Read Tommy's Honor for Free Online Page B

shouting when he sank the winning putt. Allan shrugged and said he hadn’t been trying because he didn’t like the jacket. “The wee coatie would fit Tom better,” he said. But Tom knew something had changed that day. He had stepped up a rung. Over the next year Allan began giving Tom a small share of his golf-ball sales and a growing share of the bets they won as foursomes partners. Before that, the boss had put up their portion of the stakes when he and Tom played a money match. Allan covered any losses and, fittingly, kept almost all of what they won. If Tom played well the boss might give him ten percent; if not, a token penny told him what losers are worth. But now they were sharing risk and reward, with Allan haggling over odds and strokes at the first tee and Tom surprising rivals with his maturing game. And here was the answer to the question Tom had turned over in his head since he was fourteen: Why had the great Robertson chosen Tom Morris as his apprentice? Because he had seen him swing. The game’s keenest eye had watched a boy knocking spoon shots down an open fairway, sometimes with a cracked feathery, sometimes with a cork. That eye had spotted Tom’s talent. Allan, who did nothing without a reason that served Allan, had needed a reliable foursomes partner. Now he had one.
    Lying on his cot late at night, cold wind on his face, Tom may have wondered what God thought of all this. Here he was, still a journeyman, earning more money than his father ever had, most of it in wagers. Of course his luck could vanish in a breath—a broken bone, a plague of cholera, a new golfer who could beat him and Allan both. But for now he had reason to be cautiously happy. If not yet prosperous, he was settled enough to think about settling down. If not quite respectable, he was close enough to smell the roast beef in Captain Broughton’s house.
    Captain Broughton, one of the R&A’s leading players, lived in a columned mansion at 91 North Street. The beef in the Captain’s kitchen was clean and bloody, not tinged with pepper, ginger, and charcoal like the rank meat in alehouses and inns and Allan’s kitchen. Tom shut his eyes and breathed its scent into his nostrils. A working-man like him could not set foot anywhere but in the kitchen of such a house, nor would he want to. In the hush of the parlor, with its grand piano, gold-framed mirror, and leather-trimmed chairs around a table so perfectly polished that it shone like the mirror, he would have felt like a thief, a trespasser. It was better to stay in the kitchen, picking a scrap of fat off a platter of beef carried by Nancy Bayne, the maid.
    Five years older than Tom, Nancy was one of four servants in the Captain’s house. Along with another maid and a housekeeper who outranked the maids, she scrubbed, polished, dusted, and cooked from six in the morning till after dark—all under the stern eye of the Captain’s governess. Nancy was no beauty but rather a strong, sensible girl, a “pattern girl” in the popular phrase. She knew her role in society’s pattern and played it with vigor and good humor. She already had a suitor, but after Tom Morris entered the picture the other fellow had no chance. Tom caddied for the Captain and sometimes partnered him in foursomes matches. Tom was Nancy’s favorite, too. He had a pleasing enough face, with neatly trimmed whiskers. His boots were almost new, and he took care to kick the dirt off them before he came into the Captain’s kitchen. Tom had a jacket with no frays at the sleeve or elbow, and a pocket watch with a silver chain. He had a kind eye and a bit of a spark to him, asking about Nancy’s day, offering a handshake when he took his leave. She was pleased to note that his hands were more callused than hers.
    For Tom, even courtship had to do with golf. One day on the High Hole, he and Captain Broughton were playing a crown-and-shillings game—a crown on the match, a shilling per hole—when Tom found his ball