The Patient Observer | Page 2

matter of fact, Bowman said, such a resolution always spoils his dinner. As long as he entertains it, he dares not look his man in the eye. He stirs his coffee with shaking fingers. He is cravenly, horribly afraid.
Bowman is afraid even of new waiters and of waiters he never expects to see again. Surely, it must be safe not to tip a waiter one never expected to see again. "But no," said Bowman, "I should feel his contemptuous gaze in the marrow of my backbone as I walked out. I could not keep from shaking, and I should rush from that place in agony, with the man's derisive laughter ringing in my ears."
The only one of the company who was not afraid of something concrete, something tangible, was Williams. Now Williams is notoriously, hopelessly shy; and when he took up the subject where Bowman had left it, he poured out his soul with all the fervour and abandon of which only the shy are capable. Williams was afraid of his own past. It was not a hideously criminal one, for his life had been that of a bookworm and recluse. But out of that past Williams would conjure up the slightest incident--a trifling breach of manners, a mere word out of place, a moment in which he had lost control of his emotions, and the memory of it would put him into a cold sweat of horror and shame.
Years ago, at a small dinner party, Williams had overturned a glass of water on the table-cloth; and whenever he thinks of that glass of water, his heart beats furiously, his palate goes dry, and there is a horribly empty feeling in his stomach. Once, on some similar occasion, Williams fell into animated talk with a beautiful young woman. He spoke so rapidly and so well that the rest of the company dropped their chat and gathered about him. It was five minutes, perhaps, before he was aware of what was going on. That night Williams walked the streets in an agony of remorse. The recollection of the incident comes back to him every now and then, and, whether he is alone at his desk, or in the theatre, or in a Broadway crowd, he groans with pain. Take away such memories of the past, Williams told us, and he knew of nothing in life that he is afraid of.
Gordon's was quite a different case. The group about the table burst out laughing when Gordon assured us that above all things else in this world he is afraid of elephants. He agreed with Bowman that in the latitude of New York City and under the zo?logic conditions prevailing here, it was a preposterous fear to entertain. Gordon lives in Harlem, and he recognises clearly enough that the only elephant-bearing jungle in the neighbourhood is Central Park, whence an animal would be compelled to take a Subway train to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and lie in wait for him as he came home in the twilight. But irrational or no, there was the fact. To be quashed into pulp under one of those girder-like front legs, Gordon felt must be abominable. To make matters worse, Gordon has a young son who insists on being taken every Sunday morning to see the animals; and of all attractions in the menagerie, the child prefers the elephant house. He loves to feed the biggest of the elephants, and to watch him place pennies in a little wooden box and register the deposits on a bell. What Gordon suffers at such times, he told us, can be neither imagined nor described.
My own story was received with sympathetic attention. I told them that the one great terror of my life is a certain man who owes me a fairly large sum of money, borrowed some years ago. Whenever we meet he insists on recalling the debt and reminding me of how much the favour meant to him at the time, and how he never ceases to think of it. Meeting him has become a torture. I do my best to avoid him, and frequently succeed. But often he will catch sight of me across the street and run over and grasp me by the hand and inquire after my health in so hearty, so honest a fashion that I cannot bear to look him in the face. And as he beams on me and throws his arm over my shoulder, I can only blush and shift from one foot to the other and stammer out some excuse for hurrying away. Passers-by stop and admire the man's affection and concern for one who is evidently some poor devil of a relation from the country. One Sunday he waylaid me on Riverside Drive and introduced me to his