Books: Roast Beef, Medium
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Edna Ferber >> Roast Beef, Medium
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Emma McChesney's hair was slightly tousled. Her cheeks were carmine.
Her eyes glowed.
"Don't you see! Don't you get it! Can't you feel how the thing's going
to take hold?"
"By Gad!" burst from T. A. Buck, "I'm darned if I don't believe you're
right--almost--But are you sure that you believe--"
Emma McChesney brought one little white fist down into the palm of the
other hand. "Sure? Why, I'm so sure that when I shut my eyes I can see
T. A. Senior sitting over there in that chair, tapping the side of his
nose with the edge of his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses, and nodding
his head, with his features all screwed up like a blessed old
gargoyle, the way he always did when something tickled him. That's how
sure I am."
T. A. Buck stood up abruptly. He shrugged his shoulders. His face
looked strangely white and drawn. "I'll leave it to you. I'll do my
share of the work. But I'm not more than half convinced, remember."
"That's enough for the present," answered Emma McChesney, briskly.
"Well, now, suppose we talk machinery and girls, and cutters for a
while."
Two months later found T. A. Buck and his sales-manager, both shirt-
sleeved, both smoking nervously, as they marked, ticketed, folded,
arranged. They were getting out the travelers' spring lines. Entered
Mrs. McChesney, and stood eying them, worriedly. It was her dozenth
visit to the stock-room that morning. A strange restlessness seemed to
trouble her. She wandered from office to show-room, from show-room to
factory.
"What's the trouble?" inquired T. A. Buck, squinting up at her through
a cloud of cigar smoke.
"Oh, nothing," answered Mrs. McChesney, and stood fingering the piles
of glistening satin garments, a queer, faraway look in her eyes. Then
she turned and walked listlessly toward the door. There she
encountered Spalding--Billy Spalding, of the coveted Middle-Western
territory, Billy Spalding, the long-headed, quick-thinking; Spalding,
the persuasive, Spalding the mixer, Spalding on whom depended the fate
of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Knickerbocker and Pajama.
"'Morning! When do you start out?" she asked him.
"In the morning. Gad, that's some line, what? I'm itching to spread
it. You're certainly a wonder-child, Mrs. McChesney. Why, the boys--"
Emma McChesney sighed, somberly. "That line does sort of--well, tug at
your heart-strings, doesn't it?" She smiled, almost wistfully. "Say,
Billy, when you reach the Eagle House at Waterloo, tell Annie, the
head-waitress to rustle you a couple of Mrs. Traudt's dill pickles.
Tell her Mrs. McChesney asked you to. Mrs. Traudt, the proprietor's
wife, doles 'em out to her favorites. They're crisp, you know, and
firm, and juicy, and cold, and briny."
Spalding drew a sibilant breath. "I'll be there!" he grinned. "I'll be
there!"
But he wasn't. At eight the next morning there burst upon Mrs.
McChesney a distraught T. A. Buck.
"Hear about Spalding?" he demanded.
"Spalding? No."
"His wife 'phoned from St. Luke's. Taken with an appendicitis attack
at midnight. They operated at five this morning. One of those had-it-
been-twenty-four-hours-later-etc. operations. That settles us."
"Poor kid," replied Emma McChesney. "Rough on him and his brand-new
wife."
"Poor kid! Yes. But how about his territory? How about our new line?
How about--"
"Oh, that's all right," said Emma McChesney, cheerfully.
"I'd like to know how! We haven't a man equal to the territory. He's
our one best bet."
"Oh, that's all right," said Mrs. McChesney again, smoothly.
A little impatient exclamation broke from T. A. Buck. At that Emma
McChesney smiled. Her new listlessness and abstraction seemed to drop
from her. She braced her shoulders, and smiled her old sunny,
heartening smile.
"I'm going out with that line. I'm going to leave a trail of pajamas
and knickerbockers from Duluth to Canton."
"You! No, you won't!" A dull, painful red had swept into T. A. Buck's
face. It was answered by a flood of scarlet in Mrs. McChesney's
countenance.
"I don't get you," she said. "I'm afraid you don't realize what this
trip means. It's going to be a fight. They'll have to be coaxed and
bullied and cajoled, and reasoned with. It's going to be a 'show-me'
trip."
T. A. Buck took a quick step forward. "That's just why. I won't have
you fighting with buyers, taking their insults, kowtowing to them,
salving them. It--it isn't woman's work."
Emma McChesney was sorting the contents of her desk with quick,
nervous fingers. "I'll. get the Twentieth Century," she said, over her
shoulder. "Don't argue, please. If it's no work for a woman then I
suppose it follows that I'm unwomanly. For ten years I traveled this
country selling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. My first trip on
the road I was in the twenties--and pretty, too. I'm a woman of
thirty-seven now. I'll never forget that first trip--the heartbreaks,
the insults I endured, the disappointments, the humiliation, until
they understood that I meant business--strictly business. I'm tired of
hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn't woman's
work. Any work is woman's work that a woman can do well. I've given
the ten best years of my life to this firm. Next to my boy at school
it's the biggest thing in my life. Sometimes it swamps even him. Don't
come to me with that sort of talk." She was locking drawers, searching
pigeon-holes, skimming files. "This is my busy day." She arose, and
shut her desk with a bang, locked it, and turned a flushed and beaming
face toward T. A. Buck, as he stood frowning before her.
[Illustration: "Emma McChesney... I believe in you now! Dad and I both
believe in you'"]
"Your father believed in me--from the ground up. We understood each
other, he and I. You've learned a lot in the last year and a half, T.
A. Junior-that-was, but there's one thing you haven't mastered. When
will you learn to believe in Emma McChesney?"
She was out of the office before he had time to answer, leaving him
standing there.
In the dusk of a late winter evening just three weeks later, a man
paused at the door of the unlighted office marked "Mrs. McChesney." He
looked about a moment, as though dreading detection. Then he opened
the door, stepped into the dim quiet of the little room, and closed
the door gently after him. Everything in the tiny room was quiet,
neat, orderly. It seemed to possess something of the character of its
absent owner. The intruder stood there a moment, uncertainly, looking
about him.
Then he took a step forward and laid one hand on the back of the empty
chair before the closed desk. He shut his eyes and it seemed that he
felt her firm, cool, reassuring grip on his fingers as they clutched
the wooden chair. The impression was so strong that he kept his eyes
shut, and they were still closed when his voice broke the silence of
the dim, quiet little room.
"Emma McChesney," he was saying aloud, "Emma McChesney, you great big,
fine, brave, wonderful woman, you! I believe in you now! Dad and I
both believe in you."
X
IN THE ABSENCE OF THE AGENT
This is a love-story. But it is a love-story with a logical ending.
Which means that in the last paragraph no one has any one else in his
arms. Since logic and love have long been at loggerheads, the story
may end badly. Still, what love passages there are shall be left
intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running
breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love's garden,
only to bump one's nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall
phrase of "let us draw a veil, dear reader." This is the story of the
love of a man for a woman, a mother for her son, and a boy for a girl.
And there shall be no veil.
Since 8 A.M., when she had unlocked her office door, Mrs. Emma
McChesney had been working in bunches of six. Thus, from twelve to one
she had dictated six letters, looked up memoranda, passed on samples
of petticoat silk, fired the office-boy, wired Spalding out in
Nebraska, and eaten her lunch. Emma McChesney was engaged in that
nerve-racking process known as getting things out of the way. When
Emma McChesney aimed to get things out of the way she did not use a
shovel; she used a road-drag.
Now, at three-thirty, she shut the last desk-drawer with a bang,
locked it, pushed back the desk-phone, discovered under it the
inevitable mislaid memorandum, scanned it hastily, tossed the scrap of
paper into the brimming waste-basket, and, yawning, raised her arms
high above her head. The yawn ended, her arms relaxed, came down
heavily, and landed her hands in her lap with a thud. It had been a
whirlwind day. At that moment most of the lines in Emma McChesney's
face slanted downward.
But only for that moment. The next found her smiling. Up went the
corners of her mouth! Out popped her dimples! The laugh-lines appeared
at the corners of her eyes. She was still dimpling like an
anticipatory child when she had got her wraps from the tiny closet,
and was standing before the mirror, adjusting her hat.
[Illustration: "It had been a whirlwind day"]
The hat was one of those tiny, pert, head-hugging trifles that only a
very pretty woman can wear. A merciless little hat, that gives no
quarter to a blotched skin, a too large nose, colorless eyes. Emma
McChesney stood before the mirror, the cruel little hat perched atop
her hair, ready to give it the final and critical bash which should
bring it down about her ears where it belonged. But even now, perched
grotesquely atop her head as it was, you could see that she was going
to get away with it.
It was at this critical moment that the office door opened, and there
entered T. A. Buck, president of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
and Lingerie Company. He entered smiling, leisurely, serene-eyed, as
one who anticipates something pleasurable. At sight of Emma McChesney
standing, hatted before the mirror, the pleasurable look became less
confident.
"Hello!" said T. A. Buck. "Whither?" and laid a sheaf of businesslike-
looking papers on the top of Mrs. McChesney's well cleared desk.
Mrs. McChesney, without turning, performed the cramming process
successfully, so that her hat left only a sub-halo of fluffy bright
hair peeping out from the brim.
Then, "Playing hooky," she said. "Go 'way."
T. A. Buck picked up the sheaf of papers and stowed them into an
inside coat-pocket. "As president of this large and growing concern,"
he said, "I want to announce that I'm going along."
Emma McChesney adjusted her furs. "As secretary of said firm I rise to
state that you're not invited."
T. A. Buck, hands in pockets, stood surveying the bright-eyed woman
before him. The pleasurable expression had returned to his face.
"If the secretary of the above-mentioned company has the cheek to play
hooky at 3:30 P.M. in the middle of November, I fancy the president
can demand to know where she's going, and then go too."
Mrs. McChesney unconcernedly fastened the clasp of her smart English
glove.
"Didn't you take two hours for lunch? Had mine off the top of my desk.
Ham sandwich and a glass of milk. Dictated six letters between bites
and swallows."
A frown of annoyance appeared between T. A. Buck's remarkably fine
eyes. He came over to Mrs. McChesney and looked down at her.
"Look here, you'll kill yourself. It's all very well to be interested
in one's business, but I draw the line at ruining my digestion for it.
Why in Sam Hill don't you take a decent hour at least?"
"Only bricklayers can take an hour for lunch," retorted Emma
McChesney. "When you get to be a lady captain of finance you can't
afford it."
She crossed to her desk and placed her fingers on the electric switch.
The desk-light cast a warm golden glow on the smart little figure in
the trim tailored suit, the pert hat, the shining furs. She was rosy-
cheeked and bright-eyed as a schoolgirl. There was about her that
vigor, and glow, and alert assurance which bespeaks congenial work,
sound sleep, healthy digestion, and a sane mind. She was as tingling,
and bracing, and alive, and antiseptic as the crisp, snappy November
air outdoors.
T. A. Buck drew a long breath as he looked at her.
"Those are devastating clothes," he remarked. "D'you know, until now I
always had an idea that furs weren't becoming to women. Make most of
'em look stuffy. But you--"
Emma McChesney glanced down at the shining skins of muff and scarf.
She stroked them gently and lovingly with her gloved hand.
"M-m-m-m! These semi-precious furs _are_ rather satisfactory--until
you see a woman in sealskin and sables. Then you want to use 'em for a
hall rug."
T. A. Buck stepped within the radius of the yellow light, so that its
glow lighted up his already luminous eyes--eyes that had a trick of
translucence under excitement.
"Sables and sealskin," repeated T. A. Buck, his voice vibrant. "If
it's those you want, you can--"
Snap! went the electric switch under Emma McChesney's fingers. It was
as decisive as a blow in the face. She walked to the door. The little
room was dim.
"I'm sending my boy through college with my sealskin-and-sable fund,"
she said crisply; "and I'm to meet him at 4:30."
"Oh, that's your appointment!" Relief was evident in T. A. Buck's
tone.
Emma McChesney shook a despairing head. "For impudent and unquenchable
inquisitiveness commend me to a man! Here! If you must know, though I
intended it as a surprise when it was finished and furnished--I'm
going to rent a flat, a regular six-room, plenty-of-closets flat,
after ten years of miserable hotel existence. Jock's running over for
two days to approve it. I ought to have waited until the holidays, so
he wouldn't miss classes; but I couldn't bear to. I've spent ten
Thanksgivings, and ten Christmases, and ten New Years in hotels. Hell
has no terrors for me."
They were walking down the corridor together.
"Take me along--please!" pleaded T. A. Buck, like a boy. "I know all
about flats, and gas-stoves, and meters, and plumbing, and
everything!"
"You!" scoffed Emma McChesney, "with your five-story house and your
summer home in the mountains!"
"Mother won't hear of giving up the house. I hate it myself. Bathrooms
in those darned old barracks are so cold that a hot tub is an icy
plunge before you get to it." They had reached the elevator. A
stubborn look appeared about T. A. Buck's jaw. "I'm going!" he
announced, and scudded down the hail to his office door. Emma
McChesney pressed the elevator-button. Before the ascending car showed
a glow of light in the shaft T. A. Buck appeared with hat, gloves,
stick.
"I think the car's downstairs. We'll run up in it. What's the address?
Seventies, I suppose?"
Emma McChesney stepped out of the elevator and turned. "Car! Not I! If
you're bound to come with me you'll take the subway. They're asking
enough for that apartment as it is. I don't intend to drive up in a
five-thousand-dollar motor and have the agent tack on an extra twenty
dollars a month."
T. . Buck smiled with engaging agreeableness. "Subway it is," he said.
"Your presence would turn even a Bronx train into a rose-garden."
Twelve minutes later the new apartment building, with its cream-tile
and red-brick Louis Somethingth facade, and its tan brick and plaster
Michael-Dougherty-contractor back, loomed before them, soaring even
above its lofty neighbors. On the door-step stood a maple-colored
giant in a splendor of scarlet, and gold braid, and glittering
buttons. The great entrance door was opened for them by a half-portion
duplicate of the giant outside. In the foyer was splendor to grace a
palace hall. There were great carved chairs. There was a massive oaken
table. There were rugs, there were hangings, there were dim-shaded
lamps casting a soft glow upon tapestry and velours.
Awaiting the pleasure of the agent, T. A. Buck, leaning upon his
stick, looked about him appreciatively. "Makes the Knickerbocker lobby
look like the waiting-room in an orphan asylum."
"Don't let 'em fool you," answered Emma McChesney, _sotto voce,_ just
before the agent popped out of his office. "It's all included in the
rent. Dinky enough up-stairs. If ever I have guests that I want to
impress I'll entertain 'em in the hall."
There approached them the agent, smiling, urbane, pleasing as to
manner--but not too pleasing; urbanity mixed, so to speak, with the
leaven of caution.
"Ah, yes! Mrs.--er--McChesney, wasn't it? I can't tell you how many
parties have been teasing me for that apartment since you looked at
it. I've had to--well--make myself positively unpleasant in order to
hold it for you. You said you wished your son to--"
The glittering little jewel-box of an elevator was taking them higher
and higher. The agent stared hard at T. A. Buck.
Mrs. McChesney followed his gaze. "My business associate, Mr. T. A.
Buck," she said grimly.
The agent discarded caution; he was all urbanity. Their floor
attained, he unlocked the apartment door and threw it open with a
gesture which was a miraculous mixture of royalty and generosity.
"He knows you!" hissed Emma McChesney, entering with T. A. "Another
ten on the rent. "The agent pulled up a shade, switched on a light,
straightened an electric globe. T. A. Buck looked about at the bare
white walls, at the bare polished floor, at the severe fireplace.
"I knew it couldn't last," he said.
"If it did," replied Emma McChesney good-naturedly, "I couldn't afford
to live here," and disappeared into the kitchen followed by the agent,
who babbled ever and anon of views, of Hudsons, of express-trains, of
parks, as is the way of agents from Fiftieth Street to One Hundred and
'Umpty-ninth.
T. A. Buck, feet spread wide, hands behind him, was left standing in
the center of the empty living-room. He was leaning on his stick and
gazing fixedly upward at the ornate chandelier. It was a handsome
fixture, and boasted some of the most advanced ideas in modern
lighting equipment. Yet it scarcely seemed to warrant the passionate
scrutiny which T. A. Buck was bestowing upon it. So rapt was his gaze
that when the telephone-bell shrilled unexpectedly in the hallway he
started so that his stick slipped on the polished floor, and as Emma
McChesney and the still voluble agent emerged from the kitchen the
dignified head of the firm of T. A. Buck and Company presented an
animated picture, one leg in the air, arms waving wildly, expression
at once amazed and hurt.
Emma McChesney surveyed him wide-eyed. The agent, unruffled, continued
to talk on his way to the telephone.
"It only looks small to you," he was saying. "Fact is, most people
think it's too large. They object to a big kitchen. Too much work." He
gave his attention to the telephone.
Emma McChesney looked troubled. She stood in the doorway, head on one
side, as one who conjures up a mental picture.
"Come here," she commanded suddenly, addressing the startled T. A.
"You nagged until I had to take you along. Here's a chance to justify
your coming. I want your opinion on the kitchen."
"Kitchens," announced T. A. Buck of the English clothes and the
gardenia, "are my specialty," and entered the domain of the gas-range
and the sink.
Emma McChesney swept the infinitesimal room with a large gesture.
"Considering it as a kitchen, not as a locker, does it strike you as
being adequate?"
T. A. Buck, standing in the center of the room, touched all four walls
with his stick.
"I've heard," he ventured, "that they're--ah--using 'em small this
year."
Emma McChesney's eyes took on a certain wistful expression. "Maybe.
But whenever I've dreamed of a home, which was whenever I got lonesome
on the road, which was every evening for ten years, I'd start to plan
a kitchen. A kitchen where you could put up preserves, and a keg of
dill pickles, and get a full-sized dinner without getting things more
than just comfortably cluttered."
T. A. Buck reflected. He flapped his arms as one who feels pressed for
room. "With two people occupying the room, as at present, the presence
of one dill pickle would sort of crowd things, not to speak of a keg
of 'em, and the full-sized dinner, and the--er--preserves. Still--"
"As for a turkey," wailed Emma McChesney, "one would have to go out on
the fire-escape to baste it."
The swinging door opened to admit the agent. "Would you excuse me? A
party down-stairs--lease--be back in no time. Just look about--any
questions--glad to answer later--"
"Quite all right," Mrs. McChesney assured him. Her expression was one
of relief as the hall door closed behind him. "Good! There's a spot in
the mirror over the mantel. I've been dying to find out if it was a
flaw in the glass or only a smudge."
She made for the living-room. T. A. Buck followed thoughtfully.
Thoughtfully and interestedly he watched her as she stood on tiptoe,
breathed stormily upon the mirror's surface, and rubbed the moist
place with her handkerchief. She stood back a pace, eyes narrowed
critically.
"It's gone, isn't it?" she asked.
T. A. Buck advanced to where she stood and cocked his head too,
judicially, and in the opposite direction to which Emma McChesney's
head was cocked. So that the two heads were very close together.
"It's a poor piece of glass," he announced at last.
A simple enough remark. Perhaps it was made with an object in view,
but certainly it was not meant to bring forth the storm of protest
that came from Emma McChesney's lips. She turned on him, lips
quivering, eyes wrathful.
"You shouldn't have come!" she cried. "You're as much out of place in
a six-room flat as a truffle would be in a boiled New England dinner.
Do you think I don't see its shortcomings? Every normal woman, no
matter what sort of bungalow, palace, ranch-house, cave, cottage, or
tenement she may be living in, has in her mind's eye a picture of the
sort of apartment she'd live in if she could afford it. I've had mine
mapped out from the wall-paper in the front hall to the laundry-tubs
in the basement, and it doesn't even bear a family resemblance to
this."
"I'm sorry," stammered T. A. Buck. "You asked my opinion and I--"
"Opinion! If every one had so little tact as to give their true
opinion when it was asked this would be a miserable world. I asked you
because I wanted you to lie. I expected it of you. I needed bolstering
up. I realize that the rent I'm paying and the flat I'm getting form a
geometrical problem where X equals the unknown quantity and only the
agent knows the answer. But it's going to be a home for Jock and me.
It's going to be a place where he can bring his friends; where he can
have his books, and his 'baccy, and his college junk. It will be the
first real home that youngster has known in all his miserable
boarding-house, hotel, boys' school, and college existence. Sometimes
when I think of what he's missed, of the loneliness and the neglect
when I was on the road, of the barrenness of his boyhood, I--"
T. A. Buck started forward as one who had made up his mind about
something long considered. Then he gulped, retreated, paced excitedly
to the door and back again. On the return trip he found smiling and
repentant Emma McChesney regarding him.
"Now aren't you sorry you insisted on coming along? Letting yourself
in for a ragging like that? I think I'm a wee bit taut in the nerves
at the prospect of seeing Jock--and planning things with him--I--"
T. A. Buck paused in his pacing. "Don't!" he said. "I had it coming to
me. I did it deliberately. I wanted to know how you really felt about
it."
Emma McChesney stared at him curiously. "Well, now you know. But I
haven't told you half. In all those years while I was selling T. A.
Buck's Featherloom Petticoats on the road, and eating hotel food that
tasted the same, whether it was roast beef or ice-cream, I was
planning this little place. I've even made up my mind to the
scandalous price I'm willing to pay a maid who'll cook real dinners
for us and serve them as I've always vowed Jock's dinners should be
served when I could afford something more than a shifting hotel home."
T. A. Buck was regarding the head of his if walking-stick with a gaze
as intent as that which he previously had bestowed upon the
chandelier. For that matter it was a handsome enough stick--a choice
thing in malacca. But it was scarcely more deserving than the
chandelier had been.
Mrs. McChesney had wandered into the dining-room. She peered out of
windows. She poked into butler's pantry. She inspected wall-lights.
And still T. A. Buck stared at his stick.
"It's really robbery," came Emma McChesney's voice from the next room.
"Only a New York agent could have the nerve to do it. I've a friend
who lives in Chicago--Mary Cutting. You've heard me speak of her. Has
a flat on the north side there, just next door to the lake. The rent
is ridiculous; and--would you believe it?--the flat is equipped with
bookcases, and gorgeous mantel shelves, and buffet, and bathroom
fixtures, and china-closets, and hall-tree--"
Her voice trailed into nothingness as she disappeared into the
kitchen. When she emerged again she was still enumerating the charms
of the absurdly low-priced Chicago flat, thus:
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