Fanny Herself Part 15

And as they hurried along there was a jerky feebleness about his gait.

It was with difficulty that f.a.n.n.y restrained herself from supporting him when they came to a rough bit of walk or a sudden step. Something fine in her prompted her not to. But the alert mind in that old frame sensed what was going on in her thoughts.

"He's getting feeble, the old rabbi, h'm?"

"Not a bit of it. I've got all I can do to keep up with you. You set such a pace."

"I know. I know. They are not all so kind, f.a.n.n.y. They are too prosperous, this congregation of mine. And some day, 'Off with his head!' And in my place there will step a young man, with eye-gla.s.ses instead of spectacles. They are tired of hearing about the prophets.

Texts from the Bible have gone out of fashion. You think I do not see them giggling, h'm? The young people. And the whispering in the choir loft. And the buzz when I get up from my chair after the second hymn.

'Is he going to have a sermon? Is he? Sure enough!' Na, he will make them sit up, my successor. s.e.x sermons! Political lectures. That's it.

Lectures." They were turning in at the temple now. "The race is to the young, f.a.n.n.y. To the young. And I am old."

She squeezed the frail old arm in hers. "My dear!" she said. "My dear!"

A second breaking of her new resolutions.

One by one, two by two, they straggled in for the Friday evening service, these placid, prosperous people, not unkind, but careless, perhaps, in their prosperity.

"He's worth any ten of them," f.a.n.n.y said hotly to herself, as she sat in her pew that, after to-morrow, would no longer be hers. "The dear old thing. 's.e.x sermons.' And the race is to the young. How right he is.

Well, no one can say I'm not getting an early start."

The choir had begun the first hymn when there came down the aisle a stranger. There was a little stir among the congregation. Visitors were rare. He was dark and very slim--with the slimness of steel wire.

He pa.s.sed down the aisle rather uncertainly. A traveling man, f.a.n.n.y thought, dropped in, as sometimes they did, to say Kaddish for a departed father or mother. Then she changed her mind. Her quick eye noted his walk; a peculiar walk, with a spring in it. Only one unfamiliar with cement pavements could walk like that. The Indians must have had that same light, muscular step. He chose an empty pew halfway down the aisle and stumbled into it rather awkwardly. f.a.n.n.y thought he was unnecessarily ugly, even for a man. Then he looked up, and nodded and smiled at Lee Kohn, across the aisle. His teeth were very white, and the smile was singularly sweet. f.a.n.n.y changed her mind again. Not so bad-looking, after all. Different, anyway. And then--why, of course!

Little Clarence Heyl, come back from the West. Clarence Heyl, the cowardy-cat.

Her mind went back to that day of the street fight. She smiled. At that moment Clarence Heyl, who had been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g about most shockingly, as though searching for some one, turned and met her smile, intended for no one, with a startlingly radiant one of his own, intended most plainly for her. He half started forward in his pew, and then remembered, and sat back again, but with an effect of impermanence that was ludicrous.

It had been years since he had left Winnebago. At the time of his mother's death they had tried to reach him, and had been unable to get in touch with him for weeks. He had been off on some mountain expedition, hundreds of miles from railroad or telegraph. f.a.n.n.y remembered having read about him in the Winnebago Courier. He seemed to be climbing mountains a great deal--rather difficult mountains, evidently, from the fuss they made over it. A queer enough occupation for a cowardy-cat. There had been a book, too. About the Rockies. She had not read it. She rather disliked these nature books, as do most nature lovers. She told herself that when she came upon a flaming golden maple in October she was content to know it was a maple, and to warm her soul at its blaze.

There had been something in the Chicago Herald, though--oh, yes; it had spoken of him as the brilliant young naturalist, Clarence Heyl. He was to have gone on an expedition with Roosevelt. A sprained ankle, or some such thing, had prevented. f.a.n.n.y smiled again, to herself. His mother, the fussy person who had been responsible for his boyhood reefers and too-shiny shoes, and his cowardice too, no doubt, had dreamed of seeing her Clarence a rabbi.

From that point f.a.n.n.y's thoughts wandered to the brave old man in the pulpit. She had heard almost nothing of the service. She looked at him now--at him, and then at his congregation, inattentive and palpably bored. As always with her, the thing stamped itself on her mind as a picture. She was forever seeing a situation in terms of its human value.

How small he looked, how frail, against the background of the ma.s.sive Ark with its red velvet curtain. And how bravely he glared over his blue gla.s.ses at the two Aarons girls who were whispering and giggling together, eyes on the newcomer.

So this was what life did to you, was it? Squeezed you dry, and then cast you aside in your old age, a pulp, a bit of discard. Well, they'd never catch her that way.

Unchurchly thoughts, these. The little place was very peaceful and quiet, lulling one like a narcotic. The rabbi's voice had in it that soothing monotony bred of years in the pulpit. f.a.n.n.y found her thoughts straying back to the busy, bright little store on Elm Street, then forward, to the Haynes-Cooper plant and the fight that was before her.

There settled about her mouth a certain grim line that sat strangely on so young a face. The service marched on. There came the organ prelude that announced the mourners' prayer. Then Rabbi Thalmann began to intone the Kaddish. f.a.n.n.y rose, prayer book in hand. At that Clarence Heyl rose too, hurriedly, as one unaccustomed to the service, and stood with unbowed head, looking at the rabbi interestedly, thoughtfully, reverently. The two stood alone. Death had been kind to Congregation Emanu-el this year. The prayer ended. f.a.n.n.y winked the tears from her eyes, almost wrathfully. She sat down, and there swept over her a feeling of finality. It was like the closing of Book One in a volume made up of three parts.

She said to herself: "Winnebago is ended, and my life here. How interesting that I should know that, and feel it. It is like the first movement in one of the concertos Theodore was forever playing. Now for the second movement! It's got to be lively. Fortissimo! Presto!"

For so clever a girl as f.a.n.n.y Brandeis, that was a stupid conclusion at which to arrive. How could she think it possible to shed her past life, like a garment? Those impressionable years, between fourteen and twenty-four, could never be cast off. She might don a new cloak to cover the old dress beneath, but the old would always be there, its folds peeping out here and there, its outlines plainly to be seen. She might eat of things rare, and drink of things costly, but the st.u.r.dy, stocky little girl in the made-over silk dress, who had resisted the Devil in Weinberg's pantry on that long-ago Day of Atonement, would always be there at the feast. Myself, I confess I am tired of these stories of young women who go to the big city, there to do battle with failure, to grapple with temptation, sin and discouragement. So it may as well be admitted that f.a.n.n.y Brandeis' story was not that of a painful hand-over-hand climb. She was made for success. What she attempted, she accomplished. That which she strove for, she won. She was too sure, too vital, too electric, for failure. No, f.a.n.n.y Brandeis' struggle went on inside. And in trying to stifle it she came near making the blackest failure that a woman can make. In grubbing for the pot of gold she almost missed the rainbow.

Rabbi Thalmann raised his arms for the benediction. f.a.n.n.y looked straight up at him as though stamping a picture on her mind. His eyes were resting gently on her--or perhaps she just fancied that he spoke to her alone as he began the words of the ancient closing prayer:

"May the blessings of the Lord Our G.o.d rest upon you. G.o.d bless thee and keep thee. May He cause His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. May G.o.d lift up His countenance unto thee..."

At the last word she hurried up the aisle, and down the stairs, into the soft beauty of the May night. She felt she could stand no good-bys. In her hotel room she busied herself with the half-packed trunks and bags.

So it was she altogether failed to see the dark young man who hurried after her eagerly, and who was stopped by a dozen welcoming hands there in the temple vestibule. He swore a deep inward "d.a.m.n!" as he saw her straight, slim figure disappear down the steps and around the corner, even while he found himself saying, politely, "Why, thanks! It's good to BE back." And, "Yes, things have changed. All but the temple, and Rabbi Thalmann."

f.a.n.n.y left Winnebago at eight next morning.

CHAPTER NINE

"Mr. Fenger will see you now." Mr. Fenger, general manager, had been a long time about it. This heel-cooling experience was new to f.a.n.n.y Brandeis. It had always been her privilege to keep others waiting.

Still, she felt no resentment as she sat in Michael Fenger's outer office. For as she sat there, waiting, she was getting a distinct impression of this unseen man whose voice she could just hear as he talked over the telephone in his inner office. It was characteristic of Michael Fenger that his personality reached out and touched you before you came into actual contact with the man. f.a.n.n.y had heard of him long before she came to Haynes-Cooper. He was the genie of that glittering lamp. All through the gigantic plant (she had already met department heads, buyers, merchandise managers) one heard his name, and felt the impress of his mind:

"You'll have to see Mr. Fenger about that."

"Yes,"--pointing to a new conveyor, perhaps,--"that has just been installed. It's a great help to us. Doubles our shipping-room efficiency. We used to use baskets, pulled by a rope. It's Mr. Fenger's idea."

Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Fenger had made it a slogan in the Haynes-Cooper plant long before the German nation forced it into our everyday vocabulary. Michael Fenger was System. He could take a muddle of orders, a jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective unit.

Untangling snarls was his pastime. Esprit de corps was his shibboleth.

Order and management his idols. And his war-cry was "Results!"

It was eleven o'clock when f.a.n.n.y came into his outer office. The very atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. There hung about the place an air of repressed expectancy. The room was electrically charged with the high-voltage of the man in the inner office. His secretary was a spare, middle-aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff-brown and spectacles; his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and anxious; his office boy a stern youth in knickers, who bore no relation to the slangy, gum-chewing, redheaded office boy of the comic sections.

The low-pitched, high-powered voice went on inside, talking over the long-distance telephone. Fenger was the kind of man who is always talking to New York when he is in Chicago, and to Chicago when he is in New York. Trains with the word Limited after them were invented for him and his type. A buzzer sounded. It galvanized the office boy into instant action. It brought the anxious-looking stenographer to the doorway, notebook in hand, ready. It sent the lean secretary out, and up to f.a.n.n.y.

"Temper," said f.a.n.n.y, to herself, "or horribly nervous and high-keyed.

They jump like a set of puppets on a string."

It was then that the lean secretary had said, "Mr. Fenger will see you now."

f.a.n.n.y was aware of a pleasant little tingle of excitement. She entered the inner office.

It was characteristic of Michael Fenger that he employed no cheap tricks. He was not writing as f.a.n.n.y Brandeis came in. He was not telephoning. He was not doing anything but standing at his desk, waiting for f.a.n.n.y Brandeis. As she came in he looked at her, through her, and she seemed to feel her mental processes laid open to him as a skilled surgeon cuts through skin and flesh and fat, to lay bare the muscles and nerves and vital organs beneath. He put out his hand. f.a.n.n.y extended hers. They met in a silent grip. It was like a meeting between two men. Even as he indexed her, f.a.n.n.y's alert mind was busy docketing, numbering, cataloguing him. They had in common a certain force, a driving power. f.a.n.n.y seated herself opposite him, in obedience to a gesture. He crossed his legs comfortably and sat back in his big desk chair. A great-bodied man, with powerful square shoulders, a long head, a rugged crest of a nose--the kind you see on the type of Englishman who has the imagination and initiative to go to Canada, or Australia, or America. He wore spectacles, not the fashionable horn-rimmed sort, but the kind with gold ear pieces. They were becoming, and gave a certain humanness to a face that otherwise would have been too rugged, too strong. A man of forty-five, perhaps.

He spoke first. "You're younger than I thought."

"So are you."

"Old inside."

"So am I."

He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, folded his arms on the desk.

"You've been through the plant, Miss Brandeis?"

"Yes. Twice. Once with a regular tourist party. And once with the special guide." "Good. Go through the plant whenever you can. Don't stick to your own department. It narrows one." He paused a moment. "Did you think that this opportunity to come to Haynes-Cooper, as a.s.sistant to the infants' wear department buyer was just a piece of luck, augmented by a little pulling on your part?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't. You were carefully picked by me, and I don't expect to find I've made a mistake. I suppose you know very little about buying and selling infants' wear?"

"Less than about almost any other article in the world--at least, in the department store, or mail order world."

"I thought so. And it doesn't matter. I pretty well know your history, which means that I know your training. You're young; you're ambitious, you're experienced; you're imaginative. There's no length you can't go, with these. It just depends on how farsighted your mental vision is.