Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney Read online

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  ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM

  There is a journey compared to which the travels of Bunyan's hero were asummer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march istaken belong to a maligned fraternity, and are known as traveling men.Sample-case in hand, trunk key in pocket, cigar in mouth, brown derbyatilt at an angle of ninety, each young and untried traveler starts onhis journey down that road which leads through morasses of chicken _ala_ Creole, over greasy mountains of queen fritters made doubly perilousby slippery glaciers of rum sauce, into formidable jungles of breadedveal chops threaded by sanguine and deadly streams of tomato gravy,past sluggish mires of dreadful things _en casserole_, over hills ofcorned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging intosloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexiongone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there,he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned sirensing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with applesauce.

  Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house atThree Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven manyyears before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hoteldining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows eachtreacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her torecognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom ofminced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable mysteriesof a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but terrible,from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her complexion andfigure saved.

  No more metaphor. On with the story, which left Emma at her safe andsolitary supper.

  She had the last number of the _Dry Goods Review_ propped up againstthe vinegar cruet and the Worcestershire, and the salt shaker. Betweenconscientious, but disinterested mouthfuls of medium roast beef, she wasreading the snappy ad set forth by her firm's bitterest competitors,the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company. It was a good reading ad. EmmaMcChesney, who had forgotten more about petticoats than the averageskirt salesman ever knew, presently allowed her luke-warm beef to growcold and flabby as she read. Somewhere in her subconscious mind sherealized that the lanky head waitress had placed some one opposite herat the table. Also, subconsciously, she heard him order liver and bacon,with onions. She told herself that as soon as she reached the bottom ofthe column she'd look up to see who the fool was. She never arrived atthe column's end.

  "I just hate to tear you away from that love lyric; but if I mighttrouble you for the vinegar--"

  Emma groped for it back of her paper and shoved it across the tablewithout looking up, "--and the Worcester--"

  One eye on the absorbing column, she passed the tall bottle. But at itsremoval her prop was gone. The _Dry Goods Review_ was too weighty forthe salt shaker alone.

  "--and the salt. Thanks. Warm, isn't it?"

  There was a double vertical frown between Emma McChesney's eyes as sheglanced up over the top of her _Dry Goods Review_. The frown gave way toa half smile. The glance settled into a stare.

  "But then, anybody would have stared. He expected it," she said,afterwards, in telling about it. "I've seen matinee idols, and tailors'supplies salesmen, and Julian Eltinge, but this boy had any maleprofessional beauty I ever saw, looking as handsome and dashing as abowl of cold oatmeal. And he knew it."

  Now, in the ten years that she had been out representing T. A. Buck'sFeatherloom Petticoats Emma McChesney had found it necessary to make arule or two for herself. In the strict observance of one of these shehad become past mistress in the fine art of congealing the warm advancesof fresh and friendly salesmen of the opposite sex. But this case wasdifferent, she told herself. The man across the table was little morethan a boy--an amazingly handsome, astonishingly impudent, cockilyconfident boy, who was staring with insolent approval at EmmaMcChesney's trim, shirt-waisted figure, and her fresh, attractivecoloring, and her well-cared-for hair beneath the smart summer hat.

  "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," heannounced, glibly.]

  "It isn't in human nature to be as good-looking as you are," spake EmmaMcChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-waymeasures. "I'll bet you have bad teeth, or an impediment in yourspeech."

  The gorgeous young man smiled. His teeth were perfect. "Peter Piperpicked a peck of pickled peppers," he announced, glibly. "Nothingmissing there, is there?"

  "Must be your morals then," retorted Emma McChesney. "My! My! And on theroad! Why, the trail of bleeding hearts that you must leave all the wayfrom Maine to California would probably make the Red Sea turn white withenvy."

  The Fresh Young Kid speared a piece of liver and looked soulfully upinto the adoring eyes of the waitress who was hovering over him. "Gotany nice hot biscuits to-night, girlie?" he inquired.

  "I'll get you some; sure," wildly promised his handmaiden, anddisappeared kitchenward.

  "Brand new to the road, aren't you?" observed Emma McChesney, cruelly.

  "What makes you think--"

  "Liver and bacon, hot biscuits, Worcestershire," elucidated she. "Noold-timer would commit suicide that way. After you've been out fortwo or three years you'll stick to the Rock of Gibraltar--roast beef,medium. Oh, I get wild now and then, and order eggs if the girl says sheknows the hen that layed 'em, but plain roast beef, unchloroformed, isthe one best bet. You can't go wrong if you stick to it."

  The god-like young man leaned forward, forgetting to eat.

  "You don't mean to tell me you're on the road!"

  "Why not?" demanded Emma McChesney, briskly.

  "Oh, fie, fie!" said the handsome youth, throwing her a languishinglook. "Any woman as pretty as you are, and with those eyes, and thathair, and figure--Say, Little One, what are you going to do to-night?"

  Emma McChesney sugared her tea, and stirred it, slowly. Then she lookedup. "To-night, you fresh young kid, you!" she said calmly, "I'm going todictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week,and why it's going to pick up next week, and then I'm going to keep anengagement with a nine-hour beauty sleep."

  "Don't get sore at a fellow. You'd take pity on me if you knew how Ihave to work to kill an evening in one of these little townpump burgs.Kill 'em! It can't be done. They die harder than the heroine in aten, twenty, thirty. From supper to bedtime is twice as long as frombreakfast to supper. Honest!"

  But Emma McChesney looked inexorable, as women do just before theyrelent. Said she: "Oh, I don't know. By the time I get through tryingto convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoathas every other skirt in the market looking like a piece of Fourth ofJuly bunting that's been left out in the rain, I'm about ready to turndown the spread and leave a call for six-thirty."

  "Be a good fellow," pleaded the unquenchable one. "Let's take in all thenickel shows, and then see if we can't drown our sorrows in--er--"

  Emma McChesney slipped a coin under her plate, crumpled her napkin,folded her arms on the table, and regarded the boy across the way withwhat our best talent calls a long, level look. It was so long and solevel that even the airiness of the buoyant youngster at whom it wasdirected began to lessen perceptibly, long before Emma began to talk.

  "Tell me, young 'un, did any one ever refuse you anything? I thoughtnot. I should think that when you realize what you've got to learn itwould scare you to look ahead. I don't expect you to believe me whenI tell you I never talk to fresh guys like you, but it's true. I don'tknow why I'm breaking my rule for you, unless it's because you're sounbelievably good-looking that I'm anxious to know where the blemish is.The Lord don't make 'em perfect, you know. I'm going to get out thoseletters, and then, if it's just the same to you, we'll take a walk.These nickel shows are getting on my nerves. It seems to me that if Ihave to look at one more Western picture about a fool girl with herhair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junctionand being rescued from a band of almost-Indians by the handsome, butdespised Eastern tenderfoot, or if I see one more of those his
toricalpictures, with the women wearing costumes that are a pass between earlyEgyptian and late State Street, I know I'll get hysterics and have to becarried shrieking, up the aisle. Let's walk down Main Street and look inthe store windows, and up as far as the park and back."

  "Great!" assented he. "Is there a park?

  "I don't know," replied Emma McChesney, "but there is. And for your owngood I'm going to tell you a few things. There's more to this travelinggame than just knocking down on expenses, talking to every pretty womanyou meet, and learning to ask for fresh white-bread heels at the PalmerHouse in Chicago. I'll meet you in the lobby at eight."

  Emma McChesney talked steadily, and evenly, and generously, from eightuntil eight-thirty. She talked from the great storehouse of practicalknowledge which she had accumulated in her ten years on the road. Shetold the handsome young cub many things for which he should have beenundyingly thankful. But when they reached the park--the cool, dim,moon-silvered park, its benches dotted with glimpses of white showingclose beside a blur of black, Emma McChesney stopped talking. Not onlydid she stop talking, but she ceased to think of the boy seated besideher on the bench.

  In the band-stand, under the arc-light, in the center of the prettylittle square, some neighborhood children were playing a noisy game,with many shrill cries, and much shouting and laughter. Suddenly, fromone of the houses across the way, a woman's voice was heard, even abovethe clamor of the children.

  "Fred-dee!" called the voice. "Maybelle! Come, now."

  And a boy's voice answered, as boys' voices have since Cain was a childplaying in the Garden of Eden, and as boys' voices will as long as boysare:

  "Aw, ma, I ain't a bit sleepy. We just begun a new game, an' I'm leader.Can't we just stay out a couple of minutes more?"

  "Well, five minutes," agreed the voice. "But don't let me call youagain."

  Emma McChesney leaned back on the rustic bench and clasped her strong,white hands behind her head, and stared straight ahead into the softdarkness. And if it had been light you could have seen that the bitterlines showing faintly about her mouth were outweighed by the sweet andgracious light which was glowing in her eyes.

  "Fred-dee!" came the voice of command again. "May-belle! This minute,now!"

  One by one the flying little figures under the arc-light melted awayin the direction of the commanding voice and home and bed. And EmmaMcChesney forgot all about fresh young kids and featherloom petticoatsand discounts and bills of lading and sample-cases and grouchy buyers.After all, it had been her protecting maternal instinct which had beenaroused by the boy at supper, although she had not known it then. Shedid not know it now, for that matter. She was busy remembering just suchevenings in her own life--summer evenings, filled with the high, shrilllaughter of children at play. She too, had stood in the doorway, makinga funnel of her hands, so that her clear call through the twilight mightbe heard above the cries of the boys and girls. She had known how loaththe little feet had been to leave their play, and how they had lagged upthe porch stairs, and into the house. Years, whose memory she had triedto keep behind her, now suddenly loomed before her in the dim quiet ofthe little flower-scented park.

  A voice broke the silence, and sent her dream-thoughts scattering to thewinds.

  "Honestly, kid," said the voice, "I could be crazy about you, if you'dlet me."

  The forgotten figure beside her woke into sudden life. A strong armencircled her shoulders. A strong hand seized her own, which wereclasped behind her head. Two warm, eager lips were pressed upon herlips, checking the little cry of surprise and wrath that rose in herthroat.

  Emma McChesney wrenched herself free with a violent jerk, and pushedhim from her. She did not storm. She did not even rise. She sat veryquietly, breathing fast. When she turned at last to look at the boybeside her it seemed that her white profile cut the darkness. The manshrank a little, and would have stammered something, but Emma McChesneychecked him.

  "'That was a married kiss--a two-year-old married kiss atleast.'"]

  "You nasty, good-for-nothing, handsome young devil, you!" she said. "Soyou're married."

  He sat up with a jerk. "How did you--what makes you think so?"

  "That was a married kiss--a two-year-old married kiss, at least. No boywould get as excited as that about kissing an old stager like me. Thechances are you're out of practise. I knew that if it wasn't teeth orimpediment it must be morals. And it is."

  She moved over on the bench until she was close beside him. "Now, listento me, boy." She leaned forward, impressively. "Are you listening?"

  "Yes," answered the handsome young devil, sullenly.

  "What I've got to say to you isn't so much for your sake, as for yourwife's. I was married when I was eighteen, and stayed married eightyears. I've had my divorce ten years, and my boy is seventeen years old.Figure it out. How old is Ann?"

  "I don't believe it," he flashed back. "You're not a day overtwenty-six--anyway, you don't look it. I--"

  "Thanks," drawled Emma. "That's because you've never seen me innegligee. A woman's as old as she looks with her hair on the dresser andbed only a few minutes away. Do you know why I was decent to you in thefirst place? Because I was foolish enough to think that you reminded meof my own kid. Every fond mama is gump enough to think that every Greekgod she sees looks like her own boy, even if her own happens to squintand have two teeth missing--which mine hasn't, thank the Lord! He's thegreatest young--Well, now, look here, young 'un. I'm going to returngood for evil. Traveling men and geniuses should never marry. But aslong as you've done it, you might as well start right. If you move fromthis spot till I get through with you, I'll yell police and murder. Areyou ready?"

  "I'm dead sorry, on the square, I am--"

  "Ten minutes late," interrupted Emma McChesney. "I'm dishing up asermon, hot, for one, and you've got to choke it down. Whenever I hear atraveling man howling about his lonesome evenings, and what a dog'slife it is, and no way for a man to live, I always wonder what kind ofa summer picnic he thinks it is for his wife. She's really a widow sevenmonths in the year, without any of a widow's privileges. Did you everstop to think what she's doing evenings? No, you didn't. Well, I'lltell you. She's sitting home, night after night, probably embroideringmonograms on your shirt sleeves by way of diversion. And on Saturdaynight, which is the night when every married woman has the inalienableright to be taken out by her husband, she can listen to the woman in theflat upstairs getting ready to go to the theater. The fact that there'sa ceiling between 'em doesn't prevent her from knowing just wherethey're going, and why he has worked himself into a rage over his whitelawn tie, and whether they're taking a taxi or the car and who they'regoing to meet afterward at supper. Just by listening to them comingdownstairs she can tell how much Mrs. Third Flat's silk stockingscost, and if she's wearing her new La Valliere or not. Women have thatinstinct, you know. Or maybe you don't. There's so much you've missed."

  "Say, look here--" broke from the man beside her. But Emma McChesneylaid her cool fingers on his lips.

  "Nothing from the side-lines, please," she said. "After they've goneshe can go to bed, or she can sit up, pretending to read, but reallywondering if that squeaky sound coming from the direction of the kitchenis a loose screw in the storm door, or if it's some one trying to breakinto the flat. And she'd rather sit there, scared green, than go backthrough that long hall to find out. And when Tillie comes home with heryoung man at eleven o'clock, though she promised not to stay out laterthan ten, she rushes back to the kitchen and falls on her neck, she's sohappy to see her. Oh, it's a gay life. You talk about the heroism ofthe early Pilgrim mothers! I'd like to know what they had on the averagetraveling man's wife."

  "Bess goes to the matinee every Saturday," he began, in feeble defense.

  "Matinee!" scoffed Emma McChesney. "Do you think any woman goes tomatinee by preference? Nobody goes but girls of sixteen, and confirmedold maids without brothers, and traveling men's wives. Matinee! Say,would you ever hesitate to choose between an all-day tra
in and asleeper? It's the same idea. What a woman calls going to the theater issomething very different. It means taking a nap in the afternoon, so hereyes will be bright at night, and then starting at about five o'clock todress, and lay her husband's clean things out on the bed. She loves it.She even enjoys getting his bath towels ready, and putting his shavingthings where he can lay his hands on 'em, and telling the girl to havedinner ready promptly at six-thirty. It means getting out her good dressthat hangs in the closet with a cretonne bag covering it, and her blacksatin coat, and her hat with the paradise aigrettes that she bought withwhat she saved out of the housekeeping money. It means her best silkstockings, and her diamond sunburst that he's going to have made overinto a La Valliere just as soon as business is better. She loves it all,and her cheeks get pinker and pinker, so that she really doesn't needthe little dash of rouge that she puts on 'because everybody does it,don't you know?' She gets ready, all but her dress, and then she puts ona kimono and slips out to the kitchen to make the gravy for the chickenbecause the girl never can get it as smooth as he likes it. That's partof what she calls going to the theater, and having a husband. And ifthere are children--"

  There came a little, inarticulate sound from the boy. But Emma's quickear caught it.

  "No? Well, then, we'll call that one black mark less for you. But ifthere are children--and for her sake I hope there will be--she's fatherand mother to them. She brings them up, single-handed, while he's on theroad. And the worst she can do is to say to them, 'Just wait until yourfather gets home. He'll hear of this.' But shucks! When he comes homehe can't whip the kids for what they did seven weeks before, and thatthey've forgotten all about, and for what he never saw, and can'timagine. Besides, he wants his comfort when he gets home. He says hewants a little rest and peace, and he's darned if he's going to runaround evenings. Not much, he isn't! But he doesn't object to her makinga special effort to cook all those little things that he's been longingfor on the road. Oh, there'll be a seat in Heaven for every travelingman's wife--though at that, I'll bet most of 'em will find themselvesstuck behind a post."

  "You're all right!" exclaimed Emma McChesney's listener, suddenly. "Howa woman like you can waste her time on the road is more than I can see.And--I want to thank you. I'm not such a fool--"

  "I haven't let you finish a sentence so far and I'm not going to yet.Wait a minute. There's one more paragraph to this sermon. You rememberwhat I told you about old stagers, and the roast beef diet? Well, thatapplies right through life. It's all very well to trifle with the littleside-dishes at first, but there comes a time when you've got to quitfooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of thisworld, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. Thatother stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or laterit will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roastbeef, medium. It may sound prosaic, and unimaginative and dry, butyou'll find that it wears in the long run. You can take me over to thehotel now. I've lost an hour's sleep, but I don't consider it wasted.And you'll oblige me by putting the stopper on any conversation that mayoccur to you between here and the hotel. I've talked until I'm so lowon words that I'll probably have to sell featherlooms in sign languageto-morrow."

  They walked to the very doors of the Berger House in silence. But at thefoot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and lookedinto Emma McChesney's face. His own was rather white and tense.

  "Look here," he said. "I've got to thank you. That sounds idiotic, but Iguess you know what I mean. And I won't ask you to forgive a hound likeme. I haven't been so ashamed of myself since I was a kid. Why, if youknew Bess--if you knew--"

  "I guess I know Bess, all right. I used to be a Bess, myself. Justbecause I'm a traveling man it doesn't follow that I've forgotten theBess feeling. As far as that goes, I don't mind telling you that I'vegot neuralgia from sitting in that park with my feet in the damp grass.I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will be campingover my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war dance up the sideof my face. And, boy, I'd give last week's commissions if there was someone to whom I had the right to say: 'Henry, will you get up and get me ahot-water bag for my neuralgia? It's something awful. And just open theleft-hand lower drawer of the chiffonier and get out one of those gauzevests and then get me a safety pin from the tray on my dresser. I'mgoing to pin it around my head.'"

  "'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'"]