The Wrong Twin Part 27

It compelled a certain measure of her difficult respect, especially when she beheld him worm his truck through crowded River Street with a supreme disregard for the imminent catastrophe--which somehow never ensued. But it lacked gentility. At twenty-eight Winona was not only perfected in the grammar of morals, more than ever alert for infractions of the merely social code, but her ideals of refinement and elegance had become more demanding. She would have had the boy engage in a pursuit that would require clean hands and smart apparel and bring him in contact with people of the right sort. She stubbornly held out to him the shining possibility that he might one day rise to the pinnacle of a clerical post in the First National Bank.

True, he had never betrayed the faintest promise of qualifying for this eminence, and his freely voiced preferences sweepingly excluded it from the catalogue of occupations in which he might consent to engage. But Winona was now studying doctrines that put all power in the heart's desire. Out of the infinite your own would come to you if you held the thought, and she serenely held the better thought for Wilbur, even in the moment of mechanical triumphs that brimmed his own cup of desire.

She willed him to prefer choicer characters than the roughs he consorted with, to aspire to genteel occupation that would not send him back at the day's end grimed, reeking with low odours, and far too hungry.

His exigent appet.i.te, indeed, alarmed her beyond measure, because he cried out for meat, whereas Winona's new books said that meat eaters could hope for little reward of the spirit. A few simple vegetables, fruits, and nuts--these permitted the soul to expand, to attain harmony with the infinite, until one came to choose only the best among ideals and human a.s.sociates. But she learned that she must in this case compromise, for a boy demanding meat would get it in one place if not another. If not at the guarded Penniman table, then at the low resort next to Pegleg McCarron's of one T-bone Tommy, where they commonly devoured the carca.s.ses of murdered beasts and made no secret of it.

He even rebelled at fabrications, highly extolled in the gospel of clean eating, which were meant to placate the baser minded by their resemblances to meat--things like nut turkey and mock veal loaf and leguminous chicken and synthetic beefsteak cooked in pure vegetable oils. These he scorned the more bitterly for their false pretense, demanding plain meat and a lot of it. The nations cited by Winona that had thrived and grown strong on the produce of the fields left him unimpressed. He merely said, goaded to harshness, that he was not going to be a Chinese laundryman for any one.

Of what avail to read the lyrics of a great Hindu vegetarian poet to this undeveloped being? Still Winona laboured unceasingly to bring light to the dark place. Teaching a public school for eight years had developed a substratum of granite determination in her character. She would never quit. She was still to the outer eye the slight, brown Winona of twenty--perky, birdlike, with the quick trimness of a winging swallow, a little sharper featured perhaps, but superior in acuteness of desire and persistence, and with some furtive, irresponsible girlishness lurking timorously back in her bright glance.

She still secretly relished the jesting address of Dave Cowan, when at long intervals he lingered in Newbern from cross-country flights. It thrilled her naughtily to be addressed as La Marquise, to be accused of goings-on at the court of Louis XVIII, about which the less said the better. She had never brought herself to wear the tan silk stockings of invidious allure, and she still confined herself to her mother's plainest dressmaking, yearning secretly for the fancy kind, but never with enough daring. Lyman Teaford still came of an evening to play his flute acceptably, while Winona accompanied him in many an amorous morceau. Lyman, in the speech of Newbern, had for eight years been going with Winona. But as the romantically impatient and sometimes a bit snappish Mrs. Penniman would say, he had never gone far.

Winona rejoiced a year later when golf promised, at least for a summer, to s.n.a.t.c.h Wilbur Cowan from the grimy indistinction of a mechanic's career. For thriving and aspiring Newbern had eased one of its growing pains with a veritable golf course, and the whilom machinery enthusiast became smitten with this strange new sport. Winona rejoiced, because it would bring him into contact with people of the better sort, for of course only these played the game. Her charge, it is true, engaged in the sport as a business, and not as one seeking recreation, but the desired social contact was indubitable. To carry over the course a bag or two of clubs for the elect of Newbern was bound to be improving.

And it was true that he now consorted daily through a profitable summer with people who had heretofore been but names to him. But Winona had neglected to observe that he would meet them not as a social equal but as a hireling. This was excusable in her, because she had only the vaguest notions of golf or of the interrelations between caddie and player. One informed in the ways of the sport could have warned her that caddies inevitably become cynical toward all people of the sort one cares to meet. Compelled by a rigid etiquette to silent, unemotional formality, they boil interiorly with contempt for people of the better sort, not only because their golf is usually atrocious--such as every caddie brilliantly surpa.s.ses in his leisure moments--but because the speech provoked by their inveterate failures is commonly all too human.

So the results of Wilbur Cowan's contact with people Winona would approve, enduring for a mercifully brief summer and autumn, were not what Winona had fondly preconceived. He had first been attracted to the course--a sweet course, said the golf-architect who had laid it out over the rolling land south of town--by the personality of one John Knox McTavish, an earnest Scotchman of youngish middle age, procured from afar to tell the beginning golfers of Newbern to keep their heads down and follow through and not to press the ball. As John spoke, it was "Don't pr-r-r-r-ess th' ball." He had been chosen from among other candidates because of his accent. He richly endowed his words with r's, making more than one grow where only one had grown before. It was this vocal burriness that drew the facile notice of Wilbur. He delighted to hear John McTavish talk, and hung about the new clubhouse, apparently without purpose, until John not only sanctioned but besought his presence, calling him Laddie and luring him with tales of the monstrous gains ama.s.sed by competent caddies.

The boy lingered, though from motives other than mercenary. His cup was full when he could hear John's masterful voice addressed to Mrs. Rapp, Junior, or another aspirant.

"R-r-remember, mum, th' ar-r-r-um close, th' head down--and don't pr-r-r-ress th' ball."

Yet he was presently allured by a charm even more imperious, the charm of the game itself. For John at odd moments would teach him the use of those strange weapons, so that he had the double thrill of standing under the torrential r's addressed to himself and of feeling the sharp, clean impact of the club head upon a ball that flew a surprising distance. His obedient young muscles soon conformed to the few master laws of the game. He kept down, followed through and forebore, against all human instinct, to press the ball.

By the end of Newbern's golfing season he was able to do almost unerringly what so many of Newbern's better sort did erratically and at intervals. And the talk of John Knox McTavish about the wealth accruing to alert caddies had proved to be not all fanciful. In addition to the stipend earned for conventional work, there were lost b.a.l.l.s in abundance to be salvaged and resold.

"Laddie," said John McTavish, "if I but had the lost-ball pur-r-rivilege of yon sweet courr-r-se and could insu-r-r-e deliver-r-r-y!"

For the better sort of Newbern, despite conscientious warnings for which they paid John McTavish huge sums, would insist upon pressing the ball in the face of constant proof that thus treated it would slice into the rough to cuddle obscurely at the roots of tall gra.s.s.

Wilbur Cowan became a shrewd hunter and a successful merchandiser of golf b.a.l.l.s but slightly used. Newbern's better sort denounced the scandal of this, but bought of him clandestinely, for even in that far day, when golf b.a.l.l.s in price were yet within reach of the common people, few of them liked to buy a new ball and watch it vanish forever after one brilliant drive that would have taken it far down the fairway except for the unaccountable slice.

On the whole his season was more profitable than that of the year before, when he had nursed the truck of Trimble Cushman through the traffic jams of River Street, and he was learning more about the world of men if less about gas engines. Especially did the new sport put him into closer contact with old Sharon Whipple. Having first denounced the golf project as a criminal waste of one hundred and seventy-five acres of prime arable land, Sharon had loitered about the scene of the crime to watch the offenders make a certain kind of fools of themselves. From the white bench back of the first tee this cynic would rejoice mirthfully at topped or sliced drives or the wild swing that spends all its vicious intent upon the imponderable air. His presence came to be a trial to beginning players, who took no real pleasure in the game until they reached the second tee, beyond the ken of the scoffer.

But this was perilous sport for Sharon Whipple. Day after day, looking into the whirlpool, he was--in a moment of madness--himself to leap over the brink. On an afternoon had come his brother Gideon and Rapp, Senior, elated pupils of John McTavish, to play sportingly for half a ball a hole. They ignored certain preliminary and all-too-pointed comments of the watcher. They strode gallantly to the tee in turn and exhibited the admirable form taught them by John. They took perfect practice swings.

They addressed the ball ceremoniously, waggled the club at it, first soothingly, then with distinct menace, looked up to frown at a spot far down the fairway, looked back, exhaled the breath, and drove. Rapp, Senior, sliced into the rough. Gideon Whipple hooked into the rough.

Sharon Whipple mocked them injuriously. His ironic shouts attracted the notice of arriving players. Gideon Whipple stayed placid, smiling grimly, but Rapp, Senior, was nettled to retort.

"Mebbe you could do a whole lot better!" he called to Sharon in tones unnecessarily loud.

Sharon's reply, in a voice eminently soothing and by that calculated further to irritate the novice, was in effect that Rapp, Senior, might safely wager his available a.s.sets that Sharon Whipple could do better.

"Well, come on and do it then if you're so smart!" urged Rapp, Senior.

"Come on, once--I dare you!"

Sharon scorned--but rather weakly--the invitation. Secretly, through his hostile study of the game, he had convinced himself that he by divine right could do perfectly what these people did so clumsily. Again and again his hands had itched for the club as he watched futile drives. He knew he could hit the ball. He couldn't help hitting it, stuck up the way it was on a pinch of sand--stuck up like a sore thumb. How did they miss it time after time? He had meant to test his conviction in solitude, but why not put it to trial now, and shame this doubting and inept Rapp, Senior?

"Oh, well, I don't mind," he said, and waddled negligently to the tee.

Rapp, Senior, voiced loud delight. Gideon Whipple merely stood safely back without comment, though there was a malicious waiting gleam in his eyes.

"You folks make something out of nothing," scolded Sharon, fussily.

Grasping the proffered club he severely threatened with it the new ball which Rapp, Senior, had obligingly teed up for him. In that moment he felt a quick strange fear, little twinges of doubt, a suspicion that all was not well. Perhaps the sudden hush of those about him conduced to this. Even newly arrived players in the background waited in silence.

Then he recovered his confidence. There was the ball and there was the club--it was easy, wasn't it? Make a mountain out of a mole hill, would they? He'd show them!

Amid the hanging silence--like a portent it overhung him--he raised the strange weapon and brought it gruntingly down with all the strength of his stout muscles.

In the fading light of seven o'clock on that fair summer's evening John McTavish for the hundredth time seized the heavy arms of Sharon Whipple and bent them back and up in the right line. Then Sharon did the thing faithfully in his own way, which was still, after an hour's trial, not the way of John McTavish.

"Mon, what have I told ye?" expostulated John. He had quit calling Sharon Sir-r-r. Perhaps his r's were tired, and anyway, Sharon called him Sandy, being unable to believe that any Scotchman would not have this for one or another of his names. "Again I tell ye, th' body must bend between th' hips an' th' neck, but ye keep jer-r-rkin' the head to look up."

"But, Sandy, I've sprained my back trying to bend from the hips,"

protested the plaintive Sharon.

"Yer-r-r old car-r-r-ca.s.s is musclebound, to be sur-r-e," conceded John. "You can't hope to bend it the way yon laddie does." He pointed to Wilbur Cowan, who had been retrieving b.a.l.l.s--from no great distance--hit out by the neophyte.

"Can he do it?" questioned Sharon.

"Show 'um!" ordered John.

And Wilbur Cowan, coming up for the driver, lithely bent to send three b.a.l.l.s successively where good golf players should always send them.

Sharon blinked at this performance, admiring, envious, and again hopeful. If a child could do this thing----

"Well, I ain't giving up," he declared. "I'll show some people before I'm through."

He paused, hearing again in his shamed ears the ironic laughter of Rapp, Senior, at the three wild swings he had made before--in an excess of caution--he had struck the ground back of the immune ball and raked it a pitiful five feet to one side. He heard, too, the pleased laughter in the background, high, musical peals of tactless women and the full-throated roars of brutal men. He felt again the hot flush on his cheeks as he had slunk from the dreadful scene with a shamed effort to brazen it out, followed by the amused stare of Gideon Whipple. And he had slunk back when the course was cleared, to be told the simple secret of hitting a golf ball. He would condescend to that for the sake, on a near day, of publicly humiliating a certain vainglorious jewellery dealer. But apparently now, while the secret was simple enough to tell--it took John McTavish hardly a score of burry words to tell it all--it was less simple to demonstrate. It might take him three or even four days.

"Ye've done gr-r-rand f'r-r a beginnerr-r," said John McTavish, wearily, perfunctorily.

"I'll tell you," said Sharon. "I ain't wanting this to get out on me, that I come sneaking back here to have you teach me the silly game."

"Mon, mon!" protested the hurt McTavish.

"So why can't Buck here come up and teach me in private? There's open s.p.a.ce back of the stables."

"Ye cud do wor-r-rse," said John. "And yer-r-r full hour-r-'s lesson now will be two dollar-r-rs."

"Certainly, McTavish," said Sharon, concealing his amazement. He could no longer address as Sandy one who earned two dollars as lightly as this.

There was a s.p.a.cious opening back of the stable on the Whipple Old Place--s.p.a.ce and the seclusion which Sharon Whipple considered imperative. Even Elihu t.i.tus was sent about his business when he came to observe; threatened with an instant place in the ranks of the unemployed if he so much as breathed of the secret lessons to a town now said to be composed of snickering busybodies. The open s.p.a.ce immediately back of the stable gave on wider s.p.a.ces of pasture and wood lot.