Part 5

Mrs. Coy had no realization whatever that any such parallel could be drawn; she coldly suggested that the party was being spoiled and that Laurence might well be ashamed of himself. “It’s really _very_ naughty of you,” she said; and at a word from Aunt Ella, she added: “Now you’ve all had enough of this rough romping and you must come in quietly and behave yourselves like little gentlemen—and like a little lady! The pianist from the dancing-school has come, and dear little Elsie Threamer is going to do her fancy dance for us.”

With that, under her eye, the procession filed into the house—and took seats in the living-room without any renewal of undesirable demonstrations. Laurence had the brooding air of a person who has been dangerously trifled with; but he seated himself in an orderly manner, and unfortunately did not observe which of his guests just afterward came to occupy the next chair. Elsie, exquisitely dainty, a lovely sight, was standing alone in the open space in the centre of the room.

The piano rippled out a tinkling run of little bells, and the graceful child began to undulate and pirouette. Her conscientious eyes she kept all the while downcast, with never a glance to any spectator, least of all to the lorn Laurence; but he had a miserable sense of what those veiled eyes thought about him, and he felt low and contaminated by the repulsive events connected with another of his guests. As he dumbly looked at Elsie, while she danced so prettily, beautiful things seemed to be floating about him in a summer sky: angels like pigeons with lovely faces, large glass globes in rainbow colours, and round, pure white icing cakes. His spiritual nature was uplifted; and almost his sufferings had left him, when his spine chilled at a sound behind him—a choked giggle and a hoarse but piercing whisper.

“Look at who Laurence is sittin’ by! _Oh_, oh!”

He turned and found Daisy in the chair next to his. Her small bright eyes were fixed upon him in an intolerable mirth; her shoulders were humped with the effect to control that same, and her right hand tensely covered her mouth. From behind him came further gurgles and the words:

“Sittin’ by his _girl_!”

At this moment Elsie was just concluding her dance with a series of charming curtseys. Laurence could not wait for them to be finished; he jumped from his chair, and crossed before the lovely dancer to a seat on the other side of the room, a titter following him. More than the titter followed him, in fact. Daisy walked on tiptoe just behind him.

But when she reached the centre of the room, she was suddenly inspired by the perception of a new way to increase her noticeableness. She paused before the curtseying _danseuse_ and also sank in curtseys as deep, though not so adept. Then she too began to dance, and the piano having stopped, accompanied herself by singing loudly, “Ti-didy-um-tum, dee-dee-dee!” She pirouetted, undulated, hopped on one leg with the other stiff and rather high before her; she pranced in a posture of outrageous convexity from one point of view, of incredible concavity from the other. Then she curtsied again, in recognizable burlesque of the original, and flounced into the chair next to Laurence’s, for he had been so shortsighted as to leave a vacancy beside him. This time his Aunt Ella had to take him out into the hall by force and talk to him.

A little later, when ice-cream, paper caps, and favours had been distributed, the party was over; and among those who presented themselves in the polite formalities of leavetaking was, naturally, Daisy Mears. On account of continued surveillance on the part of his Aunt Ella, Laurence was unable to respond in words, but his expression said a thousand eloquent things for him.

Daisy curtsied demurely. “G’by. Thank you for a wunnaful time, Laurence,” she said; and went out of the house with a character that had changed permanently during the brief course of a children’s party.

As for Laurence, he had been through a dog’s time; and he showed it. Every night, after he said his bedside prayers, there was an additional rite his mother had arranged for him; he was to say: “I know that I have a character, and I know that I am a soul.” But to-night he balked.

“Go on,” his mother bade him. “Say it, Laurence.”

“I doe’ want to,” he said dully.

Mrs. Coy sighed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you: you behave so queerly sometimes! Don’t you know you ought to appreciate what your mamma does for you—when she went to all the trouble to give you a nice party just to make you happy? Oughtn’t you to do what she wants you to, to pay her for all that happiness?”

“I guess so.” The poor child somehow believed it—but as he went through his formula and muttered that he knew he had a character, it is probable that he felt a strong doubt in the matter. This may have caused his aversion to saying it.

THE ONE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL

THE new one-hundred-dollar bill, clean and green, freshening the heart with the colour of springtime, slid over the glass of the teller’s counter and passed under his grille to a fat hand, dingy on the knuckles, but brightened by a flawed diamond. This interesting hand was a part of one of those men who seem to have too much fattened muscle for their clothes: his shoulders distended his overcoat; his calves strained the sprightly checked cloth, a little soiled, of his trousers; his short neck bulged above the glossy collar. His hat, round and black as a pot, and appropriately small, he wore slightly obliqued; while under its curled brim his small eyes twinkled surreptitiously between those upper and nether puffs of flesh that mark the too faithful practitioner of unhallowed gaieties. Such was the first individual owner of the new one-hundred-dollar bill, and he at once did what might have been expected of him.

Moving away from the teller’s grille, he made a cylindrical packet of bills smaller in value—“ones” and “fives”—then placed round them, as a wrapper, the beautiful one-hundred-dollar bill, snapped a rubber band over it; and the desired inference was plain: a roll all of hundred-dollar bills, inside as well as outside. Something more was plain, too: obviously the man’s small head had a sportive plan in it, for the twinkle between his eye-puffs hinted of liquor in the offing and lively women impressed by a show of masterly riches. Here, in brief, was a man who meant to make a night of it; who would feast, dazzle, compel deference, and be loved. For money gives power, and power is loved; no doubt he would be loved. He was happy, and went out of the bank believing that money is made for joy.

So little should we be certain of our happiness in this world: the splendid one-hundred-dollar bill was taken from him untimely, before nightfall that very evening. At the corner of two busy streets he parted with it to the law, though in a mood of excruciating reluctance and only after a cold-blooded threatening on the part of the lawyer. This latter walked away thoughtfully, with the one-hundred-dollar bill, now not quite so clean, in his pocket.

Collinson was the lawyer’s name, and in years he was only twenty-eight, but already had the slightly harried appearance that marks the young husband who begins to suspect that the better part of his life has been his bachelorhood. His dark, ready-made clothes, his twice-soled shoes and his hair, which was too long for a neat and businesslike aspect, were symptoms of necessary economy; but he did not wear the eager look of a man who saves to “get on for himself”: Collinson’s look was that of an employed man who only deepens his rut with his pacing of it.

An employed man he was, indeed; a lawyer without much hope of ever seeing his name on the door or on the letters of the firm that employed him, and his most important work was the collection of small debts. This one-hundred-dollar bill now in his pocket was such a collection, small to the firm and the client, though of a noble size to himself and the long-pursued debtor from whom he had just collected it.

The banks were closed; so was the office, for it was six o’clock, and Collinson was on his way home when by chance he encountered the debtor: there was nothing to do but to keep the bill over night. This was no hardship, however, as he had a faint pleasure in the unfamiliar experience of walking home with such a thing in his pocket; and he felt a little important by proxy when he thought of it.

Upon the city the November evening had come down dark and moist, holding the smoke nearer the ground and enveloping the buildings in a soiling black mist. Lighted windows and street lamps appeared and disappeared in the altering thicknesses of fog, but at intervals, as Collinson walked on northward, he passed a small shop, or a cluster of shops, where the light was close to him and bright, and at one of these oases of illumination he lingered a moment, with a thought to buy a toy in the window for his three-year-old little girl. The toy was a gaily coloured acrobatic monkey that willingly climbed up and down a string, and he knew that the “baby,” as he and his wife still called their child, would scream with delight at the sight of it. He hesitated, staring into the window rather longingly, and wondering if he ought to make such a purchase. He had twelve dollars of his own in his pocket, but the toy was marked “35 cents” and he decided he could not afford it. So he sighed and went on, turning presently into a darker street.

Here the air was like that of a busy freight-yard, thick with coal-dust and at times almost unbreathable so that Collinson was glad to get out of it even though the exchange was for the early-evening smells of the cheap apartment house where he lived.

His own “kitchenette” was contributing its share, he found, the baby was crying over some inward perplexity not to be explained; and his wife, pretty and a little frowzy, was as usual, and as he had expected. That is to say, he found her irritated by cooking, bored by the baby, and puzzled by the dull life she led. Other women, it appeared, had happy and luxurious homes, and, during the malnutritious dinner she had prepared, she mentioned many such women by name, laying particular stress upon the achievements of their husbands. Why should she (“alone,” as she put it) lead the life she did in one room and a kitchenette, without even being able to afford to go to the movies more than once or twice a month? Mrs. Theodore Thompson’s husband had bought a perfectly beautiful little sedan automobile; he gave his wife everything she wanted. Mrs. Will Gregory had merely mentioned that her old Hudson seal coat was wearing a little, and her husband had instantly said, “What’ll a new one come to, girlie? Four or five hundred? Run and get it!” Why were other women’s husbands like that—and why, oh, why! was hers like _this_? An eavesdropper might well have deduced from Mrs. Collinson’s harangue that her husband owned somewhere a storehouse containing all the good things she wanted and that he withheld them from her out of his perverse wilfulness. Moreover, he did not greatly help his case by protesting that the gratification of her desires was beyond his powers.

“My goodness!” he said. “You talk as if I had sedans and sealskin coats and theatre tickets _on_ me! Well, I haven’t; that’s all!”

“Then go out and get ’em!” she said fiercely. “Go out and get ’em!”

“What with?” he inquired. “I have twelve dollars in my pocket, and a balance of seventeen dollars at the bank; that’s twenty-nine. I get twenty-five from the office day after to-morrow—Saturday; that makes fifty-four; but we have to pay forty-five for rent on Monday; so that’ll leave us nine dollars. Shall I buy you a sedan and a sealskin coat on Tuesday out of the nine?”

Mrs. Collinson began to weep a little. “The old, old story!” she said. “Six long, long years it’s been going on now! I ask you how much you’ve got, and you say, ‘Nine dollars,’ or ‘Seven dollars,’ or ‘Four dollars’; and once it was sixty-five cents! Sixty-five cents; that’s what we have to live on! Sixty-five _cents_!”

“Oh, hush!” he said wearily.

“Hadn’t you better hush a little yourself?” she retorted. “You come home with twelve dollars in your pocket and tell your wife to hush! That’s nice! Why can’t you do what decent men do?”

“What’s that?”

“Why, give their wives something to live for. What do you give me, I’d like to know! Look at the clothes I wear, please!”

“Well, it’s your own fault,” he muttered.

“What did you say? Did you say it’s my fault I wear clothes any woman I know wouldn’t be _seen_ in?”

“Yes, I did. If you hadn’t made me get you that platinum ring——”

“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 pin-head, so’t 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!’ How very, very dreadful!”

“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, do 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-thirt. 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 peoples’s correspondence, thank you! I suppose you think I do so because you’d never hesitate to read any note _I_ get; 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 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.”

“But you never do. You always win a little.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve figured out I’m about sixteen dollars ahead at penny-ante on the whole year. I cleaned up seven dollars and sixty cents at Charlie’s last party; but of course my luck might change, and we couldn’t afford it.”

“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. He went about them in a leisurely way, played with the baby at intervals, while Mrs. Collinson sang cheerfully over her work; and 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 violent 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 man-servant.

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.