Miss Sweeney simpered down at her glove-tips, fluttered her eyelids.
"Well--yes--I--I--you see, I bought of him this year, and when you buy of a person, why, naturally, you----"
"Naturally; I understand."
She walked across the hall, threw open the door, and met T. A. Buck"s glance coolly.
"Mr. Buck, Miss Sweeney, of Des Moines, is here, and I"m sure you want to see her. This way, Miss Sweeney."
Miss Sweeney, sidling, blushing, fluttering, teetered in. Emma McChesney, just before she closed the door, saw a little spasm cross Buck"s face. It was gone so quickly, and a radiant smile sat there so rea.s.suringly, that she wondered if she had not been mistaken, after all. He had advanced, hand outstretched, with:
"Miss Sweeney! It--it"s wonderful to see you again! You"re looking----"
The closed door stifled the rest. Emma McChesney, in her office across the way, stood a moment in the center of the room, her hand covering her eyes. The hardy chrysanthemums still glowed sunnily from their vase. The little room was very quiet except for the ticking of the smart, leather-encased clock on the desk.
The closed door shut out factory and office sounds. And Emma McChesney stood with one hand over her eyes. So Napoleon might have stood after Waterloo.
After this first lesson, Mrs. McChesney did not err again. When, two days later, Miss Sharp, of Berg Brothers, Omaha, breezed in, looking strangely juvenile and distinctly antic.i.p.atory, Emma greeted her smilingly and waved her toward the door opposite. Miss Sharp, the erstwhile bristling, was strangely smooth and sleek. She glanced ever so softly, sighed ever so flutteringly.
"Working side by side with him, seeing him day after day, how have you been able to resist him?"
Emma McChesney was only human, after all.
"By remembering that this is a business house, not a matrimonial parlor."
The dart found no lodging place in Miss Sharp"s sleek armor. She seemed scarcely to have heard.
"My dear," she whispered, "his eyes! And his manner! You must be--whatchamaycallit--adamant. Is that the way you p.r.o.nounce it? You know what I mean."
"Oh, yes," replied Emma McChesney evenly, "I--know what you mean."
She told herself that she was justified in the righteous contempt which she felt for this sort of thing. A heart-breaker! A cheap lady-killer! Whereupon in walked Sam Bloom, of the Paris Emporium, Duluth, one of Mrs. McChesney"s stanchest admirers and a long-tried business friend.
The usual thing: "Younger than ever, Mrs. McChesney! You"re a wonder--yes, you are! How"s business? Same here. Going to have lunch with me to-day?" Then: "I"ll just run in and see Buck. Say, where"s he been keeping himself all these years? Chip off the old block, that boy."
So he had the men, too!
It was in this frame of mind that Miss Ethel Morrissey found her on the morning that she came into New York on her semi-annual buying-trip.
Ethel Morrissey, plump, matronly-looking, quiet, with her hair fast graying at the sides, had nothing of the skittish Middle Western buyer about her. She might have pa.s.sed for the mother of a brood of six if it were not for her eyes--the shrewd, twinkling, far-sighted, reckoning eyes of the business woman. She and Emma McChesney had been friends from the day that Ethel Morrissey had bought her first cautious bill of Featherlooms. Her love for Emma McChesney had much of the maternal in it. She felt a personal pride in Emma McChesney"s work, her success, her clean reputation, her life of self-denial for her son Jock. When Ethel Morrissey was planned by her Maker, she had not been meant to be wasted on the skirt-and-suit department of a small-town store. That broad, gracious breast had been planned as a resting-place for heads in need of comfort. Those plump, firm arms were meant to enfold the weak and distressed. Those capable hands should have smoothed troubled heads and patted plump cheeks, instead of wasting their gifts in folding piles of petticoats and deftly twitching a plait or a tuck into place. She was playing Rosalind in buskins when she should have been cast for the Nurse.
She entered Emma McChesney"s office, now, in her quiet blue suit and her neat hat, and she looked very sane and cheerful and rosy-cheeked and dependable. At least, so Emma McChesney thought, as she kissed her, while the plump arms held her close.
Ethel Morrissey, the hugging process completed, held her off and eyed her.
"Well, Emma McChesney, flourish your Featherlooms for me. I want to buy and get it over, so we can talk."
"Are you sure that you want to buy of me?" asked Emma McChesney, a little wearily.
"What"s the joke?"
"I"m not joking. I thought that perhaps you might prefer to see Mr.
Buck this trip."
Ethel Morrissey placed one forefinger under Emma McChesney"s chin and turned that lady"s face toward her and gazed at her long and thoughtfully--the most trying test of courage in the world, that, to one whose eyes fear meeting yours. Emma McChesney, bravest of women, tried to withstand it, and failed. The next instant her head lay on Ethel Morrissey"s broad breast, her hands were clutching the plump shoulders, her cheek was being patted soothingly by the kind hands.
"Now, now--what is it, dear? Tell Ethel. Yes; I do know, but tell me, anyway. It"ll do you good."
And Emma McChesney told her. When she had finished:
"You bathe your eyes, Emma, and put on your hat and we"ll eat. Oh, yes, you will. A cup of tea, anyway. Isn"t there some little cool fool place where I can be comfortable on a hot day like this--where we can talk comfortably? I"ve got at least an hour"s conversation in me."
With the first sip of her first cup of tea, Ethel Morrissey began to unload that burden of conversation.
"Emma, this is the best thing that could have happened to you. Oh, yes, it is. The queer thing about it is that it didn"t happen sooner. It was bound to come. You know, Emma, the Lord lets a woman climb just so high up the mountain of success. And then, when she gets too c.o.c.ky, when she begins to measure her wits and brain and strength against that of men, and finds herself superior, he just taps her smartly on the head and shins, so that she stumbles, falls, and rolls down a few miles on the road she has traveled so painfully. He does it just as a gentle reminder to her that she"s only a woman, after all. Oh, I know all about this feminist talk. But this thing"s been proven. Look at what happened to--to Joan of Arc, and Becky Sharp, and Mary Queen of Scots, and--yes, I have been spending my evenings reading. Now, stop laughing at your old Ethel, Emma McChesney!"
"You meant me to laugh, dear old thing. I don"t feel much like it, though. I don"t see why I should be reminded of my lowly state.
Heaven knows I haven"t been so terrifically pleased with myself! Of course, that South American trip was--well, gratifying. But I earned it. For ten years I lived with head in a sample-trunk, didn"t I? I worked hard enough to win the love of all these Westerners. It wasn"t all walking dreamily down Main Street, strewing Featherlooms along my path."
Ethel Morrissey stirred her second cup of tea, sipped, stirred, smiled, then reached over and patted Emma McChesney"s hand.
"Emma, I"m a wise old party, and I can see that it isn"t all pique with you. It"s something else--something deeper. Oh, yes, it is! Now let me tell you what happened when T. A. Buck invaded your old-time territory. I was busy up in my department the morning he came in. I had my head in a rack of coats, and a henny customer waiting. But I sensed something stirring, and I stuck my head out of the coat-rack in which I was fumbling. The department was aflutter like a poultry-yard.
Every woman in it, from the little new Swede stock-girl to Gladys Hemingway, who is only working to wear out her old clothes, was standing with her face toward the elevator, and on her face a look that would make the ordinary door-mat marked "Welcome" seem like an insult.
I kind of smoothed my back hair, because I knew that only one thing could bring that look into a woman"s face. And down the aisle came a tall, slim, distinguished-looking, wonderfully tailored, chamois-gloved, walking-sticked Fifth Avenue person with EYES! Of course, I knew. But the other girls didn"t. They just sort of fell back at his approach, smitten. He didn"t even raise an eyebrow to do it. Now, Emma, I"m not exaggerating. I know what effect he had on me and my girls, and, for that matter, every other man or woman in the store. Why, he was a dream realized to most of "em. These shrewd, clever buyer-girls know plenty of men--business men of the slap-bang, horn-blowing, bluff, good-natured, h.e.l.lo-kid kind--the kind that takes you out to dinner and blows cigar smoke in your face. Along comes this chap, elegant, well dressed and not even conscious of it, polished, suave, smooth, low-voiced, well bred. Why, when he spoke to a girl, it was the subtlest kind of flattery. Can you see little Sadie Harris, of Duluth, drawing a mental comparison between Sam Bloom, the store-manager, and this fascinating devil--Sam, red-faced, loud voiced, shirt-sleeving it around the sample room, his hat pushed "way back on his head, chewing his cigar like mad, and wild-eyed for fear he"s buying wrong? Why, child, in our town, n.o.body carries a cane except the Elks when they have their annual parade, and old man Schwenkel, who"s lame. And yet we all accepted that yellow walking-stick of Buck"s. It belonged to him. There isn"t a skirt-buyer in the Middle West that doesn"t dream of him all night and push Featherlooms in the store all day. Emma, I"m old and fat and fifty, but when I had dinner with him at the Manitoba House that evening, I caught myself making eyes at him, knowing that every woman in the dining-room would have given her front teeth to be where I was."
After which extensive period, Ethel Morrissey helped herself to her third cup of tea. Emma McChesney relaxed a little and laughed a tremulous little laugh.
"Oh, well, I suppose I must not hope to combat such formidable rivals as walking-sticks, chamois gloves, and EYES. My business arguments are futile compared to those."
Ethel Morrissey delivered herself of a last shot.
"You"re wrong, Emma. Those things helped him, but they didn"t sell his line. He sold Featherlooms out of salesmanship, and because he sounded convincing and sincere and businesslike--and he had the samples. It wasn"t all bunk. It was three-quarters business. Those two make an invincible combination."
An hour later, Ethel Morrissey was shrewdly selecting her winter line of Featherlooms from the stock in the showrooms of the T. A. Buck Company. They went about their business transaction, these two, with the cool abruptness of men, speaking little, and then only of prices, discounts, dating, shipping. Their luncheon conversation of an hour before seemed an impossibility.
"You"ll have dinner with me to-night?" Emma asked. "Up at my apartment, all cozy?"
"Not to-night, dearie. I"ll be in bed by eight. I"m not the girl I used to be. Time was when a New York buying-trip was a vacation. Now it"s a ch.o.r.e."
She took Emma McChesney"s hand and patted it.
"If you"ve got something real nice for dinner, though, and feel like company, why don"t you ask--somebody else that"s lonesome."
After which, Ethel Morrissey laughed her wickedest and waved a sudden good-by with a last word about seeing her to-morrow.
Emma McChesney, her color high, entered her office. It was five o"clock. She cleared her desk in half an hour, breathed a sigh of weariness, reached for hat and jacket, donned them, and, turning out her lights, closed her door behind her for the day. At that same instant, T. A. Buck slammed his own door and walked briskly down the hall. They met at the elevator.
They descended in silence. The street gained, they paused uncertainly.