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Bunker Bean

<h2>IV</h2> He walked buoyantly home. He had a room at the top of a house in an uptown cross-street. Having locked his door and lighted a gas-jet he stood a long time before his mirror. It was a friendly young face he saw there, but troubled. The hair was pale, the eyes were pale, the nose small. The mouth was rather fine, cleanly cut and a little feminine. The chin was not a fighter's chin, yet neither chin nor mouth revealed any weakness. He scanned the features eagerly, striving to relate them with vaguely remembered portraits of Napoleon. He was about the same height as the Little Corporal, he seemed to recall, but an eagle boldness was lacking. Did he possess it latently? Could he develop it? He must have books about this possible former self of his. He had early become impatient of written history because when it says sixteen hundred and something it means the seventeenth century. If historians had but agreed to call sixteen hundred and something the sixteenth century, he would have read more of them. It was annoying to have to stop to figure. Before retiring he went through certain exercises with an unusual vehemence. He was taking a course in jiu-jitsu from a correspondence school. Aforetime he had dreamed of a street encounter, with some blustering bully twice his size, from which, thanks to his skill, he would emerge unscarred, unruffled, perhaps flecking a bit of dust from one slight but muscular shoulder while his antagonist lay screaming with pain. With the approach of sleep all his half-doubts were swept away. Of course he had been Napoleon. He could almost remember Marengo—or was it Austerlitz? There was a vague but not distressing uncertainty as to which of these conflicts he had directed, but he could—almost—remember. And he had been one who commanded, and who, therefore, would make nothing of pricing a dog. He would enter that store boldly to-morrow, give its proprietor glare for glare, and demand to be told the price of the creature in the window. Napoleon would have made nothing of it. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> The old man came noisily from his back room and again glowered above his spectacles. But this time he faced no weakling who made a subterfuge of undesired goldfish. Bean gulped once, it is true, before words would come. "I—uh—what's the price of that dog in the window?" The old man removed his spectacles, ran a hand through upstanding white hair, and regarded his questioner suspiciously. "You vant him, hey? Vell, I tell. Fifdy dollars, you bed your life!" The blood leaped in his veins. He had expected to hear a hundred at least. Still, fifty was a difficult enough sum. He hesitated. "Er—what's his name?" "Naboleon." "What?" He could not believe this thing. "Naboleon. It comes in his bedigree when I giddim. You bed your life I gif him nod such names—robber, killer, Frenchman!" Bean felt assaulted. "He was a fighter?" "Yah, fider—a killer unt a sdealer. You know what?"—his face lightened a little with garrulity—"my granmutter she seen him, yah, sure she seen him, seddin' on his horse when he gone ridin' into Utrecht in eighdeen hunderd fife, with soljus. Sure she seen him; she loogs outer a winda' so she could touch him if she been glose to him, unt a soljus rides oop unt says, 'Ve gamp right here, not?' unt Naboleon he shneer awful unt say, 'Gamp here vere dey go inter dem cellus from der ganal-side unt get unter us unt blow us high wit bowder—you sheep's head! No; we gamp back in der Malibaan vere is old linden drees hunderd years old, eighd rows vun mile long, dere is vere we gamp, you gread fool!' Sure my granmutter seen him. He pull his nose mit t'um unt finger, so! Muddy boods, vun glofe off, seddin' oop sdraighd on a horse. Sure, she seen him. Robber unt big killer-sdealer! She vas olt lady, but she remember it lige it was to-morrow." Excitement engendered by this reminiscence had well-nigh made Bean forget the dog. Once he had made people afraid. The world had trembled before him. Policemen had been as insects. "I'll take that dog," he announced royally—then faltered—"but I haven't the money now. You keep him for me till I get it." "Yah, you know vot? A olt man, lige me, say that same ofer lasd mont' ago, unt I nefer see him until yet!" It was a time for extreme measures. Bean pressed seven dollars upon the dog's owner. "And ten dollars every week; maybe more!" The old man stowed the bills in a pocket under his apron and scratched the head of the parrot that was incisively remarking, "Oh! What a fool!" and giggling fatuously at its own jest. "I guess you giddim. I guess mebbe you lige him, hey! He iss a awful glutton to eat!" Napoleon! And in the street car the first headline he saw in his morning paper was, "Young Napoleon of Finance Flutters Wall Street!" The thing was getting uncanny. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/068_thumb.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="360" alt="It was a friendly young face he saw there, but troubled." title="" /> It was a friendly young face he saw there, but troubled.</div> A Napoleon of Finance! Something, Napoleonic at least for Bunker Bean, had to be done in finance immediately. He had reached the office penniless. He first tried Bulger, who owed him ten dollars. But this was a Waterloo. "Too bad, old top!" sympathized Bulger. "If you'd only sejested it yesterday. But you know how it is when a man's out; he's got to make a flash; got to keep up his end." He considered the others in the office. Most of them, he decided, would, like Bulger, have been keeping their ends up. Of course, there was Breede. But Napoleon at his best would never have tried to borrow money of Breede, not even on the day of his coronation. Tully, the chief clerk, was equally impossible. Tully's thick glasses magnified his eyes so that they were terrible to look at. Tully would reach out a nerveless hand and draw forth the quivering heart of his secret. Tully would know right off that a man could have no respectable reason for borrowing five dollars on Thursday. There remained old Metzeger who worked silently all day over a set of giant ledgers, interminably beautifying their pages with his meticulous figures. True, Bean had once heard Bulger fail interestingly to borrow five dollars of Metzeger until Saturday noon, but a flash of true Napoleonic genius now enabled him to see precisely why Bulger had not succeeded. Metzeger lived for numerals, for columned digits alone. He carried thousands of them in his head and apparently little else. He could tell to the fraction of a cent what Union Pacific had opened at on any day you chose to name. He had a passion for odd amounts. A flat million as a sum interested him far less than one like $107.69¾. He could remember it longer. It was necessary then to appeal to the poetry in the man. A long time from across his typewriter he studied old Metzeger, tall, angular, his shoulders lovingly rounded above one of the ledgers, a green shade pulled well over his eyes, perhaps to conceal the too-flagrant love-light that shone there for his figures. Napoleon had won most of his battles in his tent. Bean arose, moved toward the other and spoke in clear, cool tones. "Mr. Metzeger, I want to borrow five dollars—" The old man perceptibly stiffened and bent his head lower. "—five dollars and eighty-seven cents until Saturday at ten minutes past twelve." Metzeger looked up, surveying him keenly from under the green shade. "How much?' "Five eighty-seven." There was a curious relenting in the sharpened old face. The man had been struck in a vital spot. With his fine-pointed pen he affectionately wrote the figures on a pad: "$5.87—12:10." They were ideal; they vanquished him. Slowly he counted out money from various pockets, but the sum was $5.90. "Bring me the change," he said. Bean brought it from the clerk who kept the stamp-box. Metzeger replaced three pennies in a pocket, and Bean moved off with the sum he had demanded, feeling almost as once he might have felt after Marengo. It must be true! He couldn't have done the thing yesterday. He omitted his visit to the dog that day and loitered for an hour in a second-hand bookshop he had often passed. He remembered it because of a coloured print that hung in the window, "The Retreat from Moscow." He had glanced carelessly enough at this, hardly noting who it was that headed the gloomy procession. Now he felt the biting cold, and shivered, though the day was warm. There were pleasanter prints inside. In one, Napoleon with sternly folded arms gazed down at a sleeping sentry. In another he reviewed troops at Fontainebleau, and again, from an eminence, he overlooked a spirited battle, directing it with a masterly wave of his sabre. These things were a little disconcerting to one in whom the blood-lust had diminished. He was better pleased with a steel engraving of the coronation, and this he secured for a trifle. It was a thing to nourish an ailing ego, a scene to draw sustenance from when people overwhelmed you in street cars and took your gold watch. Then there were books about Napoleon, a whole shelf of them. A lot of authors had thought him worth writing about. He examined several volumes. One was full of dreadful caricatures that the English had delighted in. He found this most offensive and closed it quickly. Probably that explained why he had always felt an instinctive antipathy for the English. "If you're interested in Napoleon things—" said the officious clerk, and Bean went cold. He wondered if the fellow suspected something. "Not at all, not at all!" he protested, and refused to look at any more books. He took his print of the coronation, securely wrapped, and went to another store several blocks away. He could get a Napoleon book there, where they wouldn't be suspicious. He found one that looked promising, "Napoleon, Man and Lover," and still another entitled "The Hundred Days." The latter had illustrations of the tomb, which he noted was in Paris. Its architecture impressed him, and his hands trembled as he held the book open. He had been buried with pomp, even with flamboyance. Robber and killer he might have been, but the picture showed a throng of admiring spectators looking down to where the dead colossus was chested, and on the summit of the dome that rounded above that kingly sarcophagus, a discriminating nation had put the cross of Christ in gold. Let people say what they would! With all this glory of sepulchre there must be something in the man not to be wholly ashamed of. And yet "Napoleon, Man and Lover," which he read that night, confirmed his first impression that this strangely uncovered incident in his Karmic past was, on the whole, scandalous; not a thing he would like to have "get about." He sympathized with the poor boy driven from his Corsican home, with the charity student of Brienne, with the young artillery officer, dreaming impossible dreams. But as lover—he blushed for that ruthless dead self of his; the Polish woman, the little actress, sending for them as if they were merchandise. It seemed to him that even the not too-fastidious Bulger would have been offended by such direct brutality. Well, he was paying dearly for it now; afraid to venture into the presence of a couple of swell dames not invincibly austere, lacking the touch-and-go gallantry of a mere Bulger who had probably never been anybody worth mentioning. And there was the poor pathetic Louise of Prussia. Bean had already fallen in love with her face, observed in advertisements of the Queen Quality Shoe. He recalled the womanly dignity of the figure descending the shallow steps, the arch accost of the soft eyes, the dimple in the round check. She had been sent to sue him, the invader, to soften him with blandishments. He had kept her waiting like a lackey, then had sought cynically to discover how far her devotion to her country's safety would carry her. And when her pitiful little basket of tricks had been emptied, her little traps sprung, he had sent her back to her husband with a message that crushed her woman's pride and shattered the hopes of her people. He had heard the word "bounder." It seemed to him that Napoleon had shown himself to be just that—a fearful and impossible bounder. He tingled with shame. He wished he might speak to that Queen now as a gentleman would. And yet he could not read the book without a certain evil quickening. Brutal though his method of approach had been, the man had conquered more than mere force may ever conquer. The Polish woman had come to love him; the little actress would have followed him to his lonely island. Others, too many others, had confessed his power. He was ashamed of such a past, yet read it with a guilty relish. He recalled the flapper who had so boldly met his glance. He thought she would have been less bold if she could have known the man she looked at. He placed "Napoleon, Man and Lover" at the bottom of his trunk beside the scarlet cravat he had feared to wear. It was not a book to "leave around." "The Hundred Days," which he read the following night, was a much less discouraging work. It told of defeat, but of how glorious a defeat! The escape from Elba, the landing in France and the march to Paris, conquering, where he passed, by the sheer magnetism of his personality! His spirit bounded as he read of this and of the frightened exit of that puny usurper before the mere rumour of his approach. Then that audacious staking of all on a throw of the dice—Waterloo and a deathless ignominy. He heard the sob-choked voices of the Old Guard as they bade their leader farewell—felt the despairing clasp of their hands! Alone in his little room, high above the flaring night streets, the timid boy read of the Hundred Days, and thrilled to a fancied memory of them. The breath that checked on his lips, the blood that ran faster in his veins at the recital, went to nourish a body that contained the essential part of that hero—he was reading about himself! He forgot his mean surroundings—and the timidities of spirit that had brought him thus far through life almost with the feelings of a fugitive. The Lords of Destiny had found him indeed untractable as the great Emperor, the world-figure, and, for his proudness of spirit, had decreed that he should affrightedly tread the earth again as Bunker Bean. Everything pointed to it. Even the golden bees of Napoleon! Were there not three B's in his own name? The shameful truth is that he had been christened "Bunker Bunker Bean." His fond and foolish mother had thus ingenuously sought to placate the two old Uncle Bunkers; unsuccessfully, be it added, for each had affected to believe that he took second place in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist in Chicago had once told him, for a paltry half-dollar, that those B's in his name were of a profoundly mystic significance. Again, he was of distinguished French origin. Over and over had his worried mother sought to impress this upon him. The family was an old and noble one, fleeing from France, during a Huguenot persecution, to Protestant England where the true name "de Boncoeur" had been corrupted to "Bunker." At the time of his earliest dissatisfaction with the name he had even essayed writing it in the French manner—"B. de Boncoeur Bien"—supposing "Bien" to be approximate French for "Bean." What more natural than that the freed soul, striving for another body, should have selected one of distinguished French ancestry? The commoner would inevitably seek to become a patrician. It was a big thing; a thing to dream and wonder and calculate about. When he was puzzled or disturbed he would resort to the shell—a thing he had clung tenaciously to through all the years—sitting before it a long time, his eyes fixed upon it with hypnotic tensity. What should it mean to him? How was his life to be modified by it? He did not doubt that changes would now ensue. He was already bolder in the public eye. If people stared superciliously at him, he sometimes stared back. That aggressive stout man could not now have bullied him out of his seat in the car with any mere looks. The phrase "Napoleon of Finance" had stayed in his mind. Modernly the name seemed briefly to suggest some one who made a lot of money out of nothing but audacity. Certainly it was not being applied to soldiers or statesmen. This was interesting. If he made a lot of money he could move to the country and have plenty of room for the dog. And it seemed about the only field of adventure left for this peculiar genius. He began to think about making money. He knew vaguely how this was done: you bought stocks and then waited for the melon to be cut. You got on the inside of things. You were found to have bought up securities that trebled in value over night. Those that decreased in value had been bought by people who were not Napoleons. That was the gist of it. A Napoleonic mind would divine the way. "Napoleon knew human nature like a book," said one of the inspired historians. That was all you needed to know. He resolved to study human nature. At precisely ten minutes past twelve on the following Saturday he laid upon old Metzeger's desk the exact sum of five dollars and eighty-seven cents. One less gifted as to human nature would have said, "Thank you!" and laid down five dollars and ninety cents. Bean fell into neither trap. Metzeger looked quickly at the clock and silently took the money. He had become the prey of a man who surmised him accurately. Then occurred one of those familiar tragedies of the wage slave. The whole week long he had looked forward to the ball game. In the box that afternoon would be the Greatest Pitcher the World Had Ever Known. This figure had loomed in his mind that week bigger at times than all his past incarnations. He was going to forego a sight of his dog in order to be early on the ground. He would see the practice and thrill to the first line-up. He had lived over and over that supreme moment when the umpire sweeps the plate with a stubby broom and adjusts his mask. The correct coat was buttoned and the hat was being adjusted when the door of the inner office opened with a sharp rattle. "Wantcha!" said Breede. There was a fateful, trembling moment in which Breede was like to have been blasted; it was as if the magnate had wantonly affronted him who had once been the recipient of a second funeral in Paris. Keeping Bean from a ball game aroused that one-time self of his as perhaps nothing else would have done. But Breede was Breede, after all, and Bean swallowed the hot words that rose to his lips. His perturbation was such, however, that Breede caught something of it. "Hadjer lunch?" "No!" said Bean, murderously. "Gitcha some quick. Hurry!" He knew the worst now. The afternoon was gone. "Don't want any!" It was a miniature explosion after the Breede manner. "C'mon, then!" He was at the desk and Breede dictated interminably. When pauses came he wrote scathing comments on Breede's attire, his parsimony in the matter of food, his facial defects, and some objectionable characteristics as a human being, now perceived for the first time. He grew careless of concealing his attitude. Once he stared at Breede's detached cuffs with a scorn so malevolent that Breede turned them about on the desk to examine them himself. Bean went white, feeling "ready for anything!" but Breede merely continued his babble about "Federal Express" stock, and "first mortgage refunding 4 per cent. gold bonds," and multifarious other imbecilities that now filled a darkened world. He jealously watched the letters Breede answered and laid aside, and the sheaf of reports that he juggled from hand to hand. His hope had been that the session might be brief. There was no clock in the room and he several times felt for the absent watch. Then he tried to estimate the time. When he believed it to be one o'clock he diversified his notes with a swift summary of Breede's character which only the man's bitterest enemies would have approved. At what he thought was two o'clock he stripped him of the last shreds of moral decency. When three o'clock seemed to arrive he did not dare put down, even in secretive shorthand, what he felt could justly be said of Breede. After that it was no good hoping. He relaxed into the dullness of a big despair, merely reflecting that Bulger's picture of Breede under his heel had been too mushily humane. What Bean wished at the moment was to have Breede tied to a stake, and to be carving choice morsels from him with a dull knife. He made the picture vivacious. At what he judged to be four-thirty a spirited rap sounded on the door. "C'min," yelled Breede. Entered the flapper. Breede looked up. "Seddown! View of efforts bein' made b' cert'n parties t' s'cure 'trol of comp'ny by promise of creatin' stock script on div'dend basis, it is proper f'r d'rectors t' state policy has been—" The flapper had sat down and was looking intently at Bean. There was no coquetry in the look. It was a look of interest and one wholly in earnest. Bean became aware of it at Breede's first pause. At any other time he would have lowered his eyes before an assault so direct and continuous. Now in his hot rage he included the flapper in the glare he put upon her unconscious father. He saw that she was truly enough a flapper; not a day over eighteen, he was sure. Not tall; almost "pudgy," with a plump, browned face and gray eyes like old Breede's, that looked through you. He noted these details without enthusiasm. Then he relented a little because of her dress. The shoes—he always looked first at a woman's shoes and lost interest in her if those were not acceptable—were of tan leather and low, with decently high heels. (He loathed common-sense shoes on women.) The hose were of tan silk. So far he approved. She wore a tailored suit of blue and had removed the jacket. The shirtwaist—he knew they were called "lingerie waists" in the windows—was of creamy softness and had the lines of the thing called "style." Her hat was a straw that drooped becomingly. "Some dresser, all right!" he thought, and then, "Why don't she take a look at old Cufflets there, and get him in right?" Again and again he hardened his gaze upon her. Her eyes always met his, not with any recognition of him as a human being, but with some curious interest that seemed remote yet not impersonal. He indignantly tried to out-stare her, but the thing was simply not to be done. Even looking down at her feet steadily didn't dash her brazenness. She didn't seem to care where he looked. After a very few minutes of this he kept his eyes upon his note-book with dignified absorption. But he could feel her glance. "—to c'nserve investment rep'sented by this stock upon sound basis rather than th' spec'lative policy of larger an' fluc'chating div'dends yours ver' truly what time's 'at game called?" Thus concluded Breede, with a sudden noisy putting away of papers in an open drawer at his side. Bean looked up at him, in open-mouthed fear for his sanity. "Hello, Pops!" said the flapper. "'Lo, Sis! What time's 'at game called?" "Three," said Bean, still alarmed. Breede looked at his watch. "Jus' got time to make it." He arose from the desk. Bean arose. The flapper arose. "Take y' up in car," said Breede, most amazingly. Bean pulled his collar from about his suddenly constricted throat. "Letters!" He pointed to the note-book. "Have 'em ready Monday noon. C'mon! Two-thirty now." The early hour was as incredible as this social phenomenon. "Daughter!" said Breede, with half a glance at the flapper, and deeming that he had performed a familiar social rite. "Pleased to meet you!" said Bean, dazedly. The flapper jerked her head in a double nod. Of the interval that must have elapsed before he found himself seated in the grandstand between Breede and the flapper he was able to recall but little. It was as if a dense fog shut him in. Once it lifted and he suffered a vision of himself in a swiftly propelled motor-car, beside an absorbed mechanician. He half turned in his seat and met the cool, steady gaze of the flapper; she smiled, but quickly checked herself to resume the stare; he was aware that Breede was at her side. And the fog closed in again. It was too unbelievable. A bell clanged twice and his brain cleared. He saw the scurry of uniformed figures to the field, the catcher adjusted his mask. The Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known stood nonchalantly in the box, stooped for a handful of earth and with it polluted the fair surface of a new ball. A second later the ball shot over the plate. The batter fanned, the crowd yelled. All at once Bean was coldly himself. He knew that Breede sat at his right; that on his left was a peculiar young woman. He promptly forgot their identities, and his own as well, and recalled them but seldom during the ensuing game. It is a phenomenon familiar to most of us. The sons of men, under the magic of that living diamond, are no longer little units of souls jealously on guard. Heart speaks to heart naked and unashamed; they fraternize across deeps that are commonly impassable, thrilling as one man to the genius of the double-play, or with one voice hurling merited insults at a remote and contemptuous umpire. It is only there, on earth, that they love their neighbour. There they are fused, and welded into that perfect whole which is perhaps the only colourable imitation ever to be had on earth of the democracy said to prevail in Heaven. There was no longer a Bean, a Breede, a flapper. Instead were three merged souls in three volatile bodies, three voices that blended in cheers or execration. At any crisis they instinctively laid gripping hands upon each other and, half-rising, with distended eyes and tense half-voices, besought some panting runner to "Come on! Come on, you! Oh, come on!" There were other moments of supreme joy when they were blown to their feet and backs were impartially pounded. More than once they might have been observed, with brandishing fists, shouting, "Robber! Robber! Robber!!!" at the unperturbed man behind the plate who merely looked at an indicator in his hand and resumed his professional crouch quite as if nothing had happened. And there were moments of snappy, broken talk, comments on individual players, a raking over the records. It was not Breede who talked to Bean then. It was one freed soul communicating with another. He none too gently put Breede right in the matter of Wagner's batting average for the previous year and the price that had been paid for the new infielder. And Breede in spirit sat meekly at his feet, grateful for his lore. Of an absent player, Breede said he was too old—all of thirty-five. He'd never come back. "They come back when they learn to play ball above the ears," retorted Bean with crisp sapience. "How about old Cy Young? How about old Callahan of the Sox? How about Wagner out there—think he's only nineteen—hey? Tell me that!" He looked pityingly at the man of millions thus silenced. Two men scored from third and second, thanks to a wild throw. "Inside play, there?" said Breede. "Inside, nothing!" retorted Bean arrogantly. "Matty couldn't get back to second and they had to run. If that Silas up there hadn't gone foamy in the fighting-top and tried to hit that policeman over by the fence with the ball, where'd your inside play been? D'you think the Pirates are trying to help 'em play inside ball? Inside, nothing!" Again Breede looked respectful, and the flapper listened, lustrous-eyed. The finish was close. With two men out in the last half of the ninth and two strikes called on the batter, a none too certain single brought in the winning run. The clinging trio shrieked—then dazedly fell apart. Life had gone from the magic. The vast crowd also fell apart to units, flooding to the narrow gates. Outside Breede looked at Bean as if, faintly puzzled, he was trying to recall the fellow's face. One could fancy him saying, "Prob'ly some chap works in m' office." Father and daughter entered the car. Bean raised his dented hat. Breede was oblivious; the flapper permitted herself a severe double nod. The motor chugged violently. Bean, moving on a few steps, turned. The flapper was looking back. She stared an instant then most astonishingly smiled, a smile that seemed almost vocal with many glad words. Bean felt himself smile weakly in response. He walked a long way before he took a car, his eyes on the pavement, his mind filled with a vision. When the flapper smiled it did something to him, but what it was he couldn't tell. She had a different face when she smiled; her parting lips made a new beauty in the world. He thought the golden brown of her hair rather wonderful. It was like the golden brown of the new dog. He recalled little details of her face, the short upper lip, the forward chin, the breadth of the brow. There was something disconcerting about that brow and the eyes like her father's—probably have her own way! Then he remembered that he must have noticed a badge pinned to the left lapel of a jacket that had been fashioned—with no great difficulty, he thought—to give its wearer the appearance of perfect physical development. He couldn't remember when he had precisely noted this badge, perhaps in some frenzied moment in the game's delirium, but it was vividly before him now—"VOTES FOR WOMEN!" What did that signify in her character? Perhaps something not too pleasant. Still—he lived again through the smile that had seemed to speak. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> Three days later, at the close of an afternoon's grinding work, the grim old man at the desk looked up as Bean was leaving the room. "S'good game!" "Fine!" said Bean, as he closed the door. But for this reference and one other circumstance Bean might have supposed that Breede had forgotten the day. The other circumstance was an area of rich yellowish purple on the arm which Breede had madly gripped in moments of ecstasy, together with painful spots on his right side where the elbow of Breede had almost continuously jabbed him. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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