XXV
"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'"
As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining roomin furtive, mouselike curiosity.
"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I amwithout a hat, but I have the rose." He held it up before Mortimer'sworn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must havekept it to decorate you, Peter!"
Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested whileJack fastened it in his buttonhole.
"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on,seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get offthe course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end toall fantastic ideas."
An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospelof the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jackmight excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun hisapprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lessonat dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside thederby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softerhead-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, withpositive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it waseasy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conduciveto a certain depression of spirits.
Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to theexceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to beclothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr.Bennington in plotting Jack's chest with a stethoscope.
"Yes, sir, we will have that dinner-jacket ready to-night, sir, dependupon it--and couldn't I show you something in cheviots?"
Jack broke another precedent. A Wingfield, he decided to patronizethe Wingfield store, because he saw how supremely happy every ordermade Burleigh.
"You can do it as well as Thompson's?" he asked.
"With you, yes, sir--though Thompson is a great expert on roundshoulders. But with you, yes, sir!"
When the business of measuring was over, while Burleigh peered triumphantover the pile of cloths from which the masterpieces were to be fashioned,Jack said that he had a ripping appetite and he did not see why he andBurleigh should not appease their hunger in company. Burleigh gasped;then he grinned in abandoned delight and slipped off his shiny coat andlittle tailor's apron that bristled with pins.
They went to a restaurant of reputation, which Jack said was in keepingwith the occasion when a man changed his habits from Arizona simplicityto urban multiplicity of courses. And what did Burleigh like? Burleighadmitted that if he were a plutocrat he would have caviar at least once aday; and caviar appeared in a little glass cup set in the midst ofcracked ice, flanked by crisp toast. After caviar came other things toBurleigh's taste. He was having such an awesomely grand feast that hewas tongue-tied; but Jack could never eat in silence until he hadforgotten how to tell stories. So he told Burleigh stories of the trailand of life in Little Rivers in a way that reflected the desert sunshinein Burleigh's eyes. Burleigh thought that he would like to live in LittleRivers. Almost anyone might after hearing Jack's description, in the joyof its call to himself.
"Now, if you would trust me," said Burleigh, when they left therestaurant, "I should like to send out for some cloths not in stock for acouple of suits. And couldn't I make you up three or four fancywaistcoats, with a little color in them--the right color to go with thecloth? You can carry a little color--decidedly, yes."
"Yes, I rather like color," said Jack, succumbing to temptation, thoughhe felt that the heir to great responsibilities ought to dress in themost neutral of tones.
"And I should like to select the ties to go with the suits and a fewshirts, just to carry out my scheme--a kind of professional triumph forme, you see. May I?"
"Go ahead!" said Jack.
"And you can depend on your evening suit to be up in time. But I am goingto rush a little broader braid on those ready-made trousers--you cancarry that, too," Burleigh concluded.
When they parted Jack turned into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone ablock the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened hisimagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when hemight ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortalsuperiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silkenstreamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat infront of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousinesfloating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square toForty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped _pasde quatre_ from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge ofpedestrians.
"Such a throbbing of machine motion," he thought, "that I don't seehow anybody can have an emotion of his own without bumping intosomebody else's."
It was a scene of another age and world to him, puzzling, overpowering,dismal, mocking him with a sense of loneliness that he had never felt onthe desert. Could he ever catch up with this procession which had all thetime been moving on in the five years of his absence? Could he learn totalk and think in the regulated manner of the traffic rules ofconvention? The few chums of his brief home school-days were long awayfrom the fellowship of academies; they had settled in their grooves, withestablished intimacies. If he found his own flock he could claimadmission to the fold only with the golden key of his millions, ratherthan by the password of kindred understanding.
The tripping, finely-clad women, human flower of all the maelstrom ofurban toil, in their detachment seemed only to bring up a visualizedpicture of Mary. What would he not like to do for her! He wished that hecould pick up the Waldorf and set it on the other side of the street asa proof of the overmastering desire that possessed him whenever she wasin his mind.
And the Doge! He was the wisest man in the world. With a nod ofwell-considered and easy generosity Jack presented him with the newPublic Library. And then all the people on the sidewalks vanished andthe buildings melted away into sunswept levels, and the Avenue was atrail down which Mary came on her pony in the resplendent sufficiency ofhis dreams.
"Great heavens!" he warned himself. "And I am to take my first lesson inrunning the business this evening! What perfect lunacy comes frommistaking the top of a Fifth Avenue stage for a howdah!"