Chapter 12

When Archibald won the next in eleven and the tenth in nine, hope began to flicker feebly in his bosom. But when he won two more holes, bringing the score to like-as-we-lie, it flamed up within him like a beacon.

The ordinary golfer, whose scores per hole seldom exceed those of Colonel Bogey, does not understand the whirl of mixed sensations which the really incompetent performer experiences on the rare occasions when he does strike a winning vein. As stroke follows stroke, and he continues to hold his opponent, a wild exhilaration surges through him, followed by a sort of awe, as if he were doing something wrong, even irreligious. Then all these yeasty emotions subside and are blended into one glorious sensation of grandeur and majesty, as of a giant among pygmies.

By the time that Archibald, putting with the care of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, had holed out and won the thirteenth, he was in the full grip of this feeling. And as he walked to the fifteenth tee, after winning the fourteenth, he felt that this was Life, that till now he had been a mere mollusc.

Just at that moment he happened to look at his watch, and the sight was like a douche of cold water. The hands stood at five minutes to one.

* * * * *

Let us pause and ponder on this point for a while. Let us not dismiss it as if it were some mere trivial, everyday difficulty. You, dear reader, play an accurate, scientific game and beat your opponent with ease every time you go the links, and so do I; but Archibald was not like us. This was the first occasion on which he had ever felt that he was playing well enough to give him a chance of defeating a really good man. True, he had beaten McCay, Sigsbee, and Butler in the earlier rounds; but they were ignoble rivals compared with Gossett. To defeat Gossett, however, meant the championship. On the other hand, he was passionately devoted to Margaret Milsom, whom he was due to meet at the end of the board-walk at one sharp. It was now five minutes to one, and the end of the board-walk still a mile away.

The mental struggle was brief but keen. A sharp pang, and his mind was made up. Cost what it might, he must stay on the links. If Margaret broke off the engagement--well, it might be that Time would heal the wound, and that after many years he would find some other girl for whom he might come to care in a wrecked, broken sort of way. But a chance like this could never come again. What is Love compared with holing out before your opponent?

The excitement now had become so intense that a small boy, following with the crowd, swallowed his chewing-gum; for a slight improvement had become noticeable in Gossett's play, and a slight improvement in the play of almost anyone meant that it became vastly superior to Archibald's. At the next hole the improvement was not marked enough to have its full effect, and Archibald contrived to halve. This made him two up and three to play. What the average golfer would consider a commanding lead. But Archibald was no average golfer. A commanding lead for him would have been two up and one to play.

To give the public of his best, your golfer should have his mind cool and intent upon the game. Inasmuch as Gossett was worrying about the telegrams, while Archibald, strive as he might to dismiss it, was haunted by a vision of Margaret standing alone and deserted on the board-walk, play became, as it were, ragged. Fine putting enabled Gossett to do the sixteenth hole in twelve, and when, winning the seventeenth in nine, he brought his score level with Archibald's the match seemed over. But just then--

'Mr Gossett!' said a familiar voice.

Once more was the much-enduring telegraph boy among those present.

'T'ree dis time!' he observed.

Gossett sprang, but again the watchful Sigsbee was too swift.

'Be brave, Gossett--be brave,' he said. 'This is a crisis in the game. Keep your nerve. Play just as if nothing existed outside the links. To look at these telegrams now would be fatal.'

Eye-witnesses of that great encounter will tell the story of the last hole to their dying day. It was one of those Titanic struggles which Time cannot efface from the memory. Archibald was fortunate in getting a good start. He only missed twice before he struck his ball on the tee. Gossett had four strokes ere he achieved the feat. Nor did Archibald's luck desert him in the journey to the green. He was out of the bunker in eleven.

Gossett emerged only after sixteen. Finally, when Archibald's twenty-first stroke sent the ball trickling into the hole, Gossett had played his thirtieth.

The ball had hardly rested on the bottom of the hole before Gossett had begun to tear the telegrams from their envelopes. As he read, his eyes bulged in their sockets.

'Not bad news, I hope,' said a sympathetic bystander.

Sigsbee took the sheaf of telegrams.

The first ran: 'Good luck. Hope you win. McCay.' The second also ran: 'Good luck. Hope you win. McCay.' So, singularly enough, did the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh.

'Great Scott!' said Sigsbee. 'He seems to have been pretty anxious not to run any risk of missing you, Gossett.'

As he spoke, Archibald, close beside him, was looking at his watch. The hands stood at a quarter to two.

Margaret and her mother were seated in the parlour when Archibald arrived. Mrs Milsom, who had elicited the fact that Archibald had not kept his appointment, had been saying 'I told you so' for some time, and this had not improved Margaret's temper. When, therefore, Archibald, damp and dishevelled, was shown in, the chill in the air nearly gave him frost-bite. Mrs Milsom did her celebrated imitation of the Gorgon, while Margaret, lightly humming an air, picked up a weekly paper and became absorbed in it.

'Margaret, let me explain,' panted Archibald. Mrs Milsom was understood to remark that she dared say. Margaret's attention was riveted by a fashion plate.

'Driving in a taximeter to the ferry this morning,' resumed Archibald, 'I had an accident.'

This was the result of some rather feverish brain-work on the way from the links to the cottage.

The periodical flopped to the floor.

'Oh, Archie, are you hurt?'

'A few scratches, nothing more; but it made me miss my train.'

'What train did you catch?' asked Mrs Milsom sepulchrally.

'The one o'clock. I came straight on here from the station.'

'Why,' said Margaret, 'Stuyvesant was coming home on the one o'clock train. Did you see him?'

Archibald's jaw dropped slightly.

'Er--no,' he said.

'How curious,' said Margaret.

'Very curious,' said Archibald.

'Most curious,' said Mrs Milsom.

They were still reflecting on the singularity of this fact when the door opened, and the son of the house entered in person.

'Thought I should find you here, Mealing,' he said. 'They gave me this at the station to give to you; you dropped it this morning when you got out of the train.'

He handed Archibald the missing pouch.

'Thanks,' said the latter huskily. 'When you say this morning, of course you mean this afternoon, but thanks all the same--thanks--thanks.'

'No, Archibald Mealing, he does _not_ mean this afternoon,' said Mrs Milsom. 'Stuyvesant, speak! From what train did that guf--did Mr Mealing alight when he dropped the tobacco-pouch?'

* * * * *

'The ten o'clock, the fellow told me. Said he would have given it back to him then only he sprinted off in the deuce of a hurry.'

Six eyes focused themselves upon Archibald.

'Margaret,' he said, 'I will not try to deceive you--'

'You may try,' observed Mrs Milsom, 'but you will not succeed.'

'Well, Archibald?'

Archibald fingered his collar.

'There was no taximeter accident.'

'Ah!' said Mrs Milsom.

'The fact is, I have been playing in a golf tournament.'

Margaret uttered an exclamation of surprise.

'Playing golf!'

Archibald bowed his head with manly resignation.

'Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you arrange for us to meet on the links? I should have loved it.'

Archibald was amazed.

'You take an interest in golf, Margaret? You! I thought you scorned it, considered it an unintellectual game. I thought you considered all games unintellectual.'

'Why, I play golf myself. Not very well.'

'Margaret! Why didn't you tell me?'

'I thought you might not like it. You were so spiritual, so poetic. I feared you would despise me.'

Archibald took a step forward. His voice was tense and trembling.

'Margaret,' he said, 'this is no time for misunderstandings. We must be open with one another. Our happiness is at stake. Tell me honestly, do you like poetry really?'

Margaret hesitated, then answered bravely:

'No, Archibald,' she said, 'it is as you suspect. I am not worthy of you. I do _not_ like poetry. Ah, you shudder! You turn away! Your face grows hard and scornful!'

'I don't!' yelled Archibald. 'It doesn't! It doesn't do anything of the sort! You've made me another man!'

She stared, wild-eyed, astonished.

'What! Do you mean that you, too--'

'I should just say I do. I tell you I hate the beastly stuff. I only pretended to like it because I thought you did. The hours I've spent learning it up! I wonder I've not got brain fever.'

'Archie! Used you to read it up, too? Oh, if I'd only known!'

'And you forgive me--this morning, I mean?'

'Of course. You couldn't leave a golf tournament. By the way, how did you get on?'

Archibald coughed.

'Rather well,' he said modestly. 'Pretty decently. In fact, not badly. As a matter of fact, I won the championship.'

'The championship!' whispered Margaret. 'Of America?'

'Well, not _absolutely_ of America,' said Archibald. 'But all the same, a championship.'

'My hero.'

'You won't be wanting me for a while, I guess?' said Stuyvesant nonchalantly. 'Think I'll smoke a cigarette on the porch.'

And sobs from the stairs told that Mrs Milsom was already on her way to her room.

THE MAN, THE MAID, AND THE MIASMA

Although this story is concerned principally with the Man and the Maid, the Miasma pervades it to such an extent that I feel justified in putting his name on the bills. Webster's Dictionary gives the meaning of the word 'miasma' as 'an infection floating in the air; a deadly exhalation'; and, in the opinion of Mr Robert Ferguson, his late employer, that description, though perhaps a little too flattering, on the whole summed up Master Roland Bean pretty satisfactorily. Until the previous day he had served Mr Ferguson in the capacity of office-boy; but there was that about Master Bean which made it practically impossible for anyone to employ him for long. A syndicate of Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius might have done it, but to an ordinary erring man, conscious of things done which should not have been done, and other things equally numerous left undone, he was too oppressive. One conscience is enough for any man. The employer of Master Bean had to cringe before two. Nobody can last long against an office-boy whose eyes shine with quiet, respectful reproof through gold-rimmed spectacles, whose manner is that of a middle-aged saint, and who obviously knows all the Plod and Punctuality books by heart and orders his life by their precepts. Master Bean was a walking edition of _Stepping-Stones to Success, Millionaires who Have Never Smoked_, and _Young Man, Get up Early_. Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius, as I say, might have remained tranquil in his presence, but Robert Ferguson found the contract too large. After one month he had braced himself up and sacked the Punctual Plodder.

Yet now he was sitting in his office, long after the last clerk had left, long after the hour at which he himself was wont to leave, his mind full of his late employee.

Was this remorse? Was he longing for the touch of the vanished hand, the gleam of the departed spectacles? He was not. His mind was full of Master Bean because Master Bean was waiting for him in the outer office; and he lingered on at his desk, after the day's work was done, for the same reason. Word had been brought to him earlier in the evening, that Master Roland Bean would like to see him. The answer to that was easy: 'Tell him I'm busy.' Master Bean's admirably dignified reply was that he understood how great was the pressure of Mr Ferguson's work, and that he would wait till he was at liberty. Liberty! Talk of the liberty of the treed possum, but do not use the word in connexion with a man bottled up in an office, with Roland Bean guarding the only exit.

Mr Ferguson kicked the waste-paper basket savagely. The unfairness of the thing hurt him. A sacked office-boy ought to stay sacked. He had no business to come popping up again like Banquo's ghost. It was not playing the game.

The reader may wonder what was the trouble--why Mr Ferguson could not stalk out and brusquely dispose of his foe; but then the reader has not employed Master Bean for a month. Mr Ferguson had, and his nerve had broken.

A slight cough penetrated the door between the two offices. Mr Ferguson rose and grabbed his hat. Perhaps a sudden rush--he shot out with the tense concentration of one moving towards the refreshment-room at a station where the train stops three minutes.

'Good evening, sir!' was the watcher's view-hallo.

'Ah, Bean,' said Mr Ferguson, flitting rapidly, 'you still here? I thought you had gone. I'm afraid I cannot stop now. Some other time--'

He was almost through.

'I fear, sir, that you will be unable to get out,' said Master Bean, sympathetically. 'The building is locked up.'

Men who have been hit by bullets say the first sensation is merely a sort of dull shock. So it was with Mr Ferguson. He stopped in his tracks and stared.

'The porter closes the door at seven o'clock punctually, sir. It is now nearly twenty minutes after the hour.'

Mr Ferguson's brain was still in the numbed stage.

'Closes the door?' he said.

'Yes, sir.'

'Then how are we to get out?'

'I fear we cannot get out, sir.'

Mr Ferguson digested this.

'I am no longer in your employment, sir,' said Master Bean, respectfully, 'but I hope that in the circumstances you will permit me to remain here during the night.'

'During the night!'

'It would enable me to sleep more comfortably than on the stairs.'

'But we can't stop here all night,' said Mr Ferguson, feebly.

He had anticipated an unpleasant five minutes in Master Bean's company. Imagination boggled at the thought of an unpleasant thirteen hours.

He collapsed into a chair.

'I called,' said Master Bean, shelving the trivial subject of the prospective vigil, 'in the hope that I might persuade you, sir, to reconsider your decision in regard to my dismissal. I can assure you, sir, that I am extremely anxious to give satisfaction. If you would take me back and inform me how I have fallen short, I would endeavour to improve, I--'

'We can't stop here all night,' interrupted Mr Ferguson, bounding from his chair and beginning to pace the floor.

'Without presumption, sir, I feel that if you were to give me another chance I should work to your satisfaction. I should endeavour--'

Mr Ferguson stared at him in dumb horror. He had a momentary vision of a sleepless night spent in listening to a nicely-polished speech for the defence. He was seized with a mad desire for flight. He could not leave the building, but he must get away somewhere and think.

He dashed from the room and raced up the dark stairs. And as he arrived at the next floor his eye was caught by a thin pencil of light which proceeded from a door on the left.

No shipwrecked mariner on a desert island could have welcomed the appearance of a sail with greater enthusiasm. He bounded at the door. He knew to whom the room belonged. It was the office of one Blaythwayt; and Blaythwayt was not only an acquaintance, but a sportsman. Quite possibly there might be a pack of cards on Blaythwayt's person to help pass the long hours. And if not, at least he would be company and his office a refuge. He flung open the door without going through the formality of knocking. Etiquette is not for the marooned.

'I say, Blaythwayt--' he began, and stopped abruptly.

The only occupant of the room was a girl.

'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I thought--'

He stopped again. His eyes, dazzled with the light, had not seen clearly. They did so now.

'You!' he cried.

The girl looked at him, first with surprise, then with a cool hostility. There was a long pause. Eighteen months had passed since they had parted, and conversation does not flow easily after eighteen months of silence, especially if the nature of the parting has been bitter and stormy.

He was the first to speak.

'What are you doing here?' he said.

'I thought my doings had ceased to interest you,' she said. 'I am Mr Blaythwayt's secretary, I have been here a fortnight. I have wondered if we should meet. I used to see you sometimes in the street.'

'I never saw you.'

'No?' she said indifferently.

He ran his hand through his hair in a dazed way.

'Do you know we are locked in?' he said.

He had expected wild surprise and dismay. She merely clicked her tongue in an annoyed manner.

'Again!' she said. 'What a nuisance! I was locked in only a week ago.'

He looked at her with unwilling respect, the respect of the novice for the veteran. She was nothing to him now, of course. She had passed out of his life. But he could not help remembering that long ago--eighteen months ago--what he had admired most in her had been this same spirit, this game refusal to be disturbed by Fate's blows. It braced him up.

He sat down and looked curiously at her.

'So you left the stage?' he said.

'I thought we agreed when we parted not to speak to one another,' said she, coldly.

'Did we? I thought it was only to meet as strangers.'

'It's the same thing.'

'Is it? I often talk to strangers.'

'What a bore they must think you!' she said, hiding one-eighth of a yawn with the tips of two fingers. 'I suppose,' she went on, with faint interest, 'you talk to them in trains when they are trying to read their paper?'

'I don't force my conversation on anyone.'

'Don't you?' she said, raising her eyebrows in sweet surprise. 'Only your company--is that it?'

'Are you alluding to the present occasion?'

'Well, you have an office of your own in this building, I believe.'

'I have.'

'Then why--'

'I am at perfect liberty,' he said, with dignity, 'to sit in my friend Blaythwayt's office if I choose. I wish to see Mr Blaythwayt.'

'On business?'

He proved that she had established no corner in raised eyebrows.

'I fear,' he said, 'that I cannot discuss my affairs with Mr Blaythwayt's employees. I must see him personally.'

'Mr Blaythwayt is not here.'

'I will wait.'

'He will not be here for thirteen hours.'

I'll wait.'

'Very well,' she burst out; 'you have brought it on yourself. You've only yourself to blame. If you had been good and had gone back to your office, I would have brought you down some cake and cocoa.'

'Cake and cocoa!' said he, superciliously.

'Yes, cake and cocoa,' she snapped. 'It's all very well for you to turn up your nose at them now, but wait. You've thirteen hours of this in front of you. I know what it is. Last time I had to spend the night here I couldn't get to sleep for hours, and when I did I dreamed that I was chasing chocolate _eclairs_ round and round Trafalgar Square. And I never caught them either. Long before the night was finished I would have given _anything_ for even a dry biscuit. I made up my mind I'd always keep something here in case I ever got locked in again--yes, smile. You'd better while you can.'

He was smiling, but wanly. Nobody but a professional fasting man could have looked unmoved into the Inferno she had pictured. Then he rallied.

'Cake!' he said, scornfully.

She nodded grimly.

'Cocoa!'

Again that nod, ineffably sinister.

'I'm afraid I don't care for either,' he said.

'If you will excuse me,' she said, indifferently, 'I have a little work that I must finish.'

She turned to her desk, leaving him to his thoughts. They were not exhilarating. He had maintained a brave front, but inwardly he quailed. Reared in the country, he had developed at an early age a fine, healthy appetite. Once, soon after his arrival in London, he had allowed a dangerous fanatic to persuade him that the secret of health was to go without breakfast.

His lunch that day had cost him eight shillings, and only decent shame had kept the figure as low as that. He knew perfectly well that long ere the dawn of day his whole soul would be crying out for cake, squealing frantically for cocoa. Would it not be better to--no, a thousand times no! Death, but not surrender. His self-respect was at stake. Looking back, he saw that his entire relations with this girl had been a series of battles of will. So far, though he had certainly not won, he had not been defeated. He must not be defeated now.

He crossed his legs and sang a gay air under his breath.

'If you wouldn't mind,' said the girl, looking up.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Your groaning interrupts my work.'

'I was not groaning. I was singing.'

'Oh, I'm sorry!'

'Not at all.'

Eight bars rest.

Mr Ferguson, deprived of the solace of song, filled in the time by gazing at the toiler's back-hair. It set in motion a train of thought--an express train bound for the Land of Yesterday. It recalled days in the woods, evenings on the lawn. It recalled sunshine--storm. Plenty of storm. Minor tempests that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited 'Curfew shall not ring tonight' well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and go on the stage?

He sighed.

'Please don't snort,' said a cold voice, from behind the back-hair.

There was a train-wreck in the Land of Yesterday. Mr Ferguson, the only survivor, limped back into the Present.

The Present had little charm, but at least it was better than the cakeless Future. He fixed his thoughts on it. He wondered how Master Bean was passing the time. Probably doing deep-breathing exercises, or reading a pocket Aristotle. The girl pushed back her chair and rose.

She went to a small cupboard in the corner of the room, and from it produced in instalments all that goes to make cake and cocoa. She did not speak. Presently, filling Space, there sprang into being an Odour; and as it reached him Mr Ferguson stiffened in his chair, bracing himself as for a fight to the death. It was more than an odour. It was the soul of the cocoa singing to him. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair. This was the test.

The girl separated a section of cake from the parent body. She caught his eye.

'You had better go,' she said. 'If you go now it's just possible that I may--but I forgot, you don't like cocoa.'

'No,' said he, resolutely, 'I don't.'

She seemed now in the mood for conversation.

'I wonder why you came up here at all,' she said.

'There's no reason why you shouldn't know. I came up here because my late office-boy is downstairs.'

'Why should that send you up?'

'You've never met him or you wouldn't ask. Have you ever had to face someone who is simply incarnate Saintliness and Disapproval, who--'

'Are you forgetting that I was engaged to you for several weeks?'

He was too startled to be hurt. The idea of himself as a Roland Bean was too new to be assimilated immediately. It called for meditation.

'Was I like that?' he said at last, almost humbly.

'You know you were. Oh, I'm not thinking only about your views on the stage! It was everything. Whatever I did you were there to disapprove like a--like a--like an aunt,' she concluded triumphantly. 'You were too good for anything. If only you would, just once, have done something wrong. I think I'd have--But you couldn't. You're simply perfect.'