ABSTENTION from the art and practice of golf for one week had been Professor Robson’s ukase. Had he foreseen the course of more personal events he would never have issued it. For he now had no opportunity of seeing his pupil alone. Nothing so direct as avoidance could be charged against her. But since that parting on the Pritchard porch, he had never been able to achieve so much as two minutes of her undivided time. Her eyes, when they met his only to be swiftly withdrawn, were sweetly troubled. The Eternal Feminine within her was, for the time at least, in flight. And along those paths of delicate elusiveness, the clumsy and pursuing feet of man stumble and trip. Jeremy’s soul was sorely tried and not less sorely puzzled.
If he found difficulties in Marcia’s attitude, his own future course with regard to her was dubious. What could he, in his position and with his resources, ask of her? To wait? Certainly nothing more than that. And was even that much fair to her? His own feeling was simplicity itself. Life had, in these few short weeks of association, summed and compressed itself into his love for Marcia Ames. Until that abrupt change in the tone of their relations brought about by her half-acceptance of his devotion, she had never evinced anything more than a frank and confident comradeship. Now he felt that he might speak—if he could find opportunity. That he could not, almost caused him to accuse Marcia of unfairness. Yet could he honorably ask her to marry him and tie herself to a meager and as yet unpromising career? Within himself Jeremy had begun to assume that confidence of future success which comes with the assured sense of workmanship. He would cheerfully gamble his own future on it. But how could he ask her to risk hers? Even supposing that she cared for him! There was the thought that ached; the uncertainty of it. In any case he had to know how it stood with him in her heart.
Upon her inviolable truthfulness he could depend for a full and fair answer, if he were able to state his case. He knew that all her frank and unevasive courage would answer to his demand; that she would look that fate, or any other, steadily in the eyes. But not before her own good time. And that the time was not yet, became sufficiently apparent, one week before the match when the lessons were resumed, for with the resumption Buddy Higman was quietly established at once as caddy, chaperon, and dragon with the added qualities of the modestly adhesive burdock. The skill and technique of “No. 4.—M. Ames” prospered and improved mightily, which is more than can be said of the disposition of her instructor.
Some men’s work would have suffered. Not Jeremy’s. He was of that fortunate temperament which, keeping its troubles to itself, boils them out into steam and transforms the steam into energy. Besides, he had now “the grip of his pen.” He derived a glowing satisfaction from the expert performance of his craft. The editorial page was hospitable to him, especially for contributions in lighter vein. Many special assignments for work out of the ordinary, calling for a knack of description or characterization, came to him. His writings were beginning to earn the knighthood conferred by the clipping shears and the paste-pot. Newspapers in larger cities than Fenches-ter copied and privately asked questions about them. But what made it all so worth while, what gave a touch of exaltation to the dogged purpose for success, was the conviction that all this forwarded him upon the road which led to Marcia.
The tournament with Kirk College, on the Fenchester Country Club grounds, was now two days away. Jeremy had asked for and obtained the assignment to cover it. He had long before applied for and received the job of caddying for No. 4 of the team opposing his own college, which was regarded by the visiting Kirks as an ignoble instance of loyalty corrupted by the baser passions. However, Jeremy was perfectly willing that Kirk should win; rather hoped it would, in fact, provided only the No. 4 of Old Central beat her man. He believed her capable of doing it, unless her nerve faltered, which he deemed improbable. On her most recent performances she was from two to four strokes lower than any one but himself and Buddy Higman appreciated.
Important though the event was to Jeremy Robson, the authorities on The Record considered it rather a waste of their brilliant youngster’s time. However, they were appeased by the cropping out meantime of a story so much in the Robson line that it might have been made to order for him. Wackley, the managing editor, outlined it to him, when he arrived in the morning.
“Robson, do you know a queer old bat up on Banks Street who runs a shoe surgery?”
“Eli Wade? Yes; quite well.”
“He’s a nut of the old Know-Nothing kind, is n’t he? Hates all foreigners and all that?”
“He’s a pretty hard-shelled Yankee.”