I
Ever since the historic day when a visiting clergyman accomplished the
feat of pulling a ball from the tenth tee at an angle of two hundred and
twenty-five degrees into the river that is the rightful receptacle for
the eighth tee, the Stockbridge golf-course has had seventeen out of the
eighteen holes that are punctuated with possible water hazards. The
charming course itself lies in the flat of the sunken meadows which the
Housatonic, in the few thousand years which are necessary for the proper
preparation of a golf-course, has obligingly eaten out of the high,
accompanying bluffs. The river, which goes wriggling on its way as
though convulsed with merriment, is garnished with luxurious elms and
willows, which occasionally deflect to the difficult putting-greens the
random slices of certain notorious amateurs.
From the spectacular bluffs of the educated village of Stockbridge
nothing can be imagined more charming than the panorama that the course
presents on a busy day. Across the soft, green stretches, diminutive
caddies may be seen scampering with long buckling-nets, while from the
river-banks numerous recklessly exposed legs wave in the air as the more
socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling
current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or
ninth tees, may be seen to start immediately in headlong pursuit of a
diverted ball, the swing of the club and the intuitive leap of the legs
forward forming so continuous a movement that the main purpose of the
game often becomes obscured to the mere spectator. Nearer, in the
numerous languid swales that nature has generously provided to protect
the interests of the manufacturers, or in the rippling patches of unmown
grass, that in the later hours will be populated by enthusiastic
caddies, desperate groups linger in botanizing attitudes.
Every morning lawyers who are neglecting their clients, doctors who have
forgotten their patients, business men who have sacrificed their
affairs, even ministers of the gospel who have forsaken their churches,
gather in the noisy dressing-room and listen with servile attention
while some unscrubbed boy who goes around under eighty imparts a little
of his miraculous knowledge.
Two hours later, for every ten that have gone out so blithely, two
return crushed and despondent, denouncing and renouncing the game, once
and for all, absolutely and finally, until the afternoon, when they
return like thieves in the night and venture out in a desperate hope;
two more come stamping back in even more offensive enthusiasm; and the
remainder straggle home moody and disillusioned, reviving their sunken
spirits by impossible tales of past accomplishments.
There is something about these twilight gatherings that suggests the
degeneracy of a rugged race; nor is the contamination of merely local
significance. There are those who lie consciously, with a certain frank,
commendable, whole-hearted plunge into iniquity. Such men return to
their worldly callings with intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural
reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament,
unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England
conscience to the exigencies of the game, do not burst at once into
falsehood, but by a confusing process weaken their memories and corrupt
their imaginations. They never lie of the events of the day. Rather they
return to some jumbled happening of the week before and delude
themselves with only a lingering qualm, until from habit they can create
what is really a form of paranoia, the delusion of greatness, or the
exaggerated ego. Such men, inoculated with self-deception, return to the
outer world, to deceive others, lower the standards of business
morality, contaminate politics, and threaten the vigor of the republic.
R.N. Booverman, the Treasurer, and Theobald Pickings, the unenvied
Secretary of an unenvied hoard, arrived at the first tee at precisely
ten o'clock on a certain favorable morning in early August to begin the
thirty-six holes which six times a week, six months of the year, they
played together as sympathetic and well-matched adversaries. Their
intimacy had arisen primarily from the fact that Pickings was the only
man willing to listen to Booverman's restless dissertations on the
malignant fates which seemed to pursue him even to the neglect of their
international duties, while Booverman, in fair exchange, suffered
Pickings to enlarge ad libitum on his theory of the rolling versus the
flat putting-greens.
Pickings was one of those correctly fashioned and punctilious golfers
whose stance was modeled on classic lines, whose drive, though it
averaged only twenty-five yards over the hundred, was always a
well-oiled and graceful exhibition of the Royal St. Andrew's swing, the
left sole thrown up, the eyeballs bulging with the last muscular
tension, the club carried back until the whole body was contorted into
the first position of the traditional hoop-snake preparing to descend a
hill. He used the interlocking grip, carried a bag with a spoon driver,
an aluminium cleek, three abnormal putters, and wore one chamois glove
with air-holes on the back. He never accomplished the course in less
than eighty five and never exceeded ninety four, but, having aimed to
set a correct example rather than to strive vulgarly for professional
records, was always in a state of offensive optimism due to a complete
sartorial satisfaction.
Booverman, on the contrary, had been hailed in his first years as a
coming champion. With three holes eliminated, he could turn in a card
distinguished for its fours and threes; but unfortunately these sad
lapses inevitably occurred. As Booverman himself admitted, his
appearance on the golf-links was the signal for the capricious imps of
chance who stir up politicians to indiscreet truths and keep the Balkan
pot of discord bubbling, to forsake immediately these prime duties, and
enjoy a little relaxation at his expense.
Now, for the first three years Booverman responded in a manner to
delight imp and devil. When standing thirty-four for the first six
holes, he sliced into the jungle, and, after twenty minutes of frantic
beating of the bush, was forced to acknowledge a lost ball and no score,
he promptly sat down, tore large clutches of grass from the sod, and
expressed himself to the admiring delight of the caddies, who favorably
compared his flow of impulsive expletives to the choice moments of their
own home life. At other times he would take an offending club firmly in
his big hands and break it into four pieces, which he would drive into
the ground, hurling the head itself, with a last diabolical gesture,
into the Housatonic River, which, as may be repeated, wriggles its way
through the course as though convulsed with merriment.
There were certain trees into which he inevitably drove, certain waggish
bends of the river where, no matter how he might face, he was sure to
arrive. There was a space of exactly ten inches under the clubhouse
where his balls alone could disappear. He never ran down a long put, but
always hung on the rim of the cup. It was his adversary who executed
phenomenal shots, approaches of eighty yards that dribbled home, sliced
drives that hit a fence and bounded back on the course. Nothing of this
agreeable sort had ever happened or could ever happen to him. Finally
the conviction of a certain predestined damnation settled upon him. He
no longer struggled; his once rollicking spirits settled into a moody
despair. Nothing encouraged him or could trick him into a display of
hope. If he achieved a four and two twos on the first holes, he would
say vindictively:
"What's the use? I'll lose my ball on the fifth."
And when this happened, he no longer swore, but said gloomily with even
a sense of satisfaction: "You can't get me excited. Didn't I know it
would happen?"
Once in a while he had broken out, "If ever my luck changes, if it
comes all at once--"
But he never ended the sentence, ashamed, as it were, to have indulged
in such a childish fancy. Yet, as Providence moves in a mysterious way
its wonders to perform, it was just this invincible pessimism that alone
could have permitted Booverman to accomplish the incredible experience
that befell him.