Bunker Bean Part 39

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 pique--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 owners.h.i.+p. 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 Suns.h.i.+ne; 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 slos.h.i.+ng around over there, voting, smas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.surance 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.