“Keep your mouth closed. Head up! Arms at your side. Breathe through your nose. Chest out forward! Hep, hep, hep — the door swings in. Leave it open. Lift your foot and come down on the heel. Turn the corner sharply. Head up!”
She stood in the doorway as he marched across the porch, down the steps, and along the gravel path to the sidewalk. A turn to the right, and thirty paces took him to the street corner. Still the major’s voice sounded from the doorway:
“Hep, hep, hep — lift your feet higher — breathe through your nose — hep, hep, hep—”
And as he reached the street corner the command came sharply:
“Halt! About face! Salute!”
A glance over his shoulder showed him her nightgown framed in the doorway. There were trees in between. Bill halted, but he did not about face and he did not salute. It was too much. Instead, after a second’s hesitation, he bounded all at once into the street and across it, and was off like a shot. And as he ran he replied to her command to salute by calling back over his shoulder, as man to man:
“Go to hell!”
Excess Baggage
Napoleon may have been imprisoned on an island; Milton may have written “Paradise Lost;” Carrie Nation may have smashed a joint; and Hannibal may have crossed the Alps. But I don’t believe it. I believe nothing. When a man’s own wife, the woman whom he loves above all the world, is convinced — but listen to my tale and you’ll know what I mean.
Since I intend to tell the truth, the whole truth and the rest of it, I may as well admit that before I was married I made no claims to the white badge of purity. At the time I started to grow my first mustache I was a traveling salesman, and I’ve been one ever since. I remember an old refrain that ended something like this:
Perhaps it’s a little too flattering; a knight of the road may be attractive and insinuating, but he isn’t irresistible. And besides, there are some towns where a man wouldn’t keep a dog — much less a sweetheart. But the author had the right idea, generally speaking.
For about twelve years I did all in my power to make the words of that song ring true; and even yet it puffs me up a little to remember that for eight of them I was the champion S.S. of the river route on up as far as St. Albans, Vt. S.S. means Secret Sorrow. No woman is ever happy without one. Only if you ever decide to enter the profession, take it from me that it’s harder than it looks. It’s easy enough to show a girl a good time; too often it’s still easier to persuade her to do things she shouldn’t do. But you have to have a real knack and lots of practice to be a genuine Secret Sorrow. Besides, you are continually in danger of becoming an active member of another organization not quite so popular. In fact, they’re so near alike that it takes an expert to tell them apart — even the names are similar. Many a gawk that writes “S.S.” after his name with a flourish is in blissful ignorance of the fact that instead of Secret Sorrow it may mean Sorry Sucker.
As I say, I held the Hudson River title undisputed for eight years, and it’s the hardest ground in the country to cover properly. And with it all, I was — and am — a good salesman. If you don’t believe me, ask The Dillbecker Company, Office Furniture, 543 Broadway.
The rice and old shoe thing never appealed to me. I never even took the trouble to joke about it. My idea was that marriage is a coeducational institution whose problems have no answer in the back of the book, whose lectures are given just when you want to sleep, and whose course of painful instruction is finished only when the minister stretches his hands over you palms downward, and your friends and family throw on a few tears and nice little bunches of flowers inscribed “Rest in peace.”
For twelve long and happy years I harbored this amiable opinion of the tie that binds. I was a half-and-half mixture of Benedick and Lothario, and I was never able to decide which I admired the more. My convictions were impregnable. Women, I agreed, are the most delightful creatures in the world; I would rather be an S.S. than a Ph.D. any day. But no woman should ever tie me down to the “where have you been” thing; no woman should ever rope me in to teach me the hateful mysteries of a four-room flat; no woman should ever—
Then it hit me.
It happened in a little village not more than fifty miles north of Albany. I’d made a bum sale to the only furniture firm in town, and had gone out to Blank’s house for dinner and to spend the evening. The first thing I saw when I entered the parlor was a little blue angel sitting at the piano.
“Who’s that?” I asked my friend.
“My cousin,” said she, “from Burlington.”
We went into dinner almost immediately, and for the first time in my life I felt indifferent in the presence of food. The cousin sat across the table from me. I’m no describer, but I’ll try to give you an idea of how she looked. She wore something blue with little bunches of lace at the wrists and neck. Her hands were so white they made her pink fingertips look almost red. Her eyes and lips seemed to belong to a sort of mutual benefit society. I never saw such perfect teamwork. They teased and trembled and tempted, and yet all the time they kept saying: “Never — absolutely never. We’re having a lot of fun, but we will never—”
“You will!” I said aloud.
“You will what?” my friend asked coldly. She had been watching me. I was too busy to answer.
After dinner I walked out on the front porch alone. My eyes felt funny and I couldn’t swallow. All over my chest it felt like someone was sticking needles in me and pulling them out again. I started down the steps, sat down on the top one, and began to review my past life. Then I jumped up and started to walk up and down the porch.
“Frank Keeler,” said I, “you’re sick. Your stomach’s out of order. It’s even possible that you’re drunk. But don’t you dare to tell me—” I clenched my teeth hard — “don’t you dare tell me—”
Then I went back into the house and sat and listened to her eyes for three wonderful hours.
We were married in September — the 28th, to be exact. At that, I kept my word. She didn’t tie me down or rope me in. It was all I could do to get her to hold on to the rope after I tied it around my own neck. Before she’d even look at me, I had to admit that without her my life would be devoted to the joyless gloom of unrelieved masculinity.
We took a thirty-day wedding trip to Florida, then came to New York and rented a Harlem flat — she calls it an apartment. By that time my firm was sending me daily hints to the effect that although marriages may last forever, honeymoons don’t; and on the Monday following I left on a trip upstate. My wife’s mother had come down a day or two before for a long visit, so it wasn’t as though I was leaving her all alone among strangers.
In the short space of four months I had backed up, turned around and started off in the opposite direction. You’ve read how “in that one brief moment was condensed the experience of years, and from being a happy carefree girl she became suddenly a mature and resolute woman.” Well, as a quick-change artist “she” didn’t have anything on me. I had become the most faithful and devoted husband south of the North Pole.
In this, you understand, I was serious — darned serious. If I thought you’d know what I mean, I’d say I was an extremist. Of course I don’t claim any originality; many a man has called the Venus de Milo ugly because she didn’t look like his wife. But usually it’s merely a disease. With me it amounted to a religion. And there wasn’t any forcing about it, either; the thing actually seemed to agree with me. The worst of it was, I liked it.