Part 19 (2/2)
And f.a.n.n.y Brandeis went doggedly on, buying and selling infants' wear, and doing it expertly. Her office desk would have interested you. It was so likely to be littered with the most appealing bits of apparel--a pair of tiny, crocheted bootees, pink and white; a st.u.r.dy linen smock; a silken hood so small that one's doubled fist filled it.
The new catalogue was on the presses. f.a.n.n.y had slaved over it, hampered by Slosson. Fenger had given her practically a free hand. Results would not come in for many days. The Christmas trade would not tell the tale, for that was always a time of abnormal business. The dull season following the holiday rush would show the real returns. Slosson was discouragement itself. His att.i.tude was not resentful; it was pitying, and that frightened f.a.n.n.y. She wished that he would storm a little. Then she read her department catalogue proof sheets, and these rea.s.sured her.
They were attractive. And the new baby book had turned out very well, with a colored cover that would appeal to any one who had ever been or seen a baby.
September brought a letter from Theodore. A letter from Theodore meant just one thing. f.a.n.n.y hesitated a moment before opening it. She always hesitated before opening Theodore's letters. While she hesitated the old struggle would rage in her.
”I don't owe him anything,” the thing within her would say. ”G.o.d knows I don't. What have I done all my life but give, and give, and give to him!
I'm a woman. He's a man. Let him work with his hands, as I do. He's had his share. More than his share.”
Nevertheless she had sent him one thousand of the six thousand her mother had bequeathed to her. She didn't want to do it. She fought doing it. But she did it.
Now, as she held this last letter in her hands, and stared at the Bavarian stamp, she said to herself:
”He wants something. Money. If I send him some I can't have that new tailor suit, or the furs. And I need them. I'm going to have them.”
She tore open the letter.
”Dear Old Fan:
”Olga and I are back in Munich, as you see. I think we'll be here all winter, though Olga hates it. She says it isn't l.u.s.tig. Well, it isn't Vienna, but I think there's a chance for a cla.s.s here of American pupils. Munich's swarming with Americans--whole families who come here to live for a year or two. I think I might get together a very decent cla.s.s, backed by Auer's recommendations. Teaching! Good G.o.d, how I hate it! But Auer is planning a series of twenty concerts for me. They ought to be a success, if slaving can do it. I worked six hours a day all summer. I wanted to spend the summer--most of it, that is--in Holzhausen Am Ammersee, which is a little village, or artist's colony in the valley, an hour's ride from here, and within sight of the Bavarian Alps.
We had Kurt Stein's little villa for almost nothing. But Olga was bored, and she wasn't well, poor girl, so we went to Interlaken and it was awful. And that brings me to what I want to tell you.
”There's going to be a baby. No use saying I'm glad, because I'm not, and neither is Olga. About February, I think. Olga has been simply wretched, but the doctor says she'll feel better from now on. The truth of it is she needs a lot of things and I can't give them to her. I told you I'd been working on this concerto of mine. Sometimes I think it's the real thing, if only I could get the leisure and the peace of mind I need to work on it. You don't know what it means to be eaten up with ambition and to be handicapped.”
”Oh, don't I!” said f.a.n.n.y Brandeis, between her teeth, and crumpled the letter in her strong fingers. ”Don't I!” She got up from her chair and began to walk up and down her little office, up and down. A man often works off his feelings thus; a woman rarely. Fenger, who had not been twice in her office since her coming to the Haynes-Cooper plant, chose this moment to visit her, his hands full of papers, his head full of plans. He sensed something wrong at once, as a highly organized human instrument responds to a similarly constructed one.
”What's wrong, girl?”
”Everything. And don't call me girl.”
Fenger saw the letter crushed in her hand.
”Brother?” She had told him about Theodore and he had been tremendously interested.
”Yes.”
”Money again, I suppose?”
”Yes, but----”
”You know your salary's going up, after Christmas.”
”Catalogue or no catalogue?”
”Catalogue or no catalogue.”
”Why?”
”Because you've earned it.”
<script>