At the Palmetto Golf Club one bright, warm day in January they held a
tournament which came to be known as the Battle of Aiken. Colonel Bogey,
however, was not in command.
Each contestant's caddie was provided with a stick cleft at one end and
pointed at the other. In the cleft was stuck a square of white
card-board on which was printed the contestant's name, Colonel Bogey's
record for the course, the contestant's handicap, and the sum of these
two. Thus:
A. B. Smith
78 + 9 = 87
And the winner was to be he who travelled farthest around the links in
the number of strokes allotted to him.
Old Major Jennings did not understand, and Jimmy Traquair, the
professional, explained.
"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,
sunshine, labels, varnishes, vises, files, grips, and clubs of exquisite
workmanship. At one of the benches a grave-eyed young negro, aproned and
concentrated, was enamelling the head of a driver with shellac. 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 circumstance 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 fortitude which wins battles and
championships. Old Major Jennings approached timidly. He was very shy.
In the distance he saw two of his intimate friends finishing 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 shipwrecked mariner may cling to ships 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 balls, 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
shifted 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 brassy; 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 brassy 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 fashion 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 Parnassian, and keep stating, how that General
Bullwigg did incessantly talk, prattle, jabber, joke, boast, praise
himself, stand in the wrong place, and rehearse the noble 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 balls 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 mashie 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, shining
afar, like a white tombstone, stuck in its cleft stick, the card of the
first competitor 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
Forty yards beyond, another obituary confronted them:
In Loving Memory of
J. C. Nappin
78 + 10 = 88
Died of a Broken Mashie
And of Such is the
Kingdom of Heaven
"Ha!" said General Bullwigg. "He little realizes that here where he has
pinned his little joke in the lap of mother earth I have seen the dead
men lie as thick as kindlings in a wood-yard. Sir, across this very fair
green there were no less than three desperate charges, unremembered and
unsung, of which I may say without boasting that Magna Pars Fui. But for
the desperation of our last charge the battle must have been lost----"
Damn the memory of
E. Hewett
78 + 10 = 88
Couldn't Put
Here Lies
G. Norris
78 + 10 = 88
A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted
The little tombstones came thick and fast now. The fairway to the
seventeenth, most excellent of all four-shot holes, was dotted with
them, and it actually began to look as if General Bullwigg or Major
Jennings (they were now on even terms) might be the winner.
It was that psychological moment when of all things a contestant most
desires silence. Major Jennings was determined to triumph over his
boastful companion. And he was full of courage and resolve. They had
reached the seventeenth green in the same number of strokes from the
first tee. That is to say, each had used up ninety-five of his allotted
ninety-eight. Neither holed his approach put, and the match, so far as
they two were concerned, resolved itself into a driving contest. If
General Bullwigg drove the farther with his one remaining stroke he
would beat the major, and vice versa. As for the other competitors,
there was but one who had reached the eighteenth tee, and he, as his
tombstone showed, had played his last stroke neither far nor well.
For the major the suspense was terrible. He had never won a tournament.
He had never had so golden an opportunity to down a boaster. But it was
General Bullwigg's honor, and it occurred to him that the time was riper
for talk than play.
"You may think that I am nervous," he said. "But I am not. During one
period of the battle of Aiken the firing between ourselves on this spot
and the enemy intrenched where the club-house now stands, and spreading
right and left in a half-moon, was fast and furious. Once they charged
up to our guns; but we drove them back, and after that charge yonder
fair green was one infernal shambles of dead and dying. Among the
wounded was one of the enemy's general officers; he whipped and thrashed
and squirmed like a newly landed fish and screamed for water. It was
terrible; it was unendurable. Next to me in the trench was a young
fellow named--named Jennings----"
"Jennings?" said the major breathlessly. "And what did he do?"
"He," said General Bullwigg. "Nothing. He said, however, and he was
careful not to show his head above the top of the trench: 'I can't stand
this,' he said; 'somebody's got to bring that poor fellow in.' As for
me, I only needed the suggestion. I jumped out of the trench and ran
forward, exposing myself to the fire of both armies. When, however, I
reached the general officer, and my purpose was plain, the firing ceased
upon both sides, and the enemy stood up and cheered me."
General Bullwigg teed his ball and drove it far.
Major Jennings bit his lip; it was hardly within his ability to hit so
long a ball.
"This--er--Jennings," said he, "seems to have been a coward."
General Bullwigg shrugged his shoulders.
"Have I got it straight?" asked Major Jennings. "It was you who brought
in the general officer, and not--er--this--er--Jennings who did it?"
"I thought I had made it clear," said General Bullwigg stiffly. And he
repeated the anecdote from the beginning. Major Jennings's comment was
simply this:
"So _that_ was the way of it, was it?"
A deep crimson suffused him. He looked as if he were going to burst. He
teed his ball. He trembled. He addressed. He swung back, and then with
all the rage, indignation, and accuracy of which he was
capable--forward. It was the longest drive he had ever made. His ball
lay a good yard beyond the General's. He had beaten all competitors, but
that was nothing. He had beaten his companion, and that was worth more
to him than all the wealth of Ormuzd and of Ind. He had won the second
battle of Aiken.
In silence he took his tombstone from his caddie's hand, in silence
wrote upon it, in silence planted it where his ball had stopped. General
Bullwigg bent himself stiffly to see what the fortunate winner had
written. And this was what he read:
Sacred to the Memory of
E. O. Jennings
78 + 20 = 98
Late Major in the Gallant 29th, Talked to
Death by a Liar
As for the gallant major (still far from mollified), he turned his back
upon a foe for the first time in his life and made off--almost running.