Front offices resemble back kitchens in this: they have always an ear
at the keyhole, an eye at the crack, a nose in the air. But
between the ordinary front office and the front office of the T. A.
Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company there was a difference. The
employees at Buck's--from Emil, the errand boy, to old Pop Henderson,
who had started as errand boy himself twenty-five years
before--possessed the quality of loyalty. They were loyal to the
memory of old man Buck, because they had loved and respected him. They
were loyal to Mrs. Emma McChesney, because she was Mrs. Emma McChesney
(which amounts to the same reason). They were loyal to T. A. Buck,
because he was his father's son.
For three weeks the front office had been bewildered. From
bewilderment it passed to worry. A worried, bewildered front office is
not an efficient front office. Ever since Mrs. McChesney had come off
the road, at the death of old T. A. Buck, to assume the secretaryship
of the company which she had served faithfully for ten years, she had
set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker.
Every day of her life she figuratively pressed the electric button that
set the wheels to whirring. At nine A.M., sharp, she appeared, erect,
brisk, alert, vibrating energy. Usually, the office staff had not yet
swung into its gait. In a desultory way, it had been getting into its
sateen sleevelets, adjusting its eye-shades, uncovering its typewriter,
opening its ledgers, bringing out its files. Then, down the hall, would
come the sound of a firm, light, buoyant step. An electric thrill
would pass through the front office. Then the sunny, sincere, "Good
morning!"
"'Morning, Mrs. McChesney!" the front office would chorus back.
The day had begun for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.
Hortense, the blond stenographer (engaged to the shipping-clerk),
noticed it first. The psychology of that is interesting. Hortense knew
that by nine-thirty Mrs. McChesney's desk would be clear and that the
buzzer would summon her. Hortense didn't mind taking dictation from T.
A. Buck, though his method was hesitating and jerky, and he was likely
to employ quite casually a baffling and unaccustomed word, over which
Hortense's scampering pencil would pause, struggle desperately, then
race on. Hortense often was in for a quick, furtive session with her
pocket-dictionary after one of T. A.'s periods. But with Mrs.
McChesney, dictation was a joy. She knew what she wanted to say and
she always said it. The words she used were short, clean-cut,
meaningful Anglo-Saxon words. She never used received when she could
use got. Hers was the rapid-fire-gun method, each word sharp, well
timed, efficient.
Imagine, then, Hortense staring wide-eyed and puzzled at a floundering,
hesitating, absent-minded Mrs. McChesney--a Mrs. McChesney strangely
starry as to eyes, strangely dreamy as to mood, decidedly deficient as
to dictation. Imagine a Hortense with pencil poised in air a full five
minutes, waiting until Mrs. McChesney should come to herself with a
start, frown, smile vaguely, pass a hand over her eyes, and say, "Let
me see--where was I?"
"'And we find, on referring to your order, that the goods you
mention----'" Hortense would prompt patiently.
"Oh, yes, of course," with an effort. Hortense was beginning to grow
alarmed.
In T. A. Buck's office, just across the hall, the change was quite as
noticeable, but in another way. His leisurely drawl was gone. His
deliberate manner was replaced by a brisk, quick-thinking,
quick-speaking one. His words were brief and to the point. He seemed
to be riding on the crest of an excitement-wave. And, as he dictated,
he smiled.
Hortense stood it for a week. Then she unburdened herself to Miss
Kelly, the assistant bookkeeper. Miss Kelly evinced no surprise at her
disclosures.
"I was just talking about it to Pop yesterday. She acts worried,
doesn't she? And yet, not exactly worried, either. Do you suppose it
can be that son of hers--what's his name? Jock."
Hortense shook her head.
"No; he's all right. She had a letter from him yesterday. He's got a
grand position in Chicago, and he's going to marry that girl he was so
stuck on here. And it isn't that, either, because Mrs. McChesney likes
her. I can tell by the way she talks about her. I ought to know.
Look how Henry's ma acted toward me when we were first engaged!"
The front office buzzed with it. It crept into the workroom--into the
shipping-room. It penetrated the frowsy head of Jake, the
elevator-man. As the days went on and the tempo of the front office
slackened with that of the two bright little inner offices, only one
member of the whole staff remained unmoved, incurious, taciturn. Pop
Henderson listened, one scant old eyebrow raised knowingly, a whimsical
half-smile screwing up his wrinkled face.
At the end of three weeks, Hortense, with that display of temperament
so often encountered in young ladies of her profession, announced in
desperation that, if this thing kept on, she was going to forget
herself and jeopardize her position by demanding to know outright what
the trouble was.
From the direction of Pop Henderson's inky retreat, there came the
sound of a dry chuckle. Pop Henderson had been chuckling in just that
way for three weeks, now. It was getting on the nerves of his
colleagues.
"If you ever spring the joke that's kept you giggling for a month,"
snapped Hortense, "it'll break up the office."
Pop Henderson removed his eye-shade very deliberately, passed his thin,
cramped old hand over his scant gray locks to his bald spot, climbed
down stiffly from his stool, ambled to the center of the room, and,
head cocked like a knowing old brown sparrow, regarded the pert
Hortense over his spectacles and under his spectacles and, finally,
through his spectacles.
"Young folks now 'days," began Pop Henderson dryly, "are so darned cute
and knowin' that when an old fellow cuts in ahead of 'em for once, he
likes to hug the joke to himself a while before he springs it." There
was no acid in his tone. He was beaming very benignantly down upon the
little blond stenographer. "You say that Mrs. Mack is
absent-minded-like and dreamy, and that young T. A. acts like he'd
swallowed an electric battery. Well, when it comes to that, I've seen
you many a time, when you didn't know any one was lookin', just sitting
there at your typewriter, with your hands kind of poised halfway, and
your lips sort of parted, and your eyes just gazing away somewhere off
in the distance for fifteen minutes at a stretch. And out there in the
shipping-room Henry's singing like a whole minstrel troupe all day
long, when he isn't whistlin' so loud you can hear him over 's far as
Eighth Avenue." Then, as the red surged up through the girl's fair
skin, "Well?" drawled old Pop Henderson, and the dry chuckle threatened
again. "We-e-ell?"
"Why, Pop Henderson!" exploded Miss Kelly from her cage.
"Why--Pop--Henderson!"
In those six words the brisk and agile-minded Miss Kelly expressed the
surprise and the awed conviction of the office staff.
Pop Henderson trotted over to the water-cooler, drew a brimming glass,
drank it off, and gave vent to a great exhaust of breath. He tried not
to strut as he crossed back to his desk, climbed his stool, adjusted
his eye-shade, and, with a last throaty chuckle, plunged into his books
again.
But his words already were working their wonders. The office, after
the first shock, was flooded with a new atmosphere--a subtle, pervasive
air of hushed happiness, of tender solicitude. It went about like a
mother who has found her child asleep at play, and who steals away
atiptoe, finger on lip, lips smiling tenderly.
The delicate antennae of Emma McChesney's mind sensed the change.
Perhaps she read something in the glowing eyes of her sister-in-love,
Hortense. Perhaps she caught a new tone in Miss Kelly's voice or the
forewoman's. Perhaps a whisper from the outer office reached her desk.
The very afternoon of Pop Henderson's electrifying speech, Mrs.
McChesney crossed to T. A. Buck's office, shut the door after her,
lowered her voice discreetly, and said,
"T. A., they're on."
"What makes you think so?"
"Nothing. That is, nothing definite. No man-reason. Just a
woman-reason."
T. A. Buck strolled over to her, smiling.
"I haven't known you all this time without having learned that that's
reason enough. And if they really do know, I'm glad."
"But we didn't want them to know. Not yet--until--until just before
the----"
T. A. Buck laid his hands lightly on Emma McChesney's shoulders. Emma
McChesney promptly reached up and removed them.
"There you are!" exclaimed Buck, and rammed the offending hands into
his pockets.
"That's why I'm glad they know--if they really do know. I'm no actor.
I'm a skirt-and-lingerie manufacturer. For the last six weeks, instead
of being allowed to look at you with the expression that a man
naturally wears when he's looking at the woman he's going to marry,
what have I had to do? Glare, that's what! Scowl! Act like a captain
of finance when I've felt like a Romeo! I've had to be dry, terse,
businesslike, when I was bursting with adjectives that had nothing to
do with business. You've avoided my office as you would a small-pox
camp. You've greeted me with a what-can-I-do-for-you air when I've
dared to invade yours. You couldn't have been less cordial to a book
agent. If it weren't for those two hours you grant me in the evening,
I'd--I'd blow up with a loud report, that's what. I'd----"
"Now, now, T. A.!" interrupted Emma McChesney soothingly, and patted
one gesticulating arm. "It has been a bit of a strain--for both of us.
But, you know, we agreed it would be best this way. We've ten days
more to go. Let's stick it out as we've begun. It has been best for
us, for the office, for the business. The next time you find yourself
choked up with a stock of fancy adjectives, write a sonnet to me. Work
'em off that way."
T. A. Buck stood silent a moment, regarding her with a concentration
that would have unnerved a woman less poised.
"Emma McChesney, when you talk like that, so coolly, so evenly, so--so
darned mentally, I sometimes wonder if you really----"
"Don't say it, T. A. Because you don't mean it. I've had to fight for
most of my happiness. I've never before found it ready at hand. I've
always had to dig for it with a shovel and a spade and a pickax, and
then blast. I had almost twenty years of that--from the time I was
eighteen until I was thirty-eight. It taught me to take my happiness
seriously and my troubles lightly." She shut her eyes for a moment,
and her voice was very low and very deep and very vibrant. "So, when
I'm coolest and evenest and most mental, T. A., you may know that I've
struck gold."
A great glow illumined Buck's fine eyes. He took two quick steps in
her direction. But Emma McChesney, one hand on the door-knob, warned
him off with the other.
"Hey--wait a minute!" pleaded Buck.
"Can't. I've a fitting at the tailor's at three-thirty--my new suit.
Wait till you see it!"
"The dickens you have! But so have I"--he jerked out his watch--"at
three-thirty! It's the suit I'm going to wear when I travel as a
blushing bridegroom."
"So's mine. And look here, T. A.! We can't both leave this place for
a fitting. It's absurd. If this keeps on, it will break up the
business. We'll have to get married one at a time--or, at least, get
our trousseaux one at a time. What's your suit?"
"Sort of brown."
"Brown? So's mine! Good heavens, T. A., we'll look like a minstrel
troupe!"
Buck sighed resignedly.
"If I telephone my tailor that I can't make it until four-thirty, will
you promise to be back by that time?"
"Yes; but remember, if your bride appears in a skirt that sags in the
back or a coat that bunches across the shoulders, the crime will lie at
your door."
So it was that the lynx-eyed office staff began to wonder if, after
all, Pop Henderson was the wizard that he had claimed to be.
During working hours, Mrs. McChesney held rigidly to business. Her
handsome partner tried bravely to follow her example. If he failed
occasionally, perhaps Emma McChesney was not so displeased as she
pretended to be. A business discussion, deeply interesting to both,
was likely to run thus:
Buck, entering her office briskly, papers in hand: "Mrs.
McChesney--ahem!--I have here a letter from Singer & French, Columbus,
Ohio. They ask for an extension. They've had ninety days."
"That's enough. That firm's slow pay, and always will be until old
Singer has the good taste and common sense to retire. It isn't because
the stock doesn't move. Singer simply believes in not paying for
anything until he has to. If I were you, I'd write him that this is a
business house, not a charitable institution---- No, don't do that. It
isn't politic. But you know what I mean."
"H'm; yes." A silence. "Emma, that's a fiendishly becoming gown."
"Now, T. A.!"
"But it is! It--it's so kind of loose, and yet clinging, and those
white collar-and-cuff things----"
"T. A. Buck, I've worn this thing down to the office every day for a
month. It shines in the back. Besides, you promised not to----"
"Oh, darn it all, Emma, I'm human, you know! How do you suppose I can
stand here and look at you and not----"
Emma McChesney (pressing the buzzer that summons Hortense): "You know,
Tim, I don't exactly hate you this morning, either. But business is
business. Stop looking at me like that!" Then, to Hortense, in the
doorway: "Just take this letter, Miss Stotz-Singer & French, Columbus,
Ohio. Dear Sirs: Yours of the tenth at hand. Period. Regarding your
request for further extension we wish to say that, in view of the
fact----"
T. A. Buck, half resentful, half amused, wholly admiring, would
disappear. But Hortense, eyes demurely cast down at her notebook, was
not deceived.
"Say," she confided to Miss Kelly, "they think they've got me fooled.
But I'm wise. Don't I know? When Henry passes through the office
here, from the shipping-room, he looks at me just as cool and
indifferent. Before we announced it, we had you all guessing, didn't
we? But I can see something back of that look that the rest of you
can't get. Well, when Mr. Buck looks at her, I can see the same thing
in his eyes. Say, when it comes to seeing the love-light through the
fog, I'm there with the spy-glass."
If Emma McChesney held herself well in leash during the busy day, she
relished her happiness none the less when she could allow herself the
full savor of it. When a girl of eighteen she had married a man of the
sort that must put whisky into his stomach before the machinery of his
day would take up its creaking round.
Out of the degradation of that marriage she had emerged triumphantly,
sweet and unsullied, and she had succeeded in bringing her son, Jock
McChesney, out into the clear sunlight with her.
The evenings spent with T. A. Buck, the man of fine instincts, of
breeding, of proven worth, of rare tenderness, filled her with a great
peace and happiness. When doubts assailed her, it was not for herself
but for him. Sometimes the fear would clutch her as they sat before
the fire in the sitting-room of her comfortable little apartment. She
would voice those fears for the very joy of having them stilled.
"T. A., this is too much happiness. I'm--I'm afraid. After all,
you're a young man, though you are a bit older than I in actual years.
But men of your age marry girls of eighteen. You're handsome. And
you've brains, family, breeding, money. Any girl in New York would be
glad to marry you--those tall, slim, exquisite young girls. Young!
And well bred, and poised and fresh and sweet and lovable. You see
them every day on Fifth Avenue, exquisitely dressed, entirely
desirable. They make me feel--old--old and battered. I've sold goods
on the road. I've fought and worked and struggled. And it has left
its mark. I did it for the boy, God bless him! And I'm glad I did it.
But it put me out of the class of that girl you see on----"
"Yes, Emma; you're not at all in the class with that girl you see every
day on Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue's full of her--hundreds of her,
thousands of her. Perhaps, five years ago, before I had worked side by
side with you, I might have been attracted by that girl you see every
day on Fifth Avenue. You don't see a procession of Emma McChesneys
every day on Fifth Avenue--not by a long shot! Why? Because there's
only one of her. She doesn't come in dozen lots. I know that that
girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue is all that I deserve. But, by
some heaven-sent miracle, I'm to have this Emma McChesney woman! I
don't know how it came to be true. I don't deserve it. But it is
true, and that's enough for me."
Emma McChesney would look up at him, eyes wet, mouth smiling.
"T. A., you're balm and myrrh and incense and meat and drink to me. I
wish I had words to tell you what I'm thinking now. But I haven't. So
I'll just cover it up. We both know it's there. And I'll tell you that
you make love like a 'movie' hero. Yes, you do! Better than a 'movie'
hero, because, in the films, the heroine always has to turn to face the
camera, which makes it necessary for him to make love down the back of
her neck."
But T. A. Buck was unsmiling.
"Don't trifle, Emma. And don't think you can fool me that way. I
haven't finished. I want to settle this Fifth Avenue creature for all
time. What I have to say is this: I think you are more
attractive--finer, bigger, more rounded in character and manner,
mellower, sweeter, sounder, with all your angles and corners rubbed
smooth, saner, better poised than any woman I have ever known. And
what I am to-day you have made me, directly and indirectly, by
association and by actual orders, by suggestion, and by direct contact.
What you did for Jock, purposefully and by force, you did for me, too.
Not so directly, perhaps, but with the same result. Emma McChesney,
you've made--actually made, molded, shaped, and turned out two men.
You're the greatest sculptor that ever lived. You could make a
scarecrow in a field get up and achieve. Everywhere one sees women
over-wrought, over-stimulated, eager, tense. When there appears one
who has herself in leash, balanced, tolerant, poised, sane, composed,
she restores your faith in things. You lean on her, spiritually. I
know I need you more than you need me, Emma. And I know you won't love
me the less for that. There--that's about all for this evening."
"I think," breathed Emma McChesney in a choked little voice, "that
that's about--enough."
Two days before the date set for their very quiet wedding, they told
the heads of office and workroom. Office and workroom, somewhat moist
as to eye and flushed as to cheek and highly congratulatory, proved
their knowingness by promptly presenting to their employers a very
costly and unbelievably hideous set of mantel ornaments and clock,
calculated to strike horror to the heart of any woman who has lovingly
planned the furnishing of her drawing-room. Pop Henderson, after some
preliminary wrestling with collar, necktie, spectacles, and voice,
launched forth on a presentation speech that threatened to close down
the works for the day. Emma McChesney heard it, tears in her eyes. T.
A. Buck gnawed his mustache. And when Pop Henderson's cracked old
voice broke altogether in the passage that touched on his departed
employer, old T. A. Buck, and the great happiness that this occasion
would have brought him, Emma's hand met young T. A.'s and rested there.
Hortense and Henry, standing very close together all through the
speech, had, in this respect, anticipated their employers by several
minutes.
They were to be away two weeks only. No one knew just where, except
that some small part of the trip was to be spent on a flying visit to
young Jock McChesney out in Chicago. He himself was to be married very
soon. Emma McChesney had rather startled her very good-looking
husband-to-be by whirling about at him with,
"T. A., do you realize that you're very likely to be a step-grandfather
some fine day not so far away!"
T. A. had gazed at her for a rather shocked moment, swallowed hard,
smiled, and said,
"Even that doesn't scare me, Emma."
Everything had been planned down to the last detail. Mrs. McChesney's
little apartment had been subleased, and a very smart one taken and
furnished almost complete, with Annie installed in the kitchen and a
demure parlor-maid engaged.
"When we come back, we'll come home," T. A. Buck had said. "Home!"
There had been much to do, but it had all been done smoothly and
expertly, under the direction of these two who had learned how to plan,
direct, and carry out.
Then, on the last day, Emma McChesney, visibly perturbed, entered her
partner's office, a letter in her hand.
"This is ghastly!" she exclaimed.
Buck pulled out a chair for her.
"Klein cancel his order again?"
"No. And don't ask me to sit down. Be thankful that I don't blow up."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"Bad! Here--read that! No, don't read it; I'll tell you. It'll
relieve my feelings. You know how I've been angling and scheming and
contriving and plotting for years to get an exclusive order from Gage &
Fosdick. Of course we've had a nice little order every few months, but
what's that from the biggest mail-order house in the world? And now,
out of a blue sky, comes this bolt from O'Malley, who buys our stuff,
saying that he's coming on the tenth--that's next week--that he's
planned to establish our line with their trade, and that he wants us to
be prepared for a record-breaking order. I've fairly prayed for this.
And now--what shall we do?"
"Do?"--smoothly--"just write the gentleman and tell him you're busy
getting married this week and next, and that, by a singular
coincidence, your partner is similarly engaged; that our manager will
attend to him with all care and courtesy, unless he can postpone his
trip until our return. Suggest that he call around a week or two
later."
"T. A. Buck, I know it isn't considered good form to rage and glare at
one's fiance on the eve of one's wedding-day. If this were a week
earlier or a week later, I'd be tempted to--shake you!"
Buck stood up, came over to her, and laid a hand very gently on her
arm. With the other hand he took the letter from her fingers.
"Emma, you're tired, and a little excited. You've been under an
unusual physical and mental strain for the last few weeks. Give me
that letter. I'll answer it. This kind of thing"--he held up the
letter--"has meant everything to you. If it had not, where would I be
to-day? But to-night, Emma, it doesn't mean a thing. Not--one thing."
Slowly Emma McChesney's tense body relaxed. A great sigh that had in
it weariness and relief and acquiescence came from her. She smiled ever
so faintly.
"I've been a ramrod so long it's going to be hard to learn to be a
clinging vine. I've been my own support for so many years, I don't use
a trellis very gracefully--yet. But I think I'll get the hang of it
very soon."
She turned toward the door, crossed to her own office, looked all about
at the orderly, ship-shape room that reflected her personality--as did
any room she occupied.
"Just the same," she called out, over her shoulder, to Buck in the
doorway, "I hate like fury to see that order slide."
In hat and coat and furs she stood a moment, her fingers on the
electric switch, her eyes very bright and wide. The memories of ten
years, fifteen years, twenty years crowded up around her and filled the
little room. Some of them were golden and some of them were black; a
few had power to frighten her, even now. So she turned out the light,
stood for just another moment there in the darkness, then stepped out
into the hall, closed the door softly behind her, and stood face to
face with the lettering on the glass panel of the door--the lettering
that spelled the name, "MRS. MCCHESNEY."
T. A. Buck watched her in silence. She reached up with one wavering
forefinger and touched each of the twelve letters, one after the other.
Then she spread her hand wide, blotting out the second word. And when
she turned away, one saw--she being Emma McChesney, and a woman, and
very tired and rather sentimental, and a bit hysterical and altogether
happy--that, though she was smiling, her eyes were wet.
In her ten years on the road, visiting town after town, catching
trains, jolting about in rumbling hotel 'buses or musty-smelling
small-town hacks, living in hotels, good, bad, and indifferent, Emma
McChesney had come upon hundreds of rice-strewn, ribbon-bedecked bridal
couples. She had leaned from her window at many a railway station to
see the barbaric and cruel old custom of bride-and-bridegroom baiting.
She had smiled very tenderly--and rather sadly, and hopefully,
too--upon the boy and girl who rushed breathless into the car in a
flurry of white streamers, flowers, old shoes, laughter, cheers, last
messages. Now, as in a dream, she found herself actually of these. Of
rice, old shoes, and badinage there had been none, it is true. She
stood quietly by while Buck attended to their trunks, just as she had
seen it done by hundreds of helpless little cotton-wool women who had
never checked a trunk in their lives--she, who had spent ten years of
her life wrestling with trunks and baggagemen and porters. Once there
was some trifling mistake--Buck's fault. Emma, with her experience of
the road, saw his error. She could have set him right with a word. It
was on the tip of her tongue. By sheer force of will she withheld that
word, fought back the almost overwhelming inclination to take things in
hand, set them right. It was just an incident, almost trifling in
itself. But its import was tremendous, for her conduct, that moment,
shaped the happiness of their future life together.
Emma had said that there would be no rude awakenings for them, no
startling shocks.
"There isn't a thing we don't know about each other," she had said.
"We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you
gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I think the fuss you make
when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar
and cream is the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But, then, I know
how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my
toe, when I'm particularly comfortable and snug. You know how I like
my eggs, and you think it's immoral. I suppose we're really set in our
ways. It's going to be interesting to watch each other shift."
"Just the same," Buck said, "I didn't dream there was any woman living
who could actually make a Pullman drawing-room look homelike."
"Any woman who has spent a fourth of her life in hotels and trains
learns that trick. She has to. If she happens to be the sort that
likes books and flowers and sewing, she carries some of each with her.
And one book, one rose, and one piece of unfinished embroidery would
make an oasis in the Sahara Desert look homelike."
It was on the westbound train that they encountered Sam--Sam of the
rolling eye, the genial grin, the deft hand. Sam was known to every
hardened traveler as the porter de luxe of the road. Sam was a
diplomat, a financier, and a rascal. He never forgot a face. He never
forgave a meager tip. The passengers who traveled with him were at
once his guests and his victims.
Therefore his, "Good evenin', Mis' McChesney, ma'am. Good even'!
Well, it suh't'nly has been a long time sense Ah had the pleasuh of yoh
presence as passengah, ma'am. Ah sure am----"
The slim, elegant figure of T. A. Buck appeared in the doorway. Sam's
rolling eye became a thing on ball bearings. His teeth flashed
startlingly white in the broadest of grins. He took Buck's hat, ran a
finger under its inner band, and shook it very gently.
"What's the idea?" inquired Buck genially. "Are you a combination
porter and prestidigitator?"
Sam chuckled his infectious negro chuckle.
"Well, no, sah! Ah wouldn' go's fah as t' say that, sah. But Ah hab
been known to shake rice out of a gen'lman's ordinary, ever'-day, black
derby hat."
"Get out!" laughed T. A. Buck, as Sam ducked.
"You may as well get used to it," smiled Emma, "because I'm known to
every train-conductor, porter, hotel-clerk, chamber-maid, and bell-boy
between here and the Great Lakes."
It was Sam who proved himself hero of the honeymoon, for he saved T. A.
Buck from continuing his journey to Chicago brideless. Fifteen minutes
earlier, Buck had gone to the buffet-car for a smoke. At Cleveland,
Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a familiar figure pacing up
and down the station platform. It was that dapper and important little
Irishman, O'Malley, buyer for Gage & Fosdick, the greatest mail-order
house in the world--O'Malley, whose letter T. A. Buck had answered;
O'Malley, whose order meant thousands. He was on his way to New York,
of course.
In that moment Mrs. T. A. Buck faded into the background and Emma
McChesney rose up in her place. She snatched hat and coat and furs,
put them on as she went down the long aisle, swung down the car steps,
and flew down the platform to the unconscious O'Malley. He was
smoking, all unconscious. The Fates had delivered him into her expert
hands. She knew those kindly sisters of old, and she was the last to
refuse their largesse.
"Mr. O'Malley!"
He wheeled.
"Mrs. McChesney!" He had just a charming trace of a brogue. His
enemies said he assumed it. "Well, who was I thinkin' of but you a
minute ago. What----"
"I'm on my way to Chicago. Saw you from the car window. You're on the
New York train? I thought so. Tell me, you're surely seeing our man,
aren't you?"
O'Malley's smiling face clouded. He was a temperamental Irishman--Ted
O'Malley--with ideas on the deference due him and his great house.
"I'll tell you the truth, Mrs. McChesney. I had a letter from your Mr.
Buck. It wasn't much of a letter to a man like me, representing a
house like Gage & Fosdick. It said both heads of the firm would be out
of town, and would I see the manager. Me--see the manager! Well,
thinks I, if that's how important they think my order, then they'll not
get it--that's all. I've never yet----"
"Dear Mr. O'Malley, please don't be offended. As a McChesney to an
O'Malley, I want to tell you that I've just been married."
"Married! God bless me--to----"
"To T. A. Buck, of course. He's on that train. He----"
She turned toward the train. And as she turned it began to move, ever
so gently. At the same moment there sped toward her, with unbelievable
swiftness, the figure of Sam the porter, his eyes all whites. By one
arm he grasped her, and half carried, half jerked her to the steps of
the moving train, swung her up to the steps like a bundle of rags,
caught the rail by a miracle, and stood, grinning and triumphant,
gazing down at the panting O'Malley, who was running alongside the
train.
"Back in a week. Will you wait for us in New York?" called Emma, her
breath coming fast. She was trembling, too, and laughing.
"Will I wait!" called back the puffing O'Malley, every bit of the Irish
in him beaming from his eyes. "I'll be there when you get back as sure
as your name's McBuck."
From his pocket he took a round, silver Western dollar and, still
running, tossed it to the toothy Sam. That peerless porter caught it,
twirled it, kissed it, bowed, and grinned afresh as the train glided
out of the shed.
Emma, flushed, smiling, flew up the aisle.
Buck, listening to her laughing, triumphant account of her hairbreadth,
harum-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled.
"Emma, how could you do it! At least, why didn't you send back for me
first?"
Emma smiled a little tremulously.
"Don't be angry. You see, dear boy, I've only been your wife for a
week. But I've been Featherloom petticoats for over fifteen years.
It's a habit."
Just how strong and fixed a habit, she proved to herself a little more
than a week later. It was the morning of their first breakfast in the
new apartment. You would have thought, to see them over their coffee
and eggs and rolls, that they had been breakfasting together thus for
years--Annie was so at home in her new kitchen; the deft little maid,
in her crisp white, fitted so perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the
thing that T. A. Buck said, once the maid left them alone, might have
given an outsider the cue.
"You remind me of a sweetpea, Emma. One of those crisp, erect,
golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweetpeas. I think it is the slenderest,
sweetest, neatest, trimmest flower in the world, so delicately set on
its stem, and yet so straight, so independent."
"T. A., you say such dear things to me!"
No; they had not been breakfasting together for years.
"I'm glad you're not one of those women that wears a frowsy, lacy,
ribbony, what-do-you-call-'em-boudoir-cap--down to breakfast. They
always make me think of uncombed hair. That's just one reason why I'm
glad."
"And I'm glad," said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady hand
and firm skin, "for a number of reasons. One of them is that you're
not the sort of man who's a grouch at breakfast."
When he had hat and coat and stick in hand, and had kissed her good-by
and reached the door and opened it, he came back again, as is the way
of bridegrooms. But at last the door closed behind him.
Emma sat there a moment, listening to his quick, light step down the
corridor, to the opening of the lift door, to its metallic closing.
She sat there, in the sunshiny dining-room, in her fresh, white morning
gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened it; scanned it, put it down.
For years, now, she had read her newspaper in little gulps on the way
downtown in crowded subway or street-car. She could not accustom
herself to this leisurely scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the
window, came back to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on
something far away.
The swinging door between dining-room and butler's pantry opened.
Annie, in her neat blue-and-white stripes, stood before her.
"Shall it be steak or chops to-night, Mrs. Mc--Buck?"
Emma turned her head in Annie's direction--then her eyes. The two
actions were distinct and separate.
"Steak or----" There was a little bewildered look in her eyes.
Her mind had not yet focused on the question. "Steak--oh! Oh, yes, of
course! Why--why, Annie"--and the splendid thousand-h.-p. mind brought
itself down to the settling of this butter-churning, two-h.-p.
question--"why, Annie, considering all things, I think we'll make it
filet with mushrooms."