John Henry Smith Part 7

"Why?" I inquired.

"If I could play in eighty-five, as you and Mr. Carter do, I would not recognise one who requires from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and sixty," laughed Miss Harding.

For the life of me I cannot recall what I said in answer to this a.s.sertion, but it was something stupid, no doubt. She finally promised to play with me to-morrow, explaining that she and her father were about to go automobiling.

We strolled over to one of the practise tees, and I was delighted when she asked me to observe her swing, and advise her how to correct it. I spent half an hour doing this, and she made wonderful improvement. I hoped Carter would come along and see us, but I saw nothing of him.

While we were there, Marshall, Chilvers and Lawson pa.s.sed and asked me to make up a foursome. For the first time in my life I refused, and the way those idiots looked back at me and grinned tempted me to break a club over their heads. There is no law to compel a man to play golf if he does not wish to. I figured that a rest for half a day would improve my game. The fact is, and the best golfers are coming to realise it, that a man can play so much that he goes stale.

I have just been looking back over the notes of my second entry in this diary of a golfer, and I wish to modify the statement to the effect that a woman under no circ.u.mstances appears graceful or attractive in golf att.i.tudes.

In fact I absolutely repudiate that ungallant and prejudiced a.s.sertion.

In one place I said: "If Miss Harding is beautiful enough to overcome the handicap which always attaches to the golf duffer, she can give Venus all sorts of odds and beat her handily. I have yet to see the woman who shows to advantage with a golf regalia."

I take that back, also.

To see a woman raise a golf club with a jerky, uneven stroke, and come down on the helpless turf with the head of it, as if beating a carpet, has always given me a chill and a sensation of wild rage, but there is something about the way Miss Harding does this which is actually artistic. There are combinations of discords which make for perfect harmony, and it is the same with the little eccentricities of Miss Harding's swing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "There is no law to compel a man to play golf"]

The poise of the head and shoulders, the sweep of the arms, and the undulations of the figure seem to take on an added charm from what might be called the "graceful crudity" of her stroke. I do not know why this is so, but it is a fact.

I shall never forget the attempt I once made to instruct my sister in the rudimentary principles of the swing of a golf club. She was a pretty girl; bright, lively and graceful, but after I had given her two lessons we were so mad at one another that we did not speak for weeks. It seemingly was impossible to make her distinguish between the back sweep and the follow through. She would persist in coming down on the tee with the face of her club, but at that she made a splendid marriage, and is a happy wife and mother.

Miss Harding will make a first-cla.s.s golf player, and I told her so.

"Do you really think so?" she asked, after several swings, most of which would have hit the ball.

"I certainly do," I declared. "All that you need is the constant advice of someone who is thoroughly familiar with the technique of the game."

She utterly ignored this hint.

"My one ambition," she said, with a bewitching little laugh, rather plaintive, I thought, "is to drive a ball far enough so that there will be some difficulty in finding it. It must be jolly to hit a ball straight out so far that you cannot tell within yards just where it is.

Do you know," and she looked really sad, "I have never lost a ball in my life?"

"How remarkable!" I exclaimed. "I have known Carter to lose a dozen at one game."

"Indeed! I think Mr. Carter is a perfectly splendid player," she declared. "I was watching him one day last week. He is so strong, confident and easy in his execution of shots. If I could drive like he does I would be willing to lose a dozen b.a.l.l.s every time I played."

I changed the subject, and was showing her a new way to grip the club when I heard a step behind us.

"h.e.l.lo, Smith! If you are going out in that buzz-wagon with me, Kid, you had better drop that stick and get a move on."

Of course it was her father. No one else would dare talk to Miss Harding like that. To hear him one would think that she was twelve years old, but I suppose fathers can do as they like.

"Fix up a ball, Kid, and let's see how far you can soak it," he said.

"I am just practising the follow through," explained Miss Harding. "Mr.

Smith has told me many things about the correct way to follow through."

"When your mother was your age she was practising the 'follow through,'

as you call it, on a scrubbing board over a wash tub," declared Mr.

Harding, and he said it as if he were proud of it.

"I could do that if I had to," laughed Miss Harding, handing me the club. "Thank you, Mr. Smith. To-morrow I expect to show decided improvement. Come on, papa!"

"So long, Smith," said Harding. "I'm going to trim you youngsters at your own game before I get through with you."

I took a rest all the afternoon so as to be in shape for to-morrow. I propose to show Miss Harding that I am the peer of Carter or anyone else who plays here.

It never occurred to me that it was possible to get enjoyment out of a golf course by any method other than by playing over it, but I had keen pleasure all the afternoon in studying the men who frequent the Woodvale links. My refusal to play created a sensation, and I enjoyed that.

It is amusing to study the way in which different players go about this game. The railway station is only a few hundred yards away, and as I watched those men who came on the 1:42 train from the city the thought occurred to me that I could have picked out the good players even had I been a stranger to those who approached the club house. You can cla.s.s the various types of golfers by their mannerisms, even if you have never seen them with a club in their hands. For instance there were two members who left the station platform at the same time--Duff and Monahan. Both are men of standing in the community, and both are charter members. They started to learn the game at the same period, and both play at least five afternoons during the season, yet Monahan plays consistently in eighty-two, while Duff is fortunate to score in ninety-five. Why this woeful inferiority of Duff?

They are great friends and always play together, and they go through the same performance every time they reach the grounds.

The moment Monahan left the train he headed for the club house as if it were on fire and all of his money in its lockers. Duff says Monahan is perfectly quiet and sane until he catches the first glimpse of the links, but that his blood then begins to boil, and that he burns in a fever of haste to get a club in his hands.

Monahan barely nodded to me as he pa.s.sed and rushed up stairs. In less than two minutes he was back and ready to play. As he tore out he met Duff, who had strolled complacently up the walk, stopping now and then to speak to a friend or to watch a shot.

Duff's clothes were the model of fas.h.i.+on and good taste. In his hand was twirled a cane, and in his lapel was the inevitable boutonniere. He had paused to chat with Miss Ross--Duff is married and has a daughter older than Miss Ross--and was engaged in a discussion concerning a new play when Monahan approached. Monahan had on a golf suit which would cause his arrest as a tramp if he wandered from the links.

"Did you come up here to play golf or to pose on the veranda?" demanded the indignant Monahan, grasping Duff by the shoulder and swinging him half way around. "Please go away from him, Miss Ross; he will talk you to death."

Twenty minutes later Duff wandered leisurely out to the first tee, where Monahan had been waiting, glaring every few seconds at the club house, and swearing under his breath. Duff looked even neater than in his street clothes. His s.h.i.+rts, scarfs, trousers, shoes and caps form combinations which are sartorial poems.

Duff smiled complacently during the tongue las.h.i.+ng administered by the irate Monahan. This happens regularly every time they play. One would think that the calm, unruffled Duff would defeat the nervous and impatient Monahan, but nothing of the kind happens. The latter exacts revenge by beating Duff to a frazzle.

I do not mean to infer that the slow or deliberate person will not make a good player, but with deliberation he must have that keen interest which dominates all of his faculties.

Marshall, for instance, is the slowest player I ever saw, and one of the best. It is tiresome to watch him prepare to make a shot. He averages four practise strokes. He has become so addicted to the practise-stroke habit that he makes a series of preliminary manoeuvres before carving a steak, and he raises his gla.s.s and sets it down several times before taking a drink. His game is the sublimation of caution. It is the brilliancy of care.

Later in the afternoon I wandered down the old lane which bisects the links and climbed "The Eagle's Nest," a jagged pile of rocks which rise on the southeastern part of the course. When a boy I discovered a way to reach the crest of the higher ledge, fully two hundred feet above the brook which takes its rambling course to the west. At this alt.i.tude there is a natural seat, so formed by the rocks that those below cannot see the one who uses this as a sentinel box.

It suited my mood to climb there this afternoon. Lazily smoking a cigar I drank in the pastoral panorama spread out before me. The old Sumner road wound as a dusty-gray ribbon amid fields of grain and corn. Below were the pigmy figures of golfers, grotesque in their insignificance, striding along like abbreviated compa.s.ses.

What dwarfs they were compared with their huge playground; what insects they were contrasted to the splendid area within the sweep of the horizon; what microbes they were when the eye wandered from them to the superb vault of the skies!

I heard the lowing of cattle, and saw the Bishop herd coming over a hill from the meadows. The notes of a Scotch air, sung in a clear, mellow baritone came to my ears, and a moment later I saw Bishop's "hired man," Wallace, driving the kine before him. His cap was in his hand, and his jet-black hair fell back from his forehead.

I have no idea what impelled me to do so, but I leaned over the cliff and looked below.

Half-way up the gentler slope of "The Eagle's Nest" I saw the figure of a girl, or a woman. I keep my eyes on her, and as near as I can determine she never once took hers from Bishop's hired man. Not until he vanished in the woods which surrounds the farmhouse, did she move. Then she turned and slowly picked her way down the rather dangerous path.

It was Miss Olive Lawrence.