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 clubhouse 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 sympathize. 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 struggle hopefully than to arrive, and at last this great truth had come home to Wallace Chesney. He realized now why pro’s 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 eyes 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.
The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh
Down on the new bowling-green behind the clubhouse some sort of competition was in progress. The seats about the smooth strip of turf were crowded, and the weak-minded yapping of the patients made itself plainly audible to the Oldest Member as he sat in his favourite chair in the smoking-room. He shifted restlessly, and a frown marred the placidity of his venerable brow. To the Oldest Member a golf club was a golf club, and he resented the introduction of any alien element. He had opposed the institution of tennis-courts; and the suggestion of a bowling-green had stirred him to his depths.
A young man in spectacles came into the smoking-room. His high forehead was aglow, and he lapped up a ginger-ale with the air of one who considers that he had earned it.
“Capital exercise!” he said, beaming upon the Oldest Member.
The Oldest Member laid down his Vardon on Casual Water, and peered suspiciously at his companion.
“What did you go round in?” he asked.
“Oh, I wasn’t playing golf,” said the young man. “Bowls.”
“A nauseous pursuit!” said the Oldest Member, coldly, and resumed his reading.
The young man seemed
