Swish came the driver. The ball, fanned by the wind, rocked a little on
the tee, then settled down in its original position. Ramsden Waters,
usually the most careful of players, had missed the globe.
For a moment there was a silence--a silence which Ramsden had to strive
with an effort almost physically painful not to break. Rich oaths
surged to his lips, and blistering maledictions crashed against the
back of his clenched teeth.
The silence was broken by little Wilberforce.
One can only gather that there lurks in the supposedly innocuous amber
of ginger ale an elevating something which the temperance reformers
have overlooked. Wilberforce Bray had, if you remember, tucked away no
fewer than three in the spot where they would do most good. One
presumes that the child, with all that stuff surging about inside him,
had become thoroughly above himself. He uttered a merry laugh.
"Never hit it!" said little Wilberforce.
He was kneeling beside the tee box as he spoke, and now, as one who has
seen all that there is to be seen and turns, sated, to other
amusements, he moved round and began to play with the sand. The
spectacle of his alluring trouser seat was one which a stronger man
would have found it hard to resist. To Ramsden Waters it had the aspect
of a formal invitation. For one moment his number II golf shoe, as
supplied to all the leading professionals, wavered in mid-air, then
crashed home.
Eunice screamed.
"How dare you kick my brother!"
Ramsden faced her, stern and pale.
"Madam," he said, "in similar circumstances I would have kicked the
Archangel Gabriel!"
Then, stooping to his ball, he picked it up.
"The match is yours," he said to Miss Bingley, who, having paid no
attention at all to the drama which had just concluded, was practising
short chip shots with her mashie-niblick.
He bowed coldly to Eunice, cast one look of sombre satisfaction at
little Wilberforce, who was painfully extricating himself from a bed of
nettles into which he had rolled, and strode off. He crossed the bridge
over the water and stalked up the hill.
Eunice watched him go, spellbound. Her momentary spurt of wrath at the
kicking of her brother had died away, and she wished she had thought of
doing it herself.
How splendid he looked, she felt, as she watched Ramsden striding up to
the club-house--just like Carruthers Mordyke after he had flung
Ermyntrude Vanstone from him in chapter forty-one of "Gray Eyes That
Gleam". Her whole soul went out to him. This was the sort of man she
wanted as a partner in life. How grandly he would teach her to play
golf. It had sickened her when her former instructors, prefacing their
criticism with glutinous praise, had mildly suggested that some people
found it a good thing to keep the head still when driving and that
though her methods were splendid it might be worth trying. They had
spoken of her keeping her eye on the ball as if she were doing the ball
a favour. What she wanted was a great, strong, rough brute of a fellow
who would tell her not to move her damned head; a rugged Viking of a
chap who, if she did not keep her eye on the ball, would black it for
her. And Ramsden Waters was such a one. He might not look like a
Viking, but after all it is the soul that counts and, as this
afternoon's experience had taught her, Ramsden Waters had a soul that
seemed to combine in equal proportions the outstanding characteristics
of Nero, a wildcat, and the second mate of a tramp steamer.
* * * * *
That night Ramsden Walters sat in his study, a prey to the gloomiest
emotions. The gold had died out of him by now, and he was reproaching
himself bitterly for having ruined for ever his chance of winning the
only girl he had ever loved. How could she forgive him for his
brutality? How could she overlook treatment which would have caused
comment in the stokehold of a cattle ship? He groaned and tried to
forget his sorrows by forcing himself to read.
But the choicest thoughts of the greatest writers had no power to grip
him. He tried Vardon "On the Swing", and the words swam before his
eyes. He turned to Taylor "On the Chip Shot", and the master's pure
style seemed laboured and involved. He found solace neither in Braid
"On the Pivot" nor in Duncan "On the Divot". He was just about to give
it up and go to bed though it was only nine o'clock, when the telephone
bell rang.
"Hello!"
"Is that you, Mr. Waters? This is Eunice Bray." The receiver shook in
Ramsden's hand. "I've just remembered. Weren't we talking about
something last night? Didn't you ask me to marry you or something? I
know it was something."
Ramsden gulped three times.
"I did," he replied hollowly.
"We didn't settle anything, did we?"
"Eh?"
"I say, we sort of left it kind of open."
"Yuk!"
"Well, would it bore you awfully," said Eunice's soft voice, "to come
round now and go on talking it over?"
Ramsden tottered.
"We shall be quite alone," said Eunice. "Little Wilberforce has gone to
bed with a headache."
Ramsden paused a moment to disentangle his tongue from the back of his
neck.
"I'll be right over!" he said huskily.
10
_The Coming of Gowf_