The business interest of which George Warrener formed a humble part
had no picturesque traditions. Like everything else in New York, the
corporation had even during Warrener’s time boasted several different
addresses. When especial advantages presented themselves in the shape
of higher buildings and higher rent, Harkweather & Fulsome moved. The
unstableness, the constant transition, had an effect upon him which he
did not appreciate. Warrener, with his firm, was restless; and restless
with his eighty million fellow Americans.
Harkweather & Fulsome’s last move had been to a twenty-two-floored
steel structure, from whose tenth story were visible the roofs of the
buildings not yet razed to make room for other giant office honeycombs.
Money, at Harkweather & Fulsome’s, superseded everything else in the
world, extinguished the lights of pleasure, destroyed even the capacity
to enjoy. Everything else was crowded out of the question. Harkweather
& Fulsome were “strictly business,” strictly getters of wealth; and
they squeezed dry every sponge that came to their hands.
Warrener, in the office, had drifted into the position of confidential
clerk, very much used when wanted, and shifted off into a little,
stuffy room, where he had a desk and typewriter, when his services were
not in active demand. Here he copied, filed and noted; added, opened
and docketed mail; and read the financial news in every available
sheet in the city. To his own thinking, he was an authority on stocks
and bonds. He heard innumerable tips thrown out; saw them acted upon,
and prove either valuable or worthless; followed the rise and fall of
fortunes near and far; assisted at failures and successes; and during
the hours of his routine in the office had the sensation of being
himself a millionaire! But when he left the ferry, the bondholders and
“big men” hurried to their more important trains and more important
stations, and Warrener hustled himself, with his evening papers,
into the short train of the Slocum local, he then distinctly felt
the difference between his bank balance and his chief’s! He lived in
the atmosphere of money, but he had never been ambitious. Of average
intelligence, common school education, steady-going and trustworthy, he
had no intentions further than to pay his bills, earn his salary and
keep at the business.
Were he asked what part of his life he recalled with most pleasure
he would have unhesitatingly answered: “Getting engaged and going
on our honeymoon.” The sentimental period--which had come into his
unimaginative life with the imperiousness of that passion which at
least once during a man’s life changes his existence for a time, short
or long--had for Warrener left behind it a memory which the cares of
the world, the moth and rust of vulgar routine, trains and ferries,
quick lunches and elevators, common surroundings and abasing ideals,
overlaid but never destroyed.
Eight years before he had asked the prettiest girl he knew to marry
him, and she had said yes. His vacation falling at this time, they had
spent two weeks in August at Far Rockaway, and from there went directly
into the rented house on Grand Street, and the newly married man began
his bi-daily pilgrimages on the train.
He would have been ashamed to have anyone, above all his wife, know
that as he crossed the ferry, one of a thick-packed crowd on the front
part of the boat, standing there close to the running waters, near the
bow, he often gave himself a mental holiday; then the image of Gertrude
in a pinkish dress and picture hat came to his mind as he had seen her
on the boardwalk at Rockaway eight years ago. It was a species of revel
for him to recall those days. He was not unhappy or even discontented;
he was too commonplace to be capable of either sensation. He was
numbed, pinched hard by life.
“I am indispensable to Mr. Harkweather,” he repeated, with pride, and
passed the time with his hand on other people’s grindstones, all the
gold dust flying into other people’s bags.