immediately apologized and qualified it. To such a man women are
merciless, and it speedily became an article of faith with the feminine
population of this locality that Ramsden Waters was an unfortunate
incident and did not belong. Finally, after struggling for a time to
keep up a connection in social circles, he gave it up and became a sort
of hermit.
I think that caricature I just showed you weighed rather heavily on the
poor fellow. Just as he was nerving himself to make another attempt to
enter society, he would catch sight of it and say to himself, 'What
hope is there for a man with a face like that?' These caricaturists are
too ready to wound people simply in order to raise a laugh. Personally
I am broad-minded enough to smile at that portrait of myself. It has
given me great enjoyment, though why the committee permits it to--But
then, of course, it isn't a bit like, whereas that of Ramsden Waters
not only gave the man's exact appearance, very little exaggerated, but
laid bare his very soul. That portrait is the portrait of a chump, and
such Ramsden Waters undeniably was.
By the end of the first year in the neighbourhood, Ramsden, as I say,
had become practically a hermit. He lived all by himself in a house
near the fifteenth green, seeing nobody, going nowhere. His only solace
was golf. His late father had given him an excellent education, and,
even as early as his seventeenth year, I believe, he was going round
difficult courses in par. Yet even this admirable gift, which might
have done him social service, was rendered negligible by the fact that
he was too shy and shrinking to play often with other men. As a rule,
he confined himself to golfing by himself in the mornings and late
evenings when the links were more or less deserted. Yes, in his
twenty-ninth year, Ramsden Waters had sunk to the depth of becoming a
secret golfer.
One lovely morning in summer, a scented morning of green and blue and
gold, when the birds sang in the trees and the air had that limpid
clearness which makes the first hole look about 100 yards long instead
of 345, Ramsden Waters, alone as ever, stood on the first tee
addressing his ball. For a space he waggled masterfully, then, drawing
his club back with a crisp swish, brought it down. And, as he did so, a
voice behind him cried:
'Bing!'
Ramsden's driver wabbled at the last moment. The ball flopped weakly
among the trees on the right of the course. Ramsden turned to perceive,
standing close beside him, a small fat boy in a sailor suit. There was
a pause.
'Rotten!' said the boy austerely.
Ramsden gulped. And then suddenly he saw that the boy was not alone.
About a medium approach-putt distance, moving gracefully and languidly
towards him, was a girl of such pronounced beauty that Ramsden Waters's
heart looped the loop twice in rapid succession. It was the first time
that he had seen Eunice Bray, and, like most men who saw her for the
first time, he experienced the sensations of one in an express lift at
the tenth floor going down who has left the majority of his internal
organs up on the twenty-second. He felt a dazed emptiness. The world
