Could it be the desire for the watch which had doomed him?
As he walked down Hazel Street he wanted to turn down Rutherford.
“No,” he said. “I can choose or avoid any route that I wish; and my detour, if one can call it that, is nothing more than an alternative. An alternative of no greater length than the original or—‘More direct,’” his mind supplied. “Not more direct,” he responded. “Yes. Perhaps more direct. Perhaps. Though I do not stipulate it, but add that the desirability of a route, in this case, can be judged according to differing criteria: the length of a route; its … its …
“Well, yes,” another portion of his mind said. “Yes, We can allow it.”
“Its …” he thought, and bowed slightly, as in thanks for the concession, “its beauty …” That was the word allowed him. He nodded.
A cardinal fluttered in the corner of his eye. He turned to see it, expecting to find it gone. But, no, there it was, in the tree on Walnut Street. And he walked and found he was on Main Street and had not, after all, turned down Rutherford, and he was on Main Street, walking as he had vowed not to do, and there he was in front of Winford’s, and there was the watch.
“What garbage is man,” he thought.
“What a swine I am—although mischance and not wilfulness took me here. Forgetfulness,” he thought, “or a preoccupation took me here. Although their existence could be accounted as weakness.”
But there was the watch. It sat in its purple-blue velvet box in the window. The inside lid was lined in silk, imprinted in gold with the letters “Breguet, Paris,” and, beneath that, in small block letters, “For Winford’s, Atlanta.”
It was a full hunter. A slim pocket watch in rose gold. The case was covered front and back with small diamond cross-hatchings, which, Mr. Winford had told him, were known as “diapering.”
“Breguet,” Winford had said. “Napoleon carried a Breguet watch at Waterloo.” He paused. “And so did Wellington.”
“That a fact?” Frank had said.
On two days he had gone in, and Winford had displayed the watch: the elegance of the lines, the precision of the movement, the repeater function, which chimed the hour, the quarter, and the odd minute when one pressed the small gold stud.
Frank had never seen a repeater watch up close before; and when Winford caused it to work, Frank’s reaction, as he phrased it to himself, was “like a savage on seeing an airplane.”
The jeweler pressed the stud, and the watch, in a musical, but by no means effete, tone chimed ten, and then, in a higher tone, one-two-three; and after a pause, on the same note, in quicker rhythm, one-two-three-four-five.
“Ten-fifty,” Winford said. And Frank felt he had to check to see if his mouth hung open.
“Full hunter. Gold repeater,” Winford said. “Breguet, Paris. Lucky to get it. Doubt if ten come into the country this year.”
Frank, looking at the watch, felt that his whole character was revealed. “I stand before that man,” he thought, “unmasked as a grasping, an idolatrous swine.”
For, when the watch chimed ten-fifty, and Winford interpreted the notes, did not Frank extract his perfectly good, his in fact superb, Illinois from his vest pocket? Did it not read ten-fifty, and was it not likely and was he not old enough to know it likely that, had he purchased the new watch, he would find it inferior to the one he carried?
“A man with one watch knows the time,” he’d quoted to Winford. “A man with two watches is never sure.”
“No, I’d not heard that one before,” Winford said. He waited an amount of time to show respect for Frank’s right of refusal, but not so long as to indicate he thought the customer less than decisive. He took the watch and returned it to the box, and the box to the window, and Frank left the store.
The second time he came, he felt fully within his rights.
It was not excessive to examine at length and on more than one occasion such an important—not to say costly—object.
For was that not the point? How could one consider spending three hundred dollars on a watch?
Although it was a rarity. Although, as Winford delicately observed, it would bid fair to increase in value, although it was a gift or recompense other successful men awarded themselves in the form of the automobile, the boat, the second home, the Sporting expedition.
Finally, “Finally,” he said to himself, “finally, it was wrong.”
It was wrong for him to own more than one watch. For him to spend that money on that watch. It was wrong. How did he know?
He did not know how he knew. But it was wrong.
Could one construct and defend the opposing argument?
Yes. And have it prevail—with any adversary but oneself. For the unconquerable fact—and he knew it to be a fact—was it was wrong: he knew it to be wrong. And he shrugged—less against this self-denial of the watch than at this new self-knowledge: that there was a force in the world superior to the individual, and that that force regulated action in those to whom it appealed.
He could not wish it away.
And here he was, swine that he was, once again on the sidewalk outside Winford’s. He saw the jeweler in the store, talking to a salesgirl. And the man looked up and nodded at him.
“Son of a bitch,” Frank thought. “Does he mean to assert he does not care if I buy the watch? Does he think I do not know his courtesy point by point is nothing other than the attempt to induce me to purchase it?”
Winford came out of the store, shielding his eyes against the morning glare.
“Can he mean to accost me,” Frank thought, “with some comment either about or—the more effective (so he might think)—not about the watch? What other reason or what pretext might he have to come out here?”
Winford was turning the placard in the door from “Open” to “Closed.”
“Going downtown, Mr. Frank?” he said.
“Yes. Down to work. Nice morning.”
“… Working today?”
“Yes. Odds and ends. You’re closing?”
“Half-day. M’morial day. Half-day. Might as well.”
“… Mm?”
“… No business. Not to speak of.”
“Everyone downtown, eh?”
“I would think so.” He paused. “Down the parade.”
As they stood nodding for a moment, they heard the faint sounds of a band, far away, and particularly of several horns warming up.
“… Yeessssss …,” Winford said.
“Wealllup,” Frank said. He caught himself as he started to reach for the watch in his vest. “No,” he thought. He hoped that Winford had not seen what could be interpreted as a gesture on his part to open dialogue about a watch. But Winford was already turned away, and speaking to the shopgirl, who passed between him and the half-closed door.
“’Bye, Mr. Winford.”
“Good day, Sal,” he said.
“Yes,” Winford said. “You have a good day, Mr. Frank.”
Frank nodded and walked on. He heard the sound of the man stepping back into his shop, and the sound of the heavy shade being drawn down.
“That’s good,” Frank thought. “That’s needful to keep the sun off the carpet. Bleach it out quick as you please.” He walked on.
“What a fool I am,” he thought.