He had walked quickly away while porters were collecting the bags. "Keep
on the main street," he thought, plunging ahead. He did not change this
plan until he discovered himself again at the door of that hotel he
meant to leave. It faced a circle, and he had traversed this. He fled
down a cross-street and again felt free.
For hours he walked the lighted avenues, or sat moodily on wayside
benches, and at length, on a rustic seat screened by shrubbery in a
little park, he dozed.
He awoke in the early light, stretched legs and arms luxuriously and
again walked. He saw it was five o'clock. He was thrilled now by the
morning beauty of the Corsican's city, all gray and green in the
flooding sun. And the streets had filled with a voluble traffic that
affected him pleasantly. Every one seemed to speak gayly to every one.
Two cab-drivers exchanged swift incivilities, but in a quite perfunctory
way, with evident good-will.
Walking aimlessly as yet--it was too early for tombs--he came again to
that hotel on the circle. They were asleep in there. Little they'd
worried--glad to be so easily rid of him.
Then he noticed at the circle's centre a lofty column wrought in bronze
with infinite small detail. Surmounting that column was the figure of
the Corsican. An upstart who had prevailed!
He left the circle, lest he be apprehended by the Breedes. Soon he was
again in that vast avenue of the park-places where he had slept. And
now, far off on this splendid highway, he descried a mighty arch.
Sternly gray and beautiful it was. And when, standing under it, he
looked aloft to its mighty facade, its grandeur seemed threatening to
him. He knew what that arch was--another monument imposed upon the city
by the imperial assassin--without royal lineage since the passing of
Ram-tah.
"Some class to _that_ upstart!" he muttered. And if Napoleon had been no
one, was it not probable that Bean had not been even Napoleon. The
Countess Casanova had doubtless deceived him, though perhaps
unintentionally. She had seemed a kind woman, he thought, but you
couldn't tell about her controls.
His mind was being washed in that wondrous sunlight.
He was himself an upstart. No doubt about it. But what of it? Here were
columns and arches to commemorate the most egregious of all upstarts.
Upstarts were men who believed in themselves.
He retraced his steps from the arch.
Curious thing that scoundrel Watkins had kept saying on the boat. "As a
man thinketh in his own heart, so is he." Must mean something. What?
Far down that wide avenue he came to a bridge of striking magnificence,
beset with golden sculpture. He supposed it to be one more tribute to
the sublime Corsican who had thought in his heart, and _was_.
He had the meaning of those words now.
He, Bunker Bean, had believed himself to be mean, insignificant. And so
he had been that. Then he had come to believe himself a king, and
straightway had he been kingly. The Corsican, detecting the falsity of
some Ram-tah, would have gone on believing in himself none the less. It
was all that mattered. "As a man thinketh--" If you came down to that,
nobody needed a Ram-tah at all.
From the centre of the bridge he raised his eyes and there, far off,
high above all those gray buildings, was the golden cross that he knew
to surmount the tomb. Sharply it glittered against the blue of the sky.
"Be upstart enough," it seemed to say, "and all things are yours.
Believe yourself kingly, though your Ram-tah come from Hartford."
He walked vigorously toward that cross. It often eluded him as he
puzzled a way through the winding gray-walled streets. More than once he
was forced to turn back, to make laborious circuits. But never for long
was the cross out of sight.
Constantly as he walked that new truth ran in his mind, molten,
luminous. Who knew of Ram-tah's fictive origin, or even of Ram-tah at
all? No one but a witty scoundrel calling himself Balthasar.
Bean had become some one through a belief in himself. Ram-tah had been a
crude bit of scaffolding, and was well out of the way. The confidence he
had helped to build would now endure without his help. Be an upstart. A
convinced upstart. Such the world accepts.
Then he issued from the maze of narrow streets and confronted the tomb.
Through the open door, even at this early hour, people went and came.
The Corsican's magnetism prevailed. And he, Bunker Bean, the lowly, had
that same power to magnetize, to charm, to affront the world and yet
evoke monuments--if he could only believe it.
He went quickly through the iron gateway, up the long walk and took the
imposing stairway in leaps. Then, standing uncovered in that wonderfully
lit room, he gazed down at the upstart's mighty urn.
Long he stood under that spell of line and colour and magnitude, lost in
the spaciousness of it. No Balthasar had cheated here. There lay the
mighty and little man who had never lost belief in himself--who had been
only a little chastened by an adversity due to the craven world's fear
of his prowess.
He was quite unconscious of others beside him who paid tribute there. He
thought of those last sad days on that lonely island, the spirit still
unbroken. His emotion surged to his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him.
He gulped twice and angrily brushed away some surprising tears.
By his side stood a white-faced young Frenchman with a flowing brown
beard. He became infected with Bean's emotion. He made no pretence of
brushing his tears aside. He frankly wept.
Beyond this man a stout motherly woman, with two children in hand, was
flooded by the current. She sobbed comfortably and companionably. The
two children widened their eyes at her a moment, then fell to weeping
noisily.
Farther around the railing a distinguished looking old gentleman of
soldierly bearing, who wore a tiny red ribbon in the lapel of his frock
coat, loudly blew his nose and pressed a kerchief of delicate weave to
his brimming eyes.
Beyond him a young woman became stricken with grief and was led out by
her solicitous husband, who seemed to feel that a tomb was no place for
her at that time.
The exit of this couple aroused Bean. He cast a quick glance upon the
havoc he had wrought and fled, wiping his eyes.
Halfway down the steps he encountered the alleged Adams of Hartford, who
had stopped to open his Badaeker at the right page before entering the
tomb.
"A magnificent bit of architecture," said the Hartford man
instructively.
"Pretty loud for a tomb," replied Bean judicially. He was not going to
let this Watkins, or whatever his name was, know what a fool he had made
of himself in there. Then he remembered something.
"Say," he ventured, "how'd you happen to think up that thing you were
always getting off to me back there on the boat--about as a man thinketh
_is_ he?"
"Tut-tut-tut! Really? But that is from the Holy Scriptures, which should
always be read in connection with Science and Health."
"I must get it--something _in_ that. Funny thing," he added genially,
"getting good stuff like that out of Hartford, Connecticut."
He left Watkins or Adams staring after him in some bewilderment, a
forgotten finger between the leaves of the Badaeker.
He began once more to lay a course through those puzzling streets. He
was going to that hotel. He was going to be an upstart and talk to his
own wife.
The tomb had cleared his brain.
"I'm no king," he thought; "never was a king; more likely a guinea-pig.
But I'm some one now, all right! I'll show 'em; not afraid of the whole
lot put together; face 'em all."
He came out upon the river at last and presently found himself back in
that circle of the hotel. He stared a while at the bronze effigy
surmounting that vainglorious column. Then he drew a long breath and
went into the hotel.
A capable Swiss youth responded to his demand to be shown to his room,
seeming to consider it not strange that Americans in Paris should now
and then return to their rooms.
At the doorway of a drawing-room that looked out upon the column the
Swiss suggested coffee--perhaps?
"And fruit and fumed ... boiled eggs and toast and all that meat and
stuff," supplemented Bean firmly.
He tried one of two doors that opened from the drawing-room and exposed
a bedroom. His, evidently. There was the little old steamer trunk. He
discovered a bathroom adjoining and was presently suffering the
celestial agonies of a cold bath with no waster to coerce him.
He dressed with indignant muttering, and with occasional glances out at
that supreme upstart's memorial. He chose his suit of the most legible
checks. He had been a little fearful about it in New York. It was rather
advanced, even for one of that Wall Street gang that had netted himself
four hundred thousand dollars. Now he donned it intrepidly.
And, with no emotion whatever but a certain grim sureness of himself, he
at last adjusted the entirely red cravat. He gloated upon this
flagrantly. He hastily culled seven cravats of neutral tint and hurled
them contemptuously into a waste-basket. Done with that kind!
He heard a waiter in the drawing-room serving his breakfast. He drew on
a dark-lined waistcoat of white piqué--like the one worn by the oldest
director the day Ram-tah had winked--then the perfectly fitting coat of
unmistakable checks, and went out to sit at the table. He was resolving
at the moment that he would do everything he had ever been afraid to do.
"'S only way show you're not afraid," he muttered. He was wearing a
cravat he had always feared to wear, and now he would devour meat things
for breakfast, whatever the flapper thought about it.
When he had a little dulled the edge of his hunger, he rang a bell.
"Find m' wife," he commanded the Swiss youth, only to be met with a look
of blankness. He was considering if it might do him good to make a row
about this--he had always been afraid to make rows--but the other door
of the drawing-room opened. His wife was found.
"'S all for 's aft'noon," he exploded to the servitor, who seemed not
displeased to withdraw from this authoritative presence. Then he engaged
a slice of bacon with a ruthless fork.
"Where you _been_?" he demanded of the flapper. Only way to do--go at
them hammer and tongs!
The flapper gazed at him from the doorway. She was still pale and there
were reddened circles about her eyes. The little old rag of a morning
robe she wore added to her pallor and gave her an unaccustomed look of
fragility.
"Where you been all the time?" repeated her husband with the arrogance
of a confirmed upstart.
The flapper seemed to be on the point of tears, but she came into the
room and sat across the table from him. In spite of the blurring
moisture in her eyes he could still read the old look of ownership. Time
had not impaired it.
"I just perfectly wouldn't let them know I felt bad," she began. "I said
I was going to sleep and wouldn't worry one bit if you perfectly never
came home all night. And you never did, because I couldn't sleep and
watched ... but I wouldn't let them know it for just perfectly old hundred
thousand dollars. And this morning I said I'd had a bully sleep and felt
fit and you had a right to go where you wanted to and they could please
mind their own affairs, and I laughed so at them when they said they
were going for the police--"
"Police, eh? Let 'em bring their old police. They think I'm afraid of
police?" He valiantly attacked an egg.
"Of course not, stupid, but they thought you might wander off and get
lost, like those people in the newspapers that wake up in Jersey City or
some place and can't remember their own names or how it happened, and
they wanted the police to just perfectly find you, and I wanted them to,
too. I was deathly afraid--"
"I know my own name, all right. I'm little Tempest and Sunshine; that's
my name.
"--but I wouldn't let them know I was afraid. And I laughed at them and
told them they didn't know you at all and that you'd come home--come
home."
He found he could strangely not be an upstart another moment in the
presence of that flapper. He was over kneeling beside her, reaching his
arms up about her, pressing her cheek down to his. The flapper held him
tightly and wept.
"There, there!" he soothed her, smoothing the golden brown hair that
spilled about her shoulders. "No one ever going to hurt you while I'm
around. You're the just perfectly _dearest_, if you come right down to
it. Now, now! 'S all right. Everything all right!"
"It's those perfectly old taggers," exploded the flapper, suddenly
recovering her true form, "just furiously tagging."
"'S got to stop right now," declared Bean, rising. "Wipe that egg off
your face, and let's get out of here."
"London," she suggested brightly. "Granny has always--"
"No London!" he broke in, visibly returning to the Corsican or upstart
manner. "And no Grandma, no Pops, no Moms! You and me--us--understand
what I mean? Think I'm going to have my wife sloshing around over there,
voting, smashing windows, getting run in and sent to the island for
thirty days. No! Not for little old George W. Me!"
"I never wanted to so very much," confessed the flapper with surprising
meekness. "You tell where to go, then."
Bean debated. Baseball! Perhaps there would be a game on the home
grounds that day. Paris might be playing London or St. Petersburg or
Berlin or Venice.
"First we go see a ball game," he said.
The flapper astounded him.
"I don't think they have it over here--baseball," she observed.
No baseball? She must be crazy. He rang the bell.
The capable Swiss entered. In less than ten minutes he was able to
convince the amazed American that baseball was positively not played on
the continent of Europe. It was monstrous. It put a different aspect
upon Europe.
"Makes no difference where we go, then," announced Bean. "Just any
little old last year's place. We'll 'lope."
"Ripping," applauded the flapper, with brightening eyes.
"Hurry and dress. I'll get a little old car and we'll beat it before
they get back. No time for trunk; take bag."
Down in the office he found they made nothing of producing little old
cars for the right people. The car was there even as he was taking the
precaution to secure a final assurance from the manager that Paris did
not by any chance play London that day.
The two bags were installed in the ready car; then a radiant flapper
beside an amateur upstart. The driver desired instructions.
"_Ally, ally!_" directed Bean, waving a vague but potent hand.
"We've done it," rejoiced the flapper. "Serve the perfectly old taggers
good and plenty right!"
Bean lifted a final gaze to the laurel-crowned Believer. He knew that
Believer's secret now.
"What a stunning tie," exclaimed the flapper. "It just perfectly does
something to you."
"'S little old last year's tie," said her husband carelessly.
* * * * *
At six-thirty that evening they were resting on a balcony overlooking
the garden of a hotel at Versailles. Back of them in the little parlour
a waiter was setting a most companionable small table for two. Such
little sounds as he made were thrilling. They liked the hotel much. Its
management seemed to have been expecting them ever since the building's
erection, and to have reserved precisely that nest for them.
They had been "doing" the palace. A little self-conscious, in their
first free solitude, they had agreed that the palace would be
instructive. Through interminable galleries they had gone, inspecting
portraits of the dead who had made and marred French history ... led on by
a guide whose amiable delusion it was that he spoke English. The flapper
had been chiefly exercised in comparing the palace, to its disadvantage,
with a certain house to be surrounded on all sides by scenery and
embellished with perfectly patent laundry tubs.
The flapper sighed in contentment, now.
"We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that
old barn--"
Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have
been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as
they sat looking down into the shadowed garden.
"There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as
any ... and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two
before him ... they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he
couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in
himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York
named Cassidy .. always puttering around, dead serious about
something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and
this poor old dub didn't know how ... so they clipped his head off
for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him."
"No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me,
soon as we get back--"
"Then," pursued Bean, "along comes Mr. little old George W. Napoleon
Bluff and makes them eat out of his hand in about five minutes. Didn't
he walk over them, though? And they haven't quit thanking him for it
yet. Saw a lot of 'em snivelling over him at that tomb this morning.
Think he'd died only yesterday. You know, I don't blame him so much for
a lot of things he did--fighting and women and all that. He knew what
they'd do to him if he ever for one minute quit bluffing. You know, he
was what I call an upstart."
The flapper stole a hand into his and sighed contentedly.
"You've perfectly worked it all out, haven't you?" she said.
"--and if you come right down to it, I'm nothing but 'n upstart myself."
"Oh, splash!" said the flapper, in loving refutation.
"'S all," he persisted; "just 'n upstart. Of course I don't have to be
one with you. I wouldn't be afraid to tell you anything in the world;
but those others, now; every one else in the world except you; I'll show
'em who's little old George W. Upstart--old man Upstart himself, that's
what!"
"You're a king," declared the flapper in a burst of frankness.
"Eh?" said Bean, a little startled.
"Just a perfectly little old king," persisted the flapper with dreamy
certitude. "Never fooled little George W. Me. Knew it the very first
second. Went over me just like _that_."
"Oh, I'm no king; never was a king; rabbit, I guess. Little old
perfectly upstart rabbit, that's what!"
"What am I?" asked the flapper pointedly.
"Little old flippant flapper, that's what! But you're my Chubbins just
the same; my Chubbins!" and he very softly put his hand to her cheek.
"_Monsieur et Madame sont servi_," said the waiter. He was in the
doorway but discreetly surveyed the evening sky through an already
polished wine-glass held well aloft.
* * * * *
The three perfectly taggers meeting their just due, consulted miserably
as they gathered about a telephone in Paris the following morning. The
Demon had answered the call.
"Says she has it all reasoned out," announced the Demon.
"'S what she said before," grunted Breede. "Tha's nothing new."
"And she says we're snoop-cats and we might as well go back home--now,"
continued the Demon. "Says she's got the--u-u-m-mm!--says to perfectly
quit tagging."
"Nothing can matter now," said the bereaved mother.
"He's talking himself," said the Demon. "Mercy he's got a new
voice ... sounds like another man. He says if we don't beat it out of here
by the next boat--he can imagine nothing of less--something or other I
can't hear--"
"--consequence," snapped Breede.
"Yes, that's it; and now he's laughing and telling her she's a perfectly
flapper."
"Oh, my poor child," murmured the mother.
"Puzzle t' me," said Breede. "I swear I can't make out just how many
kinds of a--"
"James!" said his wife sternly, and indicated the presence of several
interested foreigners.