"Pip" Part 42

But the door was shut.

"Serve him right, too!" you say. Well, perhaps; but lack of presumption is a rare and not unmanly virtue.

CHAPTER XI

"_NATURAM FURCA EXPELLAS ..._"

ALAS!

When Pip slipped out of bed at six o'clock next morning the window-panes were blurred and wet, and the Links of Eric were shrouded in driving sheets of rain.

His pithy and apposite comments on the situation were, had he only known it, being reproduced (in an expurgated form) by a damsel in a kimono at a bedroom window not far down the road. Elsie surveyed the rain-washed links reflectively, and sighed.

"What a pity!" she said to herself. "I would have given him such a lesson! Now I suppose we shall both waste a day."

With which enigmatical conclusion she crept into bed again.

Pip arrived at Knocknaha after breakfast, but Elsie flatly refused to stir outside until the rain had ceased. This was no more than her swain had expected, and he returned resignedly to the hotel, where he pa.s.sed an exceedingly unprofitable morning smoking and playing billiards.

After luncheon an ancient mariner in a blue jersey and a high-crowned bowler hat approached him on the hotel veranda and intimated that the day was a good one for deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng. It was certainly no day for courting, and Pip, weary in spirit, was fain to accept the implied invitation.

They walked to the beach together, and began to haul down the old man's boat. This done, the oars and tackle were put in, and the expedition was on the point of departure when Pip suddenly realised that it had stopped raining.

"Hallo!" he said. "Rain over?"

"Aye," remarked the old man; "it will be a grand afternoon yet."

Pip turned upon him suddenly.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Aye."

"Certain?"

"'Deed aye," replied the old gentleman rather testily. "When the top of yon ben is uncovered like so, and the wind--"

"In that case," remarked his employer suddenly, "I can't come fis.h.i.+ng, I'm afraid. I must go and--do something else. Another day, perhaps."

And handing the scandalised mariner half-a-crown, he departed over the sand-hills at a rate which would certainly have brought about his disqualification in any decently conducted walking-race.

An hour later two players approached the first tee. They were Elsie and Pip.

Now the nerves of both these young people, although neither of them would have admitted it, were tightly strung up by reason of the present situation. Each side (as they say in the election reports) was confident of success, but their reasons for confidence were widely dissimilar. Pip meant to win, because in his opinion the only way to gain a woman's affection is to show yourself her master at something. If he had moved in another cla.s.s of society he would have subdued his beloved with a poker or a boot, and she on the whole would have respected him for it: being a sportsman, he preferred to use a golf-club.

Elsie meant to win for a different reason. To begin with, her spirit rebelled against the idea of becoming the captive of Pip's bow and spear. She might or she might not intend to marry him,--that was her own secret,--but she had not the slightest intention of marrying him because he beat her at golf. Obviously, the first thing to do was to beat _him_; then the situation would be in her hands and she could dictate her own terms. What those terms were to be she had not quite settled. All she knew was that Pip, if he were to have her at all, should have her as a favour and not as a right.

Consequently the l.u.s.t of battle was upon them both; and it was with undisguised chagrin that they found three couples awaiting their turn at the first tee. To be kept back through the green is irritating enough under any circ.u.mstances, but when you are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the matrimonial stakes, absolute freedom of action is essential.

Instinctively Pip and Elsie turned and looked at each other in dismay.

Then Pip said--

"Let's tramp out to the turn, and we'll play the last nine holes first.

It will come to the same thing in the end."

Elsie agreed, and they set off together across the links in the direction of the ninth hole. They had no caddies, for each felt that on this occasion witnesses were impossible.

Pip, indeed, offered to carry Elsie's clubs as well as his own, but he was met with a very curt refusal.

"Nonsense! You would always be hammering your own ball a hundred yards away in a bunker, while I was waiting for my mas.h.i.+e."

The rain had ceased, and a watery sun shone down upon them. There was no wind, and the conditions for golf were almost perfect. The greens had become a trifle fiery during the recent drought, and the morning's rain had stiffened them finely.

Presently they found themselves on the tenth tee.

"You drive first," said Pip.

Elsie began to tee her ball.

"It's the last time you'll have the chance," he continued.

Elsie picked up her ball.

"For that," she remarked, "you shall drive first. I am not going to take any favours from a duffer."

Pip rose from the tee-box on which he was sitting and took her ball from her hand. Then he stooped down and teed it carefully.

"Ladies first," he remarked briefly.

Elsie, feeling curiously weak, said no more, but obeyed him. She made a pretty drive, the ball keeping low, but towering suddenly before it dropped. It lay, clean and white, in a good lie a hundred and fifty yards away.

"Good beat!" said Pip appreciatively, and began to address his own ball.

His rigid stance and curious lifting swing were the exact opposite of Elsie's supple movements, but for all that he outdrove her by nearly a hundred yards. It was a Cyclopean effort, and the Haskell ball, as it bounded over the hard ground, which had been little affected by the rain, looked as if it would never stop.

"Lovely drive!" cried Elsie involuntarily.

"Yes, it was a hefty swipe," admitted Pip. "I get about two of those each round. The rest average five yards."

The hole was a simple one. A good drive usually left the ball in a nice lie, whence the green, which was guarded by a bunker, could be reached with an iron. Pip's ball was lying well up, and only a chip with his mas.h.i.+e was required to lay him dead. Elsie found herself faced by that difficulty which confronts all females who essay masculine golf-courses.

Her ball, though well and truly struck, was farther from the hole than her iron could carry it. A bra.s.sie-shot would get her over the bunker, but would probably overrun the green, which lay immediately beyond; while anything in the shape of a run-up ball would be trapped. She decided to risk an iron shot. She did her best, but the distance was too great for her. The ball dropped into the bunker with a soft thud; she required two more to get out; and Pip, who had succeeded in clearing the bunker with his second and running down a long putt, won the hole in an unnecessarily perfect three.

"One down," said Elsie. "Too good a start, Pip. You'll lose now."