by Myrtle Reed
IV
Finances
"I've ordered the typewriter," said Dorothy, brightly, "and some nice newnote-paper, and a seal. I've just been reading about making virtue out ofnecessity, so I've ordered 'At the Sign of the Jack-o'-Lantern' put on ourstationery, in gold, and a yellow pumpkin on the envelope flap, just abovethe seal. And I want you to make a funny sign-board to flap from a pole,the way they did in 'Rudder Grange.' If you could make a woodenJack-o'-Lantern, we could have a candle inside it at night, and then thesign would be just like the house. We can get the paint and things down inthe village. Won't it be cute? We're farmers, now, so we'll have topretend we like it."
Harlan repressed an exclamation, which could not have been wholly inspiredby pleasure.
"What's the matter?" asked Dorothy, easily. "Don't you like the design forthe note-paper? If you don't, you won't have to use it. Nobody's going tomake you write letters on paper you don't like, so cheer up."
"It isn't the paper," answered Harlan, miserably; "it's the typewriter."Up to the present moment, sustained by a false, but none the lessdetermined pride, he had refrained from taking his wife into hisconfidence regarding his finances. With characteristic masculineshort-sightedness, he had failed to perceive that every moment of delaymade matters worse.
"Might I inquire," asked Mrs. Carr, coolly, "what is wrong with thetypewriter?"
"Nothing at all," sighed Harlan, "except that we can't afford it." Thewhole bitter truth was out, now, and he turned away wretchedly, ashamed tomeet her eyes.
It seemed ages before she spoke. Then she said, in smooth, icy tones:"What was your object in offering to get it for me?"
"I spoke impulsively," explained Harlan, forgetting that he had neversuggested buying a typewriter. "I didn't stop to think. I'm sorry," heconcluded, lamely.
"I suppose you spoke impulsively," snapped Dorothy, "when you asked me tomarry you. You're sorry for that, too, aren't you?"
"Dorothy!"
"You're not the only one who's sorry," she rejoined, her cheeks flushedand her eyes blazing. "I had no idea what an expense I was going to be!"
"Dorothy!" cried Harlan, angrily; "you didn't think I was a millionaire,did you? Were you under the impression that I was an active branch of theUnited States Mint?"
"No," she answered, huskily; "I merely thought I was marrying a gentlemaninstead of a loafer, and I beg your pardon for the mistake!" She slammedthe door on the last word, and he heard her light feet pattering swiftlydown the hall, little guessing that she was trying to gain the shelter ofher own room before giving way to a tempest of sobs.
Happy are they who can drown all pain, sorrow, and disappointment in acopious flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be hersunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignifiedoutburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it, but Harlan, made ofsterner clay, would remember it for days.
"Loafer!" The cruel word seemed written accusingly on every wall of theroom. In a sudden flash of insight he perceived the truth of it--and ithurt.
"Two months," bethought; "two months of besotted idleness. And I used tochase news from the Battery to the Bronx every day from eight to six!Murders, smallpox, East Side scraps, and Tammany Hall. Why in thehereafter can't they have a fire at the sanitarium, or something that Ican wire in?"
"The Temple of Healing," as Dorothy had christened it in a happier moment,stood on a distant hill, all but hidden now by trees and shrubbery. Acolumn of smoke curled lazily upward against the blue, but there was noimmediate prospect of a fire of the "news" variety.
Harlan stood at the window for a long time, deeply troubled. The call ofthe city dinned relentlessly into his ears. Oh, for an hour in the midstof it, with the rumble and roar and clatter of ceaseless traffic, thehurrying, heedless throng rushing in every direction, the glare of the sunon the many-windowed cliffs, the fever of the struggle in his veins!
And yet--was two months so long, when a fellow was just married, andhadn't had more than a day at a time off for six years? Since the "cubreporter" was first "licked into shape" in the office of _The Thunderer_,there had been plenty of work for him, year in and year out.
"I wonder," he mused, "if the old man would take me back on my job?
"I can see 'em in the office now," went on Harlan, mentally, "when I goback and tell 'em I want my place again. The old man will look up and say:'The hell you do! Thought you'd accepted a position on the literarycircuit as manager of the nine muses! Better run along and look after 'embefore they join the union.'
"And the exchange man will yell at me not to slam the door as I go out,and I'll be pointed out to the newest kid as a horrible example ofmisdirected ambition. Brinkman will say: 'Sonny, there's a bloke that gottoo good for his job and now he's come back, willing to edit The Mother'sCorner.'
"It'd be about the same in the other offices, too," he thought. "'Sorry,nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in again sometimeafter six weeks or so and meanwhile I'll let you know if anything turnsup. Yes, I can remember your address. Don't slam the door as you go out.Most people seem to have been born in a barn.'
"Besides," he continued to himself, fiercely, "what is there in it?They'll take your youth, all your strength and energy, and give you ameasly living in exchange. They'll fill you with excitement till you'renever good for anything else, any more than a cavalry horse is fitted topull a vegetable wagon. Then, when you're old, they've got no use foryou!"
Before his mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy processionof hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn byevery instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre,uncertain pittance, dwindling slowly to charity.
"That's where I'd be at the last of it," muttered Harlan, savagely, "witheven the cubs offering me the price of a drink to get out. AndDorothy--good God! Where would Dorothy be?"
He clenched his fists and marched up and down the room in utter despair."Why," he breathed, "why wasn't I taught to do something honest, insteadof being cursed with this itch to write? A carpenter, a bricklayer, astone-mason,--any one of 'em has a better chance than I!"
And yet, even then, Harlan saw clearly that save where some vast cathedralreared its unnumbered spires, the mason and the bricklayer were withoutsignificance; that even the builders were remembered only because of thegreat uses to which their buildings were put. "That, too, through print,"he murmured. "It all comes down to the printed page at last."
On a table, near by, was a sheaf of rough copy paper, and six or eightcarefully sharpened pencils--the dull, meaningless stone waiting for theflint that should strike it into flame. Day after day the table had stoodby the window, without result, save in Harlan's uneasy conscience.
"I'm only a tramp," he said, aloud, "and I've known it, all along."
He sat down by the table and took up a pencil, but no words came.Remorsefully, he wrote to an acquaintance--a man who had a book publishedevery year and filled in the intervening time with magazine work andnewspaper specials. He sealed the letter and addressed it idly, thentossed it aside purposelessly.
"Loafer!" The memory of it stung him like a lash, and, completelyoverwhelmed with shame, he hid his face in his hands.
Suddenly, a pair of soft arms stole around his neck, a childish, tear-wetcheek was pressed close to his, and a sweet voice whispered, tenderly:"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry I can't live another minute unless you tellme you forgive me!"
* * * * *
"Am I really a loafer?" asked Harlan, half an hour later.
"Indeed you're not," answered Dorothy, her trustful eyes looking straightinto his; "you're absolutely the most adorable boy in the whole world, andit's me that knows it!"
"As long as you know it," returned Harlan, seriously, "I don't care a hangwhat other people think."
"Now, tell me," continued Dorothy, "how near are we to being broke?"
Obediently, Harlan turned his pockets inside out and
piled his worldlywealth on the table.
"Three hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixteen cents," she said, whenshe had finished counting. "Why, we're almost rich, and a little while agoyou tried to make me think we were poor!"
"It's all I have, Dorothy--every blooming cent, except one dollar in thesavings bank. Sort of a nest egg I had left," he explained.
"Wait a minute," she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up aloop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing,"makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skinbag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills."Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, proudly, "and eighty-threecents and four postage stamps in my purse.
"I saved it," she continued, hastily, "for an emergency, and I wanted somesilk stockings and a French embroidered corset and some handmade lingerieworse than you can ever know. Wasn't I a brave, heroic, noble woman?"
"Indeed you were," he cried, "but, Dorothy, you know I can't touch yourmoney!"
"Why not?" she demanded.
"Because--because--because it isn't right. Do you think I'm cad enough tolive on a woman's earnings?"
"Harlan," said Dorothy, kindly, "don't be a fool. You'll take my wholeheart and soul and life--all that I have been and all that I'm going tobe--and be glad to get it, and now you're balking at ten cents that Ihappened to have in my stocking when I took the fatal step."
"Dear heart, don't. It's different--tremendously different. Can't you seethat it is?"
"Do you mean that I'm not worth as much as two hundred and twelve dollarsand eighty-three cents and four postage stamps?"
"Darling, you're worth more than all the rest of the world put together.Don't talk to me like that. But I can't touch your money, truly, dear, Ican't; so don't ask me."
"Idiot," cried Dorothy, with tears raining down her face, "don't you knowI'd go with you if you had to grind an organ in the street, and collectthe money for you in a tin cup till we got enough for a monkey? What kindof a dinky little silver-plated wedding present do you think I am, anyway?You----"
The rest of it was sobbed out, incoherently enough, on his hithertoimmaculate shirt-front. "You don't mind," she whispered, "if I cry downyour neck, do you?"
"If you're going to cry," he answered, his voice trembling, "this is theone place for you to do it, but I don't want you to cry."
"I won't, then," she said, wiping her eyes on a wet and crumpledhandkerchief. In a time astonishingly brief to one hitherto unfamiliarwith the lachrymal function, her sobs had ceased.
"You've made me cry nearly a quart since morning," she went on, withassumed severity, "and I hope you'll behave so well from now on that I'llnever have to do it again. Look here."
She led him to the window, where a pair of robins were building a nest inthe boughs of a maple close by. "Do you see those birds?" she demanded,pointing at them with a dimpled, rosy forefinger.
"Yes, what of it?"
"Well, they're married, aren't they?"
"I hope they are," laughed Harlan, "or at least engaged."
"Who's bringing the straw and feathers for the nest?" she asked.
"Both, apparently," he replied, unwillingly.
"Why isn't she rocking herself on a bough, and keeping her nails nice, andfixing her feathers in the latest style, or perhaps going off to some foolbird club while he builds the nest by himself?"
"Don't know."
"Nor anybody else," she continued, with much satisfaction. "Now, if shehappened to have two hundred and twelve feathers, of the proper size andshape to go into that nest, do you suppose he'd refuse to touch them, andmake her cry because she brought them to him?"
"Probably he wouldn't," admitted Harlan.
There was a long silence, then Dorothy edged up closer to him. "Do yousuppose," she queried, "that Mr. Robin thinks more of his wife than you doof yours?"
"Indeed he doesn't!"
"And still, he's letting her help him."
"But----"
"Now, listen, Harlan. We've got a house, with more than enough furnitureto make it comfortable, though it's not the kind of furniture either of usparticularly like. Instead of buying a typewriter, we'll rent one forthree or four dollars a month until we have enough money to buy one. AndI'm going to have a cow and some chickens and a garden, and I'm going tosell milk and butter and cream and fresh eggs and vegetables and chickensand fruit to the sanitarium, and----"
"The sanitarium people must have plenty of those things."
"But not the kind I'm going to raise, nor put up as I'm going to put itup, and we'll be raising most of our own living besides. You can writewhen you feel like it, and be helping me when you don't feel like it, andbefore we know it, we'll be rich. Oh, Harlan, I feel like Eve all alone inthe Garden with Adam!"
The prospect fired his imagination, for, in common with most men, achicken-ranch had appealed strongly to Harlan ever since he couldremember.
"Well," he began, slowly, in the tone which was always a signal ofsurrender.
"Won't it be lovely," she cried ecstatically, "to have our own bossy cowmooing in the barn, and our own chickens for Sunday dinner, and our ownmilk, and butter, and cream? And I'll drive the vegetable waggon and youcan take the things in----"
"I guess not," interrupted Harlan, firmly. "If you're going to do thatsort of thing, you'll have people to do the work when I can't help you.The idea of my wife driving a vegetable cart!"
"All right," answered Dorothy, submissively, wise enough to let smallpoints settle themselves and have her own way in things that reallymattered. "I've not forgotten that I promised to obey you."
A gratified smile spread over Harlan's smooth, boyish face, and,half-fearfully, she reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief which shehad hitherto carefully concealed.
"That's not all," she smiled. "Look!"
"Twenty-three dollars," he said. "Why, where did you get that?"
"It was in my dresser. There was a false bottom in one of the smalldrawers, and I took it out and found this."
"What in--" began Harlan.
"It's a present to us from Uncle Ebeneezer," she cried, her eyes sparklingand her face aglow. "It's for a coop and chickens," she continued,executing an intricate dance step. "Oh, Harlan, aren't you awfully glad wecame?"
Seeing her pleasure he could not help being glad, but afterward, when hewas alone, he began to wonder whether they had not inadvertently movedinto a bank.
"Might be worse places," he reflected, "for the poor and deserving to moveinto. Diamonds and money--what next?"