greasy, he stands outside his gaudy tent, dilating on the wonders
within. One or two, perhaps, straggle in. But the crowd, made wary by
bitter experience of the sham and cheap fraud behind the tawdry canvas
flap, stops a moment, laughs, and passes on. Then Temptation, in a
panic, seeing his audience drifting away, summons from inside the tent
his bespangled and bewitching partner, Mlle. Psychological Moment, the
Hypnotic Charmer. She leaps to the platform, bows, pirouettes. The crowd
surges toward the ticket-window, nickel in hand.
Six months of bad luck had dogged the footsteps of Mrs. Emma McChesney,
traveling saleswoman for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company,
New York. It had started with a six-weeks' illness endured in the
discomfort of a stuffy little hotel bedroom at Glen Rock, Minnesota. By
August she was back in New York, attending to out-of-town buyers.
Those friendly Middle-Western persona showed dismay at her pale,
hollow-eyed appearance. They spoke to her of teaspoonfuls of olive-oil
taken thrice a day, of mountain air, of cold baths, and, above all, of
the advisability of leaving the road and taking an inside position. At
that Emma McChesney always showed signs of unmistakable irritation.
In September her son, Jock McChesney, just turned eighteen, went
blithely off to college, disguised as a millionaire's son in a blue
Norfolk, silk hose, flat-heeled shoes, correctly mounted walrus bag,
and next-week's style in fall hats. As the train glided out of the great
shed Emma McChesney had waved her handkerchief, smiling like fury
and seeing nothing but an indistinct blur as the observation platform
slipped around the curve. She had not felt that same clutching, desolate
sense of loss since the time, thirteen years before, when she had cut
off his curls and watched him march sturdily off to kindergarten.
In October it was plain that spring skirts, instead of being full as
predicted, were as scant and plaitless as ever. That spelled gloom for
the petticoat business. It was necessary to sell three of the present
absurd style to make the profit that had come from the sale of one skirt
five years before.
The last week in November, tragedy stalked upon the scene in the death
at Marienbad of old T. A. Buck, Mrs. McChesney's stanch friend and
beloved employer. Emma McChesney had wept for him as one weeps at the
loss of a father.
They had understood each other, those two, from the time that Emma
McChesney, divorced, penniless, refusing support from the man she had
married eight years before, had found work in the office of the T. A.
Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.
Old Buck had watched her rise from stenographer to head stenographer,
from head stenographer to inside saleswoman, from that to a minor road
territory, and finally to the position of traveling representative
through the coveted Middle-Western territory.
Old T. A. Buck, gruff, grim, direct, far-seeing, kindly, shrewd--he had
known Emma McChesney for what she was worth. Once, when she had been
disclosing to him a clever business scheme which might be turned into
good advertising material, old Buck had slapped his knee with one broad,
thick palm and had said:
“Emma McChesney, you ought to have been a man. With that head on a man's
shoulders, you could put us out of business.”
“I could do it anyway,” Mrs. McChesney had retorted.
Old Buck had regarded her a moment over his tortoise-shell rimmed
glasses. Then, “I believe you could,” he had said, quietly and
thoughtfully.
That brings her up to December. To some few millions of people
D-e-c-e-m-b-e-r spells Christmas. But to Emma McChesney it spelled the
dreaded spring trip. It spelled trains stalled in snowdrifts, baggage
delayed, cold hotel bedrooms, harassed, irritable buyers.
It was just six o'clock on the evening of December ninth when Mrs. Emma
McChesney swung off the train at Columbus, Ohio, five hours late. As
she walked down the broad platform her eyes unconsciously searched the
loaded trucks for her own trunks. She'd have recognized them in the hold
of a Nile steamer--those grim, travel-scarred sample-trunks. They had a
human look to her. She had a way of examining them after each trip, as a
fond mother examines her child for stray scratches and bruises when she
puts it to bed for the night. She knew each nook and corner of the great
trunks as another woman knows her linen-closet or her preserve-shelves.
Columbus, Ohio, was a Featherloom town. Emma McChesney had a fondness
for it, with its half rustic, half metropolitan air. Sometimes she
likened it to a country girl in a velvet gown, and sometimes to a
city girl in white muslin and blue sash. Singer & French always had a
Featherloom window twice a year.
The hotel lobby wore a strangely deserted look. December is a
slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered
automatically, received her mail, exchanged greetings with the affable
clerk.
“Send my trunks up to my sample-room as soon as they get in. Three of
'em--two sample-trunks and my personal trunk. And I want to see a porter
about putting up some extra tables. You see, I'm two days late now. I
expect two buyers to-morrow morning.
“Send 'em right up, Mrs. McChesney,” the clerk assured her. “Jo'll
attend to those tables. Too bad about old Buck. How's the skirt
business?”
“Skirts? There is no such thing,” corrected Emma McChesney gently.
“Sausage-casing business, you mean.”
“Guess you're right, at that. By the way, how's that handsome youngster
of yours? He's not traveling with you this trip?”
There came a wonderful glow into Emma McChesney's tired face.
“Jock's at college. Coming home for the holidays. We're going to have a
dizzy week in New York. I'm wild to see if those three months of college
have done anything to him, bless his heart! Oh, kind sir, forgive a
mother's fond ravings! Where'd that youngster go with my bag?”
Up at last in the stuffy, unfriendly, steam-smelling hotel bedroom
Emma McChesney prepared to make herself comfortable. A cocky bell-boy
switched on the lights, adjusted a shade, straightened a curtain. Mrs.
McChesney reached for her pocket-book.
“Just open that window, will you?”
“Pretty cold,” remonstrated the bell-boy. “Beginning to snow, too.”
“Can't help it. I'll shut it in a minute. The last man that had this
room left a dead cigar around somewhere. Send up a waiter, please. I'm
going to treat myself to dinner in my room.”
The boy gone, she unfastened her collar, loosened a shoe that had
pressed a bit too tightly over the instep, took a kimono and toilette
articles out of her bag.
“I'll run through my mail,” she told herself. “Then I'll get into
something loose, see to my trunks, have dinner, and turn in early. Wish
Jock were here. We'd have a steak, and some French fried, and a salad,
and I'd let the kid make the dressing, even if he does always get in too
much vinegar--”
She was glancing through her mail. Two from the firm--one from Mary
Cutting--one from the Sure-White Laundry at Dayton (hope they found that
corset-cover)--one from--why, from Jock! From Jock! And he'd written
only two days before. Well!
Sitting there on the edge of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl
lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin
from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the
envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m--it wasn't much as to length.
Just a scrawled page. Emma McChesney's eye plunged into it hungrily, a
smile of anticipation dimpling her lips, lighting up her face.
“_Dearest Blonde_,” it began.
(“The nerve of the young imp!”)
He hoped the letter would reach her in time. Knew how this
weather mussed up her schedule. He wanted her honest opinion about
something--straight, now! One of the frat fellows was giving a Christmas
house-party. Awful swells, by the way. He was lucky even to be asked.
He'd never remembered a real Christmas--in a home, you know, with a
tree, and skating, and regular high jinks, and a dinner that left you
feeling like a stuffed gooseberry. Old Wells says his grandmother wears
lace caps with lavender ribbons. Can you beat it! Of course he felt
like a hog, even thinking of wanting to stay away from her at Christmas.
Still, Christmas in a New York hotel--! But the fellows had nagged him
to write. Said they'd do it if he didn't. Of course he hated to think of
her spending Christmas alone--felt like a bloody villain--
Little by little the smile that had wreathed her lips faded and was
gone. The lips still were parted, but by one of those miracles with
which the face expresses what is within the heart their expression had
changed from pleasure to bitter pain.
She sat there, at the edge of the bed, staring dully until the black
scrawls danced on the white page. With the letter before her she raised
her hand slowly and wiped away a hot, blinding mist of tears with her
open palm. Then she read it again, dully, as though every selfish word
of it had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart.
[Illustration: “She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word
had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart”]
After the second reading she still sat there, her eyes staring down at
her lap. Once she brushed an imaginary fleck of lint from the lap of her
blue serge skirt--brushed, and brushed and brushed, with a mechanical,
pathetic little gesture that showed how completely absent her mind was
from the room in which she sat. Then her hand fell idle, and she became
very still, a crumpled, tragic, hopeless look rounding the shoulders
that were wont to hold themselves so erect and confident.
A tentative knock at the door. The figure on the bed did not stir.
Another knock, louder this time. Emma McChesney sat up with a start. She
shivered as she became conscious of the icy December air pouring into
the little room. She rose, walked to the window, closed it with a bang,
and opened the door in time to intercept the third knock.
A waiter proffered her a long card. “Dinner, Madame?”
“Oh!” She shook her head. “Sorry I've changed my mind. I--I shan't want
any dinner.”
She shut the door again and stood with her back against it, eying the
bed. In her mind's eye she had already thrown herself upon it, buried
her face in the nest of pillows, and given vent to the flood of tears
that was beating at her throat. She took a quick step toward the bed,
stopped, turned abruptly, and walked toward the mirror.
“Emma McChesney,” she said aloud to the woman in the glass, “buck up,
old girl! Bad luck comes in bunches of threes. It's like breaking the
first cup in a new Haviland set. You can always count on smashing two
more. This is your third. So pick up the pieces and throw 'em in the
ash-can.”
Then she fastened her collar, buttoned her shoe, pulled down her
shirtwaist all around, smeared her face with cold cream, wiped it with
a towel, smoothed her hair, donned her hat. The next instant the
little room was dark, and Emma McChesney was marching down the long,
red-carpeted hallway to the elevator, her head high, her face set.
Down-stairs in the lobby--“How about my trunks?” she inquired of a
porter.
That blue-shirted individual rubbed a hard brown hand over his cheek
worriedly.
“They ain't come.”
“Ain't come!”--surprise disregarded grammar.
“Nope. No signs of 'em. I'll tell you what: I think prob'ly they was
overlooked in the rush, the train being late from Dayton when you
started. Likely they'll be in on the ten-thirteen. I'll send 'em up the
minute they get in.”
“I wish you would. I've got to get my stuff out early. I can't keep
customers waiting for me. Late, as it is.”
She approached the clerk once more. “Anything at the theaters?”
“Well, nothing much, Mrs. McChesney. Christmas coming on kind of puts a
crimp in the show business. Nice little bill on at the Majestic, if you
like vaudeville.”
“Crazy about it. Always get so excited watching to see if the next act
is going to be as rotten as the last one. It always is.”
From eight-fifteen until ten-thirty Mrs. McChesney sat absolutely
expressionless while a shrill blonde lady and a nasal dark gentleman
went through what the program ironically called a “comedy sketch,”
followed by a chummy person who came out in evening dress to sing a
sentimental ditty, shed the evening dress to reappear in an ankle-length
fluffy pink affair; shucked the fluffy pink affair for a child's
pinafore, sash, and bare knees; discarded the kiddie frock, disclosing
a bathing-suit; left the bathing-suit behind the wings in favor of
satin knee-breeches and tight jacket--and very discreetly stopped there,
probably for no reason except to give way to the next act, consisting of
two miraculously thin young men in lavender dress suits and white silk
hats, who sang and clogged in unison, like two things hung on a single
wire.
The night air was grateful to her hot forehead as she walked from the
theater to the hotel.
“Trunks in?” to the porter.
“No sign of 'em, lady. They didn't come in on the ten. Think they'd
better wire back to Dayton.”
But the next morning Mrs. McChesney was in the depot baggage-room when
Dayton wired back:
_“Trunks not here. Try Columbus, Nebraska.”_
“Crash!” said Emma McChesney to the surprised baggage-master. “There
goes my Haviland vegetable-dish.”
“Were you selling china?” he inquired.
“No, I wasn't,” replied Emma McChesney viciously. “And if you don't
let me stand here and give my frank, unbiased opinion of this road,
its president, board of directors, stockholders, baggage-men, Pullman
porters, and other things thereto appertaining, I'll probably have
hysterics.”
“Give it,” said the baggage-master. “You'll feel better. And we're used
to it.”
She gave it. When she had finished:
“Did you say you was selling goods on the road? Say, that's a hell of a
job for a woman! Excuse me, lady. I didn't mean--”
“I think perhaps you're right,” said Emma McChesney slowly. “It is just
that.”
“Well, anyway, we'll do our best to trace it. Guess you're in for a
wait.”
Emma McChesney waited. She made the rounds of her customers, and waited.
She wired her firm, and waited. She wrote Jock to run along and enjoy
himself, and waited. She cut and fitted a shirt-waist, took her hat
apart and retrimmed it, made the rounds of her impatient customers
again, threatened to sue the road, visited the baggage-room daily--and
waited.
Four weary, nerve-racking days passed. It was late afternoon of the
fourth day when Mrs. McChesney entered the elevator to go to her room.
She had come from another fruitless visit to the baggage-room. She sank
into a leather-cushioned seat in a corner of the lift. Two men entered
briskly, followed by a bellboy. Mrs. McChesney did not look up.
“Well, I'll be dinged!” boomed a throaty voice. “Mrs. McChesney, by the
Great Horn Spoon! H'are you? Talking about you this minute to my friend
here.”
Emma McChesney, with the knowledge of her lost sample-trunks striking
her afresh, looked up and smiled bravely into the plump pink face of Fat
Ed Meyers, traveling representative for her firm's bitterest rival, the
Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company.
“Talking about me, Mr. Meyers? Sufficient grounds for libel, right
there.”
The little sallow, dark man just at Meyers' elbow was gazing at her
unguardedly. She felt that he had appraised her from hat to heels. Ed
Meyers placed a plump hand on the little man's shoulder.
“Abe, you tell the lady what I was saying. This is Mr. Abel Fromkin,
maker of the Fromkin Form-Fit Skirt. Abe, this is the wonderful Mrs.
McChesney.”
“Sorry I can't wait to hear what you've said of me. This is my floor.”
Mrs. McChesney was already leaving the elevator.
“Here! Wait a minute!” Fat Ed Meyers was out and standing beside her,
his movements unbelievably nimble. “Will you have dinner with us, Mrs.
McChesney?”
“Thanks. Not to-night.”
Meyers turned to the waiting elevator. “Fromkin, you go on up with the
boy; I'll talk to the lady a minute.”
A little displeased frown appeared on Emma McChesney's face.
“You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Meyers, I--”
“Heigh-ho for that haughty stuff, Mrs. McChesney,” grinned Ed Meyers.
“Don't turn up your nose at that little Kike friend of mine till you've
heard what I have to say. Now just let me talk a minute. Fromkin's heard
all about you. He's got a proposition to make. And it isn't one to sniff
at.”
He lowered his voice mysteriously in the silence of the dim hotel
corridor.
“Fromkin started in a little one-room hole-in-the-wall over on the East
Side. Lived on a herring and a hunk of rye bread. Wife used to help him
sew. That was seven years ago. In three years, or less, she'll have the
regulation uniform--full length seal coat, bunch of paradise, five-drop
diamond La Valliere set in platinum, electric brougham. Abe has got
a business head, take it from me. But he's wise enough to know that
business isn't the rough-and-tumble game it used to be. He realizes that
he'll do for the workrooms, but not for the front shop. He knows that if
he wants to keep on growing he's got to have what they call a steerer.
Somebody smooth, and polished, and politic, and what the highbrows call
suave. Do you pronounce that with a long _a_, or two dots over? Anyway,
you get me. You're all those things and considerable few besides. He's
wise to the fact that a business man's got to have poise these days,
and balance. And when it comes to poise and balance, Mrs. McChesney, you
make a Fairbanks scale look like a raft at sea.”
“While I don't want to seem to hurry you,” drawled Mrs. McChesney,
“might I suggest that you shorten the overture and begin on the first
act?”
“Well, you know how I feel about your business genius.”
“Yes, I know,” enigmatically.
Ed Meyers grinned. “Can't forget those two little business
misunderstandings we had, can you?”
“Business understandings,” corrected Emma McChesney.
“Call 'em anything your little heart dictates, but listen. Fromkin knows
all about you. Knows you've got a million friends in the trade, that
you know skirts from the belt to the hem. I don't know just what his
proposition is, but I'll bet he'll give you half interest in the livest,
come-upest little skirt factory in the country, just for a few thousands
capital, maybe, and your business head at the executive end. Now just
let that sink in before you speak.”
“And why,” inquired Emma McChesney, “don't you grab this matchless
business opportunity yourself?”
“Because, fair lady, Fromkin wouldn't let me get in with a crowbar.
He'll never be able to pronounce his t's right, and when he's dressed
up he looks like a 'bus-boy at Mouquin's, but he can see a bluff farther
than I can throw one--and that's somewhere beyond the horizon, as you'll
admit. Talk it over with us after dinner then?”
Emma McChesney was regarding the plump, pink, eager face before her with
keen, level, searching eyes.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I will.”
“Cafe? We'll have a bottle--”
“No.”
“Oh! Er--parlor?”
Mrs. McChesney smiled. “I won't ask you to make yourself that miserable.
You can't smoke in the parlor. We'll find a quiet corner in the
writing-room, where you men can light up. I don't want to take advantage
of you.”
[Illustration: “'Not that you look your age--not by ten years!'”]
Down in the writing-room at eight they formed a strange little group. Ed
Meyers, flushed and eager, his pink face glowing like a peony, talking,
arguing, smoking, reasoning, coaxing, with the spur of a fat commission
to urge him on; Abel Fromkin, with his peculiarly pallid skin made
paler in contrast to the purplish-black line where the razor had passed,
showing no hint of excitement except in the restless little black eyes
and in the work-scarred hands that rolled cigarette after cigarette,
each glowing for one brief instant, only to die down to a blackened ash
the next; Emma McChesney, half fascinated, half distrustful, listening
in spite of herself, and trying to still a small inner voice--a voice
that had never advised her ill.
“You know the ups and downs to this game,” Ed Meyers was saying. “When
I met you there in the elevator you looked like you'd lost your last
customer. You get pretty disgusted with it all, at times, like the rest
of us.”
“At that minute,” replied Emma McChesney, “I was so disgusted that
if some one had called me up on the 'phone and said, 'Hullo, Mrs.
McChesney! Will you marry me?' I'd have said: 'Yes. Who is this?'”
“There! That's just it. I don't want to be impolite, or anything like
that, Mrs. McChesney, but you're no kid. Not that you look your age--not
by ten years! But I happen to know you're teetering somewhere between
thirty-six and the next top. Ain't that right?”
“Is that a argument to put to a lady?” remonstrated Abel Fromkin.
Fat Ed Meyers waved the interruption away with a gesture of his
strangely slim hands. “This ain't an argument. It's facts. Another
ten years on the road, and where'll you be? In the discard. A man of
forty-six can keep step with the youngsters, even if it does make him
puff a bit. But a woman of forty-six--the road isn't the place for her.
She's tired. Tired in the morning; tired at night. She wants her kimono
and her afternoon snooze. You've seen some of those old girls on the
road. They've come down step by step until you spot 'em, bleached
hair, crow's-feet around the eyes, mussy shirt-waist, yellow and red
complexion, demonstrating green and lavender gelatine messes in the
grocery of some department store. I don't say that a brainy corker of
a saleswoman like you would come down like that. But you've got to
consider sickness and a lot of other things. Those six weeks last summer
with the fever at Glen Rock put a crimp in you, didn't it? You've never
been yourself since then. Haven't had a decent chance to rest up.”
“No,” said Emma McChesney wearily.
“Furthermore, now that old T. A.'s cashed in, how do you know what
young Buck's going to do? He don't know shucks about the skirt business.
They've got to take in a third party to keep it a close corporation. It
was all between old Buck, Buck junior, and old lady Buck. How can you
tell whether the new member will want a woman on the road, or not?”
A little steely light hardened the blue of Mrs. McChesney's eyes.
“We'll leave the firm of T. A. Buck out of this discussion, please.”
“Oh, very well!” Ed Meyers was unabashed. “Let's talk about Fromkin.
He don't object, do you, Abe? It's just like this. He needs your smart
head. You need his money. It'll mean a sure thing for you--a share in
a growing and substantial business. When you get your road men trained
it'll mean that you won't need to go out on the road yourself, except
for a little missionary trip now and then, maybe. No more infernal early
trains, no more bum hotel grub, no more stuffy, hot hotel rooms, no more
haughty lady buyers--gosh, I wish I had the chance!”
Emma McChesney sat very still. Two scarlet spots glowed in her cheeks.
“No one appreciates your gift of oratory more than I do, Mr. Meyers.
Your flow of language, coupled with your peculiar persuasive powers,
make a combination a statue couldn't resist. But I think it would sort
of rest me if Mr. Fromkin were to say a word, seeing that it's really
his funeral.”
Abel Fromkin started nervously, and put his dead cigarette to his lips.
“I ain't much of a talker,” he said, almost sheepishly. “Meyers, he's
got it down fine. I tell you what. I'll be in New York the twenty-first.
We can go over the books and papers and the whole business. And I like
you should know my wife. And I got a little girl--Would you believe
it, that child ain't more as a year old, and says Papa and Mama like a
actress!”
“Sure,” put in Ed Meyers, disregarding the more intimate family details.
“You two get together and fix things up in shape; then you can sign
up and have it off your mind so you can enjoy the festive Christmas
season.”
Emma McChesney had been gazing out of the window to where the
street-lamps were reflected in the ice-covered pavements. Now she spoke,
still staring out upon the wintry street.
“Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling. And I haven't got it.”
“Oh, come now, Mrs. McChesney!” objected Ed Meyers.
With a sudden, quick movement Emma McChesney turned from the window
to the little dark man who was watching her so intently. She faced him
squarely, as though utterly disregarding Ed Meyers' flattery and
banter and cajolery. The little man before her seemed to recognize the
earnestness of the moment. He leaned forward a bit attentively.