Machines were the Pemberton force, and their greatest rivals were the machines of steel and wood, at least one of which each new efficiency expert left behind him: Machines for opening letters and sealing them, automatic typewriters, dictation phonographs, pneumatic chutes. But none of the other machines was so tyrannical as the time-clock. Una admitted to herself that she didn't see how it was possible to get so many employees together promptly without it, and she was duly edified by the fact that the big chiefs punched it, too.... But she noticed that after punching it promptly at nine, in an unctuous manner which said to all beholders, "You see that even I subject myself to this delightful humility," Mr. S. Herbert Ross frequently sneaked out and had breakfast....

She knew that the machines were supposed to save work. But she was aware that the girls worked just as hard and long and hopelessly after their introduction as before; and she suspected that there was something wrong with a social system in which time-saving devices didn't save time for anybody but the owners. She was not big enough nor small enough to have a patent cure-all solution ready. She could not imagine any future for these women in business except the accidents of marriage or death--or a revolution in the att.i.tude toward them. She saw that the comfortable average men of the office sooner or later, if they were but faithful and lived long enough, had opportunities, responsibility, forced upon them.

No such force was used upon the comfortable average women!

She endeavored to picture a future in which women, the ordinary, philoprogenitive, unambitious women, would have some way out besides being married off or killed off. She envisioned a complete change in the fundamental purpose of organized business from the increased production of soap--or books or munitions--to the increased production of happiness. How this revolution was to be accomplished she had but little more notion than the other average women in business. She blindly adopted from Mamie Magen a half-comprehended faith in a Fabian socialism, a socializing that would crawl slowly through practical education and the preaching of kinship, through profit-sharing and old-age pensions, through scientific mosquito-slaying and cancer-curing and food reform and the abolition of anarchistic business compet.i.tion, to a goal of tolerable and beautiful life. Of one thing she was sure: This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid spokesmen like S. Herbert Ross to the effect that they were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing nerves to the effect that they lived in a polite version of h.e.l.l.... She was more and more certain that the workers weren't discontented enough; that they were too patient with lives insecure and tedious. But she refused to believe that the age of comparative happiness would always be a dream; for already, at Herzfeld & Cohn's she had tasted of an environment where no one considered himself a divinely ruling chief, and where it was not a crime to laugh easily. But certainly she did not expect to see this age during her own life. She and her fellows were doomed, unless they met by chance with marriage or death; or unless they crawled to the top of the heap. And this last she was determined to do.

Though she did hope to get to the top without unduly kicking the shrieking ma.s.s of slaves beneath her, as the bright young men learned to do.

Whenever she faced Mr. Ross's imperturbable belief that things-as-they-are were going pretty well, that "you can't change human nature," Una would become meek and puzzled, lose her small store of revolutionary economics, and wonder, grope, doubt her millennial faith.

Then she would again see the dead eyes of young girls as they entered the elevators at five-thirty, and she would rage at all chiefs and bright young men.... A gold-eye-gla.s.sed, kitten-stepping, good little thing she was, and competent to a.s.sist Mr. Ross in his mighty labors, yet at heart she was a shawled Irish peasant, or a muzhik lost in the vastness of the steppes; a creature elemental and despairing, facing mysterious powers of nature--human nature.

CHAPTER XV

Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz was a regular visitant at the flat of Mrs.

Lawrence and Una. Mrs. Lawrence liked him; in his presence she abandoned her pretense of being interested in Mamie Magen's arid intellectualism, and Una's quivering anxieties. Mr. Schwirtz was ready for any party, whenever he was "in off the road."

Una began to depend on him for amus.e.m.e.nts. Mrs. Lawrence encouraged her to appear at her best before him. When he or one of Mrs. Lawrence's men was coming the two women had an early and quick dinner of cold ham and canned soup, and hastily got out the electric iron to press a frock; produced Pemberton's Flesh-Tinted Vanisho Powder, and the lip-stick whose use Una hated, but which she needed more and more as she came back from the office bloodless and cold. They studied together the feminine art of using a new veil, a flower, or fresh white-kid gloves, to change one's appearance.

Poor Una! She was thinking now, secretly and shamefacedly, of the "beautifying methods" which she saw advertised in every newspaper and cheap magazine. She rubbed her red, desk-calloused elbows with Pemberton's cold-cream. She cold-creamed and ma.s.saged her face every night, standing wearily before a milky mirror in the rather close and lingerie-scattered bedroom, solemnly rotating her fingers about her cheeks and forehead, stopping to conjecture that the pores in her nose were getting enlarged. She rubbed her hair with Pemberton's "Olivine and Petrol" to keep it from growing thin, and her neck with cocoanut oil to make it more full. She sent for a bottle of "Mme. LeGrand's Bust-Developer," and spent several Sat.u.r.day afternoons at the beauty parlors of Mme. Isoldi, where in a little booth shut off by a white-rubber curtain, she received electrical ma.s.sages, applications of a magic N-ray hair-brush, vigorous cold-creaming and warm-compressing, and enormous amounts of advice about caring for the hair follicles, from a young woman who spoke French with a Jewish accent.

By a twist of psychology, though she had not been particularly fond of Mr. Schwirtz, but had anointed herself for his coming because he was a representative of men, yet after months of thus dignifying his attentions, the very effort made her suppose that she must be fond of him. Not Mr. Schwirtz, but her own self did she befool with Pemberton's "Preparations de Paris."

Sometimes with him alone, sometimes with him and Mrs. Lawrence and one of Mrs. Lawrence's young businessman attendants, Una went to theaters and dinners and heterogeneous dances.

She was dazzled and excited when Mr. Schwirtz took her to the opening of the Champs du Pom-Pom, the latest potpourri of amus.e.m.e.nts on Broadway.

All under one roof were a super-vaudeville show, a smart musical comedy, and the fireworks of one-act plays; a Chinese restaurant, and a Louis Quinze restaurant and a Syrian desert-caravan restaurant; a ballroom and an ice-skating rink; a summer garden that, in midwinter, luxuriated in real trees and real gra.s.s, and a real brook crossed by j.a.panese bridges.

Mr. Schwirtz was tireless and extravagant and hearty at the Champs du Pom-Pom. He made Una dance and skate; he had a box for the vaudeville; he gave her caviar canape and lobster _a la Rue des Trois Soeurs_ in the Louis Quinze room; and sparkling Burgundy in the summer garden, where mocking-birds sang in the wavering branches above their table. Una took away an impressionistic picture of the evening--

Scarlet and shadowy green, sequins of gold, slim shoulders veiled in costly mist. The glitter of spangles, the hissing of silk, low laughter, and continual music quieter than a dream. Crowds that were not harsh busy folk of the streets, but a nodding procession of gallant men and women. A kindly cleverness which inspirited her, and a dusky perfume in which she could meditate forever, like an Egyptian G.o.ddess throned at the end of incense-curtained aisles. Great tapestries of velvet and jeweled lights; swift, smiling servants; and the languorous well-being of eating strange, delicious foods. Orchids and the scent of poppies and spell of the lotos-flower, the bead of wine and lips that yearned; ecstasy in the Oriental pride of a superb Jewess who was singing to the demure enchantment of little violins. Her restlessness satisfied, a momentary pang of distrust healed by the brotherly talk of the broad-shouldered man who cared for her and nimbly fulfilled her every whim. An unvoiced desire to keep him from drinking so many highb.a.l.l.s; an enduring thankfulness to him when she was back at the flat; a defiant joy that he had kissed her good-night--just once, and so tenderly; a determination to "be good for him," and a fear that he had "spent too much money on her to-night," and a plan to reason with him about whisky and extravagance. A sudden hatred of the office to which she would have to return in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of the flat, where Lawrence was breathing loudly in her sleep; the oily smell of hairs tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden, frightened query as to what scornful disdain Walter Babson would fling at her if he saw her glorying in this Broadway circus with the heavy Mr.

Schwirtz. A ghostly night-born feeling that she still belonged to Walter, living or dead, and a wonder as to where in all the world he might be. A defiant protest that she idealized Walter, that he wasn't so awfully superior to the Champs du Pom-Pom as this astral body of his was pretending, and a still more defiant grat.i.tude to Mr. Schwirtz as she crawled into the tousled bed and Mrs. Lawrence half woke to yawn, "Oh, that--you--Gold'n? _Gawd!_ I'm sleepy. Wha' time is 't?"

- 2

Una was sorry. She hated herself as what she called a "quitter," but now, in January, 1910, she was at an _impa.s.se_. She could just stagger through each day of S. Herbert Ross and office diplomacies. She had been at Pemberton's for a year and a third, and longer than that with Mrs.

Lawrence at the flat. The summer vacation of 1909 she had spent with Mrs. Lawrence at a Jersey coast resort. They had been jealous, had quarreled, and made it up every day, like lovers. They had picked up two summer men, and Mrs. Lawrence had so often gone off on picnics with her man that Una had become uneasy, felt soiled, and come back to the city early. For this Mrs. Lawrence had never forgiven her. She had recently become engaged to a doctor who was going to Akron, Ohio, and she exasperated Una by giving her bland advice about trying to get married.

Una never knew whether she was divorced, or whether the mysterious Mr.

Lawrence had died.

But even the difficile Lawrence was preferable to the strain at the office. Una was tired clean through and through. She felt as though her very soul had been drained out by a million blood-sucker details--constant adjustments to Ross's demands for admiration of his filthiest office political deals, and the need of keeping friendly with both sides when Ross was engaged in one of his frequent altercations with an a.s.sistant.

Often she could not eat in the evening. She would sit on the edge of the bed and cry hopelessly, with a long, feeble, peculiarly feminine sobbing, till Mrs. Lawrence slammed the door and went off to the motion pictures. Una kept repeating a little litany she had made regarding the things she wished people would stop doing--praying to be delivered from Ross's buoyant egotism, from Mrs. Lawrence's wearing of Una's best veils, from Mr. Schwirtz's acting as though he wanted to kiss her whenever he had a whisky breath, from the office-manager who came in to chat with her just when she was busiest, from the office-boy who always snapped his fingers as he went down the corridor outside her door, and from the elevator-boy who sucked his teeth.

She was sorry. She wanted to climb. She didn't want to be a quitter. But she was at an _impa.s.se_.

On a January day the Pemberton office beheld that most terrifying crisis that can come to a hard, slave-driving office. As the office put it, "The Old Man was on a rampage."

Mr. Pemberton, senior, most h.o.a.rily awful of all the big chiefs, had indigestion or a poor balance-sheet. He decided that everything was going wrong. He raged from room to room. He denounced the new poster, the new top for the talc.u.m-powder container, the arrangement of the files, and the whispering in the amen corner of veteran stenographers.

He sent out flocks of "office memoes." Everybody trembled. Mr.

Pemberton's sons actually did some work; and, as the fire spread and the minor bosses in turn raged among their subordinates, the girls who packed soap down in the works expected to be "fired." After a visitation from Mr. Pemberton and three raging memoes within fifteen minutes, Mr.

S. Herbert Ross retreated toward the Lafayette Cafe, and Una was left to face Mr. Pemberton's bear-like growls on his next appearance.

When he did appear he seemed to hold her responsible for all the world's long sadness. Meanwhile the printer was telephoning for Mr. Ross's O. K.

on copy, the engravers wanted to know where the devil was that color-proof, the advertising agency sarcastically indicated that it was difficult for them to insert an advertis.e.m.e.nt before they received the order, and a girl from the cashier's office came nagging in about a bill for India ink.

The memoes began to get the range of her desk again, and Mr. Pemberton's voice could be heard in a distant part of the office, approaching, menacing, all-pervading.

Una fled. She ran to a wash-room, locked the door, leaned panting against it, as though detectives were pursuing her. She was safe for a moment. They might miss her, but she was insulated from demands of, "Where's Ross, Miss Golden? Well, why _don't_ you know where he is?"

from telephone calls, and from memoes whose polite "please" was a gloved threat.

But even to this refuge the familiar sound of the office penetrated--the whirr which usually sounded as a h.o.m.ogeneous murmur, but which, in her acute sensitiveness, she now a.n.a.lyzed into the voices of different typewriters--one flat, rapid, staccato; one a steady, dull rattle. The "zzzzz" of typewriter-carriages being shoved back. The roll of closing elevator doors, and the rumble of the ascending elevator. The long burr of an unanswered telephone at a desk, again and again; and at last an angry "Well! h.e.l.lo? Yes, yes; this 's Mr. Jones. What-duh-yuh want?"

Voices mingled; a shout for Mr. Brown; the hall-attendant yelping: "Miss Golden! Where's Miss Golden? Anything for Sanford? Mr. Smith, d'you know if there's anything for Sanford?" Always, over and through all, the enveloping clatter of typewriters, and the city roar behind that, breaking through the barrier of the door.

The individual, a.n.a.lyzed sounds again blended in one insistent noise of hurry which a.s.sailed Una's conscience, summoned her back to her work.

She sighed, washed her stinging eyes, opened the door, and trailed back toward her den.

In the corridor she pa.s.sed three young stenographers and heard one of them cry: "Yes, but I don't care if old Alfalfa goes on a rampage twenty-five hours a day. I'm through. Listen, May, say, what d'you know about me? I'm engaged! No, honest, straight I am! Look at me ring! Aw, it is not; it's a regular engagement-ring. I'm going to be out of this h.e.l.l-hole in two weeks, and Papa Pemberton can work off his temper on somebody else. Me, I'm going to do a slumber marathon till noon every day."

"Gee!"

"Engaged!"

--said the other girls, and--

"Engaged! Going to sleep till noon every day. And not see Mr. Ross or Mr. Pemberton! That's my idea of heaven!" thought Una.

There was a pile of inquiring memoes from Mr. Pemberton and the several department heads on her desk. As she looked at them Una reached the point of active protest.

"S. Herbert runs for shelter when the storm breaks, and leaves me here to stand it. Why isn't _he_ supposed to be here on the job just as much as I am?" she declaimed. "Why haven't I the nerve to jump up and go out for a cup of tea the way he would? By jiminy! I will!"

She was afraid of the indefinite menace concealed in all the Pemberton system as she signaled an elevator. But she did not answer a word when the hall-attendant said, "You are going out, Miss Golden?"

She went to a German-Jewish bakery and lunch-room, and reflectively got down thin coffee served in a thick cup, a sugar-warted _Kaffeekuche_, and two crullers. She was less willing to go back to work than she had been in her refuge in the wash-room. She felt that she would rather be dead than return and subject herself to the strain. She was "through,"

like the little engaged girl. She was a "quitter."

For half an hour she remained in the office, but she left promptly at five-thirty, though her desk was choked with work and though Mr. Ross telephoned that he would be back before six, which was his chivalrous way of demanding that she stay till seven.

Mr. Schwirtz was coming to see her that evening. He had suggested vaudeville.

She dressed very carefully. She did her hair in a new way.

When Mr. Schwirtz came she cried that she _couldn't_ go to a show. She was "clean played out." She didn't know what she could do. Pemberton's was too big a threshing-machine for her. She was tired--"absolutely all in."

"Poor little sister!" he said, and smoothed her hair.