"One-club practise is all right for a beginner," said the Bish, "because
he hasn't any bad habits to overcome, but this poor nut didn't take up
the game till he was forty, and when he learned it he learned it all
wrong. He can practise till he's black in the face and it won't do him
any good. Don't you think we'd better page Doc Osler and have him put
out of his misery?"
It was then that I told the Bish about Henry's desire to break into
Class A, and he whistled.
"It got him quick, didn't it?" said he. "Well, there's no fool like an
old fool."
Half an hour later this was made quite plain to us. Henry came into the
clubhouse to get a drink of water. Now I did not know him very well, and
the Bish had only a nodding acquaintance with him, but he greeted us as
long-lost brothers. I did not understand his cordiality at first, but
the reason for it was soon apparent. Henry wanted to know whether we had
a match up for the afternoon.
"Sorry," lied the Bish; "we're already hooked up with a foursome."
Henry said he was sorry too; and moreover he looked it.
"I was thinking I might get in with you," said he. "What I need is
the--er--opportunity to study better players--er--get some real
competition. Somebody that will make me do my best all the time. Don't
you think that will help my game?"
"Doubtless," said the Bish in his deepest tone; "but at the same time
you shouldn't get too far out of your class. There is a difference
between being spurred on by competition and being discouraged by it."
"I shot an eighty-two last Saturday," said Henry quickly.
"So I hear. So I hear. And how many brassy shots did you hole out?"
"Not one. It--it wasn't luck. It was good steady play."
"He admits it," murmured the Bish, but Henry didn't even hear him.
"Good steady play," he repeated. "What a man does once he can do again.
Eighty-two. Six strokes above the par of the course. My net was twelve
strokes below it--due, of course, to a ridiculously high handicap: I--I
intend to have that altered. Eighty-two is Class-A golf."
"Or an accident," said the Bish rather coldly.
"Steady golf is never an accident," argued Henry. "I have thought it all
out and come to the conclusion that what I need now is keener
competition--er--better men to play with; and"--this with a trace of
stubbornness in his tone--"I mean to find them."
The Bish kicked my foot under the table.
"That's all very well," said he, "but--how about the Old Guard?"
The wretched renegade squirmed in his chair.
"That," said he, "will adjust itself later."
"You mean that you'll break away?"
"I didn't say so, did I?"
"No, but you've been talking about keener competition."
Henry was not pleased with the turn the conversation had taken. He rose
to go.
"Woodson and Totten and Miller are fine fellows," said he. "Personally I
hold them in the highest esteem, but you must admit that they are poor
golfers. Not one of them ever shot an eighty-five. I--I have my own
game to consider.... You're quite sure you won't have a vacancy this
afternoon?"
"Oh, quite," said the Bish, and Henry toddled back to his practise. It
was well that he left us, for the Bish was on the point of an explosion.
"Well!" said he. "The conceited, ungrateful old scoundrel! Got his own
game to consider--did you hear that? Just one fair-to-middling score in
his whole worthless life, and now he's too swelled up to associate with
the fellows who have played with him all these years, stood for his
little meannesses, covered up his faults and overlooked his
shortcomings! Keener competition, eh? Pah! Would you play with him?"
"Not on a bet!" said I.
On the following Wednesday the Old Guard counted noses and found itself
short the star member. Lacking the courage or the decency to inform his
friends of his change of programme, Peacock took the line of least
resistance and elected to escape them by a late arrival. Sam Totten made
several flying trips into the locker room in search of his partner, but
he gave up at last, and at one-thirty the Old Guard drove off, a
threesome.
At one-thirty-two Henry sneaked into the clubhouse and announced that he
was without a match. The news did not create any great furore. All the
Class-A foursomes were made up, and, to make matters worse, the Bish
had been doing a little quiet but effective missionary work. Henry's
advances brought him smack up against a stone wall of polite but
definite refusal. The cup winner was left out in the cold.
He finally picked up Uncle George Sawyer, it being a matter of Uncle
George or nobody. Uncle George is a twenty-four-handicap man, but only
when he is at the very top of his game, and he is deaf as a post, left
handed and a confirmed slicer. In addition to these misfortunes Uncle
George is blessed with the disposition of a dyspeptic wildcat, and I
imagine that Mr. Peacock did not have a pleasant afternoon. The Old
Guard pounced on him when he came into the lounging room at five
o'clock.
"Hey! Why didn't you say that you'd be late?" demanded Sam Totten. "We'd
have waited for you."
"Well, I'll tell you," said Henry--and he looked like a sheep-killing
dog surprised with the wool in his teeth--"I'll tell you. The fact of
the matter is I--I didn't know just how late I was going to be, and I
didn't think it would be fair to you----"
"Apology's accepted," said Jumbo, "but don't let it happen again. And
you went and picked on poor old Sawyer too. You--a cup winner--picking
on a cripple like that! Henry, where do you expect to go when you die?
Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
"We've got it all fixed up to play at San Gabriel next Saturday," put in
Peter Miller. "You'll go, of course?"
"I'll ring up and let you know," said Henry, and slipped away to the
shower room.
I do not know what lies he told over the telephone or how he managed to
squirm out of the San Gabriel trip, but I do know that he turned up at
the country club at eleven o'clock on Saturday morning and spent two
hours panhandling everybody in sight for a match. The keen competition
fought very shy of Mr. Peacock, thanks to the Bish and his whispering
campaign. Everybody was scrupulously polite to him--some even expressed
regret--but nobody seemed to need a fourth man.
"They're just as glad to see him as if he had smallpox," grinned the
Bish. "Well, I've got a heart that beats for my fellow man. I'd hate to
see Peacock left without any kind of a match. Old Sawyer is asleep on
the front porch. I'll go and tell him that Peacock is here looking for
him."
It has been years since any one sought Uncle George's company, and the
old chap was delighted, but if Henry was pleased he managed to conceal
his happiness. I learned later that their twosome wound up in a jawing
match on the sixteenth green, in which Uncle George had all the better
of it because he couldn't hear any of the things that Henry called him.
They came to grief over a question of the rules; and Waddles, when
appealed to, decided that they were both wrong--and a couple of fussy
old hens, to boot.
"Just what I told him!" mumbled Uncle George, who hadn't heard a word
that Waddles said. "The ball nearest the hole----"
"No such thing!" interrupted Henry, and they went away still squabbling.
Waddles shook his head.
"He's a fine twelve-handicap man!" said he with scorn. "Doesn't even
know the rules of the game!"
"Twelve!" said I. "You don't mean----"
"Yes, I cut him to twelve. Ever since he won that cup he's been hounding
me--by letter, by telephone and by word of mouth. He's like Tom Sawyer's
cat and the pain killer. He kept asking for it, and now he's got it. He
thinks a low handicap will make him play better--stubborn old fool!"
"And that's not all," said the Bish. "He's left the Old Guard, flat."
"No!"
"He has, I tell you."
"I don't believe it," said Waddles. "He may be all kinds of a chump, but
he wouldn't do that."
The Old Guard didn't believe it either. It must have been all of three
weeks before Totten and Woodson and Miller realised that Peacock was a
deserter, that he was deliberately avoiding them. At first they accepted
his lame excuses at face value, and when doubt began to creep in they
said the thing couldn't be possible. One day they waited for him and
brought matters to a showdown. Henry wriggled and twisted and squirmed,
and finally blurted out that he had made other arrangements. That
settled it, of course; and then instead of being angry or disgusted with
Henry they seemed to pity him, and from the beginning to the end I am
quite certain that not one of them ever took the renegade to task for
his conduct. Worse than everything else they actually missed him. It was
Frank Woodson, acting as spokesman for the others, who explained the
situation to me.
"Oh, about Henry? Well, it's this way: We've all got our little
peculiarities--Lord knows I've a few of my own. I never would have
thought this could happen, but it just goes to show how a man gets a
notion crossways in his head and jams up the machinery. Henry is all
right at heart. His head is a little out of line at present, but his
heart is O. K. You see, he won that cup and it gave him a wrong idea. He
really thinks that under certain conditions he can play back to that
eighty-two. I know he can't. We all know he can't; but let him go ahead
and try it. He'll get over this little spell and be a good dog again."
The Bish, who was present, suggested that the Old Guard should elect a
new member and forget the deserter.
"No-o," said Frank thoughtfully; "that wouldn't be right. We've talked
it over, the three of us, and we'll keep his place open for him.
Confound it, man! You don't realise that we've been playing together for
more than fifteen years! We understand each other, and we used to have
more fun than anybody, just dubbing round the course. The game doesn't
seem quite the same, with Henry out of it; and I don't think he's having
a very good time, hanging on the fringe of Class A and trying to butt in
where he isn't wanted. No; he'll come back pretty soon, and everything
will be just the same again. We've all got our little peculiarities,
Bish. You've got some. I've got some. The best thing is to be charitable
and overlook as much as you can, hoping that folks will treat you the
same way."
"And that," said Bish after Jumbo had gone away, "proves the statement
that a friend is 'a fellow who knows all about you and still stands for
you.' How long do you suppose they'll have to wait before that old
imbecile regains his senses?"
They waited for at least five months, during which time H. Peacock,
Esquire, enrolled himself as the prize pest of the golfing world. The
Class-B men, resenting his treatment of the Old Guard, were determined
not to let him break into one of their foursomes, and the Class-A men
wouldn't have him at any price. The game of pussy-wants-a-corner is all
right for children, but Henry, playing it alone, did not seem to find
it entertaining. He picked up a stranger now and then, but it wasn't the
season for visitors, and even Uncle George Sawyer shied when he saw
Henry coming. The stubbornness which led him to insist that his handicap
be cut would not permit him to hoist the white flag and return to the
fold, and altogether he had a wretched time of it--almost as bad a time
as he deserved. Left to himself he became every known variety of a
golfing nut. He saved his score cards, entering them on some sort of a
comparative chart which he kept in his locker--one of those
see-it-at-a-glance things. He took lessons of the poor professional; he
bought new clubs and discovered that they were not as good as his old
ones; he experimented with every ball on the market; and his game was
neither better nor worse than it was before the Hemmingway Cup poured
its poison into the shrivelled receptacle which passed for Henry
Peacock's soul.