ARCHIBALD'S BENEFIT

Archibald Mealing was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. n.o.body could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of his time was spent in retrieving lost b.a.l.l.s or replacing America.

Whether it was that Archibald pressed too much or pressed too little, whether it was that his club deviated from the dotted line which joined the two points A and B in the ill.u.s.trated plate of the man making the bra.s.sy shot in the _Hints on Golf_ book, or whether it was that he was pursued by some malignant fate, I do not know. Archibald rather favoured the last theory.

The important point is that, in his thirty-first year, after six seasons of untiring effort, Archibald went in for a championship, and won it.

Archibald, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.

I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see clearly before me the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging me to tell it to the King of Denmark, others insisting that I produce my Eskimos. Nevertheless, I do not shrink. I state once more that in his thirty-first year Archibald Mealing went in for a golf championship, and won it.

Archibald belonged to a select little golf club, the members of which lived and worked in New York, but played in Jersey. Men of substance, financially as well as physically, they had combined their superfluous cash and with it purchased a strip of land close to the sea. This land had been drained--to the huge discomfort of a colony of mosquitoes which had come to look on the place as their private property--and converted into links, which had become a sort of refuge for incompetent golfers. The members of the Cape Pleasant Club were easygoing refugees from other and more exacting clubs, men who pottered rather than raced round the links; men, in short, who had grown tired of having to stop their game and stand aside in order to allow perspiring experts to whiz past them. The Cape Pleasant golfers did not make themselves slaves to the game. Their language, when they foozled, was gently regretful rather than sulphurous. The moment in the day's play which they enjoyed most was when they were saying: 'Well, here's luck!' in the club-house.

It will, therefore, be readily understood that Archibald's inability to do a hole in single figures did not handicap him at Cape Pleasant as it might have done at St. Andrews. His kindly clubmates took him to their bosoms to a man, and looked on him as a brother. Archibald's was one of those admirable natures which prompt their possessor frequently to remark: 'These are on me!' and his fellow golfers were not slow to appreciate the fact. They all loved Archibald.

Archibald was on the floor of his bedroom one afternoon, picking up the fragments of his mirror--a friend had advised him to practise the Walter J. Travis lofting shot--when the telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver, and was hailed by the comfortable voice of McCay, the club secretary.

'Is that Mealing?' asked McCay. 'Say, Archie, I'm putting your name down for our championship compet.i.tion. That's right, isn't it?'

'Sure,' said Archibald. 'When does it start?'

'Next Sat.u.r.day.'

'That's me.'

'Good for you. Oh, Archie.'

'h.e.l.lo?'

'A man I met today told me you were engaged. Is that a fact?'

'Sure,' murmured Archibald, blushfully.

The wire hummed with McCay's congratulations.

'Thanks,' said Archibald. 'Thanks, old man. What? Oh, yes. Milsom's her name. By the way, her family have taken a cottage at Cape Pleasant for the summer. Some distance from the links. Yes, very convenient, isn't it? Good-bye.'

He hung up the receiver and resumed his task of gathering up the fragments. Now McCay happened to be of a romantic and sentimental nature. He was by profession a chartered accountant, and inclined to be stout; and all rather stout chartered accountants are sentimental.

McCay was the sort of man who keeps old ball programmes and bundles of letters tied round with lilac ribbon. At country houses, where they lingered in the porch after dinner to watch the moonlight flooding the quiet garden, it was McCay and his colleague who lingered longest.

McCay knew Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x by heart, and could take Browning without anaesthetics. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Archibald's remark about his fiancee coming to live at Cape Pleasant should give him food for thought. It appealed to him.

He reflected on it a good deal during the day, and, running across Sigsbee, a fellow Cape Pleasanter, after dinner that night at the Sybarites' Club, he spoke of the matter to him. It so happened that both had dined excellently, and were looking on the world with a sort of cosy benevolence. They were in the mood when men pat small boys on the head and ask them if they mean to be President when they grow up.

'I called up Archie Mealing today,' said McCay. 'Did you know he was engaged?'

'I did hear something about it. Girl of the name of Wilson, or--'

'Milsom. She's going to spend the summer at Cape Pleasant, Archie tells me.'

'Then she'll have a chance of seeing him play in the championship compet.i.tion.'

McCay sucked his cigar in silence for a while, watching with dreamy eyes the blue smoke as it curled ceiling-ward. When he spoke his voice was singularly soft.

'Do you know, Sigsbee,' he said, sipping his Maraschino with a gentle melancholy--'do you know, there is something wonderfully pathetic to me in this business. I see the whole thing so clearly. There was a kind of quiver in the poor old chap's voice when he said: "She is coming to Cape Pleasant," which told me more than any words could have done. It is a tragedy in its way, Sigsbee. We may smile at it, think it trivial; but it is none the less a tragedy. That warm-hearted, enthusiastic girl, all eagerness to see the man she loves do well--Archie, poor old Archie, all on fire to prove to her that her trust in him is not misplaced, and the end--Disillusionment--Disappointment--Unhappiness.'

'He ought to keep his eye on the ball,' said the more practical Sigsbee.

'Quite possibly,' continued McCay, 'he has told her that he will win this championship.'

'If Archie's mutt enough to have told her that,' said Sigsbee decidedly, 'he deserves all he gets. Waiter, two Scotch highb.a.l.l.s.'

McCay was in no mood to subscribe to this stony-hearted view.

'I tell you,' he said, 'I'm _sorry_ for Archie! I'm _sorry_ for the poor old chap. And I'm more than sorry for the girl.'

'Well, I don't see what we can do,' said Sigsbee. 'We can hardly be expected to foozle on purpose, just to let Archie show off before his girl.'

McCay paused in the act of lighting his cigar, as one smitten with a great thought.

'Why not?' he said. 'Why not, Sigsbee? Sigsbee, you've hit it.'

'Eh?'

'You have! I tell you, Sigsbee, you've solved the whole thing. Archie's such a bully good fellow, why not give him a benefit? Why not let him win this championship? You aren't going to tell me that you care whether you win a tin medal or not?'

Sigsbee's benevolence was expanding under the influence of the Scotch highball and his cigar. Little acts of kindness on Archie's part, here a cigar, there a lunch, at another time seats for the theatre, began to rise to the surface of his memory like rainbow-coloured bubbles. He wavered.

'Yes, but what about the rest of the men?' he said. 'There will be a dozen or more in for the medal.'

'We can square them,' said McCay confidently. 'We will broach the matter to them at a series of dinners at which we will be joint hosts.

They are white men who will be charmed to do a little thing like that for a sport like Archie.'

'How about Gossett?' said Sigsbee.

McCay's face clouded. Gossett was an unpopular subject with members of the Cape Pleasant Golf Club. He was the serpent in their Eden. n.o.body seemed quite to know how he had got in, but there, unfortunately, he was. Gossett had introduced into Cape Pleasant golf a cheerless atmosphere of the rigour of the game. It was to enable them to avoid just such golfers as Gossett that the Cape Pleasanters had founded their club. Genial courtesy rather than strict attention to the rules had been the leading characteristics of their play till his arrival. Up to that time it had been looked on as rather bad form to exact a penalty. A cheery give-and-take system had prevailed. Then Gossett had come, full of strange rules, and created about the same stir in the community which a hawk would create in a gathering of middle-aged doves.

'You can't square Gossett,' said Sigsbee.

McCay looked unhappy.

'I forgot him,' he said. 'Of course, nothing will stop him trying to win. I wish we could think of something. I would almost as soon see him lose as Archie win. But, after all, he does have off days sometimes.'

'You need to have a very off day to be as bad as Archie.'

They sat and smoked in silence.