"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 n.o.body 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 uchre 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 h.e.l.l 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 had looked down in their time on such countless generations of human a.s.ses.
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 to-morrow."
"I"m breaking up now," he said.
"But--"
"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. _I_--"
"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 j.a.pan 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?"