The Man Who Could Not Lose | Page 6

this time following the old coach road through North
Castle to White Plains, across to Tarrytown, and along the bank of the
Hudson into Riverside Drive. Millions and millions of friendly folk,
chiefly nurse- maids and traffic policemen, waved to them, and for
some reason smiled.
"The joke of it is," declared Carter, "they don't know! The most
wonderful event of the century has just passed into history. We are
married, and nobody knows!"
But when the car drove away from in front of Carter's door, they saw
on top of it two old shoes and a sign reading: "We have just been
married." While they had been at luncheon, the chauffeur had risen to
the occasion.
"After all," said Carter soothingly, "he meant no harm. And it's the only
thing about our wedding yet that seems legal."
Three months later two very unhappy young people faced starvation in
the sitting-room of Carter's flat. Gloom was written upon the
countenance of each, and the heat and the care that comes when one
desires to live, and lacks the wherewithal to fulfill that desire, had made
them pallid and had drawn black lines under Dolly's eyes.
Mrs. Ingram had played her part exactly as her dearest friends had said
she would. She had sent to Carter's flat, seven trunks filled with Dolly's
clothes, eighteen hats, and another most unpleasant letter. In this, on
the sole condition that Dolly would at once leave her husband, she
offered to forgive and to support her.
To this Dolly composed eleven scornful answers, but finally decided
that no answer at all was the most scornful.

She and Carter then proceeded joyfully to waste his three thousand
dollars with that contempt for money with which on a honey-moon it
should always be regarded. When there was no more, Dolly called upon
her mother's lawyers and inquired if her father had left her anything in
her own right. The lawyers regretted he had not, but having loved Dolly
since she was born, offered to advance her any money she wanted.
They said they felt sure her mother would "relent."
"SHE may," said Dolly haughtily. "I WON'T! And my husband can
give me all I need. I only wanted something of my own, because I'm
going to make him a surprise present of a new motor-car. The one we
are using now does not suit us.
This was quite true, as the one they were then using ran through the
subway.
As summer approached, Carter had suddenly awakened to the fact that
he soon would be a pauper, and cut short the honey- moon. They
returned to the flat, and he set forth to look for a position. Later, while
still looking for it, he spoke of it as a "job." He first thought he would
like to be an assistant editor of a magazine. But he found editors of
magazines anxious to employ new and untried assistants, especially in
June, were very few. On the contrary, they explained they were
retrenching and cutting down expenses--they meant they had
discharged all office boys who received more than three dollars a week.
They further "retrenched," by taking a mean advantage of Carter's
having called upon them in person, by handing him three or four of his
stories--but by this he saved his postage-stamps.
Each day, when he returned to the flat, Dolly, who always expected
each editor would hastily dust off his chair and offer it to her brilliant
husband, would smile excitedly and gasp, "Well?" and Carter would
throw the rejected manuscripts on the table and say: "At least, I have
not returned empty- handed." Then they would discover a magazine
that neither they nor any one else knew existed, and they would
hurriedly readdress the manuscripts to that periodical, and run to post
them at the letter-box on the corner.

"Any one of them, if ACCEPTED," Carter would point out, "might
bring us in twenty-five dollars. A story of mine once sold for forty; so
to-night we can afford to dine at a restaurant where wine is NOT
'included.'"
Fortunately, they never lost their sense of humor. Otherwise the narrow
confines of the flat, the evil smells that rose from the baked streets, the
greasy food of Italian and Hungarian restaurants, and the ever-haunting
need of money might have crushed their youthful spirits. But in time
even they found that one, still less two, cannot exist exclusively on love
and the power to see the bright side of things-- especially when there is
no bright side. They had come to the point where they must borrow
money from their friends, and that, though there were many who would
have opened their safes to them, they had agreed was the one thing they
would not do, or they must starve.