Bunker Bean | Page 6

But
the mist had cleared. Alonzo Bean, no longer the gay blade, had settled
down upon the seat of his wagon. Once he had touched the guitar, sung
an acceptable tenor, jested with life. Now he drove soberly, sang no
more, and was concerned chiefly that his meals be served at set hours.
Small wonder, perhaps, that the mother should have feared the Bean
and laboured to cultivate the true Bunker strain in her offspring. Small
wonder that she kept him when she could from the seat of that wagon
and from the deadening influence of a father to whom Romance had
broken its fine promises. Little Bean distressed her enough by playing
at express-wagon in preference to all other games. He meant to drive a
real one when he was big enough--that is, at first. Secretly he aspired
beyond that. Some day, when he would not be afraid to climb to a
higher seat, he meant to drive the great yellow 'bus that also went to
trains. But that was a dream too splendid to tell.
In the summer of his seventh year, when his mother was finding it
increasingly difficult to supply antidotes for this poison, she even
consented to his visiting some other Beans. Unfortunately, there were
no Bunkers to harbour the child of one who had made so palpable a
mésalliance; but the elder Beans would gladly receive him, and they at
least had never driven express wagons.
To the little boy, who had no sense of their relationship, they were
persons named "Gramper" and "Grammer" whom he would do well to
look down upon because they were not Bunkers. So much he
understood, and that he was to ride in a stage and find them on a remote
farm. It was to be the summer of his first feat of daring since he had
reached years of moral discretion.
He was still so timid at the beginning of the wonderful journey that

when the kind old gentleman who drove the stage stopped his horses at
a point on the road where ripe red apples hung thickly on a tree,
climbed the fence and returned with a capacious hat full of the fruit, he
was chilled with horror at the crime. He had been freely told what was
thought of people, and what was done with them, who took things not
their own. Afraid to decline the two apples proffered by the robber,
who resumed his seat and ate brazenly of his loot, the solitary
passenger would still be no party to the outrage. He presently dropped
his own two apples over the back of the stage, and later, lacking the
preacher's courage, averred that he had eaten them--and couldn't eat
another one, thank you. He was not a little affected by the fine bravado
with which the old man ate apple after apple along miles of the road,
full in the gaze of passersby, to whom he nodded in open-faced
greeting, as might an honest man; but he was disappointed that there
was no quick dragging to a jail, nor smiting by the hand of God, which
quite as often occurred, if his mother and the minister knew anything
about such matters. He decided that at least the elderly reprobate would
wake up in the dark that very night and cry out in mortal agony under
the realization of his sin.
And yet he, the unsullied, the fine theoretical moralist, was to return
along that road a thief. A thief of parts, of depraved daring.
"Gramper" and "Grammer" proved to be an incredibly old couple,
brown and withered and gray of locks, shrunken in stature, slow and
feeble in action, and even rather timid themselves in their greetings.
They made much of this grandchild, but they were diffident. Slowly it
came to his knowledge that he was set up as a creature to adore. He
enjoyed a blissful new sensation of being deferred to. Thereafter he
lorded it over them, speaking in confident tones and making wild
demands of entertainment. His mother had been right. They were Beans
and, therefore, not much. He had brought his own silver napkin-ring
and had meant to show them how wonderfully he folded and rolled his
napkin after each meal. But it seemed they possessed no napkins
whatever. Even his mother hadn't thought anything so repulsive as that
of these people. He now boldly played the new game at table that his
mother had frowned on. This was to measure off your meat and
potatoes into an equal number of "bites," so that they would "come out
even." If you were careful and counted right, the thing could be done

every time.
And for the first time in all his years he asked for more pie. Of course
this was anarchy.