Aubrey Walks Part Way Home--and Rides The Rest of the Way
It was a cold, clear night as Mr. Aubrey Gilbert left the Haunted
Bookshop that evening, and set out to walk homeward. Without making a
very conscious choice, he felt instinctively that it would be agreeable
to walk back to Manhattan rather than permit the roaring disillusion of
the subway to break in upon his meditations.
It is to be feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked any quizzing on
the chapters of Somebody's Luggage which the bookseller had read aloud.
His mind was swimming rapidly in the agreeable, unfettered fashion of a
stream rippling downhill. As O. Henry puts it in one of his most
delightful stories: "He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve
his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness."
To say that he was thinking of Miss Chapman would imply too much power
of ratiocination and abstract scrutiny on his part. He was not
thinking: he was being thought. Down the accustomed channels of his
intellect he felt his mind ebbing with the irresistible movement of
tides drawn by the blandishing moon. And across these shimmering
estuaries of impulse his will, a lost and naked athlete, was painfully
attempting to swim, but making much leeway and already almost resigned
to being carried out to sea.
He stopped a moment at Weintraub's drug store, on the corner of Gissing
Street and Wordsworth Avenue, to buy some cigarettes, unfailing solace
of an agitated bosom.
It was the usual old-fashioned pharmacy of those parts of Brooklyn:
tall red, green, and blue vases of liquid in the windows threw blotches
of coloured light onto the pavement; on the panes was affixed white
china lettering: H. WE TRAUB, DEUT CHE APOTHEKER. Inside, the
customary shelves of labelled jars, glass cases holding cigars,
nostrums and toilet knick-knacks, and in one corner an ancient
revolving bookcase deposited long ago by the Tabard Inn Library. The
shop was empty, but as he opened the door a bell buzzed sharply. In a
back chamber he could hear voices. As he waited idly for the druggist
to appear, Aubrey cast a tolerant eye over the dusty volumes in the
twirling case. There were the usual copies of Harold MacGrath's The
Man on the Box, A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Houseboat on the
Styx. The Divine Fire, much grimed, leaned against Joe Chapple's Heart
Throbs. Those familiar with the Tabard Inn bookcases still to be found
in outlying drug-shops know that the stock has not been "turned" for
many a year. Aubrey was the more surprised, on spinning the the case
round, to find wedged in between two other volumes the empty cover of a
book that had been torn loose from the pages to which it belonged. He
glanced at the lettering on the back. It ran thus:
CARLYLE
----
OLIVER CROMWELL'S
LETTERS
AND
SPEECHES
Obeying a sudden impulse, he slipped the book cover in his overcoat
pocket.
Mr. Weintraub entered the shop, a solid Teutonic person with
discoloured pouches under his eyes and a face that was a potent
argument for prohibition. His manner, however, was that of one anxious
to please. Aubrey indicated the brand of cigarettes he wanted. Having
himself coined the advertising catchword for them--They're mild--but
they satisfy--he felt a certain loyal compulsion always to smoke this
kind. The druggist held out the packet, and Aubrey noticed that his
fingers were stained a deep saffron colour.
"I see you're a cigarette smoker, too," said Aubrey pleasantly, as he
opened the packet and lit one of the paper tubes at a little alcohol
flame burning in a globe of blue glass on the counter.
"Me? I never smoke," said Mr. Weintraub, with a smile which somehow
did not seem to fit his surly face. "I must have steady nerves in my
profession. Apothecaries who smoke make up bad prescriptions."
"Well, how do you get your hands stained that way?"
Mr. Weintraub removed his hands from the counter.
"Chemicals," he grunted. "Prescriptions--all that sort of thing."
"Well," said Aubrey, "smoking's a bad habit. I guess I do too much of
it." He could not resist the impression that someone was listening to
their talk. The doorway at the back of the shop was veiled by a
portiere of beads and thin bamboo sections threaded on strings. He
heard them clicking as though they had been momentarily pulled aside.
Turning, just as he opened the door to leave, he noticed the bamboo
curtain swaying.
"Well, good-night," he said, and stepped out onto the street.
As he walked down Wordsworth Avenue, under the thunder of the L, past
lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed
her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in
a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening. The small
book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the
lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud--and there, in the old
easy chair whose horsehair stuffing was bulging out, that blue-eyed
vision of careless girlhood! Happily he had been so seated that he
could study her without seeming to do so. The line of her ankle where
the firelight danced upon it put Coles Phillips to shame, he averred.
Extraordinary, how these creatures are made to torment us with their
intolerable comeliness! Against the background of dusky bindings her
head shone with a soft haze of gold. Her face, that had an air of
naive and provoking independence, made him angry with its unnecessary
surplus of enchantment. An unaccountable gust of rage drove him
rapidly along the frozen street. "Damn it," he cried, "what right has
any girl to be as pretty as that? Why--why, I'd like to beat her!" he
muttered, amazed at himself. "What the devil right has a girl got to
look so innocently adorable?"
It would be unseemly to follow poor Aubrey in his vacillations of rage
and worship as he thrashed along Wordsworth Avenue, hearing and seeing
no more than was necessary for the preservation of his life at street
crossings. Half-smoked cigarette stubs glowed in his wake;[2] his
burly bosom echoed with incoherent oratory. In the darker stretches of
Fulton Street that lead up to the Brooklyn Bridge he fiercely
exclaimed: "By God, it's not such a bad world." As he ascended the
slope of that vast airy span, a black midget against a froth of stars,
he was gravely planning such vehemence of exploit in the advertising
profession as would make it seem less absurd to approach the President
of the Daintybits Corporation with a question for which no progenitor
of loveliness is ever quite prepared.
[2] NOTE WHILE PROOFREADING: Surely this phrase was unconsciously
lifted from R. L. S. But where does the original occur? C. D. M.
In the exact centre of the bridge something diluted his mood; he
halted, leaning against the railing, to consider the splendour of the
scene. The hour was late--moving on toward midnight--but in the tall
black precipices of Manhattan scattered lights gleamed, in an odd,
irregular pattern like the sparse punctures on the raffle-board--"take
a chance on a Milk-Fed Turkey"--the East Indian elevator-boy presents
to apartment-house tenants about Hallowe'en. A fume of golden light
eddied over uptown merriment: he could see the ruby beacon on the
Metropolitan Tower signal three quarters. Underneath the airy decking
of the bridge a tug went puffing by, her port and starboard lamps
trailing red and green threads over the tideway. Some great argosy of
the Staten Island fleet swept serenely down to St. George, past Liberty
in her soft robe of light, carrying theatred commuters, dazed with
weariness and blinking at the raw fury of the electric bulbs. Overhead
the night was a superb arch of clear frost, sifted with stars. Blue
sparks crackled stickily along the trolley wires as the cars groaned
over the bridge.
Aubrey surveyed all this splendid scene without exact observation. He
was of a philosophic turn, and was attempting to console his
discomfiture in the overwhelming lustre of Miss Titania by the thought
that she was, after all, the creature and offspring of the science he
worshipped--that of Advertising. Was not the fragrance of her
presence, the soft compulsion of her gaze, even the delirious frill of
muslin at her wrist, to be set down to the credit of his chosen art?
Had he not, pondering obscurely upon "attention-compelling" copy and
lay-out and type-face, in a corner of the Grey-Matter office,
contributed to the triumphant prosperity and grace of this unconscious
beneficiary? Indeed she seemed to him, fiercely tormenting himself
with her loveliness, a symbol of the mysterious and subtle power of
publicity. It was Advertising that had done this--that had enabled Mr.
Chapman, a shy and droll little person, to surround this girl with all
the fructifying glories of civilization--to foster and cherish her
until she shone upon the earth like a morning star! Advertising had
clothed her, Advertising had fed her, schooled, roofed, and sheltered
her. In a sense she was the crowning advertisement of her father's
career, and her innocent perfection taunted him just as much as the
bright sky-sign he knew was flashing the words CHAPMAN PRUNES above the
teeming pavements of Times Square. He groaned to think that he
himself, by his conscientious labours, had helped to put this girl in
such a position that he could hardly dare approach her.
He would never have approached her again, on any pretext, if the
intensity of his thoughts had not caused him, unconsciously, to grip
the railing of the bridge with strong and angry hands. For at that
moment a sack was thrown over his head from behind and he was violently
seized by the legs, with the obvious intent of hoisting him over the
parapet. His unexpected grip on the railing delayed this attempt just
long enough to save him. Swept off his feet by the fury of the
assault, he fell sideways against the barrier and had the good fortune
to seize his enemy by the leg. Muffled in the sacking, it was vain to
cry out; but he held furiously to the limb he had grasped and he and
his attacker rolled together on the footway. Aubrey was a powerful
man, and even despite the surprise could probably have got the better
of the situation; but as he wrestled desperately and tried to rid
himself of his hood, a crashing blow fell upon his head, half stunning
him. He lay sprawled out, momentarily incapable of struggle, yet
conscious enough to expect, rather curiously, the dizzying sensation of
a drop through insupportable air into the icy water of the East River.
Hands seized him--and then, passively, he heard a shout, the sound of
footsteps running on the planks, and other footsteps hurrying away at
top speed. In a moment the sacking was torn from his head and a
friendly pedestrian was kneeling beside him.
"Say, are you all right?" said the latter anxiously. "Gee, those guys
nearly got you."
Aubrey was too faint and dizzy to speak for a moment. His head was
numb and he felt certain that several inches of it had been caved in.
Putting up his hand, feebly, he was surprised to find the contours of
his skull much the same as usual. The stranger propped him against his
knee and wiped away a trickle of blood with his handkerchief.
"Say, old man, I thought you was a goner," he said sympathetically. "I
seen those fellows jump you. Too bad they got away. Dirty work, I'll
say so."
Aubrey gulped the night air, and sat up. The bridge rocked under him;
against the star-speckled sky he could see the Woolworth Building
bending and jazzing like a poplar tree in a gale. He felt very sick.
"Ever so much obliged to you," he stammered. "I'll be all right in a
minute."
"D'you want me to go and ring up a nambulance?" said his assistant.
"No, no," said Aubrey; "I'll be all right." He staggered to his feet
and clung to the rail of the bridge, trying to collect his wits. One
phrase ran over and over in his mind with damnable iteration--"Mild,
but they satisfy!"
"Where were you going?" said the other, supporting him.
"Madison Avenue and Thirty-Second----"
"Maybe I can flag a jitney for you. Here," he cried, as another
citizen approached afoot, "Give this fellow a hand. Someone beat him
over the bean with a club. I'm going to get him a lift."
The newcomer readily undertook the friendly task, and tied Aubrey's
handkerchief round his head, which was bleeding freely. After a few
moments the first Samaritan succeeded in stopping a touring car which
was speeding over from Brooklyn. The driver willingly agreed to take
Aubrey home, and the other two helped him in. Barring a nasty gash on
his scalp he was none the worse.
"A fellow needs a tin hat if he's going to wander round Long Island at
night," said the motorist genially. "Two fellows tried to hold me up
coming in from Rockville Centre the other evening. Maybe they were the
same two that picked on you. Did you get a look at them?"
"No," said Aubrey. "That piece of sacking might have helped me trace
them, but I forgot it."
"Want to run back for it?"
"Never mind," said Aubrey. "I've got a hunch about this."
"Think you know who it is? Maybe you're in politics, hey?"
The car ran swiftly up the dark channel of the Bowery, into Fourth
Avenue, and turned off at Thirty-Second Street to deposit Aubrey in
front of his boarding house. He thanked his convoy heartily, and
refused further assistance. After several false shots he got his latch
key in the lock, climbed four creaking flights, and stumbled into his
room. Groping his way to the wash-basin, he bathed his throbbing head,
tied a towel round it, and fell into bed.