Flappers and Philosophers

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As a matter of fact his plans were of the vaguest. He had found
that with a mind like his, lucrative in intelligence, intuition,
and lightning decision, it was best to have but the skeleton of
a campaign. The machine-gun episode had taught him that. And he
was afraid that a method preconceived would give him two points
of view in a crisis--and two points of view meant wavering.

He stumbled slightly on a chair, held his breath, listened, went
on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh
stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was
counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again
for over a minute--and in that minute he felt more alone than he
had ever felt before. Between the lines on patrol, even when
alone, he had had behind him the moral support of half a billion
people; now he was alone, pitted against that same moral
pressure--a bandit. He had never felt this fear, yet he had
never felt this exultation.

The stairs came to an end, a doorway approached; he went in and
listened to regular breathing. His feet were economical of steps
and his body swayed sometimes at stretching as he felt over the
bureau, pocketing all articles which held promise--he could not
have enumerated them ten seconds afterward. He felt on a chair
for possible trousers, found soft garments, women's lingerie.
The corners of his mouth smiled mechanically.

Another room . . . the same breathing, enlivened by one ghastly
snort that sent his heart again on its tour of his breast. Round
object--watch; chain; roll of bills; stick-pins; two rings--he
remembered that he had got rings from the other bureau. He
started out winced as a faint glow flashed in front of him,
facing him. God!--it was the glow of his own wrist-watch on his
outstretched arm.

Down the stairs. He skipped two crumbing steps but found
another. He was all right now, practically safe; as he neared
the bottom he felt a slight boredom. He reached the dining-room
--considered the silver--again decided against it.

Back in his room at the boarding-house he examined the additions
to his personal property:

Sixty-five dollars in bills.

A platinum ring with three medium diamonds, worth, probably,
about seven hundred dollars. Diamonds were going up.

A cheap gold-plated ring with the initials O. S. and the date
inside--'03--probably a class-ring from school. Worth a few
dollars. Unsalable.

A red-cloth case containing a set of false teeth.

A silver watch.

A gold chain worth more than the watch.

An empty ring-box.

A little ivory Chinese god--probably a desk ornament.

A dollar and sixty-two cents an small change.

He put the money under his pillow and the other things in the
toe of an infantry boot, stuffing a stocking in on top of them.
Then for two hours his mind raced like a high-power engine here
and there through his life, past and future, through fear and
laughter. With a vague, inopportune wish that he were married,
he fell into a deep sleep about half past five.

VI

Though the newspaper account of the burglary failed to mention
the false teeth, they worried him considerably. The picture of
a human waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain,
of a soft, toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping
voice calling the police station, of weary, dispirited visits
to the dentist, roused a great fatherly pity in him.

Trying to ascertain whether they belonged to a man or a woman,
he took them carefully out of the case and held them up near
his mouth. He moved his own jaws experimentally; he measured
with his fingers; but he failed to decide: they might belong
either to a large-mouthed woman or a small-mouthed man.

On a warm impulse he wrapped them in brown paper from the
bottom of his army trunk, and printed FALSE TEETH on the
package in clumsy pencil letters. Then, the next night, he
walked down Philmore Street, and shied the package onto the
lawn so that it would be near the door. Next day the paper
announced that the police had a clew--they knew that the
burglar was in town. However, they didn't mention what the
clew was.

VII

At the end of a month "Burglar Bill of the Silver District
was the nurse-girl's standby for frightening children. Five
burglaries were attributed to him, but though Dalyrimple had
only committed three, he considered that majority had it and
appropriated the title to himself. He had once been seen--"a
large bloated creature with the meanest face you ever laid eyes
on." Mrs. Henry Coleman, awaking at two o'clock at the beam of
an electric torch flashed in her eye, could not have been
expected to recognize Bryan Dalyrimple at whom she had waved
flags last Fourth of July, and whom she had described as "not
at all the daredevil type, do you think?"

When Dalyrimple kept his imagination at white heat he managed to
glorify his own attitude, his emancipation from petty scruples
and remorses--but let him once allow his thought to rove
unarmored, great unexpected horrors and depressions would
overtake him. Then for reassurance he had to go back to think
out the whole thing over again. He found that it was on the
whole better to give up considering himself as a rebel. It was
more consoling to think of every one else as a fool.

His attitude toward Mr. Macy underwent a change. He no longer
felt a dim animosity and inferiority in his presence. As his
fourth month in the store ended he found himself regarding his
employer in a manner that was almost fraternal. He had a vague
but very assured conviction that Mr. Macy's innermost soul would
have abetted and approved. He no longer worried about his
future. He had the intention of accumulating several thousand
dollars and then clearing out--going east, back to France, down
to South America. Half a dozen times in the last two months he
had been about to stop work, but a fear of attracting attention
to his being in funds prevented him. So he worked on, no longer
in listlessness, but with contemptuous amusement.

VIII

Then with astounding suddenness something happened that changed
his plans and put an end to his burglaries.

Mr. Macy sent for him one afternoon and with a great show of
jovial mystery asked him if he had an engagement that night. If
he hadn't, would he please call on Mr. Alfred J. Fraser at eight
o'clock. Dalyrimple's wonder was mingled with uncertainty. He
debated with himself whether it were not his cue to take the
first train out of town. But an hour's consideration decided him
that his fears were unfounded and at eight o'clock he arrived at
the big Fraser house in Philmore Avenue.

Mr. Fraser was commonly supposed to be the biggest political
influence in the city. His brother was Senator Fraser, his son-
in-law was Congressman Demming, and his influence, though not
wielded in such a way as to make him an objectionable boss, was
strong nevertheless.

He had a great, huge face, deep-set eyes, and a barn-door of an
upper lip, the melange approaching a worthy climax if a long
professional jaw.

During his conversation with Dalyrimple his expression kept
starting toward a smile, reached a cheerful optimism, and then
receded back to imperturbability.

"How do you do, sir?" he laid, holding out his hand. "Sit down.
I suppose you're wondering why I wanted you. Sit down."

Dalyrimple sat down.

"Mr. Dalyrimple, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-three."

"You're young. But that doesn't mean you're foolish. Mr.
Dalyrimple, what I've got to say won't take long. I'm going to
make you a proposition. To begin at the beginning, I've been
watching you ever since last Fourth of July when you made that
speech in response to the loving-cup."

Dalyrimple murmured disparagingly, but Fraser waved him to
silence.

"It was a speech I've remembered. It was a brainy speech,
straight from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that
crowd. I know. I've watched crowds for years." He cleared his
throat as if tempted to digress on his knowledge of crowds--then
continued. "But, Mr. Dalyrimple, I've seen too many young men
who promised brilliantly go to pieces, fail through want of
steadiness, too many high-power ideas, and not enough
willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what you'd
do. I wanted to see if you'd go to work, and if you'd stick to
what you started."

Dalyrimple felt a glow settle over him.

"So," continued Fraser, "when Theron Macy told me you'd started
down at his place, I kept watching you, and I followed your
record through him. The first month I was afraid for awhile.
He told me you were getting restless, too good for your job,
hinting around for a raise---"

Dalyrimple started.

"---But he said after that you evidently made up your mind to
shut up and stick to it. That's the stuff I like in a young man!
That's the stuff that wins out. And don't think I don't
understand. I know how much harder it was for you after all that
silly flattery a lot of old women had been giving you. I know
what a fight it must have been---"

Dalyrimple's face was burning brightly. It felt young and
strangely ingenuous.

"Dalyrimple, you've got brains and you've got the stuff in you--
and that's what I want. I'm going to put you into the State
Senate."

"The WHAT?"

"The State Senate. We want a young man who has got brains, but
is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don't
stop there. We're up against it here, Dalyrimple. We've got to
get some young men into politics--you know the old blood that's
been running on the party ticket year in and year out."

Dalyrimple licked his lips.

"You'll run me for the State Senate?"

"I'll PUT you in the State Senate."

Mr. Fraser's expression had now reached the
point nearest a smile and Dalyrimple in a happy frivolity felt
himself urging it mentally on--but it stopped, locked, and slid
from him. The barn-door and the jaw were separated by a line
strait as a nail. Dalyrimple remembered with an effort that it
was a mouth, and talked to it.

"But I'm through," he said. "My notoriety's dead. People are
fed up with me."

"Those things," answered Mr. Fraser, "are mechanical. Linotype
is a resuscitator of reputations. Wait till you see the HERALD,
beginning next week--that is if you're with us--that is," and
his voice hardened slightly, "if you haven't got too many ideas
yourself about how things ought to be run."

"No," said Dalyrimple, looking him frankly in the eye. "You'll
have to give me a lot of advice at first."

"Very well. I'll take care of your reputation then. Just keep
yourself on the right side of the fence."

Dalyrimple started at this repetition of a phrase he had thought
of so much lately. There was a sudden ring at the door-bell.

"That's Macy now," observed Fraser, rising. "I'll go let him in.
The servants have gone to bed."

He left Dalyrimple there in a dream. The world was opening up
suddenly--- The State Senate, the United States Senate--so life
was this after all--cutting corners--common sense, that was the
rule. No more foolish risks now unless necessity called--but it
was being hard that counted-- Never to let remorse or self-
reproach lose him a night's sleep--let his life be a sword of
courage--there was no payment--all that was drivel--drivel.

He sprang to his feet with clinched hands in a sort of triumph.

"Well, Bryan," said Mr. Macy stepping through the portieres.

The two older men smiled their half-smiles at him.

"Well Bryan," said Mr. Macy again.

Dalyrimple smiled also.

"How do, Mr. Macy?"

He wondered if some telepathy between them had made this new
appreciation possible--some invisible realization. . . .

Mr. Macy held out his hand.

"I'm glad we're to be associated in this scheme--I've been for
you all along--especially lately. I'm glad we're to be on the
same side of the fence."

"I want to thank you, sir," said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a
whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.

The Four Fists

At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to
hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty
is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a
hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all
his hitable qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain
that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his
face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a
girl's lips.

I'm sure every one has met a man like that, been casually
introduced, even made a friend of him, yet felt he was the sort
who aroused passionate dislike--expressed by some in the
involuntary clinching of fists, and in others by mutterings
about "takin' a poke" and "landin' a swift smash in ee eye." In
the juxtaposition of Samuel Meredith's features this quality was
so strong that it influenced his entire life.

What was it? Not the shape, certainly, for he was a pleasant-
looking man from earliest youth: broad-bowed with gray eyes that
were frank and friendly. Yet I've heard him tell a room full of
reporters angling for a "success" story that he'd be ashamed to
tell them the truth that they wouldn't believe it, that it
wasn't one story but four, that the public would not want to
read about a man who had been walloped into prominence.

It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.
He had been brought up on a diet of caviar and bell-boys' legs
in half the capitals of Europe, and it was pure luck that his
mother had nervous prostration and had to delegate his education
to less tender, less biassed hands.

At Andover he was given a roommate named Gilly Hood. Gilly was
thirteen, undersized, and rather the school pet. From the
September day when Mr. Meredith's valet stowed Samuel's clothing
in the best bureau and asked, on departing, "hif there was
hanything helse, Master Samuel?" Gilly cried out that the
faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in
whose bowl has been put goldfish.

"Good gosh!" he complained to his sympathetic contemporaries,
"he's a damn stuck-up Willie. He said, 'Are the crowd here
gentlemen?' and I said, 'No, they're boys,' and he said age
didn't matter, and I said, 'Who said it did?' Let him get fresh
with me, the ole pieface!"

For three weeks Gilly endured in silence young Samuel's comments
on the clothes and habits of Gilly's personal friends, endured
French phrases in conversation, endured a hundred half-feminine
meannesses that show what a nervous mother can do to a boy, if
she keeps close enough to him--then a storm broke in the aquarium.

Samuel was out. A crowd had gathered to hear Gilly be wrathful
about his roommate's latest sins.

"He said, 'Oh, I don't like the windows open at night,' he said,
'except only a little bit,'" complained Gilly.

"Don't let him boss you."

"Boss me? You bet he won't. I open those windows, I guess, but
the darn fool won't take turns shuttin' 'em in the morning."

"Make him, Gilly, why don't you?"

"I'm going to." Gilly nodded his head in fierce agreement.
"Don't you worry. He needn't think I'm any ole butler."

"Le's see you make him."

At this point the darn fool entered in person and included the
crowd in one of his irritating smiles. Two boys said, "'Lo,
Mer'dith"; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking
to Gilly. But Samuel seemed unsatisfied.

"Would you mind not sitting on my bed?" he suggested politely to
two of Gilly's particulars who were perched very much at ease.

"Huh?"

"My bed. Can't you understand English?"

This was adding insult to injury. There were several comments on
the bed's sanitary condition and the evidence within it of animal
life.

"S'matter with your old bed?" demanded Gilly truculently.

"The bed's all right, but---"

Gilly interrupted this sentence by rising and walking up to
Samuel. He paused several inches away and eyed him fiercely.

"You an' your crazy ole bed," he began. "You an' your crazy---"

"Go to it, Gilly," murmured some one.

"Show the darn fool---"

Samuel returned the gaze coolly.

"Well," he said finally, "it's my bed--- "

He got no further, for Gilly hauled of and hit him succinctly in
the nose.

"Yea! Gilly!"

"Show the big bully!"

Just let him touch you--he'll see!"

The group closed in on them and for the first time in his life
Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being
passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the
glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller
than his roommate, so if he hit back he'd be called a bully and
have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five minutes;
yet if he didn't he was a coward. For a moment he stood there
facing Gilly's blazing eyes, and then, with a sudden choking
sound, he forced his way through the ring and rushed from the
room.

The month following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of
his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues
of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts
for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of
adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a
natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him
through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he
was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve
specialist. When he returned to Andover he arranged to arrive
late so that he could be alone in the bus during the drive from
station to school.

Of course when he had learned to keep his mouth shut every one
promptly forgot all about him. The next autumn, with his
realization that consideration for others was the discreet
attitude, he made good use of the clean start given him by the
shortness of boyhood memory. By the beginning of his senior year
Samuel Meredith was one of the best-liked boys of his class--and
no one was any stronger for him than his first friend and
constant companion, Gilly Hood.

II

Samuel became the sort of college student who in the early
nineties drove tandems and coaches and tallyhos between
Princeton and Yale and New York City to show that they
appreciated the social importance of football games. He believed
passionately in good form--his choosing of gloves, his tying of
ties, his holding of reins were imitated by impressionable
freshmen. Outside of his own set he was considered rather a
snob, but as his set was THE set, it never worried him. He
played football in the autumn, drank high-balls in the winter,
and rowed in the spring. Samuel despised all those who were
merely sportsmen without being gentlemen or merely gentlemen
without being sportsmen.

He live in New York and often brought home several of his
friends for the week-end. Those were the days of the horse-car
and in case of a crush it was, of course, the proper thing for
any one of Samuel's set to rise and deliver his seat to a
standing lady with a formal bow. One night in Samuel's junior
year he boarded a car with two of his intimates. There were
three vacant seats. When Samuel sat down he noticed a heavy-eyed
laboring man sitting next to him who smelt objectionably of
garlic, sagged slightly against Samuel and, spreading a little
as a tired man will, took up quite too much room.

The car had gone several blocks when it stopped for a quartet of
young girls, and, of course, the three men of the world sprang
to their feet and proffered their seats with due observance of
form. Unfortunately, the laborer, being unacquainted with the
code of neckties and tallyhos, failed to follow their example,
and one young lady was left at an embarrassed stance. Fourteen
eyes glared reproachfully at the barbarian; seven lips curled
slightly; but the object of scorn stared stolidly into the
foreground in sturdy unconsciousness of his despicable conduct.
Samuel was the most violently affected. He was humiliated that
any male should so conduct himself. He spoke aloud.

"There's a lady standing," he said sternly.

That should have been quite enough, but the object of scorn only
looked up blankly. The standing girl tittered and exchanged
nervous glances with her companions. But Samuel was aroused.

"There's a lady standing," he repeated, rather raspingly. The
man seemed to comprehend.

"I pay my fare," he said quietly.

Samuel turned red and his hands clinched, but the conductor was
looking their way, so at a warning nod from his friends he
subsided into sullen gloom.

They reached their destination and left the car, but so did the
laborer, who followed them, swinging his little pail. Seeing his
chance, Samuel no longer resisted his aristocratic inclination.
He turned around and, launching a full-featured, dime-novel
sneer, made a loud remark about the right of the lower animals
to ride with human beings.

In a half-second the workman had dropped his pail and let fly at
him. Unprepared, Samuel took the blow neatly on the jaw and
sprawled full length into the cobblestone gutter.

"Don't laugh at me!" cried his assailant. "I been workin' all
day. I'm tired as hell!"

As he spoke the sudden anger died out of his eyes and the mask
of weariness dropped again over his face. He turned and picked
up his pail. Samuel's friends took a quick step in his direction.

"Wait!" Samuel had risen slowly and was motioning back. Some
time, somewhere, he had been struck like that before. Then he
remembered--Gilly Hood. In the silence, as he dusted himself
off, the whole scene in the room at Andover was before his eyes--
and he knew intuitively that he had been wrong again. This
man's strength, his rest, was the protection of his family. He
had more use for his seat in the street-car than any young girl.

"It's all right," said Samuel gruffly. "Don't touch 'him. I've
been a damn fool."

Of course it took more than an hour, or a week, for Samuel to
rearrange his ideas on the essential importance of good form. At
first he simply admitted that his wrongness had made him
powerless--as it had made him powerless against Gilly--but
eventually his mistake about the workman influenced his entire
attitude. Snobbishness is, after all, merely good breeding grown
dictatorial; so Samuel's code remained but the necessity of
imposing it upon others had faded out in a certain gutter.
Within that year his class had somehow stopped referring to him
as a snob.

III

After a few years Samuel's university decided that it had shone
long enough in the reflected glory of his neckties, so they
declaimed to him in Latin, charged him ten dollars for the paper
which proved him irretrievably educated, and sent him into the
turmoil with much self-confidence, a few friends, and the proper
assortment of harmless bad habits.

His family had by that time started back to shirt-sleeves,
through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already
unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His
mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education
sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he
used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting
through Wall Street crowds as runner for a bank.

His diversion was--women. There were half a dozen: two or three
debutantes, an actress (in a minor way), a grass-widow, and one
sentimental little brunette who was married and lived in a
little house in Jersey City.

They had met on a ferry-boat. Samuel was crossing from New York
on business (he bad been working several years by this time) and
he helped her look for a package that she had dropped in the crush.

"Do you come over often?" he inquired casually.

"Just to shop," she said shyly. She had great brown eyes and the
pathetic kind of little mouth. "I've only been married three
months, and we find it cheaper to live over here."

"Does he--does your husband like your being alone like this?"

She laughed, a cheery young laugh.

"Oh, dear me, no. We were to meet for dinner but I must have
misunderstood the place. He'll be awfully worried."

"Well," said Samuel disapprovingly, "he ought to be. If you'll
allow me I'll see you home."

She accepted his offer thankfully, so they took the cable-car
together. When they walked up the path to her little house they
saw a light there; her husband had arrived before her.

"He's frightfully jealous," she announced, laughingly apologetic.

"Very well," answered Samuel, rather stiffly. "I'd better leave
you here."

She thanked him and, waving a good night, he left her.

That would have been quite all if they hadn't met on Fifth
Avenue one morning a week later. She started and blushed and
seemed so glad to see him that they chatted like old friends.
She was going to her dressmaker's, eat lunch alone at Taine's,
shop all afternoon, and meet her husband on the ferry at five.
Samuel told her that her husband was a very lucky man. She
blushed again and scurried off.

Samuel whistled all the way back to his office, but about twelve
o'clock he began to see that pathetic, appealing little mouth
everywhere--and those brown eyes. He fidgeted when he looked at
the clock; he thought of the grill down-stairs where he lunched
and the heavy male conversation thereof, and opposed to that
picture appeared another; a little table at Taine's with the
brown eyes and the mouth a few feet away. A few minutes before
twelve-thirty he dashed on his hat and rushed for the cable-car.

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