Personality Plus Part 3

At which there rose up before the reader a vision of Kreiss himself--baggy-eyed, cultivated English accent, interested in polo, fast growing contemptuous of things American.

Or still another:

_Hodge Manufacturing Company:_

Mr. Hodge is a very conservative gentleman. Sits still and lets others do the talking. Has gained quite a reputation for business ac.u.men with this one attribute. Spent $500 last year.

Holding his breath preparatory to taking another plunge.

It was about the time that Jock McChesney had got over the novelty of paying for his own clothes, and had begun to talk business in a slightly patronizing way to his clever and secretly amused mother, Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, that Sam Hupp noticed a rather c.o.c.ky over-a.s.surance in Jock's att.i.tude toward the world in general.

Whereupon he sent for him.

On Sam Hupp's broad flat desk stood an array of diminutive jars, and bottles, and tiny pots that would have shamed the toilette table of a musical comedy star's dressing-room. There were rose-tinted salves in white bottles. There were white creams in rose-tinted jars. There were tins of ointment and boxes of fragrant soap.

Jock McChesney, entering briskly, eyed the array in some surprise.

Then he grinned, and glanced wickedly at Sam Hupp's prematurely bald head.

"No use, Mr. Hupp. They say if it's once gone it's gone. Get a toupee."

"Shut up!" growled Sam Hupp, good-humoredly. "Stay in this game long enough and you'll be a hairless wonder yourself. Ten years ago the girls used to have to tie their hands or wear mittens to keep from running their white fingers through my waving silken locks. Sit down a minute."

Jock reached forward and took up a jar of cream. He frowned in thought. Then: "Thought I recognized this stuff. Mother uses it.

I've seen it on the bathroom shelf."

"You bet she uses it," retorted Sam Hupp. "What's more, millions of other women will be using it in the next few years. This woman," he pointed to the name on the label, "has. .h.i.t upon the real thing in toilette flub-dub. She's made a little fortune already, and if she don't look out she'll be rich. They've got quite a plant. When she started she used to put the stuff together herself over the kitchen stove. They say it's made of cottage cheese, stirred smooth and tinted pink. Well, anyway they're nationally known now--or will be when they start to advertise right."

"I've seen some of their stuff advertised--somewhere," interrupted Jock, "but I don't remember--"

"There you are. You see the head of this concern is a little bit frightened at the way she seems slated to become a lady cold cream magnate. They say she's scared pink for fear somebody will steal her recipes. She has a kid nephew who acts as general manager, and they're both on the job all the time. They say the lady herself looks like the spinster in a b'gosh drama. You can get a boy to look up your train schedule."

Train! Schedule! Across Jock McChesney's mind there flashed a vision of himself, alert, confident, brisk, taking the luxurious nine o'clock for Philadelphia. Or, maybe, the Limited to Chicago.

Das.h.i.+ng down to the station in a taxi, of course. Strolling down the car aisle to take his place among those other thoroughbreds of commerce--men whose chamois gloves and walking sticks, and talk of golf and baseball and motoring spelled elegant leisure, even as their keen eyes and shrewd faces and low-voiced exchange of such terms as "stocks," and "sales" and "propositions" proclaimed them intent on bagging the day's business. Sam Hupp's next words brought him back to reality with a jerk.

"I think you have to change at Buffalo. It gets you to Tonawanda in the morning. Rotten train."

"Tonawanda!" repeated Jock.

"Now listen, kid." Sam Hupp leaned forward, and his eyes behind their great round black-rimmed gla.s.ses were intent on Jock. "I'm not going to try to steer you. You think that advertising is a game. It isn't. There are those who think it's a science. But it isn't that either. It's white magic, that's what it is. And you can't learn it from books, any more than you can master trout fis.h.i.+ng from reading 'The Complete Angler.'" He swung about and swept the beauty lotions before him in a little heap at the end of his desk. "Here, take this stuff. And get chummy with it. Eat it, if necessary; learn it somehow."

Jock stood up, a little dazed. "But, what!--How?--I mean--"

Sam Hupp glanced up at him. "Sending you down there isn't my idea.

It's the Old Man's. He's got an idea that you--" He paused and put a detaining hand on Jock McChesney's arm. "Look here. You think I know a little something about advertising, don't you?"

"You!" laughed Jock. "You're the guy who put the whitening in the Great White Way. Everybody knows you were the--"

"M-m-m, thanks," interrupted Sam Hupp, a little dryly. "Let me tell you something, young 'un. I've got what you might call a thirty-horse-power mind. I keep it running on high all the time, with the m.u.f.fler cut out, and you can hear me coming for miles.

But the Old Man,"--he leaned forward impressively,--"the Old Man, boy, has the eighty-power kind, built like a watch--no smoke, no dripping, and you can't even hear the engine purr. But when he throws her open! Well, he can pa.s.s everything on the road. Don't forget that." He turned to his desk again and reached for a stack of papers and cuts. "Good luck to you. If you want any further details you can get 'em from Hayes." He plunged into his work.

There arose in Jock McChesney's mind that instinct of the man in his hour of triumph--the desire to tell a woman of his greatness.

He paused a second outside Sam Hupp's office, turned, and walked quickly down the length of the great central room. He stopped before a little gla.s.s door at the end, tapped lightly, and entered.

Grace Galt, copy-writer, looked up, frowning a little. Then she smiled. Miss Galt had a complete layout on the desk before her--sc.r.a.p books, cuts, copy, magazines. There was a little smudge on the end of her nose. Grace Galt was writing about magnetos.

She was writing about magnetos in a way to make you want to drop your customer, or your ironing, or your game, and go downtown and buy that particular kind of magneto at once. Which is the secretest part of the wizardry of advertising copy. To look at Grace Galt you would have thought that she should have been writing about the rose-tinted jars in Jock McChesney's hands instead of about such things as ignition, and insulation, and ball bearings, and induction windings. But it was Grace Galt's gift that she could take just such hard, dry, technical facts and weave them into a story that you followed to the end. She could make you see the romance in condensers and transformers. She had the power that caused the reader to lose himself in the charm of magnetic poles, and ball bearings, and high-tension sparks.

"Just dropped in to say good-by," said Jock, very casually. "Going to run up-state to see the Athena Company--toilette specialties, you know. It ought to be a big account."

"Athena?" Grace Galt regarded him absently, her mind still on her work. Then her eyes cleared. "You mean at Tonawanda? And they're sending you! Well!" She put out a congratulatory hand. Jock gripped it gratefully.

"Not so bad, eh?" he boasted.

"Bad!" echoed Grace Galt. Her face became serious. "Do you realize that there are men in this office who have been here for five years, six years, or even more, and who have never been given a chance to do anything but stenography, or perhaps some private secretarying?"

"I know it," agreed Jock. But there was no humbleness in his tone.

He radiated self-satisfaction. He seemed to grow and expand before her eyes. A little shadow of doubt crept across Grace Galt's expression of friendly interest.

"Are you scared," she asked; "just the least bit?"

Jock flushed a little. "Well," he confessed ruefully, "I don't mind telling you I am--a little."

"Good!"

"Good?"

"Yes. The head of that concern is a woman. That's one reason why they didn't send me, I suppose. I--I'd like to say something, if you don't mind."

"Anything you like," said Jock graciously.

"Well, then, don't be afraid of being embarra.s.sed and fussed. If you blush and stammer a little, she'll like it. Play up the coy stuff."

"The coy stuff!" echoed Jock. "I hadn't thought much about my att.i.tude toward the--er--the lady,"--a little stiffly.

"Well, you'd better," answered Miss Galt crisply. She put out her hand in much the same manner as Sam Hupp had used. "Good luck to you. I'll have to ask you to go now. I'm trying to make this magneto sound like something without which no home is complete, and to make people see that there's as much difference between it and every other magneto as there is between the steam shovels that dug out the Panama Ca.n.a.l and the junk that the French left there--" She stopped. Her eyes took on a far-away look. Her lips were parted slightly. "Why, that's not a bad idea--that last. I'll use that. I'll--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "With a jolt Jock realized she had forgotten all about him"]

She began to scribble rapidly on the sheet of paper before her.

With a jolt Jock McChesney realized that she had forgotten all about him. He walked quietly to the door, opened it, shut it very quietly, then made for the nearest telephone. He knew one woman he could count on to be proud of him. He gave his number, waited a little eager moment, then:

"Featherloom Petticoat Company? Mrs. McChesney." And waited again.

Then he smiled.

"You needn't sound so official," he laughed; "it's only your son.

Listen. I"--he took on an elaborate carelessness of tone--"I've got to take a little jump out of town. On business. Oh, a day or so. Rather important though. I'll have time to run up to the flat and throw a few things into a bag. I'll tell you, I really ought to keep a bag packed down here. In case of emergency, you know.

What? It's the Athena Toilette Preparations Company. Well, I should say it is! I'll wire you. You bet. Thanks. My what? Oh, toothbrush. No. Good-by."

So it was that at three-ten Jock McChesney took himself, his hopes, his dread, and his smart walrus bag aboard a train that halted and snuffed and backed, and b.u.mped and halted with maddening frequency. But it landed him at last in a little town bearing the characteristics of all American little towns. It was surprisingly full of six-cylinder cars, and five and ten-cent stores, and banks with Doric columns, and paved streets.

After he had registered at the hotel, and as he was cleaning up a bit, he pa.s.sed an amused eye over the bare, ugly, fusty little hotel bedroom. But somehow, as he stood in the middle of the room, a graceful, pleasing figure of youth and confidence, the smile faded. Towel in hand he surveyed the barrenness of it. He stared at the impossible wall paper, at the battered furniture, the worn carpet. He sniffed the stuffy smell of--what was that smell, anyhow?--straw, and matting, and dust, and the ghost-odor of hundreds who had occupied the room before him. It came over him with something of a shock that this same sort of room had been his mother's only home in the ten years she had spent on the road as a traveling saleswoman for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. This was what she had left in the morning. To this she had come back at night. As he stared ahead of him there rose before him a mental picture of her--the brightness of her, the sunniness, the indomitable energy, and pluck, and courage. With a sudden burst of new determination he wadded the towel into a moist ball, flung it at the washstand, seized hat, coat, and gloves, and was off down the hall. So it was with something of his mother's splendid courage in his heart, but with nothing of her canny knowledge in his head, Jock McChesney fared forth to do battle with the merciless G.o.d Business.