Fanny Brandeis' blouses showed real Cluny now, and her hats were nothing
but line. A scant two years before she had wondered if she would ever
reach a pinnacle of success lofty enough to enable her to wear blue
tailor suits as smart as the well-cut garments worn by her mother's
friend, Mrs. Emma McChesney. Mrs. McChesney's trig little suits had cost
fifty dollars, and had looked sixty. Fanny's now cost one hundred and
twenty-five, and looked one hundred and twenty-five. Her sleeves alone
gave it away. If you would test the soul of a tailor you have only to
glance at shoulder-seam, elbow and wrist. Therein lies the wizardry.
Fanny's sleeve flowed from arm-pit to thumb-bone without a ripple.
Also she moved from the South side to the North side, always a sign of
prosperity or social ambition, in Chicago. Her new apartment was near
the lake, exhilaratingly high, correspondingly expensive. And she was
hideously lonely. She was earning a man-size salary now, and she was
working like a man. A less magnificently healthy woman could not have
stood the strain, for Fanny Brandeis was working with her head, not her
heart. When we say heart we have come to mean something more than the
hollow muscular structure that propels the blood through the veins.
That, in the dictionary, is the primary definition. The secondary
definition has to do with such words as emotion, sympathy, tenderness,
courage, conviction. She was working, now, as Michael Fenger worked,
relentlessly, coldly, indomitably, using all the material at hand as
a means to an end, with never a thought of the material itself, as a
builder reaches for a brick, or stone, and fits it into place, smoothly,
almost without actually seeing the brick itself, except as something
which will help to make a finished wall. She rarely prowled the city
now. She told herself she was too tired at night, and on Sundays and
holidays, and I suppose she was. Indeed, she no longer saw things with
her former vision. It was as though her soul had shriveled in direct
proportion to her salary's expansion. The streets seldom furnished her
with a rich mental meal now. When she met a woman with a child, in
the park, her keen eye noted the child's dress before it saw the child
itself, if, indeed, she noticed the child at all.
Fascinating Facts, the guileless, pink-cheeked youth who had driven
her home the night of her first visit to the Fengers, shortly after her
coming to Haynes-Cooper's, had proved her faithful slave, and she had
not abused his devotion. Indeed, she hardly considered it that. The sex
side of her was being repressed with the artist side. Most men found her
curt, brisk, businesslike manner a little repellent, though interesting.
They never made love to her, in spite of her undeniable attractiveness.
Fascinating Facts drove her about in his smart little roadster and one
night he established himself in her memory forever as the first man who
had ever asked her to marry him. He did it haltingly, painfully, almost
grudgingly. Fanny was frankly amazed. She had enjoyed going about with
him. He rested and soothed her. He, in turn, had been stimulated by her
energy, her humor, her electric force. Nothing was said for a minute
after his awkward declaration.
“But,” he persisted, “you like me, don't you?”
“Of course I do. Immensely.”
“Then why?”
“When a woman of my sort marries it's a miracle. I'm twenty-six, and
intelligent and very successful. A frightful combination. Unmarried
women of my type aren't content just to feel. They must analyze their
feelings. And analysis is death to romance.”
“Great Scott! You expect to marry somebody sometime, don't you, Fanny?”
“No one I know now. When I do marry, if I do, it will be with the idea
of making a definite gain. I don't mean necessarily worldly gain,
though that would be a factor, too.” Fascinating Facts had been staring
straight ahead, his hands gripping the wheel with unnecessary rigidity.
He relaxed a little now, and even laughed, though not very successfully.
Then he said something very wise, for him.
“Listen to me, girl. You'll never get away with that vampire stuff.
Talons are things you have to be born with. You'll never learn to grab
with these.” He reached over, and picked up her left hand lying inertly
in her lap, and brought it up to his lips, and kissed it, glove and all.
“They're built on the open-face pattern--for giving. You can't fool me.
I know.”
A year and a half after her coming to Haynes-Cooper Fanny's department
was doing a business of a million a year. The need had been there. She
had merely given it the impetus. She was working more or less directly
with Fenger now, with an eye on every one of the departments that had
to do with women's clothing, from shoes to hats. Not that she did any
actual buying, or selling in these departments. She still confined
her actual selecting of goods to the infants' wear section, but she
occupied, unofficially, the position of assistant to the General
Merchandise Manager. They worked well together, she and Fenger, their
minds often marching along without the necessity of a single spoken
word. There was no doubt that Fenger's mind was a marvelous piece
of mechanism. Under it the Haynes-Cooper plant functioned with the
clockwork regularity of a gigantic automaton. System and Results--these
were his twin gods. With his mind intent on them he failed to see that
new gods, born of spiritual unrest, were being set up in the temples of
Big Business. Their coming had been rumored for many years. Words such
as Brotherhood, Labor, Rights, Humanity, Hours, once regarded as the
special property of the street corner ranter, were creeping into our
everyday vocabulary. And strangely enough, Nathan Haynes, the gentle,
the bewildered, the uninspired, heard them, and listened. Nathan Haynes
had begun to accustom himself to the roar of the flood that had formerly
deafened him. He was no longer stunned by the inrush of his millions.
The report sheet handed him daily had never ceased to be a wildly
unexpected thing, and he still shrank from it, sometimes. It was so
fantastic, so out of all reason. But he even dared, now and then, to put
out a tentative hand to guide the flood. He began to realize, vaguely,
that Italian Gardens, and marble pools, educational endowments and pet
charities were but poor, ineffectual barriers of mud and sticks, soon
swept away by the torrent. As he sat there in his great, luxurious
office, with the dim, rich old portraits gleaming down on him from the
walls, he began, gropingly, to evolve a new plan; a plan by which the
golden flood was to be curbed, divided, and made to form a sub-stream,
to be utilized for the good of the many; for the good of the Ten
Thousand, who were almost Fifteen Thousand now, with another fifteen
thousand in mills and factories at distant points, whose entire
output was swallowed up by the Haynes-Cooper plant. Michael Fenger,
Super-Manager, listened to the plan, smiled tolerantly, and went on
perfecting an already miraculous System. Sarah Sapinsky, at seven a
week, was just so much untrained labor material, easily replaced by
material exactly like it. No, Michael Fenger, with his head in the sand,
heard no talk of new gods. He only knew that the monster plant under
his management was yielding the greatest possible profit under the least
possible outlay.
In Fanny Brandeis he had found a stimulating, energizing fellow worker.
That had been from the beginning. In the first month or two of her
work, when her keen brain was darting here and there, into forgotten
and neglected corners, ferreting out dusty scraps of business waste and
holding them up to the light, disdainfully, Fenger had watched her
with a mingling of amusement and a sort of fond pride, as one would a
precocious child. As the months went on the pride and amusement welded
into something more than admiration, such as one expert feels for a
fellow-craftsman. Long before the end of the first year he knew that
here was a woman such as he had dreamed of all his life and never hoped
to find. He often found himself sitting at his office desk, or in his
library at home, staring straight ahead for a longer time than he dared
admit, his papers or book forgotten in his hand. His thoughts applied
to her adjectives which proved her a paradox: Generous, sympathetic,
warm-hearted, impulsive, imaginative; cold, indomitable, brilliant,
daring, intuitive. He would rouse himself almost angrily and force
himself to concentrate again upon the page before him. I don't know how
he thought it all would end--he whose life-habit it was to follow out
every process to its ultimate step, whether mental or mechanical. As for
Fanny, there was nothing of the intriguant about her. She was used to
admiration. She was accustomed to deference from men. Brandeis' Bazaar
had insured that. All her life men had taken orders from her, all the
way from Aloysius and the blithe traveling men of whom she bought goods,
to the salesmen and importers in the Chicago wholesale houses. If they
had attempted, occasionally, to mingle the social and personal with the
commercial Fanny had not resented their attitude. She had accepted their
admiration and refused their invitations with equal good nature, and
thus retained their friendship. It is not exaggeration to say that
she looked upon Michael Fenger much as she had upon these genial
fellow-workers. A woman as straightforward and direct as she has what is
known as a single-track mind in such matters. It is your soft and silken
mollusc type of woman whose mind pursues a slimy and labyrinthine trail.
But it is useless to say that she did not feel something of the intense
personal attraction of the man. Often it used to puzzle and annoy her
to find that as they sat arguing in the brisk, everyday atmosphere of
office or merchandise room the air between them would suddenly become
electric, vibrant. They met each other's eyes with effort. When their
hands touched, accidentally, over papers or samples they snatched them
back. Fanny found herself laughing uncertainly, at nothing, and was
furious. When a silence fell between them they would pounce upon it,
breathlessly, and smother it with talk.
Do not think that any furtive love-making went on, sandwiched between
shop talk. Their conversation might have taken place between two men.
Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the
vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped
ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, “I'm not sold on that,” which
is modern business slang meaning, “You haven't convinced me.” She would
go back and start afresh, covering the ground more slowly.
Usually her suggestions were practical and what might be termed human.
They seemed to be founded on an uncanny knowledge of people's frailties.
It was only when she touched upon his beloved System that he was
adamant.
“None of that socialistic stuff,” he would say. “This isn't a Benevolent
Association we're running. It's the biggest mail order business in
the world, and its back-bone is System. I've been just fifteen years
perfecting that System. It's my job. Hands off.”
“A fifteen year old system ought to be scrapped,” Fanny would retort,
boldly. “Anyway, the Simon Legree thing has gone out.”
No one in the plant had ever dared to talk to him like that. He would
glare down at Fanny for a moment, like a mastiff on a terrier. Fanny,
seeing his face rage-red, would flash him a cheerful and impudent smile.
The anger, fading slowly, gave way to another look, so that admiration
and resentment mingled for a moment.
“Lucky for you you're not a man.”
“I wish I were.”
“I'm glad you're not.”
Not a very thrilling conversation for those of you who are seeking
heartthrobs.
In May Fanny made her first trip to Europe for the firm. It was a sudden
plan. Instantly Theodore leaped to her mind and she was startled at the
tumult she felt at the thought of seeing him and his child. The baby,
a girl, was more than a year old. Her business, a matter of two weeks,
perhaps, was all in Berlin and Paris, but she cabled Theodore that she
would come to them in Munich, if only for a day or two. She had very
little curiosity about the woman Theodore had married. The memory of
that first photograph of hers, befrizzed, bejeweled, and asmirk, had
never effaced itself. It had stamped her indelibly in Fanny's mind.
The day before she left for New York (she sailed from there) she had a
letter from Theodore. It was evident at once that he had not received
her cable. He was in Russia, giving a series of concerts. Olga and the
baby were with him. He would be back in Munich in June. There was some
talk of America. When Fanny realized that she was not to see him she
experienced a strange feeling that was a mixture of regret and relief.
All the family love in her, a racial trait, had been stirred at the
thought of again seeing that dear blond brother, the self-centered,
willful, gifted boy who had held the little congregation rapt, there in
the Jewish house of worship in Winnebago. But she had recoiled a little
from the meeting with this other unknown person who gave concerts in
Russia, who had adopted Munich as his home, who was the husband of this
Olga person, and the father of a ridiculously German looking baby in a
very German looking dress, all lace and tucks, and wearing bracelets on
its chubby arms, and a locket round its neck. That was what one might
expect of Olga's baby. But not of Theodore's. Besides, what business had
that boy with a baby, anyway? Himself a baby.
Fenger had arranged for her cabin, and she rather resented its luxury
until she learned later, that it is the buyers who always occupy the
staterooms de luxe on ocean liners. She learned, too, that the men in
yachting caps and white flannels, and the women in the smartest and
most subdued of blue serge and furs were not millionaires temporarily
deprived of their own private seagoing craft, but buyers like herself,
shrewd, aggressive, wise and incredibly endowed with savoir faire.
Merely to watch one of them dealing with a deck steward was to know for
all time the superiority of mind over matter.
Most incongruously, it was Ella Monahan and Clarence Heyl who waved
good-by to her as her ship swung clear of the dock. Ella was in New
York on her monthly trip. Heyl had appeared at the hotel as Fanny was
adjusting her veil and casting a last rather wild look around the room.
Molly Brandeis had been the kind of woman who never misses a train or
overlooks a hairpin. Fanny's early training had proved invaluable more
than once in the last two years. Nevertheless, she was rather flustered,
for her, as the elevator took her down to the main floor. She told
herself it was not the contemplation of the voyage itself that thrilled
her. It was the fact that here was another step definitely marking her
progress. Heyl, looking incredibly limp, was leaning against a gaudy
marble pillar, his eyes on the downcoming elevators. Fanny saw him
just an instant before he saw her, and in that moment she found herself
wondering why this boy (she felt years older than he) should look so
fantastically out of place in this great, glittering, feverish hotel
lobby. Just a shy, rather swarthy Jewish boy, who wore the right kind of
clothes in the wrong manner--then Heyl saw her and came swiftly toward
her.
“Hello, Fan!”
“Hello, Clancy!” They had not seen each other in six months.
“Anybody else going down with you?”
“No. Ella Monahan had a last-minute business appointment, but she
promised to be at the dock, somehow, before the boat leaves. I'm going
to be grand, and taxi all the way.”
“I've an open car, waiting.”
“But I won't have it! I can't let you do that.”
“Oh, yes you can. Don't take it so hard. That's the trouble with you
business women. You're killing the gallantry of a nation. Some day one
of you will get up and give me a seat in a subway----”
“I'll punish you for that, Clancy. If you want the Jane Austen thing
I'll accommodate. I'll drop my handkerchief, gloves, bag, flowers and
fur scarf at intervals of five minutes all the way downtown. Then you
may scramble around on the floor of the cab and feel like a knight.”
Fanny had long ago ceased to try to define the charm of this man. She
always meant to be serenely dignified with him. She always ended by
feeling very young, and, somehow, gloriously carefree and lighthearted.
There was about him a naturalness, a simplicity, to which one responded
in kind.
Seated beside her he turned and regarded her with disconcerting
scrutiny.
“Like it?” demanded Fanny, pertly. And smoothed her veil, consciously.
“No.”
“Well, for a man who looks negligee even in evening clothes aren't you
overcritical?”
“I'm not criticizing your clothes. Even I can see that that hat and suit
have the repressed note that means money. And you're the kind of woman
who looks her best in those plain dark things.”
“Well, then?”
“You look like a buyer. In two more years your face will have that hard
finish that never comes off.”
“I am a buyer.”
“You're not. You're a creator. Remember, I'm not belittling your
job. It's a wonderful job--for Ella Monahan. I wish I had the gift of
eloquence. I wish I had the right to spank you. I wish I could prove to
you, somehow, that with your gift, and heritage, and racial right it's
as criminal for you to be earning your thousands at Haynes-Cooper's as
it would have been for a vestal virgin to desert her altar fire to stoke
a furnace. Your eyes are bright and hard, instead of tolerant. Your
mouth is losing its graciousness. Your whole face is beginning to be
stamped with a look that says shrewdness and experience, and success.”
“I am successful. Why shouldn't I look it?”
“Because you're a failure. I'm sick, I tell you--sick with
disappointment in you. Jane Addams would have been a success in
business, too. She was born with a humanity sense, and a value sense,
and a something else that can't be acquired. Ida Tarbell could have
managed your whole Haynes-Cooper plant, if she'd had to. So could a
dozen other women I could name. You don't see any sign of what you call
success on Jane Addams's face, do you? You wouldn't say, on seeing her,
that here was a woman who looked as if she might afford hundred-dollar
tailor suits and a town car. No. All you see in her face is the
reflection of the souls of all the men and women she has worked to save.
She has covered her job--the job that the Lord intended her to cover.
And to me she is the most radiantly beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
Fanny sat silent. She was twisting the fingers of one hand in the grip
of the other, as she had since childhood, when deeply disturbed. And
suddenly she began to cry--silently, harrowingly, as a man cries, her
shoulders shaking, her face buried in her furs.
“Fanny! Fanny girl!” He was horribly disturbed and contrite. He patted
her arm, awkwardly. She shook free of his hand, childishly. “Don't cry,
dear. I'm sorry. It's just that I care so much. It's just----”
She raised an angry, tear-stained face. “It's just that you have an
exalted idea of your own perceptions. It's just that you've grown up
from what they used to call a bright little boy to a bright young man,
and you're just as tiresome now as you were then. I'm happy enough,
except when I see you. I'm getting the things I starved for all those
years. Why, I'll never get over being thrilled at the idea of being
able to go to the theater, or to a concert, whenever I like. Actually
whenever I want to. And to be able to buy a jabot, or a smart hat, or a
book. You don't know how I wanted things, and how tired I got of never
having them. I'm happy! I'm happy! Leave me alone!”
“It's an awful price to pay for a hat, and a jabot, and a book and a
theater ticket, Fan.”
Ella Monahan had taken the tube, and was standing in the great shed,
watching arrivals with interest, long before they bumped over the
cobblestones of Hoboken. The three descended to Fanny's cabin. Ella had
sent champagne--six cosy pints in a wicker basket.
“They say it's good for seasickness,” she announced, cheerfully, “but
it's a lie. Nothing's good for seasickness, except death, or dry land.
But even if you do feel miserable--and you probably will--there's
something about being able to lie in your berth and drink champagne
alone, by the spoonful, that's sort of soothing.”
Heyl had fallen silent. Fanny was radiant again, and exclamatory over
her books and flowers.
“Of course it's my first trip,” she explained, “and an event in my life,
but I didn't suppose that anybody else would care. What's this? Candy?
Glace fruit.” She glanced around the luxurious little cabin, then up at
Heyl, impudently. “I may be a coarse commercial person, Clancy, but I
must say I like this very, very much. Sorry.”
They went up on deck. Ella, a seasoned traveler, was full of parting
instructions. “And be sure to eat at Kempinski's, in Berlin. Twenty
cents for lobster. And caviar! Big as hen's eggs, and as cheap as
codfish. And don't forget to order mai-bowle. It tastes like champagne,
but isn't, and it has the most delicious dwarf strawberries floating on
top. This is just the season for it. You're lucky. If you tip the waiter
one mark he's yours for life. Oh, and remember the plum compote. You'll
be disappointed in their Wertheim's that they're always bragging about.
After all, Field's makes 'em all look like country stores.”
“Wertheim's? Is that something to eat, too?”
“No, idiot. It's their big department store.” Ella turned to Heyl,
for whom she felt mingled awe and liking. “If this trip of hers is
successful, the firm will probably send her over three or four times a
year. It's a wonderful chance for a kid like her.”
“Then I hope,” said Heyl, quietly, “that this trip may be a failure.”
Ella smiled, uncertainly.
“Don't laugh,” said Fanny, sharply. “He means it.”
Ella, sensing an unpleasant something in which she had no part, covered
the situation with another rush of conversation.
“You'll get the jolt of your life when you come to Paris and find that
you're expected to pay for the lunches, and all the cab fares, and
everything, of those shrimpy little commissionaires. Polite little
fellows, they are, in frock coats, and mustaches, and they just stand
aside, as courtly as you please, while you pay for everything. Their
house expects it. I almost passed away, the first time, but you get used
to it. Say, imagine one of our traveling men letting you pay for his
lunch and taxi.”
She rattled on, genially. Heyl listened with unfeigned delight. Ella
found herself suddenly abashed before those clear, far-seeing eyes. “You
think I'm a gabby old girl, don't you?”
“I think you're a wonderful woman,” said Heyl. “Very wise, and very
kind.”
“Why--thanks,” faltered Ella. “Why--thanks.”
They said their good-bys. Ella hugged Fanny warm-heartedly. Then she
turned away, awkwardly. Heyl put his two hands on Fanny's shoulders and
looked down at her. For a breathless second she thought he was about to
kiss her. She was amazed to find herself hoping that he would. But he
didn't. “Good-by,” he said, simply. And took her hand in his steel grip
a moment, and dropped it. And turned away. A messenger boy, very much
out of breath, came running up to her, a telegram in his hand.
“For me?” Fanny opened it, frowned, smiled. “It's from Mr. Fenger. Good
wishes. As if all those flowers weren't enough.”
“Mm,” said Ella. She and Heyl descended the gang-way, and stood at the
dock's edge, looking rather foolish and uncertain, as people do at such
times. There followed a few moments of scramble, of absurdly shouted
last messages, of bells, and frantic waving of handkerchiefs. Fanny,
at the rail, found her two among the crowd, and smiled down upon them,
mistily. Ella was waving energetically. Heyl was standing quite still,
looking up. The ship swung clear, crept away from the dock. The good-bys
swelled to a roar. Fanny leaned far over the rail and waved too, a sob
in her throat. Then she saw that she was waving with the hand that held
the yellow telegram. She crumpled it in the other hand, and substituted
her handkerchief. Heyl still stood, hat in hand, motionless.
“Why don't you wave good-by?” she called, though he could not possibly
hear. “Wave good-by!” And then the hand with the handkerchief went to
her face, and she was weeping. I think it was that old drama-thrill in
her, dormant for so long. But at that Heyl swung his hat above his head,
three times, like a schoolboy, and, grasping Ella's plump and resisting
arm, marched abruptly away.