than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm
the nature-lover's heart.
But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a
whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and
romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a
nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the
birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that
may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at
the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer, I have
frequently found it the very devil.
The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more
deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his
ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a
tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the
hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for,
if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the
ravine.
Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately
behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the
direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddie, with a glassy look in his
eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent
prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on
it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine.
There was a pause--a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell
dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly.
'Mitchell!' I cried. 'My boy! Reflect! Be calm!'
'Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in
thousands all round you? What is this, anyway--a golf match or a
pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples! Go on, my
boy, take another bite. Take several. Enjoy yourself! Never mind if it
seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance. Go on with your lunch! You
probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish,
yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a
sandwich and a bottle of ginger-ale. Make yourself quite at home, you
lovable little fellow! Sit down and have a good time!'
I turned the pages of Professor Rollitt's book feverishly. I could not
find a passage that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this
emergency. I selected one at random.
'Mitchell,' I said, 'one moment. How much time he gains who does not
look to see what his neighbour says or does, but only at what he does
himself, to make it just and holy.'
'Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of
that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do
you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!'
He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked
at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently
on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his
driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had
passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long
grass.
