by Rick Raphael
"My mother--" he began.
"You simply can not act so dishonorably, Jones."
He sat silent for a little while.
"My mother--" he started in again finally.
"Surely your mother loves you?" I demanded.
"That's the terrible part of it, Westoby, she--"
"Pooh!"
"She stinted herself to get me through col--"
"Then why did you ever come here?"
"That's just the question I'm asking myself now."
"I don't see that you have any right to assume all that about your mother,anyway. Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a thousand--unimpeachable socialposition--a little fortune of her own--accomplished, handsome, charming,sought after--why, if you managed to win such a girl as that your motherwould walk on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha--"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a littletin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for _my_ girl. Good heavens,love is love, and all the mothers--"
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to ourhostess. If you went away to-night it would be an insult. Whatever youdecide to do later, you've simply got to stay here till Tuesdaymorning!"
"Must I?" he said, in the tone of a person who is ordered not to leavethe sinking ship.
"A gentleman has to," I said.
He quavered out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loanof a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead,with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, that fellow--atarnation fluff!
IV
It was a pretty glum evening all round. Most of them thought that Joneshad got the chilly mitt. Eleanor looked pale and undecided, not knowingwhat to make of Jones' death's-head face. She was resentful and pityingin turns, and I saw all the material lying around for a first-classconflagration. Freddy was a bit down on me, too, saying that a smoothermethod would have ironed out Jones, and that I had been headlong andsilly. She cried over it, and wouldn't kiss me in the dark; and I wasgoaded into saying--well, the course of true love ran in bumps thatnight. There was only one redeeming circumstance, and that was mymanaging to keep Jones and Eleanor apart. I mean that I insisted onbeing number three till at last poor Eleanor said she had a headache,and forlornly went up to bed.
Jones was still asleep when I got up the next morning at six and dressedmyself quietly so as not to awake him. It was now Monday, and you cansee for yourself there was no time to spare. I gave the butler a dollar,and ordered him to say that unexpected business had called me awaywithout warning, but that I should be back by luncheon. I rather overdidthe earliness of it all. At least, I hove off 1892 Eighth Avenue ateight-fifteen A.M. I loitered about; looked at pawnshop windows; gave acareful examination to a forty-eight-dollar-ninety-eight-cent completeoutfit for a four-room flat; had a chat with a policeman; assisted at arunaway; advanced a nickel to a colored gentleman in distress; had myshoes shined by another; helped a child catch an escaped parrot--andstill it wasn't nine! Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially onEighth Avenue in the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a keentongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I besought herindulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before her--at least, asmuch of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the role of her son's warmestadmirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense of hisduty to you?"
"Duty, fiddlesticks!" said she. "He's going to marry Bertha McNutt!"
"But he doesn't want to marry Bertha McNutt!"
"Then he needn't marry anybody."
She seemed to think this a triumphant answer. Indeed, in some ways Imust confess it was. But still I persevered.
"It puts me out to have him shilly-shallying around like this," shesaid. "I'll give him a good talking to when he gets back. This otherarrangement has been understood between Mrs. McNutt and myself foryears."
She was an irritating person. I found it not a little difficult to keepmy temper with her. It's easier to fight dragons than to temporize withthem and appeal to their better nature. I appealed and appealed. Shewatched me with the same air of interested detachment that one gives toa squirrel revolving in a cage. I could feel that she was flattered; hersense of power was agreeably tickled; my earnestness and despairenhanced the zest of her reiterated refusals. I was a very nice youngman, but her son was going to marry Bertha McNutt or marry nobody!
Then I tried to draw a lurid picture of his revolt from herapron-strings.
"Oh, Harry's a good boy," she said. "You can't make me believe that twodays has altered his whole character. I'll answer for his doing what Iwant."
I felt a precisely similar conviction, and my heart sank into my shoes.
At this moment there was a tap at the door, and another old lady bouncedin. She was stout, jolly-looking and effusive. The greetings between thepair were warm, and they were evidently old friends. But underneath thenew-comer's gush and noise I was dimly conscious of a sort of gayhostility. She was exultant and frightened, both at once, and her eyeswere sparkling.
"Well, what do you think?" she cried out explosively.
Mrs. Jones' lips tightened. There was a mean streak in that old woman. Icould see she was feeling for her little hatchet, and was getting outher little gun.
"Bertha!" exploded the old lady. "Bertha--"
(Mysterious mental processes at once informed me that this was noneother than Bertha's mother.)
Mrs. Jones was coolly taking aim. I was reminded of that old militarydictum: "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!"
"Bertha," vociferated the old lady fiercely--"Bertha has been secretlymarried to Mr. Stuffenhammer for the last three months!"
Another series of kinematographic mental processes informed me that Mr.Stuffenhammer was an immense catch.
"Twenty thousand dollars a year, and her own carriage," continued Mrs.McNutt gloatingly. "You could have knocked me down with a feather.Bertha is such a considerate child; she insisted on marrying secretly sothat she could tone it down by degrees to poor Harry; though there wasno engagement or anything like that, she could not help feeling, ofcourse, that she owed it to the dear boy to gradually--"
Mrs. Jones never turned a hair or moved a muscle.
"You needn't pity Harry," she said. "I've just got the good news thathe's engaged to one of the sweetest and richest girls in Morristown."
I jumped for my hat and ran.
V
You never saw anybody so electrified as Jones. For a good minute hecouldn't even speak. It was like bringing a horseback reprieve to thehero on the stage. He repeated "Stuffenhammer, Stuffenhammer," in tonesthat Henry Irving might have envied, while I gently undid the noosearound his neck. I led him under a tree and told him to buck up. He didso--slowly and surely--and then began to ask me agitated questions aboutproposing. He deferred to me as though I had spent my whole lifeBluebearding through the social system. He wanted to be coached how todo it, you know. I told him to rip out the words--any old words--andthen kiss her.
"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl hatespauses."
"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me asr-r-respectful."
"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 whatit was; but at any rate the afternoon wore on without the least signof his coming to time. I kept tab on him as well as I could--checkerswith Miss Drayton--half an hour writing letters--a long talk with themajor--and finally his gettin
g lost altogether in the shrubbery withan old lady. Freddy said the suspense was killing her, and was terriblydespondent and miserable. I couldn't interest her in the Seventy-secondStreet house at all. She asked what was the good of working andworrying, and figuring and making lists--when in all probability itwould be another girl that would live there. She had an awfully meanopinion of my constancy, and was intolerably philosophical andOh-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 weepingover the dear dead memory. She said nobody ever got what they wanted,anyway; and might she come, when she was old and ugly and faded andweary, to take care of my children and be a sort of dear old aunty inthe Seventy-second Street house. I said certainly not, and we had afight right away.
As we were dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task, andtried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it somehow, forhe said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his affairs, and then wentinto the bath-room, where he shaved and growled for ten whole minutes. Iitched to throw a bootjack at him, but compromised on doing a littlegrowling myself. Afterward we got into our clothes in silence, and as hewent out first he slammed the door.
It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive uchre for a sillyprize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so. Then themajor did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I was thankful to sneakout-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the starlight. I walked up anddown, consigning Jones to--well, where I thought he belonged. I thoughtof the time I had wasted over the fellow--the good money--the hopes--Iwas savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly callingme from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodgegate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I wasin one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure topile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it'shell not to reach par. I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm--theconsolation--to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who hadlooked down in their time on such countless generations of human asses.It gave me a wonderful sense of fellowship with the past and future.
I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the generalscheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another human speck,stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit case. It was Joneshimself, outward bound, and doing five knots an hour. I was after him ina 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 likethat.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"Home!"
"But say, stop; you can't do that. It's too darned rude. We don't breakup 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 underthe gaslights--
"Westoby," he broke out suddenly, "if there's one thing I'm sensitiveabout it is my name. Slap me in the face, turn the hose on me, rip thecoat off my back--and you'd be astounded by my mildness. But when itcomes 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 dideverything 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. Infact, 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--doyou 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 veryextra."
"Wouldn't it have been wiser to--?"
"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a fellow hasto 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 DeMontmorency."
"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 remarkthat any one might have made in the agitation of the moment--you'redeliberately turning your back on her, and her broken heart!"
"Oh, she's red-hot, too, you know, over what I said about the VanCoorts."
"She couldn't have realized that you belonged to the ConnecticutJoneses. _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 asthe mile of my life. I pleaded, argued, extenuated and explained. Mylifelong happiness--Freddy--the Seventy-second Street house--werewalking away from me in the dark while I jerked unavailingly at Jones'coat-tails. The whole outfit disappeared into a car, leaving me on theplatform 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 cornerof the veranda. The sight of her tears revived my fainting courage. Ithought 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 likethat--a splendid fellow--a member of one of the oldest and proudestfamilies of Connecticut--to his death."
"Death?"
"Well, he's off for Japan to-morrow. They're getting through fiftydoctors a week out there at the front. They're shot down faster thanthey can set them up."
I was unprepared for the effect of this on Eleanor. For two cents shewould have fainted then and there. It's awful to hear a woman moan, andclench her teeth, and pant for breath.
"Oh, Eleanor, can't you do anything?"
"I am helpless, Ezra. My pride--my woman's pride--"
"Oh, how can you let such trifles stand between you? Think of him outthere, in his tattered Japanese uniform--so far from home, so lonely, soheartbroken--standing undaunted in that rain of steel, while--"
"Oh, Ezra, stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
"Is the love of three years to be thrown aside like an old glove, justbecause--"
Her face was so wild and strained that the lies froze upon my tongue.
"Oh, Ezra, I could follow him barefooted through the snow if only he--"
"He's leaving Grand Central to-morrow at ten forty-five," I said.
She fumbled at her neck, and almost tore away the diamond locket thatreposed there.
"Take him this," she whispered hoarsely. "Take it to him at once, andsay I sent it. Say that I beg him to return--that my pride crumbles atthe thought of his going away so far into danger."
I put the locket carefully into my pocket.
"And, Eleanor, try and don't rub him the wrong way about his name. Is itworth while? There have to be Joneses, you know."
"Tell him," she burst out, "tell him--oh, I never meant to woundhim--truly, I didn't ... a name that's good enough for him is goodenough for me!"
The next morning at nine I pulled up my Porcher-Mufflin car beforeJones' door. He was sitting at his table reading a book, and he made nomotion to rise as I came in. He gave me a pale, expressionless stareinstead, such as an ancient Christian might have worn when the call-boytold him the lions were ready in the Colosseum. Resignation, obsti
nacyand defiance--all nicely blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior.He looked woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleeplessnight and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was thelast straw to this unfortunate medical camel.
I threw in a genial remark about the weather, and took a seat.
Jones hunched himself together, and squirmed a sad little squirm.
"Mr. Westoby," he said, "I once made use of a very strong expression inregard to you. I said, if you remember, that I'd be obliged if you'dkeep your paws--"
"Don't apologize," I interrupted. "I forgot it long ago."
"You've taken me up wrong," he continued drearily. "I should like you toconsider the remark repeated now. Yes, sir, repeated."
"Oh, bosh!" I exclaimed.
"You have a very tough epidermis," he went on. "Quite the toughestepidermis I have met with in my whole professional career. A paperadequately treating your epidermis would make a sensation before anymedical society."
Somehow I couldn't feel properly insulted. The whole business struck meas irresistibly comical. I lay back in my chair--my uninvited chair--androared with laughter.
I couldn't forbear asking him what treatment he'd recommend.
He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."