It was a cold, clear night as Mr. Aubrey Gilbert left
the Haunted
Bookshop that evening, and set out to walk homeward.
Without making
a very conscious choice, he felt instinctively that it
would be
agreeable to walk back to Manhattan rather than permit
the roaring
disillusion of the subway to break in upon his meditations.
It is to be feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked
any
quizzing on the chapters of Somebody's Luggage which
the bookseller
had read aloud. His mind was swimming rapidly in the
agreeable,
unfettered fashion of a stream rippling downhill. As
O. Henry puts
it in one of his most delightful stories: "He was outwardly
decent
and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was
impromptu
and full of unexpectedness." To say that he was thinking
of Miss
Chapman would imply too much power of ratiocination and
abstract
scrutiny on his part. He was not thinking: he was being
thought.
Down the accustomed channels of his intellect he felt
his mind ebbing
with the irresistible movement of tides drawn by the
blandishing moon.
And across these shimmering estuaries of impulse his
will, a lost
and naked athlete, was painfully attempting to swim,
but making
much leeway and already almost resigned to being carried
out
to sea.
He stopped a moment at Weintraub's drug store, on the
corner
of Gissing Street and Wordsworth Avenue, to buy some
cigarettes,
unfailing solace of an agitated bosom.
It was the usual old-fashioned pharmacy of those parts
of Brooklyn:
tall red, green, and blue vases of liquid in the windows
threw
blotches of coloured light onto the pavement; on the
panes was
affixed white china lettering:
WE TRAUB, DEUT CHE APOTHEKER.
Inside, the customary shelves of labelled jars, glass
cases
holding cigars, nostrums and toilet knick-knacks, and
in one corner
an ancient revolving bookcase deposited long ago by the
Tabard
Inn Library. The shop was empty, but as he opened the
door
a bell buzzed sharply. In a back chamber he could hear
voices.
As he waited idly for the druggist to appear, Aubrey cast
a tolerant eye over the dusty volumes in the twirling
case.
There were the usual copies of Harold MacGrath's The
Man on the Box,
A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Houseboat on the Styx.
The Divine Fire, much grimed, leaned against Joe Chapple's
Heart Throbs.
Those familiar with the Tabard Inn bookcases still to
be found
in outlying drug-shops know that the stock has not been
"turned"
for many a year. Aubrey was the more surprised, on spinning
the the case round, to find wedged in between two other
volumes
the empty cover of a book that had been torn loose from
the pages
to which it belonged. He glanced at the lettering on
the back.
It ran thus:
CARLYLE
----
OLIVER CROMWELL'S
LETTERS
AND
SPEECHES
Obeying a sudden impulse, he slipped the book cover in
his
overcoat pocket.
Mr. Weintraub entered the shop, a solid Teutonic person
with discoloured
pouches under his eyes and a face that was a potent argument
for prohibition. His manner, however, was that of one
anxious
to please. Aubrey indicated the brand of cigarettes he
wanted.
Having himself coined the advertising catchword for them--They're
mild--
but they satisfy--he felt a certain loyal compulsion
always to smoke
this kind. The druggist held out the packet, and Aubrey
noticed
that his fingers were stained a deep saffron colour.
"I see you're a cigarette smoker, too," said Aubrey pleasantly,
as he opened the packet and lit one of the paper tubes
at a little
alcohol flame burning in a globe of blue glass on the
counter.
"Me? I never smoke," said Mr. Weintraub, with a smile
which somehow
did not seem to fit his surly face. "I must have steady
nerves
in my profession. Apothecaries who smoke make up bad
prescriptions."
"Well, how do you get your hands stained that way?" Mr.
Weintraub
removed his hands from the counter.
"Chemicals," he grunted. "Prescriptions--all that sort
of thing."
"Well," said Aubrey, "smoking's a bad habit. I guess I
do too much
of it." He could not resist the impression that someone
was listening
to their talk. The doorway at the back of the shop was
veiled
by a portiere of beads and thin bamboo sections threaded
on strings.
He heard them clicking as though they had been momentarily
pulled aside. Turning, just as he opened the door to
leave,
he noticed the bamboo curtain swaying.
"Well, good-night," he said, and stepped out onto the
street.
As he walked down Wordsworth Avenue, under the thunder
of the L,
past lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops,
Miss Chapman
resumed her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought
his mind
whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of
the evening.
The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins,
the sparkling fire,
the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud--and
there,
in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing was bulging
out,
that blue-eyed vision of careless girlhood! Happily he
had been
so seated that he could study her without seeming to
do so.
The line of her ankle where the firelight danced upon
it put Coles
Phillips to shame, he averred. Extraordinary, how these
creatures
are made to torment us with their intolerable comeliness!
Against the
background of dusky bindings her head shone with a soft
haze of gold.
Her face, that had an air of naive and provoking independence,
made him angry with its unnecessary surplus of enchantment.
An unaccountable gust of rage drove him rapidly along
the frozen street.
"Damn it," he cried, "what right has any girl to be as
pretty as that?
Why--why, I'd like to beat her!" he muttered, amazed
at himself.
"What the devil right has a girl got to look so innocently
adorable?"
It would be unseemly to follow poor Aubrey in his vacillations
of rage and worship as he thrashed along Wordsworth Avenue,
hearing and seeing no more than was necessary for the
preservation
of his life at street crossings. Half-smoked cigarette
stubs glowed
in his wake; his burly bosom echoed with incoherent oratory.
In the darker stretches of Fulton Street that lead up
to the Brooklyn
Bridge he fiercely exclaimed: "By God, it's not such
a bad world."
As he ascended the slope of that vast airy span, a black
midget
against a froth of stars, he was gravely planning such
vehemence
of exploit in the advertising profession as would make
it seem less
absurd to approach the President of the Daintybits Corporation
with a question for which no progenitor of loveliness
is ever
quite prepared.
In the exact centre of the bridge something diluted his
mood;
he halted, leaning against the railing, to consider the
splendour
of the scene. The hour was late--moving on toward midnight--
but in the tall black precipices of Manhattan scattered
lights gleamed,
in an odd, irregular pattern like the sparse punctures
on the
raffle-board--"take a chance on a Milk-Fed Turkey"--the
East Indian
elevator-boy presents to apartment-house tenants about
Hallowe'en.
A fume of golden light eddied over uptown merriment:
he could see
the ruby beacon on the Metropolitan Tower signal three
quarters.
Underneath the airy decking of the bridge a tug went
puffing by,
her port and starboard lamps trailing red and green threads
over
the tideway. Some great argosy of the Staten Island fleet
swept
serenely down to St. George, past Liberty in her soft
robe of light,
carrying theatred commuters, dazed with weariness and
blinking
at the raw fury of the electric bulbs. Overhead the night
was
a superb arch of clear frost, sifted with stars. Blue
sparks
crackled stickily along the trolley wires as the cars
groaned over
the bridge.
Aubrey surveyed all this splendid scene without exact
observation.
He was of a philosophic turn, and was attempting to console
his
discomfiture in the overwhelming lustre of Miss Titania
by the thought
that she was, after all, the creature and offspring of
the science
he worshipped--that of Advertising. Was not the fragrance
of her presence, the soft compulsion of her gaze, even the delirious frill
of muslin
at her wrist, to be set down to the credit of his chosen
art?
Had he not, pondering obscurely upon "attention-compelling"
copy
and lay-out and type-face, in a corner of the Grey-Matter
office,
contributed to the triumphant prosperity and grace of
this
unconscious beneficiary? Indeed she seemed to him, fiercely
tormenting
himself with her loveliness, a symbol of the mysterious
and subtle
power of publicity. It was Advertising that had done
this--
that had enabled Mr. Chapman, a shy and droll little
person,
to surround this girl with all the fructifying glories
of civilization--
to foster and cherish her until she shone upon the earth
like a
morning star! Advertising had clothed her, Advertising
had fed her,
schooled, roofed, and sheltered her. In a sense she was
the crowning
advertisement of her father's career, and her innocent
perfection
taunted him just as much as the bright sky-sign he knew
was flashing
the words CHAPMAN PRUNES above the teeming pavements
of Times Square.
He groaned to think that he himself, by his conscientious
labours,
had helped to put this girl in such a position that he
could hardly dare
approach her.
He would never have approached her again, on any pretext,
if the intensity of his thoughts had not caused him,
unconsciously,
to grip the railing of the bridge with strong and angry
hands.
For at that moment a sack was thrown over his head from
behind
and he was violently seized by the legs, with the obvious
intent of hoisting him over the parapet. His unexpected
grip
on the railing delayed this attempt just long enough
to save him.
Swept off his feet by the fury of the assault, he fell
sideways against
the barrier and had the good fortune to seize his enemy
by the leg.
Muffled in the sacking, it was vain to cry out; but he
held furiously
to the limb he had grasped and he and his attacker rolled
together
on the footway. Aubrey was a powerful man, and even despite
the surprise could probably have got the better of the
situation;
but as he wrestled desperately and tried to rid himself
of his hood,
a crashing blow fell upon his head, half stunning him.
He lay sprawled out, momentarily incapable of struggle,
yet conscious enough to expect, rather curiously, the dizzying sensation
of a drop through insupportable air into the icy water of the East River.
Hands seized him -- and then, passively, he heard a shout, the sound of
footsteps running on the planks, and other footsteps hurrying away at top
speed.
In a moment the sacking was torn from his head and a
friendly
pedestrian was kneeling beside him.
"Say, are you all right?" said the latter anxiously.
"Gee, those guys nearly got you."
Aubrey was too faint and dizzy to speak for a moment.
His head was numb and he felt certain that several inches
of it
had been caved in. Putting up his hand, feebly, he was
surprised
to find the contours of his skull much the same as usual.
The stranger propped him against his knee and wiped away
a trickle
of blood with his handkerchief.
"Say, old man, I thought you was a goner," he said sympathetically.
"I seen those fellows jump you. Too bad they got away.
Dirty work,
I'll say so."
Aubrey gulped the night air, and sat up. The bridge rocked
under him;
against the star-speckled sky he could see the Woolworth
Building bending and jazzing like a poplar tree in a
gale.
He felt very sick.
"Ever so much obliged to you," he stammered. "I'll be
all right
in a minute."
"D'you want me to go and ring up a nambulance?" said his
assistant.
"No, no," said Aubrey; "I'll be all right." He staggered
to his feet
and clung to the rail of the bridge, trying to collect
his wits.
One phrase ran over and over in his mind with damnable
iteration--"Mild,
but they satisfy!"
"Where were you going?" said the other, supporting him.
"Madison Avenue and Thirty-Second----"
"Maybe I can flag a jitney for you. Here," he cried,
as another citizen approached afoot, "Give this fellow
a hand.
Someone beat him over the bean with a club. I'm going
to get him
a lift."
The newcomer readily undertook the friendly task, and
tied
Aubrey's handkerchief round his head, which was bleeding
freely.
After a few moments the first Samaritan succeeded in
stopping a touring
car which was speeding over from Brooklyn. The driver
willingly
agreed to take Aubrey home, and the other two helped
him in.
Barring a nasty gash on his scalp he was none the worse.
"A fellow needs a tin hat if he's going to wander round
Long
Island at night," said the motorist genially. "Two fellows
tried
to hold me up coming in from Rockville Centre the other
evening.
Maybe they were the same two that picked on you. Did
you get a look
at them?"
"No," said Aubrey. "That piece of sacking might have helped
me
trace them, but I forgot it."
"Want to run back for it?"
"Never mind," said Aubrey. "I've got a hunch about this."
"Think you know who it is? Maybe you're in politics, hey?"
The car ran swiftly up the dark channel of the Bowery,
into Fourth Avenue, and turned off at Thirty-Second Street to deposit Aubrey
in front
of his boarding house. He thanked his convoy heartily,
and refused
further assistance. After several false shots he got
his latch key
in the lock, climbed four creaking flights, and stumbled
into his room.
Groping his way to the wash-basin, he bathed his throbbing
head,
tied a towel round it, and fell into bed. |
