BLANKETS
There was destined to be a still longer break in the work which had been
going on in Judge Calvin Gray's library than was intended. He and his
assistant had barely resumed their labours after the Christmas
house-party when the Judge was called out of town for a period whose
limit when he left he was unable to fix. He could leave little for
Richard to do, so that young man found his time again upon his hands and
himself unable to dispose of it to advantage.
His mind at this period was in a curious state of dissatisfaction. Ever
since the evening of the Christmas dance, when a girl's careless word
had struck home with such unexpected force he had been as restless and
uneasy as a fish out of water. His condition bore as much resemblance to
that of the gasping fish as this: in the old element of life about town,
as he had been in the habit of living it, he now had the sensation of
not being able to breathe freely.
It was with the intention of getting into the open, both mentally and
physically, that on the second day following the Judge's departure
Richard started on a long drive in his car. Beyond a certain limit he
knew that the roads were likely to prove none too good, though the
winter had thus far been an open one and there was little chance of his
encountering blocking snowdrifts "up State." He took no one with him. He
could think of no one with whom he cared to go.
As he drove his mind was busy with all sorts of speculations. In his
hurt pride he had said to a girl: "If I can't make you think differently
of me it won't be for lack of will." That meant--what did it mean? That
he had recognized the fact that she despised idlers--and that young rich
men who spent a few hours, on an average of five days of the week, in
assisting elderly gentlemen bereft of their eyesight in looking up old
records, did not thereby in her estimation remove themselves from the
class of those who do nothing in the world but attend to the spending of
their incomes.
What should he do--how prove himself fit to deserve her approval?
Unquestionably he must devote himself seriously to some serious
occupation. All sorts of ideas chased one another through his mind in
response to this stimulus. What was he fitted to do? He had a certain
facility in the use of the pen, as he had proved in the service of Judge
Calvin Gray. Should he look for a job as reporter on one of the city
dailies? He certainly could not offer himself for any post higher than
that of the rawest scribe on the force; he had had no experience. The
thought of seeking such a post made his lip curl with the absurdity of
the notion. They would make a society reporter of him; it would be the
first idea that would occur to them. It was the only thing for which
they would think him fit!
The thing he should like to do would be to travel on some interesting
commission for his grandfather. On what commission, for instance? The
purchasing of rare works of art for the picture-gallery of the great
store? No mean exhibition it was they had there. But he had not the
training for such a commission; he would be cheated out of hand when it
came to buying! They sent skilled buyers on such quests.
He thought of rushing off to the far West and buying a ranch. That was a
fit and proper thing for a fellow like himself; plenty of rich men's
sons had done it. If she could see him in cowboy garb, rough-clad,
sunburnt, muscular, she would respect him then perhaps. There would be
no more flinging at him that he was a cotillion leader! How he hated the
term!
The day was fair and cold, the roads rather better than he had expected,
and by luncheon-time he had reached a large town, seventy miles away
from his own city, where he knew of an exceptionally good place to
obtain a refreshing meal. With this end in view, he was making more than
ordinary village speed when disaster befell him in the shape of a break
in his electric connections. Two blocks away from the hotel he sought,
the car suddenly went dead.
While he was investigating, fingers blue with cold, a voice he knew
hailed him. It came from a young man who advanced from the doorway of a
store, in front of which the car had chanced to stop. "Something wrong,
Rich?"
Richard stood up. He gripped his friend's hand cordially, glancing up at
the sign above the store as he did so.
"Mighty glad to see you, Benson," he responded. "I didn't realize I'd
stopped in front of your father's place of business."
Hugh Benson was a college classmate. In spite of the difference between
their respective estates in the college world, the two had been rather
good friends during the four years of their being thrown together. Since
graduation, however, they had seldom met, and for the last two years
Richard Kendrick had known no more of his former friend than that the
good-sized dry-goods store, standing on a prominent corner in the large
town through which he often motored without stopping, still bore the
name of Hugh Benson's father.
When the car was running again Benson climbed in and showed Richard the
way to his own home, where he prevailed on his friend to remain for
lunch with himself and his mother. Richard learned for the first time
that Benson's father had died within the last year.
"And you're going on with the business?" questioned Richard, as the two
lingered alone together in Benson's hall before parting. The talk during
the meal had been mostly of old college days, of former classmates, and
of the recent history of nearly every mutual acquaintance except that of
the speakers themselves.
"There was nothing else for me to do when father left us," Benson
responded in a low tone. "I'm not as well adapted to it as he was, but
I expect to learn."
"I remember you thought of doing graduate work along scientific lines.
Did you give that up?"
"Yes. I found father needed me at home; his health must have been
failing even then, though I didn't realize it. I've been in the store
with him ever since. I'm glad I have--now."
"It's not been good for you," declared Richard, scrutinizing his
friend's pale and rather worn face critically. It would have seemed to
him still paler and more worn if he could have seen it in contrast with
his own fresh-tinted features, ruddy with his morning's drive. "Better
come with me for an afternoon spin farther up State, and a good dinner
at a place I know. Get you back by bedtime."
"There's nothing I'd like better, Rich," said Benson longingly; "but--I
can't leave the store. I have rather a short force of clerks--and on a
sunny day--"
"You'd sell more goods to-morrow," urged Richard, feeling increasingly
anxious to do something which might bring light into a face he had not
remembered as so sombre.
But Benson shook his head again. Afterward, in front of the store to
which the two had returned in the car, Richard could only give his
friend a warm grip of the hand and an urgent invitation to visit him in
the city.
"I suppose you come down often to buy goods," he suggested. "Or do you
send buyers? I don't know much about the conduct of business in a town
like this--or much about it at home, for that matter," he owned. "Though
I'm not sure I'm proud of my ignorance."
"It doesn't matter whether you know anything about it or not, of
course," said Benson, looking up at him with a queer expression of
wistfulness. "No, I'm my own buyer. And I don't buy of a great,
high-grade firm like yours; I go to a different class of fellows for my
stuff."
Richard drove on, thinking hard about Benson. What a pity for a fellow
of twenty-six or seven to look like that, careworn and weary. He
wondered whether it was the loss of his father and the probably
sorrowful atmosphere at home that accounted for the look in Benson's
eyes, or whether his business was not a particularly successful one. He
recalled that the one careless glance he had given the windows of
Benson's store had brought to his mind the fleeting impression that
village shopkeepers had not much art in the dressing of their windows as
a means of alluring the public.
As he drove on he felt in his pockets for a cigar and found his case
unexpectedly empty. He turned back to a drugstore, went in and supplied
himself from the best in stock--none too good for his fastidious taste.
"What's your best dry-goods shop here?" he inquired casually.
"Artwell & Chatford's the best--now," responded the druggist, glancing
across the street, where a sign bearing those names met the eye.
"Chaffee Brothers has run 'em a close second since Benson's dropped out
of the competition. Benson's used to be the best, but it's fallen way
behind. Look at Artwell's window display over there and see the reason,"
he added, pointing across the street with the citizen's pride in a
successful enterprise in no way his own rival.
"Gorgeous!" responded Richard, eying an undoubtedly eye-catching
arrangement of blankets of every hue and quality piled about a centre
figure consisting of a handsome brass bed made up as if for occupancy,
the carefully folded-back covers revealing immaculate and downy blankets
with pink borders, the whole suggestive of warmth and comfort throughout
the most rigorous winter season.
"Catchy--on a day like this!" suggested the druggist, with a chuckle.
"I'll admit they gave me the key for my own windows."
Richard's gaze followed the other's glance and rested on piles of
scarlet flannel chest-protectors, flanked by small brass tea-kettles
with alcohol lamps beneath.
"We carry a side line of spirit-lamp stuff," explained the dealer. "It
sells well this time of year. Got to keep track of the popular thing.
Afternoon teas are all the go among the women of this town now. The
hardware's the only other place they can get these--and they don't begin
to keep the variety we do."
Richard congratulated the dealer on his window. Lingering by it, his
hand on the door, he said:
"I noticed Benson's as I came by, and I see now the force of what you
say about window display. I'm not sure I can tell what was in their
windows."
"Nor anybody else," declared the druggist, chuckling, "unless he went
with a notebook and made an inventory. Since the old man died last year
the windows have been a hodgepodge of stuff that attracts nobody. It's
merely an index to the way the place is running behind. Young Benson
doesn't know how to buy nor how to sell; he'll never succeed. The store
began to go down when the old man got too feeble to take the whole
responsibility. Hugh began to overstock some departments and understock
others. It's not so much lack of capital that'll be responsible for
Hugh's failure when it comes--and I guess it's not far off--as it is
lack of business experience. Why, he's got so little trade he's turned
off half his salespeople; and you know that talks!"
It did indeed. It talked louder now in the light of the druggist's
shrewd commentaries than it had when Benson had spoken of his "short
force." Richard wondered just how short it was, that the proprietor
could not venture to leave for even a few hours.
He drove on thoughtfully. He wanted to go back and look those windows
over again, wanted to go through the whole store, but recognized that
though he could have done this when he first arrived, he could not go
back and do it now without exciting his friend's suspicion that sympathy
was his motive.
He turned about at a point far short of the one he had intended to
reach, and made record time back to the city, impelled by an odd wish he
could hardly explain, to go by the windows of the great department
stores of Kendrick & Company and examine their window displays. Since he
was ordinarily accustomed to select any other streets than those upon
which these magnificent places of custom were situated, merely because
he not only had no interest in them but a positive distaste for seeing
his own name emblazoned--though ever so chastely--above their princely
portals, it may be understood that an entirely new idea was working in
his brain.
Speed as he would, however, running the risk as he approached the city
streets of being stopped by some watchful authority for exceeding the
limits, he could not get back to the broad avenue upon which the stores
stood before six o'clock. There was all the better chance on that
account, nevertheless, for examining the windows before which belated
shoppers were still stopping to wonder and admire.
Well, looking at them with Benson's forlorn windows in his mind as a
foil, he saw them as he never had before. What beauty, what originality,
what art they showed! And at a time of year when, the holiday season
past, it might seem as if there could be no real summons for anybody to
go shopping. They were fairly dazzling, some of them, although many of
them showed only white goods. His car came to a standstill before one
great plate-glass frame behind which was a representation of a
sewing-room with several people busily at work. So perfect were the
figures that it hardly seemed as if they could be of wax. One pretty
girl was sewing at a machine; another, on her knees, was fitting a frock
to a little girl who laughed over her shoulder at a second child who was
looking on. The mother of the family sewed by a drop-light on a
work-table. The whole scene was really charming, combining precisely the
element of domesticity with that of accomplishment which strikes the eye
of the average passer as "looking like home," no matter of what sort the
home might be.
"By heavens! if poor Ben had something like that people wouldn't pass
him by for the blanket store," he said to himself; and drove on, still
thinking.
The next day, at an hour before the morning tide of shopping at Kendrick
& Company's had reached the flood, two pretty glove clerks were suddenly
tempted into a furtive exchange of conversation at an unoccupied end of
their counter.
"Look quick! See the young man coming this way? It's Rich Kendrick."
"It is? They told me he never came here. Say, but he's the real thing!"
"I should say. Never saw him so close myself. Wish he'd stop here."
"Bet you couldn't keep your head if he spoke to you!"
"Bet I could! Don't you worry; he don't buy his gloves in his own
department store. He--"
"Sh! Granger's looking!"
There was really nothing about Richard Kendrick to attract attention
except his wholesome good looks, for he dressed with exceptional
quietness, and his manner matched his clothes. A floorwalker recognized
him and bowed, but the elevator man did not know him, and on his way to
the offices he passed only one clerk who could lay claim to a speaking
acquaintance with the grandson of the owner.
But at the office of the general manager he was met by an office boy who
knew and worshipped him from afar, and in five minutes he was closeted
with that official, who gave him his whole attention.
"Mr. Henderson, I wish you could give me"--was the substance of
Richard's remarks--"somebody who would go up to Eastman with me and tell
me what's the matter with a dry-goods store there that's on the verge of
failure."
The general manager was, to put it mildly, astonished. He was a mighty
man of valour himself, so mighty that his yearly salary would have been
to the average American citizen a small fortune. The office was one to
fill which similar houses had often scoured the country without avail.
Other business owners had been forced to remain at the helm long after
health and happiness demanded retirement. Among these, Henderson was
held to be so competent a man that Matthew Kendrick was considered
incredibly lucky to keep his hold upon him.
To Matthew Kendrick's grandson Henderson put a number of pertinent
inquiries concerning the store in question which Richard found he could
not intelligently answer. He flushed a little under the fire.
"I suppose you think I might have investigated a bit for myself," said
he. "But that's just what I don't want to do. I want to send a man up
there whom the owner doesn't know; then we can get at things without
giving ourselves away."
The general manager inferred from this that philanthropy, not business
interest, was at the bottom of young Kendrick's quest and his surprise
vanished. The young man was known as kind-hearted and generous; he was
undoubtedly merely carrying out a careless impulse, though he certainly
seemed much in earnest in the doing of it.
"You might take Carson, assistant buyer for the dress-goods department,
with you," suggested Henderson after a little consideration. "He could
probably give you a day just now. Alger, his head, is back from London
this week. Carson's a bright man--in line for promotion. He'll put his
finger on the trouble without hesitation--if it lies in the lack of
business experience, buying and selling, as you say. I'll send for him."
In two minutes Richard Kendrick and Alfred Carson were face to face,
and an appointment had been made for the following day. Richard took
a liking to the assistant buyer on the spot. He felt as if he were
selecting a competent physician for his friend, and was glad to send
him a man whose personality was both prepossessing and inspiring of
confidence.
As for Carson, it was an interesting experience for him, too. He
thoroughly enjoyed the seventy-mile drive at the side of the young
millionaire, who sent his powerful car flying over the frozen roads at a
pace which made his passenger's face sting. Carson was more accustomed
to travel in subways and sleeping-cars than by long motor drives, and by
the time Eastman was reached he was glad that the return drive would be
preceded by a hot luncheon.
"We won't go past the store," Richard explained, making a détour from
the main street of the town, regardless of the fact that he forsook a
good road for a poor one. "I don't want him to see me to-day."
He pressed upon his guest the best that the hotel afforded, then sent
him to the corner store with instructions to let nothing escape his
attention. "Though I don't need to tell you that," he added with a
laugh. "You'll see more in a minute than I should in a month."
Then he lighted a cigar--from his own case this time, though he strolled
in to see his friend the druggist when he had finished it, and bought of
him various other sundries. He did not venture to mention Benson to-day,
but the druggist did. Evidently Benson's imminent failure was the talk
of the town, and the regret, as well, of those who were not his rivals.
"Man can't succeed at a thing he picks up so late, and when he'd rather
do something else," volunteered the druggist. "Now I began in this shop
by sweeping out, mornings, and running errands, delivering goods. Got
interested--came to be a clerk after a while. Always saw myself making
up dope, compounding prescriptions. Went off to a school of
pharmacy--came back--showed the old man I could look after the
prescription business. Finally bought him out. Trained for the trade
from the cradle as you might say."
"I wonder if I'm going to be useless," thought Richard, "because I'm
not trained from the cradle. Carson says he began as a wrapper at
fifteen. At my age--he looks my age--he's assistant buyer for one of
Kendrick & Company's biggest departments, and 'in line for promotion,'
as Henderson says. Rich Kendrick, do you think you're in line for
promotion--anywhere? I wonder!"
He had gone back to the hotel and was impatiently awaiting Carson for
some time before the buyer appeared. Carson came in with a look of great
interest and eagerness on his face. The assistant buyer had, Richard
thought, one of the brightest faces he had ever seen. He was sure he had
asked the right man to diagnose the case of the invalid business, even
before Carson began to talk. As the talk progressed he was convinced of
it.
Yet Carson began at the human, not the business, end of the matter.
Richard Kendrick, himself full of concern for his friend Hugh Benson,
liked that, too.
"I never felt sorrier for a man in my life," said Carson. "He shows a
lot of pluck; he never once owned that the thing was too much for him.
But I got him to talking--a little. Didn't need to talk much; the whole
place was shouting at me--every counter, every showcase. Thunder!"
"How did you get him to talking?" Richard asked eagerly.
"Represented myself as an ex-travelling man--the dry-goods line. It's
true enough, if not just the way he took it. Of course he didn't give me
any facts about his business, but we discussed present conditions of the
trade pretty well, and he owned that a good many things puzzled him just
as much as when he was a little chap and used to listen to his father
giving orders. What's going to be wanted and how much? When to load up
and when to unload? How to catch the public fancy and not get caught
yourself? In short, how to turn over the stock in season and out of
season--turn it over and get out from under! He knows no more than a man
who can't swim how to keep his head above water. Nice fellow, too; I
could see it in every word he said. He'd be a success in, say, a
professorship in a college--and not a business college, either."
"If the place were yours," Richard, alive with interest, put it to him,
"now, this minute, what would be the first thing you would do?"
Carson laughed--not derisively, but like a boy who sees a chance at a
game he likes to play. "Have a bonfire, I'd like to say," he vowed. "But
that wouldn't be good business, and I wouldn't do it if I had the
chance--unless there was insurance to cover! And there's money in the
stock. Part of it could be got out. But it ought to be got out before
the moon is old. Then I'd like the fun of stocking up with new lines,
new departments, things the town never heard of. I'd make that blanket
window you told me about look sick. That is," he added modestly, "I
think I could. Any good general buyer could. I'm a dress-goods man
myself, only I've grown up under Kendrick & Company's roof and I've been
watching other lines than my own. It interests me--the possibilities of
that store. Why, the man ought not to fail! He has the best location in
town, the biggest windows, the best fixtures, judging by the outside of
the places I saw as I came along. I looked at the blanket-window place.
That's a dark store when you get back a dozen feet. Benson's, being on
the corner, is fairly light to the back door. That counts more than any
other thing about the building itself. And the fellow has his underwear
in the brightest spot in the shop and the dress goods in the darkest!
His heavy lines by the door and his notions and fancy stuff way back
where you've got to hunt for them! And his windows--oh, blazes! I wanted
to climb up and jump on the mess and then throw it out!"
Richard drove Carson back to town, his heart afire with longing to do
something, he did not yet know what. He could not consult Carson about
the matter further than to find out from him what was wrong with the
business from the standpoint of the customer; why the place did not
attract the customer. Details of this phase of the question Carson had
given him in plenty, all leading back to the one trouble--Benson had not
understood how to appeal to the class of custom at his doors. He had not
the right goods, nor the right means of display; he had not the right
salespeople; in brief, he had nothing, according to Carson, that he
ought to have, and everything, poor fellow, that he ought not! It was a
hard case.
As to actual business foundations and resources, neither of the young
men could judge. They had no means of knowing how deeply Benson was in
debt, nor what were his assets beyond the visible stock. Yet his fellow
shopkeepers considered him on the verge of bankruptcy; they must know.
"I've enjoyed this trip, Mr. Kendrick," Carson said at parting, "in more
ways than I can tell you. If I can be of use to you in any way, call on
me, please. I'm honestly interested in your friend Mr. Benson. I'd like
to see him win out."
"So should I." Richard shook hands heartily. "I've enjoyed the trip,
too, Mr. Carson. I never had better company. Thank you for going--and
for teaching me a lot of things I wanted to know."
As he drove away he was thinking, "Carson's a success; I'm not. Odd
thing, that I should find myself envying a chap whose place I couldn't
be hired to take. I envy him--not exactly his knowledge and skill, but
his being a definite factor, his being a man who carries
responsibilities and makes good, so that--well, so that he's 'in line
for promotion.' That phrase takes hold of me somehow; I wonder why?
Well, the next thing is to see grandfather."
* * * * *
Old Matthew Kendrick was alone. His grandson had just left him. He was
marching up and down his private library. His hands were clasped tightly
behind his back; above his flushed brow his white hair stood erect from
frequent thrustings of his agitated fingers; even his cravat, slightly
awry, bore witness to his excitement.
"Gad!" he was saying to himself. "The boy's alive after all! The boy's
waked up! He's taking notice! And the thing that's waked him up is a
country store--by cricky! a country store! I believe I'm dreaming yet!"
If the citizens of the thriving town of Eastman, almost of a size to
call itself a young city and boast of a mayor, could have heard him they
might not have been flattered. Yet when they remembered that this was
the owner of a business so colossal that its immense buildings and
branches were to be found in three great cities, they might have
understood that to him the corner store of Hugh Benson looked like a toy
concern, indeed. But he liked the look of it, as it had been presented
to his mind's eye that night; no doubt but he liked the look of it!
"Give him Carson to go up there and manage the business for those two
infants-in-arms? Gad! yes, go myself and make change at the desk for the
new firm," he chuckled, "if that would keep Dick interested. But I guess
he's interested enough or he wouldn't have agreed to my ruling that he
must go into the thing himself, not stand off and throw out a rope to
his drowning friend Benson. If young Benson's the man Dick makes him
out, it's as I told Dick: he wouldn't grasp the rope. But if Dick goes
in after him, that's business. Bless the rascal! I wish his father could
see him now. Sitting on the edge of my table and talking window-dressing
to me as if he'd been born to it, which he was, only he wouldn't accept
his birthright, the proud beggar! Talking about moving one of our
show-windows up there bodily for a white-goods sale in February; date a
trifle late for Kendrick & Company, but advance trade for Eastman,
undoubtedly. Says he knows they can start every mother's daughter of 'em
sewing for dear life, if they can get their eye on that sewing-room
scene. Well"--he paused to chuckle again--"he says Carson says that
window cost us five hundred dollars; but if it did it's cheap at the
price, and I'll make the new firm a present of it. Benson & Company--and
a grandson of Matthew Kendrick the Company!"
He laughed heartily, then paused to stand staring down into the jewelled
shade of his electric drop-light as if in its softly blending colourings
he saw the outlines of a new future for "the boy."
"I wonder what Cal will say to losing his literary assistant," he mused,
smiling to himself. "I doubt if Dick's proved himself invaluable, and I
presume the man he speaks of will give Cal much better service; but I
shall be sorry not to have him going to the Grays' every day; it seemed
like a safe harbour. Well, well, I never thought to find myself
interested again in the fortunes of a country store. Gad! I can't get
over that. The fellow's been too proud to walk down the aisles of
Kendrick & Company to buy his silk socks at cost--preferred to pay two
prices at an exclusive haberdasher's instead! And now--he's going to
have a share in the sale of socks that retail for a quarter, five pairs
for a dollar! O Dick, Dick, you rascal, your old grandfather hasn't been
so happy since you were left to him to bring up. If only you'll stick!
But you're your father's son, after all--and my grandson; I can't help
believing you'll stick!"