HIRAM, THE BUTTERFLY
"Mother, I've come home to die!" gasped Playmate Tweet.
He was seated in one of the yellow chairs near a window of the lounging
room. He had dropped his newspaper and was staring at Hiram Hooker as
he strode through the door.
Hiram seated himself on the edge of a chair and grinned uncomfortably.
The ordeal of appearing before Tweet in his new clothes, at first
poignantly dreaded, had been absent from his thoughts for the past
hour. Standing there before the jeweler's store after Lucy Dalles had
left him, tingling blissfully in every vein, the mundane thought that
Tweet was probably awaiting him in the lodging house had obtruded
itself and hurried him up the street. As he opened the lounging-room
door he thought once more of his clothes.
Tweet rubbed his eyes and looked again. "Christopher Columbus!" he
added in an undertone. He blinked his eyes three times, then threw
himself back and laughed uproariously.
For a half minute he shook in his chair, then got up, wiped his twisted
nose with his handkerchief, and came over to his half resentful charge.
"Well, Hiram," he said with a chuckle, "how much did they set us back?"
"Set us back?"
"I mean, how poor are we now?"
"How poor are _we_?"
"Sure--Tweet, Hooker & Co. pays the bills."
"I guess I c'n do what I want to with my own money, can't I?"
"Sure--sure! Don't get your shirt off. I don't mean to insinuate that
you're not capable o' judiciously handlin' the firm's money. I just
want you to read me the balance sheet."
"Well, then, I spent thirty-eight dollars, and I've got twenty-nine
dollars left."
"Stand up."
Hiram did so.
"Turn round."
Hiram wheeled slowly.
Tweet studied him from every angle, and as Hiram turned he noted the
twinkles which came and went in his slate-blue eyes. Without another
word Tweet left him standing there, went back and sat down, and hid his
face behind his paper.
Hiram waited a minute, then slowly sank to the edge of his chair.
After a little he asked pleadingly:
"Ain't they all right?"
Tweet's paper trembled. A bit of this, then Tweet lowered it and
presented a countenance which seemed never to have known a smile.
"Hiram," he remarked, "I don't wanta hurt your feelin's, but the part
o' true friendship calls for me to use the surgeon's knife. Hiram, I
wouldn't wear that outfit to a funeral. D'ye get me?"
Hiram's blue eyes blazed. "Yes, I get you," he began coldly, then
curbed a threatening outburst. "I know they're not the best in the
land," he concluded sensibly, "but I feel better in 'em."
"There's somethin' in that," Tweet propounded sagely. "There's a whole
lot in gettin' that feel. Good clothes kinda brace a fella up and give
him the nerve to buck on in the big game. Hiram, if your new outfit
gives you the _feel_, it's the goods. When you get next a little it'll
cost you more money to get that feel outa clothes. After all, now,
when that tin-roof look wears off of 'em you won't appear so
whittled-out in that suit. But now, layin' all jokes aside, are they
just the thing for drivin' old Jack and Ned on the railroad grade?
And didn't this sudden lavishness kinda set the company back on its
haunches?"
Hiram looked out the window. "Did you see the fire?" he asked absently.
"Yes--walked round the block to get outa the crowd. But----"
"I just had to kinda spruce up a bit, Mr. Tweet. I felt so
kinda--well, kinda countrified and--and lost, you might say."
"What's the fire got to do with that? And call me Playmate, too."
"Nothin', I suppose."
"Right across from the restaurant wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"M'm-m--I'd 'a' made a good lawyer, wouldn't I, Hiram?"
"I don't know--why?"
"Why, talkin' about sprucin' up, as you call it, you drift to a fire
that occurred across the street from the place where there's a
frowsy-topped waitress that's got you goin'. Well, le's foget it. Do
we go to southern California together, or not? Our pile's dwindlin' on
account o' this butterfly life you're leadin'."
"I--I'd like to, but---- Well, I left home to get a start in the city,
and I think I oughta---- Really, I wanta go, but----" Hiram gave it
up, and his lean face flushed.
"Go on--I didn't interrupt you."
"Well, I--that's all. I want to go to work here."
Tweet laughed with a little snort. "Now looky here," he said, "I think
I savvy you pretty well. If I was to go to work and tell you outright
that you couldn't win Lucy, you'd get bull-headed and try to show me.
But le'me tell you this: You ain't goin' to win her till you get next
to yourself. Now, Lucy's a pretty popular dame with the fellas about
the restaurant. I've seen her joy-ridin' with fellas I know are there
with the coin, and savvy more in a minute than you ever knew. Now,
wait a minute!--don't get excited. All this ain't your fault. It's
the fault o' your past environment. You're a hick, and you can't help
it. You get out and learn somethin' and gather up a few beans. Then
come back and, if you still want the kid, go get her.
"Now, you see this Lucy this afternoon and tell her you're bound out
into the Great Unknown to make your fortune, but that you're comin'
back to see her. Put emphasis on who you're comin' back to see. Then
flee from temptation. Come now--le's swallow this awful pill like a
man."
Hiram thought a long time, looking out the window. In the midst of
this Tweet resumed his paper.
The sensible thing to do was for Hiram to sacrifice love to the
friendship that promised him a start, in order to gain love back more
conclusively in the end. Yes, he loved her--he loved her madly!
Boiling the present situation right down to facts, he had little
confidence in Tweet's boasted powers. He could not reconcile Tweet's
present impecunious condition with his hints of past affluence. But he
liked him instinctively, which, after all, is more human and
satisfactory than liking a person after analyzing him and weighing his
good qualities against his shortcomings. So it was the thought of
Tweet's friendship which finally prompted him to say: "I guess I'll go
with you."
"Good!" Tweet dropped his paper. "This afternoon?"
"No--to-morrow."
"Not on your life! This afternoon."
"Well, I'll tell you in an hour or so. Now--now it's about noon. You
wait here a little, while I go down in the street. Then I'll come
back, and we'll go eat."
Tweet looked at him long and steadily. "Got a date with Lucy, eh?" he
said at last.
"Ye-yes--I saw her at the fire this morning. She said she wanted to
see me when she went off watch at noon--I'll be right back--probably."
Tweet frowned, then laughed. "Go ahead, Hooker," he relented testily;
"go ahead. Got a date with her, eh? I thought maybe you'd just go
down there and gape at her through the window. Go to it--but don't
forget!"
Hiram hurried out.
Again his feet seemed palsied as he neared the restaurant. Was he to
suffer such pangs of stage fright always when about to meet her?
He had not long to dwell on the query. Before he knew it he was face
to face with her. She had been looking in the jeweler's window while
she waited for him, and had turned as he came abreast.
She was smiling. "You're a minute late," she scolded, pointing to the
jeweler's brass clock.
"Yes, ma'am--I was kept."
"Oh, don't look so serious. A minute's nothing."
"No, ma'am--not much."
Silence claimed them for a time.
"Well, what'll we do?" she finally asked a little petulantly, and
turned her back on him to look into the window.
"I dunno," he began; then a sudden wild idea struck him. He had seen
along the curbs automobiles bearing signs which read "For Hire--Four
Dollars an Hour." It was worth it, if only to break this humiliating
situation. "We might take a little spin in a machine," he finished
with a tottery tone of indifference.
"Oh, I'd like that," she said instantly. "But I gotta dress. We'll
get a car and ride 'round to where I room."
They walked to the corner, where was a taxi stand. Hiram engaged a car
by the hour, and they entered. She directed the driver to her rooming
house, and they were off.
The car presently drew up to the curb, and the driver swung the door
open for his passengers. Into a dark, musty little parlor the girl led
Hiram of the butterfly life.
"Sit down," she invited; "and excuse me a minute."
She went back into the hall, and Hiram heard the tattoo of her feet on
the stairs.
It was a grand parlor, Hiram thought. There was a piano, a phonograph,
a whatnot filled with specimens of quartz, and four cloth-covered
cushion rockers. With rattlesnake fairness the one Hiram chose
squeaked a warning before it tried to land him on the back of his neck.
Hiram sat there round-eyed and dreaming, while outside the hired car
purred on, indifferent to the flight of time.
Twenty minutes later Hiram's dream was broken by the clatter of Lucy's
high heels on the stairs. Lucy entered, dressed in silk and furs and
wearing a large picture hat. The savings of many months were on Lucy's
back, and Hiram felt further removed from her than ever.
"Where'll we go?" he asked miserably as he clumsily helped her into the
car.
"Golden Gate Park, Mr. Hooker," she said.
The driver, having heard, touched his cap, and they rolled away.
"How'd you know my name?" The burden of keeping this question had been
overriding Hiram's bashfulness since she had spoken it.
Lucy laughed. "You didn't think I'd go so far as to invite you home
with me if I didn't know you, did you? At least kinda know you?"
"I hadn't thought about that at all, ma'am. But when you said 'Mr.
Hooker' it gave me a jolt."
"I'll bet it did. Well, didn't you stand in front of the jewelry shop
for over a quarter of an hour before the fire this morning?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you didn't see your friend come out of the restaurant while you
were there?"
"Who, Tweet? No, ma'am--I didn't."
"Well, he did. He'd been in talking with me. I didn't know his name,
though. Is that it? Tweet? Heavens above! Say, he's a funny guy.
Well, he'd been in talking about you. He said you were out in front of
the jeweler's shop and wondered if he could get out without you seeing
him."
Hiram only stared and waited.
"He told me your name was Hiram Hooker, and that you had just come from
Mendocino County. That's how I knew."
For quite a time she was silent. Then she said:
"He appears to be sort of butting in, it seems to me."
Hiram waited again.
"He came in and says: 'Say, Lucy, your lifeline and mine are getting
tangled. You're crossing my path and frustrating my plans.' You know
how he talks!
"'How d'ye get that way?' I says. 'Spring it.'
"'Why, your many charms are leading my business partner from the path
of duty,' he says.
"'Go on,' I told him, 'and talk sense, if you've got anything to say.'
"Then he told me that you two were partners, and were going down to
southern California together to 'get a toehold,' he said; and that you
were keeping the thing back by--by--by wanting to hang around Frisco.
He said you two had a good thing and that you were spoiling it, and
that you were nearly broke and getting more so every minute.
"I kind of like him. He's funny, but I'll bet he's right. And he said
for me to give you the cold shoul--well, what he meant was for me to
advise you to hurry up and get out with him.
"But now listen: If I'd intended to do that I wouldn't have told you
that he told me to, would I? Of course not. I wanted to see you about
something else. Two things: First, I promised to tell you about the
moving picture you helped me with this morning. Then the other thing
is Mendocino." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Listen, I'm
from Mendocino County," she finished. "I've been away three years.
I'm nearly dying to talk to some one from up there!"