"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."
§ 3
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.
§ 4
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.
CHAPTER XXI
To Una and to Mr. Fein it seemed obvious that, since women have at least half of the family decision regarding the purchase of suburban homes, women salesmen of suburban property should be at least as successful as men. But Mr. Truax had a number of "good, sound, conservative" reasons why this should not be so, and therefore declined to credit the evidence of Una, Beatrice Joline, and saleswomen of other firms that it really was so.
Yet, after solving the Boutell office problem, Una was frequently requisitioned by "Chas." to talk to women about the advantages of sites for themselves and their children, while regular and intelligent (that is, male) salesmen worked their hypnotic arts on the equally regular and intelligent men of the families. Where formerly it had seemed an awesome miracle, like chemistry or poetry, to "close a deal" and bring thousands of dollars into the office, now Una found it quite normal. Responsibility gave her more poise and willingness to take initiative. Her salary was raised to thirty dollars a week. She banked two hundred dollars of commissions, and bought a Japanese-blue silk negligée, a wrist-watch, and the gown of black satin and net recommended by Miss Joline. Yet officially she was still Mr. Truax's secretary; she took his dictation and his moods.
Her greatest reward was in the friendship of the careful, diligent Mr. Fein.
§ 2
She never forgot a dinner with Mr. Fein, at which, for the first time, she heard a complete defense of the employer's position-saw the office world from the stand-point of the "bosses."
"I never believed I'd be friendly with one of the capitalists," Una was saying at their dinner, "but I must admit that you don't seem to want to grind the faces of the poor."
"I don't. I want to wash 'em."
"I'm serious."
"My dear child, so am I," declared Mr. Fein. Then, apparently addressing his mixed grill, he considered: "It's nonsense to say that it's just the capitalists that ail the world. It's the slackers. Show me a man that we can depend on to do the necessary thing at the necessary moment without being nudged, and we'll keep raising him before he has a chance to ask us, even."
"No, you don't-that is, I really think you do, Mr. Fein, personally, but most bosses are so afraid of a big pay-roll that they deliberately discourage their people till they lose all initiative. I don't know; perhaps they're victims along with their employees. Just now I adore my work, and I do think that business can be made as glorious a profession as medicine, or exploring, or anything, but in most offices, it seems to me, the biggest ideal the clerks have is safety-a two-family house on a stupid street in Flatbush as a reward for being industrious. Doesn't matter whether they enjoy living there, if they're just secure. And you do know-Mr. Truax doesn't, but you do know-that the whole office system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks-"