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 to-day. 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 unforseen 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 realised
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 stopped
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 in to buy a putter. Isidore thereupon 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.
“These were made to measure for Sandy McHoots, the Open Champion,” said
Lou, stroking the left leg lovingly. “But he sent ’em back for some
reason or other.”
“Perhaps they frightened the children,” said Wallace, recollecting
having heard that Mr. McHoots was a married man.
“They’ll fit you nice,” said Lou.
“Sure they’ll fit him nice,” said Isidore, warmly.
“Why, just take a look at yourself in the glass,” said Irving, “and see
if they don’t fit you nice.”
And, as one who wakes from a trance, Wallace discovered that his lower
limbs were now encased in the prismatic garment. At what point in the
proceedings the brethren had slipped them on him, he could not have
said. But he was undeniably in.
Wallace looked in the glass. For a moment, as he eyed his reflection,
sheer horror gripped him. Then suddenly, as he gazed, he became aware
that his first feelings were changing. The initial shock over, he was
becoming calmer. He waggled his right leg with a certain sang-froid.
There is a certain passage in the works of the poet Pope with which you
may be familiar. It runs as follows:
“_Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen:
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace._”
Even so was it with Wallace Chesney and these Plus Fours. At first he
had recoiled from them as any decent-minded man would have done. Then,
after a while, almost abruptly he found himself in the grip of a new
emotion. After an unsuccessful attempt to analyse this, he suddenly
got it. Amazing as it may seem, it was pleasure that he felt. He
caught his eye in the mirror, and it was smirking. Now that the things
were actually on, by Hutchinson, they didn’t look half bad. By Braid,
they didn’t. There was a sort of something about them. Take away that
expanse of bare leg with its unsightly sock-suspender and substitute a
woolly stocking, and you would have the lower section of a golfer. For
the first time in his life, he thought, he looked like a man who could
play golf.
There came to him an odd sensation of masterfulness. He was still
holding the putter, and now he swung it up above his shoulder. A fine
swing, all lissomness and supple grace, quite different from any swing
he had ever done before.
Wallace Chesney gasped. He knew that at last he had discovered that
prime grand secret of golf for which he had searched so long. It was
the costume that did it. All you had to do was wear Plus Fours. He had
always hitherto played in grey flannel trousers. Naturally he had not
been able to do himself justice. Golf required an easy dash, and how
could you be easily dashing in concertina-shaped trousers with a patch
on the knee? He saw now--what he had never seen before--that it was not
because they were crack players that crack players wore Plus Fours:
it was because they wore Plus Fours that they were crack players. And
these Plus Fours had been the property of an Open Champion. Wallace
Chesney’s bosom swelled, and he was filled, as by some strange gas,
with joy--with excitement--with confidence. Yes, for the first time in
his golfing life, he felt really confident.
True, the things might have been a shade less gaudy: they might perhaps
have hit the eye with a slightly less violent punch: but what of
that? True, again, he could scarcely hope to avoid the censure of his
club-mates when he appeared like this on the links: but what of _that_?
His club-mates must set their teeth and learn to bear these Plus Fours
like men. That was what Wallace Chesney thought about it. If they did
not like his Plus Fours, let them go and play golf somewhere else.
“How much?” he muttered, thickly. And the Brothers Cohen clustered
grimly round with note-books and pencils.
In predicting a stormy reception for his new apparel, Wallace Chesney
had not been unduly pessimistic. The moment he entered the club-house
Disaffection reared its ugly head. Friends of years’ standing called
loudly for the committee, and there was a small and vehement party
of the left wing, headed by Raymond Gandle, who was an artist by
profession, and consequently had a sensitive eye, which advocated
the tearing off and public burial of the obnoxious garment. But,
prepared as he had been for some such demonstration on the part of the
coarser-minded, Wallace had hoped for better things when he should meet
Charlotte Dix, the girl who loved him. Charlotte, he had supposed,
would understand and sympathise.
Instead of which, she uttered a piercing cry and staggered to a bench,
whence a moment later she delivered her ultimatum.
“Quick!” she said. “Before I have to look again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pop straight back into the changing-room while I’ve got my eyes shut,
and remove the fancy-dress.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Darling,” said Charlotte, “I think it’s sweet and patriotic of you to
be proud of your cycling club colours or whatever they are, but you
mustn’t wear them on the links. It will unsettle the caddies.”
“They _are_ a trifle on the bright side,” admitted Wallace. “But it
helps my game, wearing them. I was trying a few practice-shots just
now, and I couldn’t go wrong. Slammed the ball on the meat every time.
They inspire me, if you know what I mean. Come on, let’s be starting.”
Charlotte opened her eyes incredulously.
“You can’t seriously mean that you’re really going to _play_ in--those?
It’s against the rules. There must be a rule somewhere in the book
against coming out looking like a sunset. Won’t you go and burn them
for my sake?”
“But I tell you they give me confidence. I sort of squint down at them
when I’m addressing the ball, and I feel like a pro.”
“Then the only thing to do is for me to play you for them. Come on,
Wally, be a sportsman. I’ll give you a half and play you for the whole
outfit--the breeches, the red jacket, the little cap, and the belt with
the snake’s-head buckle. I’m sure all those things must have gone with
the breeches. Is it a bargain?”
* * * * *
Strolling on the club-house terrace some two hours later, Raymond
Gandle encountered Charlotte and Wallace coming up from the eighteenth
green.
“Just the girl I wanted to see,” said Raymond. “Miss Dix, I represent a
select committee of my fellow-members, and I have come to ask you on
their behalf to use the influence of a good woman to induce Wally to
destroy those Plus Fours of his, which we all consider nothing short
of Bolshevik propaganda and a menace to the public weal. May I rely on
you?”
“You may not,” retorted Charlotte. “They are the poor boy’s mascot.
You’ve no idea how they have improved his game. He has just beaten me
hollow. I am going to try to learn to bear them, so you must. Really,
you’ve no notion how he has come on. My cripple won’t be able to give
him more than a couple of bisques if he keeps up this form.”
“It’s something about the things,” said Wallace. “They give me
confidence.”
“They give _me_ a pain in the neck,” said Raymond Gandle.
* * * * *
To the thinking man nothing is more remarkable in this life than the
way in which Humanity adjusts itself to conditions which at their
outset might well have appeared intolerable. Some great cataclysm
occurs, some storm or earthquake, shaking the community to its
foundations; and after the first pardonable consternation one finds the
sufferers resuming their ordinary pursuits as if nothing had happened.
There have been few more striking examples of this adaptability than
the behaviour of the members of our golf-club under the impact of
Wallace Chesney’s Plus Fours. For the first few days it is not too
much to say that they were stunned. Nervous players sent their caddies
on in front of them at blind holes, so that they might be warned in
time of Wallace’s presence ahead and not have him happening to them
all of a sudden. And even the pro. was not unaffected. Brought up in
Scotland in an atmosphere of tartan kilts, he nevertheless winced,
and a startled “Hoots!” was forced from his lips when Wallace Chesney
suddenly appeared in the valley as he was about to drive from the fifth
tee.
But in about a week conditions were back to normalcy. Within ten days
the Plus Fours became a familiar feature of the landscape, and were
accepted as such without comment. They were pointed out to strangers
together with the waterfall, the Lover’s Leap, and the view from
the eighth green as things you ought not to miss when visiting the
course; but apart from that one might almost say they were ignored.
And meanwhile Wallace Chesney continued day by day to make the most
extraordinary progress in his play.
As I said before, and I think you will agree with me when I have
told you what happened subsequently, it was probably a case of
auto-hypnosis. There is no other sphere in which a belief in oneself
has such immediate effects as it has in golf. And Wallace, having
acquired self-confidence, went on from strength to strength. In under
a week he had ploughed his way through the Unfortunate Incidents--of
which class Peter Willard was the best example--and was challenging the
fellows who kept three shots in five somewhere on the fairway. A month
later he was holding his own with ten-handicap men. And by the middle
of the summer he was so far advanced that his name occasionally cropped
up in speculative talks on the subject of the July medal. One might
have been excused for supposing that, as far as Wallace Chesney was
concerned, all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
And yet--
The first inkling I received that anything was wrong came through a
chance meeting with Raymond Gandle, who happened to pass my gate on his
way back from the links just as I drove up in my taxi; for I had been
away from home for many weeks on a protracted business tour. I welcomed
Gandle’s advent and invited him in to smoke a pipe and put me abreast
of local gossip. He came readily enough--and seemed, indeed, to have
something on his mind and to be glad of the opportunity of revealing it
to a sympathetic auditor.
“And how,” I asked him, when we were comfortably settled, “did your
game this afternoon come out?”
“Oh, he beat me,” said Gandle, and it seemed to me that there was a
note of bitterness in his voice.
“Then He, whoever he was, must have been an extremely competent
performer?” I replied, courteously, for Gandle was one of the finest
players in the club. “Unless, of course, you were giving him some
impossible handicap.”
“No; we played level.”
“Indeed! Who was your opponent?”
“Chesney.”
“Wallace Chesney! And he beat you, playing level! This is the most
amazing thing I have ever heard.”
“He’s improved out of all knowledge.”
“He must have done. Do you think he would ever beat you again?”
“No. Because he won’t have the chance.”
“You surely do not mean that you will not play him because you are
afraid of being beaten?”
“It isn’t being beaten I mind--”
And if I omit to report the remainder of his speech it is not merely
because it contained expressions with which I am reluctant to sully my
lips, but because, omitting these expletives, what he said was almost
word for word what you were saying to me just now about Nathaniel
Frisby. It was, it seemed, Wallace Chesney’s manner, his arrogance,
his attitude of belonging to some superior order of being that had so
wounded Raymond Gandle. Wallace Chesney had, it appeared, criticised
Gandle’s mashie-play in no friendly spirit; had hung up the game on
the fourteenth tee in order to show him how to place his feet; and on
the way back to the club-house had said that the beauty of golf was
that the best player could enjoy a round even with a dud, because,
though there might be no interest in the match, he could always amuse
himself by playing for his medal score.
I was profoundly shaken.
“Wallace Chesney!” I exclaimed. “Was it really Wallace Chesney who
behaved in the manner you describe?”
“Unless he’s got a twin brother of the same name, it was.”
“Wallace Chesney a victim to swelled head! I can hardly credit it.”
“Well, you needn’t take my word for it unless you want to. Ask anybody.
It isn’t often he can get any one to play with him now.”
“You horrify me!”
Raymond Gandle smoked awhile in brooding silence.
“You’ve heard about his engagement?” he said at length.
“I have heard nothing, nothing. What about his engagement?”
“Charlotte Dix has broken it off.”
“No!”
“Yes. Couldn’t stand him any longer.”
I got rid of Gandle as soon as I could. I made my way as quickly as
possible to the house where Charlotte lived with her aunt. I was
determined to sift this matter to the bottom and to do all that lay in
my power to heal the breach between two young people for whom I had a
great affection.
“I have just heard the news,” I said, when the aunt had retired to some
secret lair, as aunts do, and Charlotte and I were alone.
“What news?” said Charlotte, dully. I thought she looked pale and ill,
and she had certainly grown thinner.
“This dreadful news about your engagement to Wallace Chesney. Tell me,
why did you do this thing? Is there no hope of a reconciliation?”
“Not unless Wally becomes his old self again.”
“But I had always regarded you two as ideally suited to one another.”
“Wally has completely changed in the last few weeks. Haven’t you heard?”
“Only sketchily, from Raymond Gandle.”
“I refuse,” said Charlotte, proudly, all the woman in her leaping
to her eyes, “to marry a man who treats me as if I were a kronen at
the present rate of exchange, merely because I slice an occasional
tee-shot. The afternoon I broke off the engagement”--her voice shook,
and I could see that her indifference was but a mask--“the afternoon I
broke off the en-gug-gug-gage-ment, he t-told me I ought to use an iron
off the tee instead of a dud-dud-driver.”
And the stricken girl burst into an uncontrollable fit of sobbing. And
realising that, if matters had gone as far as that, there was little I
could do, I pressed her hand silently and left her.
* * * * *
But though it seemed hopeless I decided to persevere. I turned my steps
towards Wallace Chesney’s bungalow, resolved to make one appeal to
the man’s better feelings. He was in his sitting-room when I arrived,
polishing a putter; and it seemed significant to me, even in that tense
moment, that the putter was quite an ordinary one, such as any capable
player might use. In the brave old happy days of his dudhood, the only
putters you ever found in the society of Wallace Chesney were patent
self-adjusting things that looked like croquet mallets that had taken
the wrong turning in childhood.
“Well, Wallace, my boy,” I said.
“Hallo!” said Wallace Chesney. “So you’re back?”
We fell into conversation, and I had not been in the room two minutes
before I realised that what I had been told about the change in him was
nothing more than the truth. The man’s bearing and his every remark
were insufferably bumptious. He spoke of his prospects in the July
medal competition as if the issue were already settled. He scoffed at
his rivals.
I had some little difficulty in bringing the talk round to the matter
which I had come to discuss.
“My boy,” I said at length, “I have just heard the sad news.”
“What sad news?”
“I have been talking to Charlotte--”
“Oh, that!” said Wallace Chesney.
“She was telling me--”
“Perhaps it’s all for the best.”
“All for the best? What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Wallace, “one doesn’t wish, of course, to say anything
ungallant, but, after all, poor Charlotte’s handicap _is_ fourteen
and wouldn’t appear to have much chance of getting any lower. I mean,
there’s such a thing as a fellow throwing himself away.”
Was I revolted at these callous words? For a moment, yes. Then it
struck me that, though he had uttered them with a light laugh, that
laugh had had in it more than a touch of bravado. I looked at him
keenly. There was a bored, discontented expression in his eyes, a line
of pain about his mouth.
“My boy,” I said, gravely, “you are not happy.”
For an instant I think he would have denied the imputation. But my
visit had coincided with one of those twilight moods in which a man
requires, above all else, sympathy. He uttered a weary sigh.
“I’m fed up,” he admitted. “It’s a funny thing. When I was a dud, I
used to think how perfect it must be to be scratch. I used to watch
the cracks buzzing round the course and envy them. It’s all a fraud.
The only time when you enjoy golf is when an occasional decent shot is
enough to make you happy for the day. I’m plus two, and I’m bored to
death. I’m too good. And what’s the result? Everybody’s jealous of me.
Everybody’s got it in for me. Nobody loves me.”
His voice rose in a note of anguish, and at the sound his terrier,
which had been sleeping on the rug, crept forward and licked his hand.
“The dog loves you,” I said, gently, for I was touched.
“Yes, but I don’t love the dog,” said Wallace Chesney.
“Now come, Wallace,” I said. “Be reasonable, my boy. It is only your
unfortunate manner on the links which has made you perhaps a little
unpopular at the moment. Why not pull yourself up? Why ruin your whole
life with this arrogance? All that you need is a little tact, a little
forbearance. Charlotte, I am sure, is just as fond of you as ever, but
you have wounded her pride. Why must you be unkind about her tee-shots?”
Wallace Chesney shook his head despondently.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “It exasperates me to see any one foozling,
and I have to say so.”
“Then there is nothing to be done,” I said, sadly.
* * * * *
All the medal competitions at our club are, as you know, important
events; but, as you are also aware, none of them is looked forward to
so keenly or contested so hotly as the one in July. At the beginning
of the year of which I am speaking, Raymond Gandle had been considered
the probable winner of the fixture; but as the season progressed
and Wallace Chesney’s skill developed to such a remarkable extent
most of us were reluctantly inclined to put our money on the latter.
Reluctantly, because Wallace’s unpopularity was now so general that the
thought of his winning was distasteful to all. It grieved me to see
how cold his fellow-members were towards him. He drove off from the
first tee without a solitary hand-clap; and, though the drive was of
admirable quality and nearly carried the green, there was not a single
cheer. I noticed Charlotte Dix among the spectators. The poor girl was
looking sad and wan.
In the draw for partners Wallace had had Peter Willard allotted to
him; and he muttered to me in a quite audible voice that it was as bad
as handicapping him half-a-dozen strokes to make him play with such
a hopeless performer. I do not think Peter heard, but it would not
have made much difference to him if he had, for I doubt if anything
could have had much effect for the worse on his game. Peter Willard
always entered for the medal competition, because he said that
competition-play was good for the nerves.
On this occasion he topped his ball badly, and Wallace lit his pipe
with the exaggeratedly patient air of an irritated man. When Peter
topped his second also, Wallace was moved to speech.
“For goodness’ sake,” he snapped, “what’s the good of playing at all if
you insist on lifting your head? Keep it down, man, keep it down. You
don’t need to watch to see where the ball is going. It isn’t likely to
go as far as all that. Make up your mind to count three before you look
up.”
“Thanks,” said Peter, meekly. There was no pride in Peter to be
wounded. He knew the sort of player he was.
The couples were now moving off with smooth rapidity, and the course
was dotted with the figures of players and their accompanying
spectators. A fair proportion of these latter had decided to follow the
fortunes of Raymond Gandle, but by far the larger number were sticking
to Wallace, who right from the start showed that Gandle or any one
else would have to return a very fine card to beat him. He was out in
thirty-seven, two above bogey, and with the assistance of a superb
second, which landed the ball within a foot of the pin, got a three on
the tenth, where a four is considered good. I mention this to show
that by the time he arrived at the short lake-hole Wallace Chesney was
at the top of his form. Not even the fact that he had been obliged to
let the next couple through owing to Peter Willard losing his ball had
been enough to upset him.
* * * * *
The course has been rearranged since, but at that time the lake-hole,
which is now the second, was the eleventh, and was generally looked on
as the crucial hole in a medal round. Wallace no doubt realised this,
but the knowledge did not seem to affect him. He lit his pipe with the
utmost coolness: and, having replaced the match-box in his hip-pocket,
stood smoking nonchalantly as he waited for the couple in front to get
off the green.
They holed out eventually, and Wallace walked to the tee. As he did so,
he was startled to receive a resounding smack.
“Sorry,” said Peter Willard, apologetically. “Hope I didn’t hurt you. A
wasp.”
And he pointed to the corpse, which was lying in a used-up attitude on
the ground.
“Afraid it would sting you,” said Peter.
“Oh, thanks,” said Wallace.
He spoke a little stiffly, for Peter Willard had a large, hard, flat
hand, the impact of which had shaken him up considerably. Also, there
had been laughter in the crowd. He was fuming as he bent to address
his ball, and his annoyance became acute when, just as he reached the
top of his swing, Peter Willard suddenly spoke.
“Just a second, old man,” said Peter. Wallace spun round, outraged.
“What _is_ it? I do wish you would wait till I’ve made my shot.”
“Just as you like,” said Peter, humbly.
“There is no greater crime that a man can commit on the links than to
speak to a fellow when he’s making his stroke.”
“Of course, of course,” acquiesced Peter, crushed.
Wallace turned to his ball once more. He was vaguely conscious of a
discomfort to which he could not at the moment give a name. At first he
thought that he was having a spasm of lumbago, and this surprised him,
for he had never in his life been subject to even a suspicion of that
malady. A moment later he realised that this diagnosis had been wrong.
“Good heavens!” he cried, leaping nimbly some two feet into the air.
“I’m on fire!”
“Yes,” said Peter, delighted at his ready grasp of the situation.
“That’s what I wanted to mention just now.”
Wallace slapped vigorously at the seat of his Plus Fours.
“It must have been when I killed that wasp,” said Peter, beginning to
see clearly into the matter. “You had a match-box in your pocket.”
Wallace was in no mood to stop and discuss first causes. He was
springing up and down on his pyre, beating at the flames.
“Do you know what I should do if I were you?” said Peter Willard. “I
should jump into the lake.”
One of the cardinal rules of golf is that a player shall accept no
advice from any one but his own caddie; but the warmth about his lower
limbs had now become so generous that Wallace was prepared to stretch a
point. He took three rapid strides and entered the water with a splash.
The lake, though muddy, is not deep, and presently Wallace was to be
observed standing up to his waist some few feet from the shore.
“That ought to have put it out,” said Peter Willard. “It was a bit of
luck that it happened at this hole.” He stretched out a hand to the
bather. “Catch hold, old man, and I’ll pull you out.”
“No!” said Wallace Chesney.
“Why not?”
“Never mind!” said Wallace, austerely. He bent as near to Peter as he
was able.
“Send a caddie up to the club-house to fetch my grey flannel trousers
from my locker,” he whispered, tensely.
“Oh, ah!” said Peter.
It was some little time before Wallace, encircled by a group of male
spectators, was enabled to change his costume; and during the interval
he continued to stand waist-deep in the water, to the chagrin of
various couples who came to the tee in the course of their round and
complained with not a little bitterness that his presence there added
a mental hazard to an already difficult hole. Eventually, however, he
found himself back ashore, his ball before him, his mashie in his hand.
“Carry on,” said Peter Willard, as the couple in front left the green.
“All clear now.”
Wallace Chesney addressed his ball. And, even as he did so, he was
suddenly aware that an odd psychological change had taken place in
himself. He was aware of a strange weakness. The charred remains of the
Plus Fours were lying under an adjacent bush; and, clad in the old grey
flannels of his early golfing days, Wallace felt diffident, feeble,
uncertain of himself. It was as though virtue had gone out of him,
as if some indispensable adjunct to good play had been removed. His
corrugated trouser-leg caught his eye as he waggled, and all at once he
became acutely alive to the fact that many eyes were watching him. The
audience seemed to press on him like a blanket. He felt as he had been
wont to feel in the old days when he had had to drive off the first tee
in front of a terrace-full of scoffing critics.
The next moment his ball had bounded weakly over the intervening patch
of turf and was in the water.
“Hard luck!” said Peter Willard, ever a generous foe. And the words
seemed to touch some almost atrophied chord in Wallace’s breast.
A sudden love for his species flooded over him. Dashed decent of
Peter, he thought, to sympathise. Peter was a good chap. So were the
spectators good chaps. So was everybody, even his caddie.
Peter Willard, as if resolved to make his sympathy practical, also
rolled his ball into the lake.
“Hard luck!” said Wallace Chesney, and started as he said it; for many
weeks had passed since he had commiserated with an opponent. He felt a
changed man. A better, sweeter, kindlier man. It was as if a curse had
fallen from him.
He teed up another ball, and swung.
“Hard luck!” said Peter.
“Hard luck!” said Wallace, a moment later.
“Hard luck!” said Peter, a moment after that.
Wallace Chesney stood on the tee watching the spot in the water where
his third ball had fallen. The crowd was now openly amused, and, as he
listened to their happy laughter, it was borne in upon Wallace that he,
too, was amused and happy. A weird, almost effervescent exhilaration
filled him. He turned and beamed upon the spectators. He waved his
mashie cheerily at them. This, he felt, was something like golf. This
was golf as it should be--not the dull, mechanical thing which had
bored him during all these past weeks of his perfection, but a gay,
rollicking adventure. That was the soul of golf, the thing that made it
the wonderful pursuit it was--that speculativeness, that not knowing
where the dickens your ball was going when you hit it, that eternal
hoping for the best, that never-failing chanciness. It is better to
travel hopefully than to arrive, and at last this great truth had come
home to Wallace Chesney. He realised now why pros were all grave,
silent men who seemed to struggle manfully against some secret sorrow.
It was because they were too darned good. Golf had no surprises for
them, no gallant spirit of adventure.
“I’m going to get a ball over if I stay here all night,” cried Wallace
Chesney, gaily, and the crowd echoed his mirth. On the face of
Charlotte Dix was the look of a mother whose prodigal son has rolled
into the old home once more. She caught Wallace’s eye and gesticulated
to him blithely.
“The cripple says he’ll give you a stroke a hole, Wally!” she shouted.
“I’m ready for him!” bellowed Wallace.
“Hard _luck_!” said Peter Willard.
Under their bush the Plus Fours, charred and dripping, lurked
unnoticed. But Wallace Chesney saw them. They caught his eye as he
sliced his eleventh into the marshes on the right. It seemed to him
that they looked sullen. Disappointed. Baffled.
Wallace Chesney was himself again.