Part 17 (1/2)

The morning mail was in--the day's biggest grist, deluge of it, a flood.

Buyer and a.s.sistant 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! f.a.n.n.y 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 c.u.mbersome 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 coa.r.s.e trousseau of a Georgia bride.

It was not remarkable that f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sistant buyer, and suggested no changes. Slosson's wrinkle of anxiety smoothed itself away, and his manner became patronizingly authoritative again. f.a.n.n.y seemed to have become part of the routine of the place. Fenger did not send for her.

June and July were insufferably hot. f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y 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 un.o.btainable. 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 f.a.n.n.y 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.”

f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y. 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.”

f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 s.h.i.+pped 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.”