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.