I refused to start for Port Lafayette in Millington's automobile,
although he used to lean over the fence and beg me almost tearfully,
but one fine morning he came over, and he looked so haggard and careworn
that I took pity on him.
“John,” he said, as he led me to his garage, which was on the back of
his lot, “I am sure this automobile of mine is bewitched. I cannot think
of anything else that would make it behave as an automobile in good
health should, and I give you my word of honour that it is acting in
perfect rhythm, never slipping a cog nor missing fire. Of course, with
the machine behaving in that unaccountable manner, I would not dare to
start for Port Lafayette, but I want to run you around to the Country
Club. You ought to be in our Country Club, and I want you to see it, and
I want you to tell me what you think about this automobile of mine. I
can't understand it!”
I have often noticed three things: I have noticed that a boy is never
really happy until he owns a dog; I have noticed that a flat-dweller is
never content until he owns a phonograph; but above all I have
noticed that the commuter--the man that lives in the sweet-scented,
tree-embowered suburbs--is restless and uneasy until he joins the
Country Club. So I accepted Millington's invitation.
We ran out of his yard and half a block up the street, Millington
listening carefully all the while, and we could not hear a sound of
distress in any part of the automobile. Millington stopped the car and
got out.
“I am going to walk to the Club,” he said. “I won't trust myself in that
car. As for you, as it was entirely for your sake I proposed this little
run to the Club, I am going to put the machine in your charge, and
you are to run it around the block until it resumes its normal bad
condition. From what I know of you and the remarks you have made while I
have tried to repair the engine, I believe you will soon have it making
all sorts of noises, and,” he added, “perhaps it will be making a noise
it never made before.”
Then he showed me how to start, and what to touch if a tree or telephone
post got in my way, and then he went on to the Country Club.
I was much touched by this evidence of Millington's faith in my ability
to bring out the bad points of his automobile, and as soon as he
disappeared I set to work, and I had hardly gone twice around the block
before I had it knocking more loudly than ever I had heard it knock. But
I was resolved to show Millington that his trust was not misplaced,
and I ran the nose of the machine into a tree, threw on the high speed
suddenly until I heard a grinding noise that told me the gears were
stripped. Then I left the car there and walked on to the Country Club.
A Country Club is an institution conducted for the purpose of securing
as many new members as possible, in order that their initiation fees may
pay for the upkeep of the golf green. Aside from this, the object of the
club is to enable the men that mow the grass to make an honest living by
selling the golf balls they find while mowing the grass.
The Membership Committee, on which Millington served, is a small body of
men whose duty it is to learn, as soon as possible, who that new man is
that moved into Billing's house, and to get twenty dollars in initiation
fees from him, before he has spent all his money for mosquito screens.
When Millington said to me, in the way members of Country Clubs have,
“_You_ ought to be in our Country Club,” I was tickled. I did not
know then that Millington was on the membership committee, and his
willingness to admit me to fellowship seemed to show that I had been
promptly recognized as a desirable citizen of Westcote; a man worth
knowing; one of the inner circle of desirables. What more fully
convinced me was the eagerness of Mr. Rolfs.
“We _must_ have you in,” said Rolfs. “I have been speaking to several
of the members about you, and they are all enthusiastic about taking you
in. Of course, our green is a little ragged just now, but when we get
your mon--when--of course, the green is a little ragged just now, but we
expect to have it trimmed soon, very soon.”
Isobel was delighted when I told her I contemplated joining the Country
Club. She said it would do me all the good in the world to play a game
of golf now and then, and when I mentioned that I thought of taking
family membership, which would admit her to all the club privileges, she
was more than pleased. So were Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington. I forget
how many more dollars a family membership cost. They shook hands with
me warmly, and Millington said something to Rolfs about their now being
able to dump another load or two of sand on the bunker at the sixth
hole. They also said the ladies would be delighted. Many, they said, had
asked them why Isobel had not joined.
Then they mentioned earnestly that the initiation fee and the first
year's dues were payable immediately. They even offered to send in my
check for the amount with my membership application.
I had never played golf, but Millington said he would lend me an
excellent book on the game, written by one of the great players, and
Rolfs offered to pick me out a set of clubs. He was enthusiastic when we
went to the shop where clubs were sold, and I must say he did not allow
the clerk to foist off on me any old-fashioned, shopworn clubs. He said
with pride, as we left the shop, that, so far as he knew, every club I
had secured was absolutely new in model, and that not one club in the
lot was of a kind ever seen on the Westcote course before. Some he said,
he was sure had never been seen on any course anywhere.
He said my putter would create great excitement when it appeared on the
course. I must give him credit for being right. The putter was, perhaps,
too much like a brass sledge-hammer to be graceful, and I found later
that it worked much better as a croquet mallet than as a tool for
putting a golf ball into a hole, but it was fine advertisement for a new
member. Members who might never have noticed me at all began to speak
of me immediately. They referred to me as “that fellow that Rolfs got to
buy the idiotic putter.”
The golf course at our Westcote Country Club is one of the best I have
ever seen. It is almost free from those irregularities of ground that
make so many golf courses fretful. In selecting the ground the Committee
had in mind, I think, a billiard table, but as it was impossible
to secure a sufficiently large plot of ground as level as that near
Westcote, they secured the most level they could and then went over it
with a steam grader. The envious members of the Oakland Club speak of it
as the Westcote Croquet Grounds.
The first day I appeared at the club I saw that golf was indeed a
difficult game, particularly after Mr. Millington had explained how it
was worked. He began by remarking that, of course, I could not expect to
do much with “that bunch of crazy scrap iron”--that being the manner in
which he referred to the up-to-date clubs Rolfs had selected for
me--and that no man who knew anything about golf ever used the
red-white-and-pink polka-dot balls, which were the kind Rolfs had
advised me to buy. Then he looked through my clubs scornfully and
selected my putter.
“Usually,” he said ironically, “we begin with a driver, and drive the
ball as far as we can from this place, which is called the driving
green, but I think this tool, in your hands, will do as well as anything
else in your collection of kitchen cutlery. What do you call this tool,
anyway?”
I looked at the label on the handle and read it. I told Millington it
was a putter, but he would not believe me. I showed him the label, which
said quite plainly “putter,” but he was still skeptical. He did not
deny positively that it was a putter; he merely said, “Well, if this
instrument of torture is a putter, I'll eat it.”
[Illustration: 201]
Mr. Millington then made a little mound of sand which he took from the
green sandbox, and set one of my golf balls on top of the mound. This, I
soon learned, is called “teeing” the ball.
“Now,” said Mr. Millington, “I will explain the game. When the ball is
teed as you see it here, you take the club and hit the ball so it will
travel low and straight through the air as far as possible toward that
red flag you see yonder. The ball will alight on the fair green. You
follow it, and hit it again, and it should then alight fairly and
squarely on the putting-green. You then follow it, take the pole that
bears the flag out of the hole you will find there, and gently knock
your ball into the hole. That is all there is to the game.”
“But what shall I do,” I asked, “if my first knock at the ball carries
it beyond the flag?”
Mr. Millington glanced at the patent putter I held in my hand, and
sighed.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but the rules of the game permit one to grasp the
club with both hands.”
“I guess,” I said airily, “until I get the swing of it I will grasp the
club with one hand. I only use one hand in playing croquet.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Millington, “if you knock the ball past the
flag I will eat the flag. I will also eat the ball. Also the thing you
call a putter. If you knock the ball half way to the flag, I will eat
all the grass on this golf course.”
“Be careful, Millington,” I warned him. “You may have to eat that grass.
Now, stand back and let me have a fair whack at the ball.”
With that I swung the putter around my head two or three times, to
gather the necessary impetus, and then hit the ball a terrible whack. I
put my full strength into the blow, for I wanted to show Millington that
I had the making of a golfer in me; but when my putter ceased revolving
around me Millington seemed unimpressed. I put my hand above my eyes and
gazed into the far distance, hoping to catch sight of the ball when it
alighted. But I did not see it.
[Illustration: 205]
“Millington,” I said, “did you see where that ball went?”
“I did,” he said, turning to the left. “It went over there, into that
tall grass. It is a lost ball. Every ball that goes into that tall grass
is gone forever. I have never known any one to recover a ball that fell
in that tall grass.”
Then he stepped proudly to the sand-box and made another tee.
“Hand me a ball,” he said, “and I will show you the proper way to hit
it.”
I gave him a ball and he placed it carefully on the tee. Then he
grasped his driver in both hands, snuggled the head of it up to the ball
lovingly, drew back the club and struck the ball. I was not quick enough
to see the ball go, but Millington was.
“Fine!” he exclaimed. “I sliced it a little, but I must have got good
distance. I must have driven that ball two hundred yards.”
“But where did it go?” I asked.
“Well,” said Millington, “I did slice it a little. It went off there to
the right, into that tall grass. It is a lost ball. I have never known
any one to recover a ball that fell in that tall grass. But let me have
another ball and I will show you--”
I told Millington I guessed I would lose a couple of balls myself while
I had a few left, if it was not against the rules. He said no, a player
could lose as many as he wished; in fact many players lost more than
they wished.
I found this to be so. We played around the nine holes and I made a
score of 114, and Millington was delighted. He said it was a splendid
score to turn in to the handicapping committee, and that he wished he
could make a large, safe score like that. He said no one in the club had
ever made more than 110 and that the average was about 45. Then he said
I need not lose hope, for at any rate I had not lost a ball at every
stroke. He said he had imagined when he saw me play that I would lose
a ball at every stroke, for my style of playing--my “form” he called
it--was the sort that ought to lose me one ball for every stroke.
When I reached home I found Isobel awaiting me, and, without thinking, I
blurted out that I had lost thirty-eight golf balls. Her mouth hardened.
“John,” she said, “I have been talking with Mrs. Rolfs and Mrs.
Millington about this game of golf, and what they say has given me an
entirely different opinion of it. When I advised you to take it up I had
no idea it was a gambling game, but they both tell me the matches are
often played for a stake of balls. Mrs. Rolfs says her husband has
accumulated eighty balls in this way, and Mrs. Millington says her
husband has laid up a store of over fifty. And now, when you come home
and tell me you have lost, in one afternoon, thirty-eight golf balls, at
a cost of fifty cents each, I feel that golf is a wicked, sinful game. I
do not want to seem severe, but I do not approve of gambling, and if you
continue to lose so many golf balls you will have to give up the game.”