'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?'