The Clicking of Cuthbert

"But that will land your second or third shot in the lake."

"I have provided for that. I have a fiat-bottomed boat moored close by

the sixteenth green. I shall use a mashie-niblick and chip my ball

aboard, row across to the other side, chip it ashore, and carry on. I

propose to go across country as far as Woodfield. I think it will save

me a stroke or two."

I gasped. I had never before realized the man's devilish cunning. His

tactics gave him a flying start. Arthur, who had driven straight down

the course, had as his objective the high road, which adjoins the waste

ground beyond the first green. Once there, he would play the orthodox

game by driving his ball along till he reached the bridge. While Arthur

was winding along the high road, Ralph would have cut off practically

two sides of a triangle. And it was hopeless for Arthur to imitate his

enemy's tactics now. From where his ball lay he would have to cross a

wide tract of marsh in order to reach the seventeenth fairway--an

impossible feat. And, even if it had been feasible, he had no boat to

take him across the water.

He uttered a violent protest. He was an unpleasant young man,

almost--it seems absurd to say so, but almost as unpleasant as Ralph

Bingham; yet at the moment I am bound to say I sympathized with him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. "You can't play fast and loose with

the rules like that."

"To what rule do you refer?" said Ralph, coldly.

"Well, that bally boat of yours is a hazard, isn't it? And you can't

row a hazard about all over the place."

"Why not?"

The simple question seemed to take Arthur Jukes aback.

"Why not?" he repeated. "Why not? Well, you can't. That's why."

"There is nothing in the rules," said Ralph Bingham, "against moving a

hazard. If a hazard can be moved without disturbing the ball, you are

at liberty, I gather, to move it wherever you please. Besides, what is

all this about moving hazards? I have a perfect right to go for a

morning row, haven't I? If I were to ask my doctor, he would probably

actually recommend it. I am going to row my boat across the sound. If

it happens to have my ball on board, that is not my affair. I shall not

disturb my ball, and I shall play it from where it lies. Am I right in

saying that the rules enact that the ball shall be played from where it

lies?"

We admitted that it was.

"Very well, then," said Ralph Bingham. "Don't let us waste any more

time. We will wait for you at Woodfield."

He addressed his ball, and drove a beauty over the trees. It flashed

out of sight in the direction of the seventeenth tee. Arthur and I made

our way down the hill to play our second.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is a curious trait of the human mind that, however little personal

interest one may have in the result, it is impossible to prevent

oneself taking sides in any event of a competitive nature. I had

embarked on this affair in a purely neutral spirit, not caring which of

the two won and only sorry that both could not lose. Yet, as the

morning wore on, I found myself almost unconsciously becoming

distinctly pro-Jukes. I did not like the man. I objected to his face,

his manners, and the colour of his tie. Yet there was something in the

dogged way in which he struggled against adversity which touched me and

won my grudging support. Many men, I felt, having been so outmanoeuvred

at the start, would have given up the contest in despair; but Arthur

Jukes, for all his defects, had the soul of a true golfer. He declined

to give up. In grim silence he hacked his ball through the rough till

he reached the high road; and then, having played twenty-seven, set

himself resolutely to propel it on its long journey.

It was a lovely morning, and, as I bicycled along, keeping a fatherly

eye on Arthur's activities, I realized for the first time in my life

the full meaning of that exquisite phrase of Coleridge:

    "Clothing the palpable and familiar

    With golden exhalations of the dawn,"

for in the pellucid air everything seemed weirdly beautiful, even

Arthur Juke's heather-mixture knickerbockers, of which hitherto I had

never approved. The sun gleamed on their seat, as he bent to make his

shots, in a cheerful and almost a poetic way. The birds were singing

gaily in the hedgerows, and such was my uplifted state that I, too,

burst into song, until Arthur petulantly desired me to refrain, on the

plea that, though he yielded to no man in his enjoyment of farmyard

imitations in their proper place, I put him off his stroke. And so we

passed through Bayside in silence and started to cover that long

stretch of road which ends in the railway bridge and the gentle descent

into Woodfield.

Arthur was not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And

in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon

after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his

brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough

on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get

back on to the car tracks, and this had taught him prudence.