The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) by Marshall P. Wilder (read full novel txt) 📕

But I had left college behind these six years.[Pg 1515]

Hang these old duffers who are so absent-minded! For I was confident that the benevolent old gentleman was the cause of all this confusion. Inside the cab I tried on the thing, just to get a picture in my mind of the old gentleman going it up Broadway with my opera-hat on his head. The hat sagged over my ears; and I laughed. The picture I had conjured up was too much for my anger, which vanished suddenly. And once I had laughed I felt a trifle more agreeable toward the world. So long as a man can see the funny side of things he has no active desire to leave life behind; and laughter does more to lighten his sorrows than sympathy, which only aggravates them.

After all, the old gentleman would feel the change more sharply than I. This was, in all probability, the only hat he had. I turned it over and scrutinized it. It was a genteel old beaver, with an air of respectability that was quite convincing. There was nothing smug about it, either. It suggested amiability in the man who had recently possessed it. It suggested also a mild contempt for public opinion, which is always a sign of superior mentality and advanced years. I began to draw a mental portrait of the old man. He was a family lawyer, doubtless, who lived in the past and hugged his retrospections. When we are young there is never any vanishing point to our day-dreams. Well, well! On the morrow he would have a new hat, of approved shape and pattern; unless, indeed, he possessed others like this which had fallen into my keeping. Perhaps he would soon discover his mistake, return to the café and untangle the snarl. I sincerely hoped he would. As I remarked, my hat had cost me eight dollars.

I soon arrived at my apartments, and got into a smoking-jacket. I rather delight in lolling around in a dress-shirt;[Pg 1516] it looks so like the pictures we see in the fashionable novels. I picked up Blackstone and turned to his "promissory notes." I had two or three out myself. It was nine o'clock when the hall-boy's bell rang, and I placed my ear to the tube. A gentleman wished to see me in regard to a lost hat.

"Send him up, James; send him up!" I bawled down the tube. Visions of the club returned, and I tossed Blackstone into a corner.

Presently there came a tap on the door, and I flung it wide. But my visitor was not the benevolent old gentleman. He was the Frenchman whose absinthe had offended me. He glanced at the slip of paper in his hand.

"I have zee honaire to address zee—ah—gentleman in numbaire six?"

"I live here."

"Delight'! We have meexed zee hats, I have zee r-r-regret. Ees thees your hat?" He held out, for my inspection, an opera-hat. "I am so absent-mind'—what you call deestrait?"—affably.

I took the hat, which at first glance I thought to be mine, and went over to the rack, taking down the old stovepipe.

"This is yours, then?" I said, smiling.

"Thousand thanks, m'sieu! Eet ees certain mine. I have zee honaire to beg pardon for zee confusion. My compliments! Good night!"

Without giving the hat a single glance, he clapped it on his head, bowed and disappeared, leaving me his card. He hadn't been gone two minutes when I discovered that the hat he had exchanged for the stovepipe was not mine. It came from the same firm, but the initials proved it without doubt to belong to the young fellow I had met at the table. I said some uncomplimentary things. Where[Pg 1517] the deuce was my hat? Evidently the benevolent old gentleman hadn't waked up yet.

Ting-a-ling! It was the boy's bell again.

"Well?"

"Another man after a hat. What's goin' on?"

"Send him up!" I yelled. It came over me that the Frenchman had made a second mistake.

I was not disappointed this time in my visitor. It was the benevolent old gentleman. Evidently he had not located his hat either, and might not for some time to come. I began to believe that I had given it to the Frenchman. He seemed terribly excited.

"You are the gentleman who occupies number six?"

"Yes, sir. This is my apartment. You have come in regard to a hat?"

"Yes, sir. My name is Chittenden. Our hats got mixed up at Martin's this evening; my fault, as usual. I am always doing something absurd, my memory is so bad. When I discovered my mistake I was calling on the family of a client with whom I had spent most of the afternoon. I missed some valuable papers, legal documents. I believed as usual that I had forgotten to take them with me. They were nowhere to be found at the house. My client has a very mischievous son, and it seems that he stuffed the papers behind the inside band of my hat. With them there was a letter. I have had two very great scares. A great deal of trouble would ensue if the papers were lost. I just telephoned that I had located the hat." He laughed pleasantly.

Good heavens! here was a howdy-do.

"My dear Mr. Chittenden, there has been a great confusion," I faltered. "I had your hat, but—but you have come too late."

"Too late?" he roared, or I should say, to be exact, shouted.[Pg 1518]

"Yes, sir."

"What have you done with it?"

"Not five minutes ago I gave it to a Frenchman, who seemed to recognize it as his. It was the Frenchman, if you will remember, who sat near your table in the café."

"And this hat isn't yours, then?"—helplessly.

"This" was a flat-brimmed hat of the Paris boulevards, the father of all stovepipe hats, dear to the Frenchman's heart.

"Candidly, now," said I with a bit of excusable impatience, "do I look like a man who would wear a hat like that?"

He surveyed me miserably through his eye-glasses.

"No, I can't say that you do. But what in the world am I to do?" He mopped his brow in the ecstasy of anguish. "The hat must be found. The legal papers could be replaced, but.... You see, sir, that boy put a private letter of his sister's in the band of that hat, and it must be recovered at all hazards."

"I am very sorry, sir."

"But what shall I do?"

"I do not see what can be done save for you to leave word at the café. The Frenchman is doubtless a frequenter, and may easily be found. If you had come a few moments sooner...."

With a gurgle of dismay he fled, leaving me with a half-finished sentence hanging on my lips and the Frenchman's chapeau hanging on my fingers. And my hat; where was my hat? (I may as well add here, in parenthesis, that the disappearance of my eight-dollar hat still remains a mystery. I have had to buy a new one.)

So the boy had put a letter of his sister's in the band of the hat, I mused. How like her kid brother! It seemed that more or less families had Toddy-One-Boys to look[Pg 1519] after. Pshaw! what a muddle because a man couldn't keep his thoughts from wool-gathering!

Well, here I had two hats, neither of which was mine. I could, at a pinch, wear the opera-hat, as it was the exact size of the one I had lost. But what was to be done with the Frenchman's?... Fool that I was! I rushed over to the table. The Frenchman had left his card, and I had forgotten all about it. And I hadn't asked the benevolent old gentleman where he lived. The Frenchman's card read: "M. de Beausire, No. —— Washington Place." I decided to go myself to the address, state the matter to Monsieur de Beausire, and rescue the letter. I knew all about these Toddy-One-Boys, and I might be doing some girl a signal service.

I looked at my watch. It was closing on to ten. So I reluctantly got into my coat again, drew on a topcoat, and put on the hat that fitted me. Probably the girl had been writing some fortunate fellow a love-letter. No gentleman will ever overlook a chance to do a favor for a young girl in distress. I had scarcely drawn my stick from the umbrella-jar when the bell rang once again.

"Hello!" I called down the tube. Why couldn't they let me be?

"Lady wants to see you, sir."

"A lady!"

"Yes, sir. A real lady; l-a-d-y. She says she's come to see the gentleman in number six about a plug hat. What's the graft, anyway?"

"A plug hat!"

"Yes, sir; a plug hat. She seems a bit anxious. Shall I send her up? She's a peach."

"Yes, send her up," I answered feebly enough.

And now there was a woman in the case! I wiped the perspiration from my brow and wondered what I should[Pg 1520] say to her. A woman.... By Jove! the sister of the mischievous boy! Old Chittenden must have told her where he had gone, and as he hasn't shown up, she's worried. It must be a tremendously important letter to cause all this hubbub. So I laid aside my hat and waited, tugging and gnawing at my mustache.... Had the Girl acted reasonably I shouldn't have gone to Martin's that night.

How easy it is for a woman to hurt the man she knows I is in love with her! And the Girl had hurt me more than I was willing to confess even to myself. She had implied that I had carelessly broken an engagement.

Soon there came a gentle tapping. Certainly the young woman had abundant pluck. I approached the door quickly, and flung it open.

The Girl herself stood on the threshold, and we stared at each other with bewildered eyes!

II

She was the most exquisite creature in all the wide world; and here she was, within reach of my hungry arms!

"You?" she cried, stepping back, one hand at her throat and the other against the jamb of the door.

Dumb as ever was Lot's wife (after the turning-point in her career), I stood and stared and admired. A woman would instantly have noticed the beauty of her sables, but I was a man to whom such details were inconsequent.

"I did not expect ... that is, only the number of the apartment was given," she stammered. "I ..." Then her slender figure straightened, and with an effort she subdued the fright and dismay which had evidently seized her. "Have you Mr. Chittenden's hat?"[Pg 1521]

"Mr. Chittenden's hat?" I repeated, with a tingling in my throat similar to that when you hit your elbow smartly on a corner. "Mr. Chittenden's hat?"

"Yes; he is so thoughtless that I dared not trust him to search for it alone. Have you got it?"

Heavens! how my heart beat at the sight of this beautiful being, as she stood there, palpitating between shame and anxiety! She was beautiful; and I knew instantly that I loved her better than anything else on earth.

"Mr. Chittenden's hat," I continued, as lucid as a trained parrot and in tones not wholly dissimilar.

"Can't you say anything more than that?"—impatiently.

How much more easily a woman recovers her poise than a man, especially when that man gives himself over as tamely as I did!

"Was it your letter he was seeking?" I cried, all eagerness and excitement as this one sane thought entered my head.

"Did he tell you that there was a letter in it?"—scornfully.

"Yes,"—guiltily. Heaven only knows why I should have had any sense of guilt.

"Give it to me at once,"—imperatively.

"The hat or the letter?" Truly, I did not know what I was about. Only one thing was plain to my confused mind, and that was the knowledge that I wanted to put my arms around her and carry her far, far away from Toddy-One-Boy.

"Are you mad, to anger me in this fashion?" she said, balling her little gloved hands wrathfully. Had there been real lightning in her eyes I'd have been dead this long while. "Do you dare believe that I knew you lived in this apartment?"[Pg 1522]

"I ... haven't the hat."

"You dared to search it?"—drawing herself up to a supreme height, which was something less than five-feet-two.

I became angry, and somehow found myself.

"I never pry into other people's affairs. You are the last person I expected to see this night."

"Will you answer a single question? I promise not to intrude further upon your time, which, doubtless, is very valuable. Have you either the hat or the letter?"

"Neither. I knew nothing about any letter till Mr. Chittenden came. But he came too late."

"Too late?"—in an