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diff --git a/25474.txt b/25474.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a68f4d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/25474.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10540 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Job, by Sinclair Lewis + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Job + An American Novel + +Author: Sinclair Lewis + +Release Date: May 15, 2008 [EBook #25474] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JOB *** + + + + +Produced by K Nordquist, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + THE JOB + + AN AMERICAN NOVEL + + BY + SINCLAIR LEWIS + + AUTHOR OF MAIN STREET, BABBITT, ETC. + + GROSSET & DUNLAP + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + Made in the United States of America + + + Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + Published February, 1917 + + + + + TO + + MY WIFE + + WHO HAS MADE "THE JOB" POSSIBLE AND LIFE ITSELF + QUITE BEAUTIFULLY IMPROBABLE + + + + + CONTENTS + + + Page + + Part I 3 + THE CITY + + Part II 133 + THE OFFICE + + Part III 251 + MAN AND WOMAN + + + + +Part I + +THE CITY + +CHAPTER I + + +Captain Lew Golden would have saved any foreign observer a great deal of +trouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the petty +small-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He had +never been "captain" of anything except the Crescent Volunteer Fire +Company, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wrote +insurance, and meddled with lawsuits. + +He carried a quite visible mustache-comb and wore a collar, but no tie. +On warm days he appeared on the street in his shirt-sleeves, and +discussed the comparative temperatures of the past thirty years with +Doctor Smith and the Mansion House 'bus-driver. He never used the word +"beauty" except in reference to a setter dog--beauty of words or music, +of faith or rebellion, did not exist for him. He rather fancied large, +ambitious, banal, red-and-gold sunsets, but he merely glanced at them as +he straggled home, and remarked that they were "nice." He believed that +all Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. His +entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never +read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended; and he desired +no system of economics beyond the current platform of the Republican +party. He was aimlessly industrious, crotchety but kind, and almost +quixotically honest. + +He believed that "Panama, Pennsylvania, was good enough for anybody." + +This last opinion was not shared by his wife, nor by his daughter Una. + +Mrs. Golden was one of the women who aspire just enough to be vaguely +discontented; not enough to make them toil at the acquisition of +understanding and knowledge. She had floated into a comfortable +semi-belief in a semi-Christian Science, and she read novels with a +conviction that she would have been a romantic person "if she hadn't +married Mr. Golden--not but what he's a fine man and very bright and +all, but he hasn't got much imagination or any, well, _romance_!" + +She wrote poetry about spring and neighborhood births, and Captain +Golden admired it so actively that he read it aloud to callers. She +attended all the meetings of the Panama Study Club, and desired to learn +French, though she never went beyond borrowing a French grammar from the +Episcopalian rector and learning one conjugation. But in the pioneer +suffrage movement she took no part--she didn't "think it was quite +ladylike." ... She was a poor cook, and her house always smelled stuffy, +but she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail of +body, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked to +give cookies to the neighborhood boys, and--if you weren't impatient +with her slackness--you found her a wistful and touching figure in her +slight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, a +Marie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition she still +retained at fifty-five. + +She was, in appearance, the ideal wife and mother--sympathetic, +forgiving, bright-lipped as a May morning. She never demanded; she +merely suggested her desires, and, if they were refused, let her lips +droop in a manner which only a brute could withstand. + +She plaintively admired her efficient daughter Una. + +Una Golden was a "good little woman"--not pretty, not noisy, not +particularly articulate, but instinctively on the inside of things; +naturally able to size up people and affairs. She had common sense and +unkindled passion. She was a matter-of-fact idealist, with a healthy +woman's simple longing for love and life. At twenty-four Una had half a +dozen times fancied herself in love. She had been embraced at a dance, +and felt the stirring of a desire for surrender. But always a native +shrewdness had kept her from agonizing over these affairs. + +She was not--and will not be--a misunderstood genius, an undeveloped +artist, an embryonic leader in feminism, nor an ugly duckling who would +put on a Georgette hat and captivate the theatrical world. She was an +untrained, ambitious, thoroughly commonplace, small-town girl. But she +was a natural executive and she secretly controlled the Golden +household; kept Captain Golden from eating with his knife, and her +mother from becoming drugged with too much reading of poppy-flavored +novels. + +She wanted to learn, learn anything. But the Goldens were too +respectable to permit her to have a job, and too poor to permit her to +go to college. From the age of seventeen, when she had graduated from +the high school--in white ribbons and heavy new boots and tight new +organdy--to twenty-three, she had kept house and gone to gossip-parties +and unmethodically read books from the town library--Walter Scott, +Richard Le Gallienne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Humphry Ward, _How to +Know the Birds_, _My Year in the Holy Land_, _Home Needlework_, _Sartor +Resartus_, and _Ships that Pass in the Night_. Her residue of knowledge +from reading them was a disbelief in Panama, Pennsylvania. + +She was likely never to be anything more amazing than a mother and wife, +who would entertain the Honiton Embroidery Circle twice a year. + +Yet, potentially, Una Golden was as glowing as any princess of balladry. +She was waiting for the fairy prince, though he seemed likely to be +nothing more decorative than a salesman in a brown derby. She was fluid; +indeterminate as a moving cloud. + +Although Una Golden had neither piquant prettiness nor grave +handsomeness, her soft littleness made people call her "Puss," and want +to cuddle her as a child cuddles a kitten. If you noted Una at all, when +you met her, you first noted her gentle face, her fine-textured hair of +faded gold, and her rimless eye-glasses with a gold chain over her ear. +These glasses made a business-like center to her face; you felt that +without them she would have been too childish. Her mouth was as kind as +her spirited eyes, but it drooped. Her body was so femininely soft that +you regarded her as rather plump. But for all her curving hips, and the +thick ankles which she considered "common," she was rather anemic. Her +cheeks were round, not rosy, but clear and soft; her lips a pale pink. +Her chin was plucky and undimpled; it was usually spotted with one or +two unimportant eruptions, which she kept so well covered with powder +that they were never noticeable. No one ever thought of them except Una +herself, to whom they were tragic blemishes which she timorously +examined in the mirror every time she went to wash her hands. She knew +that they were the result of the indigestible Golden family meals; she +tried to take comfort by noticing their prevalence among other girls; +but they kept startling her anew; she would secretly touch them with a +worried forefinger, and wonder whether men were able to see anything +else in her face. + +You remembered her best as she hurried through the street in her tan +mackintosh with its yellow velveteen collar turned high up, and one of +those modest round hats to which she was addicted. For then you were +aware only of the pale-gold hair fluffing round her school-mistress +eye-glasses, her gentle air of respectability, and her undistinguished +littleness. + +She trusted in the village ideal of virginal vacuousness as the type of +beauty which most captivated men, though every year she was more +shrewdly doubtful of the divine superiority of these men. That a woman's +business in life was to remain respectable and to secure a man, and +consequent security, was her unmeditated faith--till, in 1905, when Una +was twenty-four years old, her father died. + + +Sec. 2 + +Captain Golden left to wife and daughter a good name, a number of debts, +and eleven hundred dollars in lodge insurance. The funeral was scarcely +over before neighbors--the furniture man, the grocer, the polite old +homeopathic doctor--began to come in with bland sympathy and large +bills. When the debts were all cleared away the Goldens had only six +hundred dollars and no income beyond the good name. All right-minded +persons agree that a good name is precious beyond rubies, but Una would +have preferred less honor and more rubies. + +She was so engaged in comforting her mother that she scarcely grieved +for her father. She took charge of everything--money, house, bills. + +Mrs. Golden had been overwhelmed by a realization that, however slack +and shallow Captain Golden had been, he had adored her and encouraged +her in her gentility, her pawing at culture. With an emerging sincerity, +Mrs. Golden mourned him, now, missed his gossipy presence--and at the +same time she was alive to the distinction it added to her slim +gracefulness to wear black and look wan. She sobbed on Una's shoulder; +she said that she was lonely; and Una sturdily comforted her and looked +for work. + +One of the most familiar human combinations in the world is that of +unemployed daughter and widowed mother. A thousand times you have seen +the jobless daughter devoting all of her curiosity, all of her youth, to +a widowed mother of small pleasantries, a small income, and a shabby +security. Thirty comes, and thirty-five. The daughter ages steadily. At +forty she is as old as her unwithering mother. Sweet she is, and +pathetically hopeful of being a pianist or a nurse; never quite +reconciled to spinsterhood, though she often laughs about it; often, by +her insistence that she is an "old maid," she makes the thought of her +barren age embarrassing to others. The mother is sweet, too, and "wants +to keep in touch with her daughter's interests," only, her daughter has +no interests. Had the daughter revolted at eighteen, had she stubbornly +insisted that mother either accompany her to parties or be content to +stay alone, had she acquired "interests," she might have meant something +in the new generation; but the time for revolt passes, however much the +daughter may long to seem young among younger women. The mother is +usually unconscious of her selfishness; she would be unspeakably +horrified if some brutal soul told her that she was a vampire. Chance, +chance and waste, rule them both, and the world passes by while the +mother has her games of cards with daughter, and deems herself +unselfish because now and then she lets daughter join a party (only to +hasten back to mother), and even "wonders why daughter doesn't take an +interest in girls her own age." That ugly couple on the porch of the +apple-sauce and wash-pitcher boarding-house--the mother a mute, dwarfish +punchinello, and the daughter a drab woman of forty with a mole, a wart, +a silence. That charming mother of white hair and real lace with the +well-groomed daughter. That comfortable mother at home and daughter in +an office, but with no suitors, no ambition beyond the one at home. They +are all examples of the mother-and-daughter phenomenon, that most +touching, most destructive example of selfless unselfishness, which robs +all the generations to come, because mother has never been trained to +endure the long, long thoughts of solitude; because she sees nothing by +herself, and within herself hears no diverting voice.... + +There were many such mothers and daughters in Panama. If they were +wealthy, daughter collected rents and saw lawyers and belonged to a club +and tried to keep youthful at parties. If middle-class, daughter taught +school, almost invariably. If poor, mother did the washing and daughter +collected it. So it was marked down for Una that she should be a +teacher. + +Not that she wanted to be a teacher! After graduating from high school, +she had spent two miserable terms of teaching in the small white +district school, four miles out on the Bethlehem Road. She hated the +drive out and back, the airless room and the foul outbuildings, the shy, +stupid, staring children, the jolly little arithmetical problems about +wall-paper, piles of lumber, the amount of time that notoriously +inefficient workmen will take to do "a certain piece of work." Una was +honest enough to know that she was not an honest teacher, that she +neither loved masses of other people's children nor had any ideals of +developing the new generation. But she had to make money. Of course she +would teach! + +When she talked over affairs with her tearful mother, Mrs. Golden always +ended by suggesting, "I wonder if perhaps you couldn't go back to +school-teaching again. Everybody said you were so successful. And maybe +I could get some needlework to do. I do want to help so much." + +Mrs. Golden did, apparently, really want to help. But she never +suggested anything besides teaching, and she went on recklessly +investing in the nicest mourning. Meantime Una tried to find other work +in Panama. + +Seen from a balloon, Panama is merely a mole on the long hill-slopes. +But to Una its few straggly streets were a whole cosmos. She knew +somebody in every single house. She knew just where the succotash, the +cake-boxes, the clothes-lines, were kept in each of the grocery-stores, +and on market Saturdays she could wait on herself. She summed up the +whole town and its possibilities; and she wondered what opportunities +the world out beyond Panama had for her. She recalled two trips to +Philadelphia and one to Harrisburg. She made out a list of openings with +such methodical exactness as she devoted to keeping the dwindling lodge +insurance from disappearing altogether. Hers was no poetic outreach like +that of the young genius who wants to be off for Bohemia. It was a +question of earning money in the least tedious way. Una was facing the +feminist problem, without knowing what the word "feminist" meant. + +This was her list of fair fields of fruitful labor: + +She could--and probably would--teach in some hen-coop of pedagogy. + +She could marry, but no one seemed to want her, except old Henry +Carson, the widower, with catarrh and three children, who called on her +and her mother once in two weeks, and would propose whenever she +encouraged him to. This she knew scientifically. She had only to sit +beside him on the sofa, let her hand drop down beside his. But she +positively and ungratefully didn't want to marry Henry and listen to his +hawking and his grumbling for the rest of her life. Sooner or later one +of The Boys might propose. But in a small town it was all a gamble. +There weren't so very many desirable young men--most of the energetic +ones went off to Philadelphia and New York. True that Jennie McTevish +had been married at thirty-one, when everybody had thought she was +hopelessly an old maid. Yet here was Birdie Mayberry unmarried at +thirty-four, no one could ever understand why, for she had been the +prettiest and jolliest girl in town. Una crossed blessed matrimony off +the list as a commercial prospect. + +She could go off and study music, law, medicine, elocution, or any of +that amazing hodge-podge of pursuits which are permitted to small-town +women. But she really couldn't afford to do any of these; and, besides, +she had no talent for music of a higher grade than Sousa and Victor +Herbert; she was afraid of lawyers; blood made her sick; and her voice +was too quiet for the noble art of elocution as practised by several +satin-waisted, semi-artistic ladies who "gave readings" of _Enoch Arden_ +and _Evangeline_ before the Panama Study Circle and the Panama Annual +Chautauqua. + +She could have a job selling dry-goods behind the counter in the Hub +Store, but that meant loss of caste. + +She could teach dancing--but she couldn't dance particularly well. And +that was all that she could do. + +She had tried to find work as office-woman for Dr. Mayberry, the +dentist; in the office of the Panama Wood-Turning Company; in the +post-office; as lofty enthroned cashier for the Hub Store; painting +place-cards and making "fancy-work" for the Art Needlework Exchange. + +The job behind the counter in the Hub Store was the only one offered +her. + +"If I were only a boy," sighed Una, "I could go to work in the +hardware-store or on the railroad or anywhere, and not lose +respectability. Oh, I _hate_ being a woman." + + +Sec. 3 + +Una had been trying to persuade her father's old-time rival, Squire +Updegraff, the real-estate and insurance man, that her experience with +Captain Golden would make her a perfect treasure in the office. Squire +Updegraff had leaped up at her entrance, and blared, "Well, well, and +how is the little girl making it?" He had set out a chair for her and +held her hand. But he knew that her only experience with her father's +affairs had been an effort to balance Captain Golden's account-books, +which were works of genius in so far as they were composed according to +the inspirational method. So there was nothing very serious in their +elaborate discussion of giving Una a job. + +It was her last hope in Panama. She went disconsolately down the short +street, between the two-story buildings and the rows of hitched +lumber-wagons. Nellie Page, the town belle, tripping by in canvas +sneakers and a large red hair-ribbon, shouted at her, and Charlie +Martindale, of the First National Bank, nodded to her, but these +exquisites were too young for her; they danced too well and laughed too +easily. The person who stopped her for a long curbstone conference about +the weather, while most of the town observed and gossiped, was the +fateful Henry Carson. The village sun was unusually blank and hard on +Henry's bald spot to-day. _Heavens!_ she cried to herself, in almost +hysterical protest, would she have to marry Henry? + +Miss Mattie Pugh drove by, returning from district school. Miss Mattie +had taught at Clark's Crossing for seventeen years, had grown meek and +meager and hopeless. _Heavens!_ thought Una, would she have to be shut +into the fetid barn of a small school unless she married Henry? + +"I _won't_ be genteel! I'll work in The Hub or any place first!" Una +declared. While she trudged home--a pleasant, inconspicuous, +fluffy-haired young woman, undramatic as a field daisy--a cataract of +protest poured through her. All the rest of her life she would have to +meet that doddering old Mr. Mosely, who was unavoidably bearing down on +her now, and be held by him in long, meaningless talks. And there was +nothing amusing to do! She was so frightfully bored. She suddenly hated +the town, hated every evening she would have to spend there, reading +newspapers and playing cards with her mother, and dreading a call from +Mr. Henry Carson. + +She wanted--wanted some one to love, to talk with. Why had she +discouraged the beautiful Charlie Martindale, the time he had tried to +kiss her at a dance? Charlie was fatuous, but he was young, and she +wanted, yes, yes! that was it, she wanted youth, she who was herself so +young. And she would grow old here unless some one, one of these godlike +young men, condescended to recognize her. Grow old among these streets +like piles of lumber. + +She charged into the small, white, ambling Golden house, with its +peculiar smell of stale lamb gravy, and on the old broken couch--where +her father had snored all through every bright Sunday afternoon--she +sobbed feebly. + +She raised her head to consider a noise overhead--the faint, domestic +thunder of a sewing-machine shaking the walls with its rhythm. The +machine stopped. She heard the noise of scissors dropped on the +floor--the most stuffily domestic sound in the world. The airless house +was crushing her. She sprang up--and then she sat down again. There was +no place to which she could flee. Henry Carson and the district school +were menacing her. And meantime she had to find out what her mother was +sewing--whether she had again been wasting money in buying mourning. + +"Poor, poor little mother, working away happy up there, and I've got to +go and scold you," Una agonized. "Oh, I want to earn money, I want to +earn real money for you." + +She saw a quadrangle of white on the table, behind a book. She pounced +on it. It was a letter from Mrs. Sessions, and Una scratched it open +excitedly. + +Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sessions, of Panama, had gone to New York. Mr. +Sessions was in machinery. They liked New York. They lived in a flat and +went to theaters. Mrs. Sessions was a pillowy soul whom Una trusted. + +"Why don't you," wrote Mrs. Sessions, "if you don't find the kind of +work you want in Panama, think about coming up to New York and taking +stenography? There are lots of chances here for secretaries, etc." + +Una carefully laid down the letter. She went over and straightened her +mother's red wool slippers. She wanted to postpone for an exquisite +throbbing moment the joy of announcing to herself that she had made a +decision. + +She _would_ go to New York, become a stenographer, a secretary to a +corporation president, a rich woman, free, responsible. + +The fact of making this revolutionary decision so quickly gave her a +feeling of power, of already being a business woman. + +She galloped up-stairs to the room where her mother was driving the +sewing-machine. + +"Mumsie!" she cried, "we're going to New York! I'm going to learn to be +a business woman, and the little mother will be all dressed in satin and +silks, and dine on what-is-it and peaches and cream--the poem don't come +out right, but, oh, my little mother, we're going out adventuring, we +are!" + +She plunged down beside her mother, burrowed her head in her mother's +lap, kissed that hand whose skin was like thinnest wrinkly tissue-paper. + +"Why, my little daughter, what is it? Has some one sent for us? Is it +the letter from Emma Sessions? What did she say in it?" + +"She suggested it, but we are going up independent." + +"But can we afford to?... I would like the draymas and art-galleries and +all!" + +"We _will_ afford to! We'll gamble, for once!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Una Golden had never realized how ugly and petty were the streets of +Panama till that evening when she walked down for the mail, spurning the +very dust on the sidewalks--and there was plenty to spurn. An old +mansion of towers and scalloped shingles, broken-shuttered now and +unpainted, with a row of brick stores marching up on its once leisurely +lawn. The town-hall, a square wooden barn with a sagging upper porch, +from which the mayor would presumably have made proclamations, had there +ever been anything in Panama to proclaim about. Staring loafers in front +of the Girard House. To Una there was no romance in the sick mansion, no +kindly democracy in the village street, no bare freedom in the hills +beyond. She was not much to blame; she was a creature of action to whom +this constricted town had denied all action except sweeping. + +She felt so strong now--she had expected a struggle in persuading her +mother to go to New York, but acquiescence had been easy. Una had an +exultant joy, a little youthful and cruel, in meeting old Henry Carson +and telling him that she was going away, that she "didn't know for how +long; maybe for always." So hopelessly did he stroke his lean brown +neck, which was never quite clean-shaven, that she tried to be kind to +him. She promised to write. But she felt, when she had left him, as +though she had just been released from prison. To live with him, to give +him the right to claw at her with those desiccated hands--she imagined +it with a vividness which shocked her, all the while she was listening +to his halting regrets. + +A dry, dusty September wind whirled down the village street. It choked +her. + +There would be no dusty winds in New York, but only mellow breezes over +marble palaces of efficient business. No Henry Carsons, but slim, alert +business men, young of eye and light of tongue. + + +Sec. 2 + +Una Golden had expected to thrill to her first sight of the New York +sky-line, crossing on the ferry in mid-afternoon, but it was so much +like all the post-card views of it, so stolidly devoid of any surprises, +that she merely remarked, "Oh yes, there it is, that's where I'll be," +and turned to tuck her mother into a ferry seat and count the suit-cases +and assure her that there was no danger of pickpockets. Though, as the +ferry sidled along the land, passed an English liner, and came close +enough to the shore so that she could see the people who actually lived +in the state of blessedness called New York, Una suddenly hugged her +mother and cried, "Oh, little mother, we're going to live here and do +things together--everything." + +The familiar faces of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sessions were awaiting them at +the end of the long cavernous walk from the ferry-boat, and New York +immediately became a blur of cabs, cobblestones, bales of cotton, long +vistas of very dirty streets, high buildings, surface cars, elevateds, +shop windows that seemed dark and foreign, and everywhere such a rush of +people as made her feel insecure, cling to the Sessionses, and try to +ward off the dizziness of the swirl of new impressions. She was daunted +for a moment, but she rejoiced in the conviction that she was going to +like this madness of multiform energy. + +The Sessionses lived in a flat on Amsterdam Avenue near Ninety-sixth +Street. They all went up from Cortlandt Street in the Subway, which was +still new and miraculous in 1905. For five minutes Una was terrified by +the jam of people, the blind roar through tunneled darkness, the sense +of being powerlessly hurled forward in a mass of ungovernable steel. But +nothing particularly fatal happened; and she grew proud to be part of +this black energy, and contentedly swung by a strap. + +When they reached the Sessionses' flat and fell upon the gossip of +Panama, Pennsylvania, Una was absent-minded--except when the Sessionses +teased her about Henry Carson and Charlie Martindale. The rest of the +time, curled up on a black-walnut couch which she had known for years in +Panama, and which looked plaintively rustic here in New York, Una gave +herself up to impressions of the city: the voices of many children down +on Amsterdam Avenue, the shriek of a flat-wheeled surface car, the +sturdy pound of trucks, horns of automobiles; the separate sounds +scarcely distinguishable in a whirr which seemed visible as a thick, +gray-yellow dust-cloud. + +Her mother went to lie down; the Sessionses (after an elaborate +explanation of why they did not keep a maid) began to get dinner, and +Una stole out to see New York by herself. + +It all seemed different, at once more real and not so jumbled together, +now that she used her own eyes instead of the guidance of that knowing +old city bird, Mr. Albert Sessions. + +Amsterdam Avenue was, even in the dusk of early autumn, disappointing in +its walls of yellow flat-buildings cluttered with fire-escapes, the +first stories all devoted to the same sort of shops over and over +again--delicatessens, laundries, barber-shops, saloons, groceries, +lunch-rooms. She ventured down a side-street, toward a furnace-glow of +sunset. West End Avenue was imposing to her in its solid brick and +graystone houses, and pavements milky in the waning light. Then came a +block of expensive apartments. She was finding the city of golden +rewards. Frivolous curtains hung at windows; in a huge apartment-house +hall she glimpsed a negro attendant in a green uniform with a monkey-cap +and close-set rows of brass buttons; she had a hint of palms--or what +looked like palms; of marble and mahogany and tiling, and a flash of +people in evening dress. In her plain, "sensible" suit Una tramped past. +She was unenvious, because she was going to have all these things soon. + +Out of a rather stodgy vision of silk opera wraps and suitors who were +like floor-walkers, she came suddenly out on Riverside Drive and the +splendor of the city. + +A dull city of straight-front unvaried streets is New York. But she +aspires in her sky-scrapers; she dreams a garden dream of Georgian days +in Gramercy Park; and on Riverside Drive she bares her exquisite breast +and wantons in beauty. Here she is sophisticated, yet eager, comparable +to Paris and Vienna; and here Una exulted. + +Down a polished roadway that reflected every light rolled smart motors, +with gay people in the sort of clothes she had studied in +advertisements. The driveway was bordered with mist wreathing among the +shrubs. Above Una shouldered the tremendous facades of gold-corniced +apartment-houses. Across the imperial Hudson everything was enchanted by +the long, smoky afterglow, against which the silhouettes of dome and +tower and factory chimney stood out like an Orient city. + +"Oh, I want all this--it's mine!... An apartment up there--a big, broad +window-seat, and look out on all this. Oh, dear God," she was +unconsciously praying to her vague Panama Wesley Methodist Church God, +who gave you things if you were good, "I will work for all this.... And +for the little mother, dear mother that's never had a chance." + +In the step of the slightly stolid girl there was a new lightness, a new +ecstasy in walking rapidly through the stirring New York air, as she +turned back to the Sessionses' flat. + + +Sec. 3 + +Later, when the streets fell into order and became normal, Una could +never quite identify the vaudeville theater to which the Sessionses took +them that evening. The gold-and-ivory walls of the lobby seemed to rise +immeasurably to a ceiling flashing with frescoes of light lovers in blue +and fluffy white, mincing steps and ardent kisses and flaunting +draperies. They climbed a tremendous arching stairway of marble, upon +which her low shoes clattered with a pleasant sound. They passed niches +hung with heavy curtains of plum-colored velvet, framing the sly peep of +plaster fauns, and came out on a balcony stretching as wide as the sea +at twilight, looking down on thousands of people in the orchestra below, +up at a vast golden dome lighted by glowing spheres hung with diamonds, +forward at a towering proscenic arch above which slim, nude goddesses in +bas-relief floated in a languor which obsessed her, set free the bare +brown laughing nymph that hides in every stiff Una in semi-mourning. + +Nothing so diverting as that program has ever been witnessed. The funny +men with their solemn mock-battles, their extravagance in dress, their +galloping wit, made her laugh till she wanted them to stop. The singers +were bell-voiced; the dancers graceful as clouds, and just touched with +a beguiling naughtiness; and in the playlet there was a chill intensity +that made her shudder when the husband accused the wife whom he +suspected, oh, so absurdly, as Una indignantly assured herself. + +The entertainment was pure magic, untouched by human clumsiness, rare +and spellbound as a stilly afternoon in oak woods by a lake. + +They went to a marvelous cafe, and Mr. Sessions astounded them by the +urbanity with which he hurried captains and waiters and 'bus-boys, and +ordered lobster and coffee, and pretended that he was going to be wicked +and have wine and cigarettes. + +Months afterward, when she was going to vaudeville by herself, Una tried +to identify the theater of wizardry, but she never could. The Sessionses +couldn't remember which theater it was; they thought it was the Pitt, +but surely they must have been mistaken, for the Pitt was a shanty +daubed with grotesque nudes, rambling and pretentious, with shockingly +amateurish programs. And afterward, on the occasion or two when they +went out to dinner with the Sessionses, it seemed to Una that Mr. +Sessions was provincial in restaurants, too deprecatingly friendly with +the waiters, too hesitating about choosing dinner. + + +Sec. 4 + +Whiteside and Schleusner's College of Commerce, where Una learned the +art of business, occupied only five shabby rooms of crepuscular windows +and perpetually dusty corners, and hard, glistening wall-paint, in a +converted (but not sanctified) old dwelling-house on West Eighteenth +Street. The faculty were six: Mr. Whiteside, an elaborate pomposity who +smoothed his concrete brow as though he had a headache, and took +obvious pride in being able to draw birds with Spencerian strokes. Mr. +Schleusner, who was small and vulgar and _declasse_ and really knew +something about business. A shabby man like a broken-down bookkeeper, +silent and diligent and afraid. A towering man with a red face, who kept +licking his lips with a small red triangle of tongue, and taught +English--commercial college English--in a bombastic voice of finicky +correctness, and always smelled of cigar smoke. An active young Jewish +New-Yorker of wonderful black hair, elfin face, tilted hat, and smart +clothes, who did something on the side in real estate. Finally, a thin +widow, who was so busy and matter-of-fact that she was no more +individualized than a street-car. Any one of them was considered +competent to teach any "line," and among them they ground out +instruction in shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, English grammar, +spelling, composition (with a special view to the construction of +deceptive epistles), and commercial geography. Once or twice a week, +language-masters from a linguistic mill down the street were had in to +chatter the more vulgar phrases of French, German, and Spanish. + +A cluttered, wheezy omnibus of a school, but in it Una rode to spacious +and beautiful hours of learning. It was even more to her than is the +art-school to the yearner who has always believed that she has a talent +for painting; for the yearner has, even as a child, been able to draw +and daub and revel in the results; while for Una this was the first time +in her life when her labor seemed to count for something. Her +school-teaching had been a mere time-filler. Now she was at once the +responsible head of the house and a seer of the future. + +Most of the girls in the school learned nothing but shorthand and +typewriting, but to these Una added English grammar, spelling, and +letter-composition. After breakfast at the little flat which she had +taken with her mother, she fled to the school. She drove into her books, +she delighted in the pleasure of her weary teachers when she snapped out +a quick answer to questions, or typed a page correctly, or was able to +remember the shorthand symbol for a difficult word like "psychologize." + +Her belief in the sacredness of the game was boundless. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Except for the young man in the bank, the new young man in the +hardware-store, and the proprietors of the new Broadway Clothing Shop, +Una had known most of the gallants in Panama, Pennsylvania, from +knickerbocker days; she remembered their bony, boyish knees and their +school-day whippings too well to be romantic about them. But in the +commercial college she was suddenly associated with seventy entirely new +and interesting males. So brief were the courses, so irregular the +classifications, that there was no spirit of seniority to keep her out +of things; and Una, with her fever of learning, her instinctive common +sense about doing things in the easiest way, stood out among the girl +students. The young men did not buzz about her as they did about the +slim, diabolic, star-eyed girl from Brooklyn, in her tempting low-cut +blouses, or the intense, curly-headed, boyish, brown Jew girl, or the +ardent dancers and gigglers. But Una's self-sufficient eagerness gave a +fervor to her blue eyes, and a tilt to her commonplace chin, which made +her almost pretty, and the young men liked to consult her about things. +She was really more prominent here, in a school of one hundred and +seventy, than in her Panama high school with its enrolment of seventy. + +Panama, Pennsylvania, had never regarded Una as a particularly capable +young woman. Dozens of others were more masterful at trimming the +Christmas tree for Wesley Methodist Church, preparing for the annual +picnic of the Art Needlework Coterie, arranging a surprise donation +party for the Methodist pastor, even spring house-cleaning. But she had +been well spoken of as a marketer, a cook, a neighbor who would take +care of your baby while you went visiting--because these tasks had +seemed worth while to her. She was more practical than either Panama or +herself believed. All these years she had, without knowing that she was +philosophizing, without knowing that there was a world-wide inquiry into +woman's place, been trying to find work that needed her. Her father's +death had freed her; had permitted her to toil for her mother, cherish +her, be regarded as useful. Instantly--still without learning that there +was such a principle as feminism--she had become a feminist, demanding +the world and all the fullness thereof as her field of labor. + +And now, in this fumbling school, she was beginning to feel the theory +of efficiency, the ideal of Big Business. + +For "business," that one necessary field of activity to which the +egotistic arts and sciences and theologies and military puerilities are +but servants, that long-despised and always valiant effort to unify the +labor of the world, is at last beginning to be something more than dirty +smithing. No longer does the business man thank the better classes for +permitting him to make and distribute bread and motor-cars and books. No +longer does he crawl to the church to buy pardon for usury. Business is +being recognized--and is recognizing itself--as ruler of the world. + +With this consciousness of power it is reforming its old, petty, +half-hearted ways; its idea of manufacture as a filthy sort of +tinkering; of distribution as chance peddling and squalid shopkeeping; +it is feverishly seeking efficiency.... In its machinery.... But, like +all monarchies, it must fail unless it becomes noble of heart. So long +as capital and labor are divided, so long as the making of munitions or +injurious food is regarded as business, so long as Big Business believes +that it exists merely to enrich a few of the lucky or the well born or +the nervously active, it will not be efficient, but deficient. But the +vision of an efficiency so broad that it can be kindly and sure, is +growing--is discernible at once in the scientific business man and the +courageous labor-unionist. + +That vision Una Golden feebly comprehended. Where she first beheld it +cannot be said. Certainly not in the lectures of her teachers, humorless +and unvisioned grinds, who droned that by divine edict letters must end +with a "yours truly" one space to the left of the middle of the page; +who sniffed at card-ledgers as new-fangled nonsense, and, at their most +inspired, croaked out such platitudes as: "Look out for the pennies and +the pounds will look out for themselves," or "The man who fails is the +man who watches the clock." + +Nor was the vision of the inspired Big Business that shall be, to be +found in the books over which Una labored--the flat, maroon-covered, +dusty, commercial geography, the arid book of phrases and +rules-of-the-thumb called "Fish's Commercial English," the manual of +touch-typewriting, or the shorthand primer that, with its grotesque +symbols and numbered exercises and yellow pages dog-eared by many +owners, looked like an old-fashioned Arabic grammar headachily perused +in some divinity-school library. + +Her vision of it all must have come partly from the eager talk of a few +of the students--the girl who wasn't ever going to give up her job, even +if she did marry; the man who saw a future in these motion pictures; +the shaggy-haired zealot who talked about profit-sharing (which was a +bold radicalism back in 1905; almost as subversive of office discipline +as believing in unions). Partly it came from the new sorts of business +magazines for the man who didn't, like his fathers, insist, "I guess I +can run my business without any outside interference," but sought +everywhere for systems and charts and new markets and the scientific +mind. + + +Sec. 2 + +While her power of faith and vision was satisfied by the largeness of +the city and by her chance to work, there was quickening in Una a shy, +indefinable, inner life of tenderness and desire for love. She did not +admit it, but she observed the young men about her with an interest that +was as diverting as her ambition. + +At first they awed her by their number and their strangeness. But when +she seemed to be quite their equal in this school of the timorously +clerical, she began to look at them level-eyed.... A busy, commonplace, +soft-armed, pleasant, good little thing she was; glancing at them +through eye-glasses attached to a gold chain over her ear, not much +impressed now, slightly ashamed by the delight she took in winning their +attention by brilliant recitations.... She decided that most of them +were earnest-minded but intelligent serfs, not much stronger than the +girls who were taking stenography for want of anything better to do. +They sprawled and looked vacuous as they worked in rows in the big +study-hall, with its hard blue walls showing the marks of two removed +partitions, its old iron fireplace stuffed with rubbers and overshoes +and crayon-boxes. As a provincial, Una disliked the many Jews among +them, and put down their fervor for any sort of learning to +acquisitiveness. The rest she came to despise for the clumsy slowness +with which they learned even the simplest lessons. And to all of them +she--who was going to be rich and powerful, directly she was good for +one hundred words a minute at stenography!--felt disdainfully superior, +because they were likely to be poor the rest of their lives. + +In a twilight walk on Washington Heights, a walk of such vigor and happy +absorption with new problems as she had never known in Panama, she +caught herself being contemptuous about their frayed poverty. With a +sharp emotional sincerity, she rebuked herself for such sordidness, +mocked herself for assuming that she was already rich. + +Even out of this mass of clerklings emerged two or three who were +interesting: Sam Weintraub, a young, active, red-headed, slim-waisted +Jew, who was born in Brooklyn. He smoked large cigars with an air, knew +how to wear his clothes, and told about playing tennis at the Prospect +Athletic Club. He would be a smart secretary or confidential clerk some +day, Una was certain; he would own a car and be seen in evening clothes +and even larger cigars at after-theater suppers. She was rather in awe +of his sophistication. He was the only man who made her feel like a +Freshman. + +J. J. Todd, a reticent, hesitating, hard-working man of thirty, from +Chatham on Cape Cod. It was he who, in noon-time arguments, grimly +advocated profit-sharing, which Sam Weintraub debonairly dismissed as +"socialistic." + +And, most appealing to her, enthusiastic young Sanford Hunt, +inarticulate, but longing for a chance to attach himself to some master. +Weintraub and Todd had desks on either side of her; they had that great +romantic virtue, propinquity. But Sanford Hunt she had noticed, in his +corner across the room, because he glanced about with such boyish +loneliness. + +Sanford Hunt helped her find a rubber in the high-school-like coat-room +on a rainy day when the girls were giggling and the tremendous swells of +the institution were whooping and slapping one another on the back and +acting as much as possible like their ideal of college men--an ideal +presumably derived from motion pictures and college playlets in +vaudeville. Una saw J. J. Todd gawping at her, but not offering to help, +while a foreshortened Sanford groped along the floor, under the dusty +line of coats, for her missing left rubber. Sanford came up with the +rubber, smiled like a nice boy, and walked with her to the Subway. + +He didn't need much encouragement to tell his ambitions. He was +twenty-one--three years younger than herself. He was a semi-orphan, born +in Newark; had worked up from office-boy to clerk in the office of a +huge Jersey City paint company; had saved money to take a commercial +course; was going back to the paint company, and hoped to be +office-manager there. He had a conviction that "the finest man in the +world" was Mr. Claude Lowry, president of the Lowry Paint Company; the +next finest, Mr. Ernest Lowry, vice-president and general manager; the +next, Mr. Julius Schwirtz, one of the two city salesmen--Mr. Schwirtz +having occupied a desk next to his own for two years--and that "_the_ +best paint on the market to-day is Lowry's Lasting Paint--simply no +getting around it." + +In the five-minute walk over to the Eighteenth Street station of the +Subway, Sanford had lastingly impressed Una by his devotion to the job; +eager and faithful as the glory that a young subaltern takes in his +regiment. She agreed with him that the dour J. J. Todd was "crazy" in +his theories about profit-sharing and selling stocks to employees. While +she was with young Sanford, Una found herself concurring that "the +bosses know so much better about all those things--gee whiz! they've had +so much more experience--besides you can't expect them to give away all +their profits to please these walking delegates or a Cape Cod farmer +like Todd! All these theories don't do a fellow any good; what he wants +is to stick on a job and make good." + +Though, in keeping with the general school-boyishness of the +institution, the study-room supervisors tried to prevent conversation, +there was always a current of whispering and low talk, and Sam Weintraub +gave Una daily reports of the tennis, the dances, the dinners at the +Prospect Athletic Club. Her evident awe of his urban amusements pleased +him. He told his former idol, the slim, blond giggler, that she was +altogether too fresh for a Bronx Kid, and he basked in Una's admiration. +Through him she had a revelation of the New York in which people +actually were born, which they took casually, as she did Panama. + +She tried consciously to become a real New-Yorker herself. After +lunch--her home-made lunch of sandwiches and an apple--which she ate in +the buzzing, gossiping study-hall at noon-hour, she explored the city. +Sometimes Sanford Hunt begged to go with her. Once Todd stalked along +and embarrassed her by being indignant over an anti-socialist orator in +Madison Square. Once, on Fifth Avenue, she met Sam Weintraub, and he +nonchalantly pointed out, in a passing motor, a man whom he declared to +be John D. Rockefeller. + +Even at lunch-hour Una could not come to much understanding with the +girls of the commercial college. They seemed alternately third-rate +stenographers, and very haughty urbanites who knew all about "fellows" +and "shows" and "glad rags." Except for good-natured, square-rigged Miss +Moynihan, and the oldish, anxious, industrious Miss Ingalls, who, like +Una, came from a small town, and the adorably pretty little Miss Moore, +whom you couldn't help loving, Una saw the girls of the school only in a +mass. + +It was Sam Weintraub, J. J. Todd, and Sanford Hunt whom Una watched and +liked, and of whom she thought when the school authorities pompously +invited them all to a dance early in November. + + +Sec. 3 + +The excitement, the giggles, the discussions of girdles and slippers and +hair-waving and men, which filled the study-hall at noon and the +coat-room at closing hour, was like midnight silence compared with the +tumult in Una's breast when she tried to make herself believe that +either her blue satin evening dress or her white-and-pink frock of +"novelty crepe" was attractive enough for the occasion. The crepe was +the older, but she had worn the blue satin so much that now the crepe +suddenly seemed the newer, the less soiled. After discussions with her +mother, which involved much holding up of the crepe and the tracing of +imaginary diagrams with a forefinger, she decided to put a new velvet +girdle and new sleeve ruffles on the crepe, and then she said, "It will +have to do." + +Very different is the dressing of the girl who isn't quite pretty, nor +at all rich, from the luxurious joy which the beautiful woman takes in +her new toilettes. Instead of the faint, shivery wonder as to whether +men will realize how exquisitely the line of a new bodice accentuates +the molding of her neck, the unpretty girl hopes that no one will +observe how unevenly her dress hangs, how pointed and red and rough are +her elbows, how clumsily waved her hair. "I don't think anybody will +notice," she sighs, and is contemptuously conscious of her own stolid, +straight, healthy waist, while her mother flutters about and pretends to +believe that she is curved like a houri, like Helen of Troy, like Isolde +at eighteen. + +Una was touched by her mother's sincere eagerness in trying to make her +pretty. Poor little mother. It had been hard on her to sit alone all day +in a city flat, with no Panama neighbors to drop in on her, no meeting +of the Panama Study Club, and with Una bringing home her books to work +aloof all evening. + +The day before the dance, J. J. Todd dourly asked her if he might call +for her and take her home. Una accepted hesitatingly. As she did so, she +unconsciously glanced at the decorative Sam Weintraub, who was rocking +on his toes and flirting with Miss Moore, the kittenish belle of the +school. + +She must have worried for fifteen minutes over the question of whether +she was going to wear a hat or a scarf, trying to remember the best +social precedents of Panama as laid down by Mrs. Dr. Smith, trying to +recall New York women as she had once or twice seen them in the evening +on Broadway. Finally, she jerked a pale-blue chiffon scarf over her +mildly pretty hair, pulled on her new long, white kid gloves, noted +miserably that the gloves did not quite cover her pebbly elbows, and +snapped at her fussing mother: "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'm a perfect +sight, anyway, so what's the use of worrying!" + +Her mother looked so hurt and bewildered that Una pulled her down into a +chair, and, kneeling on the floor with her arms about her, crooned, "Oh, +I'm just nervous, mumsie dear; working so hard and all. I'll have the +best time, now you've made me so pretty for the dance." Clasped thus, an +intense brooding affection holding them and seeming to fill the shabby +sitting-room, they waited for the coming of her Tristan, her chevalier, +the flat-footed J. J. Todd. + +They heard Todd shamble along the hall. They wriggled with concealed +laughter and held each other tighter when he stopped at the door of the +flat and blew his nervous nose in a tremendous blast.... More vulgar +possibly than the trumpetry which heralded the arrival of Lancelot at a +chateau, but on the whole quite as effective. + +She set out with him, observing his pitiful, home-cleaned, black +sack-suit, and home-shined, expansive, black boots and ready-made tie, +while he talked easily, and was merely rude about dances and clothes and +the weather. + +In the study-hall, which had been cleared of all seats except for a +fringe along the walls, and was unevenly hung with school flags and +patriotic bunting, Una found the empty-headed time-servers, the Little +Folk, to whom she was so superior in the class-room. Brooklyn Jews used +to side-street dance-halls, Bronx girls who went to the bartenders' +ball, and the dinner and grand ball of the Clamchowder Twenty, they +laughed and talked and danced--all three at once--with an ease which +dismayed her. + +To Una Golden, of Panama, the waltz and the two-step were solemn +affairs. She could make her feet go in a one-two-three triangle with +approximate accuracy, if she didn't take any liberties with them. She +was relieved to find that Todd danced with a heavy accuracy which kept +her from stumbling.... But their performance was solemn and joyless, +while by her skipped Sam Weintraub, in evening clothes with black velvet +collar and cuffs, swinging and making fantastic dips with the lovely +Miss Moore, who cuddled into his arms and swayed to his swing. + +"Let's cut out the next," said Todd, and she consented, though Sanford +Hunt came boyishly, blushingly up to ask her for a dance.... She was +intensely aware that she was a wall-flower, in a row with the anxious +Miss Ingalls and the elderly frump, Miss Fisle. Sam Weintraub seemed to +avoid her, and, though she tried to persuade herself that his greasy, +curly, red hair and his pride of evening clothes and sharp face were +blatantly Jewish, she knew that she admired his atmosphere of +gorgeousness and was in despair at being shut out of it. She even feared +that Sanford Hunt hadn't really wanted to dance with her, and she +wilfully ignored his frequent glances of friendliness and his efforts to +introduce her and his "lady friend." She was silent and hard, while poor +Todd, trying not to be a radical and lecture on single-tax or municipal +ownership, attempted to be airy about the theater, which meant the one +show he had seen since he had come to New York. + +From vague dissatisfaction she drifted into an active resentment at +being shut out of the world of pretty things, of clinging gowns and +graceful movement and fragrant rooms. While Todd was taking her home she +was saying to herself over and over, "Nope; it's just as bad as parties +at Panama. Never really enjoyed 'em. I'm out of it. I'll stick to my +work. Oh, drat it!" + + +Sec. 4 + +Blindly, in a daily growing faith in her commercial future, she shut out +the awkward gaieties of the school, ignored Todd and Sanford Hunt and +Sam Weintraub, made no effort to cultivate the adorable Miss Moore's +rather flattering friendliness for her. She was like a girl grind in a +coeducational college who determines to head the class and to that +devotes all of a sexless energy. + +Only Una was not sexless. Though she hadn't the dancing-girl's oblivious +delight in pleasure, though her energetic common sense and willingness +to serve had turned into a durable plodding, Una was alive, normal, +desirous of love, as the flower-faced girl grind of the college so often +is not, to the vast confusion of numerous ardent young gentlemen. + +She could not long forbid herself an interest in Sanford Hunt and Sam +Weintraub; she even idealized Todd as a humble hero, a self-made and +honest man, which he was, though Una considered herself highly +charitable to him. + +Sweet to her--even when he told her that he was engaged, even when it +was evident that he regarded her as an older sister or as a very young +and understanding aunt--was Sanford Hunt's liking. "Why do you like +me--if you do?" she demanded one lunch-hour, when he had brought her a +bar of milk-chocolate. + +"Oh, I dun'no'; you're so darn honest, and you got so much more sense +than this bunch of Bronx totties. Gee! they'll make bum stenogs. I know. +I've worked in an office. They'll keep their gum and a looking-glass in +the upper right-hand drawer of their typewriter desks, and the old man +will call them down eleventy times a day, and they'll marry the +shipping-clerk first time he sneaks out from behind a box. But you got +sense, and somehow--gee! I never know how to express things--glad I'm +taking this English composition stuff--oh, you just seem to understand a +guy. I never liked that Yid Weintraub till you made me see how darn +clever and nice he really is, even if he does wear spats." + +Sanford told her often that he wished she was going to come over to the +Lowry Paint Company to work, when she finished. He had entered the +college before her; he would be through somewhat earlier; he was going +back to the paint company and would try to find an opening for her +there. He wanted her to meet Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, the Manhattan +salesman of the company. + +When Mr. Schwirtz was in that part of town, interviewing the +department-store buyers, he called up Sanford Hunt, and Sanford insisted +that she come out to lunch with Schwirtz and himself and his girl. She +went shyly. + +Sanford's sweetheart proved to be as clean and sweet as himself, but +mute, smiling instead of speaking, inclined to admire every one, without +much discrimination. Sanford was very proud, very eager as host, and his +boyish admiration of all his guests gave a certain charm to the corner +of the crude German sausage-and-schnitzel restaurant where they lunched. +Una worked at making the party as successful as possible, and was +cordial to Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, the paint salesman. + +Mr. Schwirtz was forty or forty-one, a red-faced, clipped-mustached, +derby-hatted average citizen. He was ungrammatical and jocose; he panted +a good deal and gurgled his soup; his nails were ragged-edged, his +stupid brown tie uneven, and there were signs of a growing grossness and +fatty unwieldiness about his neck, his shoulders, his waist. But he was +affable. He quietly helped Sanford in ordering lunch, to the great +economy of embarrassment. He was smilingly ready to explain to Una how a +paint company office was run; what chances there were for a girl. He +seemed to know his business, he didn't gossip, and his heavy, +coarse-lipped smile was almost sweet when he said to Una, "Makes a +hard-cased old widower like me pretty lonely to see this nice kid and +girly here. Eh? Wish I had some children like them myself." + +He wasn't vastly different from Henry Carson, this Mr. Schwirtz, but he +had a mechanical city smartness in his manner and a jocular energy which +the stringy-necked Henry quite lacked. + +Because she liked to be with Sanford Hunt, hoped to get from Mr. Julius +Edward Schwirtz still more of the feeling of how actual business men do +business, she hoped for another lunch. + +But a crisis unexpected and alarming came to interrupt her happy +progress to a knowledge of herself and men. + + +Sec. 5 + +The Goldens had owned no property in Panama, Pennsylvania; they had +rented their house. Captain Lew Golden, who was so urgent in advising +others to purchase real estate--with a small, justifiable commission to +himself--had never quite found time to decide on his own real-estate +investments. When they had come to New York, Una and her mother had +given up the house and sold the heavier furniture, the big beds, the +stove. The rest of the furniture they had brought to the city and +installed in a little flat way up on 148th Street. + +Her mother was, Una declared, so absolutely the lady that it was a +crying shame to think of her immured here in their elevatorless +tenement; this new, clean, barren building of yellow brick, its face +broken out with fire-escapes. It had narrow halls, stairs of slate +treads and iron rails, and cheap wooden doorways which had begun to warp +the minute the structure was finished--and sold. The bright-green burlap +wall-covering in the hallways had faded in less than a year to the color +of dry grass. The janitor grew tired every now and then. He had been +markedly diligent at first, but he was already giving up the task of +keeping the building clean. It was one of, and typical of, a mile of +yellow brick tenements; it was named after an African orchid of great +loveliness, and it was filled with clerks, motormen, probationer +policemen, and enormously prolific women in dressing-sacques. + +The Goldens had three rooms and bath. A small linoleous gas-stove +kitchen. A bedroom with standing wardrobe, iron bed, and just one +graceful piece of furniture--Una's dressing-table; a room pervasively +feminine in its scent and in the little piles of lingerie which Mrs. +Golden affected more, not less, as she grew older. The living-room, with +stiff, brown, woolen brocade chairs, transplanted from their Panama +home, a red plush sofa, two large oak-framed Biblical pictures--"The +Wedding-feast at Cana," and "Solomon in His Temple." This living-room +had never been changed since the day of their moving in. Una repeatedly +coveted the German color-prints she saw in shop windows, but she had to +economize. + +She planned that when she should succeed they would have such an +apartment of white enamel and glass doors and mahogany as she saw +described in the women's magazines. She realized mentally that her +mother must be lonely in the long hours of waiting for her return, but +she who was busy all day could never feel emotionally how great was that +loneliness, and she expected her mother to be satisfied with the future. + +Quite suddenly, a couple of weeks after the dance, when they were +talking about the looming topic--what kind of work Una would be able to +get when she should have completed school--her mother fell violently +a-weeping; sobbed, "Oh, Una baby, I want to go home. I'm so lonely +here--just nobody but you and the Sessionses. Can't we go back to +Panama? You don't seem to really know what you _are_ going to do." + +"Why, mother--" + +Una loved her mother, yet she felt a grim disgust, rather than pity.... +Just when she had been working so hard! And for her mother as much as +for herself.... She stalked over to the table, severely rearranged the +magazines, slammed down a newspaper, and turned, angrily. "Why, can't +you see? I _can't_ give up my work now." + +"Couldn't you get something to do in Panama, dearie?" + +"You know perfectly well that I tried." + +"But maybe now, with your college course and all--even if it took a +little longer to get something there, we'd be right among the folks we +know--" + +"Mother, can't you understand that we have only a little over three +hundred dollars now? If we moved again and everything, we wouldn't have +two hundred dollars to live on. Haven't you _any_ sense of finances?" + +"You must not talk to me that way, my daughter!" + +A slim, fine figure of hurt-dignity, Mrs. Golden left the room, lay down +in the bedroom, her face away from the door where Una stood in +perplexity. Una ran to her, kissed her shoulder, begged for forgiveness. +Her mother patted her cheek, and sobbed, "Oh, it doesn't matter," in a +tone so forlorn and lonely that it did matter, terribly. The sadness of +it tortured Una while she was realizing that her mother had lost all +practical comprehension of the details of life, was become a child, +trusting everything to her daughter, yet retaining a power of suffering +such as no child can know. + +It had been easy to bring her mother here, to start a career. Both of +them had preconceived a life of gaiety and beauty, of charming people +and pictures and concerts. But all those graces were behind a dusty wall +of shorthand and typewriting. Una's struggle in coming to New York had +just begun. + +Gently arbitrary, dearer than ever to Una in her helpless longing for +kindly neighbors and the familiar places, Mrs. Golden went on hoping +that she could persuade Una to go back to Panama. She never seemed to +realize that their capital wasn't increasing as time passed. Sometimes +impatient at her obtuseness, sometimes passionate with comprehending +tenderness, Una devoted herself to her, and Mr. Schwirtz and Sanford +Hunt and Sam Weintraub and Todd faded. She treasured her mother's +happiness at their Christmas dinner with the Sessionses. She encouraged +the Sessionses to come up to the flat as often as they could, and she +lulled her mother to a tolerable calm boredom. Before it was convenient +to think of men again, her school-work was over. + +The commercial college had a graduation once a month. On January 15, +1906, Una finished her course, regretfully said good-by to Sam +Weintraub, and to Sanford Hunt, who had graduated in mid-December, but +had come back for "class commencement"; and at the last moment she +hesitated so long over J. J. Todd's hints about calling some day, that +he was discouraged and turned away. Una glanced about the +study-hall--the first place where she had ever been taken seriously as a +worker--and marched off to her first battle in the war of business. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Sanford Hunt telephoned to Una that he and Mr. Julius Edward +Schwirtz--whom he called "Eddie"--had done their best to find an +"opening" for her in the office of the Lowry Paint Company, but that +there was no chance. + +The commercial college gave her the names of several possible employers, +but they all wanted approximate perfection at approximately nothing a +week. After ten days of panic-stricken waiting at the employment office +of a typewriter company, and answering want advertisements, the +typewriter people sent her to the office of the _Motor and Gas Gazette_, +a weekly magazine for the trade. In this atmosphere of the literature of +lubricating oil and drop forgings and body enamels, as an +eight-dollar-a-week copyist, Una first beheld the drama and romance of +the office world. + + +Sec. 2 + +There is plenty of romance in business. Fine, large, meaningless, +general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take +the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers. + +But in the world of business there is a bewildered new Muse of Romance, +who is clad not in silvery tissue of dreams, but in a neat blue suit +that won't grow too shiny under the sleeves. + +Adventure now, with Una, in the world of business; of offices and jobs +and tired, ordinary people who know such reality of romance as your +masquerading earl, your shoddy Broadway actress, or your rosily amorous +dairy-maid could never imagine. The youths of poetry and of the modern +motor-car fiction make a long diversion of love; while the sleezy-coated +office-man who surprises a look of humanness in the weary eyes of the +office-woman, knows that he must compress all the wonder of madness into +five minutes, because the Chief is prowling about, glancing meaningly at +the little signs that declare, "Your time is your employer's money; +don't steal it." + +A world is this whose noblest vista is composed of desks and +typewriters, filing-cases and insurance calendars, telephones, and the +bald heads of men who believe dreams to be idiotic. Here, no galleon +breasts the sky-line; no explorer in evening clothes makes love to an +heiress. Here ride no rollicking cowboys, nor heroes of the great +European war. It is a world whose crises you cannot comprehend unless +you have learned that the difference between a 2-A pencil and a 2-B +pencil is at least equal to the contrast between London and Tibet; +unless you understand why a normally self-controlled young woman may +have a week of tragic discomfort because she is using a billing-machine +instead of her ordinary correspondence typewriter. The shifting of the +water-cooler from the front office to the packing-room may be an epochal +event to a copyist who apparently has no human existence beyond bending +over a clacking typewriter, who seems to have no home, no family, no +loves; in whom all pride and wonder of life and all transforming drama +seem to be satisfied by the possession of a new V-necked blouse. The +moving of the water-cooler may mean that she must now pass the sentinel +office-manager; that therefore she no longer dares break the incredible +monotony by expeditions to get glasses of water. As a consequence she +gives up the office and marries unhappily. + +A vast, competent, largely useless cosmos of offices. It spends much +energy in causing advertisements of beer and chewing-gum and union suits +and pot-cleansers to spread over the whole landscape. It marches out +ponderous battalions to sell a brass pin. It evokes shoes that are +uncomfortable, hideous, and perishable, and touchingly hopes that all +women will aid the cause of good business by wearing them. It turns +noble valleys into fields for pickles. It compels men whom it has never +seen to toil in distant factories and produce useless wares, which are +never actually brought into the office, but which it nevertheless sells +to the heathen in the Solomon Islands in exchange for commodities whose +very names it does not know; and in order to perform this miracle of +transmutation it keeps stenographers so busy that they change from dewy +girls into tight-lipped spinsters before they discover life. + +The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell +you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing +dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that +they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to +take the air. Efficiency of production they have learned; efficiency of +life they still consider an effeminate hobby. + +An unreasonable world, sacrificing bird-song and tranquil dusk and high +golden noons to selling junk--yet it rules us. And life lives there. The +office is filled with thrills of love and distrust and ambition. Each +alley between desks quivers with secret romance as ceaselessly as a +battle-trench, or a lane in Normandy. + + +Sec. 3 + +Una's first view of the _Motor and Gas Gazette_ was of an overwhelming +mass of desks and files and books, and a confusing, spying crowd of +strange people, among whom the only safe, familiar persons were Miss +Moynihan, the good-natured solid block of girl whom she had known at the +commercial college, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross, the advertising-manager, +who had hired her. Mr. Ross was a poet of business; a squat, nervous +little man, whose hair was cut in a Dutch bang, straight across his +forehead, and who always wore a black bow tie and semi-clerical black +clothes. He had eyed Una amusedly, asked her what was her reaction to +green and crimson posters, and given her a little book by himself, "R U +A Time-clock, Mr. Man?" which, in large and tremendously black type, +related two stories about the youth of Carnegie, and strongly advocated +industry, correspondence schools, and expensive advertising. When Una +entered the office, as a copyist, Mr. S. Herbert Ross turned her over to +the office-manager, and thereafter ignored her; but whenever she saw him +in pompous conference with editors and advertisers she felt proudly that +she knew him. + +The commercial college had trained her to work with a number of people, +as she was now to do in the office; but in the seriousness and savage +continuity of its toil, the office was very different. There was no +let-up; she couldn't shirk for a day or two, as she had done at the +commercial college. It was not so much that she was afraid of losing her +job as that she came to see herself as part of a chain. The others, +beyond, were waiting for her; she mustn't hold them up. That was her +first impression of the office system, that and the insignificance of +herself in the presence of the office-hierarchy--manager above manager +and the Mysterious Owner beyond all. She was alone; once she +transgressed they would crush her. They had no personal interest in her, +none of them, except her classmate, Miss Moynihan, who smiled at her and +went out to lunch with her. + +They two did not dare to sit over parcels of lunch with the curious +other girls. Before fifteen-cent lunches of baked apples, greasy +Napoleons, and cups of coffee, at a cheap restaurant, Miss Moynihan and +she talked about the office-manager, the editors, the strain of copying +all day, and they united in lyric hatred of the lieutenant of the girls, +a satiric young woman who was a wonderful hater. Una had regarded Miss +Moynihan as thick and stupid, but not when she had thought of falling in +love with Charlie Martindale at a dance at Panama, not in her most +fervid hours of comforting her mother, had she been so closely in +sympathy with any human being as she was with Miss Moynihan when they +went over and over the problems of office politics, office favorites, +office rules, office customs. + +The customs were simple: Certain hours for arrival, for lunch, for +leaving; women's retiring-room embarrassedly discovered to be on +the right behind the big safe; water-cooler in the center of the +stenographers' room. But the office prejudices, the taboos, could +not be guessed. They offered you every possible chance of "queering +yourself." Miss Moynihan, on her very first day, discovered, +perspiringly, that you must never mention the _Gazette's_ rival, +the _Internal Combustion News_. The _Gazette's_ attitude was +that the _News_ did not exist--except when the _Gazette_ +wanted the plate of an advertisement which the _News_ was to +forward. You mustn't chew gum in the office; you were to ask favors +of the lieutenant, not of the office-manager; and you mustn't be +friendly with Mr. Bush of the circulation department, nor with Miss +Caldwell, the filing-clerk. Why they were taboo Una never knew; it +was an office convention; they seemed pleasant and proper people +enough. + +She was initiated into the science of office supplies. In the commercial +college the authorities had provided stenographers' note-books and +pencils, and the representatives of typewriter companies had given +lectures on cleaning and oiling typewriters, putting in new ribbons, +adjusting tension-wheels. But Una had not realized how many tools she +had to know---- + +Desks, filing-cabinets, mimeographs, adding-machines, card indexes, desk +calendars, telephone-extensions, adjustable desk-lights. Wire +correspondence-baskets, erasers, carbon paper, type-brushes, dust-rags, +waste-baskets. Pencils, hard and soft, black and blue and red. Pens, +pen-points, backing-sheets, note-books, paper-clips. Mucilage, paste, +stationery; the half-dozen sorts of envelopes and letter-heads. + +Tools were these, as important in her trade as the masthead and black +flag, the cutlasses and crimson sashes, the gold doubloons and damsels +fair of pirate fiction; or the cheese and cream, old horses and +slumberous lanes of rustic comedy. As important, and perhaps to be +deemed as romantic some day; witness the rhapsodic advertisements of +filing-cabinets that are built like battle-ships; of carbon-paper that +is magic-inked and satin-smooth. + +Not as priest or soldier or judge does youth seek honor to-day, but as a +man of offices. The business subaltern, charming and gallant as the +jungle-gallopers of Kipling, drills files, not of troops, but of +correspondence. The artist plays the keys, not of pianos, but of +typewriters. Desks, not decks; courts of office-buildings, not of +palaces--these are the stuff of our latter-day drama. Not through +wolf-haunted forests nor purple canons, but through tiled hallways and +elevators move our heroes of to-day. + +And our heroine is important not because she is an Amazon or a Ramona, +but because she is representative of some millions of women in business, +and because, in a vague but undiscouraged way, she keeps on inquiring +what women in business can do to make human their existence of loveless +routine. + + +Sec. 4 + +Una spent much of her time in copying over and over--a hundred times, +two hundred times--form-letters soliciting advertising, letters too +personal in appearance to be multigraphed. She had lists of +manufacturers of motor-car accessories, of makers of lubricating oils, +of distributors of ball-bearings and speedometers and springs and +carburetors and compositions for water-proofing automobile tops. + +Sometimes she was requisitioned by the editorial department to copy in +form legible for the printer the rough items sent in by outsiders for +publication in the _Gazette_. Una, like most people of Panama, had +believed that there was something artistic about the office of any +publication. One would see editors--wonderful men like grand dukes, +prone to lunch with the President. But there was nothing artistic about +the editorial office of the _Gazette_--several young men in +shirt-sleeves and green celluloid eye-shades, very slangy and +pipe-smelly, and an older man with unpressed trousers and ragged +mustache. Nor was there anything literary in the things that Una copied +for the editorial department; just painfully handwritten accounts of the +meeting of the Southeastern Iowa Auto-dealers' Association; or boasts +about the increased sales of Roadeater Tires, a page originally smartly +typed, but cut and marked up by the editors. + +Lists and letters and items, over and over; sitting at her typewriter +till her shoulder-blades ached and she had to shut her eyes to the blur +of the keys. The racket of office noises all day. The three-o'clock hour +when she felt that she simply could not endure the mill till five +o'clock. No interest in anything she wrote. Then the blessed hour of +release, the stretching of cramped legs, and the blind creeping to the +Subway, the crush in the train, and home to comfort the mother who had +been lonely all day. + +Such was Una's routine in these early months of 1906. After the novelty +of the first week it was all rigidly the same, except that distinct +personalities began to emerge from the mass. + +Especially the personality of Walter Babson. + + +Sec. 5 + +Out of the mist of strange faces, blurred hordes of people who swaggered +up the office aisle so knowingly, and grinned at her when she asked +questions, individualities began to take form: + +Miss Moynihan; the Jewish stenographer with the laughing lips and hot +eyes; the four superior older girls in a corner, the still more superior +girl lieutenant, and the office-manager, who was the least superior of +all; the telephone-girl; the office-boys; Mr. S. Herbert Ross and his +assistant; the managing editor; a motor magnate whose connection was +mysterious; the owner, a courteous, silent, glancing man who was +reported to be hard and "stingy." + +Other people still remained unidentifiable to her, but the office +appeared smaller and less formidable in a month. Out of each nine +square feet of floor space in the office a novel might have been made: +the tale of the managing editor's neurotic wife; the tragedy of Chubby +Hubbard, the stupid young editor who had been a college football star, +then an automobile racer, then a failure. And indeed there was a whole +novel, a story told and retold, in the girls' gossip about each of the +men before whom they were so demure. But it was Walter Babson whom the +girls most discussed and in whom Una found the most interest. + +On her first day in the office she had been startled by an astounding +young man who had come flying past her desk, with his coat off, his +figured waistcoat half open, his red four-in-hand tie askew under a +rolling soft collar. He had dashed up to the office-manager and +demanded, "Say! Say! Nat! Got that Kokomobile description copied for me +yet? Heh? Gawd! you're slow. Got a cigarette?" He went off, puffing out +cigarette smoke, shaking his head and audibly muttering, "Slow bunch, +werry." He seemed to be of Una's own age, or perhaps a year older--a +slender young man with horn-rimmed eye-glasses, curly black hair, and a +trickle of black mustache. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbow, and +Una had a secret, shamed, shivering thrill in the contrast of the +dead-white skin of his thin forearms with the long, thick, soft, black +hairs matted over them. They seemed at once feminine and acidly male. + +"Crazy idiot," she observed, apparently describing herself and the +nervous young man together. But she knew that she wanted to see him +again. + +She discovered that he was prone to such violent appearances; that his +name was Walter Babson; that he was one of the three desk editors under +the managing editor; that the stenographers and office-boys alternately +disapproved of him, because he went on sprees and borrowed money from +anybody in sight, and adored him because he was democratically frank +with them. He was at once a hero, clown, prodigal son, and preacher of +honesty. It was variously said that he was a socialist, an anarchist, +and a believer in an American monarchy, which he was reported as +declaring would "give some color to this flat-faced province of a +country." It was related that he had been "fresh" even to the owner, and +had escaped discharge only by being the quickest worker in the office, +the best handy man at turning motor statistics into lively news-stories. +Una saw that he liked to stand about, bawling to the quizzical S. +Herbert Ross that "this is a hell of a shop to work in--rotten pay and +no _esprit de corps_. I'd quit and free-lance if I could break in with +fiction, but a rotten bunch of log-rollers have got the inside track +with all the magazines and book-publishers." + +"Ever try to write any fiction?" Una once heard S. Herbert retort. + +"No, but Lord! any fool could write better stuff than they publish. It's +all a freeze-out game; editors just accept stuff by their friends." + +In one week Una heard Walter Babson make approximately the same +assertions to three different men, and to whoever in the open office +might care to listen and profit thereby. Then, apparently, he ceased to +hear the call of literature, and he snorted at S. Herbert Ross's stodgy +assistant that he was a wage-slave, and a fool not to form a clerks' +union. In a week or two he was literary again. He dashed down to the +office-manager, poked a sheet of copy-paper at him, and yelped: "Say, +Nat. Read that and tell me just what you think of it. I'm going to put +some literary flavor into the _Gas-bag_ even if it does explode it. +Look--see. I've taken a boost for the Kells Karburetor--rotten lying +boost it is, too--and turned it into this running verse, read it like +prose, pleasant and easy to digest, especially beneficial to children +and S. Herbert Souse, Sherbert Souse, I mean." He rapidly read an +amazing lyric beginning, "Motorists, you hadn't better monkey with the +carburetor, all the racers, all the swells, have equipped their cars +with Kells. We are privileged to announce what will give the trade a +jounce, that the floats have been improved like all motorists would have +loved." + +He broke off and shouted, "Punk last line, but I'll fix it up. Say, +that'll get 'em all going, eh? Say, I bet the Kells people use it in +bill-board ads. all over the country, and maybe sign my name. Ads., why +say, it takes a literary guy to write ads., not a fat-headed +commercialist like S. Charlie Hoss." + +Two days later Una heard Babson come out and lament that the managing +editor didn't like his masterpiece and was going to use the Kells +Karburetor Kompany's original write-up. "That's what you get when you +try to give the _Gas-bag_ some literary flavor--don't appreciate it!" + +She would rather have despised him, except that he stopped by the +office-boys' bench to pull their hair and tell them to read English +dictionaries. And when Miss Moynihan looked dejected, Babson demanded of +her, "What's trouble, girlie? Anybody I can lick for you? Glad to fire +the owner, or anything. Haven't met you yet, but my name is Roosevelt, +and I'm the new janitor," with a hundred other chuckling idiocies, till +Miss Moynihan was happy again. Una warmed to his friendliness, like that +of a tail-wagging little yellow pup. + +And always she craved the touch of his dark, blunt, nervous hands. +Whenever he lighted a cigarette she was startled by his masculine way +of putting out the match and jerking it away from him in one abrupt +motion.... She had never studied male mannerisms before. To Miss Golden +of Panama men had always been "the boys." + +All this time Walter Babson had never spoken to her. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The office-manager came casually up to Una's desk and said, "You haven't +taken any dictation yet, have you?" + +"No, but," with urgent eagerness, "I'd like--I'm quite fast in +stenography." + +"Well, Mr. Babson, in the editorial department, wants to give some +dictation and you might try--" + +Una was so excited that she called herself a silly little fool. She +seized her untouched note-book, her pencils sharpened like lances, and +tried to appear a very mouse of modesty as she marched down the office +to take her first real dictation, to begin her triumphant career.... And +to have Walter Babson, the beloved fool, speak to her. + +It was a cold shock to have to stand waiting behind Babson while he +rummaged in his roll-top desk and apparently tried to pull out his hair. +He looked back at her and blurted, "Oh! You, Miss Golden? They said +you'd take some dictation. Chase those blue-prints off that chair and +sit down. Be ready in a sec." + +While she sat on the edge of the chair Babson yanked out drawers, +plunged his wriggling hands into folders, thrashed through a pile of +papers and letters that over-flowed a wire basket, and even hauled a +dictionary down from the top of the desk and hopefully peered inside the +front cover. All the time he kept up comment at which Una smiled +doubtfully, not quite sure whether it was meant for her or not: + +"Now what the doggone doggonishness did I ever do with those doggone +notes, anyway? I ask you, in the-- Here they-- Nope--" + +At last he found inside a book on motor fuels the wad of copy-paper on +which he had scrawled notes with a broad, soft pencil, and he began to +dictate a short article on air-cooling. Una was terrified lest she be +unable to keep up, but she had read recent numbers of the _Gazette_ +thoroughly, she had practised the symbols for motor technologies, and +she was not troubled by being watched. Indeed, Babson seemed to have +enough to do in keeping his restless spirit from performing the +dismaying feat of leaping straight out of his body. He leaned back in +his revolving desk-chair with a complaining squawk from the spring, he +closed his eyes, put his fingers together piously, then seized the +chair-arms and held them, while he cocked one eye open and squinted at a +large alarm-clock on the desk. He sighed profoundly, bent forward, gazed +at his ankle, and reached forward to scratch it. All this time he was +dictating, now rapidly, now gurgling and grunting while he paused to +find a word. + +"Don't be so _nervous_!" Una wanted to scream at him, and she wanted to +add, "You didn't ask my permission!" when he absently fumbled in a +cigarette-box. + +She didn't like Walter Babson, after all! + +But he stopped after a rhapsody on the divine merits of an air-cooling +system, clawed his billowing black hair, and sighed, "Sounds improbable, +don't it? Must be true, though; it's going to appear in the _Gazette_, +and that's the motor-dealer's bible. If you don't believe it, read the +blurbs we publish about ourselves!" Then he solemnly winked at her and +went on dictating. + +When he had finished he demanded, "Ever take any dictation in this +office before?" + +"No, sir." + +"Ever take any motor dictation at all?" + +"No, sir." + +"Then you'd better read that back to me. Your immejit boss--the +office-manager--is all right, but the secretary of the company is always +pussy-footing around, and if you're ever having any trouble with your +stuff when old plush-ears is in sight, keep on typing fast, no matter +what you put down. Now read me the dope." + +It was approximately correct. He nodded, and, "Good work, little girl," +he said. "You'll get along all right. You get my dictation better than +that agitated antelope Miss Harman does, right now. That's all." + + +Sec. 2 + +So far as anything connected with Walter Babson could be regular, Una +became his regular stenographer, besides keeping up her copying. He was +always rushing out, apologizing for troubling her, sitting on the edge +of her desk, dictating a short letter, and advising her to try his +latest brand of health food, which, this spring, was bran +biscuits--probably combined with highballs and too much coffee. The +other stenographers winked at him, and he teased them about their +coiffures and imaginary sweethearts.... For three days the women's +coat-room boiled with giggles over Babson's declaration that Miss +MacThrostle was engaged to a burglar, and was taking a correspondence +course in engraving in order to decorate her poor dear husband's tools +with birds and poetic mottoes. + +Babson was less jocular with Una than with the bouncing girls who were +natives of Harlem. But he smiled at her, as though they were +understanding friends, and once he said, but quietly, rather +respectfully, "You have nice hair--soft." She lay awake to croon that +to herself, though she denied that she was in love with this eccentric +waster. + +Always Babson kept up his ejaculations and fidgeting. He often accused +himself of shiftlessness and begged her to make sure that he dictated +certain matter before he escaped for the evening. "Come in and bother +the life out of me. Come in every half-hour," he would say. When she did +come in he would crow and chuckle, "Nope. I refuse to be tempted yet; I +am a busy man. But maybe I'll give you those verbal jewels of great +price on your next visitation, oh thou in the vocative--some Latin +scholar, eh? Keep it up, kid; good work. Maybe you'll keep me from being +fired." + +Usually he gave her the dictation before he went. But not always. And +once he disappeared for four days--on a drunk, everybody said, in +excited office gossip. + +During Babson's desertion the managing editor called Una in and +demanded, "Did Mr. Babson give you some copy about the Manning Wind +Shield? No? Will you take a look in his desk for his notes about it?" + +While Una was fumbling for the notes she did not expect to find, she +went through all the agony of the little shawled foreign wife for the +husband who has been arrested. + +"I've got to help you!" she said to _his_ desk, to his bag of Bull +Durham, to his alarm-clock--even to a rather shocking collection of +pictures of chorus-girls and diaphanously-clad dancers which was pasted +inside the double drawer on the right side of the desk. In her great +surge of emotion, she noticed these posturing hussies far less than she +did a little volume of Rosetti, or the overshoes whose worn toes +suddenly revealed to her that Walter Babson, the editor, was not +rich--was not, perhaps, so very much better paid than herself. + +She did not find the notes. She had to go to the managing editor, +trembling, all her good little heart wild with pain. The editor's brows +made a V at her report, and he grunted, "Well--" + +For two days, till Walter Babson returned, she never failed to look up +when the outer door of the office opened. + +She found herself immensely interested in trying to discover, from her +low plane as copyist, just what sort of a position Walter Babson +occupied up among the select souls. Nor was it very difficult. The +editor's stenographer may not appreciate all the subtleties of his wit, +and the refinements of his manner may leave her cold, but she does hear +things, she hears the Big Chief's complaints. + +Una discovered that the owner and the managing editor did not regard +Walter Babson as a permanent prop of the institution; that they would +keep him, at his present salary of twenty-five dollars a week, only till +some one happened in who would do the same work for less money. His +prose was clever but irregular; he wasn't always to be depended upon for +grammar; in everything he was unstable; yet the owner's secretary +reported the owner as saying that some day, if Babson married the right +woman, he would "settle down and make good." + +Una did not dare to make private reservations regarding what "the right +woman" ought to mean in this case, but she burned at the thought of +Walter Babson's marrying, and for an instant she saw quite clearly the +film of soft dark hair that grew just below his sharp cheek-bone. But +she forgot the sweetness of the vision in scorn of herself for even +thinking of marriage with a weakling; scorn of herself for aspiring to +marry a man who regarded her as only a dull stenographer; and a maternal +anxiety over him that was untouched by passion. + +Babson returned to the office, immaculate, a thin, fiery soul. But he +was closeted with the secretary of the company for an hour, and when he +came out his step was slow. He called for Una and dictated articles in a +quiet voice, with no jesting. His hand was unsteady, he smoked +cigarettes constantly, and his eye was an unwholesome yellow. + +She said to him suddenly, a few days later, "Mr. Babson, I'd be glad if +I could take care of any papers or anything for you." + +"Thanks. You might stick these chassis sketches away some place right +now." + +So she was given the chance to keep his desk straight. He turned to her +for everything. + +He said to her, abruptly, one dreary late afternoon of April when she +felt immensely languid and unambitious: "You're going to succeed--unless +you marry some dub. But there's one rule for success--mind you, I don't +follow it myself, I _can't_, but it's a grand old hunch: 'If you want to +get on, always be ready to occupy the job just ahead of you.' Only--what +the devil _is_ the job just ahead of a stenog.? I've been thinking of +you and wondering. What is it?" + +"Honestly, Mr. Babson, I don't know. Here, anyway. Unless it's +lieutenant of the girls." + +"Well--oh, that's just miffle-business, that kind of a job. Well, you'd +better learn to express yourself, anyway. Some time you women folks will +come into your own with both feet. Whenever you get the chance, take my +notes and try to write a better spiel from them than I do.... That won't +be hard, I guess!" + +"I don't know why you are so modest, Mr. Babson. Every girl in the +office thinks you write better than any of the other editors." + +"Yuh--but they don't know. They think that just because I chuck 'em +under the chin. I can't do this technical stuff.... Oh, _Lord_! what an +evening it'll be!... I suppose I'll go to a show. Nice, lonely city, +what?... You come from here?" + +"From Pennsylvania." + +"Got any folks?" + +"My mother is here with me." + +"That's nice. I'll take her and you to some bum two-bit vaudeville show +some night, if you'd like.... Got to show my gratitude to you for +standing my general slovenliness.... Lord! nice evening--dine at a +rotisserie with a newspaper for companion. Well--g' night and g' luck." + +Una surprised her mother, when they were vivisecting the weather after +dinner, by suddenly crying all over the sofa cushions. + +She knew all of Walter Babson's life from those two or three sentences +of his. + + +Sec. 3 + +Francois Villons America has a-plenty. An astonishing number of +Americans with the literary itch do contrive to make a living out of +that affliction. They write motion-picture scenarios and fiction for the +magazines that still regard detective stories as the zenith of original +art. They gather in woman-scented flats to discuss sex, or in +hard-voiced groups to play poker. They seem to find in the creation of +literature very little besides a way of evading regular office hours. +Below this stratum of people so successful that one sometimes sees their +names in print is the yearning band of young men who want to write. Just +to write--not to write anything in particular; not to express any +definite thought, but to be literary, to be Bohemian, to dance with +slim young authoresses of easy morals, and be jolly dogs and free souls. +Some of them are dramatists with unacted dramas; some of them do free +verse which is just as free as the productions of regular licensed +poets. Some of them do short stories--striking, rather biological, very +destructive of conventions. Some of them are ever so handy at all forms; +they are perennial candidates for any job as book-reviewer, dramatic +critic, or manuscript-reader, since they have the naive belief that +these occupations require neither toil nor training, and enable one to +"write on the side." Meanwhile they make their livings as sub-editors on +trade journals, as charity-workers, or as assistants to illiterate +literary agents. + +To this slum of literature Walter Babson belonged. He felt that he was +an author, though none of his poetry had ever been accepted, and though +he had never got beyond the first chapter of any of his novels, nor the +first act of any of his plays (which concerned authors who roughly +resembled Walter Babson). + +He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew +more aware that he hadn't even a dim candle of talent; that he was +ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the +ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices--as soon as he could get control +of his chaotic desires. Literally, he hated himself at times; hated his +own egotism, his treacherous appetite for drink and women and sloth, his +imitative attempts at literature. But no one knew how bitterly he +despised himself, in lonely walks in the rain, in savage pacing about +his furnished room. To others he seemed vigorously conceited, cock-sure, +noisily ready to blame the world for his own failures. + +Walter Babson was born in Kansas. His father was a farmer and +horse-doctor, a heavy drinker, an eccentric who joined every radical +political movement. In a country school, just such a one as Una had +taught, then in high school in a near-by town, Walter had won all the +prizes for essays and debating, and had learned a good deal about +Shakespeare and Caesar and George Washington. Also he had learned a good +deal about drinking beer, smoking manfully, and tempting the giggling +girls who hung about the "deepot." He ran away from high school, and in +the most glorious years of his life worked his way down the Mississippi +and up the Rio Grande, up to Alaska and down to Costa Rica, a butt and +jester for hoboes, sailors, longshoremen, miners, cow-punchers, +lunch-room owners, and proprietors of small newspapers. He learned to +stick type and run a press. He returned to Kansas and worked on a +country newspaper, studying poetry and college-entrance requirements in +the evening. He had, at this time, the not entirely novel idea that "he +ought to be able to make a lot of good fiction out of all his +experiences." Actually, he had no experiences, because he had no +instinct for beauty. The proof is that he read quite solemnly and +reverently a vile little periodical for would-be authors, which reduced +authorship to a way of earning one's living by supplying editors with +cheap but ingenious items to fill space. It put literature on a level +with keeping a five-and-ten-cent store. But Walter conned its pompous +trade journal discussions as to whether the name and address of the +author should be typed on the left or the right side of the first page +of a manuscript; its lively little symposia, by such successful +market-gardeners of literature as Mamie Stuyvesant Blupp and Bill Brown +and Dr. J. F. Fitzneff, on the inspiring subject of whether it paid +better to do filler verse for cheap magazines, or long verse for the big +magazines. At the end, this almost madly idealistic journal gave a list +of wants of editors; the editor of _Lingerie and Laughter_ wanted +"short, snappy stuff with a kick in it; especially good yarns about +models, grisettes, etc." _Wanderlust_ was in the market for "stories +with a punch that appealed to every red-blooded American; nothing about +psychology, problems, Europe, or love wanted." _The Plymouth Rock +Fancier_ announced that it could use "a good, lively rural poem every +week; must be clean and original." + +Pathos there was in all of this; the infinitely little men and women +daring to buy and sell "short, snappy stuff" in this somber and terribly +beautiful world of Balzac and Wells and Turgenieff. And pathos there was +in that wasted year when Walter Babson sought to climb from the +gossiping little prairie town to the grandeur of great capitals by +learning to be an efficient manufacturer of "good, lively rural poems." +He neglected even his college-entrance books, the Ruskin whose clots of +gilt might have trained him to look for real gold, and the stilted Burke +who might have given him a vision of empires and races and social +destinies. And for his pathetic treachery he wasn't even rewarded. His +club-footed verses were always returned with printed rejection slips. + +When at last he barely slid into Jonathan Edwards College, Iowa, Walter +was already becoming discouraged; already getting the habit of blaming +the gods, capitalists, editors, his father, the owner of the country +newspaper on which he had been working, for everything that went wrong. +He yammered destructive theories which would have been as obnoxious to a +genuine fighting revolutionist as they were sacrilegious to his +hard-fisted, earnest, rustic classmates in Jonathan Edwards. For Walter +was not protesting against social injustice. The slavery of +rubber-gatherers in the Putumayo and of sweatshop-workers in New York +did not exist for him. He was protesting because, at the age of twenty, +his name was not appearing in large flattering capitals on the covers of +magazines. + +Yet he was rather amusing; he helped plodding classmates with their +assignments, and he was an active participant in all worthy movements to +raise hell--as they admirably described it. By the end of his Freshman +year he had given up all attempts to be a poet and to extract +nourishment from the college classes, which were as hard and unpalatable +as dried codfish. He got drunk, he vented his energy in noisy meetings +with itinerant _filles de joie_, who were as provincial and rustic, as +bewildered and unfortunate as the wild country boys, who in them found +their only outlet for youth's madness. Walter was abruptly expelled from +college by the one man in the college whom he respected--the saintly +president, who had dreams of a new Harvard on the prairies. + +So Walter Babson found himself at twenty-one an outcast. He +declaimed--though no one would believe him--that all the gentle souls he +had ever encountered were weak; all the virile souls vicious or +suspicious. + +He drifted. He doubted himself, and all the more noisily asserted his +talent and the injustice of the world. He looked clean and energetic and +desirous, but he had nothing on which to focus. He became an active but +careless reporter on newspapers in Wichita, Des Moines, Kansas City, St. +Louis, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Between times he sold +real-estate and insurance and sets of travel books, for he had no pride +of journalism; he wanted to keep going and keep interested and make +money and spend it; he wanted to express himself without trying to find +out what his self was. + +It must be understood that, for all his vices, Walter was essentially +clean and kindly. He rushed into everything, the bad with the good. He +was not rotten with heavy hopelessness; though he was an outcast from +his home, he was never a pariah. Not Walter, but the smug, devilish +cities which took their revenues from saloon-keeping were to blame when +he turned from the intolerable dullness of their streets to the +excitement of alcohol in the saloons and brothels which they made so +much more amusing than their churches and parlors. + +Everywhere in the Western newspaper circles Walter heard stories of +Californians who had gone East and become geniuses the minute they +crossed the Hudson.... Walter also went East and crossed the Hudson, but +he did not become a genius. If there had been an attic to starve in, he +would have starved in one, but as New York has nothing so picturesque, +he starved in furnished rooms instead, while he wrote "special stories" +for Sunday newspapers, and collected jokes for a syndicated humorous +column. He was glad to become managing editor (though he himself was the +only editor he had to manage) of a magazine for stamp-collectors. He +wrote some advertisements for a Broadway dealer in automobile +accessories, read half a dozen books on motors, and brazenly demanded +his present position on the _Motor and Gas Gazette_. + +He was as far from the rarified air of Bohemia (he really believed that +sort of thing) as he had been in Kansas, except that he knew one man who +made five thousand dollars a year by writing stories about lumberjacks, +miners, cow-punchers, and young ladies of quite astounding courage. He +was twenty-seven years old when he met Una Golden. He still read Omar +Khayyam. He had a vague plan of going into real estate. There ought, he +felt, to be money in writing real-estate advertisements. + +He kept falling in love with stenographers and waitresses, with +actresses whom he never met. He was never satisfied. He didn't at all +know what he wanted, but he wanted something stronger than himself. + +He was desperately lonely--a humorous figure who had dared to aspire +beyond the manure-piles of his father's farm; therefore a young man to +be ridiculed. And in his tragic loneliness he waited for the day when he +should find any love, any labor, that should want him enough to seek him +and demand that he sacrifice himself. + + +Sec. 4 + +It was Una's first city spring. + +Save in the squares, where the bourgeoning trees made green-lighted +spaces for noon-time lovers, there was no change; no blossomy stir in +asphalt and cement and brick and steel. Yet everything was changed. +Between the cornices twenty stories above the pavement you could see a +slit of softer sky, and there was a peculiar radiance in just the light +itself, whether it lay along the park turf or made its way down an +air-well to rest on a stolid wall of yellow brick. The river breeze, +flowing so persuasively through streets which had been stormed by dusty +gales, bore happiness. Grind-organs made music for ragged, dancing +children, and old brick buildings smelled warm. Peanut-wagons came out +with a long, shrill whine, locusts of the spring. + +In the office even the most hustling of the great ones became human. +They talked of suburban gardens and of motoring out to country clubs for +tennis. They smiled more readily, and shamelessly said, "I certainly got +the spring fever for fair to-day"; and twice did S. Herbert Ross go off +to play golf all afternoon. The stenographer who commuted--always there +is one girl in the office who commutes--brought spring in the form of +pussy-willows and apple-blossoms, and was noisily envied. + +The windows were open now, and usually some one was speculatively +looking down to the life on the pavement, eight stories below. At +noon-hour the younger girls of the office strolled along the sidewalk in +threes and fours, bareheaded, their arms about one another, their +spring-time lane an irregular course between boxes in front of +loft-buildings; or they ate their box-and-paper-napkin lunches on the +fire-escape that wound down into the court. They gigglingly drew their +skirts about their ankles and flirted with young porters and packers who +leaned from windows across the court. Una sat with them and wished that +she could flirt like the daughters of New York. She listened eagerly to +their talk of gathering violets in Van Cortlandt Park and tramping on +the Palisades. She noted an increased number of excited confidences to +the effect that, "He says to me--" and "I says to him--" and, "Say, gee! +honest, Tess, he's a swell fellow." She caught herself wanting to tramp +the Palisades with--with the Walter Babson who didn't even know her +first name. + +When she left the flat these mornings she forgot her lonely mother +instantly in the treacherous magic of the tender sky, and wanted to run +away, to steal the blue and silver day for her own. But it was gone when +she reached the office--no silver and blue day was here; but, on +golden-oak desk and oak-and-frosted-glass semi-partitions, the same +light as in the winter. Sometimes, if she got out early, a stilly +afterglow of amber and turquoise brought back the spring. But all day +long she merely saw signs that otherwhere, for other people, spring did +exist; and she wistfully trusted in it as she watched and helped Walter +Babson. + +She was conscious that she was working more intimately with him as a +comrade now, not as clerk with executive. There had been no one +illuminating moment of understanding; he was impersonal with her; but +each day their relationship was less of a mechanical routine, more of a +personal friendship. She felt that he really depended on her steady +carefulness; she knew that through the wild tangle of his impulsiveness +she saw a desire to be noble. + + +Sec. 5 + +He came clattering down the aisle of desks to her one May afternoon, and +begged, "Say, Miss Golden, I'm stuck. I got to get out some publicity on +the Governor's good-roads article we're going to publish; want to send +it out to forty papers in advance, and I can't get only a dozen proofs. +And it's got to go off to-night. Can you make me some copies? You can +use onion-skin paper and carbon 'em and make anyway five copies at a +whack. But prob'ly you'd have to stay late. Got anything on to-night? +Could you do it? Could you do it? Could you?" + +"Surely." + +"Well, here's the stuff. Just single-space that introductory spiel at +the top, will you?" + +Una rudely turned out of her typewriter a form-letter which she was +writing for S. Herbert Ross, and began to type Walter's publicity, her +shoulders bent, her eyes intent, oblivious to the steady stream of +gossip which flowed from stenographer to stenographer, no matter how +busy they were. He needed her! She would have stayed till midnight. +While the keys burred under her fingers she was unconsciously telling +herself a story of how she would be working half the night, with the +office still and shadowy, of how a dead-white face would peer through +the window near her desk (difficult of accomplishment, as the window was +eight stories up in air), of how she was to be pursued by a man on the +way home; and how, when she got there, her mother would say, "I just +don't see how you could neglect me like this all evening." All the while +she felt herself in touch with large affairs--an article by the Governor +of the State; these very sheets that she was typing to go to famous +newspapers, to the "thundering presses" of which she had read in +fiction; urgency, affairs, and--doing something for Walter Babson. + +She was still typing swiftly at five-thirty, the closing hour. The +article was long; she had at least two hours of work ahead. Miss +Moynihan came stockily to say good-night. The other stenographers +fluttered out to the elevators. Their corner became oppressively quiet. +The office-manager gently puttered about, bade her good-night, drifted +away. S. Herbert Ross boomed out of his office, explaining the theory of +advertising to a gasoleny man in a pin-checked suit as they waddled to +the elevator. The telephone-girl hurried back to connect up a last call, +frowned while she waited, yanked out the plug, and scuttled away--a +creamy, roe-eyed girl, pretty and unhappy at her harassing job of +connecting nervous talkers all day. Four men, editors and +advertising-men, shouldered out, bawling over a rather feeble joke about +Bill's desire for a drink and their willingness to help him slay the +booze-evil. Una was conscious that they had gone, that walls of silence +were closing about her clacking typewriter. And that Walter Babson had +not gone; that he was sharing with her this whispering forsaken office. + +Presently he came rambling out of the editorial-room. + +He had taken off his grotesque, great horn-rimmed glasses. His eyes were +mutinous in his dark melancholy face; he drew a hand over them and shook +his head. Una was aware of all this in one glance. "Poor, tired boy!" +she thought. + +He sat on the top of the nearest desk, hugged his knee, rocked back and +forth, and said, "Much left, Miss Golden?" + +"I think I'll be through in about two hours." + +"Oh, Lord! I can't let you stay that late." + +"It doesn't matter. Really! I'll be glad. I haven't had to stay late +much." + +For quite the first time he stared straight at her, saw her as a human +being. She was desperately hoping that her hair was smooth and that +there wasn't any blue from the typewriter ribbon daubed on her +cheeks!... He ceased his rocking; appraised her. A part of her brain was +wondering what he would do; a part longing to smile temptingly at him; a +part coldly commanding, "You will not be a little fool--he isn't +interested in you, and you won't try to make him be, either!" + +"Why, you look as fagged as I feel," he said. "I suppose I'm as bad as +the rest. I kick like a steer when the Old Man shoves some extra work on +me, and then I pass the buck and make _you_ stay late. Say! Tell you +what we'll do." Very sweet to her was his "we," and his intimacy of +tone. "I'll start copying, too. I'm quite considerable at +machine-pounding myself, and we can get the thing done and mailed by +six-thirty or so, and then I'll buy you a handsome dinner at Childs's. +Gosh! I'll even blow you to a piece of pie; and I'll shoot you up home +by quarter to eight. Great stuff! Gimme a copy of the drool. Meanwhile +you'll have a whole hour for worried maiden thoughts over going out to +eat with the bad, crazy Wally Babson!" + +His smile was a caress. Her breath caught, she smiled back at him +fearfully. Then he was gone. In the editorial office was heard the +banging of his heavy old typewriter--it was an office joke, Walter's +hammering of the "threshing-machine." + +She began to type again, with mechanical rapidity, not consciously +seeing the copy, so distraught was she as she murmured, "Oh, I oughtn't +to go out with him.... But I will!... What nonsense! Why shouldn't I +have dinner with him.... Oh, I mustn't--I'm a typist and he's a boss.... +But I will!" + +Glancing down the quiet stretches of the office, to the windows looking +to westward, she saw that the sky was a delicate primrose. In a +loft-building rearing out of the low structures between her and the +North River, lights were springing out, and she--who ought to have known +that they marked weary, late-staying people like herself, fancied that +they were the lights of restaurants for gay lovers. She dismissed her +problem, forgot the mother who was waiting with a demand for all of +Una's youth, and settled down to a happy excitement in the prospect of +going out with Walter; of knowing him, of feeling again that smile. + +He came prancing out with his copies of the article before she had +finished. "Some copyist, eh?" he cried. "Say, hustle and finish. Gee! +I've been smoking cigarettes to-day till my mouth tastes like a +fish-market. Want to eat and forget my troubles." + +With her excitement dulled to a matter-of-fact hungriness, she trotted +beside him to a restaurant, one of the string of Vance eating-places, a +food-mill which tried to achieve originality by the use of imitation +rafters, a plate-rack aligned with landscape plates, and varnished black +tables for four instead of the long, marble tables which crowded the +patrons together in most places of the sort. Walter verbosely called her +attention to the mottoes painted on the wood, the individual table +lights in pink shades. "Just forget the eats, Miss Golden, and you can +imagine you're in a regular restaurant. Gosh! this place ought to +reconcile you to dining with the crazy Babson. I can't imagine a liaison +in a place where coffee costs five cents." + +He sounded boisterous, but he took her coat so languidly, he slid so +loosely into his chair, that she burned with desire to soothe away his +office weariness. She forgot all reserve. She burst out: "Why do you +call yourself 'crazy'? Just because you have more energy than anybody +else in the office?" + +"No," he said, grimly, snatching at the menu, "because I haven't any +purpose in the scheme of things." + +Una told herself that she was pleased to see how the scrawny waitress +purred at Walter when he gave his order. Actually she was feeling +resentfully that no saw-voiced, galumphing Amazon of a waitress could +appreciate Walter's smile. + +In a Vance eating-place, ordering a dinner, and getting approximately +what you order, is not a delicate epicurean art, but a matter of +business, and not till an enormous platter of "Vance's Special Ham and +Eggs, Country Style," was slammed down between them, and catsup, +Worcestershire sauce, napkins, more rolls, water, and another fork +severally demanded of the darting waitress, did Walter seem to remember +that this was a romantic dinner with a strange girl, not a deal in +food-supplies. + +His wavering black eyes searched her face. She was agitatedly aware that +her skin was broken out in a small red spot beside her lips; but she +hoped that he would find her forehead clear, her mouth a flower. He +suddenly nodded, as though he had grown used to her and found her +comfortable. While his wreathing hands picked fantastically at a roll +and made crosses with lumps of sugar, his questions probed at that +hidden soul which she herself had never found. It was the first time +that any one had demanded her formula of life, and in her struggle to +express herself she rose into a frankness which Panama circles of +courtship did not regard as proper to young women. + +"What's your ambition?" he blurted. "Going to just plug along and not +get anywhere?" + +"No, I'm not; but it's hard. Women aren't trusted in business, and you +can't count without responsibility. All I can do is keep looking." + +"Go out for suffrage, feminism, so on?" + +"I don't know anything about them. Most women don't know anything about +them--about anything!" + +"Huh! Most _people_ don't! Wouldn't have office-grinding if people did +know anything.... How much training have you had?" + +"Oh, public school, high school, commercial college." + +"Where?" + +"Panama, Pennsylvania." + +"I know. About like my own school in Kansas--the high-school principal +would have been an undertaker if he'd had more capital.... Gee! +principal and capital--might make a real cunning pun out of that if I +worked over it a little. I know.... Go to church?" + +"Why--why, yes, of course." + +"Which god do you favor at present--Unitarian or Catholic or Christian +Science or Seventh-Day Advent?" + +"Why, it's the same--" + +"Now don't spring that 'it's the same God' stuff on me. It isn't the +same God that simply hones for candles and music in an Episcopal Church +and gives the Plymouth Brotherhood a private copyright revelation that +organs and candles are wicked." + +"You're terribly sacrilegious." + +"You don't believe any such thing. Or else you'd lam me--same as they +used to do in the crusades. You don't really care a hang." + +"No, I really don't care!" she was amazed to hear herself admit. + +"Of course, I'm terribly crude and vulgar, but then what else can you be +in dealing with a bunch of churches that haven't half the size or beauty +of farmers' red barns? And yet the dubs go on asserting that they +believe the church is God's house. If I were God, I'd sure object to +being worse housed than the cattle. But, gosh! let's pass that up. If I +started in on what I think of almost anything--churches or schools, or +this lying advertising game--I'd yelp all night, and you could always +answer me that I'm merely a neurotic failure, while the big guns that I +jump on own motor-cars." He stopped his rapid tirade, chucked a lump of +sugar at an interrogative cat which was making the round of the tables, +scowled, and suddenly fired at her: + +"What do you think of me?" + +"You're the kindest person I ever met." + +"Huh? Kind? Good to my mother?" + +"Perhaps. You've made the office happy for me. I really admire you.... I +s'pose I'm terribly unladylike to tell you." + +"Gee whiz!" he marveled. "Got an admirer! And I always thought you were +an uncommonly level-headed girl. Shows how you can fool 'em." + +He smiled at her, directly, rather forlornly, proud of her praise. + +Regardless of other tables, he thrust his arm across, and with the side +of his hand touched the side of hers for a second. Dejectedly he said: +"But why do you like me? I've good intentions; I'm willing to pinch +Tolstoi's laurels right off his grave, and orate like William Jennings +Bryan. And there's a million yearners like me. There ain't a +hall-bedroom boy in New York that wouldn't like to be a genius." + +"I like you because you have fire. Mr. Babson, do you--" + +"Walter!" + +"How premature you are!" + +"Walter!" + +"You'll be calling me 'Una' next, and think how shocked the girls will +be." + +"Oh no. I've quite decided to call you 'Goldie.' Sounds nice and +sentimental. But for heaven's sake go on telling me why you like me. +That isn't a hackneyed subject." + +"Oh, I've never known anybody with _fire_, except maybe S. Herbert Ross, +and he--he--" + +"He blobs around." + +"Yes, something like that. I don't know whether you are ever going to do +anything with your fire, but you do have it, Mr. Babson!" + +"I'll probably get fired with it.... Say, do you read Omar?" + +In nothing do the inarticulate "million hall-room boys who want to be +geniuses," the ordinary, unshaved, not over-bathed, ungrammatical young +men of any American city, so nearly transcend provincialism as in an +enthusiasm over their favorite minor cynic, Elbert Hubbard or John +Kendrick Bangs, or, in Walter Babson's case, Mr. Fitzgerald's variations +on Omar. Una had read Omar as a pretty poem about roses and murmurous +courts, but read him she had; and such was Walter's delight in that fact +that he immediately endowed her with his own ability to enjoy cynicism. +He jabbed at the menu with a fork and glowed and shouted, "Say, isn't it +great, that quatrain about 'Take the cash and let the credit go'?" + +While Una beamed and enjoyed her boy's youthful enthusiasm. Mother of +the race, ancient tribal woman, medieval chatelaine, she was just now; +kin to all the women who, in any age, have clapped their hands to their +men's boasting. + +She agreed with him that "All these guys that pride themselves on being +gentlemen--like in English novels--are jus' the same as the dubs you see +in ordinary life." + +And that it was not too severe an indictment to refer to the +advertising-manager as "S. Herbert Louse." + +And that "the woman feeding by herself over at that corner table looks +mysterious, somehow. Gee! there must be a tragedy in her life." + +But her gratification in being admitted to his enthusiasms was only a +background for her flare when he boldly caught up her white paw and +muttered, "Tired little hand that has to work so hard!" + +She couldn't move; she was afraid to look at him. Clattering restaurant +and smell of roast pork and people about her all dissolved in her +agitation. She shook her head violently to awaken herself, heard herself +say, calmly, "It's terribly late. Don't you think it is?" and knew that +she was arising. But she moved beside him down the street in languor, +wondering in every cell of her etherealized body whether he would touch +her hand again; what he would do. Not till they neared the Subway +station did she, woman, the protector, noting his slow step and dragging +voice, rouse herself to say, "Oh, don't come up in the Subway; I'm used +to it, really!" + +"My dear Goldie, you aren't used to anything in real life. Gee! I said +that snappily, and it don't mean a thing!" he gleefully pointed out. He +seized her arm, which prickled to the touch of his fingers, rushed her +down the Subway steps, and while he bought their tickets they smiled at +each other. + +Several times on the way up he told her that it was a pleasure to have +some one who could "appreciate his honest-t'-God opinions of the +managing editor and S. Herbert Frost." + +The Subway, plunging through unvaried darkness, levitated them from the +district of dark loft-buildings and theater-bound taxicabs to a far-out +Broadway, softened with trees and brightened with small apartment-houses +and little shops. They could see a great feathery space of vernal +darkness down over the Hudson at the end of a street. Steel-bound nature +seemed reaching for them wherever in a vacant lot she could get free and +send out quickening odors of fresh garden soil. + +"Almost country," said Walter. + +An urgent, daring look came into his eyes, under the light-cluster. He +stopped, took her arm. There was an edge of spring madness in his voice +as he demanded, "Wouldn't you like to run away with me to-night? Feel +this breeze on your lips--it's simply plumb-full of mystery. Wouldn't +you like to run away? and we'd tramp the Palisades till dawn and go to +sleep with the May sun glaring down the Hudson. Wouldn't you like to, +wouldn't you?" + +She was conscious that, though his head was passionately thrown back, +his faunlike eyes stared into hers, and that his thin lips arched. +Terribly she wanted to say, "Yes!" Actually, Una Golden of Panama and +the _Gazette_ office speculated, for a tenth of a second, whether she +couldn't go. Madness--river-flow and darkness and the stars! But she +said, "No, I'm afraid we couldn't possibly!" + +"No," he said, slowly. "Of course--of course I didn't mean we _could_; +but--Goldie, little Goldie that wants to live and rule things, wouldn't +you _like_ to go? _Wouldn't_ you?" + +"Yes!... You hurt my arm so!... Oh, don't! We must--" + +Her low cry was an appeal to him to save them from spring's scornful, +lusty demand; every throbbing nerve in her seemed to appeal to him; and +it was not relief, but gratitude, that she felt when he said, tenderly, +"Poor kid!... Which way? Come." They walked soberly toward the Golden +flat, and soberly he mused, "Poor kids, both of us trying to be good +slaves in an office when we want to smash things.... You'll be a +queen--you'll grab the throne same as you grab papers offn my desk. And +maybe you'll let me be court jester." + +"Why do you say I'll--oh, be a queen? Do you mean literally, in +business, an executive?" + +"Hadn't thought just what it did imply, but I suppose it's that." + +"But why, _why_? I'm simply one of a million stenographers." + +"Oh, well, you aren't satisfied to take things just as they're handed to +you. Most people are, and they stick in a rut and wonder who put them +there. All this success business is a mystery--listen to how successful +men trip themselves up and fall all over their foolish faces when they +try to explain to a bunch of nice, clean, young clerks how they stole +their success. But I know you'll get it, because you aren't satisfied +easily--you take my work and do it. And yet you're willing to work in +one corner till it's time to jump. That's my failing--I ain't willing to +stick." + +"I--perhaps---- Here's the flat." + +"Lord!" he cried; "we _got_ to walk a block farther and back." + +"Well--" + +They were stealing onward toward the breeze from the river before she +had finished her "Well." + +"Think of wasting this hypnotizing evening talking of success--word that +means a big house in Yonkers! When we've become friends, Goldie, little +Goldie. Business of souls grabbing for each other! Friends--at least +to-night! Haven't we, dear? haven't we?" + +"Oh, I hope so!" she whispered. + +He drew her hand into his pocket and clasped it there. She looked shyly +down. Strange that her hand should not be visible when she could feel +its palm flame against his. She let it snuggle there, secure.... Mr. +Walter Babson was not a young man with "bad prospects," or "good +prospects"; he was love incarnate in magic warm flesh, and his hand was +the hand of love. She was conscious of his hard-starched cuff pressing +against her bare arm--a man's cuff under the rough surface of his man's +coat-sleeve. + +He brought her back to the vestibule of the flat. For a moment he held +both her arms at the elbow and looked at her, while with a panic fear +she wondered why she could not move--wondered if he were going to kiss +her. + +He withdrew his hands, sighed, "Good-night, Goldie. I won't be lonely +to-night!" and turned abruptly away. + +Through all of Mrs. Golden's long, sobbing queries as to why Una had +left her alone all evening Una was patient. For she knew that she had +ahead of her a quiet moment when she would stand alone with the god of +love and pray to him to keep her boy, her mad boy, Walter. + +While she heard her voice crisply explaining, "Why, you see, mother +dear, I simply had to get some work done for the office--" Una was +telling herself, "Some day he _will_ kiss me, and I'm _not_ sorry he +didn't to-night--not now any more I'm not.... It's so strange--I like to +have him touch me, and I simply never could stand other men touching +me!... I wonder if he's excited now, too? I wonder what he's doing.... +Oh, I'm glad, glad I loved his hands!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +"I never thought a nice girl could be in love with a man who is bad, and +I s'pose Walter is bad. Kind of. But maybe he'll become good." + +So Una simple-heartedly reflected on her way to the Subway next morning. +She could not picture what he would do, now that it was hard, dry day +again, and all the world panted through dusty streets. And she +recklessly didn't care. For Walter was not hard and dry and dusty; and +she was going to see him again! Sometimes she was timorous about seeing +him, because he had read the longing in her face, had known her soul +with its garments thrown away. But, timorous or not, she had to see him; +she would never let him go, now that he had made her care for him. + +Walter was not in sight when she entered the offices, and she was +instantly swept into the routine. Not clasping hands beguiled her, but +lists to copy, typing errors to erase, and the irritating adjustment of +a shift-key which fiendishly kept falling. For two hours she did not see +him. + +About ten-thirty she was aware that he was prosaically strolling toward +her. + +Hundreds of times, in secret maiden speculations about love, the girl +Una had surmised that it would be embarrassing to meet a man the morning +after you had yielded to his caress. It had been perplexing--one of +those mysteries of love over which virgins brood between chapters of +novels, of which they diffidently whisper to other girls when young +married friends are amazingly going to have a baby. But she found it +natural to smile up at Walter.... In this varnished, daytime office +neither of them admitted their madness of meeting hands. + +He merely stooped over her desk and said, sketchily, "Mornin', little +Goldie." + +Then for hours he seemed to avoid her. She was afraid. Most of all, +afraid of her own desire to go to him and wail that he was avoiding her. + +At three o'clock, when the office tribe accept with naive gratitude any +excuse to talk, to stop and tell one another a new joke, to rush to the +window and critically view a parade, Una saw that Walter was beginning +to hover near her. She was angry that he did not come straight to her. +He did not seem quite to know whether he wanted her or not. But her face +was calm above her typing while she watched him peer at her over the +shoulder of S. Herbert Ross, to whom he was talking. He drew nearer to +her. He examined a poster. She was oblivious of him. She was conscious +that he was trying to find an excuse to say something without openly +admitting to the ever-spying row of stenographers that he was interested +in her. He wambled up to her at last and asked for a letter she had +filed for him. She knew from the casual-looking drop of his eyes that he +was peering at the triangle of her clear-skinned throat, and for his +peeping uneasiness she rather despised him. She could fancy herself +shouting at him, "Oh, stop fidgeting! Make up your mind whether you like +me or not, and hurry up about it. I don't care now." + +In which secret defiance she was able to luxuriate--since he was still +in the office, not gone from her forever!--till five o'clock, when the +detached young men of offices are wont to face another evening of +lonely irrelevancy, and desperately begin to reach for companionship. + +At that hour Walter rushed up and begged, "Goldie, you _must_ come out +with me this evening." + +"I'm sorry, but it's so late--" + +"Oh, I know. Gee! if you knew how I've been thinking about you all day! +I've been wondering if I ought to-- I'm no good; blooming waster, I told +myself; and I wondered if I had any right to try to make you care; +but-- Oh, you _must_ come, Goldie!" + +Una's pride steeled her. A woman can forgive any vice of man more +readily than she can forgive his not loving her so unhesitatingly that +he will demand her without stopping to think of his vices. Refusal to +sacrifice the beloved is not a virtue in youth. + +Una said, clearly, "I am sorry, but I can't possibly this evening." + +"Well--wish you could," he sighed. + +As he moved away Una reveled in having refused his half-hearted +invitation, but already she was aware that she would regret it. She was +shaken with woman's fiercely possessive clinging to love. + +The light on one side of her desk was shut off by the bulky presence of +Miss Moynihan. She whispered, huskily, "Say, Miss Golden, you want to +watch out for that Babson fellow. He acts like he was stuck on you. Say, +listen; everybody says he's a bad one. Say, listen, honest; they say +he'd compromise a lady jus' soon as not." + +"Why, I don't know what you mean." + +"Oh no, like fun you don't--him rubbering at you all day and +pussy-footing around!" + +"Why, you're perfectly crazy! He was merely asking me about some +papers--" + +"Oh yes, sure! Lemme tell you, a lady can't be none too careful about +her reputation with one of them skinny, dark devils like a Dago snooping +around." + +"Why, you're absolutely ridiculous! Besides, how do you know Mr. Babson +is bad? Has he ever hurt anybody in the office?" + +"No, but they say--" + +"'They say'!" + +"Now don't you go and get peeved after you and me been such good +friends, Miss Golden. I don't know that this Babson fellow ever done +anything worse than eat cracker-jack at South Beach, but I was just +telling you what they all say--how he drinks and goes with a lot of +totties and all; but--but he's all right if you say so, and--honest t' +Gawd, Miss Golden, listen, honest, I wouldn't knock him for nothing if I +thought he was your fellow! And," in admiration, "and him an editor! +Gee!" + +Una tried to see herself as a princess forgiving her honest servitor. +But, as a matter of fact, she was plain angry that her romance should be +dragged into the nastiness of office gossip. She resented being a +stenographer, one who couldn't withdraw into a place for dreams. And she +fierily defended Walter in her mind; throbbed with a big, sweet pity for +her nervous, aspiring boy whose quest for splendor made him seem wild to +the fools about them. + +When, just at five-thirty, Walter charged up to her again, she met him +with a smile of unrestrained intimacy. + +"If you're going to be home at _all_ this evening, let me come up just +for fifteen minutes!" he demanded. + +"Yes!" she said, breathlessly. "Oh, I oughtn't to, but--come up at +nine." + + +Sec. 2 + +Una had always mechanically liked children; had ejaculated, "Oh, the +pink little darling!" over each neighborhood infant; had pictured +children of her own; but never till that night had the desire to feel +her own baby's head against her breast been a passion. After dinner she +sat on the stoop of her apartment-house, watching the children at play +between motors on the street. + +"Oh, it would be wonderful to have a baby--a boy like Walter must have +been--to nurse and pet and cry over!" she declared, as she watched a +baby of faint, brown ringlets--hair that would be black like Walter's. +Later she chided herself for being so bold, so un-Panamanian; but she +was proud to know that she could long for the pressure of a baby's lips. +The brick-walled street echoed with jagged cries of children; tired +women in mussed waists poked their red, steamy necks out of windows; the +sky was a blur of gray; and, lest she forget the job, Una's left wrist +ached from typing; yet she heard the rustle of spring, and her spirit +swelled with thankfulness as she felt her life to be not a haphazard +series of days, but a divine progress. + +Walter was coming--to-night! + +She was conscious of her mother, up-stairs. From her place of meditation +she had to crawl up the many steps to the flat and answer at least +twenty questions as to what she had been doing. Of Walter's coming she +could say nothing; she could not admit her interest in a man she did not +know. + +At a quarter to nine she ventured to say, ever so casually: "I feel sort +of headachy. I think I'll run down and sit on the steps again and get a +little fresh air." + +"Let's have a little walk. I'd like some fresh air, too," said Mrs. +Golden, brightly. + +"Why--oh--to tell the truth, I wanted to think over some office +business." + +"Oh, of course, my dear, if I am in the _way_--!" Mrs. Golden sighed, +and trailed pitifully off into the bedroom. + +Una followed her, and wanted to comfort her. But she could say nothing, +because she was palpitating over Walter's coming. The fifteen minutes of +his stay might hold any splendor. + +She could not change her clothes. Her mother was in the bedroom, +sobbing. + +All the way down the four flights of stairs she wanted to flee back to +her mother. It was with a cold impatience that she finally saw Walter +approach the house, ten minutes late. He was so grotesque in his +frantic, puffing hurry. He was no longer the brilliant Mr. Babson, but a +moist young man who hemmed and sputtered, "Gee!--couldn't find clean +collar--hustled m' head off--just missed Subway express--couldn't make +it--whew, I'm hot!" + +"It doesn't matter," she condescended. + +He dropped on the step just below her and mopped his forehead. Neither +of them could say anything. He took off his horn-rimmed eye-glasses, +carefully inserted the point of a pencil through the loop, swung them in +a buzzing circle, and started to put them on again. + +"Oh, keep them _off_!" she snapped. "You look so high-brow with them!" + +"Y-yuh; why, s-sure!" + +She felt very superior. + +He feverishly ran a finger along the upper rim of his left ear, sprang +up, stooped to take her hand, glared into her eyes till she shrank--and +then a nail-cleaner, a common, ten-cent file, fell out of his inner +pocket and clinked on the stone step. + +"Oh, damn!" he groaned. + +"I really think it _is_ going to rain," she said. + +They both laughed. + +He plumped down beside her, uncomfortably wedged between her and the +rail. He caught her hand, intertwined their fingers so savagely that +her knuckles hurt. "Look here," he commanded, "you don't really think +it's going to rain any such a darn thing! I've come fourteen billion hot +miles up here for just fifteen minutes--yes, and you wanted to see me +yourself, too! And now you want to talk about the history of recent +rains." + +In the bitter-sweet spell of his clasp she was oblivious of street, +children, sky. She tried to withdraw her hand, but he squeezed her +fingers the more closely and their two hands dropped on her thin knee, +which tingled to the impact. + +"But--but what did you want to see me about?" Her superiority was burnt +away. + +He answered her hesitation with a trembling demand. "I can't talk to you +here! Can't we go some place-- Come walk toward the river." + +"Oh, I daren't really, Walter. My mother feels so--so fidgety to-night +and I must go back to her.... By and by." + +"But would you like to go with me?" + +"Yes!" + +"Then that's all that matters!" + +"Perhaps--perhaps we could go up on the roof here for just a few +minutes. Then I must send you home." + +"Hooray! Come on." + +He boldly lifted her to her feet, followed her up the stairs. On the +last dark flight, near the roof, he threw both arms about her and kissed +her. She was amazed that she did not want to kiss him back, that his +abandon did not stir her. Even while she was shocked and afraid, he +kissed again, and she gave way to his kiss; her cold mouth grew +desirous. + +She broke away, with shocked pride--shocked most of all at herself, that +she let him kiss her thus. + +"You quiver so to my kiss!" he whispered, in awe. + +"I don't!" she denied. "It just doesn't mean anything." + +"It does, and you know it does. I had to kiss you. Oh, sweetheart, +sweetheart, we are both so lonely! Kiss me." + +"No, no!" She held him away from her. + +"Yes, I tell you!" + +She encircled his neck with her arm, laid her cheek beside his chin, +rejoiced boundlessly in the man roughness of his chin, of his +coat-sleeve, the man scent of him--scent of tobacco and soap and hair. +She opened her lips to his. Slowly she drew her arm from about his neck, +his arm from about her waist. + +"Walter!" she mourned, "I did want you. But you must be good to me--not +kiss me like that--not now, anyway, when I'm lonely for you and can't +resist you.... Oh, it wasn't wrong, was it, when we needed each other +so? It wasn't wrong, was it?" + +"Oh no--no!" + +"But not--not again--not for a long while. I want you to respect me. +Maybe it wasn't wrong, dear, but it was terribly dangerous. Come, let's +stand out in the cool air on the roof for a while and then you must go +home." + +They came out on the flat, graveled roof, round which all the glory of +the city was blazing, and hand in hand, in a confidence delicately happy +now, stood worshiping the spring. + +"Dear," he said, "I feel as though I were a robber who had gone crashing +right through the hedge around your soul, and then after that come out +in a garden--the sweetest, coolest garden.... I _will_ try to be good to +you--and for you." He kissed her finger-tips. + +"Yes, you did break through. At first it was just a kiss and the--oh, it +was _the_ kiss, and there wasn't anything else. Oh, do let me live in +the little garden still." + +"Trust me, dear." + +"I will trust you. Come. I must go down now." + +"Can I come to see you?" + +"Yes." + +"Goldie, listen," he said, as they came down-stairs to her hallway. "Any +time you'd like to marry me--I don't advise it, I guess I'd have good +intentions, but be a darn poor hand at putting up shelves--but any time +you'd like to marry me, or any of those nice conventional things, just +lemme know, will you? Not that it matters much. What matters is, I want +to kiss you good-night." + +"No, what matters is, I'm not going to let you!... Not to-night.... +Good-night, dear." + +She scampered down the hall. She tiptoed into the living-room, and for +an hour she brooded, felt faint and ashamed at her bold response to his +kiss, yet wanted to feel his sharp-ridged lips again. Sometimes in a +bitter frankness she told herself that Walter had never even thought of +marriage till their kiss had fired him. She swore to herself that she +would not give all her heart to love; that she would hold him off and +make him value her precious little store of purity and tenderness. But +passion and worry together were lost in a prayer for him. She knelt by +the window till her own individuality was merged with that of the city's +million lovers. + + +Sec. 3 + +Like sickness and war, the office grind absorbs all personal desires. +Love and ambition and wisdom it turns to its own purposes. Every day Una +and Walter saw each other. Their hands touched as he gave her papers to +file; there was affection in his voice when he dictated, and once, +outside the office door, he kissed her. Yet their love was kept +suspended. They could not tease each other and flirt raucously, like the +telephone-girl and the elevator-starter. + +Every day he begged her to go to dinner with him, to let him call at the +flat, and after a week she permitted him to come. + + +Sec. 4 + +At dinner, when Una told her mother that a young gentleman at the +office--in fact, Mr. Babson, the editor whose dictation she took--was +going to call that evening, Mrs. Golden looked pleased, and said: "Isn't +that nice! Why, you never told mother he was interested in you!" + +"Well, of course, we kind of work together--" + +"I do hope he's a nice, respectful young man, not one of these city +people that flirt and drink cocktails and heaven knows what all!" + +"Why, uh--I'm sure you'll like him. Everybody says he's the cleverest +fellow in the shop." + +"Office, dear, not shop.... Is he-- Does he get a big salary?" + +"Why, mums, I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea! How should I know?" + +"Well, I just asked.... Will you put on your pink-and-white crepe?" + +"Don't you think the brown silk would be better?" + +"Why, Una, I want you to look your prettiest! You must make all the +impression you can." + +"Well, perhaps I'd better," Una said, demurely. + +Despite her provincial training, Mrs. Golden had a much better instinct +for dress than her sturdy daughter. So long as she was not left at home +alone, her mild selfishness did not make her want to interfere with +Una's interests. She ah'd and oh'd over the torn border of Una's crepe +dress, and mended it with quick, pussy-like movements of her fingers. +She tried to arrange Una's hair so that its pale golden texture would +shine in broad, loose undulations, and she was as excited as Una when +they heard Walter's bouncing steps in the hall, his nervous tap at the +door, his fumbling for a push-button. + +Una dashed wildly to the bedroom for a last nose-powdering, a last +glance at her hair and nails, and slowly paraded to the door to let him +in, while Mrs. Golden stood primly, with folded hands, like a cabinet +photograph of 1885. + +So the irregular Walter came into a decidedly regular atmosphere and had +to act like a pure-minded young editor. + +They conversed--Lord! how they conversed! Mrs. Golden respectably +desired to know Mr. Babson's opinions on the weather, New-Yorkers, her +little girl Una's work, fashionable city ministers, the practical value +of motor-cars, and the dietetic value of beans--the large, white beans, +not the small, brown ones--she had grown both varieties in her garden at +home (Panama, Pennsylvania, when Mr. Golden, Captain Golden he was +usually called, was alive)--and had Mr. Babson ever had a garden, or +seen Panama? And was Una _really_ attending to her duties? + +All the while Mrs. Golden's canary trilled approval of the conversation. + +Una listened, numbed, while Walter kept doing absurd things with his +face--pinched his lips and tapped his teeth and rubbed his jaw as though +he needed a shave. He took off his eye-glasses to wipe them and tied +his thin legs in a knot, and all the while said, "Yes, there's +certainly a great deal to that." + +At a quarter to ten Mrs. Golden rose, indulged in a little kitten yawn +behind her silvery hand, and said: "Well, I think I must be off to +bed.... I find these May days so languid. Don't you, Mr. Babson? Spring +fever. I just can't seem to get enough sleep.... Now you mustn't stay up +_too_ late, Una dear." + +The bedroom door had not closed before Walter had darted from his chair, +picked Una up, his hands pressing tight about her knees and shoulders, +kissed her, and set her down beside him on the couch. + +"Wasn't I good, huh? Wasn't I good, huh? Wasn't I? Now who says Wally +Babson ain't a good parlor-pup, huh? Oh, you old darling, you were twice +as agonized as me!" + +And that was all he said--in words. Between them was a secret, a greater +feeling of unfettered intimacy, because together they had been polite to +mother--tragic, pitiful mother, who had been enjoying herself so much +without knowing that she was in the way. That intimacy needed no words +to express it; hands and cheeks and lips spoke more truly. They were +children of emotion, young and crude and ignorant, groping for life and +love, all the world new to them, despite their sorrows and waiting. They +were clerklings, not lords of love and life, but all the more easily did +they yield to longing for happiness. Between them was the battle of +desire and timidity--and not all the desire was his, not hers all the +timidity. She fancied sometimes that he was as much afraid as was she of +debasing their shy seeking into unveiled passion. Yet his was the +initiative; always she panted and wondered what he would do next, feared +and wondered and rebuked--and desired. + +He abruptly drew her head to his shoulder, smoothed her hair. She felt +his fingers again communicate to her every nerve a tingling electric +force. She felt his lips quest along her cheek and discover the soft +little spot just behind her ear. She followed the restless course of his +hands across her shoulders, down her arm, lingeringly over her hand. His +hand seemed to her to have an existence quite apart from him, to have a +mysterious existence of its own. In silence they rested there. She kept +wondering if his shoulder had not been made just for her cheek. With +little shivers she realized that this was his shoulder, Walter's, a +man's, as the rough cloth prickled her skin. Silent they were, and for a +time secure, but she kept speculating as to what he would dare to do +next--and she fancied that he was speculating about precisely the same +thing. + +He drew a catching breath, and suddenly her lips were opening to his. + +"Oh, you mustn't--you promised--" she moaned, when she was able to draw +back her head. + +Again he kissed her, quickly, then released her and began to talk +rapidly of--nothing. Apropos of offices and theaters and the tides of +spring, he was really telling her that, powerful though his restless +curiosity was, greatly though their poor little city bodies craved each +other, yet he did respect her. She scarce listened, for at first she was +bemused by two thoughts. She was inquiring sorrowfully whether it was +only her body that stirred him--whether he found any spark in her honest +little mind. And, for her second thought, she was considering in an +injured way that this was not love as she had read of it in novels. "I +didn't know just what it would be--but I didn't think it would be like +this," she declared. + +Love, as depicted in such American novels by literary pastors and +matrons of perfect purity as had sifted into the Panama public library, +was an affair of astounding rescues from extreme peril, of highly proper +walks in lanes, of laudable industry on the part of the hero, and of not +more than three kisses--one on the brow, one on the cheek, and, in the +very last paragraph of the book, one daringly but reverently deposited +upon the lips. These young heroes and heroines never thought about +bodies at all, except when they had been deceived in a field of +asterisks. So to Una there was the world-old shock at the earthiness of +love--and the penetrating joy of that earthiness. If real love was so +much more vulgar than she had supposed, yet also it was so much more +overwhelming that she was glad to be a flesh-and-blood lover, bruised +and bewildered and estranged from herself, instead of a polite murmurer. + +Gradually she was drawn back into a real communion with him when he +damned the human race for serfs fighting in a dungeon, warring for land, +for flags, for titles, and calling themselves kings. Walter took the +same theories of socialism, single-tax, unionism, which J. J. Todd, of +Chatham, had hacked out in commercial-college days, and he made them +bleed and yawp and be hotly human. For the first time--Walter was giving +her so many of those First Times of life!--Una realized how strong is +the demand of the undermen for a conscious and scientific justice. She +denied that stenographers could ever form a union, but she could not +answer his acerb, "Why not?" + +It was not in the patiently marching Una to be a creative thinker, yet +she did hunger for self-mastery, and ardently was she following the +erratic gibes at civilization with which young Walter showed his delight +in having an audience, when the brown, homely Golden family clock struck +eleven. + +"Heavens!" she cried. "You must run home at once. Good-night, dear." + +He rose obediently, nor did their lips demand each other again. + +Her mother awoke to yawn. "He is a very polite young man, but I don't +think he is solid enough for you, dearie. If he comes again, do remind +me to show him the kodaks of your father, like I promised." + +Then Una began to ponder the problem which is so weighty to girls of the +city--where she could see her lover, since the parks were impolite and +her own home obtrusively dull to him. + +Whether Walter was a peril or not, whether or not his love was angry and +red and full of hurts, yet she knew that it was more to her than her +mother or her conventions or her ambitious little job. Thus gladly +confessing, she fell asleep, and a new office day began, for always the +office claims one again the moment that the evening's freedom is over. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +These children of the city, where there is no place for love-making, for +discovering and testing each other's hidden beings, ran off together in +the scanted parties of the ambitious poor. Walter was extravagant +financially as he was mentally, but he had many debts, some conscience, +and a smallness of salary. She was pleased by the smallest diversions, +however, and found luxury in a bowl of chop-suey. He took her to an +Italian restaurant and pointed out supposititious artists. They had +gallery seats for a Maude Adams play, at which she cried and laughed +whole-heartedly and held his hand all through. Her first real tea was +with him--in Panama one spoke of "ladies' afternoon tea," not of "tea." +She was awed by his new walking-stick and the new knowledge of cinnamon +toast which he displayed for her. She admired, too, the bored way he +swung his stick as they sauntered into and out of the lobbies of the +great hotels. + +The first flowers from a real florist's which she had ever received, +except for a bunch of carnations from Henry Carson at Panama high-school +commencement, came from Walter--long-stemmed roses in damp paper and a +florist's box, with Walter's card inside. + +And perhaps the first time that she had ever really seen spring, felt +the intense light of sky and cloud and fresh greenery as her own, was on +a Sunday just before the fragrant first of June, when Walter and she +slipped away from her mother and walked in Central Park, shabby but +unconscious. + +She explored with him, too; felt adventurous in quite respectable +Japanese and Greek and Syrian restaurants. + +But her mother waited for her at home, and the job, the office, the +desk, demanded all her energy. + +Had they seen each other less frequently, perhaps Walter would have let +dreams serve for real kisses, and have been satisfied. But he saw her a +hundred times a day--and yet their love progressed so little. The +propinquity of the office tantalized them. And Mrs. Golden kept them +apart. + + +Sec. 2 + +The woman who had aspired and been idle while Captain Golden had toiled +for her, who had mourned and been idle while Una had planned for her, +and who had always been a compound of selfishness and love, was more and +more accustomed to taking her daughter's youth to feed her comfort and +her canary--a bird of atrophied voice and uncleanly habit. + +If this were the history of the people who wait at home, instead of the +history of the warriors, rich credit would be given to Mrs. Golden for +enduring the long, lonely days, listening for Una's step. A proud, +patient woman with nothing to do all day but pick at a little housework, +and read her eyes out, and wish that she could run in and be neighborly +with the indifferent urbanites who formed about her a wall of ice. Yet +so confused are human purposes that this good woman who adored her +daughter also sapped her daughter's vigor. As the office loomed behind +all of Una's desires, so behind the office, in turn, was ever the +shadowy thought of the appealing figure there at home; and toward her +mother Una was very compassionate. + +Yes, and so was her mother! + +Mrs. Golden liked to sit soft and read stories of young love. Partly by +nature and partly because she had learned that thus she could best +obtain her wishes, she was gentle as a well-filled cat and delicate as a +tulle scarf. She was admiringly adhesive to Una as she had been to +Captain Golden, and she managed the new master of the house just as she +had managed the former one. She listened to dictates pleasantly, was +perfectly charmed at suggestions that she do anything, and then +gracefully forgot. + +Mrs. Golden was a mistress of graceful forgetting. Almost never did she +remember to do anything she didn't want to do. She did not lie about it; +she really and quite beautifully did forget. + +Una, hurrying off to the office every morning, agonized with the effort +to be on time, always had to stop and prepare a written list of the +things her mother was to do. Otherwise, bespelled by the magazine +stories which she kept forgetting and innocently rereading, Mrs. Golden +would forget the marketing, forget to put the potatoes on to boil, +forget to scrub the bathroom.... And she often contrived to lose the +written list, and searched for it, with trembling lips but no vast +persistence. + +Una, bringing home the palsying weariness of the day's drudgery, would +find a cheery welcome--and the work not done; no vegetables for dinner, +no fresh boric-acid solution prepared for washing her stinging eyes. + +Nor could Una herself get the work immediately out of the way, because +her mother was sure to be lonely, to need comforting before Una could +devote herself to anything else or even wash away the sticky office +grime.... Mrs. Golden would have been shocked into a stroke could she +have known that while Una was greeting her, she was muttering within +herself, "I do wish I could brush my teeth first!" + +If Una was distraught, desirous of disappearing in order to get hold of +herself, Mrs. Golden would sigh, "Dear, have I done something to make +you angry?" In any case, whether Una was silent or vexed with her, the +mother would manage to be hurt but brave; sweetly distressed, but never +quite tearful. And Una would have to kiss her, pat her hair, before she +could escape and begin to get dinner (with her mother helping, always +ready to do anything that Una's doggedly tired mind might suggest, but +never suggesting novelties herself). + +After dinner, Mrs. Golden was always ready to do whatever Una wished--to +play cribbage, or read aloud, or go for a walk--not a _long_ walk; she +was so delicate, you know, but a nice _little_ walk with her dear, dear +daughter.... For such amusements she was ready to give up all her own +favorite evening diversions--namely, playing solitaire, and reading and +taking nice little walks.... But she did not like to have Una go out and +leave her, nor have naughty, naughty men like Walter take Una to the +theater, as though they wanted to steal the dear daughter away. And she +wore Una's few good frocks, and forgot to freshen them in time for Una +to wear them. Otherwise, Mrs. Golden had the unselfishness of a saint on +a marble pillar. + +Una, it is true, sometimes voiced her irritation over her mother's +forgetfulness and her subsequent pathos, but for that bitterness she +always blamed herself, with horror remembered each cutting word she had +said to the Little Mother Saint (as, in still hours when they sat +clasped like lovers, she tremblingly called her). + + +Sec. 3 + +Mrs. Golden's demand of Una for herself had never been obvious till it +clashed with Walter's demand. + +Una and Walter talked it over, but they seemed mutely to agree, after +the evening of Mrs. Golden and conversation, that it was merely balking +for him to call at the flat. Nor did Una and Mrs. Golden discuss why Mr. +Babson did not come again, or whether Una was seeing him. Una was +accustomed to say only that she would be "away this evening," but over +the teapot she quoted Walter's opinions on Omar, agnosticism, motor +magazines, pipe-smoking, Staten Island, and the Himalayas, and it was +evident that she was often with him. + +Mrs. Golden's method of opposition was very simple. Whenever Una +announced that she was going out, her mother's bright, birdlike eyes +filmed over; she sighed and hesitated, "Shall I be alone all +evening--after all day, too?" Una felt like a brute. She tried to get +her mother to go to the Sessionses' flat more often, to make new +friends, but Mrs. Golden had lost all her adaptability. She clung to Una +and to her old furniture as the only recognizable parts of her world. +Often Una felt forced to refuse Walter's invitations; always she refused +to walk with him on the long, splendid Saturday afternoons of freedom. +Nor would she let him come and sit on the roof with her, lest her mother +see them in the hall and be hurt. + +So it came to pass that only in public did she meet Walter. He showed +his resentment by inviting her out less and less, by telling her less +and less frankly his ambitions and his daily dabs at becoming a great +man. Apparently he was rather interested in a flour-faced actress at +his boarding-house. + +Never, now, did he speak of marriage. The one time when he had spoken of +it, Una had been so sure of their happiness that she had thought no more +of that formality than had his reckless self. But now she yearned to +have him "propose," in the most stupid, conventional, pink-romance +fashion. "Why can't we be married?" she fancied herself saying to him, +but she never dared say it aloud. + +Often he was abstracted when he was with her, in the office or out. +Always he was kindly, but the kindliness seemed artificial. She could +not read his thoughts, now that she had no hand-clasp to guide her. + +On a hot, quivering afternoon of early July, Walter came to her desk at +closing-hour and said, abruptly: "Look. You've simply _got_ to come out +with me this evening. We'll dine at a little place at the foot of the +Palisades. I can't stand seeing you so little. I won't ask you again! +You aren't fair." + +"Oh, I don't mean to be unfair--" + +"Will you come? Will you?" + +His voice glared. Regardless of the office folk about them, he put his +hand over hers. She was sure that Miss Moynihan was bulkily watching +them. She dared not take time to think. + +"Yes," she said, "I will go." + + +Sec. 4 + +It was a beer-garden frequented by yachtless German yachtsmen in +shirt-sleeves, boating-caps, and mustaches like muffs, but to Una it was +Europe and the banks of the Rhine, that restaurant below the Palisades +where she dined with Walter. + +A placid hour it was, as dusk grew deeper and more fragrant, and they +leaned over the terrace rail to meditate on the lights springing out +like laughing jests incarnate--reflected lights of steamers paddling +with singing excursionists up the Hudson to the storied hills of Rip Van +Winkle; imperial sweeps of fire that outlined the mighty city across the +river. + +Walter was at peace. He spared her his swart intensity; he shyly quoted +Tennyson, and bounced with cynicisms about "Sherbert Souse" and "the +_Gas-bag_." He brought happiness to her, instead of the agitation of his +kisses. + +She was not an office machine now, but one with the village lovers of +poetry, as her job-exhaustion found relief in the magic of the hour, in +the ancient music of the river, in breezes which brought old tales down +from the Catskills. + +She would have been content to sit there for hours, listening to the +twilight, absently pleating the coarse table-cloth, trying to sip the +saline claret which he insisted on their drinking. She wanted nothing +more.... And she had so manoeuvered their chairs that the left side of +her face, the better side, was toward him! + +But Walter grew restless. He stared at the German yachtsmen, at their +children who ate lumps of sugar dipped in claret, and their wives who +drank beer. He commented needlessly on a cat which prowled along the +terrace rail. He touched Una's foot with his, and suddenly condemned +himself for not having been able to bring her to a better restaurant. He +volubly pointed out that their roast chicken had been petrified--"vile +restaurant, very vile food." + +"Why, I love it here!" she protested. "I'm perfectly happy to be just +like this." + +As she turned to him with a smile that told all her tenderness, she +noted how his eyes kept stealing from the riverside to her, and back +again, how his hands trembled as he clapped two thick glass salt-shakers +together. A current of uneasiness darted between them. + +He sprang up. "Oh, I can't sit still!" he said. "Come on. Let's walk +down along the river." + +"Oh, can't we just sit here and be quiet?" she pleaded, but he rubbed +his chin and shook his head and sputtered: "Oh, rats, you can't see the +river, now that they've turned on the electric lights here. Come on. +Besides, it'll be cooler right by the river." + +She felt a menace; the darkness beyond them was no longer dreaming, but +terror-filled. She wanted to refuse, but he was so fretfully demanding +that she could only obey him. + +Up on the crest of the Palisades is an "amusement park," and suburbs and +crowded paths; and across the river is New York, in a solid mass of +apartment-houses; but between Palisades and river, at the foot of the +cliffs, is an unfrequented path which still keeps some of the wildness +it had when it was a war-path of the Indians. It climbs ridges, twists +among rocks, dips into damp hollows, widens out into tiny bowling-greens +for Hendrik Hudson's fairy men. By night it is ghostly, and beside it +the river whispers strange tragedies. + +Along this path the city children crept, unspeaking, save when his two +hands, clasping her waist to guide her down a rocky descent, were +clamorous. + +Where a bare sand jetty ran from the path out into the river's broad +current, Walter stopped and whispered, "I wish we could go swimming." + +"I wish we could--it's quite warm," she said, prosaically. + +But river and dark woods and breeze overhead seemed to whisper to +her--whisper, whisper, all the shrouded night aquiver with low, eager +whispers. She shivered to find herself imagining the unimaginable--that +she might throw off her stodgy office clothes, her dull cloth skirt and +neat blouse, and go swimming beside him, revel in giving herself up to +the utter frankness of cool water laving her bare flesh. + +She closed her mind. She did not condemn herself for wanting to bathe as +Mother Eve had bathed, naked and unafraid. She did not condemn +herself--but neither did she excuse. She was simply afraid. She dared +not try to make new standards; she took refuge in the old standards of +the good little Una. Though all about her called the enticing voices of +night and the river, yet she listened for the tried counsel voices of +the plain Panama streets and the busy office. + +While she struggled, Walter stood with his arm fitted about her +shoulder, letting the pregnant silence speak, till again he insisted: +"Why couldn't we go swimming?" Then, with all the cruelly urgent lovers +of the days of hungry poetry: "We're going to let youth go by and never +dare to be mad. Time will get us--we'll be old--it will be too late to +enjoy being mad." His lyric cry dropped to a small-boy excuse: "Besides, +it wouldn't hurt.... Come on. Think of plunging in." + +"No, no, no, no!" she cried, and ran from him up the jetty, back to the +path.... She was not afraid of him, because she was so much more afraid +of herself. + +He followed sullenly as the path led them farther and farther. She +stopped on a rise, and found herself able to say, calmly, "Don't you +think we'd better go back now?" + +"Maybe we ought to. But sit down here." + +He hunched up his knees, rested his elbows on them, and said, +abstractedly, apparently talking to himself as much as to her: + +"I'm sorry I've been so grouchy coming down the path. But I _don't_ +apologize for wanting us to go swimming. Civilization, the world's +office-manager, tells us to work like fiends all day and be lonely and +respectable all evening, and not even marry till we're thirty, because +we can't afford to! That's all right for them as likes to become nice +varnished desks, but not for me! I'm going to hunger and thirst and +satisfy my appetites--even if it makes me selfish as the devil. I'd +rather be that than be a bran-stuffed automaton that's never human +enough to hunger. But of course you're naturally a Puritan and always +will be one, no matter what you do. You're a good sort-- I'd trust you to +the limit--you're sincere and you want to grow. But me--my Wanderjahr +isn't over yet. Maybe some time we'll again-- I admire you, but--if I +weren't a little mad I'd go literally mad.... Mad--mad!" + +He suddenly undid the first button of her blouse and kissed her neck +harshly, while she watched him, in a maze. He abruptly fastened the +button again, sprang up, stared out at the wraith-filled darkness over +the river, while his voice droned on, as though it were a third person +speaking: + +"I suppose there's a million cases a year in New York of crazy young +chaps making violent love to decent girls and withdrawing because they +have some hidden decency themselves. I'm ashamed that I'm one of +them--me, I'm as bad as a nice little Y. M. C. A. boy--I bow to +conventions, too. Lordy! the fact that I'm so old-fashioned as even to +talk about 'conventions' in this age of Shaw and d'Annunzio shows that +I'm still a small-town, district-school radical! I'm really as +mid-Victorian as you are, in knowledge. Only I'm modern by instinct, and +the combination will always keep me half-baked, I suppose. I don't know +what I want from life, and if I did I wouldn't know how to get it. I'm a +Middle Western farmer, and yet I regard myself about half the time as an +Oxford man with a training in Paris. You're lucky, girl. You have a +definite ambition--either to be married and have babies or to boss an +office. Whatever I did, I'd spoil you--at least I would till I found +myself--found out what I wanted.... _Lord!_ how I hope I do find myself +some day!" + +"Poor boy!" she suddenly interrupted; "it's all right. Come, we'll go +home and try to be good." + +"Wonderful! There speaks the American woman, perfectly. You think I'm +just chattering. You can't understand that I was never so desperately in +earnest in my life. Well, to come down to cases. Specification A--I +couldn't marry you, because we haven't either of us got any money--aside +from my not having found myself yet. Ditto B--We can't play, just +because you _are_ a Puritan and I'm a typical intellectual climber. Same +C--I've actually been offered a decent job in the advertising department +of a motor-car company in Omaha, and now I think I'll take it." + +And that was all that he really had to say, just that last sentence, +though for more than an hour they discussed themselves and their +uncharted world, Walter trying to be honest, yet to leave with her a +better impression of himself; Una trying to keep him with her. It was +hard for her to understand that Walter really meant all he said. + +But, like him, she was frank. + +There are times in any perplexed love when the lovers revel in bringing +out just those problems and demands and complaints which they have most +carefully concealed. At such a time of mutual confession, if the lovers +are honest and tender, there is none of the abrasive hostility of a +vulgar quarrel. But the kindliness of the review need not imply that it +is profitable; often it ends, as it began, with the wail, "What can we +do?" But so much alike are all the tribe of lovers, that the debaters +never fail to stop now and then to congratulate themselves on being so +frank! + +Thus Una and Walter, after a careful survey of the facts that he was too +restless, that she was too Panamanian and too much mothered, after much +argument as to what he had meant when he had said this, and what she had +thought he meant when he had said that, and whether he could ever have +been so inconsiderate as to have said the other, and frequent admiration +of themselves for their open-mindedness, the questing lovers were of the +same purpose as at the beginning of their inquiry. He still felt the +urge to take up his pilgrimage again, to let the "decent job" and Omaha +carry him another stage in his search for the shrouded gods of his +nebulous faith. And she still begged for a chance to love, to be needed; +still declared that he was merely running away from himself. + +They had quite talked themselves out before he sighed: "I don't dare to +look and see what time it is. Come, we'll have to go." + +They swung arms together shyly as they stumbled back over the path. She +couldn't believe that he really would go off to the West, of which she +was so ignorant. But she felt as though she were staggering into a +darkness blinder and ever more blind. + +When she got home she found her mother awake, very angry over Una's +staying out till after midnight, and very wordy about the fact that +"that nice, clean young man," Mr. J. J. Todd, of Chatham and of the +commercial college, had come to call that evening. Una made little +answer to her. Through her still and sacred agony she could scarce hear +her mother's petulant whining. + + +Sec. 5 + +Next morning at the office, Walter abruptly asked her to come out into +the hall, told her that he was leaving without notice that afternoon. He +could never bear to delay, once he had started out on the "Long Trail," +he said, not looking at her. He hastily kissed her, and darted back into +the office. She did not see him again till, at five-thirty, he gave +noisy farewell to all the adoring stenographers and office-boys, and +ironical congratulations to his disapproving chiefs. He stopped at her +desk, hesitated noticeably, then said, "Good-by, Goldie," and passed on. +She stared, hypnotized, as, for the last time, Walter went bouncing out +of the office. + + +Sec. 6 + +A week later J. J. Todd called on her again. He was touching in his +description of his faithful labor for the Charity Organization Society. +But she felt dead; she could not get herself to show approval. It was +his last call. + + +Sec. 7 + +Walter wrote to her on the train--a jumbled rhapsody on missing her +honest companionship. Then a lively description of his new chief at +Omaha. A lonely letter on a barren evening, saying that there was +nothing to say. A note about a new project of going to Alaska. She did +not hear from him again. + + +Sec. 8 + +For weeks she missed him so tragically that she found herself muttering +over and over, "Now I sha'n't ever have a baby that would be a little +image of him." + +When she thought of the shy games and silly love-words she had lavished, +she was ashamed, and wondered if they had made her seem a fool to him. + +But presently in the week's unchanging routine she found an untroubled +peace; and in mastering her work she had more comfort than ever in his +clamorous summons. + +At home she tried not merely to keep her mother from being lonely, but +actually to make her happy, to coax her to break into the formidable +city. She arranged summer-evening picnics with the Sessionses. + +She persuaded them to hold one of these picnics at the foot of the +Palisades. During it she disappeared for nearly half an hour. She sat +alone by the river. Suddenly, with a feverish wrench, she bared her +breast, then shook her head angrily, rearranged her blouse, went back to +the group, and was unusually gay, though all the while she kept her left +hand on her breast, as though it pained her. + +She had been with the _Gazette_ for only a little over six months, and +she was granted only a week's vacation. This she spent with her mother +at Panama. In parties with old neighbors she found sweetness, and on a +motor-trip with Henry Carson and his fiancee, a young widow, she let the +fleeting sun-flecked land absorb her soul. + +At the office Una was transferred to S. Herbert Ross's department, upon +Walter's leaving. She sometimes took S. Herbert's majestic, flowing +dictation. She tried not merely to obey his instructions, but also to +discover his unvoiced wishes. Her wage was raised from eight dollars a +week to ten. She again determined to be a real business woman. She read +a small manual on advertising. + +But no one in the _Gazette_ office believed that a woman could bear +responsibilities, not even S. Herbert Ross, with his aphorisms for +stenographers, his prose poems about the ecstatic joy of running a +typewriter nine hours a day, which appeared in large, juicy-looking type +in business magazines. + +She became bored, mechanical, somewhat hopeless. She planned to find a +better job and resign. In which frame of mind she was rather +contemptuous of the _Gazette_ office; and it was an unforgettable shock +suddenly to be discharged. + +Ross called her in, on a winter afternoon, told her that he had orders +from the owner to "reduce the force," because of a "change of policy," +and that, though he was sorry, he would have to "let her go because she +was one of the most recent additions." He assured her royally that he +had been pleased by her work; that he would be glad to give her "the +best kind of a recommend--and if the situation loosens up again, I'd be +tickled to death to have you drop in and see me. Just between us, I +think the owner will regret this tight-wad policy." + +But Mr. S. Herbert Ross continued to go out to lunch with the owner, and +Una went through all the agony of not being wanted even in the prison +she hated. No matter what the reason, being discharged is the final +insult in an office, and it made her timid as she began wildly to seek a +new job. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +In novels and plays architects usually are delicate young men who wear +silky Vandyke beards, play the piano, and do a good deal with pictures +and rugs. They leap with desire to erect charming cottages for the poor, +and to win prize contests for the Jackson County Courthouse. They always +have good taste; they are perfectly mad about simplicity and +gracefulness. But from the number of flat-faced houses and three-toned +wooden churches still being erected, it may be deduced that somewhere +there are architects who are not enervated by too much good taste. + +Mr. Troy Wilkins, architect, with an office in the Septimus Building, +was a commuter. He wore a derby and a clipped mustache, and took +interest in cameras, player-pianos, phonographs, small motor-cars, +speedometers, tires, patent nicotineless pipes, jolly tobacco for +jimmy-pipes, tennis-rackets, correspondence courses, safety-razors, +optimism, Theodore Roosevelt, pocket flashlights, rubber heels, and all +other well-advertised wares. He was a conservative Republican and a +Congregationalist, and on his desk he kept three silver-framed +photographs--one of his wife and two children, one of his dog Rover, and +one of his architectural masterpiece, the mansion of Peter B. Reardon, +the copper king of Montana. + +Mr. Troy Wilkins lamented the passing of the solid and expensive stone +residences of the nineties, but he kept "up to date," and he had added +ideals about half-timbered villas, doorway settles, garages, and +sleeping-porches to his repertoire. He didn't, however, as he often +said, "believe in bungalows any more than he believed in these labor +unions." + + +Sec. 2 + +Una Golden had been the chief of Mr. Troy Wilkins's two stenographers +for seven months now--midsummer of 1907, when she was twenty-six. She +had climbed to thirteen dollars a week. The few hundred dollars which +she had received from Captain Golden's insurance were gone, and her +mother and she had to make a science of saving--economize on milk, on +bread, on laundry, on tooth-paste. But that didn't really matter, +because Una never went out except for walks and moving-picture shows, +with her mother. She had no need, no want of clothes to impress +suitors.... She had four worn letters from Walter Babson which she +re-read every week or two; she had her mother and, always, her job. + + +Sec. 3 + +Una, an errand-boy, and a young East-Side Jewish stenographer named +Bessie Kraker made up the office force of Troy Wilkins. The office was +on the eighth floor of the Septimus Building, which is a lean, +jerry-built, flashingly pretentious cement structure with cracking walls +and dirty, tiled hallways. + +The smeary, red-gold paint which hides the imperfect ironwork of its +elevators does not hide the fact that they groan like lost souls, and +tremble and jerk and threaten to fall. The Septimus Building is typical +of at least one half of a large city. It was "run up" by a speculative +builder for a "quick turn-over." It is semi-fire-proof, but more semi +than fire-proof. It stands on Nassau Street, between two portly stone +buildings that try to squeeze this lanky impostor to death, but there is +more cheerful whistling in its hallways than in the halls of its +disapproving neighbors. Near it is City Hall Park and Newspaper Row, +Wall Street and the lordly Stock Exchange, but, aside from a few dull +and honest tenants like Mr. Troy Wilkins, the Septimus Building is +filled with offices of fly-by-night companies--shifty promoters, +mining-concerns, beauty-parlors for petty brokers, sample-shoe shops, +discreet lawyers, and advertising dentists. Seven desks in one large +room make up the entire headquarters of eleven international +corporations, which possess, as capital, eleven hundred and thirty +dollars, much embossed stationery--and the seven desks. These modest +capitalists do not lease their quarters by the year. They are doing very +well if they pay rent for each of four successive months. But also they +do not complain about repairs; they are not fussy about demanding a +certificate of moral perfection from the janitor. They speak cheerily to +elevator-boys and slink off into saloons. Not all of them keep Yom +Kippur; they all talk of being "broad-minded." + +Mr. Wilkins's office was small and agitated. It consisted of two rooms +and an insignificant entry-hall, in which last was a water-cooler, a +postal scale, a pile of newspapers, and a morose office-boy who drew +copies of Gibson girls all day long on stray pieces of wrapping-paper, +and confided to Una, at least once a week, that he wanted to take a +correspondence course in window-dressing. In one of the two rooms Mr. +Wilkins cautiously made drawings at a long table, or looked surprised +over correspondence at a small old-fashioned desk, or puffed and +scratched as he planned form-letters to save his steadily waning +business. + +In the other room there were the correspondence-files, and the desks of +Una, the chief stenographer, and of slangy East-Side Bessie Kraker, who +conscientiously copied form-letters, including all errors in them, and +couldn't, as Wilkins complainingly pointed out, be trusted with +dictation which included any words more difficult than "sincerely." + +From their window the two girls could see the windows of an office +across the street. About once a month an interesting curly-haired youth +leaned out of one of the windows opposite. Otherwise there was no view. + + +Sec. 4 + +Twelve o'clock, the hour at which most of the offices closed on Saturday +in summer, was excitedly approaching. The office-women throughout the +Septimus Building, who had been showing off their holiday frocks all +morning, were hastily finishing letters, or rushing to the women's +wash-rooms to discuss with one another the hang of new skirts. All +morning Bessie Kraker had kept up a monologue, beginning, "Say, lis-ten, +Miss Golden, say, gee! I was goin' down to South Beach with my gentleman +friend this afternoon, and, say, what d'you think the piker had to go +and get stuck for? He's got to work all afternoon. I don't care--I don't +care! I'm going to Coney Island with Sadie, and I bet you we pick up +some fellows and do the light fantastic till one G. M. Oh, you sad sea +waves! I bet Sadie and me make 'em sad!" + +"But we'll be straight," said Bessie, half an hour later, apropos of +nothing. "But gee! it's fierce to not have any good times without you +take a risk. But gee! my dad would kill me if I went wrong. He reads +the Talmud all the time, and hates Goys. But gee! I can't stand it all +the time being a mollycoddle. I wisht I was a boy! I'd be a' aviator." + +Bessie had a proud new blouse with a deep V, the edges of which gaped a +bit and suggested that by ingenuity one could see more than was evident +at first. Troy Wilkins, while pretending to be absent-mindedly fussing +about a correspondence-file that morning, had forgotten that he was much +married and had peered at the V. Una knew it, and the sordidness of that +curiosity so embarrassed her that she stopped typing to clutch at the +throat of her own high-necked blouse, her heart throbbing. She wanted to +run away. She had a vague desire to "help" Bessie, who purred at poor, +good Mr. Wilkins and winked at Una and chewed gum enjoyably, who was +brave and hardy and perfectly able to care for herself--an organism +modified by the Ghetto to the life which still bewildered Una. + +Mr. Wilkins went home at 11.17, after giving them enough work to last +till noon. The office-boy chattily disappeared two minutes later, while +Bessie went two minutes after that. Her delay was due to the adjustment +of her huge straw hat, piled with pink roses and tufts of blue malines. + +Una stayed till twelve. Her ambition had solidified into an unreasoning +conscientiousness. + +With Bessie gone, the office was so quiet that she hesitated to +typewrite lest They sneak up on her--They who dwell in silent offices as +They dwell beneath a small boy's bed at night. The hush was +intimidating; her slightest movement echoed; she stopped the sharply +tapping machine after every few words to listen. + +At twelve she put on her hat with two jabs of the hat-pins, and hastened +to the elevator, exulting in freedom. The elevator was crowded with +girls in new white frocks, voluble about their afternoon's plans. One of +them carried a wicker suit-case. She was, she announced, starting on her +two weeks' vacation; there would be some boys, and she was going to have +"a peach of a time." + +Una and her mother had again spent a week of June in Panama, and she now +recalled the bright, free mornings and lingering, wonderful twilights. + +She had no place to go this holiday afternoon, and she longed to join a +noisy, excited party. Of Walter Babson she did not think. She stubbornly +determined to snatch this time of freedom. Why, of course, she asserted, +she could play by herself quite happily! With a spurious gaiety she +patted her small black hand-bag. She skipped across to the Sixth Avenue +Elevated and went up to the department-store district. She made +elaborate plans for the great adventure of shopping. Bessie Kraker had +insisted, with the nonchalant shrillness of eighteen, that Una "had +ought to wear more color"; and Una had found, in the fashion section of +a woman's magazine, the suggestion for exactly the thing--"a modest, +attractive frock of brown, with smart touches of orange"--and +economical. She had the dress planned--ribbon-belt half brown and half +orange, a collar edged with orange, cuffs slashed with it. + +There were a score of mild matter-of-fact Unas on the same Elevated +train with her, in their black hats and black jackets and black skirts +and white waists, with one hint of coquetry in a white-lace jabot or a +white-lace veil; faces slightly sallow or channeled with care, but eyes +that longed to flare with love; women whom life didn't want except to +type its letters about invoices of rubber heels; women who would have +given their salvation for the chance to sacrifice themselves for +love.... And there was one man on that Elevated train, a well-bathed +man with cynical eyes, who read a little book with a florid gold cover, +all about Clytemnestra, because he was certain that modern cities have +no fine romance, no high tragedy; that you must go back to the Greeks +for real feeling. He often aphorized, "Frightfully hackneyed to say, +'woman's place is in the home,' but really, you know, these women going +to offices, vulgarizing all their fine womanliness, and this shrieking +sisterhood going in for suffrage and Lord knows what. Give me the +reticences of the harem rather than one of these office-women with +gum-chewing vacuities. None of them clever enough to be tragic!" He was +ever so whimsical about the way in which the suffrage movement had +cheated him of the chance to find a "_grande amoureuse_." He sat +opposite Una in the train and solemnly read his golden book. He did not +see Una watch with shy desire every movement of a baby that was talking +to its mother in some unknown dialect of baby-land. He was feeling deep +sensations about Clytemnestra's misfortunes--though he controlled his +features in the most gentlemanly manner, and rose composedly at his +station, letting a well-bred glance of pity fall upon the gum-chewers. + +Una found a marvelously clean, new restaurant on Sixth Avenue, with lace +curtains at the window and, between the curtains, a red geranium in a +pot covered with red-crepe paper tied with green ribbon. A new place! +She was tired of the office, the Elevated, the flat on 148th Street, the +restaurants where she tediously had her week-day lunches. She entered +the new restaurant briskly, swinging her black bag. The place had +Personality--the white enameled tables were set diagonally and clothed +with strips of Japanese toweling. Una smiled at a lively photograph of +two bunnies in a basket. With a sensation of freedom and novelty she +ordered coffee, chicken patty, and cocoanut layer-cake. + +But the patty and the cake were very much like the hundreds of other +patties and cakes which she had consumed during the past two years, and +the people about her were of the horde of lonely workers who make up +half of New York. The holiday enchantment dissolved. She might as well +be going back to the office grind after lunch! She brooded, while +outside, in that seething summer street, the pageant of life passed by +and no voice summoned her. Men and girls and motors, people who laughed +and waged commerce for the reward of love--they passed her by, life +passed her by, a spectator untouched by joy or noble tragedy, a woman +desperately hungry for life. + +She began--but not bitterly, she was a good little thing, you know--to +make the old familiar summary. She had no lover, no friend, no future. +Walter--he might be dead, or married. Her mother and the office, between +them, left her no time to seek lover or friend or success. She was a +prisoner of affection and conscience. + +She rose and paid her check. She did not glance at the picture of the +bunnies in a basket. She passed out heavily, a woman of sterile sorrow. + + +Sec. 5 + +Una recovered her holiday by going shopping. An aisle-man in the +dress-goods department, a magnificent creature in a braided +morning-coat, directed her to the counter she asked for, spoke +eloquently of woolen voiles, picked up her bag, and remarked, "Yes, we +do manage to keep it cool here, even on the hottest days." A shop-girl +laughed with her. She stole into one of the elevators, and, though she +really should have gone home to her mother, she went into the music +department, where, among lattices wreathed with newly dusted roses, she +listened to waltzes and two-steps played by a red-haired girl who was +chewing gum and talking to a man while she played. The music roused Una +to plan a wild dissipation. She would pretend that she had a sweetheart, +that with him she was a-roving. + +Una was not highly successful in her make-believe. She could not picture +the imaginary man who walked beside her. She refused to permit him to +resemble Walter Babson, and he refused to resemble anybody else. But she +was throbbingly sure he was there as she entered a drug-store and bought +a "Berline bonbon," a confection guaranteed to increase the chronic +nervous indigestion from which stenographers suffer. Her shadow lover +tried to hold her hand. She snatched it away and blushed. She fancied +that a matron at the next tiny table was watching her silly play, +reflected in the enormous mirror behind the marble soda-counter. The +lover vanished. As she left the drug-store Una was pretending that she +was still pretending, but found it difficult to feel so very +exhilarated. + +She permitted herself to go to a motion-picture show. She looked over +all the posters in front of the theater, and a train-wreck, a seaside +love-scene, a detective drama, all invited her. + +A man in the seat in front of her in the theater nestled toward his +sweetheart and harshly muttered, "Oh you old honey!" In the red light +from the globe marking an exit she saw his huge red hand, with its +thicket of little golden hairs, creep toward the hand of the girl. + +Una longed for a love-scene on the motion-picture screen. + +The old, slow familiar pain of congestion in the back of her neck came +back. But she forgot the pain when the love-scene did appear, in a +picture of a lake shore with a hotel porch, the flat sheen of +photographed water, rushing boats, and a young hero with wavy black +hair, who dived for the lady and bore her out when she fell out of a +reasonably safe boat. The actor's wet, white flannels clung tight about +his massive legs; he threw back his head with masculine arrogance, then +kissed the lady. Una was dizzy with that kiss. She was shrinking before +Walter's lips again. She could feel her respectable, typewriter-hardened +fingers stroke the actor's swarthy, virile jaw. She gasped with the +vividness of the feeling. She was shocked at herself; told herself she +was not being "nice"; looked guiltily about; but passionately she called +for the presence of her vague, imaginary lover. + +"Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!" she whispered, with a terrible +cloistered sweetness--whispered to love itself. + +Deliberately ignoring the mother who waited at home, she determined to +spend a riotous evening going to a real theater, a real play. That is, +if she could get a fifty-cent seat. + +She could not. + +"It's been exciting, running away, even if I can't go to the theater," +Una comforted herself. "I'll go down to Lady Sessions's this evening. +I'll pack mother off to bed. I'll take the Sessionses up some ice-cream, +and we'll have a jolly time.... Mother won't care if I go. Or maybe +she'll come with me"--knowing all the while that her mother would not +come, and decidedly would care if Una deserted her. + +However negligible her mother seemed from down-town, she loomed gigantic +as Una approached their flat and assured herself that she was glad to be +returning to the dear one. + +The flat was on the fifth floor. + +It was a dizzying climb--particularly on this hot afternoon. + + +Sec. 6 + +As Una began to trudge up the flat-sounding slate treads she discovered +that her head was aching as though some one were pinching the top of her +eyeballs. Each time she moved her head the pain came in a perceptible +wave. The hallway reeked with that smell of onions and fried fish which +had arrived with the first tenants. Children were dragging noisy objects +about the halls. As the throb grew sharper during the centuries it took +her to climb the first three flights of stairs, Una realized how hot she +was, how the clammy coolness of the hall was penetrated by stabs of +street heat which entered through the sun-haloed windows at the stair +landings. + +Una knocked at the door of her flat with that light, cheery tapping of +her nails, like a fairy tattoo, which usually brought her mother running +to let her in. She was conscious, almost with a physical sensation, of +her mother; wanted to hold her close and, in the ecstasy of that caress, +squeeze the office weariness from her soul. The Little Mother Saint--she +was coming now--she was hurrying-- + +But the little mother was not hurrying. There was no response to Una's +knock. As Una stooped in the dimness of the hallway to search in her bag +for her latch-key, the pain pulsed through the top of her head again. +She opened the door, and her longing for the embrace of her mother +disappeared in healthy anger. + +The living-room was in disorder. Her mother had not touched it all +day--had gone off and left it. + +"This is a little too much!" Una said, grimly. + +The only signs of life were Mrs. Golden's pack of cards for solitaire, +her worn, brown Morris-chair, and accretions of the cheap magazines with +pretty-girl covers which Mrs. Golden ransacked for love-stories. Mrs. +Golden had been reading all the evening before, and pages of newspapers +were crumpled in her chair, not one of them picked up. The couch, where +Una had slept because it had been too hot for the two of them in a +double bed, was still an eruption of bedclothes--the pillow wadded up, +the sheets dragging out across the unswept floor.... The room +represented discomfort, highly respectable poverty--and cleaning, which +Una had to do before she could rest. + +She sat down on the couch and groaned: "To have to come home to this! I +simply can't trust mother. She hasn't done one--single--thing, not one +single thing. And if it were only the first time--! But it's every day, +pretty nearly. She's been asleep all day, and then gone for a walk. Oh +yes, of course! She'll come back and say she'd forgotten this was +Saturday and I'd be home early! Oh, of course!" + +From the bedroom came a cough, then another. Una tried to keep her soft +little heart in its temporary state of hardness long enough to have some +effect on household discipline. "Huh!" she grunted. "Got a cold again. +If she'd only stay outdoors a little--" + +She stalked to the door of the bedroom. The blind was down, the window +closed, the room stifling and filled with a yellow, unwholesome glimmer. +From the bed her mother's voice, changed from its usual ring to a croak +that was crepuscular as the creepy room, wheezed: "That--you--deary? I +got--summer--cold--so sorry--leave work undone--" + +"If you would only keep your windows _open_, my dear mother--" + +Una marched to the window, snapped up the blind, banged up the sash, and +left the room. + +"I really can't see why!" was all she added. She did not look at her +mother. + +She slapped the living-room into order as though the disordered +bedclothes and newspapers were bad children. She put the potatoes on to +boil. She loosened her tight collar and sat down to read the "comic +strips," the "Beauty Hints," and the daily instalment of the +husband-and-wife serial in her evening paper. Una had nibbled at +Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, and _Vanity Fair_ in her high-school +days, but none of these had satisfied her so deeply as did the serial's +hint of sex and husband. She was absorbed by it. Yet all the while she +was irritably conscious of her mother's cough--hacking, sore-sounding, +throat-catching. Una was certain that this was merely one of the +frequent imaginary ailments of her mother, who was capable of believing +that she had cancer every time she was bitten by a mosquito. But this +incessant crackling made Una jumpily anxious. + +She reached these words in the serial: "I cannot forget, Amy, that +whatever I am, my good old mother made me, with her untiring care and +the gentle words she spoke to me when worried and harassed with doubt." + +Una threw down the paper, rushed into the bedroom, crouched beside her +mother, crying, "Oh, my mother sweetheart! You're just everything to +me," and kissed her forehead. + +The forehead was damp and cold, like a cellar wall. Una sat bolt up in +horror. Her mother's face had a dusky flush, her lips were livid as +clotted blood. Her arms were stiff, hard to the touch. Her breathing, +rapid and agitated, like a frightened panting, was interrupted just then +by a cough like the rattling of stiff, heavy paper, which left on her +purple lips a little colorless liquid. + +"Mother! Mother! My little mother--you're sick, you're really _sick_, +and I didn't know and I spoke so harshly. Oh, what _is_ it, what is it, +mother dear?" + +"Bad--cold," Mrs. Golden whispered. "I started coughing last night--I +closed the door--you didn't hear me; you were in the other room--" +Another cough wheezed dismally, shook her, gurgled in her yellow +deep-lined neck. "C-could I have--window closed now?" + +"No. I'm going to be your nurse. Just an awfully cranky old nurse, and +so scientific. And you must have fresh air." Her voice broke. "Oh, and +me sleeping away from you! I'll never do it again. I don't know what I +_would_ do if anything happened to you.... Do you feel any headache, +dear?" + +"No--not--not so much as-- Side pains me--here." + +Mrs. Golden's words labored like a steamer in heavy seas; the throbbing +of her heart shook them like the throb of the engines. She put her hand +to her right side, shakily, with effort. It lay there, yellow against +the white muslin of her nightgown, then fell heavily to the bed, like a +dead thing. Una trembled with fear as her mother continued, "My +pulse--it's so fast--so hard breathing--side pain." + +"I'll put on an ice compress and then I'll go and get a doctor." + +Mrs. Golden tried to sit up. "Oh no, no, no! Not a doctor! Not a +doctor!" she croaked. "Doctor Smyth will be busy." + +"Well, I'll have him come when he's through." + +"Oh no, no, can't afford--" + +"Why--" + +"And--they scare you so--he'd pretend I had pneumonia, like Sam's +sister--he'd frighten me so--I just have a summer cold. I--I'll be all +right to-morrow, deary. Oh no, no, _please_ don't, please don't get a +doctor. Can't afford it--can't--" + +Pneumonia! At the word, which brought the sterile bitterness of winter +into this fetid August room, Una was in a rigor of fear, yet galvanized +with belief in her mother's bravery. "My brave, brave little mother!" +she thought. + +Not till Una had promised that she would not summon the doctor was her +mother quieted, though Una made the promise with reservations. She +relieved the pain in her mother's side with ice compresses--the ice +chipped from the pitiful little cake in their tiny ice-box. She +freshened pillows, she smoothed sheets; she made hot broth and bathed +her mother's shoulders with tepid water and rubbed her temples with +menthol. But the fever increased, and at times Mrs. Golden broke through +her shallow slumber with meaningless sentences, like the beginning of +delirium. + +At midnight she was panting more and more rapidly--three times as fast +as normal breathing. She was sunk in a stupor. And Una, brooding by the +bed, a crouched figure of mute tragedy in the low light, grew more and +more apprehensive as her mother seemed to be borne away from her. Una +started up. She would risk her mother's displeasure and bring the +doctor. Just then, even Doctor Smyth of the neighborhood practice and +obstetrical habits seemed a miracle-worker. + +She had to go four blocks to the nearest drug-store that would be open +at this time of night, and there telephone the doctor. + +She was aware that it was raining, for the fire-escape outside shone wet +in the light from a window across the narrow court. She discovered she +had left mackintosh and umbrella at the office. Stopping only to set out +a clean towel, a spoon, and a glass on the chair by the bed, Una put on +the old sweater which she secretly wore under her cheap thin jacket in +winter. She lumbered wearily down-stairs. She prayed confusedly that God +would give her back her headache and in reward make her mother well. + +She was down-stairs at the heavy, grilled door. Rain was pouring. A +light six stories up in the apartment-house across the street seemed +infinitely distant and lonely, curtained from her by the rain. Water +splashed in the street and gurgled in the gutters. It did not belong to +the city as it would have belonged to brown woods or prairie. It was +violent here, shocking and terrible. It took distinct effort for Una to +wade out into it. + +The modern city! Subway, asphalt, a wireless message winging overhead, +and Una Golden, an office-woman in eye-glasses. Yet sickness and rain +and night were abroad; and it was a clumsily wrapped peasant woman, +bent-shouldered and heavily breathing, who trudged unprotected through +the dark side-streets as though she were creeping along moorland paths. +Her thought was dulled to everything but physical discomfort and the +illness which menaced the beloved. Woman's eternal agony for the sick of +her family had transformed the trim smoothness of the office-woman's +face into wrinkles that were tragic and ruggedly beautiful. + + +Sec. 7 + +Again Una climbed the endless stairs to her flat. She unconsciously +counted the beat of the weary, regular rhythm which her feet made on the +slate treads and the landings--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, +landing, turn and--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven--over and +over. At the foot of the last flight she suddenly believed that her +mother needed her this instant. She broke the regular thumping rhythm of +her climb, dashed up, cried out at the seconds wasted in unlocking the +door. She tiptoed into the bedroom--and found her mother just as she had +left her. In Una's low groan of gladness there was all the world's +self-sacrifice, all the fidelity to a cause or to a love. But as she sat +unmoving she came to feel that her mother was not there; her being was +not in this wreck upon the bed. + +In an hour the doctor soothed his way into the flat. He "was afraid +there might be just a little touch of pneumonia." With breezy +fatherliness which inspirited Una, he spoke of the possible presence of +pneumococcus, of doing magic things with Romer's serum, of trusting in +God, of the rain, of cold baths and digitalin. He patted Una's head and +cheerily promised to return at dawn. He yawned and smiled at himself. He +looked as roundly, fuzzily sleepy as a bunny rabbit, but in the quiet, +forlorn room of night and illness he radiated trust in himself. Una said +to herself, "He certainly must know what he is talking about." + +She was sure that the danger was over. She did not go to bed, however. +She sat stiffly in the bedroom and planned amusements for her mother. +She would work harder, earn more money. They would move to a cottage in +the suburbs, where they would have chickens and roses and a kitten, and +her mother would find neighborly people again. + +Five days after, late on a bright, cool afternoon, when all the flats +about them were thinking of dinner, her mother died. + + +Sec. 8 + +There was a certain madness in Una's grief. Her agony was a big, simple, +uncontrollable emotion, like the fanaticism of a crusader--alarming, it +was, not to be reckoned with, and beautiful as a storm. Yet it was no +more morbid than the little fits of rage with which a school-teacher +relieves her cramped spirit. For the first time she had the excuse to +exercise her full power of emotion. + +Una evoked an image of her mother as one who had been altogether good, +understanding, clever, and unfortunate. She regretted every moment she +had spent away from her--remembered with scorn that she had planned to +go to the theater the preceding Saturday, instead of sanctifying the +time in the Nirvana of the beloved's presence; repented with writhing +agony having spoken harshly about neglected household duties. + +She even contrived to find it a virtue in her mother that she had so +often forgotten the daily tasks--her mind had been too fine for such +things.... Una retraced their life. But she remembered everything only +as one remembers under the sway of music. + +"If I could just have another hour, just one hour with her, and feel her +hands on my eyes again--" + +On the night before the funeral she refused to let even Mrs. Sessions +stay with her. She did not want to share her mother's shadowy presence +with any one. + +She lay on the floor beside the bed where her mother was stately in +death. It was her last chance to talk to her: + +"Mother ... Mother ... Don't you hear me? It's Una calling. Can't you +answer me this one last time? Oh, mother, think, mother dear, I can't +ever hear your voice again if you don't speak to me now.... Don't you +remember how we went home to Panama, our last vacation? Don't you +remember how happy we were down at the lake? Little mother, you haven't +forgotten, have you? Even if you don't answer, you know I'm watching by +you, don't you? See, I'm kissing your hand. Oh, you did want me to +sleep near you again, this last night-- Oh, my God! oh, my God! the last +night I shall ever spend with her, the very last, last night." + +All night long the thin voice came from the little white-clad figure so +insignificant in the dimness, now lying motionless on the comforter she +had spread beside the bed, and talking in a tone of ordinary +conversation that was uncanny in this room of invisible whisperers; now +leaping up to kiss the dead hand in a panic, lest it should already be +gone. + +The funeral filled the house with intruders. The drive to the cemetery +was irritating. She wanted to leap out of the carriage. At first she +concentrated on the cushion beside her till she thought of nothing in +the world but the faded bottle-green upholstery, and a ridiculous drift +of dust in the tufting. But some one was talking to her. (It was awkward +Mr. Sessions, for shrewd Mrs. Sessions had the genius to keep still.) He +kept stammering the most absurd platitudes about how happy her mother +must be in a heaven regarding which he did not seem to have very recent +or definite knowledge. She was annoyed, not comforted. She wanted to +break away, to find her mother's presence again in that sacred place +where she had so recently lived and spoken. + +Yet, when Una returned to the flat, something was gone. She tried to +concentrate on thought about immortality. She found that she had +absolutely no facts upon which to base her thought. The hundreds of +good, sound, orthodox sermons she had heard gave her nothing but vague +pictures of an eternal church supper somewhere in the clouds--nothing, +blankly and terribly nothing, that answered her bewildered wonder as to +what had become of the spirit which had been there and now was gone. + +In the midst of her mingling of longing and doubt she realized that she +was hungry, and she rather regretted having refused Mrs. Sessions's +invitation to dinner. She moved slowly about the kitchen. + +The rheumatic old canary hobbled along the floor of his cage and tried +to sing. At that Una wept, "She never will hear poor Dickie sing again." + +Instantly she remembered--as clearly as though she were actually +listening to the voice and words--that her mother had burst out, "Drat +that bird, it does seem as if every time I try to take a nap he just +tries to wake me up." Una laughed grimly. Hastily she reproved herself, +"Oh, but mother didn't mean--" + +But in memory of that healthily vexed voice, it seemed less wicked to +take notice of food, and after a reasonable dinner she put on her kimono +and bedroom slippers, carefully arranged the pillows on the couch, and +lay among them, meditating on her future. + +For half an hour she was afire with an eager thought: "Why can't I +really make a success of business, now that I can entirely devote myself +to it? There's women--in real estate, and lawyers and magazine +editors--some of them make ten thousand a year." + +So Una Golden ceased to live a small-town life in New York; so she +became a genuine part of the world of offices; took thought and tried to +conquer this new way of city-dwelling. + +"Maybe I can find out if there's anything in life--now--besides working +for T. W. till I'm scrapped like an old machine," she pondered. "How I +hate letters about two-family houses in Flatbush!" + +She dug her knuckles into her forehead in the effort to visualize the +problem of the hopeless women in industry. + +She was an Average Young Woman on a Job; she thought in terms of money +and offices; yet she was one with all the men and women, young and old, +who were creating a new age. She was nothing in herself, yet as the +molecule of water belongs to the ocean, so Una Golden humbly belonged to +the leaven who, however confusedly, were beginning to demand, "Why, +since we have machinery, science, courage, need we go on tolerating war +and poverty and caste and uncouthness, and all that sheer clumsiness?" + + + + +Part II + +THE OFFICE + +CHAPTER IX + + +The effect of grief is commonly reputed to be noble. But mostly it is a +sterile nobility. Witness the widows who drape their musty weeds over +all the living; witness the mother of a son killed in war who urges her +son's comrades to bring mourning to the mothers of all the sons on the +other side. + +Grief is a paralyzing poison. It broke down Una's resistance to the +cares of the office. Hers was no wholesome labor in which she could find +sacred forgetfulness. It was the round of unessentials which all +office-women know so desperately well. She bruised herself by shrinking +from those hourly insults to her intelligence; and outside the office +her most absorbing comfort was in the luxury of mourning--passion in +black, even to the black-edged face-veil.... Though she was human enough +to realize that with her fair hair she looked rather well in mourning, +and shrewd enough to get it on credit at excellent terms. + +She was in the office all day, being as curtly exact as she could. But +in the evening she sat alone in her flat and feared the city. + +Sometimes she rushed down to the Sessionses' flat, but the good people +bored her with their assumption that she was panting to know all the +news from Panama. She had drifted so far away from the town that the +sixth assertion that "it was a great pity Kitty Wilson was going to +marry that worthless Clark boy" aroused no interest in her. She was +still more bored by their phonograph, on which they played over and over +the same twenty records. She would make quick, unconvincing excuses +about having to hurry away. Their slippered stupidity was a desecration +of her mother's memory. + +Her half-hysterical fear of the city's power was increased by her daily +encounter with the clamorous streets, crowded elevators, frantic +lunch-rooms, and, most of all, the experience of the Subway. + +Amazing, incredible, the Subway, and the fact that human beings could +become used to it, consent to spend an hour in it daily. There was a +heroic side to this spectacle of steel trains clanging at forty miles an +hour beneath twenty-story buildings. The engineers had done their work +well, made a great thought in steel and cement. And then the business +men and bureaucrats had made the great thought a curse. There was in the +Subway all the romance which story-telling youth goes seeking: trains +crammed with an inconceivable complexity of people--marquises of the +Holy Roman Empire, Jewish factory hands, speculators from Wyoming, Iowa +dairymen, quarreling Italian lovers, with their dramatic tales, their +flux of every human emotion, under the city mask. But however striking +these dramatic characters may be to the occasional spectator, they +figure merely as an odor, a confusion, to the permanent serf of the +Subway.... A long underground station, a catacomb with a cement +platform, this was the chief feature of the city vista to the tired girl +who waited there each morning. A clean space, but damp, stale, like the +corridor to a prison--as indeed it was, since through it each morning +Una entered the day's business life. + +Then, the train approaching, filling the tunnel, like a piston smashing +into a cylinder; the shoving rush to get aboard. A crush that was +ruffling and fatiguing to a man, but to a woman was horror. + +Una stood with a hulking man pressing as close to her side as he dared, +and a dapper clerkling squeezed against her breast. Above her head, to +represent the city's culture and graciousness, there were advertisements +of soap, stockings, and collars. At curves the wheels ground with a +long, savage whine, the train heeled, and she was flung into the arms of +the grinning clerk, who held her tight. She, who must never be so +unladylike as to enter a polling-place, had breathed into her very mouth +the clerkling's virile electoral odor of cigarettes and onions and +decayed teeth. + +A very good thing, the Subway. It did make Una quiver with the +beginnings of rebellious thought as no suave preacher could ever have +done. Almost hysterically she resented this daily indignity, which +smeared her clean, cool womanhood with a grease of noise and smell and +human contact. + +As was the Subway, so were her noons of elbowing to get impure food in +restaurants. + +For reward she was permitted to work all day with Troy Wilkins. And for +heavens and green earth, she had a chair and a desk. + +But the human organism, which can modify itself to arctic cold and +Indian heat, to incessant labor or the long enervation of luxury, learns +to endure. Unwilling dressing, lonely breakfast, the Subway, dull work, +lunch, sleepiness after lunch, the hopelessness of three o'clock, the +boss's ill-tempers, then the Subway again, and a lonely flat with no +love, no creative work; and at last a long sleep so that she might be +fresh for such another round of delight. So went the days. Yet all +through them she found amusement, laughed now and then, and proved the +heroism as well as the unthinking servility of the human race. + + +Sec. 2 + +The need of feeling that there were people near to her urged Una to sell +her furniture and move from the flat to a boarding-house. + +She avoided Mrs. Sessions's advice. She was sure that Mrs. Sessions +would bustle about and find her a respectable place where she would have +to be cheery. She didn't want to be cheery. She wanted to think. She +even bought a serious magazine with articles. Not that she read it. + +But she was afraid to be alone any more. Anyway, she would explore the +city. + +Of the many New Yorks, she had found only Morningside Park, Central +Park, Riverside Drive, the shopping district, the restaurants and +theaters which Walter had discovered to her, a few down-town office +streets, and her own arid region of flats. She did not know the +proliferating East Side, the factories, the endless semi-suburban +stretches--nor Fifth Avenue. Her mother and Mrs. Sessions had inculcated +in her the earnest idea that most parts of New York weren't quite nice. +In over two years in the city she had never seen a millionaire nor a +criminal; she knew the picturesqueness neither of wealth nor of pariah +poverty. + +She did not look like an adventurer when, at a Saturday noon of October, +she left the office--slight, kindly, rather timid, with her pale hair +and school-teacher eye-glasses, and clear cheeks set off by comely +mourning. But she was seizing New York. She said over and over, "Why, I +can go and live any place I want to, and maybe I'll meet some folks who +are simply fascinating." She wasn't very definite about these +fascinating folks, but they implied girls to play with and--she +hesitated--and decidedly men, men different from Walter, who would touch +her hand in courtly reverence. + +She poked through strange streets. She carried an assortment of "Rooms +and Board" clippings from the "want-ad" page of a newspaper, and +obediently followed their hints about finding the perfect place. She +resolutely did not stop at places not advertised in the paper, though +nearly every house, in some quarters, had a sign, "Room to Rent." Una +still had faith in the veracity of whatever appeared in the public +prints, as compared with what she dared see for herself. + +The advertisements led her into a dozen parts of the city frequented by +roomers, the lonely, gray, detached people who dwell in other people's +houses. + +It was not so splendid a quest as she had hoped; it was too sharp a +revelation of the cannon-food of the city, the people who had never been +trained, and who had lost heart. It was scarcely possible to tell one +street from another; to remember whether she was on Sixteenth Street or +Twenty-sixth. Always the same rows of red-brick or brownstone houses, +all alike, the monotony broken only by infrequent warehouses or +loft-buildings; always the same doubtful mounting of stone steps, the +same searching for a bell, the same waiting, the same slatternly, +suspicious landlady, the same evil hallway with a brown hat-rack, a +steel-engraving with one corner stained with yellow, a carpet worn +through to the flooring in a large oval hole just in front of the +stairs, a smell of cabbage, a lack of ventilation. Always the same +desire to escape, though she waited politely while the landlady in the +same familiar harsh voice went through the same formula. + +Then, before she could flee to the comparatively fresh air of the +streets, Una would politely have to follow the panting landlady to a +room that was a horror of dirty carpet, lumpy mattress, and furniture +with everything worn off that could wear off. And at last, always the +same phrases by which Una meant to spare the woman: "Well, I'll think it +over. Thank you so much for showing me the rooms, but before I +decide-- Want to look around--" + +Phrases which the landlady heard ten times a day. + +She conceived a great-hearted pity for landladies. They were so patient, +in face of her evident distaste. Even their suspiciousness was but the +growling of a beaten dog. They sighed and closed their doors on her +without much attempt to persuade her to stay. Her heart ached with their +lack of imagination. They had no more imagination than those landladies +of the insect world, the spiders, with their unchanging, instinctive, +ancestral types of webs. + +Her depression was increased by the desperate physical weariness of the +hunt. Not that afternoon, not till two weeks later, did she find a room +in a large, long, somber railroad flat on Lexington Avenue, conducted by +a curly-haired young bookkeeper and his pretty wife, who provided their +clients with sympathy, with extensive and scientific data regarding the +motion-picture houses in the neighborhood, and board which was neither +scientific nor very extensive. + +It was time for Una to sacrifice the last material contact with her +mother; to sell the furniture which she had known ever since, as a baby +in Panama, she had crawled from this horsehair chair, all the long and +perilous way across this same brown carpet, to this red-plush couch. + + +Sec. 3 + +It was not so hard to sell the furniture; she could even read and burn +her father's letters with an unhappy resoluteness. Despite her +tenderness, Una had something of youth's joy in getting rid of old +things, as preparation for acquiring the new. She did sob when she found +her mother's straw hat, just as Mrs. Golden had left it, on the high +shelf of the wardrobe as though her mother might come in at any minute, +put it on, and start for a walk. She sobbed again when she encountered +the tiny tear in the bottom of the couch, which her own baby fingers had +made in trying to enlarge a pirate's cave. That brought the days when +her parents were immortal and all-wise; when the home sitting-room, +where her father read the paper aloud, was a security against all the +formidable world outside. + +But to these recollections Una could shut her heart. To one absurd +thing, because it was living, Una could not shut her heart--to the +senile canary. + +Possibly she could have taken it with her, but she felt confusedly that +Dickie would not be appreciated in other people's houses. She evaded +asking the Sessionses to shelter the bird, because every favor that she +permitted from that smug family was a bond that tied her to their life +of married spinsterhood. + +"Oh, Dickie, Dickie, what am I going to do with you?" she cried, +slipping a finger through the wires of the cage. + +The canary hopped toward her and tried to chirp his greeting. + +"Even when you were sick you tried to sing to me, and mother did love +you," she sighed. "I just can't kill you--trusting me like that." + +She turned her back, seeking to solve the problem by ignoring it. While +she was sorting dresses--some trace of her mother in every fold, every +wrinkle of the waists and lace collars--she was listening to the bird in +the cage. + +"I'll think of some way--I'll find somebody who will want you, Dickie +dear," she murmured, desperately, now and then. + +After dinner and nightfall, with her nerves twanging all the more +because it seemed silly to worry over one dissolute old bird when all +her life was breaking up, she hysterically sprang up, snatched Dickie +from the cage, and trotted down-stairs to the street. + +"I'll leave you somewhere. Somebody will find you," she declared. + +Concealing the bird by holding it against her breast with a hand +supersensitive to its warm little feathers, she walked till she found +a deserted tenement doorway. She hastily set the bird down on a stone +balustrade beside the entrance steps. Dickie chirped more cheerily, +more sweetly than for many days, and confidingly hopped back to her +hand. + +"Oh, I can't leave him for boys to torture and I can't take him, +I can't--" + +In a sudden spasm she threw the bird into the air, and ran back +to the flat, sobbing, "I can't kill it--I can't--there's so much +death." Longing to hear the quavering affection of its song once +more, but keeping herself from even going to the window, to look +for it, with bitter haste she completed her work of getting rid +of things--things--things--the things which were stones of an +imprisoning past. + + +Sec. 4 + +Shyness was over Una when at last she was in the house of strangers. +She sat marveling that this square, white cubby-hole of a room was +hers permanently, that she hadn't just come here for an hour or two. +She couldn't get it to resemble her first impression of it. Now the +hallway was actually a part of her life--every morning she would +face the picture of a magazine-cover girl when she came out of +her room. + +Her agitation was increased by the problem of keeping up the maiden +modesty appropriate to a Golden, a young female friend of the +Sessionses', in a small flat with gentlemen lodgers and just one +bathroom. Una was saved by not having a spinster friend with whom to +share her shrinking modesty. She simply had to take waiting for her turn +at the bathroom as a matter of course, and insensibly she was impressed +by the decency with which these dull, ordinary people solved the +complexities of their enforced intimacy. When she wildly clutched her +virgin bathrobe about her and passed a man in the hall, he stalked +calmly by without any of the teetering apologies which broad-beamed Mr. +Sessions had learned from his genteel spouse. + +She could not at first distinguish among her companions. Gradually they +came to be distinct, important. They held numberless surprises for her. +She would not have supposed that a bookkeeper in a fish-market would be +likely to possess charm. Particularly if he combined that amorphous +occupation with being a boarding-house proprietor. Yet her landlord, +Herbert Gray, with his look of a track-athlete, his confessions of +ignorance and his naive enthusiasms about whatever in the motion +pictures seemed to him heroic, large, colorful, was as admirable as the +several youngsters of her town who had plodded through Princeton or +Pennsylvania and come back to practise law or medicine or gentlemanly +inheritance of business. And his wife, round and comely, laughing +easily, wearing her clothes with an untutored grace which made her cheap +waists smart, was so thoroughly her husband's comrade in everything, +that these struggling nobodies had all the riches of the earth. + +The Grays took Una in as though she were their guest, but they did not +bother her. They were city-born, taught by the city to let other people +live their own lives. + +The Grays had taken a flat twice too large for their own use. The other +lodgers, who lived, like monks on a bare corridor, along the narrow +"railroad" hall, were three besides Una: + +A city failure, one with a hundred thousand failures, a gray-haired, +neat man, who had been everything and done nothing, and who now said +evasively that he was "in the collection business." He read Dickens and +played a masterful game of chess. He liked to have it thought that his +past was brave with mysterious splendors. He spoke hintingly of great +lawyers. But he had been near to them only as a clerk for a large law +firm. He was grateful to any one for noticing him. Like most of the +failures, he had learned the art of doing nothing at all. All Sunday, +except for a two hours' walk in Central Park, and one game of chess with +Herbert Gray, he dawdled in his room, slept, regarded his stocking-feet +with an appearance of profound meditation, yawned, picked at the Sunday +newspaper. Una once saw him napping on a radiant autumn Sunday +afternoon, and detested him. But he was politely interested in her work +for Troy Wilkins, carefully exact in saying, "Good-morning, miss," and +he became as familiar to her as the gas-heater in her cubicle. + +Second fellow-lodger was a busy, reserved woman, originally from Kansas +City, who had something to do with some branch library. She had solved +the problems of woman's lack of place in this city scheme by closing +tight her emotions, her sense of adventure, her hope of friendship. She +never talked to Una, after discovering that Una had no interesting +opinions on the best reading for children nine to eleven. + +These gentle, inconsequential city waifs, the Grays, the failure, the +library-woman, meant no more to Una than the crowds who were near, yet +so detached, in the streets. But the remaining boarder annoyed her by +his noisy whine. He was an underbred maverick, with sharp eyes of watery +blue, a thin mustache, large teeth, and no chin worth noticing. He would +bounce in of an evening, when the others were being decorous and dull in +the musty dining-room, and yelp: "How do we all find our seskpadalian +selves this bright and balmy evenin'? How does your perspegacity +discipulate, Herby? What's the good word, Miss Golden? Well, well, well, +if here ain't our good old friend, the Rev. J. Pilkington Corned Beef; +how 'r' you, Pilky? Old Mrs. Cabbage feelin' well, too? Well, well, +still discussing the movies, Herby? Got any new opinions about Mary +Pickford? Well, well. Say, I met another guy that's as nutty as you, +Herby; he thinks that Wilhelm Jenkins Bryan is a great statesman. Let's +hear some more about the Sage of Free Silver, Herby." + +The little man was never content till he had drawn them into so bitter +an argument that some one would rise, throw down a napkin, growl, "Well, +if that's all you know about it--if you're all as ignorant as that, you +simply ain't worth arguing with," and stalk out. When general topics +failed, the disturber would catechize the library-woman about Louisa M. +Alcott, or the failure about his desultory inquiries into Christian +Science, or Mrs. Gray about the pictures plastering the dining-room--a +dozen spiritual revelations of apples and oranges, which she had bought +at a department-store sale. + +The maverick's name was Fillmore J. Benson. Strangers called him Benny, +but his more intimate acquaintances, those to whom he had talked for at +least an hour, were requested to call him Phil. He made a number of +pretty puns about his first name. He was, surprisingly, a doctor--not +the sort that studies science, but the sort that studies the gullibility +of human nature--a "Doctor of Manipulative Osteology." He had earned a +diploma by a correspondence course, and had scrabbled together a small +practice among retired shopkeepers. He was one of the strange, impudent +race of fakers who prey upon the clever city. He didn't expect any one +at the Grays' to call him a "doctor." + +He drank whisky and gambled for pennies, was immoral in his relations +with women and as thick-skinned as he was blatant. He had been a +newsboy, a contractor's clerk, and climbed up by the application of his +wits. He read enormously--newspapers, cheap magazines, medical books; he +had an opinion about everything, and usually worsted every one at the +Grays' in arguments. And he did his patients good by giving them +sympathy and massage. He would have been an excellent citizen had the +city not preferred to train him, as a child in its reeling streets, to a +sharp unscrupulousness. + +Una was at first disgusted by Phil Benson, then perplexed. He would +address her in stately Shakespearean phrases which, as a boy, he had +heard from the gallery of the Academy of Music. He would quote poetry at +her. She was impressed when he almost silenced the library-woman, in an +argument as to whether Longfellow or Whittier was the better poet, by +parroting the whole of "Snow Bound." + +She fancied that Phil's general pea-weevil aspect concealed the soul of +a poet. But she was shocked out of her pleasant fabling when Phil roared +at Mrs. Gray: "Say, what did the baker use this pie for? A bureau or a +trunk? I've found three pairs of socks and a safety-pin in my slab, so +far." + +Pretty Mrs. Gray was hurt and indignant, while her husband growled: "Aw, +don't pay any attention to that human phonograph, Amy. He's got bats in +his belfry." + +Una had acquired a hesitating fondness for the mute gentleness of the +others, and it infuriated her that this insect should spoil their +picnic. But after dinner Phil Benson dallied over to her, sat on the arm +of her chair, and said: "I'm awfully sorry that I make such a bum hit +with you, Miss Golden. Oh, I can see I do, all right. You're the only +one here that can understand. Somehow it seems to me--you aren't like +other women I know. There's something--somehow it's different. A--a +temperament. You dream about higher things than just food and clothes. +Oh," he held up a deprecating hand, "don't deny it. I'm mighty serious +about it, Miss Golden. I can see it, even if you haven't waked up to it +as yet." + +The absurd part of it was that, at least while he was talking, Mr. Phil +Benson did believe what he was saying, though he had borrowed all of his +sentiments from a magazine story about hobohemians which he had read the +night before. + +He also spoke of reading good books, seeing good plays, and the lack of +good influences in this wicked city. + +He didn't overdo it. He took leave in ten minutes--to find good +influences in a Kelly pool-parlor on Third Avenue. He returned to his +room at ten, and, sitting with his shoeless feet cocked up on his bed, +read a story in _Racy Yarns_. While beyond the partition, about four +feet from him, Una Golden lay in bed, her smooth arms behind her aching +head, and worried about Phil's lack of opportunity. + +She was finding in his loud impudence a twisted resemblance to Walter +Babson's erratic excitability, and that won her, for love goes seeking +new images of the god that is dead. + +Next evening Phil varied his tactics by coming to dinner early, just +touching Una's hand as she was going into the dining-room, and murmuring +in a small voice, "I've been thinking so much of the helpful things you +said last evening, Miss Golden." + +Later, Phil talked to her about his longing to be a great surgeon--in +which he had the tremendous advantage of being almost sincere. He walked +down the hall to her room, and said good-night lingeringly, holding her +hand. + +Una went into her room, closed the door, and for full five minutes stood +amazed. "Why!" she gasped, "the little man is trying to make love to +me!" + +She laughed over the absurdity of it. Heavens! She had her Ideal. The +Right Man. He would probably be like Walter Babson--though more +dependable. But whatever the nature of the paragon, he would in every +respect be just the opposite of the creature who had been saying +good-night to her. + +She sat down, tried to read the paper, tried to put Phil out of her +mind. But he kept returning. She fancied that she could hear his voice +in the hall. She dropped the paper to listen. + +"I'm actually interested in him!" she marveled. "Oh, that's ridiculous!" + + +Sec. 5 + +Now that Walter had made a man's presence natural to her, Una needed a +man, the excitation of his touch, the solace of his voice. She could not +patiently endure a cloistered vacuousness. + +Even while she was vigorously representing to herself that he was +preposterous, she was uneasily aware that Phil was masculine. His +talons were strong; she could feel their clutch on her hands. "He's a +rat. And I do wish he wouldn't--spit!" she shuddered. But under her +scorn was a surge of emotion.... A man, not much of a man, yet a man, +had wanted the contact of her hand, been eager to be with her. +Sensations vast as night or the ocean whirled in her small, white room. +Desire, and curiosity even more, made her restless as a wave. + +She caught herself speculating as she plucked at the sleeve of her black +mourning waist: "I wonder would I be more interesting if I had the +orange-and-brown dress I was going to make when mother died?... Oh, +shame!" + +Yet she sprang up from the white-enameled rocker, tucked in her +graceless cotton corset-cover, stared at her image in the mirror, +smoothed her neck till the skin reddened. + + +Sec. 6 + +Phil talked to her for an hour after their Sunday-noon dinner. She had +been to church; had confessed indeterminate sins to a formless and +unresponsive deity. She felt righteous, and showed it. Phil caught the +cue. He sacrificed all the witty things he was prepared to say about +Mrs. Gray's dumplings; he gazed silently out of the window till she +wondered what he was thinking about, then he stumblingly began to review +a sermon which he said he had heard the previous Sunday--though he must +have been mistaken, as he shot several games of Kelly pool every Sunday +morning, or slept till noon. + +"The preacher spoke of woman's influence. You don't know what it is to +lack a woman's influence in a fellow's life, Miss Golden. I can see the +awful consequences among my patients. I tell you, when I sat there in +church and saw the colored windows--" He sighed portentously. His hand +fell across hers--his lean paw, strong and warm-blooded from massaging +puffy old men. "I tell you I just got sentimental, I did, thinking of +all I lacked." + +Phil melted mournfully away--to indulge in a highly cheerful walk on +upper Broadway with Miss Becky Rosenthal, sewer for the Sans Peur Pants +and Overalls Company--while in her room Una grieved over his forlorn +desire to be good. + + +Sec. 7 + +Two evenings later, when November warmed to a passing Indian summer of +golden skies that were pitifully far away from the little folk in city +streets, Una was so restless that she set off for a walk by herself. + +Phil had been silent, glancing at her and away, as though he were +embarrassed. + +"I wish I could do something to help him," she thought, as she poked +down-stairs to the entrance of the apartment-house. + +Phil was on the steps, smoking a cigarette-sized cigar, scratching his +chin, and chattering with his kinsmen, the gutter sparrows. + +He doffed his derby. He spun his cigar from him with a deft flip of his +fingers which somehow agitated her. She called herself a little fool for +being agitated, but she couldn't get rid of the thought that only men +snapped their fingers like that. + +"Goin' to the movies, Miss Golden?" + +"No, I was just going for a little walk." + +"Well, say, walks, that's where I live. Why don't you invite Uncle Phil +to come along and show you the town? Why, I knew this burg when they +went picnicking at the reservoir in Bryant Park." + +He swaggered beside her without an invitation. He did not give her a +chance to decline his company--and soon she did not want to. He led her +down to Gramercy Park, loveliest memory of village days, houses of a +demure red and white ringing a fenced garden. He pointed out to her the +Princeton Club, the Columbia Club, the National Arts, and the Players', +and declared that two men leaving the last were John Drew and the most +famous editor in America. He guided her over to Stuyvesant Park, a +barren square out of old London, with a Quaker school on one side, and +the voluble Ghetto on the other. He conducted her through East Side +streets, where Jewish lovers parade past miles of push-carts and +venerable Rabbis read the Talmud between sales of cotton socks, and +showed her a little cafe which was a hang-out for thieves. She was +excited by this contact with the underworld. + +He took her to a Lithuanian restaurant, on a street which was a debacle. +One half of the restaurant was filled with shaggy Lithuanians playing +cards at filthy tables; the other half was a clean haunt for tourists +who came to see the slums, and here, in the heart of these "slums," saw +only one another. + +"Wait a while," Phil said, "and a bunch of Seeing-New-Yorkers will land +here and think we're crooks." + +In ten minutes a van-load of sheepish trippers from the Middle West +filed into the restaurant and tried to act as though they were used to +cocktails. Una was delighted when she saw them secretly peering at Phil +and herself; she put one hand on her thigh and one on the table, leaned +forward and tried to look tough, while Phil pretended to be quarreling +with her, and the trippers' simple souls were enthralled by this glimpse +of two criminals. Una really enjoyed the acting; for a moment Phil was +her companion in play; and when the trippers had gone rustling out to +view other haunts of vice she smiled at Phil unrestrainedly. + +Instantly he took advantage of her smile, of their companionship. + +He was really as simple-hearted as the trippers in his tactics. + +She had been drinking ginger-ale. He urged her now to "have a real +drink." He muttered confidentially: "Have a nip of sherry or a New +Orleans fizz or a Bronx. That'll put heart into you. Not enough to +affect you a-tall, but just enough to cheer up on. Then we'll go to a +dance and really have a time. Gee! poor kid, you don't get any fun." + +"No, no, I _never_ touch it," she said, and she believed it, forgetting +the claret she had drunk with Walter Babson. + +She felt unsafe. + +He laughed at her; assured her from his medical experience that "lots of +women need a little tonic," and boisterously ordered a glass of sherry +for her. + +She merely sipped it. She wanted to escape. All their momentary +frankness of association was gone. She feared him; she hated the +complaisant waiter who brought her the drink; the fat proprietor who +would take his pieces of silver, though they were the price of her soul; +the policeman on the pavement, who would never think of protecting her; +and the whole hideous city which benignly profited by saloons. She +watched another couple down at the end of the room--an obese man and a +young, pretty girl, who was hysterically drunk. Not because she had +attended the Women's Christian Temperance Union at Panama and heard them +condemn "the demon rum," but because the sickish smell of the alcohol +was all about her now, she suddenly turned into a crusader. She sprang +up, seized her gloves, snapped, "I will not touch the stuff." She +marched down the room, out of the restaurant and away, not once looking +back at Phil. + +In about fifteen seconds she had a humorous picture of Phil trying to +rush after her, but stopped by the waiter to pay his check. She began to +wonder if she hadn't been slightly ridiculous in attempting to slay +Demon Rum by careering down the restaurant. But "I don't care!" she +said, stoutly. "I'm glad I took a stand instead of just rambling along +and wondering what it was all about, the way I did with Walter." + +Phil caught up to her and instantly began to complain. "Say, you +certainly made a sight out of yourself--and out of me--leaving me +sitting there with the waiter laughing his boob head off at me. Lord! +I'll never dare go near the place again." + +"Your own fault." This problem was so clear, so unconfused to her. + +"It wasn't all my fault," he said. "You didn't have to take a drink." +His voice fell to a pathetic whimper. "I was showing you hospitality the +best way I knew how. You won't never know how you hurt my feelin's." + +The problem instantly became complicated again. Perhaps she _had_ hurt +his rudimentary sense of courtesy. Perhaps Walter Babson would have +sympathized with Phil, not with her. She peeped at Phil. He trailed +along with a forlorn baby look which did not change. + +She was very uncomfortable as she said a brief good-night at the flat. +She half wished that he would give her a chance to recant. She saw him +and his injured feelings as enormously important. + +She undressed in a tremor of misgiving. She put her thin, pretty kimono +over her nightgown, braided her hair, and curled on the bed, condemning +herself for having been so supercilious to the rat who had never had a +chance. + +It was late--long after eleven--when there was a tapping on the door. + +She started, listened rigidly. + +Phil's voice whispered from the hall: "Open your door just half an inch, +Miss Golden. Something I wanted to say." + +Her pity for him made his pleading request like a command. She drew her +kimono close and peeped out at him. + +"I knew you were up," he whispered; "saw the light under your door. I +been so worried. I _didn't_ mean to shock you, or nothing, but if you +feel I _did_ mean to, I want to apologize. Gee! me, I couldn't sleep one +wink if I thought you was offended." + +"It's all right--" she began. + +"Say, come into the dining-room. Everybody gone to bed. I want to +explain--gee! you gotta give me a chance to be good. If _you_ don't use +no good influence over me, nobody never will, I guess." + +His whisper was full of masculine urgency, husky, bold. She shivered. +She hesitated, did not answer. + +"All right," he mourned. "I don't blame you none, but it's pretty +hard--" + +"I'll come just for a moment," she said, and shut the door. + +She was excited, flushed. She wrapped her braids around her head, gentle +braids of pale gold, and her undistinguished face, thus framed, was +young and sweet. + +She hastened out to the dining-room. + +What was the "parlor" by day the Grays used for their own bedroom, but +the dining-room had a big, ugly, leather settee and two rockers, and it +served as a secondary living-room. + +Here Phil waited, at the end of the settee. She headed for a rocker, +but he piled sofa-cushions for her at the other end of the settee, and +she obediently sank down there. + +"Listen," he said, in a tone of lofty lamentation, "I don't know as I +can ever, _ever_ make you understand I just wanted to give you a good +time. I seen you was in mourning, and I thinks, 'Maybe you could +brighten her up a little--'" + +"I am sorry I didn't understand." + +"Una, Una! Do you suppose you could ever stoop to helping a bad egg like +me?" he demanded. + +His hand fell on hers. It comforted her chilly hand. She let it lie +there. Speech became difficult for her. + +"Why, why yes--" she stammered. + +In reaction to her scorn of him, she was all accepting faith. + +"Oh, if you could--and if I could make you less lonely sometimes--" + +In his voice was a perilous tenderness; for the rat, trained to beguile +neurotic patients in his absurd practice, could croon like the very +mother of pity. + +"Yes, I am lonely sometimes," she heard herself admitting--far-off, +dreaming, needing the close affection that her mother and Walter had +once given her. + +"Poor little girl--you're so much better raised and educated than me, +but you got to have friendship jus' same." + +His arm was about her shoulder. For a second she leaned against him. + +All her scorn of him suddenly gathered in one impulse. She sprang +up--just in time to catch a grin on his face. + +"You gutter-rat!" she said. "You aren't worth my telling you what you +are. You wouldn't understand. You can't see anything but the gutter." + +He was perfectly unperturbed: "Poor stuff, kid. Weak come-back. Sounds +like a drayma. But, say, listen, honest, kid, you got me wrong. What's +the harm in a little hugging--" + +She fled. She was safe in her room. She stood with both arms +outstretched. She did not feel soiled by this dirty thing. She was +triumphant. In the silhouette of a water-tank, atop the next-door +apartment-house, she saw a strong tower of faith. + +"Now I don't have to worry about him. I don't have to make any more +decisions. I know! I'm through! No one can get me just because of +curiosity about sex again. I'm free. I can fight my way through in +business and still keep clean. I can! I was hungry for--for even that +rat. I--Una Golden! Yes, I was. But I don't want to go back to him. I've +won! + +"Oh, Walter, Walter, I do want you, dear, but I'll get along without +you, and I'll keep a little sacred image of you." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +The three-fourths of Una employed in the office of Mr. Troy Wilkins was +going through one of those periods of unchanging routine when all past +drama seems unreal, when nothing novel happens nor apparently ever will +happen--such a time of dull peacefulness as makes up the major part of +our lives. + +Her only definite impressions were the details of daily work, the +physical aspects of the office, and the presence of the "Boss." + + +Sec. 2 + +Day after day the same details of the job: letters arriving, assorted, +opened, answered by dictation, the answers sealed and stamped (and +almost every day the same panting crisis of getting off some cosmically +important letter).... The reception of callers; welcome to clients; +considerate but firm assurances to persons looking for positions that +there was "no opening just at _present_--" The suave answering of +irritating telephone calls.... The filing of letters and plans; the +clipping of real-estate-transfer items from newspapers.... The +supervision of Bessie Kraker and the office-boy. + +Equally fixed were the details of the grubby office itself. Like many +men who have pride in the smartest suburban homes available, Mr. Wilkins +was content with an office shabby and inconvenient. He regarded +beautiful offices as in some way effeminate.... His wasn't effeminate; +it was undecorative as a filled ash-tray, despite Una's daily following +up of the careless scrubwomen with dust-cloth and whisk. She knew every +inch of it, as a gardener knows his plot. She could never keep from +noticing and running her finger along the pebbled glass of the +oak-and-glass partition about Mr. Wilkins's private office, each of the +hundreds of times a day she passed it; and when she lay awake at +midnight, her finger-tips would recall precisely the feeling of that +rough surface, even to the sharp edges of a tiny flaw in the glass over +the bookcase. + +Or she would recall the floor-rag--symbol of the hard realness of the +office grind.... + +It always hung over the twisted, bulbous lead pipes below the stationary +basin in the women's wash-room provided by the Septimus Building for the +women on three floors. It was a rag ancient and slate-gray, grotesquely +stiff and grotesquely hairy at its frayed edges--a corpse of a scrub-rag +in _rigor mortis_. Una was annoyed with herself for ever observing so +unlovely an object, but in the moment of relaxation when she went to +wash her hands she was unduly sensitive to that eternal rag, and to the +griminess of the wash-room--the cracked and yellow-stained wash-bowl, +the cold water that stung in winter, the roller-towel which she spun +round and round in the effort to find a dry, clean, square space, till, +in a spasm of revulsion, she would bolt out of the wash-room with her +face and hands half dried. + +Woman's place is in the home. Una was doubtless purely perverse in +competing with men for the commercial triumphs of running that gray, wet +towel round and round on its clattering roller, and of wondering whether +for the entire remainder of her life she would see that dead scrub-rag. + +It was no less annoying a fact that Bessie and she had only one +waste-basket, which was invariably at Bessie's desk when Una reached for +it. + +Or that the door of the supply-cupboard always shivered and stuck. + +Or that on Thursday, which is the three P.M. of the week, it seemed +impossible to endure the tedium till Saturday noon; and that, +invariably, her money was gone by Friday, so that Friday lunch was +always a mere insult to her hunger, and she could never get her gloves +from the cleaner till after Saturday pay-day. + +Una knew the office to a point where it offered few beautiful surprises. + +And she knew the tactics of Mr. Troy Wilkins. + +All managers--"bosses"--"chiefs"--have tactics for keeping discipline; +tricks which they conceive as profoundly hidden from their underlings, +and which are intimately known and discussed by those underlings.... +There are the bosses who "bluff," those who lie, those who give +good-fellowship or grave courtesy in lieu of wages. None of these was +Mr. Wilkins. He was dully honest and clumsily paternal. But he was a +roarer, a grumbler; he bawled and ordained, in order to encourage +industry and keep his lambs from asking for "raises." Thus also he tried +to conceal his own mistakes; when a missing letter for which everybody +had been anxiously searching was found on his own desk, instead of in +the files, he would blare, "Well, why didn't you tell me you put it on +my desk, heh?" He was a delayer also and, in poker patois, a passer of +the buck. He would feebly hold up a decision for weeks, then make a +whole campaign of getting his office to rush through the task in order +to catch up; have a form of masculine-commuter hysterics because Una and +Bessie didn't do the typing in a miraculously short time.... He never +cursed; he was an ecclesiastical believer that one of the chief aims of +man is to keep from saying those mystic words "hell" and "damn"; but he +could make "darn it" and "why in tunket" sound as profane as a +gambling-den.... There was included in Una's duties the pretense of +believing that Mr. Wilkins was the greatest single-handed villa +architect in Greater New York. Sometimes it nauseated her. But often he +was rather pathetic in his shaky desire to go on having faith in his +superseded ability, and she would willingly assure him that his rivals, +the boisterous young firm of Soule, Smith & Fissleben, were frauds. + +All these faults and devices of Mr. Troy Wilkins Una knew. Doubtless he +would have been astonished to hear that fact, on evenings in his +plate-racked, much-raftered, highly built-in suburban dining-room, when +he discoursed to the admiring Mrs. Wilkins and the mouse-like little +Wilkinses on the art of office discipline; or mornings in the second +smoker of the 8.16 train, when he told the other lords of the world that +"these stenographers are all alike--you simply can't get 'em to learn +system." + +It is not recorded whether Mr. Wilkins also knew Una's faults--her habit +of falling a-dreaming at 3.30 and trying to make it up by working +furiously at 4.30; her habit of awing the good-hearted Bessie Kraker by +posing as a nun who had never been kissed nor ever wanted to be; her +graft of sending the office-boy out for ten-cent boxes of cocoanut +candy; and a certain resentful touchiness and ladylikeness which made it +hard to give her necessary orders. Mr. Wilkins has never given +testimony, but he is not the villain of the tale, and some authorities +have a suspicion that he did not find Una altogether perfect. + + +Sec. 3 + +It must not be supposed that Una or her million sisters in business were +constantly and actively bored by office routine. + +Save once or twice a week, when he roared, and once or twice a month, +when she felt that thirteen dollars a week was too little, she rather +liked Mr. Wilkins--his honesty, his desire to make comfortable homes for +people, his cheerful "Good-morning!" his way of interrupting dictation +to tell her antiquated but jolly stories, his stolid, dependable-looking +face. + +She had real satisfaction in the game of work--in winning points and +tricks in doing her work briskly and well, in helping Mr. Wilkins to +capture clients. She was eager when she popped in to announce to him +that a wary, long-pursued "prospect" had actually called. She was rather +more interested in her day's work than are the average of meaningless +humanity who sell gingham and teach algebra and cure boils and repair +lawn-mowers, because she was daily more able to approximate perfection, +to look forward to something better--to some splendid position at twenty +or even twenty-five dollars a week. She was certainly in no worse plight +than perhaps ninety-five million of her free and notoriously red-blooded +fellow-citizens. + +But she was in no better plight. There was no drama, no glory in +affection, nor, so long as she should be tied to Troy Wilkins's +dwindling business, no immediate increase in power. And the sameness, +the unceasing discussions with Bessie regarding Mr. Wilkins--Mr. +Wilkins's hat, Mr. Wilkins's latest command, Mr. Wilkins's lost +fountain-pen, Mr. Wilkins's rudeness to the salesman for the Sky-line +Roofing Company, Mr. Wilkins's idiotic friendship for Muldoon, the +contractor, Mr. Wilkins's pronounced unfairness to the office-boy in +regard to a certain lateness in arrival-- + +At best, Una got through day after day; at worst, she was as profoundly +bored as an explorer in the arctic night. + + +Sec. 4 + +Una, the initiate New-Yorker, continued her study of city ways and city +currents during her lunch-hours. She went down to Broad Street to see +the curb market; marveled at the men with telephones in little coops +behind opened windows; stared at the great newspaper offices on Park +Row, the old City Hall, the mingling on lower Broadway of +sky-challenging buildings with the history of pre-Revolutionary days. +She got a momentary prejudice in favor of socialism from listening to an +attack upon it by a noon-time orator--a spotted, badly dressed man whose +favorite slur regarding socialists was that they were spotted and badly +dressed. She heard a negro shouting dithyrambics about some religion she +could never make out. + +Sometimes she lunched at a newspaper-covered desk, with Bessie and the +office-boy, on cold ham and beans and small, bright-colored cakes which +the boy brought in from a bakery. Sometimes she had boiled eggs and +cocoa at a Childs restaurant with stenographers who ate baked apples, +rich Napoleons, and, always, coffee. Sometimes at a cafeteria, carrying +a tray, she helped herself to crackers and milk and sandwiches. +Sometimes at the Arden Tea Room, for women only, she encountered +charity-workers and virulently curious literary ladies, whom she +endured for the marked excellence of the Arden chicken croquettes. +Sometimes Bessie tempted her to a Chinese restaurant, where Bessie, who +came from the East Side and knew a trick or two, did not order +chop-suey, like a tourist, but noodles and eggs foo-young. + +In any case, the lunch-hour and the catalogue of what she was so vulgar +as to eat were of importance in Una's history, because that hour broke +the routine, gave her for an hour a deceptive freedom of will, of choice +between Boston beans and--New York beans. And her triumphant common +sense was demonstrated, for she chose light, digestible food, and kept +her head clear for the afternoon, while her overlord, Mr. Troy Wilkins, +like vast numbers of his fellow business men, crammed himself with +beefsteak-and-kidney pudding, drugged himself with cigar smoke and pots +of strong coffee and shop-talk, spoke earnestly of the wickedness of +drunkenness, and then, drunk with food and tobacco and coffee and talk, +came back dizzy, blur-eyed, slow-nerved; and for two hours tried to get +down to work. + +After hours of trudging through routine, Una went home. + +She took the Elevated now instead of the Subway. That was important in +her life. It meant an entire change of scenery. + +On the Elevated, beside her all evening, hovering over her bed at night, +was Worry. + +"Oh, I ought to have got all that Norris correspondence copied to-day. I +_must_ get at it first thing in the morning.... I wonder if Mr. Wilkins +was sore because I stayed out so long for lunch?... What would I do if I +were fired?" + +So would she worry as she left the office. In the evening she wouldn't +so much criticize herself as suddenly and without reason remember +office settings and incidents--startle at a picture of the T-square at +which she had stared while Mr. Wilkins was telephoning.... She wasn't +weary because she worried; she worried because she was weary from the +airless, unnatural, straining life. She worried about everything +available, from her soul to her finger-nails; but the office offered the +largest number of good opportunities. + +"After all," say the syndicated philosophers, "the office takes only +eight or nine hours a day. The other fifteen or sixteen, you are free to +do as you wish--loaf, study, become an athlete." This illuminative +suggestion is usually reinforced by allusions to Lincoln and Edison. + +Only--you aren't a Lincoln or an Edison, for the most part, and you +don't do any of those improving things. You have the office with you, in +you, every hour of the twenty-four, unless you sleep dreamlessly and +forget--which you don't. Probably, like Una, you do not take any +exercise to drive work-thoughts away. + +She often planned to take exercise regularly; read of it in women's +magazines. But she could never get herself to keep up the earnest +clowning of bedroom calisthenics; gymnasiums were either reekingly +crowded or too expensive--and even to think of undressing and dressing +for a gymnasium demanded more initiative than was left in her fagged +organism. There was walking--but city streets become tiresomely +familiar. Of sports she was consistently ignorant. + +So all the week she was in the smell and sound of the battle, until +Saturday evening with its blessed rest--the clean, relaxed time which +every woman on the job knows. + +Saturday evening! No work to-morrow! A prospect of thirty-six hours of +freedom. A leisurely dinner, a languorous slowness in undressing, a hot +bath, a clean nightgown, and fresh, smooth bed-linen. Una went to bed +early to enjoy the contemplation of these luxuries. She even put on a +lace bed-cap adorned with pink silk roses. The pleasure of relaxing in +bed, of looking lazily at the pictures in a new magazine, of drifting +into slumber--not of stepping into a necessary sleep that was only the +anteroom of another day's labor.... + +Such was her greatest joy in this period of uneventfulness. + + +Sec. 5 + +Una was, she hoped, "trying to think about things." Naturally, one who +used that boarding-house phrase could not think transformingly. + +She wasn't illuminative about Romain Rolland or Rodin or village +welfare. She was still trying to decide whether the suffrage movement +was ladylike and whether Dickens or Thackeray was the better novelist. +But she really was trying to decide. + +She compiled little lists of books to read, "movements" to investigate. +She made a somewhat incoherent written statement of what she was trying +to do, and this she kept in her top bureau drawer, among the ribbons, +collars, imitation pearl necklaces, handkerchiefs, letters from Walter, +and photographs of Panama and her mother. + +She took it out sometimes, and relieved the day's accumulated suffering +by adding such notes as: + +"Be nice & human w. employes if ever have any of own; office wretched +hole anyway bec. of econ. system; W. used to say, why make worse by +being cranky." + +Or: + +"Study music, it brings country and W. and poetry and everything; take +piano les. when get time." + +So Una tramped, weary always at dusk, but always recreated at dawn, +through one of those periods of timeless, unmarked months, when all +drama seems past and unreal and apparently nothing will ever happen +again. + +Then, in one week, everything became startling--she found melodrama and +a place of friendship. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +"I'm tired of the Grays. They're very nice people, but they can't talk," +said Una to Bessie Kraker, at lunch in the office, on a February day. + +"How do yuh mean 'can't talk'? Are they dummies?" inquired Bessie. + +"Dummies?" + +"Yuh, sure, deef and dumb." + +"Why, no, I mean they don't talk my language--they don't, oh, they +don't, I suppose you'd say 'conversationalize.' Do you see?" + +"Oh yes," said Bessie, doubtfully. "Say, listen, Miss Golden. Say, I +don't want to butt in, and maybe you wouldn't be stuck on it much, but +they say it's a dead-swell place to live--Miss Kitson, the boss's +secretary where I was before, lived there--" + +"Say, for the love o' Mike, _say_ it: _Where?_" interrupted the +office-boy. + +"You shut your nasty trap. I was just coming to it. The Temperance and +Protection Home, on Madison Avenue just above Thirty-fourth. They say +it's kind of strict, but, gee! there's a' _ausgezeichnet_ bunch of dames +there, artists and everything, and they say they feed you swell, and it +only costs eight bucks a week." + +"Well, maybe I'll look at it," said Una, dubiously. + +Neither the forbidding name nor Bessie's moral recommendation made the +Home for Girls sound tempting, but Una was hungry for companionship; +she was cold now toward the unvarying, unimaginative desires of men. +Among the women "artists and everything" she might find the friends she +needed. + +The Temperance and Protection Home Club for Girls was in a solemn, +five-story, white sandstone structure with a severe doorway of iron +grill, solid and capable-looking as a national bank. Una rang the bell +diffidently. She waited in a hall that, despite its mission settee and +red-tiled floor, was barrenly clean as a convent. She was admitted to +the business-like office of Mrs. Harriet Fike, the matron of the Home. + +Mrs. Fike had a brown, stringy neck and tan bangs. She wore a mannish +coat and skirt, flat shoes of the kind called "sensible" by everybody +except pretty women, and a large silver-mounted crucifix. + +"Well?" she snarled. + +"Some one-- I'd like to find out about coming here to +live--to see the place, and so on. Can you have somebody show me one of +the rooms?" + +"My dear young lady, the first consideration isn't to 'have somebody +show you' or anybody else a room, but to ascertain if you are a fit +person to come here." + +Mrs. Fike jabbed at a compartment of her desk, yanked out a +corduroy-bound book, boxed its ears, slammed it open, glared at Una in a +Christian and Homelike way, and began to shoot questions: + +"Whatcha name?" + +"Una Golden." + +"Miss uh Miss?" + +"I didn't quite--" + +"Miss or Mrs., I _said_. Can't you understand English?" + +"See here, I'm not being sent to jail that I know of!" Una rose, +tremblingly. + +Mrs. Fike merely waited and snapped: "Sit down. You look as though you +had enough sense to understand that we can't let people we don't know +anything about enter a decent place like this.... Miss or Mrs., I said?" + +"Miss," Una murmured, feebly sitting down again. + +"What's your denomination?... No agnostics or Catholics allowed!" + +Una heard herself meekly declaring, "Methodist." + +"Smoke? Swear? Drink liquor? Got any bad habits?" + +"No!" + +"Got a lover, sweetheart, gentleman friend? If so, what name or names?" + +"No." + +"That's what they all say. Let me tell you that later, when you expect +to have all these male cousins visit you, we'll reserve the privilege to +ask questions.... Ever served a jail sentence?" + +"Now really--! Do I look it?" + +"My dear miss, wouldn't you feel foolish if I said 'yes'? _Have_ you? I +warn you we look these things up!" + +"No, I have _not_." + +"Well, that's comforting.... Age?" + +"Twenty-six." + +"Parents living? Name nearest relatives? Nearest friends? Present +occupation?" + +Even as she answered this last simple question and Mrs. Fike's +suspicious query about her salary, Una felt as though she were perjuring +herself, as though there were no such place as Troy Wilkins's +office--and Mrs. Fike knew it; as though a large policeman were secreted +behind the desk and would at any moment pop out and drag her off to +jail. She answered with tremorous carefulness. By now, the one thing +that she wanted to do was to escape from that Christian and strictly +supervised Napoleon, Mrs. Fike, and flee back to the Grays. + +"Previous history?" Mrs. Fike was grimly continuing, and she followed +this question by ascertaining Una's ambitions, health, record for +insanity, and references. + +Mrs. Fike closed the query-book, and observed: + +"Well, you are rather fresh, but you seem to be acceptable--and now you +may look us over and see whether we are acceptable to you. Don't think +for one moment that this institution needs you, or is trying to lift you +out of a life of sin, or that we suppose this to be the only place in +New York to live. We know what we want--we run things on a scientific +basis--but we aren't so conceited as to think that everybody likes us. +Now, for example, I can see that you don't like me and my ways one bit. +But Lord love you, that isn't necessary. The one thing necessary is for +me to run this Home according to the book, and if you're fool enough to +prefer a slap-dash boarding-house to this hygienic Home, why, you'll +make your bed--or rather some slattern of a landlady will make it--and +you can lie in it. Come with me. No; first read the rules." + +Una obediently read that the young ladies of the Temperance Home were +forbidden to smoke, make loud noises, cook, or do laundry in their +rooms, sit up after midnight, entertain visitors "of any sort except +mothers and sisters" in any place in the Home, "except in the parlors +for that purpose provided." They were not permitted to be out after ten +unless their names were specifically entered in the "Out-late Book" +before their going. And they were "requested to answer all reasonable +questions of matron, or board of visitors, or duly qualified inspectors, +regarding moral, mental, physical, and commercial well-being and +progress." + +Una couldn't resist asking, "I suppose it isn't forbidden to sleep in +our rooms, is it?" + +Mrs. Fike looked over her, through her, about her, and remarked: "I'd +advise you to drop all impudence. You see, you don't do it well. We +admit East Side Jews here and they are so much quicker and wittier than +you country girls from Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, and Heaven knows +where, that you might just as well give up and try to be ladies instead +of humorists. Come, we will take a look at the Home." + +By now Una was resolved not to let Mrs. Fike drive her away. She would +"show her"; she would "come and live here just for spite." + +What Mrs. Fike thought has not been handed down. + +She led Una past a series of closets, each furnished with two straight +chairs on either side of a table, a carbon print of a chilly-looking +cathedral, and a slice of carpet on which one was rather disappointed +not to find the label, "Bath Mat." + +"These are the reception-rooms where the girls are allowed to receive +callers. _Any_ time--up to a quarter to ten," Mrs. Fike said. + +Una decided that they were better fitted for a hair-dressing +establishment. + +The living-room was her first revelation of the Temperance Home as +something besides a prison--as an abiding-place for living, eager, +sensitive girls. It was not luxurious, but it had been arranged by some +one who made allowance for a weakness for pretty things, even on the +part of young females observing the rules in a Christian home. There was +a broad fireplace, built-in book-shelves, a long table; and, in wicker +chairs with chintz cushions, were half a dozen curious girls. Una was +sure that one of them, a fizzy-haired, laughing girl, secretly nodded to +her, and she was comforted. + +Up the stairs to a marvelous bathroom with tempting shower-baths, a +small gymnasium, and, on the roof, a garden and loggia and basket-ball +court. It was cool and fresh up here, on even the hottest summer +evenings, and here the girls were permitted to lounge in negligees till +after ten, Mrs. Fike remarked, with a half-smile. + +Una smiled back. + +As they went through the bedroom floors, with Mrs. Fike stalking ahead, +a graceful girl in lace cap and negligee came bouncing out of a door +between them, drew herself up and saluted Mrs. Fike's back, winked at +Una amicably, and for five steps imitated Mrs. Fike's aggressive stride. + +"Yes, I would be glad to come here!" Una said, cheerfully, to Mrs. Fike, +who looked at her suspiciously, but granted: "Well, we'll look up your +references. Meantime, if you like--or don't like, I suppose--you might +talk to a Mrs. Esther Lawrence, who wants a room-mate." + +"Oh, I don't think I'd like a room-mate." + +"My dear young lady, this place is simply full of young persons who +would like and they wouldn't like--and forsooth we must change every +plan to suit their high and mighty convenience! I'm not at all sure that +we shall have a single room vacant for at least six months, and of +course--" + +"Well, could I talk to Mrs.--Lawrence, was it?" + +"Most assuredly. I _expect_ you to talk to her! Come with me." + +Una followed abjectly, and the matron seemed well pleased with her +reformation of this wayward young woman. Her voice was curiously anemic, +however, as she rapped on a bedroom door and called, "Oh, Mrs. +Lawrence!" + +A husky, capable voice within, "Yeah, what is 't?" + +"It's Mrs. Fike, deary. I think I have a room-mate for you." + +"Well, you wait 'll I get something on, will you!" + +Mrs. Fike waited. She waited two minutes. She looked at a wrist-watch in +a leather band while she tapped her sensibly clad foot. She tried again: +"We're _waiting_, deary!" + +There was no answer from within, and it was two minutes more before the +door was opened. + +Una was conscious of a room pleasant with white-enameled woodwork; a +denim-covered couch and a narrow, prim brass bed, a litter of lingerie +and sheets of newspaper; and, as the dominating center of it all, a +woman of thirty, tall, high-breasted, full-faced, with a nose that was +large but pleasant, black eyes that were cool and direct and +domineering--Mrs. Esther Lawrence. + +"You kept us waiting so long," complained Mrs. Fike. + +Mrs. Lawrence stared at her as though she were an impudent servant. She +revolved on Una, and with a self-confident kindliness in her voice, +inquired, "What's your name, child?" + +"Una Golden." + +"We'll talk this over.... Thank you, Mrs. Fike." + +"Well, now," Mrs. Fike endeavored, "be sure you both are satisfied--" + +"Don't you worry! We will, all right!" + +Mrs. Fike glared at her and retired. + +Mrs. Lawrence grinned, stretched herself on the couch, mysteriously +produced a cigarette, and asked, "Smoke?" + +"No, thanks." + +"Sit down, child, and be comfy. Oh, would you mind opening that window? +Not supposed to smoke.... Poor Ma Fike--I just can't help deviling her. +Please don't think I'm usually as nasty as I am with her. She has to be +kept in her place or she'll worry you to death.... Thanks.... Do sit +down--woggle up the pillow on the bed and be comfy.... You look like a +nice kid--me, I'm a lazy, slatternly, good-natured old hex, with all the +bad habits there are and a profound belief that the world is a hell of a +place, but I'm fine to get along with, and so let's take a shot at +rooming together. If we scrap, we can quit instanter, and no bad +feelings.... I'd really like to have you come in, because you look as +though you were on, even if you are rather meek and kitteny; and I'm +scared to death they'll wish some tough little Mick on to me, or some +pious sister who hasn't been married and believes in pussy-footing +around and taking it all to God in prayer every time I tell her the +truth.... What do you think, kiddy?" + +Una was by this cock-sure disillusioned, large person more delighted +than by all the wisdom of Mr. Wilkins or the soothing of Mrs. Sessions. +She felt that, except for Walter, it was the first time since she had +come to New York that she had found an entertaining person. + +"Yes," she said, "do let's try it." + +"Good! Now let me warn you first off, that I may be diverting at times, +but I'm no good. To-morrow I'll pretend to be a misused and unfortunate +victim, but your young and almost trusting eyes make me feel candid for +about fifteen minutes. I certainly got a raw deal from my beloved +husband--that's all you'll hear from me about him. By the way, I'm +typical of about ten thousand married women in business about whose +noble spouses nothing is ever said. But I suppose I ought to have bucked +up and made good in business (I'm a bum stenog. for Pitcairn, McClure & +Stockley, the bond house). But I can't. I'm too lazy, and it doesn't +seem worth while.... And, oh, we are exploited, women who are on jobs. +The bosses give us a lot of taffy and raise their hats--but they don't +raise our wages, and they think that if they keep us till two G.M. +taking dictation they make it all right by apologizing. Women are a lot +more conscientious on jobs than men are--but that's because we're fools; +you don't catch the men staying till six-thirty because the boss has +shystered all afternoon and wants to catch up on his correspondence. But +we--of course we don't dare to make dates for dinner, lest we have to +stay late. We don't _dare_!" + +"I bet _you_ do!" + +"Yes--well, I'm not so much of a fool as some of the rest--or else more +of a one. There's Mamie Magen--she's living here; she's with Pitcairn, +too. You'll meet her and be crazy about her. She's a lame Jewess, and +awfully plain, except she's got lovely eyes, but she's got a mind like a +tack. Well, she's the little angel-pie about staying late, and some day +she'll probably make four thousand bucks a year. She'll be mayor of New +York, or executive secretary of the Young Women's Atheist Association or +something. But still, she doesn't stay late and plug hard because she's +scared, but because she's got ambition. But most of the women--Lord! +they're just cowed sheep." + +"Yes," said Una. + +A million discussions of Women in Business going on--a thousand of them +at just that moment, perhaps--men employers declaring that they couldn't +depend on women in their offices, women asserting that women were the +more conscientious. Una listened and was content; she had found some one +with whom to play, with whom to talk and hate the powers.... She felt an +impulse to tell Mrs. Lawrence all about Troy Wilkins and her mother +and--and perhaps even about Walter Babson. But she merely treasured up +the thought that she could do that some day, and politely asked: + +"What about Mrs. Fike? Is she as bad as she seems?" + +"Why, that's the best little skeleton of contention around here. There's +three factions. Some girls say she's just plain devil--mean as a +floor-walker. That's what I think--she's a rotter and a four-flusher. +You notice the way she crawls when I stand up to her. Why, they won't +have Catholics here, and I'm one of those wicked people, and she knows +it! When she asked my religion I told her I was a 'Romanist +Episcopalian,' and she sniffed and put me down as an Episcopalian--I saw +her!... Then some of the girls think she's really good-hearted--just +gruff--bark worse than her bite. But you ought to see how she barks at +some of the younger girls--scares 'em stiff--and keeps picking on them +about regulations--makes their lives miserable. Then there's a third +section that thinks she's merely institutionalized--training makes her +as hard as any other kind of a machine. You'll find lots like her in +this town--in all the charities." + +"But the girls--they do have a good time here?" + +"Yes, they do. It's sort of fun to fight Ma Fike and all the fool rules. +I enjoy smoking here twice as much as I would anywhere else. And Fike +isn't half as bad as the board of visitors--bunch of fat, rich, old +Upper-West-Siders with passementeried bosoms, doing tea-table charity, +and asking us impertinent questions, and telling a bunch of hard-worked +slaves to be virtuous and wash behind their ears--the soft, ignorant, +conceited, impractical parasites! But still, it's all sort of like a +cranky boarding-school for girls--and you know what fun the girls have +there, with midnight fudge parties and a teacher pussy-footing down the +hall trying to catch them." + +"I don't know. I've never been to one." + +"Well--doesn't matter.... Another thing--some day, when you come to know +more men-- Know many?" + +"Very few." + +"Well, you'll find this town is full of bright young men seeking an +economical solution of the sex problem--to speak politely--and you'll +find it a relief not to have them on your door-step. 'S safe here.... +Come in with me, kid. Give me an audience to talk to." + +"Yes," said Una. + + +Sec. 2 + +It was hard to leave the kindly Herbert Grays of the flat, but Una made +the break and arranged all her silver toilet-articles--which consisted +of a plated-silver hair-brush, a German-silver nail-file, and a good, +plain, honest rubber comb--on the bureau in Mrs. Lawrence's room. + +With the shyness of a girl on her first night in boarding-school, Una +stuck to Mrs. Lawrence's side in the noisy flow of strange girls down to +the dining-room. She was used to being self-absorbed in the noisiest +restaurants, but she was trembly about the knees as she crossed the room +among curious upward glances; she found it very hard to use a fork +without clattering it on the plate when she sat with Mrs. Lawrence and +four strangers, at a table for six. + +They all were splendidly casual and wise and good-looking. With no men +about to intimidate them--or to attract them--they made a solid phalanx +of bland, satisfied femininity, and Una felt more barred out than in an +office. She longed for a man who would be curious about her, or cross +with her, or perform some other easy, customary, simple-hearted +masculine trick. + +But she was taken into the friendship of the table when Mrs. Lawrence +had finished a harangue on the cardinal sin of serving bean soup four +times in two weeks. + +"Oh, shut up, Lawrence, and introduce the new kid!" said one girl. + +"You wait till I get through with my introductory remarks, Cassavant. +I'm inspired to-night. I'm going to take a plate of bean soup and fit it +over Ma Fike's head--upside down." + +"Oh, give Ma Fike a rest!" + +Una was uneasy. She wasn't sure whether this repartee was friendly good +spirits or a nagging feud. Like all the ungrateful human race, she +considered whether she ought to have identified herself with the noisy +Esther Lawrence on entering the Home. So might a freshman wonder, or the +guest of a club; always the amiable and vulgar Lawrences are most +doubted when they are best-intentioned. + +Una was relieved when she was welcomed by the four: + +Mamie Magen, the lame Jewess, in whose big brown eyes was an eternal +prayer for all of harassed humanity. + +Jennie Cassavant, in whose eyes was chiefly a prayer that life would +keep on being interesting--she, the dark, slender, loquacious, observant +child who had requested Mrs. Lawrence to shut up. + +Rose Larsen, like a pretty, curly-haired boy, though her shoulders were +little and adorable in a white-silk waist. + +Mrs. Amesbury, a nun of business, pale and silent; her thin throat +shrouded in white net; her voice low and self-conscious; her very blood +seeming white--a woman with an almost morbid air of guarded purity, whom +you could never associate with the frank crudities of marriage. Her +movements were nervous and small; she never smiled; you couldn't be +boisterous with her. Yet, Mrs. Lawrence whispered she was one of the +chief operators of the telephone company, and, next to the thoughtful +and suffering Mamie Magen, the most capable woman she knew. + +"How do you like the Tempest and Protest, Miss Golden?" the lively +Cassavant said, airily. + +"I don't--" + +"Why! The Temperance and Protection Home." + +"Well, I like Mrs. Fike's shoes. I should think they'd be fine to throw +at cats." + +"Good work, Golden. You're admitted!" + +"Say, Magen," said Mrs. Lawrence, "Golden agrees with me about +offices--no chance for women--" + +Mamie Magen sighed, and "Esther," she said, in a voice which must +naturally have been rasping, but which she had apparently learned to +control like a violin--"Esther dear, if you could ever understand what +offices have done for me! On the East Side--always it was work and work +and watch all the pretty girls in our block get T. B. in +garment-factories, or marry fellows that weren't any good and have a +baby every year, and get so thin and worn out; and the garment-workers' +strikes and picketing on cold nights. And now I am in an office--all the +fellows are dandy and polite--not like the floor superintendent where I +worked in a department store; he would call down a cash-girl for making +change slow--! I have a chance to do anything a man can do. The boss is +just crazy to find women that will take an _interest_ in the work, like +it was their own you know, he told you so himself--" + +"Sure, I know the line of guff," said Mrs. Lawrence. "And you take an +interest, and get eighteen plunks per for doing statistics that they +couldn't get a real college male in trousers to do for less than +thirty-five." + +"Or put it like this, Lawrence," said Jennie Cassavant. "Magen admits +that the world in general is a muddle, and she thinks offices are heaven +because by comparison with sweat-shops they are half-way decent." + +The universal discussion was on. Everybody but Una and the nun of +business threw everything from facts to bread pills about the table, and +they enjoyed themselves in as unfeminized and brutal a manner as men in +a cafe. Una had found some one with whom to talk her own shop--and shop +is the only reasonable topic of conversation in the world; witness +authors being intellectual about editors and romanticism; lovers +absorbed in the technique of holding hands; or mothers interested in +babies, recipes, and household ailments. + +After dinner they sprawled all over the room of Una and Mrs. Lawrence, +and talked about theaters, young men, and Mrs. Fike for four solid +hours--all but the pretty, boyish Rose Larsen, who had a young man +coming to call at eight. Even the new-comer, Una, was privileged to take +part in giving Rose extensive, highly detailed, and not entirely proper +advice--advice of a completeness which would doubtless have astonished +the suitor, then dressing somewhere in a furnished room and unconscious +of the publicity of his call. Una also lent Miss Larsen a pair of silk +stockings, helped three other girls to coerce her curly hair, and formed +part of the solemn procession that escorted her to the top of the stairs +when the still unconscious young man was announced from below. And it +was Una who was able to see the young man without herself being seen, +and to win notoriety by being able to report that he had smooth black +hair, a small mustache, and carried a stick. + +Una was living her boarding-school days now, at twenty-six. The presence +of so many possible friends gave her self-confidence and +self-expression. She went to bed happy that night, home among her own +people, among the women who, noisy or reticent, slack or aspiring, were +joined to make possible a life of work in a world still heavy-scented +with the ideals of the harem. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +That same oasis of a week gave to Una her first taste of business +responsibility, of being in charge and generally comporting herself as +do males. But in order to rouse her thus, Chance broke the inoffensive +limb of unfortunate Mr. Troy Wilkins as he was stepping from his small +bronchial motor-car to an icy cement block, on seven o'clock of Friday +evening. + +When Una arrived at the office on Saturday morning she received a +telephone message from Mr. Wilkins, directing her to take charge of the +office, of Bessie Kraker, and the office-boy, and the negotiations with +the Comfy Coast Building and Development Company regarding the planning +of three rows of semi-detached villas. + +For three weeks the office was as different from the treadmill that it +familiarly had been, as the Home Club and Lawrence's controversial room +were different from the Grays' flat. She was glad to work late, to +arrive not at eight-thirty, but at a quarter to eight, to gallop down to +a cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich at noon, to be patient with +callers, and to try to develop some knowledge of spelling in that child +of nature, Bessie Kraker. She walked about the office quickly, glancing +proudly at its neatness. Daily, with an operator's headgear, borrowed +from the telephone company, over her head, she spent half an hour +talking with Mr. Wilkins, taking his dictation, receiving his cautions +and suggestions, reassuring him that in his absence the Subway ran and +Tammany still ruled. After an agitated conference with the +vice-president of the Comfy Coast Company, during which she was eloquent +as an automobile advertisement regarding Mr. Wilkins's former +masterpieces with their "every modern improvement, parquet floors, beam +ceilings, plate-rack, hardwood trim throughout, natty and novel +decorations," Una reached the zenith of salesman's virtues--she "closed +the deal." + +Mr. Wilkins came back and hemmed and hawed a good deal; he praised the +work she hadn't considered well done, and pointed out faults in what she +considered particularly clever achievements, and was laudatory but +dissatisfying in general. In a few days he, in turn, reached the zenith +of virtue on the part of boss--he raised her salary. To fifteen dollars +a week. She was again merely his secretary, however, and the office +trudged through another normal period when all past drama seemed +incredible and all the future drab. + +But Una was certain now that she could manage business, could wheedle +Bessies and face pompous vice-presidents and satisfy querulous Mr. +Wilkinses. She looked forward; she picked at architecture as portrayed +in Mr. Wilkins's big books; she learned the reason and manner of the +rows of semi-detached, semi-suburban, semi-comfortable, semi-cheap, and +somewhat less than semi-attractive houses. + +She was not afraid of the office world now; she had a part in the city +and a home. + + +Sec. 2 + +She thought of Walter Babson. Sometimes, when Mrs. Lawrence was petulant +or the office had been unusually exhausting, she fancied that she +missed him. But instead of sitting and brooding over folded hands, in +woman's ancient fashion, she took a man's unfair advantage--she went up +to the gymnasium of the Home Club and worked with the chest-weights and +flying-rings--a solemn, happy, busy little figure. She laughed more +deeply, and she felt the enormous rhythm of the city, not as a menacing +roar, but as a hymn of triumph. + +She could never be intimate with Mamie Magen as she was with the frankly +disillusioned Mrs. Lawrence; she never knew whether Miss Magen really +liked her or not; her smile, which transfigured her sallow face, was +equally bright for Una, for Mrs. Fike, and for beggars. Yet it was Miss +Magen whose faith in the purpose of the struggling world inspired Una. +Una walked with her up Madison Avenue, past huge old brownstone +mansions, and she was unconscious of suiting her own quick step to Miss +Magen's jerky lameness as the Jewess talked of her ideals of a business +world which should have generosity and chivalry and the accuracy of a +biological laboratory; in which there would be no need of charity to +employee.... Or to employer. + +Mamie Magen was the most highly evolved person Una had ever known. Una +had, from books and newspapers and Walter Babson, learned that there +were such things as socialists and earnest pessimists, and the race +sketchily called "Bohemians"--writers and artists and social workers, +who drank claret and made love and talked about the free theater, all on +behalf of the brotherhood of man. Una pictured the socialists as always +attacking capitalists; the pessimists as always being bitter and +egotistic; Bohemians as always being dissipated, but as handsome and +noisy and gay. + +But Mamie Magen was a socialist who believed that the capitalists with +their profit-sharing and search for improved methods of production were +as sincere in desiring the scientific era as were the most burning +socialists; who loved and understood the most oratorical of the young +socialists with their hair in their eyes, but also loved and understood +the clean little college boys who came into business with a desire to +make it not a war, but a crusade. She was a socialist who was determined +to control and glorify business; a pessimist who was, in her gentle +reticent way, as scornful of half-churches, half-governments, +half-educations, as the cynical Mrs. Lawrence. Finally, she who was not +handsome or dissipated or gay, but sallow and lame and Spartan, knew +"Bohemia" better than most of the professional Hobohemians. As an East +Side child she had grown up in the classes and parties of the University +Settlement; she had been held upon the then juvenile knees of half the +distinguished writers and fighters for reform, who had begun their +careers as settlement workers; she, who was still unknown, a clerk and a +nobody, and who wasn't always syntactical, was accustomed to people +whose names had been made large and sonorous by newspaper publicity; and +at the age when ambitious lady artists and derailed Walter Babsons came +to New York and determinedly seized on Bohemia, Mamie Magen had outgrown +Bohemia and become a worker. + +To Una she explained the city, made it comprehensible, made art and +economics and philosophy human and tangible. Una could not always follow +her, but from her she caught the knowledge that the world and all its +wisdom is but a booby, blundering school-boy that needs management and +could be managed, if men and women would be human beings instead of just +business men, or plumbers, or army officers, or commuters, or educators, +or authors, or clubwomen, or traveling salesmen, or Socialists, or +Republicans, or Salvation Army leaders, or wearers of clothes. She +preached to Una a personal kinghood, an education in brotherhood and +responsible nobility, which took in Una's job as much as it did +government ownership or reading poetry. + + +Sec. 3 + +Not always was Una breathlessly trying to fly after the lame but +broad-winged Mamie Magen. She attended High Mass at the Spanish church +on Washington Heights with Mrs. Lawrence; felt the beauty of the +ceremony; admired the simple, classic church; adored the padre; and for +about one day planned to scorn Panama Methodism and become a Catholic, +after which day she forgot about Methodism and Catholicism. She also +accompanied Mrs. Lawrence to a ceremony much less impressive and much +less easily forgotten--to a meeting with a man. + +Mrs. Lawrence never talked about her husband, but in this reticence she +was not joined by Rose Dawn or Jennie Cassavant. Jennie maintained that +the misfitted Mr. Lawrence was alive, very much so; that Esther and he +weren't even divorced, but merely separated. The only sanction Mrs. +Lawrence ever gave to this report was to blurt out one night: "Keep up +your belief in the mysticism of love and all that kind of sentimental +sex stuff as long as you can. You'll lose it some day fast enough. Me, I +know that a woman needs a man just the same as a man needs a woman--and +just as darned unpoetically. Being brought up a Puritan, I never can +quite get over the feeling that I oughtn't to have anything to do with +men--me as I am--but believe me it isn't any romantic ideal. I sure want +'em." + +Mrs. Lawrence continually went to dinners and theaters with men; she +told Una all the details, as women do, from the first highly proper +handshake down in the pure-minded hall of the Home Club at eight, to the +less proper good-night kiss on the dark door-step of the Home Club at +midnight. But she was careful to make clear that one kiss was all she +ever allowed, though she grew dithyrambic over the charming, lonely men +with whom she played--a young doctor whose wife was in a madhouse; a +clever, restrained, unhappy old broker. + +Once she broke out: "Hang it! I want love, and that's all there is to +it--that's crudely all there ever is to it with any woman, no matter how +much she pretends to be satisfied with mourning the dead or caring for +children, or swatting a job or being religious or anything else. I'm a +low-brow; I can't give you the economics of it and the spiritual +brotherhood and all that stuff, like Mamie Magen. But I know women want +a man and love--all of it." + +Next evening she took Una to dinner at a German restaurant, as chaperon +to herself and a quiet, insistent, staring, good-looking man of forty. +While Mrs. Lawrence and the man talked about the opera, their eyes +seemed to be defying each other. Una felt that she was not wanted. When +the man spoke hesitatingly of a cabaret, Una made excuse to go home. + +Mrs. Lawrence did not return till two. She moved about the room quietly, +but Una awoke. + +"I'm _glad_ I went with him," Mrs. Lawrence said, angrily, as though she +were defending herself. + +Una asked no questions, but her good little heart was afraid. Though she +retained her joy in Mrs. Lawrence's willingness to take her and her job +seriously, Una was dismayed by Mrs. Lawrence's fiercely uneasy interest +in men.... She resented the insinuation that the sharp, unexpected +longing to feel Walter's arms about her might be only a crude physical +need for a man, instead of a mystic fidelity to her lost love. + +Being a lame marcher, a mind which was admittedly "shocked at each +discovery of the aliveness of theory," Una's observation of the stalking +specter of sex did not lead her to make any very lucid conclusions about +the matter. But she did wonder a little if this whole business of +marriages and marriage ceremonies and legal bonds which any clerkly +pastor can gild with religiosity was so sacred as she had been informed +in Panama. She wondered a little if Mrs. Lawrence's obvious requirement +of man's companionship ought to be turned into a sneaking theft of love. +Una Golden was not a philosopher; she was a workaday woman. But into her +workaday mind came a low light from the fire which was kindling the +world; the dual belief that life is too sacred to be taken in war and +filthy industries and dull education; and that most forms and +organizations and inherited castes are not sacred at all. + + +Sec. 4 + +The aspirations of Mamie Magen and the alarming frankness of Mrs. +Lawrence were not all her life at the Home Club. With pretty Rose Larsen +and half a dozen others she played. They went in fluttering, beribboned +parties to the theater; they saw visions at symphony concerts, and +slipped into exhibits of contemporary artists at private galleries on +Fifth Avenue. When spring came they had walking parties in Central Park, +in Van Cortlandt Park, on the Palisades, across Staten Island, and +picnicked by themselves or with neat, trim-minded, polite men clerks +from the various offices and stores where the girls worked. They had a +perpetual joy in annoying Mrs. Fike by parties on fire-escapes, by +lobster Newburgh suppers at midnight. They were discursively excited +for a week when Rose Larsen was followed from the surface-car to the +door by an unknown man; and they were unhappily excited when, without +explanations, slim, daring Jennie Cassavant was suddenly asked to leave +the Home Club; and they had a rose-lighted dinner when Livy Hedger +announced her engagement to a Newark lawyer. + +Various were the Home Club women in training and work and ways; they +were awkward stenographers and dependable secretaries; fashion artists +and department-store clerks; telephone girls and clever college-bred +persons who actually read manuscripts and proof, and wrote captions or +household-department squibs for women's magazines--real editors, or at +least real assistant editors; persons who knew authors and illustrators, +as did the great Magen. They were attendants in dentists' offices and +teachers in night-schools and filing-girls and manicurists and cashiers +and blue-linen-gowned super-waitresses in artistic tea-rooms. And +cliques, caste, they did have. Yet their comradeship was very sweet, +quite real; the factional lines were not drawn according to salary or +education or family, but according to gaiety or sobriety or propriety. + +Una was finding not only her lost boarding-school days, but her second +youth--perhaps her first real youth. + +Though the questions inspired by the exceptional Miss Magen and the +defiant Mrs. Lawrence kept her restless, her association with the +play-girls, her growing acquaintanceship with women who were +easy-minded, who had friends and relatives and a place in the city, who +did not agonize about their jobs or their loves, who received young men +casually and looked forward to marriage and a comfortable flat in +Harlem, made Una feel the city as her own proper dwelling. Now she no +longer plodded along the streets wonderingly, a detached little +stranger; she walked briskly and contentedly, heedless of crowds, +returning to her own home in her own city. Most workers of the city +remain strangers to it always. But chance had made Una an insider. + +It was another chapter in the making of a business woman, that spring of +happiness and new stirrings in the Home Club; it was another term in the +unplanned, uninstructed, muddling, chance-governed college which +civilization unwittingly keeps for the training of men and women who +will carry on the work of the world. + +It passed swiftly, and July and vacation-time came to Una. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +It was hard enough to get Mr. Wilkins to set a definite date for her +summer vacation; the time was delayed and juggled till Mrs. Lawrence, +who was to have gone with Una, had to set off alone. But it was even +harder for Una to decide where to go for her vacation. + +There was no accumulation of places which she had fervently been +planning to see. Indeed, Una wasn't much interested in any place besides +New York and Panama; and of the questions and stale reminiscences of +Panama she was weary. She decided to go to a farm in the Berkshires +largely because she had overheard a girl in the Subway say that it was a +good place. + +When she took the train she was brave with a new blue suit, a new +suit-case, a two-pound box of candy, copies of the _Saturday Evening +Post_ and the _Woman's Home Companion_, and Jack London's _People of the +Abyss_, which Mamie Magen had given her. All the way to Pittsfield, all +the way out to the farm by stage, she sat still and looked politely at +every large detached elm, every cow or barefoot boy. + +She had set her methodical mind in order; had told herself that she +would have time to think and observe. Yet if a census had been taken of +her thoughts, not sex nor economics, not improving observations of the +flora and fauna of western Massachusetts, would have been found, but a +half-glad, half-hysterical acknowledgment that she had not known how +tired and office-soaked she was till now, when she had relaxed, and a +dull, recurrent wonder if two weeks would be enough to get the office +poison out of her body. Now that she gave up to it, she was so nearly +sick that she couldn't see the magic of the sheer green hillsides and +unexpected ponds, the elm-shrined winding road, towns demure and white. +She did not notice the huge, inn-like farm-house, nor her bare room, nor +the noisy dining-room. She sat on the porch, exhausted, telling herself +that she was enjoying the hill's slope down to a pond that was yet +bright as a silver shield, though its woody shores had blurred into soft +darkness, the enchantment of frog choruses, the cooing pigeons in the +barn-yard. + +"Listen. A cow mooing. Thank the Lord I'm away from New York--clean +forgotten it--might be a million miles away!" she assured herself. + +Yet all the while she continued to picture the office--Bessie's desk, +Mr. Wilkins's inkwell, the sinister gray scrub-rag in the wash-room, and +she knew that she needed some one to lure her mind from the office. + +She was conscious that some man had left the chattering rocking-chair +group at the other end of the long porch and had taken the chair beside +her. + +"Miss Golden!" a thick voice hesitated. + +"Yes." + +"Say, I thought it was you. Well, well, the world's pretty small, after +all. Say, I bet you don't remember me." + +In the porch light Una beheld a heavy-shouldered, typical American +business man, in derby hat and clipped mustache, his jowls shining with +a recent shave; an alert, solid man of about forty-five. She remembered +him as a man she had been glad to meet; she felt guiltily that she ought +to know him--perhaps he was a Wilkins client, and she was making future +difficulty in the office. But place him she could not. + +"Oh yes, yes, of course, though I can't just remember your name. I +always can remember faces, but I never can remember names," she +achieved. + +"Sure, I know how it is. I've often said, I never forget a face, but I +never can remember names. Well, sir, you remember Sanford Hunt that went +to the commercial college--" + +"Oh, _now_ I know--you're Mr. Schwirtz of the Lowry Paint Company, who +had lunch with us and told me about the paint company--Mr. Julius +Schwirtz." + +"You got me.... Though the fellows usually call me 'Eddie'--Julius +Edward Schwirtz is my full name--my father was named Julius, and my +mother's oldest brother was named Edward--my old dad used to say it +wasn't respectful to him because I always preferred 'Eddie'--old codger +used to get quite het up about it. Julius sounds like you was an old +Roman or something, and in the business you got to have a good easy +name. Say, speaking of that, I ain't with Lowry any more; I'm chief +salesman for the AEtna Automobile Varnish and Wax Company. I certainly +got a swell territory--New York, Philly, Bean-Town, Washi'nun, +Balt'more, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, and so on, and of course most +especially Detroit. Sell right direct to the jobbers and the big auto +companies. Good bunch of live wires. Some class! I'm rolling in my +little old four thousand bucks a year now, where before I didn't hardly +make more 'n twenty-six or twenty-eight hundred. Keeps me on the jump +alrightee. Fact. I got so tired and run-down-- I hadn't planned to take +any vacation at all, but the boss himself says to me, 'Eddie, we can't +afford to let you get sick; you're the best man we've got,' he says, +'and you got to take a good vacation now and forget all about business +for a couple weeks.' 'Well,' I says, 'I was just wondering if you was +smart enough to get along without me if I was to sneak out and rubber at +some scenery and maybe get up a flirtation with a pretty summer +girl'--and I guess that must be you, Miss Golden!--and he laughs and +says, 'Oh yes, I guess the business wouldn't go bust for a few days,' +and so I goes down and gets a shave and a hair-cut and a singe and a +shampoo--there ain't as much to cut as there used to be, though--ha, +ha!--and here I am." + +"Yes!" said Una affably.... + +Miss Una Golden, of Panama and the office, did not in the least feel +superior to Mr. Eddie Schwirtz's robust commonness. The men she knew, +except for pariahs like Walter Babson, talked thus. She could admire +Mamie Magen's verbal symphonies, but with Mr. Schwirtz she was able to +forget her little private stock of worries and settle down to her +holiday. + +Mr. Schwirtz hitched forward in his rocker, took off his derby, stroked +his damp forehead, laid his derby and both his hands on his stomach, +rocked luxuriously, and took a fresh hold on the conversation: + +"But say! Here I am gassing all about myself, and you'll want to be +hearing about Sandy Hunt. Seen him lately?" + +"No, I've lost track of him--you _do_ know how it is in such a big +city." + +"Sure, I know how it is. I was saying to a fellow just the other day, +'Why, gosh all fish-hooks!' I was saying, 'it seems like it's harder to +keep in touch with a fellow here in New York than if he lived in +Chicago--time you go from the Bronx to Flatbush or Weehawken, it's time +to turn round again and go home!' Well, Hunt's married--you know, to +that same girl that was with us at lunch that day--and he's got a nice +little house in Secaucus. He's still with Lowry. Good job, too, +assistant bookkeeper, pulling down his little twenty-seven-fifty +regular, and they got a baby, and let me tell you she makes him a mighty +fine wife, mighty bright little woman. Well, now, say! How are _you_ +getting along, Miss Golden? Everything going bright and cheery?" + +"Yes--kind of." + +"Well, that's good. You'll do fine, and pick up some good live wire of a +husband, too--" + +"I'm never going to marry. I'm going--" + +"Why, sure you are! Nice, bright woman like you sticking in an office! +Office is no place for a woman. Takes a man to stand the racket. Home's +the place for a woman, except maybe some hatchet-faced old battle-ax +like the cashier at our shop. Shame to spoil a nice home with her. Why, +she tried to hold up my vacation money, because she said I'd +overdrawn--" + +"Oh, but Mr. _Schwirtz_, what can a poor girl do, if you high and mighty +men don't want to marry her?" + +"Pshaw. There ain't no trouble like that in your case, I'll gamble!" + +"Oh, but there is. If I were pretty, like Rose Larsen--she's a girl that +stays where I live--oh! I could just eat her up, she's so pretty, curly +hair and big brown eyes and a round face like a boy in one of those +medieval pictures--" + +"That's all right about pretty squabs. They're all right for a bunch of +young boys that like a cute nose and a good figger better than they do +sense-- Well, you notice I remembered you, all right, when you went and +forgot poor old Eddie Schwirtz. Yessir, by golly! teetotally plumb +forgot me. I guess I won't get over _that_ slam for a while." + +"Now that isn't fair, Mr. Schwirtz; you know it isn't--it's almost dark +here on the porch, even with the lamps. I couldn't really see you. And, +besides, I _did_ recognize you--I just couldn't think of your name for +the moment." + +"Yuh, that listens fine, but poor old Eddie's heart is clean busted just +the same--me thinking of you and your nice complexion and goldie hair +and the cute way you talked at our lunch--whenever Hunt shut up and gave +you a chance--honest, I haven't forgot yet the way you took off old +man--what was it?--the old stiff that ran the commercial college, what +was his name?" + +"Mr. Whiteside?" Una was enormously pleased and interested. Far off and +dim were Miss Magen and the distressing Mrs. Lawrence; and the office of +Mr. Troy Wilkins was fading. + +"Yuh, I guess that was it. Do you remember how you gave us an imitation +of him telling the class that if they'd work like sixty they might get +to be little tin gods on wheels like himself, and how he'd always keep +dropping his eye-glasses and fishing 'em up on a cord while he was +talking--don't you remember how you took him off? Why, I thought Mrs. +Hunt-that-is--I've forgotten what her name was before Sandy married +her--why, I thought she'd split, laughing. She admired you a whole pile, +lemme tell you; I could see that." + +Not unwelcome to the ears of Una was this praise, but she was properly +deprecatory: "Why, she probably thought I was just a stuffy, stupid, +ugly old thing, as old as--" + +"As old as Eddie Schwirtz, heh? Go on, insult me! I can stand it! Lemme +tell you I ain't forty-three till next October. Look here now, little +sister, I know when a woman admires another. Lemme tell you, if you'd +ever traveled for dry-goods like I did, out of St. Paul once, for a +couple of months--nev-er again; paint and varnish is good enough for +Eddie any day--and if you'd sold a bunch of women buyers, you'd know how +they looked when they liked a thing, alrightee! Not that I want to knock +The Sex, y' understand, but you know yourself, bein' a shemale, that +there's an awful lot of cats among the ladies--God bless 'em--that +wouldn't admit another lady was beautiful, not if she was as +good-looking as Lillian Russell, corking figger and the swellest dresser +in town." + +"Yes, perhaps--sometimes," said Una. + +She did not find Mr. Schwirtz dull. + +"But I was saying: It was a cinch to see that Sandy's girl thought you +was ace high, alrightee. She kept her eyes glommed onto you all the +time." + +"But what would she find to admire?" + +"Uh-huh, fishing for compliments!" + +"No, I am _not_, so there!" Una's cheeks burned delightfully. She was +back in Panama again--in Panama, where for endless hours on dark porches +young men tease young women and tell them that they are beautiful.... +Mr. Schwirtz was direct and "jolly," like Panama people; but he was so +much more active and forceful than Henry Carson; so much more hearty +than Charlie Martindale; so distinguished by that knowledge of New York +streets and cafes and local heroes which, to Una, the recent convert to +New York, seemed the one great science. + +Their rockers creaked in complete sympathy. + +The perfect summer man took up his shepherd's tale: + +"There's a whole lot of things she'd certainly oughta have admired in +you, lemme tell you. I suppose probably Maxine Elliott is better-looking +than what you are, maybe, but I always was crazy over your kind of +girl--blond hair and nice, clear eyes and just shoulder-high--kind of a +girl that could snuggle down beside a fireplace and look like she grew +there--not one of these domineerin' sufferin' cats females. No, nor one +of these overdressed New-York chickens, neither, but cute and bright--" + +"Oh, you're just flattering me, Mr. Schwirtz. Mr. Hunt told me I should +watch out for you." + +"No, no; you got me wrong there. 'I dwell on what-is-it mountain, and my +name is Truthful James,' like the poet says! Believe me, I may be a +rough-neck drummer, but I notice these things." + +"Oh!... Oh, do you like poetry?" + +Without knowing precisely what she was trying to do, Una was testing Mr. +Schwirtz according to the somewhat contradictory standards of culture +which she had acquired from Walter Babson, Mamie Magen, Esther Lawrence, +Mr. Wilkins's books on architecture, and stray copies of _The Outlook_, +_The Literary Digest_, _Current Opinion_, _The Nation_, _The +Independent_, _The Review of Reviews_, _The World's Work_, _Collier's_, +and _The Atlantic Monthly_, which she had been glancing over in the Home +Club library. She hadn't learned much of the technique of the arts, but +she had acquired an uneasy conscience of the sort which rather +discredits any book or music or picture which it easily enjoys. She was, +for a moment, apologetic to these insistent new standards, because she +had given herself up to Mr. Schwirtz's low conversation.... She was not +vastly different from a young lady just back in Panama from a term in +the normal school, with new lights derived from a gentlemanly young +English teacher with poetic interests and a curly mustache. + +"Sure," affirmed Mr. Schwirtz, "I like poetry fine. Used to read it +myself when I was traveling out of St. Paul and got kind of stuck on a +waitress at Eau Claire." This did not perfectly satisfy Una, but she was +more satisfied that he had heard the gospel of culture after he had +described, with much detail, his enjoyment of a "fella from Boston, +perfessional reciter; they say he writes swell poetry himself; gave us a +program of Kipling and Ella Wheeler Wilcox before the Elks--real poetic +fella." + +"Do you go to concerts, symphonies, and so on, much?" Una next +catechized. + +"Well, no; that's where I fall down. Just between you and I, I never did +have much time for these high-brows that try to make out they're so darn +much better than common folks by talking about motifs and symphony poems +and all that long-haired stuff. Fellow that's in music goods took me to +a Philharmonic concert once, and I couldn't make head or tail of the +stuff--conductor batting a poor musician over the ear with his +swagger-stick (and him a union man, oughta kicked to his union about the +way the conductor treated him) and him coming back with a yawp on the +fiddle and getting two laps ahead of the brass band, and they all +blowing their stuffings out trying to catch up. Music they call that! +And once I went to grand opera--lot of fat Dutchmen all singing together +like they was selling old rags. Aw nix, give me one of the good old +songs like 'The Last Rose of Summer.'... I bet _you_ could sing that so +that even a sporting-goods drummer would cry and think about the +sweetheart he had when he was a kid." + +"No, I couldn't--I can't sing a note," Una said, delightedly.... She had +laughed very much at Mr. Schwirtz's humor. She slid down in her chair +and felt more expansively peaceful than she ever had been in the stress +of Walter Babson. + +"Straight, now, little sister. Own up. Don't you get more fun out of +hearing Raymond Hitchcock sing than you do out of a bunch of fiddles and +flutes fighting out a piece by Vaugner like they was Kilkenny cats? +'Fess up, now; don't you get more downright amusement?" + +"Well, maybe I do, sometimes; but that doesn't mean that all this cheap +musical comedy music is as good as opera, and so on, if we had our--had +musical educations--" + +"Oh yes; that's what they all say! But I notice that Hitchcock and +George M. Cohan go on drawing big audiences every night--yes, and the +swellest, best-dressed, smartest people in New York and Brooklyn, +too--it's in the gallery at the opera that you find all these Wops and +Swedes and Lord knows what-all. And when a bunch of people are out at a +lake, say, you don't ever catch 'em singing Vaugner or Lits or Gryge or +any of them guys. If they don't sing, 'In the Good Old Summer-Time,' +it's 'Old Black Joe,' or 'Nelly Was a Lady,' or something that's really +got some _melody_ to it." + +The neophyte was lured from her new-won altar. Cold to her knees was the +barren stone of the shrine; and she feebly recanted, "Yes, that's so." + +Mr. Schwirtz cheerfully took out a cigar, smelled it, bit it, +luxuriously removed the band, requested permission to smoke, lighted the +cigar without waiting for an answer to that request, sighed happily, and +dived again: + +"Not that I'm knocking the high-brows, y' understand. This dress-suit +music is all right for them that likes it. But what I object to is their +trying to stuff it down _my_ throat! I let 'em alone, and if I want to +be a poor old low-brow and like reg'lar music, I don't see where they +get off to be telling me I got to go to concerts. Honest now, ain't that +the truth?" + +"Oh yes, _that_ way--" + +"All these here critics telling what low-brows us American business men +are! Just between you and I, I bet I knock down more good, big, round, +iron men every week than nine-tenths of these high-brow fiddlers--yes, +and college professors and authors, too!" + +"Yes, but you shouldn't make money your standard," said Una, in company +with the invisible chorus of Mamie Magen and Walter Babson. + +"Well, then, what _are_ you going to make a standard?" asked Mr. +Schwirtz, triumphantly. + +"Well--" said Una. + +"Understan' me; I'm a high-brow myself some ways. I never could stand +these cheap magazines. I'd stop the circulation of every last one of +them; pass an act of Congress to make every voter read some A-1, +high-class, intellectual stuff. I read Rev. Henry van Dyke and Newell +Dwight Hillis and Herbert Kaufman and Billy Sunday, and all these +brainy, inspirational fellows, and let me tell you I get a lot of +talking-points for selling my trade out of their spiels, too. I don't +_believe_ in all this cheap fiction--these nasty realistic stories (like +all the author could see in life was just the bad side of things--I tell +you life's bad enough without emphasizing the rotten side, all these +unhappy marriages and poverty and everything--I believe if you can't +write bright, optimistic, _cheerful_ things, better not write at all). +And all these sex stories! Don't believe in 'em! Sensational! Don't +believe in cheap literature of _no_ sort.... Oh, of course it's all +right to read a coupla detective stories or a nice, bright, clean +love-story just to pass the time away. But me, I like real, classy, +high-grade writers, with none of this slangy dialogue or vulgar stuff. +'Specially I like essays on strenuous, modern American life, about not +being in a rut, but putting a punch in life. Yes, _sir_!" + +"I'm glad," said Una. "I do like improving books." + +"You've said it, little sister.... Say, gee! you don't know what +a luxury it is for me to talk about books and literature with an +educated, cultured girl like you. Now take the rest of these people +here at the farm--nice folks, you understand, mighty well-traveled, +broad-gauged, intelligent folks, and all that. There's a Mr. and +Mrs. Cannon; he's some kind of an executive in the Chicago +stock-yards--nice, fat, responsible job. And he was saying to me, +'Mr. Schwirtz,' he says, 'Mrs. C. and I had never been to New England +till this summer, but we'd toured every other part of the country, +and we've done Europe thoroughly and put in a month doing Florida, +and now,' he says, 'I think we can say we've seen every point of +interest that's worth an American's time.' They're good American +people like that, well-traveled and nice folks. But _books_--Lord! +they can't talk about books no more than a Jersey City bartender. So +you can imagine how pleased I was to find you here.... World's pretty +small, all right. Say, I just got here yesterday, so I suppose we'll +be here about the same length o' time. If you wouldn't think I was +presumptuous, I'd like mighty well to show you some of the country +around here. We could get up a picnic party, ten or a dozen of us, +and go up on Bald Knob and see the scenery and have a real jolly +time. And I'd be glad to take you down to Lesterhampton--there's a +real old-fashioned inn down there, they say, where Paul Revere stayed +one time; they say you can get the best kind of fried chicken and +corn on cob and real old-fashioned New England blueberry pie. Would +you like to?" + +"Why, I should be very pleased to," said Una. + + +Sec. 2 + +Mr. Schwirtz seemed to know everybody at the farm. He had been there +only thirty-six hours, but already he called Mr. Cannon "Sam," and knew +that Miss Vincent's married sister's youngest child had recently passed +away with a severe and quite unexpected attack of cholera morbus. Mr. +Schwirtz introduced Una to the others so fulsomely that she was +immediately taken into the inner political ring. He gave her a first +lesson in auction pinochle also. They had music and recitations at ten, +and Una's shyness was so warmed away that she found herself reciting, +"I'm Only Mammy's Pickaninny Coon." + +She went candle-lighted up to a four-poster bed. As she lay awake, her +job-branded mind could not keep entirely away from the office, the work +she would have to do when she returned, the familiar series of +indefinite worries and disconnected office pictures. But mostly she let +the rustle of the breathing land inspirit her while she thought of Mr. +Julius Edward Schwirtz. + +She knew that he was ungrammatical, but she denied that he was uncouth. +His deep voice had been very kindly; his clipped mustache was trim; his +nails, which had been ragged at that commercial-college lunch, were +manicured now; he was sure of himself, while Walter Babson doubted and +thrashed about. All of which meant that the tired office-woman was +touchily defensive of the man who liked her. + +She couldn't remember just where she had learned it, but she knew that +Mr. Schwirtz was a widower. + + +Sec. 3 + +The fact that she did not have to get up and go to the office was Una's +chief impression at awakening, but she was not entirely obtuse to the +morning, to the chirp of a robin, the cluck of the hens, the creak of a +hay-wagon, and the sweet smell of cattle. When she arose she looked +down a slope of fields so far away that they seemed smooth as a lawn. +Solitary, majestic trees cast long shadows over a hilly pasture of crisp +grass worn to inviting paths by the cropping cattle. Beyond the valley +was a range of the Berkshires with every tree distinct. + +Una was tired, but the morning's radiance inspired her. "My America--so +beautiful! Why do we turn you into stuffy offices and ugly towns?" she +marveled while she was dressing. + +But as breakfast was not ready, her sudden wish to do something +magnificent for America turned into what she called a "before-coffee +grouch," and she sat on the porch waiting for the bell, and hoping that +the conversational Mr. Schwirtz wouldn't come and converse. It was to +his glory that he didn't. He appeared in masterful white-flannel +trousers and a pressed blue coat and a new Panama, which looked well on +his fleshy but trim head. He said, "Mornin'," cheerfully, and went to +prowl about the farm. + +All through the breakfast Una caught the effulgence of Mr. Schwirtz's +prosperous-looking solidness, and almost persuaded herself that his +jowls and the slabs of fat along his neck were powerful muscles. + +He asked her to play croquet. Una played a game which had been respected +in the smartest croqueting circles of Panama; she defeated him; and +while she blushed and insisted that he ought to have won, Mr. Schwirtz +chuckled about his defeat and boasted of it to the group on the porch. + +"I was afraid," he told her, "I was going to find this farm kinda tame. +Usually expect a few more good fellows and highballs in mine, but thanks +to you, little sister, looks like I'll have a bigger time than a +high-line poker Party." + +He seemed deeply to respect her, and Una, who had never had the +debutante's privilege of ordering men about, who had avoided Henry +Carson and responded to Walter Babson and obeyed chiefs in offices, was +now at last demanding that privilege. She developed feminine whims and +desires. She asked Mr. Schwirtz to look for her handkerchief, and bring +her magazine, and arrange her chair cushions, and take her for a walk to +"the Glade." + +He obeyed breathlessly. + +Following an old and rutted woodland road to the Glade, they passed a +Berkshire abandoned farm--a solid house of stone and red timbers, +softened by the long grasses that made the orchard a pleasant place. +They passed berry-bushes--raspberry and blackberry and currant, now +turned wild; green-gold bushes that were a net for sunbeams. They saw +yellow warblers flicker away, a king-bird swoop, a scarlet tanager +glisten in flight. + +"Wonder what that red bird is?" He admiringly looked to her to know. + +"Why, I think that's a cardinal." + +"Golly! I wish I knew about nature." + +"So do I! I don't really know a thing--" + +"Huh! I bet you do!" + +"--though I ought to, living in a small town so long. I'd planned to buy +me a bird-book," she rambled on, giddy with sunshine, "and a flower-book +and bring them along, but I was so busy getting away from the office +that I came off without them. Don't you just love to know about birds +and things?" + +"Yuh, I cer'nly do; I cer'nly do. Say, this beats New York, eh? I don't +care if I never see another show or a cocktail. Cer'nly do beat New +York. Cer'nly does! I was saying to Sam Cannon, 'Lord,' I says, 'I +wonder what a fellow ever stays in the city for; never catch me there +if I could rake in the coin out in the country, no, _sir_!' And he +laughed and said he guessed it was the same way with him. No, sir; my +idea of perfect happiness is to be hiking along here with you, Miss +Golden." + +He gazed down upon her with a mixture of amorousness and awe. The leaves +of scrub-oaks along the road crinkled and shone in the sun. She was +lulled to slumberous content. She lazily beamed her pleasure back at +him, though a tiny hope that he would be circumspect, not be too ardent, +stirred in her. He was touching in his desire to express his interest +without ruffling her. He began to talk about Miss Vincent's affair with +Mr. Starr, the wealthy old boarder at the farm. In that topic they +passed safely through the torrid wilderness of summer shine and tangled +blooms. + +The thwarted boyish soul that persisted in Mr. Schwirtz's barbered, +unexercised, coffee-soaked, tobacco-filled, whisky-rotted, fattily +degenerated city body shone through his red-veined eyes. He was having a +_fete champetre_. He gathered berries and sang all that he remembered of +"Nut Brown Ale," and chased a cow and pantingly stopped under a tree and +smoked a cigar as though he enjoyed it. In his simple pleasure Una was +glad. She admired him when he showed his trained, professional side and +explained (with rather confusing details) why the AEtna Automobile +Varnish Company was a success. But she fluttered up to her feet, became +the wilful debutante again, and commanded, "Come _on_, Mr. Slow! We'll +never reach the Glade." He promptly struggled up to his feet. There was +lordly devotion in the way he threw away his half-smoked cigar. It +indicated perfect chivalry.... Even though he did light another in about +three minutes. + +The Glade was filled with a pale-green light; arching trees shut off +the heat of the summer afternoon, and the leaves shone translucent. +Ferns were in wild abundance. They sat on a fallen tree, thick +upholstered with moss, and listened to the trickle of a brook. Una was +utterly happy. In her very weariness there was a voluptuous feeling that +the air was dissolving the stains of the office. + +He urged a compliment upon her only once more that day; but she +gratefully took it to bed with her: "You're just like this glade--make a +fellow feel kinda calm and want to be good," he said. "I'm going to cut +out--all this boozing and stuff-- Course you understand I never make a +_habit_ of them things, but still a fellow on the road--" + +"Yes," said Una. + +All evening they discussed croquet, Lenox, Florida, Miss Vincent and Mr. +Starr, the presidential campaign, and the food at the farm-house. +Boarders from the next farm-house came a-calling, and the enlarged +company discussed the food at both of the farm-houses, the presidential +campaign, Florida, and Lenox. The men and women gradually separated; +relieved of the strain of general and polite conversation, the men +gratefully talked about business conditions and the presidential +campaign and food and motoring, and told sly stories about Mike and Pat, +or about Ikey and Jakey; while the women listened to Mrs. Cannon's +stories about her youngest son, and compared notes on cooking, village +improvement societies, and what Mrs. Taft would do in Washington society +if Judge Taft was elected President. Miss Vincent had once shaken hands +with Judge Taft, and she occasionally referred to the incident. Mrs. +Cannon took Una aside and told her that she thought Mr. Starr and Miss +Vincent must have walked down to the village together that afternoon, as +she had distinctly seen them coming back up the road. + +Yet Una did not feel Panama-ized. + +She was a grown-up person, accepted as one, not as Mrs. Golden's +daughter; and her own gossip now passed at par. + +And all evening she was certain that Mr. Schwirtz was watching her. + + +Sec. 4 + +The boarders from the two farm-houses organized a tremendous picnic on +Bald Knob, with sandwiches and chicken salad and cake and thermos +bottles of coffee and a whole pail of beans and a phonograph with seven +records; with recitations and pastoral merriment and kodaks snapping +every two or three minutes; with groups sitting about on blankets, and +once in a while some one explaining why the scenery was so scenic. Una +had been anxious lest Mr. Schwirtz "pay her too marked attentions; make +them as conspicuous as Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent"; for in the morning +he had hung about, waiting for a game of croquet with her. But Mr. +Schwirtz was equally pleasant to her, to Miss Vincent, and to Mrs. +Cannon; and he was attractively ardent regarding the scenery. "This +cer'nly beats New York, eh? Especially you being here," he said to her, +aside. + +They sang ballads about the fire at dusk, and trailed home along dark +paths that smelled of pungent leaf-mold. Mr. Schwirtz lumbered beside +her, heaped with blankets and pails and baskets till he resembled a +camel in a caravan, and encouraged her to tell how stupid and +unenterprising Mr. Troy Wilkins was. When they reached the farm-house +the young moon and the great evening star were low in a wash of +turquoise above misty meadows; frogs sang; Una promised herself a long +and unworried sleep; and the night tingled with an indefinable magic. +She was absolutely, immaculately happy, for the first time since she had +been ordered to take Walter Babson's dictation. + + +Sec. 5 + +Mr. Schwirtz was generous; he invited all the boarders to a hay-ride +picnic at Hawkins's Pond, followed by a barn dance. He took Una and the +Cannons for a motor ride, and insisted on buying--not giving, but +buying--dinner for them, at the Lesterhampton Inn. + +When the debutante Una bounced and said she _did_ wish she had some +candy, he trudged down to the village and bought for her a two-pound box +of exciting chocolates. And when she longed to know how to play tennis, +he rented balls and two rackets, tried to remember what he had learned +in two or three games of ten years before, and gave her elaborate +explanations. Lest the farm-house experts (Mr. Cannon was said by Mrs. +Cannon to be one of the very best players at the Winnetka Country Club) +see them, Una and Mr. Schwirtz sneaked out before breakfast. Their +tennis costumes consisted of new canvas shoes. They galloped through the +dew and swatted at balls ferociously--two happy dubs who proudly used +all the tennis terms they knew. + + +Sec. 6 + +Mr. Schwirtz was always there when she wanted him, but he never +intruded, he never was urgent. She kept him away for a week; but in +their second week Mr. and Mrs. Cannon, Mr. Starr, Miss Vincent, and the +pleasant couple from Gloversville all went away, and Una and Mr. +Schwirtz became the elder generation, the seniors, of the boarders. They +rather looked down upon the new boarders who came in--tenderfeet, +people who didn't know about Bald Knob or the Glade or Hawkins's Pond, +people who weren't half so witty or comfy as the giants of those golden, +olden days when Mr. Cannon had ruled. Una and Mr. Schwirtz deigned to +accompany them on picnics, even grew interested in their new conceptions +of the presidential campaign and croquet and food, yet held rather +aloof, as became the _ancien regime_; took confidential walks together, +and in secret laughed enormously when the green generation gossiped +about them as though they were "interested in each other," as Mr. Starr +and Miss Vincent had been in the far-forgotten time. Una blushed a +little when she discovered that every one thought they were engaged, but +she laughed at the rumor, and she laughed again, a nervous young laugh, +as she repeated it to Mr. Schwirtz. + +"Isn't it a shame the way people gossip! Silly billies," she said. "We +never talked that way about Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent--though in their +case we would have been justified." + +"Yes, bet they _were_ engaged. Oh, say, did I tell you about the first +day I came here, and Starr took me aside, and says he--" + +In their hour-long talks Mr. Schwirtz had not told much about himself, +though of his business he had talked often. But on an afternoon when +they took a book and a lunch and tramped off to a round-topped, grassy +hill, he finally confided in her, and her mild interest in him as an +amiable companion deepened to sympathy. + +The book was The _People of the Abyss_, by Jack London, which Mamie +Magen had given to Una as an introduction to a knowledge of social +conditions. Una had planned to absorb it; to learn how the shockingly +poor live. Now she read the first four pages to Mr. Schwirtz. After +each page he said that he was interested. At the end of the fourth page, +when Una stopped for breath, he commented: "Fine writer, that fella +London. And they say he's quite a fella; been a sailor and a miner and +all kinds of things; ver' intimate friend of mine knows him quite +well--met him in 'Frisco--and he says he's been a sailor and all kinds +of things. But he's a socialist. Tell you, I ain't got much time for +these socialists. Course I'm kind of a socialist myself lots-a ways, but +these here fellas that go around making folks discontented--! +Agitators--! Don't suppose it's that way with this London--he must be +pretty well fixed, and so of course he's prob'ly growing conservative +and sensible. But _most_ of these socialists are just a lazy bunch of +bums that try and see how much trouble they can stir up. They think that +just because they're too lazy to find an opening, that they got the +right to take the money away from the fellas that hustle around and make +good. Trouble with all these socialist guys is that they don't stop to +realize that you can't change human nature. They want to take away all +the rewards for initiative and enterprise, just as Sam Cannon was +saying. Do you s'pose I'd work my head off putting a proposition through +if there wasn't anything in it for me? Then, 'nother thing, about all +this submerged tenth--these 'People of the Abyss,' and all the rest: I +don't feel a darn bit sorry for them. They stick in London or New York +or wherever they are, and live on charity, and if you offered 'em a good +job they wouldn't take it. Why, look here! all through the Middle West +the farmers are just looking for men at three dollars a day, and for +hired girls, they'd give hired girls three and four dollars a week and a +good home. But do all these people go out and get the jobs? Not a bit of +it! They'd rather stay home and yelp about socialism and anarchism and +Lord knows what-all. 'Nother thing: I never could figger out what all +these socialists and I. W. W.'s, these 'I Won't Work's,' would do if we +_did_ divide up and hand all the industries over to them. I bet they'd +be the very first ones to kick for a return to the old conditions! I +tell you, it surprises me when a good, bright man like Jack London or +this fella, Upton Sinclair--they say he's a well-educated fella, +too--don't stop and realize these things." + +"But--" said Una. + +Then she stopped. + +Her entire knowledge of socialism was comprised in the fact that Mamie +Magen believed in it, and that Walter Babson alternated between +socialism, anarchism, and a desire to own a large house in Westchester +and write poetry and be superior to the illiterate mass. So to the +economic spokesman for the Great American Business Man her answer was: + +"But--" + +"Then look here," said Mr. Schwirtz. "Take yourself. S'pose you like to +work eight hours a day? Course you don't. Neither do I. I always thought +I'd like to be a gentleman farmer and take it easy. But the good Lord +saw fit to stick us into these jobs, that's all we know about it; and we +do our work and don't howl about it like all these socialists and +radicals and other windjammers that know more than the Constitution and +Congress and a convention of Philadelphia lawyers put together. You +don't want to work as hard as you do and then have to divide up every +Saturday with some lazy bum of a socialist that's too lazy to support +himself--yes, or to take a bath!--now do you?" + +"Well, no," Una admitted, in face of this triumphant exposure of liberal +fallacies. + +The book slipped into her lap. + +"How wonderful that line of big woolly clouds is, there between the two +mountains!" she said. "I'd just like to fly through them.... I _am_ +tired. The clouds rest me so." + +"Course you're tired, little sister. You just forget about all those +guys in the abyss. Tell you a person on the job's got enough to do +looking out for himself." + +"Well--" said Una. + +Suddenly she lay back, her hands behind her head, her fingers +outstretched among the long, cool grasses. A hum of insects surrounded +her. The grasses towering above her eyes were a forest. She turned her +head to watch a lady-bug industriously ascend one side of a blade of +grass, and with equal enterprise immediately descend the other side. +With the office always in her mind as material for metaphors, Una +compared the lady-bug's method to Troy Wilkins's habit of having his +correspondence filed and immediately calling for it again. She turned +her face to the sky. She was uplifted by the bold contrast of cumulus +clouds and the radiant blue sky. + +Here she could give herself up to rest; she was so secure now, with the +affable Mr. Schwirtz to guard her against outsiders--more secure and +satisfied, she reflected, than she could ever have been with Walter +Babson.... A hawk soared above her, a perfect thing of sun-brightened +grace, the grasses smelled warm and pleasant, and under her beat the +happy heart of the summer land. + +"I'm a poor old rough-neck," said Mr. Schwirtz, "but to-day, up here +with you, I feel so darn good that I almost think I'm a decent citizen. +Honest, little sister, I haven't felt so bully for a blue moon." + +"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 +passengers 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 passenger-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 titles, 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 shell 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 hell; 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-glasses. 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 passion. +But he had taken and he held her hand among the long grasses, 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!" + + +Sec. 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 Knob, 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 +Larsen 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 Japanese toweling and Russian, or at least +Russian-Jew, brassware. Here Mrs. Lawrence's men came calling, and +sometimes Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, and all of them, except Una +herself, had cigarettes and highballs, 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 Saturday 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, noble, 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." + +Mr. Ross disregarded her letter for ten days, then so urgently +telephoned her to come and see him that she took a taxicab clear to the +Pemberton Building in Long Island City. After paying a week's lunch +money for the taxicab, it was rather hard to discover why Mr. Ross had +been quite so urgent. He rolled about his magnificent mahogany and +tapestry office, looked out of the window at the Long Island Railroad +tracks, and told her (in confidence) what fools all the _Gas Gazette_ +chiefs had been, and all his employers since then. She smiled +appreciatively, and tried to get in a tactful remark about a position. +She did discover that Mr. Ross had not as yet chosen his secretary at +Pemberton's, but beyond this Una could find no evidence that he supposed +her to have come for any reason other than to hear his mellow wisdom and +even mellower stories. + +After more than a month, during which Mr. Ross diverted himself by +making appointments, postponing them, forgetting them, telephoning, +telegraphing, sending special-delivery letters, being paged at hotels, +and doing all the useless melodramatic things he could think of, except +using an aeroplane or a submarine, he decided to make her his secretary +at twenty dollars a week. Two days later it occurred to him to test her +in regard to speed in dictation and typing, and a few other minor things +of the sort which her ability as a long-distance listener had made him +overlook. Fortunately, she also passed this test. + +When she told Mr. Wilkins that she was going to leave, he used another +set of phrases which all side-street office potentates know--they must +learn these _cliches_ out of a little red-leather manual.... He +tightened his lips and tapped on his desk-pad with a blue pencil; he +looked grieved and said, touchingly: "I think you're making a mistake. I +was making plans for you; in fact, I had just about decided to offer you +eighteen dollars a week, and to advance you just as fast as the business +will warrant. I, uh, well, I think you're making a mistake in leaving a +sure thing, a good, sound, conservative place, for something you don't +know anything about. I'm not in any way urging you to stay, you +understand, but I don't like to see you making a mistake." + +But he had also told Bessie Kraker that she was "making a mistake" when +she had resigned to be married, and he had been so very certain that Una +could never be "worth more" than fifteen. Una was rather tart about it. +Though Mr. Ross didn't want her at Pemberton's for two weeks more, she +told Mr. Wilkins that she was going to leave on the following Saturday. + +It did not occur to her till Mr. Wilkins developed nervous indigestion +by trying to "break in" a new secretary who couldn't tell a blue-print +from a set of specifications, that he had his side in the perpetual +struggle between ill-paid failure employers and ill-paid ambitious +employees. She was sorry for him as she watched him putter, and she +helped him; stayed late, and powerfully exhorted her successor. Mr. +Wilkins revived and hoped that she would stay another week, but stay she +could not. Once she knew that she was able to break away from the +scrub-rag, that specter of the wash-room, and the bleak, frosted glass +on the semi-partition in front of her desk, no wage could have helped +her. Every moment here was an edged agony. + +In this refusal there may have been a trace of aspiration. Otherwise the +whole affair was a hodge-podge of petty people and ignoble motives--of +Una and Wilkins and S. Herbert Ross and Bessie Kraker, who married a +mattress-renovator, and Bessie's successor; of fifteen dollars a week, +and everybody trying to deceive everybody else; of vague reasons for +going, and vaguer reasons for letting Una go, and no reason at all for +her remaining; in all, an ascent from a scrub-rag to a glorified +soap-factory designed to provide Mr. Pemberton's daughters-in-law with +motors. + +So long as her world was ruled by chance, half-training, and lack of +clear purpose, how could it be other than a hodge-podge? + + +Sec. 2 + +She could not take as a holiday the two weeks intervening between the +Wilkins office and Pemberton's. When she left Wilkins's, exulting, "This +is the last time I'll ever go down in one of these rickety elevators," +she had, besides her fifteen dollars in salary, one dollar and seventeen +cents in the savings-bank. + +Mamie Magen gave her the opportunity to spend the two weeks installing a +modern filing-system at Herzfeld & Cohn's. + +So Una had a glimpse of the almost beautiful thing business can be. + +Herzfeld and Cohn were Jews, old, white-bearded, orthodox Jews; their +unpoetic business was the jobbing of iron beds; and Una was typical of +that New York which the Jews are conquering, in having nebulous +prejudices against the race; in calling them "mean" and "grasping" and +"un-American," and wanting to see them shut out of offices and hotels. + +Yet, with their merry eyes, their quick little foreign cries and +gestures of sympathy, their laughter that rumbled in their tremendous +beards, their habit of having coffee and pinochle in the office every +Friday afternoon, their sincere belief that, as the bosses, they were +not omniscient rulers, but merely elder fellow-workers--with these +un-American, eccentric, patriarchal ways, Herzfeld and Cohn had made +their office a joyous adventure. Other people "in the trade" sniffed at +Herzfeld and Cohn for their Quixotic notions of discipline, but they +made it pay in dividends as well as in affection. At breakfast Una would +find herself eager to get back to work, though Herzfeld and Cohn had but +a plain office in an ugly building of brownstone and iron Corinthian +columns, resembling an old-fashioned post-office, and typical of all +that block on Church Street. There was such gentleness here as Una was +not to find in the modern, glazed-brick palace of Pemberton's. + + +Sec. 3 + +Above railroad yards and mean tenements in Long Island City, just across +the East River from New York, the shining milky walls of Pemberton's +bulk up like a castle overtowering a thatched village. It is +magnificently the new-fashioned, scientific, efficient business +institution.... Except, perhaps, in one tiny detail. King Pemberton and +his princely sons do not believe in all this nonsense about +profit-sharing, or a minimum wage, or an eight-hour day, or pensions, or +any of the other fads by which dangerous persons like Mr. Ford, the +motor manufacturer, encourage the lazier workmen to think that they have +just as much right to rise to the top as the men who have had nerve and +foresight. And indeed Mr. Pemberton may be sound. He says that he bases +wages on the economic law of supply and demand, instead of on sentiment; +and how shrewdly successful are he and his sons is indicated by the fact +that Pemberton's is one of the largest sources of drugs and proprietary +medicines in the world; the second largest manufactory of soda-fountain +syrups; of rubber, celluloid, and leather goods of the kind seen in +corner drug-stores; and the third largest manufactory of soaps and +toilet articles. It has been calculated that ninety-three million women +in all parts of the world have ruined their complexions, and, therefore, +their souls, by Pemberton's creams and lotions for saving the same; and +that nearly three-tenths of the alcohol consumed in prohibition counties +is obtained in Pemberton's tonics and blood-builders and women's +specifics, the last being regarded by large farmers with beards as +especially tasty and stimulating. Mr. Pemberton is the Napoleon of +patent medicine, and also the Napoleon of drugs used by physicians to +cure the effects of patent medicine. He is the Shakespeare of ice-cream +sodas, and the Edison of hot-water bags. He rules more than five +thousand employees, and his name is glorious on cartons in drug-stores, +from Sandy Hook to San Diego, and chemists' shops from Hong-Kong to the +Scilly Isles. He is a modern Allah, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross is his +prophet. + + +Sec. 4 + +Una discovered that Mr. Ross, who had been negligible as +advertising-manager of the _Gas and Motor Gazette_, had, in two or +three years, become a light domestic great man, because he so completely +believed in his own genius, and because advertising is the romance, the +faith, the mystery of business. Mr. Pemberton, though he knew well +enough that soap-making was a perfectly natural phenomenon, could never +get over marveling at the supernatural manner in which advertising +seemed to create something out of nothing. It took a cherry fountain +syrup which was merely a chemical imitation that under an old name was +familiar to everybody; it gave the syrup a new name, and made twenty +million children clamor for it. Mr. Pemberton could never quite +understand that advertising was merely a matter of salesmanship by paper +and ink, nor that Mr. Ross's assistants, who wrote the copy and drew the +pictures and selected the mediums and got the "mats" over to the agency +on time, were real advertising men. No, the trusting old pirate believed +it was also necessary to have an ordained advertising-manager like Mr. +Ross, a real initiate, who could pull a long face and talk about "the +psychology of the utilitarian appeal" and "pulling power" and all the +rest of the theology. So he, who paid packing-girls as little as four +dollars a week, paid Mr. Ross fifteen thousand dollars a year, and let +him have competent assistants, and invited him out to the big, lonely, +unhappy Pemberton house in the country, and listened to his sacerdotal +discourses, and let him keep four or five jobs at once. For, besides +being advertising-manager for Pemberton's, Mr. Ross went off to deliver +Lyceum lectures and Chautauqua addresses and club chit-chats on the +blessings of selling more soap or underwear; and for the magazines he +wrote prose poems about stars, and sympathy, and punch, and early +rising, and roadside flowers, and argosies, and farming, and saving +money. + +All this doge-like splendor Una discovered, but could scarcely believe, +for in his own office Mr. Ross seemed but as the rest of us--a small +round man, with a clown-like little face and hair cut Dutch-wise across +his forehead. When he smoked a big cigar he appeared naughty. One +expected to see his mother come and judiciously smack him. But more and +more Una felt the force of his attitude that he was a genius +incomparable. She could not believe that he knew what a gorgeous fraud +he was. On the same day, he received an advance in salary, discharged an +assistant for requesting an advance in salary, and dictated a magazine +filler to the effect that the chief duty of executives was to advance +salaries. She could not chart him.... Thus for thousands of years have +servants been amazed at the difference between pontiffs in the pulpit +and pontiffs in the pantry. + +Doubtless it helped Mr. Ross in maintaining his sublimity to dress like +a cleric--black, modest suits of straight lines, white shirts, small, +black ties. But he also wore silk socks, which he reflectively scratched +while he was dictating. He was of an elegance in linen handkerchiefs, in +a chased-gold cigarette-case, in cigarettes with a monogram. Indeed, he +often stopped during dictation to lean across the enormous mahogany desk +and explain to Una how much of a connoisseur he was in tennis, +fly-casting, the ordering of small, smart dinners at the Plaza. + +He was fond of the word "smart." + +"Rather smart poster, eh?" he would say, holding up the latest creation +of his genius--that is to say, of his genius in hiring the men who had +planned and prepared the creation. + +Mr. Ross was as full of ideas as of elegance. He gave birth to ideas at +lunch, at "conferences," while motoring, while being refreshed with a +manicure and a violet-ray treatment at a barber-shop in the middle of +one of his arduous afternoons. He would gallop back to the office with +notes on these ideas, pant at Una in a controlled voice, "Quick--your +book--got a' idea," and dictate the outline of such schemes as the +Tranquillity Lunch Room--a place of silence and expensive food; the +Grand Arcade--a ten-block-long rival to Broadway, all under glass; the +Barber-Shop Syndicate, with engagement cards sent out every third week +to notify customers that the time for a hair-cut had come again. None of +these ideas ever had anything to do with assisting Mr. Pemberton in the +sale of soap, and none of them ever went any farther than being +outlined. Whenever he had dictated one of them, Mr. Ross would assume +that he had already made a million out of it, and in his quiet, +hypnotizing voice he would permit Una to learn what a great man he was. +Hitching his chair an inch nearer to her at each sentence, looking +straight into her eyes, in a manner as unboastful as though he were +giving the market price of eggs, he would tell her how J. Pierpont +Morgan, Burbank, or William Randolph Hearst had praised him; or how much +more he knew about electricity or toxicology or frogs or Java than +anybody else in the world. + +Not only a priest, but a virtuoso of business was he, and Una's chief +task was to keep assuring him that he was a great man, a very great +man--in fact, as great as he thought he was. This task was, to the +uneasily sincere Una, the hardest she had ever attempted. It was worth +five dollars more a week than she had received from Troy Wilkins--it was +worth a million more! + +She got confidence in herself from the ease with which she satisfied Mr. +Ross by her cold, canned compliments. And though she was often dizzied +by the whirling dynamo of Pemberton's, she was not bored by the routine +of valeting Mr. Ross in his actual work.... For Mr. Ross actually did +work now and then, though his chief duty was to make an impression on +old Mr. Pemberton, his sons, and the other big chiefs. Still, he did +condescend to "put his O. K." on pictures, on copy and proof for +magazine advertisements, car cards, window-display "cut-outs," and he +dictated highly ethical reading matter for the house organ, which was +distributed to ten thousand drug-stores, and which spoke well of +honesty, feminine beauty, gardening, and Pemberton's. Occasionally he +had a really useful idea, like the celebrated slogan, "_Pemberton's_ +Means PURE," which you see in every street-car, on every fourth or fifth +bill-board. It is frequent as the "In God We Trust" on our coins, and at +least as accurate. This slogan, he told Una, surpassed "A train every +hour on the hour," or "The watch that made the dollar famous," or, "The +ham what am," or any of the other masterpieces of lyric advertising. He +had created it after going into a sibyllic trance of five days, during +which he had drunk champagne and black coffee, and ridden about in +hansoms, delicately brushing his nose with a genuine California poppy +from the Monterey garden of R. L. S. + +If Mr. Ross was somewhat agitating, he was calm as the desert compared +with the rest of Pemberton's. + +His office, which was like a million-dollar hotel lobby, and Una's own +den, which was like the baggage-porter's den adjoining the same, were +the only spots at Pemberton's where Una felt secure. Outside of them, +fourteen stories up in the titanic factory, was an enormous +office-floor, which was a wilderness of desks, toilet-rooms, elevators, +waiting-rooms, filing-cabinets. Her own personality was absorbed in the +cosmic (though soapy) personality of Pemberton's. Instead of longing for +a change, she clung to her own corner, its desk and spring-back chair, +and the insurance calendar with a high-colored picture of Washington's +farewell. She preferred to rest here rather than in the "club-room and +rest-room for women employees," on which Mr. Pemberton so prided +himself. + +Una heard rumors of rest-rooms which were really beautiful, really +restful; but at Pemberton's the room resembled a Far Rockaway cottage +rented by the week to feeble-minded bookkeepers. Musty it was, with +curtains awry, and it must have been of use to all the branches of the +Pemberton family in cleaning out their attics. Here was the old stuffed +chair in which Pemberton I. had died, and the cot which had been in the +cook's room till she had protested. The superstition among the chiefs +was that all the women employees were very grateful for this charity. +The room was always shown to exclamatory visitors, who told Mr. +Pemberton that he was almost too good. But in secret conclaves at lunch +the girls called the room "the junk-shop," and said that they would +rather go out and sit on the curb. + +Una herself took one look--and one smell--at the room, and never went +near it again. + +But even had it been enticing, she would not have frequented it. Her +caste as secretary forbade. For Pemberton's was as full of caste and +politics as a Republican national convention; caste and politics, +cliques and factions, plots and secrets, and dynasties that passed and +were forgotten. + +Plots and secrets Una saw as secretary to Mr. Ross. She remembered a day +on which Mr. Ross, in her presence, assured old Pemberton that he hoped +to be with the firm for the rest of his life, and immediately afterward +dictated a letter to the president of a rival firm in the effort to +secure a new position. He destroyed the carbon copy of that letter and +looked at Una as serenely as ever. Una saw him read letters on the +desks of other chiefs while he was talking to them; saw him "listen in" +on telephone calls, and casually thrust his foot into doors, in order to +have a glimpse of the visitors in offices. She saw one of the younger +Pembertons hide behind a bookcase while his father was talking to his +brother. She knew that this Pemberton and Mr. Ross were plotting to oust +the brother, and that the young, alert purchasing agent was trying to +undermine them both. She knew that one of the girls in the private +telephone exchange was the mistress and spy of old Pemberton. All of the +chiefs tried to emulate the _moyen-age_ Italians in the arts of smiling +poisoning--but they did it so badly; they were as fussily ineffectual as +a group of school-boys who hate their teacher. Not "big deals" and vast +grim power did they achieve, but merely a constant current of worried +insecurity, and they all tended to prove Mrs. Lawrence's assertion that +the office-world is a method of giving the largest possible number of +people the largest possible amount of nervous discomfort, to the end of +producing the largest possible quantity of totally useless articles.... +The struggle extended from the chiefs to the clerks; they who tramped up +and down a corridor, waiting till a chief was alone, glaring at others +who were also manoeuvering to see him; they who studied the lightest +remark of any chief and rushed to allies with the problem of, "Now, what +did he mean by that, do you think?"... A thousand questions of making an +impression on the overlords, and of "House Policy"--that malicious +little spirit which stalks through the business house and encourages +people to refuse favors. + +Una's share in the actual work at Pemberton's would have been only a +morning's pastime, but her contact with the high-voltage current of +politics exhausted her--and taught her that commercial rewards come to +those who demand and take. + +The office politics bred caste. Caste at Pemberton's was as clearly +defined as ranks in an army. + +At the top were the big chiefs, the officers of the company, and the +heads of departments--Mr. Pemberton and his sons, the treasurer, the +general manager, the purchasing-agent, the superintendents of the +soda-fountain-syrup factory, of the soap-works, of the drug-laboratories, +of the toilet-accessories shops, the sales-manager, and Mr. S. Herbert +Ross. The Olympian council were they; divinities to whom the lesser +clerks had never dared to speak. When there were rumors of "a change," of +"a cut-down in the force," every person on the office floor watched the +chiefs as they assembled to go out to lunch together--big, florid, +shaven, large-chinned men, talking easily, healthy from motoring and +golf, able in a moment's conference at lunch to "shift the policy" and to +bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred +workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together, +some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women +to weep and be comforted.... An hour from now her tiny job might be gone. + +Even the chiefs' outside associates were tremendous, buyers and +diplomatic representatives; big-chested men with watch-chains across +their beautiful tight waistcoats. And like envoys extraordinary were the +efficiency experts whom Mr. Pemberton occasionally had in to speed up +the work a bit more beyond the point of human endurance.... One of these +experts, a smiling and pale-haired young man who talked to Mr. Ross +about the new poetry, arranged to have office-boys go about with trays +of water-glasses at ten, twelve, two, and four. Thitherto, the +stenographers had wasted a great deal of time in trotting to the battery +of water-coolers, in actually being human and relaxed and gossipy for +ten minutes a day. After the visitation of the expert the girls were so +efficient that they never for a second stopped their work--except when +one of them would explode in hysteria and be hurried off to the +rest-room. But no expert was able to keep them from jumping at the +chance to marry any one who would condescend to take them out of this +efficient atmosphere. + +Just beneath the chiefs was the caste of bright young men who would some +day have the chance to be beatified into chiefs. They believed +enormously in the virtue of spreading the blessings of Pemberton's +patent medicines; they worshiped the house policy. Once a month they met +at what they called "punch lunches," and listened to electrifying +addresses by Mr. S. Herbert Ross or some other inspirer, and turned +fresh, excited eyes on one another, and vowed to adhere to the true +faith of Pemberton's, and not waste their evenings in making love, or +reading fiction, or hearing music, but to read diligently about soap and +syrups and window displays, and to keep firmly before them the vision of +fifteen thousand dollars a year. They had quite the best time of any one +at Pemberton's, the bright young men. They sat, in silk shirts and new +ties, at shiny, flat-topped desks in rows; they answered the telephone +with an air; they talked about tennis and business conditions, and were +never, never bored. + +Intermingled with this caste were the petty chiefs, the office-managers +and bookkeepers, who were velvety to those placed in power over them, +but twangily nagging to the girls and young men under them. Failures +themselves, they eyed sourly the stenographers who desired two dollars +more a week, and assured them that while _personally_ they would be +_very_ glad to obtain the advance for them, it would be "unfair to the +other girls." They were very strong on the subject of not being unfair +to the other girls, and their own salaries were based on "keeping down +overhead." Oldish men they were, wearing last-year hats and smoking +Virginia cigarettes at lunch; always gossiping about the big chiefs, and +at night disappearing to homes and families in New Jersey or Harlem. +Awe-encircled as the very chiefs they appeared when they lectured +stenographers, but they cowered when the chiefs spoke to them, and +tremblingly fingered their frayed cuffs. + +Such were the castes above the buzzer-line. + +Una's caste, made up of private secretaries to the chiefs, was not above +the buzzer. She had to leap to the rattlesnake tattoo, when Mr. Ross +summoned her, as quickly as did the newest Jewish stenographer. But hers +was a staff corps, small and exclusive and out of the regular line. On +the one hand she could not associate with the chiefs; on the other, it +was expected of her in her capacity as daily confidante to one of the +gods, that she should not be friendly, in coat-room or rest-room or +elevator, with the unrecognized horde of girls who merely copied or took +the bright young men's dictation of letters to drug-stores. These girls +of the common herd were expected to call the secretaries, "Miss," no +matter what street-corner impertinences they used to one another. + +There was no caste, though there was much factional rivalry, among the +slaves beneath--the stenographers, copyists, clerks, waiting-room +attendants, office-boys, elevator-boys. They were expected to keep clean +and be quick-moving; beyond that they were as unimportant to the larger +phases of office politics as frogs to a summer hotel. Only the +cashier's card index could remember their names.... Though they were not +deprived of the chief human satisfaction and vice--feeling superior. The +most snuffle-nosed little mailing-girl on the office floor felt superior +to all of the factory workers, even the foremen, quite as negro +house-servants look down on poor white trash. + +Jealousy of position, cattishness, envy of social standing--these were +as evident among the office-women as they are in a woman's club; and Una +had to admit that woman's cruelty to woman often justified the +prejudices of executives against the employment of women in business; +that women were the worst foes of Woman. + +To Una's sympathies, the office proletarians were her own poor +relations. She sighed over the cheap jackets, with silesia linings and +raveled buttonholes, which nameless copyists tried to make attractive by +the clean embroidered linen collars which they themselves laundered in +wash-bowls in the evening. She discovered that even after years of +experience with actual office-boys and elevator-boys, Mr. Ross still saw +them only as slangy, comic-paper devils. Then, in the elevator, she +ascertained that the runners made about two hundred trips up and down +the dark chutes every day, and wondered if they always found it comic to +do so. She saw the office-boys, just growing into the age of interest in +sex and acquiring husky male voices and shambling sense of shame, yearn +at the shrines of pasty-faced stenographers. She saw the humanity of all +this mass--none the less that they envied her position and spoke privily +of "those snippy private secretaries that think they're so much sweller +than the rest of us." + +She watched with peculiar interest one stratum: the old ladies, the +white-haired, fair-handed women of fifty and sixty and even seventy, +spinsters and widows, for whom life was nothing but a desk and a job of +petty pickings--mailing circulars or assorting letters or checking up +lists. She watched them so closely because she speculated always, "Will +I ever be like that?" + +They seemed comfortable; gossipy they were, and fond of mothering the +girls. But now and then one of them would start to weep, cry for an hour +together, with her white head on a spotty desk-blotter, till she forgot +her homelessness and uselessness. Epidemics of hysteria would spring up +sometimes, and women of thirty-five or forty--normally well +content--would join the old ladies in sobbing. Una would wonder if she +would be crying like that at thirty-five--and at sixty-five, with thirty +barren, weeping years between. Always she saw the girls of twenty-two +getting tired, the women of twenty-eight getting dry and stringy, the +women of thirty-five in a solid maturity of large-bosomed and widowed +spinsterhood, the old women purring and catty and tragic.... She herself +was twenty-eight now, and she knew that she was growing sallow, that the +back of her neck ached more often, and that she had no release in sight +save the affably dull Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz. + +Machines were the Pemberton force, and their greatest rivals were the +machines of steel and wood, at least one of which each new efficiency +expert left behind him: Machines for opening letters and sealing them, +automatic typewriters, dictation phonographs, pneumatic chutes. But none +of the other machines was so tyrannical as the time-clock. Una admitted +to herself that she didn't see how it was possible to get so many +employees together promptly without it, and she was duly edified by the +fact that the big chiefs punched it, too.... But she noticed that after +punching it promptly at nine, in an unctuous manner which said to all +beholders, "You see that even I subject myself to this delightful +humility," Mr. S. Herbert Ross frequently sneaked out and had +breakfast.... + +She knew that the machines were supposed to save work. But she was aware +that the girls worked just as hard and long and hopelessly after their +introduction as before; and she suspected that there was something wrong +with a social system in which time-saving devices didn't save time for +anybody but the owners. She was not big enough nor small enough to have +a patent cure-all solution ready. She could not imagine any future for +these women in business except the accidents of marriage or death--or a +revolution in the attitude toward them. She saw that the comfortable +average men of the office sooner or later, if they were but faithful and +lived long enough, had opportunities, responsibility, forced upon them. +No such force was used upon the comfortable average women! + +She endeavored to picture a future in which women, the ordinary, +philoprogenitive, unambitious women, would have some way out besides +being married off or killed off. She envisioned a complete change in the +fundamental purpose of organized business from the increased production +of soap--or books or munitions--to the increased production of +happiness. How this revolution was to be accomplished she had but little +more notion than the other average women in business. She blindly +adopted from Mamie Magen a half-comprehended faith in a Fabian +socialism, a socializing that would crawl slowly through practical +education and the preaching of kinship, through profit-sharing and +old-age pensions, through scientific mosquito-slaying and cancer-curing +and food reform and the abolition of anarchistic business competition, +to a goal of tolerable and beautiful life. Of one thing she was sure: +This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or +munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the +testimony of paid spokesmen like S. Herbert Ross to the effect that they +were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing +nerves to the effect that they lived in a polite version of hell.... She +was more and more certain that the workers weren't discontented enough; +that they were too patient with lives insecure and tedious. But she +refused to believe that the age of comparative happiness would always be +a dream; for already, at Herzfeld & Cohn's she had tasted of an +environment where no one considered himself a divinely ruling chief, and +where it was not a crime to laugh easily. But certainly she did not +expect to see this age during her own life. She and her fellows were +doomed, unless they met by chance with marriage or death; or unless they +crawled to the top of the heap. And this last she was determined to do. +Though she did hope to get to the top without unduly kicking the +shrieking mass of slaves beneath her, as the bright young men learned to +do. + +Whenever she faced Mr. Ross's imperturbable belief that +things-as-they-are were going pretty well, that "you can't change human +nature," Una would become meek and puzzled, lose her small store of +revolutionary economics, and wonder, grope, doubt her millennial faith. +Then she would again see the dead eyes of young girls as they entered +the elevators at five-thirty, and she would rage at all chiefs and +bright young men.... A gold-eye-glassed, kitten-stepping, good little +thing she was, and competent to assist Mr. Ross in his mighty labors, +yet at heart she was a shawled Irish peasant, or a muzhik lost in the +vastness of the steppes; a creature elemental and despairing, facing +mysterious powers of nature--human nature. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz was a regular visitant at the flat of Mrs. +Lawrence and Una. Mrs. Lawrence liked him; in his presence she abandoned +her pretense of being interested in Mamie Magen's arid intellectualism, +and Una's quivering anxieties. Mr. Schwirtz was ready for any party, +whenever he was "in off the road." + +Una began to depend on him for amusements. Mrs. Lawrence encouraged her +to appear at her best before him. When he or one of Mrs. Lawrence's men +was coming the two women had an early and quick dinner of cold ham and +canned soup, and hastily got out the electric iron to press a frock; +produced Pemberton's Flesh-Tinted Vanisho Powder, and the lip-stick +whose use Una hated, but which she needed more and more as she came back +from the office bloodless and cold. They studied together the feminine +art of using a new veil, a flower, or fresh white-kid gloves, to change +one's appearance. + +Poor Una! She was thinking now, secretly and shamefacedly, of the +"beautifying methods" which she saw advertised in every newspaper and +cheap magazine. She rubbed her red, desk-calloused elbows with +Pemberton's cold-cream. She cold-creamed and massaged her face every +night, standing wearily before a milky mirror in the rather close and +lingerie-scattered bedroom, solemnly rotating her fingers about her +cheeks and forehead, stopping to conjecture that the pores in her nose +were getting enlarged. She rubbed her hair with Pemberton's "Olivine and +Petrol" to keep it from growing thin, and her neck with cocoanut oil to +make it more full. She sent for a bottle of "Mme. LeGrand's +Bust-Developer," and spent several Saturday afternoons at the beauty +parlors of Mme. Isoldi, where in a little booth shut off by a +white-rubber curtain, she received electrical massages, applications of +a magic N-ray hair-brush, vigorous cold-creaming and warm-compressing, +and enormous amounts of advice about caring for the hair follicles, from +a young woman who spoke French with a Jewish accent. + +By a twist of psychology, though she had not been particularly fond of +Mr. Schwirtz, but had anointed herself for his coming because he was a +representative of men, yet after months of thus dignifying his +attentions, the very effort made her suppose that she must be fond of +him. Not Mr. Schwirtz, but her own self did she befool with Pemberton's +"Preparations de Paris." + +Sometimes with him alone, sometimes with him and Mrs. Lawrence and one +of Mrs. Lawrence's young businessman attendants, Una went to theaters +and dinners and heterogeneous dances. + +She was dazzled and excited when Mr. Schwirtz took her to the opening of +the Champs du Pom-Pom, the latest potpourri of amusements on Broadway. +All under one roof were a super-vaudeville show, a smart musical comedy, +and the fireworks of one-act plays; a Chinese restaurant, and a Louis +Quinze restaurant and a Syrian desert-caravan restaurant; a ballroom and +an ice-skating rink; a summer garden that, in midwinter, luxuriated in +real trees and real grass, and a real brook crossed by Japanese bridges. +Mr. Schwirtz was tireless and extravagant and hearty at the Champs du +Pom-Pom. He made Una dance and skate; he had a box for the vaudeville; +he gave her caviar canape and lobster _a la Rue des Trois Soeurs_ in +the Louis Quinze room; and sparkling Burgundy in the summer garden, +where mocking-birds sang in the wavering branches above their table. Una +took away an impressionistic picture of the evening-- + +Scarlet and shadowy green, sequins of gold, slim shoulders veiled in +costly mist. The glitter of spangles, the hissing of silk, low laughter, +and continual music quieter than a dream. Crowds that were not harsh +busy folk of the streets, but a nodding procession of gallant men and +women. A kindly cleverness which inspirited her, and a dusky perfume in +which she could meditate forever, like an Egyptian goddess throned at +the end of incense-curtained aisles. Great tapestries of velvet and +jeweled lights; swift, smiling servants; and the languorous well-being +of eating strange, delicious foods. Orchids and the scent of poppies and +spell of the lotos-flower, the bead of wine and lips that yearned; +ecstasy in the Oriental pride of a superb Jewess who was singing to the +demure enchantment of little violins. Her restlessness satisfied, a +momentary pang of distrust healed by the brotherly talk of the +broad-shouldered man who cared for her and nimbly fulfilled her every +whim. An unvoiced desire to keep him from drinking so many highballs; an +enduring thankfulness to him when she was back at the flat; a defiant +joy that he had kissed her good-night--just once, and so tenderly; a +determination to "be good for him," and a fear that he had "spent too +much money on her to-night," and a plan to reason with him about whisky +and extravagance. A sudden hatred of the office to which she would have +to return in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of +hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his +own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent +from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of the flat, where +Lawrence was breathing loudly in her sleep; the oily smell of hairs +tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in +just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden, +frightened query as to what scornful disdain Walter Babson would fling +at her if he saw her glorying in this Broadway circus with the heavy Mr. +Schwirtz. A ghostly night-born feeling that she still belonged to +Walter, living or dead, and a wonder as to where in all the world he +might be. A defiant protest that she idealized Walter, that he wasn't so +awfully superior to the Champs du Pom-Pom as this astral body of his was +pretending, and a still more defiant gratitude to Mr. Schwirtz as she +crawled into the tousled bed and Mrs. Lawrence half woke to yawn, "Oh, +that--you--Gold'n? _Gawd!_ I'm sleepy. Wha' time is 't?" + + +Sec. 2 + +Una was sorry. She hated herself as what she called a "quitter," but +now, in January, 1910, she was at an _impasse_. She could just stagger +through each day of S. Herbert Ross and office diplomacies. She had been +at Pemberton's for a year and a third, and longer than that with Mrs. +Lawrence at the flat. The summer vacation of 1909 she had spent with +Mrs. Lawrence at a Jersey coast resort. They had been jealous, had +quarreled, and made it up every day, like lovers. They had picked up two +summer men, and Mrs. Lawrence had so often gone off on picnics with her +man that Una had become uneasy, felt soiled, and come back to the city +early. For this Mrs. Lawrence had never forgiven her. She had recently +become engaged to a doctor who was going to Akron, Ohio, and she +exasperated Una by giving her bland advice about trying to get married. +Una never knew whether she was divorced, or whether the mysterious Mr. +Lawrence had died. + +But even the difficile Lawrence was preferable to the strain at the +office. Una was tired clean through and through. She felt as though her +very soul had been drained out by a million blood-sucker +details--constant adjustments to Ross's demands for admiration of his +filthiest office political deals, and the need of keeping friendly with +both sides when Ross was engaged in one of his frequent altercations +with an assistant. + +Often she could not eat in the evening. She would sit on the edge of the +bed and cry hopelessly, with a long, feeble, peculiarly feminine +sobbing, till Mrs. Lawrence slammed the door and went off to the motion +pictures. Una kept repeating a little litany she had made regarding the +things she wished people would stop doing--praying to be delivered from +Ross's buoyant egotism, from Mrs. Lawrence's wearing of Una's best +veils, from Mr. Schwirtz's acting as though he wanted to kiss her +whenever he had a whisky breath, from the office-manager who came in to +chat with her just when she was busiest, from the office-boy who always +snapped his fingers as he went down the corridor outside her door, and +from the elevator-boy who sucked his teeth. + +She was sorry. She wanted to climb. She didn't want to be a quitter. But +she was at an _impasse_. + +On a January day the Pemberton office beheld that most terrifying crisis +that can come to a hard, slave-driving office. As the office put it, +"The Old Man was on a rampage." + +Mr. Pemberton, senior, most hoarily awful of all the big chiefs, had +indigestion or a poor balance-sheet. He decided that everything was +going wrong. He raged from room to room. He denounced the new poster, +the new top for the talcum-powder container, the arrangement of the +files, and the whispering in the amen corner of veteran stenographers. +He sent out flocks of "office memoes." Everybody trembled. Mr. +Pemberton's sons actually did some work; and, as the fire spread and the +minor bosses in turn raged among their subordinates, the girls who +packed soap down in the works expected to be "fired." After a visitation +from Mr. Pemberton and three raging memoes within fifteen minutes, Mr. +S. Herbert Ross retreated toward the Lafayette Cafe, and Una was left to +face Mr. Pemberton's bear-like growls on his next appearance. + +When he did appear he seemed to hold her responsible for all the world's +long sadness. Meanwhile the printer was telephoning for Mr. Ross's O. K. +on copy, the engravers wanted to know where the devil was that +color-proof, the advertising agency sarcastically indicated that it was +difficult for them to insert an advertisement before they received the +order, and a girl from the cashier's office came nagging in about a bill +for India ink. + +The memoes began to get the range of her desk again, and Mr. Pemberton's +voice could be heard in a distant part of the office, approaching, +menacing, all-pervading. + +Una fled. She ran to a wash-room, locked the door, leaned panting +against it, as though detectives were pursuing her. She was safe for a +moment. They might miss her, but she was insulated from demands of, +"Where's Ross, Miss Golden? Well, why _don't_ you know where he is?" +from telephone calls, and from memoes whose polite "please" was a gloved +threat. + +But even to this refuge the familiar sound of the office penetrated--the +whirr which usually sounded as a homogeneous murmur, but which, in her +acute sensitiveness, she now analyzed into the voices of different +typewriters--one flat, rapid, staccato; one a steady, dull rattle. The +"zzzzz" of typewriter-carriages being shoved back. The roll of closing +elevator doors, and the rumble of the ascending elevator. The long burr +of an unanswered telephone at a desk, again and again; and at last an +angry "Well! Hello? Yes, yes; this 's Mr. Jones. What-duh-yuh want?" +Voices mingled; a shout for Mr. Brown; the hall-attendant yelping: "Miss +Golden! Where's Miss Golden? Anything for Sanford? Mr. Smith, d'you know +if there's anything for Sanford?" Always, over and through all, the +enveloping clatter of typewriters, and the city roar behind that, +breaking through the barrier of the door. + +The individual, analyzed sounds again blended in one insistent noise of +hurry which assailed Una's conscience, summoned her back to her work. + +She sighed, washed her stinging eyes, opened the door, and trailed back +toward her den. + +In the corridor she passed three young stenographers and heard one of +them cry: "Yes, but I don't care if old Alfalfa goes on a rampage +twenty-five hours a day. I'm through. Listen, May, say, what d'you know +about me? I'm engaged! No, honest, straight I am! Look at me ring! Aw, +it is not; it's a regular engagement-ring. I'm going to be out of this +hell-hole in two weeks, and Papa Pemberton can work off his temper on +somebody else. Me, I'm going to do a slumber marathon till noon every +day." + +"Gee!" + +"Engaged!" + +--said the other girls, and-- + +"Engaged! Going to sleep till noon every day. And not see Mr. Ross or +Mr. Pemberton! That's my idea of heaven!" thought Una. + +There was a pile of inquiring memoes from Mr. Pemberton and the several +department heads on her desk. As she looked at them Una reached the +point of active protest. + +"S. Herbert runs for shelter when the storm breaks, and leaves me here +to stand it. Why isn't _he_ supposed to be here on the job just as much +as I am?" she declaimed. "Why haven't I the nerve to jump up and go out +for a cup of tea the way he would? By jiminy! I will!" + +She was afraid of the indefinite menace concealed in all the Pemberton +system as she signaled an elevator. But she did not answer a word when +the hall-attendant said, "You are going out, Miss Golden?" + +She went to a German-Jewish bakery and lunch-room, and reflectively got +down thin coffee served in a thick cup, a sugar-warted _Kaffeekuche_, +and two crullers. She was less willing to go back to work than she had +been in her refuge in the wash-room. She felt that she would rather be +dead than return and subject herself to the strain. She was "through," +like the little engaged girl. She was a "quitter." + +For half an hour she remained in the office, but she left promptly at +five-thirty, though her desk was choked with work and though Mr. Ross +telephoned that he would be back before six, which was his chivalrous +way of demanding that she stay till seven. + +Mr. Schwirtz was coming to see her that evening. He had suggested +vaudeville. + +She dressed very carefully. She did her hair in a new way. + +When Mr. Schwirtz came she cried that she _couldn't_ go to a show. She +was "clean played out." She didn't know what she could do. Pemberton's +was too big a threshing-machine for her. She was tired--"absolutely all +in." + +"Poor little sister!" he said, and smoothed her hair. + +She rested her face on his shoulder. It seemed broad and strong and +protective. + +She was glad when he put his arm about her. + +She was married to Mr. Schwirtz about two weeks later. + + +Sec. 3 + +She had got herself to call him "Ed." ... "Eddie" she could not +encompass, even in that fortnight of rushing change and bewilderment. + +She asked for a honeymoon trip to Savannah. She wanted to rest; she had +to rest or she would break, she said. + +They went to Savannah, to the live-oaks and palmettoes and quiet old +squares. + +But she did not rest. Always she brooded about the unleashed brutality +of their first night on the steamer, the strong, inescapable man-smell +of his neck and shoulders, the boisterous jokes he kept telling her. + +He insisted on their staying at a commercial hotel at Savannah. Whenever +she went to lie down, which was frequently, he played poker and drank +highballs. He tried in his sincerest way to amuse her. He took her to +theaters, restaurants, road-houses. He arranged a three days' +hunting-trip, with a darky cook. He hired motor-boats and motor-cars and +told her every "here's a new one," that he heard. But she dreaded his +casual-seeming suggestions that she drink plenty of champagne; dreaded +his complaints, whiney as a small boy, "Come now, Unie, show a little +fire. I tell you a fellow's got a right to expect it at this time." She +dreaded his frankness of undressing, of shaving; dreaded his occasional +irritated protests of "Don't be a finicking, romantic school-miss. I may +not wear silk underclo' and perfume myself like some bum actor, but I'm +a regular guy"; dreaded being alone with him; dreaded always the memory +of that first cataclysmic night of their marriage; and mourned, as in +secret, for year on year, thousands of women do mourn. "Oh, I wouldn't +care now if he had just been gentle, been considerate.... Oh, Ed _is_ +good; he _does_ mean to care for me and give me a good time, but--" + +When they returned to New York, Mr. Schwirtz said, robustly: "Well, +little old trip made consid'able hole in my wad. I'm clean busted. Down +to one hundred bucks in the bank." + +"Why, I thought you were several thousand ahead!" + +"Oh--oh! I lost most of that in a little flyer on stocks--thought I'd +make a killing, and got turned into lamb-chops; tried to recoup my +losses on that damn flying-machine, passenger-carrying game that that +---- ---- ---- ---- let me in for. Never mind, little sister; we'll +start saving now. And it was worth it. Some trip, eh? You enjoyed it, +didn't you--after the first couple days, while you were seasick? You'll +get over all your fool, girly-girly notions now. Women always are like +that. I remember the first missus was, too.... And maybe a few other +skirts, though I guess I hadn't better tell no tales outa school on +little old Eddie Schwirtz, eh? Ha, ha!... Course you high-strung virgin +kind of shemales take some time to learn to get over your choosey, +finicky ways. But, Lord love you! I don't mind that much. Never could +stand for these rough-necks that claim they'd rather have a good, +healthy walloping country wench than a nice, refined city lady. Why, I +_like_ refinement! Yes, sir, I sure do!... Well, it sure was some trip. +Guess we won't forget it in a hurry, eh? Sure is nice to rub up against +some Southern swells like we did that night at the Avocado Club. And +that live bunch of salesmen. Gosh! Say, I'll never forget that Jock +Sanderson. He was a comical cuss, eh? That story of his--" + +"No," said Una, "I'll never forget the trip." + +But she tried to keep the frenzy out of her voice. The frenzy was dying, +as so much of her was dying. She hadn't realized a woman can die so many +times and still live. Dead had her heart been at Pemberton's, yet it had +secreted enough life to suffer horribly now, when it was again being +mauled to death. + +And she wanted to spare this man. + +She realized that poor Ed Schwirtz, puttering about their temporary room +in a side-street family hotel, yawning and scratching his head, and +presumably comfortable in suspenders over a woolen undershirt--she +realized that he treasured a joyous memory of their Savannah diversions. + +She didn't want to take joy away from anybody who actually had it, she +reflected, as she went over to the coarse-lace hotel curtains, parted +them, stared down on the truck-filled street, and murmured, "No, I can't +ever forget." + + + + +Part III + +MAN AND WOMAN + +CHAPTER XVI + + +For two years Una Golden Schwirtz moved amid the blank procession of +phantoms who haunt cheap family hotels, the apparitions of the +corridors, to whom there is no home, nor purpose, nor permanence. Mere +lodgers for the night, though for score on score of tasteless years they +use the same alien hotel room as a place in which to take naps and store +their trunks and comb their hair and sit waiting--for nothing. The men +are mysterious. They are away for hours or months, or they sit in the +smoking-room, glancing up expectant of fortunes that never come. But the +men do have friends; they are permitted familiarities by the bartender +in the cafe. It is the women and children who are most dehumanized. The +children play in the corridors; they become bold and sophisticated; they +expect attention from strangers. At fourteen the girls have long dresses +and mature admirers, and the boys ape the manners of their shallow +elders and discuss brands of cigarettes. The women sit and rock, +empty-hearted and barren of hands. When they try to make individual +homes out of their fixed molds of rooms--the hard walls, the brass +bedsteads, the inevitable bureaus, the small rockers, and the transoms +that always let in too much light from the hall at night--then they are +only the more pathetic. For the small pictures of pulpy babies +photographed as cupids, the tin souvenirs and the pseudo-Turkish scarves +draped over trunks rob the rooms of the simplicity which is their only +merit. + +For two years--two years snatched out of her life and traded for +somnambulatory peace, Una lived this spectral life of one room in a +family hotel on a side street near Sixth Avenue. The only other +dwelling-places she saw were the flats of friends of her husband. + +He often said, with a sound of pride: "We don't care a darn for all +these would-be social climbers. The wife and I lead a regular Bohemian +life. We know a swell little bunch of live ones, and we have some pretty +nifty parties, lemme tell you, with plenty poker and hard liquor. And +one-two of the bunch have got their own cars--I tell you they make a +whole lot more coin than a lot of these society-column guys, even if +they don't throw on the agony; and we all pile in and go up to some +road-house, and sing, and play the piano, and have a real time." + +Conceive Una--if through the fumes of cheap cigarettes you can make out +the low lights of her fading hair--sitting there, trying patiently to +play a "good, canny fist of poker"--which, as her husband often and +irritably assured her, she would never learn to do. He didn't, he said, +mind her losing his "good, hard-earned money," but he "hated to see +Eddie Schwirtz's own wife more of a boob than Mrs. Jock Sanderson, who's +a regular guy; plays poker like a man." + +Mrs. Sanderson was a black-haired, big-bosomed woman with a face as hard +and smooth and expressionless as a dinner-plate, with cackling laughter +and a tendency to say, "Oh, hell, boys!" apropos of nothing. She was a +"good sport" and a "good mixer," Mr. Schwirtz averred; and more and +more, as the satisfaction of having for his new married mistress a +"refined lady" grew dull, he adjured the refined lady to imitate Mrs. +Sanderson. + +Fortunately, Mr. Schwirtz was out of town two-thirds of the time. But +one-third of the time was a good deal, since for weeks before his coming +she dreaded him; and for weeks after his going she remembered him with +chill shame; since she hadn't even the whole-hearted enthusiasm of +hating him, but always told herself that she was a prude, an abnormal, +thin-blooded creature, and that she ought to appreciate "Ed's" desire to +have her share his good times, be coarse and jolly and natural. + +His extravagance was constant. He was always planning to rent an +expensive apartment and furnish it, but the money due him after each +trip he spent immediately and they were never able to move away from the +family hotel. He had to have taxicabs when they went to theaters. He +would carol, "Oh, don't let's be pikers, little sister--nothing too good +for Eddie Schwirtz, that's my motto." And he would order champagne, the +one sort of good wine that he knew. He always overtipped waiters and +enjoyed his own generosity. Generous he really was, in a clumsy way. He +gave to Una all he had over from his diversions; urged her to buy +clothes and go to matinees while he was away, and told it as a good joke +that he "blew himself" so extensively on their parties that he often had +to take day-coaches instead of sleepers for a week after he left New +York.... Una had no notion of how much money he made, but she knew that +he never saved it. She would beg: "Why don't you do like so many of the +other traveling-men? Your Mr. Sanderson is saving money and buying real +estate, even though he does have a good time. Let's cut out some of the +unnecessary parties and things--" + +"Rats! My Mr. Sanderson is a leet-le tight, like all them Scotch +laddies. I'm going to start saving one of these days. But what can you +do when the firm screws you down on expense allowances and don't hardly +allow you one red cent of bonus on new business? There's no chance for +a man to-day--these damn capitalists got everything lashed down. I tell +you I'm getting to be a socialist." + +He did not seem to be a socialist of the same type as Mamie Magen, but +he was interested in socialism to this extent--he always referred to it +at length whenever Una mentioned saving money. + +She had not supposed that he drank so much. Always he smelled of whisky, +and she found quart bottles of it in his luggage when he returned from a +trip. + +But he never showed signs of drunkenness, except in his urgent +attentions to her after one of their "jolly Bohemian parties." + +More abhorrent to her was the growing slackness in his personal +habits.... He had addressed her with great volubility and earnestness +upon his belief that now they were married, she must get rid of all her +virginal book-learned notions about reticence between husband and wife. +Such feminine "hanky-panky tricks," he assured her, were the cause of +"all these finicky, unhappy marriages and these rotten divorces--lot of +fool clubwomen and suffragettes and highbrows expecting a man to be like +a nun. A man's a man, and the sooner a female gets on to that fact and +doesn't nag, nag, nag him, and let's him go round being comfortable and +natural, the kinder he'll be to her, and the better it'll be for all +parties concerned. Every time! Don't forget that, old lady. Why, there's +J. J. Vance at our shop. Married one of these up-dee-dee, +poetry-reading, finicky women. Why, he did _everything_ for that woman. +Got a swell little house in Yonkers, and a vacuum cleaner, and a hired +girl, and everything. Then, my God! she said she was _lonely_! Didn't +have enough housework, that was the trouble with her; and darned if she +doesn't kick when J. J. comes in all played out at night because he +makes himself comfortable and sits around in his shirt-sleeves and +slippers. Tell you, the first thing these women have gotta learn is that +a man's a man, and if they learn that they won't _need_ a vote!" + +Mr. Schwirtz's notion of being a man was to perform all hygienic +processes as publicly as the law permitted. Apparently he was proud of +his God-given body--though it had been slightly bloated since God had +given it to him--and wanted to inspire her not only with the artistic +vision of it, but with his care for it.... His thick woolen +undergarments were so uncompromisingly wooleny. + +Nor had Mr. Schwirtz any false modesty in his speech. If Una had made +out a list of all the things she considered the most banal or +nauseatingly vulgar, she would have included most of the honest fellow's +favorite subjects. And at least once a day he mentioned his former wife. +At a restaurant dinner he gave a full account of her death, embalming, +and funeral. + +Una identified him with vulgarity so completely that she must often have +been unjust to him. At least she was surprised now and then by a +reassertion that he was a "highbrow," and that he decidedly disapproved +of any sort of vulgarity. Several times this came out when he found her +reading novels which were so coarsely realistic as to admit the sex and +sweat of the world. + +"Even if they _are_ true to life," he said, "I don't see why it's +necessary to drag in unpleasant subjects. I tell you a fella gets too +much of bad things in this world without reading about 'em in books. +Trouble with all these 'realists' as you call 'em, is that they're such +dirty-minded hounds themselves that all they can see in life is the bad +side." + +Una surmised that the writers of such novels might, perhaps, desire to +show the bad side in the hope that life might be made more beautiful. +But she wasn't quite sure of it, and she suffered herself to be +overborne, when he snorted: "Nonsense! These fellas are just trying to +show how sensational they can be, t' say nothing of talking like they +was so damn superior to the rest of us. Don't read 'em. Read pure +authors like Howard Bancock Binch, where, whenever any lady gets seduced +or anything like that, the author shows it's because the villain is an +atheist or something, and he treats all those things in a nice, fine, +decent manner. Good Gawd! sometimes a fella 'd think, to see you scrooge +up your nose when I'm shaving, that I'm common as dirt, but lemme tell +you, right now, miss, I'm a darn sight too refined to read any of these +nasty novels where they go to the trouble of describing homes that ain't +any better than pig-pens. Oh, and another thing! I heard you telling +Mrs. Sanderson you thought all kids oughta have sex education. My +_Gawd_! I don't know where you get those rotten ideas! Certainly not +from me. Lemme tell you, no kid of mine is going to be made nasty-minded +by having a lot of stuff like that taught her. Yes, sir, actually taught +her right out in school." + +Una was sufficiently desirous of avoiding contention to keep to novels +which portrayed life--offices and family hotels and perspiratory +husbands--as all for the best. But now and then she doubted, and looked +up from the pile of her husband's white-footed black-cotton socks to +question whether life need be confined to Panama and Pemberton and +Schwirtz. + +In deference to Mr. Schwirtz's demands on the novelists, one could +scarce even suggest the most dreadful scene in Una's life, lest it be +supposed that other women really are subject to such horror, or that +the statistics regarding immoral diseases really mean anything in +households such as we ourselves know.... She had reason to suppose that +her husband was damaged goods. She crept to an old family doctor and had +a fainting joy to find that she had escaped contamination. + +"Though," said the doctor, "I doubt if it would be wise to have a child +of his." + +"I won't!" she said, grimly. + +She knew the ways of not having children. The practical Mr. Schwirtz had +seen to that. Strangely enough, he did not object to birth-control, even +though it was discussed by just the sort of people who wrote these +sensational realistic novels. + +There were periods of reaction when she blamed herself for having become +so set in antipathy that she always looked for faults; saw as a fault +even the love for amusements which had once seemed a virtue in him. + +She tried, wistfully and honestly, to be just. She reminded herself +constantly that she had enjoyed some of the parties with him--theater +and a late supper, with a couple just back from South America. + +But--there were so many "buts"! Life was all one obliterating But. + +Her worst moments were when she discovered that she had grown careless +about appearing before him in that drabbest, most ignoble of feminine +attire--a pair of old corsets; that she was falling into his own +indelicacies. + +Such marionette tragedies mingled ever with the grander passion of +seeing life as a ruined thing; her birthright to aspiring cleanness sold +for a mess of quick-lunch pottage. And as she walked in a mist of agony, +a dumb, blind creature heroically distraught, she could scarce +distinguish between sordidness and the great betrayals, so chill and +thick was the fog about her. + +She thought of suicide, often, but too slow and sullen was her protest +for the climax of suicide. And the common sense which she still had +urged her that some day, incredibly, there might again be hope. Oftener +she thought of a divorce. Of that she had begun to think even on the +second day of her married life. She suspected that it would not be hard +to get a divorce on statutory grounds. Whenever Mr. Schwirtz came back +from a trip he would visibly remove from his suit-case bunches of +letters in cheaply pretentious envelopes of pink and lavender. She +scorned to try to read them, but she fancied that they would prove +interesting to the judges. + + +Sec. 2 + +When Mr. Schwirtz was away Una was happy by contrast. Indeed she found a +more halcyon rest than at any other period since her girlhood; and in +long hours of thinking and reading and trying to believe in life, the +insignificant good little thing became a calm-browed woman. + +Mrs. Lawrence had married the doctor and gone off to Ohio. They motored +much, she wrote, and read aloud, and expected a baby. Una tried to be +happy in them. + +Una had completely got out of touch with Mr. and Mrs. Sessions, but +after her marriage she had gone to call on Mamie Magen, now prosperous +and more earnest than ever, in a Greenwich Village flat; on Jennie +Cassavant, sometime of the Home Club, now obscurely on the stage; on +curly-haired Rose Larsen, who had married a young lawyer. But Una had +fancied that they were suspiciously kind to her, and in angry pride she +avoided them. She often wondered what they had heard about Mr. Schwirtz +from the talkative Mrs. Lawrence. She conceived scenes in which she was +haughtily rhapsodic in defending her good, sensible husband before them. +Then she would long for them and admit that doubtless she had merely +imagined their supercilious pity. But she could not go back to them as a +beggar for friendship. + +Also, though she never admitted this motive to herself, she was always +afraid that some day, if she kept in touch with them, her husband would +demand: "Why don't you trot out these fussy lady friends of yours? +Ashamed of me, eh?" + +So she drifted away from them, and at times when she could not endure +solitariness she depended upon the women of the family hotel, whom she +met in the corridors and cafe and "parlor." + +The aristocrats among them, she found, were the wives of traveling +salesmen, good husbands and well loved, most of them, writing to their +wives daily and longing for the time when they could have places in the +suburbs, with room for chickens and children and love. These aristocrats +mingled only with the sound middle-class of the hotel women, whose +husbands were clerks and bookkeepers resident in the city, or traveling +machinery experts who went about installing small power-plants. They +gossiped with Una about the husbands of the _declasse_ women--men +suspected to be itinerant quack doctors, sellers of dubious mining or +motor stock, or even crooks and gamblers. + +There was a group of three or four cheery, buxom, much-bediamonded, +much-massaged women, whose occasionally appearing husbands were sleek +and overdressed. To Una these women were cordial. They invited her to +go shopping, to matinees. But they stopped so often for cocktails, they +told so many intimate stories of their relations with their husbands, +that Una was timid before them, and edged away from their invitations +except when she was desperately lonely. Doubtless she learned more about +the mastery of people from them, however, than from the sighing, +country-bred hotel women of whom she was more fond; for the cheerful +hussies had learned to make the most of their shoddy lives. + +Only one woman in the hotel did Una accept as an actual friend--Mrs. +Wade, a solid, slangy, contented woman with a child to whom she was +devoted. She had, she told Una, "been stuck with a lemon of a husband. +He was making five thousand a year when I married him, and then he went +to pieces. Good-looking, but regular poor white trash. So I cleaned +house--kicked him out. He's in Boston now. Touches me for a ten-spot now +and then. I support myself and the kid by working for a department +store. I'm a wiz at bossing dressmakers--make a Lucile gown out of the +rind of an Edam cheese. Take nothing off nobody--especially you don't +see me taking any more husbands off nobody." + +Mostly, Una was able to make out an existence by herself. + +She read everything--from the lacy sentimentalism of Myrtle Read to +Samuel Butler and translations of Gorky and Flaubert. She nibbled at +histories of art, and was confirmed in her economic theology by shallow +but earnest manuals of popular radicalism. She got books from a branch +public library, or picked them up at second-hand stalls. At first she +was determined to be "serious" in her reading, but more and more she +took light fiction as a drug to numb her nerves--and forgot the tales as +soon as she had read them. + +In ten years of such hypnotic reading Mrs. Una Golden Schwirtz would not +be very different from that Mrs. Captain Golden who, alone in a flat, +had read all day, and forgotten what she had read, and let life dream +into death. + +But now Una was still fighting to keep in life. + +She began to work out her first definite philosophy of existence. In +essence it was not so very different from the blatant optimism of Mr. S. +Herbert Ross--except that it was sincere. + +"Life is hard and astonishingly complicated," she concluded. "No one +great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work--or want to +work--will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be +calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy." + +No more original than this was her formulated philosophy--the +commonplace creed of a commonplace woman in a rather less than +commonplace family hotel. The important thing was not the form of it, +but her resolve not to sink into nothingness.... She hoped that some day +she would get a job again. She sometimes borrowed a typewriter from the +manager of the hotel, and she took down in shorthand the miscellaneous +sermons--by Baptists, Catholics, Reformed rabbis, Christian Scientists, +theosophists, High Church Episcopalians, Hindu yogis, or any one else +handy--with which she filled up her dull Sundays.... Except as practice +in stenography she found their conflicting religions of little value to +lighten her life. The ministers seemed so much vaguer than the +hard-driving business men with whom she had worked; and the question of +what Joshua had done seemed to have little relation to what Julius +Schwirtz was likely to do. The city had come between her and the Panama +belief that somehow, mysteriously, one acquired virtue by enduring dull +sermons. + +She depended more on her own struggle to make a philosophy. + +That philosophy, that determination not to sink into paralyzed despair, +often broke down when her husband was in town, but she never gave up +trying to make it vital to her. + +So, through month on month, she read, rocking slowly in the small, +wooden rocker, or lying on the coarse-coverleted bed, while round her +the hotel room was still and stale-smelling and fixed, and outside the +window passed the procession of life--trucks laden with crates of +garments consigned to Kansas City and Bangor and Seattle and Bemidji; +taxicabs with passengers for the mammoth hotels; office-girls and +policemen and salesmen and all the lusty crew that had conquered the +city or were well content to be conquered by it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Late in the summer of 1912, at a time when Una did not expect the return +of her husband for at least three weeks, she was in their room in the +afternoon, reading "Salesmanship for Women," and ruminatively eating +lemon-drops from a small bag. + +As though he were a betrayed husband dramatically surprising her, Mr. +Schwirtz opened the door, dropped a large suit-case, and stood, glaring. + +"Well!" he said, with no preliminary, "so here you are! For once you +could--" + +"Why, Ed! I didn't expect to see you for--" + +He closed the door and gesticulated. "No! Of course you didn't. Why +ain't you out with some of your swell friends that I ain't good enough +to meet, shopping, and buying dresses, and God knows what--" + +"Why, Ed!" + +"Oh, don't 'why-Ed' me! Well, ain't you going to come and kiss me? Nice +reception when a man's come home tired from a hard trip--wife so busy +reading a book that she don't even get up from her chair and make him +welcome in his own room that he pays for. Yes, by--" + +"Why, you didn't--you don't act as though--" + +"Yes, sure, that's right; lay it all on--" + +"--you wanted me to kiss you." + +"Well, neither would anybody if they'd had all the worries I've had, +sitting there worrying on a slow, hot train that stopped at every +pig-pen--yes, and on a day-coach, too, by golly! _Somebody_ in this +family has got to economize!--while you sit here cool and comfortable; +not a thing on your mind but your hair; not a thing to worry about +except thinking how damn superior you are to your husband! Oh, sure! But +I made up my mind--I thought it all out for once, and I made up my mind +to one thing, you can help me out by economizing, anyway." + +"Oh, Ed, I don't know what you're driving at. I _haven't_ been +extravagant, ever. Why, I've asked you any number of times not to spend +so much money for suppers and so forth--" + +"Yes, sure, lay it all onto me. I'm fair game for everybody that's +looking for a nice, soft, easy, safe boob to kick! Why, look there!" + +While she still sat marveling he pounced on the meek little five-cent +bag of lemon-drops, shook it as though it were a very small kitten, and +whined: "Look at this! Candy or something all the while! You never have +a single cent left when I come home--candy and ice-cream sodas, and +matinees, and dresses, and everything you can think of. If it ain't one +thing, it's another. Well, you'll either save from now on--" + +"Look here! What do you mean, working off your grouch on--" + +"--or else you won't _have_ anything to spend, un'erstand? And when it +comes down to talking about grouches I suppose you'll be real _pleased_ +to know--this will be sweet news, probably, to _you_--I've been fired!" + +"Fired? Oh, Ed!" + +"Yes, fired-oh-Ed. Canned. Got the gate. Thrown out. Got the +razzle-dazzle. Got the hook thrown into me. Bounced. Kiyudeled. That is, +at least, I will be, as soon as I let the old man get at me, judging +from the love-letters he's been sending me, inviting me to cut a switch +and come out to the wood-shed with him." + +"Oh, Ed dear, what was the trouble?" + +She walked up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder. Her voice was +earnest, her eyes full of pity. He patted her hand, seemed from her +gentle nearness to draw comfort--not passion. He slouched over to the +bed, and sat with his thick legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in +his trousers pockets, while he mused: + +"Oh, I don't hardly know what it _is_ all about. My sales have been +falling off, all rightee. But, good Lord! that's no fault of mine. I +work my territory jus' as hard as I ever did, but I can't meet the +competition of the floor-wax people. They're making an auto polish +now--better article at a lower price--and what can I do? They got a full +line, varnish, cleaner, polish, swell window displays, national +advertising, swell discounts--everything; and I can't buck competition +like that. And then a lot of the salesmen at our shop are jealous of me, +and one thing and another. Well, now I'll go down and spit the old man +in the eye couple o' times, and get canned, unless I can talk him out of +his bad acting. Oh, I'll throw a big bluff. I'll be the little +misunderstood boy, but I don't honestly think I can put anything across +on him. I'm-- Oh, hell, I guess I'm getting old. I ain't got the pep I +used to have. Not but what J. Eddie Schwirtz can still sell goods, but I +can't talk up to the boss like I could once. I gotta feel some sympathy +at the home office. And I by God deserve it--way I've worked and slaved +for that bunch of cutthroats, and now-- Sure, that's the way it goes in +this world. I tell you, I'm gonna turn socialist!" + +"Ed--listen, Ed. Please, oh, _please_ don't be offended now; but don't +you think perhaps the boss thinks you drink too much?" + +"How could he? I don't drink very much, and you know it. I don't hardly +touch a drop, except maybe just for sociability. God! this temperance +wave gets my goat! Lot of hot-air females telling me what I can do and +what I can't do--fella that knows when to drink and when to stop. Drink? +Why, you ought to see some of the boys! There's Burke McCullough. Say, I +bet he puts away forty drinks a day, if he does one, and I don't know +that it hurts him any; but me--" + +"Yes, I know, dear. I was just thinking--maybe your boss is one of the +temperance cranks," Una interrupted. Mr. Schwirtz's arguments regarding +the privileges of a manly man sounded very familiar. This did not seem +to be a moment for letting her husband get into the full swing of them. +She begged: "What will you do if they let you out? I wish there was +something I could do to help." + +"Dun'no'. There's a pretty close agreement between a lot of the leading +paint-and-varnish people--gentleman's agreement--and it's pretty hard to +get in any place if you're in Dutch with any of the others. Well, I'm +going down now and watch 'em gwillotine me. You better not wait to have +dinner with me. I'll be there late, thrashing all over the carpet with +the old man, and then I gotta see some fellas and start something. Come +here, Una." + +He stood up. She came to him, and when he put his two hands on her +shoulders she tried to keep her aversion to his touch out of her look. + +He shook his big, bald head. He was unhappy and his eyes were old. +"Nope," he said; "nope. Can't be done. You mean well, but you haven't +got any fire in you. Kid, can't you understand that there are wives +who've got so much passion in 'em that if their husbands came home +clean-licked, like I am, they'd--oh, their husbands would just +naturally completely forget their troubles in love--real love, with fire +in it. Women that aren't ashamed of having bodies.... But, oh, Lord! it +ain't your fault. I shouldn't have said anything. There's lots of wives +like you. More 'n one man's admitted his wife was like that, when he's +had a couple drinks under his belt to loosen his tongue. You're not to +blame, but-- I'm sorry.... Don't mind my grouch when I came in. I was so +hot, and I'd been worrying and wanted to blame things onto somebody.... +Don't wait for me at dinner. If I ain't here by seven, go ahead and +feed. Good-by." + + +Sec. 2 + +All she knew was that at six a woman's purring voice on the telephone +asked if Mr. Eddie Schwirtz had returned to town yet. That he did not +reappear till after midnight. That his return was heralded by wafting +breezes with whisky laden. That, in the morning, there was a smear of +rice powder on his right shoulder and that he was not so urgent in his +attentions to her as ordinarily. So her sympathy for him was lost. But +she discovered that she was neither jealous nor indignant--merely +indifferent. + +He told her at breakfast that, with his usual discernment, he had +guessed right. When he had gone to the office he had been discharged. + +"Went out with some business acquaintances in the evening--got to pull +all the wires I can now," he said. + +She said nothing. + + +Sec. 3 + +They had less than two hundred dollars ahead. But Mr. Schwirtz borrowed +a hundred from his friend, Burke McCullough, and did not visibly have +to suffer from want of highballs, cigars, and Turkish baths. From the +window of their room Una used to see him cross the street to the cafe +entrance of the huge Saffron Hotel--and once she saw him emerge from it +with a fluffy blonde. But she did not attack him. She was spellbound in +a strange apathy, as in a dream of swimming on forever in a warm and +slate-hued sea. She was confident that he would soon have another +position. He had over-ridden her own opinions about business--the +opinions of the underling who never sees the great work as a rounded +whole--till she had come to have a timorous respect for his commercial +ability. + +Apparently her wifely respect was not generally shared in the paint +business. At least Mr. Schwirtz did not soon get his new position. + +The manager of the hotel came to the room with his bill and pressed for +payment. And after three weeks--after a night when he had stayed out +very late and come home reeking with perfume--Mr. Schwirtz began to hang +about the room all day long and to soak himself in the luxury of +complaining despair. + +Then came the black days. + +There were several scenes (during which she felt like a beggar about to +be arrested) between Mr. Schwirtz and the landlord, before her husband +paid part of a bill whose size astounded her. + +Mr. Schwirtz said that he was "expecting something to turn up--nothin' +he could do but wait for some telephone calls." He sat about with his +stockinged feet cocked up on the bed, reading detective stories till he +fell asleep in his chair. He drank from unlabeled pint flasks of whisky +all day. Once, when she opened a bureau drawer of his by mistake, she +saw half a dozen whisky-flasks mixed with grimy collars, and the sour +smell nauseated her. But on food--they had to economize on that! He took +her to a restaurant of fifteen-cent breakfasts and twenty-five-cent +dinners. It was the "parlor floor" of an old brownstone house--two +rooms, with eggy table-cloths, and moldings of dusty stucco. + +She avoided his presence as much as possible. Mrs. Wade, the practical +dressmaker, who was her refuge among the women of the hotel, seemed to +understand what was going on, and gave Una a key to her room. Here Una +sat for hours. When she went back to their room quarrels would spring up +apropos of anything or nothing. + +The fault was hers as much as his. She was no longer trying to conceal +her distaste, while he, who had a marital conscience of a sort, was +almost pathetic in his apologies for being unable to "show her a good +time." And he wanted her soothing. He was more and more afraid of her as +the despair of the jobless man in the hard city settled down on him. He +wanted her to agree with him that there was a conspiracy against him. + +She listened to him and said nothing, till he would burst out in abuse: + +"You women that have been in business simply ain't fit to be married. +You think you're too good to help a man. Yes, even when you haven't been +anything but dub stenographers. I never noticed that you were such a +whale of a success! I don't suppose you remember how you used to yawp to +me about the job being too much for you! And yet when I want a little +sympathy you sit there and hand me the frozen stare like you were the +president of the Standard Oil Company and I was a bum office-boy. Yes, +sir, I tell you business simply unfits a skirt for marriage." + +"No," she said, "not for marriage that has any love and comradeship in +it. But I admit a business woman doesn't care to put up with being a cow +in a stable." + +"What the devil do you mean--" + +"Maybe," she went on, "the business women will bring about a new kind of +marriage in which men will _have_ to keep up respect and courtesy.... I +wonder--I wonder how many millions of women in what are supposed to be +happy homes are sick over being chambermaids and mistresses till they +get dulled and used to it. Nobody will ever know. All these books about +women being emancipated--you'd think marriage had changed entirely. Yet, +right now, in 1912, in Panama and this hotel--not changed a bit. The +business women must simply _compel_ men to--oh, to shave!" + +She went out (perhaps she slammed the door a little, in an unemancipated +way) to Mrs. Wade's room. + +That discussion was far more gentle and coherent than most of their +quarrels. + +It may have been rather to the credit of Mr. Schwirtz--it may have been +a remnant of the clean pride which the boy Eddie Schwirtz must once have +had, that, whenever she hinted that she would like to go back to +work--he raged: "So you think I can't support you, eh? My God! I can +stand insults from all my old friends--the fellas that used to be +tickled to death to have me buy 'em a drink, but now they dodge around +the corner as though they thought I was going to try to borrow four bits +from 'em--I can stand their insults, but, by God! it _is_ pretty hard on +a man when his own wife lets him know that she don't think he can +support her!" + +And he meant it. + +She saw that, felt his resentment. But she more and more often invited +an ambition to go back to work, to be independent and busy, no matter +how weary she might become. To die, if need be, in the struggle. +Certainly that death would be better than being choked in muck.... One +of them would have to go to work, anyway. + +She discovered that an old acquaintance of his had offered him an +eighteen-dollar-a-week job as a clerk in a retail paint-shop, till he +should find something better. Mr. Schwirtz was scornful about it, and +his scorn, which had once intimidated Una, became grotesquely absurd to +her. + +Then the hotel-manager came with a curt ultimatum: "Pay up or get out," +he said. + +Mr. Schwirtz spent an hour telephoning to various acquaintances, trying +to raise another hundred dollars. He got the promise of fifty. He +shaved, put on a collar that for all practical purposes was quite clean, +and went out to collect his fifty as proudly as though he had earned it. + +Una stared at herself in the mirror over the bureau, and said, aloud: "I +don't believe it! It isn't you, Una Golden, that worked, and paid your +debts. You can't, dear, you simply _can't_ be the wife of a man who +lives by begging--a dirty, useless, stupid beggar. Oh, no, no! You +wouldn't do that--you _couldn't_ marry a man like that simply because +the job had exhausted you. Why, you'd die at work first. Why, if you +married him for board and keep, you'd be a prostitute--you'd be marrying +him just because he was a 'good provider.' And probably, when he didn't +provide any more, you'd be quitter enough to leave him--maybe for +another man. You couldn't do that. I don't believe life could bully you +into doing that.... Oh, I'm hysterical; I'm mad. I can't believe I am +what I am--and yet I am!... Now he's getting that fifty and buying a +drink--" + + +Sec. 4 + +Mr. Schwirtz actually came home with forty-five out of the fifty intact. +That was because he wanted to be able to pay the hotel-manager and +insultingly inform him that they were going to leave.... The manager +bore up under the blow.... They did move to a "furnished +housekeeping-room" on West Nineteenth Street--in the very district of +gray rooms and pathetic landladies where Una had sought a boarding-house +after the death of her mother. + +As furnished housekeeping-rooms go, theirs was highly superior. Most of +them are carpetless, rusty and small of coal-stove, and filled with +cockroaches and the smell of carbolic acid. But the _maison_ Schwirtz +was almost clean. It had an impassioned green carpet, a bedspring which +scarcely sagged at all, a gas-range, and at least a dozen vases with +rococo handles and blobs of gilt. + +"Gee! this ain't so bad," declared Mr. Schwirtz. "We can cook all our +eats here, and live on next to nothing per, till the big job busts +loose." + +With which he prepared to settle down to a life of leisure. He went out +and bought a pint of whisky, a pound of steak, a pound of cheese, a loaf +of bread, six cigars, and for her a bar of fudge. + +So far as Una could calculate, he had less than forty dollars. She burst +out on him. She seemed to be speaking with the brusque voice of an +accomplishing man. In that voice was all she had ever heard from +executives; all the subconsciously remembered man-driving force of the +office world. She ordered him to go and take the job in the +paint-shop--at eighteen dollars a week, or eight dollars a week. She +briefly, but thoroughly, depicted him as alcohol-soaked, poor white +trash. She drove him out, and when he was gone she started to make their +rooms presentable, with an energy she had not shown for months. She +began to dust, to plan curtains for the room, to plan to hide the +bric-a-brac, to plan to rent a typewriter and get commercial copying to +do. + +If any one moment of life is more important than the others, this may +have been her crisis, when her husband had become a begging pauper and +she took charge; began not only to think earnest, commonplace, little +Una thoughts about "mastering life," but actually to master it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +So long as Mr. Schwirtz contrived to keep his position in the retail +paint-store, Una was busy at home, copying documents and specifications +and form-letters for a stenographic agency and trying to make a science +of quick and careful housework. + +She suspected that, now he had a little money again, Mr. Schwirtz was +being riotous with other women--as riotous as one can be in New York on +eighteen dollars a week, with debts and a wife to interfere with his +manly pleasures. But she did not care; she was getting ready to break +the cocoon, and its grubbiness didn't much matter. + +Sex meant nothing between them now. She did not believe that she would +ever be in love again, in any phase, noble or crude. While she aspired +and worked she lived like a nun in a cell. And now that she had +something to do, she could be sorry for him. She made the best possible +dinners for him on their gas-range. She realized--sometimes, not often, +for she was not a contemplative seer, but a battered woman--that their +marriage had been as unfair to him as it was to her. In small-town +boy-gang talks behind barns, in clerkly confidences as a young man, in +the chatter of smoking-cars and provincial hotel offices, he had been +trained to know only two kinds of women, both very complaisant to smart +live-wires: The bouncing lassies who laughed and kissed and would share +with a man his pleasures, such as poker and cocktails, and rapid +motoring to no place in particular; and the meek, attentive, "refined" +kind, the wives and mothers who cared for a man and admired him and +believed whatever he told them about his business. + +Una was of neither sort for him, though for Walter Babson she might have +been quite of the latter kind. Mr. Schwirtz could not understand her, +and she was as sorry for him as was compatible with a decided desire to +divorce him and wash off the stain of his damp, pulpy fingers with the +water of life. + +But she stayed home, and washed and cooked, and earned money for +him--till he lost his retail-store position by getting drunk and being +haughty to a customer. + +Then the chrysalis burst and Una was free again. Free to labor, to +endeavor--to die, perhaps, but to die clean. To quest and meet whatever +surprises life might hold. + + +Sec. 2 + +She couldn't go back to Troy Wilkins's, nor to Mr. S. Herbert Ross and +the little Pemberton stenographers who had enviously seen her go off to +be married. But she made a real business of looking for a job. While Mr. +Schwirtz stayed home and slept and got mental bed-sores and drank +himself to death--rather too slowly--on another fifty dollars which he +had borrowed after a Verdun campaign, Una was joyous to be out early, +looking over advertisements, visiting typewriter companies' employment +agencies. + +She was slow in getting work because she wanted twenty dollars a week. +She knew that any firm taking her at this wage would respect her far +more than if she was an easy purchase. + +Work was slow to come, and she, who had always been so securely above +the rank of paupers who submit to the dreadful surgery of charity, +became afraid. She went at last to Mamie Magen. + +Mamie was now the executive secretary of the Hebrew Young Women's +Professional Union. She seemed to be a personage. In her office she had +a secretary who spoke of her with adoring awe, and when Una said that +she was a personal friend of Miss Magen the secretary cried: "Oh, then +perhaps you'd like to go to her apartment, at ---- Washington Place. +She's almost always home for tea at five." + +The small, tired-looking Una, a business woman again, in her old +tailor-made and a new, small hat, walked longingly toward Washington +Place and tea. + +In her seven years in New York she had never known anybody except S. +Herbert Ross who took tea as a regular function. It meant to her the +gentlest of all forms of distinction, more appealing than riding in +motors or going to the opera. That Mamie Magen had, during Una's own +experience, evolved from a Home Club girl to an executive who had tea at +her apartment every afternoon was inspiriting; meeting her an adventure. + +An apartment of buff-colored walls and not bad prints was Mamie's, +small, but smooth; and taking tea in a manner which seemed to Una +impressively suave were the insiders of the young charity-workers' +circle. But Mamie's uncouth face and eyes of molten heroism stood out +among them all, and she hobbled over to Una and kissed her. When the +cluster had thinned, she got Una aside and invited her to the "Southern +Kitchen," on Washington Square. + +Una did not speak of her husband. "I want to get on the job again, and I +wish you'd help me. I want something at twenty a week (I'm more than +worth it) and a chance to really climb," was all she said, and Mamie +nodded. + +And so they talked of Mrs. Harriet Fike of the Home Club, of dreams and +work and the fight for suffrage. Una's marriage slipped away--she was +ardent and unstained again. + +Mamie's nod was worth months of Mr. Schwirtz's profuse masculine boasts. +Within ten days, Mamie's friend, Mr. Fein, of Truax & Fein, the +real-estate people, sent for Una and introduced her to Mr. Daniel T. +Truax. She was told to come to work on the following Monday as Mr. +Truax's secretary, at twenty-one dollars a week. + +She went home defiant, determined to force her husband to let her take +the job.... She didn't need to use force. He--slippered and drowsy by +the window--said: "That's fine; that'll keep us going till my big job +breaks. I'll hear about it by next week, _anyway_. Then, in three-four +weeks you can kick Truax & Fein in the face and beat it. Say, girlie, +that's fine! Say, tell you what I'll do. Let's have a little party to +celebrate. I'll chase out and rush a growler of beer and some wienies--" + +"No! I've got to go out again." + +"Can't you stop just long enough to have a little celebration? I--I been +kind of lonely last few days, little sister. You been away so much, and +I'm too broke to go out and look up the boys now." + +He was peering at her with a real wistfulness, but in the memory of +Mamie Magen, the lame woman of the golden heart, Una could not endure +his cackling enthusiasm about the job he would probably never get. + +"No, I'm sorry--" she said, and closed the door. From the walk she saw +him puzzled and anxious at the window. His face was becoming so ruddy +and fatuous and babyish. She was sorry for him--but she was not big +enough to do anything about it. Her sorrow was like sympathy for a +mangy alley cat which she could not take home. + +She had no place to go. She walked for hours, planlessly, and dined at +a bakery and lunch-room in Harlem. Sometimes she felt homeless, and +always she was prosaically footsore, but now and then came the +understanding that she again had a chance. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +So, toward the end of 1912, when she was thirty-one years old, Mrs. Una +Golden Schwirtz began her business career, as confidential secretary to +Mr. Truax, of Truax & Fein. + +Her old enemy, routine, was constantly in the field. Routine of taking +dictation, of getting out the letters, prompting Mr. Truax's memory as +to who Mrs. A was, and what Mr. B had telephoned, keeping plats and +plans and memoes in order, making out cards regarding the negotiations +with possible sellers of suburban estates. She did not, as she had +hoped, always find this routine one jolly round of surprises. She was +often weary, sometimes bored. + +But in the splendor of being independent again and of having something +to do that seemed worth while she was able to get through the details +that never changed from day to day. And she was rewarded, for the whole +job was made fascinating by human contact. She found herself +enthusiastic about most of the people she met at Truax & Fein's; she was +glad to talk with them, to work with them, to be taken seriously as a +brain, a loyalty, a woman. + +By contrast with two years of hours either empty or filled with +Schwirtz, the office-world was of the loftiest dignity. It may have been +that some of the men she met were Schwirtzes to their wives, but to her +they had to be fellow-workers. She did not believe that the long hours, +the jealousies, the worry, or Mr. Truax's belief that he was several +planes above ordinary humanity, were desirable or necessary parts of the +life at Truax & Fein's. Here, too, she saw nine hours of daily strain +aging slim girls into skinny females. But now her whole point of view +was changed. Instead of looking for the evils of the business world, she +was desirous of seeing in it all the blessings she could; and, without +ever losing her belief that it could be made more friendly, she was, +nevertheless, able to rise above her own personal weariness and see that +the world of jobs, offices, business, had made itself creditably +superior to those other muddled worlds of politics and amusement and +amorous Schwirtzes. She believed again, as in commercial college she had +callowly believed, that business was beginning to see itself as +communal, world-ruling, and beginning to be inspired to communal, kingly +virtues and responsibility. + +Looking for the good (sometimes, in her joy of escape, looking for it +almost with the joy of an S. Herbert Ross in picking little lucrative +flowers of sentiment along the roadside) she was able to behold more +daily happiness about her. + +Fortunately, Truax & Fein's was a good office, not too hard, not too +strained and factional like Pemberton's; not wavering like Troy +Wilkins's. Despite Mr. Truax's tendency to courteous whining, it was +doing its work squarely and quietly. That was fortunate. Offices differ +as much as office-managers, and had chance condemned Una to another +nerve-twanging Pemberton's her slight strength might have broken. She +might have fallen back to Schwirtz and the gutter. + +Peaceful as reapers singing on their homeward path now seemed the +teasing voices of men and girls as, in a group, they waited for the +elevator at five-thirty-five. The cheerful, "Good-night, Mrs. Schwirtz!" +was a vesper benediction, altogether sweet with its earnest of rest and +friendship. + +Tranquillity she found when she stayed late in the deserted office. Here +no Schwirtz could reach her. Here her toil counted for something in the +world's work--in the making of suburban homes for men and women and +children. She sighed, and her breast felt barren, as she thought of the +children. But tranquillity there was, and a brilliant beauty of the city +as across dark spaces of evening were strung the jewels of light, as in +small, French restaurants sounded desirous violins. On warm evenings of +autumn Una would lean out of the window and be absorbed in the afterglow +above the North River: smoke-clouds from Jersey factories drifting +across the long, carmine stain, air sweet and cool, and the +yellow-lighted windows of other skyscrapers giving distant +companionship. She fancied sometimes that she was watching the afterglow +over a far northern lake, among the pines; and with a sigh more of +content than of restlessness she turned back to her work.... Time ceased +to exist when she worked alone. Of time and of the office she was +manager. What if she didn't go out to dinner till eight? She could dine +whenever she wanted to. If a clumsy man called Eddie Schwirtz got hungry +he could get his own dinner. What if she did work slowly? There were no +telephone messages, no Mr. Truax to annoy her. She could be leisurely +and do the work as it should be done.... She was no longer afraid of the +rustling silence about her, as Una Golden had been at Troy Wilkins's. +She was a woman now, and trained to fill the blank spaces of the +deserted office with her own colored thoughts. + +Hours of bustling life in the daytime office had their human joys as +well. Una went out of her way to be friendly with the ordinary +stenographers, and, as there was no vast Pembertonian system of caste, +she succeeded, and had all the warmth of their little confidences. Nor +after her extensive experience with Messrs. Schwirtz, Sanderson, and +McCullough, did even the noisiest of the salesmen offend her. She +laughed at the small signs they were always bringing in and displaying: +"Oh, forget it! I've got troubles of my own!" or, "Is that you again? +Another half hour gone to hell!" The sales-manager brought this latter +back from Philadelphia and hung it on his desk, and when the admiring +citizenry surrounded it, Una joined them.... As a married woman she was +not expected to be shocked by the word, "hell!"... + +But most beautiful was Christmas Eve, when all distinctions were +suspended for an hour before the office closed, when Mr. Truax +distributed gold pieces and handshakes, when "Chas.," the hat-tilted +sales-manager, stood on a chair and sang a solo. Mr. Fein hung holly on +all their desks, and for an hour stenographers and salesmen and clerks +and chiefs all were friends. + +When she went home to Schwirtz she tried to take some of the holiday +friendship. She sought to forget that he was still looking for the +hypothetical job, while he subsisted on her wages and was increasingly +apologetic. She boasted to herself that her husband hated to ask her for +money, that he was large and strong and masculine. + +She took him to dinner at the Pequoit, in a room of gold and tapestry. +But he got drunk, and wept into his sherbet that he was a drag on her; +and she was glad to be back in the office after Christmas. + + +Sec. 2 + +The mist of newness had passed, that confusion of the recent arrival in +office or summer hotel or revengeful reception; and she now saw the +office inhabitants as separate people. She wondered how she could ever +have thought that the sales-manager and Mr. Fein were confusingly alike, +or have been unable to get the salesmen's names right. + +There was the chief, Mr. Daniel T. Truax, usually known as "D. T.," a +fussily courteous whiner with a rabbity face (his pink nose actually +quivered), a little yellow mustache, and a little round stomach. Himself +and his business he took very seriously, though he was far less tricky +than Mr. Pemberton. The Real Estate Board of Trade was impressed by his +unsmiling insistence on the Dignity of the Profession, and always asked +him to serve on committees. It was Mr. Truax who bought the property for +sub-development, and though he had less abstract intelligence than Mr. +Fein, he was a better judge of "what the people want"; of just how high +to make restrictions on property, and what whim would turn the commuters +north or south in their quest for homes. + +There was the super-chief, the one person related to the firm whom Una +hated--Mrs. D. T. Truax. She was not officially connected with the +establishment, and her office habits were irregular. Mostly they +consisted in appearing at the most inconvenient hours and asking +maddening questions. She was fat, massaged, glittering, wheezy-voiced, +nagging. Una peculiarly hated Mrs. Truax's nails. Una's own finger-tips +were hard with typing; her manicuring was a domestic matter of clipping +and hypocritical filing. But to Mrs. Truax manicuring was a life-work. +Because of much clipping of the cuticle, the flesh at the base of each +nail had become a noticeably raised cushion of pink flesh. Her nails +were too pink, too shiny, too shapely, and sometimes they were an +unearthly white at the ends, because of nail-paste left under them. At +that startling whiteness Una stared all the while Mrs. Truax was tapping +her fingers and prying into the private morals of the pretty hall-girl, +and enfilading Una with the lorgnon that so perfectly suited her Upper +West Side jowls. + +Collating Mrs. Truax and the matrons of the Visiting Board of the +Temperance Home Club, Una concluded that women trained in egotism, but +untrained in business, ought to be legally enjoined from giving their +views to young women on the job. + +The most interesting figure in the office was Mr. Fein, the junior +partner, a Harvard Jew, who was perfectly the new type of business man. +Serious, tall, spectacled, clean-shaven, lean-faced, taking business as +a profession, and kindly justice as a religion, studying efficiency, but +hating the metamorphosis of clerks into machines, he was the distinction +and the power of Truax & Fein. At first Una had thought him humorless +and negligible, but she discovered that it was he who pulled Mr. Truax +out of his ruts, his pious trickeries, his cramping economies. She found +that Mr. Fein loved books and the opera, and that he could be boyish +after hours. + +Then the sales-manager, that driving but festive soul, Mr. Charles +Salmond, whom everybody called "Chas."--pronounced "Chaaz"--a good soul +who was a little tiresome because he was so consistently an anthology of +New York. He believed in Broadway, the Follies, good clothes, a +motor-car, Palm Beach, and the value of the Salvation Army among the +lower classes. When Mr. Fein fought for real beauty in their suburban +developments it was Chas. who echoed all of New York by rebelling, "We +aren't in business for our health--this idealistic game is O. K. for the +guys that have the cash, but you can't expect my salesmen to sell this +Simplicity and High-Thinking stuff to prospects that are interested in +nothing but a sound investment with room for a garage and two kids." + +Sixty or seventy salesmen, clerks, girls--these Una was beginning to +know. + +Finally, there was a keen, wide-awake woman, willing to do anything for +anybody, not forward, but not to be overridden--a woman with a slight +knowledge of architecture and a larger knowledge of the way of +promotion; a woman whom Una took seriously; and the name of this paragon +was Mrs. Una Golden Schwirtz. + +Round these human islands flowed a sea of others. She had a sense of +flux, and change, and energy; of hundreds of thousands of people rushing +about her always--crowds on Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Sixth, and on +Thirty-fourth Street, where stood the Zodiac Building in which was the +office. Crowds in the hall of the Zodiac Building, examining the +black-and-white directory board with its list of two hundred offices, or +waiting to surge into one of the twelve elevators--those packed vertical +railroads. A whole village life in the hallway of the Zodiac Building: +the imperial elevator-starter in a uniform of blue and gold, and merely +regal elevator-runners with less gold and more faded blue; the oldest of +the elevator-boys, Harry, the Greek, who knew everybody in the building; +the cigar-stand, with piles of cigarettes, cans of advertised tobacco, +maple fudge wrapped in tinfoil, stamps, and even a few cigars, also the +keeper thereof, an Italian with an air of swounding romance. More +romantic Italians in the glass-inclosed barber-shop--Desperate Desmond +devils, with white coats like undress uniforms, and mustaches that +recalled the Riviera and baccarat and a secret-service count; the two +manicure-girls of the barber-shop, princesses reigning among admirers +from the offices up-stairs; janitors, with brooms, and charwomen with +pails, and a red, sarcastic man, the engineer, and a meek puppet who was +merely the superintendent of the whole thing.... Una watched these +village people, to whom the Zodiac hall was Main Street, and in their +satisfied conformation to a life of marble floors and artificial light +she found such settled existence as made her feel at home in this town, +with its eighteen strata called floors. She, too, at least during the +best hours of the day, lived in the Zodiac Building's microcosm. + +And to her office penetrated the ever flowing crowds--salesmen, buyers +of real estate, inquirers, persons who seemed to have as a hobby the +collection of real-estate folders. Indeed, her most important task was +the strategy of "handling callers"--the callers who came to see Mr. +Truax himself, and were passed on to Una by the hall-girl. To the clever +secretary the management of callers becomes a question of scientific +tactics, and Una was clever at it because she liked people. + +She had to recognize the type of awkward shabby visitor who looks like a +beggar, but has in his pocket the cash for investment in lots. And the +insinuating caller, with tailor-made garments and a smart tie, who +presents himself as one who yearns to do a good turn to his dear, dear +personal friend, Mr. D. T. Truax, but proves to be an insurance-agent or +a salesman of adding-machines. She had to send away the women with +high-pitched voices and purely imaginary business, who came in for +nothing whatever, and were willing to spend all of their own time and +Mr. Truax's in obtaining the same; women with unsalable houses to sell +or improbable lots to buy, dissatisfied clients, or mere cranks--old, +shattered, unhappy women, to whom Una could give sympathy, but no +time.... She was expert at standing filially listening to them at the +elevator, while all the time her thumb steadily pressed the elevator +signal. + +Una had been trained, perhaps as much by enduring Mr. Schwirtz as by +pleasing Mr. S. Herbert Ross, to be firm, to say no, to keep Mr. Truax's +sacred rites undisturbed. She did not conventionally murmur, "Mr. Truax +is in a conference just now, and if you will tell me the nature of your +business--" Instead, she had surprising, delightful, convincing things +for Mr. Truax to be doing, just at that particular _moment_-- + +From Mr. Truax himself she learned new ways of delicately getting rid of +people. He did not merely rise to indicate that an interview was over, +but also arranged a system of counterfeit telephone-calls, with Una +calling up from the outside office, and Mr. Truax answering, "Yes, I'll +be through now in just a moment," as a hint for the visitor. He even +practised such play-acting as putting on his hat and coat and rushing +out to greet an important but unwelcome caller with, "Oh, I'm so sorry +I'm just going out--late f' important engagement--given m' secretary +full instructions, and I know she'll take care of you jus' as well as I +could personally," and returning to his private office by a rear door. + +Mr. Truax, like Mr. S. Herbert Ross, gave Una maxims. But his had very +little to do with stars and argosies, and the road to success, and +vivisection, and the abstract virtues. They concerned getting to the +office on time, and never letting a customer bother him if an office +salesman could take care of the matter. + +So round Una flowed all the energy of life; and she of the listening and +desolate hotel room and the overshadowing storm-clouds was happy again. + +She began to make friendships. "Chas.," the office-manager, stopped +often at her desk to ridicule--and Mr. Fein to praise--the plans she +liked to make for garden-suburbs which should be filled with poets, +thatched roofs, excellent plumbing, artistic conversation, fireplaces, +incinerators, books, and convenient trains. + +"Some day," said Mr. Fein to her, "we'll do that sort of thing, just as +the Sage Foundation is doing it at Forest Hills." And he smiled +encouragingly. + +"Some day," said Mr. Truax, "when you're head of a women's real-estate +firm, after you women get the vote, and rusty, old-fashioned people like +me are out of the way, perhaps you can do that sort of thing." And he +smiled encouragingly. + +"Rot," said Chas., and amiably chucked her under the chin. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +Truax & Fein was the first firm toward which Una was able to feel such +loyalty as is supposed to distinguish all young aspirants--loyalty which +is so well spoken of by bosses, and which is so generally lacking among +the bossed. Partly, this was her virtue, partly it was the firm's, and +partly it was merely the accident of her settling down. + +She watched the biological growth of Truax & Fein with fascination; was +excited when they opened a new subdivision, and proudly read the +half-page advertisements thereof in the Sunday newspapers. + +That loyalty made her study real estate, not merely stenography; for to +most stenographers their work is the same whether they take dictation +regarding real estate, or book-publishing, or felt slippers, or the +removal of taconite. They understand transcription, but not what they +transcribe. She read magazines--_System_, _Printer's Ink_, _Real Estate +Record_ (solemnly studying "Recorded Conveyances," and "Plans Filed for +New Construction Work," and "Mechanics' Liens"). She got ideas for +houses from architectural magazines, garden magazines, women's +magazines. But what most indicated that she was a real devotee was the +fact that, after glancing at the front-page headlines, the society news, +and the joke column in her morning paper, she would resolutely turn to +"The Real Estate Field." + +On Sundays she often led Mr. Schwirtz for a walk among the new suburban +developments.... For always, no matter what she did at the office, no +matter how much Mr. Truax depended on her or Mr. Fein praised her, she +went home to the same cabbage-rose-carpeted housekeeping-room, and to a +Mr. Schwirtz who had seemingly not stirred an inch since she had left +him in the morning.... Mr. Schwirtz was of a harem type, and not much +adapted to rustic jaunting, but he obediently followed his master and +tried to tell stories of the days when he had known all about real +estate, while she studied model houses, the lay of the land, the lines +of sewers and walks. + +That was loyalty to Truax & Fein as much as desire for advancement. + +And that same loyalty made her accept as fellow-workers even the +noisiest of the salesmen--and even Beatrice Joline. + +Though Mr. Truax didn't "believe in" women salesmen, one woman briskly +overrode his beliefs: Miss Beatrice Joline, of the Gramercy Park +Jolines, who cheerfully called herself "one of the _nouveau pauvre_," +and condescended to mere Upper West Side millionaires, and had to earn +her frocks and tea money. She earned them, too; but she declined to be +interested in office regulations or office hours. She sold suburban +homes as a free lance, and only to the very best people. She darted into +the office now and then, slender, tall, shoulder-swinging, an +exclamation-point of a girl, in a smart, check suit and a Bendel hat. +She ignored Una with a coolness which reduced her to the status of a new +stenographer. All the office watched Miss Joline with hypnotized envy. +Always in offices those who have social position outside are observed +with secret awe by those who have not. + +Once, when Mr. Truax was in the act of persuading an unfortunate +property-owner to part with a Long Island estate for approximately +enough to buy one lot after the estate should be subdivided into six +hundred lots, Miss Joline had to wait. She perched on Una's desk, +outside Mr. Truax's door, swung her heels, inspected the finger-ends of +her chamois gloves, and issued a command to Una to perform +conversationally. + +Una was thinking, "I'd like to spank you--and then I'd adore you. You're +what story-writers call a thoroughbred." + +While unconscious that a secretary in a tabby-gray dress and gold +eye-glasses was venturing to appraise her, Miss Joline remarked, in a +high, clear voice: "Beastly bore to have to wait, isn't it! I suppose +you can rush right in to see Mr. Truax any time you want to, Mrs. +Ummmmm." + +"Schwirtz. Rotten name, isn't it?" Una smiled up condescendingly. + +Miss Joline stopped kicking her heels and stared at Una as though she +might prove to be human, after all. + +"Oh no, it's a very nice name," she said. "Fancy being called Joline. +Now Schwirtz sounds rather like Schenck, and that's one of the smartest +of the old names.... Uh, _would_ it be too much trouble to see if Mr. +Truax is still engaged?" + +"He is.... Miss Joline, I feel like doing something I've wanted to do +for some time. Of course we both know you think of me as 'that poor +little dub, Mrs. What's-her-name, D. T.'s secretary--'" + +"Why, really--" + +"--or perhaps you hadn't thought of me at all. I'm naturally quite a +silent little dub, but I've been learning that it's silly to be silent +in business. So I've been planning to get hold of you and ask you where +and how you get those suits of yours, and what I ought to wear. You +see, after you marry I'll still be earning my living, and perhaps if I +could dress anything like you I could fool some business man into +thinking I was clever." + +"As I do, you mean," said Miss Joline, cheerfully. + +"Well--" + +"Oh, I don't mind. But, my dear, good woman--oh, I suppose I oughtn't to +call you that." + +"I don't care what you call me, if you can tell me how to make a +seventeen-fifty suit look like _Vogue_. Isn't it awful, Miss Joline, +that us lower classes are interested in clothes, too?" + +"My dear girl, even the beautiful, the accomplished Beatrice +Joline--I'll admit it--knows when she is being teased. I went to +boarding-school, and if you think I haven't ever been properly and +thoroughly, and oh, most painstakingly told what a disgusting, natural +snob I am, you ought to have heard Tomlinson, or any other of my dear +friends, taking me down. I rather fancy you're kinder-hearted than they +are; but, anyway, you don't insult me half so scientifically." + +"I'm so sorry. I tried hard-- I'm a well-meaning insulter, but I haven't +the practice." + +"My dear, I adore you. Isn't it lovely to be frank? When us females get +into Mr. Truax's place we'll have the most wonderful time insulting each +other, don't you think? But, really, please don't think I like to be +rude. But you see we Jolines are so poor that if I stopped it all my +business acquaintances would think I was admitting how poor we are, so +I'm practically forced to be horrid. Now that we've been amiable to each +other, what can I do for you?... Does that sound business-like enough?" + +"I want to make you give me some hints about clothes. I used to like +terribly crude colors, but I've settled down to tessie things that are +safe--this gray dress, and brown, and black." + +"Well, my dear, I'm the best little dressmaker you ever saw, and I do +love to lay down the law about clothes. With your hair and complexion, +you ought to wear clear blues. Order a well-made--be sure it's +well-made, no matter what it costs. Get some clever little Jew socialist +tailor off in the outskirts of Brooklyn, or some heathenish place, and +stand over him. A well-made tailored suit of not too dark navy blue, +with matching blue crepe de Chine blouses with nice, soft, white +collars, and cuffs of crepe or chiffon--and change 'em often." + +"What about a party dress? Ought I to have satin, or chiffon, or blue +net, or what?" + +"Well, satin is too dignified, and chiffon too perishable, and blue net +is too tessie. Why don't you try black net over black satin? You know +there's really lots of color in black satin if you know how to use it. +Get good materials, and then you can use them over and over +again--perhaps white chiffon over the black satin." + +"White over black?" + +Though Miss Joline stared down with one of the quick, secretive smiles +which Una hated, the smile which reduced her to the rank of a novice, +her eyes held Miss Joline, made her continue her oracles. + +"Yes," said Miss Joline, "and it isn't very expensive. Try it with the +black net first, and have soft little folds of white tulle along the +edge of the decolletage--it's scarcely noticeable, but it does soften +the neck-line. And wear a string of pearls. Get these Artifico pearls, a +dollar-ninety a string.... Now you see how useful a snob is to the +world! I'd never give you all this god-like advice if I didn't want to +advertise what an authority I am on 'Smart Fashions for Limited +Incomes.'" + +"You're a darling," said Una. + +"Come to tea," said Miss Joline. + +They did go to tea. But before it, while Miss Joline was being voluble +with Mr. Truax, Una methodically made notes on the art of dress and +filed them for future reference. Despite the fact that, with the support +of Mr. Schwirtz as her chief luxury, she had only sixteen dollars in the +world, she had faith that she would sometime take a woman's delight in +dress, and a business woman's interest in it.... This had been an +important hour for her, though it cannot be authoritatively stated which +was the more important--learning to dress, or learning not to be in awe +of a Joline of Gramercy Park. + +They went to tea several times in the five months before the sudden +announcement of Miss Joline's engagement to Wally Castle, of the Tennis +and Racquet Club. And at tea they bantered and were not markedly +different in their use of forks or choice of pastry. But never were they +really friends. Una, of Panama, daughter of Captain Golden, and wife of +Eddie Schwirtz, could comprehend Walter Babson and follow Mamie Magen, +and even rather despised that Diogenes of an enameled tub, Mr. S. +Herbert Ross; but it seemed probable that she would never be able to do +more than ask for bread and railway tickets in the language of Beatrice +Joline, whose dead father had been ambassador to Portugal and friend to +Henry James and John Hay. + + +Sec. 2 + +It hurt a little, but Una had to accept the fact that Beatrice Joline +was no more likely to invite her to the famous and shabby old house of +the Jolines than was Mrs. Truax to ask her advice about manicuring. They +did, however, have dinner together on an evening when Miss Joline +actually seemed to be working late at the office. + +"Let's go to a Cafe des Enfants," said Miss Joline. "Such a party! And, +honestly, I do like their coffee and the nice, shiny, bathroom walls." + +"Yes," said Una, "it's almost as much of a party to me as running a +typewriter.... Let's go Dutch to the Martha Washington." + +"Verra well. Though I did want buckwheats and little sausages. +Exciting!" + +"Huh!" said Una, who was unable to see any adventurous qualities in a +viand which she consumed about twice a week. + +Miss Joline's clean litheness, her gaiety that had never been made +timorous or grateful by defeat or sordidness, her whirlwind of nonsense, +blended in a cocktail for Una at dinner. Schwirtz, money difficulties, +weariness, did not exist. Her only trouble in the entire universe was +the reconciliation of her admiration for Miss Joline's amiable +superiority to everybody, her gibes at the salesmen, and even at Mr. +Truax, with Mamie Magen's philanthropic socialism. (So far as this +history can trace, she never did reconcile them.) + +She left Miss Joline with a laugh, and started home with a song--then +stopped. She foresaw the musty room to which she was going, the +slatternly incubus of a man. Saw--with just such distinctness as had +once dangled the stiff, gray scrub-rag before her eyes--Schwirtz's every +detail: bushy chin, stained and collarless shirt, trousers like old +chair-covers. Probably he would always be like this. Probably he would +never have another job. But she couldn't cast him out. She had married +him, in his own words, as a "good provider." She had lost the bet; she +would be a good loser--and a good provider for him.... Always, +perhaps.... Always that mass of spoiled babyhood waiting at home for +her.... Always apologetic and humble--she would rather have the old, +grumbling, dominant male.... + +She tried to push back the moment of seeing him again. Her steps +dragged, but at last, inevitably, grimly, the house came toward her. She +crept along the moldy hall, opened the door of their room, saw him-- + +She thought it was a stranger, an intruder. But it was veritably her +husband, in a new suit that was fiercely pressed and shaped, in new, +gleaming, ox-blood shoes, with a hair-cut and a barber shave. He was +bending over the bed, which was piled with new shirts, Afro-American +ties, new toilet articles, and he was packing a new suit-case. + +He turned slowly, enjoying her amazement. He finished packing a shirt. +She said nothing, standing at the door. Teetering on his toes and +watching the effect of it all on her, he lighted a large cigar. + +"Some class, eh?" he said. + +"Well--" + +"Nifty suit, eh? And how are those for swell ties?" + +"Very nice.... From whom did you borrow the money?" + +"Now that cer'nly is a nice, sweet way to congratulate friend hubby. Oh, +_sure_! Man lands a job, works his head off getting it, gets an advance +for some new clothes he's simply got to have, and of course everybody +else congratulates him--everybody but his own wife. She sniffs at +him--not a word about the new job, of course. First crack outa the box, +she gets busy suspecting him, and says, 'Who you been borrowing of now?' +And this after always acting as though she was an abused little innocent +that nobody appreciated--" + +He was in mid-current, swimming strong, and waving his cigar above the +foaming waters, but she pulled him out of it with, "I _am_ sorry. I +ought to have known. I'm a beast. I am glad, awfully glad you've got a +new job. What is it?" + +"New company handling a new kind of motor for row-boats--converts 'em to +motor-boats in a jiffy--outboard motors they call 'em. Got a swell +territory and plenty bonus on new business." + +"Oh, isn't that fine! It's such a fine surprise--and it's cute of you to +keep it to surprise me with all this while--" + +"Well, 's a matter of fact, I just got on to it to-day. Ran into Burke +McCullough on Sixth Avenue, and he gave me the tip." + +"Oh!" A forlorn little "Oh!" it was. She had pictured him proudly +planning to surprise her. And she longed to have the best possible +impression of him, because of a certain plan which was hotly being +hammered out in her brain. She went on, as brightly as possible: + +"And they gave you an advance? That's fine." + +"Well, no, _they_ didn't, exactly, but Burke introduced me to his +clothier, and I got a swell line of credit." + +"Oh!" + +"Now for the love of Pete, don't go oh-ing and ah-ing like that. You've +handed me the pickled visage since I got the rowdy-dow on my last +job--good Lord! you acted like you thought I _liked_ to sponge on you. +Now let me tell you I've kept account of every red cent you've spent on +me, and I expect to pay it back." + +She tried to resist her impulse, but she couldn't keep from saying, as +nastily as possible: "How nice. When?" + +"Oh, I'll pay it back, all right, trust you for that! You won't fail to +keep wising me up on the fact that you think I'm a drunken bum. You'll +sit around all day in a hotel and take it easy and have plenty time to +figger out all the things you can roast me for, and then spring them on +me the minute I get back from a trip all tired out. Like you always used +to." + +"Oh, I did not!" she wailed. + +"Sure you did." + +"And what do you mean by my sitting around, from now on--" + +"Well, what the hell else are you going to do? You can't play the piano +or maybe run an aeroplane, can you?" + +"Why, I'm going to stay on my job, of course, Ed." + +"You are not going-to-of-course-stay-on-your-job-Ed, any such a thing. +Lemme tell you that right here and now, my lady. I've stood just about +all I'm going to stand of your top-lofty independence and business +airs--as though you weren't a wife at all, but just as 'be-damned-to-you' +independent as though you were as much of a business man as I am! No, +sir, you'll do what _I_ say from now on. I've been tied to your apron +strings long enough, and now I'm the boss--see? Me!" He tapped his florid +bosom. "You used to be plenty glad to go to poker parties and leg-shows +with me, when I wanted to, but since you've taken to earning your living +again you've become so ip-de-dee and independent that when I even suggest +rushing a growler of beer you scowl at me, and as good as say you're too +damn almighty good for Eddie Schwirtz's low-brow amusements. And you've +taken to staying out all hours--course it didn't matter whether I stayed +here without a piece of change, or supper, or anything else, or any +amusements, while you were out whoop-de-doodling around-- You _said_ it +was with women!" + +She closed her eyes tight; then, wearily: "You mean, I suppose, that you +think I was out with men." + +"Well, I ain't insinuating anything about what you _been_ doing. You +been your own boss, and of course I had to take anything off anybody as +long as I was broke. But lemme tell you, from now on, no pasty-faced +female is going to rub it in any more. You're going to try some of your +own medicine. You're going to give up your rotten stenographer's job, +and you're going to stay home where I put you, and when I invite you to +come on a spree you're going to be glad--" + +Her face tightened with rage. She leaped at him, shook him by the +shoulder, and her voice came in a shriek: + +"Now that's enough. I'm through. You did mean to insinuate I was out +with men. I wasn't--but that was just accident. I'd have been glad to, +if there'd been one I could have loved even a little. I'd have gone +anywhere with him--done anything! And now we're through. I stood you as +long as it was my job to do it. _God!_ what jobs we women have in this +chivalrous world that honors women so much!--but now that you can take +care of yourself, I'll do the same." + +"What d' yuh mean?" + +"I mean this." + +She darted at the bed, yanked from beneath it her suit-case, and into it +began to throw her toilet articles. + +Mr. Schwirtz sat upon the bed and laughed enormously. + +"You women cer'nly are a sketch!" he caroled. "Going back to mamma, are +you? Sure! That's what the first Mrs. Schwirtz was always doing. Let's +see. Once she got as far as the depot before she came back and admitted +that she was a chump. I doubt if you get that far. You'll stop on the +step. You're too tightwad to hire a taxi, even to try to scare me and +make it unpleasant for me." + +Una stopped packing, stood listening. Now, her voice unmelodramatic +again, she replied: + +"You're right about several things. I probably was thoughtless about +leaving you alone evenings--though it is _not_ true that I ever left you +without provision for supper. And of course you've often left me alone +back there in the hotel while you were off with other women--" + +"Now who's insinuating?" He performed another characteristic peroration. +She did not listen, but stood with warning hand up, a small but +plucky-looking traffic policeman, till he ceased, then went on: + +"But I can't really blame you. Even in this day when people like my +friend Mamie Magen think that feminism has won everything, I suppose +there must still be a majority of men like you--men who've never even +heard of feminism, who think that their women are breed cattle. I judge +that from the conversations I overhear in restaurants and street-cars, +and these pretty vaudeville jokes about marriage that you love so, and +from movie pictures of wives beating husbands, and from the fact that +women even yet haven't the vote. I suppose that you don't really know +many men besides the mucky cattle-drover sort, and I can't blame you for +thinking like them--" + +"Say, what is all this cattle business about? I don't seem to recall we +were discussing stockyards. Are you trying to change the conversation, +so you won't even have to pack your grip before you call your own bluff +about leaving me? Don't get it at all, at all!" + +"You will get it, my friend!... As I say, I can see--now it's too +late--how mean I must have been to you often. I've probably hurt your +feelings lots of times--" + +"You have, all right." + +"--but I still don't see how I could have avoided it. I don't blame +myself, either. We two simply never could get together--you're +two-thirds the old-fashioned brute, and I'm at least one-third the new, +independent woman. We wouldn't understand each other, not if we talked +a thousand years. Heavens alive! just see all these silly discussions of +suffrage that men like you carry on, when the whole thing is really so +simple: simply that women are intelligent human beings, and have the +right--" + +"Now who mentioned suffrage? If you'll kindly let me know what you're +trying to get _at_, then--" + +"You see? We two never could understand each other! So I'm just going to +clean house. Get rid of things that clutter it up. I'm going, to-night, +and I don't think I shall ever see you again, so do try to be pleasant +while I'm packing. This last time.... Oh, I'm free again. And so are +you, you poor, decent man. Let's congratulate each other." + + +Sec. 3 + +Despite the constant hammering of Mr. Schwirtz, who changed swiftly from +a tyrant to a bewildered orphan, Una methodically finished her packing, +went to a hotel, and within a week found in Brooklyn, near the Heights, +a pleasant white-and-green third-floor-front. + +Her salary had been increased to twenty-five dollars a week. + +She bought the blue suit and the crepe de Chine blouse recommended by +Miss Beatrice Joline. She was still sorry for Mr. Schwirtz; she thought +of him now and then, and wondered where he had gone. But that did not +prevent her enjoying the mirror's reflection of the new blouse. + + +Sec. 4 + +While he was dictating to Una, Mr. Truax monologized: "I don't see why +we can't sell that Boutell family a lot. We wouldn't make any profit out +of it, now, anyway--that's nearly eaten up by the overhead we've wasted +on them. But I hate to give them up, and your friend Mr. Fein says that +we aren't scientific salesmen if we give up the office problems that +everybody takes a whack at and seems to fail on." + +More and more Mr. Truax had been recognizing Una as an intelligence, and +often he teased her regarding her admiration for Mr. Fein's efficiency. +Now he seemed almost to be looking to her for advice as he plaintively +rambled on: + +"Every salesman on the staff has tried to sell this asinine Boutell +family and failed. We've got the lots--give 'em anything from a +fifteen-thousand-dollar-restriction, water-front, high-class development +to an odd lot behind an Italian truck-farm. They've been considering a +lot at Villa Estates for a month, now, and they aren't--" + +"Let me try them." + +"Let you try them?" + +"Try to sell them." + +"Of course, if you want to--in your own time outside. This is a matter +that the selling department ought to have disposed of. But if you want +to try--" + +"I will. I'll try them on a Saturday afternoon--next Saturday." + +"But what do you know about Villa Estates?" + +"I walked all over it, just last Sunday. Talked to the resident salesman +for an hour." + +"That's good. I wish all our salesmen would do something like that." + +All week Una planned to attack the redoubtable Boutells. She telephoned +(sounding as well-bred and clever as she could) and made an appointment +for Saturday afternoon. The Boutells were going to a matinee, Mrs. +Boutell's grating voice informed her, but they would be pleased t' see +Mrs. Schwirtz after the show. All week Una asked advice of "Chas.," the +sales-manager, who, between extensive exhortations to keep away from +selling--"because it's the hardest part of the game, and, believe me, it +gets the least gratitude"--gave her instructions in the tactics of +"presenting a proposition to a client," "convincing a prospect of the +salesman's expert knowledge of values," "clinching the deal," "talking +points," and "desirability of location." + +Wednesday evening Una went out to Villa Estates to look it over again, +and she conducted a long, imaginary conversation with the Boutells +regarding the nearness of the best school in Nassau County. + +But on Saturday morning she felt ill. At the office she wailed on the +shoulder of a friendly stenographer that she would never be able to +follow up this, her first chance to advance. + +She went home at noon and slept till four. She arrived at the Boutells' +flat looking like a dead leaf. She tried to skip into the presence of +Mrs. Boutell--a dragon with a frizz--and was heavily informed that Mr. +Boutell wouldn't be back till six, and that, anyway, they had "talked +over the Villa Estates proposition, and decided it wasn't quite time to +come to a decision--be better to wait till the weather cleared up, so a +body can move about." + +"Oh, Mrs. Boutell, I just can't argue it out with you," Una howled. "I +_do_ know Villa Estates and its desirability for you, but this is my +very first experience in direct selling, and as luck _would_ have it, I +feel perfectly terrible to-day." + +"You poor lamb!" soothed Mrs. Boutell. "You do look terrible sick. You +come right in and lie down and I'll have my Lithuanian make you a cup of +hot beef-tea." + +While Mrs. Boutell held her hand and fed her beef-tea, Una showed +photographs of Villa Estates and became feebly oratorical in its +praises, and when Mr. Boutell came home at six-thirty they all had a +light dinner together, and went to the moving-pictures, and through them +talked about real estate, and at eleven Mr. Boutell uneasily took the +fountain-pen which Una resolutely held out to him, and signed a contract +to purchase two lots at Villa Estates, and a check for the first +payment. + +Una had climbed above the rank of assistant to the rank of people who do +things. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +To Una and to Mr. Fein it seemed obvious that, since women have at least +half of the family decision regarding the purchase of suburban homes, +women salesmen of suburban property should be at least as successful as +men. But Mr. Truax had a number of "good, sound, conservative" reasons +why this should not be so, and therefore declined to credit the evidence +of Una, Beatrice Joline, and saleswomen of other firms that it really +was so. + +Yet, after solving the Boutell office problem, Una was frequently +requisitioned by "Chas." to talk to women about the advantages of sites +for themselves and their children, while regular and intelligent (that +is, male) salesmen worked their hypnotic arts on the equally regular and +intelligent men of the families. Where formerly it had seemed an awesome +miracle, like chemistry or poetry, to "close a deal" and bring thousands +of dollars into the office, now Una found it quite normal. +Responsibility gave her more poise and willingness to take initiative. +Her salary was raised to thirty dollars a week. She banked two hundred +dollars of commissions, and bought a Japanese-blue silk negligee, a +wrist-watch, and the gown of black satin and net recommended by Miss +Joline. Yet officially she was still Mr. Truax's secretary; she took his +dictation and his moods. + +Her greatest reward was in the friendship of the careful, diligent Mr. +Fein. + + +Sec. 2 + +She never forgot a dinner with Mr. Fein, at which, for the first time, +she heard a complete defense of the employer's position--saw the office +world from the stand-point of the "bosses." + +"I never believed I'd be friendly with one of the capitalists," Una was +saying at their dinner, "but I must admit that you don't seem to want to +grind the faces of the poor." + +"I don't. I want to wash 'em." + +"I'm serious." + +"My dear child, so am I," declared Mr. Fein. Then, apparently addressing +his mixed grill, he considered: "It's nonsense to say that it's just the +capitalists that ail the world. It's the slackers. Show me a man that we +can depend on to do the necessary thing at the necessary moment without +being nudged, and we'll keep raising him before he has a chance to ask +us, even." + +"No, you don't--that is, I really think you do, Mr. Fein, personally, +but most bosses are so afraid of a big pay-roll that they deliberately +discourage their people till they lose all initiative. I don't know; +perhaps they're victims along with their employees. Just now I adore my +work, and I do think that business can be made as glorious a profession +as medicine, or exploring, or anything, but in most offices, it seems to +me, the biggest ideal the clerks have is _safety_--a two-family house on +a stupid street in Flatbush as a reward for being industrious. Doesn't +matter whether they _enjoy_ living there, if they're just secure. And +you do know--Mr. Truax doesn't, but you do know--that the whole office +system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks--" + +"But, good heavens! child, the employers have just as hard a time. Talk +about being nervous! Take it in our game. The salesman does the +missionary work, but the employer is the one who has to worry. Take some +big deal that seems just about to get across--and then falls through +just when you reach for the contract and draw a breath of relief. Or say +you've swung a deal and have to pay your rent and office force, and you +can't get the commission that's due you on an accomplished sale. And +your clerks dash in and want a raise, under threat of quitting, just at +the moment when you're wondering how you'll raise the money to pay them +their _present_ salaries on time! Those are the things that make an +employer a nervous wreck. He's got to keep it going. I tell you there's +advantages in being a wage-slave and having the wages coming--" + +"But, Mr. Fein, if it's just as hard on the employers as it is on the +employees, then the whole system is bad." + +"Good Lord! of course it's bad. But do you know anything in this world +that isn't bad--that's anywhere near perfect? Except maybe Bach fugues? +Religion, education, medicine, war, agriculture, art, pleasure, +_anything_--all systems are choked with clumsy, outworn methods and +ignorance--the whole human race works and plays at about ten-per-cent. +efficiency. The only possible ground for optimism about the human race +that I can see is that in most all lines experts are at work showing up +the deficiencies--proving that alcohol and war are bad, and consumption +and Greek unnecessary--and making a beginning. You don't do justice to +the big offices and mills where they have real efficiency tests, and if +a man doesn't make good in one place, they shift him to another." + +"There aren't very many of them. In all the offices I've ever seen, the +boss's indigestion is the only test of employees." + +"Yes, yes, I know, but that isn't the point. The point is that they are +making such tests--beginning to. Take the schools where they actually +teach future housewives to cook and sew as well as to read aloud. But, +of course, I admit the very fact that there can be and are such schools +and offices is a terrible indictment of the slatternly schools and +bad-tempered offices we usually do have, and if you can show up this +system of shutting people up in treadmills, why go to it, and good luck. +The longer people are stupidly optimistic, the longer we'll have to wait +for improvements. But, believe me, my dear girl, for every ardent +radical who says the whole thing is rotten there's ten clever +advertising-men who think it's virtue to sell new brands of soap-powder +that are no better than the old brands, and a hundred old codgers who +are so broken into the office system that they think they are perfectly +happy--don't know how much fun in life they miss. Still, they're no +worse than the adherents to any other paralyzed system. Look at the +comparatively intelligent people who fall for any freak religious system +and let it make their lives miserable. I suppose that when the world has +no more war or tuberculosis, then offices will be exciting places to +work in--but not till then. And meantime, if the typical business man +with a taste for fishing heard even so mild a radical as I am, he'd +sniff, 'The fellow don't know what he's talking about; everybody in all +the offices I know is perfectly satisfied.'" + +"Yes, changes will be slow, I suppose, but that doesn't excuse bosses of +to-day for thinking they are little tin gods." + +"No, of course it doesn't. But people in authority always do that. The +only thing we can do about it is for us, personally, to make our offices +as clean and amusing as we can, instead of trying to buy yachts. But +don't ever think either that capitalists are a peculiar race of fiends, +different from anarchists or scrubwomen, or that we'll have a millennium +about next election. We've got to be anthropological in our view. It's +taken the human race about five hundred thousand years to get where it +is, and presumably it will take quite a few thousand more to become +scientific or even to understand the need of scientific conduct of +everything. I'm not at all sure that there's any higher wisdom than +doing a day's work, and hoping the Subway will be a little less crowded +next year, and in voting for the best possible man, and then forgetting +all the _Weltschmertz_, and going to an opera. It sounds pretty raw and +crude, doesn't it? But living in a world that's raw and crude, all you +can do is to be honest and not worry." + +"Yes," said Una. + +She grieved for the sunset-colored ideals of Mamie Magen, for the fine, +strained, hysterical enthusiasms of Walter Babson, as an enchantment of +thought which she was dispelling in her effort to become a "good, sound, +practical business woman." Mr. Fein's drab opportunist philosophy +disappointed her. Yet, in contrast to Mr. Schwirtz, Mr. Truax, and +Chas., he was hyperbolic; and after their dinner she was gushingly happy +to be hearing the opportunist melodies of "Il Trovatore" beside him. + + +Sec. 3 + +The Merryton Realty Company had failed, and Truax & Fein were offered +the small development property of Crosshampton Hill Gardens at so +convenient a price that they could not refuse it, though they were +already "carrying" as many properties as they could easily handle. In a +characteristic monologue Mr. Truax asked a select audience, consisting +of himself, his inkwell, and Una, what he was to do. + +"Shall I try to exploit it and close it out quick? I've got half a mind +to go back to the old tent-and-brass-band method and auction it off. The +salesmen have all they can get away with. I haven't even a good, +reliable resident salesman I could trust to handle it on the grounds." + +"Let me try it!" said Una. "Give me a month's trial as salesman on the +ground, and see what I can do. Just run some double-leaded classified +ads. and forget it. You can trust me; you know you can. Why, I'll write +my own ads., even: 'View of Long Island Sound, and beautiful rolling +hills. Near to family yacht club, with swimming and sailing.' I know I +could manage it." + +Mr. Truax pretended not to hear, but she rose, leaned over his desk, +stared urgently at him, till he weakly promised: "Well, I'll talk it +over with Mr. Fein. But you know it wouldn't be worth a bit more salary +than you're getting now. And what would I do for a secretary?" + +"I don't worry about salary. Think of being out on Long Island, now that +spring is coming! And I'll find a successor and train her." + +"Well--" said Mr. Truax, while Una took her pencil and awaited dictation +with a heart so blithe that she could scarcely remember the symbols for +"Yours of sixteenth instant received." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Of the year and a half from March, 1914, to the autumn of 1915, which +Una spent on Long Island, as the resident salesman and director of +Crosshampton Hill Gardens, this history has little to say, for it is a +treatise regarding a commonplace woman on a job, and at the Gardens +there was no job at all, but one long summer day of flushed laughter. It +is true that "values were down on the North Shore" at this period, and +sales slow; it is true that Una (in high tan boots and a tweed suit from +a sporting-goods house) supervised carpenters in constructing a bungalow +as local office and dwelling-place for herself. It is true that she +quarreled with the engineer planning the walks and sewers, usurped +authority and discharged him, and had to argue with Mr. Truax for three +hours before he sustained her decision. Also, she spent an average of +nine hours a day in waiting for people or in showing them about, and +serving tea and biscuits to dusty female villa-hunters. And she herself +sometimes ran a lawn-mower and cooked her own meals. But she had +respect, achievement, and she ranged the open hills from the stirring +time when dogwood blossoms filled the ravines with a fragrant mist, +round the calendar, and on till the elms were gorgeous with a second +autumn, and sunsets marched in naked glory of archangels over the +Connecticut hills beyond the flaming waters of Long Island Sound. +Slow-moving, but gentle, were the winter months, for she became a part +of the commuting town of Crosshampton Harbor, not as the negligible +daughter of a Panama Captain Golden, but as a woman with the glamour of +independence, executive position, city knowledge, and a certain marital +mystery. She was invited to parties at which she obediently played +bridge, to dances at the Harbor Yacht Club, to meetings of the Village +Friendly Society. A gay, easy-going group, with cocktail-mixers on their +sideboards, and motors in their galvanized-iron garages, but also with +savings-bank books in the drawers beneath their unit bookcases, took her +up as a woman who had learned to listen and smile. And she went with +them to friendly, unexacting dances at the Year-Round Inn, conducted by +Charley Duquesne, in the impoverished Duquesne mansion on Smiley Point. +She liked Charley, and gave him advice about bedroom chintzes for the +inn, and learned how a hotel is provisioned and served. Charley did not +know that her knowledge of chintzes was about two weeks old and derived +from a buyer at Wanamacy's. He only knew that it solved his +difficulties. + +She went into the city about once in two weeks, just often enough to +keep in touch with Truax, Fein, Chas., and Mamie Magen, the last of whom +had fallen in love with a socialistic Gentile charities secretary, +fallen out again, and was quietly dedicating all her life to Hebrew +charities. + +Una closed the last sale at Crosshampton Hill Gardens in the autumn of +1915, and returned to town, to the office-world and the job. Her record +had been so clean and promising that she was able to demand a +newly-created position--woman sales-manager, at twenty-five hundred +dollars a year, selling direct and controlling five other women +salesmen. + +Mr. Truax still "didn't believe in" women salesmen, and his lack of +faith was more evident now that Una was back in the office. Una grew +more pessimistic as she realized that his idea of women salesmen was a +pure, high, aloof thing which wasn't to be affected by anything +happening in his office right under his nose. But she was too busy +selling lots, instructing her women aides, and furnishing a four-room +flat near Stuyvesant Park, to worry much about Mr. Truax. And she was +sure that Mr. Fein would uphold her. She had the best of reasons for +that assurance, namely, that Mr. Fein had hesitatingly made a formal +proposal for her hand in marriage. + +She had refused him for two reasons--that she already had one husband +somewhere or other, and the more cogent reason that though she admired +Mr. Fein, found him as cooling and pleasant as lemonade on a July +evening, she did not love him, did not want to mother him, as she had +always wanted to mother Walter Babson, and as, now and then, when he had +turned to her, she had wanted to mother even Mr. Schwirtz. + +The incident brought Mr. Schwirtz to her mind for a day or two. But he +was as clean gone from her life as was Mr. Henry Carson, of Panama. She +did not know, and did not often speculate, whether he lived or continued +to die. If the world is very small, after all, it is also very large, +and life and the world swallow up those whom we have known best, and +they never come back to us. + + +Sec. 2 + +Una had, like a Freshman envying the Seniors, like a lieutenant in awe +of the council of generals, always fancied that when she became a real +executive with a salary of several thousands, and people coming to her +for orders, she would somehow be a different person from the good +little secretary. She was astonished to find that in her private office +and her new flat, and in her new velvet suit she was precisely the same +yearning, meek, efficient woman as before. But she was happier. Despite +her memories of Schwirtz and the fear that some time, some place, she +would encounter him and be claimed as his wife, and despite a less +frequent fear that America would be involved in the great European war, +Una had solid joy in her office achievements, in her flat, in taking +part in the vast suffrage parade of the autumn of 1915, and feeling +comradeship with thousands of women. + +Despite Mr. Fein's picture of the woes of executives, Una found that her +new power and responsibility were inspiring as her little stenographer's +wage had never been. Nor, though she did have trouble with the women +responsible to her at times, though she found it difficult to secure +employees on whom she could depend, did Una become a female Troy +Wilkins. + +She was able to work out some of the aspirations she had cloudily +conceived when she had herself been a slave. She did find it possible to +be friendly with her aides, to be on tea and luncheon and gossip terms +of intimacy with them, to confide in them instead of tricking them, to +use frank explanations instead of arbitrary rules; and she was rewarded +by their love and loyalty. Her chief quarrels were with Mr. Truax in +regard to raising the salaries and commissions of her assistant +saleswomen. + +Behind all these discoveries regarding the state of being an executive, +behind her day's work and the evenings at her flat when Mamie Magen and +Mr. Fein came to dinner, there were two tremendous secrets: + +For her personal life, her life outside the office, she had found a way +out such as might, perhaps, solve the question of loneliness for the +thousands of other empty-hearted, fruitlessly aging office-women. Not +love of a man. She would rather die than have Schwirtz's clumsy feet +trampling her reserve again. And the pleasant men who came to her flat +were--just pleasant. No, she told herself, she did not need a man or +man's love. But a child's love and presence she did need. + +She was going to adopt a child. That was her way out. + +She was thirty-four now, but by six of an afternoon she felt forty. +Youth she would find--youth of a child's laughter, and the healing of +its downy sleep. + +She took counsel with Mamie Magen (who immediately decided to adopt a +child also, and praised Una as a discoverer) and with the good +housekeeping women she knew at Crosshampton Harbor. She was going to be +very careful. She would inspect a dozen different orphan-asylums. + +Meanwhile her second secret was making life pregnant with interest: + +She was going to change her job again--for the last time she hoped. She +was going to be a creator, a real manager, unhampered by Mr. Truax's +unwillingness to accept women as independent workers and by the growing +animosity of Mrs. Truax. + + +Sec. 3 + +Una's interest in the Year-Round Inn at Crosshampton Harbor, the results +obtained by reasonably good meals and a little chintz, and her memory of +the family hotel, had led her attention to the commercial possibilities +of innkeeping. + +She was convinced that, despite the ingenuity and care displayed by the +managers of the great urban hotels and the clever resorts, no calling +included more unimaginative slackers than did innkeeping. She had heard +traveling-men at Pemberton's and at Truax & Fein's complain of sour +coffee and lumpy beds in the hotels of the smaller towns; of knives and +forks that had to be wiped on the napkins before using; of shirt-sleeved +proprietors who loafed within reach of the cuspidors while their wives +tried to get the work done. + +She began to read the _Hotel News_ and the _Hotel Bulletin_, and she +called on the manager of a supply-house for hotels. + +She read in the _Bulletin_ of Bob Sidney, an ex-traveling-man, who, in +partnership with a small capitalist, had started a syndicate of inns. He +advertised: "The White Line Hotels. Fellow-drummers, when you see the +White Line sign hung out, you know you're in for good beds and good +coffee." + +The idea seemed good to her. She fancied that traveling-men would go +from one White Line Hotel to another. The hotels had been established in +a dozen towns along the Pennsylvania Railroad, in Norristown, Reading, +Williamsport, and others, and now Bob Sidney was promising to invade +Ohio and Indiana. The blazed White Line across the continent caught +Una's growing commercial imagination. And she liked several of Mr. +Sidney's ideas: The hotels would wire ahead to others of the Line for +accommodations for the traveler; and a man known to the Line could get +credit at any of its houses, by being registered on identifying cards. + +She decided to capture Mr. Sidney. She made plans. + +In the spring she took a mysterious two weeks' leave of absence and +journeyed through New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The +woman who had quite recently regarded it as an adventure to go to +Brooklyn was so absorbed in her Big Idea that she didn't feel +self-conscious even when she talked to men on the train. If they +smacked their lips and obviously said to themselves, "Gee! this is +easy--not a bad little dame," she steered them into discussing hotels; +what they wanted at hotels and didn't get; what was their favorite hotel +in towns in from fifteen hundred to forty thousand inhabitants, and +precisely what details made it the favorite. + +She stayed at two or three places a day for at least one meal--hotels in +tiny towns she had never heard of, and in larger towns that were +fumbling for metropolitanism. She sought out all the summer resorts that +were open so early. She talked to travelers, men and women; to +hack-drivers and to grocers supplying hotels; to proprietors and their +wives; to clerks and waitresses and bell-boys, and unconsidered, +observant porters. She read circulars and the catalogues of furniture +establishments. + +Finally, she visited each of Mr. Bob Sidney's White Line Hotels. Aside +from their arrangements for "accommodations" and credit, their superior +cleanliness, good mattresses, and coffee with a real taste, she did not +find them preferable to others. In their rows of cuspidors and +shouldering desks, and barren offices hung with insurance calendars, and +dining-rooms ornamented with portraits of decomposed ducks, they were +typical of all the hotels she had seen. + +On the train back to New York she formulated her suggestions for hotels, +among which, in her own words, were the following: + +"(1) Make the offices decent rooms--rem. living-room at Gray Wolf Lodge. +Take out desks--guests to register and pay bills in small office off +living-room--keep letters there, too. Not much room needed and can't +make pleasant room with miserable old 'desk' sticking out into it. + +"(2) Cut out the cuspidors. Have special room where drummers can play +cards and tell stories and _spit_. Allow smoking in 'office,' but make +it pleasant. Rem. chintz and wicker chairs at $3 each. Small round +tables with reading-lamps. Maybe fireplace. + +"(3) Better pastry and soup and keep coffee up to standard. One surprise +in each meal--for example, novel form of eggs, good salad, or canned +lobster cocktail. Rem. the same old pork, beans, cornbeef, steak, deadly +cold boiled potato everywhere I went. + +"(4) More attractive dining-rooms. Esp. small tables for 2 and 4. Cater +more to local customers with a la carte menus--not long but good. + +"(5) Women housekeepers and pay 'em good. + +"(6) Hygienic kitchens and advertise 'em. + +"(7) Train employees, as rem. trav. man told me United Cigar Stores do. + +"(8) Better accom. for women. Rem. several traveling men's wives told me +they would go on many trips w. husbands if they could get decent hotels +in all these towns. + +"(9) Not ape N. Y. hotels. Nix on gilt and palms and marble. But clean +and tasty food, and don't have things like desks just because most +hotels do." + + +Sec. 4 + +Three hours after Una reached New York she telephoned to the object of +her secret commercial affections, the unconscious Mr. Robert Sidney, at +the White Line Hotels office. She was so excited that she took ten +minutes for calming herself before she telephoned. Every time she lifted +the receiver from its hook she thrust it back and mentally apologized to +the operator. But when she got the office and heard Mr. Bob Sidney's raw +voice shouting, "Yas? This 's Mist' Sidney," Una was very cool. + +"This is Mrs. Schwirtz, realty salesman for Truax & Fein. I've just been +through Pennsylvania, and I stayed at your White Line Hotels. Of course +I have to be an expert on different sorts of accommodations, and I made +some notes on your hotels--some suggestions you might be glad to have. +If you care to, we might have lunch together to-morrow, and I'll give +you the suggestions." + +"Why, uh, why--" + +"Of course I'm rather busy with our new Long Island operations, so if +you have a date to-morrow, the matter can wait, but I thought you'd +better have the suggestions while they were fresh in my mind. But +perhaps I can lunch with you week after next, if--" + +"No, no, let's make it to-morrow." + +"Very well. Will you call for me here--Truax & Fein, Zodiac Building?" + +Una arose at six-thirty next morning, to dress the part of the great +business woman, and before she went to the office she had her hair +waved. + +Mr. Bob Sidney called for her. He was a simple, energetic soul, with a +derby on the back of his head, cheerful, clean-shaven, large-chinned, +hoarse-voiced, rapidly revolving a chewed cigar. She, the commonplace, +was highly evolved in comparison with Mr. Sidney, and there was no +nervousness in her as she marched out in a twenty-dollar hat and +casually said, "Let's go to the Waldorf--it's convenient and not at all +bad." + +On the way over Mr. Sidney fairly massaged his head with his agitated +derby--cocked it over one eye and pushed it back to the crown of his +head--in his efforts to find out what and why was Mrs. Una Schwirtz. He +kept appraising her. It was obvious that he was trying to decide whether +this mysterious telephone correspondent was an available widow who had +heard of his charms. He finally stumbled over the grating beside the +Waldorf and bumped into the carriage-starter, and dropped his dead +cigar. But all the while Una steadily kept the conversation to the +vernal beauties of Pennsylvania. + +Thanks to rice powder and the pride of a new hat, she looked cool and +adequate. But she was thinking all the time: "I never could keep up this +Beatrice-Joline pose with Mr. Fein or Mr. Ross. Poor Una, with them +she'd just have to blurt out that she wanted a job!" + +She sailed up to a corner table by a window. The waiter gave the menu to +Mr. Sidney, but she held out her hand for it. "This is my lunch. I'm a +business woman, not just a woman," she said to Mr. Sidney; and she +rapidly ordered a lunch which was shockingly imitative of one which Mr. +Fein had once ordered for her. + +"Prett' hot day for April," said Mr. Sidney. + +"Yes.... Is the White Line going well?" + +"Yump. Doing a land-office business." + +"You're having trouble with your day clerk at Brockenfelt, I see." + +"How juh know?" + +"Oh--" She merely smiled. + +"Well, that guy's a four-flush. Came to us from the New Willard, and to +hear him tell it you'd think he was the guy that put the "will" in the +Willard. But he's a credit-grabber, that's what he is. Makes me +think-- Nev' forget one time I was up in Boston and I met a coon porter +and he told me he was a friend of the president of the Pullman Company +and had persuaded him to put on steel cars. Bet a hat he believed it +himself. That's 'bout like this fellow. He's going to get the razoo.... +Gee! I hope you ain't a friend of his." + +Una had perfectly learned the Boeotian dialect so strangely spoken by +Mr. Sidney, and she was able to reply: + +"Oh no, no indeed! He ought to be fired. He gave me a room as though he +were the superintendent of a free lodging-house." + +"But it's so hard to get trained employees that I hate to even let _him_ +go. Just to show you the way things go, just when I was trying to swing +a deal for a new hotel, I had to bust off negotiations and go and train +a new crew of chambermaids at Sandsonville myself. You'd died laughing +to seen _me_ making beds and teaching those birds to clean a spittador, +beggin' your pardon, but it certainly was some show, and I do, by gum! +know a traveling-man likes his bed tucked in at the foot! Oh, it's +fierce! The traveling public kicks if they get bum service, and the help +kick if you demand any service from 'em, and the boss gets it right in +the collar-button both ways from the ace." + +"Well, I'm going to tell you how to have trained service and how to make +your hotels distinctive. They're good hotels, as hotels go, and you +really do give people good coffee and good beds and credit conveniences, +as you promise, but your hotels are not distinctive. I'm going to tell +you how to make them so." + +Una had waited till Mr. Sidney had disposed of his soup and filet +mignon. She spoke deliberately, almost sternly. She reached for her new +silver link bag, drew out immaculate typewritten schedules, and while he +gaped she read to him precisely the faults of each of the hotels, her +suggested remedies, and her general ideas of hotels, with less +cuspidors, more originality, and a room where traveling-men could be at +home on a rainy Sunday. + +"Now you know, and I know," she wound up, "that the proprietor's ideal +of a hotel is one to which traveling-men will travel sixty miles on +Saturday evening, in order to spend Sunday there. You take my +recommendations and you'll have that kind of hotels. At the same time +women will be tempted there and the local trade will go there when wife +or the cook is away, or they want to give a big dinner." + +"It does sound like it had some possibilities," said Mr. Sidney, as she +stopped for breath, after quite the most impassioned invocation of her +life. + +She plunged in again: + +"Now the point of all this is that I want to be the general manager of +certain departments of the Line--catering, service, decoration, and so +on. I'll keep out of the financial end and we'll work out the buying +together. You know it's women who make the homes for people at home, and +why not the homes for people traveling?... I'm woman sales-manager for +Truax & Fein--sell direct, and six women under me. I'll show you my +record of sales. I've been secretary to an architect, and studied +architecture a little. And plenty other jobs. Now you take these +suggestions of mine to your office and study 'em over with your partner +and we'll talk about the job for me by and by." + +She left him as quickly as she could, got back to her office, and in a +shaking spasm of weeping relapsed into the old, timorous Una. + + +Sec. 5 + +Tedious were the negotiations between Una and Mr. Sidney and his +partner. They wanted her to make their hotels--and yet they had never +heard of anything so nihilistic as actually having hotel "offices" +without "desks." They wanted her, and yet they "didn't quite know about +adding any more overhead at this stage of the game." + +Meantime Una sold lots and studied the economical buying of hotel +supplies. She was always willing to go with Mr. Sidney and his partner +to lunch--but they were brief lunches. She was busy, she said, and she +had no time to "drop in at their office." When Mr. Sidney once tried to +hold her hand (not seriously, but with his methodical system of never +failing to look into any possibilities), she said, sharply, "Don't try +that--let's save a lot of time by understanding that I'm what you would +call 'straight.'" He apologized and assured her that he had known she +was a "high-class genuwine lady all the time." + +The very roughness which, in Mr. Schwirtz, had abraised her, interested +her in Mr. Sidney. She knew better now how to control human beings. She +was fascinated by a comparison of her four average citizens--four men +not vastly varied as seen in a street-car, yet utterly different to one +working with them: Schwirtz, the lumbering; Troy Wilkins, the roaring; +Truax, the politely whining; and Bob Sidney, the hesitating. + +The negotiations seemed to arrive nowhere. + +Then, unexpectedly, Bob Sidney telephoned to her at her flat one +evening: "Partner and I have just decided to take you on, if you'll come +at thirty-eight hundred a year." + +Una hadn't even thought of the salary. She would gladly have gone to her +new creative position at the three thousand two hundred she was then +receiving. But she showed her new training and demanded: + +"Four thousand two hundred." + +"Well, split the difference and call it four thousand for the first +year." + +"All right." + +Una stood in the center of the room. She had "succeeded on her job." +Then she knew that she wanted some one with whom to share the good news. + +She sat down and thought of her almost-forgotten plan to adopt a child. + + +Sec. 6 + +Mr. Sidney had, during his telephone proclamation, suggested: "Come down +to the office to-morrow and get acquainted. Haven't got a very big +force, you know, but there's a couple of stenographers, good girls, +crazy to meet the new boss, and a bright, new Western fellow we thought +we might try out as your assistant and publicity man, and there's an +office-boy that's a sketch. So come down and meet your subjects, as the +fellow says." + +Una found the office, on Duane Street, to consist of two real rooms and +a bare anteroom decorated with photographs of the several White Line +Hotels--set on maple-lined streets, with the local managers, in white +waistcoats, standing proudly in front. She herself was to have a big +flat-topped desk in the same room with Mr. Sidney. The surroundings were +crude compared with the Truax & Fein office, but she was excited. Here +she would be a pioneer. + +"Now come in the other room," said Mr. Sidney, "and meet the +stenographers and the publicity man I was telling you about on the +'phone." + +He opened a door and said, "Mrs. Schwirtz, wantcha shake hands with the +fellow that's going to help you to put the Line on the map--Mr. Babson." + +It was Walter Babson who had risen from a desk and was gaping at her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +"But I did write to you, Goldie--once more, anyway--letter was returned +to me after being forwarded all over New York," said Walter, striding +about her flat. + +"And then you forgot me completely." + +"No, I didn't--but what if I had? You simply aren't the same girl I +liked--you're a woman that can do things; and, honestly, you're an +inspiration to me." Walter rubbed his jaw in the nervous way she +remembered. + +"Well, I hope I shall inspire you to stick to the White Line and make +good." + +"Nope, I'm going to make one more change. Gee! I can't go on working for +you. The problem of any man working for a woman boss is hard enough. +He's always wanting to give her advice and be superior, and yet he has +to take her orders. And it's twice as hard when it's me working for you +that I remember as a kid--even though you have climbed past me." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I'm going to work for you till I have a job where I can make +good, and when I do--or if I do--I'm going to ask you to marry me." + +"But, my dear boy, I'm a business woman. I'm making good right now. In +three months I've boosted White Line receipts seventeen per cent., and +I'm not going back to minding the cat and the gas-stove and waiting--" + +"You don't need to. We can both work, keep our jobs, and have a real +housekeeper--a crackajack maid at forty a month--to mind the cat." + +"But you seem to forget that I'm more or less married already." + +"So do you!... If I make good-- Listen: I guess it's time now to tell you +my secret. I'm breaking into your old game, real estate. You know I've +been turning out pretty good publicity for the White Line, besides all +the traveling and inspecting, and we have managed to have a few good +times, haven't we? But, also, on the side, I've been doing a whale of a +lot of advertising, and so on, for the Nassau County Investment Company, +and they've offered me a steady job at forty-five a week. And now that +I've got you to work for, my _Wanderjahre_ are over. So, if I do make +good, will you divorce that incubus of an Eddie Schwirtz and marry me? +Will you?" + +He perched on the arm of her chair, and again demanded: "Will you? +You've got plenty legal grounds for divorcing him--and you haven't any +ethical grounds for not doing it." + +She said nothing. Her head drooped. She, who had blandly been his +manager all day, felt managed when his "Will you?" pierced her, made her +a woman. + +He put his forefinger under her chin and lifted it. She was conscious of +his restless, demanding eyes. + +"Oh, I must think it over," she begged. + +"Then you will!" he triumphed. "Oh, my soul, we've bucked the +world--you've won, and I will win. Mr. and Mrs. Babson will be +won'erfully happy. They'll be a terribly modern couple, both on the job, +with a bungalow and a Ford and two Persian cats and a library of Wells, +and Compton Mackenzie, and Anatole France. And everybody will think +they're exceptional, and not know they're really two lonely kids that +curl up close to each other for comfort.... And now I'm going home and +do a couple miles publicity for the Nassau Company.... Oh, my dear, my +dear--" + + +Sec. 2 + +"I will keep my job--if I've had this world of offices wished on to me, +at least I'll conquer it, and give my clerks a decent time," the +business woman meditated. "But just the same--oh, I am a woman, and I do +need love. I want Walter, and I want his child, my own baby and his." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Job, by Sinclair Lewis + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JOB *** + +***** This file should be named 25474.txt or 25474.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/4/7/25474/ + +Produced by K Nordquist, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +book was produced from scanned images of public domain +material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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