The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

Frank had bargained with him to deliver the soap for sixty cents.

In still another half-hour he was before the door of the astonished Mr. Dalrymple whom he had come out and look at the boxes before attempting to remove them. His plan was to have them carried on to his own home if the operation for any reason failed to go through. Though it was his first great venture, he was cool as glass.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dalrymple, scratching his gray head reflectively.

“Yes, that’s the same soap. I’ll take it. I’ll be as good as my word. Where’d you get it, Frank?”

“At Bixom’s auction up here,” he replied, frankly and blandly.

Mr. Dalrymple had the drayman bring in the soap; and after some formality—because the agent in this case was a boy—made out his note at thirty days and gave it to him.

Frank thanked him and pocketed the note. He decided to go back to his father’s bank and discount it, as he had seen others doing, thereby paying his father back and getting his own profit in ready money. It couldn’t be done ordinarily on any day after business hours; but his father would make an exception in his case.

He hurried back, whistling; and his father glanced up smiling when he came in.

“Well, Frank, how’d you make out?” he asked.

“Here’s a note at thirty days,” he said, producing the paper Dalrymple had given him. “Do you want to discount that for me? You can take your thirty-two out of that.”

His father examined it closely. “Sixty-two dollars!” he observed.

“Mr. Dalrymple! That’s good paper! Yes, I can. It will cost you ten per cent.,” he added, jestingly. “Why don’t you just hold it, though? I’ll let you have the thirty-two dollars until the end of the month.”

“Oh, no,” said his son, “you discount it and take your money. I may want mine.”

His father smiled at his business-like air. “All right,” he said.

“I’ll fix it tomorrow. Tell me just how you did this.” And his son told him.

At seven o’clock that evening Frank’s mother heard about it, and in due time Uncle Seneca.

“What’d I tell you, Cowperwood?” he asked. “He has stuff in him, that youngster. Look out for him.”

Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the son she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was developing rapidly.

“Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often,” she said.

“I hope so, too, ma,” was his rather noncommittal reply.

Auction sales were not to be discovered every day, however, and his home grocer was only open to one such transaction in a reasonable period of time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to make money. He took subscriptions for a boys’ paper; handled the agency for the sale of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their summer straw hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that liberal spending was better, and that somehow he would get along.

It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an interest in girls. He had from the first a keen eye for the beautiful among them; and, being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow, who lived further up the street, was the first to attract his attention or be attracted by him. Black hair and snapping black eyes were her portion, with pretty pigtails down her back, and dainty feet and ankles to match a dainty figure.

She was a Quakeress, the daughter of Quaker parents, wearing a demure little bonnet. Her disposition, however, was vivacious, and she liked this self-reliant, self-sufficient, straight-spoken boy. One day, after an exchange of glances from time to time, he said, with a smile and the courage that was innate in him: “You live up my way, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she replied, a little flustered—this last manifested in a nervous swinging of her school-bag—“I live at number one-forty-one.”

“I know the house,” he said. “I’ve seen you go in there. You go to the same school my sister does, don’t you? Aren’t you Patience Barlow?” He had heard some of the boys speak her name. “Yes. How do you know?”

“Oh, I’ve heard,” he smiled. “I’ve seen you. Do you like licorice?”

He fished in his coat and pulled out some fresh sticks that were sold at the time.

“Thank you,” she said, sweetly, taking one.

“It isn’t very good. I’ve been carrying it a long time. I had some taffy the other day.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied, chewing the end of hers.

“Don’t you know my sister, Anna Cowperwood?” he recurred, by way of self-introduction. “She’s in a lower grade than you are, but I thought maybe you might have seen her.”

“I think I know who she is. I’ve seen her coming home from school.”

“I live right over there,” he confided, pointing to his own home as he drew near to it, as if she didn’t know. “I’ll see you around here now, I guess.”

“Do you know Ruth Merriam?” she asked, when he was about ready to turn off into the cobblestone road to reach his own door.

“No, why?”

“She’s giving a party next Tuesday,” she volunteered, seemingly pointlessly, but only seemingly.

“Where does she live?”

“There in twenty-eight.”

“I’d like to go,” he affirmed, warmly, as he swung away from her.

“Maybe she’ll ask you,” she called back, growing more courageous as the distance between them widened. “I’ll ask her.”

“Thanks,” he smiled.

And she began to run gayly onward.

He looked after her with a smiling face. She was very pretty.

He felt a keen desire to kiss her, and what might transpire at Ruth Merriam’s party rose vividly before his eyes.

This was just one of the early love affairs, or puppy loves, that held his mind from time to time in the mixture of after events.

Patience Barlow was kissed by him in secret ways many times before he found another girl. She and others of the street ran out to play in the snow of a winter’s night, or lingered after dusk before her own door when the days grew dark early. It was so easy to catch and kiss her then, and to talk to her foolishly at parties. Then came Dora Fitler, when he was sixteen years old and she was fourteen; and Marjorie Stafford, when he was seventeen and she was fifteen.

Dora Fitter was a brunette, and Marjorie Stafford was as fair as the morning, with bright-red cheeks, bluish-gray eyes, and flaxen hair, and as plump as a partridge.

It was at seventeen that he decided to leave school. He had not graduated. He had only finished the third year in high school; but he had had enough. Ever since his thirteenth year his mind had been on finance; that is, in the form in which he saw it manifested in Third Street. There had been odd things which he had been able to do to earn a little money now and then. His Uncle Seneca had allowed him to act as assistant weigher at the sugar-docks in Southwark, where three-hundred-pound bags were weighed into the government bonded warehouses under the eyes of United States inspectors. In certain emergencies he was called to assist his father, and was paid for it. He even made an arrangement with Mr. Dalrymple to assist him on Saturdays; but when his father became cashier of his bank, receiving an income of four thousand dollars a year, shortly after Frank had reached his fifteenth year, it was self-evident that Frank could no longer continue in such lowly employment.

Just at this time his Uncle Seneca, again back in Philadelphia and stouter and more domineering than ever, said to him one day: “Now, Frank, if you’re ready for it, I think I know where there’s a good opening for you. There won’t be any salary in it for the first year, but if you mind your p’s and q’s, they’ll probably give you something as a gift at the end of that time. Do you know of Henry Waterman & Company down in Second Street?”

“I’ve seen their place.”

“Well, they tell me they might make a place for you as a bookkeeper.

They’re brokers in a way—grain and commission men. You say you want to get in that line. When school’s out, you go down and see Mr. Waterman—tell him I sent you, and he’ll make a place for you, I think. Let me know how you come out.”

Uncle Seneca was married now, having, because of his wealth, attracted the attention of a poor but ambitious Philadelphia society matron; and because of this the general connections of the Cowperwoods were considered vastly improved. Henry Cowperwood was planning to move with his family rather far out on North Front Street, which commanded at that time a beautiful view of the river and was witnessing the construction of some charming dwellings.