VII
Bean had once attended a magician's entertainment and there suffered vicariously the agony endured by one of his volunteer assistants. Suavely the entertainer begged the help of "some kind gentleman from the audience." He was insistent, exerting upon the reluctant ones the pressure of his best platform manner.
When the pause had grown embarrassing, a shamed looking man slouched forward from an aisle seat amid hearty cheers. He ascended the carpeted runway from aisle to stage, stumbled over footlights and dropped his hat. Then the magician harried him to the malicious glee of the audience. He removed playing-cards, white rabbits and articles of feminine apparel from beneath the coat of his victim. He seated him in a chair that collapsed. He gave him a box to hold and shocked him electrically. He missed his watch and discovered it in the abused man's pocket. And when the ordeal was over the recovered hat was found to contain guinea-pigs. The kind gentleman from the audience had been shown to be transcendently awkward, brainless, and to have a mania for petty thievery. With burning face and falling glance, he had stumbled back to his seat, where a lady who had before exhibited the public manner of wife to husband toward him, now pretended that he was an utter and offensive stranger.
Bean, I say, had once suffered vicariously with this altruistic dolt. His suffering now was not vicarious. For three days he endured on the raw of his own soul tortures even more ingeniously harrowing.
To be shut up for three hours a day with Breede was bad enough, but custom had a little dulled his sensitiveness to this. And he could look Breede over and write down in beautiful shorthand what he thought of him.
But the other Breedes!
Mrs. Breede, a member of one of the very oldest families in Omaha, he learned, terrified him exceedingly. She was an advanced dresser—he had to admit that—but she was no longer beautiful. She was a plucked rose that had been too long kept; the petals were rusting, crumpling at the edges. He wondered if Breede had ever wished to be wrecked on a desert island with her. She surveyed Bean through a glass-and-gold weapon with a long handle, and on the two subsequent occasions when she addressed him called him Mr. Brown. Once meeting him in the hall, she seemed to believe that he had been sent to fix the telephone.
And the flapper's taller sister of the languishing glance—how quickly had she awakened him from that golden dream of the low-lying atoll and the wrecked ship in a far sea. She did flirt with "any one," no doubt about that. She adroitly revealed to Bean an unshakable conviction that he was desperately enamoured of her, and that it served him right for a presumptuous nobody. She talked to him, preened herself in his gaze, and maddened him with a manner of deadly roguishness. Then she flew to exert the same charm upon any one of the resplendent young men who were constantly riding over or tooting over in big black motor-cars. They were young men who apparently had nothing to do but "go in" for things—riding, tennis, polo, golf. To all of them she was the self-confident charmer; just the kind of a girl to make a fool of you and tell about it.
Twenty-four hours after her first assault upon him he was still wrecking the ship at the entrance to that lagoon, but now he watched the big sister go down for the third time while he placidly rescued a stoker to share his romantic isolation.
The flapper and Grandma, the Demon, were even more objectionable, and, what was worse, they alarmed him. Puzzled as to their purpose, he knew not what defence to make. He was swept on some secret and sinister current to an end he could not divine.
The flapper lay in wait for him at all hours when he might appear. Did he open a door, she lurked in the corridor; did he seek refuge in the gloom of the library, she arose to confront him from its dimmest nook; did he plan a masterly escape by a rear stairway, she burst upon him from the ambush of some exotic shrub to demand which way he had thought of going. He had never thought of a way that did not prove to have been her own. The creature was a leech! If she had only talked, he believed that he could have thrown her off. But she would not talk. She merely walked beside him insatiably. Sometimes he thought he could detect a faint anxiety in the look she kept upon him, but, mostly, it was the look of something calm, secure, ruthless. Something! It unnerved him.
It was usually probable that Grandma, the Demon, would join them, the silver cigarette case dangling at her girdle. Then was he sorely beset. They would perhaps talk about him over his head, discuss his points as if he were some new beast from the stables.
"I tell you, he's over an inch taller than I am," announced the flapper.
"U-u-mm!" replied Grandma, measuring Bean's stature with narrowed eye. "U-u-mm!"
"You show her!" commanded flapper, in a louder voice, as if she believed him deaf. She grasped his arm and whirled him about to stand with his back to hers.
"There!" said the flapper tensely, her eyes staring ahead. "There!"
"You're scrooching!" accused the Demon.
"Not a bit!—and see how square his shoulders are!" She turned to point out this grace of the animal.
"Ever take any drugs? Ever get any habits like that?" queried the Demon. Plainly Bean's confession to an unusual virtue had aroused her suspicion. He might be a drug fiend!
He faltered wretchedly, wishing Breede would send for him.
"I—well, I used to be made to take sulphur and molasses every spring . . . but I never kept it up after I left home."
"Hum!" said the old lady, looking as if he could tell a lot more if he chose.
She gripped one of his biceps. He was not ashamed of these. The night and morning drill with that home exerciser had told, even though he was not yet so impressive as the machine's inventor, who, in magazine advertisements, looked down so fondly upon his own flexed arm.
"For goodness sake!" exclaimed the Demon respectfully.
Bean thrilled at this, feeling like a primitive brute of the cave times, accustomed to subduing women by force.
After that they seemed tacitly to agree that they would pretend to show him over the "grounds." Bean hated the grounds, which were worried to the last square inch into a chilling formality, and the big glass conservatory was stifling, like an overcrowded, overheated auditorium. And he knew they were "drawing him out." They looked meaningly at each other when ever he spoke.
They questioned him about his early life, but learned only that his father had been "engaged in the express business." He was ably reticent.
Did he believe that women ought to be classed legally with drunkards, imbeciles and criminals? He did not, if you came down to that. Let them vote if they wanted to. He had other things to think about, more important. He didn't care much, either way. Voting didn't do any good.
He had taken the ideal attitude to enrage the woman suffragist. She will respect opposition. Careless indifference she cannot brook. Grandma opened upon him and battered him to a pulpy mass. Within the half hour he was supinely promising to remind her to give him a badge before he left; and there was further talk of his marching at the next parade as a member of the Men's League for Woman's Suffrage, or, at the very least, in the column of Men Sympathizers.
He wondered, wondered! Were they trying to assure themselves that he was a fit man to be in the employ of old Breede? He could imagine it of them; as soon as they thought about voting they began to interfere in a man's business. Yet this suspicion slept when he was with the flapper alone. Sometimes he was conscious of liking very much to be with her. He decided that this was because she didn't talk.
The evening of his last day came. Breede, in a burst of garrulity, had said: "Had enough this; go town to-morrow!" The flapper, and even the Demon, had seemed to be stirred by the announcement. He resolved to be more than ever on his guard. But they caught him fairly in the open.
"How do you like his hair parted that way in the middle?" demanded the flapper, with the calculating eye of one who ponders changes in a dwelling-house.
"U-u-mm!" considered the Demon gravely. "Not bad. Still, perhaps!"
"Exactly what I was thinking!" said the flapper cordially. Then, to Bean, her tone slightly raised:
"Which way?"
"Got to get off a bunch of telegrams," lied Bean.
"Oh, all right! We'll wait for you," said the flapper. "Right there," she added, pointing to the most expensive pergola on the place.
In the dusk of an hour later he slunk stealthily down a rear stairway and made a cautious detour into the grounds. He earnestly meant to keep far from that pergola. Wait for him, would they? Well, he'd show them! Always spying on a man; hounding him! What business was it of theirs whether he had habits or not . . . any kind of habits?
But he was to find himself under a spell such as is said to bring the weak-willed bird to the serpent's maw. His traitorous feet dragged him toward the trap. The odour of a cigarette drew his revolted nostrils. He could hear the murmurous duet.
Talking about him! Of course! He would like to break in on them and for a little while be a certain Corsican upstart in one of his most objectionable moods. That would take them down a bit. But, instead, he became something entirely different. With the stealth of the red Indian he effaced himself against a background of well-groomed shrubbery and crept toward the murmur. At last he could hear words above the beating of his heart.
"How can you know?" the Demon was saying. "A child of your age?"
The flapper's tone was calm and confident as one who relates a phenomenon that has become a commonplace.
"I knew it the very first second I ever saw him—something went over me just like that—I can't tell how, but I knew."
"Well, how can you know about him?"
"Oh, him!" The words implied that the flapper had waved a deprecating hand. "Why, I know about him in just the same way; you can't tell how. It comes over you!"
The Demon: (A long-drawn) "U-u-mm!"
The flapper: "And he makes me perfectly furious sometimes, too!"
There was a stir as if they were leaving. Bean retreated a dozen feet before he breathed again. So that was their game, was it? He'd see about that!
He waited for them to emerge, but they had apparently settled to more of this high-handed talk. Then, like an icy wave to engulf him, came a name—"Tommy Hollins." It came in the Demon's voice, indistinguishable words preceding it. And in the flapper's voice came "Tommy Hollins!" gently, caressingly, it seemed. In truth, the flapper had sniffed before uttering it, and the sniff had meant good-natured contempt but Bean had lost the sniff.
Now he had it! Tommy Hollins! He identified the youth, a yellow-headed, pink-faced lout in flannels who was always riding over, and who seemed to "go in" for nearly everything. He had detected a romping intimacy between the two. So it was Tommy Hollins. At once he felt a great relief; he need worry no longer over the singular attentions of this young woman. Let Tommy Hollins worry! He could admit, now, how grave had been his alarm. And there was nothing in it. He could meet her without being afraid. He was almost ready to approach them genially and pass an hour in light conversation. He advanced a few steps with this intention, but again came the voice of the flapper replying, apparently, to some unheard admonition. It came, cold and terrible.
"I don't care. I've got the right to choose the father of my own children!"
He blushed for this language, a blush he could feel mantling his very toes. He fled from there. He saw that the moment was not for light conversation. And even as he fled he caught the Demon's prolonged "U-u-mmm!"
Yet when he left in the morning the flapper lurked for him as ever, materializing from an apparently vacant corridor. He greeted her for the first time without ulterior questioning. He thought he liked her pretty well now. And she was undeniably good to look at in the white of her tennis costume; the hair, like Nap's spots in its golden brown, was filleted with a scarlet ribbon, and her eyes shone from her freshened face with an unwonted sparkle—decision, certitude—what was it? He deemed that he knew.
"Tommy Hollins coming to play," she vouchsafed in explanation of the racquet she carried. "Are you glad to go?"
"Glad to see my dog again." He smiled as a man of the world. He was on the verge of coquetry, now that he knew it to be safe.
"We'll bring him along too, next time."
"Oh, the next time!" He put it carelessly aside.
"You'll be out again, soon enough. I simply know Pops is going to have another bad spell—in a week or so."
He could have sworn that the eyes of Breede's daughter gleamed with cold anticipatory malice. He shuddered for Breede. And he wished Tommy Hollins well of his bargain. Flirt, indeed! All alike!
"Chubbins!" called the unconscious father from afar.
"Yes, Pops!" She gripped his hand with a well-muscled fervour. "Oh, he'll have another in a little while, don't you worry!" And she was off, with this evil in her heart, to a father but now convalescent.
Marvelling, he walked on to the Demon's ambuscade. She pounced upon him from behind a half-opened door.
"I want to say one word, young man. Oh, you needn't think I don't see the way things are going. I'm not blind if I am seventy-six! If you're the tender and innocent thing you say you are, you look out for yourself. I know you all! If you don't break out one time you do another. I'd a good deal rather you'd had it over before now and put it all behind you—don't interrupt—but you're sound and clean as far as I can see, and you've got a good situation. I don't say it couldn't be worse. But if you are—well, you see that you stay that way. Don't try to tell me. I've seen enough of men in my time"
He broke away from her at Breede's call. The flapper jerked her head twice at him, very neatly, as the car passed the tennis court. She was beginning a practise volley with Tommy Hollins, who was disporting himself like a young colt.
"Chubbins!" he thought. Not a bad name for her, though it had come queerly from Breede. For the first time he was pricked with the needle of suspicion that Hollins might not be the right man for the flapper. Hearing her called "Chubbins" somehow made it seem different. Maybe Hollins, who seemed all of twenty, wouldn't "make her happy." He thought it was something that the family ought to consider very seriously. He was conscious of a willingness to consider it himself, as a friend of the family and a well-wisher of Chubbins.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
The hour had come. "My men have succeeded, after incredible hardships," wrote Professor Balthasar. "The goods will be delivered to you Thursday night, the tenth. I trust the final payment will be ready, as, relying on your honour, I have advanced"
The rest did not matter. His honour was surely to be relied upon. The money had been richly earned. An able man, this Balthasar! He had achieved the thing with admirable secrecy. Bean had feared the hounds of the daily press. They might discover who It was, to whom It was going; discover the true identity of Bunker Bean. The whole thing might come out in the papers! But Balthasar had known how. He approved the caution that had led him to speak of "the goods"; there was something almost witty about it.
He leaned far out a window, listening, straining his eyes up and down the lighted avenue. There was confusion in his mind as to how It could most fittingly be brought to him. The sable vision of a hearse drawn by four lordly black horses at first possessed his mind. But this was dismissed; there was no death! And the spectacle would excite comment. The idea of an ambulance, which he next considered, seemed equally impracticable. It would have to be done quietly; Balthasar would know. Trust Balthasar!
He heard the rhythmic clump-clump of a horse's hoofs on the asphalt pavement. This was presently accompanied by the sounds of wheels. An express wagon came under the street-lights. Balthasar rode beside the driver, his frock coat and glossy tall hat having been relinquished for the garb of an ordinary citizen. Back of them in the wagon he could distinguish the lines of an Object. It had come to him in a common express wagon, in a common crate, and the driver did not even wear a black mask. Balthasar had cunningly eluded detection by pretending there was nothing to conceal.
He drew back from the window and with fast beating heart went to open the door. They were already on the stairway. Balthasar was coming first. With sublime effrontery he had impressed Cassidy to help carry It, and Cassidy was warning the expressman to look out for that turn an' not tear inta th' plashter.
It was lowered to the floor in the throne-room. Cassidy and the expressman puffed freely and looked at the thing as if wondering how two men had ever been equal to it.
"'Twould be brickybac," said Cassidy genially.
"That there hall's choked with dust," said the expressman with seeming irrelevance.
"I noticed it meself," said Cassidy.
"Clogged me throat up fur fair," continued the expressman huskily.
"Pay the men liberally and let them be on their way," said Balthasar. Bean pressed money upon both and they departed.
"You couldn't get me to do it again for twice the money," said Balthasar; "the nervous strain I've been under. A custom-house detective was on our trail, but one of my men took care of him—at a dark corner."
Bean shuddered.
"They didn't"
"Oh, nothing serious. He'll be as well as ever in a few days. Got a hatchet." He gestured significantly toward the crate.
But this was too precipitate for Bean. He could not disinter himself—it seemed like that—under the eyes of Balthasar.
"Not now! Not now! You've done your part—here!" He passed Balthasar the check he had written earlier in the evening.
"I'll leave you, then," said the professor. "But one thing, don't handle it much. It might disintegrate. I bid you farewell, my young friend."
Bean, at the door, listened to his descending steps. The professor was whistling. He recognized the air, "Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon." It was a lively air and the professor rendered it ably but quite softly.
The door locked, he was back staring at the crate that concealed his dead self. He was helpless before it. The fleshly tenement of a great king who had later flashed upon the world as Napoleon I, and was now Bunker Bean! Could he bear to look? He trembled and knew himself weak. Yet it would be done, some time.
There was a vigorous knock at the door. All was discovered!
The crime of assault at the dark corner had been traced to his door. Balthasar had betrayed him. The Egyptian authorities had discovered their loss. The thing was there. He was caught red-handed.
He reached the door and cautiously opened it an inch. Cassidy stood there, armed with a hatchet. They would use violence!
"Hatchet!" said Cassidy, genially extending the weapon. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The aroma of beer stole into the room.
"F'r brox brickybac!" insinuated Cassidy.
"Thanks!" said Bean, accepting the tool.
"We kem frum th' sem county, Mayo, him an' me," volunteered Cassidy. "G'night!"
Once more Bean faced the crate. It must be done at once. Discovery was too probable. Gingerly he forced the blade under one of the boards and pried. The nails screeched horribly as they were withdrawn. The task was simple enough; the crate was a flimsy affair to have withstood so difficult a journey. But after each board was removed he peered to the street from behind the closed blind, half expecting to find policemen drawn to the spot.
A smoothly packed layer of excelsior greeted his eyes. It was rather reassuring. He felt that he might be unpacking any casual object. Exposed at last was the wooden case that enveloped him!
Awestruck, he looked down at it for a long time. He recognized the workmanship, having seen a dozen such in the museum in the park. He knelt by it and ran a reverent hand over its painted surface. In many colours were birds and beasts, and men in profile, and queer marks that he knew to be picture-writing; processions of slaves and oxen, reapers and water-bearers. The tints were fresh under their overlaying lacquer. There was even a smell of varnish. He wondered if the contents—if It—were in the same remarkable state of preservation. He rapped on the thin wood—it was cedar, he thought, or perhaps sycamore. The sound was musical, resonant; the same note that had vibrated how many thousands of years before.
Nap came up to smell, seeming to suspect that the box might contain food. He stretched his forepaws to the top of the case and betrayed eagerness.
"Napoleon!" cried Bean sternly, putting the dog's complete name upon him for the first time. He was banished to his couch and made to know that leaving it would entail unpleasantness.
The thought of the Corsican came back with a new significance. In that embodiment he had felt, perhaps dimly recalled, his Egyptian life. Had he not been drawn irresistibly to Egypt? "In the shadow of the pyramids," he had read in a history, "the conqueror of Italy dreamed of the pomp and power of a crown and sceptre, and upon his return to France from the Egyptian expedition, with characteristic energy he set himself to work to bring the dream to pass" It was plain enough. He knew now the inner meaning of that engraving he had bought, in which Napoleon stood in rapt meditation before the Sphinx. They had all—King, Emperor, Bean—been dreamers that brought their dreams to pass. He mused long, staring down at the case; a queerly shaped thing, fashioned to follow the lines of the human form. From the neck the shoulders rounded gracefully. They might have been cut to give the wearer the appearance of perfect physical development; at least they seemed to fit him neatly.
It occurred to Bean that the case should not lie prone. It suggested death where death was not. He pulled out more excelsior until he could raise the case. It was surprisingly light and he leaned it upright against the wall. He now tried to pretend that everything was over. He gathered boards, excelsior and the crate and piled them in the kitchenette, which they approximately filled.
But inevitably he was brought back. He stood with hands upon the cover of the upreared case, drew a long shivering breath and gently lifted it off. His eyes were upon the swathed figure within, then slowly they crept up the yellowed linen and came to rest upon the bared face.
He had tried feebly to prefigure this face, but never had his visioning approached the actual in its majestic, still beauty. The brow was nobly broad, the nose straight and purposeful, the chin bold yet delicate. The grimness of the mouth was relieved by a faint lift of the upper lip, perhaps an echo of the smile with which he greeted death. There was a gleam of teeth from under the lip. The eyes had closed peacefully; the lids lay light upon their secrets as if they might flutter and open again. On cheek and chin was a descernible growth of dark beard; the hair above the brow was black and abundant. It was a kingly face, a face of command, though benign. It was all too easy to believe that a crown had become it well. And there had been no weakening at the end, no sunken cheeks nor hollowed temples. The lines were full. The general colour was of rich red mahogany.
He ran a tremulous hand over the face, smoothed the thick hair, fingered the firm lips that almost smiled. Under the swathing of linen he could see where the hands were folded on the breast. Low down on the right jaw was unmistakably a mole, a thing that had strangely survived on Bean's own face. Again he ran a hand over the features, then a corroborating hand over his own. Intently and long he studied each detail, nostrils, eyebrows, ears, hair, the tips of the just-revealed teeth.
"God!" he breathed. It was hardly more than a whisper and was uttered in all reverence.
Then
"God! how I've changed!"