SHOWING HOW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO MAKE OF HIMSELF A CHUMP
After a while I repeated: "They _did_ marry, didn't they?"
"What do _you_ think?"
"I'm perfectly certain they did."
"Well, then, what more do you want?" he laughed.
"Another of your reminiscences disguised as fiction," I said, tinkling
my spoon on the edge of my tumbler to attract the waiter.
"Two more," I said, lighting a caporal cigarette, the penetrating aroma
of which drifted lazily through forgotten years, drawing memory with it
in its fragrant back-draught.
"Do you remember Seabury's brother?" he asked.
"Beaux Arts? Certainly. Architect, wasn't he?"
"Yes, but he came into a lot of money and started for home to hit a
siding."
"Little chump," I said; "I remember him. There was a promising architect
spoiled."
"Oh, I don't know. He is doing a lot to his money."
"Good?"
"Of course. Otherwise I should have said that his money is doing a lot
to him."
"Cut out these fine shades and go back to galley-proof," I said,
sullenly. "What about him, anyway?"
Williams said, slowly: "A thing happened to that man which had no right
to happen anywhere except in a musical comedy. But," he shrugged his
shoulders, "everybody's lives are really full of equally grotesque
episodes. The trouble is that the world is too serious to discover any
absurdity in itself. We writers have to do that for it. For example,
there was Seabury's brother. Trouble began the moment he saw her."
"Saw who?" I interrupted.
"Saw her! Shut up!"
I did so. He continued:
* * * * *
They encountered one another under the electric lights in the wooden
labyrinth which forms the ferry terminal of the Sixth Avenue Elevated
Railroad, she hastening one way, he hurrying the opposite. There was
ample room for them to pass each other; it may have been because she was
unusually pretty, it may have been his absent-mindedness, but he made
one of those mistakes which everybody makes once in a lifetime: he
turned to the left, realised what he was doing, wheeled hastily to the
right--as she, too, turned--only to meet her face to face, politely
dodge, meet again, lose his head and begin a heart-breaking
contra-dance, until, vexed and bewildered, she stood perfectly still,
and he, redder than she, took the opportunity to slink past her and
escape.
"Hey!" said a sarcastic voice, as, blinded with chagrin, he found
himself attempting to force a locked wooden gate. "You want to go the
other way, unless you're hunting for the third rail."
"No, I don't," he said, wrathfully; "I want to go uptown."
"That's what I said; you want to go the other way, even if you don't
know where you want to go," yawned the gateman disdainfully.
Seabury collected his scattered wits and gazed about him. Being a New
Yorker, and acquainted with the terminal labyrinth, he very quickly
discovered his error, and, gripping suit-case and golf-bag more firmly,
he turned and retraced his steps at the natural speed of a good New
Yorker, which is a sort of a meaningless lope.
Jammed into the familiar ticket line, he peered ahead through the yellow
glare of light and saw the charming girl with whom he had danced his
foolish contra-dance just receiving her ticket from the boxed automaton.
Also, to his satisfaction, he observed her disappear through the
turnstile into the crush surging forward alongside of the cars, and,
when he presently deposited his own ticket in the chopper's box, he had
no more expectation of ever again seeing her than he had of doing
something again to annoy and embarrass her.
But even in Manhattan Destiny works overtime, and Fate gets busy in a
manner that no man knoweth; and so, personally though invisibly
conducted, Seabury lugged his suit-case and golf-bag aboard a train,
threaded his way into a stuffy car and took the only empty seat
remaining; and a few seconds later, glancing casually at his right-hand
neighbour, he blushed to find himself squeezed into a seat beside his
unusually attractive partner in the recent contra-dance.
That she had already seen him, the calm indifference in her blue eyes,
the poise of her flushed face, were evidence conclusive.
He shrank back, giving her all the room he could, set his bag of
golf-clubs between his knees, and looked innocent. First, as all New
Yorkers do, he read the line of advertisements opposite with the usual
personal sense of resentment; then he carelessly scanned the people
across the aisle. As usual, they resembled everybody he had never
particularly noticed; he fished out the evening paper, remembered that
he had read it on the ferryboat, stuck it into his golf-bag, and
contemplated the battered ends of his golf-clubs.
Station after station flashed yellow lamps along the line of car
windows; passengers went and passengers took their places; in one of the
streets below he caught a glimpse of a fire engine vomiting sparks and
black smoke; in another an ambulance with a squalid assemblage crowded
around a policeman who was emerging from a drug store.
He had pretty nearly succeeded in forgetting the girl and his
mortification; he cast a calmly casual glance over his well-fitting
trousers and shoes. The edge of a shoe-lace lay exposed, and he
leisurely remedied this untidy accident, leaning over and tying the lace
securely with a double knot.
Fourteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, ran the stations. He gathered his
golf-bag instinctively and sat alert, prepared to rise and leave the car
with dignity.
"Twenty-eighth!" It was his station. Just as he rose the attractive girl
beside him sprang up, and at the same instant his right leg was jerked
from under him and he sat down in his seat with violence. Before he
comprehended what had happened, the girl, with a startled exclamation,
fell back into her seat, and he felt a spasmodic wrench at his foot
again.
Astonished, he struggled to rise once more, but something held him--his
foot seemed to be caught; and as he turned he encountered her bewildered
face and felt another desperate tug which brought him abruptly into his
seat again.
"What on earth is the matter?" he asked.
[Illustration: "'I--I don't know,' she stammered; 'my shoe seems tied to
yours.'"]
"I--I don't know," she stammered; "my shoe seems to be tied to yours."
"Tied!" he cried, bending down in a panic, "wasn't that _my_ shoe-lace?"
His golf-bag fell, he seized it and set it against the seat between
them. "Hold it a moment," he groaned. "I tied your shoe-lace to mine!"
"_You_ tied it!" she repeated, furiously.
"I saw a shoe-lace--I thought it was mine--I tied it fast--in a
d-d-double knot----"
"Untie it at once!" she said, crimson to the roots of her hair.
"Great Heavens, madam! I didn't mean to do it! I'll fix it in a
moment----"
"Don't," she whispered, fiercely; "the people opposite are looking at
us! Do you wish to hold us both up to ridicule?" He straightened up,
thoroughly flurried.
"But--this is my station--" he began.
"It is mine, too. I'd rather sit here all night than have those people
see you untie your shoe from mine! How--how _could_ you----"
"I've explained that I didn't mean to do it," he returned, dropping into
the breathless undertone in which she spoke. "Happening to glance down,
I saw a shoe-lace end and thought my shoe was untied----"
She looked at him scornfully.
"And I tied it tight, that's all. I'm horribly mortified; this is the
second time I've appeared to disadvantage----"
"People in New York usually turn to the right; even horses----"
"I doubt," he said, "that you can make me feel much worse than I feel
now, but it's a sort of a horrible relief to know what a fool you think
me."
She said nothing, sitting there, cooling her hot face in the breeze
from the forward door; he, numb with chagrin, stole an apprehensive
glance at the passengers opposite. Nobody appeared to have observed
their plight, and he ventured to say so in a low voice.
"Are you certain?" she asked, her own voice not quite steady.
"Perfectly. Look! Nobody is eying our feet."
Her own small feet were well tucked up under her gown; she instinctively
drew them further in; he felt a little tug; they both coloured
furiously.
"This is simply unspeakable," she said, looking straight ahead of her
through two bright tears of mortification.
"Suppose," he whispered, "you edge your foot a trifle this way--I think
I can cut the knot with my penknife--" He glanced about him stealthily.
"Shall I try?"
"Not now. Wait until those people go."
"But some of them may live in Harlem."
"I--I can't help it. Do you suppose I'm going to let you lean over
before all those people and try to untie our shoes?"
"Do you mean to sit here until they're all gone?" he asked, appalled.
"I do. Terrible as the situation is, we've got to conceal it."
"Even if some of them go to the end of the line?"
"I don't care!" She turned on him with a hint of that pretty fierceness
again. "Do you know what you've done? You've affronted and mortified me
and humiliated me beyond endurance. I have a guest to dine with me: I
shall not arrive before midnight!"
"Do you suppose," he said miserably, "that anything you say can add to
my degradation? Can't you imagine how a man must feel who first of all
makes a four-footed fool of himself before the most attractive girl
he----"
"Don't say that!" she cried, hotly.
"Yes, I will! You are! And I dodged and tumbled about like a headless
chicken and ran into the wrong gate. I wish I'd climbed out on the third
rail! And then, when I hoped I'd never see you again, I found myself
beside you, and--Good Heavens! I lost no time in beginning my capers
again and doing the most abandoned deed a man ever accomplished on
earth!"
She appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of a breakfast-food
advertisement; her color was still high; at times she worried her under
lip with her white teeth, but her breath rose and fell under the fluffy
bosom of her gown with more regularity, and the two bright tears in her
eyes had dried unshed. Wrath may have dried them.
"I wish it were possible," he said very humbly, "for you to see the
humour----"
"Humour!" she repeated, menacingly.
"No--I didn't mean that, I meant the--the----"
"You did! You meant the humour of the situation. I will answer you. I do
_not_ see the humour of it!"
"You are quite right," he admitted, looking furtively at the edge of her
gown which concealed his right foot. "It is, as you say, simply ghastly
to be tied together by the feet. Don't you suppose I could--without
awakening suspicion--cut the--the laces with a penknife?"
"I beg you will attempt nothing whatever until this car is empty."
"Certainly," he said. "I will do anything in the world I can to spare
you."
She did not reply, and he sat there nervously balanced on the edge of
his seat, watching the lights of Harlem flash into view below. He had
been hungry; he was no longer. Appetite had been succeeded by a gnawing
anxiety. Again and again warm waves of shame overwhelmed him,
alternating with a sort of wild-eyed pity for the young girl who sat so
rigidly beside him, face averted. Once a mad desire to laugh seized him;
he wondered whether it might be a premonition of hysteria, and
shuddered. It did not seem as though he could possibly endure it
another second to be tied by the foot to this silently suffering and
lovely companion.
"Do you think," he said, hoarsely, "at the next station that if we rose
together--and kept step----"
She shook her head.
"A--a sort of lock-step," he explained, timidly.
"I would if I thought it possible," she replied under her breath; "but I
dare not. Suppose you should miss step! You are likely to do anything if
it's only sufficiently foolish."
"You could take my arm and pretend you are my lame sister," he ventured.
"Suppose the train started. Suppose, by any one of a thousand possible
accidents, you should become panic-stricken. What sort of a spectacle
would we furnish the passengers of this car? No! No! No! The worst of it
is almost over. My guest is there--astounded at my absence. Before I am
even half-way back to Twenty-eighth Street she will have become
sufficiently affronted to leave the house. I might as well go on to the
end of the road." She turned toward him hastily: "Where is the end of
this road?"
"Somewhere in the Bronx, I believe," he said, vaguely.
"That is hours from Twenty-eighth Street, isn't it?"
"I believe so."
The train whirled on; stations were far between, now. He sat so silent,
so utterly broken and downcast, that after a long while she turned to
him with a hint of softness in her stern reserve.
"Of course," she said, "I do not suppose you deliberately intended to
tie our feet together. I am not absurd. But the astonishment, the horror
of finding what you had done exasperated me for a moment. I'm cool
enough now; besides, it is perfectly plain that you are the sort of man
one is--is accustomed to know."
"I hope not!" he said, devoutly.
"Oh, I mean--" She hesitated, and the glimmer of a smile touched her
eyes, instantly extinguished, however.
"I understand," he said. "You mean that it's lucky your shoe-laces are
tied to the shoe-lace of a man of your own sort. I hope to Heaven you
may find a little comfort in that."
"I do," she said, with the uncertain violet light in her eyes again.
"It's bad enough, goodness knows, but I--I am very sure you did not
mean----"
"You are perfectly right; I mean well, as they say of all chumps. And
the worst of it is," he added, wildly, "I never before knew that I was
a chump! I never before saw any symptoms. Would you believe me, I never
in all my life have been such an idiot as I was in those first few
minutes that I crossed your path. How on earth to account for it; how to
explain, to ask pardon, to--to ever forget it! As long as I live I shall
wake at night with the dreadful chagrin burning my ears off. Isn't it
the limit? And I--I shouldn't have felt so crushed if it had been
anybody excepting you----"
"I do not understand," she said gravely.
"I do," he muttered.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]