Fanny Herself

E >> Edna Ferber >> Fanny Herself

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"M-m," replied Fanny, disinterestedly, without looking at
him.

Heyl's jaw set. You could see the muscles show white for an
instant. Then he said: "It has been a wonderful day,
Fanny, but you haven't told me a thing about yourself. I'd
like to know about your work. I'd like to know what you're
doing; what your plan is. You looked so darned definite up
there in that office. Whom do you play with? And who's
this Fenger--wasn't that the name?--who saw that you looked
tired?"

"All right, Clancy. I'll tell you all about it," Fanny
agreed, briskly.

"All right--who!"

"Well, I can't call you Clarence. It doesn't fit. So just
for the rest of the day let's make it Clancy, even if
you do look like one of the minor Hebrew prophets, minus the
beard."

And so she began to tell him of her work and her aims. I
think that she had been craving just this chance to talk.
That which she told him was, unconsciously, a confession.
She told him of Theodore and his marriage; of her mother's
death; of her coming to Haynes-Cooper, and the changes she
had brought about there. She showed him the infinite
possibilities for advancement there. Slosson she tossed
aside. Then, rather haltingly, she told him of Fenger, of
his business genius, his magnetic qualities, of his career.
She even sketched a deft word-picture of the limp and
irritating Mrs. Fenger.

"Is this Fenger in love with you?" asked Heyl, startlingly.

Fanny recoiled at the idea with a primness that did credit
to Winnebago.

"Clancy! Please! He's married."

"Now don't sneak, Fanny. And don't talk like an ingenue.
So far, you've outlined a life-plan that makes Becky Sharp
look like a cooing dove. So just answer this straight, will
you?"

"Why, I suppose I attract him, as any man of his sort, with
a wife like that, would be attracted to a healthily alert
woman, whose ideas match his. And I wish you wouldn't talk
to me like that. It hurts."

"I'm glad of that. I was afraid you'd passed that stage.
Well now, how about those sketches of yours? I suppose you
know that they're as good, in a crude, effective sort of
way, as anything that's being done to-day."

"Oh, nonsense!" But then she stopped, suddenly, and put
both hands on his arm, and looked up at him, her face
radiant in the gray twilight. "Do you really think they're
good!"

"You bet they're good. There isn't a newspaper in the
country that couldn't use that kind of stuff. And there
aren't three people in the country who can do it. It isn't
a case of being able to draw. It's being able to see life
in a peculiar light, and to throw that light so that others
get the glow. Those sketches I saw this morning are life,
served up raw. That's your gift, Fanny. Why the devil
don't you use it!"

But Fanny had got herself in hand again. "It isn't a gift,"
she said, lightly. "It's just a little knack that amuses
me. There's no money in it. Besides, it's too late now.
One's got to do a thing superlatively, nowadays, to be
recognized. I don't draw superlatively, but I do handle
infants' wear better than any woman I know. In two more
years I'll be getting ten thousand a year at Haynes-Cooper.
In five years----"

"Then what?"

Fanny's hands became fists, gripping the power she craved.
"Then I shall have arrived. I shall be able to see the
great and beautiful things of this world, and mingle with
the people who possess them."

"When you might be making them yourself, you little fool.
Don't glare at me like that. I tell you that those pictures
are the real expression of you. That's why you turn to them
as relief from the shop grind. You can't help doing them.
They're you."

"I can stop if I want to. They amuse me, that's all."

"You can't stop. It's in your blood. It's the Jew in you."

"The---- Here, I'll show you. I won't do another sketch
for a year. I'll prove to you that my ancestors' religion
doesn't influence my work, or my play."

"Dear, you can't prove that, because the contrary has been
proven long ago. You yourself proved it when you did that
sketch of the old fish vender in the Ghetto. The one with
the beard. It took a thousand years of suffering and
persecution and faith to stamp that look on his face,
and it took a thousand years to breed in you the genius to
see it, and put it down on paper. Fan, did you ever read
Fishberg's book?"

"No," said Fanny, low-voiced.

"Sometime, when you can snatch a moment from the
fascinations of the mail order catalogue, read it. Fishberg
says--I wish I could remember his exact words--`It isn't the
body that marks the Jew. It's his Soul. The type is not
anthropological, or physical; it's social or psychic. It
isn't the complexion, the nose, the lips, the head. It's
his Soul which betrays his faith. Centuries of Ghetto
confinement, ostracism, ceaseless suffering, have produced a
psychic type. The thing that is stamped on the Soul seeps
through the veins and works its way magically to the
face----'"

"But I don't want to talk about souls! Please! You're
spoiling a wonderful day."

"And you're spoiling a wonderful life. I don't object to
this driving ambition in you. I don't say that you're wrong
in wanting to make a place for yourself in the world. But
don't expect me to stand by and let you trample over your
own immortal soul to get there. Your head is busy enough on
this infants' wear job, but how about the rest of you--how
about You? What do you suppose all those years of work, and
suppression, and self-denial, and beauty-hunger there in
Winnebago were meant for! Not to develop the mail order
business. They were given you so that you might recognize
hunger, and suppression, and self-denial in others. The
light in the face of that girl in the crowd pouring out of
the plant. What's that but the reflection of the light in
you! I tell you, Fanny, we Jews have got a money-grubbing,
loud-talking, diamond-studded, get-there-at-any-price
reputation, and perhaps we deserve it. But every now and
then, out of the mass of us, one lifts his head and stands
erect, and the great white light is in his face. And that
person has suffered, for suffering breeds genius. It
expands the soul just as over-prosperity shrivels it. You
see it all the way from Lew Fields to Sarah Bernhardt; from
Mendelssohn to Irving Berlin; from Mischa Elman to Charlie
Chaplin. You were a person set apart in Winnebago. Instead
of thanking your God for that, you set out to be something
you aren't. No, it's worse than that. You're trying not to
be what you are. And it's going to do for you."

"Stop!" cried Fanny. "My head's whirling. It sounds like
something out of `Alice in Wonderland.'"

"And you," retorted Heyl, "sound like some one who's afraid
to talk or think about herself. You're suppressing the
thing that is you. You're cutting yourself off from your
own people--a dramatic, impulsive, emotional people. By
doing those things you're killing the goose that lays the
golden egg. What's that old copy-book line? `To thine own
self be true,' and the rest of it."

"Yes; like Theodore, for example," sneered Fanny.

At which unpleasant point Nature kindly supplied a
diversion. Across the black sky there shot two luminous
shafts of lights. Northern lights, pale sisters of the
chromatic glory one sees in the far north, but still weirdly
beautiful. Fanny and Heyl stopped short, faces upturned.
The ghostly radiance wavered, expanded, glowed palely, like
celestial searchlights. Suddenly, from the tip of each
shaft, there burst a cluster of slender, pin-point lines,
like aigrettes set in a band of silver. Then these slowly
wavered, faded, combined to form a third and fourth slender
shaft of light. It was like the radiance one sees in the
old pictures of the Holy Family. Together Fanny and Heyl
watched it in silence until the last pale glimmer faded and
was gone, and only the brazen lights of Gary, far, far down
the beach, cast a fiery glow against the sky.

They sighed, simultaneously. Then they laughed, each at the
other.

"Curtain," said Fanny. They raced for the station, despite
the sand. Their car was filled with pudgy babies lying limp
in parental arms; with lunch baskets exuding the sickly
scent of bananas; with disheveled vandals whose moist palms
grasped bunches of wilted wild flowers. Past the belching
chimneys of Gary, through South Chicago, the back yard of a
metropolis, past Jackson Park that breathed coolly upon
them, and so to the city again. They looked at it with the
shock that comes to eyes that have rested for hours on long
stretches of sand and sky and water. Monday, that had
seemed so far away, became an actuality of to-morrow.

Tired as they were, they stopped at one of those frank
little restaurants that brighten Chicago's drab side
streets. Its windows were full of pans that held baked
beans, all crusty and brown, and falsely tempting, and of
baked apples swimming in a pool of syrup. These flanked by
ketchup bottles and geometrical pyramids of golden grape-
fruit.

Coffee and hot roast beef sandwiches, of course, in a place
like that. "And," added Fanny, "one of those baked apples.
Just to prove they can't be as good as they look."

They weren't, but she was too hungry to care. Not too
hungry, though, to note with quick eye all that the little
restaurant held of interest, nor too sleepy to respond to
the friendly waitress who, seeing their dusty boots, and the
sprig of sumac stuck in Fanny's coat, said, "My, it must
have been swell in the country today!" as her flapping
napkin precipitated crumbs into their laps.

"It was," said Fanny, and smiled up at the girl with her
generous, flashing smile. "Here's a bit of it I brought
back for you." And she stuck the scarlet sumac sprig into
the belt of the white apron.

They finished the day incongruously by taking a taxi
home, Fanny yawning luxuriously all the way. "Do you know,"
she said, as they parted, "we've talked about everything
from souls to infants' wear. We're talked out. It's a
mercy you're going to New York. There won't be a next
time."

"Young woman," said Heyl, forcefully, "there will. That
young devil in the red tam isn't dead. She's alive. And
kicking. There's a kick in every one of those Chicago
sketches in your portfolio upstairs. You said she wouldn't
fight anybody's battles to-day. You little idiot, she's
fighting one in each of those pictures, from the one showing
that girl's face in the crowd, to the old chap with the
fish-stall. She'll never die that one. Because she's the
spirit. It's the other one who's dead--and she doesn't know
it. But some day she'll find herself buried. And I want to
be there to shovel on the dirt."

CHAPTER TWELVE

From the first of December the floor of the Haynes-Cooper
mail room looked like the New York Stock Exchange, after a
panic. The aisles were drifts of paper against which a
squad of boys struggled as vainly as a gang of snow-
shovelers against a blizzard. The guide talked in terms of
tons of mail, instead of thousands. And smacked his lips
after it. The Ten Thousand were working at night now,
stopping for a hasty bite of supper at six, then back to
desk, or bin or shelf until nine, so that Oklahoma and
Minnesota might have its Christmas box in time.

Fanny Brandeis, working under the light of her green-shaded
desk lamp, wondered, a little bitterly, if Christmas would
ever mean anything to her but pressure, weariness, work.
She told herself that she would not think of that Christmas
of one year ago. One year! As she glanced around the
orderly little office, and out to the stock room beyond,
then back to her desk again, she had an odd little feeling
of unreality. Surely it had been not one year, but many
years--a lifetime--since she had elbowed her way up and down
those packed aisles of the busy little store in Winnebago--
she and that brisk, alert, courageous woman.

"Mrs. Brandeis, lady wants to know if you can't put this
blue satin dress on the dark-haired doll, and the pink
satin. . . . Well, I did tell her, but she said for me to
ask you, anyway."

"Mis' Brandeis, this man says he paid a dollar down on a go-
cart last month and he wants to pay the rest and take it
home with him."

And then the reassuring, authoritative voice, "Coming! I'll
be right there."

"Coming!" That had been her whole life. Service. And now
she lay so quietly beneath the snow of the bitter northern
winter.

At that point Fanny's fist would come down hard on her desk,
and the quick, indrawn breath of mutinous resentment would
hiss through her teeth.

She kept away from the downtown shops and their crowds. She
scowled at sight of the holly and mistletoe wreaths, with
their crimson streamers. There was something almost
ludicrous in the way she shut her eyes to the holiday
pageant all around her, and doubled and redoubled her work.
It seemed that she had a new scheme for her department every
other day, and every other one was a good one.

Slosson had long ago abandoned the attempt to keep up with
her. He did not even resent her, as he had at first. "I'm
a buyer," he said, rather pathetically, "and a pret-ty good
one, too. But I'm not a genius, and I never will be. And I
guess you've got to be a genius, these days, to keep up. It
used to be enough for an infants' wear buyer to know
muslins, cottons, woolens, silks, and embroideries. But
that's old-fashioned now. These days, when you hire an
office boy you don't ask him if he can read and write. You
tell him he's got to have personality, magnetism, and
imagination. Makes me sick!"

The Baby Book came off the presses and it was good. Even
Slosson admitted it, grudgingly. The cover was a sunny,
breezy seashore picture, all blue and gold, with plump,
dimpled youngsters playing, digging in the sand, romping
(and wearing our No. 13E1269, etc., of course). Inside were
displayed the complete baby outfits, with a smiling mother,
and a chubby, crowing baby as a central picture, and each
piece of each outfit separately pictured. Just below this,
the outfit number and price, and a list of the pieces
that went to make it up. From the emergency outfit at $3.98
to the outfit de luxe (for Haynes-Cooper patrons) at $28.50,
each group was comprehensive, practical, complete. In the
back of the book was a personal service plea. "Use us," it
said. "We are here to assist you, not only in the matter of
merchandise, but with information and advice. Mothers in
particular are in need of such service. This book will save
you weariness and worry. Use us."

Fanny surveyed the book with pardonable pride. But she was
not satisfied. "We lack style," she said. "The practical
garments are all right. But what we need is a little snap.
That means cut and line. And I'm going to New York to get
it." That had always been Slosson's work.

She and Ella Monahan were to go to the eastern markets
together. Ella Monahan went to New York regularly every
three weeks. Fanny had never been east of Chicago. She
envied Ella her knowledge of the New York wholesalers and
manufacturers. Ella had dropped into Fanny's office for a
brief moment. The two women had little in common, except
their work, but they got on very well, and each found the
other educating.

"Seems to me you're putting an awful lot into this,"
observed Ella Monahan, her wise eyes on Fanny's rather tense
face.

"You've got to," replied Fanny, "to get anything out of it."

"I guess you're right," Ella agreed, and laughed a rueful
little laugh. "I know I've given 'em everything I've got--
and a few things I didn't know I had. It's a queer game--
life. Now if my old father hadn't run a tannery in Racine,
and if I hadn't run around there all the day, so that I got
so the smell and feel of leather and hides were part of me,
why, I'd never be buyer of gloves at Haynes-Cooper.
And you----"

"Brandeis' Bazaar." And was going on, when her office boy
came in with a name. Ella rose to go, but Fanny stopped
her. "Father Fitzpatrick! Bring him right in! Miss
Monahan, you've got to meet him. He's"--then, as the great
frame of the handsome old priest filled the doorway--"he's
just Father Fitzpatrick. Ella Monahan."

The white-haired Irishman, and the white-haired Irish woman
clasped hands.

"And who are you, daughter, besides being Ella Monahan?"

"Buyer of gloves at Haynes-Cooper, Father."

"You don't tell me, now!" He turned to Fanny, put his two
big hands on her shoulders, and swung her around to face the
light. "Hm," he murmured, noncommittally, after that.

"Hm--what?" demanded Fanny. "It sounds unflattering,
whatever it means."
"Gloves!" repeated Father Fitzpatrick, unheeding her.
"Well, now, what d'you think of that! Millions of dollars'
worth, I'll wager, in your time."

"Two million and a half in my department last year," replied
Ella, without the least trace of boastfulness. One talked
only in terms of millions at Haynes-Cooper's.

"What an age it is! When two slips of women can earn
salaries that would make the old kings of Ireland look like
beggars." He twinkled upon the older woman. "And what a
feeling it must be--independence, and all."

"I've earned my own living since I was seventeen," said Ella
Monahan. "I'd hate to tell you how long that is." A murmur
from the gallant Irishman. "Thanks, Father, for the
compliment I see in your eyes. But what I mean is this:
You're right about independence. It is a grand thing. At
first. But after a while it begins to pall on you. Don't
ask me why. I don't know. I only hope you won't think I'm a
wicked woman when I say I could learn to love any man who'd hang a
silver fox scarf and a string of pearls around my neck, and ask me
if I didn't feel a draft."

"Wicked! Not a bit of it, my girl. It's only natural, and
commendable--barrin' the pearls."

"I'd forego them," laughed Ella, and with a parting
handshake left the two alone.

Father Fitzpatrick looked after her. "A smart woman, that."
He took out his watch, a fat silver one. "It's eleven-
thirty. My train leaves at four. Now, Fanny, if you'll get
on your hat, and arrange to steal an hour or so from this
Brobdingnagian place a grand word that, my girl, and nearer
to swearing than any word I know--I'll take you to the
Blackstone, no less, for lunch. How's that for a poor
miserable old priest!"

"You dear, I couldn't think of it. Oh, yes, I could get
away, but let's lunch right here at the plant, in the
grill----"

"Never! I couldn't. Don't ask it of me. This place scares
me. I came up in the elevator with a crowd and a guide, and
he was juggling millions, that chap, the way a newsboy flips
a cent. I'm but a poor parish priest, but I've got my
pride. We'll go to the Blackstone, which I've passed,
humbly, but never been in, with its rose silk shades and its
window boxes. And we'll be waited on by velvet-footed
servitors, me girl. Get your hat."

Fanny, protesting, but laughing, too, got it. They took the
L. Michigan avenue, as they approached it from Wabash, was
wind-swept and bleak as only Michigan avenue can be in
December. They entered the warm radiance of the luxurious
foyer with a little breathless rush, as wind-blown
Chicagoans generally do. The head waiter must have thought
Father Fitzpatrick a cardinal, at least, for he seated them
at a window table that looked out upon the icy street,
with Grant Park, crusted with sooty snow, just across the
way, and beyond that the I. C. tracks and the great gray
lake. The splendid room was all color, and perfume, and
humming conversation. A fountain tinkled in the center, and
upon its waters there floated lily pads and blossoms,
weirdly rose, and mauve, and lavender. The tables were
occupied by deliciously slim young girls and very self-
conscious college boys, home for the holidays, and marcelled
matrons, furred and aigretted. The pink in Fanny's cheeks
deepened. She loved luxury. She smiled and flashed at the
handsome old priest opposite her.

"You're a wastrel," she said, "but isn't it nice!" And
tasted the first delicious sip of soup.

"It is. For a change. Extravagance is good for all of us,
now and then." He glanced leisurely about the brilliant
room, then out to the street, bleakly windswept. He leaned
back and drummed a bit with his fingers on the satin-smooth
cloth. "Now and then. Tell me, Fanny, what would you say,
off-hand, was the most interesting thing you see from here?
You used to have a trick of picking out what they call the
human side. Your mother had it, too."

Fanny, smiling, glanced about the room, her eyes
unconsciously following the track his had taken. About the
room, and out, to the icy street. "The most interesting
thing?" Back to the flower-scented room, with its music,
and tinkle, and animation. Out again, to the street. "You
see that man, standing at the curb, across the street. He's
sort of crouched against the lamp post. See him? Yes,
there, just this side of that big gray car? He's all drawn
up in a heap. You can feel him shivering. He looks as if
he were trying to crawl inside himself for warmth. Ever
since we came in I've noticed him staring straight across at
these windows where we're all sitting so grandly, lunching.
I know what he's thinking, don't you? And I wish I
didn't feel so uncomfortable, knowing it. I wish we hadn't
ordered lobster thermidor. I wish--there! the policeman's
moving him on."

Father Fitzpatrick reached over and took her hand, as it lay
on the table, in his great grasp. "Fanny, girl, you've told
me what I wanted to know. Haynes-Cooper or no Haynes-
Cooper, millions or no millions, your ravines aren't choked
up with ashes yet, my dear. Thank God."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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.

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