Bunker Bean

Bunker Bean

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Illustrated by F. R. Gruger
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Title: Bunker Bean
Author: Harry Leon Wilson
Release Date: May 2, 2005 [eBook #15743]
Language: English
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BUNKER BEAN
by
HARRY LEON WILSON
Author of _The Spenders_, _The Lions of the Lord_, _The Boss of
Little Arcady_, etc.
Illustrated By F. R. Gruger
Garden City ... New York Doubleday, Page & Company

1913

[Illustration: "Every time I get alone I just giggle myself into spasms.
Isn't it the funniest?"]

To H.G. WELLS

ILLUSTRATIONS
"Every time I get alone I just giggle myself into spasms. Isn't it the
funniest?"
It was a friendly young face he saw there, but troubled
"I feared he was discommoding you," ventured the Countess, elegantly
apologetic
"Daughter!" said Breede with half a glance at the flapper
In that instant Bean read the flapper's look, the look she had puzzled
him with from their first meeting
"Oh, put up your trinkets!" said Bean, with a fine affectation of
weariness
Thereafter, until late at night, the red car was trailed by the taxi-cab
"Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt

BUNKER BEAN

I
Bunker Bean was wishing he could be different. This discontent with
himself was suffered in a moment of idleness as he sat at a desk on a
high floor of a very high office-building in "downtown" New York.
The first correction he would have made was that he should be "well
over six feet" tall. He had observed that this was the accepted stature
for a hero.
And the name, almost any name but "Bunker Bean!" Often he wrote
good ones on casual slips of paper and fancied them his; names like
Trevellyan or Montressor or Delancey, with musical prefixes; or a good,
short, beautiful, but dignified name like "Gordon Dane." He liked that
one. It suggested something. But Bean! And Bunker Bean, at that! True,
it also suggested something, but this had never been anything desirable.

Just now the people in the outside office were calling him "Boston."
"Gordon Dane," well over six feet, abundant dark hair, a bit inclined to
"wave" and showing faint lines of gray "above the temples"; for Bean
also wished to be thirty years old and to have learned about women; in
short, to have suffered. Gordon Dane's was a face before which the
eyes of women would fall in half-frightened, half-ecstatic subjection,
and men would feel the inexplicable magnetism of his presence. He
would be widely remarked for his taste in dress. He would don stripes
or checks without a trace of timidity. He would quail before no
violence of colour in a cravat.
A certain insignificant Bunker Bean was not like this. With a soul
aspiring to stripes and checks that should make him a man to be looked
at twice in a city street, he lacked courage for any but the quietest
patterns. Longing for the cravat of brilliant hue, he ate out his heart
under neutral tints. Had he not, in the intoxication of his first free
afternoon in New York, boldly purchased a glorious thing of silk
entirely, flatly red, an article to stamp its wearer with distinction; and
had he not, in the seclusion of his rented room, that night hidden the
flaming thing at the bottom of a bottom drawer, knowing in his
sickened soul he dared not flaunt it?
Once, truly, had he worn it, but only for a brief stroll on a rainy Sunday,
with an entirely opaque raincoat buttoned closely under his chin. Even
so, he fancied that people stared through and through that guaranteed
fabric straight to his red secret. The rag burned on his breast. Afterward
it was something to look at beyond the locked door; perhaps to try on
behind drawn shades, late of a night. And how little Gordon Dane
would have made of such a matter! Floated in Bean's mind the refrain
of a clothing advertisement. "The more advanced dressers will seek this
fashion." "Something dignified yet different!" Gordon Dane would be
"an advanced dresser."
But if you have been afraid of nearly everything nearly all your life,
how then? You must