There was no hard stock in Brandeis' Bazaar now. The packing-room was
always littered with straw and excelsior dug from hogsheads and great
crates. Aloysius lorded it over a small red-headed satellite who
disappeared inside barrels and dived head first into huge boxes,
coming up again with a lamp, or a doll, or a piece of glassware, like
a magician. Fanny, perched on an overturned box, used to watch him,
fascinated, while he laboriously completed a water set, or a tea set.
A preliminary dive would bring up the first of a half dozen related
pieces, each swathed in tissue paper. A deft twist on the part of
the attendant Aloysius would strip the paper wrappings and disclose
a ruby-tinted tumbler, perhaps. Another dive, and another, until six
gleaming glasses stood revealed, like chicks without a hen mother. A
final dip, much scratching and burrowing, during which armfuls of hay
and excelsior were thrown out, and then the red-headed genie of the
barrel would emerge, flushed and triumphant, with the water pitcher
itself, thus completing the happy family.
Aloysius, meanwhile, would regale her with one of those choice bits of
gossip he had always about him, like a jewel concealed, and only to be
brought out for the appreciative. Mrs. Brandeis disapproved of store
gossip, and frowned on Sadie and Pearl whenever she found them, their
heads close together, their stifled shrieks testifying to his wit. There
were times when Molly Brandeis herself could not resist the spell of his
tongue. No one knew where Aloysius got his information. He had news that
Winnebago's two daily papers never could get, and wouldn't have dared to
print if they had.
“Did you hear about Myrtle Krieger,” he would begin, “that's marryin'
the Hempel boy next month? The one in the bank. She's exhibiting her
trewsow at the Outagamie County Fair this week, for the handwork and
embroid'ry prize. Ain't it brazen? They say the crowd's so thick around
the table that they had to take down the more pers'nal pieces. The first
day of the fair the grand-stand was, you might say, empty, even when
they was pullin' off the trottin' races and the balloon ascension. It's
funny--ain't it?--how them garmints that you wouldn't turn for a second
look at on the clothesline or in a store winda' becomes kind of wicked
and interestin' the minute they get what they call the human note. There
it lays, that virgin lawnjerie, for all the county to look at, with pink
ribbons run through everything, and the poor Krieger girl never dreamin'
she's doin' somethin' indelicate. She says yesterday if she wins the
prize she's going to put it toward one of these kitchen cabinets.”
I wish we could stop a while with Aloysius. He is well worth it.
Aloysius, who looked a pass between Ichabod Crane and Smike; Aloysius,
with his bit of scandal burnished with wit; who, after a long, hard
Saturday, would go home to scrub the floor of the dingy lodgings where
he lived with his invalid mother, and who rose in the cold dawn of
Sunday morning to go to early mass, so that he might return to cook the
dinner and wait upon the sick woman. Aloysius, whose trousers flapped
grotesquely about his bony legs, and whose thin red wrists hung
awkwardly from his too-short sleeves, had in him that tender, faithful
and courageous stuff of which unsung heroes are made. And he adored his
clever, resourceful boss to the point of imitation. You should have seen
him trying to sell a sled or a doll's go-cart in her best style. But we
cannot stop for Aloysius. He is irrelevant, and irrelevant matter halts
the progress of a story. Any one, from Barrie to Harold Bell Wright,
will tell you that a story, to be successful, must march.
We'll keep step, then, with Molly Brandeis until she drops out of the
ranks. There is no detouring with Mrs. Brandeis for a leader. She is the
sort that, once her face is set toward her goal, looks neither to right
nor left until she has reached it.
When Fanny Brandeis was fourteen, and Theodore was not quite sixteen,
a tremendous thing happened. Schabelitz, the famous violinist, came to
Winnebago to give a concert under the auspices of the Young Men's Sunday
Evening Club.
The Young Men's Sunday Evening Club of the Congregational Church prided
itself (and justifiably) on what the papers called its “auspices.” It
scorned to present to Winnebago the usual lyceum attractions--Swiss bell
ringers, negro glee clubs, and Family Fours. Instead, Schumann-Heink
sang her lieder for them; McCutcheon talked and cartooned for them;
Madame Bloomfield-Zeisler played. Winnebago was one of those wealthy
little Mid-Western towns whose people appreciate the best and set out to
acquire it for themselves.
To the Easterner, Winnebago, and Oshkosh, and Kalamazoo, and Emporia are
names invented to get a laugh from a vaudeville audience. Yet it is the
people from Winnebago and Emporia and the like whom you meet in Egypt,
and the Catalina Islands, and at Honolulu, and St. Moritz. It is in the
Winnebago living-room that you are likely to find a prayer rug got in
Persia, a bit of gorgeous glaze from China, a scarf from some temple in
India, and on it a book, hand-tooled and rare. The Winnebagoans seem to
know what is being served and worn, from salad to veilings, surprisingly
soon after New York has informed itself on those subjects. The
7:52 Northwestern morning train out of Winnebago was always pretty
comfortably crowded with shoppers who were taking a five-hour run down
to Chicago to get a hat and see the new musical show at the Illinois.
So Schabelitz's coming was an event, but not an unprecedented one.
Except to Theodore. Theodore had a ticket for the concert (his mother
had seen to that), and he talked of nothing else. He was going with his
violin teacher, Emil Bauer. There were strange stories as to why Emil
Bauer, with his gift of teaching, should choose to bury himself in this
obscure little Wisconsin town. It was known that he had acquaintance
with the great and famous of the musical world. The East End set fawned
upon him, and his studio suppers were the exclusive social events in
Winnebago.
Schabelitz was to play in the evening. At half past three that afternoon
there entered Brandeis' Bazaar a white-faced, wide-eyed boy who was
Theodore Brandeis; a plump, voluble, and excited person who was Emil
Bauer; and a short, stocky man who looked rather like a foreign-born
artisan--plumber or steam-fitter--in his Sunday clothes. This was Levine
Schabelitz.
Molly Brandeis was selling a wash boiler to a fussy housewife who, in
her anxiety to assure herself of the flawlessness of her purchase, had
done everything but climb inside it. It had early been instilled in the
minds of Mrs. Brandeis's children that she was never to be approached
when busy with a customer. There were times when they rushed into the
store bursting with news or plans, but they had learned to control
their eagerness. This, though, was no ordinary news that had blanched
Theodore's face. At sight of the three, Mrs. Brandeis quietly turned
her boiler purchaser over to Pearl and came forward from the rear of the
store.
“Oh, Mother!” cried Theodore, an hysterical note in his voice. “Oh,
Mother!”
And in that moment Molly Brandeis knew. Emil Bauer introduced them,
floridly. Molly Brandeis held out her hand, and her keen brown eyes
looked straight and long into the gifted Russian's pale blue ones.
According to all rules he should have started a dramatic speech,
beginning with “Madame!” hand on heart. But Schabelitz the great had
sprung from Schabelitz the peasant boy, and in the process he had
managed, somehow, to retain the simplicity which was his charm. Still,
there was something queer and foreign in the way he bent over Mrs.
Brandeis's hand. We do not bow like that in Winnebago.
“Mrs. Brandeis, I am honored to meet you.”
“And I to meet you,” replied the shopkeeper in the black sateen apron.
“I have just had the pleasure of hearing your son play,” began
Schabelitz.
“Mr. Bauer called me out of my economics class at school, Mother, and
said that----”
“Theodore!” Theodore subsided. “He is only a boy,” went on Schabelitz,
and put one hand on Theodore's shoulder. “A very gifted boy. I hear
hundreds. Oh, how I suffer, sometimes, to listen to their devilish
scraping! To-day, my friend Bauer met me with that old plea, `You must
hear this pupil play. He has genius.' `Bah! Genius!' I said, and I swore
at him a little, for he is my friend, Bauer. But I went with him to his
studio--Bauer, that is a remarkably fine place you have there, above
that drug store; a room of exceptional proportions. And those rugs, let
me tell you----”
“Never mind the rugs, Schabelitz. Mrs. Brandeis here----”
“Oh, yes, yes! Well, dear lady, this boy of yours will be a great
violinist if he is willing to work, and work, and work. He has what you
in America call the spark. To make it a flame he must work, always work.
You must send him to Dresden, under Auer.”
“Dresden!” echoed Molly Brandeis faintly, and put one hand on the table
that held the fancy cups and saucers, and they jingled a little.
“A year, perhaps, first, in New York with Wolfsohn.”
Wolfsohn! New York! Dresden! It was too much even for Molly Brandeis'
well-balanced brain. She was conscious of feeling a little dizzy. At
that moment Pearl approached apologetically. “Pardon me, Mis' Brandeis,
but Mrs. Trost wants to know if you'll send the boiler special this
afternoon. She wants it for the washing early to-morrow morning.”
That served to steady her.
“Tell Mrs. Trost I'll send it before six to-night.” Her eyes rested on
Theodore's face, flushed now, and glowing. Then she turned and faced
Schabelitz squarely. “Perhaps you do not know that this store is our
support. I earn a living here for myself and my two children. You see
what it is--just a novelty and notion store in a country town. I speak
of this because it is the important thing. I have known for a long
time that Theodore's playing was not the playing of the average boy,
musically gifted. So what you tell me does not altogether surprise me.
But when you say Dresden--well, from Brandeis' Bazaar in Winnebago,
Wisconsin, to Auer, in Dresden, Germany, is a long journey for one
afternoon.”
“But of course you must have time to think it over. It must be brought
about, somehow.”
“Somehow----” Mrs. Brandeis stared straight ahead, and you could almost
hear that indomitable will of hers working, crashing over obstacles,
plowing through difficulties. Theodore watched her, breathless, as
though expecting an immediate solution. His mother's eyes met his own
intent ones, and at that her mobile mouth quirked in a sudden smile.
“You look as if you expected pearls to pop out of my mouth, son. And,
by the way, if you're going to a concert this evening don't you think
it would be a good idea to squander an hour on study this afternoon? You
may be a musical prodigy, but geometry's geometry.”
“Oh, Mother! Please!”
“I want to talk to Mr. Schabelitz and Mr. Bauer, alone.” She patted his
shoulder, and the last pat ended in a gentle push. “Run along.”
“I'll work, Mother. You know perfectly well I'll work.” But he looked
so startlingly like his father as he said it that Mrs. Brandeis felt a
clutching at her heart.
Theodore out of the way, they seemed to find very little to discuss,
after all. Schabelitz was so quietly certain, Bauer so triumphantly
proud.
Said Schabelitz, “Wolfsohn, of course, receives ten dollars a lesson
ordinarily.”
“Ten dollars!”
“But a pupil like Theodore is in the nature of an investment,” Bauer
hastened to explain. “An advertisement. After hearing him play, and
after what Schabelitz here will have to say for him, Wolfsohn will
certainly give Theodore lessons for nothing, or next to nothing. You
remember”--proudly--“I offered to teach him without charge, but you
would not have it.”
Schabelitz smote his friend sharply on the shoulder “The true musician!
Oh, Bauer, Bauer! That you should bury yourself in this----”
But Bauer stopped him with a gesture. “Mrs. Brandeis is a busy woman.
And as she says, this thing needs thinking over.”
“After all,” said Mrs. Brandeis, “there isn't much to think about. I
know just where I stand. It's a case of mathematics, that's all. This
business of mine is just beginning to pay. From now on I shall be able
to save something every year. It might be enough to cover his musical
education. It would mean that Fanny--my daughter--and I would have to
give up everything. For myself, I should be only too happy, too proud.
But it doesn't seem fair to her. After all, a girl----”
“It isn't fair,” broke in Schabelitz. “It isn't fair. But that is the
way of genius. It never is fair. It takes, and takes, and takes. I know.
My mother could tell you, if she were alive. She sold the little farm,
and my sisters gave up their dowries, and with them their hopes of
marriage, and they lived on bread and cabbage. That was not to pay for
my lessons. They never could have done that. It was only to send me to
Moscow. We were very poor. They must have starved. I have come to know,
since, that it was not worth it. That nothing could be worth it.”
“But it was worth it. Your mother would do it all over again, if she had
the chance. That's what we're for.”
Bauer pulled out his watch and uttered a horrified exclamation. “Himmel!
Four o'clock! And I have a pupil at four.” He turned hastily to Mrs.
Brandeis. “I am giving a little supper in my studio after the concert
to-night.”
“Oh, Gott!” groaned Schabelitz.
“It is in honor of Schabelitz here. You see how overcome he is. Will you
let me bring Theodore back with me after the concert? There will be some
music, and perhaps he will play for us.”
Schabelitz bent again in his queer little foreign bow. “And you, of
course, will honor us, Mrs. Brandeis.” He had never lived in Winnebago.
“Oh, certainly,” Bauer hastened to say. He had.
“I!” Molly Brandeis looked down at her apron, and stroked it with her
fingers. Then she looked up with a little smile that was not so pleasant
as her smile usually was. There had flashed across her quick mind a
picture of Mrs. G. Manville Smith. Mrs. G. Manville Smith, in an evening
gown whose decolletage was discussed from the Haley House to Gerretson's
department store next morning, was always a guest at Bauer's studio
affairs. “Thank you, but it is impossible. And Theodore is only a
schoolboy. Just now he needs, more than anything else in the world,
nine hours of sleep every night. There will be plenty of time for studio
suppers later. When a boy's voice is changing, and he doesn't know what
to do with his hands and feet, he is better off at home.”
“God! These mothers!” exclaimed Schabelitz. “What do they not know!”
“I suppose you are right.” Bauer was both rueful and relieved. It
would have been fine to show off Theodore as his pupil and Schabelitz's
protege. But Mrs. Brandeis? No, that would never do. “Well, I must go.
We will talk about this again, Mrs. Brandeis. In two weeks Schabelitz
will pass through Winnebago again on his way back to Chicago. Meanwhile
he will write Wolfsohn. I also. So! Come, Schabelitz!”
He turned to see that gentleman strolling off in the direction of the
notion counter behind which his expert eye had caught a glimpse of Sadie
in her white shirtwaist and her trim skirt. Sadie always knew what they
were wearing on State Street, Chicago, half an hour after Mrs. Brandeis
returned from one of her buying trips. Shirtwaists had just come in, and
with them those neat leather belts with a buckle, and about the throat
they were wearing folds of white satin ribbon, smooth and high and
tight, the two ends tied pertly at the back. Sadie would never be the
saleswoman that Pearl was, but her unfailing good nature and her cheery
self-confidence made her an asset in the store. Besides, she was pretty.
Mrs. Brandeis knew the value of a pretty clerk.
At the approach of this stranger Sadie leaned coyly against the stocking
rack and patted her paper sleevelets that were secured at wrist and
elbow with elastic bands. Her method was sure death to traveling men.
She prepared now to try it on the world-famous virtuoso. The ease with
which she succeeded surprised even Sadie, accustomed though she was to
conquest.
“Come, come, Schabelitz!” said Bauer again. “I must get along.”
“Then go, my friend. Go along and make your preparations for that studio
supper. The only interesting woman in Winnebago--” he bowed to Mrs.
Brandeis--“will not be there. I know them, these small-town society
women, with their imitation city ways. And bony! Always! I am enjoying
myself. I shall stay here.”
And he did stay. Sadie, talking it over afterward with Pearl and
Aloysius, put it thus:
“They say he's the grandest violin player in the world. Not that I care
much for the violin, myself. Kind of squeaky, I always think. But it
just goes to show they're all alike. Ain't it the truth? I jollied him
just like I did Sam Bloom, of Ganz & Pick, Novelties, an hour before. He
laughed just where Sam did. And they both handed me a line of talk about
my hair and eyes, only Sam said I was a doll, and this Schabelitz, or
whatever his name is, said I was as alluring as a Lorelei. I guess he
thought he had me there, but I didn't go through the seventh reader for
nothing. `If you think I'm flattered,' I said to him, `you're mistaken.
She was the mess who used to sit out on a rock with her back hair down,
combing away and singing like mad, and keeping an eye out for sailors up
and down the river. If I had to work that hard to get some attention,'
I said, `I'd give up the struggle, and settle down with a cat and a
teakettle.' At that he just threw back his head and roared. And when
Mrs. Brandeis came up he said something about the wit of these American
women. `Work is a great sharpener of wit--and wits,' Mrs. Brandeis said
to him. `Pearl, did Aloysius send Eddie out with that boiler, special?'
And she didn't pay any more attention to him, or make any more fuss
over him, than she would to a traveler with a line of samples she wasn't
interested in. I guess that's why he had such a good time.”
Sadie was right. That was the reason. Fanny, coming into the store half
an hour later, saw this man who had swayed thousands with his music,
down on his hands and knees in the toy section at the rear of Brandeis'
Bazaar. He and Sadie and Aloysius were winding up toy bears, and clowns,
and engines, and carriages, and sending them madly racing across the
floor. Sometimes their careening career was threatened with disaster
in the form of a clump of brooms or a stack of galvanized pails. But
Schabelitz would scramble forward with a shout and rescue them just
before the crash came, and set them deftly off again in the opposite
direction.
“This I must have for my boy in New York.” He held up a miniature hook
and ladder. “And this windmill that whirls so busily. My Leo is seven,
and his head is full of engines, and motors, and things that run on
wheels. He cares no more for music, the little savage, than the son of a
bricklayer.”
“Who is that man?” Fanny whispered, staring at him.
“Levine Schabelitz.”
“Schabelitz! Not the--”
“Yes.”
“But he's playing on the floor like--like a little boy! And laughing!
Why, Mother, he's just like anybody else, only nicer.”
If Fanny had been more than fourteen her mother might have told her that
all really great people are like that, finding joy in simple things. I
think that is the secret of their genius--the child in them that keeps
their viewpoint fresh, and that makes us children again when we listen
to them. It is the Schabelitzes of this world who can shout over a toy
engine that would bore a Bauer to death.
Fanny stood looking at him thoughtfully. She knew all about him.
Theodore's talk of the past week had accomplished that. Fanny knew that
here was a man who did one thing better than any one else in the world.
She thrilled to that thought. She adored the quality in people that
caused them to excel. Schabelitz had got hold of a jack-in-the-box, and
each time the absurd head popped out, with its grin and its squawk, he
laughed like a boy. Fanny, standing behind the wrapping counter, and
leaning on it with her elbows the better to see this great man, smiled
too, as her flexible spirit and her mobile mind caught his mood. She did
not know she was smiling. Neither did she know why she suddenly frowned
in the intensity of her concentration, reached up for one of the pencils
on the desk next the wrapping counter, and bent over the topmost sheet
of yellow wrapping paper that lay spread out before her. Her tongue-tip
curled excitedly at one corner of her mouth. Her head was cocked to one
side.
She was rapidly sketching a crude and startling likeness of Levine
Schabelitz as he stood there with the ridiculous toy in his hand. It
was a trick she often amused herself with at school. She had drawn her
school-teacher one day as she had looked when gazing up into the eyes of
the visiting superintendent, who was a married man. Quite innocently
and unconsciously she had caught the adoring look in the eyes of Miss
McCook, the teacher, and that lady, happening upon the sketch later, had
dealt with Fanny in a manner seemingly unwarranted. In the same way it
was not only the exterior likeness of the man which she was catching
now--the pompadour that stood stiffly perpendicular like a brush; the
square, yellow peasant teeth; the strong, slender hands and wrists; the
stocky figure; the high cheek bones; the square-toed, foreign-looking
shoes and the trousers too wide at the instep to have been cut by an
American tailor. She caught and transmitted to paper, in some uncanny
way, the simplicity of the man who was grinning at the jack-in-the-box
that smirked back at him. Behind the veneer of poise and polish born of
success and adulation she had caught a glimpse of the Russian peasant
boy delighted with the crude toy in his hand. And she put it down
eagerly, wetting her pencil between her lips, shading here, erasing
there.
Mrs. Brandeis, bustling up to the desk for a customer's change, and with
a fancy dish to be wrapped, in her hand, glanced over Fanny's shoulder.
She leaned closer. “Why, Fanny, you witch!”
Fanny gave a little crow of delight and tossed her head in a way that
switched her short curls back from where they had fallen over her
shoulders. “It's like him, isn't it?”
“It looks more like him than he does himself.” With which Molly Brandeis
unconsciously defined the art of cartooning.
Fanny looked down at it, a smile curving her lips. Mrs. Brandeis, dish
in hand, counted her change expertly from the till below the desk, and
reached for the sheet of wrapping paper just beneath that on which Fanny
had made her drawing. At that moment Schabelitz, glancing up, saw her,
and came forward, smiling, the jack-in-the-box still in his hand.
“Dear lady, I hope I have not entirely disorganized your shop. I have
had a most glorious time. Would you believe it, this jack-in-the-box
looks exactly--but exactly--like my manager, Weber, when the box-office
receipts are good. He grins just--”
And then his eye fell on the drawing that Fanny was trying to cover with
one brown paw. “Hello! What's this?” Then he looked at Fanny. Then he
grasped her wrist in his fingers of steel and looked at the sketch that
grinned back at him impishly. “Well, I'm damned!” exploded Schabelitz in
amusement, and surprise, and appreciation. And did not apologize. “And
who is this young lady with the sense of humor?”
“This is my little girl, Fanny.”
He looked down at the rough sketch again, with its clean-cut satire, and
up again at the little girl in the school coat and the faded red tam o'
shanter, who was looking at him shyly, and defiantly, and provokingly,
all at once.
“Your little girl Fanny, h'm? The one who is to give up everything that
the boy Theodore may become a great violinist.” He bent again over the
crude, effective cartoon, then put a forefinger gently under the child's
chin and tipped her glowing face up to the light. “I am not so sure now
that it will work. As for its being fair! Why, no! No!”
Fanny waited for her mother that evening, and they walked home together.
Their step and swing were very much alike, now that Fanny's legs were
growing longer. She was at the backfisch age.
“What did he mean, Mother, when he said that about Theodore being a
great violinist, and its not being fair? What isn't fair? And how did he
happen to be in the store, anyway? He bought a heap of toys, didn't he?
I suppose he's awfully rich.”
“To-night, when Theodore's at the concert, I'll tell you what he meant,
and all about it.”
“I'd love to hear him play, wouldn't you? I'd just love to.”
Over Molly Brandeis's face there came a curious look. “You could hear
him, Fanny, in Theodore's place. Theodore would have to stay home if I
told him to.”
Fanny's eyes and mouth grew round with horror. “Theodore stay home! Why
Mrs.--Molly--Brandeis!” Then she broke into a little relieved laugh.
“But you're just fooling, of course.”
“No, I'm not. If you really want to go I'll tell Theodore to give up his
ticket to his sister.”
“Well, my goodness! I guess I'm not a pig. I wouldn't have Theodore stay
home, not for a million dollars.”
“I knew you wouldn't,” said Molly Brandeis as they swung down Norris
Street. And she told Fanny briefly of what Schabelitz had said about
Theodore.
It was typical of Theodore that he ate his usual supper that night. He
may have got his excitement vicariously from Fanny. She was thrilled
enough for two. Her food lay almost untouched on her plate. She
chattered incessantly. When Theodore began to eat his second baked apple
with cream, her outraged feelings voiced their protest.
“But, Theodore, I don't see how you can!”
“Can what?”
“Eat like that. When you're going to hear him play. And after what he
said, and everything.”
“Well, is that any reason why I should starve to death?”
“But I don't see how you can,” repeated Fanny helplessly, and looked
at her mother. Mrs. Brandeis reached for the cream pitcher and poured
a little more cream over Theodore's baked apple. Even as she did it
her eyes met Fanny's, and in them was a certain sly amusement, a
little gleam of fun, a look that said, “Neither do I.” Fanny sat back,
satisfied. Here, at least, was some one who understood.
At half past seven Theodore, looking very brushed and sleek, went off to
meet Emil Bauer. Mrs. Brandeis had looked him over, and had said, “Your
nails!” and sent him back to the bathroom, and she had resisted the
desire to kiss him because Theodore disliked demonstration. “He hated to
be pawed over,” was the way he put it. After he had gone, Mrs. Brandeis
went into the dining-room where Fanny was sitting. Mattie had cleared
the table, and Fanny was busy over a book and a tablet, by the light
of the lamp that they always used for studying. It was one of the rare
occasions when she had brought home a school lesson. It was arithmetic,
and Fanny loathed arithmetic. She had no head for mathematics. The set
of problems were eighth-grade horrors, in which A is digging a well 20
feet deep and 9 feet wide; or in which A and B are papering two rooms,
or building two fences, or plastering a wall. If A does his room in 9
1/2 days, the room being 12 feet high, 20 feet long, and 15 1/2 feet
wide, how long will it take B to do a room 14 feet high, 11 3/4 feet,
etc.
Fanny hated the indefatigable A and B with a bitter personal hatred.
And as for that occasional person named C, who complicated matters still
more--!
Sometimes Mrs. Brandeis helped to disentangle Fanny from the mazes of
her wall paper problems, or dragged her up from the bottom of the well
when it seemed that she was down there for eternity unless a friendly
hand rescued her. As a rule she insisted that Fanny crack her own
mathematical nuts. She said it was good mental training, not to speak
of the moral side of it. But to-night she bent her quick mind upon the
problems that were puzzling her little daughter, and cleared them up in
no time.
When Fanny had folded her arithmetic papers neatly inside her book and
leaned back with a relieved sigh Molly Brandeis bent forward in the
lamplight and began to talk very soberly. Fanny, red-cheeked and
bright-eyed from her recent mental struggles, listened interestedly,
then intently, then absorbedly. She attempted to interrupt, sometimes,
with an occasional, “But, Mother, how--” but Mrs. Brandeis shook her
head and went on. She told Fanny a few things about her early married
life--things that made Fanny look at her with new eyes. She had always
thought of her mother as her mother, in the way a fourteen-year-old
girl does. It never occurred to her that this mother person, who was
so capable, so confident, so worldly-wise, had once been a very young
bride, with her life before her, and her hopes stepping high, and her
love keeping time with her hopes. Fanny heard, fascinated, the story
of this girl who had married against the advice of her family and her
friends.
Molly Brandeis talked curtly and briefly, and her very brevity and lack
of embroidering details made the story stand out with stark realism. It
was such a story of courage, and pride, and indomitable will, and sheer
pluck as can only be found among the seemingly commonplace.
“And so,” she finished, “I used to wonder, sometimes, whether it
was worth while to keep on, and what it was all for. And now I know.
Theodore is going to make up for everything. Only we'll have to help
him, first. It's going to be hard on you, Fanchen. I'm talking to you as
if you were eighteen, instead of fourteen. But I want you to understand.
That isn't fair to you either--my expecting you to understand. Only I
don't want you to hate me too much when you're a woman, and I'm gone,
and you'll remember--”
“Why, Mother, what in the world are you talking about? Hate you!”
“For what I took from you to give to him, Fanny. You don't understand
now. Things must be made easy for Theodore. It will mean that you and
I will have to scrimp and save. Not now and then, but all the time.
It will mean that we can't go to the theater, even occasionally, or to
lectures, or concerts. It will mean that your clothes won't be as pretty
or as new as the other girls' clothes. You'll sit on the front porch
evenings, and watch them go by, and you'll want to go too.”
“As if I cared.”
“But you will care. I know. I know. It's easy enough to talk about
sacrifice in a burst of feeling; but it's the everyday, shriveling grind
that's hard. You'll want clothes, and books, and beaux, and education,
and you ought to have them. They're your right. You ought to have them!”
Suddenly Molly Brandeis' arms were folded on the table, and her head
came down on her arms and she was crying, quietly, horribly, as a man
cries. Fanny stared at her a moment in unbelief. She had not seen her
mother cry since the day of Ferdinand Brandeis' death. She scrambled
out of her chair and thrust her head down next her mother's, so that her
hot, smooth cheek touched the wet, cold one. “Mother, don't! Don't Molly
dearie. I can't bear it. I'm going to cry too. Do you think I care for
old dresses and things? I should say not. It's going to be fun going
without things. It'll be like having a secret or something. Now stop,
and let's talk about it.”
Molly Brandeis wiped her eyes, and sat up, and smiled. It was a watery
and wavering smile, but it showed that she was mistress of herself
again.
“No,” she said, “we just won't talk about it any more. I'm tired, that's
what's the matter with me, and I haven't sense enough to know it. I'll
tell you what. I'm going to put on my kimono, and you'll make some
fudge. Will you? We'll have a party, all by ourselves, and if Mattie
scolds about the milk to-morrow you just tell her I said you could. And
I think there are some walnut meats in the third cocoa can on the shelf
in the pantry. Use 'em all.”