Bunker Bean/9
IX
Back in the lofty office that Saturday morning he sat under the eye of Breede, in outward seeming a neat and efficient amanuensis. In truth he was pluming himself as a libertine of rare endowments. He openly and shamelessly wished he had kissed the creature again. When the next opportunity came she wouldn't get off so lightly, he could tell her that. It was base, but it was thrilling. He would abandon himself. He would take her hand and hold it the very first time they were alone together. Well might she be afraid of him, as she had confessed herself to be. She little knew!
It was, though, pretty light conduct on her part. It was possible that he would not see her again. Perhaps a baggage like that would already have forgotten him; would have treated the thing as trivial, an incident to laugh about, even to regale her intimates with. Probably he had done nothing more than make a fool of himself as usual. Votes for women, indeed! He thought they should first learn how to behave properly with young men who weren't expecting things of that sort.
"—this 'mount'll then become 'vailable f'r purpose shortenin' line an reducin' heavy grades," dictated the unconscious father of the baggage.
"I kissed that smug-faced little brat of yours last night," wrote Bean immediately thereafter. He didn't care. He would put the thing down plainly, right under Breede's nose.
"With 'creased freight earnin's these 'provements may be 'spected t' pay f'r 'emselves," continued Breede.
"And I don't say I wouldn't do the same thing over again," Bean slipped in skilfully.
He winced to think he might some day have a daughter of his own that would "carry on" just so with young men who would be all right if they were only let alone. He found new comfort in the reflection that his first-born would be a boy—to grow up and be the idol of a nation.
But a little later he was again thinking of her as "Chubbins," wishing he had called her that, wishing she had stayed longer out in the scented night—the wonderful smoothness of her yielding cheek! Her little tricks of voice and manner came back to him, her quick little patting of Grandma's back at unexpected moments, the tilting of her head like a listening bird, that inexplicable look as her eyes enveloped him, a tiny scar at her temple, mark of an early fall from her pony.
He became sentimental to a maudlin degree. She would go on in her shallow way of life, smashing windows, voting, leading perfectly decent young men to do things they never meant to do; but he, the tender, the true, the ever-earnest, he would not recover from the wound that frail one had so carelessly inflicted. He would be a changed man, with hair prematurely graying at the temples, like Gordon Dane's, hiding his hurt under a mask of light cynicism to all but persons of superior insight. The heartless quip, the mad jest on his lips! And years afterward, a deeply serious and very beautiful woman would divine his sorrow and win him back to his true self.
The wedding! The drive from the church! The carriage is halted by a street crowd. A stalwart policeman appears. He has just arrested two women, confirmed window-smashers—Grandma, the Demon, and the flapper. The flapper gives him one long look, then bows her head. She sees all the nobility she has missed. Serve her right, too!
Noon came and he was about to leave the office. He was still the changed man of quip and jest. Desperately he jested with old Metzeger, who was regretfully, it seemed, relinquishing his adored ledgers from Saturday noon until Monday morning.
"Say, I want to borrow nineteen thousand eleven hundred and eighty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents until the sixteenth at seven minutes to eleven."
Old Metzeger repeated the numbers accurately. He looked wistful, but he knew it was a jest.
"Telephone for Boston Bean!" cried an office boy, dryly affecting to be unconscious of his wit.
He rushed nervously for the booth. No one in the great city had ever before found occasion to telephone him. He thought of Professor Balthasar. Balthasar would warn him to fly at once; that all was discovered.
He held the receiver to his ear and managed a husky "Hello!"
At first there were many voices, mostly indignant: "I want the manager!" "Get off the line!" "A hundred and nine and three quarters!" "That you, Howard? Say, this is" "Get—off—that—line!" "Or I'll know the reason why before to-morrow night!" And then from Bedlam pealed the voice of the flapper, silencing these evil spirits.
"Hello! Hello! This line makes me perfectly furious. To-morrow about three o'clock—you're to give us tea and things, some nice place—Granny and me. Be along in the car. I remember the number. Be there. Good-bye!"
There was the rattle of a receiver being hung up. But he stood there not believing it—tea and car and be there The receiver rattled again.
"You knew who I was, didn't you?"
"Yes, right away," muttered Bean. Then he brightened. "I knew your voice the moment I heard it." The madness was upon him and he soared. "You're Chubbins!" He waited.
"Cut out the Chubbins stuff, Bill, and get off there!" directed a coarse masculine voice from the unseen wire-world.
He got off there with all possible quickness. His first thought was that she probably had not heard the magnificent piece of daring. It was too bad. Probably he never could do it again. Then he turned and discovered that he had left the door of the telephone booth ajar. Chubbins might not have heard him, but Bulger assuredly had.
"Well, well, well!" declaimed Bulger in his best manner. "Look whom we have with us here to-night! Old Mr. George W. Fox Bean, keeping it all under his hat. Chubbins, eh? Some name, that! Don't tell me you thought it up all by yourself, you word-painter! Miss Chubbsy Chubbins! Where's she work?"
Bean saw release.
"Little manicure party," he confessed; "certain shop not far from here. Think I'm going to put you wise?"
Bulger was pleased at the implication.
"Ain't got a friend, has she?"
"No," said Bean. "Never did have one. Some class, too," he added with a leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," as they separated.
But when he was alone the song died. The thing was getting serious. And she was so assured. Telling him to be there as if she were Breede himself. How did she know he had time for all that tea and Grandma nonsense? Suppose he had had another engagement. She hadn't given him time to say. Hadn't asked him; just told him. Well, it showed one thing. It showed that Bunker Bean could bring women to his feet.
His afternoon recreation, there being no baseball, was to lead Nap triumphantly through Central Park to be seen of an envious throng. He affected a lordly unconsciousness of the homage Nap received. He left adoring women in his wake and covetous men; and children demanded bluntly if he would sell that dog; or if he wouldn't sell him would he give him away, because they wanted him.
Surfeited with this easily won attention, he sat by the driveway to watch the endless parade of carriage folk. His eye was for the women in those shining equipages. Young or old, they were to him newly exciting. His attitude was the rather scornful one of a conqueror whose victories have cost him too little. They had been mysteries to him, but now, all in a day, he understood women. They were vulnerable things, and men were their masters. Votes, indeed!
His own power over them was abundantly proved. Any of them passing heedlessly there would, under the right conditions, confess it. Let him be called to their notice and they'd be following him around, forgetting plighted vows, getting him into places screened with vines and letting themselves be led on; telephoning him to give them and Grandma tea and things of a Sunday in some nice place—hanging on his words. Of course it had always been that way, only he had never known it. Looking back over his barren past he surveyed minor incidents with new eyes. There was that girl with the pretty hair in the business college, who always smiled in the quick, confidential way at him. Maybe she wouldn't have been a talker!
And how far was this present affair going? Pretty far already: clandestine meetings and that sort of thing. Still, he couldn't help being a man, could he? And Tommy Hollins, poor dupe!
In the steam-heated apartment It had been locked in a closet, which in an upright position It fitted nicely. He did not open the door that night. He felt that he was venturing into ways that the wise and good king would not approve. He could not face the thing while guilt was in his heart. A woman had come between them.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
At three o'clock the next afternoon he lounged carelessly against the basement railing of the steam-heated apartment. With Nap on a leash he was keenly aware that he was "some class." He was arrayed in the new suit of a quiet check. The cravat with the red stripe shimmered in the sunlight. He had a new straw hat with a coloured band, bought the day before at a shop advertising "Snappy Togs for Dressy Men." He lightly twirled a yellow stick and carried yellow gloves in one hand. He was almost the advanced dresser, dignified but unquestionably a bit different. He seemed to be one who has tamed the world to his ends; but, though he stood erect, expanded his chest and drew in his waist, as instinctively do all those who wear America's greatest eighteen-dollar suit, he was nevertheless wondering with a lively apprehension just what was going to be done with him. This life of "affairs" was making him uncomfortable.
Taking Nap along, he somehow felt, was a wise precaution. He didn't know what mad thing you might expect of Grandma, the Demon, but surely nothing very discreditable could occur in the presence of that innocent dog. And he would play the waiting game; make 'em show their hands.
At twenty minutes after three he wondered if he mightn't reasonably disappear. He would walk in the park and say afterward—if there should be an afterward—that he had given them up. An easy way out. He would do it. Twenty minutes more passed and he still meant to do it, knowing he wouldn't.
Then came the blare of a motor horn and Breede's biggest and blackest car descended upon him, stopping neatly at the curb.
He retained his calm, nonchalantly doffing the new straw hat.
"Just strolling off," he said; "given you up."
"Pops wanted to come," explained the flapper. "I had a perfectly annoying time not letting him. What a darling child of a dog! Does he want to—well, he shall!"
And Nap did at once. He seemed in the flapper to be greeting an old friend. He interrogated his lawful owner from the flapper's embrace, then reached up to implant a moist salute upon the ear of Grandma, who at once removed herself from his immediate presence.
"Sit there yourself," she commanded Bean. And Bean sat there beside the flapper, with Nap between them. The car moved gently on under the gaze of the impressed Cassidy, who had clattered up the iron stairway. Cassidy's gaze seemed to say, "All right, me lad, but you want t' look out f'r that sort. I know th' kind well!"
The car was moving swiftly now, heading for the north and the open.
"They cut us off yesterday," said the flapper. "I know I shall simply make a lot of trouble for that operator some day."
He wondered if she had heard that mad "Chubbins!" But now the flapper smiled upon him with a wondrous content, and he could say nothing. Instead of talking he stroked the head of Nap, who was panting with the excitement of this celestial adventure.
"I like you in that," confided the flapper with an approving glance. He wondered if she meant the hat, the cravat or America's very best suit for the money.
"I like you in that," he retorted with equal vagueness, at last stung to speech.
"Oh, this!" explained the flapper in pleased deprecation. "It's just a little old rag. What's his darling name?"
"Eh? Name? Napoleon, Man and—I mean Napoleon. I call him Nap," he said shortly, feeling himself in chameleon-like sympathy with the cravat.
Grandma, on the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there was something ominous in her rigidity. She had the air of a captor.
Once when his hand was on Nap the flapper brazenly patted it. He pretended not to notice.
"Everything's all right," she said.
"Of course," he answered, believing nevertheless that everything was all wrong.
They had come swiftly to the country and now swept along a wide highway that narrowed in perspective far and straight ahead of them. He watched the road, grateful for the slight hypnotic effect of its lines running toward him. He must play the waiting game.
"Here's the inn," said the flapper. They turned into a big green yard and drew up at the steps of a rambling old house begirt with wide piazzas on which tables were set. This would be the nice place where he was to give them tea and things. They descended from the car, and he was aware that they pleasantly drew the attention of many people who were already there having tea and things: the big car and Grandma and the flapper in her little old rag and Nap still panting ecstatically, and, not least, himself in dignified and a little bit different apparel, lightly grasping the yellow stick and the quite as yellow gloves. It was horribly open and conspicuous, he felt; still, getting out of a car like—that and the flapper's little old rag was something that had to be looked at—he was drunk with it. Following a waiter to a table he felt that the floor was not meeting his feet.
They were seated! The shocking affair was on. The waiter inclined a deferential ear to the gentleman from the large and costly car.
"Tea and things," said the gentleman with a very bored manner indeed, and turned to rebuke the rare and costly dog with harsh words for his excessive emotion at the prospect of food.
The waiter manifested delight at the command; one could not help seeing that he considered it precisely the right one. He moved importantly off. The three regarded each other a moment. Bean played the waiting game. The flapper played her ancient game of looking at him in that curious way. Grandma looked at them both, then meaningly at Bean. She spoke.
"I'll say very frankly that I wouldn't marry you myself."
He blinked, then he pretended to search with his eyes for their vanished waiter. But it was no good. He had to face the Demon, helpless.
"But that's nothing to your discredit, and it isn't a question of me," she added dispassionately.
His inner voice chanted, "Play the waiting game; play the waiting game."
"Every woman with a head on her knows what she wants when she sees it. And nowadays, thanks to the efforts of a few noble leaders of our sex, she has the right and the courage to take it. I haven't wasted any time talking to her." She indicated the flapper, who still fixed the implacable look on Bean.
"If she doesn't know at nineteen, she never would"
"We've settled all that," said the flapper loftily. "Haven't we?"
Bean nodded. All at once that look of the flapper's began to be intelligible. He could almost read it.
"I suppose you expect me to talk a lot of that stuff about marriage being a serious business," continued the Demon evenly. "But I shan't. Marriage isn't half as serious as living alone is. It's what we were made for in my time, and your time isn't a bit different, young man."
She raised an argumentative finger toward him, as if he had sought to contest this.
"I've always" he began weakly. But the Demon would have none of it.
"Oh, don't tell me what you've 'always!' I know well enough what you've 'always.' That isn't the point."
What did the woman think she was talking about? Couldn't he say a word to her without being snapped at?
"What is the point?" he ventured. It was still the waiting game, and it showed he wasn't afraid of her.
"The point is"
And in that instant Bean read the flapper's look, the look she had puzzled him with from their first meeting. It was like finally understanding an oft-heard phrase in a foreign tongue. How luminous that look was now! The simple look of 
proud and assured and most determined ownership! It lay quietly on her face now as always. It was the look he must have bestowed on his shell the first time he saw it. Ownership!
"the point is," the Demon was saying terribly, "I don't believe in long engagements."
He had once been persuaded, yielding out of spineless bravado, to descend the shaft of a mine in a huge bucket. The sensations of that plunge were now reproduced. He looked up to the far circle of light that ever diminished as he went down and down.
"I don't believe in them either," said the flapper firmly. "They're perfectly no good."
"I never did believe in 'em," he heard himself saying. And added with firmness equal to the flapper's, "Silly!" He was wondering if they would ever pull him to the surface again; if the rope would break.
"Just what I think," chanted the flapper. "Silly, and then some!"
"Then some!" repeated the male being in helpless, terrified corroboration.
"Won't he ever come?" queried the Demon.
"Oh, here he is!"
The waiter was neatly removing tea and things from the tray. Bean recalled how on that other occasion he had fearfully believed the earth would close upon him, how hope revived as he was precariously drawn upward, and what a novel view the earth's fair surface presented when he again stood firmly upon it.
It was the waiter who raised him from this other abyss where he had been like to perish, the waiter and the things, including tea: plates, forks, napkins, cups and saucers, tea and hot water, jam, biscuit, toast. There was something particularly reassuring about that plate of nicely matched triangles of buttered toast. It spoke of a sane and orderly world where you were never taken off your feet.
"How many lumps?" demanded the pouring flapper.
"Just as you like; I'm not fussy," he answered.
This was untrue. His preference in the matter was decided, but he could not remember what it was. Afterward he knew that he did not take sugar in his tea, but the flapper had sweetened it with three lumps. Grandma again addressed him, engaging his difficult attention with a brandished fragment of toast.
"I can't imagine how you were ever mad enough to think of it," she said, "but you were. I give you credit for that. And just let me tell you that you've won a treasure. Of course, I don't say you won't find her difficult now and then, but you mustn't be too overbearing; give in a bit now and then; 't won't hurt you. Remember she's got a will of her own, as well as you have. Don't try to ride rough-shod"
"Oh, we've settled all that," broke in the flapper. "Haven't we?"
"We've settled all that," said Bean, grateful for the solid feel of a cup in his fingers.
"Don't be too domineering, that's all," warned the Demon. "She wouldn't put up with it."
"I understand all that," insisted Bean, resolutely seizing a fork for which he had no use. "I can look ahead!"
He began hurriedly to eat toast, hoping it would seem that he had more to say but was too hungry to say it.
"I know you," persisted the Demon. "Brow-beating, bound to have your own way, and, after all, she's nothing but a child."
"I'll want him to have his own way," declared the child. "I'll see that he just perfectly gets it, too!"
"Give and take, that's my motto, he muttered, wondering if more toast would choke him.
"Be a row back there, of course," said Grandma, "but Julia's going to marry off the other child after her own heart, and it's only right for me to have a little say about this one. You're a better man than he is. You have a good situation and he's just a waster; couldn't buy his own cigarettes if he had to work for the money, say nothing of his gloves and ties. Born to riches, born to folly, say I. Still, Julia will fuss just about so much. Of course, Jim"
"Oh, poor old Pops!" The flapper gracefully destroyed him as a factor in the problem.
Bean was feeding toast to Nap, who didn't choke.
"She always has to come around though when the girl makes up her mind. I haven't had that child in my charge for nothing."
"I have a right to choose the" The flapper broke her speech with tea. "I have the right," she concluded defiantly.
Bean shuddered. He recalled the terrific remainder of that speech.
"I thought we better have this little talk," said Grandma, "and get everything understood."
"'S the only way to do," said Bean, wrinkling his forehead, "have everything clear."
"I had it all perfectly planned out long ago," said the flapper. "I don't want a large place."
"Lots of trouble," conceded Bean. "Something always coming up," he added knowingly.
"Nice yard," said the flapper, "plenty of room for flowers and the tennis court, and I'll do the marketing when I motor in for you. They won't let me do it back there," she concluded with some acrimony; "and they get good and cheated and I'm perfectly glad of it. Eighteen cents a head for lettuce! I saw that very thing on a tag yesterday!"
"Rob you right and left," mumbled Bean. "All you can expect."
"Just leave it all to me," said the flapper with four of her double nods. "They'll soon learn better."
"Hardly seems as if it could all be true," ventured Bean in a genial effort at sanity.
"It's just perfectly true and true," insisted the flapper. "I knew it all the time." She placed the old relentless gaze upon him. He was hers.
"The beautiful, blind wants of youth!" said the Demon, who had been silent a long time, for her. "I remember" But it seemed to come to nothing. She was silent again.
He paid the waiter.
"It was just as well to have this little talk," murmured Grandma as they arose.
The car throbbed before the steps. They were in and away. A reviving breeze swept them as the car gained speed. At least it partially revived one of them.
In the back seat he presently found a hand in his, but his own hand seemed no longer a part of him. He thought the serenity of the flapper was remarkable. She seemed to feel that nothing wonderful had happened. There was something awful about that calm.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
The car stopped before the steam-heated apartment. There were but brief adieus before it went on. Cassidy sat at the head of his basement stairs with a Sunday paper. He was heading an article entitled, "My Secrets of Beauty," profusely illustrated.
"I wouldn't have one o' the things did ye give it t' me," said Cassidy. "Runnin' inta telegrapht poles an' trolley cairs."
"Couple of friends of mine took me out for a little spin," said Bean, clutching his stick, his gloves and Nap's leash.
He seemed to be still spinning.
In his own place he went quickly to Its closet, pulled open the door and shouted aloud:
"Well, what do you make of that?"
The sound of his own voice was startling as he caught the look of the serene Ram-tah. He softly closed the door upon what his living self had been. He was too violent.
But he could not be cool all at once. He tossed hat, stick, and gloves aside and paced the room.
Engaged to be married! That was all any one could make of it. All the agreeable iniquity had been extracted from the affair. It was fearsomely respectable. And it was deadly serious. How had he got into it? And yet he had always felt something ominous in that girl's look.
And there would be a row "back there." Julia would make the row. And Jim. They might think Jim wouldn't help in the row, but he knew better. Jim was old Jim Breede, who would of course take Bunker Bean's head off. He had been a fool all the time. In the car he had strained himself to the point of mentioning the Hollins boy. The flapper had laughed unaffectedly. Tommy Hollins was a perfectly darling boy, a good sport and all that, but he couldn't be anything important to the flapper if he were the perfectly last man on earth. How any one could ever have thought such an absurd thing was beyond the flapper, for one.
And she didn't want a large place: flowers and a tennis court, and she'd do the marketing herself when she motored in for him. Moreover, he was not to be brutally domineering. He was to curb that tendency in himself, at least now and then, and let her have an opinion or two of her own. She was nothing but a child, after all; he mustn't be harsh with her.
He was weak before it. Once more he opened the closet door, feeling the need for new strength. A long time he looked into the still face. He was a king. Was it strange that a woman had fallen before him?
He reduced the event to its rudiments. He was the affianced husband of Breeders youngest daughter, who didn't believe in long engagements.
The thing was incredible, even as he faced Ram-tah.
How had he ever done it?
"Gee!" he muttered, "how'd I ever have the nerve to do it!"
Ram-tah's sleeping face remained still. If the wise and good king knew the answer he gave no sign.