"Per C."

Author Unknown

"Mr. Bronson? Oh yes, you will find him in his private office, up three flights; turn to the right, No. 6."

"Thanks," and the compactly built, stalwart man in brown linen ulster, thread gloves, and Panama hat, ran, satchel and umbrella in hand, up three flights of black, dusty stairs, up, up through the gloomy halls of the great business house, turning to the right down a narrow space lined with offices, with open doors to get the circulation from the stairways and paused at "No. 5." A slight, graceful, pale-faced little woman glanced up from a pile of letters.

"Mr. Bronson? Oh, yes, sir. Walk in, please. Mr. Bronson, a gentleman."

Just a commonplace, everyday meeting between two large-hearted men who had maintained business relations for years, entertaining the very highest regard for each other meanwhile, without having once met face to face.

"Mr. Sturtevant? Is it possible? I am glad to see you, sir." And the two sat down and fell into a chat, which settled the Western man in his half-formed opinion that the genuine, substantial, out-and-out New Yorker is the representative man of America, and made the city man say to himself, "What a hearty frankness your real Western man brings into everything. Nothing dwarfed or contracted about him. His heart and his opinions are as broad and as breezy as his own rich prairies."

"Where do you stop?" as the visitor and long-time customer arose. "Don't know? Allow me to suggest that you go to the St. Nicholas with me, then. I'm there for a little, while my folks are out of town and the house is being brushed out. I will go with you. I was just going, in fact. Miss Clark, I will leave this last account for you to balance Oh, I want you to see Miss Clark—This is Mr. Sturtevant, from Chicago."

"Your name and your handwriting are entirely familiar, Mr. Sturtevant," said the pale-faced young woman with whom the visitor had first spoken, leaving the desk by which she was standing and coming forward toward the inner office, which was formed by heavy jet green curtains, looped back across a windowed niche, making a pleasing delusion of seclusion and of shade.

"We learn to feel acquainted with people from their handwriting," remarked Mr. Bronson pleasantly, as he drew on his gloves. "On that principle, you two must know each other quite well by this time."

"And you are 'Per C.'?" queried Mr. Sturtevant, looking critically down into the young woman's delicate, finely cut face. "Now I have a habit of conjuring people up from their handwriting, and the 'Per C.' I have kept in my mind all this time was a methodical, clear-headed, old grey-beard, whom all the sharpers in Gotham couldn't get around, and I find the real 'Per C.' to be but a mere thistledown or frost flower! Well, well!"

"You were not very far astray in your character estimate, however," smiled Mr. Bronson, tipping his light hat down over his dusky black eyes.

"'Per C.' is the most efficient helper that a perplexed merchant was ever blessed with. The firm would have been bankrupt had it not been for her. Fact, sir. At my father's death things were in bad shape. The head book-keeper, who was also a partner, had been making false entries, and the accounts were in the most inextricable tangle. They baffled me, and I employed an expert to straighten them, but he gave them up in despair. Miss Clark, who was then in the lower office, volunteered her assistance. She went through them all at odd hours, and brought everything out straight. To prevent exposure the partner refunded what he had embezzled. I bought in all the stock, and kept on with the business."

Mr. Sturtevant looked at the quiet little woman with more admiration than if he had just heard that she had painted a picture, written a book, or awakened a slumbering goddess from a block of marble.

"It was not much to do," she said, in deprecatory tones. "I had had experience with my father's books—only, unhappily—and the partner had not the embezzled funds in reserve, and the house went down."

"Good afternoon, Miss Clark," and the handsome, healthy gentleman started, full of life and spirits, to run down the stairs.

Mr. Bronson returned almost immediately to say: "Never mind about those last bills. I shall be early in the morning," and finding the little grey-dressed woman sitting at his desk in the shadow of the deep green curtains in a dejected attitude, looking so like a crashed, wilted flower that he could but wonder what had so quickly changed the bright, pleasant face that had just smiled back at him from the doorway.

"This hot wave is something fearful," said Mr. Sturtevant, as his companion regained his side. "I don't see how you can stand it here, week after week."

"Oh, I run up the Hudson, where my mother and sisters are, whenever the whim seizes me, knowing the books will not get behindhand in my absence."

"So you are not a married man?"

"No. I have never had time nor inclination to think of matrimony; and I am very well off in my present home."

"Yet it is all wrong," replied the Western man, in a fatherly way he was apt to fall into toward any one to whom he took a fancy. "A man of your age ought to be settled in a home of his own. The mother will go to heaven some day, and the sisters will take unto themselves husbands, and then, my man, you will be left adrift."

Mr. Sturtevant flitted in and out of "No. 5, third floor," every day for a week, assiduously cultivating the acquaintance of Mr. Bronson and "Per C.," as he persisted in calling the fragile little accountant, in the intervals of business, of sightseeing, and of writing to his wife—this last being his favorite way of filling in odd moments.

While driving, with Mr. Bronson late one sultry July afternoon in Central Park, he broke out abruptly, yet with a tone of peculiar earnestness, which the younger man had leaned to understand covered some deep feeling.

"Your eyes need opening, friend Bronson. Oh, not at all in regard to your horsemanship: you hold the reins like an expert. I beg your pardon, but I want to speak to you about your confidential clerk. You look surprised. I suppose I shall surprise you still more, my dear fellow, when I tell you that she is dying by inches there in that stifling office, before your very eyes, and you are so accustomed to her clear, white rose of a face anti her gentle ways that you can't understand that anythings is wrong with her. Why, man! even I, with my broad chest and perfect health, almost lose my breath every time I run up those stairs. She has faded and wilted and lost vitality perceptibly in the week that I have been here. Her lovely face grows more and more transparent every day. Now Oliver Walker, my confidential clerk, is wild to come to New York. He's a cute, sharp fellow, conscientious and industrious, and being so well acquainted with my business he would work into yours with little difficulty. Now I want to propose to you that we change confidential clerks. The fresh Western air will brace that little woman right up. I know enough of womankind to see that it is a matter of life and death with her. The change, the journey, the meeting with new people will renew her personality; she won't know herself in a month's time. This great city broadens the lives of those who are in constant attrition with their kind, but is more contracting than the most isolated country life can be to a soul moving in a daily rut. I know she is valuable to you, but when the flower wilts utterly and falls to the ground you will be obliged to take some one to fill her place."

"I can't dispute your argument," replied the young man thoughtfully, bringing his high-stepping horses down to a walk. "I have no doubt she needs rest and change. The place is a responsible one, and there is a great deal put upon her, as there is apt to be upon a person so efficient and obliging. I never saw her out of temper, and never heard her complain of weariness. She has no relatives, and never seems to care about taking a vacation. She could never be persuaded to leave us," he continued, presently, with a confidential smile, curling his tawny moustache. "We will, however, for the sake of justice, submit the proposition to her. I have no right to dismiss the subject until she has been consulted. I think you are needlessly alarmed in regard to her health, however. She has wonderful powers of endurance, although it is true she has looked as fragile as that lily yonder all the ten years she has been with us."

"Ten years ?"

"Ten years last autumn."

Mr. Sturtevant went back to his airy room at the St. Nicholas, and wrote a long letter to his wife, although he had already sent her a postal card and a telegram that day. He used to say that his pent-up enthusiasm would explode had he had not the safety-valve of writing to Eliza always at hand.

The next morning Mr. Sturtevant appeared at the Bronson office just as the old black porter was taking down the shutters. He had not long to wait, however, and disclosed his plan to Miss Clark while she was removing her simple wrap and plain straw hat.

"You say Mr. Bronson is willing to make the exchange?" she inquired with a faltering voice, seating herself at her desk, and mechanically breaking the seal of the topmost letter of that morning's mail.

"Yes, for your good, remember."

"I will go."

That was all. Mr. Sturtevant, with a rare knowledge of woman gained from his own felicitous union with Eliza, went over to a window and sat down to look at the morning papers, while she busied herself with the mail as usual; but with a faint glow on her cheeks, warning of an inward fire, like the reflection on the snowy petals of the gleam in the chalice or a cactus cup. An hour passed thus, and her employer entered, genial and gentlemanly as usual.

Mr. Sturtevant threw aside his paper, and said breezily:

"It is all settled, my dear Bronson. This is Saturday. We shall start for Chicago on Monday, on the S.A.M. express. I shall telegraph for Oliver to meet us at Niagara, where we will stop over a train, and have a looked at the Falls. He is one of those live, up and coming chaps that wouldn't ask for more than half an hour's notice to start on a voyage around the world."

Mr. Bronson gave his accountant a questionable look. She nodded. "Very well," he said, coldly yet with an effort to speak in his usual way. "You will need all the time there is, of course." He sat down in the shadow of the rich green curtains and wrote an order on the cashier. She put on her grey hat and gloves again, took the paper in her trembling fingers, and went down the dusty stairs without trusting herself to speak. I don't know as it occurred to either of them at the time, or for hours afterwards, that their parting, after their years of intimate business relationship, was a very strange one, or that it would have been very strange for two men under the same circumstances.

"Women have not the hearts of men, although it is the fashion of the time to put them and keep them in places requiring a man's strength, judgement, and impertubability. I must put that in my next letter to Eliza," said Sturtevant to himself as he ran after the little accountant, overtook her on the second landing, made some necessary arrangements, stood by when the cashier handed her her money and left her on the crowded sidewalk.

She did not go home at once, or rather to the boarding-house which she called home. Instead, she walked across to Broadway and took a Central Park omnibus.

"I can be alone in the park for a little while," she said to herself.

I don't know that she thought at all as the omnibus thundered and rattled and banged up Broadway; she was only realising the fact that she was going away from him.

She strolled about the gravel walks of the park, sat in the rustic arbours, lingering beside the fountain, ponds, and flowerbeds, but she saw nothing of the beauties that were delighting thousands of souls famishing for a breath of country summer; she was only almost overpowered by a dragging pain at being torn away from the associations of years.

Alone in her own little room, packing her scanty possessions, she burst out bitterly to herself:

"Oh, the wretchedness and wrong of shutting a young girl up in an office day after day for years with a young man no way her superior except in the matter of money, and expecting her to look upon him as indifferently as upon the improved typewriter at his elbow. Oh, the cruelty and the pity of it. I have had my dream. I will not call foolish dreams; it was only the rose bush reaching toward the trellis. Every girl has dreams, and it is right that she should have. It makes no difference whether she is filling the position of a man or that of a woman—her heart is not changed by the work that her mind and body are engaged in.

"My beautiful visions have faded into air as I have faded from a plump, pretty girl to a thin, wan, colourless old maid, and all the time he has been growing manly and strong and handsome year by year. Yet he has been kind to me, in a way, and although constantly in society, with elegant ladies he has remained single, and my woman's heart has dared to hope that it might be for my sake. For the sake of me, his book-keeper! How his proud mother and sisters would spurn the idea.

"I had better have been a kitchen girl in some good family, or a cook, or a farmer's wife with rosy children in my arms and about my knees, than to be what I am—a recluse, with no friends or associates. A disappointed woman, with her heart eaten out for love of a man who looks upon her only as a calculating machine!"

That night she arose from her bed, and, throwing a shawl around her, looked out upon the tireless moon and stars and upon the sleepless streets of the great city whose life is so abundant that it must go on by night as by day, but this thought did not occur to her now; she was saying:

"Had I been his wife he would not have allowed me to serve him as I have served him. To think of the nights that I have sat up over those books! I saved him from bankruptcy, and in his gratitude he promoted me to be his confidential clerk! He was grateful, and am I to blame for having thought that my life might grow fresh and beautiful with love, like the lives we read of in books? What hours I have spent, which should have been passed in sleep, in reading, and study, that I might keep abreast with him in mental culture. He must remember me as one who has been a help to him. It is impossible that he should forget me. There is a modicum of comfort in the fact that a young man is to take my place. I could not bear to think of him smiling over the top of his desk into the eyes of some other woman. If he marries, I hope I shall never know it.

"It is the nature of single women to love the unmarried men who treat then pleasantly and kindly, and with whom they are constantly associated. I wish it was in my power to put an end to every such unnatural relation. The people who are constantly crowding women into the places which should be filled by men wilfully misunderstand this matter. Every woman who fills a man's position is keeping some man out of a place of employment—keeping him from marrying, and so lessening, her, own chances of matrimony and of being mistress of a home. When will this problem be set right? I have been guilty, and must suffer; and yet should I dare to speak these sentiments in public how should I be ridiculed by the so-called reformers; and should I weave what I know of these shop and office flirtations into a readable newspaper article, there is no editor who would give it a place, because it would treat of an unpopular side of the subject, and because women can be hired for less money than men."

The next morning she went early to church. There had been a funeral of one of the members, and they were bearing the coffin out as she entered.

"I wish it were me," she thought, looking at the mourners, headed by the stricken husband, walking, sorrowing with bowed head, to the carriage.

As she sat in her accustomed seat that idea had such complete possession of her that she took no notice of the opening services—in fact, comprehended nothing only that she wished her life might go out then and there, as a candle is blown out by the wind.

Then she heard the minister read. "For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life; and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land."

The sermon which followed was practical as well as spiritual, growing out of some circumstances in the life just ended, and Miss Clark left the church, saying:

"God has a right to my life, and therefore to serve Him I must do my best with what He has given. I have never looked at it in just that way before. I have seen my duty; I am glad I came. If, through this change which has been wrought for me, I can prolong my days in the land I will go away cheerfully. And since I have no right to trouble others with my trouble, I will take up my burden bravely, for I can never hope to leave it, and hide it away in my heart; and I will even call up a hope to take with me as I start out upon this new chapter of my history."

She told no one that she was going away. Indeed, there was no one to tell, for, aside from the minister, not more than half a dozen people had addressed a word to her in all the years that she had regularly attended the church, and now they were all away on vacations, or summer journeys, a stranger to her filling the pulpit even.

She doubled her weekly offering to a poor old woman who always stood while the congregation was dispersing at the opening of a little alleyway a short distance from the church, and said "Good-bye," as she put the scrip in the withered hand. She smiled rather bitterly as the thought asserted itself, "All my going to that church has formed that single easily-severed tie!" Then she cast about in her mind, trying to remember what had decided her to fix on that particular church, and blushed when she had to confess that it was because he attended the church just below, and that she often caught a sight of him going in or out, and sometimes he gave her a smile or a nod of recognition.

The thought that she might see him in this way to-day, for a last look, had been a comfort all the morning; but now, when it came up to her again, like the last lingering ray of sunshine in a clouded sky, she resolutely put it away, and turned down another street.

At that very hour the object of that poor soul's conflict with self was swinging in a hammock suspended from the spreading branches of a giant oak, on the Highlands, above the Hudson. There were four of these swaying crimson and yellow cradles hanging in the balmy air from the huge limbs of this massive tree; and it was characteristic of these luxury-loving Bronsons that they had lounged here, looking up into its vast emerald dome, through the shining leaves of which filtered an occasional shower of sunshine, while the clear-voiced bell, only a few rods away, was summoning other people in carriages and on foot for miles from farm and hill and meadow.

The mother and the three sisters, four stylish society women, were all beaming now upon this black-whiskered Adonis, who was their idol.

"What should you have said," he asked, indifferently, after lying for a long time with his eyes closed and his white hands clasped beneath his shapely head, "if I had married my accountant, the woman who had been so long in our office, you know?"

There was a little rustle of drapery and flutter of fans, then Marie, the youngest sister, began an indignant protest, which her brother checked by saying:

"Don't excite yourself, Marie; the idea merely occurred to me as I was about to announce to you that she has been called away."

"Is it possible!" exclaimed his mother, settling her grey frizzes and finger-puffs, which the fresh breeze had slightly disarranged. "What was her name? I never saw her, but remember hearing her spoken of in the matter of settling your poor father's estate as a faithful creature—"

"I should think so," interrupted the young man; "'she saved the estate from bankruptcy, and your daughters from going out into the world in some capacity to earn their own living, as she did when her father died insolvent, leaving her without relatives."

Mrs. Bronson ignored the point, and went on in exactly the same key as before. "It is very unfortunate. What will you do, my son?"

"I have already hired a young man to fill the vacancy."

"Ten years?" said Adelaide, the oldest sister. "She has fairly grown grey in our service."

"Do you mean that white-faced girl in No. 5?" asked Sarah, and Marie, who was swinging in the same airy couch as the second sister, added, "I never noticed anything about her."

"I thought you looked worn out," said his mother; "and I heard you up in the night walking about your room. When did it happen?"

"Yesterday."

"Suddenly?"

"Very." And the young man dismissed the subject by turning upon his side, crossing his elbow under one ear, and reaching his long, slim fingers around the back of his head, and covering the other ear with the tips of them—an old, boyish habit of his when he wished to shut out the tiresome chat of his mother and sisters. They exchanged glances and smiles, and let him alone while he was thinking, "I didn't say what had called her away, or where she is gone. Am I to blame that they think she is dead?"

Mr. Bronson took it upon himself all through the late summer and early autumn to open the mail. As usual, there were plenty of business letters from Sturtevant and Co., but none "Per C." After a time hie ventured an inquiry, in a postscript, and received, in reply: "Per C. is recruiting."

After that the morning mail was left for the new clerk, who, happily was all that was represented. Yet Mr. Bronson found an unwonted wearisomeness about the business that seemed to him would wear his very life out. Night after night he lay in his luxurious rooms at the St. Nicholas, for he had entirely given up going up the Hudson now, and dreamed that he climbed the long, hard stairs up to No. 5 with a light, hopeful step, and, sitting down by his desk, looked over the bisected back to meet the soft, blue, faithful eyes that had never failed him; and then the fair face and smooth brown hair turned into a white lily, or rose, or a forest flower, or snow wreath, and faded away.

"Always into some emblem of purity, and fitly, too," he cried one night, when these dream pictures continually haunted and deluded him, leaving him in an agony of remorseful sorrow. "What am I to do? The old time can never return."

Ripe summer wore into autumn, and as the golden days grew grey and chill, Mrs. Bronson and her daughters returned to the thoroughly-renovated family mansion on Murray Hill. The four women were all shocked at the pale face and languid air of the son and brother.

"He must have a change. He most go on a journey. Either one or all of the sisters would accompany and take care of him." But he refused to entertain their offer, and would "look out for himself," he said, should he decide upon any place to go.

Passing through No. 5 the next morning to his place in his own curtained niche, he chanced to glance over Mr. Walker's shoulder, and caught sight of an order from Sturtevant and Co. in per C.'s well-known, clear-cut characters.

He took the bill and studied it, from the "Chicago, 18th October," to the "Per C." in the lower right hand corner.

The blood danced through his veins, his heart throbbed with an exultant joy, his very fingers tingled. He was stimulated out of his languor, as he had sometimes been by the freshening breeze when sailing down the harbor on a sultry morning, or by finding himself in a cool, woodland dell, surrounded by the romantic fragrance of wild azaleas, after a brisk, warm walk.

"I have decided to start on the 8 p.m. express for Chicago," he announced, to the surprise of the household, after he had already surprised them by appearing at lunch, which they were enjoying with two or three lady friends.

After a rapid journey for a person in pursuit of rest and enjoyment, he found himself on a clear, crisp October morning in the vestibule of the business quarters of Sturtevant and Co.

"Mr. Sturtevant? One flight, No. 1, to the left."

The young New Yorker's heart beat as it had never before beaten at anticipation in any form. He thought, "I shall see her in her plain grey dress, with her smooth brown hair, white cheeks, and her thin, pliant hands busy over the morning mail. How her shy, blue eyes will light up at sight of me. I don't know what I shall say. Of course I shall go through all the proper conventionalities. Ah me!"

He reached the door. His hand trembled on the knob. Just then it was turned from within, and he stood face to face with Mr. Sturtevant.

"Why, Bronson! my man; glad to see you. Been ill? You look like the ghost of your former self." But his quick eye did not lose his visitor's rapid glance around the office, nor the change of countenance when the accountant's desk was seen to be vacant; but he made him say, after a little commonplace talk, making an effort to speak naturally:

"Miss Clark is not with you?"

"No, her place is at the house. My wife was an Eastern woman, and had relations by the name of Clark. They have hunted up some kind of relationship, and have struck up a great friendship over it. Kitty, as my wife calls her—'Per C.' she will always be to me—fits right into our household as if she belonged there. Wife needed a companion. The children needed a governess, and I needed someone at the house to straighten my books for me, and to write orders when I am in a hurry. I have never had a woman in my office, nor a Chinaman in my kitchen. I don't take kindly to the new order of things."

"'Per C.' and Eliza, my wife, are taking singing lessons and brushing up their German, and I don't know what all; but I do know that she more than earns her wages by the additional light and life and interest she brings to our home. She's a rare woman, and there are plenty of people in Chicago who are finding it out. You must go home to dinner with me this evening, and get acquainted with Eliza and the children, and see what the West has done for 'Per C.'"

He had planned to surprise her, but of course he could not make that admission, and had to accept the invitation to dinner like any other gentleman, and went abroad all that day with an undefined pain in his heart, lest, just as he approached her, she would fade away like the flower maiden of his dreams.

Mrs. Sturtevent was never surprised to see a messenger coming with a little billet from her husband. The one this morning, however, was of unusual interest.

"He's come!" it said, "I knew he would, and he looks is if he had been through a siege. You must tell her, for we won't allow her to he surprised. You ought to have seen the man, with his heart in his eyes, when I opened the door upon him just now, and the blank look that succeeded when he found me to be the only occupant of the office. I shall bring him up to dinner. Have the children down; we will receive him like a family friend. I want him to see that a man's best riches are in his home. And mind you, Eliza, we won't leave them alone for a moment. If he wants favors he must ask for them."

I think Miss Clark cried a little for joy as she knelt beside the low white bed in her pretty room, and instead of uttering any spoken prayer, saying simply, in prayerful spirit, "I shall see him again!" But experience had taught her better than to admit one stray gleam of hope into her yearning heart.

She was in the back parlor, telling the children a story, when Mr. Bronson entered the high, handsome rooms with his jolly, bustling host. Too much the man of society to fail of saying just the right thing when he was presented to Mrs. Sturtevant, he was still looking for the quiet maiden whom he had almost begun to think of as a creature of fancy.

He had never seen her surrounded by children before, and thought at first, "She has caught a gleam of youth from them," and then the thought asserted itself, "Had I known my mind we might have been married these seven or eight years," and still approaching her through the long rooms, at the further end of which she had risen and remained standing in the centre of the pretty group, he thought:

"This plump, girlish figure in blue silk and white laces and frizzes, is not she at all."

But Miss Clark smiled and blushed, and held out the small, white hand, which he took in his own for the first time in all those years of acquaintance, and as he held it fast said bravely before them all:

"I can't do without you, and have come to ask you to return with me as my wife."

"Ha, ha," laughed Mrs. Sturtevant, "I wrote to Eliza the first day I was in your office, 'Bronson is in love with his confidential clerk, but he will never know it until something happens to remove her from her position.' Thank me for opening your eyes, young man."

"Per C." became Mrs. Bronson, but the wedding did not come off until the following spring. It was well that Oliver Walker was such a treasure of a bookkeeper, as business matters kept his employer in Chicago a great deal during the winter.

The mother and sisters of Bronson admired the wife of the head of the family exceedingly. They liked "Western women," they said, and they were glad to have Clarence married and settled in a home of his own.

One day not long ago, at a family dinner in the grand Murray Hill mansion, the

oldest sister said: "It has always puzzled me who Kate resembled; now I know. It is Miss —; I have forgotten her name—your old accountant, brother."

"Perhaps," replied the young man, smiling across the table at his wife: "yes, I can see the likeness myself, although it is a long time since she was 'called away.'

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 18 November 1880, supplement page 2