For ten years, Mrs. Emma McChesney's home had been a wardrobe-trunk.
She had taken her family life at second hand. Four nights out of the
seven, her bed was "Lower Eight," and her breakfast, as many mornings,
a cinder-strewn, lukewarm horror, taken tete-a-tete with a sleepy-eyed
stranger and presided over by a white-coated, black-faced bandit, to
whom a coffee-slopped saucer was a matter of course.
It had been her habit during those ten years on the road as traveling
saleswoman for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, to avoid
the discomfort of the rapidly chilling car by slipping early into her
berth. There, in kimono, if not in comfort, she would shut down the
electric light with a snap, raise the shade, and, propped up on one
elbow, watch the little towns go by. They had a wonderful fascination
for her, those Middle Western towns, whose very names had a
comfortable, home-like sound--Sandusky, Galesburg, Crawfordsville,
Appleton--very real towns, with very real people in them. Peering
wistfully out through the dusk, she could get little intimate glimpses
of the home life of these people as the night came on. In those modest
frame houses near the station they need not trouble to pull down the
shades as must their cautious city cousins. As the train slowed down,
there could be had a glimpse of a matronly housewife moving deftly
about in the kitchen's warm-yellow glow, a man reading a paper in
slippered, shirt-sleeved comfort, a pig-tailed girl at the piano, a
woman with a baby in her arms, or a family group, perhaps, seated about
the table, deep in an after-supper conclave. It had made her homeless
as she was homesick.
Emma always liked that picture best. Her keen, imaginative mind could
sense the scene, could actually follow the trend of the talk during
this, the most genial, homely, soul-cheering hour of the day. The
trifling events of the last twelve hours in schoolroom, in store, in
office, in street, in kitchen loom up large as they are rehearsed in
that magic, animated, cozy moment just before ma says, with a sigh:
"Well, folks, go on into the sitting-room. Me and Nellie've got to
clear away."
Just silhouettes as the train flashed by--these small-town people--but
very human, very enviable to Emma McChesney.
"They're real," she would say. "They're regular, three-meals-a-day
people. I've been peeking in at their windows for ten years, and I've
learned that it is in these towns that folks really live. The
difference between life here and life in New York is the difference
between area and depth. D'you see what I mean? In New York, they live
by the mile, and here they live by the cubic foot. Well, I'd rather
have one juicy, thick club-steak than a whole platterful of
quarter-inch. It's the same idea."
To those of her business colleagues whose habit it was to lounge in the
hotel window with sneering comment upon the small-town procession as it
went by, Emma McChesney had been wont to say:
"Don't sneer at Main Street. When you come to think of it, isn't it
true that Fifth Avenue, any bright winter afternoon between four and
six, is only Main Street on a busy day multiplied by one thousand?"
Emma McChesney was not the sort of woman to rail at a fate that had
placed her in the harness instead of in the carriage. But during all
the long years of up-hill pull, from the time she started with a humble
salary in the office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company,
through the years spent on the road, up to the very time when the crown
of success came to her in the form of the secretaryship of the
prosperous firm of T. A. Buck, there was a minor but fixed ambition in
her heart. That same ambition is to be found deep down in the heart of
every woman whose morning costume is a tailor suit, whose newspaper
must be read in hurried snatches on the way downtown in crowded train
or car, and to whom nine A.M. spells "Business."
"In fifteen years," Emma McChesney used to say, "I've never known what
it is to loll in leisure. I've never had a chance to luxuriate.
Sunday? To a working woman, Sunday is for the purpose of repairing the
ravages of the other six days. By the time you've washed your brushes,
mended your skirt-braid, darned your stockings and gloves, looked for
gray hairs and crows'-feet, and skimmed the magazine section, it's
Monday."
It was small wonder that Emma McChesney's leisure had been limited. In
those busy years she had not only earned the living for herself and her
boy; she had trained that boy into manhood and placed his foot on the
first rung of business success. She had transformed the T. A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company from a placidly mediocre concern to a
thriving, flourishing, nationally known institution. All this might
have turned another woman's head. It only served to set Emma
McChesney's more splendidly on her shoulders. Not too splendidly,
however; for, with her marriage to her handsome business partner, T. A.
Buck, that well-set, independent head was found to fit very cozily into
the comfortable hollow formed by T. A. Buck's right arm.
"Emma," Buck had said, just before their marriage, "what is the
arrangement to be after--after----"
"Just what it is now, I suppose," Emma had replied, "except that we'll
come down to the office together."
He had regarded her thoughtfully for a long minute. Then, "Emma, for
three months after our marriage will you try being just Mrs. T. A.
Buck?"
"You mean no factory, no Featherlooms, no dictation, no business
bothers!" Her voice was a rising scale of surprise.
"Just try it for three months, with the privilege of a lifetime, if you
like it. But try it. I--I'd like to see you there when I leave, Emma.
I'd like to have you there when I come home. I suppose I sound like a
selfish Turk, but----"
"You sound like a regular husband," Emma McChesney had interrupted,
"and I love you for it. Now listen, T. A. For three whole months I'm
going to be what the yellow novels used to call a doll-wife. I'm going
to meet you at the door every night with a rose in my hair. I shall
wear pink things with lace ruffles on 'em. Don't you know that I've
been longing to do just those things for years and years? I'm going to
blossom out into a beauty. Watch me! I've never had time to study
myself. I'll hold shades of yellow and green and flesh-color up to my
face to see which brings out the right tints. I'm going to gaze at
myself through half-closed eyes to see which shade produces tawny
lights in my hair. Ever since I can remember, I've been so busy that
it has been a question of getting the best possible garments in the
least possible time for the smallest possible sum. In that case, one
gets blue serge. I've worn blue serge until it feels like a convict's
uniform. I'm going to blossom out into fawn and green and mauve. I
shall get evening dresses with only bead shoulder-straps. I'm going to
shop. I've never really seen Fifth Avenue between eleven and one, when
the real people come out. My views of it have been at nine A.M. when
the office-workers are going to work, and at five-thirty when they are
going home. I will now cease to observe the proletariat and mingle
with the predatory. I'll probably go in for those tiffin things at the
Plaza. If I do, I'll never be the same woman again."
Whereupon she paused with dramatic effect.
To all of which T. A. Buck had replied:
"Go as far as you like. Take fencing lessons, if you want to, or
Sanskrit. You've been a queen bee for so many years that I think the
role of drone will be a pleasant change. Let me shoulder the business
worries for a while. You've borne them long enough."
"It's a bargain. For three months I shall do nothing more militant
than to pick imaginary threads off your coat lapel and pout when you
mention business. At the end of those three months we'll go into
private session, compare notes, and determine whether the plan shall
cease or become permanent. Shake hands on it."
They shook hands solemnly. As they did so, a faint shadow of doubt
hovered far, far back in the depths of T. A. Buck's fine eyes. And a
faint, inscrutable smile lurked in the corners of Emma's lips.
So it was that Emma McChesney, the alert, the capable, the brisk, the
business-like, assumed the role of Mrs. T. A. Buck, the leisurely, the
languid, the elegant. She, who formerly, at eleven in the morning,
might have been seen bent on selling the best possible bill of spring
Featherlooms to Joe Greenbaum, of Keokuk, Iowa, could now be found in a
modiste's gray-and-raspberry salon, being draped and pinned and fitted.
She, whose dynamic force once charged the entire office and factory
with energy and efficiency, now distributed a tithe of that priceless
vigor here, a tithe there, a tithe everywhere, and thus broke the very
backbone of its power.
She had never been a woman to do things by halves. What she undertook
to do she did thoroughly and whole-heartedly. This principle she
applied to her new mode of life as rigidly as she had to the old.
That first month slipped magically by. Emma was too much a woman not
to feel a certain exquisite pleasure in the selecting of delicate and
becoming fabrics. There was a thrill of novelty in being able to spend
an hour curled up with a book after lunch, to listen to music one
afternoon a week, to drive through the mistily gray park; to walk up
the thronged, sparkling Avenue, pausing before its Aladdin's Cave
windows. Simple enough pleasures, and taken quite as a matter of
course by thousands of other women who had no work-filled life behind
them to use as contrast.
She plunged into her new life whole-heartedly. The first new gown was
exciting. It was a velvet affair with furs, and gratifyingly becoming.
Her shining blond head rose above the soft background of velvet and fur
with an effect to distract the least observing.
"Like it?" she had asked Buck, turning slowly, frankly sure of herself.
"You're wonderful in it," said T. A. Buck. "Say, Emma, where's that
blue thing you used to wear--the one with the white cuffs and collar,
and the little blue hat with the what-cha-ma-call-ems on it?"
"T. A. Buck, you're--you're--well, you're a man, that's what you are!
That blue thing was worn threadbare in the office, and I gave it to the
laundress's niece weeks ago." Small wonder her cheeks took on a deeper
pink.
"Oh," said Buck, unruffled, "too bad! There was something about that
dress--I don't know----"
At the first sitting of the second gown, Emma revolted openly.
On the floor at Emma's feet there was knotted into a contortionistic
attitude a small, wiry, impolite person named Smalley. Miss Smalley
was an artist in draping and knew it. She was the least fashionable
person in all that smart dressmaking establishment. She refused to
notice the corset-coiffure-and-charmeuse edict that governed all other
employees in the shop. In her shabby little dress, her steel-rimmed
spectacles, her black-sateen apron, Smalley might have passed for a
Bird Center home dressmaker. Yet, given a yard or two or three of
satin and a saucer of pins, Smalley could make the dumpiest of
debutantes look like a fragile flower.
At a critical moment Emma stirred. Handicapped as she was by a
mouthful of nineteen pins and her bow-knot attitude, Smalley still
could voice a protest.
"Don't move!" she commanded, thickly.
"Wait a minute," Emma said, and moved again, more disastrously than
before. "Don't you think it's too--too young?"
She eyed herself in the mirror anxiously, then looked down at Miss
Smalley's nut-cracker face that was peering up at her, its lips pursed
grotesquely over the pins.
"Of course it is," mumbled Miss Smalley. "Everybody's clothes are too
young for 'em nowadays. The only difference between the dresses we
make for girls of sixteen and the dresses we make for their
grandmothers of sixty is that the sixty-year-old ones want 'em shorter
and lower, and they run more to rose-bud trimming."
Emma surveyed the acid Miss Smalley with a look that was half amused,
half vexed, wholly determined.
"I shan't wear it. Heaven knows I'm not sixty, but I'm not sixteen
either! I don't want to be."
Miss Smalley, doubling again to her task, flung upward a grudging
compliment.
"Well, anyway, you've got the hair and the coloring and the figure for
it. Goodness knows you look young enough!"
"That's because I've worked hard all my life," retorted Emma, almost
viciously. "Another month of this leisure and I'll be as wrinkled as
the rest of them."
Smalley's magic fingers paused in their manipulation of a soft fold of
satin.
"Worked? Earned a living? Used your wits and brains every day against
the wits and brains of other folks?"
"Every day."
Into the eyes of Miss Smalley, the artist in draping, there crept the
shrewd twinkle of Miss Smalley, the successful woman in business. She
had been sitting back on her knees, surveying her handiwork through
narrowed lids. Now she turned her gaze on Emma, who was smiling down
at her.
"Then for goodness' sake don't stop! I've found out that work is a
kind of self-oiler. If you're used to it, the minute you stop you
begin to get rusty, and your hinges creak and you clog up. And the
next thing you know, you break down. Work that you like to do is a
blessing. It keeps you young. When my mother was my age, she was
crippled with rheumatism, and all gnarled up, and quavery, and all she
had to look forward to was death. Now me--every time the styles in
skirts change I get a new hold on life. And on a day when I can make a
short, fat woman look like a tall, thin woman, just by sitting here on
my knees with a handful of pins, and giving her the line she needs, I
go home feeling like I'd just been born."
"I know that feeling," said Emma, in her eyes a sparkle that had long
been absent. "I've had it when I've landed a thousand-dollar
Featherloom order from a man who has assured me that he isn't
interested in our line."
At dinner that evening, Emma's gown was so obviously not of the new
crop that even her husband's inexpert eye noted it.
"That's not one of the new ones, is it?"
"This! And you a manufacturer of skirts!"
"What's the matter with the supply of new dresses? Isn't there enough
to go round?"
"Enough! I've never had so many new gowns in my life. The trouble is
that I shan't feel at home in them until I've had 'em all dry-cleaned
at least once."
During the second month, there came a sudden, sharp change in skirt
modes. For four years women had been mincing along in garments so
absurdly narrow that each step was a thing to be considered, each
curbing or car-step demanding careful negotiation. Now, Fashion, in
her freakiest mood, commanded a bewildering width of skirt that was
just one remove from the flaring hoops of Civil War days. Emma knew
what that meant for the Featherloom workrooms and selling staff. New
designs, new models, a shift in prices, a boom for petticoats, for four
years a garment despised.
A hundred questions were on the tip of Emma's tongue; a hundred
suggestions flashed into her keen mind; there occurred to her a
wonderful design for a new model which should be full and flaring
without being bulky and uncomfortable as were the wide petticoats of
the old days.
But a bargain was a bargain. Still, Emma Buck was as human as Emma
McChesney had been. She could not resist a timid,
"T. A., are you--that is--I was just wondering--you're making 'em wide,
I suppose, for the spring trade."
A queer look flashed into T. A. Buck's eyes--a relieved look that was
as quickly replaced by an expression both baffled and anxious.
"Why--a--mmmm--yes--oh, yes, we're making 'em up wide, but----"
"But what?" Emma leaned forward, tense.
"Oh, nothing--nothing."
During the second month there came calling on Emma, those solid and
heavy New Yorkers, with whom the Buck family had been on friendly terms
for many years. They came at the correct hour, in their correct motor
or conservative broughams, wearing their quietly correct clothes, and
Emma gave them tea, and they talked on every subject from suffrage to
salad dressings, and from war to weather, but never once was mention
made of business. And Emma McChesney's life had been interwoven with
business for more than fifteen years.
There were dinners--long, heavy, correct dinners. Emma, very well
dressed, bright-eyed, alert, intelligent, vital, became very popular at
these affairs, and her husband very proud of her popularity. And if
any one as thoroughly alive as Mrs. T. A. Buck could have been bored to
extinction by anything, then those dinners would have accomplished the
deadly work.
"T. A.," she said one evening, after a particularly large affair of
this sort, "T. A., have you ever noticed anything about me that is
different from other women?"
"Have I? Well, I should say I----"
"Oh, I don't mean what you mean, dear--thanks just the same. I mean
those women tonight. They all seem to 'go in' for something--votes or
charity or dancing or social service, or something--even the girls.
And they all sounded so amateurish, so untrained, so unprepared, yet
they seemed to be dreadfully in earnest."
"This is the difference," said T. A. Buck. "You've rubbed up against
life, and you know. They've always been sheltered, but now they want
to know. Well, naturally they're going to bungle and bump their heads
a good many times before they really find out."
"Anyway," retorted Emma, "they want to know. That's something. It's
better to have bumped your head, even though you never see what's on
the other side of the wall, than never to have tried to climb it."
It was in the third week of the third month that Emma encountered
Hortense. Hortense, before her marriage to Henry, the shipping-clerk,
had been a very pretty, very pert, very devoted little stenographer in
the office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She had
married just a month after her employers, and Emma, from the fulness of
her own brimming cup of happiness, had made Hortense happy with a gift
of linens and lingerie and lace of a fineness that Hortense's
beauty-loving, feminine heart could never have hoped for.
They met in the busy aisle of a downtown department store and shook
hands as do those who have a common bond.
Hortense, as pretty as ever and as pert, spoke first.
"I wouldn't have known you, Mrs. Mc-- Buck!"
"No? Why not?"
"You look--no one would think you'd ever worked in your life. I was
down at the office the other day for a minute--the first time since I
was married. They told me you weren't there any more."
"No; I haven't been down since my marriage either. I'm like you--an
elegant lady of leisure."
Hortense's bright-blue eyes dwelt searchingly on the face of her former
employer.
"The bunch in the office said they missed you something awful." Then,
in haste: "Oh, I don't mean that Mr. Buck don't make things go all
right. They're awful fond of him. But--I don't know--Miss Kelly said
she never has got over waiting for the sound of your step down the hall
at nine--sort of light and quick and sharp and busy, as if you couldn't
wait till you waded into the day's work. Do you know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean," said Emma.
There was a little pause. The two women so far apart, yet so near; so
different, yet so like, gazed far down into each other's soul.
"Miss it, don't you?" said Hortense.
"Yes; don't you?"
"Do I! Say----" She turned and indicated the women surging up and
down the store aisles, and her glance and gesture were replete with
contempt. "Say; look at 'em! Wandering around here, aimless as a lot
of chickens in a barnyard. Half of 'em are here because they haven't
got anything else to do. Think of it! I've watched 'em lots of times.
They go pawing over silks and laces and trimmings just for the pleasure
of feeling 'em. They stand in front of a glass case with a figure in it
all dressed up in satin and furs and jewels, and you'd think they were
worshiping an idol like they used to in the olden days. They don't seem
to have anything to do. Nothing to occupy their--their heads. Say, if
I thought I was going to be like them in time, I----"
"Hortense, my dear child, you're--you're happy, aren't you? Henry----"
"Well, I should say we are! I'm crazy about Henry, and he thinks I'm
perfect. Honestly, ain't they a scream! They think they're so big and
manly and all, and they're just like kids; ain't it so? We're living
in a four-room apartment in Harlem. We've got it fixed up too cozy for
anything."
"I'd like to come and see you," said Emma. Hortense opened her eyes
wide.
"Honestly; if you would----"
"Let's go up now. I've the car outside."
"Now! Why I--I'd love it!"
They chattered like schoolgirls on the way uptown--these two who had
found so much in common. The little apartment reached, Hortense threw
open the door with the confident gesture of the housekeeper who is not
afraid to have her household taken by surprise--whose housekeeping is
an index of character.
Hortense had been a clean-cut little stenographer. Her correspondence
had always been free from erasures, thumb-marks, errors. Her four-room
flat was as spotless as her typewritten letters had been. The kitchen
shone in its blue and white and nickel. A canary chirped in the tiny
dining-room. There were books and magazines on the sitting-room table.
The bedroom was brave in its snowy spread and the toilet silver that
had been Henry's gift to her the Christmas they became engaged.
Emma examined everything, exclaimed over everything, admired
everything. Hortense glowed like a rose.
"Do you really like it? I like the green velours in the sitting-room,
don't you? It's always so kind and cheerful. We're not all settled
yet. I don't suppose we ever will be. Sundays, Henry putters around,
putting up shelves, and fooling around with a can of paint. I always
tell him he ought to have lived on a farm, where he'd have elbow-room."
"No wonder you're so happy and busy," Emma exclaimed, and patted the
girl's fresh, young cheek.
Hortense was silent a moment.
"I'm happy," she said, at last, "but I ain't busy. And--well, if
you're not busy, you can't be happy very long, can you?"
"No," said Emma, "idleness, when you're not used to it, is misery."
"There! You've said it! It's like running on half-time when you're
used to a day-and-night shift. Something's lacking. It isn't that
Henry isn't grand to me, because he is. Evenings, we're so happy that
we just sit and grin at each other and half the time we forget to go to
a 'movie.' After Henry leaves in the morning, I get to work. I
suppose, in the old days, when women used to have to chop the kindling,
and catch the water for washing in a rain-barrel, and keep up a fire in
the kitchen stove and do their own bread baking and all, it used to
keep 'em hustling. But, my goodness! A four-room flat for two isn't
any work. By eleven, I'm through. I've straightened everything, from
the bed to the refrigerator; the marketing's done, and the dinner
vegetables are sitting around in cold water. The mending for two is a
joke. Henry says it's a wonder I don't sew double-breasted buttons on
his undershirts."
Emma was not smiling. But, then, neither was Hortense. She was
talking lightly, seemingly, but her pretty face was quite serious.
"The big noise in my day is when Henry comes home at six. That was all
right and natural, I suppose, in those times when a quilting-bee was a
wild afternoon's work, and teaching school was the most advanced job a
woman could hold down."
Emma was gazing fascinated at the girl's sparkling face. Her own eyes
were very bright, and her lips were parted.
"Tell me, Hortense," she said now; "what does Henry say to all this?
Have you told him how you feel?"
"Well, I--I talked to him about it once or twice. I told him that I've
got about twenty-four solid hours a week that I might be getting fifty
cents an hour for. You know, I worked for a manuscript-typewriting
concern before I came over to Buck's--plays and stories and that kind
of thing. They used to like my work because I never queered their
speeches by leaving out punctuation or mixing up the characters. The
manager there said I could have work any time I wanted it. I've got my
own typewriter. I got it second hand when I first started in. Henry
picks around on it sometimes, evenings. I hardly ever touch it. It's
getting rusty--and so am I."
"It isn't just the money you want, Hortense? Are you sure?"
"Of course I'd like the money. That extra coming in would mean
books--I'm crazy about reading, and so is Henry--and theaters and lots
of things we can't afford now. But that isn't all. Henry don't want
to be a shipping-clerk all his life. He's crazy about mechanics and
that kind of stuff. But the books that he needs cost a lot. Don't you
suppose I'd be proud to feel that the extra money I'd earned would lift
him up where he could have a chance to be something! But Henry is dead
set against it. He says he is the one that's going to earn the money
around here. I try to tell him that I'm used to using my mind. He
laughs and pinches my cheek and tells me to use it thinking about him."
She stopped suddenly and regarded Emma with conscience-stricken eyes.
"You don't think I'm running down Henry, do you? My goodness, I don't
want you to think that I'd change back again for a million dollars,
because I wouldn't." She looked up at Emma, conscience-stricken.
Emma came swiftly over and put one hand on the girl's shoulder.
"I don't think it. Not for a minute. I know that the world is full of
Henrys, and that the number of Hortenses is growing larger and larger.
I don't know if the four-room flats are to blame, or whether it's just
a natural development. But the Henry-Hortense situation seems to be
spreading to the nine-room-and-three-baths apartments, too."
Hortense nodded a knowing head.
"I kind of thought so, from the way you were listening."
The two, standing there gazing at each other almost shyly, suddenly
began to laugh. The laugh was a safety-valve. Then, quite as
suddenly, both became serious. That seriousness had been the
under-current throughout.
"I wonder," said Emma very gently, "if a small Henry, some day, won't
provide you with an outlet for all that stored-up energy."
Hortense looked up very bravely.
"Maybe. You--you must have been about my age when your boy was born.
Did he make you feel--different?"
The shade of sadness that always came at the mention of those unhappy
years of her early marriage crept into Emma's face now.
"That was not the same, dear," she explained. "I hadn't your sort of
Henry. You see, my boy was my only excuse for living. You'll never
know what that means. And when things grew altogether impossible, and
I knew that I must earn a living for Jock and myself, I just did
it--that's all. I had to."
Hortense thought that over for one deliberate moment. Her brows were
drawn in a frown.
"I'll tell you what I think," she announced, at last, "though I don't
know that I can just exactly put it into words. I mean this: Some
people are just bound to--to give, to build up things, to--well, to
manufacture, because they just can't help it. It's in 'em, and it's
got to come out. Dynamos--that's what Henry's technical books would
call them. You're one--a great big one. I'm one. Just a little tiny
one. But it's sparking away there all the time, and it might as well
be put to some use, mightn't it?"
Emma bent down and kissed the troubled forehead, and then, very
tenderly, the pretty, puckered lips.
"Little Hortense," she said, "you're asking a great big question. I
can answer it for myself, but I can't answer it for you. It's too
dangerous. I wouldn't if I could."
Emma, waiting in the hall for the lift, looked back at the slim little
figure in the doorway. There was a droop to the shoulders. Emma's
heart smote her.
"Don't bother your head about all this, little girl," she called back
to her. "Just forget to be ambitious and remember to be happy. That's
much the better way."
Hortense, from the doorway, grinned a rather wicked little grin.
"When are you going back to the office, Mrs. Buck?" she asked, quietly
enough.
"What makes you think I'm going back at all?" demanded Emma, stepping
into the shaky little elevator.
"I don't think it," retorted Hortense, once more the pert. "I know it."
Emma knew it, too. She had known it from the moment that she shook
hands in her compact. There was still one week remaining of the
stipulated three months. It seemed to Emma that that one week was
longer than the combined eleven. But she went through with colors
flying. Whatever Emma McChesney Buck did, she did well. But, then, T.
A. Buck had done his part well, too--so well that, on the final day,
Emma felt a sinking at her heart. He seemed so satisfied with affairs
as they were. He was, apparently, so content to drop all thought of
business when he left the office for his home.
Emma had planned a very special little dinner that evening. She wore a
very special gown, too--one of the new ones. T. A. noticed it at once,
and the dinner as well, being that kind of husband. Still, Annie, the
cook, complained later, to the parlor-maid, about the thanklessness of
cooking dinners for folks who didn't eat more'n a mouthful, anyway.
Dinner over,
"Well, Emma?" said T. A. Buck.
"Light your cigar, T. A.," said Emma. "You'll need it."
T. A. lighted it with admirable leisureliness, sent out a great puff of
fragrant smoke, and surveyed his wife through half-closed lids.
Beneath his air of ease there was a tension.
"Well, Emma?" he said again, gently.
Emma looked at him a moment appreciatively. She had too much poise and
balance and control herself not to recognize and admire those qualities
in others.
"T. A., if I had been what they call a homebody, we wouldn't be married
to-day, would we?"
"No."
"You knew plenty of home-women that you could have married, didn't you?"
"I didn't ask them, Emma, but----"
"You know what I mean. Now listen, T. A.: I've loafed for three
months. I've lolled and lazied and languished. And I've never been so
tired in my life--not even when we were taking January inventory.
Another month of this, and I'd be an old, old woman. I understand,
now, what it is that brings that hard, tired, stony look into the faces
of the idle women. They have to work so hard to try to keep happy. I
suppose if I had been a homebody all my life, I might be hardened to
this kind of thing. But it's too late now. And I'm thankful for it.
Those women who want to shop and dress and drive and play are welcome
to my share of it. If I am to be punished in the next world for my
wickedness in this, I know what form my torture will take. I shall
have to go from shop to shop with a piece of lace in my hand, matching
a sample of insertion. Fifteen years of being in the thick of it spoil
one for tatting and tea. The world is full of homebodies, I suppose.
And they're happy. I suppose I might have been one, too, if I hadn't
been obliged to get out and hustle. But it's too late to learn now.
Besides, I don't want to. If I do try, I'll be destroying the very
thing that attracted you to me in the first place. Remember what you
said about the Fifth Avenue girl?"
"But, Emma," interrupted Buck very quietly, "I don't want you to try."
Emma, with a rush of words at her very lips, paused, eyed him for a
doubtful moment, asked a faltering question.
"But it was your plan--you said you wanted me to be here when you came
home and when you left, didn't you? Do you mean you----"
"I mean that I've missed my business partner every minute for three
months. All the time we've been going to those fool dinners and all
that kind of thing, I've been bursting to talk skirts to you. I--say,
Emma, Adler's designed a new model--a full one, of course, but there's
something wrong with it. I can't put my finger on the flaw, but----"
Emma came swiftly over to his chair.
"Make a sketch of it, can't you?" she said. From his pocket Buck drew
a pencil, an envelope, and fell to sketching rapidly, squinting down
through his cigar smoke as he worked.
"It's like this," he began, absorbed and happy; "you see, where the
fulness begins at the knee----"
"Yes!" prompted Emma, breathlessly.
Two hours later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper.
But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a
perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation of a
task accomplished.
Emma straightened, leaned back, sighed--a victorious, happy sigh.
"And to think," she said, marveling, "to think that I once envied the
women who had nothing to do but the things I've done in the last three
months!"
Buck had risen, stretched luxuriously, yawned. Now he came over to his
wife and took her head in his two hands, cozily, and stood a moment
looking into her shining eyes.
"Emma, I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but perhaps
you'll still be interested to know that I think you're a wonder. A
wonder! You're the----"
"Oh, well, we won't quarrel about that," smiled Emma brazenly. "But I
wonder if Adler will agree with us when he sees what we've done to his
newest skirt design."
Suddenly a new thought seemed to strike her. She was off down the
hall. Buck, following in a leisurely manner, hands in pockets, stood
in the bedroom door and watched her plunge into the innermost depths of
the clothes-closet.
"What's the idea, Emma?"
"Looking for something," came back his wife's muffled tones.
A long wait.
"Can I help?"
"I've got it!" cried Emma, and emerged triumphant, flushed, smiling,
holding a garment at arm's length, aloft.
"What----"
Emma shook it smartly, turned it this way and that, held it up under
her chin by the sleeves.
"Why, girl!" exclaimed Buck, all a-grin, "it's the----"
"The blue serge," Emma finished for him, "with the white collars and
cuffs. And what's more, young man, it's the little blue hat with the
what-cha-ma-call-ems on it. And praise be! I'm wearing 'em both
down-town to-morrow morning."
V
"HOOPS, MY DEAR!"
Emma McChesney Buck always vigorously disclaimed any knowledge of that
dreamy-eyed damsel known as Inspiration. T. A. Buck, her
husband-partner, accused her of being on intimate terms with the lady.
So did the adoring office staff of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company. Out in the workshop itself, the designers and cutters, those
jealous artists of the pencil, shears, and yardstick, looked on in awed
admiration on those rare occasions when the feminine member of the
business took the scissors in her firm white hands and slashed boldly
into a shimmering length of petticoat-silk. When she put down the
great shears, there lay on the table the detached parts of that which
the appreciative and experienced eyes of the craftsmen knew to be a new
and original variation of that elastic garment known as the underskirt.
For weeks preceding one of these cutting-exhibitions, Emma was likely
to be not quite her usual brisk self. A mystic glow replaced the alert
brightness of her eye. Her wide-awake manner gave way to one of almost
sluggish inactivity.
The outer office, noting these things, would lift its eyebrows
significantly.
"Another hunch!" it would whisper. "The last time she beat the rest of
the trade by six weeks with that elastic-top gusset."
"Inspiration working, Emma?" T. A. Buck would ask, noting the symptoms.
"It isn't inspiration, T. A. Nothing of the kind! It's just an attack
of imagination, complicated by clothes-instinct."
"That's all that ails Poiret," Buck would retort.
Early in the autumn, when women were still walking with an absurd
sidewise gait, like a duck, or a filly that is too tightly hobbled, the
junior partner of the firm began to show unmistakable signs of business
aberration. A blight seemed to have fallen upon her bright little
office, usually humming with activity. The machinery of her day,
ordinarily as noiseless and well ordered as a thing on ball bearings,
now rasped, creaked, jerked, stood still, jolted on again. A bustling
clerk or stenographer, entering with paper or memorandum, would find
her bent over her desk, pencil in hand, absorbed in a rough drawing
that seemed to bear no relation to the skirt of the day. The margin of
her morning paper was filled with queer little scrawls by the time she
reached the office. She drew weird lines with her fork on the
table-cloth at lunch. These hieroglyphics she covered with a quick
hand, like a bashful schoolgirl, when any one peeped.
"Tell a fellow what it's going to be, can't you?" pleaded Buck.
"I got one glimpse yesterday, when you didn't know I was looking over
your shoulder. It seemed a pass between an overgrown Zeppelin and an
apple dumpling. So I know it can't be a skirt. Come on, Emma; tell
your old man!"
"Not yet," Emma would reply dreamily.
Buck would strike an attitude intended to intimidate.
"If you have no sense of what is due me as your husband, then I demand,
as senior partner of this firm, to know what it is that is taking your
time, which rightfully belongs to this business."
"Go away, T. A., and stop pestering me! What do you think I'm
designing--a doily?"
Buck, turning to go to his own office, threw a last retort over his
shoulder--a rather sobering one, this time.
"Whatever it is, it had better be good--with business what it is and
skirts what they are."
Emma lifted her head to reply to that.
"It isn't what they are that interests me. It's what they're going to
be."
Buck paused in the doorway.
"Going to be! Anybody can see that. Underneath that full, fool,
flaring over-drape, the real skirt is as tight as ever. I don't think
the spring models will show an inch of real difference. I tell you,
Emma, it's serious."
Emma, apparently absorbed in her work, did not reply to this. But a
vague something about the back of her head told T. A. Buck that she was
laughing at him. The knowledge only gave him new confidence in this
resourceful, many-sided, lovable, level-headed partner-wife of his.
Two weeks went by--four--six--eight. Emma began to look a little thin.
Her bright color was there only when she was overtired or excited. The
workrooms began to talk of new designs for spring, though it was
scarcely mid-winter. The head designer came forward timidly with a
skirt that measured a yard around the bottom. Emma looked at it, tried
to keep her lower lip prisoner between her teeth, failed, and began to
laugh helplessly, almost hysterically.
Amazement in the faces of Buck and Koritz, the designer, became
consternation, then, in the designer, resentment.
Koritz, dark, undersized, with the eyes of an Oriental and the lean,
sensitive fingers of one who creates, shivered a little, like a plant
that is swept by an icy blast. Buck came over and laid one hand on his
wife's shaking shoulder.
"Emma, you're overtired! This--this thing you've been slaving over has
been too much for you."
With one hand, Emma reached up and patted the fingers that rested
protectingly on her shoulder. With the other, she wiped her eyes,
then, all contrition, grasped the slender brown hand of the offended
Koritz.
"Bennie, please forgive me! I--I didn't mean to laugh. I wasn't
laughing at your new skirt."
"You think it's too wide, maybe, huh?" Bennie Koritz said, and held it
up doubtfully.
"Too wide!" For a moment Emma seemed threatened with another attack of
that inexplicable laughter. She choked it back resolutely.
"No, Bennie; not too wide. I'll tell you to-morrow why I laughed.
Then, perhaps, you'll laugh with me."
Bennie, draping his despised skirt-model over one arm, had the courage
to smile even now, though grimly.
"I laugh--sure," he said, showing his white teeth now. "But the laugh
will be, I bet you, on me--like it was when you designed that
knickerbocker before the trade knew such a thing could be."
Impulsively Emma grasped his hand and shook it, as though she found a
certain needed encouragement in the loyalty of this sallow little
Russian.
"Bennie, you're a true artist--because you're big enough to praise the
work of a fellow craftsman when you recognize its value." And Koritz,
the dull red showing under the olive of his cheeks, went back to his
cutting-table happy.
Buck bent forward, eagerly.
"You're going to tell me now, Emma? It's finished?"
"To-night--at home. I want to be the first to try it on. I'll play
model. A private exhibition, just for you. It's not only finished; it
is patented."
"Patented! But why? What is it, anyway? A new fastener? I thought
it was a skirt."
"Wait until you see it. You'll think I should have had it copyrighted
as well, not to say passed by the national board of censors."
"Do you mean to say that I'm to be the entire audience at the premiere
of this new model?"
"You are to be audience, critic, orchestra, box-holder, patron, and
'Diamond Jim' Brady. Now run along into your own office--won't you,
dear? I want to get out these letters." And she pressed the button
that summoned a stenographer.
T. A. Buck, resigned, admiring, and anticipatory, went.
Annie, the cook, was justified that evening in her bitter complaint.
Her excellent dinner received scant enough attention from these two.
They hurried through it like eager, bright-eyed school-children who
have been promised a treat. Two scarlet spots glowed in Emma's cheeks.
Buck's eyes, through the haze of his after-dinner cigar, were luminous.
"Now?"
"No; not yet. I want you to smoke your cigar and digest your dinner
and read your paper. I want you to twiddle your thumbs a little and
look at your watch. First-night curtains are always late in rising,
aren't they? Well!"
She turned on the full glare of the chandelier, turned it off, went
about flicking on the soft-shaded wall lights and the lamps.
"Turn your chair so that your back will be toward the door."
He turned it obediently.
Emma vanished.
From the direction of her bedroom there presently came the sounds of
dresser drawers hurriedly opened and shut with a bang, of a slipper
dropped on the hard-wood floor, a tune hummed in an absent-minded
absorption under the breath, an excited little laugh nervously stifled.
Buck, in his role of audience, began to clap impatiently and to stamp
with his feet on the floor.
"No gallery!" Emma called in from the hall. "Remember the
temperamental family on the floor below!" A silence--then: "I'm
coming. Shut your eyes and prepare to be jarred by the Buck
balloon-petticoat!"
There was a rustling of silks, a little rush to the center of the big
room, a breathless pause, a sharp snap of finger and thumb. Buck opened
his eyes.
He opened his eyes. Then he closed them and opened them again,
quickly, as we do, sometimes, when we are unwilling to believe that
which we see. What he beheld was this: A very pretty, very flushed,
very bright-eyed woman, her blond hair dressed quaintly after the
fashion of the early 'Sixties, her arms and shoulders bare, a pink-slip
with shoulder-straps in lieu of a bodice, and--he passed a bewildered
hand over his eyes a skirt that billowed and flared and flounced and
spread in a great, graceful circle--a skirt strangely light for all its
fulness--a skirt like, and yet, somehow, unlike those garments seen in
ancient copies of Godey's Lady Book.
"That can't be--you don't mean--what--what IS it?" stammered Buck,
dismayed.
Emma, her arms curved above her head like a ballet-dancer's,
pirouetted, curtsied very low so that the skirt spread all about her on
the floor, like the petals of a flower.
"Hoops, my dear!"
"Hoops!" echoed Buck, in weak protest. "Hoops, my DEAR!"
Emma stroked one silken fold with approving fingers.
"Our new leader for spring."
"But, Emma, you're joking!"
She stared, suddenly serious.
"You mean--you don't like it!"
"Like it! For a fancy-dress costume, yes; but as a petticoat for
every-day wear, to be made up by us for our customers! But of course
you're playing a trick on me." He laughed a little weakly and came
toward her. "You can't catch me that way, old girl! It's darned
becoming, Emma--I'll say that." He bent down, smiling. "I'll allow
you to kiss me. And then try me with the real surprise, will you?"
Her coquetry vanished. Her smile fled with it. Her pretty pose was
abandoned. Mrs. T. A. Buck, wife, gave way to Emma McChesney Buck,
business woman. She stiffened a little, as though bracing herself for
a verbal encounter.
"You'll get used to it. I expected you to be jolted at the first shock
of it. I was, myself--when the idea came to me."
Buck passed a frenzied forefinger under his collar, as though it had
suddenly grown too tight for him.
"Used to it! I don't want to get used to it! It's preposterous! You
can't be serious! No woman would wear a garment like that! For five
years skirts have been tighter and tighter----"
"Until this summer they became tightest," interrupted Emma. "They could
go no farther. I knew that meant, 'About face!' I knew it meant not a
slightly wider skirt but a wildly wider skirt. A skirt as bouffant as
the other had been scant. I was sure it wouldn't be a gradual process
at all but a mushroom growth--hobbles to-day, hoops to-morrow. Study
the history of women's clothes, and you'll find that has always been
true."
"Look here, Emma," began Buck, desperately; "you're wrong, all wrong!
Here, let me throw this scarf over your shoulders. Now we'll sit down
and talk this thing over sensibly."
"I'll agree to the scarf"--she drew a soft, silken, fringed shawl about
her and immediately one thought of a certain vivid, brilliant portrait
of a hoop-skirted dancer--"but don't ask me to sit down. I'd rebound
like a toy balloon. I've got to convince you of this thing. I'll have
to do it standing."
Buck sank into his chair and dabbed at his forehead with his
handkerchief.
"You'll never convince me, sitting or standing. Emma, I know I fought
the knickerbocker when you originated it, and I know that it turned out
to be a magnificent success. But this is different. The knicker was
practical; this thing's absurd--it's impossible! This is an age of
activity. In Civil War days women minced daintily along when they
walked at all. They stitched on samplers by way of diversion."
"What has all that to do with it?" inquired Emma sweetly.
"Everything. Use a little logic."
"Logic! In a discussion about women's dress! T. A., I'm surprised."
"But, Emma, be reasonable. Good Lord! You're usually clear-sighted
enough. Our mode of living has changed in the last fifty years--our
methods of transit, our pastimes, customs, everything. Imagine a woman
trying to climb a Fifth Avenue 'bus in one of those things. Fancy her
in a hot set of tennis. Women use street-cars, automobiles, airships.
Can you see a subway train full of hoop-skirted clerks, stenographers,
and models? Street-car steps aren't built for it. Office-building
elevators can't stand for it. Six-room apartments won't accommodate
'em. They're fantastic, wild, improbable. You're wrong, Emma--all
wrong!"
She had listened patiently enough, never once attempting to interrupt.
But on her lips was the maddening half-smile of one whose rebuttal is
ready. Now she perched for a moment at the extreme edge of the arm of
a chair. Her skirt subsided decorously. Buck noticed that, with
surprise, even in the midst of his heated protest.
"T. A., you've probably forgotten, but those are the very arguments
used when the hobble was introduced. Preposterous, people
said--impossible! Women couldn't walk in 'em. Wouldn't, couldn't sit
down in 'em. Women couldn't run, play tennis, skate in them. The car
steps were too high for them. Well, what happened? Women had to walk
in them, and a new gait became the fashion. Women took lessons in how
to sit down in them. They slashed them for tennis and skating. And
street-car companies all over the country lowered the car steps to
accommodate them. What's true for the hobble holds good for the hoop.
Women will cease to single-foot and learn to undulate when they walk.
They'll widen the car platforms. They'll sit on top the Fifth Avenue
'buses, and you'll never give them a second thought."
"The things don't stay where they belong. I've seen 'em misbehave in
musical comedies," argued Buck miserably.
"That's where my patent comes in. The old hoop was cumbersome,
unwieldy, clumsy. The new skirt, by my patent featherboning process,
is made light, graceful, easily managed. T. A., I predict that by
midsummer a tight skirt will be as rare a sight as a full one was a
year ago."
"Nonsense!"
"We're not quarreling, are we?"
"Quarreling! I rather think not! A man can have his own opinion,
can't he?"
It appeared, however, that he could not. For when they had threshed it
out, inch by inch, as might two partners whose only bond was business,
it was Emma who won.
"Remember, I'm not convinced," Buck warned her; "I'm only beaten by
superior force. But I do believe in your woman's intuition--I'll say
that. It has never gone wrong. I'm banking on it.
"It's woman's intuition when we win," Emma observed, thoughtfully.
"When we lose it's a foolish, feminine notion."
There were to be no half-way measures. The skirt was to be the feature
of the spring line. Cutters and designers were one with Buck in
thinking it a freak garment. Emma reminded them that the same thing
had been said of the hobble on its appearance.
In February, Billy Spalding, veteran skirt-salesman, led a flying wedge
of six on a test-trip that included the Middle West and the Coast.
Their sample-trunks had to be rebuilt to accommodate the new model.
Spalding, shirt-sleeved, whistling dolorously, eyed each garment with a
look of bristling antagonism. Spalding sold skirts on commission.
Emma, surveying his labors, lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
"If you're going to sell that skirt as enthusiastically as you pack it,
you'd better stay here in New York and save the house traveling
expenses."
Spalding ceased to whistle. He held up a billowy sample and gazed at
it.
"Honestly, Mrs. Buck, you know I'd try to sell pretzels in London if
you asked me to. But do you really think any woman alive would be
caught wearing a garment like this in these days?"
"Not only do I think it, Billy; I'm certain of it. This new petticoat
makes me the Lincoln of the skirt trade. I'm literally freeing my
sisters from the shackles that have bound their ankles for five years."
Spalding, unimpressed, folded another skirt.
"Um, maybe! But what's that line about slaves hugging their chains?"
The day following, Spalding and his flying squad scattered to spread
the light among the skirt trade. And things went wrong from the start.
The first week showed an ominous lack of those cheering epistles
beginning, "Enclosed please find," etc. The second was worse. The
third was equally bad. The fourth was final. The second week in
March, Spalding returned from a territory which had always been known
as firmly wedded to the T. A. Buck Featherloom petticoat. The Middle
West would have none of him.
They held the post-mortem in Emma's bright little office, and that lady
herself seemed to be strangely sunny and undaunted, considering the
completeness of her defeat. She sat at her desk now, very interested,
very bright-eyed, very calm. Buck, in a chair at the side of her desk,
was interested, too, but not so calm. Spalding, who was accustomed to
talk while standing, leaned against the desk, feet crossed, brows
furrowed. As he talked, he emphasized his remarks by jabbing the air
with his pencil.
"Well," said Emma quietly, "it didn't go."
"It didn't even start," corrected Spalding.
"But why?" demanded Buck. "Why?"
Spalding leaned forward a little, eagerly.
"I'll tell you something: When I started out with that little garment,
I thought it was a joke. Before I'd been out with it a week, I began
to like it. In ten days, I was crazy about it, and I believed in it
from the waistband to the hem. On the level, Mrs. Buck, I think it's a
wonder. Now, can you explain that?"
"Yes," said Emma; "you didn't like it at first because it was a shock
to you. It outraged all your ideas of what a skirt ought to be. Then
you grew accustomed to it. Then you began to see its good points. Why
couldn't you make the trade get your viewpoint?"
"This is why: Out in Manistee and Oshkosh and Terre Haute, the girls
have just really learned the trick of walking in tight skirts. It's as
impossible to convince a Middle West buyer that the exaggerated full
skirt is going to be worn next summer as it would be to prove to him
that men are going to wear sunbonnets. They thought I was trying to
sell 'em masquerade costumes. I may believe in it, and you may believe
in it, and T. A.; but the girls from Joplin--well, they're from Joplin.
And they're waiting to hear from headquarters."
T. A. Buck crossed one leg over the other and sat up with a little sigh.
"Well, that settles it, doesn't it?" he said.
"It does not," replied Emma McChesney Buck crisply. "If they want to
hear from headquarters, they won't have long to wait."
"Now, Emma, don't try to push this thing if it----"
"T. A., please don't look so forgiving. I'd much rather have you
reproach me."
"It's you I'm thinking of, not the skirt."
"But I want you to think of the skirt, too. We've gone into this
thing, and it has cost us thousands. Don't think I'm going to sit
quietly by and watch those thousands trickle out of our hands. We've
played our first card. It didn't take a trick. Here's another."
Buck and Spalding were leaning forward, interested, attentive. There
was that in Emma's vivid, glowing face which did not mean defeat.
"March fifteenth, at Madison Square Garden, there is to be held the
first annual exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of American
Styles for American Women. For one hundred years we've taken our
fashions as Paris dictated, regardless of whether they outraged our
sense of humor or decency or of fitness. This year the American
designer is going to have a chance. Am I an American designer, T. A.,
Billy?"
"Yes!" in chorus.
"Then I shall exhibit that skirt on a live model at the First Annual
American Fashion Show next month. Every skirt-buyer in the country
will be there. If it takes hold there, it's made--and so are we."
March came, and with it an army of men and women buyers, dependent, for
the first time in their business careers, on the ingenuity of the
American brain. The keen-eyed legions that had advanced on Europe
early, armed with letters of credit--the vast horde that returned each
spring and autumn laden with their spoils--hats, gowns, laces, linens,
silks, embroideries--were obliged to content themselves with what was
to be found in their own camp.
Clever manager that she was, Emma took as much pains with her model as
with the skirt itself. She chose a girl whose demure prettiness and
quiet charm would enhance the possibilities of the skirt's
practicability in the eye of the shrewd buyer. Gertrude, the model,
developed a real interest in the success of the petticoat. Emma knew
enough about the psychology of crowds to realize how this increased her
chances for success.
The much heralded fashion show was to open at one o'clock on the
afternoon of March fifteenth. At ten o'clock that morning, there
breezed in from Chicago a tall, slim, alert young man, who made
straight for the offices of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company, walked into the junior partner's private office, and took that
astonished lady in his two strong arms.
"Jock McChesney!" gasped his rumpled mother, emerging from the hug.
"I've been hungry for a sight of you!" She was submerged in a second
hug. "Come here to the window where I can get a real look at you! Why
didn't you wire me? What are you doing away from your own job? How's
business? And why come to-day, of all days, when I can't make a fuss
over you?"
Jock McChesney, bright-eyed, clear-skinned, steady of hand, stood up
well under the satisfied scrutiny of his adoring mother. He smiled
down at her.
"Wanted to surprise you. Here for three reasons--the Abbott
Grape-juice advertising contract, you, and Grace. And why can't you
make a fuss over me, I'd like to know?"
Emma told him. His keen, quick mind required little in the way of
explanation.
"But why didn't you let me in on it sooner?"
"Because, son, nothing explains harder than embryo success. I always
prefer to wait until it's grown up and let it do its own explaining."
"But the thing ought to have national advertising," Jock insisted, with
the advertising expert's lightning grasp of its possibilities. "What
that skirt needs is publicity. Why didn't you let me handle----"
"Yes, I know, dear; but you haven't seen the skirt. It won't do to ram
it down their throats. I want to ease it to them first. I want them to
get used to it. It failed utterly on the road, because it jarred their
notion of what a petticoat ought to be. That's due to five years of
sheath skirts."
"But suppose--just for the sake of argument--that it doesn't strike
them right this afternoon?"
"Then it's gone, that's all. Six months from now, every skirt-factory
in the country will be manufacturing a similar garment. People will be
ready for it then. I've just tried to cut in ahead of the rest.
Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do it."
Jock hugged her again at that, to the edification of the office windows
across the way.
"Gad, you're a wiz, mother! Now listen: I 'phoned Grace when I got
in. She's going to meet me here at one. I'll chase over to the office
now on this grape-juice thing and come back here in time for lunch. Is
T. A. in? I'll look in on him a minute. We'll all lunch together, and
then----"
"Can't do it, son. The show opens at one. Gertrude, my model, comes
on at three. She's going to have the stage to herself for ten minutes,
during which she'll make four changes of costume to demonstrate the
usefulness of the skirt for every sort of gown from chiffon to velvet.
Come back here at one, if you like. If I'm not here, come over to the
show. But--lunch! I'd choke."
At twelve-thirty, there scampered into Emma's office a very
white-faced, round-eyed little stock-girl. Emma, deep in a last-minute
discussion with Buck, had a premonition of trouble before the girl
gasped out her message.
"Oh, Mrs. Buck, Gertie's awful sick!"
"Sick!" echoed Emma and Buck, in duet. Then Emma:
"But she can't be! It's impossible! She was all right a half hour
ago." She was hurrying down the hall as she spoke. "Where is she?"
"They've got her on one of the tables in the workroom. She's moaning
awful."
Gertie's appendix, with that innate sense of the dramatic so often
found in temperamental appendices, had indeed chosen this moment to
call attention to itself. Gertie, the demurely pretty and quietly
charming, was rolled in a very tight ball on the workroom
cutting-table. At one o'clock, she was on her way home in a cab, under
the care of a doctor, Miss Kelly, the bookkeeper, and Jock, who, coming
in gaily at one, had been pressed into service, bewildered but willing.
Three rather tragic figures stared at one another in the junior
partner's office. They were Emma, Buck, and Grace Galt, Jock's
wife-to-be. Grace Galt, slim, lovely, girlish, was known, at
twenty-four, as one of the most expert copy writers in the advertising
world. In her clear-headed, capable manner, she tried to suggest a way
out of the difficulty now.
"But surely the world's full of girls," she said. "It's late, I know;
but any theatrical agency will send a girl over."
"That's just what I tried to avoid," Emma replied. "I wanted to show
this skirt on a sweet, pretty, refined sort of girl who looks and acts
like a lady. One of those blond show girls would kill it."
Gloom settled down again over the three. Emma broke the silence with a
rueful little laugh.
"I think," she said, "that perhaps you're right, T. A., and this is the
Lord's way of showing me that the world is not quite ready for this
skirt."
"You're not beaten yet, Emma," Buck assured her vigorously. "How about
this new girl--what's her name?--Myrtle. She's one of those thin, limp
ones, isn't she? Try her."
"I will," said Emma. "You're right. I'm not beaten yet. I've had to
fight for everything worth while in my life. I'm superstitious about
it now. When things come easy I'm afraid of them." Then, to the
stock-girl, "Annie, tell Myrtle I want to see her."
Silence fell again upon the three. Myrtle, very limp, very thin, very
languid indeed, roused them at her entrance. The hopeful look in
Emma's eyes faded as she beheld her. Myrtle was so obviously limp, so
hopelessly new.
"Annie says you want me to take Gertie's place," drawled Myrtle,
striking a magazine-cover attitude.
"I don't know that you are just the--er--type; but perhaps, if you're
willing----"
"Of course I didn't come here as a model," said Myrtle, and sagged on
the other hip. "But, as a special favor to you I'm willing to try
it--at special model's rates."
Emma ran a somewhat frenzied hand through her hair.
"Then, as a special favor to me, will you begin by trying to stand up
straight, please? That debutante slouch would kill a queen's
coronation costume."
Myrtle straightened, slumped again.
"I can't help it if I am willowy"--listlessly.
"Your hair!" Myrtle's hand went vaguely to her head. "I can't have you
wear it that way."
"Why, this is the French roll!" protested Myrtle, offended.
"Then do it in a German bun!" snapped Emma. "Any way but that. Will
you walk, please?"
"Walk?"--dully.
"Yes, walk; I want to see how you----"
Myrtle walked across the room. A groan came from Emma.
"I thought so." She took a long breath.
"Myrtle, listen: That Australian crawl was necessary when our skirts
were so narrow we had to negotiate a curbing before we could take it.
But the skirt you're going to demonstrate is wide. Like that! You're
practically a free woman in it. Step out! Stride! Swing! Walk!"
Myrtle tried it, stumbled, sulked.
Emma, half smiling, half woeful, patted the girl's shoulder.
"Oh, I see; you're wearing a tight one. Well, run in and get into the
skirt. Miss Loeb will help you. Then come back here--and quickly,
please."
The three looked at each other in silence. It was a silence brimming
with eloquent meaning. Each sought encouragement in the eyes of the
other--and failed to find it. Failing, they broke into helpless
laughter. It proved a safety-valve.
"She may do, Emma--when she has her hair done differently, and if
she'll only stand up."
But Emma shook her head.
"T. A., something tells me you're going to have a wonderful chance to
say, 'I told you so!' at three o'clock this afternoon."
"You know I wouldn't say it, Emma."
"Yes; I do know it, dear. But what's the difference, if the chance is
there?"
Suspense settled down on the little office. Billy Spalding entered,
smiling. After five minutes of waiting, even his buoyant spirits sank.
"Don't you think--if you were to go in and--and sort of help adjust
things----" suggested Buck vaguely.
"No; I don't want to prop her up. She'll have to stand alone when she
gets there. She'll either do, or not. When she enters that door, I'll
know."
When Myrtle entered, wearing the fascinatingly fashioned new model,
they all knew.
Emma spoke decisively.
"That settles it."
"What's the matter? Don't it look all right?" demanded Myrtle.
"Take it off, Myrtle."
Then, to the others, as Myrtle, sulking, left the room:
"I can stand to see that skirt die if necessary. But I won't help
murder it."
"But, Mrs. Buck," protested Spalding, almost tearfully, "you've got to
exhibit that skirt. You've got to!"
Emma shook a sorrowing head.
"That wouldn't be an exhibition, Billy. It would be an expose."
Spalding clapped a desperate hand to his bald head.
"If only I had Julian Eltinge's shape, I'd wear it to the show for you
myself."
"That's all it needs now," retorted Emma grimly.
Whereupon, Grace Galt spoke up in her clear, decisive voice.
"Wait a minute," she said quietly. "I'm going to wear that skirt at
the fashion show."
"You!" cried the three, like a trained trio.
"Why not?" demanded Grace Galt, coolly. Then: "No; don't tell me why
not. I won't listen."
But Emma, equally cool, would have none of it.
"It's impossible, dear. You're an angel to want to help me. But you
must know it's quite out of the question."
"It's nothing of the kind. This skirt isn't merely a fad. It has a
fortune in it. I'm business woman enough to know that. You've got to
let me do it. It isn't only for yourself. It's for T. A. and for the
future of the firm."
"Do you suppose I'd allow you to stand up before all those people?"
"Why not? I don't know them. They don't know me. I can make them get
the idea in that skirt. And I'm going to do it. You don't object to
me on the same grounds that you did to Myrtle, do you?"
"You!" burst from the admiring Spalding. "Say, you'd make a
red-flannel petticoat look like crepe de Chine and lace."
"There!" said Grace, triumphant. "That settles it!" And she was off
down the hall. They stood a moment in stunned silence. Then:
"But Jock!" protested Emma, following her. "What will Jock say? Grace!
Grace dear! I can't let you do it! I can't!"
"Just unhook this for me, will you?" replied Grace Galt sweetly.
At two o'clock, Jock McChesney, returned from his errand of mercy,
burst into the office to find mother, step-father, and fiancee all
flown.
"Where? What?" he demanded of the outer office.
"Fashion show!" chorused the office staff
"Might have waited for me," Jock said to himself, much injured. And
hurled himself into a taxi.
There was a crush of motors and carriages for a block on all sides of
Madison Square Garden. He had to wait for what seemed an interminable
time at the box-office. Then he began the task of worming his way
through the close-packed throng in the great auditorium. It was a
crowd such as the great place had not seen since the palmy days of the
horse show. It was a crowd that sparkled and shone in silks and
feathers and furs and jewels.
"Jove, if mother has half a chance at this gang!" Jock told himself.
"If only she has grabbed some one who can really show that skirt!"
He was swept with the crowd toward a high platform at the extreme end
of the auditorium. All about that platform stood hundreds, close
packed, faces raised eagerly, the better to see the slight, graceful,
girlish figure occupying the center of the stage--a figure strangely
familiar to Jock's eyes in spite of its quaintly billowing, ante-bellum
garb. She was speaking. Jock, mouth agape, eyes protruding, ears
straining, heard, as in a daze, the sweet, clear, charmingly modulated
voice:
"The feature of the skirt, ladies and gentlemen, is that it gives a
fulness without weight, something which the skirt-maker has never
before been able to achieve. This is due to the patent featherboning
process invented by Mrs. T. A. Buck, of the T. A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company, New York. Note, please, that it has all the
advantages of our grandmother's hoop-skirt, but none of its awkward
features. It is graceful"--she turned slowly, lightly--"it is
bouffant" she twirled on her toes--"it is practical, serviceable,
elegant. It can be made up in any shade, in any material--silk, lace,
crepe de Chine, charmeuse, taffeta. The T. A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company is prepared to fill orders for immediate----"
"Well, I'll be darned!" said Jock McChesney aloud. And, again,
heedless of the protesting "Sh-sh-sh-sh!" that his neighbors turned
upon him, "Well, I'll--be--darned!"
A hand twitched his coat sleeve. He turned, still dazed. His mother,
very pink-cheeked, very bright-eyed, pulled him through the throng. As
they reached the edge of the crowd, there came a great burst of
applause, a buzz of conversation, the turning, shifting, nodding,
staccato movements which mean approval in a mass of people.
"What the dickens! How!" stammered Jock. "When--did she--did she----"
Emma, half smiling, half tearful, raised a protesting hand.
"I don't know. Don't ask me, dear. And don't hate me for it. I tried
to tell her not to, but she insisted. And, Jock, she's done it, I tell
you! She's done it! They love the skirt! Listen to 'em!"
"Don't want to," said Jock. "Lead me to her."
"Angry, dear!"
"Me? No! I'm--I'm proud of her! She hasn't only brains and looks,
that little girl; she's got nerve--the real kind! Gee, how did I ever
have the gall to ask her to marry me!"
Together they sped toward the door that led to the dressing-rooms.
Buck, his fine eyes more luminous than ever as he looked at this
wonder-wife of his, met them at the entrance.
"She's waiting for you, Jock," he said, smiling. Jock took the steps
in one leap.
"Well, T. A.?" said Emma.
"Well, Emma?" said T. A.
Which burst of eloquence was interrupted abruptly by a short, squat,
dark man, who seized Emma's hand in his left and Buck's in his right,
and pumped them up and down vigorously. It was that volatile, voluble
person known to the skirt trade as Abel I. Fromkin, of the "Fromkin
Form-fit Skirt. It Clings!"
"I'm looking everywhere for you!" he panted. Then, his shrewd little
eyes narrowing, "You want to talk business?"
"Not here," said Buck abruptly.
"Sure--here," insisted Fromkin. "Say, that's me. When I got a thing
on my mind, I like to settle it. How much you take for the rights to
that skirt?"
"Take for it!" exclaimed Emma, in the tone a mother would use to one
who has suggested taking a beloved child from her.
"Now wait a minute. Don't get mad. You ain't started that skirt
right. It should have been advertised. It's too much of a shock.
You'll see. They won't buy. They're afraid of it. I'll take it off
your hands and push it right, see? I offer you forty thousand for the
rights to make that skirt and advertise it as the 'Fromkin Full-flounce
Skirt. It Flares!'"
Emma smiled.
"How much?" she asked quizzically.
Abel I. Fromkin gulped.
"Fifty thousand," he said.
"Fifty thousand," repeated Emma quietly, and looked at Buck. "Thanks,
Mr. Fromkin! I know, now, that if it's worth fifty thousand to you
to-day as the 'Fromkin Full-flounce Skirt. It Flares!' then it's worth
one hundred and fifty thousand to us as the 'T. A. Buck
Balloon-Petticoat. It Billows!'"
And it was.