Kitabı oku: «The Wall Street Girl», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XV
COST

It was quite evident that Farnsworth had something in mind; for, beginning that week, he assigned Don to a variety of new tasks–to checking and figuring and copying, sometimes at the ticker, sometimes in the cashier’s cage of the bond department, sometimes on the curb. For the most part, it was dull, uninspiring drudgery of a clerical nature, and it got on Don’s nerves. Within a month he had reached the conclusion that this was nothing short of a conspiracy on Farnsworth’s part to tempt him to resign. It had the effect of making him hold on all the more tenaciously. He did his work conscientiously, and–with his lips a little more tightly set than was his custom–kept his own counsel.

He had no alternative. His new work gave him little opportunity to talk with Miss Winthrop, and she was the one person in the world in whom he felt he could confide safely and at length. She herself was very busy. Mr. Seagraves, having accidentally discovered her ability, was now employing her more and more in his private office.

It was about this time that a lot of petty outside matters came up, further to vex him. Up to this point Don’s wardrobe had held out fairly well; but it was a fact that he needed a new business suit, and a number of tailors were thoughtfully reminding him that, with March approaching, it was high time he began to consider seriously his spring and summer outfit. Until now such details had given him scarcely more concern than the question of food in his daily life. Some three or four times a year, at any convenient opportunity, he strolled into his tailor’s and examined samples at his leisure. Always recognizing at sight just what he wanted, no great mental strain was involved. He had merely to wave his cigarette toward any pleasing cloth, mention the number of buttons desired on coat and waistcoat, and the matter was practically done.

But when Graustein & Company announced to him their new spring importations, and he dropped in there one morning on his way downtown, he recognized the present necessity of considering the item of cost. It was distinctly a disturbing and embarrassing necessity, which Mr. Graustein did nothing to soften. He looked his surprise when Don, in as casual a fashion as possible, inquired:–

“What will you charge for making up this?”

“But you have long had an account with us!” he exclaimed. “Here is something here, Mr. Pendleton,–an exclusive weave.”

“No,” answered Don firmly; “I don’t want that. But this other–you said you’d make that for how much?”

Graustein appeared injured. He waved his hand carelessly.

“Eighty dollars,” he replied. “You really need two more, and I’ll make the three for two hundred.”

“Thanks. I will tell you when to go ahead.”

“We like to have plenty of time on your work, Mr. Pendleton,” said Graustein.

Two hundred dollars! Once upon the street again, Don caught his breath. His bill at Graustein’s had often amounted to three times that, but it had not then come out of a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. Without extra expenses he seldom had more than a dollar left on Saturday. By the strictest economy, he figured, it might be possible to save five. To pay a bill of two hundred dollars would at that rate require forty working weeks. By then the clothes would be worn out.

It was facts like these that brought home to Don how little he was earning, and that made that ten-thousand-dollar salary appear like an actual necessity. It was facts like these that helped him to hold on.

But it was also facts like these that called his attention to this matter of cost in other directions. Within the next two months, one item after another of his daily life became reduced to figures, until he lived in a world fairly bristling with price-tags. Collars were so much apiece, cravats so much apiece, waistcoats and shoes and hats so much. As he passed store windows the price-tags were the first thing he saw. It seemed that everything was labeled, even such articles of common household use as bed-linen, chairs and tables, carpets and draperies. When they were not, he entered and asked the prices. It became a passion with him to learn the cost of things.

It was toward the middle of May that Frances first mentioned a possible trip abroad that summer.

“Dolly Seagraves is going, and wishes me to go with her,” she announced.

“It will take a lot of money,” he said.

“What do you mean, Don?”

One idle evening he had figured the cost of the wedding trip they had proposed. He estimated it at three years’ salary.

“Well, the tickets and hotel bills–” he began.

“But, Don, dear,” she protested mildly, “I don’t expect you to pay my expenses.”

“I wish to Heavens I could, and go with you!”

“We had planned on June, hadn’t we?” she smiled.

“On June,” he nodded.

She patted his arm.

“Dear old Don! Well, I think a fall wedding would be nicer, anyway. And Dolly has an English cousin or something who may have us introduced at court. What do you think of that?”

“I’d rather have you right here. I thought after the season here I might be able to see more of you.”

“Nonsense! You don’t think we’d stay in town all summer? Don, dear, I think you’re getting a little selfish.”

“Well, you’d be in town part of the summer.”

She shook her head.

“We shall sail early, in order to have some gowns made. But if you could meet us there for a few weeks–you do have a vacation, don’t you?”

“Two weeks, I think.”

“Oh, dear, then you can’t.”

“Holy smoke, do you know what a first-class passage costs?”

“I don’t want to know. Then you couldn’t go, anyway, could you?”

“Hardly.”

“Shall you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“That will be nice, and I shall send you a card every day.”

“Good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “If your father would only go broke before then. If only he would!”

Stuyvesant did not go broke, and Frances sailed on the first of June. Don went to the boat to see her off, and the band on the deck played tunes that brought lumps to his throat. Then the hoarse whistle boomed huskily, and from the Hoboken sheds he watched her until she faded into nothing but a speck of waving white handkerchief. In twenty minutes he was back again in the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves–back again to sheets of little figures with dollar signs before them. These he read off to Speyer, who in turn pressed the proper keys on the adding-machine–an endless, tedious, irritating task. The figures ran to hundreds, to thousands, to tens of thousands.

Nothing could have been more uninteresting, nothing more meaningless. He could not even visualize the sums as money. It was like adding so many columns of the letter “s.” And yet, it was the accident of an unfair distribution of these same dollar signs that accounted for the fact that Frances was now sailing out of New York harbor, while he remained here before this desk.

They represented the week’s purchase of bonds, and if the name “Pendleton, Jr.,” had appeared at the head of any of the accounts he might have been by her side.

Something seemed wrong about that. Had she been a steam yacht he could have understood it. Much as he might have desired a steam yacht, he would have accepted cheerfully the fact that he did not have the wherewithal to purchase it. He would have felt no sense of injustice. But it scarcely seemed decent to consider Frances from this point of view, though a certain parallel could be drawn: her clean-cut lines, her nicety of finish, a certain air of silver and mahogany about her, affording a basis of comparison; but this was from the purely artistic side. One couldn’t very well go further and estimate the relative initial cost and amount for upkeep without doing the girl an injustice. After all, there was a distinction between a gasolene engine and a heart, no matter how close an analogy physicians might draw.

And yet, the only reason he was not now with her was solely a detail of bookkeeping. It was a matter of such fundamental inconsequence as the amount of his salary. He was separated from her by a single cipher.

But that cipher had nothing whatever to do with his regard for her. It had played no part in his first meeting with her, or in the subsequent meetings, when frank admiration had developed into an ardent attachment. It had nothing to do with the girl herself, as he had seen her for the moment he succeeded in isolating her in a corner of the upper deck before she sailed. It had nothing to do with certain moments at the piano when she sang for him. It had nothing to do with her eyes, as he had seen them that night she had consented to marry him. To be sure, these were only detached moments which were not granted him often; but he had a conviction that they stood for something deeper in her than the everyday moments.

CHAPTER XVI
A MEMORANDUM

During that next week Don found a great deal of time in which to think. He was surprised at how much time he had. It was as if the hours in the day were doubled. Where before he seldom had more than time to hurry home and dress for his evening engagements, he now found that, even when he walked home, he was left with four or five idle hours on his hands.

If a man is awake and hasn’t anything else to do, he must think. He began by thinking about Frances, and wondering what she was doing, until young Schuyler intruded himself,–Schuyler, as it happened, had taken the same boat, having been sent abroad to convalesce from typhoid,–and after that there was not much satisfaction in wondering what she was doing. He knew how sympathetic Frances was, and how good she would be to Schuyler under these circumstances. Not that he mistrusted her in the least–she was not the kind to lose her head and forget. But, at the same time, it did not make him feel any the less lonesome to picture them basking in the sun on the deck of a liner while he was adding innumerable little figures beneath an electric light in the rear of the cashier’s cage in a downtown office. It did not do him any good whatever.

However, the conclusion of such uneasy wondering was to force him back to a study of the investment securities of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. Right or wrong, the ten thousand was necessary, and he must get it. On the whole, this had a wholesome effect. For the next few weeks he doubled his energies in the office. That this counted was proved by a penciled note which he received at the club one evening:–

Mr. Donald Pendleton.

Dear Sir:–

You’re making good, and Farnsworth knows it.

Sincerely yours,

Sarah Kendall Winthrop.

To hear from her like this was like meeting an old friend upon the street. It seemed to say that in all these last three weeks, when he thought he was occupying the city of New York all by himself, she, as a matter of fact, had been sharing it with him. She too had been doing her daily work and going home at night, where presumably she ate her dinner and lived through the long evenings right here in the same city. He seldom caught a glimpse of her even in the office now, for Seagraves took all her time. Her desk had been moved into his office. Yet, she had been here all the while. It made him feel decidedly more comfortable.

The next day at lunch-time Don waited outside the office for her, and, unseen by her, trailed her to her new egg sandwich place. He waited until she had had time to order, and then walked in as if quite by accident. She was seated, as usual, in the farthest corner.

“Why, hello,” he greeted her.

She looked up in some confusion. For several days she had watched the entrance of every arrival, half-expecting to see him stride in. But she no longer did that, and had fallen back into the habit of eating her lunch quite oblivious of all the rest of the world. Now it seemed like picking up the thread of an old story, and she was not quite sure she desired this.

“Hello,” he repeated.

“Hello,” she answered.

There was an empty seat next to hers.

“Will you hold that for me?” he asked.

“They don’t let you reserve seats here,” she told him.

“Then I guess I’d better not take a chance,” he said, as he sat down in it.

He had not changed any in the last few months.

“Do you expect me to go and get your lunch for you?” she inquired.

“No,” he assured her. “I don’t expect to get any lunch.”

She hesitated.

“I was mighty glad to get your note,” he went on. “I was beginning to think I’d got lost in the shuffle.”

“You thought Mr. Farnsworth had forgotten you?”

“I sure did. I hadn’t laid eyes on him for a week.”

“Mr. Farnsworth never forgets,” she answered.

“How about the others?”

“There isn’t any one else worth speaking of in that office.”

“How about you?”

“I’m one of those not worth speaking of,” she replied.

She met his eyes steadily.

“Seagraves doesn’t seem to feel that way. He keeps you in there all the time now.”

“The way he does his office desk,” she nodded. “You’d better get your lunch.”

“I’ll lose my chair.”

“Oh, get your sandwich; I’ll hold the chair for you,” she answered impatiently.

He rose immediately, and soon came back with his plate and coffee-cup.

“Do you know I haven’t had one of these things or a chocolate éclair since the last time I was in one of these places with you?”

“What have you been eating?”

“Doughnuts and coffee, mostly.”

“That isn’t nearly so good for you,” she declared.

He adjusted himself comfortably.

“This is like getting back home,” he said.

“Home?”

She spoke the word with a frightened, cynical laugh.

“Well, it’s more like home than eating alone at the other places,” he said.

“They are all alike,” she returned–“just places in which to eat.”

She said it with some point, but he did not see the point. He took a bite of his egg sandwich.

“Honest, this tastes pretty good,” he assured her.

He was eating with a relish and satisfaction that he had not known for a long time. It was clear that the credit for this was due in some way to Sarah Kendall Winthrop, though that was an equally curious phenomenon. Except that he had, or assumed, the privilege of talking to her, she was scarcely as intimate a feature of his life as Nora.

“How do you like your new work?” she inquired.

“It’s fierce,” he answered. “It’s mostly arithmetic.”

“It all helps,” she said. “All you have to do now is just to keep at it. Keeping posted on the bonds?”

“Yes. But as fast as I learn a new one, it’s sold.”

“That’s all right,” she answered. “The more you learn, the better. Some day Mr. Farnsworth will call you in and turn you loose on your friends.”

“You think so?”

“I know it, if you keep going. But you can’t let up–not for one day.”

“If I can only last through the summer,” he reflected aloud. “Have you ever spent a summer in town?”

“Where else would I spend a summer?” she inquired.

“I like the mountains myself. Ever been to Fabyan House?”

She looked to see if he was joking. He was not. He had spent the last three summers very pleasantly in the White Mountains.

“No,” she answered. “A ten-cent trolley trip is my limit.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere I can find trees or water. You can get quite a trip right in Central Park, and it’s good fun to watch the kiddies getting an airing.”

There was a note in her voice that made him turn his head toward her. The color sprang to her cheeks.

“It’s time I was getting back,” she announced as she rose. “This is Mr. Seagraves’s busy day.”

“But look here; I haven’t finished my éclair!”

“Then you’d better devote the next five minutes to that,” she advised.

She disappeared through the door, and in another second was blended with a thousand others.

Don drew out his memorandum book and made the following entry:–

“Visit Central Park some day and watch the kiddies.”

CHAPTER XVII
ON THE WAY HOME

Frances wrote him enthusiastically from London. In her big, sprawling handwriting the letter covered eight pages. Toward the end she added:–

I miss you quite a lot, Don, dear, especially on foggy days. Please don’t work too hard, and remember that I am, as always,

Your FRANCES.

Well, that was something to know–that she was always his, even in London. London was a long way from New York, and of course he could not expect her to go abroad and then spend all her time writing to him. He went up to the club after reading this, and wrote her a letter twenty pages long. It was a very sentimental letter, but it did him good. The next day he returned to the office decidedly refreshed. In fact, he put in one of the best weeks there since he had taken his position. When Saturday came he was sorry that it was a half-holiday: he would have liked to work even through Sunday.

He left the office that day at a little before twelve, and stood on the corner waiting for Miss Winthrop. They had lunched together every day during the week; but he had not mentioned meeting her to-day, because he had come to the conclusion that the only successful way to do that was to capture her. So she came out quite jauntily and confidently, and almost ran into him as he raised his hat.

She glanced about uneasily.

“Please–we mustn’t stand here.”

“Then I’ll walk a little way with you.”

So he accompanied her to the Elevated station, and then up the steps, and as near as she could judge purposed entering the train with her. He revealed no urgent business. He merely talked at random, as he had at lunch.

She allowed two trains to pass, and then said:–

“I must go home now.”

“It seems to me you are always on the point of going home,” he complained. “What do you do after you get there?”

“I have a great many things to do,” she informed him.

“You have dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I have dinner too,” he nodded. “Then what do you do?”

“I have a great many things to do,” she repeated.

“I don’t have anything to do after dinner,” he said. “I just wander around until it’s time to go to bed.”

“That’s a waste of time.”

“I know it. It’s just killing time until the next day.”

She appeared interested.

“You have many friends?”

“They are all in London and Paris,” he answered.

“You have relatives.”

“No,” he answered. “You see, I live all alone. Dad left me a house, but–well, he didn’t leave any one in it except the servants.”

“You live in a house all by yourself?”

He nodded.

Mr. Pendleton lived in a house! That was a wonderful thing to her. She had almost forgotten that any one lived in whole houses any more. She was eager to hear more. So, when the next train came along she stepped into it, and he followed, although she had not intended to allow this.

“I wish you would tell me about your house,” she said wistfully.

So, on the way uptown, he tried to describe it to her. He told her where it was, and that quite took away her breath; and how his father had bought it; and how many rooms there were; and how it was furnished; and, finally, how he came to be living in it himself on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. As she listened her eyes grew round and full.

“My, but you’re lucky!” she exclaimed. “I should think you’d want to spend there every minute you could get.”

“Why?” he asked in surprise.

“Just because it’s your house,” she answered. “Just because it’s all your own.”

“I don’t see it,” he answered.

“And what do you want of ten thousand a year?” she demanded. “You can live like a king on what you’re drawing now.”

“You don’t mean that?” he asked.

“I don’t mean you ought to give up trying for the big jobs,” she said quickly. “You ought to try all the harder for those, because that’s all that’s left for you to try for. With everything else provided, you ought to make a name for yourself. Why, you’re free to work for nothing else.”

“On twenty-five dollars a week?”

“And a house that’s all your own. With a roof over your head no one can take away, and heat and light–why, it’s a fortune and your twenty-five so much extra.”

“Well, I have to eat,” he observed.

“Yes, you have to eat.”

“And wear clothes.”

She was doing that and paying her rent out of fifteen.

“I don’t see what you do with all your money,” she answered.

At this point she stepped out of the train, and he followed her. She went down the stairs to the street, and he continued to follow. She was on her way to the delicatessen store to buy her provisions for the night and Sunday. Apparently it was his intention to go there with her. At the door of the little shop she stopped.

“I’m going in here,” she informed him, as if that concluded the interview.

He merely nodded and opened the door for her. She was beginning to be worried. At this rate there was no knowing but what he might follow her right home.

“I’m going to buy my provisions for to-morrow,” she further informed him.

“I suppose I must get something too,” he answered. “Can’t I buy it here?”

“It’s a public place,” she admitted.

“Then come on.”

So they entered together, and Hans greeted them both with a smile, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. But Miss Winthrop herself was decidedly embarrassed. This seemed a very intimate business to be sharing with a man. On the other hand, she did not propose to have her plans put out by a man. So she ordered half a pound of butter and a jar of milk and some cheese and some cold roast and potato salad for that night and a lamb chop for Sunday, and one or two other little things, the whole coming to eighty-five cents.

“Now,” he asked, when she had concluded, “what do you think I’d better order?”

Her cheeks were flushed, and she knew it.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered.

He saw some eggs.

“I might as well have a dozen eggs to start with,” he began.

“Is there only yourself?” she inquired.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Then I should think a half-dozen would do.”

“A half-dozen,” he corrected the order.

Then he thought of chops.

“A pound or two of chops,” he ordered.

“If you have eggs for breakfast, you will need chops only for dinner. Two chops will be enough.”

Before she was through she had done practically all his ordering for him,–because she could not bear to see waste,–and the total came to about one half what it usually cost him. He thought there must be some mistake, and insisted that Hans make a second reckoning. The total was the same.

“I shall trade with you altogether after this,” he informed the pleased proprietor.

There were several packages, but Hans bound them together into two rather large-sized ones. With one of these in each hand, Don came out upon the street with Miss Winthrop.

“I’m going home now,” she announced.

“There you are again!” he exclaimed.

“But I must.”

“I suppose you think I ought to go home.”

“Certainly.”

“Look here–doesn’t it seem sort of foolish to prepare two lunches in two different places. Doesn’t it seem rather wasteful?”

Offhand, it did. And yet there was something wrong with that argument somewhere.

“It may be wasteful, but it’s necessary,” she replied.

“Now, is it?” he asked. “Why can’t we go downtown somewhere and lunch together?”

“You must go home with your bundles,” she said, grasping at the most obvious fact she could think of at the moment.

“If that’s the only difficulty, I can call a messenger,” he replied instantly.

“And lose all you’ve saved by coming ’way up here? I won’t listen to it.”

“Then I’ll go home with them and come back.”

“It will be too late for lunch then.”

“I can take a taxi and–”

“No wonder your salary isn’t enough if you do such things!” she interrupted. “If you had ten thousand a year, you would probably manage to spend it all.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” he answered cheerfully. “On the other hand, it would get me out of such predicaments as these.”

Apparently he was content to stand here in front of the little shop the rest of the afternoon, debating this and similar points. It was necessary for her to take matters into her own hands.

“The sensible thing for you to do is to go home and have lunch,” she decided.

“And then?”

“Oh, I can’t plan your whole day for you. But you ought to get out in the sunshine.”

“Then I’ll meet you in the park at three?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Will you come?”

She was upon the point of saying no, when she made the mistake of meeting his eyes. They were honest, direct, eager. It was so easy to promise whatever they asked and so hard to be always opposing them. She answered impulsively:–

“Yes.”

But she paid for her impulse, as she generally did, by being sorry as soon as she was out of sight of him. The first thing she knew, she would be back where she was a month ago, and that would never do–never do at all.