A LESSON IN GOLF
"You won't dare!" said I.
"There is nothing else for it," said Amanda sternly. "You know perfectly well that we must practise every minute of the time, if we expect to have the least chance of winning. If she will come just now—well!" Amanda cocked her pretty chin in the air, and looked defiant.
"But—Aunt Susannah!" said I.
"It's quite time for you to go and meet her," said Amanda, cutting short my remonstrances; and she rose with an air of finality.
My wife, within her limitations, is a very clever woman. She is prompt: she is resolute: she has the utmost confidence in her own generalship. Yet, looking at Aunt Susannah, as she sat—gaunt, upright, and formidable—beside me in the dogcart, I did not believe even Amanda capable of the stupendous task which she had undertaken. She would never dare——
I misjudged her. Aunt Susannah had barely sat down—was, in fact, only just embarking on her first scone—when Amanda rushed incontinently in where I, for one, should have feared to tread.
"Dear Aunt Susannah," she said, beaming hospitably, "I'm sure you will never guess how we mean to amuse you while you are here!"
"Nothing very formidable, I hope?" said Aunt Susannah grimly.
"You'll never, never guess!" said Amanda; and her manner was so unnaturally sprightly that I knew she was inwardly quaking. "We want to teach you—what do you think?"
"I think that I'm a trifle old to learn anything new, my dear," said Aunt Susannah.
I should have been stricken dumb by such a snub. Not so, however, my courageous wife.
"Well—golf!" she cried, with overdone cheerfulness.
Aunt Susannah started. Recovering herself, she eyed us with a stony glare which froze me where I sat.
"There is really nothing else to do in these wilds, you know," Amanda pursued gallantly, though even she was beginning to look frightened. "And it is such a lovely game. You'll like it immensely."
"What do you say it is called?" asked Aunt Susannah in awful tones.
"Golf," Amanda repeated meekly; and for the first time her voice shook.
"Spell it!" commanded Aunt Susannah.
Amanda obeyed, with increasing meekness.
"Why do you call it 'goff' if there's an 'l' in it?" asked Aunt Susannah.
"I—I'm afraid I don't know," said Amanda faintly.
Aunt Susannah sniffed disparagingly. She condescended, however, to inquire into the nature of the game, and Amanda gave an elaborate explanation in faltering accents. She glanced imploringly at me; but I would not meet her eye.
"Then you just try to get a little ball into a little hole?" inquired my relative.
"And in the fewest possible strokes," Amanda reminded her, gasping.
"And—is that all?" asked Aunt Susannah.
"Y—yes," said Amanda.
"Oh!" said Aunt Susannah.
A game described in cold blood sounds singularly insignificant. We both fell into sudden silence and depression.
"Well, it doesn't sound difficult" said Aunt Susannah. "Oh, yes, I'll come and play at ball with you if you like, my dears."
"Dear Auntie!" said Amanda affectionately. She did not seem so much overjoyed at her success, however, as might have been expected. As for me, I saw a whole sea of breakers ahead; but then I had seen them all the time.
We drove out to the Links next day. We were both very silent. Aunt Susannah, however, was in good spirits, and deeply interested in our clubs.
"What in the world do you want so many sticks for, child?" she inquired of Amanda.
"Oh, they are for—for different sorts of ground," Amanda explained feebly; and she cast an agonised glance at our driver, who had obviously overheard, and was chuckling in an offensive manner.
We both looked hastily and furtively round us when we arrived. We were early, however, and fortune was kind to us; there was no one else there.
"Perhaps you would like to watch us a little first, just to see how the game goes?" Amanda suggested sweetly.
"Not at all!" was Aunt Susannah's brisk rejoinder. "I've come here to play, not to look on. Which stick——?"
"Club—they are called clubs," said Amanda.
"Why?" inquired Aunt Susannah.
"I—I don't know," faltered Amanda. "Do you Laurence?"
I did not know, and said so.
"Then I shall certainly call them sticks," said Aunt Susannah decisively. "They are not in the least like clubs."
"Shall I drive off?" I inquired desperately of Amanda.
"Drive off? Where to? Why are you going away?" asked Aunt Susannah. "Besides, you can't go—the carriage is out of sight."
"The way you begin is called driving off," I explained laboriously. "Like this." I drove nervously, because I felt her eye upon me. The ball went some dozen yards.
"That seems easy enough," said Aunt Susannah. "Give me a stick, child."
"Not that end—the other end!" cried Amanda, as our relative prepared to make her stroke with the butt-end.
"Dear me! Isn't that the handle?" she remarked cheerfully; and she reversed her club, swung it, and chopped a large piece out of the links. "Where is it gone? Where is it gone?" she exclaimed, looking wildly round.
"It—it isn't gone," said Amanda nervously, and pointed to the ball still lying at her feet.
"What an extraordinary thing!" cried Aunt Susannah; and she made another attempt, with a precisely similar result. "Give me another stick!" she demanded. "Here, let me choose for myself—this one doesn't suit me. I'll have that flat thing."
"But that's a putter," Amanda explained agonisedly.
"What's a putter? You said just now that they were all clubs," said Aunt Susannah, pausing.
"They are all clubs," I explained patiently. "But each has a different name."
"You don't mean to say you give them names like a little girl with her dolls?" cried Aunt Susannah. "Why, what a babyish game it is!" She laughed very heartily. "At any rate," she continued, with that determination which some of her friends call by another name, "I am sure that this will be easier to play with!" She grasped the putter, and in some miraculous way drove the ball to a considerable distance.
"Oh, splendid!" cried Amanda. Her troubled brow cleared a little, and she followed suit, with mediocre success. Aunt Susannah pointed out that her ball had gone farther than either of ours, and grasped her putter tenaciously.
"It's a better game than I expected from your description," she conceded. "Oh, I daresay I shall get to like it. I must come and practise every day." We glanced at each other in a silent horror of despair, and Aunt Susannah after a few quite decent strokes, triumphantly holed out. "What next?" said she.
I hastily arranged her ball on the second tee: but the luck of golf is proverbially capricious. She swung her club, and hit nothing. She swung it again, and hit the ground.
"Why can't I do it?" she demanded, turning fiercely upon me.
"You keep losing your feet," I explained deferentially.
"Spare me your detestable slang terms, Laurence, at least!" she cried, turning on me again like a whirlwind. "If you think I have lost my temper—which is absurd!—you might have the courage to say so in plain English!"
"Oh, no, Aunt Susannah!" I said. "You don't understand——"
"Or want to," she snapped. "Of all silly games——"
"I mean you misunderstood me," I pursued, trembling. "Your foot slipped, and that spoilt your stroke. You should have nails in your boots, as we have."
"Oh!" said Aunt Susannah, only half pacified. But she succeeded in dislodging her ball at last, and driving it into a bunker. At the same moment, Amanda suddenly clutched me by the arm. "Oh, Laurence!" she said in a bloodcurdling whisper. "What shall we do? Here is Colonel Bartlemy!"
The worst had happened. The hottest-tempered man in the club, the oldest member, the best player, the greatest stickler for etiquette, was hard upon our track; and Aunt Susannah, with a red and determined countenance, was urging her ball up the bunker, and watching it roll back again.
"Dear Auntie," said Amanda, in her sweetest voice, "you had much better take it out."
"Is that allowed?" inquired our relative suspiciously.
"Oh, you may always do that and lose a stroke!" I assured her eagerly.
"I shan't dream of losing a stroke!" said Aunt Susannah, with decision. "I'll get it out of this ditch by fair means, if I have to spend all day over it!"
"Then do you mind waiting one moment?" I said, with the calmness of despair. "There is a player behind us——"
"Let him stay behind us! I was here first," said Aunt Susannah; and she returned to her bunker.
The Links rose up in a hillock immediately behind us, so that our successor could not see us until he had reached the first hole. I stood with my eye glued to the spot where he might be expected to appear. I saw, as in a nightmare, the scathing remarks that would find their way into the Suggestion Book. I longed for a sudden and easy death.
At the moment when Colonel Bartlemy's rubicund face appeared over the horizon, Aunt Susannah, flushed but unconquered, drew herself up for a moment's rest from toil. He had seen her. Amanda shut her eyes. For myself, I would have run away shamelessly, if there had been any place to run to. The Colonel and Aunt Susannah looked hard at each other. Then he began to hurry down the slope, while she started briskly up it.
"Miss Cadwalader!" said the Colonel.
"Colonel Bartlemy!" cried Aunt Susannah; and they met with effusion.
I saw Amanda's eyes open, and grow round with amazed interest. I knew perfectly well that she had scented a bygone love affair, and was already planning the most suitable wedding-garb for Aunt Susannah. A frantic hope came to me that in that case the Colonel's affection might prove stronger than his zeal for golf. They were strolling down to us in a leisurely manner, and the subject of their conversation broke upon my astonished ears.
"I'm afraid you don't think much of these Links, after yours," Colonel Bartlemy was saying anxiously. "They are rather new——"
"Oh, I've played on many worse," said Aunt Susannah, looking round her with a critical eye. "Let me see—I haven't seen you since your victory at Craigmory. Congratulations!"
"Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley!" purred the Colonel, evidently much gratified. "You will be here for the twenty-seventh, I hope?"
"Exactly what I came for," said Aunt Susannah calmly.
"Though I don't know what our ladies will say to playing against the Cranford Champion!" chuckled the Colonel; and then they condescended to become aware of our existence. We had never known before how exceedingly small it is possible to feel.
"Aunt Susannah, what am I to say? What fools you must think us!" I murmured miserably to her, when the Colonel was out of earshot looking for his ball. "We are such raw players ourselves—and of course we never dreamt——"
Aunt Susannah twinkled at me in a friendly manner. "There's an ancient proverb about eggs and grandmothers," she remarked cheerfully.
"There should be a modern form for golf-balls and aunts—hey, Laurence?"
Amanda did not win the prize brooch; but Aunt Susannah did, in spite of an overwhelming handicap, and gave it to her. She does not often wear it—possibly because rubies are not becoming to her: possibly because its associations are too painful.
THE LOST GOLFER
[The sharp decline of ping-pong, whose attractions at its zenith seduced many golfers from the nobler sport, has left a marked void in the breasts of these renegades. Some of them from a natural sense of shame hesitate to return to their first love. The conclusion of the following lines should be an encouragement to this class of prodigal.]
Just for a celluloid pillule he left us,
Just for an imbecile batlet and ball,
These were the toys by which Fortune bereft us
Of Jennings, our captain, the pride of us all.
Shopmen with clubs to sell handed him rackets,
Rackets of sand-paper, rubber and felt,
Said to secure an unplayable service,
Pestilent screws and the death-dealing welt.
Oft had we played with him, partnered him, sworn by him,
Copied his pitches in height and in cut,
Hung on his words as he delved in a bunker,
Made him our pattern to drive and to putt.
Benedick's with us, the major is of us,
Swiper the county bat's still going strong;
He alone broke from the links and the clubhouse,
He alone sank in the slough of ping-pong.
We have "come on"—but not his the example;
Sloe-gin has quickened us—not his the cash;
Holes done in 6 where a 4 would be ample
Vexed him not, busy perfecting a smash.
Rased was his name as a decadent angel,
One more mind unhinged by a piffulent game,
One more parlour-hero, the worshipped of school-girls
Who once had a princely "plus 5" to his name.
Jennings is gone; yet perhaps he'll come back to us,
Healed of his hideous lesion of brain,
Back to the links in the daytime; at twilight
Back to his cosy club corner again.
Back for the medal day, back for our foursomes,
Back from the tables' diminishing throng,
Back from the infantile, ceaseless half-volley,
Back from the lunatic lure of ping-pong.
The Retort Courteous.—(The Major-General waiting to drive, to girl carrying baby, who blocks the way). "Now then, hurry on please with that baby."
Girl. "Garn! Baby yerself, playing at ball there in your knickerbockers an' all!"
A GOLF TOURNAMENT IN YE TIME OF YE ROMANS
From a rare old frieze (not) in ye British Museum.
"Anyway, it's better to break one's——clubs than to lose one's —— —— temper!!"
A Place for Everything.—Obstructive Lady (in reply to the golfer's warning call). "The whole world wasn't made for golf, sir."
Youngster. "No; but the links wis. 'Fore!"
Unenviable position of Mr. Pottles, whose record drive has just landed fairly in the ribs of irascible old Colonel Curry, out for his constitutional canter.
Aunt Jabisca (pointing to earnest golfer endeavouring to play out of quarry). "Dear me, Maud, what a respectably dressed man that is breaking stones!"
Suggestion for a rainy day. Spillikins on a grand scale.
GOLF À LA WATTEAU—AND OTHERWISE
Major Brummel (comparing the length of his and his opponent's "drives"). "I think I'm shorter than Mr. Simkins?"
Small Caddie (a new hand, greatly flattered at being asked, as he thinks, to judge of their personal appearance). "Yes, sir, and fatterer too, sir!"
[Delight of the gallant Major.]
ARRY AT GOLF.
Miss Dora (to Major Putter, who is playing an important match, and has just lost his ball). "Oh, Major, do come and take your horrid ball away from my little dog. He won't let me touch it, and I know he must be ruining his teeth!"
Tennis Player (from London). "Don't see the fun o' this game—knockin' a ball into a bush, and then 'untin' about for it!"
THE AMERICAN HUSBAND.
THE ENGLISH WIFE.
A TOO-FEEBLE EXPLETIVE
MacSymon. "I saw you were carrying for the professor yesterday, Sandy. How does he play?"
Sandy. "Eh, yon man'll never be a gowffer. Div ye ken what he says when he foozles a ba'?"
MacSymon. "No. What does he say?"
Sandy. "'Tut-tut!'"