She picked up the drawing, still wet, opened the door, and with a smile
at the bewildered Ella, was gone.
It was after eight o'clock when she reached the Star building. She asked
for Lasker's office, and sent in her card. Heyl had told her that Lasker
was always at his desk at eight. Now, Fanny Brandeis knew that the
average young woman, standing outside the office of a man like Lasker,
unknown and at the mercy of office boy or secretary, continues to stand
outside until she leaves in discouragement. But Fanny knew, too, that
she was not an average young woman. She had, on the surface, an air
of authority and distinction. She had that quiet assurance of one
accustomed to deference. She had youth, and beauty, and charm. She had a
hat and suit bought in Paris, France; and a secretary is only human.
Carl Lasker's private office was the bare, bright, newspaper-strewn room
of a man who is not only a newspaper proprietor, but a newspaper man.
There's a difference. Carl Lasker had sold papers on the street when he
was ten. He had slept on burlap sacks, paper stuffed, in the basement
of a newspaper office. Ink flowed with the blood in his veins. He could
operate a press. He could manipulate a linotype machine (that almost
humanly intelligent piece of mechanism). He could make up a paper single
handed, and had done it. He knew the newspaper game, did Carl Lasker,
from the composing room to the street, and he was a very great man in
his line. And so he was easy to reach, and simple to talk to, as are all
great men.
A stocky man, decidedly handsome, surprisingly young, well dressed,
smooth shaven, direct.
Fanny entered. Lasker laid down her card. “Brandeis. That's a good
name.” He extended his hand. He wore evening clothes, with a white
flower in his buttonhole. He must have just come from a dinner, or he
was to attend a late affair, somewhere. Perhaps Fanny, taken aback,
unconsciously showed her surprise, because Lasker grinned, as he waved
her to a chair. His quick mind had interpreted her thought.
“Sit down, Miss Brandeis. You think I'm gotten up like the newspaper
man in a Richard Harding Davis short story, don't you? What can I do for
you?”
Fanny wasted no words. “I saw the parade this afternoon. I did a
picture. I think it's good. If you think so too, I wish you'd use it.”
She laid it, face up, on Lasker's desk. Lasker picked it up in his two
hands, held it off, and scrutinized it. All the drama in the world is
concentrated in the confines of a newspaper office every day in the
year, and so you hear very few dramatic exclamations in such a place.
Men like Lasker do not show emotion when impressed. It is too wearing
on the mechanism. Besides, they are trained to self-control. So Lasker
said, now:
“Yes, I think it's pretty good, too.” Then, raising his voice to a
sudden bellow, “Boy!” He handed the drawing to a boy, gave a few brief
orders, and turned back to Fanny. “To-morrow morning every other paper
in New York will have pictures showing Mildred Inness, the beauty, on
her snow-white charger, or Sophronisba A. Bannister, A.B., Ph.D., in her
cap and gown, or Mrs. William Van der Welt as Liberty. We'll have that
little rat with the banner, and it'll get 'em. They'll talk about it.”
His eyes narrowed a little. “Do you always get that angle?”
“Yes.”
“There isn't a woman cartoonist in New York who does that human stuff.
Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Want a job?”
“N-no.”
His knowing eye missed no detail of the suit, the hat, the gloves, the
shoes.
“What's your salary now?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Satisfied?”
“No.”
“You've hit the heart of that parade. I don't know whether you could do
that every day, or not. But if you struck twelve half the time, it would
be enough. When you want a job, come back.”
“Thanks,” said Fanny quietly. And held out her hand.
She returned in the subway. It was a Bronx train, full of sagging faces,
lusterless eyes, grizzled beards; of heavy, black-eyed girls in soiled
white shoes; of stoop-shouldered men, poring over newspapers in Hebrew
script; of smells and sounds and glaring light.
And though to-morrow would bring its reaction, and common sense would
have her again in its cold grip, she was radiant to-night and glowing
with the exaltation that comes with creation. And over and over a voice
within her was saying:
These are my people! These are my people!