by Julie Ganz
Arthur’s jaw dropped.
“What! Then how the deuce am I to get it out?”
“That,” I said, gravely, “is a question between you and your Maker.”
It was here that Arthur Jukes forfeited the sympathy which I had begun to feel for him. A crafty, sinister look came into his eyes.
“Listen!” he said. “It’ll take them an hour to catch up with us. Suppose, during that time, that door happened to open accidentally, as it were, and close again? You wouldn’t think it necessary to mention the fact, eh? You would be a good fellow and keep your mouth shut, yes? You might even see your way to go so far as to back me up in a statement to the effect that I hooked it out with my—?”
I was revolted.
“I am a golfer,” I said, coldly, “and I obey the rules.”
“Yes, but—”
“Those rules were drawn up by—” I bared my head reverently. “By the Committee of the Royal and Ancient at St. Andrews. I have always respected them, and I shall not deviate on this occasion from the policy of a lifetime.”
Arthur Jukes relapsed into a moody silence. He broke it once, crossing the West Street Bridge, to observe that he would like to know if I called myself a friend of his—a question which I was able to answer with a whole-hearted negative. After that he did not speak till the car drew up in front of the Majestic Hotel in Royal Square.
Early as the hour was, a certain bustle and animation already prevailed in that centre of the city, and the spectacle of a man in a golf-coat and plus-four knickerbockers hacking with a niblick at the floor of a car was not long in collecting a crowd of some dimensions. Three messenger-boys, four typists, and a gentleman in full evening-dress, who obviously possessed or was friendly with someone who possessed a large cellar, formed the nucleus of it; and they were joined about the time when Arthur addressed the ball in order to play his nine hundred and fifteenth by six news-boys, eleven charladies, and perhaps a dozen assorted loafers, all speculating with the liveliest interest as to which particular asylum had had the honour of sheltering Arthur before he had contrived to elude the vigilance of his custodians.
Arthur had prepared for some such contingency. He suspended his activities with the niblick, and drew from his pocket a large poster, which he proceeded to hang over the side of the car. It read:
COME
TO
McCLURG AND MACDONALD,
18, WEST STREET,
FOR
ALL GOLFING SUPPLIES.
His knowledge of psychology had not misled him. Directly they gathered that he was advertising something, the crowd declined to look at it; they melted away, and Arthur returned to his work in solitude.
He was taking a well-earned rest after playing his eleven hundred and fifth, a nice niblick shot with lots of wrist behind it, when out of Bridle Street there trickled a weary-looking golf ball, followed in the order named by Ralph Bingham, resolute but going a trifle at the knees, and Rupert Bailey on a bicycle. The latter, on whose face and limbs the mud had dried, made an arresting spectacle.
“What are you playing?” I inquired.
“Eleven hundred,” said Rupert. “We got into a casual dog.”
“A casual dog?”
“Yes, just before the bridge. We were coming along nicely, when a stray dog grabbed our nine hundred and ninety-eighth and took it nearly back to Woodfield, and we had to start all over again. How are you getting on?”
“We have just played our eleven hundred and fifth. A nice even game.” I looked at Ralph’s ball, which was lying close to the kerb. “You are farther from the hole, I think. Your shot, Bingham.”
Rupert Bailey suggested breakfast. He was a man who was altogether too fond of creature comforts. He had not the true golfing spirit.
“Breakfast!” I exclaimed.
“Breakfast,” said Rupert, firmly. “If you don’t know what it is, I can teach you in half a minute. You play it with a pot of coffee, a knife and fork, and about a hundred-weight of scrambled eggs. Try it. It’s a pastime that grows on you.”
I was surprised when Ralph Bingham supported the suggestion. He was so near holing out that I should have supposed that nothing would have kept him from finishing the match. But he agreed heartily.
“Breakfast,” he said, “is an excellent idea. You go along in. I’ll follow in a moment. I want to buy a paper.”
We went into the hotel, and a few minutes later he joined us. Now that we were actually at the table, I confess that the idea of breakfast was by no means repugnant to me. The keen air and the exercise had given me an appetite, and it was some little time before I was able to assure the waiter definitely that he could cease bringing orders of scrambled eggs. The others having finished also, I suggested a move. I was anxious to get the match over and be free to go home.
We filed out of the hotel, Arthur Jukes leading. When I had passed through the swing-doors, I found him gazing perplexedly up and down the street.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“It’s gone!”
“What has gone?”
“The car!”
“Oh, the car?” said Ralph Bingham. “That’s all right. Didn’t I tell you about that? I bought it just now and engaged the driver as my chauffeur, I’ve been meaning to buy a car for a long time. A man ought to have a car.”
“Where is it?” said Arthur, blankly. The man seemed dazed.
“I couldn’t tell you to a mile or two,” replied Ralph. “I told the man to drive to Glasgow. Why? Had you any message for him?”
“But my ball was inside it!”
“Now that,” said Ralph, “is really unfortunate! Do you mean to tell me you hadn’t managed to get it out yet? Yes, that is a little awkward for you. I’m afraid it means that you lose the match.”
“Lose the match?”
“Certainly. The rules are perfectly definite on that point. A period of five minutes is allowed for each stroke. The player who fails to make his stroke within that time loses the hole. Unfortunate, but there it is!”
Arthur Jukes sank down on the path and buried his face in his hands. He had the appearance of a broken man. Once more, I am bound to say, I felt a certain pity for him. He had certainly struggled gamely, and it was hard to be beaten like this on the post.
“Playing eleven hundred and one,” said Ralph Bingham, in his odiously self-satisfied voice, as he addressed his ball. He laughed jovially. A messenger-boy had paused close by and was watching the proceedings gravely. Ralph Bingham patted him on the head.
“Well, sonny,” he said, “what club would you use here?”
“I claim the match!” cried Arthur Jukes, springing up. Ralph Bingham regarded him coldly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I claim the match!” repeated Arthur Jukes. “The rules say that a player who asks advice from any person other than his caddie shall lose the hole.”
“This is absurd!” said Ralph, but I noticed that he had turned pale.
“I appeal to the judges.”
“We sustain the appeal,” I said, after a brief consultation with Rupert Bailey. “The rule is perfectly clear.”
“But you had lost the match already by not playing within five minutes,” said Ralph, vehemently.
“It was not my turn to play. You were farther from the pin.”
“Well, play now. Go on! Let’s see you make your shot.”
“There is no necessity,” said Arthur, frigidly. “Why should I play when you have already disqualified yourself?”
“I claim a draw!”
“I deny the claim.”
“I appeal to the judges.”
“Very well. We will leave it to the judges.”
I consulted with Rupert Bailey. It seemed to me that Arthur Jukes was entitled to the verdict. Rupert, who, though an amiable and delightful companion, had always been one of Nature’s fatheads, could not see it. We had to go back to our principals and announce that we had been unable to agree.
�
��This is ridiculous,” said Ralph Bingham. “We ought to have had a third judge.”
At this moment, who should come out of the hotel but Amanda Trivett! A veritable goddess from the machine.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that you would both be well advised to leave the decision to Miss Trivett. You could have no better referee.”
“I’m game,” said Arthur Jukes.
“Suits me,” said Ralph Bingham.
“Why, whatever are you all doing here with your golf clubs?” asked the girl, wonderingly.
“These two gentlemen,” I explained, “have been playing a match, and a point has arisen on which the judges do not find themselves in agreement. We need an unbiased outside opinion, and we should like to put it up to you. The facts are as follows: . . .”
Amanda Trivett listened attentively, but, when I had finished, she shook her head.
“I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the game to be able to decide a question like that,” she said.
“Then we must consult St. Andrews,” said Rupert Bailey.
“I’ll tell you who might know,” said Amanda Trivett, after a moment’s thought.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“My fiance. He has just come back from a golfing holiday. That’s why I’m in town this morning. I’ve been to meet him. He is very good at golf. He won a medal at Little-Mudbury-in-the-Wold the day before he left.”
There was a tense silence. I had the delicacy not to look at Ralph or Arthur. Then the silence was broken by a sharp crack. Ralph Bingham had broken his mashie-niblick across his knee. From the direction where Arthur Jukes was standing there came a muffled gulp.
“Shall I ask him?” said Amanda Trivett.
“Don’t bother,” said Ralph Bingham.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Arthur Jukes.
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THE STORY OF THE GOLF VS. FOOTBALL DEBATE: AN EXCERPT FROM THE HALFBACK
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
How’s craps, Country?”
“Shut up, Bart! he may hear you.”
“What if he does, ninny? I want him to. Say, Spinach!”
“Do you suppose he’s going to try and play football, Bart?”
“Not he. He’s looking for a rake. Thinks this is a hayfield, Wall.”
The speakers were lying on the turf back of the north goal on the campus at Hillton Academy. The elder and larger of the two was a rather coarse-looking youth of seventeen. His name was Bartlett Cloud, shortened by his acquaintances to “Bart” for the sake of that brevity beloved of the schoolboy. His companion, Wallace Clausen, was a handsome though rather frail-looking boy, a year his junior. The two were roommates and friends.
“He’d better rake his hair,” responded the latter youth jeeringly. “I’ll bet there’s lots of hayseed in it!”
The subject of their derisive remarks, although standing but a scant distance away, apparently heard none of them.
“Hi, West!” shouted Bartlett Cloud as a youth, attired in a finely fitting golf costume, and swinging a brassie, approached. The newcomer hesitated, then joined the two friends.
“Hello! you fellows. What’s up? Thought it was golf, from the crowd over here.” He stretched himself beside them on the grass.
“Golf!” answered Bartlett Cloud contemptuously. “I don’t believe you ever think of anything except golf, Out! Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night trying to drive the pillow out of the window with a bed-slat?”
“Oh, sometimes,” answered Outfield West smilingly. “There’s a heap more sense in being daft over a decent game like golf than in going crazy about football. It’s just a kid’s game.”
“Oh, is it?” growled Bartlett Cloud. “I’d just like to have you opposite me in a good stiff game for about five minutes. I’d show you something about the kid’s game!”
“Well, I don’t say you couldn’t knock me down a few times and walk over me, but who wants to play such games—except a lot of bullies like yourself?”
“Plenty of fellows, apparently,” answered the third member of the group, Wallace Clausen, hastening to avert the threatening quarrel. “Just look around you. I’ve never seen more fellows turn out at the beginning of the season than are here today. There must be sixty here.”
“More like a hundred,” grunted “Bart” Cloud, not yet won over to good temper. “Every little freshman thinks he can buy a pair of moleskins and be a football man. Look at that fellow over yonder, the one with the baggy trousers and straw hat. The idea of that fellow coming down here just out of the hayfield and having the cheek to report for football practice! What do you suppose he would do if some one threw a ball at him?”
“Catch it in his hat,” suggested Wallace Clausen.
“He does look a bit—er—rural,” said Outfield West, eying the youth in question. “I fear he doesn’t know a bulger from a baffy,” he added sorrowfully.
“What’s more to the subject,” said Wallace Clausen, “is that he probably doesn’t know a touch-down from a referee. There’s where the fun will come in.”
“Well, I’m no judge of football, thank goodness!” answered West, “but from the length of that chap I’ll bet he’s a bully kicker.”
“Nonsense. That’s what a fellow always thinks who doesn’t know anything about the game. It takes something more than long legs to make a good punter.”
“Perhaps; but there’s one thing sure, Bart: that hayseed will be a better player than you at the end of two months—that is, if he gets taken on.”
“I’ll bet you he won’t be able to catch a punt,” growled Cloud. “A fool like him can no more learn football than—than——”
“Than you could learn golf,” continued West sweetly.
“Oh, shut up! I know a mule that plays golf better than you do.”
“Well, I sha’n’t attempt to compete with your friends, Bart.”
“There you both go, quarreling again,” cried Clausen. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll have to whip the pair of you.”
Wallace Clausen was about two thirds the size of Cloud, and lacked both the height and breadth of shoulder that made West’s popular nickname of “Out” West seem so appropriate. Clausen’s threat was so absurd that Cloud came back to good humor with a laugh, and even West grinned.
“Come on, Wall—there’s Blair,” said Cloud. “You’d better come too, Out, and learn something about a decent game.” West shook his head, and the other two arose and hurried away to where the captain of the school eleven was standing beneath the west goal, surrounded by a crowd of variously attired football aspirants. West, left to himself, sighed lazily and fell to digging holes in the turf with his brassie. Tiring of this amusement in a trice, he arose and sauntered over to the side-line and watched the operations. Some sixty boys, varying in age from fifteen to nineteen, some clothed in full football rig, some wearing the ordinary dress in which they had stepped from the school rooms an hour before, all laughing or talking with the high spirits produced upon healthy youth by the tonic breezes of late September, were standing about the gridiron. I have said that all were laughing or talking. This is not true; one among them was silent.
For standing near by was the youth who had aroused the merriment of Cloud and Clausen, and who West had shortly before dubbed “rural.” And rural he looked. His gray and rather wrinkled trousers and his black coat and vest of cheap goods were in the cut of two seasons gone, and his discolored straw hat looked sadly out of place among so many warm caps. But as he watched the scene with intent and earnest face there was that about him that held West’s attention. He looked to be about seventeen. His height was above the ordinary, and in the broad shoulders and hips lay promise of great strength and vigor.
But it was the face that attracted West most. So earnest, honest, and fearless was it that West unconsciously wished to know it better, and found himself drawing nearer to the straw hat and baggy gray trousers. But their owner appeared to be unconscious of his presence an
d West paused.
“I don’t believe that chap knows golf from Puss-in-the-Comer,” mused West, “but I’ll bet a dozen Silvertowns that he could learn; and that’s more than most chaps here can. I almost believe that I’d loan him my new dogwood driver!”
Wesley Blair, captain of the eleven, was bringing order out of chaos. Blair was one of the leaders in school life at Hillton, a strongly built, manly fellow, beloved of the higher class boys, adored from a distance by the youngsters. Blair was serving his second term as football captain, having been elected to succeed himself the previous fall. At this moment, attired in the crimson sweater, moleskin trousers, and black and crimson stockings that made up the school uniform, he looked every inch the commander of the motley array that surrounded him.
“Warren, you take a dozen or so of these fellows over there out of the way and pass the ball awhile. Get their names first— Christie, you take another dozen farther down the field.”
The crowd began to melt away, squad after squad moving off down the field to take position and learn the rudiments of the game. Blair assembled the experienced players about him and, dividing them into two groups, put them to work at passing and falling. The youth with the straw hat still stood unnoticed on the side-line. When the last of the squads had moved away he stepped forward and addressed the captain:
“Where do you want me?”
Blair, suppressing a smile of amusement as he looked the applicant over, asked:
“Ever played any?”
“Some; I was right end on the Felton Grammar School team last year.”
“Where’s Felton Grammar School, please?”
“Maine, near Auburn.”
“Oh! What’s your name?”
“Joel March.”
“Can you kick?”
“Pretty fair.”
“Well, show me what you consider pretty fair.” He turned to the nearest squad. “Toss me the ball a minute, Ned. Here’s a chap who wants to try a kick.”
Ned Post threw the ball, and his squad of veterans turned to observe the odd-looking country boy toe the pigskin. Several audible remarks were made, none of them at all flattering to the subject of them; but if the latter heard them he made no sign, but accepted the ball from Blair without fumbling it, much to the surprise of the onlookers. Among these were Clausen and Cloud, their mouths prepared for the burst of ironical laughter that was expected to follow the country boy’s effort.