at the moment of impact. If you allow your heel to point down the
course, it is almost impossible to bring it back in time to make the
foot a solid fulcrum.'
I drove, and managed to clear the rough and reach the fairway. But it
was not one of my best drives. George Mackintosh, I confess, had
unnerved me. The feeling he gave me resembled the self-conscious panic
which I used to experience in my childhood when informed that there was
One Awful Eye that watched my every movement and saw my every act. It
was only the fact that poor Celia appeared even more affected by his
espionage that enabled me to win the first hole in seven.
On the way to the second tee George discoursed on the beauties of
Nature, pointing out at considerable length how exquisitely the silver
glitter of the lake harmonized with the vivid emerald turf near the
hole and the duller green of the rough beyond it. As Celia teed up her
ball, he directed her attention to the golden glory of the sand-pit to
the left of the flag. It was not the spirit in which to approach the
lake-hole, and I was not surprised when the unfortunate girl's ball
fell with a sickening plop half-way across the water.
'Where you went wrong there,' said George, 'was that you made the
stroke a sudden heave instead of a smooth, snappy flick of the wrists.
Pressing is always bad, but with the mashie----'
'I think I will give you this hole,' said Celia to me, for my shot had
cleared the water and was lying on the edge of the green. 'I wish I
hadn't used a new ball.'
'The price of golf-balls,' said George, as we started to round the
lake, 'is a matter to which economists should give some attention. I am
credibly informed that rubber at the present time is exceptionally
cheap. Yet we see no decrease in the price of golf-balls, which, as I
need scarcely inform you, are rubber-cored. Why should this be so? You
will say that the wages of skilled labour have gone up. True. But----'
'One moment, George, while I drive,' I said. For we had now arrived at
the third tee.
'A curious thing, concentration,' said George, 'and why certain
phenomena should prevent us from focusing our attention---- This brings
me to the vexed question of sleep. Why is it that we are able to sleep
through some vast convulsion of Nature when a dripping tap is enough to
keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered
peacefully through the San Francisco earthquake, merely stirring
drowsily from time to time to tell an imaginary person to leave it on
the mat. Yet these same people----'
Celia's drive bounded into the deep ravine which yawns some fifty yards
from the tee. A low moan escaped her.
'Where you went wrong there----' said George.
'I know,' said Celia. 'I lifted my head.'
I had never heard her speak so abruptly before. Her manner, in a girl
less noticeably pretty, might almost have been called snappish. George,
however, did not appear to have noticed anything amiss. He filled his
pipe and followed her into the ravine.
'Remarkable,' he said, 'how fundamental a principle of golf is this
