At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 6

"I've ordered the typewriter," said Dorothy, brightly, "and some nice new note-paper, and a seal. I've just been reading about making virtue out of necessity, so I've ordered 'At the Sign of the Jack-o'-Lantern' put on our stationery, in gold, and a yellow pumpkin on the envelope flap, just above the seal. And I want you to make a funny sign-board to flap from a pole, the way they did in 'Rudder Grange.' If you could make a wooden Jack-o'-Lantern, we could have a candle inside it at night, and then the sign would be just like the house. We can get the paint and things down in the village. Won't it be cute? We're farmers, now, so we'll have to pretend we like it."

Harlan repressed an exclamation, which could not have been wholly inspired by pleasure.

"What's the matter?" asked Dorothy, easily. "Don't you like the design for the note-paper? If you don't, you won't have to use it. n.o.body's going to make you write letters on paper you don't like, so cheer up."

"It isn't the paper," answered Harlan, miserably; "it's the typewriter."

Up to the present moment, sustained by a false, but none the less determined pride, he had refrained from taking his wife into his confidence regarding his finances. With characteristic masculine short-sightedness, he had failed to perceive that every moment of delay made matters worse.

"Might I inquire," asked Mrs. Carr, coolly, "what is wrong with the typewriter?"

"Nothing at all," sighed Harlan, "except that we can't afford it." The whole bitter truth was out, now, and he turned away wretchedly, ashamed to meet her eyes.

It seemed ages before she spoke. Then she said, in smooth, icy tones: "What was your object in offering to get it for me?"

"I spoke impulsively," explained Harlan, forgetting that he had never suggested buying a typewriter. "I didn't stop to think. I'm sorry," he concluded, lamely.

"I suppose you spoke impulsively," snapped Dorothy, "when you asked me to marry you. You're sorry for that, too, aren't you?"

"Dorothy!"

"You're not the only one who's sorry," she rejoined, her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing. "I had no idea what an expense I was going to be!"

"Dorothy!" cried Harlan, angrily; "you didn't think I was a millionaire, did you? Were you under the impression that I was an active branch of the United States Mint?"

"No," she answered, huskily; "I merely thought I was marrying a gentleman instead of a loafer, and I beg your pardon for the mistake!" She slammed the door on the last word, and he heard her light feet pattering swiftly down the hall, little guessing that she was trying to gain the shelter of her own room before giving way to a tempest of sobs.

Happy are they who can drown all pain, sorrow, and disappointment in a copious flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be her sunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignified outburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it, but Harlan, made of sterner clay, would remember it for days.

"Loafer!" The cruel word seemed written accusingly on every wall of the room. In a sudden flash of insight he perceived the truth of it--and it hurt.

"Two months," bethought; "two months of besotted idleness. And I used to chase news from the Battery to the Bronx every day from eight to six!

Murders, smallpox, East Side sc.r.a.ps, and Tammany Hall. Why in the hereafter can't they have a fire at the sanitarium, or something that I can wire in?"

"The Temple of Healing," as Dorothy had christened it in a happier moment, stood on a distant hill, all but hidden now by trees and shrubbery. A column of smoke curled lazily upward against the blue, but there was no immediate prospect of a fire of the "news" variety.

Harlan stood at the window for a long time, deeply troubled. The call of the city dinned relentlessly into his ears. Oh, for an hour in the midst of it, with the rumble and roar and clatter of ceaseless traffic, the hurrying, heedless throng rus.h.i.+ng in every direction, the glare of the sun on the many-windowed cliffs, the fever of the struggle in his veins!

And yet--was two months so long, when a fellow was just married, and hadn't had more than a day at a time off for six years? Since the "cub reporter" was first "licked into shape" in the office of _The Thunderer_, there had been plenty of work for him, year in and year out.

"I wonder," he mused, "if the old man would take me back on my job?

"I can see 'em in the office now," went on Harlan, mentally, "when I go back and tell 'em I want my place again. The old man will look up and say: 'The h.e.l.l you do! Thought you'd accepted a position on the literary circuit as manager of the nine muses! Better run along and look after 'em before they join the union.'

"And the exchange man will yell at me not to slam the door as I go out, and I'll be pointed out to the newest kid as a horrible example of misdirected ambition. Brinkman will say: 'Sonny, there's a bloke that got too good for his job and now he's come back, willing to edit The Mother's Corner.'

"It'd be about the same in the other offices, too," he thought. "'Sorry, nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in again sometime after six weeks or so and meanwhile I'll let you know if anything turns up. Yes, I can remember your address. Don't slam the door as you go out.

Most people seem to have been born in a barn.'

"Besides," he continued to himself, fiercely, "what is there in it?

They'll take your youth, all your strength and energy, and give you a measly living in exchange. They'll fill you with excitement till you're never good for anything else, any more than a cavalry horse is fitted to pull a vegetable wagon. Then, when you're old, they've got no use for you!"

Before his mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre, uncertain pittance, dwindling slowly to charity.

"That's where I'd be at the last of it," muttered Harlan, savagely, "with even the cubs offering me the price of a drink to get out. And Dorothy--good G.o.d! Where would Dorothy be?"

He clenched his fists and marched up and down the room in utter despair.

"Why," he breathed, "why wasn't I taught to do something honest, instead of being cursed with this itch to write? A carpenter, a bricklayer, a stone-mason,--any one of 'em has a better chance than I!"

And yet, even then, Harlan saw clearly that save where some vast cathedral reared its unnumbered spires, the mason and the bricklayer were without significance; that even the builders were remembered only because of the great uses to which their buildings were put. "That, too, through print,"

he murmured. "It all comes down to the printed page at last."

On a table, near by, was a sheaf of rough copy paper, and six or eight carefully sharpened pencils--the dull, meaningless stone waiting for the flint that should strike it into flame. Day after day the table had stood by the window, without result, save in Harlan's uneasy conscience.

"I'm only a tramp," he said, aloud, "and I've known it, all along."

He sat down by the table and took up a pencil, but no words came.

Remorsefully, he wrote to an acquaintance--a man who had a book published every year and filled in the intervening time with magazine work and newspaper specials. He sealed the letter and addressed it idly, then tossed it aside purposelessly.

"Loafer!" The memory of it stung him like a lash, and, completely overwhelmed with shame, he hid his face in his hands.

Suddenly, a pair of soft arms stole around his neck, a childish, tear-wet cheek was pressed close to his, and a sweet voice whispered, tenderly: "Dear, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry I can't live another minute unless you tell me you forgive me!"

"Am I really a loafer?" asked Harlan, half an hour later.

"Indeed you're not," answered Dorothy, her trustful eyes looking straight into his; "you're absolutely the most adorable boy in the whole world, and it's me that knows it!"

"As long as you know it," returned Harlan, seriously, "I don't care a hang what other people think."

"Now, tell me," continued Dorothy, "how near are we to being broke?"

Obediently, Harlan turned his pockets inside out and piled his worldly wealth on the table.

"Three hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixteen cents," she said, when she had finished counting. "Why, we're almost rich, and a little while ago you tried to make me think we were poor!"

"It's all I have, Dorothy--every blooming cent, except one dollar in the savings bank. Sort of a nest egg I had left," he explained.

"Wait a minute," she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flus.h.i.+ng, "makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills.

"Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, proudly, "and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps in my purse.

"I saved it," she continued, hastily, "for an emergency, and I wanted some silk stockings and a French embroidered corset and some handmade lingerie worse than you can ever know. Wasn't I a brave, heroic, n.o.ble woman?"

"Indeed you were," he cried, "but, Dorothy, you know I can't touch your money!"

"Why not?" she demanded.