to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without
intending it.'
Mitchell nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.
'Before you drive, darling,' said Millicent, 'remember this. Let no act
be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished
rules that govern its kind.'
The next moment Mitchell's ball was shooting through the air, to come
to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive.
He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter.
An admirable iron-shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and
he holed out in one under bogey with one of the nicest putts I have
ever beheld. And when at the next hole, the dangerous water-hole, his
ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole,
I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day,
and this was plainly Mitchell's. He was playing faultless golf. If he
could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no
chance to show itself.
The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine--or possibly
into it. In the latter event you breathe a prayer and call for your
niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the
equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a
brassey-shot, will put you within easy mashie-distance of the green.
Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled
back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an
indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world
seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so
little irritating as when we have just swatted the pill right on the
spot.
'I can't see why he does it,' said Mitchell, eyeing Alexander with a
toleration that almost amounted to affection. 'If I did all those
Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out
for and go home.' Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare
three yards on the other side of the ravine. 'He's what you would call
a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies!'
Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his
stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Over-confidence
at golf is almost as bad as timidity.
My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled
twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth
opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I
were standing.
'I didn't say it!' he said. 'What on earth happened then?'
'Search men's governing principles,' said Millicent, 'and consider the
wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.'
'Exactly,' I said. 'You swayed your body.'
'And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball.'
'Never mind, darling,' said Millicent. 'Nothing has such power to
broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly
all that comes under thy observation in life.'
'Besides,' I said, 'you're three up.'
