Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney

by Edna Ferber

  III

  CHICKENS

  For the benefit of the bewildered reader it should be said that thereare two distinct species of chickens. There is the chicken which youfind in the barnyard, in the incubator, or on a hat. And there is thetype indigenous to State Street, Chicago. Each is known by its feathers.The barnyard variety may puzzle the amateur fancier, but there is nomistaking the State Street chicken. It is known by its soiled, high,white canvas boots; by its tight, short black skirt; by its slug pearlearrings; by its bewildering coiffure. By every line of its slim youngbody, by every curve of its cheek and throat you know it is adorably,pitifully young. By its carmined lip, its near-smart hat, its babblingof "him," and by the knowledge which looks boldly out of its eyes youknow it is tragically old.

  Seated in the Pullman car, with a friendly newspaper protecting herbright hair from the doubtful gray-white of the chair cover, EmmaMcChesney, traveling saleswoman for T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats,was watching the telegraph poles chase each other back to Duluth,Minnesota, and thinking fondly of Mary Cutting, who is themother-confessor and comforter of the State Street chicken.

  Now, Duluth, Minnesota, is trying to be a city. In watching itsstruggles a hunger for a taste of the real city had come upon EmmaMcChesney. She had been out with her late Fall line from May untilSeptember. Every Middle-Western town of five thousand inhabitantsor over had received its share of Emma McChesney's attention andpetticoats. It had been a mystifyingly good season in a bad businessyear. Even old T. A. himself was almost satisfied. Commissions piled upwith gratifying regularity for Emma McChesney. Then, quite suddenly, thelonely evenings, the lack of woman companionship, and the longing for asight of her seventeen-year-old son had got on Emma McChesney's nerves.

  She was two days ahead of her schedule, whereupon she wired her son,thus:

  _"Dear Kid:_

  "Meet me Chicago usual place Friday large time my treat. MOTHER."

  Then she had packed her bag, wired Mary Cutting that she would see herThursday, and had taken the first train out for Chicago.

  You might have found the car close, stuffy, and uninteresting. Ten yearson the road had taught Emma McChesney to extract a maximum of enjoymentout of a minimum of material. Emma McChesney's favorite occupation wasselling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats, and her favorite pastimewas studying men and women. The two things went well together.

  When the train stopped for a minute or two you could hear a faint rattleand click from the direction of the smoking compartment where threejewelry salesmen from Providence, Rhode Island, were indulging in theirbeloved, but dangerous diversion of dice throwing. Just across the aislewas a woman, with her daughter, Chicago-bound to buy a trousseau. Theywere typical, wealthy small-town women smartly garbed in a fashion notmore than twenty minutes late. In the quieter moments of the trip EmmaMcChesney could hear the mother's high-pitched, East End Ladies' ReadingClub voice saying:

  "I'd have the velvet suit made fussy, with a real fancy waist to forafternoons. You can go anywhere in a handsome velvet three-piece suit."

  The girl had smiled, dreamily, and gazed out of the car window. "Iwonder," she said, "if there'll be a letter from George. He said hewould sit right down and write."

  In the safe seclusion of her high-backed chair Emma McChesney smiledapprovingly. Seventeen years ago, when her son had been born, and tenyears ago, when she had got her divorce, Emma McChesney had thanked herGod that her boy had not been a girl. Sometimes, now, she was not sosure about it. It must be fascinating work--selecting velvet suits, made"fussy," for a daughter's trousseau.

  Just how fully those five months of small-town existence had got on hernerves Emma McChesney did not realize until the train snorted into theshed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and foundit sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered theBiggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to anuncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart littlehat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever, and herseventeen-year-old son an absurdity.

  It was four-thirty when she took the elevator up to Mary Cutting'soffice on the tenth floor. She knew she would find Mary Cuttingthere--Mary Cutting, friend, counselor, adviser to every young girl inthe great store and to all Chicago's silly, helpless "chickens."

  A dragon sat before Mary Cutting's door and wrote names on slips. But atsight of Emma McChesney she laid down her pencil.

  "Well," smiled the dragon, "you're a sight for sore eyes. There's nobodyin there with her. Just walk in and surprise her."

  At a rosewood desk in a tiny cozy office sat a pink-cheeked,white-haired woman. You associated her in your mind with black velvetand real lace. She did not look up as Emma McChesney entered. EmmaMcChesney waited for one small moment. Then:

  "Cut out the bank president stuff, Mary Cutting, and make a fuss overme," she commanded.

  The pink-cheeked, white-haired woman looked up. You saw that her eyeswere wonderfully young. She made three marks on a piece of paper, pusheda call-button at her desk, rose, and hugged Emma McChesney thoroughlyand satisfactorily, then held her off a moment and demanded to knowwhere she had bought her hat.

  "Got it ten minutes ago, in the millinery department downstairs. Had to.If I'd have come into New York after five months' exile like this I'dprobably have bought a brocade and fur-edged evening wrap, to relievethis feeling of wild joy. For five months I've spent my evenings in myhotel room, or watching the Maude Byrnes Stock Company playing "LenaRivers," with the ingenue coming out between the acts in a calico apronand a pink sunbonnet and doing a thing they bill as vaudeville. I'mdying to see a real show--a smart one that hasn't run two hundrednights on Broadway--one with pretty girls, and pink tights, and a lotof moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima donna in a dress sostunning that all the women in the audience are busy copying it so theycan describe it to their home-dressmaker next day."

  "Poor, poor child," said Mary Cutting, "I don't seem to recall any suchshow."

  "Well, it will look that way to me, anyway," said Emma McChesney. "I'vewired Jock to meet me to-morrow, and I'm going to give the child areally sizzling little vacation. But to-night you and I will have anold-girl frolic. We'll have dinner together somewhere downtown, and thenwe'll go to the theater, and after that I'm coming out to that blessedflat of yours and sleep between real sheets. We'll have some sandwichesand beer and other things out of the ice-box, and then we'll have abathroom bee. We'll let down our back hair, and slap cold cream around,and tell our hearts' secrets and use up all the hot water. Lordy! Itwill be a luxury to have a bath in a tub that doesn't make you feel asthough you wanted to scrub it out with lye and carbolic. Come on, MaryCutting."

  Mary Cutting's pink cheeks dimpled like a girl's.

  "'You'll never grow up, Emma McChesney'"]

  "You'll never grow up, Emma McChesney--at least, I hope you never will.Sit there in the corner and be a good child, and I'll be ready for youin ten minutes."

  Peace settled down on the tiny office. Emma McChesney, there in hercorner, surveyed the little room with entire approval. It breathed ofthings restful, wholesome, comforting. There was a bowl of sweet peason the desk; there was an Indian sweet grass basket filled with autumnleaves in the corner; there was an air of orderliness and good taste;and there was the pink-cheeked, white-haired woman at the desk.

  "There!" said Mary Cutting, at last. She removed her glasses, snappedthem up on a little spring-chain near her shoulder, sat back, and smiledupon Emma McChesney.

  Emma McChesney smiled back at her. Theirs was not a talking friendship.It was a thing of depth and understanding, like the friendship betweentwo men.

  They sat looking into each other's eyes, and down beyond, where the soulholds forth. And because what each saw there was beautiful and sightlythey were seized with a shyness such as two men feel when they love eachother, and so they awkwardly endeavored to cover up their shyness withwords.

  "You could stand a facial and
a decent scalp massage, Emma," observedMary Cutting in a tone pregnant with love and devotion. "Your hair looksa little dry. Those small-town manicures don't know how to give a realtreatment."

  "I'll have it to-morrow morning, before the Kid gets in at eleven. Asthe Lily Russell of the traveling profession I can't afford to letmy beauty wane. That complexion of yours makes me mad, Mary. It goesthrough a course of hard water and Chicago dirt and comes up lookinglike a rose leaf with the morning dew on it. Where'll we have supper?"

  "I know a new place," replied Mary Cutting. "German, but not greasy."

  She was sorting, marking, and pigeonholing various papers and envelopes.When her desk was quite tidy she shut and locked it, and came over toEmma McChesney.

  "Something nice happened to me to-day," she said, softly. "Somethingthat made me realize how worth while life is. You know we have fivethousand women working here--almost double that during the holidays. Alot of them are under twenty and, Emma, a working girl, under twenty, ina city like this--Well, a brand new girl was looking for me today. Shedidn't know the way to my office, and she didn't know my name. So shestopped one of the older clerks, blushed a little, and said, 'Can youtell me the way to the office of the Comfort Lady?' That's worth workingfor, isn't it, Emma McChesney?"

  "It's worth living for," answered Emma McChesney, gravely. "It--it'sworth dying for. To think that those girls come to you with their littlesacred things, their troubles, and misfortunes, and unhappinesses and--"

  "And their disgraces--sometimes," Mary Cutting finished for her. "Oh,Emma McChesney, sometimes I wonder why there isn't a national schoolfor the education of mothers. I marvel at their ignorance more and moreevery day. Remember, Emma, when we were kids our mothers used to sendus flying to the grocery on baking day? All the way from our houseto Hine's grocery I'd have to keep on saying, over and over: 'Sugar,butter, molasses; sugar, butter, molasses; sugar, butter, molasses.' IfI stopped for a minute I'd forget the whole thing. It isn't so differentnow. Sometimes at night, going home in the car after a day so bad thatthe whole world seems rotten, I make myself say, over and over, as Iused to repeat my 'Sugar, butter, and molasses.' 'It's a glorious, goodold world; it's a glorious, good old world; it's a glorious, goodold world.' And I daren't stop for a minute for fear of forgetting mylesson."

  For the third time in that short half-hour a silence fell between thetwo--a silence of perfect sympathy and understanding.

  Five little strokes, tripping over each other in their haste, came fromthe tiny clock on Mary Cutting's desk. It roused them both.

  "Come on, old girl," said Mary Cutting. "I've a chore or two still to dobefore my day is finished. Come along, if you like. There's a new girlat the perfumes who wears too many braids, and puffs, and curls, and inthe basement misses' ready-to-wear there's another who likes to breakstore rules about short-sleeved, lace-yoked lingerie waists. And oneof the floor managers tells me that a young chap of that callow,semi-objectionable, high-school fraternity, flat-heeled shoe type hasbeen persistently hanging around the desk of the pretty little bundleinspector at the veilings. We're trying to clear the store of that type.They call girls of that description chickens. I wonder why some onehasn't found a name for the masculine chicken."

  "'Well, s'long, then, Shrimp. See you at eight'"]

  "I'll give 'em one," said Emma McChesney as they swung down a broad,bright aisle of the store. "Call 'em weasels. That covers their style,occupation, and character."

  They swung around the corner to the veilings, and there they saw thevery pretty, very blond, very young "chicken" deep in conversation withher weasel. The weasel's trousers were very tight and English, and hishat was properly woolly and Alpine and dented very much on one side andhis heels were fashionably flat, and his hair was slickly pompadour.

  Mary Cutting and Emma McChesney approached them very quietly just intime to hear the weasel say:

  "Well, s' long then, Shrimp. See you at eight."

  And he swung around and faced them.

  That sick horror of uncertainty which had clutched at Emma McChesneywhen first she saw the weasel's back held her with awful certaintynow. But ten years on the road had taught her self-control, among otherthings. So she looked steadily and calmly into her son's scarlet face.Jock's father had been a liar.

  She put her hand on the boy's arm.

  "You're a day ahead of schedule, Jock," she said evenly.

  "So are you," retorted Jock, sullenly, his hands jammed into hispockets.

  "All the better for both of us, Kid. I was just going over to the hotelto clean up, Jock. Come along, boy."

  The boy's jaw set. His eyes sought any haven but that of EmmaMcChesney's eyes. "I can't," he said, his voice very low. "I've anengagement to take dinner with a bunch of the fellows. We're going downto the Inn. Sorry."

  A certain cold rigidity settled over Emma McChesney's face. She eyed herson in silence until his miserable eyes, perforce, looked up into hers.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to break your engagement," she said.

  She turned to face Mary Cutting's regretful, understanding gaze. Hereyebrows lifted slightly. Her head inclined ever so little in thedirection of the half-scared, half-defiant "chicken."

  "You attend to your chicken, Mary," she said. "I'll see to my weasel."

  So Emma McChesney and her son Jock, looking remarkably like brotherand sister, walked down the broad store aisles and out into the street.There was little conversation between them. When the pillared entranceof the hotel came into sight Jock broke the silence, sullenly:

  "Why do you stop at that old barracks? It's a rotten place for a woman.No one stops there but clothing salesmen and boobs who still think it'sChicago's leading hotel. No place for a lady."

  "Any place in the world is the place for a lady, Jock," said EmmaMcChesney quietly.

  Automatically she started toward the clerk's desk. Then she remembered,and stopped. "I'll wait here," she said. "Get the key for five-eighteen,will you please? And tell the clerk that I'll want the room adjoiningbeginning to-night, instead of to-morrow, as I first intended. Tell himyou're Mrs. McChesney's son."

  He turned away. Emma McChesney brought her handkerchief up to her mouthand held it there a moment, and the skin showed white over the knucklesof her hand. In that moment every one of her thirty-six years were onthe table, face up.

  "We'll wash up," said Emma McChesney, when he returned, "and then we'llhave dinner here."

  "I don't want to eat here," objected Jock McChesney. "Besides, there'sno reason why I can't keep my evening's engagements."

  "And after dinner," went on his mother, as though she had not heard,"we'll get acquainted, Kid."

  It was a cheerless, rather tragic meal, though Emma McChesney saw itthrough from soup to finger-bowls. When it was over she led the way downthe old-fashioned, red-carpeted corridors to her room. It was the sortof room to get on its occupant's nerves at any time, with its red plusharm-chairs, its black walnut bed, and its walnut center table inlaidwith an apoplectic slab of purplish marble.

  "'I'm still in position to enforce that ordinance againstpouting'"]

  Emma McChesney took off her hat before the dim old mirror, and stoodthere, fluffing out her hair here, patting it there. Jock had thrown hishat and coat on the bed. He stood now, leaning against the footboard,his legs crossed, his chin on his breast, his whole attitude breathingsullen defiance.

  "Jock," said his mother, still patting her hair, "perhaps you don't knowit, but you're pouting just as you used to when you wore pinafores.I always hated pouting children. I'd rather hear them howl. I used tospank you for it. I have prided myself on being a modern mother, butI want to mention, in passing, that I'm still in a position to enforcethat ordinance against pouting." She turned around abruptly. "Jock, tellme, how did you happen to come here a day ahead of me, and how do youhappen to be so chummy with that pretty, weak-faced little thing at theveiling counter, and how, in the name of all that's unbelievable, haveyou managed to become a grown-up in the la
st few months?"

  Jock regarded the mercifully faded roses in the carpet. His lower lipcame forward again.

  "Oh, a fellow can't always be tied to his mother's apron strings. I liketo have a little fling myself. I know a lot of fellows here. They arefrat brothers. And anyway, I needed some new clothes."

  For one long moment Emma McChesney stared, in silence. Then: "Ofcourse," she began, slowly, "I knew you were seventeen years old. I'veeven bragged about it. I've done more than that--I've gloried in it.But somehow, whenever I thought of you in my heart--and that was agreat deal of the time it was as though you still were a little tyke inknee-pants, with your cap on the back of your head, and a chunk of applebulging your cheek. Jock, I've been earning close to six thousand a yearsince I put in that side line of garters. Just how much spending moneyhave I been providing you with?"

  Jock twirled a coat button uncomfortably "Well, quite a lot. But afellow's got to have money to keep up appearances. A lot of the fellowsin my crowd have more than I. There are clothes, and tobacco, and thenflowers and cabs for the skirts--girls, I mean, and--"

  "Kid," impressively, "I want you to sit down over there in that plushchair--the red one, with the lumps in the back. I want you to beuncomfortable. From where I am sitting I can see that in you there isthe making of a first-class cad. That's no pleasant thing for a motherto realize. Now don't interrupt me. I'm going to be chairman, speaker,program, and ways-and-means committee of this meeting. Jock, I gotmy divorce from your father ten years ago. Now, I'm not going to sayanything about him. Just this one thing. You're not going to follow inhis footsteps, Kid. Not if I have to take you to pieces like a nickelwatch and put you all together again. You're Emma McChesney's son, andten years from now I intend to be able to brag about it, or I'll want toknow the reason why--and it'll have to be a blamed good reason."

  "I'd like to know what I've done!" blurted the boy. "Just because Ihappened to come here a few hours before you expected me, and justbecause you saw me talking to a girl! Why--"

  "It isn't what you've done. It's what those things stand for. I've beenat fault. But I'm willing to admit it. Your mother is a working woman,Jock. You don't like that idea, do you? But you don't mind spending themoney that the working woman provides you with, do you? I'm earning aman'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 schoolyet. Other fellows whose fathers aren't earning as much--"

  "Fathers," interrupted Emma McChesney. "There you are. Jock, I don'thave to make the distinction for you. You're sufficiently my son to knowit, in your heart. I had planned to give you a college education, ifyou showed yourself deserving. I don't believe in sending a boy inyour position to college unless he shows some special leaning toward aprofession."

  "Mother, you know how wild I am about machines, and motors, andengineering, and all that goes with it. Why I'd work--"

  "You'll have to, Jock. That's the only thing that will make a man ofyou. I've started you wrong, but it isn't too late yet. It's all verywell for boys with rich fathers to run to clothes, and city jaunts, and'chickens,' and cabs and flowers. Your mother is working tooth and nailto earn her six thousand, and when you realize just what it means fora woman to battle against men in a man's game, you'll stop being aspender, and become an earner--because you'll want to. I'll tell youwhat I'm going to do, Kid. I'm going to take you on the road with me fortwo weeks. You'll learn so many things that at the end of that time thesides of your head will be bulging."

  "I'd like it!" exclaimed the boy, sitting up. "It will be regular fun."

  "No, it won't," said Emma McChesney; "not after the first three or fourdays. But it will be worth more to you than a foreign tour and a privatetutor."

  She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Your room'sjust next to mine," she said. "You and I are going to sleep on this.To-morrow we'll have a real day of it, as I promised. If you want tospend it with the fellows, say so. I'm not going to spoil this littlelark that I promised you."

  "I think," said the boy, looking up into his mother's face, "I thinkthat I'll spend it with you."

  The door slammed after him.

  Emma McChesney remained standing there, in the center of the room. Sheraised her arms and passed a hand over her forehead and across her hairuntil it rested on the glossy knot at the back of her head. It was theweary little gesture of a weary, heart-sick woman.

  There came a ring at the 'phone.

  Emma McChesney crossed the room and picked up the receiver.

  "Hello, Mary Cutting," she said, without waiting for the voice at theother end. "What? Oh, I just knew. No, it's all right. I've had somehigh-class little theatricals of my own, right here, with me in theroles of leading lady, ingenue, villainess, star, and heavy mother. I'vegot Mrs. Fiske looking like a First Reader Room kid that's forgotten herFriday piece. What's that?"

  There was no sound in the room but the hollow cackle of the voice at theother end of the wire, many miles away.

  Then: "Oh, that's all right, Mary Cutting. I owe you a great big debtof gratitude, bless your pink cheeks and white hair! And, Mary," shelowered her voice and glanced in the direction of the room next door, "Idon't know how a hard, dry sob would go through the 'phone, so I won'ttry to get it over. But, Mary, it's been 'sugar, butter, and molasses'for me for the last ten minutes, and I'm dead scared to stop for fearI'll forget it. I guess it's 'sugar, butter, and molasses' for me forthe rest of the night, Mary Cutting; just as hard and fast as I can sayit, 'sugar, butter, molasses.'"