Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney

by Edna Ferber

  II

  REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK

  Emma McChesney, Mrs. (I place it in the background because she generallydid) swung off the 2:15, crossed the depot platform, and dived into thehotel 'bus. She had to climb over the feet of a fat man in brown and alean man in black, to do it. Long practise had made her perfect in theart. She knew that the fat man and the thin man were hogging the endseats so that they could be the first to register and get a choice ofrooms when the 'bus reached the hotel. The vehicle smelled of straw, andmold, and stables, and dampness, and tobacco, as 'buses have from oldJonas Chuzzlewit's time to this. Nine years on the road had accustomedEmma McChesney's nostrils to 'bus smells. She gazed stolidly out ofthe window, crossed one leg over the other, remembered that her snugsuit-skirt wasn't built for that attitude, uncrossed them again, andcaught the delighted and understanding eye of the fat traveling man, whowas a symphony in brown--brown suit, brown oxfords, brown scarf, brownbat, brown-bordered handkerchief just peeping over the edge of hispocket. He looked like a colossal chocolate fudge.

  "Red-faced, grinning, and a naughty wink--I'll bet he sells coffins andundertakers' supplies," mused Emma McChesney. "And the other one--thetall, lank, funereal affair in black--I suppose his line would be sheetmusic, or maybe phonographs. Or perhaps he's a lyceum bureau reader,scheduled to give an evening of humorous readings for the Young Men'sSunday Evening Club course at the First M. E. Church."

  During those nine years on the road for the Featherloom Skirt CompanyEmma McChesney had picked up a side line or two on human nature.

  She was not surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man inblack leap out of the 'bus and into the hotel before she had had time tostraighten her hat after the wheels had bumped up against the curbing.By the time she reached the desk the two were disappearing in the wakeof a bell-boy.

  The sartorial triumph behind the desk, languidly read her signatureupside down, took a disinterested look at her, and yelled:

  "Front! Show the lady up to nineteen."

  Emma McChesney took three steps in the direction of the stairway towardwhich the boy was headed with her bags. Then she stopped.

  "Wait a minute, boy," she said, pleasantly enough; and walked back tothe desk. She eyed the clerk, a half-smile on her lips, one arm, in itsneat tailored sleeve, resting on the marble, while her right forefinger,trimly gloved, tapped an imperative little tattoo. (Perhaps you thinkthat last descriptive sentence is as unnecessary as it is garbled.But don't you get a little picture of her--trim, taut, tailored,mannish-booted, flat-heeled, linen-collared, sailor-hatted?)

  "You've made a mistake, haven't you?" she inquired.

  "Mistake?" repeated the clerk, removing his eyes from their lovingcontemplation of his right thumb-nail. "Guess not."

  "Oh, think it over," drawled Emma McChesney. "I've never seen nineteen,but I can describe it with both eyes shut, and one hand tied behind me.It's an inside room, isn't it, over the kitchen, and just next to thewater butt where the maids come to draw water for the scrubbing at 5A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for nineteen, and thepatent ventilators work just next door, and there's a pet rat that makeshis headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and thehousekeeper whose room is across the hail is afflicted with a bronchialcough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of welcome that you fellows handout to us women on the road. This is new territory for me--my firsttrip West. Think it over. Don't--er--say, sixty-five strike you as beingnearer my size?"

  The clerk stared at Emma McChesney, and Emma McChesney coolly staredback at the clerk.

  "Our aim," began he, loftily, "is to make our guests as comfortable aspossible on all occasions. But the last lady drummer who--"

  "That's all right," interrupted Emma McChesney, "but I'm not the kindthat steals the towels, and I don't carry an electric iron with me,either. Also I don't get chummy with the housekeeper and the dining-roomgirls half an hour after I move in. Most women drummers are living up totheir reputations, but some of us are living 'em down. I'm for revisiondownward. You haven't got my number, that's all."

  A slow gleam of unwilling admiration illumined the clerk's chill eye. Heturned and extracted another key with its jangling metal tag, from oneof the many pigeonholes behind him.

  "You win," he said. He leaned over the desk and lowered his voicediscreetly. "Say, girlie, go on into the cafe and have a drink on me."

  "Wrong again," answered Emma McChesney. "Never use it. Bad for thecomplexion. Thanks just the same. Nice little hotel you've got here."

  In the corridor leading to sixty-five there was a great litter of pails,and mops, and brooms, and damp rags, and one heard the sigh of a vacuumcleaner.

  "Spring house-cleaning," explained the bellboy, hurdling a pail.

  Emma McChesney picked her way over a little heap of dust-cloths and aladder or so.

  "House-cleaning," she repeated dreamily; "spring house-cleaning." Andthere came a troubled, yearning light into her eyes. It lingered thereafter the boy had unlocked and thrown open the door of sixty-five,pocketed his dime, and departed.

  Sixty-five was--well, you know what sixty-five generally is in asmall Middle-Western town. Iron bed--tan wall-paper--pine table--pinedresser--pine chair--red carpet--stuffy smell--fly buzzing atwindow--sun beating in from the west. Emma McChesney saw it all in oneaccustomed glance.

  "Lordy, I hate to think what nineteen must be," she told herself, andunclasped her bag. Out came the first aid to the travel-stained--ajar of cold cream. It was followed by powder, chamois, brush, comb,tooth-brush. Emma McChesney dug four fingers into the cold cream jar,slapped the stuff on her face, rubbed it in a bit, wiped it off witha dry towel, straightened her hat, dusted the chamois over her face,glanced at her watch and hurriedly whisked downstairs.

  "After all," she mused, "that thin guy might not be out for a musichouse. Maybe his line is skirts, too. You never can tell. Anyway, I'llbeat him to it."

  Saturday afternoon and spring-time in a small town! Do you know it? MainStreet--on the right side--all a-bustle; farmers' wagons drawn up at thecurbing; farmers' wives in the inevitable rusty black with dowdy hatsfurbished up with a red muslin rose in honor of spring; grand opening atthe new five-and-ten-cent store, with women streaming in and streamingout again, each with a souvenir pink carnation pinned to her coat; everyone carrying bundles and yellow paper bags that might contain bananas orhats or grass seed; the thirty-two automobiles that the town boastsall dashing up and down the street, driven by hatless youths incareful college clothes; a crowd of at least eleven waiting at Jenson'sdrug-store corner for the next interurban car.

  Emma McChesney found herself strolling when she should have beenhustling in the direction of the Novelty Cloak and Suit Store. Shewas aware of a vague, strangely restless feeling in the region of herheart--or was it her liver?--or her lungs?

  Reluctantly she turned in at the entrance of the Novelty Cloak and SuitStore and asked for the buyer. (Here we might introduce one of thoseside-splitting little business deal scenes. But there can be paid nofiner compliment to Emma McChesney's saleswomanship than to state thatshe landed her man on a busy Saturday afternoon, with a store full ofcustomers and the head woman clerk dead against her from the start.)

  As she was leaving:

  "Generally it's the other way around," smiled the boss, regarding Emma'strim comeliness, "but seeing you're a lady, why, it'll be on me." Hereached for his hat. "Let's go and have--ah--a little something."

  "Not any, thanks," Emma McChesney replied, a little wearily.

  On her way back to the hotel she frankly loitered. Just to look at hermade you certain that she was not of our town. Now, that doesn't implythat the women of our town do not dress well, because they do. But therewas something about her--a flirt of chiffon at the throat, or her hatquill stuck in a certain way, or the stitching on her gloves, or thevamp of her shoe--that was of a style which had not reached us yet.

  As Emma McChesney loitered, looking in at the shop windows and watc
hingthe women hurrying by, intent on the purchase of their Sunday dinners,that vaguely restless feeling seized her again. There were rows of plumpfowls in the butcher-shop windows, and juicy roasts. The cunning hand ofthe butcher had enhanced the redness of the meat by trimmings of curlyparsley. Salad things and new vegetables glowed behind the grocers'plate-glass. There were the tender green of lettuces, the coral oftomatoes, the brown-green of stout asparagus stalks, bins of spring peasand beans, and carrots, and bunches of greens for soup. There came overthe businesslike soul of Emma McChesney a wild longing to go in andselect a ten-pound roast, taking care that there should be just theright proportion of creamy fat and red meat. She wanted to go in andpoke her fingers in the ribs of a broiler. She wanted to order wildly ofsweet potatoes and vegetables, and soup bones, and apples for pies. Sheached to turn back her sleeves and don a blue-and-white checked apronand roll out noodles.

  She still was fighting that wild impulse as she walked back to thehotel, went up to her stuffy room, and, without removing hat or coat,seated herself on the edge of the bed and stared long and hard at thetan wall-paper.

  There is this peculiarity about tan wall-paper. If you stare at itlong enough you begin to see things. Emma McChesney, who pulled downsomething over thirty-two hundred a year selling Featherloom Petticoats,saw this:

  A kitchen, very bright and clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanlinessthat bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls,and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came thesounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinelydelectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself inan all-enveloping checked gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hairsomewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed itback with a floury hand. Her cheeks were surprisingly pink, and her eyeswere very bright, and she was scraping a baking board and rolling-pin,and trimming the edges of pie tins, and turning with a whirl to open theoven door, stooping to dip up spoonfuls of gravy only to pour the richbrown liquid over the meat again. There were things on top of the stovethat required sticking into with a fork, and other things that demandedtasting and stirring with a spoon. A neighbor came in to borrow a cup ofmolasses, and Emma urged upon her one of her freshly baked cookies. Andthere was a ring at the front-door bell, and she had to rush away to dobattle with a persistent book agent....

  The buzzing fly alighted on Emma McChesney's left eyebrow. She swattedit with a hand that was not quite quick enough, spoiled the picture, andslowly rose from her perch at the bedside.

  "Oh, damn!" she remarked, wearily, and went over to the dresser. Thenshe pulled down her shirtwaist all around and went down to supper.

  The dining-room was very warm, and there came a smell of lardy thingsfrom the kitchen. Those supping were doing so languidly.

  "I'm dying for something cool, and green, and fresh," remarked Emma tothe girl who filled her glass with iced water; "something springish andtempting."

  "Well," sing-songed she of the ruffled, starched skirt, "we haveham'n-aigs, mutton chops, cold veal, cold roast--"

  "Two, fried," interrupted Emma hopelessly, "and a pot of tea--black."

  Supper over she passed through the lobby on her way upstairs. The placewas filled with men. They were lolling in the big leather chairs at thewindow, or standing about, smoking and talking. There was a rattleof dice from the cigar counter, and a burst of laughter from the mengathered about it. It all looked very bright, and cheery, and sociable.Emma McChesney, turning to ascend the stairs to her room, felt that she,too, would like to sit in one of the big leather chairs in the windowand talk to some one.

  Some one was playing the piano in the parlor. The doors were open. EmmaMcChesney glanced in. Then she stopped. It was not the appearance ofthe room that held her. You may have heard of the wilds of an Africanjungle--the trackless wastes of the desert--the solitude of theforest--the limitless stretch of the storm-tossed ocean; they are cozyand snug when compared to the utter and soul-searing dreariness of asmall town hotel parlor. You know what it is--red carpet, red plush andbrocade furniture, full-length walnut mirror, battered piano on whichreposes a sheet of music given away with the Sunday supplement of a citypaper.

  A man was seated at the piano, playing. He was not playing the Sundaysupplement sheet music. His brown hat was pushed back on his head andthere was a fat cigar in his pursy mouth, and as he played he squintedup through the smoke. He was playing Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Not asyou have heard it played by sweet young things; not as you have heardit rendered by the Apollo String Quartette. Under his fingers it was afragrant, trembling, laughing, sobbing, exquisite thing. He was playingit in a way to make you stare straight ahead and swallow hard.

  Emma McChesney leaned her head against the door. The man at the pianodid not turn. So she tip-toed in, found a chair in a corner, andnoiselessly slipped into it. She sat very still, listening, and thepast-that-might-have-been, and the future-that-was-to-be, stretchedbehind and before her, as is strangely often the case when we arelistening to music. She stared ahead with eyes that were very wide openand bright. Something in the attitude of the man sitting hunched thereover the piano keys, and something in the beauty and pathos of the musicbrought a hot haze of tears to her eyes. She leaned her head againstthe back of the chair, and shut her eyes and wept quietly andheart-brokenly. The tears slid down her cheeks, and dropped on her smarttailored waist and her Irish lace jabot, and she didn't care a bit.

  The last lovely note died away. The fat man's hands dropped limply tohis sides. Emma McChesney stared at them, fascinated. They were quitemarvelous hands; not at all the sort of hands one would expect to seeattached to the wrists of a fat man. They were slim, nervous, sensitivehands, pink-tipped, tapering, blue-veined, delicate. As Emma McChesneystared at them the man turned slowly on the revolving stool. His plump,pink face was dolorous, sagging, wan-eyed.

  He watched Emma McChesney as she sat up and dried her eyes. A satisfiedlight dawned in his face.

  "Thanks," he said, and mopped his forehead and chin and neck with thebrown-edged handkerchief.

  "You--you can't be Paderewski. He's thin. But if he plays any betterthan that, then I don't want to hear him. You've upset me for the restof the week. You've started me thinking about things--about thingsthat--that-"

  The fat man clasped his thin, nervous hands in front of him and leanedforward.

  "About things that you're trying to forget. It starts me that way, too.That's why sometimes I don't touch the keys for weeks. Say, what do youthink of a man who can play like that, and who is out on the road for aliving just because he knows it's a sure thing? Music! That's mygift. And I've buried it. Why? Because the public won't take a fat manseriously. When he sits down at the piano they begin to howl for Italianrag. Why, I'd rather play the piano in a five-cent moving picture housethan do what I'm doing now. But the old man wanted his son to be abusiness man, not a crazy, piano-playing galoot. That's the way he putit. And I was darn fool enough to think he was right. Why can't peoplestand up and do the things they're out to do! Not one person in athousand does. Why, take you--I don't know you from Eve, but just fromthe way you shed the briny I know you're busy regretting."

  "Regretting?" repeated Emma McChesney, in a wail. "Do you know what Iam? I'm a lady drummer. And do you know what I want to do this minute?I want to clean house. I want to wind a towel around my head, and pinup my skirt, and slosh around with a pail of hot, soapy water. I want topound a couple of mattresses in the back yard, and eat a cold dinner offthe kitchen table. That's what I want to do."

  "Well, go on and do it," said the fat man.

  "Do it? I haven't any house to clean. I got my divorce ten years ago,and I've been on the road ever since. I don't know why I stick. I'mpulling down a good, fat salary and commissions, but it's no life fora woman, and I know it, but I'm not big enough to quit. It's differentwith a man on the road. He can spend his evenings taking in two or threenickel shows, or he can stand on the drug-store corner
and watch thepretty girls go by, or he can have a game of billiards, or maybe cards.Or he can have a nice, quiet time just going up to his room, and smokinga cigar and writing to his wife or his girl. D'you know what I do?"

  "No," answered the fat man, interestedly. "What?"

  "Evenings I go up to my room and sew or read. Sew! Every hook and eyeand button on my clothes is moored so tight that even the hand laundrycan't tear 'em off. You couldn't pry those fastenings away withdynamite. When I find a hole in my stockings I'm tickled to death,because it's something to mend. And read? Everything from the Rules ofthe House tacked up on the door to spelling out the French short storyin the back of the Swell Set Magazine. It's getting on my nerves. Doyou know what I do Sunday mornings? No, you don't. Well, I go to church,that's what I do. And I get green with envy watching the other womenthere getting nervous about 11:45 or so, when the minister is still inknee-deep, and I know they're wondering if Lizzie has basted the chickenoften enough, and if she has put the celery in cold water, and theice-cream is packed in burlap in the cellar, and if she has forgotten tomix in a tablespoon of flour to make it smooth. You can tell by the lookon their faces that there's company for dinner. And you know that afterdinner they'll sit around, and the men will smoke, and the women folkswill go upstairs, and she'll show the other woman her new scalloped,monogrammed, hand-embroidered guest towels, and the waist that hercousin Ethel brought from Paris. And maybe they'll slip off their skirtsand lie down on the spare-room bed for a ten minutes' nap. And you canhear the hired girl rattling the dishes in the kitchen, and talking toher lady friend who is helping her wipe up so they can get out early.You can hear the two of them laughing above the clatter of the dishes--"

  The fat man banged one fist down on the piano keys with a crash.

  "I'm through," he said. "I quit to-night. I've got my own life tolive. Here, will you shake on it? I'll quit if you will. You're a bornhousekeeper. You don't belong on the road any more than I do. It's nowor never. And it's going to be now with me. When I strike the pearlygates I'm not going to have Saint Peter say to me, 'Ed, old kid, whathave you done with your talents?'"

  "You're right," sobbed Emma McChesney, her face glowing.

  "By the way," interrupted the fat man, "what's your line?"

  "Petticoats. I'm out for T. A. Buck's Featherloom Skirts. What's yours?"

  "Suffering cats!" shouted the fat man. "D' you mean to tell me thatyou're the fellow who sold that bill to Blum, of the Novelty Cloak andSuit concern, and spoiled a sale for me?"

  "You! Are you--"

  "You bet I am. I sell the best little skirt in the world. Strauss'sSans-silk Petticoat, warranted not to crack, rip, or fall into holes.Greatest little skirt in the country."

  Emma McChesney straightened her collar and jabot with a jerk, and satup.

  "Oh, now, don't give me that bunk. You've got a good little seller, allright, but that guaranty don't hold water any more than the petticoatcontains silk. I know that stuff. It looms up big in the windowdisplays, but it's got a filler of glucose, or starch or mucilage orsomething, and two days after you wear it it's as limp as a cheeseclothrag. It's showy, but you take a line like mine, for instance, why--"

  "My customers swear by me. I make DeKalb to-morrow, and there'sNussbaum, of the Paris Emporium, the biggest store there, who just--"

  "I make DeKalb, too," remarked Emma McChesney, the light of battle inher eye.

  "You mean," gently insinuated the fat man, "that you were going to, butthat's all over now."

  "Huh?" said Emma.

  "Our agreement, you know," the fat man reminded her, sweetly. "Youaren't going back on that. The cottage and the Sunday dinner for you,remember."

  "Of course," agreed Emma listlessly. "I think I'll go up and get somesleep now. Didn't get much last night on the road."

  "Won't you--er--come down and have a little something moist? Or we couldhave it sent up here," suggested the fat man.

  "You're the third man that's asked me that to-day," snapped EmmaMcChesney, somewhat crossly. "Say, what do I look like, anyway? I guessI'll have to pin a white ribbon on my coat lapel."

  "No offense," put in the fat man, with haste. "I just thought it wouldbind our bargain. I hope you'll be happy, and contented, and all that,you know."

  "Let it go double," replied Emma McChesney, and shook his hand.

  "Guess I'll run down and get a smoke," remarked he.

  He ran down the stairs in a manner wonderfully airy for one so stout.Emma watched him until he disappeared around a bend in the stairs. Thenshe walked hastily in the direction of sixty-five.

  Down in the lobby the fat man, cigar in mouth, was cautioning the clerk,and emphasizing his remarks with one forefinger.

  "I want to leave a call for six thirty," he was saying. "Not a minutelater. I've got to get out of here on that 7:35 for DeKalb. Got a Sundaycustomer there."

  As he turned away a telephone bell tinkled at the desk. The clerk benthis stately head.

  "Clerk. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am, there's no train out of here to-nightfor DeKalb. To-morrow morning. Seven thirty-five A.M. I sure will. Atsix-thirty? Surest thing you know."