for the reason, I presume, that they did not dare leave me at home. My
impression of the colossal splendour beneath the vaulted heights of
Saint Peter's was that a certain smooth space on the tiled floor offered
unequalled facilities for playing marbles. I marvelled that baseball
grounds were not laid out in the noble open spaces surrounding the
palaces of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. The Swiss Alps had a fascination
for me by reason of their unsurpassed opportunities for coasting.
It never occurred to me until to-day that nature had any motive in
planning Woodvale other than to provide a sporty golf course. Miss
Harding has opened my eyes to the fact that it is one of the most
beautiful spots on the face of the earth.
When I told Carter I was to play with Miss Harding, he looked sort of
queer for a moment, and then bet me a box of balls I would not make
eighty-five. This was the only thing he could think to say. He tried
hard to conceal his surprise, but I could see that he was hard hit.
He wins the box of balls, all right. As a matter of fact we did not
finish the round, but I did not tell Carter that. I simply grinned
happily and told him that he had won.
There is no reason why I should attempt to write an account of this game
in this diary. I shall never forget the slightest detail of it as long
as I live.
The night is black as a raven's wing, but I am certain that I can start
from the first tee and retrace every step made by Miss Harding over the
fourteen holes played, and I will admit that it was far from a straight
line. I will wager that I can place my hand on every place where her
club tore up the turf, and can locate the exact spots where she drove
out of bounds.
The day was beautiful, the weather perfect. A few fleecy clouds drifted
across a deep sky. The rich green of the slopes blended into the darker
shades of the encompassing forests. As a rule, the only thing I can
recall after a golf game, so far as weather is concerned, is whether it
rained or if a high wind were blowing. It was different to-day.
I noted that the breeze was just strong enough to ruffle the lace at her
throat, and that the blue of her gown matched perfectly with cloud, sky,
and the dominating tones of the undulating carpet on which she tread.
I might play with Marshall or Chilvers a thousand times and not know or
care if the links were garbed in green or yellow, or if the clouds were
pink or Van Dyke brown, but as I said before, the only sentiment aroused
by association with these vindictive golf fiends is a wild and
unreasoning desire to beat the life out of them at their own game. I
dislike to say it, but they have never inspired in me one sentiment of
which I am proud.
At my suggestion we decided to start at the third tee. The first one
requires a long drive to carry the lane, and on the second it is
necessary to negotiate the old graveyard, and I disliked to put Miss
Harding to so severe a test on the start.
As I made a tee for her and carefully placed a new white ball on it, I
could not help think of the many times I have sneered and laughed at
Thomas, who is the only good player in the club who has really seemed to
enjoy a game of golf with one of the opposite sex.
I can see now that I have been very unfair to Thomas.
The man who refuses to play golf with a woman, or who even hesitates,
and who justifies such conduct on the plea that she cannot play well
enough to make the contest an equal one--well, he has none of the finer
instincts of a gentleman.
I told Marshall and Chilvers so this evening, and they laughed at me.
Both of these men are married, and both used to play golf with their
sweethearts when they were engaged. Once in a great while they now play
a round with the alleged partners of their joys and sorrows, but they do
it as if it were a penance, and seem immensely relieved when the ordeal
is over. It is pitiful to watch these two ladies forced to play
together, while their lords and masters indulge in fierce foursomes,
waged for the brute love of victory--and incidentally, perhaps for a
ball a hole.
If I ever marry I shall play with the habitual golfer only when Mrs.
Smith is disinclined to favour me with her society on the links.
Chilvers and Marshall say that they made the same resolution--and kept
it nearly six months. Let them watch me.
Miss Harding missed the ball entirely the first time she swung at it,
and both of us laughed heartily.
Now that I come to think of it, nothing used to infuriate me more than
to have to wait on a tee for a woman who was wildly striking at a ball.
But one must learn, and it is no disgrace for a lady to miss so small
an object as a golf ball.
She hit the ball on the second attempt. It did not go far, it is true,
but it went gracefully, describing a parabolic curve considerably to the
right of the line of the green.
Then I drove a long, straight ball, and felt just a little bit ashamed
of myself. It seemed like taking an unfair advantage of my fair
opponent. In fact it seemed a brutal thing to do, but she expressed
delight.
"That was splendid, Mr. Smith!" she declared, as my ball stopped
rolling, more than two hundred yards away. "I know that my poor little
game will bore you to death, but you invited this calamity."
"I only wish that--that I----" and then I stopped in time to keep from
saying something foolish.
"Well?" she said, a smile hovering on her lips.
"I only wish that I could drive as far as that every time," I continued,
"and--and that you could drive twice as far."
"What an absurd wish!" declared Miss Harding.
It was worse than absurd; it was stupid! Imagine a woman driving a ball
four hundred yards! I would never dare marry such a woman, and I came
near making some idiotic remark to that effect, but luckily at that
moment we came to her ball. I selected the proper club for her, jabbered
something about how to play the shot, and thus got safely out of an
awkward situation.
At my suggestion we were playing without caddies. There are times when
these little terrors take all of the romance out of a situation, and I
did not wish to be bothered with them.
On her fourth shot Miss Harding landed her ball in the brook, and it
took quite a time to find it. While we were looking for it Boyd and
LaHume arrived on the tee, and I motioned them to drive ahead.
I have seen this brook a thousand times. It was my greatest source of
amusement and mischief when a boy, but never until this afternoon did I
observe its perfect beauty. Heretofore it has been no more nor less than
a ribbon of water with weed-lined banks and tall rushes, into which a
poor player is likely to drive a ball and lose one or more strokes. It
is one of our "natural hazards," and I have thought no more of it than I
would of the cushion on a billiard table.
I shall never cross that brook again without thinking of her face as I
saw it mirrored in the shadows of the old stone bridge. The reflection
was framed with delicate interfacings of water cress, while in the bed
of the stream the smooth pebbles gleamed like pearls. The pointed reeds
nodded and waved in the gentle breeze.
Now that I think of it, I have cursed those reeds many, many times while
hunting for a lost ball.
"Is it not beautiful?" I exclaimed to Miss Harding.
"That drive of Mr. Boyd's?" she asked in reply. Boyd had made a ripper,
which went sailing over our heads. "It was a lovely drive! He has beaten
you by several yards."
"I meant the brook," I said.
"The brook?" she exclaimed. "I am surprised, Mr. Smith! I had no idea
that a confirmed golfer could find beauty in anything outside of a
drive, brassie, approach or putt."
"You malign us, Miss Harding," I declared, looking first in her eyes and
then in her mirrored image in the water. "From where I stand that brook
is the most lovely thing in the world, except--except----"
"Mr. LaHume has put his ball square on the green on his second shot!"
interrupted Miss Harding, clapping her hands in excitement.
I do not know whether she knew what I was going to say or not. I wish I
had the nerve to finish some of the fine speeches and compliments I plan
and begin, but as a rule I end them without a climax.
We found the ball and I dropped it a few yards back of the brook. She
promptly drove it into the brook a second time, and what became of it
will always remain a mystery to me. It did not go more than fifteen
feet, and we looked and looked but could not find it, so I smiled and
dropped another one, and this time she made a really good shot.
Counting all of the strokes and penalties it took Miss Harding fifteen
to make that hole, the bogy for which is four, but I assured her that I
have known men to do worse, and I believe the statement a fact, though I
cannot recall at this moment who did it in such woeful figures.
Miss Harding insisted in trying to drive over the pond on the fourth
hole, and said she would gladly pay for all the balls that went into it,
but of course I would not listen to that. The pond is very shallow at
this season of the year, and in fact is a mud hole in most places, and
it is therefore impossible to recover a ball which fails to carry less
than eighty yards.
She barely touched the ball on her first attempt, and I got it after
wading in the mud to my shoe tops. Then she hit it nicely, but it failed
to carry the pond by a few yards, and disappeared in the ooze.
"I thought I could do it, but I give it up," she said, and I could see
that she was disappointed.
"Try it again," I insisted, teeing up a new one. "Keep your eye on the
ball when your club comes down, and don't press."
She made a brave effort, but hit the ball a trifle on top. It struck the
water, ricochetted and eventually poised itself on a mud bank. I recall
how white it looked against the black slime with lily pads in the
background, but I saw at a glance that it would remain there, so far as
we were concerned.
[Illustration: "We rested on top of the hill"]
Against her protest I teed another ball, but she went under it and it
met the fate of its predecessors. It took all my eloquence to induce her
to make the five attempts which followed, and then I made the discovery
that I had brought only eight new balls with me. So I excused myself and
went back to the club house and bought a box of a dozen, but nothing
would change her determination not to try it again.
I am firmly convinced that with a little luck she could have done it,
but it was the first time Miss Harding had played this course, and that
makes lots of difference.
Of the various incidents in this most delightful game nothing gave me
more keen enjoyment than when Miss Harding played Carter's ball. It was
by mistake, of course. Nature has implanted in woman an instinct which
leads her to play any ball rather than her own. The ball thus selected
is generally without a blemish, and it has been ordained that a weak
little creature can with one stroke cut that sphere in halves.
That is what happened to Carter's ball when Miss Harding played it by
mistake, and I never laughed more heartily. Carter smiled and bowed and
pretended to be amused, but I knew he was not.
We rested on top of the hill after this exploit and talked of the rare
view and of other topics which had nothing whatever to do with golf.
Never before have I rested during a game, and I did not think it
possible. I have been on that hill innumerable times, but it never
occurred to me to take more than a passing glance at the inspiring
vista which spreads away to the north and west.
We talked of poetry and of art. Think of sitting with a golf club in
your hand, resting a few rods from a tee where a clean shot will carry
the railway tracks a hundred feet below and land your ball on a green
two hundred and eighty yards from the tee--it is one of the finest holes
in the country--think of idling an hour away on the most perfect golf
afternoon you ever saw, and repeating line after line of verse
descriptive of "meadows green and sylvan shades," and all that sort of
thing!
We did that! I would not believe it, but I actually felt sorry for the
chaps who went past us, their minds absorbed in the mere struggle to see
which would take the fewer numbers of strokes in putting golf balls in
certain round holes. Honestly I pitied them.
And they envied me. I could see that. The arrival of Miss Harding has
created a sensation, and it was no small honour to play the first game
with her. Of course Marshall, Chilvers, Pepper and other married men
hardly noticed me, but Thomas, Boyd, Roberts and such young gallants
smiled, bowed and looked longingly in my direction.
It took us more than five hours to play twelve holes, and I have played
twice around in less than that. I have not the slightest idea what my
score is, and that is something which never before happened to me.
Carter wins a dozen balls, and he can have them, or a dozen dozen for
all I care.
Miss Harding has promised to play with me again.
ENTRY NO. VII
TWO BOYS FROM BUCKFIELD
When Harding was in the city he purchased a huge golf bag, the most
wonderful assortment of clubs imaginable, also two golf suits and a
bewildering array of shirts, caps, scarfs, shoes and other articles that
some dealers assured him were necessary for the proper playing of the
game.
"If I have got to play this fool game, and I suppose there is no way I
can get out of it," he said to me, looking down disdainfully at his
knickerbockered legs and taking an extra hitch on his new leather belt,
"I may as well have the regulation uniform. How do I look?"
I told him the suit was very becoming. He was a sight! On his huge,
bushy head was a Scotch cap, and it is certain that no clan stands
sponsor for that bewildering plaid. The silk shirt was a beauty, but it
did not harmonise with the burning red of his coat, with its cuffs and
collar of vivid green.
His trousers were of another plaid, but I should say that his stockings
were the dominating feature of his make-up. They were of green and gray,
the stripes running around instead of up and down, the effect being, of
course, to emphasise the appearance of stoutness. When you pull a thick
stocking or legging over an eighteen-inch calf you have done something
which compels even those who are near-sighted and blasé to sit up and
give attention.
Harding's feet are of generous proportions, and his tan shoes with their
thick, broad soles armed with big spikes to keep him from slipping
looked most impressive.
He was the personification of newness. The leather of his bag was
flawless, and the grips of his clubs were new and glossy. The steel and
nickel of his iron clubs shone without one flaw to dim their lustre. In
the pocket of his bag were a dozen new balls, so white and gleaming that
it seemed a shame to use them. I could see that the art collection of
balls being made by Miss Dangerfield would take on a boom from the
advent of Harding.
"Tell you what I want to do, Smith," said Harding, as we stood on the
veranda of the club house, early this forenoon. "I want to find some
place where I can soak a ball as far as I can and not have it stopped by
a hill or a brook, or something like that. I haven't been over this
place yet, but isn't there some smooth, level place where a ball would
naturally roll a quarter of a mile or so if you hit it good and hard?"
"The eighteenth hole is six hundred and thirty-two yards--one of the
longest in the country," I said, "and it is smooth as a barn floor after
you carry the railroad tracks. That is a long carry, and most players go
short and take the tracks on their second shot."
"Six hundred odd yards," he mused. "Let's see; over a third of a mile,
eh?"
I said that it was, and a par hole in six.
"Anybody ever drive it yet?" he asked.
"Drive it?" I repeated, laughing. "Well, I should say not! I have
reached the green in three only twice in all the times I have played it,
and am well satisfied to be there in four."
"That proves nothing to me," he said, looking me over, "but you're a
pretty husky-appearing chap at that. You're nearly six feet, aren't you,
Smith?"
"A quarter of an inch more than six feet in my stockings," I said.
"And how much do you weigh?"
"One hundred and eighty-five."
"You'd ought to be able to drive a ball farther than you do," he said,
with the air of one who had mastered the game in all its details. There
is not a man in the club who can consistently out-drive me, and I'll
wager that Kirkaldy himself cannot average ten yards more than I do, but
what was the use of arguing with Harding?
It was easy to see that this magnate actually believed that his first
stroke at a golf ball was no accident, and was confident that with a
little practice he could far surpass that terrific drive of two hundred
and seventy yards. But though I well knew what was coming to him I held
my peace.
I asked Kirkaldy if he had ever known of a happening similar to
Harding's now famous drive. He said he could not recall when a duffer
had reached so great a distance, but it was not unusual for a husky
novice to drive a few good balls before he began to attempt an
improvement of a natural, but of course crude, stroke.
"But," I asked Kirkaldy, "how did Harding manage to drive it so far?"
"Strength and luck, mon," said our Scotch professional, "the more luck.
It war th' same as when ye won a match with me by makin' th' last three
holes in less than bogy. Luck, mon, is yer truest friend."
I think Kirkaldy is right.
"I never like to take up a thing unless it is difficult," said Harding,
as we started for the eighteenth tee. "I like to do the things other men
say cannot be done, and without blowing my own horn I have done a few of
them. I am fond of work, but when I play I play with all my might. The
boy who is not a good player will never make a good worker. You take a
boy who is playing baseball, for instance. I can watch a game among
youngsters and pick out those who are likely to win out later on in
life."
"How?" I interrupted.
"By the way they go at it. The one who covers the most ground on a ball
field will cover the most ground later on in whatever he undertakes. The
one who plays to win, who takes chances even at the risk of making
errors is the coming man. The boy who sits down in the out-field, on the
theory that a ball is not likely to come in his direction, will be poor
all his life. The boy who plays an unimportant position as if his very
existence depended upon it will get along all right, and don't you
forget it. But this golf game is so simple that it does not call on a
man to let himself out. Billiards is my game. Billiards is a game of
endless possibilities, and no matter how well a man plays there is
always room for improvement."
That made me mad, and I resented this assertion the more for the reason
that I once held the same views as he then expressed. I went right at
him.
"When you have played as many games of golf as you have of billiards," I
said, and I play a fair billiard game myself, "you will not mention them
in the same breath. Let me assure you, Mr. Harding, that golf is the
most difficult game in the world, and you have only the slightest
conception of what you must master before you can play more than an
indifferent sort of a game."
He smiled indulgently.
"What is there hard about it?" he demanded. "In billiards, for instance,
you--"
"You play billiards on a table which is not more than five feet by ten,"
I broke in, "and you play golf on a table which may cover two hundred
acres of hills, woods, marshes, ponds, brooks, and meadows. You play
billiards in a room which is always at about the same temperature, and
where there is not a breath of air stirring. You play golf out-of-doors,
where it may be one hundred in the shade or far below freezing; under
conditions of perfect calm, or with winds ranging all the way from a
zephyr to gales from every point of the compass."
"There is something in that," he admitted, "but you need not get mad
about it, Smith."
"Your billiard table is always the same," I continued. "It consists of
the cloth and four cushions, and they are smooth as art can make them.
Your golf course is never the same on any two days, and would not be if
you played through all eternity. Sometimes the grass in a certain place
is long, and sometimes it is short; sometimes it is thick, and again it
is thin; sometimes the ground is hard from lack of rain, and again it is
soft and spongy from an excess of rain. There are millions of variations
in these conditions, and every one of them must be considered in making
a perfect shot."
"Yes, I suppose that is so," he admitted, and I could see I had started
him thinking.
"There are days when the air is light," I went on, "and when a certain
stroke will send the ball where you wish it to go. There are other days
when the air is heavy, and when a hit ball seems to have no life in it.
You must allow for the force and direction of every slant of wind. There
are conditions of atmosphere when objects seem near, and others when
they seem far away, and you must take this into account."
He was silent, and I went on.
"On a billiard table your ball is always within easy reach. You stand on
a level floor and play on a level table. In golf your ball never lands
in the same place twice. It may be above you, or below you. It may lie
in any one of ten million separate conformations of ground, and for each
you must exercise judgment. Your clubs change in weight as you clean
them; no two golf balls have the same degree of elasticity when new, and
as you use them it decreases. But more than all else, you are not the
same man physically or mentally on any two days. A slight increase in
weight, the wearing of an extra garment, the congestion of a muscle or
the stiffening of a chord may be sufficient to throw you off your stroke
and seriously impair your game."
"Nonsense; I don't believe it," he declared. "When I once find out how
to make a certain shot I will keep right on improving until I have it
perfect."
"If that were possible golf would lose its charm," I said. "A man will
go on making a certain shot with almost perfect accuracy for months, and
all at once lose the knack of it, and not be able to recover it for
months, and perhaps never. In order to hit a golf ball accurately there
are scores of muscles which must act in perfect accord, and the several
parts of the body must maintain certain positions during the various
parts of the stroke. If the shoulder drops the quarter of an inch, if
the heel rises too soon by the minutest fraction of a second, if either
hand grasping the club turns in any degree the stroke is ruined. You
will hit the ball, but it will not go the distance or the direction
required."
"Must be a mighty hard game, from all that you say," he laughed, grimly.
"Guess I'd better go back and not try it, but I notice that there was
nothing the matter with the position of my muscles, cords, hands and the
rest of my anatomy the other day when I whacked that ball out of sight.
And I can do it again, Smith, and don't you forget it."
I preferred to await the arbitrament of events so far as that boast was
concerned.
We had arrived at the eighteenth tee, and he looked over the field with
much satisfaction. The railroad embankment is about one hundred and
fifty yards from the tee, and few try to carry it. The old post road
runs parallel to the line of this hole, and forms the western boundary
of the Woodvale links. There is no bunker save the railroad bank for the
entire distance, and it is an ideal hole for the golf "slugger."
"Where is the green?" asked Harding, standing on the elevated tee. I
pointed in the line of the old church belfry, and after a long look he
declared that he could see the white flag floating from the standard.
"Nobody ever drove it, you say?" he observed, throwing his shoulders
back.
"Of course not," I laughed, and added, "and never will."
"Don't be too sure about that," he said, piling a mound of sand. "It's
nothing more than a 'putt,' as you call it, to bat a ball over that
railroad."
"You talk about driving six hundred yards to that green," I said,
annoyed at his ignorant nerve, "I will bet you a box of cigars that you
do not carry that railroad track in a month."
"Don't be foolish, Smith."
"Do you wish to bet?"
"Of course I do," he replied, teeing a ball, "and we'll get action on it
in about ten seconds. Just keep your eye on this ball!"
Disdaining to take a practice stroke, he swung viciously at it. He must
have caught it on the toe of his club, for it sliced to the right in a
low and sweeping curve.
As I followed its flight I saw a farm wagon in the road. The driver had
stopped his team, and was standing up watching Harding. I recognised
Farmer Bishop, and noted that his sallow face was distorted in a
disdainful grin, which froze on his lips when he saw the ball curving
toward him.
It is difficult for an experienced golfer to dodge a sliced drive, even
when he has a chance to run to one side or the other, but all that
Bishop could do was to duck, which he did, with the result that the
ball hit his left temple. He half fell and half jumped to the ground,
and was not so badly hurt as to prevent his being the maddest
agriculturist I have seen in many years.