CHARM OF MANNER
"GENTLEMAN to see you about the Vacuum Cleaner, Mem," announced Catherine in her briefest, most professional manner.
"Ye-s," I said hesitatingly.
I had been unable to see him the last time he called and the time before that, and I must get the thing settled. I looked at the inexorable little clock on my desk ticking away the minutes like mad. It was twenty-five to three now and at three precisely I had a telephone appointment with the difficult-to-be-gotten-at Mrs. L., chairman of our Social Work Committee—very important.
Twenty-five minutes seemed ample time in which to fill out a check and dispose of even a vacuum-cleaner agent, considering that I had already been informed of the special advantages of his particular brand. Still, long experience has made me cautious.
"Catherine," I said impressively, "tell him I'm very much occupied this afternoon, and cannot spare more than five minutes, but if that will do, he may come up."
He came. He greeted me as an old friend with whom he was eager and rejoiced to renew acquaintanceship. I did not ask him to sit down, but briefly informed him that we had decided to keep the sweeper he had "demonstrated" to us the week before, and would make out a check for it at once.
If I had looked for any sign of satisfaction from him at this announcement of capitulation, I was doomed to disappointment, for he accepted it as the natural result of our previous conferences, though he remarked benignly that I would never regret it.
"Just ring us up," he said cheerfully, "if anything goes wrong. The firm'll have a man over inside half an hour—no extra charge. But our machines don't get out of order easy. That's why folks take to them so lively. They're not complicated like some machines are, and they last. I'll venture to say that six or eight years from now you'll be using this very same machine (I devoutly hoped so) with good results. Of course they want care like everything else, you don't want to smash 'em round too much, but you can take my honest word for it there ain't a better line on the market to-day, though some charges a third more for 'em."
He looked at me earnestly, triumphantly, his eyes glowing with the depth of the faith that was in him, and added with fervor "not one!"
It was then I made my mistake. I should have known better, but we each have a vulnerable spot, a familiar, that betrays us at the least opportunity. Many and sad occasions have I had to know mine.
Seeing him so thrilled with his own conviction, I could not help saying just by way of urbanity, "Have you disposed of many from this last set of cleaners you have been placing out?"
"I sent out thirty-six machines, and yours is the twenty-second sale, and there are still some who haven't finally made up their minds."
I murmured my surprise.
"Why not?" he exclaimed enthusiastically, "they are a good investment, time-savers for everyone, and a first-class machine as well as inexpensive when you consider everything."
"But how can people afford such luxuries in war-time?" I asked.
"Pardon me, they are not luxuries, they are necessities—hygienic necessities. Let me tell you, Madam, how I came to go into this work. It is not my chosen occupation. I was and still am to some extent connected with the real estate business, but that is not a profitable concern during war-time, and I decided to take up some other line. I looked over the ground well and settled on vacuum-cleaners as offering a safe and pleasant as well as profitable opportunity. I will tell you why, Madam, I reasoned it out this way. During war-time, people's incomes will be more restricted. And besides that, many young women now employed as domestics, will enter factories as munition workers. Hence an increased number of ladies will do their own work, and as a natural result will require all the aids that modern science can furnish them with. So I looked about me and decided this was the right thing. I considered gramophones for a while, but they are luxuries—though you'd be surprised what a fine selling proposition they are. Still I decided vacuum-cleaners offered the best chance for me, and I've had no reason thus far to regret it. Besides, I had a good opening. I may say I've done pretty well. I've taken on two assistants besides the young lady in the office. I knew a young fellow—only about twenty-two—who wasn't making more'n eighty a month, and I says to myself, 'you're just the right sort for this branch.' Do you know why, Madam?"
My visitor paused dramatically. He was standing behind the best padded chair punctuating his remarks on it energetically with the hand that wore the heavy gold ring. He kept his eyes fixed on me and radiated professionalism. One could see he was in his best working order. Leaning forward he became confidential. "It's because he had Charm of Manner. That's it, Madam, that's the secret of success in a business like this. Charm of Manner. Well, that young man had it, and he's goin' right ahead. He is making from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a month now."
I may have emitted some sign of surprise at this information. I know I experienced it. At any rate, my caller became more earnest still. Leaning well over the chair, he lowered his voice and said, "I am myself realizing a net profit on the average of three hundred and fifty a month. My brother is at the Front and I am keeping the old folks' home-fires burning as well as my own place going. My wife and I have as cozy an apartment as anyone could wish to see."
He paused, not for breath, though you might think it, but for the artistic effect. The rapid mental calculation I made in the moment's silence, certainly left me impressed. Four or five thousand a year! I looked at my interlocutor with fresh interest. He appeared to my mature eyes not much more than a slip of a boy. Must I begin to revise my ideas of commercial life? Belonging myself to the professional class of fixed incomes (fixed at none too high a figure), prosperity of the sliding scale variety had never appealed to my imagination. I hope we do not indulge any "better than thou" spirit towards our commercial neighbors, and that we hold all honest labor in due respect, but I have entertained in my own house so many men of weight and influence whose incomes were considerably below that mentioned by the vacuum-cleaner gentleman that naturally my sense of values was challenged.
"Of course," I said, "there are some things that have no money standard—things money cannot buy."
"As for instance?" he suggested. As I did not instantly reply, he took up the thread again himself, earnestly, respectfully, as a genuine seeker after truth. "Excuse me, but I see you have a good many books about you here. You probably lead what is called 'the intellectual life.' You might be able to throw light on a point that has never become clear to me. It is this. What do people see in the profession of teaching and that sort of thing that attracts them? I know there must be something in it that I don't get a-hold of. There isn't what I would call a decent living in it—what attracts them?"
"But they may not put money-making first," I said.
"Why not?" he asked with every indication of sincerity. "One must make his living before he can do anything else. I don't call it a living if one has to pinch and save at every turn. There must be something else, and I'd like to know what it is."
Could I tell him? Was it worth while trying?
I did try. I used all the old arguments and a few new ones. I discoursed on the value of research, of acquaintance with the contents of the world's storehouse of thought. I enlarged upon the romance, the sense of high adventure that awaits one in the boundless fields of knowledge, and the fascination of being identified with progress, the unfolding scroll of the universe. I waxed quite eloquent for me, but I wasn't convincing. He wasn't convinced.
"But I read too," he exclaimed patiently. "There's scarcely a day I don't manage to get in an hour at the Public Library. My wife and I read together. Just now we are doing Huneker. Do you know Huneker? Now we've read nearly all of Wells—just finishing his Invisible King—my, but it's a fine book, ain't it, sets you thinking—and Howard Thompson and Tagore—I've read quite a few of Tagore's plays. And we hear the best concerts that come along, and we see our friends on Sundays. We generally get a nice jaunt away somewheres in the summer. My life, as you see, is full. I vary my interests. I don't waste myself, but I don't work all the time—I don't need to. I suppose I am what you might call a self-made man. My mother gave me what book-education I have, and the rest I picked up for myself. I'm just turned thirty, and I've got $5,000 in Victory Bonds. My wife and I have a good time. She has her friends whenever she pleases. I had a car, but a good chance come along and I sold it. Time too valuable. Better hire, I says to Kitty, comes cheaper in the end. Now, if it ain't intruding I would like to know what it is we're missing by enjoying ourselves and making a good living and helping others to do the same."
He paused again. What staggered me wasn't so much the difficulty of explaining what intellect and culture and tradition stood for—though I knew I couldn't explain them—it was simply the challenge of the practical. It was like a wave of some vast and unknown sea that had washed up to my door. I perceived in this alert, rubicund-faced, faultlessly attired young man before me the insurgence of the armies of commercialism. It was Labor knocking at the Study door, with perhaps a warrant of arrest in its pocket. It was the Administrator, the Executor, the inheritor of the earth, and it was asking a reason for the faith that was in me. Had I one to give?—that is, one that would be understood? Could the pallid pleasures of the intellect justify themselves in these vivid times? What contribution to a world at war had mere thinkers to make? Were not all the Knights and Barons of the times conservers of flesh, or producers of tin? Were not the rewards for those who do, not for those who merely say what ought to be done? Nay, more, were not Bacon and Tin and other commodities the very basis on which the higher life is sustained? Are not the Knights and Barons, who manipulate them, yea, and the vacuum-sweeper gentlemen, the real dictators of the world, the actuating forces? It was these assailing questions, this revelation that staggered me, that rendered me dumb.
But the seeker after light who still leaned over the padded chair, regarding me with what, to my heated imagination, appeared to be an ever-increasing sternness of gaze, improved the opportunity by continuing his remarks.
"I had a conversation with Professor Grantly last week. Perhaps you know him—lives up on the hill—at least I think the name was Grantly. I gave a demonstration there, but he said he couldn't afford to buy. His study walls were lined with books—literally lined with them. He seems to be an authority on ancient languages of some sort—Semitic, perhaps. Well, anyway I asked him what it was that induced people to become teachers, or to take up the study of by-gone languages. Why should he, for example, be devoting his life to what brings so little return that he couldn't even afford a Cleaner? He didn't make it clear to me, though he talked a good deal. We have only one life so far as we know at present, why not make the most of it, enjoy it, get somewhere. That's the way I look at it."
"Each to his own taste," I said, rather lamely.
"Yes, I suppose it must be something like that, but I cannot see the attraction myself."
He administered a thump of finality to the chair, and looked around for his hat in preparation for departure.
"I often think," he said, half way to the door, "what a pity it is that all the learning and so on that people get here can't be passed on to others when they're done with it themselves. Lloyd George, for instance, or Mr. Balfour, they're getting along in years. What'll become of all they know? Seems a waste, don't it?"
Seeing that I was expected to say something and that the interview would not close until I did, I replied vaguely—"But that's just where we come to the edge of things, I suppose."
"Your books here now," he resumed, ignoring my remarks, "and—and all you must a' got out of them—seems a pity we couldn't—he paused for a word.
"Buy it?" I suggested.
"Well, yes, something of that sort."
I could see his charm of manner welling up again over him as he made his final bow. It was long after three of course, and I would have to make apologies and humble myself to ask for another appointment with Mrs. L.
"'Charm of Manner!'" I murmured to myself, reflectively.