THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN(说服者)

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THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

THE MAKE-BELIEVE

MAN

By Richard Harding Davis

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

I had made up my mind that when my vacation came I would spend it

seeking adventures. I have always wished for adventures, but, though I

am old enough--I was twenty-five last October--and have always gone

half-way to meet them, adventures avoid me. Kinney says it is my fault.

He holds that if you want adventures you must go after them.

Kinney sits next to me at Joyce & Carboy's, the woollen manufacturers,

where I am a stenographer, and Kinney is a clerk, and we both have rooms

at Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house. Kinney is only a year older than myself,

but he is always meeting with adventures. At night, when I have sat up

late reading law, so that I may fit myself for court reporting, and in the

hope that some day I may become a member of the bar, he will knock at

my door and tell me some surprising thing that has just happened to him.

Sometimes he has followed a fire-engine and helped people from a fire-

escape, or he has pulled the shield off a policeman, or at the bar of the

Hotel Knickerbocker has made friends with a stranger, who turns out to be

no less than a nobleman or an actor. And women, especially beautiful

women, are always pursuing Kinney in taxicabs and calling upon him for

assistance. Just to look at Kinney, without knowing how clever he is at

getting people out of their difficulties, he does not appear to be a man to

whom you would turn in time of trouble. You would think women in

distress would appeal to some one bigger and stronger; would sooner ask a

policeman. But, on the contrary, it is to Kinney that women always run,

especially, as I have said, beautiful women. Nothing of the sort ever

happens to me. I suppose, as Kinney says, it is because he was born and

brought up in New York City and looks and acts like a New York man,

while I, until a year ago, have always lived at Fairport. Fairport is a very

pretty harbor, but it does not train one for adventures. We arranged to take

our vacation at the same time, and together. At least Kinney so arranged it.

I see a good deal of him, and in looking forward to my vacation, not the

least pleasant feature of it was that everything connected with Joyce &

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

Carboy and Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house would be left behind me. But

when Kinney proposed we should go together, I could not see how,

without being rude, I could refuse his company, and when he pointed out

that for an expedition in search of adventure I could not select a better

guide, I felt that he was right.

"Sometimes," he said, "I can see you don't believe that half the things I

tell you have happened to me, really have happened. Now, isn't that so?"

To find the answer that would not hurt his feelings I hesitated, but he

did not wait for my answer. He seldom does.

"Well," on this trip," he went on, "you will see Kinney on the job. You

won't have to take my word for it. You will see adventures walk up and

eat out of my hand."

Our vacation came on the first of September, but we began to plan for

it in April, and up to the night before we left New York we never ceased

planning. Our difficulty was that having been brought up at Fairport,

which is on the Sound, north of New London, I was homesick for a smell

of salt marshes and for the sight of water and ships. Though they were

only schooners carrying cement, I wanted to sit in the sun on the string-

piece of a wharf and watch them. I wanted to beat about the harbor in a

catboat, and feel the tug and pull of the tiller. Kinney protested that that

was no way to spend a vacation or to invite adventure. His face was set

against Fairport. The conversation of clam-diggers, he said, did not

appeal to him; and he complained that at Fairport our only chance of

adventure would be my capsizing the catboat or robbing a lobster-pot.

He insisted we should go to the mountains, where we would meet what he

always calls "our best people." In September, he explained, everybody

goes to the mountains to recuperate after the enervating atmosphere of the

sea-shore. To this I objected that the little sea air we had inhaled at Mrs.

Shaw's basement dining-room and in the subway need cause us no anxiety.

And so, along these lines, throughout the sleepless, sultry nights of June,

July, and August, we fought it out. There was not a summer resort within

five hundred miles of New York City we did not consider. From the

information bureaus and passenger agents of every railroad leaving New

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

York, Kinney procured a library of timetables, maps, folders, and

pamphlets, illustrated with the most attractive pictures of summer hotels,

golf links, tennis courts, and boat- houses. For two months he carried on

a correspondence with the proprietors of these hotels; and in comparing

the different prices they asked him for suites of rooms and sun parlors

derived constant satisfaction.

"The Outlook House," he would announce, "wants twenty-four dollars

a day for bedroom, parlor, and private bath. While for the same

accommodations the Carteret Arms asks only twenty. But the Carteret

has no tennis court; and then again, the Outlook has no garage, nor are

dogs allowed in the bedrooms."

As Kinney could not play lawn tennis, and as neither of us owned an

automobile or a dog, or twenty-four dollars, these details to me seemed

superfluous, but there was no health in pointing that out to Kinney.

Because, as he himself says, he has so vivid an imagination that what he

lacks he can "make believe" he has, and the pleasure of possession is his.

Kinney gives a great deal of thought to his clothes, and the question of

what he should wear on his vacation was upon his mind. When I said I

thought it was nothing to worry about, he snorted indignantly. "YOU

wouldn't!" he said. "If I'D been brought up in a catboat, and had a tan

like a red Indian, and hair like a Broadway blonde, I wouldn't worry either.

Mrs. Shaw says you look exactly like a British peer in disguise." I had

never seen a British peer, with or without his disguise, and I admit I was

interested.

"Why are the girls in this house," demanded Kinney, "always running

to your room to borrow matches? Because they admire your CLOTHES?

If they're crazy about clothes, why don't they come to ME for matches?"

"You are always out at night," I said.

"You know that's not the answer," he protested. "Why do the type-

writer girls at the office always go to YOU to sharpen their pencils and tell

them how to spell the hard words? Why do the girls in the lunch-rooms

serve you first? Because they're hypnotized by your clothes? Is THAT

it?"

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

"Do they?" I asked; "I hadn't noticed."

Kinney snorted and tossed up his arms. "He hadn't noticed!" he kept

repeating. "He hadn't noticed!" For his vacation Kinney bought a

second-hand suit-case. It was covered with labels of hotels in France and

Switzerland.

"Joe," I said, "if you carry that bag you will be a walking falsehood."

Kinney's name is Joseph Forbes Kinney; he dropped the Joseph

because he said it did not appear often enough in the Social Register, and

could be found only in the Old Testament, and he has asked me to call him

Forbes. Having first known him as "Joe," I occasionally forget.

"My name is NOT Joe," he said sternly, "and I have as much right to

carry a second-hand bag as a new one. The bag says IT has been to

Europe. It does not say that I have been there."

"But, you probably will," I pointed out, "and then some one who has

really visited those places--"

"Listen!" commanded Kinney. "If you want adventures you must be

somebody of importance. No one will go shares in an adventure with Joe

Kinney, a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk, the human adding machine, the

hall-room boy. But Forbes Kinney, Esq., with a bag from Europe, and a

Harvard ribbon round his hat--"

"Is that a Harvard ribbon round your hat?" I asked.

"It is!" declared Kinney; "and I have a Yale ribbon, and a Turf Club

ribbon, too. They come on hooks, and you hook 'em on to match your

clothes, or the company you keep. And, what's more," he continued, with

some heat, "I've borrowed a tennis racket and a golf bag full of sticks, and

you take care you don't give me away."

"I see," I returned, "that you are going to get us into a lot of trouble."

"I was thinking," said Kinney, looking at me rather doubtfully, "it might

help a lot if for the first week you acted as my secretary, and during the

second week I was your secretary."

Sometimes, when Mr. Joyce goes on a business trip, he takes me with

him as his private stenographer, and the change from office work is very

pleasant; but I could not see why I should spend one week of my holiday

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

writing letters for Kinney.

"You wouldn't write any letters," he explained. "But if I could tell

people you were my private secretary, it would naturally give me a certain

importance."

"If it will make you any happier," I said, "you can tell people I am a

British peer in disguise."

"There is no use in being nasty about it," protested Kinney. "I am

only trying to show you a way that would lead to adventure."

"It surely would!" I assented. "It would lead us to jail."

The last week in August came, and, as to where we were to go we still

were undecided, I suggested we leave it to chance.

"The first thing," I pointed out, "is to get away from this awful city.

The second thing is to get away cheaply. Let us write down the names of

the summer resorts to which we can travel by rail or by boat for two

dollars and put them in a hat. The name of the place we draw will be the

one for which we start Saturday afternoon. The idea," I urged, "is in

itself full of adventure."

Kinney agreed, but reluctantly. What chiefly disturbed him was the

thought that the places near New York to which one could travel for so

little money were not likely to be fashionable.

"I have a terrible fear," he declared, "that, with this limit of yours, we

will wake up in Asbury Park."

Friday night came and found us prepared for departure, and at

midnight we held our lottery. In a pillow-case we placed twenty slips of

paper, on each of which was written the name of a summer resort. Ten of

these places were selected by Kinney, and ten by myself. Kinney

dramatically rolled up his sleeve, and, plunging his bared arm into our

grab-bag, drew out a slip of paper and read aloud: "New Bedford, via New

Bedford Steamboat Line." The choice was one of mine.

"New Bedford!" shouted Kinney. His tone expressed the keenest

disappointment. "It's a mill town!" he exclaimed. "It's full of cotton

mills."

"That may be," I protested. "But it's also a most picturesque old

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN

seaport, one of the oldest in America. You can see whaling vessels at the

wharfs there, and wooden figure-heads, and harpoons--"

"Is this an expedition to dig up buried cities," interrupted Kinney, "or a

pleasure trip? I don't WANT to see harpoons! I wouldn't know a

harpoon if you stuck one into me. I prefer to see hatpins."

The Patience did not sail until six o'clock, but we were so anxious to

put New York behind us that at five we were on board. Our cabin was an

outside one with two berths. After placing our suit-cases in it, we

collected camp-chairs and settled ourselves in a cool place on the boat

deck. Kinney had bought all the afternoon papers, and, as later I had

reason to remember, was greatly interested over the fact that the young

Earl of Ivy had at last arrived in this country. For some weeks the papers

had been giving more space than seemed necessary to that young Irishman

and to the young lady he was coming over to marry. There had been

pictures of his different country houses, pictures of himself; in uniform, in

the robes he wore at the coronation, on a polo pony, as Master of Fox-

hounds. And there had been pictures of Miss Aldrich, and of HER

country places at Newport and on the Hudson. From the afternoon

papers Kinney learned that, having sailed under his family name of

Meehan, the young man and Lady Moya, his sister, had that morning

landed in New York, but before the reporters had discovered them, had

escaped from the wharf and disappeared.

"'Inquiries at the different hotels,'" read Kinney impressively, "'failed

to establish the whereabouts of his lordship and Lady Moya, and it is

believed they at once left by train for Newport.'"

With awe Kinney pointed at the red funnels of the Mauretania.

"There is the boat that brought them to America," he said. "I see," he

added, "that in this picture of him playing golf he wears one of those knit

jackets the Eiselbaum has just marked down to three dollars and seventy-

five cents. I wish--" he added regretfully.

"You can get one at New Bedford," I suggested.

"I wish," he continued, "we had gone to Newport. All of our BEST

people will be there for the wedding. It is the most important social

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THEMAKE-BELIEVEMAN1THEMAKE-BELIEVEMANByRichardHardingDavisTHEMAKE-BELIEVEMAN2IIhadmadeupmymindthatwhenmyvacationcameIwouldspenditseekingadventures.Ihavealwayswishedforadventures,but,thoughIamoldenough--Iwastwenty-fivelastOctober--andhavealwaysgonehalf-waytomeetthem,adventuresavoidme.Kinneysaysitismy...

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