THE ENCHANTED HAT THE ADVENTURE OF MY LADY'S LETTER
It was half-after six when I entered Martin's from the Broadway side. I chose a table by the north wall and sat down on the cushioned seat. I ordered dinner, and the ample proportions of it completely hoodwinked the waiter as to the condition of my cardiac affliction: being, as I was, desperately and hopelessly and miserably in love. Old owls say that a man can not eat when he is in love. He can if he is mad at the way the object of his affections has treated him; and I was mad. To be sure, I can not recall what my order was, but the amount of the waiter's check is still vivid to my recollection.
I glanced about. The café was crowded, as it usually is at this hour. Here and there I caught glimpses of celebrities and familiar faces: journalists, musicians, authors, artists and actors. This is the time they drop in to be pointed out to strangers from out of town. It's a capital advertisement. To-night, however, none of these interested me in the slightest degree; rather, their animated countenances angered me. How could they laugh and look happy!
At my left sat a young man about my own age. He was also in evening dress. At my right a benevolent old gentleman, whose eye-glasses balanced neatly upon the end of his nose, was deeply interested in The Law Journal and a pint of mineral water. A little beyond my table was an exiled Frenchman, and the irritating odor of absinthe drifted at times across my nostrils.
With my coffee I ordered a glass of Dantzic, and watched the flakes of beaten gold waver and settle; and presently I devoted myself entirely to my own particularly miserable thoughts.... To be in love and in debt! To be with the gods one moment and hunted by a bill-collector the next! To have the girl you love snub and dismiss you for no more lucid reason than that you did not attend the dance at the Country Club when you promised you would! It did not matter that you had a case on that night from which depended a large slice of your bread and butter; no, that did not matter. Neither did the fact that you had mixed the dates. You had promised to go, and you hadn't gone or notified the girl that you wouldn't go. Your apologetic telegram she had torn into halves and returned the following morning, together with a curt note to the effect that she could not value the friendship of a man who made and broke a promise so easily. It was all over. It was a dashed hard world. How the deuce do you win a girl, anyhow?
Supposing, besides, that you possessed a rich uncle who said that on the day of your wedding he would make over to you fifty thousand in Government three per cents? Hard, wasn't it? Suppose that you were earning about two thousand a year, and that the struggle to keep up smart appearances was a keen one. Wouldn't you have been eager to marry, especially the girl you loved? A man can not buy flowers twice a week, dine before and take supper after the theater twice a week, belong (and pay dues and house-accounts) to a country club, a town club and keep respectable bachelor apartments on two thousand ... and save anything. And suppose the girl was independently rich? Heigh-ho!
I find that a man needs more money in love than he does in debt. This is not to say that I was ever very hard pressed; but I hated to pay ten dollars "on account" when the total was only twenty. You understand me, don't you? If you don't, somebody who reads this will. Of course, the girl knew nothing about these things. A young man always falls into the fault of magnifying his earning capacity to the girl he loves. You see, I hadn't told her yet that I loved her, though I was studying up somebody on Moral and Physical Courage for that purpose.
And now it was all over!
I did not care so much about my uncle's gold-bonds, but I did think a powerful lot of the girl. Why, when I recall the annoyances I've put up with from that kid brother of hers!... Pshaw, what's the use?
His mother called him "Toddy-One-Boy," in memory of a book she had read long years ago. He was six years old, and I never think of him without that jingle coming to mind:
"Little Willie choked his sister,
She was dead before they missed her.
Willie's always up to tricks.
Ain't he cute, he's only six!"
He had the face of a Bouguereau cherub, and mild blue eyes such as we are told inhabit the countenances of angels. He was the most innocent-looking chap you ever set eyes on. His mother called him an angel; I should hate to tell you what the neighbors called him. He lacked none of that subtile humor so familiar in child-life. Heavens! the deeds I could (if I dared) enumerate. They turned him loose among the comic supplements one Sunday, and after that it was all over.
Hadn't he emptied his grandma's medicine capsules and substituted cotton? And hadn't dear old grandma come down stairs three days later, saying that she felt much improved? Hadn't he beaten out the brains of his toy bank and bought up the peanut man on the corner? Yes, indeed! And hadn't he taken my few letters from his sister's desk and played postman up and down the street? His papa thought it all a huge joke till one of the neighbors brought back a dunning dressmaker's bill that had lain on the said neighbor's porch. It was altogether a different matter then. Toddy-One-Boy crawled under the bed that night, and only his mother's tears saved him from a hiding.
All these things I thought over as I sat at my table. She knew that I would have gone had it been possible. Women and logic are only cousins german. Six months ago I hadn't been in love with any one but myself, and now the Virgil of love's dream was leading me like a new Dante through his Inferno, and was pointing out the foster-brother of Sisyphus (if he had a foster-brother), pushing the stone of my lady's favor up the steeps of Forlorn Hope. Well, I would go up to the club, and if I didn't get home till mor-r-ning, who was there to care?
The Frenchman had gone, and the benevolent old gentleman. The crowd was thinning out. The young man at my left rose, and I rose also. We both stared thoughtfully at the hat-rack. There hung two hats: an opera-hat and a dilapidated old stovepipe. The young fellow reached up and, quite naturally, selected the opera-hat. He glanced into it, and immediately a wrinkle of annoyance darkened his brow. He held the hat toward me.
"Is this yours?" he asked.
I looked at the label.
"No." The wrinkle of annoyance sprang from his brow to mine. My opera-hat had cost me eight dollars.
The young fellow laughed rather lamely. "Do you live in New York?" he asked.
I nodded.
"So do I," he continued; "and yet it is evident that both of us have been neatly caught." He thought for a moment, then brightened. "I'll tell you what; let's match for the good one."
I gazed indignantly at the rusty stovepipe. "Done!" said I.
I lost; I knew that I should; and the young fellow walked off with the good hat. Then, with the relic in my hand, a waiter and myself began a systematic search. My hat was nowhere to be found. How the deuce was I to get up town to the club? I couldn't wear the old plug; I wasn't rich enough for such an eccentricity. I had nothing but a silk hat at the apartment, and I hated it because it was always in the way when I entered carriages and elevators.
Angrily, I strode up to the cashier's desk and explained the situation, leaving my address and the number of my apartment; my name wasn't necessary.
Troubles never come singly. Here I had lost my girl and my hat, to say nothing of my temper—of the three the most certain to be found again. I passed out of the café, bareheaded and hotheaded. I hailed a cab and climbed in. I had finally determined to return to my rooms and study. I simply could not afford to be seen with that stovepipe hat either on my head or under my arm. Had I been green from college it is probable that I should have worn it proudly and defiantly. But I had left college behind these six years.
Hang these old duffers who are so absent-minded! For I was confident that the benevolent old gentleman was the cause of all this confusion. Inside the cab I tried on the thing, just to get a picture in my mind of the old gentleman going it up Broadway with my opera-hat on his head. The hat sagged over my ears; and I laughed. The picture I had conjured up was too much for my anger, which vanished suddenly. And once I had laughed I felt a trifle more agreeable toward the world. So long as a man can see the funny side of things he has no active desire to leave life behind; and laughter does more to lighten his sorrows than sympathy, which only aggravates them.
After all, the old gentleman would feel the change more sharply than I. This was, in all probability, the only hat he had. I turned it over and scrutinized it. It was a genteel old beaver, with an air of respectability that was quite convincing. There was nothing smug about it, either. It suggested amiability in the man who had recently possessed it. It suggested also a mild contempt for public opinion, which is always a sign of superior mentality and advanced years. I began to draw a mental portrait of the old man. He was a family lawyer, doubtless, who lived in the past and hugged his retrospections. When we are young there is never any vanishing point to our day-dreams. Well, well! On the morrow he would have a new hat, of approved shape and pattern; unless, indeed, he possessed others like this which had fallen into my keeping. Perhaps he would soon discover his mistake, return to the café and untangle the snarl. I sincerely hoped he would. As I remarked, my hat had cost me eight dollars.
I soon arrived at my apartments, and got into a smoking-jacket. I rather delight in lolling around in a dress-shirt; it looks so like the pictures we see in the fashionable novels. I picked up Blackstone and turned to his "promissory notes." I had two or three out myself. It was nine o'clock when the hall-boy's bell rang, and I placed my ear to the tube. A gentleman wished to see me in regard to a lost hat.
"Send him up, James; send him up!" I bawled down the tube. Visions of the club returned, and I tossed Blackstone into a corner.
Presently there came a tap on the door, and I flung it wide. But my visitor was not the benevolent old gentleman. He was the Frenchman whose absinthe had offended me. He glanced at the slip of paper in his hand.
"I have zee honaire to address zee—ah—gentleman in numbaire six?"
"I live here."
"Delight'! We have meexed zee hats, I have zee r-r-regret. Ees thees your hat?" He held out, for my inspection, an opera-hat. "I am so absent-mind'—what you call deestrait?"—affably.
I took the hat, which at first glance I thought to be mine, and went over to the rack, taking down the old stovepipe.
"This is yours, then?" I said, smiling.
"Thousand thanks, m'sieu! Eet ees certain mine. I have zee honaire to beg pardon for zee confusion. My compliments! Good night!"
Without giving the hat a single glance, he clapped it on his head, bowed and disappeared, leaving me his card. He hadn't been gone two minutes when I discovered that the hat he had exchanged for the stovepipe was not mine. It came from the same firm, but the initials proved it without doubt to belong to the young fellow I had met at the table. I said some uncomplimentary things. Where the deuce was my hat? Evidently the benevolent old gentleman hadn't waked up yet.
Ting-a-ling! It was the boy's bell again.
"Well?"
"Another man after a hat. What's goin' on?"
"Send him up!" I yelled. It came over me that the Frenchman had made a second mistake.
I was not disappointed this time in my visitor. It was the benevolent old gentleman. Evidently he had not located his hat either, and might not for some time to come. I began to believe that I had given it to the Frenchman. He seemed terribly excited.
"You are the gentleman who occupies number six?"
"Yes, sir. This is my apartment. You have come in regard to a hat?"
"Yes, sir. My name is Chittenden. Our hats got mixed up at Martin's this evening; my fault, as usual. I am always doing something absurd, my memory is so bad. When I discovered my mistake I was calling on the family of a client with whom I had spent most of the afternoon. I missed some valuable papers, legal documents. I believed as usual that I had forgotten to take them with me. They were nowhere to be found at the house. My client has a very mischievous son, and it seems that he stuffed the papers behind the inside band of my hat. With them there was a letter. I have had two very great scares. A great deal of trouble would ensue if the papers were lost. I just telephoned that I had located the hat." He laughed pleasantly.
Good heavens! here was a howdy-do.
"My dear Mr. Chittenden, there has been a great confusion," I faltered. "I had your hat, but—but you have come too late."
"Too late?" he roared, or I should say, to be exact, shouted.
"Yes, sir."
"What have you done with it?"
"Not five minutes ago I gave it to a Frenchman, who seemed to recognize it as his. It was the Frenchman, if you will remember, who sat near your table in the café."
"And this hat isn't yours, then?"—helplessly.
"This" was a flat-brimmed hat of the Paris boulevards, the father of all stovepipe hats, dear to the Frenchman's heart.
"Candidly, now," said I with a bit of excusable impatience, "do I look like a man who would wear a hat like that?"
He surveyed me miserably through his eye-glasses.
"No, I can't say that you do. But what in the world am I to do?" He mopped his brow in the ecstasy of anguish. "The hat must be found. The legal papers could be replaced, but.... You see, sir, that boy put a private letter of his sister's in the band of that hat, and it must be recovered at all hazards."
"I am very sorry, sir."
"But what shall I do?"
"I do not see what can be done save for you to leave word at the café. The Frenchman is doubtless a frequenter, and may easily be found. If you had come a few moments sooner...."
With a gurgle of dismay he fled, leaving me with a half-finished sentence hanging on my lips and the Frenchman's chapeau hanging on my fingers. And my hat; where was my hat? (I may as well add here, in parenthesis, that the disappearance of my eight-dollar hat still remains a mystery. I have had to buy a new one.)
So the boy had put a letter of his sister's in the band of the hat, I mused. How like her kid brother! It seemed that more or less families had Toddy-One-Boys to look after. Pshaw! what a muddle because a man couldn't keep his thoughts from wool-gathering!
Well, here I had two hats, neither of which was mine. I could, at a pinch, wear the opera-hat, as it was the exact size of the one I had lost. But what was to be done with the Frenchman's?... Fool that I was! I rushed over to the table. The Frenchman had left his card, and I had forgotten all about it. And I hadn't asked the benevolent old gentleman where he lived. The Frenchman's card read: "M. de Beausire, No. — Washington Place." I decided to go myself to the address, state the matter to Monsieur de Beausire, and rescue the letter. I knew all about these Toddy-One-Boys, and I might be doing some girl a signal service.
I looked at my watch. It was closing on to ten. So I reluctantly got into my coat again, drew on a topcoat, and put on the hat that fitted me. Probably the girl had been writing some fortunate fellow a love-letter. No gentleman will ever overlook a chance to do a favor for a young girl in distress. I had scarcely drawn my stick from the umbrella-jar when the bell rang once again.
"Hello!" I called down the tube. Why couldn't they let me be?
"Lady wants to see you, sir."
"A lady!"
"Yes, sir. A real lady; l-a-d-y. She says she's come to see the gentleman in number six about a plug-hat. What's the graft, anyway?"
"A plug-hat!"
"Yes, sir; a plug-hat. She seems a bit anxious. Shall I send her up? She's a peach."
"Yes, send her up," I answered feebly enough.
And now there was a woman in the case! I wiped the perspiration from my brow and wondered what I should say to her. A woman.... By Jove! the sister of the mischievous boy! Old Chittenden must have told her where he had gone, and as he hasn't shown up, she's worried. It must be a tremendously important letter to cause all this hubbub. So I laid aside my hat and waited, tugging and gnawing at my mustache.... Had the Girl acted reasonably I shouldn't have gone to Martin's that night.
How easy it is for a woman to hurt the man she knows is in love with her! And the Girl had hurt me more than I was willing to confess even to myself. She had implied that I had carelessly broken an engagement.
Soon there came a gentle tapping. Certainly the young woman had abundant pluck. I approached the door quickly, and flung it open.
The Girl herself stood on the threshold, and we stared at each other with bewildered eyes!