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.