The Man With Two Left Feet

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It had not been easy for her to say it. The decision was the outcome of
many wakeful nights. She had asked herself the question whether it was
fair for her to keep Ted chained to her in this hopeless fashion, when,
left to himself and away from her, he might so easily find some other
girl to make him happy.

So Ted went, reluctantly, and the little shop on Sixth Avenue knew him
no more. And Katie spent her time looking after old Mr Bennett (who had
completely forgotten the affair by now, and sometimes wondered why
Katie was not so cheerful as she had been), and--for, though unselfish,
she was human--hating those unknown girls whom in her mind's eye she
could see clustering round Ted, smiling at him, making much of him, and
driving the bare recollection of her out of his mind.

The summer passed. July came and went, making New York an oven. August
followed, and one wondered why one had complained of July's tepid
advances.

It was on the evening of September the eleventh that Katie, having
closed the little shop, sat in the dusk on the steps, as many thousands
of her fellow-townsmen and townswomen were doing, turning her face to
the first breeze which New York had known for two months. The hot spell
had broken abruptly that afternoon, and the city was drinking in the
coolness as a flower drinks water.

From round the corner, where the yellow cross of the Judson Hotel shone
down on Washington Square, came the shouts of children, and the
strains, mellowed by distance, of the indefatigable barrel-organ which
had played the same tunes in the same place since the spring.

Katie closed her eyes, and listened. It was very peaceful this evening,
so peaceful that for an instant she forgot even to think of Ted. And it
was just during this instant that she heard his voice.

'That you, kid?'

He was standing before her, his hands in his pockets, one foot on the
pavement, the other in the road; and if he was agitated, his voice did
not show it.

'Ted!'

'That's me. Can I see the old man for a minute, Katie?'

This time it did seem to her that she could detect a slight ring of
excitement.

'It's no use, Ted. Honest.'

'No harm in going in and passing the time of day, is there? I've got
something I want to say to him.'

'What?'

'Tell you later, maybe. Is he in his room?'

He stepped past her, and went in. As he went, he caught her arm and
pressed it, but he did not stop. She saw him go into the inner room and
heard through the door as he closed it behind him, the murmur of
voices. And almost immediately, it seemed to her, her name was called.
It was her grandfather's voice which called, high and excited. The door
opened, and Ted appeared.

'Come here a minute, Katie, will you?' he said. 'You're wanted.'

The old man was leaning forward in his chair. He was in a state of
extraordinary excitement. He quivered and jumped. Ted, standing by the
wall, looked as stolid as ever; but his eyes glittered.

'Katie,' cried the old man, 'this is a most remarkable piece of news.
This gentleman has just been telling me--extraordinary. He--'

He broke off, and looked at Ted, as he had looked at Katie when he had
tried to write the letter to the Parliament of England.

Ted's eye, as it met Katie's, was almost defiant.

'I want to marry you,' he said.

'Yes, yes,' broke in Mr Bennett, impatiently, 'but--'

'And I'm a king.'

'Yes, yes, that's it, that's it, Katie. This gentleman is a king.'

Once more Ted's eye met Katie's, and this time there was an imploring
look in it.

'That's right,' he said, slowly. 'I've just been telling your
grandfather I'm the King of Coney Island.'

'That's it. Of Coney Island.'

'So there's no objection now to us getting married, kid--Your Royal
Highness. It's a royal alliance, see?'

'A royal alliance,' echoed Mr Bennett.

Out in the street, Ted held Katie's hand, and grinned a little
sheepishly.

'You're mighty quiet, kid,' he said. 'It looks as if it don't make much
of a hit with you, the notion of being married to me.'

'Oh, Ted! But--'

He squeezed her hand.

'I know what you're thinking. I guess it was raw work pulling a tale
like that on the old man. I hated to do it, but gee! when a fellow's up
against it like I was, he's apt to grab most any chance that comes
along. Why, say, kid, it kind of looked to me as if it was sort of
_meant_. Coming just now, like it did, just when it was wanted,
and just when it didn't seem possible it could happen. Why, a week ago
I was nigh on two hundred votes behind Billy Burton. The Irish-American
put him up, and everybody thought he'd be King at the Mardi Gras. And
then suddenly they came pouring in for me, till at the finish I had
Billy looking like a regular has-been.

'It's funny the way the voting jumps about every year in this Coney
election. It was just Providence, and it didn't seem right to let it go
by. So I went in to the old man, and told him. Say, I tell you I was
just sweating when I got ready to hand it to him. It was an outside
chance he'd remember all about what the Mardi Gras at Coney was, and
just what being a king at it amounted to. Then I remembered you telling
me you'd never been to Coney, so I figured your grandfather wouldn't be
what you'd call well fixed in his information about it, so I took the
chance.

'I tried him out first. I tried him with Brooklyn. Why, say, from the
way he took it, he'd either never heard of the place, or else he'd
forgotten what it was. I guess he don't remember much, poor old fellow.
Then I mentioned Yonkers. He asked me what Yonkers were. Then I
reckoned it was safe to bring on Coney, and he fell for it right away.
I felt mean, but it had to be done.'

He caught her up, and swung her into the air with a perfectly impassive
face. Then, having kissed her, he lowered her gently to the ground
again. The action seemed to have relieved his feelings, for when he
spoke again it was plain that his conscience no longer troubled him.

'And say,' he said, 'come to think of it, I don't see where there's so
much call for me to feel mean. I'm not so far short of being a regular
king. Coney's just as big as some of those kingdoms you read about on
the other side; and, from what you see in the papers about the
goings-on there, it looks to me that, having a whole week on the throne
like I'm going to have, amounts to a pretty steady job as kings go.'

AT GEISENHEIMER'S

As I walked to Geisenheimer's that night I was feeling blue and
restless, tired of New York, tired of dancing, tired of everything.
Broadway was full of people hurrying to the theatres. Cars rattled by.
All the electric lights in the world were blazing down on the Great
White Way. And it all seemed stale and dreary to me.

Geisenheimer's was full as usual. All the tables were occupied, and
there were several couples already on the dancing-floor in the centre.
The band was playing 'Michigan':

_I want to go back, I want to go back
To the place where I was born.
Far away from harm
With a milk-pail on my arm._

I suppose the fellow who wrote that would have called for the police if
anyone had ever really tried to get him on to a farm, but he has
certainly put something into the tune which makes you think he meant
what he said. It's a homesick tune, that.

I was just looking round for an empty table, when a man jumped up and
came towards me, registering joy as if I had been his long-lost sister.

He was from the country. I could see that. It was written all over him,
from his face to his shoes.

He came up with his hand out, beaming.

'Why, Miss Roxborough!'

'Why not?' I said.

'Don't you remember me?'

I didn't.

'My name is Ferris.'

'It's a nice name, but it means nothing in my young life.'

'I was introduced to you last time I came here. We danced together.'

This seemed to bear the stamp of truth. If he was introduced to me, he
probably danced with me. It's what I'm at Geisenheimer's for.

'When was it?'

'A year ago last April.'

You can't beat these rural charmers. They think New York is folded up
and put away in camphor when they leave, and only taken out again when
they pay their next visit. The notion that anything could possibly have
happened since he was last in our midst to blur the memory of that
happy evening had not occurred to Mr Ferris. I suppose he was so
accustomed to dating things from 'when I was in New York' that he
thought everybody else must do the same.

'Why, sure, I remember you,' I said. 'Algernon Clarence, isn't it?'

'Not Algernon Clarence. My name's Charlie.'

'My mistake. And what's the great scheme, Mr Ferris? Do you want to
dance with me again?'

He did. So we started. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die,
as the poem says. If an elephant had come into Geisenheimer's and asked
me to dance I'd have had to do it. And I'm not saying that Mr Ferris
wasn't the next thing to it. He was one of those earnest, persevering
dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

I guess I was about due that night to meet someone from the country.
There still come days in the spring when the country seems to get a
stranglehold on me and start in pulling. This particular day had been
one of them. I got up in the morning and looked out of the window, and
the breeze just wrapped me round and began whispering about pigs and
chickens. And when I went out on Fifth Avenue there seemed to be
flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all
green, and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the
air--why, say, if there hadn't have been a big policeman keeping an eye
on me, I'd have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf.

And as soon as I got to Geisenheimer's they played that 'Michigan'
thing.

Why, Charlie from Squeedunk's 'entrance' couldn't have been better
worked up if he'd been a star in a Broadway show. The stage was just
waiting for him.

But somebody's always taking the joy out of life. I ought to have
remembered that the most metropolitan thing in the metropolis is a
rustic who's putting in a week there. We weren't thinking on the same
plane, Charlie and me. The way I had been feeling all day, what I
wanted to talk about was last season's crops. The subject he fancied
was this season's chorus-girls. Our souls didn't touch by a mile and a
half.

'This is the life!' he said.

There's always a point when that sort of man says that.

'I suppose you come here quite a lot?' he said.

'Pretty often.'

I didn't tell him that I came there every night, and that I came
because I was paid for it. If you're a professional dancer at
Geisenheimer's, you aren't supposed to advertise the fact. The
management thinks that if you did it might send the public away
thinking too hard when they saw you win the Great Contest for the
Love-r-ly Silver Cup which they offer later in the evening. Say, that
Love-r-ly Cup's a joke. I win it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,
and Mabel Francis wins it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It's
all perfectly fair and square, of course. It's purely a matter of merit
who wins the Love-r-ly Cup. Anybody could win it. Only somehow they
don't. And the coincidence of the fact that Mabel and I always do has
kind of got on the management's nerves, and they don't like us to tell
people we're employed there. They prefer us to blush unseen.

'It's a great place,' said Mr Ferris, 'and New York's a great place.
I'd like to live in New York.'

'The loss is ours. Why don't you?'

'Some city! But dad's dead now, and I've got the drugstore, you know.'

He spoke as if I ought to remember reading about it in the papers.

'And I'm making good with it, what's more. I've got push and ideas.
Say, I got married since I saw you last.'

'You did, did you?' I said. 'Then what are you doing, may I ask,
dancing on Broadway like a gay bachelor? I suppose you have left your
wife at Hicks' Corners, singing "Where is my wandering boy tonight"?'

'Not Hicks' Corners. Ashley, Maine. That's where I live. My wife comes
from Rodney.... Pardon me, I'm afraid I stepped on your foot.'

'My fault,' I said; 'I lost step. Well, I wonder you aren't ashamed
even to think of your wife, when you've left her all alone out there
while you come whooping it up in New York. Haven't you got any
conscience?'

'But I haven't left her. She's here.'

'In New York?'

'In this restaurant. That's her up there.'

I looked up at the balcony. There was a face hanging over the red plush
rail. It looked to me as if it had some hidden sorrow. I'd noticed it
before, when we were dancing around, and I had wondered what the
trouble was. Now I began to see.

'Why aren't you dancing with her and giving her a good time, then?' I
said.

'Oh, she's having a good time.'

'She doesn't look it. She looks as if she would like to be down here,
treading the measure.'

'She doesn't dance much.'

'Don't you have dances at Ashley?'

'It's different at home. She dances well enough for Ashley, but--well,
this isn't Ashley.'

'I see. But you're not like that?'

He gave a kind of smirk.

'Oh, I've been in New York before.'

I could have bitten him, the sawn-off little rube! It made me mad. He
was ashamed to dance in public with his wife--didn't think her good
enough for him. So he had dumped her in a chair, given her a lemonade,
and told her to be good, and then gone off to have a good time. They
could have had me arrested for what I was thinking just then.

The band began to play something else.

'This is the life!' said Mr Ferris. 'Let's do it again.'

'Let somebody else do it,' I said. 'I'm tired. I'll introduce you to
some friends of mine.'

So I took him off, and whisked him on to some girls I knew at one of
the tables.

'Shake hands with my friend Mr Ferris,' I said. 'He wants to show you
the latest steps. He does most of them on your feet.'

I could have betted on Charlie, the Debonair Pride of Ashley. Guess
what he said? He said, 'This is the life!'

And I left him, and went up to the balcony.

She was leaning with her elbows on the red plush, looking down on the
dancing-floor. They had just started another tune, and hubby was moving
around with one of the girls I'd introduced him to. She didn't have to
prove to me that she came from the country. I knew it. She was a little
bit of a thing, old-fashioned looking. She was dressed in grey, with
white muslin collar and cuffs, and her hair done simple. She had a
black hat.

I kind of hovered for awhile. It isn't the best thing I do, being shy;
as a general thing I'm more or less there with the nerve; but somehow I
sort of hesitated to charge in.

Then I braced up, and made for the vacant chair.

'I'll sit here, if you don't mind,' I said.

She turned in a startled way. I could see she was wondering who I was,
and what right I had there, but wasn't certain whether it might not be
city etiquette for strangers to come and dump themselves down and start
chatting. 'I've just been dancing with your husband,' I said, to ease
things along.

'I saw you.'

She fixed me with a pair of big brown eyes. I took one look at them,
and then I had to tell myself that it might be pleasant, and a relief
to my feelings, to take something solid and heavy and drop it over the
rail on to hubby, but the management wouldn't like it. That was how I
felt about him just then. The poor kid was doing everything with those
eyes except crying. She looked like a dog that's been kicked.

She looked away, and fiddled with the string of the electric light.
There was a hatpin lying on the table. She picked it up, and began to
dig at the red plush.

'Ah, come on sis,' I said; 'tell me all about it.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'You can't fool me. Tell me your troubles.'

'I don't know you.'

'You don't have to know a person to tell her your troubles. I sometimes
tell mine to the cat that camps out on the wall opposite my room. What
did you want to leave the country for, with summer coming on?'

She didn't answer, but I could see it coming, so I sat still and
waited. And presently she seemed to make up her mind that, even if it
was no business of mine, it would be a relief to talk about it.

'We're on our honeymoon. Charlie wanted to come to New York. I didn't
want to, but he was set on it. He's been here before.'

'So he told me.'

'He's wild about New York.'

'But you're not.'

'I hate it.'

'Why?'

She dug away at the red plush with the hatpin, picking out little bits
and dropping them over the edge. I could see she was bracing herself to
put me wise to the whole trouble. There's a time comes when things
aren't going right, and you've had all you can stand, when you have got
to tell somebody about it, no matter who it is.

'I hate New York,' she said getting it out at last with a rush. 'I'm
scared of it. It--it isn't fair Charlie bringing me here. I didn't want
to come. I knew what would happen. I felt it all along.'

'What do you think will happen, then?'

She must have picked away at least an inch of the red plush before she
answered. It's lucky Jimmy, the balcony waiter, didn't see her; it
would have broken his heart; he's as proud of that red plush as if he
had paid for it himself.

'When I first went to live at Rodney,' she said, 'two years ago--we
moved there from Illinois--there was a man there named Tyson--Jack
Tyson. He lived all alone and didn't seem to want to know anyone. I
couldn't understand it till somebody told me all about him. I can
understand it now. Jack Tyson married a Rodney girl, and they came to
New York for their honeymoon, just like us. And when they got there I
guess she got to comparing him with the fellows she saw, and comparing
the city with Rodney, and when she got home she just couldn't settle
down.'

'Well?'

'After they had been back in Rodney for a little while she ran away.
Back to the city, I guess.'

'I suppose he got a divorce?'

'No, he didn't. He still thinks she may come back to him.'

'He still thinks she will come back?' I said. 'After she has been away
three years!'

'Yes. He keeps her things just the same as she left them when she went
away, everything just the same.'

'But isn't he angry with her for what she did? If I was a man and a
girl treated me that way, I'd be apt to murder her if she tried to show
up again.'

'He wouldn't. Nor would I, if--if anything like that happened to me;
I'd wait and wait, and go on hoping all the time. And I'd go down to
the station to meet the train every afternoon, just like Jack Tyson.'

Something splashed on the tablecloth. It made me jump.

'For goodness' sake,' I said, 'what's your trouble? Brace up. I know
it's a sad story, but it's not your funeral.'

'It is. It is. The same thing's going to happen to me.'

'Take a hold on yourself. Don't cry like that.'

'I can't help it. Oh! I knew it would happen. It's happening right now.
Look--look at him.'

I glanced over the rail, and I saw what she meant. There was her
Charlie, dancing about all over the floor as if he had just discovered
that he hadn't lived till then. I saw him say something to the girl he
was dancing with. I wasn't near enough to hear it, but I bet it was
'This is the life!' If I had been his wife, in the same position as
this kid, I guess I'd have felt as bad as she did, for if ever a man
exhibited all the symptoms of incurable Newyorkitis, it was this
Charlie Ferris.

'I'm not like these New York girls,' she choked. 'I can't be smart. I
don't want to be. I just want to live at home and be happy. I knew it
would happen if we came to the city. He doesn't think me good enough
for him. He looks down on me.'

'Pull yourself together.'

'And I do love him so!'

Goodness knows what I should have said if I could have thought of
anything to say. But just then the music stopped, and somebody on the
floor below began to speak.

'Ladeez 'n' gemmen,' he said, 'there will now take place our great
Numbah Contest. This gen-u-ine sporting contest--'

It was Izzy Baermann making his nightly speech, introducing the
Love-r-ly Cup; and it meant that, for me, duty called. From where I sat
I could see Izzy looking about the room, and I knew he was looking for
me. It's the management's nightmare that one of these evenings Mabel or
I won't show up, and somebody else will get away with the Love-r-ly
Cup.

'Sorry I've got to go,' I said. 'I have to be in this.'

And then suddenly I had the great idea. It came to me like a flash, I
looked at her, crying there, and I looked over the rail at Charlie the
Boy Wonder, and I knew that this was where I got a stranglehold on my
place in the Hall of Fame, along with the great thinkers of the age.

'Come on,' I said. 'Come along. Stop crying and powder your nose and
get a move on. You're going to dance this.'

'But Charlie doesn't want to dance with me.'

'It may have escaped your notice,' I said, 'but your Charlie is not the
only man in New York, or even in this restaurant. I'm going to dance
with Charlie myself, and I'll introduce you to someone who can go
through the movements. Listen!'

'The lady of each couple'--this was Izzy, getting it off his
diaphragm--'will receive a ticket containing a num-bah. The dance will
then proceed, and the num-bahs will be eliminated one by one, those
called out by the judge kindly returning to their seats as their
num-bah is called. The num-bah finally remaining is the winning
num-bah. The contest is a genuine sporting contest, decided purely by
the skill of the holders of the various num-bahs.' (Izzy stopped
blushing at the age of six.) 'Will ladies now kindly step forward and
receive their num-bahs. The winner, the holder of the num-bah left on
the floor when the other num-bahs have been eliminated' (I could see
Izzy getting more and more uneasy, wondering where on earth I'd got
to), 'will receive this Love-r-ly Silver Cup, presented by the
management. Ladies will now kindly step forward and receive their
num-bahs.'

I turned to Mrs Charlie. 'There,' I said, 'don't you want to win a
Love-r-ly Silver Cup?'

'But I couldn't.'

'You never know your luck.'

'But it isn't luck. Didn't you hear him say it's a contest decided
purely by skill?'

'Well, try your skill, then.' I felt as if I could have shaken her.
'For goodness' sake,' I said, 'show a little grit. Aren't you going to
stir a finger to keep your Charlie? Suppose you win, think what it will
mean. He will look up to you for the rest of your life. When he starts
talking about New York, all you will have to say is, "New York? Ah,
yes, that was the town I won that Love-r-ly Silver Cup in, was it not?"
and he'll drop as if you had hit him behind the ear with a sandbag.
Pull yourself together and try.'

I saw those brown eyes of hers flash, and she said, 'I'll try.'

'Good for you,' I said. 'Now you get those tears dried, and fix
yourself up, and I'll go down and get the tickets.'

Izzy was mighty relieved when I bore down on him.

'Gee!' he said, 'I thought you had run away, or was sick or something.
Here's your ticket.'

'I want two, Izzy. One's for a friend of mine. And I say, Izzy, I'd
take it as a personal favour if you would let her stop on the floor as
one of the last two couples. There's a reason. She's a kid from the
country, and she wants to make a hit.'

'Sure, that'll be all right. Here are the tickets. Yours is thirty-six,
hers is ten.' He lowered his voice. 'Don't go mixing them.'

I went back to the balcony. On the way I got hold of Charlie.

'We're dancing this together,' I said.

He grinned all across his face.

I found Mrs Charlie looking as if she had never shed a tear in her
life. She certainly had pluck, that kid.

'Come on,' I said. 'Stick to your ticket like wax and watch your step.'

I guess you've seen these sporting contests at Geisenheimer's. Or, if
you haven't seen them at Geisenheimer's, you've seen them somewhere
else. They're all the same.

When we began, the floor was so crowded that there was hardly
elbow-room. Don't tell me there aren't any optimists nowadays. Everyone
was looking as if they were wondering whether to have the Love-r-ly Cup
in the sitting-room or the bedroom. You never saw such a hopeful gang
in your life.

Presently Izzy gave tongue. The management expects him to be humorous
on these occasions, so he did his best.

'Num-bahs, seven, eleven, and twenty-one will kindly rejoin their
sorrowing friends.'

This gave us a little more elbow-room, and the band started again.

A few minutes later, Izzy once more: 'Num-bahs thirteen, sixteen, and
seventeen--good-bye.'

Off we went again.

'Num-bah twelve, we hate to part with you, but--back to your table!'

A plump girl in a red hat, who had been dancing with a kind smile, as
if she were doing it to amuse the children, left the floor.

'Num-bahs six, fifteen, and twenty, thumbs down!'

And pretty soon the only couples left were Charlie and me, Mrs Charlie
and the fellow I'd introduced her to, and a bald-headed man and a girl
in a white hat. He was one of your stick-at-it performers. He had been
dancing all the evening. I had noticed him from the balcony. He looked
like a hard-boiled egg from up there.

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