Part 22 (2/2)

I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well-poised as I am, I had long since been compelled to give up playing with Alexander Paterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and resigning from the Baptist Church.

At this moment Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I recognized it as the life-work of Professor Rollitt.

”Think on this doctrine,” she said, in her soft, modulated voice, ”that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.”

Mitch.e.l.l nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.

”Before you drive, darling,” said Millicent, ”remember this. Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind.”

The next moment Mitch.e.l.l's ball was shooting through the air, to come to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive.

He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter.

An admirable iron-shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and he holed out in one under bogey with one of the nicest putts I have ever beheld. And when at the next hole, the dangerous water-hole, his ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole, I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day, and this was plainly Mitch.e.l.l's. He was playing faultless golf. If he could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no chance to show itself.

The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine--or possibly into it. In the latter event you breathe a prayer and call for your niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a bra.s.sey-shot, will put you within easy mas.h.i.+e-distance of the green.

Mitch.e.l.l cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so little irritating as when we have just swatted the pill right on the spot.

”I can't see why he does it,” said Mitch.e.l.l, eyeing Alexander with a toleration that almost amounted to affection. ”If I did all those Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out for and go home.” Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare three yards on the other side of the ravine. ”He's what you would call a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies!”

Mitch.e.l.l won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Over-confidence at golf is almost as bad as timidity.

My apprehensions were justified. Mitch.e.l.l topped his ball. It rolled twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I were standing.

”I didn't say it!” he said. ”What on earth happened then?”

”Search men's governing principles,” said Millicent, ”and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.”

”Exactly,” I said. ”You swayed your body.”

”And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball.”

”Never mind, darling,” said Millicent. ”Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”

”Besides,” I said, ”you're three up.”

”I shan't be after this hole.”

He was right. Alexander won it in five, one above bogey, and regained the honour.

Mitch.e.l.l was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless vigour. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth.

The ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple four, although the rolling nature of the green makes bogey always a somewhat doubtful feat; but, on the other hand, if you foozle your drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The tee is on the farther side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where the water narrows almost to the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this water and over a tangle of trees and under-growth on the other bank. The distance to the fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there!

Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short, straight drive, and Mitch.e.l.l advanced to the tee.

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