MR. EUSTACE VEAL was a manufacturer of cuspidors. His beautiful factory
was one of the finest of its kind, equipped with complete automatic
sprinklers, wire-glass windows, cafeteria on the top floor, pensions for
superannuated employees, rosewood directors' dining room, mottoes from
Orison Swett Marden on the weekly pay envelopes, and a clever young man
in tortoise-shell spectacles hired at eighty dollars a week to write the
house-organ (which was called _El Cuspidorado_).
Mr. Veal lived in the exclusive and clean-shaven suburb of Mandrake
Park, where he had built a stucco mansion with Venetian blinds, a
croquet lawn with a revolving spray on it on hot days, and a mansard
butler. Here Mrs. Veal and the two Veal girls, Dora and Petunia, led the
blameless life of the _embonpoint_ classes. The electric lights in the
bedrooms were turned on promptly at ten o'clock every night, except on
the sixteen winter evenings when the Veals occupied their box at the
opera. During “Rigoletto” or “Pagliacci” the uncomplaining Mr. Veal
would sit in silence with his head against the thick red velvet curtain
at the back of the box, thinking up new ways to get an order for ten
thousand nickel-plated seamless number 13's from the Pullman Company.
Mr. Veal, hampered as he was by the restrictions of success, was still
full of the enjoyment of life. He had written a little brochure on “The
Cuspidor: Its Use and Abuse Since the Times of the Pharaohs,” which
was very well spoken of in the trade. A morocco-bound copy lay on
the console table in Mrs. Veal's salon. It was he who invented the
papier-maché spittoon, and the collapsible paper “companion” for
travelling salesmen. It was he who had presented a solid silver spittoon
de luxe to the King of Siam when that worthy visited the United States.
And it was his idea, too, to name the beautiful shining brass model,
especially recommended for hotel lobbies, El Cuspidorado. This was
a stroke of imaginative genius, and several rival manufacturers wept
because they had not thought of it first.
The spittoon magnate's habits were regular and sane. He rose by alarm
clock at seven. He bathed, shaved, brushed his teeth with the vertical
motion recommended by the toothbrush advertisers, breakfasted on cereal
and cream and poached eggs, with one cup of strong coffee; walked
leisurely to the station, bought a paper, and caught the 8.13 train. He
avoided the other men who wanted him to sit with them, took the fifth
chair on the left-hand side of the smoking car, and just as the train
started he lit his first cigar. His commutation ticket was always ready
for the conductor to punch. He never kept others waiting, just as he
hated to be kept waiting himself. After his ticket had been punched
and put back into an alligator-hide pocketbook, he opened the paper and
studied it faithfully until the train got to the terminal.
At the factory Mr. Veal's routine was equally well-ordered and uniform.
At nine o'clock he reached his private office, greeted his secretary,
and ran over the morning mail, which had been opened and lay on his
desk. Then he went through his dictation, which was carefully (even if
not grammatically) accomplished. The sales reports for the preceding day
were brought to him. Then he discussed any matters requiring attention
with his department heads, calling them in one by one. At a quarter
after twelve he walked up to the Manufacturers' Club for lunch, after
which he played one game of pool.
He was back at the office by half-past two, and gave his passionate
and devoted attention to the salivary needs of the nation until five
o'clock. He caught the 5.23 train back to Mandrake Park, sitting on the
right-hand side of the smoker where the setting sun would not dazzle on
his newspaper.
But one day, about the time of the March equinox, when young ladies put
furry pussywillows on their typewriter desks, and bank tellers crack the
shells of spring jokes through the brass railings, Mr. Veal's behaviour
was so peculiar as to cause anxiety among his associates.
He had ridden on the train as usual, without showing any abnormal
symptoms. But when he was next observed, walking down Vincent Street,
there was a red spot on his cheekbones and his expression was savage.
He entered a haberdasher's shop and asked to see some neckties. When the
clerk put out a tray of silk scarves in rich, sober colours, such as are
commonly worn by successful and middle-aged merchants, Mr. Veal swore
and dashed them aside.
“Good Lord!” he cried, “I'm not going to a funeral! Things like that are
worn by Civil War veterans. What do you think I am, seventy years old?
Give me something with some snap to it!”
And he chose a lemon-tinted cravat with vorticist patterns of brown
and purple. He tore off the dark gray tie he had on and substituted the
gaudy new one.
At the next corner he passed a shoe-shop. He hesitated a moment at the
plate-glass window, then he entered and glared at the brisk young puppet
who came forward with a smirk. He displayed his elastic-sided boots
of the floorwalker type (which he had worn for years on account of his
corns) and asked to have them removed. When they were off his feet
he threw them to the other end of the long, narrow room. “I want some
russet shoes with cloth tops,” he said. “And some silk socks to match,
the kind the men wear in the magazine ads.”
When he left the shop, his feet might have been taken for those of
Charley Chaplin, or of an assistant advertising manager of a department
store.
*****
Mr. Veal reached his office nearly two hours late, and one of his office
boys was instantly discharged for asking him whom he wanted to see.
Indeed, in a new suit of violent black-and-white checks, and with a
crush hat of velvety substance, he was almost unrecognizable. As he
passed through the filing department a hush fell over the young ladies
there. His secretary, looking nervously from her corner outside the
private office, felt a tingling _scherzo_ run up and down the keyboard
of her spine. Never before had she seen Mr. Veal wear flowers in his
buttonhole, and as he swung the door of his office behind him, she
sniffed the vibrating air. In the rich wake of cigar-fragrance always
exhaled by her employer her sharp nostrils detected a new tang--the
sweet scent of mignonette. Heavens! Was Mr. Veal using perfume?
Miss Stafford was an acute young woman. She had long been waiting the
adroit moment to push her employer for a raise, which was indeed due
her. She determined that this was the psychological day. When the sign
of the Ram is ascendant in the zodiac, let employers tremble. This
is when even the most faithful and long-enduring wage-earner dreams
seditiously of a fatter manila envelope. Miss Stafford's typewriter
had sung like a zither for a number of years, she had orchestrated many
curious harmonies on it, and now she had reached the point where she
was almost as indispensable to the business as Mr. Veal himself. She was
carrying what the efficiency dopesters call the peak load.
The buzzer buzzed, and Miss Stafford hastened to the private office,
nerving herself to throw cantilevers across the Rubicon.
To her surprise, Mr. Veal, instead of sitting glowering over the morning
mail, was standing by the window, throwing a paper-weight in the air
and failing to catch it. The sunlight blazing through the large windows
seemed to surround his emphatic clothes with a prismatic fringe. To
her amazement, instead of the customary brief and reserved greeting, he
said:
“Hullo, Miss Stafford. Great weather, eh? Sorry I'm late, but I just
couldn't keep my schedule this morning. Went out to buy myself some golf
clubs. I think I'd better take up the game, don't you?”
He made a swing at an imaginary golf ball, and slipped on the polished
floor, nearly falling down. He recovered himself.
“Here's some flowers for you,” he said, taking a bunch of daffodils from
the desk. “Daffy-down-dillies, as the poets call 'em. Lovely flowers,
hey? Now comes in the sweet of the year. What ho!”
He advanced toward her, and for one extraordinary moment she thought he
was about to chuck her under the chin.
“Ask Mr. Foster to come in,” he said.
“Mr. Veal,” she said, nervously, “there's just one thing--I wanted to
ask you about, my salary, don't you think, er, I think, it seems to me
about time I had a raise. I've been here----”
“Bless my soul,” he said. “I never thought of it. Why, of course, you're
right. Miss Stafford, how old would you say I am?”
Miss Stafford knew perfectly well that he was fifty-five, but she had
learned the cunning of all women who have to manage men, whether those
men be husbands, employers, or ticket scalpers.
“Why, Mr. Veal, in a good light and in your new suit, I should say about
thirty-nine.”
“What are you getting now, Miss Stafford?”
“Thirty dollars.”
“Tell Mr. Mason to double it.”
The feminine mind moves in rapid zigzags, and Miss Stafford's first
conscious and coherent thought was of a certain woollen sports suit she
had seen in a window on Vincent Street marked $50.00.
“And by the way,” said Mr. Veal, “when you see Mr. Mason, tell him I've
got a new motto for next week's pay envelopes. Here it is; I found it
in the paper this morning. I don't know who wrote it--better have him
credit it to Orison Swett Marden.”
He handed her a slip of paper, on which he had copied out:
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;