"Pip" Part 38

"Give us a kiss, Jack!"

Pip complied, with a satisfactory thoroughness that elicited a humorous expostulation from the only porter, who was pa.s.sing by.

"Good-bye!" he said. "You'll be all right when you get to King's Cross."

Which cryptic remark was the last he ever addressed to the Princ.i.p.al Boy, for the train glided out of the station, and he never saw her again.

Before leaving the station Pip despatched the following telegram:--

_Lister, Crown Theatre, Strand, London._

Arriving King's Cross 7.30. Can you meet me? Want help badly.

LOTTIE.

The following morning, having discarded his chauffeur's attire and departed from Broadoak Manor, after listening to an eloquent and most enjoyable valedictory address from its tenant, Pip returned to London.

At the end of a highly satisfactory interview with the Gresleys he turned his steps in the direction of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, which he had not entered for three years.

He made himself known to those in authority, and announced that he had now returned from "abroad." He then asked if there was any letter for "Armstrong," which, he explained rather lamely, had been sent him under that name, "by mistake."

Yes, there was a note left by a messenger that afternoon. He opened it.

It contained a single line--

All's well; and we thank you--_both_ of us!

LOTTIE LISTER.

BOOK THREE

THE JOURNEY'S END

CHAPTER X

AN ANCIENT GAME

I

SOMEWHERE on the east coast of Scotland lie the famous Links of Eric.

The district has not changed much, to all seeming, during the last thousand years--or ten thousand, for that matter. Then, as now, the links were a sandy waste, a wilderness of whin, sand, and bent, the home of countless scuttling rabbits and plaintive peewits. Later, perhaps, when William the Conqueror was creating a disturbance in the southern parts of remote England, a tiny fis.h.i.+ng town began to grow up round the little harbour reluctantly yielded by the tall red cliffs to the eternal industry of the ocean, and the adjoining strip of low-lying sand-dunes acquired the t.i.tle that it now bears, derived, it is said, from the name of the Norse king who once landed on this, the only piece of accessible sh.o.r.e for miles, and was there slain, after a b.l.o.o.d.y battle with the neighbouring lord and his retainers. The town itself will have none of these barbaric t.i.tles, but exists smugly and contentedly as Port Allan.

But it was through her little-valued links that Port Allan achieved fame. Two hundred years ago a new minister came from St. Andrew's, and introduced the men of Port Allan to a game called Golf. They took to it in their deliberate, methodical fas.h.i.+on, and laid out a little course on the hitherto neglected Links of Eric. Thither they repaired on fine summer evenings, carrying queer long-nosed wooden clubs and feather-stuffed b.a.l.l.s. The golfing minister went the way of all flesh, and his compeers with him, but the golf endured. Generations of slow-moving fisher-folk, ecclesiastical luminaries, and holiday-making scholars--for the fame of the links brought visitors from so great a distance as a hundred miles--all played round the links in their day, recking nothing of Medal Scores, Colonel Bogey, the Schenectady putter, or other modern excrescences. They used their long-nosed wooden clubs to some purpose, and though they did not drive the feather-stuffed ball very far they drove it very straight. Once the great Allan Robertson visited Port Allan. He p.r.o.nounced favourably on the course, and a word from Allan Robertson in those days was as good as a descriptive article in "Golf Ill.u.s.trated" in these. And so for many years the Links of Eric grew steadily in favour with golfers.

But one day--one momentous day--the men of England came to the conclusion that golf was the one and only game worth playing, and Scotland the one and only place to play it in. Accordingly, with that spontaneous readiness to suit the action to the word that has ever been the characteristic of an Empire-making race, they migrated with their wives and families across the Border, and proceeded to hew divots from the face of Scotland with an eagerness and _bonhomie_ which was equalled only by the unanimity with which they forbore to replace them. Golf, which had existed for centuries as a sort of religious ceremony, to be cultivated by its votaries in reverent silence and at a strictly processional pace, suddenly became a species of bank-holiday picnic; and those ancient and highly respectable burghs which fostered the game in especial purity were converted into rather _recherche_ editions of Hampstead Heath.

However unpleasant this foray might be for the Scottish golfer, it presented certain compensating features to the Scottish railways and hotel-proprietors. Of remote villages, which had formerly figured in the traffic returns as occasional yielders of a truck-load of fish, there now appeared highly-tinted pictures, with the Company's name at the top and a list of trains at the bottom. The hotel proprietors, on their part, quickly realising that to the average Englishman a golf-course consists of any tract of land in Scotland plentifully endowed with rabbit-holes, hastily staked out a claim on the nearest collection of sand-hills, and advertised to all and sundry that visitors to their hotel would be permitted, for a consideration, to play golf over the celebrated links of so-and-so, "adjoining the hotel."

Port Allan was one of the places which benefited by reason of the boom.

The nearest railway station was seven miles away, but the Company quickly remedied that defect, and advertised through bookings from King's Cross. A special time-table was published, decorated at the top with a coloured view of the Links of Eric, in the foreground of which a golf-match was in progress between a gentleman in a sky-blue Norfolk suit and a red cap, and a lady in a red dress and a sky-blue hat. The lady was depicted in the act of driving off from the tee (with a blue putter); while the gentleman, rather ungallantly, had gone forward a few yards, and was engaged in playing out of the first bunker (with a red bra.s.sie).

The inhabitants of Port Allan soon realised that to play golf over their own links in summer was out of the question. They accordingly accepted the situation, and, relegating their own golfing efforts to the autumn, turned to the equally congenial task of spoiling the Egyptians. Elderly seafaring men, who had hitherto extracted a precarious livelihood from the grudging ocean, abandoned their nets and took to carrying clubs, the fee of eighteenpence per round which they were permitted to charge being inclusive of a vast amount of caustic criticism, and priceless, if unintelligible, advice.

Behold, then, the Links of Eric one fine morning in early August.

Observe the throng of golfers, male and female, young and old. Here you may see Youth, full of slas.h.i.+ng drives and strange oaths, and Age, known for his sage counsel and long putts. Here is a schoolboy, with bare knees and head, and a supple swing that makes middle-aged golfers wriggle with envy. Here is a "golfing minister." His clubs are old-fas.h.i.+oned and his ball has been repainted; you will outdrive him over and over again, but unless you have at least a stroke in hand when it comes to approaching and putting, he will beat you. Those two men over there, playing in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, are Americans, of course.

They are playing very keenly, but they are thinking, not of the game, but of some entirely new and original way of winning it. The fat gentleman is an Englishman. He originally took up golf by his doctor's orders, but by this time is badly bitten. He wears a red coat, adorned with the b.u.t.tons of the Toadley-in-the-Hole Golf Club, and ekes out his want of skill by the help of patent clubs, an india-rubber tee,--ye G.o.ds!--and a wealth of technical phraseology. The couple in the middle of the course, with a highly profane throng waiting behind them, are a honeymoon, and as such ought not to be there at all. Their b.a.l.l.s lie side by side in a rabbit-sc.r.a.pe; and they are disputing, not as to the right club to use, but whether p.u.s.s.y can possibly love Sweetie more than Sweetie loves p.u.s.s.y. Ah! an irascible couple have driven into them!

Sweetie, at once putting a protecting arm round p.u.s.s.y, turns and glares at them wrathfully, but p.u.s.s.y, looking distinctly relieved, picks up both b.a.l.l.s and impels her newly acquired lord over an adjacent sand-hill to a secluded spot that she knows of, where they can sit in peace till lunch-time.

But besides these anomalies and curiosities--common objects of all golf-links in summer--there are some real golfers to be seen. Here are two young men worth watching. Number One is addressing his ball for an approach shot. It will have to be a cunning stroke, for there is a yawning bunker in front of the green and a thick patch of whin beyond it. If he attempts to run the ball up, the bunker will catch it, and if he plays to carry the bunker, the chances are that he will overrun the green and find himself in the whins. He plays a fine lofted ball, which drops on to the hard green six yards from the pin, and then, with that marvellous back-spin which only a master-hand can impart, gives a curious staggering rebound, and after trickling forward for a few yards lies almost dead.

"Good shot!" remarks Number Two, and turns to play his own ball. It is lying very badly in some bents, half buried in sand. Number Two--he is a left-hander--rejects the proffered niblick and selects a ponderous driving-mas.h.i.+e. Then, with an opening of the shoulders and an upward lift that betray the cricketer in every movement, he gives a mighty slog, and propels a confused cloud of sand, bents, and ball into the bunker guarding the green sixty yards away.

"Too good that time, Pip," remarks his companion.

"Didn't think I could get so far," replied Pip. "However, I get a stroke from you this hole, so wait a bit."

He descended into the bunker, but the ball was reposing in a heel-mark, and it required two even of Pip's earth-compelling niblick shots to remove it. Colquhoun, plus one at St. Andrew's, consequently took the hole in four.

Pip was staying at the Station Hotel, by himself. The motive which had brought him to a distant part of Scotland, to play a game at which he was far from being first-cla.s.s, will appear in due course. Sufficient to say that it was a strong motive, and an exceedingly ancient one,--a motive which has brought about even more surprising events than the abandonment of first-cla.s.s cricket, on the eve of a Test Match, by the finest amateur bowler in England.

They finished their match half an hour later, Pip, who was in receipt of a half, being one down. As they turned to leave the last green Pip found himself confronted by a large man in a Panama hat.

"Pip!" cried the stranger--"Pip! Bless my soul! What the blazes are you doing in Scotland in August?"

"Hallo, Raven," replied Pip. "Fancy meeting you, old man!"

They turned and walked up the road together.

"Why aren't you playing for the County?" inquired Pip severely.

"Missis," replied Raven Innes laconically. Then he added,--

"Said we must go away for August on account of the kiddies. I'm taking a holiday from cricket in consequence: golf isn't a bad subst.i.tute. But what are you doing here, young man? Aren't you about due at Old Trafford for the Test Match?"

"No," replied Pip, beginning to fill his pipe; "I'm not."

Innes stopped short in his walk.

"You don't mean to tell me," he said, "that they have been such fools--"

"It's not that," said Pip.