DIVOTS
P. G. WODEHOUSE
By P. G. WODEHOUSE
CARRY ON, JEEVES!
HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
BILL THE CONQUEROR
GOLF WITHOUT TEARS
JEEVES
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
MOSTLY SALLY
THREE MEN AND A MAID
INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE
THE LITTLE WARRIOR
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
DIVOTS
BY
P. G. WODEHOUSE
[Illustration: NEW YORK]
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926 AND 1927,
BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
[Illustration]
DIVOTS
--B--
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY DAUGHTER
LEONORA
WITHOUT WHOSE NEVER-FAILING
SYMPATHY AND ENCOURAGEMENT
THIS BOOK
WOULD HAVE BEEN FINISHED
IN
HALF THE TIME
PREFACE
Before leading the reader out on to this little nine-hole course, I
should like to say a few words on the club-house steps with regard to
the criticisms of my earlier book of Golf stories, _The Clicking of
Cuthbert_. In the first place, I noticed with regret a disposition
on the part of certain writers to speak of Golf as a trivial theme,
unworthy of the pen of a thinker. In connection with this, I can only
say that right through the ages the mightiest brains have occupied
themselves with this noble sport, and that I err, therefore, if I do
err, in excellent company.
Apart from the works of such men as James Braid, John Henry Taylor and
Horace Hutchinson, we find Publius Syrius not disdaining to give advice
on the back-swing (“He gets through too late who goes too fast”);
Diogenes describing the emotions of a cheery player at the water-hole
(“Be of good cheer. I see land”); and Doctor Watts, who, watching one
of his drives from the tee, jotted down the following couplet on the
back of his score-card:
_Fly, like a youthful hart or roe,
Over the hills where spices grow._
And, when we consider that Chaucer, the father of English poetry,
inserted in his Squiere’s Tale the line
_Therefore behoveth him a ful long spoone_
(though, of course, with the modern rubber-cored ball an iron would
have got the same distance) and that Shakespeare himself, speaking
querulously in the character of a weak player who held up an impatient
foursome, said:
_Four rogues in buckram let drive at me_
we may, I think, consider these objections answered.
A far more serious grievance which I have against my critics is that
many of them confessed to the possession of but the slightest knowledge
of the game, and one actually stated in cold print that he did not know
what a niblick was. A writer on golf is certainly entitled to be judged
by his peers--which, in my own case, means men who do one good drive in
six, four reasonable approaches in an eighteen-hole round, and average
three putts per green: and I think I am justified in asking of editors
that they instruct critics of this book to append their handicaps in
brackets at the end of their remarks. By this means the public will
be enabled to form a fair estimate of the worth of the volume, and
the sting in such critiques as “We laughed heartily while reading
these stories--once--at a misprint” will be sensibly diminished by the
figures (36) at the bottom of the paragraph. While my elation will be
all the greater should the words “A genuine masterpiece” be followed by
a simple (scr.).
* * * * *
One final word. The thoughtful reader, comparing this book with _The
Clicking of Cuthbert_, will, no doubt, be struck by the poignant depth
of feeling which pervades the present volume like the scent of muddy
shoes in a locker-room: and it may be that he will conclude that, like
so many English writers, I have fallen under the spell of the great
Russians.
This is not the case. While it is, of course, true that my style owes
much to Dostoievsky, the heart-wringing qualities of such stories as
“The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” and “Keeping in with Vosper” is due
entirely to the fact that I have spent much time recently playing on
the National Links at Southampton, Long Island, U.S.A. These links
were constructed by an exiled Scot who conceived the dreadful idea of
assembling on one course all the really foul holes in Great Britain. It
cannot but leave its mark on a man when, after struggling through the
Sahara at Sandwich and the Alps at Prestwick, he finds himself faced by
the Station-Master’s Garden hole at St. Andrew’s and knows that the
Redan and the Eden are just round the corner. When you turn in a medal
score of a hundred and eight on two successive days, you get to know
something about Life.
* * * * *
And yet it may be that there are a few gleams of sunshine in the book.
If so, it is attributable to the fact that some of it was written
before I went to Southampton and immediately after I had won my first
and only trophy--an umbrella in a hotel tournament at Aiken, South
Carolina, where, playing to a handicap of sixteen, I went through a
field consisting of some of the fattest retired businessmen in America
like a devouring flame. If we lose the Walker Cup this year, let
England remember that.
P. G. WODEHOUSE
_The Sixth Bunker
Addington_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HEART OF A GOOF 15
II HIGH STAKES 51
III KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER 85
IV CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF 116
V THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS 153
VI THE AWAKENING OF ROLLO PODMARSH 183
VII RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY 210
VIII JANE GETS OFF THE FAIRWAY 246
IX THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN 283
DIVOTS
CHAPTER I
THE HEART OF A GOOF
It was a morning when all nature shouted “Fore!” The breeze, as it
blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and
cheer, whispering of chip-shots holed and brassies landing squarely
on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred
dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky; and the sun, peeping above
the trees, looked like a giant golf-ball perfectly lofted by the mashie
of some unseen god and about to drop dead by the pin of the eighteenth.
It was the day of the opening of the course after the long winter, and
a crowd of considerable dimensions had collected at the first tee.
Plus fours gleamed in the sunshine, and the air was charged with happy
anticipation.
In all that gay throng there was but one sad face. It belonged to the
man who was waggling his driver over the new ball perched on its little
hill of sand. This man seemed careworn, hopeless. He gazed down the
fairway, shifted his feet, waggled, gazed down the fairway again,
shifted the dogs once more, and waggled afresh. He waggled as Hamlet
might have waggled, moodily, irresolutely. Then, at last, he swung,
and, taking from his caddie the niblick which the intelligent lad had
been holding in readiness from the moment when he had walked on to the
tee, trudged wearily off to play his second.
The Oldest Member, who had been observing the scene with a benevolent
eye from his favourite chair on the terrace, sighed.
“Poor Jenkinson,” he said, “does not improve.”
“No,” agreed his companion, a young man with open features and a
handicap of six. “And yet I happen to know that he has been taking
lessons all the winter at one of those indoor places.”
“Futile, quite futile,” said the Sage with a shake of his snowy head.
“There is no wizard living who could make that man go round in an
average of sevens. I keep advising him to give up the game.”
“You!” cried the young man, raising a shocked and startled face from
the driver with which he was toying. “_You_ told him to give up golf!
Why I thought--”
“I understand and approve of your horror,” said the Oldest Member,
gently. “But you must bear in mind that Jenkinson’s is not an ordinary
case. You know and I know scores of men who have never broken a hundred
and twenty in their lives, and yet contrive to be happy, useful
members of society. However badly they may play, they are able to
forget. But with Jenkinson it is different. He is not one of those who
can take it or leave it alone. His only chance of happiness lies in
complete abstinence. Jenkinson is a goof.”
“A what?”
“A goof,” repeated the Sage. “One of those unfortunate beings who have
allowed this noblest of sports to get too great a grip upon them, who
have permitted it to eat into their souls, like some malignant growth.
The goof, you must understand, is not like you and me. He broods.
He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life.
Jenkinson, for example, was once a man with a glowing future in the
hay, corn, and feed business, but a constant stream of hooks, tops,
and slices gradually made him so diffident and mistrustful of himself,
that he let opportunity after opportunity slip, with the result that
other, sterner, hay, corn, and feed merchants passed him in the race.
Every time he had the chance to carry through some big deal in hay, or
to execute some flashing _coup_ in corn and feed, the fatal diffidence
generated by a hundred rotten rounds would undo him. I understand his
bankruptcy may be expected at any moment.”
“My golly!” said the young man, deeply impressed. “I hope I never
become a goof. Do you mean to say there is really no cure except
giving up the game?”
The Oldest Member was silent for a while.
“It is curious that you should have asked that question,” he said at
last, “for only this morning I was thinking of the one case in my
experience where a goof was enabled to overcome his deplorable malady.
It was owing to a girl, of course. The longer I live, the more I come
to see that most things are. But you will, no doubt, wish to hear the
story from the beginning.”
The young man rose with the startled haste of some wild creature,
which, wandering through the undergrowth, perceives the trap in his
path.
“I should love to,” he mumbled, “only I shall be losing my place at the
tee.”
“The goof in question,” said the Sage, attaching himself with quiet
firmness to the youth’s coat-button, “was a man of about your age, by
name Ferdinand Dibble. I knew him well. In fact, it was to me--”
“Some other time, eh?”
“It was to me,” proceeded the Sage, placidly, “that he came for
sympathy in the great crisis of his life, and I am not ashamed to say
that when he had finished laying bare his soul to me there were tears
in my eyes. My heart bled for the boy.”
“I bet it did. But--”
The Oldest Member pushed him gently back into his seat.
“Golf,” he said, “is the Great Mystery. Like some capricious goddess--”
The young man, who had been exhibiting symptoms of feverishness,
appeared to become resigned. He sighed softly.
“Did you ever read ‘The Ancient Mariner’?” he said.
“Many years ago,” said the Oldest Member. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the young man. “It just occurred to me.”
* * * * *
Golf (resumed the Oldest Member) is the Great Mystery. Like some
capricious goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an
almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we
see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping
every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock knees and
hollow cheeks, who are tearing off snappy seventy-fours. Giants of
finance have to accept a stroke per from their junior clerks. Men
capable of governing empires fail to control a small, white ball, which
presents no difficulties whatever to others with one ounce more brain
than a cuckoo-clock. Mysterious, but there it is. There was no apparent
reason why Ferdinand Dibble should not have been a competent golfer.
He had strong wrists and a good eye. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that he was a dub. And on a certain evening in June I realised that
he was also a goof. I found it out quite suddenly as the result of a
conversation which we had on this very terrace.
I was sitting here that evening thinking of this and that, when by the
corner of the clubhouse I observed young Dibble in conversation with a
girl in white. I could not see who she was, for her back was turned.
Presently they parted and Ferdinand came slowly across to where I sat.
His air was dejected. He had had the boots licked off him earlier in
the afternoon by Jimmy Fothergill, and it was to this that I attributed
his gloom. I was to find out in a few moments that I was partly but not
entirely correct in this surmise. He took the next chair to mine, and
for several minutes sat staring moodily down into the valley.
“I’ve just been talking to Barbara Medway,” he said, suddenly breaking
the silence.
“Indeed?” I said. “A delightful girl.”
“She’s going away for the summer to Marvis Bay.”
“She will take the sunshine with her.”
“You bet she will!” said Ferdinand Dibble, with extraordinary warmth,
and there was another long silence.
Presently Ferdinand uttered a hollow groan.
“I love her, dammit!” he muttered brokenly. “Oh, golly, how I love her!”
I was not surprised at his making me the recipient of his confidences
like this. Most of the young folk in the place brought their troubles
to me sooner or later.
“And does she return your love?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.”
“Why not? I should have thought the point not without its interest for
you.”
Ferdinand gnawed the handle of his putter distractedly.
“I haven’t the nerve,” he burst out at length. “I simply can’t summon
up the cold gall to ask a girl, least of all an angel like her, to
marry me. You see, it’s like this. Every time I work myself up to the
point of having a dash at it, I go out and get trimmed by some one
giving me a stroke a hole. Every time I feel I’ve mustered up enough
pep to propose, I take ten on a bogey three. Every time I think I’m in
good mid-season form for putting my fate to the test, to win or lose
it all, something goes all blooey with my swing, and I slice into the
rough at every tee. And then my self-confidence leaves me. I become
nervous, tongue-tied, diffident. I wish to goodness I knew the man who
invented this infernal game. I’d strangle him. But I suppose he’s been
dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.”
It was at this point that I understood all, and the heart within me
sank like lead. The truth was out. Ferdinand Dibble was a goof.
“Come, come, my boy,” I said, though feeling the uselessness of any
words. “Master this weakness.”
“I can’t.”
“Try!”
“I have tried.”
He gnawed his putter again.
“She was asking me just now if I couldn’t manage to come to Marvis Bay,
too,” he said.
“That surely is encouraging? It suggests that she is not entirely
indifferent to your society.”
“Yes, but what’s the use? Do you know,” a gleam coming into his eyes
for a moment, “I have a feeling that if I could ever beat some really
fairly good player--just once--I could bring the thing off.” The gleam
faded. “But what chance is there of that?”
It was a question which I did not care to answer. I merely patted his
shoulder sympathetically, and after a little while he left me and
walked away. I was still sitting there, thinking over his hard case,
when Barbara Medway came out of the club-house.
She, too, seemed grave and pre-occupied, as if there was something on
her mind. She took the chair which Ferdinand had vacated, and sighed
wearily.
“Have you ever felt,” she asked, “that you would like to bang a man on
the head with something hard and heavy? With knobs on?”
I said I had sometimes experienced such a desire, and asked if she
had any particular man in mind. She seemed to hesitate for a moment
before replying, then, apparently, made up her mind to confide in me.
My advanced years carry with them certain pleasant compensations, one
of which is that nice girls often confide in me. I frequently find
myself enrolled as a father-confessor on the most intimate matters
by beautiful creatures from whom many a younger man would give his
eye-teeth to get a friendly word. Besides, I had known Barbara since
she was a child. Frequently--though not recently--I had given her her
evening bath. These things form a bond.
“Why are men such chumps?” she exclaimed.
“You still have not told me who it is that has caused these harsh
words. Do I know him?”
“Of course you do. You’ve just been talking to him.”
“Ferdinand Dibble? But why should you wish to bang Ferdinand Dibble on
the head with something hard and heavy with knobs on?”
“Because he’s such a goop.”
“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have penetrated
the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t tell
her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond of
me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in _me_, the poor fish?” cried the
high-spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing
grasshopper. “I can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless
he gives some sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I wanted
him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers begging him to
marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come Ferdinand
Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the head kept
rigid and the right leg firmly braced and--”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble would
cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who--” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
“It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their
game. But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to become
morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success at the
game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which keeps a man
from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs he may achieve in
other walks of life; but in all things there is a happy mean, and with
Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has taken all the spirit
out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is grateful to caddies
when they accept a tip instead of drawing themselves up to their full
height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers--I used the term in its broadest sense,
to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed--whom even
he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis Bay, the hotel
links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had drifted all the
pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things done on that
course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes--and I am not a weak
man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as to go round in a fairly
steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope. But I understand he is
not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with him.”
And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.
* * * * *
It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as
the lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity
of summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of play was
rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for some days
after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man who cannot
believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this summer
resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of stout,
middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to making money,
had taken to a game at which real proficiency can only be acquired by
those who start playing in their cradles and keep their weight down.
Out on the course each morning you could see representatives of every
nightmare style that was ever invented. There was the man who seemed to
be attempting to deceive his ball and lull it into a false security by
looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent
hope of catching it off its guard. There was the man who wielded his
mid-iron like one killing snakes. There was the man who addressed his
ball as if he were stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were
cracking a whip, the man who brooded over each shot like one whose
heart is bowed down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with
his mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He had
gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their faces
with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local amateurs, whose
prowess the octogenarians and the men who went round in bath-chairs
vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was faced on the eighth
morning of his visit by the startling fact that he had no more worlds
to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed, and, what is more,
had won his first trophy, the prize in the great medal-play handicap
tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of the field by two strokes,
edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old gentleman, by means
of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last hole. The prize was
a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the old oaken bucket, and
Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately after dinner to croon over
it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did not
take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a sick
parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a couple of
weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the daily letters
which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started writing, he found
that he used up so much space describing his best shots on the links
that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a declaration of undying
passion. After all, you can hardly cram that sort of thing into a
postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile pursued
his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in one way, for
every morning and afternoon that passed was adding new layers to his
self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew chestier and chestier.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen mutterings
were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the spirit of
revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not escaped the
notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty as a normally
unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I am sorry to say that
the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand was the aggressive type of
chestiness which breeds enemies. He had developed a habit of holding
the game up in order to give his opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker
had not forgiven, and never would forgive, his well-meant but galling
criticism of his back-swing. The Scooper, who had always scooped
since the day when, at the age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the
Correspondence Course which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by
mail, resented being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke
should be a smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer--But I need not
weary you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is
enough to say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night,
after dinner, they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done
about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the Scooper.
“Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I? Well, what
more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer. It
is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the man
had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this last
remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And there
was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office--young Parsloe--who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him on
this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer, anxiously.
“It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once went
round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of these
motor-cars then, tearing about and killing--”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the remaining
conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean counting
every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time to
give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand, kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
“Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.
* * * * *
It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good time
and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of the
day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind the
opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve that
night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was proceeding over
the smooth turf without a care in the world, when there was a sudden
cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball, missing him by inches,
sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty yards from where he
stood. He looked round and observed a figure coming towards him from
the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards. Add
fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such drive
had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation, and
such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the hum
of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had been
permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only when
the other man came up that there began to steal over him a sickening
apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on the hotel
course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was a
stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the man
he had agreed to play.
“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth, with
brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er--do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local champion, or
something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the best
man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to happen, he
nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe. The magic had
gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a silly, feeble
way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For Ferdinand’s
inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever, was back again,
doing business at the old stand.
* * * * *
How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on his
lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would unleash
his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her only worry
was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the sacred scene
by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his peculiar
manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet resultant
upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The interpretation
which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to see her. If he had
behaved like this before, she would, of course, have put it down to
ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written statements to prove that
for the last ten days his golf had been one long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it all
now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew how
quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an instant
she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as to let
him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in wrath,
and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on the point
of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell and
conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a certain
level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said yes, it
was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water, and Barbara
said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand said he hoped
it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would be a pity if
it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as the
Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying with
him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest his
heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not have
supposed that anything could have added to his existing depression, but
he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs farther down the
ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful ring in her voice.
Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all was! We never
know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a good patch and are
beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and along comes a George
Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch George
Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s fevered eye he
looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex began to exhibit
symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete at love or golf with a
fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of the movies and considered
himself off his drive when he did a hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung miserably
about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society was not
essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it was
with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after dinner.
Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went early
to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his cup,
could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely into
his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.
* * * * *
Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room. Coming
down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the hotel. It was
her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day like this one
was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the lounge, shut all
the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute industry. To her
surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a cloudless sky, the
only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian with the ear-trumpet.
She observed that he was chuckling to himself in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his acquaintance
on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and getting his
trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio outfit
and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
“What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a crumb
the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she should
have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble--” Here the octogenarian choked
again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t know that
Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist she
appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink. Then her
eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at the back
of the chair. She understood now. She realised why Ferdinand had been
so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him in a spasm of maternal
pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was mumbling,
and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man. For two pins
she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the need for action
roused her. What action? She did not know. All she knew was that she
must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee.
In spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did
not wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the second
nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and now she
could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill that shook
her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So he must have won
one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not going
altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the direction
of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing right on
the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble
had managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth
green, but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient
to cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation--to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives, never
chipped his chip so shrewdly.
About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the
ball. But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the way
round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness and
the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like a young
lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of dejection to be
elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of clear vision,
he perceived the reason why he had been playing so well to-day. It
was just because he was not elated. It was simply because he was so
profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the sixteenth,
after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway, and I am
convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent golfers,
Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for himself by thinking
too much. He was a deep student of the works of the masters, and
whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a complete mental list of
all the mistakes which it was possible to make. He would remember how
Taylor had warned against dipping the right shoulder, how Vardon had
inveighed against any movement of the head; he would recall how Ray had
mentioned the tendency to snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken
sadly of those who sin against their better selves by stiffening the
muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen manner
till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of action, he
eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right shoulder,
stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the same time
raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some Frequent
Faults of Beginners--No. 3--Lifting the Bean”) facing page thirty-four
of James Braid’s _Golf Without Tears_. To-day he had been so
preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots absently,
almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every three had
been a lallapaloosa.
Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was progressing.
George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had been given to
understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-best man, and all
the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives in great profusion,
and had once actually got a four. True, there had been an occasional
six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the main fact that the
man was making the dickens of a game of it. With the haughty spirit of
one who had once done a ninety-four, George Parsloe had anticipated
being at least three up at the turn. Instead of which he had been two
down, and had to fight strenuously to draw level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have won
the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The same
defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in two, with
Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the green with his
fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a distance of seven
yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts just enabled him to
equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first she
had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she approached
the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath. Ferdinand
held his breath. And all around one could see their respective breaths
being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the enthralled crowd
of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest tension, and it was
broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it met the ball and sent
it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty yards. At this supreme
crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and gave
it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the happy
ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before. He would so
drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots to catch up
with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution, poised it at the
top of the swing--
“I always wonder--” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway--” said George Parsloe, in a small, flat
voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees are
called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called greens,
may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth. His
fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he picked
it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been something
venomous.
“Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.
* * * * *
Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried off
the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had spoken
those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that he
had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to sink
again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could hold
nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to his
feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man with
whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight beside
this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water,”
persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played together
as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged to be
married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was thinking
tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If Parsloe’s
engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with _you_.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.
* * * * *
“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,
thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows, while
in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s Wedding
March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just
discovered the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game
unless you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take
the case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you
don’t care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to
see. Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at
the top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll be
fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.