Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3816/The Scratch Handicap
"What do you do?" asked Charles, "when people want you to play lawn-tennis?"
"Sometimes I play," I said. "Sometimes I send Sophonisba. Sometimes I tell them that my hend-keeper is away and I am obliged to look after the lop-ears. What happens to your?"
"Well, you know what lawn-tennis is like nowadays. In the bygone butter-pat era I could hold own with the best of my them. Golf had hardly come in, and when one wasn't playing cricket, and the spilliken set had been mislaid, and tiddley-winks was voted too rough, a couple of sets or so was rather fun. Soft undulating courts, very hard to keep a footing on, and plenty of sticks and leaves to assist one's screws, and patches of casual whiting here and there so that you could say that it wasn't a fault but hit the line. Now all that is changed. Panther-limbed, hawk-eyed young persons leap about the lawn dressed in white from top to toe. They play on fast and level lawns, entirely circumscribed by a kind of deep-sea trawling apparatus. They want you to hit hard and well. I have only two stroked when I hit hard. One of them pierces the bottom of the seine or drag-net fixed across the fairway, the other brings the man round from the next-door garden but two to say that his cucumbers are catching cold. And then I do not understand their terms. What is a 'fore-hand drive'? It sounds like the coaching Marathon. And how do you put on top spin? Do you wind your racquet round and round the ball and them pull it away suddenly, or what? And cross-volleys—what in the world are they?"
"Goodness knows," I said. "My own volleys are the best-tempered little chaps alive. But, hang it! no one can foce you to play lawn-tennis if you don't want to."
"Can't they?" said Charles. "That's just the point. They do. They say to me, 'You play golf and cricket; of course you can play tennis. Easiest thing in the world.' Swish! swish! they go, making a ferocious cross-hand top-lead from baulk with their umbrellas. 'That’s how to do it. You'll soon get into the way of the stroke'. 'That’s just what I'm afraid of,' I say, leaping nervously on to the table. But it's no good. 'Come round next Saturday afternoon,' they say, 'we shall be expecting you,' and pass rapidly into the night before I can refuse."
"One can always have a sick headache," I reminded him.
"I did that once," said Charles. "I had been asked to play in a tournament, and at dinner the next evening I sat next to the girl who ought to have been my partner in the mixed handicaps, and we had meringues. No, it isn't safe, and besides one might always want to play golf. I think the best thing is to go once and trust to one's own skill not to be asked again. Anyhow, I don't believe the Jenkinsons will give me another invitation for some time."
"What happened?" I asked. "I suppose when they've sewn up the new and bought new balls———"
"No, it wasn't that," he answered, with a dreamy smile. "You know the Jenkinsons. You know how keen they are on tennis and how proud of their court. I did everything I could to save them, but they would have me. I said I had no racquet except the one I had used for landing trout in the spring, and they told me I could get it restrung. I said I had no shoes, and they told me any shoes would do. I couldn't tell them I had no flannels, because they wouldn't have believed me. So I went. I wore an old blue cricket cap on the back of my head: I wore long white trousers not turned up, and I wore brown shoes."
"And your racquet?" I asked.
"I borrowed a real tennis racquet," replied Charles; "one of those narrow, rather wistful-looking things, with a kink in its head. I thought it would complete the languid artistic effect and help to convince them. It had rained a deal in the a good morning, and rather hoped we might spend the time looking at the conservatory and have muffins for tea. But no. When I reached the house I found that they had decided to play. They laughed at me a good deal, of course—at my cap, and my racquet, and my trousers, and my brown shoes. When we had taken up our stations in the arena they told me I was to serve first. I sent the ball high up into the air underhand and ran swiftly to the net." He paused melodramatically.
"Go on," I said. "Was it the solar plexus or the eye?"
"No," he answered sadly, "I was unwounded; but that was the last stroke I played. When I served that service they laughed at me again, but when I ran to the net they ceased to laugh. They said they could easily find someone else to complete the four. They pressed me to sit and watch for the remainder of the afternoon. Indeed, they were quite firm on it."
"I don't understand," I said. "Was it your face that frightened them in the blue cap?"
"Not so much my face," he answered gently, "as my feet."
"What was the matter with them?"
"There are big nails," he said softly, "in my brown golf shoes."