CHAPTER VI.
COLLAPSE OF THE ROMANCE.
"B m--B m--B m--N--N--N--Oh! where are you, N? Where is the little girl atB m--B m--B m?"
Such were the sounds that greeted Nattie's ears, as she entered theoffice the morning after her adventure with the love-lorn Quimby; andimmediately she ceased to speculate on the probable embarrassment thatmust necessarily attend their not-to-be-avoided next meeting, andinterrupted "C's" solitary conversation, by saying,
"What is the matter with you this morning? Here I am, N."
"G. M., my dear. I'm off, and wanted to say good-by before I went,"responded "C."
"Off?" questioned Nattie, with a sudden fall in her mental temperature.
"Yes, I am going to a station five miles below to substitute, to-day.The operator there is obliged to go away, and couldn't find any onecompetent to do his work, and as there was a fellow that could do mine,he comes here and I go there."
"Oh, dear! what shall I do all day?" said Nattie, sinking into a chair,very much aggrieved.
"I am very sorry, but I couldn't well avoid accommodating him. But whatwill you do when I leave entirely, if you can't get along without me oneday? happy I, to be so necessary to your existence!"
"But there is no prospect of your leaving at present, is there?" askedNattie, forgetting in her alarm at such a possibility to challenge thelast of his remark.
"There is some probability of it now," "C" responded. "I will tell youall about it to-morrow. I may come nearer to you; near enough even foryou to see that twinkle."
"You don't mean you have a prospect of an office here in the city?"questioned Nattie, not knowing whether she would be glad or sorry ifsuch were the case.
"Not exactly," replied "C." "I haven't time to explain; train is coming,so--"
"Where did you say you were going to-day?" broke in Nattie quickly.
"B a--five miles down the line nearer you, but not on this wire. Used tobe, you know, but switched on wire number twenty-seven last week," "C"responded so hurriedly, that Nattie could hardly read it, although soaccustomed to his style of making his dots and dashes; for, with thekey, as with the pen, all operators have their own peculiar manner ofwriting.
"Ah, yes! I remember," responded Nattie quickly. "That hateful operatorsigning 'M' had it, that used to be fighting for the circuit always, andbreaking in when we were talking. I wouldn't have gone for him."
"Couldn't well avoid it. Here is train. Good-by; shall miss youterribly, but will be with you again to-morrow. Good-by."
"Good-by. I am lonesome already," Nattie answered.
As "C" made no reply, it was supposable he had gone, and probably had torun for the train, thought Nattie, as she took off her hat ratherdejectedly.
A broken companionship of any kind must ever leave a certain sense ofloneliness, and this was none the less true now on account of the uniquecircumstances. Indeed, until to-day she had not fully realized hownecessary "C" had become to her telegraphic life. Naturally, she hadwoven a sort of romance about him who was a friend "so near and yet sofar." Perhaps too, a certain yearning for tenderness in her lonelyheart, a feeling that every woman knows, found something, very pleasantin being always greeted with "Good morning, my dear," and hearing thelast thing at night, "Good night, little girl at B m."
Miss Kling undoubtedly would have been shocked at being thus addressedeven on the wire, by a strange person--a person certainly, althoughunseen; but Nattie, used to the license that distance gave, whetherwisely or unwisely, had never, thought it necessary to check thefamiliarity.
Pondering over what he had hinted about leaving permanently, in theleisure usually devoted to chatting with him, but which that day shehardly knew how to fill, Nattie wondered if, should they ever come faceto face, they would feel like the old friends they were, or if thenearness would bring a constraint now unknown? Yet she was fain toconfess she would like to see him and ascertain the personal appearanceof one who occupied so much of her thoughts. But how strange it wouldbe, if, after all their friendly talks and gay confidences, he shouldpass out of the way that was both their ways now, and they never knowanything more about each other than that one was "C" and one was "N!"something not impossible either, or even improbable; for fate is a sortof switch-board, and a slight move will switch two lives onto wires farasunder, even as the moving of a peg or two will alter everything on theboard that shows its power so little.
With such thoughts in her mind, Nattie was rather among the shadows thatday, and presented no laughing face to the curious passers-by, much tothat opposite clerk's relief, who came to the conclusion that she hadonce more recovered her senses.
About an hour before the time for closing the office, as she wascounting over her cash, and thinking how glad she was that "C" would beback to-morrow, she became conscious of some one waiting her attentionoutside, and went forward, scarcely looking at him, expecting, ofcourse, a message. But instead, the individual, who filled the air witha suffocating odor of musk, asked,
"You are the regular operator here, I suppose?"
With a start Nattie looked up, expecting a complaint, an occurrenceoften prefaced by some like question, and scrutinizing him moreparticularly, saw a short, rather stout young man, possessing an air ofcheap assurance, hair that insisted on being red, notwithstanding thebear's grease that covered it, teeth all at variance with each other,and seeming to rejoice obtrusively in the fact, and light blue eyes of amost insinuating expression, trimmed around with red.
"Yes," Nattie replied as she took this survey. "I am."
"You don't know me, I suppose?" was the next question.
"No," Nattie replied with a glance at the large mock diamond pin, andimmense imitation amethyst ring he wore; "I certainly do not."
"I think you are mistaken about that," he rejoined, smiling at her in amost unpleasantly familiar manner.
Surprised and offended, Nattie drew back haughtily. "I think, rather,you are mistaken," she said, stiffly. "May I inquire your business?"
With an air of easy confidence and familiar remonstrance, he replied,
"Come, now, don't freeze a fellow; why, I came to see you. That's mybusiness and no other!"
"He is drunk," thought Nattie, indignantly, but before she could replyhe added,
"I am an operator, you see."
"Oh!" said Nattie, comprehensively, but not at all delightedly, foroperator or no operator, and notwithstanding the sort of freemasonrybetween those of the craft, she preferred his room to his company. Butconstraining herself, she added as civilly as possible, "Did you wish tosend a message, or speak to any one on the wire?"
"No, thank you," he answered; then, with an insinuating smile,
"Can't you guess who I am?"
"I really can't," Nattie replied, coldly and indifferently; thinking,"some of the operators down town, I suppose, and a delightful set theyare if he is a specimen! So impertinent of him!"
"Can't you?" laughing and displaying his obtrusive teeth to their utmostadvantage. "Now just think of some one you have been buzzing lately, andthen guess, won't you, N?"
Without the least suspicion Nattie shook her head impatiently, feelingvery much disgusted, and longing for some interruption to occur. But hisnext words were startling. Leaning forward very confidentially, he askedwith a smile of consciousness,
"Do you see that twinkle, N?"
"What!" ejaculated Nattie--so forcibly that a passing countryman stoppedwith a peanut half cracked, to stare--and clutching at an umbrellahanging by her side, for support, she turned a horror-stricken face tothe questioner, who, looking as if he expected her to be enraptured,added,
"You know a fellow that signs 'C,' don't you?"
The bump of self-conceit must have largely overbalanced the perceptivefaculties of this obnoxious young man, if he could possibly mistake theexpression on Nattie's face for rapture, as, frantically grasping theumbrella, she gasped,
"No--no--it can't be--you are not--not--"
"Not C? Ain't I,
though!" laughed the proprietor of the ring, pin,bear's-grease, et cetera.
"But," said poor Nattie, clinging desperately to hope and the umbrella,"C said this morning he was going to B a--and--"
"That was a trick to take you by surprise," he interrupted, with greatenjoyment of his own words. "I knew I was coming here, all the time, butI wanted to give you a nice little surprise. Think I have, eh?" and helaughed again, and winked with almost vulgar assurance.
Nattie let go of hope and the umbrella, and collapsed with her romanceinto a chair; and she thought of Quimby's warning about the "soiledinvisible," and barely suppressed a groan. Involuntarily she stole aglance at this too-visible person, and shuddered. Could she reconcile"C," her visionary, interesting, witty and gentlemanly "C" of the wire,with this musk-scented being of greasy red hair, cheap jewelry andvulgar manners? Impossible!
"It is the nightmare! it cannot be!" she thought, with the despairingrefuge in dreams we often take when suddenly overwhelmed with terriblerealities.
As she made no reply to his last observation, her visitor, glancing ather as if slightly puzzled by her behavior, went on--
"I did not think you would be so bashful, after all our talks. _I_ amnot,"--a fact hardly necessary to mention. "We ought to be pretty goodfriends by this time. Say, do I look as you expected I would? and as ifto give her a better view, he pushed his hat back on his head, akindness wholly unappreciated, as Nattie had seen more than sufficientof him already.
"Not--not exactly!" she stammered, in a sort of dazed way.
"I believe you thought I was one of those slim fellows whose bonesrattle when they walk, didn't you? I am no such a fellow, you see. Butyou ain't a bit as I imagined. May I be a plug [1] forever if you are!"
[1] "Plug" is the common telegraphic expression for an incompetentoperartor.
Nattie was too wretched, too unable even yet to realize that her "C" andthis odious creature were one and the same, to ask, as he evidentlyexpected natural curiosity would induce her to do, in what way she sodiffered from the person of his imagination.
"You go beyond all my calculations," he continued, flatteringly, afterwaiting in vain for a question from her; "Only you are more bashful thanI supposed you would be, after the dots and dashes we have slung. Butthen it's easier to buzz on the wire than it is to talk, isn't it? Forall a fellow has to do is to take up a book or a paper, pick things outto say, and go it without exercising his own brains!"
At these words, that explained the previous incomprehensible differencebetween the distant "C" and present person, the realization of thecompanionship, the romance, the friendship gone to wreck on this reef ofmusk and bear's-grease came over Nattie with a rush, and for a momentso affected her that she could hardly restrain her tears. And yet, afterall, was not "C," _her_ "C," the "C" whom she knew by his conversationonly--"picked out of books!"--an unreal, intangible being, and not thisso different person who claimed his identity?
"I think we astonished some of them on the wire with all the stuff wehad over!" went on with his monologue the knight of the collapsedromance, who, not being troubled with fine sensibilities, had no idea ofthe feelings under which she was laboring.
"Yes--I--doubtless!" stammered Nattie, and turned very red, as, suddenlyremembering the tenor of some of what he so elegantly termed "stuff,"the appalling thought, what if he should say "my dear?" presented itselfin all its horrors, and the idea punished her for that girlishimprudence in allowing the familiarity from afar.
Evidently he noticed the access of color, and attributed it to his ownfascinations, for he smiled complacently as he said,
"I wish I had longer to stay with you, but my train goes in fiveminutes." Nattie breathed a sigh of relief. "Too bad, isn't it? But Iwill come again some time! By the way," a cunning expression that seemeduncalled-for crossing over his face, "don't say anything on the wireabout my being here to-day, will you? I don't want any one to know. Letthem think I was at B a."
"Certainly not!" replied Nattie, with an alacrity born of the knowledgethat she should hold no further communication of any kind with him;then, in order to give a hint of her intentions, she added, bracingherself up to mention what was so difficult to speak of to this vampirewho mocked her with her vanished "C."
"Now that the--the mystery is solved, and I--and we have met, I don'tthink there will be much amusement in talking over the wire."
Somewhat to her surprise, and not at all flattering to her vanity, heanswered, without a remonstrance,
"No! I don't know as there will!"
"Perhaps he doesn't like my looks any better than I do his!" wasNattie's natural and indignant thought at this quiet reception of herhint. And if anything had been necessary--which it certainly was not--toher utter repudiation of him, this would have sufficed for the purpose.
"You mentioned this morning you thought of leaving X n. Do you expect togo soon?" she asked, catching at the idea that a few hours ago hadcaused so much alarm, with a hope that he might be about to vanish fromher world finally and forever. But even as she spoke, the difference ofthe now and then smote her like a pain.
"Did I say that?" he said, with a look that she could not understand, asif for some secret reason, he was so well pleased with himself, he couldhardly avoid laughing outright. "Oh! well! I was only fooling!"
Nattie's face fell, but, catching at the opportunity to convey theimpression that in her opinion they had not been very friendly, afterall, she said,
"I suppose no one really means what they say on the wire. I am sure _I_ donot!"
"But we mean what we say now," he replied, with an insinuating smile."Next time I come we will be more sociable. But we've have had a nicetalk, ain't we?"
For a moment the repulsive person before her overcame the remembrance ofthe lost "C," and Nattie replied, sarcastically,
"I trust the talk has not been too much of an exercise for your brain!"
He looked at her doubtfully, and then laughed. "You are sort of a queergirl, ain't you? I wish though, I could stay and buzz you longer, but Ihave only time to get my train, so good-by."
"Good-by," said Nattie, betraying all her relief at his departure in thesudden animation of her voice, something so different from her precedingmanner that he could but notice it, and he turned, looked at her, as ifa suspicion of its true cause penetrated his mind at last, frowned, andthen with that former look she did not understand crossing his face,nodded and ran for the depot, coming into violent collision with a fatDutchman, looking perplexedly for a barber's shop. And thus the redhair, the bear's grease, the sham jewelry, and the obtrusive, fightingteeth disappeared forever from Nattie's sight, leaving her with abewildered look on her face, as if, indeed, just awakened from thatimagined nightmare.
She looked around the office blankly. Everything was there just asusual, the little key and the sounder, over which had come all "C's"pleasant talk. "C!" That creature! The odor of his detestable muskhovered about her even now, but not yet could she realize that her "C"was no more.