Part 1 (1/2)
Personality Plus.
by Edna Ferber.
I
MAKING GOOD WITH MOTHER
When men began to build cities vertically instead of horizontally there pa.s.sed from our highways a picturesque figure, and from our language an expressive figure of speech. That oily-tongued, persuasive, soft-stepping stranger in the rusty Prince Albert and the black string tie who had been wont to haunt our back steps and front offices with his carefully wrapped bundle, retreated in bewildered defeat before the clanging blows of steel on steel that meant the erection of the first twenty-story skysc.r.a.per. ”As slick,” we used to say, ”as a lightning-rod agent.” Of what use his wares on a building whose tower was robed in clouds and which used the chain lightning for a necklace? The Fourth Avenue antique dealer had another curio to add to his collection of andirons, knockers, snuff boxes and warming pans.
But even as this quaint figure vanished there sprang up a new and glittering one to take his place. He stood framed in the great plate-gla.s.s window of the very building which had brought about the defeat of his predecessor. A miracle of close shaving his face was, and a marvel of immaculateness his linen. Dapper he was, and dressy, albeit inclined to glittering effects and a certain plethory at the back of the neck. Back of him stood s.h.i.+ning shapes that reflected his glory in enamel, and bra.s.s, and gla.s.s. His language was floral, but choice; his talk was of gearings and bearings and cylinders and magnetos; his method differed from that of him who went before as the method of a skilled aeronaut differs from that of the man who goes over Niagara in a barrel. And as he multiplied and spread over the land we coined a new figure of speech. ”Smooth!” we chuckled. ”As smooth as an automobile salesman.”
But even as we listened, fascinated by his fluent verbiage there grew within us a certain resentment. Familiarity with his glittering wares bred a contempt of them, so that he fell to speaking of them as necessities instead of luxuries. He juggled figures, and thought nothing of four of them in a row. We looked at our five-thousand-dollar salary, so strangely shrunken and thin now, and even as we looked we saw that the method of the unctuous, anxious stranger had become antiquated in its turn.
Then from his ashes emerged a new being. Neither urger nor spellbinder he. The twentieth century was stamped across his brow, and on his lips was ever the word ”Service.” Silent, courteous, watchful, alert, he listened, while you talked. His method, in turn, made that of the silk-lined salesman sound like the hoa.r.s.e hoots of the ballyhoo man at a county fair. Blithely he accepted five hundred thousand dollars and gave in return--a promise. And when we would search our soul for a synonym to express all that was low-voiced, and suave, and judicious, and patient, and sure, we began to say, ”As alert as an advertising expert.”
Jock McChesney, looking as fresh and clear-eyed as only twenty-one and a cold shower can make one look, stood in the doorway of his mother's bedroom. His toilette had halted abruptly at the bathrobe stage. One of those bulky garments swathed his slim figure, while over his left arm hung a gray tweed Norfolk coat.
From his right hand dangled a pair of trousers, in pattern a modish black-and-white.
Jock regarded the gray garment on his arm with moody eyes.
”Well, I'd like to know what's the matter with it!” he demanded, a trifle irritably.
Emma McChesney, in the act of surveying her back hair in the mirror, paused, hand gla.s.s poised half way, to regard her son.
”All right,” she answered cheerfully. ”I'll tell you. It's too young.”
”Young!” He held it at arm's length and stared at it. ”What d'you mean--young?”
Emma McChesney came forward, wrapping the folds of her kimono about her. She took the disputed garment in one hand and held it aloft. ”I know that you look like a man on a magazine cover in it.
But Norfolk suits spell tennis, and seash.o.r.e, and elegant leisure.
And you're going out this morning, Son, to interview business men.
You're going to try to impress the advertising world with the fact that it needs your expert services. You walk into a business office in a Norfolk suit, and everybody from the office boy to the president of the company will ask you what your score is.”
She tossed it back over his arm.
”I'll wear the black and white,” said Jock resignedly, and turned toward his own room. At his doorway he paused and raised his voice slightly: ”For that matter, they're looking for young men.
Everybody's young. Why, the biggest men in the advertising game are just kids.” He disappeared within his room, still talking.
”Look at McQuirk, advertising manager of the Combs Car Company.
He's so young he has to disguise himself in bone-trimmed eye-gla.s.ses with a black ribbon to get away with it. Look at Hopper, of the Berg, Shriner Company. Pulls down ninety thousand a year, and if he's thirty-five I'll--”
”Well, you asked my advice,” interrupted his mother's voice with that m.u.f.fled effect which is caused by a skirt being slipped over the head, ”and I gave it. Wear a white duck sailor suit with blue anchors and carry a red tin pail and a shovel, if you want to look young. Only get into it in a jiffy, Son, because breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. I can tell by the way Annie's cras.h.i.+ng the cups. So step lively if you want to pay your lovely mother's subway fare.”
Ten minutes later the slim young figure, in its English-fitting black and white, sat opposite Emma McChesney at the breakfast table and between excited gulps of coffee outlined a meteoric career in his chosen field. And the more he talked and the rosier his figures of speech became, the more silent and thoughtful fell his mother. She wondered if five o'clock would find a droop to the set of those young shoulders; if the springy young legs in their absurdly scant modish trousers would have lost some of their elasticity; if the buoyant step in the flat-heeled shoes would not drag a little. Thirteen years of business experience had taught her to swallow smilingly the bitter pill of rebuff. But this boy was to experience his first dose to-day. She felt again that sensation of almost physical nausea--that sickness of heart and spirit which had come over her when she had met her first sneer and intolerant shrug. It had been her maiden trip on the road for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She was secretary of that company now, and moving spirit in its policy. But the wound of that first insult still ached. A word from her would have placed the boy and saved him from curt refusals. She withheld that word. He must fight his fight alone.
”I want to write the kind of ad,” Jock was saying excitedly, ”that you see 'em staring at in the subways, and street cars and L-trains. I want to sit across the aisle and watch their up-turned faces staring at that oblong, and reading it aloud to each other.”
”Isn't that an awfully obvious necktie you're wearing, Jock?”