"I"d have the velvet suit made fussy, with a real fancy waist to for afternoons. You can go anywhere in a handsome velvet three-piece suit."
The girl had smiled, dreamily, and gazed out of the car window. "I wonder," she said, "if there"ll be a letter from George. He said he would sit right down and write."
In the safe seclusion of her high-backed chair Emma McChesney smiled approvingly. Seventeen years ago, when her son had been born, and ten years ago, when she had got her divorce, Emma McChesney had thanked her G.o.d that her boy had not been a girl. Sometimes, now, she was not so sure about it. It must be fascinating work--selecting velvet suits, made "fussy," for a daughter"s trousseau.
Just how fully those five months of small-town existence had got on her nerves Emma McChesney did not realize until the train snorted into the shed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart little hat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever, and her seventeen-year-old son an absurdity.
It was four-thirty when she took the elevator up to Mary Cutting"s office on the tenth floor. She knew she would find Mary Cutting there --Mary Cutting, friend, counselor, adviser to every young girl in the great store and to all Chicago"s silly, helpless "chickens."
A dragon sat before Mary Cutting"s door and wrote names on slips. But at sight of Emma McChesney she laid down her pencil.
"Well," smiled the dragon, "you"re a sight for sore eyes. There"s n.o.body in there with her. Just walk in and surprise her."
At a rosewood desk in a tiny cozy office sat a pink-cheeked, white- haired woman. You a.s.sociated her in your mind with black velvet and real lace. She did not look up as Emma McChesney entered. Emma McChesney waited for one small moment. Then:
"Cut out the bank president stuff, Mary Cutting, and make a fuss over me," she commanded.
The pink-cheeked, white-haired woman looked up. You saw that her eyes were wonderfully young. She made three marks on a piece of paper, pushed a call-b.u.t.ton at her desk, rose, and hugged Emma McChesney thoroughly and satisfactorily, then held her off a moment and demanded to know where she had bought her hat.
"Got it ten minutes ago, in the millinery department downstairs. Had to. If I"d have come into New York after five months" exile like this I"d probably have bought a brocade and fur-edged evening wrap, to relieve this feeling of wild joy. For five months I"ve spent my evenings in my hotel room, or watching the Maude Byrnes Stock Company playing "Lena Rivers," with the ingenue coming out between the acts in a calico ap.r.o.n and a pink sunbonnet and doing a thing they bill as vaudeville. I"m dying to see a real show--a smart one that hasn"t run two hundred nights on Broadway--one with pretty girls, and pink tights, and a lot of moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima donna in a dress so stunning that all the women in the audience are busy copying it so they can describe it to their home-dressmaker next day."
"Poor, poor child," said Mary Cutting, "I don"t seem to recall any such show."
"Well, it will look that way to me, anyway," said Emma McChesney.
"I"ve wired Jock to meet me to-morrow, and I"m going to give the child a really sizzling little vacation. But to-night you and I will have an old-girl frolic. We"ll have dinner together somewhere downtown, and then we"ll go to the theater, and after that I"m coming out to that blessed flat of yours and sleep between real sheets. We"ll have some sandwiches and beer and other things out of the ice-box, and then we"ll have a bathroom bee. We"ll let down our back hair, and slap cold cream around, and tell our hearts" secrets and use up all the hot water. Lordy! It will be a luxury to have a bath in a tub that doesn"t make you feel as though you wanted to scrub it out with lye and carbolic. Come on, Mary Cutting."
Mary Cutting"s pink cheeks dimpled like a girl"s.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""You"ll never grow up, Emma McChesney""]
"You"ll never grow up, Emma McChesney--at least, I hope you never will. Sit there in the corner and be a good child, and I"ll be ready for you in ten minutes."
Peace settled down on the tiny office. Emma McChesney, there in her corner, surveyed the little room with entire approval. It breathed of things restful, wholesome, comforting. There was a bowl of sweet peas on the desk; there was an Indian sweet gra.s.s basket filled with autumn leaves in the corner; there was an air of orderliness and good taste; and there was the pink-cheeked, white-haired woman at the desk.
"There!" said Mary Cutting, at last. She removed her gla.s.ses, snapped them up on a little spring-chain near her shoulder, sat back, and smiled upon Emma McChesney.
Emma McChesney smiled back at her. Theirs was not a talking friendship. It was a thing of depth and understanding, like the friendship between two men.
They sat looking into each other"s eyes, and down beyond, where the soul holds forth. And because what each saw there was beautiful and sightly they were seized with a shyness such as two men feel when they love each other, and so they awkwardly endeavored to cover up their shyness with words.
"You could stand a facial and a decent scalp ma.s.sage, Emma," observed Mary Cutting in a tone pregnant with love and devotion. "Your hair looks a little dry. Those small-town manicures don"t know how to give a real treatment."
"I"ll have it to-morrow morning, before the Kid gets in at eleven. As the Lily Russell of the traveling profession I can"t afford to let my beauty wane. That complexion of yours makes me mad, Mary. It goes through a course of hard water and Chicago dirt and comes up looking like a rose leaf with the morning dew on it. Where"ll we have supper?"
"I know a new place," replied Mary Cutting. "German, but not greasy."
She was sorting, marking, and pigeonholing various papers and envelopes. When her desk was quite tidy she shut and locked it, and came over to Emma McChesney.
"Something nice happened to me to-day," she said, softly. "Something that made me realize how worth while life is. You know we have five thousand women working here--almost double that during the holidays. A lot of them are under twenty and, Emma, a working girl, under twenty, in a city like this--Well, a brand new girl was looking for me today.
She didn"t know the way to my office, and she didn"t know my name. So she stopped one of the older clerks, blushed a little, and said, "Can you tell me the way to the office of the Comfort Lady?" That"s worth working for, isn"t it, Emma McChesney?"
"It"s worth living for," answered Emma McChesney, gravely. "It--it"s worth dying for. To think that those girls come to you with their little sacred things, their troubles, and misfortunes, and unhappinesses and--"
"And their disgraces--sometimes," Mary Cutting finished for her. "Oh, Emma McChesney, sometimes I wonder why there isn"t a national school for the education of mothers. I marvel at their ignorance more and more every day. Remember, Emma, when we were kids our mothers used to send us flying to the grocery on baking day? All the way from our house to Hine"s grocery I"d have to keep on saying, over and over: "Sugar, b.u.t.ter, mola.s.ses; sugar, b.u.t.ter, mola.s.ses; sugar, b.u.t.ter, mola.s.ses." If I stopped for a minute I"d forget the whole thing. It isn"t so different now. Sometimes at night, going home in the car after a day so bad that the whole world seems rotten, I make myself say, over and over, as I used to repeat my "Sugar, b.u.t.ter, and mola.s.ses." "It"s a glorious, good old world; it"s a glorious, good old world; it"s a glorious, good old world." And I daren"t stop for a minute for fear of forgetting my lesson."
For the third time in that short half-hour a silence fell between the two--a silence of perfect sympathy and understanding.
Five little strokes, tripping over each other in their haste, came from the tiny clock on Mary Cutting"s desk. It roused them both.
"Come on, old girl," said Mary Cutting. "I"ve a ch.o.r.e or two still to do before my day is finished. Come along, if you like. There"s a new girl at the perfumes who wears too many braids, and puffs, and curls, and in the bas.e.m.e.nt misses" ready-to-wear there"s another who likes to break store rules about short-sleeved, lace-yoked lingerie waists. And one of the floor managers tells me that a young chap of that callow, semi-objectionable, high-school fraternity, flat-heeled shoe type has been persistently hanging around the desk of the pretty little bundle inspector at the veilings. We"re trying to clear the store of that type. They call girls of that description chickens. I wonder why some one hasn"t found a name for the masculine chicken."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""Well, s"long, then, Shrimp. See you at eight""]
"I"ll give "em one," said Emma McChesney as they swung down a broad, bright aisle of the store. "Call "em weasels. That covers their style, occupation, and character."
They swung around the corner to the veilings, and there they saw the very pretty, very blond, very young "chicken" deep in conversation with her weasel. The weasel"s trousers were very tight and English, and his hat was properly woolly and Alpine and dented very much on one side and his heels were fashionably flat, and his hair was slickly pompadour.
Mary Cutting and Emma McChesney approached them very quietly just in time to hear the weasel say:
"Well, s" long then, Shrimp. See you at eight."
And he swung around and faced them.
That sick horror of uncertainty which had clutched at Emma McChesney when first she saw the weasel"s back held her with awful certainty now. But ten years on the road had taught her self-control, among other things. So she looked steadily and calmly into her son"s scarlet face. Jock"s father had been a liar.
She put her hand on the boy"s arm.
"You"re a day ahead of schedule, Jock," she said evenly.
"So are you," retorted Jock, sullenly, his hands jammed into his pockets.
"All the better for both of us, Kid. I was just going over to the hotel to clean up, Jock. Come along, boy."
The boy"s jaw set. His eyes sought any haven but that of Emma McChesney"s eyes. "I can"t," he said, his voice very low. "I"ve an engagement to take dinner with a bunch of the fellows. We"re going down to the Inn. Sorry."
A certain cold rigidity settled over Emma McChesney"s face. She eyed her son in silence until his miserable eyes, perforce, looked up into hers.
"I"m afraid you"ll have to break your engagement," she said.
She turned to face Mary Cutting"s regretful, understanding gaze. Her eyebrows lifted slightly. Her head inclined ever so little in the direction of the half-scared, half-defiant "chicken."
"You attend to your chicken, Mary," she said. "I"ll see to my weasel."
So Emma McChesney and her son Jock, looking remarkably like brother and sister, walked down the broad store aisles and out into the street. There was little conversation between them. When the pillared entrance of the hotel came into sight Jock broke the silence, sullenly:
"Why do you stop at that old barracks? It"s a rotten place for a woman. No one stops there but clothing salesmen and b.o.o.bs who still think it"s Chicago"s leading hotel. No place for a lady."
"Any place in the world is the place for a lady, Jock," said Emma McChesney quietly.