Bunker Bean Part 18

"From the very first," he lied glibly. "Something went over me--just like _that_. I can't tell you how, but I knew!"

"You made me so afraid of you," confessed the flapper.

"I never meant to, couldn't help it."

"I'm horribly shy, but I knew it had to be. I felt powerless."

"I _know_," he sympathized.

"Our day has come!" roared Grandma from out of the gloom. "We know our rights! We've broken gla.s.s! We break heads!" This was followed by "Ar!

Ar! Ar!" meant for sinister growls of rage. It seemed to be the united voice of the mob.

They drew apart, once more self-conscious. They walked slowly out, pa.s.sed the mob scene, which ignored them, and went with awkward little hesitations up the wide walk to the Breede portal. To Bean's suddenly cooled eye, the vast gray house towered above him as a menace. He had a fear that it might fall upon him.

At the entrance they stood discreetly apart. Bean wondered what he ought to say. His sense of guilt was overwhelming. But the flapper seemed clear-headed enough.

"You leave it to me," she said, as if he had confided his perplexity to her. "Leave it all to me. _I've_ always managed."

"Yes," said Bean, meaning nothing whatever.

She made little movements that suggested departure. She was regarding him now with the old curious look that had puzzled him.

"You're just as perfectly nice as I knew you were," she announced, with an obvious pride in this bit of proved wisdom.

"Good-night!"

From a distance of five feet she bestowed the little double-nod upon him and fled.

"Good-night!" he managed to call after her. Then he was aware that he had wanted to call her "Chubbins!" He liked that name for her. If he could only have said "Good-night, Chubbins--"

For that matter he basely wanted again to--but he thought with shame that he had done enough for once. A pretty night's work, indeed! If Breede ever found it out--

When he left with Breede in the morning, she was on the tennis-court.

Brazenly she engaged in light conversation across the net with no other than Thomas Hollins, Junior. She did not look up as the car pa.s.sed the court, though he knew that she knew. Something in the poise of her head told him that.

He didn't wonder she couldn't face him in the light of day. He smiled bitterly, in scorn for the betrayed Tommy.

IX

Back in the lofty office that Sat.u.r.day morning he sat under the eye of Breede, in outward seeming a neat and efficient amanuensis. In truth he was pluming himself as a libertine of rare endowments. He openly and shamelessly wished he had kissed the creature again. When the next opportunity came she wouldn't get off so lightly, he could tell her that. It was base, but it was thrilling. He would abandon himself. He would take her hand and hold it the very first time they were alone together. Well might she be afraid of him, as she had confessed herself to be. She little knew!

It was, though, pretty light conduct on her part. It was possible that he would not see her again. Perhaps a baggage like that would already have forgotten him; would have treated the thing as trivial, an incident to laugh about, even to regale her intimates with. Probably he had done nothing more than make a fool of himself as usual. Votes for women, indeed! He thought they should first learn how to behave properly with young men who weren't expecting things of that sort.

"--this 'mount'll then become 'vailable f'r purpose shortenin' line an'

reducin' heavy grades," dictated the unconscious father of the baggage.

"I kissed that smug-faced little brat of yours last night," wrote Bean immediately thereafter. He didn't care. He would put the thing down plainly, right under Breede's nose.

"With 'creased freight earnin's these 'provements may be 'spected t' pay f'r 'emselves," continued Breede.

"And I don't say I wouldn't do the same thing over again," Bean slipped in skilfully.

He winced to think he might some day have a daughter of his own that would "carry on" just so with young men who would be all right if they were only let alone. He found new comfort in the reflection that his first-born would be a boy--to grow up and be the idol of a nation.

But a little later he was again thinking of her as "Chubbins," wis.h.i.+ng he had called her that, wis.h.i.+ng she had stayed longer out in the scented night--the wonderful smoothness of her yielding cheek! Her little tricks of voice and manner came back to him, her quick little patting of Grandma's back at unexpected moments, the tilting of her head like a listening bird, that inexplicable look as her eyes enveloped him, a tiny scar at her temple, mark of an early fall from her pony.

He became sentimental to a maudlin degree. She would go on in her shallow way of life, smas.h.i.+ng windows, voting, leading perfectly decent young men to do things they never meant to do; but he, the tender, the true, the ever-earnest, he would not recover from the wound that frail one had so carelessly inflicted. He would be a changed man, with hair prematurely graying at the temples, like Gordon Dane's, hiding his hurt under a mask of light cynicism to all but persons of superior insight.

The heartless quip, the mad jest on his lips! And years afterward, a deeply serious and very beautiful woman would divine his sorrow and win him back to his true self.

The wedding! The drive from the church! The carriage is halted by a street crowd. A stalwart policeman appears. He has just arrested two women, confirmed window-smashers--Grandma, the Demon, and the flapper.

The flapper gives him one long look, then bows her head. She sees all the n.o.bility she has missed. Serve her right, too!

Noon came and he was about to leave the office. He was still the changed man of quip and jest. Desperately he jested with old Metzeger, who was regretfully, it seemed, relinquis.h.i.+ng his adored ledgers from Sat.u.r.day noon until Monday morning.

"Say, I want to borrow nineteen thousand eleven hundred and eighty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents until the sixteenth at seven minutes to eleven."

Old Metzeger repeated the numbers accurately. He looked wistful, but he knew it was a jest.

"Telephone for Boston Bean!" cried an office boy, dryly affecting to be unconscious of his wit.

He rushed nervously for the booth. No one in the great city had ever before found occasion to telephone him. He thought of Professor Balthasar. Balthasar would warn him to fly at once; that all was discovered.

He held the receiver to his ear and managed a husky "h.e.l.lo!"

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.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! 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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.suredly 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.