your finger into the whirligig they call 'Woman's Sphere.' Its
mechanism is too complicated. It's the same quirk that makes women
pray for daughters and men for sons. It's the same kink that makes
women read the marriage and death notices first in a newspaper.
It's the same queer strain that causes a mother to lavish the most
love on the weakest, wilfullest child. Perhaps I wouldn't have
loved Jock so much if there hadn't been that streak of yellow in
him, and if I hadn't had to work so hard to dilute it until now
it's only a faint cream color. There ought to be a special prayer
for women who are bringing up their sons alone."
Buck stirred a little uneasily. "I've never heard you talk like
this before."
"You probably never will again." She swung round to her desk.
T.A. Buck, strolling toward the door, still wore the puzzled look.
"I don't know what makes you take this so seriously. Of course,
the boy will be a long way off. But then, you've been separated
from him before. What's the difference now?"
"T.A.," said Emma McChesney solemnly, "Jock will be drawing a
man-size salary now. Something tells me I'll be a grandmother in
another two years. Girls aren't letting men like Jock run around
loose. He'll be gobbled up. Just you wait."
"Oh, I don't know," drawled Buck mischievously. "You've just said
he's a headstrong young cub. He strikes me as the kind who'd
raise the dickens if his three-minute egg happened to be five
seconds overtime."
Emma McChesney swung around in her chair. "Look here, T.A. As
business partners we've quarreled about everything from silk
samples to traveling men, and as friends we've wrangled on every
subject from weather to war. I've allowed you to criticise my soul
theories, and my new spring hat. But understand that I'm the only
living person who has the right to villify my son, Jock
McChesney."
The telephone buzzed a punctuation to this period.
"Baumgartner?" inquired Buck humbly.
She listened a moment, then, over her shoulder,
"Baumgartner,"--grimly, her hand covering the mouthpiece--"and
if he thinks that he can work off a lot of last year's silk
swatches on--Hello! Yes, Mrs. McChesney talking. Look here, Mr.
Baumgartner--"
And for the time being Emma McChesney, mother, was relegated to
the background, while Emma McChesney, secretary of the T.A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company, held the stage.
Having said that she would be home at five-thirty. Mrs. McChesney
was home at five-thirty, being that kind of a person. Jock came
in at six, breathless, bright-eyed, eager, and late, being that
kind of a person.
He found his mother on the floor before the chiffonier in his
bedroom, surrounded by piles of pajamas, socks, shirts and
collars.
[Illustration: "He found his mother on the floor ... surrounded
by piles of pajamas, socks, shirts and collars"]
He swooped down upon her from the doorway. "What do you think of
your blue-eyed boy! Poor, eh?"
Emma McChesney looked up absently. "Jock, these medium-weights of
yours didn't wear at all, and you paid five dollars for them."
"Medium-weights! What in--"
"You've enough silk socks to last you the rest of your natural
life. Handkerchiefs, too. But you'll need pajamas."
Jock stooped, gathered up an armful of miscellaneous undergarments
and tossed them into an open drawer. Then he shut the drawer with
a bang, reached over, grasped his mother firmly under the arms and
brought her to her feet with a swing.
"We will now consider the question of summer underwear ended.
Would it bore you too much to touch lightly on the subject of your
son's future?"
Emma McChesney, tall, straight, handsome, looked up at her son,
taller, straighter, handsomer. Then she took him by the coat
lapels and hugged him.
"You were so bursting with your own glory that I couldn't resist
teasing you. Besides, I had to do something to keep my mind
off--off--"
"Why, Blonde dear, you're not--!"
"No, I'm not," gulped Emma McChesney. "Don't flatter yourself,
young 'un. Tell me just how it happened. From the beginning." She
perched at the side of the bed. Jock, hands in pockets, hair a
little rumpled, paced excitedly up and down before her as he
talked.
"There wasn't any beginning. That's the stunning part of it. I
just landed right into the middle of it with both feet. I knew
they had been planning to start a big Western branch. But we all
thought they'd pick some big man for it. There are plenty of
medium-class dubs to be had. The kind that answers the ad:
'Manager wanted, young man, preferably married, able to furnish
A-1 reference.' They're as thick as advertising men in Detroit on
Monday morning. But we knew that this Western branch was going to
be given an equal chance with the New York office. Those big
Western advertisers like to give their money to Western firms if
they can. So we figured that they'd pick a real top-notcher--even
Hopper, or Hupp, maybe--and start out with a bang. So when the Old
Man called me into his office this morning I was as unconscious as
a babe. Well, you know Berg. He's as unexpected as a summer shower
and twice as full of electricity.
"'Morning, McChesney!' he said. 'That a New York necktie you're
wearing?'
"'Strictly,' says I.
"'Ever try any Chicago ties?'
"'Not from choice. That time my suit case went astray--'
"'M-m-m-m, yes.' He drummed his fingers on the table top a couple
of times. Then--McChesney, what have you learned about advertising
in the last two and a half years?'
"I was wise enough as to Bartholomew Berg to know that he didn't
mean any cut-and-dried knowledge. He didn't mean rules of the
game. He meant tricks.
"'Well,' I said, 'I've learned to watch a man's eyes when I'm
talking business to him. If the pupils of his eyes dilate he's
listening to you, and thinking about what you're saying. When they
contract it means that he's only faking interest, even though he's
looking straight at you and wearing a rapt expression. His
thoughts are miles away.'
"'That so?' said Berg, and sort of grinned. 'What else?'
"'I've learned that one negative argument is worth six positive
ones; that it never pays to knock your competitor; that it's wise
to fight shy of that joker known as "editorial coöperation."'
"'That so?' said Berg. 'Anything else?'
"I made up my mind I could play the game as long as he could.
"'I've learned not to lose my temper when I'm in the middle of a
white-hot, impassioned business appeal and the office boy bounces
in to say to the boss: "Mrs. Jones is waiting. She says you were
going to help her pick out wall paper this morning;" and Jones
says, "Tell her I'll be there in five minutes."'
"'Sure you've learned that?' said Berg.
"'Sure,' says I. 'And I've learned to let the other fellow think
your argument's his own. He likes it. I've learned that the
surest kind of copy is the slow, insidious kind, like the
Featherloom Petticoat Company's campaign. That was an ideal
campaign because it didn't urge and insist that the public buy
Featherlooms. It just eased the idea to them. It started by
sketching a history of the petticoat, beginning with Eve's fig
leaf and working up. Before they knew it they were interested.'
"'That so? That campaign was your mother's idea, McChesney.' You
know, Mother, he thinks you're a wonder."
"So I am," agreed Emma McChesney calmly. "Go on."
"Well, I went on. I told him that I'd learned to stand so that the
light wouldn't shine in my client's eyes when I was talking to
him. I lost a big order once because the glare from the window
irritated the man I was talking to. I told Berg all the tricks I'd
learned, and some I hadn't thought of till that minute. Berg put
in a word now and then. I thought he was sort of guying me, as he
sometimes does--not unkindly, you know, but in that quiet way he
has. Finally I stopped for breath, or something, and he said:
"'Now let me talk a minute, McChesney. Anybody can teach you the
essentials of the advertising business, if you've any advertising
instinct in you. But it's what you pick up on the side, by your
own efforts and out of your own experience, that lifts you out of
the scrub class. Now I don't think you're an ideal advertising man
by any means, McChesney. You're shy on training and experience,
and you've just begun to acquire that golden quality known as
balance. I could name a hundred men that are better all-around
advertising men than you will ever be. Those men have advertising
ability that glows steadily and evenly, like a well-banked fire.
But you've got the kind of ability that flares up, dies down,
flares up. But every flare is a real blaze that lights things red
while it lasts, and sends a new glow through the veins of
business. You've got personality, and youth, and enthusiasm, and a
precious spark of the real thing known as advertising genius.
There's no describing it. You know what I mean. Also, you
know enough about actual advertising not to run an ad for a
five-thousand-dollar motor car in the "Police Gazette." All of
which leads up to this question: How would you like to buy your
neckties in Chicago, McChesney?'
"'Chicago!' I blurted.
"'We've taken a suite of offices in the new Lakeview Building on
Michigan Avenue. Would you like your office done in mahogany or
oak?'"
Jock came to a full stop before his mother. His cheeks were
scarlet. Hers were pale. He was breathing quickly. She was very
quiet. His eyes glowed. So did hers, but the glow was dimmed by a
mist.
"Mahogany's richer, but make it oak, son. It doesn't show
finger-marks so." Then, quite suddenly, she stood up, shaking a
little, and buried her face in the boy's shoulder.
"Why--why, Mother! Don't! Don't, Blonde. We'll see each other
every few weeks. I'll be coming to New York to see the sights,
like the rest of the rubes, and I suppose the noise and lights
will confuse me so that I'll be glad to get back to the sylvan
quiet of Chicago. And then you'll run out there, eh? We'll have
regular bats, Mrs. Mack. Dinner and the theater and supper! Yes?"
"Yes," said Emma McChesney, in muffled tones that totally lacked
enthusiasm.
"Chicago's really only a suburb of New York, anyway, these days,
and--"
Emma McChesney's head came up sharply. "Look here, son. If you're
going to live in Chicago I advise you to cut that suburb talk, and
sort of forget New York. Chicago's quite a village, for an inland
settlement, even if it has only two or three million people, and a
lake as big as all outdoors. That kind of talk won't elect you to
the University Club, son."
So they talked, all through supper and during the evening. Rather,
Jock talked and his mother listened, interrupting with only an
occasional remark when the bubble of the boy's elation seemed to
grow too great.
Quite suddenly Jock was silent. After the almost incessant rush of
conversation quiet settled down strangely on the two seated there
in the living-room with its soft-shaded lamps. Jock picked up a
magazine, twirled its pages, put it down, strolled into his own
room, and back again.
"Mother," he said suddenly, standing before her, "there was a
time when you were afraid I wasn't going to pan out, wasn't
there?"
"Not exactly afraid, dear, just a little doubtful, perhaps."
Jock smiled a tolerant, forgiving smile. "You see, Mother, you
didn't understand, that's all. A woman doesn't. I was all right. A
man would have realized that. I don't mean, dear, that you haven't
always been wonderful, because you have. But it takes a man to
understand a man. When you thought I was going bad on your hands I
was just developing, that's all. Remember that time in Chicago,
Mother?"
"Yes," answered Emma McChesney, "I remember."
"Now a man would have understood that that was only kid
foolishness. If a fellow's got the stuff in him it'll show up,
sooner or later. If I hadn't had it in me I wouldn't be going to
Chicago as manager of the Berg, Shriner Western office, would I?"
"No, dear."
Jock looked at her. In an instant he was all contrition and
tenderness. "You're tired. I've talked you to death, haven't I?
Lordy, it's midnight! And I want to get down early to-morrow.
Conference with Mr. Berg, and Hupp." He tried not to sound too
important.
Emma McChesney took his head between her two hands and kissed him
once on the lips, then, standing a-tiptoe, kissed his eyelids with
infinite gentleness as you kiss a baby's eyes. Then she brought
his cheek up against hers. And so they stood for a moment,
silently.
Ten minutes later there came the sound of blithe whistling from
Jock's room. Jock always whistled when he went to bed and when he
rose. Even these years of living in a New York apartment had
not broken him of the habit. It was a cheerful, disconnected
whistling, sometimes high and clear, sometimes under the breath,
sometimes interspersed with song, and sometimes ceasing altogether
at critical moments, say, during shaving, or while bringing the
four-in-hand up tight and snug under the collar. It was one of
those comfortable little noises that indicate a masculine
presence; one of those pleasant, reassuring, man-in-the-house
noises that every woman loves.
Emma McChesney, putting herself to bed in her room across the
hall, found herself listening, brush poised, lips parted, as
though to the exquisite strains of celestial music. There came the
thump of a shoe on the floor. An interval of quiet. Then another
thump. Without having been conscious of it, Emma McChesney had
grown to love the noises that accompanied Jock's retiring and
rising. His dressing was always signalized by bangings and
thumpings. His splashings in the tub were tremendous. His morning
plunge could be heard all over the six-room apartment. Mrs.
McChesney used to call gayly through the door:
"Mercy, Jock! You sound like a school of whales coming up for
air."
"You'll think I'm a school of sharks when it comes to breakfast,"
Jock would call back. "Tell Annie to make enough toast, Mum. She's
the tightest thing with the toast I ever did--"
The rest would be lost in a final surging splash.
The noises in the room across the hall had subsided now. She
listened more intently. No, a drawer banged. Another. Then:
"Hasn't my gray suit come back from the tailor's?"
"It was to be sponged, too, you know. He said he'd bring it
Wednesday. This is Tuesday."
"Oh!" Another bang. Then: '"Night, Mother!"
"Good night, dear." Creaking sounds, then a long, comfortable sigh
of complete relaxation.
Emma McChesney went on with her brushing. She brushed her hair
with the usual number of swift even strokes, from the top of the
shining head to the waist. She braided her hair into two plaits,
Gretchen fashion. Millions of scanty-locked women would have given
all they possessed to look as Emma McChesney looked standing there
in kimono and gown. She nicked out the light. Then she, too,
relaxed upon her pillow with a little sigh. Quiet fell on the
little apartment. The street noises came up to her, now roaring,
now growing faint. Emma McChesney lay there sleepless. She lay
flat, hands clasped across her breast, her braids spread out on
the pillow. In the darkness of the room the years rolled before
her in panorama: her girlhood, her marriage, her unhappiness,
Jock, the divorce, the struggle for work, those ten years on the
road. Those ten years on the road! How she had hated them--and
loved them. The stuffy trains, the jarring sleepers, the bare
little hotel bedrooms, the bad food, the irregular hours, the
loneliness, the hard work, the disappointments, the temptations.
Yes but the fascination of it, the dear friends she had made, the
great human lesson of it all! And all for Jock. That Jock might
have good schools, good clothes, good books, good surroundings,
happy times. Why, Jock had been the reason for it all! She had
swallowed insult because of Jock. She had borne the drudgery
because of Jock. She had resisted temptation, smiled under
hardship, worked, fought, saved, succeeded, all because of Jock.
And now this pivot about which her whole life had revolved was to
be pulled up, wrenched away.
Over Emma McChesney, lying there in the dark, there swept one of
those unreasoning night-fears. The fear of living. The fear of
life. A straining of the eyeballs in the dark. The pounding of
heart-beats.
She sat up in bed. Her hands went to her face. Her cheeks were
burning and her eyes smarted. She felt that she must see Jock. At
once. Just to be near him. To touch him. To take him in her arms,
with his head in the hollow of her breast, as she used to when he
was a baby. Why, he had been a baby only yesterday. And now he was
a man. Big enough to stand alone, to live alone, to do without
her.
Emma McChesney flung aside the covers and sprang out of bed. She
thrust her feet in slippers, groped for the kimono at the foot of
the bed and tiptoed to the door. She listened. No sound from the
other room. She stole across the hall, stopped, listened, gained
the door. It was open an inch or more. Just to be near him, to
know that he lay there, sleeping! She pushed the door very, very
gently. Then she stood in the doorway a moment, scarcely
breathing, her head thrust forward, her whole body tense with
listening. She could not hear him breathe! She caught her breath
again in that unreasoning fear and took a quick step forward.
"Stop or I'll shoot!" said a voice. Simultaneously the light
flashed on. Emma McChesney found herself blinking at a determined
young man who was steadily pointing a short, chubby, businesslike
looking steel affair in her direction. Then the hand that held the
steel dropped.
"What is this, anyway?" demanded Jock rather crossly. "A George
Cohan comedy?"
Emma McChesney leaned against the foot of the bed rather weakly.
"What did you think--"
"What would you think if you heard some one come sneaking along
the hall, stopping, listening, sneaking to your door, and then
opening it, and listening again, and sneaking in? What would you
think it was? How did I know you were going around making social
calls at two o'clock in the morning!"
Suddenly Emma McChesney began to laugh. She leaned over the
footboard and laughed hysterically, her head in her arms. Jock
stared a moment in offended disapproval. Then the humor of it
caught him, and he buried his head in his pillow to stifle
unseemly shrieks. His legs kicked spasmodically beneath the
bedclothes.
As suddenly as she had begun to laugh Mrs. McChesney became very
sober.
"Stop it, Jock! Tell me, why weren't you sleeping?"
"I don't know," replied Jock, as suddenly solemn. "I--sort
of--began to think, and I couldn't sleep."
"What were you thinking of?"
Jock looked down at the bedclothes and traced a pattern with one
forefinger on the sheet. Then he looked up.
"Thinking of you."
"Oh!" said Emma McChesney, like a bashful schoolgirl. "Of--me!"
Jock sat up very straight and clasped his hands about his knees.
"I got to thinking of what I had said about having made good all
alone. That's rot. It isn't so. I was striped with yellow like a
stick of lemon candy. If I've got this far, it's all because of
you. I've been thinking all along that I was the original electric
self-starter, when you've really had to get out and crank me every
few miles."
Into Emma McChesney's face there came a wonderful look. It was the
sort of look with which a newly-made angel might receive her
crown and harp. It was the look with which a war-hero sees the
medal pinned on his breast. It was the look of one who has come
into her Reward. Therefore:
"What nonsense!" said Emma McChesney. "If you hadn't had it in
you, it wouldn't have come out."
"It wasn't in me, in the first place," contested Jock stubbornly.
"You planted it."
From her stand at the foot of the bed she looked at him, her eyes
glowing brighter and brighter with that wonderful look.
"Now see here,"--severely--"I want you to go to sleep. I don't
intend to stand here and dispute about your ethical innards at
this hour. I'm going to kiss you again."
"Oh, well, if you must," grinned Jock resignedly, and folded her
in a bear-hug.
To Emma McChesney it seemed that the next three weeks leaped by,
not by days, but in one great bound. And the day came when a
little, chattering, animated group clustered about the slim young
chap who was fumbling with his tickets, glancing at his watch,
signaling a porter for his bags, talking, laughing, trying to hide
the pangs of departure under a cloak of gayety and badinage that
deceived no one. Least of all did it deceive the two women who
stood there. The eyes of the older woman never left his face. The
eyes of the younger one seldom were raised to his, but she saw his
every expression. Once Emma McChesney's eyes shifted a little so
as to include both the girl and the boy in her gaze. Grace Galt in
her blue serge and smart blue hat was worth a separate glance.
Sam Hupp was there, T.A. Buck, Hopper, who was to be with him in
Chicago for the first few weeks, three or four of the younger men
in the office, frankly envious and heartily congratulatory.
They followed him to his train, all laughter and animation.
"If this train doesn't go in two minutes," said Jock, "I'll get
scared and chuck the whole business. Funny, but I'm not so keen on
going as I was three weeks ago."
His eyes rested on the girl in the blue serge and the smart hat.
Emma McChesney saw that. She saw that his eyes still rested there
as he stood on the observation platform when the train pulled out.
The sight did not pain her as she thought it would. There was
success in every line of him as he stood there, hat in hand. There
was assurance in every breath of him. His clothes, his skin, his
clear eyes, his slim body, all were as they should be. He had
made a place in the world. He was to be a builder of ideas. She
thought of him, and of the girl in blue serge, and of their
children-to-be.
Her breast swelled exultingly. Her head came up.
This was her handiwork. She looked at it, and found that it was
good.
"Let's strike for the afternoon and call it a holiday," suggested
Buck.
Emma McChesney turned. The train was gone. "T.A., you'll never
grow up."
"Never want to. Come on, let's play hooky, Emma."
"Can't. I've a dozen letters to get out, and Miss Loeb wants to
show me that new knicker-bocker design of hers."
They drove back to the office almost in silence. Emma McChesney
made straight for her desk and began dictating letters with an
energy that bordered on fury. At five o'clock she was still
working. At five-thirty T.A. Buck came in to find her still
surrounded by papers, samples, models.
"What is this?" he demanded wrathfully, "an all-night session?"
Emma McChesney looked up from her desk. Her face was flushed, her
eyes bright, but there was about her an indefinable air of
weariness.
"T.A., I'm afraid to go home. I'll rattle around in that empty
flat like a hickory nut in a barrel."
"We'll have dinner down-town and go to the theater."
"No use. I'll have to go home sometime."
"Now, Emma," remonstrated Buck, "you'll soon get used to it. Think
of all the years you got along without him. You were happy,
weren't you?"
"Happy because I had somebody to work for, somebody to plan for,
somebody to worry about. When I think of what that flat will be
without him--Why, just to wake up and know that you can say good
morning to some one who cares! That's worth living for, isn't it?"
"Emma," said T.A. evenly, "do you realize that you are virtually
hounding me into asking you to marry me?"
"T.A.!" gasped Emma McChesney.
"Well, you said you wanted somebody to worry about, didn't you?"
[Illustration: "'Well, you said you wanted somebody to worry
about, didn't you?'"]
A little whimsical smile lay lightly on his lips.
"Timothy Buck, I'm over forty years old."
"Emma, in another minute I'm going to grow sentimental, and
nothing can stop me."
She looked down at her hands. There fell a little silence. Buck
stirred, leaned forward. She looked up from the little watch that
ticked away at her wrist.
"The minute's up, T.A.," said Emma McChesney.
THE END