“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 readmit 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.
That is to say, he disliked the possibility of losing enough money to annoy him, though of course he set forth his principles as resting upon a more gallant and unselfish basis. “I don’t consider it hospitality to have any man go out o’ my shack sore,” he was wont to say. “Myself, I’m a bachelor and got no obligations; I’ll shoot any man that can afford it for anything he wants to.
Trouble is, you never can tell when a man can’t afford it, or what harm his losin’ might mean to the little girlie at home and the kiddies. No, boys, penny-ante and ten-cent limit is the highest we go in this ole shack. Penny-ante and a few steins of the ole home-brew that hasn’t got a divorce in a barrel of it!”
Penny-ante and the ole home-brew had been in festal operation for half an hour when the morose Collinson arrived this evening. Mr. Loomis and his guests sat about the round table under the alabaster drop-light; their coats were off; cigars were worn at the deliberative poker angle; colourful chips and cards glistened on the cloth; one of the players wore a green shade over his eyes; and all in all, here was a little poker party for a lithograph. To complete the picture, several of the players continued to concentrate upon their closely held cards, and paid no attention to the newcomer or to their host’s lively greeting of him.
“Ole Collie, b’gosh!” Mr. Loomis shouted, humorously affecting the bucolic. “Here’s your vacant cheer; stack all stuck out for you ‘n’ ever’thin’! Set down, neighbour, an’ Smithie’ll deal you in, next hand. What made you so late? Helpin’ the little girlie at home get the kiddy to bed? That’s a great kiddy of yours, Collie. I got a little Christmas gift for her I’m goin’ to bring around some day soon. Yes, sir, that’s a great little kiddy Collie’s got over at his place, boys.”
Collinson took the chair that had been left for him, counted his chips, and then as the playing of a “hand” still preoccupied three of the company, he picked up a silver dollar that lay upon the table near him. “What’s this?” he asked. “A side bet? Or did somebody just leave it here for me?”
“Yes; for you to look at,” Mr. Loomis explained. “It’s Smithie’s.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothin’. Smithie was just showin’ it to us. Look at it.”
Collinson turned the coin over and saw a tiny inscription that had been lined into the silver with a point of steel. ‘“Luck,”’ he read; ‘“Luck hurry back to me!”’ Then he spoke to the owner of this marked dollar. “I suppose you put that on there, Smithie, to help make sure of getting our money to-night.” But Smithie shook his head, which was a large, gaunt head, as it happened — a head fronted with a sallow face shaped much like a coffin, but inconsistently genial in expression. “No,” he said. “It just came in over my counter this afternoon, and I noticed it when I was checkin’ up the day’s cash. Funny, ain’t it: ‘Luck hurry back to me!’”
“Who do you suppose marked that on it?” Collinson said thoughtfully.
“Golly!” his host exclaimed. “It won’t do you much good to wonder about that!”
Collinson frowned, continuing to stare at the marked dollar. “I guess not, but really I should like to know.”
“I would, too,” Smithie said. “I been thinkin’ about it. Might ‘a’ been somebody in Seattle or somebody in Ipswich, Mass., or New Orleans or St. Paul. How you goin’ to tell? Might ‘a’ been a woman; might ‘a’ been a man. The way I guess it out, this poor boob, whoever he was, well, prob’ly he’d had good times for a while, and maybe carried this dollar for a kind of pocket piece, the way some people do, you know. Then he got in trouble — or she did, whichever it was — and got flat broke and had to spend this last dollar he had — for something to eat, most likely. Well, he thought a while before he spent it, and the way I guess it out, he said to himself, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘most of the good luck I’ve enjoyed lately,’ he said, ‘it’s been while I had this dollar on me. I got to kiss ’em good-bye now, good luck and good dollar together; but maybe I’ll get ’em both back some day, so I’ll just mark the wish on the dollar, like this: Luck hurry back to me! That’ll help some, maybe, and anyhow I’ll know my luck dollar if I ever do get it back.’ That’s the way I guess it out, anyhow. It’s funny how some people like to believe luck depends on some little thing like that.”
“Yes, it is,” Collinson assented, still brooding over the coin.
The philosophic Smithie extended his arm across the table, collecting the cards to deal them, for the “hand” was finished. “Yes, sir, it’s funny,” he repeated. “Nobody knows exactly what luck is, but the way I guess it out, it lays in a man’s believin’ he’s in luck, and some little object like this makes him kind of concentrate his mind on thinkin’ he’s goin’ to be lucky, because of course you often know you’re goin’ to win, and then you do win. You don’t win when you want to win, or when you need to; you win when you believe you’ll win. I don’t know who was the dummy that said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil’; but I guess he didn’t have too much sense! I suppose if some man killed some other man for a dollar, the poor fish that said that would let the man out and send the dollar to the chair. No, sir; money’s just as good as it is bad; and it’ll come your way if you feel it will; so you take this marked dollar o mine —
But here this garrulous and discursive guest was interrupted by immoderate protests from several of his colleagues. “Cut it out!”
“My Lord!”
“Do something!”
“Smithie! Are you ever goin’ to deal?”
“I’m goin’ to shuffle first,” he responded, suiting the action to the word, though with deliberation, and at the same time continuing his discourse. “It’s a mighty interesting thing, a piece o’ money. You take this dollar, now: Who’s it belonged to? Where’s it been? What different kind o’ funny things has it been spent for sometimes? What funny kind of secrets do you suppose it could ‘a’ heard if it had ears? Good people have had it and bad people have had it: why, a dollar could tell more about the human race — why, it could tell all about it!”
“I guess it couldn’t tell all about the way you’re dealin’ these cards,” said the man with the green shade. “You’re mixin’ things all up.”
“I’ll straighten ’em all out then,” said Smithie cheerfully. “I knew of a twenty-dollar bill once; a pickpocket prob’ly threw it in the gutter to keep from havin’ it found on him when they searched him, but anyway a woman I knew found it and sent it to her young sister out in Michigan to take some music lessons with, and the sister was so excited she took this bill out of the letter and kissed it. That’s where they thought she got the germ she died of a couple o’ weeks later, and the undertaker got the twenty-dollar bill, and got robbed of it the same night. Nobody knows where it went then. They say, ‘Money talks.’
Golly! If it could talk, what couldn’t it tell? Nobody’d be safe. I got this dollar now, but who’s it goin’ to belong to next, and what’ll he do with it? And then after that! Why for years and years and years it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. We all want money; but some say it’s a bad thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. Lordy! Goodness or badness, I’ll take all anybody—”
He was interrupted again, and with increased vehemence. Collinson, who sat next to him, complied with the demand to “ante up,” then placed the dollar near his little cylinders of chips, and looked at his cards. They proved unencouraging, and he turned to his neighbour. “I’d sort of like to have that marked dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper dollar and a nickel for it.”
But Smithie laughed, shook his head, and slid the coin over toward his own chips. “No, sir. I’m goin’ to keep it — awhile, anyway.”
“So you do think it’ll bring you luck, after all!”
“No. But I’ll hold onto it for this evening, anyhow.”
“Not if we clean you out, you won’t,” said Charlie Loomis. “You know the rules o’ the ole shack: only cash goes in this game; no I. O. U. stuff ever went here or ever will. Tell you what I’ll do, though, before you lose it: I’ll give you a dollar and a quarter for your ole silver dollar, Smithie.”
“Oh, you want it, too, do you? I guess I can spot what sort of luck you want it for, Charlie.”
“Well, Mr. Bones, what sort of luck do I want it for?”
“You win, Smithie,” one of the other players said.
“We all know what sort o’ luck ole Charlie wants your dollar for — he wants it for luck with the dames.”
“Well, I might,” Charlie admitted, not displeased. “I haven’t been so lucky that way lately — not so dog-gone lucky!”
All of his guests, except one, laughed at this; but Collinson frowned, still staring at the marked dollar. For a reason he could not have put into words just then, it began to seem almost vitally important to him to own this coin if he could, and to prevent Charlie Loomis from getting possession of it. The jibe, “He wants it for luck with the dames,” rankled in Collinson’s mind: somehow it seemed to refer to his wife.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll bet two dollars against that dollar of yours that I hold a higher hand next deal than you do.”
“Here! Here!” Charlie remonstrated. “Shack rules! Ten-cent limit.”
“That’s only for the game,” Collinson said, turning upon his host with a sudden sharpness. “This is an outside bet between Smithie and me. Will you do it, Smithie? Where’s your sporting spirit?”
So liberal a proposal at once roused the spirit to which it appealed. “Well, I might, if some o’ the others’ll come in too, and make it really worth my while.”
“I’m in,” the host responded with prompt inconsistency; and others of the party, it appeared, were desirous of owning the talisman. They laughed and said it was “crazy stuff,” yet they all “came in,” and, for the first time in the history of this “shack,” what Mr. Loomis called “real money” was seen upon the table as a stake. It was won, and the silver dollar with it, by the largest and oldest of the gamesters, a fat man with a walrus moustache that inevitably made him known in this circle as “Old Bill.” He smiled condescendingly, and would have put the dollar in his pocket with the “real money,” but Mr. Loomis protested.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 496
