3
_A Mixed Threesome_
It was the holiday season, and during the holidays the GreensCommittees have decided that the payment of twenty guineas shallentitle fathers of families not only to infest the course themselves,but also to decant their nearest and dearest upon it in whateverquantity they please. All over the links, in consequence, happy,laughing groups of children had broken out like a rash. A wan-facedadult, who had been held up for ten minutes while a drove of issuequarrelled over whether little Claude had taken two hundred or twohundred and twenty approach shots to reach the ninth green sank into aseat beside the Oldest Member.
"What luck?" inquired the Sage.
"None to speak of," returned the other, moodily. "I thought I hadbagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but heducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling theirhoops 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 thesesentiments.
No doubt (said the Oldest Member) the summer golf-child is, from thepoint of view of the player who likes to get round the course in asingle afternoon, something of a trial; but, personally, I confess, itpleases me to see my fellow human beings--and into this categorygolf-children, though at the moment you may not be broad-minded enoughto admit it, undoubtedly fall--taking to the noblest of games at anearly age. Golf, like measles, should be caught young, for, ifpostponed to riper years, the results may be serious. Let me tell youthe story of Mortimer Sturgis, which illustrates what I mean ratheraptly.
Mortimer Sturgis, when I first knew him, was a care-free man ofthirty-eight, of amiable character and independent means, which heincreased from time to time by judicious ventures on the StockExchange. Although he had never played golf, his had not beenaltogether an ill-spent life. He swung a creditable racket at tennis,was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, andgave 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 heroicvirtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelainvases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl oftwenty-five, a lifelong friend of mine.
I like Mortimer. Everybody liked him. But, at the same time, I was alittle surprised that a girl like Betty should have become engaged tohim. 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 oneof those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity forhero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in thenature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been herideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry wherethe demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knightsand corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, hasto take the best she can get. I must admit that Betty seemed perfectlycontent with Mortimer.
Such, then, was the state of affairs when Eddie Denton arrived, and thetrouble began.
I was escorting Betty home one evening after a tea-party at which wehad been fellow-guests, when, walking down the road, we happened toespy 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 thingwhich was unusual in this well-balanced man. His broad, good-humouredface 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'sbest friend," she explained to me. "He has told me so much about him. Ihave been looking forward to his coming home. Mortie thinks the worldof him."
"So will you, when you know him," cried Mortimer. "Dear old Eddie! He'sa wonder! The best fellow on earth! We were at school and the 'Varsitytogether. There's nobody like Eddie! He landed yesterday. Just homefrom 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 soimpressed, I fear, as she was. Explorers, as a matter of fact, leave mea trifle cold. It has always seemed to me that the difficulties oftheir life are greatly exaggerated--generally by themselves. In a largecountry like Africa, for instance, I should imagine that it was almostimpossible 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 earthat Piccadilly Circus and find the right Tube train with nothing but alot of misleading signs to guide him. However, we are not allconstituted alike in this world, and it was apparent from the flush onher cheek and the light in her eyes that Betty admired explorers.
"I wired to him at once," went on Mortimer, "and insisted on his comingdown here. It's two years since I saw him. You don't know how I havelooked forward, dear, to you and Eddie meeting. He is just your sort. Iknow how romantic you are and keen on adventure and all that. Well,you should hear Eddie tell the story of how he brought down thebull _bongo_ with his last cartridge after all the _pongos_, ornative bearers, had fled into the _dongo_, or undergrowth."
"I should love to!" whispered Betty, her eyes glowing. I suppose to animpressionable girl these things really are of absorbing interest. Formyself, _bongos_ intrigue me even less than _pongos_, while_dongos_ frankly bore me. "When do you expect him?"
"He will get my wire tonight. I'm hoping we shall see the dear oldfellow tomorrow afternoon some time. How surprised old Eddie will be tohear that I'm engaged. He's such a confirmed bachelor himself. He toldme once that he considered the wisest thing ever said by human tonguewas the Swahili proverb--'Whoso taketh a woman into his kraaldepositeth himself straightway in the _wongo_.' _Wongo_, hetells me, is a sort of broth composed of herbs and meat-bones,corresponding to our soup. You must get Eddie to give it you in theoriginal Swahili. It sounds even better."
I saw the girl's eyes flash, and there came into her face that peculiarset expression which married men know. It passed in an instant, but notbefore it had given me material for thought which lasted me all the wayto my house and into the silent watches of the night. I was fond ofMortimer Sturgis, and I could see trouble ahead for him as plainly asthough I had been a palmist reading his hand at two guineas a visit.There are other proverbs fully as wise as the one which Mortimer hadtranslated from the Swahili, and one of the wisest is that quaint oldEast London saying, handed down from one generation of costermongers toanother, and whispered at midnight in the wigwams of the whelk-seller!"Never introduce your donah to a pal." In those seven words iscontained the wisdom of the ages. I could read the future so plainly.What but one thing could happen after Mortimer had influenced Betty'simagination with his stories of his friend's romantic career, and addedthe finishing touch by advertising him as a woman-hater? He might justas well have asked for his ring back at once. My heart bled forMortimer.
* * * *
I happened to call at his house on the second evening of the explorer'svisit, and already the mischief had been done.
Denton was one of those lean, hard-bitten men with smouldering eyes anda brick-red complexion. He looked what he was, the man of action andenterprise. He had the wiry frame and strong jaw without which noexplorer is complete, and Mortimer, beside him, seemed but a poor, softproduct of our hot-house civilization. Mortimer, I forgot to say, woreglasses; and, if there is one time more than another when a man shouldnot wear glasses, it is while a strong-faced, keen-eyed wanderer in thewilds is telling a beautiful girl the story of his adventures.
For this was what Denton was doing. My arrival seemed to haveinterrupted him in the middle of narrative. He shook my hand in astrong, silent sort of way, and resumed:
"Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay thenight."
I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. Ifyou do, he always decides to stay the night.
"In the morning they took me down to the river. At this point it widensinto a _kongo_,
or pool, and it was here, they told me, that thecrocodile mostly lived, subsisting on the native oxen--the short-horned_jongos_--which, swept away by the current while crossing the fordabove, were carried down on the _longos_, or rapids. It was not,however, till the second evening that I managed to catch sight of hisugly snout above the surface. I waited around, and on the third day Isaw him suddenly come out of the water and heave his whole length on toa sandbank in mid-stream and go to sleep in the sun. He was certainly amonster--fully thirty--you have never been in Central Africa, have you,Miss Weston? No? You ought to go there!--fully fifty feet from tip totail. There he lay, glistening. I shall never forget the sight."
He broke off to light a cigarette. I heard Betty draw in her breathsharply. Mortimer was beaming through his glasses with the air of theowner of a dog which is astonishing a drawing-room with its clevertricks.
"And what did you do then, Mr. Denton?" asked Betty, breathlessly.
"Yes, what did you do then, old chap?" said Mortimer.
Denton blew out the match and dropped it on the ash-tray.
"Eh? Oh," he said, carelessly, "I swam across and shot him."
"Swam across and shot him!"
"Yes. It seemed to me that the chance was too good to be missed. Ofcourse, I might have had a pot at him from the bank, but the chanceswere I wouldn't have hit him in a vital place. So I swam across to thesandbank, put the muzzle of my gun in his mouth, and pulled thetrigger. I have rarely seen a crocodile so taken aback."
"But how dreadfully dangerous!"
"Oh, danger!" Eddie Denton laughed lightly. "One drops into the habitof taking a few risks out there, you know. Talking of _danger_,the time when things really did look a little nasty was when thewounded _gongo_ cornered me in a narrow _tongo_ and I only hada pocket-knife with everything in it broken except the corkscrewand the thing for taking stones out of horses' hoofs. It was likethis----"
I could bear no more. I am a tender-hearted man, and I made some excuseand got away. From the expression on the girl's face I could see thatit was only a question of days before she gave her heart to thisromantic newcomer.
* * * * *
As a matter of fact, it was on the following afternoon that she calledon me and told me that the worst had happened. I had known her from achild, you understand, and she always confided her troubles to me.
"I want your advice," she began. "I'm so wretched!"
She burst into tears. I could see the poor girl was in a highly nervouscondition, so I did my best to calm her by describing how I had oncedone the long hole in four. My friends tell me that there is no finersoporific, and it seemed as though they may be right, for presently,just as I had reached the point where I laid my approach-putt dead froma distance of fifteen feet, she became quieter. She dried her eyes,yawned once or twice, and looked at me bravely.
"I love Eddie Denton!" she said.
"I feared as much. When did you feel this coming on?"
"It crashed on me like a thunderbolt last night after dinner. We werewalking in the garden, and he was just telling me how he had beenbitten by a poisonous _zongo_, when I seemed to go all giddy. WhenI came to myself I was in Eddie's arms. His face was pressed againstmine, and he was gargling."
"Gargling?"
"I thought so at first. But he reassured me. He was merely speaking inone of the lesser-known dialects of the Walla-Walla natives of EasternUganda, into which he always drops in moments of great emotion. He soonrecovered sufficiently to give me a rough translation, and then I knewthat he loved me. He kissed me. I kissed him. We kissed each other."
"And where was Mortimer all this while?"
"Indoors, cataloguing his collection of vases."
For a moment, I confess, I was inclined to abandon Mortimer's cause. Aman, I felt, who could stay indoors cataloguing vases while his_fiancee_ wandered in the moonlight with explorers deserved allthat was coming to him. I overcame the feeling.
"Have you told him?"
"Of course not."
"You don't think it might be of interest to him?"
"How can I tell him? It would break his heart. I am awfully fond ofMortimer. So is Eddie. We would both die rather than do anything tohurt him. Eddie is the soul of honour. He agrees with me that Mortimermust never know."
"Then you aren't going to break off your engagement?"
"I couldn't. Eddie feels the same. He says that, unless something canbe done, he will say good-bye to me and creep far, far away to somedistant desert, and there, in the great stillness, broken only by thecry of the prowling _yongo_, try to forget."
"When you say 'unless something can be done,' what do you mean? Whatcan be done?"
"I thought you might have something to suggest. Don't you think itpossible that somehow Mortimer might take it into his head to break theengagement himself?"
"Absurd! He loves you devotedly."
"I'm afraid so. Only the other day I dropped one of his best vases, andhe just smiled and said it didn't matter."
"I can give you even better proof than that. This morning Mortimer cameto me and asked me to give him secret lessons in golf."
"Golf! But he despises golf."
"Exactly. But he is going to learn it for your sake."
"But why secret lessons?"
"Because he wants to keep it a surprise for your birthday. Now can youdoubt his love?"
"I am not worthy of him!" she whispered.
The words gave me an idea.
"Suppose," I said, "we could convince Mortimer of that!"
"I don't understand."
"Suppose, for instance, he could be made to believe that you were, letus say, a dipsomaniac."
She shook her head. "He knows that already."
"What!"
"Yes; I told him I sometimes walked in my sleep."
"I mean a secret drinker."
"Nothing will induce me to pretend to be a secret drinker."
"Then a drug-fiend?" I suggested, hopefully.
"I hate medicine."
"I have it!" I said. "A kleptomaniac."
"What is that?"
"A person who steals things."
"Oh, that's horrid."
"Not at all. It's a perfectly ladylike thing to do. You don't know youdo it."
"But, if I don't know I do it, how do I know I do it?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I mean, how can I tell Mortimer I do it if I don't know?"
"You don't tell him. I will tell him. I will inform him tomorrow thatyou called on me this afternoon and stole my watch and"--I glancedabout the room--"my silver matchbox."
"I'd rather have that little vinaigrette."
"You don't get either. I merely say you stole it. What will happen?"
"Mortimer will hit you with a cleek."
"Not at all. I am an old man. My white hairs protect me. What he willdo is to insist on confronting me with you and asking you to deny thefoul charge."
"And then?"
"Then you admit it and release him from his engagement."
She sat for a while in silence. I could see that my words had made animpression.
"I think it's a splendid idea. Thank you very much." She rose and movedto the door. "I knew you would suggest something wonderful." Shehesitated. "You don't think it would make it sound more plausible if Ireally took the vinaigrette?" she added, a little wistfully.
"It would spoil everything," I replied, firmly, as I reached for thevinaigrette and locked it carefully in my desk.
She was silent for a moment, and her glance fell on the carpet. That,however, did not worry me. It was nailed down.
"Well, good-bye," she said.
"_Au revoir_," I replied. "I am meeting Mortimer at six-thirtytomorrow. You may expect us round at your house at about eight."
* * * * *
Mortimer was punctual at the tryst next morning. When I reached thetenth tee he was already there. We exchanged a brief greeting and Ihanded him
a driver, outlined the essentials of grip and swing, andbade him go to it.
"It seems a simple game," he said, as he took his stance. "You're sureit's fair to have the ball sitting up on top of a young sand-hill likethis?"
"Perfectly fair."
"I mean, I don't want to be coddled because I'm a beginner."
"The ball is always teed up for the drive," I assured him.
"Oh, well, if you say so. But it seems to me to take all the element ofsport out of the game. Where do I hit it?"
"Oh, straight ahead."
"But isn't it dangerous? I mean, suppose I smash a window in that houseover there?"
He indicated a charming bijou residence some five hundred yards downthe fairway.
"In that case," I replied, "the owner comes out in his pyjamas andoffers you the choice between some nuts and a cigar."
He seemed reassured, and began to address the ball. Then he pausedagain.
"Isn't there something you say before you start?" he asked. "'Five', orsomething?"
"You may say 'Fore!' if it makes you feel any easier. But it isn'tnecessary."
"If I am going to learn this silly game," said Mortimer, firmly, "I amgoing to learn it _right_. Fore!"
I watched him curiously. I never put a club into the hand of a beginnerwithout something of the feeling of the sculptor who surveys a mass ofshapeless clay. I experience the emotions of a creator. Here, I say tomyself, is a semi-sentient being into whose soulless carcass I ambreathing life. A moment before, he was, though technically living, amere clod. A moment hence he will be a golfer.
While I was still occupied with these meditations Mortimer swung at theball. The club, whizzing down, brushed the surface of the rubbersphere, toppling it off the tee and propelling it six inches with aslight slice on it.
"Damnation!" said Mortimer, unravelling himself.
I nodded approvingly. His drive had not been anything to write to thegolfing journals about, but he was picking up the technique of thegame.
"What happened then?"
I told him in a word.
"Your stance was wrong, and your grip was wrong, and you moved yourhead, and swayed your body, and took your eye off the ball, andpressed, and forgot to use your wrists, and swung back too fast, andlet the hands get ahead of the club, and lost your balance, and omittedto pivot on the ball of the left foot, and bent your right knee."
He was silent for a moment.
"There is more in this pastime," he said, "than the casual observerwould suspect."
I have noticed, and I suppose other people have noticed, that in thegolf education of every man there is a definite point at which he maybe said to have crossed the dividing line--the Rubicon, as itwere--that separates the golfer from the non-golfer. This moment comesimmediately after his first good drive. In the ninety minutes in whichI instructed Mortimer Sturgis that morning in the rudiments of thegame, he made every variety of drive known to science; but it was nottill we were about to leave that he made a good one.
A moment before he had surveyed his blistered hands with sombredisgust.
"It's no good," he said. "I shall never learn this beast of a game. AndI don't want to either. It's only fit for lunatics. Where's the sensein it? Hitting a rotten little ball with a stick! If I want exercise,I'll take a stick and go and rattle it along the railings. There'ssomething _in_ that! Well, let's be getting along. No good wastingthe whole morning out here."
"Try one more drive, and then we'll go."
"All right. If you like. No sense in it, though."
He teed up the ball, took a careless stance, and flicked moodily. Therewas a sharp crack, the ball shot off the tee, flew a hundred yards in adead straight line never ten feet above the ground, soared anotherseventy yards in a graceful arc, struck the turf, rolled, and came torest within easy mashie distance of the green.
"Splendid!" I cried.
The man seemed stunned.
"How did that happen?"
I told him very simply.
"Your stance was right, and your grip was right, and you kept your headstill, and didn't sway your body, and never took your eye off the ball,and slowed back, and let the arms come well through, and rolled thewrists, and let the club-head lead, and kept your balance, and pivotedon the ball of the left foot, and didn't duck the right knee."
"I see," he said. "Yes, I thought that must be it."
"Now let's go home."
"Wait a minute. I just want to remember what I did while it's fresh inmy mind. Let me see, this was the way I stood. Or was it more likethis? No, like this." He turned to me, beaming. "What a great idea itwas, my taking up golf! It's all nonsense what you read in the comicpapers about people foozling all over the place and breaking clubs andall that. You've only to exercise a little reasonable care. And what acorking game it is! Nothing like it in the world! I wonder if Betty isup yet. I must go round and show her how I did that drive. A perfectswing, with every ounce of weight, wrist, and muscle behind it. I meantto keep it a secret from the dear girl till I had really learned, butof course I _have_ learned now. Let's go round and rout her out."
He had given me my cue. I put my hand on his shoulder and spokesorrowfully.
"Mortimer, my boy, I fear I have bad news for you."
"Slow; back--keep the head---- What's that? Bad news?"
"About Betty."
"About Betty? What about her? Don't sway the body--keep the eye onthe----"
"Prepare yourself for a shock, my boy. Yesterday afternoon Betty calledto see me. When she had gone I found that she had stolen my silvermatchbox."
"Stolen your matchbox?"
"Stolen my matchbox."
"Oh, well, I dare say there were faults on both sides," said Mortimer."Tell me if I sway my body this time."
"You don't grasp what I have said! Do you realize that Betty, the girlyou are going to marry, is a kleptomaniac?"
"A kleptomaniac!"
"That is the only possible explanation. Think what this means, my boy.Think how you will feel every time your wife says she is going out todo a little shopping! Think of yourself, left alone at home, watchingthe clock, saying to yourself, 'Now she is lifting a pair of silkstockings!' 'Now she is hiding gloves in her umbrella!' 'Just aboutthis moment she is getting away with a pearl necklace!'"
"Would she do that?"
"She would! She could not help herself. Or, rather, she could notrefrain from helping herself. How about it, my boy?"
"It only draws us closer together," he said.
I was touched, I own. My scheme had failed, but it had proved MortimerSturgis to be of pure gold. He stood gazing down the fairway, wrappedin thought.
"By the way," he said, meditatively, "I wonder if the dear girl evergoes to any of those sales--those auction-sales, you know, where you'reallowed to inspect the things the day before? They often have somepretty decent vases."
He broke off and fell into a reverie.
* * * * *
From this point onward Mortimer Sturgis proved the truth of what I saidto you about the perils of taking up golf at an advanced age. Alifetime of observing my fellow-creatures has convinced me that Natureintended us all to be golfers. In every human being the germ of golf isimplanted at birth, and suppression causes it to grow and grow till--itmay be at forty, fifty, sixty--it suddenly bursts its bonds and sweepsover the victim like a tidal wave. The wise man, who begins to play inchildhood, is enabled to let the poison exude gradually from hissystem, with no harmful results. But a man like Mortimer Sturgis, withthirty-eight golfless years behind him, is swept off his feet. He iscarried away. He loses all sense of proportion. He is like the fly thathappens to be sitting on the wall of the dam just when the crack comes.
Mortimer Sturgis gave himself up without a struggle to an orgy of golfsuch as I have never witnessed in any man. Within two days of thatfirst lesson he had accumulated a collection of clubs large enough tohave enabled him to open a shop; and he went on buying them at the rateof t
wo and three a day. On Sundays, when it was impossible to buyclubs, he was like a lost spirit. True, he would do his regular fourrounds on the day of rest, but he never felt happy. The thought, as hesliced into the rough, that the patent wooden-faced cleek which heintended to purchase next morning might have made all the difference,completely spoiled his enjoyment.
I remember him calling me up on the telephone at three o'clock onemorning to tell me that he had solved the problem of putting. Heintended in future, he said, to use a croquet mallet, and he wonderedthat no one had ever thought of it before. The sound of his brokengroan when I informed him that croquet mallets were against the ruleshaunted me for days.
His golf library kept pace with his collection of clubs. He bought allthe standard works, subscribed to all the golfing papers, and, when hecame across a paragraph in a magazine to the effect that Mr. Hutchings,an ex-amateur champion, did not begin to play till he was past forty,and that his opponent in the final, Mr. S. H. Fry, had never held a clubtill his thirty-fifth year, he had it engraved on vellum and framed andhung up beside his shaving-mirror.
* * * * *
And Betty, meanwhile? She, poor child, stared down the years into ableak future, in which she saw herself parted for ever from the man sheloved, and the golf-widow of another for whom--even when he won a medalfor lowest net at a weekly handicap with a score of a hundred and threeminus twenty-four--she could feel nothing warmer than respect. Thosewere dreary days for Betty. We three--she and I and Eddie Denton--oftentalked over Mortimer's strange obsession. Denton said that, except thatMortimer had not come out in pink spots, his symptoms were almostidentical with those of the dreaded _mongo-mongo_, the scourge ofthe West African hinterland. Poor Denton! He had already booked hispassage for Africa, and spent hours looking in the atlas for gooddeserts.
In every fever of human affairs there comes at last the crisis. We mayemerge from it healed or we may plunge into still deeper depths ofsoul-sickness; but always the crisis comes. I was privileged to bepresent when it came in the affairs of Mortimer Sturgis and BettyWeston.
I had gone into the club-house one afternoon at an hour when it isusually empty, and the first thing I saw, as I entered the main room,which looks out on the ninth green, was Mortimer. He was grovelling onthe floor, and I confess that, when I caught sight of him, my heartstood still. I feared that his reason, sapped by dissipation, had givenway. I knew that for weeks, day in and day out, the niblick had hardlyever been out of his hand, and no constitution can stand that.
He looked up as he heard my footstep.
"Hallo," he said. "Can you see a ball anywhere?"
"A ball?" I backed away, reaching for the door-handle. "My dear boy," Isaid, soothingly, "you have made a mistake. Quite a natural mistake.One anybody would have made. But, as a matter of fact, this is theclub-house. The links are outside there. Why not come away with me veryquietly and let us see if we can't find some balls on the links? If youwill wait here a moment, I will call up Doctor Smithson. He was tellingme only this morning that he wanted a good spell of ball-hunting to puthim in shape. You don't mind if he joins us?"
"It was a Silver King with my initials on it," Mortimer went on, notheeding me. "I got on the ninth green in eleven with a nicemashie-niblick, but my approach-putt was a little too strong. It camein through that window."
I perceived for the first time that one of the windows facing thecourse was broken, and my relief was great. I went down on my knees andhelped him in his search. We ran the ball to earth finally inside thepiano.
"What's the local rule?" inquired Mortimer. "Must I play it where itlies, or may I tee up and lose a stroke? If I have to play it where itlies, I suppose a niblick would be the club?"
It was at this moment that Betty came in. One glance at her pale, setface told me that there was to be a scene, and I would have retired,but that she was between me and the door.
"Hallo, dear," said Mortimer, greeting her with a friendly waggle ofhis niblick. "I'm bunkered in the piano. My approach-putt was a littlestrong, and I over-ran the green."
"Mortimer," said the girl, tensely, "I want to ask you one question."
"Yes, dear? I wish, darling, you could have seen my drive at the eighthjust now. It was a pip!"
Betty looked at him steadily.
"Are we engaged," she said, "or are we not?"
"Engaged? Oh, to be married? Why, of course. I tried the open stancefor a change, and----"
"This morning you promised to take me for a ride. You never appeared.Where were you?"
"Just playing golf."
"Golf! I'm sick of the very name!"
A spasm shook Mortimer.
"You mustn't let people hear you saying things like that!" he said. "Isomehow felt, the moment I began my up-swing, that everything was goingto be all right. I----"
"I'll give you one more chance. Will you take me for a drive in yourcar this evening?"
"I can't."
"Why not? What are you doing?"
"Just playing golf!"
"I'm tired of being neglected like this!" cried Betty, stamping herfoot. Poor girl, I saw her point of view. It was bad enough for herbeing engaged to the wrong man, without having him treat her as a mereacquaintance. Her conscience fighting with her love for Eddie Dentonhad kept her true to Mortimer, and Mortimer accepted the sacrifice withan absent-minded carelessness which would have been galling to anygirl. "We might just as well not be engaged at all. You never take meanywhere."
"I asked you to come with me to watch the Open Championship."
"Why don't you ever take me to dances?"
"I can't dance."
"You could learn."
"But I'm not sure if dancing is a good thing for a fellow's game. Younever hear of any first-class pro. dancing. James Braid doesn't dance."
"Well, my mind's made up. Mortimer, you must choose between golf andme."
"But, darling, I went round in a hundred and one yesterday. You can'texpect a fellow to give up golf when he's at the top of his game."
"Very well. I have nothing more to say. Our engagement is at an end."
"Don't throw me over, Betty," pleaded Mortimer, and there was that inhis voice which cut me to the heart. "You'll make me so miserable. And,when I'm miserable, I always slice my approach shots."
Betty Weston drew herself up. Her face was hard.
"Here is your ring!" she said, and swept from the room.
* * * * *
For a moment after she had gone Mortimer remained very still, lookingat the glistening circle in his hand. I stole across the room andpatted his shoulder.
"Bear up, my boy, bear up!" I said.
He looked at me piteously.
"Stymied!" he muttered.
"Be brave!"
He went on, speaking as if to himself.
"I had pictured--ah, how often I had pictured!--our little home! Hersand mine. She sewing in her arm-chair, I practising putts on thehearth-rug----" He choked. "While in the corner, little Harry VardonSturgis played with little J. H. Taylor Sturgis. And round theroom--reading, busy with their childish tasks--little George DuncanSturgis, Abe Mitchell Sturgis, Harold Hilton Sturgis, Edward RaySturgis, Horace Hutchinson Sturgis, and little James Braid Sturgis."
"My boy! My boy!" I cried.
"What's the matter?"
"Weren't you giving yourself rather a large family?"
He shook his head moodily.
"Was I?" he said, dully. "I don't know. What's bogey?"
There was a silence.
"And yet----" he said, at last, in a low voice. He paused. An odd,bright look had come into his eyes. He seemed suddenly to be himselfagain, the old, happy Mortimer Sturgis I had known so well. "And yet,"he said, "who knows? Perhaps it is all for the best. They might allhave turned out tennis-players!" He raised his niblick again, his faceaglow. "Playing thirteen!" he said. "I think the game here would be tochip out through the door and work round the club-house to
the green,don't you?"
* * * * *
Little remains to be told. Betty and Eddie have been happily marriedfor years. Mortimer's handicap is now down to eighteen, and he isimproving all the time. He was not present at the wedding, beingunavoidably detained by a medal tournament; but, if you turn up thefiles and look at the list of presents, which were both numerous andcostly, you will see--somewhere in the middle of the column, the words:
STURGIS, J. MORTIMER. _Two dozen Silver King Golf-balls and one patent Sturgis Aluminium Self-Adjusting, Self-Compensating Putting-Cleek._