Illinois Association of Druggists," and, underneath that, "On business
connected with closer commercial relations of France and the United
States." As he handed the slip of paper back to the young soldier he
thought, "I might about as well get a rubber stamp for that last, and
save writing it over so often."
The uniformed messenger limped out of the room. "Oh Lord! and a wooden
leg, along with only one eye and one arm," thought Mr. Hale, wincing at
the too familiar sound of the halting gait. He thrust his hands deep
into his pockets and stood meditatively looking down at his own
vigorous, well-clad legs.
The soldier came back and motioned the visitor to follow him. They went
along a narrow corridor with occasional steps up and other steps down,
with large old windows looking out through time-dimmed panes upon a
stone-paved court with an old gray stone fountain. The American shook
his head. "Never anything new! Always cutting their clothes out of their
grand-father's left-overs and sewing them up by hand; that's it,
everything hand-made!"
He was ushered into an office where a man of about his own age, with a
black beard, streaked with white, rose up and came towards him with
outstretched hand.
"Ninth to-day," noted the American mentally. He amused himself by
keeping statistics on the fabulous amount of handshaking accomplished in
French business life.
Then he explained his presence. Partly because he accounted it a crime
to take longer than necessary to state your business, and partly because
he had stated it so many times, he packed a succinct account of himself
into comparatively few phrases.
"Like almost everybody else in America, Monsieur Portier, I want to help
make up to France for the way she's been having the rough end of all
this war. But everybody does best at his own sort of help; and I didn't
come over for reconstructing villages or taking care of refugees. That
sort of work's got to be done, of course, but there are a lot of our own
folks at that already. Anyhow, not knowing your language, or your folks,
I'd make a poor job of trying to fix up their personal lives. That's not
my specialty. But I _have_ a specialty, and that's the American toilet
preparations business. And it occurred to me out there in Evanston that
perhaps getting American business along my line joined up closer with
French business would be as good a turn as I could do for France. After
all, though it does give you the horrors to see the poor boys with their
legs and arms shot off, that doesn't last but one generation. But
_business_ now ... all the future is there!" His eye kindled. He had
evidently pronounced his _credo_. The attentive Frenchman behind the
desk nodded, acquiescing in carefully accurate English: "Precisely, Mr.
Hale. You had the very same idea which induced my Government to organize
this committee of which I am secretary. I am more than at your
disposition."
"I know it," said the American without further expression of gratitude
than this recognition, "and that's why I'm here. I've got to a place
where I need some help. It's this way. I've done a lot of straight
business, I mean paying business. And I've managed that all right. I've
got the rails laid for our sending over drug specialties you don't have
here and for shipping to the States the toilet preparations specialties
I find here. But now I'm here I want to do _more_ than just regular
business. Now that I _see_ your country and take in what the war's been,
and think what you've been up against ... well, Monsieur Portier, I tell
you I want to _do_ something for France!"
He said this with a simple, heartfelt sincerity which moved the
Frenchman to lean from his chair and give him a silent handshake of
appreciation. The American forgot to add this to his total for the day,
going on earnestly with his story: "And so, I keep my eyes open all the
time for little good turns I can do. I don't mean charity ... honestly,
I think that does about as much harm as good, though of course we have
to go through the motions in a time like this. I mean business good
turns, such as I'd like to have anybody do me, look at my concern with a
fresh eye and tell me how I could make it better, or else tell me where
I could find a bigger market. You understand? Like that. Now I've been
doing business with a big chemical factory out in the country near
Paris. The nearest place to it, for me, is Versailles ... maybe you
happen to know Versailles?"
The Frenchman nodded gravely. Yes, he had a married sister living in
Versailles. "Well, there's a little drug-store out there, one of these
peaceful, sleepy-looking, home-and-mother French drug-stores, with a big
cat dozing in the window, and somebody in a white apron putting up pills
behind the counter, and so far as anybody from _my_ part of the world
can see, not enough business doing from one week's end to another, to
buy a postage-stamp."
The Frenchman laughed. "Oh, it's a very good business in France being a
_pharmacien_."
"That's what everybody tells me, and that's what gets me. _One_ of the
things that gets me! In _our_ country when there is any business being
done you hear the wheels going 'round.' I can't get used to this smooth
European way of doing it and not letting on. Well, my main interest in
life being the toilet preparations business I hardly ever go by one
without stopping in. You never know when you're going to run onto
something worthwhile. Well, out there in Versailles, I certainly did. I
ran onto a genius. Yes, sir, that's not too much to say; a genius! Any
man who can make a cold cream like that ..."
He interrupted himself to ask: "You don't happen to be up on cold cream?
No? It's a pity, because you can't appreciate what that man is doing. By
George, I never saw anything like it, and I've dealt in cold creams for
thirty years! It's got anything in America beaten a mile! The two great
faults of cold cream, you see, are being greasy and being crumbly. This
isn't either. And it keeps! He showed me some he'd had for four years in
a pot, with just a flat earthenware lid laid on top, and you wouldn't
believe it, Monsieur Portier, but it hadn't changed an atom, not an
_atom_! And the fineness of it! The least little pinch between your
fingers, and it just sinks right into your pores before your eyes! It's
_like_ cream, thick, rich cream off a three-days-set pan of milk, and
yet it don't run! And the perfume! Monsieur Portier, I give you my word
for it, and I know what I'm talking about, the perfume that little old
druggist out in his dinky little old shop has got into his cold cream is
the only _refined_ cold cream perfume I ever smelled! It makes all the
others smell like a third-rate actress. It's got a ... it's got a ..."
He hesitated, searching for exactly the right word and brought it out
with enthusiasm, "it's got a _clean_ smell, if you get me, like a nice
girl after a bath! I've got daughters of my own," he added in whimsical
justification of his metaphor.
The Frenchman had been watching him with appreciative eyes. "Mr. Hale, I
see that, like so many of your countrymen, you are a real artist in your
line, and you have the artist's flavor."
The American was disconcerted by this characterization. "Who? Me? I know
a good thing when I see it, that's all, and that's _business_, that's
not art."
The Frenchman smiled with the amused, respectful sympathy which men of
his race so often feel for their American contemporaries. "Well, and
what did you do when you discovered this miraculous cold cream?"
Mr. Hale laughed, a young, vigorous laugh which made his gray hair seem
a paradox. "Well, you've guessed it. I threw a fit, first of all. I was
taken off my feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if I acted like a cat
over catnip. So I decided I'd better go away and cool off before I did
anything rash. I bought a couple of pots and went back to the hotel to
sleep on it. That's something I always try to do, Monsieur Portier,
before I let myself in for a _big_ proposition; and I meant this to be
big, all right. I wanted to see if that cold cream seemed as good after
twenty-four hours as it did at first. Well, it did, and _then_ some! So
I got the Swede porter at my hotel, who can talk some English, to go
back with me. And I started in to ask the old fellow all about it.
Right there I struck a difference. After the way I'd gone on, an
American, when I went back the next day, would have been wondering what
I was trying to take away from him; but my old friend was just as
pleased as a mother is when you tell her she's got a pretty baby. In
fact he reminded me of that, the way he talked. So glad to tell me all
about it. I got the impression before he got through that it was a
member of the family. I don't mean, of course, that he told me how he
made it. I wouldn't have let him if he'd started to. But he told me
everything else. To begin with, he told me that his folks have been
pharmacists right there for more than a hundred years! _A hundred years_
in that little shop in that little street in that little town! I tell
you, Monsieur Portier, I never can get used to the way your people stay
put."
The Frenchman looked grave. "Perhaps too much so, Mr. Hale."
"Anyhow, he said they had the recipe, the first recipe for that cold
cream in his great-grandfather's handwriting. He said there'd been some
talk always in the family about its having come from his
great-grandfather's father, who had sold toilet specialties to Marie
Antoinette, the queen, you know. He said he himself didn't take much
stock in that story because everybody in France, more or less, claimed
to have a great-grandfather who'd had dealings with Marie Antoinette,
but I just thought to myself what a good smart advertisement agency
could do with that item ... you could see it on every billboard between
New York and San Francisco ... 'Marie Antoinette's own cold cream,
rediscovered recipe.' If you've been in America, you can imagine."
"Yes," said the Frenchman, "I can imagine."
"He said, of course, they had not stuck absolutely to that recipe just
as it stood. His grandfather had made some changes, experimented with it
all his life, and his father had changed the proportions, just little
shadings, with years in between, to think them over and to be sure they
were right. But he himself had changed it the most, because modern
chemistry had let him substitute for one ingredient that had never been
just right, something else that exactly filled the bill. Do you know,
Monsieur Portier, as he stood there telling me how, for a hundred years,
three generations of his folks had concentrated on that, I said to
myself: 'By George, there's a _reason_! No wonder it's better than any
of our get-there-quick products. They've certainly got us beat.'"
To this handsome tribute the Frenchman replied dubiously: "It is very
generous, Mr. Hale, to say such a thing. But since taking over the work
on this committee I have had periods of great depression when it has
seemed to me that no power on earth, not even American energy from which
I hope a great deal, could ever move our trades-people from their
century-old habits of business inertia and lack of enterprise."
"Well, I understand that, too," agreed the American sympathetically; "I
certainly do, because that's just what I've come to see you about. We
went on with our confab, my old friend and I, and he showed me his books
to show how the sale of the cold cream had grown since they began on it.
It seems they've had quite a lot of their customers for sixty or seventy
years. Not Versailles people at all, you know, people from all over,
people who had tried it once and never would have another, and I don't
blame them. He's got quite a lot of aristocrats on his list. He showed
me names on his account book that made it look like a history of France.
Well, the sum-total of it came to this. His grandfather sold on an
average three hundred pots a year, which was good for those days; in his
father's time it went up, so he said, astonishingly, to fifteen hundred
pots a year; but he had done even better, and in his little
factory-laboratory that he'd had to enlarge, he made four thousand pots
a year and sold them all. 'More than _ten times_ what his grandfather
had done.'"
In repeating these statistics he reproduced with an ironical exactness
the tone of self-congratulation of the pharmacist. The man before him
fell into the little trap, remarking innocently: "That is indeed making
a remarkable enlargement."
The American sat up straight in his chair so suddenly that he gave the
effect of having leaped to his feet. "_Remarkable!_ Why, it was all I
could do to keep from sitting right down and crying. Remarkable! Why,
with the article he has there, the family ought to have been
millionaires a generation ago! Anybody with a particle of business
imagination would have put it on the bathroom shelf of every family in
Christendom." He went on, more quietly: "I said something of that to the
old fellow and I tried, through that hotel porter, to make him
understand what my proposition was, to take up his cold cream. To take
it up strong. I outlined my plan for the advertising campaign, I told
him some of the figures of our toilet preparations market, and I told
him I'd guarantee him in less than six months' time to have a demand for
fifteen hundred gross pots and by the end of the first year it would
pass the four thousand gross mark. I told him just how I could get him
credit on the easiest terms for the enlargement of his plant ... one of
our Merchants' Associations is prepared to give credit to French and
Belgian firms, and I was just starting in to explain how it wouldn't be
any risk for him at all, and absolute certain big profits for him and
his son ... he's got a son at the front now who's passed his
pharmacist's examination and is ready to go on with his father's
business...."
He stopped short for a moment, staring into space as though recalling
the scene.
"Well," prompted the French listener, "what did he say?"
"He said, as near as I could make out from what the hotel porter told
me, he said _he didn't want to_," replied the American, in the carefully
restrained voice of one who recounts an enormity so patent that there is
no need for emphasis to bring out its monstrousness. "Yes, from what
the hotel porter said, I took it that he said he didn't want to! It
wasn't that he was afraid of losing money, or that he suspected a skin
deal ... at least that was what he _said_ ... nor that he doubted a
single thing I said, it was just that he guessed he didn't feel like it
to-day, thank you."
He reached for his hat and stood up. "There, Monsieur Portier, there's
where I am. I started to argue, of course. I tried to get at what in
hell was the matter anyhow. But I soon saw I was up against something
too big for that hotel porter to manage. So I came to see if you would
go back with me, or send somebody who's got good sense and business
experience, and help me make that proposition all over again. It must be
of course that that hotel porter got the thing all balled up, the way he
put it. I ought to have known better than to trust it to a Swede,
anyhow."
Monsieur Portier looked at the calendar on his desk. "Yes, I shall be
glad to go out with you. Let me see, to-day is Monday, next Thursday
afternoon."
The visitor's face dropped. "Not till _Thursday_!" he cried, as though
that date were in the next century. "I was hoping you could go right
back with me now. I've got a taxi waiting downstairs."
The Frenchman's face wore for an instant a look of consternation which
changed into a rather curious, strained expression. Then he said with
the accent of heroism, laughing a little, "Yes, Mr. Hale, there is
really no valid reason for my not going with you now, _at this
instant_, and I will!" He seemed to regard the resolution as an
extraordinary one, adding whimsically, as he put on his overcoat, "Ah,
you can never, never understand, my dear Mr. Hale, the awful effort of
will it costs a European to do something the moment it is suggested
instead of putting it off till the next week."
"No," said the American heartily, "that's something I never will
understand."
* * * * *
As they approached the shining windows of the pharmacy, where as a
matter of fact a big, beautifully cared-for cat was sleeping in the sun,
the Frenchman exclaimed: "Oh, it's Monsieur Requine's pharmacy! I've
known him for years, ever since my sister came to live in Versailles. I
didn't think it could be he because you spoke of him always as old."
"Isn't he?" asked the American.
"Fifty-two. Is that old? I hope not."
"Fifty-two! I'm fifty-four myself! That's one on me!"
"What made you think him old? His hair isn't white. He hasn't any
wrinkles. Really, I'm curious to know."
The American stopped on the curbstone, pondering, his alert mind
interested by the little problem in self-analysis. "What _did_ make me,
I wonder?" He glanced in through the open door and said: "Well, just
look at him as he stands there, his hands clasped over his stomach,--you
can see for yourself. It's a kind of settled-down-to-stay look that I'm
not used to seeing unless a man is so old that he can't move on any
more."
The Frenchman looked at the druggist and then at the man beside him.
"Yes, I see what you mean," he admitted. He said it with a sigh.
They entered the shop. The druggist came forward with a smile, and shook
hands heartily with them both. "Eleven," noted the American mentally.
"Monsieur Requine," said the French visitor, "can't we go through into
your salon, or perhaps out into your garden for a little talk?" Mr.
Requine glowed with hospitality. "Yes, yes, delighted. I'll just ask my
wife to step here to mind the shop."
"_His wife!_" asked the American, "to wait on customers?"
A well-dressed, tall, full-bosomed woman of forty-odd, with elaborately
dressed black hair and a much powdered, intelligent face came in answer
to the call and installed herself back of the counter with her knitting.
"Yes, and she knows as much about the business end as he does, you may
be sure," said the Frenchman as they went through a door at the back of
the shop, emerging, not, as the American expected, into a storeroom, but
into an attractive parlor. They passed through the salon, into an
exquisitely kept little dining-room and out into a walled garden which
made the American pass his hand over his eyes and look again. While
their host was installing them at the little round green iron table
under a trellis overgrown by a magnificent grapevine, Mr. Hale's eyes
traveled from one point to another of the small paradise before him. It
could not have been more than a hundred feet wide and three hundred
long, but like a fabled spot in the "Arabian Nights" it shone
resplendent with incredible riches. The stone walls, ten feet high, were
carpeted to the top with a mantle of glistening green leaves, among
which hung peaches and pears, glorious to the view, rank on rank, such
fruit as the American had never thought could exist. On each side of the
graveled path down the center were flowering plants, like great bouquets
each. Back of them were more fruit-trees, none more than eight feet
tall, bearing each a dozen or more amazing apples, as brightly colored
as the flowers. Around the trees were vegetables, carrots, salads,
cabbages, every specimen as floridly full-leafed and perfect as the
incredible pictures Mr. Hale had seen, and disbelieved in, on the front
of seed catalogues.
From the other end of the garden, drenched in sunshine, came the humming
of bees. Above their heads a climbing rose covering the end of the house
sent down a clear, delicate perfume from its hundred flowers.
The American's eyes came back from their inspection of all this and
rested with a new expression on his rather snuffy, rather stout and
undistinguished host. "Will you please tell Monsieur Requine from me,"
he said to his companion, "that I never saw such a garden in my life?"
Monsieur Requine waved the tribute away with sincere humility. "Oh, it's
nothing compared to those all about me. I can't give it the time I would
like to. Later on, when I am retired, and my son has the business ..."
his gesture seemed to indicate wider horizons of horticultural
excellence before which the American's imagination recoiled breathless.
The straw-colored liqueur had been poured out into the glasses,
which were, so Mr. Hale noticed, of extremely fine and delicate
workmanship ... "and his wife tending shop!" The two Frenchmen drank
with ceremonious bowings and murmured salutations. Mr. Hale consumed his
fiery draught silently but with a not ungraceful self-possession. He was
at his ease with all kinds of ways of taking a drink.
Then, drawing a long breath, taking off his hat and putting his elbows
on the table, he began to expound and the French official with him to
translate. The bees hummed a queer, unsuitable accompaniment to his
resonant, forceful staccato.
He talked a long time. The patches of sunlight which fell through the
vines over their heads had shifted their places perceptibly when he
stopped, his head high, his gray eagle's eyes flashing.
The elderly Frenchman opposite him had listened intently, his fat,
wrinkled hands crossed on his waistcoat, an expression of thoughtful
consideration on his broad face and in his small, very intelligent brown
eyes. When the American finished speaking, he bent his head courteously
and said: "Mr. Hale, you have spoken with great eloquence. But you have
forgotten to touch on one matter, and that is the reason for my doing
all that you outline so enthusiastically. Why _should_ I?" It was
evidently a genuine and not a rhetorical question, for he paused for a
reply, awaiting it with sincere curiosity on his face. He received none,
however, the fluent American being totally at a loss. "Why _should_
you?" he said blankly. "I don't believe I understand you." The two
exchanged a long puzzled look across the little table, centuries and
worlds apart.
"Why, I mean," Monsieur Requine went on finally, "I don't see any
possible reason for embarking in such a terrifyingly vast enterprise as
you outline; no reason for, and many against. To speak of nothing else,
I am absolutely, morally certain that my cold cream" (he spoke of it
with respect and affection) "would immediately deteriorate if it were
manufactured on such an inhuman scale of immensity as you plan, with
factories here and factories there, run by mercenary superintendents who
had no personal interest in its excellence, with miscellaneous workmen
picked up out of the street haphazard. Why, Mr. Hale, you have no idea
of the difficulties I have, as it is, to get and train and keep serious,
conscientious work-people. I should be lost without the little nucleus
of old helpers who have been with our family for two generations and who
set the tone of our small factory. They have the reputation and fine
quality of our cold cream at heart as much as we of the family. They
help us in the selection of the newer, younger workers whom we need to
fill the ranks, they help us to train them in the traditions and methods
of our work, and with patience teach them, one by one, year by year, the
innumerable little fine secrets of manipulation which have been worked
out since my grandfather began the manufacture there in that room back
of you in 1836. Our recipe is much of course, it is all important; but
it is not all. Oh no, Mr. Hale, it is not all. We put into our cold
cream beside the recipe, patience, conscience, and pride, and that
deftness of hand that only comes after years of training. You cannot buy
those qualities on the market, not for any price. To think of my recipe
put into the hands of money-making factory superintendents and a rabble
horde of riffraff workmen!... Mr. Hale, you must excuse me for saying
that I am astonished at your proposing it, you who have shown by your
generous appreciation of its qualities that you are so worthy a member
of our guild."
He paused, stirred from his usual equable calm and waited for an answer.
But he still received none. The American was staring at him across an
unfathomable chasm of differences.