Chapter 4

I wasn't a bit hurt, only bruised and giddy, and Morty was throwing the baby's milk in my face to revive me, while the baby looked on and roared with displeasure at its being wasted. Morty wasn't hurt, either, and if there were ever two people well out of a bad scrape it was he and I. He had been so frightened about me he was crying; and I guess his tears were like the recording angel's, because they seemed to blot out all the old quarrel between us. At least, when we got up and began to limp home it seemed to me I didn't mind anything so long as he was close to me. He was shameless enough to kiss me right before the nurse-girl, who was demanding our names and addresses and our blood--and all I did was to kiss back. I didn't have any fight left, and for once he had everything his own way. Of course, it didn't last long--it wouldn't have been good for him if it had--but even in six minutes I managed to lose the results of six months' coldness. Yet I was glad it was gone; glad just to be alive; and we'd look at each other and laugh like children. You don't realize what a good old place the world is until you've taken a chance on leaving it and weighed against death itself; all our little jealousies and misunderstandings seemed too trivial to count. It seemed enough that I loved him and that he loved me and that neither of us had broken anything--bones, I mean. It was sad, though, to think the poor little bubble was a goner and that we'd never hear its honest little pant again.

"If we had lived up to the comic papers, Morty," I said, "we would have spiflicated a red child, given a merry toot and disappeared in a cloud of dust!"

"I'm almost sorry we didn't," said Morty, who was dreadfully pale and always hated walking. "We'll know better next time."

"There'll be no next time for that bubble," I said sadly. "It's sparked its last spark and will never choo-choo again!

"I mean our next car, of course," said Morty (it was awfully sweet to hear him say "our." And it took the sting out of losing the little bubble, especially now that we're going to have another).

"Yesterday Forbes Mason offered me his new four-cylinder Lafayette for twenty-eight hundred dollars," said Morty; "it's only been run five hundred miles, and I told him I'd think about it."

"It's suspiciously cheap," I said. "Sure he hasn't cut the cylinders?"

"Well, you see, he broke his arm cranking. It backfired on him, and his wife is such a little fool that he had to promise to give up automobiling."

"They are splendid cars, with a record of fifty miles on the track, unstripped and out of stock!"

"And you shall have half-interest in it, Virgie!"

"I never could pay fourteen hundred dollars, Morty, and I don't want any more of pa's blanks. It's too exasperating."

"Oh, I meant for nothing!"

"Then it's a present--and there's always a string to your presents."

"Isn't there to everybody's?"

"Besides, it's an air-cooled motor," I said, not wanting to appear too eager. "Don't they always overheat in time and stick the pistons?"

"Not the Lafayette!"

"Don't tempt me," I said. "You know I couldn't take it on any terms."

"Forced feed lubrication and direct drive on the fourth speed," he continued, like a stage villain offering diamonds to the heroine.

"What kind of a string?"

"Oh, Virgie, it was all a lie about Josie Felton."

"I had it straight from Mrs. Gettridge and she's Josie's aunt and she ought to know, I guess."

"Mrs. Gettridge is a social assassinator belongs to a regular Mafia of mischief-makers and old cats--you know you used to care once."

"Oh, I did, Morty, I did. It nearly broke my heart, and I just wanted to throw myself away--become a trained nurse or go in for settlement work!"

"Couldn't it ever be as it used to be?"

"I should want all the bushings of phosphor bronze."

"They are that already--and it's patent-lock nutted throughout, and the engine is that new kind that interlocks. I'll draw it for you when I get home . . . and we'll be married at the same time as Harry and Nelly."

"And one of those French brass gasoline tanks that set flat against the dash-board and hold a two-gallon extra supply."

"You shall have it!"

"But she said she had actually, seen the letter!"

"It was all a lie, every word of it," he broke out. "We'll go straight to her now if you like and have it out, and then you'll see whom to believe! There never was any letter or anything, except that she made up her mind I was to have her niece whether I wanted to or not. I told you that fifty million times in the letters you wouldn't read and sent back unopened. And it wasn't the kind of message I could give anybody else to take to you. I had to think of the girl, of course, and I know she liked me."

"French tires, of course?"

"Every blessed thing just the way you want it. The only thing I can't see my way to change is the chauffeur, a poor devil named Truslow, who's really an awful decent kind of fellow when you get to know him!"

"Oh, dear," I said, "I never dreamed the Great Bubble Syndicate was going to end like this!"

"End?" cried Morty, putting his arm around my waist as though he now had a right to. "It's only the reorganization of a splendid old concern, and for fourteen hundred kisses I am going to let you in on the ground floor!"

COAL OIL JOHNNY

It was eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and on the veranda of Mrs. Hemingway's house three young girls were gathered in conversation. Below them a garden ran to the water's edge and gave access to a wooden pier projecting some thirty or forty feet beyond. Here, in a mimic harbor formed by a sharp turn of the shore and a line of piles on which the pier was supported, rode the Hemingway fleet at its moorings: a big half-decked catboat, a gasoline launch, an Indian canoe and two trim gigs. Here, too, under the kindly lee of a small boat-house, the Hemingway crew lay stretched in slumber, his head pillowed on an ancient jib, and his still-smoking pipe fallen from his unconscious lips. A Hemingway puppy was stalking some Hemingway tomtits, in the bland, leisurely, inoffensive manner of one whose intentions were not serious; and the picture was completed by a Hemingway cat, with a blue ribbon round its neck, which was purring to itself in a serenity that a stray page of a Sunday supplement never yet afforded man.

The wide, shady veranda was articulate of summer and girls and gaiety, and of all that pleasant, prosperous American homeliness that we see so much of in life and hear so little about in fiction. Hammocks, rocking-chairs and rugs were scattered about in a comfortable, haphazard fashion; a tea-table here was stacked high with novels and magazines; a card-table there bore a violin, a couple of tennis racquets, a silver-handled crop and a box of papa's second-best cigars. (The really-truly best were under the basketwork sofa.) There was also a sewing-machine, a music-stand, a couple of dogs asleep on the floor, a family Bible full of pressed wild flowers, a twenty-two-bore rifle, and the messy remains of a Latin exercise that the son of the house had recently been engaged upon before being called away to play Indian.

Dolly Hemingway, a handsome, fair-haired, imperious-looking girl, was lolling in a hammock, directing the deliberations of Sattie Felton, aged seventeen, who was sitting on the floor holding a dog's head in her lap, and of Grace Sinclair, aged twenty, who was in possession of a stool and a box of chocolate creams. A very important matter was being discussed, and that was why everybody was talking at once, and how it came about that a young man passed unnoticed through the cool darkened rooms of the house and appeared without warning before the little group--a tall, bulky young man, with an air of diffidence on his honest, sunburned face, and a general awkwardness of movement that seemed to betray a certain doubt as to his welcome. He stammered out something like "Good morning," and then stood there, hat in hand, waiting for the massacre to begin.

"Mr. Bassity!" exclaimed Dolly Hemingway, straightening up in the hammock, and staring at him with cold gray eyes. The bulky young man halted, tried to find some reassurance in the no less chilling faces of Sattie Felton and Grace Sinclair, and then said, "How do you do!" in a voice of extreme dejection.

"It is the custom here," said Dolly in cutting accents, "for a gentleman, when he calls upon a lady, to announce himself first at the door--"

"And be told she's out," said Mr. Bassity, timidly defiant. "Call next day, and out, too! Call next week and still out!"

"When you make a closer study of the social system," began Miss Hemingway "our social system, which seems in vogue everywhere except the place you came from--you will discover that such little subterfuges save painful interviews."

"Oh, now, girls, don't be hard on me," said Mr. Bassity, sitting down uninvited and speaking with the most disarming contrition. "We all used to be such good friends once, and now, for the life of me, I don't know, what's the matter. I valued your friendship tremendously--valued it more than I can tell, and now I am losing it without even knowing why. It cuts a fellow; it's humiliating; it is crool, that's what it is, awful crool, and I'll tell you the straight-out truth that I've cried over it!"

He looked quite capable of crying over it again, and his honest, manly face bore mute witness to his words. Though addressing himself to Miss Hemingway, his eyes were more often fixed on Grace Sinclair, and it was plain that it was her good opinion he valued most. But she was as merciless as Dolly, and showed not the least sign of relenting.

"We have decided that we do not care for the further pleasure of your acquaintance," said Miss Hemingway. "It's a disagreeable thing to have to say--but it's the truth! We liked you at first because there was something breezy and Western about you; then you got breezier and Westerner til it was more than the traffic could stand."

"Now see here," broke out Mr. Bassity in pleading accents, "have I ever done anything caddish or ungentlemanly--intentionally, I mean--anything that could possibly justify my being dropped like this--that could--"

"Perhaps not intentionally," Interrupted Miss Hemingway, "though it's no good your coming around here to say you didn't know any better. You ought to have known better, that's all."

"Known what?" bleated Mr. Bassity. "In Heaven's name, tell me what?"

"Oh, it isn't one thing--it's a thousand," said Dolly. "It's--it's --general social ineptitude!"

Mr. Bassity looked more depressed than ever. He didn't know what the word meant, and it seemed to cover a terrifying accusation. He was seen silently making a note of it for a future reference to a dictionary.

"I'm just a rough, uncouth fellow," said he at last. "I know that well enough without three young ladies' telling me so: An oil man--a successful oil man--hasn't much chance to cultivate the social graces. If he can keep on the right side of common honesty he has done more than most. I guess even our best people out there would give you a shock--and I don't pretend I even ran with them!"

"That's the most redeeming thing you've said yet," remarked Grace.

"Oh, they wouldn't have me," remarked Coal Oil Johnny with fatal truthfulness.

"All you need is toning down," said Miss Hemingway, with a suspicion of kindness in her voice. "You're too exuberant, that's all. You're always rushing in where angels fear to tread, till it has grown on you like a habit. When other people stop you're just beginning!"

"Couldn't you give me another chance?" he asked, still with his eyes pathetically on Grace Sinclair's face. "Just one more chance to try and hit it off better next time? Now, just sit up, every one of you, and tell me frankly what I've done to offend you--stamp all over me--bite my head off--and then let's begin again with a clean slate, and see if I can't buck up"

"I'll leave it to the general vote," said Miss Hemingway. "You certainly have a very winning nature in some ways--and who knows?--you might possibly do better after this awful warning. Only you mustn't come round here next time demanding explanations. The next time will be positive and final. Yes," she went on, "I propose that Mr. Bassity be given a good talking to, and then have his name put on the probation list."

"Poor Mr. Bassity!" said Sattie Felton. "I second the motion for reinstating him temporarily!"

Grace Sinclair was not so quick in giving her decision. In her girlish heart she enjoyed the big man's discomfiture, and was mischievous enough to prolong his suspense. She knew that to him her opinion was the most important of all, and this gave her an added pleasure in withholding her verdict. All three looked at her as she bent her pretty brown head and seemed to weigh the question. She was a Southerner, and her French-Spanish blood betrayed itself in her grace, her slender hands and feet, and the type of her dark and unusual beauty. She was more a woman than either Dolly or Sattie, and the fact that Mr. Bassity was desperately in love with her fanned within her breast a wilful desire to torment him.

"Let me think!" she said.

"'Pon my soul!--" began that unfortunate young man, boisterously attempting to sway her judgment.

"Hush!" exclaimed Sattie Felton.

"She's thinking," said Miss Hemingway severely.

Mr. Bassity noisily subsided.

"I don't know whether it's worth while to forgive him," said Grace at last. "He's so incorrigible--so wild and woolly--that if you're nice to him he's like one of those dogs that want to jump all over you!"

"Oh, Miss Sinclair, please, please--!" cried Coal Oil Johnny.

"Well, I won't hang the jury," continued Grace; "only it must be clearly understood that we have the privilege of making a few remarks"

Mr. Bassity made a pantomime of baring his breast.

"Strike!" he said.

"You first," said Dolly to Grace.

"Last Tuesday I was playing golf at the links," began that young lady vindictively. "Mr. Bassity volunteered to call for me at four and take me home in his French automobile. I knew we were going too fast and said so twice, but he only answered, 'Oh, bother!' or something equally polite and gracious. Then as we raced into Franklin Street we found a rope across it and sixteen policemen waiting to arrest us! Pleasant, wasn't it?--with a million people looking on; and my picture next day in the paper. I was so mortified I could have cried, and I can't think of it even now without burning all over"

"Perhaps the prisoner might care to offer some explanation?" suggested Miss Hemingway.

"Well, really, it was most unfortunate," admitted Coal Oil Johnny. "The fact is, the low gear is chewed up on that car, and I've always been forced to run it on the intermediate--and the most you can throttle down the intermediate to is eighteen miles an hour!"

"The legal speed being eight, I believe," Icily interjected Miss Sinclair.

"I don't know what the silly law is," continued Mr. Bassity, "but the only way to obey it would be to get out and push the car. Couldn't ask a lady to do that, could I?"

"You could have thrown in your intermediate and then thrown it out again, and run on momentum," said Miss Sinclair. "That's automobile A B C!"

"Oh, but my dear girl," protested Coal Oil Johnny, "the clutches on that car are something fierce, and half the time the intermediate won't mesh. When you're lucky enough to get it in, of course you keep it in."

"Yes, and get arrested," said Miss Sinclair, "and give your passenger some disagreeable notoriety, not to speak of shaking up her happy home and getting her allowance stopped for a month."

Mr. Bassity looked acutely miserable. To have brought penury to his lady-love struck him to the heart.

"I'm the most wretched fellow alive," he said. "If ever there was a child of misfortune, it's me. I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court and grovel--yes, grovel --if you'll show me a place to grovel and teach me how!"

"Have you anything else against the prisoner?" Inquired Miss Hemingway of Grace.

"About sixty-five other complaints," assented that young lady. "But I'll let it go at this, which was the worst of all"

"Miss Sattie Felton, what have you against the unhappy wretch who stands trembling at the bar of justice?" asked the self-appointed president of the court.

"Last Sunday I was at the Country Club with papa," said Miss Felton. "The prisoner engaged in an altercation with my male parent on the subject of religion, said parent being a man of strong views and short temper. Said parent, however, being a man of the world as well, tried to evade an argument and escape, but was penned up in a corner for ten purple minutes. Said afterward that he had never been so affronted in all his life; explodes even now at the recollection; calls the prisoner a word that begins with a B, contains a double O and ends with R!"

At this staggering blow poor Coal Oil Johnny covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"It's all true," he said, "only I was kind of goaded into it. It began by my saying that if religious people would only be Christians, too, the world would be a better place to live in!"

"The court is now going to get in its own little knife," said Miss Hemingway. "The court, in a moment of generous weakness, verging on imbecility, invited, or, rather, caused to be invited, the prisoner to dinner. Prisoner, through the absence of one lady from the party, was placed next to a distinguished young sociologist. Of course, in his usual headlong and unrestrained manner, the prisoner had to teach the distinguished young sociologist a thing or two he didn't know about sociology. Roared at him! Yes, ladies of the jury, positively roared at him, and beat on the table, extra, with his fist!"

"But he was such an ass!" said the prisoner.

"No reason at all why you should roar at him," said the court, "and disturb everybody and make them feel uncomfortable."

"An awful ass!" persisted the prisoner.

"The world is full of them," said the court "If you were to roar at every one you meet you'd never have time for anything else. Life would degenerate into one long roar. Everybody knows that Professor Titcombe is a ninny and an idiot, but the decencies of intercourse require you to say, 'How nice!' or 'How interesting!' to his remarks.

"But he had never even been in Colorado," vociferated Coal Oil Johnny. "It was all lies and hearsay and gas. But I have, and I know all about it, and if you want proof I have a scar on my head where a dago shot me at Telluride!"

"Prisoner's motion to show scar overruled," said the court.

"Isn't it about time to let me off?" pleaded Mr. Bassity. "Surely I've listened like a lamb to everything you've said to me? I've been slapped on one cheek and then on the other, and if I haven't always come up smiling it isn't that I haven't tried. It stings a fellow to hear such things to his face; it hurts a fellow more than I think you know; for I may not be up to the general standard of your friends, but I guess my feelings are just as sensitive, and my regard and respect for all three of you is not a whit behind theirs. I dare say this has amused you very much, and I don't grudge for a minute the fun you've had out of it--but suppose we call it off now and be friends again, and--and --talk about something else!" He looked earnestly from one to another.

There was something so naive and affecting in Bassity's plea for mercy that for a moment his three persecutors looked almost ashamed of themselves. Grace Sinclair's eyes filled with tears, and she rose and went over to him and patted his hand.

"Cheer up," she said, smiling. "We've reinstated you now, and like you better than we ever did before."

"And oo'll be mamma's little darling and will never be naughty again?" added Miss Hemingway.

"Poor old Johnny!" said Miss Felton sympathetically; "that's the trouble about being a rough diamond and being polished while you wait--makes you sorry you ever came, doesn't it?"

"Now you can smoke a cigar, Mr. Bassity," said Dolly, "and improve your mind listening to us talk!"

"So long as I'm not the subject of it," observed Coal Oil Johnny ruefully.

"Oh, we can't bother about you for always," said Miss Hemingway. "You've had your little turn and must now give way to something mere important!"

"Delighted!" said Mr. Bassity.

"And don't look as though your own cigars were better than papa's," added Dolly.

"But they are," he retorted.

"Will nothing ever prevent your speaking the truth?" cried Miss Sinclair. "There ought to be tracts about the young man who always spoke the truth--and his awful end!"

"Do you want me to listen intelligently or unintelligently?" Mr. Bassity asked Dolly.

"Oh, any old way," she said. "We don't mind particularly which."

"But you might tell me what the next topic's about," he said. "It might improve my mind more, you know, to have some glimmering of what's going on. Possibly--I say it with all diffidence--possibly I might be able to contribute some valuable suggestions."

At this there arose such a chorus of incredulity that even the dogs jumped up and barked.

"It'll be a long time before you'll ever pay your social way," said Miss Hemingway cruelly. "In the meanwhile you're a social pauper, living on crusts, and the most becoming thing you can do is to sit very silent and grateful and self-effacing."

"Yep," said Coal Oil Johnny, pretending to gulp down a manly emotion. "Yep, kind lady, and God bless your purty face, and if a lifetime of humble devotion and--"

"We all three have to do something for the St. John's Home for Incurable Children," Interrupted Dolly, "and the question is, what?"

"Simplest thing out," said Mr. Bassity, feeling for his pocketbook.

"That's just what we're not going to do," continued Dolly. "It's horrid to go around dunning people for subscriptions, and being ten dollars nice to them for three dollars and fifty cents cash. We're all pledged to earn some money--really, truly earn it--and every one of us is going to get out and hustle, and, of course, we want to arrange it so that none of us three will overlap. My own idea is dog-thinning!"

"Dog-what?" ejaculated Coal Oil Johnny.

"Most people's dogs are too fat," explained Miss Hemingway. "Most owners are so slack and good-natured that, though they know they are their own dogs' worst enemies, they weakly go on pampering them in spite of their better judgment. I am going to reduce dogs for ten dollars a dog--not brutally, like a vet, who kicks them into a cellar and leaves them there--but giving up my whole time to it for a month. Plain living, lots of exercise, sympathy, tact, and all the comforts of home! I've already got the promise of four, and there's a Russian Poodle, besides, and a dachshund, who are trying to make up their minds."

"I wish I could have thought of anything so original," cried Sattie Felton mournfully. "It seems so commonplace just to work in papa's office for two weeks, doesn't it?"

"'Specially the way you'll work!" exclaimed Grace Sinclair.

"I am going to help Miss Drayton in the filing department," said Sattie. "Put a letter from an F man into an F drawer, and from a G man into a G drawer, and from an H man into an H drawer, and from an I man into an I drawer--"

"Oh, stop!" cried Dolly Hemingway, warningly.

"And from a J man into a J drawer," continued Sattie drearily, "and from a K man into--"

The hurried passing of the chocolate creams in her direction brought about a welcome silence.

"What's your plan, Miss Sinclair?" Inquired Mr. Bassity.

"Oh, Grace has a snap," said Sattie in thick, chocolate-cream accents.