Bunker Bean Part 19

Think I'm going to put _you_ wise?"

Bulger was pleased at the implication.

"Ain't got a friend, has she?"

"No," said Bean. "Never did have one. Some cla.s.s, too," he added with a leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," as they separated.

But when he was alone the song died. The thing was getting serious. And she was so a.s.sured. Telling him to be there as if she were Breede himself. How did she know he had time for all that tea and Grandma nonsense? Suppose he had had another engagement. She hadn't given him time to say. Hadn't asked him; just _told_ him. Well, it showed one thing. It showed that Bunker Bean could bring women to his feet.

His afternoon recreation, there being no baseball, was to lead Nap triumphantly through Central Park to be seen of an envious throng. He affected a lordly unconsciousness of the homage Nap received. He left adoring women in his wake and covetous men; and children demanded bluntly if he would sell that dog; or if he wouldn't sell him would he give him away, because they wanted him.

Surfeited with this easily won attention, he sat by the driveway to watch the endless parade of carriage folk. His eye was for the women in those s.h.i.+ning equipages. Young or old, they were to him newly exciting.

His att.i.tude was the rather scornful one of a conqueror whose victories have cost him too little. They had been mysteries to him, but now, all in a day, he understood women. They were vulnerable things, and men were their masters. Votes, indeed!

His own power over them was abundantly proved. Any of them pa.s.sing heedlessly there would, under the right conditions, confess it. Let him be called to their notice and they'd be following him around, forgetting plighted vows, getting him into places screened with vines and letting themselves be led on; telephoning him to give them and Grandma tea and things of a Sunday in some nice place--hanging on his words. Of course it had always been that way, only he had never known it. Looking back over his barren past he surveyed minor incidents with new eyes. There was that girl with the pretty hair in the business college, who always smiled in the quick, confidential way at him. Maybe she wouldn't have been a talker!

And how far was this present affair going? Pretty far already: clandestine meetings and that sort of thing. Still, he couldn't help being a man, could he? And Tommy Hollins, poor dupe!

In the steam-heated apartment It had been locked in a closet, which in an upright position It fitted nicely. He did not open the door that night. He felt that he was venturing into ways that the wise and good king would not approve. He could not face the thing while guilt was in his heart. A woman had come between them.

At three o'clock the next afternoon he lounged carelessly against the bas.e.m.e.nt railing of the steam-heated apartment. With Nap on a leash he was keenly aware that he was "some cla.s.s." He was arrayed in the new suit of a quiet check. The cravat with the red stripe s.h.i.+mmered in the sunlight. He had a new straw hat with a coloured band, bought the day before at a shop advertising "Snappy Togs for Dressy Men." He lightly twirled a yellow stick and carried yellow gloves in one hand. He was almost the advanced dresser, dignified but unquestionably a bit different. He seemed to be one who has tamed the world to his ends; but, though he stood erect, expanded his chest and drew in his waist, as instinctively do all those who wear America's greatest eighteen-dollar suit, he was nevertheless wondering with a lively apprehension just what was going to be done with him. This life of "affairs" was making him uncomfortable.

Taking Nap along, he somehow felt, was a wise precaution. He didn't know what mad thing you might expect of Grandma, the Demon, but surely nothing very discreditable could occur in the presence of that innocent dog. And he would play the waiting game; make 'em show their hands.

At twenty minutes after three he wondered if he mightn't reasonably disappear. He would walk in the park and say afterward--if there should be an afterward--that he had given them up. An easy way out. He would do it. Twenty minutes more pa.s.sed and he still meant to do it, knowing he wouldn't.

Then came the blare of a motor horn and Breede's biggest and blackest car descended upon him, stopping neatly at the curb.

He retained his calm, nonchalantly doffing the new straw hat.

"Just strolling off," he said; "given you up."

"Pops wanted to come," explained the flapper. "I had a perfectly annoying time not letting him. What a darling child of a dog! _Does_ he want to--well, he _shall_!"

And Nap did at once. He seemed in the flapper to be greeting an old friend. He interrogated his lawful owner from the flapper's embrace, then reached up to implant a moist salute upon the ear of Grandma, who at once removed herself from his immediate presence.

"Sit there yourself," she commanded Bean. And Bean sat there beside the flapper, with Nap between them. The car moved gently on under the gaze of the impressed Ca.s.sidy, who had clattered up the iron stairway.

Ca.s.sidy's gaze seemed to say, "All right, me lad, but you want t' look out f'r that sort. I know th' kind well!"

The car was moving swiftly now, heading for the north and the open.

"They cut us off yesterday," said the flapper. "I know I shall simply make a lot of trouble for that operator some day."

He wondered if she had heard that mad "Chubbins!" But now the flapper smiled upon him with a wondrous content, and he could say nothing.

Instead of talking he stroked the head of Nap, who was panting with the excitement of this celestial adventure.

"I like you in that," confided the flapper with an approving glance. He wondered if she meant the hat, the cravat or America's very best suit for the money.

"I like _you_ in that," he retorted with equal vagueness, at last stung to speech.

"Oh, this!" explained the flapper in pleased deprecation. "It's just a little old rag. What's his darling name?"

"Eh? Name? Napoleon, Man and--I mean Napoleon. I call him Nap," he said shortly, feeling himself in chameleon-like sympathy with the cravat.

Grandma, on the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there was something ominous in her rigidity. She had the air of a captor.

Once when his hand was on Nap the flapper brazenly patted it. He pretended not to notice.

"Everything's all right," she said.

"Of course," he answered, believing nevertheless that everything was all wrong.

They had come swiftly to the country and now swept along a wide highway that narrowed in perspective far and straight ahead of them. He watched the road, grateful for the slight hypnotic effect of its lines running toward him. He must play the waiting game.

"Here's the inn," said the flapper. They turned into a big green yard and drew up at the steps of a rambling old house begirt with wide piazzas on which tables were set. This would be the nice place where he was to give them tea and things. They descended from the car, and he was aware that they pleasantly drew the attention of many people who were already there having tea and things: the big car and Grandma and the flapper in her little old rag and Nap still panting ecstatically, and, not least, himself in dignified and a little bit different apparel, lightly grasping the yellow stick and the quite as yellow gloves. It was horribly open and conspicuous, he felt; still, getting out of a car like that--and the flapper's little old rag was something that had to be looked at--he was drunk with it. Following a waiter to a table he felt that the floor was not meeting his feet.

They were seated! The shocking affair was on. The waiter inclined a deferential ear to the gentleman from the large and costly car.

"Tea and things," said the gentleman with a very bored manner indeed, and turned to rebuke the rare and costly dog with harsh words for his excessive emotion at the prospect of food.

The waiter manifested delight at the command; one could not help seeing that he considered it precisely the right one. He moved importantly off.

The three regarded each other a moment.

Bean played the waiting game. The flapper played her ancient game of looking at him in that curious way. Grandma looked at them both, then meaningly at Bean. She spoke.

"I'll say very frankly that I wouldn't marry you myself."

He blinked, then he pretended to search with his eyes for their vanished waiter. But it was no good. He had to face the Demon, helpless.

"But that's nothing to your discredit, and it isn't a question of me,"

she added dispa.s.sionately.

His inner voice chanted, "Play the waiting game; play the waiting game."

"Every woman with a head on her knows what she wants when she sees it.

And nowadays, thanks to the efforts of a few n.o.ble leaders of our s.e.x, she has the right and the courage to take it. I haven't wasted any time talking to _her_." She indicated the flapper, who still fixed the implacable look on Bean.

"If she doesn't know at nineteen, she never would--"

"We've settled all _that_," said the flapper loftily. "Haven't we?"

Bean nodded. All at once that look of the flapper's began to be intelligible. He could almost read it.

"I suppose you expect me to talk a lot of that stuff about marriage being a serious business," continued the Demon evenly. "But I shan't.

Marriage isn't half as serious as living alone is. It's what we were made for in my time, and your time isn't a bit different, young man."

She raised an argumentative finger toward him, as if he had sought to contest this.