Dangerous Business/Chapter 13
Jay set out to establish his first connection with a payroll, encouraged by a wife eloquent with hopes contrary to those usually entertained upon such an occasion. Lida hoped his father wouldn't employ him and that Jay, after having offered to go to work and having been refused, would feel satisfied with the gesture.
Lida had awakened, after he had dressed, and beckoned him to her bed where she had extended her white arms to him.
"Try to be through with him in time to catch the Century, Jay," she urged. "I'll have us packed."
Her temporary enthusiasm for Chicago, surprised in her by the revelation of the lake and the floe agleam under the moon, was quickly worn. The lake, under daylight, did not develop any diversions; it was scenery in winter.
The city was not impressive to a New Yorker. It was flat and smoky; the people talked just like their streets, Lida observed, with flat, noisy, uninteresting voices; and they kept themselves simply spattered with business.
"You never see a gentleman, born here," she told her husband coolly. "Every man who isn't working apologizes for it or looks like he expected to be arrested, no matter how much he has. It's the slave psychology. It simply screams out loud hou'recently you've all been scraping. You can't get away from it in Chicago, so you love it and praise it—like your rotten weather."
"I was born here," Jay reminded her.
Lida nodded. "Yes; that's my trouble. If you were an Englishman, now—if you'd generations and centuries behind you when you'd never been anything but a gentleman—you'd have the confidence and pride in yourself to use your wife's money. You'd not only use it; you'd demand it. Imagine an Englishman marrying me without seeing to a big settlement on himself first."
"Hmhm," said Jay. "You'd have respected me for that?"
"It would show you respected yourself."
"You'd have liked an Englishman like that," he said, not putting it as a question, but a statement of realization. "Well, the English certainly get away with it."
"Because they know what's in them."
"What's in me, unless I show something by working?"
"Chicago," said Lida, hopelessly. "Go down and see what the Mettens gave you; and what your father'll give you for it."
Jay went to breakfast, upon this morning, not in the hotel dining-room at a dollar-fifty for cereal, egg and coffee, but in a cafeteria a few blocks away in the company of clerks and stenographers where he saved a subtraction of a dollar and fifteen cents.
How it would amuse Lida's bright, black eyes to witness this bit of economy! It would not amuse at all the steady, gray eyes of the girl to whom he was going and who had suggested to him, so gently, that he "grow up." By going into business, she meant, by taking another at' titude, than his own, toward business. What was his own attitude? Not Lida's surely.
He sat in his chair, with his coffee on the wide arm beside him, and smiled at the idea of Lida's imaginary English husband here. Of course he wouldn't be, but would be sound asleep beside his wife, with his boots outside the door. When he awakened, he would order, haughtily, breakfast for two in their room—on her money. And every hostess would fall over herself in her haste to entertain them. He would patronize the men, and they would like it and brag that they knew him.
Nothing fanciful in that picture; it would merely be history repeating itself. Jay laughed a little; certainly there was something to be said for Lida's theory, if a man could get away with it within himself.
His father's idea was pretty much the polar opposite—work, keep everlastingly at it; long hours and close attention to detail; go to bed tired; and rise to work. This never had made any appeal to Jay; he always had combated it. He believed in some work but in joy, too; short hours and plenty of play and pleasure. He had taken, in college, too much, perhaps, but he felt that altogether he was more right than his father. He had felt, also, that the one other person who knew most about him, although she worked with his father, in general agreed with him. Her suggestion that he "grow up" was her first personal pronouncement of any sort of criticism of him throughout the many months she had known his most intimate affairs and had had to deal with them. It was, indeed, her first personal intrusion, except when she had cried a little, talking to him, on the morning in the office when he had taken upon himself . . . Lida. Consequently, except when he had been with her, he had never given Ellen Powell much thought. He had never had reason to; she always had approved him.
He swung along Michigan Avenue in a cold, raw wind under gray, gloomy clouds comprising weather which Chicagoans, making the best of it according to their slave psychology, called invigorating. From a less practical point of view, and probably a more honest one, it was rotten weather, Jay admitted. He was hurrying along, hoping that this morning Phil Metten, making good on his hints of yesterday, would send over a big order, which would be a reward for social favors extended—and that was rather rotten, Jay thought. What had been behind those gray eyes of Ellen Powell when she had said "grow up"?
He entered the office, determined not to be affected by strictures upon his marriage, because his father did not know the facts of it, but he hoped for no discussion of Lida. And there was, immediately, none.
His father, who was at the desk with Ellen, arose and she slipped away. His father extended a hand, slowly and with a grave, steady inspection. In spite of being affected by the solemnity of it, Jay tried to study this reception according to his knowledge of lines his father would adopt. A visit with Stanley Alban was, especially in these last years, an emotional and prayerful event. Beyond doubt, his father had discussed the marriage with his old, ailing friend; beyond doubt, they had prayed together over Jay and, probably together, decided what was to be done about him. It was a guess, only; yet Jay felt sure of it; and the idea of the two disposing of him, and without knowing all the facts, offended him.
"I'm the prodigal son," he said to himself. "They've agreed to forgive me." And he asked, as soon as he had spoken formally to his father, "How's Mr. Alban?"
"Not at all well."
"You mean he's very bad?"
"Comfortable enough," replied his father. "He may go on as he is for a year; he may be gone to-morrow."
"Sorry," said Jay, pressing slightly his father's hand and with the offense gone from him. Sincerely old Stanley and his father were friends, he knew, though he felt no force, for himself, in the tie of emotionalism and religiosity which bound them. To pray together was simply their way of seriously deciding a question. He had wanted to ask whether his father had brought back the Alban business but he did not and, indeed, he needed not. He knew that relations remained much what they had been.
"How's Lew?" he inquired.
"How is your wife?" asked his father.
"Fine," said Jay.
"You have not yet come home."
Not moved to the house, his father meant.
"No," said Jay.
"It will welcome you," assured his father, withdrawing his hand. "You will both be over this evening."
"I want to talk business with you," said Jay, seating himself on the edge of the desk as his father resumed his chair.
"What do you mean by business?"
"Payroll," replied Jay plainly.
"I will employ you," his father offered. "Your place is with me." And Jay recognized in this an echo of discussion and prayer with old Stanley. "Good Lord," he thought and realized how rigid was the decision regarding him. It made him want to break away; but already, in a sense, he had been at work. He remembered Metten.
"An order come over from Mettens this morning?" he asked.
"No."
"Not yet, I guess," said Jay; and now he inquired, "By the way, the Alban account all right? Lew trying anything?"
He saw his father color slightly. "Lew is not yet in control," said John Rountree, vengefully. "I will start you in the stockroom."
"What at?"
"Learning stock."
"I meant the pay envelope."
"There will be consideration of your necessities," said his father. Another echo of the prayer, thought Jay. "I will pay you fifty dollars a week. Also you—both of you—can have your home with me."
It was generous, Jay very well knew: a home, for his wife and himself, without expense and with more pay than any one else, purely as an employer, would offer him at the start; yet it was, under the circumstances, impossible. What was, for him, feasible?
"Thanks, father," he acknowledged, uneasily.
"What did you expect? You must learn stock before you can sell."
"Lowry sent me some money at Tryston," Jay reminded. "Did I earn any of it?"
His father reddened and looked down. "That has been charged off," he said. "Not charged to you."
He rang for Ellen and Jay recognized the signal that he would take up his own work.
"It ought to be charged to selling," said Jay, in spite of Ellen's presence in the room, "for it sold Metten. We got a two-weeks order out of it, anyway. Ask Lowry."
His father looked up at him.
"I know I've got to start, father; but I've already begun. I want to go on and land the rest of that Metten account. I'll never land it in the stockroom."
"How shall I put you on the payroll?" his father demanded. "As a golf player? Shall I put on your wife, too?"
Jay went fiery red. "Not my wife," he said.
"Why not? She seems to have done as much as you." And he turned to Ellen and gave her directions.
Jay waited in the room, apparently looking at the newspaper but listening and attending. He caught a change in his father's voice since, months ago, he had lingered thus in the office with business going on. His father's certainty of himself, reasserted positively enough when he was stirred to personal argument, was lacking; a confidence was gone. It bothered Jay to feel it; finally he arose and went into the general offices, to return after his father passed on the way to the plant.
"What happened to him down at Stanley?" he demanded of Ellen.
"He just managed to bring back the business," said Ellen frankly.
"Do you know anything?" Jay challenged her.
She knew, through Di, a good deal; she knew the sneers and jibes at Mr. Rountree for holding the Alban business through his church and prayer meeting association with his old friend. She would not tell that, but some of it showed in her eyes.
"I think," said Ellen, "Lew Alban was as unpleasant as he could be."
"He'll not bring father to his knees," denied Jay.
"The order—I've seen it—" said Ellen, "is cancelable on ten days notice. There's no way to figure our running without it . . . if it's not replaced."
"It'll be replaced."
"Yes," said Ellen, looking up at him and catching breath quickly. "Don't go to the stockroom. Learn the shapes, sizes, qualities, prices, of course; but they're mostly in a book. You can carry them in your pocket. Don't let him keep you in the stockroom."
"No," said Jay; and it was like a promise to her. Without either of them consciously approaching, they had drawn together so that they almost touched. Warm, clear color spread over her cheek: her forehead. What a fine forehead she had with her, hair parted near the pretty point of a widow's peak. What large, steady eyes lovely with thought.
"I'm married," suddenly he said to himself; and the next second, it startled him. Why, close to her, gazing down at her, disposing with her of himself, had he thought of that? Married! Why had it occurred to him? Because this girl, with her eyes so lovely with tenderness and thought, was become at this moment woman to him?
Lida. He thought of her urging him away, hoping he'd be through with his father, and that his father would have refused him, in time to catch the Century to-day to New York—on her money, as an English husband might have done.
He smiled, looking down into Ellen's eyes; and she crimsoned with confusion and drew back, thinking he was laughing at her. He was laughing at Lida's slave psychology with her opinion of Chicago and work. He wanted to tell Ellen Powell of it and say that he was not laughing at her, but he could not do this so he turned it into a smile at himself.
"Am I growing up a little?" he asked Ellen.
"A little," said Ellen; and in her confusion, fled.