"I mean," said Bartholomew Berg, "that you've scored what the
dramatic critics call a personal hit; but that doesn't get the box
office anything."
"But, Mr. Berg, they said--"
"Sit down a minute, boy." He waved one great heavy hand toward a
near-by chair. His eyes were not fixed on Jock. They gazed out of
the window toward the great white tower toward which hundreds of
thousands of eyes were turned daily--the tower, four-faced but
faithful.
"McChesney, do you know why you fell down on that Athena account?"
"Because I'm an idiot," blurted Jock. "Because I'm a
double-barreled, corn-fed, hand-picked chump and--"
"That's one reason," drawled the Old Man grimly. "But it's not the
chief one. The real reason why you didn't land that account was
because you're too darned charming."
"Charming!" Jock stared.
"Just that. Personality's one of the biggest factors in business
to-day. But there are some men who are so likable that it actually
counts against them. The client he's trying to convince is so
taken with him that he actually forgets the business he
represents. We say of a man like that that he is personality plus.
Personality is like electricity, McChesney. It's got to be tamed
to be useful."
"But I thought," said Jock, miserably, "that the idea was not to
talk business all the time."
"You've got it," agreed Berg. "But you must think it all the time.
Every minute. It's got to be working away in the back of your
head. You know it isn't always the biggest noise that gets the
biggest result. The great American hen yields a bigger income than
the Steel Trust. Look at Miss Galt. When we have a job that needs
a woman's eye do we send her? No. Why? Because she's too blame
charming. Too much personality. A man just naturally refuses to
talk business to a pretty woman unless she's so smart that--"
"My mother," interrupted Jock, suddenly, and then stopped,
surprised at himself.
"Your mother," said Bartholomew Berg slowly, "is one woman in a
million. Don't ever forget that. They don't turn out models like
Emma McChesney more than once every blue moon."
Jock got to his feet slowly. He felt heavy, old. "I suppose," he
began, "that this ends my--my advertising career."
"Ends it!" The Old Man stood up and put a heavy hand on the boy's
shoulder. "It only begins it. Unless you want to lie down and
quit. Do you?"
"Quit!" cried Jock McChesney. "Quit! Not on your white space!"
"Good!" said Bartholomew Berg, and took Jock McChesney's hand in
his own great friendly grasp.
An instinct as strong as that which had made him blatant in his
hour of triumph now caused him to avoid, in his hour of defeat,
the women-folk before whom he would fain be a hero. He avoided
Grace Galt all that long, dreary afternoon. He thought wildly of
staying down-town for the evening, of putting off the meeting with
his mother, of avoiding the dreaded explanations, excuses,
confessions.
But when he let himself into the flat at five-thirty the place was
very quiet, except for Annie, humming in a sort of nasal singsong
of content in the kitchen.
He flicked on the light in the living-room. A new magazine had
come. It lay on the table, its bright cover staring up invitingly.
He ran through its pages. By force of habit he turned to the back
pages. Ads started back at him--clothing ads, paint ads, motor
ads, ads of portable houses, and vacuum cleaners--and toilette
preparations. He shut the magazine with a vicious slap.
He flicked off the light again, for no reason except that he
seemed to like the dusk. In his own bedroom it was very quiet.
He turned on the light there, too, then turned it off. He sat down
at the edge of his bed. How was it in the stories? Oh, yes! The
cub always started out on an impossibly difficult business stunt
and came back triumphant, to be made a member of the firm at once.
A vision of his own roseate hopes and dreams rose up before him.
It grew very dark in the little room, then altogether dark. Then
an impudent square of yellow from a light turned on in the
apartment next door flung itself on the bedroom floor. Jock stared
at it moodily.
A key turned in the lock. A door opened and shut. A quick step.
Then: "Jock!" A light flashed in the living-room.
Jock sat up suddenly. He opened his mouth to answer. There issued
from his throat a strange and absurd little croak.
"Jock! Home?"
"Yes," answered Jock, and straightened up. But before he could
flick on his own light his mother stood in the doorway, a tall,
straight, buoyant figure.
"I got your wire and--Why, dear! In the dark! What--"
"Must have fallen asleep, I guess," muttered Jock. Somehow he
dreaded to turn on the lights.
And then, very quietly, Emma McChesney came in. She found him,
there in the dark, as surely as a mother bear finds her cubs in a
cave. She sat down beside him at the edge of the bed and put her
hand on his shoulder, and brought his head down gently to her
breast. And at that the room, which had been a man's room with its
pipe, its tobacco jar, its tie rack filled with cravats of
fascinating shapes and hues, became all at once a boy's room
again, and the man sitting there with straight, strong shoulders
and his little air of worldliness became in some miraculous way a
little boy again.
[Illustration: "... became in some miraculous way a little boy
again"]
III
DICTATED BUT NOT READ
About the time that Jock McChesney began to carry a yellow
walking-stick down to work each morning his mother noticed a
growing tendency on his part to patronize her. Now Mrs. Emma
McChesney, successful, capable business woman that she was, could
afford to regard her young son's attitude with a quiet and deep
amusement. In twelve years Emma McChesney had risen from the
humble position of stenographer in the office of the T.A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company to the secretaryship of the firm. So
when her young son, backed by the profound business knowledge
gained in his one year with the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company,
hinted gently that her methods and training were archaic,
ineffectual, and lacking in those twin condiments known to the
twentieth century as pep and ginger, she would listen, eyebrows
raised, lower lip caught between her teeth--a trick which gives
a distorted expression to the features, calculated to hide any
lurking tendency to grin. Besides, though Emma McChesney was forty
she looked thirty-two (as business women do), and knew it. Her
hard-working life had brought her in contact with people, and
things, and events, and had kept her young.
[Illustration: "Jock McChesney began to carry a yellow
walking-stick down to work"]
"Thank fortune!" Mrs. McChesney often said, "that
I wasn't cursed with a life of ease. These
massage-at-ten-fitting-at-eleven-bridge-at-one women
always look such hags at thirty-five."
But repetition will ruin the rarest of jokes. As the weeks went on
and Jock's attitude persisted, the twinkle in Emma McChesney's eye
died. The glow of growing resentment began to burn in its place.
Now and then there crept into her eyes a little look of doubt and
bewilderment. You sometimes see that same little shocked, dazed
expression in the eyes of a woman whose husband has just said,
"Isn't that hat too young for you?"
Then, one evening, Emma McChesney's resentment flared into open
revolt. She had announced that she intended to rise half an hour
earlier each morning in order that she might walk a brisk mile or
so on her way down-town, before taking the subway.
"But won't it tire you too much, Mother?" Jock had asked with
maddeningly tender solicitude.
His mother's color heightened. Her blue eyes glowed dark.
"Look here, Jock! Will you kindly stop this lean-on-me-grandma
stuff! To hear you talk one would think I was ready for a wheel
chair and gray woolen bedroom slippers."
"Why, I didn't mean--I only thought that perhaps overexertion in a
woman of your--That is, you need your energy for--"
"Don't wallow around in it," snapped Emma McChesney. "You'll only
sink in deeper in your efforts to crawl out. I merely want to warn
you that if you persist in this pose of tender solicitude for your
doddering old mother, I'll--I'll present you with a stepfather a
year younger than you. Don't laugh. Perhaps you think I couldn't
do it."
"Good Lord, Mother! Of course you don't mean it, but--"
"Mean it! Cleverer women than I have been driven by their
children to marrying bell-boys in self-defense. I warn you!"
[Illustration: "'Good Lord, Mother! Of course you don't
mean it, but--'"]
That stopped it--for a while. Jock ceased to bestow upon his
mother judicious advice from the vast storehouse of his own
experience. He refrained from breaking out with elaborate
advertising schemes whereby the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company might grind every other skirt concern to dust. He gave
only a startled look when his mother mischievously suggested
raspberry as the color for her new autumn suit. Then, quite
suddenly, Circumstance caught Emma McChesney in the meshes and,
before she had fought her way free, wrought trouble and change
upon her.
Jock McChesney was seated in the window of his mother's office at
noon of a brilliant autumn day. A little impatient frown was
forming between his eyes. He wanted his luncheon. He had called
around expressly to take his mother out to luncheon--always a
festive occasion when taken together. But Mrs. McChesney, seated
at her desk, was bent absorbedly over a sheet of paper whereon she
was adding up two columns of figures at a time--a trick on which
she rather prided herself. She was counting aloud, her mind
leaping agilely, thus:
"Eleven, twenty-nine, forty-three, sixty, sixty-nine--" Her pencil
came down on the desk with a thwack. "SIXTY-NINE!" she repeated in
capital letters. She turned around to face Jock. "Sixty-nine!" Her
voice bristled with indignation. "Now what do you think of that!"
"I think you'd better make it an even seventy, whatever it is
you're counting up, and come on out to luncheon. I've an
appointment at two-fifteen, you know."
"Luncheon!"--she waved the paper in the air--"with this outrage on
my mind! Nectar would curdle in my system."
Jock rose and strolled lazily over to the desk. "What is it?" He
glanced idly at the sheet of paper. "Sixty-nine what?"
Mrs. McChesney pressed a buzzer at the side of her desk.
"Sixty-nine dollars, that's what! Representing two days' expenses
in the six weeks' missionary trip that Fat Ed Meyers just made for
us. And in Iowa, too."
"When you gave that fellow the job," began Jock hotly, "I told
you, and Buck told you, that--"
Mrs. McChesney interrupted wearily. "Yes, I know. You'll never
have a grander chance to say 'I told you so.' I hired him
because he was out of a job and we needed a man who knew the
Middle-Western trade, and then because--well, poor fellow, he
begged so and promised to keep straight. As though I oughtn't to
know that a pinochle-and-poker traveling man can never be anything
but a pinochle-and-poker traveling man--"
The office door opened as there appeared in answer to the buzzer a
very alert, very smiling, and very tidy office girl. Emma
McChesney had tried office boys, and found them wanting.
"Tell Mr. Meyers I want to see him."
"Just going out to lunch,"--she turned like a race horse trembling
to be off,--"putting on his overcoat in the front office. Shall
I--"
"Catch him."
"Listen here," began Jock uncomfortably; "if you're going to call
him perhaps I'd better vanish."
"To save Ed Meyers's tender feelings! You don't know him. Fat Ed
Meyers could be courtmartialed, tried, convicted, and publicly
disgraced, with his epaulets torn off, and his sword broken, and
likely as not he'd stoop down, pick up a splinter of steel to use
as a toothpick, and Castlewalk down the aisle to the tune with
which they were drumming him out of the regiment. Stay right
here. Meyers's explanation ought to be at least amusing, if not
educating."
In the corridor outside could be heard some one blithely humming
in the throaty tenor of the fat man. The humming ceased with a
last high note as the door opened and there entered Fat Ed Meyers,
rosy, cherubic, smiling, his huge frame looming mountainous in the
rippling folds of a loose-hung London plaid topcoat.
"Greetings!" boomed this cheery vision, raising one hand, palm
outward, in mystic salute. He beamed upon the frowning Jock.
"How's the infant prodigy!" The fact that Jock's frown deepened to
a scowl ruffled him not at all. "And what," went on he, crossing
his feet and leaning negligently against Mrs. McChesney's desk,
"and what can I do for thee, fair lady?"
[Illustration: "'Greetings!'"]
"For me?" said Emma McChesney, looking up at him through narrowed
eyelids. "I'll tell you what. You can explain to me, in what
they call a few well-chosen words, just how you, or any other
living creature, could manage to turn in an expense account like
that on a six-weeks' missionary trip through the Middle West."
"Dear lady,"--in the bland tones that one uses to an unreasonable
child,--"you will need no explanation if you will just remember to
lay the stress on the word missionary. I went forth through the
Middle West to spread the light among the benighted skirt trade.
This wasn't a selling trip, dear lady. It was a buying expedition.
And I had to buy, didn't I? all the way from Michigan to Indiana."
He smiled down at her, calm, self-assured, impudent. A little
flush grew in Emma McChesney's cheeks.
"I've always said," she began, crisply, "that one could pretty
well judge a man's character, temperament, morals, and physical
make-up by just glancing at his expense account. The trouble with
you is that you haven't learned the art of spending money wisely.
It isn't always the man with the largest expense sheet that gets
the most business. And it isn't the man who leaves the greatest
number of circles on the table top in his hotel room, either."
She paused a moment. Ed Meyers's smile had lost some of its
heartiness. "Mr. Buck's out of town, as you know. He'll be back
next week. He wasn't in favor of--"
"Now, Mrs. McChesney," interrupted Ed Meyers nervously, "you know
there's always one live one in every firm, just like there's
always one star in every family. You're the--"
"I'm the one who wants to know how you could spend sixty-nine
dollars for two days' incidentals in Iowa. Iowa! Why, look here,
Ed Meyers, I made Iowa for ten years when I was on the road. You
know that. And you know, and I know, that in order to spend
sixty-nine dollars for incidentals in two days in Iowa you have to
call out the militia."
"Not when you're trying to win the love of every skirt buyer from
Sioux City to Des Moines."
Emma McChesney rose impatiently. "Oh, that's nonsense! You don't
need to do that these days. Those are old-fashioned methods.
They're out of date. They--"
At that a little sound came from Jock. Emma heard it, glanced at
him, turned away again in confusion.
"I was foolish enough in the first place to give you this job for
old times' sake," she continued hurriedly.
Fat Ed Meyers' face drooped dolefully. He cocked his round head on
one side fatuously. "For old times' sake," he repeated, with
tremulous pathos, and heaved a gusty sigh.
"Which goes to show that I need a guardian," finished Emma
McChesney cruelly. "The only old times that I can remember are
when I was selling Featherlooms, and you were out for the
Sans-Silk Skirt Company, both covering the same territory, and
both running a year-around race to see which could beat the other
at his own game. The only difference was that I always played
fair, while you played low-down whenever you had a chance."
"Now, my dear Mrs. McChesney--"
"That'll be all," said Emma McChesney, as one whose patience is
fast slipping away. "Mr. Buck will see you next week." Then,
turning to her son as the door closed on the drooping figure of
the erstwhile buoyant Meyers, "Where'll we lunch, Jock?"
"Mother," Jock broke out hotly, "why in the name of all that's
foolish do you persist in using the methods of Methuselah! People
don't sell goods any more by sending out fat old ex-traveling men
to jolly up the trade."
"Jock," repeated Emma McChesney slowly, "where--shall--we--lunch?"
It was a grim little meal, eaten almost in silence. Emma McChesney
had made it a rule to use luncheon time as a recess. She played
mental tag and hop-scotch, so that, returning to her office
refreshed in mind and body, she could attack the afternoon's work
with new vigor. And never did she talk or think business.
To-day she ate her luncheon with a forced appetite, glanced about
with a listlessness far removed from her usual alert interest, and
followed Jock's attempts at conversation with a polite effort that
was more insulting than downright inattention.
"Dessert, Mother?" Jock had to say it twice before she heard.
"What? Oh, no--I think not."
The waiter hesitated, coughed discreetly, lifted his eyebrows
insinuatingly. "The French pastry's particularly nice to-day,
madam. If you'd care to try something? Eclair, madam--peach
tart--mocha tart--caramel--"
Emma McChesney smiled. "It does sound tempting." She glanced at
Jock. "And we're wearing our gowns so floppy this year that it
makes no difference whether one's fat or not." She turned to the
waiter. "I never can tell till I see them. Bring your pastry tray,
will you?"
Jock McChesney's finger and thumb came together with a snap. He
leaned across the table toward his mother, eyes glowing, lips
parted and eager. "There! you've proved my point."
"Point?"
"About advertising. No, don't stop me. Don't you see that what
applies to pastry applies to petticoats? You didn't think of
French pastry until he suggested it to you--advertised it, really.
And then you wanted a picture of them. You wanted to know
what they looked like before buying. That's all there is to
advertising. Telling people about a thing, making 'em want it, and
showing 'em how it will look when they have it. Get me?"
Emma McChesney was gazing at Jock with a curious, fascinated
stare. It was a blank little look, such as we sometimes wear when
the mind is working furiously. If the insinuating waiter,
presenting the laden tray for her inspection, was startled by the
rapt expression which she turned upon the cunningly wrought wares,
he was too much a waiter to show it.
A pause. "That one," said Mrs. McChesney, pointing to the least
ornate. She ate it, down to the last crumb, in a silence that was
pregnant with portent. She put down her fork and sat back.
"Jock, you win. I--I suppose I have fallen out of step. Perhaps
I've been too busy watching my own feet. T.A. will be back next
week. Could your office have an advertising plan roughly sketched
by that time?"
"Could they!" His tone was exultant. "Watch 'em! Hupp's been crazy
to make Featherlooms famous."
"But look here, son. I want a hand in that copy. I know
Featherlooms better than your Sam Hupp will ever--"
Jock shook his head. "They won't stand for that, Mother. It never
works. The manufacturer always thinks he can write magic stuff
because he knows his own product. But he never can. You see, he
knows too much. That's it. No perspective."
"We'll see," said Emma McChesney curtly.
So it was that ten days later the first important conference in
the interests of the Featherloom Petticoat Company's advertising
campaign was called. But in those ten days of hurried preparation
a little silent tragedy had come about. For the first time in her
brave, sunny life Emma McChesney had lost faith in herself. And
with such malicious humor does Fate work her will that she chose
Sam Hupp's new dictagraph as the instrument with which to prick
the bubble of Mrs. McChesney's self-confidence.
Sam Hupp, one of the copy-writing marvels of the Berg, Shriner
firm, had a trick of forgetting to shut off certain necessary
currents when he paused in his dictation to throw in
conversational asides. The old and experienced stenographers, had
learned to look out for that, and to eliminate from their
typewritten letters certain irrelevant and sometimes irreverent
asides which Sam Hupp evidently had addressed to his pipe, or the
office boy, and not intended for the tube of the all-devouring
dictagraph.
There was a new and nervous little stenographer in the outer
office, and she had not been warned of this.
"We think very highly of the plan you suggest," Sam Hupp had said
into the dictagraph's mouthpiece. "In fact, in one of your
valuable copy suggestions you--"
Without changing his tone he glanced over his shoulder at his
colleague, Hopper, who was listening and approving.
"... Let the old girl think the idea is her own. She's virtually
the head of that concern, and they've spoiled her. Successful, and
used to being kowtowed to. Doesn't know her notions of copy are
ten years behind the advertising game--"
And went on with his letter again. After which he left the office
to play golf. And the little blond numbskull in the outer office
dutifully took down what the instrument had to say, word for word,
marked it, "Dictated, but not read," signed neat initials, and
with a sigh went on with the rest of her sheaf of letters.
Emma McChesney read the letter next morning. She read it down to
the end, and then again. The two readings were punctuated with a
little gasp, such as we give when an icy douche is suddenly
turned upon us. And that was all.
A week later an intent little group formed a ragged circle about
the big table in the private office of Bartholomew Berg, head of
the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Bartholomew Berg himself,
massive, watchful, taciturn, managing to give an impression of
power by his very silence, sat at one side of the long table. Just
across from him a sleek-haired stenographer bent over her note
book, jotting down every word, that the conference might make
business history. Hopper, at one end of the room, studied his shoe
heel intently. He was unbelievably boyish looking to command the
fabulous salary reported to be his. Advertising men, mentioning
his name, pulled a figurative forelock as they did so. Near Mrs.
McChesney sat Sam Hupp, he of the lightning brain and the
sure-fire copy. Emma McChesney, strangely silent, kept her eyes
intent on the faces of the others. T.A. Buck, interested,
enthusiastic, but somewhat uncertain, glanced now and then at his
silent business partner, found no satisfaction in her set face,
and glanced away again. Grace Galt, unbelievably young and pretty
to have won a place for herself in that conference of business
people, smiled in secret at Jock McChesney's evident struggle to
conceal his elation at being present at this, his first staff
meeting.
The conference had lasted one hour now. In that time Featherloom
petticoats had been picked to pieces, bit by bit, from hem to
waist-band. Nothing had been left untouched. Every angle had come
under the keen vision of the advertising experts--the comfort of
the garment, its durability, style, cheapness, service. Which to
emphasize?
"H--m, novelty campaign, in my opinion," said Hopper, breaking one
of his long silences. "There's nothing new in petticoats
themselves, you know. You've got to give 'em a new angle."
"Yep," agreed Hupp. "Start out with a feature skirt. Might
illustrate with one of those freak drawings they're crazy about
now--slinky figure, you know, hollow-chested, one foot trailing,
and all that. They're crazy, but they do attract attention, no
doubt of that."
Bartholomew Berg turned his head slowly. "What's your opinion,
Mrs. McChesney?" he asked.
"I--I'm afraid I haven't any," said Emma McChesney listlessly.
T.A. Buck stared at her in dismay and amazement.
"How about you, Mr. Buck?"
"Why--I--er--of course this advertising game's new to me. I'm
really leaving it in your hands. I really thought that Mrs.
McChesney's idea was to make a point of the fact that these
petticoats were not freak petticoats, but skirts for the everyday
women. She gave me what I thought was a splendid argument a week
ago." He turned to her helplessly.
Mrs. McChesney sat silent.
Bartholomew Berg leaned forward a little and smiled one of his
rare smiles.
"Won't you tell us, Mrs. McChesney? We'd all like to hear what you
have to say."