The House of Toys Part 5

She studied his face intently.

"David Quentin, do you mean to say you begrudge things for Davy Junior, when you can buy expensive books for plans n.o.body will ever want?"

A retort sprang to his lips--that professional knowledge is always an a.s.set. But the words did not fall. Nor did it seem worth while to tell her that for three weeks he had had his lunches over a dairy counter to save money for the book. Instead he mustered a smile.

"As you see, we're keeping the ba.s.sinet and the book goes back."

She saw only the smile. "Why, we almost had a tiff, didn't we. Brrr!"

She pretended to shiver. "And you know we mustn't have them, because they'd have a bad effect on Davy Junior."

So that squall pa.s.sed, and they talked of Davy Junior. And Davy Junior--they were sure it was to be a boy--was already a personage in that household, a hope and a love in which both shared.

But long after Shirley had gone to bed David sat thinking of the episode. One of the little criticisms, quite definite now, lingered: a suspicion that Shirley's words were not always pearls of wisdom, that her att.i.tude was a little too possessive, her demands upon his time and thought and scanty store of money a trifle less than reasonable sometimes. Sternly he crushed the suspicion back.

"It must be that I'm settling down. The novelty's wearing off. And I suppose, having no one but myself to think of for so long, I did get to be pretty selfish. I must be very careful." But somehow the argument did not quite convince. "I wish-- Maybe when the baby comes Shirley will take things a little more"--he halted before the word so disloyal--"sensibly." . . .

Davy Junior and the panic came at the same time.

And with them came Worry.

The wise statesmen and newspapers offered many explanations of the panic. But explanations could not soften the grim fact. Ruin stalked through the land, and its ghostly twin, Fear. Men who had been accounted rich, men who had been rich, heard the approach of the fearsome twain and trembled. And what shall be said of their dependents, the small fry, earners of salaries, young men of the professions, who saw incomes curtailed or cut off; to whom frank poverty would have been almost a relief but who must, as habit and the custom, of their kind decreed, keep up their sham and shabby gentility?

Business was at a standstill. The city ceased to expand. There was no building. d.i.c.k Holden closed his desk and locked his office door.

"There'll be nothing doing in our line for some while. I'm going to Europe for two or three months to learn something about architecture.

Better pack up your family and come along, Davy."

David laughed grimly. "My d.i.c.kybird, you're quite a joker."

Trips to Europe!--when the apartment was a miniature hospital. Davy Junior was sickly. Shirley's strength came back slowly. For six weeks the trained nurse stayed, ordering expensive things for her patients.

Anxiously David saw his scanty resources dwindling fast. One by one his old commissions were paid and disappeared down the hopper of household expenses. He took to thinking of what would happen when the commissions were all paid, and to haunting Fisher's office. Fisher was his contractor client and owed him five hundred dollars. But Fisher always put him off.

In the meantime the dairy lunch became a habit. He smoked only a pipe now. The books he loved and needed, little things he used to think were necessaries, were foregone. He thought wistfully of the indulgences he might have gone without in the past.

Fisher continued to put him off. Then Worry began to shadow David by day, to share his pillow at night. If Fisher, like so many others, should fail--! But with an effort he concealed the unbidden guest from Shirley. With her he was always cheery, ready with quip and laugh, teasing her over her devotion to that red-faced bit of humanity, hight Davy Junior. And in truth, the sight of her, still weak and fragile but happy in the possession of her baby, would give him a fresh courage. Things _couldn't_ happen to hurt her, he a.s.sured himself.

For her, for them; he would weather the storm--somehow. "Why," thus he would snub intrusive Worry, "we've got Fisher, anyhow. When he pays, we'll simply _make_ it last until business picks up." . . . .

The doctor's bill and word that Fisher had gone into bankruptcy reached him by the same mail. Dazed and trembling, he got out his bank-book and tried to strike a balance; the figures danced crazily before him.

But too well he knew that slender sum! He could see barely a month ahead.

He walked home that evening, to get a new grip on his courage. He found Shirley almost breathless with excitement.

She waved a letter before him. "You can have two guesses to what's in it."

But David was unequal even to one guess just then.

"It's from Aunt Clara. She wants me to take the baby out there for two or three weeks. You don't mind, do you, David?"

"Do you want to go so much?"

"I'm just crazy to have them see Davy Junior. And I haven't seen Maizie and auntie and the rest of them for so long. And I think the change will do me good. I get tired so easily, you know."

This last was a convincing argument and quite true. "I know. But I'm afraid, dear, we can't afford it."

"Is business so bad?"

"It's pretty slow---and getting no better."

"Hasn't that Fisher man paid up yet?"

He hesitated. But he could not find the heart--perhaps it was courage he lacked--to break his evil tidings to her.

"Not yet."

"I'd like to shake him. But he must pay soon. And anyhow," she reverted to the original topic, "it wouldn't cost so much. There'd be only railroad fare and in two weeks--or maybe three--we'd save that in house expenses. We could let the maid go, you know."

He caught at that straw. "And maybe, when you come back, you'll be strong enough to get along without her--for a while?"

"Maybe." Her tone lacked a.s.surance. "We'll try it, anyhow."

Two mornings later David stood on a platform and watched a train pull slowly out of the shed. Then he gulped twice, sternly set his teeth together and walked swiftly to his office.

Shirley and the baby stayed, not two weeks nor three, but five. There were other expenses than railroad fare, just what her letters did not set out in detail. Twice she had to write to David for money; in the midst of riches she found it hard to economize. Still David, by taking his meals at a cheap boarding-house, managed to save a little.

In other ways the trip was a great success. Shirley's letters were glowing. She was getting stronger every day. She could lie deliciously in bed all morning, if she chose. Aunt Clara had a nurse for the baby. The weather was fine and there was motoring daily. All her old friends came to see her with warm words of welcome on their lips. Among them was Sam Hardy.

"He is very nice. (But you mustn't think _anything_ of that. Every man I see makes me glad I married my David.) He has a gorgeous new machine and takes us all out. He gets his clothes made in New York now. Such good times as we're having!" And down in one corner of the last page was, "If only you were here!"

"P. S.," popped into his mind. But very sternly he drove it out, calling himself hard names. Ought he not be glad that Shirley was having a good time?

"I _am_ glad. Poor dear! It's going to be very hard for her if things don't get better soon. You see," he explained to himself, "in some things Shirley hasn't quite grown up yet, just as Maizie said, and good times mean so much to her."

He sat down and wrote her the cheeriest letter he could compose.

He himself felt old enough to interest an antiquarian. Before Shirley came back he felt older, with nothing to do but sit idly in his office, figuring his bank balance for the thousandth time or working over some of his old sketches, jumping nervously every time the door opened.

(But the visitor always turned out to be some one who wanted to sigh and groan in company over the hard times.) Of evenings in the apartment, which grew dustier and lonelier every day, he would write his letter to Shirley, mail it and then get out his easel. Frowning with determination, he would put and keep his mind firmly on a new idea for a Norman Gothic cathedral, until, about midnight, worry and loneliness would steal away and leave him with the swiftly growing sketch.

Shirley's visit ended at last. David was pacing up and down the platform a full hour before her train was due. In the street-car that evening people smiled kindly at the pretty little family group--the gravely smiling young man who held the baby so awkwardly, the pretty wife bubbling over with joy in the reunion and with accounts of the good times she had been having.

Afterward, when Davy Junior had had his bottle and closed his eyes, Shirley dusted off one chair and they sat down in it.

"Now tell me about yourself and business and everything."

So, finding it harder than he had thought it could be, he told her of the panic and what it meant to them. She listened with a pretty air of taking it all in and making ready to meet the situation.

When his account was ended, she pushed herself back to look into his eyes.

"David, when did you know about that Fisher man?"