Chapter 7. A Game They Did Not Understand

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_ CHAPTER VII. A GAME THEY DID NOT UNDERSTAND

With regard to the Royal visit to the Gold Mine, it should be mentioned that, on returning to the Palace, the Queen and Princess Ruby had met Daphne in one of the galleries. Ruby ran to her impulsively: "Oh, Miss Heritage!" she cried, "we've had a ripping afternoon. Such fun throwing money to the people, and seeing them scramble for it! We saw the Gold Mine. And all the darling little Gnomes! You _would_ have loved them! I do wish you had come with us!"

"I fully intended to have arranged for you to do so, Miss Heritage," said Queen Selina, with unwonted graciousness. "But with so much to think of----! Do you happen to know where my other ladies-in-waiting are?... In the Tapestry Chamber? Then I must get you to show me to it, for I don't know my way yet about this immense house.... Through here? Yes, you will accompany me--in fact, I particularly desire you to be present."

At her entrance the Maids of Honour all rose from their seats and made obeisances which, but for the Court Godmother's revelations of their ancestries, would have occasioned their Sovereign agonies of embarrassment. But she felt she could face them now without _mauvaise honte_, and indeed with all the assurance of superiority.

"You may sit down, _girls_," she said, and although they found it hard to believe at first that they could be the persons thus addressed, they sat down.

"And what are you all about?" she inquired. "Embroidery, is it? The pattern seems rather large.... Oh, tapestry? I _see_. I prefer a bright, cheerful paper on the walls to any tapestry myself. Only collects dust. Now if you were to knit some warm woollen jerseys for those wretched little Gnomes, who are really in _want_ of them, you would be doing something useful. But that wasn't what I--ah, to be sure, I remember now. I looked in to tell you, girls, that I have appointed Miss Heritage here as my First Lady-in-waiting. You will be careful to address her in future as 'Lady Daphne,' and treat her in all respects as your equal in rank.... I don't know why you should look so surprised." (If they did, it was merely that any such recommendation should be thought necessary.) "Miss Heritage's parentage may, it is true, be obscure--but not more so, from all I have been told, than that of most of your own ancestresses. Indeed, I am much mistaken if she has not a better claim to be considered a lady than any of them. Not that I think mere birth of any importance myself, but I object to people giving themselves airs without some real _ground_ for it. I am not alluding to Lady Daphne, whom I have always found perfectly well-behaved and unpretentious."

This was not perhaps the surest way of endearing Daphne to her new companions, but then Queen Selina was less concerned to effect that than to make them pay for the excessive deference she had so mistakenly shown them in the past.

However, in their simplicity it had never occurred to them that they had any cause to be ashamed of their descent, and so they never imagined that their Royal Mistress could insult them with it, and her shafts missed the target.

Fortunately for Daphne, too, she was already the object of a secret _schwaermerei_ that left no room in their sentimental bosoms for jealousy or ill-feeling.

But, not being aware of this as yet, she was rendered only unhappy by this sudden rise in the Royal favour. Her one consolation was the certainty that it would not be very long before she was again in disgrace.

On the afternoon of the day on which the State Council had been held, the Crown Prince explored the surrounding country with a view to selecting a golf course.

He found a district which was in every way suitable for his purpose--a stretch of undulating land in a valley behind the plateau on which the Palace stood, abounding in natural hazards, and affording great facilities for artificial ones--in short, an ideal site for any links. He began laying it out the next morning. The Gnomes were brought out of the mine and conducted to the spot. The general idea was conveyed to a Gnome who seemed, on the whole, less devoid of intelligence than his fellows, and they all set to work with more activity than immediate result. However, they seemed to take kindly to their new industry, and Clarence was very well pleased with them. He had had no experience in golf-architecture himself, but the nature of the ground was such that it required but little to turn it into a very sporting course indeed, and, if the Gnomes did not do much else, they constructed some remarkably cunning bunkers.

While they were thus engaged he ordered several sets of clubs to be made from rough designs of his own by a master artificer in Eswareinmal, who carried them out with considerable skill and fidelity. The implements he produced may not have been quite according to Club standards, but they were fairly serviceable. The balls seemed at first likely to be the main difficulty, but some were discovered on the toy-stalls in the market square which, though not of rubber, were composed of a substance that proved an admirable substitute. They were certainly open to one objection that, in ordinary circumstances, might have disqualified them--they cost considerably under a farthing each. But Clarence got over that by paying a ducat apiece for them. And then, as the work progressed but slowly, he was forced to wait with what patience he could until the links were ready for practising on.

It does not take long for most people to get accustomed to any surroundings, no matter how novel, and Queen Selina and her family soon became acclimatised. Now that her household had lost their terrors for her, she began to enjoy the sensation of being a Queen and inspiring reverence and awe wherever she went, though she could have wished to be the ruler of a Kingdom that was not quite so _outre_ as Maerchenland. However, she felt she must take it as it was, and in a short time she had almost forgotten that there ever had been a period when she had not occupied a throne.

Princess Edna, though she frequently protested that her rank had no charms for her, was ready enough to assert it on all occasions, and exercised authority over the unfortunate ladies-in-waiting to a degree that might have rendered their lives a burden to them if they had been able to take her as seriously as she did herself, which they were not.

"Mother," she remarked one day, "I've been quite shocked to find how appallingly ignorant our Maids of Honour are. Fancy, they've never heard of Shakespeare, or Ibsen, or Bernard Shaw, or--well, anybody!"

"My dear," said the Queen, "what can you _expect_ from such a set of giggling, empty-headed minxes?"

"I know. Still, I feel it a duty to do what I can to improve their minds. I shall bring down my note-book this afternoon. It's got all my notes on those lectures on English Literature I attended last Autumn. I thought I'd read them aloud to them. It would give them a very good general idea of the subject. Enough, at least, to enable them to talk about it without exposing themselves."

"I'm sure, Edna dear, it's most sweet of you to trouble about them."

"Oh, since I have to live with a Court, I must try and raise it to a more intellectual level."

And so that afternoon, while the ladies of the Court were engaged, under the Queen's supervision, in knitting little woollen garments of shattering hues for the unsuspecting Gnomes, the Princess Royal produced her note-book and read aloud extracts which gave an impressionist bird's-eye view of English Literature from the fourteenth to the close of the nineteenth Century.

No doubt the lecturer had given his audience credit for some previous acquaintance with the subject, and it may be that Princess Edna's method of note-taking had been a trifle desultory; it was certain that the ladies-in-waiting found a difficulty in assimilating the scraps of literary pemmican she dispensed to them.

They received with polite but languid attention such items as that: "Shakespeare stands supreme among dramatists for consummate knowledge of the human heart"; that: "as _Ralph Roister Doister_ is the first pure comedy, so _The Vicar of Wakefield_ may be termed the first idyllic English novel"; that: "while Byron possessed more intellect than imagination, Shelley, on the contrary, was rather imaginative than intellectual"; and even the statement that: "Browning's 'Ring and the Book' contains upwards of twenty-one thousand lines" left them unmoved.

It is true they were more interested in hearing that it was: "after he had come under the spell of Petrarch and Boccaccio that Chaucer produced his wondrous Tales," but it appeared their interest was due to some slight misapprehension. Daphne felt the fearful joy of suppressed mirth combined with the danger of detection as she heard Edna explaining with laborious patience that she had _not_ intended to convey that the Poet had been afflicted by a pair of enchanters with any caudal appendages whatever.

But the Princess Royal could not conceal her disgust when her final extract, which was to the effect that: "during the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century England became once more a 'nest of singing birds,' as was apparent from the stream of fresh and melodious strains issuing from, among other sources, 'The Bodley Head,'" was greeted with a ripple of girlish laughter from her hearers. It seemed that this incontrovertible statement of fact had somehow aroused reminiscences of another head which, if fresh, had not been precisely melodious on the luncheon board after the Coronation.

Princess Edna waited with cold dignity until the last giggle was no longer audible before announcing that she was willing to answer any questions they might wish to ask her. Upon which Baroness Kluge von Bauerngrosstochterheimer begged that they might be favoured with the outline of one of the romances written by the Poet Shakespeare, who they had been informed by her was so unsurpassed as a story-teller.

Now Edna was undoubtedly well versed in the Literature of her native land. She could not only have given with tolerable accuracy the names and dates of the principal authors of each century, but a list of their best-known works, and an estimate of the rank assigned to them by modern criticism. She had even, impelled by an almost morbid conscientiousness, consulted the works themselves, and could honestly assert that she had read every single play of Shakespeare's all through, though her private preference was for a more advanced and psychological form of drama.

And yet on this occasion she chose to parry the Baroness's very reasonable request. "Shakespeare," she said, in her most superior tone, "did not write romances. He wrote _plays_."

"Will your Royal Highness please," said the Baroness, "to tell us about one of _them_?"

For the life of her Edna could not just then summon up a clear recollection of the plot of any Shakespearian comedy or tragedy--and it is quite possible that there are many persons as highly educated as she who might be equally at a loss.

"With so prolific a writer as Shakespeare," she hedged, "it is difficult to single out any particular play."

She was so plainly embarrassed that Daphne felt impelled to come to the rescue.

"I think, Ma'am," she said, "they would like the story of _The Merchant of Venice_!"

"I should hardly call it suitable myself to such an audience as this," replied Edna, who was possibly confusing it with _Othello_. "No, Miss Heritage, I really think something less--less objectionable would be--There's _As you like it_, now, _quite_ a pleasant play. I think I can remember the outline of _that_. Let me see. Yes, it's about a girl called "Rosalind," who dressed up as a boy and ran away into a forest, where she met Ferdinand--or was it Bassanio?--anyway, the name is of no consequence. Well, and he carved her name on all the trees, and so they fell in love, and in the end they were married, you know."

As drama this appeared to strike the ladies-in-waiting as lacking in incident, and the Baroness von Haulemaennerschen openly declared that an ancestress of hers who also ran away into a forest had the far more exciting experience of being poisoned by a jealous Queen and enclosed by dwarfs in a glass coffin.

"Oh, very well!" said Edna; "if you are going to compare your own silly traditions with works of genius, I give you up as hopeless!"

And this was the beginning and the end of the Princess Royal's attempt to infuse Culture into Court Circles.

She had certainly failed signally to inspire her ladies with any enthusiasm for English Literature, though, strangely enough, Daphne succeeded later in giving them a more favourable impression of its quality.

Edna was, of course, incomparably more widely read, but then Daphne knew such authors as she had read well enough to be able to give a very full and clear account of her 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 Royal, who kept his bed for several days afterwards.

And Clarence, as the Yellow Gnomes were impossible as caddies, had to carry his own clubs, which he particularly detested. So in course of time he ceased to visit the links, and thus deprived himself of his only form of open-air exercise.

There was nothing much for him to do, except to lounge and loaf aimlessly about the Palace, with a depressed suspicion that he was not inspiring the full amount of respect that was due to his position as Crown Prince. It would have been a distraction to make advances to Daphne, but, after his somewhat cavalier treatment of her at the Ball, he could not be sure how they would be received. Moreover, either by her own management or his Royal Mother's, he was never given a chance of seeing her except in public.

He found a resource in gambling with the gentlemen of the Royal Household. They played for high stakes, but no higher, seeing that he could replenish his purse as often as it was emptied, than he could well afford. His visits to the sacks of gold in the King's Counting-house became more and more frequent, but he would have derived more enjoyment from cards if he had won occasionally.

One afternoon when, the usual card-players being absent on some hunting expedition, he was left to his own devices, he wandered forlornly through a suite of empty halls till he drifted out upon a balcony that overlooked the Palace gardens.

And then, as he stepped through the window, his heart gave a sudden leap. At the corner of the balcony he had just recognised Daphne. She was quite alone, and he recognised that the opportunity, half-feared, half-desired, had come at last. _

Read next: Chapter 8. "A Steed That Knows His Rider"

Read previous: Chapter 6. Cares Of State

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