"Is there no chance of anything turning up?" I said. "An appendicitis case—an outbreak of measles? I thought there was a lot of scarlatina just now."
He shook his head dejectedly.
"Doctor," I began again, "I am pretty well fixed myself. I'm blessed with an income that runs to five figures. If all goes the way it should we shall be brothers-in-law in six months. We are almost relations. Give me the privilege of taking over this small obligation—"
I never saw a man so overcome. My proposal seemed to tear the poor devil to pieces. When he spoke his voice was trembling.
"You don't know what it means to me to refuse," he said. "My self-respect ... my—my...." And then he positively began to weep!
"You said three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents, I believe?"
He waved it from him with a long, lean hand.
"I can not do it," he said; "and, for God's sake, don't ask me to!"
I argued with him for twenty minutes; I laid the question before him in a million lights; I racked him with a picture of Eleanor, so deeply hurt, so mortified, that in her recklessness and despair she would probably throw herself away on the first man that offered! This was his chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollarsand seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw myself losing Freddy.
I went away with his "no, no, no!" still ringing in my ears.
At the club I found a note from Freddy. She pressed me to lose no time. Mrs. Matthewman was talking of going to Europe, and of course she and Eleanor would have to accompany her. Eleanor, she said, had ordered two new gowns and had brightened up wonderfully. "Only yesterday she told me she wished that silly doctor would hurry up and come—and that, you know, from Eleanor is almost a declaration!"
Some of my best friends happened to be in the club. It occurred to me that poor Nevill was diabetic, and that Charley Crossman had been boring everybody about his gout. I buttonholed them both, and laid my unfortunate predicament before them. I said I'd pay all the expenses. In fact, the more they could make it cost the better I'd be pleased.
"What," roared Nevill, "put myself in the hands of a young fool so that he may fill his empty pockets with your money! Where doIcome in? Good heavens, Westoby, you're crazy! Think what would happen to me if it came to Doctor Saltworthy's ears? He'd never have anything more to do with me!"
Charley Crossman was equally rebellious and unreasonable.
"I guess you've never had the gout," he said grimly.
"But Charley, old man," I pleaded, "all that you'd have to do would be to let himtalkto you. I don't ask you to suffer for it. Just pay—that's all—pay my money!"
"I'm awfully easily talked into things," said Charley. (There was never such a mule on the Produce Exchange.) "He'd be saying, 'Take this'—and I'm the kind of blankety-blank fool that would take it!"
Then I did a mean thing. I reminded Crossman of having backed some bills of his—big bills, too—at a time when it was touch and go whether he'd manage to keep his head above water.
"Westoby," he replied, "don't think that time has lessened my sense of that obligation. I'd cut off my right hand to do you a good turn. But for heaven's sake, don't ask me to monkey with my gout!"
The best I could get out of him was the promise of an anemic servant-girl. Nevill generously threw in a groom with varicose veins. Small contributions, but thankfully received.
"Now, what you do," said Nevill, "is to go round right off and interview Bishop Jordan. He has sick people to burn!"
But I said Jones would get on to it if I deluged him with the misery of the slums.
"That's just where the bishop comes in," said Nevill. "There isn't a man more in touch with the saddest kind of poverty in New York—the decent, clean, shrinking poverty that hides away from all the dead-head coffee and doughnuts. If I was in your fix I'd fall over myself to reach Jordan!"
"Yes, you try Jordan," said Charley, who, I'm sure, had never heard of him before.
"Then it's me for Jordan," said I.
I went down stairs and told one of the bell-boys to look up the address in the telephone-book. It seemed to me he looked pale, that boy.
"Aren't you well, Dan?" I said.
"I don't know what's the matter with me, sir. I guess it must be the night work."
I gave him a five-dollar bill and made him write down 1892 Eighth Avenue on a piece of paper.
"You go and see Doctor Jones first thing," I said. "And don't mention my name, nor spend the money onHer Mad Marriage."
I jumped into a hansom with a pleasant sense that I was beginning to make the fur fly.
"That's a horrible cold of yours, Cabby," I said as we stopped at the bishop's door and I handed him up a dollar bill. "That's just the kind of a cold that makes graveyards hum!"
"I can't shake it off, sir," he said despondently. "Try what I can, and it's never no use!"
"There's one doctor in the world who can cure anything," I said; "Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I was worse than you two weeks ago, and now look at me! Take this five dollars, and for heaven's sake, man, put yourself in his hands quick."
Bishop Jordan was a fine type of modern clergyman. He was broad-shouldered mentally as well as physically, and he brought to philanthropic work the thoroughness, care, enthusiasm and capacity that would have earned him a fortune in business.
"Bishop," I said, "I've come to see if I can't make a trade with you!"
He raised his grizzled eyebrows and gave me a very searching look.
"A trade," he repeated in a holding-back kind of tone, as though wondering what the trap was.
"Here's a check for one thousand dollars drawn to your order," I went on. "And here's the address of Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I want this money to reach him via your sick people, and that without my name being known or at all suspected."
"May I not ask the meaning of so peculiar a request?"
"He's hard up," I said, "and I want to help him. It occurred to me that I might make you—er—a confederate in my little game, you know."
His eyes twinkled as he slowly folded up my check and put it in his pocket.
"I don't want any economy about it, Bishop," I went on. "I don't want to make the best use of it, or anything of that kind. I want to slap it into Doctor Jones' till, and slap it in quick."
"Would you consider two weeks—?"
"Oh, one, please!"
"It is understood, of course, that this young man is a duly qualified and capable physician, and that in the event of my finding it otherwise I shall be at liberty to direct your check to other uses?"
"Oh, I can answer for his being all right, Bishop. He's thoroughly up-to-date, you know; does the X-ray act; and keeps the pace of modern science."
"You say you can answer for him," said the bishop genially. "Might I inquire whoyouare?"
"I'm named Westoby—Ezra Westoby—managing partner of Hodge & Westoby, boxers."
"I like boxers," said the bishop in the tone of a benediction, rising to dismiss me. "I like one thousand dollar checks, too. When you have any more to spare just give them a fair wind in this direction!"
I went out feeling that the Episcopal Church had risen fifty per cent. in my esteem. Bishops like that would make a success of any denomination. I like to see a fellow who's on to his job.
I gave Jones a week to grapple with the new developments, and then happened along. The anteroom was full, and there was a queue down the street like a line of music-loving citizens waiting to hear Patti. Nice, decent-looking people, with money in their hands. (I always like to see a cash business, don't you?) I guess it took me an hour to crowd my way up stairs, and even then I had to buy a man out of the line.
Jones was carrying off the boom more quietly than I cared about. He wore a curt, snappy air. I don't know why, but I felt misgivings as I shook hands with him.
Of course I commented on the rush.
"The Lord only knows what's happened to my practice," he said. "The blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a great wave of sickness passing over New York just now."
"Everybody's complaining," I said.
This reminded him of my insomnia till I cut him short.
"What's the matter with our going down to the Van Coorts' from Saturday to Tuesday," I said. "They haven't given up the hope of seeing you there, Doctor, and the thing's still open."
Then I waited for him to jump with joy.
He didn't jump a bit. He shook his head. He distinctly said "No."
"I told you it was the money side of it that bothered me," he explained. "So it was at the time, for, of course, I couldn't foresee that my practice was going to fill the street and call for policemen to keep order. But, my dear Westoby, after giving the subject a great deal of consideration I have come to the conclusion that it would be too painful for me to revive those—those—unhappy emotions I was just beginning to recover from!"
"I thought you loved her!" I exclaimed.
"That's why I've determined not to go," he said. "I have outlived one refusal. How do I know I have the strength, the determination, the hardihood to undergo the agonies of another?"
It seemed a feeble remark to say that faint heart never won fair lady. I growled it out more like a swear than anything else. I was disgusted with the chump.
"She's the star above me," he said; "and I am crushed by my own presumption. Is there any such fool as the man that breaks his heart twice for the impossible?"
"But it isn't impossible," I cried. "Hasn't she—as far as a woman can—hasn't she called you back to her? What more do you expect her to do? A woman's delicacy forbids her screaming for a man! I think Eleanor has already gone a tremendous way in just hinting—"
"You may be right," he said pathetically; "but then you may also be wrong. The risk is too terrible for me to run. It will comfort me all my life to think that perhaps she does love me in secret!"
"Do you mean to say you're going to give it all up?" I roared.
"You needn't get so warm about it," he returned. "After all, I have some justification in thinking she doesn't care."
"What on earth do you suppose she invited you for, then?"
"Well, it would be different," he said, "if I had a note from her—a flower—some little tender reminder of those dear old dead days in the Pullman!"
"She's saving up all that for Morristown," I said.
For the first time in our acquaintance Doctor Jones looked at me with suspicion. His blue eyes clouded. He was growing a little restive under my handling.
"You seem to make the matter a very personal one," he observed.
"Well, I love Freddy," I explained. "It naturally brings your own case very close to me. And then I am so positive that you love Eleanor and that Eleanor loves you.Put yourself in my place, Doctor! Do you mean that you'd do nothing to bring two such noble hearts together?"
He seized my hand and wrung it effusively. He reallydidlove Eleanor, you know. The only fault with him was his being so darned humble about it. He was eaten up with a sense of his own inferiority. And yet I could see he was just tingling to go to Morristown. Of course, I crowded him all I could, but the best I could accomplish was his promise to "think it over." I hated to leave him wabbling, but patients were scuffling at the door and fighting on the stairs.
The next thing I did was to get Freddy on the long-distance 'phone.
"Freddy," I said, after explaining the situation, "you must get Eleanor to telegraph to him direct!"
"What's the good of asking what she won't do?" bubbled the sweet little voice.
"Can't you persuade her?"
"I know she won't do it!"
"Then you must forge it," I said desperately. "It needn't be anything red-hot, you know. But something tender and sincere: 'Shall be awfully disappointed if you don't come,' or, 'There was a time when you would not have failed me!'"
"It's impossible."
"Then he won't budge a single inch!" I replied.
"Ezra?"
"Darling!"
"Suppose I just signed the telegram Van Coort?"
"The very thing!"
"If he misunderstood it—I mean if he thought it really came from Eleanor—there couldn't be any fuss about it afterward, could there?"
"And, of course, you'll send the official invitation from Mrs. Matthewman besides?"
"For Saturday?"
"Yes, Saturday!"
"Andyou'llcome?"
"Just watch me!"
"Ezra, are you happy?"
"That depends on Jones."
"Oh, isn't it exciting?"
"I have the ring in my pocket—"
"But touch wood, won't you?"
"Freddy?"
"Yes—"
"What's the matter with getting some forget-me-nots and mailing them to Jones in an envelope?"
"All right, I'll attend to it. Eighteen ninety-two Eighth Avenue, isn't it?"
"Be sure itisforget-me-nots, you know. Don't mix up the language of flowers, and send him one that says: 'I'm off with a handsomer man,' or, 'You needn't come round any more!'"
"Oh, Ezra, Eleanor is really getting quite worked up!"
"So am I!"
"Wouldn't it be perfectly splendid if—Switch off quick, here's aunt coming!"
"Mayn't I even say I love you?"
"I daren't say it back, Ezra—she's calling."
"Butdoyou?"
"Yes, unfortunately—"
"Why unfortun—?"
Buzz-buzz-swizzleum-bux-bux!—Aunt had cut us off. However, short as my talk with Freddy had been, it brightened my whole day.
Late the same afternoon I went back to Doctor Jones.I was prepared to find him uplifted, but I hadn't counted on his being maudlin. The fellow was drunk, positively drunk—with happiness. His tongue ran on like a mill-stream. I had to sit down and have the whole Pullman-car episode inflicted on me a second time. I was shown the receipt-slip. I was shown the telegram from Eleanor. I was shown with a whoop the forget-me-nots! Then he was going on Saturday? I asked. He said he guessed it would take an earthquake to keep him away, and a pretty big earthquake, too!... Oh, it was a great moment, and all the greater because I was tremendously worked up, too. I saw Freddy floating before me, my sweet, girlish, darling Freddy, holding out her arms ... while Jones gassed and gassed and gassed....
I left him taking phenacetin for his headache.
The house-party had grown a little larger than was originally intended. On Saturday night we sat down twelve to dinner. Doctor Jones and I shared a room together, and I must say whatever misgivings I might have had about him wore away very quickly on closer acquaintance. In the first place he looked well in evening dress, carrying himself with a sort of shy, kind air that became him immensely. At table he developed the greatest of conversational gifts—that of the appreciative and intelligent listener. I heard one of the guests asking Eleanor who was that charming young man. Freddy and I hugged each other (I mean metaphorically, of course) and gloried in his success. In the presence of an admirer (such is the mystery of women) Eleanor instantly got fifteen points better looking, and you wouldn't have known her for the same girl. Freddy thought itwas the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gown she wore, but I could see it was deeper than that. She was thawing in the sunshine of love, and I'll do Doctor Jones the justice to say that he didn't hide his affection under a bushel. It was generous enough for everybody to bask in, and in his pell-mell ardor he took us all to his bosom. The women loved him for it, and entered into a tacit conspiracy to gain him the right-of-way to wherever Eleanor was to be found. In fact, he followed her about like a dog, and she could scarcely move without stepping on him.
Sunday was even better. One of the housemaids drank some wood-alcohol by mistake for vichy water, and the resulting uproar redounded to Jones' coolness, skill and despatch. He dominated the situation and—well, I won't describe it, this not being a medical work, and the reader probably being a good guesser. Mrs. Matthewman remarked significantly that it must be nice to be the wife of a medical man—one would always have the safe feeling of a doctor at hand in case anything happened at night! Eleanor said it was a beautiful profession that had for its object the alleviation of human pain. Freddy jealously tried to get in a good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me. It was all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern medicine. Altogether he sailed through that whole day with flying colors, first with the housemaid, and then afterward at church, where he was the only one that knew what Sunday after Epiphany it was. He made it plainer than ever that he was a model young man and a pattern. Mrs. Matthewman compared him to her departed husband, and talked about old-fashioned courtesy and the splendid men of her youth. Everybody fell over everybody else to praise him. It was a regular Jones boom. Peoplebegan to write down his address, and ask him if he'd be free Thursday, or what about Friday, and started to book seats in advance.
That evening, as I was washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully whistlingHiawatha, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my attention was a groan—preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It worried me—when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every right to be whistlingHiawatha, too.
"What's the matter, Jones?" said I.
He keeled over on the sofa, and groaned louder than ever.
"It isn't possible—that she's refused you?" I exclaimed. He muttered something about his mother.
"Well, what about your mother?" I said.
"Westoby," he returned, "I guess I was the worst kind of fool ever to put my foot into this house."
That was nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head to buy that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement into a garage!
"You see, old man, my mother would never consent to my marrying Eleanor. I'm in the position of having to choose between her and the woman I love. And I owe so much to my mother, Westoby. She stinted herself for years to get me through college; she hardly had enough to eat; she...." Then he groaned a lot more.
"I can't think that your mother—a mother like yours, Jones—would consent to stand between you and your lifelong happiness. It's morbid—that's what I call it—morbid, just to dream of such a thing."
"There's Bertha," he quavered.
"Great Scott, and who's Bertha?"
"The girl my mother chose for me two years ago—Bertha McNutt, you know. She'd really prefer me not to marry at all, but if I must—it's Bertha, Westoby—Bertha or nothing!"
"It's too late to say that now, old fellow."
"It's not too late for me to go home this very night."
"Well, Jones," I broke out, "I can't think you'd do such a caddish thing as that. Think it over for a minute. You come down here; you sweep that unfortunate girl off her feet; you make love to her with the fury of a stage villain; you force her to betray her very evident partiality for you—and then you have the effrontery to say: 'Good-by. I'm off.'"
"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 social position—a little fortune of her own—accomplished, handsome, charming, sought after—why, if you managed to win such a girl as that your mother would walk on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha—"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a little tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water formygirl. 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 our hostess. If you went away to-night it would be an insult. Whatever you decide to do later, you've simply got to stay here till Tuesday morning!"
"Must I?" he said, in the tone of a person who is ordered not to leave the sinking ship.
"A gentleman has to," I said.
He quavered out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan of 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—a tarnation fluff!
It was a pretty glum evening all round. Most of them thought that Jones had got the chilly mitt. Eleanor looked pale and undecided, not knowing what to make of Jones' death's-head face. She was resentful and pitying in turns, and I saw all the material lying around for a first-class conflagration. Freddy was a bit down on me, too, saying that a smoother method would have ironed out Jones, and that I had been headlong and silly. She cried over it, and wouldn't kiss me in the dark; and I was goaded into saying—well, the course of true love ran in bumps that night. There was only one redeeming circumstance, and that was my managing to keep Jones and Eleanor apart. I mean that I insisted on being 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 dressed myself quietly so as not to awake him. It was now Monday, and you can see 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 away without warning, but that I should be back by luncheon. I rather overdid the earliness of it all. At least, I hove off 1892 Eighth Avenue at eight-fifteena.m.I loitered about; looked at pawnshop windows; gave a careful examination to a forty-eight-dollar-ninety-eight-cent complete outfit for a four-room flat; had a chat with a policeman; assisted at a runaway; advanced a nickel to a colored gentleman in distress; had my shoes shined by another; helped a child catch an escaped parrot—and still it wasn't nine! Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on Eighth Avenue in the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a keen tongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I besought her indulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before her—at least, as much of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the rôle of her son's warmest admirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense of his duty 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 I must confess it was. But still I persevered.
"It puts me out to have him shilly-shallying around like this," she said. "I'll give him a good talking to when he gets back. This other arrangement has been understood between Mrs. McNutt and myself for years."
She was an irritating person. I found it not a little difficult to keep my temper with her. It's easier to fight dragons than to temporize with them and appeal to theirbetter nature. I appealed and appealed. She watched me with the same air of interested detachment that one gives to a squirrel revolving in a cage. I could feel that she was flattered; her sense of power was agreeably tickled; my earnestness and despair enhanced the zest of her reiterated refusals. I was a very nice young man, but her son was going to marry Bertha McNutt or marry nobody!
Then I tried to draw a lurid picture of his revolt from her apron-strings.
"Oh, Harry's a good boy," she said. "You can't make me believe that two days has altered his whole character. I'll answer for his doing what I want."
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 bounced in. She was stout, jolly-looking and effusive. The greetings between the pair were warm, and they were evidently old friends. But underneath the new-comer's gush and noise I was dimly conscious of a sort of gay hostility. She was exultant and frightened, both at once, and her eyes were sparkling.
"Well, what do you think?" she cried out explosively.
Mrs. Jones' lips tightened. There was a mean streak in that old woman. I could see she was feeling for her little hatchet, and was getting out her little gun.
"Bertha!" exploded the old lady. "Bertha—"
(Mysterious mental processes at once informed me that this was none other than Bertha's mother.)
Mrs. Jones was coolly taking aim. I was reminded of that old military dictum: "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!"
"Bertha," vociferated the old lady fiercely—"Bertha has been secretly married 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 so that she could tone it down by degrees to poor Harry; though there was no engagement or anything like that, she could not help feeling, of course, 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 that he's engaged to one of the sweetest and richest girls in Morristown."
I jumped for my hat and ran.
You never saw anybody so electrified as Jones. For a good minute he couldn't even speak. It was like bringing a horseback reprieve to the hero on the stage. He repeated "Stuffenhammer, Stuffenhammer," in tones that Henry Irving might have envied, while I gently undid the noose around his neck. I led him under a tree and told him to buck up. He did so—slowly and surely—and then began to ask me agitated questions about proposing. He deferred to me as though I had spent my whole life Bluebearding through the social system. He wanted to be coached how to do it, you know. I told him to rip out the words—any old words—and then kiss her.
"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl hates pauses."
"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me as r-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 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 nobody 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 Jonesto 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 hell 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 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 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 myname."
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 tochangeyour 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.Ididn'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 Japan 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?"
"I am helpless, Ezra. My pride—my woman's pride—"
"Oh, how can you let such trifles stand between you? Think of him out there, in his tattered Japanese uniform—so far from home, so lonely, so heartbroken—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, just because—"
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 that reposed there.
"Take him this," she whispered hoarsely. "Take it to him at once, and say I sent it. Say that I beg him to return—that my pride crumbles at the 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 it worth while? There have to be Joneses, you know."
"Tell him," she burst out, "tell him—oh, I never meant to wound him—truly, I didn't ... a name that's good enough for him is good enough for me!"
The next morning at nine I pulled up my Porcher-Mufflin car before Jones' door. He was sitting at his table reading a book, and he made no motion to rise as I came in. He gave me a pale, expressionless stare instead, such as an ancient Christian might have worn when the call-boy told him the lions were ready in the Colosseum. Resignation, obstinacy and defiance—all nicely blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior. He looked woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleepless night and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was the last 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 in regard to you. I said, if you remember, that I'd be obliged if you'd keep 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 to consider the remark repeated now. Yes, sir, repeated."
"Oh, bosh!" I exclaimed.
"You have a very tough epidermis," he went on. "Quite the toughest epidermis I have met with in my whole professional career. A paper adequately treating your epidermis would make a sensation before any medical society."
Somehow I couldn't feel properly insulted. The whole business struck me as irresistibly comical. I lay back in my chair—my uninvited chair—and roared with laughter.
I couldn't forbear asking him what treatment he'd recommend.
He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."
I retorted by laying the diamond locket before him.
"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't let us go on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give you this, and beg you to return."
I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was far more eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in his hands beside it, and his whole body trembled with emotion. He trembled and trembled, till finally I got tired of waiting. I poked him in the back, and reminded him that my car was waiting down stairs. He rose with a strange, bewildered air, and submitted like a child to be led into the street. He had the locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then he would glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.
"Let her out, James," I said.
James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired housemaid at the Van Coorts' ... and it was a crack, new, four-cylinder car with a direct drive on the top speed. Off we went like the wind, jouncing poor Jones around the tonneau like a pea in a pill-box. But he didn't care. Was he not seraphically whizzing through space, obeying the diamond telegram of love? In the gentle whizzle and bang of the whole performance he even ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could overhear him behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the machinery. It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the outskirts of Morristown. You see I had to coach him about that Japanese war business, or else there might be trouble! So I leaned over the back seat and gently broke it to him. I thought I had managed it rather well. I felt sure he could understand, I said, the absolute need of a little—embellishing and—
"Let me out," he said.
I feverishly went on explaining.
"If you don't let me out I'll climb out," he said, and began to make as good as his word over the tonneau.
Of course, there was nothing for it but to stop the car.
Jones deliberately descended and headed for New York.
I ran after him, while the chauffeur turned the car round and slowly followed us both. It was a queer procession. First Jones, then I, then the car.
Finally I overtook him.
"Jones," I panted. "Jones."
He muttered something about Ananias, and speeded up.
"But it was an awfully tight place," I pleaded. "Something had to be done; you must make allowances; it wasthe first thing that came into my head—and you must admit that it worked, Jones. Didn't she send you the locket? Didn't she—?"
"What a prancing, show-off, matinée fool you've made me look!" he burst out. "I have an old mother to support. I have an increasing practice. I have already attracted some little attention in my chosen field—eye, ear and throat. A nice figure I'd cut, traipsing around the battlefields in a kimono, and looking for a kindly bullet to lay me low. If I were ever tempted by such a thing—which God forbid—wouldn't I prefer to spread bacilli on buttered toast?"
"I never thought of that," I said humbly.
"I have known retail liars," he went on. "But I guess you are the only wholesaler in the business. When other people are content with ones and twos, you get them out in grosses, packed for export!"
He went on slamming me like this for miles. Anybody else would have given him up as hopeless. I don't want to praise myself, but if I have one good quality it's staying power. I pleaded and argued, and expostulated and explained, with the determination of a man whose back is to the wall. I wasn't going to lose Freddy so long as there was breath in my body. However, it wasn't the least good in the world. Jones was as impervious as sole-leather, and as unshaken as a marble pillar.
Then I played my last card.
I told him the truth! Not thewholetruth, of course, but within ten per cent. of it. About Freddy, you know, and how she was determined not to marry before her elder sister, and how Eleanor's only preference seemed to be for him, and how with such a slender clue to work on I had engineered everything up to this point.
"If I have seemed to you intolerably prying and officious," I said, "well, at any rate, Jones, there's my excuse. It rests with you to give me Freddy or take her from me. Turn back, and you'll make me the happiest man alive; go forward, and—and—"
I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
His tread lost some of its elasticity. He was short-circuiting inside. Positively he began to look sort of sympathetic and human.
"Westoby," he said at last, in a voice almost of awe, "when they get up another world's fair you must have a building to yourself. You're colossal, that's what you are!"
"I'm only in love," I said.
"Well, that's the love that moves mountains," he said. "If anybody had told me that I should...." He stopped irresolutely on the word.
"Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!" he bleated.
I was too wise to say a word. I simply motioned James to switch the car around and back up. I shooed Jones into the tonneau and turned the knob on him. He snuggled back in the cushions, and smiled—yes smiled—with a beautiful, blue-eyed, far-away, indulgent expression that warmed me like spring sunshine. Not that I felt absolutely safe even yet—of course I couldn't—but still—
We ran into Freddy and Eleanor at the lodge gates. I had already telephoned the former to expect us, so as to have everything fall out naturally when the time came. We stopped the car, and descended—Jones and I—and he walked straight off with Eleanor, while I side-stepped with Freddy.
She and I were almost too excited to talk. It was now or never, you know, and there was an awfully solemn look about both their backs that was either reassuring oralarming—we couldn't decide quite which. Freddy and I simply held our breath and waited.
Finally, after an age, Jones and Eleanor turned, still close in talk, still solemn and enigmatical, and drew toward us very slowly and deliberately. When they had got quite close, and the tension was at the breaking point, Eleanor suddenly made a little rush, and, with a loud sob, threw her arms round Freddy's neck.
Jones fidgeted nervously about, and seemed to quail under my questioning eyes. It was impossible to tell whether things had gone right or not. I waited for him to speak.... I saw words forming themselves hesitatingly on his lips ... he bent toward me quite confidentially....
"Say, old man," he whispered, "is there any place around here where a fellow can buy an engagement ring?"