The Clicking of Cuthbert

down to eight or something."

Mortimer shook his head.

"Alas, no!" he replied, gravely. "My game went right off for some

reason or other, and I'm twenty-four, too."

"For some reason or other!" She uttered a cry. "Oh, I know what the

reason was! How can I ever forgive myself! I have ruined your game!"

The brightness came back to Mortimer's eyes. He embraced her fondly.

"Do not reproach yourself, dearest," he murmured. "It is the best thing

that could have happened. From now on, we start level, two hearts that

beat as one, two drivers that drive as one. I could not wish it

otherwise. By George! It's just like that thing of Tennyson's."

He recited the lines softly:

                 My bride,

    My wife, my life. Oh, we will walk the links

    Yoked in all exercise of noble end,

    And so thro' those dark bunkers off the course

    That no man knows. Indeed, I love thee: come,

    Yield thyself up: our handicaps are one;

    Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;

    Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.

She laid her hands in his.

"And now, Mortie, darling," she said, "I want to tell you all about how

I did the long twelfth at Auchtermuchtie in one under bogey."

5

 The Salvation of George Mackintosh

The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his

usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice

which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to

bring on the hemlock.

Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had

watched him with silent sympathy.

"How did you get on?" he inquired.

"He beat me."

The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.

"You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much

when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go

out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in his youth, and crawl back at

eventide looking like a toad under the harrow! He talked?"

"All the time, confound it! Put me right off my stroke."

The Oldest Member sighed.

"The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our

complex modern civilization," he said, "and the most difficult to deal

with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have

produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in

action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad

as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you

about George Mackintosh?"

"I don't think so."

"His," said the Sage, "is the only case of golfing garrulity I have

ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care to

hear about it----?"

       *       *       *       *       *

George Mackintosh (said the Oldest Member), when I first knew him, was

one of the most admirable young fellows I have ever met. A handsome,

well-set-up man, with no vices except a tendency to use the mashie for

shots which should have been made with the light iron. And as for his

positive virtues, they were too numerous to mention. He never swayed

his body, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a

tactful grunt when his opponent foozled. And when he himself achieved a

glaring fluke, his self-reproachful click of the tongue was music to

his adversary's bruised soul. But of all his virtues the one that most

endeared him to me and to all thinking men was the fact that, from the

start of a round to the finish, he never spoke a word except when

absolutely compelled to do so by the exigencies of the game. And it was

this man who subsequently, for a black period which lives in the memory

of all his contemporaries, was known as Gabby George and became a shade

less popular than the germ of Spanish Influenza. Truly, corruptio

optimi pessima!

One of the things that sadden a man as he grows older and reviews his

life is the reflection that his most devastating deeds were generally

the ones which he did with the best motives. The thought is

disheartening. I can honestly say that, when George Mackintosh came to

me and told me his troubles, my sole desire was to ameliorate his lot.

That I might be starting on the downward path a man whom I liked and

respected never once occurred to me.

One night after dinner when George Mackintosh came in, I could see at

once that there was something on his mind, but what this could be I was

at a loss to imagine, for I had been playing with him myself all the

afternoon, and he had done an eighty-one and a seventy-nine. And, as I

had not left the links till dusk was beginning to fall, it was

practically impossible that he could have gone out again and done

badly. The idea of financial trouble seemed equally out of the

question. George had a good job with the old-established legal firm of

Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Cootes, Toots, and Peabody. The

third alternative, that he might be in love, I rejected at once. In all

the time I had known him I had never seen a sign that George Mackintosh

gave a thought to the opposite sex.

Yet this, bizarre as it seemed, was the true solution. Scarcely had he

seated himself and lit a cigar when he blurted out his confession.