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Bunker Bean

<h2>XV</h2> He had walked quickly away while porters were collecting the bags. "Keep on the main street," he thought, plunging ahead. He did not change this plan until he discovered himself again at the door of that hotel he meant to leave. It faced a circle, and he had traversed this. He fled down a cross-street and again felt free. For hours he walked the lighted avenues, or sat moodily on wayside benches, and at length, on a rustic seat screened by shrubbery in a little park, he dozed. He awoke in the early light, stretched legs and arms luxuriously and again walked. He saw it was five o'clock. He was thrilled now by the morning beauty of the Corsican's city, all gray and green in the flooding sun. And the streets had filled with a voluble traffic that affected him pleasantly. Every one seemed to speak gayly to every one. Two cab-drivers exchanged swift incivilities, but in a quite perfunctory way, with evident good-will. Walking aimlessly as yet—it was too early for tombs—he came again to that hotel on the circle. They were asleep in there. Little they'd worried—glad to be so easily rid of him. Then he noticed at the circle's centre a lofty column wrought in bronze with infinite small detail. Surmounting that column was the figure of the Corsican. An upstart who had prevailed! He left the circle, lest he be apprehended by the Breedes. Soon he was again in that vast avenue of the park-places where he had slept. And now, far off on this splendid highway, he descried a mighty arch. Sternly gray and beautiful it was. And when, standing under it, he looked aloft to its mighty facade, its grandeur seemed threatening to him. He knew what that arch was—another monument imposed upon the city by the imperial assassin—without royal lineage since the passing of Ram-tah. "Some class to that upstart!" he muttered. And if Napoleon had been no one, was it not probable that Bean had not been even Napoleon. The Countess Casanova had doubtless deceived him, though perhaps unintentionally. She had seemed a kind woman, he thought, but you couldn't tell about her controls. His mind was being washed in that wondrous sunlight. He was himself an upstart. No doubt about it. But what of it? Here were columns and arches to commemorate the most egregious of all upstarts. Upstarts were men who believed in themselves. He retraced his steps from the arch. Curious thing that scoundrel Watkins had kept saying on the boat. "As a man thinketh in his own heart, so is he." Must mean something. What? Far down that wide avenue he came to a bridge of striking magnificence, beset with golden sculpture. He supposed it to be one more tribute to the sublime Corsican who had thought in his heart, and was. He had the meaning of those words now. He, Bunker Bean, had believed himself to be mean, insignificant. And so he had been that. Then he had come to believe himself a king, and straightway had he been kingly. The Corsican, detecting the falsity of some Ram-tah, would have gone on believing in himself none the less. It was all that mattered. "As a man thinketh—" If you came down to that, nobody needed a Ram-tah at all. From the centre of the bridge he raised his eyes and there, far off, high above all those gray buildings, was the golden cross that he knew to surmount the tomb. Sharply it glittered against the blue of the sky. "Be upstart enough," it seemed to say, "and all things are yours. Believe yourself kingly, though your Ram-tah come from Hartford." He walked vigorously toward that cross. It often eluded him as he puzzled a way through the winding gray-walled streets. More than once he was forced to turn back, to make laborious circuits. But never for long was the cross out of sight. Constantly as he walked that new truth ran in his mind, molten, luminous. Who knew of Ram-tah's fictive origin, or even of Ram-tah at all? No one but a witty scoundrel calling himself Balthasar. Bean had become some one through a belief in himself. Ram-tah had been a crude bit of scaffolding, and was well out of the way. The confidence he had helped to build would now endure without his help. Be an upstart. A convinced upstart. Such the world accepts. Then he issued from the maze of narrow streets and confronted the tomb. Through the open door, even at this early hour, people went and came. The Corsican's magnetism prevailed. And he, Bunker Bean, the lowly, had that same power to magnetize, to charm, to affront the world and yet evoke monuments—if he could only believe it. He went quickly through the iron gateway, up the long walk and took the imposing stairway in leaps. Then, standing uncovered in that wonderfully lit room, he gazed down at the upstart's mighty urn. Long he stood under that spell of line and colour and magnitude, lost in the spaciousness of it. No Balthasar had cheated here. There lay the mighty and little man who had never lost belief in himself—who had been only a little chastened by an adversity due to the craven world's fear of his prowess. He was quite unconscious of others beside him who paid tribute there. He thought of those last sad days on that lonely island, the spirit still unbroken. His emotion surged to his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him. He gulped twice and angrily brushed away some surprising tears. By his side stood a white-faced young Frenchman with a flowing brown beard. He became infected with Bean's emotion. He made no pretence of brushing his tears aside. He frankly wept. Beyond this man a stout motherly woman, with two children in hand, was flooded by the current. She sobbed comfortably and companionably. The two children widened their eyes at her a moment, then fell to weeping noisily. Farther around the railing a distinguished looking old gentleman of soldierly bearing, who wore a tiny red ribbon in the lapel of his frock coat, loudly blew his nose and pressed a kerchief of delicate weave to his brimming eyes. Beyond him a young woman became stricken with grief and was led out by her solicitous husband, who seemed to feel that a tomb was no place for her at that time. The exit of this couple aroused Bean. He cast a quick glance upon the havoc he had wrought and fled, wiping his eyes. Halfway down the steps he encountered the alleged Adams of Hartford, who had stopped to open his Badaeker at the right page before entering the tomb. "A magnificent bit of architecture," said the Hartford man instructively. "Pretty loud for a tomb," replied Bean judicially. He was not going to let this Watkins, or whatever his name was, know what a fool he had made of himself in there. Then he remembered something. "Say," he ventured, "how'd you happen to think up that thing you were always getting off to me back there on the boat—about as a man thinketh is he?" "Tut-tut-tut! Really? But that is from the Holy Scriptures, which should always be read in connection with Science and Health." "I must get it—something in that. Funny thing," he added genially, "getting good stuff like that out of Hartford, Connecticut." He left Watkins or Adams staring after him in some bewilderment, a forgotten finger between the leaves of the Badaeker. He began once more to lay a course through those puzzling streets. He was going to that hotel. He was going to be an upstart and talk to his own wife. The tomb had cleared his brain. "I'm no king," he thought; "never was a king; more likely a guinea-pig. But I'm some one now, all right! I'll show 'em; not afraid of the whole lot put together; face 'em all." He came out upon the river at last and presently found himself back in that circle of the hotel. He stared a while at the bronze effigy surmounting that vainglorious column. Then he drew a long breath and went into the hotel. A capable Swiss youth responded to his demand to be shown to his room, seeming to consider it not strange that Americans in Paris should now and then return to their rooms. At the doorway of a drawing-room that looked out upon the column the Swiss suggested coffee—perhaps? "And fruit and fumed ... boiled eggs and toast and all that meat and stuff," supplemented Bean firmly. He tried one of two doors that opened from the drawing-room and exposed a bedroom. His, evidently. There was the little old steamer trunk. He discovered a bathroom adjoining and was presently suffering the celestial agonies of a cold bath with no waster to coerce him. He dressed with indignant muttering, and with occasional glances out at that supreme upstart's memorial. He chose his suit of the most legible checks. He had been a little fearful about it in New York. It was rather advanced, even for one of that Wall Street gang that had netted himself four hundred thousand dollars. Now he donned it intrepidly. And, with no emotion whatever but a certain grim sureness of himself, he at last adjusted the entirely red cravat. He gloated upon this flagrantly. He hastily culled seven cravats of neutral tint and hurled them contemptuously into a waste-basket. Done with that kind! He heard a waiter in the drawing-room serving his breakfast. He drew on a dark-lined waistcoat of white piqué—like the one worn by the oldest director the day Ram-tah had winked—then the perfectly fitting coat of unmistakable checks, and went out to sit at the table. He was resolving at the moment that he would do everything he had ever been afraid to do. "'S only way show you're not afraid," he muttered. He was wearing a cravat he had always feared to wear, and now he would devour meat things for breakfast, whatever the flapper thought about it. When he had a little dulled the edge of his hunger, he rang a bell. "Find m' wife," he commanded the Swiss youth, only to be met with a look of blankness. He was considering if it might do him good to make a row about this—he had always been afraid to make rows—but the other door of the drawing-room opened. His wife was found. "'S all for 's aft'noon," he exploded to the servitor, who seemed not displeased to withdraw from this authoritative presence. Then he engaged a slice of bacon with a ruthless fork. "Where you been?" he demanded of the flapper. Only way to do—go at them hammer and tongs! The flapper gazed at him from the doorway. She was still pale and there were reddened circles about her eyes. The little old rag of a morning robe she wore added to her pallor and gave her an unaccustomed look of fragility. "Where you been all the time?" repeated her husband with the arrogance of a confirmed upstart. The flapper seemed to be on the point of tears, but she came into the room and sat across the table from him. In spite of the blurring moisture in her eyes he could still read the old look of ownership. Time had not impaired it. "I just perfectly wouldn't let them know I felt bad," she began. "I said I was going to sleep and wouldn't worry one bit if you perfectly never came home all night. And you never did, because I couldn't sleep and watched ... but I wouldn't let them know it for just perfectly old hundred thousand dollars. And this morning I said I'd had a bully sleep and felt fit and you had a right to go where you wanted to and they could please mind their own affairs, and I laughed so at them when they said they were going for the police—" "Police, eh? Let 'em bring their old police. They think I'm afraid of police?" He valiantly attacked an egg. "Of course not, stupid, but they thought you might wander off and get lost, like those people in the newspapers that wake up in Jersey City or some place and can't remember their own names or how it happened, and they wanted the police to just perfectly find you, and I wanted them to, too. I was deathly afraid—" "I know my own name, all right. I'm little Tempest and Sunshine; that's my name. "—but I wouldn't let them know I was afraid. And I laughed at them and told them they didn't know you at all and that you'd come home—come home." He found he could strangely not be an upstart another moment in the presence of that flapper. He was over kneeling beside her, reaching his arms up about her, pressing her cheek down to his. The flapper held him tightly and wept. "There, there!" he soothed her, smoothing the golden brown hair that spilled about her shoulders. "No one ever going to hurt you while I'm around. You're the just perfectly dearest, if you come right down to it. Now, now! 'S all right. Everything all right!" "It's those perfectly old taggers," exploded the flapper, suddenly recovering her true form, "just furiously tagging." "'S got to stop right now," declared Bean, rising. "Wipe that egg off your face, and let's get out of here." "London," she suggested brightly. "Granny has always—" "No London!" he broke in, visibly returning to the Corsican or upstart manner. "And no Grandma, no Pops, no Moms! You and me—us—understand what I mean? Think I'm going to have my wife sloshing around over there, voting, smashing windows, getting run in and sent to the island for thirty days. No! Not for little old George W. Me!" "I never wanted to so very much," confessed the flapper with surprising meekness. "You tell where to go, then." Bean debated. Baseball! Perhaps there would be a game on the home grounds that day. Paris might be playing London or St. Petersburg or Berlin or Venice. "First we go see a ball game," he said. The flapper astounded him. "I don't think they have it over here—baseball," she observed. No baseball? She must be crazy. He rang the bell. The capable Swiss entered. In less than ten minutes he was able to convince the amazed American that baseball was positively not played on the continent of Europe. It was monstrous. It put a different aspect upon Europe. "Makes no difference where we go, then," announced Bean. "Just any little old last year's place. We'll 'lope." "Ripping," applauded the flapper, with brightening eyes. "Hurry and dress. I'll get a little old car and we'll beat it before they get back. No time for trunk; take bag." Down in the office he found they made nothing of producing little old cars for the right people. The car was there even as he was taking the precaution to secure a final assurance from the manager that Paris did not by any chance play London that day. The two bags were installed in the ready car; then a radiant flapper beside an amateur upstart. The driver desired instructions. "Ally, ally!" directed Bean, waving a vague but potent hand. "We've done it," rejoiced the flapper. "Serve the perfectly old taggers good and plenty right!" Bean lifted a final gaze to the laurel-crowned Believer. He knew that Believer's secret now. "What a stunning tie," exclaimed the flapper. "It just perfectly does something to you." "'S little old last year's tie," said her husband carelessly. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> At six-thirty that evening they were resting on a balcony overlooking the garden of a hotel at Versailles. Back of them in the little parlour a waiter was setting a most companionable small table for two. Such little sounds as he made were thrilling. They liked the hotel much. Its management seemed to have been expecting them ever since the building's erection, and to have reserved precisely that nest for them. They had been "doing" the palace. A little self-conscious, in their first free solitude, they had agreed that the palace would be instructive. Through interminable galleries they had gone, inspecting portraits of the dead who had made and marred French history ... led on by a guide whose amiable delusion it was that he spoke English. The flapper had been chiefly exercised in comparing the palace, to its disadvantage, with a certain house to be surrounded on all sides by scenery and embellished with perfectly patent laundry tubs. The flapper sighed in contentment, now. "We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that old barn—" Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as they sat looking down into the shadowed garden. "There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as any ... and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two before him ... they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York named Cassidy .. always puttering around, dead serious about something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and this poor old dub didn't know how ... so they clipped his head off for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him." "No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me, soon as we get back—" "Then," pursued Bean, "along comes Mr. little old George W. Napoleon Bluff and makes them eat out of his hand in about five minutes. Didn't he walk over them, though? And they haven't quit thanking him for it yet. Saw a lot of 'em snivelling over him at that tomb this morning. Think he'd died only yesterday. You know, I don't blame him so much for a lot of things he did—fighting and women and all that. He knew what they'd do to him if he ever for one minute quit bluffing. You know, he was what I call an upstart." The flapper stole a hand into his and sighed contentedly. "You've perfectly worked it all out, haven't you?" she said. "—and if you come right down to it, I'm nothing but 'n upstart myself." "Oh, splash!" said the flapper, in loving refutation. "'S all," he persisted; "just 'n upstart. Of course I don't have to be one with you. I wouldn't be afraid to tell you anything in the world; but those others, now; every one else in the world except you; I'll show 'em who's little old George W. Upstart—old man Upstart himself, that's what!" "You're a king," declared the flapper in a burst of frankness. "Eh?" said Bean, a little startled. "Just a perfectly little old king," persisted the flapper with dreamy certitude. "Never fooled little George W. Me. Knew it the very first second. Went over me just like that." "Oh, I'm no king; never was a king; rabbit, I guess. Little old perfectly upstart rabbit, that's what!" "What am I?" asked the flapper pointedly. "Little old flippant flapper, that's what! But you're my Chubbins just the same; my Chubbins!" and he very softly put his hand to her cheek. "Monsieur et Madame sont servi," said the waiter. He was in the doorway but discreetly surveyed the evening sky through an already polished wine-glass held well aloft. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> The three perfectly taggers meeting their just due, consulted miserably as they gathered about a telephone in Paris the following morning. The Demon had answered the call. "Says she has it all reasoned out," announced the Demon. "'S what she said before," grunted Breede. "Tha's nothing new." "And she says we're snoop-cats and we might as well go back home—now," continued the Demon. "Says she's got the—u-u-m-mm!—says to perfectly quit tagging." "Nothing can matter now," said the bereaved mother. "He's talking himself," said the Demon. "Mercy he's got a new voice ... sounds like another man. He says if we don't beat it out of here by the next boat—he can imagine nothing of less—something or other I can't hear—" "—consequence," snapped Breede. "Yes, that's it; and now he's laughing and telling her she's a perfectly flapper." "Oh, my poor child," murmured the mother. "Puzzle t' me," said Breede. "I swear I can't make out just how many kinds of a—" "James!" said his wife sternly, and indicated the presence of several interested foreigners.   <hr class="full" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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