Books: Roast Beef, Medium
E >>
Edna Ferber >> Roast Beef, Medium
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11
"Son!" echoed the clerk, staring.
"Thanks. That's what they all do. After a while I'll begin to believe
that there must be something hauntingly beautiful and girlish about me
or every one wouldn't petrify when I announce that I've a six-foot son
attached to my apron-strings. He looks twenty-one, but he's seventeen.
He thinks the world's rotten because he can't grow one of those fuzzy
little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats.
He's down at the depot now, straightening out our baggage. Now I want
to say this before he gets here. He's been out with me just four days.
Those four days have been a revelation, an eye-opener, and a series of
rude jolts. He used to think that his mother's job consisted of
traveling in Pullmans, eating delicate viands turned out by the hotel
chefs, and strewing Featherloom Petticoats along the path. I gave him
plenty of money, and he got into the habit of looking lightly upon
anything more trifling than a five-dollar bill. He's changing his mind
by great leaps. I'm prepared to spend the night in the coal cellar if
you'll just fix him up--not too comfortably. It'll be a great lesson
for him. There he is now. Just coming in. Fuzzy coat and hat and
English stick. Hist! As they say on the stage."
The boy crossed the crowded lobby. There was a little worried, annoyed
frown between his eyes. He laid a protecting hand on his mother's arm.
Emma McChesney was conscious of a little thrill of pride as she
realized that he did not have to look up to meet her gaze.
"Look here, Mother, they tell me there's some sort of a convention
here, and the town's packed. That's what all those banners and things
were for. I hope they've got something decent for us here. I came up
with a man who said he didn't think there was a hole left to sleep
in."
"You don't say!" exclaimed Emma McChesney, and turned to the clerk.
"This is my son, Jock McChesney--Mr. Sims. Is this true?"
"Glad to know you, sir," said Mr. Sims. "Why, yes, I'm afraid we are
pretty well filled up, but seeing it's you maybe we can do something
for you."
He ruminated, tapping his teeth with a pen-holder, and eying the pair
before him with a maddening blankness of gaze. Finally:
"I'll do my best, but you can't expect much. I guess I can squeeze
another cot into eighty-seven for the young man. There's--let's see
now--who's in eighty-seven? Well, there's two Bisons in the double
bed, and one in the single, and Fat Ed Meyers in the cot and--"
Emma McChesney stiffened into acute attention. "Meyers?" she
interrupted. "Do you mean Ed Meyers of the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt
Company?"
"That's so. You two are in the same line, aren't you? He's a great
little piano player, Ed is. Ever hear him play?"
"When did he get in?"
"Oh, he just came in fifteen minutes ago on the Ashland division. He's
in at supper." "Oh," said Emma McChesney. The two letters breathed
relief.
But relief had no place in the voice, or on the countenance of Jock
McChesney. He bristled with belligerence. "This cattle-car style of
sleeping don't make a hit. I haven't had a decent night's rest for
three nights. I never could sleep on a sleeper. Can't you fix us up
better than that?"
"Best I can do."
"But where's mother going? I see you advertise three 'large and
commodious steam-heated sample rooms in connection.' I suppose
mother's due to sleep on one of the tables there."
"Jock," Emma McChesney reproved him, "Mr. Sims is doing us a great
favor. There isn't another hotel in town that would--"
"You're right, there isn't," agreed Mr. Sims. "I guess the young man
is new to this traveling game. As I said, I'd like to accommodate you,
but--Let's see now. Tell you what I'll do. If I can get the
housekeeper to go over and sleep in the maids' quarters just for to-
night, you can use her room. There you are! Of course, it's over the
kitchen, and there may be some little noise early in the morning--"
Emma McChesney raised a protesting hand. "Don't mention it. Just lead
me thither. I'm so tired I could sleep in an excursion special that
was switching at Pittsburgh. Jock, me child, we're in luck. That's
twice in the same place. The first time was when we were inspired to
eat our supper on the diner instead of waiting until we reached here
to take the leftovers from the Bisons' grazing. I hope that
housekeeper hasn't a picture of her departed husband dangling, life-
size, on the wall at the foot of the bed. But they always have. Good-
night, son. Don't let the Bisons bite you. I'll be up at seven."
But it was just 6:30 A.M. when Emma McChesney turned the little bend
in the stairway that led to the office. The scrub-woman was still in
possession. The cigar-counter girl had not yet made her appearance.
There was about the place a general air of the night before. All but
the night clerk. He was as spruce and trim, and alert and smooth-
shaven as only a night clerk can be after a night's vigil.
"'Morning!" Emma McChesney called to him. She wore blue serge, and a
smart fall hat. The late autumn morning was not crisper and sunnier
than she.
"Good-morning, Mrs. McChesney," returned Mr. Sims, sonorously. "Have a
good night's sleep? I hope the kitchen noises didn't wake you."
Emma McChesney paused with her hand on the door. "Kitchen? Oh, no. I
could sleep through a vaudeville china-juggling act. But---what an
extraordinarily unpleasant-looking man that housekeeper's husband must
have been."
That November morning boasted all those qualities which November-
morning writers are so prone to bestow upon the month. But the words
wine, and sparkle, and sting, and glow, and snap do not seem to cover
it. Emma McChesney stood on the bottom step, looking up and down Main
Street and breathing in great draughts of that unadjectivable air. Her
complexion stood the test of the merciless, astringent morning and
came up triumphantly and healthily firm and pink and smooth. The town
was still asleep. She started to walk briskly down the bare and ugly
Main Street of the little town. In her big, generous heart, and her
keen, alert mind, there were many sensations and myriad thoughts, but
varied and diverse as they were they all led back to the boy up there
in the stuffy, over-crowded hotel room--the boy who was learning his
lesson.
Half an hour later she reentered the hotel, her cheeks glowing. Jock
was not yet down. So she ordered and ate her wise and cautious
breakfast of fruit and cereal and toast and coffee, skimming over her
morning paper as she ate. At 7:30 she was back in the lobby, newspaper
in hand. The Bisons were already astir. She seated herself in a deep
chair in a quiet corner, her eyes glancing up over the top of her
paper toward the stairway. At eight o'clock Jock McChesney came down.
There was nothing of jauntiness about him. His eyelids were red. His
face had the doughy look of one whose sleep has been brief and
feverish. As he came toward his mother you noticed a stain on his
coat, and a sunburst of wrinkles across one leg of his modish brown
trousers.
"Good-morning, son!" said Emma McChesney. "Was it as bad as that?"
Jock McChesney's long fingers curled into a fist.
"Say," he began, his tone venomous, "do you know what those--those--
those--"
"Say it!" commanded Emma McChesney. "I'm only your mother. If you keep
that in your system your breakfast will curdle in your stomach."
Jock McChesney said it. I know no phrase better fitted to describe his
tone than that old favorite of the erotic novelties. It was vibrant
with passion. It breathed bitterness. It sizzled with savagery. It--
Oh, alliteration is useless.
"Well," said Emma McChesney, encouragingly, "go on."
[Illustration: "'Well!' gulped Jock, 'those two double-bedded,
bloomin' blasted Bisons--'"]
"Well!" gulped Jock McChesney, and glared; "those two double-bedded,
bloomin', blasted Bisons came in at twelve, and the single one about
fifteen minutes later. They didn't surprise me. There was a herd of
about ninety-three of 'em in the hall, all saying good-night to each
other, and planning where they'd meet in the morning, and the time,
and place and probable weather conditions. For that matter, there were
droves of 'em pounding up and down the halls all night. I never saw
such restless cattle. If you'll tell me what makes more noise in the
middle of the night than the metal disk of a hotel key banging and
clanging up against a door, I'd like to know what it is. My three
Bisons were all dolled up with fool ribbons and badges and striped
paper canes. When they switched on the light I gave a crack imitation
of a tired working man trying to get a little sleep. I breathed
regularly and heavily, with an occasional moaning snore. But if those
two hippopotamus Bisons had been alone on their native plains they
couldn't have cared less. They bellowed, and pawed the earth, and
threw their shoes around, and yawned, and stretched and discussed
their plans for the next day, and reviewed all their doings of that
day. Then one of them said something about turning in, and I was so
happy I forgot to snore. Just then another key clanged at the door, in
walked a fat man in a brown suit and a brown derby, and stuff was
off."
"That," said Emma McChesney, "would be Ed Meyers, of the Strauss Sans-
silk Skirt Company."
"None other than our hero." Jock's tone had an added acidity. "It took
those four about two minutes to get acquainted. In three minutes they
had told their real names, and it turned out that Meyers belonged to
an organization that was a second cousin of the Bisons. In five
minutes they had got together a deck and a pile of chips and were
shirt-sleeving it around a game of pinochle. I would doze off to the
slap of cards, and the click of chips, and wake up when the bell-boy
came in with another round, which he did every six minutes. When I got
up this morning I found that Fat Ed Meyers had been sitting on the
chair over which I trustingly had draped my trousers. This sunburst of
wrinkles is where he mostly sat. This spot on my coat is where a Bison
drank his beer."
Emma McChesney folded her paper and rose, smiling. "It is sort of
trying, I suppose, if you're not used to it."
"Used to it!" shouted the outraged Jock. "Used to it! Do you mean to
tell me there's nothing unusual about--"
"Not a thing. Oh, of course you don't strike a bunch of Bisons every
day. But it happens a good many times. The world is full of Ancient
Orders and they're everlastingly getting together and drawing up
resolutions and electing officers. Don't you think you'd better go in
to breakfast before the Bisons begin to forage? I've had mine."
The gloom which had overspread Jock McChesney's face lifted a little.
The hungry boy in him was uppermost. "That's so. I'm going to have
some wheat cakes, and steak, and eggs, and coffee, and fruit, and
toast, and rolls."
"Why slight the fish?" inquired his mother. Then, as he turned toward
the dining-room, "I've two letters to get out. Then I'm going down the
street to see a customer. I'll be up at the Sulzberg-Stein department
store at nine sharp. There's no use trying to see old Sulzberg before
ten, but I'll be there, anyway, and so will Ed Meyers, or I'm no skirt
salesman. I want you to meet me there. It will do you good to watch
how the overripe orders just drop, ker-plunk, into my lap."
Maybe you know Sulzberg & Stein's big store? No? That's because you've
always lived in the city. Old Sulzberg sends his buyers to the New
York market twice a year, and they need two floor managers on the main
floor now. The money those people spend for red and green decorations
at Christmas time, and apple-blossoms and pink crepe paper shades in
the spring, must be something awful. Young Stein goes to Chicago to
have his clothes made, and old Sulzberg likes to keep the traveling
men waiting in the little ante-room outside his private office.
Jock McChesney finished his huge breakfast, strolled over to Sulzberg
& Stein's, and inquired his way to the office only to find that his
mother was not yet there. There were three men in the little waiting-
room. One of them was Fat Ed Meyers. His huge bulk overflowed the
spindle-legged chair on which he sat. His brown derby was in his
hands. His eyes were on the closed door at the other side of the room.
So were the eyes of the other two travelers. Jock took a vacant seat
next to Fat Ed Meyers so that he might, in his mind's eye, pick out a
particularly choice spot upon which his hard young fist might land--if
only he had the chance. Breaking up a man's sleep like that, the great
big overgrown mutt!
"What's your line?" said Ed Meyers, suddenly turning toward Jock.
Prompted by some imp--"Skirts," answered Jock. "Ladies' petticoats."
("As if men ever wore 'em!" he giggled inwardly.)
Ed Meyers shifted around in his chair so that he might better stare at
this new foe in the field. His little red mouth was open ludicrously.
"Who're you out for?" he demanded next.
There was a look of Emma McChesney on Jock's face. "Why--er--the Union
Underskirt and Hosiery Company of Chicago. New concern."
"Must be," ruminated Ed Meyers. "I never heard of 'em, and I know 'em
all. You're starting in young, ain't you, kid! Well, it'll never hurt
you. You'll learn something new every day. Now me, I--"
In breezed Emma McChesney. Her quick glance rested immediately upon
Meyers and the boy. And in that moment some instinct prompted Jock
McChesney to shake his head, ever so slightly, and assume a blankness
of expression. And Emma McChesney, with that shrewdness which had made
her one of the best salesmen on the road, saw, and miraculously
understood.
"How do, Mrs. McChesney," grinned Fat Ed Meyers. "You see I beat you
to it."
"So I see," smiled Emma, cheerfully. "I was delayed. Just sold a nice
little bill to Watkins down the Street." She seated herself across the
way, and kept her eyes on that closed door.
"Say, kid," Meyers began, in the husky whisper of the fat man, "I'm
going to put you wise to something, seeing you're new to this game.
See that lady over there?" He nodded discreetly in Emma McChesney's
direction.
"Pretty, isn't she?" said Jock, appreciatively.
"Know who she is?"
"Well--I--she does look familiar but--"
"Oh, come now, quit your bluffing. If you'd ever met that dame you'd
remember it. Her name's McChesney--Emma McChesney, and she sells T. A.
Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. I'll give her her dues; she's the best
little salesman on the road. I'll bet that girl could sell a ruffled,
accordion-plaited underskirt to a fat woman who was trying to reduce.
She's got the darndest way with her. And at that she's straight, too."
If Ed Meyers had not been gazing so intently into his hat, trying at
the same time to look cherubically benign he might have seen a quick
and painful scarlet sweep the face of the boy, coupled with a certain
tense look of the muscles around the jaw.
"Well, now, look here," he went on, still in a whisper. "We're both
skirt men, you and me. Everything's fair in this game. Maybe you don't
know it, but when there's a bunch of the boys waiting around to see
the head of the store like this, and there happens to be a lady
traveler in the crowd, why, it's considered kind of a professional
courtesy to let the lady have the first look-in. See? It ain't so
often that three people in the same line get together like this. She
knows it, and she's sitting on the edge of her chair, waiting to bolt
when that door opens, even if she does act like she was hanging on the
words of that lady clerk there. The minute it does open a crack she'll
jump up and give me a fleeting, grateful smile, and sail in and cop a
fat order away from the old man and his skirt buyer. I'm wise. Say, he
may be an oyster, but he knows a pretty woman when he sees one. By the
time she's through with him he'll have enough petticoats on hand to
last him from now until Turkey goes suffrage. Get me?"
"I get you," answered Jock.
"I say, this is business, and good manners be hanged. When a woman
breaks into a man's game like this, let her take her chances like a
man. Ain't that straight?"
"You've said something," agreed Jock.
"Now, look here, kid. When that door opens I get up. See? And shoot
straight for the old man's office. See? Like a duck. See? Say, I may
be fat, kid, but I'm what they call light on my feet, and when I see
an order getting away from me I can be so fleet that I have Diana
looking like old Weston doing a stretch of muddy country road in a
coast to coast hike. See? Now you help me out on this and I'll see
that you don't suffer for it. I'll stick in a good word for you,
believe me. You take the word of an old stager like me and you won't
go far--"
The door opened. Simultaneously three figures sprang into action. Jock
had the seat nearest the door. With marvelous clumsiness he managed to
place himself in Ed Meyers' path, then reddened, began an apology,
stepped on both of Ed's feet, jabbed his elbow into his stomach, and
dropped his hat. A second later the door of old Sulzberg's private
office closed upon Emma McChesney's smart, erect, confident figure.
Now, Ed Meyers' hands were peculiar hands for a fat man. They were
tapering, slender, delicate, blue-veined, temperamental hands. At this
moment, despite his purpling face, and his staring eyes, they were the
most noticeable thing about him. His fingers clawed the empty air,
quivering, vibrant, as though poised to clutch at Jock's throat.
Then words came. They spluttered from his lips. They popped like corn
kernels in the heat of his wrath; they tripped over each other; they
exploded.
"You darned kid, you!" he began, with fascinating fluency. "You
thousand-legged, double-jointed, ox-footed truck horse. Come on out of
here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you!
What did you get up for, huh? What did you think this was going to be
--a flag drill?"
With a whoop of pure joy Jock McChesney turned and fled.
They dined together at one o'clock, Emma McChesney and her son Jock.
Suddenly Jock stopped eating. His eyes were on the door. "There's that
fathead now," he said, excitedly. "The nerve of him! He's coming over
here."
Ed Meyers was waddling toward them with the quick light step of the
fat man. His pink, full-jowled face was glowing. His eyes were bright
as a boy's. He stopped at their table and paused for one dramatic
moment.
"So, me beauty, you two were in cahoots, huh? That's the second low-
down deal you've handed me. I haven't forgotten that trick you turned
with Nussbaum at DeKalb. Never mind, little girl. I'll get back at you
yet."
He nodded a contemptuous head in Jock's direction. "Carrying a
packer?"
[Illustration: "'Come on out of here, and I'll lick the shine off your
shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you!'"]
Emma McChesney wiped her fingers daintily on her napkin, crushed it on
the table, and leaned back in her chair. "Men," she observed,
wonderingly, "are the cussedest creatures. This chap occupied the same
room with you last night and you don't even know his name. Funny! If
two strange women had found themselves occupying the same room for a
night they wouldn't have got to the kimono and back hair stage before
they would not only have known each other's name, but they'd have
tried on each other's hats, swapped corset cover patterns, found
mutual friends living in Dayton, Ohio, taught each other a new Irish
crochet stitch, showed their family photographs, told how their
married sister's little girl nearly died with swollen glands, and
divided off the mirror into two sections to paste their newly washed
handkerchiefs on. Don't tell _me_ men have a genius for friendship."
"Well, who is he?" insisted Ed Meyers. "He told me everything but his
name this morning. I wish I had throttled him with a bunch of Bisons'
badges last night."
"His name," smiled Emma McChesney, "is Jock McChesney. He's my one and
only son, and he's put through his first little business deal this
morning just to show his mother that he can be a help to his folks if
he wants to. Now, Ed Meyers, if you're going to have apoplexy don't
you go and have it around this table. My boy is only on his second
piece of pie, and I won't have his appetite spoiled."
V
PINK TIGHTS AND GINGHAMS
Some one--probably one of those Frenchmen whose life job it was to
make epigrams---once said that there are but two kinds of women: good
women, and bad women. Ever since then problem playwrights have been
putting that fiction into the mouths of wronged husbands and building
their "big scene" around it. But don't you believe it. There are four
kinds: good women, bad women, good bad women, and bad good women. And
the worst of these is the last. This should be a story of all four
kinds, and when it is finished I defy you to discover which is which.
When the red stuff in the thermometer waxes ambitious, so that fat men
stand, bulging-eyed, before it and beginning with the ninety mark
count up with a horrible satisfaction--ninety-one--ninety-two--ninety-
three--NINETY FOUR! by gosh! and the cinders are filtering into your
berth, and even the porter is wandering restlessly up and down the
aisle like a black soul in purgatory and a white duck coat, then the
thing to do is to don those mercifully few garments which the laxity
of sleeping-car etiquette permits, slip out between the green curtains
and fare forth in search of draughts, liquid and atmospheric.
At midnight Emma McChesney, inured as she was to sleepers and all
their horrors, found her lower eight unbearable. With the bravery of
desperation she groped about for her cinder-strewn belongings, donned
slippers and kimono, waited until the tortured porter's footsteps had
squeaked their way to the far end of the car, then sped up the dim
aisle toward the back platform. She wrenched open the door, felt the
rush of air, drew in a long, grateful, smoke-steam-dust laden lungful
of it, felt the breath of it on spine and chest, sneezed, realized
that she would be the victim of a summer cold next day, and, knowing,
cared not.
"Great, ain't it?" said a voice in the darkness. (Nay, reader. A
woman's voice.)
Emma McChesney was of the non-screaming type. But something inside of
her suspended action for the fraction of a second. She peered into the
darkness.
"'J' get scared?" inquired the voice. Its owner lurched forward from
the corner in which she had been crouching, into the half-light cast
by the vestibule night-globe.
Even as men judge one another by a Masonic emblem, an Elk pin, or the
band of a cigar, so do women in sleeping-cars weigh each other
according to the rules of the Ancient Order of the Kimono. Seven
seconds after Emma McChesney first beheld the negligee that stood
revealed in the dim light she had its wearer neatly weighed, marked,
listed, docketed and placed.
It was the kind of kimono that is associated with straw-colored hair,
and French-heeled shoes, and over-fed dogs at the end of a leash. The
Japanese are wrongly accused of having perpetrated it. In pattern it
showed bright green flowers-that-never-were sprawling on a purple
background. A diamond bar fastened it not too near the throat.
It was one of Emma McChesney's boasts that she was the only living
woman who could get off a sleeper at Bay City, Michigan, at 5 A.M.,
without looking like a Swedish immigrant just dumped at Ellis Island.
Traveling had become a science with her, as witness her serviceable
dark-blue silk kimono, and her hair in a schoolgirl braid down her
back. The blonde woman cast upon Emma McChesney an admiring eye.
"Gawd, ain't it hot!" she said, sociably.
"I wonder," mused Emma McChesney, "if that porter could be hypnotized
into making some lemonade--a pitcherful, with a lot of ice in it, and
the cold sweat breaking out all over the glass?
"Lemonade!" echoed the other, wonder and amusement in her tone. "Are
they still usin' it?" She leaned against the door, swaying with the
motion of the car, and hugging her. plump, bare arms. "Travelin'
alone?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," replied Emma McChesney, and decided it was time to go in.
"Lonesome, ain't it, without company? Goin' far?"
"I'm accustomed to it. I travel on business, not pleasure. I'm on the
road, representing T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats!"
The once handsome violet eyes of the plump blonde widened with
surprise. Then they narrowed to critical slits.
"On the road! Sellin' goods! And I thought you was only a kid. It's
the way your hair's fixed, I suppose. Say, that must be a hard life
for a woman--buttin' into a man's game like that."
"Oh, I suppose any work that takes a woman out into the world--" began
Emma McChesney vaguely, her hand on the door-knob.
"Sure," agreed the other. "I ought to know. The hotels and time-tables
alone are enough to kill. Who do you suppose makes up train schedules?
They don't seem to think no respectable train ought to leave anywhere
before eleven-fifty A.M., or arrive after six A.M. We played Ottumwa,
Iowa, last night, and here we are jumpin' to Illinois."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11