The cat was crying to get in. Jeannette, deep in slumber, was irritated by persistent mewings. Every once in awhile the outside screen door at the back of the apartment shut with a small clap as the animal, sinking its claws into the wire mesh, tried to pull it open. The noise awoke Jeannette finally and she sat up with a start.
It was morning. Gray light filled the room. She peered at the alarm clock, blinking her eyes, and saw there were still twenty minutes before she had to get up. In the next room, the sound of a closing window announced that Beatrice Alexander was already astir.
“She’s put Mitzi out,” thought Jeannette, drawing the bed clothes over an exposed shoulder. “I wish she’d remember to leave the door ajar.”
Presently Beatrice’s steps passed in the hall and in another moment the annoyance ceased. Jeannette dropped gratefully back to sleep. But it seemed she had hardly lost consciousness when the whirring clock bell aroused her again. Though still drowsy, she immediately got up; she never permitted herself to remain in bed after the moment arrived for rising; indulgence of this kind was weakness of character, and she despised weakness in herself or in others. As she dressed, she heard Beatrice in the kitchen busy with breakfast preparations. From the window a glimpse of the street showed the sun’s first rays striking obliquely through the haze of early morning.
The apartment in Waverly Place had now been her home for seven years; she and Beatrice Alexander had taken it together a month after her mother’s death, and life for the two women as time rolled on had become undeviating in its routine. There was small variation in their days.
It was Beatrice’s business to prepare breakfast. She rose at seven; Jeannette half-an-hour later. The meal was always the same: fruit, boiled eggs, four pieces of toast, and a substitute for coffee,—cubes of a prepared vegetable material dissolved in hot water. Beatrice set the table daintily, with a small Japanese lunch cloth and a yellow bowl filled with bright red apples in its center. Knives, forks and spoons were nicely arranged and she never neglected to put tumblers of drinking water beside the triangularly folded, fringed napkins, and finger-bowls at each place with a bit of peel sliced from the bottoms of the grapefruits or oranges which began the breakfast. Beatrice was a fastidious person, Jeannette often thought gratefully; she liked “things nice.”
While her friend was busy in kitchen and dining-room, Jeannette dressed with her usual scrupulous carefulness. She gave but meager attention to household affairs; these were Beatrice’s province; it was Beatrice who did the ordering, paid the bills and managed the small establishment. Jeannette’s companion was much like Alice and these duties came naturally to her. Besides, during the years Mrs. Sturgis and her daughter had lived together, it had been her mother who attended to such matters; Jeannette had grown accustomed to leaving household details to someone else. She took pains to explain this to Beatrice when they discussed the project of an apartment together and the latter had assured her it would be quite satisfactory. There had never been the slightest friction between the two women; Beatrice Alexander, with her soft, whispery voice and shy manner, was one of the sweetest-tempered persons in the world.
The years had dealt not unkindly with Jeannette. At forty-three, she was still a handsome woman,—no longer graceful and willowy, perhaps,—but erect, aggressive, substantial-looking. There was a solidarity about her now; her arms were big and round, her shoulders broad and plump, her bosom well-developed; she was thirty pounds heavier, and walked with a sturdy tread. There was gray in her hair, too, and a certain settled expression about her mouth that proclaimed middle age, but she was a fine looking woman with clear eyes and skin, an impressive carriage, and much that was commanding in poise. She dressed smartly and was always meticulously neat. Every morning she donned a fresh shirtwaist, crisply laundered. It was a matter of concern to her that this should set so snugly and correctly where it joined the plain dark tailored skirt that closely fitted her back, the effect should be of the skirt holding the blouse trimly in place. When she had completed her toilet, she was the embodiment of trigness and trimness, from her dark lusterless hair with its streaks of gray, which she now wore in a smooth sweep encircling her head like a bird’s unruffled wing, to her tan-booted feet in sheer brown silk stockings. She always had taken a great deal of pains in the matter of attire, and her hats, shoes and garments were of the latest approved styles and the best materials, and came from the most exclusive shops in New York. She still observed the strictest simplicity in the matter of clothes when she dressed for the office.
She surveyed herself now in the mirror with approval, and as she noted her fine tall figure, the breadth of her shoulders, the round, neat, firm waist line, her calm, strong face,—shrewd, capable, resourceful,—she could understand the awe and respect with which the girls in her department regarded her. A hint of a smile touched her resolute lips as she thought that to them she must appear a super-woman, a sort of queen, the fount of all wisdom, justice and power. She liked the idea.
She flung back the covers to let her bed air during the day, and righted the flagrant disorder in her room with a few effective movements. As she opened her closet door or bureau drawers, the scrupulous neatness of their contents pleased her; the row of dresses in the closet suggested the orderliness of a company of soldiers; her shoes and slippers, each pair equipped punctiliously with boot-trees, ranged themselves on a shelf in effective array, her lingerie was carefully be-ribboned, folded in piles, and a scent of sachet arose from its lacy whiteness.
As she busied herself she came upon a muss of face powder that had been spilled upon the glass top of her bureau. A small sound of annoyance escaped her. She crossed the hall to the bathroom, returned with the moistened end of a soiled towel, resurrected from the laundry basket, and wiped up the offending litter vigorously.
About to quit the room she paused a moment with her hand on the door-knob for a final inspection, and turned back to make sure the lower bureau drawer was locked and that she had put the key in its hiding place under the rug; she raised the window an inch higher; a white thread on the floor attracted her eye and she picked it up with thumb and finger to deposit in the waste-basket before she joined Beatrice Alexander in the dining-room. A glance at her wrist watch assured her she was on time to the minute.
“Morning, Beat,” she said saluting her companion. “What was the matter with Mitzi this morning?”
“I let her out early; she was clawing the carpet and growling. She wouldn’t stop, so I just had to get up and put her out.”
“Strange,” commented Jeannette, eyeing the cat who blinked at her comfortably from beside an empty soup plate that had held her bread and milk. She began to talk baby talk to the pet:
“Mitzi-witzi! Yes, oo was,—oo went out to see a feller,—ess oo did....”
The two women sat down to the breakfast table together. Jeannette spread her World out before her; Beatrice propped the Times against a water pitcher. They picked at their fruit, raised egg spoons to their lips delicately, broke off bits of toast and inserted them in their mouths, sipped their coffee with little fingers extended. Silence reigned except for the small noises of cup and spoon, and the crackle of newspapers.
“I do think France ought to be more lenient with Germany,” Beatrice remarked at length, adjusting her eye-glasses.
“I’d make her pay to the last mark she’s got,” asserted Jeannette. She folded back her newspaper carefully to another page.
“They had quite an accident in the subway,” Beatrice observed.
“So I see.... Does seem to me the papers are awfully hard on the Interborough. I should think they ought to be permitted to charge an eight-cent fare; everything else is going up in price.”
“Do you suppose that Hennessy woman will get off?” asked Beatrice after an interval.
“Well, I’d like to see her.”
“Senator Knowles died, they think, from drinking whiskey that had wood alcohol in it.”
“Served him right. I wish they all would.”
At twenty minutes past eight, Jeannette put on her hat carefully before the mirror, drew about her shoulders her tipped fox scarf, jerked her hands vigorously into stout tan gloves, and proceeded down the two flights of stairs to the street. As she descended she noted with customary pleasure the effect of the cream-painted woodwork in the halls, the width of the stairs, and the flood of light from the skylight above the stair-well which effectively illuminated the interior of the house. She and Beatrice had indeed been fortunate in finding a home in such a pleasant, well-arranged building. It was the same apartment Miss Holland and Mrs. O’Brien had occupied for so many years, until the latter married again, and the former went to live with her nephew, Jerry,—who was a Commander now, had a wife and babies, and was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The trend of Jeannette’s thoughts reminded her she had not been to see Miss Holland for nearly two months; she resolved upon a visit in the immediate future.
The street was filled with morning sunshine as Jeannette stepped out upon the stone flagging of the lower hall, closed the inner door behind her, and felt in her purse with gloved fingers for the key to the mail-box.
She found two letters for herself: one from Alice saying that Etta was going to town on Saturday, would love to lunch with Aunt Jeannette and be eternally grateful to her if she’d help her pick out the dress; the other was a circular from Wanamaker’s. It was the latter rather than the former communication that started the train of thought which occupied Jeannette’s mind as she firmly stepped along the Avenue. Her walk to the office took twenty-three minutes and as she passed Fourteenth Street she noted by a clock in front of a jeweller’s store that she was a minute ahead of time. The Wanamaker circular set forth the advantages of a sale of women’s suits, yet it was not the attractive prices nor the smart models that occasioned Jeannette’s thoughts. The envelope containing the circular was addressed to “Mrs. Martin Devlin.” No one called her by that name any more. When she went back to work as Mr. Corey’s secretary, she had been welcomed as “Miss Sturgis.” “Miss Sturgis” had meant something in the affairs of the Chandler B. Corey Company; no significance was attached to “Mrs. Devlin.” It seemed wiser to drop her married name,—and after the break with Martin, she had no desire to keep it.
Odd to have been a man’s wife, to have belonged to someone! It would be hard to think of herself as a “Mrs.” again, to call herself “Mrs. Martin Devlin.” How many years ago had it been? Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that. Had there really ever been an interval of four years in her life when she had been a married woman? It seemed to her she had always been part of the Chandler B. Corey Company,—or the Corey Publishing Company as it now was called,—part of it without a break since those days of long ago when it had occupied three floors in a clumsy old office building and had looked out, with Schirmer’s Music Store and Tiffany’s, upon Union Square. What a slim, tall, ignorant, ill-equipped young thing she had been that day she went eagerly to meet Roy at the office and had watched Miss Reubens looking at photographs in the reception room! Jeannette smiled now at the memory of herself. It strained the imagination to believe that the present Miss Sturgis of the Mail Order Department had been that awkward girl so long ago.
The years—the years! The changes they had wrought! Jeannette thought of her last painful interview with Martin and the shadow of a frown came to her brow. She had gone over every detail of it a million times. It had indeed been harrowing. Poor Martin! He had pleaded so hard for her to come back to him, he had offered to do anything she wanted, but it was too late then; she couldn’t make him see it. She reminded him again and again that he had talked just the same way when he begged her to marry him; she had doubtfully agreed then, had consented to give their union a trial, and it had turned out a failure,—a hopeless failure. No, she didn’t blame him; she told him so over and over and admitted it was as much her fault as his; she was no more fitted to be a wife than he a husband; many people were constituted that way; they weren’t suited to married life. She pointed out to him that unless a marriage was happy, it was a mistake, and neither he nor she had been happy as man and wife. Why, she had never been for one minute as happy married to Martin Devlin as she had been since she became her own mistress again! She loved her independence, she told him, too much to surrender it to any man. And he? Well, it had been clearly demonstrated that he liked the society of men and enjoyed outdoor sports more than he did being a husband. She tried hard not to reproach him, had even said she saw no reason why they, two, could not go on being friends, occasionally seeing one another, but at that point Martin got angry,—a sort of madness seemed to take hold of him and he had said all sorts of terrible things to her, even called her names,—unforgettable ones. It had ended in a dreadful scene, a terrible scene,—dreadful and terrible because in spite of the fury and bitterness that gripped them, they knew love still remained. Jeannette would never forget the storm of tears, the abject grief that had come to her at their parting. Love Martin though she did, she realized she loved her re-won independence more, and she would not,—could not return to him. Mr. Corey had taken her in; she had promised to work for him for a while at least, and it was utterly impossible for her to tell him, after he had discharged his other secretary, that she was going back to her husband again. If Martin had only given her a year or two she might have been willing to be his wife once more, and she had told him as much, but Martin refused to listen; he had thrown down his challenge and forced her then and there to choose between her job and himself. There was nothing else for her to do; she had made her decision, and Martin had gone his way. She had never regretted it, she said to herself now; she was far better off to-day, far happier and more contented than she ever would have been as Mrs. Martin Devlin. As his wife she would have had ties and known sickness; she and he would have quarrelled and there would have been everlasting recriminations; she would have lost her looks, and her clothes would have become shabby; she would have grown familiar with poverty and have had to fight for herself and family the way Alice did,—poor, deserving, hard-working Alice, with her five children and unsuccessful husband! No doubt she, Jeannette, had missed much in life, but hers had been the safe course, the prudent and sure one. She was now in charge of the Mail Order Department of the Corey Publishing Company, she was earning fifty dollars a week, had five Liberty bonds all paid for, and was beholden to no one.... Of Martin she had not heard for years. On a visit to Alice at Cohasset Beach, she had one Sunday encountered ’Stel Teschemacher and that lady had informed her that Zeb Kline, while on a brief visit to Philadelphia, had seen Martin, and Martin had an agency for a motor-car there and was doing quite well. Jeannette would have liked to hear more, but she did not care to have ’Stel Teschemacher suspect she was interested.
It was ’Stel’s husband who sold the Beardsleys their home at Cohasset Beach. The purchase had followed the death of Roy’s father and the return of Roy and his family to New York. Dr. Beardsley had not lived long enough to make a writer’s career for his son possible. His death had sadly broken up the small home in Mill Valley, and Roy and Alice had deemed it wiser to put the little money the clergyman left them into a home of their own than spend it in paying rent, butchers’ and grocers’ bills on the chance that Roy’s pen might some day earn a livelihood sufficient for their needs. He had been only moderately successful as an author. His dog story had been published and he had placed several short stories but these had been few and far between and then little Frank had come to add his chubby countenance to the family circle and his parents decided a writer’s career was too precarious for a man with a family. A job on a newspaper or magazine would insure a steady income. So with grief over their bereavement and disappointment in their hearts for the abandoned profession, Roy and his wife returned to New York and then in quick succession had come the finding of his position on the Quart-z-Arts Review which carried with it a moderate salary, the purchase of the house at Cohasset Beach, and in time the arrival of the small Jeannette,—’Nettie she was called to distinguish her from her aunt,—and Baby Roy, who was seven years old now and had recently asserted his manhood by resenting the identifying adjective by which he had been known since birth. Jeannette paused a moment in her retrospective thoughts to calculate: Twenty-two years! Yes,—Alice and Roy had been married twenty-two years! They were an old married couple now.
She realized abruptly she had reached the office. Men and women, up and down the street, were converging in their courses toward the doors of the publishing company. The great concrete block of eight stories, crowded now to the limit of its capacity, with the thundering presses on the lower floors, had often seemed to her a monster that sucked in through its tiny mouth each morning a small army of workers, mulled them about all day between its ruminating jaws, fed on their juices and spewed them forth at evening to go their ways and gather new strength during the night to feed its hungry maw again upon the morrow.
Though the picture was grim and repellent, she cherished no hostility toward the institution that employed her. With the exception of the four-year interlude of adventuring in matrimony, she had been an employee of the self-same concern since she was eighteen; for nearly twenty years her name had appeared upon its pay-roll; in November she could make that very boast. More than any building in the world this block of steel and concrete was bound up with her destiny; she had spent most of the days of her life within it; she had seen its beginnings, had watched it spring into being, had had a hand in altering and adapting it to the needs of business, had observed its almost barren floors slowly fill year after year with human activity until now the use of every square foot of space was a matter of debate; she was one of the half dozen still gleaning a livelihood within its walls to-day who could speak of a time before its existence had even been conceived.
Most of those early associates on Union Square were gone now,—dead or following other lines of endeavor. Old Kipps still pottered about in the manufacturing department, Mr. Cavendish white-haired, gray-moustached and rosy, still edited Corey’s Commentary; Miss Travers, her merry face now lined with many criss-crossed wrinkles, had succeeded Mr. Olmstead and while not accorded the title of Auditor, which he had enjoyed, was known as the Cashier. Then there was Sidney Frank Allister, who, while he did not date back to the Union Square days, was still to be reckoned among those early associated with the fortunes of the publishing company, and now very much identified with them since he had become President and sat in the seat of Chandler B. Corey.
For Mr. Corey was dead. He had died the year Jeannette lost her mother and had followed his son, Willis, to the grave after a few months. Mrs. Corey had left him a widower many years before. There remained only his daughter, Babs, in an Adirondack sanitarium for the insane, to inherit his wealth and fifty-one per cent of the stock of the business he had created. He died a rich man and his will provided that his worldly possessions should be divided equally between his two children, their heirs and assigns, and of these last there were none, for Willis had never married and Babs could not. Jeannette often used to muse upon the futility of human ambition when she thought of the man she had served so long as secretary. She knew it had been the great desire of his life to found a publishing house that should become identified with the growth of American literature and pass on down the years in the hands of the Corey family, father and son succeeding one another after the fashion of some of the great English houses.
One day while sitting in his office intent upon affairs of business, his head dropped forward and banged on the hard surface of his desk before him, and he was dead. His heart had suddenly grown tired of its work. Even before he was laid away at Woodlawn, there had begun the mad scramble for the control of stock which would elect his successor. Jeannette never learned how Mr. Allister succeeded in obtaining it, but Mr. Featherstone had shortly been eliminated entirely from the affairs of the company and it was whispered that Mr. Kipps had played a double game. However that may have been, Sidney Frank Allister was by far the best man to fill Corey’s place, in Jeannette’s opinion. He was not so shrewd nor so far-seeing, but he had certain literary qualifications which fitted him for the position. Mr. Featherstone, Jeannette had early come to regard as a blustering blow-hard, while Mr. Kipps was hardly grammatical in speech or in letters, and had grown into a fussy old man. Francis Holm or Walt Chase might have proven themselves even better material, but three years prior to Mr. Corey’s death, both these young men had broken away from the old organization; Holm had launched forth into the publishing business for himself, and Walt Chase had gone to Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago at a salary, it was rumored, of ten thousand a year, and Jeannette had succeeded him as head of the Mail Order Department.
Much as she had enjoyed being secretary to Mr. Corey, she was forced to realize as the years rolled by, that the position held no future for her. She would always be the president’s secretary as long as Mr. Corey lived but against the congenial work and easy rôle her ambition had protested. Recollections of early resolutions she had made on entering the business world returned to disturb her complacency. She remembered vowing then she would go to the very top and some day become herself an executive instead of a secretary. She saw no reason why she should not follow in Walt Chase’s footsteps and be worth ten thousand a year, if not to the Corey Company then to some other. She had great confidence in herself, felt especially qualified to do mail order work, and was sure she could increase sales and manage the department better than Walt Chase. It was a pet idea of hers that women, not men, bought books by mail, and she was confident that attacks directed at women, written from a feminine standpoint, would show results. When the offer from Chicago came and Chase announced he was going, she determined suddenly to seize the opportunity and asked Mr. Corey for Chase’s place; she had played secretary long enough, she told him,—she wanted her chance at bigger work.
There had been a great deal of demurring and discussion before she was allowed to try her hand. Mr. Kipps and Mr. Featherstone had vigorously opposed the plan, arguing that while Miss Sturgis had proven herself an incomparable secretary, there was no indication she would be equally successful in charge of the Mail Order Department. Walt Chase had built up a steady sale for the company’s publications, and had been, doing many thousands of dollars’ worth of business a year. Mr. Kipps and Mr. Featherstone shared the opinion that a woman was not competent to manage affairs involving so much money,—they were too large for the feminine mind to grasp. They contended, too, that she had had no experience in mail order affairs, and that a young man, named Owens, who had been Chase’s assistant for over a year, was his logical successor, and had been led to expect the promotion; it was doubtful, they said, whether he and Mr. Sparks, and old Mr. Harris and the one or two other men who had been under Walt Chase would consent to remain if a woman was placed in charge of them; this particular branch of the business had become exceedingly profitable and it was pointed out to Mr. Corey that he was in great danger of demoralizing it by permitting a girl to assume its management.
Jeannette had stood firm and resolutely pressed her request in the face of opposition which she considered stupid and which angered her. Mr. Corey finally agreed to give her a trial although it was clear he had his misgivings. But during the nine years in which Jeannette had filled the coveted position, she had amply demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction her faith in herself to be warranted, and this in spite of the fact that Owens and Sparks had promptly resigned as predicted by Mr. Featherstone and Mr. Kipps, and for a time the work had been demoralized indeed.
Yet she triumphed, as she knew she would, and the ideas she had long cherished for conducting mail order campaigns had borne fruit. Last year she had the satisfaction of stating in her annual report that the business of her department had doubled in size since she had taken it in charge. It had been a long struggle fraught with interference and constant criticism of her methods. It had been particularly hard at first when Mr. Kipps supervised everything she did and vetoed some of her pet projects. He had hampered her in every way he could, not because he had any personal feeling against her but because she was a woman and he had no faith in a woman’s judgment. That was the way he had always treated Miss Holland; but now since Miss Holland had resigned and gone to live with her nephew in Brooklyn, he was willing at any minute to wax eloquent in praise of her extraordinary ability: ah, yes,—yes, indeed,—Miss Holland was a remarkable woman,—fitted in every way for business,—brain like a man’s,—wonderfully clear-sighted, excellent judgment; they didn’t “make” many women like Miss Holland,—she was the exception, one in a million!
Jeannette had to contend against such prejudice for the first year or two, but eventually she overcame it. Mr. Corey helped her whenever possible. She strove to keep the affairs of her department to herself and when forced to seek higher authority, made a practice of going directly to the President who had been the first to be convinced of her ability. As time went on, Kipps and the other members of the firm inclined to question her gradually allowed her to go her way. It had taken nearly a decade to win their confidence but there was satisfaction in the thought that at last it was hers, the victory was complete. Of course old Mr. Kipps would always purse his lips and frown dubiously about anything she proposed for he would never be completely convinced of her ability until she followed in Miss Holland’s footsteps, but Kipps was stooped and aged now and little attention was paid to what he said or did. The Board of Directors was satisfied with the generalship of Miss Sturgis whose monthly reports of sales and profits confirmed their confidence. When some other department reported a loss, or when business in general was poor, the Mail Order Department could be depended upon to show a consoling profit.
One section of the sixth floor was Jeannette’s domain. She had tried for years to have her department walled off by partitions but the best she had been able to obtain for herself and her girls was a line of screens and bookcases. She had twenty-four clerks under her now, although the number fluctuated, particularly during October when the fall campaign was in progress. Then her force often swelled to over a hundred and the extra help was quartered temporarily in neighboring vacant lofts and offices, rented for a few weeks. She then had her lieutenants to superintend the work, which for the most part consisted merely of folding and inserting circulars in envelopes, sealing and stamping.
Her department was well organized; the work had been so systematized that it now moved with perfect smoothness. Old Sam Harris,—who represented all that was left of Walt Chase’s régime,—supervised the card catalogues; Miss Stenicke was in charge of the girls; the “inquiries” were checked and answered by Mrs. M’Ardle, while orders were entered and forwarded to the stock room for filling by little Miss Lacy. Jeannette devoted herself to the preparation of copy for letters, circulars and advertisement. This was the most important part of the work, and she believed her time and brains could not be better employed. She kept huge scrap-books in which she pasted circulars and letters issued by other mail order houses and spent hours poring over them.
Her desk stood on a low platform and from this vantage-point she could overlook her department as a school teacher surveys her schoolroom. She prided herself she could tell at a glance what any particular girl ought to be doing; if ever in doubt she promptly summoned Mrs. M’Ardle to her desk and inquired. All the girls respected and admired her; they knew her to be fair-dealing and straightforward, though swift in censure where merited. She liked to have them think of her in this way and cultivated the idea.
“You’re conscientious and you try hard,” she would say in admonishing some unfortunate bungler. “I want to be just to you. In conducting the affairs of this department, I want to be as lenient as I can. I strive to forget personalities and think only of my assistants,—or perhaps I had better say ‘associates,’—as co-helpers in a big machine, each one functioning to the best of her ability at her particular piece of work. I’ve explained my ideas to Mr. Allister repeatedly. I want the girls in the Mail Order Department to be every one her own boss, to come and go as she pleases, and feel responsible—not to me but to the work.... I want to be a ‘big sister’ to every girl under me. I’m placed here to help, advise and direct, not to scold. But if you fail to perform properly the work assigned you, if you’re clumsy and careless and haphazard in your methods, then it is my duty to call the fact to your attention.... I want to be fair to everyone; I have no favorites....”
The lecture might continue at some length particularly if Miss Stenicke, Mrs. M’Ardle or little Miss Lacy was within earshot.
For a long time this Mail Order branch of the business of which she was the head had called forth Jeannette’s great pride. She had felt it was all hers,—her work. But of late, she had been stirred less and less. After