The Wall Street Girl

CHAPTER XIV

IN REPLY

Don did not receive Miss Winthrop’s letter until the following evening. He had dropped into the club to join Wadsworth in a bracer,–a habit he had drifted into this last month,–and opened the envelope with indifferent interest, expecting a tailor’s announcement. He caught his breath at the first line, and then read the letter through some five times. Wadsworth, who was waiting politely, grew impatient.

“If you’re trying to learn that by heart–” he began.

Don thrust the letter into his pocket.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “It–it was rather important.”

They sat down in the lounge.

“What’s yours?” inquired Wadsworth, as in response to a bell a page came up.

“A little French vichy,” answered Don.

“Oh, have a real drink,” Wadsworth urged.

“I think I’d better not to-night,” answered Don.

Wadsworth ordered a cock-tail for himself.

“How’s the market to-day?” he inquired. He always inquired how the market was of his business friends–as one inquires as to the health of an elderly person.

“I don’t know,” answered Don.

“You don’t mean to say you’ve cut out business?” exclaimed Wadsworth.

“I guess I have,” Don answered vaguely.

“Think of retiring?”

“To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought of it until very lately; but now–”

Don restrained a desire to read his letter through once more.

“Take my advice and do it,” nodded Wadsworth. “Nothing in it but a beastly grind. It’s pulling on you.”

As a matter of fact, Don had lost some five pounds in the last month, and it showed in his face. But it was not business which had done that, and he knew it. Also Miss Winthrop knew it.

It was certainly white of her to take the trouble to write to him like this. He wondered why she did. She had not been very much in his thoughts of late, and he took it for granted that to the same degree he had been absent from hers. And here she had been keeping count of every time he came in late. Curious that she should have done that!

In the library, he took out the letter and read it through again. Heavens, he could not allow himself to be discharged like an unfaithful office-boy! His father would turn in his grave. It would be almost as bad as being discharged for dishonesty.

Don’s lips came together in thin lines. This would never do–never in the world. As Miss Winthrop suggested, he had much better resign. Perhaps he ought to resign, anyway. No matter what he might do in the future, he could not redeem the past; and if Farnsworth felt he had not been playing the game right, he ought to take the matter in his own hands and get off the team. But, in a way, that would be quitting–and the Pendletons had never been quitters. It would be quitting, both inside the office and out. He had to have that salary to live on. Without it, life would become a very serious matter. The more he thought of this, the more he realized that resigning was out of the question. He really had no alternative but to make good; so he would make good.

The resolution, in itself, was enough to brace him. The important thing now was, not to make Carter, Rand & Seagraves understand this, not to make Farnsworth understand this: it was to make Miss Winthrop understand it. He seized a pen and began to write.

MY DEAR SARAH K. WINTHROP [he began]:–

Farnsworth ought to be sitting at your desk plugging that machine, and you ought to be holding down his chair before the roll-top desk. You’d get more work out of every man in the office in a week than he does in a month. Maybe he knows more about bonds than you do, but he doesn’t know as much about men. If he did he’d have waded into me just the way you did.

I’m not saying Farnsworth hasn’t good cause to fire me. He has, and that’s just what you’ve made clear. But, honest and hope to die, I didn’t realize it until I read your letter. I knew I’d been getting in late and all that; but, as long as it didn’t seem to make any difference to any one, I couldn’t see the harm in it. I’d probably have kept on doing it if you hadn’t warned me. And I’d have been fired, and deserved it.

If that had happened I think my father would have risen from his grave long enough to come back and disown me. He was the sort of man I have a notion you’d have liked. He’d be down to the office before the doors were open, and he’d stay until some one put him out. I guess he was born that way. But I don’t believe he ever stayed up after ten o’clock at night in his life. Maybe there wasn’t as much doing in New York after ten in those days as there is now.

I don’t want to make any excuses, but, true as you’re living, if I turned in at ten I might just as well set up business in the Fiji Islands. It’s about that time the evening really begins. How do you work it yourself? I wish you’d tell me how you get in on time, looking fresh as a daisy. And what sort of an alarm-clock do you use? I bought one the other day as big as a snare-drum, and the thing never made a dent. Then I tried having Nora call me, but I only woke up long enough to tell her to get out and went to sleep again. If your system isn’t patented I wish you’d tell me what it is. In the mean while, I’m going to sit up all night if I can’t get up any other way.

Because I’m going to make the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves on time, beginning to-morrow morning. You watch me. And I’ll make up for the time I’ve overdrawn on lunches by getting back in twenty minutes after this. As for errands–you take the time when Farnsworth sends me out again.

You’re dead right in all you said, and if I can’t make good in the next few months I won’t wait for Farnsworth to fire me–I’ll fire myself. But that isn’t going to happen. The livest man in that office is going to be

Don addressed the letter to the office, mailed it, and went home to dress. But before going upstairs he called to Nora.

“Nora,” he said, “you know that I’m in business now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you wouldn’t like to see me fired, would you?”

“Oh, Lord, sir!” gasped Nora.

“Then you get me up to-morrow morning at seven o’clock, because if I’m late again that is just what is going to happen. And you know what Dad would say to that.”

The next morning Don stepped briskly into the office five minutes ahead of Miss Winthrop.

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.

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?”