myself quietly so as not to awake him. It was now Monday, and you can
see for yourself there was no time to spare. I gave the butler a dollar,
and ordered him to say that unexpected business had called me away
without warning, but that I should be back by luncheon. I rather overdid
the earliness of it all. At least, I hove off 1892 Eighth Avenue at
eight-fifteen A.M. I loitered about; looked at pawnshop windows; gave a
careful examination to a forty-eight-dollar-ninety-eight-cent complete
outfit for a four-room flat; had a chat with a policeman; assisted at a
runaway; advanced a nickel to a colored gentleman in distress; had my
shoes shined by another; helped a child catch an escaped parrot--and
still it wasn't nine! Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on
Eighth Avenue in the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a keen
tongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I besought her
indulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before her--at least, as
much of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the rôle of her son's warmest
admirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense of his
duty to you?"
"Duty, fiddlesticks!" said she. "He's going to marry Bertha McNutt!"
"But he doesn't want to marry Bertha McNutt!"
"Then he needn't marry anybody."
She seemed to think this a triumphant answer. Indeed, in some ways I
must confess it was. But still I persevered.
"It puts me out to have him shilly-shallying around like this," she
said. "I'll give him a good talking to when he gets back. This other
arrangement has been understood between Mrs. McNutt and myself for
years."
She was an irritating person. I found it not a little difficult to keep
my temper with her. It's easier to fight dragons than to temporize with
them and appeal to their better nature. I appealed and appealed. She
watched me with the same air of interested detachment that one gives to
a squirrel revolving in a cage. I could feel that she was flattered; her
sense of power was agreeably tickled; my earnestness and despair
enhanced the zest of her reiterated refusals. I was a very nice young
man, but her son was going to marry Bertha McNutt or marry nobody!
Then I tried to draw a lurid picture of his revolt from her
apron-strings.
"Oh, Harry's a good boy," she said. "You can't make me believe that two
days has altered his whole character. I'll answer for his doing what I
want."
I felt a precisely similar conviction, and my heart sank into my shoes.
At this moment there was a tap at the door, and another old lady bounced
in. She was stout, jolly-looking and effusive. The greetings between the
pair were warm, and they were evidently old friends. But underneath the
new-comer's gush and noise I was dimly conscious of a sort of gay
hostility. She was exultant and frightened, both at once, and her eyes
were sparkling.
"Well, what do you think?" she cried out explosively.
Mrs. Jones' lips tightened. There was a mean streak in that old woman. I
could see she was feeling for her little hatchet, and was getting out
her little gun.
"Bertha!" exploded the old lady. "Bertha--"
(Mysterious mental processes at once informed me that this was none
other than Bertha's mother.)
Mrs. Jones was coolly taking aim. I was reminded of that old military
dictum: "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!"
"Bertha," vociferated the old lady fiercely--"Bertha has been secretly
married to Mr. Stuffenhammer for the last three months!"
Another series of kinematographic mental processes informed me that Mr.
Stuffenhammer was an immense catch.
"Twenty thousand dollars a year, and her own carriage," continued Mrs.
McNutt gloatingly. "You could have knocked me down with a feather.
Bertha is such a considerate child; she insisted on marrying secretly so
that she could tone it down by degrees to poor Harry; though there was
no engagement or anything like that, she could not help feeling, of
course, that she owed it to the dear boy to gradually--"
Mrs. Jones never turned a hair or moved a muscle.
"You needn't pity Harry," she said. "I've just got the good news that
he's engaged to one of the sweetest and richest girls in Morristown."
I jumped for my hat and ran.
V
You never saw anybody so electrified as Jones. For a good minute he
couldn't even speak. It was like bringing a horseback reprieve to the
hero on the stage. He repeated "Stuffenhammer, Stuffenhammer," in tones
that Henry Irving might have envied, while I gently undid the noose
around his neck. I led him under a tree and told him to buck up. He did
so--slowly and surely--and then began to ask me agitated questions about
proposing. He deferred to me as though I had spent my whole life
Bluebearding through the social system. He wanted to be coached how to
do it, you know. I told him to rip out the words--any old words--and
then kiss her.
"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl hates
pauses."
"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me as
r-r-respectful."
"You try it," I said. "It's the only way."
"I'll be glad when it's over," he remarked dreamily.
"Whatever you do, keep clear of set speeches," I went on. "Blurt it out,
no matter how badly--but with all the fire and ginger in you."
He gazed at me like a dead calf.
"Here goes," he said, and started on a trembling walk toward the house.
I don't know whether he was afraid, or didn't get the chance, or what
it was; but at any rate the afternoon wore on without the least sign
of his coming to time. I kept tab on him as well as I could--checkers
with Miss Drayton--half an hour writing letters--a long talk with the
major--and finally his getting lost altogether in the shrubbery with
an old lady. Freddy said the suspense was killing her, and was terribly
despondent and miserable. I couldn't interest her in the Seventy-second
Street house at all. She asked what was the good of working and
worrying, and figuring and making lists--when in all probability it
would be another girl that would live there. She had an awfully mean
opinion of my constancy, and was intolerably philosophical and
Oh-I-wouldn't-blame-you-the-least-little-bit-if-you-did-go-off-and-marry-somebody-else!
She took a pathetic pleasure in loving me, losing me, and then weeping
over the dear dead memory. She said nobody ever got what they wanted,
anyway; and might she come, when she was old and ugly and faded and
weary, to take care of my children and be a sort of dear old aunty in
the Seventy-second Street house. I said certainly not, and we had a
fight right away.
As we were dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task, and
tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it somehow, for
he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his affairs, and then went
into the bath-room, where he shaved and growled for ten whole minutes. I
itched to throw a bootjack at him, but compromised on doing a little
growling myself. Afterward we got into our clothes in silence, and as he
went out first he slammed the door.
It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive uchre for a silly
prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so. Then the
major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I was thankful to sneak
out-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the starlight. I walked up and
down, consigning Jones to--well, where I thought he belonged. I thought
of the time I had wasted over the fellow--the good money--the hopes--I
was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling
me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge
gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was
in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to
pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it's
hell not to reach par. I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm--the
consolation--to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who had
looked down in their time on such countless generations of human asses.
It gave me a wonderful sense of fellowship with the past and future.
I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the general
scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another human speck,
stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit case. It was Jones
himself, outward bound, and doing five knots an hour. I was after him in
a second, doing six.
"Jones!" I cried.
He never even turned round.
I grabbed him by the arm. He wasn't going to walk away from me like
that.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"Home!"
"But say, stop; you can't do that. It's too darned rude. We don't break
up till to-morrow."
"I'm breaking up now," he said.
"But--"
"Let go my arm--!"
"Oh, but, my dear chap--" I began.
"Don't you dear chap me!"
We strode on in silence. Even his back looked sullen, and his face under
the gaslights--
"Westoby," he broke out suddenly, "if there's one thing I'm sensitive
about it is my name. Slap me in the face, turn the hose on me, rip the
coat off my back--and you'd be astounded by my mildness. But when it
comes to my name I--I'm a tiger!"
"A tiger," I repeated encouragingly.
"It all went swimmingly," he continued in a tone of angry confidence.
"For five seconds I was the happiest man in the United States. I--I did
everything you said, you know, and I was dumfounded at my own success.
S-s-she loves me, Westoby."
I gazed inquiringly at the dress-suit case.
"We don't belong to any common Joneses. We're Connecticut Joneses. In
fact, we're the only Joneses--and the name is as dear to me, as sacred,
as I suppose that of Westoby is, perhaps, to you. And yet--and yet--do
you know what she actually said to me? Said to me, holding my hand, and,
and--that the only thing she didn't like about me was my _name_."
I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper astonishment.
"I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything very
extra."
"Wouldn't it have been wiser to--?"
"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a fellow has
to show a little decent pride. A fellow owes something to his family,
doesn't he? As a man I love the ground she walks on; as a Jones--well,
if she feels like that about it--I told her she had better wait for a De
Montmorency."
"But she didn't say she wouldn't marry you, did she?"
"N-o-o-o!"
"She didn't ask you to _change_ your name, did she?"
"N-o-o-o!"
"And do you mean to say that just for one unfortunate remark--a remark
that any one might have made in the agitation of the moment--you're
deliberately turning your back on her, and her broken heart!"
"Oh, she's red-hot, too, you know, over what I said about the Van
Coorts."
"She couldn't have realized that you belonged to the Connecticut
Joneses. _I_ didn't know it. _I_--"
"Well, it's all off now," he said.
It was a mile to the depot. For Jones it was a mile of reproaches,
scoldings, lectures and insults. For myself I shall ever remember it as
the mile of my life. I pleaded, argued, extenuated and explained. My
lifelong happiness--Freddy--the Seventy-second Street house--were
walking away from me in the dark while I jerked unavailingly at Jones'
coat-tails. The whole outfit disappeared into a car, leaving me on the
platform with the ashes of my hopes. Of all obstinate, mulish,
pig-headed, copper-riveted--
I was lucky enough to find Eleanor crying softly to herself in a corner
of the veranda. The sight of her tears revived my fainting courage. I
thought of Bruce and the spider, and waded in.
"Eleanor," I said, "I've just been seeing poor Jones off."
She sobbed out something to the effect that she didn't care.
"No, you can't care very much," I said, "or you wouldn't send a man like
that--a splendid fellow--a member of one of the oldest and proudest
families of Connecticut--to his death."
"Death?"
"Well, he's off for Japan to-morrow. They're getting through fifty
doctors a week out there at the front. They're shot down faster than
they can set them up."
I was unprepared for the effect of this on Eleanor. For two cents she
would have fainted then and there. It's awful to hear a woman moan, and
clench her teeth, and pant for breath.
"Oh, Eleanor, can't you do anything?"
"I am helpless, Ezra. My pride--my woman's pride--"
"Oh, how can you let such trifles stand between you? Think of him out
there, in his tattered Japanese uniform--so far from home, so lonely, so
heartbroken--standing undaunted in that rain of steel, while--"
"Oh, Ezra, stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
"Is the love of three years to be thrown aside like an old glove, just
because--"
Her face was so wild and strained that the lies froze upon my tongue.
"Oh, Ezra, I could follow him barefooted through the snow if only he--"
"He's leaving Grand Central to-morrow at ten forty-five," I said.
She fumbled at her neck, and almost tore away the diamond locket that
reposed there.
"Take him this," she whispered hoarsely. "Take it to him at once, and
say I sent it. Say that I beg him to return--that my pride crumbles at
the thought of his going away so far into danger."
I put the locket carefully into my pocket.
"And, Eleanor, try and don't rub him the wrong way about his name. Is it
worth while? There have to be Joneses, you know."
"Tell him," she burst out, "tell him--oh, I never meant to wound
him--truly, I didn't ... a name that's good enough for him is good
enough for me!"
The next morning at nine I pulled up my Porcher-Mufflin car before
Jones' door. He was sitting at his table reading a book, and he made no
motion to rise as I came in. He gave me a pale, expressionless stare
instead, such as an ancient Christian might have worn when the call-boy
told him the lions were ready in the Colosseum. Resignation, obstinacy
and defiance--all nicely blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior.
He looked woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleepless
night and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was the
last straw to this unfortunate medical camel.
I threw in a genial remark about the weather, and took a seat.
Jones hunched himself together, and squirmed a sad little squirm.
"Mr. Westoby," he said, "I once made use of a very strong expression in
regard to you. I said, if you remember, that I'd be obliged if you'd
keep your paws--"
"Don't apologize," I interrupted. "I forgot it long ago."
"You've taken me up wrong," he continued drearily. "I should like you to
consider the remark repeated now. Yes, sir, repeated."
"Oh, bosh!" I exclaimed.
"You have a very tough epidermis," he went on. "Quite the toughest
epidermis I have met with in my whole professional career. A paper
adequately treating your epidermis would make a sensation before any
medical society."
Somehow I couldn't feel properly insulted. The whole business struck me
as irresistibly comical. I lay back in my chair--my uninvited chair--and
roared with laughter.
I couldn't forbear asking him what treatment he'd recommend.
He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."
I retorted by laying the diamond locket before him.
"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't let us go
on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give you this, and beg
you to return."
I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was far more
eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in his hands beside
it, and his whole body trembled with emotion. He trembled and trembled,
till finally I got tired of waiting. I poked him in the back, and
reminded him that my car was waiting down stairs. He rose with a
strange, bewildered air, and submitted like a child to be led into the
street. He had the locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then
he would glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him
into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.
"Let her out, James," I said.
James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired housemaid
at the Van Coorts' ... and it was a crack, new, four-cylinder car with a
direct drive on the top speed. Off we went like the wind, jouncing poor
Jones around the tonneau like a pea in a pill-box. But he didn't care.
Was he not seraphically whizzing through space, obeying the diamond
telegram of love? In the gentle whizzle and bang of the whole
performance he even ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could
overhear him behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the
machinery. It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the
outskirts of Morristown. You see I had to coach him about that Japanese
war business, or else there might be trouble! So I leaned over the back
seat and gently broke it to him. I thought I had managed it rather well.
I felt sure he could understand, I said, the absolute need of a
little--embellishing and--
"Let me out," he said.
I feverishly went on explaining.
"If you don't let me out I'll climb out," he said, and began to make as
good as his word over the tonneau.
Of course, there was nothing for it but to stop the car.
Jones deliberately descended and headed for New York.
I ran after him, while the chauffeur turned the car round and slowly
followed us both. It was a queer procession. First Jones, then I, then
the car.
Finally I overtook him.
"Jones," I panted. "Jones."
He muttered something about Ananias, and speeded up.
"But it was an awfully tight place," I pleaded. "Something had to be
done; you must make allowances; it was the first thing that came into
my head--and you must admit that it worked, Jones. Didn't she send you
the locket? Didn't she--?"
"What a prancing, show-off, matinée fool you've made me look!" he burst
out. "I have an old mother to support. I have an increasing practice. I
have already attracted some little attention in my chosen field--eye,
ear and throat. A nice figure I'd cut, traipsing around the battlefields
in a kimono, and looking for a kindly bullet to lay me low. If I were
ever tempted by such a thing--which God forbid--wouldn't I prefer to
spread bacilli on buttered toast?"
"I never thought of that," I said humbly.
"I have known retail liars," he went on. "But I guess you are the only
wholesaler in the business. When other people are content with ones and
twos, you get them out in grosses, packed for export!"
He went on slamming me like this for miles. Anybody else would have
given him up as hopeless. I don't want to praise myself, but if I have
one good quality it's staying power. I pleaded and argued, and
expostulated and explained, with the determination of a man whose back
is to the wall. I wasn't going to lose Freddy so long as there was
breath in my body. However, it wasn't the least good in the world. Jones
was as impervious as sole-leather, and as unshaken as a marble pillar.
Then I played my last card.
I told him the truth! Not the _whole_ truth, of course, but within ten
per cent. of it. About Freddy, you know, and how she was determined not
to marry before her elder sister, and how Eleanor's only preference
seemed to be for him, and how with such a slender clue to work on I had
engineered everything up to this point.
"If I have seemed to you intolerably prying and officious," I said,
"well, at any rate, Jones, there's my excuse. It rests with you to give
me Freddy or take her from me. Turn back, and you'll make me the
happiest man alive; go forward, and--and--"
I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
His tread lost some of its elasticity. He was short-circuiting inside.
Positively he began to look sort of sympathetic and human.
"Westoby," he said at last, in a voice almost of awe, "when they get up
another world's fair you must have a building to yourself. You're
colossal, that's what you are!"
"I'm only in love," I said.
"Well, that's the love that moves mountains," he said. "If anybody had
told me that I should...." He stopped irresolutely on the word.
"Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!" he bleated.
I was too wise to say a word. I simply motioned James to switch the car
around and back up. I shooed Jones into the tonneau and turned the knob
on him. He snuggled back in the cushions, and smiled--yes smiled--with a
beautiful, blue-eyed, far-away, indulgent expression that warmed me like
spring sunshine. Not that I felt absolutely safe even yet--of course I
couldn't--but still--
We ran into Freddy and Eleanor at the lodge gates. I had already
telephoned the former to expect us, so as to have everything fall out
naturally when the time came. We stopped the car, and descended--Jones
and I--and he walked straight off with Eleanor, while I side-stepped
with Freddy.
She and I were almost too excited to talk. It was now or never, you
know, and there was an awfully solemn look about both their backs that
was either reassuring or alarming--we couldn't decide quite which.
Freddy and I simply held our breath and waited.
Finally, after an age, Jones and Eleanor turned, still close in talk,
still solemn and enigmatical, and drew toward us very slowly and
deliberately. When they had got quite close, and the tension was at the
breaking point, Eleanor suddenly made a little rush, and, with a loud
sob, threw her arms round Freddy's neck.
Jones fidgeted nervously about, and seemed to quail under my questioning
eyes. It was impossible to tell whether things had gone right or not. I
waited for him to speak.... I saw words forming themselves hesitatingly
on his lips ... he bent toward me quite confidentially....
"Say, old man," he whispered, "is there any place around here where a
fellow can buy an engagement ring?"
THE BEAR STORY
THAT ALEX "IST MAKED UP HIS-OWN-SE'F"
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
W'y, wunst they wuz a Little Boy went out
In the woods to shoot a Bear. So, he went out
'Way in the grea'-big woods--he did.--An' he
Wuz goin' along--an' goin' along, you know,
An' purty soon he heerd somepin' go "_Wooh_!"--
Ist thataway--"_Woo-ooh!_" An' he wuz _skeered_,
He wuz. An' so he runned an' clumbed a tree--
A grea'-big tree, he did,--a _sicka-more_ tree.
An' nen he heerd it ag'in: an' he looked round,
An' _'t'uz a Bear_!--_a grea'-big shore-nuff Bear!_--
No: 't'uz _two_ Bears, it wuz--two grea'-big Bears--
_One_ of 'em wuz--ist _one's_ a _grea'-big_ Bear.--
But they ist _boff_ went "_Wooh_!"--An' here _they_ come
To climb the tree an' git the Little Boy
An' eat him up!
An' nen the Little Boy
He 'uz skeered worse'n ever! An' here come
The grea'-big Bear a-climbin' th' tree to git
The Little Boy an' eat him up--Oh, _no_!--
It 'uzn't the _Big_ Bear 'at dumb the tree--
It 'uz the _Little_ Bear. So here _he_ come
Climbin' the tree--an' climbin' the tree! Nen when
He git wite _clos't_ to the Little Boy, w'y nen
The Little Boy he ist pulled up his gun
An' _shot_ the Bear, he did, an' killed him dead!
An' nen the Bear he falled clean on down out
The tree--away clean to the ground, he did--
_Spling-splung!_ he falled _plum_ down, an' killed him, too!
An' lit wite side o' where the _Big_ Bear's at.
An' nen the Big Bear's awful mad, you bet!--
'Cause--'cause the Little Boy he shot his gun
An' killed the _Little_ Bear.--'Cause the _Big_ Bear
He--he 'uz the Little Bear's Papa.--An' so here
_He_ come to climb the big old tree an' git
The Little Boy an' eat him up! An' when
The Little Boy he saw the _grea'-big Bear_
A-comin', he 'uz badder skeered, he wuz,
Than _any_ time! An' so he think he'll climb
Up _higher_--'way up higher in the tree
Than the old _Bear_ kin climb, you know.--But he--
He _can't_ climb higher 'an old _Bears_ kin climb,--
'Cause Bears kin climb up higher in the trees
Than any little Boys in all the Wo-r-r-ld!
An' so here come the grea'-big Bear, he did,--
A-climbin' up--an' up the tree, to git
The Little Boy an' eat him up! An' so
The Little Boy he clumbed on higher, an' higher,
An' higher up the tree--an' higher--an' higher--
An' higher'n iss-here _house_ is!--An' here come
Th' old Bear--clos'ter to him all the time!--
An' nen--first thing you know,--when th' old Big Bear
Wuz wite clos't to him--nen the Little Boy
Ist jabbed his gun wite in the old Bear's mouf
An' shot an' killed him dead!--No; I _fergot_,--
He didn't shoot the grea'-big Bear at all--
'Cause _they 'uz no load in the gun_, you know--
'Cause when he shot the _Little_ Bear, w'y, nen
No load 'uz any more nen _in_ the gun!
But th' Little Boy clumbed _higher_ up, he did--
He clumbed _lots_ higher--an' on up _higher_--an' higher
An' _higher_--tel he ist _can't_ climb no higher,
'Cause nen the limbs 'uz all so little, 'way
Up in the teeny-weeny tip-top of
The tree, they'd break down wiv him ef he don't
Be keerful! So he stop an' think: An' nen
He look around--An' here come th' old Bear!