"Yes, and I--" she said.
He smoked, while she almost drowsed into slumber to the lullaby of the afternoon.
When a blackbird chased a crow above her, and she sat up to watch the aerial privateering, Mr. Schwirtz began to talk.
He spoke of the flight of the Wright brothers in France and Virginia, which were just then--in the summer of 1908--arousing the world to a belief in aviation. He had as positive information regarding aeroplanes as he had regarding socialism. It seemed that a man who was tremendously on the inside of aviation--who was, in fact, going to use whole tons of aeroplane varnish on aeroplane bodies, next month or next season--had given Mr. Schwirtz secret advices that within five years, by 1913, aeroplanes would be crossing the Atlantic daily, and conveying pa.s.sengers and mail on regular routes between New York and Chicago....
"Though," said Mr. Schwirtz, in a sophisticated way, "I don"t agree with these crazy enthusiasts that believe aeroplanes will be used in war. Too easy to shoot "em down." His information was so sound that he had bought a hundred shares of stock in his customer"s company. In on the ground floor. Stock at three dollars a share. Would be worth two hundred a share the minute they started regular pa.s.senger-carrying.
"But at that, I only took a hundred shares. I don"t believe in all this stock-gambling. What I want is sound, conservative investments," said Mr. Schwirtz.
"Yes, I should think you"d be awfully practical," mused Una. "My! three dollars to two hundred! You"ll make an awful lot out of it."
"Well, now, I"m not saying anything. I don"t pretend to be a Wisenheimer. May be nine or ten years--nineteen seventeen or nineteen eighteen--before we are doing a regular business. And at that, the shares may never go above par. But still, I guess I"m middlin"
practical--not like these socialists, ha, ha!"
"How did you ever get your commercial training?"
The question encouraged him to tell the story of his life.
Mostly it was a story of dates and towns and jobs--jobs he had held and jobs from which he had resigned, and all the crushing things he had said to the wicked bosses during those victorious resignings.... Clerk in a general store, in a clothing-store, in a hardware-store--all these in Ohio. A quite excusable, almost laudable, failure in his own hardware-store in a tiny Wisconsin town. Half a dozen clerkships.
Collector for a harvester company in Nebraska, going from farm to farm by buggy. Traveling salesman for a St. Paul wholesaler, for a Chicago clothing-house. Married. Partner with his brother-in-law in a drug, paint, and stationery store. Traveling for a Boston paint-house. For the Lowry Paint Company of Jersey City. Now with the automobile wax company.
A typical American business career, he remarked, though somehow distinctive, _different_-- A guiding star--
Una listened murmuringly, and he was encouraged to try to express the inner life behind his jobs. Hesitatingly he sought to make vivid his small-boy life in the hills of West Virginia: carving initials, mowing lawns, smoking corn silk, being arrested on Hallowe"en, his father"s death, a certain Irving who was his friend, "carrying a paper route"
during two years of high school. His determination to "make something of himself." His arrival in Columbus, Ohio, with just seventy-eight cents--he emphasized it: "just seventy-eight cents, that"s every red cent I had, when I started out to look for a job, and I didn"t know a single guy in town." His reading of books during the evenings of his first years in Ohio; he didn"t "remember their t.i.tles, exactly," he said, but he was sure that "he read a lot of them." ... At last he spoke of his wife, of their buggy-riding, of their neat frame house with the lawn and the porch swing. Of their quarrels--he made it clear that his wife had been "finicky," and had "fool notions," but he praised her for having "come around and learned that a man is a man, and sometimes he means a lot better than it looks like; prob"ly he loves her a lot better than a lot of these plush-soled, soft-tongued fellows that give "em a lot of guff and lovey-dovey stuff and don"t sh.e.l.l out the cash. She was a good sport--one of the best."
Of the death of their baby boy.
"He was the brightest little kid--everybody loved him. When I came home tired at night he would grab my finger--see, this first finger--and hold it, and want me to show him the bunny-book.... And then he died."
Mr. Schwirtz told it simply, looking at clouds spread on the blue sky like a thrown handful of white paint.
Una had hated the word "widower"; it had suggested Henry Carson and the Panama undertaker and funerals and tired men trying to wash children and looking for a new wife to take over that work; all the smell and grease of disordered side-street kitchens. To her, now, Julius Edward Schwirtz was not a flabby-necked widower, but a man who mourned, who felt as despairingly as could Walter Babson the loss of the baby who had crowed over the bunny-book. She, the motherless, almost loved him as she stood with him in the same depth of human grief. And she cried a little, secretly, and thought of her longing for the dead mother, as he gently went on:
"My wife died a year later. I couldn"t get over it; seemed like I could have killed myself when I thought of any mean thing I might have said to her--not meaning anything, but hasty-like, as a man will. Couldn"t seem to get over it. Evenings were just h.e.l.l; they were so--empty. Even when I was out on the road, there wasn"t anybody to write to, anybody that cared. Just sit in a hotel room and think about her. And I just couldn"t realize that she was gone. Do you know, Miss Golden, for months, whenever I was coming back to Boston from a trip, it was _her_ I was coming back to, seemed like, even though I _knew_ she wasn"t there--yes, and evenings at home when I"d be sitting there reading, I"d think I heard her step, and I"d look up and smile--and she wouldn"t be there; she wouldn"t _ever_ be there again.... She was a lot like you--same cute, bright sort of a little woman, with light hair--yes, even the same eye-gla.s.ses. I think maybe that"s why I noticed you particular when I first met you at that lunch and remembered you so well afterward.... Though you"re really a lot brighter and better educated than what she was--I can see it now. I don"t mean no disrespect to her; she was a good sport; they don"t make "em any better or finer or truer; but she hadn"t never had much chance; she wasn"t educated or a live wire, like you are.... You don"t mind my saying that, do you? How you mean to me what she meant--"
"No, I"m glad--" she whispered.
Unlike the nimble Walter Babson, Mr. Schwirtz did not make the revelation of his tragedy an excuse for trying to stir her to pa.s.sion.
But he had taken and he held her hand among the long gra.s.ses, and she permitted it.
That was all.
He did not arouse her; still was it Walter"s dark head and the head of Walter"s baby that she wanted to cradle on her breast. But for Mr.
Schwirtz she felt a good will that was broad as the summer afternoon.
"I am very glad you told me. I _do_ understand. I lost my mother just a year ago," she said, softly.
He squeezed her hand and sighed, "Thank you, little sister." Then he rose and more briskly announced, "Getting late--better be hiking, I guess."
Not again did he even touch her hand. But on his last night at the farm-house he begged, "May I come to call on you in New York?" and she said, "Yes, please do."
She stayed for a day after his departure, a long and lonely Sunday. She walked five miles by herself. She thought of the momently more horrible fact that vacation was over, that the office would engulf her again. She declared to herself that two weeks were just long enough holiday to rest her, to free her from the office; not long enough to begin to find positive joy.
Between shudders before the swiftly approaching office she thought of Mr. Schwirtz. (She still called him that to herself. She couldn"t fit "Eddie" to his trim bulkiness, his maturity.)
She decided that he was wrong about socialism; she feebly tried to see wherein, and determined to consult her teacher in ideals, Mamie Magen, regarding the proper answers to him. She was sure that he was rather crude in manners and speech, rather boastful, somewhat loquacious.
"But I do like him!" she cried to the hillsides and the free sky. "He would take care of me. He"s kind; and he would learn. We"ll go to concerts and things like that in New York--dear me, I guess I don"t know any too much about art things myself. I don"t know why, but even if he isn"t interesting, like Mamie Magen, I _like_ him--I think!"
- 7
On the train back to New York, early Monday morning, she felt so fresh and fit, with morning vigorous in her and about her, that she relished the thought of attacking the job. Why, she rejoiced, every fiber of her was simply soaked with holiday; she was so much stronger and happier; New York and the business world simply couldn"t be the same old routine, because she herself was different.
But the train became hot and dusty; the Italians began to take off their collars and hand-painted ties.
And hot and dusty, perspiring and dizzily rushing, were the streets of New York when she ventured from the Grand Central station out into them once more.
It was late. She went to the office at once. She tried to push away her feeling that the Berkshires, where she had arisen to a cool green dawn just that morning, were leagues and years away. Tired she was, but sunburnt and easy-breathing. She exploded into the office, set down her suit-case, found herself glad to shake Mr. Wilkins"s hand and to answer his cordial, "Well, well, you"re brown as a berry. Have a good time?"
The office _was_ different, she cried--cried to that other earlier self who had sat in a train and hoped that the office would be different.
She kissed Bessie Kraker, and by an error of enthusiasm nearly kissed the office-boy, and told them about the farm-house, the view from her room, the Glade, Bald k.n.o.b, Hawkins"s Pond; about chickens and fresh milk and pigeons aflutter; she showed them the kodak pictures taken by Mrs. Cannon and indicated Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent and laughed about them till--
"Oh, Miss Golden, could you take a little dictation now?" Mr. Wilkins called.
There was also a pile of correspondence unfiled, and the office supplies were low, and Bessie was behind with her copying, and the office-boy had let the place get as dusty as a hay-loft--and the stiff, old, gray floor-rag was grimly at its post in the wash-room.
"The office _isn"t_ changed," she said; and when she went out at three for belated lunch, she added, "and New York isn"t, either. Oh, Lord! I really am back here. Same old hot streets. Don"t believe there _are_ any Berkshires; just seems now as though I hadn"t been away at all."
She sat in negligee on the roof of the Home Club and learned that Rose La.r.s.en and Mamie Magen and a dozen others had just gone on vacation.
"Lord! it"s over for me," she thought. "Fifty more weeks of the job before I can get away again--a whole year. Vacation is farther from me now than ever. And the same old grind.... Let"s see, I"ve got to get in touch with the Adine Company for Mr. Wilkins before I even do any filing in the morning--"
She awoke, after midnight, and worried: "I _mustn"t_ forget to get after the Adine Company, the very first thing in the morning. And Mr. Wilkins has _got_ to get Bessie and me a waste-basket apiece. Oh, Lord! I wish Eddie Schwirtz were going to take me out for a walk to-morrow, the old darling that he is-- I"d walk _anywhere_ rather than ask Mr. Wilkins for those blame waste-baskets!"
CHAPTER XIV
Mrs. Esther Lawrence was, she said, bored by the general atmosphere of innocent and bounding girlhood at the Temperance Home Club, and she persuaded Una to join her in taking a flat--three small rooms--which they made attractive with j.a.panese toweling and Russian, or at least Russian-Jew, bra.s.sware. Here Mrs. Lawrence"s men came calling, and sometimes Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, and all of them, except Una herself, had cigarettes and highb.a.l.l.s, and Una confusedly felt that she was getting to be an Independent Woman.
Then, in January, 1909, she left the stiff, gray scrub-rag which symbolized the routine of Mr. Troy Wilkins"s office.
In a magazine devoted to advertising she had read that Mr. S. Herbert Ross, whom she had known as advertising-manager of the _Gas and Motor Gazette_, had been appointed advertising-manager for Pemberton"s--the greatest manufactory of drugs and toilet articles in the world. Una had just been informed by Mr. Wilkins that, while he had an almost paternal desire to see her successful financially and otherwise, he could never pay her more than fifteen dollars a week. He used a favorite phrase of commuting captains of commerce: "Personally, I"d be glad to pay you more, but fifteen is all the position is worth." She tried to persuade him that there is no position which cannot be made "worth more." He promised to "think it over." He was still taking a few months to think it over--while her Sat.u.r.day pay-envelope remained as thin as ever--when Bessie Kraker resigned, to marry a mattress-renovator, and in Bessie"s place Mr. Wilkins engaged a tall, beautiful blonde, who was too much of a lady to take orders from Una. This wrecked Una"s little office home, and she was inspired to write to Mr. S. Herbert Ross at Pemberton"s, telling him what a wise, good, n.o.ble, efficient man he was, and how much of a privilege it would be to become his secretary. She felt that Walter Babson must have been inexact in ever referring to Mr. Ross as "Sherbet Souse."