from now on fanny brandeis' life became such a swift-moving thing that your trilogist would have regarded her with disgust. here was no slow unfolding, petal by petal. here were two processes going on, side by side. fanny, the woman of business, flourished and throve like a weed, arrogantly flaunting its head above the timid, white flower that lay close to the soil, and crept, and spread, and multiplied. between the two the fight went on silently.
fate, or chance, or whatever it is that directs our movements, was forever throwing tragic or comic little life-groups in her path, and then, pointing an arresting finger at her, implying, “this means you!” fanny stepped over these obstructions, or walked around them, or stared straight through them.
she had told herself that she would observe the first anniversary of her mother's death with none of those ancient customs by which your pious jew honors his dead. there would be no yahrzeit light burning for twenty-four hours. she would not go to temple for kaddish prayer. but the thing was too strong for her, too anciently inbred. her ancestors would have lighted a candle, or an oil lamp. fanny, coming home at six, found herself turning on the shaded electric lamp in her hall. she went through to the kitchen.
“princess, when you come in to-morrow morning you'll find a light in the hall. don't turn it off until to-morrow evening at six.”
“all day long, miss fan! mah sakes, wa' foh?”
“it's just a religious custom.”
“didn't know yo' had no relijin, miss fan. leastways, ah nevah could figgah——”
“i haven't,” said fanny, shortly. “dinner ready soon, princess? i'm starved.”
she had entered a jewish house of worship only once in this year. it was the stately, white-columned edifice on grand boulevard that housed the congregation presided over by the famous kirsch. she had heard of him, naturally. she was there out of curiosity, like any other newcomer to chicago. the beauty of the auditorium enchanted her—a magnificently proportioned room, and restful without being in the least gloomy. then she had been interested in the congregation as it rustled in. she thought she had never seen so many modishly gowned women in one room in all her life. the men were sleekly broadclothed, but they lacked the well-dressed air, somehow. the women were slimly elegant in tailor suits and furs. they all looked as if they had been turned out by the same tailor. an artist, in his line, but of limited imagination. dr. kirsch, sociologist and savant, aquiline, semi-bald, grimly satiric, sat in his splendid, high-backed chair, surveying his silken flock through half-closed lids. he looked tired, and rather ill, fanny thought, but distinctly a personage. she wondered if he held them or they him. that recalled to her the little winnebago temple and rabbi thalmann. she remembered the frequent rudeness and open inattention of that congregation. no doubt mrs. nathan pereles had her counterpart here, and the hypocritical bella weinberg, too, and the giggling aarons girls, and old ben reitman. here dr. kirsch had risen, and, coming forward, had paused to lean over his desk and, with an awful geniality, had looked down upon two rustling, exquisitely gowned late-comers. they sank into their seats, cowed. fanny grinned. he began his lecture something about modern politics. fanny was fascinated and resentful by turns. his brilliant satire probed, cut, jabbed like a surgeon's scalpel; or he railed, scolded, snarled, like a dyspeptic schoolmaster. often he was in wretched taste. he mimicked, postured, sneered. but he had this millionaire congregation of his in hand. fanny found herself smiling up at him, delightedly. perhaps this wasn't religion, as she had been taught to look upon it, but it certainly was tonic. she told herself that she would have come to the same conclusion if kirsch had occupied a methodist pulpit.
there were no kaddish prayers in kirsch's temple. on the friday following the first anniversary of molly brandeis's death fanny did not go home after working hours, but took a bite of supper in a neighborhood restaurant. then she found her way to one of the orthodox russian jewish synagogues on the west side. it was a dim, odorous, bare little place, this house of worship. fanny had never seen one like it before. she was herded up in the gallery, where the women sat. and when the patriarchal rabbi began to intone the prayer for the dead fanny threw the gallery into wild panic by rising for it—a thing that no woman is allowed to do in an orthodox jewish church. she stood, calmly, though the beshawled women to right and left of her yanked at her coat.
in january fanny discovered new york. she went as selector for her department. hereafter slosson would do only the actual buying. styles, prices, and materials would be decided by her. ella monahan accompanied her, it being the time for her monthly trip. fanny openly envied her her knowledge of new york's wholesale district. ella offered to help her.
“no,” fanny had replied, “i think not, thanks. you've your own work. and besides i know pretty well what i want, and where to go to get it. it's making them give it to me that will be hard.”
they went to the same hotel, and took connecting rooms. each went her own way, not seeing the other from morning until night, but they often found kimonoed comfort in each other's presence.
fanny had spent weeks outlining her plan of attack. she had determined to retain the cheap grades, but to add a finer line as well. she recalled those lace-bedecked bundles that the farmer women and mill hands had born so tenderly in their arms. here was one direction in which they allowed extravagance free rein. as a canny business woman, she would trade on her knowledge of their weakness.
at haynes-cooper order is never a thing to be despised by a wholesaler. fanny, knowing this, had made up her mind to go straight to horn & udell. now, horn & udell are responsible for the bloomers your small daughter wears under her play frock, in place of the troublesome and extravagant petticoat of the old days. it was they who introduced smocked pinafores to you; and those modish patent-leather belts for children at which your grandmothers would have raised horrified hands. they taught you that an inch of hand embroidery is worth a yard of cheap lace. and as for style, cut, line—you can tell a horn & udell child from among a flock of thirty.
fanny, entering their office, felt much as molly brandeis had felt that january many, many years before, when she had made that first terrifying trip to the chicago market. the engagement had been made days before. fanny never knew the shock that her youthfully expectant face gave old sid udell. he turned from his desk to greet her, his polite smile of greeting giving way to a look of bewilderment.
“but you are not the buyer, are you, miss brandeis?”
“no, mr. slosson buys.”
“i thought so.”
“but i select for my entire department. i decide on our styles, materials, and prices, six months in advance. then mr. slosson does the actual bulk buying.”
“something new-fangled?” inquired sid udell. “of course, we've never sold much to you people. our stuff is——”
“yes, i know. but you'd like to, wouldn't you?”
“our class of goods isn't exactly suited to your wants.”
“yes, it is. exactly. that's why i'm here. we'll be doing a business of a million and a quarter in my department in another two years. no firm, not even horn & udell, can afford to ignore an account like that.”
sid udell smiled a little. “you've made up your mind to that million and a quarter, young lady?”
“yes.”
“well, i've dealt with buyers for a quarter of a century or more. and i'd say that you're going to get it.”
whereupon fanny began to talk. ten minutes later udell interrupted her to summon horn, whose domain was the factory. horn came, was introduced, looked doubtful. fanny had statistics. fanny had arguments. she had determination. “and what we want,” she went on, in her quiet, assured way, “is style. the horn & udell clothes have chic. now, material can't be imitated successfully, but style can. our goods lack just that. i could copy any model you have, turn the idea over to a cheap manufacturer, and get a million just like it, at one-fifth the price. that isn't a threat. it's just a business statement that you know to be true. i can sketch from memory anything i've seen once. what i want to know is this: will you make it necessary for me to do that, or will you undertake to furnish us with cheaper copies of your high-priced designs? we could use your entire output. i know the small-town woman of the poorer class, and i know she'll wear a shawl in order to give her child a cloth coat with fancy buttons and a velvet collar.”
and horn & udell, whose attitude at first had been that of two seasoned business men dealing with a precocious child, found themselves quoting prices to her, shipments, materials, quality, quantities. then came the question of time.
“we'll get out a special catalogue for the summer,” fanny said. “a small one, to start them our way. then the big fall catalogue will contain the entire line.”
“that doesn't give us time!” exclaimed both men, in a breath.
“but you must manage, somehow. can't you speed up the workroom? put on extra hands? it's worth it.”
they might, under normal conditions. but there was this strike-talk, its ugly head bobbing up in a hundred places. and their goods were the kind that required high-class workers. their girls earned all the way from twelve to twenty-five dollars. but fanny knew she had driven home the entering wedge. she left them after making an engagement for the following day. the horn & udell factory was in new york's newer loft-building section, around madison, fifth avenue, and the thirties. her hotel was very near. she walked up fifth avenue a little way, and as she walked she wondered why she did not feel more elated. her day's work had exceeded her expectations. it was a brilliant january afternoon, with a snap in the air that was almost western. fifth avenue flowed up, flowed down, and fanny fought the impulse to stare after every second or third woman she passed. they were so invariably well-dressed. there was none of the occasional shabbiness or dowdiness of michigan avenue. every woman seemed to have emerged fresh from the hands of masseuse and maid. their hair was coiffed to suit the angle of the hat, and the hat had been chosen to enhance the contour of the head, and the head was carried with regard for the dark furs that encircled the throat. they were amazingly well shod. their white gloves were white. (a fact remarkable to any soot-haunted chicagoan.) their coloring rivaled the rose leaf. and nobody's nose was red.
“goodness knows i've never pretended to be a beauty,” fanny said that evening, in conversation with ella monahan. “but i've always thought i had my good points. by the time i'd reached forty-second street i wouldn't have given two cents for my chances of winning a cave man on a desert island.”
she made up her mind that she would go back to the hotel, get a thick coat, and ride outside one of those fascinating fifth avenue 'buses. it struck her as an ideal way to see this amazing street. she was back at her hotel in ten minutes. ella had not yet come in. their rooms were on the tenth floor. fanny got her coat, peered at her own reflection in the mirror, sighed, shook her head, and was off down the hall toward the elevators. the great hall window looked toward fifth avenue, but between it and the avenue rose a yellow-brick building that housed tier on tier of manufacturing lofts. cloaks, suits, blouses, petticoats, hats, dresses—it was just such a building as fanny had come from when she left the offices of horn & udell. it might be their very building, for all she knew. she looked straight into its windows as she stood waiting for the lift. and window after window showed women, sewing. they were sewing at machines, and at hand-work, but not as women are accustomed to sew, with leisurely stitches, stopping to pat a seam here, to run a calculating eye along hem or ruffle. it was a dreadful, mechanical motion, that sewing, a machine-like, relentless motion, with no waste in it, no pause. fanny's mind leaped back to winnebago, with its pleasant porches on which leisurely women sat stitching peacefully at a fine seam.
what was it she had said to udell? “can't you speed up the workroom? it's worth it.”
fanny turned abruptly from the window as the door of the bronze and mirrored lift opened for her. she walked over to fifth avenue again and up to forty-fifth street. then she scrambled up the spiral stairs of a washington square 'bus. the air was crisp, clear, intoxicating. to her chicago eyes the buildings, the streets, the very sky looked startlingly fresh and new-washed. as the 'bus lurched down fifth avenue she leaned over the railing to stare, fascinated, at the colorful, shifting, brilliant panorama of the most amazing street in the world. block after block, as far as the eye could see, the gorgeous procession moved up, moved down, and the great, gleaming motor cars crept, and crawled, and writhed in and out, like nothing so much as swollen angle worms in a fishing can, fanny thought. her eye was caught by one limousine that stood out, even in that crush of magnificence. it was all black, as though scorning to attract the eye with vulgar color, and it was lined with white. fanny thought it looked very much like siegel & cowan's hearse, back in winnebago. in it sat a woman, all furs, and orchids, and complexion. she was holding up to the window a little dog with a wrinkled and weary face, like that of an old, old man. he was sticking his little evil, eager red tongue out at the world. and he wore a very smart and woolly white sweater, of the imported kind—with a monogram done in black.
the traffic policeman put up his hand. the 'bus rumbled on down the street. names that had always been remotely mythical to her now met her eye and became realities. maillard's. and that great red stone castle was the waldorf. almost historic, and it looked newer than the smoke-grimed blackstone. and straight ahead—why, that must be the flatiron building! it loomed up like the giant prow of an unimaginable ship. brentano's. the holland house. madison square. why there never was anything so terrifying, and beautiful, and palpitating, and exquisite as this fifth avenue in the late winter afternoon, with the sky ahead a rosy mist, and the golden lights just beginning to spangle the gray. at madison square she decided to walk. she negotiated the 'bus steps with surprising skill for a novice, and scurried along the perilous crossing to the opposite side. she entered madison square. but why hadn't o. henry emphasized its beauty, instead of its squalor? it lay, a purple pool of shadow, surrounded by the great, gleaming, many-windowed office buildings, like an amethyst sunk in a circle of diamonds. “it's a fairyland!” fanny told herself. “who'd have thought a city could be so beautiful!”
and then, at her elbow, a voice said, “oh, lady, for the lova god!” she turned with a jerk and looked up into the unshaven face of a great, blue-eyed giant who pulled off his cap and stood twisting it in his swollen blue fingers. “lady, i'm cold. i'm hungry. i been sittin' here hours.”
fanny clutched her bag a little fearfully. she looked at his huge frame. “why don't you work?”
“work!” he laughed. “there ain't any. looka this!” he turned up his foot, and you saw the bare sole, blackened and horrible, and fringed, comically, by the tattered leather upper.
“oh—my dear!” said fanny. and at that the man began to cry, weakly, sickeningly, like a little boy.
“don't do that! don't! here.” she was emptying her purse, and something inside her was saying, “you fool, he's only a professional beggar.”
and then the man wiped his face with his cap, and swallowed hard, and said, “i don't want all you got. i ain't holdin' you up. just gimme that. i been sittin' here, on that bench, lookin' at that sign across the street. over there. it says, `eat.' it goes off an' on. seemed like it was drivin' me crazy.”
fanny thrust a crumpled five-dollar bill into his hand. and was off. she fairly flew along, so that it was not until she had reached thirty-third street that she said aloud, as was her way when moved, “i don't care. don't blame me. it was that miserable little beast of a dog in the white sweater that did it.”
it was almost seven when she reached her room. a maid, in neat black and white, was just coming out with an armful of towels.
“i just brought you a couple of extra towels. we were short this morning,” she said.
the room was warm, and quiet, and bright. in her bathroom, that glistened with blue and white tiling, were those redundant towels. fanny stood in the doorway and counted them, whimsically. four great fuzzy bath towels. eight glistening hand towels. a blue and white bath rug hung at the side of the tub. her telephone rang. it was ella.
“where in the world have you been, child? i was worried about you. i thought you were lost in the streets of new york.”
“i took a 'bus ride,” fanny explained.
“see anything of new york?”
“i saw all of it,” replied fanny. ella laughed at that, but fanny's face was serious.
“how did you make out at horn & udell's? never mind, i'm coming in for a minute; can i?”
“please do. i need you.”
a moment later ella bounced in, fresh as to blouse, pink as to cheeks, her whole appearance a testimony to the revivifying effects of a warm bath, a brief nap, clean clothes.
“dear child, you look tired. i'm not going to stay. you get dressed and i'll meet you for dinner. or do you want yours up here?”
“oh, no!”
“'phone me when you're dressed. but tell me, isn't it a wonder, this town? i'll never forget my first trip here. i spent one whole evening standing in front of the mirror trying to make those little spit-curls the women were wearing then. i'd seen 'em on fifth avenue, and it seemed i'd die if i couldn't have 'em, too. and i dabbed on rouge, and touched up my eyebrows. i don't know. it's a kind of a crazy feeling gets you. the minute i got on the train for chicago i washed my face and took my hair down and did it plain again.”
“why, that's the way i felt!” laughed fanny. “i didn't care anything about infants' wear, or haynes-cooper, or anything. i just wanted to be beautiful, as they all were.”
“sure! it gets us all!”
fanny twisted her hair into the relentless knob women assume preparatory to bathing. “it seems to me you have to come from winnebago, or thereabouts, to get new york—really get it, i mean.”
“that's so,” agreed ella. “there's a man on the new york star who writes a column every day that everybody reads. if he isn't a small-town man then we're both wrong.”
fanny, bathward bound, turned to stare at ella. “a column about what?”
“oh, everything. new york, mostly. say, it's the humanest stuff. he says the kind of thing we'd all say, if we knew how. reading him is like getting a letter from home. i'll bet he went to a country school and wore his mittens sewed to a piece of tape that ran through his coat sleeves.”
“you're right,” said fanny; “he did. that man's from winnebago, wisconsin.”
“no!”
“yes.”
“do you mean you know him? honestly? what's he like?”
but fanny had vanished. “i'm a tired business woman,” she called, above the splashing that followed, “and i won't converse until i'm fed.”
“but how about horn & udell?” demanded ella, her mouth against the crack.
“practically mine,” boasted fanny.
“you mean—landed!”
“well, hooked, at any rate, and putting up a very poor struggle.”
“why, you clever little divil, you! you'll be making me look like a stock girl next.”
fanny did not telephone heyl until the day she left new york. she had told herself she would not telephone him at all. he had sent her his new york address and telephone number months before, after that sunday at the dunes. ella monahan had finished her work and had gone back to chicago four days before fanny was ready to leave. in those four days fanny had scoured the city from the palisades to pell street. i don't know how she found her way about. it was a sort of instinct with her. she seemed to scent the picturesque. she never for a moment neglected her work. but she had found it was often impossible to see these new york business men until ten—sometimes eleven—o'clock. she awoke at seven, a habit formed in her winnebago days. eight-thirty one morning found her staring up at the dim vastness of the dome of the cathedral of st. john the divine. the great gray pile, mountainous, almost ominous, looms up in the midst of the dingy commonplaceness of amsterdam avenue and 110th street. new yorkers do not know this, or if they know it, the fact does not interest them. new yorkers do not go to stare up into the murky shadows of this glorious edifice. they would if it were situate in rome. bare, crude, unfinished, chaotic, it gives rich promise of magnificent fulfillment. in an age when great structures are thrown up to-day, to be torn down to-morrow, this slow-moving giant is at once a reproach and an example. twenty-five years in building, twenty-five more for completion, it has elbowed its way, stone by stone, into such company as st. peter's at rome, and the marvel at milan. fanny found her way down the crude cinder paths that made an alley-like approach to the cathedral. she entered at the side door that one found by following arrows posted on the rough wooden fence. once inside she stood a moment, awed by the immensity of the half-finished nave. as she stood there, hands clasped, her face turned raptly up to where the massive granite columns reared their height to frame the choir, she was, for the moment, as devout as any episcopalian whose money had helped make the great building. not only devout, but prayerful, ecstatic. that was partly due to the effect of the pillars, the lights, the tapestries, the great, unfinished chunks of stone that loomed out from the side walls, and the purple shadow cast by the window above the chapels at the far end; and partly to the actress in her that responded magically to any mood, and always to surroundings. later she walked softly down the deserted nave, past the choir, to the cluster of chapels, set like gems at one end, and running from north to south, in a semi-circle. a placard outside one said, “st. saviour's chapel. for those who wish to rest and pray.” all white marble, this little nook, gleaming softly in the gray half-light. fanny entered, and sat down. she was quite alone. the roar and crash of the eighth avenue l, the amsterdam cars, the motors drumming up morningside hill, were softened here to a soothing hum.
for those who wish to rest and pray.
fanny brandeis had neither rested nor prayed since that hideous day when she had hurled her prayer of defiance at him. but something within her now began a groping for words; for words that should follow an ancient plea beginning, “o god of my fathers——” but at that the picture of the room came back to her mental vision—the room so quiet except for the breathing of the woman on the bed; the woman with the tolerant, humorous mouth, and the straight, clever nose, and the softly bright brown eyes, all so strangely pinched and shrunken-looking now——
fanny got to her feet, with a noisy scraping of the chair on the stone floor. the vague, half-formed prayer died at birth. she found her way out of the dim, quiet little chapel, up the long aisle and out the great door. she shivered a little in the cold of the early january morning as she hurried toward the broadway subway.
at nine-thirty she was standing at a counter in the infants' wear section at best's, making mental notes while the unsuspecting saleswoman showed her how the pink ribbon in this year's models was brought under the beading, french fashion, instead of weaving through it, as heretofore. at ten-thirty she was saying to sid udell, “i think a written contract is always best. then we'll all know just where we stand. mr. fenger will be on next week to arrange the details, but just now a very brief written understanding to show him on my return would do.”
and she got it, and tucked it away in her bag, in triumph.
she tried to leave new york without talking to heyl, but some quiet, insistent force impelled her to act contrary to her resolution. it was, after all, the urge of the stronger wish against the weaker.
when he heard her voice over the telephone heyl did not say, “who is this?” neither did he put those inevitable questions of the dweller to the transient, “where are you? how long have you been here?” what he said was, “how're you going to avoid dining with me to-night?”
to which fanny replied, promptly, “by taking the twentieth century back to chicago to-day.”
a little silence. a hurt silence. then, “when they get the twentieth century habit they're as good as lost. how's the infants' wear business, fanny?”
“booming, thank you. i want to tell you i've read the column every day. it's wonderful stuff.”
“it's a wonderful job. i'm a lucky boy. i'm doing the thing i'd rather do than anything else in the world. there are mighty few who can say that.” there was another silence, awkward, heavy. then, “fanny, you're not really leaving to-day?”
“i'll be in chicago to-morrow, barring wrecks.”
“you might have let me show you our more or less fair city.”
“i've shown it to myself. i've seen riverside drive at sunset, and at night. that alone would have been enough. but i've seen fulton market, too, and the grand street stalls, and washington square, and central park, and lady duff-gordon's inner showroom, and the night court, and the grand central subway horror at six p. m., and the gambling on the curb, and the bench sleepers in madison square—oh, clancy, the misery——”
“heh, wait a minute! all this, alone?”
“yes. and one more thing. i've landed horn & udell, which means nothing to you, but to me it means that by spring my department will be a credit to its stepmother; a real success.”
“i knew it would be a success. so did you. anything you might attempt would be successful. you'd have made a successful lawyer, or cook, or actress, or hydraulic engineer, because you couldn't do a thing badly. it isn't in you. you're a superlative sort of person. but that's no reason for being any of those things. if you won't admit a debt to humanity, surely you'll acknowledge you've an obligation to yourself.”
“preaching again. good-by.”
“fanny, you're afraid to see me.”
“don't be ridiculous. why should i be?”
“because i say aloud the things you daren't let yourself think. if i were to promise not to talk about anything but flannel bands——”
“will you promise?”
“no. but i'm going to meet you at the clock at the grand central station fifteen minutes before train time. i don't care if every infants' wear manufacturer in new york had a prior claim on your time. you may as well be there, because if you're not i'll get on the train and stay on as far as albany. take your choice.”
he was there before her. fanny, following the wake of a redcap, picked him at once from among the crowd of clock-waiters. he saw her at the same time, and started forward with that singularly lithe, springy step which was, after all, just the result of perfectly trained muscles in coordination. he was wearing new york clothes—the right kind, fanny noted.
their hands met. “how well you look,” said fanny, rather lamely.
“it's the clothes,” said heyl, and began to revolve slowly, coyly, hands out, palms down, eyelids drooping, in delicious imitation of those ladies whose business it is to revolve thus for fashion.
“clancy, you idiot! all these people! stop it!”
“but get the grace! get the easy english hang, at once so loose and so clinging.”
fanny grinned, appreciatively, and led the way through the gate to the train. she was surprisingly glad to be with him again. on discovering that, she began to talk rapidly, and about him.
“tell me, how do you manage to keep that fresh viewpoint? everybody else who comes to new york to write loses his identity. the city swallows him up. i mean by that, that things seem to strike you as freshly as they did when you first came. i remember you wrote me an amazing letter.”
“for one thing, i'll never be anything but a foreigner in new york. i'll never quite believe broadway. i'll never cease to marvel at fifth avenue, and cooper union, and the bronx. the time may come when i can take the subway for granted, but don't ask it of me just yet.”
“but the other writers—and all those people who live down in washington square?”
“i never see them. it's sure death. those greenwichers are always taking out their own feelings and analyzing them, and pawing them over, and passing them around. when they get through with them they're so thumb-marked and greasy that no one else wants them. they don't get enough golf, those greenwichers. they don't get enough tennis. they don't get enough walking in the open places. gosh, no! i know better than to fall for that kind of thing. they spend hours talking to each other, in dim-lighted attics, about souls, and society, and the joy of life, and the greater good. and they know all about each other's insides. they talk themselves out, and there's nothing left to write about. a little of that kind of thing purges and cleanses. too much of it poisons, and clogs. no, ma'am! when i want to talk i go down and chin with the foreman of our composing room. there's a chap that has what i call conversation. a philosopher, and knows everything in the world. composing room foremen always are and do. now, that's all of that. how about fanny brandeis? any sketches? come on. confess. grand street, anyway.”
“i haven't touched a pencil, except to add up a column of figures or copy an order, since last september, when you were so sure i couldn't stop.”
“you've done a thousand in your head. and if you haven't done one on paper so much the better. you'll jam them back, and stifle them, and screw the cover down tight on every natural impulse, and then, some day, the cover will blow off with a loud report. you can't kill that kind of thing, fanny. it would have to be a wholesale massacre of all the centuries behind you. i don't so much mind your being disloyal to your tribe, or race, or whatever you want to call it. but you've turned your back on yourself; you've got an obligation to humanity, and i'll nag you till you pay it. i don't care if i lose you, so long as you find yourself. the thing you've got isn't merely racial. god, no! it's universal. and you owe it to the world. pay up, fanny! pay up!”
“look here!” began fanny, her voice low with anger; “the last time i saw you i said i'd never again put myself in a position to be lectured by you, like a schoolgirl. i mean it, this time. if you have anything else to say to me, say it now. the train leaves”—she glanced at her wrist—“in two minutes, thank heaven, and this will be your last chance.”
“all right,” said heyl. “i have got something to say. do you wear hatpins?”
“hatpins!” blankly. “not with this small hat, but what——”
“that means you're defenseless. if you're going to prowl the streets of chicago alone get this: if you double your fist this way, and tuck your thumb alongside, like that, and aim for this spot right here, about two inches this side of the chin, bringing your arm back, and up, quickly, like a piston, the person you hit will go down, limp. there's a nerve right here that communicates with the brain. that blow makes you see stars, bright lights, and fancy colors. they use it in the comic papers.”
“you are crazy,” said fanny, as though at last assured of a long-suspected truth. the train began to move, almost imperceptibly. “run!” she cried.
heyl sped up the aisle. at the door he turned. “it's called an uppercut,” he shouted to the amazement of the other passengers. and leaped from the train.
fanny sank into her seat, weakly. then she began to laugh, and there was a dash of hysteria in it. he had left a paper on the car seat. it was the star. fanny crumpled it, childishly, and kicked it under the seat. she took off her hat, arranged her belongings, and sat back with eyes closed. after a few moments she opened them, fished about under the seat for the crumpled copy of the star, and read it, turning at once to his column. she thought it was a very unpretentious thing, that column, and yet so full of insight, and sagacity, and whimsical humor. not a guffaw in it, but a smile in every fifth line. she wondered if those years of illness, and loneliness, with weeks of reading, and tramping, and climbing in the colorado mountains had kept him strangely young, or made him strangely old.
she welcomed the hours that lay between new york and chicago. they would give her an opportunity to digest the events of the past ten days. in her systematic mind she began to range them in the order of their importance. horn & udell came first, of course, and then the line of maternity dresses she had selected to take the place of the hideous models carried under slosson's regime. and then the slip-over pinafores. but somehow her thoughts became jumbled here, so that faces instead of garments filled her mind's eye. again and again there swam into her ken the face of that woman of fifty, in decent widow's weeds, who had stood there in the night court, charged with drunkenness on the streets. and the man with the frost-bitten fingers in madison square. and the dog in the sweater. and the feverish concentration of the piece-work sewers in the window of the loft building.
she gave it up, selected a magazine, and decided to go in to lunch.
there was nothing spectacular about the welcome she got on her return to the office after this first trip. a firm that counts its employees by the thousands, and its profits in tens of millions, cannot be expected to draw up formal resolutions of thanks when a heretofore flabby department begins to show signs of red blood.
ella monahan said, “they'll make light of it—all but fenger. that's their way.”
slosson drummed with his fingers all the time she was giving him the result of her work in terms of style, material, quantity, time, and price. when she had finished he said, “well, all i can say is we seem to be going out of the mail order business and into the imported novelty line, de luxe. i suppose by next christmas the grocery department will be putting in artichoke hearts, and truffles and french champagne by the keg for community orders.”
to which fanny had returned, sweetly, “if oregon and wyoming show any desire for artichokes and champagne i don't see why we shouldn't.”
fenger, strangely enough, said little. he was apt to be rather curt these days, and almost irritable. fanny attributed it to the reaction following the strain of the christmas rush.
one did not approach fenger's office except by appointment. fanny sent word to him of her return. for two days she heard nothing from him. then the voice of the snuff-brown secretary summoned her. she did not have to wait this time, but passed directly through the big bright outer room into the smaller room. the power house, fanny called it.
fenger was facing the door. “missed you,” he said.
“you must have,” fanny laughed, “with only nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to look after.”
“you look as if you'd been on a vacation, instead of a test trip.”
“so i have. why didn't you warn me that business, as transacted in new york, is a series of social rites? i didn't have enough white kid gloves to go round. no one will talk business in an office. i don't see what they use offices for, except as places in which to receive their mail. you utter the word `business,' and the other person immediately says, `lunch.' no wholesaler seems able to quote you his prices until he has been sustained by half a dozen cape cods. i don't want to see a restaurant or a rose silk shade for weeks.”
fenger tapped the little pile of papers on his desk. “i've read your reports. if you can do that on lunches, i'd like to see what you could put over in a series of dinners.”
“heaven forbid,” said fanny, fervently. then, for a very concentrated fifteen minutes they went over the reports together. fanny's voice grew dry and lifeless as she went into figures.
“you don't sound particularly enthusiastic,” fenger said, when they had finished, “considering that you've accomplished what you set out to do.”
“that's just it,” quickly. “i like the uncertainty. it was interesting to deal directly with those people, to stack one's arguments, and personality, and mentality and power over theirs, until they had to give way. but after that! well, you can't expect me to be vitally interested in gross lots, and carloads and dating.”
“it's part of business.”
“it's the part i hate.”
fenger stacked the papers neatly. “you came in june, didn't you?”
“yes.”
“it has been a remarkable eight-months' record, even at haynes-cooper's, where records are the rule. have you been through the plant since the time you first went through?”
“through it! goodness, no! it would take a day.”
“then i wish you'd take it. i like to have the heads of departments go through the plant at least twice a year. you'll find the fourteenth floor has been cleared and is being used entirely by the selectors. the manufacturers' samples are spread on the tables in the various sections. you'll find your place ready for you. you'll be amused at daly's section. he took your suggestion about trying the blouses on live models instead of selecting them as he used to. you remember you said that one could tell about the lines and style of a dress merely by looking at it, but that a blouse is just a limp rag until it's on.”
“it's true of the flimsy georgette things women want now. they may be lovely in the box and hideously unbecoming when worn. if daly's going in for the higher grade stuff he can't risk choosing unbecoming models.”
“wait till you see him!” smiled fenger, “sitting there like a sultan while the pinks and blues, and whites and plaids parade before him.” he turned to his desk again. “that's all, miss brandeis. thank you.” then, at a sudden thought. “do you know that all your suggestions have been human suggestions? i mean they all have had to do with people. tell me, how do you happen to have learned so much about what people feel and think, in such a short time?”
the thing that clarence heyl had said flashed through her mind, and she was startled to find herself quoting it. “it hasn't been a short time,” she said.
“it took a thousand years.” and left fenger staring, puzzled.
she took next morning for her tour of the plant as fenger had suggested. she went through it, not as the startled, wide-eyed girl of eight months before had gone, but critically, and with a little unconscious air of authority. for, this organization, vast though it was, actually showed her imprint. she could have put her finger on this spot, and that, saying, “here is the mark of my personality.” and she thought, as she passed from department to department, “ten thousand a year, if you keep on as you've started.” up one aisle and down the next. bundles, bundles, bundles. and everywhere you saw the yellow order-slips. in the hands of the stock boys whizzing by on roller skates; in the filing department; in the traffic department. the very air seemed jaundiced with those clouds of yellow order-slips. she stopped a moment, fascinated as always before the main spiral gravity chute down which the bundles—hundreds of them, thousands of them daily—chased each other to—to what? fanny asked herself. she knew, vaguely, that hands caught these bundles halfway, and redirected them toward the proper channel, where they were assembled and made ready for shipping or mailing. she turned to a stock boy.
“where does this empty?” she asked.
“floor below,” said the boy, “on the platform.”
fanny walked down a flight of iron stairs, and around to face the spiral chute again. in front of the chute, and connected with it by a great metal lip, was a platform perhaps twelve feet above the floor and looking very much like the pilot's deck of a ship. a little flight of steps led up to it—very steep steps, that trembled a little under a repetition of shocks that came from above. fanny climbed them warily, gained the top, and found herself standing next to the girl whose face had gleamed out at her from among those thousands in the crowd pouring out of the plant. the girl glanced up at fanny for a second—no, for the fraction of a second. her job was the kind that permitted no more than that. fanny watched her for one breathless moment. in that moment she understood the look that had been stamped on the girl's face that night; the look that had cried: “release!” for this platform, shaking under the thud of bundles, bundles, bundles, was the stomach of the haynes-cooper plant. sixty per cent of the forty-five thousand daily orders passed through the hands of this girl and her assistants. down the chutes swished the bundles, stamped with their section mark, and here they were caught deftly and hurled into one of the dozen conveyers that flowed out from this main stream. the wrong bundle into the wrong conveyer? confusion in the shipping room. it only took a glance of the eye and a motion of the arms. but that glance and that motion had been boiled down to the very concentrated essence of economy. they seemed to be working with fury, but then, so does a pile-driver until you get the simplicity of it.
fanny bent over the girl (it was a noisy corner) and put a question. the girl did not pause in her work as she answered it. she caught a bundle with one hand, hurled one into a conveyer with the other.
“seven a week,” she said. and deftly caught the next slithering bundle.
fanny watched her for another moment. then she turned and went down the steep stairs.
“none of your business,” she said to herself, and continued her tour. “none of your business.” she went up to the new selectors' floor, and found the plan running as smoothly as if it had been part of the plant's system for years. the elevator whisked her up to the top floor, where she met the plant's latest practical fad, the new textile chemist—a charming youth, disguised in bone-rimmed glasses, who did the honors of his little laboratory with all the manner of a harvard host. this was the fusing oven for silks. here was the drying oven. this delicate scale weighed every ounce of the cloth swatches that came in for inspection, to get the percentage of wool and cotton. not a chance for the manufacturer to slip shoddy into his goods, now.
“mm,” said fanny, politely. she hated complicated processes that had to do with scales, and weights, and pounds, and acids. she crossed over to the administration building, and stopped at the door marked, “mrs. knowles.” if you had been an employee of the haynes-cooper company, and had been asked to define mrs. knowles's position the chances are that you would have found yourself floundering, wordless. haynes-cooper was reluctant to acknowledge the need of mrs. knowles. still, when you employ ten thousand people, and more than half of these are girls, and fifty per cent of these girls are unskilled, ignorant, and terribly human you find that a mrs. knowles saves the equivalent of ten times her salary in wear and tear and general prevention. she could have told you tragic stories, could mrs. knowles, and sordid stories, and comic too; she knew how to deal with terror, and shame, and stubborn silence, and hopeless misery. gray-haired and motherly? not at all. an astonishingly young, pleasingly plumpish woman, with nothing remarkable about her except a certain splendid calm. four years out of vassar, and already she had learned that if you fold your hands in your lap and wait, quietly, asking no questions, almost any one will tell you almost anything.
“hello!” called fanny. “how are our morals this morning?”
“going up!” answered esther knowles, “considering that it's tuesday. come in. how's the infant prodigy, i lunched with ella monahan, and she told me your first new york trip was a whirlwind. congratulations!”
“thanks. i can't stop. i haven't touched my desk to-day. i just want to ask you if you know the name of that girl who has charge of the main chute in the merchandise building.”
“good lord, child! there are thousands of girls.”
“but this one's rather special. she is awfully pretty, and rather different looking. exquisite coloring, a discontented expression, and a blouse that's too low in the neck.”
“which might be a description of fanny brandeis herself, barring the blouse,” laughed mrs. knowles. then, at the startled look in fanny's face, “do forgive me. and don't look so horrified. i think i know which one you mean. her name is sarah sapinsky—yes, isn't it a pity!—and it's queer that you should ask me about her because i've been having trouble with that particular girl.”
“trouble?”
“she knows she's pretty, and she knows she's different, and she knows she's handicapped, and that accounts for the discontented expression. that, and some other things. she gets seven a week here, and they take just about all of it at home. she says she's sick of it. she has left home twice. i don't blame the child, but i've always managed to bring her back. some day there'll be a third time—and i'm afraid of it. she's not bad. she's really rather splendid, and she has a certain dreadful philosophy of her own. her theory is that there are only two kinds of people in the world. those that give, and those that take. and she's tired of giving. sarah didn't put it just that way; but you know what she means, don't you?”
“i know what she means,” said fanny, grimly.
so it was sarah she saw above all else in her trip through the gigantic plant; sarah's face shone out from among the thousands; the thud-thud of sarah's bundle-chute beat a dull accompaniment to the hum of the big hive; above the rustle of those myriad yellow order-slips, through the buzz of the busy mail room; beneath the roar of the presses in the printing building, the crash of the dishes in the cafeteria, ran the leid-motif of sarah-at-seven-a-week. back in her office once more fanny dictated a brief observation-report for fenger's perusal.
“it seems to me there's room for improvement in our card index file system. it's thorough, but unwieldy. it isn't a system any more. it's a ceremony. can't you get a corps of system sharks to simplify things there?”
she went into detail and passed on to the next suggestion.
“if the north american cloak & suit company can sell mail order dresses that are actually smart and in good taste, i don't see why we have to go on carrying only the most hideous crudities in our women's dress department. i know that the majority of our women customers wouldn't wear a plain, good looking little blue serge dress with a white collar, and some tailored buttons. they want cerise satin revers on a plum-colored foulard, and that's what we've been giving them. but there are plenty of other women living miles from anywhere who know what's being worn on fifth avenue. i don't know how they know it, but they do. and they want it. why can't we reach those women, as well as their shoddier sisters? the north american people do it. i'd wear one of their dresses myself. i wouldn't be found dead in one of ours. here's a suggestion:
“why can't we get camille to design half a dozen models a season for us? now don't roar at that. and don't think that the women on western ranches haven't heard of camille. they have. they may know nothing of mrs. pankhurst, and lillian russell may be a myth to them, but i'll swear that every one of them knows that camille is a dressmaker who makes super-dresses. she is as much a household word among them as roosevelt used to be to their men folks. and if we can promise them a camille-designed dress for $7.85 (which we could) then why don't we?”
at the very end, to her stenographer's mystification, she added this irrelevant line.
“seven dollars a week is not a living wage.”
the report went to fenger. he hurdled lightly over the first suggestion, knowing that the file system was as simple as a monster of its bulk could be. he ignored the third hint. the second suggestion amused, then interested, then convinced him. within six months camille's name actually appeared in the haynes-cooper catalogue. not that alone, the haynes-cooper company broke its rule as to outside advertising, and announced in full-page magazine ads the news of the $7.85 gowns designed by camille especially for the haynes-cooper company. there went up a nationwide shout of amusement and unbelief, but the announcement continued. camille (herself a frump with a fringe) whose frocks were worn by queens, and dancers and matrons with millions, and debutantes; camille, who had introduced the slouch, revived the hoop, discovered the sunset chiffon, had actually consented to design six models every season for the mail order millions of the haynes-cooper women's dress department—at a price that made even michael fenger wince.
