V
You never saw anybody so electrified as Jones. For a good minute
he couldn't even speak. It was like bringing a horseback
reprieve to the hero on the stage. He repeated "Stuffenhammer,
Stuffenhammer," In tones that Henry Irving might have envied,
while I gently undid the noose around his neck. I led him under
a tree and told him to buck up. He did so--slowly and surely--and
then began to ask me agitated questions about proposing. He
deferred to me as though I had spent my whole life Bluebearding
through the social system. He wanted to be coached how to do it,
you know. I told him to rip out the words--any old words--and
then kiss her.
"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl
hates pauses."
"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me
as r-r-respectful."
"You try it," I said. "It's the only way."
"I'll be glad when it's over," he remarked dreamily.
"Whatever you do, keep clear of set speeches;" I went on. "Blurt
it out, no matter how badly--but with all the fire and ginger in
you."
He gazed at me like a dead calf.
"Here goes," he said, and started on a trembling walk toward the
house.
I don't know whether he was afraid, or didn't get the chance, or
what it was; but at any rate the afternoon wore on without the
least sign of his coming to time. I kept tab on him as well as I
could--checkers with Miss Drayton--half an hour writing letters
--a long talk with the major--and finally his getting lost
altogether in the shrubbery with an old lady. Freddy said the
suspense was killing her, and was terribly despondent and
miserable. I couldn't interest her in the Seventy-second Street
house at all. She asked what was the good of working and
worrying, and figuring and making lists--when in all probability
it would be another girl that would live there. She had an
awfully mean opinion of my constancy, and was intolerably
philosophical and Oh-I-wouldn't-blame-you-the-least-little--bit
-if-you-did-go-off-and-marry-somebody-else! She took a pathetic
pleasure in loving me, losing me, and then weeping over the dear
dead memory. She said nobody ever got what they wanted, anyway;
and might she come, when she was old and ugly and faded and
weary, to take care of my children and be a sort of dear old
aunty in the Seventy-second Street house. I said certainly not,
and we had a fight right away.
As we were dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task,
and tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it
somehow, for he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his
affairs, and then went into the bath-room, where he shaved and
growled for ten whole minutes. I itched to throw a bootjack at
him, but compromised on doing a little growling myself.
Afterward we got into our clothes in silence, and as he went out
first he slammed the door.
It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive euchre for
a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay
so. Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I
was thankful to sneak out-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the
starlight. I walked up and down, consigning Jones to--well,
where I thought he belonged. I thought of the time I had wasted
over the fellow--the good money--the hopes--I was savage with
disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from
the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge
gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone.
Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is
a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight
per cent miserable it's hell not to reach par. I was sore all over,
and I wanted the balm--the consolation--to be found in the company
of those cold old stars, who have looked down in their time on such
countless generations of human asses. It gave me a wonderful
sense of fellowship with the past and future.
I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the
general scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another
human speck, stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit
case. It was Jones himself, outward bound, and doing five knots
an hour. I was after him in a second, doing six.
"Jones!" I cried.
He never even turned round.
I grabbed him by the arm. He wasn't going to walk away from me
like that.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"Home!"
"But say, stop; you can't do that. It's too darned rude. We
don't break up till tomorrow."
"I'm breaking up now," he said.
"Bu--"
"Let go my arm--!"
Oh, but, my dear chap--"I began.
"Don't you dear chap me!"
We strode on in silence. Even his back looked sullen, and his
face under the gaslights.
"Westoby," he broke out suddenly, "if there's one thing I'm
sensitive about it is my name. Slap me in the face, turn the
hose on me, rip the coat off my back--and you'd be astounded by
my mildness. But when it comes to my name I--I'm a tiger!"
"A tiger," I repeated encouragingly.
"It all went swimmingly," he continued in a tone of angry
confidence. "For five seconds I was the happiest man in the
United States. I--I did everything you said, you know, and I was
dumfounded at my own success. S-s-she loves me, Westoby."