Mortimer shook his head.
'Alas, no!' he replied, gravely. 'My game went right off for some
reason or other, and I'm twenty-four, too.'
'For some reason or other!' She uttered a cry. 'Oh, I know what the
reason was! How can I ever forgive myself! I have ruined your game!'
The brightness came back to Mortimer's eyes. He embraced her fondly.
'Do not reproach yourself, dearest,' he murmured. 'It is the best thing
that could have happened. From now on, we start level, two hearts that
beat as one, two drivers that drive as one. I could not wish it
otherwise. By George! It's just like that thing of Tennyson's.'
He recited the lines softly:
My bride,
My wife, my life. Oh, we will walk the links
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so thro' those dark bunkers off the course
That no man knows. Indeed, I love thee: come,
Yield thyself up: our handicaps are one;
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.
She laid her hands in his.
'And now, Mortie, darling,' she said, 'I want to tell you all about how
I did the long twelfth at Auchtermuchtie in one under bogey.'
5
The Salvation of George Mackintosh
The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his
usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice
which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to
bring on the hemlock.
Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had
watched him with silent sympathy.
'How did you get on?' he inquired.
'He beat me.'
The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.
'You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much
when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go
out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in his youth, and crawl back at
eventide looking like a toad under the harrow! He talked?'
'All the time, confound it! Put me right off my stroke.'
The Oldest Member sighed.
'The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our
complex modern civilization,' he said, 'and the most difficult to deal
with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have
produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in
action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad
as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you
about George Mackintosh?'
'I don't think so.'
'His,' said the Sage, 'is the only case of golfing garrulity I have
ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care to
hear about it----?'
* * * * *
