The Golf Omnibus (38 page)

“Well, there is no need to tell her that.”

“Do you mean⎯?” He gazed at me wildly. “Do you mean 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 over-done 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 criticizing—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 tomorrow.”

“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 patronizingly 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 neutralized 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 tomorrow,” 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”.