The Blunders of a Bashful Man Part 6

They dragged me off the bed, and marched me up and down the room.

Supposing, as a matter of course, that I ought to be expiring, I felt that I was expiring. My knees tottered under me; they only hauled me around the more violently. They forced a spoonful of tartar-emetic down my throat; Mary, the servant-girl, poured a quart of black coffee down me, half outside and half in; then they jerked me about the floor again, as if we were dancing a Virginia reel.

The doctor came and poked a long rubber tube down and converted me into a patent pump, until the tartar-emetic, and the coffee, and the pumpkin-pie I had eaten for dinner had all revisited this mundane sphere.

They had no mercy on me; I promenaded up and down and across with father, with Mary, with the doctor, until I felt that I should die if they didn't allow me to stop promenading.

The worst of it was, the house was full of folks; they crowded about the chamber door and looked at me, dancing up and down with the hired girl and the doctor.

"Shut the door--they shall _not_ look at me!" I gasped, at last. The doctor felt my pulse and said proudly to my mother:

"Madam, your son will live! Our skill and vigilance have saved him."

"Bless you, doctor!" sobbed my parents.

"I will _not_ live," I moaned, "to be the laughing stock of Babbletown. I will buy some more."

"John," said my father, weeping, "arouse yourself! You shall leave this place, if you desire it--only live! I will get you the position of weather-gauger on top of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, if you say so, but don't commit any more suicide, my son!"

I was affected, and promised that I wouldn't, provided that I was found a situation somewhere by myself. So the excitement subsided.

Father slept with me that night, keeping one eye open; the doctor got the credit of saving my life, and the girls of Babbletown were scared out of laughing at me for a whole month.

When we came to talk the matter over seriously--father and I--it was found to be too late in the season to procure me the Mount Was.h.i.+ngton appointment for the winter; besides, the effect of my attempt to "shuffle off this mortal coil" was to literally overrun our store with customers. People came from the country for fifteen miles around, in ox teams, on horse-back, in sleighs and cutters, and bob-sleds, and crockery-crates, to buy something, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the bashful young man who swallowed the pizen. Now, father was too cute a Yankee not to take advantage of the mob. He forgot his promises, and made me stay in the store from morning till night, so that women could say: "I bought this 'ere s.h.i.+rting from the young man who committed suicide; he did it up with his own hands."

"I'll give you a fair share o' the profits, John," father would say, slyly.

Well, things went on as it greased; the girls mostly stayed away--the Babbletown girls, for they had guilty consciences, I suspect; and in February there came a thaw. I stood looking out of the store window one day; the snow had melted in the street, and right over the stones that had been laid across the road for a walk, there was a great puddle of muddy water about two yards wide and a foot deep. I soon saw Hetty Sloc.u.m tripping across the street; she came to the puddle and stood still; the soft slush was heaped up on either side--she couldn't get around and she couldn't go through. My natural gallantry got the better of my resentment, and I went out to help her over, notwithstanding what she had said when I was under the counter.

Planting one foot firmly in the center of the puddle and bracing the other against the curb-stone, I extended my hand.

"If you're good at jumping, Miss Sloc.u.m," said I, "I'll land you safely on this side."

"Oh," said she, roguishly, "Mr. Flutter, can I trust you?" and she reached out her little gloved hand.

All my old embarra.s.sment rushed over me. I became nervous at the critical moment when I should have been cool. I never could tell just how it happened--whether her glove was slippery, or my foot slipped on a piece of ice under slush, or what--but the next moment we were both of us sitting down in fourteen inches of very cold, very muddy water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NEXT MOMENT WE WERE BOTH OF US SITTING DOWN IN FOURTEEN INCHES OF VERY COLD, VERY MUDDY WATER.]

My best beaver hat flew off and was run over by a pa.s.sing sled, while a little dog ran away with Hetty's seal-skin m.u.f.f.

I floundered around in that puddle for about two minutes, and then I got up. Hetty still sat there. She was white, she was so mad.

"I might a known better," said she. "Let me alone. I'd sit here forever, before I'd let _you_ help me up."

The boys were coming home from school, and they began to hoot and laugh. I ran after the little dog who was making off with the m.u.f.f.

How Hetty got up, or who came to her rescue I don't know. That cur belonged about four miles out of town, and he never let up until he got home.

I grabbed the m.u.f.f just as he was disappearing under the house with it, and then I walked slowly back. The people who didn't know me took me for an escaped convict--I was water-soaked and muddy, hatless, and had a sneaking expression, like that of a convicted horse-thief. Two or three persons attempted to arrest me. Finally, two stout farmers succeeded, and brought me into the village in triumph, and marched me between them to the jail.

"Why, what's Mr. Flutter been doin'?" asked the sheriff, coming out to meet us.

"Do you mean to say you know him?" inquired one of the men.

"Yes, I know him. That's our esteemed fellow-citizen, young Flutter."

"And he ain't no horse-thief nor nuthin'!"

"Not a bit of it, I a.s.sure you."

The man eyed me from head to foot, critically and contemptuously.

"Then all I've got to say," he remarked slowly, "is this--appearances is very deceptive."

It was getting dusk by this time, and I was thankful for it.

"I slipped down in a mud-puddle and lost my hat," I explained to the sheriff, as I turned away, and had the satisfaction of hearing the other one of my arresters say, behind my back:

"Oh, drunk!"

I hired a little boy, for five cents, to deliver Miss Sloc.u.m's m.u.f.f at her residence. Then I went into the house by the kitchen, bribed Mary to clean my soiled pants without telling mother, slipped up-stairs, and went to bed without my supper.

The next day I bought a handsome seven-dollar ring, and sent it to Hetty as some compensation for the damage done to her dress.

That evening was singing-school evening. I went early, so as to get my seat without attracting attention. Early as I was, I was not the first. A group of young people was gathered about the great black-board, on which the master ill.u.s.trated his lessons. They were having lots of fun, and did not notice me as I came in. I stole quietly to a seat behind a pillar. Fred Hencoop was drawing something on the board, and explaining it. As he drew back and pointed with the long stick, I saw a splendid caricature of myself pursuing a small dog with a m.u.f.f, while a young lady sat quietly in a mud-puddle in the corner of the black-board, and Fred was saying, with intense gravity:

"This is the man, all tattered and torn, that spattered the maiden all forlorn. _This_ is the dog that stole the m.u.f.f. _This_ is the ring he sent the maid--"

"m.u.f.f-in ring," suggested some one, and then they laughed louder than ever.

I felt that that singing-school was no place for me that evening, and I stole away as noiselessly as I had entered.

I went home and packed my trunk. The next morning I said to father:

"Give me my share of the profits for the last month," and he gave me one hundred and thirty dollars. "I am going where no one knows me, mother, so good-bye. You'll hear from me when I'm settled," and I was actually off on the nine o'clock New York express.

Every seat was full in every car but one--one seat beside a pretty, fas.h.i.+onably-dressed young lady was vacant. I stood up against the wood-box and looked at that seat, as a boy looks at a jar of peppermint-drops in a candy-store window. After a while I reflected that these people were all strangers, and, of course, unaware of my infirmity; this gave me a certain degree of courage. I left the support of the wood-box and made my way along the aisle until I came to the vacant seat.

"Miss," I began, politely, but the lady purposely looked the other way; she had her bag in the place where I wanted to sit, and she didn't mean to move it, if she could help it. "Miss," I said again, in a louder tone.

Two or three people looked at us. That confused me; her refusing to look around confused me; one of my old bad spells began to come on.

"Miss," I whispered, leaning toward her, blus.h.i.+ng and embarra.s.sed, "I would like to know if you are engaged--if--if you are taken, I mean?"

She looked at me then sharp enough.

"Yes, sir, I _am_," she said calmly; "and going to be married next week."

The pa.s.sengers began to laugh, and I began to back out. I didn't stop at the wood-box, but retreated into the next car, where I stood until my legs ached, and then sat down by an ancient lady, with a long nose, blue spectacles, and a green veil.