Broken to the Plow

Charles Caldwell Dobie

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• Publié par: seyh
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 61
• Langue: English

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Plow, by Charles Caldwell Dobie
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Title: Broken to the Plow
Author: Charles Caldwell Dobie
Release Date: August 14, 2004 [EBook #13178]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK BROKEN TO THE PLOW ***
Produced by Keith M. Eckrich and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreaders TeamBROKEN TO THE
PLOW
A Novel by
CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE
Author of "THE BLOOD RED DAWN"
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
* * * * *
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY BROTHER
Who Helped Make My Literary Career Possible.BROKEN TO THE PLOWCHAPTER I
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Fred Starratt
remembered that he had been commissioned by
his wife to bring home oyster cocktails for dinner.
Of course, it went without saying that he was
expected to attend to the cigars. That meant he
must touch old Wetherbee for money. Five dollars
would do the trick, but, while he was about it, he
decided that he might as well ask for twenty-five.
There were bound to be other demands before the
first of the month, and the hard-fisted cashier of
Ford, Wetherbee & Co. seemed to grow more and
more crusty over drafts against the salary account.
If one caught him in a good humor it was all right.
Usually a risqué story was the safest road to
geniality. Starratt raked his brains for a new one, to
no purpose. Every moment of delay added greater
certainty to the conviction that he was in for a
disagreeable encounter. At four o'clock Wetherbee
always began to balance his cash for the day and
he was particularly vicious at any interruptions
during this precise performance. What in the world
had possessed Helen to give this absurd dinner
party to two people Starratt had never met? At
least she might have put the thing off until pay day,
when money was more plentiful.
How did others manage? Starratt asked himself.
Because there was a small minority in the office
who received their full month's salary without abreak during the entire year. Take young Brauer,
for instance. He got a little over a hundred a month
and yet he never seemed short. He dressed well,
too—or neatly, to be nearer the truth; there was no
great style to his make-up. Of course, Brauer was
not married, but Starratt could never remember a
time, even before he took the plunge into
matrimony, when he was not going through the
motions of smoothing old Wetherbee into a good-
humored acceptance of an IOU tag. Starratt did
not think himself extravagant, and it always had
puzzled him to observe how free some of his
salaried friends were with their coin. Only that
morning his wife had reflected his own mood with
exaggerated petulancy when she had said:
"I'm sure I don't know where all the money goes!
We don't spend it on cafés, and we haven't a car,
and goodness knows I only buy what I have to
when it comes down to clothes."
What she had to! He thought over the phrase not
with any desire to put Helen in the pillory, but
merely to uncover, if possible, the source of their
economic ills.
In days gone by, when his mother was alive, he
had heard almost the same remark leveled at his
father:
"Well, I suppose some people could save on our
income. But we've got to be decent—we can't go
about in rags!"
He knew from long experience just the sort hisHe knew from long experience just the sort his
mother had meant by the term "some people."
Brauer was a case in point. Mrs. Starratt always
spoke of such as he with lofty tolerance.
"Oh, of course, foreigners always get on! They're
accustomed to live that way!"
Fred Starratt had not altogether accepted his
mother's philosophy that everybody lacking the
grace of an Anglo-Saxon or Scotch name was a
foreigner. There were times when he was given to
wonder vaguely why the gift of "getting on" had
been given to "foreigners" and denied him. Once in
a while he rebelled against the implied gentility
which had been wished on him. Were rags
necessary to achieve economy? Granting the
premises, in moments of rare revolt he became
hospitable to any contingency that would free him
from the ever-present humiliation of an empty
purse.
He soon had learned that the term "rags" was a
mere figure of speech, which stood for every
pretense offered up as a sacrifice upon the altar of
appearances. His mother had never been a
spendthrift and certainly one could not convict
Helen on such a charge. But they both had one
thing in common—they "had to have things" for
almost any and every occasion. If a trip were
planned or a dancing party arranged or a tea
projected—well, one simply couldn't go looking like
a fright, and that was all there was to it. His father
never thought to argue such a question. Women
folks had to have clothes, and so he accepted thesituation with the philosophy born of bowing
gracefully to the inevitable. But Starratt himself
occasionally voiced a protest.
"Nothing to wear?" he would echo, incredulously.
"Why, how about that pink dress? That hasn't worn
out yet."
"No, that's just it! It simply won't! I'm sick and tired
of putting it on. Everybody knows it down to the
last hook and eye… Oh, well, I'll stay home. It isn't
a matter of life and death. I've given things up
before."
When a woman took that tone of martyrdom there
really was nothing to do but acknowledge defeat.
Other men were able to provide frocks for their
wives and he supposed he ought to be willing to do
the same thing. There was an element of stung
pride in his surrender. He had the ingrained
Californian's distaste for admitting, even to himself,
that there was anything he could not afford. And in
the end it was this feeling rising above the surface
of his irritation which made him a bit ashamed of
his attitude toward Helen's dinner party. After all, it
would be the same a thousand years from now. A
man couldn't have his cake and eat it, and a man
like Brauer must live a dull sort of life. What could
be the use of saving money if one forgot how to
spend it in the drab process? As a matter of fact,
old Wetherbee wouldn't gobble him. He'd grunt or
grumble or even rave a bit, but in the end he would
yield up the money. He always did. And suddenly,
while his courage had been so adroitly screwed tothe sticking point, he went over to old Wetherbee's
desk without further ado.
The cashier was absorbed in adding several
columns of figures and he let Starratt wait. This
was not a reassuring sign. Finally, when he
condescended to acknowledge the younger man's
presence he did it with the merest uplift of the
eyebrows. Starratt decided at once against
pleasantries. Instead, he matched Wetherbee's
quizzical pantomime by throwing the carefully
written IOU tag down on the desk.
Wetherbee tossed the tag aside. "You got twenty-
five dollars a couple of days ago!" he bawled out
suddenly.
Starratt was surprised into silence. Old Wetherbee
was sometimes given to half-audible and
impersonal grumblings, but this was the first time
he had ever gone so far as to voice a specific
objection to an appeal for funds.
"What do you think this is?" Wetherbee went on in
a tone loud enough to be heard by all the office
force. "The Bank of England?… I've got something
else to do besides advance money every other day
to a bunch of joy-riding spendthrifts. In my day a
young man ordered his expenditures to suit his
pocketbook. We got our salary once a month and
we saw to it that it lasted… What's the matter—
somebody sick at home?"
Starratt could easily have lied and closed the
incident quickly, but an illogical pride stirred him toincident quickly, but an illogical pride stirred him to
the truth.
"No," he returned, quietly, "I'm simply short. We're
having some company in for dinner and there are a
few things to get—cigars and—well, you know
what."
Wetherbee threw him a lip-curling glance. "Cigars?
Well, twopenny clerks do keep up a pretty scratch
and no mistake. In my day—"
Starratt cut him short with an impatient gesture.
"Times have changed, Mr. Wetherbee."
"Yes, I should say they have," the elder man
sneered, as he reached for the key to the cash
drawer.
For a moment Starratt felt an enormous relief at
the old man's significant movement. He was to get
the money, after all! But almost at once he was
moved to sudden resentment. What right had
Wetherbee to humiliate him before everybody
within earshot? He knew that the eyes of the entire
force were being leveled at him, and he felt a surge
of satisfaction as he said, very distinctly:
"Don't bother, Mr. Wetherbee… It really doesn't
mak