The inevitable answer came:
"Your first! Really! This is my twentieth crossing. Been coming over
twice a year for ten years. If there's anything I can tell you, just
ask. The first buying trip to Paris is hard until you know the ropes. Of
course you love this town?"
Sophy Gold sat silent a moment, hesitating. Then she turned a puzzled
face toward Miss Morrissey.
"What do people mean when they say they love Paris?"
Ella Morrissey stared. Then a queer look came into her face--a pitying
sort of look. The shrewd eyes softened. She groped for words.
"When I first came over here, ten years ago, I--well, it would have been
easier to tell you then. I don't know--there's something about
Paris--something in the atmosphere--something in the air. It--it makes
you do foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy. It's
nothing you can put your finger on and say 'That's it!' But it's there."
"Huh!" grunted Sophy Gold. "I suppose I could save myself a lot of
trouble by saying that I feel it; but I don't. I simply don't react to
this town. The only things I really like in Paris are the Tomb of
Napoleon, the Seine at night, and the strawberry tart you get at Vian's.
Of course the parks and boulevards are a marvel, but you can't expect me
to love a town for that. I'm no landscape gardener."
That pitying look deepened in Miss Morrissey's eyes.
"Have you been out in the evening? The restaurants! The French women!
The life!"
Sophy Gold caught the pitying look and interpreted it without
resentment; but there was perhaps an added acid in her tone when she
spoke.
"I'm here to buy--not to play. I'm thirty years old, and it's taken me
ten years to work my way up to foreign buyer. I've worked. And I wasn't
handicapped any by my beauty. I've made up my mind that I'm going to buy
the smoothest-moving line of French lingerie and infants' wear that
Schiff Brothers ever had."
Miss Morrissey checked her.
"But, my dear girl, haven't you been round at all?"
"Oh, a little; as much as a woman can go round alone in Paris--even a
homely woman. But I've been disappointed every time. The noise drives me
wild, to begin with. Not that I'm not used to noise. I am. I can stand
for a town that roars, like Chicago. But this city yelps. I've been
going round to the restaurants a little. At noon I always picked the
restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the
_commissionnaire_ who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at
home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen
do?
"Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of
the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and
then they'd say: 'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried
potatoes?' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the
order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place.
As for the French women, every time I picked what I took to be a real
Parisienne coming toward me I'd hear her say as she passed: 'Henry, I'm
going over to the Galerie Lafayette. I'll meet you at the American
Express at twelve. And, Henry, I think I'll need some more money.'"
Miss Ella Morrissey's twinkling eyes almost disappeared in wrinkles of
laughter; but Sophy Gold was not laughing. As she talked she gazed
grimly ahead at the throng that shifted and glittered and laughed and
chattered all about her.
"I stopped work early one afternoon and went over across the river.
Well! They may be artistic, but they all looked as though they needed a
shave and a hair-cut and a square meal. And the girls!"
Ella Morrissey raised a plump, protesting palm.
"Now look here, child, Paris isn't so much a city as a state of mind. To
enjoy it you've got to forget you're an American. Don't look at it from
a Chicago, Illinois, viewpoint. Just try to imagine you're a mixture of
Montmartre girl, Latin Quarter model and duchess from the Champs
Élysées. Then you'll get it."
"Get it!" retorted Sophy Gold. "If I could do that I wouldn't be buying
lingerie and infants' wear for Schiffs'. I'd be crowding Duse and
Bernhardt and Mrs. Fiske off the boards."
Miss Morrissey sat silent and thoughtful, rubbing one fat forefinger
slowly up and down her knee. Suddenly she turned.
"Don't be angry--but have you ever been in love?"
"Look at me!" replied Sophy Gold simply. Miss Morrissey reddened a
little. "As head of the lingerie section I've selected trousseaus for I
don't know how many Chicago brides; but I'll never have to decide
whether I'll have pink or blue ribbons for my own."
With a little impulsive gesture Ella Morrissey laid one hand on the
shoulder of her new acquaintance.
"Come on up and visit me, will you? I made them give me an inside room,
away from the noise. Too many people down here. Besides, I'd like to
take off this armour-plate of mine and get comfortable. When a girl gets
as old and fat as I am--"
"There are some letters I ought to get out," Sophy Gold protested
feebly.
"Yes; I know. We all have; but there's such a thing as overdoing this
duty to the firm. You get up at six to-morrow morning and slap off
those letters. They'll come easier and sound less tired."
They made for the lift; but at its very gates:
"Hello, little girl!" cried a masculine voice; and a detaining hand was
laid on Ella Morrissey's plump shoulder.
That lady recognised the voice and the greeting before she turned to
face their source. Max Tack, junior partner in the firm of Tack
Brothers, Lingerie and Infants' Wear, New York, held out an eager hand.
"Hello, Max!" said Miss Morrissey not too cordially. "My, aren't you
dressy!"
He was undeniably dressy--not that only, but radiant with the
self-confidence born of good looks, of well-fitting evening clothes, of
a fresh shave, of glistening nails. Max Tack, of the hard eye and the
soft smile, of the slim figure and the semi-bald head, of the flattering
tongue and the business brain, bent his attention full on the very plain
Miss Sophy Gold.
"Aren't you going to introduce me?" he demanded.
Miss Morrissey introduced them, buyer fashion--names, business
connection, and firms.
"I knew you were Miss Gold," began Max Tack, the honey-tongued. "Some
one pointed you out to me yesterday. I've been trying to meet you ever
since."
"I hope you haven't neglected your business," said Miss Gold without
enthusiasm.
Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered.
"I'd neglect it any day for you. Listen, little one: aren't you going
to take dinner with me some evening?"
Max Tack always called a woman "Little one." It was part of his business
formula. He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly
ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to
those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests
of their firms. To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods
such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make
them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came
to New York--that was Max Tack's mission in Paris. He performed it
admirably.
"What evening?" he said now. "How about to-morrow?" Sophy Gold shook her
head. "Wednesday then? You stick to me and you'll see Paris. Thursday?"
"I'm buying my own dinners," said Sophy Gold.
Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her.
"You little rascal!" No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal
before. "You stingy little rascal! Won't give a poor lonesome fellow an
evening's pleasure, eh! The theatre? Want to go slumming?"
He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled. Usually he landed a buyer
at the first shot. Of course you had to use tact and discrimination.
Some you took to supper and to the naughty _revues_.
Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera. Had he
not sat through Parsifal the week before? And nearly died! Some wanted
to begin at Tod Sloan's bar and work their way up through Montmartre,
ending with breakfast at the Pré Catalan. Those were the greedy ones.
But this one!
"What's she stalling for--with that face?" he asked himself.
Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey
with her.
"I'm working too hard to play. Thanks, just the same. Good-night."
Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to
ascend.
"_Trazyem_," said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man.
"Third," replied that linguistic person, unimpressed.
It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey's room.
She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold.
"Is that your usual method?"
"I haven't any method," Miss Gold seated herself by the window. "But
I've worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself
under obligations to any New York firm. It simply means that you've got
to buy their goods. It isn't fair to your firm."
Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings. Her utterance
was jerky but concise. At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a
great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her.
"There! That's comfort! Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of
our flat to sit on for just an hour. Ma has flower boxes all round it,
and I bought one of those hammock couches last year. When I come home
from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white
kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for
supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with
egg sauce!" She relaxed into an armchair. "Tell me, do you always talk
to men that way?"
Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window.
"They don't bother me much, as a rule."
"Max Tack isn't a bad boy. He never wastes much time on me. I don't buy
his line. Max is all business. Of course he's something of a smarty, and
he does think he's the first verse and chorus of Paris-by-night; but you
can't help liking him."
"Well, I can," said Sophy Gold, and her voice was a little bitter, "and
without half trying."
"Oh, I don't say you weren't right. I've always made it a rule to steer
clear of the ax-grinders myself. There are plenty of girls who take
everything they can get. I know that Max Tack is just padded with
letters from old girls, beginning 'Dear Kid,' and ending, 'Yours with a
world of love!' I don't believe in that kind of thing, or in accepting
things. Julia Harris, who buys for three departments in our store,
drives up every morning in the French car that Parmentier's gave her
when she was here last year. That's bad principle and poor taste.
But--Well, you're young; and there ought to be something besides
business in your life."
Sophy Gold turned her face from the window toward Miss Morrissey. It
served to put a stamp of finality on what she said:
"There never will be. I don't know anything but business. It's the only
thing I care about. I'll be earning my ten thousand a year pretty soon."
"Ten thousand a year is a lot; but it isn't everything. Oh, no, it
isn't. Look here, dear; nobody knows better than I how this working and
being independent and earning your own good money puts the stopper on
any sentiment a girl might have in her; but don't let it sour you. You
lose your illusions soon enough, goodness knows! There's no use in
smashing 'em out of pure meanness."
"I don't see what illusions have got to do with Max Tack," interrupted
Sophy Gold.
Miss Morrissey laughed her fat, comfortable chuckle.
"I suppose you're right, and I guess I've been getting a lee-tle bit
nosey; but I'm pretty nearly old enough to be your mother. The girls
kind of come to me and I talk to 'em. I guess they've spoiled me.
They--"
There came a smart rapping at the door, followed by certain giggling and
swishing. Miss Morrissey smiled.
"That'll be some of 'em now. Just run and open the door, will you, like
a nice little thing? I'm too beat out to move."
The swishing swelled to a mighty rustle as the door opened. Taffeta was
good this year, and the three who entered were the last in the world to
leave you in ignorance of that fact. Ella Morrissey presented her new
friend to the three, giving the department each represented as one would
mention a title or order.
"The little plump one in black?--Ladies' and Misses' Ready-to-wear,
Gates Company, Portland.... That's a pretty hat, Carrie. Get it to-day?
Give me a big black velvet every time. You can wear 'em with anything,
and yet they're dressy too. Just now small hats are distinctly passy.
"The handsome one who's dressed the way you always imagined the
Parisiennes would dress, but don't?--Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San
Francisco. Listen, Fan: don't go back to San Francisco with that stuff
on your lips. It's all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but
you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and
then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face. Well, I'm just telling
you as a friend.
"That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country.... No, you
wouldn't, would you? Such a mite! Even if she does wear a twenty-eight
blouse she's got a forty-two brain--haven't you, Belle? You didn't make
a mistake with that blue crêpe de chine, child. It's chic and yet it's
girlish. And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home. It's
quiet if it is stunning."
These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and
your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan
Avenue next October. On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the
success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments. The lace for
Miss Minnesota's lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado's hair;
the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam
Delaware--all were the results of their farsighted selection. They were
foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from
oyster cove to orange grove.
They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives. They
rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them. Their hats were so
smart that they gave you a shock. Their shoes were correct. Their skirts
bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where
smoothness was decreed. They looked like the essence of frivolity--until
you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in
sheltered women's eyes was crystallised in theirs.
Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than
ever.
"I'm taking tango lessons, Ella," chirped Miss Laces. "Every time I went
to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else
was dancing. I've made up my mind I'll be in it this year."
"You girls are wonders!" Miss Morrissey marvelled. "I can't do it any
more. If I was to work as hard as I have to during the day and then run
round the way you do in the evening they'd have to hold services for me
at sea. I'm getting old."
"You--old!" This from Miss Ready-to-Wear. "You're younger now than I'll
ever be. Oh, Ella, I got six stunning models at Estelle Mornet's.
There's a business woman for you! Her place is smart from the ground
floor up--not like the shabby old junk shops the others have. And she
greets you herself. The personal touch! Let me tell you, it counts in
business!"
"I'd go slow on those cape blouses if I were you; I don't think they're
going to take at home. They look like regular Third Avenue style to me."
"Don't worry. I've hardly touched them."
They talked very directly, like men, when they discussed clothes; for to
them a clothes talk meant a business talk.
The telephone buzzed. The three sprang up, rustling.
"That'll be for us, Ella," said Miss Fancy Goods. "We told the office to
call us here. The boys are probably downstairs." She answered the call,
turned, nodded, smoothed her gloves and preened her laces.
Ella Morrissey, in kimonoed comfort, waved a good-bye from her armchair.
"Have a good time! You all look lovely. Oh, we met Max Tack downstairs,
looking like a grand duke!"
Pert Miss Laces turned at the door, giggling.
"He says the French aristocracy has nothing on him, because his
grandfather was one of the original Ten Ikes of New York."
A final crescendo of laughter, a last swishing of silks, a breath of
perfume from the doorway and they were gone.
Within the room the two women sat looking at the closed door for a
moment. Then Ella Morrissey turned to look at Sophy Gold just as Sophy
Gold turned to look at Ella Morrissey.
"Well?" smiled Ella.
Sophy Gold smiled too--a mirthless, one-sided smile.
"I felt just like this once when I was a little girl. I went to a party,
and all the other little girls had yellow curls. Maybe some of them had
brown ones; but I only remember a maze of golden hair, and pink and blue
sashes, and rosy cheeks, and ardent little boys, and the sureness of
those little girls--their absolute faith in their power to enthrall, and
in the perfection of their curls and sashes. I went home before the ice
cream. And I love ice cream!"
Ella Morrissey's eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"Then the next time you're invited to a party you wait for the ice
cream, girlie."
"Maybe I will," said Sophy Gold.
The party came two nights later. It was such a very modest affair that
one would hardly call it that--least of all Max Tack, who had spent
seventy-five dollars the night before in entertaining an important
prospective buyer.
On her way to her room that sultry June night Sophy had encountered the
persistent Tack. Ella Morrissey, up in her room, was fathoms deep in
work. It was barely eight o'clock and there was a wonderful opal sky--a
June twilight sky, of which Paris makes a specialty--all grey and rose
and mauve and faint orange.
"Somebody's looking mighty sweet to-night in her new Paris duds!"
Max Tack's method of approach never varied in its simplicity.
"They're not Paris--they're Chicago."
His soul was in his eyes.
"They certainly don't look it!" Then, with a little hurt look in those
same expressive features: "I suppose, after the way you threw me down
hard the other night, you wouldn't come out and play somewhere, would
you--if I sat up and begged and jumped through this?"
"It's too warm for most things," Sophy faltered.
"Anywhere your little heart dictates," interrupted Max Tack ardently.
"Just name it."
Sophy looked up.
"Well, then, I'd like to take one of those boats and go down the river
to St.-Cloud. The station's just back of the Louvre. We've just time to
catch the eight-fifteen boat."
"Boat!" echoed Max Tack stupidly. Then, in revolt: "Why, say, girlie,
you don't want to do that! What is there in taking an old tub and
flopping down that dinky stream? Tell you what we'll do: we'll--"
"No, thanks," said Sophy. "And it really doesn't matter. You simply
asked me what I'd like to do and I told you. Thanks. Good-night."
"Now, now!" pleaded Max Tack in a panic. "Of course we'll go. I just
thought you'd rather do something fussier--that's all. I've never gone
down the river; but I think that's a classy little idea--yes, I do. Now
you run and get your hat and we'll jump into a taxi and--"
"You don't need to jump into a taxi; it's only two blocks. We'll walk."
There was a little crowd down at the landing station. Max Tack noticed,
with immense relief, that they were not half-bad-looking people either.
He had been rather afraid of workmen in red sashes and with lime on
their clothes, especially after Sophy had told him that a trip cost
twenty centimes each.
"Twenty centimes! That's about four cents! Well, my gad!"
They got seats in the prow. Sophy took off her hat and turned her face
gratefully to the cool breeze as they swung out into the river. The
Paris of the rumbling, roaring auto buses, and the honking horns, and
the shrill cries, and the mad confusion faded away. There was the
palely glowing sky ahead, and on each side the black reflection of the
tree-laden banks, mistily mysterious now and very lovely. There was not
a ripple on the water and the Pont Alexandre III and the golden glory of
the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides were ahead.
"Say, this is Venice!" exclaimed Max Tack.
A soft and magic light covered the shore, the river, the sky, and a soft
and magic something seemed to steal over the little boat and work its
wonders. The shabby student-looking chap and his equally shabby and
merry little companion, both Americans, closed the bag of fruit from
which they had been munching and sat looking into each other's eyes.
The long-haired artist, who looked miraculously like pictures of Robert
Louis Stevenson, smiled down at his queer, slender-legged little
daughter in the curious Cubist frock; and she smiled back and snuggled
up and rested her cheek on his arm. There seemed to be a deep and silent
understanding between them. You knew, somehow, that the little Cubist
daughter had no mother, and that the father's artist friends made much
of her and that she poured tea for them prettily on special days.
The bepowdered French girl who got on at the second station sat frankly
and contentedly in the embrace of her sweetheart. The stolid married
couple across the way smiled and the man's arm rested on his wife's
plump shoulder.
So the love boat glided down the river into the night. And the shore
faded and became grey, and then black. And the lights came out and cast
slender pillars of gold and green and scarlet on the water.
Max Tack's hand moved restlessly, sought Sophy's, found it, clasped it.
Sophy's hand had never been clasped like that before. She did not know
what to do with it, so she did nothing--which was just what she should
have done.
"Warm enough?" asked Max Tack tenderly.
"Just right," murmured Sophy.
The dream trip ended at St.-Cloud. They learned to their dismay that the
boat did not return to Paris. But how to get back? They asked questions,
sought direction--always a frantic struggle in Paris. Sophy, in the
glare of the street light, looked uglier than ever.
"Just a minute," said Max Tack. "I'll find a taxi."
"Nonsense! That man said the street car passed right here, and that we
should get off at the Bois. Here it is now! Come on!"
Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up.
"You certainly make a fellow hump," he said, not without a note of
admiration. "And why are you so afraid that I'll spend some money?" as
he handed the conductor the tiny fare.
"I don't know--unless it's because I've had to work so hard all my life
for mine."
At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting _fiacres_.
"But you don't want to go home yet!" protested Max Tack.
"I--I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park--if you don't
mind--that is--"
"Mind!" cried the gallant and game Max Tack.
Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might
drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven
with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her
tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and
because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness,
he took her unaccustomed hand again in his.
"This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured.
Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a
mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that
particular _fiacre_ wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to
the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near
by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they
saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris
moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the
lips.
Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would
have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as
well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother,
and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been
kissed before her. So they told her to say:
"You shouldn't have done that."
And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries:
"I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!"
"You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very
ugly--when it isn't moonlight."
"Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who
think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties,
that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any
fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains
every time." Which was a lie!
They drove home down the Bois--the cool, spacious, tree-bordered
Bois--and through the Champs Élysées. Because he was an artist in his
way, and because every passing _fiacre_ revealed the same picture, Max
Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his.
It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite,
quite sane and very comforting in Paris.
At the door of the hotel:
"I'm sailing Wednesday," said Max Tack. "You--you won't forget me?"
"Oh, no--no!"
"You'll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?"
"Oh, yes!"
He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the
_fiacre_ with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his
face. The _fiacre_ meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a
lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He
looked up at the cabby--the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his
absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top
hat.
"Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening's
entertainment! Why--why, all she wanted was just a little love!"
To the bottle-nosed one all conversation in a foreign language meant
dissatisfaction with the meter. He tapped that glass-covered contrivance
impatiently with his whip. A flood of French bubbled at his lips.
"It's all right, boy! It's all right! You don't get me!" And Max Tacked
pressed a five-franc piece into the outstretched palm. Then to the hotel
porter: "Just grab a taxi for me, will you? These tubs make me nervous."
Sophy, on her way to her room, hesitated, turned, then ran up the stairs
to the next floor and knocked gently at Miss Morrissey's door. A moment
later that lady's kimonoed figure loomed large in the doorway.
"Who is--oh, it's you! Well, I was just going to have them drag the
Seine for you. Come in!"
She went back to the table. Sheets of paper, rough sketches of hat
models done from memory, notes and letters lay scattered all about.
Sophy leaned against the door dreamily.
"I've been working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey,
holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her
working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the
other's running on first. Where've you been, child?"
"Oh, driving!" Sophy's limp hair was a shade limper than usual, and a
strand of it had become loosened and straggled untidily down over her
ear. Her eyes looked large and strangely luminous. "Do you know, I love
Paris!"
Ella Morrissey laid down her pencil sketch and turned slowly. She
surveyed Sophy Gold, her shrewd eyes twinkling.
"That so? What made you change your mind?"
The dreamy look in Sophy's eyes deepened.
"Why--I don't know. There's something in the atmosphere--something in
the air. It makes you do and say foolish things. It makes you feel queer
and light and happy."
Ella Morrissey's bright twinkle softened to a glow. She stared for
another brief moment. Then she trundled over to where Sophy stood and
patted her leathery cheek. "Welcome to our city!" said Miss Ella
Morrissey.