You could not have lived a week in Winnebago without being aware of Mrs.
Brandeis. In a town of ten thousand, where every one was a personality,
from Hen Cody, the drayman, in blue overalls (magically transformed
on Sunday mornings into a suave black-broadcloth usher at the
Congregational Church), to A. J. Dawes, who owned the waterworks before
the city bought it. Mrs. Brandeis was a super-personality. Winnebago
did not know it. Winnebago, buying its dolls, and china, and Battenberg
braid and tinware and toys of Mrs. Brandeis, of Brandeis' Bazaar,
realized vaguely that here was some one different.
When you entered the long, cool, narrow store on Elm Street, Mrs.
Brandeis herself came forward to serve you, unless she already was busy
with two customers. There were two clerks--three, if you count Aloysius,
the boy--but to Mrs. Brandeis belonged the privilege of docketing you
first. If you happened in during a moment of business lull, you were
likely to find her reading in the left-hand corner at the front of the
store, near the shelf where were ranged the dolls' heads, the pens, the
pencils, and school supplies.
You saw a sturdy, well-set-up, alert woman, of the kind that looks
taller than she really is; a woman with a long, straight, clever nose
that indexed her character, as did everything about her, from her crisp,
vigorous, abundant hair to the way she came down hard on her heels in
walking. She was what might be called a very definite person. But first
you remarked her eyes. Will you concede that eyes can be piercing, yet
velvety? Their piercingness was a mental quality, I suppose, and the
velvety softness a physical one. One could only think, somehow, of wild
pansies--the brown kind. If Winnebago had taken the trouble to glance
at the title of the book she laid face down on the pencil boxes as you
entered, it would have learned that the book was one of Balzac's, or,
perhaps, Zangwill's, or Zola's. She never could overcome that habit
of snatching a chapter here and there during dull moments. She was too
tired to read when night came.
There were many times when the little Wisconsin town lay broiling in
the August sun, or locked in the January drifts, and the main business
street was as silent as that of a deserted village. But more often she
came forward to you from the rear of the store, with bits of excelsior
clinging to her black sateen apron. You knew that she had been helping
Aloysius as he unpacked a consignment of chamber sets or a hogshead of
china or glassware, chalking each piece with the price mark as it was
dug from its nest of straw and paper.
“How do you do!” she would say. “What can I do for you?” And in that
moment she had you listed, indexed, and filed, were you a farmer woman
in a black shawl and rusty bonnet with a faded rose bobbing grotesquely
atop it, or one of the patronizing East End set who came to Brandeis'
Bazaar because Mrs. Brandeis' party favors, for one thing, were of a
variety that could be got nowhere else this side of Chicago. If, after
greeting you, Mrs. Brandeis called, “Sadie! Stockings!” (supposing
stockings were your quest), you might know that Mrs. Brandeis had
weighed you and found you wanting.
There had always been a store--at least, ever since Fanny could
remember. She often thought how queer it would seem to have to buy pins,
or needles, or dishes, or soap, or thread. The store held all these
things, and many more. Just to glance at the bewildering display outside
gave you promise of the variety within. Winnebago was rather ashamed of
that display. It was before the day of repression in decoration, and
the two benches in front of the windows overflowed with lamps, and
water sets, and brooms, and boilers and tinware and hampers. Once the
Winnebago Courier had had a sarcastic editorial about what they called
the Oriental bazaar (that was after the editor, Lem Davis, had bumped
his shin against a toy cart that protruded unduly), but Mrs. Brandeis
changed nothing. She knew that the farmer women who stood outside with
their husbands on busy Saturdays would not have understood repression
in display, but they did understand the tickets that marked the wares in
plain figures--this berry set, $1.59; that lamp, $1.23. They talked it
over, outside, and drifted away, and came back, and entered, and bought.
She knew when to be old-fashioned, did Mrs. Brandeis, and when to be
modern. She had worn the first short walking skirt in Winnebago. It
cleared the ground in a day before germs were discovered, when women's
skirts trailed and flounced behind them in a cloud of dust. One of her
scandalized neighbors (Mrs. Nathan Pereles, it was) had taken her aside
to tell her that no decent woman would dress that way.
“Next year,” said Mrs. Brandeis, “when you are wearing one, I'll remind
you of that.” And she did, too. She had worn shirtwaists with a broad
“Gibson” shoulder tuck, when other Winnebago women were still encased
in linings and bodices. Do not get the impression that she stood for
emancipation, or feminism, or any of those advanced things. They had
scarcely been touched on in those days. She was just an extraordinarily
alert woman, mentally and physically, with a shrewd sense of values.
Molly Brandeis never could set a table without forgetting the spoons, or
the salt, or something, but she could add a double column of figures in
her head as fast as her eye could travel.
There she goes, running off with the story, as we were afraid she would.
Not only that, she is using up whole pages of description when she
should be giving us dialogue. Prospective readers, running their
eyes over a printed page, object to the solid block formation of the
descriptive passage. And yet it is fascinating to weave words about her,
as it is fascinating to turn a fine diamond this way and that in the
sunlight, to catch its prismatic hues. Besides, you want to know--do you
not?--how this woman who reads Balzac should be waiting upon you in a
little general store in Winnebago, Wisconsin?
In the first place, Ferdinand Brandeis had been a dreamer, and a
potential poet, which is bad equipment for success in the business of
general merchandise. Four times, since her marriage, Molly Brandeis had
packed her household goods, bade her friends good-by, and with her two
children, Fanny and Theodore, had followed her husband to pastures new.
A heart-breaking business, that, but broadening. She knew nothing of the
art of buying and selling at the time of her marriage, but as the
years went by she learned unconsciously the things one should not do
in business, from watching Ferdinand Brandeis do them all. She even
suggested this change and that, but to no avail. Ferdinand Brandeis
was a gentle and lovable man at home; a testy, quick-tempered one in
business.
That was because he had been miscast from the first, and yet had played
one part too long, even though unsuccessfully, ever to learn another. He
did not make friends with the genial traveling salesmen who breezed in,
slapped him on the back, offered him a cigar, inquired after his health,
opened their sample cases and flirted with the girl clerks, all in a
breath. He was a man who talked little, listened little, learned little.
He had never got the trick of turning his money over quickly--that trick
so necessary to the success of the small-town business.
So it was that, in the year preceding Ferdinand Brandeis' death, there
came often to the store a certain grim visitor. Herman Walthers, cashier
of the First National Bank of Winnebago, was a kindly-enough, shrewd,
small-town banker, but to Ferdinand Brandeis and his wife his visits,
growing more and more frequent, typified all that was frightful,
presaged misery and despair. He would drop in on a bright summer
morning, perhaps, with a cheerful greeting. He would stand for a moment
at the front of the store, balancing airily from toe to heel, and
glancing about from shelf to bin and back again in a large, speculative
way. Then he would begin to walk slowly and ruminatively about, his
shrewd little German eyes appraising the stock. He would hum a little
absent-minded tune as he walked, up one aisle and down the next (there
were only two), picking up a piece of china there, turning it over to
look at its stamp, holding it up to the light, tapping it a bit with his
knuckles, and putting it down carefully before going musically on down
the aisle to the water sets, the lamps, the stockings, the hardware, the
toys. And so, his hands behind his back, still humming, out the swinging
screen door and into the sunshine of Elm Street, leaving gloom and fear
behind him.
One year after Molly Brandeis took hold, Herman Walthers' visits ceased,
and in two years he used to rise to greet her from his little cubbyhole
when she came into the bank.
Which brings us to the plush photograph album. The plush photograph
album is a concrete example of what makes business failure and success.
More than that, its brief history presents a complete characterization
of Ferdinand and Molly Brandeis.
Ten years before, Ferdinand Brandeis had bought a large bill of
Christmas fancy-goods--celluloid toilette sets, leather collar boxes,
velvet glove cases. Among the lot was a photograph album in the shape of
a huge acorn done in lightning-struck plush. It was a hideous thing, and
expensive. It stood on a brass stand, and its leaves were edged in gilt,
and its color was a nauseous green and blue, and it was altogether the
sort of thing to grace the chill and funereal best room in a Wisconsin
farmhouse. Ferdinand Brandeis marked it at six dollars and stood it
up for the Christmas trade. That had been ten years before. It was too
expensive; or too pretentious, or perhaps even too horrible for the
bucolic purse. At any rate, it had been taken out, brushed, dusted, and
placed on its stand every holiday season for ten years. On the day after
Christmas it was always there, its lightning-struck plush face staring
wildly out upon the ravaged fancy-goods counter. It would be packed
in its box again and consigned to its long summer's sleep. It had seen
three towns, and many changes. The four dollars that Ferdinand Brandeis
had invested in it still remained unturned.
One snowy day in November (Ferdinand Brandeis died a fortnight later)
Mrs. Brandeis, entering the store, saw two women standing at the
fancy-goods counter, laughing in a stifled sort of way. One of them was
bowing elaborately to a person unseen. Mrs. Brandeis was puzzled. She
watched them for a moment, interested. One of the women was known to
her. She came up to them and put her question, bluntly, though her quick
wits had already given her a suspicion of the truth.
“What are you bowing to?”
The one who had done the bowing blushed a little, but giggled too, as
she said, “I'm greeting my old friend, the plush album. I've seen it
here every Christmas for five years.”
Ferdinand Brandeis died suddenly a little more than a week later. It was
a terrible period, and one that might have prostrated a less resolute
and balanced woman. There were long-standing debts, not to speak of the
entire stock of holiday goods to be paid for. The day after the funeral
Winnebago got a shock. The Brandeis house was besieged by condoling
callers. Every member of the little Jewish congregation of Winnebago
came, of course, as they had come before the funeral. Those who had not
brought cakes, and salads, and meats, and pies, brought them now, as was
the invariable custom in time of mourning.
Others of the townspeople called, too; men and women who had known and
respected Ferdinand Brandeis. And the shock they got was this: Mrs.
Brandeis was out. Any one could have told you that she should have been
sitting at home in a darkened room, wearing a black gown, clasping
Fanny and Theodore to her, and holding a black-bordered handkerchief at
intervals to her reddened eyes. And that is what she really wanted to
do, for she had loved her husband, and she respected the conventions.
What she did was to put on a white shirtwaist and a black skirt at seven
o'clock the morning after the funeral.
The store had been closed the day before. She entered it at seven
forty-five, as Aloysius was sweeping out with wet sawdust and a languid
broom. The extra force of holiday clerks straggled in, uncertainly, at
eight or after, expecting an hour or two of undisciplined gossip. At
eight-ten Molly Brandeis walked briskly up to the plush photograph
album, whisked off its six-dollar price mark, and stuck in its place
a neatly printed card bearing these figures: “To-day--79 cents!” The plush
album went home in a farmer's wagon that afternoon.