COLLAPSE OF THE ROMANCE.
"B m--B m--B m--N--N--N--Oh! where are you, N? Where is the little girl at
B m--B m--B m?"
Such were the sounds that greeted Nattie's ears, as she entered the
office the morning after her adventure with the love-lorn Quimby; and
immediately she ceased to speculate on the probable embarrassment that
must necessarily attend their not-to-be-avoided next meeting, and
interrupted "C's" solitary conversation, by saying,
"What is the matter with you this morning? Here I am, N."
"G. M., my dear. I'm off, and wanted to say good-by before I went,"
responded "C."
"Off?" questioned Nattie, with a sudden fall in her mental temperature.
"Yes, I am going to a station five miles below to substitute, to-day.
The operator there is obliged to go away, and couldn't find any one
competent to do his work, and as there was a fellow that could do mine,
he comes here and I go there."
"Oh, dear! what shall I do all day?" said Nattie, sinking into a chair,
very much aggrieved.
"I am very sorry, but I couldn't well avoid accommodating him. But what
will you do when I leave entirely, if you can't get along without me one
day? happy I, to be so necessary to your existence!"
"But there is no prospect of your leaving at present, is there?" asked
Nattie, forgetting in her alarm at such a possibility to challenge the
last of his remark.
"There is some probability of it now," "C" responded. "I will tell you
all about it to-morrow. I may come nearer to you; near enough even for
you to see that twinkle."
"You don't mean you have a prospect of an office here in the city?"
questioned Nattie, not knowing whether she would be glad or sorry if
such were the case.
"Not exactly," replied "C." "I haven't time to explain; train is coming,
so--"
"Where did you say you were going to-day?" broke in Nattie quickly.
"B a--five miles down the line nearer you, but not on this wire. Used to
be, you know, but switched on wire number twenty-seven last week," "C"
responded so hurriedly, that Nattie could hardly read it, although so
accustomed to his style of making his dots and dashes; for, with the
key, as with the pen, all operators have their own peculiar manner of
writing.
"Ah, yes! I remember," responded Nattie quickly. "That hateful operator
signing 'M' had it, that used to be fighting for the circuit always, and
breaking in when we were talking. I wouldn't have gone for him."
"Couldn't well avoid it. Here is train. Good-by; shall miss you
terribly, but will be with you again to-morrow. Good-by."
"Good-by. I am lonesome already," Nattie answered.
As "C" made no reply, it was supposable he had gone, and probably had to
run for the train, thought Nattie, as she took off her hat rather
dejectedly.
A broken companionship of any kind must ever leave a certain sense of
loneliness, and this was none the less true now on account of the unique
circumstances. Indeed, until to-day she had not fully realized how
necessary "C" had become to her telegraphic life. Naturally, she had
woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend "so near and yet so
far." Perhaps too, a certain yearning for tenderness in her lonely
heart, a feeling that every woman knows, found something, very pleasant
in being always greeted with "Good morning, my dear," and hearing the
last thing at night, "Good night, little girl at B m."
Miss Kling undoubtedly would have been shocked at being thus addressed
even on the wire, by a strange person--a person certainly, although
unseen; but Nattie, used to the license that distance gave, whether
wisely or unwisely, had never, thought it necessary to check the
familiarity.
Pondering over what he had hinted about leaving permanently, in the
leisure usually devoted to chatting with him, but which that day she
hardly knew how to fill, Nattie wondered if, should they ever come face
to face, they would feel like the old friends they were, or if the
nearness would bring a constraint now unknown? Yet she was fain to
confess she would like to see him and ascertain the personal appearance
of one who occupied so much of her thoughts. But how strange it would
be, if, after all their friendly talks and gay confidences, he should
pass out of the way that was both their ways now, and they never know
anything more about each other than that one was "C" and one was "N!"
something not impossible either, or even improbable; for fate is a sort
of switch-board, and a slight move will switch two lives onto wires far
asunder, even as the moving of a peg or two will alter everything on the
board that shows its power so little.
With such thoughts in her mind, Nattie was rather among the shadows that
day, and presented no laughing face to the curious passers-by, much to
that opposite clerk's relief, who came to the conclusion that she had
once more recovered her senses.
About an hour before the time for closing the office, as she was
counting over her cash, and thinking how glad she was that "C" would be
back to-morrow, she became conscious of some one waiting her attention
outside, and went forward, scarcely looking at him, expecting, of
course, a message. But instead, the individual, who filled the air with
a suffocating odor of musk, asked,
"You are the regular operator here, I suppose?"
With a start Nattie looked up, expecting a complaint, an occurrence
often prefaced by some like question, and scrutinizing him more
particularly, saw a short, rather stout young man, possessing an air of
cheap assurance, hair that insisted on being red, notwithstanding the
bear's grease that covered it, teeth all at variance with each other,
and seeming to rejoice obtrusively in the fact, and light blue eyes of a
most insinuating expression, trimmed around with red.
"Yes," Nattie replied as she took this survey. "I am."
"You don't know me, I suppose?" was the next question.
"No," Nattie replied with a glance at the large mock diamond pin, and
immense imitation amethyst ring he wore; "I certainly do not."
"I think you are mistaken about that," he rejoined, smiling at her in a
most unpleasantly familiar manner.
Surprised and offended, Nattie drew back haughtily. "I think, rather,
you are mistaken," she said, stiffly. "May I inquire your business?"
With an air of easy confidence and familiar remonstrance, he replied,
"Come, now, don't freeze a fellow; why, I came to see you. That's my
business and no other!"
"He is drunk," thought Nattie, indignantly, but before she could reply
he added,
"I am an operator, you see."
"Oh!" said Nattie, comprehensively, but not at all delightedly, for
operator or no operator, and notwithstanding the sort of freemasonry
between those of the craft, she preferred his room to his company. But
constraining herself, she added as civilly as possible, "Did you wish to
send a message, or speak to any one on the wire?"
"No, thank you," he answered; then, with an insinuating smile,
"Can't you guess who I am?"
"I really can't," Nattie replied, coldly and indifferently; thinking,
"some of the operators down town, I suppose, and a delightful set they
are if he is a specimen! So impertinent of him!"
"Can't you?" laughing and displaying his obtrusive teeth to their utmost
advantage. "Now just think of some one you have been buzzing lately, and
then guess, won't you, N?"
Without the least suspicion Nattie shook her head impatiently, feeling
very much disgusted, and longing for some interruption to occur. But his
next words were startling. Leaning forward very confidentially, he asked
with a smile of consciousness,
"Do you see that twinkle, N?"
"What!" ejaculated Nattie--so forcibly that a passing countryman stopped
with a peanut half cracked, to stare--and clutching at an umbrella
hanging by her side, for support, she turned a horror-stricken face to
the questioner, who, looking as if he expected her to be enraptured,
added,
"You know a fellow that signs 'C,' don't you?"
The bump of self-conceit must have largely overbalanced the perceptive
faculties of this obnoxious young man, if he could possibly mistake the
expression on Nattie's face for rapture, as, frantically grasping the
umbrella, she gasped,
"No--no--it can't be--you are not--not--"
"Not C? Ain't I, though!" laughed the proprietor of the ring, pin,
bear's-grease, et cetera.
"But," said poor Nattie, clinging desperately to hope and the umbrella,
"C said this morning he was going to B a--and--"
"That was a trick to take you by surprise," he interrupted, with great
enjoyment of his own words. "I knew I was coming here, all the time, but
I wanted to give you a nice little surprise. Think I have, eh?" and he
laughed again, and winked with almost vulgar assurance.
Nattie let go of hope and the umbrella, and collapsed with her romance
into a chair; and she thought of Quimby's warning about the "soiled
invisible," and barely suppressed a groan. Involuntarily she stole a
glance at this too-visible person, and shuddered. Could she reconcile
"C," her visionary, interesting, witty and gentlemanly "C" of the wire,
with this musk-scented being of greasy red hair, cheap jewelry and
vulgar manners? Impossible!
"It is the nightmare! it cannot be!" she thought, with the despairing
refuge in dreams we often take when suddenly overwhelmed with terrible
realities.
As she made no reply to his last observation, her visitor, glancing at
her as if slightly puzzled by her behavior, went on--
"I did not think you would be so bashful, after all our talks. _I_ am
not,"--a fact hardly necessary to mention. "We ought to be pretty good
friends by this time. Say, do I look as you expected I would? and as if
to give her a better view, he pushed his hat back on his head, a
kindness wholly unappreciated, as Nattie had seen more than sufficient
of him already.
"Not--not exactly!" she stammered, in a sort of dazed way.
"I believe you thought I was one of those slim fellows whose bones
rattle when they walk, didn't you? I am no such a fellow, you see. But
you ain't a bit as I imagined. May I be a plug [1] forever if you are!"
[1] "Plug" is the common telegraphic expression for an incompetent
operartor.
Nattie was too wretched, too unable even yet to realize that her "C" and
this odious creature were one and the same, to ask, as he evidently
expected natural curiosity would induce her to do, in what way she so
differed from the person of his imagination.
"You go beyond all my calculations," he continued, flatteringly, after
waiting in vain for a question from her; "Only you are more bashful than
I supposed you would be, after the dots and dashes we have slung. But
then it's easier to buzz on the wire than it is to talk, isn't it? For
all a fellow has to do is to take up a book or a paper, pick things out
to say, and go it without exercising his own brains!"
At these words, that explained the previous incomprehensible difference
between the distant "C" and present person, the realization of the
companionship, the romance, the friendship gone to wreck on this reef of
musk and bear's-grease came over Nattie with a rush, and for a moment
so affected her that she could hardly restrain her tears. And yet, after
all, was not "C," _her_ "C," the "C" whom she knew by his conversation
only--"picked out of books!"--an unreal, intangible being, and not this
so different person who claimed his identity?
"I think we astonished some of them on the wire with all the stuff we
had over!" went on with his monologue the knight of the collapsed
romance, who, not being troubled with fine sensibilities, had no idea of
the feelings under which she was laboring.
"Yes--I--doubtless!" stammered Nattie, and turned very red, as, suddenly
remembering the tenor of some of what he so elegantly termed "stuff,"
the appalling thought, what if he should say "my dear?" presented itself
in all its horrors, and the idea punished her for that girlish
imprudence in allowing the familiarity from afar.
Evidently he noticed the access of color, and attributed it to his own
fascinations, for he smiled complacently as he said,
"I wish I had longer to stay with you, but my train goes in five
minutes." Nattie breathed a sigh of relief. "Too bad, isn't it? But I
will come again some time! By the way," a cunning expression that seemed
uncalled-for crossing over his face, "don't say anything on the wire
about my being here to-day, will you? I don't want any one to know. Let
them think I was at B a."
"Certainly not!" replied Nattie, with an alacrity born of the knowledge
that she should hold no further communication of any kind with him;
then, in order to give a hint of her intentions, she added, bracing
herself up to mention what was so difficult to speak of to this vampire
who mocked her with her vanished "C."
"Now that the--the mystery is solved, and I--and we have met, I don't
think there will be much amusement in talking over the wire."
Somewhat to her surprise, and not at all flattering to her vanity, he
answered, without a remonstrance,
"No! I don't know as there will!"
"Perhaps he doesn't like my looks any better than I do his!" was
Nattie's natural and indignant thought at this quiet reception of her
hint. And if anything had been necessary--which it certainly was not--to
her utter repudiation of him, this would have sufficed for the purpose.
"You mentioned this morning you thought of leaving X n. Do you expect to
go soon?" she asked, catching at the idea that a few hours ago had
caused so much alarm, with a hope that he might be about to vanish from
her world finally and forever. But even as she spoke, the difference of
the now and then smote her like a pain.
"Did I say that?" he said, with a look that she could not understand, as
if for some secret reason, he was so well pleased with himself, he could
hardly avoid laughing outright. "Oh! well! I was only fooling!"
Nattie's face fell, but, catching at the opportunity to convey the
impression that in her opinion they had not been very friendly, after
all, she said,
"I suppose no one really means what they say on the wire. I am sure _I_ do
not!"
"But we mean what we say now," he replied, with an insinuating smile.
"Next time I come we will be more sociable. But we've have had a nice
talk, ain't we?"
For a moment the repulsive person before her overcame the remembrance of
the lost "C," and Nattie replied, sarcastically,
"I trust the talk has not been too much of an exercise for your brain!"
He looked at her doubtfully, and then laughed. "You are sort of a queer
girl, ain't you? I wish though, I could stay and buzz you longer, but I
have only time to get my train, so good-by."
"Good-by," said Nattie, betraying all her relief at his departure in the
sudden animation of her voice, something so different from her preceding
manner that he could but notice it, and he turned, looked at her, as if
a suspicion of its true cause penetrated his mind at last, frowned, and
then with that former look she did not understand crossing his face,
nodded and ran for the depot, coming into violent collision with a fat
Dutchman, looking perplexedly for a barber's shop. And thus the red
hair, the bear's grease, the sham jewelry, and the obtrusive, fighting
teeth disappeared forever from Nattie's sight, leaving her with a
bewildered look on her face, as if, indeed, just awakened from that
imagined nightmare.
She looked around the office blankly. Everything was there just as
usual, the little key and the sounder, over which had come all "C's"
pleasant talk. "C!" That creature! The odor of his detestable musk
hovered about her even now, but not yet could she realize that her "C"
was no more.