THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker,

allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually

expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half

past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy

"Good-morning, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were

intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of

letters and telegrams waiting there for him.

The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was

beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent

the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or

lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to

luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with

fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green

wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her

eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow, her expression

a happy one, tinged with reminiscence.

Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this

morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her

desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once

she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of

her presence.

The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New

York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.

"Well--what is it? Anything?" asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail

lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye,

impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.

"Nothing," answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile.

"Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, did Mr. Maxwell say

anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?"

"He did," answered Pitcher. "He told me to get another one. I notified

the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning.

It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple

chewing gum has showed up yet."

"I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, "until some

one comes to fill the place." And she went to her desk at once and hung

the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed

place.

He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a

rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The

poet sings of the "crowded hour of glorious life." The broker's hour is

not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the

straps and packing both front and rear platforms.

And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel

out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic

attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him

over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger

boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the

office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face

relaxed into something resembling animation.

On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and

glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced

in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against

the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He

jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with the trained agility

of a harlequin.

In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became

suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding

canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a

string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with

a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with

these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her.

"Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the position," said

Pitcher.

Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker

tape.

"What position?" he asked, with a frown.

"Position of stenographer," said Pitcher. "You told me yesterday to call

them up and have one sent over this morning."

"You are losing your mind, Pitcher," said Maxwell. "Why should I

have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect

satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as

long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam.

Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any

more of 'em in here."

The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself

independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed.

Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the "old man"

seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world.

The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor

they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers

were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going

as swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were

imperilled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate,

strong machine--strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate,

never hesitating, with the proper word and decision and act ready and

prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins

and securities--here was a world of finance, and there was no room in

it for the human world or the world of nature.

When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the uproar.

Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and

memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging

in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the

beloved janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the

waking registers of the earth.

And through the window came a wandering--perhaps a lost--odour--a

delicate, sweet odour of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment

immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own,

and hers only.

The odour brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world

of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next

room--twenty steps away.

"By George, I'll do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. "I'll ask her

now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago."

He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to

cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer.

She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and

her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He

still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was above

his ear.

"Miss Leslie," he began hurriedly, "I have but a moment to spare. I want

to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't had time

to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk

quick, please--those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union

Pacific."

"Oh, what are you talking about?" exclaimed the young lady. She rose to

her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.

"Don't you understand?" said Maxwell, restively. "I want you to marry

me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a

minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for

the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss

Leslie?"

The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with

amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she

smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about

the broker's neck.

"I know now," she said, softly. "It's this old business that has driven

everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at

first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8

o'clock in the Little Church Around the Corner."

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 988