ENTRY NO. XVI
MISS HARDING OWNS UP
"I Demand part of my payment this afternoon," I said to Miss Harding as we neared the Oak Cliff club house.
"You are impatient, Jacques Henri," she laughed. "Is it possible my credit is not good?"
"Not in this instance," I returned. "I am demanding that you refuse all invitations to play in foursomes, and that after luncheon you and I make the round of Oak Cliff."
"That is so modest a request that I grant it," she said, and ten minutes later I had the satisfaction of hearing her decline Carter's invitation to join in a foursome in which I was to take no part. This proves not only that all is fair in love, but that victory favours the one who strikes the first blow.
It was about ten o'clock when we reached Oak Cliff, and found Mr. Wilson waiting for us. Harding was impatient to test his skill against Wilson, and the two were ready to play when the rest of us were still chatting with Mrs. Wilson and others of their party.
"We are entitled to a gallery," declared Harding. "Come on, everybody, and watch me show Wilson how this game should be played."
Most of us accepted this invitation. Mr. Wilson fits the description Harding had given of him. He is wonderfully tall and slim, and I doubted if he had much skill as a golfer. His smooth-shaven features and dreamy eyes were those of the poet, but he is one of the best bankers and business men in the country.
Harding drove a fairly straight ball but Wilson promptly sliced into the tall grass. Miss Harding and I helped him search for his ball, and Chilvers joined in the hunt.
"Ah, this is very lucky!" exclaimed Mr. Wilson, bending his long frame over some object.
"Found your ball?" asked Chilvers.
"The ball? No, no," he said, coming to his feet with something in his hand which looked to me like a weed. "But I've found a rare specimen of the Articum Lappa. It is a beauty!"
"Looks sort of familiar," said the puzzled Chilvers. "What did you say it was?"
"The Articum Lappa, more commonly called the burdock," explained
Mr. Wilson.
"If you can't find your ball drop another one and play!" shouted Harding from the other side of course. Just then I discovered the ball, and after two strokes Wilson got it out of trouble, and then by a lucky approach and putt won the hole. Harding looked at him suspiciously.
[Illustration: "What are you looking for?">[
On the next hole their drives landed the balls not far apart and neither was in trouble.
"I'm afraid this man Wilson can beat me," Harding said to us in an undertone as we neared the balls.
"Don't lose your nerve, papa," cautioned his daughter.
Wilson was away, but when he was within a few yards of his ball he looked intently at the turf and then dropped to his knees and crawled slowly around.
"What are you looking for?" exclaimed Harding "There's your ball right in front of you."
"I know it," calmly said Wilson, running his hand over the turf, "but
I'm curious to know what kind of Trifolium this is."
"Wilson," said the magnate, as the former rose to his full height and took a club from his bag, "Wilson, I might as well quit and give up this game."
"Why?" asked the surprised banker.
"Let me tell you something," declared Harding. "I only took up this golf business a few weeks ago, and by hard work have found out about mashies, hooks, foozles, cops, one off two and all those difficult things, but I'm blamed if I ever heard of trifoliums, or whatever you call 'em, and you can't ring 'em in on me. I won't stand for it! We don't play trifoliums in Woodvale, do we, Smith?"
"But my dear Harding," interposed Wilson, his mobile face wrinkled in a smile, "Trifolium is not a golf term and has nothing whatever to do with the game."
"What in thunder is it?"
"Trifolium is the genus name for the clover plant, and these are beautiful specimens," explained this amateur botanist.
"It is, is it?" laughed Harding. "Well, let's see how far you 'can knock that ball out of that bed of Trifoliums."
We left them soon after and returned to the club house. The ladies did not care to play before luncheon, preferring to take a rest after the exciting experiences of the trip from Woodvale. I ran across an old friend of mine, Sam Robinson, and he and I played against Carter and Chilvers. Robinson is one of the best amateurs in the country and we defeated our opponents handily.
It was a merry party which gathered about the table which had been spread under the trees near the club house. Oak Cliff is the only club which Woodvale recognises as a rival, and the Wilson's entertained us charmingly. Mr. Harding was in great spirits.
"I won!" he announced as he returned with our elongated and smiling host. "Licked Wilson, trifoliums and all, right here on his own ground! But he found a Rumex and a lot of other weeds, so he don't care."
Miss Harding and I had discovered an oil painting in the club library which interested us, and when coffee and cigars had been served I asked Mr. Wilson about its history.
"Robinson gave it to the club," he said, "he can tell its story better than I can."
"It's an odd sort of a yarn," began Robinson. "Last fall an artist friend of mine of the name of Powers wrote a letter inviting me to come and spend a few weeks with him in a camp he had established on the upper waters of the Outrades River in northeastern Quebec. He was there sketching and loafing, and I took my golf clubs and went. While he painted I batted balls around a cleared space in the forest, fished, hunted and had so much fun that we stayed there until cold weather set in. Then we loaded up a boat and started down the river with a guide."
"One evening we came to an island with rapids below it. We had to portage around these rapids, so we decided to camp for the night. It was cold, and rapidly growing colder, but Powers insisted in making a trip to that island, the beauty of its rocks fascinating his artistic soul. We emptied the boat and he pulled across the swift current. Ten minutes later we heard him yell. His boat had drifted from where he thought he had moored it, and had been dashed to pieces in the rapids below. The guide declared that there was no way to reach him without a boat, and that he would have to go back twenty miles to a lumber camp for one. We explained this to Powers, and told him to light a fire and make the best of it until morning. The current was so swift that no swimmer could breast it. It was already down to zero."
[Illustration: "Had ignited the matches">[
"Powers searched his pockets," continued Robinson, "and made the startling announcement that he did not have a match. Without a fire he surely would freeze before the guide could return. He was dancing up and down on a rock and swinging his arms to keep warm."
"He certainly was in a bad fix," interrupted Harding. "Was there no way to get at him?"
"Absolutely none," continued Robinson. "The sun was sinking—when I had an idea. In the bottom of my golf bag were four badly hacked and split balls. I called to Powers to keep his nerve. The balls were rubber-cored, and I widened the crack in one of them and gouged out a space in the rubber. In this I put the heads of three matches, teed the ball on the beach, called to Powers what I had done and told him to keep his eye on the ball. I hit it clean and fair, but a trail of smoke told that the concussion had ignited the matches. The ball fell in the underbrush a few yards from Powers, and he almost cried when he took out the charred match heads."
"How far was it?" asked Harding.
"I paced it later and found it to be about one hundred and forty yards," said Robinson.
"You paced it?" exclaimed Harding. "You're a bit mixed on this story,
Robinson, aren't you?"
"Not at all," laughed that gentleman. "You wait and I'll explain. Then I fixed another ball and wrapped the match heads in surgeon's cotton. I popped that ball in the air. The next one was pulled, struck a rock and bounded into the water. One remained, and it was a critical moment. I was numbed with the cold, it was almost dark, and I had to make a shot for a man's life, but I made it. It went far and true and struck in the branches of a fir tree over Power's head. He did not see it, but he heard it. Then began a search for a lost ball. It was pitch dark half an hour later when Powers shouted that he had found it, and soon after we yelled like madmen when a tiny yellow flame curled up from the island. Powers asked me to drive a ham sandwich across, but I did not attempt it. The guide started back after another boat, and Powers and I spent the long hours over our respective bonfires in an effort to keep from freezing."
"It dropped to twenty-five below zero before morning, and when daybreak came I went down to the beach. The water still flowed swift and black directly across, but when I looked to the north I found that the ice extended from the shore to the upper end of the island. I put several sandwiches in my pocket and carefully walked across. Powers was trying to cook some freshwater clams when I came upon his bonfire."
"That is as much of the story as you will be interested in," concluded Robinson. "Powers kept the ball which saved his life, and in return gave me that oil painting depicting the scene at nightfall as I was driving that last ball."
"It's a good thing for your friend Powers that it was not up to me to drive that last ball," declared Harding. "That story is all right, Robinson, and the picture proves it."
As we were leaving the table Mrs. Chilvers called me aside.
"Have you made up a game for this afternoon?" she asked, and I thought I discerned a mischievous glance in her eyes.
"Why—why, yes," I hesitated, wondering if I were to be dragged into some wretched foursome. "I have arranged to play with Miss Harding."
"What, again?" she asked.
"This is only my third game with her," I declared.
"Ah, Mr. Smith, do you remember how I warned you several weeks ago?"
I remembered but did not admit it.
"I told you then that some time you would meet a golfing Venus," she said triumphantly, and without waiting for me to make a defense left and joined Miss Dangerfield.
Miss Harding and I waited until we had a clear field ahead of us before we began our game. It was one of the perfect early summer afternoons when it is a delight to live. Oak Cliff is famous for its scenery and for its velvet-like greens.
"I'm going to play my best game this afternoon," announced Miss Harding when I had teed her ball.
"I always play my best game; don't you?" I asked.
"You shall judge of that when we finish this round," she declared.
It was my first game with her since the day she won the touring car from her father, on which occasion she made Woodvale in 116. This was so marked an improvement over her former exhibition that I was at a loss to account for it. Since then Miss Harding had confined her golf to the practising of approach shots and putting, following the instructions given by Wallace. I have been so busy with Wall Street and other affairs that I have paid little attention to golf, and smiled at her enthusiasm.
"How shall we play?" I asked. "You have improved so much and are so confident that I dare not offer you more than a stroke a hole."
"I shall beat you at those odds," she said. "This is a short course, you know."
"You will have to make it in a hundred to beat me," I replied.
"Fore!" she called, and drove a beautiful ball with a true swing which was the perfection of grace. I made one which did not beat it enough to give me any advantage, and we started down the field together.
"Mr. Wallace must be a wonderfully clever teacher," I said, "or else he has a most remarkably apt pupil. I wish I could improve that rapidly."
Miss Harding smiled but declined to commit herself. Her second shot was a three-quarter midiron to the green and she made it like a veteran. She played the stroke—and it is one of the most difficult—in perfect form, and I was so astounded that I cut under a short approach shot and had to play the odd. She came within inches of going down in three, and I then missed a long putt and lost the hole outright, she not needing the stroke handicap.
"One up, Jacques Henri!" she laughed.
She drove another perfect ball on the next hole, but the green was three hundred and fifty yards away and I reached it in two against her three. My work on the green was abominable and we both were down in fives.
"Two up, Jacques Henri!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Really, now, don't you think I've improved?"
"Improved!" I gasped. "That's not the word for it! You have been translated into a golf magician! I cannot understand it!"
I don't suppose I played my best game, but even if I had I could not have won at the odds stipulated. I never lose interest in a golf game, but I must confess that I paid far more attention to her play than to my own.
It was not the first time that I had witnessed a fine exhibition of golf by a woman, but it was the first time I had been privileged to see a strikingly pretty girl execute shots as they should be made. All former experiences had led me to the belief that feminine beauty and proficiency in golf run in adverse ratio. But here was a superb creature who combined beauty with a skill which was surpassing.
It was difficult to believe the testimony of my own eyes. Here was a girl who had taken fifteen to make the first hole of Woodvale only a few weeks preceding; who had driven eight of my new balls into a pond which demanded only an eighty-yard carry; who had told me that the one ambition of her golfing life was to drive a ball far enough so that she might have difficulty in finding it; who had repeatedly missed strokes entirely, had mutilated the turf, sliced, pulled and committed all the faults and crimes possible to a novice—here was this same young lady playing a game which was well-nigh perfect to the extent of her strength!
When a woman is beautiful and plays a beautiful game of golf, then physical grace reaches its highest exemplification. Even an ugly woman becomes attractive when she swings a driving club with an evenly sustained sweep, picking the ball clean from the turf or tee. But when a supremely charming girl acquires this skill it is impossible to express in mere language the exquisite grace of it—and I am not going to attempt it.
Miss Harding made that round in a flat ninety against my eighty-two, and with the odds I had given her defeated me by five up and four to play. She made the same score as Chilvers, and he is a good player when on his game.
The game ended, we rested in the shade of an arbour where we could watch the players on many greens.
"Come now; make your confession," I insisted, looking into her face through the blue haze of a cigar.
"Confess what?" she innocently asked.
"Confess why it is that you deliberately deceived me regarding your game," I demanded. "Don't you suppose I know that you were not trying to play that day when you first favoured me with a game at Woodvale?"
"You know nothing about it," she laughed. "I have been taking lessons since then."
"Tell that to someone who does not understand the difficulty of learning this game," I responded. "Your father for instance. Unless you confess the truth, I shall tell him that you deliberately lured him into a trap by which you won that touring car."
"Tell him; I dare you!" she challenged me. "If he believes it he will think it a huge joke."
"And you told me that you once made a nine-hole course in Paris in ninety-one," I accused her.
"I did," she laughed. "It was in a competition with one club—a putter."
"Was that when you won the gold cup?"
She shook her head.
"What score did you make when you won that gold cup in Paris?" I asked.
"The witness declines to answer," she defiantly replied.
"You are guilty of contempt of court. Tell me, Miss Harding, why you played so atrociously that day?"
"Atrociously?" she exclaimed with mock indignation. "You told me that I was doing splendidly, and you said that with a little practice I would make a fine player. And now that I have verified your predictions you seem vastly surprised."
"I was—I was trying to encourage you," I faltered.
"In other words you were deceiving me, Jacques Henri. Confess that you were!"
"I do confess," I laughed. "You were the worst player I ever saw. Now you confess why you did it."
"I shall confess nothing," she declared, her eyes dropping as I gazed into them. "I shall confess nothing, Jacques Henri! Since when has it been decreed that a lady must confess to her chauffeur? Do not forget your place, Jacques Henri. Let's start for the club house; I see papa and others on the lawn."
I have a theory of the truth, but it is too foolish to put in writing.
We made a speedy run to Woodvale after a most delightful afternoon.