"Pip" Part 43

"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 b.a.l.l.s 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 st.u.r.dily 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 cra.s.s 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 bra.s.sie-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-sc.r.a.pe, 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 gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 slas.h.i.+ng stroke, with her bra.s.sie 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.h.i.+fty 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 la.s.s. The whole soul of each was set on defeating the other.

But there are deeper pa.s.sions 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.