Mr. Punch's Golf Stories by J. A. Hammerton (best romance books of all time TXT) 📗

Extract from the rules of a local golf club:—"Rule V.—The committee shall have the power at any time to fill any vacancy in their body."

[Pg 146]

"You won't dare!" said I.

"There is nothing else for it," said Amanda sternly. "You know perfectly well that we must practise every minute of the time, if we expect to have the least chance of winning. If she will come just now—well!" Amanda cocked her pretty chin in the air, and looked defiant.

"But—Aunt Susannah!" said I.

"It's quite time for you to go and meet her," said Amanda, cutting short my remonstrances; and she rose with an air of finality.

My wife, within her limitations, is a very clever woman. She is prompt: she is resolute: she has the utmost confidence in her own generalship. Yet, looking at Aunt Susannah, as she sat—gaunt, upright, and formidable—beside me in the dogcart, I did not believe even Amanda capable of the stupendous task which she had undertaken. She would never dare——

I misjudged her. Aunt Susannah had barely [Pg 148] sat down—was, in fact, only just embarking on her first scone—when Amanda rushed incontinently in where I, for one, should have feared to tread.

"Dear Aunt Susannah," she said, beaming hospitably, "I'm sure you will never guess how we mean to amuse you while you are here!"

"Nothing very formidable, I hope?" said Aunt Susannah grimly.

"You'll never, never guess!" said Amanda; and her manner was so unnaturally sprightly that I knew she was inwardly quaking. "We want to teach you—what do you think?"

"I think that I'm a trifle old to learn anything new, my dear," said Aunt Susannah.

I should have been stricken dumb by such a snub. Not so, however, my courageous wife.

"Well—golf!" she cried, with overdone cheerfulness.

Aunt Susannah started. Recovering herself, she eyed us with a stony glare which froze me where I sat.

"There is really nothing else to do in these wilds, you know," Amanda pursued gallantly, though even she was beginning to look frightened. [Pg 150] "And it is such a lovely game. You'll like it immensely."

"What do you say it is called?" asked Aunt Susannah in awful tones.

"Golf," Amanda repeated meekly; and for the first time her voice shook.

"Spell it!" commanded Aunt Susannah.

Amanda obeyed, with increasing meekness.

"Why do you call it 'goff' if there's an 'l' in it?" asked Aunt Susannah.

"I—I'm afraid I don't know," said Amanda faintly.

Aunt Susannah sniffed disparagingly. She condescended, however, to inquire into the nature of the game, and Amanda gave an elaborate explanation in faltering accents. She glanced imploringly at me; but I would not meet her eye.

"Then you just try to get a little ball into a little hole?" inquired my relative.

"And in the fewest possible strokes," Amanda reminded her, gasping.

"And—is that all?" asked Aunt Susannah.

"Y—yes," said Amanda.

"Oh!" said Aunt Susannah.

[Pg 152]

A game described in cold blood sounds singularly insignificant. We both fell into sudden silence and depression.

"Well, it doesn't sound difficult" said Aunt Susannah. "Oh, yes, I'll come and play at ball with you if you like, my dears."

"Dear Auntie!" said Amanda affectionately. She did not seem so much overjoyed at her success, however, as might have been expected. As for me, I saw a whole sea of breakers ahead; but then I had seen them all the time.

We drove out to the Links next day. We were both very silent. Aunt Susannah, however, was in good spirits, and deeply interested in our clubs.

"What in the world do you want so many sticks for, child?" she inquired of Amanda.

"Oh, they are for—for different sorts of ground," Amanda explained feebly; and she cast an agonised glance at our driver, who had obviously overheard, and was chuckling in an offensive manner.

We both looked hastily and furtively round us when we arrived. We were early, however, and fortune was kind to us; there was no one else there.

"Perhaps you would like to watch us a little [Pg 154] first, just to see how the game goes?" Amanda suggested sweetly.

"Not at all!" was Aunt Susannah's brisk rejoinder. "I've come here to play, not to look on. Which stick——?"

"Club—they are called clubs," said Amanda.

"Why?" inquired Aunt Susannah.

"I—I don't know," faltered Amanda. "Do you Laurence?"

I did not know, and said so.

"Then I shall certainly call them sticks," said Aunt Susannah decisively. "They are not in the least like clubs."

"Shall I drive off?" I inquired desperately of Amanda.

"Drive off? Where to? Why are you going away?" asked Aunt Susannah. "Besides, you can't go—the carriage is out of sight."

"The way you begin is called driving off," I explained laboriously. "Like this." I drove nervously, because I felt her eye upon me. The ball went some dozen yards.

"That seems easy enough," said Aunt Susannah. "Give me a stick, child."

[Pg 156]

"Not that end—the other end!" cried Amanda, as our relative prepared to make her stroke with the butt-end.

"Dear me! Isn't that the handle?" she remarked cheerfully; and she reversed her club, swung it, and chopped a large piece out of the links. "Where is it gone? Where is it gone?" she exclaimed, looking wildly round.

"It—it isn't gone," said Amanda nervously, and pointed to the ball still lying at her feet.

"What an extraordinary thing!" cried Aunt Susannah; and she made another attempt, with a precisely similar result. "Give me another stick!" she demanded. "Here, let me choose for myself—this one doesn't suit me. I'll have that flat thing."

"But that's a putter," Amanda explained agonisedly.

"What's a putter? You said just now that they were all clubs," said Aunt Susannah, pausing.

"They are all clubs," I explained patiently. "But each has a different name."

"You don't mean to say you give them names like a little girl with her dolls?" cried Aunt [Pg 157] Susannah. "Why, what a babyish game it is!" She laughed very heartily. "At any rate," she continued, with that determination which some of her friends call by another name, "I am sure that this will be easier to play with!" She grasped the putter, and in some miraculous way drove the ball to a considerable distance.

"Oh, splendid!" cried Amanda. Her troubled [Pg 158] brow cleared a little, and she followed suit, with mediocre success. Aunt Susannah pointed out that her ball had gone farther than either of ours, and grasped her putter tenaciously.

"It's a better game than I expected from your description," she conceded. "Oh, I daresay I shall get to like it. I must come and practise every day." We glanced at each other in a silent horror of despair, and Aunt Susannah after a few quite decent strokes, triumphantly holed out. "What next?" said she.

I hastily arranged her ball on the second tee: but the luck of golf is proverbially capricious. She swung her club, and hit nothing. She swung it again, and hit the ground.

"Why can't I do it?" she demanded, turning fiercely upon me.

"You keep losing your feet," I explained deferentially.

"Spare me your detestable slang terms, Laurence, at least!" she cried, turning on me again like a whirlwind. "If you think I have lost my temper—which is absurd!—you might have the courage to say so in plain English!"

[Pg 160]

"Oh, no, Aunt Susannah!" I said. "You don't understand——"

"Or want to," she snapped. "Of all silly games——"

"I mean you misunderstood me," I pursued, trembling. "Your foot slipped, and that spoilt your stroke. You should have nails in your boots, as we have."

"Oh!" said Aunt Susannah, only half pacified. But she succeeded in dislodging her ball at last, and driving it into a bunker. At the same moment, Amanda suddenly clutched me by the arm. "Oh, Laurence!" she said in a bloodcurdling whisper. "What shall we do? Here is Colonel Bartlemy!"

The worst had