Ralph Barbour - Right End Emerson

The direct result of those three lines and pot-hooks was the appearance the next forenoon of Russell Emerson in the school office and his prompt passage to the Principal’s private sanctum beyond. This room, which Russell had never before entered – and had never pined to! – was a large, high-ceilinged chamber with cream-white walls and woodwork and three massive windows toward the Green. It was saved from coldness and austerity by the huge mahogany bookcase along the farther wall, by a soft-piled green rug occupying most of the floor space, by a big mahogany desk in the center of the rug and by the presence along two walls of some half-dozen armchairs of the same warm-toned wood. Nevertheless, the first effect of that chamber on Russell was awesome, if not alarming. Although conscious of no lapse from the straight and narrow path, he nevertheless felt most uneasy as he closed the heavy door behind him, responded to the Principal’s smiling “Good morning, Emerson” and seated himself in the chair that stood beside the nearer end of the desk. Secretly curious, he sent a hurried look along the top of the shining mahogany, thinking that perhaps there would be somewhere in sight a clew to this unexpected summons. But the desk, save for some half-dozen books between handsome bronze book-ends in a distant corner, a large leather-bound writing pad under the Doctor’s elbow and a combined ink-well and pen-tray beyond it, was absolutely empty. Nor did the Doctor’s brown and rather sinewy hand hold anything that appeared like incriminating evidence. It held, in fact – I am referring to the hand that held anything – only a sharply-pointed yellow pencil which the Doctor, as he inquired politely as to Russell’s health and, subsequently, the health of Russell’s parents, slipped slowly back and forth between his fingers, alternating sharpened lead and rubber tip against one gray-trousered knee. Then he laid the pencil down on the blotting-pad, very exactly, so that it lay absolutely parallel to the rim of the pad, and came to the subject.

“I read in The Doubleay , Emerson, that you have opened a shop in the town – in West street, I believe – for the sale of athletic supplies.”

He paused, and Russell said, “Yes, sir.”

“Rather an unusual proceeding, Emerson,” pursued the Doctor. “Unusual, that is to say, at this school. It may have been done elsewhere. Would you mind telling me why you have embarked in this – ah – enterprise?”

“Why,” replied Russell a trifle blankly, “to make money.”

“I see. But do you really need money? That is, more money than, I presume, your parents allow you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy emphatically. “My tuition is paid until the end of this term, sir, but if I’m to remain here for the rest of the year I’ll have to pony up – I mean I’ll have to pay for it myself.” Russell paused, frowned a little and looked speculatively at the Principal. The latter smiled faintly and nodded.

“Yes, I would,” he said.

Russell looked a bit startled and a bit questioning.

“Tell me all about it,” explained the Doctor. “You were wondering whether you should, weren’t you?”

“Well, I – ” Russell began apologetically. Then he smiled and began anew. “You see, sir, my father isn’t very well off. I guess I oughtn’t to have come here in the first place, but I wanted to pretty badly, and father said I might as well have the best as any, and so I came. It went all right the first two years, but last spring things got sort of bad in our town. Folks got out of work and went away, and those that stayed didn’t have much money and didn’t spend much of what they had. And a good many didn’t pay their bills. So father’s business sort of ran down and we didn’t have much money.”

“What is your father’s business, Emerson?”

“He keeps a store, sir, a sort of general store. He told me away back last March that if things didn’t pick up soon there wouldn’t be much chance of my getting back here, and I tried to think of some way of making money so I could come back. I’d helped in the store a good deal and so, naturally, I thought of selling something, and I was pretty sure that athletic goods would go pretty well here, because there isn’t any one in town that makes a specialty of them, you see. Crocker, the hardware man, carries some, but he tries to shove off second-rate stuff at first-class prices, and the fellows have been stung a good deal. Then there’s another man away down town, Loring, who carries a few things, but he’s a good distance off, and his stuff is kind of second-rate, too. When the football team or the baseball team or the hockey team want supplies they send to New York for them, and that takes time and they don’t get any different goods than what we carry.”

“I see,” commented the Doctor interestedly. “And so you and Patterson, your room-mate, decided to start this shop. That was last spring, you say?”

“We didn’t exactly decide then, sir. That is, I decided to do it if I could, but I couldn’t get Stick – that’s Patterson, sir: his name’s George, but every one calls him Stick – I couldn’t get him to promise until about the middle of the summer. I’d have gone into it alone, only I didn’t have enough money, and Stick had some he’d saved and I wanted it. You see, it takes quite a lot to get a thing like this started, sir.”

The Doctor nodded gravely. “Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “And between you, you managed to get enough together to put it through, Emerson?”

Russell shook his head ruefully. “No, sir, not enough, but – well, it has to do,” he answered a bit defiantly. “Stick didn’t want to – I mean he found he couldn’t put in quite as much as he thought he could, sir, and I didn’t make quite as much during the summer as I’d expected to, and so it left us sort of short when the time came.”

“You worked during the summer, then?”

“Yes, sir, I waited on table at the Pine Harbor House. They didn’t have a very good season. Too much rain and cold weather. A lot of the fellows made less than I did, though, so I guess I oughtn’t to kick,” added Russell thoughtfully.

There was silence for a moment, and then the Doctor, having taken up his pencil again, said: “I don’t want to pry into matters that don’t concern me, Emerson, but it must have taken at least several hundred dollars to start this shop of yours. Now, just suppose that there isn’t the demand for your wares that you anticipate. What then? It’s going to whisk that money away, isn’t it? You’ve laid out most of it, I presume, on goods, you’ve had to sign a lease of the premises you occupy and you’ve paid some rent already. Have you thought what may happen? What happens every day in retail business?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Russell. “It’s a risk, I know, but it isn’t as big as you think, I guess. We didn’t have much money to start on and so we don’t stand to lose very much, even if all went, which it can’t. We’ve taken only half a store and we’ve leased it by the month. A florist has the rest of it, a man named Pulsifer. You see, we couldn’t afford to take a whole store, not where we wanted it, and so we made an offer to this florist fellow and he fell for it right away. He had more space than he needed, except around Christmas and Easter time, and he was quite keen about renting it. Then we haven’t put in a very big stock, sir. You see, there are so many things that we have to handle that we just couldn’t begin to keep them all. So we have samples of most everything and a fair line of the fall things. If we don’t happen to have what’s wanted to-day we telephone to New York for it and we get it to-morrow.”

“I see,” said the Doctor. “And of course you aren’t depending solely on the Academy trade?”