I had just played two holes with the professor before I remembered the man who had smiled in the hall of the hotel yesterday. Certainly Quarles was an enthusiast. In all the etiquette of the game he was perfect, but as a player he was the very last word. He persisted in driving with a full swing, usually with comic effect; he was provided with a very full complement of clubs, and was precise in always using the right one; but he seemed physically incapable of keeping his eye on the ball, and constantly hit out, as if he were playing cricket; yet the bigger ass he made of himself the greater seemed his enjoyment. He never lost his temper. Other men would have emptied themselves of the dregs of their vocabulary; Quarles only smiled, cheerfully explaining how he had come to top a ball, or why he had taken half a dozen shots to get out of a bunker. No wonder the man in the hotel had laughed.
There was one particularly difficult hole. The bogey was six. It required a good drive to get over a ridge of high ground; beyond was a brassey shot, then an iron, and a mashie on to the green. To the left lay a creek, a narrow water course between mud. My drive did not reach the ridge, on the top of which was a direction post; and the professor pulled his ball, which landed perilously near the mud. It took him three shots to come up with me, and when at last we mounted the ridge we saw there was a man on the distant green, which lay in a hollow surrounded by bunkers, behind which was the bank of the curving creek.
"Fore!" shouted Quarles.
I almost laughed. It was certain the man would have ample time to get off the green before the professor arrived there. Quarles waited for a moment, but the man ahead took no notice, possibly had not heard him.
The professor took a fall swing with his brassey, and, for a wonder, the ball went as straight and true as any golfer could desire.
"Ah! I am getting into form, Wigan," he exclaimed. "What is that fool doing yonder? Fore!"
This time the man looked round and waved to us to come on, which we did slowly, for Quarles's form was speedily out again.
The man on the green was a curiosity. Thirty-five or thereabouts, I judged him to be; a thin man, but wiry, with a stiff figure and an immobile face, which looked as if he had never been guilty of showing an emotion. His eyes were beady, and fixed you; his mouth gave the impression of being so seldom used for speech that it had become partially atrophied. His costume, perhaps meant to be sporting, missed the mark—looked as if he had borrowed the various articles from different friends; and he was practicing putting with a thin-faced mashie, very rusty in the head, and dilapidated in the shaft.
He stood aside and watched Quarles miss two short puts.
"Difficult," he remarked. "I'm practicing it."