And to her office penetrated the ever flowing crowds-salesmen, buyers of real estate, inquirers, persons who seemed to have as a hobby the collection of real-estate folders. Indeed, her most important task was the strategy of "handling callers"-the callers who came to see Mr. Truax himself, and were passed on to Una by the hall-girl. To the clever secretary the management of callers becomes a question of scientific tactics, and Una was clever at it because she liked people.
She had to recognize the type of awkward shabby visitor who looks like a beggar, but has in his pocket the cash for investment in lots. And the insinuating caller, with tailor-made garments and a smart tie, who presents himself as one who yearns to do a good turn to his dear, dear personal friend, Mr. D. T. Truax, but proves to be an insurance-agent or a salesman of adding-machines. She had to send away the women with high-pitched voices and purely imaginary business, who came in for nothing whatever, and were willing to spend all of their own time and Mr. Truax's in obtaining the same; women with unsalable houses to sell or improbable lots to buy, dissatisfied clients, or mere cranks-old, shattered, unhappy women, to whom Una could give sympathy, but no time.... She was expert at standing filially listening to them at the elevator, while all the time her thumb steadily pressed the elevator signal.
Una had been trained, perhaps as much by enduring Mr. Schwirtz as by pleasing Mr. S. Herbert Ross, to be firm, to say no, to keep Mr. Truax's sacred rites undisturbed. She did not conventionally murmur, "Mr. Truax is in a conference just now, and if you will tell me the nature of your business-" Instead, she had surprising, delightful, convincing things for Mr. Truax to be doing, just at that particular moment-
From Mr. Truax himself she learned new ways of delicately getting rid of people. He did not merely rise to indicate that an interview was over, but also arranged a system of counterfeit telephone-calls, with Una calling up from the outside office, and Mr. Truax answering, "Yes, I'll be through now in just a moment," as a hint for the visitor. He even practised such play-acting as putting on his hat and coat and rushing out to greet an important but unwelcome caller with, "Oh, I'm so sorry I'm just going out-late f' important engagement-given m' secretary full instructions, and I know she'll take care of you jus' as well as I could personally," and returning to his private office by a rear door.
Mr. Truax, like Mr. S. Herbert Ross, gave Una maxims. But his had very little to do with stars and argosies, and the road to success, and vivisection, and the abstract virtues. They concerned getting to the office on time, and never letting a customer bother him if an office salesman could take care of the matter.
So round Una flowed all the energy of life; and she of the listening and desolate hotel room and the overshadowing storm-clouds was happy again.
She began to make friendships. "Chas.," the office-manager, stopped often at her desk to ridicule-and Mr. Fein to praise-the plans she liked to make for garden-suburbs which should be filled with poets, thatched roofs, excellent plumbing, artistic conversation, fireplaces, incinerators, books, and convenient trains.
"Some day," said Mr. Fein to her, "we'll do that sort of thing, just as the Sage Foundation is doing it at Forest Hills." And he smiled encouragingly.
"Some day," said Mr. Truax, "when you're head of a women's real-estate firm, after you women get the vote, and rusty, old-fashioned people like me are out of the way, perhaps you can do that sort of thing." And he smiled encouragingly.
"Rot," said Chas., and amiably chucked her under the chin.
CHAPTER XX
Truax &Fein was the first firm toward which Una was able to feel such loyalty as is supposed to distinguish all young aspirants-loyalty which is so well spoken of by bosses, and which is so generally lacking among the bossed. Partly, this was her virtue, partly it was the firm's, and partly it was merely the accident of her settling down.
She watched the biological growth of Truax &Fein with fascination; was excited when they opened a new subdivision, and proudly read the half-page advertisements thereof in the Sunday newspapers.
That loyalty made her study real estate, not merely stenography; for to most stenographers their work is the same whether they take dictation regarding real estate, or book-publishing, or felt slippers, or the removal of taconite. They understand transcription, but not what they transcribe. She read magazines-System, Printer's Ink, Real Estate Record (solemnly studying "Recorded Conveyances," and "Plans Filed for New Construction Work," and "Mechanics' Liens"). She got ideas for houses from architectural magazines, garden magazines, women's magazines. But what most indicated that she was a real devotee was the fact that, after glancing at the front-page headlines, the society news, and the joke column in her morning paper, she would resolutely turn to "The Real Estate Field."
On Sundays she often led Mr. Schwirtz for a walk among the new suburban developments.... For always, no matter what she did at the office, no matter how much Mr. Truax depended on her or Mr. Fein praised her, she went home to the same cabbage-rose-carpeted housekeeping-room, and to a Mr. Schwirtz who had seemingly not stirred an inch since she had left him in the morning.... Mr. Schwirtz was of a harem type, and not much adapted to rustic jaunting, but he obediently followed his master and tried to tell stories of the days when he had known all about real estate, while she studied model houses, the lay of the land, the lines of sewers and walks.
That was loyalty to Truax &Fein as much as desire for advancement.
And that same loyalty made her accept as fellow-workers even the noisiest of the salesmen-and even Beatrice Joline.
Though Mr. Truax didn't "believe in" women salesmen, one woman briskly overrode his beliefs: Miss Beatrice Joline, of the Gramercy Park Jolines, who cheerfully called herself "one of the nouveau pauvre," and condescended to mere Upper West Side millionaires, and had to earn her frocks and tea money. She earned them, too; but she declined to be interested in office regulations or office hours. She sold suburban homes as a free lance, and only to the very best people. She darted into the office now and then, slender, tall, shoulder-swinging, an exclamation-point of a girl, in a smart, check suit and a Bendel hat. She ignored Una with a coolness which reduced her to the status of a new stenographer. All the office watched Miss Joline with hypnotized envy. Always in offices those who have social position outside are observed with secret awe by those who have not.
Once, when Mr. Truax was in the act of persuading an unfortunate property-owner to part with a Long Island estate for approximately enough to buy one lot after the estate should be subdivided into six hundred lots, Miss Joline had to wait. She perched on Una's desk, outside Mr. Truax's door, swung her heels, inspected the finger-ends of her chamois gloves, and issued a command to Una to perform conversationally.
Una was thinking, "I'd like to spank you-and then I'd adore you. You're what story-writers call a thoroughbred."
While unconscious that a secretary in a tabby-gray dress and gold eye-glasses was venturing to appraise her, Miss Joline remarked, in a high, clear voice: "Beastly bore to have to wait, isn't it! I suppose you can rush right in to see Mr. Truax any time you want to, Mrs. Ummmmm."
"Schwirtz. Rotten name, isn't it?" Una smiled up condescendingly.
Miss Joline stopped kicking her heels and stared at Una as though she might prove to be human, after all.