CHAPTER XI
"NATURAM FURCA EXPELLAS
Alas!
When Pip slipped out of bed at six o'clock next morning the window-panes were blurred and wet, and the Links of Eric were shrouded in driving sheets of rain.
His pithy and apposite comments on the situation were, had he only known it, being reproduced (in an expurgated form) by a damsel in a kimono at a bedroom window not far down the road. Elsie surveyed the rain-washed links reflectively, and sighed.
"What a pity!" she said to herself. "I would have given him such a lesson! Now I suppose we shall both waste a day."
With which enigmatical conclusion she crept into bed again.
Pip arrived at Knocknaha after breakfast, but Elsie flatly refused to stir outside until the rain had ceased. This was no more than her swain had expected, and he returned resignedly to the hotel, where he passed an exceedingly unprofitable morning smoking and playing billiards.
After luncheon an ancient mariner in a blue jersey and a high-crowned bowler hat approached him on the hotel veranda and intimated that the day was a good one for deep-sea fishing. It was certainly no day for courting, and Pip, weary in spirit, was fain to accept the implied invitation.
They walked to the beach together, and began to haul down the old man's boat. This done, the oars and tackle were put in, and the expedition was on the point of departure when Pip suddenly realised that it had stopped raining.
"Hallo!" he said. "Rain over?"
"Aye," remarked the old man; "it will be a grand afternoon yet."
Pip turned upon him suddenly.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Aye."
"Certain?"
"'Deed aye," replied the old gentleman rather testily. "When the top of yon ben is uncovered like so, and the wind—"
"In that case," remarked his employer suddenly, "I can't come fishing, I'm afraid. I must go and—do something else. Another day, perhaps."
And handing the scandalised mariner half-a-crown, he departed over the sand-hills at a rate which would certainly have brought about his disqualification in any decently conducted walking-race.
An hour later two players approached the first tee. They were Elsie and Pip.
Now the nerves of both these young people, although neither of them would have admitted it, were tightly strung up by reason of the present situation. Each side (as they say in the election reports) was confident of success, but their reasons for confidence were widely dissimilar. Pip meant to win, because in his opinion the only way to gain a woman's affection is to show yourself her master at something. If he had moved in another class of society he would have subdued his beloved with a poker or a boot, and she on the whole would have respected him for it: being a sportsman, he preferred to use a golf-club.
Elsie meant to win for a different reason. To begin with, her spirit rebelled against the idea of becoming the captive of Pip's bow and spear. She might or she might not intend to marry him,—that was her own secret,—but she had not the slightest intention of marrying him because he beat her at golf. Obviously, the first thing to do was to beat him; then the situation would be in her hands and she could dictate her own terms. What those terms were to be she had not quite settled. All she knew was that Pip, if he were to have her at all, should have her as a favour and not as a right.
Consequently the lust of battle was upon them both; and it was with undisguised chagrin that they found three couples awaiting their turn at the first tee. To be kept back through the green is irritating enough under any circumstances, but when you are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the matrimonial stakes, absolute freedom of action is essential.
Instinctively Pip and Elsie turned and looked at each other in dismay. Then Pip said—
"Let's tramp out to the turn, and we'll play the last nine holes first. It will come to the same thing in the end."
Elsie agreed, and they set off together across the links in the direction of the ninth hole. They had no caddies, for each felt that on this occasion witnesses were impossible.
Pip, indeed, offered to carry Elsie's clubs as well as his own, but he was met with a very curt refusal.
"Nonsense! You would always be hammering your own ball a hundred yards away in a bunker, while I was waiting for my mashie."
The rain had ceased, and a watery sun shone down upon them. There was no wind, and the conditions for golf were almost perfect. The greens had become a trifle fiery during the recent drought, and the morning's rain had stiffened them finely.
Presently they found themselves on the tenth tee.
"You drive first," said Pip.
Elsie began to tee her ball.
"It's the last time you'll have the chance," he continued.
Elsie picked up her ball.
"For that," she remarked, "you shall drive first. I am not going to take any favours from a duffer."
Pip rose from the tee-box on which he was sitting and took her ball from her hand. Then he stooped down and teed it carefully.
"Ladies first," he remarked briefly.
Elsie, feeling curiously weak, said no more, but obeyed him. She made a pretty drive, the ball keeping low, but towering suddenly before it dropped. It lay, clean and white, in a good lie a hundred and fifty yards away.
"Good beat!" said Pip appreciatively, and began to address his own ball. His rigid stance and curious lifting swing were the exact opposite of Elsie's supple movements, but for all that he outdrove her by nearly a hundred yards. It was a Cyclopean effort, and the Haskell ball, as it bounded over the hard ground, which had been little affected by the rain, looked as if it would never stop.
"Lovely drive!" cried Elsie involuntarily.
"Yes, it was a hefty swipe," admitted Pip. "I get about two of those each round. The rest average five yards."
The hole was a simple one. A good drive usually left the ball in a nice lie, whence the green, which was guarded by a bunker, could be reached with an iron. Pip's ball was lying well up, and only a chip with his mashie was required to lay him dead. Elsie found herself faced by that difficulty which confronts all females who essay masculine golf-courses. Her ball, though well and truly struck, was farther from the hole than her iron could carry it. A brassie-shot would get her over the bunker, but would probably overrun the green, which lay immediately beyond; while anything in the shape of a run-up ball would be trapped. She decided to risk an iron shot. She did her best, but the distance was too great for her. The ball dropped into the bunker with a soft thud; she required two more to get out; and Pip, who had succeeded in clearing the bunker with his second and running down a long putt, won the hole in an unnecessarily perfect three.
"One down," said Elsie. "Too good a start, Pip. You'll lose now."
"Well begun is half done," retorted Pip sententiously, but he knew in his heart that she spoke with some truth.
The next hole was over four hundred yards long, and as such should have been a moral certainty for Pip. However, his tee-shot travelled exactly two feet, and his second, played perforce with an iron, not much farther. Elsie reached the green in three strokes and a pitch, and won the hole in six.
At the next hole Pip sliced his drive, the ball flying an immense distance and curling away out of sight to their left. (You must remember that he was a left-handed player.) Elsie, as usual, drove a picture of a ball, but just failed to reach the green with her second. Meanwhile Pip, tramping at large amid the whin-bushes, found his ball in a fairly good lie, and with a perfectly preposterous cleek-shot, which seemed to Elsie to travel about a quarter of a mile, lay on the edge of the green. He holed out in two putts, and won the hole in four to her five.
They were warming to their work, and each was playing a characteristic game. The next two holes were short ones, across a high ridge of sand and back again. In each case the green could be reached from the tee. Pip, who had the honour, buried his ball in the face of the sand-hill, and as Elsie cleared the summit and lay on the green, he gave up the hole. Driving back again, Elsie carried the hill. Pip took his cleek this time, and his ball followed hers straight over the guide-post. When they reached the green they found the balls lying side by side ten yards or so from the pin. Pip putted first, and lay dead, six inches from the hole.
"This is the first half we'll have had," he said, as he stood over the hole waiting for Elsie to putt.
"Wait a little," said Elsie.
She took the line of her putt with great care, and allowing nicely for the undulations of the green, just found the hole, and again took the lead, having won the hole in two to Pip's three.
"Don't talk to me any more about flukes," remarked Pip severely as he replaced the flag.
"I won't," retorted Elsie, "if you won't talk to me about halves."
Pip made no mistake at the next two holes, the sixth and seventh. Both were long and straight, and, though Elsie drove as sturdily as ever, Pip's determined slogging brought him to the green before her each time, and at the seventh hole he stood one up.
The next hole was uneventful. The course here ran straight along the edge of the shore, with the sea on their right. Pip, unmindful of the necessity for straightness, hit out with his usual blind ferocity, and was rewarded by seeing his comparatively new Haskell fly off in a determined and ambitious effort to reach the coast of Norway.
"The sea," remarked Elsie calmly, "is out of bounds. You drop another and lose distance."
With the advantage derived from Pip's mishap, Elsie just won the hole. The next, the ninth (the eighteenth and last if they had started from the first tee), a dull and goose-greeny affair, as most home-holes are, was halved, and the match stood "all square at the turn."
They sat down for a moment on a club-house seat on their way to the first tee proper, to begin the second half of their round.
"By gum, this is a game!" said Pip, smacking his lips.
"Rather!" said Elsie as heartily.
And, at that, a little chill of silence fell upon them. In the sheer joy of battle they had almost forgotten the great issues that hung on the result. They were absolutely alone on the links. The few players who had ventured out after the rain ceased were well on their way round—somewhere near the ninth hole, probably; and the green-keeper had taken advantage of slackness in business to go home to his tea. The sky was overcast, and promised more rain.
Suddenly Elsie sprang up.
"Come on," she said briskly. "My honour, I think?"
"Yes," replied Pip.
For the tenth time that afternoon Elsie drove the ball far and sure, straight for the green. Pip's heart smote him. Who was he that his crass and brutal masculine muscle should be permitted to annul the effects of Elsie's delicate precision and indomitable pluck?
"Elsie," he said suddenly, "if you don't win this match—you deserve to!"
Elsie looked up at him. For a moment her heart softened. She felt inclined to tell him something—that she did not want to win after all, that the game was his for the asking, that she would surrender unconditionally. But, even as she wavered, Pip unconsciously settled the matter by driving his ball just about twice the distance of hers. Without another word she picked up her clubs and set off to play her second. But her brassie-shot found a bunker, and as her skill lay in avoiding difficulties rather than in getting out of them, she soon found it necessary to give up the hole.
The stars in their courses now began to fight for Pip. His ball from the next tee, badly topped, ran merrily into a bunker, hopped out, and lay on fair turf five yards beyond. Upset, perhaps, by this fluke, Elsie for the first time bungled her tee-shot, sliced her second into a bad lie, and arrived at the green to find that Pip, who had been playing a kind of glorified croquet-match against an invisible opponent, with his iron for a mallet and whin-bushes for hoops, was still a stroke to the good. She lost the hole.
Pip was now two up, with seven to play. But Elsie's cup was not yet full. Her next drive was caught most unfairly in an aggressively fresh rabbit-scrape, which lay right in the fairway to the hole. Pip offered to allow her to lift it, but she declined. Pip's good luck also continued, for though he pulled his drive over some sand-hills to the right, he found his ball lying teed up "on the only blade of grass for miles," as he explained on reappearing. He reached the green in two, Elsie taking three, and won the hole.
Three down, and six to play!
There was no question of giving in in Elsie's heart now. She had hesitated, and was lost, or at any rate committed to a life-and-death struggle. There can be no graceful concessions when one is three down. Under such circumstances a virtue is apt to be misconstrued into a necessity.
The next hole was the longest in the course, and Elsie felt that it was a gift for Pip. That erratic warrior, however, failed to carry the burn, distant about fifteen yards from the tee, and was ignominiously compelled to fish his ball out, drop, and lose a stroke. This gave Elsie some much-needed encouragement. Her tee-shot took her well on her way, and the ball lay so clean for her second that she was enabled to take her driver to it. One more slashing stroke, with her brassie this time, delivered with all the vigour and elasticity of which her lithe young body was capable, and she lay only ten yards from the green. Pip, despite some absolutely heroic work with his beloved cleek, was unable to overcome the handicap of the burn, and reached the green a stroke behind her. However, his luck stood by him once more, for he accomplished a five-yard putt, and halved the hole.
"Good putt!" said Elsie bravely.
"All putts of over three feet," remarked Pip, sententiously quoting one of his favourite golfing maxims, "are flukes."
Fluke or no fluke, Elsie was three down, with only five to play. Another hole lost, and Pip would be "dormy." Fortunately the next three holes were of the short and tricky variety, presenting difficulties more easily to be overcome by a real golfer than a human battering-ram. Elsie rose to the occasion. She set her small white teeth, squared her slim shoulders, and applied herself to the task of reducing Pip's lead. And she succeeded. The first hole she took in a perfect three, Pip, who had encountered a whin-bush en route, requiring thirteen!
"One thing," he remarked philosophically as he mopped his brow, "I did the job thoroughly. That whin-bush will never bother anybody again."
The next hole was a real triumph for Elsie. She was weak with her approach, and arrived on the green in three to Pip's two. Pip played the like, hit the back of the hole hard, hopped over, and lay a foot beyond—dead.
"This for a half," said Elsie.
"This" was an exceedingly tricky putt of about eight yards over an undulating green. She carefully examined the lie of the ground in both directions, thrust her tongue out of one corner of her mouth—an unladylike habit which intruded itself at moments of extreme tension—and played. The ball left her putter sweetly, successfully negotiated the various hills and dales of the green, and dropped into the hole.
"Grand putt!" said Pip. "I mustn't miss this of mine."
He humped his shoulders, bent his knees, and addressed the ball with all the intense elaboration usual in a player suddenly called upon to hole a ball which, under ordinary circumstances, he would knock in with the back of his putter. Whether his impossible posture or his recent unequal encounter with the whin-bush was responsible will never be known, but the fact remains that he missed the hole by inches, and so lost it by one stroke.
Elsie stifled the scream of delight that rose to her lips.
"One down, and three to play," she remarked, in a voice that would tremble a little.
She made no mistake with the next hole. For her it was a full drive over a high bunker on to the green. Pip took his cleek, failed to carry the bunker, and after one or two abortive attempts to get out of the shifty sand with his niblick, gave up the hole, Elsie's drive having laid her a few yards from the pin.
"All square," announced Elsie. "Two to play."
"My word, Elsie, this is a match!" repeated Pip.
Elsie replied by an ecstatic sigh.
Both had entirely forgotten the stake for which they were playing. For the moment they were golfers pure and simple. They were no longer human beings, much less male and female, less still lover and lass. The whole soul of each was set on defeating the other.
But there are deeper passions than golf.
- "Naturam furca expellas, tamen usque recurret!"
—which, being interpreted, means roughly that if a man and a maid set out to dislodge Human Nature from their systems with, say, a niblick, Human Nature will inevitably come home to roost. All of which is cold truth, as the event proved.
Both gave an exceedingly moderate exhibition at the seventeenth tee, Pip because he not infrequently did so, and Elsie because her nerve was going. Their second shots were better, though Pip as usual got farther with his cleek than Elsie with her brassie. Elsie therefore had to play the odd in approaching the green. This time she did herself justice. It was a perfect shot. The ball rose quickly, fell plump upon the green, checked itself with a little back-spin, and staggered uncertainly towards the hole. Finally it stopped, eighteen inches beyond the pin.
Elsie heaved a sigh of the most profound relief. In all human probability she was sure of a "half" now, and unless Pip laid his approach dead she would win the hole outright, and so make the match safe, safe, safe! She involuntarily clasped her hands together over her beating heart.
Pip, impassive as ever, said nothing, but took his mashie and succeeded in reaching the green. Since his ball lay a good ten yards short, his chances of a half looked meagre, but he grasped his putter with determination and "went for" the hole. The ball rolled smoothly over the green, but suddenly turned off a little and just rolled past the lip of the hole.
"Bad luck!" said Elsie, with ready sympathy.
Bad luck indeed, but not for Pip. The ball, as she spoke, suddenly slowed down and stopped dead, midway, to a hair's-breadth, between the ball and the hole. Elsie required only a short putt to win the hole and make herself "dormy," and Pip had laid her a dead stymie.
Involuntarily they looked at each other. Then Pip said quickly,—
"I'll pick up my ball while you putt. We aren't having any stymies in this match, of course."
All the sportswoman in Elsie revolted at this. "No, Pip," she said; "certainly not. We arranged nothing about stymies before we started, so stymies must stand. I must just play it."
She took her mashie, and made a gallant but unsuccessful effort to jump her ball over Pip's. Each holed the next putt, and the match remained square—with one to play. Ye gods!
They were very silent as they prepared to drive off for the last time. Absolutely alone, far out on the course, they were now approaching what was properly "the turn," more than a mile from the clubhouse.
"I shall put down a new ball here," said Pip, "just for luck."
"So shall I," said Elsie.
"We mustn't mix them on the green, then. What is yours?"
"A 'Haskell.'"
"Right. Mine's a 'Springvale Kite.'"
Elsie had the honour, and drove as good a ball as any that afternoon. Pip, determined to take as few risks as possible, used his cleek, and lay just beside her.
The ninth hole on the Links of Eric is known as "The Crater." The green lies in a curious hollow on the top of a conical hill. An average drive leaves your ball at the hill-foot in a good lie. After this only one stroke is of the slightest use. You take your farthest-laid-back mashie, commend your soul to Providence, and smite. The ball, if struck as desired, will rise up, tower, and drop into the basin at the top of the hill. Should you play too strongly you will fly over the oasis of green turf and fall into a howling wilderness of bents, sand, and whins on the far side; should you play short, your ball will bury itself in the slopes of shifting sand that guard the approach, and your doom is sealed. It is credibly reported that all four players in a four-ball match—scratch men, every one—once arrived upon the Crater green, ball in hand, each having given up the struggle under the despairing impression that no opponent could possibly have played more strokes than himself.
On paper, this was just the sort of hole that Elsie should have won from Pip. But in practice the conditions were even. Pip's Herculean wrists made it possible for him to force the ball up to the necessary height with a half-mashie-shot, but for Elsie the task involved a full swing—and to keep your ball under absolute control in such circumstances is about the most difficult shot in golf. Pip's approaching was at its worst unspeakable, but on this occasion he was at his best. The ball sailed grandly into the air and dropped in a reassuringly perpendicular fashion into the Crater. Elsie's effort was almost as good, though her ball curled slightly to the left before dropping.
They tramped up the long flight of wooden steps which facilitated the ascent to the summit with bated breath. A glance at the green would decide the match.
Elsie reached the top first. Pip heard her give a little gasp.
One ball, new, white, and glistening, lay on the green ten or twelve yards from the hole. The other was nowhere to be seen.
"Whose ball, I wonder?" said Pip calmly.
They stooped together and examined the ball as it lay on the green. So close were they that Pip was conscious of a flutter that passed through Elsie's body.
The ball was a "Springvale Kite."
Pip maintained an absolutely unmoved countenance. The ball was his, and so, unless a miracle intervened, was the hole. And the match. And—Elsie!
But that mysterious quality which, for want of a better name, we call "sportsmanship," under whose benign influence we learn to win with equanimity and lose with cheerfulness, prevented him from so much as turning an eye upon his beaten opponent. He merely remarked briskly—
"We must find your pill, Elsie. It can't be far off."
Elsie made no reply, but took her niblick and began to search rather perfunctorily for the lost ball. She could not speak: the strain of the match had told upon her. After all she was a woman, and a girl at that. Pip's iron immobility made her feel worse. She was beginning to realise that he was stronger than she was—a state of affairs which had never appeared possible to her before. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to go home. She wanted to beat Pip, and now that feat appeared to be impossible. Half an hour ago she could have abandoned the match with good grace. She might have surrendered with all the honours of war. Now she would be dragged home at the wheels of Pip's chariot.
Meanwhile her opponent, that tender-hearted and unconscious ogre, was diligently poking about among the bents and whins for the missing Haskell. He was genuinely distressed that the match should end thus. Elsie had had cruel luck. She should have won the last hole, and at any rate halved this one. He took no pleasure in his prospective victory. He had wild thoughts of offering to play the hole again, but dismissed them at once. Elsie might be only a girl, but she had the right instincts, and would very properly regard such an offer as an insult. If only her ball could be found, though, Pip flattered himself that he could go on missing putts after Elsie had reached the green until she had pulled the match out of the fire. Happy thought! he would so manipulate the game as to halve the hole and the match. Then Box and Cox would be satisfied. Beat Elsie, plucky little Elsie? Perish the thought! Pip's sentimental heart overflowed. What a game she had played!
But, sentiment or no sentiment, a lost ball is a lost hole, and unless the ball could be found Pip would be a victor malgré lui.
Coming round the face of the hill, Pip suddenly found himself a few yards from Elsie. She stood with her back to him, unaware of his presence. What was she doing? Certainly not looking for her ball. Was she—could she—really—was Elsie, the proud, the scornful, the unbending, actually cr—? Certainly that flimsy article in her hand looked like a handkerchief. Perhaps it was only a fly in her eye, or something.
No. Pip watched Elsie for a moment longer. It was not a fly in her eye. His heart, already liquescent, melted entirely. He tiptoed away back to the green.
Once there, he took three balls from his pocket and examined them. One was an old and battered "guttie," the others were "Kites," with Pip's trade-mark indelibly stamped upon their long-suffering skins. None of these were suitable for his fell purpose. Nothing daunted, the conspirator stole across to Elsie's bag, which lay on the edge of the green, and selected from the pocket a new Haskell. Carefully fastening up the pocket again, he walked to the middle of the green, and after a furtive glance all round him—dropped the ball into the hole.
Then he uplifted his voice in a full-throated yell, and hurried towards the spot where he had last seen Elsie. As he emerged from the hollow green he met her face to face, coming slowly up to the ridge. Her cheeks were rather flushed and her eyes shone, but her handkerchief was resolutely tucked away in her blouse, and she greeted Pip with a ready smile.
"Elsie," said Pip excitedly, "I've found your ball."
"My ball? Nonsense! Why, I've—"
She checked herself suddenly and followed Pip. That well-meaning but misguided philanthropist, heedless of the danger-signals in Elsie's eyes, walked to the hole, and there, rather with the air of an amateur conjurer who is not quite certain whether his audience know "how it's done" or not, picked out the ball.
"There's your ball," he said. "Good hole, in two! Congratters!"
He handed her the ball with a clumsy gesture of good-will.
Elsie regarded the unoffending Haskell in a dazed manner for a moment, turned white and then red, and finally looked Pip squarely in the face without speaking. Then she flung the ball down upon the green, turned on her heel with a passionate whirl of her skirt, and stalked off, leaving Pip staring dejectedly after her.