“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 anyone 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 changed completely 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-gagement, 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 realizing 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 realized 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 anyone 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,
