II
Colonel Jimmy picked up a new pupil after Archie quit him and Archie paired off with me. We played two or three times a week and often ran into the Colonel on the porch or in the locker room. The old reprobate was always cordial in his cat-and-canary way—infernally cordial. I couldn't resist the temptation to inquire after his lumbago occasionally, but it was next to impossible to hurt his feelings. The old fellow's hide was bullet proof and even the broadest sort of hint was lost on him. Archie was more tactful. He used to joke the Colonel about a return match, but he was never able to fix a date. The Colonel was busy anyway. His latest victim was a chinless youth from Poughkeepsie with money to burn and no fear of matches.
One afternoon Archie brought a friend out to the club with him—an immense big chap with hands and feet like hams. Everything about him was beyond the limit. He was too beefy to begin with, though I suppose that wasn't his fault. He wore a red tie and a yellow vest. He talked too much and too loud. Archie introduced him to me as Mr. Small of Chicago.
"Small but not little!" said Small. "Haw!"
"Mr. Small is an old friend of mine," said Archie. "He is taking a short vacation and I am putting him up at the club for a week or ten days. He doesn't look it, but his doctor says he needs exercise."
"Yeh," said Small, "and while I'm resting I think I'll learn this fool game of golf. Think of a big fellow like me, whaling a poor little pill all over the country! I suppose all there is to it is to hit the blamed thing."
Colonel Jimmy was sitting over by the reading table and I saw him prick up his ears at this remark. He always manages to scrape an acquaintance with all the beginners.
Small went booming along.
"I can remember," said he, "when people who played golf were supposed to be a little queer upstairs. Cow-pasture pool, we used to call it. It's a good deal like shinny-on-your-own-side, ain't it?"
Archie took him out to David to get him outfitted with clubs and things, left Small in the shop, and came back to explain matters to me.
"You mustn't mind Small's manner," said he. "He's really one of the best fellows in the world, but he's—well, a trifle crude in spots. He's never had time to acquire a polish; he's been too busy making money."
"Excuse me"—Colonel Jimmy had been listening—"but is he in any way related to the Caspar Smalls of Chicago and Denver?"
"Not that I know of, Colonel," said Archie.
"You spoke of money," said I. "Has he so much of it, then?"
"Barrels, my dear boy, barrels. Crude oil is his line at present. And only thirty-five years of age too. He's a self-made man, Small is."
I couldn't think of anything to say except that he must have had a deuce of a lot of raw material to start with—and if I put the accent on the raw it was unintentional.
"Well," said Archie, "his heart is in the right place anyway."
When you can't think of anything else to say for a man, you can always say that his heart is in the right place. It sounds well, but it doesn't mean anything. Archie proposed that we should let Small go around with us that afternoon. I didn't like the idea, but, of course, I kept mum; the man was Archie's guest.
Small got in bad on the first tee. I knew he would when I saw who was ahead of us—Colonel Jimmy and the chinless boy. Like most elderly mechanical golfers, the Colonel is a stickler for the etiquette of the game—absolute silence and all that sort of thing.
Archie introduced Small to the Colonel and the Colonel introduced us to the chinless boy, who said he was charmed, stepped up on the tee and whacked his ball into the rough.
While the Colonel was teeing up, Small kept moving around and talking in that megaphone voice of his. Colonel Jimmy looked at him rather eloquently a couple of times and finally Small hushed up. The Colonel took his stance, tramped around awhile to get a firm footing, addressed the ball three times, and drew his club back for the swing. Just as it started downward, Small sneezed—one of those sneezes with an Indian war whoop on the end of it—"Aa-chew!" Naturally Colonel Jimmy jumped, took his eye off the ball and topped it into the long grass in front of the tee.
"Take it over," said the chinless boy, who was a sport if nothing else.
"I certainly intend to!" snapped the Colonel, glaring at Small. "You—you spoiled my swing, sir!"
"Quit your kidding, Colonel!" said Small. "How could I spoil your swing?"
"You sneezed behind me!"
Small laughed at the top of his voice. "Haw! Haw! That's rich! Why, I've seen Heinie Zimmerman hit a baseball a mile with thirty thousand people yelling their heads off at him!"
"Yes," said Archie, "but that was baseball. This is golf. There's a difference."
"Gentlemen," said the Colonel, "when you are through with your discussion, I would really like to drive."