It, and Other Stories Part 33

"Do you know what the bogey for the course is?" said he. "It's seventy-eight. Do you know what your handicap is? It's twenty."

Old Major Jennings winced slightly. His handicap had never seemed quite adequate to him.

"Well?" he said.

"Well," said Jimmie, who ever tempered his speech to his hearer's understanding, "what's twenty added to seventy-eight?"

"Eighty-eight--ninety-eight," said old Major Jennings (but not conceitedly).

"Right," said Jimmie. "Well, you start at the first tee and play ninety-eight strokes. Where the ball lies after the ninety-eighth, you plant the card with your name on it. And that's all."

"Suppose after my ninety-eighth stroke that my ball lies in the pond?"

said old Major Jennings with a certain timid conviction. The pond hole is only the twelfth, and Jimmie wanted to laugh, but did not.

"If that happens," he said, "you'll have to report it, I'm afraid, to the Green Committee. Who are you going around with?"

"I haven't got anybody to go around with," said the major. "I didn't know there was going to be a tournament till it was too late to ask any one to play with me."

This conversation took place in the new shop, a place all windows, suns.h.i.+ne, labels, varnishes, vises, files, grips, and clubs of exquisite workmans.h.i.+p. At one of the benches a grave-eyed young negro, ap.r.o.ned and concentrated, was enamelling the head of a driver with sh.e.l.lac. Sudden cannon fire would not have shaken his hand. In one corner a rosy lad with curly yellow hair dangled his legs from the height of a packing-case and chewed gum. He had been born with a golden spoon in his mouth, and was learning golf from the inside. Sometimes he winked with one eye. But these silent comments were hidden from the major.

"I don't care about the tournament," said the latter, his loose lip trembling slightly. "I'll just practice a little."

"Don't be in a hurry, sir," said Jimmie sympathetically; "General Bullwigg hasn't any one to go around with either. And if you don't mind----"

"Bullwigg," said the major vaguely; "I used to know a Bullwigg."

"He's a very fine gentleman indeed, sir," said Jimmie. "Same handicap as yourself, sir, and if you don't mind----"

"Where is he from?" asked the major.

"I don't know, sir. Mr. Bowers extended the privileges of the club to him. He's stopping at the Park in the Pines."

"Oh!" said the major, and then with a certain dignity and resolution: "If Mr. Bowers knows him, and if _he_ doesn't mind, I'm sure I don't. Is he here?"

"He's waiting at the first tee," said Jimmie, and he averted his face.

At the first tee old Major Jennings found a portly, red-faced gentleman, with fierce, bushy eyebrows, who seemed prepared to play golf under any condition of circ.u.mstance and weather. He had two caddies. One carried a monstrous bag, which, in addition to twice the usual number of clubs, contained a crook-handled walking-stick and a crook-handled umbrella; the other carried over his right arm a greatcoat, in case the June-like weather should turn cold, and over his left a mackintosh, in case rain should fall from the cloudless, azure heavens. The gentleman himself was swinging a wooden club, with pudgy vehemence, at an imaginary ball. Upon his countenance was that expression of fort.i.tude which wins battles and champions.h.i.+ps. Old Major Jennings approached timidly. He was very shy.

In the distance he saw two of his intimate friends finis.h.i.+ng out the first hole. Except for himself and the well-prepared stranger they had been the last pair to start, and the old major's pale blue eyes clung to them as those of a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner may cling to s.h.i.+ps upon the horizon. Then he pulled himself together and said:

"General Bullwigg, I presume."

"The very man," said the general, and the two gentlemen lifted their plaid golfing caps and bowed to each other. Owing to extreme diffidence, Major Jennings did not volunteer his own name; owing to the fact that he seldom thought of anything but himself, General Bullwigg did not ask it.

Major Jennings was impatient to be off, but it was General Bullwigg's honor, and he could not compel that gentleman to drive until he was quite ready. General Bullwigg apostrophized the weather and the links.

He spoke at some length of "_My_ game," "_My_ swing," "_My_ wrist motion," "_My_ notion of getting out of a bunker." He told an anecdote which reminded him of another. He touched briefly upon the manufacture of b.a.l.l.s, the principle of imparting pure back-spin; the best seed for Northern greens, the best sand for Southern. And then, by way of adding insult to injury, he stepped up to his ball and, with due consideration for his age and stomach, drove it far and straight.

"Fine shot, sir," was Major Jennings's comment.

"I've seen better, sir," said General Bullwigg. "But I won't take it over."

Major Jennings teed up his ball, and addressed it, and waggled, and s.h.i.+fted his feet, and had just received that sudden inner knowledge that the time was come to strike, when General Bullwigg interrupted him.

"My first visit to Aiken," said he, "was in the 60's. But that was no visit of pleasure. No, sir. Along the brow of this hill upon which we are standing was an earthwork. In the pines yonder, back of the first green, was a battery. In those days we did not fight it out with the pacific putter, but with bullets and bayonets."

"Were you in the battle of Aiken?" asked the major, so quietly as to make the question sound purely perfunctory.

General Bullwigg laughed, as strong men laugh, from the stomach, and with a sweeping gesture of his left hand appeared to dismiss a hundred flatterers.

"I have heard men say," said he, "that I _was_ the battle of Aiken."

With an involuntary shudder Major Jennings hastily addressed his ball, swung jerkily, and topped it feebly down the hill. Then, smiling a sickly smile, he said:

"We're off."

"Get a good one?" asked General Bullwigg. "I wasn't looking."

"Not a very good one," said Major Jennings, inwardly writhing, "but straight--perfectly straight. A little on top."

They sagged down the hill, the major in a pained silence, the general describing, with sweeping gestures, the positions of the various troops among the surrounding hills at the beginning of the battle of Aiken.

"In those days," he went on, "I was second lieutenant in the gallant Twenty-ninth; but it often happens that a young man has an old head on his shoulders, and as one after the other of my superior officers--superior in rank--bit the dust---- That ball is badly cupped.

You will hardly get it away with a bra.s.sy; if I were you I should play my niblick. Well out, sir! A fine recovery! On this very spot I saw a bomb burst. The air was filled with arms and legs. It seemed as if they would never come down. I shall play my bra.s.sy spoon, Purnell, the one with the yellow head. I see you don't carry a spoon. Most invaluable club. There are days when I can do anything with a spoon. I used to own one of which I often said that it could do anything but talk."

Major Jennings shuddered as if he were very cold; while General Bullwigg swung his spoon and made another fine shot. He had a perfect four for the first hole, to Major Jennings's imperfect and doddering seven.

"The enemy," said General Bullwigg, "had a breastwork of pine logs all along this line. I remember the general said to me: 'Bullwigg,' he said, 'to get them out of that timber is like getting rats out of the walls of a house.' And I said: 'General----'"

"It's your honor," the major interrupted mildly.

But General Bullwigg would not drive until he had brought his anecdote to a self-laudatory end. And his ball was not half through its course before he had begun another. The major, compelled to listen, again foozled, and a dull red began to mantle his whole face. And in his peaceful and affable heart there waxed a sullen, feverish rage against his companion.

The battle of Aiken was on.

Sing, O chaste and reluctant Muse, the battle of Aiken! Only don't sing it! State it, as is the fas.h.i.+on of our glorious times, in humble and perishable prose. Fling grammar of which nothing is now known to the demnition bow-wows, and state how in the beginning General Bullwigg had an advantage of many strokes, not wasted, over his self-effacing companion. State how, because of the general's incessant chatter, the gentle and gallant major foozled shot after shot; how once his ball hid in a jasmine bower, once behind the stem of a tree, and once in a sort of cavern over which the broom straw waved. But omit not, O truthful and ecstatic one, to mention that dull rage which grew from small beginnings in the major's breast until it became furious and all-consuming, like a prairie fire. At this stage your narrative becomes heroic, and it might be in order for you, O capable and delectable one, to switch from humble stating to loud singing. Only don't do it. State on. State how the rage into which he had fallen served to lend precision to the major's eye, steel to his wrist, rhythm to his tempo, and fiery ambition to his gentle and retiring soul. He is filled with memories of daring: of other battles in other days. He remembers what times he sought the bubble reputation in the cannon's mouth, and spiked the aforementioned cannon's touch-hole into the bargain. And he remembers the greater war that he fought single-handed for a number of years against the demon rum.

State, too, exquisite Parna.s.sian, and keep stating, how that General Bullwigg did incessantly talk, prattle, jabber, joke, boast, praise himself, stand in the wrong place, and rehea.r.s.e the n.o.ble deeds that he himself had performed in the first battle of Aiken. And state how the major answered him less and less frequently, but more and more loudly and curtly--but I see that you are exhausted, and, thanking you kindly, I shall resume the narrative myself.

They came to the pond hole, which was the twelfth; the general, still upon his interminable reminiscences of his own military glory, stood up to drive, and was visited by his first real disaster. He swung--and he looked up. His ball, beaten downward into the hard clay tee, leaped forward with a sound as of a stone breaking in two and dove swiftly into the centre of the pond. The major spoke never a word. For the first time during the long dreary round his risibles were tickled and he wanted to laugh. Instead he concentrated all his faculties upon his ball and made a fine drive.

Not so the general with his second attempt. Again he found water, and fell into a panic at the sudden losing of so many invaluable strokes (not to mention two brand-new b.a.l.l.s at seventy-five cents each).

It was at the pond hole that the major's luck began to ameliorate. For the first time in his life he made it in three--a long approach close to the green; a short mas.h.i.+e shot that trickled into the very cup. And it was at the pond hole that the general, who had hitherto played far above his ordinary form, began to go to pieces. He was a little dashed in spirit, but not in eloquence.

Going to the long fourteenth, they found the first evidence of those who had gone before. In the very midst of the fair green they saw, s.h.i.+ning afar, like a white tombstone, stuck in its cleft stick, the card of the first compet.i.tor to use up the whole of his allotted strokes. They paused a moment to read:

Sacred to the Memory of W. H. Lands 78 + 6 = 84 Who Sliced Himself to Pieces