The Clicking of Cuthbert

poor fellow. Just as he was nerving himself to make another attempt to

enter society, he would catch sight of it and say to himself, "What

hope is there for a man with a face like that?" These caricaturists are

too ready to wound people simply in order to raise a laugh. Personally

I am broad-minded enough to smile at that portrait of myself. It has

given me great enjoyment, though why the committee permits it to--But

then, of course, it isn't a bit like, whereas that of Ramsden Waters

not only gave the man's exact appearance, very little exaggerated, but

laid bare his very soul. That portrait is the portrait of a chump, and

such Ramsden Waters undeniably was.

By the end of the first year in the neighbourhood, Ramsden, as I say,

had become practically a hermit. He lived all by himself in a house

near the fifteenth green, seeing nobody, going nowhere. His only solace

was golf. His late father had given him an excellent education, and,

even as early as his seventeenth year, I believe, he was going round

difficult courses in par. Yet even this admirable gift, which might

have done him social service, was rendered negligible by the fact that

he was too shy and shrinking to play often with other men. As a rule,

he confined himself to golfing by himself in the mornings and late

evenings when the links were more or less deserted. Yes, in his

twenty-ninth year, Ramsden Waters had sunk to the depth of becoming a

secret golfer.

One lovely morning in summer, a scented morning of green and blue and

gold, when the birds sang in the trees and the air had that limpid

clearness which makes the first hole look about 100 yards long instead

of 345, Ramsden Waters, alone as ever, stood on the first tee

addressing his ball. For a space he waggled masterfully, then, drawing

his club back with a crisp swish, brought it down. And, as he did so, a

voice behind him cried:

"Bing!"

Ramsden's driver wabbled at the last moment. The ball flopped weakly

among the trees on the right of the course. Ramsden turned to perceive,

standing close beside him, a small fat boy in a sailor suit. There was

a pause.

"Rotten!" said the boy austerely.

Ramsden gulped. And then suddenly he saw that the boy was not alone.

About a medium approach-putt distance, moving gracefully and languidly

towards him, was a girl of such pronounced beauty that Ramsden Waters's

heart looped the loop twice in rapid succession. It was the first time

that he had seen Eunice Bray, and, like most men who saw her for the

first time, he experienced the sensations of one in an express lift at

the tenth floor going down who has left the majority of his internal

organs up on the twenty-second. He felt a dazed emptiness. The world

swam before his eyes.

You yourself saw Eunice just now: and, though you are in a sense

immune, being engaged to a charming girl of your own, I noticed that

you unconsciously braced yourself up and tried to look twice as

handsome as nature ever intended you to. You smirked and, if you had a

moustache, you would have twiddled it. You can imagine, then, the

effect which this vision of loveliness had on lonely, diffident Ramsden

Waters. It got right in amongst him.

"I'm afraid my little brother spoiled your stroke," said Eunice. She

did not speak at all apologetically, but rather as a goddess might have

spoken to a swineherd.

Ramsden yammered noiselessly. As always in the presence of the opposite

sex, and more than ever now, his vocal cords appeared to have tied

themselves in a knot which would have baffled a sailor and might have

perplexed Houdini. He could not even gargle.

"He is very fond of watching golf," said the girl.

She took the boy by the hand, and was about to lead him off, when

Ramsden miraculously recovered speech.

"Would he like to come round with me?" he croaked. How he had managed

to acquire the nerve to make the suggestion he could never understand.

I suppose that in certain supreme moments a sort of desperate

recklessness descends on nervous men.

"How very kind of you!" said the girl indifferently. "But I'm afraid----"

"I want to go!" shrilled the boy. "I want to go!"

Fond as Eunice Bray was of her little brother, I imagine that the

prospect of having him taken off her hands on a fine summer morning,

when all nature urged her to sit in the shade on the terrace and read a

book, was not unwelcome.

"It would be very kind of you if you would let him," said Eunice. "He

wasn't able to go to the circus last week, and it was a great

disappointment; this will do instead."

She turned toward the terrace, and Ramsden, his head buzzing, tottered

into the jungle to find his ball, followed by the boy.

I have never been able to extract full particulars of that morning's

round from Ramsden. If you speak of it to him, he will wince and change

the subject. Yet he seems to have had the presence of mind to pump

Wilberforce as to the details of his home life, and by the end of the

round he had learned that Eunice and her brother had just come to visit

an aunt who lived in the neighbourhood. Their house was not far from