Part 10 (1/2)

During working hours, Mrs. McChesney held rigidly to business. Her handsome partner tried bravely to follow her example. If he failed occasionally, perhaps Emma McChesney was not so displeased as she pretended to be. A business discussion, deeply interesting to both, was likely to run thus:

Buck, entering her office briskly, papers in hand: ”Mrs.

McChesney--ahem!--I have here a letter from Singer & French, Columbus, Ohio. They ask for an extension. They've had ninety days.”

”That's enough. That firm's slow pay, and always will be until old Singer has the good taste and common sense to retire. It isn't because the stock doesn't move. Singer simply believes in not paying for anything until he has to. If I were you, I'd write him that this is a business house, not a charitable inst.i.tution---- No, don't do that. It isn't politic. But you know what I mean.”

”H'm; yes.” A silence. ”Emma, that's a fiendishly becoming gown.”

”Now, T. A.!”

”But it is! It--it's so kind of loose, and yet clinging, and those white collar-and-cuff things----”

”T. A. Buck, I've worn this thing down to the office every day for a month. It s.h.i.+nes in the back. Besides, you promised not to----”

”Oh, darn it all, Emma, I'm human, you know! How do you suppose I can stand here and look at you and not----”

Emma McChesney (pressing the buzzer that summons Hortense): ”You know, Tim, I don't exactly hate you this morning, either. But business is business. Stop looking at me like that!” Then, to Hortense, in the doorway: ”Just take this letter, Miss Stotz-Singer & French, Columbus, Ohio. Dear Sirs: Yours of the tenth at hand. Period. Regarding your request for further extension we wish to say that, in view of the fact----”

T. A. Buck, half resentful, half amused, wholly admiring, would disappear. But Hortense, eyes demurely cast down at her notebook, was not deceived.

”Say,” she confided to Miss Kelly, ”they think they've got me fooled.

But I'm wise. Don't I know? When Henry pa.s.ses through the office here, from the s.h.i.+pping-room, he looks at me just as cool and indifferent. Before we announced it, we had you all guessing, didn't we? But I can see something back of that look that the rest of you can't get. Well, when Mr. Buck looks at her, I can see the same thing in his eyes. Say, when it comes to seeing the love-light through the fog, I'm there with the spy-gla.s.s.”

If Emma McChesney held herself well in leash during the busy day, she relished her happiness none the less when she could allow herself the full savor of it. When a girl of eighteen she had married a man of the sort that must put whisky into his stomach before the machinery of his day would take up its creaking round.

Out of the degradation of that marriage she had emerged triumphantly, sweet and unsullied, and she had succeeded in bringing her son, Jock McChesney, out into the clear sunlight with her.

The evenings spent with T. A. Buck, the man of fine instincts, of breeding, of proven worth, of rare tenderness, filled her with a great peace and happiness. When doubts a.s.sailed her, it was not for herself but for him. Sometimes the fear would clutch her as they sat before the fire in the sitting-room of her comfortable little apartment. She would voice those fears for the very joy of having them stilled.

”T. A., this is too much happiness. I'm--I'm afraid. After all, you're a young man, though you are a bit older than I in actual years.

But men of your age marry girls of eighteen. You're handsome. And you've brains, family, breeding, money. Any girl in New York would be glad to marry you--those tall, slim, exquisite young girls. Young!

And well bred, and poised and fresh and sweet and lovable. You see them every day on Fifth Avenue, exquisitely dressed, entirely desirable. They make me feel--old--old and battered. I've sold goods on the road. I've fought and worked and struggled. And it has left its mark. I did it for the boy, G.o.d bless him! And I'm glad I did it.

But it put me out of the cla.s.s of that girl you see on----”

”Yes, Emma; you're not at all in the cla.s.s with that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue's full of her--hundreds of her, thousands of her. Perhaps, five years ago, before I had worked side by side with you, I might have been attracted by that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue. You don't see a procession of Emma McChesneys every day on Fifth Avenue--not by a long shot! Why? Because there's only one of her. She doesn't come in dozen lots. I know that that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue is all that I deserve. But, by some heaven-sent miracle, I'm to have this Emma McChesney woman! I don't know how it came to be true. I don't deserve it. But it is true, and that's enough for me.”

Emma McChesney would look up at him, eyes wet, mouth smiling.

”T. A., you're balm and myrrh and incense and meat and drink to me. I wish I had words to tell you what I'm thinking now. But I haven't. So I'll just cover it up. We both know it's there. And I'll tell you that you make love like a 'movie' hero. Yes, you do! Better than a 'movie'

hero, because, in the films, the heroine always has to turn to face the camera, which makes it necessary for him to make love down the back of her neck.”

But T. A. Buck was unsmiling.

”Don't trifle, Emma. And don't think you can fool me that way. I haven't finished. I want to settle this Fifth Avenue creature for all time. What I have to say is this: I think you are more attractive--finer, bigger, more rounded in character and manner, mellower, sweeter, sounder, with all your angles and corners rubbed smooth, saner, better poised than any woman I have ever known. And what I am to-day you have made me, directly and indirectly, by a.s.sociation and by actual orders, by suggestion, and by direct contact.

What you did for Jock, purposefully and by force, you did for me, too.

Not so directly, perhaps, but with the same result. Emma McChesney, you've made--actually made, molded, shaped, and turned out two men.

You're the greatest sculptor that ever lived. You could make a scarecrow in a field get up and achieve. Everywhere one sees women over-wrought, over-stimulated, eager, tense. When there appears one who has herself in leash, balanced, tolerant, poised, sane, composed, she restores your faith in things. You lean on her, spiritually. I know I need you more than you need me, Emma. And I know you won't love me the less for that. There--that's about all for this evening.”