In Brief Authority, F. Anstey [latest novels to read .txt] 📗

favourite books, and to repeat many of her best loved poems from memory.

It is quite possible that much of the pleasure her companions took in hearing her do so was due to her own personality. They were not, it must be confessed, a highly intellectual or cultivated set of young women, but one and all regarded Daphne with a whole-hearted adoration which would have given Princess Edna, had she condescended to notice it, a lower opinion than ever of their intelligence.

The links were at last in a sufficiently advanced stage for practice at the first nine of the eighteen holes, and Clarence undertook to instruct the Marshal in the mysteries of the game. The Marshal, though slightly handicapped by insisting on playing in a breastplate and high boots, was so much encouraged by the success which most beginners at golf experience that he at once became an ardent votary. He tried to make converts of the Courtiers, but they preferred to keep an open mind and remain spectators for the present.

Prince Tapfer von Schneiderleinberg indeed went so far as to say that golf seemed to him to be without the element of danger which all genuine sport should possess. He modified that opinion, it is true, after incautiously standing close behind the Marshal when he was driving off from the tee, but it did not alter his prejudices against the game.

King Sidney practised most assiduously in private, and found he improved in his driving under Clarence's tuition. The Gnomes had been established in a kind of compound near the links, but their unfortunate tendency to bolt with the club-bags and purloin every ball they found rather impaired their usefulness as caddies. Marshal Federhelm treated his with regrettable inhumanity.

There was still a good deal of "ground under repair" on the course, but the day was drawing near when the links could be formally opened. The Marshal was anxious to celebrate the occasion by challenging his Royal Master to play him a single, a challenge which was conveyed through the Crown Prince.

"Well, what do you think, my boy," asked King Sidney. "Can I beat him?"

"I think you ought to, Guv'nor. He fancies himself at it—but he's pretty rotten."

"In that case, you can tell him I accept," said the King.

But on the morning before the day, Clarence, after watching his parent top and slice and foozle through a whole round without intermission, became less sanguine.

"I tell you what it is, Guv'nor," he said, frankly, "the Marshal's been shaping a bit better these last few days, and it's my belief he can give you a stroke a hole and win easy."

"After all," said the King, "I'm not sure there isn't a certain loss of dignity—playing with my own subject, don't you know."

"It won't do to let him lick you, certainly," agreed Clarence.

"Quite so, my boy, quite so. I was thinking—I might be prevented by sudden business—I could go and sit with the Council, you know."

"He'd only want you to fix another day for playing him. It's no use, Guv'nor, you can't get out of it now. Perhaps you'd do better if you played with a different sort of ball. I must see if I can't get you one or two."

And that evening he brought his father half a dozen. "They're specially marked," he said, "so you can't make a mistake over them, and I fancy you'll find they travel better than any of the Marshal's."

"You've got those golf balls I gave you?" he asked the King at breakfast next morning. "Mind you don't forget to take 'em."

"I shan't forget, my boy. But what I'm most troubled about is my swing—there's something wrong with it, only I can't find out what."

"I think it a great pity myself," said Queen Selina, "that you ever agreed to play this match at all. If you are beaten it will certainly lower your prestige. But I am sure the dear Marshal has too much tact not to let you win."

"Don't you worry, Mater," said Clarence. "The Guv'nor's going to win on his own, hands down!"

"I sincerely hope so. It will be a sad blow to the Throne if he does not."

These remarks did not help much to steady King Sidney's nerves when he met the Marshal on the links, where, as Monarch, he naturally had the honour. A large crowd of onlookers from the Court had collected, and the players had decided to dispense with caddies under the circumstances.

The first hole was only about a hundred and sixty yards; a deep gully lay between, and on either side of the approach were beds of tall rushes.

King Sidney addressed his ball for some time in agonising indecision before he finally drove off. A cloud of sand rose; the ball was nowhere to be seen, and, taught by experience, he looked behind for it.

"Jolly good shot!" cried Clarence. "Right on the green!"

"Is it, my boy?" said the King. "I can't see it there myself."

"No more can I," Clarence owned, "but I bet you what you like you're on the pretty, anyway. Your drive, Marshal."

The Marshal smote a mighty blow, and his ball likewise vanished. Clarence was of opinion that it had gone over the boundary, but the Marshal was so certain that it was on the green that he declined to search for it.

"Funny," said Clarence disappointedly, as they neared the pin, "I don't see your ball anywhere, Pater. Nor yet the Marshal's."

"I fancy mine isn't very far away, my boy," said the King hopefully.

One of the Courtiers who had gone to the hole, called out to say that he could see a ball marked with a Royal Crown wedged in by the pin.

"By George, Guv'nor!" cried Clarence, "you've holed it in one!"

"Ah," said King Sidney, "I thought I'd got the right direction."

But the next moment both of them were depressed by the announcement that the Marshal's ball had also landed in the hole. The Courtier had naturally mentioned his Sovereign's achievement first, but there could be no possible doubt that the Marshal had succeeded in equalling it.

To have holed out at a hundred and sixty yards is not by any means an unprecedented feat, but that two players should have done it in succession was at least a rather remarkable coincidence. It was a severe disappointment to the King, who had serious doubts of his own ability to repeat such a performance.

The next hole was a long one, some six hundred yards, over undulating land with patches of bog; the green was on a hillock protected by artfully devised bunkers, and the approach was full of difficulties.

The Marshal was given the honour, and, as before, none could follow the flight of his ball, though he declared with the greatest confidence that it was straight for the green. King Sidney's drive did not look very promising, but Clarence assured him that it was probably a longer one than he thought.

But neither player could locate his ball as they trudged on, and, though it seemed unlikely that either could have reached the green, they did not stop to search on the way to it. Still, when they arrived there each of them was obviously astonished by the discovery that the other had holed out once more. Even had the distance been less, it seemed to them that this was stretching the long arm of coincidence almost too far, but they did not say so; in fact, they both thought it wiser to abstain from any comment at all. The next hole was some three hundred and fifty yards, with several extremely tricky hazards, but, contrary to all reasonable expectations, both King Sidney and the Marshal distinguished themselves by doing it in one.

At this the King felt bound to make some comment. "Very even game this, Marshal, so far," he said.

"Very even indeed, Sire!" said the Marshal curtly, and turned aside to curse under his breath.

However, after they had played the fourth and fifth holes with precisely the same result, King Sidney became suspicious. "Clarence, my boy," he said, taking him aside. "It strikes me there's something rather odd about his play. I can't understand it!"

"I can," said Clarence; "it's plain enough. Haven't you noticed he's been using a mashie—the same mashie every time? Well, he's bribed or bullied that pop-eyed little swine of an Astrologer to enchant it for him—that's what he's done!"

"What a confounded low, ungentlemanly trick!" spluttered King Sidney in high indignation. "Just when I was beginning to find my form at last, too! I shall decline to go on with the match. And what's more, when we do get a Golf Club started, I'll have him blackballed for it!"

"I wouldn't make a row about it if I were you," advised Clarence.

"Not make a row? When he's taking an unfair advantage of me by using this infernal Magic?—which is unlawful, by Gad, don't you forget that! Why shouldn't I denounce such trickery?"

"Because," said the Crown Prince, "he might say something disagreeable about it being a case of Pot and Kettle, don't you know."

"Let him!" cried the King. "Let him! I defy him to prove that I've had anything done to my clubs!"

"Not the clubs," said Clarence; "it's those balls I gave you. I hadn't meant to tell you, but p'raps I'd better now. I paid that little sweep to put a spell on 'em. Of course I'd no idea he'd go and overdo it like this. If he'd been anything of a Golfer he'd have known most of these holes couldn't be done under three or four. And now he's given you both away, blast him!"

"It—it's most unfortunate!" said King Sidney. "I—I don't quite see what to do about it."

"Simple enough," said his son, "pretend not to notice anything and play it out."

"I suppose I must, my boy, I suppose I must. But I know I shan't play so well after this—it's quite put me off my game!"

"No, it hasn't, Guv'nor. You'll play up all right, at least if Xuriel knows his job."

Xuriel apparently did know his job, for the King's ball continued to be as foozle-proof as the Marshal's mashie.

It would be tedious to describe any further holes. When a bewitched mashie is pitted against an enchanted ball, there can obviously be none of the alternations and vicissitudes of Fortune which constitute the charm of Golf.

When they were at the turn, having halved every hole up to the ninth, the Marshal had had enough of it. "We are too well matched, Sire," he said, "and to proceed would only be to waste your Majesty's time, which is of far more value than my own."

"H'm, well, perhaps we'd better call it a draw and have done with it," said the King.

The Court had witnessed the game without excitement or astonishment. They saw no particular reason why the balls should fail to reach the hole in one stroke, and did not care in the least whether they failed or not. The only impressions they received were that Golf was too monotonous and too easy a pastime to have any attractions for them, and that nothing should induce them to indulge in it against such invincible champions as his Majesty and the Ex-Regent.

"I must say, my boy," said the King to his son, as they walked back to the Palace together, "I wish you hadn't gone to that magician fellow. It makes it so very awkward for me."

"It would have been a jolly sight more awkward if I hadn't. Just think of the licking you'd have had, what?"

"Yes, yes—but there's your Mother. She's so set against Magic of any kind. I really don't know what I'm to say to her."

"Well," said Clarence, "I should hope, Guv'nor, you wouldn't be such a jay as to say anything."

"It might be only distressing her unnecessarily," said the King.

"Sidney!" exclaimed the Queen when they met, "I can see by your face that you've been beaten after all!"

"Not at all, my love, not at all. Far from it!"

"Then you've won?"

"Well—er—not exactly won, my dear. We—we finished up all square."

"Considering how long you've been learning, that's as bad as if you'd lost. Now, mind what I say, Sidney, you must never attempt to play golf again after this. I cannot have you making yourself ridiculous!"

"I think you're right, my dear," he said meekly. "In fact, I had already decided to give it up."

Clarence clung to his Golf as long as he could, but he found it dreary work going round the course alone. None of the Courtiers could be induced to learn the game, and he felt a natural reluctance to take on the Marshal as an antagonist, even if the latter had continued to be keen. But he had conceived a strong distaste for the game, and it was rumoured that there had been a stormy interview between him and the Astrologer