"Sometimes," pursued Miss Hinkle, eyes carefully averted, "sometimes a new girl goes out with an important customer and he gets fresh and she kicks and complains to Mr. Jeffries--or Mr. Jonas--or Mr. Ratney, the head man. They always sympathize with her--but--well, I"ve noticed that somehow she soon loses her job."
"What do you do when--when a customer annoys you?"
"I!" Miss Hinkle laughed with some embarra.s.sment. "Oh, I do the best I can." A swift glance of the cynical, laughing, "fast" eyes at Susan and away. "The best I can--for the house--and for myself. . . . I talk to you because I know you"re a lady and because I don"t want to see you thrown down.
A woman that"s living quietly at home--like a lady--she can be squeamish. But out in the world a woman can"t afford to be--no, nor a man, neither. You don"t find this set down in the books, and they don"t preach it in the churches--leastways they didn"t when I used to go to church. But it"s true, all the same."
They were a few minutes early; so Miss Hinkle continued the conversation while they waited for the opening of the room where Susan would be outfitted for her work. "I called you Miss Sackville," said she, "but you"ve been married--haven"t you?"
"Yes."
"I can always tell--or at least I can see whether a woman"s had experience or not. Well, I"ve never been regularly married, and I don"t expect to, unless something pretty good offers.
Think I"d marry one of these rotten little clerks?" Miss Hinkle answered her own question with a scornful sniff. "They can hardly make a living for themselves. And a man who amounts to anything, he wants a refined lady to help him on up, not a working girl. Of course, there"re exceptions. But as a rule a girl in our position either has to stay single or marry beneath her--marry some mechanic or such like. Well, I ain"t so lazy, or so crazy about being supported, that I"d sink to be cook and slop-carrier--and worse--for a carpenter or a bricklayer. Going out with the buyers--the gentlemanly ones--has spoiled my taste. I can"t stand a coa.r.s.e man--coa.r.s.e dress and hands and manners. Can you?"
Susan turned hastily away, so that her face was hidden from Miss Hinkle.
"I"ll bet you wasn"t married to a coa.r.s.e man."
"I"d rather not talk about myself," said Susan with an effort.
"It"s not pleasant."
Her manner of checking Miss Hinkle"s friendly curiosity did not give offense; it excited the experienced working woman"s sympathy. She went on:
"Well, I feel sorry for any woman that has to work. Of course most women do--and at worse than anything in the stores and factories. As between being a drudge to some dirty common laborer like most women are, and working in a factory even, give me the factory. Yes, give me a job as a pot slinger even, low as that is. Oh, I _hate_ working people! I love refinement. Up to Murray"s last night I sat there, eating my lobster and drinking my wine, and I pretended I was a lady--and, my, how happy I was!"
The stockroom now opened. Susan, with the help of Miss Hinkle and the stock keeper, dressed in one of the tight-fitting satin slips that revealed every curve and line of her form, made every motion however slight, every breath she drew, a gesture of sensuousness. As she looked at herself in a long gla.s.s in one of the show-parlors, her face did not reflect the admiration frankly displayed upon the faces of the two other women. That satin slip seemed to have a moral quality, an immoral character. It made her feel naked--no, as if she were naked and being peeped at through a crack or keyhole.
"You"ll soon get used to it," Miss Hinkle a.s.sured her. "And you"ll learn to show off the dresses and cloaks to the best advantage." She laughed her insinuating little laugh again, amused, cynical, reckless. "You know, the buyers are men.
Gee, what awful jay things we work off on them, sometimes!
They can"t see the dress for the figure. And you"ve got such a refined figure, Miss Sackville--the kind I"d be crazy about if I was a man. But I must say----" here she eyed herself in the gla.s.s complacently--"most men prefer a figure like mine.
Don"t they, Miss Simmons?"
The stock keeper shook her fat shoulders in a gesture of indifferent disdain. "They take whatever"s handiest--that"s _my_ experience."
About half-past nine the first customer appeared--Mr. Gideon, it happened to be. He was making the rounds of the big wholesale houses in search of stock for the huge Chicago department store that paid him fifteen thousand a year and expenses. He had been contemptuous of the offerings of Jeffries and Jonas for the winter season, had praised with enthusiasm the models of their princ.i.p.al rival, Icklemeier, Schwartz and Company. They were undecided whether he was really thinking of deserting them or was feeling for lower prices. Mr. Jeffries bustled into the room where Susan stood waiting; his flat face quivered with excitement. "Gid"s come!"
he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Everybody get busy. We"ll try Miss Sackville on him."
And he himself a.s.sisted while they tricked out Susan in an afternoon costume of pale gray, putting on her head a big pale gray hat with harmonizing feathers. The model was offered in all colors and also in a modified form that permitted its use for either afternoon or evening. Susan had received her instructions, so when she was dressed, she was ready to sweep into Gideon"s presence with languid majesty. Jeffries" eyes glistened as he noted her walk. "She looks as if she really was a lady!" exclaimed he. "I wish I could make my daughters move around on their trotters like that."
Gideon was enthroned in an easy chair, smoking a cigar. He was a spare man of perhaps forty-five, with no intention of abandoning the pretensions to youth for many a year. In dress he was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade"s annual convention. But he had evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that has been for weeks on short rations or none.
"What"s the matter?" he snapped, as the door began to open.
"I don"t like to be kept waiting."
In swept Susan; and Jeffries, rubbing his thick hands, said fawningly, "But I think, Mr. Gideon, you"ll say it was worth waiting for."
Gideon"s angry, arrogant eyes softened at first glimpse of Susan. "Um!" he grunted, some such sound as the jaguar aforesaid would make when the first chunk of food hurtled through the bars and landed on his paws. He sat with cigar poised between his long white fingers while Susan walked up and down before him, displaying the dress at all angles, Jeffries expatiating upon it the while.
"Don"t talk so d.a.m.n much, Jeff!" he commanded with the insolence of a customer containing possibilities of large profit. "I judge for myself. I"m not a d.a.m.n fool."
"I should say not," cried Jeffries, laughing the merchant"s laugh for a customer"s pleasantry. "But I can"t help talking about it, Gid, it"s so lovely!"
Jeffries" shrewd eyes leaped for joy when Gideon got up from his chair and, under pretense of examining the garment, investigated Susan"s figure. As his gentle, insinuating hands traveled over her, his eyes sought hers. "Excuse me," said Jeffries. "I"ll see that they get the other things ready."
And out he went, winking at Mary Hinkle to follow him--an unnecessary gesture as she was already on her way to the door.
Gideon understood as well as did they why they left. "I don"t think I"ve seen you before, my dear," said he to Susan.
"I came only this morning," replied she.
"I like to know everybody I deal with. We must get better acquainted. You"ve got the best figure in the business--the very best."
"Thank you," said Susan with a grave, distant smile.
"Got a date for dinner tonight?" inquired he; and, a.s.suming that everything would yield precedence to him, he did not wait for a reply, but went on, "Tell me your address. I"ll send a cab for you at seven o"clock."
"Thank you," said Susan, "but I can"t go."
Gideon smiled. "Oh, don"t be shy. Of course you"ll go. Ask Jeffries. He"ll tell you it"s all right."
"There are reasons why I"d rather not be seen in the restaurants."
"That"s even better. I"ll come in the cab myself and we"ll go to a quiet place."
His eyes smiled insinuatingly at her. Now that she looked at him more carefully he was unusually attractive for a man of his type--had strength and intelligence in his features, had a suggestion of mastery, of one used to obedience, in his voice.
His teeth were even and sound, his lips firm yet not too thin.
"Come," said he persuasively. "I"ll not eat you up--" with a gay and gracious smile--"at least I"ll try not to."
Susan remembered what Miss Hinkle had told her. She saw that she must either accept the invitation or give up her position.
She said:
"Very well," and gave him her address.
Back came Jeffries and Miss Hinkle carrying the first of the wraps. Gideon waved them away. "You"ve shown "em to me before," said he. "I don"t want to see "em again. Give me the evening gowns."
Susan withdrew, soon to appear in a dress that left her arms and neck bare. Gideon could not get enough of this. Jeffries kept her walking up and down until she was ready to drop with weariness of the monotony, of the distasteful play of Gideon"s fiery glance upon her arms and shoulders and throat. Gideon tried to draw her into conversation, but she would--indeed could--go no further than direct answers to his direct questions. "Never mind," said he to her in an undertone.
"I"ll cheer you up this evening. I think I know how to order a dinner."
Her instant conquest of the difficult and valuable Gideon so elated Jeffries that he piled the work on her. He used her with every important buyer who came that day. The temperature was up in the high nineties, the hot moist air stood stagnant as a barnyard pool; the winter models were cruelly hot and heavy. All day long, with a pause of half an hour to eat her roll and drink a gla.s.s of water, Susan walked up and down the show parlors weighted with dresses and cloaks, furs for arctic weather. The other girls, even those doing almost nothing, were all but prostrated. It was little short of intolerable, this struggle to gain the "honest, self-respecting living by honest work" that there was so much talk about. Toward five o"clock her nerves abruptly and completely gave way, and she fainted--for the first time in her life. At once the whole establishment was in an uproar. Jeffries cursed himself loudly for his shortsightedness, for his overestimating her young strength. "She"ll look like h.e.l.l this evening," he wailed, wringing his hands like a distracted peasant woman. "Maybe she won"t be able to go out at all."
She soon came round. They brought her whiskey, and afterward tea and sandwiches. And with the power of quick recuperation that is the most fascinating miracle of healthy youth, she not only showed no sign of her breakdown but looked much better.
And she felt better. We shall some day understand why it is that if a severe physical blow follows upon a mental blow, recovery from the physical blow is always accompanied by a relief of the mental strain. Susan came out of her fit of faintness and exhaustion with a different point of view--as if time had been long at work softening her, grief. Spenser seemed part of the present no longer, but of the past--a past far more remote than yesterday.
Mary Hinkle sat with her as she drank the tea. "Did you make a date with Gid?" inquired she. Her tone let Susan know that the question had been prompted by Jeffries.
"He asked me to dine with him, and I said I would."
"Have you got a nice dress--dinner dress, I mean?"
"The linen one I"m wearing is all. My other dress is for cooler weather."