Part 29 (1/2)
”Of course I do. Immensely.”
”Then why?”
”When a woman of my sort marries it's a miracle. I'm twenty-six, and intelligent and very successful. A frightful combination. Unmarried women of my type aren't content just to feel. They must a.n.a.lyze their feelings. And a.n.a.lysis is death to romance.”
”Great Scott! You expect to marry somebody sometime, don't you, f.a.n.n.y?”
”No one I know now. When I do marry, if I do, it will be with the idea of making a definite gain. I don't mean necessarily worldly gain, though that would be a factor, too.” Fascinating Facts had been staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the wheel with unnecessary rigidity.
He relaxed a little now, and even laughed, though not very successfully.
Then he said something very wise, for him.
”Listen to me, girl. You'll never get away with that vampire stuff.
Talons are things you have to be born with. You'll never learn to grab with these.” He reached over, and picked up her left hand lying inertly in her lap, and brought it up to his lips, and kissed it, glove and all.
”They're built on the open-face pattern--for giving. You can't fool me.
I know.”
A year and a half after her coming to Haynes-Cooper f.a.n.n.y's department was doing a business of a million a year. The need had been there. She had merely given it the impetus. She was working more or less directly with Fenger now, with an eye on every one of the departments that had to do with women's clothing, from shoes to hats. Not that she did any actual buying, or selling in these departments. She still confined her actual selecting of goods to the infants' wear section, but she occupied, unofficially, the position of a.s.sistant to the General Merchandise Manager. They worked well together, she and Fenger, their minds often marching along without the necessity of a single spoken word. There was no doubt that Fenger's mind was a marvelous piece of mechanism. Under it the Haynes-Cooper plant functioned with the clockwork regularity of a gigantic automaton. System and Results--these were his twin G.o.ds. With his mind intent on them he failed to see that new G.o.ds, born of spiritual unrest, were being set up in the temples of Big Business. Their coming had been rumored for many years. Words such as Brotherhood, Labor, Rights, Humanity, Hours, once regarded as the special property of the street corner ranter, were creeping into our everyday vocabulary. And strangely enough, Nathan Haynes, the gentle, the bewildered, the uninspired, heard them, and listened. Nathan Haynes had begun to accustom himself to the roar of the flood that had formerly deafened him. He was no longer stunned by the inrush of his millions.
The report sheet handed him daily had never ceased to be a wildly unexpected thing, and he still shrank from it, sometimes. It was so fantastic, so out of all reason. But he even dared, now and then, to put out a tentative hand to guide the flood. He began to realize, vaguely, that Italian Gardens, and marble pools, educational endowments and pet charities were but poor, ineffectual barriers of mud and sticks, soon swept away by the torrent. As he sat there in his great, luxurious office, with the dim, rich old portraits gleaming down on him from the walls, he began, gropingly, to evolve a new plan; a plan by which the golden flood was to be curbed, divided, and made to form a sub-stream, to be utilized for the good of the many; for the good of the Ten Thousand, who were almost Fifteen Thousand now, with another fifteen thousand in mills and factories at distant points, whose entire output was swallowed up by the Haynes-Cooper plant. Michael Fenger, Super-Manager, listened to the plan, smiled tolerantly, and went on perfecting an already miraculous System. Sarah Sapinsky, at seven a week, was just so much untrained labor material, easily replaced by material exactly like it. No, Michael Fenger, with his head in the sand, heard no talk of new G.o.ds. He only knew that the monster plant under his management was yielding the greatest possible profit under the least possible outlay.
In f.a.n.n.y Brandeis he had found a stimulating, energizing fellow worker.
That had been from the beginning. In the first month or two of her work, when her keen brain was darting here and there, into forgotten and neglected corners, ferreting out dusty sc.r.a.ps of business waste and holding them up to the light, disdainfully, Fenger had watched her with a mingling of amus.e.m.e.nt and a sort of fond pride, as one would a precocious child. As the months went on the pride and amus.e.m.e.nt welded into something more than admiration, such as one expert feels for a fellow-craftsman. Long before the end of the first year he knew that here was a woman such as he had dreamed of all his life and never hoped to find. He often found himself sitting at his office desk, or in his library at home, staring straight ahead for a longer time than he dared admit, his papers or book forgotten in his hand. His thoughts applied to her adjectives which proved her a paradox: Generous, sympathetic, warm-hearted, impulsive, imaginative; cold, indomitable, brilliant, daring, intuitive. He would rouse himself almost angrily and force himself to concentrate again upon the page before him. I don't know how he thought it all would end--he whose life-habit it was to follow out every process to its ultimate step, whether mental or mechanical. As for f.a.n.n.y, there was nothing of the intriguant about her. She was used to admiration. She was accustomed to deference from men. Brandeis' Bazaar had insured that. All her life men had taken orders from her, all the way from Aloysius and the blithe traveling men of whom she bought goods, to the salesmen and importers in the Chicago wholesale houses. If they had attempted, occasionally, to mingle the social and personal with the commercial f.a.n.n.y had not resented their att.i.tude. She had accepted their admiration and refused their invitations with equal good nature, and thus retained their friends.h.i.+p. It is not exaggeration to say that she looked upon Michael Fenger much as she had upon these genial fellow-workers. A woman as straightforward and direct as she has what is known as a single-track mind in such matters. It is your soft and silken mollusc type of woman whose mind pursues a slimy and labyrinthine trail.
But it is useless to say that she did not feel something of the intense personal attraction of the man. Often it used to puzzle and annoy her to find that as they sat arguing in the brisk, everyday atmosphere of office or merchandise room the air between them would suddenly become electric, vibrant. They met each other's eyes with effort. When their hands touched, accidentally, over papers or samples they s.n.a.t.c.hed them back. f.a.n.n.y found herself laughing uncertainly, at nothing, and was furious. When a silence fell between them they would pounce upon it, breathlessly, and smother it with talk.
Do not think that any furtive love-making went on, sandwiched between shop talk. Their conversation might have taken place between two men.
Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. f.a.n.n.y had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, ”I'm not sold on that,” which is modern business slang meaning, ”You haven't convinced me.” She would go back and start afresh, covering the ground more slowly.
Usually her suggestions were practical and what might be termed human.
They seemed to be founded on an uncanny knowledge of people's frailties.
It was only when she touched upon his beloved System that he was adamant.
”None of that socialistic stuff,” he would say. ”This isn't a Benevolent a.s.sociation we're running. It's the biggest mail order business in the world, and its back-bone is System. I've been just fifteen years perfecting that System. It's my job. Hands off.”
”A fifteen year old system ought to be sc.r.a.pped,” f.a.n.n.y would retort, boldly. ”Anyway, the Simon Legree thing has gone out.”
No one in the plant had ever dared to talk to him like that. He would glare down at f.a.n.n.y for a moment, like a mastiff on a terrier. f.a.n.n.y, seeing his face rage-red, would flash him a cheerful and impudent smile.
The anger, fading slowly, gave way to another look, so that admiration and resentment mingled for a moment.
”Lucky for you you're not a man.”
”I wish I were.”
”I'm glad you're not.”
Not a very thrilling conversation for those of you who are seeking heartthrobs.
In May f.a.n.n.y made her first trip to Europe for the firm. It was a sudden plan. Instantly Theodore leaped to her mind and she was startled at the tumult she felt at the thought of seeing him and his child. The baby, a girl, was more than a year old. Her business, a matter of two weeks, perhaps, was all in Berlin and Paris, but she cabled Theodore that she would come to them in Munich, if only for a day or two. She had very little curiosity about the woman Theodore had married. The memory of that first photograph of hers, befrizzed, bejeweled, and asmirk, had never effaced itself. It had stamped her indelibly in f.a.n.n.y's mind.