Golfers—and I stretch this term to include the Wrecking Crew—are a highly imitative race. The spectacle of a flubber flubbing ahead of us on the fairway inclines to make us flub as well; and, conversely, it is immediately after we have seen a magnificent shot that we are apt to eclipse ourselves. Consciously the Grave-Digger had no notion how Chester had made that superb brassie-biff of his, but all the while I suppose his subconscious self had been taking notes. At any rate, on this occasion he, too, did the shot of a lifetime. As he opened his eyes, which he always shut tightly at the moment of impact, and started to unravel himself from the complicated tangle in which his follow-through had left him, he perceived the ball breasting the hill like some untamed jack-rabbit of the Californian prairie.
For a moment his only emotion was one of dreamlike amazement. He stood looking at the ball with a wholly impersonal wonder, like a man suddenly confronted with some terrific work of Nature. Then, as a sleep-walker awakens, he came to himself with a start. Directly in front of the flying ball was a man bending to make an approach-shot.
Chester, always a concentrated golfer when there was man’s work to do, had scarcely heard the crack of the brassie behind him. Certainly he had paid no attention to it. His whole mind was fixed on his stroke. He measured with his eye the distance to the pin, noted the down-slope of the green, and shifted his stance a little to allow for it. Then, with a final swift waggle, he laid his club-head behind the ball and slowly raised it. It was just coming down when the world became full of shouts of “Fore!” and something hard smote him violently on the seat of his plus fours.
The supreme tragedies of life leave us momentarily stunned. For an instant which seemed an age Chester could not understand what had happened. True, he realized that there had been an earthquake, a cloud-burst, and a railway accident, and that a high building had fallen on him at the exact moment when somebody had shot him with a gun, but these happenings would account for only a small part of his sensations. He blinked several times, and rolled his eyes wildly. And it was while rolling them that he caught sight of the gesticulating Wrecking Crew on the lower slopes at d found enlightenment. Simultaneously, he observed his ball only a yard and a half from where it had been when he addressed it.
Chester Meredith gave one look at his ball, one look at the flag, one look at the Wrecking Crew, one look at the sky. His lips writhed, his forehead turned vermilion. Beads of perspiration started out on his forehead. And then, with his whole soul seething like a cistern struck by a thunderbolt, he spoke.
“! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !” cried Chester.
Dimly he was aware of a wordless exclamation from the girl beside him, but he was too distraught to think of her now. It was as if all the oaths pent up within his bosom for so many weary days were struggling and jostling to see which could get out first. They cannoned into each other, they linked hands and formed parties, they got themselves all mixed up in weird vowel-sounds, the second syllable of some red-hot verb forming a temporary union with the first syllable of some blistering noun.
“⎯!⎯!!⎯!!!⎯!!!!⎯!!!!!” cried Chester.
Felicia stood starring at him. In her eyes was the look of one who sees visions.
“***!!! ***!!! ***!!! ***!!!” roared Chester, in part.
A great wave of emotion flooded over the girl. How she had misjudged this silver-tongued man! She shivered as she thought that, had this not happened, in another five minutes they would have parted for ever, sundered by seas of misunderstanding, she cold and scornful, he with all his music still within him.
“Oh, Mr. Meredith!” she cried, faintly.
With a sickening abruptness Chester came to himself. It was as if somebody had poured a pint of ice-cold water down his back. He blushed vividly. He realized with horror and shame how grossly he had offended against all the canons of decency and good taste. He felt like the man in one of those “What Is Wrong With This Picture?” things in the advertisements of the etiquette books.
“I beg—I beg your pardon!” he mumbled, humbly. “Please please, forgive me. I should not have spoken like that.”
“You should! You should!” cried the girl, passionately. “You should have said all that and a lot more. That awful man ruining your record round like that! Oh, why am I a poor weak woman with practically no vocabulary that’s any use for anything!”
Quite suddenly, without knowing that she had moved, she found herself at his side, holding his hand.
“Oh, to think how I misjudged you!” she wailed. “I thought you cold, stiff, formal, precise. I hated the way you sniggered when you foozled a shot. I see it all now! You were keeping it in for my sake. Can you ever forgive me?
Chester, as I have said, was not a very quick-minded young man, but it would have taken a duller youth than he to fail to read the message in the girl’s eyes, to miss the meaning of the pressure of her hand on his.
“My gosh!” he exclaimed wildly. “Do you mean⎯? Do you think⎯? Do you really⎯? Honestly, has this made a difference? Is there any chance for a fellow, I mean?”
Her eyes helped him on. He felt suddenly confident and masterful.
“Look here—no kidding—will you marry me?” he said.
“I will! I will!”
“Darling!” cried Chester.
He would have said more, but at this point he was interrupted by the arrival of the Wrecking Crew who panted up full of apologies; and Chester, as he eyed them, thought that he had never seen a nicer, cheerier, pleasanter lot of fellows in his life. His heart warmed to them. He made a mental resolve to hunt them up some time and have a good long talk. He waved the Grave-Digger’s remorse airily aside.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Not at all. Faults on both sides. By the way, my fiancée, Miss Blakeney.”
The Wrecking Crew puffed acknowledgment.
“But, my dear fellow,” said the Grave-Digger, “it was—really it was—unforgivable. Spoiling your shot. Never dreamed I would send the ball that distance. Lucky you weren’t playing an important match.”
“But he was,” moaned Felicia. “He was trying for the course-record, and now he can’t break it.”
The Wrecking Crew paled behind their whiskers, aghast at this tragedy, but Chester, glowing with the yeasty intoxication of love, laughed lightly.
“What do you mean, can’t break it?” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve one more shot.”
And, carelessly addressing the ball, he holed out with a light flick of his mashie-niblick.
“Chester, darling!” said Felicia.
They were walking slowly through a secluded glade in the quiet evenfall.
“Yes, precious?”
Felicia hesitated. What she was going to say would hurt him, she knew, and her love was so great that to hurt him was agony.
“Do you think⎯” she began. “I wonder whether⎯ It’s about Crispin.”
“Good old Crispin!”
Felicia sighed, but the matter was too vital to be shirked. Cost what it might, she must speak her mind.
“Chester, darling, when we are married, would you mind very, very much if we didn’t have Crispin with us all the time?”
Chester started.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you like him?”
“Not very much,” confessed Felicia. “I don’t think I’m clever enough for him. I’ve rather disliked him ever since we were children. But I know what a friend he is of yours⎯”
Chester uttered a joyous laugh.
“Friend of mine! Why, I can’t stand the blighter! I loathe the worm! I abominate the excrescence! I only pretended we were friends because I thought it would put me in solid with you. The man is a pest and should have been strangled at birth. At school I used to kick him every time I saw him. If your brother Crispin tries so much as to set foot across the threshold of our little home, I’ll set the dog on him.”
“Darling!” whispered Felicia. “We shall be very, very happy.” She drew her arm through his. “Tell me,
dearest,” she murmured, “all about how you used to kick Crispin at school.”
And together they wandered off into the sunset.
16
THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS
“AFTER ALL,” SAID the young man, “golf is only a game.”
He spoke bitterly and with the air of one who has been following a train of thought. He had come into the smoking-room of the club-house in low spirits at the dusky close of a November evening, and for some minutes had been sitting, silent and moody, staring at the log fire.
“Merely a pastime,” said the young man.
The Oldest Member, nodding in his arm-chair, stiffened with horror, and glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure that none of the waiters had heard these terrible words.
“Can this be George William Pennefather speaking!” he said, reproachfully. “My boy, you are not yourself.”
The young man flushed a little beneath his tan: for he had had a good upbringing and was not bad at heart.
“Perhaps I ought not to have gone quite so far as that,” he admitted. “I was only thinking that a fellow’s got no right, just because he happens to have come on a bit in his form lately, to treat a fellow as if a fellow was a leper or something.”
The Oldest Member’s face cleared, and he breathed a relieved sigh.
“Ah! I see,” he said. “You spoke hastily and in a sudden fit of pique because something upset you out on the links today. Tell me all. Let me see, you were playing with Nathaniel Frisby this afternoon, were you not? I gather that he beat you.”
“Yes, he did. Giving me a third. But it isn’t being beaten that I mind. What I object to is having the blighter behave as if he were a sort of champion condescending to a mere mortal. Dash it, it seemed to bore him playing with me! Every time I sliced off the tee he looked at me as if I were a painful ordeal. Twice when I was having a bit of trouble in the bushes I caught him yawning. And after we had finished he started talking about what a good game croquet was, and he wondered more people didn’t take it up. And it’s only a month or so ago that I could play the man level!”
The Oldest Member shook his snowy head sadly.
“There is nothing to be done about it,” he said. “We can only hope that the poison will in time work its way out of the man’s system. Sudden success at golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character. And, as it comes almost miraculously, so only a miracle can effect a cure. The best advice I can give you is to refrain from playing with Nathaniel Frisby till you can keep your tee-shots straight.”
“Oh, but don’t run away with the idea that I wasn’t pretty good off the tee this afternoon!” said the young man. “I should like to describe to you the shot I did on the⎯”
“Meanwhile,” proceeded the Oldest Member, “I will relate to you a little story which bears on what I have been saying.”
“From the very moment I addressed the ball⎯”
“It is the story of two loving hearts temporarily estranged owing to the sudden and unforeseen proficiency of one of the couple⎯”
“I waggled quickly and strongly, like Duncan. Then, swinging smoothly back, rather in the Vardon manner⎯”
“But as I see,” said the Oldest Member, “that you are all impatience for me to begin, I will do so without further preamble.”
To the philosophical student of golf like myself (said the Oldest Member) perhaps the most outstanding virtue of this noble pursuit is the fact that it is a medicine for the soul. Its great service to humanity is that it teaches human beings that, whatever petty triumphs they may have achieved in other walks of life, they are after all merely human. It acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip-shot. If Cleopatra had been outed in the first round of the Ladies’ Singles, we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness. And, coming down to modern times, it was undoubtedly his rotten golf that kept Wallace Chesney the nice unspoiled fellow he was. For in every other respect he had everything in the world calculated to make a man conceited and arrogant. He was the best-looking man for miles around; his health was perfect; and, in addition to this, he was rich; danced, rode, played bridge and polo with equal skill; and was engaged to be married to Charlotte Dix. And when you saw Charlotte Dix you realized that being engaged to her would by itself have been quite enough luck for any one man.
But Wallace, as I say, despite all his advantages, was a thoroughly nice, modest young fellow. And I attribute this to the fact that, while one of the keenest golfers in the club, he was also one of the worst players. Indeed, Charlotte Dix used to say to me in his presence that she could not understand why people paid money to go to the circus when by merely walking over the brow of a hill they could watch Wallace Chesney trying to get out of the bunker by the eleventh green. And Wallace took the gibe with perfect good humour, for there was a delightful camaraderie between them which robbed it of any sting. Often at lunch in the club-house I used to hear him and Charlotte planning the handicapping details of a proposed match between Wallace and a non-existent cripple whom Charlotte claimed to have discovered in the village—it being agreed finally that he should accept seven bisques from the cripple, but that, if the latter ever recovered the use of his arms, Wallace should get a stroke a hole.
In short, a thoroughly happy and united young couple. Two hearts, if I may coin an expression, that beat as one.
I would not have you misjudge Wallace Chesney. I may have given you the impression that his attitude towards golf was light and frivolous, but such was not the case. As I have said, he was one of the keenest members of the club. Love made him receive the joshing of his fiancée in the kindly spirit in which it was meant, but at heart he was as earnest as you could wish. He practised early and late; he bought golf books; and the mere sight of a patent club of any description acted on him like catnip on a cat. I remember remonstrating with him on the occasion of his purchasing a wooden-faced driving-mashie which weighed about two pounds, and was, taking it for all in all, as foul an instrument as ever came out of the workshop of a clubmaker who had been dropped on the head by his nurse when a baby.
“I know, I know,” he said, when I had finished indicating some of the weapon’s more obvious defects. “But the point is, I believe in it. It gives me confidence. I don’t believe you could slice with a thing like that if you tried.”
Confidence! That was what Wallace Chesney lacked, and that, as he saw it, was the prime grand secret of golf. Like an alchemist on the track of the Philosopher’s Stone, he was for ever seeking for something which would really give him confidence. I recollect that he even tried repeating to himself fifty times every morning the words, “Every day in every way I grow better and better.” This, however, proved such a black lie that he gave it up. The fact is, the man was a visionary, and it is to auto-hypnosis of some kind that I attribute the extraordinary change that came over him at the beginning of his third season.
You may have noticed in your perambulations about the City a shop bearing above its door and upon its windows the legend:
COHEN BROS.
SECOND-HAND CLOTHIERS
a statement which is borne out by endless vistas seen through the door of every variety of what is technically known as Gents’ Wear. But the Brothers Cohen, though their main stock-in-trade is garments which have been rejected by their owners for one reason or another, do not confine their dealings to Gents’ Wear. The place is a museum of derelict goods of every description. You can get a second-hand revolver there, or a second-hand sword, or a second-hand umbrella. You can do a cheap deal in field-glasses, trunks, dog collars, canes, photograph frames, attaché cases, and bowls for goldfish. And on the bright spring morning when Wallace Chesney happened to pass by there was exhibited in the window a putter of such pre-eminently lunatic design that he sto
pped dead as if he had run into an invisible wall, and then, panting like an overwrought fish, charged in through the door.
The shop was full of the Cohen family, sombre-eyed, smileless men with purposeful expressions; and two of these, instantly descending upon Wallace Chesney like leopards, began in swift silence to thrust him into a suit of yellow tweed. Having worked the coat over his shoulders with a shoe-horn, they stood back to watch the effect.
“A beautiful fit,” announced Isidore Cohen.
“A little snug under the arms,” said his brother Irving. “But that’ll give.”
“The warmth of the body will make it give,” said Isidore.
“Or maybe you’ll lose weight in the summer,” said Irving.
Wallace, when he had struggled out of the coat and was able to breathe, said that he had come into buy a putter. Isidore therefore sold him the putter, a dog collar, and a set of studs, and Irving sold him a fireman’s helmet: and he was about to leave when their elder brother Lou, who had just finished fitting out another customer, who had come in to buy a cap, with two pairs of trousers and a miniature aquarium for keeping newts in, saw that business was in progress and strolled up. His fathomless eye rested on Wallace, who was toying feebly with the putter.
“You play golf?” asked Lou. “Then looka here!”
He dived into an alleyway of dead clothing, dug for a moment, and emerged with something at the sight of which Wallace Chesney, hardened golfer that he was, blenched and threw up an arm defensively.
“No, no!” he cried.
The object which Lou Cohen was waving insinuatingly before his eyes was a pair of those golfing breeches which are technically known as Plus Fours. A player of two years’ standing, Wallace Chesney was not unfamiliar with Plus Fours—all the club cracks wore them—but he had never seen Plus Fours like these. What might be termed the main motif of the fabric was a curious vivid pink, and with this to work on the architect had let his imagination run free, and had produced so much variety in the way of chessboard squares of white, yellow, violet, and green that the eye swam as it looked upon them.