The Clicking of Cuthbert

on of Georg

erful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice which an ancien

rite settee the Oldest Member had

u get on?"

beat

ber nodded his

t with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in

found it! Put me r

st Membe

is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in action. As the

't thi

garrulity I have ever known where a permanent cure

*

ody, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a tactful grunt when his opponent foozled. And when he himself achieved a glaring fluke, his self-reproachful click of the tongue was music to his adversary's bruised soul. But of all his virtues the one that most endeared him to me and to all thinking men was the fact that, from the start of

which he did with the best motives. The thought is disheartening. I can honestly say that, when George Mackintosh came to me and told me his troubles

y-nine. And, as I had not left the links till dusk was beginning to fall, it was practically impossible that he could have gone out again and done badly. The idea of financial trouble seemed equally out of the question. George had a good job with the old-establish

solution. Scarcely had he seated himself and

do in a case lik

e wh

urface. "Well, it seems a silly thing to say and all

love with Ce

ly be in love with? That," he went on, moodily, "is the whole trouble. There's a field of a

every advantage, it appears to me. You are young,

st out. "And how is a man to get anywhe

ing perfectly

t kills my chances stone dead. You know these other men. I can give Claude Mainwaring a third and beat him. I can give Eustac

not be d

when I'm the man who wrote the words and music, when Diffidence is my

u could ov

you might be able to suggest som

of a magazine, and one of the advertisements, I chanced to remember, might have been framed with a special eye to George's unfortunate case. It was tha

the Man who had taken the course being fawned upon by lovely women, while the man w

o that to me,

at, my

und, clingi

press that they will if y

re is really s

ht by mail. One seems to be able to acquire every

it," he murmured, returning to his perusal, "that fellow does look po

g evening dress, and yet he is merely among those on the ou

post

you say, p

ood mind

ason why you

his thing a trial for a week or two, and at the end of that time I'll go to the boss and see how he reacts when I ask for a

of the Memory Training Course advertised on the adjoining page of the magazine-the matter slipped fr

like

a quarter of an hour before George himself ar

awled?" I said,

t had been. But it was his eye that struck me most forcibly. The George Mackintosh I had known had had a pleasing gaze, but, though frank and agreeable, it had never been more dynamic than a fried egg. This new George had an eye that was a combination of a gimlet and a searchlight. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I imagine, must have been s

, because I saw him coming and side-stepped; but he did eve

ped. "Did you ta

history of my connection with the firm. He began to wilt before the end of the first ten minutes. At the quarter of an hour mark he was looking at me like a lost dog that's just found its owner. By the half-hour he was making little bleating noises and massaging my coat-sleeve. And when, after perhaps an hour and a half,

for I was finding my young friend a trifle

A man wants an addition to his inco

t, of course, will

do you

ennant. You remember you were say

rge, carelessly. "I'

ha

ation. I looked in on Celia about

azi

st put the thing to her,

, like Alexander, you have

inner speech at the anniversary banquet of the firm, I suppose? My dear fellow, a riot! A positive stampede. Had 'em laughing and then crying and then laughing again and then crying once mo

on a stringe

if I could play on a stringed instrument. Wonderful sense of power it gi

et it interfere

h which turned

teen has just won some sort of championship. Could that stripling convulse a roomful of banqueters? I think not! To sway your fellow-men with a word, to hold them with a gestur

man whom the committee were grooming for the amateur championship. I

*

gradually shunned, he who in the days of his sanity had been besieged with more offers of games than he could manage to accept. Men simply would not stand his incessant flow of talk. One by one they dropped off, until the only person he could find to go round with

er name. I had been half expecting her to come to me for advice and consolation, for I had known her ever since she was a child. It was I who had given her her first driver and taught her infant lips

long that I know that it was not my face that pained her, but rather some unspoken malaise of the soul. I wai

stand it! I c

aid, though I kn

e cried passionately. "I don't think he has st

reed. "Has he told y

shm

ional anecdote. Women have to learn to bear anecdotes from the men they love. It is the curse of

en you an inkling of the truth. He only hinted at it w

hich the fruit of his life grew; his Present, his Future, his Past … oh, and all that sort of thing. If he would only confine his conversation now to remarks of a s

also, I fear,"

ss on Marriage Ceremonies of All Ages. The world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long after-dinner, with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. It is breaking my heart. I see him shunned by his former

is alwa

ways golf," she w

e a round thi

She shuddered, then pulled herself t

ted for

hand. "It may be that together we shall

ook he

e. He never stops talking lo

f loquacity has attacked him gives me hope. You must remember that before this seizure he was rather a noticeably silent man. Sometimes I think that it i

try to b

-past two on the

fth, fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth," she said, with a

her han

I said gently.

*

st tee told me that George had not forgotten the tryst. He was sitting on the stone s

?" he was saying. "We come to the for

noon, Georg

enly with his speech, and was still talking when Celia addressed her ball and drove off. Her drive, coinciding with a sharp rhetorical question from George, wavered in mid-air, and t

left heel to point down the course when you were at the top of your swing. This makes for instability and loss of distance. The fundamental law of the dynamics of golf is that the left foo

g he gave me resembled the self-conscious panic which I used to experience in my childhood when informed that there was One Awful Eye that watched my every mo

vid emerald turf near the hole and the duller green of the rough beyond it. As Celia teed up her ball, he directed her attention to the golden glory of the sand-pit to the left of

the stroke a sudden heave instead of a smooth, snappy flick

for my shot had cleared the water and was lying on th

credibly informed that rubber at the present time is exceptionally cheap. Yet we see no decrease in the price of golf-balls, which, as I

drive," I said. For we had

Why is it that we are able to sleep through some vast convulsion of Nature when a dripping tap is enough to keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered

ravine which yawns some fifty yards

t wrong there-

d Celia. "I l

ly pretty, might almost have been called snappish. George, however, did not appear

rofessionals tell their pupils to keep their eye on the ball. Keeping the eye on the ball is only a seconda

orge in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the side of the hill, and she was d

when I heard Celia's voice calling to me from the edge of the

of some unknown shrub which h

picking twigs

r advice,"

e? By the way," I said, lookin

," she said, in a

oken off the

et-well, I suppose

quite und

n a burst of girlish frankness, "I

ed hi

rt, when we are all working together to try to make our beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody before had thought of

with my niblic

to be done at all, it was u

went on, "with George talking all the time about the recent excavations

ce with my shoe-lac

must have said something, for George stopped talking about Egypt and said th

sed he

it hurts you,"

bent his head to light his pipe, and well-the

re quit

ally th

er far less provocation, once made Jael the w

ious of nothing but an awful elation. But-but-oh, he was such a darling before he

nto a torre

or me to view the

t would be

ine. George Mackintosh was lying

!" sai

and sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees be

d children!" he cr

rge!" sa

little bett

ow many peop

ur

into us." He cast anot

w did I

re all the t

ter the roof fe

quietly down the

e!" she sa

ebly for her han

an! She stuck by me all through. Tell me-I am st

npleasant explanation might be avoi

me another," I said. "Whether it

in her made her revolt against t

you,

, curiously. "What wi

my nib

ith your nibl

Then she face

wouldn't st

gap

top talking! But I hardly ta

den shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in such a way as to effect a complete cur

e habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out t

links! It is

k. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was making her eleventh shot to

orgive me, Geor

d at me. Then a crimson

eginning to come back

me, George?" cr

her hand

-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lo

d Celia, looking at the sleeve of his

ith a man who talks when peo

never do

And you stuck to me a

d you,

d the other in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been

hat was rather dece

y to both his hearers. For it showed that George M

you are rather a

!" crie

clubs, I retired. When I looked round she was still in his a

*

ple wrists. It seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope. And the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the illustrious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the British Open Championship, he was inte