"That's bad! I was looking on you as a steadying influence."
"I thought I was, too. But Mitchell says no. He says my being there
keeps him from concentrating."
"Then perhaps it would be better for you to remain in the club-house
till we return. There is, I fear, dirty work ahead."
A choking sob escaped the unhappy girl.
"I'm afraid so. There is an apple tree near the thirteenth hole, and
Mitchell's caddie is sure to start eating apples. I am thinking of what
Mitchell will do when he hears the crunching when he is addressing his
ball."
"That is true."
"Our only hope," she said, holding out Professor Rollitt's book, "is
this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting
nervous? We went through the book last night and marked all the
passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful. You will see notes
against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed to be used."
It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand
silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.
Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens
Committee.
"The hole after this one," he said, "used to be a short hole. There was
no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the
Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes, so
now they've tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have
to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch
you get into a sort of No Man's Land, full of rocks and bushes and
crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live
there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging
each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going
to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just
hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it
up!"
Golf, however, is a curious game--a game of fluctuations. One might
have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have
continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he
once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach
the tenth green with an iron-shot, and, though the ball was several
yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-putt and holed
his second for a bogey four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so
that they were all square again.
The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly
a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in
grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives
straight, and found no difficulty in securing fours.
"A little more of this," said Mitchell, beaming, "and the Greens
Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work."
The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, bogey five. Alexander plugged
steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell, whose second
shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick.
He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely-judged
mashie-shot to the edge of the green.
Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty yard
hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the
green, but his third laid the ball dead; while Mitchell, who was on in
two, required three putts.
"That reminds me," said Alexander, chattily, "of a story I heard.
Friend calls out to a beginner, 'How are you getting on, old man?' and
the beginner says, 'Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the
last green!'"
Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had
made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had
been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in
his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.
There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside
than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm
the nature-lover's heart.
But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a
whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and
romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a
nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the
birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that
may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at
the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer, I have
frequently found it the very devil.
The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more
deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his
ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a
tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the
hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for,
if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the
ravine.
Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately
behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the
direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddie, with a glassy look in his
eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent
prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on
it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine.
There was a pause--a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell
dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly.
"Mitchell!" I cried. "My boy! Reflect! Be calm!"
"Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in
thousands all round you? What _is_ this, anyway--a golf match or a
pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples! Go on, my
boy, take another bite. Take several. Enjoy yourself! Never mind if it
seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance. Go on with your lunch! You
probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish,
yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a
sandwich and a bottle of ginger-ale. Make yourself quite at home, you
lovable little fellow! Sit down and have a good time!"
I turned the pages of Professor Rollitt's book feverishly. I could not
find a passage that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this
emergency. I selected one at random.
"Mitchell," I said, "one moment. How much time he gains who does not
look to see what his neighbour says or does, but only at what he does
himself, to make it just and holy."
"Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of
that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do
you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!"
He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked
at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently
on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his
driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had
passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long
grass.
He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the
scene.
"I'm through!" he said. "I concede the match. Good-bye. You'll find me
in the bay!"
"Going swimming?"
"No. Drowning myself."
A gentle smile broke out over my old friend's usually grave face. He
patted Mitchell's shoulder affectionately.
"Don't do that, my boy," he said. "I was hoping you would stick around
the office awhile as treasurer of the company."
Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very
still. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the
murmur of the distant wavelets, and the sound of Mitchell's caddie
going on with his apple.
"What!" cried Mitchell.
"The position," said Alexander, "will be falling vacant very shortly,
as no doubt you know. It is yours, if you care to accept it."
"You mean--you mean--you're going to give me the job?"
"You have interpreted me exactly."
Mitchell gulped. So did his caddie. One from a spiritual, the other
from a physical cause.
"If you don't mind excusing me," said Mitchell, huskily, "I think I'll
be popping back to the club-house. Someone I want to see."
He disappeared through the trees, running strongly. I turned to
Alexander.
"What does this mean?" I asked. "I am delighted, but what becomes of
the test?"
My old friend smiled gently.
"The test," he replied, "has been eminently satisfactory.
Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea
of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since
we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have
come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing and Refining
Company really needs is a treasurer whom I can beat at golf. And I have
discovered the ideal man. Why," he went on, a look of holy enthusiasm
on his fine old face, "do you realize that I can always lick the
stuffing out of that boy, good player as he is, simply by taking a
little trouble? I can make him get the wind up every time, simply by
taking one or two extra practice-swings! That is the sort of man I need
for a responsible post in my office."
"But what about Rupert Dixon?" I asked.
He gave a gesture of distaste.
"I wouldn't trust that man. Why, when I played with him, everything
went wrong, and he just smiled and didn't say a word. A man who can do
that is not the man to trust with the control of large sums of money.
It wouldn't be safe. Why, the fellow isn't honest! He can't be." He
paused for a moment. "Besides," he added, thoughtfully, "he beat me by
six and five. What's the good of a treasurer who beats the boss by six
and five?"
7
_The Long Hole_
The young man, as he sat filling his pipe in the club-house
smoking-room, was inclined to be bitter.
"If there's one thing that gives me a pain squarely in the centre of
the gizzard," he burst out, breaking a silence that had lasted for some
minutes, "it's a golf-lawyer. They oughtn't to be allowed on the
links."
The Oldest Member, who had been meditatively putting himself outside a
cup of tea and a slice of seed-cake, raised his white eyebrows.
"The Law," he said, "is an honourable profession. Why should its
practitioners be restrained from indulgence in the game of games?"
"I don't mean actual lawyers," said the young man, his acerbity
mellowing a trifle under the influence of tobacco. "I mean the
blighters whose best club is the book of rules. You know the sort of
excrescences. Every time you think you've won a hole, they dig out Rule
eight hundred and fifty-three, section two, sub-section four, to prove
that you've disqualified yourself by having an ingrowing toe-nail.
Well, take my case." The young man's voice was high and plaintive. "I
go out with that man Hemmingway to play an ordinary friendly
round--nothing depending on it except a measly ball--and on the seventh
he pulls me up and claims the hole simply because I happened to drop my
niblick in the bunker. Oh, well, a tick's a tick, and there's nothing
more to say, I suppose."
The Sage shook his head.
"Rules are rules, my boy, and must be kept. It is odd that you should
have brought up this subject, for only a moment before you came in I
was thinking of a somewhat curious match which ultimately turned upon a
question of the rule-book. It is true that, as far as the actual prize
was concerned, it made little difference. But perhaps I had better tell
you the whole story from the beginning."
The young man shifted uneasily in his chair.
"Well, you know, I've had a pretty rotten time this afternoon
already----"
"I will call my story," said the Sage, tranquilly, "'The Long Hole',
for it involved the playing of what I am inclined to think must be the
longest hole in the history of golf. In its beginnings the story may
remind you of one I once told you about Peter Willard and James Todd,
but you will find that it develops in quite a different manner. Ralph
Bingham...."
"I half promised to go and see a man----"
"But I will begin at the beginning," said the Sage. "I see that you are
all impatience to hear the full details."
* * * * *
Ralph Bingham and Arthur Jukes (said the Oldest Member) had never been
friends--their rivalry was too keen to admit of that--but it was not
till Amanda Trivett came to stay here that a smouldering distaste for
each other burst out into the flames of actual enmity. It is ever so.
One of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am
unable at the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the
time being has slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old
situation. The gist of his remarks is that lovely woman rarely fails to
start something. In the weeks that followed her arrival, being in the
same room with the two men was like dropping in on a reunion of
Capulets and Montagues.
You see, Ralph and Arthur were so exactly equal in their skill on the
links that life for them had for some time past resolved itself into a
silent, bitter struggle in which first one, then the other, gained some
slight advantage. If Ralph won the May medal by a stroke, Arthur would
be one ahead in the June competition, only to be nosed out again in
July. It was a state of affairs which, had they been men of a more
generous stamp, would have bred a mutual respect, esteem, and even
love. But I am sorry to say that, apart from their golf, which was in a
class of its own as far as this neighbourhood was concerned, Ralph
Bingham and Arthur Jukes were a sorry pair--and yet, mark you, far from
lacking in mere superficial good looks. They were handsome fellows,
both of them, and well aware of the fact; and when Amanda Trivett came
to stay they simply straightened their ties, twirled their moustaches,
and expected her to do the rest.
But there they were disappointed. Perfectly friendly though she was to
both of them, the lovelight was conspicuously absent from her beautiful
eyes. And it was not long before each had come independently to a
solution of this mystery. It was plain to them that the whole trouble
lay in the fact that each neutralized the other's attractions. Arthur
felt that, if he could only have a clear field, all would be over
except the sending out of the wedding invitations; and Ralph was of the
opinion that, if he could just call on the girl one evening without
finding the place all littered up with Arthur, his natural charms would
swiftly bring home the bacon. And, indeed, it was true that they had no
rivals except themselves. It happened at the moment that Woodhaven was
very short of eligible bachelors. We marry young in this delightful
spot, and all the likely men were already paired off. It seemed that,
if Amanda Trivett intended to get married, she would have to select
either Ralph Bingham or Arthur Jukes. A dreadful choice.
* * * * *
It had not occurred to me at the outset that my position in the affair
would be anything closer than that of a detached and mildly interested
spectator. Yet it was to me that Ralph came in his hour of need. When I
returned home one evening, I found that my man had brought him in and
laid him on the mat in my sitting-room.
I offered him a chair and a cigar, and he came to the point with
commendable rapidity.
"Leigh," he said, directly he had lighted his cigar, "is too small for
Arthur Jukes and myself."
"Ah, you have been talking it over and decided to move?" I said,
delighted. "I think you are perfectly right. Leigh _is_ over-built.
Men like you and Jukes need a lot of space. Where do you think of
going?"
"I'm not going."
"But I thought you said----"
"What I meant was that the time has come when one of us must leave."
"Oh, only one of you?" It was something, of course, but I confess I was
disappointed, and I think my disappointment must have shown in my
voice; for he looked at me, surprised.
"Surely you wouldn't mind Jukes going?" he said.
"Why, certainly not. He really is going, is he?"
A look of saturnine determination came into Ralph's face.
"He is. He thinks he isn't, but he is."
I failed to understand him, and said so. He looked cautiously about the
room, as if to reassure himself that he could not be overheard.
"I suppose you've noticed," he said, "the disgusting way that man Jukes
has been hanging round Miss Trivett, boring her to death?"
"I have seen them together sometimes."
"I love Amanda Trivett!" said Ralph.
"Poor girl!" I sighed.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Poor girl!" I said. "I mean, to have Arthur Jukes hanging round her."
"That's just what I think," said Ralph Bingham. "And that's why we're
going to play this match."
"What match?"
"This match we've decided to play. I want you to act as one of the
judges, to go along with Jukes and see that he doesn't play any of his
tricks. You know what he is! And in a vital match like this----"
"How much are you playing for?"
"The whole world!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"The whole world. It amounts to that. The loser is to leave Leigh for
good, and the winner stays on and marries Amanda Trivett. We have
arranged all the details. Rupert Bailey will accompany me, acting as
the other judge."
"And you want me to go round with Jukes?"
"Not round," said Ralph Bingham. "Along."
"What is the distinction?"
"We are not going to play a round. Only one hole."
"Sudden death, eh?"
"Not so very sudden. It's a longish hole. We start on the first tee
here and hole out in the town in the doorway of the Majestic Hotel in
Royal Square. A distance, I imagine, of about sixteen miles."
I was revolted. About that time a perfect epidemic of freak matches had
broken out in the club, and I had strongly opposed them from the start.
George Willis had begun it by playing a medal round with the pro.,
George's first nine against the pro.'s complete eighteen. After that
came the contest between Herbert Widgeon and Montague Brown, the
latter, a twenty-four handicap man, being entitled to shout "Boo!"
three times during the round at moments selected by himself. There had
been many more of these degrading travesties on the sacred game, and I
had writhed to see them. Playing freak golf-matches is to my mind like
ragging a great classical melody. But of the whole collection this one,
considering the sentimental interest and the magnitude of the stakes,
seemed to me the most terrible. My face, I imagine, betrayed my
disgust, for Bingham attempted extenuation.
"It's the only way," he said. "You know how Jukes and I are on the
links. We are as level as two men can be. This, of course is due to his
extraordinary luck. Everybody knows that he is the world's champion
fluker. I, on the other hand, invariably have the worst luck. The
consequence is that in an ordinary round it is always a toss-up which
of us wins. The test we propose will eliminate luck. After sixteen
miles of give-and-take play, I am certain--that is to say, the better
man is certain to be ahead. That is what I meant when I said that
Arthur Jukes would shortly be leaving Leigh. Well, may I take it that
you will consent to act as one of the judges?"
I considered. After all, the match was likely to be historic, and one
always feels tempted to hand one's name down to posterity.
"Very well," I said.
"Excellent. You will have to keep a sharp eye on Jukes, I need scarcely
remind you. You will, of course, carry a book of the rules in your
pocket and refer to them when you wish to refresh your memory. We start
at daybreak, for, if we put it off till later, the course at the other
end might be somewhat congested when we reached it. We want to avoid
publicity as far as possible. If I took a full iron and hit a
policeman, it would excite a remark."
"It would. I can tell you the exact remark which it would excite."
"We will take bicycles with us, to minimize the fatigue of covering the
distance. Well, I am glad that we have your co-operation. At daybreak
tomorrow on the first tee, and don't forget to bring your rule-book."
* * * * *
The atmosphere brooding over the first tee when I reached it on the
following morning, somewhat resembled that of a duelling-ground in the
days when these affairs were sealed with rapiers or pistols. Rupert
Bailey, an old friend of mine, was the only cheerful member of the
party. I am never at my best in the early morning, and the two rivals
glared at each other with silent sneers. I had never supposed till that
moment that men ever really sneered at one another outside the movies,
but these two were indisputably doing so. They were in the mood when
men say "Pshaw!"
They tossed for the honour, and Arthur Jukes, having won, drove off
with a fine ball that landed well down the course. Ralph Bingham,
having teed up, turned to Rupert Bailey.
"Go down on to the fairway of the seventeenth," he said. "I want you to
mark my ball."
Rupert stared.
"The seventeenth!"
"I am going to take that direction," said Ralph, pointing over the
trees.
"But that will land your second or third shot in the lake."
"I have provided for that. I have a fiat-bottomed boat moored close by
the sixteenth green. I shall use a mashie-niblick and chip my ball
aboard, row across to the other side, chip it ashore, and carry on. I
propose to go across country as far as Woodfield. I think it will save
me a stroke or two."
I gasped. I had never before realized the man's devilish cunning. His
tactics gave him a flying start. Arthur, who had driven straight down
the course, had as his objective the high road, which adjoins the waste
ground beyond the first green. Once there, he would play the orthodox
game by driving his ball along till he reached the bridge. While Arthur
was winding along the high road, Ralph would have cut off practically
two sides of a triangle. And it was hopeless for Arthur to imitate his
enemy's tactics now. From where his ball lay he would have to cross a
wide tract of marsh in order to reach the seventeenth fairway--an
impossible feat. And, even if it had been feasible, he had no boat to
take him across the water.
He uttered a violent protest. He was an unpleasant young man,
almost--it seems absurd to say so, but almost as unpleasant as Ralph
Bingham; yet at the moment I am bound to say I sympathized with him.
"What are you doing?" he demanded. "You can't play fast and loose with
the rules like that."
"To what rule do you refer?" said Ralph, coldly.
"Well, that bally boat of yours is a hazard, isn't it? And you can't
row a hazard about all over the place."
"Why not?"
The simple question seemed to take Arthur Jukes aback.
"Why not?" he repeated. "Why not? Well, you can't. That's why."
"There is nothing in the rules," said Ralph Bingham, "against moving a
hazard. If a hazard can be moved without disturbing the ball, you are
at liberty, I gather, to move it wherever you please. Besides, what is
all this about moving hazards? I have a perfect right to go for a
morning row, haven't I? If I were to ask my doctor, he would probably
actually recommend it. I am going to row my boat across the sound. If
it happens to have my ball on board, that is not my affair. I shall not
disturb my ball, and I shall play it from where it lies. Am I right in
saying that the rules enact that the ball shall be played from where it
lies?"
We admitted that it was.
"Very well, then," said Ralph Bingham. "Don't let us waste any more
time. We will wait for you at Woodfield."
He addressed his ball, and drove a beauty over the trees. It flashed
out of sight in the direction of the seventeenth tee. Arthur and I made
our way down the hill to play our second.
* * * * *
It is a curious trait of the human mind that, however little personal
interest one may have in the result, it is impossible to prevent
oneself taking sides in any event of a competitive nature. I had
embarked on this affair in a purely neutral spirit, not caring which of
the two won and only sorry that both could not lose. Yet, as the
morning wore on, I found myself almost unconsciously becoming
distinctly pro-Jukes. I did not like the man. I objected to his face,
his manners, and the colour of his tie. Yet there was something in the
dogged way in which he struggled against adversity which touched me and
won my grudging support. Many men, I felt, having been so outmanoeuvred
at the start, would have given up the contest in despair; but Arthur
Jukes, for all his defects, had the soul of a true golfer. He declined
to give up. In grim silence he hacked his ball through the rough till
he reached the high road; and then, having played twenty-seven, set
himself resolutely to propel it on its long journey.
It was a lovely morning, and, as I bicycled along, keeping a fatherly
eye on Arthur's activities, I realized for the first time in my life
the full meaning of that exquisite phrase of Coleridge:
_"Clothing the palpable and familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn,"_
for in the pellucid air everything seemed weirdly beautiful, even
Arthur Jukes' heather-mixture knickerbockers, of which hitherto I had
never approved. The sun gleamed on their seat, as he bent to make his
shots, in a cheerful and almost a poetic way. The birds were singing
gaily in the hedgerows, and such was my uplifted state that I, too,
burst into song, until Arthur petulantly desired me to refrain, on the
plea that, though he yielded to no man in his enjoyment of farmyard
imitations in their proper place, I put him off his stroke. And so we
passed through Bayside in silence and started to cover that long
stretch of road which ends in the railway bridge and the gentle descent
into Woodfield.
Arthur was not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And
in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon
after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his
brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough
on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get
back on to the car tracks, and this had taught him prudence.
He was now using his putter for every shot, and, except when he got
trapped in the cross-lines at the top of the hill just before reaching
Bayside, he had been in no serious difficulties. He was playing a nice
easy game, getting the full face of the putter on to each shot.
At the top of the slope that drops down into Woodfield High Street he
paused.
"I think I might try my brassey again here," he said. "I have a nice
lie."
"Is it wise?" I said.
He looked down the hill.
"What I was thinking," he said, "was that with it I might wing that man
Bingham. I see he is standing right out in the middle of the fairway."
I followed his gaze. It was perfectly true. Ralph Bingham was leaning
on his bicycle in the roadway, smoking a cigarette. Even at this
distance one could detect the man's disgustingly complacent expression.
Rupert Bailey was sitting with his back against the door of the
Woodfield Garage, looking rather used up. He was a man who liked to
keep himself clean and tidy, and it was plain that the cross-country
trip had done him no good. He seemed to be scraping mud off his face. I
learned later that he had had the misfortune to fall into a ditch just
beyond Bayside.
"No," said Arthur. "On second thoughts, the safe game is the one to
play. I'll stick to the putter."
We dropped down the hill, and presently came up with the opposition. I
had not been mistaken in thinking that Ralph Bingham looked complacent.
The man was smirking.
"Playing three hundred and ninety-six," he said, as we drew near. "How
are you?"