New York Stories

by Bob Blaisdell

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, well, then, it’s just a gift, I take it; and if you aren’t born that way there’s no use worrying.”

  “Precisely, sir,” said Jeeves. “If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the red domino pattern instead, sir.”

  “All right, Jeeves,” I said, humbly. “You know!”

  ARDESSA (1919)

  Willa Cather

  Willa Cather (1873–1947) moved from Pittsburgh to New York City in 1906; she was already a well-regarded journalist and writer of short stories (she published her first story in 1892). Cather became the managing editor of McClure’s magazine in 1908 but left that job in 1912 to have more time to write. Her famous Nebraska novels followed: O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918). In “Arabella,” Cather describes the routines of self-satisfied, clever Arabella, who has mastered her job with that type of mastery that allows one to coast. Arabella’s protégé, Becky, seems to be a predecessor of the actress America Ferrera’s TV character in Ugly Betty: a plucky, competent, honest, hard-working outsider. Cather and her partner, Edith Lewis, lived in Greenwich Village from 1912 to 1927.

  THE GRAND-MANNERED OLD man who sat at a desk in the reception-room of “The Outcry” offices to receive visitors and incidentally to keep the time-book of the employees, looked up as Miss Devine entered at ten minutes past ten and condescendingly wished him good morning. He bowed profoundly as she minced past his desk, and with an indifferent air took her course down the corridor that led to the editorial offices. Mechanically he opened the flat, black book at his elbow and placed his finger on D, running his eye along the line of figures after the name Devine. “It’s banker’s hours she keeps, indeed,” he muttered. What was the use of entering so capricious a record? Nevertheless, with his usual preliminary flourish he wrote 10:10 under this, the fourth day of May.

  The employee who kept banker’s hours rustled on down the corridor to her private room, hung up her lavender jacket and her trim spring hat, and readjusted her side combs by the mirror inside her closet door. Glancing at her desk, she rang for an office boy, and reproved him because he had not dusted more carefully and because there were lumps in her paste. When he disappeared with the paste-jar, she sat down to decide which of her employer’s letters he should see and which he should not.

  Ardessa was not young and she was certainly not handsome. The coquettish angle at which she carried her head was a mannerism surviving from a time when it was more becoming. She shuddered at the cold candor of the new business woman, and was insinuatingly feminine.

  Ardessa’s employer, like young Lochinvar, had come out of the West, and he had done a great many contradictory things before he became proprietor and editor of “The Outcry.” Before he decided to go to New York and make the East take notice of him, O’Mally had acquired a punctual, reliable silver-mine in South Dakota. This silent friend in the background made his journalistic success comparatively easy. He had figured out, when he was a rich nobody in Nevada, that the quickest way to cut into the known world was through the printing-press. He arrived in New York, bought a highly respectable publication, and turned it into a red-hot magazine of protest, which he called “The Outcry.” He knew what the West wanted, and it proved to be what everybody secretly wanted. In six years he had done the thing that had hitherto seemed impossible: built up a national weekly, out on the news-stands the same day in New York and San Francisco; a magazine the people howled for, a moving-picture film of their real tastes and interests.

  O’Mally bought “The Outcry” to make a stir, not to make a career, but he had got built into the thing more than he ever intended. It had made him a public man and put him into politics. He found the publicity game diverting, and it held him longer than any other game had ever done. He had built up about him an organization of which he was somewhat afraid and with which he was vastly bored. On his staff there were five famous men, and he had made every one of them. At first it amused him to manufacture celebrities. He found he could take an average reporter from the daily press, give him a “line” to follow, a trust to fight, a vice to expose,—this was all in that good time when people were eager to read about their own wickedness,—and in two years the reporter would be recognized as an authority. Other people—Napoleon, Disraeli, Sarah Bernhardt—had discovered that advertising would go a long way; but Marcus O’Mally discovered that in America it would go all the way—as far as you wished to pay its passage. Any human countenance, plastered in three-sheet posters from sea to sea, would be revered by the American people. The strangest thing was that the owners of these grave countenances, staring at their own faces on news-stands and billboards, fell to venerating themselves; and even he, O’Mally, was more or less constrained by these reputations that he had created out of cheap paper and cheap ink.

  Constraint was the last thing O’Mally liked. The most engaging and unusual thing about the man was that he couldn’t be fooled by the success of his own methods, and no amount of “recognition” could make a stuffed shirt of him. No matter how much he was advertised as a great medicine-man in the councils of the nation, he knew that he was a born gambler and a soldier of fortune. He left his dignified office to take care of itself for a good many months of the year while he played about on the outskirts of social order. He liked being a great man from the East in rough-and-tumble Western cities where he had once been merely an unconsidered spender.

  O’Mally’s long absences constituted one of the supreme advantages of Ardessa Devine’s position. When he was at his post her duties were not heavy, but when he was giving balls in Goldfield, Nevada, she lived an ideal life. She came to the office every day, indeed, to forward such of O’Mally’s letters as she thought best, to attend to his club notices and tradesmen’s bills, and to taste the sense of her high connections. The great men of the staff were all about her, as contemplative as Buddhas in their private offices, each meditating upon the particular trust or form of vice confided to his care. Thus surrounded, Ardessa had a pleasant sense of being at the heart of things. It was like a mental message, exercise without exertion. She read and she embroidered. Her room was pleasant, and she liked to be seen at ladylike tasks and to feel herself a graceful contrast to the crude girls in the advertising and circulation departments across the hall. The younger stenographers, who had to get through with the enormous office correspondence, and who rushed about from one editor to another with wire baskets full of letters, made faces as they passed Ardessa’s door and saw her cool and cloistered, daintily plying her needle. But no matter how hard the other stenographers were driven, no one, not even one of the five oracles of the staff, dared dictate so much as a letter to Ardessa. Like a sultan’s bride, she was inviolate in her lord’s absence; she had to be kept for him.

  Naturally the other young women employed in “The Outcry” offices disliked Miss Devine. They were all competent girls, trained in the exacting methods of modern business, and they had to make good every day in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work or lose their position. O’Mally’s private secretary was a mystery to them. Her exemptions and privileges, her patronizing remarks, formed an exhaustless subject of conversation at the lunch-hour. Ardessa had, indeed, as they knew she must have, a kind of “purchase” on her employer.

  When O’Mally first came to New York to break into publicity, he engaged Miss Devine upon the recommendation of the editor whose ailing publication he bought and rechristened. That editor was a conservative, scholarly gentleman of the old school, who was retiring because he felt out of place in the world of brighter, breezier magazines that had been flowering since the new century came in. He believed that in this vehement world young O’Mally would make himself heard and that Miss Devine’s training in an editorial office would be of use to him.

  When O’Mally first sat down at a desk to be an editor, all the cards that were brough
t in looked pretty much alike to him. Ardessa was at his elbow. She had long been steeped in literary distinctions and in the social distinctions which used to count for much more than they do now. She knew all the great men, all the nephews and clients of great men. She knew which must be seen, which must be made welcome, and which could safely be sent away. She could give O’Mally on the instant the former rating in magazine offices of nearly every name that was brought in to him. She could give him an idea of the man’s connections, of the price his work commanded, and insinuate whether he ought to be met with the old punctiliousness or with the new joviality. She was useful in explaining to her employer the significance of various invitations, and the standing of clubs and associations. At first she was virtually the social mentor of the bullet-headed young Westerner who wanted to break into everything, the solitary person about the office of the humming new magazine who knew anything about the editorial traditions of the eighties and nineties which, antiquated as they now were, gave an editor, as O’Mally said, a background.

  Despite her indolence, Ardessa was useful to O’Mally as a social reminder. She was the card catalogue of his ever-changing personal relations. O’Mally went in for everything and got tired of everything; that was why he made a good editor. After he was through with people, Ardessa was very skilful in covering his retreat. She read and answered the letters of admirers who had begun to bore him. When great authors, who had been dined and fêted the month before, were suddenly left to cool their heels in the reception-room, thrown upon the suave hospitality of the grand old man at the desk, it was Ardessa who went out and made soothing and plausible explanations as to why the editor could not see them. She was the brake that checked the too-eager neophyte, the emollient that eased the severing of relationships, the gentle extinguisher of the lights that failed. When there were no longer messages of hope and cheer to be sent to ardent young writers and reformers, Ardessa delivered, as sweetly as possible, whatever messages were left.

  In handling these people with whom O’Mally was quite through, Ardessa had gradually developed an industry which was immensely gratifying to her own vanity. Not only did she not crush them; she even fostered them a little. She continued to advise them in the reception-room and “personally” received their manuscripts long after O’Mally had declared that he would never read another line they wrote. She let them outline their plans for stories and articles to her, promising to bring these suggestions to the editor’s attention. She denied herself to nobody, was gracious even to the Shakespere-Bacon man, the perpetual-motion man, the travel-article man, the ghosts which haunt every magazine office. The writers who had had their happy hour of O’Mally’s favor kept feeling that Ardessa might reinstate them. She answered their letters of inquiry in her most polished and elegant style, and even gave them hints as to the subjects in which the restless editor was or was not interested at the moment: she feared it would be useless to send him an article on “How to Trap Lions,” because he had just bought an article on “Elephant-Shooting in Majuba Land,” etc.

  So when O’Mally plunged into his office at 11:30 on this, the fourth day of May, having just got back from three-days’ fishing, he found Ardessa in the reception-room, surrounded by a little court of discards. This was annoying, for he always wanted his stenographer at once. Telling the office boy to give her a hint that she was needed, he threw off his hat and top-coat and began to race through the pile of letters Ardessa had put on his desk. When she entered, he did not wait for her polite inquiries about his trip, but broke in at once.

  “What is that fellow who writes about phossy jaw still hanging round here for? I don’t want any articles on phossy jaw, and if I did, I wouldn’t want his.”

  “He has just sold an article on the match industry to ‘The New Age,’ Mr. O’Mally,” Ardessa replied as she took her seat at the editor’s right.

  “Why does he have to come and tell us about it? We’ve nothing to do with ‘The New Age.’ And that prison-reform guy, what’s he loafing about for?”

  Ardessa bridled.

  “You remember, Mr. O’Mally, he brought letters of introduction from Governor Harper, the reform Governor of Mississippi.”

  O’Mally jumped up, kicking over his waste-basket in his impatience.

  “That was months ago. I went through his letters and went through him, too. He hasn’t got anything we want. I’ve been through with Governor Harper a long while. We’re asleep at the switch in here. And let me tell you, if I catch sight of that causes-of-blindness-in-babies woman around here again. I’ll do something violent. Clear them out, Miss Devine! Clear them out! We need a traffic policeman in this office. Have you got that article on ‘Stealing Our National Water Power’ ready for me?”

  “Mr. Gerrard took it back to make modifications. He gave it to me at noon on Saturday, just before the office closed. I will have it ready for you to-morrow morning, Mr. O’Mally, if you have not too many letters for me this afternoon,” Ardessa replied pointedly.

  “Holy Mike!” muttered O’Mally, “we need a traffic policeman for the staff, too. Gerrard’s modified that thing half a dozen times already. Why don’t they get accurate information in the first place?”

  He began to dictate his morning mail, walking briskly up and down the floor by way of giving his stenographer an energetic example. Her indolence and her ladylike deportment weighed on him. He wanted to take her by the elbows and run her around the block. He didn’t mind that she loafed when he was away, but it was becoming harder and harder to speed her up when he was on the spot. He knew his correspondence was not enough to keep her busy, so when he was in town he made her type his own breezy editorials and various articles by members of his staff.

  Transcribing editorial copy is always laborious, and the only way to make it easy is to farm it out. This Ardessa was usually clever enough to do. When she returned to her own room after O’Mally had gone out to lunch, Ardessa rang for an office boy and said languidly, “James, call Becky, please.”

  In a moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself in her insufficient open-work waist. Her wild, black eyes followed Miss Devine’s hands desperately. Ardessa sighed.

  “This seems to be very smeary copy again, Becky. You don’t keep your mind on your work, and so you have to erase continually.”

  Becky spoke up in wailing self-vindication.

  “It ain’t that, Miss Devine. It’s so many hard words he uses that I have to be at the dictionary all the time. Look! Look!” She produced a bunch of manuscript faintly scrawled in pencil, and thrust it under Ardessa’s eyes. “He don’t write out the words at all. He just begins a word, and then makes waves for you to guess.”

  “I see you haven’t always guessed correctly, Becky,” said Ardessa, with a weary smile. “There are a great many words here that would surprise Mr. Gerrard, I am afraid.”

  “And the inserts,” Becky persisted. “How is anybody to tell where they go, Miss Devine? It’s mostly inserts; see, all over the top and sides and back.”

  Ardessa turned her head away.

  “Don’t claw the pages like that, Becky. You make me nervous. Mr. Gerrard has not time to dot his i’s and cross his t’s. That is what we keep copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you,—it would be terrible if Mr. O’Mally saw them,—and then you can copy them over again. It must be done by to-morrow morning, so you may have to work late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you will not smear it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Miss Devine. Will you tell the janitor, please, it’s all right if I have to stay? He was cross because I was here Saturday afternoon doi
ng this. He said it was a holiday, and when everybody else was gone I ought to—”

  “That will do, Becky. Yes, I will speak to the janitor for you. You may go to lunch now.”

  Becky turned on one heel and then swung back.

  “Miss Devine,” she said anxiously, “will it be all right if I get white shoes for now?”

  Ardessa gave her kind consideration.

  “For office wear, you mean? No, Becky. With only one pair, you could not keep them properly clean; and black shoes are much less conspicuous. Tan, if you prefer.”

  Becky looked down at her feet. They were too large, and her skirt was as much too short as her legs were too long.

  “Nearly all the girls I know wear white shoes to business,” she pleaded.

  “They are probably little girls who work in factories or department stores, and that is quite another matter. Since you raise the question. Becky, I ought to speak to you about your new waist. Don’t wear it to the office again, please. Those cheap open-work waists are not appropriate in an office like this. They are all very well for little chorus girls.”

  “But Miss Kalski wears expensive waists to business more open than this, and jewelry—”

  Ardessa interrupted. Her face grew hard.

  “Miss Kalski,” she said coldly, “works for the business department. You are employed in the editorial offices. There is a great difference. You see, Becky, I might have to call you in here at any time when a scientist or a great writer or the president of a university is here talking over editorial matters, and such clothes as you have on to-day would make a bad impression. Nearly all our connections are with important people of that kind, and we ought to be well, but quietly, dressed.”

  “Yes, Miss Devine. Thank you,” Becky gasped and disappeared. Heaven knew she had no need to be further impressed with the greatness of “The Outcry” office. During the year and a half she had been there she had never ceased to tremble. She knew the prices all the authors got as well as Miss Devine did, and everything seemed to her to be done on a magnificent scale. She hadn’t a good memory for long technical words, but she never forgot dates or prices or initials or telephone numbers.