Chapter 11

"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 reading 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 Breede's 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.

X

"Where maint'nance f'r both roadway an' 'quipment is clearly surcharged," Breede was exploding, "extent of excess of maintenance over normal 'quirements cannot be taken as present earnin' power, an' this'll haf t' be understood before nex' meetin' d'r'ectors--"

"No need of _you_ making any fuss," wrote Bean. "Let Julia do that. I'm as good a man as anybody if you come right down to it."

"--these prior-lien bon's an' receiver's stiff-cuts mus' natchally come ahead of firs'-mortgage bon's--" continued Breede.

"Wouldn't care if she told you right now over that telephone," wrote Bean. "You wouldn't dare touch me, and you know it."

Later he wrote "Poor old Pops!" contemptuously, and put an evil sneer upon Breede's removed cuffs.

At the same time he wished that the flapper and Grandma hadn't been so set against long engagements. And how long had they meant? One day, a week, a month? Would they have _it_ done the next time they took him out in that car for tea and things? They were capable of it. Why couldn't they be reasonable and let things stay quiet for a while?

And how about that small place with flowers and a tennis court and a motor to go marketing in? Did they believe he was made of money? About all he could do was to provide a place big enough for a growing dog. And Breede, of course, would cast the girl off penniless, as they always did, telling her never to darken his doors again. And he'd have to find a new job. Breede wouldn't think of keeping on the scoundrel who had lured his child away.

Still, the flapper's mind was set on an early marriage, and, for this once, at least, he would let her have her own way. No good being brutal at the start. They would get along; scrimp and save; even move to Brooklyn, maybe. He looked into the far years and saw his son, greatest of all left-handed pitchers, shutting out Pittsburgh without a single hit. A very aged couple in the grandstand tried to claim relationship with his pitching marvel, saying he was their grandson, but few of the yelling enthusiasts would credit it. One of the crowd would later question the phenomenon's father, who was none other than the owner of the home team, and he would say, "Oh, yes, quite true, but there has been no communication between the two families for more than twenty years."

There would now follow from the abject grandparents timid overtures for a reconciliation, they having at last seen their mistake. These overtures met with a varying response. Sometimes he was adamant and told them no; they had made their bed twenty years before, and now they could lie on it. Again, he would relent, allowing them to come to the house and associate with their superb descendant once every week. He didn't want to be too hard on them.

And he was not penniless. He would continue in the unexciting express business for a while, until he had amassed enough to buy the ball-team.

Out at his typewriter, turning off Breede's letters, his mind kept reverting to those nicely printed stock certificates Aunt Clara had sent to him, five of them for ten shares each, his own name written on them. Of course there were hundreds of shares at the brokers', but those seemed not to mean so much. And they had gone down a point, whatever that was, since his purchase. The broker had explained that this was because of an unexpectedly low dividend, 3 per cent. It showed bad management. All the more reason for getting a new man on the Board--a lot of old fossils!

He recalled the indignant-looking old gentleman who was so excessively well dressed. He wore choice gold-rimmed eyeglasses tethered by a black silk ribbon. They were intensely respectable things when adjusted to the nose, but he knew he should clash with that old party the moment he got on the Board. He would find him to be one of the sort that is always looking for trouble.

He wondered if he might not himself some day have sufficient excuse for wearing glasses like those, at the end of a silk ribbon. He thought they set off the face. And the old gentleman's white parted beard flowed down upon a waistcoat he wouldn't mind owning: black silk set with tiny white stars, a good background for a small gold chain. There would be a bunch of important keys on one end of that chain. Bean had yearned to wear one of those key-chains, but he had never had more than a trunk-key and a latch-key, and it would look silly to pull those out on a chain before people; they'd begin to make fun of you!

He worked on, narrowly omitting to have Breede inform the vice-president of an important trunk-line that it wouldn't hurt him any to have those trousers pressed once in a while; also that plenty of barbers would be willing to cut his hair.

Bulger condescendingly wrote at his own typewriter, as if he were the son of a millionaire pretending to work up from the bottom. Old Metzeger was deep in a dream of odd numerals. The half-dozen other clerks wrought at tasks not too absorbing to prevent frequent glances at the clock on the wall.

Tully, the chief clerk, marred the familiarity of the hour by approaching Bean's desk. He walked lightly. Tully always walked as if he felt himself to be on dangerously thin ice. He might get safely across; then again he mightn't. He leaned confidentially on the back of Bean's chair and Bean looked up and through the lenses that so alarmingly magnified Tully's eyes. Tully twitched the point of his blond beard with thumb and finger as if to reassure himself of its presence.

"By the way, Bean, I notice some fifty shares of Federal Express stock in your name. Now it is not impossible that the office would be willing to take them over for you."

That was Tully's way. He was bound to say "some" fifty shares instead of fifty, and of anything he knew to be true he could only aver "it is not impossible." Of a certain familiar enough event in the natural world he would have declared, "The sun sets not infrequently in the west."

Bean was for the moment uncertain of Tully's meaning.

"Shares," he said. "Right there in my desk."

"Quite so, quite so!" said Tully. "I'm not wholly uncertain, you know--this is between us--that I couldn't place them for you. I may say the office would not find even those few shares unwelcome."

"Well, you see, I don't know about that," said Bean. "You see, I had a kind of an idea--"

"I think I may say they would take it not unkindly," said Tully.

"--of holding on to them," concluded Bean.

"Your letting them go for a fair price might not inconceivably react to your advantage," suggested the luminous Tully.

"It is not impossible that I shall want them myself," responded Bean, unconsciously adopting the Tully indirection.

"The office is not unwilling--" began Tully.

"I'll keep 'em a while," said Bean. "I have a sort of plan."

"I should not like to think it possible--"

Bean was tired of Tully. What was the man trying to get at, anyway? He didn't know; but he would shut him off. His mind leaped with an inspiration.

"I can imagine nothing of less consequence," said Bean.

He was at once proud of the snappy way the words came out. Breede, he thought, could hardly have been snappier. He glared at Tully, who looked shocked, hurt, and disgusted. Tully sighed and walked back to his own desk, as if the ice cracked beneath his small feet at every step.

Bean resumed his work, with the air of one forgetting a past annoyance. But he was not forgetting. He might let them have the stock; he had never thought any too well of that express directorship; but let them send some one that could talk straight. He didn't care if he _had_ been short with Tully. He was going to lose his job anyway, the day after that wedding, if not before.

He wrote many of Breede's letters, and was again interrupted, this time by Markham, Breede's confidential secretary. Markham's approach to Bean was emphatically footed, as that of a man unable to imagine ice being thin under _his_ feet. He was bluff and open, where Tully lurked behind his "not impossibles." He was even jovial now. He smiled down at Bean.

"By the way, Bean, some one was telling me you have some Federal Express."

"Have the shares right there in my desk," admitted Bean, wonderingly. He was suspicious all at once. Tully and Markham had both opened on him with "By the way." He had always felt it a shrewd thing to suspect people who began with "By the way."

"Ah, yes, fifty shares, I believe." Markham smiled again, but seemed to try not to smile. He apparently considered it a rare jest that Bean should own any shares of anything; a thing for smiles even though one must humour the fellow.

"Fifty shares! Well, well, that's good! Now the fact is, old man, I can place those for you this afternoon. Some of the Federal people going to meet informally here, and they happen to want a little block or two of the stuff, for voting purposes, you know. Not that it's worth anything. How'd you happen to get down on such a dead one?"

"Well, you know, I had a sort of a plan about that stock. I don't know--"