The Clicking of CuthbertWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
The Clicking of Cuthbert
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Golf stories; Humorous stories
Eunice moved to the tee. In the course of the last eight holes the
girl's haughty soul had been rudely harrowed. She had foozled two
drives and three approach shots and had missed a short putt on the last
green but three. She had that consciousness of sin which afflicts the
golfer off his game, that curious self-loathing which humbles the
proudest. Her knees felt weak and all nature seemed to bellow at her
that this was where she was going to blow up with a loud report.
Even as her driver rose above her shoulder she was acutely aware that
she was making eighteen out of the twenty-three errors which complicate
the drive at golf. She knew that her head had swayed like some
beautiful flower in a stiff breeze. The heel of her left foot was
pointing down the course. Her grip had shifted, and her wrists felt
like sticks of boiled asparagus. As the club began to descend she
perceived that she had underestimated the total of her errors. And when
the ball, badly topped, bounded down the slope and entered the muddy
water like a timid diver on a cold morning she realized that she had a
full hand. There are twenty-three things which it is possible to do
wrong in the drive, and she had done them all.
Silently Ramsden Waters made a tee and placed thereon a new ball. He
was a golfer who rarely despaired, but he was playing three, and his
opponents' ball would undoubtedly be on the green, possibly even dead,
in two. Nevertheless, perhaps, by a supreme drive, and one or two
miracles later on, the game might be saved. He concentrated his whole
soul on the ball.
I need scarcely tell you that Ramsden Waters pressed....
Swish came the driver. The ball, fanned by the wind, rocked a little on
the tee, then settled down in its original position. Ramsden Waters,
usually the most careful of players, had missed the globe.
For a moment there was a silence--a silence which Ramsden had to strive
with an effort almost physically painful not to break. Rich oaths
surged to his lips, and blistering maledictions crashed against the
back of his clenched teeth.
The silence was broken by little Wilberforce.
One can only gather that there lurks in the supposedly innocuous amber
of ginger ale an elevating something which the temperance reformers
have overlooked. Wilberforce Bray had, if you remember, tucked away no
fewer than three in the spot where they would do most good. One
presumes that the child, with all that stuff surging about inside him,
had become thoroughly above himself. He uttered a merry laugh.
"Never hit it!" said little Wilberforce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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