The Clicking of Cuthbert

laughing groups of children had broken out like a rash. A wan-faced

adult, who had been held up for ten minutes while a drove of issue

quarrelled over whether little Claude had taken two hundred or two

hundred and twenty approach shots to reach the ninth green sank into a

seat beside the Oldest Member.

"What luck?" inquired the Sage.

"None to speak of," returned the other, moodily. "I thought I had

bagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but he

ducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling their

hoops in the road. Golf is a game for grownups. How can a fellow play,

with a platoon of progeny blocking him at every hole?"

The Oldest Member shook his head. He could not subscribe to these

sentiments.

No doubt (said the Oldest Member) the summer golf-child is, from the

point of view of the player who likes to get round the course in a

single afternoon, something of a trial; but, personally, I confess, it

pleases me to see my fellow human beings--and into this category

golf-children, though at the moment you may not be broad-minded enough

to admit it, undoubtedly fall--taking to the noblest of games at an

early age. Golf, like measles, should be caught young, for, if

postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. Let me tell you

the story of Mortimer Sturgis, which illustrates what I mean rather

aptly.

Mortimer Sturgis, when I first knew him, was a care-free man of

thirty-eight, of amiable character and independent means, which he

increased from time to time by judicious ventures on the Stock

Exchange. Although he had never played golf, his had not been

altogether an ill-spent life. He swung a creditable racket at tennis,

was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, and

gave freely to the poor. He was what you might call a golden-mean man,

good-hearted rather than magnetic, with no serious vices and no heroic

virtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelain

vases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl of

twenty-five, a lifelong friend of mine.

I like Mortimer. Everybody liked him. But, at the same time, I was a

little surprised that a girl like Betty should have become engaged to

him. As I said before, he was not magnetic; and magnetism, I thought,

was the chief quality she would have demanded in a man. Betty was one

of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for

hero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in the

nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her

ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where

the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights

and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has

to take the best she can get. I must admit that Betty seemed perfectly

content with Mortimer.

Such, then, was the state of affairs when Eddie Denton arrived, and the

trouble began.

I was escorting Betty home one evening after a tea-party at which we

had been fellow-guests, when, walking down the road, we happened to

espy Mortimer. He broke into a run when he saw us, and galloped up,

waving a piece of paper in his hand. He was plainly excited, a thing

which was unusual in this well-balanced man. His broad, good-humoured

face was working violently.

"Good news!" he cried. "Good news! Dear old Eddie's back!"

"Oh, how nice for you, dear!" said Betty. "Eddie Denton is Mortimer's

best friend," she explained to me. "He has told me so much about him. I

have been looking forward to his coming home. Mortie thinks the world

of him."

"So will you, when you know him," cried Mortimer. "Dear old Eddie! He's

a wonder! The best fellow on earth! We were at school and the 'Varsity

together. There's nobody like Eddie! He landed yesterday. Just home

from Central Africa. He's an explorer, you know," he said to me.

"Spends all his time in places where it's death for a white man to go."

"An explorer!" I heard Betty breathe, as if to herself. I was not so

impressed, I fear, as she was. Explorers, as a matter of fact, leave me

a trifle cold. It has always seemed to me that the difficulties of

their life are greatly exaggerated--generally by themselves. In a large

country like Africa, for instance, I should imagine that it was almost

impossible for a man not to get somewhere if he goes on long enough.

Give me the fellow who can plunge into the bowels of the earth

at Piccadilly Circus and find the right Tube train with nothing but a

lot of misleading signs to guide him. However, we are not all

constituted alike in this world, and it was apparent from the flush on

her cheek and the light in her eyes that Betty admired explorers.

"I wired to him at once," went on Mortimer, "and insisted on his coming

down here. It's two years since I saw him. You don't know how I have

looked forward, dear, to you and Eddie meeting. He is just your sort. I

know how romantic you are and keen on adventure and all that. Well,

you should hear Eddie tell the story of how he brought down the