University of Virginia Library

"Oh, don't I!" said Fanny 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."

Fanny faced him squarely. "I know that Haynes-Cooper isn't exactly a philanthropic institution. A

salary raise here usually means a battle. I've only been here three months."

Fenger seated himself in the chair beside her desk and ran a cool finger through the sheaf of papers in his hand. "My dear girl—I beg your pardon. I forgot. My good woman then—if you like that better—you've transfused red blood into a dying department. It may suffer a relapse after Christmas, but I don't think so. That's why you're getting more money, and not because I happen to be tremendously interested in you, personally."

Fanny's face flamed scarlet. "I didn't mean that."

"Yes you did. Here are those comparative lists you sent me. If I didn't know Slosson to be as honest as Old Dog Tray I'd think he had been selling us to the manufacturers. No wonder this department hasn't paid. He's been giving 'em top prices for shoddy. Now what's this new plan of yours?"

In an instant Fanny forgot about Theodore, the new winter suit and furs, everything but the idea that was clamoring to be born. She sat at her desk, her fingers folding and unfolding a bit of paper, her face all light and animation as she talked.

"My idea is to have a person known as a selector for each important department. It would mean a boiling down of the products of every manufacturer we deal with, and skimming the cream off the top. As it is now a department buyer has to do the selecting and buying too. He can't do both and get results. We ought to set aside an entire floor for the display of manufacturers' samples. The selector would make his choice among these, six months in advance of the season. The selector would go to the eastern markets too, of course. Not to buy. Merely to select. Then, with the line chosen as far as style, quality, and value is concerned, the buyer would be free to deal directly with the manufacturer as to quantity, time, and all that. You know

as well as I that that's enough of a job for any one person, with the labor situation what it is. He wouldn't need to bother about styles or colors, or any of that. It would all have been done for him. The selector would have the real responsibility. Don't you see the simplicity of it, and the way it would grease the entire machinery?"

Something very like jealousy came into Michael Fenger's face as he looked at her. But it was gone in an instant. "Gad! You'll have my job away from me in two years. You're a super-woman, do you know that?"

"Super nothing! It's just a perfectly good idea, founded on common sense and economy."

"M-m-m, but that's all Columbus had in mind when he started out to find a short cut to India."

Fanny laughed out at that. "Yes, but see where he landed!"

But Fenger was serious. "We'll have to have a meeting on this. Are you prepared to go into detail on it, before Mr. Haynes and the two Coopers, at a real meeting in a real mahogany directors' room? Wednesday, say?"

"I think so."

Fenger got up. "Look here, Miss Brandeis. You need a day in the country. Why don't you run up to your home town over Sunday? Wisconsin, wasn't it?"

"Oh, no! No. I mean yes it was Wisconsin, but no I don't want to go."

"Then let me send you my car."

"Car! No, thanks. That's not my idea of the country."

"It was just a suggestion. What do you call going to the country, then?"

"Tramping all day, and getting lost, if possible. Lying down under a tree for hours, and letting the ants

amble over you. Dreaming. And coming back tired, hungry, dusty, and refreshed."

"It sounds awfully uncomfortable. But I wish you'd try it, this week."

"Do I look such a wreck?" Fanny demanded, rather pettishly.

"You!" Fenger's voice was vibrant. "You're the most splendidly alive looking woman I ever saw. When you came into my office that first day you seemed to spark with health, and repressed energy, and electricity, so that you radiated them. People who can do that, stimulate. That's what you are to me—a stimulant."

What can one do with a man who talks like that? After all, what he said was harmless enough. His tone was quietly sincere. One can't resent an expression of the eyes. Then, too, just as she made up her mind to be angry she remembered the limp and querulous Mrs. Fenger, and the valve and the scarf. And her anger became pity. There flashed back to her the illuminating bit of conversation with which Fascinating Facts had regaled her on the homeward drive that night of the tea.

"Nice chap, Fenger. And a wiz in business. Get's a king's salary; Must be hell for a man to be tied, hand and foot, the way he is."

"Tied?"

"Mrs. Fenger's a semi-invalid. At that I don't believe she's as helpless as she seems. I think she just holds him by that shawl of hers, that's forever slipping. You know he was a machine boy in her father's woolen mill. She met him after he'd worked his way up to an office job. He has forged ahead like a locomotive ever since."

That had been their conversation, gossipy, but tremendously enlightening for Fanny. She looked up at him now.

"Thanks for the vacation suggestion. I may go off

somewhere. Just a last-minute leap. It usually turns out better, that way. I'll be ready for the Wednesday discussion."

She sounded very final and busy. The crumpled letter lay on her desk. She smoothed it out, and the crumple transferred itself to her forehead. Fenger stood a moment, looking down at her. Then he turned, abruptly and left the office. Fanny did not look up.

That was Friday. On Saturday her vacation took a personally conducted turn. She had planned to get away at noon, as most office heads did on Saturday, during the warm weather. When her 'phone rang at eleven she answered it mechanically as does one whose telephone calls mean a row with a tardy manufacturer, an argument with a merchandise man, or a catalogue query from the printer's.

The name that came to her over the telephone conveyed nothing to her.

"Who?" Again the name. "Heyl?" She repeated the name uncertainly. "I'm afraid I—O, of course! Clarence Heyl. Howdy-do."

"I want to see you," said the voice, promptly.

There rose up in Fanny's mind a cruelly clear picture of the little, sallow, sniveling school boy of her girlhood. The little boy with the big glasses and the shiny shoes, and the weak lungs.

"Sorry," she replied, promptly, "but I'm afraid it's impossible. I'm leaving the office early, and I'm swamped." Which was a lie.

"This evening?"

"I rarely plan anything for the evening. Too tired, as a rule.

"Too tired to drive?"

"I'm afraid so."

A brief silence. Then, "I'm coming out there to see you."

"Where? Here? The plant! That's impossible, Mr. Heyl. I'm terribly sorry, but I can't—"

"Yes, I know. Also terribly sure that if I ever get to you it will be over your office boy's dead body. Well, arm him. I'm coming. Good-by."

"Wait a minute! Mr. Heyl! Clarence! Hello! Hello!"

A jiggling of the hook. "Number, please?" droned the voice of the operator.

Fanny jammed the receiver down on the hook and turned to her work, lips compressed, a frown forming a double cleft between her eyes.

Half an hour later he was there. Her office boy brought in his card, as she had rehearsed him to do. Fanny noted that it was the wrong kind of card. She would show him what happened to pushers who pestered business women during office hours.

"Bring him in in twenty minutes," she said, grimly. Her office boy (and slave) always took his cue from her. She hoped he wouldn't be too rude to Heyl, and turned back to her work again. Thirty-nine seconds later Clarence Heyl walked in.

"Hello, Fan!" he said, and had her limp hand in a grip that made her wince.

"But I told—"

"Yes, I know. But he's a crushed and broken office boy by now. I had to be real harsh with him."

Fanny stood up, really angry now. She looked up at Clarence Heyl, and her eyes were flashing. Clarence Heyl looked down at her, and his eyes were the keenest, kindest, most gently humorous eyes she had ever encountered. You know that picture of Lincoln that shows us his eyes with much that expression in them? That's as near as I can come to conveying to you the whimsical pathos in this man. They were the eyes of a lonely little boy grown up. And they had seen much in the process.

Fanny felt her little blaze of anger flicker and die.

"That's the girl," said Heyl, and patted her hand. "You'll like me—presently. After you've forgotten about that sniveling kid you hated." He stepped back a pace and threw back his coat senatorially. "How do I look?" he demanded.

"Look?" repeated Fanny, feebly.

"I've been hours preparing for this. Years! And now something tells me—This tie, for instance."

Fanny bit her lip in a vain effort to retain her solemnity. Then she gave it up and giggled, frankly. "Well, since you ask me, that tie!—"

"What's the matter with it?" Fanny giggled again. "It's red, that's what."

"Well, what of it! Red's all right. I've always considered red one of our leading colors."

"But you can't wear it."

"Can't! Why can't I?"

"Because you're the brunest kind of brunette. And dark people have a special curse hanging over them that makes them want to wear red. It's fatal. That tie makes you look like a Mafia murderer dressed for business."

"I knew it," groaned Heyl. "Something told me." He sank into a chair at the side of her desk, a picture of mock dejection. "And I chose it. Deliberately. I had black ones, and blue ones, and green ones. And I chose—this." He covered his face with a shaking hand.

Fanny Brandeis leaned back in her chair, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Surely she hadn't laughed like that in a year at least.

"You're a madman," she said, finally.

At that Heyl looked up with his singularly winning smile. "But different. Concede that, Fanny. Be fair, now. Refreshingly different."

"Different," said Fanny, "doesn't begin to cover it. Well, now you're here, tell me what you're doing here."

"Seeing you."

"I mean here, in Chicago."

"So do I. I'm on my way from Winnebago to New York, and I'm in Chicago to see Fanny Brandeis."

"Don't expect me to believe that."

Heyl put an arm on Fanny's desk and learned forward, his face very earnest. "I do expect you to believe it. I expect you to believe everything I say to you. Not only that, I expect you not to be surprised at anything I say. I've done such a mass of private thinking about you in the last ten years that I'm likely to forget I've scarcely seen you in that time. Just remember, will you, that like the girl in the sob song, `You made me what I am to-day?'"

"I! You're being humorous again."

"Never less so in my life. Listen, Fan. That cowardly, sickly little boy you fought for in the street, that day in Winnebago, showed every sign of growing up a cowardly, sickly man. You're the real reason for his not doing so. Now, wait a minute. I was an impressionable little kid, I guess. Sickly ones are apt to be. I worshiped you and hated you from that day. Worshiped you for the blazing, generous, whole-souled little devil of a spitfire that you were. Hated you because—well, what boy wouldn't hate a girl who had to fight for him. Gosh! It makes me sick to think of it, even now. Pasty-faced rat!"

"What nonsense! I'd forgotten all about it."

"No you hadn't. Tell me, what flashed into your mind when you saw me in Temple that night before you left Winnebago? The truth, now."

She learned, later, that people did not lie to him. She tried it now, and found herself saying, rather shamefacedly, "I thought `Why, it's Clarence Heyl, the Cowardy-Cat!'"

"There! That's why I'm here to-day. I knew you were thinking that. I knew it all the time I was in

Colorado, growing up from a sickly kid, with a bum lung, to a heap big strong man. It forced me to do things I was afraid to do. It goaded me on to stunts at the very thought of which I'd break out in a clammy sweat. Don't you see how I'll have to turn handsprings in front of you, like the school-boy in the McCutcheon cartoon? Don't you see how I'll have to flex my muscles—like this—to show you how strong I am? I may even have to beat you, eventually. Why, child, I've chummed with lions, and bears, and wolves, and everything, because of you, you little devil in the red cap! I've climbed unclimbable mountains. I've frozen my feet in blizzards. I've wandered for days on a mountain top, lost, living on dried currants and milk chocolate,—and Lord! how I hate milk chocolate! I've dodged snowslides, and slept in trees; I've endured cold, and hunger and thirst, through you. It took me years to get used to the idea of passing a timber wolf without looking around, but I learned to do it— because of you. You made me. They sent me to Colorado, a lonely kid, with a pretty fair chance of dying, and I would have, if it hadn't been for you. There! How's that for a burst of speech, young woman! And wait a minute. Remember, too, my name was Clarence. I had that to live down."

Fanny was staring at him eyes round, lips parted. "But why?" she said, faintly. "Why?"

Heyl smiled that singularly winning smile of his. "Since you force me to it, I think I'm in love with that little, warm-hearted spitfire in the red cap. That's why."

Fanny sat forward now. She had been leaning back in her chair, her hands grasping its arms, her face a lovely, mobile thing, across which laughter, and pity, and sympathy and surprise rippled and played. It hardened now, and set. She looked down at her hands, and clasped them in her lap, then up at him. "In that

case, you can forsake the strenuous life with a free conscience. You need never climb another mountain, or wrestle with another—er—hippopotamus. That little girl in the red cap is dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes. She died a year ago. If the one who has taken her place were to pass you on the street today, and see you beset by forty thieves, she'd not even stop. Not she. She'd say, `Let him fight it out alone. It's none of your business. You've got your own fights to handle.'"

"Why—Fanny. You don't mean that, do you? What could have made her like that?"

"She just discovered that fighting for others didn't pay. She just happened to know some one else who had done that all her life and—it killed her."

"Her mother?"

"Yes."

A little silence. "Fanny, let's play outdoors tomorrow, will you? All day."

Involuntarily Fanny glanced around the room. Papers, catalogues, files, desk, chair, typewriter. "I'm afraid I've forgotten how."

"I'll teach you. You look as if you could stand a little of it."

"I must be a pretty sight. You're the second man to tell me that in two days."

Heyl leaned forward a little. "That so? Who's the other one?"

"Fenger, the General Manager."

"Oh! Paternal old chap, I suppose. No? Well, anyway, I don't know what he had in mind, but you're going to spend Sunday at the dunes of Indiana with me."

"Dunes? Of Indiana?"

"There's nothing like them in the world. Literally. In September that combination of yellow sand, and

blue lake, and the woods beyond is—well, you'll see what it is. It's only a little more than an hour's ride by train. And it will just wipe that tired look out of your face, Fan." He stood up. "I'll call for you tomorrow morning at eight, or thereabouts. That's early for Sunday, but it's going to be worth it."

"I can't. Really. Besides, I don't think I even want to. I—"

"I promise not to lecture on Nature, if that's what's worrying you." He took her hand in a parting grip. "Bring some sandwiches, will you? Quite a lot of 'em. I'll have some other stuff in my rucksack. And wear some clothes you don't mind wrecking. I suppose you haven't got a red tam o' shanter?"

"Heavens, no!"

"I just thought it might help to keep me humble." He was at the door, and so was she, somehow, her hand still in his. "Eight o'clock. How do you stand it in this place, Fan? Oh, well—I'll find that out to-morrow. Good-by."

Fanny went back to her desk and papers. The room seemed all at once impossibly stuffy, her papers and letters dry, meaningless things. In the next office, separated from her by a partition half glass, half wood, she saw the top of Slosson's bald head as he stood up to shut his old-fashioned roll-top desk. He was leaving. She looked out of the window. Ella Monahan, in hat and suit, passed and came back to poke her head in the door.

"Run along!" she said. "It's Saturday afternoon. You'll work overtime enough when the Christmas rush begins. Come on, child, and call it a day!"

And Fanny gathered papers, figures, catalogue proofs into a glorious heap, thrust them into a drawer, locked the drawer, pushed back her chair, and came.