At first there were many voices, mostly indignant: "I want the manager!"
"Get off the line!" "A hundred and nine and three quarters!" "That you,
Howard? Say, this is--" "Get--off--that--line!" "Or I'll know the reason
why before to-morrow night!" And then from Bedlam pealed the voice of
the flapper, silencing these evil spirits.
"Hello! Hello! This line makes me perfectly furious. To-morrow about
three o'clock--you're to give us tea and things, some nice place--Granny
and me. Be along in the car. I remember the number. Be there. Good-bye!"
There was the rattle of a receiver being hung up. But he stood there not
believing it--tea and car and be there--The receiver rattled again.
"You knew who I was, _didn't_ you?"
"Yes, right away," muttered Bean. Then he brightened. "I knew your voice
the moment I heard it." The madness was upon him and he soared. "You're
Chubbins!" He waited.
"Cut out the Chubbins stuff, Bill, and get off there!" directed a coarse
masculine voice from the unseen wire-world.
He got off there with all possible quickness. His first thought was that
she probably had not heard the magnificent piece of daring. It was too
bad. Probably he never could do it again. Then he turned and discovered
that he had left the door of the telephone booth ajar. Chubbins might
not have heard him, but Bulger assuredly had.
"Well, well, well!" declaimed Bulger in his best manner. "Look whom we
have with us here to-night! Old Mr. George W. Fox Bean, keeping it all
under his hat. Chubbins, eh? Some name, that! Don't tell me you thought
it up all by yourself, you word-painter! Miss Chubbsy Chubbins! Where's
she work?"
Bean saw release.
"Little manicure party," he confessed; "certain shop not far from here.
Think I'm going to put _you_ wise?"
Bulger was pleased at the implication.
"Ain't got a friend, has she?"
"No," said Bean. "Never did have one. Some class, too," he added with a
leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and
was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," as they separated.
But when he was alone the song died. The thing was getting serious. And
she was so assured. Telling him to be there as if she were Breede
himself. How did she know he had time for all that tea and Grandma
nonsense? Suppose he had had another engagement. She hadn't given him
time to say. Hadn't asked him; just _told_ him. Well, it showed one
thing. It showed that Bunker Bean could bring women to his feet.
His afternoon recreation, there being no baseball, was to lead Nap
triumphantly through Central Park to be seen of an envious throng. He
affected a lordly unconsciousness of the homage Nap received. He left
adoring women in his wake and covetous men; and children demanded
bluntly if he would sell that dog; or if he wouldn't sell him would he
give him away, because they wanted him.
Surfeited with this easily won attention, he sat by the driveway to
watch the endless parade of carriage folk. His eye was for the women in
those shining equipages. Young or old, they were to him newly exciting.
His attitude was the rather scornful one of a conqueror whose victories
have cost him too little. They had been mysteries to him, but now, all
in a day, he understood women. They were vulnerable things, and men were
their masters. Votes, indeed!
His own power over them was abundantly proved. Any of them passing
heedlessly there would, under the right conditions, confess it. Let him
be called to their notice and they'd be following him around, forgetting
plighted vows, getting him into places screened with vines and letting
themselves be led on; telephoning him to give them and Grandma tea and
things of a Sunday in some nice place--hanging on his words. Of course
it had always been that way, only he had never known it. Looking back
over his barren past he surveyed minor incidents with new eyes. There
was that girl with the pretty hair in the business college, who always
smiled in the quick, confidential way at him. Maybe she wouldn't have
been a talker!
And how far was this present affair going? Pretty far already:
clandestine meetings and that sort of thing. Still, he couldn't help
being a man, could he? And Tommy Hollins, poor dupe!
In the steam-heated apartment It had been locked in a closet, which in
an upright position It fitted nicely. He did not open the door that
night. He felt that he was venturing into ways that the wise and good
king would not approve. He could not face the thing while guilt was in
his heart. A woman had come between them.
* * * * *
At three o'clock the next afternoon he lounged carelessly against the
basement railing of the steam-heated apartment. With Nap on a leash he
was keenly aware that he was "some class." He was arrayed in the new
suit of a quiet check. The cravat with the red stripe shimmered in the
sunlight. He had a new straw hat with a coloured band, bought the day
before at a shop advertising "Snappy Togs for Dressy Men." He lightly
twirled a yellow stick and carried yellow gloves in one hand. He was
almost the advanced dresser, dignified but unquestionably a bit
different. He seemed to be one who has tamed the world to his ends; but,
though he stood erect, expanded his chest and drew in his waist, as
instinctively do all those who wear America's greatest eighteen-dollar
suit, he was nevertheless wondering with a lively apprehension just what
was going to be done with him. This life of "affairs" was making him
uncomfortable.
Taking Nap along, he somehow felt, was a wise precaution. He didn't know
what mad thing you might expect of Grandma, the Demon, but surely
nothing very discreditable could occur in the presence of that innocent
dog. And he would play the waiting game; make 'em show their hands.
At twenty minutes after three he wondered if he mightn't reasonably
disappear. He would walk in the park and say afterward--if there should
be an afterward--that he had given them up. An easy way out. He would do
it. Twenty minutes more passed and he still meant to do it, knowing he
wouldn't.
Then came the blare of a motor horn and Breede's biggest and blackest
car descended upon him, stopping neatly at the curb.
He retained his calm, nonchalantly doffing the new straw hat.
"Just strolling off," he said; "given you up."
"Pops wanted to come," explained the flapper. "I had a perfectly
annoying time not letting him. What a darling child of a dog! _Does_ he
want to--well, he _shall_!"
And Nap did at once. He seemed in the flapper to be greeting an old
friend. He interrogated his lawful owner from the flapper's embrace,
then reached up to implant a moist salute upon the ear of Grandma, who
at once removed herself from his immediate presence.
"Sit there yourself," she commanded Bean. And Bean sat there beside the
flapper, with Nap between them. The car moved gently on under the gaze
of the impressed Cassidy, who had clattered up the iron stairway.
Cassidy's gaze seemed to say, "All right, me lad, but you want t' look
out f'r that sort. I know th' kind well!"
The car was moving swiftly now, heading for the north and the open.
"They cut us off yesterday," said the flapper. "I know I shall simply
make a lot of trouble for that operator some day."
He wondered if she had heard that mad "Chubbins!" But now the flapper
smiled upon him with a wondrous content, and he could say nothing.
Instead of talking he stroked the head of Nap, who was panting with the
excitement of this celestial adventure.
"I like you in that," confided the flapper with an approving glance. He
wondered if she meant the hat, the cravat or America's very best suit
for the money.
"I like _you_ in that," he retorted with equal vagueness, at last stung
to speech.
"Oh, this!" explained the flapper in pleased deprecation. "It's just a
little old rag. What's his darling name?"
"Eh? Name? Napoleon, Man and--I mean Napoleon. I call him Nap," he said
shortly, feeling himself in chameleon-like sympathy with the cravat.
Grandma, on the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there
was something ominous in her rigidity. She had the air of a captor.
Once when his hand was on Nap the flapper brazenly patted it. He
pretended not to notice.
"Everything's all right," she said.
"Of course," he answered, believing nevertheless that everything was all
wrong.
They had come swiftly to the country and now swept along a wide highway
that narrowed in perspective far and straight ahead of them. He watched
the road, grateful for the slight hypnotic effect of its lines running
toward him. He must play the waiting game.
"Here's the inn," said the flapper. They turned into a big green yard
and drew up at the steps of a rambling old house begirt with wide
piazzas on which tables were set. This would be the nice place where he
was to give them tea and things. They descended from the car, and he was
aware that they pleasantly drew the attention of many people who were
already there having tea and things: the big car and Grandma and the
flapper in her little old rag and Nap still panting ecstatically, and,
not least, himself in dignified and a little bit different apparel,
lightly grasping the yellow stick and the quite as yellow gloves. It was
horribly open and conspicuous, he felt; still, getting out of a car like
that--and the flapper's little old rag was something that had to be
looked at--he was drunk with it. Following a waiter to a table he felt
that the floor was not meeting his feet.
They were seated! The shocking affair was on. The waiter inclined a
deferential ear to the gentleman from the large and costly car.
"Tea and things," said the gentleman with a very bored manner indeed,
and turned to rebuke the rare and costly dog with harsh words for his
excessive emotion at the prospect of food.
The waiter manifested delight at the command; one could not help seeing
that he considered it precisely the right one. He moved importantly off.
The three regarded each other a moment.
Bean played the waiting game. The flapper played her ancient game of
looking at him in that curious way. Grandma looked at them both, then
meaningly at Bean. She spoke.
"I'll say very frankly that I wouldn't marry you myself."
He blinked, then he pretended to search with his eyes for their vanished
waiter. But it was no good. He had to face the Demon, helpless.
"But that's nothing to your discredit, and it isn't a question of me,"
she added dispassionately.