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Page 97
Then, through the compelling force of associated ideas, there seemed to
come to him the faint sweet scent of lilac blossoms ... the vision of a
lilac clump revolving both vertically and horizontally ... the noisome
fumes of Grammer's own pipe.
"Too much for you, eh? Ha, ha, ha!" It was the scoundrel from Hartford,
malignantly cheerful. He was inhaling a cubeb cigarette.
"Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt.
"'As a man thinketh, so is he!' As simple as that," admonished the
other.
Bean groped for the door and for ages fled down blind corridors, vainly
seeking that little old stateroom. He did not find it as quickly as he
should have; but he was there at last, and a deft steward quickly
divested him of the life-belt and other garments for which there no
longer seemed to be any need.
He lay weakly reflecting, with a sinister glee, that the boat was bound
to sink in a moment. He wanted it to sink. Death was coming too slowly.
Later he knew that the flapper was there. She had come to die with him,
though she was plainly not in a proper state of mind to pass on. She was
saying that something was the nerviest piece of work she'd ever been up
against, and that she would perfectly just fix them ... only give her a
little time--they were snoop-cats!
"You'll perfectly manage; jus' leave it to you," breathed her moribund
husband.
"If you'd try some fruit and two eggs," suggested the flapper.
He raised a futile hand defensively, and an expression of acute
repugnance was to be seen upon his yellowed face.
"Please, please go 'way," he murmured. "Let Julia do fussing. Go way off
to other end of little old steamer; stay there."
The flapper saw it was no time for woman's nursing. Sadly she went.
"Telephone to a drug-store," demanded Bean after her, but she did not
hear.
He continued to die, mercifully unmolested, until the man from Hartford
came in to ascertain if his locks had been tampered with.
"Hold to the all good!" urged the man at a moment when it was too
poignantly, too openly certain that Bean could hold to very little
indeed.
"Uh-hah!" gasped Bean.
"Go into the silence," urged the man kindly.
"You go--" retorted Bean swiftly; but he should not further be shamed by
the recording of language which he lived to regret.
The Hartford man said, "Tut-tut-tut!" and went elsewhere than he had
been told to go.
There ensued a dreadful time of alternating night and day, with
recurrent visions of the flapper, who perfectly knew and said that he
had been eating stuff out of the wrong cans.
"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," affirmed the Hartford
person each morning as he shaved.
And a merry party gathered in the adjoining stateroom of afternoons and
sang songs of the jolly sailor's life: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,"
and "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main."
On the morning of the fourth day he made the momentous discovery that
the image of food was not repulsive to all his better instincts.
Carefully he got upon his feet and they amazingly supported him. He
dressed with but slight discomfort. He would audaciously experiment upon
himself with the actual sight of food. It was the luncheon hour.
Outside the door he met the flapper on one of her daily visits of
inspection.
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