The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (i can read book club .txt) 📗

and that in the event of my finding it otherwise I shall be at liberty to direct your check to other uses?"

"Oh, I can answer for his being all right, Bishop. He's thoroughly up-to-date, you know; does the X-ray act; and keeps the pace of modern science."

"You say you can answer for him," said the bishop genially. "Might I inquire who you are?"

"I'm named Westoby—Ezra Westoby—managing partner of Hodge & Westoby, boxers."

"I like boxers," said the bishop in the tone of a benediction, rising to dismiss me. "I like one thousand dollar checks, too. When you have any more to spare just give them a fair wind in this direction!"

I went out feeling that the Episcopal Church had risen fifty per cent. in my esteem. Bishops like that would make a success of any denomination. I like to see a fellow who's on to his job.

I gave Jones a week to grapple with the new developments, and then happened along. The anteroom was full, and there was a queue down the street like a line of mu[Pg 1024]sic-loving citizens waiting to hear Patti. Nice, decent-looking people, with money in their hands. (I always like to see a cash business, don't you?) I guess it took me an hour to crowd my way up stairs, and even then I had to buy a man out of the line.

Jones was carrying off the boom more quietly than I cared about. He wore a curt, snappy air. I don't know why, but I felt misgivings as I shook hands with him.

Of course I commented on the rush.

"The Lord only knows what's happened to my practice," he said. "The blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a great wave of sickness passing over New York just now."

"Everybody's complaining," I said.

This reminded him of my insomnia till I cut him short.

"What's the matter with our going down to the Van Coorts' from Saturday to Tuesday," I said. "They haven't given up the hope of seeing you there, Doctor, and the thing's still open."

Then I waited for him to jump with joy.

He didn't jump a bit. He shook his head. He distinctly said "No."

"I told you it was the money side of it that bothered me," he explained. "So it was at the time, for, of course, I couldn't foresee that my practice was going to fill the street and call for policemen to keep order. But, my dear Westoby, after giving the subject a great deal of consideration I have come to the conclusion that it would be too painful for me to revive those—those—unhappy emotions I was just beginning to recover from!"

"I thought you loved her!" I exclaimed.

"That's why I've determined not to go," he said. "I have outlived one refusal. How do I know I have the strength, the determination, the hardihood to undergo the agonies of another?"[Pg 1025]

It seemed a feeble remark to say that faint heart never won fair lady. I growled it out more like a swear than anything else. I was disgusted with the chump.

"She's the star above me," he said; "and I am crushed by my own presumption. Is there any such fool as the man that breaks his heart twice for the impossible?"

"But it isn't impossible," I cried. "Hasn't she—as far as a woman can—hasn't she called you back to her? What more do you expect her to do? A woman's delicacy forbids her screaming for a man! I think Eleanor has already gone a tremendous way in just hinting—"

"You may be right," he said pathetically; "but then you may also be wrong. The risk is too terrible for me to run. It will comfort me all my life to think that perhaps she does love me in secret!"

"Do you mean to say you're going to give it all up?" I roared.

"You needn't get so warm about it," he returned. "After all, I have some justification in thinking she doesn't care."

"What on earth do you suppose she invited you for, then?"

"Well, it would be different," he said, "if I had a note from her—a flower—some little tender reminder of those dear old dead days in the Pullman!"

"She's saving up all that for Morristown," I said.

For the first time in our acquaintance Doctor Jones looked at me with suspicion. His blue eyes clouded. He was growing a little restive under my handling.

"You seem to make the matter a very personal one," he observed.

"Well, I love Freddy," I explained. "It naturally brings your own case very close to me. And then I am so positive that you love Eleanor and that Eleanor loves you.[Pg 1026] Put yourself in my place, Doctor! Do you mean that you'd do nothing to bring two such noble hearts together?"

He seized my hand and wrung it effusively. He really did love Eleanor, you know. The only fault with him was his being so darned humble about it. He was eaten up with a sense of his own inferiority. And yet I could see he was just tingling to go to Morristown. Of course, I crowded him all I could, but the best I could accomplish was his promise to "think it over." I hated to leave him wabbling, but patients were scuffling at the door and fighting on the stairs.

The next thing I did was to get Freddy on the long-distance 'phone.

"Freddy," I said, after explaining the situation, "you must get Eleanor to telegraph to him direct!"

"What's the good of asking what she won't do?" bubbled the sweet little voice.

"Can't you persuade her?"

"I know she won't do it!"

"Then you must forge it," I said desperately. "It needn't be anything red-hot, you know. But something tender and sincere: 'Shall be awfully disappointed if you don't come,' or, 'There was a time when you would not have failed me!'"

"It's impossible."

"Then he won't budge a single inch!" I replied.

"Ezra?"

"Darling!"

"Suppose I just signed the telegram Van Coort?"

"The very thing!"

"If he misunderstood it—I mean if he thought it really came from Eleanor—there couldn't be any fuss about it afterward, could there?"[Pg 1027]

"And, of course, you'll send the official invitation from Mrs. Matthewman besides?"

"For Saturday?"

"Yes, Saturday!"

"And you'll come?"

"Just watch me!"

"Ezra, are you happy?"

"That depends on Jones."

"Oh, isn't it exciting?"

"I have the ring in my pocket—"

"But touch wood, won't you?"

"Freddy?"

"Yes—"

"What's the matter with getting some forget-me-nots and mailing them to Jones in an envelope?"

"All right, I'll attend to it. Eighteen ninety-two Eighth Avenue, isn't it?"

"Be sure it is forget-me-nots, you know. Don't mix up the language of flowers, and send him one that says: 'I'm off with a handsomer man,' or, 'You needn't come round any more!'"

"Oh, Ezra, Eleanor is really getting quite worked up!"

"So am I!"

"Wouldn't it be perfectly splendid if—Switch off quick, here's aunt coming!"

"Mayn't I even say I love you?"

"I daren't say it back, Ezra—she's calling."

"But do you?"

"Yes, unfortunately—"

"Why unfortun—?"

Buzz-buzz-swizzleum-bux-bux!—Aunt had cut us off. However, short as my talk with Freddy had been, it brightened my whole day.

Late the same afternoon I went back to Doctor Jones.[Pg 1028] I was prepared to find him uplifted, but I hadn't counted on his being maudlin. The fellow was drunk, positively drunk—with happiness. His tongue ran on like a mill-stream. I had to sit down and have the whole Pullman-car episode inflicted on me a second time. I was shown the receipt-slip. I was shown the telegram from Eleanor. I was shown with a whoop the forget-me-nots! Then he was going on Saturday? I asked. He said he guessed it would take an earthquake to keep him away, and a pretty big earthquake, too!... Oh, it was a great moment, and all the greater because I was tremendously worked up, too. I saw Freddy floating before me, my sweet, girlish, darling Freddy, holding out her arms ... while Jones gassed and gassed and gassed....

I left him taking phenacetin for his headache.

III

The house-party had grown a little larger than was originally intended. On Saturday night we sat down twelve to dinner. Doctor Jones and I shared a room together, and I must say whatever misgivings I might have had about him wore away very quickly on closer acquaintance. In the first place he looked well in evening dress, carrying himself with a sort of shy, kind air that became him immensely. At table he developed the greatest of conversational gifts—that of the appreciative and intelligent listener. I heard one of the guests asking Eleanor who was that charming young man. Freddy and I hugged each other (I mean metaphorically, of course) and gloried in his success. In the presence of an admirer (such is the mystery of women) Eleanor instantly got fifteen points better looking, and you wouldn't have known her for the same girl. Freddy thought it[Pg 1029] was the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gown she wore, but I could see it was deeper than that. She was thawing in the sunshine of love, and I'll do Doctor Jones the justice to say that he didn't hide his affection under a bushel. It was generous enough for everybody to bask in, and in his pell-mell ardor he took us all to his bosom. The women loved him for it, and entered into a tacit conspiracy to gain him the right-of-way to wherever Eleanor was to be found. In fact, he followed her about like a dog, and she could scarcely move without stepping on him.

Sunday was even better. One of the housemaids drank some wood-alcohol by mistake for vichy water, and the resulting uproar redounded to Jones' coolness, skill and despatch. He dominated the situation and—well, I won't describe it, this not being a medical work, and the reader probably being a good guesser. Mrs. Matthewman remarked significantly that it must be nice to be the wife of a medical man—one would always have the safe feeling of a doctor at hand in case anything happened at night! Eleanor said it was a beautiful profession that had for its object the alleviation of human pain. Freddy jealously tried to get in a good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me. It was all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern medicine. Altogether he sailed through that whole day with flying colors, first with the housemaid, and then afterward at church, where he was the only one that knew what Sunday after Epiphany it was. He made it plainer than ever that he was a model young man and a pattern. Mrs. Matthewman compared him to her departed husband, and talked about old-fashioned courtesy and the splendid men of her youth. Everybody fell over everybody else to praise him. It was a regular Jones boom. People[Pg 1030] began to write down his address, and ask him if he'd be free Thursday, or what about Friday, and started to book seats in advance.

That evening, as I was washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully whistling Hiawatha, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my attention was a groan—preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It worried me—when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every right to be whistling Hiawatha, too.

"What's the matter, Jones?" said I.

He keeled over on the sofa, and groaned louder than ever.

"It isn't possible—that she's refused you?" I exclaimed. He muttered something about his mother.

"Well, what about your mother?" I said.

"Westoby," he returned, "I guess I was the worst kind of fool ever to put my foot into this house."

That was nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head to buy that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement into a garage!

"You see, old man, my mother would never consent to my marrying Eleanor. I'm in the position of having to choose between her and the woman I love. And I owe so much to my mother, Westoby. She stinted herself for years to get me through college; she hardly had enough to eat; she...." Then he groaned a lot more.

"I can't think that your mother—a mother like yours, Jones—would consent to stand between you and your lifelong happiness. It's morbid—that's what I call it—morbid, just to dream of such a thing."

"There's Bertha," he quavered.

"Great Scott, and who's Bertha?"[Pg 1031]

"The girl my mother chose for me two years ago—Bertha McNutt, you know. She'd really prefer me not to marry at all, but if I must—it's Bertha, Westoby—Bertha or nothing!"

"It's too late to say that now, old fellow."

"It's not too late for me to go home this very night."

"Well, Jones," I broke out, "I can't think you'd do such a caddish thing as that. Think it over