The Man Who Could Not Lose | Page 7

Dolly was distinctly pleased. She argued they proved he was intended to pursue his natural career as an author.
That their friends might know they were poor did not affect her, but she did not want them to think by his taking up any outside "job" that they were poor because as a literary genius he was a failure. She believed in his stories. She wanted every one else to believe in them. Meanwhile, she assisted him in so far as she could by pawning the contents of five of the seven trunks, by learning to cook on a " Kitchenette," and to laundry her handkerchiefs and iron them on the looking-glass.
They faced each other across the breakfast-table. It was only nine o'clock, but the sun beat into the flat with the breath of a furnace, and the air was foul and humid.
"I tell you," Carter was saying fiercely, "you look ill. You are ill. You must go to the sea-shore. You must visit some of your proud, friends at East Hampton or Newport. Then I'll know you're happy and I won't worry, and I'll find a job. I don't mind the heat-and I'll write you love letters"--he was talking very fast and not looking at Dolly--"like those I used to write you, before----"
Dolly raised her hand. "Listen!" she said. "Suppose I leave you. What will happen? I'll wake up in a cool, beautiful brass bed, won't I--with cretonne window-curtains, and salt air blowing them about, and a maid to bring me coffee. And instead of a bathroom like yours, next to an elevator shaft and a fire-escape, I'll have one as big as a church, and the whole blue ocean to swim in. And I'll sit on the rocks in the sunshine and watch the waves and the yachts--"
"And grow well again!" cried Carter. "But you'll write to me," he added wistfully, "every day, won't you?"
In her wrath, Dolly rose, and from across the table confronted him.
"And what will I be doing on those rocks?" she cried. "You KNOW what I'll be doing! I'll be sobbing, and sobbing, and calling out to the waves: 'Why did he send me away? Why doesn't he want me? Because he doesn't love me. That's why! He doesn't LOVE me!' And you DON'T!" cried Dolly. "you DON'T!"
It took him all of three minutes to persuade her she was mistaken.
"Very well, then," sobbed Dolly, "that's settled. And there'll be no more talk of sending me away!
"There will NOT!" said Champneys hastily. "We will now," he announced, "go into committee of the whole and decide how we are to face financial failure. Our assets consist of two stories, accepted, but not paid for, and fifteen stories not accepted. In cash, he spread upon the table a meagre collection of soiled bills and coins. "We have twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents. That is every penny we possess in the world."
Dolly regarded him fixedly and shook her head.
"Is it wicked," she asked, "to love you so?"
"Haven't you been listening to me?" demanded Carter.
Again Dolly shook her head.
"I was watching the way you talk. When your lips move fast they do such charming things."
"Do you know," roared Carter, "that we haven't a penny in the world, that we have nothing in this flat to eat?"
"I still have five hats," said Dolly.
"We can't eat hats," protested Champneys.
"We can sell hats!" returned Dolly. "They cost eighty dollars apiece!"
"When you need money," explained Carter, "I find it's just as hard to sell a hat as to eat it."
"Twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents," repeated Dolly. She exclaimed remorsefully: "And you started with three thousand! What did I do with it?"
"We both had the time of our lives with it!" said Carter stoutly. "And that's all there is to that. Post-mortems," he pointed out, "are useful only as guides to the future, and as our future will never hold a second three thousand dollars, we needn't worry about how we spent the first one. No! What we must consider now is how we can grow rich quick, and the quicker and richer, the better. Pawning our clothes, or what's left of them, is bad economics. There's no use considering how to live from meal to meal. We must evolve something big, picturesque, that will bring a fortune. You have imagination; I'm supposed to have imagination, we must think of a plan to get money, much money. I do not insist on our plan being dignified, or even outwardly respectable; so long as it keeps you alive, it may be as desperate as--"
"I see!" cried Dolly; "like sending mother Black Hand letters!"
"Blackmail----" began that lady's son-in-law doubtfully.
"Or!" cried Dolly, "we might kidnap Mr. Carnegie when he's walking in the park alone, and hold him for ransom. Or"--she rushed on-- "we might forge a codicil to