As his car bore him past the shadowy white pile on the other side of the Square, Stroude sighed. A man does not live with a dream—even the dream of another—through season after season without catching some gleam of its radiance; but in Boyce Martin’s straight look as he met him at the train gate, Stroude began to drink of his justification.
“You Stroudes always kept your word,” the other man said.
“We aim to,” said Stroude, unconsciously slipping back into the vernacular of his youth. “It was her letter,” he explained. “I never knew about the boy.”
“I know,” said Martin. “I—I’ve loved him as if he’d been the child I’ve never had. That’s why I came for you.” He held out his hand and Stroude grasped it. “You’re one of us, after all.”
As the train slid past the Potomac and threaded the low pines of the Virginia river lands, Stroude pondered the mountaineer’s tribute. In the light of it he saw the path to Dell Martin’s cabin leading higher than the way across the Square. For the first time in many years he felt the surge of freedom rising in his soul. A thousand shackles fell away as the last lights of Washington slid down on the horizon.
THE ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL
By BOOTH TARKINGTON
From McCall’s
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, not now quite so clean, in his pocket.