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Page 16
Again Bean was thrilled, resolving then and there that no daughter of
Breede's should ever wed him. Bulger was entirely right. It wouldn't do.
Bulger looked at his watch.
"Well, s'long; got a date down in the next block. She's out at five.
Say, I want you to get a flash at her some day. Broadway car, yesterday,
me goin' uptown with Max, see? she lookin' at her gloves. 'Pipe the
queen in black,' I says to Max, jes' so she could hear, y' understand.
Say, did she gimme the eye. Not at all! Not at _all_! Old William H.
Smoothy, I guess yes. Pretty soon a gink setting beside her beats it,
and quick change for me. Had her all dated up by Fourteenth Street.
Dinner and a show, if things look well. Some class to her, all right.
One the manicures in that shop down there. Well, s'long!"
Looking over his shoulder with sickish envy after the invincible Bulger,
Bean left the curb for a passing car and came to a jolting stop against
the biggest policeman he had ever seen. He mumbled a horrified apology,
but his victim did not even turn to look down upon him. He fled into the
car and found a seat, still trembling from that collision. From across
the aisle a pretty girl surveyed him with veiled insolence. He furtively
felt of his neutral-tinted cravat and took his hat off to see if there
could be a dent in it. The girl, having plumbed his insignificance, now
unconcernedly read the signs above his head. There was bitterness in the
stare he bestowed upon her trim lines. Some day Bulger would chance to
be on that car with her--then she'd be taken down a bit--Bulger who, by
Fourteenth Street, had them all dated up.
Presently he was embarrassed by a stout, aggressive man who clutched a
strap with one hand and some evening papers with the other, a man who
clearly considered it outrageous that he should be compelled to stand in
a street car. He glared at Bean with a cold, questioning indignation,
shifting from one foot to the other, and seeming to be on the point of
having words about it. This was not long to be endured. Bean glanced out
in feigned dismay, as if at a desired cross-street he had carelessly
passed, sprang toward the door of the car and caromed heavily against a
tired workingman who still, however, was not too tired to put his sense
of injury into quick, pithy words of the street. The pretty girl
tittered horribly and the stout man, already in Bean's seat, rattled his
papers impatiently, implying that people in that state ought to be kept
off in the first place.
He had meant to leave the car and try another, but there at the step was
another too-large policeman helping an uncertain old lady to the ground,
so he slinkingly insinuated himself to the far corner of the platform,
where, for forty city blocks, a whistling messenger boy gored his right
side with the corners of an unyielding box while a dreamy-eyed man who,
as Bulger would have said, had apparently been sopping it up like you
see some do, leaned a friendly elbow on his shoulder, dented his new hat
and from time to time stepped elaborately on his natty shoes with the
blue cloth uppers. Also, the conductor demanded and received a second
fare from him. What was the use of saying you had paid inside? The
conductor was a desperate looking man who would probably say he knew
that game, and stop the car....
Something of the sort always happened to him in street cars. It was bad
enough when you walked, with people jostling you and looking as if they
wondered what right you had to be there.
At last came the street down which he made a daily pilgrimage and he
popped from the crowd on the platform like a seed squeezed from an
orange.
Reaching the curb alive--the crossing policeman graciously halted a huge
motor-truck driven by a speed-enthusiast--he corrected the latest dent
in his hat, straightened his cravat, readjusted the shoulder lines of
the coat appertaining to America's greatest eighteen-dollar
suit--"$18.00--No More; No Less!"--and with a fear-quickened hand
discovered that his watch was gone, his gold hunting-case watch and
horseshoe fob set with brilliants, that Aunt Clara had given him on his
twenty-first birthday for not smoking!
A moment he stood, raging, fearing. His money was safe, but they might
decide to come back for that. Or the policeman might come up and make an
ugly row because he had let himself be robbed in a public conveyance. He
would have to prove that the watch was his; probably have to tell why
Aunt Clara had given it to him.
With a philosophy peculiarly his own, a spirit of wise submission that
was more than once to serve him well, he pulled his hat sharply down,
braced and squared such appearance of perfect physical development as
the eighteen dollars had achieved, and walked away. He had always known
the watch would go. Now it was gone, no more worry. Good enough! As he
walked he rehearsed an explanation to Bulger: cleverly worded
intimations that the watch had been pawned to meet a certain quick
demand on his resources not morally to his credit. He made the
implication as sinister as he could.
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