Bunker Bean | Page 3

his
note-book. His shorthand was a marvel of condensed neatness. Breede
had had trouble with stenographers; he was not easy to "take." He
spoke swiftly, often indistinctly, and it maddened him to be asked to
repeat. Bean had never asked him to repeat, and he inserted the a's and
the's and all the minor words that Breede could not pause to utter. The
letter continued:
"--mus' have report at your earl's' convenience of earnings and expenses
of Grand Valley branch for las' four months with engineer's est'mate of
prob'le cost of repairs and maintenance for nex' year--"
Breede halted to consult a document. Bean glanced up with his look of
respectful waiting. Then he glanced down at his notes and wrote two

other lines of shorthand. Breede might have supposed these to record
the last sentence he had spoken, but one able to decipher the notes
could have read: "That is one rotten suit of clothes. For God's sake,
why not get some decent shoes next time--"
The letter was resumed. It came to its end with a phrase that almost
won the difficult respect of Bean. Of a rumour that the C. & G.W.
would build into certain coveted territory Breede exploded: "I can
imagine nothing of less consequence!" Bean rather liked the phrase and
the way Breede emitted it. That was a good thing to say to some one
who might think you were afraid. He treasured the words; fondled them
with the point of his pencil. He saw himself speaking them pithily to
various persons with whom he might be in conflict. There was a thing
now that Gordon Dane might have hurled at his enemies a dozen times
in his adventurous career. Breede must have something in him--but
look at his shiny white cuffs with the metal clasps, on the desk at his
elbow!
Bean had lately read of Breede in a newspaper that "Conservative
judges estimate his present fortune at a round hundred million." Bean's
own stipend was thirty dollars a week, but he pitied Breede. Bean could
learn to make millions if he should happen to want them; but poor old
Breede could never learn to look like anybody.
There you have Bunker Bean at a familiar, prosaic moment in an
afternoon of his twenty-third year. But his prosaic moments are
numbered. How few they are to be! Already the door of Enchantment
has swung to his scared touch. The times will show a scar or two from
Bean. Bean the prodigious! The choicely perfect toy of Destiny at frolic!
Bean the innocent--the monstrous!
* * * * *
Those who long since gave Bean up as an insoluble problem were
denied the advantages of an early association with him. Only an
acquaintance with his innermost soul of souls could permit any sane
understanding of his works, and this it is our privilege, and our
necessity, to make, if we are to comprehend with any sympathy that
which was later termed his "madness." The examination shall be made
quickly and with all decency.
Let us regard Bean through the glass of his earliest reactions to an
environment that was commonplace, unstimulating, dull--the little

wooden town set among cornfields, "Wellsville" they called it, where
he came from out of the Infinite to put on a casual body.
Of Bean at birth, it may be said frankly that he was not imposing. He
was not chubby nor rosy; had no dimples. His face was a puckered
protest at the infliction of animal life. In the white garments
conventional to his age he was a distressing travesty, even when he
gurgled. In the nude he was quite impossible to all but the most
hardened mothers, and he was never photographed thus in a washbowl.
Even his own mother, before he had survived to her one short year,
began to harbour the accursed suspicion that his beauty was not
flawless nor his intelligence supreme. To put it brutally, she almost
admitted to herself that he was not the most remarkable child in all the
world. To be sure, this is a bit less incredible when we know that
Bean's mother, at his advent, thought far less highly of Bean's father
than on the occasion, seven years before, when she had consented to be
endowed with all his worldly goods. In the course of those years she
came to believe that she had married beneath her, a fact of which she
made no secret to her intimates and least of all to her mate, who, it may
be added, privately agreed with her. Alonzo Bean, after that one
delirious moment at the altar, had always disbelieved in himself
pathetically. Who was he--to have wed a Bunker!
When little Bean's years began to permit small activities it was seen
that his courage