Part 25 (2/2)

”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 cla.s.s 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 f.a.n.n.y began to talk. Ten minutes later Udell interrupted her to summon Horn, whose domain was the factory. Horn came, was introduced, looked doubtful. f.a.n.n.y had statistics. f.a.n.n.y had arguments. She had determination. ”And what we want,” she went on, in her quiet, a.s.sured 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 cla.s.s, and I know she'll wear a shawl in order to give her child a cloth coat with fancy b.u.t.tons and a velvet collar.”

And Horn & Udell, whose att.i.tude at first had been that of two seasoned business men dealing with a precocious child, found themselves quoting prices to her, s.h.i.+pments, materials, quality, quant.i.ties. Then came the question of time.

”We'll get out a special catalogue for the summer,” f.a.n.n.y 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-cla.s.s workers. Their girls earned all the way from twelve to twenty-five dollars. But f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y fought the impulse to stare after every second or third woman she pa.s.sed. 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 ma.s.seuse 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 n.o.body's nose was red.

”Goodness knows I've never pretended to be a beauty,” f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 st.i.tches, 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. f.a.n.n.y's mind leaped back to Winnebago, with its pleasant porches on which leisurely women sat st.i.tching peacefully at a fine seam.

What was it she had said to Udell? ”Can't you speed up the workroom? It's worth it.”

f.a.n.n.y 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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, s.h.i.+fting, 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 fis.h.i.+ng can, f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y thought it looked very much like Siegel & Cowan's hea.r.s.e, 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 s.h.i.+p. 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!” f.a.n.n.y 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 G.o.d!”

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.”

<script>