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Page 51
On this occasion he was not oppressed by those attentions which the
flapper and Grandma, the Demon, still bestowed upon him. Where he had
once fled, he now put himself in the way of them. He listened with
admirably simulated interest to Grandma's account of the suffrage play
for which she was rehearsing. She was to appear in the mob scene. He was
certain she would lend vivacity to any mob. But he was glad that the
flapper was not to appear. Voting and smashing windows were bad enough.
He tried at first to talk to the flapper about Tommy Hollins, whom he
airily designated as "that Hollins boy". It seemed to be especially
needed, because the Hollins boy arrived after breakfast every day and
left only in the late afternoon. But the flapper declined nevertheless
to consider him as meat for serious converse.
Bean considered that this was sheer flirting, whereupon he flung
principle to the winds and flirted himself.
"You show signs of life," declared Grandma, who was quick to note this
changed demeanor. And Bean smirked like a man of the world.
"She never set her mind on anything yet that she didn't get it," added
Grandma, naming no one. "She's like her father there."
And Bean strolled off to enjoy a vision of himself defeating her purpose
to ensnare the Hollins youth. Once he would have considered it crass
presumption, but that was before a certain sarcophagus on the left bank
of the Nile had been looted of its imperial occupant. Now he merely
recalled a story about a King Cophetua and a beggar maid. It was a
comparison that would have intensely interested the flapper's mother,
who was this time regarding Bean through her glazed weapon as if he were
some queer growth the head gardener had brought from the conservatory.
Grandma deftly probed his past for affairs of the heart. She pointedly
had him alone, and her intimation was that he might talk freely, as to a
woman of understanding and broad sympathy. But Bean made a wretched mess
of it.
Certainly there had been "affairs." There was the girl in Chicago, two
doors down the street, whom he had once taken to walk in the park, but
only once, because she talked; the girl in the business college who had
pretty hair and always smiled when she looked at him; and another who,
he was almost sure, had sent him an outspoken valentine; yes, there had
been plenty of girls, but he hadn't bothered much about them.
And Grandma, plainly incredulous, averred that he was too deep for her.
Bean was on the point of inventing a close acquaintance with an actress,
which he considered would be scandalous enough to compel a certain
respect he seemed to find lacking in the old lady, but he saw quickly
that she would confuse and trip him with a few questions. He was obliged
to content himself with looking the least bit smug when she said:
"You're a deep one--too deep for me!"
He tried hard to look deep and at least as depraved as the conventions
of good society seemed to demand.
He was beginning to enjoy the sinful thing. The girl was of course
plighted to the Hollins boy, and yet she was putting herself in his way.
Very well! He would teach her the danger of playing with fire. He would
bring all of his arts and wiles to bear. True, in behaving thus he was
conscious of falling below the moral standards of a wise and good king
who had never stooped to baseness of any sort. But he was now living in
a different age, and somehow--
"I'm a dual nature," he thought. And he applied to himself another
phrase he seemed to recall from his reading of magazine stories.
"I've got the artistic temper!" This, he gathered, was held to explain,
if not to justify, many departures from the conventional in affairs of
the heart. It was a kind of licensed madness. Endowed with the "artistic
temper," you were not held accountable when you did things that made
plain people gasp. That was it! That was why he was carrying on with
Tommy Hollins' girl, and not caring _what_ happened.
In his times of leisure they walked through the shaded aisles of those
too well-kept grounds, or they sat in seats of twisted iron and honored
the setting sun with their notice. They did not talk much, yet they were
acutely aware of each other. Sometimes the silence was prolonged to
awkwardness, and one of them would jestingly offer a penny for the
other's thoughts. This made a little talk, but not much, and sometimes
increased the awkwardness; it was so plain that what they were thinking
of could not be told for money.
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