Fanny Herself Part 21

"Yes, I know. But he's a crushed and broken office boy by now. I had to be real harsh with him."

f.a.n.n.y stood up, really angry now. She looked up at Clarence Heyl, and her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng. Clarence Heyl looked down at her, and his eyes were the keenest, kindest, most gently humorous eyes she had ever encountered. You know that picture of Lincoln that shows us his eyes with much that expression in them? That's as near as I can come to conveying to you the whimsical pathos in this man. They were the eyes of a lonely little boy grown up. And they had seen much in the process.

f.a.n.n.y felt her little blaze of anger flicker and die.

"That's the girl," said Heyl, and patted her hand. "You'll like me--presently. After you've forgotten about that sniveling kid you hated." He stepped back a pace and threw back his coat senatorially.

"How do I look?" he demanded.

"Look?" repeated f.a.n.n.y, feebly.

"I've been hours preparing for this. Years! And now something tells me--This tie, for instance."

f.a.n.n.y bit her lip in a vain effort to retain her solemnity. Then she gave it up and giggled, frankly. "Well, since you ask me, that tie!----"

"What's the matter with it?"

f.a.n.n.y giggled again. "It's red, that's what."

"Well, what of it! Red's all right. I've always considered red one of our leading colors."

"But you can't wear it."

"Can't! Why can't I?"

"Because you're the brunest kind of brunette. And dark people have a special curse hanging over them that makes them want to wear red.

It's fatal. That tie makes you look like a Mafia murderer dressed for business."

"I knew it," groaned Heyl. "Something told me." He sank into a chair at the side of her desk, a picture of mock dejection. "And I chose it.

Deliberately. I had black ones, and blue ones, and green ones. And I chose--this." He covered his face with a shaking hand.

f.a.n.n.y Brandeis leaned back in her chair, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Surely she hadn't laughed like that in a year at least.

"You're a madman," she said, finally.

At that Heyl looked up with his singularly winning smile. "But different. Concede that, f.a.n.n.y. Be fair, now. Refres.h.i.+ngly different."

"Different," said f.a.n.n.y, "doesn't begin to cover it. Well, now you're here, tell me what you're doing here."

"Seeing you."

"I mean here, in Chicago."

"So do I. I'm on my way from Winnebago to New York, and I'm in Chicago to see f.a.n.n.y Brandeis."

"Don't expect me to believe that."

Heyl put an arm on f.a.n.n.y's desk and learned forward, his face very earnest. "I do expect you to believe it. I expect you to believe everything I say to you. Not only that, I expect you not to be surprised at anything I say. I've done such a ma.s.s of private thinking about you in the last ten years that I'm likely to forget I've scarcely seen you in that time. Just remember, will you, that like the girl in the sob song, 'You made me what I am to-day?'"

"I! You're being humorous again."

"Never less so in my life. Listen, Fan. That cowardly, sickly little boy you fought for in the street, that day in Winnebago, showed every sign of growing up a cowardly, sickly man. You're the real reason for his not doing so. Now, wait a minute. I was an impressionable little kid, I guess. Sickly ones are apt to be. I wors.h.i.+ped you and hated you from that day. Wors.h.i.+ped you for the blazing, generous, whole-souled little devil of a spitfire that you were. Hated you because--well, what boy wouldn't hate a girl who had to fight for him. Gos.h.!.+ It makes me sick to think of it, even now. Pasty-faced rat!"

"What nonsense! I'd forgotten all about it."

"No you hadn't. Tell me, what flashed into your mind when you saw me in Temple that night before you left Winnebago? The truth, now."

She learned, later, that people did not lie to him. She tried it now, and found herself saying, rather shamefacedly, "I thought 'Why, it's Clarence Heyl, the Cowardy-Cat!'"

"There! That's why I'm here to-day. I knew you were thinking that. I knew it all the time I was in Colorado, growing up from a sickly kid, with a b.u.m lung, to a heap big strong man. It forced me to do things I was afraid to do. It goaded me on to stunts at the very thought of which I'd break out in a clammy sweat. Don't you see how I'll have to turn handsprings in front of you, like the school-boy in the McCutcheon cartoon? Don't you see how I'll have to flex my muscles--like this--to show you how strong I am? I may even have to beat you, eventually. Why, child, I've chummed with lions, and bears, and wolves, and everything, because of you, you little devil in the red cap! I've climbed unclimbable mountains. I've frozen my feet in blizzards. I've wandered for days on a mountain top, lost, living on dried currants and milk chocolate,--and Lord! how I hate milk chocolate! I've dodged snowslides, and slept in trees; I've endured cold, and hunger and thirst, through you. It took me years to get used to the idea of pa.s.sing a timber wolf without looking around, but I learned to do it--because of you. You made me. They sent me to Colorado, a lonely kid, with a pretty fair chance of dying, and I would have, if it hadn't been for you. There! How's that for a burst of speech, young woman! And wait a minute. Remember, too, my name was Clarence. I had that to live down."

f.a.n.n.y was staring at him eyes round, lips parted. "But why?" she said, faintly. "Why?"

Heyl smiled that singularly winning smile of his. "Since you force me to it, I think I'm in love with that little, warm-hearted spitfire in the red cap. That's why."

f.a.n.n.y sat forward now. She had been leaning back in her chair, her hands grasping its arms, her face a lovely, mobile thing, across which laughter, and pity, and sympathy and surprise rippled and played. It hardened now, and set. She looked down at her hands, and clasped them in her lap, then up at him. "In that case, you can forsake the strenuous life with a free conscience. You need never climb another mountain, or wrestle with another--er--hippopotamus. That little girl in the red cap is dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes. She died a year ago. If the one who has taken her place were to pa.s.s you on the street today, and see you beset by forty thieves, she'd not even stop. Not she. She'd say, 'Let him fight it out alone. It's none of your business. You've got your own fights to handle.'"

"Why--f.a.n.n.y. You don't mean that, do you? What could have made her like that?"

"She just discovered that fighting for others didn't pay. She just happened to know some one else who had done that all her life and--it killed her."

"Her mother?"

"Yes."

A little silence. "f.a.n.n.y, let's play outdoors tomorrow, will you? All day."

Involuntarily f.a.n.n.y glanced around the room. Papers, catalogues, files, desk, chair, typewriter. "I'm afraid I've forgotten how."

"I'll teach you. You look as if you could stand a little of it."

"I must be a pretty sight. You're the second man to tell me that in two days."

Heyl leaned forward a little. "That so? Who's the other one?"

"Fenger, the General Manager."

"Oh! Paternal old chap, I suppose. No? Well, anyway, I don't know what he had in mind, but you're going to spend Sunday at the dunes of Indiana with me."

"Dunes? Of Indiana?"

"There's nothing like them in the world. Literally. In September that combination of yellow sand, and blue lake, and the woods beyond is--well, you'll see what it is. It's only a little more than an hour's ride by train. And it will just wipe that tired look out of your face, Fan." He stood up. "I'll call for you tomorrow morning at eight, or thereabouts. That's early for Sunday, but it's going to be worth it."

"I can't. Really. Besides, I don't think I even want to. I----"