"You were here all the time," I said.
"Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?"
Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.
"Oh, George!" she said, again.
He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.
"Brave little woman!" he said. "Brave little woman! She stuck by me all through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the explosion?"
It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be avoided by the exercise of a little tact.
"Well, some say one thing and some another," I said. "Whether it was a spark from a cigarette----"
Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this well-intentioned subterfuge.
"I hit you, George!"
"Hit me?" he repeated, curiously. "What with? The Eiffel Tower?"
"With my niblick."
"You hit me with your niblick? But why?"
She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.
"Because you wouldn"t stop talking."
He gaped.
"Me!" he said. "_I_ wouldn"t stop talking! But I hardly talk at all. I"m noted for it."
Celia"s eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened.
The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George"s brain-cells in such a way as to effect a complete cure. I have not the technical knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain.
"Lately, my dear fellow," I a.s.sured him, "you have dropped into the habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this afternoon you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation!"
"Me! On the links! It isn"t possible."
"It is only too true, I fear. And that is why this brave girl hit you with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was making her eleventh shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she took what she considered the necessary steps."
"Can you ever forgive me, George?" cried Celia.
George Mackintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face.
"So I did! It"s all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens!"
"_Can_ you forgive me, George?" cried Celia again.
He took her hand in his.
"Forgive you?" he muttered. "Can _you_ forgive _me?_ Me--a tee-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form of life known to science! I am unclean, unclean!"
"It"s only a little mud, dearest," said Celia, looking at the sleeve of his coat. "It will brush off when it"s dry."
"How can you link your lot with a man who talks when people are making their shots?"
"You will never do it again."
"But I have done it. And you stuck to me all through! Oh, Celia!"
"I loved you, George!"
The man seemed to swell with a sudden emotion. His eye lit up, and he thrust one hand into the breast of his coat while he raised the other in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been made sharply aware of what it was that he intended to do, he suddenly sagged. The gleam died out of his eyes. He lowered his hand.
"Well, I must say that was rather decent of you," he said.
A lame speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his hearers. For it showed that George Mackintosh was cured beyond possibility of relapse.
"Yes, I must say you are rather a corker," he added.
"George!" cried Celia.
I said nothing, but I clasped his hand; and then, taking my clubs, I retired. When I looked round she was still in his arms. I left them there, alone together in the great silence.
And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that a cure is possible, though it needs a woman"s gentle hand to bring it about. And how few women are capable of doing what Celia Tennant did. Apart from the difficulty of summoning up the necessary resolution, an act like hers requires a straight eye and a pair of strong and supple wrists. It seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope. And the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the ill.u.s.trious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the leading daily papers as to his views on Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, the Trial by Jury System, and the Modern Craze for Dancing, all they could extract from him was the single word "Mphm!" Having uttered which, he shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were more like him.
6
_Ordeal By Golf_
A pleasant breeze played among the trees on the terrace outside the Marvis Bay Golf and Country Club. It ruffled the leaves and cooled the forehead of the Oldest Member, who, as was his custom of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, sat in the shade on a rocking-chair, observing the younger generation as it hooked and sliced in the valley below. The eye of the Oldest Member was thoughtful and reflective. When it looked into yours you saw in it that perfect peace, that peace beyond understanding, which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.
The Oldest Member has not played golf since the rubber-cored ball superseded the old dignified gutty. But as a spectator and philosopher he still finds pleasure in the pastime. He is watching it now with keen interest. His gaze, pa.s.sing from the lemonade which he is sucking through a straw, rests upon the Sat.u.r.day foursome which is struggling raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Sat.u.r.day foursomes, it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be digging for buried treasure, unless--it is too far off to be certain--they are killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just foozled a mashie-shot, is blaming his caddie. His voice, as he upbraids the innocent child for breathing during his up-swing, comes clearly up the hill.
The Oldest Member sighs. His lemonade gives a sympathetic gurgle. He puts it down on the table.
How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing temperament! How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees; but I did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one"s temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. "Whatever may befall thee," says that great man in his "Meditations", "it was preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear." I like to think that this n.o.ble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new b.a.l.l.s into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his score-card. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. n.o.body who had not had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have written the words: "That which makes the man no worse than he was makes life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within." Yes, Marcus Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The niblick was his club.
Speaking of Marcus Aurelius and the golfing temperament recalls to my mind the case of young Mitch.e.l.l Holmes. Mitch.e.l.l, when I knew him first, was a promising young man with a future before him in the Paterson Dyeing and Refining Company, of which my old friend, Alexander Paterson, was the president. He had many engaging qualities--among them an unquestioned ability to imitate a bulldog quarrelling with a Pekingese in a way which had to be heard to be believed. It was a gift which made him much in demand at social gatherings in the neighbourhood, marking him off from other young men who could only almost play the mandolin or recite bits of Gunga Din; and no doubt it was this talent of his which first sowed the seeds of love in the heart of Millicent Boyd. Women are essentially hero-worshippers, and when a warm-hearted girl like Millicent has heard a personable young man imitating a bulldog and a Pekingese to the applause of a crowded drawing-room, and has been able to detect the exact point at which the Pekingese leaves off and the bulldog begins, she can never feel quite the same to other men. In short, Mitch.e.l.l and Millicent were engaged, and were only waiting to be married till the former could bite the Dyeing and Refining Company"s ear for a bit of extra salary.