The House of Toys Part 20

Shirley was very sweet about it. "I did think you were a little foolish to take it so hard, dear, when the old architecture never brought us anything but disappointments. I always knew you would come to look at it sensibly."

And she dismissed the subject with the carelessness it may have deserved.

"When do you think Mr. Radbourne will raise your salary?"

"Probably before I have earned it."

"David, do you think we'll _ever_ be rich?"

"I suppose not. There seems little chance of it."

She sighed.

"There is nothing in the world but money, is there?"

Tears of self-pity were coming into her eyes. "It's terrible, having to look forward to being poor forever."

The train announcer made loud noises through a megaphone. David rose and looked down in a sudden daze at the pretty young woman who was his wife--to whom he had become but a disappointing means to an end, to whom his heart, though he might thrust it naked and quivering before her eyes, would ever be a sealed book inspiring no interest. His pretty house of love was swaying, falling, and he could not support it.

"And I begin to think," he said queerly, "that we'll always be hopelessly, miserably poor."

Even Shirley could perceive a cryptic quality in that speech.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing that need disturb you. I have no reason," he added grimly, "to believe that it will disturb you."

She eyed him reproachfully and gave a sigh of patience sorely taxed.

"David, I wonder if you never realize that in some of your moods you are very hard to understand."

"Too temperamental, I suppose? Right as always, my dear." He laughed.

Men sometimes laugh because they can not weep. But Shirley did not know that. "But I think I can promise you--no more temperament. I'm learning a cure for that. And now I'd better turn you over to Charles. I think that noise means my train is ready."

He took her to the car, kissed her and helped her into the seat and watched her ride away. Then he went back into the station just in time to catch the train.

Shirley found herself perturbed and close to tears; she hardly knew why.

"I wonder what he meant by that about temperament?" She sighed again.

"Sometimes I think the worry and everything are turning David's temper sour. I wish--I wish he were like other men. He doesn't realize how trying he is sometimes."

And Shirley being Shirley, she bade Charles drive faster and tried to put David's unlikeness to other men out of her mind.

David being David, he sat up all night, submitting to his cure for temperament. He was facing the truth from which he had been hiding ever since Shirley went away. His heavy sense of loss had been defined.

A little imp with a nasty sneering voice that jabbed like a hot needle perched itself on his shoulder and kept dinning into his ears:

"The truth is, you had nothing to lose but a fancy. Shirley never really loved you. You were only one of her toys, one sort of a good time, and not worth the price. You didn't really love Shirley, only what you thought she was, what you see now she is not. Therefore . . ."

CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY

Some men fall out of love with their wives as easily and unconcernedly as they fell in. They even feel a sort of relief, thinking a disturbing factor thus removed from their lives, and they live happily ever after. But they are not "temperamental."

It was not so with David. He thought it a tragedy, at least for a while. Even when it had failed him, when it had refused to shine in darkness, itself turned upon him in an hour of need, he had not lost faith in love. He had said in his heart, "At least I have love left, which is worth while in itself; and having that, I can yet work out some sort of happiness for us all." He had clung desperately to that hope, though the evidence was against it.

He had been clinging to an illusion. When he found that out, he had nothing left. He was bewildered by the task of working out a happiness where no love was. How could he rebuild when he had not even wreckage with which to build?

He went to live at the boarding-house where he had been taking his meals, a dingy cheerless establishment that had but the one merit of cheapness. He spent his evenings there alone, smoking too much, reading or working for d.i.c.k Holden. The cheap tobacco burned his tongue and the loneliness, more than ever, ate into his soul. He thought of going out to call on the Jim Blaisdells or for dinners with the men he had used to know. But he shrank from that because he supposed his old friends must be saying, "That David Quentin--poor Davy!--has quite petered out, hasn't he?" As probably they were.

He had sense enough to understand that these nights were not good for him.

"As far as I know, I've got to exist a good many years yet and make a living for myself and Shirley and Davy Junior. So I mustn't let myself get into this sort of a rut. I must hunt up a more cheerful place to stay."

When a love is dead, it is dead, and there's an end to it. After a decent period of mourning you get used to the fact. . . .

The office, after all, was not so unbearably prison-like. There was the balm of friendship--a double friendship--which is good for the self-respect of a man. And there was the work, with which he was growing more familiar and which, therefore, was more easily and quickly and better done. At his own suggestion the scope of his duties had been broadened; and he borrowed books from the library and tried to study out schemes to systematize Jonathan's business. Some of these schemes were not wholly absurd and one or two were adopted, which pleased Jonathan far more than David. Strictly speaking, David was not putting his heart into his work, but he was giving fidelity and a desire to do his best; and he was getting back, perhaps not happiness, but at least a measure of the honest workman's best reward. So that Jonathan's theorem was given a partial demonstration. Jonathan saw.

"Mother," he said one evening, "I am more than a little ashamed. I took David Quentin into the office because Mr. Blaisdell said he was badly in need of a position and nothing else offered. I'm afraid I thought it a charity and was rather patronizing at first. I'm afraid,"

Jonathan sighed, "I am puffed up at times by my charities, which don't amount to so much, after all."

"We are not required to be _too_ humble," she reminded him. "Why are you ashamed just now?"

"It wasn't charity at all. David is really a very capable man and a hard worker. He more than earns his salary--I'll have to raise that very soon. I can't understand how he failed as an architect."

"Perhaps he didn't have the right talent. I understand architecture is a very difficult profession."

"It is a n.o.ble art," said Jonathan, "and very few men have the talent.

That must be the explanation, though I've looked up some of his work and it seems quite as good as that of many architects I know. But I find it hard not to be glad that he was forced to come to me. He is the most likable man I have ever met."

"He seems attractive," said his mother, less sweepingly, "and has excellent manners. He is good-looking, is he not?"

"Very." Jonathan winced. "He is just what a man would like to be.

And I never had a friendship that meant quite so much to me."

"Has he displaced Miss Summers?"

"Miss Summers," said Jonathan, "is--different. What shall I read to-night--_Earnest Maltravers_?"

Boarding-houses that are both good and cheap are not easy to find.

David took his problem to Esther Summers. It made an excuse for a minute's chat. He liked to watch the dancing lights in those expressive gray eyes.

"Do you happen to know of any pretty good boarding-house? I say _pretty_ good, because it has to be pretty cheap, too. The place I'm at now is a nightmare. They're always frying onions. And the star-boarder is a haberdashery clerk. He looks like an advertis.e.m.e.nt of ready-made clothes and talks out of the side of his mouth in what he thinks is an English accent. He's always talking to me about the squabs on his staff."

"What is a squab?" she asked.