Part 5

“But, Bowser, don’t you recall that our Doctor Butterfield worked out in the laboratory that the Human Eye Can Only Rivet on Seven Words at Once? Your slogan has nine. If you could somehow boil it down——”

“I’ll boil nothing down. I like it as it is.”

Mr. Bowser shrugged his well-tailored shoulders.

“And fly in the face of psychology?” he asked gently, but as one who is hurt.

Mrs. Bowser bridled.

“Don’t look at me as if I were a naughty child, Bowser!” she ejaculated. “I’m not a green copy writer that you’ve caught wearing an unadvertised brand of rubber heels. I was a Successful Slogan Builder before I ever met you, please remember.”

“Come now, control yourself. At least let me tell you about the Big Thought I just had before I came in here.”

Mrs. Bowser tapped her teeth with her pencil. Mr. Bowser jumped to his feet and when he spoke his voice held chords of rapture and his eyes were alight with the joy of creation.

“Listen,” he began. Then in his special slogan voice he declaimed: “Smelly-Welly—dirt-devourer!”

Mrs. Bowser regarded him without enthusiasm.

“Not bad,” she admitted.

“Not bad?” he cried. “Great Scott, woman, it’s perfect! Smelly-Welly! Why, it’s an inspiration. Came to me like a flash from the sky. Smelly-Welly! Easy to say, easy to spell and chock-full of punch. Look here, Bowser, just look here!” From an inside pocket he took a strip of cardboard on which he had hastily lettered in large black print:

SMELLY-WELLY

Dirt-devourer

He held it aloft, eyes beaming.

“Just picture that in orange on a dark blue background! Smelly-Welly! A child can say it. Ah, an idea! ‘A child can use it just as easily as a child can say it.’ We’ll print that on every can. Why, it would be a sin to retail Smelly-Welly at a dollar a can. I bet we could get a dollar and a half easy for a product with a name like that. Smelly-Welly! There’s magic in it, I tell you. Isn’t it a peach, Bowser?”

“I like Garfinko Nostinko better,” she answered doggedly.

He bit his lip.

“Oh, do you?” he said stiffly.

“Yes; Smelly-Welly lacks dignity.”

“Is that so? Well, I tried it on Mink, Pffeffer, Boley, Deyo, Hendricks and Shinners, and they were all most enthusiastic about it.”

“They would be, the jellyfish,” said Mrs. Bowser dryly. “If you suggest Cupid’s Caress as the name for a tire pump they’d applaud.”

Mr. Bowser was outraged by this suggestion.

“You’re just in a stubborn streak, Bowser,” he declared. “No use reasoning with you. I shall use Smelly-Welly.”

“It lacks dignity,” she retorted.

“Smelly-Welly,” said Mr. Bowser with concentrated gravity, “is my choice, and I intend that it shall be used.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Mrs. Bowser grimly.

A light and timorous tap sounded on the door; the frightened face of Miss Mink peeped through the crack.

“Sorry, Mr. Bowser,” she said, “but your reducing class at the Billboard A. C. starts at 5:30 and it’s now 5:25. You told me to be sure you didn’t miss it again. Your car is waiting.”

“I’ll come directly, Mink,” said Mr. Bowser. He turned to his wife. “I shall stay at the club tonight,” he informed her, then stalked out.

She said nothing; ominously she tapped her teeth. There was a buzzer in the Quiet Room—a pale gray buzzer with a wan buzz; this she pressed. Miss Gussing flitted into the room.

“Gussing, take a memo. To cook. _In re_ dinner tonight. Mr. Bowser will not be present. Tomato soup, roast chicken, little green beans, guava jelly, raspberry mousse, eight sharp.

“(Signed) P. I. Bowser, _Associate President_.”

Morn came to the office of J. Sanford Bowser. Up and down, up and down paced Mr. Bowser, heedless of the fact that he might wear a path in the genuine Cabistan rug. That he, most careful of men, should thus imperil so costly a piece of his own property was a sure sign to his employees that he was in no mood to be trifled with. His brow, generally bland, was creased with care and perplexity. He lit Marlborough-Somerset after Marlborough-Somerset, then tossed them, half-smoked, into the copper ash tray. J. Sanford Bowser was in conference with himself.

Heads of departments tiptoed about with ashen faces and tight-shut lips; now and then they paused in the corridors to exchange a few tense, whispered words. Copy writers in their coops wrote furiously but silently with soft black pencils; now and then they glanced apprehensively over their shoulders as if they momentarily expected the grim reaper himself to enter. Little girls down in the checking department curbed their giggles and masticated their gum with nervous molars; even the space salesmen on the benches in the reception room sensed the fact that the atmosphere was electric with suspense; in muted voices they muttered their selling talk over to themselves.

“J. S. B. is making some big decision,” whispered the head of the copy department to the head of the media department.

“The Chief is making some big decision,” whispered Copy Writer Deyo to Copy Writer Shinners as they held hands in the Quiet Room.

“Mr. Bowser is makin’ some big decision,” whispered Mickey the messenger to Sallie the checker.

And Mrs. Bowser, where was she? Alone and aloof in her own private concentrating room on the roof of the building, she did not know of the spiritual wrestling match that went on in Mr. Bowser’s soul. She was busy; her chin jutted out resolutely; with pieces of colored paper and with paint she frantically designed car cards, posters, cartons, on which she lettered vigorously “Garfinko Nostinko.”

“Hit them in the Eye with Something Tangible,” she explained to the faithful Gussing who stood guard outside the door to prevent interruption. “Once Bowser sees these, he’ll forget Smelly-Welly. Smelly-Welly lacks dignity, don’t you think, Gussing?”

“Yes, Bowser.”

From the theater of war, where Mr. Bowser battled with himself, came a news bulletin which leaped from mouth to mouth:

“J. S. B. is going into the Quiet Room.”

“The Chief is going into the Quiet Room.”

“Mr. Bowser is going into the Quiet Room.”

They saw him, hands clasped behind him, chin resting on necktie, eyes oblivious to things mundane, stride down the corridor and into the Quiet Room. As noiselessly as if it were the cobweb door to ghostland the gray door purred shut behind him. From basement to roof in the vast Bowser Building breaths were held.

In the Quiet Room Mr. Bowser set up on racks four cards, in groups of two. The first card bore the words:

SMELLY-WELLY

Dirt-devourer

The second card had inscribed on it:

GARFINKO-NOSTINKO

Easy on the Nostrils, But Hard on the Dirt

The other two cards were smaller. One bore the words:

KINZO BOWSER

The other had written on it:

JOHN BOWSER

J. Sanford Bowser leaned back in a gray easy-chair, stretched out his long legs and studied for many minutes the cards.

Abruptly he stood erect; dynamically his teeth clicked. With quick hands he seized the Garfinko Nostinko card and the John Bowser card and tore them into small bits.

“Thinking out loud,” he said—a favorite expression of his—“I intend to be master in my own office and in my own home.”

He jabbed a buzzer button. Two thousand employees of The Bowsers, Inc., breathed again. They knew that the big decision had been made.

In spurted Miss Mink.

“Minktakmemo.”

She looked at him in some alarm; he appeared ruffled, almost agitated. It was contagious; her hand trembled.

“Memo to Hencastle,” he jerked out. “_In re_ name. My final decision is SMELLY-WELLY—Dirt-devourer! This name must be used no matter what objections are raised; it will be up to you to see that this is done. Please note that appointment is for one sharp, as per verbal instructions given this morning.

“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”

He signed it as if he were signing the Declaration of Independence.

“Minktaknuthermemo.”

Miss Mink snapped to attention.

“To Hendricks. _In re_ matter discussed this morning. My final choice is Kinzo. Please carry out my instructions to the letter. Use my limousine.

“(Signed) J. Sanford Bowser, _President_.”

“Now,” he directed, “when Hencastle and Hendricks have left the office please find Mrs. Bowser and ask her to be so good as to come to the Quiet Room as soon as she can for a very important conference.”

Miss Mink scurried forth, and he picked up a large pad of paper and began to sketch out posters for the forthcoming Smelly-Welly campaign.

So engrossed was he in this work that he did not notice that it was fully two hours before Mrs. Bowser entered. She was slightly disheveled, slightly smeared with purple ink, slightly flushed, and in her hand were many papers.

“Well, Bowser?” she inquired.

“Sit down, please,” he said most affably.

She did so.

“Bowser,” he began levelly, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m going to tell you straight out.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Two heads,” stated Mr. Bowser, “may be better than one in thinking, but one is better than two in doing. So I determined today that I would go ahead and name the new cleaning powder and attend to the christening of the baby myself.”

“Oh, have you really?” said Mrs. Bowser in a voice ten degrees below freezing. “Important, if true.”

“It is true,” he rejoined calmly. “The things have been done.”

“Done? Done!” The first “done” she uttered was a whisper; the second “done” a scream.

“Precisely. Both jobs I put through according to a careful plan,” he continued with serenity. “By my order Hencastle went to Peabody Garfinkle and told him he could order one million cans bearing the label Smelly-Welly.”

Mrs. Bowser, incapable of speech, sucked in her breath sharply.

“And,” finished Mr. Bowser, “also by my order, Hendricks called at the house today, took the baby to the church in the limousine, and had him christened.”

“What?” asked Mrs. Bowser faintly. “John?”

“No,” said Mr. Bowser; “Kinzo.”

For a brief second Mrs. Bowser appeared to be about to swoon, but she didn’t; she spoke, but with an effort.

“There are times,” she said slowly, “when mere words cannot express thoughts. And this is one of them.” Then, with mounting ire: “Do you mean to sit there and tell me, J. Sanford Bowser, that you had the unmitigated nerve to name my baby without——”

“Hush, for heaven’s sake! There’s somebody at the door,” he said. There was indeed somebody at the door; the Bowsers heard a crackling noise.

“Look! What’s that?” exclaimed Mr. Bowser.

“It’s a newspaper; someone is poking it under the door,” she said, mystified.

He stooped and picked up the paper.

“Early edition of the Evening Clarion,” he said. “Look—it’s marked—right here.”

For a moment they bent their heads over the sheet.

Then Mrs. Bowser gave forth a heartrending scream that made the gray walls of the Quiet Room tremble; then Mr. Bowser cried aloud “Great Cæsar’s ghost!” and collapsed into a chair. Staring out in cold black type they saw:

Late News Bowser Scion Christened

The infant son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Sanford Bowser, well-known publicity engineers, of Park Avenue, and Great Neck, L. I., was christened at noon today in the Church of Saint Jude the Obscure, by the Rev. James Russell Swiggette. The name given the infant was Smelly-Welly Dirt-devourer Bowser.

Mr. Bowser recovered just enough to moan, “Great Cæsar’s ghost—they got the memos mixed! They got the memos mixed!”

“Smelly-Welly Bowser,” repeated Mrs. Bowser over and over, as if under some horrible spell. “Smelly-Welly Bowser. My baby! Smelly-Welly Bowser.”

“They got the memos mixed, Pandora,” he said abjectly. “I tell you they got the memos mixed.”

“Smelly-Welly Bowser,” she moaned. “You wanted an unusual name! You wanted a name no one will forget! You wanted a name easy to say! Well, you’ve got it! Oh, dear; oh, dear—Smelly-Welly Bowser! My son. Smelly-Welly——”

“Oh, Pandora,” he cried, taking her hand, “how can you—or he—ever forgive me?”

She looked up and the beginning of a smile twitched her lips.

“Now we’ll just have to call him John,” she said.

THE WRONGING OF EDWIN DELL

“ONE, two, three, four,” counted Aunt Charity as she put the hard-boiled eggs into the shoebox beside the bananas, and twisted a little cornucopia from the sheep-dip advertisement in the Crosby Corners’ News to hold the pepper and salt. “Do you think four will be enough, Edwin?”

“Four what, Aunt Charity?” asked Edwin Dell, looking up from his book; it was Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Living and Holy Dying.”

“These,” she said, pointing a long, pale forefinger. She never mentioned the word egg. To her there was a suggestion of the improper about an egg.

Edwin Dell looked at them, blushed, turned his head away.

“I think so, Aunt Charity,” he murmured.

She cut slices of bread from the home-made loaf and swaddled each slice in tissue paper.

“You’ll be careful what victuals you eat in New York, Edwin,” she said; it was half question, half command.

“Oh, yes, Aunt Charity,” promised the young man. “I’m always most particular about my victuals.”

“Sit up straight, Edwin. And be sure to allow plenty of time to get to the station. The New York train leaves at three-twenty-four. What is it Emerson says about punctuality?”

“Punctuality,” Edwin quoted, “is one of the legs of the table of Success.” He knew his Emerson.

“And Edwin——”

“Yes, Aunt Charity?”

“Don’t forget what I said about women.”

“Indeed I shan’t, aunt,” he said, earnestly. “I shall eschew them. Indeed I shall eschew them, Aunt Charity.”

“You’d better,” said his aunt, grimly. She was a geometric woman, all angles, corners, tangents and plane surfaces. The one man who might have loved her was Euclid. She had come to Crosby Corners, Connecticut, from Louisburg Square, Boston, to bring up her infant nephew, Edwin Dell, an orphan whose parents had been called away when lightning struck the village church during Wednesday prayer meeting. After Edwin was one year old she always called the gardener in to give Edwin his bath. She had conducted an exclusive school for girls in Boston, and so was able to bring the child up carefully and well. He had not been permitted to go to school; that would have brought him in contact with gauche persons. Any young man would have envied him his ability to read Latin at sight and his considerable knowledge of ecclesiastical history. The malady of the time—ingrown worldliness—had never tainted him. At twenty-one he had conversed with practically no one but his aunt, and the Rev. Vernon Stickney Entwistle, who came to tea on alternate Tuesdays, and Palumbo, the Italian gardener, whose remarks, by Aunt Charity’s strict orders were confined to agricultural subjects, such as “Theesa punk” and “Theesa cab.” It took Edwin some years to discover that Palumbo was saying “This is a pumpkin” and “This is a cabbage.”

Aunt Charity’s library consisted of the following books: The Book of Common Prayer, Young’s Night Thoughts, Fox’s Book of Martyrs, Holy Living and Holy Dying, the Sermons of Bishop Amos Pratt, the Sermons of the Rev. Hosea Ballou (in eleven volumes), the Sermons of John Wesley Tweedy, D.D., the Collected Prayers of the Rev. Nathaniel Beasley, the Sermons (one volume each) of the Revs. Snellgrove, Tetter, Peabody, Kinsolving, Struthers, Kipp, Manning, Pinkney, and Dodd, and The Genealogical History of the Tillotson Family. Aunt Charity was a Boston Tillotson. Young Edwin had free access to this library, and, being by nature bookish, he read all the volumes so assiduously that his aunt had to renew the chintz slip-covers three distinct times.

And now Edwin Dell was going to New York to seek his fortune. It was his first visit to that great city. In its libraries he planned to find material to finish the work on which he was engaged, a scholarly and exhaustive treatise on The History of the Dogma of Infant Damnation in New England between 1800 and 1830. It was to fill six large volumes, possibly ten. It would make something of a stir in the more thoughtful literary circles, he expected, in all modesty. He was a modest young man; he could not tolerate mirrors in his bathroom.

His heart beat fast as he took his seat in the train to New York. There he sat, waiting for the train to start, his ticket and the address of his boarding house clutched in one hand, his lunch box, with the four hard-boiled blanks, clutched in the other. His first week’s allowance was pinned to his union suit by two safety pins.

Passengers, even hardened traveling salesmen, turned to look twice at Edwin Dell; he was so young, so fresh. His light blue eyes were large, round, wondering; they looked at the world so candidly, so trustingly. He had the tall, well-proportioned body of the Tillotsons and the frank, boyish features of the Dells. Not a million mud-baths could have given him those cheeks, to which the color came easily; they were Nature’s reward for clean living, early retiring, and waking with the lark. Electricity had had nothing to do with that wave in his blond hair; that, too, was Nature’s gift. He was quietly dressed in a pepper and salt suit; his necktie was blue with white polka dots.

“Edwin,” his aunt called through the window, “are you sure you packed”—she looked about to be sure no one overheard her—“your woolens?”

“Yes, Aunt Charity.”

“And the goose-grease?”

“Yes, Aunt Charity.”

“When you feel a cold coming on,” she said, “be sure to rub the goose-grease on your——self.”

He knew she meant “chest”. He was glad she didn’t say the word in front of all those strangers, but, of course, he reflected, there was not the slightest danger of Aunt Charity committing an indelicacy; she tacitly admitted the existence of Edwin from chin to ankles, but never mentioned it.

“Edwin?”

“Yes, aunt.”

“Remember what I said.”

“About what, aunt?”

“About women.”

“Have no apprehension,” he said. “I shall eschew them.”

The engine tooted, the train creaked, and he was off to New York.

* * * * *

General Grant, it is likely, never stayed at the boarding house of Miss Hetty Venable in West 13th street. But the mark of his régime was on it, particularly in its interior decorations. In Edwin Dell’s room on the second floor, rear, hung heavy velvet portières that still smelled faintly, from the campaign cigar some roomer had smoked there during the Hayes-Tilden election. The furniture was massive and glum; the marble mantel was covered with a cloth with yellow tassels; in the bathtub were painted purple and green tulips of decalcomaniac tendencies; the gas jets suffered from chronic asthma and halitosis. The view from the window embraced four back-yards as similar as pocket-dictionaries, with frescoes of clothes-lines, and a liberal sprinkling of ash-barrels, elderly shoes and used cats. Edwin rubbed his hands with satisfaction; it seemed to him an ideal place to write his kind of book.

Four days after Edwin Dell came to New York and to West 13th Street, Miss Venable’s cook left to accept a position in the moving pictures, and Edwin, who had had his meals in his rooms till then, was now forced to seek his nourishment outside. Was it he who impersonated a serpent in a garden some eons ago who led Edwin Dell to select for his meals the Scarlet Hyena Tea Room, dinner eighty five cents, with soup or salad, one dollar; chicken Sundays? He thought he chose it because it lay on his route to the Greenwich Village branch of the public library.

It was during his second dinner there that Edwin Dell, looking up from page 512 of Bishop Groody’s masterly defense of the theory of infant damnation, saw the girl. He had been aware that there were many girls in New York, but he had ignored them. This girl was hard to ignore. She was looking at him, looking directly and smiling a slight, shameless smile. Edwin frowned, dropped his eyes to his book, and felt uncomfortable. In his confusion he salted his cocoa, and, on tasting it, sputtered. He heard her only partly suppressed titter. He knew that he was flushing. He tried to look up without meeting her eye but he ran straight into her gaze; she was smiling most provocatively. He gulped down his cocoa, salt and all, and fled from the restaurant.

How fresh and pure seemed the air of Seventh Avenue as he crossed it! How reassuring the presence of the traffic policeman! Edwin picked his way along through the crisp December evening. The sound of steps on the sidewalk behind him made him glance over his shoulder. His heart fluttered. Somebody was following him.

Under the arc light he could see her unmistakable dress, an unrestrained maroon batik affair besprint with ochre fish pursuing mauve worms. It was she, the one who had smiled. Edwin Dell’s backward glance was hasty, but hasty as it was, it saw her smile, and her wink. Something close akin to panic gripped him and he lengthened his strides; from the _lap, lap, lap_ of her sandals he knew she too had increased her pace. With anxious eyes he glanced at the numbers; he had forty houses to go before he reached Miss Venable’s. His breath began to come jerkily. Thirty numbers more. She was gaining on him, and was clearing her throat with a loud “Ahem” that even to his inexperienced ears sounded manufactured. Twenty more numbers; and the girl drew nearer, nearer. Edwin broke into a species of canter; _lap, lap, lap, lap_—she was cantering, too. Just in time he reached the brown stone steps of Miss Venable’s house; with two leaps he reached the door and miraculously hit the key-hole the first stab. He slammed the door shut behind him, and sank down, almost fainting on the derby hats of the other roomers on the hall hat-rack.

Next day before Edwin Dell went forth, he stood for a long time looking at a steel engraving he had brought with him from his home in the country and had tacked to the rose-dappled wall-paper. It was a picture of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New courage rushed into his system like air into a tire as he gazed into the wise, kind, understanding eyes. He ate a push-cart apple for breakfast and another for lunch, and entrenched himself in the library behind the bulwark of Bishop Groody’s ponderous tome. It was past seven that evening when Edwin Dell had intimations that he had a grosser side and must appease it with food. He set forth to do so.

Edwin Dell’s acquaintance with Freud was as limited as Freud’s acquaintance with Edwin Dell. Edwin Dell knew no more of the theory of the subconscious than a trout does of trigonometry. Little did the country lad realize that he was an iceberg with one-third of him projecting above the surface of consciousness, and the other two-thirds plunged deep down in the murky realms of the subconscious. So, with the utmost innocence of intention (ah, little did he reck of the tricks of the subconscious!) he found himself well into the fried atmosphere of the Scarlet Hyena before he remembered that he had resolved never to set foot in that place again. He wheeled about to leave, but a vigilant waiter herded him into a seat in a corner and affixed him there with a napkin, a glass of water and butter. Edwin peered round, and saw no cause for alarm. The girl was not there. Her bobbed red head was nowhere visible in the forest of black, brown, yellow and brindle bobbed heads. With a relieved sigh he ordered chicken liver omelet and weak tea.

He was seeking for vestiges of chicken liver with one eye and reading Groody’s epoch-making chapter, “Have Babies Adult-sized Souls?” with the other, when he became aware that someone had taken the vacant seat across the table from him. Of course he did not look up; he hadn’t the slightest interest in knowing who it was. But the person addressed him.

“I beg your pardon, but will you give me a light,” the voice said. He had to look up then. It was she.

He wished to leave at once, but he was too well-bred, so he said, with impersonal politeness:

“I’m sorry, but I have no matches.”

“Ah,” she laughed, “I’ll bet your aunt won’t let you carry them.”