The Clicking of Cuthbert

Mortimer's fondness for the game until then had been merely tepid

compared with what it became now. He had played a little before, but

now he really buckled to and got down to it. It was at this point, too,

that he began once more to entertain thoughts of marriage. A profound

statistician in this one department, he had discovered that practically

all the finest exponents of the art are married men; and the thought

that there might be something in the holy state which improved a man's

game, and that he was missing a good thing, troubled him a great deal.

Moreover, the paternal instinct had awakened in him. As he justly

pointed out, whether marriage improved your game or not, it was to Old

Tom Morris's marriage that the existence of young Tommy Morris, winner

of the British Open Championship four times in succession, could be

directly traced. In fact, at the age of forty-two, Mortimer Sturgis was

in just the frame of mind to take some nice girl aside and ask her to

become a step-mother to his eleven drivers, his baffy, his twenty-eight

putters, and the rest of the ninety-four clubs which he had accumulated

in the course of his golfing career. The sole stipulation, of course,

which he made when dreaming his daydreams was that the future Mrs.

Sturgis must be a golfer. I can still recall the horror in his face

when one girl, admirable in other respects, said that she had never

heard of Harry Vardon, and didn't he mean Dolly Vardon? She has since

proved an excellent wife and mother, but Mortimer Sturgis never spoke

to her again.

With the coming of January, it was Mortimer's practice to leave England

and go to the South of France, where there was sunshine and crisp dry

turf. He pursued his usual custom this year. With his suit-case and his

ninety-four clubs he went off to Saint Brule, staying as he always did

at the Hotel Superbe, where they knew him, and treated with an amiable

tolerance his habit of practising chip-shots in his bedroom. On the

first evening, after breaking a statuette of the Infant Samuel in

Prayer, he dressed and went down to dinner. And the first thing he saw

was Her.

Mortimer Sturgis, as you know, had been engaged before, but Betty

Weston had never inspired the tumultuous rush of emotion which the mere

sight of this girl had set loose in him. He told me later that just to

watch her holing out her soup gave him a sort of feeling you get when

your drive collides with a rock in the middle of a tangle of rough and

kicks back into the middle of the fairway. If golf had come late in

life to Mortimer Sturgis, love came later still, and just as the golf,

attacking him in middle life, had been some golf, so was the love

considerable love. Mortimer finished his dinner in a trance, which is

the best way to do it at some hotels, and then scoured the place for

someone who would introduce him. He found such a person eventually and

the meeting took place.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was a small and rather fragile-looking girl, with big blue eyes and

a cloud of golden hair. She had a sweet expression, and her left wrist

was in a sling. She looked up at Mortimer as if she had at last found

something that amounted to something. I am inclined to think it was a

case of love at first sight on both sides.

"Fine weather we're having," said Mortimer, who was a capital

conversationalist.

"Yes," said the girl.

"I like fine weather."

"So do I."

"There's something about fine weather!"

"Yes."

"It's--it's--well, fine weather's so much finer than weather that isn't

fine," said Mortimer.

He looked at the girl a little anxiously, fearing he might be taking

her out of her depth, but she seemed to have followed his train of

thought perfectly.

"Yes, isn't it?" she said. "It's so--so fine."

"That's just what I meant," said Mortimer. "So fine. You've just hit

it."

He was charmed. The combination of beauty with intelligence is so rare.

"I see you've hurt your wrist," he went on, pointing to the sling.

"Yes. I strained it a little playing in the championship."

"The championship?" Mortimer was interested. "It's awfully rude of me,"

he said, apologetically, "but I didn't catch your name just now."

"My name is Somerset."

Mortimer had been bending forward solicitously. He overbalanced and

nearly fell off his chair. The shock had been stunning. Even before he

had met and spoken to her, he had told himself that he loved this girl

with the stored-up love of a lifetime. And she was Mary Somerset! The

hotel lobby danced before Mortimer's eyes.

The name will, of course, be familiar to you. In the early rounds of

the Ladies' Open Golf Championship of that year nobody had paid much

attention to Mary Somerset. She had survived her first two matches, but

her opponents had been nonentities like herself. And then, in the third

round, she had met and defeated the champion. From that point on, her

name was on everybody's lips. She became favourite. And she justified

the public confidence by sailing into the final and winning easily. And

here she was, talking to him like an ordinary person, and, if he could