He had only one weakness, his secretary felt, and that was his attitude toward his son, Willis, who, two years before, had been withdrawn from the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge, and put into the business, presumably that his father might watch him. He was one of the sub-editors of Corey’s Commentary and demoralized the office by his late hours, his disregard of office rules against smoking, and his condescending attitude toward everyone in his father’s employ.
The three years that Jeannette Sturgis had been Mr. Corey’s secretary had seen many changes. Poor Mrs. Inness had turned out to be a dipsomaniac. Jeannette guessed her secret long before it was discovered by anyone else, and she had been full of pity and sorrow when this gray-haired, regal woman had to be dismissed. Van Alstyne was gone, and Humphrey Stubbs as well; Max Oppenheim likewise had departed. The new Circulation Manager was a shrewd, keen-eyed, spectacled young Scotchman, named MacGregor, whom everyone familiarly spoke to and of as “Sandy.” Miss Holland was still Mr. Kipps’ assistant, and now most of the routine affairs of the business were administered by her. Besides Mr. Holme, there was another new member of the firm, Sidney Frank Allister, who had come into the Chandler B. Corey Company from a rival house, and was now entrusted with the book-publishing end of the business. It was usually his opinion that decided the fate of a manuscript. He had his assistants: a haughty Radcliffe graduate, named Miss Peckenbaugh, whom Jeannette heartily disliked, and old Major Ticknor, who had a stiff leg since his Civil War days, and who stumped into the office two or three times a week with his bundle of manuscripts and stumped out again with a fresh supply. Very rarely Mr. Corey was consulted; he frankly declared he hated to read a book, and would only do so under the most vigorous pressure.
“Do I have to read this, Frank?” Jeannette would often hear him ask Allister, when the latter brought him a bulky manuscript and laid it on his desk. “You know, I don’t know anything about literature,” he would add, smilingly, with his favorite assumption of being only a plain business man and lacking in appreciation of the arts.
“Well, Mr. Corey, this is really important,” Allister would say. “We don’t agree about it in my department.”
“Has Holme read it? He can tell you whether it will sell or not.”
“Mr. Holme doesn’t think it will, but I believe this is a very important book, and one we most assuredly ought to have on our list.”
Frequently Mr. Corey would hand the manuscript over to Jeannette after Mr. Allister had left the room, and beg her to take it home with her, read it, and give him a careful synopsis and her opinion. She used to smile to herself when she would hear him quoting her, and once when he repeated a phrase she had used in her report, he winked at her in a most undignified fashion.
“I’m nothing but a hard-headed business man, you know,” he would say, justifying himself to his secretary when they were alone together. “I haven’t any time to read books. I can hire men to do that,—men with much keener judgment about such things than I have. I’m watching the circulation of our magazines, the advertising revenues, our daily sales report, and seeing that our presses are being worked to their maximum capacity. I’m negotiating with a mill for a year’s supply of paper, and buying fifty thousand pounds of ink, and at the same time arranging for a loan from the bank. I haven’t got time for books. Anyhow I never went to college,”—this with a humorous twinkle as he had a general contempt for college men,—“and I don’t know anything about ‘liter-a-choor.’”
§ 2
Jeannette took a tremendous pride in the new building. She had an office to herself, now,—one adjoining Mr. Corey’s. He left the details of equipping both to her. She took the greatest delight in doing so. She bought some very handsome furniture,—a great mahogany desk covered with a sheet of plate glass for Mr. Corey; some finely upholstered leather armchairs, a rich moquette rug, and she had the walls distempered, and lined on three sides with tall mahogany bookcases with diamond-paned glass doors. She had all the authors’ autographed photographs reframed in a uniform narrow black molding, and hung them herself. She arranged to have some greens always on the bookcases, and a great bunch of feathery pine boughs in a large round earthenware jar on the floor in one corner.