The Adventures of a Modest Man

I looked up at Williams, suspiciously.

"Is this one of your professional literary stories?"

"It's a true one. What's the harm in my enveloping it in a professional glamour?"

"None," I said, resignedly; "go ahead."

"All right, mon vieux."

CHAPTER VIII

A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION

This is a story of the Mystic Three – Fate, Chance, and Destiny; and what happens to people who trifle with them.

It begins with a young man running after a train. He had to run.

The connection at Westport Junction was normally a close one, but now, even before the incoming train had entirely stopped, the local on the other line began to move out, while the engineers of the two locomotives, leaning from their cab windows, exchanged sooty grins. It was none of their business – this squabble between the two roads which was making the term, "Junction," as applied to Westport, a snare and a derision.

So the roads squabbled, and young Seabury ran. Other passengers ran, too, amid the gibes of newsboys and the patronizing applause of station loafers.

He heard them; he also heard squeaks emitted by females whose highest speed was a dignified and scuttering waddle. Meanwhile he was running, and running hard through the falling snow; the ice under foot did not aid him; his overcoat and suit-case handicapped him; the passengers on the moving train smiled at him behind frosty windows.

One very thin man smoking a cigar rubbed his thumb on the pane in order to see better; he was laughing, and Seabury wished him evil.

There were only two cars, and the last one was already rolling by him. And at one of the windows of this car he saw a pretty girl in chinchilla furs watching him curiously. Then she also smiled.

It may have been the frank amusement of a pretty woman, and it may have been the sorrowful apathy of a red-nosed brakeman tying the loose end of the signal rope on the rear platform; doubtless one or the other spurred him to a desperate flying leap which landed him and his suit-case on the rear platform of the last car. And there he stuck, too mad to speak, until a whirlwind of snow and cinders drove him to shelter inside.

The choice of cars was limited to a combination baggage and smoker and a more fragrant passenger coach. He selected a place in the latter across the aisle from the attractive girl in chinchilla furs who had smiled at his misfortunes – not very maliciously. Now, as he seated himself, she glanced up at him without the slightest visible interest, and returned to her study of the winter landscape.

The car was hot; he was hot. Burning thoughts concerning the insolence of railroads made him hotter; the knowledge that he had furnished amusement for the passengers of two trains did not cool him.

Meanwhile everybody in the car had become tired of staring at him; a little boy across the aisle giggled his last giggle; several men resumed their newspapers; a shopgirl remembered her gum and began chewing it again.

A large mottled man with a damp moustache, seated opposite him, said: "Vell, Mister, you runned pooty quvick alretty py dot Vestport train!"

"It seems to me," observed Seabury, touching his heated face with his handkerchief, "that the public ought to do something."

"Yaw; der bublic it runs," said the large man, resuming his eyeglasses and holding his newspaper nearer to the window in the fading light.

Seabury smiled to himself and ventured to glance across the aisle in time to see the dawning smile in the blue eyes of his neighbor die out instantly as he turned. It was the second smile he had extinguished since his appearance aboard the train.

The conductor, a fat, unbuttoned, untidy official, wearing spectacles and a walrus moustache, came straddling down the aisle. He looked over the tops of his spectacles at Seabury doubtfully.

"I managed to jump aboard," explained the young man, smiling.

"Tickuts!" returned the conductor without interest.

"I haven't a ticket; I'll pay – "

"Sure," said the conductor; "vere you ged owid?"

"What?"

"Vere do you ged owid?"

"Oh, where do I get out? I'm going to Beverly – "

"Peverly? Sefenty-vive cends."

"Not to Peverly, to Beverly – "

"Yaw, Peverly – "

"No, no; Beverly! not Peverly – "

"Aind I said Peverly alretty? Sefenty-vive – "

"Look here; there's a Beverly and a Peverly on this line, and I don't want to go to Peverly and I do want to go to Beverly – "

"You go py Peverly und you don'd go py Beverly alretty! Sure! Sefenty-vive ce – "

The young man cast an exasperated glance across the aisle in time to catch a glimpse of two deliciously blue eyes suffused with mirth. And instantly, as before, the mirth died out. As an extinguisher of smiles he was a success, anyway; and he turned again to the placid conductor who was in the act of punching a ticket.

"Wait! Hold on! Don't do that until I get this matter straight! Now, do you understand where I wish to go?"

"You go py Peverly – "

"No, Beverly! Beverly! Beverly," he repeated in patiently studied accents.

The large mottled man with the damp moustache looked up gravely over his newspaper: "Yaw, der gonductor he also says Peverly."

"But Peverly isn't Beverly – "

"Aind I said it blenty enough dimes?" demanded the conductor, becoming irritable.

"But you haven't said it right yet!" insisted Seabury.

The conductor was growing madder and madder. "Peverly! Peverly!! Peverly!!! In Gottes Himmel, don'd you English yet alretty understandt? Sefenty-vive cends! Und" – here he jammed a seat check into the rattling windows-sill – "Und ven I sez Peverly it iss Peverly, und ven I sez Beverly it iss Beverly, und ven I sez sefenty-vive cends so iss it sefenty-vi – "

Seabury thrust three silver quarters at him; it was impossible to pursue the subject; madness lay in that direction. And when the affronted conductor, mumbling muffled indignation, had straddled off down the aisle, the young man took a cautious glance at the check in the window-sill. But on it was printed only, "Please show this to the conductor," so he got no satisfaction there. He had mislaid his time-table, too, and the large mottled man opposite had none, and began an endless and patient explanation which naturally resulted in nothing, as his labials were similar to the conductor's; even more so.

CHAPTER IX

FATE

Turning to the man behind him Seabury attempted to extract a little information, and the man was very affable and anxious to be of help, but all he could do was to nod and utter Teutonic gutturals through a bushy beard with a deep, buzzing sound, and Seabury sank back, beaten and dejected.