IV
Of course you know the theory of the mixed foursome. There are four players, two men and two women, and each couple plays one ball. It sounds very simple. Miss Jones and Mr. Brown are partners. Miss Jones drives, and it is up to Mr. Brown to play the next shot from where the ball lies, after which Miss Jones takes another pop at the pill, and so on until the putt sinks. Yes, it sounds like an innocent pastime, but of all forms of golf the mixed foursome carries the highest percentage of danger and explosive material. It is the supreme test of nerves and temper, and the trial-by-acid of the disposition.
In our club there is an unwritten law that no wife shall be partnered with her husband in a mixed-foursome match, because husbands and wives have a habit of saying exactly what they think about each other—a practise which should be confined to the breakfast table. There was a case once—but let us avoid scandal. She has a new husband and he has a new wife.
Waddles' mixed-foursome tournament was scheduled for a Thursday, and it was amazing how many of the male members discovered that imperative business engagements would keep them from participating in the contest. The women were willing enough to play—they always are, bless 'em!—but it was only after a vast amount of effort and Mexican diplomacy that Waddles was able to lead six goats to the slaughter. Six, did I say? Five. Russell Davidson needed no urging.
The man who gave Waddles the most trouble was Bill Hawley. Bill was polite about it, but firm—oh, very firm. He didn't want any mixed foursomes in his young life, thank you just the same. More than that, he was busy. Waddles had to put it on the ground of a personal favour before Bill showed the first sign of wavering.
When I arrived at the club on Thursday noon I found Waddles sweating over the handicaps for his six couples. Now it is a cinch to handicap two women or two men if they are to play as partners, but to handicap a woman and a man is quite another matter, and all recognised rules go by the board. I watched the old boy for some time, but I couldn't make head or tail of his system. Finally I asked him how he handicapped a mixed foursome.
"With prayer," said Waddles. "With prayer, and in fear and trembling. And sometimes that ain't any good."
I noted that he had given Mary Brooke and Russell Davidson the lowest mark—10. Beth Rogers and Bill Hawley were next with 16, and the other couples ranged on upward to the blue sky.
"Of course," I suggested, "the low handicap is something of a compliment, but haven't you slipped Davidson a bit the worst of it?"
"Not at all," growled Waddles. "He was just crazy to get into this thing, and he wouldn't have been unless he figured to have a cinch; consequently, hence and by reason of which I've given him a mark that'll make him draw right down to his hand. He won't play any four-flush here." Waddles then arranged the personnel of the foursomes, and jotted down the order in which they would leave the first tee. When I saw which quartette would start last I offered another suggestion.
"You're not helping Bill's game any," said I. "You know that he doesn't like Davidson, and——"
Waddles stopped me with his frozen-faced, stuffed-owl stare. In deep humiliation I confess that at the time I attributed it to his distaste for criticism. I realise now that it must have been amazement at my stupidity.
"Excuse me for living," said I with mock humility.
"There is no excuse," said Waddles heavily.
Bill turned up on the tee at the last moment, and if he didn't like the company in which he found himself he masked his feelings very well.
"How do, Mary? Beth, this is a pleasure. How are you, Davidson? Ladies first, I presume?"
"Drive, Miss Rogers," said Davidson.
Now a fluffy blonde is all right, I suppose, if she wears a hair net. Beth doesn't, and her golden aureole would make a Circassian woman jealous. Still, there are people who think Beth is a beauty. I more than half suspect that Beth is one of them. Beth drove, and the ball plumped into the cross bunker.
"Oh, partner!" she squealed. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"That's all right," Bill assured her. "I've often been in there myself. Takes a good long shot to carry that bunker."
"It's perfectly dear of you to say so!"
"Fore!" said Mary, who was on the tee, and the conversation ceased.
"Better shoot to the left," advised Russell, "and go round the end of the bunker."
Mary stopped waggling her club to look at him. If there is anything in which the female of the golfing species takes sinful pride it is the length of her drive. She likes to stand up on a tee used by the men and smack the ball over the cross bunker. She wouldn't trade a two-hundred-yard drive for twenty perfect approach shots. She may be a wonder on the putting green, but she offers herself no credit for that. It is the long tee shot that takes her eye—the drive that skims the bunker and goes on up the course. Waddles says the proposition of sex equality has a bearing on the matter, but I claim that it is just ordinary, everyday pride in being able to play a man's game, man fashion.
Coming from a total stranger, that suggestion about driving to the left would have been regarded as a deadly insult; coming from Russell——
"But I think I can carry it," said Mary with a tiny pout.
"Change your stance and drive to the left." The suggestion had become a command.
"Fore!" said Mary again—and whacked the ball straight into the bunker—straight into the middle of it.
"Now, you see?" Russell was aggravated, and showed it. "If you had changed your stance and put that ball somewhere to the left you might have given me a chance to reach the green. As it is——"
He was still enlarging upon her offence as they moved away from the tee. Mary did not answer him, but she gave Beth a bright smile, as much as to say, "What care I?" Bill trailed along in the rear, juggling a niblick, his homely face wiped clean of all expression.
There wasn't much to choose between the second shots—both lies were about as bad as could be—but Russell got out safely and Bill duplicated the effort.
Beth then elected to use her brassy, and sliced the ball into the long grass. Of course she had to wail about it.
"Isn't that just too maddening? Partner, I'm so sorry!"
"Don't you care," grinned Bill. "That's just my distance with a mashie. And as for long grass, I dote on it."
Mary was taking her brassy out of the bag when Russell butted in again—with excellent advice, I must confess.
"You can't reach the green anyway," said he, "so take an iron and keep on the course."
There was a warning flash in Mary's eye which a wiser man would not have ignored.
"Remember you've got a partner," urged Russell. "Take an iron, there's a good girl."
"Oh, Russell! Do be still; you fuss me so!"
"But, my dear! I'm only trying to help——"
The swish of the brassy cut his explanation neatly in two, and the ball went sailing straight for the distant flag—a very pretty shot for any one to make.
"Oh, a peach!" cried Bill. "A peach!"
"And you," said Mary, turning accusingly to Russell, "you wanted me to take an iron!"
"Because you can keep straighter with an iron," argued Davidson.
"Wasn't that ball straight enough to please you?" asked Mary with just a touch of malice.
"You had luck," was the ungracious response, "but it doesn't follow that all your wooden-club shots will turn out as well. The theory of the mixed foursome is to leave your partner with a chance to hit the ball."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Beth. "Now you're making me feel like a criminal!"
"Lady," said Bill, "if I don't mind, why should you?"
"I think you're an angel!" gushed Beth.
"Yep," replied Bill, "I am; but don't tell anybody."
While Mary and Russell were discussing the theory of the mixed foursome old Bill made a terrific mashie shot out of the grass, and the ball reached the edge of the green. Beth applauded wildly, Mary chimed in, but Davidson did not open his mouth. He was irritated, and made no secret of it, but his irritation did not keep him from dropping the next shot on the putting green.
Bill didn't even blink when Beth took her putter and overran the hole by ten feet. Beth said she knew he'd never, never speak to her again in this world, and she couldn't blame him if he didn't.
"Well," said Bill cheerfully, "you gave the ball a chance, anyhow. That's the main thing. It's better to be over than short."
"You're a perfect dear!" said Beth. "I'll do better—see if I don't."
Mary then prepared to putt, Russell's approach having left her twelve feet short of the hole. "And be sure to get it there," cautioned her partner. "It's uphill, you know. Allow for it."
Mary bit her lip and hit the grass an inch behind the ball. It rolled something less than four feet.
"Hit the ball! Hit the ball!" snapped Russell angrily. "What's the matter with you to-day?"
Mary apologised profusely—probably to keep Russell quiet; and she laughed too—a dry, hard little laugh that didn't have any fun in it. Bill glared at Davidson for an instant, and his mouth opened, but he swallowed whatever impulse was troubling him, and carefully laid his ball on the lip of the cup for a two-inch putt that not even Beth could have missed. Russell then holed his long one, which seemed to put him in a better humour, and the men started for the second tee. In mixed foursomes the drive alternates.
Mary and Beth took the short cut used by the caddies, and I followed them at a discreet distance. Mary babbled incessantly about everything in the world but golf, which was her way of conveying the impression that nothing unusual had happened; and Beth, womanlike, helped her out by pretending to be deeply interested in what Mary was saying. And yet they tell you that if women could learn to bluff they would make good poker players!
As I waited for the men to drive I thought of the Mary Brooke I used to know—the leggy little girl with her hair in pigtails—and I remembered that in those days she would stand just so much teasing from the boys, and then somebody would be slapped—hard. Had she changed so much, I wondered?
On the third hole Russell began nagging again, and Bill's face was a study. For two cents I think he would have choked him. Mary tried to carry it off with a smile, but it was a weak effort. Nothing but absolute obedience and recognition of his right to give orders would satisfy Russell.
"It's no use your telling me now that you're sorry," he scolded after Mary had butchered a spoon shot on Number Three. "You won't take advice when it's offered. I told you not to try that confounded spoon. A spoon is no club for a beginner."
Mary gasped.
"But—I'm not a beginner! I've been playing ever and ever so long! And I like that spoon."
"I don't care what you like. If we win this thing you must do as I say."
"Oh! So that's it—because you want to win?"
"What do you think I entered for—exercise? Nothing to beat but a lot of dubs—and you're not even trying!"
"Bill is no dub." Mary flared up a bit in defence of her old friend.
"Ho!" sneered Russell. "So you call him Bill, do you?"
I lost the thread of the conversation there because Mary lowered her voice, but she must have told the young man something for the good of his soul. Anyway he was in a savage frame of mind when he stepped on the fourth tee. He wanted to quarrel with some one, but it wouldn't have been healthy to pick on old Bill, and Russell probably realised it. Bill hadn't spoken to him since the first hole, and to be thus calmly ignored was fresh fuel on a smouldering fire.
There was another explosion on Number Four—such a loud one that everybody heard it.
"There you go again!" snarled Russell. "I give you a perfect drive—I leave you in a position where all you have to do is pop a little mashie over a bunker to the green—and see what a mess you've made of it! I'm sorry I ever entered this fool tournament!"
"I'm sorry too," said Mary quietly, and walked away from him leaving him fuming.
It must have been an uncomfortable situation for Beth and Bill. They kept just as far away from the other pair as they could—an exhibition of delicacy which I am sure Mary appreciated—and pretended not to hear the nasty things Russell said, though there were times when Bill had to hide his clenched fists in his coat pockets. He wanted to hit something, and hit it hard, so he took it out on the ball, with excellent results. And no matter what Beth did or did not do Bill never had anything for her but a cheery grin and words of encouragement. They got quite chummy, those two, and once or twice I thought I surprised resentment in Mary's eye. I may have been mistaken.
Russell grew more rabid as the round proceeded, possibly because Mary's manner was changing. After the seventh hole, where Russell said it was a waste of time to try to teach a woman anything about the use of a wooden club, Mary made not the slightest attempt to placate him. She deliberately ignored his advice, and did it smilingly. She became very gay, and laughed a great deal—too much, in fact—and of course her attitude did not help matters to any appreciable extent. A bully likes to have a victim who cringes under the lash.
The last nine was painful, even to a spectator, and if Russell Davidson had been blessed with the intelligence which God gives a goose he would have kept his mouth shut; but no, he seemed determined to force Mary to take some notice of his remarks. The strangest thing about it was that some fairly good golf was played by all hands. Even fuzzy-headed little Beth pulled off some pretty shots, whereupon Bill cheered uproariously. I think he found relief in making a noise.
While they were on the seventeenth green I spied old Waddles against the skyline, cutting off the entire sunset, and I climbed the hill to tell him the news. You may believe it or not, but up to that moment I had overlooked Waddles entirely. I had been stupid enough to think that the show I had been witnessing was an impromptu affair—a thing of pure chance, lacking a stage manager. Just as I reached the top of the hill, enlightenment came to me—came in company with Mary's laugh, rippling up from below. At a distance it sounded genuine. A shade of disappointment crossed Waddles' wide and genial countenance.
"So it didn't work," said he. "It didn't work—and I'm sixteen dollars to the bad. Hey! Quit pounding me on the back! Anybody but a born ass would have known the whole thing was cooked up for Mary's benefit—and you've just tumbled, eh? Now then, what has he done?"
Briefly, and in words of one syllable, I sketched Russell's activities. Waddles wagged his head soberly.
"Treated her just the same as if he was already married to her, eh? A mixed foursome is no-o-o place for a mean man; give him rope enough and he'll hang himself. How do they stand?"
I had not been keeping the score, so we walked down the hill to the eighteenth tee.
"Pretty soft for you folks," said Waddles with a disarming grin. "Pretty soft. You've only got to beat a net 98."
"Zat so?" asked Bill carelessly, but Russell snatched a score card from his pocket. Instantly his whole manner changed. The sullen look left his face; his eyes sparkled; he smiled.
"We're here in 94," said Russell. "Ten off of that—84. Why—it's a cinch, Mary, a cinch! And I thought you'd thrown it away!"
"And you?" asked Waddles, turning to Bill.
"Oh," said Russell casually, "they've got a gross of 102. What's their handicap?"
"Sixteen," answered Waddles.
"A net 86." Russell became thoughtful. "H'm-m. Close enough to be interesting. Still, they've got to pick up three strokes on us here. Mary, all you've got to do is keep your second shot out of trouble. Go straight, and I'll guarantee to be on the green in three."
Mary didn't say anything. She was watching Waddles—Waddles, with his lip curled into the scornful expression which he reserves for cup hunters and winter members who try to hog the course.
Russell drove and the ball sailed over the direction post at the summit of the hill.
"That'll hold 'em!" he boasted. "Now just keep straight, Mary, and we've got 'em licked!"
Bill followed with another of his tremendous tee shots—two hundred pounds of beef and at least a thousand pounds of contempt behind the pill—and away they went up the path. Russell fell in beside Mary, and at every step he urged upon her the vital importance of keeping the ball straight. He simply bubbled and fizzed with advice, and he smiled as he offered it. I never saw a man change so in a short space of time.
"Well, partner," apologised Beth, "I'm sorry. If I'd only played a tiny bit better——"
"Shucks!" laughed Bill. "Don't you care. What's a little tin cup between friends?"
"A tin cup!" growled Waddles. "Where do you get that stuff? Sterling silver, you poor cow!"
Bill's drive was the long one, so it was up to Mary to play first. Our last hole requires fairly straight shooting, because the course is paralleled at the right by the steep slope of a hill, and at the bottom of that hill is a creek bed, lined on either side by tangled brush and heavy willows. A ball sliced so as to reach the top of the incline is almost certain to go all the way down. On the other side of the fair green there is a wide belt of thick long grass in which a ball may easily be lost. No wonder Russell advised caution.
"Take an iron," said he, "and never mind trying for distance. All we need is a six."
"Boy," said Mary, addressing the caddie, "my brassy, please."
"Give her an iron," countermanded Russell. "Mary, you must listen to me. We've got this thing won now——"
"Fore!" said Mary in the tone of voice which all women possess, but most men do not hear it until after they are married. Russell fell back, stammering a remonstrance, and Mary took her practise swings—four of them. Then she set herself as carefully as if her entire golfing career depended on that next shot. Her back swing was deliberate, the club head descended in a perfect arc, she kept her head down, and she followed through beautifully—but at the click of contact a strangled howl of anguish went up from her partner. She had hit the ball with the rounded toe of the club, instead of the flat driving surface, and the result was a flight almost at right angles with the line of the putting green—a wretched roundhouse slice ticketed for the bottom of the creek bed. By running at top speed Russell was able to catch sight of the ball as it bounded into the willows. Mary looked at Waddles and smiled—the first real smile of the afternoon.
"Isn't that provoking?" said she.
Judging by the language which floated up out of the ravine it must have been all of that. Russell found the ball at last, under the willows and half buried in the sand, and the recovery which he made was nothing short of miraculous. He actually managed to clear the top of the hill. Even Waddles applauded the shot.
Beth took an iron and played straight for the flag. Russell picked the burs from his flannel trousers and counted the strokes on his fingers.
"Hawley will put the next one on the green," said he, "and that means a possible five—a net of 91. A six will win for us; and for pity's sake, Mary, for my sake, get up there somewhere and give me a chance to lay the ball dead!"
Waddles sniffed.
"He's quit bossing and gone to begging," said he. "Well, if I was Mary Brooke——Holy mackerel! She's surely not going to take another shot at it with that brassy!"
But that was exactly what Mary was preparing to do. Russell pleaded, he entreated, and at last he raved wildly; he might have spared his breath.
"Cheer up!" said Mary with a chilly little smile. "I won't slice this one. You watch me." She kept her promise—kept it with a savage hook, which sailed clear across the course and into the thick grass. The ball carried in the rough seventy-five yards from the putting green, and disappeared without even a bounce.
"That one," whispered Waddles, sighing contentedly, "is buried a foot deep. It begins to look bad for love's young dream. Bill, you're away."
Russell, his shoulders hunched and his chin buried in his collar, lingered long enough to watch Bill put an iron shot on the putting green, ten feet from the flag. Then he wandered off into the rough and relieved his feelings by growling at the caddie. He did not quit, however; the true cup hunter never quits. His niblick shot tore through that tangle of thick grass, cut under the ball and sent it spinning high in the air. It stopped rolling just short of the green.
We complimented him again, but he was past small courtesies. Our reward was a black scowl, which we shared with Mary.
"Lay it up!" said he curtly. "A seven may tie 'em. Lay it up!"
By this time quite a gallery had gathered to witness the finish of the match. In absolute silence Mary drew her putter from the bag and studied the shot. It was an absurdly simple one—a 30-foot approach over a level green, and all she had to do was to leave Russell a short putt. Then if Beth missed her ten-footer——
"It's fast," warned Russell. "It's fast, so don't hit it too hard!"
Even as he spoke the putter clicked against the ball, and instantly a gasp of dismay went up from the feminine spectators. I was watching Russell Davidson, and I can testify that his face turned a delicate shade of green. I looked for the ball, and was in time to see it skate merrily by the hole, "going a mile a minute," as Waddles afterward expressed it. It rolled clear across the putting green before it stopped.
Mary ignored the polite murmur of sympathy from the gallery.
"Never up, never in," said she with a cheerful smile. "Russell, I'm afraid you're away."
Waddles pinched my arm.
"Did you get that stuff?" he breathed into my ear. "Did you get it? She threw him down—threw him down cold!"
Russell seemed to realise this, but he made a noble effort to hole the putt. A third miracle refused him, and then Beth Rogers put her ball within three inches of the cup.
"Put it down!" grunted Russell. "Sink it—and let's get it done with!"
Bill tapped the ball into the hole, and the match was over.
"Why—why," stuttered Beth, "then—we've won!"
At this point the hand-shaking began. I was privileged to hear one more exchange of remarks between the losers as they started for the clubhouse.
"We had it won—if you'd only listened to me——" Russell began.
"Ah!" said Mary, "you seem to forget that I've been listening to you all the afternoon—listening and learning!"
That very same evening I was sitting on my front porch studying the stars and meditating upon the mutability of human relationships.
A familiar runabout drew up at the Brooke house, and a young man passed up the walk, moving with a stiff and stately stride. In exactly twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds by my watch the young man came out again, bounced down the steps, jumped into his car, slammed the door with a bang like a pistol shot, and departed from the neighbourhood with a grinding and a clashing of gears which might have been heard for half a mile.
The red tail light had scarcely disappeared down the street when big Bill Hawley lumbered across the Brooke lawn, took the front steps at a bound and rang the doorbell.
Not being of an inquisitive and a prying nature, I cannot be certain how long he remained, but at 11:37 I thought I heard a door close, and immediately afterward some one passed under my window whistling loudly and unmelodiously. The selection of the unknown serenader was that pretty little thing which describes the end of a perfect day.