I have what I think is a bit of a treat. It’s a barefoot-related short story from 1921.
The story was written by Lloyd Osbourne, who was Robert Louis Stevenson’s stepson. I’ve written before about Colorful Character: Robert Louis Stevenson.
The story takes place shortly after World War I, so they’re just heading into the flapper era.
The story is fairly long, so I’ve serialized it to appear over
the next four days.
So, without further ado, here’s “The Man Who”.
The Man Who
BEDFORD MILLS was one of those very rare people—a happy man. It was no drudgery to Beddy, as everyone called him, to stand all day behind a wicket at the Pocahontas National Bank and pass out soiled pieces of green paper to greedy paws. He had no idea of repining at his lot; he cherished no stifled ambitions. He arrived whistling and left whistling, and cheerfully read the evening paper in the Subway jam, unmindful of elbows in his ribs. The abstract had never touched Bedford Mills; he was a stranger to all speculative questionings; he was innocent of any knowledge of books or pictures or music or social problems. In his attractive commonplaceness he took everything for granted, conforming respectfully to every tribal custom. If he had ever heard the word “culture”—which he hadn’t—it would have conjured up something vaguely German and menacing.
He was twenty-six; a tall, fair, well-set-up young fellow, with girlish blue eyes that could look very keenly at a doubtful check and a pleasant mouth that was always ready to part over exceptionally white teeth; and he could say odd, shy, impulsive things—usually to a girl—with a sideway smile that was extraordinarily winning. Beddy really did not know how winning that smile was or what havoc it had caused in many a pretty bosom. Perhaps he was too modest, or too cautious, to find out. Young as he was, he had seen so many unhappy marriages that he considered himself disillusioned. That was why, perhaps, when the time came, he fell so madly in love with Helen Jessop.
No young man was likely to be very cautious where Helen Jessop was concerned. Such lovely, slender, radiant blondes swirl a young man off his feet like a Kansas cyclone, and at the slightest hint of preference his heart is lost forever. Beddy, in his simple parlance, had been a goner from the moment he had first met Helen; he had swirled into the air, military boots, spurs and all, and had never really come down again.
Of course Helen was not nearly so much an angel as she looked. Golden hair and a Cupid’s-bow mouth and a face of sparkling purity do not always imply wings—not at least in New York. Helen was too fashionable, too sophisticated for any great warmth of nature. She was a very intelligent, highly cultivated, self-centered young woman of twenty-three who set an inordinate value on herself and kept her heart in cold storage. It must be admitted that her own good opinion of herself was well justified. Not only had she beauty—the beauty that made people gape on the street—but those accessories that become it so admirably, wealth and distinguished social position.
The Jessops were old New York, to-whom half the owners of parterre boxes at the opera were merely moneyed upstarts—wretched strap hangers in the social system, whom an old New Yorker pushed aside with his old New York nose in the air. Pride was the breath of an old New Yorker’s nostrils; a pride as exquisitely concealed as the temper of a damascened blade. Helen’s mother was dead, and she lived alone with her father in a charming old house on the north side of Washington Square. Fifth Avenue had long ago become too vulgar for St. John Jessop. It had ceased to be a street where a gentleman could live. Helen’s father never made such remarks snappishly; he was no choleric old gentleman with a growling voice and an expansive waistcoat. St. John Jessop was far too silken and courtly and urbane for anything so uncouth. Tall and slender, with aristocratic hands and a deceptively gentle manner, he uttered such reproaches with a deprecatory air, as of one who hated to object to anything.
Nothing less than a World War could have given Beddy Mills the entrée to such a house as the Jessops’. But in the general topsy-turvydom of ’18 all sorts of unheard-of things happened and all sorts of lambs lay down with all sorts of lions in a bewildering confusion. Beddy, in a military hospital, had been invited, together with fifty-nine other convalescents, to attend an afternoon party at the Jessops’. It was a do-something-for-the-poor-boys party, with ice cream, cigars and opera singers; and Beddy, quite unintentionally, had made a sensation by fainting in the most public way possible. This was probably due to the close air and the amplitude of ice cream, but in the emotion of that emotional period it took on a more heroic aspect. Beddy, in spite of his protests, was carried to a resplendent guest room and was kept there gloriously imprisoned for three never-to-be-forgotten days.
On leaving, he had been warmly pressed to call when he grew better, Mr. Jessop murmuring something about Beddy always considering 17 Washington Square as his second home; and lovely, radiant Helen, in bewitching Red Cross costume, held his hand all the way to the hospital and occasionally smoothed his cool and unfevered brow, while his heart, which really needed attention, was pitapating crazily with joy. He was desperately in love; the three glorious days had settled that; and in his unquenchable optimism and ignorance of the world, and lulled besides into false security by magazine fiction, which in the hospital was devoured in vast quantities, he dreamed of it all coming right and pictured with a palpitating tenderness the appropriate course of his romance.
Had she not held his hand? Had she not often stooped over him till her lips almost touched his hair? Had she not extorted from him, with transparent craft, that there was no other in his affections? And on the strictly practical side, had he not a four-hundred-dollar-a-month position held open for him at the Pocahontas National Bank?
And had he not in American Moth Balls preferred and Candy common and some Liberties a little fortune of eleven thousand dollars that had come to him from an aunt? What more did a happy young optimist need to make him even happier and more optimistic? Nothing! He had love and youth and ardor; health, and an excellent position; and the prestige of several coveted medals won by gallantry in the Argonne.
He read the snippets of verse he had always disregarded before in the magazines, and was astonished at their profundity and understanding. Some of these snippets plumbed depths that he thought were his alone, and stirred him immeasurably. The “he” of course was always himself, and the “she” was likewise Helen Jessop; and though the snippets were often sad, they were tremendously reassuring. People died a great deal in snippets, but their hearts were always true; and Beddy was agreeably impressed at the ease with which the heroines were won, and stayed won—often at the cost of their blighted lives.
He had called after leaving the hospital, and had been pleasantly received and invited to dinner. But though Helen had been very sweet to him, he was conscious that something intangible had intervened. In his simplicity he did not realize that a young bank clerk is a very different person from a khaki-clad hero. But he was cruelly disappointed nevertheless. The aristocratic old house seemed to wear a formidable air, and his host and hostess had in some way receded from him. Had Helen not squeezed his hand at parting he would never have come again.
But he did come again at her express invitation; came and came, and often sat cozily with her for hours in the music room, which she had made her own. He was utterly at a loss to understand her. She could be so melting and so distant in perplexing alternations; yet of real advance there was none. Once he had caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately, holding her till her panting breath fanned his cheek and her eyed closed in what seemed an exquisite submission. But a moment later she disengaged herself and, moving a little apart, gazed at him with lovely, troubled eyes.
“I don’t want to make a mountain of this,” she said. “I suppose it is what people do in your milieu, but in mine it is apt to lead to the immediate end of an acquaintance. If we are to continue friends, Beddy dear, you must never do such a thing again—never, never, never!”
Beddy could not answer a word, but stood there, so glum and miserable and stricken that he wished the floor might open under his feet. But at least he was not so stupid as to apologize.
“I don’t know how to love a girl without wanting to kiss her,” he blurted out at last. “If you drive a man mad with longing you can’t expect him to sit quietly on a chair like an old lady in a lace cap. I—I suppose it is nothing to you that I love you better than anything in the world, and —”
He could get no further; the words were already quavering. He might have been more humiliated still had not Helen come over to him and, with a half-playful, half-tender gesture, placed both hands on his shoulder. Worldly though she was, she was touched by his sincerity. The love of being loved is deep in every woman. Besides, Helen did care—just a little.
“Is it as bad as that? ” she asked with a ghost of a smile.
“Worse,” said Beddy, comforted in spite of himself. “The more I come here the more I realize how utterly out of my reach you are.”
“No girl is out of any man’s reach,” said Helen. “But of course I am terribly high up on the wall, and the one that gets me will have to be quite a porch climber.”
“The trouble is, you have everything,” remarked Beady after he had been given one end of the couch and told to be good, and after he had been told he might smoke a cigarette if that would make him gooder. “The most successful man in the world could not give you more than you have.”
“Oh, yes, he could!” exclaimed Helen, moving nearer, and with the animation she always showed when speaking about herself. “If only you knew how I long to be somebody instead of just a slip of old New York, living on my ancestors! I hate ancestors and genealogies and this everlasting bowing down to the family joss!”
Beddy, much encouraged, murmured a typical commonplace about the plain people.
But that was not what Helen meant at all. She disavowed it with pink in her cheeks. All that the plain people were made for was to be walked on; to work and fill the background of life. What she longed for was the ideal man.
Beddy was dismayed at the intrusion of this horrid stranger, whose existence in Helen’s heart he had long been suspecting. But he was evidently expected to ask about him, and so asked.
“It’s a stupid word, of course,” replied Helen, in the prettiest of preoccupations for a better. “What I mean is somebody who has done something tremendous—whose name is a household word, and all that. The Man Who, you know. I would walk over red-hot plowshares, like a girl in a fairy tale, to be the wife of a Man Who.”
Beddy was mystified; mystified and depressed. He was painfully conscious that Helen, as far as he was concerned, was demanding the impossible. That his unattainable beloved should be talking of walking over red-hot plowshares for somebody else was indescribably smarting to his spirit. He gazed dismally at those trim, small feet, with their enticing dove-colored stockings, and for once found no pleasure in them. Were they not willing to walk over red-hot plowshares for the Man Who? Never had she seemed remoter from the fondest wish of his heart.
“I don’t understand,” he remarked at last. “What exactly do you mean by a Man Who?”
“Who has done something, of course,” Helen answered, ecstatic but scornful. “To my mind it is the greatest title in the world. Have you never been to some wonderful party and had people pointed out to you like that? That’s Massenet, the man who composed Thaïs; that’s Marconi, the man who invented wireless; that’s Amundsen, the man who discovered the South Pole; that’s Kovalsikoff, the man who shot the archduke. Oh, what is any prince or earl, or old New Yorker for that matter, compared with a Man Who! Any nice-looking one who wasn’t bald could have me as easily as calling a taxicab.”
Beddy was shocked. The comparison cut him to the quick. He was too simple-minded to make allowances for feminine exaggeration. After a moment he remarked, in a very hurt voice, “Do you mean you would prefer some crack-brained idiot who had paddled down the Mississippi in a paper canoe had jumped off Mont Blanc with a Japanese parasol, to—to”—he hesitated, and then added—”to a man of sterling business achievement?”
Helen rippled into laughter. The examples seemed to amuse her immensely, or perhaps it was the jaundiced tone with which they were submitted to her.
“All I meant was that I simply couldn’t love a man whose name wasn’t known,” she said. “I want people to turn round and look at me when they hear whose wife I am. If I can’t marry a Man Who I’ll never marry anybody.”
When Beddy walked home that evening his head was in a whirl. He had to become a Man Who, and how the dickens was he to do it? For weeks it had been becoming clear to him in many rankling ways that Helen’s preference for him was hardly more than the caprice of a spoiled young queen for a poor clod of a fellow who made her laugh. Somehow he was always able to do that, though not wholly unaware that it was his boyishness and unsophistication which served to entertain her. But compared with the courtships in magazine fiction, it was a dreadful failure. It had never advanced at all. In fact there had been a positive retrogression since the time he was a wounded hero and she the outward semblance of a Red Cross nurse.
With corrugating brows and tightening lips, he resolved to become a Man Who. It was his only chance. He had to succeed or lose Helen forever. She had shown him the way to her heart, like a fairy princess in a legend, never dreaming that he might take her at her word. And he had at least one of the qualifications already—he wasn’t bald. Well, he would surprise her. He would scale the castle wall and say, “Here I am, Bedford Mills, the Man Who!” Had he not succeeded in everything be had ever put his hand to? Had he not brains, ability, determination? Had he not the leverage of eleven thousand dollars, which was probably more than most of the Men Who possessed before they started? The only essential thing he lacked was an idea.
It was a head-racking business to try and find one. After half a night towing on his pillow all he had attained was elimination—elimination of art, especially as a great cartoonist; elimination of science; elimination of invention. All these involved arduous preparation extending over years. Analysis of famous names showed exploration as one of the quickest short cuts in the past, but unfortunately there seemed nothing left to explore except Borneo.
“The Man Who crossed Borneo!”
No, it wasn’t very tempting. People who had never heard of Borneo were scarcely likely to be impressed by Beddy crossing it. The poles had been the prize packages, and they were gone. Geographically, alas, everything was gone except scraps. He toyed with the idea of shooting the Kaiser.
“Bedford Mills, the Man Who shot the Kaiser!”
It had a splendid ring, but he soon abandoned it. The Kaiser might continue sawing wood for all the interference he would get from Beddy. Politics? Elimination again, though with some lingering over that renowned Colonel Waring, who as street commissioner had actually cleaned the streets of New York. But of course that was a miracle. It couldn’t happen twice.
Beddy ate a dispirited breakfast. It was Sunday, and a day as gray and cold as his own thoughts. Fame was not for him; his sleepless night had shown him that. In his discouragement he came near throwing over the morning service. Afterward, in the retrospect, it dismayed him to recall his indecision and what it might have coat him had he remained at home. For it was at church that he got his idea from the sermon on Service. It was an admirable sermon, a very moving sermon, and it floated down the great aisles in the most mellifluous voice in New York.
It was all about devotion to humanity, self-dedication to humanity, and was touchingly biographical. With what unction the rector extolled those noble names! With what sonorous enthusiasm he dwelt on their imperishable place in the hearts of mankind! And how stupendously he buried them, while whole nations mourned and kings wept on their thrones. There is no better story in the world than that of the humble personage who becomes great through his love of humanity; and the mellifluous doctor told it and retold it and told it again with a steadily augmenting zest and pathos. Beddy, listening with respectful interest, suddenly became electrified. Here, perhaps, was the answer to his quest; here were avenues to fame he had never dreamed of. All you needed apparently was a big heart and a capacity to bear persecution—and there was no height you might not climb to. With sufficient publicity in the way of contumely and derision you could spring to fame in almost the twinkling of an eye. In fact, judged by the preacher’s discourse, it was in a direct sort of ratio.
The possibilities were dazzling. You needed no toilsome preparations, no prolonged study or research, no exile to Borneo or frozen wastes. You could woo fame at your own front door—if you had the nerve. You simply chose one phase of human misery or human oppression and went forth to remedy it with a flaming sword and as many spectators as possible. Beddy was no cynic, but he recognized that the limelight was as essential as the devotion. Where, indeed, would all these Men Who and Women Who have been without it? Beddy simply analyzed the matter like the practical young American he was, and said to himself, “It was the free advertising that did it.”
He walked out of Saint Mark’s with the idea surging in his head and a tiny voice repeating from somewhere, “I shall marry her in June! I shall marry her in June! I shall marry her in June!” Which, considering it was then late April, goes to show it was a very gripping idea indeed and had fastened on Beddy like the influenza. With it too were something of the same shivers; of the same alternations of heat and cold; of a similar weakness in the knees. It was a simple idea—but appalling.
Beddy spent the afternoon trying to nerve himself for its accomplishment next day, and feeling like a man getting ready for electrocution. The idea called for a front of brass; it demanded a skin as tough as that of a rhinoceros; and Beddy had neither. He had never done anything unconventional in his whole life, and here was the idea inciting him to stagger New York. He had never even dared to wear a straw hat before the first of June, and here he was meditating something that would have made a Savonarola quail—that is, if Savonarola had been a young man in the Pocahontas National Bank.
Beddy’s respect for the lovers of mankind went up tremendously as he began to realize what ridicule and derision really meant. Jumping into fame was an awfully scorching business. Even in anticipation you could feel the flames licking up your legs. He spent an agonizing afternoon that preceded an agonizing evening. And one of the troubles was that the idea, on its off side, had an undeniably silly look. There were times when it appeared downright idiotic. But in spite of such moments of despair, Beddy did not flinch. It was the only idea he had, you know, and the only one he ever seemed likely to get. Silly or not, the idea would certainly make him a Man Who—of sorts. And it was only by becoming a Man Who that he could hope to win Helen Jessop.
He set his alarm clock for two A. M., the hour when the Morning Clarion went to press and he might count on finding Horton Meiklejohn in the office. Meiklejohn was one of the feature writers of the Clarion, and Beddy and he had been chums in the training camp—which was as near Flanders’ fields as Horton ever got, being, as he was, essential to the Clarion’s circulation. The idea called for an active coöperation on the part of Horton, who Beddy was sure would not fail him. Horton would never have failed anybody whose antics might bring in good copy. If you had boiled your grandmother in oil and then had telephoned to Horton Meiklejohn, he would have answered: “Splendid! Hold the story! I’ll be round in five minutes with the staff photographer!”
Horton was hurried but cordial, and amazingly wide-awake at that unearthly hour. A faint rumble of presses rumbled over the telephone, making an appropriate background for his staccato voice.
“You say you want a reporter at your door to-morrow at nine o’clock?”
“Yes, a live wire—a really good one.”
“But what for?”
“I’ll show him when he comes.”
“Say, I can’t send out reporters like morning milk,” said Horton in a peevish voice. “He would have to get an assignment from the chief, and the chief would want to know why. Are you off your chump, or what?”
“No, I am going to do something that will make all New York sit up.”
Horton laughed scornfully.
“It would take a bigger man than you to make New York do that,” he exclaimed. “You poor nut, don’t you know you have no more news value than a last year’s orange pip? Why, you would have to steal more than your third-class bank is worth to get on the front page. Good Lord, man, if you committed suicide the Clarion wouldn’t run more than ‘Despondent Bank Clerk Ends Promising Career’—and it would think it was treating you mighty handsomely at that!”
But these jeering remarks served only to accentuate Beddy’s determination. They brought his own unimportance home to him like the repeated lashes of a whip. It was plainer than ever, thanks to these wounding comments, that he had to become a Man Who, or abandon all thoughts of Helen Jessop. Little though Horton knew it, he was adding fuel to the flames.
Beddy redoubled his urging. He was truculent and beseeching, both at once, though nothing could wring any explanation from him. Horton was mystified; he did not know what to make of it. It seemed to him like the ravings of a lunatic. Ah, that was what it was, of course! Another queer manifestation of war strain. The sanest people did erratic things nowadays; the sanest minds had been shaken in France. Poor Beddy, with this bee in his bonnet about making New York sit up! What a shame! Well the only thing to do was to humor him. Horton’s voice, previously on the verge of exasperation, turned suddenly to a soothing key.
“I will make a point of coming myself,” he said. “I am one of those happy outlaws who can do as they please. Nine o’clock, wasn’t it? All right—I’ll be there, sharp. And now go to bed, old boy, and don’t worry; and if you should change your mind in the morning it won’t matter a hill of beans. We’ll have a good walk through the park instead, or maybe fix it up with the bank to let you go to Atlantic City for two or three days.”
Beddy, with a sigh of relief, took his friend’s advice to return to bed, agreeably conscious that he had surmounted the first obstacle on the road to fame.
Beddy shared an apartment on the Upper West Side with his two friends, Cooper and Haynes; and though these two should both have been on their way to their respective offices at the hour of Horton’s arrival, the journalist found them sitting with Beddy and looking profoundly perturbed. The little sitting room was as quiet as a tomb, and it needed but a corpse to explain the somber faces. Horton’s quick eyes took in the flush on Beddy’s cheeks and then passed in surprise to his costume. Beddy was attired as though for a formal afternoon call, in a cutaway black coat, fancy waistcoat, ascot tie with a pin and the appropriate trousers. On a chair were a silk hat and a pair of suede gloves, suggestive of an immediate departure. But—why were his feet bare, giving the oddest look to his otherwise faultlessly groomed appearance? Bare, without even bath slippers? And why were Cooper and Haynes both staring at them like doctors who had detected some incipient and deadly disease?
He may be related to this Doctor I know….
boom boom tish 😉