P G Wodehouse - Man Upstairs

by Man Upstairs

  "It's all right, old man," he said. "Go right ahead. I'll keep it safe for you."

  "Give it to me," said Gossett anxiously. "It may be from the office. Something may have happened to the market. I may be needed."

  "No, no," said Sigsbee, soothingly. "Don't you worry about it. Better not open it. It might have something in it that would put you off your stroke. Wait till the end of the game."

  "Give it to me. I want to see it."

  Sigsbee was firm.

  "No," he said. "I'm here to see you win this championship and I won't have you taking any risks. Besides, even if it was important, a few minutes won't make any difference."

  "Well, at any rate, open it and read it."

  "It is probably in cipher," said Sigsbee. "I wouldn't understand it. Play on, old man. You've only a few more holes to win."

  Gossett turned and addressed his ball again. Then he swung. The club tipped the ball, and it rolled sluggishly for a couple of feet. Archibald approached the tee. Now there were moments when Archibald could drive quite decently. He always applied a considerable amount of muscular force to his efforts. It was in direction that, as a rule, he erred. On this occasion, whether inspired by his rival's failure or merely favoured by chance, he connected with his ball at precisely the right moment. It flew from the tee, straight, hard, and low, struck the ground near the green, bounded on and finally rocked to within a foot of the hole. No such long ball had been driven on the Cape Pleasant links since their foundation.

  That it should have taken him three strokes to hole out from this promising position was unfortunate, but not fatal, for Gossett, who seemed suddenly to have fallen off his game, only reached the green in seven. A moment late a murmur of approval signified the fact that Archibald had won his first hole.

  "Mr. Gossett," said a voice.

  Those murmuring approval observed that the telegraph boy was once more in their midst. This time he bore two missives. Sigsbee dexterously impounded both.

  "No," he said with decision, "I absolutely refuse to let you look at them till the game is over. I know your temperament."

  Gossett gesticulated.

  "But they must be important. They must come from my office. Where else would I get a stream of telegrams? Something has gone wrong. I am urgently needed."

  Sigsbee nodded gravely.

  "That is what I fear," he said. "That is why I cannot risk having you upset. Time enough, Gossett, for bad news after the game. Play on, man, and dismiss it from your mind. Besides, you couldn't get back to New York just yet, in any case. There are no trains. Dismiss the whole thing from your mind and just play your usual, and you're sure to win."

  Archibald had driven off during this conversation, but without his previous success. This time he had pulled his ball into some long grass. Gossett's drive was, however, worse; and the subsequent movement of the pair to the hole resembled more than anything else the manœuvres of two men rolling pea-nuts with toothpicks as the result of an election bet. Archibald finally took the hole in twelve after Gossett had played his fourteenth.

  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 pigmies.

  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 to 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 became 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 looki
ng 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. Matgaret'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 net result of some rather feverish brainwork on the way from the links to the cottage.

  The periodical flapped 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 focussed 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 connection 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 halloo.

  "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 that 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.