Part 43 (1/2)

”Well begun is half done,” retorted Pip sententiously, but he knew in his heart that she spoke with some truth.

The next hole was over four hundred yards long, and as such should have been a moral certainty for Pip. However, his tee-shot travelled exactly two feet, and his second, played perforce with an iron, not much farther. Elsie reached the green in three strokes and a pitch, and won the hole in six.

At the next hole Pip sliced his drive, the ball flying an immense distance and curling away out of sight to their left. (You must remember that he was a left-handed player.) Elsie, as usual, drove a picture of a ball, but just failed to reach the green with her second. Meanwhile Pip, tramping at large amid the whin-bushes, found his ball in a fairly good lie, and with a perfectly preposterous cleek-shot, which seemed to Elsie to travel about a quarter of a mile, lay on the edge of the green. He holed out in two putts, and won the hole in four to her five.

They were warming to their work, and each was playing a characteristic game. The next two holes were short ones, across a high ridge of sand and back again. In each case the green could be reached from the tee.

Pip, who had the honour, buried his ball in the face of the sand-hill, and as Elsie cleared the summit and lay on the green, he gave up the hole. Driving back again, Elsie carried the hill. Pip took his cleek this time, and his ball followed hers straight over the guide-post. When they reached the green they found the b.a.l.l.s lying side by side ten yards or so from the pin. Pip putted first, and lay dead, six inches from the hole.

”This is the first half we'll have had,” he said, as he stood over the hole waiting for Elsie to putt.

”Wait a little,” said Elsie.

She took the line of her putt with great care, and allowing nicely for the undulations of the green, just found the hole, and again took the lead, having won the hole in two to Pip's three.

”Don't talk to me any more about flukes,” remarked Pip severely as he replaced the flag.

”I won't,” retorted Elsie, ”if you won't talk to me about halves.”

Pip made no mistake at the next two holes, the sixth and seventh. Both were long and straight, and, though Elsie drove as st.u.r.dily as ever, Pip's determined slogging brought him to the green before her each time, and at the seventh hole he stood one up.

The next hole was uneventful. The course here ran straight along the edge of the sh.o.r.e, with the sea on their right. Pip, unmindful of the necessity for straightness, hit out with his usual blind ferocity, and was rewarded by seeing his comparatively new Haskell fly off in a determined and ambitious effort to reach the coast of Norway.

”The sea,” remarked Elsie calmly, ”is out of bounds. You drop another and lose distance.”

With the advantage derived from Pip's mishap, Elsie just won the hole.

The next, the ninth (the eighteenth and last if they had started from the first tee), a dull and goose-greeny affair, as most home-holes are, was halved, and the match stood ”all square at the turn.”

They sat down for a moment on a club-house seat on their way to the first tee proper, to begin the second half of their round.

”By gum, this is a game!” said Pip, smacking his lips.

”Rather!” said Elsie as heartily.

And, at that, a little chill of silence fell upon them. In the sheer joy of battle they had almost forgotten the great issues that hung on the result. They were absolutely alone on the links. The few players who had ventured out after the rain ceased were well on their way round--somewhere near the ninth hole, probably; and the green-keeper had taken advantage of slackness in business to go home to his tea. The sky was overcast, and promised more rain.

Suddenly Elsie sprang up.

”Come on,” she said briskly. ”My honour, I think?”

”Yes,” replied Pip.

For the tenth time that afternoon Elsie drove the ball far and sure, straight for the green. Pip's heart smote him. Who was he that his cra.s.s and brutal masculine muscle should be permitted to annul the effects of Elsie's delicate precision and indomitable pluck?

”Elsie,” he said suddenly, ”if you don't win this match--you deserve to!”

Elsie looked up at him. For a moment her heart softened. She felt inclined to tell him something--that she did not want to win after all, that the game was his for the asking, that she would surrender unconditionally. But, even as she wavered, Pip unconsciously settled the matter by driving his ball just about twice the distance of hers.

Without another word she picked up her clubs and set off to play her second. But her bra.s.sie-shot found a bunker, and as her skill lay in avoiding difficulties rather than in getting out of them, she soon found it necessary to give up the hole.

The stars in their courses now began to fight for Pip. His ball from the next tee, badly topped, ran merrily into a bunker, hopped out, and lay on fair turf five yards beyond. Upset, perhaps, by this fluke, Elsie for the first time bungled her tee-shot, sliced her second into a bad lie, and arrived at the green to find that Pip, who had been playing a kind of glorified croquet-match against an invisible opponent, with his iron for a mallet and whin-bushes for hoops, was still a stroke to the good.