It happened in this way.
To me, as I stood with Ukridge in the fowl-run in the morning following my maritime conversation with the professor, regarding a hen that had posed before us, obviously with a view to inspection, there appeared a man carrying an envelope. Ukridge, who by this time saw, as Calverley almost said, “under every hat a dun,” and imagined that no envelope could contain anything but a small account, softly and silently vanished away, leaving me to interview the enemy.
“Mr. Garnet, sir?” said the foe.
I recognised him. He was Professor Derrick’s gardener.
I opened the envelope. No. Father’s blessings were absent. The letter was in the third person. Professor Derrick begged to inform Mr. Garnet that, by defeating Mr. Saul Potter, he had qualified for the final round of the Combe Regis Golf Tournament, in which, he understood, Mr. Garnet was to be his opponent. If it would be convenient for Mr. Garnet to play off the match on the present afternoon, Professor Derrick would be obliged if he would be at the Club House at half-past two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange others. The bearer would wait.
The bearer did wait. He waited for half-an-hour, as I found it impossible to shift him, not caring to use violence on a man well stricken in years, without first plying him with drink. He absorbed more of our diminishing cask of beer than we could conveniently spare, and then trudged off with a note, beautifully written in the third person, in which Mr. Garnet, after numerous compliments and thanks, begged to inform Professor Derrick that he would be at the Club House at the hour mentioned.
“And,” I added—to myself, not in the note—”I will give him such a licking that he’ll brain himself with a cleek.”
For I was not pleased with the professor. I was conscious of a malicious joy at the prospect of snatching the prize from him. I knew he had set his heart on winning the tournament this year. To be runner-up two years in succession stimulates the desire for first place. It would be doubly bitter to him to be beaten by a newcomer, after the absence of his rival, the colonel, had awakened hope in him. And I knew I could do it. Even allowing for bad luck—and I am never a very unlucky golfer—I could rely almost with certainty on crushing the man.
“And I’ll do it,” I said to Bob, who had trotted up. I often make Bob the recipient of my confidences. He listens appreciatively, and never interrupts. And he never has grievances of his own. If there is one person I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.
“Bob,” I said, running his tail through my fingers, “listen to me, my old University chum, for I have matured a dark scheme. Don’t run away. You know you don’t really want to go and look at that chicken. Listen to me. If I am in form this afternoon, and I feel in my bones that I shall be, I shall nurse the professor. I shall play with him. Do you understand the principles of Match play at Golf, Robert? You score by holes, not strokes. There are eighteen holes. All right, how was /I/ to know that you knew that without my telling you? Well, if you understand so much about the game, you will appreciate my dark scheme. I shall toy with the professor, Bob. I shall let him get ahead, and then catch him up. I shall go ahead myself, and let him catch me up. I shall race him neck and neck till the very end. Then, when his hair has turned white with the strain, and he’s lost a couple of stone in weight, and his eyes are starting out of his head, and he’s praying—if he ever does pray—to the Gods of Golf that he may be allowed to win, I shall go ahead and beat him by a hole. /I’ll/ teach him, Robert. He shall taste of my despair, and learn by proof in some wild hour how much the wretched dare. And when it’s all over, and he’s torn all his hair out and smashed all his clubs, I shall go and commit suicide off the Cob. Because, you see, if I can’t marry Phyllis, I shan’t have any use for life.”
Bob wagged his tail cheerfully.
“I mean it,” I said, rolling him on his back and punching him on the chest till his breathing became stertorous. “You don’t see the sense of it, I know. But then you’ve got none of the finer feelings. You’re a jolly good dog, Robert, but you’re a rank materialist. Bones and cheese and potatoes with gravy over them make you happy. You don’t know what it is to be in love. You’d better get right side up now, or you’ll have apoplexy.”
It has been my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor’s peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.
I felt ruthless towards the professor. I cannot plead ignorance of the golfer’s point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to one whose soul is in the game as the professor’s was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all other agonies. I knew that, if I scraped through by the smallest possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o’ nights broken. He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only used his iron instead of his mashie at the tenth, all would have been well; that, if he had putted more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of his brassey throughout might have given him something to live for. All these things I knew.
And they did not touch me. I was adamant. The professor was waiting for me at the Club House, and greeted me with a cold and stately inclination of the head.
“Beautiful day for golf,” I observed in my gay, chatty manner. He bowed in silence.
“Very well,” I thought. “Wait. Just wait.”
“Miss Derrick is well, I hope?” I added, aloud.
That drew him. He started. His aspect became doubly forbidding.
“Miss Derrick is perfectly well, sir, I thank you.”
“And you? No bad effect, I hope, from your dip yesterday?”
“Mr. Garnet, I came here for golf, not conversation,” he said.
We made it so. I drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid drive. I should not say so if there were any one else to say so for me. Modesty would forbid. But, as there is no one, I must repeat the statement. It was one of the best drives of my experience. The ball flashed through the air, took the bunker with a dozen feet to spare, and rolled on to the green. I had felt all along that I should be in form. Unless my opponent was equally above himself, he was a lost man. I could toy with him.
The excellence of my drive had not been without its effect on the professor. I could see that he was not confident. He addressed his ball more strangely and at greater length than any one I had ever seen. He waggled his club over it as if he were going to perform a conjuring trick. Then he struck, and topped it.
The ball rolled two yards.
He looked at it in silence. Then he looked at me—also in silence.
I was gazing seawards.
When I looked round he was getting to work with a brassey.
This time he hit the bunker, and rolled back. He repeated this manoeuvre twice.
“Hard luck!” I murmured sympathetically on the third occasion, thereby going as near to being slain with a niblick as it has ever been my lot to go. Your true golfer is easily roused in times of misfortune; and there was a red gleam in the eye of the professor turned to me.