the player proceeds up the face of a steep slope, to find himself
ultimately on a green which looks like the sea in the storm scene of a
melodrama. It heaves and undulates, and is altogether a nasty thing to
have happen to one at the end of a gruelling match. But it is the first
shot, the drive, which is the real test, for the water and the trees
form a mental hazard of unquestionable toughness.
George Perkins, as he addressed his ball for the vital stroke,
manifestly wabbled. He was scared to the depths of his craven soul. He
tried to pray, but all he could remember was the hymn for those in
peril on the deep, into which category, he feared, his ball would
shortly fall. Breathing a few bars of this, he swung. There was a
musical click, and the ball, singing over the water like a bird,
breasted the hill like a homing aeroplane and fell in the centre of the
fairway within easy distance of the plateau green.
'Nice work, partner,' said Miss Bingley, speaking for the first and
last time in the course of the proceedings.
George unravelled himself with a modest simper. He felt like a gambler
who has placed his all on a number at roulette and sees the white ball
tumble into the correct compartment.
Eunice moved to the tee. In the course of the last eight holes the
girl's haughty soul had been rudely harrowed. She had foozled two
drives and three approach shots and had missed a short putt on the last
green but three. She had that consciousness of sin which afflicts the
golfer off his game, that curious self-loathing which humbles the
proudest. Her knees felt weak and all nature seemed to bellow at her
that this was where she was going to blow up with a loud report.
Even as her driver rose above her shoulder she was acutely aware that
she was making eighteen out of the twenty-three errors which complicate
the drive at golf. She knew that her head had swayed like some
beautiful flower in a stiff breeze. The heel of her left foot was
pointing down the course. Her grip had shifted, and her wrists felt
like sticks of boiled asparagus. As the club began to descend she
perceived that she had underestimated the total of her errors. And when
the ball, badly topped, bounded down the slope and entered the muddy
water like a timid diver on a cold morning she realized that she had a
full hand. There are twenty-three things which it is possible to do
wrong in the drive, and she had done them all.
Silently Ramsden Waters made a tee and placed thereon a new ball. He
was a golfer who rarely despaired, but he was playing three, and his
opponents' ball would undoubtedly be on the green, possibly even dead,
in two. Nevertheless, perhaps, by a supreme drive, and one or two
miracles later on, the game might be saved. He concentrated his whole
soul on the ball.
I need scarcely tell you that Ramsden Waters pressed....
Swish came the driver. The ball, fanned by the wind, rocked a little on
the tee, then settled down in its original position. Ramsden Waters,
usually the most careful of players, had missed the globe.
For a moment there was a silence--a silence which Ramsden had to strive
with an effort almost physically painful not to break. Rich oaths
surged to his lips, and blistering maledictions crashed against the
