Emma McChesney and Co Part 24

"Like 'em? You know perfectly well that you never can offend me by making me compliments like that. I not only like them; I actually believe them!"

"That's because I mean them, Emma. Now, out with that reason!"

Emma stood up then and put her hands on his shoulders. But she was not looking at him. She was gazing past him, her eyes dreamy, contemplative.

"I don't know whether I'll be able to explain to you just how I feel about it. I'll probably make a mess of it. But I'll try. You see, dear, it's just this way: Two years ago--a year ago, even--I might have felt just that sensation of personal resentment and loss. But somehow, lately, I've been looking at life through--how shall I put it?--through seven-league gla.s.ses. I used to see life in its relation to me and mine. Now I see it in terms of my relation to it. Do you get me? I was the soloist, and the world my orchestral accompaniment.

Lately, I've been content just to step back with the other instruments and let my little share go to make up a more perfect whole. In those years, long before I met you, when Jock was all I had in the world, I worked and fought and saved that he might have the proper start, the proper training, and environment. And I did succeed in giving him those things. Well, as I looked at him there to-day I saw him, not as my son, my property that was going out of my control into the hands of another woman, but as a link in the great chain that I had helped to forge--a link as strong and sound and perfect as I could make it. I saw him, not as my boy, Jock McChesney, but as a unit. When I am gone I shall still live in him, and he in turn will live in his children.

There! I've muddled it--haven't I?--as I said I would. But I think"-- And she looked into her husband's glowing eyes.--"No; I'm sure you understand. And when I die, T. A.----"

"You, Emma!" And he held her close, and then held her off to look at her through quizzical, appreciative eyes. "Why, girl, I can't imagine you doing anything so pa.s.sive."

In the busy year that followed, anyone watching Emma McChesney Buck as she worked and played and constructed, and helped others to work and play and construct, would have agreed with T. A. Buck. She did not seem a woman who was looking at life objectively. As she went about her home in the evening, or the office, the workroom, or the showrooms during the day, adjusting this, arranging that, smoothing out snarls, solving problems of business or household, she was very much alive, very vital, very personal, very electric. In that year there came to her many letters from Jock and Grace--happy letters, all of them, some with an undertone of great seriousness, as is fitting when two people are readjusting their lives. Then, in spring, came the news of the baby. The telegram came to Emma as she sat in her office near the close of a busy day. As she read it and reread it, the slip of paper became a misty yellow with vague lines of blue dancing about on it; then it became a blur of nothing in particular, as Emma's tears fell on it in a little shower of joy and pride and wonder at the eternal miracle.

Then she dried her eyes, mopped the telegram and her lace jabot impartially, went across the hall and opened the door marked "T. A.

BUCK."

T. A. looked up from his desk, smiled, held out a hand.

"Girl or boy?"

"Girl, of course," said Emma tremulously, "and her name is Emma McChesney."

T. A. stood up and put an arm about his wife's shoulders.

"Lean on me, grandma," he said.

"Fiend!" retorted Emma, and reread the telegram happily. She folded it then, with a pensive sigh, "I hope she'll look like Grace. But with Jock's eyes. They were wasted in a man. At any rate, she ought to be a raving, tearing beauty with that father and mother."

"What about her grandmother, when it comes to looks! Yes, and think of the brain she'll have," Buck reminded her excitedly. "Great Scott!

With a grandmother who has made the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat a household word, and a mother who was the cleverest woman advertising copy-writer in New York, this young lady ought to be a composite Hetty Green, Madame de Stael, Hypatia, and Emma McChesney Buck. She'll be a lady wizard of finance or a----"

"She'll be nothing of the kind," Emma disputed calmly. "That child will be a throwback. The third generation generally is. With a militant mother and a grandmother such as that child has, she'll just naturally be a clinging vine. She'll be a reversion to type. She'll be the kind who'll make eyes and wear pale blue and be crazy about new embroidery-st.i.tches. Just mark my words, T. A."

Buck had a brilliant idea.

"Why don't you pack a bag and run over to Chicago for a few days and see this marvel of the age?"

But Emma shook her head.

"Not now, T. A. Later. Let the delicate machinery of that new household adjust itself and begin to run smoothly and sweetly again.

Anyone who might come in now--even Jock's mother--would be only an outsider."

So she waited very patiently and considerately. There was much to occupy her mind that spring. Business was unexpectedly and gratifyingly good. Then, too, one of their pet dreams was being realized; they were to have their own house in the country, at Westchester. Together they had pored over the plans. It was to be a house of wide, s.p.a.cious verandas, of fireplaces, of bookshelves, of great, bright windows, and white enamel and cheerful chintz. By the end of May it was finished, furnished, and complete. At which a surprising thing happened; and yet, not so surprising. A demon of restlessness seized Emma McChesney Buck. It had been a busy, happy winter, filled with work. Now that it was finished, there came upon Emma and Buck that unconscious and quite natural irritation which follows a long winter spent together by two people, no matter how much in harmony. Emma pulled herself up now and then, horrified to find a rasping note of impatience in her voice. Buck found himself, once or twice, fairly caught in a little whirlpool of ill temper of his own making. These conditions they discovered almost simultaneously. And like the comrades they were, they talked it over and came to a sensible understanding.

"We're a bit ragged and saw-edged," said Emma. "We're getting on each other's nerves. What we need is a vacation from each other. This morning I found myself on the verge of snapping at you. At you!

Imagine, T. A.!"

Whereupon Buck came forward with his confession.

"It's a couple of late cases of spring fever. You've been tied to this office all winter. So've I. We need a change. You've had too much petticoats, too much husband, too much cutting room and sales-room and rush orders and business generally. Too much Featherloom and not enough foolishness." He came over and put a gentle hand on his wife's shoulder, a thing strictly against the rules during business hours.

And Emma not only permitted it but reached over and covered his hand with her own. "You're tired, and you're a wee bit nervous; so g'wan,"

said T. A., ever so gently, and kissed his wife, "g'wan; get out of here!"

And Emma got.

She went, not to the mountains or the seash.o.r.e but with her face to the west. In her trunks were tiny garments--garments pink-ribboned, blue-ribboned, things embroidered and scalloped and hemst.i.tched and hand-made and lacy. She went looking less grandmotherly than ever in her smart, blue tailor suit, her rakish hat, her quietly correct gloves, and slim shoes and softly becoming jabot. Her husband had got her a compartment, had laden her down with books, magazines, fruit, flowers, candy. Five minutes before the train pulled out, Emma looked about the little room and sighed, even while she smiled.

"You're an extravagant boy, T. A. I look as if I were equipped for a dash to the pole instead of an eighteen-hour run to Chicago. But I love you for it. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess how I like having a whole compartment just for myself. You see, a compartment always will spell luxury to me. There were all those years on the road, you know, when I often considered myself in luck to get an upper on a local of a branch line that threw you around in your berth like a bean in a tin can every time the engineer stopped or started."

Buck looked at his watch, then stooped in farewell. Quite suddenly they did not want to part. They had grown curiously used to each other, these two. Emma found herself clinging to this man with the tender eyes, and Buck held her close, regardless of train-schedules.

Emma rushed him to the platform and watched him, wide-eyed, as he swung off the slowly moving train.

"Come on along!" she called, almost tearfully.

Buck looked up at her. At her trim, erect figure, at her clear youthful coloring, at the brightness of her eye.

"If you want to get a reputation for comedy," he laughed, "tell somebody on that train that you're going to visit your granddaughter."

Jock met her at the station in Chicago and drove her home in a very dapper and glittering black runabout.

"Grace wanted to come down," he explained, as they sped along, "but they're changing the baby's food or something, and she didn't want to leave. You know those nurses." Emma felt a curious little pang. This was her boy, her baby, talking about his baby and nurses. She had a sense of unreality. He turned to her with s.h.i.+ning eyes. "That's a stunning get-up, Blonde. Honestly, you're a wiz, mother. Grace has told all her friends that you're coming, and their mothers are going to call. But, good Lord, you look like my younger sister, on the square you do!"

The apartment reached, it seemed to Emma that she floated across the walk and up the stairs, so eagerly did her heart cry out for a glimpse of this little being who was flesh of her flesh. Grace, a little pale but more beautiful than ever, met them at the door. Her arms went about Emma's neck. Then she stood her handsome mother-in-law off and gazed at her.

"You wonder! How lovely you look! Good heavens, are they wearing that kind of hat in New York! And those collars! I haven't seen a thing like 'em here. 'East is east and West is west and----'"

"Where's that child?" demanded Emma McChesney Buck. "Where's my baby?"

"Sh-sh-sh-s.h.!.+" came in a sibilant duet from Grace and Jock. "Not now.

She's sleeping. We were up with her for three hours last night. It was the new food. She's not used to it yet."

"But, you foolish children, can't I peek at her?"

"Oh, dear, no!" said Grace hastily. "We never go into her room when she's asleep. This is your room, mother dear. And just as soon as she wakes up--this is your bath--you'll want to freshen up. Dear me; who could have hung the baby's little s.h.i.+rt here? The nurse, I suppose.

If I don't attend to every little thing----"

Emma took off her hat and smoothed her hair with light, deft fingers.

She turned a smiling face toward Jock and Grace standing there in the doorway.

"Now don't bother, dear. If you knew how I love having that little s.h.i.+rt to look at! And I've such things in my trunk! Wait till you see them."

So she possessed her soul in patience for one hour, two hours. At the end of the second hour, a little wail went up. Grace vanished down the hall. Emma, her heart beating very fast, followed her. A moment later she was bending over a very pink morsel with very blue eyes and she was saying, over and over in a rapture of delightful idiocy:

"Say h.e.l.lo to your gran-muzzer, yes her is! Say, h.e.l.lo, granny!" And her longing arms reached down to take up her namesake.

"Not now!" Grace said hastily. "We never play with her just before feeding-time. We find that it excites her, and that's bad for her digestion."

"Dear me!" marveled Emma. "I don't remember worrying about Jock's digestion when he was two and a half months old!"