Fanny Herself Part 29

"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 a.n.a.lyze their feelings. And a.n.a.lysis is death to romance."

"Great Scott! You expect to marry somebody sometime, don't you, f.a.n.n.y?"

"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 f.a.n.n.y'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 a.s.sistant 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 G.o.ds. With his mind intent on them he failed to see that new G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds. He only knew that the monster plant under his management was yielding the greatest possible profit under the least possible outlay.

In f.a.n.n.y 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 sc.r.a.ps of business waste and holding them up to the light, disdainfully, Fenger had watched her with a mingling of amus.e.m.e.nt and a sort of fond pride, as one would a precocious child. As the months went on the pride and amus.e.m.e.nt 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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 f.a.n.n.y had not resented their att.i.tude. She had accepted their admiration and refused their invitations with equal good nature, and thus retained their friends.h.i.+p. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed them back. f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sociation 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 sc.r.a.pped," f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y for a moment, like a mastiff on a terrier. f.a.n.n.y, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y'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 f.a.n.n.y 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p swung clear of the dock. Ella was in New York on her monthly trip. Heyl had appeared at the hotel as f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y's early training had proved invaluable more than once in the last two years. Nevertheless, she was rather fl.u.s.tered, 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. f.a.n.n.y 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Fan!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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."

f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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."