The day of the final dawned bright and clear. At least, I was not awake
at the time to see, but I suppose it did; for at nine o'clock, when I
came down to breakfast, the sun was shining brightly. The first
eighteen holes were to be played before lunch, starting at eleven.
Until twenty minutes before the hour Vincent Jopp kept me busy taking
dictation, partly on matters connected with his wheat deal and partly
on a signed article dealing with the Final, entitled "How I Won." At
eleven sharp we were out on the first tee.

Jopp's opponent was a nice-looking young man, but obviously nervous. He
giggled in a distraught sort of way as he shook hands with my employer.

"Well, may the best man win," he said.

"I have arranged to do so," replied Jopp, curtly, and started to
address his ball.

There was a large crowd at the tee, and, as Jopp started his
down-swing, from somewhere on the outskirts of this crowd there came
suddenly a musical "Boo!" It rang out in the clear morning air like a
bugle.

I had been right in my estimate of Vincent Jopp. His forceful stroke
never wavered. The head of his club struck the ball, despatching it a
good two hundred yards down the middle of the fairway. As we left the
tee I saw Amelia Merridew being led away with bowed head by two members
of the Greens Committee. Poor girl! My heart bled for her. And yet,
after all, Fate had been kind in removing her from the scene, even in
custody, for she could hardly have borne to watch the proceedings.
Vincent Jopp made rings round his antagonist. Hole after hole he won in
his remorseless, machine-like way, until when lunch-time came at the
end of the eighteenth he was ten up. All the other holes had been
halved.

It was after lunch, as we made our way to the first tee, that the
advance-guard of the Mrs. Jopps appeared in the person of Luella
Mainprice Jopp, a kittenish little woman with blond hair and a
Pekingese dog. I remembered reading in the papers that she had divorced
my employer for persistent and aggravated mental cruelty, calling
witnesses to bear out her statement that he had said he did not like
her in pink, and that on two separate occasions had insisted on her dog
eating the leg of a chicken instead of the breast; but Time, the great
healer, seemed to have removed all bitterness, and she greeted him
affectionately.

"Wassums going to win great big championship against nasty rough strong
man?" she said.

"Such," said Vincent Jopp, "is my intention. It was kind of you,
Luella, to trouble to come and watch me. I wonder if you know Mrs.
Agnes Parsons Jopp?" he said, courteously, indicating a kind-looking,
motherly woman who had just come up. "How are you, Agnes?"

"If you had asked me that question this morning, Vincent," replied Mrs.
Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I should have been obliged to say that I felt far
from well. I had an odd throbbing feeling in the left elbow, and I am
sure my temperature was above the normal. But this afternoon I am a
little better. How are you, Vincent?"

Although she had, as I recalled from the reports of the case, been
compelled some years earlier to request the Court to sever her marital
relations with Vincent Jopp on the ground of calculated and inhuman
brutality, in that he had callously refused, in spite of her pleadings,
to take old Dr. Bennett's Tonic Swamp-Juice three times a day, her
voice, as she spoke, was kind and even anxious. Badly as this man had
treated her--and I remember hearing that several of the jury had been
unable to restrain their tears when she was in the witness-box giving
her evidence--there still seemed to linger some remnants of the old
affection.

"I am quite well, thank you, Agnes," said Vincent Jopp.

"Are you wearing your liver-pad?"

A frown flitted across my employer's strong face.

"I am not wearing my liver-pad," he replied, brusquely.

"Oh, Vincent, how rash of you!"

He was about to speak, when a sudden exclamation from his rear checked
him. A genial-looking woman in a sports coat was standing there, eyeing
him with a sort of humorous horror.

"Well, Jane," he said.

I gathered that this was Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, the wife who had
divorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the ground
that he had repeatedly outraged her feelings by wearing a white
waistcoat with a dinner-jacket. She continued to look at him dumbly,
and then uttered a sort of strangled, hysterical laugh.

"Those legs!" she cried. "Those legs!"

Vincent Jopp flushed darkly. Even the strongest and most silent of us
have our weaknesses, and my employer's was the rooted idea that he
looked well in knickerbockers. It was not my place to try to dissuade
him, but there was no doubt that they did not suit him. Nature, in
bestowing upon him a massive head and a jutting chin, had forgotten to
finish him off at the other end. Vincent Jopp's legs were skinny.

"You poor dear man!" went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. "What practical
joker ever lured you into appearing in public in knickerbockers?"

"I don't object to the knickerbockers," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,
"but when he foolishly comes out in quite a strong east wind without
his liver-pad----"

"Little Tinky-Ting don't need no liver-pad, he don't," said Mrs. Luella
Mainprice Jopp, addressing the animal in her arms, "because he was his
muzzer's pet, he was."

I was standing quite near to Vincent Jopp, and at this moment I saw a
bead of perspiration spring out on his forehead, and into his steely
eyes there came a positively hunted look. I could understand and
sympathize. Napoleon himself would have wilted if he had found himself
in the midst of a trio of females, one talking baby-talk, another
fussing about his health, and the third making derogatory observations
on his lower limbs. Vincent Jopp was becoming unstrung.

"May as well be starting, shall we?"

It was Jopp's opponent who spoke. There was a strange, set look on his
face--the look of a man whose back is against the wall. Ten down on the
morning's round, he had drawn on his reserves of courage and was
determined to meet the inevitable bravely.

Vincent Jopp nodded absently, then turned to me.

"Keep those women away from me," he whispered tensely. "They'll put me
off my stroke!"

"Put _you_ off your stroke!" I exclaimed, incredulously.

"Yes, me! How the deuce can I concentrate, with people babbling about
liver-pads, and--and knickerbockers all round me? Keep them away!"

He started to address his ball, and there was a weak uncertainty in the
way he did it that prepared me for what was to come. His club rose,
wavered, fell; and the ball, badly topped, trickled two feet and sank
into a cuppy lie.

"Is that good or bad?" inquired Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp.

A sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other competitor in
the final. He swung with renewed vigour. His ball sang through the air,
and lay within chip-shot distance of the green.

"At the very least," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I hope, Vincent,
that you are wearing flannel next your skin."

I heard Jopp give a stifled groan as he took his spoon from the bag. He
made a gallant effort to retrieve the lost ground, but the ball struck
a stone and bounded away into the long grass to the side of the green.
His opponent won the hole.

We moved to the second tee.

"Now, that young man," said Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, indicating her late
husband's blushing antagonist, "is quite right to wear knickerbockers.
He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown you
that you----"

"I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,
solicitously. "You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in your
eyes."

"Muzzer's pet got little buttons of eyes, that don't never have no wild
gleam in zem because he's muzzer's own darling, he was!" said Mrs.
Luella Mainprice Jopp.

A hollow groan escaped Vincent Jopp's ashen lips.

I need not recount the play hole by hole, I think. There are some
subjects that are too painful. It was pitiful to watch Vincent Jopp in
his downfall. By the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced to
one, and his antagonist, rendered a new man by success, was playing
magnificent golf. On the next hole he drew level. Then with a
superhuman effort Jopp contrived to halve the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth. It seemed as though his iron will might still assert
itself, but on the fourteenth the end came.

He had driven a superb ball, outdistancing his opponent by a full fifty
yards. The latter played a good second to within a few feet of the
green. And then, as Vincent Jopp was shaping for his stroke, Luella
Mainprice gave tongue.

"Vincent!"

"Well?"

"Vincent, that other man--bad man--not playing fair. When your back was
turned just now, he gave his ball a great bang. _I_ was watching
him."

"At any rate," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I do hope, when the game
is over, Vincent, that you will remember to cool slowly."

"Flesho!" cried Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp triumphantly. "I've been trying to
remember the name all the afternoon. I saw about it in one of the
papers. The advertisements speak most highly of it. You take it before
breakfast and again before retiring, and they guarantee it to produce
firm, healthy flesh on the most sparsely-covered limbs in next to no
time. Now, _will_ you remember to get a bottle tonight? It comes
in two sizes, the five-shilling (or large size) and the smaller at
half-a-crown. G. K. Chesterton writes that he used it regularly for
years."

Vincent Jopp uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took the
mashie from his bag, was trembling like an aspen.

Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the club-house, a beaten
man.

And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that in golf there is no
such thing as a soft snap. You can never be certain of the finest
player. Anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the
game. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over a
hole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horses
or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the
Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier.
But to bet at golf is pure gambling.

9

_The Rough Stuff_

Into the basking warmth of the day there had crept, with the approach
of evening, that heartening crispness which heralds the advent of
autumn. Already, in the valley by the ninth tee, some of the trees had
begun to try on strange colours, in tentative experiment against the
coming of nature's annual fancy dress ball, when the soberest tree
casts off its workaday suit of green and plunges into a riot of reds
and yellows. On the terrace in front of the club-house an occasional
withered leaf fluttered down on the table where the Oldest Member sat,
sipping a thoughtful seltzer and lemon and listening with courteous
gravity to a young man in a sweater and golf breeches who occupied the
neighbouring chair.

"She is a dear girl," said the young man a little moodily, "a dear girl
in every respect. But somehow--I don't know--when I see her playing
golf I can't help thinking that woman's place is in the home."

The Oldest Member inclined his frosted head.

"You think," he said, "that lovely woman loses in queenly dignity when
she fails to slam the ball squarely on the meat?"

"I don't mind her missing the pill," said the young man. "But I think
her attitude toward the game is too light-hearted."

"Perhaps it cloaks a deeper feeling. One of the noblest women I ever
knew used to laugh merrily when she foozled a short putt. It was only
later, when I learned that in the privacy of her home she would weep
bitterly and bite holes in the sofa cushions, that I realized that she
did but wear the mask. Continue to encourage your _fiancee_ to
play the game, my boy. Much happiness will reward you. I could tell you
a story----"

A young woman of singular beauty and rather statuesque appearance came
out of the club-house carrying a baby swaddled in flannel. As she drew
near the table she said to the baby:

"Chicketty wicketty wicketty wipsey pop!"

In other respects her intelligence appeared to be above the ordinary.

"Isn't he a darling!" she said, addressing the Oldest Member.

The Sage cast a meditative eye upon the infant. Except to the eye of
love, it looked like a skinned poached egg.

"Unquestionably so," he replied.

"Don't you think he looks more like his father every day?"

For a brief instant the Oldest Member seemed to hesitate.

"Assuredly!" he said. "Is your husband out on the links today?"

"Not today. He had to see Wilberforce off on the train to Scotland."

"Your brother is going to Scotland?"

"Yes. Ramsden has such a high opinion of the schools up there. I did
say that Scotland was a long way off, and he said yes, that had
occurred to him, but that we must make sacrifices for Willie's good. He
was very brave and cheerful about it. Well, I mustn't stay. There's
quite a nip in the air, and Rammikins will get a nasty cold in his
precious little button of a nose if I don't walk him about. Say
'Bye-bye' to the gentleman, Rammy!"

The Oldest Member watched her go thoughtfully.

"There is a nip in the air," he said, "and, unlike our late
acquaintance in the flannel, I am not in my first youth. Come with me,
I want to show you something."

He led the way into the club-house, and paused before the wall of the
smoking-room. This was decorated from top to bottom with bold
caricatures of members of the club.

"These," he said, "are the work of a young newspaper artist who belongs
here. A clever fellow. He has caught the expressions of these men
wonderfully. His only failure, indeed, is that picture of myself." He
regarded it with distaste, and a touch of asperity crept into his
manner. "I don't know why the committee lets it stay there," he said,
irritably. "It isn't a bit like." He recovered himself. "But all the
others are excellent, excellent, though I believe many of the subjects
are under the erroneous impression that they bear no resemblance to the
originals. Here is the picture I wished to show you. That is Ramsden
Waters, the husband of the lady who has just left us."

The portrait which he indicated was that of a man in the early
thirties. Pale saffron hair surmounted a receding forehead. Pale blue
eyes looked out over a mouth which wore a pale, weak smile, from the
centre of which protruded two teeth of a rabbit-like character.

"Golly! What a map!" exclaimed the young man at his side.

"Precisely!" said the Oldest Member. "You now understand my momentary
hesitation in agreeing with Mrs. Waters that the baby was like its
father. I was torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, politeness
demanded that I confirm any statement made by a lady. Common humanity,
on the other hand, made it repugnant to me to knock an innocent child.
Yes, that is Ramsden Waters. Sit down and take the weight off your
feet, and I will tell you about him. The story illustrates a favourite
theory of mine, that it is an excellent thing that women should be
encouraged to take up golf. There are, I admit, certain drawbacks
attendant on their presence on the links. I shall not readily forget
the occasion on which a low, raking drive of mine at the eleventh
struck the ladies' tee box squarely and came back and stunned my
caddie, causing me to lose stroke and distance. Nevertheless, I hold
that the advantages outnumber the drawbacks. Golf humanizes women,
humbles their haughty natures, tends, in short, to knock out of their
systems a certain modicum of that superciliousness, that swank, which
makes wooing a tough proposition for the diffident male. You may have
found this yourself?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," admitted the young man, "now I come to
think of it I have noticed that Genevieve has shown me a bit more
respect since she took up the game. When I drive 230 yards after she
had taken six sloshes to cover fifty, I sometimes think that a new
light comes into her eyes."

"Exactly," said the Sage.

From earliest youth (said the Oldest Member) Ramsden Waters had always
been of a shrinking nature. He seemed permanently scared. Possibly his
nurse had frightened him with tales of horror in his babyhood. If so,
she must have been the Edgar Allan Poe of her sex, for, by the time he
reached men's estate, Ramsden Waters had about as much ferocity and
self-assertion as a blanc mange. Even with other men he was noticeably
timid, and with women he comported himself in a manner that roused
their immediate scorn and antagonism. He was one of those men who fall
over their feet and start apologizing for themselves the moment they
see a woman. His idea of conversing with a girl was to perspire and tie
himself into knots, making the while a strange gurgling sound like the
language of some primitive tribe. If ever a remark of any coherence
emerged from his tangled vocal cords it dealt with the weather, and he
immediately apologized and qualified it. To such a man women are
merciless, and it speedily became an article of faith with the feminine
population of this locality that Ramsden Waters was an unfortunate
incident and did not belong. Finally, after struggling for a time to
keep up a connection in social circles, he gave it up and became a sort
of hermit.

I think that caricature I just showed you weighed rather heavily on the
poor fellow. Just as he was nerving himself to make another attempt to
enter society, he would catch sight of it and say to himself, "What
hope is there for a man with a face like that?" These caricaturists are
too ready to wound people simply in order to raise a laugh. Personally
I am broad-minded enough to smile at that portrait of myself. It has
given me great enjoyment, though why the committee permits it to--But
then, of course, it isn't a bit like, whereas that of Ramsden Waters
not only gave the man's exact appearance, very little exaggerated, but
laid bare his very soul. That portrait is the portrait of a chump, and
such Ramsden Waters undeniably was.

By the end of the first year in the neighbourhood, Ramsden, as I say,
had become practically a hermit. He lived all by himself in a house
near the fifteenth green, seeing nobody, going nowhere. His only solace
was golf. His late father had given him an excellent education, and,
even as early as his seventeenth year, I believe, he was going round
difficult courses in par. Yet even this admirable gift, which might
have done him social service, was rendered negligible by the fact that
he was too shy and shrinking to play often with other men. As a rule,
he confined himself to golfing by himself in the mornings and late
evenings when the links were more or less deserted. Yes, in his
twenty-ninth year, Ramsden Waters had sunk to the depth of becoming a
secret golfer.

One lovely morning in summer, a scented morning of green and blue and
gold, when the birds sang in the trees and the air had that limpid
clearness which makes the first hole look about 100 yards long instead
of 345, Ramsden Waters, alone as ever, stood on the first tee
addressing his ball. For a space he waggled masterfully, then, drawing
his club back with a crisp swish, brought it down. And, as he did so, a
voice behind him cried:

"Bing!"

Ramsden's driver wabbled at the last moment. The ball flopped weakly
among the trees on the right of the course. Ramsden turned to perceive,
standing close beside him, a small fat boy in a sailor suit. There was
a pause.

"Rotten!" said the boy austerely.

Ramsden gulped. And then suddenly he saw that the boy was not alone.
About a medium approach-putt distance, moving gracefully and languidly
towards him, was a girl of such pronounced beauty that Ramsden Waters's
heart looped the loop twice in rapid succession. It was the first time
that he had seen Eunice Bray, and, like most men who saw her for the
first time, he experienced the sensations of one in an express lift at
the tenth floor going down who has left the majority of his internal
organs up on the twenty-second. He felt a dazed emptiness. The world
swam before his eyes.

You yourself saw Eunice just now: and, though you are in a sense
immune, being engaged to a charming girl of your own, I noticed that
you unconsciously braced yourself up and tried to look twice as
handsome as nature ever intended you to. You smirked and, if you had a
moustache, you would have twiddled it. You can imagine, then, the
effect which this vision of loveliness had on lonely, diffident Ramsden
Waters. It got right in amongst him.

"I'm afraid my little brother spoiled your stroke," said Eunice. She
did not speak at all apologetically, but rather as a goddess might have
spoken to a swineherd.

Ramsden yammered noiselessly. As always in the presence of the opposite
sex, and more than ever now, his vocal cords appeared to have tied
themselves in a knot which would have baffled a sailor and might have
perplexed Houdini. He could not even gargle.

"He is very fond of watching golf," said the girl.

She took the boy by the hand, and was about to lead him off, when
Ramsden miraculously recovered speech.

"Would he like to come round with me?" he croaked. How he had managed
to acquire the nerve to make the suggestion he could never understand.
I suppose that in certain supreme moments a sort of desperate
recklessness descends on nervous men.

"How very kind of you!" said the girl indifferently. "But I'm afraid----"

"I want to go!" shrilled the boy. "I want to go!"

Fond as Eunice Bray was of her little brother, I imagine that the
prospect of having him taken off her hands on a fine summer morning,
when all nature urged her to sit in the shade on the terrace and read a
book, was not unwelcome.

"It would be very kind of you if you would let him," said Eunice. "He
wasn't able to go to the circus last week, and it was a great
disappointment; this will do instead."

She turned toward the terrace, and Ramsden, his head buzzing, tottered
into the jungle to find his ball, followed by the boy.

I have never been able to extract full particulars of that morning's
round from Ramsden. If you speak of it to him, he will wince and change
the subject. Yet he seems to have had the presence of mind to pump
Wilberforce as to the details of his home life, and by the end of the
round he had learned that Eunice and her brother had just come to visit
an aunt who lived in the neighbourhood. Their house was not far from
the links; Eunice was not engaged to be married; and the aunt made a
hobby of collecting dry seaweed, which she pressed and pasted in an
album. One sometimes thinks that aunts live entirely for pleasure.

At the end of the round Ramsden staggered on to the terrace, tripping
over his feet, and handed Wilberforce back in good condition. Eunice,
who had just reached the chapter where the hero decides to give up all
for love, thanked him perfunctorily without looking up from her book;
and so ended the first spasm of Ramsden Waters's life romance.

There are few things more tragic than the desire of the moth for the
star; and it is a curious fact that the spectacle of a star almost
invariably fills the most sensible moth with thoughts above his
station. No doubt, if Ramsden Waters had stuck around and waited long
enough there might have come his way in the fullness of time some nice,
homely girl with a squint and a good disposition who would have been
about his form. In his modest day dreams he had aspired to nothing
higher. But the sight of Eunice Bray seemed to have knocked all the
sense out of the man. He must have known that he stood no chance of
becoming anything to her other than a handy means of getting rid of
little Wilberforce now and again. Why, the very instant that Eunice
appeared in the place, every eligible bachelor for miles around her
tossed his head with a loud, snorting sound, and galloped madly in her
direction. Dashing young devils they were, handsome, well-knit fellows
with the figures of Greek gods and the faces of movie heroes. Any one
of them could have named his own price from the advertisers of collars.
They were the sort of young men you see standing grandly beside the
full-page picture of the seven-seater Magnifico car in the magazines.
And it was against this field that Ramsden Waters, the man with the
unshuffled face, dared to pit his feeble personality. One weeps.

Something of the magnitude of the task he had undertaken must have come
home to Ramsden at a very early point in the proceedings. At Eunice's
home, at the hour when women receive callers, he was from the start a
mere unconsidered unit in the mob scene. While his rivals clustered
thickly about the girl, he was invariably somewhere on the outskirts
listening limply to the aunt. I imagine that seldom has any young man
had such golden opportunities of learning all about dried seaweed.
Indeed, by the end of the month Ramsden Waters could not have known
more about seaweed if he had been a deep sea fish. And yet he was not
happy. He was in a position, if he had been at a dinner party and
things had got a bit slow, to have held the table spellbound with the
first hand information about dried seaweed, straight from the stable;
yet nevertheless he chafed. His soul writhed and sickened within him.
He lost weight and went right off his approach shots. I confess that my
heart bled for the man.

His only consolation was that nobody else, not even the fellows who
worked their way right through the jam and got seats in the front row
where they could glare into her eyes and hang on her lips and all that
sort of thing, seemed to be making any better progress.

And so matters went on till one day Eunice decided to take up golf. Her
motive for doing this was, I believe, simply because Kitty Manders, who
had won a small silver cup at a monthly handicap, receiving thirty-six,
was always dragging the conversation round to this trophy, and if there
was one firm article in Eunice Bray's simple creed it was that she
would be hanged if she let Kitty, who was by way of being a rival on a
small scale, put anything over on her. I do not defend Eunice, but
women are women, and I doubt if any of them really take up golf in that
holy, quest-of-the-grail spirit which animates men. I have known girls
to become golfers as an excuse for wearing pink jumpers, and one at
least who did it because she had read in the beauty hints in the
evening paper that it made you lissome. Girls will be girls.

Her first lessons Eunice received from the professional, but after that
she saved money by distributing herself among her hordes of admirers,
who were only too willing to give up good matches to devote themselves
to her tuition. By degrees she acquired a fair skill and a confidence
in her game which was not altogether borne out by results. From Ramsden
Waters she did not demand a lesson. For one thing it never occurred to
her that so poor-spirited a man could be of any use at the game, and
for another Ramsden was always busy tooling round with little
Wilberforce.

Yet it was with Ramsden that she was paired in the first competition
for which she entered, the annual mixed foursomes. And it was on the
same evening that the list of the draw went up on the notice board that
Ramsden proposed.

The mind of a man in love works in strange ways. To you and to me there
would seem to be no reason why the fact that Eunice's name and his own
had been drawn out of a hat together should so impress Ramsden, but he
looked on it as an act of God. It seemed to him to draw them close
together, to set up a sort of spiritual affinity. In a word, it acted
on the poor fellow like a tonic, and that very night he went around to
her house, and having, after a long and extremely interesting
conversation with her aunt, contrived to get her alone, coughed eleven
times in a strangled sort of way, and suggested that the wedding bells
should ring out.

Eunice was more startled than angry.

"Of course, I'm tremendously complimented, Mr.----" She had to pause to
recall the name. "Mr.----"

"Waters," said Ramsden, humbly.

"Of course, yes. Mr. Waters. As I say, it's a great compliment----"

"Not at all!"

"A great compliment----"

"No, no!" murmured Ramsden obsequiously.

"I wish you wouldn't interrupt!" snapped Eunice with irritation. No
girl likes to have to keep going back and trying over her speeches.
"It's a great compliment, but it is quite impossible."

"Just as you say, of course," agreed Ramsden.

"What," demanded Eunice, "have you to offer me? I don't mean money. I
mean something more spiritual. What is there in you, Mr. Walter----"

"Waters."

"Mr. Waters. What is there in you that would repay a girl for giving up
the priceless boon of freedom?"

"I know a lot about dried seaweed," suggested Ramsden hopefully.

Eunice shook her head.

"No," she said, "it is quite impossible. You have paid me the greatest
compliment a man can pay a woman, Mr. Waterson----"

"Waters," said Ramsden. "I'll write it down for you."

"Please don't trouble. I am afraid we shall never meet again----"

"But we are partners in the mixed foursomes tomorrow."

"Oh, yes, so we are!" said Eunice. "Well, mind you play up. I want to
win a cup more than anything on earth."

"Ah!" said Ramsden, "if only I could win what I want to win more than
anything else on earth! You, I mean," he added, to make his meaning
clear. "If I could win you----" His tongue tied itself in a bow knot
round his uvula, and he could say no more. He moved slowly to the door,
paused with his fingers on the handle for one last look over his
shoulder, and walked silently into the cupboard where Eunice's aunt
kept her collection of dried seaweed.

His second start was favoured with greater luck, and he found himself
out in the hall, and presently in the cool air of the night, with the
stars shining down on him. Had those silent stars ever shone down on a
more broken-hearted man? Had the cool air of the night ever fanned a
more fevered brow? Ah, yes! Or, rather, ah no!

There was not a very large entry for the mixed foursomes competition.
In my experience there seldom is. Men are as a rule idealists, and wish
to keep their illusions regarding women intact, and it is difficult for
the most broad-minded man to preserve a chivalrous veneration for the
sex after a woman has repeatedly sliced into the rough and left him a
difficult recovery. Women, too--I am not speaking of the occasional
champions, but of the average woman, the one with the handicap of 33,
who plays in high-heeled shoes--are apt to giggle when they foozle out
of a perfect lie, and this makes for misogyny. Only eight couples
assembled on the tenth tee (where our foursomes matches start) on the
morning after Ramsden Waters had proposed to Eunice. Six of these were
negligible, consisting of males of average skill and young women who
played golf because it kept them out in the fresh air. Looking over the
field, Ramsden felt that the only serious rivalry was to be feared from
Marcella Bingley and her colleague, a 16-handicap youth named George
Perkins, with whom they were paired for the opening round. George was a
pretty indifferent performer, but Marcella, a weather-beaten female
with bobbed hair and the wrists of a welterweight pugilist, had once
appeared in the women's open championship and swung a nasty iron.

Ramsden watched her drive a nice, clean shot down the middle of the
fairway, and spoke earnestly to Eunice. His heart was in this
competition, for, though the first prize in the mixed foursomes does
not perhaps entitle the winners to a place in the hall of fame, Ramsden
had the soul of the true golfer. And the true golfer wants to win
whenever he starts, whether he is playing in a friendly round or in the
open championship.

"What we've got to do is to play steadily," he said. "Don't try any
fancy shots. Go for safety. Miss Bingley is a tough proposition, but
George Perkins is sure to foozle a few, and if we play safe we've got
'em cold. The others don't count."

You notice something odd about this speech. Something in it strikes you
as curious. Precisely. It affected Eunice Bray in the same fashion. In
the first place, it contains forty-four words, some of them of two
syllables, others of even greater length. In the second place, it was
spoken crisply, almost commandingly, without any of that hesitation and
stammering which usually characterized Ramsden Waters's utterances.
Eunice was puzzled. She was also faintly resentful. True, there was not
a word in what he had said that was calculated to bring the blush of
shame to the cheek of modesty; nevertheless, she felt vaguely that
Ramsden Waters had exceeded the limits. She had been prepared for a
gurgling Ramsden Waters, a Ramsden Waters who fell over his large feet
and perspired; but here was a Ramsden Waters who addressed her not
merely as an equal, but with more than a touch of superiority. She eyed
him coldly, but he had turned to speak to little Wilberforce, who was
to accompany them on the round.

"And you, my lad," said Ramsden curtly, "you kindly remember that this
is a competition, and keep your merry flow of conversation as much as
possible to yourself. You've got a bad habit of breaking into small
talk when a man's addressing the ball."

"If you think that my brother will be in the way----" began Eunice
coldly.

"Oh, I don't mind him coming round," said Ramsden, "if he keeps quiet."

Eunice gasped. She had not played enough golf to understand how that
noblest of games changes a man's whole nature when on the links. She
was thinking of something crushing to say to him, when he advanced to
the tee to drive off.

He drove a perfect ball, hard and low with a lot of roll. Even Eunice
was impressed.

"Good shot, partner!" she said.

Ramsden was apparently unaware that she had spoken. He was gazing down
the fairway with his club over his left shoulder in an attitude almost
identical with that of Sandy McBean in the plate labelled "The
Drive--Correct Finish", to face page twenty-four of his monumental
work, "How to Become a Scratch Player Your First Season by Studying
Photographs". Eunice bit her lip. She was piqued. She felt as if she
had patted the head of a pet lamb, and the lamb had turned and bitten
her in the finger.

"I said, 'Good shot, partner!'" she repeated coldly.

"Yes," said Ramsden, "but don't talk. It prevents one concentrating."
He turned to Wilberforce. "And don't let me have to tell you that
again!" he said.

"Wilberforce has been like a mouse!"

"That is what I complain of," said Ramsden. "Mice make a beastly
scratching sound, and that's what he was doing when I drove that ball."

"He was only playing with the sand in the tee box."

"Well, if he does it again, I shall be reluctantly compelled to take
steps."

They walked in silence to where the ball had stopped. It was nicely
perched up on the grass, and to have plunked it on to the green with an
iron should have been for any reasonable golfer the work of a moment.
Eunice, however, only succeeded in slicing it feebly into the rough.

Ramsden reached for his niblick and plunged into the bushes. And,
presently, as if it had been shot up by some convulsion of nature, the
ball, accompanied on the early stages of its journey by about a pound
of mixed mud, grass, and pebbles, soared through the air and fell on
the green. But the mischief had been done. Miss Bingley, putting
forcefully, put the opposition ball down for a four and won the hole.

Eunice now began to play better, and, as Ramsden was on the top of his
game, a ding-dong race ensued for the remainder of the first nine
holes. The Bingley-Perkins combination, owing to some inspired work by
the female of the species, managed to keep their lead up to the tricky
ravine hole, but there George Perkins, as might have been expected of
him, deposited the ball right in among the rocks, and Ramsden and
Eunice drew level. The next four holes were halved and they reached the
club-house with no advantage to either side. Here there was a pause
while Miss Bingley went to the professional's shop to have a tack put
into the leather of her mashie, which had worked loose. George Perkins
and little Wilberforce, who believed in keeping up their strength,
melted silently away in the direction of the refreshment bar, and
Ramsden and Eunice were alone.

The pique which Eunice had felt at the beginning of the game had
vanished by now. She was feeling extremely pleased with her performance
on the last few holes, and would have been glad to go into the matter
fully. Also, she was conscious of a feeling not perhaps of respect so
much as condescending tolerance towards Ramsden. He might be a pretty
minus quantity in a drawing-room or at a dance, but in a bunker or out
in the open with a cleek, Eunice felt, you'd be surprised. She was just
about to address him in a spirit of kindliness, when he spoke.

"Better keep your brassey in the bag on the next nine," he said. "Stick
to the iron. The great thing is to keep 'em straight!"

Eunice gasped. Indeed, had she been of a less remarkable beauty one
would have said that she snorted. The sky turned black, and all her
amiability was swept away in a flood of fury. The blood left her face
and surged back in a rush of crimson. You are engaged to be married and
I take it that there exists between you and your _fiancee_ the
utmost love and trust and understanding; but would you have the nerve,
could you summon up the cold, callous gall to tell your Genevieve that
she wasn't capable of using her wooden clubs? I think not. Yet this was
what Ramsden Waters had told Eunice, and the delicately nurtured girl
staggered before the coarse insult. Her refined, sensitive nature was
all churned up.

Ever since she had made her first drive at golf, she had prided herself
on her use of the wood. Her brother and her brassey were the only
things she loved. And here was this man deliberately.... Eunice choked.

"Mr. Waters!"

Before they could have further speech George Perkins and little
Wilberforce ambled in a bloated way out of the clubhouse.

"I've had three ginger ales," observed the boy. "Where do we go from
here?"

"Our honour," said Ramsden. "Shoot!"

Eunice took out her driver without a word. Her little figure was tense
with emotion. She swung vigorously, and pulled the ball far out on to
the fairway of the ninth hole.

"Even off the tee," said Ramsden, "you had better use an iron. You must
keep 'em straight."

Their eyes met. Hers were glittering with the fury of a woman scorned.
His were cold and hard. And, suddenly, as she looked at his awful,
pale, set golf face, something seemed to snap in Eunice. A strange
sensation of weakness and humility swept over her. So might the cave
woman have felt when, with her back against a cliff and unable to
dodge, she watched her suitor take his club in the interlocking grip,
and, after a preliminary waggle, start his back swing.

The fact was that, all her life, Eunice had been accustomed to the
homage of men. From the time she had put her hair up every man she had
met had grovelled before her, and she had acquired a mental attitude
toward the other sex which was a blend of indifference and contempt.
For the cringing specimens who curled up and died all over the
hearthrug if she spoke a cold word to them she had nothing but scorn.
She dreamed wistfully of those brusque cavemen of whom she read in the
novels which she took out of the village circulating library. The
female novelist who was at that time her favourite always supplied with
each chunk of wholesome and invigorating fiction one beetle-browed hero
with a grouch and a scowl, who rode wild horses over the countryside
till they foamed at the mouth, and treated women like dirt. That,
Eunice had thought yearningly, as she talked to youths whose spines
turned to gelatine at one glance from her bright eyes, was the sort of
man she wanted to meet and never seemed to come across.

Of all the men whose acquaintance she had made recently she had
despised Ramsden Waters most. Where others had grovelled he had tied
himself into knots. Where others had gazed at her like sheep he had
goggled at her like a kicked spaniel. She had only permitted him to
hang round because he seemed so fond of little Wilberforce. And here he
was, ordering her about and piercing her with gimlet eyes, for all the
world as if he were Claude Delamere, in the thirty-second chapter of
"The Man of Chilled Steel", the one where Claude drags Lady Matilda
around the smoking-room by her hair because she gave the rose from her
bouquet to the Italian count.

She was half-cowed, half-resentful.

"Mr Winklethorpe told me I was very good with the wooden clubs," she
said defiantly.

"He's a great kidder," said Ramsden.

He went down the hill to where his ball lay. Eunice proceeded direct
for the green. Much as she told herself that she hated this man, she
never questioned his ability to get there with his next shot.

George Perkins, who had long since forfeited any confidence which his
partner might have reposed in him, had topped his drive, leaving Miss
Bingley a difficult second out of a sandy ditch. The hole was halved.

The match went on. Ramsden won the short hole, laying his ball dead
with a perfect iron shot, but at the next, the long dog-leg hole, Miss
Bingley regained the honour. They came to the last all square.

As the match had started on the tenth tee, the last hole to be
negotiated was, of course, what in the ordinary run of human affairs is
the ninth, possibly the trickiest on the course. As you know, it is
necessary to carry with one's initial wallop that combination of stream
and lake into which so many well meant drives have flopped. This done,
the player proceeds up the face of a steep slope, to find himself
ultimately on a green which looks like the sea in the storm scene of a
melodrama. It heaves and undulates, and is altogether a nasty thing to
have happen to one at the end of a gruelling match. But it is the first
shot, the drive, which is the real test, for the water and the trees
form a mental hazard of unquestionable toughness.

George Perkins, as he addressed his ball for the vital stroke,
manifestly wabbled. He was scared to the depths of his craven soul. He
tried to pray, but all he could remember was the hymn for those in
peril on the deep, into which category, he feared, his ball would
shortly fall. Breathing a few bars of this, he swung. There was a
musical click, and the ball, singing over the water like a bird,
breasted the hill like a homing aeroplane and fell in the centre of the
fairway within easy distance of the plateau green.

"Nice work, partner," said Miss Bingley, speaking for the first and
last time in the course of the proceedings.

George unravelled himself with a modest simper. He felt like a gambler
who has placed his all on a number at roulette and sees the white ball
tumble into the correct compartment.

Eunice moved to the tee. In the course of the last eight holes the
girl's haughty soul had been rudely harrowed. She had foozled two
drives and three approach shots and had missed a short putt on the last
green but three. She had that consciousness of sin which afflicts the
golfer off his game, that curious self-loathing which humbles the
proudest. Her knees felt weak and all nature seemed to bellow at her
that this was where she was going to blow up with a loud report.

Even as her driver rose above her shoulder she was acutely aware that
she was making eighteen out of the twenty-three errors which complicate
the drive at golf. She knew that her head had swayed like some
beautiful flower in a stiff breeze. The heel of her left foot was
pointing down the course. Her grip had shifted, and her wrists felt
like sticks of boiled asparagus. As the club began to descend she
perceived that she had underestimated the total of her errors. And when
the ball, badly topped, bounded down the slope and entered the muddy
water like a timid diver on a cold morning she realized that she had a
full hand. There are twenty-three things which it is possible to do
wrong in the drive, and she had done them all.

Silently Ramsden Waters made a tee and placed thereon a new ball. He
was a golfer who rarely despaired, but he was playing three, and his
opponents' ball would undoubtedly be on the green, possibly even dead,
in two. Nevertheless, perhaps, by a supreme drive, and one or two
miracles later on, the game might be saved. He concentrated his whole
soul on the ball.

I need scarcely tell you that Ramsden Waters pressed....

Swish came the driver. The ball, fanned by the wind, rocked a little on
the tee, then settled down in its original position. Ramsden Waters,
usually the most careful of players, had missed the globe.

For a moment there was a silence--a silence which Ramsden had to strive
with an effort almost physically painful not to break. Rich oaths
surged to his lips, and blistering maledictions crashed against the
back of his clenched teeth.

The silence was broken by little Wilberforce.

One can only gather that there lurks in the supposedly innocuous amber
of ginger ale an elevating something which the temperance reformers
have overlooked. Wilberforce Bray had, if you remember, tucked away no
fewer than three in the spot where they would do most good. One
presumes that the child, with all that stuff surging about inside him,
had become thoroughly above himself. He uttered a merry laugh.

"Never hit it!" said little Wilberforce.

He was kneeling beside the tee box as he spoke, and now, as one who has
seen all that there is to be seen and turns, sated, to other
amusements, he moved round and began to play with the sand. The
spectacle of his alluring trouser seat was one which a stronger man
would have found it hard to resist. To Ramsden Waters it had the aspect
of a formal invitation. For one moment his number II golf shoe, as
supplied to all the leading professionals, wavered in mid-air, then
crashed home.

Eunice screamed.

"How dare you kick my brother!"

Ramsden faced her, stern and pale.

"Madam," he said, "in similar circumstances I would have kicked the
Archangel Gabriel!"

Then, stooping to his ball, he picked it up.

"The match is yours," he said to Miss Bingley, who, having paid no
attention at all to the drama which had just concluded, was practising
short chip shots with her mashie-niblick.

He bowed coldly to Eunice, cast one look of sombre satisfaction at
little Wilberforce, who was painfully extricating himself from a bed of
nettles into which he had rolled, and strode off. He crossed the bridge
over the water and stalked up the hill.

Eunice watched him go, spellbound. Her momentary spurt of wrath at the
kicking of her brother had died away, and she wished she had thought of
doing it herself.

How splendid he looked, she felt, as she watched Ramsden striding up to
the club-house--just like Carruthers Mordyke after he had flung
Ermyntrude Vanstone from him in chapter forty-one of "Gray Eyes That
Gleam". Her whole soul went out to him. This was the sort of man she
wanted as a partner in life. How grandly he would teach her to play
golf. It had sickened her when her former instructors, prefacing their
criticism with glutinous praise, had mildly suggested that some people
found it a good thing to keep the head still when driving and that
though her methods were splendid it might be worth trying. They had
spoken of her keeping her eye on the ball as if she were doing the ball
a favour. What she wanted was a great, strong, rough brute of a fellow
who would tell her not to move her damned head; a rugged Viking of a
chap who, if she did not keep her eye on the ball, would black it for
her. And Ramsden Waters was such a one. He might not look like a
Viking, but after all it is the soul that counts and, as this
afternoon's experience had taught her, Ramsden Waters had a soul that
seemed to combine in equal proportions the outstanding characteristics
of Nero, a wildcat, and the second mate of a tramp steamer.

That night Ramsden Walters sat in his study, a prey to the gloomiest
emotions. The gold had died out of him by now, and he was reproaching
himself bitterly for having ruined for ever his chance of winning the
only girl he had ever loved. How could she forgive him for his
brutality? How could she overlook treatment which would have caused
comment in the stokehold of a cattle ship? He groaned and tried to
forget his sorrows by forcing himself to read.

But the choicest thoughts of the greatest writers had no power to grip
him. He tried Vardon "On the Swing", and the words swam before his
eyes. He turned to Taylor "On the Chip Shot", and the master's pure
style seemed laboured and involved. He found solace neither in Braid
"On the Pivot" nor in Duncan "On the Divot". He was just about to give
it up and go to bed though it was only nine o'clock, when the telephone
bell rang.

"Hello!"

"Is that you, Mr. Waters? This is Eunice Bray." The receiver shook in
Ramsden's hand. "I've just remembered. Weren't we talking about
something last night? Didn't you ask me to marry you or something? I
know it was something."

Ramsden gulped three times.

"I did," he replied hollowly.

"We didn't settle anything, did we?"

"Eh?"

"I say, we sort of left it kind of open."

"Yuk!"

"Well, would it bore you awfully," said Eunice's soft voice, "to come
round now and go on talking it over?"

Ramsden tottered.

"We shall be quite alone," said Eunice. "Little Wilberforce has gone to
bed with a headache."

Ramsden paused a moment to disentangle his tongue from the back of his
neck.

"I'll be right over!" he said huskily.

10

_The Coming of Gowf_

PROLOGUE

After we had sent in our card and waited for a few hours in the marbled
ante-room, a bell rang and the major-domo, parting the priceless
curtains, ushered us in to where the editor sat writing at his desk. We
advanced on all fours, knocking our head reverently on the Aubusson
carpet.

"Well?" he said at length, laying down his jewelled pen.

"We just looked in," we said, humbly, "to ask if it would be all right
if we sent you an historical story."

"The public does not want historical stories," he said, frowning
coldly.

"Ah, but the public hasn't seen one of ours!" we replied.

The editor placed a cigarette in a holder presented to him by a
reigning monarch, and lit it with a match from a golden box, the gift
of the millionaire president of the Amalgamated League of Working
Plumbers.

"What this magazine requires," he said, "is red-blooded,
one-hundred-per-cent dynamic stuff, palpitating with warm human
interest and containing a strong, poignant love-motive."

"That," we replied, "is us all over, Mabel."

"What I need at the moment, however, is a golf story."

"By a singular coincidence, ours is a golf story."

"Ha! say you so?" said the editor, a flicker of interest passing over
his finely-chiselled features. "Then you may let me see it."

He kicked us in the face, and we withdrew.

THE STORY

On the broad terrace outside his palace, overlooking the fair expanse
of the Royal gardens, King Merolchazzar of Oom stood leaning on the low
parapet, his chin in his hand and a frown on his noble face. The day
was fine, and a light breeze bore up to him from the garden below a
fragrant scent of flowers. But, for all the pleasure it seemed to give
him, it might have been bone-fertilizer.

The fact is, King Merolchazzar was in love, and his suit was not
prospering. Enough to upset any man.

Royal love affairs in those days were conducted on the correspondence
system. A monarch, hearing good reports of a neighbouring princess,
would despatch messengers with gifts to her Court, beseeching an
interview. The Princess would name a date, and a formal meeting would
take place; after which everything usually buzzed along pretty
smoothly. But in the case of King Merolchazzar's courtship of the
Princess of the Outer Isles there had been a regrettable hitch. She had
acknowledged the gifts, saying that they were just what she had wanted
and how had he guessed, and had added that, as regarded a meeting, she
would let him know later. Since that day no word had come from her, and
a gloomy spirit prevailed in the capital. At the Courtiers' Club, the
meeting-place of the aristocracy of Oom, five to one in _pazazas_
was freely offered against Merolchazzar's chances, but found no takers;
while in the taverns of the common people, where less conservative odds
were always to be had, you could get a snappy hundred to eight. "For in
good sooth," writes a chronicler of the time on a half-brick and a
couple of paving-stones which have survived to this day, "it did indeed
begin to appear as though our beloved monarch, the son of the sun and
the nephew of the moon, had been handed the bitter fruit of the
citron."

The quaint old idiom is almost untranslatable, but one sees what he
means.

As the King stood sombrely surveying the garden, his attention was
attracted by a small, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a face like a
walnut, who stood not far away on a gravelled path flanked by rose
bushes. For some minutes he eyed this man in silence, then he called to
the Grand Vizier, who was standing in the little group of courtiers and
officials at the other end of the terrace. The bearded man, apparently
unconscious of the Royal scrutiny, had placed a rounded stone on the
gravel, and was standing beside it making curious passes over it with
his hoe. It was this singular behaviour that had attracted the King's
attention. Superficially it seemed silly, and yet Merolchazzar had a
curious feeling that there was a deep, even a holy, meaning behind the
action.

"Who," he inquired, "is that?"

"He is one of your Majesty's gardeners," replied the Vizier.

"I don't remember seeing him before. Who is he?"

The Vizier was a kind-hearted man, and he hesitated for a moment.

"It seems a hard thing to say of anyone, your Majesty," he replied,
"but he is a Scotsman. One of your Majesty's invincible admirals
recently made a raid on the inhospitable coast of that country at a
spot known to the natives as S'nandrews and brought away this man."

"What does he think he's doing?" asked the King, as the bearded one
slowly raised the hoe above his right shoulder, slightly bending the
left knee as he did so.

"It is some species of savage religious ceremony, your Majesty.
According to the admiral, the dunes by the seashore where he landed
were covered with a multitude of men behaving just as this man is
doing. They had sticks in their hands and they struck with these at
small round objects. And every now and again----"

"Fo-o-ore!" called a gruff voice from below.

"And every now and again," went on the Vizier, "they would utter the
strange melancholy cry which you have just heard. It is a species of
chant."

The Vizier broke off. The hoe had descended on the stone, and the
stone, rising in a graceful arc, had sailed through the air and fallen
within a foot of where the King stood.

"Hi!" exclaimed the Vizier.

The man looked up.

"You mustn't do that! You nearly hit his serene graciousness the King!"

"Mphm!" said the bearded man, nonchalantly, and began to wave his hoe
mystically over another stone.

Into the King's careworn face there had crept a look of interest,
almost of excitement.

"What god does he hope to propitiate by these rites?" he asked.

"The deity, I learn from your Majesty's admiral is called Gowf."

"Gowf? Gowf?" King Merolchazzar ran over in his mind the muster-roll of
the gods of Oom. There were sixty-seven of them, but Gowf was not of
their number. "It is a strange religion," he murmured. "A strange
religion, indeed. But, by Belus, distinctly attractive. I have an idea
that Oom could do with a religion like that. It has a zip to it. A sort
of fascination, if you know what I mean. It looks to me extraordinarily
like what the Court physician ordered. I will talk to this fellow and
learn more of these holy ceremonies."

And, followed by the Vizier, the King made his way into the garden. The
Vizier was now in a state of some apprehension. He was exercised in his
mind as to the effect which the embracing of a new religion by the King
might have on the formidable Church party. It would be certain to cause
displeasure among the priesthood; and in those days it was a ticklish
business to offend the priesthood, even for a monarch. And, if
Merolchazzar had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little tactless in
his dealings with that powerful body. Only a few mornings back the High
Priest of Hec had taken the Vizier aside to complain about the quality
of the meat which the King had been using lately for his sacrifices. He
might be a child in worldly matters, said the High Priest, but if the
King supposed that he did not know the difference between home-grown
domestic and frozen imported foreign, it was time his Majesty was
disabused of the idea. If, on top of this little unpleasantness, King
Merolchazzar were to become an adherent of this new Gowf, the Vizier
did not know what might not happen.

The King stood beside the bearded foreigner, watching him closely. The
second stone soared neatly on to the terrace. Merolchazzar uttered an
excited cry. His eyes were glowing, and he breathed quickly.

"It doesn't look difficult," he muttered.

"Hoo's!" said the bearded man.

"I believe I could do it," went on the King, feverishly. "By the eight
green gods of the mountain, I believe I could! By the holy fire that
burns night and day before the altar of Belus, I'm _sure_ I could!
By Hec, I'm going to do it now! Gimme that hoe!"

"Toots!" said the bearded man.

It seemed to the King that the fellow spoke derisively, and his blood
boiled angrily. He seized the hoe and raised it above his shoulder,
bracing himself solidly on widely-parted feet. His pose was an exact
reproduction of the one in which the Court sculptor had depicted him
when working on the life-size statue ("Our Athletic King") which stood
in the principal square of the city; but it did not impress the
stranger. He uttered a discordant laugh.

"Ye puir gonuph!" he cried, "whitkin' o' a staunce is that?"

The King was hurt. Hitherto the attitude had been generally admired.

"It's the way I always stand when killing lions," he said. "'In killing
lions,'" he added, quoting from the well-known treatise of Nimrod, the
recognized text-book on the sport, "'the weight at the top of the swing
should be evenly balanced on both feet.'"

"Ah, weel, ye're no killing lions the noo. Ye're gowfing."

A sudden humility descended upon the King. He felt, as so many men were
to feel in similar circumstances in ages to come, as though he were a
child looking eagerly for guidance to an all-wise master--a child,
moreover, handicapped by water on the brain, feet three sizes too large
for him, and hands consisting mainly of thumbs.

"O thou of noble ancestors and agreeable disposition!" he said, humbly.
"Teach me the true way."

"Use the interlocking grup and keep the staunce a wee bit open and slow
back, and dinna press or sway the heid and keep yer e'e on the ba'."

"My which on the what?" said the King, bewildered.

"I fancy, your Majesty," hazarded the Vizier, "that he is respectfully
suggesting that your serene graciousness should deign to keep your eye
on the ball."

"Oh, ah!" said the King.

The first golf lesson ever seen in the kingdom of Oom had begun.

Up on the terrace, meanwhile, in the little group of courtiers and
officials, a whispered consultation was in progress. Officially, the
King's unfortunate love affair was supposed to be a strict secret. But
you know how it is. These things get about. The Grand Vizier tells the
Lord High Chamberlain; the Lord High Chamberlain whispers it in
confidence to the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog;
the Supreme Hereditary Custodian hands it on to the Exalted Overseer of
the King's Wardrobe on the understanding that it is to go no farther;
and, before you know where you are, the varlets and scurvy knaves are
gossiping about it in the kitchens, and the Society journalists have
started to carve it out on bricks for the next issue of _Palace
Prattlings_.

"The long and short of it is," said the Exalted Overseer of the King's
Wardrobe, "we must cheer him up."

There was a murmur of approval. In those days of easy executions it was
no light matter that a monarch should be a prey to gloom.

"But how?" queried the Lord High Chamberlain.

"I know," said the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog.
"Try him with the minstrels."

"Here! Why us?" protested the leader of the minstrels.

"Don't be silly!" said the Lord High Chamberlain. "It's for your good
just as much as ours. He was asking only last night why he never got
any music nowadays. He told me to find out whether you supposed he paid
you simply to eat and sleep, because if so he knew what to do about
it."

"Oh, in that case!" The leader of the minstrels started nervously.
Collecting his assistants and tip-toeing down the garden, he took up
his stand a few feet in Merolchazzar's rear, just as that much-enduring
monarch, after twenty-five futile attempts, was once more addressing
his stone.

Lyric writers in those days had not reached the supreme pitch of
excellence which has been produced by modern musical comedy. The art
was in its infancy then, and the best the minstrels could do was
this--and they did it just as Merolchazzar, raising the hoe with
painful care, reached the top of his swing and started down:

    _"Oh, tune the string and let us sing
    Our godlike, great, and glorious King!
      He's a bear! He's a bear! He's a bear!"_

There were sixteen more verses, touching on their ruler's prowess in
the realms of sport and war, but they were not destined to be sung on
that circuit. King Merolchazzar jumped like a stung bullock, lifted his
head, and missed the globe for the twenty-sixth time. He spun round on
the minstrels, who were working pluckily through their song of praise:

    _"Oh, may his triumphs never cease!
      He has the strength of ten!
    First in war, first in peace,
      First in the hearts of his countrymen."_

"Get out!" roared the King.

"Your Majesty?" quavered the leader of the minstrels.

"Make a noise like an egg and beat it!" (Again one finds the
chronicler's idiom impossible to reproduce in modern speech, and must
be content with a literal translation.) "By the bones of my ancestors,
it's a little hard! By the beard of the sacred goat, it's tough! What
in the name of Belus and Hec do you mean, you yowling misfits, by
starting that sort of stuff when a man's swinging? I was just shaping
to hit it right that time when you butted in, you----"

The minstrels melted away. The bearded man patted the fermenting
monarch paternally on the shoulder.

"Ma mannie," he said, "ye may no' be a gowfer yet, but hoots! ye're
learning the language fine!"

King Merolchazzar's fury died away. He simpered modestly at these words
of commendation, the first his bearded preceptor had uttered. With
exemplary patience he turned to address the stone for the
twenty-seventh time.

That night it was all over the city that the King had gone crazy over a
new religion, and the orthodox shook their heads.

We of the present day, living in the midst of a million marvels of a
complex civilization, have learned to adjust ourselves to conditions
and to take for granted phenomena which in an earlier and less advanced
age would have caused the profoundest excitement and even alarm. We
accept without comment the telephone, the automobile, and the wireless
telegraph, and we are unmoved by the spectacle of our fellow human
beings in the grip of the first stages of golf fever. Far otherwise was
it with the courtiers and officials about the Palace of Oom. The
obsession of the King was the sole topic of conversation.

Every day now, starting forth at dawn and returning only with the
falling of darkness, Merolchazzar was out on the Linx, as the outdoor
temple of the new god was called. In a luxurious house adjoining this
expanse the bearded Scotsman had been installed, and there he could be
found at almost any hour of the day fashioning out of holy wood the
weird implements indispensable to the new religion. As a recognition of
his services, the King had bestowed upon him a large pension,
innumerable _kaddiz_ or slaves, and the title of Promoter of the
King's Happiness, which for the sake of convenience was generally
shortened to The Pro.

At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new
god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for
the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign's
fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to
a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such
vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King
the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four
Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty--a title which
in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.

All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as the courtiers
were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks
and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and
the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his
social position all cut and dried--a man, to take an instance at
random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows
that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just
above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels--it jars him, we say,
to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step in favour of the
Hereditary Bearer of the King's Baffy.

But it was from the priesthood that the real, serious opposition was to
be expected. And the priests of the sixty-seven gods of Oom were up in
arms. As the white-bearded High Priest of Hec, who by virtue of his
office was generally regarded as leader of the guild, remarked in a
glowing speech at an extraordinary meeting of the Priests' Equity
Association, he had always set his face against the principle of the
Closed Shop hitherto, but there were moments when every thinking man
had to admit that enough was sufficient, and it was his opinion that
such a moment had now arrived. The cheers which greeted the words
showed how correctly he had voiced popular sentiment.

Of all those who had listened to the High Priest's speech, none had
listened more intently than the King's half-brother, Ascobaruch. A
sinister, disappointed man, this Ascobaruch, with mean eyes and a
crafty smile. All his life he had been consumed with ambition, and
until now it had looked as though he must go to his grave with this
ambition unfulfilled. All his life he had wanted to be King of Oom, and
now he began to see daylight. He was sufficiently versed in Court
intrigues to be aware that the priests were the party that really
counted, the source from which all successful revolutions sprang. And
of all the priests the one that mattered most was the venerable High
Priest of Hec.

It was to this prelate, therefore, that Ascobaruch made his way at the
close of the proceedings. The meeting had dispersed after passing a
unanimous vote of censure on King Merolchazzar, and the High Priest was
refreshing himself in the vestry--for the meeting had taken place in
the Temple of Hec--with a small milk and honey.

"Some speech!" began Ascobaruch in his unpleasant, crafty way. None
knew better than he the art of appealing to human vanity.

The High Priest was plainly gratified.

"Oh, I don't know," he said, modestly.

"Yessir!" said Ascobaruch. "Considerable oration! What I can never
understand is how you think up all these things to say. I couldn't do
it if you paid me. The other night I had to propose the Visitors at the
Old Alumni dinner of Oom University, and my mind seemed to go all
blank. But you just stand up and the words come fluttering out of you
like bees out of a barn. I simply cannot understand it. The thing gets
past me."

"Oh, it's just a knack."

"A divine gift, I should call it."

"Perhaps you're right," said the High Priest, finishing his milk and
honey. He was wondering why he had never realized before what a capital
fellow Ascobaruch was.

"Of course," went on Ascobaruch, "you had an excellent subject. I mean
to say, inspiring and all that. Why, by Hec, even I--though, of course,
I couldn't have approached your level--even I could have done something
with a subject like that. I mean, going off and worshipping a new god
no one has ever heard of. I tell you, my blood fairly boiled. Nobody
has a greater respect and esteem for Merolchazzar than I have, but I
mean to say, what! Not right, I mean, going off worshipping gods no one
has ever heard of! I'm a peaceable man, and I've made it a rule never
to mix in politics, but if you happened to say to me as we were sitting
here, just as one reasonable man to another--if you happened to say,
'Ascobaruch, I think it's time that definite steps were taken,' I
should reply frankly, 'My dear old High Priest, I absolutely agree with
you, and I'm with you all the way.' You might even go so far as to
suggest that the only way out of the muddle was to assassinate
Merolchazzar and start with a clean slate."

The High Priest stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"I am bound to say I never thought of going quite so far as that."

"Merely a suggestion, of course," said Ascobaruch. "Take it or leave
it. I shan't be offended. If you know a superior excavation, go to it.
But as a sensible man--and I've always maintained that you are the most
sensible man in the country--you must see that it would be a solution.
Merolchazzar has been a pretty good king, of course. No one denies
that. A fair general, no doubt, and a plus-man at lion-hunting. But,
after all--look at it fairly--is life all battles and lion-hunting?
Isn't there a deeper side? Wouldn't it be better for the country to
have some good orthodox fellow who has worshipped Hec all his life, and
could be relied on to maintain the old beliefs--wouldn't the fact that
a man like that was on the throne be likely to lead to more general
prosperity? There are dozens of men of that kind simply waiting to be
asked. Let us say, purely for purposes of argument, that you approached
_me_. I should reply, 'Unworthy though I know myself to be of such
an honour, I can tell you this. If you put me on the throne, you can
bet your bottom _pazaza_ that there's one thing that won't suffer,
and that is the worship of Hec!' That's the way I feel about it."

The High Priest pondered.

"O thou of unshuffled features but amiable disposition!" he said, "thy
discourse soundeth good to me. Could it be done?"

"Could it!" Ascobaruch uttered a hideous laugh. "Could it! Arouse me in
the night-watches and ask me! Question me on the matter, having stopped
me for that purpose on the public highway! What I would suggest--I'm
not dictating, mind you; merely trying to help you out--what I would
suggest is that you took that long, sharp knife of yours, the one you
use for the sacrifices, and toddled out to the Linx--you're sure to
find the King there; and just when he's raising that sacrilegious stick
of his over his shoulder----"

"O man of infinite wisdom," cried the High Priest, warmly, "verily hast
them spoken a fullness of the mouth!"

"Is it a wager?" said Ascobaruch.

"It is a wager!" said the High Priest.

"That's that, then," said Ascobaruch. "Now, I don't want to be mixed up
in any unpleasantness, so what I think I'll do while what you might
call the preliminaries are being arranged is to go and take a little
trip abroad somewhere. The Middle Lakes are pleasant at this time of
year. When I come back, it's possible that all the formalities will
have been completed, yes?"

"Rely on me, by Hec!" said the High Priest grimly, as he fingered his
weapon.

The High Priest was as good as his word. Early on the morrow he made
his way to the Linx, and found the King holing-out on the second green.
Merolchazzar was in high good humour.

"Greetings, O venerable one!" he cried, jovially. "Hadst thou come a
moment sooner, them wouldst have seen me lay my ball dead--aye, dead as
mutton, with the sweetest little half-mashie-niblick chip-shot ever
seen outside the sacred domain of S'nandrew, on whom"--he bared his
head reverently--"be peace! In one under bogey did I do the hole--yea,
and that despite the fact that, slicing my drive, I became ensnared in
yonder undergrowth."

The High Priest had not the advantage of understanding one word of what
the King was talking about, but he gathered with satisfaction that
Merolchazzar was pleased and wholly without suspicion. He clasped an
unseen hand more firmly about the handle of his knife, and accompanied
the monarch to the next altar. Merolchazzar stooped, and placed a small
round white object on a little mound of sand. In spite of his austere
views, the High Priest, always a keen student of ritual, became
interested.

"Why does your Majesty do that?"

"I tee it up that it may fly the fairer. If I did not, then would it be
apt to run along the ground like a beetle instead of soaring like a
bird, and mayhap, for thou seest how rough and tangled is the grass
before us, I should have to use a niblick for my second."

The High Priest groped for his meaning.

"It is a ceremony to propitiate the god and bring good luck?"

"You might call it that."

The High Priest shook his head.

"I may be old-fashioned," he said, "but I should have thought that, to
propitiate a god, it would have been better to have sacrificed one of
these _kaddiz_ on his altar."

"I confess," replied the King, thoughtfully, "that I have often felt
that it would be a relief to one's feelings to sacrifice one or two
_kaddiz_, but The Pro for some reason or other has set his face
against it." He swung at the ball, and sent it forcefully down the
fairway. "By Abe, the son of Mitchell," he cried, shading his eyes, "a
bird of a drive! How truly is it written in the book of the prophet
Vadun, 'The left hand applieth the force, the right doth but guide.
Grip not, therefore, too closely with the right hand!' Yesterday I was
pulling all the time."

The High Priest frowned.

"It is written in the sacred book of Hec, your Majesty, 'Thou shalt not
follow after strange gods'."

"Take thou this stick, O venerable one," said the King, paying no
attention to the remark, "and have a shot thyself. True, thou art well
stricken in years, but many a man has so wrought that he was able to
give his grandchildren a stroke a hole. It is never too late to begin."

The High Priest shrank back, horrified. The King frowned.

"It is our Royal wish," he said, coldly.

The High Priest was forced to comply. Had they been alone, it is
possible that he might have risked all on one swift stroke with his
knife, but by this time a group of _kaddiz_ had drifted up, and
were watching the proceedings with that supercilious detachment so
characteristic of them. He took the stick and arranged his limbs as the
King directed.

"Now," said Merolchazzar, "slow back and keep your e'e on the ba'!"

A month later, Ascobaruch returned from his trip. He had received no
word from the High Priest announcing the success of the revolution, but
there might be many reasons for that. It was with unruffled contentment
that he bade his charioteer drive him to the palace. He was glad to get
back, for after all a holiday is hardly a holiday if you have left your
business affairs unsettled.

As he drove, the chariot passed a fair open space, on the outskirts of
the city. A sudden chill froze the serenity of Ascobaruch's mood. He
prodded the charioteer sharply in the small of the back.

"What is that?" he demanded, catching his breath.

All over the green expanse could be seen men in strange robes, moving
to and fro in couples and bearing in their hands mystic wands. Some
searched restlessly in the bushes, others were walking briskly in the
direction of small red flags. A sickening foreboding of disaster fell
upon Ascobaruch.

The charioteer seemed surprised at the question.

"Yon's the muneecipal linx," he replied.

"The what?"

"The muneecipal linx."

"Tell me, fellow, why do you talk that way?"

"Whitway?"

"Why, like that. The way you're talking."

"Hoots, mon!" said the charioteer. "His Majesty King Merolchazzar--may
his handicap decrease!--hae passit a law that a' his soobjects shall do
it. Aiblins, 'tis the language spoken by The Pro, on whom be peace!
Mphm!"

Ascobaruch sat back limply, his head swimming. The chariot drove on,
till now it took the road adjoining the royal Linx. A wall lined a
portion of this road, and suddenly, from behind this wall, there rent
the air a great shout of laughter.

"Pull up!" cried Ascobaruch to the charioteer.

He had recognized that laugh. It was the laugh of Merolchazzar.

Ascobaruch crept to the wall and cautiously poked his head over it. The
sight he saw drove the blood from his face and left him white and
haggard.

The King and the Grand Vizier were playing a foursome against the Pro
and the High Priest of Hec, and the Vizier had just laid the High
Priest a dead stymie.

Ascobaruch tottered to the chariot.

"Take me back," he muttered, pallidly. "I've forgotten something!"

And so golf came to Oom, and with it prosperity unequalled in the whole
history of the land. Everybody was happy. There was no more
unemployment. Crime ceased. The chronicler repeatedly refers to it in
his memoirs as the Golden Age. And yet there remained one man on whom
complete felicity had not descended. It was all right while he was
actually on the Linx, but there were blank, dreary stretches of the
night when King Merolchazzar lay sleepless on his couch and mourned
that he had nobody to love him.

Of course, his subjects loved him in a way. A new statue had been
erected in the palace square, showing him in the act of getting out of
casual water. The minstrels had composed a whole cycle of up-to-date
songs, commemorating his prowess with the mashie. His handicap was down
to twelve. But these things are not all. A golfer needs a loving wife,
to whom he can describe the day's play through the long evenings. And
this was just where Merolchazzar's life was empty. No word had come
from the Princess of the Outer Isles, and, as he refused to be put off
with just-as-good substitutes, he remained a lonely man.

But one morning, in the early hours of a summer day, as he lay sleeping
after a disturbed night, Merolchazzar was awakened by the eager hand of
the Lord High Chamberlain, shaking his shoulder.

"Now what?" said the King.

"Hoots, your Majesty! Glorious news! The Princess of the Outer Isles
waits without--I mean wi'oot!"

The King sprang from his couch.

"A messenger from the Princess at last!"

"Nay, sire, the Princess herself--that is to say," said the Lord
Chamberlain, who was an old man and had found it hard to accustom
himself to the new tongue at his age, "her ain sel'! And believe me, or
rather, mind ah'm telling ye," went on the honest man, joyfully, for he
had been deeply exercised by his monarch's troubles, "her Highness is
the easiest thing to look at these eyes hae ever seen. And you can say
I said it!"

"She is beautiful?"

"Your majesty, she is, in the best and deepest sense of the word, a
pippin!"

King Merolchazzar was groping wildly for his robes.

"Tell her to wait!" he cried. "Go and amuse her. Ask her riddles! Tell
her anecdotes! Don't let her go. Say I'll be down in a moment. Where in
the name of Zoroaster is our imperial mesh-knit underwear?"

A fair and pleasing sight was the Princess of the Outer Isles as she
stood on the terrace in the clear sunshine of the summer morning,
looking over the King's gardens. With her delicate little nose she
sniffed the fragrance of the flowers. Her blue eyes roamed over the
rose bushes, and the breeze ruffled the golden curls about her temples.
Presently a sound behind her caused her to turn, and she perceived a
godlike man hurrying across the terrace pulling up a sock. And at the
sight of him the Princess's heart sang within her like the birds down
in the garden.

"Hope I haven't kept you waiting," said Merolchazzar, apologetically.
He, too, was conscious of a strange, wild exhilaration. Truly was this
maiden, as his Chamberlain had said, noticeably easy on the eyes. Her
beauty was as water in the desert, as fire on a frosty night, as
diamonds, rubies, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts.

"Oh, no!" said the princess, "I've been enjoying myself. How passing
beautiful are thy gardens, O King!"

"My gardens may be passing beautiful," said Merolchazzar, earnestly,
"but they aren't half so passing beautiful as thy eyes. I have dreamed
of thee by night and by day, and I will tell the world I was nowhere
near it! My sluggish fancy came not within a hundred and fifty-seven
miles of the reality. Now let the sun dim his face and the moon hide
herself abashed. Now let the flowers bend their heads and the gazelle
of the mountains confess itself a cripple. Princess, your slave!"

And King Merolchazzar, with that easy grace so characteristic of
Royalty, took her hand in his and kissed it.

As he did so, he gave a start of surprise.

"By Hec!" he exclaimed. "What hast thou been doing to thyself? Thy hand
is all over little rough places inside. Has some malignant wizard laid
a spell upon thee, or what is it?"

The Princess blushed.

"If I make that clear to thee," she said, "I shall also make clear why
it was that I sent thee no message all this long while. My time was so
occupied, verily I did not seem to have a moment. The fact is, these
sorenesses are due to a strange, new religion to which I and my
subjects have but recently become converted. And O that I might make
thee also of the true faith! 'Tis a wondrous tale, my lord. Some two
moons back there was brought to my Court by wandering pirates a captive
of an uncouth race who dwell in the north. And this man has taught
us----"

King Merolchazzar uttered a loud cry.

"By Tom, the son of Morris! Can this truly be so? What is thy
handicap?"

The Princess stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Truly this is a miracle! Art thou also a worshipper of the great
Gowf?"

"Am I!" cried the King. "Am I!" He broke off. "Listen!"

From the minstrels' room high up in the palace there came the sound of
singing. The minstrels were practising a new paean of praise--words by
the Grand Vizier, music by the High Priest of Hec--which they were to
render at the next full moon at the banquet of the worshippers of Gowf.
The words came clear and distinct through the still air:

    _"Oh, praises let us utter
    To our most glorious King!
    It fairly makes you stutter
    To see him start his swing!
    Success attend his putter!
    And luck be with his drive!
    And may he do each hole in two,
    Although the bogey's five!"_

The voices died away. There was a silence.

"If I hadn't missed a two-foot putt, I'd have done the long fifteenth
in four yesterday," said the King.

"I won the Ladies' Open Championship of the Outer Isles last week,"
said the Princess.

They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment. And then, hand in
hand, they walked slowly into the palace.

EPILOGUE

"Well?" we said, anxiously.

"I like it," said the editor.

"Good egg!" we murmured.

The editor pressed a bell, a single ruby set in a fold of the tapestry
upon the wall. The major-domo appeared.

"Give this man a purse of gold," said the editor, "and throw him out."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P. G. Wodehouse