C3. 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 passed 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 assume 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 button 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 pass 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.
Hortense, the blond stenographer (engaged to the shipping-clerk),
noticed it first. The psychology of that is interesting.
Hortense knew that by nine-thirty Mrs. McChesney's desk would be
clear and that the buzzer would summon her. Hortense didn't mind
taking dictation from T. A. Buck, though his method was
hesitating and jerky, and he was likely to employ quite casually
a baffling and unaccustomed word, over which Hortense's
scampering pencil would pause, struggle desperately, then race
on. Hortense often was in for a quick, furtive session with her
pocket-dictionary after one of T. A.'s periods. But with Mrs.
McChesney, dictation was a joy. She knew what she wanted to say
and she always said it. The words she used were short,
clean-cut, meaningful Anglo-Saxon words. She never used received
when she could use got. Hers was the rapid-fire-gun method, each
word sharp, well timed, efficient.
Imagine, then, Hortense staring wide-eyed and puzzled at a
floundering, hesitating, absent-minded Mrs. McChesney--a Mrs.
McChesney strangely starry as to eyes, strangely dreamy as to
mood, decidedly deficient as to dictation. Imagine a Hortense
with pencil poised in air a full five minutes, waiting until Mrs.
McChesney should come to herself with a start, frown, smile
vaguely, pass a hand over her eyes, and say, "Let me see--where
was I?"
" `And we find, on referring to your order, that the goods you
mention----' " Hortense would prompt patiently.
"Oh, yes, of course," with an effort. Hortense was beginning
to grow alarmed.
In T. A. Buck's office, just across the hall, the change was
quite as noticeable, but in another way. His leisurely drawl was
gone. His deliberate manner was replaced by a brisk,
quick-thinking, quick-speaking one. His words were brief and to
the point. He seemed to be riding on the crest of an
excitement-wave. And, as he dictated, he smiled.
Hortense stood it for a week. Then she unburdened herself to
Miss Kelly, the assistant bookkeeper. Miss Kelly evinced no
surprise at her disclosures.
"I was just talking about it to Pop yesterday. She acts
worried, doesn't she? And yet, not exactly worried, either. Do
you suppose it can be that son of hers--what's his name? Jock."
Hortense shook her head.
"No; he's all right. She had a letter from him yesterday. He's
got a grand position in Chicago, and he's going to marry that
girl he was so stuck on here. And it isn't that, either, because
Mrs. McChesney likes her. I can tell by the way she talks about
her. I ought to know. Look how Henry's ma acted toward me when
we were first engaged!"
The front office buzzed with it. It crept into the
workroom--into the shipping-room. It penetrated the frowsy head
of Jake, the elevator-man. As the days went on and the tempo of
the front office slackened with that of the two bright little
inner offices, only one member of the whole staff remained
unmoved, incurious, taciturn. Pop Henderson listened, one scant
old eyebrow raised knowingly, a whimsical half-smile screwing up
his wrinkled face.
At the end of three weeks, Hortense, with that display of
temperament so often encountered in young ladies of her
profession, announced in desperation that, if this thing kept on,
she was going to forget herself and jeopardize her position by
demanding to know outright what the trouble was.
From the direction of Pop Henderson's inky retreat, there came
the sound of a dry chuckle. Pop Henderson had been chuckling in
just that way for three weeks, now. It was getting on the nerves
of his colleagues.
"If you ever spring the joke that's kept you giggling for a
month," snapped Hortense, "it'll break up the office."
Pop Henderson removed his eye-shade very deliberately, passed his
thin, cramped old hand over his scant gray locks to his bald
spot, climbed down stiffly from his stool, ambled to the center
of the room, and, head cocked like a knowing old brown sparrow,
regarded the pert Hortense over his spectacles and under his
spectacles and, finally, through his spectacles.
"Young folks now 'days," began Pop Henderson dryly, "are so
darned cute and knowin' that when an old fellow cuts in ahead of
'em for once, he likes to hug the joke to himself a while before
he springs it." There was no acid in his tone. He was beaming
very benignantly down upon the little blond stenographer. "You
say that Mrs. Mack is absent-minded-like and dreamy, and that
young T. A. acts like he'd swallowed an electric battery. Well,
when it comes to that, I've seen you many a time, when you didn't
know any one was lookin', just sitting there at your typewriter,
with your hands kind of poised halfway, and your lips sort of
parted, and your eyes just gazing away somewhere off in the
distance for fifteen minutes at a stretch. And out there in the
shipping-room Henry's singing like a whole minstrel troupe all
day long, when he isn't whistlin' so loud you can hear him over
's far as Eighth Avenue." Then, as the red surged up through
the girl's fair skin, "Well?" drawled old Pop Henderson, and
the dry chuckle threatened again. "We-e-ell?"
"Why, Pop Henderson!" exploded Miss Kelly from her cage.
"Why--Pop--Henderson!"
In those six words the brisk and agile-minded Miss Kelly
expressed the surprise and the awed conviction of the office
staff.
Pop Henderson trotted over to the water-cooler, drew a brimming
glass, drank it off, and gave vent to a great exhaust of breath.
He tried not to strut as he crossed back to his desk, climbed his
stool, adjusted his eye-shade, and, with a last throaty chuckle,
plunged into his books again.
But his words already were working their wonders. The office,
after the first shock, was flooded with a new atmosphere--a
subtle, pervasive air of hushed happiness, of tender solicitude.
It went about like a mother who has found her child asleep at
play, and who steals away atiptoe, finger on lip, lips smiling
tenderly.
The delicate antennae of Emma McChesney's mind sensed the change.
Perhaps she read something in the glowing eyes of her sister-in-
love, Hortense. Perhaps she caught a new tone in Miss Kelly's
voice or the forewoman's. Perhaps a whisper from the outer
office reached her desk. The very afternoon of Pop Henderson's
electrifying speech, Mrs. McChesney crossed to T. A. Buck's
office, shut the door after her, lowered her voice discreetly,
and said,
"T. A., they're on."
"What makes you think so?"
"Nothing. That is, nothing definite. No man-reason. Just a
woman-reason."
T. A. Buck strolled over to her, smiling.
"I haven't known you all this time without having learned that
that's reason enough. And if they really do know, I'm glad."
"But we didn't want them to know. Not yet--until--until just
before the----"
T. A. Buck laid his hands lightly on Emma McChesney's shoulders.
Emma McChesney promptly reached up and removed them.
"There you are!" exclaimed Buck, and rammed the offending hands
into his pockets.
"That's why I'm glad they know--if they really do know. I'm no
actor. I'm a skirt-and-lingerie manufacturer. For the last six
weeks, instead of being allowed to look at you with the
expression that a man naturally wears when he's looking at the
woman he's going to marry, what have I had to do? Glare, that's
what! Scowl! Act like a captain of finance when I've felt like
a Romeo! I've had to be dry, terse, businesslike, when I was
bursting with adjectives that had nothing to do with business.
You've avoided my office as you would a small-pox camp. You've
greeted me with a what-can-I-do-for-you air when I've dared to
invade yours. You couldn't have been less cordial to a book
agent. If it weren't for those two hours you grant me in the
evening, I'd--I'd blow up with a loud report, that's what.
I'd----"
"Now, now, T. A.!" interrupted Emma McChesney soothingly, and
patted one gesticulating arm. "It has been a bit of a
strain--for both of us. But, you know, we agreed it would be
best this way. We've ten days more to go. Let's stick it out as
we've begun. It has been best for us, for the office, for the
business. The next time you find yourself choked up with a stock
of fancy adjectives, write a sonnet to me. Work 'em off that
way."
T. A. Buck stood silent a moment, regarding her with a
concentration that would have unnerved a woman less poised.
"Emma McChesney, when you talk like that, so coolly, so evenly,
so--so darned mentally, I sometimes wonder if you really----"
"Don't say it, T. A. Because you don't mean it. I've had to
fight for most of my happiness. I've never before found it ready
at hand. I've always had to dig for it with a shovel and a spade
and a pickax, and then blast. I had almost twenty years of
that-- from the time I was eighteen until I was thirty-eight.
It taught me to take my happiness seriously and my troubles
lightly." She shut her eyes for a moment, and her voice was
very low and very deep and very vibrant. "So, when I'm coolest
and evenest and most mental, T. A., you may know that I've struck
gold."
A great glow illumined Buck's fine eyes. He took two quick steps
in her direction. But Emma McChesney, one hand on the door-knob,
warned him off with the other.
"Hey--wait a minute!" pleaded Buck.
"Can't. I've a fitting at the tailor's at three-thirty--my new
suit. Wait till you see it!"
"The dickens you have! But so have I"-- he jerked out his
watch--"at three-thirty! It's the suit I'm going to wear when I
travel as a blushing bridegroom."
"So's mine. And look here, T. A.! We can't both leave this
place for a fitting. It's absurd. If this keeps on, it will
break up the business. We'll have to get married one at a
time--or, at least, get our trousseaux one at a time. What's
your suit?"
"Sort of brown."
"Brown? So's mine! Good heavens, T. A., we'll look like a
minstrel troupe!"
Buck sighed resignedly.
"If I telephone my tailor that I can't make it until
four-thirty, will you promise to be back by that time?"
"Yes; but remember, if your bride appears in a skirt that sags
in the back or a coat that bunches across the shoulders, the
crime will lie at your door."
So it was that the lynx-eyed office staff began to wonder if,
after all, Pop Henderson was the wizard that he had claimed to
be.
During working hours, Mrs. McChesney held rigidly to business.
Her handsome partner tried bravely to follow her example. If he
failed occasionally, perhaps Emma McChesney was not so displeased
as she pretended to be. A business discussion, deeply
interesting to both, was likely to run thus:
Buck, entering her office briskly, papers in hand: "Mrs.
McChesney--ahem!--I have here a letter from Singer & French,
Columbus, Ohio. They ask for an extension. They've had ninety
days."
"That's enough. That firm's slow pay, and always will be until
old Singer has the good taste and common sense to retire. It
isn't because the stock doesn't move. Singer simply believes in
not paying for anything until he has to. If I were you, I'd
write him that this is a business house, not a charitable
institution---- No, don't do that. It isn't politic. But you
know what I mean."
"H'm; yes." A silence. "Emma, that's a fiendishly becoming
gown."
"Now, T. A.!"
"But it is! It--it's so kind of loose, and yet clinging, and
those white collar-and-cuff things----"
"T. A. Buck, I've worn this thing down to the office every day
for a month. It shines in the back. Besides, you promised not
to----"
"Oh, darn it all, Emma, I'm human, you know! How do you suppose
I can stand here and look at you and not----"
Emma McChesney (pressing the buzzer that summons Hortense):
"You know, Tim, I don't exactly hate you this morning, either.
But business is business. Stop looking at me like that!" Then,
to Hortense, in the doorway: "Just take this letter, Miss
Stotz-Singer & French, Columbus, Ohio. Dear Sirs: Yours of the
tenth at hand. Period. Regarding your request for further
extension we wish to say that, in view of the fact----"
T. A. Buck, half resentful, half amused, wholly admiring, would
disappear. But Hortense, eyes demurely cast down at her
notebook, was not deceived.
"Say," she confided to Miss Kelly, "they think they've got me
fooled. But I'm wise. Don't I know? When Henry passes through
the office here, from the shipping-room, he looks at me just as
cool and indifferent. Before we announced it, we had you all
guessing, didn't we? But I can see something back of that look
that the rest of you can't get. Well, when Mr. Buck looks at
her, I can see the same thing in his eyes. Say, when it comes to
seeing the love-light through the fog, I'm there with the
spy-glass."
If Emma McChesney held herself well in leash during the busy day,
she relished her happiness none the less when she could allow
herself the full savor of it. When a girl of eighteen she had
married a man of the sort that must put whisky into his stomach
before the machinery of his day would take up its creaking round.
Out of the degradation of that marriage she had emerged
triumphantly, sweet and unsullied, and she had succeeded in
bringing her son, Jock McChesney, out into the clear sunlight
with her.
The evenings spent with T. A. Buck, the man of fine instincts, of
breeding, of proven worth, of rare tenderness, filled her with a
great peace and happiness. When doubts assailed her, it was not
for herself but for him. Sometimes the fear would clutch her as
they sat before the fire in the sitting-room of her comfortable
little apartment. She would voice those fears for the very joy
of having them stilled.
"T. A., this is too much happiness. I'm--I'm afraid. After
all, you're a young man, though you are a bit older than I in
actual years. But men of your age marry girls of eighteen.
You're handsome. And you've brains, family, breeding, money.
Any girl in New York would be glad to marry you--those tall,
slim, exquisite young girls. Young! And well bred, and poised
and fresh and sweet and lovable. You see them every day on Fifth
Avenue, exquisitely dressed, entirely desirable. They make me
feel--old--old and battered. I've sold goods on the road. I've
fought and worked and struggled. And it has left its mark. I
did it for the boy, God bless him! And I'm glad I did it. But
it put me out of the class of that girl you see on----"
"Yes, Emma; you're not at all in the class with that girl you
see every day on Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue's full of
her--hundreds of her, thousands of her. Perhaps, five years ago,
before I had worked side by side with you, I might have been
attracted by that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue. You
don't see a procession of Emma McChesneys every day on Fifth
Avenue--not by a long shot! Why? Because there's only one of
her. She doesn't come in dozen lots. I know that that girl you
see every day on Fifth Avenue is all that I deserve. But, by
some heaven-sent miracle, I'm to have this Emma McChesney woman!
I don't know how it came to be true. I don't deserve it. But it
is true, and that's enough for me."
Emma McChesney would look up at him, eyes wet, mouth smiling.
"T. A., you're balm and myrrh and incense and meat and drink to
me. I wish I had words to tell you what I'm thinking now. But I
haven't. So I'll just cover it up. We both know it's there.
And I'll tell you that you make love like a `movie' hero. Yes,
you do! Better than a `movie' hero, because, in the films, the
heroine always has to turn to face the camera, which makes it
necessary for him to make love down the back of her neck."
But T. A. Buck was unsmiling.
"Don't trifle, Emma. And don't think you can fool me that way.
I haven't finished. I want to settle this Fifth Avenue creature
for all time. What I have to say is this: I think you are more
attractive--finer, bigger, more rounded in character and manner,
mellower, sweeter, sounder, with all your angles and corners
rubbed smooth, saner, better poised than any woman I have ever
known. And what I am to-day you have made me, directly and
indirectly, by association and by actual orders, by suggestion,
and by direct contact. What you did for Jock, purposefully and
by force, you did for me, too. Not so directly, perhaps, but
with the same result. Emma McChesney, you've made--actually
made, molded, shaped, and turned out two men. You're the
greatest sculptor that ever lived. You could make a scarecrow in
a field get up and achieve. Everywhere one sees women
over-wrought, over-stimulated, eager, tense. When there appears
one who has herself in leash, balanced, tolerant, poised, sane,
composed, she restores your faith in things. You lean on her,
spiritually. I know I need you more than you need me, Emma. And
I know you won't love me the less for that. There--that's about
all for this evening."
"I think," breathed Emma McChesney in a choked little voice,
"that that's about--enough."
Two days before the date set for their very quiet wedding, they
told the heads of office and workroom. Office and workroom,
somewhat moist as to eye and flushed as to cheek and highly
congratulatory, proved their knowingness by promptly presenting
to their employers a very costly and unbelievably hideous set of
mantel ornaments and clock, calculated to strike horror to the
heart of any woman who has lovingly planned the furnishing of her
drawing-room. Pop Henderson, after some preliminary wrestling
with collar, necktie, spectacles, and voice, launched forth on a
presentation speech that threatened to close down the works for
the day. Emma McChesney heard it, tears in her eyes. T. A. Buck
gnawed his mustache. And when Pop Henderson's cracked old voice
broke altogether in the passage that touched on his departed
employer, old T. A. Buck, and the great happiness that this
occasion would have brought him, Emma's hand met young T. A.'s
and rested there. Hortense and Henry, standing very close
together all through the speech, had, in this respect,
anticipated their employers by several minutes.
They were to be away two weeks only. No one knew just where,
except that some small part of the trip was to be spent on a
flying visit to young Jock McChesney out in Chicago. He himself
was to be married very soon. Emma McChesney had rather startled
her very good- looking husband-to-be by whirling about at him
with,
"T. A., do you realize that you're very likely to be a
step-grandfather some fine day not so far away!"
T. A. had gazed at her for a rather shocked moment, swallowed
hard, smiled, and said,
"Even that doesn't scare me, Emma."
Everything had been planned down to the last detail. Mrs.
McChesney's little apartment had been subleased, and a very smart
one taken and furnished almost complete, with Annie installed in
the kitchen and a demure parlor-maid engaged.
"When we come back, we'll come home," T. A. Buck had said.
"Home!"
There had been much to do, but it had all been done smoothly and
expertly, under the direction of these two who had learned how to
plan, direct, and carry out.
Then, on the last day, Emma McChesney, visibly perturbed, entered
her partner's office, a letter in her hand.
"This is ghastly!" she exclaimed.
Buck pulled out a chair for her.
"Klein cancel his order again?"
"No. And don't ask me to sit down. Be thankful that I don't
blow up."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"Bad! Here--read that! No, don't read it; I'll tell you.
It'll relieve my feelings. You know how I've been angling and
scheming and contriving and plotting for years to get an
exclusive order from Gage & Fosdick. Of course we've had a nice
little order every few months, but what's that from the biggest
mail-order house in the world? And now, out of a blue sky, comes
this bolt from O'Malley, who buys our stuff, saying that he's
coming on the tenth--that's next week--that he's planned to
establish our line with their trade, and that he wants us to be
prepared for a record-breaking order. I've fairly prayed for
this. And now--what shall we do?"
"Do?"--smoothly--"just write the gentleman and tell him you're
busy getting married this week and next, and that, by a singular
coincidence, your partner is similarly engaged; that our manager
will attend to him with all care and courtesy, unless he can
postpone his trip until our return. Suggest that he call around
a week or two later."
"T. A. Buck, I know it isn't considered good form to rage and
glare at one's fiance on the eve of one's wedding-day. If this
were a week earlier or a week later, I'd be tempted to--shake
you!"
Buck stood up, came over to her, and laid a hand very gently on
her arm. With the other hand he took the letter from her
fingers.
"Emma, you're tired, and a little excited. You've been under an
unusual physical and mental strain for the last few weeks. Give
me that letter. I'll answer it. This kind of thing"--he held
up the letter--"has meant everything to you. If it had not,
where would I be to-day? But to-night, Emma, it doesn't mean a
thing. Not--one thing."
Slowly Emma McChesney's tense body relaxed. A great sigh that
had in it weariness and relief and acquiescence came from her.
She smiled ever so faintly.
"I've been a ramrod so long it's going to be hard to learn to be
a clinging vine. I've been my own support for so many years, I
don't use a trellis very gracefully--yet. But I think I'll get
the hang of it very soon."
She turned toward the door, crossed to her own office, looked all
about at the orderly, ship- shape room that reflected her
personality--as did any room she occupied.
"Just the same," she called out, over her shoulder, to Buck in
the doorway, "I hate like fury to see that order slide."
In hat and coat and furs she stood a moment, her fingers on the
electric switch, her eyes very bright and wide. The memories of
ten years, fifteen years, twenty years crowded up around her and
filled the little room. Some of them were golden and some of
them were black; a few had power to frighten her, even now. So
she turned out the light, stood for just another moment there in
the darkness, then stepped out into the hall, closed the door
softly behind her, and stood face to face with the lettering on
the glass panel of the door--the lettering that spelled the name,
"MRS. MCCHESNEY."
T. A. Buck watched her in silence. She reached up with one
wavering forefinger and touched each of the twelve letters, one
after the other. Then she spread her hand wide, blotting out the
second word. And when she turned away, one saw--she being Emma
McChesney, and a woman, and very tired and rather sentimental,
and a bit hysterical and altogether happy--that, though she was
smiling, her eyes were wet.
In her ten years on the road, visiting town after town, catching
trains, jolting about in rumbling hotel 'buses or musty-smelling
small- town hacks, living in hotels, good, bad, and indifferent,
Emma McChesney had come upon hundreds of rice-strewn,
ribbon-bedecked bridal couples. She had leaned from her window
at many a railway station to see the barbaric and cruel old
custom of bride-and-bridegroom baiting. She had smiled very
tenderly--and rather sadly, and hopefully, too--upon the boy and
girl who rushed breathless into the car in a flurry of white
streamers, flowers, old shoes, laughter, cheers, last messages.
Now, as in a dream, she found herself actually of these. Of
rice, old shoes, and badinage there had been none, it is true.
She stood quietly by while Buck attended to their trunks, just as
she had seen it done by hundreds of helpless little cotton-wool
women who had never checked a trunk in their lives--she, who had
spent ten years of her life wrestling with trunks and baggagemen
and porters. Once there was some trifling mistake--Buck's fault.
Emma, with her experience of the road, saw his error. She could
have set him right with a word. It was on the tip of her tongue.
By sheer force of will she withheld that word, fought back the
almost overwhelming inclination to take things in hand, set them
right. It was just an incident, almost trifling in itself. But
its import was tremendous, for her conduct, that moment, shaped
the happiness of their future life together.
Emma had said that there would be no rude awakenings for them, no
startling shocks.
"There isn't a thing we don't know about each other," she had
said. "We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I
hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I
think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without
first having given you sugar and cream is the most absurd thing
I've ever seen. But, then, I know how it annoys you to see me
sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe, when I'm
particularly comfortable and snug. You know how I like my eggs,
and you think it's immoral. I suppose we're really set in our
ways. It's going to be interesting to watch each other shift."
"Just the same," Buck said, "I didn't dream there was any
woman living who could actually make a Pullman drawing-room look
homelike."
"Any woman who has spent a fourth of her life in hotels and
trains learns that trick. She has to. If she happens to be the
sort that likes books and flowers and sewing, she carries some of
each with her. And one book, one rose, and one piece of
unfinished embroidery would make an oasis in the Sahara Desert
look homelike."
It was on the westbound train that they encountered Sam--Sam of
the rolling eye, the genial grin, the deft hand. Sam was known
to every hardened traveler as the porter de luxe of the road.
Sam was a diplomat, a financier, and a rascal. He never forgot a
face. He never forgave a meager tip. The passengers who
traveled with him were at once his guests and his victims.
Therefore his, "Good evenin', Mis' McChesney, ma'am. Good
even'! Well, it suh't'nly has been a long time sense Ah had the
pleasuh of yoh presence as passengah, ma'am. Ah sure am----"
The slim, elegant figure of T. A. Buck appeared in the doorway.
Sam's rolling eye became a thing on ball bearings. His teeth
flashed startlingly white in the broadest of grins. He took
Buck's hat, ran a finger under its inner band, and shook it very
gently.
"What's the idea?" inquired Buck genially. "Are you a
combination porter and prestidigitator?"
Sam chuckled his infectious negro chuckle.
"Well, no, sah! Ah wouldn' go's fah as t' say that, sah. But
Ah hab been known to shake rice out of a gen'lman's ordinary,
ever'-day, black derby hat."
"Get out!" laughed T. A. Buck, as Sam ducked.
"You may as well get used to it," smiled Emma, "because I'm
known to every train-conductor, porter, hotel-clerk,
chamber-maid, and bell-boy between here and the Great Lakes."
It was Sam who proved himself hero of the honeymoon, for he saved
T. A. Buck from continuing his journey to Chicago brideless.
Fifteen minutes earlier, Buck had gone to the buffet-car for a
smoke. At Cleveland, Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a
familiar figure pacing up and down the station platform. It was
that dapper and important little Irishman, O'Malley, buyer for
Gage & Fosdick, the greatest mail-order house in the
world--O'Malley, whose letter T. A. Buck had answered; O'Malley,
whose order meant thousands. He was on his way to New York, of
course.
In that moment Mrs. T. A. Buck faded into the background and Emma
McChesney rose up in her place. She snatched hat and coat and
furs, put them on as she went down the long aisle, swung down the
car steps, and flew down the platform to the unconscious
O'Malley. He was smoking, all unconscious. The Fates had
delivered him into her expert hands. She knew those kindly
sisters of old, and she was the last to refuse their largesse.
"Mr. O'Malley!"
He wheeled.
"Mrs. McChesney!" He had just a charming trace of a brogue.
His enemies said he assumed it. "Well, who was I thinkin' of
but you a minute ago. What----"
"I'm on my way to Chicago. Saw you from the car window. You're
on the New York train? I thought so. Tell me, you're surely
seeing our man, aren't you?"
O'Malley's smiling face clouded. He was a temperamental
Irishman--Ted O'Malley-- with ideas on the deference due him and
his great house.
"I'll tell you the truth, Mrs. McChesney. I had a letter from
your Mr. Buck. It wasn't much of a letter to a man like me,
representing a house like Gage & Fosdick. It said both heads of
the firm would be out of town, and would I see the manager.
Me--see the manager! Well, thinks I, if that's how important
they think my order, then they'll not get it--that's all. I've
never yet----"
"Dear Mr. O'Malley, please don't be offended. As a McChesney to
an O'Malley, I want to tell you that I've just been married."
"Married! God bless me--to----"
"To T. A. Buck, of course. He's on that train. He----"
She turned toward the train. And as she turned it began to move,
ever so gently. At the same moment there sped toward her, with
unbelievable swiftness, the figure of Sam the porter, his eyes
all whites. By one arm he grasped her, and half carried, half
jerked her to the steps of the moving train, swung her up to the
steps like a bundle of rags, caught the rail by a miracle, and
stood, grinning and triumphant, gazing down at the panting
O'Malley, who was running alongside the train.
"Back in a week. Will you wait for us in New York?" called
Emma, her breath coming fast. She was trembling, too, and
laughing.
"Will I wait!" called back the puffing O'Malley, every bit of
the Irish in him beaming from his eyes. "I'll be there when you
get back as sure as your name's McBuck."
From his pocket he took a round, silver Western dollar and, still
running, tossed it to the toothy Sam. That peerless porter
caught it, twirled it, kissed it, bowed, and grinned afresh as
the train glided out of the shed.
Emma, flushed, smiling, flew up the aisle.
Buck, listening to her laughing, triumphant account of her
hairbreadth, harum-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled.
"Emma, how could you do it! At least, why didn't you send back
for me first?"
Emma smiled a little tremulously.
"Don't be angry. You see, dear boy, I've only been your wife
for a week. But I've been Featherloom petticoats for over
fifteen years. It's a habit."
Just how strong and fixed a habit, she proved to herself a little
more than a week later. It was the morning of their first
breakfast in the new apartment. You would have thought, to see
them over their coffee and eggs and rolls, that they had been
breakfasting together thus for years--Annie was so at home in her
new kitchen; the deft little maid, in her crisp white, fitted so
perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the thing that T. A. Buck
said, once the maid left them alone, might have given an outsider
the cue.
"You remind me of a sweetpea, Emma. One of those crisp, erect,
golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweetpeas. I think it is the
slenderest, sweetest, neatest, trimmest flower in the world, so
delicately set on its stem, and yet so straight, so
independent."
"T. A., you say such dear things to me!"
No; they had not been breakfasting together for years.
"I'm glad you're not one of those women that wears a frowsy,
lacy, ribbony, what-do-you- call-'em-boudoir-cap--down to
breakfast. They always make me think of uncombed hair. That's
just one reason why I'm glad."
"And I'm glad," said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady
hand and firm skin, "for a number of reasons. One of them is
that you're not the sort of man who's a grouch at breakfast."
When he had hat and coat and stick in hand, and had kissed her
good-by and reached the door and opened it, he came back again,
as is the way of bridegrooms. But at last the door closed behind
him.
Emma sat there a moment, listening to his quick, light step down
the corridor, to the opening of the lift door, to its metallic
closing. She sat there, in the sunshiny dining-room, in her
fresh, white morning gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened
it; scanned it, put it down. For years, now, she had read her
newspaper in little gulps on the way downtown in crowded subway
or street-car. She could not accustom herself to this leisurely
scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the window, came back
to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on something
far away.
The swinging door between dining-room and butler's pantry opened.
Annie, in her neat blue-and-white stripes, stood before her.
"Shall it be steak or chops to-night, Mrs. Mc--Buck?"
Emma turned her head in Annie's direction--then her eyes. The
two actions were distinct and separate.
"Steak or----" There was a little bewildered look in her eyes.
Her mind had not yet focused on the question. "Steak--oh! Oh,
yes, of course! Why--why, Annie"--and the splendid
thousand-h.-p. mind brought itself down to the settling of this
butter-churning, two-h.-p. question--"why, Annie, considering
all things, I think we'll make it filet with mushrooms."
Edna Ferber's short story: A Closer Corporation
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