In a few months the first stress of the panic lifted. The worry creases between men's eyes were being ironed out. A few who had money, taking advantage of cheap labor and materials, began to build. Dick Holden came home, with a trunkful of presents for his friends and another of English clothes for himself, and at once became busy.
The Quentins were still hanging on—"by a frog's hair," David said.But they had paid. It always costs to survive.
They had paid, despite their brave words, in the coin of worry. More than once David had jingled a few coins in his pocket, wondering where he could add to them on the morrow and when he had borrowed how he could repay.
But they had paid with a bigger price than that. The pretty flower of romance was withering in the shade. The cozy little times, when one chair did for both and they became beautifully silly, were fewer and briefer now. When they tucked Davy Junior in at night and whispered that he was almost too bright to be healthy, shadowing their pride was the chill cloud of fear that he, too, might have to feel the pinch. Often they moved restlessly about the apartment or sat listlessly yawning, wishing there were something to do. And sometimes, without warning, quarrels would blaze, over nothing at all. It is so easy to mislay your temper when worry is gnawing at your heart, and perhaps you don't try very hard to find it. David always had to find his first, but the making up was never quite perfect.
And, though their well-to-do friends were beginning to talk of new model cars and going abroad once more, the Quentins continued to be hard up. David seemed to have struck a dead level. One month business would be pretty good; the next he would make almost nothing. But the average was always the same, and always a little less than they spent. The note at Jim Blaisdell's bank and the little loans from Dick Holden kept slowly piling up, and though neither Jim nor Dick ever dunned him, the thought of his debts weighed heavily on David's heart.
It was worse than if they had had a steady income. They were kept zigzagging between hope and disappointment, and when they had money, it was often spent foolishly. David did his best to save. His suits and overcoat had shiny spots. He smoked only cheap tobacco that burned his tongue. He gave up even the dairy lunch, saying that two meals a day were enough for any man. He walked, rain or shine, to and from his office, and bought no more books. But the sum of these savings seemed pitifully small. Shirley, too, did without things during the lean months. But when a fee came in she could never say no to her wants.
"We must have this. We must do that," she would say.
"Dear, don't you think we'd better go slow?" he would venture.
"Oh, what's the use of having money, if not to get what we want?"
"We could use it to pay a little to Jim and—"
"Oh, let Jim and Dick wait. They can afford it. I've had to do without so much I think I've a right to this little spree. And Ihateto wait for things. If I wait, they lose all their fun."
It always ended in her having her own way. But sometimes David wondered whether she would have lost interest in him, too, if she had had to wait.
For he saw that another goblin had come unbidden into their home: Discontent. He had learned to seek and always found the wistful look with which she regarded their callers' pretty gowns or heard tales of jolly dinners at the club. (Months ago the club had been dropped.) And he knew that in her heart she was drawing comparisons.
Once she said, "It wasn't like this when Maizie and I were together."She did not guess the barb she left quivering in his heart.
Dick Holden was making no such heavy weather of it. He was even so busy that little odds and ends of his work were turned over to David, crusts for which the latter was as grateful as the Lazaruses always have been. But this suggested another comparison to Shirley.
"Dick Holden gets business and makes money, and everybody says he's not half so clever as you. How does he do it?"
"He works people for their business."
"Then why don't you do that?"
"I don't know how. And if I did know, I couldn't, anyhow. The people that come to me come because they have confidence in my ability. If they don't have confidence, I couldn't work them because—I just couldn't, that's all."
"You're too thin-skinned. If I were a man I'dmakethem come to me, and then I'd teach them to have confidence—the way Dick Holden does."
"Dick Holden's way, somebody else's, never mine," he thought bitterly, "is always the best."
But he did not let her see him wince. Instead, he said gently, "In the long run it's not the sound way. If I do good work, some day people will realize it and come to me. And Idogood work," he cried, not to boast, but because their courage needed a tonic, "and some day when I get my chance I'll do far finer."
She smiled wearily. "Some day! It's always some day. Why don't youmakeyour chance—as Dick does?"
That talk rankled in David's heart long after Shirley had forgotten it. She could say such things and forget them in an hour. But her comparisons never angered him, only hurt. He tried to be just, and blamed himself for their predicament. If he had been wise and firm at the beginning, when the temptations to indulgences came, they could have escaped these troublous waters. Firmness now seemed only cruel.
"You see," he would explain to himself, trying to believe, "she's really only a child still. It is very hard on her. If I said no to things now, she wouldn't understand. I must just make it as easy as possible for her—somehow." But he sighed, "If only we could give up this apartment and live cheaply and—and honestly until we're on our feet. If only she'd look at it that way!"
He had suggested that to Shirley once—but only once. "Oh, no!" she had cried. "That would be a confession to everybody. It would be humiliating, more than I could bear. We've got to keep this apartment and not let people know we're hard up."
They thought people did not know.
So it went for nearly two years. You must not think there were no happy times, hours or days or even weeks when they took joy in their love and Davy Junior; though more and more these times lost their wonderfulness and the power to charm away the grisly goblin Care. But the ugly or weary or despondent hours bulked largest in David's mind because he took them so keenly to heart. Yet, though his debts slowly grew, and he was always a month behind in his office and apartment rent, he did not lose faith in himself; he gave his very best to the little business he had and worked away at his sketches, which grew better all the time. (It hurt him more than a little that Shirley took no interest in them.) And though he saw clearly that she had faults, even as you and I, he did not lose faith in Shirley nor cease to love her. Often at nights, especially after there had been a quarrel, he stole away from his sketching to the room where she slept with the baby by her side and lightly kissed her hair or an outflung arm. Then the old tender protective impulse swept over him; he wished he were the sort of man that could give her all the things she wanted, thinking that the way to prove a love.
Then a "chance" came. Or, rather, he tried to make one. A rich parish decided that it could best honor God by building a new church, finer and costlier than anything else in the city, and invited several architects to submit plans. David entered the competition, not by the adroit methods Dick Holden practised, but in the simple open-handed fashion which alone was possible to him. He went to the chairman of the building committee.
"Will you let me submit plans?" he asked.
"I suppose so," Bixby said carelessly, eying his caller dubiously.
For David, though he had carefully pressed his trousers for the occasion, was getting to be a little shabby. If you looked close you saw that his cuffs were trimmed, his necktie was threadbare and his shoes were run down at the heels. And he had not the look that speaks of success. Seeing him, Bixby did not think as people had used to think, "This is a young man who will do big things some day."
"When must the plans be filed?"
The chairman told him, and added, "You understand, of course, they have to be bang-up—up-to-date in every particular, andimpressive?"
"Some things," David said gravely, "are so beautiful that they are up-to-date in every age. And real beauty is always impressive because it is so rare."
"Humph!" said Bixby, and dismissed his caller.
David set to work that very night, going over all his old sketches in search of the best. And because none of them had ever quite satisfied him, he discarded them all. He began a new series of sketches, sitting up at nights long after he should have been asleep. He discarded these, too. For this idea must be so very good that the committee couldn't help accepting it.
"I think," he told himself often, "I have reached the point where I can do something really worth while."
One night when he had gone reluctantly to bed, sleep would not come. For a long while he lay staring at a white patch of moonlight on the floor.
Suddenly he sat up, sprang out of bed and, still in his pajamas, sat down before his easel.
In the morning Shirley found him there, looking raptly at the completed sketch.
"David Quentin, what in the name of common sense are you doing here?"
"Look!" he whispered, almost in awe. "This is it."
Shirley looked. And she, who had picked up a little knowledge of architecture from him, knew that it was good.
"Do you think," she asked, "do you think it really has a chance?"
"Shirley, it's so good I can hardly believe it came out of my head.Maybe it didn't, but just passed through coming from—somewhere."
He was thinking it was an inspiration. . . . Well, since then many men who ought to know have thought and said the same thing about that church.
For two months he toiled every spare moment of the day and in the still watches of the night, elaborating that first rough sketch, working out details, which came to him as of their own accord, making beautiful plans and elevations and long sheets of specifications. He gave to the work enthusiasm, patience and stern criticism. In return it gave him a new faith in himself. And hope. Heknewhe would not fail in this.
It was not really hard work. For, as the weeks sped by, there grew up in his heart a love for the thing to which he was giving birth, deep, warm and abiding, a love that counted no hour of labor too heavy, no task too exacting. He did not care to think of the day when the work must pass out of his hands.
A little of his ardor entered into Shirley. She, too, hoped. She thought of the fee such a commission would bring, of the release from care and the good times that fee would buy. Sometimes she had a glimpse of the new love growing up in David's heart, but, though she did not wholly like that, she gave it no serious thought.
"Would you mind coming back to me?" she asked one evening, thus bringing him out of a smiling brown study.
"I was just thinking what it would feel like to see the churchreal."
"Don't you ever think of the money it will bring?"
"That, too, sometimes. But I never knew before how much the work—just being in it, you know—means to me."
"That's very temperamental," she said with a shrug. "Sometimes I believe you think more of your work than you do of your family."
"I love you both," he answered gently. "And I don't love you and DavyJunior less because I think so much of the work."
It was a fleeting shadow. Those months of preparation and hope were the happiest they had had since the panic began.
Only once did his faith waver. It was on the day when Dick Holden, a roll of plans under his arm, came into the office.
"Davy, are you too busy to do a little job for me?"
That was the formula Dick, who was very thoughtful in little things, always used when he turned work over to David.
"I guess I can make room—with crowding." That was the reply David, with a smile only half humorous, always made. "What is it?"
"I want you to make one of your pretty-pretty pictures of some church plans I'm making."
"What church?"
"St. Christopher's."
David looked up quickly. "Let's see the plans."
Dick spread them out on the table. David glanced over them hastily.
"You're trying for it with that?"
"Even so." Dick laughed. Dick at that stage of his career laid no claims to genius. "But I know what I'm doing. I've been talking with old man Bixby."
David looked up again.
"Dick, it's fair to tell you that I'm trying for that St. Christopher's job myself."
"Meaning you'd rather not make pretty-pretty pictures for a competitor?"
"No. I mean you'd be wasting your money."
"Why?"
David drew out his original sketch and laid it before Dick.
Dick looked—and looked again. He leaned over and studied it intently, his eyes widening and shining. Suddenly with a queer gesture he rose and went to a window. He stood there, back turned to David, for several minutes.
When he turned a flush was on his face and he found it hard to meetDavid's questioning eyes.
"Davy, it's good. It's damn good. It's so much better than mine that I can't find a comparison. I know just enough architecture to be sure of that. I take off my hat to you. But it's fair to tell you—it won't win."
"Why not?"
"I'mgoing to win."
"With that?" David nodded toward Dick's plans.
"With that."
"How?"
"I'm giving old Bixby what he wants, and I'm—" Dick made gestures of pulling wires.
David was silent.
"Maybe," Dick went on after a moment, "you think I oughtn't to work this game against you. And maybe I oughtn't. But if I didn't somebody would beat us both out. They're all working it. It's the only game that pays nowadays. And besides, I need the money. It isn't out yet, but I'm going to be married—and she's used to a lot of money. I've been doing pretty well, but if I land this job I'll be fixed and able to give her the things she deserves. Do you blame me, old man?"
A troubled smile was on David's lips. "Not wholly, Dick."
There was another silence, awkward now, and then Dick began to move toward the door. But with his hand on the knob he turned.
"Davy, why don't you play the game? You've got the stuff. If you only could put it across, if you had the punch, you could go any distance. I—I'm not quite big enough to step down for a better man, but I'd rather have you beat me than any other man alive. Why don't you try it?"
The troubled smile lingered. "I can't, old man."
David did not hear the door close. For a long time he sat staring vaguely at his sketch.
But that night, when he was alone with his work once more, the old faith rushed back into his heart. Dick was wrong—he must be wrong! The committee were honorable men; they held a position of trust. Surely they could see how much better his plans were than Dick's. And surely they could not be tricked into passing them by for a hodgepodge that would only bring ridicule down upon their church.
He was ashamed that he had lost faith, even for a day.
Toward the end of the two months Shirley began to grow a little impatient with his industry.
"Will it never be finished?" she would sigh plaintively. "You never have any time to spare for me any more."
"You see," he would explain, "there are so many details to be worked out in a thing like this, and I mustn't slur over any of them. We must make it the best we can. And it will soon be done."
But a little throb of regret would clutch his heart as he said that.
And one evening he did come to the end, the illustrative sketches complete, the beautiful plans all made, the last calculation for the specifications set down.
"There! It's done."
He propped a sketch on the easel and leaned back, sighing.
Shirley looked up from her novel. "Thank goodness—at last! Are you sure you've made it the very best you can?"
"Yes." He looked long at the sketch, a strange wistfulness in his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever do as well again."
"Suppose it shouldn't win, after all?"
"Oh, don't!" he cried. "Don't suggest that—just now."
She caught the sudden sharp pain in his voice and looked at him wonderingly.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing," he answered, his voice gone dull now. "I guess I've been working harder than I thought and am pretty tired."
"You'd better go to bed early and get a good sleep."
"Yes," he said, "I'm going to do that."
But he did not do that. Instead, for the last time, he stayed up until nearly morning in the company of his completed work. It was as if he watched the night out with a loved one who in the morning must go upon a long uncertain journey. . . . This also Shirley, had she known, would have called very temperamental.
For a month they waited, a feverish, anxious but always hopeful month, for the committee's decision.
And then one morning as he sat idly in his office an errand boy came, under his arm a long round parcel.
"Mr. Bixby sent me with this."
When the boy was gone David quickly ripped open the parcel. It contained his sketches and plans. With them was a note.
"As we have accepted the plans submitted by Mr. Richard Holden, we return yours herewith. Thanking you for. . . ."
The rest was a dancing blur. . . .
It was mid-afternoon when he rose from his table. The first dizzying shock had passed, but a dull unceasing ache was left and he was very tired. He tried to smile, to gather together the tatters of his courage and faith, but he could not think of the future. When he tried to think of Shirley a sickening qualm rushed over him, leaving him weak and nerveless.
"Poor Shirley!" he muttered. "How can I tell her? Poor Shirley!"
Mechanically he put on his hat and overcoat and went out. It was storming. He had no umbrella, and if he had had one it would have been but scanty shelter against the driving rain. But he did not care. He was even glad of the storm and the discomfort of wet feet and clothes.
For an hour he splashed aimlessly through the city's streets. Then he turned slowly but doggedly homeward.
"Poor Shirley!" he kept saying to himself. "I mustn't let her see how it hurts. I must put a brave face on it before her."
He was half-way home when he stopped with a sudden "Oh!" that was almost a groan. A memory had cut even through his misery. It was their fourth anniversary!
He took out what money was in his pocket, counted it and tramped back through the rain until he came to a florist's. There he got a small bunch of carnations. It was all he could buy with the money he had with him, and it was too late to go to the bank—and little enough was there! He started homeward once more.
By the time the apartment was reached he had pulled himself together a little. With an effort he achieved a smile and went in.
Shirley was waiting for him. "Any word?"
He shook his head. He could not tell her just then, but he could not trust his voice with a kindly lie.
"Oh, I thought surely we'd hear to-day— You've brought something for me?"
"It isn't much."
He gave her the little box—it was rain-soaked now—and saw her face fall as she peeped within. Always he had brought her some pretty extravagance on their anniversary. But she kissed him and sent him to his room to put on dry clothes.
They sat down to dinner, a special dinner with things they both liked and could not always have. And for a while he tried to be as merry as the occasion demanded. But not for long. His tongue fumbled over his poor little jokes and his laughter was lifeless. Shirley saw.
"David, look at me."
His eyes wavered, fell, then rose doggedly to hers.
"What's the matter? Something has happened. Do you mean it's—"
"Yes, Shirley. Dick Holden won."
For a moment she stared blankly at him, then burst into a storm of weeping. In an instant his own heartache was swallowed up in sorrow for her. He sprang to her side, catching her close and petting her, begging her "not to take it so," saying foolish brave things.
The storm subsided as suddenly as it rose. With a sharp movement she pushed herself away from him and sat looking at him with eyes in which he would have said, if he could have trusted his senses just then, anger and—almost—hate were blazing.
"Shirley," he pleaded, "don't take it so. Our plansweregood. It was only pull that beat us. Dick told me—"
The eyes did not change. "It doesn't matter why, does it? They didn't take them—that's all. What difference does it make if things are good when nobody will buy them? And I had hoped—"
"Dear, don't take it so," he repeated. "We must be brave. This is only a test—the hardest of all. If we're brave and keep hanging on—you remember what we used to say—"
She laughed, not her old beautiful laugh, but a shrill outpouring of her bitter disappointment.
"Oh, we said a lot of silly things. We were fools. I didn't know what it would be like." Anger—yes, and even hate—were unmistakable in that moment. She sat up sharply. "And, David, you've got to do something to change it. I'm tired of it all—sick and tired of scrimping and worrying and wearing made-over dresses and being—just shabby genteel. You've got to do something."
Every word was a knife in his heart. But he could not be angry with her; he was thinking of her disappointment.
"But, dear, I'm doing all I can. How can I—"
"You can get a position somewhere and at least have a steady income that would—"
"Why, Shirley, you don't mean—give up my profession? Youcouldn'tmean that!"
"I mean just that. It would give us a steady income at least."
"But I can't give it up. There's more than money to working. There's being in the work you want to do and are fitted for—"
"Ah!" She turned on him fiercely. "I thought you cared more for your work than for your family. Now I know it. You would keep us poor, just so you can do the things you like to do. And what right have you to think you're fitted for it? Why can't you be sensible and see what everybody else sees—that as an architect you are—"
"Shirley!"
But she said it.
"—a failure."
For a little he stared blindly at her. All other aches were as nothing beside this. . . . Then something within, that had sustained him since he left the office, snapped, gave way. His head and shoulders sagged forward. With a weary gesture he turned and went into the living-room.
That storm, too, passed. It had been more than half the hysteria of shattered hope. She had hardly known what she was saying. Now she remembered his eyes as she had dealt her thrust. She was a little frightened at what she had done. She waited nervously for him to come back to her; always David had been first to mend their quarrels, and Shirley thought her kisses balm to heal all wounds.
But he did not come back. In the living-room was a heavy silence.
At last she went softly to the door. He was standing by the table, still in the broken attitude, with the same dazed eyes. He did not see her.
"David!"
He did not seem to hear. She went to him and put an arm around his shoulder.
"David, I didn't mean to be nasty. It really isn't your fault. I didn't mean—"
The sound of her voice brought him out of his daze. He shrank from her touch and, turning, regarded her with a queer new look that held her from him. After a little the sense of her words seemed to come to him.
"I think you did mean it," he said wearily. "And I think—I think you are quite right."
In the morning the world, strangely enough, was outwardly the same. Even the sun had the bad taste to shine, as though a black shadow were not on their hearts.
They went through the routine of bath and toilet and breakfast. David glanced over his newspaper and romped a bit with Davy Junior. And because he kissed her as he left for the day, Shirley supposed that the scene of the night before had been filed away with their other tiffs, in a remote pigeonhole labeled "To Be Forgotten." She was glad of that.
"And maybe," she thought hopefully, "it was a good thing I said that to him. David is clever and good and dear and all that, but the trouble is he lacks ambition and push. He needs bracing up and to take things more seriously. Perhaps it will be just as well if I take the reins for a while."
Her first act as whip was to write a long letter to Aunt Clara.
David, not guessing that the reins had been transferred to Shirley's hands—not guessing, in fact, that they had ever been out of Shirley's hands—was trudging listlessly, not to his office, but to Jim Blaisdell's bank. His note fell due that day.
"Same old story," he told Jim. "I'd like to renew, if you don't mind."
Jim fingered the note thoughtfully.
"Davy," he said at last, "don't you think it's about time to clean this up? It's been running a good while."
David flushed and his head went up. "Of course, if you'd rather not indorse—"
"Don't be a fool, Davy. It isn't that. There's nothing Mrs. Jim and I wouldn't do for you and Shirley, and you know it. What I mean is, debt's a bad habit. It grows on you and you get to a point where it doesn't worry you as it ought. And it leads to other bad habits—living beyond one's means, and so on."
David's prideful pose collapsed suddenly. "I know," he said wearily. "I'd like to clean this note up. It worries me quite enough. But the fact is—the fact is, I'm strapped and can't. We've been living from hand to mouth for a good while. And it begins to look"—David's laugh went to Jim's heart—"as if both hand and mouth would be empty soon."
"It's really as bad as that?"
"Worse than that."
Jim slowly scrawled his name across the back of a new note. David got up and crossed the office, fixing his eyes—which saw not—on a flashlight photograph of the last bankers' association banquet. He cleared his throat vigorously.
"It's worse than that. Jim—" He paused.
"Yes?"
"Jim, you don't happen to know any one with a job—living salary attached—concealed about his person, do you?"
"What!"
Jim whirled around in his swivel chair and stared hard at David's back.David continued his regard of the bankers' association banquet. "Thisis you in the corner, isn't it?— Because, if you know of any such jobI'd be glad to take it over."
"In your own line, of course?"
"In any line. Preferablynotin my line."
"But—good lord, man! You're not losing your nerve, are you—just because business has slumped a little? What about your profession?"
"As to that," David cleared his throat again, "as to that, I think we may say—safely—I haven't made good."
"Oh, piffle! You're too young a man to say a fool thing like that. If it's this note that's bothering you—" He stopped, because David had turned and Jim saw his eyes.
"The note is only part of it. But, if you don't mind, we'll not discuss it. I'll be glad if you can help me out. And I'll try to cut this loan down a little next time—somehow. I'll not keep you any longer now." David moved toward the door. "Remember us to Mrs. Jim, won't you?" And he went hastily out.
"Why, damn it!" muttered Jim, left alone. "This is bad. This is entirely too bad."
David went to a long weary day at his office, where he had nothing to do but sit at his desk and gaze into space. Shirley was mistaken. Her words had not been filed away in the remote pigeonhole, "To Be Forgotten."
For a while Jim stared frowningly at the crumpled note in his hand.Then he began a long series of telephone calls.
The thing was still on his mind that evening when Mrs. Jim descended from the children's dormitory and silence reigned at last through the house.
"You might as well out with it now as later," she observed, as she took up her sewing. "What has been bothering you all evening?"
"I've been congratulating myself on my cleverness in the matter of choosing a wife."
Mrs. Jim surveyed him suspiciously. "What put that into your head?"
"Davy Quentin—by way of contrast, I suppose."
"What about Davy?"
"I'm afraid he's got into a pretty sour pickle."
"He's been there for four years. Though he didn't always know it.What is the particular development now?"
"Debt, insolvency—in fact, genteel poverty."
"And worry, discontent and disillusionment at home. I've been afraid of that."
"He didn't say so."
"Davy wouldn't, of course."
"It must be pretty bad, for he wants to give up his profession and take a job. You know, Davy's liking for his work amounted almost to a mania."
"Does hehaveto give it up?"
"It doesn't meet their needs—at least, their requirements. And worst of all, he's got it into his head that he hasn't made good."
"But he has made good. He has done good work. And he has talent.Hasn't he?"
"In a way. But there's only one divine spark nowadays—push. He hasn't that. He prefers to let his work speak and push for itself. Poor Davy!"
"Poor Davy! But you'll get him a position, of course."
"There are times," remarked Jim, "when you're as innocent and credulous as Davy himself. It isn't so simple. He's fitted only for his own line. And there are very few men willing to pay a living salary to a greenhorn just for learning a business. In fact, after to-day I'm ready to say there is none."
"Poor Davy!" Mrs. Jim repeated softly. She threaded a needle and bent over her sewing. Jim watched the swift deft fingers proudly; they had acquired the habit of industry in a day when the Blaisdells had had to wrestle with the problem of slender income. After a few minutes' silence she let her sewing fall to her lap.
"I think, Jim, if you'll have the machine around I'll go down-town with you in the morning."
Jim sighed in relief. "You've solved it, then?"
"I want to call on my latest acquisition. You remember asking, 'Why isJonathan Radbourne?'"
Jim nodded, with the smile the thought of that gentleman always evoked.
"The answer is, of course—Davy."
"I'm wondering," said Jim thoughtfully, "just how Davy would like it if he knew you were going to beg a job for him."
"I'm not going to beg a job. I will merely state the case to Mr.Radbourne."
"Suppose he concludes that making a job for Davy is too high a price to pay even for your ladyship's favor?"
Mrs. Jim smiled confidently. "Mr. Radbourne and I understand each other. And he doesn't have to pay for my favor. I have made him a present of it."
Two mornings later David found a note from Jim, asking him to call at the bank. David obeyed the summons at once.
"Davy," Jim began, "did you mean what you said the other day about a job?"
"Yes," David answered quietly.
"Well, I took you at your word. And I think I've landed you one. Radbourne & Company want a good man to do mechanical drawing. They'll pay a hundred and fifty to the right man at the start, and they'll raise that later if you turn out well. Do you care to try it on?"
"Yes," David said again.
"I still think you're making a mistake—but that's your business.Shall we go around to Radbourne's now?"
"Yes."
To those three monosyllables David added nothing during the few minutes' walk. Had Jim been leading him to the prisoner's dock David could not have taken less joy in the journey. Jim discoursed of the judge before whom the prisoner was being led.
"Odd fish, this Radbourne. Dinky little man. With whiskers. You're apt to think he's a fool at first. But that's a mistake. He isn't at all—I'd hate to lose his account. He makes machines in a small way, but very wellandquite profitably. His father made a reputation for turning out high-class work and the son keeps it up. We got to know him at St. Mark's. Mrs. Jim says he's the only man of real charity she knows—not even excepting me."
David forgot to smile.
They were shown into a small bare office, where, behind a littered flat-top desk, the judge got nimbly to his feet; although "judge" was in this case a queer fancy indeed, as David had later to confess.
There are several ways in which men can be homely, and Radbourne, of Radbourne & Company, had chosen the worst way of all. When you saw him you wanted to smile. He was little and roly-poly. His eyes were too small, their blue too light. His nose was acutely and ungracefully pug. His ears were too big and stood out from his head. His mouth was too wide. His hair and eyebrows were thick and red, too red, and his round chubby face was flanked by a pair of silky, luxuriant red Dundrearies that would have done credit to a day of hirsute achievements. His linen was strictly without blemish, and he wore a creaseless black frock coat and a waistcoat of brown broadcloth. And as he stood looking up at his tall visitors, head on one side, he reminded them of nothing so much as a sleek cock-robin who had just dined to his taste. He seemed to be in his late thirties.
David would have smiled at any other time. "Why, this," he thought unkindly, "is a mere comic valentine."
The comic valentine smiled, a little shyly it seemed, and put out a slender long-fingered hand.
"This," he announced, "is a great pleasure."
David took the hand and murmured something polite.
Blaisdell chatted briskly for a few minutes, then departed. Radbourne turned to his draftsman-to-be.
"Perhaps Mr. Blaisdell has told you we are needing a man here. Do you think, now you've had a look at us, you would care to come and help us?"
"That's a pleasant way of putting it," said David a bit grimly. "I'm needing a job badly. If you think you aren't afraid to try me—"
Radbourne smiled protestingly. "If you knew all Mr. Blaisdell has said of you, you wouldn't say that. You have warm friends, Mr. Quentin, if he is a sample."
"Did he tell you I've failed in the only thing I ever tried?"
"He didn't put it that way," the little man said gently. "Nor would I, if I were you. There's such a thing as getting into the wrong niche—which isn't failure at all. Shall we consider it settled that you will come?"
"I'd like to be sure," David said, flushing, "that this job isn't one of your—charities."
The little man flushed, too. "Oh, Ibegof you not to think that. I expect you to prove it a good stroke of business for me. And I hope we shall please each other. Your first name is David, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And mine is Jonathan. That ought to be a good omen. Don't you think so?" And that diffident smile, so absurdly out of place on the face of an employer, appeared again.
"Why, I hope so," said David.
"And I hope you will like the work, though it may not be very big at first. I understand how important that is to a man." Radbourne nodded gravely. "But I have a theory that if he puts his heart into his work he is bound to get a good deal of happiness out of it. Don't you think so?"
"I'll try to remember that. When do you want me to come?"
"Could you make it next Monday?"
"I will be here then."
David went away from Jonathan Radbourne, the comic valentine; and the heartache, for some reason, was a little eased, courage a little stiffened.
"After all," he kept saying to himself, "it's only a gift to Shirley and the baby. And I'mgladto give it to them—they're worth anything. It's a debt, too. I owe them everything I can give. And maybe now we can be happy as we used to be—no worries or quarrels."
He tried to keep thinking of that—of the comfort in knowing that next month's expenses could be met, of debts growing less, not bigger, of a love happily reborn under freedom from worry.
He went to Dick Holden's office. That busy young man met him with visible embarrassment, which, however, David ignored.
"Dick," he plunged at once into his errand, "I owe you a lot of money."
"Oh, not much—not worth speaking about. No hurry about that, old man."
David smiled grimly at that. "It won't be paid in a hurry—can't be. But I'm quitting the game and taking a job, and I can pay you some every month now; not much, but a nibble, anyhow. And if ever you get rushed with business and I can help you out at nights, I'd be glad to work part of my debt off that way."
"Why," said Dick very eagerly, "that'll be easy. I've got three sets of plans I'd like to have you work out right now. And there'll be more. You know, I'll be pretty busy over that St. Chris—" Dick's tongue halted sharply and the red crept over his face until even his ears were glowing.
"Of course. I haven't congratulated you yet. I do most—"
"Don't you, Davy Quentin!" Dick interrupted fiercely. "Don't you go congratulating me. I feel darn small potatoes just now. You're quitting the game because I beat you out on the St. Christopher's job, and I—"
"Not at all," David interrupted in his turn. "You mustn't look at it that way. I was foozling my approach right along anyway, and the St. Christopher thing couldn't have changed that. One swallow doesn't kill a summer thirst, you know." He laughed at this slender joke so heartily that Dick was almost deceived.
"Is it a pretty fair job?"
"I must say it is. And I expect to make a mighty good draftsman for Radbourne & Company. I've always been rather long on mechanical drawing, you may remember. And I've got a first-rate boss, if I'm any judge. On the whole, it looks pretty good—much better than dubbing along at a game where—where one hasn't the punch, as you put it."
Dick flushed again. For several minutes he was silent save for the drumming of his fingers on the desk. Then he stirred, with a sharp irritable movement.
"Well, I wish you luck. And I'll have the data for those plans to-morrow."
David took this as a hint to go. When he had gone Dick heaved a sigh of relief. During those silent minutes a strange inspiration had come to him, to suggest a partnership in lieu of the new job. Dick felt that he had had a narrow escape from an expensive generosity.
Next David called on a young architect who was looking for quarters. To him it was arranged to transfer the office lease and to sell enough of its furniture to pay the rent in arrears.
Then David went home to lay his gift at Shirley's feet.
And yet, as he neared the apartment, he felt a strange shrinking from telling her the news, lest she guess what his gift had cost him. He wondered at that.
He found Shirley flushed with excitement over news of her own.
"Guess who's coming!"
David could not guess.
"Aunt Clara!"
"Why, that's fine," he rejoiced weakly.
Shirley kissed him nicely.
"And, David, I think she's coming to talk over things."
"Aunt Clara generally is— What things?"
"Why, our affairs. Money, you know."
His glance sharpened. "Why do you think that?"
"Because—now don't scold!" She brushed an imaginary bit of dust from his shoulder. "Because—I asked her."
"Shirley!" His clasp of her relaxed.
"Nowplease, don't let's have another scene. What's the use of rich relations if they can't help you out once in a while? You've no right to let your foolish pride cut Davy Junior and me off from Aunt Clara's help."
"Luckily we shan't need her help, because"—it was not so he had thought to tender his gift—"because to-day I got a job."
"A job? Oh, David!" Her arms tightened around his neck, Aunt Clara for the moment forgotten. "What is it?"
He told her.
"Just a draftsman? That isn't a very high position, is it?"
"Not very."
"How much does it pay?"
He told her and saw her face fall.
"Why, that's only a little more than you have been making."
"At least, it's steady and sure."
"But even Maizie makes that much. I used to get ninety from the library. I thought men—clever men—"
"Beggars," he said, "even clever beggars, can't be choosers."
"But we're not beggars, are we?"
"Your Aunt Clara will think so."
He turned away into another room, leaving the matter of Aunt Clara suspended in the air. He saw then that he ran no risk of Shirley guessing what his gift had cost him. He wondered ifheyet guessed how much it would cost.
Soon Aunt Clara arrived, in a taxicab and wearing a businesslike, purposeful air. She made herself promptly and perfectly at home and freely passed judgment on all she saw; and very little escaped Aunt Clara's eyes. She inspected the flat and, inquiry establishing the rent, sniffingly reminded them that she and Uncle John—now unhappily deceased—had begun their housekeeping in a fifteen-dollar-a-month cottage. Pouncing upon a drawerful of Davy Junior's sweaters and slippers and lacy dresses, she cited the case of John,fils, who until he was three years old had never had more than two dresses and one coatie at a time. David's books struck her as an appalling extravagance; she and the late Uncle John had never thought of a library until they had ten thousand in bank.
"You are very poor managers, I must admit. You've been married more than four years, and what have you to show for it but didoes—and debts, as I understand?"
The question went home to David's heart. But it was he who, catching up Davy Junior, held out the crowing youngster for her inspection.
"We have this."
And then, a sudden wave of emotion surging unbidden within him, he caught the child sharply to him. He turned away quickly to hide this unwonted demonstration, but Aunt Clara saw.
"Very pretty! But sentiment butters no bread."
"Sometimes," he returned gravely, "it makes dry bread palatable."
"Humph!" remarked Aunt Clara. "And now let us have dinner—something more than dry bread and sentiment, if you please. I never talk business on an empty stomach."
To David, love and pride quivering from hurts lately sustained, that dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of the jarring critical voice, seemed endless. And yet, thinking of a worse thing to come, he could have wished it to last until midnight or that hour which found Aunt Clara too sleepy for business. It lasted until Aunt Clara had slowly sipped her second cup of coffee—which, inquiry brought out, cost forty-three cents the pound.
Perhaps the dinner had mellowed her humor a little, for:
"You may smoke," she nodded to David, "provided it isn't one of those nasty little cigarettes."
"It will have to be a pipe."
"A pipe is the least objectionable," she graciously conceded. "Your late Uncle John smoked one to the last."
Then she produced and donned a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and through them fixed upon David the sternest of glances.
"And now, since I must leave in the morning, let us get to business.You may tell me the situation."
"What situation have you in mind?"
"The one that made you write to me for help."
"But I didn't write to you for help."
"Shirley did, which is the same thing."
"When Shirley wrote, without my knowledge, she hadn't all the facts. I have just taken a position—"
"That is very sensible. What sort of a position?"
"A very good position, quite sufficient for our needs. And so we needn't spoil your visit by discussing our dull affairs."
Aunt Clara glared. "Young man, are you trying to snub me? I remember you tried that the first time I saw you."
"I hope," said David gently, "I haven't given you that impression."
"It's just his silly pride, Aunt Clara," Shirley put in soothingly.
Aunt Clara silenced Shirley with a gesture and kept her attention on David. "You did leave that impression. And you are thinking that I'm nosing into what is none of my business. On the contrary, young man, it is my business. You married against my advice, but it's no credit to me to have my relatives hard up and in debt. You are in debt, I understand?"
"That is true," David answered quietly, "but—"
"But you don't want my money to pay them with, you were about to say? Young man, when you refuse my money, you're a little—quitea little—in advance of the fact. I'm not going to give you money. I don't believe in giving money to able-bodied young men."
"Thank you," said David.
"But I will give you some advice and some help. You can take them or leave them. My advice is—get rid of this expensive apartment and store your goods. For the rest, I will take Shirley and the baby to live with me, paying all their expenses, until you can get on your feet. With your new position and no one but yourself to pay for, it oughtn't to take long."
Shirley gasped—unmistakably with delight.
David turned red, but he answered, still quietly, "It is good of you to make the offer, but of course it is out of the question. I think Shirley would prefer—"
"Young man," Aunt Clara reminded him, "in my family nothing I suggest is ever out of the question. As for Shirley, let her answer for herself."
"Ithink it would be very sensible," Shirley answered for herself, eagerly.
"She means," corrected Aunt Clara, who was nobody's fool, "she means it would be pleasanter living in my house than scrimping here to pay for dead horses. So it would. But it would be sensible, too. You've got into hot water. I blame Shirley—I know her. But I blame you most. A husband ought always to keep a tight rein on household affairs. Your late Uncle John—well, never mind him. Because you've been weak, you've run into debt, the worst disturber of household peace. I give you a chance to be rid of it quickly. Have you a quicker way?"
"I have a better way. Since we got into the hole through our own carelessness, let us work our own way out."
"Humph! More sentiment. You'd make your family pay for your weakness. However," Aunt Clara rose with the air of having done her whole duty, "I've made my offer. It is for you to decide. I will now go into the other room while you and Shirley talk it over. I make it a rule never to intrude into discussions between husband and wife."
She moved toward the living-room. David ushered her to the door and closed it behind her. Then he turned to Shirley. . . . .
He had made many mistakes, no doubt, been as weak and foolish as Aunt Clara said. But they had been loving faults, born of a deep desire to make Shirley happy. And he had atoned for them. He had declared himself to his world a failure; he had swallowed and forgiven the word that ought never to be on a wife's tongue. Because it seemed best for her, he had given up a work that was very dear to him, even in failure; how dear, he had not known until he had resigned it, as he thought, forever. He had taken unto himself a master and a task that to his cast of mind could never be aught but drudgery. It was no easy thing he had done. But he had not whimpered, he had made an effort, none the less brave because so boyishly obvious, to keep up a smiling front. He had sought to offer his gift from the heart, ungrudgingly, because he had loved her, still loved her, he thought.
That which they had now to decide seemed big and vital to him. His pride was touched. A need was involved. Good sense might counsel acceptance of Aunt Clara's offer, but he thought it cowardly. Since they had failed in the issue of making a living, the brave course was to retrieve that failure by themselves. More—it did not seem to him the act of a loving woman to leave him, even for a few months, when his need of her and her love was greatest.
He did not ask her to count the cost of his gift; he knew she could not. He did want her tojustifythe gift, to prove that the love for which he had paid so big a price was real love dwelling in a fine brave woman's heart. . .
Shirley was sitting at the table. He went to a chair across from her.She looked up eagerly.
"Shirley, shall you mind very much if I say, no?"
"I think the only sensible thing is to take her at her word."
"Perhaps. But I'd rather not be under obligations to—to anybody."
"Oh, that's just sentiment, as Aunt Clara says. And it's quite time for us to begin being practical. Think of being rid of all those horrid debts! You don't seem to understand what a weight they've been on me."
"I think I do understand, dear. But it will be different now, because we know that if we're careful for a while we can clean them all up. Radbourne seems a good man to work for and maybe this job will develop into something better. And I'll be doing work on the side for Dick for a while. It won't be so long before the debts will melt away. Then we'll have the satisfaction of knowing we did it by ourselves, without any one's help. We'll have proved ourselves, don't you see?"
"That's more sentiment. I can't see anything so awful in going to Aunt Clara's. It would be just a visit, such as any one would make. It wouldn't be for so very long, and it would do us all good. I would have a fine rest, and the change would be good for you, too. You could read and work in the evenings with no one to bother you. And you'd have a fine chance to see all your old men friends."
"It isn't the men I want to see just now. Shirley, dear—" He was pleading now. "Shirley, dear, I— You see, it's cost me a little, a good deal maybe—letting my profession go and taking up work that isn't—isn't so very interesting and is for another man. It'll be a little hard—just for a while of course, until I get used to the idea. And I'd like to have you here with me. Don't you see, dear—I need you."
But the plea failed. With a sharp sinking of his heart he saw her pretty brow wrinkle in an impatient frown.
"I don't see at all. I should think, if the position is such a good one, you'd be glad you've taken it. And you ought to be glad to think of Davy Junior and me out at Aunt Clara's instead of moping around a cheap dingy flat or boarding-house."
"You mean," he tried to keep his voice steady, "youwantto go?You'd really rather—aside from saving money?"
"Want to! I'm wild to go. Of course, I'll be homesick for you, but all husbands and wives expect to be apart sometimes on vacations and trips and—oh, David, can't you see? It's been so long since I've had any really good times and I'm hungry for them—starving. And out there at Aunt Clara's, where you don't have to think of money all the time— Why, you couldn't—it isn't like you to be so selfish as to refuse me that."
He said no more. He sat fumbling with a napkin, his eyes cast down. He dared not lift them to Shirley's, lest he see there a truth he had not the courage to face just then. After a little he rose, went to the door and opened it.
"Will you come in now?" he nodded to Aunt Clara. "The family council is over."
Aunt Clara marched into the room.
"Well, what have you decided?"
"Shirley has convinced me," he smiled queerly, "that you are right.But your hospitality is all we ought to accept. For her other expensesI will send something from my salary every month."
"But that isn't what I—"
"I'm afraid," he interrupted quietly, "you will have to concede so much to me—and sentiment." . . .
In the morning Aunt Clara left.
"This is what comes," was her benediction, "of marrying before you're ready and living beyond your means. I hope it will be a lesson to you never to do it again."
David was too tired to smile.
The rest of that week was too full for much thinking. The office was to be cleaned out. Trunks were to be packed, china and silver and bric-à-brac to be wrapped and boxed for storage, a thousand little preparations for moving when a new tenant for the apartment should have been found. David was grateful for that. He did not want time to think. Especially he did not want time to feel.
On Sunday morning he took Shirley and Davy Junior to the train. Not once did he let the baby out of his arms. At the very last a doubt seemed to disturb Shirley.
"David—" They were sitting in the station waiting-room then. "David, it's dear of you to let me go like this."
"It's better than moping around here."
"You don't think I'm selfish in wanting to go, do you?"
He shook his head and kept his eyes on the child's face.
"It doesn't mean I don't love you—oh, with all my heart! I'll be so lonesome for you. I'll be thinking of you all the time and write you every day. And when I come back—! Do you know, dear, I have the feeling that now, with the new position and the debts cleaned up soon, things are going to be different with us, so much brighter."
"Why, I think so, Shirley."
"I'm sure of it." She squeezed his hand. "When people love as we do, things just have to come out right."
"Yes, Shirley."
The gates were thrown open and they went out on the platform. The train thundered in. David took Shirley and Davy Junior into their car. He kissed her hastily and lingered longer over his good-by to the baby. Then he ran out of the car and stood again on the platform, while Shirley made the youngster wave his hand. David managed an answering smile.
He walked homeward by a long roundabout way. The rest of that day he spent in working feverishly at unfinished odds and ends of packing. Then he got out all his sketches and plans and slowly tore them into bits, until the floor around him was littered with the fragments. Last of all he came to the St. Christopher's plans. But his hands refused his command to destroy. He sat looking at this evidence of his failure, until darkness fell and hid them from his sight. He rose then and, wrapping them up carefully, put them with the boxes for storage.
There was nothing more that he could do. He had not eaten since morning but he was not hungry. He leaned back in a chair and let all the thoughts and feelings he had held at bay during the busy days rush at him in the darkness. An incredible loneliness was upon him, a sense of loss bitterer even than loneliness. It seemed that something for which he had paid dearly had been stolen from him.