"Won"t you stay down and have dinner with me to-night, Emma?"
"Thanks so much, T. A. Not to-night."
"I"m--sorry."
"Good night."
"Good night."
She turned away. He stood there, in the busy street, looking irresolutely and not at all eagerly in the direction of his club, perhaps, or his hotel, or whatever shelter he sought after business hours. Something in his att.i.tude--the loneliness of it, the uncertainty, the indecision--smote Emma McChesney with a great pang.
She came swiftly back.
"I wish you"d come home to dinner with me. I don"t know what Annie"ll give us. Probably bread pudding. She does, when she"s left to her own devices. But I--I wish you would." She looked up at him almost shyly.
T. A. Buck took Emma McChesney"s arm in a rather unnecessarily firm grip and propelled her, surprised and protesting, in the direction of the nearest vacant taxi.
"But, T. A.! This is idiotic! Why take a cab to go home from the office on a--a week day?"
"In with you! Besides, I never have a chance to take one from the office on Sunday, do I? Does Annie always cook enough for two?"
Apparently Annie did. Annie was something of a witch, in her way. She whisked about, wrought certain changes, did things with asparagus and mayonnaise, lighted the rose-shaded table-candles. No one noticed that dinner was twenty minutes late.
Together they admired the great mahogany buffet that Emma had miraculously found s.p.a.ce for in the little dining-room.
"It glows like a great, deep ruby, doesn"t it?" she said proudly. "You should see Annie circle around it with the carpet-sweeper. She knows one b.u.mp would be followed by instant death."
Looking back on it, afterward, they remembered that the dinner was a very silent one. They did not notice their wordlessness at the time.
Once, when the chops came on, Buck said absently,
"Oh, I had those for l----" Then he stopped abruptly.
Emma McChesney smiled.
"Your mother trained you well," she said.
The October night had grown cool. Annie had lighted a wood fire in the living-room.
"That was what attracted me to this apartment in the first place," Mrs.
McChesney said, as they left the dining-room. "A fireplace--a practical, real, wood-burning fireplace in a New York apartment! I"d have signed the lease if the plaster had been falling in chunks and the bathtub had been zinc."
"That"s because fireplaces mean home--in our minds," said Buck.
He sat looking into the heart of the glow. There fell another of those comfortable silences.
"T. A., I--I want to tell you that I know I"ve been acting the cat ever since I got home from South America and found that you had taken charge. You see, you had spoiled me. The thing that has happened to me is the thing that always happens to those who a.s.sume to be dictators. I just want you to know, now, that I"m glad and proud and happy because you have come into your own. It hurt me just at first.
That was the pride of me. I"m quite over that now. You"re not only president of the T. A. Buck Company in name. You"re its actual head.
And that"s as it should be. Long live the King!"
Buck sat silent a moment. Then,
"I had to do it, Emma." She looked up. "You have a wonderful brain,"
said Buck then, and the two utterances seemed connected in his mind.
They seemed to bring no great satisfaction to the woman to whom he addressed them, however. She thanked him dryly, as women do when their brain is dragged into an intimate conversation.
"But," said Buck, and suddenly stood up, looking at her very intently, "it isn"t for your mind that I love you this minute. I love you for your eyes, Emma, and for your mouth--you have the tenderest, most womanly-sweet mouth in the world--and for your hair, and the way your chin curves. I love you for your throat-line, and for the way you walk and talk and sit, for the way you look at me, and for the way you don"t look at me."
He reached down and gathered Emma McChesney, the alert, the aggressive, the capable, into his arms, quite as men gather the clingingest kind of woman. "And now suppose you tell me just why and how you love me."
And Emma McChesney told him.
When, at last, he was leaving,
"Don"t you think," asked Emma McChesney, her hands on his shoulders, "that you overdid the fascination thing just the least leetle bit there on the road?"
"Well, but you told me to entertain them, didn"t you?"
"Yes," reluctantly; "but I didn"t tell you to consecrate your life to "em. The ordinary fat, middle-aged, every-day traveling man will never be able to sell Featherlooms in the Middle West again. They won"t have "em. They"ll never be satisfied with anything less than John Drew after this."
"Emma McChesney, you"re not marrying me because a lot of overdressed, giggling, skittish old girls have taken a fancy to make eyes at me, are you!"
Emma McChesney stood up very straight and tall.
"I"m marrying you, T. A., because you are a great, big, fine, upstanding, tender, wonderful----"
"Oh, well, then that"s all right," broke in Buck, a little tremulously.
Emma McChesney"s face grew serious.
"But promise me one thing, T. A. Promise me that when you come home for dinner at night, you"ll never say, "Good heavens, I had that for lunch!""
III
A CLOSER CORPORATION
Front offices resemble back kitchens in this: they have always an ear at the keyhole, an eye at the crack, a nose in the air. But
between the ordinary front office and the front office of the T. A.
Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company there was a difference. The employees at Buck"s--from Emil, the errand boy, to old Pop Henderson, who had started as errand boy himself twenty-five years before--possessed the quality of loyalty. They were loyal to the memory of old man Buck, because they had loved and respected him. They were loyal to Mrs. Emma McChesney, because she was Mrs. Emma McChesney (which amounts to the same reason). They were loyal to T. A. Buck, because he was his father"s son.
For three weeks the front office had been bewildered. From bewilderment it pa.s.sed to worry. A worried, bewildered front office is not an efficient front office. Ever since Mrs. McChesney had come off the road, at the death of old T. A. Buck, to a.s.sume the secretaryship of the company which she had served faithfully for ten years, she had set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker.
Every day of her life she figuratively pressed the electric b.u.t.ton that set the wheels to whirring. At nine A.M., sharp, she appeared, erect, brisk, alert, vibrating energy. Usually, the office staff had not yet swung into its gait. In a desultory way, it had been getting into its sateen sleevelets, adjusting its eye-shades, uncovering its typewriter, opening its ledgers, bringing out its files. Then, down the hall, would come the sound of a firm, light, buoyant step. An electric thrill would pa.s.s through the front office. Then the sunny, sincere, "Good morning!"
""Morning, Mrs. McChesney!" the front office would chorus back.
The day had begun for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.