ENTRY NO. VIII
DOWNFALL OF MR. HARDING
I do not know whether to be annoyed or amused over the result of my second golf game with Miss Harding. It was not in the least like my anticipations.
Our first game was so romantic. It was as if the kindly skies had raised a dome over earth's most favoured spot and reserved it for our use. It was different to-day.
I presume it is necessary that beautiful maidens shall have fathers. I raise no doubt that Mr. Harding is a wonderful financier and railroad genius, and it is likely he is entitled to a vacation and to that relaxation which comes from taking exercise, but this does not justify him in—well, in "butting in" on our game. I don't use slang as a rule, but no other term so accurately describes the conduct of that gentleman this afternoon.
As for Carter—I have no words to express what I think of Carter.
If I had a daughter nineteen years old it would occur to me that she might prefer to play golf with a young gentleman somewhere near her own age rather than with me, especially if that young gentleman were a good golfer, and possessed of wealth, prospects, and honourable ambitions. But Mr. Harding treats her as if she were a school miss in short dresses. He persists in calling her "Kid," and only rarely does he address her by the beautiful name of Grace.
When Miss Harding started from the club house her father was on the lawn not many yards away engaged in the interesting but expensive experiment of trying to drive balls across the lake. He was buying new balls by the box—they cost $5.50 a box—with the joyous abandon of a pampered boy purchasing fire-crackers on the Fourth of July.
All he asks of a ball is "one crack at it," and the caddies were reaping a harvest. He had not made one decent drive, and was surprised and angry.
As luck would have it he turned and saw us as we were starting for the first tee. He had laid aside that flaming red-and-green coat, and was in his shirt sleeves. His face was crimson from exertion, and his hair wet with perspiration.
"Where are you going?" he called.
"We're going to play a round," I answered, with a sinking heart.
"Good; I'll go with you," he returned. "Chuck the rest of those balls into that sack," he said to one of his caddies, "and follow me."
What could I do but say we would be delighted to have him join us? We were waiting for him, when who should come from the club house but Carter.
"Hello there, Carter!" shouted Harding. "Come on and play with us! This is my first real game, and we'll make it a foursome, or whatever you call it. What d'ye say?"
"That's fine!" declared Carter.
I happen to know that he had already made up a game with Marshall, Boyd, and Chilvers, but he did not hesitate to abandon them for his long-coveted chance to play with Miss Harding.
"We'll have a great game," asserted Mr. Harding mopping his brow. "How shall we divide up? I suppose you're the best player, Carter, and Smith comes next, but I can beat the Kid, here," patting Miss Harding on the shoulder.
"I'll bet you cannot," I declared, angry that he should class Carter above me.
"Bet I cannot beat my Grace?" he exclaimed. I told him that such was my opinion.
"Of course I can beat you, papa," laughed Miss Harding. "You have never played, and know nothing of the game. I can beat you easily."
"Talk of the insolence and ingratitude of children!" he gasped. "Kid, I'm astonished at you! I'll teach both of you a lesson. What do you want to bet, Smith?"
I suggested that a box of balls would suit me as a bet.
"Box of monkeys!" exclaimed Harding. "I thought you were a sport, Smith!
A box of balls don't last me as long as a box of cigarettes does Carter.
Tell you what I'll do. We'll all keep track of our shots, and for every
one I beat her you pay me a box of balls, and for every one she beats me
I pay you a box of balls. How does that strike you?"
"Take him up, Mr. Smith," said Miss Harding, a smile on her lips and a meaning glance in her eyes. I would not have hesitated had I known it would have cost me every dollar in the world.
"You are on, Mr. Harding," I said.
"We'll teach you a good lesson, Papa Harding," she declared, with a confidence which surprised me. "You have never seen me play."
He roared with laughter.
"Talk about David and Goliath!" he exclaimed. "Tell you what I'll do, Kid. I'll make you a small bet on the side. You remember that sixty horse-power buzz wagon we were looking at in the city the other day?"
"The one in red that I admired so much?" asked Miss Harding.
"Yes, the one you tried to soft soap me into buying. Tell you what I'll do. If you beat me I'll buy that machine for you, and if I beat you I get a new hat which you pay for out of your pin money."
"It's a shame to take advantage of you, papa, dear," she hesitated, "but
I want that machine awfully, and I'll make the wager."
[Illustration: "… and missed the ball by three inches">[
"If you never get it until you beat me at this shinny game you will wait a long time," he declared. "Who shoots first?"
"Miss Harding and I will be partners," suggested Carter, before I could get the words out of my mouth.
"Since I am interested in Miss Harding's play to the extent of a box of balls a stroke, I claim the right to act as her partner and adviser," I said, looking hard at Carter.
"Mr. Smith and I will be partners," said Miss Harding, and it was the happiest moment of my life.
"I don't care who are partners," said Harding, stepping up to the tee.
"I'll shoot first, and you keep your eye on your Uncle Dudley!"
He piled up a hill of sand, gripped his club like grim death, drew back, swung with all his might—and missed the ball by three inches.
"One stroke!" laughed Miss Harding.
"That don't count!" he declared. "I didn't hit the blamed thing at all!
Look at it! It's just where I fixed it a minute ago. Don't cheat, Kid!"
"A missed ball counts a stroke," laughed Carter.
"Are you sure that's the rule?"
We all assured him there was not the slightest doubt of it.
"All that I can say is that it's a fool rule," he protested, "but at that, one missed swipe cuts little figure with me. Here goes for number two!"
"Don't press!" cautioned Carter.
"I'll press all I darned please. Keep your eyes on this one!"
He grazed the ball enough to make it roll not more than twenty feet into a clump of tall grass. He looked blankly at it, but did not say a word. Then he took a jack-knife from his pocket and cut two notches in the shaft of his club.
Carter drove out a good one, and I teed a ball for Miss Harding. The lane is about a hundred yards away, and I thought of advising her to play short, but on reflection determined not to embarrass her by suggestions so early in the game.
The moment she took her stance and grasped her club I noted a difference in her style of play as compared with that of the preceding day. Her club head came back with a free, even curve, and on the return she caught the ball with a good though not perfect follow through. The ball carried straight and true over the lane, and did not stop rolling until it had passed the 130-yard mark. It was a nice clean drive, and I smiled my approval.
"Good work, Kid," grinned Harding, but he did not seem the least dismayed. I should not care to play poker with him. I lined out a beauty, and then Harding returned to the attack.
It took two strokes to get his ball out of the grass. On his fifth shot the ball had a good lie about ten yards from the lane fence. He smashed at it with a brassie, but drove too low. The ball hit a fence post and bounded back fully seventy-five yards. In five strokes he had not gained a foot. After a combination of weird and wonderful shots he reached the green in twelve.
Harding's putting was a revelation in how not to drop a ball in a cup. He went back and forth over the hole like a shuttle. This performance added six to his score, and he holed out in nineteen. He was fighting mad, but did not say a word. While the rest of us were holing out he sullenly added seventeen notches to his club.
I was astonished and pleased at the reversal in form shown by Miss Harding. Two iron shots laid her ball on the green, her approach was a little weak, and she missed an easy two-foot putt, but she made the hole in seven, which is not at all bad for a woman. Carter and I both got fours.
When Harding finally got his ball out of the old graveyard in playing the second hole there was a dispute as to how many strokes he had taken. I counted twelve, but he claimed only nine, and we let him have his own way about it. I did not dare to dispute with him, fearing that he might have a stroke of apoplexy. He marked eleven new notches on his club shaft for this hole.
He made a fair drive over the marsh on his third hole, flubbed his second and third shots, but his fourth was a screaming brassie which landed him on the green within two inches of the cup. It was one of those freak shots which a man makes once a season, but Harding took vast credit for it and was the happiest person on the links over his bogy five for this long hole.
Miss Harding was playing like a veteran. This hole is 355 yards from the tee, but she was well on the green on her third, and holed out in six. Carter did the same, but I got a five and saved the hole for our side.
I do not know how to account for Miss Harding's improved playing. It was not in the least like that of the day when we were alone. For the entire eighteen holes she played steady, consistent golf. It was not brilliant, but it was a creditable exhibition for a woman. She kept on the course, missed only two drives, and rarely failed to get distance and direction.
Not until we had played half-way around and Harding was hopelessly behind did he give voice to his amazement.
"This is the time you have got the old man down and out, Kid," he said, after she had made the ninth hole in four to his fourteen. "I'll admit that there is a trick about this game that I'm not on to, but you just wait; you just wait. I seem to hit 'em all right, but confound 'em, they don't go right. I don't understand it. I'd have bet a million dollars against a perfecto cigar that I could drive a ball farther than a 125-pound girl, even if she is my daughter."
"We will call our bet off, Mr. Harding," I suggested, satisfied that we had tumbled him from the pedestal reared by his conceit.
"We'll call nothing off," he promptly declared. "Soak it to me as hard as you can; I'll get even with all of you before the season's over."
No language can describe the game played by the railway magnate. His miserable playing was supplemented by worse luck. A predatory cow swallowed his ball. He drove another one into the crotch of a tree, hit Carter in the shin, broke a window in the club house, tore his trousers, sprained his thumb, and poisoned his hands with ivy while searching for a lost ball. He conversed much with himself when Miss Harding was not near.
The nicks in his club by which he kept score became so numerous, and they so weakened the shaft, that he finally broke it; also one of the commandments.
The story of his calamities and of his undoing is feebly indicated by his score, which was as follows:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Out— 19 11 5 7 12 9 8 16 14—101
In—- 8 6 10 5 7 7 11 5 12— 71
—-
Total —172
Miss Harding made it in 116, and with a reasonable amount of luck I am sure she would have done much better. I played a rattling good game, completing the round in 80, which is the best score I have made this season.
I put it all over Carter, who had made me a side bet of the dinners for the four of us that his individual score would be better than mine.
Miss Harding won an automobile which will cost not less than $15,000; I won fifty-six dozen golf balls, enough to last me two years; Carter lost a dinner which I thoroughly enjoyed, and Mr. Harding lost his temper, but I will give him credit for finding it the moment the game was over.
He laughed as if it were the greatest joke in the world.
"You threw me down, Kid," he said to Miss Harding, "but I'll forgive you. You get the buzz wagon and Smith gets a cartload of balls, but I'll tell you one thing, and that is this: I'm going to learn how to hit one of those blamed balls in the nose every time I swipe at it, even if I have to resign the presidency of the R.G. & K. railroad."
I can see that the golf microbe has marked him for a shining victim.