Chapter 2

I can take Thomas out alone and beat him so badly he will not dare turn in his score, but in a mixed foursome he can put it all over me.

It does not take much to throw a man off his golf game. For instance: My private secretary came up from the city early this morning. Among other matters he called my attention to the fact that my N.O. & G. railway stock has dropped three points during the week. I seldom indulge in stock speculation, but was induced to buy two thousand shares of this security on what I believed to be inside information. The stock is now selling at five points below my purchase price, a paper loss of $10,000.

"Your brokers inform me that unless you desire to take your losses it will be necessary to put up a ten-point margin," said my secretary.

"That means a cheque for $20,000, I presume," I observed, making a hurried calculation. He said it did, and I gave it to him.

As soon as he had gone I went out with Kirkaldy, our club professional, and played a few holes before luncheon, hoping to get that confounded N.O. & G. stock affair out of my mind so that I could play a good game in the afternoon. I made the fifth hole in five, which reminded me that the cursed stock had dropped five points. As a consequence I drove wide on the next hole, and Kirkaldy won half a dozen balls from me.

In order to play a perfect game of golf one's mind must reflect no outside matter, and I shall sell that miserable stock the moment I can get out without serious loss. This should be a lesson to me.

I saw Carter a few minutes ago and he tells me he understands that the famous Grace Harding does play golf. My worst fears are confirmed.

I shall now clean my clubs and go to bed.

ENTRY NO. II

MAINLY ABOUT SMITH

It has rained all day and nothing of interest has happened. The ladies are clustered on the sheltered side of the veranda. Some are reading, others are engaged in fancy work. The leading topic of discussion is the coming of the Hardings--or rather a fruitless inquiry as to what gowns and how many Miss Grace Harding will wear.

They are due to-morrow. I wonder if old Harding knows anything about N.O. & G. stock? He probably does--and will keep it to himself.

There being nothing else to write about I shall write of myself.

As Chilvers said yesterday, I was born on the farm which now constitutes the Woodvale golf links. When my father died he willed this land and other property to me. I take it that a man has a right to do as he pleases with his own.

The old farm makes a sporty golf course, and I cannot say that I have ever regretted my action in signing the lease which transfers its use to the Woodvale Golf and Country Club for a long term of years.

I doubt if the two hundred odd acres ever yielded so large an income as I now receive semi-annually from the treasurer of the club, but this does not appeal to my Uncle Henry.

"It is an outrage," he once said to me, with unnecessary adjectives, "to use the fine old farmhouse, sacred to long generations of Smiths, as an ell to a club house."

He said other things which I will not repeat. He is a banker, and I sincerely hope Chilvers does not hit him with a golf ball. That infernal slice of Chilvers' has already cost me one legacy.

I have traced my ancestry as far back as I dare, and have a certain amount of reverence for hallowed traditions and all that sort of thing. I must admit there have been times when I have almost imagined that the shades of three generations of more or less distinguished Smiths were holding an indignation meeting to protest against this golf invasion of their mundane haunts.

Where my great-grandmother once sang over her spinning wheel there has been installed a modern shower bath. The huge old-fashioned dining-room, with its cavernous fireplace, is now lined on three sides with lockers. The place above it which was once filled with the blackened oil portrait of our original Smith is now adorned with an engraving of Harry Varden at the finish of his drive.

This picture of Varden's is said to be the best likeness yet produced of this truly remarkable man. I have studied it for hours, but cannot understand how he can grip a club as he does without hooking his ball.

All the bed-chambers on the second floor have been thrown into one large room, which is used as a gymnasium. As near as I can make out, the place where I once knelt to say my prayers is now occupied by a punching bag.

The ceiling has been removed, which, of course, does away with the attic, and trapeze ropes now hang from rafters where successive grandmothers suspended peppermint, pennyroyal and other weeds and herbs possessing medicinal or culinary virtues.

I confess it does look a bit odd, but it makes a ripping good gym.

Certain it is that the old farm never looked as beautiful as it does now. The cow pasture once flanked with boggy marshes has been drained and rolled until the turf is smooth as velvet. The cornfields have disappeared. The straggling stone walls have been converted into bunkers, and the whole area has been converted into a park.

Old Bishop owns the adjoining farm, and whenever he sees our employees at work with rollers or grass-mowers he is overcome with rage.

"The best tract of land for corn, oats or hay in the county!" he exclaims, "and you have made it the playground of a lot of rich dudes! Jack, I should think your father would turn over in his grave. I'd like to run a plow an' harrer over them puttin' greens of yours, as ye call them. You've wasted enough manure on that grass to make me rich."

Bishop does not understand or appreciate the beauties and niceties of golf.

The first tee is under an elm which was planted by the Smith who was born in 1754, and who served under Washington. Facing it is the quaint old country church where the Father of our Country has attended many services, and in which my parents were married.

A straight drive of one hundred and thirty yards will carry the lane and insure a good lie, but a sliced ball is likely to go through a window of the church. However, the church is no longer used, and besides there is no excuse for slicing a ball. Some of the members assert that the old belfry is a "mental hazard."

On the second hole it is necessary to carry the old graveyard. A topped ball or even a low one is likely to strike one of the blackened slate slabs. The grass is so thick and rank that it is almost impossible to find a ball driven into this last resting place of my ancestors.

It makes an ideal hazard.

The second time I ever played this hole I lined out a low ball which struck the tombstone of Deacon Lemuel Smith. It bounded back at least seventy-five yards, but I had a good lie and my second shot was a screaming brassie. It carried the graveyard and landed on the edge of the green.

After carefully studying my putt I holed out from twenty yards, making the hole in three after practically throwing my first shot away.

This ability to recover from an indifferent or unfortunate shot is one of the strong points of my game.

The third hole requires a hundred-and-thirty-yard drive over the brook where I used to fish when a boy, and on the fourth hole you must carry the pond. I came very near being drowned in that pond when a youngster, and I firmly believe that this is the reason I so often flub my drive on this hole.

But it is unnecessary to describe all of the eighteen holes. The links are 3,327 yards out and 3,002 yards in, a long and sporty course, the delight of the true golfer and the terror of the duffer.

Woodvale is very exclusive. The membership is limited, and hundreds of the best people in the city are on the waiting list. Our club house is one of the finest in the country. In addition to the links we have tennis courts, croquet grounds, bowling alleys and other games, but why one should care to indulge in any game other than golf is a mystery to me.

We also have bicycle and riding paths, flower gardens and all the luxuries and artificial scenic charms possible from the judicious expenditure of nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Nothing can surpass it.

I live here during the golfing season, and one is unfortunate if he cannot play nine months in the year in Woodvale. In the winter it is safer to go to Florida or California, and I propose to do so in the future rather than risk a repetition of last season's heavy snows which made golf impossible for days at a time.

My suite of rooms in the club house is as finely furnished as any in the city, and the service and cuisine are excellent.

One saves a vast amount of time by living in such a club house as that of Woodvale. The hours expended by golfers in travelling between their places of business and the links will foot up to an enormous total each year. I remain here and thus save all that time.

Not that I neglect my business; far from it. Once a week my private secretary comes to the club house from my office in the city. He brings with him letters and other matters which imperatively demand my personal attention, and I sternly abandon all else for the time being.

On the days when he is here I play twenty-four holes instead of the usual thirty-six or more, but I find the change diverting rather than otherwise. Without claiming special merit for an original discovery, I believe I have struck what may be termed the happy medium between work and relaxation.

I do not class the keeping of this diary as work for the reason that I shall not permit it to interfere with my golf. When I feel disposed to make a note of an event, an idea or a score I shall do so, but I do not propose to be a slave to this diary.

I have just returned from a walk on the veranda. Miss Ross came to me, greatly excited.

"They are here!" she exclaimed.

"Who; the Hardings?" I asked.

"No, their trunks are here. And what do you think?"

"I would not make a guess," I declared.

"Miss Harding has only six trunks, and I had seven myself."

The sweet creature was happy and immensely relieved. I forgot to ask her if any golf clubs were included in the Harding luggage.

ENTRY NO. III

MR. HARDING WINS A BET

I have met Harding, the western railroad magnate, and he is a character. His wife is in the city, but will be out here in a few days.

Harding--I call him Mister when addressing him, since he is worth thirty millions or more, and he is old enough to be my father--Harding strolled out to the first tee early this morning and stood with his hands in his pockets watching some of the fellows drive off.

I should judge him to be a man of about fifty-five, or perhaps a year of two older. He stands more than six feet, is broad of shoulder and equally broad of waist, ruddy of complexion, clear of eye and quick of motion. He is of the breezy, independent type peculiar to those who have risen to fortune with the wonderful development of our western country, and it is difficult to realise that he is a real live magnate.

His close-cropped beard shows few gray hairs, and does not entirely hide the lines of a resolute chin. He looks like a prosperous farmer who has been forced to become familiar with metropolitan conventionalities, but whose rough edges have withstood the friction. His voice is heavy but not unpleasant, and his laugh jovial but defiant. He reminds me of no one I have seen, and I shall study him with much interest.

He was with Carter, who seemed well acquainted with him, and he greeted each drive whether it was good or bad with a sneering smile. This told me that he had never played the game, and that he had all of the outsider's contempt for it. I knew exactly what he thought, for I was once as ignorant and unappreciative as he is now.

A mutual contempt exists between those who play golf and those who do not. Those who have not played are sure they could become expert in a week, if they had so little sense as to waste time on so simple and objectless a game. Those who are familiar with the game know that no man living can ever hope to approach its possibilities, and they also know that it is the grandest sport designed since man has inhabited this globe.

I have sometimes thought that this old globe of ours is nothing more nor less than a golf ball, brambled with mountains and valleys, and scarred with ravines where the gods in their play have topped their drives. The spin around its axis causes it to slice about the sun. This strikes me as rather poetic, and when I write a golf epic I shall elaborate on this fancy.

Harding has no such conception of this whirling earth of ours. He is fully convinced that it was created for the purpose of being cross-hatched with railroads, and that it never had any real utility until he gridironed the western prairies with ten thousand miles of rust and grease. I thought of that as I watched him standing by the side of Carter, his huge hands thrust deep in his pockets, his bushy head thrown back, and a tolerant grin on his bearded lips.

I was practising putting on a green set aside for that purpose, and Carter saw me and motioned me to come to him. He introduced Harding, who shook hands and then glanced curiously at my putter.

"What do you call that?" he asked, taking it from my hand. It was an aluminum putter of my own design, and I have won many a game with it. I told him what it was.

"Looks like a brake shoe on the new-model hand-cars," he said, swinging it viciously with one hand. "How far can you knock one of those little pills with it?"

"I see that you do not play golf," I said, rather offended at his manner.

"No, there are a lot of things I do not do, and this is one of them," he replied, and then he laughed. "But let me tell you," he added, "I used to be a wonder at shinny."

I would have wagered he would make some such remark.

"Do you see that scar on the bridge of my nose?" he asked. "That came from a crack with a shinny club when I was not more than ten years old. Shinny is a great game; a great game! It requires quickness of eye and limb, and more than that it demands a high degree of courage. It teaches a boy to stand a hard knock without whimpering. Yes, sir, shinny is a great game, and all boys should play it," and he rubbed the scar on his nose tenderly.

A man who would compare golf with shinny is capable of contrasting Venice with a drainage canal, and I came near telling him so. Golf and shinny! Whist and old maid! Pink lemonade and champagne!

"No, sir, I never could see much in this golf game," said Harding, handing back my putter. "It certainly isn't much of a trick to hit one of those balls with a mallet like that. When I was your age," turning to Carter, "I could swing a maul and send a railroad spike into five inches of seasoned oak, and never miss once a week, and I'll bet that if I had to I could do it again. That was what your father used to do for a living, and if he hadn't worked up from a section boss to the presidency of a railroad you would have something else to do besides batting balls around a farm and then hunting for 'em. But I suppose you must like it or you wouldn't do it."

"I think you would find the game interesting if you took it up," suggested Carter, whose father is nearly as rich as Harding. "Smith and I will initiate you into the mysteries of the game."

"Oh, I suppose I'll have to play now that I'm here," he said, with the most exasperating complacency. "My daughter plays some, and she is as crazy about it as the rest of them. I don't see where the fascination comes in. I called the other day on a man who was once in the Cabinet. He is rich and famous, and can have anything or do anything he likes, but he spends most of his time playing golf. I went to him and attempted to induce him to represent us in a big railway lawsuit, but he said it would prevent his playing in some tournament where he expected to win five dollars' worth of plated pewter. What do you think of that? Wouldn't take the case, and there was fifty thousand in it for him! I roasted the life out of him."

"'If you would drop this fool game and pay the same amount of attention to your political fortunes,' I said to him, 'you would have a right to aspire to the Presidency of the United States.' And what do you suppose he said to me?"

I assured him that I had not the slightest idea.

"'Mr. Harding,' he said to me in perfect seriousness, when I attempted to put this presidential bee in his bonnet, 'Mr. Harding, I would rather be able to drive a golf ball two hundred and fifty feet than be President of the United States for life.' That's what he said, and I told him he was crazy, and he is so mad at me that I don't dare go near him."

"Didn't he say two hundred and fifty yards?" asked Carter, who had been listening intently. "Two hundred and fifty feet is no drive."

"Mebbe it was yards," admitted Harding, disgusted that Carter ignored the point of his story, "but let me tell you that I'd rather be President of the United States for one minute than to be able to drive one of those little pellets two hundred and fifty miles! I'll tell you what I'll do!" he exclaimed, turning fiercely on both of us. "I never tried to play this idiotic game in my life, but I'll bet the Scotch and soda for the three of us that I can drive a ball further than either of you."

"That would hardly be fair," I protested, though I was delighted at the chance to take some of the conceit out of him. I have seen many of his type before, and it is a pleasure to witness their downfall.

"Why wouldn't it be fair?" he demanded.

"Because you know nothing of the swing of a club or of the follow through," I attempted to explain.

"The follow what?" he asked.

"The follow through," I repeated.

"What the devil is the follow through?" he asked, reaching for Carter's bag. "Let me take yours and I'll try it anyhow."

"The 'follow through' is not a club," I explained when we had ceased laughing, "but it is the trick of sending the face of the club after the ball when you have hit it. It is the end of the stroke, and by it you get both distance and direction. Without a good follow through it is impossible to drive a ball any considerable distance, no matter how great the strength with which you hit it. This knack can only be acquired after much practise."

"You don't say?" he laughed. "Let me tell you that when I used to play baseball I had a 'follow through' which made the fielders get out so far when I came to bat that the spectators had to use fieldglasses to see where they were. If I hit that golf ball good and fair it will 'follow through' into the next county, and don't you forget that I told you so! Come on, boys!"

Carter looked at me and winked. There was no one waiting on the first tee, and a clear field ahead. It was agreed that Carter should have the honour, I to follow, and that Harding should drive last.

Harding stripped off his coat and waistcoat, removed his collar and rolled up his sleeves. I was impressed with his magnificent physique, and do not recall when I have seen so massive and well-formed a forearm. From my bag he selected a driver which I seldom use on account of its excessive weight, and looked at it critically.

"Pretty fair sort of a stick," he observed, swinging it clumsily and viciously, "but I'd rather have one of those hickory roots we used to cut for shinny when I was a boy. Go ahead and soak it, Carter, so that I may know what I've got to beat."

I mentally resolved to press even at the chance of flubbing. Carter hit the ball too low, and it sailed into the air barely clearing the lane, stopping not more than one hundred and fifty yards away.

"That's not so much," said Harding, grimly. "Bat her out, Smith, and then watch your Uncle Dudley!"

I carefully teed a new ball and took a practise swing or two. I felt morally certain that Harding could not beat Carter's drive, poor as it was, but I was anxious to show him how a golf ball will fly when properly struck.

I fell on that ball for one of the longest and cleanest drives I ever made, and it did not stop rolling until it was twenty yards past the two-hundred-yard post. I was properly proud of that shot, and despite his loud talk I felt a sort of pity for Harding.

"Is that considered a fairly good shot?" he asked.

"It was a good one for Smith, or for that matter for anyone," replied Carter, who was a bit sore that he had fallen down.

"It looks easy for me," calmly declared Harding stepping up to the tee. "Can you make as high a pile of sand as you want to?"

"Yes, but it is better to tee it close to the ground," advised Carter. "If you tee it high you are apt to go under it."

Ignoring Carter's advice he reached into the box, scooped out a double-handful of sand and piled it in a pyramid at least four inches high. On the apex of this he placed a new ball I had taken from my bag, and which I felt reasonably certain would be cut in two in the improbable event that he hit it. He stood back and surveyed his preparations with evident satisfaction.

It was impossible for Carter and me to keep our faces straight, but Harding paid no attention to us.

"I ought to be able to hit that, all right," he said, walking around the sand pile and viewing it from all sides. Then he stood back and took a practise swing.

He stood square on both feet, his legs spread as far apart as he could extend them. He grasped the shaft of the club with both hands, holding the left one underneath. His practise swing was the typical baseball stroke used by all novices, and I saw at a glance that in all probability he would go under his ball.

"The blamed club is too light, but I suppose it's the best you've got," he said. "It feels like a willow switch. Well, stand back and give me lots of room. Here goes!"

As he grasped the club I saw the muscles of his right forearm stand out like whipcords. His face was wrinkled in a frown, but there was, blood in his eye.

Carter and I stood well away so as to escape a flying club-head. I cannot describe how Harding made that swing; it was done so quickly that I only noted what followed.

When the club came down there was a crack that sounded like a pistol shot, and at that instant I noted that the pyramid of sand was intact. Then I saw the ball! It was headed straight out the course, curving with that slight hook which contributes so much to distance.

When I first caught sight of it I should say it was fifty feet in the air and slowly rising. I never saw a ball travel so in my life. We had sent a caddy out ahead, and he marked the spot where it landed. It was more than twenty-five yards beyond the two-hundred-yard mark, and the ball rolled forty-five yards farther, making a total of two hundred and seventy yards.

It was within ten yards of the longest drive ever made by Kirkaldy, our club professional.

The exertion carried Harding fairly off his feet, and he landed squarely on the tee. He half raised himself, and followed the flight of the ball. His shirt was ripped open at the shoulder and torn at the neck.

"If I hadn't slipped," he declared, rising to a sitting posture, "I could have belted it twice as far as that, but I guess that's enough to win."

I heard the rustle of a woman's garment.

"Why, Papa Harding!" exclaimed a voice, musical as a silver bell. "You said you never would play golf! You should see how you look!"

I turned and saw Grace Harding. She is the most beautiful creature I ever met in my life.

Before any of us could reach him, Harding scrambled to his feet. He was streaked with sand, but there was a merry twinkle in his eye.

"Did you see me soak it, Kid?" he asked, brushing the sand from his trousers, and fumbling at a broken suspender.

"You are nothing but a great big boy," she declared. "Are you sure you are not hurt, papa?"