The House of Toys Part 4

But at the door she stopped and looked back--a risky business, as Lot's wife once proved. She surveyed the place with a lingering wishful glance.

"I wonder if we couldn't make up the difference in rent by cutting down somewhere else. We could cut the extras in half. And I won't need any new clothes for a whole year--not a single st.i.tch. By that time--"

She paused, as it seemed for a reply.

"Do you want it so much, Shirley?"

"Oh, if we only could do it, David!"

David, too, did sums in subtraction and found that, with care, he could cut his expenses down-town.

They took the apartment.

In fact, there came a time when David remembered, with a sickening qualm, that in almost every item they had stepped little or far beyond the limits of their budget. They did it because the disappointment written on Shirley's pretty face when something on which she had set her heart seemed beyond their reach, was more than he could bear.

But the old cat was still playing. It was a "boom year": the beginning, said the wise statesmen and newspapers, of an era of unprecedented prosperity. The city was growing rapidly. Architects'

services were in demand. David's business continued good. Among his clients was a gambling contractor who shaved his architects' fees but made up for that by the largeness of his operations. There seemed to be no need of cutting down "extras." They were not cut down.

It was on the whole a cloudless year. There were, to be sure, a few little quarrels, impatient words sharply answered, but there was also the exquisite joy of harmony restored. There were occasions when David found Shirley in tears, both cake or roast and fingers burned; occasions which he made festive by carrying her off to the club for dinner. There were evenings at the theater and concerts, gifts impulsively bought and rewarded with kisses, little household purchases that gave a pleasure out of all proportion to their cost, as it seemed at the time. But there were never any doubts, nor any fears. For all their demands there was money. The handicap of debt under which they had started was even a little diminished. As for rainy days--but why should happy young love take thought of them?

On their first anniversary they gave a dinner in the apartment, twelve covers with flowers and all the wedding silver on display and a caterer's man to serve. Shirley, in a new gown, was at her loveliest, beaming with the happiness of hospitality prettily dispensed. When the last guest was gone, they turned out all the lights but one shaded lamp, she found a seat on his knee, snuggled close to him, and they fell into a long silence.

After a while she stirred. "It's been a wonderful year, hasn't it?"

"You express the sense of the meeting, dear."

"Being poor isn't so bad, after all, is it?"

"Not bad at all, I find." He took up the catechism. "You haven't once regretted that Sam Hardy chap, have you? With all his money--let's see, was it millions or billions?"

"Hush!" She laid a hand over his lips. "Not even in fun. That's almost profane."

There was another silence, broken at length by a contented chuckle from David.

"Am I doing anything specially ridiculous?" she murmured sleepily from his shoulder.

"I was just remembering. A year ago tonight I was frightened almost into a faint. I thought living together might turn out to be _hard_."

"And _we_ know that is perfectly absurd."

You must excuse them. If they had been lovers out of a book, they would have talked in dithyrambs or long perfervid paragraphs. Since they were real, they could bear witness to their happiness only by spooning and being a little bit silly. But--it was part of their happiness--they did not know they were silly.

The beginning of the second year was like unto the first. But the witch was biding her time. Toward the end of that year the sky darkened and the winds howled roughly around the house of love.

Sometimes the designer of this pretty abode--if he was the designer--bethought him to look to its foundations. But they seemed strong and safe.

In the first place, there was a sudden falling-off of new business. It was so with others than David. Only a temporary slump, said the wise statesmen and newspapers, due to trivial causes and not long to interrupt the era of prosperity. Jim Blaisdell shook his head and advised his friends to prepare for heavy weather. The reception of his counsel made him growl, "a.s.ses!"--a sweeping epithet that included David, who was not so deeply troubled as he should have been.

Unfinished commissions kept him reasonably busy, and when they were concluded others would come to meet his needs. They always had; therefore, they always would. David was content with this logic.

In the second place, a baby was coming. And many and elaborate were the preparations for this momentous event. Countless st.i.tches must be taken, a serious number of dollars spent, that the prettiest layette possible might await the coming mite. But Shirley, in one of her soft house dresses, head bent over her dainty st.i.tching or laying out before him for the hundredth time the tiny articles she had collected or her friends donated, made too pretty a picture; he had not the heart to ruffle it with discussions of economy. And when, her time drawing near, she complained of the work in the flat, a maid was installed. He was glad summer was coming; his overcoat was getting shabby and he felt he could not afford a new one.

For despite his optimism David was beginning to take thought of the morrow. And this leads to our tertium.

Sometimes he had moments of restiveness, so vague and fleeting that he could not define them, under what he did not know. There were times when little criticisms of Shirley would pop maliciously into his mind, never worded, hastily banished and always followed by a reaction of shame that he should have become critical even in thought at such a time. To correct this disquieting tendency he took medicine for his liver.

And growing upon him was his joy in his work: not the old boyish enthusiasm at the thought of ultimate recognition, nor yet the later gratification that he was earning money against their needs, but a deep-seated content merely to be in it, an almost personal affection for the sketches which, after a lapse, had once more begun to multiply.

Gently overruling Shirley's protests, he had taken to sitting up late of nights after she had retired. Then in the pregnant silence of midnight he would sit before his easel, smoking furiously and occasionally making a light swift stroke, until the clock struck one or two or even three. Many nights would pa.s.s thus, and there on the easel would stand a restful little chapel or a n.o.ble cathedral, with separate sketches for details such as doors or rood screen or altar, the very presentment of which, if only in black-and-white, filled him with a solemn worshipful glow. He did not hug himself or say that "they"

would have to come to him yet, but would pat the sketch lingeringly, thinking, "I'd like to see you _real_."

The next evening he would show the completed sketch to Shirley, who would give it a cursory glance and say:

"It's very pretty. I wish some one would let you build it. It would be a big commission, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," he would answer, with a slight sinking of his heart. For some reason he would tuck the sketch away in the big portfolio and hastily change the subject.

One evening the house shook in the wind. It was after dinner and David was opening a new book he had brought home, a bulky volume bearing the formidable t.i.tle, _Ecclesiastical Architecture Since the Renaissance_.

Shirley found a seat as close as possible to him and began.

"David, I have a confession to make." A smile proclaimed her a.s.surance of absolution.

"Yes," he smiled back.

"I broke a rule. I--had something charged."

"Oh, Shirley, when we--"

"But wait until you see what it is. Then scold me if you can."

She led him into another room where on a bed reposed a hooded wicker basket, lined and covered in silk--blue for a boy--with fine lace tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. She awaited his verdict.

"It's very pretty. But-- How much was it?"

She named the price.

He whistled. "Wouldn't something cheaper have done as well?"

"David, you ought to be ashamed of yourself." Her indignation was three-fourths in earnest. "_I'd_ be ashamed not to get Davy Junior the very best of everything. It's the duty of parents to get their children the very best of everything."

"The best they can afford, yes. But-- However, it's here and the only thing to do is to pay for it. I'll send a check in the morning."

He returned to the living-room. Shirley followed. He stood for a long minute by the table, looking down at the new book. Then he restored it to its wrappings.

"What are you doing?"

"I think I'll not keep it, after all."

"What is it?"

"A book I wanted for some cathedral sketches I'm making."