 CHAPTER IV In the smoking room of the clubhouse, a cheerful fire was burning, and the oldest member glanced from time to time out of the window into the gathering dusk. Snow was falling lightly on the lynx. From where he sat the oldest member had a good view of the ninth green, and presently out of the grayness of the December evening there appeared over the brow of the hill a golf ball. It trickled across the green and stopped within a yard of the hole. The oldest member nodded approvingly. A good approach shot. A young man in a tweed suit clambered on to the green, holed out with easy confidence, and shouldering his bag made his way to the clubhouse. A few moments later he entered the smoking room and uttered an exclamation of rapture at the side of the fire. I am frozen stiff. He rang for a waiter in order to hot-drink. The oldest member gave a gracious assent to the suggestion that he should join him. I like playing in winter, said the young man. You get the course to yourself, for the world is full of slackers who only turn out when the weather suits them. I cannot understand where they get the nerve to call themselves golfers. And not everyone is as keen as you are, my boys, at the sage, dipping gratefully into his hot drink. If they were, the world would be a better place, and we should hear less of all this modern unrest. I am pretty keen, admitted the young man. I have only encountered one man whom I could describe as Keener. I allude to Mortimer Sturgis. The fellow who took up golf at thirty-eight, and let the girl he was engaged to marry go off with someone else, because he hadn't the time to combine golf with courtship? I remember you were telling me about him the other day. There's a sequel to that story, if you would care to hear it, said the oldest member. You have the honor, said the young man. Go ahead. Some people began the oldest member, considered that Mortimer Sturgis was too wrapped up in golf, and blamed him for it. I could never see eye to eye with them, and the days of King Arthur nobody thought the worse of a young knight, if he suspended all his social and business engagements in favor of a search for the Holy Grail. In the middle ages a man could devote his whole life to the Crusades, and the public fond upon him. Why, then, blame the man of Trey for a zealous attention to the modern equivalent, the quest of Scratch. Mortimer Sturgis never became a Scratch player, but he did eventually get his handicap down to nine, and I honor him for it. The story which I am about to tell begins in what might be called the middle period of Sturgis' career. He had reached the stage when his handicap was a wobbly twelve, and as you are no doubt aware, it is then that a man really begins to golf in the true sense of the word. Mortimer's fondness for the game until then had been merely tepid compared with what it became now. He had played a little before, but now he really buckled to and got down to it. It was at this point too that he began once more to entertain thoughts of marriage. A profound statistician in this one department, he had discovered that practically all the finest exponents of the art are married men, and the thought that there might be something in the holy state which improved a man's game and that he was missing a good thing troubled him a great deal. Moreover, the paternal instinct had awakened in him. As he justly pointed out whether marriage improved your game or not, it was to old Tom Morris' marriage that the existence of young Tommy Morris, winner of the British Open Championship four times in succession, could be directly traced. In fact, at the age of 42, Mortimer Sturgis was in just the frame of mind to take some nice girl aside and ask her to become a stepmother to his eleven drivers as Baffy, his twenty-eight putters, and the rest of the ninety-four clubs which he had accumulated in the course of his golfing career. The sole stipulation of course, which he made when dreaming his daydreams, was that the future Mrs. Sturgis must be a golfer. I can still recall the horror in his face when one girl, admirable in other respects, said that she had never heard of Harry Varden, and didn't he mean Dolly Varden? She has since proved an excellent wife and mother, but Mortimer Sturgis never spoke to her again. With the coming of January, it was Mortimer's practice to leave England and go to the south of France, where there was sunshine and crisp dry turf. He pursued his usual custom this year. With his suitcase and his ninety-four clubs, he went off to St. Brule, staying as he always did at the Hotel Superb, where they knew him, and it treated with an amiable tolerance his habit of practicing chip shots in his bedroom. On the first evening, after breaking a statuette of the infant Samuel in prayer, he dressed and went down to dinner. And the first thing he saw was her. Mortimer Sturgis, as you know, had been engaged before, but Betty Weston had never inspired the tumultuous rush of emotion which the mere sight of this girl had set loose in him. He told me later that just to watch her holding out her soup gave him a sort of feeling you get when your drive collides with a rock in the middle of a tangle of rough and kicks back into the middle of the fairway. If golf had come late in life to Mortimer Sturgis, love came later still, and just as the golf attacking him in middle life had been some golf, so was the love considerable love. Mortimer finished his dinner in a trance, which is the best way to do it at some hotels, and then scoured the place for someone who would introduce him. He found such a person eventually, and the meeting took place. She was a small and rather fragile-looking girl with big blue eyes and a cloud of golden hair. She had a sweet expression, and her left wrist was in a sling. She looked up at Mortimer as if she had at last found something that amounted to something. I am inclined to think it was a case of love at first sight on both sides. Fine weather we're having, said Mortimer, who was a capital conversation list. Yes, said the girl. I like fine weather. So do I. There is something about fine weather. Yes. It's, well, fine weather so much finer than weather that isn't fine, said Mortimer. He looked at the girl a little anxiously, fearing he might be taking her out of her depth, but she seemed to have followed his train of thought perfectly. Yes, isn't it? she said. It's so, so fine. That's just what I meant, said Mortimer. So fine. You've just hit it. He was charmed. The combination of beauty and intelligence is so rare. I see you've hurt your wrist, he went on, pointing to the sling. Yes, I strained it a little playing in the championship. The championship? Mortimer was interested. It's awfully rude of me, he said apologetically, but I didn't catch her name just now. My name is Somerset. Mortimer had been bending forward solicitously. He overbalanced and nearly fell off his chair. Shock had been stunning. Even before he had met and spoken to her, he had told himself that he loved this girl with the stored-up love of a lifetime. And she was Mary Somerset. The hotel lobby danced before Mortimer's eyes. The name will, of course, be familiar to you, and the early rounds of the ladies' open golf championship of that year nobody had paid much attention to Mary Somerset. She had survived her first two matches, but her opponents had been non-entities like herself, and then in the third round she had met and defeated the champion. From that point on, her name was on everybody's lips. She became a favorite, and she justified the public confidence by sailing into the final and winning easily. And here she was, talking to him like an ordinary person. And if he could read the message in her eyes, not altogether indifferent to his charms, if you could call them that, golly, said Mortimer, odd. Their friendship ripened rapidly, as friendships do in the South of France. In that favored climb you find the girl, and in nature does the rest. On the second morning of their acquaintance, Mortimer invited her to walk round the links with him and watch him play. He did it a little diffidently, for his golf was not of the caliber that would be likely to extort admiration from a champion. On the other hand, one should never let slip the opportunity of acquiring wrinkles on the game, and he thought that Miss Somerset, if she watched one or two of his shots, might tell him just what he ought to do. And sure enough, the opening arrived in the fourth hole, where Mortimer, after a drive, which surprised even himself, found his ball in a nasty, cuppy lie. He turned to the girl. What ought I to do here? he asked. Miss Somerset looked at the ball. She seemed to be weighing the matter in her mind. Give it a good hard knock, she said. Mortimer knew what she meant. She was advocating a full iron. The only trouble was that when he tried anything more ambitious than a half swing, except off the tee, he almost invariably topped. However, he could not fail this wonderful girl, so he swung well back and took a chance. His enterprise was rewarded. The ball flew out of the indentation in the turf, as cleanly as though John Henry Taylor had been behind it, and rolled, looking neither to left nor to right, straight for the pin. A few moments later, Mortimer Sturges had holed odd one under Bogie, and it was only the fear that, having known him for so short a time, she might be startled and refuse him that kept him from proposing then and there. This exhibition of golfing generalship on her part had removed his last doubts. He knew that if he lived forever, there could be no other girl in the world for him. With her at his side, what might he not do? He might get his handicap down to six, to three, to scratch, to plus something, good heavens, while even the amateur championship was not outside the range of possibility. Mortimer Sturges shook his putter solemnly in the air, and vowed a silent vow that he would win this pearl among women. Now, when a man feels like that, it is impossible to restrain him long, for a week Mortimer Sturges' soul sizzled within him. Then he could contain himself no longer. One night, at one of the informal denses at the hotel, he drew the girl out onto the moonlit terrace. Miss Somerset, he began, stuttering with emotion, like an imperfectly corked bottle of ginger beer. Miss Somerset, may I call you Mary? The girl looked at him with eyes that shone softly on the dim light. Mary, she repeated. Why, of course, if you like, if I like, cried Mortimer, don't you know that it is my dearest wish? Don't you know that I would rather be permitted to call you Mary than do the first hole at Mirfield in two? Oh, Mary, how I have longed for this moment. I love you, I love you. Ever since I met you, I have known that you were the one girl in this vast world, whom I would die to win. Mary, will you be mine? Shall we go round together? Will you fix up a match with me and the links of life, which shall end only when the grim reaper lays us both a stymie? She drooped towards him, Mortimer, she murmured. He held out his arms, then drew back. His face had grown suddenly tense, and there were lines of pain about his mouth. Wait, he said in a strained voice. Mary, I love you dearly, and because I love you so dearly, I cannot let you trust your sweet life to me blindly. I have a confession to make. I am not, I have not always been. He paused. A good man, he said in a low voice. She started indignantly. How can you say that? You are the best, the kindest, the bravest man I have ever met. Who but a good man would have risked his life to save me from drowning? Drowning? Mortimer's voice seemed perplexed with you. What do you mean? Have you forgotten the time when I fell on the sea last week and you jumped in with all your clothes on? Of course, yes, said Mortimer. I remember now. It was the day I did the long seventh and five. I got off a good tee shot straight down the fairway, took a baffy for my second, and... But that is not the point. It is sweet and generous of you to think so highly of what was the nearest commonplace act of ordinary politeness. But I must repeat that judged by the standards of your snowy purity, I am not a good man. I do not come to you clean and spotless as a young girl should expect her husband to come to her. Once, playing in a foursome, my ball fell in some long grass. Nobody was near me. We had no catties, and the others were on the fairway. God knows, his voice shook. God knows I struggled against the temptation. But I fell. I kicked the ball onto a little bare mound, from which it was an easy task with a nice half-mashy. To reach the green for a snappy seven. Mary there have been times when, going round by myself, I have allowed myself ten-foot putts on three holes in succession, simply in order to be able to say I had done the course at under a hundred. Ah, you shrink from me. You are disgusted. I am not disgusted, and I don't shrink. I only shivered because it is rather cold. Then you can love me in spite of my past. Mordomer. She fell into his arms. My dearest, he said presently, what a happy life ours will be. That is, if you do not find that you have made a mistake. A mistake, she cried scornfully. Well, my handicap is twelve of you know, and not so darn twelve at that. There are days when I play my second from the fairway over the next hole, but one. Days when I couldn't putt into a coal hole with welcome written over it. And you are a lady's open champion. Still, if you think it's all right. Oh, Mary, you little know how I have dreamed of someday marrying a really first-class golfer. Yes, that was my vision, of walking up the aisle with some sweet plus-two girl on my arm. You shivered again. You were catching cold. It is a little cold, said the girl. She spoke in a small voice. Let me take you in, sweetheart, said Mortimer. I'll just put you in a comfortable chair with a nice cup of coffee. And then I think I really must come out again and tramp about, and think how perfectly splendid everything is. And they were married a few weeks later, very quietly, in the little village church of St. Brewell, the secretary of the local golf club acted as best man for Mortimer. And a girl from the hotel was the only bridesmaid. The whole business was rather a disappointment to Mortimer, who had planned out a somewhat florid ceremony at St. George's Hanover Square, with the vicar of Tootinger scratch player excellent at short approach shots officiating, and the voice that breathed or St. Andrews boomed from the organ. He had even had the idea of copying the military wedding and escorting his bride out of the church under an arch of crossed cliques. But she would have none of this pomp. She insisted on a quiet wedding, and for the honeymoon trip preferred a tour through Italy. Mortimer, who had wanted to go to Scotland to visit the birthplace of James Brade, yielded amably, for he loved her dearly. But he did not think much of Italy. In Rome, the great monuments of the past left him cold. Of the temple of Vespasian, all he thought was that it would be a devil of a place to be bunkered behind. The Colosseum arose a faint spark of interest in him, as he speculated whether Abe Mitchell would use a full brassie to carry it. In Florence, the view over the Tuscan Hills from the Torre Rosa Fiesole, over which his bride waxed enthusiastically, seemed to him merely a nasty bit of rough, which would take a deal of getting out of. And so, in the fullness of time, they came home to Mortimer's cozy little house adjoining the links. Mortimer was so busy polishing his ninety-four clubs on the evening of their arrival that he failed to notice that his wife was preoccupied. A less busy man would have perceived at a glance that she was distinctly nervous. She started at sudden noises, and once when he tried the newest of his mashy niblicks and broke one of the drawing-room windows, she screamed sharply. In short, her manner was strange, and if Edgar Allen Poe had put her into the fall of the House of Usher, she would have fitted it like the paper on the wall. She had the air of one waiting tensely for the approach of some imminent doom. Mortimer humming gaily to himself as he sanded the paper the blade of his twenty-second putter, observed none of this. He was thinking of the morrow's play. Your wrist's quite well again now, darling, isn't it, he said. Yes, yes, quite well. Fine, said Mortimer, will breakfast early stay at half past seven, and then we'll be able to get in a couple of rounds before lunch. A couple more in the afternoon will about see us through. One doesn't want to overgolf oneself the first day. He swung the putter joyfully. How had we better play, do you think? We might start with you giving me a half. She did not speak. She was very pale. She clutched the arm of her chair tightly till the knuckles showed white under the skin. To anybody but Mortimer her nervousness would have been even more obvious on the following morning as they reached the first tea. Her eyes were dull and heavy, and she started when a grasshopper chirruped. But Mortimer was too occupied with thinking how jolly it was having the course to themselves to notice anything. He scooped some sand out of the box and took a ball out of her bag. His wedding present to her had been a brand new golf bag, six dozen balls and a full set of the most expensive clubs all born in Scotland. And do you like a high tea, he asked. Oh no, she replied, coming with a start out of her thoughts. Doctors say it's indigestible. Mortimer laughed merrily. Deuced good, he chuckled. Is that your own or did you read it in a comic paper? There you are. He placed the ball on a little hill of sand and got up. Now let's see some of that championship form of yours. She bursts into tears. My darling, Mortimer ran to her and put his arms around her. She tried weakly to push him away. My angel, what is it? She sobbed, brokenly. Then with an effort she spoke. Mortimer, I have deceived you. Deceived me? I have never played golf in my life. I don't even know how to hold the caddy. Mortimer's heart stood still. This sounded like the gibbrings of an unbalanced mind and no man likes his wife to begin gibbering immediately after the honeymoon. My precious, you are not yourself. I am. That's the whole trouble. I am myself and not the girl you thought I was. Mortimer stared at her, puzzled. He was thinking that it was a little difficult and that to work it out properly he would need a pencil and a bit of paper. My name is not Mary. But you said it was. I didn't. You asked if you could call me Mary and I said you might because I loved you too much to deny your smallest whim. I was going on to say that it wasn't my name but you interrupted me. Not Mary, the horrid truth was coming home to Mortimer. You were not Mary Somerset? Mary is my cousin. My name is Mabel. But you said you had sprained your wrist playing in the championship. So I had. The mallet slipped in my hand. The mallet, Mortimer clutched at his forehead. You didn't say the mallet. Yes, Mortimer, the mallet. A faint blush of shame mantled her cheek. An end to her blue eyes there came a look of pain. But she faced him bravely. I am the lady's open croquet champion, she whispered. Mortimer Sturges cried aloud. A cry that was like the shriek of some wounded animal. Croquet, he gulped and stared at her with unseeing eyes. He was no prude but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself. However broad-minded he may try to be. Croquet! There was a long silence. The light breeze sang in the pines above them. The grasshoppers chirped at their feet. She began to speak again in a loam and not in his voice. I blame myself. I should have told you before, while there was yet time for you to withdraw. I should have confessed this to you that night on the terrace and the moonlight. But you swept me off my feet and I was in your arms before I realized what you would think of me. It was only then that I understood what my supposed skill at golf meant to you. And then it was too late. I loved you too much to let you go. I could not bear the thought of you recoiling from me. Oh, I was mad, mad. I knew that I could not keep up the deception of forever, that you must find me out in time. But I had a wild hope that by then we should be so close to one another that you might find it in your heart to forgive. But I was wrong. I see it now. There are some things that no man can forgive. Some things, she repeated dully, which no man can forgive. She turned away. Mortimer awoke from his trance. Stop, he cried. Don't go. I must go. I want to talk this over. She shook her head sadly and started to walk slowly across the sunlit grass. Mortimer watched her, his brain in a whirl of chaotic thoughts. She disappeared through the trees. Mortimer sat down on the tea box and buried his face in his hands. For a time you could think of nothing but the cruel blow he had received. This was the end of those rainbow visions of himself and her going through life side by side. She lovingly criticizing his stance and his backswing, he learning wisdom from her. A croquet player. He was married to a woman who hit colored balls through hoops. Mortimer Sturgis writhed in torment. A strong man's agony. The mood passed. How long it had lasted, he did not know. But suddenly, as he sat there, he became once more aware of the glow of the sunshine and the singing of the birds. It was as if a shadow had lifted. Hope and optimism crept into his heart. He loved her. He loved her still. She was part of him and nothing that she could do had power to alter that. She had deceived him, yes, but why had she deceived him? Because she loved him so much that she could not bear to lose him. Dashed her all was a bit of a compliment. And after all, poor girl, was it her fault? Was it not rather the fault of her upbringing? Probably she had been taught to play a croquet when a mere child hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. No steps had been taken to eradicate the virus from her system, and a thing had become chronic. Could she be blamed? Was she not more to be pityed than censured? Mortimer rose to his feet, his heart swelling with generous forgiveness. The black horror had passed from him. The future seemed once more bright. It was not too late. She was still young, and many years younger than he himself had been when he took up golf. And surely if she put herself into the hands of a good specialist and practiced every day, she might still hope to become a fair player. He reached the house and ran in, calling her name. No answer came. He sped from room to room, but all were empty. She had gone. The house was there. The furniture was there. The canary sang in its cage. The cook in the kitchen. The pictures still hung on the walls. But she had gone. Everything was at home except his wife. Finally, propped up against the cup he had once won in the handicap competition, he saw a letter. With a sinking heart he tore open the envelope. It was a pathetic, a tragic letter. The letter of a woman endeavoring to express all the anguish of a torn heart was one of those fountain pens which suspend the flow of ink about twice in every three words. The gist of it was that she felt she had wronged him. That though he might forgive, he could never forget, and that she was going away, away out into the world alone. The mortimer sank into a chair and stared blankly before him. She had scratched the match. I am not a married man myself, so have had no experience of how it feels to have one's wife whiz off silently into the unknown. But I should imagine that it must be something like taking a full swing with a brassie and missing the ball. Something I take it of the same sense of mingled shock, chagrin, and the feeling that nobody loves one which attacks a man in such circumstances must come to the bereaved husband. And one can readily understand how terribly the incident must have shaken mortimer Sturgers. I was away at the time, but I am told by those who saw him that his game went to all to pieces. He had never shown much indication of becoming anything in the nature of a first-class golfer, but he had managed to acquire one or two decent shots. His work with the light iron was not at all bad, and he was a fairly steady putter. But now, under the shadow of this tragedy, he dropped right back to the form of his earliest period. It was a pitiful sight to see this gaunt, haggard man with a look of dumb anguish behind his spectacles taking as many as three shots sometimes to get past the lady's tea. His slice, of which he had almost cured himself, returned with such virulence that in the list of ordinary hazards he had now to include the tea-box. And when he was not slicing, he was pulling. I have heard that he was known when driving at the sixth to get bunkered in his own caddy, who had taken up his position directly behind him. As for the deep sand trap in front of the seventh screen, he spent so much of his time in it that there was some informal talk among the members of the committee of charging him a small weekly rent. A man of comfortable independent means, he lived during these days and next to nothing. Golf balls cost him a certain amount, but the bulk of his income he spent in efforts to discover his wife's whereabouts. He advertised in all the papers, he employed private detectives, he even, much as it revolted his finer instincts, took to traveling about the country watching croquet matches. But she was never among the players. I'm not sure that he did not find a melancholy comfort in this, for it seemed to show that whatever his wife might be and whatever she might be doing, she had not gone right under. Summer passed, autumn came and went, winter arrived. The days grew bleak and chill and in early fall of snow, heavier than had been known at that time of the year for a long while, put an end to golf. Mortimer spent his days indoors, staring gloomily through the window at the white mantlet covered the earth. It was Christmas Eve. The young man shifted uneasily on his seat, his face was long and somber. Oh, this is very depressing, he said. These sole tragedies, agreed the oldest member, are never very cheery. Look here, said the young man firmly. Tell me one thing frankly, as man to man, did Mortimer find her dead in the snow, covered except for her face, and which still lingered that faint sweet smile which he remembered so well? Because if he did, I'm going home. No, no, protested the oldest member, nothing of that kind. You're sure? You aren't going to spring it on me suddenly. No, no. The young man breathed a relieved sigh. It was your saying about the white mantlet covering the earth that made me suspicious. The sage resumed. It was Christmas Eve, all day the snow had been falling, and now it lay thick and deep over the countryside. Mortimer stirred as his frugal dinner concluded, what with losing his wife and not being able to get any golf, he had little appetite these days, was sitting in his drawing room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon, wearing of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no, it was freezing. The snow as he tested it with his shoe crackled crisply. The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer that the scenery packed up and went to the south of France the better. He was just about to close the door when suddenly he thought he heard his own name called. Mortimer, had he been mistaken? The voice had sounded faint and far away. Mortimer, he thrilled from head to foot. This time there could be no mistake. It was the voice he knew so well, his wife's voice, and he had come from somewhere down near the garden gate. It is difficult to judge distance where sounds are concerned, but Mortimer estimated that the voice had spoken about a short, mashy niblick and an easy putt from where he stood. The next moment he was racing down the snow-covered path, and then his heart stood still. What was that dark something on the ground just inside the gate? He leaped towards it. He passed his hands over it. It was a human body. Quivering, he struck a match. It went out. He struck another. That went out too. He struck a third, and it burned with a steady flame and stooping. He saw that it was his wife who lay there, cold and stiff. Her eyes were closed, and on her face still lingered that faint, sweet smile which she remembered so well. The young man rose with a set face. He reached for his golf bag. I call that a dirty trick, he said. After you promised, the sage waved him back to his seat. Have no fear, she had only fainted. You said she was cold. Wouldn't you be cold if you were lying in the snow? And stiff. Miss Isstergis was stiff because the train service was bad. It's being the holiday season, and she had had to walk all the way from the junction, a distance of eight miles. Sit down and allow me to proceed. Tenderly, reverently, Mordemirster just picked her up and began to bear her into the house. Halfway there, his foot slipped on a piece of ice, and he fell heavily, barking his shin, and shooting his lovely burden out onto the snow. The fall brought her to. She opened her eyes. Mordemir, darling, she said. Mordemir had just been going to say something else, but he checked himself. Are you alive? he asked. Yes, she replied. Thank God, said Mordemir, scooping some of the snow out of the back of his collar. Together they went into the house, and into the drawing room. Wife, gazed at husband, husband at wife. There was a silence. Rotten weather, said Mordemir. Yes, isn't it? The spell was broken. They fell into each other's arms, and presently they were sitting side by side on the sofa holding hands, just as if that awful parting had been but a dream. It was Mordemir who made the first reference to it. I say, you know, he said. You oughtn't to have nipped away like that. I thought you hated me. Hated you? I love you better than life itself. I would sooner have smashed my pet driver than I have had you leave me. She thrilled at the words, Darling, Mordemir fondled her hand. I was just coming back to tell you that I loved you still. I was going to suggest that you took lessons from some good professional, and I found you gone. I wasn't worthy of you, Mordemir. My angel, he pressed his lips to her hair, and spoke solemnly. All this has taught me a lesson, dearest. I knew all along, and I know what more than ever now, that it is you, you that I want, just you. I don't care if you don't play golf. I don't care. He hesitated, then went on manfully. I don't care even if you play croquet, so long as you are with me. For a moment her face showed rapture that made it almost angelic. She uttered a low moan of ecstasy. She kissed him. Then she rose. Mordemir, look. What at? Me. Just look. The jigger which she had been polishing lay on a chair close by. She took it up. From the bowl of golf balls and the mantelpiece, she selected a brand new one. She placed it on the carpet. She addressed it. Then, with a merry cry of four, she drove it hard and strayed to the glass of the china cupboard. Good God! cried Mordemir astounded. It had been a bird of a shot. She turned to him, her whole face alight with that beautiful smile. When I left you, Mordi, she said, I had but one aim in life, somehow to make myself worthy of you. I saw your advertisements in the papers, and I longed to answer them, but I was not ready. All this long, weary while, I have been in the village of Ostermachty in Scotland, studying under Thames MacMickle. Not the Thames MacMickle who finished fourth in the Opian Championship of 1911 and had the best ball in the foursome in 1912 with Jacques McHaggis, Andy McHeather, and Sandy McHootz. Yes, Mordemir, the very same. Oh, it was difficult at first. I missed my mallet, and longed to study the ball with my foot and use the toe of the club. Wherever there was a direction post, I aimed at it automatically, but I conquered my weakness. I practiced steadily, and now Mr. MacMickle says my handicap would be a good twenty-four on any links. She smiled apologetically. Of course, that doesn't sound much to you. You were twelve when I left you, and now I suppose you were down to eight or something. Mordemir shook his head. Alas, no, he replied gravely. My game went right off for some reason, rather, and I'm twenty-four, too. For some reason or other, she uttered a cry. Oh, I know what the reason was. How could I ever forgive myself? I have ruined your game. The brightness came back to Mordemir's eyes. He embraced her fondly. Do not reproach yourself, dearest, you murmured. It is the best thing that could have happened. From now on, we start level. Two hearts that beat as one. Two drivers that drive as one. I could not wish it otherwise. By Georgia, just like that thing of Tennyson's, he recited the lines softly. My bride, my wife, my life. Oh, we will walk the links, yoked in all exercise of noble end. And so, through those dark bunkers, off the course that no man knows. Indeed, I love thee. Come, yield thyself up. Our handicaps are one. Accomplish thou, my manhood, and thyself. Lay thy sweet hands in mine, and trust to me. She laid her hands in his. And now, Morty Darling, she said, I want to tell you all about how I did the long twelfth at Aukter Mukti and one under Bogie. End of Chapter 4 Recording by Neil Donnelly Chapter 5 The Salvation of George Macintosh by P. G. Woodhouse The young man came into the clubhouse. There was a frown on his usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger ale and the sort of voice which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to bring on the hemlock. Sunk in the recesses of his favourite seti, the oldest member had watched him with silent sympathy. How did you get on, he inquired. He beat me. The oldest member nodded his venerable head. You have had a trying time if I am not mistaken. I feared as much when I saw you go out with Popsley. How many a young man have I seen go out with Herbert Popsley exalting in his youth and crawl back at Eventide looking like a toad under the harrow. He talked. All the time confound it, put me right off my stroke. The oldest member sighed. The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our complex modern civilisation, he said, and the most difficult to deal with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Popsley in action, as the crackling of thorns under a pot. He is almost as bad as poor George Macintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you about George Macintosh? I don't think so. His, said the sage, is the only case of golfing girulity I have ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care to hear about it. George Macintosh, said the oldest member, when I first knew him was one of the most admirable young fellows I have ever met. A handsome, well-set-up man with no vices except a tendency to use the mashy for shots which should have been made with the light iron. And as for his positive virtues, they were too numerous to mention. He never swayed his body, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a tactful grunt when his opponent foosled. And when he himself achieved a glaring fluke, his self-approachful click of the tongue was music to his adversary's bruised soul. But of all his virtues, the one that most endeared him to me and to all thinking men, was the fact that, from the start of a round to the finish, he never spoke a word except when absolutely compelled to do so by the exigencies of the game. And it was this man who subsequently, for a black period which lives in the memory of all his contemporaries, was known as Gabby George and became a shade less popular than the germ of Spanish influenza. Truly corruptio optimi pessima. One of the things that sadden a man as he grows older and reviews his life is the reflection that his most devastating deeds were generally the ones which he did with the best motives. The thought is disheartening. I can honestly say that when George Macintosh came to me and told me his troubles, my sole desire was to ameliorate his lot. That I might be starting on the downward path, a man whom I liked and respected never once occurred to me. One night, after dinner, when George Macintosh came in, I could see at once that there was something on his mind. But what this could be I was at a loss to imagine, for I had been playing with him myself all the afternoon, and he had done an eighty-one and a seventy-nine, and as I had not left the links till dusk was beginning to fall, it was practically impossible that he could have gone out again and done badly. The idea of financial trouble seemed equally out of the question. George had a good job with the old established legal firm of Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Coots, Toots, and Peabody. The third alternative that he might be in love, I rejected at once. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen a sign that George Macintosh gave a thought to the opposite sex. Yet this, bizarre as it seemed, was the true solution. Scarcely had he seated himself and lit a cigar when he blurted out his confession. What would you do in a case like this, he said? Like what? Well, he choked and a rich blush permeated his surface. Well, it seems a silly thing to say in all that, but I'm in love with Miss Tennant, you know. You are in love with Celia Tennant? Of course I am, I've got eyes, haven't I? Who else is there that any sane man could possibly be in love with? That, he went on moodily, is the whole trouble. There's a field of about twenty-nine, and I should think my place in the bedding is about thirty-three to one. I cannot agree with you there, I said. You have every advantage, it appears to me. You are young, amiable, good-looking, comfortably off, scratch, but I can't talk, confound it, he burst out. And how is a man to get anywhere at this sort of game without talking? You are talking perfectly fluently now. Yes, to you, but put me in front of Celia Tennant, and I simply make a sort of gurgling noise like a sheep with a box. It kills my chances stone dead. You know these other men. I can give Claude Main wearing a third and beat him. I can give Eustace Brinkley a stroke a hole and simply trample on his corpse. But when it comes to talking to a girl, I'm not in their class. You must not be diffident. But I am diffident. What's the good of saying I mustn't be diffident when I'm the man who wrote the words and music? When diffidence is my middle name and my telegraphic address, I can't help being diffident. Surely you could overcome it. But how? It was in the hope that you might be able to suggest something that I came around tonight. And this was where I did the fatal thing. It happened that, just before I took up braid on the push shot, I had been dipping into the current number of a magazine, and one of the advertisements I chanced to remember might have been framed with a special eye to George's unfortunate case. It was that one which I have no doubt you have seen which treats of how to become a convincing talker. I picked up this magazine now and handed it to George. He studied it for a few minutes in thoughtful silence. He looked at the picture of the man who had taken the course being fond upon by lovely women, while the man who had let this opportunity slip stood outside the group gazing with a wistful envy. They never do that to me, said George. Do what, my boy? Cluster round, clinging cooingly. I gather from the letterpress that they will if you write for the booklet. You think there is really something in it? I see no reason why eloquence should not be taught by male. One seems to be able to acquire every other desirable quality in that manner nowadays. I might try it. After all, it's not expensive. There's no doubt about it, he murmured, returning to his perusal. That fellow does look popular. Of course the evening dress may have something to do with it. Not at all. The other man you will notice is also wearing evening dress, and yet he is merely among those on the outskirts. It is simply a question of writing for the booklet. Sent post free. Sent, as you say, post free. I have a good mind to try it. I see no reason why you should not. I will, by Duncan. He tore the page out of the magazine and put it in his pocket. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give this thing a trial for a week or two, and at the end of that time I'll go to the boss and see how he reacts when I ask for a rise of salary. If he crawls it'll show there's something in this. If he flings me out it will prove the things no good. We left it at that, and I am bound to say, owing no doubt to my not having written for the booklet of the memory training course advertised on the adjoining page of the magazine, the matter slipped from my mind. When, therefore, a few weeks later I received a telegram from young Macintosh which ran, worked like magic, I confess I was intensely puzzled. It was only a quarter of an hour before George himself arrived that I solved the problem of its meaning. So the boss crawled, I said, as he came in. He gave a light, confident laugh. I had not seen him, as I say, for some time, and I was struck by the alteration in his appearance. In what exactly this alteration consisted I could not at first have said. But gradually it began to impress itself on me that his eye was brighter, his jaw squareer, his carriage a trifle more upright than it had been. But it was his eye that struck me most forcibly. The George Macintosh I had known had had a pleasing gaze, but though frank and agreeable, it had never been more dynamic than a fried egg. This new George had an eye that was a combination of a gimlet and a searchlight. Collarage's ancient mariner, I imagine, must have been somewhat similarly equipped. The ancient mariner stopped a wedding guest on his way to a wedding. George Macintosh gave me the impression that he could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express on its way to Penzance. Self-confidence, I, and more than self-confidence, a sort of sinful overbearing swank seemed to exude from his very pores. Crawled, he said. Well, he didn't actually lick my boots because I saw him coming and side-stepped, but he did everything short of that. I hadn't been talking an hour when— An hour, I gasped. Did you talk for an hour? Certainly. You wouldn't have had me be abrupt, would you? I went into his private office and found him alone. I think at first he would have been just as well pleased if I had retired. In fact, he said as much. But I soon adjusted that outlook. I took a seat, and a cigarette, and then I started to sketch out for him the history of my connection with the firm. He began to wilt before the end of the first ten minutes. At the quarter of an hour mark he was looking at me like a lost dog that's just found its owner. By the half-hour he was making little bleeding noises and massaging my coat-sleeve, and when, after perhaps an hour and a half, I came to my peroration and suggested a rise. He choked back a sob, gave me double what I had asked, and invited me to dine at his club next Tuesday. I'm a little sorry now I cut the thing so short. A few minutes more, and I fancy it would have given me his sock suspenders and made over his life insurance in my favour. Well, I said, as soon as I could speak, for I was finding my young friend a trifle overpowering. This is most satisfactory. So-so, said George, not un-so-so. A man wants an addition to his income when he is going to get married. Ah, I said, that, of course, will be the real test. What do you mean? Why, when you propose to see Lea Tennant, you remember you were saying when we spoke of this before. Oh, that, said George carelessly. I've arranged all that. What? Oh, yes, on my way up from the station. I looked in on Lea about an hour ago, and it's all settled. Amazing. Well, I don't know. I just put the thing to her, and she seemed to see it. I congratulate you. So now, like Alexander, you have no more worlds to conquer. Well, I don't know so much about that, said George. The way it looks to me is that I'm just starting. This eloquence is a thing that rather grows on one. You didn't hear about my after-dinner speech at the anniversary banquet of the firm, I suppose. My dear fellow, a riot, a positive stampede, had him laughing and then crying and then laughing again, and then crying once more till six of them had to be let out and the rest down with hiccoughs. Napkins waving, three tables broken, waiters in hysterics. I tell you, I played on them as on a stringed instrument. Can you play on a stringed instrument? As it happens? No, but as I would have played on a stringed instrument if I could play on a stringed instrument, wonderful sense of power it gives you. I mean to go in pretty largely for that sort of thing in future. You must not let it interfere with your gulf. He gave a laugh which turned my blood cold. Golf, he said. After all, what is golf? Just pushing a small ball into a hole. A child could do it. Indeed, children have done it with great success. I see an infant of fourteen has just won some sort of championship. Could that stripling convulse a room full of bankwooders? I think not. To sway your fellow men with a word, to hold them with a gesture. That is the real salt of life. I don't suppose I shall play much more golf now. I'm making arrangements for a lecturing tour, and I'm booked up for fifteen lunches already. Those were his words. A man who had once done the lake hole in one. A man whom the committee were grooming for the amateur championship. I am no weakling, but I confess, they sent a chill shiver down my spine. George Macintosh did not, I am glad to say, carry out his mad project to the letter. He did not altogether sever himself from golf. He was still to be seen occasionally on the links. But now, and I know of nothing more tragic that can befall a man, he found himself gradually shunned. He who in the days of his sanity had been besieged with more offers of games than he could manage to accept. Men simply would not stand his incessant flow of talk. One by one they dropped off, until the only person he could find to go round with him was Old Major Mosby, whose hearing completely petered out as long ago as the year ninety-eight. And of course, Celia Tennant would play with him occasionally. But it seemed to me that even she, greatly as no doubt she loved him, was beginning to crack under the strain. So surely had I read the pallor of her face, and the wild look of dumb agony in her eyes, that I was not surprised when, as I sat one morning in my garden reading Ray on Taking Turf, my man announced her name. I had been half expecting her to come to me for advice and consolation, for I had known her ever since she was a child. It was I who had given her her first driver and taught her infant lips to lisp four. It is not easy to lisp the word four, but I had taught her to do it, and this constituted a bond between us which had been strengthened rather than weakened by the passage of time. She sat down on the grass beside my chair and looked up at my face in silent pain. We had known each other so long that I know it was not my face that pained her, but rather some unspoken malaise of the soul. I waited for her to speak, and suddenly she burst out impetuously, as though she could hold back her sorrow no longer. Oh, I can't stand it! I can't stand it! You mean, I said, though I knew only too well. This horrible obsession of poor George's, she cried passionately, I don't think he has stopped talking once since we have been engaged. He is, Chattie, I agreed. Has he told you the story about the Irishman? Half a dozen times, and the one about the Swede oftener than that. But I would not mind an occasional anecdote. Women have to learn to bear anecdotes from the men they love. It is the curse of Eve. It is his incessant easy flow of chatter on all topics that is undermining even my devotion. But surely, when he proposed to you, he must have given you an inkling of the truth. He only hinted at it when he spoke to me, but I gather that he was eloquent. When he proposed, said Celia Dreamily, he was wonderful. He spoke for twenty minutes without stopping. He said I was the essence of his every hope, the tree on which the fruit of his life grew. His present, his future, his past, oh, and all that sort of thing. If he would only confine his conversation now to remarks of a similar nature, I could listen to him all day long. But he doesn't. He talks politics and statistics and philosophy, and oh, and everything. He makes my headache. And your heart, also, I fear, I said gravely. I love him, she replied simply. In spite of everything, I love him dearly. But what to do, what to do? I have an awful fear that when we are getting married, instead of answering I will, he will go into the pulpit and deliver an address on marriage ceremonies of all ages. The world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long after-dinner with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. It is breaking my heart. I see him shunned by his former friends, shunned. They run a mile when they see him coming. The mere sound of his voice outside the clubhouse is enough to send brave men diving for safety beneath the sofas. Can you wonder that I am in despair? What have I to live for? There is always golf. Yes, there is always golf, she whispered bravely. Come and have a round this afternoon. I had promised to go for a walk. She shuddered, then pulled herself together. For a walk with George, I hesitated for a moment. Bring him along, I said, and patted her hand. It may be that together we shall find an opportunity of reasoning with him. She shook her head. You can't reason with George. He never stops talking long enough to give you time. Nevertheless, there is no harm in trying. I have an idea that this malady of his is not permanent and incurable. The very violence with which the germ of locustity has attacked him gives me hope. You must remember that before this seizure he was rather a noticeably silent man. Sometimes I think that it is just nature's way of restoring the average, and that soon the fever may burn itself out. Or it may be that a sudden shock, at any rate, have courage. I will try to be brave. Capital at half-past two on the first tee, then. You will have to give me a stroke on the third, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth, she said with a quaver in her voice. My gulf has fallen off rather lately. I patted her hand again. I understand, I said gently. I understand. The steady drone of a baritone voice as I alighted from my car and approached the first tee told me that George had not forgotten the trist. He was sitting on the stone seat under the chestnut tree, speaking a few well-chosen words on the labour movement. To what conclusion, then, do we come, he was saying. We come to the foregone and inevitable conclusion that, good afternoon, George, I said. He nodded briefly but without verbal salutation. He seemed to regard my remark as he would have regarded the unmanorly heckling of someone at the back of the hall. He proceeded evenly with his speech and was still talking when Celia addressed her ball and drove off. Her drive, coinciding with the sharp rhetorical question from George, wavered in mid-air and the ball trickled off into the rough halfway down the hill. I can see the poor girl's tortured face even now, but she breathed no word of reproach, such is the miracle of women's love. Where you went wrong there, said George, breaking off his remarks on labour, was that you have not studied the dynamics of golf sufficiently. You do not pivot properly. You allowed your left heel to point down the course when you were at the top of your swing. This makes for instability and loss of distance. The fundamental law of the dynamics of golf is that the left foot shall be solidly on the ground at the moment of impact. If you allow your heel to point down the course, it is almost impossible to bring it back in time to make the foot a solid fulcrum. I drove and managed to clear the rough and reach the fairway. But it was not one of my best drives. George Macintosh, I confess, had unnerved me. The feeling he gave me resembled the self-conscious panic which I used to experience in my childhood when informed that there was one awful eye that watched my every movement and saw my every act. It was only the fact that poor Celia appeared even more affected by his espionage that enabled me to win the first hole in seven. On the way to the second tee, George discoursed on the beauties of nature, pointing out at considerable length how exquisitely the silver glitter of the lake harmonized with the vivid emerald turf near the hole and the duller green of the rough beyond it. As Celia teed up her ball, he directed her attention to the golden glory of the sandpit to the left of the flag. It was not the spirit in which to approach the lake hole, and I was not surprised when the unfortunate girl's ball fell with a sickening plump halfway across the water. Where you went wrong there, said George, was that you made the stroke a sudden heave instead of a smooth snappy flick of the wrists. Pressing is always bad, but with the mashy, I think I will give you this hole, said Celia to me, for my shot had cleared the water and was lying on the edge of the green. I wish I hadn't used a new ball. The price of golf balls, said George, as we started to round the lake, is a matter to which economists should give some attention. I am credibly informed that rubber at the present time is exceptionally cheap. Yet we see no decrease in the price of golf balls, which, as I need scarcely inform you, are rubber-cored. Why should this be so? You will say that the wages of skilled labour have gone up. True, but— One moment, George, while I drive, I said, for we had now arrived at the third tee. A curious thing, concentration, said George, and why certain phenomena should prevent us from focusing our attention. This brings me to the vexed question of sleep. Why is it that we are able to sleep through some vast convulsion of nature when a dripping tap is enough to keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered peacefully through the San Francisco earthquake, merely stirring drowsily from time to time to tell an imaginary person to leave it on the mat. Yet these same people— Celia's drive bounded into the deep ravine which yawned some fifty yards from the tee. A low moan escaped her. Where you went wrong there, said George, I know, said Celia, I lifted my head. I had never heard her speak so abruptly before. Her manner and a girl less noticeably pretty might almost have been called snappish. George, however, did not appear to have noticed anything amiss. He filled his pipe and followed her into the ravine. Remarkable, he said, how fundamental a principle of golf is this keeping the head still. You will hear professionals tell their pupils to keep their eye on the ball. Keeping the eye on the ball is only a secondary matter. What they really mean is that the head should be kept rigid as otherwise it is impossible to. His voice died away. I had sliced my drive into the woods on the right, and after playing another had gone off to try to find my ball, leaving Celia and George in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the side of the hill, and she was drawing her niblick from her bag as I passed out of sight. George's voice blurred by distance to a monotonous murmur followed me until I was out of earshot. I was just about to give up the hunt for my ball in despair when I heard Celia's voice calling to me from the edge of the undergrowth. There was a sharp note in it which startled me. I came out trailing a portion of some unknown shrub which had twined itself about my ankle. Yes, I said, picking twigs out of my hair. I want your advice, said Celia. Certainly what is the trouble? By the way, I said looking round. Where is your fiancée? I have no fiancée, she said in a dull, hard voice. You have broken off the engagement? Not exactly, and yet, well, I suppose it amounts to that. I don't quite understand. Well, the fact is, said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, I rather think I've killed George. Killed him, eh? It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George Macintosh. George Macintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had taken a woman's intuition to see it. I killed him with my niblick, said Celia. I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a niblick shock. I had just made my eleventh attempt to get out of that ravine, the girl went on, with George talking all the time about the recent excavations in Egypt, when suddenly, you know what it is when something seems to snap. I had the experience with my shoelace only this morning. Yes, it was like that, sharp, sudden, happening all in a moment. I suppose I must have said something for George to stop talking about Egypt, and said that he was reminded by a remark of the last speakers of a certain Irishman. I pressed her hand. Don't go on if it hurts you, I said gently. Well, there is very little more to tell. He bent his head to light his pipe. And, well, the temptation was too much for me, that's all. You were quite right. You really think so? I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation, once made Yael, the wife of Heber, the most popular woman in Israel. I wish I could think so too, she murmured. At the moment, you know, I was conscious of nothing but an awful elation. But—but—oh, he was such a darling before he got this dreadful affliction. I can't help thinking of George as he used to be. She burst into a torrent of sobs. Would you care for me to view the remains, I said? Perhaps it would be as well. She led me silently into the ravine. George Macintosh was lying on his back where he had fallen. There, said Celia. And, as she spoke, George Macintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him. George blinked once or twice and looked about him daisily. Save the women and children, he cried. I can swim. Oh, George, said Celia. Feeling a little better, I asked. A little? How many people were hurt? Hurt? When the express ran into us, he cast another glance around him. Why, how did I get here? You were here all the time, I said. Do you mean after the roof fell in or before? Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck. Oh, George, she said again. He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it. Brave little woman, he said. Brave little woman, she stuck by me all through. Tell me, I am strong enough to bear it. What caused the explosion? It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be avoided by the exercise of a little tact. Well, some say one thing and some another, I said. Whether it was a spark from a cigarette? Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this well-intentioned subterfuge. I hit you, George. Hit me, he repeated curiously. With what? The Eiffel Tower? With my niblick. You hit me with your niblick? But why? She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely. Because you wouldn't stop talking. He gait. Me, he said, I wouldn't stop talking. But I hardly talk at all. I'm noted for it. Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened. The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain cells in such a way as to affect a complete cure. I have not the technical knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain. Lately, my dear fellow, I assured him, you have dropped into the habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this afternoon, you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation. Me, on the links, it isn't possible. It is only too true, I fear, and that is why this brave girl hit you with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story, just as she was making her 11th shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she took what she considered the necessary steps. Can you ever forgive me, George? cried Celia. George Macintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face. So I did. It's all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens! Can you forgive me, George? cried Celia again. He took her hand in his. Forgive you, he muttered. Can you forgive me? Me, a teatalker, a green gambler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form of life known to science. I am unclean, unclean. It is only a little mud, dearest, said Celia, looking at the sleeve of his coat. It will brush off when it's dry. How can you link your lot with a man who talks when people are making their shots? He will never do it again. But I have done it, and you stuck to me all through. Oh, Celia! I loved you, George. The man seemed to swell with a sudden emotion. His eye lit up, and you thrust one hand into the breast of his coat while he raised the other in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been made sharply aware of what it was that he intended to do, he suddenly sagged. The gleam died out of his eyes. He lowered his hand. Well, I must say that was rather decent of you, he said. A lame speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his hearers, for it showed that George Macintosh was cured beyond possibility of relapse. Yes, I must say you are rather a corker, he added. George cried, Celia. I said nothing, but I clasped his hand, and then, taking my clubs, I retired. When I looked round, she was still in his arms. I left them there alone together in the great silence. And so, concluded the oldest member, you see that a cure is possible, though it needs a woman's gentle hand to bring it about. And how few women are capable of doing what Celia Tennant did. Apart from the difficulty of summoning up the necessary resolution, an act like hers requires a straight eye and a pair of strong and supple wrists. It seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope, and the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the illustrious Sandy McCutes that when, on the occasion of his winning the British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the leading Daily Papers as to his views on tariff reform, bimetalism, the trial by jury system, and the modern craze for dancing. All they could extract from him was the single word. Having uttered which, he shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were more like him. Chapter 6 Ordeal by Golf Recording by Gary McFadden A pleasant breeze played among the trees on the terrace outside the Marvis Bay Golf and Country Club. It ruffled the leaves and cooled the forehead of the oldest member, who, as was his custom of a Saturday afternoon, sat in the shade on a rocking chair, observing the younger generation as it hooked and sliced in the valley below. The eye of the oldest member was thoughtful and reflective. When it looked into yours, you saw in it that perfect peace, that peace beyond understanding, which comes, at its maximum, only to the man who has given up golf. The oldest member has not played golf since the rubber-cored ball superseded the old dignified gutty. But, as a spectator and philosopher, he still finds pleasure in the pastime. He is watching it now with keen interest. His gaze, passing from the lemonade which he is sucking through a straw, rests upon the Saturday foresum which is struggling raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Saturday foresums, it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be digging for buried treasure, unless, it is too far off to be certain, they are killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just foosled a mashy shot, is blaming his caddy. His voice, as he upgrades the innocent child for breathing during his upswing, comes clearly up the hill. The oldest member sighs. His lemonade gives a sympathetic gurgle. He puts it down on the table. How few men, says the oldest member, possess the proper golfing temperament. How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf, except a pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees, but I did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no good, and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one's temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. Whatever may befall thee, says that great man in his meditations, it was preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody, which he is not fitted by nature to bear. I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his scorecard. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have written the words, that which makes man no worse than he was, makes life no worse. It has no power to harm without or within. Yes, Marcus Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The Niblik was his club. Speaking of Marcus Aurelius and the golfing temperament, recalls to my mind the case of young Mitchell Holmes. Mitchell, when I knew him first, was a promising young man with a future before him in the Patterson Dine and Refining Company, of which my old friend, Alexander Patterson, was the President. He had many engaging qualities, among them an unquestioned ability to imitate a bulldog quarreling with the Pecanese in a way which had to be heard to be believed. It was a gift which made him much in demand at social gatherings in the neighborhood, marking him off from other young men who could only almost play the mandolin or recite bits of gangadine, and no doubt it was this talent of his which first sowed the seeds of love in the heart of Millicent Boyd. Women are essentially hero-worshippers, and when a warm-hearted girl like Millicent has heard of personable young men imitating a bulldog in a Pecanese to the applause of a crowded drawing-room, and has been able to detect the exact point at which the Pecanese leaves off and the bulldog begins, she can never feel quite the same to other men. In short, Mitchell and Millicent were engaged, and were only waiting to be married till the former could bite the dine in refining company's ear for a bit of extra salary. Mitchell Holmes had only one fault. He lost his temper when playing golf. He seldom played around without becoming peaked, peeved, or in many cases chagrined. The caddies on our links, it was said, could always worst other small boys in verbal argument by calling them some of the things they had heard Mitchell call his ball on discovering it in a cuppy lie. He had a great gift of language, and he used it unsparingly. I will admit that there was some excuse for the man. He had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck and inconsistent play invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill. He was the sort of player who does the first two holes in one under bogey, and then takes an eleven at the third. The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. It seemed hardly likely that this one kink and an otherwise admirable character would ever seriously affect his working or professional life, but it did. One evening, as I was sitting in my garden, Alexander Patterson was announced. A glance at his face told me that he had come to ask my advice. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded me as one capable of giving advice. It was I who had changed the whole current of his life by counseling him to leave the wood in his bag and take a driving-iron off the tee. And in one or two other matters, like the choice of a putter, so much more important than the choice of a wife, I had been of assistance to him. Alexander sat down and fanned himself with his hat, for the evening was warm. Perplexity was written upon his fine face. I don't know what to do, he said. Keep the head still, slow back, don't press, I said gravely. There is no better rule for a happy and successful life. It's nothing to do with golf this time, he said. It's about the treasure-ship of my company. Old Smithers retires next week, and I've got to find a man to fill his place. That should be easy. You have simply to select the most deserving from among your other employees. But which is the most deserving? That's the point. There are two men who are capable of holding the job quite adequately. But then I realize how little I know of their real characters. It is the treasure-ship, you understand, which has to be filled. Now, a man who was quite good at another job might easily get wrong ideas into his head when he became a treasurer. He would have the handling of large sums of money. In other words, a man who, in ordinary circumstances, had never been conscious of any desire to visit the more distant portions of South America might feel the urge, so to speak, shortly after he became a treasurer. That is my difficulty. Of course, one always takes a sporting chance with any treasurer, but how am I to find out which of these two men would give me the more reasonable opportunity of keeping some of my money? I did not hesitate a moment. I held strong views on the subject of character testing. The only way, I said to Alexander, of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. I employed a lawyer for years, until one day I saw him kick his ball out of a heel mark. I removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run off with any trust funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, and I am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow, is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone with the knowledge that only God is watching him and play his ball where it lies is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. The man who can smile bravely when his putt is diverted by one of those beastly worm casts is pure gold right through. But the man who is hasty, unbalanced, and violent on the links will display the same qualities in the wider field of everyday life. You don't want an unbalanced treasurer, do you? Not if his books are likely to catch the complaint. They are sure to. Statisticians estimate that the average of crime among good golfers is lower than any class of the community, except possibly bishops. Since Willie Park won the first championship at Prestwick in the year 1860, there has, I believe, been no instance of an open champion spending a day in prison. Whereas the bad golfers, and by bad I do not mean incompetent, but black sold, the men who fail to count a stroke when they miss the globe, the men who never replace a divot, the men who talk while their opponent is driving, and the men who let their angry passions rise, these are in and out of warm wood scrubs all the time. They find it hardly worthwhile to get their haircut and their brief intervals of liberty. Alexander was visibly impressed. That sounds sensible by George, he said. It is sensible. I'll do it. Honestly, I can't see any other way of deciding between Holmes and Dixon. I started. Holmes? Not Mitchell Holmes. Yes, of course you must know him. He lives here, I believe. And by Dixon, do you mean Rupert Dixon? That's the man, another neighbor of yours. I confessed that my heart sank. It was if my ball had fallen into the pit which my niblet could dig. I wished heartily that I had thought of waiting to ascertain the names of the two rivals before offering my scheme. I was extremely fond of Mitchell Holmes, and of the girl to whom he was engaged to be married. Indeed, it was I who had sketched out a few rough notes for the lad to use when proposing, and results had shown that he had put my stuff across well. And I had listened many a time with a sympathetic ear to his hopes in the matter of securing a rise of salary which would enable him to get married. Somehow, when Alexander was talking, it had not occurred to me that young Holmes might be in the running for so important an office as treasurer's ship. I had ruined the boy's chances, or deal by golf was the one test which he could not possibly undergo with success. Only a miracle could keep him from losing his temper, and I had expressly warned Alexander against such a man. When I thought of his rival, my heart sank still more. Rupert Dixon was rather an unpleasant young man, but the worst of his enemies could not accuse him of not possessing the golfing temperament. From the drive off the tee to the holing of the final put, he was uniformly suave. When Alexander had gone, I said in thought for some time, I was faced with a problem. Strictly speaking, no doubt I had no right to take sides, and though secrecy had not been enjoined upon me in so many words, I was very well aware that Alexander was under the impression that I would keep the thing under my hat, and not reveal to either party the test that awaited him. Each candidate was, of course, to remain ignorant that he was taking part in anything but a friendly game. But when I thought of the young couple whose future depended on this ordeal, I hesitated no longer. I put on my hat, and went round to Miss Boyd's house, where I knew that Mitchell was to be found at this hour. The young couple were out in the porch, looking at the moon. They greeted me heartily, but their hardiness had rather a tinny sound, and I could see that, on the whole, they regarded me as one of those things which should not happen. But when I told my story, their attitude changed. They began to look on me in the pleasanter light of a guardian, philosopher, and friend. Where ever did Mr. Patterson get such a silly idea, said Miss Boyd, indignantly? I had, from the best motives, concealed the source of the scheme. It's ridiculous. Oh, I don't know, said Mitchell. The old boy's crazy about golf. It's just a sort of scheme he would cook up. Well, it dishes me. Oh, come, I said. It's no good saying, oh, come. You know perfectly well that I'm a frank, outspoken golfer. When my ball goes off nor nor east when I want it to go due west, I can't help expressing an opinion about it. It is a curious phenomenon which calls for comment, and I give it. Similarly, when I top my drive, I have to go on record as saying that I did not do it intentionally. And it's just these trifles, as far as I can make out, that are going to decide the thing. Couldn't you learn to control yourself on the links, Mitchell Darling? Asked Millicent. After all, golf is only a game. Mitchell's eyes met mine, and I have no doubt that mine showed just the same look of horror which I saw in his. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realize what they are saying. Hush, said Mitchell, huskily, patting her hand and overcoming his emotion with a strong effort. Hush, dearest! Two or three days later I met Millicent coming from the post-office. There was a new light of happiness in her eyes, and her face was glowing. Such a splendid thing has happened, she said. After Mitchell left that night, I happened to be glancing through a magazine, and I came across a wonderful advertisement. It began by saying that all the great men in history owed their success to being able to control themselves, and that Napoleon wouldn't have amounted to anything if he had not curbed his fiery nature, and then it said that we can all be like Napoleon if we fill in the accompanying blank order form for Professor Orlando Rowlett's wonderful book, Are You Your Own Master? Absolutely free for five days and then seven shillings, but you must write it once because the demand is enormous, and pretty soon it may be too late. I wrote it once, and luckily I was in time because Professor Rowlett did have a copy left, and it's just arrived. I've been looking through it, and it seems splendid. She held out a small volume. I glanced at it. There was a frontispiece showing a signed photograph of Professor Orlando Rowlett controlling himself in spite of having long white whiskers, and then some reading matter printed between wide margins. One look at the book told me the Professor's methods. To be brief, he had simply swiped Marcus Aurelius' best stuff, the copyright having expired some two thousand years ago, and was retailing it as his own. I did not mention this to militant. It was no affair of mine. Presumably, however obscure the necessity, Professor Rowlett had to live. I'm going to start Mitchell on it today. Don't you think this is good? Thou seeest how few be the things, which, if a man has at his command, his life flows gently on and is divine. I think it will be wonderful if Mitchell's life flows gently on and is divine for seven shillings, don't you? At the clubhouse that evening I encountered Rupert Dixon. He was emerging from a shower-bath, and looked as pleased with himself as usual. Just been going round with old Patterson, he said. He was asking after you. He's gone back to town in his car. I was thrilled, so the test had begun. How did you come out? I asked. Rupert Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped in a bath-tel, with a wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight. Oh, pretty well! I won by six and five, in spite of having poisonous luck. I felt a gleam of hope at these last words. Oh! you had bad luck! The worst! I overshot the green at the third with the best brassie shot I've ever made in my life, and that's saying a lot, and lost my ball in the rough beyond it. And I suppose you let yourself go, eh? Let myself go? I take it that you made some sort of demonstration. Oh, no! Losing your temper doesn't get you anywhere at golf. It only spoils your next shot. I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal, as well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the vacant treasure-ship had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that Alexander Patterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with Alexander and give him my moral support. I shall need it, he said. I don't mind telling you I'm pretty nervous. I wish I had longer to get the stranglehold on that are you your own master stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real Tabasco from start to finish and absolutely as mother makes it, but the trouble is I've only had a few days to soak it into my system. It's like trying to patch up a motor-car with string. You never know when the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a ball at the water-hole, and something seemed to tell me I am going to do it. There was silence for a moment. Do you believe in dreams? asked Mitchell. Believe in what? Dreams. What about them? I said, Do you believe in dreams? Because last night I dreamed that I was playing in the final of the open championship and I got into the rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad sort of way and said, Why don't you use the 2v-grip instead of the interlocking? At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen, but I've been thinking it over, and I wonder if there isn't something in it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose. You can't change your grip on the day of an important match. I suppose not. The fact is, I'm a bit jumpy, or I wouldn't have mentioned it. Oh well, see you tomorrow at two. The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky crosswind was blowing when I reached the clubhouse. Alexander Patterson was there, practicing swings on the first tee, and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes arrived, accompanied by Millicent. Perhaps, said Alexander, we had better be getting underway. Shall I take the honour? Certainly, said Mitchell. Alexander teed up his ball. Alexander Patterson has always been a careful, rather than a dashing, player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured practice swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting green. When he does address the ball, he shuffles his feet for a moment or two, then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if he had been expecting it to play some sort of trick on him when he was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the horizon's bona fides, and he turns his attention to the ball again. He shuffles his feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the globule. At this point he suddenly peers at the horizon again, in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This done, he raises his club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, and brings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped in thought, like some Indian Fakir, contemplating the infinite. Then he raises his club again, and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for about 150 yards in a dead straight line. It is a method of procedure which proves sometimes a little exasperating to the highly strung, and I watched Mitchell's face anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The unhappy lad had blinched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one in pain. Does he always do that? he whispered. Always, I replied. Then I'm done for. No human being could play golf against a one-ring circus like that without blowing up. I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well poised as I am, I had long since been compelled to give up playing with Alexander Patterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and resigning from the Baptist Church. At this moment, Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I recognized it as the life-work of Professor Rowlett. Think on this doctrine, she said, in her soft, modulated voice, that to be patient is a branch of justice and that men sin without intending it. Mitchell nodded briefly and walked to the tee with a firm step. Before you drive, darling, said Millicent, remember this. Let no act be done at haphazard nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind. The next moment Mitchell's ball was shooting through the air to come to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive. He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter. An admirable iron shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and he holed out in one underbogie with one of the nicest putts I have ever beheld. And when, at the next hole, the dangerous waterhole, his ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole, I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day, and this was plainly Mitchell's. He was plain, faultless golf. If he could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no chance to show itself. The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine, or possibly into it. In the latter event, you breathe a prayer and call for your niblik. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a brassie shot, will put you within easy mashy distance of the green. Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world seem so sweet and fair, and the foibles of our fellow human beings so little irritating, as when we have just swatted the pill right on the spot. I can't see why he does it, said Mitchell, eyeing Alexander with a toleration that almost amounted to affection. If I did all those Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out for and go home. Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare three yards on the other side of the ravine. He's what you would call a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies. Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his stance on the fourth tee, which made me a little uneasy. Overconfidence at golf is almost as bad as timidity. My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I were standing. I didn't say it, he said. What on earth happened then? Searchmen's governing principles, said Millicent, and consider the wise what they shun and what they cleave to. Exactly, I said, you swayed your body. And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball. Never mind, darling, said Millicent. Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life. Besides, I said, you're three up. I shan't be after this hole. He was right. Alexander won it in five, won above Bogey, and regained the honor. Mitchell was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless vigor. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth. The ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple four, although the rolling nature of the green makes Bogey always a somewhat doubtful feet. But, on the other hand, if you foozle your drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The T is on the farther side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where the water narrows almost to the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this water and over a tangle of trees and undergrowth on the other bank, the distance to the fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there. Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short, straight drive, and Mitchell advanced to the tee. I think the loss of the honor had been praying on his mind. He seemed nervous. His upswing was shaky, and he swayed back perceptibly. He made a lunge at the ball, sliced it, and it struck a tree on the other side of the water, and fell in the long grass. We crossed the bridge to look for it, and it was here that the effect of Professor Rowlett began definitely to wane. Why on earth don't they mow this darn stuff? demanded Mitchell, querulously, as he beat about the grass with his niblick. You have to have rough on a course, I ventured. Whatever happens at all, said Millicent, happens as it should. Thou wilt find this true if thou shouldst watch narrowly. That's all very well, said Mitchell, watching narrowly in a clump of weeds, but seeming unconvinced. I believe the Greens Committee run this ballet club purely in the interests of the caddies. I believe they encourage lost balls, and go halves with the little beasts when they find them and sell them. Millicent and I exchanged glances. There were tears in her eyes. Oh, Mitchell, remember Napoleon! Napoleon! What's Napoleon got to do with it? Napoleon never was expected to drive through a primeval forest? Besides, what did Napoleon ever do? Where did Napoleon get off, swanking round as if he amounted to something? Poor fish! All he ever did was to get hammered at Waterloo. Alexander rejoined us. He had walked on to where his ball lay. Can't find it, eh? Nasty bit of rough, this. No, I can't find it. But tomorrow some miserable, cheneless, half-witted reptile of a caddy with pop eyes and 837 pimples will find it, and will sell it to someone for six pence. No, it was a brand new ball. He'll probably get a shilling for it. That'll be six pence for himself, and six pence for the Greens Committee. No wonder they're buying cars quicker than the makers can supply them. No wonder you see their wives going about in mink coats and pearl necklaces. Oh, dash it! I'll drop another. In that case, Alexander pointed out, you will, of course, under the rules governing match play, lose the hole. All right, then. I'll give up the hole. Then that, I think, makes me one up on the first nine, said Alexander. Excellent! A very pleasant even game. Pleasant! On second thoughts, I don't believe the Greens Committee let the wretched caddies get any of the loot. They hang round behind the trees till the deals concluded, and then sneak out and choke it out of them. I saw Alexander raise his eyebrows. He walked up the hill to the next tea with me. Rather a quick-tempered young fellow homes, he said thoughtfully, I should never have suspected it. It just shows how little one can know of a man only meeting him in business hours. I tried to defend the poor lad. He has an excellent heart, Alexander, but the fact is, we are such old friends that I know you will forgive my mention in it. Your style of play gets, I fancy, a little on his nerves. My style of play? What's wrong with my style of play? Nothing is actually wrong with it, but to a young and ardent spirit, there is apt to be something a trifle upsetting in being compelled to watch a man play quite so slowly as you do. Come now, Alexander, as one friend to another. Is it necessary to take two practice swings before you putt? Dear, dear, said Alexander, you really mean to say that that upsets him? Well, I'm afraid I'm too old to change my methods now. I had nothing more to say. As we reached the tenth tea, I saw that we were in for a few minutes' weight. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm. Millicent was standing beside me, dejection written on her face. Alexander and young Mitchell were some distance away from us. Mitchell doesn't want me to come round the rest of the way with him, she said, despondently. He says I make him nervous. I shook my head. That's bad. I was looking on you as a steadying influence. I thought I was too, but Mitchell says no. He says my being there keeps him from concentrating. Then perhaps it would be better for you to remain in the clubhouse till we return. There is, I fear, dirty work ahead. A choking sob escaped the unhappy girl. I'm afraid so. There is an apple-tree near the thirteenth hole, and Mitchell's caddy is sure to start eating apples. I am thinking of what Mitchell will do when he hears the crunching when he is addressing his ball. That is true. Our only hope, she said, holding out Professor Rowlett's book, is this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting nervous? We went through the book last night and marked all the passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful. You will see notes against them in the margins showing when each is supposed to be used. It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee. Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens Committee. The hole after this one, he said, used to be a short hole. There was no chance of losing a ball. Then one day the wife of one of the Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes. So now they have tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice and ate them an inch, you get into a sort of no-man's-land, full of rocks and bushes and crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it up. Golf, however, is a curious game, a game of fluctuations. One might have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach the tenth Green with an iron shot, and, though the ball was several yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-butt, and holed his second for a bogie four. Alexander could only achieve a five so that they were all square again. The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives straight and found no difficulty in securing fours. A little more of this, said Mitchell, beaming, and the Green's committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work. The twelfth is a long dog-leg hole, bogie five. Alexander plugged steadily round the bend, holding out in six, and Mitchell, whose second shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick. He contrived, however, to have the hole, with a nicely judged mashy shot to the edge of the Green. Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty-yard hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the Green, but his third laid the ball dead, while Mitchell, who was on in two, required three putts. That reminds me, said Alexander Chaddly, of a story I heard. Friend calls out to a beginner. How are you getting on, old man? And the beginner says, splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the last Green. Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had made no remark, but the missed putt, which would have saved the hole, had been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee. There are few more picturesque spots in the hole of the countryside than the neighborhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm the nature-lover's heart. But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a wholehearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a nasty patch of rough, from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye, but as a golfer I have frequently found it the very devil. The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his ball, pawing at it with his driving iron like a cat investigating a tortoise. Finally he dispatched it to one of the few safe spots on the hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated for, if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the ravine. Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddy, with a glassy look in his eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine. There was a pause, a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly. Mitchell, I cried, my boy, reflect, be calm. Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples and thousands all round you? What is this, anyway, a golf match or a pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples, go on, my boy. Take another bite. Take several. Enjoy yourself. Never mind if it seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance. Go on with your lunch. You probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish, yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a sandwich and a bottle of ginger ale. Make yourself quiet at home, you lovable little fellow. Sit down and have a good time. I turned the pages of Professor Rollett's book feverishly. I could not find a passage that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this emergency. I selected one at random. Mitchell, I said, one moment. How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does, but only at what he does himself to make it just and holy. Well, look what I've done myself. I'm somewhere down at the bottom of that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment. He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant, he looked at it with a curious expression of loathing. Then he placed it gently on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long grass. He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the scene. I'm through, he said. I can seed the match. Goodbye. You'll find me in the bay. Going swimming? No, drowning myself. A gentle smile broke out over my old friend's usually grave face. He padded Mitchell's shoulder affectionately. Don't do that, my boy, he said. I was hoping you would stick around the office a while as treasurer of the company. Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very still. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the murmur of the distant wavelets, and the sound of Mitchell's caddy going on with his apple. What! cried Mitchell. The position, said Alexander, will be falling vacant very shortly, as no doubt you know. It is yours if you care to accept it. You mean, you mean you're going to give me the job? You have interpreted me exactly. Mitchell gulped. So did his caddy, one from a spiritual, the other from a physical cause. If you don't mind excusing me, said Mitchell huskily, I think I'll be popping back to the clubhouse—someone I want to see. He disappeared through the trees, running strongly. I turned to Alexander. What does this mean? I asked. I am delighted, but what becomes of the test? My old friend smiled gently. The test, he replied, has been eminently satisfactory. Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have come to the conclusion that what the Patterson Dian and Refining Company really needs is a treasurer whom I can beat at golf. And I have discovered the ideal man. Why, he went on, a look of holy enthusiasm on his fine old face, do you realize that I can always lick the stuffing out of that boy, good player as he is, simply by taking a little trouble? I can make him get the wind up every time, simply by taking one or two extra practice swings. That is the sort of man I need for a responsible post in my office. But what about Rupert Dixon, I asked? He gave a gesture of distaste. I wouldn't trust that man. Why, when I played with him everything went wrong, and he just smiled and didn't say a word. A man who can do that is not the man to trust with the control of large sums of money. It wouldn't be safe. Why, the fellow isn't honest. He can't be. He paused for a moment. Besides, he added thoughtfully, he beat me by six and five. What's the good of a treasurer who beats the boss by six and five?