by Willa Cather
“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 tomorrow 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 doing 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 today 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.
Becky felt that her job depended on Miss Devine, and she was so glad to have it that she scarcely realized she was being bullied. Besides, she was grateful for all that she had learned from Ardessa; Ardessa had taught her to do most of the things that she was supposed to do herself. Becky wanted to learn, she had to learn; that was the train she was always running for. Her father, Isaac Tietelbaum, the tailor, who pressed Miss Devine’s skirts and kept her ladylike suits in order, had come to his client two years ago and told her he had a bright girl just out of a commercial high school. He implored Ardessa to find some office position for his daughter. Ardessa told an appealing story to O’Mally, and brought Becky into the office, at a salary of six dollars a week, to help with the copying and to learn business routine. When Becky first came she was as ignorant as a young savage. She was rapid at her shorthand and typing, but a Kafir girl would have known as much about the English language. Nobody ever wanted to learn more than Becky. She fairly wore the dictionary out. She dug up her old school grammar and worked over it at night. She faithfully mastered Miss Devine’s fussy system of punctuation.
There were eight children at home, younger than Becky, and they were all eager to learn. They wanted to get their mother out of the three dark rooms behind the tailor shop and to move into a flat upstairs, where they could, as Becky said, “live private.” The young Tietelbaums doubted their father’s ability to bring this change about, for the more things he declared himself ready to do in his window placards, the fewer were brought to him to be done. “Dyeing, Cleaning, Ladies’ Furs Remodeled”—it did no good.
Rebecca was out to “improve herself,” as her father had told her she must. Ardessa had easy way with her. It was one of those rare relationships from which both persons profit. The more Becky could learn from Ardessa, the happier she was; and the more Ardessa could unload on Becky, the greater was her contentment. She easily broke Becky of the gum-chewing habit, taught her to walk quietly, to efface herself at the proper moment, and to hold her tongue. Becky had been raised to eight dollars a week; but she didn’t care half so much about that as she did about her own increasing efficiency. The more work Miss Devine handed over to her the happier she was, and the faster she was able to eat it up. She tested and tried herself in every possible way. She now had full confidence that she would surely one day be a high-priced stenographer, a real “business woman.”
Becky would have corrupted a really industrious person, but a bilious temperament like Ardessa’s couldn’t make even a feeble stand against such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost the knack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance and serenity, she shivered. What if O’Mally should die, and she were thrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen, competent young women she saw about her everywhere? She believed herself indispensable, but she knew that in such a mischanceful world as this the very powers of darkness might rise to separate her from this pearl among jobs.
When Becky came in from lunch she went down the long hall to the washroom, where all the little girls who worked in the advertising and circulation departments kept their hats and jackets. There were shelves and shelves of bright spring hats, piled on top of one another, all as stiff as sheet-iron and trimmed with gay flowers. At the marble washstand stood Rena Kalski, the right bower of the business manager, polishing her diamond rings with a nailbrush.
“Hullo, kid,” she called over her shoulder to Becky. “I’ve got a ticket for you for Thursday afternoon.”
Becky’s black eyes glowed, but the strained look on her face drew tighter than ever.
“I’ ll never ask her, Miss Kalski,” she said rapidly. “I don’t dare. I have to stay late tonightagain; and I know she’d be hard to please after, if I was to try to get off on a weekday. I thank you, Miss Kalski, but I’d better not.”
Miss Kalski laughed. She was a slender young Hebrew, handsome in an impudent, Tenderloin sort of way, with a small head, reddish-brown almond eyes, a trifle tilted, a rapacious mouth, and a beautiful chin.
“Ain’t you under that woman’s thumb, though! Call her bluff. She isn’t half the prima donna she thinks she is. On my side of the hall we know who’s who about this place.”
The business and editorial departments of “The Outcry” were separated by a long corridor and a great contempt. Miss Kalski dried her rings with tissue-paper and studied them with an appraising eye.
“Well, since you’re such a ’fraidy-
cat,” she went on, “maybe I can get a rise out of her myself. Now I’ve got you a ticket out of that shirt-front, I want you to go. I’ll drop in on Devine this afternoon.”
When Miss Kalski went back to her desk in the business manager’s private office, she turned to him familiarly, but not impertinently.
“Mr. Henderson, I want to send a kid over in the editorial stenographers’ to the Palace Thursday afternoon. She’s a nice kid, only she’s scared out of her skin all the time. Miss Devine’s her boss, and she’ll be just mean enough not to let the young one off. Would you say a word to her?”
The business manager lit a cigar.
“I’m not saying words to any of the highbrows over there. Try it out with Devine yourself. You’re not bashful.”
Miss Kalski shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
“Oh, very well.” She serpentined out of the room and crossed the Rubicon into the editorial offices. She found Ardessa typing O’Mally’s letters and wearing a pained expression.
“Good afternoon, Miss Devine,” she said carelessly. “Can we borrow Becky over there for Thursday afternoon? We’re short.”
Miss Devine looked piqued and tilted her head.
“I don’t think it’s customary, Miss Kalski, for the business department to use our people. We never have girls enough here to do the work. Of course if Mr. Henderson feels justified—”
“Thanks awfully, Miss Devine,”—Miss Kalski interrupted her with the perfectly smooth, good-natured tone which never betrayed a hint of the scorn every line of her sinuous figure expressed,—“I will tell Mr. Henderson. Perhaps we can do something for you some day.” Whether this was a threat, a kind wish, or an insinuation, no mortal could have told. Miss Kalski’s face was always suggesting insolence without being quite insolent. As she returned to her own domain she met the cashier’s head clerk in the hall. “That Devine woman’s a crime,” she murmured. The head clerk laughed tolerantly.
That afternoon as Miss Kalski was leaving the office at 5:15, on her way down the corridor she heard a typewriter clicking away in the empty, echoing editorial offices. She looked in, and found Becky bending forward over the machine as if she were about to swallow it.
“Hello, kid. Do you sleep with that?” she called. She walked up to Becky and glanced at her copy. “What do you let ’em keep you up nights over that stuff for?” she asked contemptuously. “The world wouldn’t suffer if that stuff never got printed.”
Rebecca looked up wildly. Not even Miss Kalski’s French pansy hat or her earrings and landscape veil could loosen Becky’s tenacious mind from Mr. Gerrard’s article on water power. She scarcely knew what Miss Kalski had said to her, certainly not what she meant.
“But I must make progress already, Miss Kalski,” she panted.
Miss Kalski gave her low, siren laugh.
“I should say you must!” she ejaculated.
Ardessa decided to take her vacation in June, and she arranged that Miss Milligan should do O’Mally’s work while she was away. Miss Milligan was blunt and noisy, rapid and inaccurate. It would be just as well for O’Mally to work with a coarse instrument for a time; he would be more appreciative, perhaps, of certain qualities to which he had seemed insensible of late. Ardessa was to leave for East Hampton on Sunday, and she spent Saturday morning instructing her substitute as to the state of the correspondence. At noon O’Mally burst into her room. All the morning he had been closeted with a new writer of mystery-stories just over from England.
“Can you stay and take my letters this afternoon, Miss Devine? You’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
Ardessa pouted, and tilted her head at the angle he was tired of.
“I’m sorry, Mr. O’Mally, but I’ve left all my shopping for this afternoon. I think Becky Tietelbaum could do them for you. I will tell her to be careful.”
“Oh, all right.” O’Mally bounced out with a reflection of Ardessa’s disdainful expression on his face. Saturday afternoon was always a half-holiday, to be sure, but since she had weeks of freedom when he was away—However—
At two o’clock Becky Tietelbaum appeared at his door, clad in the sober office suit which Miss Devine insisted she should wear, her notebook in her hand, and so frightened that her fingers were cold and her lips were pale. She had never taken dictation from the editor before. It was a great and terrifying occasion.
“Sit down,” he said encouragingly. He began dictating while he shook from his bag the manuscripts he had snatched away from the amazed English author that morning. Presently he looked up.
“Do I go too fast?”
“No, sir,” Becky found strength to say.
At the end of an hour he told her to go and type as many of the letters as she could while he went over the bunch of stuff he had torn from the Englishman. He was with the Hindu detective in an opium den in Shanghai when Becky returned and placed a pile of papers on his desk.
“How many?” he asked, without looking up.
“All you gave me, sir.”
“All, so soon? Wait a minute and let me see how many mistakes.” He went over the letters rapidly, signing them as he read. “They seem to be all right. I thought you were the girl that made so many mistakes.”
Rebecca was never too frightened to vindicate herself.
“Mr. O’Mally, sir, I don’t make mistakes with letters. It’s only copying the articles that have so many long words, and when the writing isn’t plain, like Mr. Gerrard’s. I never make many mistakes with Mr. Johnson’s articles, or with yours I don’t.”
O’Mally wheeled round in his chair, looked with curiosity at her long, tense face, her black eyes, and straight brows.
“Oh, so you sometimes copy articles, do you? How does that happen?”
“Yes, sir. Always Miss Devine gives me the articles to do. It’s good practice for me.”
“I see.” O’Mally shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking that he could get a rise out of the whole American public any day easier than he could get a rise out of Ardessa. “What editorials of mine have you copied lately, for instance?”
Rebecca blazed out at him, reciting rapidly:
“Oh, ‘A Word about the Rosenbaums,’ ‘Useless Navy-Yards,’ ‘Who Killed Cock Robin’—”
“Wait a minute.” O’Mally checked her flow. “What was that one about—Cock Robin?”
“It was all about why the secretary of the interior dismissed—”
“All right, all right. Copy those letters, and put them down the chute as you go out. Come in here for a minute on Monday morning.”
Becky hurried home to tell her father that she had taken the editor’s letters and had made no mistakes. On Monday she learned that she was to do O’Mally’s work for a few days. He disliked Miss Milligan, and he was annoyed with Ardessa for trying to put her over on him when there was better material at hand. With Rebecca he got on very well; she was impersonal, unreproachful, and she fairly panted for work. Everything was done almost before he told her what he wanted. She raced ahead with him; it was like riding a good modern bicycle after pumping along on an old hard tire.
On the day before Miss Devine’s return O’Mally strolled over for a chat with the business office.
“Henderson, your people are taking vacations now, I suppose? Could you use an extra girl?”
“If it’s that thin black one, I can.”
O’Mally gave him a wise smile.
“It isn’t. To be honest, I want to put one over on you. I want you to take Miss Devine over here for a while and speed her up. I can’t do anything. She’s got the upper hand of me. I don’t want to fire her, you understand, but she makes my life too difficult. It’s my fault, of course. I’ve pampered her. Give her a chance over here; maybe she’ll come back. You can be firm with ’em, can’t you?”
Henderson
glanced toward the desk where Miss Kalski’s lightning eye was skimming over the printing-house bills that he was supposed to verify himself.
“Well, if I can’t, I know who can,” he replied, with a chuckle.
“Exactly,” O’Mally agreed. “I’m counting on the force of Miss Kalski’s example. Miss Devine’s all right, Miss Kalski, but she needs regular exercise. She owes it to her complexion. I can’t discipline people.”
Miss Kalski’s only reply was a low, indulgent laugh.
O’Mally braced himself on the morning of Ardessa’s return. He told the waiter at his club to bring him a second pot of coffee and to bring it hot. He was really afraid of her. When she presented herself at his office at 10:30 he complimented her upon her tan and asked about her vacation. Then he broke the news to her.
“We want to make a few temporary changes about here, Miss Devine, for the summer months. The business department is short of help. Henderson is going to put Miss Kalski on the books for a while to figure out some economies for him, and he is going to take you over. Meantime I’ll get Becky broken in so that she could take your work if you were sick or anything.”
Ardessa drew herself up.
“I’ve not been accustomed to commercial work, Mr. O’Mally. I’ve no interest in it, and I don’t care to brush up in it.”
“Brushing up is just what we need, Miss Devine.” O’Mally began tramping about his room expansively. “I’m going to brush everybody up. I’m going to brush a few people out; but I want you to stay with us, of course. You belong here. Don’t be hasty now. Go to your room and think it over.”
Ardessa was beginning to cry, and O’Mally was afraid he would lose his nerve. He looked out of the window at a new skyscraper that was building, while she retired without a word.
At her own desk Ardessa sat down breathless and trembling. The one thing she had never doubted was her unique value to O’Mally. She had, as she told herself, taught him everything. She would say a few things to Becky Tietelbaum, and to that pigeon-breasted tailor, her father, too! The worst of it was that Ardessa had herself brought it all about; she could see that clearly now. She had carefully trained and qualified her successor. Why had she ever civilized Becky? Why had she taught her manners and deportment, broken her of the gum-chewing habit, and made her presentable? In her original state O’Mally would never have put up with her, no matter what her ability.