CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF
The afternoon was warm and heavy. Butterflies loafed languidly in the
sunshine, birds panted in the shady recesses of the trees.
The Oldest Member, snug in his favourite chair, had long since
succumbed to the drowsy influence of the weather. His eyes were closed,
his chin sunk upon his breast. The pipe which he had been smoking lay
beside him on the turf, and ever and anon there proceeded from him a
muffled snore.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. There was a sharp, cracking sound as
of splitting wood. The Oldest Member sat up, blinking. As soon as his
eyes had become accustomed to the glare, he perceived that a foursome
had holed out on the ninth and was disintegrating. Two of the players
were moving with quick, purposeful steps in the direction of the side
door which gave entrance to the bar; a third was making for the road
that led to the village, bearing himself as one in profound dejection;
the fourth came on to the terrace.
“Finished?” said the Oldest Member.
The other stopped, wiping a heated brow. He lowered himself into the
adjoining chair and stretched his legs out.
“Yes. We started at the tenth. Golly, I’m tired. No joke playing in
this weather.”
“How did you come out?”
“We won on the last green. Jimmy Fothergill and I were playing the
vicar and Rupert Blake.”
“What was that sharp, cracking sound I heard?” asked the Oldest Member.
“That was the vicar smashing his putter. Poor old chap, he had rotten
luck all the way round, and it didn’t seem to make it any better for
him that he wasn’t able to relieve his feelings in the ordinary way.”
“I suspected some such thing,” said the Oldest Member, “from the look
of his back as he was leaving the green. His walk was the walk of an
overwrought soul.”
His companion did not reply. He was breathing deeply and regularly.
“It is a moot question,” proceeded the Oldest Member, thoughtfully,
“whether the clergy, considering their peculiar position, should not
be more liberally handicapped at golf than the laymen with whom they
compete. I have made a close study of the game since the days of the
feather ball, and I am firmly convinced that to refrain entirely from
oaths during a round is almost equivalent to giving away three bisques.
There are certain occasions when an oath seems to be so imperatively
demanded that the strain of keeping it in must inevitably affect
the ganglions or nerve-centres in such a manner as to diminish the
steadiness of the swing.”
The man beside him slipped lower down in his chair. His mouth had
opened slightly.
“I am reminded in this connection,” said the Oldest Member, “of the
story of young Chester Meredith, a friend of mine whom you have not, I
think, met. He moved from this neighbourhood shortly before you came.
There was a case where a man’s whole happiness was very nearly wrecked
purely because he tried to curb his instincts and thwart nature in this
very respect. Perhaps you would care to hear the story?”
A snore proceeded from the next chair.
“Very well, then,” said the Oldest Member, “I will relate it.”
* * * * *
Chester Meredith (said the Oldest Member) was one of the nicest young
fellows of my acquaintance. We had been friends ever since he had come
to live here as a small boy, and I had watched him with a fatherly eye
through all the more important crises of a young man’s life. It was
I who taught him to drive, and when he had all that trouble in his
twenty-first year with shanking his short approaches, it was to me that
he came for sympathy and advice. It was an odd coincidence, therefore,
that I should have been present when he fell in love.
I was smoking my evening cigar out here and watching the last couples
finishing their rounds, when Chester came out of the club-house and
sat by me. I could see that the boy was perturbed about something, and
wondered why, for I knew that he had won his match.
“What,” I inquired, “is on your mind?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Chester. “I was only thinking that there are some
human misfits who ought not be allowed on any decent links.”
“You mean--?”
“The Wrecking Crew,” said Chester, bitterly. “They held us up all the
way round, confound them. Wouldn’t let us through. What can you do with
people who don’t know enough of the etiquette of the game to understand
that a single has right of way over a four-ball foursome? We had to
loaf about for hours on end while they scratched at the turf like a
lot of crimson hens. Eventually all four of them lost their balls
simultaneously at the eleventh and we managed to get by. I hope they
choke.”
I was not altogether surprised at his warmth. The Wrecking Crew
consisted of four retired business men who had taken up the noble game
late in life because their doctors had ordered them air and exercise.
Every club, I suppose, has a cross of this kind to bear, and it
was not often that our members rebelled; but there was undoubtedly
something particularly irritating in the methods of the Wrecking Crew.
They tried so hard that it seemed almost inconceivable that they should
be so slow.
“They are all respectable men,” I said, “and were, I believe, highly
thought of in their respective businesses. But on the links I admit
that they are a trial.”
“They are the direct lineal descendants of the Gadarene swine,” said
Chester firmly. “Every time they come out I expect to see them rush
down the hill from the first tee and hurl themselves into the lake at
the second. Of all the--”
“Hush!” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye I had seen a girl approaching, and I was
afraid lest Chester in his annoyance might use strong language. For he
was one of those golfers who are apt to express themselves in moments
of emotion with a good deal of generous warmth.
“Eh?” said Chester.
I jerked my head, and he looked round. And, as he did so, there came
into his face an expression which I had seen there only once before,
on the occasion when he won the President’s Cup on the last green by
holing a thirty-yard chip with his mashie. It was a look of ecstasy and
awe. His mouth was open, his eyebrows raised, and he was breathing
heavily through his nose.
“Golly!” I heard him mutter.
The girl passed by. I could not blame Chester for staring at her. She
was a beautiful young thing, with a lissom figure and a perfect face.
Her hair was a deep chestnut, her eyes blue, her nose small and laid
back with about as much loft as a light iron. She disappeared, and
Chester, after nearly dislocating his neck trying to see her round the
corner of the club-house, emitted a deep, explosive sigh.
“Who is she?” he whispered.
I could tell him that. In one way and another I get to know most things
around this locality.
“She is a Miss Blakeney. Felicia Blakeney. She has come to stay for
a month with the Waterfields. I understand she was at school with
Jane Waterfield. She is twenty-three, has a dog named Joseph, dances
well, and dislikes parsnips. Her father is a distinguished writer on
sociological subjects; her mother is Wilmot Royce, the well-known
novelist, whose last work, _Sewers of the Soul_, was, you may recall,
jerked before a tribunal by the Purity League. She has a brother,
Crispin Blakeney, an eminent young reviewer and essayist, who is now in
India studying local conditions with a view to a series of lectures.
She only arrived here yesterday, so this is all I have been able to
find out about her as yet.”
Chester’s mouth was still open when I began speaking. By the time I had
finished it was open still wider. The ecstatic look in his eyes had
changed to one of dull despair.
“My God!” he muttered. “If her family is like that, what chance is
there for a rough-neck like me?”
“You admire her?”
“She is the alligator’s Adam’s apple,” said Chester, simply.
I patted his shoulder.
“Have courage, my boy,” I said. “Always remember that the love of a
good man, to whom the pro can give only a couple of strokes in eighteen
holes is not to be despised.”
“Yes, that’s all very well. But this girl is probably one solid mass of
brain. She will look on me as an uneducated wart-hog.”
“Well, I will introduce you, and we will see. She looked a nice girl.”
“You’re a great describer, aren’t you?” said Chester. “A wonderful
flow of language you’ve got, I don’t think! Nice girl! Why, she’s the
only girl in the world. She’s a pearl among women. She’s the most
marvellous, astounding, beautiful, heavenly thing that ever drew
perfumed breath.” He paused, as if his train of thought had been
interrupted by an idea. “Did you say that her brother’s name was
Crispin?”
“I did. Why?”
Chester gave vent to a few manly oaths.
“Doesn’t that just show you how things go in this rotten world?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was at school with him.”
“Surely that should form a solid basis for friendship?”
“Should it? Should it, by gad? Well, let me tell you that I probably
kicked that blighted worm Crispin Blakeney a matter of seven hundred
and forty-six times in the few years I knew him. He was the world’s
worst. He could have walked straight into the Wrecking Crew and no
questions asked. Wouldn’t it jar you? I have the luck to know her
brother, and it turns out that we couldn’t stand the sight of each
other.”
“Well, there is no need to tell her that.”
“Do you mean--?” He gazed at me wildly. “Do you mean that I might
pretend we were pals?”
“Why not? Seeing that he is in India, he can hardly contradict you.”
“My gosh!” He mused for a moment. I could see that the idea was
beginning to sink in. It was always thus with Chester. You had to give
him time. “By Jove, it mightn’t be a bad scheme at that. I mean, it
would start me off with a rush, like being one up on bogey in the first
two. And there’s nothing like a good start. By gad, I’ll do it.”
“I should.”
“Reminiscences of the dear old days when we were lads together, and all
that sort of thing.”
“Precisely.”
“It isn’t going to be easy, mind you,” said Chester, meditatively.
“I’ll do it because I love her, but nothing else in this world would
make me say a civil word about the blister. Well, then, that’s settled.
Get on with the introduction stuff, will you? I’m in a hurry.”
One of the privileges of age is that it enables a man to thrust his
society on a beautiful girl without causing her to draw herself up and
say “Sir!” It was not difficult for me to make the acquaintance of Miss
Blakeney, and, this done, my first act was to unleash Chester on her.
“Chester,” I said, summoning him as he loafed with an overdone
carelessness on the horizon, one leg almost inextricably entwined about
the other, “I want you to meet Miss Blakeney. Miss Blakeney, this is
my young friend Chester Meredith. He was at school with your brother
Crispin. You were great friends, were you not?”
“Bosom,” said Chester, after a pause.
“Oh, really?” said the girl. There was a pause. “He is in India now.”
“Yes,” said Chester.
There was another pause.
“Great chap,” said Chester, gruffly.
“Crispin is very popular,” said the girl, “with some people.”
“Always been my best pal,” said Chester.
“Yes?”
I was not altogether satisfied with the way matters were developing.
The girl seemed cold and unfriendly, and I was afraid that this was due
to Chester’s repellent manner. Shyness, especially when complicated
by love at first sight, is apt to have strange effects on a man, and
the way it had taken Chester was to make him abnormally stiff and
dignified. One of the most charming things about him, as a rule, was
his delightful boyish smile. Shyness had caused him to iron this out
of his countenance till no trace of it remained. Not only did he not
smile, he looked like a man who never had smiled and never would. His
mouth was a thin, rigid line. His back was stiff with what appeared to
be contemptuous aversion. He looked down his nose at Miss Blakeney as
if she were less than the dust beneath his chariot-wheels.
I thought the best thing to do was to leave them alone together to get
acquainted. Perhaps, I thought, it was my presence that was cramping
Chester’s style. I excused myself and receded.
* * * * *
It was some days before I saw Chester again. He came round to my
cottage one night after dinner and sank into a chair, where he
remained silent for several minutes.
“Well?” I said at last.
“Eh?” said Chester, starting violently.
“Have you been seeing anything of Miss Blakeney lately?”
“You bet I have.”
“And how do you feel about her on further acquaintance?”
“Eh?” said Chester, absently.
“Do you still love her?”
Chester came out of his trance.
“Love her?” he cried, his voice vibrating with emotion. “Of course I
love her. Who wouldn’t love her? I’d be a silly chump not loving her.
Do you know,” the boy went on, a look in his eyes like that of some
young knight seeing the Holy Grail in a vision, “do you know, she is
the only woman I ever met who didn’t overswing. Just a nice, crisp,
snappy, half-slosh, with a good full follow-through. And another thing.
You’ll hardly believe me, but she waggles almost as little as George
Duncan. You know how women waggle as a rule, fiddling about for a
minute and a half like kittens playing with a ball of wool. Well, she
just makes one firm pass with the club and then _bing!_ There is none
like her, none.”
“Then you have been playing golf with her?”
“Nearly every day.”
“How is your game?”
“Rather spotty. I seem to be mistiming them.”
I was concerned.
“I do hope, my dear boy,” I said, earnestly, “that you are taking care
to control your feelings when out on the links with Miss Blakeney. You
know what you are like. I trust you have not been using the sort of
language you generally employ on occasions when you are not timing them
right?”
“Me?” said Chester, horrified. “Who, me? You don’t imagine for a moment
that I would dream of saying a thing that would bring a blush to her
dear cheek, do you? Why, a bishop could have gone round with me and
learned nothing new.”
I was relieved.
“How do you find you manage the dialogue these days?” I asked. “When
I introduced you, you behaved--you will forgive an old friend for
criticising--you behaved a little like a stuffed frog with laryngitis.
Have things got easier in that respect?”
“Oh yes. I’m quite the prattler now. I talk about her brother mostly.
I put in the greater part of my time boosting the tick. It seems to be
coming easier. Will-power, I suppose. And then, of course, I talk a
good deal about her mother’s novels.”
“Have you read them?”
“Every damned one of them--for her sake. And if there’s a greater proof
of love than that, show me! My gosh, what muck that woman writes!
That reminds me, I’ve got to send to the bookshop for her latest--out
yesterday. It’s called _The Stench of Life_. A sequel, I understand, to
_Grey Mildew_.”
“Brave lad,” I said, pressing his hand. “Brave, devoted lad!”
“Oh, I’d do more than that for her.” He smoked for a while in silence.
“By the way, I’m going to propose to her to-morrow.”
“Already?”
“Can’t put it off a minute longer. It’s been as much as I could manage,
bottling it up till now. Where do you think would be the best place? I
mean, it’s not the sort of thing you can do while you’re walking down
the street or having a cup of tea. I thought of asking her to have a
round with me and taking a stab at it on the links.”
“You could not do better. The links--Nature’s cathedral.”
“Right-o, then! I’ll let you know how I come out.”
“I wish you luck, my boy,” I said.
* * * * *
And what of Felicia, meanwhile? She was, alas, far from returning
the devotion which scorched Chester’s vital organs. He seemed to her
precisely the sort of man she most disliked. From childhood up Felicia
Blakeney had lived in an atmosphere of highbrowism, and the type of
husband she had always seen in her daydreams was the man who was simple
and straightforward and earthy and did not know whether Artbashiekeff
was a suburb of Moscow or a new kind of Russian drink. A man like
Chester, who on his own statement would rather read one of her mother’s
novels than eat, revolted her. And his warm affection for her brother
Crispin set the seal on her distaste.
Felicia was a dutiful child, and she loved her parents. It took a
bit of doing, but she did it. But at her brother Crispin she drew
the line. He wouldn’t do, and his friends were worse than he was.
They were high-voiced, supercilious, pince-nezed young men who talked
patronisingly of Life and Art, and Chester’s unblushing confession that
he was one of them had put him ten down and nine to play right away.
You may wonder why the boy’s undeniable skill on the links had no power
to soften the girl. The unfortunate fact was that all the good effects
of his prowess were neutralised by his behaviour while playing. All
her life she had treated golf with a proper reverence and awe, and in
Chester’s attitude towards the game she seemed to detect a horrible
shallowness. The fact is, Chester, in his efforts to keep himself from
using strong language, had found a sort of relief in a girlish giggle,
and it made her shudder every time she heard it.
His deportment, therefore, in the space of time leading up to the
proposal could not have been more injurious to his cause. They started
out quite happily, Chester doing a nice two-hundred-yarder off the
first tee, which for a moment awoke the girl’s respect. But at the
fourth, after a lovely brassie-shot, he found his ball deeply embedded
in the print of a woman’s high heel. It was just one of those rubs of
the green which normally would have caused him to ease his bosom with a
flood of sturdy protest, but now he was on his guard.
“Tee-hee!” simpered Chester, reaching for his niblick. “Too bad, too
bad!” and the girl shuddered to the depths of her soul.
Having holed out, he proceeded to enliven the walk to the next tee with
a few remarks on her mother’s literary style, and it was while they
were walking after their drives that he proposed.
His proposal, considering the circumstances, could hardly have been
less happily worded. Little knowing that he was rushing upon his doom,
Chester stressed the Crispin note. He gave Felicia the impression that
he was suggesting this marriage more for Crispin’s sake than anything
else. He conveyed the idea that he thought how nice it would be for
brother Crispin to have his old chum in the family. He drew a picture
of their little home, with Crispin for ever popping in and out like
a rabbit. It is not to be wondered at that, when at length he had
finished and she had time to speak, the horrified girl turned him down
with a thud.
It is at moments such as these that a man reaps the reward of a good
upbringing.
In similar circumstances those who have not had the benefit of a
sound training in golf are too apt to go wrong. Goaded by the sudden
anguish, they take to drink, plunge into dissipation, and write _vers
libre_. Chester was mercifully saved from this. I saw him the day after
he had been handed the mitten, and was struck by the look of grim
determination in his face. Deeply wounded though he was, I could see
that he was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul.
“I am sorry, my boy,” I said, sympathetically, when he had told me the
painful news.
“It can’t be helped,” he replied, bravely.
“Her decision was final?”
“Quite.”
“You do not contemplate having another pop at her?”
“No good. I know when I’m licked.”
I patted him on the shoulder and said the only thing it seemed possible
to say.
“After all, there is always golf.”
He nodded.
“Yes. My game needs a lot of tuning up. Now is the time to do it. From
now on I go at this pastime seriously. I make it my life-work. Who
knows?” he murmured, with a sudden gleam in his eyes. “The Amateur
Championship--”
“The Open!” I cried, falling gladly into his mood.
“The American Amateur,” said Chester, flushing.
“The American Open,” I chorused.
“No one has ever copped all four.”
“No one.”
“Watch me!” said Chester Meredith, simply.
* * * * *
It was about two weeks after this that I happened to look in on Chester
at his house one morning. I found him about to start for the links.
As he had foreshadowed in the conversation which I have just related,
he now spent most of the daylight hours on the course. In these two
weeks he had gone about his task of achieving perfection with a furious
energy which made him the talk of the club. Always one of the best
players in the place, he had developed an astounding brilliance. Men
who had played him level were now obliged to receive two and even three
strokes. The pro. himself conceding one, had only succeeded in halving
their match. The struggle for the President’s Cup came round once more,
and Chester won it for the second time with ridiculous ease.
When I arrived, he was practising chip-shots in his sitting-room. I
noticed that he seemed to be labouring under some strong emotion, and
his first words gave me the clue.
“She’s going away to-morrow,” he said, abruptly, lofting a ball over
the whatnot on to the Chesterfield.
I was not sure whether I was sorry or relieved. Her absence would leave
a terrible blank, of course, but it might be that it would help him to
get over his infatuation.
“Ah!” I said, non-committally.
Chester addressed his ball with a well-assumed phlegm, but I could
see by the way his ears wiggled that he was feeling deeply. I was not
surprised when he topped his shot into the coal-scuttle.
“She has promised to play a last round with me this morning,” he said.
Again I was doubtful what view to take. It was a pretty, poetic idea,
not unlike Browning’s “Last Ride Together,” but I was not sure if it
was altogether wise. However, it was none of my business, so I merely
patted him on the shoulder and he gathered up his clubs and went off.
* * * * *
Owing to motives of delicacy I had not offered to accompany him on his
round, and it was not till later that I learned the actual details of
what occurred. At the start, it seems, the spiritual anguish which he
was suffering had a depressing effect on his game. He hooked his drive
off the first tee and was only enabled to get a five by means of a
strong niblick shot out of the rough. At the second, the lake hole,
he lost a ball in the water and got another five. It was only at the
third that he began to pull himself together.
The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.
Chester had this quality to a pre-eminent degree. A lesser man,
conscious of being three over bogey for the first two holes, might
have looked on his round as ruined. To Chester it simply meant that he
had to get a couple of “birdies” right speedily, and he set about it
at once. Always a long driver, he excelled himself at the third. It
is, as you know, an uphill hole all the way, but his drive could not
have come far short of two hundred and fifty yards. A brassie-shot of
equal strength and unerring direction put him on the edge of the green,
and he holed out with a long putt two under bogey. He had hoped for a
“birdie” and he had achieved an “eagle.”
I think that this splendid feat must have softened Felicia’s heart, had
it not been for the fact that misery had by this time entirely robbed
Chester of the ability to smile. Instead, therefore, of behaving in
the wholesome, natural way of men who get threes at bogey five holes,
he preserved a drawn, impassive countenance; and as she watched him
tee up her ball, stiff, correct, polite, but to all outward appearance
absolutely inhuman, the girl found herself stifling that thrill of what
for a moment had been almost adoration. It was, she felt, exactly how
her brother Crispin would have comported himself if he had done a hole
in two under bogey.
And yet she could not altogether check a wistful sigh when, after
a couple of fours at the next two holes, he picked up another
stroke on the sixth and with an inspired spoon-shot brought his
medal-score down to one better than bogey by getting a two at the
hundred-and-seventy-yard seventh. But the brief spasm of tenderness
passed, and when he finished the first nine with two more fours
she refrained from anything warmer than a mere word of stereotyped
congratulation.
“One under bogey for the first nine,” she said. “Splendid!”
“One under bogey!” said Chester, woodenly.
“Out in thirty-four. What is the record for the course?”
Chester started. So great had been his preoccupation that he had not
given a thought to the course record. He suddenly realised now that the
pro., who had done the lowest medal-score to date--the other course
record was held by Peter Willard with a hundred and sixty-one, achieved
in his first season--had gone out in only one better than his own
figures that day.
“Sixty-eight,” he said.
“What a pity you lost those strokes at the beginning!”
“Yes,” said Chester.
He spoke absently--and, as it seemed to her, primly and without
enthusiasm--for the flaming idea of having a go at the course record
had only just occurred to him. Once before he had done the first nine
in thirty-four, but on that occasion he had not felt that curious
feeling of irresistible force which comes to a golfer at the very
top of his form. Then he had been aware all the time that he had
been putting chancily. They had gone in, yes, but he had uttered a
prayer per putt. To-day he was superior to any weak doubtings. When he
tapped the ball on the green, he knew it was going to sink. The course
record? Why not? What a last offering to lay at her feet! She would
go away, out of his life for ever; she would marry some other bird;
but the memory of that supreme round would remain with her as long as
she breathed. When he won the Open and Amateur for the second--the
third--the fourth time, she would say to herself, “I was with him when
he dented the record for his home course!” And he had only to pick up a
couple of strokes on the last nine, to do threes at holes where he was
wont to be satisfied with fours. Yes, by Vardon, he would take a whirl
at it.
* * * * *
You, who are acquainted with these links, will no doubt say that the
task which Chester Meredith had sketched out for himself--cutting two
strokes off thirty-five for the second nine--was one at which Humanity
might well shudder. The pro. himself, who had finished sixth in the
last Open Championship, had never done better than a thirty-five,
playing perfect golf and being one under par. But such was Chester’s
mood that, as he teed up on the tenth, he did not even consider the
possibility of failure. Every muscle in his body was working in perfect
co-ordination with its fellows, his wrists felt as if they were made
of tempered steel, and his eyes had just that hawk-like quality which
enables a man to judge his short approaches to the inch. He swung
forcefully, and the ball sailed so close to the direction-post that for
a moment it seemed as if it had hit it.
“Oo!” cried Felicia.
Chester did not speak. He was following the flight of the ball. It
sailed over the brow of the hill, and with his knowledge of the course
he could tell almost the exact patch of turf on which it must have come
to rest. An iron would do the business from there, and a single putt
would give him the first of the “birdies” he required. Two minutes
later he had holed out a six-foot putt for a three.
“Oo!” said Felicia again.
Chester walked to the eleventh tee in silence.
“No, never mind,” she said, as he stooped to put her ball on the sand.
“I don’t think I’ll play any more. I’d much rather just watch you.”
“Oh, that you could watch me through life!” said Chester, but he said
it to himself. His actual words were “Very well!” and he spoke them
with a stiff coldness which chilled the girl.
The eleventh is one of the trickiest holes on the course, as no doubt
you have found out for yourself. It looks absurdly simple, but that
little patch of wood on the right that seems so harmless is placed just
in the deadliest position to catch even the most slightly sliced drive.
Chester’s lacked the austere precision of his last. A hundred yards
from the tee it swerved almost imperceptibly, and, striking a branch,
fell in the tangled undergrowth. It took him two strokes to hack it out
and put it on the green, and then his long putt, after quivering on
the edge of the hole, stayed there. For a swift instant red-hot words
rose to his lips, but he caught them just as they were coming out and
crushed them back. He looked at his ball and he looked at the hole.
“Tut!” said Chester.
Felicia uttered a deep sigh. The niblick-shot out of the rough had
impressed her profoundly. If only, she felt, this superb golfer had
been more human! If only she were able to be constantly in this man’s
society, to see exactly what it was that he did with his left wrist
that gave that terrific snap to his drives, she might acquire the knack
herself one of these days. For she was a clear-thinking, honest girl,
and thoroughly realised that she did not get the distance she ought
to with her wood. With a husband like Chester beside her to stimulate
and advise, of what might she not be capable? If she got wrong in
her stance, he could put her right with a word. If she had a bout of
slicing, how quickly he would tell her what caused it. And she knew
that she had only to speak the word to wipe out the effects of her
refusal, to bring him to her side for ever.
But could a girl pay such a price? When he had got that “eagle” on the
third, he had looked bored. When he had missed this last putt, he had
not seemed to care. “Tut!” What a word to use at such a moment! No,
she felt sadly, it could not be done. To marry Chester Meredith, she
told herself, would be like marrying a composite of Soames Forsyte, Sir
Willoughby Patterne, and all her brother Crispin’s friends. She sighed
and was silent.
* * * * *
Chester, standing on the twelfth tee, reviewed the situation swiftly,
like a general before a battle. There were seven holes to play, and he
had to do these in two better than bogey. The one that faced him now
offered few opportunities. It was a long, slogging, dog-leg hole, and
even Ray and Taylor, when they had played their exhibition game on the
course, had taken fives. No opening there.
The thirteenth--up a steep hill with a long iron-shot for one’s second
and a blind green fringed with bunkers? Scarcely practicable to hope
for better than a four. The fourteenth--into the valley with the ground
sloping sharply down to the ravine? He had once done it in three, but
it had been a fluke. No; on these three holes he must be content to
play for a steady par and trust to picking up a stroke on the fifteenth.
The fifteenth, straightforward up to the plateau green with its circle
of bunkers, presents few difficulties to the finished golfer who is on
his game. A bunker meant nothing to Chester in his present conquering
vein. His mashie-shot second soared almost contemptuously over the
chasm and rolled to within a foot of the pin. He came to the sixteenth
with the clear-cut problem before him of snipping two strokes off par
on the last three holes.
To the unthinking man, not acquainted with the layout of our links,
this would no doubt appear a tremendous feat. But the fact is, the
Greens Committee, with perhaps an unduly sentimental bias towards the
happy ending, have arranged a comparatively easy finish to the course.
The sixteenth is a perfectly plain hole with broad fairway and a
down-hill run; the seventeenth, a one-shot affair with no difficulties
for the man who keeps them straight; and the eighteenth, though its
up-hill run makes it deceptive to the stranger and leads the unwary
to take a mashie instead of a light iron for his second, has no real
venom in it. Even Peter Willard has occasionally come home in a canter
with a six, five, and seven, conceding himself only two eight-foot
putts. It is, I think, this mild conclusion to a tough course that
makes the refreshment-room of our club so noticeable for its sea of
happy faces. The bar every day is crowded with rejoicing men who,
forgetting the agonies of the first fifteen, are babbling of what they
did on the last three. The seventeenth, with its possibilities of
holing out a topped second, is particularly soothing.
* * * * *
Chester Meredith was not the man to top his second on any hole, so this
supreme bliss did not come his way; but he laid a beautiful mashie-shot
dead and got a three; and when with his iron he put his first well on
the green at the seventeenth and holed out for a two, life, for all his
broken heart, seemed pretty tolerable. He now had the situation well in
hand. He had only to play his usual game to get a four on the last and
lower the course record by one stroke.
It was at this supreme moment of his life that he ran into the Wrecking
Crew.
You doubtless find it difficult to understand how it came about that if
the Wrecking Crew were on the course at all he had not run into them
long before. The explanation is that, with a regard for the etiquette
of the game unusual in these miserable men, they had for once obeyed
the law that enacts that foursomes shall start at the tenth. They had
begun their dark work on the second nine, accordingly, at almost the
exact moment when Chester Meredith was driving off at the first, and
this had enabled them to keep ahead until now. When Chester came to the
eighteenth tee, they were just leaving it, moving up the fairway with
their caddies in mass formation and looking to his exasperated eye like
one of those great race-migrations of the Middle Ages. Wherever Chester
looked he seemed to see human, so to speak, figures. One was doddering
about in the long grass fifty yards from the tee, others debouched to
left and right. The course was crawling with them.
Chester sat down on the bench with a weary sigh. He knew these men.
Self-centred, remorseless, deaf to all the promptings of their better
nature, they never let any one through. There was nothing to do but
wait.
The Wrecking Crew scratched on. The man near the tee rolled his ball
ten yards, then twenty, then thirty--he was improving. Ere long he
would be out of range. Chester rose and swished his driver.
But the end was not yet. The individual operating in the rough on the
left had been advancing in slow stages, and now, finding his ball teed
up on a tuft of grass, he opened his shoulders and let himself go.
There was a loud report, and the ball, hitting a tree squarely, bounded
back almost to the tee, and all the weary work was to do again. By the
time Chester was able to drive, he was reduced by impatience, and the
necessity of refraining from commenting on the state of affairs as he
would have wished to comment, to a frame of mind in which no man could
have kept himself from pressing. He pressed, and topped. The ball
skidded over the turf for a meagre hundred yards.
“D-d-d-dear me!” said Chester.
The next moment he uttered a bitter laugh. Too late a miracle had
happened. One of the foul figures in front was waving its club. Other
ghastly creatures were withdrawing to the side of the fairway. Now,
when the harm had been done, these outcasts were signalling to him to
go through. The hollow mockery of the thing swept over Chester like
a wave. What was the use of going through now? He was a good three
hundred yards from the green, and he needed bogey at this hole to break
the record. Almost absently he drew his brassie from his bag; then, as
the full sense of his wrongs bit into his soul, he swung viciously.
Golf is a strange game. Chester had pressed on the tee and foozled. He
pressed now, and achieved the most perfect shot of his life. The ball
shot from its place as if a charge of powerful explosive were behind
it. Never deviating from a straight line, never more than six feet
from the ground, it sailed up the hill, crossed the bunker, eluded the
mounds beyond, struck the turf, rolled, and stopped fifty feet from the
hole. It was a brassie-shot of a lifetime, and shrill senile yippings
of excitement and congratulation floated down from the Wrecking Crew.
For, degraded though they were, these men were not wholly devoid of
human instincts.
Chester drew a deep breath. His ordeal was over. That third shot, which
would lay the ball right up to the pin, was precisely the sort of thing
he did best. Almost from boyhood he had been a wizard at the short
approach. He could hole out in two now on his left ear. He strode up
the hill to his ball. It could not have been lying better. Two inches
away there was a nasty cup in the turf; but it had avoided this and was
sitting nicely perched up, smiling an invitation to the mashie-niblick.
Chester shuffled his feet and eyed the flag keenly. Then he stooped to
play, and Felicia watched him breathlessly. Her whole being seemed to
be concentrated on him. She had forgotten everything save that she was
seeing a course record get broken. She could not have been more wrapped
up in his success if she had had large sums of money on it.
* * * * *
The Wrecking Crew, meanwhile, had come to life again. They had stopped
twittering about Chester’s brassie-shot and were thinking of resuming
their own game. Even in foursomes where fifty yards is reckoned a good
shot somebody must be away, and the man whose turn it was to play was
the one who had acquired from his brother-members of the club the
nickname of the First Grave-Digger.
A word about this human wen. He was--if there can be said to be grades
in such a sub-species--the star performer of the Wrecking Crew. The
lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down into
the mezzanine floor, but he was still a powerful man, and had in his
youth been a hammer-thrower of some repute. He differed from his
colleagues--the Man With the Hoe, Old Father Time, and Consul, the
Almost Human--in that, while they were content to peck cautiously at
the ball, he never spared himself in his efforts to do it a violent
injury. Frequently he had cut a blue dot almost in half with his
niblick. He was completely muscle-bound, so that he seldom achieved
anything beyond a series of chasms in the turf, but he was always
trying, and it was his secret belief that, given two or three miracles
happening simultaneously, he would one of these days bring off a
snifter. Years of disappointment had, however, reduced the flood of
hope to a mere trickle, and when he took his brassie now and addressed
the ball he had no immediate plans beyond a vague intention of rolling
the thing a few yards farther up the hill.
The fact that he had no business to play at all till Chester had
holed out did not occur to him; and even if it had occurred he would
have dismissed the objection as finicking. Chester, bending over his
ball, was nearly two hundred yards away--or the distance of three full
brassie-shots. The First Grave-Digger did not hesitate. He whirled up
his club as in distant days he had been wont to swing the hammer, and,
with the grunt which this performance always wrung from him, brought it
down.
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 one 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 dream-like 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 a 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 realised 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 and 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 staring 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 realised 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.