§ 8
The morning found Captain Douglas in a state of reaction. He was anxious to explain quite clearly to Madeleine just how necessary it was that he should go in search of Bealby forthwith. He was beginning to realize now just what a chance in the form of Bealby had slipped through his fingers. He had dropped Bealby and now the thing to do was to pick up Bealby again before he was altogether lost. Her professional life unfortunately had given Miss Philips the habit of never rising before midday, and the Captain had to pass the time as well as he could until the opportunity for his explanation came.
A fellow couldn’t go off without an explanation....
He passed the time with Professor Bowles upon the golf links.
The Professor was a first-rate player and an unselfish one; he wanted all other players to be as good as himself. He would spare no pains to make them so. If he saw them committing any of the many errors into which golfers fall, he would tell them of it and tell them why it was an error and insist upon showing them just how to avoid it in future. He would point out any want of judgment, and not confine himself, as so many professional golf teachers do, merely to the stroke. After a time he found it necessary to hint to the Captain that nowadays a military man must accustom himself to self-control. The Captain kept Pishing and Tushing, and presently, it was only too evident, swearing softly; his play got jerky, his strokes were forcible without any real strength, once he missed the globe altogether and several times he sliced badly. The eyes under his light eyelashes were wicked little things.
He remembered that he had always detested golf.
And the Professor. He had always detested the Professor.
And his caddie; at least he would have always detested his caddie if he had known him long enough. His caddie was one of those maddening boys with no expression at all. It didn’t matter what he did or failed to do, there was the silly idiot with his stuffed face, unmoved. Really, of course overjoyed—but apparently unmoved....
“Why did I play it that way?” the Captain repeated. “Oh! because I like to play it that way.”
“Well,” said the Professor. “It isn’t a recognized way anyhow....”
Then came a moment of evil pleasures.
He’d sliced. Old Bowles had sliced. For once in a while he’d muffed something. Always teaching others and here he was slicing! Why, sometimes the Captain didn’t slice!...
He’d get out of that neatly enough. Luck! He’d get the hole yet. What a bore it all was!...
Why couldn’t Madeleine get up at a decent hour to see a fellow? Why must she lie in bed when she wasn’t acting? If she had got up all this wouldn’t have happened. The shame of it! Here he was, an able-bodied capable man in the prime of life and the morning of a day playing this blockhead’s game—!
Yes—blockhead’s game!
“You play the like,” said the Professor.
“Rather,” said the Captain and addressed himself to his stroke.
“That’s not your ball,” said the Professor.
“Similar position,” said the Captain.
“You know, you might win this hole,” said the Professor.
“Who cares?” said the Captain under his breath and putted extravagantly.
“That saves me,” said the Professor, and went down from a distance of twelve yards.
The Captain, full of an irrational resentment, did his best to halve the hole and failed.
“You ought to put in a week at nothing but putting,” said the Professor. “It would save you at least a stroke a hole. I’ve noticed that on almost every green, if I haven’t beaten you before I pull up in the putting.”
The Captain pretended not to hear and said a lot of rococo things inside himself.
It was Madeleine who had got him in for this game. A beautiful healthy girl ought to get up in the mornings. Mornings and beautiful healthy girls are all the same thing really. She ought to be dewy—positively dewy.... There she must be lying, warm and beautiful in bed—like Catherine the Great or somebody of that sort. No. It wasn’t right. All very luxurious and so on but not right. She ought to have understood that he was bound to fall a prey to the Professor if she didn’t get up. Golf! Here he was, neglecting his career; hanging about on these beastly links, all the sound men away there in France—it didn’t do to think of it!—and he was playing this retired tradesman’s consolation!
(Beastly the Professor’s legs looked from behind. The uglier a man’s legs are the better he plays golf. It’s almost a law.)
That’s what it was, a retired tradesman’s consolation. A decent British soldier has no more business to be playing golf than he has to be dressing dolls. It’s a game at once worthless and exasperating. If a man isn’t perfectly fit he cannot play golf, and when he is perfectly fit he ought to be doing a man’s work in the world. If ever anything deserved the name of vice, if ever anything was pure, unforgivable dissipation, surely golf was that thing....
And meanwhile that boy was getting more and more start. Anyone with a ha’porth of sense would have been up at five and after that brat—might have had him bagged and safe and back to lunch. Ass one was at times!
“You’re here, sir,” said the caddie.
The captain perceived he was in a nasty place, open green ahead but with some tumbled country near at hand and to the left, a rusty old gravel pit, furze at the sides, water at the bottom. Nasty attractive hole of a place. Sort of thing one gets into. He must pull himself together for this. After all, having undertaken to play a game one must play the game. If he hit the infernal thing, that is to say the ball, if he hit the ball so that if it didn’t go straight it would go to the right rather—clear of the hedge it wouldn’t be so bad to the right. Difficult to manage. Best thing was to think hard of the green ahead, a long way ahead,—with just the slightest deflection to the right. Now then,—heels well down, club up, a good swing, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball just where you mean to hit it—far below there and a little to the right—and don’t worry....
Rap.
“In the pond I think, sir.”
“The water would have splashed if it had gone in the pond,” said the Professor. “It must be over there in the wet sand. You hit it pretty hard, I thought.”
Search. The caddie looked as though he didn’t care whether he found it or not. He ought to be interested. It was his profession, not just his game. But nowadays everybody had this horrid disposition towards slacking. A Tired generation we are. The world is too much with us. Too much to think about, too much to do, Madeleines, army manœuvres, angry lawyers, lost boys—let alone such exhausting foolery as this game....
“Got it, sir!” said the caddie.
“Where?”
“Here, sir! Up in the bush, sir!”
It was resting in the branches of a bush two yards above the slippery bank.
“I doubt if you can play it,” said the Professor, “but it will be interesting to try.”
The Captain scrutinized the position. “I can play it,” he said.
“You’ll slip, I’m afraid,” said the Professor.
They were both right. Captain Douglas drove his feet into the steep slope of rusty sand below the bush, held his iron a little short and wiped the ball up and over and as he found afterwards out of the rough. All eyes followed the ball except his. The Professor made sounds of friendly encouragement. But the Captain was going—going. He was on all fours, he scrabbled handfuls of prickly gorse, of wet sand. His feet, his ankles, his calves slid into the pond. How much more? No. He’d reached the bottom. He proceeded to get out again as well as he could. Not so easy. The bottom of the pond sucked at him....
When at last he rejoined the other three his hands were sandy red, his knees were sandy red, his feet were of clay, but his face was like the face of a little child. Like the face of a little fair child after it has been boiled red in its bath and then dusted over with white powder. His ears were the colour of roses, Lancaster roses. And his eyes too had something of the angry wonder of a little child distressed....
“I was afraid you’d slip into the pond,” said the Professor.
“I didn’t,” said the Captain.
“!”
“I just got in to see how deep it was and cool my feet—I hate warm feet.”
He lost that hole but he felt a better golfer now, his anger he thought was warming him up so that he would presently begin to make strokes by instinct, and do remarkable things unawares. After all there is something in the phrase “getting one’s blood up.” If only the Professor wouldn’t dally so with his ball and let one’s blood get down again. Tap!—the Professor’s ball went soaring. Now for it. The Captain addressed himself to his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote and topped the ball.
The least one could expect was a sympathetic silence. But the Professor thought fit to improve the occasion.
“You’ll never drive,” said the Professor; “you’ll never drive with that irritable jerk in the middle of the stroke. You might just as well smack the ball without raising your club. If you think—”
The Captain lost his self-control altogether.
“Look here,” he said, “if you think that I care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you think that I really want to win and do well at this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game—.”
He paused on the verge of ungentlemanly language.
“If a thing’s worth doing at all,” said the Professor after a pause for reflection, “it’s worth doing well.”
“Then it isn’t worth doing at all. As this hole gives you the game—if you don’t mind—”
The Captain’s hot moods were so rapid that already he was acutely ashamed of himself.
“O certainly, if you wish it,” said the Professor.
With a gesture the Professor indicated the altered situation to the respectful caddies and the two gentlemen turned their faces towards the hotel.
For a time they walked side by side in silence, the caddies following with hushed expressions.
“Splendid weather for the French manœuvres,” said the Captain presently in an off-hand tone, “that is to say if they are getting this weather.”
“At present there are a series of high pressure systems over the whole of Europe north of the Alps,” said the Professor. “It is as near set fair as Europe can be.”
“Fine weather for tramps and wanderers,” said the Captain after a further interval.
“There’s a drawback to everything,” said the Professor. “But it’s very lovely weather.”