BY CHARLES FLEMING EMBREE
To Euchretown, Los Angeles County, came Mr. Stoker and his wife. He bought ranches, and, strikingly dressed, drove about in the rubber-tired buggies of real-estate agents; while Mrs. Stoker, a handsome young woman, sniffed the social air. Just what should she do to win, with éclat, the commanding place in the local feminine view? For her no slow progress to social supremacy! Rather the Napoleonic sweeping away of rivals.
At that stage of its rise from a desert to a paradise Euchretown was belied by its name. A sombreness hovered over the thought of the place; the method of life was Puritanic. Euchre? One would have thought there was never a deck in the town.
“I don’t want to be un-Christian,” snapped the wife of Reverend Hummel; “but I wish that Mrs. Stoker had never stuck her foot in this town.”
Mrs. Hummel was out of place linked to a preacher. Fairly well had she clothed her mind in the prevalent Puritanic mood; but in her heart she was different. As for social leaders, she was the one, and she knew it.
“Why, Jennie,” complained the Reverend Hummel, a pale gentleman with eyes that ever bespoke a receptive surprise at his debts; “your words ring evil. And then the term you employed—stuck. How, pray, could Mrs. Stoker stick her foot?”
At this moment the maid (employed despite the mortgaged condition of Hummel’s real estate) ushered in Mrs. Banker Wheelock.
“And have you heard the news about Mrs. Stoker!” cried Mrs. Wheelock, as Mr. Hummel, wandering away, hummed “Throw Out the Life Line” in a fumbling voice. “Oh, haven’t you got an invitation?”
“What is it?” said Mrs. Hummel, darkly.
“A euchre-party! Everybody!”
Mrs. Hummel’s arms dropped limp.
“But, of course,” she said, “nobody will go.”
“They’re all wild about it!” ejaculated Mrs. Wheelock; “Mrs. Stoker is said to have struck the psychological moment.”
Mrs. Hummel started up.
“There hasn’t been a card-party for years!” cried she; “where’ll she get her decks? Does she carry around a trunk full? Or will she clean out the saloons? But——” and the tears leaped up to her lashes, “I wouldn’t be un-Christian about it.”
Mrs. Wheelock arose and laid her hands on Mrs. Hummel’s arm.
“Of course, dear, you know the only reason you wouldn’t be invited is that you’re the preacher’s wife,” soothed she; and then, with a puzzled air: “That must be the reason.”
Now the maid brought in an envelope. It was Mr. and Mrs. Hummel’s invitation to Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party. The eye of Jennie met that of Mrs. Wheelock, as a partial relief made its way into the breast of the preacher’s wife.
“Did you ever hear of such impudence?” she breathed.
Mrs. Stoker had a new green cottage with nine Corinthian pillars (capitals enormously ornate) along her front porch. Within, electric lights, white-pine woodwork, brilliant floral tributes of Axminster carpets, and bird’s-eye maple furniture combined to produce an effect luxurious, irrefutable.
“Oh, yes,” natty Stoker was saying to the men, “I gave him three thousand for his ten acres. Wheelock, run over to the city with me to-morrow and look at the Pasadena Villa Tract. I’ve a mind to pick up a bunch of those lots.”
“O Mrs. Hummel!” came Mrs. Stoker’s winning voice, and everybody listened. There was the purple-draped hostess flowing toward the preacher’s wife. “I was dreadfully afraid you wouldn’t come! I’m so” (powerful kiss) “glad you did! And dear Mr. Hummel?”
“To-night he works on his sermon,” said Mrs. Hummel, beaming about on the faces of the alert and delightfully surprised company. “I persuaded him to run in for me later; for I just came to look on. Of course,” here she turned the sweet lips toward Mrs. Stoker, “you couldn’t expect us to play.”
Mrs. Stoker put new fuel in her smile to Mrs. Hummel; and Mrs. Hummel did likewise further fire up her smile to Mrs. Stoker; and the edified company sat down.
The games went on with a vim that made it seem some hungry gambling spirit, dormant in the town, rose up and reveled. Mrs. Stoker had risked it all on her belief in the psychological moment—and won! The town was ready for sin.
“And that little statue is the prize,” now said Mrs. Stoker, moving about. “Mrs. Hummel, would you hold it up?”
All eyes came round in sneaking way toward Mrs. Hummel, who grew pallid. There, on the mantel, near her hand as she stood to watch, was the statuette—a nude Greek maid.
“Would you mind holding it up? They can’t see,” repeated Mrs. Stoker, louder, fires in her eyes.
Hypnotized, Mrs. Hummel lifted it and saw a price tag, $7.50.
“Why,” said she, forcing into her voice the daring experiment of a note of censure, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“Oh,” echoed Mrs. Wheelock from a distance, instilling into her tones a strain of triumph, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“No!” chimed all the women, in mutually sanctioning delight, “we didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“Just a cheap little thing,” said Mrs. Stoker.
A new brightening of eyes fastened on euchre decks. The games went on with strange excitement; for, lo! all the women had suddenly resolved to win or ruin their nerves in the fight.
“Would you punch—while I look to the sherbet?” whispered Mrs. Stoker to Mrs. Hummel, with new, bald patronage.
The preacher’s wife stared round. The fascination of the game was influencing her. She felt her footing go; she saw the Stoker triumph, the reins gone from her hand. Desperately did she leap at this only chance to cling to the victorious vehicle of pleasure which her rival from this night on was to drive headlong through the Puritanic mood of Euchretown.
Mrs. Hummel punched the cards.
More fierce became the spirit of gaming, until, with final shriek of delight, Mrs. Wheelock won the statue. Followed by jealous eyes she took it.
“Splendid!” she cried, examining the tag and seeing $7.50. Then she passed it round. “Beautiful!” said the women, seeing $7.50.
And the corruption of Euchretown was accomplished.
We pass hastily to the strange fury in its later vigor. From the night of the initiative prize an extraordinary inflation went on apace. Scarcely had a week elapsed (full of gossip at the Stoker’s indubitable success) when Mrs. Wheelock gave a second euchre-party. And when the guests flocked to the banker’s two-story house in the mission style (on the fifty-foot lot which he bought for $1,400 of Jeffreys Sassy), they were yet more morally poisoned to observe, on the cut-glass dish which she awarded to shrieking Mrs. Botts, the half-extinguished price-mark, $9.65.
For six days, $9.65 was a sort of tag to the town’s mental status; when, to the thrilling of all, Mrs. George Botts did suddenly cast out invitations; and at Mrs. Bott’s brilliant affair, Mrs. Stoker, after a dashing race neck-and-neck with six women who all but beat her, won a clock on the bottom of which, mysteriously blurred, the figures $13.75 could, after careful scrutiny, be distinguished.
The value of the prize at the fourth party was $15; at the sixth, $19; at the ninth, $25.50. Agape, the town stared ahead at its coming dizzy course. Then Mrs. Samuel Lethwait, taciturn woman, stupefied the inhabitants of the place by making one flying leap from $25 to $50. Out of the ranks, out of the number of the unfeared had Mrs. Lethwait made her daring rise.
There was an instant’s recoil. Could Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Wheelock, Mrs. Botts pause now? Their shoulders were at the wheel, their hands on the flying plow which tore up such amazing furrows in the social field. The recoil was but momentary. At the very hour when Mrs. Botts was putting on her hat, sworn to buy a prize worth $60, there fell into her agitated hand an invitation. Mrs. Stoker had sprung to the breach.
A scramble for the cottage of the nine pillars. And behold on the golden lamp there displayed as prize, were the shameless figures, $75.00.
Now had the insanity taken general root. He who fails to understand knows not California. The dangerous mania once contracted, no matter what its form, must continue till the collapse. If the gold fury of ’49, and the equally furious land boom of ’87, are not object-lessons enough, let the sociologist recall the Belgian hares. And if yet he doubts the historical verity of such a cast in the California mind, let him give this euchre boom his careful consideration. As men bid for twenty-five foot lots in San Diego in the insane days of ’87, so did women now bid, under the thin disguise of euchre prizes, for choice positions in the social field of Euchretown. It was the old disease.
In two more leaps the prizes had advanced to a hundred. And, most significant of all, seldom was the price of a prize now paid down. The credit system had saved the day. The people of Euchretown were not millionaires. Few felt able to toss out a hundred with this rapid periodicity. So small first payments, contracts, “the rest in six and twelve,” became the rule.
In the rear dust of this race, panting, tagged Mrs. Hummel. Again and again, contrary to the will of pained Mr. Hummel (who to himself sang “Throw Out the Life Line” in despair), did she attend, punch cards, look on with jealous eye; yet she did not play. She was a buffer whom the sinners held between their gaming and their consciences. Oh, how she longed to give a party that would stagger the general mind!
Now for a fatal three weeks Mr. Hummel was in Oregon. Two sleepless nights his wife spent tossing, then arose feverish, stood on the high pinnacle of temptation, and plunged down.
First she went for a prize. The price had risen to a hundred and forty; she must act quick; now!—lest she be ruined, for the boom waited for no man. At a furniture store she asked information on the contract system. The dealer (who had furnished prizes) was confused; he could not accept the Hummel’s contract. Why? she gasped. Oh, he hastened, it was not for doubts of the Hummel honesty; it was for doubts of the honesty of the community. In the present furious state he did not believe the Hummels would get their salary! Infinitely sorry, infinitely polite was he; and she went away dazed.
But she would do it or die. One more hour of suffering brought her back.
“I’ll mortgage our household goods,” said she, dry-eyed, “till Hummel returns.” And he agreed.
So, Mrs. Stoker’s old slain rival rose up astonishing over the horizon. The chill that ran through the community with Mrs. Hummel’s invitations, gave way to white heat, and everybody, euchre mad, now rushed to the preacher’s home.
Mrs. Hummel’s struggles had been heroic; the house was decorated as never before, the refreshments were beyond any that Mrs. Stoker had conceived. And on the portières (given as a prize) the mark one hundred and fifty dollars stook forth a challenge.
Mrs. Stoker, playing recklessly, lost; and her drawn face suggested nervous collapse and thoughts criminal. But a crisis in the social life of Euchretown was now imminent. There was yet another element to Mrs. Hummel’s victory; a murmur went round of the coming ruin of Stoker. As ladies moved to tables they eyed Mrs. Stoker, and whispered gossip; as men sat down they hinted at revelations, speaking in one another’s ears.
“What is it?” whispered Mrs. Hummel, huskily, to Mrs. Wheelock.
“They say that Stoker is found out; that he gave false title to some land!”
At that moment Stoker’s wild, unnatural laugh was heard.
In the final neck-and-neck sprint to the goal, Mrs. Stoker, gone to pieces, wretched, was distanced; Mrs. Botts carried off the portières; the party broke up, and Mrs. Hummel’s night of sinful conquering passed into history.
When Hummel returned, the news emaciated him. He went to bed and lay ill for a week, and nobody threw out the life line to him. Nay, even the bed he lay on came near to being snatched from under him. And now, with the boom trembling on the verge of collapse, with everybody’s contracts coming due, bills began to rain upon the preacher’s head.
“Jennie,” groaned he, “you have ruined me. See, they haven’t paid my salary, and the furniture man is mad. We will be cast into the street!”
Then there fell into Mrs. Hummel’s hands an envelope—“Mrs. Stoker—at home—Friday night—euchre!”
“Why,” cried Mrs. Wheelock, bursting in with Mrs. Botts, “everybody knows that the Stokers are on the brink of ruin. They say he is fighting like mad to keep his head up—maybe to keep out of jail! This is their final fling. And everybody has learned about her prize. Guess what it is!”
“And guess what it cost!” shouted Mrs. Botts.
“I wouldn’t be un-Christian about it,” declared Jennie, “but I do think swindlers had better hide their heads. What is the thing, then, and what does it cost?”
There was an impressive hush.
“A bedroom set worth two hundred! And she’s let everybody know that she paid cash down for it.”
They all gazed at one another, the fire of gaming in their eyes.
“She is making one last grand play,” said they.
One day of gloom did Mrs. Hummel pass in Hummel’s bedroom, arguing, pleading. To Hummel, he and the whole town were gone to the devil.
“No! Never!” cried he, receiving more duns, and shaken.
But at last toward night he arose and, haunted, went to the furniture store. In the window was the bedroom set, and over it a sign, “The prize for Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party.” Staring, the emaciated Hummel lost his soul.
“Would it cover the bill,” he whispered, hoarsely, in the dealer’s back room, “if we won it?”
“About,” mused the dealer; “Hummel, since it’s you. I’d call it square.”
And Hummel returned, unsteady on his feet.
Once again the cottage of the Corinthian pillars shone with the brilliancy of a euchre evening. Stoker was making a high play to-night to keep his footing with the men. Mrs. Stoker had rouged to hide the pallor of her cheeks. The house distanced all previous efforts in its decorations, the refreshments were beyond the experience of the most high-rolling citizen of the town.
Behold, in came Mrs. Hummel, her blood up.
“And dear Mr. Hummel?” asked Mrs. Stoker, taking Mrs. Hummel’s hand in both of hers.
“Hummel’s in bed,” said Jennie, tersely; “Mrs. Stoker, I’ll play to-night.”
A moment’s silence, as of a solitude; then a great hubbub, the guests making for tables.
“So glad!” cried Mrs. Stoker; “we’ve always hoped you would!”
“So glad!” shrieked all the women into Mrs. Hummel’s ear; and the games began.
Why dwell on the mad scramble? That night was the culmination. Disgraceful as was the thing in itself, it pales before the disgrace incident to a mood of reckless confession which seized the company. Somebody blurted out that she’d win that two hundred or die. Then a nigh insane man in a corner shouted across the room, to the shocking of all: “Let’s make it poker!”
The laugh that greeted this was spasmodic; and all at once right before Mrs. Hummel on the central table, Mr. Stoker, as though he had lost his mind, and grown wild and cynical, began to deal out—ten-dollar bills from his deck. These Mr. Wheelock snatched up and shook aloft with fearful merriment under the chandelier.
In that instant the boom collapsed. Who could predict the psychological moment? The sight of the ten-dollar bills was too much. Shame rushed into every breast; the reaction began; and henceforth in the hands of everybody but Mrs. Hummel (who, brain on fire, had failed to catch the significance of the moment), euchre fell a limp and lifeless thing.
And that alone is why the preacher’s wife, who scarcely knew her bowers, won the bedroom set.
A sudden, fierce knocking at the door, and in burst an officer.
“I have a warrant for the arrest of John Stoker,” said he.
“I’m here,” said Stoker, sneering and white; and Mrs. Stoker fainted.
Everybody stared; all seized hats; like rats the euchre players slunk away; the Corinthian cottage, like a bedizened but deserted courtesan, stood gaudily shining in the night, alone.
Later the town awoke, as the high-roller awakes next morning with a suffering and repentant head, and the readjustment began. Everybody owed somebody for prizes, as, in ’88, everybody owed somebody for lots. Everybody was a buffer to everybody. The thing let itself down and evened itself up, and nobody was hard on anybody. And thus the euchre boom passed into history.
Now the church people began to rehabilitate their consciences. And Banker Wheelock hit upon a scheme. As financier of the bankrupt soul, Wheelock will ever stand out a genius.
“Why,” said he to Botts, “we did it to help Hummel.”
“True,” said Botts, dazzled; “let’s go and tell him.”
And on a Saturday evening a score of citizens came to Hummel’s house.
Hummel was lying pallid on a lounge.
“We’ve come,” said Wheelock, blandly, “to felicitate you. We couldn’t bear to see you carry that debt, Hummel. We fixed the little thing in what was, I agree, an unprecedented way. But when we schemed beforehand with Mrs. Stoker to give a party and pass the victory on to your wife—Hummel, my friend, our hearts went with it!”
And Hummel, seeing this astonishing loophole for them all, arose to greet the general smile.
“Kind friends,” said he, in trembling relief, “more blessed is it to give than to receive.”