It was Fat Ed Meyers, of the Sans-Silk Skirt Company, who first said
that Mrs. Emma McChesney was the Maude Adams of the business world. It
was on the occasion of his being called to the carpet for his failure
to make Sans-silks as popular as Emma McChesney's famed Featherlooms.
He spoke in self-defense, heatedly.
"It isn't Featherlooms. It's McChesney. Her line is no better than
ours. It's her personality, not her petticoats. She's got a following
that swears by her. If Maude Adams was to open on Broadway in 'East
Lynne,' they'd flock to see her, wouldn't they? Well, Emma McChesney
could sell hoop-skirts, I'm telling you. She could sell bustles. She
could sell red-woolen mittens on Fifth Avenue!"
The title stuck.
It was late in September when Mrs. McChesney, sunburned, decidedly
under weight, but gloriously triumphant, returned from a four months'
tour of South America. Against the earnest protests of her business
partner, T. A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company, she had invaded the southern continent and left it abloom with
Featherlooms from the Plata to the Canal.
Success was no stranger to Mrs. McChesney. This last business victory
had not turned her head. But it had come perilously near to tilting
that extraordinarily well-balanced part. A certain light in her eyes,
a certain set of her chin, an added briskness of bearing, a cocky slant
of the eyebrow revealed the fact that, though Mrs. McChesney's feet
were still on the ground, she might be said to be standing on tiptoe.
When she had sailed from Brooklyn pier that June afternoon, four months
before, she had cast her ordinary load of business responsibilities on
the unaccustomed shoulders of T. A. Buck. That elegant person, although
president of the company which his father had founded, had never been
its real head. When trouble threatened in the workroom, it was to Mrs.
McChesney that the forewoman came. When an irascible customer in
Green Bay, Wisconsin, waxed impatient over the delayed shipment of a
Featherloom order, it was to Emma McChesney that his typewritten
protest was addressed. When the office machinery needed mental oiling,
when a new hand demanded to be put on silk-work instead of mercerized,
when a consignment of skirt-material turned out to be more than usually
metallic, it was in Mrs. Emma McChesney's little private office that
the tangle was unsnarled.
She walked into that little office, now, at nine o'clock of a brilliant
September morning. It was a reassuring room, bright, orderly,
workmanlike, reflecting the personality of its owner. She stood in the
center of it now and looked about her, eyes glowing, lips parted. She
raised her hands high above her head, then brought them down to her
sides again with an unconsciously dramatic gesture that expressed
triumph, peace, content, relief, accomplishment, and a great and deep
satisfaction. T. A. Buck, in the doorway, saw the gesture--and
understood.
"Not so bad to get back to it, is it?"
"Bad! It's like a drink of cool spring water after too much champagne.
In those miserable South American hotels, how I used to long for the
orderliness and quiet of this!"
She took off hat and coat. In a vase on the desk, a cluster of yellow
chrysanthemums shook their shaggy heads in welcome. Emma McChesney's
quick eye jumped to them, then to Buck, who had come in and was
surveying the scene appreciatively.
"You--of course." She indicated the flowers with a nod and a radiant
smile.
"Sorry--no. The office staff did that. There's a card of welcome, I
believe."
"Oh," said Emma McChesney. The smile was still there, but the radiance
was gone.
She seated herself at her desk. Buck took the chair near by. She
unlocked a drawer, opened it, rummaged, closed it again, unlocked
another. She patted the flat top of her desk with loving fingers.
"I can't help it," she said, with a little shamed laugh; "I'm so glad
to be back. I'll probably hug the forewoman and bite a piece out of
the first Featherloom I lay hands on. I had to use all my self-control
to keep from kissing Jake, the elevator-man, coming up."
Out of the corner of her eye, Emma McChesney had been glancing at her
handsome business partner. She had found herself doing the same thing
from the time he had met her at the dock late in the afternoon of the
day before. Those four months had wrought some subtle change. But
what? Where? She frowned a moment in thought.
Then:
"Is that a new suit, T. A.?"
"This? Lord, no! Last summer's. Put it on because of this July
hangover in September. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know"--vaguely--"I just--wondered."
There was nothing vague about T. A. Buck, however. His old air of
leisureliness was gone. His very attitude as he sat there, erect,
brisk, confident, was in direct contrast to his old, graceful indolence.
"I'd like to go over the home grounds with you this morning," he said.
"Of course, in our talk last night, we didn't cover the South American
situation thoroughly. But your letters and the orders told the story.
You carried the thing through to success. It's marvelous! But we
stay-at-homes haven't been marking time during your absence."
The puzzled frown still sat on Emma McChesney's brow. As though
thinking aloud, she said,
"Have you grown thinner, or fatter or--something?"
"Not an ounce. Weighed at the club yesterday."
He leaned forward a little, his face suddenly very sober.
"Emma, I want to tell you now that--that mother--she--I lost her just a
few weeks after you sailed."
Emma McChesney gave a little cry. She came quickly over to him, and
one hand went to his shoulder as she stood looking down at him, her
face all sympathy and contrition and sorrow.
"And you didn't write me! You didn't even tell me, last night!"
"I didn't want to distress you. I knew you were having a hard-enough
pull down there without additional worries. It happened very suddenly
while I was out on the road. I got the wire in Peoria. She died very
suddenly and quite painlessly. Her companion, Miss Tate, was with her.
She had never been herself since Dad's death."
"And you----"
"I could only do what was to be done. Then I went back on the road. I
closed up the house, and now I've leased it. Of course it's big enough
for a regiment. But we stayed on because mother was used to it. I
sold some of the furniture, but stored the things she had loved. She
left some to you."
"To me!"
"You know she used to enjoy your visits so much, partly because of the
way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that
she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to
rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you'll do with it!
It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent
it out as an apartment."
"Indeed I shall take it, and cherish it, and polish it up myself every
week--the beauty!"
She came back to her chair. They sat a moment in silence. Then Emma
McChesney spoke musingly.
"So that was it." Buck looked up. "I sensed something--different. I
didn't know. I couldn't explain it."
Buck passed a quick hand over his eyes, shook himself, sat up, erect
and brisk again, and plunged, with a directness that was as startling
as it was new in him, into the details of Middle Western business.
"Good!" exclaimed Emma McChesney.
"It's all very well to know that Featherlooms are safe in South
America. But the important thing is to know how they're going in the
corn country."
Buck stood up.
"Suppose we transfer this talk to my office. All the papers are there,
all the correspondence--all the orders, everything. You can get the
whole situation in half an hour. What's the use of talking when
figures will tell you."
He walked swiftly over to the door and stood there waiting. Emma
McChesney rose. The puzzled look was there again.
"No, that wasn't it, after all," she said.
"Eh?" said Buck. "Wasn't what?"
"Nothing," replied Emma McChesney.
"I'm wool-gathering this morning. I'm afraid it's going to take me a
day or two to get back into harness again."
"If you'd rather wait, if you think you'll be more fit to-morrow or the
day after, we'll wait. There's no real hurry. I just thought----"
But Mrs. McChesney led the way across the hall that separated her
office from her partner's. Halfway across, she stopped and surveyed
the big, bright, busy main office, with its clacking typewriters and
rustle and crackle of papers and its air of concentration.
"Why, you've run up a partition there between Miss Casey's desk and the
workroom door, haven't you?"
"Yes; it's much better that way."
"Yes, of course. And--why, where are the boys' desks? Spalding's and
Hutchinson's, and--they're all gone!" She turned in amazement.
"Break it to me! Aren't we using traveling men any more?"
Buck laughed his low, pleasant laugh.
"Oh, yes; but I thought their desks belonged somewhere else than in the
main office. They're now installed in the little room between the shop
and Healy's office. Close quarters, but better than having them out
here where they were inclined to neglect their reports in order to
shine in the eyes of that pretty new stenographer. There are one or
two other changes. I hope you'll approve of them."
"I'm sure I shall," replied Emma McChesney, a little stiffly.
In Buck's office, she settled back in her chair to watch him as he
arranged neat sheaves of papers for her inspection. Her eyes traveled
from his keen, eager face to the piles of paper and back again.
"Tell me, did you hit it off with the Ella Sweeneys and the Sadie
Harrises of the great Middle West? Is business as bad as the howlers
say it is? You said something last night about a novelty bifurcated
skirt. Was that the new designer's idea? How have the early buyers
taken to it?"
Buck crooked an elbow over his head in self-defense.
"Stop it! You make me feel like Rheims cathedral. Don't bombard until
negotiations fail."
He handed her the first sheaf of papers. But, before she began to
read: "I'll say this much. Miss Sharp, of Berg Brothers, Omaha--the
one you warned against as the human cactus--had me up for dinner.
Well, I know you don't, but it's true. Her father and I hit it off
just like that. He's a character, that old boy. Ever meet him? No?
And Miss Sharp told me something about herself that explains her
porcupine pose. That poor child was engaged to a chap who was killed
in the Spanish-American war, and she----"
"Kate Sharp!" interrupted Emma McChesney. "Why, T. A. Buck, in all her
vinegary, narrow life, that girl has never had a beau, much less----"
Buck's eyebrows came up slightly.
"Emma McChesney, you haven't developed--er--claws, have you?"
With a gasp, Emma McChesney plunged into the papers before her. For ten
minutes, the silence of the room was unbroken except for the crackling
of papers. Then Emma McChesney put down the first sheaf and looked up
at her business partner.
"Is that a fair sample?" she demanded.
"Very," answered T. A. Buck, and handed her another set.
Another ten minutes of silence. Emma McChesney reached out a hand for
still another set of papers. The pink of repressed excitement was
tinting her cheeks.
"They're--they're all like this?"
"Practically, yes."
Mrs. McChesney faced him, her eyes wide, her breath coming fast.
"T. A. Buck," she slapped the papers before her smartly with the back
of her hand, "this means you've broken our record for Middle Western
sales!"
"Yes," said T. A., quietly. "Dad would have enjoyed a morning like
this, wouldn't he?"
Emma McChesney stood up.
"Enjoyed it! He is enjoying it. Don't tell me that T. A., Senior,
just because he is no longer on earth, has failed to get the joy of
knowing that his son has realized his fondest dreams. Why, I can feel
him here in this room, I can see those bright brown eyes of his
twinkling behind his glasses. Not know it! Of course he knows it."
Buck looked down at the desk, smiling curiously.
"D'you know, I felt that way, too."
Suddenly Emma McChesney began to laugh. It was not all mirth--that
laugh. Buck waited.
"And to think that I--I kindly and patronizingly handed you a little
book full of tips on how to handle Western buyers, 'The Salesman's
Who's Who'--I, who used to think I was the witch of the West when it
came to selling! You, on your first selling-trip, have made me look
like--like a shoe-string peddler."
Buck put out a hand suddenly.
"Don't say that, Emma. I--somehow it takes away all the pleasure."
"It's true. And now that I know, it explains a lot of things that I've
been puzzling about in the last twenty-four hours."
"What kind of things?"
"The way you look and act and think. The way you carry your head. The
way you sit in a chair. The very words you use, your gestures, your
intonations. They're different."
T. A. Buck, busy with his cigar, laughed a little self-consciously.
"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "You're imagining things."
Which remark, while not a particularly happy one, certainly was not in
itself so unfortunate as to explain why Mrs. McChesney should have
turned rather suddenly and bolted into her own office across the hall
and closed the door behind her.
T. A. Buck, quite cool and unruffled, viewed her sudden departure
quizzically. Then he took his cigar from his mouth and stood eying it
a moment with more attention, perhaps, than it deserved, in spite of
its fine aroma. When he put it back between his lips and sat down at
his desk once more he was smiling ever so slightly.
Then began a new order of things in the offices of the T. A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company. Feet that once had turned quite as a
matter of course toward the door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY," now took the
direction of the door opposite--and that door bore the name of Buck.
Those four months of Mrs. McChesney's absence had put her partner to
the test. That acid test had washed away the accumulated dross of
years and revealed the precious metal beneath. T. A. Buck had proved
to be his father's son.
If Mrs. McChesney noticed that the head office had miraculously moved
across the hall, if her sharp ears marked that the many feet that once
had paused at her door now stopped at the door opposite, if she
realized that instead of, "I'd like your opinion on this, Mrs.
McChesney," she often heard the new, "I'll ask Mr. Buck," she did not
show it by word or sign.
The first of October found buyers still flocking into New York from
every State in the country. Shrewd men and women, these--bargain
hunters on a grand scale. Armed with the long spoon of business
knowledge, they came to skim the cream from factory and workroom
products set forth for their inspection.
For years, it had been Emma McChesney's quiet boast that of those whose
business brought them to the offices and showrooms of the T. A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company, the foremost insisted on dealing only
with her. She was proud of her following. She liked their loyalty.
Their preference for her was the subtlest compliment that was in their
power to pay. Ethel Morrissey, whose friendship dated back to the days
when Emma McChesney had sold Featherlooms through the Middle West, used
to say laughingly, her plump, comfortable shoulders shaking, "Emma, if
you ever give me away by telling how many years I've been buying
Featherlooms of you, I'll--I'll call down upon you the spinster's
curse."
Early Monday morning, Mrs. McChesney, coming down the hall from the
workroom, encountered Miss Ella Sweeney, of Klein & Company, Des
Moines, Iowa, stepping out of the elevator. A very skittish Miss
Sweeney, rustling, preening, conscious of her dangling black earrings
and her Robespierre collar and her beauty-patch. Emma McChesney met
this apparition with outstretched, welcoming hand.
"Ella Sweeney! Well, I'd almost given you up. You're late this fall.
Come into my office."
She led the way, not noticing that Miss Sweeney came reluctantly, her
eyes on the closed door across the way.
"Sit down," said Emma McChesney, and pulled a chair nearer her desk.
"No; wait a minute! Let me look at you. Now, Ella, don't try to tell
me that THAT dress came from Des Moines, Iowa! Do I! Why, child, it's
distinctive!"
Miss Sweeney, still standing, smiled a pleased but rather preoccupied
smile. Her eyes roved toward the door.
Emma McChesney, radiating good will and energy, went on:
"Wait till you see our new samples! You'll buy a million dollars'
worth. Just let me lead you to our new Walk-Easy bifurcated skirt. We
call it the 'one-stepper's delight.'" She put a hand on Ella Sweeney's
arm, preparatory to guiding her to the showrooms in the rear. But Miss
Sweeney's strange reluctance grew into resolve. A blush, as real as it
was unaccustomed, arose to her bepowdered cheeks.
"Is--I--that is--Mr. Buck is in, I suppose?"
"Mr. Buck? Oh, yes, he's in."
Miss Sweeney's eyes sought the closed door across the hall.
"Is that--his office?"
Emma McChesney stiffened a little. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"You have guessed it," she said crisply. "Mr. Buck's name is on the
door, and you are looking at it."
Miss Sweeney looked down, looked up, twiddled the chain about her neck.
"You want to see Mr. Buck?" asked Emma McChesney quietly.
Miss Sweeney simpered down at her glove-tips, fluttered her eyelids.
"Well--yes--I--I--you see, I bought of him this year, and when you buy
of a person, why, naturally, you----"
"Naturally; I understand."
She walked across the hall, threw open the door, and met T. A. Buck's
glance coolly.
"Mr. Buck, Miss Sweeney, of Des Moines, is here, and I'm sure you want
to see her. This way, Miss Sweeney."
Miss Sweeney, sidling, blushing, fluttering, teetered in. Emma
McChesney, just before she closed the door, saw a little spasm cross
Buck's face. It was gone so quickly, and a radiant smile sat there so
reassuringly, that she wondered if she had not been mistaken, after
all. He had advanced, hand outstretched, with:
"Miss Sweeney! It--it's wonderful to see you again! You're
looking----"
The closed door stifled the rest. Emma McChesney, in her office across
the way, stood a moment in the center of the room, her hand covering
her eyes. The hardy chrysanthemums still glowed sunnily from their
vase. The little room was very quiet except for the ticking of the
smart, leather-encased clock on the desk.
The closed door shut out factory and office sounds. And Emma McChesney
stood with one hand over her eyes. So Napoleon might have stood after
Waterloo.
After this first lesson, Mrs. McChesney did not err again. When, two
days later, Miss Sharp, of Berg Brothers, Omaha, breezed in, looking
strangely juvenile and distinctly anticipatory, Emma greeted her
smilingly and waved her toward the door opposite. Miss Sharp, the
erstwhile bristling, was strangely smooth and sleek. She glanced ever
so softly, sighed ever so flutteringly.
"Working side by side with him, seeing him day after day, how have you
been able to resist him?"
Emma McChesney was only human, after all.
"By remembering that this is a business house, not a matrimonial
parlor."
The dart found no lodging place in Miss Sharp's sleek armor. She
seemed scarcely to have heard.
"My dear," she whispered, "his eyes! And his manner! You must
be--whatchamaycallit--adamant. Is that the way you pronounce it? You
know what I mean."
"Oh, yes," replied Emma McChesney evenly, "I--know what you mean."
She told herself that she was justified in the righteous contempt which
she felt for this sort of thing. A heart-breaker! A cheap
lady-killer! Whereupon in walked Sam Bloom, of the Paris Emporium,
Duluth, one of Mrs. McChesney's stanchest admirers and a long-tried
business friend.
The usual thing: "Younger than ever, Mrs. McChesney! You're a
wonder--yes, you are! How's business? Same here. Going to have lunch
with me to-day?" Then: "I'll just run in and see Buck. Say, where's
he been keeping himself all these years? Chip off the old block, that
boy."
So he had the men, too!
It was in this frame of mind that Miss Ethel Morrissey found her on the
morning that she came into New York on her semi-annual buying-trip.
Ethel Morrissey, plump, matronly-looking, quiet, with her hair fast
graying at the sides, had nothing of the skittish Middle Western buyer
about her. She might have passed for the mother of a brood of six if
it were not for her eyes--the shrewd, twinkling, far-sighted, reckoning
eyes of the business woman. She and Emma McChesney had been friends
from the day that Ethel Morrissey had bought her first cautious bill of
Featherlooms. Her love for Emma McChesney had much of the maternal in
it. She felt a personal pride in Emma McChesney's work, her success,
her clean reputation, her life of self-denial for her son Jock. When
Ethel Morrissey was planned by her Maker, she had not been meant to be
wasted on the skirt-and-suit department of a small-town store. That
broad, gracious breast had been planned as a resting-place for heads in
need of comfort. Those plump, firm arms were meant to enfold the weak
and distressed. Those capable hands should have smoothed troubled
heads and patted plump cheeks, instead of wasting their gifts in
folding piles of petticoats and deftly twitching a plait or a tuck into
place. She was playing Rosalind in buskins when she should have been
cast for the Nurse.
She entered Emma McChesney's office, now, in her quiet blue suit and
her neat hat, and she looked very sane and cheerful and rosy-cheeked
and dependable. At least, so Emma McChesney thought, as she kissed
her, while the plump arms held her close.
Ethel Morrissey, the hugging process completed, held her off and eyed
her.
"Well, Emma McChesney, flourish your Featherlooms for me. I want to
buy and get it over, so we can talk."
"Are you sure that you want to buy of me?" asked Emma McChesney, a
little wearily.
"What's the joke?"
"I'm not joking. I thought that perhaps you might prefer to see Mr.
Buck this trip."
Ethel Morrissey placed one forefinger under Emma McChesney's chin and
turned that lady's face toward her and gazed at her long and
thoughtfully--the most trying test of courage in the world, that, to
one whose eyes fear meeting yours. Emma McChesney, bravest of women,
tried to withstand it, and failed. The next instant her head lay on
Ethel Morrissey's broad breast, her hands were clutching the plump
shoulders, her cheek was being patted soothingly by the kind hands.
"Now, now--what is it, dear? Tell Ethel. Yes; I do know, but tell me,
anyway. It'll do you good."
And Emma McChesney told her. When she had finished:
"You bathe your eyes, Emma, and put on your hat and we'll eat. Oh, yes,
you will. A cup of tea, anyway. Isn't there some little cool fool
place where I can be comfortable on a hot day like this--where we can
talk comfortably? I've got at least an hour's conversation in me."
With the first sip of her first cup of tea, Ethel Morrissey began to
unload that burden of conversation.
"Emma, this is the best thing that could have happened to you. Oh, yes,
it is. The queer thing about it is that it didn't happen sooner. It
was bound to come. You know, Emma, the Lord lets a woman climb just so
high up the mountain of success. And then, when she gets too cocky,
when she begins to measure her wits and brain and strength against that
of men, and finds herself superior, he just taps her smartly on the
head and shins, so that she stumbles, falls, and rolls down a few miles
on the road she has traveled so painfully. He does it just as a gentle
reminder to her that she's only a woman, after all. Oh, I know all
about this feminist talk. But this thing's been proven. Look at what
happened to--to Joan of Arc, and Becky Sharp, and Mary Queen of Scots,
and--yes, I have been spending my evenings reading. Now, stop laughing
at your old Ethel, Emma McChesney!"
"You meant me to laugh, dear old thing. I don't feel much like it,
though. I don't see why I should be reminded of my lowly state.
Heaven knows I haven't been so terrifically pleased with myself! Of
course, that South American trip was--well, gratifying. But I earned
it. For ten years I lived with head in a sample-trunk, didn't I? I
worked hard enough to win the love of all these Westerners. It wasn't
all walking dreamily down Main Street, strewing Featherlooms along my
path."
Ethel Morrissey stirred her second cup of tea, sipped, stirred, smiled,
then reached over and patted Emma McChesney's hand.
"Emma, I'm a wise old party, and I can see that it isn't all pique with
you. It's something else--something deeper. Oh, yes, it is! Now let
me tell you what happened when T. A. Buck invaded your old-time
territory. I was busy up in my department the morning he came in. I
had my head in a rack of coats, and a henny customer waiting. But I
sensed something stirring, and I stuck my head out of the coat-rack in
which I was fumbling. The department was aflutter like a poultry-yard.
Every woman in it, from the little new Swede stock-girl to Gladys
Hemingway, who is only working to wear out her old clothes, was
standing with her face toward the elevator, and on her face a look that
would make the ordinary door-mat marked 'Welcome' seem like an insult.
I kind of smoothed my back hair, because I knew that only one thing
could bring that look into a woman's face. And down the aisle came a
tall, slim, distinguished-looking, wonderfully tailored,
chamois-gloved, walking-sticked Fifth Avenue person with EYES! Of
course, I knew. But the other girls didn't. They just sort of fell
back at his approach, smitten. He didn't even raise an eyebrow to do
it. Now, Emma, I'm not exaggerating. I know what effect he had on me
and my girls, and, for that matter, every other man or woman in the
store. Why, he was a dream realized to most of 'em. These shrewd,
clever buyer-girls know plenty of men--business men of the slap-bang,
horn-blowing, bluff, good-natured, hello-kid kind--the kind that takes
you out to dinner and blows cigar smoke in your face. Along comes this
chap, elegant, well dressed and not even conscious of it, polished,
suave, smooth, low-voiced, well bred. Why, when he spoke to a girl, it
was the subtlest kind of flattery. Can you see little Sadie Harris, of
Duluth, drawing a mental comparison between Sam Bloom, the
store-manager, and this fascinating devil--Sam, red-faced, loud voiced,
shirt-sleeving it around the sample room, his hat pushed 'way back on
his head, chewing his cigar like mad, and wild-eyed for fear he's
buying wrong? Why, child, in our town, nobody carries a cane except
the Elks when they have their annual parade, and old man Schwenkel,
who's lame. And yet we all accepted that yellow walking-stick of
Buck's. It belonged to him. There isn't a skirt-buyer in the Middle
West that doesn't dream of him all night and push Featherlooms in the
store all day. Emma, I'm old and fat and fifty, but when I had dinner
with him at the Manitoba House that evening, I caught myself making
eyes at him, knowing that every woman in the dining-room would have
given her front teeth to be where I was."
After which extensive period, Ethel Morrissey helped herself to her
third cup of tea. Emma McChesney relaxed a little and laughed a
tremulous little laugh.
"Oh, well, I suppose I must not hope to combat such formidable rivals
as walking-sticks, chamois gloves, and EYES. My business arguments are
futile compared to those."
Ethel Morrissey delivered herself of a last shot.
"You're wrong, Emma. Those things helped him, but they didn't sell his
line. He sold Featherlooms out of salesmanship, and because he sounded
convincing and sincere and businesslike--and he had the samples. It
wasn't all bunk. It was three-quarters business. Those two make an
invincible combination."
An hour later, Ethel Morrissey was shrewdly selecting her winter line
of Featherlooms from the stock in the showrooms of the T. A. Buck
Company. They went about their business transaction, these two, with
the cool abruptness of men, speaking little, and then only of prices,
discounts, dating, shipping. Their luncheon conversation of an hour
before seemed an impossibility.
"You'll have dinner with me to-night?" Emma asked. "Up at my
apartment, all cozy?"
"Not to-night, dearie. I'll be in bed by eight. I'm not the girl I
used to be. Time was when a New York buying-trip was a vacation. Now
it's a chore."
She took Emma McChesney's hand and patted it.
"If you've got something real nice for dinner, though, and feel like
company, why don't you ask--somebody else that's lonesome."
After which, Ethel Morrissey laughed her wickedest and waved a sudden
good-by with a last word about seeing her to-morrow.
Emma McChesney, her color high, entered her office. It was five
o'clock. She cleared her desk in half an hour, breathed a sigh of
weariness, reached for hat and jacket, donned them, and, turning out
her lights, closed her door behind her for the day. At that same
instant, T. A. Buck slammed his own door and walked briskly down the
hall. They met at the elevator.
They descended in silence. The street gained, they paused uncertainly.
"Won't you stay down and have dinner with me to-night, Emma?"
"Thanks so much, T. A. Not to-night."
"I'm--sorry."
"Good night."
"Good night."
She turned away. He stood there, in the busy street, looking
irresolutely and not at all eagerly in the direction of his club,
perhaps, or his hotel, or whatever shelter he sought after business
hours. Something in his attitude--the loneliness of it, the
uncertainty, the indecision--smote Emma McChesney with a great pang.
She came swiftly back.
"I wish you'd come home to dinner with me. I don't know what Annie'll
give us. Probably bread pudding. She does, when she's left to her own
devices. But I--I wish you would." She looked up at him almost shyly.
T. A. Buck took Emma McChesney's arm in a rather unnecessarily firm
grip and propelled her, surprised and protesting, in the direction of
the nearest vacant taxi.
"But, T. A.! This is idiotic! Why take a cab to go home from the
office on a--a week day?"
"In with you! Besides, I never have a chance to take one from the
office on Sunday, do I? Does Annie always cook enough for two?"
Apparently Annie did. Annie was something of a witch, in her way. She
whisked about, wrought certain changes, did things with asparagus and
mayonnaise, lighted the rose-shaded table-candles. No one noticed that
dinner was twenty minutes late.
Together they admired the great mahogany buffet that Emma had
miraculously found space for in the little dining-room.
"It glows like a great, deep ruby, doesn't it?" she said proudly. "You
should see Annie circle around it with the carpet-sweeper. She knows
one bump would be followed by instant death."
Looking back on it, afterward, they remembered that the dinner was a
very silent one. They did not notice their wordlessness at the time.
Once, when the chops came on, Buck said absently,
"Oh, I had those for l----" Then he stopped abruptly.
Emma McChesney smiled.
"Your mother trained you well," she said.
The October night had grown cool. Annie had lighted a wood fire in the
living-room.
"That was what attracted me to this apartment in the first place," Mrs.
McChesney said, as they left the dining-room. "A fireplace--a
practical, real, wood-burning fireplace in a New York apartment! I'd
have signed the lease if the plaster had been falling in chunks and the
bathtub had been zinc."
"That's because fireplaces mean home--in our minds," said Buck.
He sat looking into the heart of the glow. There fell another of those
comfortable silences.
"T. A., I--I want to tell you that I know I've been acting the cat ever
since I got home from South America and found that you had taken
charge. You see, you had spoiled me. The thing that has happened to
me is the thing that always happens to those who assume to be
dictators. I just want you to know, now, that I'm glad and proud and
happy because you have come into your own. It hurt me just at first.
That was the pride of me. I'm quite over that now. You're not only
president of the T. A. Buck Company in name. You're its actual head.
And that's as it should be. Long live the King!"
Buck sat silent a moment. Then,
"I had to do it, Emma." She looked up. "You have a wonderful brain,"
said Buck then, and the two utterances seemed connected in his mind.
They seemed to bring no great satisfaction to the woman to whom he
addressed them, however. She thanked him dryly, as women do when their
brain is dragged into an intimate conversation.
"But," said Buck, and suddenly stood up, looking at her very intently,
"it isn't for your mind that I love you this minute. I love you for
your eyes, Emma, and for your mouth--you have the tenderest, most
womanly-sweet mouth in the world--and for your hair, and the way your
chin curves. I love you for your throat-line, and for the way you walk
and talk and sit, for the way you look at me, and for the way you don't
look at me."
He reached down and gathered Emma McChesney, the alert, the aggressive,
the capable, into his arms, quite as men gather the clingingest kind of
woman. "And now suppose you tell me just why and how you love me."
And Emma McChesney told him.
When, at last, he was leaving,
"Don't you think," asked Emma McChesney, her hands on his shoulders,
"that you overdid the fascination thing just the least leetle bit there
on the road?"
"Well, but you told me to entertain them, didn't you?"
"Yes," reluctantly; "but I didn't tell you to consecrate your life to
'em. The ordinary fat, middle-aged, every-day traveling man will never
be able to sell Featherlooms in the Middle West again. They won't have
'em. They'll never be satisfied with anything less than John Drew
after this."
"Emma McChesney, you're not marrying me because a lot of overdressed,
giggling, skittish old girls have taken a fancy to make eyes at me, are
you!"
Emma McChesney stood up very straight and tall.
"I'm marrying you, T. A., because you are a great, big, fine,
upstanding, tender, wonderful----"
"Oh, well, then that's all right," broke in Buck, a little tremulously.
Emma McChesney's face grew serious.
"But promise me one thing, T. A. Promise me that when you come home
for dinner at night, you'll never say, 'Good heavens, I had that for
lunch!'"