The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
Gossett's drive took him well on the way to the green. He holed out in
five. Archibald, mournful but not surprised, made his way to the second
tee.
The second hole was shorter. Gossett won it in three. The third he took
in six, the fourth in four. Archibald began to feel that he might just
as well not be there. He was practically a spectator.
At this point he reached in his pocket for his tobacco-pouch, to
console himself with smoke. To his dismay he found it was not there. He
had had it in the train, but now it had vanished. This added to his
gloom, for the pouch had been given to him by Margaret, and he had
always thought it one more proof of the way her nature towered over the
natures of other girls that she had not woven a monogram on it in
forget-me-nots. This record pouch was missing, and Archibald mourned
for the loss.
His sorrows were not alleviated by the fact that Gossett won the fifth
and sixth holes.
It was now a quarter past twelve, and Archibald reflected with moody
satisfaction that the massacre must soon be over, and that he would
then be able to forget it in the society of Margaret.
As Gossett was about to drive off from the seventh tee, a telegraph boy
approached the little group.
'Mr Gossett,' he said.
Gossett lowered his driver, and wheeled round, but Sigsbee had snatched
the envelope from the boy's hand.
'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 that direction, 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 later 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
manoeuvres of two men rolling peanuts 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 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