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Page 15
At four-thirty the day's work ended and Bean was free to forget until
another day the little he had been unable to avoid learning about high
railroad finance; free to lead his own secret life, which was a thing
apart from all that wordy foolery.
He changed from his office coat to one alleged by its maker to give him
the appearance of perfect physical development, and descended to the
street-level in company with Bulger. Bean would have preferred to walk
down; he suffered the sensations of dying each time the elevator seemed
to fall, but he could not confess this to the doggish and intrepid
Bulger.
There were other weaknesses he had to cloak. Bulger proffered cigarettes
from a silver case at their first meeting. Bean declined.
"Doctor's orders," said he.
"Nerves?" suggested Bulger, expertly.
"Heart--gets me something fierce."
"Come in here to Tommy's and take a bracer," now suggested the
hospitable Bulger. But again the physician had been obdurate.
"Won't let me touch a thing--liver," said Bean. "Got to be careful of a
breakdown."
"Tough," said Bulger. "Man needs a certain amount of it, down here in
the street. Course, a guy can't _sop_ it up, like you see some do. Other
night, now--gang of us out, y'understand--come too fast for your Uncle
Cuthbert. Say, goin' up those stairs where I live I cert'n'ly must 'a'
sounded like a well-known clubman gettin' home from an Elks' banquet.
Head, next A.M.?--ask me, _ask_ me! Nothing of the kind! Don't I show
up with a toothache and con old Tully into a day off at the dentist's to
have the bridge-work tooled up. Ask me was I at the dentist's? Wow!
Not!--little old William J. Turkish bath for mine!"
Bean was moved to raw envy. But he knew himself too well. The specialist
he professed to have consulted had put a ban upon the simplest
recreations. Otherwise how could he with any grace have declined those
repeated invitations of Bulger's to come along and meet a couple of
swell dames that'd like to have a good time? Bulger, considered in
relation to the sex not his own, was what he himself would have termed
"a smooth little piece of work." Bean was not this. Of all his terrors
women, as objects of purely male attention, were the greatest. He longed
for them, he looked upon such as were desirable with what he believed to
be an evil eye, but he had learned not to go too close. They talked,
they disconcerted him horribly. And if they didn't talk they looked
dangerous, as if they knew too much. Some day, of course, he would nerve
himself to it. Indeed he very determinedly meant to marry, and to have a
son who should be trained from the cradle with the sole idea of making
him a great left-handed pitcher; but that was far in the future. He
longed tragically to go with Bulger and meet a couple of swell dames,
but he knew how it would be. Right off they would find him out and laugh
at him.
Bulger consumed another high-ball, filled his cigarette case, and the
two stood a moment on Broadway. Breede, the last to leave his office,
crossed the pavement to a waiting automobile.
"There's his foxy Rebates going to the arms of his family," said Bulger,
disrespectfully applying to Breede a term that had more than once made
him interesting to the Interstate Commerce Commission.
"See the three skirts in the back? That's the Missis and the two squabs.
Young one's only a flapper, but the old one's a peacherine for looks. Go
on, lamp her once!"
Bean turned his diffident gaze upon the occupants of the tonneau with a
sudden wild dream that he would stare insolently. But his eyes
unaccountably came to rest in the eyes of the young one--the flapper. He
saw only the eyes, and he felt that the eyes were seeing him. The motor
chugged slowly up Broadway, nosing for a path about a slowly driven
truck; the flapper looked back.
"Not half bad, that!" said Bean, recovering, and speaking in what he
felt was the correct Bulger tone.
"Not for mine," said Bulger firmly. "Big sister, though, not so worse.
Met up with her one time out to the country place, takin' stuff for the
old man the time he got kidneys in his feet. I made a hit with her, too,
on the level, but say! nothin' doing there for old John W. me! I dropped
the thing like it was poison ivy. Me doin' the nuptial in a family like
that, and bein' under Pop's thumb the rest of my life? Ask me, that's
all; _ask_ me! Wake me up any time in the night and ask me."
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