________________________________________________
_ Fanny told herself, before she went to bed Saturday night,
that she hoped it would rain Sunday morning from seven to
twelve. But when Princess woke her at seven-thirty, as per
instructions left in penciled scrawl on the kitchen table,
she turned to the window at once, and was glad, somehow, to
find it sun-flooded. Princess, if you're mystified, was
royal in name only--a biscuit-tinted lady, with a very black
and no-account husband whose habits made it necessary for
Princess to let herself into Fanny's four-room flat at seven
every morning, and let herself out at eight every evening.
She had an incredibly soft and musical voice, had Princess,
and a cooking hand. She kept Fanny mended, fed and
comfortable, and her only cross was that Fanny's taste in
blouses (ultimately her property) ran to the severe and
tailored.
"Mawnin', Miss Fanny. There's a gep'mun waitin' to see
yo'."
Fanny choked on a yawn. "A what!"
"Gep'mun. Says yo-all goin' picnickin'. He's in the
settin' room, a-lookin' at yo' pictchah papahs. Will Ah fry
yo' up a li'l chicken to pack along? San'wiches ain't no
eatin' fo' Sunday."
Fanny flung back her covers, swung around to the side of the
bed, and stood up, all, seemingly, in one sweeping movement.
"Do you mean to tell me he's in there, now?"
From the sitting room. "I think I ought to tell you I can
hear everything you're saying. Say. Fanny, those sketches
of yours are---- Why, Gee Whiz! I didn't know
you did that kind of thing. This one here, with that girl's
face in the crowd----"
"For heaven's sake!" Fanny demanded, "what are you doing
here at seven-thirty? And I don't allow people to look at
those sketches. You said eight-thirty."
"I was afraid you'd change your mind, or something.
Besides, it's now twenty-two minutes to eight. And will you
tell the lady that's a wonderful idea about the chicken?
Only she'd better start now."
Goaded by time bulletins shouted through the closed door,
Fanny found herself tubbed, clothed, and ready for breakfast
by eight-ten. When she opened the door Clarence was
standing in the center of her little sitting room, waiting,
a sheaf of loose sketches in his hand.
"Say, look here! These are the real thing. Why, they're
great! They get you. This old geezer with the beard,
selling fish and looking like one of the Disciples. And
this. What the devil are you doing in a mail order house,
or whatever it is? Tell me that! When you can draw like
this!"
"Good morning," said Fanny, calmly. "And I'll tell you
nothing before breakfast. The one thing that interests me
this moment is hot coffee. Will you have some breakfast?
Oh, well, a second one won't hurt you. You must have got up
at three, or thereabouts." She went toward the tiny
kitchen. "Never mind, Princess. I'll wait on myself. You
go on with that chicken."
Princess was the kind of person who can fry a chicken, wrap
it in cool, crisp lettuce leaves, box it, cut sandwiches,
and come out of the process with an unruffled temper and an
immaculate kitchen. Thanks to her, Fanny and Heyl found
themselves on the eight fifty-three train, bound for the
dunes.
Clarence swung his rucksack up to the bundle rack. He took
off his cap, and stuffed it into his pocket. He was
grinning like a schoolboy. Fanny turned from the window and
smiled at what she saw in his face. At that he gave an
absurd little bounce in his place, like an overgrown child,
and reached over and patted her hand.
"I've dreamed of this for years."
"You're just fourteen, going on fifteen," Fanny reproved
him.
"I know it. And it's great! Won't you be, too? Forget
you're a fair financier, or whatever they call it. Forget
you earn more in a month than I do in six. Relax. Unbend.
Loosen up. Don't assume that hardshell air with me. Just
remember that I knew you when the frill of your panties
showed below your skirt."
"Clarence Heyl!"
But he was leaning past her, and pointing out of the window.
"See that curtain of smoke off there? That's the South
Chicago, and the Hammond and Gary steel mills. Wait till
you see those smokestacks against the sky, and the iron
scaffoldings that look like giant lacework, and the slag
heaps, and the coal piles, and those huge, grim tanks. Gad!
It's awful and beautiful. Like the things Pennell does."
"I came out here on the street car one day," said Fanny,
quietly. "One Sunday."
"You did!" He stared at her.
"It was hot, and they were all spilling out into the street.
You know, the women in wrappers, just blobs of flesh trying
to get cool. And the young girls in their pink silk dresses
and white shoes, and the boys on the street corners, calling
to them. Babies all over the sidewalks and streets, and the
men who weren't in the mills--you know how they look in
their Sunday shirtsleeves, with their flat faces, and high
cheekbones, and their great brown hands with the broken
nails. Hunkies. Well, at five the motor cars began
whizzing by from the country roads back to Chicago.
You have to go back that way. Just then the five o'clock
whistles blew and the day shift came off. There was a great
army of them, clumping down the road the way they do. Their
shoulders were slack, and their lunch pails dangled, empty,
and they were wet and reeking with sweat. The motor cars
were full of wild phlox and daisies and spiderwort."
Clarence was still turned sideways, looking at her. "Get a
picture of it?"
"Yes. I tried, at least."
"Is that the way you usually spend your Sundays?"
"Well, I--I like snooping about."
"M-m," mused Clarence. Then, "How's business, Fanny?"
"Business?" You could almost feel her mind jerk back. "Oh,
let's not talk about business on Sunday."
"I thought so," said Clarence, enigmatically. "Now listen
to me, Fanny."
"I'll listen," interrupted she, "if you'll talk about
yourself. I want to know what you're doing, and why you're
going to New York. What business can a naturalist have in
New York, anyway?"
"I didn't intend to be a naturalist. You can tell that by
looking at me. But you can't have your very nose rubbed up
against trees, and rocks, and mountains, and snow for years
and years without learning something about 'em. There were
whole weeks when I hadn't anything to chum with but a
timber-line pine and an odd assortment of mountain peaks.
We just had to get acquainted."
"But you're going back, aren't you? Don't they talk about
the spell of the mountains, or some such thing?"
"They do. And they're right. And I've got to have them six
months in the year, at least. But I'm going to try spending
the other six in the bosom of the human race. Not only
that, I'm going to write about it. Writing's my job,
really. At least, it's the thing I like best."
"Nature?"
"Human nature. I went out to Colorado just a lonesome
little kid with a bum lung. The lung's all right, but I
never did quite get over the other. Two years ago, in the
mountains, I met Carl Lasker, who owns the New York Star.
It's said to be the greatest morning paper in the country.
Lasker's a genius. And he fries the best bacon I ever
tasted. I took him on a four-weeks' horseback trip through
the mountains. We got pretty well acquainted. At the end
of it he offered me a job. You see, I'd never seen a chorus
girl, or the Woolworth building, or a cabaret, or a broiled
lobster, or a subway. But I was interested and curious
about all of them. And Lasker said, `A man who can humanize
a rock, or a tree, or a chipmunk ought to be able to make
even those things seem human. You've got what they call the
fresh viewpoint. New York's full of people with a scum over
their eyes, but a lot of them came to New York from
Winnebago, or towns just like it, and you'd be surprised at
the number of them who still get their home town paper. One
day, when I came into Lee Kohl's office, with stars, and
leading men, and all that waiting outside to see him, he was
sitting with his feet on the desk reading the Sheffield,
Illinois, Gazette.' You see, the thing he thinks I can do
is to give them a picture of New York as they used to see
it, before they got color blind. A column or so a day,
about anything that hits me. How does that strike you as a
job for a naturalist?"
"It's a job for a human naturalist. I think you'll cover
it."
If you know the dunes, which you probably don't, you know
why they did not get off at Millers, with the crowd, but
rode on until they were free of the Sunday picnickers.
Then they got off, and walked across the tracks, past
saloons, and a few huddled houses, hideous in yellow paint,
and on, and on down a road that seemed endless. A stretch
of cinders, then dust, a rather stiff little hill, a great
length of yellow sand and--the lake! We say, the lake! like
that, with an exclamation point after it, because it wasn't
at all the Lake Michigan that Chicagoans know. This vast
blue glory bore no relation to the sullen, gray, turbid
thing that the city calls the lake. It was all the blues of
which you've ever heard, and every passing cloud gave it a
new shade. Sapphire. No, cobalt. No, that's too cold.
Mediterranean. Turquoise. And the sand in golden contrast.
Miles of sand along the beach, and back of that the dunes.
Now, any dictionary or Scotchman will tell you that a dune
is a hill of loose sand. But these dunes are done in
American fashion, lavishly. Mountains of sand, as far as
the eye can see, and on the top of them, incredibly, great
pine trees that clutch at their perilous, shifting foothold
with frantic root-toes. And behind that, still more
incredibly, the woods, filled with wild flowers, with
strange growths found nowhere else in the whole land, with
trees, and vines, and brush, and always the pungent scent of
the pines. And there you have the dunes--blue lake, golden
sand-hills, green forest, in one.
Fanny and Clarence stood there on the sand, in silence, two
ridiculously diminutive figures in that great wilderness of
beauty. I wish I could get to you, somehow, the clear
sparkle of it, the brilliance of it, and yet the peace of
it. They stood there a long while, those two, without
speaking. Then Fanny shut her eyes, and I think her lower
lip trembled just a little. And Clarence patted her hand
just twice.
"I thank you," he said, "in the name of that much-abused
lady known as Nature."
Said Fanny, "I want to scramble up to the top of one of
those dunes--the high one--and just sit there."
And that is what they did. A poor enough Sunday, I suppose,
in the minds of those of you who spend yours golfing at the
club, or motoring along grease-soaked roads that lead to a
shore dinner and a ukulele band. But it turned Fanny
Brandeis back a dozen years or more, so that she was again
the little girl whose heart had ached at sight of the pale
rose and, orange of the Wisconsin winter sunsets. She
forgot all about layettes, and obstetrical outfits, and
flannel bands, and safety pins; her mind was a blank in the
matter of bootees, and catalogues, and our No. 29E8347, and
those hungry bins that always yawned for more. She forgot
about Michael Fenger, and Theodore, and the new furs. They
scrambled up dunes, digging into the treacherous sand with
heels, toes, and the side of the foot, and clutching at
fickle roots with frantic fingers. Forward a step, and back
two--that's dune climbing. A back-breaking business, unless
you're young and strong, as were these two. They explored
the woods, and Heyl had a fascinating way of talking about
stones and shrubs and trees as if they were endowed with
human qualities--as indeed they were for him. They found a
hill-slope carpeted with dwarf huckleberry plants, still
bearing tiny clusters of the blue-black fruit. Fanny's
heart was pounding, her lungs ached, her cheeks were
scarlet, her eyes shining. Heyl, steel-muscled, took the
hills like a chamois. Once they crossed hands atop a dune
and literally skated down it, right, left, right, left,
shrieking with laughter, and ending in a heap at the bottom.
"In the name of all that's idiotic!" shouted Heyl. "Silk
stockings! What in thunder made you wear silk stockings!
At the sand dunes! Gosh!"
They ate their dinner in olympic splendor, atop a dune.
Heyl produced unexpected things from the rucksack--things
that ranged all the way from milk chocolate to
literature, and from grape juice to cigarettes. They ate
ravenously, but at Heyl's thrifty suggestion they saved a
few sandwiches for the late afternoon. It was he, too, who
made a little bonfire of papers, crusts, and bones, as is
the cleanly habit of your true woodsman. Then they
stretched out, full length, in the noon sun, on the warm,
clean sand.
"What's your best price on one-sixth doz. flannel vests?"
inquired Heyl.
And, "Oh, shut up!" said Fanny, elegantly. Heyl laughed as
one who hugs a secret.
"We'll work our way down the beach," he announced, "toward
Millers. There'll be northern lights to-night; did you know
that? Want to stay and see them?"
"Do I want to! I won't go home till I have."
These were the things they did on that holiday; childish,
happy, tiring things, such as people do who love the
outdoors.
The charm of Clarence Heyl--for he had charm--is difficult
to transmit. His lovableness and appeal lay in his
simplicity. It was not so much what he said as in what he
didn't say. He was staring unwinkingly now at the sunset
that had suddenly burst upon them. His were the eyes of one
accustomed to the silent distances.
"Takes your breath away, rather, doesn't it? All that
color?" said Fanny, her face toward the blaze.
"Almost too obvious for my taste. I like 'em a little more
subdued, myself." They were atop a dune, and he stretched
himself flat on the sand, still keeping his bright brown
eyes on lake and sky. Then he sat up, excitedly. "Heh, try
that! Lie flat. It softens the whole thing. Like this.
Now look at it. The lake's like molten copper flowing in.
And you can see that silly sun going down in jerks, like a
balloon on a string."
They lay there, silent, while the scarlet became orange, the
orange faded to rose, the rose to pale pink, to salmon, to
mauve, to gray. The first pale star came out, and the
brazen lights of Gary, far to the north, defied it.
Fanny sat up with a sigh and a little shiver.
"Fasten up that sweater around your throat," said Heyl.
"Got a pin?" They munched their sandwiches, rather soggy by
now, and drank the last of the grape juice. "We'll have a
bite of hot supper in town, at a restaurant that doesn't
mind Sunday trampers. Come on, Fan. We'll start down the
beach until the northern lights begin to show."
"It's been the most accommodating day," murmured Fanny.
"Sunshine, sunset, northern lights, everything. If we were
to demand a rainbow and an eclipse they'd turn those on,
too."
They started to walk down the beach in the twilight, keeping
close to the water's edge where the sand was moist and firm.
It was hard going. They plunged along arm in arm, in
silence. Now and again they stopped, with one accord, and
looked out over the great gray expanse that lay before them,
and then up at the hills and the pines etched in black
against the sky. Nothing competitive here, Fanny thought,
and took a deep breath. She thought of to-morrow's work,
with day after to-morrow's biting and snapping at its heels.
Clarence seemed to sense her thoughts. "Doesn't this make
you feel you want to get away from those damned bins that
you're forever feeding? I watched those boys for a minute,
the other day, outside your office. Jove!"
Fanny dug a heel into the sand, savagely. "Some days I feel
that I've got to walk out of the office, and down the
street, without a hat, and on, and on, walking and walking,
and running now and then, till I come to the horizon.
That's how I feel, some days."
"Then some day, Fanny, that feeling will get too strong for
you, and you'll do it. Now listen to me. Tuck this away in
your subconscious mind, and leave it there until you need
it. When that time comes get on a train for Denver. From
Denver take another to Estes Park. That's the Rocky
Mountains, and they're your destination, because that's
where the horizon lives and has its being. When you get
there ask for Heyl's place. They'll just hand you from one
to the other, gently, until you get there. I may be there,
but more likely I shan't. The key's in the mail box, tied
to a string. You'll find a fire already laid, in the
fireplace, with fat pine knots that will blaze up at the
touch of a match. My books are there, along the walls. The
bedding's in the cedar chest, and the lamps are filled.
There's tinned stuff in the pantry. And the mountains are
there, girl, to make you clean and whole again. And the
pines that are nature's prophylactic brushes. And the sky.
And peace. That sounds like a railway folder, but it's
true. I know." They trudged along in silence for a little
while. "Got that?"
"M-m," replied Fanny, disinterestedly, without looking at
him.
Heyl's jaw set. You could see the muscles show white for an
instant. Then he said: "It has been a wonderful day,
Fanny, but you haven't told me a thing about yourself. I'd
like to know about your work. I'd like to know what you're
doing; what your plan is. You looked so darned definite up
there in that office. Whom do you play with? And who's
this Fenger--wasn't that the name?--who saw that you looked
tired?"
"All right, Clancy. I'll tell you all about it," Fanny
agreed, briskly.
"All right--who!"
"Well, I can't call you Clarence. It doesn't fit. So just
for the rest of the day let's make it Clancy, even if
you do look like one of the minor Hebrew prophets, minus the
beard."
And so she began to tell him of her work and her aims. I
think that she had been craving just this chance to talk.
That which she told him was, unconsciously, a confession.
She told him of Theodore and his marriage; of her mother's
death; of her coming to Haynes-Cooper, and the changes she
had brought about there. She showed him the infinite
possibilities for advancement there. Slosson she tossed
aside. Then, rather haltingly, she told him of Fenger, of
his business genius, his magnetic qualities, of his career.
She even sketched a deft word-picture of the limp and
irritating Mrs. Fenger.
"Is this Fenger in love with you?" asked Heyl, startlingly.
Fanny recoiled at the idea with a primness that did credit
to Winnebago.
"Clancy! Please! He's married."
"Now don't sneak, Fanny. And don't talk like an ingenue.
So far, you've outlined a life-plan that makes Becky Sharp
look like a cooing dove. So just answer this straight, will
you?"
"Why, I suppose I attract him, as any man of his sort, with
a wife like that, would be attracted to a healthily alert
woman, whose ideas match his. And I wish you wouldn't talk
to me like that. It hurts."
"I'm glad of that. I was afraid you'd passed that stage.
Well now, how about those sketches of yours? I suppose you
know that they're as good, in a crude, effective sort of
way, as anything that's being done to-day."
"Oh, nonsense!" But then she stopped, suddenly, and put
both hands on his arm, and looked up at him, her face
radiant in the gray twilight. "Do you really think they're
good!"
"You bet they're good. There isn't a newspaper in the
country that couldn't use that kind of stuff. And there
aren't three people in the country who can do it. It isn't
a case of being able to draw. It's being able to see life
in a peculiar light, and to throw that light so that others
get the glow. Those sketches I saw this morning are life,
served up raw. That's your gift, Fanny. Why the devil
don't you use it!"
But Fanny had got herself in hand again. "It isn't a gift,"
she said, lightly. "It's just a little knack that amuses
me. There's no money in it. Besides, it's too late now.
One's got to do a thing superlatively, nowadays, to be
recognized. I don't draw superlatively, but I do handle
infants' wear better than any woman I know. In two more
years I'll be getting ten thousand a year at Haynes-Cooper.
In five years----"
"Then what?"
Fanny's hands became fists, gripping the power she craved.
"Then I shall have arrived. I shall be able to see the
great and beautiful things of this world, and mingle with
the people who possess them."
"When you might be making them yourself, you little fool.
Don't glare at me like that. I tell you that those pictures
are the real expression of you. That's why you turn to them
as relief from the shop grind. You can't help doing them.
They're you."
"I can stop if I want to. They amuse me, that's all."
"You can't stop. It's in your blood. It's the Jew in you."
"The---- Here, I'll show you. I won't do another sketch
for a year. I'll prove to you that my ancestors' religion
doesn't influence my work, or my play."
"Dear, you can't prove that, because the contrary has been
proven long ago. You yourself proved it when you did that
sketch of the old fish vender in the Ghetto. The one with
the beard. It took a thousand years of suffering and
persecution and faith to stamp that look on his face,
and it took a thousand years to breed in you the genius to
see it, and put it down on paper. Fan, did you ever read
Fishberg's book?"
"No," said Fanny, low-voiced.
"Sometime, when you can snatch a moment from the
fascinations of the mail order catalogue, read it. Fishberg
says--I wish I could remember his exact words--`It isn't the
body that marks the Jew. It's his Soul. The type is not
anthropological, or physical; it's social or psychic. It
isn't the complexion, the nose, the lips, the head. It's
his Soul which betrays his faith. Centuries of Ghetto
confinement, ostracism, ceaseless suffering, have produced a
psychic type. The thing that is stamped on the Soul seeps
through the veins and works its way magically to the
face----'"
"But I don't want to talk about souls! Please! You're
spoiling a wonderful day."
"And you're spoiling a wonderful life. I don't object to
this driving ambition in you. I don't say that you're wrong
in wanting to make a place for yourself in the world. But
don't expect me to stand by and let you trample over your
own immortal soul to get there. Your head is busy enough on
this infants' wear job, but how about the rest of you--how
about You? What do you suppose all those years of work, and
suppression, and self-denial, and beauty-hunger there in
Winnebago were meant for! Not to develop the mail order
business. They were given you so that you might recognize
hunger, and suppression, and self-denial in others. The
light in the face of that girl in the crowd pouring out of
the plant. What's that but the reflection of the light in
you! I tell you, Fanny, we Jews have got a money-grubbing,
loud-talking, diamond-studded, get-there-at-any-price
reputation, and perhaps we deserve it. But every now and
then, out of the mass of us, one lifts his head and stands
erect, and the great white light is in his face. And that
person has suffered, for suffering breeds genius. It
expands the soul just as over-prosperity shrivels it. You
see it all the way from Lew Fields to Sarah Bernhardt; from
Mendelssohn to Irving Berlin; from Mischa Elman to Charlie
Chaplin. You were a person set apart in Winnebago. Instead
of thanking your God for that, you set out to be something
you aren't. No, it's worse than that. You're trying not to
be what you are. And it's going to do for you."
"Stop!" cried Fanny. "My head's whirling. It sounds like
something out of `Alice in Wonderland.'"
"And you," retorted Heyl, "sound like some one who's afraid
to talk or think about herself. You're suppressing the
thing that is you. You're cutting yourself off from your
own people--a dramatic, impulsive, emotional people. By
doing those things you're killing the goose that lays the
golden egg. What's that old copy-book line? `To thine own
self be true,' and the rest of it."
"Yes; like Theodore, for example," sneered Fanny.
At which unpleasant point Nature kindly supplied a
diversion. Across the black sky there shot two luminous
shafts of lights. Northern lights, pale sisters of the
chromatic glory one sees in the far north, but still weirdly
beautiful. Fanny and Heyl stopped short, faces upturned.
The ghostly radiance wavered, expanded, glowed palely, like
celestial searchlights. Suddenly, from the tip of each
shaft, there burst a cluster of slender, pin-point lines,
like aigrettes set in a band of silver. Then these slowly
wavered, faded, combined to form a third and fourth slender
shaft of light. It was like the radiance one sees in the
old pictures of the Holy Family. Together Fanny and Heyl
watched it in silence until the last pale glimmer faded and
was gone, and only the brazen lights of Gary, far, far down
the beach, cast a fiery glow against the sky.
They sighed, simultaneously. Then they laughed, each at the
other.
"Curtain," said Fanny. They raced for the station, despite
the sand. Their car was filled with pudgy babies lying limp
in parental arms; with lunch baskets exuding the sickly
scent of bananas; with disheveled vandals whose moist palms
grasped bunches of wilted wild flowers. Past the belching
chimneys of Gary, through South Chicago, the back yard of a
metropolis, past Jackson Park that breathed coolly upon
them, and so to the city again. They looked at it with the
shock that comes to eyes that have rested for hours on long
stretches of sand and sky and water. Monday, that had
seemed so far away, became an actuality of to-morrow.
Tired as they were, they stopped at one of those frank
little restaurants that brighten Chicago's drab side
streets. Its windows were full of pans that held baked
beans, all crusty and brown, and falsely tempting, and of
baked apples swimming in a pool of syrup. These flanked by
ketchup bottles and geometrical pyramids of golden grape-
fruit.
Coffee and hot roast beef sandwiches, of course, in a place
like that. "And," added Fanny, "one of those baked apples.
Just to prove they can't be as good as they look."
They weren't, but she was too hungry to care. Not too
hungry, though, to note with quick eye all that the little
restaurant held of interest, nor too sleepy to respond to
the friendly waitress who, seeing their dusty boots, and the
sprig of sumac stuck in Fanny's coat, said, "My, it must
have been swell in the country today!" as her flapping
napkin precipitated crumbs into their laps.
"It was," said Fanny, and smiled up at the girl with her
generous, flashing smile. "Here's a bit of it I brought
back for you." And she stuck the scarlet sumac sprig into
the belt of the white apron.
They finished the day incongruously by taking a taxi
home, Fanny yawning luxuriously all the way. "Do you know,"
she said, as they parted, "we've talked about everything
from souls to infants' wear. We're talked out. It's a
mercy you're going to New York. There won't be a next
time."
"Young woman," said Heyl, forcefully, "there will. That
young devil in the red tam isn't dead. She's alive. And
kicking. There's a kick in every one of those Chicago
sketches in your portfolio upstairs. You said she wouldn't
fight anybody's battles to-day. You little idiot, she's
fighting one in each of those pictures, from the one showing
that girl's face in the crowd, to the old chap with the
fish-stall. She'll never die that one. Because she's the
spirit. It's the other one who's dead--and she doesn't know
it. But some day she'll find herself buried. And I want to
be there to shovel on the dirt." _
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