THE new one-hundred-dollar bill, clean and green, freshening the heart
with the colour of springtime, slid over the glass of the teller’s
counter and passed under his grille to a fat hand, dingy on the
knuckles, but brightened by a flawed diamond. This interesting hand was
a part of one of those men who seem to have too much fattened muscle for
their clothes: his shoulders distended his overcoat; his calves strained
the sprightly checked cloth, a little soiled, of his trousers; his short
neck bulged above the glossy collar. His hat, round and black as a pot,
and appropriately small, he wore slightly obliqued; while under its
curled brim his small eyes twinkled surreptitiously between those upper
and nether puffs of flesh that mark the too faithful practitioner of
unhallowed gaieties. Such was the first individual owner of the new
one-hundred-dollar bill, and he at once did what might have been
expected of him.
Moving away from the teller’s grille, he made a cylindrical packet of
bills smaller in value—“ones” and “fives”—then placed round them, as a
wrapper, the beautiful one-hundred-dollar bill, snapped a rubber band
over it; and the desired inference was plain: a roll all of
hundred-dollar bills, inside as well as outside. Something more was
plain, too: obviously the man’s small head had a sportive plan in it,
for the twinkle between his eye-puffs hinted of liquor in the offing and
lively women impressed by a show of masterly riches. Here, in brief, was
a man who meant to make a night of it; who would feast, dazzle, compel
deference, and be loved. For money gives power, and power is loved; no
doubt he would be loved. He was happy, and went out of the bank
believing that money is made for joy.
So little should we be certain of our happiness in this world: the
splendid one-hundred-dollar bill was taken from him untimely, before
nightfall that very evening. At the corner of two busy streets he parted
with it to the law, though in a mood of excruciating reluctance and only
after a cold-blooded threatening on the part of the lawyer. This latter
walked away thoughtfully, with the one-hundred-dollar bill, now not
quite so clean, in his pocket.
Collinson was the lawyer’s name, and in years he was only twenty-eight,
but already had the slightly harried appearance that marks the young
husband who begins to suspect that the better part of his life has been
his bachelorhood. His dark, ready-made clothes, his twice-soled shoes
and his hair, which was too long for a neat and businesslike aspect,
were symptoms of necessary economy; but he did not wear the eager look
of a man who saves to “get on for himself”: Collinson’s look was that of
an employed man who only deepens his rut with his pacing of it.
An employed man he was, indeed; a lawyer without much hope of ever
seeing his name on the door or on the letters of the firm that employed
him, and his most important work was the collection of small debts. This
one-hundred-dollar bill now in his pocket was such a collection, small
to the firm and the client, though of a noble size to himself and the
long-pursued debtor from whom he had just collected it.
The banks were closed; so was the office, for it was six o’clock, and
Collinson was on his way home when by chance he encountered the debtor:
there was nothing to do but to keep the bill over night. This was no
hardship, however, as he had a faint pleasure in the unfamiliar
experience of walking home with such a thing in his pocket; and he felt
a little important by proxy when he thought of it.
Upon the city the November evening had come down dark and moist, holding
the smoke nearer the ground and enveloping the buildings in a soiling
black mist. Lighted windows and street lamps appeared and disappeared in
the altering thicknesses of fog, but at intervals, as Collinson walked
on northward, he passed a small shop, or a cluster of shops, where the
light was close to him and bright, and at one of these oases of
illumination he lingered a moment, with a thought to buy a toy in the
window for his three-year-old little girl. The toy was a gaily coloured
acrobatic monkey that willingly climbed up and down a string, and he
knew that the “baby,” as he and his wife still called their child, would
scream with delight at the sight of it. He hesitated, staring into the
window rather longingly, and wondering if he ought to make such a
purchase. He had twelve dollars of his own in his pocket, but the toy
was marked “35 cents” and he decided he could not afford it. So he
sighed and went on, turning presently into a darker street.
Here the air was like that of a busy freight-yard, thick with coal-dust
and at times almost unbreathable so that Collinson was glad to get out
of it even though the exchange was for the early-evening smells of the
cheap apartment house where he lived.
His own “kitchenette” was contributing its share, he found, the baby was
crying over some inward perplexity not to be explained; and his wife,
pretty and a little frowzy, was as usual, and as he had expected. That
is to say, he found her irritated by cooking, bored by the baby, and
puzzled by the dull life she led. Other women, it appeared, had happy
and luxurious homes, and, during the malnutritious dinner she had
prepared, she mentioned many such women by name, laying particular
stress upon the achievements of their husbands. Why should she (“alone,”
as she put it) lead the life she did in one room and a kitchenette,
without even being able to afford to go to the movies more than once or
twice a month? Mrs. Theodore Thompson’s husband had bought a perfectly
beautiful little sedan automobile; he gave his wife everything she
wanted. Mrs. Will Gregory had merely mentioned that her old Hudson seal
coat was wearing a little, and her husband had instantly said, “What’ll
a new one come to, girlie? Four or five hundred? Run and get it!” Why
were other women’s husbands like that—and why, oh, why! was hers like
_this_? An eavesdropper might well have deduced from Mrs. Collinson’s
harangue that her husband owned somewhere a storehouse containing all
the good things she wanted and that he withheld them from her out of his
perverse wilfulness. Moreover, he did not greatly help his case by
protesting that the gratification of her desires was beyond his powers.
“My goodness!” he said. “You talk as if I had sedans and sealskin coats
and theatre tickets _on_ me! Well, I haven’t; that’s all!”
“Then go out and get ’em!” she said fiercely. “Go out and get ’em!”
“What with?” he inquired. “I have twelve dollars in my pocket, and a
balance of seventeen dollars at the bank; that’s twenty-nine. I get
twenty-five from the office day after to-morrow—Saturday; that makes
fifty-four; but we have to pay forty-five for rent on Monday; so that’ll
leave us nine dollars. Shall I buy you a sedan and a sealskin coat on
Tuesday out of the nine?”
Mrs. Collinson began to weep a little. “The old, old story!” she said.
“Six long, long years it’s been going on now! I ask you how much you’ve
got, and you say, ‘Nine dollars,’ or ‘Seven dollars,’ or ‘Four dollars’;
and once it was sixty-five cents! Sixty-five cents; that’s what we have
to live on! Sixty-five _cents_!”
“Oh, hush!” he said wearily.
“Hadn’t you better hush a little yourself?” she retorted. “You come home
with twelve dollars in your pocket and tell your wife to hush! That’s
nice! Why can’t you do what decent men do?”
“What’s that?”
“Why, give their wives something to live for. What do you give me, I’d
like to know! Look at the clothes I wear, please!”
“Well, it’s your own fault,” he muttered.
“What did you say? Did you say it’s my fault I wear clothes any woman I
know wouldn’t be _seen_ in?”
“Yes, I did. If you hadn’t made me get you that platinum ring——”
“What!” she cried, and flourished her hand at him across the table.
“Look at it! It’s platinum, yes; but look at the stone in it, about the
size of a pin-head, so’t I’m ashamed to wear it when any of my friends
see me! A hundred and sixteen dollars is what this magnificent ring cost
you, and how long did I have to beg before I got even _that_ little out
of you? And it’s the best thing I own and the only thing I ever did get
out of you!”
“Oh, Lordy!” he moaned.
“I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis looking at this ring to-day,” she
said, with a desolate laugh. “He happened to notice it, and I saw him
keep glancing at it, and I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis’s expression!”
Collinson’s own expression became noticeable upon her introduction of
this name; he stared at her gravely until he completed the mastication
of one of the indigestibles she had set before him; then he put down his
fork and said:
“So you saw Charlie Loomis again to-day. Where?”
“Oh, my!” she sighed. “Have we got to go over all that again?”
“Over all what?”
“Over all the fuss you made the last time I mentioned Charlie’s name. I
thought we settled it you were going to be a little more sensible about
him.”
“Yes,” Collinson returned. “I was going to be more sensible about him,
because you were going to be more sensible about him. Wasn’t that the
agreement?”
She gave him a hard glance, tossed her head so that the curls of her
bobbed hair fluttered prettily, and with satiric mimicry repeated his
question: “‘Agreement! Wasn’t that the agreement?’ Oh, my, but you do
make me tired, talking about ‘agreements’! As if it was a crime my going
to a vaudeville matinée with a man kind enough to notice that my husband
never takes me anywhere!”
“Did you go to a vaudeville with him to-day?”
“No, I didn’t!” she said. “I was talking about the time when you made
such a fuss. I didn’t go anywhere with him to-day.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Collinson said. “I wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t?” she cried, and added a shrill laugh as further
comment. “You ‘wouldn’t have stood for it!’ How very, very dreadful!”
“Never mind,” he returned doggedly. “We went over all that the last
time, and you understand me: I’ll have no more foolishness about Charlie
Loomis.”
“How nice of you! He’s a friend of yours; you go with him yourself; but
your wife mustn’t even look at him just because he happens to be the one
man that amuses her a little. That’s fine!”
“Never mind,” Collinson said again. “You say you saw him to-day. I want
to know where.”
“Suppose I don’t choose to tell you.”
“You’d better tell me, I think.”
“Do you? I’ve got to answer for every minute of my day, do I?”
“I want to know where you saw Charlie Loomis.”
She tossed her curls again, and laughed. “Isn’t it funny!” she said.
“Just because I like a man, he’s the one person I can’t have anything to
do with! Just because he’s kind and jolly and amusing and I like his
jokes and his thoughtfulness toward a woman, when he’s with her, I’m not
to be allowed to see him at all! But my _husband_—oh, that’s entirely
different! _He_ can go out with Charlie whenever he likes and have a
good time, while I stay home and wash the dishes! Oh, it’s a lovely
life!”
“Where did you see him to-day?”
Instead of answering his question, she looked at him plaintively, and
allowed tears to shine along her lower eyelids. “Why do you treat me
like this?” she asked in a feeble voice. “Why can’t I have a man friend
if I want to? I do like Charlie Loomis. I do like him——”
“Yes! That’s what I noticed!”
“Well, but what’s the good of always insulting me about him? He has time
on his hands of afternoons, and so have I. Our janitor’s wife is crazy
about the baby and just adores to have me leave her in their flat—the
longer the better. Why shouldn’t I go to a matinée or a picture-show
sometimes with Charlie? Why should I just have to sit around instead of
going out and having a nice time when he wants me to?”
“I want to know where you saw him to-day!”
Mrs. Collinson jumped up. “You make me sick!” she said, and began to
clear away the dishes.
“I want to know where——”
“Oh, hush up!” she cried. “He came here to leave a note for you.”
“Oh,” said her husband. “I beg your pardon. That’s different.”
“How sweet of you!”
“Where’s the note, please?”
She took it from her pocket and tossed it to him. “So long as it’s a
note for _you_ it’s all right, of course!” she said. “I wonder what
you’d do if he’d written one to me!”
“Never mind,” said Collinson, and read the note.
DEAR COLLIE: Dave and Smithie and Old Bill and Sammy Hoag and
maybe Steinie and Sol are coming over to the shack about
eight-thirt. Home-brew and the old pastime. _You_ know! Don’t
fail.—CHARLIE.
“You’ve read this, of course,” Collinson said. “The envelope wasn’t
sealed.”
“I have not,” his wife returned, covering the prevarication with a cold
dignity. “I’m not in the habit of reading other peoples’s
correspondence, thank you! I suppose you think I do so because you’d
never hesitate to read any note _I_ get; but I don’t do everything you
do, you see!”
“Well, you can read it now,” he said, and gave her the note.
Her eyes swept the writing briefly, and she made a sound of wonderment,
as if amazed to find herself so true a prophet. “And the words weren’t
more than out of mouth! _You_ can go and have a grand party right in his
flat, while your wife stays home and gets the baby to bed and washes the
dishes!”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh, no!” she said mockingly. “I suppose not! I see you missing one of
Charlie’s stag-parties!”
“I’ll miss this one.”
But it was not to Mrs. Collinson’s purpose that he should miss the
party; she wished him to be as intimate as possible with the debonair
Charlie Loomis; and so, after carrying some dishes into the kitchenette
in meditative silence, she reappeared with a changed manner. She went to
her husband, gave him a shy little pat on the shoulder and laughed
good-naturedly. “Of course you’ll go,” she said. “I do think you’re
silly about my never going out with him when it would give me a little
innocent pleasure and when you’re not home to take me, yourself; but I
wasn’t really in such terrible earnest, all I said. You work hard the
whole time, honey, and the only pleasure you ever do have, it’s when you
get a chance to go to one of these little penny-ante stag-parties. You
haven’t been to one for ever so long, and you never stay after twelve;
it’s really all right with me. I want you to go.”
“Oh, no,” said Collinson. “It’s only penny-ante, but I couldn’t afford
to lose anything at all.”
“But you never do. You always win a little.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve figured out I’m about sixteen dollars ahead at
penny-ante on the whole year. I cleaned up seven dollars and sixty cents
at Charlie’s last party; but of course my luck might change, and we
couldn’t afford it.”
“If you did lose, it’d only be a few cents,” she said. “What’s the
difference, if it gives you a little fun? You’ll work all the better if
you go out and enjoy yourself once in a while.”
“Well, if you really look at it that way, I’ll go.”
“That’s right, dear,” she said, smiling. “Better put on a fresh collar
and your other suit, hadn’t you?”
“I suppose so,” he assented, and began to make the changes she
suggested. He went about them in a leisurely way, played with the baby
at intervals, while Mrs. Collinson sang cheerfully over her work; and
when he had completed his toilet, it was time for him to go. She came in
from the kitchenette, kissed him, and then looked up into his eyes,
letting him see a fond and brightly amiable expression.
“There, honey,” she said. “Run along and have a nice time. Then maybe
you’ll be a little more sensible about some of _my_ little pleasures.”
He held the one-hundred-dollar bill, folded, in his hand, meaning to
leave it with her, but as she spoke a sudden recurrence of suspicion
made him forget his purpose. “Look here,” he said. “I’m not making any
bargain with you. You talk as if you thought I was going to let you run
around to vaudevilles with Charlie because you let me go to this party.
Is that your idea?”
It was, indeed, precisely Mrs. Collinson’s idea, and she was instantly
angered enough to admit it in her retort. “Oh, aren’t you _mean_!” she
cried. “I might know better than to look for any fairness in a man like
you!”
“See here——”
“Oh, hush up!” she said. “Shame on you! Go on to your party!” With that
she put both hands upon his breast, and pushed him toward the door.
“I won’t go. I’ll stay here.”
“You will, too, go!” she cried shrewishly. “_I_ don’t want to look at
you around here all evening. It’d make me sick to look at a man without
an ounce of fairness in his whole mean little body!”
“All right,” said Collinson, violently, “I _will_ go!”
“Yes! Get out of my sight!”
And he did, taking the one-hundred-dollar bill with him to the
penny-ante poker party.
The gay Mr. Charlie Loomis called his apartment “the shack” in jocular
depreciation of its beauty and luxury, but he regarded it as a perfect
thing, and in one way it was; for it was perfectly in the family
likeness of a thousand such “shacks.” It had a ceiling with false beams,
walls of green burlap spotted with coloured “coaching prints,” brown
shelves supporting pewter plates and mugs, “mission” chairs, a leather
couch with violent cushions, silver-framed photographs of lady-friends
and officer-friends, a drop-light of pink-shot imitation alabaster, a
papier-mâché skull tobacco-jar among moving-picture magazines on the
round card-table; and, of course, the final Charlie Loomis touch—a
Japanese man-servant.
The master of all this was one of those neat, stoutish young men with
fat, round heads, sleek, fair hair, immaculate, pale complexions and
infirm little pink mouths—in fact, he was of the type that may suggest
to the student of resemblances a fastidious and excessively clean white
pig with transparent ears. Nevertheless, Charlie Loomis was of a
free-handed habit in some matters, being particularly indulgent to
pretty women and their children. He spoke of the latter as “the
kiddies,” of course, and liked to call their mothers “kiddo,” or
“girlie.” One of his greatest pleasures was to tell a woman that she was
“the dearest, bravest little girlie in the world.” Naturally he was a
welcome guest in many households, and would often bring a really
magnificent toy to the child of some friend whose wife he was courting.
Moreover, at thirty-three, he had already done well enough in business
to take things easily, and he liked to give these little card-parties,
not for gain, but for pastime. He was cautious and disliked high stakes
in a game of chance.
That is to say, he disliked the possibility of losing enough money to
annoy him, though of course he set forth his principles as resting upon
a more gallant and unselfish basis. “I don’t consider it hospitality to
have any man go out o’ my shack sore,” he was wont to say. “Myself, I’m
a bachelor and got no obligations; I’ll shoot any man that can afford it
for anything he wants to. Trouble is, you never can tell when a man
_can’t_ afford it, or what harm his losin’ might mean to the little
girlie at home and the kiddies. No, boys, penny-ante and ten-cent limit
is the highest we go in this ole shack. Penny-ante and a few steins of
the ole home-brew that hasn’t got a divorce in a barrel of it!”
Penny-ante and the ole home-brew had been in festal operation for half
an hour when the morose Collinson arrived this evening. Mr. Loomis and
his guests sat about the round table under the alabaster drop-light;
their coats were off; cigars were worn at the deliberative poker angle;
colourful chips and cards glistened on the cloth; one of the players
wore a green shade over his eyes; and all in all, here was a little
poker party for a lithograph. To complete the picture, several of the
players continued to concentrate upon their closely held cards, and paid
no attention to the newcomer or to their host’s lively greeting of him.
“Ole Collie, b’gosh!” Mr. Loomis shouted, humorously affecting the
bucolic. “Here’s your vacant cheer; stack all stuck out for you ’n’
ever’thin’! Set daown, neighbour, an’ Smithie’ll deal you in, next hand.
What made you so late? Helpin’ the little girlie at home get the kiddy
to bed? That’s a great kiddy of yours, Collie. I got a little Christmas
gift for her I’m goin’ to bring around some day soon. Yes, sir, that’s a
great little kiddy Collie’s got over at his place, boys.”
Collinson took the chair that had been left for him, counted his chips,
and then as the playing of a “hand” still preoccupied three of the
company, he picked up a silver dollar that lay upon the table near him.
“What’s this?” he asked. “A side bet? Or did somebody just leave it here
for me?”
“Yes; for you to look at,” Mr. Loomis explained. “It’s Smithie’s.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothin’. Smithie was just showin’ it to us. Look at it.”
Collinson turned the coin over and saw a tiny inscription that had been
lined into the silver with a point of steel. “‘Luck,’” he read;—“‘Luck
hurry back to me!’” Then he spoke to the owner of this marked dollar. “I
suppose you put that on there, Smithie, to help make sure of getting our
money to-night.”
But Smithie shook his head, which was a large, gaunt head, as it
happened—a head fronted with a sallow face shaped much like a coffin,
but inconsistently genial in expression. “No,” he said. “It just came in
over my counter this afternoon, and I noticed it when I was checkin’ up
the day’s cash. Funny, ain’t it: ‘Luck hurry back to me!’”
“Who do you suppose marked that on it?” Collinson said thoughtfully.
“Golly!” his host exclaimed. “It won’t do you much good to wonder about
that!”
Collinson frowned, continuing to stare at the marked dollar. “I guess
not, but really I should like to know.”
“I would, too,” Smithie said. “I been thinkin’ about it. Might ’a’ been
somebody in Seattle or somebody in Ipswich, Mass., or New Orleans or St.
Paul. How you goin’ to tell? Might ’a’ been a woman; might ’a’ been a
man. The way I guess it out, this poor boob, whoever he was, well,
prob’ly he’d had good times for a while, and maybe carried this dollar
for a kind of pocket piece, the way some people do, you know. Then he
got in trouble—or she did, whichever it was—and got flat broke and had
to spend this last dollar he had—for something to eat, most likely.
Well, he thought a while before he spent it, and the way I guess it out,
he said to himself, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘most of the good luck
I’ve enjoyed lately,’ he said, ‘it’s been while I had this dollar on me.
I got to kiss ’em good-bye now, good luck and good dollar together; but
maybe I’ll get ’em both back some day, so I’ll just mark the wish on the
dollar, like this: Luck hurry back to me! That’ll help some, maybe, and
anyhow I’ll _know_ my luck dollar if I ever do get it back.’ That’s the
way I guess it out, anyhow. It’s funny how some people like to believe
luck depends on some little thing like that.”
“Yes, it is,” Collinson assented, still brooding over the coin.
The philosophic Smithie extended his arm across the table, collecting
the cards to deal them, for the “hand” was finished. “Yes, sir, it’s
funny,” he repeated. “Nobody knows exactly what luck is, but the way I
guess it out, it lays in a man’s _believin’_ he’s in luck, and some
little object like this makes him kind of concentrate his mind on
thinkin’ he’s goin’ to be lucky, because of course you often _know_
you’re goin’ to win, and then you do win. You don’t win when you _want_
to win, or when you need to; you win when you _believe_ you’ll win. I
don’t know who was the dummy that said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil’;
but I guess he didn’t have _too_ much sense! I suppose if some man
killed some other man for a dollar, the poor fish that said that would
let the man out and send the dollar to the chair. No, sir; money’s just
as good as it is bad; and it’ll come your way if you _feel_ it will; so
you take this marked dollar o’ mine——”
But here this garrulous and discursive guest was interrupted by
immoderate protests from several of his colleagues. “Cut it out!” “My
Lord!” “_Do_ something!” “Smith_ie_! Are you ever goin’ to _deal_?”
“I’m goin’ to shuffle first,” he responded, suiting the action to the
word, though with deliberation, and at the same time continuing his
discourse. “It’s a mighty interesting thing, a piece o’ money. You take
this dollar, now: Who’s it belonged to? Where’s it been? What different
kind o’ funny things has it been spent for sometimes? What funny kind of
secrets do you suppose it could ’a’ heard if it had ears? Good people
have had it and bad people have had it: why, a dollar could tell more
about the human race—why, it could tell _all_ about it!”
“I guess it couldn’t tell all about the way you’re dealin’ these cards,”
said the man with the green shade. “You’re mixin’ things all up.”
“I’ll straighten ’em all out then,” said Smithie cheerfully. “I knew of
a twenty-dollar bill once; a pickpocket prob’ly threw it in the gutter
to keep from havin’ it found on him when they searched him, but anyway a
woman I knew found it and sent it to her young sister out in Michigan to
take some music lessons with, and the sister was so excited she took
this bill out of the letter and kissed it. That’s where they thought she
got the germ she died of a couple o’ weeks later, and the undertaker got
the twenty-dollar bill, and got robbed of it the same night. Nobody
knows where it went then. They say, ‘Money talks.’ Golly! If it _could_
talk, what couldn’t it tell? _No_body’d be safe. _I_ got this dollar
now, but who’s it goin’ to belong to next, and what’ll _he_ do with it?
And then after _that_! Why for years and years and years it’ll go on
from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some
burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do
good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. We all _want_ money; but
some say it’s a bad thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. Lordy!
Goodness or badness, I’ll take all anybody——”
He was interrupted again, and with increased vehemence. Collinson, who
sat next to him, complied with the demand to “ante up,” then placed the
dollar near his little cylinders of chips, and looked at his cards. They
proved unencouraging, and he turned to his neighbour. “I’d sort of like
to have that marked dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper
dollar and a nickel for it.”
But Smithie laughed, shook his head, and slid the coin over toward his
own chips. “No, sir. I’m goin’ to keep it—awhile, anyway.”
“So you do think it’ll bring you luck, after all!”
“No. But I’ll hold onto it for this evening, anyhow.”
“Not if we clean you out, you won’t,” said Charlie Loomis. “You know the
rules o’ the ole shack: only cash goes in _this_ game; no I. O. U. stuff
ever went here or ever will. Tell you what I’ll do, though, before you
lose it: I’ll give you a dollar and a quarter for your ole silver
dollar, Smithie.”
“Oh, you want it, too, do you? I guess I can spot what sort of luck
_you_ want it for, Charlie.”
“Well, Mr. Bones, what sort of luck do I want it for?”
“_You_ win, Smithie,” one of the other players said. “We all know what
sort o’ luck ole Charlie wants your dollar for—he wants it for luck
with the dames.”
“Well, I might,” Charlie admitted, not displeased. “I haven’t been so
lucky that way lately—not so dog-_gone_ lucky!”
All of his guests, except one, laughed at this; but Collinson frowned,
still staring at the marked dollar. For a reason he could not have put
into words just then, it began to seem almost vitally important to him
to own this coin if he could, and to prevent Charlie Loomis from getting
possession of it. The jibe, “He wants it for luck with the dames,”
rankled in Collinson’s mind: somehow it seemed to refer to his wife.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll bet two dollars
against that dollar of yours that I hold a higher hand next deal than
you do.”
“Here! Here!” Charlie remonstrated. “Shack rules! Ten-cent limit.”
“That’s only for the game,” Collinson said, turning upon his host with a
sudden sharpness. “This is an outside bet between Smithie and me. Will
you do it, Smithie? Where’s your sporting spirit?”
So liberal a proposal at once roused the spirit to which it appealed.
“Well, I might, if some o’ the others’ll come in too, and make it really
worth my while.”
“I’m in,” the host responded with prompt inconsistency; and others of
the party, it appeared, were desirous of owning the talisman. They
laughed and said it was “crazy stuff,” yet they all “came in,” and, for
the first time in the history of this “shack,” what Mr. Loomis called
“real money” was seen upon the table as a stake. It was won, and the
silver dollar with it, by the largest and oldest of the gamesters, a fat
man with a walrus moustache that inevitably made him known in this
circle as “Old Bill.” He smiled condescendingly, and would have put the
dollar in his pocket with the “real money,” but Mr. Loomis protested.
“Here! What you doin’?” he shouted, catching Old Bill by the arm. “Put
that dollar back on the table.”
“What for?”
“What _for_? Why, we’re goin’ to play for it again. Here’s two dollars
against it I beat you on the next hand.”
“No,” said Old Bill calmly. “It’s worth more than two dollars to me.
It’s worth five.”
“Well, five then,” his host returned. “I want that dollar!”
“So do I,” said Collinson. “I’ll put in five dollars if you do.”
“Anybody else in?” Old Bill inquired, dropping the coin on the table;
and all of the others again “came in.” Old Bill won again; but once more
Charlie Loomis prevented him from putting the silver dollar in his
pocket.
“Come on now!” Mr. Loomis exclaimed. “Anybody else but me in on this for
five dollars next time?”
“I am,” said Collinson, swallowing with a dry throat; and he set forth
all that remained to him of his twelve dollars. In return he received a
pair of deuces, and the jubilant Charlie won.
He was vainglorious in his triumph. “Didn’t that little luck piece just
keep on tryin’ to find the right man?” he cried, and read the
inscription loudly. “‘Luck hurry back to me!’ Righto! You’re home where
you belong, girlie! Now we’ll settle down to our reg’lar little game
again.”
“Oh, no,” said Old Bill. “You wouldn’t let me keep it. Put it out there
and play for it again.”
“I won’t. She’s mine now.”
“I want my luck piece back myself,” said Smithie. “Put it out and play
for it. You made Old Bill.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Yes, you will,” Collinson said, and he spoke without geniality. “You
put it out there.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” Mr. Loomis returned mockingly. “I will for ten
dollars.”
“Not I,” said Old Bill. “Five is foolish enough.” And Smithie agreed
with him. “Nor me!”
“All right, then. If you’re afraid of ten, I keep it. I thought the
ten’d scare you.”
“Put that dollar on the table,” Collinson said. “I’ll put ten against
it.”
There was a little commotion among these mild gamesters; and someone
said, “You’re crazy, Collie. What do you want to do that for?”
“I don’t care,” said Collinson. “That dollar’s already cost me enough,
and I’m going after it.”
“Well, you see, I want it, too,” Charlie Loomis retorted cheerfully; and
he appealed to the others. “I’m not askin’ him to put up ten against it,
am I?”
“Maybe not,” Old Bill assented. “But how long is this thing goin’ to
keep on? It’s already balled our game all up, and if we keep on foolin’
with these side bets, why, what’s the use?”
“My goodness!” the host exclaimed. “_I_’m not pushin’ this thing, am I?
_I_ don’t want to risk my good old luck piece, do I? It’s Collie that’s
crazy to go on, ain’t it?” He laughed. “He hasn’t showed his money yet,
though, I notice, and this ole shack is run on strickly cash principles.
I don’t believe he’s got ten dollars more on him!”
“Oh, yes, I have.”
“Let’s see it then.”
Collinson’s nostrils distended a little; but he said nothing, fumbled in
his pocket, and then tossed the one-hundred-dollar bill, rather
crumpled, upon the table.
“Great heavens!” shouted Old Bill. “Call the doctor: I’m all of a
swoon!”
“Look at what’s spilled over our nice clean table!” another said, in an
awed voice. “Did you claim he didn’t have _ten_ on him, Charlie?”
“Well, it’s nice to look at,” Smithie observed. “But I’m with Old Bill.
How long are you two goin’ to keep this thing goin’? If Collie wins the
luck piece, I suppose Charlie’ll bet him fifteen against it, and
then——”
“No, I won’t,” Charlie interrupted. “Ten’s the limit.”
“Goin’ to keep on bettin’ ten against it all night?”
“No,” said Charlie. “I tell you what I’ll do with you, Collinson; we
both of us seem kind o’ set on this luck piece, and you’re already out
some on it. I’ll give you a square chance at it and at catchin’ even.
It’s twenty minutes after nine. I’ll keep on these side bets with you
till ten o’clock, but when my clock hits ten, we’re through, and the one
that’s got it then keeps it, and no more foolin’. You want to do that,
or quit now? I’m game either way.”
“Go ahead and deal,” said Collinson. “Whichever one of us has it at ten
o’clock, it’s his, and we quit.”
But when the little clock on Charlie’s green-painted mantel shelf struck
ten, the luck piece was Charlie’s and with it an overwhelming lien on
the one-hundred-dollar bill. He put both in his pocket; “Remember this
ain’t my fault; it was you that insisted,” he said, and handed Collinson
four five-dollar bills as change.
Old Bill, platonically interested, discovered that his cigar was
sparkless, applied a match, and casually set forth his opinion. “Well, I
guess that was about as poor a way of spendin’ eighty dollars as I ever
saw, but it all goes to show there’s truth in the old motto that
anything at all can happen in any poker game! That was a mighty nice
hundred-dollar bill you had on you, Collie; but it’s like what Smithie
said: a piece o’ money goes hoppin’ around from one person to
another—_it_ don’t care!—and yours has gone and hopped to Charlie. The
question is, Who’s it goin’ to hop to next?” He paused to laugh, glanced
over the cards that had been dealt him, and concluded: “My guess is ’t
some good-lookin’ woman’ll prob’ly get a pretty fair chunk o’ that
hundred-dollar bill out o’ Charlie. Well, let’s settle down to the ole
army game.”
They settled down to it, and by twelve o’clock (the invariable closing
hour of these pastimes in the old shack) Collinson had lost four dollars
and thirty cents more. He was commiserated by his fellow gamesters as
they put on their coats and overcoats, preparing to leave the hot little
room. They shook their heads, laughed ruefully in sympathy, and told him
he oughtn’t to carry hundred-dollar bills upon his person when he went
out among friends. Old Bill made what is sometimes called an unfortunate
remark.
“Don’t worry about Collie,” he said jocosely. “That hundred-dollar bill
prob’ly belonged to some rich client of his.”
“What!” Collinson said, staring.
“Never mind, Collie; I wasn’t in earnest,” the joker explained. “Of
course I didn’t mean it.”
“Well, you oughtn’t to say it,” Collinson protested. “People say a thing
like that about a man in a joking way, but other people hear it
sometimes and don’t know he’s joking, and a story gets started.”
“My goodness, but you’re serious!” Old Bill exclaimed. “You look like
you had a misery in your chest, as the rubes say; and I don’t blame you!
Get on out in the fresh night air and you’ll feel better.”
He was mistaken, however; the night air failed to improve Collinson’s
spirits as he walked home alone through the dark and chilly streets.
There was indeed a misery in his chest, where stirred a sensation
vaguely nauseating; his hands were tremulous and his knees infirm as he
walked. In his mind was a confusion of pictures and sounds, echoes from
Charlie Loomis’s shack: he could not clear his mind’s eye of the
one-hundred-dollar bill; and its likeness, as it lay crumpled on the
green cloth under the drop-light, haunted and hurt him as a face in a
coffin haunts and hurts the new mourner. Bits of Smithie’s
discursiveness resounded in his mind’s ear, keeping him from thinking.
“In one person’s hands money’ll do good likely, and in another’s it’ll
do harm.”—“The dummy that said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil!’”
It seemed to Collinson then that money was the root of all evil and the
root of all good, the root and branch of all life, indeed. With money,
his wife would have been amiable, not needing gay bachelors to take her
to vaudevilles. Her need of money was the true foundation of the
jealousy that had sent him out morose and reckless to-night; of the
jealousy that had made it seem, when he gambled with Charlie Loomis for
the luck dollar, as though they really gambled for luck with her.
It still seemed to him that they had gambled for luck with her: Charlie
had wanted the talisman, as Smithie said, in order to believe in his
luck—his luck with women—and therefore actually be lucky with them;
and Charlie had won. But as Collinson plodded homeward in the chilly
midnight, his shoulders sagging and his head drooping, he began to
wonder how he could have risked money that belonged to another man. What
on earth had made him do what he had done? Was it the mood his wife had
set him in as he went out that evening? No; he had gone out feeling like
that often enough, and nothing had happened.
Something had brought this trouble on him, he thought; for it appeared
to Collinson that he had been an automaton, having nothing to do with
his own actions. He must bear the responsibility for them; but he had
not willed them. If the one-hundred-dollar bill had not happened to be
in his pocket—— That was it! And at the thought he mumbled desolately
to himself: “I’d been all right if it hadn’t been for that.” If the
one-hundred-dollar bill had not happened to be in his pocket, he’d have
been “all right.” The one-hundred-dollar bill had done this to him. And
Smithie’s romancing again came back to him: “In one person’s hands
money’ll do good, likely; in another’s it’ll do harm.” It was the money
that did harm or good, not the person; and the money in his hands had
done this harm to himself.
He had to deliver a hundred dollars at the office in the morning,
somehow, for he dared not take the risk of the client’s meeting the
debtor. There was a balance of seventeen dollars in his bank, and he
could pawn his watch for twenty-five, as he knew well enough, by
experience. That would leave fifty-eight dollars to be paid, and there
was only one way to get it. His wife would have to let him pawn her
ring. She’d _have_ to!
Without any difficulty he could guess what she would say and do when he
told her of his necessity: and he knew that never in her life would she
forego the advantage over him she would gain from it. He knew, too, what
stipulations she would make, and he had to face the fact that he was in
no position to reject them. The one-hundred-dollar bill had cost him the
last vestiges of mastery in his own house; and Charlie Loomis had really
won not only the bill and the luck, but the privilege of taking
Collinson’s wife to vaudevilles. But it all came back to the same
conclusion: the one-hundred-dollar bill had done it to him. “What kind
of a thing _is_ this life?” Collinson mumbled to himself, finding
matters wholly perplexing in a world made into tragedy at the caprice of
a little oblong slip of paper.
Then, as he went on his way to wake his wife and face her with the
soothing proposal to pawn her ring early the next morning, something
happened to Collinson. Of itself the thing that happened was nothing,
but he was aware of his folly as if it stood upon a mountain top against
the sun—and so he gathered knowledge of himself and a little of the
wisdom that is called better than happiness.
His way was now the same as upon the latter stretch of his walk home
from the office that evening. The smoke fog had cleared, and the air was
clean with a night wind that moved briskly from the west; in all the
long street there was only one window lighted, but it was sharply
outlined now, and fell as a bright rhomboid upon the pavement before
Collinson. When he came to it he paused at the hint of an inward impulse
he did not think to trace; and, frowning, he perceived that this was the
same shop window that had detained him on his homeward way, when he had
thought of buying a toy for the baby.
The toy was still there in the bright window; the gay little acrobatic
monkey that would climb up or down a red string as the string slacked or
straightened; but Collinson’s eye fixed itself upon the card marked with
the price: “35 cents.”
He stared and stared. “Thirty-five cents!” he said to himself.
“Thirty-five cents!”
Then suddenly he burst into loud and prolonged laughter.
The sound was startling in the quiet night, and roused the interest of a
meditative policeman who stood in the darkened doorway of the next shop.
He stepped out, not unfriendly.
“What _you_ havin’ such a good time over, this hour o’ the night?” he
inquired. “What’s all the joke?”
Collinson pointed to the window. “It’s that monkey on the string,” he
said. “Something about it struck me as mighty funny!”
So, with a better spirit, he turned away, still laughing, and went home
to face his wife.