“Well,” he said, “I'll take one more shot—it's my last—positively. I'm going back to New York to-morrow.”
He tossed a scarred, cut, battered ball on the turf, scorning to make a tee. Yanking a cleek from his bag, he stepped up with the speed of Duncan and swung. To our amazement, the ball flew like a bullet to the mark and disappeared over the lip of the green, headed straight for the pin. But he never saw it. He wasn't watching.
“Good shot!” we cried, with real enthusiasm.
“I wasn't looking, where'd it go?” he asked, with an attempt at scorn, which, however, was manifestly weakening.
“Got a putt fer a two,” said his caddie.
The noted man cast a withering look at this object of his previous invective. He still suspected something. We backed the caddie up, and he strode down the fairway with a certain reviving spring in his step.
There on the green, not six inches from the cup, reposed his battered ball!
“Been anybody else it would have gone in!” he muttered, as he sank it for a two.
That was his proud surrender. He said no more. He strode ahead to the next tee, and tore out a long, straight drive. Then he lit a cigarette and remarked that he had never seen the willows more beautiful, more silvery in the afternoon light.
Ah, well, poor chap, he did give up golf on the first of August, if not forever at least for the longest period of abstinence in his career on the links. On our last afternoon over the velvet together, before he left for the steamer that was to take him into the maelstrom, he paid little attention to his game, and a surprised and, I fancied, even a slightly disappointed caddie followed him. (He was always most generous to his caddie when he had most abused him, like the hero of Goldoni's comedy.)