The Clicking of Cuthbert | Page 2

man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and
flung his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodily into an
arm-chair and pressed the bell.
"Waiter!"
"Sir?"
The young man pointed at the bag with every evidence of distaste.
"You may have these clubs," he said. "Take them away. If you don't
want them yourself, give them to one of the caddies."
Across the room the Oldest Member gazed at him with a grave sadness
through the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy--the eye
of a man who, as the poet says, has seen Golf steadily and seen it
whole.
"You are giving up golf?" he said.
He was not altogether unprepared for such an attitude on the young
man's part: for from his eyrie on the terrace above the ninth green he
had observed him start out on the afternoon's round and had seen him
lose a couple of balls in the lake at the second hole after taking seven
strokes at the first.
"Yes!" cried the young man fiercely. "For ever, dammit! Footling game!
Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing but a waste of
time."
The Sage winced.
"Don't say that, my boy."
"But I do say it. What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is
earnest. We live in a practical age. All round us we see foreign
competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing
golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking
you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential

pastime has done a man any practical good?"
The Sage smiled gently.
"I could name a thousand."
"One will do."
"I will select," said the Sage, "from the innumerable memories that rush
to my mind, the story of Cuthbert Banks."
"Never heard of him."
"Be of good cheer," said the Oldest Member. "You are going to hear of
him now."
* * * * *
It was in the picturesque little settlement of Wood Hills (said the Oldest
Member) that the incidents occurred which I am about to relate. Even if
you have never been in Wood Hills, that suburban paradise is probably
familiar to you by name. Situated at a convenient distance from the city,
it combines in a notable manner the advantages of town life with the
pleasant surroundings and healthful air of the country. Its inhabitants
live in commodious houses, standing in their own grounds, and enjoy
so many luxuries--such as gravel soil, main drainage, electric light,
telephone, baths (h. and c.), and company's own water, that you might
be pardoned for imagining life to be so ideal for them that no possible
improvement could be added to their lot. Mrs. Willoughby Smethurst
was under no such delusion. What Wood Hills needed to make it
perfect, she realized, was Culture. Material comforts are all very well,
but, if the summum bonum is to be achieved, the Soul also demands a
look in, and it was Mrs. Smethurst's unfaltering resolve that never
while she had her strength should the Soul be handed the loser's end. It
was her intention to make Wood Hills a centre of all that was most
cultivated and refined, and, golly! how she had succeeded. Under her
presidency the Wood Hills Literary and Debating Society had tripled its
membership.

But there is always a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad. The
local golf club, an institution to which Mrs. Smethurst strongly
objected, had also tripled its membership; and the division of the
community into two rival camps, the Golfers and the Cultured, had
become more marked than ever. This division, always acute, had
attained now to the dimensions of a Schism. The rival sects treated one
another with a cold hostility.
Unfortunate episodes came to widen the breach. Mrs. Smethurst's
house adjoined the links, standing to the right of the fourth tee: and, as
the Literary Society was in the habit of entertaining visiting lecturers,
many a golfer had foozled his drive owing to sudden loud outbursts of
applause coinciding with his down-swing. And not long before this
story opens a sliced ball, whizzing in at the open window, had come
within an ace of incapacitating Raymond Parsloe Devine, the rising
young novelist (who rose at that moment a clear foot and a half) from
any further exercise of his art. Two inches, indeed, to the right and
Raymond must inevitably have handed in his dinner-pail.
To make matters worse, a ring at the front-door bell followed almost
immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing
appearance in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers who apologetically
but firmly insisted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what