Bunker Bean Part 37

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!'"

"'S'at _so_?" said Bean insolently to the closed door.

He roused himself and descended precariously from his shelf. Once upon his feet he was convinced that the s.h.i.+p was foundering. He hurriedly dressed and adjusted a life-belt from one of a number he saw behind a rack. Over the belt he put on a serviceable rain-coat. It seemed to be the coat to wear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt]

Outside he plunged through narrow corridors until he came to a stairway.

He mounted this to be as far away from the ocean as possible. He came out upon a deck where people were strangely not excited by the impending disaster. Innocent children romped, oblivious to their fate, while callous elders walked the deck or reclined in little old steamer chairs.

He poised a moment, trying to prevent the steamer's deck from mounting by planting one foot firmly upon it. The device, sound enough in mechanical theory, proved unavailing. The vast hulk sank alternately at either end, and to fearsome depths of the sea. There would come a last plunge. He tightened the life-belt.

Then, through the compelling force of a.s.sociated ideas, there seemed to come to him the faint sweet scent of lilac blossoms ... the vision of a lilac clump revolving both vertically and horizontally ... the noisome fumes of Grammer's own pipe.

"Too much for you, eh? Ha, ha, ha!" It was the scoundrel from Hartford, malignantly cheerful. He was inhaling a cubeb cigarette.

"Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt.

"'As a man thinketh, so is he!' As simple as that," admonished the other.

Bean groped for the door and for ages fled down blind corridors, vainly seeking that little old stateroom. He did not find it as quickly as he should have; but he was there at last, and a deft steward quickly divested him of the life-belt and other garments for which there no longer seemed to be any need.

He lay weakly reflecting, with a sinister glee, that the boat was bound to sink in a moment. He wanted it to sink. Death was coming too slowly.

Later he knew that the flapper was there. She had come to die with him, though she was plainly not in a proper state of mind to pa.s.s on. She was saying that something was the nerviest piece of work she'd ever been up against, and that she would perfectly just fix them ... only give her a little time--they were snoop-cats!

"You'll perfectly manage; jus' leave it to you," breathed her moribund husband.

"If you'd try some fruit and two eggs," suggested the flapper.

He raised a futile hand defensively, and an expression of acute repugnance was to be seen upon his yellowed face.

"Please, please go 'way," he murmured. "Let Julia do fussing. Go way off to other end of little old steamer; stay there."

The flapper saw it was no time for woman's nursing. Sadly she went.

"Telephone to a drug-store," demanded Bean after her, but she did not hear.

He continued to die, mercifully unmolested, until the man from Hartford came in to ascertain if his locks had been tampered with.

"Hold to the all good!" urged the man at a moment when it was too poignantly, too openly certain that Bean could hold to very little indeed.

"Uh-hah!" gasped Bean.

"Go into the silence," urged the man kindly.

"You go--" retorted Bean swiftly; but he should not further be shamed by the recording of language which he lived to regret.

The Hartford man said, "Tut-tut-tut!" and went elsewhere than he had been told to go.

There ensued a dreadful time of alternating night and day, with recurrent visions of the flapper, who perfectly knew and said that he had been eating stuff out of the wrong cans.

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," affirmed the Hartford person each morning as he shaved.

And a merry party gathered in the adjoining stateroom of afternoons and sang songs of the jolly sailor's life: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,"

and "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main."

On the morning of the fourth day he made the momentous discovery that the image of food was not repulsive to all his better instincts.

Carefully he got upon his feet and they amazingly supported him. He dressed with but slight discomfort. He would audaciously experiment upon himself with the actual sight of food. It was the luncheon hour.

Outside the door he met the flapper on one of her daily visits of inspection.

"I perfectly well knew you'd never die," exclaimed the flapper, and laid glad hands upon him.

"Where do they eat?" asked Bean.

"How jolly! We'll eat together," rejoined the flapper. "The funniest thing! They all kept up till half an hour ago. Then it got rougher and rougher and now they're all three laid out. Poor Moms says it's the smell of the rubber matting, and Granny says she had too many of those perfectly whiffy old cigarettes, and Pops says he's plain seasick.

Serves 'em rippingly well right--_taggers!_"

She convoyed him to the dining-room, where he was welcomed by a waiter who had sorrowfully thought not to come to his notice. He greedily scanned the menu card, while the waiter, of his own initiative, placed some trifles of German delicatessen before them.

"It is a lot rougher," said the flapper. "Isn't it too close for you in here?" She was fixedly regarding on a plate before her a limp, pickled fish with one glazed eye staring aloft.

"Never felt better in my life," declared Bean. "Don't care how this little old steamer teeters now. Got my sea-legs."

"Me, too," said the flapper, but with a curious diminution of spirit.

She still hung on the hypnotic eye of the pickled fish.

"Ham and cabbage!" said Bean proudly to the waiter.

The flapper pushed her chair swiftly back.

"Forgot my handkerchief," said she.

"There it is," prompted Bean ineptly.

The flapper placed it to her lips and rose to her feet.

"'S perfe'ly old rubber mattin'," she uttered through the fabric, and started toward the doorway. Bean observed that incoming diners anxiously made way for her. He followed swiftly and overtook the flapper at her door.

"Maybe if you'd try a little--" he began.

"Please go away," pleaded the flapper.

Bean returned to the ham and cabbage.

"Ought to go into the silence," he reflected. "'S all she needs. Fixed me all right."