Books: The Motormaniacs
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Lloyd Osbourne >> The Motormaniacs
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"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?"
"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 for a minute. You come
down here; you sweep that unfortunate girl off her feet; you make
love to her with the fury of a stage villain; you force her to
betray her very evident partiality for you--and then you have the
effrontery to say: 'Good-by. I'm off.'"
"My mother--" he began.
"You simply can not act so dishonorably, Jones."
He sat silent for a little while.
"My mother--" he started in again finally.
"Surely your mother loves you?" I demanded.
"That's the terrible part of it, Westoby, she--"
"Pooh!"
"She stinted herself to get me through col--"
"Then why did you ever come here?"
"That's just the question I'm asking myself now."
"I don't see that you have any right to assume all that about
your mother, anyway. Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a
thousand--unimpeachable social position--a little fortune of her
own--accomplished, handsome, charming, sought after--why, if
you managed to win such a girl as that your mother would walk
on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha--"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a
little tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for my girl.
Good heavens, love is love, and all the mothers--"
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to our
hostesses. If you went away to-night it would be an insult.
Whatever you decide to do later, you've simply got to stay here
till Tuesday morning!"
"Must I?" he said, in the tone of a person who is ordered not to
leave the sinking ship.
"A gentleman has to," I said.
He quavered out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the
loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring
instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a
fluff, that fellow--a tarnation fluff!
IV
It was a pretty glum evening all round. Most of them thought
that Jones had got the chilly mitt. Eleanor looked pale and
undecided, not knowing what to make of Jones' death's-head face.
She was resentful and pitying in turns, and I saw all the
material lying around for a first-class conflagration.
Freddy was a bit down on me, too, saying that a smoother method
would have ironed out Jones, and that I had been headlong and
silly. She cried over it, and wouldn't kiss me in the dark; and
I was goaded into saying--Well, the course of true love ran in
bumps that night. There was only one redeeming circumstance, and
that was my managing to keep Jones and Eleanor apart. I mean
that I insisted on being number three till at last poor Eleanor
said she had a headache, and forlornly went up to bed.
Jones was still asleep when I got up the next morning at six and
dressed myself quietly so as not to awake him. It was now
Monday, and you can see for yourself there was no time to spare.
I gave the butler a dollar, and ordered him to say that
unexpected business had called me away without warning, but that
I should be back by luncheon. I rather overdid the earliness of
it all. At least, I hove off 1892 Eighth Avenue at eight-fifteen
A. M. I loitered about; looked at pawnshop windows; gave a
careful examination to a forty-eight-dollars-ninety-eight-cent
complete outfit for a four-room flat; had a chat with a
policeman; assisted at a runaway; advanced a nickel to a colored
gentleman in distress; had my shoes shined by another; helped a
child catch an escaped parrot--and still it wasn't nine!
Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on Eighth Avenue in
the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a
keen tongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I
besought her indulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before
her--at least, as much of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the
role of her son's warmest admirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense
of his duty to you?"
"Duty, fiddlesticks!" said she. "He's going to marry Bertha
McNutt!"
"But he doesn't want to marry Bertha McNutt!"
"Then he needn't marry anybody."
She seemed to think this a triumphant answer. Indeed, in some
ways I must confess it was. But still I persevered.
"It puts me out to have him shilly-shallying around like this,"
she said. "I'll give him a good talking to when he gets back.
This other arrangement has been understood between Mrs. McNutt
and myself for years."
She was an irritating person. I found it not a little difficult
to keep my temper with her. It's easier to fight dragons than to
temporize with them and appeal to their better nature. I
appealed and appealed. She watched me with the same air of
interested detachment that one gives to a squirrel revolving in a
cage. I could feel that she was flattered; her sense of power
was agreeably tickled; my earnestness and despair enhanced the
zest of her reiterated refusals. I was a very nice young man,
but her son was going to marry Bertha McNutt or marry nobody!
Then I tried to draw a lurid picture of his revolt from her
apron-strings.
"Oh, Harry's a good boy," she said. "You can't make me believe
that two days has altered his whole character. I'll answer for
his doing what I want."
I felt a precisely similar conviction, and my heart sank into my
shoes.
At this moment there was a tap at the door, and another old lady
bounced in. She was stout, jolly-looking and effusive. The
greetings between the pair were warm, and they were evidently old
friends. But underneath the new-comer's gush and noise I was
dimly conscious of a sort of gay hostility. She was exultant and
frightened, both at once, and her eyes were sparkling.
"Well, what do you think?" she cried out, explosively.
Mrs. Jones' lips tightened. There was a mean streak in that old
woman. I could see she was feeling for her little hatchet, and
was getting out her little gun.
"Bertha!" exploded the old lady. "Bertha--"
(Mysterious mental processes at once informed me that this was
none other than Bertha's mother.)
Mrs. Jones was coolly taking aim. I was reminded of that old
military dictum: "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their
eyes!"
"Bertha," vociferated the old lady fiercely--"Bertha has been
secretly married to Mr. Stuffenhammer for the last three months!"
Another series of kinematographic mental processes informed me
that Mr. Stuffenhammer was an immense catch.
"Twenty thousand dollars a year, and her own carriage," continued
Mrs. McNutt gloatingly. "You could have knocked me down with a
feather. Bertha is such a considerate child; she insisted on
marrying secretly so that she could tone it down by degrees to
poor Harry; though there was no engagement or anything like that,
she could not help feeling of course that she owed it to the dear
boy to gradually"
Mrs. Jones never turned a hair or moved a muscle.
"You needn't pity Harry," she said. "I've just got the good news
that he's engaged to one of the sweetest and richest girls in
Morristown."
I jumped for my hat and ran.
V
You never saw anybody so electrified as Jones. For a good minute
he couldn't even speak. It was like bringing a horseback
reprieve to the hero on the stage. He repeated "Stuffenhammer,
Stuffenhammer," In tones that Henry Irving might have envied,
while I gently undid the noose around his neck. I led him under
a tree and told him to buck up. He did so--slowly and surely--and
then began to ask me agitated questions about proposing. He
deferred to me as though I had spent my whole life Bluebearding
through the social system. He wanted to be coached how to do it,
you know. I told him to rip out the words--any old words--and
then kiss her.
"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl
hates pauses."
"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me
as r-r-respectful."
"You try it," I said. "It's the only way."
"I'll be glad when it's over," he remarked dreamily.
"Whatever you do, keep clear of set speeches;" I went on. "Blurt
it out, no matter how badly--but with all the fire and ginger in
you."
He gazed at me like a dead calf.
"Here goes," he said, and started on a trembling walk toward the
house.
I don't know whether he was afraid, or didn't get the chance, or
what it was; but at any rate the afternoon wore on without the
least sign of his coming to time. I kept tab on him as well as I
could--checkers with Miss Drayton--half an hour writing letters
--a long talk with the major--and finally his getting lost
altogether in the shrubbery with an old lady. Freddy said the
suspense was killing her, and was terribly despondent and
miserable. I couldn't interest her in the Seventy-second Street
house at all. She asked what was the good of working and
worrying, and figuring and making lists--when in all probability
it would be another girl that would live there. She had an
awfully mean opinion of my constancy, and was intolerably
philosophical and Oh-I-wouldn't-blame-you-the-least-little--bit
-if-you-did-go-off-and-marry-somebody-else! She took a pathetic
pleasure in loving me, losing me, and then weeping over the dear
dead memory. She said nobody ever got what they wanted, anyway;
and might she come, when she was old and ugly and faded and
weary, to take care of my children and be a sort of dear old
aunty in the Seventy-second Street house. I said certainly not,
and we had a fight right away.
As we were dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task,
and tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it
somehow, for he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his
affairs, and then went into the bath-room, where he shaved and
growled for ten whole minutes. I itched to throw a bootjack at
him, but compromised on doing a little growling myself.
Afterward we got into our clothes in silence, and as he went out
first he slammed the door.
It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive euchre for
a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay
so. Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I
was thankful to sneak out-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the
starlight. I walked up and down, consigning Jones to--well,
where I thought he belonged. I thought of the time I had wasted
over the fellow--the good money--the hopes--I was savage with
disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from
the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge
gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone.
Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is
a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight
per cent miserable it's hell not to reach par. I was sore all over,
and I wanted the balm--the consolation--to be found in the company
of those cold old stars, who have looked down in their time on such
countless generations of human asses. It gave me a wonderful
sense of fellowship with the past and future.
I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the
general scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another
human speck, stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit
case. It was Jones himself, outward bound, and doing five knots
an hour. I was after him in a second, doing six.
"Jones!" I cried.
He never even turned round.
I grabbed him by the arm. He wasn't going to walk away from me
like that.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"Home!"
"But say, stop; you can't do that. It's too darned rude. We
don't break up till tomorrow."
"I'm breaking up now," he said.
"Bu--"
"Let go my arm--!"
Oh, but, my dear chap--"I began.
"Don't you dear chap me!"
We strode on in silence. Even his back looked sullen, and his
face under the gaslights.
"Westoby," he broke out suddenly, "if there's one thing I'm
sensitive about it is my name. Slap me in the face, turn the
hose on me, rip the coat off my back--and you'd be astounded by
my mildness. But when it comes to my name I--I'm a tiger!"
"A tiger," I repeated encouragingly.
"It all went swimmingly," he continued in a tone of angry
confidence. "For five seconds I was the happiest man in the
United States. I--I did everything you said, you know, and I was
dumfounded at my own success. S-s-she loves me, Westoby."
I gazed inquiringly at the dress-suit case.
"We don't belong to any common Joneses. We're Connecticut
Joneses. In fact, we're the only Joneses--and the name is as
dear to me, as sacred, as I suppose that of Westoby is, perhaps,
to you. And yet--and yet do you know what she actually said to
me? Said to me, holding my hand, and, and that the only thing
she didn't like about me was my name."
I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper
astonishment.
"I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything
very extra."
"Wouldn't it have been wiser to--?"
"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a
fellow has to show a little decent pride. A fellow owes
something to his family, doesn't he? As a man I love the ground
she walks on; as a Jones--well, if she feels like that about it--I
told her she had better wait for a De Montmorency."
"But she didn't say she wouldn't marry you, did she?"
"N-o-o-o!"
"She didn't ask you to change your name, did she?"
"N-o-o-o!"
"And do you mean to say that just for one unfortunate remark--a
remark that any one might have made in the agitation of the
moment--you're deliberately turning your back on her, and her
broken heart!"
"Oh, she's red-hot, too, you know, over what I said about the Van
Coorts."
"She couldn't have realized that you belonged to the Connecticut
Joneses. I didn't know it!"
"Well, it's all off now," he said.
It was a mile to the depot. For Jones it was a mile of
reproaches, scoldings, lectures and insults. For myself I shall
ever remember it as the mile of my life. I pleaded,
argued, extenuated and explained. My lifelong happiness--Freddy
--the Seventy-second Street house--were walking away
from me in the dark while I jerked unavailingly at Jones' coat-tails.
The whole outfit disappeared into a car, leaving me on the
platform with the ashes of my hopes. Of all obstinate, mulish,
pig headed, copper-riveted--
I was lucky enough to find Eleanor crying softly to herself in a
corner of the veranda. The sight of her tears revived my
fainting courage. I thought of Bruce and the spider, and waded
in.
"Eleanor," I said, "I've just been seeing poor Jones off."
She sobbed out something to the effect that she didn't care.
"No, you can't care very much," I said, "or you wouldn't send a
man like that--a splendid fellow--a member of one of the oldest
and proudest families of Connecticut to his death."
"Death?"
"Well, he's off for Japan to-morrow. They're getting through
fifty doctors a week out there at the front. They're shot down
faster than they can set them up."
I was unprepared for the effect of this on Eleanor. For two
cents she would have fainted then and there. It's awful to hear
a woman moan, and clench her teeth, and pant for breath.
"Oh, Eleanor, can't you do anything?"
"I am helpless, Ezra. My pride--my woman's pride"
"Oh, how can you let such trifles stand between you? Think of
him out there, in his tattered Japanese uniform--so far from
home, so lonely, so heartbroken--standing undaunted in that rain
of steel, while--"
"Oh, Ezra, stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"
"Is the love of three years to be thrown aside like an old glove,
just because--"
Her face was so wild and strained that the lies froze upon my
tongue.
"Oh, Ezra, I could follow him barefooted through the snow if only
he--"
"He's leaving Grand Central to-morrow at ten forty-five," I said.
She fumbled at her neck, and almost tore away the diamond locket
that reposed there.
"Take him this," she whispered hoarsely. "Take it to him at
once, and say I sent it. Say that I beg him to return--that my
pride crumbles at the thought of his going away so far into
danger."
I put the locket carefully into my pocket.
"And, Eleanor, try and don't rub him the wrong way about his
name. Is it worth while? There have to be Joneses, you know."
"Tell him," she burst out, "tell him--oh, I never meant to wound
him--truly, I didn't . . . a name that's good enough for him is
good enough for me!"
The next morning at nine I pulled up my Porcher-Mufflin car
before Jones' door. He was sitting at his table reading a book,
and he made no motion to rise as I came in. He gave me a pale,
expressionless stare instead, such as an ancient Christian might
have worn when the call-boy told him the lions were ready in the
Colosseum. Resignation, obstinacy and defiance--all nicely
blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior. He looked
woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleepless night
and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was
the last straw to this unfortunate medical camel.
I threw in a genial remark about the weather, and took a seat.
Jones hunched himself together, and squirmed a sad little squirm.
"Mr. Westoby," he said, "I once made use of a very strong
expression in regard to you. I said, if you remember, that I'd
be obliged if you'd keep your paws--"
"Don't apologize," I interrupted. "I forgot it long ago."
"You've taken me up wrong," he continued drearily. "I should like
you to consider the remark repeated now. Yes, sir, repeated."
"Oh, bosh!" I exclaimed.
"You have a very tough epidermis," he went on. "Quite the
toughest epidermis I have met with in my whole professional
career. A paper adequately treating your epidermis would make a
sensation before any medical society."
Somehow I couldn't feel properly insulted. The whole business
struck me as irresistibly comical. I lay back in my chair--my
uninvited chair--and roared with laughter.
I couldn't forbear asking him what treatment he'd recommend.
He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."
I retorted by laying the diamond locket before him.
"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't
let us go on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give
you this, and beg you to return."
I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was
far more eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in
his hands beside it, and his whole body trembled with emotion.
He trembled and trembled, till finally I got tired of waiting. I
poked him in the back, and reminded him that my car was waiting
down stairs. He rose with a strange, bewildered air, and
submitted like a child to be led into the street. He had the
locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then he would
glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him
into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.
"Let her out, James," I said.
James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired
housemaid at the Van Coorts' . . . and it was a crack, new
four-cylinder car with a direct drive on the top speed. Off we
went like the wind, jouncing poor Jones around the tonneau like a
pea in a pill-box. But he didn't care. Was he not seraphically
whizzing through space, obeying the diamond telegram of love? In
the general whizzle and bang of the whole performance he even
ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could overhear him
behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the machinery.
It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the
outskirts of Morristown. You see I had to coach him about that
Japanese war business, or else there might be trouble! So I
leaned over the back seat and gently broke it to him I thought I
had managed it rather well. I felt sure he could understand, I
said, the absolute need of a little--embellishing and--
"Let me out," he said.
I feverishly went on explaining.
"If you don't let me out I'll climb out," he said, and began to
make as good as his word over the tonneau.
Of course, there was nothing for it but to stop the car.
Jones deliberately descended and headed for New York.
I ran after him, while the chauffeur turned the car round and
slowly followed us both. It was a queer procession. First
Jones, then I, then the car.
Finally I overtook him.
"Jones," I panted. "Jones."
He muttered something about Ananias, and speeded up.
"But it was an awfully tight place," I pleaded. "Something had
to be done; you must make allowances; it was the first thing that
came into my head--and you must admit that it worked, Jones.
Didn't she send you the locket? Didn't she--?"
"What a prancing, show-of, matinee fool you've made me look!" he
burst out. "I have an old mother to support. I have an
increasing practice. I have already attracted some little
attention in my chosen field--eye, ear and throat. A nice figure
I'd cut, traipsing around battle-fields in a kimono, and looking
for a kindly bullet to lay me low. If I were ever tempted by
such a thing--which God forbid--wouldn't I prefer to spread
bacilli on buttered toast?"
"I never thought of that," I said humbly.
"I have known retail liars," he went on. "But I guess you are the
only wholesaler in the business. When other people are content
with ones and twos you get them out in grosses, packed for
export!"
He went on slamming me like this for miles. Anybody else would
have given him up as hopeless. I don't want to praise myself,
but if I have one good quality it's staying power. I pleaded and
argued, and expostulated and explained, with the determination of
a man whose back is to the wall. I wasn't going to lose Freddy
so long as there was breath in my body. However, it wasn't the
least good in the world. Jones was as impervious as sole-leather,
and as unshaken as a marble pillar.
Then I played my last card.
I told him the truth! Not the whole truth, of course, but within
ten per cent of it. About Freddy, you know, and how she was
determined not to marry before her elder sister, and how
Eleanor's only preference seemed to be for him, and how with such
a slender clue to work on I had engineered everything up to this
point.
"If I have seemed to you intolerably prying and officious," I
said, "well, at any rate, Jones, there's my excuse. It rests
with you to give me Freddy or take her from me. Turn back, and
you'll make me the happiest man alive; go forward, and--and--"
I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
His tread lost some of its elasticity. He was short-circuiting
inside. Positively he began to look sort of sympathetic and
human.
"Westoby," he said at last, in a voice almost of awe, "when they
get up another world's fair you must have a building to yourself.
You're colossal, that's what you are!"
"I'm only in love," I said.
"Well, that's the love that moves mountains," he said. "If
anybody had told me that I should . . . " He stopped
irresolutely on the word.
"Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!" he bleated.
I was too wise to say a word. I simply motioned James to switch
the car around and back up. I shooed Jones into the tonneau and
turned the knob on him. He snuggled back in the cushions, and
smiled--yes, smiled--with a beautiful, blue-eyed, faraway,
indulgent expression that warmed me like spring sunshine. Not
that I felt absolutely safe even yet--of course I couldn't--but
still--
We ran into Freddy and Eleanor at the lodge gates. I had already
telephoned the former to expect us, so as to have everything fall
out naturally when the time came. We stopped the car, and
descended--Jones and I--and he walked straight off with Eleanor,
while I side-stepped with Freddy.
She and I were almost too excited to talk.
It was now or never, you know, and there was an awfully solemn
look about both their backs that was either reassuring or
alarming--we couldn't decide quite which. Freddy and I simply
held our breath and waited.
Finally, after an age, Jones and Eleanor turned, still close in
talk, still solemn and enigmatical, and drew toward us very
slowly and deliberately. When they bad got quite close, and the
tension was at the breaking point, Eleanor suddenly made a little
rush, and, with a loud sob, threw her arms round Freddy's neck.
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