Winnie Childs by C. N. Williamson

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These hands fascinated Win. They beckoned her gaze and held it. Slowly
they came up and drew attention to themselves, silently filching it
from Broadway's emblems of business success. The stranger in New York
stopped involuntarily as if hypnotized, watching for the ten colossal
outspread fingers to materialize on their unseen frames; to become
hands, with wrists and upraised arms; and then to drop out of sight,
like the last appeal for help of a drowning Atlas who had lost his
grip on the globe.

Yet this immense, arresting gesture was never the last. Three seconds
gone, then blazing back again, came fingers, hands, wrists, arms. And
on every one of the ten fingers (including thumbs) flashed a huge
ring, each different from the other in colour and design. Each ring
was adorned with a jewelled letter, and as the hands reached toward
the zenith the colour of the rings changed rapidly twice. It was
impossible to remove the eyes from this sign until the gesture pageant
had completed itself. To the lost dryad New York seemed dominated by
Peter Rolls's Hands.

CHAPTER VII

THE TWO PETERS

The hands of Peter Rolls!

They had Winifred Child's imagination in their grip. Sleeping and
waking, she saw the glitter of their rings. For on her first night in
New York Mr. Loewenfeld told her a story about the hands.

They were the hands of Peter senior. His commercial genius had spread
them across the sky to beckon the public to his great new department
store on Sixth Avenue. Just as at the beginning of the gesture you saw
only the tips of the fingers, so Peter Rolls, Sr., had begun with a
tiny flicker, the first groping of his inspiration feeling its way to
success.

Everybody in the United States had heard of Peter Rolls, or it was not
the fault of the magazines and Sunday papers. Peter Rolls had been for
years one of the greatest advertisers in America. Mr. Winfield didn't
see how, even on a remote little island like England, Miss Child could
have escaped hearing about Peter Rolls's hands. This had now become
the snappy way of saying that you intended to shop at Peter Rolls's
store: "I'm going to the Hands." "I'll get that at the Hands." And
Peter Rolls had emphasized the phrase on the public tongue by his
method of advertising.

Each advertisement that appeared took the same form--a square space
heavily outlined in black or colour, held up by a pair of ringed
hands, facsimiles in miniature of his famous sky sign. And the several
thousand salespeople in the huge store were slangily nicknamed "Peter
Rolls's hands." But naturally these insignificant morsels of the great
mosaic were not spelled with a capital H, unless, perhaps by
themselves, and once when a vaudeville favourite sang a song, "I'm a
Hand, I'm a Hand." It was a smart song, and made a hit; but Peter
Rolls was said to have paid both the star and the management.

Apparently nothing concerning Peter Rolls, Sr., and his family was
hidden from Mr. Loewenfeld and Miss Seeker, although they claimed no
personal acquaintance with the great. Probably, if Win had asked, they
could have told how many servants Mrs. Rolls kept and how many cases
of champagne her husband ordered in a year. But questions were
unnecessary. The subject of a self-made millionaire was a fascinating
one to the lately naturalized German.

Peter Rolls, Sr., had emigrated from the north of Ireland as a young
boy. He had contrived to buy a few cheap odds and ends likely to
attract women buried in the country far from shops. He had somehow
known exactly what odds and ends to select. That was genius; and he
had coined money as a peddler. In his wandering life he made
acquaintance with many tramps and saw how he might make even the
lowest useful. After a few years he scraped up enough capital to start
a small store in New York, far downtown, where rents were cheap.

Like his peddler's pack, the store was stocked with odds and ends.
But again they were just the right odds and ends, the odds and ends
that every one in that neighbourhood wanted and had never been able to
obtain under one roof. No article cost less than five cents, none more
than a dollar, and it was marvellous what Peter Rolls could afford to
sell for a dollar.

"I Can Furnish Your Flat for Ten Dollars. Why? Because I Work with My
Own Hands," was Peter Rolls's first advertisement. And the Hands had
never lost their cunning since.

He could undersell any other shopkeeper in New York because he got his
salesmen for next to nothing. They were a judicious selection from
among his friends, the tramps. Any man who could recall enough of his
schooling to do a little sum in addition was eligible. He was fed,
clothed, tobaccoed, judiciously beered, watched all day while at work,
and shut up at night in a fireproof, drink-proof cubicle. The plan
proved a brilliant success. The little store downtown became a big
one, and grew bigger and bigger, swallowing all the other stores in
its block; and it was now ten years since the great Sixth Avenue
department store, which could call itself the largest in New York, was
opened under the benediction of the Hands.

Winifred had fancied, because of the balm which was making a fortune,
that Peter Rolls, Sr., was some sort of a glorified chemist. But Mr.
Loewenfeld roared at this idea. The Balm of Gilead was only one of the
lucky hits in the drug department, in itself as big as a good-sized
provincial store. The Hands sold everything, and though the tramps
were long ago dead or abolished, Peter Rolls still undersold every
other store in New York. How did he do it? Well--there were ways.
The hands without a capital H might tell, perhaps; but they did not
talk much. Peter Rolls never had any difficulty in obtaining or
keeping as many of them as he wanted, and could get double the number
if he liked.

"Does he still 'work with his own hands?'" quoted Win at last, feeling
half guilty, as if she ought not to ask questions about Peter's father
behind Peter's back. But the affairs of the Rolls family seemed to be
public property. Mr. Loewenfeld and Miss Seeker both laughed.

"I should love," said the latter, "to see Ena Rolls's face if her
father _did_ work! She spells their name with an 'e'--R-o-l-l-e-s--and
hopes the smart set on Long Island, where their new palace is, won't
realize they're the Hands. Isn't it ridiculous? Like an ostrich hiding
its head in the sand. She runs her father and mother socially. I guess
the old man hardly dares put his nose inside the store, except about
once a year; and Ena and the old lady never buy a pin there. As for
the young fellow, they say he doesn't bother: hates business and wants
to be a philanthropist or something outlandish on his own. I should
say to him, if he asked _me_: 'Charity begins at home.'"

Those last two sentences spoken by Miss Emma Seeker on Winifred
Child's first night in New York had as direct an effect upon the
girl's life as if the ringed hands had come down out of the sky and
clutched her dress. She did not attach much importance to the words at
the time, except to think it snobbish of Miss Rolls and weak of her
mother never to show themselves under the roof where their fortune was
being piled up. Also, she thought it disappointing of Peter junior not
to "bother" about the business which had been his father's life work.
But then Peter was altogether disappointing, as Miss Rolls (with an
"e") had disinterestedly warned her.

It was not until Win had been in New York for a month that the
influence of Miss Seeker's words made itself felt, and the Hands gave
their twitch at the hem of her dress. They had been on her mind often
enough during the four weeks--morning, noon, and night--but she had
never known that she was physically within touching distance.

The "happy omen" of getting her passage to New York free had stopped
working on the _Monarchic_. Since then bad luck had walked after her
and jumped onto her lap and purred on her pillow, exactly like a cat
that persistently clings to a person who dislikes it. All the
positions which she was competent to fill were filled already. Only
those she could not undertake seemed to be open. She tried to sing,
she tried to teach, she tried to report news, she tried to be a
publisher's reader, and to get work in a public library. She tried to
make hats, she tried to act, but nobody wanted her to do any of these
things, unless, perhaps, she went away and trained hard for a year.
When matters began to look desperate, and not till then, she applied
to Nadine.

But Lady Darling had gone back to England, and Miss Sorel, not having
recovered her health after the great tossing at sea, had been replaced
by a brand-new American manageress. No more models were wanted. There
was nothing that Miss Child could do, and the only result of her visit
was delight in the heart of Miss Devereux because "that queer Child
girl was laughing on the wrong side of her mouth." The new manageress
was so preoccupied in manner and so sure that Miss Child's services
would not be needed that Win did not even leave her address. Besides,
as it happened, she had given Miss Hampshire "notice," and had not yet
found another boarding-house.

"I think I ought to try to get into a cheaper place," she explained.
And that was a reason; but another, just as important, was pretty Miss
Seeker's jealousy because Mr. Loewenfeld talked too much to the English
girl at the table.

After all, the best that Win could accomplish after three days' dismal
search was a saving of two dollars a week. For eight dollars she
secured a fourth-story back hall bedroom half as big and half as clean
as Miss Hampshire's, and she laughed aloud to find herself feeling
desperately homesick for the "frying pan." For Win could still laugh.

It was counting her money, the day after a servant at the new
boarding-house stole twenty dollars, that whisked Miss Child's skirt
within reach of the Hands. Things could not go on like this. She must
get something to do at once--no matter what. Another girl in that
house bought newspapers for the sake of the employment notices.
Winifred borrowed the papers and answered many of the most attractive
offers in vain. Next she tried the less attractive ones. When they
were used up--and she also--she came down to what she called bed rock.

In bed rock were advertisements of several large stores for extra help
through the holiday season. Of these Peter Rolls's store was at the
head. "The Hands want hands," was part of the appeal, and Win
instantly turned to something else. It was not until she had applied
for work at six other shops, and found herself too late at all, that
it began to seem faintly possible for her to think of going to Peter
Rolls's father's store.

When the idea did knock at the door of her mind hesitatingly as Peter
junior used to knock at the dryad door, the Hands' advertisement for
help was the last of its kind in the papers. The Hands needed more
hands than any of the other stores.

When Win was just about to say to herself, "That's the one thing I
couldn't do," she remembered Miss Seeker's words. Miss Rolls ruled her
father and mother socially. Peter senior was allowed to show his nose
in the place only about once a year. Mrs. and Miss Rolls never bought
a pin there. Young Peter didn't bother, but wanted to be a
philanthropist. In fact, you would, apparently, be far more likely to
meet a member of the Rolls family in any other shop than their own.

Instead of saying that she could not, Win said: "Why shouldn't I?" She
told herself that in a vast house of business which employed over two
thousand salespeople she would be a needle in a haystack--a needle
with a number, not a name. "I'll go and ask for a place," she answered
her own question.

But almost she hoped that she would not succeed. If she tried, failure
would not be her fault.

CHAPTER VIII

NO. 2884

Morning and girl were gray with cold as Win hovered before the vast
expanse of plate glass which made of Peter Rolls's department store a
crystal palace. Customers would not be admitted for an hour, yet the
lovely wax ladies and the thrilling wax men in the window world wore
the air of never having stopped doing their life work since they were
appointed to it.

But then they had a life work of the most charming description.
Winifred envied them. It was indeed their business to make all men,
women, and children who passed envy them enough to stop, enter the
store, and purchase things to make real life as much as possible like
life in the window world.

All the nicest things which could be done in the strenuous outside
world could in a serene and silent way be done in window world. And
the lovely ladies and their thrilling men had not to hustle from one
corner of the earth to another in order to find different amusements.

In one section of plate-glass existence beautiful girls were being
dressed by their maids for a ball. Some were almost ready to start.
Exquisite cloaks were being folded about their shoulders by
fascinating French soubrettes with little lace caps like dabs of
whipped cream. Other willowy creatures were lazy enough to be still in
filmy "princess" petticoats and long, weblike, silk corsets
ensheathing their figures nearly to their knees. A realistic
dressing-table, a lace-canopied bed, and pale-blue curtains formed
their background. Instead of having to rush half across New York to
the dance, it was apparently taking place next door, with only a thin
partition as a wall.

In a somewhat Louis Seize room several wondrous wax girls and the same
number of young men, with extremely broad shoulders and slender hips,
were dancing a decorous tango. But, if they tired of that, they had
only to move on a section, to find a party of four young people
playing tennis in appropriate costumes against a trellis of crimson
ramblers. Strange to say, a mere wall divided this summer scene from
sports in the high Alps. There was gorgeous fun going on in this
portion of window world, where men and girls were skeeing,
tobogganing, and snowballing each other in deep cotton snow. Next door
they were skating on a surface so mirrorlike that, in fact, it _was_ a
mirror.

A little farther on a young wax mother of no more than eighteen was in
a nursery, caressing an immense family of wax children of all ages,
from babyhood up to twelve years. A grandmother was there, too, and a
hospital nurse, and several playful dogs and cats. In another house
they were having a Christmas tree, and Santa Claus had come in person
to be master of ceremonies. How the children on the other side of a
partition, engaged in learning lessons at school desks, must have
envied those whose Christmas had prematurely come! But best of all was
the automobile race; or, perhaps, the zoo of window world, where
Teddy bears and Teddy monkeys and Teddy snakes and Teddy everythings
disported themselves together among trees and flowers in Peter Rolls's
conception of Eden.

Win had often glanced into these windows before, hurrying nervously
past, but now she lingered, trying to fill her heart with the waxen
peace of that luxurious land of leisure. She walked very slowly all
around the great square, three sides of which were crystal, the fourth
being given up to huge open doors, through which streamed men and
parcels and hurled themselves into motor vans. The idea flashed into
the girl's head that here was the cemetery of window land. In those
big boxes and packages that men furiously yet indifferently carried
out, were the dolls or animals that had smiled or romped behind the
plate glass, or the dresses and hats, the tennis rackets and toboggans
they had fondly thought their own.

This promenade of inspection and introspection put off the evil minute
for a while; but the time came when Win must hook herself on to the
tail of a procession constantly entering at an inconspicuous side
door, or else go home with the project abandoned.

"_Of course_ I shall never see Peter Rolls or his sister here," she
told herself for the twentieth time, and passed through the door
almost on the back of an enormous young man, while a girl closed in
behind her with the intimacy of a sardine.

"Gee! Get on to the tall Effect in brown!" murmured a voice.

"Ain't she the baby doll?" another voice wanted to know.

Winifred heard, and realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in
question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the
Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was
pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black stones on the
way.

When the cue of tightly packed men and women had advanced along a
corridor on the other side of the doorway, it began mounting a
fireproof staircase. Up and up it went, slowly, steadily rising from
story to story, but it did not spread across the whole width of the
wide, shallow steps. Other men and women, in single file and with no
attention to order, pushed themselves down, the ascending gang
flattening them against the varnished, green wall as they sneaked
hastily past. No one spoke to Win or told her anything (though the big
fellow in front threw her a jovial glance when she trod on his heel,
and she herself ventured a look at the rear sardine), but she knew
somehow that the irregular, descending procession was the defeated
army in flight; those who "would not do." She wondered if she should
be among them after a few hours of vain waiting and standing on her
feet.

Seven flights of stairs she counted, and then she and those in front
and behind debouched into a corridor much longer than that at the
entrance on the ground floor.

"They might have shot us up in the customers' lifts!" snapped the
sardine who had just detached herself from Winifred's spine. "'Twould
have saved their time and our tempers."

"They don't spend money putting up fireproof staircases for nothing,"
mumbled a voice over the sardine's shoulder. "They want to give us a
free exhibition of an emergency exit. But it'll be the only thing we
ever will get free here."

"Except maybe the sack--or the bounce," tittered the sardine.

There was something likable about that sardine. Win felt drawn to her,
which was fortunate in the circumstances.

Nearer and nearer they approached, with a kind of shuffle step, to an
office whose whole front consisted of window. This window was raised,
and electric light streaming out brightened that distant end of the
otherwise economically lit corridor. The advance guard of would-be
hands stepped one at a time in front of a counter which took the place
of a window ledge. Now and then a girl or a man was kept for several
moments talking to a person whom Win could not yet see; a kind of god
in the machine. This halt delayed the procession and meant that a hand
was being engaged; but oftener than not the pause was short, and the
look on the late applicant's face as he or she turned to scurry back
like a chased dog along the corridor told its own story.

Win read each human document, as a page opened and then shut forever
under her eyes, with a sick, cold pang for the tragedy of the
unwanted. She ceased to feel that she was alien to these young men and
women, because they were American and she English. A curious
impression thrilled through her that she and these others and all
dwellers on earth were but so many beads threaded on the same
glittering string, that string the essence of the Creator, uniting all
if they but knew it.

The realization that hearts near hers were beating with hope or dread,
or sinking with disappointment, was so keen that the heavy air of the
place became charged for Win with the electricity of emotion. She felt
what all felt in a strange confusion; and when a stricken face went
by, it was she, Winifred Child, who was stricken. What happened to
others suddenly mattered just as much and in exactly the same degree
as what might happen to her. The weight of sadness and weariness
pressed upon her. The smell of unaired clothes and stale, cheap
perfumes made her head ache.

"Tired, girlie?" inquired the big young man on whose broad back Win
had involuntarily reposed on the way upstairs She was startled at this
manner of address, but the brotherly benevolence on the square face
under a thick brushwood of blond hair reassured her. Evidently
"girlie" was the right word in the right place.

"Not so very. Are you?" She felt that conversation would be a relief.
It was intensely cold yet stuffy in the corridor, and time seemed
endless.

"Me? Huh! Bet yer my place yer can't guess what my job was up to a
month ago."

He turned a strongly cut profile far over his shoulder, his head
pivoting on a great column of throat above a low, loose collar that
had a celluloid gleam where the light touched it. Only one eye and the
transparent gleam of another cornea were given to Winifred's view, but
that one green-gray orb was as compelling as a dozen ordinary seeing
apparatuses.

"If I guessed what's in my mind, I'm afraid it would be silly," said
Win. "You look as if you might be a--a boxer--or---"

"Or what?"

"Or as if you could train things--animals, I mean---"

"Gee-whittaker! If she ain't hit it square in the jaw first round! Go
up ahead, little girl. This is where I move down one."

The sardines were now so loose in their partially emptied box that
they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big
young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a
waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where he had
been.

"Good gracious!" she gasped.

"That's what you get for bein' a bright child," he explained "The
place is yours. See? If Peter Rolls wants only one more hand when your
turn comes, you're it, and I'm left. I was lion man in Jakes's and
Boon's show, but my best lion died on me, and that kind o' got my
goat. Guess my nerve went; and then brutes is as quick as fleas to
jump if they feel you don't know where you are for once. That shop is
shut for yours truly, so I'm doin' my darnedest to get another. If
Peter Rolls can use me, he can have me dirt cheap. I want to feed my
face again. It needs it!"

"You give Father one straight look between the eyes," suggested the
sardine, now at his back, "sort of as if he was a lion, and I'd bet my
bottom dollar, if I had one, he dasn't hand you the frosty mitt."

"Who's Father?" the lion tamer threw over his shoulder Win had longed
to ask the same question, but had not liked to betray herself as an
amateur.

"Oh, I forgot this was your first party! Wish 'twas mine. Father's
what the supe--the superintendent, the gent in the window--gets
himself called by us guyls."

"Wipe me off the map! I'm some Johnny to cost you all that breath.
But gee! the thought of standin' up to him gets my goat worse 'n twice
his weight in lions. I'm mighty glad this young lady's gotta go
through with it in front of me. Say, maybe you'll push the right bell
with him, too."

"I hope we both may," answered Win fervently. "It's more than kind of
you to give me your place, but really I---"

"Ain't we the polite one?" remarked the lion tamer. "Say, girlie,
you've made a hit with me. Where did you buy your swell accent?"

"Don't make fun of me, please, or I shall drop!" exclaimed Win with a
laugh nipped in the bud, lest it should reach the august ear of
Father.

This way of taking the joke appeased those within hearing, who had
perhaps believed that the tall Effect in brown thought a lot of
herself and was putting on airs. Her seeming to imply that she might
be considered ridiculous inclined censors to leniency.

"Have a spruce cream?" asked a girl in front, screwing her head round
to see what the Effect was like, and offering a small, flat object
about an inch in width and two in length.

"Thank you very much," said Win.

Every one near tittered good-naturedly. Perhaps it was that accent
again! Funny, thought Win. Her idea had been that Americans had an
accent, because they didn't talk like English people who had invented
the language. Americans appeared to think it was the other way round!

She put the flat thing into her mouth and began to chew it. At first
it was very nice; sugary, with a fresh, woodsy flavour which was new
to her. Presently, however, the sweetness and some of the taste melted
away, and instead of dissolving, so that she could swallow it, the
substance kept all its bulk and assumed a rubbery texture exactly like
a doll's nose she had once bitten off and never forgotten. She coughed
a little and did not quite know what to do.

"Good heavens', she's goin' to absorb it!" ejaculated the girl in
front, still twisting to gaze at the tall Effect. "Didn't you never
chew gum before?"

"Only millionaires can afford it in my country," said Win, recovering
herself. The laugh was with her! But every sound made was _piano_.
There was the feeling among the mice that this was the cat's house.

The girl in front who had offered the chewing gum was small and just
missed being very pretty. She had curly hair of so light a red that it
was silvery at the roots. Seeing her from behind, you hoped for a
radiant beauty, but she had pale, prominent eyes and a hard mouth. Win
imagined that the muscles in her cheeks were overdeveloped because of
chewing too much gum.

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