Chapter IV (2)

“What!” she cried, and flourished her hand at him across the table. “Look at it! It’s platinum, yes; but look at the stone in it, about the size of a pinhead, so’s I’m ashamed to wear it when any of my friends see me! A hundred and sixteen dollars is what this magnificent ring cost you, and how long did I have to beg before I got even that little out of you? And it’s the best thing I own and the only thing I ever did get out of you!”

“Oh, Lordy!” he moaned.

“I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis looking at this ring to-day,” she said, with a desolate laugh. “He happened to notice it, and I saw him keep glancing at it, and I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis’s expression!”

Collinson’s own expression became noticeable upon her introduction of this name; he stared at her gravely until he completed the mastication of one of the indigestibles she had set before him; then he put down his fork and said:

“So you saw Charlie Loomis again to-day. Where?”

“Oh, my!” she sighed. “Have we got to go over all that again?”

“Over all what?”

“Over all the fuss you made the last time I mentioned Charlie’s name. I thought we settled it you were going to be a little more sensible about him.”

“Yes,” Collinson returned. “_I_ was going to be more sensible about him, because _you_ were going to be more sensible about him. Wasn’t that the agreement?”

She gave him a hard glance, tossed her head so that the curls of her bobbed hair fluttered prettily, and with satiric mimicry repeated his question. “‘Agreement’! Wasn’t that the agreement! Oh, my, but you do make me tired, talking about ‘agreements’! As if it was a crime my going to a vaudeville matinée with a man kind enough to notice that my husband never takes me anywhere!”

“Did you go to a vaudeville with him to-day?”

“No, I didn’t!” she said. “I was talking about the time when you made such a fuss. I didn’t go anywhere with him to-day.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Collinson said. “I wouldn’t have stood for it.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t?” she cried, and added a shrill laugh as further comment. “You ‘wouldn’t have stood for it’!”

“Never mind,” he returned doggedly. “We went over all that the last time, and you understand me: I’ll have no more foolishness about Charlie Loomis.”

“How nice of you! He’s a friend of yours; you go with him yourself; but your wife mustn’t even look at him, just because he happens to be the one man that amuses her a little. That’s fine!”

“Never mind,” Collinson said again. “You say you saw him to-day. I want to know where.”

“Suppose I don’t choose to tell you.”

“You’d better tell me, I think.”

“Do you? I’ve got to answer for every minute of my day, have I?”

“I want to know where you saw Charlie Loomis.”

She tossed her curls again, and laughed. “Isn’t it funny!” she said. “Just because I like a man, he’s the one person I can’t have anything to do with! Just because he’s kind and jolly and amusing, and I like his jokes and his thoughtfulness toward a woman when he’s with her, I’m not to be allowed to see him at all! But my _husband_--oh, that’s entirely different! _He_ can go out with Charlie whenever he likes and have a good time, while I stay home and wash the dishes! Oh, it’s a lovely life!”

“Where did you see him to-day?”

Instead of answering his question, she looked at him plaintively and allowed tears to shine along her lower eyelids. “Why do you treat me like this?” she asked in a feeble voice. “Why can’t I have a man friend if I want to? I do like Charlie Loomis. I do like him----”

“Yes! That’s what I noticed!”

“Well, but what’s the good of always insulting me about him? He has time on his hands of afternoons, and so have I. Our janitor’s wife is crazy about the baby and just adores to have me leave her in their flat--the longer the better. Why shouldn’t I go to a matinée or a picture show sometimes with Charlie? Why should I just have to sit around instead of going out and having a nice time, when he wants me to?”

“I want to know where you saw him to-day!”

Mrs. Collinson jumped up. “You make me sick!” she said, and began to clear away the dishes.

“I want to know where----”

“Oh, hush up!” she cried. “He came here to leave a note for you.”

“Oh,” said her husband. “I beg your pardon. That’s different.”

“How sweet of you!”

“Where’s the note, please?”

She took it from her pocket and tossed it to him. “So long as it’s a note for _you_ it’s all right, of course,” she said. “I wonder what you’d do if he’d written one to me!”

“Never mind,” said Collinson, and read the note.

DEAR COLLIE: Dave and Smithie and Old Bill and Sammy Hoag and maybe
Steinie and Sol are coming over to the shack about eight-thirty.
Home brew and the old pastime. _You_ know! Don’t fail.

CHARLIE.

“You’ve read this of course,” Collinson said. “The envelope wasn’t sealed.”

“I have not,” his wife returned, covering the prevarication with a cold dignity. “I’m not in the habit of reading other people’s correspondence, thank you! I suppose you think I do so because you’d never hesitate to read any note _I_ got; but I don’t do everything you do, you see!”

“Well, you can read it now,” he said, and gave her the note.

Her eyes swept the writing briefly, and she made a sound of wonderment, as if amazed to find herself so true a prophet. “And the words weren’t more than out of my mouth! _You_ can go and have a grand party right in his flat, while your wife stays home and gets the baby to bed and washes the dishes!”

“I’m not going.”

“Oh, no!” she said mockingly. “I suppose not! I see you missing one of Charlie’s stag parties!”

“I’ll miss this one.”

But it was not to Mrs. Collinson’s purpose that he should miss the party; she wished him to be as intimate as possible with the debonair Charlie Loomis; and so, after carrying some dishes into the kitchenette in meditative silence, she reappeared with a changed manner. She went to her husband, gave him a shy little pat on the shoulder and laughed good-naturedly. “Of course you’ll go,” she said. “I do think you’re silly about my never going out with him when it would give me a little innocent pleasure and when you’re not home to take me, yourself; but I wasn’t really in such terrible earnest, all I said. You work hard the whole time, honey, and the only pleasure you ever do have, it’s when you get a chance to go to one of these little penny-ante stag parties. You haven’t been to one for ever so long, and you never stay after twelve; it’s really all right with me. I want you to go.”

“Oh, no,” said Collinson. “It’s only penny-ante, but I couldn’t afford to lose anything at all.”

“If you did lose, it’d only be a few cents,” she said. “What’s the difference, if it gives you a little fun? You’ll work all the better if you go out and enjoy yourself once in a while.”

“Well, if you really look at it that way, I’ll go.”

“That’s right, dear,” she said, smiling. “Better put on a fresh collar and your other suit, hadn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” he assented, and began to make the changes she suggested.

When he had completed his toilet, it was time for him to go. She came in from the kitchenette, kissed him, and then looked up into his eyes, letting him see a fond and brightly amiable expression.

“There, honey,” she said. “Run along and have a nice time. Then maybe you’ll be a little more sensible about some of _my_ little pleasures.”

He held the one hundred dollar bill folded in his hand, meaning to leave it with her, but as she spoke a sudden recurrence of suspicion made him forget his purpose. “Look here,” he said. “I’m not making any bargain with you. You talk as if you thought I was going to let you run around to vaudevilles with Charlie because you let me go to this party. Is that your idea?”

It was, indeed, precisely Mrs. Collinson’s idea, and she was instantly angered enough to admit it in her retort. “Oh, aren’t you _mean_!” she cried. “I might know better than to look for any fairness in a man like you!”

“See here----”

“Oh, hush up!” she said. “Shame on you! Go on to your party!” With that she put both hands upon his breast, and pushed him toward the door.

“I won’t go. I’ll stay here.”

“You will, too, go!” she cried, shrewishly. “_I_ don’t want to look at you around here all evening. It’d make me sick to look at a man without an ounce of fairness in his whole mean little body!”

“All right,” said Collinson, violently, “I _will_ go!”

“Yes! Get out of my sight!”

And he did, taking the one hundred dollar bill with him, to the penny-ante poker party.

The gay Mr. Charlie Loomis called his apartment “the shack” in jocular depreciation of its beauty and luxury, but he regarded it as a perfect thing, and in one way it was: for it was perfectly in the family likeness of a thousand such “shacks.” It had a ceiling with false beams, walls of green burlap, spotted with coloured “coaching prints,” brown shelves supporting pewter plates and mugs, “mission” chairs, a leather couch with violet cushions, silver-framed photographs of lady friends and officer friends, a drop light of pink-shot imitation alabaster, a papier-mâché skull tobacco jar among moving-picture magazines on the round card table; and, of course, the final Charlie Loomis touch--a Japanese manservant.

The master of all this was one of those neat, stoutish young men with fat, round heads, sleek, fair hair, immaculate, pale complexions, and infirm little pink mouths--in fact, he was of the type that may suggest to the student of resemblances a fastidious and excessively clean white pig with transparent ears. Nevertheless, Charlie Loomis was of a free-handed habit in some matters, being particularly indulgent to pretty women and their children. He spoke of the latter as “the kiddies,” of course, and liked to call their mothers “kiddo,” or “girlie.” One of his greatest pleasures was to tell a woman that she was “the dearest, bravest little girlie in the world.” Naturally he was a welcome guest in many households, and would often bring a really magnificent toy to the child of some friend whose wife he was courting. Moreover, at thirty-three, he had already done well enough in business to take things easily, and he liked to give these little card parties, not for gain, but for pastime. He was cautious and disliked high stakes in a game of chance.

“I don’t consider it hospitality to have any man go out o’ my shack sore,” he was wont to say. “Myself, I’m a bachelor and got no obligations; I’ll shoot any man that can afford it for anything he wants to. Trouble is, you never can tell when a man _can’t_ afford it or what harm his losin’ might mean to the little girlie at home and the kiddies. No, boys, penny-ante and ten-cent limit is the highest we go in this ole shack. Penny-ante and a few steins of the ole home-brew that hasn’t got a divorce in a barrel of it!”

Penny-ante and the ole home-brew had been in festal operation for half an hour when the morose Collinson arrived this evening. Mr. Loomis and his guests sat about the round table under the alabaster drop light; their coats were off; cigars were worn at the deliberative poker angle; colourful chips and cards glistened on the cloth; one of the players wore a green shade over his eyes; and all in all, here was a little poker party for a lithograph.

“Ole Collie, b’gosh!” Mr. Loomis shouted, humorously. “Here’s your vacant cheer; stack all stuck out for you ’n’ ever’thin’! Set daown, neighbour, an’ Smithie’ll deal you in, next hand. What made you so late? Helpin’ the little girlie at home get the kiddy to bed? That’s a great kiddy of yours, Collie.”

Collinson took the chair that had been left for him, counted his chips and then as the playing of a “hand” still preoccupied three of the company, he picked up a silver dollar that lay upon the table near him. “What’s this?” he asked. “A side bet? Or did somebody just leave it here for me?”

“Yes; for you to look at,” Mr. Loomis explained. “It’s Smithie’s.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothin’. Smithie was just showin’ it to us. Look at it.”

Collinson turned the coin over and saw a tiny inscription that had been lined into the silver with a point of steel. “Luck,” he read--“Luck hurry back to me!” Then he spoke to the owner of this marked dollar. “I suppose you put that on there, Smithie, to help make sure of getting our money to-night.”

But Smithie shook his head, which was a large, gaunt head, as it happened--a head fronted with a sallow face shaped much like a coffin, but inconsistently genial in expression. “No,” he said. “It just came in over my counter this afternoon, and I noticed it when I was checkin’ up the day’s cash. Funny, ain’t it: ‘Luck hurry back to me!’”

“Who do you suppose marked that on it?” Collinson said thoughtfully.

“Golly!” his host exclaimed. “It won’t do you much good to wonder about that!”

Collinson frowned, continuing to stare at the marked dollar. “I guess not, but really I should like to know.”

“I would, too,” Smithie said. “I been thinkin’ about it. Might ’a’ been somebody in Seattle or somebody in Ipswich, Mass., or New Orleans or St. Paul. How you goin’ to tell? It’s funny how some people like to believe luck depends on some little thing like that.”

“Yes, it is,” Collinson assented, still brooding over the coin.

The philosophic Smithie extended his arm across the table collecting the cards to deal them, for the “hand” was finished. “Yes, sir, it’s funny,” he repeated. “Nobody knows exactly what luck is, but the way I guess it out, it lays in a man’s _believin’_ he’s in luck, and some little object like this makes him kind of concentrate his mind on thinkin’ he’s goin’ to be lucky, because of course you often _know_ you’re goin’ to win, and then you do win. You don’t win when you _want_ to win, or when you need to; you win when you believe you’ll win. I don’t know who it was that said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil’; but I guess he didn’t have _too_ much sense! I suppose if some man killed some other man for a dollar, the poor fish that said that would let the man out and send the dollar to the chair----”

But here this garrulous and discursive guest was interrupted by immoderate protests from several of his colleagues. “Cut it out!” “My Lord!” “_Do_ something!” “Smith_ie_! Are you ever goin’ to _deal_?”

“I’m goin’ to shuffle first,” he responded, suiting the action to the word, though with deliberation, and at the same time continuing his discourse. “It’s a mighty interesting thing, a piece o’ money. You take this dollar, now: Who’s it belonged to? Where’s it been? What different kind o’ funny things has it been spent for sometimes? What funny kind of secrets do you suppose it could ’a’ heard if it had ears? Good people have had it and bad people have had it: why, a dollar could tell more about the human race--why, it could tell _all_ about it!”

“I guess it couldn’t tell all about the way you’re dealin’ those cards,” said the man with the green shade. “You’re mixin’ things all up.”

“I’ll straighten ’em all out then,” said Smithie cheerfully. “They say, ‘Money talks.’ Golly! If it _could_ talk, what couldn’t it tell? _No_body’d be safe. _I_ got this dollar now, but who’s it goin’ to belong to next, and what’ll _he_ do with it? And then after _that_! Why, for years and years and years, it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. We all _want_ money; but some say it’s a bad thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. Lordy! Goodness or badness, I’ll take all anybody----”

He was interrupted again, and with increased vehemence. Collinson, who sat next to him, complied with the demand to “ante up,” then placed the dollar near his little cylinder of chips, and looked at his cards. They proved unencouraging, and he turned to his neighbour. “I’d sort of like to have that marked dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper dollar and a nickel for it.”

But Smithie laughed, shook his head and slid the coin over toward his own chips. “No, sir. I’m goin’ to keep it--awhile, anyway.”

“So you do think it’ll bring you luck, after all!”

“No. But I’ll hold on to it for this evening, anyhow.”

“Not if we clean you out, you won’t,” said Charlie Loomis. “You know the rules o’ the old shack: only cash goes in _this_ game; no I. O. U. stuff ever went here or ever will. Tell you what I’ll do, though, before you lose it: I’ll give you a dollar and a quarter for your ole silver dollar, Smithie.”

“Oh, you want it, too, do you? I guess I can spot what sort of luck _you_ want it for, Charlie.”

“Well, Mr. Bones, what sort of luck do I want it for?”

“_You_ win, Smithie,” one of the other players said. “We all know what sort o’ luck ole Charlie wants your dollar for: he wants it for luck with the dames.”

“Well, I might,” Charlie admitted not displeased. “I haven’t been so lucky that way lately--not so dog-_gone_ lucky!”

All of his guests, except one, laughed at this; but Collinson frowned, still staring at the marked dollar. For a reason he could not have put into words just then, it began to seem almost vitally important to him to own this coin if he could, and to prevent Charlie Loomis from getting possession of it. The jibe, “He wants it for luck with the dames,” rankled in Collinson’s mind: somehow it seemed to refer to his wife.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll bet two dollars against that dollar of yours that I hold a higher hand next deal than you do.”

“Here! Here!” Charlie remonstrated. “Shack rules! Ten-cent limit.”

“That’s only for the game,” Collinson said, turning upon his host with a sudden sharpness. “This is an outside bet between Smithie and me. Will you do it, Smithie? Where’s your sporting spirit?”

So liberal a proposal at once roused the spirit to which it appealed. “Well, I might, if some o’ the others’ll come in, too, and make it really worth my while.”

“I’m in,” the host responded with prompt inconsistency; and others of the party, it appeared, were desirous of owning the talisman. They laughed and said it was “crazy stuff,” yet they all “came in,” and, for the first time in the history of this “shack,” what Mr. Loomis called “real money,” was seen upon the table as a stake. It was won, and the silver dollar with it, by the largest and oldest of the gamesters, a fat man with a walrus moustache that inevitably made him known in this circle as “Old Bill.” He smiled condescendingly, and would have put the dollar in his pocket with the “real money,” but Mr. Loomis protested.

“Here! What you doin’?” he shouted, catching Old Bill by the arm. “Put that dollar back on the table.”

“What for?”

“What _for_? Why, we’re goin’ to play for it again. Here’s two dollars against it I beat you on the next hand.”

“No,” said Old Billy calmly. “It’s worth more than two dollars to me. It’s worth five.”

“Well, five then,” his host returned. “I want that dollar!” “So do I,” said Collinson. “I’ll put in five dollars if you do.”

“Anybody else in?” Old Bill inquired, dropping the coin on the table; and all of the others again “came in.” Old Bill won again; but once more Charlie Loomis prevented him from putting the silver dollar in his pocket.

“Come on now!” Mr. Loomis exclaimed. “Anybody else but me in on this for five dollars next time?”

“I am,” said Collinson, swallowing with a dry throat; and he set forth all that remained to him of his twelve dollars. In return he received a pair of deuces, and the jubilant Charlie won.

He was vainglorious in his triumph. “Didn’t that little luck piece just keep on tryin’ to find the right man?” he cried, and read the inscription loudly. “‘Luck hurry back to me!’ Righto! You’re home where you belong, girlie! Now we’ll settle down to our reg’lar little game again.”

“Oh, no,” said Old Bill. “You wouldn’t let me keep it. Put it out there and play for it again.”

“I won’t. She’s mine now.”

“I want my luck piece back myself,” said Smithie. “Put it out and play for it. You made Old Bill.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Yes, you will,” Collinson said, and he spoke without geniality. “You put it out there.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” Mr. Loomis returned mockingly. “I will for ten dollars.”

“Not I,” said Old Bill. “Five is foolish enough.” And Smithie agreed with him. “Nor me!”

“All right, then. If you’re afraid of ten, I keep it. I thought the ten’d scare you.”

“Put that dollar on the table,” Collinson said. “I’ll put ten against it.”

There was a little commotion among these mild gamesters; and someone said: “You’re crazy, Collie. What do you want to do that for?”

“I don’t care,” said Collinson. “That dollar’s already cost me enough, and I’m going after it.”

“Well, you see, I want it, too,” Charlie Loomis retorted cheerfully; and he appealed to the others. “I’m not askin’ him to put up ten against it, am I?”

“Maybe not,” Old Bill assented. “But how long is this thing goin’ to keep on? It’s already balled our game all up, and if we keep on foolin’ with these side bets, why, what’s the use?”

“My goodness!” the host exclaimed. “_I’m_ not pushin’ this thing, am I? _I_ don’t want to risk my good old luck piece, do I? It’s Collie that’s crazy to go on, ain’t it?” He laughed. “He hasn’t showed his money yet, though, I notice, and this old shack is run on strickly cash principles. I don’t believe he’s got ten dollars more on him!”

“Oh, yes, I have.”

“Let’s see it then.”

Collinson’s nostrils distended a little, but he said nothing, fumbled in his pocket, and then tossed the one hundred dollar bill, rather crumpled, upon the table.

“Great heavens!” shouted Old Bill. “Call the doctor: I’m all of a swoon!”

“Look at what’s spilled over our nice clean table!” another said, in an awed voice. “Did you claim he didn’t have _ten_ on him, Charlie?”

“Well, it’s nice to look at,” Smithie observed. “But I’m with Old Bill. How long are you two goin’ to keep this thing goin’? If Collie wins the luck piece I suppose Charlie’ll bet him fifteen against it, and then----”

“No, I won’t,” Charlie interrupted. “Ten’s the limit.”

“Goin’ to keep on bettin’ ten against it all night?”

“No,” said Charlie. “I tell you what I’ll do with you, Collinson; we both of us seem kind o’ set on this luck piece, and you’re already out some on it. I’ll give you a square chance at it and at catchin’ even. It’s twenty minutes after nine. I’ll keep on these side bets with you till ten o’clock, but when my clock hits ten, we’re through, and the one that’s got it then keeps it, and no more foolin’. You want to do that, or quit now? I’m game either way.”

“Go ahead and deal,” said Collinson. “Whichever one of us has it at ten o’clock, it’s his, and we quit!”

But when the little clock on Charlie’s green painted mantel-shelf struck ten, the luck piece was Charlie’s and with it an overwhelming lien on the one hundred dollar bill. He put both in his pocket. “Remember this ain’t my fault; it was you that insisted,” he said, and handed Collinson four five-dollar bills as change.

Old Bill, platonically interested, discovered that his cigar was sparkless, applied a match, and casually set forth his opinion. “Well, I guess that was about as poor a way of spendin’ eighty dollars as I ever saw, but it all goes to show there’s truth in the old motto that anything at all can happen in any poker game! That was a mighty nice hundred dollar bill you had on you, Collie; but it’s like what Smithie said: a piece o’ money goes hoppin’ around from one person to another--it don’t care!--and yours has gone and hopped to Charlie. The question is: Who’s it goin’ to hop to next?” He paused to laugh, glanced over the cards that had been dealt him, and concluded: “My guess is ’t some good-lookin’ woman’ll prob’ly get a pretty fair chunk o’ that hundred dollar bill out o’ Charlie. Well, let’s settle down to the ole army game.”

They settled down to it, and by twelve o’clock (the invariable closing hour of these pastimes in the old shack) Collinson had lost four dollars and thirty cents more. He was commiserated by his fellow gamesters as they put on their coats and overcoats, preparing to leave the hot little rooms. They shook their heads, laughed ruefully in sympathy, and told him he oughtn’t to carry hundred dollar bills upon his person when he went out among friends. Old Bill made what is sometimes called an unfortunate remark.

“Don’t worry about Collie,” he said, jocosely. “That hundred dollar bill prob’ly belonged to some rich client of his.”

“What!” Collinson said, staring.

“Never mind, Collie; I wasn’t in earnest,” the joker explained. “Of course I didn’t mean it.”

“Well, you oughtn’t to say it,” Collinson protested. “People say a thing like that about a man in a joking way, but other people hear it sometimes and don’t know they’re joking, and a story gets started.”

“My goodness, but you’re serious!” Old Bill exclaimed. “You look like you had a misery in your chest, as the rubes say; and I don’t blame you! Get on out in the fresh night air and you’ll feel better.”

He was mistaken, however; the night air failed to improve Collinson’s spirits as he walked home alone through the dark and chilly streets. There was, indeed, a misery in his chest, where stirred a sensation vaguely nauseating; his hands were tremulous and his knees infirm as he walked. In his mind was a confusion of pictures and sounds, echoes from Charlie Loomis’s shack: he could not clear his mind’s eye of the one hundred dollar bill; and its likeness, as it lay crumpled on the green cloth under the drop light, haunted and hurt him as a face in a coffin haunts and hurts the new mourner.

It seemed to Collinson then that money was the root of all evil and the root of all good, the root and branch of all life, indeed. With money, his wife would have been amiable, not needing gay bachelors to take her to vaudevilles. Her need of money was the true foundation of the jealousy that had sent him out morose and reckless to-night; of the jealousy that had made it seem, when he gambled with Charlie Loomis for the luck dollar, as though they really gambled for luck with her.

It still seemed to him that they had gambled for luck with her, and Charlie had won it. But as Collinson plodded homeward in the chilly midnight, his shoulders sagging and his head drooping, he began to wonder how he could have risked money that belonged to another man. What on earth had made him do what he had done? Was it the mood his wife had set him in as he went out that evening? No; he had gone out feeling like that often enough, and nothing had happened.

Something had brought this trouble on him, he thought; for it appeared to Collinson that he had been an automaton, having nothing to do with his own actions. He must bear the responsibility for them; but he had not willed them. If the one hundred dollar bill had not happened to be in his pocket---- That was it! And at the thought he mumbled desolately to himself: “I’d been all right if it hadn’t been for that.” If the one hundred dollar bill had not happened to be in his pocket, he’d have been “all right.” The one hundred dollar bill had done this to him. And Smithie’s romancing again came back to him: “In one person’s hands money’ll do good, likely; in another’s it’ll do harm.” It was the money that did harm or good, not the person; and the money in his hands had done this harm to himself.

He had to deliver a hundred dollars at the office in the morning, somehow; for he dared not take the risk of the client’s meeting the debtor.

There was a balance of seventeen dollars in his bank, and he could pawn his watch for twenty-five, as he knew well enough, by experience. That would leave fifty-eight dollars to be paid, and there was only one way to get it. His wife would have to let him pawn her ring. She’d _have_ to!

Without any difficulty he could guess what she would say and do when he told her of his necessity: and he knew that never in her life would she forego the advantage over him she would gain from it. He knew, too, what stipulations she would make, and he had to face the fact that he was in no position to reject them. The one hundred dollar bill had cost him the last vestiges of mastery in his own house; and Charlie Loomis had really won not only the bill and the luck, but the privilege of taking Collinson’s wife to vaudevilles. And it all came back to the same conclusion: The one hundred dollar bill had done it to him. “What kind of a thing _is_ this life?” Collinson mumbled to himself, finding matters wholly perplexing in a world made into tragedy at the caprice of a little oblong slip of paper.

Then, as he went on his way to wake his wife and face her with the soothing proposal to pawn her ring early the next morning, something happened to Collinson. Of itself the thing that happened was nothing, but he was aware of his folly as if it stood upon a mountain top against the sun--and so he gathered knowledge of himself and a little of the wisdom that is called better than happiness.

His way was now the same as upon the latter stretch of his walk home from the office that evening. The smoke fog had cleared, and the air was clean with a night wind that moved briskly from the west; in all the long street there was only one window lighted, but it was sharply outlined now, and fell as a bright rhomboid upon the pavement before Collinson. When he came to it he paused, at the hint of an inward impulse he did not think to trace; and, frowning, he perceived that this was the same shop window that had detained him on his homeward way, when he had thought of buying a toy for the baby.

The toy was still there in the bright window: the gay little acrobatic monkey that would climb up or down a red string as the string slacked or straightened; but Collinson’s eye fixed itself upon the card marked with the price: “35 cents.”

He stared and stared. “Thirty-five cents!” he said to himself. “Thirty-five cents!”

Then suddenly he burst into loud and prolonged laughter.

The sound was startling in the quiet night, and roused the interest of a meditative policeman who stood in the darkened doorway of the next shop. He stepped out, not unfriendly.

“What _you_ havin’ such a good time over, this hour o’ the night?” he inquired. “What’s all the joke?”

Collinson pointed to the window. “It’s that monkey on the string,” he said. “Something about it struck me as mighty funny!”

So, with a better spirit, he turned away, still laughing, and went home to face his wife.

NICE NEIGHBOURS

BY MARY S. WATTS

From _Harper’s_

Guiding the possible tenant about the house, Miss Wilcox pointed out its desirable features in a dry little monotone that gave no hint, she hoped, of her inward taut anxiety. She could not have achieved the persuasive enthusiasm of the young man from the real-estate office even if she had thought it becoming to a gentlewoman. Apparently he could see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; there was something abnormal about his incapacities; he was magnificent, but at moments Miss Martha feared that he was not strictly conscientious. And besides, to what end shutting his eyes and thereby perhaps influencing others to shut theirs against unhappy facts? Truth will out. The house _was_ old; the floors _did_ need refinishing: the front-parlour fireplace _did_ smoke----

“Them ceilings sure are high!” ejaculated the possible tenant, cocking a measuring eye heavenward.

“Y-yes, they _are_ high,” Miss Martha admitted helplessly. At this familiar--and perfectly just--criticism the agent always burst into flaming eulogies of high ceilings. Just the thing for our summer climate, our super-heated furnaces in winter! Tell you, the old-timers knew how to build for comfort! Miss Martha shrank from conjecturing what he said when ceilings were low. This whole experience illuminated depressingly the practice current in what it was the modern shibboleth to call “big business,” she thought.

“Well, eight-five per is a whole lotta money,” said the possible tenant. She gazed round indifferently as they stepped out on the little side porch; then all at once her expression altered with surprise and interest. She clutched Miss Wilcox’s arm, holding her back with an energetic whisper of warning. “Sh-h! See that bird? See him? Washing himself in that old pedestal washstand somebody’s left out there? If that ain’t the cutest thing! He’s just sloshin’ right in like a person, you ’r I ’r anybody. Like it was put there just on purpose for him!”

“Why, it was. It’s a birds’ bath, you know,” said Miss Martha, somewhat startled, fumbling for her eyeglasses; the pretty spectacle was no novelty to her, yet it never lost its charm. “Oh, that’s one of the thrushes. They must have a nest somewhere near----”

“Sh-h!” the other interrupted peremptorily. “There’s another one goin’ in!” She tiptoed to the edge of the porch and stood there entranced, following the movements of the birds, a vague smile irradiating her worn, sharpened, insignificant features. The shoving and spattering and small outcry finally subsided, the last robin hopped out, spinning the moisture from his feathers with quick wings; and she turned away reluctantly, drawing a long breath in childishly frank delight. “What d’you know about that, huh? I wouldn’ta believed they’d do that, take a bath that way. You couldn’ta _made_ me believe it? I don’t know much about ’em, but I always _have_ liked ’em. Birds, I mean, and--well, dogs and all kinds of regular pets, you know. I always did like ’em. Say, you got your grounds fixed up real nice, ain’t you? I like flowers, too.”

She went down the steps, and Miss Wilcox trailed after, resigned to seeing the garden butchered to make a possible tenant’s holiday; but the visitor moved about carefully, without offering to pluck or mishandle, and paused at last in the middle of the tidy plot, surveying its beds and borders with full appreciation. Then she wheeled to appraise again the mid-Victorian house whose stark tastelessness and characterlessness no garden setting could relieve; and Miss Martha’s heart sank.

“The neighbourhood’s very nice,” she murmured desperately; this ladylike insinuation went to the limits of propriety in salesmanship according to Miss Martha’s code. “So--so _permanent_. The church on the corner and the parsonage next door. It will always be nice. Everybody likes it so much on that account--that is----” She could get no farther, overcome by a hideous sense of disloyalty to this same neighbourhood whose select character she was exploiting. For, looking upon her, the conviction would not down that Mrs. Shields, if a possible tenant, was abysmally impossible otherwise. She must be near Miss Martha’s own age, yet was dressed, tinted, bedizened as if sixteen; there was a kind of withered pertness about her; she had a trick of glancing sidewise with her large, shadowed eyes in a style of roguish challenge and invitation combined; and her disturbingly frequent and facile smile suggested somehow a mere embellishment, obvious and inexpressive as her rouge. Such a figure in the rarefied atmosphere of Saint Luke’s was unthinkable; but here she was, Martha Wilcox, making capital out of that proximity with all its implications. Contact with “big business” had done its debasing work! “Of course, the music might be an objection,” she faltered, conscience-struck. “And sometimes one can hear Doctor Gowdy quite distinctly on Sundays in warm weather when the windows are open.”

“Music? Oh, you mean hymns?” queried Mrs. Shields. “Doctor Gowdy’s the preacher, huh? I went to Billy Sunday once. Tell you, the rev’rend’d have to go some to beat _him_! Well, I don’ know--eighty-five--” She hesitated, looking around the genteel landscape; then faced Miss Martha with the air of giving up argument, not without wonder and some amusement at herself. “Well, I guess them birds has got me going. I guess you’ve rented a house!”

Miss Wilcox, comprehending her expression rather than the words, stood dumb for an instant in half-incredulous relief. The thing was almost too good to be true, coming to pass with this uncanny suddenness. Eighty-five dollars a month and the hopeless old place off her hands at last! All the dreams which even in the act of dreaming she had stigmatized as rank folly, revisited her in flashing procession: having her hair “permanented,” going to Atlantic City, buying a fur coat--how often had she spent that rainbow gold! This time it was real. There would be only the pleasing care of letting it accumulate for a while. She awoke to new apprehensions. “I--I suppose there will be things to do? Changes? I mean you will want----?”

Mrs. Shields applied the decorative smile to her face. “Oh, my, no, I don’t want nothin’. The house is just swell, and anyways I never was one to keep running to people for new wallpaper, and ever’ little thing that needs fixing. I like to keep things up my own self. I’m awful easy to get along with,” she assured her prospective landlady eagerly. Miss Martha, who had been recalling terrifying tales she had had from more than one earnest friend about the misdemeanours and the tyrannous exactions of the average tenant, breathed freely again. It began to seem a leisurely, congenial, and singularly profitable occupation to rent houses as the patient waiting and many disappointments of the last six months retired to the background of her memories. Mrs. Shields, meanwhile, fluttered up and down the garden, already assuming innocent airs of proprietorship.

“You gotta tell me where at you get a bird bath like that, ’cause that’s what I’m gonna have the first thing!” she proclaimed with enthusiasm. “Never you mind! It’ll all be took good care of, and I won’t change a thing. It’s so nice the way it is, all clean and quiet and kinda restful. I got the same old-style notions as you. I’m crazy about having a real refined home.”

Miss Wilcox, not for the first time, wished that the questionably adaptable young man from the real-estate office were there; he would know what to say. “You’re a stranger here?” she ventured at length.

“Oh, I’ve lived lotsa places,” said the other, smiling blankly. “Is that as far as the yard goes to, that fence, with the vines on? My, they grow thick, don’t they?”

They did indeed, forming a broad, tangled breastwork of honeysuckle and rambler roses valued by Miss Martha for being comely to the view in blooming time and all the year round an impregnable defence against boys and other animals. Mrs. Shields, craning slightly to peer over it, inspected the adjoining territory with her naïvely open curiosity; she gave an exclamation. “For Pete’s sake! Didn’t you tell me that’s where the preacher lives?”

“Doctor Gowdy. Yes,” said Miss Martha, a little uncomfortable.

“Keeps it lovely, don’t he? Just like this side!”

Miss Martha perceived that this was to be taken in an ironic sense; making every allowance for the other’s idiosyncrasies of speech and manner, it was impossible that she could be in earnest. Even the most stalwart members of his congregation had been overheard to express themselves unfavourably about Doctor Gowdy’s yard. “Well--a clergyman, you know--he’s so busy. Besides, one really ought not to expect him---- And Mrs. Gowdy---- They have quite a family. It’s almost impossible for her to keep a servant. Even coloured----”

“They got a coon in the kitchen now. I can see her,” said Mrs. Shields.

“Er--yes--but often there isn’t anybody. It makes a great deal of work for poor Mrs. Gowdy. She can’t see to everything outside as well as in,” said Miss Wilcox, nervously, conscious that her explanations amounted to an apology; it annoyed her. And now the coon in the kitchen unwittingly added to the embarrassments of the situation by shoving up the window-screen and flinging an over-ripe tomato in the general direction of the ministerial garbage can; it fell short, spattering seeds and pulp; the coon--she was a strapping, coffee-coloured slattern--regarded it absently a moment while she wrung out a leprous-looking rag, sent a sharp glance toward the audience on the other side of the fence, and slammed down the screen, slouching back to her labours at a sink full of dishes.

“Mrs. Gowdy simply can’t see to everything,” Miss Martha repeated feebly. She awaited the other’s further comment in something of a panic; but Mrs. Shields had none to make. Her gaze, as it roved round the unkempt enclosure, was one of complete detachment. She was turning away when melodious, preluding chords on the piano sounded from within the parsonage, and Mrs. Gowdy’s pleasant soprano uplifted in “Angels ever bright and fair.” She sang with taste and feeling, but Miss Martha uneasily wished that she had not begun just at this moment; it was inopportune, somehow.

“That’s some of that music you was scairt I wouldn’t like, huh? Why, it ain’t so bad!” said Mrs. Shields tolerantly. “Anyway, I never let nothing the neighbours does worry me much,” she added, glancing again, perhaps involuntarily, at the Gowdy premises. “Live and let live, I always say. Oh, say, look what’s coming!”

It was a little procession of the Gowdy children round the corner of the house, Thomas junior in the lead, shouldering a spade and issuing bluff words of command; Florence came next, with a black silk petticoat, evidently borrowed from some much more mature wardrobe than her own, solemnly draped upon her; the twins were hauling the catafalque, that is, their Irish-Mail wagon, a shoe-box disposed upon it and covered with an unbelievably dirty towel; and Wilbur, straddling his kiddie-car, theoretically brought up the rear. In reality, he tooled along to suit himself, with erratic swoops and circles, carrying on an inarticulate, one-sided conversation the while. They halted, after some shrill disagreements, at one of the bare, hard-trodden spots occurring sporadically among the weeds of the parsonage back yard, and Tommie was about to attack it with the spade when all hands simultaneously became aware of the uninvited witnesses. There was an interval of silent staring broken by Wilbur, who, as has been seen, was a sociable soul, without sufficient field for the exercise of his gift.

“‘O,’ady!” said he, steering up to the fence.

“My, my, ain’t you little folks busy, though!” said Mrs. Shields genially. “Watch out, buddy, you’ll get a sticker in your eye. What’s he say?”

“‘O,’ady!” cried Wilbur with vehemence.

Tom authoritatively advised him to shut up. “‘Hello, lady!’ that’s what he’s trying to say. He can’t talk plain yet, he’s only two and a half. We’ve got to be after him the whole time. It’s fierce!” he explained gloomily.

“Well, now, _I_ think that’s real nice, taking care of your little brother----”

“Icky eye!” interrupted Wilbur urgently. “Icky _eye_!”

Florence undertook the translation. “He’s saying the kitty died.”

“Oh, ain’t that too bad! Poor kitty! What was the matter with her?”

“I don’t know. She just died,” said Florence indifferently. “We’re having a funeral with her.”

“You _are_? Well, I declare! And I s’pose Mommer’s singing that lovely hymn for you.”

They eyed her in the wary fashion of children suspicious of the false interest of grown-ups. “No, she isn’t. She’s just singing.” Tom said curtly. “I don’t b’lieve she knows about the kitty even.”

Here the auburn-haired twin precipitately entered the conversation with the information that the bird died, too. “It was a canary. It sang and sang, and then it stopped singing and died.”

“Oh, my, you musta felt bad!”

“Ho, that ain’t anything!” said the blue-eyed twin in a superior manner. “We’ve had lots of things die. Just lots!” He launched into large statements. “Everything we get dies! We had some white mice and _they_ died, and we had a dog and _it_ died, and we had----”

“Aw, shut up, we didn’t any such thing!”

“We did so! Don’t we, Flo, have everything die? Don’t we, Reddy?”

“Aw, you’re lying! Shut up, I tell you!”

Mrs. Shields intervened on the side of peace and propriety. “Now, now, don’t you kids get to scrapping. You go ahead and have your funeral, and play nice and pretty. First thing you know you’ll have Mommer out here, scairt to death for fear some of you has got their neck broke, hollerin’ like that.”

“Aw, she won’t hear, she never does,” growled Thomas junior. And in fact, the voice and piano, now sweetly rilling arpeggios throughout all the keys in ardent practice, kept on undisturbed. Mrs. Shields retreated, joining Miss Martha with confidences uttered in a voice of polite caution.

“I expect them young ones are right nice-looking when they’re washed up. They’re all right, only I don’t know as I’m keen for ’em to come over on my side of the fence. Of course, Mrs. Rev’rend, she’s used to the racket and muss.”

She asked whether she was to pay in advance, briskly announcing that she would while Miss Martha was still hanging in timorous indecision. The maiden lady moved in a haze of doubt and awe in what she considered the business world; out-of-hand offers to pay rent in advance might be one of its pitfalls for what Miss Martha knew. But in due time the check arrived, and though intrinsically an unhandsome document executed in weak, loosely flowing figures and handwriting with the signature “Tillie Shields” sidling downhill into the corner, it was negotiable like any other check. Eighty-five dollars! The dream had come true! Miss Martha was thriftily resolved not to spend it this first time, but it gave her a solid foundation on which to erect more dreams. Moreover, she took an almost equally solid satisfaction in replying coolly and competently to all inquirers, yes, the house was rented; yes, very advantageously, thank you! Hitherto she had had to endure their discouraging sympathy; and now detected, in spite of the felicitations, the great fundamental truth that nobody is really glad when somebody else gets a house rented! Eliza Seabury was the one exception; Eliza was too blunt-minded and blunt-spoken for civil pretenses. She rushed up on the street one day, and opened the subject, or in a manner of speaking, committed assault and battery on it with: “Martha Wilcox, where on earth did you pick up that weird woman you’ve got in your house?”

“I didn’t pick her up at all. She saw the advertisement,” said Miss Martha, a trifle stiffly.

“Well, she’s positively _weird_. I saw her the other day, and when somebody said she was in your house I nearly passed away. Her clothes! And those eyes rolling around like two buckeyes in a pan of milk! It’s simply _weird_! Who is she, anyhow, and where did she come from?”

“She’s a Mrs. Matilda Shields,” said Miss Martha, sagely correcting that too informal “Tillie.” “I don’t know where her home was originally. I understood she’d travelled about a good deal.”

“Mercy, Martha, I hope you didn’t take her without a reference. It would be awful if she didn’t pay you.”

“The bank said she was all right,” said Miss Martha triumphantly. The bank’s endorsement was her trump card; it left criticism without a leg to stand on. She was prompted to testify to Mrs. Shields’s credit on other grounds. “She’s been very nice about the house, not finding fault and not asking for anything, you know.”

“What, not a thing?” Mrs. Seabury exclaimed on a high note of astonishment. “That old rookery! Well, of course, I don’t mean it’s not a lovely house,” she amended hastily. “Only naturally, you’ve never spent any more on it than you could help, I suppose. It’s weird her not wanting _some_ repairs. She can’t be much of a housekeeper. Maybe that’s just as well, though. She won’t mind living next door to the Gowdys. Has she ever said anything about them?”

“I haven’t inquired,” said Miss Martha, stiffening again.

“Oh, well, she probably will later on,” Mrs. Seabury prophesied blithely; she was not a member of Saint Luke’s congregation. “Unless she’s a saint, she’ll have trouble over the ashes or the garbage or the children or something.”

Mrs. Shields, however, was apparently bent on justifying her claim to being “awful easy to get along with,” if that phrase connotes living quietly and seeking no one’s acquaintance. She went about domestic duties with an extraordinary zest, cooked, cleaned, ran up and down stairs endlessly; and spent hours in the garden applying her patently unskilled energies to weeding and trimming it, or motionless in some coign of vantage, watching the birds. Except for these robins and jays and an occasional squirrel, she had no visitors, and defeated expectations by never publicly falling foul of the Gowdy ash-heap, the Gowdy garbage, or the Gowdy children, whatever her private attitude toward them. Mrs. Gowdy, with characteristic sweet thoughtfulness--everybody acclaimed her as the ideal wife for a clergyman--introduced herself over the hedge after a few days with a smiling word or two about the other’s courage in coming to live alongside such a houseful. “We used to be afraid our youngsters were a good deal of a trial to Miss Wilcox.”

“I don’t mind ’em, only when it sounds like somebody was getting hurt,” said Mrs. Shields, whereat the experienced mother began to laugh.

“Oh, children are always getting hurt, you know. Mine seem to be made of steel and india-rubber. They stand everything. Luella--that’s the maid I have now--worries over them more than I do! She’s so good with them, and perfectly devoted to Wilbur, especially.”

Mrs. Shields looked at her uncertainly.

“Well, Luella ain’t always on the job, is she? I don’t see how she can be.”

“Oh, yes, she’s very efficient. I hardly ever give an order. Sometimes coloured people are like that, wonderful with children and about the housework too.” With other agreeable generalities, she moved away; and Mrs. Shields, after a speculative stare at the retreating back, shook her own overdressed head soberly, and moved away, too.

It happened that she did not encounter Doctor Gowdy until some time later, on an occasion which turned out to be more or less momentous. Pottering about among the flower beds, she heard without heeding a piping excitement in the other back yard, and only looked across at last when a heavier voice was added to the children’s. “Now, we must have a coop, you know, boys. They have to be kept in a coop,” Doctor Gowdy was expounding. “Let’s see! What shall we do? Oh, I’ll tell you! There’s that old peach crate over there; you get that, Robbie, and I shouldn’t wonder if Tom could nail some strips up the sides. Everybody must help, that’s the only way to get along----” he kept on fluently in his trained, carrying voice, while the boys circled about, squabbling over his directions. Then, as he caught Mrs. Shields’s eye, smiled with a gesture toward the basket in his hands.