Now school was over for another summer and Trimble Cushman's dray could
be driven at a good wage--by a boy overnight become a man. There were
still carpers who would regard him as a menace to life and limb. Judge
Penniman was among these. A large truck in sole charge of a boy--still
in his teens, as the judge put it--was not conducive to public
tranquillity. But this element was speedily silenced. The immature
Wilbur drove the thing acceptably, though requiring help on the larger
boxes of merchandise, and Trimble Cushman, still driving horses on his
other truck, was proud of his employee. Moreover, the boy became in high
repute for his knowledge of the inner mysteries of these new mechanisms.
New cars appeared in Newbern every day now, and many of them, developing
ailments of a character more or less alarming to their purchasers, were
brought to his distinguished notice with results almost uniformly
gratifying. He was looked up to, consulted as a specialist, sent for to
minister to distant roadside failures, called in the night, respected
and rewarded.
It was a new Newbern through whose thoroughfares the new motor truck of
Trimble Cushman was so expertly propelled. Farm horses still professed
the utmost dismay at sight of vehicles drawn by invisible horses, and
their owners often sought to block industrial progress by agitation for
a law against these things, but progress was triumphant. The chamber of
commerce recorded immense gains in population. New factories and mills
had gone up beside the little river. New people were on the streets or
living in their new houses. New merchants came to meet the new demand
for goods.
The homy little town was putting on airs of a great city. There was
already a Better Newbern club. The view down River Street from its
junction with State, Masonic Hall on the left and the new five-story
Whipple block on the right, as preserved on the picture postcards sold
by the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, impressed all purchasers with the town's
vitality. The _Advance_ appeared twice a week, outdoing its rival, the
_Star_, by one issue; and Sam Pickering, ever in the van of progress,
was busy with plans for making his journal a daily.
Newbern was coming on, even as boys were coming on from bare feet to
shoes on week-days. Ever and again there were traffic jams on River
Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers' wagons, buggies, delivery carts,
about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles. High in the centre would
be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed
through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate,
sure hands on a potent wheel. Never did he kill or maim either citizen
or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman. Traffic jams to him
were a part of the day's work.
When he had performed for a little time this skilled labour for Trimble
Cushman it was brought to him one day that he was old indeed. For he
observed, delivering a box to Rapp Brothers, jewellery, that from the
sidewalk before that establishment he was being courted by a small boy;
a shy boy with bare feet and freckles who permanently exposed two front
teeth, and who followed the truck to the next place of delivery. Here,
when certain boxes had been left, he seated himself, as if
absentmindedly, upon the remote rear of the truck and was borne to
another stopping place. The truck's driver glanced back savagely at him,
but not too savagely; then pretended to ignore him.
The newcomer for an hour hung to the truck leechlike, without winning
further recognition. Then by insensible gradations, by standing on the
truck bed as it moved, by edging forward toward the high seat, by
silently helping with a weighty box, it seemed he had acquired the right
to mount to the high seat of honour itself. He did this without spoken
words, yet with an ingratiating manner. It was a manner that had been
used, ages back, by the lordly driver of the present truck, when he had
formed alliances with drivers of horse-drawn vehicles. He recognized it
as such and turned to regard the courtier with feigned austerity.
"Hello, kid!" he said, with permitting severity. But secretly he
rejoiced. Now he was really old.
* * * * *
Winona viewed the latest avocation of her charge with little enthusiasm.
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 appetite, 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 associates. 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 carcasses 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 snatch 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 surpasses 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 amassed 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 balls 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 grass.
Wilbur Cowan became a shrewd hunter and a successful merchandiser of
golf balls 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 balls 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 assets 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-cass 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 balls--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
balls 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
space 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 spacious opening back of the stable on the Whipple Old
Place--space and the seclusion which Sharon Whipple considered
imperative. Even Elihu Titus 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 space immediately back of
the stable gave on wider spaces of pasture and wood lot.