CHAPTER XX

Even Mortimer Crabb was excluded from that charming luncheon of four. It was very informal and great was the merriment at Patricia's expense, but through it all she smiled calmly at their scepticism--as Columbus at Salamanca must have smiled, if he ever did, or Newton or Edison, or any others of the world's great innovators.

"Cross-country golf," she continued proudly to assert, "is the golf of the New Era."

"Do you really mean it, Patty?" asked Aurora seriously, when the men had gone upstairs to change.

"Of course I do, Aurora. The Ancient and Honorable Game has its limitations. Cross-country golf has none. You'll see, my dear, in ten years, they'll be playing distance matches between New York and Philadelphia--the fewest strokes in the shortest time--that _will_ be a game."

"And who'll pay for the lost balls?" asked Aurora, laughing.

"That, Aurora," replied Patricia with a touch of dignity, "is something with which I am remotely concerned."

The men came down stairs dressed for the fray, grinning broadly, and Patricia, after a glance at McLemore's red vest, took up his golf bag with a business-like air and led the way to the terrace. The Sphynx blinked through his tauric glasses at her unresponsive back silhouetted in the doorway, but as Aurora had taken Steve's bag, he followed meekly, submitting to the inevitable. Outside, Patricia was indicating a rift in the row of maples which bordered her vegetable garden, through which was to be seen the brown sweep of the meadow beyond.

"The drive is through there. You'll get the direction marks for your second. The distance is four miles. The finish is on Aurora's lawn--the putting-green near the rear portico of the house. Drive off, gentlemen."

The honor was Mr. McLemore's. With a saddish smile, half of pity and half of a protest for his outraged golfing dignity, he took his bag from Patricia, and with a frugality which did him credit, upturned the bag on the lawn, spilling out a miscellany of old balls which he had saved for practice strokes. Selecting half a dozen, he stuffed five of them in his pockets, returned the newer ones to his bag and scorning the rubber tee which Patricia offered him, dropped a ball over his shoulder and took his cleek out of his bag. Each act was sportsman-like--a fine expression of the golfing spirit.

The drive went straight--and they saw it bouncing coquettishly up the meadow beyond. Steve, with the munificence which only poverty knows, brought forth a new ball, took the rubber tee and, with his driver, got off a long low one which cleared the bushes and vanished over the brow of the hill.

"A new golfing era has begun," said Patricia, with the air of a prophet.

"If I ever find my ball," said Ventnor, dubiously.

"What do you care, Steve, as long as you're making history?" laughed Aurora, with a sly glance at their hostess.

Patricia, unperturbed, led the way through a breach in the hedge and out into the sunlight where she raised a crimson parasol, which no one had noticed before.

"My complexion," she explained to Aurora. "One can't be too careful when one gets to be--ahem--thirty. Besides, it just matches Jimmy's vest."

The grass in the pasture was short and McLemore played his brassey--his caddy instructing him as to the ground on the other side, which fell gently down to a brook he could not reach.

"I got that one away," said McLemore, livening to his task. "It's not really bad going at all."

Patricia smiled gratefully, but made no response, for Steve, a little further on, was in a hole and had to play out with a mashie, which he did with consummate skill, the ball rolling down the hill thirty yards short of McLemore's.

From the hilltop they could easily see the line of the paper chase which Patricia had laid when she rode over the course yesterday. It stretched across the lower end of the Renwick's meadows along the road, crossing two streams, bordered with willow trees and led straight for Waterman's stone quarry. Ventnor played a careful mid-iron which cleared the brook and bounded forward into the meadow beyond; but McLemore overreached himself trying for distance and found the brook, losing his ball and two strokes; but he teed up, having played five and lay six well down the meadow, within carrying distance of the second stream. But Steve, playing steadily, passed him with his fourth, a long cleek shot which fell just short of the stream.

Beyond the creek was the hill to the quarry, three shots for McLemore, two long ones for Ventnor. With excellent judgment McLemore played safely over the creek with a mid-iron, reaching the brink of the quarry in two more, which gave him a chance to tee up on his ninth for the long drive across. Steve Ventnor was less fortunate, dribbling his sixth up the hill, fifty yards short of the quarry, into which, trying a long cleek shot to clear it, he unfortunately drove. He waited to see the Sphynx carefully tee his ball and send it straight down the course which Patricia indicated, and then taking the bag from his caddy helped her into the path which zig-zagged down to where his ball lay, a hundred feet below.

Patricia and the Sphynx had chosen the shorter way through the woods at the upper end and Steve and Aurora were alone.

At the bottom of the slope behind a projecting crag Steve stopped and faced his companion.

"Aurora," he said.

"Yes, Steve."

"Is it true you're going to marry McLemore?"

Aurora picked a flower which grew in a ledge beside her before she replied.

"Why do you ask?"

"I thought I'd like to know, that's all. People say you are----"

"_I_ haven't said so."

"Then," eagerly, "you aren't?"

"I don't see what right you've got to ask."

"I haven't--only I thought I'd like to be the first to congratulate him."

"Oh, is that all?"

"And I thought I'd like to tell you again that I love you better than anybody could--and that I always will, even if you marry him. He's a very nice fellow but--but I'll be very unhappy----"

"Will you? I don't believe it."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you're too cool about it. You wouldn't think he was such a nice fellow if you were jealous of him. Why haven't you played more with me this summer?"

"I had to work--you know that. What's the use----"

"If you love me as you say you do, I don't see how you could be so cool about--about seeing us together----"

"Perhaps I wasn't as cool as I looked. See here, Aurora, you mustn't talk like that." He had turned and before she could escape him, had taken her in his arms and was kissing her. "Don't say I'm cool. I love you, Aurora, with every ounce that's in me. I want you more than I can ever want anything again in this world or the next. I'm not going to let you marry that fellow or anybody else--do you understand?"

She had yielded for a moment to his warmth because there didn't seem to be anything else to do. But when she slowly disengaged herself from his arms and faced him her eyes were wet and the color flamed through her tan.

"Steve!" she stammered. "Steve!--how could you?"

But he still faced her passionately, undaunted. "It's true," he said huskily. "I love you--you can't marry him--I won't let you----"

He took a step forward but this time she retreated.

"Don't, Steve--not again--not now--you mustn't. They'll be coming out in the open there in a moment. I'll never say you are cool again--never--after that. You're not cool--not in the least--I was mistaken. I've never seen you--like this before--you're different----"

"You made me do it. I couldn't stand your saying I didn't care. I'm not sorry," he went on, "he couldn't love you the way I do."

"I think perhaps you're right," said Aurora coolly. "In the meantime----"

"Won't you give me an answer?"

"In the meanwhile," she went on, preening her disordered hair, "you are supposed to be playing the golf of the New Era----"

"Aurora----"

"No," she had taken up his golf bag and was walking away.

"Won't you answer me?" he pleaded.

"Get your ball out of this quarry," she said, relentlessly, "and I'll think about it."

It took Steve Ventnor thirteen strokes to play out of that quarry, which, for a fellow with a record of seventy-two at Apawomeck, was "going it." The first stroke he missed clean; the second he sliced into a clay-bank; his third struck the rocks and bounded back against the wall behind him, finding lodgment at last in some bushes where he took three more. To make matters worse, Aurora was laughing at him, hysterically, unrestrainedly, and Patricia and the Sphynx, who had appeared on the path above, were joining in the merriment.

"Oh, I'll lift," he growled at last.

"You can't," laughed Aurora. "It's against the rules." And Patricia appealed to, confirmed the statement.

Three more swings he took, each of them in impossible lies, the last of which smashed his niblick. After that there followed a period of strange calmness--of desperation, while he worked his ball into a good lie on the far side of the quarry from which, with a fine mashie shot he lifted it over the cliffs and into the open beyond.

Steve Ventnor toiled wearily up the hill at the heels of his caddy, struggling for his lost composure. He caught up with Aurora at a point half-way up where he took the golf bag from her shoulder and faced her again.

"Won't you answer me, Aurora?" he pleaded, breathlessly.

"No, I won't," she said, calmly. "You swore--horribly--in the bushes."

"I didn't."

"I heard you," firmly. "I'll never marry a man who swears," and she hurried on. When Ventnor joined the others, he found Patricia sitting on a rock making up the score, which at the present moment stood: Ventnor--20; McLemore--9.

"How do you like it, Steve?" asked Patricia, still figuring.

"Oh, it's great!" said Steve, ironically, holding up his shattered niblick. "I like granite, it's so spongy."

"I'm afraid you've got a bad temper, Steve."

But Ventnor had taken out his pipe, lit it and was now doggedly moving toward his ball.

The luck favored him on his next volley, for playing two mid-irons down the hill, he reached the level meadow below safely, while McLemore sliced his second into a row of hot frames, where an indignant horticulturist and two dogs contributed an interesting mental hazard. But the Sphynx handed the farmer a dollar in exchange for lacerated feelings and glass, and the match went on. Over the brook McLemore lay thirteen, having "dubbed" his shot into the stream, but playing steadily after that reached the top of the long hill before them, safely in four more; while Ventnor lost his ball in the bushes and was now playing twenty-five.