Edna Ferber

“ Miss Riordon stared. Then she slammed the cover of the case, rose, and started toward the door. But before she reached it, and while the sick woman's sobs were still sounding hysterically the door flew open to admit a tall, slim, miraculously well-dressed young man. The next instant Emma McChesney's lace nightgown was crushed against the top of a correctly high-cut vest, and her tears coursed, unmolested, down the folds of an exquisitely shaded lavender silk necktie.
“Jock!” cried Emma McChesney; and then, “Oh, my son, my son, my beautiful boy!” like a woman in a play. ”

“ Old T. A. Buck, gruff, grim, direct, far-seeing, kindly, shrewd—he had known Emma McChesney for what she was worth. Once, when she had been disclosing to him a clever business scheme which might be turned into good advertising material, old Buck had slapped his knee with one broad, thick palm and had said:
“Emma McChesney, you ought to have been a man. With that head on a man's shoulders, you could put us out of business.” ”

“ She waited in silence until the demure Miss La Noyes reappeared. A narrow, straight-hanging, wrinkleless cloth skirt covered the much discussed under-garment. “Turn slowly, please. Thanks. You see, Mr. Buck? Not a wrinkle. No bunchiness. No lumps. No crawling up about the knees. Nothing but ease, and comfort, and trim good looks.”
T. A. Buck passed his hand over his head in a dazed, helpless gesture. There was something pathetic in his utter bewilderment and helplessness in contrast with Emma McChesney's breezy self-confidence, and the show-girl's cool poise and unconcern. ”

“ A kitchen, very bright and clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls, and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself in an all-enveloping checked gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hair somewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed it back with a floury hand. ”

“ I'm earning a man's salary. But Jock, you oughtn't to be willing to live on it.
“What do you want me to do?” demanded Jock. “I'm not out of high school yet. Other fellows whose fathers aren't earning as much—”
“Fathers,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “There you are. Jock, I don't have to make the distinction for you. You're sufficiently my son to know it, in your heart. I had planned to give you a college education, if you showed yourself deserving. I don't believe in sending a boy in your position to college unless he shows some special leaning toward a profession.” ”

“ The female of the species as she is found in sleeping-car dressing-rooms had taught Emma McChesney to rise betimes that she might avoid contact with certain frowsy, shapeless beings armed with bottles of milky liquids, and boxes of rosy pastes, and pencils that made arched and inky lines; beings redolent of bitter almond, and violet toilette water; beings in doubtful corsets and green silk petticoats perfect as to accordion-plaited flounce, but showing slits and tatters farther up; beings jealously guarding their ten inches of mirror space and consenting to move for no one ”

“ I've got my own life to live. Here, will you shake on it? I'll quit if you will. You're a born housekeeper. You don't belong on the road any more than I do. It's now or never. And it's going to be now with me. When I strike the pearly gates I'm not going to have Saint Peter say to me, 'Ed, old kid, what have you done with your talents?'”
“You're right,” sobbed Emma McChesney, her face glowing.
“By the way,” interrupted the fat man, “what's your line?”
“Petticoats. I'm out for T. A. Buck's Featherloom Skirts. What's yours?” ”

“ It was one of Emma McChesney's boasts that she was the only living woman who could get off a sleeper at Bay City, Michigan, at 5 A.M., without looking like a Swedish immigrant just dumped at Ellis Island. Traveling had become a science with her, as witness her serviceable dark-blue silk kimono, and her hair in a schoolgirl braid down her back. ”

“ You know I was married when I was eighteen and got my divorce after eight years. Those eight years would have left any woman who had endured them with one of two determinations: to take up life again and bring it out into the sunshine until it was sound, and sweet, and clean, and whole once more, or to hide the hurt and brood over it, and cover it with bitterness, and hate until it destroyed by its very foulness. ”

“ Every traveling man who stopped at the little hotel on his way to Minneapolis added to the heaped-up offerings at Emma McChesney's shrine. Books and magazines assumed the proportions of a library. One could see the hand of T. A. Buck, Junior, in the cases of mineral water, quarts of wine, cunning cordials and tiny bottles of liqueur that stood in convivial rows on the closet shelf and floor. There came letters, too, and telegrams with such phrases as “let nothing be left undone” and “spare no expense” under T. A. Buck, Junior's, signature. ”

“ Emma McChesney paused with her hand on the door. “Kitchen? Oh, no. I could sleep through a vaudeville china-juggling act. But—-what an extraordinarily unpleasant-looking man that housekeeper's husband must have been.”
That November morning boasted all those qualities which November-morning writers are so prone to bestow upon the month. But the words wine, and sparkle, and sting, and glow, and snap do not seem to cover it. Emma McChesney stood on the bottom step, looking up and down Main Street and breathing in great draughts of that unadjectivable air. ”

“ Why can't people stand up and do the things they're out to do! Not one person in a thousand does. Why, take you—I don't know you from Eve, but just from the way you shed the briny I know you're busy regretting.”
“Regretting?” repeated Emma McChesney, in a wail. “Do you know what I am? I'm a lady drummer. And do you know what I want to do this minute? I want to clean house. I want to wind a towel around my head, and pin up my skirt, and slosh around with a pail of hot, soapy water. I want to pound a couple of mattresses in the back yard, and eat a cold dinner off the kitchen table. ”

“ I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save a quarter or fifty cents. I've always tried to look well dressed and immaculate—”
“You!” exclaimed Ed Meyers. “Why, say, you're what I call a swell dresser. Nothing flashy, understand, or loud, but the quiet, good stuff that spells ready money.” ”

“ I'm dying to see a real show—a smart one that hasn't run two hundred nights on Broadway—one with pretty girls, and pink tights, and a lot of moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima donna in a dress so stunning that all the women in the audience are busy copying it so they can describe it to their home-dressmaker next day.”
“Poor, poor child,” said Mary Cutting, “I don't seem to recall any such show.”
“Well, it will look that way to me, anyway,” said Emma McChesney. “I've wired Jock to meet me to-morrow, and I'm going to give the child a really sizzling little vacation. ”

“ Emma McChesney shook a despairing head. “For impudent and unquenchable inquisitiveness commend me to a man! Here! If you must know, though I intended it as a surprise when it was finished and furnished—I'm going to rent a flat, a regular six-room, plenty-of-closets flat, after ten years of miserable hotel existence. Jock's running over for two days to approve it. I ought to have waited until the holidays, so he wouldn't miss classes; but I couldn't bear to. I've spent ten Thanksgivings, and ten Christmases, and ten New Years in hotels. Hell has no terrors for me.” ”

“ Well, that applies right through life. It's all very well to trifle with the little side-dishes at first, but there comes a time when you've got to quit fooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of this world, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. That other stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or later it will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roast beef, medium. It may sound prosaic, and unimaginative and dry, but you'll find that it wears in the long run. You can take me over to the hotel now. ”

“ Another ten years on the road, and where'll you be? In the discard. A man of forty-six can keep step with the youngsters, even if it does make him puff a bit. But a woman of forty-six—the road isn't the place for her. She's tired. Tired in the morning; tired at night. She wants her kimono and her afternoon snooze. You've seen some of those old girls on the road. They've come down step by step until you spot 'em, bleached hair, crow's-feet around the eyes, mussy shirt-waist, yellow and red complexion, demonstrating green and lavender gelatine messes in the grocery of some department store. ”

“ Along come a lot of boobs who never use a hotel the year around except to loaf in the lobby, and wear out the leather chairs, and use up the matches and toothpicks and get the baseball returns, and immediately you turn away a traveling man who uses a three-dollar-a-day room, with a sample room downstairs for his stuff, who tips every porter and bell-boy in the place, asks for no favors, and who, if you give him a half-way decent cup of coffee for breakfast, will fall in love with the place and boom it all over the country. ”

“ The man across the table was little more than a boy—an amazingly handsome, astonishingly impudent, cockily confident boy, who was staring with insolent approval at Emma McChesney's trim, shirt-waisted figure, and her fresh, attractive coloring, and her well-cared-for hair beneath the smart summer hat.
{Illustration: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he announced, glibly.}
“It isn't in human nature to be as good-looking as you are,” spake Emma McChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-way measures. ”

“ Ed Meyers was unabashed. “Let's talk about Fromkin. He don't object, do you, Abe? It's just like this. He needs your smart head. You need his money. It'll mean a sure thing for you—a share in a growing and substantial business. When you get your road men trained it'll mean that you won't need to go out on the road yourself, except for a little missionary trip now and then, maybe. No more infernal early trains, no more bum hotel grub, no more stuffy, hot hotel rooms, no more haughty lady buyers—gosh, I wish I had the chance!”
Emma McChesney sat very still. ”

“ These everyday things he accepts with a philosopher's cheerfulness. No—his nightmare is always a vision of himself, sick on the road, at a country hotel in the middle of a Spring season.
On the third day that she looked with more than ordinary indifference upon hotel and dining-car food Mrs. Emma McChesney, representing the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, wondered if, perhaps, she did not need a bottle of bitter tonic. ”

“ There are lovelier sights than New York seen at night, from a window eyrie with a mauve haze softening all, as a beautiful but experienced woman is softened by an artfully draped scarf of chiffon. There are cities of roses, cities of mountains, cities of palm-trees and sparkling lakes ”

“ By one small degree was the perfect poise of the peerless personage behind the register jarred. But by only one. He was a hotel night clerk.
“It won't do you any good to get sore, Mrs. McChesney,” he began, suavely. “Now a man would—”
“But I'm not a man,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “I'm only doing a man's work and earning a man's salary and demanding to be treated with as much consideration as you'd show a man.” ”

“ Ed Meyers tucked his cigar neatly into the extreme right corner of his mouth, pushed his brown derby far back on his head, rested his strangely lean hands on his plump knees, and fixed T. A. Junior with a shrewd blue eye. “That suits me fine,” he agreed. “I never was one to beat around the bush. Look here. I know skirts from the draw-string to the ruffle. It's a woman's garment, but a man's line. There's fifty reasons why a woman can't handle it like a man. For one thing the packing cases weigh twenty-five pounds each, and she's as dependent on a packer and a porter as a baby is on its mother. ”

“ Miss Blanche LeHaye had made the most of her eleven minutes. Her baggage attended to, Emma McChesney climbed into a hotel 'bus. It bore no other passengers. From her corner in the vehicle she could see the queen of burlesque standing in the center of the depot platform, surrounded by her company. It was a tawdry, miserable, almost tragic group, the men undersized, be-diamonded, their skulls oddly shaped, their clothes a satire on the fashions for men, their chins unshaven, their loose lips curved contentedly over cigarettes ”

“ He looks twenty-one, but he's seventeen. He thinks the world's rotten because he can't grow one of those fuzzy little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats. He's down at the depot now, straightening out our baggage. Now I want to say this before he gets here. He's been out with me just four days. Those four days have been a revelation, an eye-opener, and a series of rude jolts. He used to think that his mother's job consisted of traveling in Pullmans, eating delicate viands turned out by the hotel chefs, and strewing Featherloom Petticoats along the path. ”

“ T. A. Buck's eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little stenographer had carried away with her.
“Good Lord! It looks as though you had stayed down here all night.”
Emma McChesney smiled a little wearily. “Not quite that. But I was here this morning in time to greet the night watchman. Wanted to get my mail out of the way.” Her eyes searched T. A. Buck's serene face. Then she leaned forward, earnestly. ”

“ In surprise Emma McChesney turned at the door for another look at the hair, figure, complexion and kimono.
“Oh, you're an actress! Well, if you think mine is a hard life for a woman, why—”
“Me!” said the green-gold blonde, and laughed not prettily. “I ain't a woman. I'm a queen of burlesque.
“Burlesque? You mean one of those—” Emma McChesney stopped, her usually deft tongue floundering.
“One of those 'men only' troupes? You guessed it. I'm Blanche LeHaye, of the Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles. We get into North Bend at six to-morrow morning, and we play there to-morrow night, Sunday.” ”