"What do you do?" asked Charles, "when people want you to play
lawn-tennis?"
"Sometimes I play," I said. "Sometimes I send Sophonisba. Sometimes I
tell them that my head-keeper is away and I am obliged to look after the
lop-ears. What happens to you?"
"Well, you know what lawn-tennis is like nowadays. In the bygone
butter-pat era I could hold my own with the best of them. Golf had
hardly come in, and when one wasn't playing cricket, and the spilliken
set had been mislaid, and tiddley-winks was voted too rough, a couple of
sets or so was rather fun. Soft undulating courts, very hard to keep a
footing on, and plenty of sticks and leaves to assist one's screws, and
patches of casual whiting here and there so that you could say that it
wasn't a fault but hit the line. Now all that is changed.
Panther-limbed, hawk-eyed young persons leap about the lawn dressed in
white from top to toe. They play on fast and level lawns, entirely
circumscribed by a kind of deep-sea trawling apparatus. They want you to
hit hard and well. I have only two strokes when I hit hard. One of them
pierces the bottom of the seine or drag-net fixed across the fairway,
the other brings the man round from the next-door garden but two to say
that his cucumbers are catching cold. And then I do not understand their
terms. What is a 'fore-hand drive'? It sounds like the coaching
Marathon. And how do you put on top spin? Do you wind your racquet round
and round the ball and then pull it away suddenly, or what? And
cross-volleys--what in the world are they?"
"Goodness knows," I said. "My own volleys are the best-tempered little
chaps alive. But, hang it! no one can force you to play lawn-tennis if
you don't want to."
"Can't they?" said Charles. "That's just the point. They do. They say to
me, 'You play golf and cricket; of course you can play tennis. Easiest
thing in the world.' Swish! swish! they go, making a ferocious
cross-hand top-lead from baulk with their umbrellas. 'That's how to do
it. You'll soon get into the way of the stroke.' 'That's just what I'm
afraid of,' I say, leaping nervously on to the table. But it's no good.
'Come round next Saturday afternoon,' they say, 'we shall be expecting
you,' and pass rapidly into the night before I can refuse."
"One can always have a sick headache," I reminded him.
"I did that once," said Charles. "I had been asked to play in a
tournament, and at dinner the next evening I sat next to the girl who
ought to have been my partner in the mixed handicaps, and we had
meringues. No, it isn't safe, and besides one might always want to play
golf. I think the best thing is to go once and trust to one's own skill
not to be asked again. Anyhow, I don't believe the Jenkinsons will give
me another invitation for some time."
"What happened?" I asked. "I suppose when they've sewn up the net and
bought new balls----"
"No, it wasn't that," he answered, with a dreamy smile. "You know the
Jenkinsons. You know how keen they are on tennis and how proud of their
court. I did everything I could to save them, but they would have me. I
said I had no racquet except the one I had used for landing trout in the
spring, and they told me I could get it restrung. I said I had no shoes,
and they told me any shoes would do. I couldn't tell them I had no
flannels, because they wouldn't have believed me. So I went. I wore an
old blue cricket cap on the back of my head: I wore long white trousers
not turned up, and I wore brown shoes."
"And your racquet?" I asked.
"I borrowed a real tennis-racquet," replied Charles; "one of those
narrow, rather wistful-looking things, with a kink in its head. I
thought it would complete the languid artistic effect and help to
convince them. It had rained a good deal in the morning, and I rather
hoped we might spend the time looking at the conservatory and have
muffins for tea. But no. When I reached the house I found that they had
decided to play. They laughed at me a good deal, of course--at my cap,
and my racquet, and my trousers, and my brown shoes. When we had taken
up our stations in the arena they told me I was to serve first. I sent
the ball high up into the air underhand and ran swiftly to the net." He
paused melodramatically.
"Go on," I said. "Was it the solar plexus or the eye?"
"No," he answered sadly, "I was unwounded; but that was the last stroke
I played. When I served that service they laughed at me again, but when
I ran to the net they ceased to laugh. They said they could easily find
someone else to complete the four. They pressed me to sit and watch for
the remainder of the afternoon. Indeed, they were quite firm about it."
"I don't understand," I said. "Was it your face that frightened them in
the blue cap?"
"Not so much my face," he answered gently, "as my feet."
"What was the matter with them?"
"There are big nails," he said softly, "in my brown golf shoes."
* * * * *
Illustration: _Trooper._ "COME ON BEHIND HERE AND TRAVEL WITH US,
JIM!"
_Jim_ (_from horse-box_). "NOT MUCH. NONE OF YOUR THIRD-CLASS FOR ME."
* * * * *