[Illustration: "'What is this anyway? A George Cohan comedy?'"]
PERSONALITY PLUS
SOME EXPERIENCES OF EMMA McCHESNEY
AND HER SON, JOCK
By
EDNA FERBER
AUTHOR OF "DAWN O'HARA," "BUTTERED SIDE DOWN,"
"ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM," ETC.
_WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. MAKING GOOD WITH MOTHER
II. PERSONALITY PLUS
III. DICTATED BUT NOT READ
IV. THE MAN WITHIN HIM
V. THE SELF-STARTER
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'What is this anyway? A George Cohan comedy?'" _Frontispiece_
"'You're a jealous blond,' he laughed"
"He was the concentrated essence of do-it-now"
"'Hi! Hold that pose!' called Von Herman"
"With a jolt Jock realized she had forgotten all about him"
"'Well, raw-thah!' he drawled"
"... became in some miraculous way a little boy again"
"Jock McChesney began to carry a yellow walking stick down to
work"
"'Good Lord, Mother! Of course you don't mean it, but--'"
"'Greetings!'"
"She laid one hand very lightly on his arm and looked up into the
sullen, angry young face"
"He made straight for the main desk with its battalion of clerks"
"'Let's not waste any time,' he said"
"He found his mother on the floor ... surrounded by piles of
pajamas, socks, shirts and collars"
"'Well, you said you wanted somebody to worry about, didn't you?'"
PERSONALITY PLUS
I
MAKING GOOD WITH MOTHER
When men began to build cities vertically instead of horizontally
there passed from our highways a picturesque figure, and from our
language an expressive figure of speech. That oily-tongued,
persuasive, soft-stepping stranger in the rusty Prince Albert and
the black string tie who had been wont to haunt our back steps and
front offices with his carefully wrapped bundle, retreated in
bewildered defeat before the clanging blows of steel on steel that
meant the erection of the first twenty-story skyscraper. "As
slick," we used to say, "as a lightning-rod agent." Of what use
his wares on a building whose tower was robed in clouds and which
used the chain lightning for a necklace? The Fourth Avenue antique
dealer had another curio to add to his collection of andirons,
knockers, snuff boxes and warming pans.
But even as this quaint figure vanished there sprang up a new and
glittering one to take his place. He stood framed in the great
plate-glass window of the very building which had brought about
the defeat of his predecessor. A miracle of close shaving his face
was, and a marvel of immaculateness his linen. Dapper he was, and
dressy, albeit inclined to glittering effects and a certain
plethory at the back of the neck. Back of him stood shining shapes
that reflected his glory in enamel, and brass, and glass. His
language was floral, but choice; his talk was of gearings and
bearings and cylinders and magnetos; his method differed from that
of him who went before as the method of a skilled aëronaut differs
from that of the man who goes over Niagara in a barrel. And as he
multiplied and spread over the land we coined a new figure of
speech. "Smooth!" we chuckled. "As smooth as an automobile
salesman."
But even as we listened, fascinated by his fluent verbiage there
grew within us a certain resentment. Familiarity with his
glittering wares bred a contempt of them, so that he fell to
speaking of them as necessities instead of luxuries. He juggled
figures, and thought nothing of four of them in a row. We looked
at our five-thousand-dollar salary, so strangely shrunken and thin
now, and even as we looked we saw that the method of the unctuous,
anxious stranger had become antiquated in its turn.
Then from his ashes emerged a new being. Neither urger nor
spellbinder he. The twentieth century was stamped across his brow,
and on his lips was ever the word "Service." Silent, courteous,
watchful, alert, he listened, while you talked. His method, in
turn, made that of the silk-lined salesman sound like the hoarse
hoots of the ballyhoo man at a county fair. Blithely he accepted
five hundred thousand dollars and gave in return--a promise. And
when we would search our soul for a synonym to express all that
was low-voiced, and suave, and judicious, and patient, and sure,
we began to say, "As alert as an advertising expert."
Jock McChesney, looking as fresh and clear-eyed as only twenty-one
and a cold shower can make one look, stood in the doorway of his
mother's bedroom. His toilette had halted abruptly at the
bathrobe stage. One of those bulky garments swathed his slim
figure, while over his left arm hung a gray tweed Norfolk coat.
From his right hand dangled a pair of trousers, in pattern a
modish black-and-white.
Jock regarded the gray garment on his arm with moody eyes.
"Well, I'd like to know what's the matter with it!" he demanded, a
trifle irritably.
Emma McChesney, in the act of surveying her back hair in the
mirror, paused, hand glass poised half way, to regard her son.
"All right," she answered cheerfully. "I'll tell you. It's too
young."
"Young!" He held it at arm's length and stared at it. "What d'you
mean--young?"
Emma McChesney came forward, wrapping the folds of her kimono
about her. She took the disputed garment in one hand and held it
aloft. "I know that you look like a man on a magazine cover in it.
But Norfolk suits spell tennis, and seashore, and elegant leisure.
And you're going out this morning, Son, to interview business men.
You're going to try to impress the advertising world with the fact
that it needs your expert services. You walk into a business
office in a Norfolk suit, and everybody from the office boy to the
president of the company will ask you what your score is."
She tossed it back over his arm.
"I'll wear the black and white," said Jock resignedly, and turned
toward his own room. At his doorway he paused and raised his voice
slightly: "For that matter, they're looking for young men.
Everybody's young. Why, the biggest men in the advertising game
are just kids." He disappeared within his room, still talking.
"Look at McQuirk, advertising manager of the Combs Car Company.
He's so young he has to disguise himself in bone-trimmed
eye-glasses with a black ribbon to get away with it. Look at
Hopper, of the Berg, Shriner Company. Pulls down ninety thousand a
year, and if he's thirty-five I'll--"
"Well, you asked my advice," interrupted his mother's voice with
that muffled effect which is caused by a skirt being slipped over
the head, "and I gave it. Wear a white duck sailor suit with blue
anchors and carry a red tin pail and a shovel, if you want to look
young. Only get into it in a jiffy, Son, because breakfast will be
ready in ten minutes. I can tell by the way Annie's crashing the
cups. So step lively if you want to pay your lovely mother's
subway fare."
Ten minutes later the slim young figure, in its English-fitting
black and white, sat opposite Emma McChesney at the breakfast
table and between excited gulps of coffee outlined a meteoric
career in his chosen field. And the more he talked and the rosier
his figures of speech became, the more silent and thoughtful fell
his mother. She wondered if five o'clock would find a droop to the
set of those young shoulders; if the springy young legs in their
absurdly scant modish trousers would have lost some of their
elasticity; if the buoyant step in the flat-heeled shoes would not
drag a little. Thirteen years of business experience had taught
her to swallow smilingly the bitter pill of rebuff. But this boy
was to experience his first dose to-day. She felt again that
sensation of almost physical nausea--that sickness of heart and
spirit which had come over her when she had met her first sneer
and intolerant shrug. It had been her maiden trip on the road for
the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She was secretary of
that company now, and moving spirit in its policy. But the wound
of that first insult still ached. A word from her would have
placed the boy and saved him from curt refusals. She withheld that
word. He must fight his fight alone.
"I want to write the kind of ad," Jock was saying excitedly, "that
you see 'em staring at in the subways, and street cars and
L-trains. I want to sit across the aisle and watch their up-turned
faces staring at that oblong, and reading it aloud to each other."
"Isn't that an awfully obvious necktie you're wearing, Jock?"
inquired his mother irrelevantly.
"This? You ought to see some of them. This is a Quaker stock in
comparison." He glanced down complacently at the vivid-hued silken
scarf that the season's mode demanded. Immediately he was off
again. "And the first thing you know, Mrs. McChesney, ma'am, we'll
have a motor truck backing up at the door once a month and six
strong men carrying my salary to the freight elevator in sacks."
Emma McChesney buttered her bit of toast, then looked up to remark
quietly:
"Hadn't you better qualify for the trial heats, Jock, before you
jump into the finals?"
"Trial heats!" sneered Jock. "They're poky. I want real money.
Now! It isn't enough to be just well-to-do in these days. It needs
money. I want to be rich! Not just prosperous, but rich! So rich
that I can let the bath soap float around in the water without any
pricks of conscience. So successful that they'll say, 'And he's a
mere boy, too. Imagine!'"
And, "Jock dear," Emma McChesney said, "you've still to learn that
plans and ambitions are like soap bubbles. The harder you blow and
the more you inflate them, the quicker they burst. Plans and
ambitions are things to be kept locked away in your heart, Son,
with no one but yourself to take an occasional peep at them."
Jock leaned over the table, with his charming smile. "You're a
jealous blonde," he laughed. "Because I'm going to be a captain of
finance--an advertising wizard; you're afraid I'll grab the glory
all away from you."
[Illustration: "'You're a jealous blond,' he said"]
Mrs. McChesney folded her napkin and rose. She looked unbelievably
young, and trim, and radiant, to be the mother of this boasting
boy.
"I'm not afraid," she drawled, a wicked little glint in her blue
eyes. "You see, they'll only regard your feats and say, 'H'm, no
wonder. He ought to be able to sell ice to an Eskimo. His mother
was Emma McChesney.'"
And then, being a modern mother, she donned smart autumn hat and
tailored suit coat and stood ready to reach her office by
nine-thirty. But because she was as motherly as she was modern she
swung open the door between kitchen and dining-room to advise with
Annie, the adept.
"Lamb chops to-night, eh, Annie? And sweet potatoes. Jock loves
'em. And corn au gratin and some head lettuce." She glanced toward
Jock in the hallway, then lowered her voice. "Annie," she teased,
"just give us one of your peach cobblers, will you? You see
he--he's going to be awfully--tired when he gets home."
So they went stepping off to work together, mother and son. A
mother of twenty-five years before would have watched her son
with tear-dimmed eyes from the vine-wreathed porch of a cottage.
There was no watching a son from the tenth floor of an up-town
apartment house. Besides, she had her work to do. The subway
swallowed both of them. Together they jostled and swung their way
down-town in the close packed train. At the Twenty-third Street
station Jock left her.
"You'll have dinner to-night with a full-fledged professional
gent," he bragged, in his youth and exuberance and was off down
the aisle and out on the platform. Emma McChesney managed to turn
in her nine-inch space of train seat so that she watched the slim,
buoyant young figure from the window until the train drew away and
he was lost in the stairway jam. Just so Rachel had watched the
boy Joseph go to meet the Persian caravans in the desert.
"Don't let them buffalo you, Jock," Emma had said, just before he
left her. "They'll try it. If they give you a broom and tell you
to sweep down the back stairs, take it, and sweep, and don't
forget the corners. And if, while you're sweeping, you notice that
that kind of broom isn't suited to the stairs go in and suggest a
new kind. They'll like it."
Brooms and back stairways had no place in Jock McChesney's mind as
the mahogany and gold elevator shot him up to the fourteenth floor
of the great office building that housed the Berg, Shriner
Company. Down the marble hallway he went and into the reception
room. A cruel test it was, that reception room, with the cruelty
peculiar to the modern in business. With its soft-shaded lamp, its
two-toned rug, its Jacobean chairs, its magazine-laden cathedral
oak table, its pot of bright flowers making a smart touch of color
in the somber richness of the room, it was no place for the
shabby, the down-and-out, the cringing, the rusty, or the
mendicant.
Jock McChesney, from the tips of his twelve-dollar shoes to his
radiant face, took the test and stood it triumphantly. He had
entered with an air in which was mingled the briskness of
assurance with the languor of ease. There were times when Jock
McChesney was every inch the son of his mother.
There advanced toward Jock a large, plump, dignified personage, a
personage courteous, yet reserved, inquiring, yet not offensively
curious--a very Machiavelli of reception-room ushers. Even while
his lips questioned, his eyes appraised clothes, character,
conduct.
"Mr. Hupp, please," said Jock, serene in the perfection of his
shirt, tie, collar and scarf pin, upon which the appraising eye
now rested. "Mr. McChesney." He produced a card.
"Appointment?"
"No--but he'll see me."
But Machiavelli had seen too many overconfident callers. Their
very confidence had taught him caution.
"If you will please state your--ah--business--"
Jock smiled a little patient smile and brushed an imaginary fleck
of dust from the sleeve of his very correct coat.
"I want to ask him for a job as office boy," he jibed.
An answering grin overspread the fat features of the usher. Even
an usher likes his little joke. The sense of humor dies hard.
"I have a letter from him, asking me to call," said Jock, to
clinch it.
"This way." The keeper of the door led Jock toward the sacred
inner portal and held it open. "Mr. Hupp's is the last door to the
right."
The door closed behind him. Jock found himself in the big, busy,
light-flooded central office. Down either side of the great room
ran a row of tiny private offices, each partitioned off, each
outfitted with desk, and chairs, and a big, bright window. On his
way to the last door at the right Jock glanced into each tiny
office, glimpsing busy men bent absorbedly over papers, girls busy
with dictation, here and there a door revealing two men, or three,
deep in discussion of a problem, heads close together, voices
low, faces earnest. It came suddenly to the smartly modish,
overconfident boy walking the length of the long room that
the last person needed in this marvelously perfected and
smooth-running organization was a somewhat awed young man named
Jock McChesney. There came to him that strange sensation which
comes to every job-hunter; that feeling of having his spiritual
legs carry him out of the room, past the door, down the hall and
into the street, even as, in reality, they bore him on to the very
presence which he dreaded and yet wished to see.
Two steps more, and he stood in the last doorway, right. No
matinee idol, nervously awaiting his cue in the wings, could have
planned his entrance more carefully than Jock had planned this.
Ease was the thing; ease, bordering on nonchalance, mixed with a
brisk and businesslike assurance.
The entrance was lost on the man at the desk. He did not even look
up. If Jock had entered on all-fours, doing a double tango to
vocal accompaniment, it is doubtful if the man at the desk would
have looked up. Pencil between his fingers, head held a trifle to
one side in critical contemplation of the work before him, eyes
narrowed judicially, lips pursed, he was the concentrated essence
of do-it-now.
[Illustration: "He was the concentrated essence of do-it-now"]
Jock waited a moment, in silence. The man at the desk worked on.
His head was semi-bald. Jock knew him to be thirty. Jock fixed his
eye on the semi-bald spot and spoke.
"My name's McChesney," he began. "I wrote you three days ago; you
probably will remember. You replied, asking me to call, and I--"
"Minute," exploded the man at the desk, still absorbed.
Jock faltered, stopped. The man at the desk did not look up. A
moment of silence, except for the sound of the busy pencil
traveling across the paper. Jock, glaring at the semi-bald spot,
spoke again.
"Of course, Mr. Hupp, if you're too busy to see me--"
"M-m-m-m," a preoccupied hum, such as a busy man makes when he is
trying to give attention to two interests.
"--why I suppose there's no sense in staying; but it seems to me
that common courtesy--"
The busy pencil paused, quivered in the making of a final period,
enclosed the dot in a proofreader's circle, and rolled away across
the desk, its work done.
"Now," said Sam Hupp, and swung around, smiling, to face the
affronted Jock. "I had to get that out. They're waiting for it."
He pressed a desk button. "What can I do for you? Sit down, sit
down."
There was a certain abrupt geniality about him. His
tortoise-rimmed glasses gave him an oddly owlish look, like a
small boy taking liberties with grandfather's spectacles.
Jock found himself sitting down, his anger slipping from him.
"My name's McChesney," he began. "I'm here because I want to work
for this concern." He braced himself to present the convincing,
reason-why arguments with which he had prepared himself.
Whereupon Sam Hupp, the brisk, proceeded to whisk his breath and
arguments away with an unexpected:
"All right. What do you want to do?"
Jock's mouth fell open. "Do!" he stammered. "Do! Why--anything--"
Sam Hupp's quick eye swept over the slim, attractive, radiant,
correctly-garbed young figure before him. Unconsciously he rubbed
his bald spot with a rueful hand.
"Know anything about writing, or advertising?"
Jock was at ease immediately. "Quite a lot; yes. I practically
rewrote the Gridiron play that we gave last year, and I was
assistant advertising manager of the college publications for
two years. That gives a fellow a pretty broad knowledge of
advertising."
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Sam Hupp, and covered his eyes with his hand,
as if in pain.
Jock stared. The affronted feeling was returning. Sam Hupp
recovered himself and smiled a little wistfully.
"McChesney, when I came up here twelve years ago I got a job as
reception-room usher. A reception-room usher is an office boy in
long pants. Sometimes, when I'm optimistic, I think that if I live
twelve years longer I'll begin to know something about the
rudiments of this game."
"Oh, of course," began Jock, apologetically. But Hupp's glance was
over his head. Involuntarily Jock turned to follow the direction
of his eyes.
"Busy?" said a voice from the doorway.
"Come in, Dutch! Come in!" boomed Hupp.
The man who entered was of the sort that the boldest might well
hesitate to address as "Dutch"--a tall, slim, elegant figure,
Van-dyked, bronzed.
"McChesney, this is Von Herman, head of our art department."
Their hands met in a brief clasp. Von Herman's thoughts were
evidently elsewhere.
"Just wanted to tell you that that cussed model's skipped out.
Gone with a show. Just when I had the whole series blocked out in
my mind. He was a wonder. No brains, but a marvel for looks and
style. These people want real stuff. Don't know how I'm going to
give it to them now."
Hupp sat up. "Got to!" he snapped. "Campaign's late, as it is.
Can't you get an ordinary man model and fake the Greek god
beauty?"
"Yes--but it'll look faked. If I could lay my hands on a chap who
could wear clothes as if they belonged to him--"
Hupp rose. "Here's your man," he cried, with a snap of his
fingers. "Clothes! Look at him. He invented 'em. Why, you could
photograph him and he'd look like a drawing."
Von Herman turned, surprised, incredulous, hopeful, his artist eye
brightening at the ease and grace and modishness of the smart,
well-knit figure before him.
"Me!" exploded Jock, his face suffused with a dull, painful red.
"Me! Pose! For a clothing ad!"
"Well," Hupp reminded him, "you said you'd do anything."
Jock McChesney glared belligerently. Hupp returned the stare with
a faint gleam of amusement shining behind the absurd glasses. The
amused look changed to surprise as he beheld the glare in Jock's
eyes fading. For even as he glared there had come a warning to
Jock--a warning sent just in time from that wireless station
located in his subconscious mind. A vivid face, full of pride, and
hope, and encouragement flashed before him.
"Jock," it said, "don't let 'em buffalo you. They'll try it. If
they give you a broom and tell you to sweep down the back
stairs--"
Jock was smiling his charming, boyish smile.
"Lead me to your north light," he laughed at Von Herman. "Got any
Robert W. Chambers's heroines tucked away there?"
Hupp's broad hand came down on his shoulder with a thwack. "That's
the spirit, McChesney! That's the--" He stopped, abruptly. "Say,
are you related to Mrs. Emma McChesney, of the Featherloom Skirt
Company?"
"Slightly. She's my one and only mother."
"She--you mean--her son! Well I'll be darned!" He held out his
hand to Jock. "If you're a real son of your mother I wish you'd
just call the office boy as you step down the hall with Von Herman
and tell him to bring me a hammer and a couple of spikes. I'd
better nail down my desk."
"I'll promise not to crowd you for a year or two," grinned Jock
from the doorway, and was off with the pleased Von Herman.
Past the double row of beehives again, into the elevator, out
again, up a narrow iron stairway, into a busy, cluttered,
skylighted room. Pictures, posters, photographs hung all about.
Some of the pictures Jock recognized as old friends that had gazed
familiarly at him from subway trains and street cars and theater
programmes. Golf clubs, tennis rackets, walking sticks, billiard
cues were stacked up in corners. And yet there was a bare and
orderly look about the place. Two silent, shirt-sleeved men were
busy at drawing boards. Through a doorway beyond Jock could see
others similarly engaged in the next room. On a platform in one
corner of the room posed a young man in one of those costumes the
coat of which is a mongrel mixture of cutaway and sack. You see
them worn by clergymen with unsecular ideas in dress, and by the
leader of the counterfeiters' gang in the moving pictures. The
pose was that met with in the backs of magazines--the head lifted,
eyes fixed on an interesting object unseen, one arm crooked to
hold a cane, one foot advanced, the other trailing slightly to
give a Fifth Avenue four o'clock air. His face was expressionless.
On his head was a sadly unironed silk hat.
Von Herman glanced at the drawing tacked to the board of one of
the men. "That'll do, Flynn," he said to the model. He glanced
again at the drawing. "Bring out the hat a little more, Mack. They
won't burnish it if you don't,"--to the artist. Then, turning
about, "Where's that girl?"
From a far corner, sheltered by long green curtains, stepped a
graceful almost childishly slim figure in a bronze-green Norfolk
suit and close-fitting hat from beneath which curled a fluff of
bright golden hair. Von Herman stared at her.
"You're not the girl," he said. "You won't do."
"You sent for me," retorted the girl. "I'm Miss Michelin--Gelda
Michelin. I posed for you six months ago, but I've been out of
town with the show since then."
Von Herman, frowning, opened a table drawer, pulled out a card
index, ran his long fingers through it and extracted a card. He
glanced at it, and then, the frown deepening, read it aloud.
"'Michelin, Gelda. Telephone Bryant 4759. Brunette. Medium build.
Good neck and eyes. Good figure. Good clothes.'"
He glanced up. "Well?"
"That's me," said Miss Michelin calmly. "I've got the same
telephone number and eyes and neck and clothes. Of course my hair
is different and I am thinner, but that's business. I'd like to
know what chance a fat girl would have in the chorus these days."
Von Herman groaned. "I'll pay you for the time you've waited and
for your trouble. Can't use you for these pictures." Then as she
left he turned a comically despairing face to the two men at the
drawing boards. "What are we going to do? We've got to make a
start on these pictures and everything has gone wrong. They want
something special. Two figures, young man and woman. Said
expressly they didn't want a chicken. No romping curls and none of
that eyes and lips fool-girl stuff. This chap's ideal for the
man." He pointed to Jock.
Jock had been staring, fascinated, at the shaded, zigzag marks
which the artist--dark-skinned, velvet-eyed, foreign-looking
youth--was making on the sheet of paper before him. He had
scarcely glanced up during the entire scene. Now he looked briefly
and coolly at Jock.
"Where did you get him?" he asked, with the precise enunciation of
the foreign-born. "Good figure. And he wears his clothes not like
a cab driver, as the others do."
"Thanks," drawled Jock, flushing a little. Then, boyish curiosity
getting the better of him, "Say, tell me, what in the world are
you doing to that drawing?"
He of the velvety eyes smiled a twisted little smile. His slim
brown fingers never stopped in their work of guiding the pen in
its zigzag path.
"It is work," he sneered, "to delight the soul of an artist. I am
now engaged in the pleasing task of putting the bones in a
herringbone suit."
But Jock did not smile. Here was another man, he thought, who had
been given a broom and told to sweep down the stairway.
Von Herman was regarding him almost wistfully. "I hate to let you
slip," he said. Then, his face brightening, "By Jove! I wonder if
Miss Galt would pose for us if we told her what a fix we were in."
He picked up the telephone receiver. "Miss Galt, please," he said.
Then, aside, "Of course it's nerve to ask a girl who's earning
three thousand a year to leave her desk and come up and pose
for--Hello! Miss Galt?"
Jock, seated on the edge of the models' platform, was beginning to
enjoy himself. Even this end of the advertising business had its
interesting side, he thought. Ten minutes later he knew it had.
Ten minutes later there appeared Miss Galt. Jock left off
swinging his legs from the platform and stood up. Miss Galt was
that kind of girl. Smooth black hair parted and coiled low as only
an exquisitely shaped head can dare to wear its glory-crown. A
face whose expression was sweetly serious in spite of its youth. A
girl whose clothes were the sort of clothes that girls ought to
wear in offices, and don't.
"This is mighty good of you, Miss Galt," began Von Herman. "It's
the Kool Komfort Klothes Company's summer campaign stuff. We'll
only need you for an hour or so--to get the expression and general
outline. Poster stuff, really. Then this young man will pose for
the summer union suit pictures."
"Don't apologize," said Miss Galt. "We had a hard enough time to
get that Kool Komfort account. We don't want to start wrong with
the pictures. Besides, I think posing's real fun."
Jock thought so too, quite suddenly. Just as suddenly Von Herman
remembered the conventions and introduced them.
"McChesney?" repeated Miss Galt, crisply. "I know a Mrs.
McChesney, of the T.A. Buck--"
"My mother," proudly.
"Your mother! Then why--" She stopped.
"Because," said Jock, "I'm the rawest rooky in the Berg, Shriner
Company. And when I begin to realize what I don't know about
advertising I'll probably want to plunge off the Palisades."
Miss Galt smiled up at him, her clear, frank eyes meeting his.
"You'll win," she said.
"Even if I lose--I win now," said Jock, suddenly audacious.
"Hi! Hold that pose!" called Von Herman, happily.
[Illustration: "'Hi! Hold that pose!' called Von Herman"]
II
PERSONALITY PLUS
There are seven stages in the evolution of that individual whose
appearance is the signal for a listless "Who-do-you-want-to-see?"
from the white-bloused, drab-haired, anæmic little girl who sits
in the outer office forever reading last month's magazines. The
badge of fear brands the novice. Standing hat in hand, nervous,
apprehensive, gulpy, with the elevator door clanging behind him,
and the sacred inner door closed before him, he offers up a silent
and paradoxical "Thank heaven!" at the office girl's languid "Not
in," and dives into the friendly shelter of the next elevator
going down. When, at that same message, he can smile, as with a
certain grim agreeableness he says, "I'll wait," then has he
reached the seventh stage, and taken the orders of the regularly
ordained.
Jock McChesney had learned to judge an unknown prospective by
glancing at his hall rug and stenographer, which marks the fifth
stage. He had learned to regard office boys with something less
than white-hot hate. He had learned to let the other fellow do the
talking. He had learned to condense a written report into
twenty-five words. And he had learned that there was as much
difference between the profession of advertising as he had thought
of it and advertising as it really was, as there is between a
steam calliope and a cathedral pipe organ.
In the big office of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company they
had begun to chuckle a bit over the McChesney solicitor's reports.
Those same reports indicated that young McChesney was beginning to
find the key to that maddening jumble of complexities known as
human nature. Big Sam Hupp, who was the pet caged copy-writing
genius of the place, used even to bring an occasional example of
Jock's business badinage into the Old Man's office, and the two
would grin in secret. As when they ran thus:
_Pepsinale Manufacturing Company_:
Mr. Bowser is the kind of gentleman who curses his
subordinates in front of the whole office force. Very touchy.
Crumpled his advertising manager. Our chance to get at him is
when he is in one of his rare good humors.
Or:
_E.V. Kreiss Company_:
Kreiss very difficult to reach. Permanent address seems to be
Italy, Egypt, and other foreign ports. Occasionally his
instructions come from Palm Beach.
At which there rose up before the reader a vision of Kreiss
himself--baggy-eyed, cultivated English accent, interested in
polo, fast growing contemptuous of things American.
Or still another:
_Hodge Manufacturing Company:_
Mr. Hodge is a very conservative gentleman. Sits still and
lets others do the talking. Has gained quite a reputation for
business acumen with this one attribute. Spent $500 last year.
Holding his breath preparatory to taking another plunge.
It was about the time that Jock McChesney had got over the novelty
of paying for his own clothes, and had begun to talk business in a
slightly patronizing way to his clever and secretly amused mother,
Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of the T.A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company, that Sam Hupp noticed a rather cocky
over-assurance in Jock's attitude toward the world in general.
Whereupon he sent for him.
On Sam Hupp's broad flat desk stood an array of diminutive jars,
and bottles, and tiny pots that would have shamed the toilette
table of a musical comedy star's dressing-room. There were
rose-tinted salves in white bottles. There were white creams in
rose-tinted jars. There were tins of ointment and boxes of
fragrant soap.
Jock McChesney, entering briskly, eyed the array in some surprise.
Then he grinned, and glanced wickedly at Sam Hupp's prematurely
bald head.
"No use, Mr. Hupp. They say if it's once gone it's gone. Get a
toupee."
"Shut up!" growled Sam Hupp, good-humoredly. "Stay in this game
long enough and you'll be a hairless wonder yourself. Ten years
ago the girls used to have to tie their hands or wear mittens to
keep from running their white fingers through my waving silken
locks. Sit down a minute."
Jock reached forward and took up a jar of cream. He frowned in
thought. Then: "Thought I recognized this stuff. Mother uses it.
I've seen it on the bathroom shelf."
"You bet she uses it," retorted Sam Hupp. "What's more, millions
of other women will be using it in the next few years. This
woman," he pointed to the name on the label, "has hit upon the
real thing in toilette flub-dub. She's made a little fortune
already, and if she don't look out she'll be rich. They've got
quite a plant. When she started she used to put the stuff together
herself over the kitchen stove. They say it's made of cottage
cheese, stirred smooth and tinted pink. Well, anyway they're
nationally known now--or will be when they start to advertise
right."
"I've seen some of their stuff advertised--somewhere," interrupted
Jock, "but I don't remember--"
"There you are. You see the head of this concern is a little bit
frightened at the way she seems slated to become a lady cold cream
magnate. They say she's scared pink for fear somebody will steal
her recipes. She has a kid nephew who acts as general manager, and
they're both on the job all the time. They say the lady herself
looks like the spinster in a b'gosh drama. You can get a boy to
look up your train schedule."
Train! Schedule! Across Jock McChesney's mind there flashed a
vision of himself, alert, confident, brisk, taking the luxurious
nine o'clock for Philadelphia. Or, maybe, the Limited to Chicago.
Dashing down to the station in a taxi, of course. Strolling down
the car aisle to take his place among those other thoroughbreds of
commerce--men whose chamois gloves and walking sticks, and talk of
golf and baseball and motoring spelled elegant leisure, even as
their keen eyes and shrewd faces and low-voiced exchange of such
terms as "stocks," and "sales" and "propositions" proclaimed them
intent on bagging the day's business. Sam Hupp's next words
brought him back to reality with a jerk.
"I think you have to change at Buffalo. It gets you to Tonawanda
in the morning. Rotten train."
"Tonawanda!" repeated Jock.
"Now listen, kid." Sam Hupp leaned forward, and his eyes behind
their great round black-rimmed glasses were intent on Jock. "I'm
not going to try to steer you. You think that advertising is a
game. It isn't. There are those who think it's a science. But it
isn't that either. It's white magic, that's what it is. And you
can't learn it from books, any more than you can master trout
fishing from reading 'The Complete Angler.'" He swung about and
swept the beauty lotions before him in a little heap at the end of
his desk. "Here, take this stuff. And get chummy with it. Eat it,
if necessary; learn it somehow."
Jock stood up, a little dazed. "But, what!--How?--I mean--"
Sam Hupp glanced up at him. "Sending you down there isn't my idea.
It's the Old Man's. He's got an idea that you--" He paused and put
a detaining hand on Jock McChesney's arm. "Look here. You think I
know a little something about advertising, don't you?"
"You!" laughed Jock. "You're the guy who put the whitening in the
Great White Way. Everybody knows you were the--"
"M-m-m, thanks," interrupted Sam Hupp, a little dryly. "Let me
tell you something, young 'un. I've got what you might call a
thirty-horse-power mind. I keep it running on high all the time,
with the muffler cut out, and you can hear me coming for miles.
But the Old Man,"--he leaned forward impressively,--"the Old Man,
boy, has the eighty-power kind, built like a watch--no smoke, no
dripping, and you can't even hear the engine purr. But when he
throws her open! Well, he can pass everything on the road. Don't
forget that." He turned to his desk again and reached for a stack
of papers and cuts. "Good luck to you. If you want any further
details you can get 'em from Hayes." He plunged into his work.
There arose in Jock McChesney's mind that instinct of the man in
his hour of triumph--the desire to tell a woman of his greatness.
He paused a second outside Sam Hupp's office, turned, and walked
quickly down the length of the great central room. He stopped
before a little glass door at the end, tapped lightly, and
entered.
Grace Galt, copy-writer, looked up, frowning a little. Then she
smiled. Miss Galt had a complete layout on the desk before
her--scrap books, cuts, copy, magazines. There was a little smudge
on the end of her nose. Grace Galt was writing about magnetos.
She was writing about magnetos in a way to make you want to drop
your customer, or your ironing, or your game, and go downtown and
buy that particular kind of magneto at once. Which is the
secretest part of the wizardry of advertising copy. To look at
Grace Galt you would have thought that she should have been
writing about the rose-tinted jars in Jock McChesney's hands
instead of about such things as ignition, and insulation, and ball
bearings, and induction windings. But it was Grace Galt's gift
that she could take just such hard, dry, technical facts and weave
them into a story that you followed to the end. She could make you
see the romance in condensers and transformers. She had the power
that caused the reader to lose himself in the charm of magnetic
poles, and ball bearings, and high-tension sparks.
"Just dropped in to say good-by," said Jock, very casually. "Going
to run up-state to see the Athena Company--toilette specialties,
you know. It ought to be a big account."
"Athena?" Grace Galt regarded him absently, her mind still on her
work. Then her eyes cleared. "You mean at Tonawanda? And they're
sending you! Well!" She put out a congratulatory hand. Jock
gripped it gratefully.
"Not so bad, eh?" he boasted.
"Bad!" echoed Grace Galt. Her face became serious. "Do you realize
that there are men in this office who have been here for five
years, six years, or even more, and who have never been given a
chance to do anything but stenography, or perhaps some private
secretarying?"
"I know it," agreed Jock. But there was no humbleness in his tone.
He radiated self-satisfaction. He seemed to grow and expand before
her eyes. A little shadow of doubt crept across Grace Galt's
expression of friendly interest.
"Are you scared," she asked; "just the least bit?"
Jock flushed a little. "Well," he confessed ruefully, "I don't
mind telling you I am--a little."
"Good!"
"Good?"
"Yes. The head of that concern is a woman. That's one reason why
they didn't send me, I suppose. I--I'd like to say something, if
you don't mind."
"Anything you like," said Jock graciously.
"Well, then, don't be afraid of being embarrassed and fussed. If
you blush and stammer a little, she'll like it. Play up the coy
stuff."
"The coy stuff!" echoed Jock. "I hadn't thought much about my
attitude toward the--er--the lady,"--a little stiffly.
"Well, you'd better," answered Miss Galt crisply. She put out her
hand in much the same manner as Sam Hupp had used. "Good luck to
you. I'll have to ask you to go now. I'm trying to make this
magneto sound like something without which no home is complete,
and to make people see that there's as much difference between it
and every other magneto as there is between the steam shovels that
dug out the Panama Canal and the junk that the French left
there--" She stopped. Her eyes took on a far-away look. Her lips
were parted slightly. "Why, that's not a bad idea--that last. I'll
use that. I'll--"
[Illustration: "With a jolt Jock realized she had forgotten all
about him"]
She began to scribble rapidly on the sheet of paper before her.
With a jolt Jock McChesney realized that she had forgotten all
about him. He walked quietly to the door, opened it, shut it very
quietly, then made for the nearest telephone. He knew one woman he
could count on to be proud of him. He gave his number, waited a
little eager moment, then:
"Featherloom Petticoat Company? Mrs. McChesney." And waited again.
Then he smiled.
"You needn't sound so official," he laughed; "it's only your son.
Listen. I"--he took on an elaborate carelessness of tone--"I've
got to take a little jump out of town. On business. Oh, a day or
so. Rather important though. I'll have time to run up to the flat
and throw a few things into a bag. I'll tell you, I really ought
to keep a bag packed down here. In case of emergency, you know.
What? It's the Athena Toilette Preparations Company. Well, I
should say it is! I'll wire you. You bet. Thanks. My what? Oh,
toothbrush. No. Good-by."
So it was that at three-ten Jock McChesney took himself, his
hopes, his dread, and his smart walrus bag aboard a train that
halted and snuffed and backed, and bumped and halted with
maddening frequency. But it landed him at last in a little town
bearing the characteristics of all American little towns. It was
surprisingly full of six-cylinder cars, and five and ten-cent
stores, and banks with Doric columns, and paved streets.
After he had registered at the hotel, and as he was cleaning up a
bit, he passed an amused eye over the bare, ugly, fusty little
hotel bedroom. But somehow, as he stood in the middle of the room,
a graceful, pleasing figure of youth and confidence, the smile
faded. Towel in hand he surveyed the barrenness of it. He stared
at the impossible wall paper, at the battered furniture, the worn
carpet. He sniffed the stuffy smell of--what was that smell,
anyhow?--straw, and matting, and dust, and the ghost-odor of
hundreds who had occupied the room before him. It came over him
with something of a shock that this same sort of room had been his
mother's only home in the ten years she had spent on the road as a
traveling saleswoman for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company. This was what she had left in the morning. To this she
had come back at night. As he stared ahead of him there rose
before him a mental picture of her--the brightness of her, the
sunniness, the indomitable energy, and pluck, and courage. With a
sudden burst of new determination he wadded the towel into a moist
ball, flung it at the washstand, seized hat, coat, and gloves, and
was off down the hall. So it was with something of his mother's
splendid courage in his heart, but with nothing of her canny
knowledge in his head, Jock McChesney fared forth to do battle
with the merciless god Business.
It was ten-thirty of a brilliant morning just two days later that
a buoyant young figure swung into an elevator in the great office
building that housed the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Just
one more grain of buoyant swing and the young man's walk might
have been termed a swagger. As it was, his walrus bag just saved
him.
Stepping out of the lift he walked, as from habit, to the little
unlettered door which admitted employes to the big, bright, inner
office. But he did not use it. Instead he turned suddenly and
walked down the hall to the double door which led into the
reception room. He threw out his legs stiffly and came down rather
flat-footed, the way George Cohan does when he's pleased with
himself in the second act.
"Hel-lo, Mack!" he called out jovially.
Mack, the usher, so called from his Machiavellian qualities,
turned to survey the radiant young figure before him.
"Good morning, Mr. McChesney," he made answer smoothly. Mack
never forgot himself. His keen eye saw the little halo of
self-satisfaction that hovered above Jock McChesney's head. "A
successful trip, I see."
Jock McChesney laughed a little, pleased, conscious laugh. "Well,
raw-thah!" he drawled, and opened the door leading into the main
office. He had been loath to lose one crumb of the savor of it.
[Illustration: "'Well, raw-thah!' he drawled"]
Still smiling, he walked to his own desk, with a nod here and
there, dropped his bag, took off coat and hat, selected a
cigarette, tapped it smartly, lighted it, and was off down the big
room to the little cubby-hole at the other end. But Sam Hupp's
plump, keen, good-humored face did not greet him as he entered.
The little room was deserted. Frowning, Jock sank into the empty
desk chair. He cradled his head in his hands, tilted the chair,
pursed his mouth over the slender white cylinder and squinted his
eyes up toward the lazy blue spirals of smoke--the very picture
of content and satisfaction.
Hupp was in attending some conference in the Old Man's office, of
course. He wished they'd hurry. The business of the week was being
boiled-down there. Those conferences were great cauldrons into
which the day's business, or the week's, was dumped, to be boiled,
simmered, stirred, skimmed, cooled. Jock had never been privileged
to attend one of these meetings. Perhaps by this time next week he
might have a spoon in the stirring too--
There came the murmur of voices as a door was opened. The voices
came nearer. Then quick footsteps. Jock recognized them. He rose,
smiling. Sam Hupp, vibrating electric energy, breezed in.
"Oh--hello!" he said, surprised. Jock's smile widened to a grin.
"You back?"
"Hello, Hupp," he said, coolly. It was the first time that he had
omitted the prefix. "You just bet I'm back."
There flashed across Sam Hupp's face a curious little look. The
next instant it was gone.
"Well," said Jock, and took a long breath.
"Mr. Berg wants to see you."
Hupp plunged into his work.
"Me? The Old Man wants to see me?"
"Yes," snapped Hupp shortly. Then, in a new tone, "Look here, son.
If he says--" He stopped, and turned back to his work again.
"If he says what?"
"Nothing. Better run along."
"What's the hurry? I want to tell you about--"
"Better tell him."
"Oh, all right," said Jock stiffly. If that was the way they
treated a fellow who had turned his first real trick, why, very
well. He flung out of the little room and made straight for the
Old Man's office.
Seated at his great flat table desk, Bartholomew Berg did not look
up as Jock entered. This was characteristic of the Old Man.
Everything about the chief was deliberate, sure, unhurried. He
finished the work in hand as though no other person stood there
waiting his pleasure. When at last he raised his massive head he
turned his penetrating pale blue eyes full on Jock. Jock was
conscious of a little tremor running through him. People were apt
to experience that feeling when that steady, unblinking gaze was
turned upon them. And yet it was just the clear, unwavering look
with which Bartholomew Berg, farmer boy, had been wont to gaze out
across the fresh-plowed fields to the horizon beyond which lay the
city he dreamed about.
"Tell me your side of it," said Bartholomew Berg tersely.
"All of it?" Jock's confidence was returning.
"Till I stop you."
"Well," began Jock. And standing there at the side of the Old
Man's desk, his legs wide apart, his face aglow, his hands on his
hips, he plunged into his tale.
"It started off with a bang from the minute I walked into the
office of the plant and met Snyder, the advertising manager. We
shook hands and sparked--just like that." He snapped thumb and
finger. "What do you think! We belong to the same frat! He's '93.
Inside of ten minutes he and I were Si-washing around like mad. He
introduced me to his aunt. I told her who I was, and all that. But
I didn't start off by talking business. We got along from the
jump. They both insisted on showing me through the place.
I--well,"--he laughed a little ruefully,--"there's something
about being shown through a factory that sort of paralyzes my
brain. I always feel that I ought to be asking keen, alert,
intelligent questions like the ones Kipling always asks, or the
Japs when they're taken through the Stock Yards. But I never can
think of any. Well, we didn't talk business much. But I could see
that they were interested. They seemed to,"--he faltered and
blushed a little,--"to like me, you know. I played golf with
Snyder that afternoon and he beat me. Won two balls. The next
morning I found there's been a couple of other advertising men
there. And while I was talking to Snyder--he was telling me about
the time he climbed up and muffled the chapel bell--that fellow
Flynn, of the Dowd Agency, came in. Snyder excused himself, and
talked to him for--oh, half an hour, perhaps. But that was all. He
was back again in no time. After that it looked like plain
sailing. We got along wonderfully. When I left I said, 'I expect
to know you both better--'"
"I guess," interrupted the Old Man slowly, "that you'll know them
better all right." He reached out with one broad freckled hand
and turned back the page of a desk memorandum. "The Athena account
was given to the Dowd Advertising Agency yesterday."
It took Jock McChesney one minute--one long, sickening minute--to
grasp the full meaning of it all. He stared at the massive figure
before him, his mouth ludicrously open, his eyes round, his breath
for the moment suspended. Then, in a queer husky voice: