Your true golfer is a man who, knowing that life is short and
perfection hard to attain, neglects no opportunity of practising
his chosen sport, allowing neither wind nor weather nor any
external influence to keep him from it. There is a story, with an
excellent moral lesson, of a golfer whose wife had determined to
leave him for ever. "Will nothing alter your decision?" he says.
"Will nothing induce you to stay? Well, then, while you're packing,
I think I'll go out on the lawn and rub up my putting a bit."
George Bevan was of this turn of mind. He might be in love; romance
might have sealed him for her own; but that was no reason for
blinding himself to the fact that his long game was bound to suffer
if he neglected to keep himself up to the mark. His first act on
arriving at Belpher village had been to ascertain whether there was
a links in the neighbourhood; and thither, on the morning after his
visit to the castle and the delivery of the two notes, he repaired.
At the hour of the day which he had selected the club-house was
empty, and he had just resigned himself to a solitary game, when,
with a whirr and a rattle, a grey racing-car drove up, and from it
emerged the same long young man whom, a couple of days earlier, he
had seen wriggle out from underneath the same machine. It was
Reggie Byng's habit also not to allow anything, even love, to
interfere with golf; and not even the prospect of hanging about the
castle grounds in the hope of catching a glimpse of Alice Faraday
and exchanging timorous words with her had been enough to keep him
from the links.
Reggie surveyed George with a friendly eye. He had a dim
recollection of having seen him before somewhere at some time or
other, and Reggie had the pleasing disposition which caused him to
rank anybody whom he had seen somewhere at some time or other as a
bosom friend.
"Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!" he observed.
"Good morning," said George.
"Waiting for somebody?"
"No."
"How about it, then? Shall we stagger forth?"
"Delighted."
George found himself speculating upon Reggie. He was unable to
place him. That he was a friend of Maud he knew, and guessed that
he was also a resident of the castle. He would have liked to
question Reggie, to probe him, to collect from him inside
information as to the progress of events within the castle walls;
but it is a peculiarity of golf, as of love, that it temporarily
changes the natures of its victims; and Reggie, a confirmed babbler
off the links, became while in action a stern, silent, intent
person, his whole being centred on the game. With the exception of
a casual remark of a technical nature when he met George on the
various tees, and an occasional expletive when things went wrong
with his ball, he eschewed conversation. It was not till the end of
the round that he became himself again.