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ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM
THE BUSINESS ADVENTURES OF EMMA McCHESNEY
By Edna Ferber
Author of “Dawn O'Hara,” “Buttered Side Down,” Etc.
With twenty-seven illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg
[Illustration: “'And they call that thing a petticoat!'”]
FOREWORD
Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy.
Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the Menu of Morals before you, your
eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things
_a la_, though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and
sure. It agrees with you. As you hesitate there sounds in your ear a
soft and insinuating Voice.
“You'll find the tongue in aspic very nice today,” purrs the Voice.
“May I recommend the chicken pie, country style? Perhaps you'd relish
something light and tempting. Eggs Benedictine. Very fine. Or some
flaked crab meat, perhaps. With a special Russian sauce.”
Roast Beef, Medium! How unimaginative it sounds. How prosaic, and dry!
You cast the thought of it aside with the contempt that it deserves, and
you assume a fine air of the epicure as you order. There are set before
you things encased in pastry; things in frilly paper trousers; things
that prick the tongue; sauces that pique the palate. There are strange
vegetable garnishings, cunningly cut. This is not only Food. These are
Viands.
“Everything satisfactory?” inquires the insinuating Voice.
“Yes,” you say, and take a hasty sip of water. That paprika has burned
your tongue. “Yes. Check, please.”
You eye the score, appalled. “Look here! Aren't you over-charging!”
“Our regular price,” and you catch a sneer beneath the smugness of the
Voice. “It is what every one pays, sir.”
You reach deep, deep into your pocket, and you pay. And you rise and go,
full but not fed. And later as you take your fifth Moral Pepsin Tablet
you say Fool! and Fool! and Fool!
When next we dine we are not tempted by the Voice. We are wary of weird
sauces. We shun the cunning aspics. We look about at our neighbor's
table. He is eating of things French, and Russian and Hungarian. Of food
garnished, and garish and greasy. And with a little sigh of Content and
resignation we settle down to our Roast Beef, Medium.
E. F.
CONTENTS
I. ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM
II. REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK
III. CHICKENS
IV. HIS MOTHER'S SON
V. PINK TIGHTS AND GINGHAMS
VI. SIMPLY SKIRTS
VII. UNDERNEATH THE HIGH-CUT VEST
VIII. CATCHING UP WITH CHRISTMAS
IX. KNEE-DEEP IN KNICKERS
X. IN THE ABSENCE OF THE AGENT
ILLUSTRATIONS
“'And they call that thing a petticoat!'”
“'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,' he announced, glibly”
“'That was a married kiss--a two-year-old married kiss at least'”
“'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'”
“'You'll never grow up, Emma McChesney'”
“'Well, s'long then, Shrimp. See you at eight'”
“'I'm still in a position to enforce that ordinance against pouting'”
“'Son!' echoed the clerk, staring”
“'Well!' gulped Jock, 'those two double-bedded, bloomin', blasted
Bisons--'”
“'Come on out of here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you
blue-eyed babe, you!'”
“'You can't treat me with your life's history. I'm going in'”
“'Now, Lillian Russell and cold cream is one; and new potatoes and brown
crocks is another.'”
“'Why, girls, I couldn't hold down a job in a candy factory'”
“'Honestly, I'd wear it myself!'”
“'I've lived petticoats, I've talked petticoats, I've dreamed
petticoats--why, I've even worn the darn things!'”
“And found himself addressing the backs of the letters on the door
marked 'Private'.”
“'Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't you see the lady's sick?'”
“At his gaze that lady fled, sample-case banging at her knees”
“In the exuberance of his young strength, he picked her up”
“She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word had not already
stamped itself on her brain and heart.”
“'Not that you look your age--not by ten years!”'
“'Christmas isn't a season ... it's a feeling; and, thank God, I've got
it!'”
“No man will ever appreciate the fine points of this little garment, but
the women--”
“Emma McChesney ... I believe in you now! Dad and I both believe in
you.”
“It had been a whirlwind day.”
“'Emma,' he said, 'will you marry me?'”
“'Welcome home!' she cried. 'Sketch in the furniture to suit yourself.'”
I
ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM
There is a journey compared to which the travels of Bunyan's hero were a
summer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march is
taken belong to a maligned fraternity, and are known as traveling men.
Sample-case in hand, trunk key in pocket, cigar in mouth, brown derby
atilt at an angle of ninety, each young and untried traveler starts on
his journey down that road which leads through morasses of chicken _a
la_ Creole, over greasy mountains of queen fritters made doubly perilous
by slippery glaciers of rum sauce, into formidable jungles of breaded
veal chops threaded by sanguine and deadly streams of tomato gravy,
past sluggish mires of dreadful things _en casserole_, over hills of
corned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging into
sloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexion
gone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there,
he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren
sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with apple
sauce.
Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at
Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many
years before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hotel
dining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows each
treacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her to
recognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom of
minced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable mysteries
of a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but terrible,
from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her complexion and
figure saved.
No more metaphor. On with the story, which left Emma at her safe and
solitary supper.
She had the last number of the _Dry Goods Review_ propped up against
the vinegar cruet and the Worcestershire, and the salt shaker. Between
conscientious, but disinterested mouthfuls of medium roast beef, she was
reading the snappy ad set forth by her firm's bitterest competitors,
the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company. It was a good reading ad. Emma
McChesney, who had forgotten more about petticoats than the average
skirt salesman ever knew, presently allowed her luke-warm beef to grow
cold and flabby as she read. Somewhere in her subconscious mind she
realized that the lanky head waitress had placed some one opposite her
at the table. Also, subconsciously, she heard him order liver and bacon,
with onions. She told herself that as soon as she reached the bottom of
the column she'd look up to see who the fool was. She never arrived at
the column's end.
“I just hate to tear you away from that love lyric; but if I might
trouble you for the vinegar--”
Emma groped for it back of her paper and shoved it across the table
without looking up, “--and the Worcester--”
One eye on the absorbing column, she passed the tall bottle. But at its
removal her prop was gone. The _Dry Goods Review_ was too weighty for
the salt shaker alone.
“--and the salt. Thanks. Warm, isn't it?”
There was a double vertical frown between Emma McChesney's eyes as she
glanced up over the top of her _Dry Goods Review_. The frown gave way to
a half smile. The glance settled into a stare.
“But then, anybody would have stared. He expected it,” she said,
afterwards, in telling about it. “I've seen matinee idols, and tailors'
supplies salesmen, and Julian Eltinge, but this boy had any male
professional beauty I ever saw, looking as handsome and dashing as a
bowl of cold oatmeal. And he knew it.”
Now, in the ten years that she had been out representing T. A. Buck's
Featherloom Petticoats Emma McChesney had found it necessary to make a
rule or two for herself. In the strict observance of one of these she
had become past mistress in the fine art of congealing the warm advances
of fresh and friendly salesmen of the opposite sex. But this case was
different, she told herself. The man across the table was little more
than a boy--an amazingly handsome, astonishingly impudent, cockily
confident boy, who was staring with insolent approval at Emma
McChesney's trim, shirt-waisted figure, and her fresh, attractive
coloring, and her well-cared-for hair beneath the smart summer hat.
[Illustration: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he
announced, glibly.]
“It isn't in human nature to be as good-looking as you are,” spake Emma
McChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-way
measures. “I'll bet you have bad teeth, or an impediment in your
speech.”
The gorgeous young man smiled. His teeth were perfect. “Peter Piper
picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he announced, glibly. “Nothing
missing there, is there?”
“Must be your morals then,” retorted Emma McChesney. “My! My! And on the
road! Why, the trail of bleeding hearts that you must leave all the way
from Maine to California would probably make the Red Sea turn white with
envy.”
The Fresh Young Kid speared a piece of liver and looked soulfully up
into the adoring eyes of the waitress who was hovering over him. “Got
any nice hot biscuits to-night, girlie?” he inquired.
“I'll get you some; sure,” wildly promised his handmaiden, and
disappeared kitchenward.
“Brand new to the road, aren't you?” observed Emma McChesney, cruelly.
“What makes you think--”
“Liver and bacon, hot biscuits, Worcestershire,” elucidated she. “No
old-timer would commit suicide that way. After you've been out for
two or three years you'll stick to the Rock of Gibraltar--roast beef,
medium. Oh, I get wild now and then, and order eggs if the girl says she
knows the hen that layed 'em, but plain roast beef, unchloroformed, is
the one best bet. You can't go wrong if you stick to it.”
The god-like young man leaned forward, forgetting to eat.
“You don't mean to tell me you're on the road!”
“Why not?” demanded Emma McChesney, briskly.
“Oh, fie, fie!” said the handsome youth, throwing her a languishing
look. “Any woman as pretty as you are, and with those eyes, and that
hair, and figure--Say, Little One, what are you going to do to-night?”
Emma McChesney sugared her tea, and stirred it, slowly. Then she looked
up. “To-night, you fresh young kid, you!” she said calmly, “I'm going to
dictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week,
and why it's going to pick up next week, and then I'm going to keep an
engagement with a nine-hour beauty sleep.”
“Don't get sore at a fellow. You'd take pity on me if you knew how I
have to work to kill an evening in one of these little townpump burgs.
Kill 'em! It can't be done. They die harder than the heroine in a
ten, twenty, thirty. From supper to bedtime is twice as long as from
breakfast to supper. Honest!”
But Emma McChesney looked inexorable, as women do just before they
relent. Said she: “Oh, I don't know. By the time I get through trying
to convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoat
has every other skirt in the market looking like a piece of Fourth of
July bunting that's been left out in the rain, I'm about ready to turn
down the spread and leave a call for six-thirty.”
“Be a good fellow,” pleaded the unquenchable one. “Let's take in all the
nickel shows, and then see if we can't drown our sorrows in--er--”
Emma McChesney slipped a coin under her plate, crumpled her napkin,
folded her arms on the table, and regarded the boy across the way with
what our best talent calls a long, level look. It was so long and so
level that even the airiness of the buoyant youngster at whom it was
directed began to lessen perceptibly, long before Emma began to talk.
“Tell me, young 'un, did any one ever refuse you anything? I thought
not. I should think that when you realize what you've got to learn it
would scare you to look ahead. I don't expect you to believe me when
I tell you I never talk to fresh guys like you, but it's true. I don't
know why I'm breaking my rule for you, unless it's because you're so
unbelievably good-looking that I'm anxious to know where the blemish is.
The Lord don't make 'em perfect, you know. I'm going to get out those
letters, and then, if it's just the same to you, we'll take a walk.
These nickel shows are getting on my nerves. It seems to me that if I
have to look at one more Western picture about a fool girl with her
hair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junction
and being rescued from a band of almost-Indians by the handsome, but
despised Eastern tenderfoot, or if I see one more of those historical
pictures, with the women wearing costumes that are a pass between early
Egyptian and late State Street, I know I'll get hysterics and have to be
carried shrieking, up the aisle. Let's walk down Main Street and look in
the store windows, and up as far as the park and back.”
“Great!” assented he. “Is there a park?
“I don't know,” replied Emma McChesney, “but there is. And for your own
good I'm going to tell you a few things. There's more to this traveling
game than just knocking down on expenses, talking to every pretty woman
you meet, and learning to ask for fresh white-bread heels at the Palmer
House in Chicago. I'll meet you in the lobby at eight.”
Emma McChesney talked steadily, and evenly, and generously, from eight
until eight-thirty. She talked from the great storehouse of practical
knowledge which she had accumulated in her ten years on the road. She
told the handsome young cub many things for which he should have been
undyingly thankful. But when they reached the park--the cool, dim,
moon-silvered park, its benches dotted with glimpses of white showing
close beside a blur of black, Emma McChesney stopped talking. Not only
did she stop talking, but she ceased to think of the boy seated beside
her on the bench.
In the band-stand, under the arc-light, in the center of the pretty
little square, some neighborhood children were playing a noisy game,
with many shrill cries, and much shouting and laughter. Suddenly, from
one of the houses across the way, a woman's voice was heard, even above
the clamor of the children.
“Fred-dee!” called the voice. “Maybelle! Come, now.”
And a boy's voice answered, as boys' voices have since Cain was a child
playing in the Garden of Eden, and as boys' voices will as long as boys
are:
“Aw, ma, I ain't a bit sleepy. We just begun a new game, an' I'm leader.
Can't we just stay out a couple of minutes more?”
“Well, five minutes,” agreed the voice. “But don't let me call you
again.”
Emma McChesney leaned back on the rustic bench and clasped her strong,
white hands behind her head, and stared straight ahead into the soft
darkness. And if it had been light you could have seen that the bitter
lines showing faintly about her mouth were outweighed by the sweet and
gracious light which was glowing in her eyes.
“Fred-dee!” came the voice of command again. “May-belle! This minute,
now!”
One by one the flying little figures under the arc-light melted away
in the direction of the commanding voice and home and bed. And Emma
McChesney forgot all about fresh young kids and featherloom petticoats
and discounts and bills of lading and sample-cases and grouchy buyers.
After all, it had been her protecting maternal instinct which had been
aroused by the boy at supper, although she had not known it then. She
did not know it now, for that matter. She was busy remembering just such
evenings in her own life--summer evenings, filled with the high, shrill
laughter of children at play. She too, had stood in the doorway, making
a funnel of her hands, so that her clear call through the twilight might
be heard above the cries of the boys and girls. She had known how loath
the little feet had been to leave their play, and how they had lagged up
the porch stairs, and into the house. Years, whose memory she had tried
to keep behind her, now suddenly loomed before her in the dim quiet of
the little flower-scented park.
A voice broke the silence, and sent her dream-thoughts scattering to the
winds.
“Honestly, kid,” said the voice, “I could be crazy about you, if you'd
let me.”
The forgotten figure beside her woke into sudden life. A strong arm
encircled her shoulders. A strong hand seized her own, which were
clasped behind her head. Two warm, eager lips were pressed upon her
lips, checking the little cry of surprise and wrath that rose in her
throat.
Emma McChesney wrenched herself free with a violent jerk, and pushed
him from her. She did not storm. She did not even rise. She sat very
quietly, breathing fast. When she turned at last to look at the boy
beside her it seemed that her white profile cut the darkness. The man
shrank a little, and would have stammered something, but Emma McChesney
checked him.
[Illustration: “'That was a married kiss--a two-year-old married kiss at
least.'”]
“You nasty, good-for-nothing, handsome young devil, you!” she said. “So
you're married.”
He sat up with a jerk. “How did you--what makes you think so?”
“That was a married kiss--a two-year-old married kiss, at least. No boy
would get as excited as that about kissing an old stager like me. The
chances are you're out of practise. I knew that if it wasn't teeth or
impediment it must be morals. And it is.”
She moved over on the bench until she was close beside him. “Now, listen
to me, boy.” She leaned forward, impressively. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” answered the handsome young devil, sullenly.
“What I've got to say to you isn't so much for your sake, as for your
wife's. I was married when I was eighteen, and stayed married eight
years. I've had my divorce ten years, and my boy is seventeen years old.
Figure it out. How old is Ann?”
“I don't believe it,” he flashed back. “You're not a day over
twenty-six--anyway, you don't look it. I--”
“Thanks,” drawled Emma. “That's because you've never seen me in
negligee. A woman's as old as she looks with her hair on the dresser and
bed only a few minutes away. Do you know why I was decent to you in the
first place? Because I was foolish enough to think that you reminded me
of my own kid. Every fond mama is gump enough to think that every Greek
god she sees looks like her own boy, even if her own happens to squint
and have two teeth missing--which mine hasn't, thank the Lord! He's the
greatest young--Well, now, look here, young 'un. I'm going to return
good for evil. Traveling men and geniuses should never marry. But as
long as you've done it, you might as well start right. If you move from
this spot till I get through with you, I'll yell police and murder. Are
you ready?”
“I'm dead sorry, on the square, I am--”
“Ten minutes late,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “I'm dishing up a
sermon, hot, for one, and you've got to choke it down. Whenever I hear a
traveling man howling about his lonesome evenings, and what a dog's
life it is, and no way for a man to live, I always wonder what kind of
a summer picnic he thinks it is for his wife. She's really a widow seven
months in the year, without any of a widow's privileges. Did you ever
stop to think what she's doing evenings? No, you didn't. Well, I'll
tell you. She's sitting home, night after night, probably embroidering
monograms on your shirt sleeves by way of diversion. And on Saturday
night, which is the night when every married woman has the inalienable
right to be taken out by her husband, she can listen to the woman in the
flat upstairs getting ready to go to the theater. The fact that there's
a ceiling between 'em doesn't prevent her from knowing just where
they're going, and why he has worked himself into a rage over his white
lawn tie, and whether they're taking a taxi or the car and who they're
going to meet afterward at supper. Just by listening to them coming
downstairs she can tell how much Mrs. Third Flat's silk stockings
cost, and if she's wearing her new La Valliere or not. Women have that
instinct, you know. Or maybe you don't. There's so much you've missed.”
“Say, look here--” broke from the man beside her. But Emma McChesney
laid her cool fingers on his lips.
“Nothing from the side-lines, please,” she said. “After they've gone
she can go to bed, or she can sit up, pretending to read, but really
wondering if that squeaky sound coming from the direction of the kitchen
is a loose screw in the storm door, or if it's some one trying to break
into the flat. And she'd rather sit there, scared green, than go back
through that long hall to find out. And when Tillie comes home with her
young man at eleven o'clock, though she promised not to stay out later
than ten, she rushes back to the kitchen and falls on her neck, she's so
happy to see her. Oh, it's a gay life. You talk about the heroism of
the early Pilgrim mothers! I'd like to know what they had on the average
traveling man's wife.”
“Bess goes to the matinee every Saturday,” he began, in feeble defense.
“Matinee!” scoffed Emma McChesney. “Do you think any woman goes to
matinee by preference? Nobody goes but girls of sixteen, and confirmed
old maids without brothers, and traveling men's wives. Matinee! Say,
would you ever hesitate to choose between an all-day train and a
sleeper? It's the same idea. What a woman calls going to the theater is
something very different. It means taking a nap in the afternoon, so her
eyes will be bright at night, and then starting at about five o'clock to
dress, and lay her husband's clean things out on the bed. She loves it.
She even enjoys getting his bath towels ready, and putting his shaving
things where he can lay his hands on 'em, and telling the girl to have
dinner ready promptly at six-thirty. It means getting out her good dress
that hangs in the closet with a cretonne bag covering it, and her black
satin coat, and her hat with the paradise aigrettes that she bought with
what she saved out of the housekeeping money. It means her best silk
stockings, and her diamond sunburst that he's going to have made over
into a La Valliere just as soon as business is better. She loves it all,
and her cheeks get pinker and pinker, so that she really doesn't need
the little dash of rouge that she puts on 'because everybody does it,
don't you know?' She gets ready, all but her dress, and then she puts on
a kimono and slips out to the kitchen to make the gravy for the chicken
because the girl never can get it as smooth as he likes it. That's part
of what she calls going to the theater, and having a husband. And if
there are children--”
There came a little, inarticulate sound from the boy. But Emma's quick
ear caught it.
“No? Well, then, we'll call that one black mark less for you. But if
there are children--and for her sake I hope there will be--she's father
and mother to them. She brings them up, single-handed, while he's on the
road. And the worst she can do is to say to them, 'Just wait until your
father gets home. He'll hear of this.' But shucks! When he comes home
he can't whip the kids for what they did seven weeks before, and that
they've forgotten all about, and for what he never saw, and can't
imagine. Besides, he wants his comfort when he gets home. He says he
wants a little rest and peace, and he's darned if he's going to run
around evenings. Not much, he isn't! But he doesn't object to her making
a special effort to cook all those little things that he's been longing
for on the road. Oh, there'll be a seat in Heaven for every traveling
man's wife--though at that, I'll bet most of 'em will find themselves
stuck behind a post.”
“You're all right!” exclaimed Emma McChesney's listener, suddenly. “How
a woman like you can waste her time on the road is more than I can see.
And--I want to thank you. I'm not such a fool--”
“I haven't let you finish a sentence so far and I'm not going to yet.
Wait a minute. There's one more paragraph to this sermon. You remember
what I told you about old stagers, and the roast beef diet? Well, that
applies right through life. It's all very well to trifle with the little
side-dishes at first, but there comes a time when you've got to quit
fooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of this
world, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. That
other stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or later
it will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roast
beef, medium. It may sound prosaic, and unimaginative and dry, but
you'll find that it wears in the long run. You can take me over to the
hotel now. I've lost an hour's sleep, but I don't consider it wasted.
And you'll oblige me by putting the stopper on any conversation that may
occur to you between here and the hotel. I've talked until I'm so low
on words that I'll probably have to sell featherlooms in sign language
to-morrow.”
They walked to the very doors of the Berger House in silence. But at the
foot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and looked
into Emma McChesney's face. His own was rather white and tense.
“Look here,” he said. “I've got to thank you. That sounds idiotic, but I
guess you know what I mean. And I won't ask you to forgive a hound like
me. I haven't been so ashamed of myself since I was a kid. Why, if you
knew Bess--if you knew--”
“I guess I know Bess, all right. I used to be a Bess, myself. Just
because I'm a traveling man it doesn't follow that I've forgotten the
Bess feeling. As far as that goes, I don't mind telling you that I've
got neuralgia from sitting in that park with my feet in the damp grass.
I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will be camping
over my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war dance up the side
of my face. And, boy, I'd give last week's commissions if there was some
one to whom I had the right to say: 'Henry, will you get up and get me a
hot-water bag for my neuralgia? It's something awful. And just open the
left-hand lower drawer of the chiffonier and get out one of those gauze
vests and then get me a safety pin from the tray on my dresser. I'm
going to pin it around my head.'”
[Illustration: “'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'”]
II
REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK
Emma McChesney, Mrs. (I place it in the background because she generally
did) swung off the 2:15, crossed the depot platform, and dived into the
hotel 'bus. She had to climb over the feet of a fat man in brown and a
lean man in black, to do it. Long practise had made her perfect in the
art. She knew that the fat man and the thin man were hogging the end
seats so that they could be the first to register and get a choice of
rooms when the 'bus reached the hotel. The vehicle smelled of straw, and
mold, and stables, and dampness, and tobacco, as 'buses have from old
Jonas Chuzzlewit's time to this. Nine years on the road had accustomed
Emma McChesney's nostrils to 'bus smells. She gazed stolidly out of
the window, crossed one leg over the other, remembered that her snug
suit-skirt wasn't built for that attitude, uncrossed them again, and
caught the delighted and understanding eye of the fat traveling man, who
was a symphony in brown--brown suit, brown oxfords, brown scarf, brown
bat, brown-bordered handkerchief just peeping over the edge of his
pocket. He looked like a colossal chocolate fudge.
“Red-faced, grinning, and a naughty wink--I'll bet he sells coffins and
undertakers' supplies,” mused Emma McChesney. “And the other one--the
tall, lank, funereal affair in black--I suppose his line would be sheet
music, or maybe phonographs. Or perhaps he's a lyceum bureau reader,
scheduled to give an evening of humorous readings for the Young Men's
Sunday Evening Club course at the First M. E. Church.”
During those nine years on the road for the Featherloom Skirt Company
Emma McChesney had picked up a side line or two on human nature.
She was not surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man in
black leap out of the 'bus and into the hotel before she had had time to
straighten her hat after the wheels had bumped up against the curbing.
By the time she reached the desk the two were disappearing in the wake
of a bell-boy.
The sartorial triumph behind the desk, languidly read her signature
upside down, took a disinterested look at her, and yelled:
“Front! Show the lady up to nineteen.”
Emma McChesney took three steps in the direction of the stairway toward
which the boy was headed with her bags. Then she stopped.
“Wait a minute, boy,” she said, pleasantly enough; and walked back to
the desk. She eyed the clerk, a half-smile on her lips, one arm, in its
neat tailored sleeve, resting on the marble, while her right forefinger,
trimly gloved, tapped an imperative little tattoo. (Perhaps you think
that last descriptive sentence is as unnecessary as it is garbled.
But don't you get a little picture of her--trim, taut, tailored,
mannish-booted, flat-heeled, linen-collared, sailor-hatted?)
“You've made a mistake, haven't you?” she inquired.
“Mistake?” repeated the clerk, removing his eyes from their loving
contemplation of his right thumb-nail. “Guess not.”
“Oh, think it over,” drawled Emma McChesney. “I've never seen nineteen,
but I can describe it with both eyes shut, and one hand tied behind me.
It's an inside room, isn't it, over the kitchen, and just next to the
water butt where the maids come to draw water for the scrubbing at 5
A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for nineteen, and the
patent ventilators work just next door, and there's a pet rat that makes
his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and the
housekeeper whose room is across the hail is afflicted with a bronchial
cough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of welcome that you fellows hand
out to us women on the road. This is new territory for me--my first
trip West. Think it over. Don't--er--say, sixty-five strike you as being
nearer my size?”
The clerk stared at Emma McChesney, and Emma McChesney coolly stared
back at the clerk.
“Our aim,” began he, loftily, “is to make our guests as comfortable as
possible on all occasions. But the last lady drummer who--”
“That's all right,” interrupted Emma McChesney, “but I'm not the kind
that steals the towels, and I don't carry an electric iron with me,
either. Also I don't get chummy with the housekeeper and the dining-room
girls half an hour after I move in. Most women drummers are living up to
their reputations, but some of us are living 'em down. I'm for revision
downward. You haven't got my number, that's all.”
A slow gleam of unwilling admiration illumined the clerk's chill eye. He
turned and extracted another key with its jangling metal tag, from one
of the many pigeonholes behind him.
“You win,” he said. He leaned over the desk and lowered his voice
discreetly. “Say, girlie, go on into the cafe and have a drink on me.”
“Wrong again,” answered Emma McChesney. “Never use it. Bad for the
complexion. Thanks just the same. Nice little hotel you've got here.”
In the corridor leading to sixty-five there was a great litter of pails,
and mops, and brooms, and damp rags, and one heard the sigh of a vacuum
cleaner.
“Spring house-cleaning,” explained the bellboy, hurdling a pail.
Emma McChesney picked her way over a little heap of dust-cloths and a
ladder or so.
“House-cleaning,” she repeated dreamily; “spring house-cleaning.” And
there came a troubled, yearning light into her eyes. It lingered there
after the boy had unlocked and thrown open the door of sixty-five,
pocketed his dime, and departed.
Sixty-five was--well, you know what sixty-five generally is in a
small Middle-Western town. Iron bed--tan wall-paper--pine table--pine
dresser--pine chair--red carpet--stuffy smell--fly buzzing at
window--sun beating in from the west. Emma McChesney saw it all in one
accustomed glance.
“Lordy, I hate to think what nineteen must be,” she told herself, and
unclasped her bag. Out came the first aid to the travel-stained--a
jar of cold cream. It was followed by powder, chamois, brush, comb,
tooth-brush. Emma McChesney dug four fingers into the cold cream jar,
slapped the stuff on her face, rubbed it in a bit, wiped it off with
a dry towel, straightened her hat, dusted the chamois over her face,
glanced at her watch and hurriedly whisked downstairs.
“After all,” she mused, “that thin guy might not be out for a music
house. Maybe his line is skirts, too. You never can tell. Anyway, I'll
beat him to it.”
Saturday afternoon and spring-time in a small town! Do you know it? Main
Street--on the right side--all a-bustle; farmers' wagons drawn up at the
curbing; farmers' wives in the inevitable rusty black with dowdy hats
furbished up with a red muslin rose in honor of spring; grand opening at
the new five-and-ten-cent store, with women streaming in and streaming
out again, each with a souvenir pink carnation pinned to her coat; every
one carrying bundles and yellow paper bags that might contain bananas or
hats or grass seed; the thirty-two automobiles that the town boasts
all dashing up and down the street, driven by hatless youths in
careful college clothes; a crowd of at least eleven waiting at Jenson's
drug-store corner for the next interurban car.
Emma McChesney found herself strolling when she should have been
hustling in the direction of the Novelty Cloak and Suit Store. She
was aware of a vague, strangely restless feeling in the region of her
heart--or was it her liver?--or her lungs?
Reluctantly she turned in at the entrance of the Novelty Cloak and Suit
Store and asked for the buyer. (Here we might introduce one of those
side-splitting little business deal scenes. But there can be paid no
finer compliment to Emma McChesney's saleswomanship than to state that
she landed her man on a busy Saturday afternoon, with a store full of
customers and the head woman clerk dead against her from the start.)
As she was leaving:
“Generally it's the other way around,” smiled the boss, regarding Emma's
trim comeliness, “but seeing you're a lady, why, it'll be on me.” He
reached for his hat. “Let's go and have--ah--a little something.”
“Not any, thanks,” Emma McChesney replied, a little wearily.
On her way back to the hotel she frankly loitered. Just to look at her
made you certain that she was not of our town. Now, that doesn't imply
that the women of our town do not dress well, because they do. But there
was something about her--a flirt of chiffon at the throat, or her hat
quill stuck in a certain way, or the stitching on her gloves, or the
vamp of her shoe--that was of a style which had not reached us yet.
As Emma McChesney loitered, looking in at the shop windows and watching
the women hurrying by, intent on the purchase of their Sunday dinners,
that vaguely restless feeling seized her again. There were rows of plump
fowls in the butcher-shop windows, and juicy roasts. The cunning hand of
the butcher had enhanced the redness of the meat by trimmings of curly
parsley. Salad things and new vegetables glowed behind the grocers'
plate-glass. There were the tender green of lettuces, the coral of
tomatoes, the brown-green of stout asparagus stalks, bins of spring peas
and beans, and carrots, and bunches of greens for soup. There came over
the businesslike soul of Emma McChesney a wild longing to go in and
select a ten-pound roast, taking care that there should be just the
right proportion of creamy fat and red meat. She wanted to go in and
poke her fingers in the ribs of a broiler. She wanted to order wildly of
sweet potatoes and vegetables, and soup bones, and apples for pies. She
ached to turn back her sleeves and don a blue-and-white checked apron
and roll out noodles.
She still was fighting that wild impulse as she walked back to the
hotel, went up to her stuffy room, and, without removing hat or coat,
seated herself on the edge of the bed and stared long and hard at the
tan wall-paper.
There is this peculiarity about tan wall-paper. If you stare at it
long enough you begin to see things. Emma McChesney, who pulled down
something over thirty-two hundred a year selling Featherloom Petticoats,
saw this:
A kitchen, very bright and clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness
that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls,
and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the
sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely
delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself in
an all-enveloping checked gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hair
somewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed it
back with a floury hand. Her cheeks were surprisingly pink, and her eyes
were very bright, and she was scraping a baking board and rolling-pin,
and trimming the edges of pie tins, and turning with a whirl to open the
oven door, stooping to dip up spoonfuls of gravy only to pour the rich
brown liquid over the meat again. There were things on top of the stove
that required sticking into with a fork, and other things that demanded
tasting and stirring with a spoon. A neighbor came in to borrow a cup of
molasses, and Emma urged upon her one of her freshly baked cookies. And
there was a ring at the front-door bell, and she had to rush away to do
battle with a persistent book agent....
The buzzing fly alighted on Emma McChesney's left eyebrow. She swatted
it with a hand that was not quite quick enough, spoiled the picture, and
slowly rose from her perch at the bedside.
“Oh, damn!” she remarked, wearily, and went over to the dresser. Then
she pulled down her shirtwaist all around and went down to supper.
The dining-room was very warm, and there came a smell of lardy things
from the kitchen. Those supping were doing so languidly.
“I'm dying for something cool, and green, and fresh,” remarked Emma to
the girl who filled her glass with iced water; “something springish and
tempting.”
“Well,” sing-songed she of the ruffled, starched skirt, “we have
ham'n-aigs, mutton chops, cold veal, cold roast--”
“Two, fried,” interrupted Emma hopelessly, “and a pot of tea--black.”
Supper over she passed through the lobby on her way upstairs. The place
was filled with men. They were lolling in the big leather chairs at the
window, or standing about, smoking and talking. There was a rattle
of dice from the cigar counter, and a burst of laughter from the men
gathered about it. It all looked very bright, and cheery, and sociable.
Emma McChesney, turning to ascend the stairs to her room, felt that she,
too, would like to sit in one of the big leather chairs in the window
and talk to some one.
Some one was playing the piano in the parlor. The doors were open. Emma
McChesney glanced in. Then she stopped. It was not the appearance of
the room that held her. You may have heard of the wilds of an African
jungle--the trackless wastes of the desert--the solitude of the
forest--the limitless stretch of the storm-tossed ocean; they are cozy
and snug when compared to the utter and soul-searing dreariness of a
small town hotel parlor. You know what it is--red carpet, red plush and
brocade furniture, full-length walnut mirror, battered piano on which
reposes a sheet of music given away with the Sunday supplement of a city
paper.
A man was seated at the piano, playing. He was not playing the Sunday
supplement sheet music. His brown hat was pushed back on his head and
there was a fat cigar in his pursy mouth, and as he played he squinted
up through the smoke. He was playing Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Not as
you have heard it played by sweet young things; not as you have heard
it rendered by the Apollo String Quartette. Under his fingers it was a
fragrant, trembling, laughing, sobbing, exquisite thing. He was playing
it in a way to make you stare straight ahead and swallow hard.
Emma McChesney leaned her head against the door. The man at the piano
did not turn. So she tip-toed in, found a chair in a corner, and
noiselessly slipped into it. She sat very still, listening, and the
past-that-might-have-been, and the future-that-was-to-be, stretched
behind and before her, as is strangely often the case when we are
listening to music. She stared ahead with eyes that were very wide open
and bright. Something in the attitude of the man sitting hunched there
over the piano keys, and something in the beauty and pathos of the music
brought a hot haze of tears to her eyes. She leaned her head against
the back of the chair, and shut her eyes and wept quietly and
heart-brokenly. The tears slid down her cheeks, and dropped on her smart
tailored waist and her Irish lace jabot, and she didn't care a bit.
The last lovely note died away. The fat man's hands dropped limply to
his sides. Emma McChesney stared at them, fascinated. They were quite
marvelous hands; not at all the sort of hands one would expect to see
attached to the wrists of a fat man. They were slim, nervous, sensitive
hands, pink-tipped, tapering, blue-veined, delicate. As Emma McChesney
stared at them the man turned slowly on the revolving stool. His plump,
pink face was dolorous, sagging, wan-eyed.
He watched Emma McChesney as she sat up and dried her eyes. A satisfied
light dawned in his face.
“Thanks,” he said, and mopped his forehead and chin and neck with the
brown-edged handkerchief.
“You--you can't be Paderewski. He's thin. But if he plays any better
than that, then I don't want to hear him. You've upset me for the rest
of the week. You've started me thinking about things--about things
that--that-”
The fat man clasped his thin, nervous hands in front of him and leaned
forward.
“About things that you're trying to forget. It starts me that way, too.
That's why sometimes I don't touch the keys for weeks. Say, what do you
think of a man who can play like that, and who is out on the road for a
living just because he knows it's a sure thing? Music! That's my
gift. And I've buried it. Why? Because the public won't take a fat man
seriously. When he sits down at the piano they begin to howl for Italian
rag. Why, I'd rather play the piano in a five-cent moving picture house
than do what I'm doing now. But the old man wanted his son to be a
business man, not a crazy, piano-playing galoot. That's the way he put
it. And I was darn fool enough to think he was right. Why can't people
stand up and do the things they're out to do! Not one person in a
thousand does. Why, take you--I don't know you from Eve, but just from
the way you shed the briny I know you're busy regretting.”
“Regretting?” repeated Emma McChesney, in a wail. “Do you know what I
am? I'm a lady drummer. And do you know what I want to do this minute?
I want to clean house. I want to wind a towel around my head, and pin
up my skirt, and slosh around with a pail of hot, soapy water. I want to
pound a couple of mattresses in the back yard, and eat a cold dinner off
the kitchen table. That's what I want to do.”
“Well, go on and do it,” said the fat man.
“Do it? I haven't any house to clean. I got my divorce ten years ago,
and I've been on the road ever since. I don't know why I stick. I'm
pulling down a good, fat salary and commissions, but it's no life for
a woman, and I know it, but I'm not big enough to quit. It's different
with a man on the road. He can spend his evenings taking in two or three
nickel shows, or he can stand on the drug-store corner and watch the
pretty girls go by, or he can have a game of billiards, or maybe cards.
Or he can have a nice, quiet time just going up to his room, and smoking
a cigar and writing to his wife or his girl. D'you know what I do?”
“No,” answered the fat man, interestedly. “What?”
“Evenings I go up to my room and sew or read. Sew! Every hook and eye
and button on my clothes is moored so tight that even the hand laundry
can't tear 'em off. You couldn't pry those fastenings away with
dynamite. When I find a hole in my stockings I'm tickled to death,
because it's something to mend. And read? Everything from the Rules of
the House tacked up on the door to spelling out the French short story
in the back of the Swell Set Magazine. It's getting on my nerves. Do
you know what I do Sunday mornings? No, you don't. Well, I go to church,
that's what I do. And I get green with envy watching the other women
there getting nervous about 11:45 or so, when the minister is still in
knee-deep, and I know they're wondering if Lizzie has basted the chicken
often enough, and if she has put the celery in cold water, and the
ice-cream is packed in burlap in the cellar, and if she has forgotten to
mix in a tablespoon of flour to make it smooth. You can tell by the look
on their faces that there's company for dinner. And you know that after
dinner they'll sit around, and the men will smoke, and the women folks
will go upstairs, and she'll show the other woman her new scalloped,
monogrammed, hand-embroidered guest towels, and the waist that her
cousin Ethel brought from Paris. And maybe they'll slip off their skirts
and lie down on the spare-room bed for a ten minutes' nap. And you can
hear the hired girl rattling the dishes in the kitchen, and talking to
her lady friend who is helping her wipe up so they can get out early.
You can hear the two of them laughing above the clatter of the dishes--”
The fat man banged one fist down on the piano keys with a crash.
“I'm through,” he said. “I quit to-night. I've got my own life to
live. Here, will you shake on it? I'll quit if you will. You're a born
housekeeper. You don't belong on the road any more than I do. It's now
or never. And it's going to be now with me. When I strike the pearly
gates I'm not going to have Saint Peter say to me, 'Ed, old kid, what
have you done with your talents?'”
“You're right,” sobbed Emma McChesney, her face glowing.
“By the way,” interrupted the fat man, “what's your line?”
“Petticoats. I'm out for T. A. Buck's Featherloom Skirts. What's yours?”
“Suffering cats!” shouted the fat man. “D' you mean to tell me that
you're the fellow who sold that bill to Blum, of the Novelty Cloak and
Suit concern, and spoiled a sale for me?”
“You! Are you--”
“You bet I am. I sell the best little skirt in the world. Strauss's
Sans-silk Petticoat, warranted not to crack, rip, or fall into holes.
Greatest little skirt in the country.”
Emma McChesney straightened her collar and jabot with a jerk, and sat
up.
“Oh, now, don't give me that bunk. You've got a good little seller, all
right, but that guaranty don't hold water any more than the petticoat
contains silk. I know that stuff. It looms up big in the window
displays, but it's got a filler of glucose, or starch or mucilage or
something, and two days after you wear it it's as limp as a cheesecloth
rag. It's showy, but you take a line like mine, for instance, why--”
“My customers swear by me. I make DeKalb to-morrow, and there's
Nussbaum, of the Paris Emporium, the biggest store there, who just--”
“I make DeKalb, too,” remarked Emma McChesney, the light of battle in
her eye.
“You mean,” gently insinuated the fat man, “that you were going to, but
that's all over now.”
“Huh?” said Emma.
“Our agreement, you know,” the fat man reminded her, sweetly. “You
aren't going back on that. The cottage and the Sunday dinner for you,
remember.”
“Of course,” agreed Emma listlessly. “I think I'll go up and get some
sleep now. Didn't get much last night on the road.”
“Won't you--er--come down and have a little something moist? Or we could
have it sent up here,” suggested the fat man.
“You're the third man that's asked me that to-day,” snapped Emma
McChesney, somewhat crossly. “Say, what do I look like, anyway? I guess
I'll have to pin a white ribbon on my coat lapel.”
“No offense,” put in the fat man, with haste. “I just thought it would
bind our bargain. I hope you'll be happy, and contented, and all that,
you know.”
“Let it go double,” replied Emma McChesney, and shook his hand.
“Guess I'll run down and get a smoke,” remarked he.
He ran down the stairs in a manner wonderfully airy for one so stout.
Emma watched him until he disappeared around a bend in the stairs. Then
she walked hastily in the direction of sixty-five.
Down in the lobby the fat man, cigar in mouth, was cautioning the clerk,
and emphasizing his remarks with one forefinger.
“I want to leave a call for six thirty,” he was saying. “Not a minute
later. I've got to get out of here on that 7:35 for DeKalb. Got a Sunday
customer there.”
As he turned away a telephone bell tinkled at the desk. The clerk bent
his stately head.