The Project Gutenberg EBook of Broken to the 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

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BROKEN 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 PLOW

CHAPTER 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 a break 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 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 the situation 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 to the 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