The Adventures of a Modest Man

They encountered one another under the electric lights in the wooden labyrinth which forms the ferry terminal of the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad, she hastening one way, he hurrying the opposite. There was ample room for them to pass each other; it may have been because she was unusually pretty, it may have been his absent-mindedness, but he made one of those mistakes which everybody makes once in a lifetime: he turned to the left, realised what he was doing, wheeled hastily to the right – as she, too, turned – only to meet her face to face, politely dodge, meet again, lose his head and begin a heart-breaking contra-dance, until, vexed and bewildered, she stood perfectly still, and he, redder than she, took the opportunity to slink past her and escape.

"Hey!" said a sarcastic voice, as, blinded with chagrin, he found himself attempting to force a locked wooden gate. "You want to go the other way, unless you're hunting for the third rail."

"No, I don't," he said, wrathfully; "I want to go uptown."

"That's what I said; you want to go the other way, even if you don't know where you want to go," yawned the gateman disdainfully.

Seabury collected his scattered wits and gazed about him. Being a New Yorker, and acquainted with the terminal labyrinth, he very quickly discovered his error, and, gripping suit-case and golf-bag more firmly, he turned and retraced his steps at the natural speed of a good New Yorker, which is a sort of a meaningless lope.

Jammed into the familiar ticket line, he peered ahead through the yellow glare of light and saw the charming girl with whom he had danced his foolish contra-dance just receiving her ticket from the boxed automaton. Also, to his satisfaction, he observed her disappear through the turnstile into the crush surging forward alongside of the cars, and, when he presently deposited his own ticket in the chopper's box, he had no more expectation of ever again seeing her than he had of doing something again to annoy and embarrass her.

But even in Manhattan Destiny works overtime, and Fate gets busy in a manner that no man knoweth; and so, personally though invisibly conducted, Seabury lugged his suit-case and golf-bag aboard a train, threaded his way into a stuffy car and took the only empty seat remaining; and a few seconds later, glancing casually at his right-hand neighbour, he blushed to find himself squeezed into a seat beside his unusually attractive partner in the recent contra-dance.

That she had already seen him, the calm indifference in her blue eyes, the poise of her flushed face, were evidence conclusive.

He shrank back, giving her all the room he could, set his bag of golf-clubs between his knees, and looked innocent. First, as all New Yorkers do, he read the line of advertisements opposite with the usual personal sense of resentment; then he carelessly scanned the people across the aisle. As usual, they resembled everybody he had never particularly noticed; he fished out the evening paper, remembered that he had read it on the ferryboat, stuck it into his golf-bag, and contemplated the battered ends of his golf-clubs.

Station after station flashed yellow lamps along the line of car windows; passengers went and passengers took their places; in one of the streets below he caught a glimpse of a fire engine vomiting sparks and black smoke; in another an ambulance with a squalid assemblage crowded around a policeman who was emerging from a drug store.

He had pretty nearly succeeded in forgetting the girl and his mortification; he cast a calmly casual glance over his well-fitting trousers and shoes. The edge of a shoe-lace lay exposed, and he leisurely remedied this untidy accident, leaning over and tying the lace securely with a double knot.

Fourteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, ran the stations. He gathered his golf-bag instinctively and sat alert, prepared to rise and leave the car with dignity.

"Twenty-eighth!" It was his station. Just as he rose the attractive girl beside him sprang up, and at the same instant his right leg was jerked from under him and he sat down in his seat with violence. Before he comprehended what had happened, the girl, with a startled exclamation, fell back into her seat, and he felt a spasmodic wrench at his foot again.

Astonished, he struggled to rise once more, but something held him – his foot seemed to be caught; and as he turned he encountered her bewildered face and felt another desperate tug which brought him abruptly into his seat again.

"What on earth is the matter?" he asked.

"I – I don't know," she stammered; "my shoe seems to be tied to yours."

"Tied!" he cried, bending down in a panic, "wasn't that my shoe-lace?" His golf-bag fell, he seized it and set it against the seat between them. "Hold it a moment," he groaned. "I tied your shoe-lace to mine!"

"You tied it!" she repeated, furiously.

"I saw a shoe-lace – I thought it was mine – I tied it fast – in a d-d-double knot – "

"Untie it at once!" she said, crimson to the roots of her hair.

"Great Heavens, madam! I didn't mean to do it! I'll fix it in a moment – "

"Don't," she whispered, fiercely; "the people opposite are looking at us! Do you wish to hold us both up to ridicule?" He straightened up, thoroughly flurried.

"But – this is my station – " he began.

"It is mine, too. I'd rather sit here all night than have those people see you untie your shoe from mine! How – how could you – "

"I've explained that I didn't mean to do it," he returned, dropping into the breathless undertone in which she spoke. "Happening to glance down, I saw a shoe-lace end and thought my shoe was untied – "

She looked at him scornfully.

"And I tied it tight, that's all. I'm horribly mortified; this is the second time I've appeared to disadvantage – "

"People in New York usually turn to the right; even horses – "

"I doubt," he said, "that you can make me feel much worse than I feel now, but it's a sort of a horrible relief to know what a fool you think me."

She said nothing, sitting there, cooling her hot face in the breeze from the forward door; he, numb with chagrin, stole an apprehensive glance at the passengers opposite. Nobody appeared to have observed their plight, and he ventured to say so in a low voice.

"Are you certain?" she asked, her own voice not quite steady.

"Perfectly. Look! Nobody is eying our feet."

Her own small feet were well tucked up under her gown; she instinctively drew them further in; he felt a little tug; they both coloured furiously.

"This is simply unspeakable," she said, looking straight ahead of her through two bright tears of mortification.

"Suppose," he whispered, "you edge your foot a trifle this way – I think I can cut the knot with my penknife – " He glanced about him stealthily. "Shall I try?"

"Not now. Wait until those people go."

"But some of them may live in Harlem."

"I – I can't help it. Do you suppose I'm going to let you lean over before all those people and try to untie our shoes?"

"Do you mean to sit here until they're all gone?" he asked, appalled.

"I do. Terrible as the situation is, we've got to conceal it."

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"Even if some of them go to the end of the line?"

"I don't care!" She turned on him with a hint of that pretty fierceness again. "Do you know what you've done? You've affronted and mortified me and humiliated me beyond endurance. I have a guest to dine with me: I shall not arrive before midnight!"

"Do you suppose," he said miserably, "that anything you say can add to my degradation? Can't you imagine how a man must feel who first of all makes a four-footed fool of himself before the most attractive girl he – "

"Don't say that!" she cried, hotly.

"Yes, I will! You are! And I dodged and tumbled about like a headless chicken and ran into the wrong gate. I wish I'd climbed out on the third rail! And then, when I hoped I'd never see you again, I found myself beside you, and – Good Heavens! I lost no time in beginning my capers again and doing the most abandoned deed a man ever accomplished on earth!"

She appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of a breakfast-food advertisement; her color was still high; at times she worried her under lip with her white teeth, but her breath rose and fell under the fluffy bosom of her gown with more regularity, and the two bright tears in her eyes had dried unshed. Wrath may have dried them.

"I wish it were possible," he said very humbly, "for you to see the humour – "

"Humour!" she repeated, menacingly.

"No – I didn't mean that, I meant the – the – "