The Job (Lewis)/Man and Woman/Chapter 20

TRUAX & FEIN was the first firm toward which Una was able to feel such loyalty as is supposed to distinguish all young aspirants—loyalty which is so well spoken of by bosses, and which is so generally lacking among the bossed. Partly, this was her virtue, partly it was the firm’s, and partly it was merely the accident of her settling down.

She watched the biological growth of Truax & Fein with fascination; was excited when they opened a new subdivision, and proudly read the half-page advertisements thereof in the Sunday newspapers.

That loyalty made her study real estate, not merely stenography; for to most stenographers their work is the same whether they take dictation regarding real estate, or book-publishing, or felt slippers, or the removal of taconite. They understand transcription, but not what they transcribe. She read magazines—System, Printer’s Ink, Real Estate Record (solemnly studying “Recorded Conveyances,” and “Plans Filed for New Construction Work,” and “Mechanics’ Liens”). She got ideas for houses from architectural magazines, garden magazines, women’s magazines. But what most indicated that she was a real devotee was the fact that, after glancing at the front-page headlines, the society news, and the joke column in her morning paper, she would resolutely turn to “The Real Estate Field.”

On Sundays she often led Mr. Schwirtz for a walk among the new suburban developments.... For always, no matter what she did at the office, no matter how much Mr. Truax depended on her or Mr. Fein praised her, she went home to the same cabbage-rose-carpeted housekeeping-room, and to a Mr. Schwirtz who had seemingly not stirred an inch since she had left him in the morning.... Mr. Schwirtz was of a harem type, and not much adapted to rustic jaunting, but he obediently followed his master and tried to tell stories of the days when he had known all about real estate, while she studied model houses, the lay of the land, the lines of sewers and walks.

That was loyalty to Truax & Fein as much as desire for advancement.

And that same loyalty made her accept as fellow-workers even the noisiest of the salesmen—and even Beatrice Joline.

Though Mr. Truax didn’t “believe in” women salesmen, one woman briskly overrode his beliefs: Miss Beatrice Joline, of the Gramercy Park Jolines, who cheerfully called herself “one of the nouveau pauvre,” and condescended to mere Upper West Side millionaires, and had to earn her frocks and tea money. She earned them, too; but she declined to be interested in office regulations or office hours. She sold suburban homes as a free lance, and only to the very best people. She darted into the office now and then, slender, tall, shoulder-swinging, an exclamation-point of a girl, in a smart, check suit and a Bendel hat. She ignored Una with a coolness which reduced her to the status of a new stenographer. All the office watched Miss Joline with hypnotized envy. Always in offices those who have social position outside are observed with secret awe by those who have not.

Once, when Mr. Truax was in the act of persuading an unfortunate property-owner to part with a Long Island estate for approximately enough to buy one lot after the estate should be subdivided into six hundred lots, Miss Joline had to wait. She perched on Una’s desk, outside Mr. Truax’s door, swung her heels, inspected the finger-ends of her chamois gloves, and issued a command to Una to perform conversationally.

Una was thinking, “I’d like to spank you—and then I’d adore you. You’re what story-writers call a thoroughbred.”

While unconscious that a secretary in a tabby-gray dress and gold eye-glasses was venturing to appraise her, Miss Joline remarked, in a high, clear voice: “Beastly bore to have to wait, isn’t it! I suppose you can rush right in to see Mr. Truax any time you want to, Mrs. Ummmmm.”

“Schwirtz. Rotten name, isn’t it?” Una smiled up condescendingly.

Miss Joline stopped kicking her heels and stared at Una as though she might prove to be human, after all.

“Oh no, it’s a very nice name,” she said. “Fancy being called Joline. Now Schwirtz sounds rather like Schenck, and that’s one of the smartest of the old names.... Uh, would it be too much trouble to see if Mr. Truax is still engaged?”

“He is.... Miss Joline, I feel like doing something I’ve wanted to do for some time. Of course we both know you think of me as ‘that poor little dub, Mrs. What’s-her-name, D. T.’s secretary—’”

“Why, really—”

“—or perhaps you hadn’t thought of me at all. I’m naturally quite a silent little dub, but I’ve been learning that it’s silly to be silent in business. So I’ve been planning to get hold of you and ask you where and how you get those suits of yours, and what I ought to wear. You see, after you marry I’ll still be earning my living, and perhaps if I could dress anything like you I could fool some business man into thinking I was clever.”

“As I do, you mean,” said Miss Joline, cheerfully.

“Well—”

“Oh, I don’t mind. But, my dear, good woman—oh, I suppose I oughtn’t to call you that.”

“I don’t care what you call me, if you can tell me how to make a seventeen-fifty suit look like Vogue. Isn’t it awful, Miss Joline, that us lower classes are interested in clothes, too?”

“My dear girl, even the beautiful, the accomplished Beatrice Joline—I’ll admit it—knows when she is being teased. I went to boarding-school, and if you think I haven’t ever been properly and thoroughly, and oh, most painstakingly told what a disgusting, natural snob I am, you ought to have heard Tomlinson, or any other of my dear friends, taking me down. I rather fancy you’re kinder-hearted than they are; but, anyway, you don’t insult me half so scientifically.”

“I’m so sorry. I tried hard— I’m a well-meaning insulter, but I haven’t the practice.”

“My dear, I adore you. Isn’t it lovely to be frank? When us females get into Mr. Truax’s place we’ll have the most wonderful time insulting each other, don’t you think? But, really, please don’t think I like to be rude. But you see we Jolines are so poor that if I stopped it all my business acquaintances would think I was admitting how poor we are, so I’m practically forced to be horrid. Now that we’ve been amiable to each other, what can I do for you?... Does that sound business-like enough?”

“I want to make you give me some hints about clothes. I used to like terribly crude colors, but I’ve settled down to tessie things that are safe—this gray dress, and brown, and black.”

“Well, my dear, I’m the best little dressmaker you ever saw, and I do love to lay down the law about clothes. With your hair and complexion, you ought to wear clear blues. Order a well-made—be sure it’s well-made, no matter what it costs. Get some clever little Jew socialist tailor off in the outskirts of Brooklyn, or some heathenish place, and stand over him. A well-made tailored suit of not too dark navy blue, with matching blue crêpe de Chine blouses with nice, soft, white collars, and cuffs of crêpe or chiffon—and change’em often.”

“What about a party dress? Ought I to have satin, or chiffon, or blue net, or what?”

“Well, satin is too dignified, and chiffon too perishable, and blue net is too tessie. Why don’t you try black net over black satin? You know there’s really lots of color in black satin if you know how to use it. Get good materials, and then you can use them over and over again—perhaps white chiffon over the black satin.”

“White over black?”

Though Miss Joline stared down with one of the quick, secretive smiles which Una hated, the smile which reduced her to the rank of a novice, her eyes held Miss Joline, made her continue her oracles.

“Yes,” said Miss Joline, “and it isn’t very expensive. Try it with the black net first, and have soft little folds of white tulle along the edge of the décolletage—it’s scarcely noticeable, but it does soften the neck-line. And wear a string of pearls. Get these Artifico pearls, a dollar-ninety a string.... Now you see how useful a snob is to the world! I’d never give you all this god-like advice if I didn’t want to advertise what an authority I am on ‘Smart Fashions for Limited Incomes.’”

“You’re a darling,” said Una.

“Come to tea,” said Miss Joline.

They did go to tea. But before it, while Miss Joline was being voluble with Mr. Truax, Una methodically made notes on the art of dress and filed them for future reference. Despite the fact that, with the support of Mr. Schwirtz as her chief luxury, she had only sixteen dollars in the world, she had faith that she would sometime take a woman’s delight in dress, and a business woman’s interest in it.... This had been an important hour for her, though it cannot be authoritatively stated which was the more important—learning to dress, or learning not to be in awe of a Joline of Gramercy Park.

They went to tea several times in the five months before the sudden announcement of Miss Joline’s engagement to Wally Castle, of the Tennis and Racquet Club. And at tea they bantered and were not markedly different in their use of forks or choice of pastry. But never were they really friends. Una, of Panama, daughter of Captain Golden, and wife of Eddie Schwirtz, could comprehend Walter Babson and follow Mamie Magen, and even rather despised that Diogenes of an enameled tub, Mr. S. Herbert Ross; but it seemed probable that she would never be able to do more than ask for bread and railway tickets in the language of Beatrice Joline, whose dead father had been ambassador to Portugal and friend to Henry James and John Hay.

It hurt a little, but Una had to accept the fact that Beatrice Joline was no more likely to invite her to the famous and shabby old house of the Jolines than was Mrs. Truax to ask her advice about manicuring. They did, however, have dinner together on an evening whenMiss Joline actually seemed to be working late at the office.

“Let’s go to a Café des Enfants,” said Miss Joline. “Such a party! And, honestly, I do like their coffee and the nice, shiny, bathroom walls.”

“Yes,” said Una, “it’s almost as much of a party to me as running a typewriter.... Let’s go Dutch to the Martha Washington.”

“Verra well. Though I did want buckwheats and little sausages. Exciting!”

“Huh!” said Una, who was unable to see any adventurous qualities in a viand which she consumed about twice a week.

Miss Joline’s clean litheness, her gaiety that had never been made timorous or grateful by defeat or sordidness, her whirlwind of nonsense, blended in a cocktail for Una at dinner. Schwirtz, money difficulties, weariness, did not exist. Her only trouble in the entire universe was the reconciliation of her admiration for Miss Joline’s amiable superiority to everybody, her gibes at the salesmen, and even at Mr. Truax, with Mamie Magen’s philanthropic socialism. (So far as this history can trace, she never did reconcile them.)

She left Miss Joline with a laugh, and started home with a song—then stopped. She foresaw the musty room to which she was going, the slatternly incubus of a man. Saw—with just such distinctness as had once dangled the stiff, gray scrub-rag before her eyes—Schwirtz’s every detail: bushy chin, stained and collarless shirt, trousers like old chair-covers. Probably he would always be like this. Probably he would never have another job. But she couldn’t cast him out. She had married him, in his own words, as a “good provider.” She had lost the bet; she would be a good loser—and a good provider for him.... Always, perhaps.... Always that mass of spoiled babyhood waiting at home for her.... Always apologetic and humble—she would rather have the old, grumbling, dominant male....

She tried to push back the moment of seeing him again. Her steps dragged, but at last, inevitably, grimly, the house came toward her. She crept along the moldy hall, opened the door of their room, saw him—

She thought it was a stranger, an intruder. But it was veritably her husband, in a new suit that was fiercely pressed and shaped, in new, gleaming, ox-blood shoes, with a hair-cut and a barber shave. He was bending over the bed, which was piled with new shirts, Afro-American ties, new toilet articles, and he was packing a new suit-case.

He turned slowly, enjoying her amazement. He finished packing a shirt. She said nothing, standing at the door. Teetering on his toes and watching the effect of it all on her, he lighted a large cigar.

“Some class, eh?” he said.

“Well—”

“Nifty suit, eh? And how are those for swell ties?”

“Very nice.... From whom did you borrow the money?”

“Now that cer’nly is a nice, sweet way to congratulate friend hubby. Oh, sure! Man lands a job, works his head off getting it, gets an advance for some new clothes he’s simply got to have, and of course everybody else congratulates him—everybody but his own wife. She sniffs at him—not a word about the new job, of course. First crack outa the box, she gets busy suspecting him, and says, ‘Who you been borrowing of now?’ And this after always acting as though she was an abused little innocent that nobody appreciated—”

He was in mid-current, swimming strong, and waving his cigar above the foaming waters, but she pulled him out of it with, “I am sorry. I ought to have known. I’m a beast. I am glad, awfully glad you’ve got a new job. What is it?”

“New company handling a new kind of motor for row-boats—converts’em to motor-boats in a jiffy—outboard motors they call’em. Got a swell territory and plenty bonus on new business.”

“Oh, isn’t that fine! It’s such a fine surprise—and it’s cute of you to keep it to surprise me with all this while—”

“Well, ’s a matter of fact, I just got on to it to-day. Ran into Burke McCullough on Sixth Avenue, and he gave me the tip.”

“Oh!” A forlorn little “Oh!” it was. She had pictured him proudly planning to surprise her. And she longed to have the best possible impression of him, because of a certain plan which was hotly being hammered out in her brain. She went on, as brightly as possible:

“And they gave you an advance? That’s fine.”

“Well, no, they didn’t, exactly, but Burke introduced me to his clothier, and I got a swell line of credit.”

“Oh!”

“Now for the love of Pete, don’t go oh-ing and ah-ing like that. You’ve handed me the pickled visage since I got the rowdy-dow on my last job—good Lord! you acted like you thought I liked to sponge on you. Now let me tell you I’ve kept account of every red cent you’ve spent on me, and I expect to pay it back.”

She tried to resist her impulse, but she couldn’t keep from saying, as nastily as possible: “How nice. When?”

“Oh, I’ll pay it back, all right, trust you for that! You won’t fail to keep wising me up on the fact that you think I’m a drunken bum. You’ll sit around all day in a hotel and take it easy and have plenty time to figger out all the things you can roast me for, and then spring them on me the minute I get back from a trip all tired out. Like you always used to.”

“Oh, I did not!” she wailed.

“Sure you did.”

“And what do you mean by my sitting around, from now on—”

“Well, what the hell else are you going to do? You can’t play the piano or maybe run an aeroplane, can you?”

“Why, I’m going to stay on my job, of course, Ed.”

“You are not going-to-of-course-stay-on-your-job-Ed, any such a thing. Lemme tell you that right here and now, my lady. I’ve stood just about all I’m going to stand of your top-lofty independence and business airs—as though you weren’t a wife at all, but just as ‘be-damned-to-you’ independent as though you were as much of a business man as I am! No, sir, you’ll do what I say from now on. I’ve been tied to your apron strings long enough, and now I’m the boss—see? Me!” He tapped his florid bosom. “You used to be plenty glad to go to poker parties and leg-shows with me, when I wanted to, but since you’ve taken to earning your living again you’ve become so ip-de-dee and independent that when I even suggest rushing a growler of beer you scowl at me, and as good as say you’re too damn almighty good for Eddie Schwirtz’s low-brow amusements. And you’ve taken to staying out all hours—course it didn’t matter whether I stayed here without a piece of change, or supper, or anything else, or any amusements, while you were out whoop-de-doodling around— You said it was with women!”

She closed her eyes tight; then, wearily: “You mean, I suppose, that you think I was out with men.”

“Well, I ain’t insinuating anything about what you been doing. You been your own boss, and of course I had to take anything off anybody as long as I was broke. But lemme tell you, from now on, no pasty-faced female is going to rub it in any more. You’re going to try some of your own medicine. You’re going to give up your rotten stenographer’s job, and you’re going to stay home where I put you, and when I invite you to come on a spree you’re going to be glad—”

Her face tightened with rage. She leaped at him, shook him by the shoulder, and her voice came in a shriek:

“Now that’s enough. I’m through. You did mean to insinuate I was out with men. I wasn’t—but that was just accident. I’d have been glad to, if there’d been one I could have loved even a little. I’d have gone anywhere with him—done anything! And now we’re through. I stood you as long as it was my job to do it. God! what jobs we women have in this chivalrous world that honors women so much!—but now that you can take care of yourself, I’ll do the same.”

“What d’ yuh mean?”

“I mean this.”

She darted at the bed, yanked from beneath it her suit-case, and into it began to throw her toilet articles.

Mr. Schwirtz sat upon the bed and laughed enormously.

“You women cer’nly are a sketch!” he caroled. “Going back to mamma, are you? Sure! That’s what the first Mrs. Schwirtz was always doing. Let’s see. Once she got as far as the depot before she came back and admitted that she was a chump. I doubt if you get that far. You’ll stop on the step. You’re too tightwad to hire a taxi, even to try to scare me and make it unpleasant for me.”

Una stopped packing, stood listening. Now, her voice unmelodramatic again, she replied:

“You’re right about several things. I probably was thoughtless about leaving you alone evenings—though it is not true that I ever left you without provision for supper. And of course you’ve often left me alone back there in the hotel while you were off with other women—”

“Now who’s insinuating?” He performed another characteristic peroration. She did not listen, but stood with warning hand up, a small but plucky-looking traffic policeman, till he ceased, then went on:

“But I can’t really blame you. Even in this day when people like my friend Mamie Magen think that feminism has won everything, I suppose there must still be a majority of men like you—men who’ve never even heard of feminism, who think that their women are breed cattle. I judge that from the conversations I overhear in restaurants and street-cars, and these pretty vaudeville jokes about marriage that you love so, and from movie pictures of wives beating husbands, and from the fact that women even yet haven’t the vote. I suppose that you don’t really know many men besides the mucky cattle-drover sort, and I can’t blame you for thinking like them—”

“Say, what is all this cattle business about? I don’t seem to recall we were discussing stockyards. Are you trying to change the conversation, so you won’t even have to pack your grip before you call your own bluff about leaving me? Don’t get it at all, at all!”

“You will get it, my friend!... As I say, I can see—now it’s too late—how mean I must have been to you often. I’ve probably hurt your feelings lots of times—”

“You have, all right.”

“—but I still don’t see how I could have avoided it. I don’t blame myself, either. We two simply never could get together—you’re two-thirds the old-fashioned brute, and I’m at least one-third the new, independent woman. We wouldn’t understand each other, not if we talked a thousand years. Heavens alive! just see all these silly discussions of suffrage that men like you carry on, when the whole thing is really so simple: simply that women are intelligent human beings, and have the right—”

“Now who mentioned suffrage? If you’ll kindly let me know what you’re trying to get at, then—”

“You see? We two never could understand each other! So I’m just going to clean house. Get rid of things that clutter it up. I’m going, to-night, and I don’t think I shall ever see you again, so do try to be pleasant while I’m packing. This last time.... Oh, I’m free again. And so are you, you poor, decent man. Let’s congratulate each other.”

Despite the constant hammering of Mr. Schwirtz, who changed swiftly from a tyrant to a bewildered orphan, Una methodically finished her packing, went to a hotel, and within a week found in Brooklyn, near the Heights, a pleasant white-and-green third-floor-front.

Her salary had been increased to twenty-five dollars a week.

She bought the blue suit and the crêpe de Chine blouse recommended by Miss Beatrice Joline. She was still sorry for Mr. Schwirtz; she thought of him now and then, and wondered where he had gone. But that did not prevent her enjoying the mirror’s reflection of the new blouse.

While he was dictating to Una, Mr. Truax monologized: “I don’t see why we can’t sell that Boutell family a lot. We wouldn’t make any profit out of it, now, anyway—that’s nearly eaten up by the overhead we’ve wasted on them. But I hate to give them up, and your friend Mr. Fein says that we aren’t scientific salesmen if we give up the office problems that everybody takes a whack at and seems to fail on.”

More and more Mr. Truax had been recognizing Una as an intelligence, and often he teased her regarding her admiration for Mr. Fein’s efficiency. Now he seemed almost to be looking to her for advice as he plaintively rambled on:

“Every salesman on the staff has tried to sell this asinine Boutell family and failed. We’ve got the lots—give’em anything from a fifteen-thousand-dollar-restriction, water-front, high-class development to an odd lot behind an Italian truck-farm. They’ve been considering a lot at Villa Estates for a month, now, and they aren’t—”

“Let me try them.”

“Let you try them?”

“Try to sell them.”

“Of course, if you want to—in your own time outside. This is a matter that the selling department ought to have disposed of. But if you want to try—”

“I will. I’ll try them on a Saturday afternoon—next Saturday.”

“But what do you know about Villa Estates?”

“I walked all over it, just last Sunday. Talked to the resident salesman for an hour.”

“That’s good. I wish all our salesmen would do something like that.”

All week Una planned to attack the redoubtable Boutells. She telephoned (sounding as well-bred and clever as she could) and made an appointment for Saturday afternoon. The Boutells were going to a matinée, Mrs. Boutell’s grating voice informed her, but they would be pleased t’ see Mrs. Schwirtz after the show. All week Una asked advice of “Chas.,” the sales-manager, who, between extensive exhortations to keep away from selling—“because it’s the hardest part of the game, and, believe me, it gets the least gratitude”—gave her instructions in the tactics of “presenting a proposition to a client,” “convincing a prospect of the salesman’s expert knowledge of values,” “clinching the deal,” “talking points,” and “desirability of location.”

Wednesday evening Una went out to Villa Estates to look it over again, and she conducted a long, imaginary conversation with the Boutells regarding the nearness of the best school in Nassau County.

But on Saturday morning she felt ill. At the office she wailed on the shoulder of a friendly stenographer that she would never be able to follow up this, her first chance to advance.

She went home at noon and slept till four. She arrived at the Boutells’ flat looking like a dead leaf. She tried to skip into the presence of Mrs. Boutell—a dragon with a frizz—and was heavily informed that Mr. Boutell wouldn’t be back till six, and that, anyway, they had “talked over the Villa Estates proposition, and decided it wasn’t quite time to come to a decision—be better to wait till the weather cleared up, so a body can move about.”

“Oh, Mrs. Boutell, I just can’t argue it out with you,” Una howled. “I do know Villa Estates and its desirability for you, but this is my very first experience in direct selling, and as luck would have it, I feel perfectly terrible to-day.”

“You poor lamb!” soothed Mrs. Boutell. “You do look terrible sick. You come right in and lie down and I’ll have my Lithuanian make you a cup of hot beef-tea.”

While Mrs. Boutell held her hand and fed her beef-tea, Una showed photographs of Villa Estates and became feebly oratorical in its praises, and when Mr. Boutell came home at six-thirty they all had a light dinner together, and went to the moving-pictures, and through them talked about real estate, and at eleven Mr. Boutell uneasily took the fountain-pen which Una resolutely held out to him, and signed a contract to purchase two lots at Villa Estates, and a check for the first payment.

Una had climbed above the rank of assistant to the rank of people who do things.