~ CHAPTER VI. ~

Golf matches through the mirror—Mr. White—The International Championship—Sir John Dornoch—Rain towers—Discover I am a capitalist

On going round the green I had noticed at regular intervals, on both sides of the course, very long, perpendicular poles, that looked about four hundred feet or so high. On asking my companion what they were used for, he replied:

“Ah, that will give you some idea to what lengths we have brought golf. You observe there is a double row of poles, one on each side of the course.   Between those two rows a mirror is suspended horizontally at the height of four hundred and fifty feet, covering the whole length of the green. Of course it does not require to be the breadth of the course; a strip down the centre serves the purpose. The glass is only put up when an important match is in progress. Everything going on on the green is then reflected overhead; in the club-house, at the first hole, there is a small mirror, so placed that it reflects what is in the large mirror overhead, at any point you choose. Thus, when a match starts, the small mirror is almost horizontal, the players being so close, and being first reflected to the mirror above and then back again on to the small one. As the players get further off—of course we are only following one couple or foursome, as the case may be—the small mirror gradually tilts up, till, when the players are at the furthest distance from the start, it is at an angle of about eighty degrees. Then gradually, as the players return, the angle gets smaller, till the glass resumes its former almost horizontal position. You observe it has been following the reflection of the players all this time. It is worked by a female, who has full charge of it, and has to be very careful in the following of the match. This small mirror is connected by a wire, specially prepared, as in the case of the theatre wires, to a mirror in London, we will say, though of course it can be, and sometimes is, connected with a thousand different mirrors, on the same principle as those theatre ones which I showed you last night. The figures are seen life-size, walking along and taking their shots; indeed, you see them from the first drive off, till they hole out the last putt; and people in London and all the large towns can watch a golf match going on here. They pay two shillings, take a seat as if they were at a theatre, and watch the reflection on their own special mirrors, wherever they may be. Of course they don’t hear anything. But you mustn’t think every golfing green has this contrivance; it is confined to only a very few, I think about fifty or so, and they play the big matches only on those.”

“By Jove!” I said, “that seems almost a fable; but I would like to be in London and watch a match played here.”

“Nothing easier,” he answered; “next big match that comes off we’ll go to London and have front seats.”

As we had finished the round, we went back to the club.

“You’ll be thirsty,” said Adams; “at least I am. What will you drink?”

“I’ll have a whisky and potash,” I answered; “at least if there is still such a drink in existence.”

“Ah,” he said, “we have been able to improve upon a lot of your old-fashioned ways; but the Auld Kirk has stood its ground. It was the drink of the past, it is the drink of the present, and it will be the drink of the future. As long as there are golfers to drink it, there will be distillers to make it.”

Going up to the side of the room, round which a ledge ran, about three feet from the floor, he put a coin in a slot and produced tumblers of whisky and potash—one for himself and one for me.

As we seated ourselves and were filling our pipes—I was glad to see that they still smoked pipes—one of the men whom I had seen sitting at the window came up and accosted my companion.

“How are you, Adams?” he said. “Had a good round?”

“Oh, fairly,” Adams replied. “I was just going round with my friend, Mr. Gibson. Let me introduce you two—Mr. Gibson, Mr. White. He has not been playing for some time past, having been laid up.”

I bowed.

“I hope it has been nothing serious, Mr Gibson,” said Mr White, bowing also.

“Oh, no,” I replied, smiling. “I have been troubled with somnolence, and have been under medical treatment for some time” (some considerable time, I thought to myself), “so have got rather out of form. But a round or two will put me all right again, I hope. The greens are in first-rate order.”

“Yes,” said Mr. White, “I have seldom seen them looking better. What do you think of the big match next week?”

“What match is that?” I asked. I must take care not to betray ignorance, I thought to myself.

“Why, the match against the Cape of Good Hope,” he answered. “It is played every year between teams of twenty men a-side; last year it was played at the Cape. The Scotchmen have won every time since the institution of the match, but I believe the Cape players are very strong this year, and intend to give us a tussle for it.”

“A very interesting match,” I said. “I suppose it is played by holes?”

“Yes,” he replied. “We had a very close shave for the International Championship last year; but I suppose you know all that.”

“No, I don’t,” I answered. “You see I have been kept very quiet for some time, and you people have got rather ahead of me.”—There was more truth in this than he imagined.—“But tell me about it.”

“Oh, there’s not much to tell,” he went on. “In the final with Canada—it is played in foursomes, you know—we only managed to win by one hole, after being all square and one to play The excitement over that last hole through the whole country was something frightful. Jack Dornoch, who holed a long putt at the finish and won the match, was knighted, and got a pension of a thousand a year for life.”

“He’s a wonderful player, Dornoch,” broke in Adams. “What is the latest betting about his match with the American?”

“Five to four on Dornoch, I believe,” said White; “but Michigan” (that was the American, I supposed) “is a tremendous player, if all accounts be true. The game will be well worth seeing—I’ll watch it in London, I think. It’s a pity they hadn’t arranged to play it in this country. I’ve never played on any American greens myself, though I suppose they are very good.”

Watch it in London, I thought, and it to be played in America! Then I recollected the mirrors, and wondered if it could be possible to transmit the whole match through the ocean.

“I wonder,” I said, turning to White, “what a golfer of a century ago would say were he to rise from his grave and see the way you play golf now.”

“I expect he would be a little surprised, to say the least of it,” said White.

“I expect he would,” I admitted, with a wink to Adams. “They thought they knew everything about golf, while, indeed, they knew nothing or next to nothing. It was in its infancy, and you won’t have got it to perfection until you have a machine for walking round the green and swinging the club, while you sit here and manage it.”

“Well, I don’t think it will ever be so bad as that,” said White, “though certainly there have been a tremendous number of improvements in the last hundred years. Talking of improvements,” he went on, “I see that experiment of Dr. Fawcett’s has been a complete success. It will be a great thing now to have the weather under complete control. If we could only manage the wind.”

The weather under complete control! I thought—the man must be mad! What can this invention be?

“Ah, yes,” said Adams, throwing a warning glance in my direction, “it will be a great thing. I thought it would come, it was an easy matter to bring the rain, but it was no joke when you could not get it turned off. This will simplify matters very much.”

“I must be going, though,” said White, rising. “We will have a game some day, I hope, Mr. Gibson.”

“I will be very happy,” I answered “but I must get into form first.”

“Well, we will arrange later on. Good-bye for the present."

So saying, he left us and made his way across the hall.

When we were alone I turned to Adams.

“What, in the name of all that’s wonderful, do you mean by controlling the weather?” I said.

“Ah,” he said, “I was afraid White would notice your look of astonishment. It is a great discovery. Scattered about the country are very high towers, about two thousand feet high, made of steel: some are placed on mountains, so that they do not require to be quite so high. When we want rain, from the top of this tower are shot up balls of some kind of chemical, which explode, and never fail to bring rain; in about half an hour it comes down in torrents; but we were never able to stop it; sometimes it would just be a shower, at other times it went on for days, and did more harm than good; but, as you heard White say, they have discovered something to stop the rain and drive away the clouds. I read something about it lately. It is a ball of some other chemical which also explodes, but acts in the reverse way, stopping the rain and dispersing the clouds. So now we will be able to suit ourselves with our weather. For a big match we’ll have the greens well watered beforehand, and a fine day to play the match on. There are only about a dozen of these towers in Great Britain. One takes in a radius of sixty miles or so.”

“Well,” I could only say, “I’m not going to be surprised at anything more you tell me after that. But do you really mean that you can turn rain off and on at will?”

“Undoubtedly,” he replied. “I don’t think any of your nineteenth-century people ever dreamt of that.”

“No, I’m certain none of them did,” I replied; “but look here, White was saying something about an International Championship. What did he mean?”

“That is a great annual match, perhaps the greatest of the year. Each country is represented by four players, and it is played in foursomes by holes. There were, I think, close on twenty different countries entered last year, and the finish was very exciting, as White said. Since the institution of the match Scotland has won no less than twenty-seven times, England eleven, while Canada and Australia have each won once.”

“I’m glad to see Scotland still takes the lead as far as golf is concerned,” I answered.

“Yes, indeed,” said Adams, rising. “Now, if you have finished your drink, we had better go. We’ll get back in plenty of time for dinner.”

We moved across the hall, and Adams putting a coin in the slot, we were once more back in the train or “tub.” We had no sooner taken our seats, it seemed to me, than the lift came down again; but as my companion did not move, I concluded it wasn’t our station, and on looking at the wall again, I saw “Edinburgh” in large letters. I wondered why we only stopped at Edinburgh, but on my asking Adams he explained that the trains ran every five minutes, and each one had a different set of stations to stop at. There were time-tables, of course; but he was so well up in all the trains, having to use them so much, that he did not require to refer to one. As he finished his explanation we arrived at our station, and, ascending in the lift, were once more in the open air.

In going along the street I noticed that we never saw any ladies walking about; in fact, I had not seen a female of any kind, which struck me as rather peculiar. I thought that perhaps, among other improvements, they had got the ladies to stay at home; however, I did not remark on this to my companion.

While walking along I began to think about how I was to live. I could not go on spunging on Adams, though he seemed to take it quite as a matter of course. That was out of the question. Therefore I explained my predicament to my friend. To my surprise, he told me that a sum of money had been invested in my name by my relations, in case I ever came to life again, and that this had been accumulating ever since. In the event of my death, while lying in the trance, the money was to have gone to found a mission station at the North Pole, or perhaps the South Pole—I am not sure which, and don’t greatly care. I was not dependent on Adams’s generosity after all, and the news made me feel much more comfortable. Adams would not hear of me leaving him, however; I was to consider myself his guest for the present, till I had time to look about me and get used to everything.

Before I could get my money it seemed that I would require doctors’ certificates and a declaration from Mr Adams that I was the so-called A. J. Gibson come to life again. Now, as I said before, I did not want to make a show of myself quite yet. But I’ll have to do it soon in order to get the cash, I mused, for I don’t suppose they can get on even nowadays without filthy lucre.

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