Chapter 10

The little scarlet leather clock on Emma McChesney's desk pointed to 9:29 A.M. when there entered her office an immaculately garbed, miraculously shaven, healthily rosy youngish-middle-aged man who looked ten years younger than the harassed, frowning T. A. Buck with whom she had almost quarreled the evening before. Mrs. McChesney was busily dictating to a sleek little stenographer. The sleek little stenographer glanced up at T. A. Buck's entrance. The glance, being a feminine one, embraced all of T. A.'s good points and approved them from the tips of his modish boots to the crown of his slightly bald head, and including the creamy-white flower that reposed in his buttonhole.

“'Morning!” said Emma McChesney, looking up briefly. “Be with you in a minute.... and in reply would say we regret that you have had trouble with No. 339. It is impossible to avoid pulling at the seams in the lower-grade silk skirts when they are made up in the present scant style. Our Mr. Spalding warned you of this at the time of your purchase. We will not under any circumstances consent to receive the goods if they are sent back on our hands. Yours sincerely. That'll be all, Miss Casey.”

She swung around to face her visitor as the door closed. If T. A. Buck looked ten years younger than he had the afternoon before, Emma McChesney undoubtedly looked five years older. There were little, worried, sagging lines about her eyes and mouth.

T. A. Buck's eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little stenographer had carried away with her.

“Good Lord! It looks as though you had stayed down here all night.”

Emma McChesney smiled a little wearily. “Not quite that. But I was here this morning in time to greet the night watchman. Wanted to get my mail out of the way.” Her eyes searched T. A. Buck's serene face. Then she leaned forward, earnestly.

“Haven't you seen the morning paper?”

“Just a mere glance at 'em. Picked up Burrows on the way down, and we got to talking. Why?”

“The Rasmussen-Welsh Skirt Company has failed. Liabilities three hundred thousand. Assets one hundred thousand.”

“Failed! Good God!” All the rosy color, all the brisk morning freshness had vanished from his face. “Failed! Why, girl, I thought that concern was as solid as Gibraltar.” He passed a worried hand over his head. “That knocks the wind out of my sails.”

“Don't let it. Just say that it fills them with a new breeze. I'm all the more sure that the time is ripe for my plan.”

T. A. Buck took from a vest pocket a scrap of paper and a fountain pen, slid down in his chair, crossed his legs, and began to scrawl meaningless twists and curlycues, as was his wont when worried or deeply interested.

“Are you as sure of this scheme of yours as you were yesterday?”

“Sure,” replied Emma McChesney, briskly. “Sartin-sure.”

“Then fire away.”

Mrs. McChesney leaned forward, breathing a trifle fast. Her eyes were fastened on her listener.

“Here's the plan. We'll make Featherloom Petticoats because there still are some women who have kept their senses. But we'll make them as a side line. The thing that has got to keep us afloat until full skirts come in again will be a full and complete line of women's satin messaline knickerbockers made up to match any suit or gown, and a full line of pajamas for women and girls. Get the idea? Scant, smart, trim little taupe-gray messaline knickers for a taupe gray suit, blue messaline for blue suits, brown messaline for brown--”

T. A. Buck stared, open-mouthed, the paper on which he had been scrawling fluttering unnoticed to the floor.

“Look here!” he interrupted. “Is this supposed to be humorous?”

“And,” went on Emma McChesney, calmly, “in our full and complete, not to say nifty line of women's pajamas--pink pajamas, blue pajamas, violet pajamas, yellow pajamas, white silk--”

T. A. Buck stood up. “I want to say,” he began, “that if you are jesting, I think this is a mighty poor time to joke. And if you are serious I can only deduce from it that this year of business worry and responsibility has been too much for you. I'm sure that if you were--”

“That's all right,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “Don't apologize. I purposely broke it to you this way, when I might have approached it gently. You've done just what I knew you'd do, so it's all right. After you've thought it over, and sort of got chummy with the idea, you'll be just as keen on it as I am.”

“Never!”

“Oh, yes, you will. It's the knickerbocker end of it that scares you. Nothing new or startling about pajamas, except that more and more women are wearing 'em, and that no girl would dream of going away to school without her six sets of pajamas. Why, a girl in a regulation nightie at one of their midnight spreads would be ostracized. Of course I've thought up a couple of new kinks in 'em--new ways of cutting and all that, and there's one model--a washable crepe, for traveling, that doesn't need to be pressed--but I'll talk about that later.”

T. A. Buck was trying to put in a word of objection, but she would have none of it. But at Emma McChesney's next words his indignation would brook no barriers.

“Now,” she went on, “the feature of the knickerbockers will be this: They've got to be ready for the boys' spring trip, and in all the larger cities, especially in the hustling Middle-Western towns, and along the coast, too, I'm planning to have the knickerbockers introduced at private and exclusive exhibitions, and worn by--get this, please--worn by living models. One big store in each town, see? Half a dozen good-looking girls--”

“Never!” shouted T. A. Buck, white and shaking. “Never! This firm has always had a name for dignity, solidness, conservatism--”

“Then it's just about time it lost that reputation. It's all very well to hang on to your dignity when you're on solid ground, but when you feel things slipping from under you the thing to do is to grab on to anything that'll keep you on your feet for a while at least. I tell you the women will go wild over this knickerbocker idea. They've been waiting for it.”

“It's a wild-cat scheme,” disputed Buck hotly. “It's a drowning man's straw, and just about as helpful. I'm a reasonable man--”

“All unreasonable men say that,” smiled Emma McChesney.

“--I'm a reasonable man, I say. And heaven knows I have the interest of this firm at heart. But this is going too far. If we're going to smash we'll go decently, and with our name untarnished. Pajamas are bad enough. But when it comes to the firm of T. A. Buck being represented by--by--living model hussies stalking about in satin tights like chorus girls, why--”

In Emma McChesney's alert, electric mind there leapt about a dozen plans for winning this man over. For win him she would, in the end. It was merely a question of method. She chose the simplest. There was a set look about her jaw. Her eyes flashed. Two spots of carmine glowed in her cheeks.

“I expected just this,” she said. “And I prepared for it.” She crossed swiftly to her desk, opened a drawer, and took out a flat package. “I expected opposition. That's why I had these samples made up to show you. I designed them myself, and tore up fifty patterns before I struck one that suited me. Here are the pajamas.”

She lifted out a dainty, shell-pink garment, and shook it out before the half-interested, half-unwilling eyes of T. A. Buck.

“This is the jacket. Buttons on the left; see? Instead of the right, as it would in a man's garment. Semi-sailor collar, with knotted soft silk scarf. Oh, it's just a little kink, but they'll love it. They're actually becoming. I've tried 'em. Notice the frogs and cord. Pretty neat, yes? Slight flare at the hips. Makes 'em set and hang right. Perfectly straight, like a man's coat.”

T. A. Buck eyed the garments with a grudging admiration.

“Oh, that part of it don't sound so unreasonable, although I don't believe there is much of a demand for that kind of thing. But the other---the--the knickerbocker things--that's not even practical. It will make an ugly garment, and the women who would fall for a fad like that wouldn't be of the sort to wear an ugly piece of lingerie. It isn't to be thought of seriously--”

Emma McChesney stepped to the door of the tiny wash-room off her office and threw it open.

“Miss La Noyes! We're ready for you.”

And there emerged from the inner room a trim, lithe, almost boyishly slim figure attired in a bewitchingly skittish-looking garment consisting of knickerbockers and snug brassiere of king's blue satin messaline. Dainty black silk stockings and tiny buckled slippers set off the whole effect.

“Miss La Noyes,” said Emma McChesney, almost solemnly, “this is Mr. T. A. Buck, president of the firm. Miss La Noyes, of the 'Gay Social Whirl' company.”

Miss La Noyes bowed slightly and rested one white hand at her side in an attitude of nonchalant ease.

“Pleased, I'm shaw!” she said, in a clear, high voice.

And, “Charmed,” replied T. A. Buck, his years and breeding standing him in good stead now.

Emma McChesney laid a kindly hand on the girl's shoulder. “Turn slowly, please. Observe the absence of unnecessary fulness about the hips, or at the knees. No wrinkles to show there. No man will ever appreciate the fine points of this little garment, but the women!--To the left, Miss La Noyes. You'll see it fastens snug and trim with a tiny clasp just below the knees. This garment has the added attraction of being fastened to the upper garment, a tight satin brassiere. The single, unattached garment is just as satisfactory, however. Women are wearing plush this year. Not only for the street, but for evening dresses. I rather think they'll fancy a snappy little pair of yellow satin knickers under a gown of the new orange plush. Or a taupe pair, under a gray street suit. Or a natty little pair of black satin, finished and piped in white satin, to be worn with a black and white shopping costume. Why, I haven't worn a petticoat since I--”

“Do you mean to tell me,” burst from the long-pent T. A. Buck, “that you wear 'em too?”

“Crazy about 'em. Miss La Noyes, will you just slip on your street skirt, please?”

She waited in silence until the demure Miss La Noyes reappeared. A narrow, straight-hanging, wrinkleless cloth skirt covered the much discussed under-garment. “Turn slowly, please. Thanks. You see, Mr. Buck? Not a wrinkle. No bunchiness. No lumps. No crawling up about the knees. Nothing but ease, and comfort, and trim good looks.”

T. A. Buck passed his hand over his head in a dazed, helpless gesture. There was something pathetic in his utter bewilderment and helplessness in contrast with Emma McChesney's breezy self-confidence, and the show-girl's cool poise and unconcern.

“Wait a minute,” he murmured, almost pleadingly. “Let me ask a couple of questions, will you?”

“Questions? A hundred. That proves you're interested.”

“Well, then, let me ask this young lady the first one. Miss--er--La Noyes, do you honestly and truly like this garment? Would you buy one if you saw it in a shop window?”

Miss La Noyes' answer came trippingly and without hesitation. She did not even have to feel of her back hair first.

“Say, I'd go without my lunch for a week to get it. Mrs. McChesney says I can have this pair. I can't wait till our prima donna sees 'em. She'll hate me till she's got a dozen like 'em.”

“Next!” urged Mrs. McChesney, pleasantly.

But T. A. Buck shook his head. “That's all. Only--”

Emma McChesney patted Miss La Noyes lightly on the shoulder, and smiled dazzlingly upon her. “Run along, little girl. You've done beautifully. And many thanks.”

Miss La Noyes, appearing in another moment dressed for the street, stopped at the door to bestow a frankly admiring smile upon the abstracted president of the company, and a grateful one upon its pink-cheeked secretary.

“Hope you'll come and see our show some evening. You won't know me at first, because I wear a blond wig in the first scene. Third from the left, front row.” And to Mrs. McChesney: “I cer'nly did hate to get up so early this morning, but after you're up it ain't so fierce. And it cer'nly was easy money. Thanks.”

Emma McChesney glanced quickly at T. A., saw that he was pliant enough for the molding process, and deftly began to shape, and bend, and smooth and pat.

“Let's sit down, and unravel the kinks in our nerves. Now, if you do favor this new plan--oh, I mean after you've given it consideration, and all that! Yes, indeed. But if you do, I think it would be good policy to start the game in--say--Cleveland. The Kaufman-Oster Company of Cleveland have a big, snappy, up-to-the-minute store. We'll get them to send out announcement cards. Something neat and flattering-looking. See? Little stage all framed up. Scene set to show a bedroom or boudoir. Then, thin girls, plump girls, short girls, high girls. They'll go through all the paces. We won't only show the knickerbockers: we demonstrate how the ordinary petticoat bunches and crawls up under the heavy plush and velvet top skirt. We'll show 'em in street clothes, evening clothes, afternoon frocks. Each one in a different shade of satin knicker. And silk stockings and cunning little slippers to match. The store will stand for that. It's a big ad for them, too.”

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.

“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.

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.”