Emma McChesney and Co Part 4

"She is with you, this business friend who is also so charming?"

"Oh, yes," said Emma McChesney, "she's--she's with me." Then, as he made a motion toward the push-b.u.t.ton, which would summon the secretary: "No, don't do that! Wait a minute!" From her bag she drew her business card, presented it. "Read that first."

Senor Pages read it. He looked up. Then he read it again. He gazed again at Emma McChesney. Emma McChesney looked straight at him and tried in vain to remember ever having heard of the South American's sense of humor. A moment pa.s.sed. Her heart sank. Then Senor Pages threw back his fine head and laughed--laughed as the Latin laughs, emphasizing his mirth with many e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and gestures.

"Ah, you Northerners! You are too quick for us. Come; I myself must see this garment which you honor by selling." His glance rested approvingly on Emma McChesney's trim, smart figure. "That which you sell, it must be quite right."

"I not only sell it," said Emma McChesney; "I wear it."

"That--how is it you Northerners say?--ah, yes--that settles it!"

Six weeks later, in his hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, T. A. Buck sat reading a letter forwarded from New York and postmarked Argentina. As he read he chuckled, grew serious, chuckled again and allowed his cigar to grow cold.

For the seventh time:

DEAR T. A.:

They've fallen for Featherlooms the way an Eskimo takes to gum-drops.

My letter of credit is all shot to pieces, but it was worth it. They make you pay a separate license fee in each province, and South America is just one darn province after another. If they'd lump a peddler's license for $5,000 and tell you to go ahead, it would be cheaper.

I landed Pages y Hernandez by a trick. The best of it is the man I played it on saw the point and laughed with me. We North Americans brag too much about our sense of humor.

I thought ten years on the road had hardened me to the most fiendish efforts of a hotel chef. But the food at the Grande here makes a quarter-inch round steak with German fried look like Sherry's latest triumph. You know I'm not fussy. I'm the kind of woman who, given her choice of ice cream or cheese for dessert, will take cheese. Here, given my choice, I play safe and take neither. I've reached the point where I make a meal of radishes. They kill their beef in the morning and serve it for lunch. It looks and tastes like an Ethiop's ear. But I don't care, because I'm getting gorgeously thin.

If the radishes hold out I'll invade Central America and Panama. I've one eye on Valparaiso already. I know it sounds wild, but it means a future and a fortune for Featherlooms. I find I don't even have to talk skirts. They're self-sellers. But I have to talk honesty and packing.

How did you hit it off with Ella Sweeney? Haven't seen a sign of Fat Ed Meyers. I'm getting nervous. Do you think he may have exploded at the equator?

EMMA.

But kind fortune saw fit to add a last sweet drop to Emma McChesney's already br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup. As she reached the docks on the day of her departure, clad in cool, crisp white from hat to shoes, her quick eye spied a red-faced, rotund, familiar figure disembarking from the New York boat, just arrived. The fates, grinning, had planned this moment like a stage-manager. Fat Ed Meyers came heavily down the gangplank.

His hat was off. He was mopping the top of his head with a large, damp handkerchief. His gaze swept over the busy landing-docks, darted hither and thither, alighted on Emma McChesney with a shock, and rested there. A distinct little shock went through that lady, too. But she waited at the foot of her boat's gangway until the unbelievably nimble Meyers reached her.

He was a fiery spectacle. His cheeks were distended, his eyes protuberant. He wasted no words. They understood each other, those two.

"Coming or going?"

"Going," replied Emma McChesney.

"Clean up this--this Bonez Areez, too?"

"Absolutely."

"Did, huh?"

Meyers stood a moment panting, his little eyes glaring into her calm ones.

"Well, I beat you in Bahia, anyway." he boasted.

Emma McChesney snapped her fingers blithely.

"Bah, for Bahia!" She took a step or two up the gangplank, and turned.

"Good-by, Ed. And good luck. I can recommend the radishes, but pa.s.s up the beef. Dangerous."

Fat Ed Meyers, still staring, began to stutter unintelligibly, his lips moving while no words came. Emma McChesney held up a warning hand.

"Don't do that, Ed! Not in this climate! A man of your build, too!

I'm surprised. Consider the feelings of your firm!"

Fat Ed Meyers glared up at the white-clad, smiling, gracious figure.

His hands unclenched. The words came.

"Oh, if only you were a man for just ten minutes!" he moaned.

II

THANKS TO MISS MORRISSEY

It was Fat Ed Meyers, of the Sans-Silk Skirt Company, who first said that Mrs. Emma McChesney was the Maude Adams of the business world. It was on the occasion of his being called to the carpet for his failure to make Sans-silks as popular as Emma McChesney's famed Featherlooms.

He spoke in self-defense, heatedly.

"It isn't Featherlooms. It's McChesney. Her line is no better than ours. It's her personality, not her petticoats. She's got a following that swears by her. If Maude Adams was to open on Broadway in 'East Lynne,' they'd flock to see her, wouldn't they? Well, Emma McChesney could sell hoop-skirts, I'm telling you. She could sell bustles. She could sell red-woolen mittens on Fifth Avenue!"

The t.i.tle stuck.

It was late in September when Mrs. McChesney, sunburned, decidedly under weight, but gloriously triumphant, returned from a four months'

tour of South America. Against the earnest protests of her business partner, T. A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, she had invaded the southern continent and left it abloom with Featherlooms from the Plata to the Ca.n.a.l.

Success was no stranger to Mrs. McChesney. This last business victory had not turned her head. But it had come perilously near to tilting that extraordinarily well-balanced part. A certain light in her eyes, a certain set of her chin, an added briskness of bearing, a c.o.c.ky slant of the eyebrow revealed the fact that, though Mrs. McChesney's feet were still on the ground, she might be said to be standing on tiptoe.

When she had sailed from Brooklyn pier that June afternoon, four months before, she had cast her ordinary load of business responsibilities on the unaccustomed shoulders of T. A. Buck. That elegant person, although president of the company which his father had founded, had never been its real head. When trouble threatened in the workroom, it was to Mrs.

McChesney that the forewoman came. When an irascible customer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, waxed impatient over the delayed shipment of a Featherloom order, it was to Emma McChesney that his typewritten protest was addressed. When the office machinery needed mental oiling, when a new hand demanded to be put on silk-work instead of mercerized, when a consignment of skirt-material turned out to be more than usually metallic, it was in Mrs. Emma McChesney's little private office that the tangle was unsnarled.

She walked into that little office, now, at nine o'clock of a brilliant September morning. It was a rea.s.suring room, bright, orderly, workmanlike, reflecting the personality of its owner. She stood in the center of it now and looked about her, eyes glowing, lips parted. She raised her hands high above her head, then brought them down to her sides again with an unconsciously dramatic gesture that expressed triumph, peace, content, relief, accomplishment, and a great and deep satisfaction. T. A. Buck, in the doorway, saw the gesture--and understood.

"Not so bad to get back to it, is it?"

"Bad! It's like a drink of cool spring water after too much champagne.

In those miserable South American hotels, how I used to long for the orderliness and quiet of this!"

She took off hat and coat. In a vase on the desk, a cl.u.s.ter of yellow chrysanthemums shook their s.h.a.ggy heads in welcome. Emma McChesney's quick eye jumped to them, then to Buck, who had come in and was surveying the scene appreciatively.

"You--of course." She indicated the flowers with a nod and a radiant smile.

"Sorry--no. The office staff did that. There's a card of welcome, I believe."