The Golf Omnibus Page 6

  “’Morning,” said Peter.

  Peter sat down and toyed absently with a slice of bacon.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  “One isn’t many,” said James, bringing his knife down with a jerk-shot on a fried egg. “What is your idea?”

  “Got it last night as I was lying awake. It struck me that, if either of us was to clear out of this place, the other would have a fair chance. You know what I mean—with Her. At present we’ve got each other stymied. Now, how would it be,” said Peter, abstractedly spreading marmalade on his bacon, “if we were to play an eighteen-hole match, the loser to leg out of the neighbourhood and stay away long enough to give the winner the chance to find out exactly how things stood?”

  James started so violently that he struck himself in the left eye with his fork.

  “That’s exactly the idea I got last night, too.”

  “Then it’s a go?”

  “It’s the only thing to do.”

  There was silence for a moment. Both men were thinking. Remember, they were friends. For years they had shared each other’s sorrows, joys, and golf-balls, and sliced into the same bunkers.

  Presently Peter said:

  “I shall miss you.”

  “What do you mean, miss me?”

  “When you’re gone, Woodhaven won’t seem the same place. But of course you’ll soon be able to come back. I sha’n’t waste any time proposing.”

  “Leave me your address,” said James, “and I’ll send you a wire when you can return. You won’t be offended if I don’t ask you to be best man at the wedding? In the circumstances it might be painful to you.”

  Peter sighed dreamily.

  “We’ll have the sitting-room done in blue. Her eyes are blue.”

  “Remember,” said James, “there will always be a knife and fork for you at our little nest. Grace is not the woman to want me to drop my bachelor friends.”

  “Touching this match,” said Peter. “Strict Royal and Ancient rules, of course?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I mean to say—no offence, old man—but no grounding niblicks in bunkers.”

  “Precisely. And, without hinting at anything personal, the ball shall be considered holed-out only when it is in the hole, not when it stops on the edge.”

  “Undoubtedly. And—you know I don’t want to hurt your feelings—missing the ball counts as a stroke, not as a practice-swing.”

  “Exactly. And—you’ll forgive me if I mention it—a player whose ball has fallen in the rough, may not pull up all the bushes within a radius of three feet.”

  “In fact, strict rules.”

  “Strict rules.”

  They shook hands without more words. And presently Peter walked out, and James, with a guilty look over his shoulder, took down Sandy MacBean’s great work from the bookshelf and began to study the photograph of the short approach-shot showing Mr. MacBean swinging from Point A, through dotted line B–C, to Point D, his head the while remaining rigid at the spot marked with a cross. He felt a little guiltily that he had stolen a march on his friend, and that the contest was as good as over.

  I cannot recall a lovelier summer day than that on which the great Todd-Willard eighteen-hole match took place. It had rained during the night, and now the sun shone down from a clear blue sky on to turf that glistened more greenly than the young grass of early spring. Butterflies flitted to and fro; birds sang merrily. In short, all Nature smiled. And it is to be doubted if nature ever had a better excuse for smiling—or even laughing outright; for matches like that between James Todd and Peter Willard do not occur every day.

  Whether it was that love had keyed them up, or whether hours of study of Braid’s “Advanced Golf” and the Badminton Book had produced a belated effect, I cannot say; but both started off quite reasonably well. Our first hole, as you can see, is a bogey four, and James was dead on the pin in seven, leaving Peter, who had twice hit the United Kingdom with his mashie in mistake for the ball, a difficult putt for the half. Only one thing could happen when you left Peter a difficult putt; and James advanced to the lake-hole one up, Peter, as he followed, trying to console himself with the thought that many of the best golfers prefer to lose the first hole and save themselves for a strong finish.

  Peter and James had played over the lake-hole so often that they had become accustomed to it, and had grown into the habit of sinking a ball or two as a preliminary formality with much the same stoicism displayed by those kings in ancient and superstitious times who used to fling jewellery into the sea to propitiate it before they took a voyage. But today, by one of those miracles without which golf would not be golf, each of them got over with his first shot—and not only over, but dead on the pin. Our “pro” himself could not have done better.

  I think it was at this point that the two men began to go to pieces. They were in an excited frame of mind, and this thing unmanned them. You will no doubt recall Keats’s poem about stout Cortez staring with eagle eyes at the Pacific while all his men gazed at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien. Precisely so did Peter Willard and James Todd stare with eagle eyes at the second lake hole, and gaze at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a tee in Woodhaven. They had dreamed of such a happening so often and woke to find the vision false, that at first they could not believe that the thing had actually occurred.

  “I got over!” whispered James, in an awed voice.

  “So did I!” muttered Peter.

  “In one!”

  “With my very first!”

  They walked in silence round the edge of the lake, and holed out. One putt was enough for each, and they halved the hole with a two. Peter’s previous record was eight, and James had once done a seven. There are times when strong men lose their self-control, and this was one of them. They reached the third tee in a daze, and it was here that mortification began to set in.

  The third hole is another bogey four, up the hill and past the tree that serves as a direction-post, the hole itself being out of sight. On his day, James had often done it in ten and Peter in nine; but now they were unnerved. James, who had the honour, shook visibly as he addressed his ball. Three times he swung and only connected with the ozone; the fourth time he topped badly. The discs had been set back a little way, and James had the mournful distinction of breaking a record for the course by playing his fifth shot from the tee. It was a low, raking brassey-shot, which carried a heap of stones twenty feet to the right and finished in a furrow. Peter, meanwhile, had popped up a lofty ball which came to rest behind a stone.

  It was now that the rigid rules governing this contest began to take their toll. Had they been playing an ordinary friendly round, each would have teed up on some convenient hillock and probably been past the tree with their second, for James would, in ordinary circumstances, have taken his drive back and regarded the strokes he had made as a little preliminary practice to get him into mid-season form. But today it was war to the niblick, and neither man asked nor expected quarter. Peter’s seventh shot dislodged the stone, leaving him a clear field, and James, with his eleventh, extricated himself from the furrow. Fifty feet from the tree James was eighteen, Peter twelve; but then the latter, as every golfer does at times, suddenly went right off his game. He hit the tree four times, then hooked into the sand-bunkers to the left of the hole. James, who had been playing a game that was steady without being brilliant, was on the green in twenty-six, Peter taking twenty-seven. Poor putting lost James the hole. Peter was down in thirty-three, but the pace was too hot for James. He missed a two-foot putt for the half, and they went to the fourth tee all square.

  The fourth hole follows the curve of the road, on the other side of which are picturesque woods. It presents no difficulties to the expert, but it has pitfalls for the novice. The dashing player stands for a slice, while the more cautious are satisfied if they can clear the bunker that spans the fairway and lay their ball well out to the left, whence an iron shot will take the
m to the green. Peter and James combined the two policies. Peter aimed to the left and got a slice, and James, also aiming to the left, topped into the bunker. Peter, realizing from experience the futility of searching for his ball in the woods, drove a second, which also disappeared into the jungle, as did his third. By the time he had joined James in the bunker he had played his sixth.

  It is the glorious uncertainty of golf that makes it the game it is. The fact that James and Peter, lying side by side in the same bunker, had played respectively one and six shots, might have induced an unthinking observer to fancy the chances of the former. And no doubt, had he not taken seven strokes to extricate himself from the pit, while his opponent, by some act of God, contrived to get out in two, James’s chances might have been extremely rosy. As it was, the two men staggered out on to the fairway again with a score of eight apiece. Once past the bunker and round the bend of the road, the hole becomes simple. A judicious use of the cleek put Peter on the green in fourteen, while James, with a Braid iron, reached it in twelve. Peter was down in seventeen, and James contrived to halve. It was only as he was leaving the hole that the latter discovered that he had been putting with his niblick, which cannot have failed to exercise a prejudicial effect on his game. These little incidents are bound to happen when one is in a nervous and highly-strung condition.

  The fifth and sixth holes produced no unusual features. Peter won the fifth in eleven, and James the sixth in ten. The short seventh they halved in nine. The eighth, always a tricky hole, they took no liberties with, James, sinking a long putt with his twenty-third, just managing to halve. A ding-dong race up the hill for the ninth found James first at the pin, and they finished the first nine with James one up.

  As they left the green James looked a little furtively at his companion.

  “You might be strolling on to the tenth,” he said. “I want to get a few balls at the shop. And my mashie wants fixing up. I sha’n’t be long.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Peter.

  “Don’t bother,” said James. “You go on and hold our place at the tee.”

  I regret to say that James was lying. His mashie was in excellent repair, and he still had a dozen balls in his bag, it being his prudent practice always to start out with eighteen. No! What he had said was mere subterfuge. He wanted to go to his locker and snatch a few minutes with Sandy MacBean’s “How to Become a Scratch Man”. He felt sure that one more glance at the photograph of Mr. MacBean driving would give him the mastery of the stroke and so enable him to win the match. In this I think he was a little sanguine. The difficulty about Sandy MacBean’s method of tuition was that he laid great stress on the fact that the ball should be directly in a line with a point exactly in the centre of the back of the player’s neck; and so far James’s efforts to keep his eye on the ball and on the back of his neck simultaneously had produced no satisfactory results.

  It seemed to James, when he joined Peter on the tenth tee, that the latter’s manner was strange. He was pale. There was a curious look in his eye.

  “James, old man,” he said.

  “Yes?” said James.

  “While you were away I have been thinking. James, old man, do you really love this girl?”

  James stared. A spasm of pain twisted Peter’s face.

  “Suppose,” he said in a low voice, “she were not all you—we—think she is!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “Miss Forrester is an angel.”

  “Yes, yes. Quite so.”

  “I know what it is,” said James passionately. “You’re trying to put me off my stroke. You know that the least thing makes me lose my form.”

  “No, no!”

  “You hope that you can take my mind off the game and make me go to pieces, and then you’ll win the match.”

  “On the contrary,” said Peter. “I intend to forfeit the match.”

  James reeled.

  “What!”

  “I give up.”

  “But—but⎯” James shook with emotion. His voice quavered. “Ah!” he cried. “I see now: I understand! You are doing this for me because I am your pal. Peter, this is noble! This is the sort of thing you read about in books. I’ve seen it in the movies. But I can’t accept the sacrifice.”

  “You must!”

  “No, no!”

  “I insist!”

  “Do you mean this?”

  “I give her up, James, old man. I—I hope you will be happy.”

  “But I don’t know what to say. How can I thank you?”

  “Don’t thank me.”

  “But, Peter, do you fully realize what you are doing? True, I am one up, but there are nine holes to go, and I am not right on my game today. You might easily beat me. Have you forgotten that I once took forty-seven at the dog-leg hole? This may be one of my bad days. Do you understand that if you insist on giving up I shall go to Miss Forrester tonight and propose to her?”

  “I understand.”

  “And yet you stick to it that you are through?”

  “I do. And, by the way, there’s no need for you to wait till tonight. I saw Miss Forrester just now outside the tennis court. She’s alone.”

  James turned crimson.

  “Then I think perhaps⎯”

  “You’d better go to her at once.”

  “I will.” James extended his hand. “Peter, old man, I shall never forget this.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Now, do you mean? Oh, I shall potter round the second nine. If you want me, you’ll find me somewhere about.”

  “You’ll come to the wedding, Peter?” said James, wistfully.

  “Of course,” said Peter. “Good luck.”

  He spoke cheerily, but, when the other had turned to go, he stood looking after him thoughtfully. Then he sighed a heavy sigh.

  James approached Miss Forrester with a beating heart. She made a charming picture as she stood there in the sunlight, one hand on her hip, the other swaying a tennis racket.

  “How do you do?” said James.

  “How are you, Mr. Todd? Have you been playing golf?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Mr. Willard?”

  “Yes. We were having a match.”

  “Golf,” said Grace Forrester, “seems to make men very rude. Mr. Willard left me without a word in the middle of our conversation.”

  James was astonished.

  “Were you talking to Peter?”

  “Yes. Just now. I can’t understand what was the matter with him. He just turned on his heel and swung off.”

  “You oughtn’t to turn on your heel when you swing.” said James; “only on the ball of the foot.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I wasn’t thinking. The fact is, I’ve something on my mind. So has Peter. You mustn’t think too hardly of him. We have been playing an important match, and it must have got on his nerves. You didn’t happen by any chance to be watching us?”

  “No.”

  “Ah! I wish you had seen me at the lake-hole. I did it one under par.”

  “Was your father playing?”

  “You don’t understand. I mean I did it in one better than even the finest player is supposed to do it. It’s a mashie-shot, you know. You mustn’t play too light, or you fall in the lake; and you mustn’t play it too hard, or you go past the hole into the woods. It requires the nicest delicacy and judgment, such as I gave it. You might have to wait a year before seeing anyone do it in two again. I doubt if the ‘pro’ often does it in two. Now, directly we came to this hole today, I made up my mind that there was going to be no mistake. The great secret of any shot at golf is ease, elegance, and the ability to relax. The majority of men, you will find, think it important that their address should be good.”

  “How snobbish! What does it matter where a man lives?”

  “You don’t absolutely follow me. I refer
to the waggle and the stance before you make the stroke. Most players seem to fix in their minds the appearance of the angles which are presented by the position of the arms, legs, and club shaft, and it is largely the desire to retain these angles which results in their moving their heads and stiffening their muscles so that there is no freedom in the swing. There is only one point which vitally affects the stroke, and the only reason why that should be kept constant is that you are enabled to see your ball clearly. That is the pivotal point marked at the base of the neck, and a line drawn from this point to the ball should be at right angles to the line of flight.”

  James paused for a moment for air, and as he paused Miss Forrester spoke.

  “This is all gibberish to me,” she said.

  “Gibberish!” gasped James. “I am quoting verbatim from one of the best authorities on golf.”

  Miss Forrester swung her tennis racket irritably.

  “Golf,” she said, “bores me pallid. I think it is the silliest game ever invented!”

  The trouble about telling a story is that words are so feeble a means of depicting the supreme moments of life. That is where the artist has the advantage over the historian. Were I an artist, I should show James at this point falling backwards with his feet together and his eyes shut, with a semi-circular dotted line marking the progress of his flight and a few stars above his head to indicate moral collapse. There are no words that can adequately describe the sheer, black horror that froze the blood in his veins as this frightful speech smote his ears.

  He had never inquired into Miss Forrester’s religious views before, but he had always assumed that they were sound. And now here she was polluting the golden summer air with the most hideous blasphemy. It would be incorrect to say that James’s love was turned to hate. He did not hate Grace. The repulsion he felt was deeper than mere hate. What he felt was not altogether loathing and not wholly pity. It was a blend of the two.

  There was a tense silence. The listening world stood still. Then, without a word, James Todd turned and tottered away.

  Peter was working moodily in the twelfth bunker when his friend arrived. He looked up with a start. Then, seeing that the other was alone, he came forward hesitatingly.