Fanny Herself Part 13

"By squinting up your eyes so you can see ten years ahead. If it looks good to you at that distance--better, in fact, than it does close by--then it's right. I suppose that's what they call having imagination.

I never had any. That's why I'm still selling goods on the road. To look at you I'd say you had too much. Maybe I'm wrong. But I never yet saw a woman with a mouth like yours who was cut out for business--unless it was your mother--And her eyes were different. Let's see, what was I saying?"

"Specialize."

"Oh, yes. And that reminds me. Bunch of fellows in the smoker last night talking about Haynes-Cooper. Your mother hated 'em like poison, the way every small-town merchant hates the mail-order houses. But I hear they've got an infants' wear department that's just going to gra.s.s for lack of a proper head. You're only a kid. And they have done you dirt all these years, of course. But if you could sort of horn in there--why, say, there's no limit to the distance you could go. No limit! With your brains and experience."

That had been the beginning. From then on the thing had moved forward with a certain inevitableness. There was something about the vastness of the thing that appealed to f.a.n.n.y. Here was an organization whose great arms embraced the world. Haynes-Cooper, giant among mail-order houses, was said to eat a small-town merchant every morning for breakfast.

"There's a Haynes-Cooper catalogue in every farmer's kitchen," Molly Brandeis used to say. "The Bible's in the parlor, but they keep the H.

C. book in the room where they live."

That she was about to affiliate herself with this house appealed to f.a.n.n.y Brandeis's sense of comedy. She had heard her mother presenting her arguments to the stubborn farmer folk who insisted on ordering their stove, or dinner set, or plow, or kitchen goods from the fascinating catalogue. "I honestly think it's just the craving for excitement that makes them do it," she often said. "They want the thrill they get when they receive a box from Chicago, and open it, and take off the wrappings, and dig out the thing they ordered from a picture, not knowing whether it will be right or wrong."

Her arguments usually left the farmer unmoved. He would drive into town, mail his painfully written letter and order at the post-office, dispose of his load of apples, or b.u.t.ter, or cheese, or vegetables, and drive cheerfully back again, his empty wagon b.u.mping and rattling down the old corduroy road. Express, breakage, risk, loyalty to his own region--an these arguments left him cold.

In May, after much manipulation, correspondence, two interviews, came a definite offer from the Haynes-Cooper Company. It was much less than the State Street store had offered, and there was something tentative about the whole agreement. Haynes-Cooper proffered little and demanded much, as is the way of the rich and mighty. But f.a.n.n.y remembered the ten-year viewpoint that the weary-wise old traveling man had spoken about. She took their offer. She was to go to Chicago almost at once, to begin work June first.

Two conversations that took place before she left are perhaps worth recording. One was with Father Fitzpatrick of St. Ignatius Catholic Church. The other with Rabbi Emil Thalmann of Temple Emanu-el.

An impulse brought her into Father Fitzpatrick's study. It was a week before her departure. She was tired. There had been much last signing of papers, nailing of boxes, strapping of trunks. When things began to come too thick and fast for her she put on her hat and went for a walk at the close of the May day. May, in Wisconsin, is a thing all fragrant, and gold, and blue; and white with cherry blossoms; and pink with apple blossoms; and tremulous with budding things.

f.a.n.n.y struck out westward through the neat streets of the little town, and found herself on the bridge over the ravine in which she had played when a little girl--the ravine that her childish imagination had peopled with such pageantry of redskin, and priests, and voyageurs, and cavaliers. She leaned over the iron railing and looked down.

Where gra.s.s, and brook, and wild flower had been there now oozed great eruptions of ash heaps, tin cans, broken bottles, mounds of dirt.

Winnebago's growing pains had begun. f.a.n.n.y turned away with a little sick feeling. She went on across the bridge past the Catholic church.

Just next the church was the parish house where Father Fitzpatrick lived. It always looked as if it had been scrubbed, inside and out, with a scouring brick. Its windows were a reproach and a challenge to every housekeeper in Winnebago.

f.a.n.n.y wanted to talk to somebody about that ravine. She was full of it.

Father Fitzpatrick's study over-looked it. Besides, she wanted to see him before she left Winnebago. A picture came to her mind of his handsome, ruddy face, twinkling with humor as she had last seen it when he had dropped in at Brandeis' Bazaar for a chat with her mother. She turned in at the gate and ran up the immaculate, gray-painted steps, that always gleamed as though still wet with the paint brush.

"I shouldn't wonder if that housekeeper of his comes out with a pail of paint and does 'em every morning before breakfast," f.a.n.n.y said to herself as she rang the bell.

Usually it was that spa.r.s.e and spectacled person herself who opened the parish house door, but to-day f.a.n.n.y's ring was answered by Father Casey, parish a.s.sistant. A sour-faced and suspicious young man, Father Casey, thick-spectacled, and pointed of nose. Nothing of the jolly priest about him. He was new to the town, but he recognized f.a.n.n.y and surveyed her darkly.

"Father Fitzpatrick in? I'm f.a.n.n.y Brandeis."

"The reverend father is busy," and the gla.s.s door began to close.

"Who is it?" boomed a voice from within. "Who're you turning away, Casey?"

"A woman, not a paris.h.i.+oner." The door was almost shut now.

Footsteps down the hall. "Good! Let her in." The door opened ever so reluctantly. Father Fitzpatrick loomed up beside his puny a.s.sistant, dwarfing him. He looked sharply at the figure on the porch. "For the love of--! Casey, you're a fool! How you ever got beyond being an altar-boy is more than I can see. Come in, child. Come in! The man's cut out for a jailor, not a priest."

f.a.n.n.y's two hands were caught in one of his big ones, and she was led down the hall to the study. It was the room of a scholar and a man, and the one spot in the house that defied the housekeeper's weapons of broom and duster. A comfortable and disreputable room, full of books, and fis.h.i.+ng tackle, and chairs with sagging springs, and a sofa that was dented with friendly hollows. Pipes on the disorderly desk. A copy of "Mr. Dooley" spread face down on what appeared to be next Sunday's sermon, rough-drafted.

"I just wanted to talk to you." f.a.n.n.y drifted to the shelves, book-lover that she was, and ran a finger over a half-dozen t.i.tles. "Your a.s.sistant was justified, really, in closing the door on me. But I'm glad you rescued me." She came over to him and stood looking up at him. He seemed to loom up endlessly, though hers was a medium height. "I think I really wanted to talk to you about that ravine, though I came to say good-by."

"Sit down, child, sit down!" He creaked into his great leather-upholstered desk chair, himself. "If you had left without seeing me I'd have excommunicated Casey. Between you and me the man's mad. His job ought to be duenna to a Spanish maiden, not a.s.sistant to a priest with a leaning toward the flesh."

Now, Father Fitzpatrick talked with a--no, you couldn't call it a brogue. It was nothing so gross as that. One does not speak of the flavor of a rare wine; one calls attention to its bouquet. A subtle, teasing, elusive something that just tickles the senses instead of punching them in the ribs. So his speech was permeated with a will-o'-the-wisp, a tingling richness that evaded definition. You will have to imagine it. There shall be no vain attempt to set it down.

Besides, you always skip dialect.

"So you're going away. I'd heard. Where to?"

"Chicago, Haynes-Cooper. It's a wonderful chance. I don't see yet how I got it. There's only one other woman on their business staff--I mean working actually in an executive way in the buying and selling end of the business. Of course there are thousands doing clerical work, and that kind of thing. Have you ever been through the plant? It's--it's incredible."

Father Fitzpatrick drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair, and looked at f.a.n.n.y, his handsome eyes half shut.

"So it's going to be business, h'm? Well, I suppose it's only natural.

Your mother and I used to talk about you often. I don't know if you and she ever spoke seriously of this little trick of drawing, or cartooning, or whatever it is you have. She used to think about it. She said once to me, that it looked to her more than just a knack. An authentic gift of caricature, she called it--if it could only be developed. But of course Theodore took everything. That worried her."

"Oh, nonsense! That! I just amuse myself with it."

"Yes. But what amuses you might amuse other people. There's all too few amusing things in the world. Your mother was a smart woman, f.a.n.n.y. The smartest I ever knew."

"There's no money in it, even if I were to get on with it. What could I do with it? Who ever heard of a woman cartoonist! And I couldn't ill.u.s.trate. Those pink cheesecloth pictures the magazines use. I want to earn money. Lots of it. And now."

She got up and went to the window, and stood looking down the steep green slope of the ravine that lay, a natural amphitheater, just below.

"Money, h'm?" mused Father Fitzpatrick. "Well, it's popular and handy.

And you look to me like the kind of girl who'd get it, once you started out for it. I've never had much myself. They say it has a way of turning to dust and ashes in the mouth, once you get a good, satisfying bite of it. But that's only talk, I suppose."

f.a.n.n.y laughed a little, still looking down at the ravine. "I'm fairly accustomed to dust and ashes by this time. It won't be a new taste to me." She whirled around suddenly. "And speaking of dust and ashes, isn't this a shame? A crime? Why doesn't somebody stop it? Why don't you stop it?" She pointed to the desecrated ravine below. Her eyes were blazing, her face all animation.

Father Fitzpatrick came over and stood beside her. His face was sad.

"It's a--" He stopped abruptly, and looked down into her glowing face.

He cleared his throat. "It's a perfectly natural state of affairs," he said smoothly. "Winnebago's growing. Especially over there on the west side, since the new mill went up, and they've extended the street car line. They need the land to build on. It's business. And money."

"Business! It's a crime! It's wanton! Those ravines are the most beautiful natural spots in Wisconsin. Why, they're history, and romance, and beauty!"

"So that's the way you feel about it?"

"Of course. Don't you? Can't you stop it? Pet.i.tions--"

"Certainly I feel it's an outrage. But I'm just a poor fool of a priest, and sentimental, with no head for business. Now you're a business woman, and different."

"I! You're joking."

"Say, listen, m' girl. The world's made up of just two things: ravines and dump heaps. And the dumpers are forever edging up, and squeedging up, and trying to grab the ravines and spoil 'em, when n.o.body's looking.

You've made your choice, and allied yourself with the dump heaps. What right have you to cry out against the desecration of the ravines?"

"The right that every one has that loves them."

"Child, you're going to get so used to seeing your ravines choked up at Haynes-Cooper that after a while you'll prefer 'em that way."

f.a.n.n.y turned on him pa.s.sionately. "I won't! And if I do, perhaps it's just as well. There's such a thing as too much ravine. What do you want me to do? Stay here, and grub away, and become a crabbed old maid like Irma Klein, thankful to be taken around by the married crowd, joining the Aid Society and going to the card parties on Sunday nights? Or I could marry a traveling man, perhaps, or Lee Kohn of the Golden Eagle.

I'm just like any other ambitious woman with brains--"