'Ah!' said Ramsden, 'if only I could win what I want to win more than
anything else on earth! You, I mean,' he added, to make his meaning
clear. 'If I could win you----' His tongue tied itself in a bow knot
round his uvula, and he could say no more. He moved slowly to the door,
paused with his fingers on the handle for one last look over his
shoulder, and walked silently into the cupboard where Eunice's aunt
kept her collection of dried seaweed.
His second start was favoured with greater luck, and he found himself
out in the hall, and presently in the cool air of the night, with the
stars shining down on him. Had those silent stars ever shone down on a
more broken-hearted man? Had the cool air of the night ever fanned a
more fevered brow? Ah, yes! Or, rather, ah no!
There was not a very large entry for the mixed foursomes competition.
In my experience there seldom is. Men are as a rule idealists, and wish
to keep their illusions regarding women intact, and it is difficult for
the most broad-minded man to preserve a chivalrous veneration for the
sex after a woman has repeatedly sliced into the rough and left him a
difficult recovery. Women, too--I am not speaking of the occasional
champions, but of the average woman, the one with the handicap of 33,
who plays in high-heeled shoes--are apt to giggle when they foozle out
of a perfect lie, and this makes for misogyny. Only eight couples
assembled on the tenth tee (where our foursomes matches start) on the
morning after Ramsden Waters had proposed to Eunice. Six of these were
negligible, consisting of males of average skill and young women who
played golf because it kept them out in the fresh air. Looking over the
field, Ramsden felt that the only serious rivalry was to be feared from
Marcella Bingley and her colleague, a 16-handicap youth named George
Perkins, with whom they were paired for the opening round. George was a
pretty indifferent performer, but Marcella, a weather-beaten female
with bobbed hair and the wrists of a welterweight pugilist, had once
appeared in the women's open championship and swung a nasty iron.
Ramsden watched her drive a nice, clean shot down the middle of the
fairway, and spoke earnestly to Eunice. His heart was in this
competition, for, though the first prize in the mixed foursomes does
not perhaps entitle the winners to a place in the hall of fame, Ramsden
had the soul of the true golfer. And the true golfer wants to win
whenever he starts, whether he is playing in a friendly round or in the
open championship.
'What we've got to do is to play steadily,' he said. 'Don't try any
fancy shots. Go for safety. Miss Bingley is a tough proposition, but
George Perkins is sure to foozle a few, and if we play safe we've got
'em cold. The others don't count.'
You notice something odd about this speech. Something in it strikes you
as curious. Precisely. It affected Eunice Bray in the same fashion. In
the first place, it contains forty-four words, some of them of two
syllables, others of even greater length. In the second place, it was
spoken crisply, almost commandingly, without any of that hesitation and
stammering which usually characterized Ramsden Waters's utterances.
Eunice was puzzled. She was also faintly resentful. True, there was not
a word in what he had said that was calculated to bring the blush of
