The first week in June found her back in New York. That month of
absence had worked a subtle change. The two weeks spent in crossing and
recrossing had provided her with a let-down that had been almost jarring
in its completeness. Everything competitive had seemed to fade away with
the receding shore, and to loom up again only when the skyline became a
thing of smoke-banks, spires, and shafts. She had had only two weeks for
the actual transaction of her business. She must have been something of
a revelation to those Paris and Berlin manufacturers, accustomed though
they were to the brisk and irresistible methods of the American business
woman. She was, after all, absurdly young to be talking in terms
of millions, and she was amazingly well dressed. This last passed
unnoticed, or was taken for granted in Paris, but in Berlin, home of the
frump and the flour-sack figure, she was stared at, appreciatively. Her
business, except for one or two unimportant side lines, had to do with
two factories on whose product the Haynes-Cooper company had long had a
covetous eye. Quantity, as usual, was the keynote of their demand,
and Fanny's task was that of talking in six-figure terms to these
conservative and over-wary foreign manufacturers. That she had
successfully accomplished this, and that she had managed to impress them
also with the important part that time and promptness in delivery played
in a swift-moving machine like the Haynes-Cooper concern, was due to
many things beside her natural business ability. Self-confidence was
there, and physical vigor, and diplomacy. But above all there was that
sheer love of the game; the dramatic sense that enabled her to see
herself in the part. That alone precluded the possibility of failure.
She knew how youthful she looked, and how glowing. She anticipated the
look that came into their faces when she left polite small-talk behind
and soared up into the cold, rarefied atmosphere of business. She
delighted in seeing the admiring and tolerant smirk vanish and give way
to a startled and defensive attentiveness.
It might be mentioned that she managed, somehow, to spend almost half
a day in Petticoat Lane, and its squalid surroundings, while in London.
She actually prowled, alone, at night, in the evil-smelling, narrow
streets of the poorer quarter of Paris, and how she escaped unharmed is
a mystery that never bothered her, because she had never known fear of
streets. She had always walked on the streets of Winnebago, Wisconsin,
alone. It never occurred to her not to do the same in the streets of
Chicago, or New York, or London, or Paris. She found Berlin, with
its Adlon, its appalling cleanliness, its overfed populace, and its
omnipresent Kaiser forever scudding up and down Unter den Linden in his
chocolate-colored car, incredibly dull, and unpicturesque. Something she
had temporarily lost there in the busy atmosphere of the Haynes-Cooper
plant, seemed to have returned, miraculously.
New York, on her return, was something of a shock. She remembered how
vividly fresh it had looked to her on the day of that first visit,
months before. Now, to eyes fresh from the crisp immaculateness of Paris
and Berlin, Fifth avenue looked almost grimy, and certainly shabby in
spots.
Ella Monahan, cheerful, congratulatory, beaming, met her at the pier,
and Fanny was startled at her own sensation of happiness as she saw
that pink, good-natured face looking up at her from the crowd below. The
month that had gone by since last she saw Ella standing just so, seemed
to slip away and fade into nothingness.
“I waited over a day,” said Ella, “just to see you. My, you look grand!
I know where you got that hat. Galeries Lafayette. How much?”
“I don't expect you to believe it. Thirty-five francs. Seven dollars. I
couldn't get it for twenty-five here.”
They were soon clear of the customs. Ella had engaged a room for her at
the hotel they always used. As they rode uptown together, happily, Ella
opened her bag and laid a little packet of telegrams and letters in
Fanny's lap.
“I guess Fenger's pleased, all right, if telegrams mean anything. Not
that I know they're from him. But he said--”
But Fanny was looking up from one of them with a startled expression.
“He's here. Fenger's here.”
“In New York?” asked Ella, rather dully.
“Yes.” She ripped open another letter. It was from Theodore. He was
coming to New York in August. The Russian tour had been a brilliant
success. They had arranged a series of concerts for him in the United
States. He could give his concerto there. It was impossible in Russia,
Munich, even Berlin, because it was distinctly Jewish in theme--as
Jewish as the Kol Nidre, and as somber. They would have none of it in
Europe. Prejudice was too strong. But in America! He was happier than he
had been in years. Olga objected to coming to America, but she would
get over that. The little one was well, and she was learning to talk.
Actually! They were teaching her to say Tante Fanny.
“Well!” exclaimed Fanny, her eyes shining. She read bits of the letter
aloud to Ella. Ella was such a satisfactory sort of person to whom to
read a letter aloud. She exclaimed in all the right places. Her face was
as radiant as Fanny's. They both had forgotten all about Fenger, their
Chief. But they had been in their hotel scarcely a half hour, and Ella
had not done exclaiming over the bag that Fanny had brought her from
Paris, when his telephone call came.
He wasted very little time on preliminaries.
“I'll call for you at four. We'll drive through the park, and out by the
river, and have tea somewhere.”
“That would be wonderful. That is, if Ella's free. I'll ask her.”
“Ella?”
“Yes. She's right here. Hold the wire, will you?” She turned away from
the telephone to face Ella. “It's Mr. Fenger. He wants to take us both
driving this afternoon. You can go, can't you?”
“I certainly CAN,” replied Miss Monahan, with what might have appeared
to be undue force.
Fanny turned back to the telephone. “Yes, thanks. We can both go. We'll
be ready at four.”
Fanny decided that Fenger's muttered reply couldn't have been what she
thought it was.
Ella busied herself with the unpacking of a bag. She showed a
disposition to spoil Fanny. “You haven't asked after your friend, Mr.
Heyl. My land! If I had a friend like that--” “Oh, yes,” said Fanny,
vaguely. “I suppose you and he are great chums by this time. He's a nice
boy.”
“You don't suppose anything of the kind,” Ella retorted, crisply. “That
boy, as you call him--and it isn't always the man with the biggest fists
that's got the most fight in him--is about as far above me as--as--”
she sat down on the floor, ponderously, beside the open bag, and
gesticulated with a hairbrush, at loss for a simile “as an eagle is
above a waddling old duck. No, I don't mean that, either, because I
never did think much of the eagle, morally. But you get me. Not that
he knows it, or shows it. Heyl, I mean. Lord, no! But he's got
something--something kind of spiritual in him that makes you that way,
too. He doesn't say much, either. That's the funny part of it. I do all
the talking, seems, when I'm with him. But I find myself saying things
I didn't know I knew. He makes you think about things you're afraid to
face by yourself. Big things. Things inside of you.” She fell silent a
moment, sitting cross-legged before the bag. Then she got up, snapped
the bag shut, and bore it across the room to a corner. “You know he's
gone, I s'pose.”
“Gone?”
“To those mountains, or wherever it is he gets that look in his eyes
from. That's my notion of a job. They let him go for the whole summer,
roaming around being a naturalist, just so's he'll come back in the
winter.”
“And the column?” Fanny asked. “Do they let that go, too?”
“I guess he's going to do some writing for them up there. After all,
he's the column. It doesn't make much difference where he writes from.
Did you know it's being syndicated now, all over the country? Well, it
is. That's the secret of its success, I suppose. It isn't only a column
written about New York for a New York paper. It's about everything, for
anybody. It's the humanest stuff. And he isn't afraid of anything. New
York's crazy about him. They say he's getting a salary you wouldn't
believe. I'm a tongue-tied old fool when I'm with him, but then, he
likes to talk about you, mostly, so it doesn't matter.”
Fanny turned swiftly from the dressing-table, where she was taking the
pins out of her vigorous, abundant hair.
“What kind of thing does he say about me, Ellen girl. H'm? What kind of
thing?”
“Abuse, mostly. I'll be running along to my own room now. I'll be out
for lunch, but back at four, for that airing Fenger's so wild to have
me take. If I were you I'd lie down for an hour, till you get your
land-legs.” She poked her head in at the door again. “Not that you
look as if you needed it. You've got a different look, somehow. Kind of
rested. After all, there's nothing like an ocean voyage.”
She was gone. Fanny stood a moment, in the center of the room. There
was nothing relaxed or inert about her. Had you seen her standing there,
motionless, you would still have got a sense of action from her. She
looked so splendidly alive. She walked to the window, now, and stood
looking down upon New York in early June. Summer had not yet turned
the city into a cauldron of stone and steel. From her height she could
glimpse the green of the park, with a glint of silver in its heart, that
was the lake. Her mind was milling around, aimlessly, in a manner far
removed from its usual orderly functioning. Now she thought of Theodore,
her little brother--his promised return. It had been a slow and painful
thing, his climb. Perhaps if she had been more ready to help, if she
had not always waited until he asked the aid that she might have
volunteered--she thrust that thought out of her mind, rudely, and
slammed the door on it.... Fenger. He had said, “Damn!” when she had
told him about Ella. And his voice had been--well--she pushed that
thought outside her mind, too.... Clarence Heyl.... “He makes you think
about things you're afraid to face by yourself. Big things. Things
inside of you....”
Fanny turned away from the window. She decided she must be tired, after
all. Because here she was, with everything to make her happy: Theodore
coming home; her foreign trip a success; Ella and Fenger to praise her
and make much of her; a drive and tea this afternoon (she wasn't above
these creature comforts)--and still she felt unexhilarated, dull. She
decided to go down for a bit of lunch, and perhaps a stroll of ten
or fifteen minutes, just to see what Fifth avenue was showing. It
was half-past one when she reached that ordinarily well-regulated
thoroughfare. She found its sidewalks packed solid, up and down, as far
as the eye could see, with a quiet, orderly, expectant mass of people.
Squads of mounted police clattered up and down, keeping the middle
of the street cleared. Whatever it was that had called forth that
incredible mass, was scheduled to proceed uptown from far downtown, and
that very soon. Heads were turned that way. Fanny, wedged in the crowd,
stood a-tiptoe, but she could see nothing. It brought to her mind the
Circus Day of her Winnebago childhood, with Elm street packed with
townspeople and farmers, all straining their eyes up toward Cherry
street, the first turn in the line of march. Then, far away, the blare
of a band. “Here they come!” Just then, far down the canyon of Fifth
avenue, sounded the cry that had always swayed Elm street, Winnebago.
“Here they come!”
“What is it?” Fanny asked a woman against whom she found herself
close-packed. “What are they waiting for?”
“It's the suffrage parade,” replied the woman. “The big suffrage parade.
Don't you know?”
“No. I haven't been here.” Fanny was a little disappointed. The crowd
had surged forward, so that it was impossible for her to extricate
herself. She found herself near the curb. She could see down the broad
street now, and below Twenty-third street it was a moving, glittering
mass, pennants, banners, streamers flying. The woman next her
volunteered additional information.
“The mayor refused permission to let them march. But they fought it, and
they say it's the greatest suffrage parade ever held. I'd march myself,
only--”
“Only what?”
“I don't know. I'm scared to, I think. I'm not a New Yorker.”
“Neither am I,” said Fanny. Fanny always became friendly with the woman
next her in a crowd. That was her mother in her. One could hear the
music of the band, now. Fanny glanced at her watch. It was not quite
two. Oh, well, she would wait and see some of it. Her mind was still too
freshly packed with European impressions to receive any real idea of
the value of this pageant, she told herself. She knew she did not feel
particularly interested. But she waited.
Another surging forward. It was no longer, “Here they come!” but, “Here
they are!”
And here they were.
A squad of mounted police, on very prancy horses. The men looked very
ruddy, and well set-up and imposing. Fanny had always thrilled to
anything in uniform, given sufficient numbers of them. Another police
squad. A brass band, on foot. And then, in white, on a snow-white
charger, holding a white banner aloft, her eyes looking straight ahead,
her face very serious and youthful, the famous beauty and suffrage
leader, Mildred Inness. One of the few famous beauties who actually
was a beauty. And after that women, women, women! Hundreds of them,
thousands of them, a river of them flowing up Fifth avenue to the park.
More bands. More horses. Women! Women! They bore banners. This section,
that section. Artists. School teachers. Lawyers. Doctors. Writers. Women
in college caps and gowns. Women in white, from shoes to hats. Young
women. Girls. Gray-haired women. A woman in a wheel chair, smiling. A
man next to Fanny began to jeer. He was a red-faced young man, with a
coarse, blotchy skin, and thick lips. He smoked a cigar, and called to
the women in a falsetto voice, “Hello, Sadie!” he called. “Hello, kid!”
And the women marched on, serious-faced, calm-eyed. There came floats;
elaborate affairs, with girls in Greek robes. Fanny did not care for
these. More solid ranks. And then a strange and pitiful and tragic
and eloquent group. Their banner said, “Garment Workers. Infants' Wear
Section.” And at their head marched a girl, carrying a banner. I don't
know how she attained that honor. I think she must have been one of
those fiery, eloquent leaders in her factory clique. The banner she
carried was a large one, and it flapped prodigiously in the breeze, and
its pole was thick and heavy. She was a very small girl, even in that
group of pale-faced, under-sized, under-fed girls. A Russian Jewess,
evidently. Her shoes were ludicrous. They curled up at the toes, and the
heels were run down. Her dress was a sort of parody on the prevailing
fashion. But on her face, as she trudged along, hugging the pole of the
great pennant that flapped in the breeze, was stamped a look.--well, you
see that same look in some pictures of Joan of Arc. It wasn't merely a
look. It was a story. It was tragedy. It was the history of a people.
You saw in it that which told of centuries of oppression in Russia. You
saw eager groups of student Intellectuals, gathered in secret places
for low-voiced, fiery talk. There was in it the unspeakable misery of
Siberia. It spoke eloquently of pogroms, of massacres, of Kiev and its
sister-horror, Kishineff. You saw mean and narrow streets, and carefully
darkened windows, and, on the other side of those windows the warm
yellow glow of the seven-branched Shabbos light. Above this there shone
the courage of a race serene in the knowledge that it cannot die.
And illuminating all, so that her pinched face, beneath the flapping
pennant, was the rapt, uplifted countenance of the Crusader, there
blazed the great glow of hope. This woman movement, spoken of so glibly
as Suffrage, was, to the mind of this over-read, under-fed, emotional,
dreamy little Russian garment worker the glorious means to a long hoped
for end. She had idealized it, with the imagery of her kind. She had
endowed it with promise that it would never actually hold for her,
perhaps. And so she marched on, down the great, glittering avenue,
proudly clutching her unwieldy banner, a stunted, grotesque, magnificent
figure. More than a figure. A symbol.
Fanny's eyes followed her until she passed out of sight. She put up her
hand to her cheek, and her face was wet. She stood there, and the parade
went on, endlessly, it seemed, and she saw it through a haze. Bands.
More bands. Pennants. Floats. Women. Women. Women.
“I always cry at parades,” said Fanny, to the woman who stood next
her--the woman who wanted to march, but was scared to. “That's all
right,” said the woman. “That's all right.” And she laughed, because she
was crying, too. And then she did a surprising thing. She elbowed her
way to the edge of the crowd, past the red-faced man with the cigar,
out to the street, and fell into line, and marched on up the street,
shoulders squared, head high.
Fanny glanced down at her watch. It was quarter after four. With a
little gasp she turned to work her way through the close-packed crowd.
It was an actual physical struggle, from which she emerged disheveled,
breathless, uncomfortably warm, and minus her handkerchief, but she had
gained the comparative quiet of the side street, and she made the short
distance that lay between the Avenue and her hotel a matter of little
more than a minute. In the hotel corridor stood Ella and Fenger, the
former looking worried, the latter savage.
“Where in the world--” began Ella.
“Caught in the jam. And I didn't want to get out. It was--it
was--glorious!” She was shaking hands with Fenger, and realizing for the
first time that she must be looking decidedly sketchy and that she had
lost her handkerchief. She fished for it in her bag, hopelessly, when
Fenger released her hand. He had not spoken. Now he said:
“What's the matter with your eyes?”
“I've been crying,” Fanny confessed cheerfully.
“Crying!”
“The parade. There was a little girl in it--” she stopped. Fenger would
not be interested in that little girl. Now Clancy would have--but Ella
broke in on that thought.
“I guess you don't realize that out in front of this hotel there's a
kind of a glorified taxi waiting, with the top rolled back, and it's
been there half an hour. I never expect to see the time when I could
enjoy keeping a taxi waiting. It goes against me.”
“I'm sorry. Really. Let's go. I'm ready.”
“You are not. Your hair's a sight; and those eyes!”
Fenger put a hand on her arm. “Go on up and powder your nose, Miss
Brandeis. And don't hurry. I want you to enjoy this drive.”
On her way up in the elevator Fanny thought, “He has lost his waistline.
Now, that couldn't have happened in a month. Queer I didn't notice it
before. And he looks soft. Not enough exercise.”
When she rejoined them she was freshly bloused and gloved and all traces
of the tell-tale red had vanished from her eyelids. Fifth avenue was
impossible. Their car sped up Madison avenue, and made for the Park. The
Plaza was a jam of tired marchers. They dispersed from there, but there
seemed no end to the line that still flowed up Fifth avenue. Fenger
seemed scarcely to see it. He had plunged at once into talk of the
European trip. Fanny gave him every detail, omitting nothing. She
repeated all that her letters and cables had told. Fenger was more
excited than she had ever seen him. He questioned, cross-questioned,
criticized, probed, exacted an account of every conversation. Usually
it was not method that interested him, but results. Fanny, having
accomplished the thing she had set out to do, had lost interest in it
now. The actual millions so glibly bandied in the Haynes-Cooper plant
had never thrilled her. The methods by which they were made possible
had.
Ella had been listening with the shrewd comprehension of one who admires
the superior art of a fellow craftsman.
“I'll say this, Mr. Fenger. If I could make you look like that, by going
to Europe and putting it over those foreign boys, I'd feel I'd earned
a year's salary right there, and quit. Not to speak of the
cross-examination you're putting her through.”
Fenger laughed, a little self-consciously. “It's just that I want to be
sure it's real. I needn't tell you how important this trick is that Miss
Brandeis has just turned.” He turned to Fanny, with a boyish laugh. “Now
don't pose. You know you can't be as bored as you look.”
“Anyway,” put in Ella, briskly, “I move that the witness step down. She
may not be bored, but she certainly must be tired, and she's beginning
to look it. Just lean back, Fanny, and let the green of this park soak
in. At that, it isn't so awfully green, when you get right close, except
that one stretch of meadow. Kind of ugly, Central Park, isn't it? Bare.”
Fanny sat forward. There was more sparkle in her face than at any time
during the drive. They were skimming along those green-shaded drives
that are so sophisticatedly sylvan.
“I used to think it was bare, too, and bony as an old maid, with no soft
cuddly places like the parks at home; no gracious green stretches, and
no rose gardens. But somehow, it grows on you. The reticence of it. And
that stretch of meadow near the Mall, in the late afternoon, with the
mist on it, and the sky faintly pink, and that electric sign--Somebody's
Tires or other--winking off and on--”
“You're a queer child,” interrupted Fenger. “As wooden as an Indian
while talking about a million-a-year deal, and lyrical over a
combination of electric sign, sunset, and moth-eaten park. Oh, well,
perhaps that's what makes you as you are.”
Even Ella looked a little startled at that.
They had tea at Claremont, at a table overlooking the river and the
Palisades. Fenger was the kind of man to whom waiters always give a
table overlooking anything that should be overlooked. After tea they
drove out along the river and came back in the cool of the evening.
Fanny was very quiet now. Fenger followed her mood. Ella sustained the
conversation, somewhat doggedly. It was almost seven when they reached
the plaza exit. And there Fanny, sitting forward suddenly, gave a little
cry.
“Why--they're marching yet!” she said, and her voice was high with
wonder. “They're marching yet! All the time we've been driving and
teaing, they've been marching.”
And so they had. Thousands upon thousands, they had flowed along as
relentlessly, and seemingly as endlessly as a river. They were marching
yet. For six hours the thousands had poured up that street, making it a
moving mass of white. And the end was not yet. What pen, and tongue, and
sense of justice had failed to do, they were doing now by sheer, crude
force of numbers. The red-faced hooligan, who had stood next to Fanny
in the crowd hours before, had long ago ceased his jibes and slunk away,
bored, if not impressed. After all, one might jeer at ten, or fifty, or
a hundred women, or even five hundred. But not at forty thousand.
Their car turned down Madison Avenue, and Fenger twisted about for a
last look at the throng in the plaza. He was plainly impressed. The
magnitude of the thing appealed to him. To a Haynes-Cooper-trained
mind, forty thousand women, marching for whatever the cause, must
be impressive. Forty thousand of anything had the respect of Michael
Fenger. His eyes narrowed, thoughtfully.
“They seem to have put it over,” he said. “And yet, what's the idea?
Oh, I'm for suffrage, of course. Naturally. And all those thousands of
women, in white--still, a thing as huge as this parade has to be reduced
to a common denominator, to be really successful. If somebody could take
the whole thing, boil it down, and make the country see what this huge
demonstration stands for.”
Fanny leaned forward suddenly. “Tell the man to stop. I want to get
out.”
Fenger and Ella stared. “What for?” But Fenger obeyed.
“I want to get something at this stationer's shop.” She had jumped down
almost before the motor had stopped at the curb.
“But let me get it.”
“No. You can't. Wait here.” She disappeared within the shop. She was
back in five minutes, a flat, loosely wrapped square under her arm.
“Cardboard,” she explained briefly, in answer to their questions.
Fenger, about to leave them at their hotel, presented his plans for the
evening. Fanny, looking up at him, her head full of other plans, thought
he looked and sounded very much like Big Business. And, for the moment
at least, Fanny Brandeis loathed Big Business, and all that it stood
for.
“It's almost seven,” Fenger was saying. “We'll be rubes in New York,
this evening. You girls will just have time to freshen up a bit--I
suppose you want to--and then we'll have dinner, and go to the theater,
and to supper afterward. What do you want to see?”
Ella looked at Fanny. And Fanny shook her head, “Thanks. You're awfully
kind. But--no.”
“Why not?” demanded Fenger, gruffly.
“Perhaps because I'm tired. And there's something else I must do.”
Ella looked relieved. Fenger's eyes bored down upon Fanny, but she
seemed not to feel them. She held out her hand.
“You're going back to-morrow?” Fenger asked. “I'm not leaving until
Thursday.”
“To-morrow, with Ella. Good-by. It's been a glorious drive. I feel quite
rested.”
“You just said you were tired.”
The elevator door clanged, shutting out the sight of Fenger's resentful
frown.
“He's as sensitive as a soubrette,” said Ella. “I'm glad you decided not
to go out. I'm dead, myself. A kimono for the rest of the evening.”
Fanny seemed scarcely to hear her. With a nod she left Ella, and entered
her own room. There she wasted no time. She threw her hat and coat on
the bed. Her suitcase was on the baggage stand. She turned on all the
lights, swung the closed suitcase up to the table, shoved the table
against the wall, up-ended the suitcase so that its leather side
presented a smooth surface, and propped a firm sheet of white cardboard
against the impromptu rack. She brought her chair up close, fumbled in
her bag for the pens she had just purchased. Her eyes were on the blank
white surface of the paper. The table was the kind that has a sub-shelf.
It prevented Fanny from crossing her legs under it, and that bothered
her. While she fitted her pens, and blocked her paper, she kept on
barking her shins in unconscious protest against the uncomfortable
conditions under which she must work.
She sat staring at the paper now, after having marked it off into
blocks, with a pencil. She got up, and walked across the room,
aimlessly, and stood there a moment, and came back. She picked up a
thread on the floor. Sat down again. Picked up her pencil, rolled it a
moment in her palms, then, catching her toes behind either foreleg of
her chair, in an attitude that was as workmanlike as it was ungraceful,
she began to draw, nervously, tentatively at first, but gaining in
firmness and assurance as she went on.
If you had been standing behind her chair you would have seen, emerging
miraculously from the white surface under Fanny's pencil, a thin,
undersized little figure in sleazy black and white, whose face, under
the cheap hat, was upturned and rapturous. Her skirts were wind-blown,
and the wind tugged, too, at the banner whose pole she hugged so tightly
in her arms. Dimly you could see the crowds that lined the street on
either side. Vaguely, too, you saw the faces and stunted figures of the
little group of girls she led. But she, the central figure, stood out
among all the rest. Fanny Brandeis, the artist, and Fanny Brandeis, the
salesman, combined shrewdly to omit no telling detail. The wrong kind of
feet in the wrong kind of shoes; the absurd hat; the shabby skirt--every
bit of grotesquerie was there, serving to emphasize the glory of the
face. Fanny Brandeis' face, as the figure grew, line by line, was a
glorious thing, too.
She was working rapidly. She laid down her pencil, now, and leaned back,
squinting her eyes critically. She looked grimly pleased. Her hair was
rather rumpled, and her cheeks very pink. She took up her pen, now, and
began to ink her drawing with firm black strokes. As she worked a little
crow of delight escaped her--the same absurd crow of triumph that had
sounded that day in Winnebago, years and years before, when she,
a school girl in a red tam o' shanter, had caught the likeness of
Schabelitz, the peasant boy, under the exterior of Schabelitz, the
famous. There sounded a smart little double knock at her door. Fanny
did not heed it. She did not hear it. Her toes were caught behind the
chair-legs again. She was slumped down on the middle of her spine. She
had brought the table, with its ridiculously up-ended suitcase, very
near, so that she worked with a minimum of effort. The door opened.
Fanny did not turn her head. Ella Monahan came in, yawning. She was
wearing an expensive looking silk kimono that fell in straight, simple
folds, and gave a certain majesty to her ample figure.
“Well, what in the world--” she began, and yawned again, luxuriously.
She stopped behind Fanny's chair and glanced over her shoulder. The yawn
died. She craned her neck a little, and leaned forward. And the little
girl went marching by, in her cheap and crooked shoes, and her short
and sleazy skirt, with the banner tugging, tugging in the breeze.
Fanny Brandeis had done her with that economy of line, and absence
of sentimentality which is the test separating the artist from the
draughtsman.
Silence, except for the scratching of Fanny Brandeis's pen.
“Why--the poor little kike!” said Ella Monahan. Then, after another
moment of silence, “I didn't know you could draw like that.”
Fanny laid down her pen. “Like what?” She pushed back her chair, and
rose, stiffly. The drawing, still wet, was propped up against the
suitcase. Fanny walked across the room. Ella dropped into her chair, so
that when Fanny came back to the table it was she who looked over Ella's
shoulder. Into Ella's shrewd and heavy face there had come a certain
look.
“They don't get a square deal, do they? They don't get a square deal.”
The two looked at the girl a moment longer, in silence. Then Fanny went
over to the bed, and picked up her hat and coat. She smoothed her hair,
deftly, powdered her nose with care, and adjusted her hat at the smart
angle approved by the Galeries Lafayette. She came back to the table,
picked up her pen, and beneath the drawing wrote, in large print: