Personality Plus Part 13

"I made up my mind I could play the game as long as he could.

"'I've learned not to lose my temper when I'm in the middle of a white-hot, impa.s.sioned business appeal and the office boy bounces in to say to the boss: "Mrs. Jones is waiting. She says you were going to help her pick out wall paper this morning;" and Jones says, "Tell her I'll be there in five minutes."'

"'Sure you've learned that?' said Berg.

"'Sure,' says I. 'And I've learned to let the other fellow think your argument's his own. He likes it. I've learned that the surest kind of copy is the slow, insidious kind, like the Featherloom Petticoat Company's campaign. That was an ideal campaign because it didn't urge and insist that the public buy Featherlooms. It just eased the idea to them. It started by sketching a history of the petticoat, beginning with Eve's fig leaf and working up. Before they knew it they were interested.'

"'That so? That campaign was your mother's idea, McChesney.' You know, Mother, he thinks you're a wonder."

"So I am," agreed Emma McChesney calmly. "Go on."

"Well, I went on. I told him that I'd learned to stand so that the light wouldn't s.h.i.+ne in my client's eyes when I was talking to him. I lost a big order once because the glare from the window irritated the man I was talking to. I told Berg all the tricks I'd learned, and some I hadn't thought of till that minute. Berg put in a word now and then. I thought he was sort of guying me, as he sometimes does--not unkindly, you know, but in that quiet way he has. Finally I stopped for breath, or something, and he said:

"'Now let me talk a minute, McChesney. Anybody can teach you the essentials of the advertising business, if you've any advertising instinct in you. But it's what you pick up on the side, by your own efforts and out of your own experience, that lifts you out of the scrub cla.s.s. Now I don't think you're an ideal advertising man by any means, McChesney. You're shy on training and experience, and you've just begun to acquire that golden quality known as balance. I could name a hundred men that are better all-around advertising men than you will ever be. Those men have advertising ability that glows steadily and evenly, like a well-banked fire.

But you've got the kind of ability that flares up, dies down, flares up. But every flare is a real blaze that lights things red while it lasts, and sends a new glow through the veins of business. You've got personality, and youth, and enthusiasm, and a precious spark of the real thing known as advertising genius.

There's no describing it. You know what I mean. Also, you know enough about actual advertising not to run an ad for a five-thousand-dollar motor car in the "Police Gazette." All of which leads up to this question: How would you like to buy your neckties in Chicago, McChesney?'

"'Chicago!' I blurted.

"'We've taken a suite of offices in the new Lakeview Building on Michigan Avenue. Would you like your office done in mahogany or oak?'"

Jock came to a full stop before his mother. His cheeks were scarlet. Hers were pale. He was breathing quickly. She was very quiet. His eyes glowed. So did hers, but the glow was dimmed by a mist.

"Mahogany's richer, but make it oak, son. It doesn't show finger-marks so." Then, quite suddenly, she stood up, shaking a little, and buried her face in the boy's shoulder.

"Why--why, Mother! Don't! Don't, Blonde. We'll see each other every few weeks. I'll be coming to New York to see the sights, like the rest of the rubes, and I suppose the noise and lights will confuse me so that I'll be glad to get back to the sylvan quiet of Chicago. And then you'll run out there, eh? We'll have regular bats, Mrs. Mack. Dinner and the theater and supper! Yes?"

"Yes," said Emma McChesney, in m.u.f.fled tones that totally lacked enthusiasm.

"Chicago's really only a suburb of New York, anyway, these days, and--"

Emma McChesney's head came up sharply. "Look here, son. If you're going to live in Chicago I advise you to cut that suburb talk, and sort of forget New York. Chicago's quite a village, for an inland settlement, even if it has only two or three million people, and a lake as big as all outdoors. That kind of talk won't elect you to the University Club, son."

So they talked, all through supper and during the evening. Rather, Jock talked and his mother listened, interrupting with only an occasional remark when the bubble of the boy's elation seemed to grow too great.

Quite suddenly Jock was silent. After the almost incessant rush of conversation quiet settled down strangely on the two seated there in the living-room with its soft-shaded lamps. Jock picked up a magazine, twirled its pages, put it down, strolled into his own room, and back again.

"Mother," he said suddenly, standing before her, "there was a time when you were afraid I wasn't going to pan out, wasn't there?"

"Not exactly afraid, dear, just a little doubtful, perhaps."

Jock smiled a tolerant, forgiving smile. "You see, Mother, you didn't understand, that's all. A woman doesn't. I was all right. A man would have realized that. I don't mean, dear, that you haven't always been wonderful, because you have. But it takes a man to understand a man. When you thought I was going bad on your hands I was just developing, that's all. Remember that time in Chicago, Mother?"

"Yes," answered Emma McChesney, "I remember."

"Now a man would have understood that that was only kid foolishness. If a fellow's got the stuff in him it'll show up, sooner or later. If I hadn't had it in me I wouldn't be going to Chicago as manager of the Berg, Shriner Western office, would I?"

"No, dear."

Jock looked at her. In an instant he was all contrition and tenderness. "You're tired. I've talked you to death, haven't I?

Lordy, it's midnight! And I want to get down early to-morrow.

Conference with Mr. Berg, and Hupp." He tried not to sound too important.

Emma McChesney took his head between her two hands and kissed him once on the lips, then, standing a-tiptoe, kissed his eyelids with infinite gentleness as you kiss a baby's eyes. Then she brought his cheek up against hers. And so they stood for a moment, silently.

Ten minutes later there came the sound of blithe whistling from Jock's room. Jock always whistled when he went to bed and when he rose. Even these years of living in a New York apartment had not broken him of the habit. It was a cheerful, disconnected whistling, sometimes high and clear, sometimes under the breath, sometimes interspersed with song, and sometimes ceasing altogether at critical moments, say, during shaving, or while bringing the four-in-hand up tight and snug under the collar. It was one of those comfortable little noises that indicate a masculine presence; one of those pleasant, rea.s.suring, man-in-the-house noises that every woman loves.

Emma McChesney, putting herself to bed in her room across the hall, found herself listening, brush poised, lips parted, as though to the exquisite strains of celestial music. There came the thump of a shoe on the floor. An interval of quiet. Then another thump. Without having been conscious of it, Emma McChesney had grown to love the noises that accompanied Jock's retiring and rising. His dressing was always signalized by bangings and thumpings. His splas.h.i.+ngs in the tub were tremendous. His morning plunge could be heard all over the six-room apartment. Mrs.

McChesney used to call gayly through the door:

"Mercy, Jock! You sound like a school of whales coming up for air."

"You'll think I'm a school of sharks when it comes to breakfast,"

Jock would call back. "Tell Annie to make enough toast, Mum. She's the tightest thing with the toast I ever did--"

The rest would be lost in a final surging splash.

The noises in the room across the hall had subsided now. She listened more intently. No, a drawer banged. Another. Then:

"Hasn't my gray suit come back from the tailor's?"

"It was to be sponged, too, you know. He said he'd bring it Wednesday. This is Tuesday."

"Oh!" Another bang. Then: '"Night, Mother!"

"Good night, dear." Creaking sounds, then a long, comfortable sigh of complete relaxation.

Emma McChesney went on with her brus.h.i.+ng. She brushed her hair with the usual number of swift even strokes, from the top of the s.h.i.+ning head to the waist. She braided her hair into two plaits, Gretchen fas.h.i.+on. Millions of scanty-locked women would have given all they possessed to look as Emma McChesney looked standing there in kimono and gown. She nicked out the light. Then she, too, relaxed upon her pillow with a little sigh. Quiet fell on the little apartment. The street noises came up to her, now roaring, now growing faint. Emma McChesney lay there sleepless. She lay flat, hands clasped across her breast, her braids spread out on the pillow. In the darkness of the room the years rolled before her in panorama: her girlhood, her marriage, her unhappiness, Jock, the divorce, the struggle for work, those ten years on the road. Those ten years on the road! How she had hated them--and loved them. The stuffy trains, the jarring sleepers, the bare little hotel bedrooms, the bad food, the irregular hours, the loneliness, the hard work, the disappointments, the temptations.

Yes but the fascination of it, the dear friends she had made, the great human lesson of it all! And all for Jock. That Jock might have good schools, good clothes, good books, good surroundings, happy times. Why, Jock had been the reason for it all! She had swallowed insult because of Jock. She had borne the drudgery because of Jock. She had resisted temptation, smiled under hards.h.i.+p, worked, fought, saved, succeeded, all because of Jock.

And now this pivot about which her whole life had revolved was to be pulled up, wrenched away.

Over Emma McChesney, lying there in the dark, there swept one of those unreasoning night-fears. The fear of living. The fear of life. A straining of the eyeb.a.l.l.s in the dark. The pounding of heart-beats.

She sat up in bed. Her hands went to her face. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes smarted. She felt that she must see Jock. At once. Just to be near him. To touch him. To take him in her arms, with his head in the hollow of her breast, as she used to when he was a baby. Why, he had been a baby only yesterday. And now he was a man. Big enough to stand alone, to live alone, to do without her.

Emma McChesney flung aside the covers and sprang out of bed. She thrust her feet in slippers, groped for the kimono at the foot of the bed and tiptoed to the door. She listened. No sound from the other room. She stole across the hall, stopped, listened, gained the door. It was open an inch or more. Just to be near him, to know that he lay there, sleeping! She pushed the door very, very gently. Then she stood in the doorway a moment, scarcely breathing, her head thrust forward, her whole body tense with listening. She could not hear him breathe! She caught her breath again in that unreasoning fear and took a quick step forward.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" said a voice. Simultaneously the light flashed on. Emma McChesney found herself blinking at a determined young man who was steadily pointing a short, chubby, businesslike looking steel affair in her direction. Then the hand that held the steel dropped.

"What is this, anyway?" demanded Jock rather crossly. "A George Cohan comedy?"

Emma McChesney leaned against the foot of the bed rather weakly.

"What did you think--"

"What would you think if you heard some one come sneaking along the hall, stopping, listening, sneaking to your door, and then opening it, and listening again, and sneaking in? What would you think it was? How did I know you were going around making social calls at two o'clock in the morning!"

Suddenly Emma McChesney began to laugh. She leaned over the footboard and laughed hysterically, her head in her arms. Jock stared a moment in offended disapproval. Then the humor of it caught him, and he buried his head in his pillow to stifle unseemly shrieks. His legs kicked spasmodically beneath the bedclothes.