Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  She hurried into the hall, but the outlaws were already descending. Just ahead of them plunged Laurence, fleeing like some rabid thing. Behind him, in the ruck of boys, Daisy Mears seemed to reach for him at the full length of her extended arms; and so the rout went on and out through the open front doors to the yard, where still was heard above all other cries, “Hay, there, Mister! I’ll show you!” Mrs. Coy returned helplessly to the guests of sweeter behaviour, and did what she could to amuse them, but presently she was drawn to a window by language without.

  It was the voice of her son in frenzy. He stood on the lawn, swinging a rake about him circularly.

  “Let her try it!” he said. “Let her try it just once more, an’ I’ll show her!”

  For audience, out of reach of the rake, he had Daisy Mears and all his male guests save the two or three spiritless well-mannered at feeble play in the living-room; and this entire audience, including Miss Mears, replied in chanting chorus: “Daisy Mears an’ Laurunce Coy! She’s your girl!” Such people are hard to convince.

  Laurence swung the rake, repeating:

  “Just let her try it; that’s all I ast! Just let her try to come near me again!”

  “Laurence!” said his mother from the window.

  He looked up, and there was the sincerest bitterness in his tone as he said: “Well, I stood enough around here this afternoon!”

  “Put down the rake,” she said. “The idea of shaking a rake at a little girl!”

  The idea she mentioned seemed reasonable to Laurence, in his present state of mind, and in view of what he had endured. “I bet you’d shake it at her,” he said, “if she’d been doin’ to you what she’s been doin’ to me!”

  Now, from Mrs. Coy’s standpoint, that was nothing short of grotesque; yet actually there was something in what he said. Mrs. Coy was in love with Mr. Coy; and if another man — one whom she disliked and thought homely and unattractive — had bumped into her at a party, upsetting her frequently, sitting on her, pushing her over repeatedly as she attempted to rise, then embracing her and claiming her as his own, and following her about, and pursuing her even when she fled, insisting upon his claim to her and upon embracing her again and again, causing Mr. Coy to criticize her with outspoken superiority — and if all this had taken place with the taunting connivance of absolutely every one of the best people she knew — why, under such parallel circumstances, Mrs. Coy might or might not have armed herself with a rake, but this would have depended, probably, on whether or not there was a rake handy, and supposing there was, upon whether or not she became too hysterical to use it.

  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 to
o 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 pinhead, 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 go
ing 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!”