________________________________________________
_ 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:
THE MARCHER.
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! _
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