Emma McChesney & Co.
by Edna Ferber.
I
BROADWAY TO BUENOS AIRES
The door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY" was closed. T. A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, coming gaily down the hall, stopped before it, dismayed, as one who, with a spicy bit of news at his tongue"s end, is met with rebuff before the first syllable is voiced. That closed door meant: "Busy. Keep out."
"She"ll be reading a letter," T. A. Buck told himself grimly. Then he turned the k.n.o.b and entered his partner"s office.
Mrs. Emma McChesney was reading a letter. More than that, she was poring over it so that, at the interruption, she glanced up in a maddeningly half-c.o.c.ked manner which conveyed the impression that, while her physical eye beheld the intruder, her mental eye was still on the letter.
"I knew it," said T. A. Buck morosely.
Emma McChesney put down the letter and smiled.
"Sit down--now that you"re in. And if you expect me to say, "Knew what?" you"re doomed to disappointment."
T. A. Buck remained standing, both gloved hands clasping his walking stick on which he leaned.
"Every time I come into this office, you"re reading the latest scrawl from your son. One would think Jock"s letters were deathless masterpieces. I believe you read them at half-hour intervals all week, and on Sunday get "em all out and play solitaire with them."
Emma McChesney"s smile widened frankly to a grin.
"You make me feel like a cash-girl who"s been caught flirting with the elevator starter. Have I been neglecting business?"
"Business? No; you"ve been neglecting me!"
"Now, T. A., you"ve just come from the tailor"s, and I suppose it didn"t fit in the back."
"It isn"t that," interrupted Buck, "and you know it. Look here! That day Jock went away and we came back to the office, and you said----"
"I know I said it, T. A., but don"t remind me of it. That wasn"t a fair test. I had just seen Jock leave me to take his own place in the world. You know that my day began and ended with him. He was my reason for everything. When I saw him off for Chicago that day, and knew he was going there to stay, it seemed a million miles from New York. I was blue and lonely and heart-sick. If the office-boy had thrown a kind word to me I"d have broken down and wept on his shoulder."
Buck, still standing, looked down between narrowed lids at his business partner.
"Emma McChesney," he said steadily, "do you mean that?"
Mrs. McChesney, the straightforward, looked up, looked down, fiddled with the letter in her hand.
"Well--practically yes--that is--I thought, now that you"re going to the mountains for a month, it might give me a chance to think--to----"
"And d"you know what I"ll do meanwhile, out of revenge on the s.e.x?
I"ve just ordered three suits of white flannel, and I shall break every feminine heart in the camp, regardless-- Oh, say, that"s what I came in to tell you! Guess whom I saw at the tailor"s?"
"Well, Mr. Bones, whom did you, and so forth?"
"Fat Ed Meyers. I just glimpsed him in one of the fitting-rooms. And they were draping him in white."
Emma McChesney sat up with a jerk.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure? There"s only one figure like that. He had the thing on and was surveying himself in the mirror--or as much of himself as could be seen in one ordinary mirror. In that white suit, with his red face above it, he looked like those pictures you see labeled, "Sunrise on Snow-covered Mountain.""
"Did he see----"
"He dodged when he saw me. Actually! At least, he seems to have the decency to be ashamed of the deal he gave us when he left us flat in the thick of his Middle Western trip and went back to the Sans-Silk Skirt Company. I wanted him to know I had seen him. As I pa.s.sed, I said, "You"ll mow "em down in those clothes, Meyers."" Buck sat down in his leisurely fashion, and laughed his low, pleasant laugh. "Can"t you see him, Emma, at the seash.o.r.e?"
But something in Emma McChesney"s eyes, and something in her set, unsmiling face, told him that she was not seeing seash.o.r.es. She was staring straight at him, straight through him, miles beyond him. There was about her that tense, electric, breathless air of complete detachment, which always enveloped her when her lightning mind was leaping ahead to a goal unguessed by the slower thinking.
"What"s your tailor"s name?"
"Name? Trotter. Why?"
Emma McChesney had the telephone operator before he could finish.
"Get me Trotter, the tailor, T-r-o-double-t-e-r. Say I want to speak to the tailor who fits Mr. Ed Meyers, of the Sans-Silk Skirt Company."
T. A. Buck leaned forward, mouth open, eyes wide. "Well, what in the name of----"
"I"ll let you know in a minute. Maybe I"m wrong. It"s just one of my hunches. But for ten years I sold Featherlooms through the same territory that Ed Meyers was covering for the Sans-Silk Skirt people.
It didn"t take me ten years to learn that Fat Ed hadn"t the decency to be ashamed of any deal he turned, no matter how raw. And let me tell you, T. A.: If he dodged when he saw you it wasn"t because he was ashamed of having played us low-down. He was contemplating playing lower-down. Of course, I may be----"
She picked up the receiver in answer to the bell. Then, sweetly, her calm eyes smiling into Buck"s puzzled ones:
"h.e.l.lo! Is this Mr. Meyers" tailor? I"m to ask if you are sure that the grade he selected is the proper weight for the tropics. What? Oh, you say you a.s.sured him it was the weight of flannel you always advise for South America. And you said they"d be ready when? Next week?
Thank you."
She hung up the receiver. The pupils of her eyes were dilated. Her cheeks were very pink as always under excitement. She stood up, her breath coming rather quickly.
"Hurray for the hunch! It holds. Fat Ed Meyers is going down to South America for the Sans-Silk Company. It"s what I"ve been planning to do for the last six months. You remember I spoke of it. You pooh-poohed the idea. It means hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Sans-Silk people if they get it. But they won"t get it."
T. A. Buck stood up suddenly.
"Look here, Emma! If you"re----"
"I certainly am. Nothing can stop me. The skirt business has been--well, you know what it"s been for the last two years. The South American boats sail twice a month. Fat Ed Meyers" clothes are promised for next week. That means he isn"t sailing until week after next. But the next boat sails in three days." She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and tossed it into Buck"s hand. "That"s the letter I was reading when you came in. No; don"t read it. Let me tell you instead."
Buck threw cane, hat, gloves, and letter on the broad desk, thrust his hands into his pockets, and prepared for argument. But he got only as far as: "But I won"t allow it! You couldn"t get away in three days, at any rate. And at the end of two weeks you"ll have come to your senses, and besides----"
"T. A., I don"t mean to be rude. But here are your hat and stick and gloves. It"s going to take me just forty-eight hours to mobilize."
"But, Emma, even if you do get in ahead of Meyers, it"s an insane idea.
A woman can"t go down there alone. It isn"t safe. It"s bad enough for a man to tackle it. Besides, we"re holding our own."
"That"s just it. When a doctor issues a bulletin to the effect that the patient is holding his own, you may have noticed that the relatives always begin to gather."