"Oh, you had bad luck?"
"The worst. I over-shot the green at the third with the best
brassey-shot I've ever made in my life--and that's saying a lot--and
lost my ball in the rough beyond it."
"And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?"
"Let myself go?"
"I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?"
"Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn't get you anywhere at golf. It only
spoils your next shot."
I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as
well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the
vacant treasurership had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even
been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that
Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor
not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when
Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would
accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with
Alexander, and give him my moral support.
"I shall need it," he said. "I don't mind telling you I'm pretty
nervous. I wish I had had longer to get the stranglehold on that 'Are
You Your Own Master?' stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real
tabasco from start to finish, and absolutely as mother makes it, but
the trouble is I've only had a few days to soak it into my system. It's
like trying to patch up a motor car with string. You never know when
the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a
ball at the water-hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do
it."
There was a silence for a moment.
"Do you believe in dreams?" asked Mitchell.
"Believe in what?"
"Dreams."
"What about them?"
"I said, 'Do you believe in dreams?' Because last night I dreamed that
I was playing in the final of the Open Championship, and I got into the
rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad
sort of way and said, 'Why don't you use the two-V grip instead of the
interlocking?' At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen,
but I've been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn't something in
it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose."
"You can't change your grip on the day of an important match."
"I suppose not. The fact is, I'm a bit jumpy, or I wouldn't have
mentioned it. Oh, well! See you tomorrow at two."
* * * * *
The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross-wind was blowing when
I reached the club-house. Alexander Paterson was there, practising
swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes
arrived, accompanied by Millicent.
"Perhaps," said Alexander, "we had better be getting under way. Shall I
take the honour?"
"Certainly," said Mitchell.
Alexander teed up his ball.
Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing
player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured
practice-swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting-green.
When he does address the ball he shuffles his feet for a moment or two,
then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if
he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he
was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the
horizon's _bona fides_, and he turns his attention to the ball
again. He shuffles his feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles
the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the
globule. At this point he suddenly peers at the horizon again, in the
apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This done, he raises his
club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the
ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, and
brings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped
in thought, like some Indian fakir contemplating the infinite. Then he
raises his club again and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he
quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for
about a hundred and fifty yards in a dead straight line.
It is a method of procedure which proves sometimes a little
exasperating to the highly strung, and I watched Mitchell's face
anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The
unhappy lad had blenched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one
in pain.
"Does he always do that?" he whispered.
"Always," I replied.
"Then I'm done for! No human being could play golf against a one-ring
circus like that without blowing up!"
I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well-poised as I am, I
had long since been compelled to give up playing with Alexander
Paterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and
resigning from the Baptist Church.
At this moment Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I
recognized it as the life-work of Professor Rollitt.
"Think on this doctrine," she said, in her soft, modulated voice, "that
to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without
intending it."
Mitchell nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.
"Before you drive, darling," said Millicent, "remember this. Let no act
be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished
rules that govern its kind."
The next moment Mitchell's ball was shooting through the air, to come
to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive.
He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter.
An admirable iron-shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and
he holed out in one under bogey with one of the nicest putts I have
ever beheld. And when at the next hole, the dangerous water-hole, his
ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole,
I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day,
and this was plainly Mitchell's. He was playing faultless golf. If he
could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no
chance to show itself.
The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine--or possibly
into it. In the latter event you breathe a prayer and call for your
niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the
equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a
brassey-shot, will put you within easy mashie-distance of the green.
Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled
back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an
indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world
seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so
little irritating as when we have just swatted the pill right on the
spot.
"I can't see why he does it," said Mitchell, eyeing Alexander with a
toleration that almost amounted to affection. "If I did all those
Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out
for and go home." Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare
three yards on the other side of the ravine. "He's what you would call
a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies!"
Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his
stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Over-confidence
at golf is almost as bad as timidity.
My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled
twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth
opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I
were standing.
"I didn't say it!" he said. "What on earth happened then?"
"Search men's governing principles," said Millicent, "and consider the
wise, what they shun and what they cleave to."
"Exactly," I said. "You swayed your body."
"And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball."
"Never mind, darling," said Millicent. "Nothing has such power to
broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly
all that comes under thy observation in life."
"Besides," I said, "you're three up."
"I shan't be after this hole."
He was right. Alexander won it in five, one above bogey, and regained
the honour.
Mitchell was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless
vigour. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short
seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth.
The ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple
four, although the rolling nature of the green makes bogey always a
somewhat doubtful feat; but, on the other hand, if you foozle your
drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The tee is on the farther
side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where the water narrows almost to
the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this water and over a
tangle of trees and under-growth on the other bank. The distance to the
fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a
mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there!
Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short,
straight drive, and Mitchell advanced to the tee.
I think the loss of the honour had been preying on his mind. He seemed
nervous. His up-swing was shaky, and he swayed back perceptibly. He
made a lunge at the ball, sliced it, and it struck a tree on the other
side of the water and fell in the long grass. We crossed the bridge to
look for it; and it was here that the effect of Professor Rollitt began
definitely to wane.
"Why on earth don't they mow this darned stuff?" demanded Mitchell,
querulously, as he beat about the grass with his niblick.
"You have to have rough on a course," I ventured.
"Whatever happens at all," said Millicent, "happens as it should. Thou
wilt find this true if thou shouldst watch narrowly."
"That's all very well," said Mitchell, watching narrowly in a clump of
weeds but seeming unconvinced. "I believe the Greens Committee run this
bally club purely in the interests of the caddies. I believe they
encourage lost balls, and go halves with the little beasts when they
find them and sell them!"
Millicent and I exchanged glances. There were tears in her eyes.
"Oh, Mitchell! Remember Napoleon!"
"Napoleon! What's Napoleon got to do with it? Napoleon never was
expected to drive through a primeval forest. Besides, what did Napoleon
ever do? Where did Napoleon get off, swanking round as if he amounted
to something? Poor fish! All he ever did was to get hammered at
Waterloo!"
Alexander rejoined us. He had walked on to where his ball lay.
"Can't find it, eh? Nasty bit of rough, this!"
"No, I can't find it. But tomorrow some miserable, chinless,
half-witted reptile of a caddie with pop eyes and eight hundred and
thirty-seven pimples will find it, and will sell it to someone for
sixpence! No, it was a brand-new ball. He'll probably get a shilling
for it. That'll be sixpence for himself and sixpence for the Greens
Committee. No wonder they're buying cars quicker than the makers can
supply them. No wonder you see their wives going about in mink coats
and pearl necklaces. Oh, dash it! I'll drop another!"
"In that case," Alexander pointed out, "you will, of course, under the
rules governing match-play, lose the hole."
"All right, then. I'll give up the hole."
"Then that, I think, makes me one up on the first nine," said
Alexander. "Excellent! A very pleasant, even game."
"Pleasant! On second thoughts I don't believe the Greens Committee let
the wretched caddies get any of the loot. They hang round behind trees
till the deal's concluded, and then sneak out and choke it out of
them!"
I saw Alexander raise his eyebrows. He walked up the hill to the next
tee with me.
"Rather a quick-tempered young fellow, Holmes!" he said, thoughtfully.
"I should never have suspected it. It just shows how little one can
know of a man, only meeting him in business hours."