He sat down in my easiest chair, leaned back contentedly, and reached for my tobacco jar.
“Well, how’re they coming, old scout?” he inquired cordially, tamping the tobacco in his battered brier pipe with a blunt thumb.
“You never vary that formula of yours, do you, Bliffins?” I observed politely. “Of course, it’s no wonder your stuff’s refused, if you show no more originality in your writing than you do in your greeting.”
Bliffins stared at me in pained surprise. In the Parthenon flummery was the rule, and calumny the exception.
“What’s the matter, Jeff?” he asked wonderingly. “Isn’t the work going well?”
“Work!” I snorted. “Work with that rackety-bang-bang-bang thundering in the index?” I waved my hand toward the window whence issued the uproar. “Don’t ask foolish questions, Bliffins.”
Bliffins lighted his pipe and walked over to the window.
“Pretty rough,” he announced, after listening a moment, “pretty rough. I’m no connoisseur in music, or even a dilettante, but to my untutored ear this noise soundeth rotten.” Then abruptly changing the subject: “I haven’t dined yet, Jeff. Got any grub round here?”
“Take this bill and buy some stuff while I get things ready,” I answered.
Bliffins was always at his best whenever he was eating. I often reflected upon the stir he would have made in the world of letters had nature so equipped him as to enable him to put his thoughts on paper while putting food into his stomach.
All during our meal he kept up a running fire of comments that were brilliant, entertaining, diverting—and mostly about mine art. For he could hold forth on tone, technique, shading, and so on, quite as glibly as I myself could; and the more he talked the more I appreciated the fact that before I was many years older I would have Rembrandt, Vandyke, and that bunch looking like decorators of souvenir postcards.
But it was after dinner, when we had lighted our pipes and tilted back our chairs and propped our feet on the dining table, that Bliffins had his great inspiration.
“Jeff,” he exclaimed suddenly, sitting upright and puffing like a ten-horse-power automobile taking a fifty-horse-power grade, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Hold on to its tail!” I advised excitedly. “What is it? A historical novel without a heroine, or a short story with a logical climax?”
“Hush, child! I mind me of the musicale.”
At that moment the demoniacal pianist threw off his temporary restraint, and great billows of discord and clangor came bounding across the air-shaft, through the open window, and into the studio.
“Go on,” I urged. “I’ll stop at nothing short of manslaughter.”
Bliffins leaned back comfortably and again propped his feet on the table.
“Buried somewhere in the rubbish of my abode,” he resumed, “is a diabolical musical contrivance, part accordion, part something else, I don’t know what, which, if I judge aright, has not uttered a squeak since the battle of Bunker Hill. Which is all the better. Ever play an accordion, Jeff?”
“The nearest I ever got to one,” I answered, “was the show-window of a Wabash Avenue music store.”
“Better still,” pronounced Bliffins. “Wait a minute while I fetch it.”
I waited twenty minutes while Bliffins fetched it. In those twenty minutes I had ample time to regulate. Louder and louder the clamor grew, until it reached the proportion of a St. Louis cyclone.
Then entered Bliffins, bearing an odd-looking object about four feet by two that would have gladdened the heart of a lover of antiques. A conservative estimator would have judged its age to be two hundred years.
Bliffins placed the curio in my hands.
“See what you can do with it, Jeff.” I slipped my hands under the straps at either end, pressed my fingers against some little buttons, and squeezed it. It issued a hoarse yelp that sounded not unlike the cry of a sea lion just before the keeper arrives with the fish.
“Good! Now, then, go to the window and do your worst. I’ll bet you could out-whoop the hullabaloo of a Republican caucus with T. R. running for a third term.
To my surprise, I hesitated.
“Isn’t this a rather mean trick, Bliff?” Bliffins shrugged his shoulders.
“Suit yourself, Jeff. It’s up to you.”
Thus encouraged, I hesitated no longer. I stepped to the window, seized a propitious moment, and began pumping that cacophonous bellows for all it was worth—and in a noise-producing way it was worth a considerable deal. It boomed and pealed like a sort of combined hurdy-gurdy and sick church organ.
I sha’n’t attempt to describe the awful duet. Words would be useless, anyway.
I shall only observe that I came off victorious. I was not aware that I had vanquished my foe, so vociferous was I, and was doing arm-gymnastics with a feverish ferocity, when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Bliffins shouting above the din:
“For Heavens sake, come off, Jeff! You’ve won.”
So, indeed, I had. The pianist had ceased. I put down the accordion, shook hands with Bliffins, took the water-pitcher, and went for the beer.
We celebrated our victory in fitting wise, Bliffins giving me a detailed history of the accordion after quaffing his third glass.
“And so it was this old humming-box,” ended Bliffins, laying his hand affectionately on the instrument, “that kept General Washington and his men from giving way to despondency at Valley Forge. My great-grandmother told my grandmother, who told my mother, who also told me all about it.”
“It has served well in a second battle,” I remarked.
“Better keep it here,” advised Bliffins. “Methinks this was but a skirmish tonight; the war will follow.”
“No doubt, no doubt.”
I hung the ancient organ over the armor that night, looked triumphantly at the darkened window across the air-shaft, went to bed, and slept soundly—undisturbed by my unmusical neighbor for the first time in many weeks.
Next day I toiled steadily at my masterpiece, not abating my labor until afternoon, when I closed up shop for a walk. I terminated it at the square.
The brown-eyed girl was sitting on the bench.
No, my heart did not go pit-a-pat, nor did my pulse quicken, nor did my face go red—none of those things which you often read about in light summer fiction happened. I remember taking a note of it at the time.
“I was very much disappointed the other afternoon,” I began, sitting down beside her, “when I came back and found you gone.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, in about the same sort of tone she would probably use in saying, “How much is this brown ribbon, please?”
“I wanted the pleasure of taking you to dinner myself.”
“And you had to eat alone. I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry that you are sorry,” said I. “I enjoyed a very good meal, thank you kindly.”
“U-u-u-m.”
“Still, it was rather fortunate—for you, I mean—that a friend came along at such an opportune moment. It was better than dining with a stranger, of course. And for that dispensation of providence I am glad.”
“And I am glad that you are glad,” she smiled, evincing, I thought, a little less austerity. “I was really somewhat appalled,” she went on, “at the thought of dining with a young man whom I had never before seen.”
Slightly discomfited, I cast about for a fresh topic. My eye fell upon the prismatic signs of a drugstore opposite the square.
“If I mistake not, there is a soda-fountain in that drugstore yonder,” said I. “Suppose we go over and have a—have something. Your former vindication of refusal is weightless now, you know. I am no longer a man whom you have never seen before.”
A full minute ticked off before she replied, and when she arose and looked down at me I thought I detected a twinkle of mischief in her fine eyes.
“Very well,” she said. “Come on.”
As w
e were leaving the drugstore, after imbibing some purplish concoction unknown in my philosophy, I said:
“It is a beautiful spring day”—and it was—“let’s go up to Lincoln Park. It is glorious now—all green and fresh in its vernal dress.” (I considered that rather neat at the time.) “Will you go?”
She stepped back to glance at the drugstore clock, then joined me, all eagerness.
“Indeed, I will. I have never been to Lincoln Park, and I am very anxious to see it.”
“You are a stranger in Chicago, then?” I ventured, as we started north. I had suggested a streetcar, but she preferred walking the ten blocks or so.
“Just three weeks ago today I had my first glimpse of it, so you may account me a stranger in your fair city.”
“Don’t call it my fair city,” I protested. “It’s not mine. I hail from St. Elmo, Tennessee.”
She stopped and turned to me with a newborn interest.
“Do you know, I had thought that! And I am from Virginia—Westmoreland County.”
“I’d known that long ago,” I answered complacently, and indeed I had guessed it.
Before we reached the park we had become pretty well acquainted. She was in Chicago to look after some business interests of her father, who had been too ill to attend in person. Her presence in the city thenceforth would possibly be demanded indefinitely.
Like myself, she received periodic remittances from her family—who had owned a homestead along the Potomac for two hundred years or more. On the day I first saw her the fortnightly check had been delayed, lost, stolen, or gone astray, hence the absence of dinner money.
Her name was Muriel—Muriel Rutledge.
Theretofore I had never given much thought to the beauty of Muriel as a Christian name for a girl, but now I began to discern undreamt-of charms and sweetness in it. In fact, I soon became aware that it was quite the most beautiful girl’s name in the world.
Considering divers notions, I decided to make no mention of my career. It would be better, I reflected, to wait until we were—until we had become longer acquainted, and I had become famous, and then tell her all about it.
This idea so pleased me that I even went to the length of informing her I was contemplating legal study, and was in Chicago to that end, thinking the while on the far cry from law to art, and what a delightful denouement mine would be.
Happy, we two, in Lincoln Park that afternoon? Well, I should say!
You may well believe we came to know each other rather well, when, while watching the antics of a lubberly bear and my thoughts somehow reverted to the man in the restaurant and the subsequent ogre, I playfully asked her who her “fat friend” was.
I fancied she seemed a bit disconcerted, for I saw her white teeth pressing upon her under lip in embarrassment—or perhaps it was displeasure at my flippant tone.
“He is—he is a friend of my father,” she replied slowly, looking away as she spoke. Suddenly she turned back to me, and I was puzzled to see that she was blushing furiously. “Have you the time, Mr. Mayfair?”
I had redeemed it that morning. I told her it was six.
Instantly she was in a little flutter of consternation.
“Gracious! I’d no idea it was so late. Six o’clock! And I’ve an engagement for five Which way is the car? I must hurry.”
The walk to Clark Street wasn’t much of a success. I was in no mood for conversational banter, and she was obviously too perturbed to think of amenities.
While we stood waiting for the streetcar, I blurted out:
“It may seem presumptuous and over-inquisitive of me, Miss Rutledge, but just whom are you going to see?”
Again I saw the warm color flood her face, and again she bit her lip as though painfully confused.
“It would hardly enlighten you,” she answered, “even though I told you his name. I am sure you do not know him.”
“So it is a man, then,” I said sternly.
“Yes, it is a man.”
“Tell me,” I begged, “not the fat man? Please, not that?”
“He is the one,” she answered in a low voice.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I began angrily, “that you go to see men—”
“Yes!” She threw up her head defiantly, and the challenge in her eyes checked my galloping tongue. “I mean to tell you just that. I should have been there an hour ago, and he will be very angry with me, and you, I think, are partly to blame, and—and here’s my car, thank goodness.”
Silently, I helped her to the platform. The conductor rang his bell. The car moved on.
I was stung to a panic. She was leaving me—perhaps forever!
“Will you be at the bench tomorrow?” I shouted foolishly.
She either did not hear or did not deign to answer.
She was gone, and I was staring after the rumbling streetcar which bore her away, and wondering if it could be possible that I, plain Jefferson Davis Mayfair, had inadvertently stumbled upon one of those baffling mysteries, or upon one of those shocking tragedies, one daily sees scare-headed in the saffron journals, and had as inadvertently stumbled out of it again.
CHAPTER II
Ear-piercing war raged that night.
My tuneless foe, of course, opened first fire. I rushed to the firing line my heavy artillery, and sent back as bad as I received, or worse.
It was an unearthly hullabaloo. To the harsh clash of chords a back-fence tabby added its mournful caterwauling; then a forsaken dog chimed in with a melancholy yowl; windows were thrown up, and gruff-voiced epithets struck a crescendo note in the diabolical discord.
Bliffins, wearied of knocking unheeded, opened the door and came in.
“Go to it, Jeff, go to it!” he encouraged enthusiastically. “You’ll win out yet, old scout.”
“If I don’t, I’ll die fighting,” I shouted over my shoulder. “I’m going to conquer this thing, I tell you, if I have to hire a brass band.”
As though cowed by this formidable war-cry, my adversary immediately ceased firing.
I put the accordion away and rinsed out the water-pitcher. Once again Bliffins and I quaffed the beer of victory.
Of course I went to the square next afternoon. I always did. Both benches were vacant, but I soon saw to it that one of them was fully occupied. This so that passersby would keep on passing.
The first half hour tripped pleasantly by. Anticipation is a wonderful thing. The second half-hour not quite so trippingly. And the fourth half-hour was a sluggard and snail, and its creepy shuffle and crawl the quintessence of misery and chagrin.
Then I began to get angry with myself. I had met pretty girls before—girls almost, if not quite, as pretty as she. None of them had turned my head. I had always escaped unscathed.
Wherefore, then, should I allow this? No! It should not be. I jumped up, started home, fiercely torturing the question.
Somehow it would not work. I was dull and lugubrious when I reached my studio. I scarcely noticed a most imperative dun for money that lay on the threshold; and when later Bliffins found me sitting gloomily in the dark, with the clamorous enemy in full cry and possession of the field, he was no more surprised than I. I had not known it.
Next afternoon, suddenly rounding a corner near the square, I came plump upon her.
She was dressed (as I discovered later) in an exquisite gown of some soft, shimmering brown stuff, and wore a marvelously becoming hat.
Yes—it was true, what the summer authors said—about the pit-a-pat heart and the quickening pulse, and all the rest.
I experienced all the emotions simultaneously, and I felt like shaking hands with all the summer authors. They understood. They knew.
As we walked to a bench and sat down, she kept chattering away volubly upon random topics, but underneath it all I plainly detected a nervousness, an uneasiness—even a fear.
It was easily to be seen she was endeavoring to mask with an outward vola
tility some inward perturbation. Again my mind’s eye saw the yellow journal horror-heads, and a great wave of love and pity surged over me. I longed to protect her, to implore her to tell me all—no matter what that all might be.
To my disgust I did nothing of the sort. When I spoke it was merely to ask her if she would go with me to a certain amusement park which had opened a few days before.
“I’ve never been,” I explained, “but I understand it’s hilarious fun, though rather bourgeois, no doubt. Will you come?”
“Of course I will. I’ve never been, either, but I’ve often heard of it, and I am sure it must be enchanting.”
It was. We took in everything, from the four-legged duck to the Perilous Plunges for Plucky People, and the next morning I pawned a pearl scarf-pin.
After three or four ecstatic hours that were so many minutes, came the same black cloud that had darkened day before yesterday’s sky of serenity. We were; watching the lady divers when she turned to me and asked:
“What time is it, Mr. Mayfair?”
“Why bother about time?” said I. “There’s plenty of it left. Here, take another piece of this yum-yum candy and watch Mlle. Aquazelle. She’s going to do a triple somersault now.”
“No, really, Mr. Mayfair, I must know.”
“Very well then,” I sighed, and consulted my watch. “It’s five-thirty-seven.”
“Heavens! And it’s five miles to the Loop. Oh, I must fly!”
“Now, look here,” I demanded, “don’t you go and tell me you have another appointment with—”
“The fat man?” she smiled. “Yes, I have. And I must hurry, too. Let us take the Elevated. It’s the quickest.”
We took it without a word. But as we went skimming toward town I uttered the question that had been a maggot in my brain for the last two days and nights.
“Muriel,” I entreated, and her first name slipped out unconsciously, so often had I called her so to myself, “Muriel, won’t you please tell me just who this person is?”
“Why certainly,” she answered quickly, then stopped and looked down. A wave of color dyed her face crimson. Her embarrassment was pitiful.
Adventure Tales, Volume 4 Page 9