Fanny Herself
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Edna Ferber >> Fanny Herself
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But all this had to do with her other side. It had no
bearing on Haynes-Cooper, and business. Business! That was
it. She had trained herself for it, like an athlete. Eight
hours of sleep. A cold plunge on arising. Sane food. Long
walks. There was something terrible about her earnestness.
On Monday she presented herself at the Haynes-Cooper plant.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in going over the great works.
It was an exhausting process, but fascinating beyond belief.
It was on Wednesday that she had been summoned for the talk
with Michael Fenger. Thursday morning she was at her desk
at eight-thirty. It was an obscure desk, in a dingy corner
of the infants' wear department, the black sheep section of
the great plant. Her very presence in that corner seemed to
change it magically. You must remember how young she was,
how healthy, how vigorous, with the freshness of the small
town still upon her. It was health and youth, and vigor
that gave that gloss to her hair (conscientious brushing
too, perhaps), that color to her cheeks and lips, that
brightness to her eyes. But crafty art and her dramatic
instinct were responsible for the tailored severity of her
costume, for the whiteness of her blouse, the trim common-
sense expensiveness of her shoes and hat and gloves.
Slosson, buyer and head of the department, came in at nine.
Fanny rose to greet him. She felt a little sorry for
Slosson. In her mind she already knew him for a doomed man.
"Well, well!"--he was the kind of person who would say,
well, well!--"You're bright and early, Miss--ah--"
"Brandeis."
"Yes, certainly; Miss Brandeis. Well, nothing like making a
good start."
"I wanted to go through the department by myself," said
Fanny. "The shelves and bins, and the numbering system. I
see that your new maternity dresses have just come in."
"Oh, yes. How do you like them?"
"I think they're unnecessarily hideous, Mr. Slosson."
"My dear young lady, a plain garment is what they want.
Unnoticeable."
"Unnoticeable, yes; but becoming. At such a time a woman is
at her worst. If she can get it, she at least wants a dress
that doesn't add to her unattractiveness."
"Let me see--you are not--ah--married, I believe, Miss
Brandeis?"
"No."
"I am. Three children. All girls." He passed a nervous
hand over his head, rumpling his hair a little. "An
expensive proposition, let me tell you, three girls. But
there's very little I don't know about babies, as you may
imagine."
But there settled over Fanny Brandeis' face the mask of
hardness that was so often to transform it.
The morning mail was in--the day's biggest grist, deluge of
it, a flood. Buyer and assistant buyer never saw the actual
letters, or attended to their enclosed orders. It was only
the unusual letter, the complaint or protest that reached
their desk. Hundreds of hands downstairs sorted, stamped,
indexed, filed, after the letter-opening machines had slit
the envelopes. Those letter-openers! Fanny had hung over
them, enthralled. The unopened envelopes were fed into
them. Flip! Zip! Flip! Out! Opened! Faster than eye
could follow. It was uncanny. It was, somehow, humorous,
like the clever antics of a trained dog. You could not
believe that this little machine actually performed what
your eyes beheld. Two years later they installed the sand-
paper letter-opener, marvel of simplicity. It made the
old machine seem cumbersome and slow. Guided by Izzy, the
expert, its rough tongue was capable of licking open six
hundred and fifty letters a minute.
Ten minutes after the mail came in the orders were being
filled; bins, shelves, warehouses, were emptying their
contents. Up and down the aisles went the stock clerks;
into the conveyors went the bundles, down the great spiral
bundle chute, into the shipping room, out by mail, by
express, by freight. This leghorn hat for a Nebraska
country belle; a tombstone for a rancher's wife; a plow,
brave in its red paint; coffee, tea, tinned fruit, bound for
Alaska; lace, muslin, sheeting, toweling, all intended for
the coarse trousseau of a Georgia bride.
It was not remarkable that Fanny Brandeis fitted into this
scheme of things. For years she had ministered to the wants
of just this type of person. The letters she saw at Haynes-
Cooper's read exactly as customers had worded their wants at
Brandeis' Bazaar. The magnitude of the thing thrilled her,
the endless possibilities of her own position.
During the first two months of her work there she was as
unaggressive as possible. She opened the very pores of her
mind and absorbed every detail of her department. But she
said little, followed Slosson's instructions in her position
as assistant buyer, and suggested no changes. Slosson's
wrinkle of anxiety smoothed itself away, and his manner
became patronizingly authoritative again. Fanny seemed to
have become part of the routine of the place. Fenger did
not send for her. June and July were insufferably hot.
Fanny seemed to thrive, to expand like a flower in the heat,
when others wilted and shriveled. The spring catalogue was
to be made up in October, as always, six months in advance.
The first week in August Fanny asked for an interview with
Fenger. Slosson was to be there. At ten o'clock she
entered Fenger's inner office. He was telephoning--
something about dinner at the Union League Club. His voice
was suave, his tone well modulated, his accent correct, his
English faultless. And yet Fanny Brandeis, studying the
etchings on his wall, her back turned to him, smiled to
herself. The voice, the tone, the accent, the English, did
not ring true They were acquired graces, exquisite
imitations of the real thing. Fanny Brandeis knew. She was
playing the same game herself. She understood this man now,
after two months in the Haynes-Cooper plant. These
marvelous examples of the etcher's art, for example. They
were the struggle for expression of a man whose youth had
been bare of such things. His love for them was much the
same as that which impels the new made millionaire to buy
rare pictures, rich hangings, tapestries, rugs, not so much
in the desire to impress the world with his wealth as to
satisfy the craving for beauty, the longing to possess that
which is exquisite, and fine, and almost unobtainable. You
have seen how a woman, long denied luxuries, feeds her
starved senses on soft silken things, on laces and gleaming
jewels, for pure sensuous delight in their feel and look.
Thus Fanny mused as she eyed these treasures--grim, deft,
repressed things, done with that economy of line which is
the test of the etcher's art.
Fenger hung up the receiver.
"So it's taken you two months, Miss Brandeis. I was awfully
afraid, from the start you made, that you'd be back here in
a week, bursting with ideas."
Fanny smiled, appreciatively. He had come very near the
truth. "I had to use all my self-control, that first week.
After that it wasn't so hard."
Fenger's eyes narrowed upon her. "Pretty sure of yourself,
aren't you?"
"Yes," said Fanny. She came over to his desk.
"I wish we needn't have Mr. Slosson here this morning.
After all, he's been here for years, and I'm practically an
upstart. He's so much older, too. I--I hate to hurt him.
I wish you'd--"
But Fenger shook his head. "Slosson's due now. And he has
got to take his medicine. This is business, Miss Brandeis.
You ought to know what that means. For that matter, it may
be that you haven't hit upon an idea. In that case, Slosson
would have the laugh, wouldn't he?"
Slosson entered at that moment. And there was a chip on his
shoulder. It was evident in the way he bristled, in the way
he seated himself. His fingers drummed his knees. He was
like a testy, hum-ha stage father dealing with a willful
child.
Fenger took out his watch.
"Now, Miss Brandeis."
Fanny took a chair facing the two men, and crossed her trim
blue serge knees, and folded her hands in her lap. A deep
pink glowed in her cheeks. Her eyes were very bright. All
the Molly Brandeis in her was at the surface, sparkling
there. And she looked almost insultingly youthful.
"You--you want me to talk?"
"We want you to talk. We have time for just three-quarters
of an hour of uninterrupted conversation. If you've got
anything to say you ought to say it in that time. Now, Miss
Brandeis, what's the trouble with the Haynes-Cooper infants'
wear department?"
And Fanny Brandeis took a long breath
"The trouble with the Haynes-Cooper infants' wear department
is that it doesn't understand women. There are millions of
babies born every year. An incredible number of them are
mail order babies. I mean by that they are born to tired,
clumsy-fingered immigrant women, to women in mills and
factories, to women on farms, to women in remote
villages. They're the type who use the mail order method.
I've learned this one thing about that sort of woman: she
may not want that baby, but either before or after it's born
she'll starve, and save, and go without proper clothing, and
even beg, and steal to give it clothes--clothes with lace on
them, with ribbon on them, sheer white things. I don't know
why that's true, but it is. Well, we're not reaching them.
Our goods are unattractive. They're packed and shipped
unattractively. Why, all this department needs is a little
psychology--and some lace that doesn't look as if it had
been chopped out with an ax. It's the little, silly,
intimate things that will reach these women. No, not silly,
either. Quite understandable. She wants fine things for
her baby, just as the silver-spoon mother does. The thing
we'll have to do is to give her silver-spoon models at
pewter prices."
"It can't be done," said Slosson.
"Now, wait a minute, Slosson," Fenger put in, smoothly.
"Miss Brandeis has given us a very fair general statement.
We'll have some facts. Are you prepared to give us an
actual working plan?"
"Yes. At least, it sounds practical to me. And if it does
to you--and to Mr. Slosson--"
"Humph!" snorted that gentleman, in expression of defiance,
unbelief, and a determination not to be impressed.
It acted as a goad to Fanny. She leaned forward in her
chair and talked straight at the big, potent force that sat
regarding her in silent attention.
"I still say that we can copy the high-priced models in low-
priced materials because, in almost every case, it isn't the
material that makes the expensive model; it's the line, the
cut, the little trick that gives it style. We can get that.
We've been giving them stuff that might have been made by
prison labor, for all the distinction it had. Then
I think we ought to make a feature of the sanitary
methods used in our infants' department.
Every article intended for a baby's use should
be wrapped or boxed as it lies in the bin or on the shelf.
And those bins ought to be glassed. We would advertise
that, and it would advertise itself. Our visitors would
talk about it. This department hasn't been getting a square
deal in the catalogue. Not enough space. It ought to have
not only more catalogue space, but a catalogue all its own--
the Baby Book. Full of pictures. Good ones. Illustrations
that will make every mother think her baby will look like
that baby, once it is wearing our No. 29E798--chubby babies,
curly-headed, and dimply. And the feature of that catalogue
ought to be, not separate garments, but complete outfits.
Outfits boxed, ready for shipping, and ranging in price all
the way from twenty-five dollars to three-ninety-eight--"
"It can't be done!" yelled Slosson. "Three-ninety-eight!
Outfits!"
"It can be done. I've figured it out, down to a packet of
assorted size safety pins. We'll call it our emergency
outfit. Thirty pieces. And while we're about it, every
outfit over five dollars ought to be packed in a pink or a
pale blue pasteboard box. The outfits trimmed in pink, pink
boxes; the outfits trimmed in blue, blue boxes. In eight
cases out of ten their letters will tell us whether it's a
pink or blue baby. And when they get our package, and take
out that pink or blue box, they'll be as pleased as if we'd
made them a present. It's the personal note--"
"Personal slop!" growled Slosson. "It isn't business. It's
sentimental slush!"
"Sentimental, yes," agreed Fanny pleasantly, "but then,
we're running the only sentimental department in this
business. And we ought to be doing it at the rate of a
million and a quarter a year. If you think these last
suggestions sentimental, I'm afraid the next one--"
"Let's have it, Miss Brandeis," Fenger encouraged her
quietly.
"It's"--she flashed a mischievous smile at Slosson--"it's a
mother's guide and helper, and adviser. A woman who'll
answer questions, give advice. Some one they'll write to,
with a picture in their minds of a large, comfortable,
motherly-looking person in gray. You know we get hundreds
of letters asking whether they ought to order flannel bands,
or the double-knitted kind. That sort of thing. And who's
been answering them? Some sixteen-year-old girl in the
mailing department who doesn't know a flannel band from a
bootee when she sees it. We could call our woman something
pleasant and everydayish, like Emily Brand. Easy to
remember. And until we can find her, I'll answer those
letters myself. They're important to us as well as to the
woman who writes them. And now, there's the matter of
obstetrical outfits. Three grades, packed ready for
shipment, practical, simple, and complete. Our drug section
has the separate articles, but we ought to--"
"Oh, lord!" groaned Slosson, and slumped disgustedly in his
seat.
But Fenger got up, came over to Fanny, and put a hand on her
shoulder for a moment. He looked down at her. "I knew
you'd do it." He smiled queerly. "Tell me, where did you
learn all this?"
"I don't know," faltered Fanny happily. "Brandeis' Bazaar,
perhaps. It's just another case of plush photograph album."
"Plush--?"
Fanny told him that story. Even the discomfited Slosson
grinned at it.
But after ten minutes more of general discussion Slosson
left. Fenger, without putting it in words, had
conveyed that to him. Fanny stayed. They did things
that way at Haynes-Cooper. No waste. No delay. That she
had accomplished in two months that which ordinarily takes
years was not surprising. They did things that way, too, at
Haynes-Cooper. Take the case of Nathan Haynes himself. And
Michael Fenger too who, not so many years before, had been a
machine-boy in a Racine woolen mill.
For my part, I confess that Fanny Brandeis begins to lose
interest for me. Big Business seems to dwarf the finer
things in her. That red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl,
absorbed in Zola and peanut brittle in the Winnebago
library, was infinitely more appealing than this glib and
capable young woman. The spitting wildcat of the street
fight so long ago was gentler by far than this cool person
who was so deliberately taking his job away from Slosson.
You, too, feel that way about her? That is as it should be.
It is the penalty they pay who, given genius, sympathy, and
understanding as their birthright, trade them for the tawdry
trinkets money brings.
Perhaps the last five minutes of that conference between
Fanny and Michael Fenger reveals a new side, and presents
something of interest. It was a harrowing and unexpected
five minutes.
You may remember how Michael Fenger had a way of looking at
one, silently. It was an intent and concentrated gaze that
had the effect of an actual physical hold. Most people
squirmed under it. Fanny, feeling it on her now, frowned
and rose to leave.
"Shall you want to talk these things over again? Of course
I've only outlined them, roughly. You gave me so little
time."
Fenger, at his desk, did not answer, or turn away his gaze.
A little blaze of wrath flamed into Fanny's face.
"General manager or not," she said, very low-voiced,
"I wish you wouldn't sit and glower at me like that. It's
rude, and it's disconcerting," which was putting it
forthrightly.
"I beg your pardon!" Fenger came swiftly around the desk,
and over to her. "I was thinking very hard. Miss Brandeis,
will you dine with me somewhere tonight? Then to-morrow
night? But I want to talk to you."
"Here I am. Talk."
"But I want to talk to--you."
It was then that Fanny Brandeis saved an ugly situation.
For she laughed, a big, wholesome, outdoors sort of laugh.
She was honestly amused.
"My dear Mr. Fenger, you've been reading the murky
magazines. Very bad for you."
Fenger was unsmiling: "Why won't you dine with me?"
"Because it would be unconventional and foolish. I respect
the conventions. They're so sensible. And because it would
be unfair to you, and to Mrs. Fenger, and to me."
"Rot! It's you who have the murky magazine viewpoint, as
you call it, when you imply--"
"Now, look here, Mr. Fenger," Fanny interrupted, quietly.
"Let's be square with each other, even if we're not being
square with ourselves. You're the real power in this plant,
because you've the brains. You can make any person in this
organization, or break them. That sounds melodramatic, but
it's true. I've got a definite life plan, and it's as
complete and detailed as an engineering blue print. I don't
intend to let you spoil it. I've made a real start here.
If you want to, I've no doubt you can end it. But before
you do, I want to warn you that I'll make a pretty stiff
fight for it. I'm no silent sufferer. I'll say things.
And people usually believe me when I talk."
Still the silent, concentrated gaze. With a little
impatient exclamation Fanny walked toward the door.
Fenger, startlingly light and agile for his great height,
followed.
"I'm sorry, Miss Brandeis, terribly sorry. You see, you
interest me very much. Very much."
"Thanks," dryly.
"Don't go just yet. Please. I'm not a villain. Really.
That is, not a deliberate villain. But when I find
something very fine, very intricate, very fascinating and
complex--like those etchings, for example--I am intrigued.
I want it near me. I want to study it."
Fanny said nothing. But she thought, "This is a dangerously
clever man. Too clever for you. You know so little about
them." Fenger waited. Most women would have found refuge
in words. The wrong words. It is only the strong who can
be silent when in doubt.
"Perhaps you will dine with Mrs. Fenger and me at our home
some evening? Mrs. Fenger will speak to you about it."
"I'm afraid I'm usually too tired for further effort at the
end of the day. I'm sorry----"
"Some Sunday night perhaps, then. Tea."
"Thank you." And so out, past the spare secretary, the
anxious-browed stenographer, the academic office boy, to the
hallway, the elevator, and finally the refuge of her own
orderly desk. Slosson was at lunch in one of the huge
restaurants provided for employees in the building across
the street. She sat there, very still, for some minutes;
for more minutes than she knew. Her hands were clasped
tightly on the desk, and her eyes stared ahead in a puzzled,
resentful, bewildered way. Something inside her was saying
over and over again:
"You lied to him on that very first day. That placed you.
That stamped you. Now he thinks you're rotten all the way
through. You lied on the very first day."
Ella Monahan poked her head in at the door. The Gloves
were on that floor, at the far end. The two women rarely
saw each other, except at lunch time.
"Missed you at lunch," said Ella Monahan. She was a pink-
cheeked, bright-eyed woman of forty-one or two, prematurely
gray and therefore excessively young in her manner, as women
often are who have grown gray before their time.
Fanny stood up, hurriedly. "I was just about to go."
"Try the grape pie, dear. It's delicious." And strolled
off down the aisle that seemed to stretch endlessly ahead.
Fanny stood for a moment looking after her, as though
meaning to call her back. But she must have changed her
mind, because she said, "Oh, nonsense!" aloud. And went
across to lunch. And ordered grape pie. And enjoyed it.
CHAPTER TEN
The invitation to tea came in due time from Mrs. Fenger. A
thin, querulous voice over the telephone prepared one for
the thin, querulous Mrs. Fenger herself. A sallow,
plaintive woman, with a misbehaving valve. The valve, she
confided to Fanny, made any effort dangerous. Also it made
her susceptible to draughts. She wore over her shoulders a
scarf that was constantly slipping and constantly being
retrieved by Michael Fenger. The sight of this man, a
physical and mental giant, performing this task ever so
gently and patiently, sent a little pang of pity through
Fanny, as Michael Fenger knew it would. The Fengers lived
in an apartment on the Lake Shore Drive--an apartment such
as only Chicago boasts. A view straight across the lake,
rooms huge and many-windowed, a glass-enclosed sun-porch gay
with chintz and wicker, an incredible number of bathrooms.
The guests, besides Fanny, included a young pair, newly
married and interested solely in rents, hangings, linen
closets, and the superiority of the Florentine over the
Jacobean for dining room purposes; and a very scrubbed
looking, handsome, spectacled man of thirty-two or three who
was a mechanical engineer. Fanny failed to catch his name,
though she learned it later. Privately, she dubbed him
Fascinating Facts, and he always remained that. His
conversation was invariably prefaced with, "Funny thing
happened down at the works to-day." The rest of it sounded
like something one reads at the foot of each page of a
loose-leaf desk calendar.
At tea there was a great deal of silver, and lace, but Fanny
thought she could have improved on the chicken a la king.
It lacked paprika and personality. Mrs. Fenger was
constantly directing one or the other of the neat maids in
an irritating aside.
After tea Michael Fenger showed Fanny his pictures, not
boastfully, but as one who loves them reveals his treasures
to an appreciative friend. He showed her his library, too,
and it was the library of a reader. Fanny nibbled at it,
hungrily. She pulled out a book here, a book there, read a
paragraph, skimmed a page. There was no attempt at
classification. Lever rubbed elbows with Spinoza; Mark
Twain dug a facetious thumb into Haeckel's ribs. Fanny
wanted to sit down on the floor, legs crossed, before the
open shelves, and read, and read, and read. Fenger,
watching the light in her face, seemed himself to take on a
certain glow, as people generally did who found this girl in
sympathy with them.
They were deep in book talk when Fascinating Facts strolled
in, looking aggrieved, and spoiled it with the thoroughness
of one who never reads, and is not ashamed of it.
"My word, I'm having a rotten time, Fenger," he said,
plaintively. "They've got a tape-measure out of your wife's
sewing basket, those two in there, and they're down on their
hands and knees, measuring something. It has to do with
their rug, over your rug, or some such rot. And then you
take Miss Brandeis and go off into the library."
"Then stay here," said Fanny, "and talk books."
"My book's a blue-print," admitted Fascinating Facts,
cheerfully. "I never get time to read. There's enough
fiction, and romance, and adventure in my job to give me all
the thrill I want. Why, just last Tuesday--no, Thursday it
was--down at the works----"
Between Fanny and Fenger there flashed a look made up of
dismay, and amusement, and secret sympathy. It was a
look that said, "We both see the humor of this. Most people
wouldn't. Our angle is the same." Such a glance jumps the
gap between acquaintance and friendship that whole days of
spoken conversation cannot cover.
"Cigar?" asked Fenger, hoping to stay the flood.
"No, thanks. Say, Fenger, would there be a row if I smoked
my pipe?"
"That black one? With the smell?"
"The black one, yes."
"There would." Fenger glanced in toward his wife, and
smiled, dryly.
Fascinating Facts took his hand out of his pocket,
regretfully.
"Wouldn't it sour a fellow on marriage! Wouldn't it! First
those two in there, with their damned linen closets, and
their rugs--I beg your pardon, Miss Brandeis! And now your
missus objects to my pipe. You wouldn't treat me like that,
would you, Miss Brandeis?"
There was about him something that appealed--something
boyish and likeable.
"No, I wouldn't. I'd let you smoke a nargileh, if you
wanted to, surrounded by rolls of blue prints."
"I knew it. I'm going to drive you home for that."
And he did, in his trim little roadster. It is a fairy road
at night, that lake drive between the north and south sides.
Even the Rush street bridge cannot quite spoil it. Fanny
sat back luxuriously and let the soft splendor of the late
August night enfold her. She was intelligently
monosyllabic, while Fascinating Facts talked. At the door
of her apartment house (she had left the Mendota weeks
before) Fascinating Facts surprised her.
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