the arm with his huge hand. "I have important business in the club house
with these gentlemen, and it is a matter which takes precedence over
everything else. You can tell Smith about your golf triumphs some other
time."
He talked to her as if she were a child who was in the way. I suppose it
does not occur to him that she is a woman grown. I would rather have
remained where I was and attempted to talk to her, or even look at her,
than to sip the finest Scotch whiskey ever bottled.
Now that I read this last line it does not convey much of a compliment,
but I mean all that it implies. She certainly is very pretty. We made
our excuses to her, and went to the club café, and I have not seen her
since. She has gone to the city with her mother on a shopping tour and
will not be back for several days.
I wonder how Carter became acquainted with her. He seems to know her
very well, and must have met her many times. I should like to ask him,
but of course that would not be the proper thing to do.
I had no idea that I would write so much as this when I started.
ENTRY NO. IV
BISHOP'S HIRED MAN
Miss Harding is still in the city, and I have added nothing to this
diary for several days. She is expected back to-morrow.
I do not know how to account for it, but since the coming of the
Hardings my game has fallen off several strokes. It seems impossible for
me to concentrate my mind on my shots.
Ninety-one is very poor golf for nine holes, and I am sure that with
practice under a capable golfer Miss Harding could do much better. She
has just the figure for a long, true and swinging stroke. I shall make
it a point to ask her to play before Carter gets a chance to forestall
me.
Unless I am entirely in error Carter is badly smitten with Miss Harding.
It also occurs to me that I have written enough about that young lady.
Mr. Harding is also in the city. I wish I had his opinion about the
future of N.O. & G. railroad stock. It has gone down another point,
which means the loss of two thousand dollars to me.
An odd sort of an incident happened yesterday morning. None of the
scratch players was about, so I accepted an invitation to play a round
with LaHume and Miss Lawrence. She is a very pretty girl, though in my
opinion she is not to be compared with Miss Harding. LaHume is devoted
to her, as much as he can be devoted to any one or anything, and there
have been rumours now and then that they were engaged or about to be
engaged, but since it has always been possible to trace these reports
back to LaHume I have had my doubts of their accuracy. Miss Olive
Lawrence has inherited a large fortune, and is the master of it and of
herself.
LaHume has been a persistent fortune hunter, and if patience be a virtue
he deserves to win. He had a tiff yesterday with Miss Lawrence, and it
came about curiously enough.
The Bishop farm adjoins the club grounds on the east, and everyone for
miles about knows Bishop. He has little use for anything but work and
money, and he always has difficulty in keeping farm labourers, or "hired
men," as he terms them.
About a month ago he employed a fellow named Wallace, who admitted that
he did not know much about farming, but who said he was strong and
healthy and was willing to do the best he could. It was in the haying
season and Bishop was short of men, so he gave this chap a chance.
I met Bishop one day shortly after he put Wallace to work, and he told
me something about him.
"He's strong an' willin' enough," said Bishop, as we stood talking over
the fence, "but he surely is the blamedest, funniest hired man I ever
had, an' I've had some that'd make a man quit the church. What do you
think he wants?"
I assured him that I could not imagine.
"Soap in his room, and cake soap at that!" he exclaimed. "If I hadn't
given it to him he'd a quit, so I had to give it to him. He takes a bath
every morning, an' shaves. That's what he does! Gets up about four
o'clock and goes down to the old swimming hole in the crick, paddles
around a while, an' then comes back to the house an' shaves, an' then
goes out an' milks an' cleans out the stables. Never saw a man wash his
hands so much in my life, but accordin' to his lights he's a mighty good
worker. He eats a lot, but then all hired men eats a lot. An' he reads!
Brought a big trunk with him, an' in it was a lot of books in French,
Dutch or some other language that no white man can understand. And
fight! You know Big Dave Cole, that's been with me for years?"
I assured him that I should never forget "Big Dave" Cole. I have known
him ever since he went to work for Bishop, and that was when I was a
boy. From that day he has been the terror of the neighbourhood, and I
have sometimes thought that even Bishop stood in fear of him.
"Wal," he said slowly and impressively, biting the end from a plug of
tobacco, "this here Wallace licked the life plumb out of Big Dave no
more than yesterday, an' Big Dave is that disgusted he has packed up and
quit me."
"What caused the trouble?" I asked.
"Big Dave called him an English dude, an' it seems that Wallace took
offense because he's Scotch," explained Bishop, "at least that's what
the other men who was there when it started said. I couldn't get a word
outer Wallace, who said he'd quit if I wanted him to, but I told him
that a man who could lick Big Dave and come out without a scratch had
the makings of a rattlin' good hired man, an' I raised his wages two
dollars a month an' gave him Big Dave's room, which is bigger than the
one he had. If he could milk, an' run a seeder, or a thresher, or stack
oats an' corn as well as he can fight, I would give him forty dollars a
month."
This incident was related to me several weeks ago, and I have made it a
point to study this chap when I have met him. I should say he is about
my age, twenty-five or so, and I must say that he is a good-looking
fellow. He is tall, dark of complexion, broad of shoulder and narrow of
loin, and certainly looks as if he was able to take care of himself. I
presume that he is some college chap who cannot make his way in the
profession he has chosen, and who is trying to get a financial start by
working on a farm.
I am going to have a talk with him at the first opportunity, and if my
suspicion is verified I shall try to find some way to give him a quicker
start. I doubt if Bishop is paying him more than twenty dollars a month.
As I started to describe, LaHume, Miss Olive Lawrence and I were playing
a threesome. It was along about noon when we came to the tenth tee,
which is located so that a sliced ball may go into or over the country
road which separates the Bishop farm from the golf course. Miss Lawrence
is not an accurate player, but she drives as long a ball as any woman
golfer in Woodvale.
She hit the ball hard, but sliced it, and a strong westerly wind helped
deflect it to the right. It sailed over the fence, and struck in a
ploughed field only a few feet from a man whom I recognised as Wallace.
He had evidently been looking in our direction, and he followed the
flight of the ball. He walked up to it.
"Are you playing bounds?" he shouted, lifting his cap.
"Yes!" answered LaHume, "throw it back!"
Wallace carried a stout stick of some kind in his hand. He looked at the
end of it critically, placed the ball on a clod of soil, glanced at us
and called "Fore!" and then lofted that ball with as clean a shot as ever
I saw, dropping it almost at LaHume's feet. He bowed again, twirled the
stick about his fingers, and then turned and went toward the farmhouse.
[Illustration: "Fore"]
"Well, what do you think of the cold nerve of that clodhopper?"
exclaimed LaHume, staring at the retreating figure of Wallace. "I
presume he has ruined that new ball."
"Not with that stroke," I said. "I wish I could make as good an approach
with any club in my bag as he did with that improvised cane."
I picked up the ball and found that there was not a blemish on it.
"Wasn't he a handsome young gentleman?" murmured Miss Lawrence, whose
eyes had been fixed on Wallace until he vanished behind a clump of
trees. "Who is he?"
"Gentleman?" laughed LaHume, teeing the ball. "He's a farm labourer; old
Bishop's hired man. One of his duties is to deliver milk every morning
at the club house."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Miss Lawrence. "I presume it is impossible for him
to attend to such duties and remain a gentleman."
"Not impossible, but highly improbable," laughed young LaHume, unaware
that he was treading on thin ice.
"My father made his start in that way, and before he died there were
many who called themselves gentlemen who were glad to associate with
him," declared Miss Lawrence with a warmth uncommon to her. "What did
your father do?"
"Really now, I did not mean anything," stammered LaHume, the red
flushing through the tan of his face. It suddenly dawned on me that
there was a period in the life of my father when he worked as a hired
man in order to earn the money with which to marry my mother, and that
from this humble start he was able finally to acquire the ancestral
Smith farm, then in the possession of a more wealthy branch of the
family. I made common cause with Miss Lawrence, and I did it with better
grace from the fact that I resent the airs assumed by LaHume.
"LaHume's father founded the roadhouse down yonder," I said, pointing
towards a resort which yet goes by the LaHume name, and one which does
not enjoy a reputation any too savory. Of course this is not the fault
of the elder LaHume, who has since made a fortune in the hotel business.
I could see that the shot went home.
"I say, Smith, let's play golf and cut out this family history
business," protested LaHume, who was fighting angry. "It is your shot,
Miss Lawrence."
"Don't you think he is handsome, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
"Who; Mr. LaHume?" I returned, not averse to rubbing it into the
descendant of the roadhouse keeper.
"Of course not," she replied, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "I mean
that lovely hired man."
"He's a rustic Apollo," I said, "and it may interest our friend to know
that he also combines the qualities of Hercules and Mars."
And while LaHume fumed and Miss Lawrence clapped her hands I told the
story of the downfall of "Big Dave" at the hands of the quiet and
cleanly Wallace, making sure that the defeat of the village bully lost
nothing in its telling.
All the way back to the club house--we did not play out the remaining
holes--Miss Lawrence plied me with questions concerning Wallace. Of
course I know that her object was to punish LaHume, and she did it most
effectively.
She pretended to believe that there is some great romance back of
Wallace's present status. She pictured him as a Scotch nobleman, or the
son of one, I have forgotten which, forced by most interesting
circumstances to remain for a while in foreign lands. She conjured from
her fancy the castle in which he was born, and over which he will some
time rule, and I helped her as best I could.
I can see that it will be a long time before LaHume will ask me to make
up a threesome with Miss Lawrence. I wonder what "the hired man" would
think if he knew that his lucky stroke with a hickory club had created
so great a furor? I have a suspicion that this was not a lucky day in
LaHume's campaign for the Lawrence hand and fortune.
ENTRY NO. V
THE EAGLE'S NEST
Miss Grace Harding is here again, and I am to play a game of golf with
her to-morrow. Carter does not know it yet, but that is because I have
not had a chance to tell him.
Carter is a rattling good fellow and a fine golfer--he has made Woodvale
in seventy-seven; two strokes better than my low score--but he is a bit
conceited; he imagines he is a lady's man, and I propose to take him
down a peg.
I am certain he schemed to play with Miss Harding before I did, and he
went about it in what he doubtless thought was a diplomatic way. He
opened his campaign this morning by playing a round with her father.
Carter furnished clubs and balls for Mr. Harding, who broke two of the
clubs and lost six new balls, to say nothing of those he mutilated.
Diplomacy is not my long suit. I prefer to carry things by assault. When
I saw what Carter was up to I formed a plan and put it into operation
without delay. It was very simple. I walked right up to Miss Harding and
asked her if she would like to play a round with me. That was this
morning.
"When?" she asked, with a charming smile which told me victory was in
sight.
"Right now!" I said, bold as could be.
"You are brave to ask me to play with you, after what I have told you of
my game," she said, pressing down a worm cast with the toe of her dainty
shoe. We were standing on the edge of the practise putting green. I am
no hand to describe a woman's gowns, and in fact know nothing of them,
but I recall distinctly that she was dressed in blue, with some white
stuff here and there, and it was very becoming.
"Why?" I inquired.
"If I could play in eighty-five, as you and Mr. Carter do, I would not
recognise one who requires from one hundred and thirty to one hundred
and sixty," laughed Miss Harding.
For the life of me I cannot recall what I said in answer to this
assertion, but it was something stupid, no doubt. She finally promised
to play with me to-morrow, explaining that she and her father were about
to go automobiling.
We strolled over to one of the practise tees, and I was delighted when
she asked me to observe her swing, and advise her how to correct it. I
spent half an hour doing this, and she made wonderful improvement. I
hoped Carter would come along and see us, but I saw nothing of him.
While we were there, Marshall, Chilvers and Lawson passed and asked me
to make up a foursome. For the first time in my life I refused, and the
way those idiots looked back at me and grinned tempted me to break a
club over their heads. There is no law to compel a man to play golf if
he does not wish to. I figured that a rest for half a day would improve
my game. The fact is, and the best golfers are coming to realise it,
that a man can play so much that he goes stale.
I have just been looking back over the notes of my second entry in this
diary of a golfer, and I wish to modify the statement to the effect that
a woman under no circumstances appears graceful or attractive in golf
attitudes.
In fact I absolutely repudiate that ungallant and prejudiced assertion.
In one place I said: "If Miss Harding is beautiful enough to overcome
the handicap which always attaches to the golf duffer, she can give
Venus all sorts of odds and beat her handily. I have yet to see the
woman who shows to advantage with a golf regalia."
I take that back, also.
To see a woman raise a golf club with a jerky, uneven stroke, and come
down on the helpless turf with the head of it, as if beating a carpet,
has always given me a chill and a sensation of wild rage, but there is
something about the way Miss Harding does this which is actually
artistic. There are combinations of discords which make for perfect
harmony, and it is the same with the little eccentricities of Miss
Harding's swing.
[Illustration: "There is no law to compel a man to play golf"]
The poise of the head and shoulders, the sweep of the arms, and the
undulations of the figure seem to take on an added charm from what might
be called the "graceful crudity" of her stroke. I do not know why this
is so, but it is a fact.
I shall never forget the attempt I once made to instruct my sister in
the rudimentary principles of the swing of a golf club. She was a pretty
girl; bright, lively and graceful, but after I had given her two lessons
we were so mad at one another that we did not speak for weeks. It
seemingly was impossible to make her distinguish between the back sweep
and the follow through. She would persist in coming down on the tee with
the face of her club, but at that she made a splendid marriage, and is a
happy wife and mother.
Miss Harding will make a first-class golf player, and I told her so.
"Do you really think so?" she asked, after several swings, most of which
would have hit the ball.
"I certainly do," I declared. "All that you need is the constant advice
of someone who is thoroughly familiar with the technique of the game."
She utterly ignored this hint.
"My one ambition," she said, with a bewitching little laugh, rather
plaintive, I thought, "is to drive a ball far enough so that there will
be some difficulty in finding it. It must be jolly to hit a ball
straight out so far that you cannot tell within yards just where it is.
Do you know," and she looked really sad, "I have never lost a ball in my
life?"
"How remarkable!" I exclaimed. "I have known Carter to lose a dozen at
one game."
"Indeed! I think Mr. Carter is a perfectly splendid player," she
declared. "I was watching him one day last week. He is so strong,
confident and easy in his execution of shots. If I could drive like he
does I would be willing to lose a dozen balls every time I played."
I changed the subject, and was showing her a new way to grip the club
when I heard a step behind us.
"Hello, Smith! If you are going out in that buzz-wagon with me, Kid, you
had better drop that stick and get a move on."
Of course it was her father. No one else would dare talk to Miss Harding
like that. To hear him one would think that she was twelve years old,
but I suppose fathers can do as they like.
"Fix up a ball, Kid, and let's see how far you can soak it," he said.
"I am just practising the follow through," explained Miss Harding. "Mr.
Smith has told me many things about the correct way to follow through."
"When your mother was your age she was practising the 'follow through,'
as you call it, on a scrubbing board over a wash tub," declared Mr.
Harding, and he said it as if he were proud of it.
"I could do that if I had to," laughed Miss Harding, handing me the
club. "Thank you, Mr. Smith. To-morrow I expect to show decided
improvement. Come on, papa!"
"So long, Smith," said Harding. "I'm going to trim you youngsters at
your own game before I get through with you."
I took a rest all the afternoon so as to be in shape for to-morrow. I
propose to show Miss Harding that I am the peer of Carter or anyone else
who plays here.
It never occurred to me that it was possible to get enjoyment out of a
golf course by any method other than by playing over it, but I had keen
pleasure all the afternoon in studying the men who frequent the Woodvale
links. My refusal to play created a sensation, and I enjoyed that.
It is amusing to study the way in which different players go about this
game. The railway station is only a few hundred yards away, and as I
watched those men who came on the 1:42 train from the city the thought
occurred to me that I could have picked out the good players even had I
been a stranger to those who approached the club house. You can class
the various types of golfers by their mannerisms, even if you have never
seen them with a club in their hands. For instance there were two
members who left the station platform at the same time--Duff and
Monahan. Both are men of standing in the community, and both are charter
members. They started to learn the game at the same period, and both
play at least five afternoons during the season, yet Monahan plays
consistently in eighty-two, while Duff is fortunate to score in
ninety-five. Why this woeful inferiority of Duff?
They are great friends and always play together, and they go through the
same performance every time they reach the grounds.
The moment Monahan left the train he headed for the club house as if it
were on fire and all of his money in its lockers. Duff says Monahan is
perfectly quiet and sane until he catches the first glimpse of the
links, but that his blood then begins to boil, and that he burns in a
fever of haste to get a club in his hands.
Monahan barely nodded to me as he passed and rushed up stairs. In less
than two minutes he was back and ready to play. As he tore out he met
Duff, who had strolled complacently up the walk, stopping now and then
to speak to a friend or to watch a shot.
Duff's clothes were the model of fashion and good taste. In his hand was
twirled a cane, and in his lapel was the inevitable boutonniere. He had
paused to chat with Miss Ross--Duff is married and has a daughter older
than Miss Ross--and was engaged in a discussion concerning a new play
when Monahan approached. Monahan had on a golf suit which would cause
his arrest as a tramp if he wandered from the links.
"Did you come up here to play golf or to pose on the veranda?" demanded
the indignant Monahan, grasping Duff by the shoulder and swinging him
half way around. "Please go away from him, Miss Ross; he will talk you
to death."
Twenty minutes later Duff wandered leisurely out to the first tee, where
Monahan had been waiting, glaring every few seconds at the club house,
and swearing under his breath. Duff looked even neater than in his
street clothes. His shirts, scarfs, trousers, shoes and caps form
combinations which are sartorial poems.
Duff smiled complacently during the tongue lashing administered by the
irate Monahan. This happens regularly every time they play. One would
think that the calm, unruffled Duff would defeat the nervous and
impatient Monahan, but nothing of the kind happens. The latter exacts
revenge by beating Duff to a frazzle.
I do not mean to infer that the slow or deliberate person will not make
a good player, but with deliberation he must have that keen interest
which dominates all of his faculties.
Marshall, for instance, is the slowest player I ever saw, and one of the
best. It is tiresome to watch him prepare to make a shot. He averages
four practise strokes. He has become so addicted to the practise-stroke
habit that he makes a series of preliminary manoeuvres before carving a
steak, and he raises his glass and sets it down several times before
taking a drink. His game is the sublimation of caution. It is the
brilliancy of care.
Later in the afternoon I wandered down the old lane which bisects the
links and climbed "The Eagle's Nest," a jagged pile of rocks which rise
on the southeastern part of the course. When a boy I discovered a way to
reach the crest of the higher ledge, fully two hundred feet above the
brook which takes its rambling course to the west. At this altitude
there is a natural seat, so formed by the rocks that those below cannot
see the one who uses this as a sentinel box.
It suited my mood to climb there this afternoon. Lazily smoking a cigar
I drank in the pastoral panorama spread out before me. The old Sumner
road wound as a dusty-gray ribbon amid fields of grain and corn. Below
were the pigmy figures of golfers, grotesque in their insignificance,
striding along like abbreviated compasses.
What dwarfs they were compared with their huge playground; what insects
they were contrasted to the splendid area within the sweep of the
horizon; what microbes they were when the eye wandered from them to the
superb vault of the skies!
I heard the lowing of cattle, and saw the Bishop herd coming over a hill
from the meadows. The notes of a Scotch air, sung in a clear, mellow
baritone came to my ears, and a moment later I saw Bishop's "hired
man," Wallace, driving the kine before him. His cap was in his hand, and
his jet-black hair fell back from his forehead.
I have no idea what impelled me to do so, but I leaned over the cliff
and looked below.
Half-way up the gentler slope of "The Eagle's Nest" I saw the figure of
a girl, or a woman. I keep my eyes on her, and as near as I can
determine she never once took hers from Bishop's hired man. Not until he
vanished in the woods which surrounds the farmhouse, did she move. Then
she turned and slowly picked her way down the rather dangerous path.
It was Miss Olive Lawrence.
ENTRY NO. VI
I PLAY WITH MISS HARDING
I regret that lack of intimacy with the muses prevents me from recording
this entry in verse. I have been playing golf with Miss Harding!
Not until this afternoon did I realise that constant association with
Marshall, Carter, Chilvers, and other hardened golfers has dulled my
finer sensibilities and deadened my appreciation of the wonderful scenic
beauties of the Woodvale golf course.
Like the fool bicycle scorcher who tears past beautiful bits of
landscape, his eyes fixed on the dusty path spurned by his whirring
wheel, or like the goggled maniac who steers an automobile, I now find
that I have played hundreds of times over this course without once
having seen it.