Bunker Bean Part 35

"One," said Bean stubbornly.

The attendant was again busy.

"Better be careful," warned the waster. "Those things come to you and steal their hands into yours like little innocent children, but--".

They drank. Bean felt himself bold for any situation. He would carry the farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the waster. They were in the speeding car.

"Fumed eggs!" murmured Bean approvingly.

They were inside that desolated house, the door closed fatefully upon them. The waster disappeared. Bean heard the flapper's voice calling cheerily to him from above stairs. A footman disapprovingly ushered him to the midst of an immense drawing-room of most ponderous grandeur, and left him to perish.

He sat on the edge of a chair and tried to clear his mind about this enormity he was going to commit. False pretenses! Nothing less. He was not a king at all. He was Bunker Bean, a stenographer, whose father drove an express wagon, and whose grandmother had smoked a pipe. He had never been anything more, nor ever would be. And here he was ... pretending.

No wonder Julia had fussed! She had seen through him. How they would all scorn him if they knew what that scoundrelly Balthasar knew. He'd made money, but he had no right to it. He had made that under false pretenses, too, believing money would come naturally to a king. Would they find him out at once, or not until it was too late? He shudderingly recalled a crisis in the ceremony of marriage where some one is invited to make trouble, urged to come forward and say if there isn't some reason why this man and this woman shouldn't be married at all. Could he live through that? Suppose a policeman rushed in, crying, "I forbid the banns! The man is an impostor!" He seemed to remember that banns were often forbidden in novels. Then would he indeed be a thing for contemptuous laughter.

Yet, in spite of this dismal foreboding, he was presently conscious of an unusual sense of well-being. It had been growing since they stopped for those eggs, in that fumed oak place. What about the Corsican? Better have been him than no one! He would look at that tomb. Then he would know. He was rather clinging to the idea of the Corsican. It gave him courage. Still, if he could get out peacefully ...

He stepped lightly to the hall and was on the point of seizing his hat when the flapper called down to him.

"You just perfectly don't leave this house again!"

"Not going to," he answered guiltily. "Looking to see what size hat I wear. Fumed eggs," he concluded triumphantly.

He was not again left alone. The waster came back and supposed he would do some golfing "over across."

Bean loathed golf and gathered the strange power to say so.

"Sooner be a mail-carrier than a golf-player," he answered stoutly.

"Looks more fun, anyway."

"_My_ word!" exclaimed the waster, "aren't you even keen on watching it?"

"Sooner watch a lot of Italians tearing up a street-car track," Bean persisted.

"Oh, come!" protested the waster.

"Like to have another fumed egg," said Bean.

"You've had one too many," declared the waster, knowing that no sober man could speak thus of the sport of kings.

Grandma, the Demon, entered and portentously shook hands with him. She seemed to have discovered that marriage was very serious.

"Fumed eggs," said Bean, regarding her shrewdly.

"What?" demanded Grandma.

"Fumed eggs, hundred p'cent efficient," he declared stoutly.

The Demon eyed him more closely.

"My grandmother smoked, too," said Bean, "but I never went in for it much."

"U-u-u-mmm!" said the Demon. It was to be seen that she felt puzzled.

Breede slunk into the room, garbed in an unaccustomed frock coat. He went through the form of shaking hands with Bean.

Bean felt a sudden necessity to tell Breede a lot of things. He wished to confide in the man.

"Principle of the thing's all I cared about," he began. "Anybody make money that wants to be a Wall Street crook and take it away from the tired business man. What I want to be is one of the idle rich ... only not idle much of the time, you know. Good major league club for mine. Been looking the ground over; sound 'vestment; keep you out of bad company, lots time to read good books."

"Hanh! Wha's 'at?" exploded Breede.

"Fumed eggs," said Bean, feeling witty. He affected to laugh at his own jest as he perceived that the mourning mother had entered the room.

Breede drew cautiously away from him. Mrs. Breede nodded to him bravely.

He mentioned the name of the world's greatest pitcher, with an impulse to take the woman down a bit.

"Get our s.h.i.+rts same place; he's going to have a suit just like this--no, like another one I have in that little old steamer trunk."

He was aware that they all eyed him too closely. The waster winked at him. Then he found himself shaking hands with a soothing old gentleman in clerical garb who called him his young friend and said that this was indeed a happy moment.

The three Breedes and the waster stood apart, studying him queerly. He was feeling an embarra.s.sed need to make light conversation, and he was still conscious of that strange power to make it. He was going to tell the old gentleman, whose young friend he was, that fumed eggs were a hundred p'cent efficient.

But the flapper saved him from that. She came in, quiet but businesslike, and in a low yet distinct voices aid she wished it to be perfectly over at once. She did not relax her grasp of Bean's arm after she approached him, and he presently knew that something solemn was going on in which he was to be seriously involved.

"Say, 'I do,'" muttered the old gentleman, and Bean did so. The flapper had not to be told.

There followed a blurred and formal shaking of his hand by those present, and the big sister whom he had not noticed before came up and kissed him.

Then he was conscious of the flapper still at his side. He turned to her and was amazed to discover that she was blinking tears from her eyes.

"There, _there_!" he muttered soothingly, and took her in his arms quite as if they were alone. He held her closely a moment, with little mumbled endearments, softly patting her cheek.

"There, there! No one ever going to hurt _you_. You're _dear_; yes, you are!"

He was much embarra.s.sed to discover those staring others still present.

But the flapper swiftly revived. It seemed to be perfectly over for the flapper. She announced that every one must hurry.

Hurriedly, with every one, it seemed, babbling nonsense of remote matters, they sat at a table, and ate of cold food from around a bed of flowers. Bean ate frankly. He was hungry, but he took his part in the talk as a gentleman should.

They were toasting the bride in champagne.

"Never drink," protested Bean to the proffered gla.s.s.

"Won't happen every day, old top," suggested the waster.

He drank. The sparkling stuff brought him new courage. He drained the gla.s.s.

"I knew they were trying to keep me off that board of directors," he confided to Breede, "specially that oldest one."