Beautiful and Damned (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (49 page)

As the winter passed with the march of the returning troops along Fifth Avenue they became more and more aware that since Anthony’s return their relations had entirely changed. After that re-flowering of tenderness and passion each of them had returned into some solitary dream unshared by the other and what endearments passed between them passed, it seemed, from empty heart to empty heart, echoing hollowly the departure of what they knew at last was gone.

Anthony had again made the rounds of the metropolitan newspapers and had again been refused encouragement by a motley of office boys, telephone girls, and city editors. The word was: “We’re keeping any vacancies open for our own men who are still in France.” Then, late in March, his eye fell on an advertisement in the morning paper and in consequence he found at last the semblance of an occupation.

There followed an address on Madison Avenue, and instructions to appear at one o’clock that afternoon. Gloria, glancing over his shoulder after one of their usual late breakfasts, saw him regarding it idly.

“Why don’t you try it?” she suggested.

“Oh—it’s one of these crazy schemes.”

“It might not be. At least it’d be experience.”

At her urging he went at one o’clock to the appointed address, where he found himself one of a dense miscellany of men waiting in front of the door. They ranged from a messenger-boy evidently misusing his company’s time to an immemorial individual with a gnarled body and a gnarled cane. Some of the men were seedy, with sunken cheeks and puffy pink eyes—others were young, possibly still in high school. After a jostled fifteen minutes during which they all eyed one another with apathetic suspicion there appeared a smart young shepherd clad in a “waist-line” suit and wearing the manner of an assistant rector who herded them up-stairs into a large room, which resembled a schoolroom and contained innumerable desks. Here the prospective salesmen sat down—and again waited. After an interval a platform at the end of the hall was clouded with half a dozen sober but sprightly men who, with one exception, took seats in a semi-circle facing the audience.

The exception was the man who seemed the soberest, the most sprightly and the youngest of the lot, and who advanced to the front of the platform. The audience scrutinized him hopefully. He was rather small and rather pretty, with the commercial rather than the thespian sort of prettiness. He had straight blond bushy brows and eyes that were almost preposterously honest, and as he reached the edge of his rostrum he seemed to throw these eyes out into the audience, simultaneously extending his arm with two fingers outstretched. Then while he rocked himself to a state of balance an expectant silence settled over the hall. With perfect assurance the young man had taken his listeners in hand and his words when they came were steady and confident and of the school of “straight from the shoulder.”

“Men!”—he began, and paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily, were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling of bowling-balls he launched himself into the sea of exposition.

“This bright and sunny morning you picked up your favorite newspaper and you found an advertisement which made the plain, unadorned statement that
you
could sell. That was all it said—it didn’t say ‘what,’ it didn’t say ‘how,’ it didn’t say ‘why.’ It just made one single solitary assertion that
you
and you and
you”
—business of pointing—”could sell. Now my job isn’t to make a success of you, because every man is born a success, he makes himself a failure; it’s not to teach you how to talk, because each man is a natural orator and only makes himself a clam; my business is to tell you one thing in a way that will make you know it—it’s to tell you that you and you and you have the heritage of money and prosperity waiting for you to come and claim it.”

At this point an Irishman of saturnine appearance rose from his desk near the rear of the hall and went out.

“That man thinks he’ll go look for it in the beer parlor around the corner. (Laughter.) He won’t find it there. Once upon a time I looked for it there myself (laughter), but that was before I did what every one of you men no matter how young or how old, how poor or how rich (a faint ripple of satirical laughter), can do. It was before I found
—myself
!

“Now I wonder if any of you men know what a ‘Heart Talk’ is. A ‘Heart Talk’ is a little book in which I started, about five years ago, to write down what I had discovered were the principal reasons for a man’s failure and the principal reasons for a man’s success—from John D. Rockerfeller back to John D. Napoleon (laughter), and before that, back in the days when Abel sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. There are now one hundred of these ‘Heart Talks.’Those of you who are sincere, who are interested in our proposition, above all who are dissatisfied with the way things are breaking for you at present will be handed one to take home with you as you go out yonder door this afternoon.

“Now in my own pocket I have four letters just received concerning ‘Heart Talks.’ These letters have names signed to them that are familiar in every household in the U.S.A. Listen to this one from Detroit:

He brought the name out in three long booming triumphancies—pausing for it to produce its magical effect. Then he read two more letters, one from a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and one from the president of the Great Northern Doily Company.

“And now,” he continued, “I’m going to tell you in a few words what the proposition is that’s going to make those of you who go into it in the right spirit. Simply put, it’s this: ‘Heart Talks’ have been incorporated as a company. We’re going to put these little pamphlets into the hands of every big business organization, every salesman, and every man who
knows
—I don’t say ‘thinks,’ I say
‘knows’—
that he can sell! We are offering some of the stock of the ‘Heart Talks’ concern upon the market, and in order that the distribution may be as wide as possible, and in order also that we can furnish a living, concrete, flesh-and-blood example of what salesmanship is, or rather what it may be, we’re going to give those of you who are the real thing a chance to sell that stock. Now, I don’t care what you’ve tried to sell before or how you’ve tried to sell it. It don’t matter how old you are or how young you are. I only want to know two things—first, do you want success, and, second, will you work for it?

“My name is Sammy Carleton. Not‘Mr.’ Carleton, but just plain Sammy. I’m a regular no-nonsense man with no fancy frills about me. I want you to call me Sammy.

“Now this is all I’m going to say to you to-day. To-morrow I want those of you who have thought it over and have read the copy of ‘Heart Talks’ which will be given to you at the door, to come back to this same room at this same time, then we’ll go into the proposition further and I’ll explain to you what I’ve found the principles of success to be. I’m going to make you feel that you and you and you can sell!”

Mr. Carleton’s voice echoed for a moment through the hall and then died away. To the stamping of many feet Anthony was pushed and jostled with the crowd out of the room.

With an accompaniment of ironic laughter Anthony told Gloria the story of his commercial adventure. But she listened without amusement.

“You’re going to give up again?” she demanded coldly.

“Why—you don’t expect me to—”

“I never expected anything of you.”

He hesitated.

“Well—I can’t see the slightest benefit in laughing myself sick over this sort of affair. If there’s anything older than the old story, it’s the new twist.”

It required an astonishing amount of moral energy on Gloria’s part to intimidate him into returning, and when he reported next day, somewhat depressed from his perusal of the senile bromides skittishly set forth in “Heart Talks on Ambition,” he found only fifty of the original three hundred awaiting the appearance of the vital and compelling Sammy Carleton. Mr. Carleton’s powers of vitality and compulsion were this time exercised in elucidating that magnificent piece of speculation—how to sell. It seemed that the approved method was to state one’s proposition and then to say not “And now, will you buy?”—this was not the way—oh, no!—the way was to state one’s proposition and then, having reduced one’s adversary to a state of exhaustion, to deliver oneself of the categorical imperative: “Now see here! You’ve taken up my time explaining this matter to you. You’ve admitted my points—all I want to ask is how many do you want?”

As Mr. Carleton piled assertion upon assertion Anthony began to feel a sort of disgusted confidence in him. The man appeared to know what he was talking about. Obviously prosperous, he had risen to the position of instructing others. It did not occur to Anthony that the type of man who attains commercial success seldom knows how or why, and, as in his grandfather’s case, when he ascribes reasons, the reasons are generally inaccurate and absurd.

Anthony noted that of the numerous old men who had answered the original advertisement, only two had returned, and that among the thirty odd who assembled on the third day to get actual selling instructions from Mr. Carleton, only one gray head was in evidence. These thirty were eager converts; with their mouths they followed the working of Mr. Carleton’s mouth; they swayed in their seats with enthusiasm, and in the intervals of his talk they spoke to each other in tense approving whispers. Yet of the chosen few who, in the words of Mr. Carleton, “were determined to get those deserts that rightly and truly belonged to them,” less than half a dozen combined even a modicum of personal appearance with that great gift of being a “pusher.” But they were told that they were all natural pushers—it was merely necessary that they should believe with a sort of savage passion in what they were selling. He even urged each one to buy some stock himself, if possible, in order to increase his own sincerity.

On the fifth day then, Anthony sallied into the street with all the sensations of a man wanted by the police. Acting according to instructions he selected a tall office-building in order that he might ride to the top story and work downward, stopping in every office that had a name on the door. But at the last minute he hesitated. Perhaps it would be more practicable to acclimate himself to the chilly atmosphere which he felt was awaiting him by trying a few offices on, say, Madison Avenue. He went into an arcade that seemed only semi-prosperous, and seeing a sign which read Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, he opened the door heroically and entered. A starchy young woman looked up questioningly.

“Can I see Mr. Weatherbee?” He wondered if his voice sounded tremulous.

She laid her hand tentatively on the telephone-receiver.

“What’s the name, please?”

“He wouldn’t—ah—know me. He wouldn’t know my name.”

“What’s your business with him? You an insurance agent?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that!” denied Anthony hurriedly. “Oh, no. It’s a—it’s a personal matter.” He wondered if he should have said this. It had all sounded so simple when Mr. Carleton had enjoined his flock: “Don’t allow yourself to be kept out! Show them you’ve made up your mind to talk to them, and they’ll listen.”

The girl succumbed to Anthony’s pleasant, melancholy face, and in a moment the door to the inner room opened and admitted a tall, splay-footed man with slicked hair. He approached Anthony with ill-concealed impatience.

“You wanted to see me on a personal matter?”

Anthony quailed.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said defiantly.

“About what?”

“It’ll take some time to explain.”

“Well, what’s it about?” Mr. Weatherbee’s voice indicated rising irritation.

Then Anthony, straining at each word, each syllable, began:

“I don’t know whether or not you’ve ever heard of a series of pamphlets called ‘Heart Talks’—”

“Good grief?” cried Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, “are you trying to touch my heart?”

“No, it’s business. ‘Heart Talks’ have been incorporated and we’re putting some shares on the market—”

His voice faded slowly off, harassed by a fixed and contemptuous stare from his unwilling prey. For another minute he struggled on, increasingly sensitive, entangled in his own words. His confidence oozed from him in great retching emanations that seemed to be sections of his own body. Almost mercifully Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, terminated the interview:

“Good grief!” he exploded in disgust, “and you call that a personal matter!” He whipped about and strode into his private office, banging the door behind him. Not daring to look at the stenographer, Anthony in some shameful and mysterious way got himself from the room. Perspiring profusely he stood in the hall wondering why they didn’t come and arrest him; in every hurried look he discerned infallibly a glance of scorn.

After an hour and with the help of two strong whiskies he brought himself up to another attempt. He walked into a plumber’s shop, but when he mentioned his business the plumber began pulling on his coat in a great hurry, gruffly announcing that he had to go to lunch. Anthony remarked politely that it was futile to try to sell a man anything when he was hungry, and the plumber heartily agreed.