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 Saturday
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superseded the old dignified gutty.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, passing from the lemonade which he is sucking
through a straw, rests upon the Saturday foursome which is struggling
raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Saturday 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
Saturday 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 noble thought came to him
after he had sliced a couple of new balls 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. Nobody 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 Mitchell Holmes. Mitchell, 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, Mitchell 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.

Mitchell Holmes had only one fault. He lost his temper when playing
golf. He seldom played a round without becoming piqued, peeved, or--in
many cases--chagrined. The caddies on our links, it was said, could
always worst other small boys in verbal argument by calling them some
of the things they had heard Mitchell call his ball on discovering it
in a cuppy lie. He had a great gift of language, and he used it
unsparingly. I will admit that there was some excuse for the man. He
had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck
and inconsistent play invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill.
He was the sort of player who does the first two holes in one under
bogey and then takes an eleven at the third. The least thing upset him
on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the
butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

It seemed hardly likely that this one kink in an otherwise admirable
character would ever seriously affect his working or professional life,
but it did. One evening, as I was sitting in my garden, Alexander
Paterson was announced. A glance at his face told me that he had come
to ask my advice. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded me as one capable of
giving advice. It was I who had changed the whole current of his life
by counselling him to leave the wood in his bag and take a driving-iron
off the tee; and in one or two other matters, like the choice of a
putter (so much more important than the choice of a wife), I had been
of assistance to him.

Alexander sat down and fanned himself with his hat, for the evening was
warm. Perplexity was written upon his fine face.

"I don't know what to do," he said.

"Keep the head still--slow back--don't press," I said, gravely. There
is no better rule for a happy and successful life.

"It's nothing to do with golf this time," he said. "It's about the
treasurership of my company. Old Smithers retires next week, and I've
got to find a man to fill his place."

"That should be easy. You have simply to select the most deserving from
among your other employees."

"But which _is_ the most deserving? That's the point. There are
two men who are capable of holding the job quite adequately. But then I
realize how little I know of their real characters. It is the
treasurership, you understand, which has to be filled. Now, a man who
was quite good at another job might easily get wrong ideas into his
head when he became a treasurer. He would have the handling of large
sums of money. In other words, a man who in ordinary circumstances had
never been conscious of any desire to visit the more distant portions
of South America might feel the urge, so to speak, shortly after he
became a treasurer. That is my difficulty. Of course, one always takes
a sporting chance with any treasurer; but how am I to find out which of
these two men would give me the more reasonable opportunity of keeping
some of my money?"

I did not hesitate a moment. I held strong views on the subject of
character-testing.

"The only way," I said to Alexander, "of really finding out a man's
true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does
the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. I employed a lawyer for
years, until one day I saw him kick his ball out of a heel-mark. I
removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run
off with any trust-funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, and I
am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow,
is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone,
with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball
where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. The
man who can smile bravely when his putt is diverted by one of those
beastly wormcasts is pure gold right through. But the man who is hasty,
unbalanced, and violent on the links will display the same qualities in
the wider field of everyday life. You don't want an unbalanced
treasurer do you?"

"Not if his books are likely to catch the complaint."

"They are sure to. Statisticians estimate that the average of crime
among good golfers is lower than in any class of the community except
possibly bishops. Since Willie Park won the first championship at
Prestwick in the year 1860 there has, I believe, been no instance of an
Open Champion spending a day in prison. Whereas the bad golfers--and by
bad I do not mean incompetent, but black-souled--the men who fail to
count a stroke when they miss the globe; the men who never replace a
divot; the men who talk while their opponent is driving; and the men
who let their angry passions rise--these are in and out of Wormwood
Scrubbs all the time. They find it hardly worth while to get their hair
cut in their brief intervals of liberty."

Alexander was visibly impressed.

"That sounds sensible, by George!" he said.

"It is sensible."

"I'll do it! Honestly, I can't see any other way of deciding between
Holmes and Dixon."

I started.

"Holmes? Not Mitchell Holmes?"

"Yes. Of course you must know him? He lives here, I believe."

"And by Dixon do you mean Rupert Dixon?"

"That's the man. Another neighbour of yours."

I confess that my heart sank. It was as if my ball had fallen into the
pit which my niblick had digged. I wished heartily that I had thought
of waiting to ascertain the names of the two rivals before offering my
scheme. I was extremely fond of Mitchell Holmes and of the girl to whom
he was engaged to be married. Indeed, it was I who had sketched out a
few rough notes for the lad to use when proposing; and results had
shown that he had put my stuff across well. And I had listened many a
time with a sympathetic ear to his hopes in the matter of securing a
rise of salary which would enable him to get married. Somehow, when
Alexander was talking, it had not occurred to me that young Holmes
might be in the running for so important an office as the
treasurership. I had ruined the boy's chances. Ordeal by golf was the
one test which he could not possibly undergo with success. Only a
miracle could keep him from losing his temper, and I had expressly
warned Alexander against such a man.

When I thought of his rival my heart sank still more. Rupert Dixon was
rather an unpleasant young man, but the worst of his enemies could not
accuse him of not possessing the golfing temperament. From the drive
off the tee to the holing of the final putt he was uniformly suave.

* * * * *

When Alexander had gone, I sat in thought for some time. I was faced
with a problem. Strictly speaking, no doubt, I had no right to take
sides; and, though secrecy had not been enjoined upon me in so many
words, I was very well aware that Alexander was under the impression
that I would keep the thing under my hat and not reveal to either party
the test that awaited him. Each candidate was, of course, to remain
ignorant that he was taking part in anything but a friendly game.

But when I thought of the young couple whose future depended on this
ordeal, I hesitated no longer. I put on my hat and went round to Miss
Boyd's house, where I knew that Mitchell was to be found at this hour.

The young couple were out in the porch, looking at the moon. They
greeted me heartily, but their heartiness had rather a tinny sound, and
I could see that on the whole they regarded me as one of those things
which should not happen. But when I told my story their attitude
changed. They began to look on me in the pleasanter light of a
guardian, philosopher, and friend.

"Wherever did Mr. Paterson get such a silly idea?" said Miss Boyd,
indignantly. I had--from the best motives--concealed the source of the
scheme. "It's ridiculous!"

"Oh, I don't know," said Mitchell. "The old boy's crazy about golf.
It's just the sort of scheme he would cook up. Well, it dishes
_me_!"

"Oh, come!" I said.

"It's no good saying 'Oh, come!' You know perfectly well that I'm a
frank, outspoken golfer. When my ball goes off nor'-nor'-east when I
want it to go due west I can't help expressing an opinion about it. It
is a curious phenomenon which calls for comment, and I give it.
Similarly, when I top my drive, I have to go on record as saying that I
did not do it intentionally. And it's just these trifles, as far as I
can make out, that are going to decide the thing."

"Couldn't you learn to control yourself on the links, Mitchell,
darling?" asked Millicent. "After all, golf is only a game!"

Mitchell's eyes met mine, and I have no doubt that mine showed just the
same look of horror which I saw in his. Women say these things without
thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character.
They simply don't realize what they are saying.

"Hush!" said Mitchell, huskily, patting her hand and overcoming his
emotion with a strong effort. "Hush, dearest!"

* * * * *

Two or three days later I met Millicent coming from the post-office.
There was a new light of happiness in her eyes, and her face was
glowing.

"Such a splendid thing has happened," she said. "After Mitchell left
that night I happened to be glancing through a magazine, and I came
across a wonderful advertisement. It began by saying that all the great
men in history owed their success to being able to control themselves,
and that Napoleon wouldn't have amounted to anything if he had not
curbed his fiery nature, and then it said that we can all be like
Napoleon if we fill in the accompanying blank order-form for Professor
Orlando Rollitt's wonderful book, 'Are You Your Own Master?' absolutely
free for five days and then seven shillings, but you must write at once
because the demand is enormous and pretty soon it may be too late. I
wrote at once, and luckily I was in time, because Professor Rollitt did
have a copy left, and it's just arrived. I've been looking through it,
and it seems splendid."

She held out a small volume. I glanced at it. There was a frontispiece
showing a signed photograph of Professor Orlando Rollitt controlling
himself in spite of having long white whiskers, and then some reading
matter, printed between wide margins. One look at the book told me the
professor's methods. To be brief, he had simply swiped Marcus
Aurelius's best stuff, the copyright having expired some two thousand
years ago, and was retailing it as his own. I did not mention this to
Millicent. It was no affair of mine. Presumably, however obscure the
necessity, Professor Rollitt had to live.

"I'm going to start Mitchell on it today. Don't you think this is good?
'Thou seest how few be the things which if a man has at his command his
life flows gently on and is divine.' I think it will be wonderful if
Mitchell's life flows gently on and is divine for seven shillings,
don't you?"

* * * * *

At the club-house that evening I encountered Rupert Dixon. He was
emerging from a shower-bath, and looked as pleased with himself as
usual.

"Just been going round with old Paterson," he said. "He was asking
after you. He's gone back to town in his car."

I was thrilled. So the test had begun!

"How did you come out?" I asked.

Rupert Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped in a bath towel, with a
wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight.

"Oh, pretty well. I won by six and five. In spite of having poisonous
luck."

I felt a gleam of hope at these last words.

"Oh, you had bad luck?"

"The worst. I over-shot the green at the third with the best
brassey-shot I've ever made in my life--and that's saying a lot--and
lost my ball in the rough beyond it."

"And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?"

"Let myself go?"

"I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?"

"Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn't get you anywhere at golf. It only
spoils your next shot."

I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as
well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the
vacant treasurership had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even
been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that
Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor
not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when
Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would
accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with
Alexander, and give him my moral support.

"I shall need it," he said. "I don't mind telling you I'm pretty
nervous. I wish I had had longer to get the stranglehold on that 'Are
You Your Own Master?' stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real
tabasco from start to finish, and absolutely as mother makes it, but
the trouble is I've only had a few days to soak it into my system. It's
like trying to patch up a motor car with string. You never know when
the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a
ball at the water-hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do
it."

There was a silence for a moment.

"Do you believe in dreams?" asked Mitchell.

"Believe in what?"

"Dreams."

"What about them?"

"I said, 'Do you believe in dreams?' Because last night I dreamed that
I was playing in the final of the Open Championship, and I got into the
rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad
sort of way and said, 'Why don't you use the two-V grip instead of the
interlocking?' At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen,
but I've been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn't something in
it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose."

"You can't change your grip on the day of an important match."

"I suppose not. The fact is, I'm a bit jumpy, or I wouldn't have
mentioned it. Oh, well! See you tomorrow at two."

* * * * *

The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross-wind was blowing when
I reached the club-house. Alexander Paterson was there, practising
swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes
arrived, accompanied by Millicent.

"Perhaps," said Alexander, "we had better be getting under way. Shall I
take the honour?"

"Certainly," said Mitchell.

Alexander teed up his ball.

Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing
player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured
practice-swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting-green.
When he does address the ball he shuffles his feet for a moment or two,
then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if
he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he
was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the
horizon's _bona fides_, and he turns his attention to the ball
again. He shuffles his feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles
the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the
globule. At this point he suddenly peers at the horizon again, in the
apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This done, he raises his
club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the
ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, and
brings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped
in thought, like some Indian fakir contemplating the infinite. Then he
raises his club again and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he
quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for
about a hundred and fifty yards in a dead straight line.

It is a method of procedure which proves sometimes a little
exasperating to the highly strung, and I watched Mitchell's face
anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The
unhappy lad had blenched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one
in pain.

"Does he always do that?" he whispered.

"Always," I replied.

"Then I'm done for! No human being could play golf against a one-ring
circus like that without blowing up!"

I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well-poised as I am, I
had long since been compelled to give up playing with Alexander
Paterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and
resigning from the Baptist Church.

At this moment Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I
recognized it as the life-work of Professor Rollitt.

"Think on this doctrine," she said, in her soft, modulated voice, "that
to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without
intending it."

Mitchell nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.

"Before you drive, darling," said Millicent, "remember this. Let no act
be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished
rules that govern its kind."

The next moment Mitchell's ball was shooting through the air, to come
to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive.
He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter.

An admirable iron-shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and
he holed out in one under bogey with one of the nicest putts I have
ever beheld. And when at the next hole, the dangerous water-hole, his
ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole,
I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day,
and this was plainly Mitchell's. He was playing faultless golf. If he
could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no
chance to show itself.

The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine--or possibly
into it. In the latter event you breathe a prayer and call for your
niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the
equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a
brassey-shot, will put you within easy mashie-distance of the green.

Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled
back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an
indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world
seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so
little irritating as when we have just swatted the pill right on the
spot.

"I can't see why he does it," said Mitchell, eyeing Alexander with a
toleration that almost amounted to affection. "If I did all those
Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out
for and go home." Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare
three yards on the other side of the ravine. "He's what you would call
a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies!"

Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his
stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Over-confidence
at golf is almost as bad as timidity.

My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled
twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth
opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I
were standing.

"I didn't say it!" he said. "What on earth happened then?"

"Search men's governing principles," said Millicent, "and consider the
wise, what they shun and what they cleave to."

"Exactly," I said. "You swayed your body."

"And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball."

"Never mind, darling," said Millicent. "Nothing has such power to
broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly
all that comes under thy observation in life."

"Besides," I said, "you're three up."

"I shan't be after this hole."

He was right. Alexander won it in five, one above bogey, and regained
the honour.

Mitchell was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless
vigour. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short
seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth.

The ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple
four, although the rolling nature of the green makes bogey always a
somewhat doubtful feat; but, on the other hand, if you foozle your
drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The tee is on the farther
side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where the water narrows almost to
the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this water and over a
tangle of trees and under-growth on the other bank. The distance to the
fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a
mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there!

Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short,
straight drive, and Mitchell advanced to the tee.

I think the loss of the honour had been preying on his mind. He seemed
nervous. His up-swing was shaky, and he swayed back perceptibly. He
made a lunge at the ball, sliced it, and it struck a tree on the other
side of the water and fell in the long grass. We crossed the bridge to
look for it; and it was here that the effect of Professor Rollitt began
definitely to wane.

"Why on earth don't they mow this darned stuff?" demanded Mitchell,
querulously, as he beat about the grass with his niblick.

"You have to have rough on a course," I ventured.

"Whatever happens at all," said Millicent, "happens as it should. Thou
wilt find this true if thou shouldst watch narrowly."

"That's all very well," said Mitchell, watching narrowly in a clump of
weeds but seeming unconvinced. "I believe the Greens Committee run this
bally club purely in the interests of the caddies. I believe they
encourage lost balls, and go halves with the little beasts when they
find them and sell them!"

Millicent and I exchanged glances. There were tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Mitchell! Remember Napoleon!"

"Napoleon! What's Napoleon got to do with it? Napoleon never was
expected to drive through a primeval forest. Besides, what did Napoleon
ever do? Where did Napoleon get off, swanking round as if he amounted
to something? Poor fish! All he ever did was to get hammered at
Waterloo!"

Alexander rejoined us. He had walked on to where his ball lay.

"Can't find it, eh? Nasty bit of rough, this!"

"No, I can't find it. But tomorrow some miserable, chinless,
half-witted reptile of a caddie with pop eyes and eight hundred and
thirty-seven pimples will find it, and will sell it to someone for
sixpence! No, it was a brand-new ball. He'll probably get a shilling
for it. That'll be sixpence for himself and sixpence for the Greens
Committee. No wonder they're buying cars quicker than the makers can
supply them. No wonder you see their wives going about in mink coats
and pearl necklaces. Oh, dash it! I'll drop another!"

"In that case," Alexander pointed out, "you will, of course, under the
rules governing match-play, lose the hole."

"All right, then. I'll give up the hole."

"Then that, I think, makes me one up on the first nine," said
Alexander. "Excellent! A very pleasant, even game."

"Pleasant! On second thoughts I don't believe the Greens Committee let
the wretched caddies get any of the loot. They hang round behind trees
till the deal's concluded, and then sneak out and choke it out of
them!"

I saw Alexander raise his eyebrows. He walked up the hill to the next
tee with me.

"Rather a quick-tempered young fellow, Holmes!" he said, thoughtfully.
"I should never have suspected it. It just shows how little one can
know of a man, only meeting him in business hours."

I tried to defend the poor lad.

"He has an excellent heart, Alexander. But the fact is--we are such old
friends that I know you will forgive my mentioning it--your style of
play gets, I fancy, a little on his nerves."

"My style of play? What's wrong with my style of play?"

"Nothing is actually wrong with it, but to a young and ardent spirit
there is apt to be something a trifle upsetting in being, compelled to
watch a man play quite so slowly as you do. Come now, Alexander, as one
friend to another, is it necessary to take two practice-swings before
you putt?"

"Dear, dear!" said Alexander. "You really mean to say that that upsets
him? Well, I'm afraid I am too old to change my methods now."

I had nothing more to say.

As we reached the tenth tee, I saw that we were in for a few minutes'
wait. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm. Millicent was standing beside
me, dejection written on her face. Alexander and young Mitchell were
some distance away from us.

"Mitchell doesn't want me to come round the rest of the way with him,"
she said, despondently. "He says I make him nervous."

I shook my head.

"That's bad! I was looking on you as a steadying influence."

"I thought I was, too. But Mitchell says no. He says my being there
keeps him from concentrating."

"Then perhaps it would be better for you to remain in the club-house
till we return. There is, I fear, dirty work ahead."

A choking sob escaped the unhappy girl.

"I'm afraid so. There is an apple tree near the thirteenth hole, and
Mitchell's caddie is sure to start eating apples. I am thinking of what
Mitchell will do when he hears the crunching when he is addressing his
ball."

"That is true."

"Our only hope," she said, holding out Professor Rollitt's book, "is
this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting
nervous? We went through the book last night and marked all the
passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful. You will see notes
against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed to be used."

It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand
silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.
Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens
Committee.

"The hole after this one," he said, "used to be a short hole. There was
no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the
Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes, so
now they've tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have
to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch
you get into a sort of No Man's Land, full of rocks and bushes and
crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live
there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging
each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going
to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just
hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it
up!"

Golf, however, is a curious game--a game of fluctuations. One might
have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have
continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he
once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach
the tenth green with an iron-shot, and, though the ball was several
yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-putt and holed
his second for a bogey four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so
that they were all square again.

The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly
a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in
grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives
straight, and found no difficulty in securing fours.

"A little more of this," said Mitchell, beaming, "and the Greens
Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work."

The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, bogey five. Alexander plugged
steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell, whose second
shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick.
He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely-judged
mashie-shot to the edge of the green.

Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty yard
hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the
green, but his third laid the ball dead; while Mitchell, who was on in
two, required three putts.

"That reminds me," said Alexander, chattily, "of a story I heard.
Friend calls out to a beginner, 'How are you getting on, old man?' and
the beginner says, 'Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the
last green!'"

Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had
made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had
been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in
his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.

There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside
than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm
the nature-lover's heart.

But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a
whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and
romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a
nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the
birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that
may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at
the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer, I have
frequently found it the very devil.

The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more
deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his
ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a
tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the
hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for,
if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the
ravine.

Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately
behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the
direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddie, with a glassy look in his
eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent
prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on
it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine.

There was a pause--a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell
dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly.

"Mitchell!" I cried. "My boy! Reflect! Be calm!"

"Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in
thousands all round you? What _is_ this, anyway--a golf match or a
pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples! Go on, my
boy, take another bite. Take several. Enjoy yourself! Never mind if it
seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance. Go on with your lunch! You
probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish,
yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a
sandwich and a bottle of ginger-ale. Make yourself quite at home, you
lovable little fellow! Sit down and have a good time!"

I turned the pages of Professor Rollitt's book feverishly. I could not
find a passage that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this
emergency. I selected one at random.

"Mitchell," I said, "one moment. How much time he gains who does not
look to see what his neighbour says or does, but only at what he does
himself, to make it just and holy."

"Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of
that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do
you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!"

He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked
at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently
on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his
driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had
passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long
grass.

He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the
scene.

"I'm through!" he said. "I concede the match. Good-bye. You'll find me
in the bay!"

"Going swimming?"

"No. Drowning myself."

A gentle smile broke out over my old friend's usually grave face. He
patted Mitchell's shoulder affectionately.

"Don't do that, my boy," he said. "I was hoping you would stick around
the office awhile as treasurer of the company."

Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very
still. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the
murmur of the distant wavelets, and the sound of Mitchell's caddie
going on with his apple.

"What!" cried Mitchell.

"The position," said Alexander, "will be falling vacant very shortly,
as no doubt you know. It is yours, if you care to accept it."

"You mean--you mean--you're going to give me the job?"

"You have interpreted me exactly."

Mitchell gulped. So did his caddie. One from a spiritual, the other
from a physical cause.

"If you don't mind excusing me," said Mitchell, huskily, "I think I'll
be popping back to the club-house. Someone I want to see."

He disappeared through the trees, running strongly. I turned to
Alexander.

"What does this mean?" I asked. "I am delighted, but what becomes of
the test?"

My old friend smiled gently.

"The test," he replied, "has been eminently satisfactory.
Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea
of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since
we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have
come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing and Refining
Company really needs is a treasurer whom I can beat at golf. And I have
discovered the ideal man. Why," he went on, a look of holy enthusiasm
on his fine old face, "do you realize that I can always lick the
stuffing out of that boy, good player as he is, simply by taking a
little trouble? I can make him get the wind up every time, simply by
taking one or two extra practice-swings! That is the sort of man I need
for a responsible post in my office."

"But what about Rupert Dixon?" I asked.

He gave a gesture of distaste.

"I wouldn't trust that man. Why, when I played with him, everything
went wrong, and he just smiled and didn't say a word. A man who can do
that is not the man to trust with the control of large sums of money.
It wouldn't be safe. Why, the fellow isn't honest! He can't be." He
paused for a moment. "Besides," he added, thoughtfully, "he beat me by
six and five. What's the good of a treasurer who beats the boss by six
and five?"