Of course, Van Bibber lost all the money he saved at the races on the
Fourth of July. He went to the track the next day, and he saw the
whole sum melt away, and in his vexation tried to "get back," with the
usual result. He plunged desperately, and when he had reached his
rooms and run over his losses, he found he was a financial wreck, and
that he, as his sporting friends expressed it, "would have to smoke a
pipe" for several years to come, instead of indulging in Regalias. He
could not conceive how he had come to make such a fool of himself, and
he wondered if he would have enough confidence to spend a dollar on
luxuries again.
It was awful to contemplate the amount he had lost. He felt as if it
were sinful extravagance to even pay his car-fare up-town, and he
contemplated giving his landlord the rent with keen distress. It
almost hurt him to part with five cents to the conductor, and as he
looked at the hansoms dashing by with lucky winners inside he groaned
audibly.
"I've got to economize," he soliloquized. "No use talking; must
economize. I'll begin to-morrow morning and keep it up for a month.
Then I'll be on my feet again. Then I can stop economizing, and enjoy
myself. But no more races; never, never again."
He was delighted with this idea of economizing. He liked the idea of
self-punishment that it involved, and as he had never denied himself
anything in his life, the novelty of the idea charmed him. He rolled
over to sleep, feeling very much happier in his mind than he had been
before his determination was taken, and quite eager to begin on the
morrow. He arose very early, about ten o'clock, and recalled his idea
of economy for a month, as a saving clause to his having lost a
month's spending money.
He was in the habit of taking his coffee and rolls and a parsley
omelette, at Delmonico's every morning. He decided that he would start
out on his road of economy by omitting the omelette and ordering only
a pot of coffee. By some rare intuition he guessed that there were
places up-town where things were cheaper than at his usual haunt, only
he did not know where they were. He stumbled into a restaurant on a
side street finally, and ordered a cup of coffee and some rolls.
The waiter seemed to think that was a very poor sort of breakfast, and
suggested some nice chops or a bit of steak or "ham and eggs, sah,"
all of which made Van Bibber shudder. The waiter finally concluded
that Van Bibber was poor and couldn't afford any more, which, as it
happened to be more or less true, worried that young gentleman; so
much so, indeed, that when the waiter brought him a check for fifteen
cents, Van Bibber handed him a half-dollar and told him to "keep the
change."
The satisfaction he felt in this wore off very soon when he
appreciated that, while he had economized in his breakfast, his vanity
had been very extravagantly pampered, and he felt how absurd it was
when he remembered he would not have spent more if he had gone to
Delmonico's in the first place. He wanted one of those large black
Regalias very much, but they cost entirely too much. He went carefully
through his pockets to see if he had one with him, but he had not, and
he determined to get a pipe. Pipes are always cheap.
"What sort of a pipe, sir?" said the man behind the counter.
"A cheap pipe," said Van Bibber.
"But what sort?" persisted the man.
Van Bibber thought a brier pipe, with an amber mouth-piece and a
silver band, would about suit his fancy. The man had just such a pipe,
with trade-marks on the brier and hall-marks and "Sterling" on the
silver band. It lay in a very pretty silk box, and there was another
mouth-piece you could screw in, and a cleaner and top piece with which
to press the tobacco down. It was most complete, and only five
dollars. "Isn't that a good deal for a pipe?" asked Van Bibber. The
man said, being entirely unprejudiced, that he thought not. It was
cheaper, he said, to get a good thing at the start. It lasted longer.
And cheap pipes bite your tongue. This seemed to Van Bibber most
excellent reasoning. Some Oxford-Cambridge mixture attracted Van
Bibber on account of its name. This cost one dollar more. As he left
the shop he saw a lot of pipes, brier and corn-cob and Sallie
Michaels, in the window marked, "Any of these for a quarter." This
made him feel badly, and he was conscious he was not making a success
of his economy. He started back to the club, but it was so hot that he
thought he would faint before he got there; so he called a hansom, on
the principle that it was cheaper to ride and keep well than to walk
and have a sunstroke.
He saw some people that he knew going by in a cab with a pile of
trunks on the top of it, and that reminded him that they had asked him
to come down and see them off when the steamer left that afternoon. So
he waved his hand when they passed, and bowed to them, and cried, "See
you later," before he counted the consequences. He did not wish to
arrive empty-handed, so he stopped in at a florist's and got a big
basket of flowers and another of fruit, and piled them into the
hansom.
When be came to pay the driver he found the trip from Thirty-fifth
Street to the foot of Liberty was two dollars and a half, and the
fruit and flowers came to twenty-two dollars. He was greatly
distressed over this, and could not see how it had happened. He rode
back in the elevated for five cents and felt much better. Then some
men just back from a yachting trip joined him at the club and ordered
a great many things to drink, and of course he had to do the same, and
seven dollars were added to his economy fund. He argued that this did
not matter, because he signed a check for it, and that he would not
have to pay for it until the end of the month, when the necessity of
economizing would be over.
Still, his conscience did not seem convinced, and he grew very
desperate. He felt he was not doing it at all properly, and he
determined that he would spend next to nothing on his dinner. He
remembered with a shudder the place he had taken the tramp to dinner,
and he vowed that before he would economize as rigidly as that he
would starve; but he had heard of the _table d'hôte_ places on Sixth
Avenue, so he went there and wandered along the street until he found
one that looked clean and nice. He began with a heavy soup, shoved a
rich, fat, fried fish over his plate, and followed it with a queer
_entrée_ of spaghetti with a tomato dressing that satisfied his hunger
and killed his appetite as if with the blow of a lead pipe. But he
went through with the rest of it, for he felt it was the truest
economy to get his money's worth, and the limp salad in bad oil and
the ice-cream of sour milk made him feel that eating was a positive
pain rather than a pleasure; and in this state of mind and body,
drugged and disgusted, he lighted his pipe and walked slowly towards
the club along Twenty-sixth Street.
He looked in at the _café_ at Delmonico's with envy and disgust, and,
going disheartenedly on, passed the dining-room windows that were wide
open and showed the heavy white linen, the silver, and the women
coolly dressed and everybody happy.
And then there was a wild waving of arms inside, and white hands
beckoning him, and he saw with mingled feelings of regret that the
whole party of the Fourth of July were inside and motioning to him.
They made room for him, and the captain's daughter helped him to
olives, and the chaperon told how they had come into town for the day,
and had been telegraphing for him and Edgar and Fred and "dear Bill,"
and the rest said they were so glad to see him because they knew he
could appreciate a good dinner if any one could.
But Van Bibber only groaned, and the awful memories of the lead-like
spaghetti and the bad oil and the queer cheese made him shudder, and
turned things before him into a Tantalus feast of rare cruelty. There
were Little Neck clams, delicious cold consommé, and white fish, and
French chops with a dressing of truffles, and Roman punch and woodcock
to follow, and crisp lettuce and toasted crackers-and-cheese, with a
most remarkable combination of fruits and ices; and Van Bibber could
eat nothing, and sat unhappily looking at his plate and shaking his
head when the waiter urged him gently. "Economy!" he said, with
disgusted solemnity. "It's all tommy rot. It wouldn't have cost me a
cent to have eaten this dinner, and yet I've paid half a dollar to
make myself ill so that I can't. If you know how to economize, it may
be all right; but if you don't understand it, you must leave it alone.
It's dangerous. I'll economize no more."
And he accordingly broke his vow by taking the whole party up to see
the lady who would not be photographed in tights, and put them in a
box where they were gagged by the comedian, and where the soubrette
smiled on them and all went well.