"Don't go on if it hurts you," I said, gently.
"Well, there is very little more to tell. He bent his head to light his
pipe, and well--the temptation was too much for me. That's all."
"You were quite right."
"You really think so?"
"I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation,
once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular woman in Israel."
"I wish I could think so too," she murmured. "At the moment, you know,
I was conscious of nothing but an awful elation. But--but--oh, he was
such a darling before he got this dreadful affliction. I can't help
thinking of G-George as he used to be."
She burst into a torrent of sobs.
"Would you care for me to view the remains?" I said.
"Perhaps it would be as well."
She led me silently into the ravine. George Mackintosh was lying on his
back where he had fallen.
"There!" said Celia.
And, as she spoke, George Mackintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and
sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him.
George blinked once or twice and looked about him dazedly.
"Save the women and children!" he cried. "I can swim."
"Oh, George!" said Celia.
"Feeling a little better?" I asked.
"A little. How many people were hurt?"
"Hurt?"
"When the express ran into us." He cast another glance around him.
"Why, how did I get here?"
"You were here all the time," I said.
"Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?"
Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.
"Oh, George!" she said, again.
He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.
"Brave little woman!" he said. "Brave little woman! She stuck by me all
through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the
explosion?"
It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be
avoided by the exercise of a little tact.
"Well, some say one thing and some another," I said. "Whether it was a
spark from a cigarette----"
Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this
well-intentioned subterfuge.
"I hit you, George!"
"Hit me?" he repeated, curiously. "What with? The Eiffel Tower?"
"With my niblick."
"You hit me with your niblick? But why?"
She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.
"Because you wouldn't stop talking."
He gaped.
"Me!" he said. "_I_ wouldn't stop talking! But I hardly talk at
all. I'm noted for it."
Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened.
The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in
such a way as to effect a complete cure. I have not the technical
knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain.
"Lately, my dear fellow," I assured him, "you have dropped into the
habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this
afternoon you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation!"
"Me! On the links! It isn't possible."
"It is only too true, I fear. And that is why this brave girl hit you
with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was
making her eleventh shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she
took what she considered the necessary steps."
"Can you ever forgive me, George?" cried Celia.
George Mackintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face.
"So I did! It's all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens!"
"_Can_ you forgive me, George?" cried Celia again.
He took her hand in his.
"Forgive you?" he muttered. "Can _you_ forgive _me?_ Me--a
tee-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form
of life known to science! I am unclean, unclean!"
"It's only a little mud, dearest," said Celia, looking at the sleeve of
his coat. "It will brush off when it's dry."
"How can you link your lot with a man who talks when people are making
their shots?"
"You will never do it again."
"But I have done it. And you stuck to me all through! Oh, Celia!"
"I loved you, George!"
The man seemed to swell with a sudden emotion. His eye lit up, and he
thrust one hand into the breast of his coat while he raised the other
in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a
flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been made sharply aware of
what it was that he intended to do, he suddenly sagged. The gleam died
out of his eyes. He lowered his hand.
"Well, I must say that was rather decent of you," he said.
A lame speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his
hearers. For it showed that George Mackintosh was cured beyond
possibility of relapse.
"Yes, I must say you are rather a corker," he added.
"George!" cried Celia.
I said nothing, but I clasped his hand; and then, taking my clubs, I
retired. When I looked round she was still in his arms. I left them
there, alone together in the great silence.
* * * * *
And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that a cure is possible,
though it needs a woman's gentle hand to bring it about. And how few
women are capable of doing what Celia Tennant did. Apart from the
difficulty of summoning up the necessary resolution, an act like hers
requires a straight eye and a pair of strong and supple wrists. It
seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope. And
the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest
golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the
illustrious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the
British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the
leading daily papers as to his views on Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, the
Trial by Jury System, and the Modern Craze for Dancing, all they could
extract from him was the single word "Mphm!" Having uttered which, he
shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were
more like him.
6
_Ordeal By Golf_
A pleasant breeze played among the trees on the terrace outside the
Marvis Bay Golf and Country Club. It ruffled the leaves and cooled the
forehead of the Oldest Member, who, as was his custom of a Saturday
afternoon, sat in the shade on a rocking-chair, observing the younger
generation as it hooked and sliced in the valley below. The eye of the
Oldest Member was thoughtful and reflective. When it looked into yours
you saw in it that perfect peace, that peace beyond understanding,
which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.
The Oldest Member has not played golf since the rubber-cored ball
superseded the old dignified gutty. But as a spectator and philosopher
he still finds pleasure in the pastime. He is watching it now with keen
interest. His gaze, passing from the lemonade which he is sucking
through a straw, rests upon the Saturday foursome which is struggling
raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Saturday foursomes,
it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the
fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be
digging for buried treasure, unless--it is too far off to be
certain--they are killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just
foozled a mashie-shot, is blaming his caddie. His voice, as he upbraids
the innocent child for breathing during his up-swing, comes clearly up
the hill.
The Oldest Member sighs. His lemonade gives a sympathetic gurgle. He
puts it down on the table.
* * * * *
How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing
temperament! How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on
Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a
pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for
the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his
temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I
may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees; but I
did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no
good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one's temper at
golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the
spirit of Marcus Aurelius. "Whatever may befall thee," says that great
man in his "Meditations", "it was preordained for thee from
everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by
nature to bear." I like to think that this noble thought came to him
after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he
jotted it down on the back of his score-card. For there can be no doubt
that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not
had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have
written the words: "That which makes the man no worse than he was makes
life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within." Yes, Marcus
Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to
indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The
niblick was his club.
Speaking of Marcus Aurelius and the golfing temperament recalls to my
mind the case of young Mitchell Holmes. Mitchell, when I knew him
first, was a promising young man with a future before him in the
Paterson Dyeing and Refining Company, of which my old friend, Alexander
Paterson, was the president. He had many engaging qualities--among them
an unquestioned ability to imitate a bulldog quarrelling with a
Pekingese in a way which had to be heard to be believed. It was a gift
which made him much in demand at social gatherings in the
neighbourhood, marking him off from other young men who could only
almost play the mandolin or recite bits of Gunga Din; and no doubt it
was this talent of his which first sowed the seeds of love in the heart
of Millicent Boyd. Women are essentially hero-worshippers, and when a
warm-hearted girl like Millicent has heard a personable young man
imitating a bulldog and a Pekingese to the applause of a crowded
drawing-room, and has been able to detect the exact point at which the
Pekingese leaves off and the bulldog begins, she can never feel quite
the same to other men. In short, Mitchell and Millicent were engaged,
and were only waiting to be married till the former could bite the
Dyeing and Refining Company's ear for a bit of extra salary.
Mitchell Holmes had only one fault. He lost his temper when playing
golf. He seldom played a round without becoming piqued, peeved, or--in
many cases--chagrined. The caddies on our links, it was said, could
always worst other small boys in verbal argument by calling them some
of the things they had heard Mitchell call his ball on discovering it
in a cuppy lie. He had a great gift of language, and he used it
unsparingly. I will admit that there was some excuse for the man. He
had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck
and inconsistent play invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill.
He was the sort of player who does the first two holes in one under
bogey and then takes an eleven at the third. The least thing upset him
on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the
butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
It seemed hardly likely that this one kink in an otherwise admirable
character would ever seriously affect his working or professional life,
but it did. One evening, as I was sitting in my garden, Alexander
Paterson was announced. A glance at his face told me that he had come
to ask my advice. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded me as one capable of
giving advice. It was I who had changed the whole current of his life
by counselling him to leave the wood in his bag and take a driving-iron
off the tee; and in one or two other matters, like the choice of a
putter (so much more important than the choice of a wife), I had been
of assistance to him.
Alexander sat down and fanned himself with his hat, for the evening was
warm. Perplexity was written upon his fine face.
"I don't know what to do," he said.
"Keep the head still--slow back--don't press," I said, gravely. There
is no better rule for a happy and successful life.
"It's nothing to do with golf this time," he said. "It's about the
treasurership of my company. Old Smithers retires next week, and I've
got to find a man to fill his place."
"That should be easy. You have simply to select the most deserving from
among your other employees."
"But which _is_ the most deserving? That's the point. There are
two men who are capable of holding the job quite adequately. But then I
realize how little I know of their real characters. It is the
treasurership, you understand, which has to be filled. Now, a man who
was quite good at another job might easily get wrong ideas into his
head when he became a treasurer. He would have the handling of large
sums of money. In other words, a man who in ordinary circumstances had
never been conscious of any desire to visit the more distant portions
of South America might feel the urge, so to speak, shortly after he
became a treasurer. That is my difficulty. Of course, one always takes
a sporting chance with any treasurer; but how am I to find out which of
these two men would give me the more reasonable opportunity of keeping
some of my money?"
I did not hesitate a moment. I held strong views on the subject of
character-testing.
"The only way," I said to Alexander, "of really finding out a man's
true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does
the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. I employed a lawyer for
years, until one day I saw him kick his ball out of a heel-mark. I
removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run
off with any trust-funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, and I
am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow,
is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone,
with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball
where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. The
man who can smile bravely when his putt is diverted by one of those
beastly wormcasts is pure gold right through. But the man who is hasty,
unbalanced, and violent on the links will display the same qualities in
the wider field of everyday life. You don't want an unbalanced
treasurer do you?"
"Not if his books are likely to catch the complaint."
"They are sure to. Statisticians estimate that the average of crime
among good golfers is lower than in any class of the community except
possibly bishops. Since Willie Park won the first championship at
Prestwick in the year 1860 there has, I believe, been no instance of an
Open Champion spending a day in prison. Whereas the bad golfers--and by
bad I do not mean incompetent, but black-souled--the men who fail to
count a stroke when they miss the globe; the men who never replace a
divot; the men who talk while their opponent is driving; and the men
who let their angry passions rise--these are in and out of Wormwood
Scrubbs all the time. They find it hardly worth while to get their hair
cut in their brief intervals of liberty."
Alexander was visibly impressed.
"That sounds sensible, by George!" he said.
"It is sensible."
"I'll do it! Honestly, I can't see any other way of deciding between
Holmes and Dixon."