Part 8 (1/2)
”We ought to be safe that way.”
”Peter, old man,” said James, ”I've been meaning to speak to you about it for some time. I've got Sandy MacBean's new book, and I think you ought to read it. It is full of helpful hints.”
”James!”
”Peter!”
Silently the two men clasped hands. James Todd and Peter Willard were themselves again.
And so (said the Oldest Member) we come back to our original starting-point--to wit, that, while there is nothing to be said definitely against love, your golfer should be extremely careful how he indulges in it. It may improve his game or it may not. But, if he finds that there is any danger that it may not--if the object of his affections is not the kind of girl who will listen to him with cheerful sympathy through the long evenings, while he tells her, ill.u.s.trating stance and grip and swing with the kitchen poker, each detail of the day's round--then, I say unhesitatingly, he had better leave it alone.
Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there are higher, n.o.bler things than love. A woman is only a woman, but a hefty drive is a slosh.
3
_A Mixed Threesome_
It was the holiday season, and during the holidays the Greens Committees have decided that the payment of twenty guineas shall ent.i.tle fathers of families not only to infest the course themselves, but also to decant their nearest and dearest upon it in whatever quant.i.ty they please. All over the links, in consequence, happy, laughing groups of children had broken out like a rash. A wan-faced adult, who had been held up for ten minutes while a drove of issue quarrelled over whether little Claude had taken two hundred or two hundred and twenty approach shots to reach the ninth green sank into a seat beside the Oldest Member.
”What luck?” inquired the Sage.
”None to speak of,” returned the other, moodily. ”I thought I had bagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but he ducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling their hoops in the road. Golf is a game for grownups. How can a fellow play, with a platoon of progeny blocking him at every hole?”
The Oldest Member shook his head. He could not subscribe to these sentiments.
No doubt (said the Oldest Member) the summer golf-child is, from the point of view of the player who likes to get round the course in a single afternoon, something of a trial; but, personally, I confess, it pleases me to see my fellow human beings--and into this category golf-children, though at the moment you may not be broad-minded enough to admit it, undoubtedly fall--taking to the n.o.blest of games at an early age. Golf, like measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. Let me tell you the story of Mortimer Sturgis, which ill.u.s.trates what I mean rather aptly.
Mortimer Sturgis, when I first knew him, was a care-free man of thirty-eight, of amiable character and independent means, which he increased from time to time by judicious ventures on the Stock Exchange. Although he had never played golf, his had not been altogether an ill-spent life. He swung a creditable racket at tennis, was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, and gave freely to the poor. He was what you might call a golden-mean man, good-hearted rather than magnetic, with no serious vices and no heroic virtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelain vases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl of twenty-five, a lifelong friend of mine.
I like Mortimer. Everybody liked him. But, at the same time, I was a little surprised that a girl like Betty should have become engaged to him. As I said before, he was not magnetic; and magnetism, I thought, was the chief quality she would have demanded in a man. Betty was one of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for hero-wors.h.i.+p, and I would have supposed that something more in the nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has to take the best she can get. I must admit that Betty seemed perfectly content with Mortimer.
Such, then, was the state of affairs when Eddie Denton arrived, and the trouble began.
I was escorting Betty home one evening after a tea-party at which we had been fellow-guests, when, walking down the road, we happened to espy Mortimer. He broke into a run when he saw us, and galloped up, waving a piece of paper in his hand. He was plainly excited, a thing which was unusual in this well-balanced man. His broad, good-humoured face was working violently.
”Good news!” he cried. ”Good news! Dear old Eddie's back!”
”Oh, how nice for you, dear!” said Betty. ”Eddie Denton is Mortimer's best friend,” she explained to me. ”He has told me so much about him. I have been looking forward to his coming home. Mortie thinks the world of him.”
”So will you, when you know him,” cried Mortimer. ”Dear old Eddie! He's a wonder! The best fellow on earth! We were at school and the 'Varsity together. There's n.o.body like Eddie! He landed yesterday. Just home from Central Africa. He's an explorer, you know,” he said to me.
”Spends all his time in places where it's death for a white man to go.”
”An explorer!” I heard Betty breathe, as if to herself. I was not so impressed, I fear, as she was. Explorers, as a matter of fact, leave me a trifle cold. It has always seemed to me that the difficulties of their life are greatly exaggerated--generally by themselves. In a large country like Africa, for instance, I should imagine that it was almost impossible for a man not to get somewhere if he goes on long enough.
Give _me_ the fellow who can plunge into the bowels of the earth at Piccadilly Circus and find the right Tube train with nothing but a lot of misleading signs to guide him. However, we are not all const.i.tuted alike in this world, and it was apparent from the flush on her cheek and the light in her eyes that Betty admired explorers.
”I wired to him at once,” went on Mortimer, ”and insisted on his coming down here. It's two years since I saw him. You don't know how I have looked forward, dear, to you and Eddie meeting. He is just your sort. I know how romantic you are and keen on adventure and all that. Well, you should hear Eddie tell the story of how he brought down the bull _bongo_ with his last cartridge after all the _pongos_, or native bearers, had fled into the _dongo_, or undergrowth.”