"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 sn.o.bbish! 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 a.s.sumed 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.
"Am I to congratulate you?"
James breathed a deep breath.
"You are!" he said. "On an escape!"
"She refused you?"
"She didn"t get the chance. Old man, have you ever sent one right up the edge of that bunker in front of the seventh and just not gone in?"
"Very rarely."
"I did once. It was my second shot, from a good lie, with the light iron, and I followed well through and thought I had gone just too far, and, when I walked up, there was my ball on the edge of the bunker, nicely teed up on a chunk of gra.s.s, so that I was able to lay it dead with my mashie-niblick, holing out in six. Well, what I mean to say is, I feel now as I felt then--as if some unseen power had withheld me in time from some frightful disaster."
"I know just how you feel," said Peter, gravely.
"Peter, old man, that girl said golf bored her pallid. She said she thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You don"t seem revolted," said James.
"I am revolted, but not surprised. You see, she said the same thing to me only a few minutes before."
"She did!"
"It amounted to the same thing. I had just been telling her how I did the lake-hole today in two, and she said that in her opinion golf was a game for children with water on the brain who weren"t athletic enough to play Animal Grab."
The two men shivered in sympathy.
"There must be insanity in the family," said James at last.
"That," said Peter, "is the charitable explanation."
"We were fortunate to find it out in time."
"We were!"
"We mustn"t run a risk like that again."
"Never again!"
"I think we had better take up golf really seriously. It will keep us out of mischief."
"You"re quite right. We ought to do our four rounds a day regularly."
"In spring, summer, and autumn. And in winter it would be rash not to practise most of the day at one of those indoor schools."