The progress Mr. Dawkins made at golf, and his dogged determination and his unflinching continuous practise rather startled the golf professional more than once during the next three months. Golf, as golf, meant nothing to Mr. Dawkins; he was one of those rare mortals who remain adamant to the insidious charm of the game. All he wanted to do was to become a first-class player and so worm his way into Gilding society—he had decided that this was the readiest method, and having decided this his stubborn will carried him through. Six hours’ practise a day and a great deal of thought—even such slow thought as Mr. Dawkins’—will work wonders, especially when backed up by Dawkins’ giant strength. If Dawkins had ever been asked his opinion of golf, which he was not (the last thing one golfer would say to another is, “What do you think about golf?”), he would have replied, if he gave the matter due consideration, that it was a bit easier than digging phosphate but a bit harder than shoveling it. That is the only sort of opinion Dawkins ever held about golf.
So Dawkins practised his swing, and did approach shots by the dozen, and spent hours a day at the practise nets, and played rounds with the professional or his assistant, and said his first tentative good afternoons to other members in the club-house. The club professional, with a twinkle of humor, allowed him to play his first round with a fellow member in one of the monthly spoon competitions, where Dawkins mildly astonished his associates in the second division by winning easily and bringing his handicap down with a rush from twenty-four to seventeen. More people came to know Dawkins after that, and more people nodded to him in Gilding streets, and despite his rather reserved manner (Dawkins was a model of caution and patience, and, after all, he would not want to launch Nina into society for several years yet), he came gradually to be included in club-room conversations; and his opinion began to be listened to when he won the next month’s spoon and brought his handicap down to twelve. Men would mention to one another, “That fellow Dawkins—don’t know much about him, but he seems nice enough and he’s dam’ keen on golf.” Those last words only serve to show how little they did know about Dawkins.
But by the time all this came to pass Nina’s first term at school was finished and much water had flowed under bridges—especially along the little nameless brook which divided the garden of the Other House. That brook was a source of unending delight to Nina and Dawkins—although her first sight of it had given qualms to Miss Lamb, who darkly suspected it as likely to make the house damp and give everybody rheumatism. Nina, however, had developed a very specialized standard of regard for rivers. Just as Blücher exclaimed, “What a city to sack!” when he first saw London, so would Nina, at this period, have exclaimed at sight of the Mississippi or the Amazon, “What a nice river to dam!” Damming the brook was a favorite pastime with Dawkins and Nina that spring. They would dabble about at its muddy sides with stones and clay, extending the dam feverishly when the spreading water threatened to turn its flanks, building hurriedly when the water rose over the top, and getting most gloriously wet and muddy in the process. Miss Lamb was inclined to condemn these pastimes, and her eyebrows would rise when Nina came pelting into the house cold and wet and daubed with clay, her hands (where they were visible) a fine shade of purple and her nose bright pink. But Miss Lamb knew that Mr. Dawkins saw no objection at all to any one getting wet and cold if there was a hot bath handy and plenty of dry clothes to change into, which was sensible of Dawkins, as even Miss Lamb, swamping her inherent Victorianism by her acquired Georgianism, came to admit. There was always great excitement over those Saturday-morning dams, especially at the great moment when lunch-time was near and the water was in consequence allowed to burst through the dam and come rushing in a tremendous torrent out of its deep pool and go swishing forward along its nearly dry bed, bearing with it its heap of accumulated débris. Nina nearly always chose that particular moment to lose her footing on a slippery stone and shoot down the bank in a sitting position into the six-inch deep water. Ooh, and it was cold! She had to run as hard as ever she could back to the house to the bath and the dry clothes whenever that happened.
During the weeks the craze lasted Nina looked forward to Saturday mornings even more than she did to Wednesday afternoons, which was the time for hockey. But the weekends and mid-week were not (as even Nina would admit when pressed) so very much nicer than school-time. Gilding Girls’ High School was a very much better place than the frowsy dame’s school in South London to which her step-grandmother’s snobbery (which sneered at Council Schools but sought out the cheapest of the other kind) had sent her. Nina did not appreciate it in so many words, but there is a world of difference between sitting at a badly made desk in a badly adapted, crowded room in a dwelling-house, and sitting at a respectable desk in a full-sized schoolroom with a sufficiency of windows. Sitting still was ever a trial to Nina—many were the “order marks” she received for wriggling—but the headmistress at Gilding had perhaps a little sympathy for little girls’ wriggling, for either by accident or design the younger girls’ classes were always arranged in the time-tables so that the next lesson took place in a room at the opposite end of the big building to the one in which the previous lesson had been given. And no time allowed for changing! Goodness, but at the end of the thirty-five-minute lesson how they had to run up the stairs and along the corridors! They would arrive all breathless—so much so that Nina would not start wanting to wriggle for the first quarter of an hour or so.
And when half-term arrived there was a new excitement to look forward to in the form of riding lessons in the riding school at Gilding; these, she knew, she owed to a suggestion from Miss Lamb, who at once sprang a good many degrees higher in her estimation. Indeed, it was not very long before Miss Lamb herself came riding with Nina, and although she rode with a side-saddle in a fashion which was hardly ever seen in Gilding she certainly could ride, as Nina willingly admitted. What was much more amazing to Nina was that Miss Lamb, when the color had been brought to her cheeks by a fast canter through the woods and over the hills, looked really pretty, with her eyes all shining behind the ugly thick spectacles.
For Miss Lamb was happier now than she had ever been in her unloved life. Many weary years of elementary mathematics and childish English made the running of a house sheer joy to her. It was an unspeakable, never-ending delight to walk round Gilding on Saturday morning with the tradesmen’s books, mingling with the scores of opulent housewives similarly occupied, settling the weekly accounts and giving the weekly orders, having mid-morning coffee in Gilding’s fashionable café, changing her books at the circulating library, and returning to a house where the servants carried out her instructions as a matter of course and not as a favor.
Between them they made an oddly assorted trio, did Dawkins and Nina and Miss Lamb, bound together in a powerful bond of happiness. And Dawkins knew that the other two were happy, and on occasions was modestly amazed at such a definite success gained by himself, which went far to mitigate his first faint frettings at a life of idleness and ease.
Chapter XIV
Mr. Dawkins teed up his ball, took his stance, waited the split second he allowed himself for addressing the ball and then swung his driver in the powerful flat swing which the club professional had neatly substituted for his original pickax-like stroke. Those vast wrists of his took hold of the swing half-way through, and snapped the club through the top of the swing and the moment of impact, and carried it on over the follow-through, while the ball, cleanly hit with tremendous force, sailed up the fairway, pitched, ran and finally came to rest a useful ten yards on the hither side of the bunker which was designed for trapping weak second shots. It was a perfect drive, and the distance was extraordinarily good for a sodden course.
The Reverend Mr. Henry Gray raised his eyebrows a little.
“D’you do that often?” he asked. “You were introduced to me as a twelve handicap man, you know.”
Dawkins would have shrugged his shoulders if such a gesture had been natural to him; as it was he merel
y looked awkward.
“Oh, well,” said Gray, “let’s see what I can do in reply.”
Gray and Dawkins were beginning their first round together, on a week-day morning when the course was nearly empty. They had known each other by sight for some time, for Gray, being a clergyman, played his golf in mid-week, and had often noticed Dawkins toiling away in the practise nets or practising approach shots. Gray teed up his repainted ball, waggled carefully and drove his usual distance, comfortably on the fairway and fifty yards behind Dawkins. But his iron shot landed on the green, while Dawkins, who took his mashie, misjudged the strength slightly so that his ball rolled callously across and vanished into the pot bunker on the farther side. Dawkins’ mashie brought it out again on the green, but the situation called for two putts, and as Gray took two as well, the hole was Gray’s in bogey figures.
“Your honor,” said Dawkins imperturbably, at the second tee.
It was a situation Gray had known often enough before. He was used to being outdriven on occasions, but he could always rely on his approaching and putting to get him out of his difficulties, and his drives, although short, were consistently straight—which was more than could be said of those of most of the men he met. There was nothing spectacular about Gray’s play; no mammoth drives, no holing of thirty-foot putts. But he was always down in two from thirty feet from the hole, and there were few opponents whom he met who were not worn down and heart-broken in the end by the machine-like regularity of his approaching and putting. Everybody knows the kind of golfer Gray was—it seems to be a specialty of clergymen.
It seemed, this time, however, as though the game were not to proceed on the lines to which Gray had grown accustomed. Lots of men would be upset at losing the first hole in that fashion after such a beautiful drive, and after only taking five for a hole with a difficult bogey of four. But Dawkins seemed quite unmoved and went on to the second hole not a bit downcast. Nor, on the other hand, did he seem at all elated when he won the long second, after another huge drive and a big brassie shot had landed him on the green with Gray an iron shot behind. Gray began to look keenly at this burly fellow with the rather unintelligent face. It was unusual to meet a man with a complete lack of temperament —and Gray made a study of temperament. He set himself doggedly to play his best and try to wear down this immobile opponent. Sooner or later those drives would be sliced or pulled, and clearly Dawkins’ approach shots were not so good as his wooden club shots. A prolonged sojourn in the fiendish rough of the Gilding Club course might break this sturdy spirit.
That sojourn in the rough came inevitably, and Dawkins’ clumsy recovery lost him the hole in question. But once again there was no sign of disgruntlement on Dawkins’ heavy features, and certainly there was no weakening in his play. He hit his drives just as fiercely as before, fifty yards beyond Gray’s best efforts. He approached just as painstakingly and unfortunately. He putted with a wooden regularity which matched Gray’s own. Gray began to tell himself, as half followed half, that he must classify Dawkins’ temperament as genus novum. Also, he realized, he was playing against a probable Open Championship competitor of years to come. Another long hole was won by Dawkins, and they were all square again, but into Dawkins’ flinty blue eyes there came no gleam of hope, no hint of elation. Gray found himself more puzzled than ever. He rather specialized in men (that was part of his job) and this was a new type to him. But all the same he did not think too hard about it, for he wanted to win, and concentration was an essential ingredient in the recipe of victory.
They came to the up-hill eighteenth, all square still. It was a wickedly difficult hole, dog-legged and littered with traps for the unwary. Mr. Gray was full of hope, and his hope increased as he saw from Dawkins’ stance that he was setting himself for the long and difficult carry across the angle.
Dawkins’ driver hit the ball with a clean hard smack, and if Mr. Gray had been of a despondent nature his hope would have welled out of him as he saw the ball tower over the rough and drop just upon the fairway. As it was the spectacle only filled him with a grimmer resolution as he played his safe short drive to the near fairway. Mr. Gray’s brassie shot was one to be pleased about, for it skipped fortunately over the turf quite a long way up the slope beyond which was the green. Dawkins took his iron, but was unlucky, possibly in encountering heavier going, for his ball came to rest alongside his opponent’s. Mr. Gray took his mashie from his bag with pleasurable anticipation. A forty-yard mashie shot up-hill to an unseen hole would be a hard trial to such an inexperienced golfer as Dawkins, good though he was. Mr. Gray’s mashie clipped through beautifully, and the ball soared up-hill and dropped over the ridge to Gray’s intense delight; he knew from experience that it would stop a few feet at most from the pin. Dawkins said not a word; he grimly took his mashie and his stance, and in his usual cold-blooded fashion played his shot after the barest possible consideration. Wordless they walked up the slope together. Some of the men Gray knew would have chattered nervously, with a, “Good match, this,” or, “I wonder where we’ll be on the green,” and others would have been sullenly bad-tempered over Gray’s fortunate second shot and their own unlucky one. Dawkins, on the other hand, was neither pleased nor sorry; he was neither excited nor ostentatiously indifferent—there is a very subtle difference between Mr. Dawkins’ kind of indifference and the usual golfing indifference.
And on the green, when they climbed the ridge, lay the sight which Mr. Gray, judging by the flight of the balls, had expected. Glistening white upon the green they lay, one two feet from the hole—that was Gray’s, and another on the edge of the green, forty-five feet away; that was Dawkins’. Mr. Gray was more pleased at the proof of his judgment than at his certainty of victory; his conscience pricked him a little regarding his two lucky shots. But Mr. Dawkins had taken his putter from his bag and was striding over to where lay his ball. Mr. Gray hastened to remove the flag from the hole, full of consideration for so fine a fighter. Mr. Dawkins ran an eagle blue eye over the undulations of the green. He scanned the line and judged the distance in one sweeping glance. He struck his ball solidly, neither tentatively nor desperately, and it rolled forward like destiny over the folds of the green. Onward and ever onward, until it struck the back of the hole with a satisfying thump and clattered to the bottom of the tin. Mr. Gray, flabbergasted, tore his eyes away from the hole and looked across at Mr. Dawkins—and Dawkins was putting his club back into his bag.
Even in his present startled state of mind Gray made two instant deductions from this fact. Dawkins must have begun to put back his putter before the ball reached the hole. That showed that, to say the least, he had not followed the course of the ball with all his heart and soul. Also it showed that as soon as he had struck the ball he had known that at any rate it would stop nearer the hole than Gray’s—no one human could have predicted for certain its going in, even then. The one deduction proved that Dawkins’ indifference was not assumed, and the other that he had a solid confidence in his putting, quite justified by his achievements during the round, and was an additional proof that the result was not quite such a fluke as it might appear at first sight.
Concentration notwithstanding, Gray found it impossible to sweep all these thoughts from his mind as he applied himself to the putt necessary to halve the hole and the match. And even as he addressed the ball a new deduction came surging into his mind with such clarity and rapidity that he could not check it in time to save his stroke. He remembered the woodenness of Dawkins’ expression, and his apparent carelessness about the result. Gray realized, in that clairvoyant flash, that this carelessness was not only apparent, it was real. Dawkins simply did not care whether he won or not. He was not really interested in golf. But all Gray’s clairvoyance could not inform him why a man not interested in golf should practise it for six hours a day. Thoughts of this kind are not conducive to good putting. The rush of realization had come just as Gray drew back his putter for the stroke, and the inevitable result was a weak-minded twitch
of the club and a stabbing shot which sent the ball gaily past the lip of the hole and a yard beyond. Gray had lost the round and Dawkins had won it. Gray’s study of the golfing temperament of his opponent had for once in a way cost him a new ball.
It was not until a fortnight later, after they had played two more rounds together, that Gray, having confirmed all his deductions by further close observations, began to act on them. They were lunching together in the club-house after the round.
“Golf’s a fascinating game, isn’t it?” began Gray Jesuitically.
“Yes,” said Dawkins.
“It doesn’t leave you any time for anything else, does it?”
“Not if you want to be any good at it,” said Dawkins cautiously. There was a twinkle in Gray’s eyes which warned him to be careful, and so he tried to draw farther into his shell than ever, and to make only a sparing use of the clear-cut English he was acquiring by painful observation of Miss Lamb.
“And some us are desperately keen on being good at it, aren’t we?” laughed Gray, and Dawkins grew restless and uncomfortable. He guessed that Gray had realized how uninterested he was in golf, and with his social future at stake he was going to take no chances. Otherwise where would be that respectable golfing guardian he visualized for Nina, and the friends he hoped to win for her? He put down his knife and fork and eyed Gray straightly across the table, with his hands hard clenched beneath it. Gray, accustomed to dealing with men’s souls, noted the gesture.
“I don’t want to rag you,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’m desperately earnest. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” said Dawkins, relaxing. He liked Gray—who, by the way, was the only parson he had ever met socially in his life.
“Well,” said Gray, oddly embarrassed, “it—it’s not easy to begin. But I’ve seen you playing golf, and I’ve seen you practising golf, and—and—hang it all, man, you know what I mean. And you can’t guess how I covet the time and the thought you spend on the game. To me they’d be worth—well, I can’t tell you what they’d be worth, because I couldn’t measure them by material values.”
The Daughter of the Hawk Page 10