The Wit and Humor of America Volume VI Part 9

"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 n.o.body 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 uchre 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 h.e.l.l 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 had looked down in their time on such countless generations of human a.s.ses.

It gave me a wonderful sense of fellows.h.i.+p 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 to-morrow."

"I'm breaking up now," he said.

"But--"

"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."

I gazed inquiringly at the dress-suit case.

"We don't belong to any common Joneses. We're Connecticut Joneses. In fact, we're the only Joneses--and the name is as dear to me, as sacred, as I suppose that of Westoby is, perhaps, to you. And yet--and yet--do you know what she actually said to me? Said to me, holding my hand, and, and--that the only thing she didn't like about me was my _name_."

I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper astonishment.

"I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything very extra."

"Wouldn't it have been wiser to--?"

"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a fellow has to show a little decent pride. A fellow owes something to his family, doesn't he? As a man I love the ground she walks on; as a Jones--well, if she feels like that about it--I told her she had better wait for a De Montmorency."

"But she didn't say she wouldn't marry you, did she?"

"N-o-o-o!"

"She didn't ask you to _change_ your name, did she?"

"N-o-o-o!"

"And do you mean to say that just for one unfortunate remark--a remark that any one might have made in the agitation of the moment--you're deliberately turning your back on her, and her broken heart!"

"Oh, she's red-hot, too, you know, over what I said about the Van Coorts."

"She couldn't have realized that you belonged to the Connecticut Joneses. _I_ didn't know it. _I_--"

"Well, it's all off now," he said.

It was a mile to the depot. For Jones it was a mile of reproaches, scoldings, lectures and insults. For myself I shall ever remember it as the mile of my life. I pleaded, argued, extenuated and explained. My lifelong happiness--Freddy--the Seventy-second Street house--were walking away from me in the dark while I jerked unavailingly at Jones'

coat-tails. The whole outfit disappeared into a car, leaving me on the platform with the ashes of my hopes. Of all obstinate, mulish, pig-headed, copper-riveted--

I was lucky enough to find Eleanor crying softly to herself in a corner of the veranda. The sight of her tears revived my fainting courage. I thought of Bruce and the spider, and waded in.

"Eleanor," I said, "I've just been seeing poor Jones off."

She sobbed out something to the effect that she didn't care.

"No, you can't care very much," I said, "or you wouldn't send a man like that--a splendid fellow--a member of one of the oldest and proudest families of Connecticut--to his death."

"Death?"

"Well, he's off for j.a.pan to-morrow. They're getting through fifty doctors a week out there at the front. They're shot down faster than they can set them up."

I was unprepared for the effect of this on Eleanor. For two cents she would have fainted then and there. It's awful to hear a woman moan, and clench her teeth, and pant for breath.

"Oh, Eleanor, can't you do anything?"