Even Mortimer Crabb was excluded from that charming luncheon of four. It
was very informal and great was the merriment at Patricia's expense, but
through it all she smiled calmly at their scepticism--as Columbus at
Salamanca must have smiled, if he ever did, or Newton or Edison, or any
others of the world's great innovators.
"Cross-country golf," she continued proudly to assert, "is the golf of
the New Era."
"Do you really mean it, Patty?" asked Aurora seriously, when the men had
gone upstairs to change.
"Of course I do, Aurora. The Ancient and Honorable Game has its
limitations. Cross-country golf has none. You'll see, my dear, in ten
years, they'll be playing distance matches between New York and
Philadelphia--the fewest strokes in the shortest time--that _will_ be a
game."
"And who'll pay for the lost balls?" asked Aurora, laughing.
"That, Aurora," replied Patricia with a touch of dignity, "is something
with which I am remotely concerned."
The men came down stairs dressed for the fray, grinning broadly, and
Patricia, after a glance at McLemore's red vest, took up his golf bag
with a business-like air and led the way to the terrace. The Sphynx
blinked through his tauric glasses at her unresponsive back silhouetted
in the doorway, but as Aurora had taken Steve's bag, he followed meekly,
submitting to the inevitable. Outside, Patricia was indicating a rift in
the row of maples which bordered her vegetable garden, through which was
to be seen the brown sweep of the meadow beyond.
"The drive is through there. You'll get the direction marks for your
second. The distance is four miles. The finish is on Aurora's lawn--the
putting-green near the rear portico of the house. Drive off, gentlemen."
The honor was Mr. McLemore's. With a saddish smile, half of pity and
half of a protest for his outraged golfing dignity, he took his bag from
Patricia, and with a frugality which did him credit, upturned the bag on
the lawn, spilling out a miscellany of old balls which he had saved for
practice strokes. Selecting half a dozen, he stuffed five of them in his
pockets, returned the newer ones to his bag and scorning the rubber tee
which Patricia offered him, dropped a ball over his shoulder and took
his cleek out of his bag. Each act was sportsman-like--a fine expression
of the golfing spirit.
The drive went straight--and they saw it bouncing coquettishly up the
meadow beyond. Steve, with the munificence which only poverty knows,
brought forth a new ball, took the rubber tee and, with his driver, got
off a long low one which cleared the bushes and vanished over the brow
of the hill.
"A new golfing era has begun," said Patricia, with the air of a prophet.
"If I ever find my ball," said Ventnor, dubiously.
"What do you care, Steve, as long as you're making history?" laughed
Aurora, with a sly glance at their hostess.
Patricia, unperturbed, led the way through a breach in the hedge and out
into the sunlight where she raised a crimson parasol, which no one had
noticed before.
"My complexion," she explained to Aurora. "One can't be too careful when
one gets to be--ahem--thirty. Besides, it just matches Jimmy's vest."
The grass in the pasture was short and McLemore played his brassey--his
caddy instructing him as to the ground on the other side, which fell
gently down to a brook he could not reach.
"I got that one away," said McLemore, livening to his task. "It's not
really bad going at all."
Patricia smiled gratefully, but made no response, for Steve, a little
further on, was in a hole and had to play out with a mashie, which he
did with consummate skill, the ball rolling down the hill thirty yards
short of McLemore's.
From the hilltop they could easily see the line of the paper chase which
Patricia had laid when she rode over the course yesterday. It stretched
across the lower end of the Renwick's meadows along the road, crossing
two streams, bordered with willow trees and led straight for Waterman's
stone quarry. Ventnor played a careful mid-iron which cleared the brook
and bounded forward into the meadow beyond; but McLemore overreached
himself trying for distance and found the brook, losing his ball and two
strokes; but he teed up, having played five and lay six well down the
meadow, within carrying distance of the second stream. But Steve,
playing steadily, passed him with his fourth, a long cleek shot which
fell just short of the stream.
Beyond the creek was the hill to the quarry, three shots for McLemore,
two long ones for Ventnor. With excellent judgment McLemore played
safely over the creek with a mid-iron, reaching the brink of the quarry
in two more, which gave him a chance to tee up on his ninth for the long
drive across. Steve Ventnor was less fortunate, dribbling his sixth up
the hill, fifty yards short of the quarry, into which, trying a long
cleek shot to clear it, he unfortunately drove. He waited to see the
Sphynx carefully tee his ball and send it straight down the course which
Patricia indicated, and then taking the bag from his caddy helped her
into the path which zig-zagged down to where his ball lay, a hundred
feet below.
Patricia and the Sphynx had chosen the shorter way through the woods at
the upper end and Steve and Aurora were alone.
At the bottom of the slope behind a projecting crag Steve stopped and
faced his companion.
"Aurora," he said.
"Yes, Steve."
"Is it true you're going to marry McLemore?"
Aurora picked a flower which grew in a ledge beside her before she
replied.
"Why do you ask?"
"I thought I'd like to know, that's all. People say you are----"
"_I_ haven't said so."
"Then," eagerly, "you aren't?"
"I don't see what right you've got to ask."
"I haven't--only I thought I'd like to be the first to congratulate
him."
"Oh, is that all?"
"And I thought I'd like to tell you again that I love you better than
anybody could--and that I always will, even if you marry him. He's a
very nice fellow but--but I'll be very unhappy----"
"Will you? I don't believe it."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you're too cool about it. You wouldn't think he was such a nice
fellow if you were jealous of him. Why haven't you played more with me
this summer?"
"I had to work--you know that. What's the use----"
"If you love me as you say you do, I don't see how you could be so cool
about--about seeing us together----"
"Perhaps I wasn't as cool as I looked. See here, Aurora, you mustn't
talk like that." He had turned and before she could escape him, had
taken her in his arms and was kissing her. "Don't say I'm cool. I love
you, Aurora, with every ounce that's in me. I want you more than I can
ever want anything again in this world or the next. I'm not going to let
you marry that fellow or anybody else--do you understand?"
She had yielded for a moment to his warmth because there didn't seem to
be anything else to do. But when she slowly disengaged herself from his
arms and faced him her eyes were wet and the color flamed through her
tan.
"Steve!" she stammered. "Steve!--how could you?"
But he still faced her passionately, undaunted. "It's true," he said
huskily. "I love you--you can't marry him--I won't let you----"
He took a step forward but this time she retreated.
"Don't, Steve--not again--not now--you mustn't. They'll be coming
out in the open there in a moment. I'll never say you are cool
again--never--after that. You're not cool--not in the least--I was
mistaken. I've never seen you--like this before--you're different----"
"You made me do it. I couldn't stand your saying I didn't care. I'm not
sorry," he went on, "he couldn't love you the way I do."
"I think perhaps you're right," said Aurora coolly. "In the meantime----"
"Won't you give me an answer?"
"In the meanwhile," she went on, preening her disordered hair, "you are
supposed to be playing the golf of the New Era----"
[Illustration: "'You are supposed to be playing the golf of the New
Era.'"]
"Aurora----"
"No," she had taken up his golf bag and was walking away.
"Won't you answer me?" he pleaded.
"Get your ball out of this quarry," she said, relentlessly, "and I'll
think about it."
It took Steve Ventnor thirteen strokes to play out of that quarry,
which, for a fellow with a record of seventy-two at Apawomeck, was
"going it." The first stroke he missed clean; the second he sliced into
a clay-bank; his third struck the rocks and bounded back against the
wall behind him, finding lodgment at last in some bushes where he
took three more. To make matters worse, Aurora was laughing at him,
hysterically, unrestrainedly, and Patricia and the Sphynx, who had
appeared on the path above, were joining in the merriment.
"Oh, I'll lift," he growled at last.
"You can't," laughed Aurora. "It's against the rules." And Patricia
appealed to, confirmed the statement.
Three more swings he took, each of them in impossible lies, the last of
which smashed his niblick. After that there followed a period of strange
calmness--of desperation, while he worked his ball into a good lie on
the far side of the quarry from which, with a fine mashie shot he lifted
it over the cliffs and into the open beyond.
Steve Ventnor toiled wearily up the hill at the heels of his caddy,
struggling for his lost composure. He caught up with Aurora at a point
half-way up where he took the golf bag from her shoulder and faced her
again.
"Won't you answer me, Aurora?" he pleaded, breathlessly.
"No, I won't," she said, calmly. "You swore--horribly--in the bushes."
"I didn't."
"I heard you," firmly. "I'll never marry a man who swears," and she
hurried on. When Ventnor joined the others, he found Patricia sitting on
a rock making up the score, which at the present moment stood:
Ventnor--20; McLemore--9.
"How do you like it, Steve?" asked Patricia, still figuring.
"Oh, it's great!" said Steve, ironically, holding up his shattered
niblick. "I like granite, it's so spongy."
"I'm afraid you've got a bad temper, Steve."
But Ventnor had taken out his pipe, lit it and was now doggedly moving
toward his ball.
The luck favored him on his next volley, for playing two mid-irons down
the hill, he reached the level meadow below safely, while McLemore
sliced his second into a row of hot frames, where an indignant
horticulturist and two dogs contributed an interesting mental hazard.
But the Sphynx handed the farmer a dollar in exchange for lacerated
feelings and glass, and the match went on. Over the brook McLemore lay
thirteen, having "dubbed" his shot into the stream, but playing steadily
after that reached the top of the long hill before them, safely in four
more; while Ventnor lost his ball in the bushes and was now playing
twenty-five.