The House of Toys Part 6

"The day you got your aunt's letter." David flushed as though he had done something shameful.

Her eyes filled with tears. "And you kept it from me so my visit wouldn't be spoiled, and stayed here worrying by yourself while I was out there having a good time. Oh, David-- Oh, David! Well," she got to her feet and stood upright before him, "I'll tell you this much.

Let the old panic come on--I'm not afraid. We'll make out somehow.

And we won't worry either. What if we do have to give up things? We have each other--and Davy Junior--and nothing else counts."

They repeated in chorus. "We have each other and Davy Junior and nothing else counts."

They were very happy just then and so it was easy to be brave.

CHAPTER III

ON THE SANDS

In a few months the first stress of the panic lifted. The worry creases between men's eyes were being ironed out. A few who had money, taking advantage of cheap labor and materials, began to build. d.i.c.k Holden came home, with a trunkful of presents for his friends and another of English clothes for himself, and at once became busy.

The Quentins were still hanging on--"by a frog's hair," David said.

But they had paid. It always costs to survive.

They had paid, despite their brave words, in the coin of worry. More than once David had jingled a few coins in his pocket, wondering where he could add to them on the morrow and when he had borrowed how he could repay.

But they had paid with a bigger price than that. The pretty flower of romance was withering in the shade. The cozy little times, when one chair did for both and they became beautifully silly, were fewer and briefer now. When they tucked Davy Junior in at night and whispered that he was almost too bright to be healthy, shadowing their pride was the chill cloud of fear that he, too, might have to feel the pinch.

Often they moved restlessly about the apartment or sat listlessly yawning, wishing there were something to do. And sometimes, without warning, quarrels would blaze, over nothing at all. It is so easy to mislay your temper when worry is gnawing at your heart, and perhaps you don't try very hard to find it. David always had to find his first, but the making up was never quite perfect.

And, though their well-to-do friends were beginning to talk of new model cars and going abroad once more, the Quentins continued to be hard up. David seemed to have struck a dead level. One month business would be pretty good; the next he would make almost nothing. But the average was always the same, and always a little less than they spent.

The note at Jim Blaisdell's bank and the little loans from d.i.c.k Holden kept slowly piling up, and though neither Jim nor d.i.c.k ever dunned him, the thought of his debts weighed heavily on David's heart.

It was worse than if they had had a steady income. They were kept zigzagging between hope and disappointment, and when they had money, it was often spent foolishly. David did his best to save. His suits and overcoat had shiny spots. He smoked only cheap tobacco that burned his tongue. He gave up even the dairy lunch, saying that two meals a day were enough for any man. He walked, rain or shine, to and from his office, and bought no more books. But the sum of these savings seemed pitifully small. Shirley, too, did without things during the lean months. But when a fee came in she could never say no to her wants.

"We must have this. We must do that," she would say.

"Dear, don't you think we'd better go slow?" he would venture.

"Oh, what's the use of having money, if not to get what we want?"

"We could use it to pay a little to Jim and--"

"Oh, let Jim and d.i.c.k wait. They can afford it. I've had to do without so much I think I've a right to this little spree. And I _hate_ to wait for things. If I wait, they lose all their fun."

It always ended in her having her own way. But sometimes David wondered whether she would have lost interest in him, too, if she had had to wait.

For he saw that another goblin had come unbidden into their home: Discontent. He had learned to seek and always found the wistful look with which she regarded their callers' pretty gowns or heard tales of jolly dinners at the club. (Months ago the club had been dropped.) And he knew that in her heart she was drawing comparisons.

Once she said, "It wasn't like this when Maizie and I were together."

She did not guess the barb she left quivering in his heart.

d.i.c.k Holden was making no such heavy weather of it. He was even so busy that little odds and ends of his work were turned over to David, crusts for which the latter was as grateful as the Lazaruses always have been. But this suggested another comparison to Shirley.

"d.i.c.k Holden gets business and makes money, and everybody says he's not half so clever as you. How does he do it?"

"He works people for their business."

"Then why don't you do that?"

"I don't know how. And if I did know, I couldn't, anyhow. The people that come to me come because they have confidence in my ability. If they don't have confidence, I couldn't work them because--I just couldn't, that's all."

"You're too thin-skinned. If I were a man I'd _make_ them come to me, and then I'd teach them to have confidence--the way d.i.c.k Holden does."

"d.i.c.k Holden's way, somebody else's, never mine," he thought bitterly, "is always the best."

But he did not let her see him wince. Instead, he said gently, "In the long run it's not the sound way. If I do good work, some day people will realize it and come to me. And I _do_ good work," he cried, not to boast, but because their courage needed a tonic, "and some day when I get my chance I'll do far finer."

She smiled wearily. "Some day! It's always some day. Why don't you _make_ your chance--as d.i.c.k does?"

That talk rankled in David's heart long after Shirley had forgotten it.

She could say such things and forget them in an hour. But her comparisons never angered him, only hurt. He tried to be just, and blamed himself for their predicament. If he had been wise and firm at the beginning, when the temptations to indulgences came, they could have escaped these troublous waters. Firmness now seemed only cruel.

"You see," he would explain to himself, trying to believe, "she's really only a child still. It is very hard on her. If I said no to things now, she wouldn't understand. I must just make it as easy as possible for her--somehow." But he sighed, "If only we could give up this apartment and live cheaply and--and honestly until we're on our feet. If only she'd look at it that way!"

He had suggested that to Shirley once--but only once. "Oh, no!" she had cried. "That would be a confession to everybody. It would be humiliating, more than I could bear. We've got to keep this apartment and not let people know we're hard up."

They thought people did not know.

So it went for nearly two years. You must not think there were no happy times, hours or days or even weeks when they took joy in their love and Davy Junior; though more and more these times lost their wonderfulness and the power to charm away the grisly goblin Care. But the ugly or weary or despondent hours bulked largest in David's mind because he took them so keenly to heart. Yet, though his debts slowly grew, and he was always a month behind in his office and apartment rent, he did not lose faith in himself; he gave his very best to the little business he had and worked away at his sketches, which grew better all the time. (It hurt him more than a little that Shirley took no interest in them.) And though he saw clearly that she had faults, even as you and I, he did not lose faith in Shirley nor cease to love her. Often at nights, especially after there had been a quarrel, he stole away from his sketching to the room where she slept with the baby by her side and lightly kissed her hair or an outflung arm. Then the old tender protective impulse swept over him; he wished he were the sort of man that could give her all the things she wanted, thinking that the way to prove a love.

Then a "chance" came. Or, rather, he tried to make one. A rich parish decided that it could best honor G.o.d by building a new church, finer and costlier than anything else in the city, and invited several architects to submit plans. David entered the compet.i.tion, not by the adroit methods d.i.c.k Holden practised, but in the simple open-handed fashion which alone was possible to him. He went to the chairman of the building committee.

"Will you let me submit plans?" he asked.

"I suppose so," Bixby said carelessly, eying his caller dubiously.

For David, though he had carefully pressed his trousers for the occasion, was getting to be a little shabby. If you looked close you saw that his cuffs were trimmed, his necktie was threadbare and his shoes were run down at the heels. And he had not the look that speaks of success. Seeing him, Bixby did not think as people had used to think, "This is a young man who will do big things some day."

"When must the plans be filed?"

The chairman told him, and added, "You understand, of course, they have to be bang-up--up-to-date in every particular, and _impressive_?"

"Some things," David said gravely, "are so beautiful that they are up-to-date in every age. And real beauty is always impressive because it is so rare."

"Humph!" said Bixby, and dismissed his caller.

David set to work that very night, going over all his old sketches in search of the best. And because none of them had ever quite satisfied him, he discarded them all. He began a new series of sketches, sitting up at nights long after he should have been asleep. He discarded these, too. For this idea must be so very good that the committee couldn't help accepting it.

"I think," he told himself often, "I have reached the point where I can do something really worth while."

One night when he had gone reluctantly to bed, sleep would not come.