Fanny Herself Part 26

f.a.n.n.y clutched her bag a little fearfully. She looked at his huge frame.

"Why don't you work?"

"Work!" He laughed. "There ain't any. Looka this!" He turned up his foot, and you saw the bare sole, blackened and horrible, and fringed, comically, by the tattered leather upper.

"Oh--my dear!" said f.a.n.n.y. And at that the man began to cry, weakly, sickeningly, like a little boy.

"Don't do that! Don't! Here." She was emptying her purse, and something inside her was saying, "You fool, he's only a professional beggar."

And then the man wiped his face with his cap, and swallowed hard, and said, "I don't want all you got. I ain't holdin' you up. Just gimme that. I been sittin' here, on that bench, lookin' at that sign across the street. Over there. It says, 'EAT.' It goes off an' on. Seemed like it was drivin' me crazy."

f.a.n.n.y thrust a crumpled five-dollar bill into his hand. And was off. She fairly flew along, so that it was not until she had reached Thirty-third street that she said aloud, as was her way when moved, "I don't care.

Don't blame me. It was that miserable little beast of a dog in the white sweater that did it."

It was almost seven when she reached her room. A maid, in neat black and white, was just coming out with an armful of towels.

"I just brought you a couple of extra towels. We were short this morning," she said.

The room was warm, and quiet, and bright. In her bathroom, that glistened with blue and white tiling, were those redundant towels. f.a.n.n.y stood in the doorway and counted them, whimsically. Four great fuzzy bath towels. Eight glistening hand towels. A blue and white bath rug hung at the side of the tub. Her telephone rang. It was Ella.

"Where in the world have you been, child? I was worried about you. I thought you were lost in the streets of New York."

"I took a 'bus ride," f.a.n.n.y explained.

"See anything of New York?"

"I saw all of it," replied f.a.n.n.y. Ella laughed at that, but f.a.n.n.y's face was serious.

"How did you make out at Horn & Udell's? Never mind, I'm coming in for a minute; can I?"

"Please do. I need you."

A moment later Ella bounced in, fresh as to blouse, pink as to cheeks, her whole appearance a testimony to the revivifying effects of a warm bath, a brief nap, clean clothes.

"Dear child, you look tired. I'm not going to stay. You get dressed and I'll meet you for dinner. Or do you want yours up here?"

"Oh, no!"

"'Phone me when you're dressed. But tell me, isn't it a wonder, this town? I'll never forget my first trip here. I spent one whole evening standing in front of the mirror trying to make those little spit-curls the women were wearing then. I'd seen 'em on Fifth avenue, and it seemed I'd die if I couldn't have 'em, too. And I dabbed on rouge, and touched up my eyebrows. I don't know. It's a kind of a crazy feeling gets you.

The minute I got on the train for Chicago I washed my face and took my hair down and did it plain again."

"Why, that's the way I felt!" laughed f.a.n.n.y. "I didn't care anything about infants' wear, or Haynes-Cooper, or anything. I just wanted to be beautiful, as they all were."

"Sure! It gets us all!"

f.a.n.n.y twisted her hair into the relentless k.n.o.b women a.s.sume preparatory to bathing. "It seems to me you have to come from Winnebago, or thereabouts, to get New York--really get it, I mean."

"That's so," agreed Ella. "There's a man on the New York Star who writes a column every day that everybody reads. If he isn't a small-town man then we're both wrong."

f.a.n.n.y, bathward bound, turned to stare at Ella. "A column about what?"

"Oh, everything. New York, mostly. Say, it's the humanest stuff. He says the kind of thing we'd all say, if we knew how. Reading him is like getting a letter from home. I'll bet he went to a country school and wore his mittens sewed to a piece of tape that ran through his coat sleeves."

"You're right," said f.a.n.n.y; "he did. That man's from Winnebago, Wisconsin."

"No!"

"Yes."

"Do you mean you know him? Honestly? What's he like?"

But f.a.n.n.y had vanished. "I'm a tired business woman," she called, above the splas.h.i.+ng that followed, "and I won't converse until I'm fed."

"But how about Horn & Udell?" demanded Ella, her mouth against the crack.

"Practically mine," boasted f.a.n.n.y.

"You mean--landed!"

"Well, hooked, at any rate, and putting up a very poor struggle."

"Why, you clever little divil, you! You'll be making me look like a stock girl next."

f.a.n.n.y did not telephone Heyl until the day she left New York. She had told herself she would not telephone him at all. He had sent her his New York address and telephone number months before, after that Sunday at the dunes. Ella Monahan had finished her work and had gone back to Chicago four days before f.a.n.n.y was ready to leave. In those four days f.a.n.n.y had scoured the city from the Palisades to Pell street. I don't know how she found her way about. It was a sort of instinct with her.

She seemed to scent the picturesque. She never for a moment neglected her work. But she had found it was often impossible to see these New York business men until ten--sometimes eleven--o'clock. She awoke at seven, a habit formed in her Winnebago days. Eight-thirty one morning found her staring up at the dim vastness of the dome of the cathedral of St. John the Divine. The great gray pile, mountainous, almost ominous, looms up in the midst of the dingy commonplaceness of Amsterdam avenue and 110th street. New Yorkers do not know this, or if they know it, the fact does not interest them. New Yorkers do not go to stare up into the murky shadows of this glorious edifice. They would if it were situate in Rome. Bare, crude, unfinished, chaotic, it gives rich promise of magnificent fulfillment. In an age when great structures are thrown up to-day, to be torn down to-morrow, this slow-moving giant is at once a reproach and an example. Twenty-five years in building, twenty-five more for completion, it has elbowed its way, stone by stone, into such company as St. Peter's at Rome, and the marvel at Milan. f.a.n.n.y found her way down the crude cinder paths that made an alley-like approach to the cathedral. She entered at the side door that one found by following arrows posted on the rough wooden fence. Once inside she stood a moment, awed by the immensity of the half-finished nave. As she stood there, hands clasped, her face turned raptly up to where the ma.s.sive granite columns reared their height to frame the choir, she was, for the moment, as devout as any Episcopalian whose money had helped make the great building. Not only devout, but prayerful, ecstatic. That was partly due to the effect of the pillars, the lights, the tapestries, the great, unfinished chunks of stone that loomed out from the side walls, and the purple shadow cast by the window above the chapels at the far end; and partly to the actress in her that responded magically to any mood, and always to surroundings. Later she walked softly down the deserted nave, past the choir, to the cl.u.s.ter of chapels, set like gems at one end, and running from north to south, in a semi-circle. A placard outside one said, "St. Saviour's chapel. For those who wish to rest and pray." All white marble, this little nook, gleaming softly in the gray half-light.

f.a.n.n.y entered, and sat down. She was quite alone. The roar and crash of the Eighth avenue L, the Amsterdam cars, the motors drumming up Morningside hill, were softened here to a soothing hum.

For those who wish to rest and pray.

f.a.n.n.y Brandeis had neither rested nor prayed since that hideous day when she had hurled her prayer of defiance at Him. But something within her now began a groping for words; for words that should follow an ancient plea beginning, "O G.o.d of my Fathers----" But at that the picture of the room came back to her mental vision--the room so quiet except for the breathing of the woman on the bed; the woman with the tolerant, humorous mouth, and the straight, clever nose, and the softly bright brown eyes, all so strangely pinched and shrunken-looking now----

f.a.n.n.y got to her feet, with a noisy sc.r.a.ping of the chair on the stone floor. The vague, half-formed prayer died at birth. She found her way out of the dim, quiet little chapel, up the long aisle and out the great door. She s.h.i.+vered a little in the cold of the early January morning as she hurried toward the Broadway subway.

At nine-thirty she was standing at a counter in the infants' wear section at Best's, making mental notes while the unsuspecting saleswoman showed her how the pink ribbon in this year's models was brought under the beading, French fas.h.i.+on, instead of weaving through it, as heretofore. At ten-thirty she was saying to Sid Udell, "I think a written contract is always best. Then we'll all know just where we stand. Mr. Fenger will be on next week to arrange the details, but just now a very brief written understanding to show him on my return would do."

And she got it, and tucked it away in her bag, in triumph.

She tried to leave New York without talking to Heyl, but some quiet, insistent force impelled her to act contrary to her resolution. It was, after all, the urge of the stronger wish against the weaker.

When he heard her voice over the telephone Heyl did not say, "Who is this?" Neither did he put those inevitable questions of the dweller to the transient, "Where are you? How long have you been here?" What he said was, "How're you going to avoid dining with me to-night?"

To which f.a.n.n.y replied, promptly, "By taking the Twentieth Century back to Chicago to-day."

A little silence. A hurt silence. Then, "When they get the Twentieth Century habit they're as good as lost. How's the infants' wear business, f.a.n.n.y?"

"Booming, thank you. I want to tell you I've read the column every day.

It's wonderful stuff."

"It's a wonderful job. I'm a lucky boy. I'm doing the thing I'd rather do than anything else in the world. There are mighty few who can say that." There was another silence, awkward, heavy. Then, "f.a.n.n.y, you're not really leaving to-day?"