“You can come down now. They're all here, I guess. Doctor Thalmann's
going to begin.” Fanny, huddled in a chair in her bedroom, looked up
into the plump, kindly face of the woman who was bending over her.
Then she stood up, docilely, and walked toward the stairs with a heavy,
stumbling step.
“I'd put down my veil if I were you,” said the neighbor woman. And
reached up for the black folds that draped Fanny's hat. Fanny's fingers
reached for them too, fumblingly. “I'd forgotten about it,” she said.
The heavy crape fell about her shoulders, mercifully hiding the swollen,
discolored face. She went down the stairs. There was a little stir,
a swaying toward her, a sibilant murmur of sympathy from the crowded
sitting-room as she passed through to the parlor where Rabbi Thalmann
stood waiting, prayer book in hand, in front of that which was covered
with flowers. Fanny sat down. A feeling of unreality was strong upon
her. Doctor Thalmann cleared his throat and opened the book.
After all, it was not Rabbi Thalmann's funeral sermon that testified to
Mrs. Brandeis's standing in the community. It was the character of the
gathering that listened to what he had to say. Each had his own opinion
of Molly Brandeis, and needed no final eulogy to confirm it. Father
Fitzpatrick was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white
showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a leading
man. He had been of those who had sat in what he called Mrs. Brandeis's
confessional, there in the quiet little store. The two had talked of
things theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it was, was
no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense and a drama sense,
and one day they discovered, queerly enough, that they worshiped the
same God. Any one of these things is basis enough for a friendship.
Besides, Molly Brandeis could tell an Irish story inimitably. And you
should have heard Father Fitzpatrick do the one about Ikey and the
nickel. No, I think the Catholic priest, seeming to listen with such
respectful attention, really heard very little of what Rabbi Thalmann
had to say.
Herman Walthers was there, he of the First National Bank of Winnebago,
whose visits had once brought such terror to Molly Brandeis. Augustus G.
Gerretson was there, and three of his department heads. Emil Bauer sat
just behind him. In a corner was Sadie, the erstwhile coquette, very
subdued now, and months behind the fashions in everything but baby
clothes. Hen Cody, who had done all of Molly Brandeis's draying, sat,
in unaccustomed black, next to Mayor A. J. Dawes. Temple Emmanu-el
was there, almost a unit. The officers of Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid
Society sat in a row. They had never honored Molly Brandeis with office
in the society--she who could have managed its business, politics and
social activities with one hand tied behind her, and both her bright
eyes shut. In the kitchen and on the porch and in the hallway stood
certain obscure people--women whose finger tips stuck out of their
cotton gloves, and whose skirts dipped ludicrously in the back. Only
Molly Brandeis could have identified them for you. Mrs. Brosch, the
butter and egg woman, hovered in the dining-room doorway. She had
brought a pound of butter. It was her contribution to the funeral baked
meats. She had deposited it furtively on the kitchen table. Birdie
Callahan, head waitress at the Haley House, found a seat just next to
the elegant Mrs. Morehouse, who led the Golf Club crowd. A haughty young
lady in the dining-room, Birdie Callahan, in her stiffly starched white,
but beneath the icy crust of her hauteur was a molten mass of good humor
and friendliness. She and Molly Brandeis had had much in common.
But no one--not even Fanny Brandeis--ever knew who sent the great
cluster of American Beauty roses that had come all the way from
Milwaukee. There had been no card, so who could have guessed that they
came from Blanche Devine. Blanche Devine, of the white powder, and the
minks, and the diamonds, and the high-heeled shoes, and the plumes,
lived in the house with the closed shutters, near the freight depot.
She often came into Brandeis' Bazaar. Molly Brandeis had never allowed
Sadie, or Pearl, or Fanny or Aloysius to wait on her. She had attended
to her herself. And one day, for some reason, Blanche Devine found
herself telling Molly Brandeis how she had come to be Blanche Devine,
and it was a moving and terrible story. And now her cardless flowers, a
great, scarlet sheaf of them, lay next the chaste white roses that had
been sent by the Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid. Truly, death is a great
leveler.
In a vague way Fanny seemed to realize that all these people were
there. I think she must even have found a certain grim comfort in their
presence. Hers had not been the dry-eyed grief of the strong, such as
you read about. She had wept, night and day, hopelessly, inconsolably,
torturing herself with remorseful questions. If she had not gone
skating, might she not have seen how ill her mother was? Why hadn't
she insisted on the doctor when her mother refused to eat the Christmas
dinner? Blind and selfish, she told herself; blind and selfish. Her face
was swollen and distorted now, and she was thankful for the black veil
that shielded her. Winnebago was scandalized to see that she wore no
other black. Mrs. Brandeis had never wanted Fanny to wear it; she hadn't
enough color, she said. So now she was dressed in her winter suit of
blue, and her hat with the pert blue quill. And the little rabbi's voice
went on and on, and Fanny knew that it could not be true. What had all
this dust-to-dust talk to do with any one as vital, and electric, and
constructive as Molly Brandeis. In the midst of the service there was a
sharp cry, and a little stir, and the sound of stifled sobbing. It was
Aloysius the merry, Aloysius the faithful, whose Irish heart was quite
broken. Fanny ground her teeth together in an effort at self-control.
And so to the end, and out past the little hushed, respectful group
on the porch, to the Jewish cemetery on the state road. The snow of
Christmas week was quite virgin there, except for that one spot where
the sexton and his men had been at work. Then back at a smart jog trot
through the early dusk of the winter afternoon, the carriage wheels
creaking upon the hard, dry snow. And Fanny Brandeis said to herself
(she must have been a little light-headed from hunger and weeping):
“Now I'll know whether it's true or not. When I go into the house. If
she's there she'll say, `Well Fanchen! Hungry? Oh, but my little girl's
hands are cold! Come here to the register and warm them.' O God, let her
be there! Let her be there!”
But she wasn't. The house had been set to rights by brisk and
unaccustomed hands. There was a bustle and stir in the dining-room, and
from the kitchen came the appetizing odors of cooking food. Fanny went
up to a chair that was out of its place, and shoved it back against the
wall where it belonged. She straightened a rug, carried the waste basket
from the desk to the spot near the living-room table where it had always
served to hide the shabby, worn place in the rug. Fanny went up-stairs,
past The Room that was once more just a comfortable, old fashioned
bedroom, instead of a mysterious and awful chamber; bathed her face,
tidied her hair, came down-stairs again, ate and drank things hot and
revivifying. The house was full of kindly women.
Fanny found herself clinging to them--clinging desperately to these
ample, broad-bosomed, soothing women whom she had scarcely known before.
They were always there, those women, and their husbands too; kindly,
awkward men, who patted her shoulder, and who spoke of Molly Brandeis
with that sincerity of admiration such as men usually give only to men.
People were constantly popping in at the back door with napkin-covered
trays, and dishes and baskets. A wonderful and beautiful thing, that
homely small-town sympathy that knows the value of physical comfort in
time of spiritual anguish.
Two days after the funeral Fanny Brandeis went back to the store, much
as her mother had done many years before, after her husband's death. She
looked about at the bright, well-stocked shelves and tables with a new
eye--a speculative eye. The Christmas season was over. January was the
time for inventory and for replenishment. Mrs. Brandeis had always
gone to Chicago the second week in January for the spring stock. But
something was forming in Fanny Brandeis's mind--a resolve that grew so
rapidly as to take her breath away. Her brain felt strangely clear and
keen after the crashing storm of grief that had shaken her during the
past week.
“What are you going to do now?” people had asked her, curious and
interested. “Is Theodore coming back?”
“I don't know--yet.” In answer to the first. And, “No. Why should he? He
has his work.”
“But he could be of such help to you.”
“I'll help myself,” said Fanny Brandeis, and smiled a curious smile
that had in it more of bitterness and less of mirth than any smile has a
right to have.
Mrs. Brandeis had left a will, far-sighted business woman that she was.
It was a terse, clear-headed document, that gave “to Fanny Brandeis, my
daughter,” the six-thousand-dollar insurance, the stock, good-will and
fixtures of Brandeis' Bazaar, the house furnishings, the few pieces of
jewelry in their old-fashioned setting. To Theodore was left the sum of
fifteen hundred dollars. He had received his share in the years of his
musical education.
Fanny Brandeis did not go to Chicago that January. She took inventory
of Brandeis' Bazaar, carefully and minutely. And then, just as carefully
and minutely she took stock of Fanny Brandeis. There was something
relentless and terrible in the way she went about this self-analysis.
She walked a great deal that winter, often out through the drifts to the
little cemetery. As she walked her mind was working, working. She held
long mental conversations with herself during these walks, and once she
was rather frightened to find herself talking aloud. She wondered if she
had done that before. And a plan was maturing in her brain, while the
fight went on within herself, thus:
“You'll never do it, Fanny. You're not built that way.”
“Oh, won't I! Watch me! Give me time.”
“You'll think of what your mother would have done under the same
conditions, and you'll do that thing.”
“I won't. Not unless it's the long-headed thing to do. I'm through being
sentimental and unselfish. What did it bring her? Nothing!”
The weeks went by. Fanny worked hard in the store, and bought little.
February came, and with the spring her months of private thinking bore
fruit. There came to Fanny Brandeis a great resolve. She would put
herself in a high place. Every talent she possessed, every advantage,
every scrap of knowledge, every bit of experience, would be used toward
that end. She would make something of herself. It was a worldly, selfish
resolve, born of a bitter sorrow, and ambition, and resentment. She made
up her mind that she would admit no handicaps. Race, religion, training,
natural impulses--she would discard them all if they stood in her way.
She would leave Winnebago behind. At best, if she stayed there, she
could never accomplish more than to make her business a more than
ordinarily successful small-town store. And she would be--nobody. No,
she had had enough of that. She would crush and destroy the little girl
who had fasted on that Day of Atonement; the more mature girl who had
written the thesis about the paper mill rag-room; the young woman who
had drudged in the store on Elm Street. In her place she would mold a
hard, keen-eyed, resolute woman, whose godhead was to be success, and
to whom success would mean money and position. She had not a head for
mathematics, but out of the puzzling problems and syllogisms in geometry
she had retained in her memory this one immovable truth:
A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
With her mental eye she marked her two points, and then, starting from
the first, made directly for the second. But she forgot to reckon with
the law of tangents. She forgot, too, how paradoxical a creature
was this Fanny Brandeis whose eyes filled with tears at sight of a
parade--just the sheer drama of it--were the marchers G. A. R. veterans,
school children in white, soldiers, Foresters, political marching clubs;
and whose eyes burned dry and bright as she stood over the white mound
in the cemetery on the state road. Generous, spontaneous, impulsive,
warm-hearted, she would be cold, calculating, deliberate, she told
herself.
Thousands of years of persecution behind her made her quick to
appreciate suffering in others, and gave her an innate sense of
fellowship with the downtrodden. She resolved to use that sense as a
searchlight aiding her to see and overcome obstacles. She told herself
that she was done with maudlin sentimentality. On the rare occasions
when she had accompanied her mother to Chicago, the two women had found
delight in wandering about the city's foreign quarters. When other
small-town women buyers snatched occasional moments of leisure for the
theater or personal shopping, these two had spent hours in the ghetto
around Jefferson and Taylor, and Fourteenth Streets. Something in
the sight of these people--alien, hopeful, emotional, often
grotesque--thrilled and interested both the women. And at sight of an
ill-clad Italian, with his slovenly, wrinkled old-young wife, turning
the handle of his grind organ whilst both pairs of eyes searched windows
and porches and doorsteps with a hopeless sort of hopefulness, she lost
her head entirely and emptied her limp pocketbook of dimes, and nickels,
and pennies. Incidentally it might be stated that she loved the cheap
and florid music of the hand organ itself.
It was rumored that Brandeis' Bazaar was for sale. In the spring
Gerretson's offered Fanny the position of buyer and head of the china,
glassware, and kitchenware sections. Gerretson's showed an imposing
block of gleaming plate-glass front now, and drew custom from a dozen
thrifty little towns throughout the Fox River Valley. Fanny refused the
offer. In March she sold outright the stock, good-will, and fixtures of
Brandeis' Bazaar. The purchaser was a thrifty, farsighted traveling
man who had wearied of the road and wanted to settle down. She sold the
household goods too--those intimate, personal pieces of wood and cloth
that had become, somehow, part of her life. She had grown up with them.
She knew the history of every nick, every scratch and worn spot. Her
mother lived again in every piece. The old couch went off in a farmer's
wagon. Fanny turned away when they joggled it down the front steps and
into the rude vehicle. It was like another funeral. She was furious to
find herself weeping again. She promised herself punishment for that.
Up in her bedroom she opened the bottom drawer of her bureau. That
bureau and its history and the history of every piece of furniture in
the room bore mute testimony to the character of its occupant; to her
protest against things as she found them, and her determination to
make them over to suit her. She had spent innumerable Sunday mornings
wielding the magic paint brush that had transformed the bedroom from
dingy oak to gleaming cream enamel. She sat down on the floor now,
before the bureau, and opened the bottom drawer.
In a corner at the back, under the neat pile of garments, was a
tightly-rolled bundle of cloth. Fanny reached for it, took it out, and
held it in her hands a moment. Then she unrolled it slowly, and the
bundle revealed itself to be a faded, stained, voluminous gingham apron,
blue and white. It was the kind of apron women don when they perform
some very special household ritual--baking, preserving, house cleaning.
It crossed over the shoulders with straps, and its generous fullness ran
all the way around the waist. It was discolored in many places with the
brown and reddish stains of fruit juices. It had been Molly Brandeis'
canning apron. Fanny had come upon it hanging on a hook behind the
kitchen door, after that week in December. And at sight of it all her
fortitude and forced calm had fled. She had spread her arms over the
limp, mute, yet speaking thing dangling there, and had wept so wildly
and uncontrollably as to alarm even herself.
Nothing in connection with her mother's death had power to call up such
poignant memories as did this homely, intimate garment. She saw again
the steamy kitchen, deliciously scented with the perfume of cooking
fruit, or the tantalizing, mouth-watering spiciness of vinegar and
pickles. On the stove the big dishpan, in which the jelly glasses and
fruit jars, with their tops and rubbers, bobbed about in hot water.
In the great granite kettle simmered the cooking fruit Molly Brandeis,
enveloped in the familiar blue-and-white apron, stood over it, like a
priestess, stirring, stirring, slowly, rhythmically. Her face would be
hot and moist with the steam, and very tired too, for she often came
home from the store utterly weary, to stand over the kettle until ten
or eleven o'clock. But the pride in it as she counted the golden or ruby
tinted tumblers gleaming in orderly rows as they cooled on the kitchen
table!
“Fifteen glasses of grape jell, Fan! And I didn't mix a bit of apple
with it. I didn't think I'd get more than ten. And nine of the quince
preserve. That makes--let me see--eighty-three, ninety-eight--one
hundred and seven altogether.”
“We'll never eat it, Mother.”
“You said that last year, and by April my preserve cupboard looked like
Old Mother Hubbard's.”
But then, Mrs. Brandeis was famous for her preserves, as Father
Fitzpatrick, and Aloysius, and Doctor Thalmann, and a dozen others could
testify. After the strain and flurry of a busy day at the store there
was something about this homely household rite that brought a certain
sense of rest and peace to Molly Brandeis.
All this moved through Fanny Brandeis's mind as she sat with the
crumpled apron in her lap, her eyes swimming with hot tears. The very
stains that discolored it, the faded blue of the front breadth, the
frayed buttonhole, the little scorched place where she had burned a hole
when trying unwisely to lift a steaming kettle from the stove with the
apron's corner, spoke to her with eloquent lips. That apron had become
a vice with Fanny. She brooded over it as a mother broods over the
shapeless, scuffled bit of leather that was a baby's shoe; as a woman,
widowed, clings to a shabby, frayed old smoking jacket. More than once
she had cried herself to sleep with the apron clasped tightly in her
arms.
She got up from the floor now, with the apron in her hands, and went
down the stairs, opened the door that led to the cellar, walked heavily
down those steps and over to the furnace. She flung open the furnace
door. Red and purple the coal bed gleamed, with little white flame
sprites dancing over it. Fanny stared at it a moment, fascinated. Her
face was set, her eyes brilliant. Suddenly she flung the tightly-rolled
apron into the heart of the gleaming mass. She shut her eyes then.
The fire seemed to hold its breath for a moment. Then, with a gasp, it
sprang upon its food. The bundle stiffened, writhed, crumpled, sank, lay
a blackened heap, was dissolved. The fire bed glowed red and purple as
before, except for a dark spot in its heart. Fanny shivered a little.
She shut the furnace door and went up-stairs again.
“Smells like something burning--cloth, or something,” called Annie, from
the kitchen.
“It's only an old apron that was cluttering up my--my bureau drawer.”
Thus she successfully demonstrated the first lesson in the cruel and
rigid course of mental training she had mapped out for herself.
Leaving Winnebago was not easy. There is something about a small town
that holds you. Your life is so intimately interwoven with that of your
neighbor. Existence is so safe, so sane, so sure. Fanny knew that when
she turned the corner of Elm Street every third person she met would
speak to her. Life was made up of minute details, too trivial for the
notice of the hurrying city crowds. You knew when Milly Glaenzer changed
the baby buggy for a go-cart. The youngest Hupp boy--Sammy--who was
graduated from High School in June, is driving A. J. Dawes's automobile
now. My goodness, how time flies! Doeppler's grocery has put in
plate-glass windows, and they're getting out-of-season vegetables every
day now from Milwaukee. As you pass you get the coral glow of tomatoes,
and the tender green of lettuces. And that vivid green? Fresh young
peas! And in February. Well! They've torn down the old yellow brick
National Bank, and in its place a chaste Greek Temple of a building
looks rather contemptuously down its classic columns upon the farmer's
wagons drawn up along the curb. If Fanny Brandeis' sense of proportion
had not been out of plumb she might have realized that, to Winnebago,
the new First National Bank building was as significant and epochal as
had been the Woolworth Building to New York.
The very intimacy of these details, Fanny argued, was another reason for
leaving Winnebago. They were like detaining fingers that grasped at your
skirts, impeding your progress.
She had early set about pulling every wire within her reach that might
lead, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance of her ambition. She
got two offers from Milwaukee retail stores. She did not consider them
for a moment. Even a Chicago department store of the second grade (one
of those on the wrong side of State Street) did not tempt her. She knew
her value. She could afford to wait. There was money enough on which to
live comfortably until the right chance presented itself. She knew every
item of her equipment, and she conned them to herself greedily:
Definite charm of manner; the thing that is called magnetism; brains;
imagination; driving force; health; youth; and, most precious of all,
that which money could not buy, nor education provide--experience.
Experience, a priceless weapon, that is beaten into shape only by
much contact with men and women, and that is sharpened by much rubbing
against the rough edges of this world.
In April her chance came to her; came in that accidental, haphazard way
that momentous happenings have. She met on Elm Street a traveling man
from whom Molly Brandeis had bought for years. He dropped both sample
cases and shook hands with Fanny, eying her expertly and approvingly,
and yet without insolence. He was a wise, road-weary, skillful member
of his fraternity, grown gray in years of service, and a little bitter.
Though perhaps that was due partly to traveling man's dyspepsia, brought
on by years of small-town hotel food.
“So you've sold out.”
“Yes. Over a month ago.”
“H'm. That was a nice little business you had there. Your ma built it up
herself. There was a woman! Gosh! Discounted her bills, even during the
panic.”
Fanny smiled a reflective little smile. “That line is a complete
characterization of my mother. Her life was a series of panics. But she
never lost her head. And she always discounted.”
He held out his hand. “Well, glad I met you.” He picked up his sample
cases. “You leaving Winnebago?”
“Yes.”
“Going to the city, I suppose. Well you're a smart girl. And your
mother's daughter. I guess you'll get along all right. What house are
you going with?”
“I don't know. I'm waiting for the right chance. It's all in starting
right. I'm not going to hurry.”
He put down his cases again, and his eyes grew keen and kindly. He
gesticulated with one broad forefinger. “Listen, m' girl. I'm what they
call an old-timer. They want these high-power, eight-cylinder kids on
the road these days, and it's all we can do to keep up. But I've got
something they haven't got--yet. I never read anybody on the Psychology
of Business, but I know human nature all the way from Elm Street,
Winnebago, to Fifth Avenue, New York.”
“I'm sure you do,” said Fanny politely, and took a little step forward,
as though to end the conversation.
“Now wait a minute. They say the way to learn is to make mistakes. If
that's true, I'm at the head of the class. I've made 'em all. Now get
this. You start out and specialize. Specialize! Tie to one thing, and
make yourself an expert in it. But first be sure it's the right thing.”
“But how is one to be sure?”
“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 grass 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 Fanny. 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
Fanny 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 butter, or cheese, or vegetables, and drive
cheerfully back again, his empty wagon bumping 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 Fanny 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.
Fanny 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 grass, 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. Fanny 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.
Fanny 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,” Fanny said to
herself as she rang the bell.
Usually it was that sparse and spectacled person herself who opened the
parish house door, but to-day Fanny's ring was answered by Father Casey,
parish assistant. 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 Fanny and surveyed her
darkly.
“Father Fitzpatrick in? I'm Fanny Brandeis.”
“The reverend father is busy,” and the glass door began to close.
“Who is it?” boomed a voice from within. “Who're you turning away,
Casey?”
“A woman, not a parishioner.” 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 assistant,
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.”
Fanny'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
fishing 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.” Fanny drifted to the shelves, book-lover
that she was, and ran a finger over a half-dozen titles. “Your assistant
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 assistant 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 Fanny, 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, Fanny. 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
illustrate. 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.”
Fanny 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? Petitions--”
“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 nobody'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.”
Fanny turned on him passionately. “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--”
“No you're not. You're different. And I'll tell you why. You're a Jew.”
“Yes, I've got that handicap.”
“That isn't a handicap, Fanny. It's an asset. Outwardly you're like
any other girl of your age. Inwardly you've been molded by occupation,
training, religion, history, temperament, race, into something--”
“Ethnologists have proved that there is no such thing as a Jewish race,”
she interrupted pertly.
“H'm. Maybe. I don't know what you'd call it, then. You can't take a
people and persecute them for thousands of years, hounding them from
place to place, herding them in dark and filthy streets, without leaving
some sort of brand on them--a mark that differentiates. Sometimes it
doesn't show outwardly. But it's there, inside. You know, Fanny, how
it's always been said that no artist can became a genius until he has
suffered. You've suffered, you Jews, for centuries and centuries, until
you're all artists--quick to see drama because you've lived in it,
emotional, oversensitive, cringing, or swaggering, high-strung,
demonstrative, affectionate, generous.
“Maybe they're right. Perhaps it isn't a race. But what do you call the
thing, then, that made you draw me as you did that morning when you came
to ten o'clock mass and did a caricature of me in the pulpit. You showed
up something that I've been trying to hide for twenty years, till I'd
fooled everybody, including myself. My church is always packed. Nobody
else there ever saw it. I'll tell you, Fanny, what I've always said: the
Irish would be the greatest people in the world--if it weren't for the
Jews.”
They laughed together at that, and the tension was relieved.
“Well, anyway,” said Fanny, and patted his great arm, “I'd rather talk
to you than to any man in the world.”
“I hope you won't be able to say that a year from now, dear girl.”
And so they parted. He took her to the door himself, and watched her
slim figure down the street and across the ravine bridge, and thought
she walked very much like her mother, shoulders squared, chin high, hips
firm. He went back into the house, after surveying the sunset largely,
and encountered the dour Casey in the hall.
“I'll type your sermon now, sir--if it's done.”
“It isn't done, Casey. And you know it. Oh, Casey,”--(I wish your
imagination would supply that brogue, because it was such a deliciously
soft and racy thing)--“Oh, Casey, Casey! you're a better priest than I
am--but a poorer man.”
Fanny was to leave Winnebago the following Saturday. She had sold the
last of the household furniture, and had taken a room at the Haley
House. She felt very old and experienced--and sad. That, she told
herself, was only natural. Leaving things to which one is accustomed is
always hard. Queerly enough, it was her good-by to Aloysius that most
unnerved her. Aloysius had been taken on at Gerretson's, and the dignity
of his new position sat heavily upon him. You should have seen his ties.
Fanny sought him out at Gerretson's.
“It's flure-manager of the basement I am,” he said, and struck an
elegant attitude against the case of misses'-ready-to-wear coats. “And
when you come back to Winnebago, Miss Fanny,--and the saints send it
be soon--I'll bet ye'll see me on th' first flure, keepin' a stern but
kindly eye on the swellest trade in town. Ev'ry last thing I know I
learned off yur poor ma.”
“I hope it will serve you here, Aloysius.”
“Sarve me!” He bent closer. “Meanin' no offense, Miss Fanny; but say,
listen: Oncet ye get a Yiddish business education into an Irish head,
and there's no limit to the length ye can go. If I ain't a dry-goods
king be th' time I'm thirty I hope a packin' case'll fall on me.”
The sight of Aloysius seemed to recall so vividly all that was happy and
all that was hateful about Brandeis' Bazaar; all the bravery and pluck,
and resourcefulness of the bright-eyed woman he had admiringly called
his boss, that Fanny found her self-control slipping. She put out her
hand rather blindly to meet his great red paw (a dressy striped cuff
seemed to make it all the redder), murmured a word of thanks in return
for his fervent good wishes, and fled up the basement stairs.
On Friday night (she was to leave next day) she went to the temple. The
evening service began at seven. At half past six Fanny had finished her
early supper. She would drop in at Doctor Thalmann's house and walk with
him to temple, if he had not already gone.
“Nein, der Herr Rabbi ist noch hier--sure,” the maid said in answer
to Fanny's question. The Thalmann's had a German maid--one Minna--who
bullied the invalid Mrs. Thalmann, was famous for her cookies with
walnuts on the top, and who made life exceedingly difficult for
unlinguistic callers.
Rabbi Thalmann was up in his study. Fanny ran lightly up the stairs.
“Who is it, Emil? That Minna! Next Monday her week is up. She goes.”
“It's I, Mrs. Thalmann. Fanny Brandeis.”
“Na, Fanny! Now what do you think!”
In the brightly-lighted doorway of his little study appeared Rabbi
Thalmann, on one foot a comfortable old romeo, on the other a street
shoe. He held out both hands. “Only at supper we talked about you. Isn't
that so, Harriet?” He called into the darkened room.
“I came to say good-by. And I thought we might walk to temple together.
How's Mrs. Thalmann tonight?”
The little rabbi shook his head darkly, and waved a dismal hand. But
that was for Fanny alone. What he said was: “She's really splendid
to-day. A little tired, perhaps; but what is that?”
“Emil!” from the darkened bedroom. “How can you say that? But how! What
I have suffered to-day, only! Torture! And because I say nothing I'm not
sick.”
“Go in,” said Rabbi Thalmann.
So Fanny went in to the woman lying, yellow-faced, on the pillows of the
dim old-fashioned bedroom with its walnut furniture, and its red plush
mantel drape. Mrs. Thalmann held out a hand. Fanny took it in hers, and
perched herself on the edge of the bed. She patted the dry, devitalized
hand, and pressed it in her own strong, electric grip. Mrs. Thalmann
raised her head from the pillow.
“Tell me, did she have her white apron on?”
“White apron?”
“Minna, the girl.”
“Oh!” Fanny's mind jerked back to the gingham-covered figure that had
opened the door for her. “Yes,” she lied, “a white one--with crochet
around the bottom. Quite grand.”
Mrs. Thalmann sank back on the pillow with a satisfied sigh. “A wonder.”
She shook her head. “What that girl wastes alone, when I am helpless
here.”
Rabbi Thalmann came into the room, both feet booted now, and placed his
slippers neatly, toes out, under the bed. “Ach, Harriet, the girl is all
right. You imagine. Come, Fanny.” He took a great, fat watch out of his
pocket. “It is time to go.”
Mrs. Thalmann laid a detaining hand on Fanny's arm. “You will come often
back here to Winnebago?”
“I'm afraid not. Once a year, perhaps, to visit my graves.”
The sick eyes regarded the fresh young face. “Your mother, Fanny,
we didn't understand her so well, here in Winnebago, among us Jewish
ladies. She was different.”
Fanny's face hardened. She stood up. “Yes, she was different.”
“She comes often into my mind now, when I am here alone, with only the
four walls. We were aber dumm, we women--but how dumm! She was too smart
for us, your mother. Too smart. Und eine sehr brave frau.”
And suddenly Fanny, she who had resolved to set her face against all
emotion, and all sentiment, found herself with her glowing cheek pressed
against the withered one, and it was the weak old hand that patted her
now. So she lay for a moment, silent. Then she got up, straightened her
hat, smiled.
“Auf Wiedersehen,” she said in her best German. “Und gute Besserung.”
But the rabbi's wife shook her head. “Good-by.”
From the hall below Doctor Thalmann called to her. “Come, child, come!”
Then, “Ach, the light in my study! I forgot to turn it out, Fanny, be so
good, yes?”
Fanny entered the bright little room, reached up to turn off the light,
and paused a moment to glance about her. It was an ugly, comfortable,
old-fashioned room that had never progressed beyond the what-not period.
Fanny's eye was caught by certain framed pictures on the walls.
They were photographs of Rabbi Thalmann's confirmation classes.
Spindling-legged little boys in the splendor of patent-leather buttoned
shoes, stiff white shirts, black broadcloth suits with satin lapels;
self-conscious and awkward little girls--these in the minority--in white
dresses and stiff white hair bows. In the center of each group sat the
little rabbi, very proud and alert. Fanny was not among these. She had
never formally taken the vows of her creed. As she turned down the light
now, and found her way down the stairs, she told herself that she was
glad this was so.
It was a matter of only four blocks to the temple. But they were late,
and so they hurried, and there was little conversation. Fanny's arm was
tucked comfortably in his. It felt, somehow, startlingly thin, that arm.
And as they hurried along there was a jerky feebleness about his gait.
It was with difficulty that Fanny restrained herself from supporting him
when they came to a rough bit of walk or a sudden step. Something fine
in her prompted her not to. But the alert mind in that old frame sensed
what was going on in her thoughts.
“He's getting feeble, the old rabbi, h'm?”
“Not a bit of it. I've got all I can do to keep up with you. You set
such a pace.”
“I know. I know. They are not all so kind, Fanny. They are too
prosperous, this congregation of mine. And some day, `Off with his
head!' And in my place there will step a young man, with eye-glasses
instead of spectacles. They are tired of hearing about the prophets.
Texts from the Bible have gone out of fashion. You think I do not see
them giggling, h'm? The young people. And the whispering in the choir
loft. And the buzz when I get up from my chair after the second hymn.
`Is he going to have a sermon? Is he? Sure enough!' Na, he will make
them sit up, my successor. Sex sermons! Political lectures. That's it.
Lectures.” They were turning in at the temple now. “The race is to the
young, Fanny. To the young. And I am old.”
She squeezed the frail old arm in hers. “My dear!” she said. “My dear!”
A second breaking of her new resolutions.
One by one, two by two, they straggled in for the Friday evening
service, these placid, prosperous people, not unkind, but careless,
perhaps, in their prosperity.
“He's worth any ten of them,” Fanny said hotly to herself, as she sat
in her pew that, after to-morrow, would no longer be hers. “The dear
old thing. `Sex sermons.' And the race is to the young. How right he is.
Well, no one can say I'm not getting an early start.”
The choir had begun the first hymn when there came down the aisle a
stranger. There was a little stir among the congregation. Visitors were
rare. He was dark and very slim--with the slimness of steel wire.
He passed down the aisle rather uncertainly. A traveling man, Fanny
thought, dropped in, as sometimes they did, to say Kaddish for a
departed father or mother. Then she changed her mind. Her quick
eye noted his walk; a peculiar walk, with a spring in it. Only one
unfamiliar with cement pavements could walk like that. The Indians must
have had that same light, muscular step. He chose an empty pew halfway
down the aisle and stumbled into it rather awkwardly. Fanny thought he
was unnecessarily ugly, even for a man. Then he looked up, and nodded
and smiled at Lee Kohn, across the aisle. His teeth were very white,
and the smile was singularly sweet. Fanny changed her mind again. Not
so bad-looking, after all. Different, anyway. And then--why, of course!
Little Clarence Heyl, come back from the West. Clarence Heyl, the
cowardy-cat.
Her mind went back to that day of the street fight. She smiled. At that
moment Clarence Heyl, who had been screwing about most shockingly, as
though searching for some one, turned and met her smile, intended for
no one, with a startlingly radiant one of his own, intended most plainly
for her. He half started forward in his pew, and then remembered, and
sat back again, but with an effect of impermanence that was ludicrous.
It had been years since he had left Winnebago. At the time of his
mother's death they had tried to reach him, and had been unable to
get in touch with him for weeks. He had been off on some mountain
expedition, hundreds of miles from railroad or telegraph. Fanny
remembered having read about him in the Winnebago Courier. He seemed
to be climbing mountains a great deal--rather difficult mountains,
evidently, from the fuss they made over it. A queer enough occupation
for a cowardy-cat. There had been a book, too. About the Rockies. She
had not read it. She rather disliked these nature books, as do most
nature lovers. She told herself that when she came upon a flaming golden
maple in October she was content to know it was a maple, and to warm her
soul at its blaze.
There had been something in the Chicago Herald, though--oh, yes; it had
spoken of him as the brilliant young naturalist, Clarence Heyl. He was
to have gone on an expedition with Roosevelt. A sprained ankle, or some
such thing, had prevented. Fanny smiled again, to herself. His mother,
the fussy person who had been responsible for his boyhood reefers and
too-shiny shoes, and his cowardice too, no doubt, had dreamed of seeing
her Clarence a rabbi.
From that point Fanny's thoughts wandered to the brave old man in the
pulpit. She had heard almost nothing of the service. She looked at him
now--at him, and then at his congregation, inattentive and palpably
bored. As always with her, the thing stamped itself on her mind as a
picture. She was forever seeing a situation in terms of its human value.
How small he looked, how frail, against the background of the massive
Ark with its red velvet curtain. And how bravely he glared over his
blue glasses at the two Aarons girls who were whispering and giggling
together, eyes on the newcomer.
So this was what life did to you, was it? Squeezed you dry, and then
cast you aside in your old age, a pulp, a bit of discard. Well, they'd
never catch her that way.
Unchurchly thoughts, these. The little place was very peaceful and
quiet, lulling one like a narcotic. The rabbi's voice had in it that
soothing monotony bred of years in the pulpit. Fanny found her thoughts
straying back to the busy, bright little store on Elm Street, then
forward, to the Haynes-Cooper plant and the fight that was before her.
There settled about her mouth a certain grim line that sat strangely on
so young a face. The service marched on. There came the organ prelude
that announced the mourners' prayer. Then Rabbi Thalmann began to intone
the Kaddish. Fanny rose, prayer book in hand. At that Clarence Heyl
rose too, hurriedly, as one unaccustomed to the service, and stood
with unbowed head, looking at the rabbi interestedly, thoughtfully,
reverently. The two stood alone. Death had been kind to Congregation
Emanu-el this year. The prayer ended. Fanny winked the tears from
her eyes, almost wrathfully. She sat down, and there swept over her a
feeling of finality. It was like the closing of Book One in a volume
made up of three parts.
She said to herself: “Winnebago is ended, and my life here. How
interesting that I should know that, and feel it. It is like the first
movement in one of the concertos Theodore was forever playing. Now for
the second movement! It's got to be lively. Fortissimo! Presto!”
For so clever a girl as Fanny Brandeis, that was a stupid conclusion at
which to arrive. How could she think it possible to shed her past
life, like a garment? Those impressionable years, between fourteen and
twenty-four, could never be cast off. She might don a new cloak to cover
the old dress beneath, but the old would always be there, its folds
peeping out here and there, its outlines plainly to be seen. She might
eat of things rare, and drink of things costly, but the sturdy, stocky
little girl in the made-over silk dress, who had resisted the Devil in
Weinberg's pantry on that long-ago Day of Atonement, would always be
there at the feast. Myself, I confess I am tired of these stories of
young women who go to the big city, there to do battle with failure, to
grapple with temptation, sin and discouragement. So it may as well
be admitted that Fanny Brandeis' story was not that of a painful
hand-over-hand climb. She was made for success. What she attempted, she
accomplished. That which she strove for, she won. She was too sure, too
vital, too electric, for failure. No, Fanny Brandeis' struggle went on
inside. And in trying to stifle it she came near making the blackest
failure that a woman can make. In grubbing for the pot of gold she
almost missed the rainbow.
Rabbi Thalmann raised his arms for the benediction. Fanny looked
straight up at him as though stamping a picture on her mind. His eyes
were resting gently on her--or perhaps she just fancied that he spoke to
her alone as he began the words of the ancient closing prayer:
“May the blessings of the Lord Our God rest upon you. God bless thee
and keep thee. May He cause His countenance to shine upon thee and be
gracious unto thee. May God lift up His countenance unto thee...”
At the last word she hurried up the aisle, and down the stairs, into the
soft beauty of the May night. She felt she could stand no good-bys. In
her hotel room she busied herself with the half-packed trunks and bags.
So it was she altogether failed to see the dark young man who hurried
after her eagerly, and who was stopped by a dozen welcoming hands there
in the temple vestibule. He swore a deep inward “Damn!” as he saw her
straight, slim figure disappear down the steps and around the corner,
even while he found himself saying, politely, “Why, thanks! It's good to
BE back.” And, “Yes, things have changed. All but the temple, and Rabbi
Thalmann.”
Fanny left Winnebago at eight next morning.