Once a Week Part 54

"What I really meant to say was, can you play golf with me on Monday at Mudbury Hill? I am your new and favourite nephew, and it is quite time we met. Be at the club-house at 2.30, if you can. I don't quite know how we shall recognize each other, but the well-dressed man in the nut-brown suit will probably be me. My features are plain but good, except where I fell against the bath-taps yesterday. If you have fallen against anything which would give me a clue to your face you might let me know. Also you might let me know if you are a professor at golf; if you are, I will read some more books on the subject between now and Monday. Just at the moment my game is putrid.

"Your niece and my wife sends her love. Good-bye. I was top of my cla.s.s in Latin last week. I must now stop, as it is my bath-night.

"I am, "Your loving "NEPHEW."

The next day I had a letter from my uncle:--

"MY DEAR NEPHEW,--I was so glad to get your nice little letter and to hear that you were working hard. Let me know when it is your bath-night again; these things always interest me. I shall be delighted to play golf with you on Monday. You will have no difficulty in recognizing me. I should describe myself roughly as something like Apollo and something like Little Tich, if you know what I mean. It depends how you come up to me. I am an excellent golfer and never take more than two putts in a bunker.

"Till 2.30 then. I enclose a postal-order for sixpence, to see you through the rest of the term.

"Your favourite uncle, "EDWARD."

I showed it to Celia.

"Perhaps you could describe him more minutely," I said. "I hate wandering about vaguely and asking everybody I see if he's my uncle. It seems so odd."

"You're sure to meet all right," said Celia confidently. "He's--well, he's nice-looking and--and clean-shaven--and, oh, _you'll_ recognize him."

At 2.30 on Monday I arrived at the club-house and waited for my uncle.

Various people appeared, but none seemed in want of a nephew. When 2.45 came there was still no available uncle. True, there was one unattached man reading in a corner of the smoke-room, but he had a moustache--the sort of heavy moustache one a.s.sociates with a major.

At three o'clock I became desperate. After all, Celia had not seen Edward for some time. Perhaps he had grown a moustache lately; perhaps he had grown one specially for to-day. At any rate there would be no harm in asking this major man if he was my uncle. Even if he wasn't he might give me a game of golf.

"Excuse me," I said politely, "but are you by any chance my Uncle Edward?"

"Your _what_?"

"I was almost certain you weren't, but I thought I'd just ask. I'm sorry."

"Not at all. Naturally one wants to find one's uncle. Have you--er--lost him long?"

"Years," I said sadly. "Er--I wonder if you would care to adopt me--I mean, give me a game this afternoon. My man hasn't turned up."

"By all means. I'm not very great."

"Neither am I. Shall we start now? Good."

I was sorry to miss Edward, but I wasn't going to miss a game of golf on such a lovely day. My spirits rose. Not even the fact that there were no caddies left and I had to carry my own clubs could depress me.

The Major drove. I am not going to describe the whole game; though my cleek shot at the fifth hole, from a hanging lie to within two feet of the---- However, I mustn't go into that now. But it surprised the Major a good deal. And when at the next hole I laid my bra.s.sie absolutely dead, he---- But I can tell you about that some other time. It is sufficient to say now that, when we reached the seventeenth tee, I was one up.

We both played the seventeenth well. He was a foot from the hole in four. I played my third from the edge of the green, and was ridiculously short, giving myself a twenty-foot putt for the hole. Leaving my clubs I went forward with the putter, and by the absurdest luck pushed the ball in.

"Good," said the Major. "Your game."

I went back for my clubs. When I turned round the Major was walking carelessly off to the next tee, leaving the flag lying on the green and my ball still in the tin.

"Slacker," I said to myself, and walked up to the hole.

And then I had a terrible shock. I saw in the tin, not my ball, but a moustache!

"Am I going mad?" I said. "I could have sworn that I drove off with a 'Colonel,' and yet I seem to have holed out with a Major's moustache!" I picked it up and hurried after him.

"Major," I said, "excuse me, you've dropped your moustache. It fell off at the critical stage of the match; the shock of losing was too much for you; the strain of----"

He turned his clean-shaven face round and grinned at me.

"On second thoughts," he said, "I _am_ your long-lost uncle."

THE RENASCENCE OF BRITAIN

Peter Riley was one of those lucky people who take naturally to games.

Actually he got his blue for cricket, rugger, and boxing, but his perfect eye and wrist made him a beautiful player of any game with a ball. Also he rode and shot well, and knew all about the inside of a car. But, although he was always enthusiastic about anything he was doing, he was not really keen on games. He preferred wandering about the country looking for birds' nests or discovering the haunts of rare b.u.t.terflies; he liked managing a small boat single-handed in a stiff breeze; he would have enjoyed being upset and having to swim a long way to sh.o.r.e. Most of all, perhaps, he loved to lie on the top of the cliffs and think of the wonderful things that he would do for England when he was a Cabinet Minister. For politics was to be his profession, and he had just taken a first in History by way of preparation for it.

There were a lot of silly people who envied Peter's mother. They thought, poor dears, that she must be very, very proud of him, for they regarded Peter as the ideal of the modern young Englishman. "If only my boy grows up to be like Peter Riley!" they used to say to themselves; and then add quickly, "But of course he'll be much nicer." In their ignorance they didn't see that it was the Peters of England who were making our country the laughing-stock of the world.

If you had been in Berlin in 1916, you would have seen Peter; for he had been persuaded, much against his will, to uphold the honour of Great Britain in the middle-weights at the Olympic Games. He got a position in the papers as "P. Riley, disqualified"--the result, he could only suppose, of his folly in allowing his opponent to b.u.t.t him in the stomach. He was both annoyed and amused about it; offered to fight his vanquisher any time in England; and privately thanked Heaven that he could now get back to London in time for his favourite sister's wedding.

But he didn't. The English trainer, who had been sent, at the public expense, to America for a year, to study the proper methods, got hold of him.

"I've been watching you, young man," he said. "You'll have to give yourself up to me now. You're the coming champion."

"I'm sorry," said Peter politely, "but I shan't be fighting again."

"Fighting!" said the trainer scornfully. "Don't you worry; I'll take good care that you don't fight any more. The event _you're_ going to win is 'Pushing the Chisel.' I've been watching you, and you've got the most perfect neck and calf-muscles for it I've ever seen. No more fighting for you, my boy; nor cricket, nor anything else. I'm not going to let you spoil those muscles."

"I don't think I've ever pushed the Chisel," said Peter. "Besides, it's over, isn't it?"

"Over? Of course it's over, and that confounded American won. 'Poor old England,' as all the papers said."

"Then it's too late to begin to practise," said Peter thankfully.

"Well, it's too late for the 1920 games. But we can do a lot in eight years, and I think I can get you fit for the 1924 games at Pekin."

Peter stared at him in amazement.

"My good man," he said at last, "in 1924 I shall be in London; and I hope in the House of Commons."

"And what about the honour of your country? Do you want to read the jeers in the American papers when we lose 'Pushing the Chisel' in 1924?"

"I don't care a curse what the American papers say," said Peter angrily.

"Then you're very different from other Englishmen," said the trainer sternly.