________________________________________________
_ If Fanny Brandeis, the deliberately selfish, the
calculatingly ambitious, was aghast at the trick fate had
played her, she kept her thoughts to herself. Knowing her,
I think she must have been grimly amused at finding herself
saddled with a helpless baby, a bewildered peasant woman,
and an artist brother both helpless and bewildered.
It was out of the question to house them in her small
apartment. She found a furnished apartment near her own,
and installed them there, with a working housekeeper in
charge. She had a gift for management, and she arranged all
these details with a brisk capability that swept everything
before it. A sunny bedroom for Mizzi. But then, a bright
living room, too, for Theodore's hours of practice. No
noise. Chicago's roar maddened him. Otti shied at every
new contrivance that met her eye. She had to be broken in
to elevators, electric switches, hot and cold faucets,
radiators.
"No apartment ever built could cover all the requirements,"
Fanny confided to Fenger, after the first harrowing week.
"What they really need is a combination palace, houseboat,
sanatorium, and creche."
"Look here," said Fenger. "If I can help, why--" a sudden
thought struck him. "Why don't you bring 'em all down to my
place in the country? We're not there half the time. It's
too cool for my wife in September. Just the thing for the
child, and your brother could fiddle his head off."
The Fengers had a roomy, wide-verandaed house near
Lake Forest; one of the many places of its kind that dot the
section known as the north shore. Its lawn sloped gently
down to the water's edge. The house was gay with striped
awnings, and scarlet geraniums, and chintz-covered chairs.
The bright, sparkling, luxurious little place seemed to
satisfy a certain beauty-sense in Fenger, as did the
etchings on the walls in his office. Fanny had spent a
week-end there in July, with three or four other guests,
including Fascinating Facts. She had been charmed with it,
and had announced that her energies thereafter would be
directed solely toward the possession of just such a house
as this, with a lawn that was lipped by the lake, awnings
and geraniums to give it a French cafe air; books and
magazines enough to belie that.
"And I'll always wear white," she promised, gayly, "and
there'll be pitchers on every table, frosty on the outside,
and minty on the inside, and you're all invited."
They had laughed at that, and so had she, but she had been
grimly in earnest just the same.
She shook her head now at Fenger's suggestion. "Imagine
Mrs. Fenger's face at sight of Mizzi, and Theodore with his
violin, and Otti with her shawls and paraphernalia.
Though," she added, seriously, "it's mighty kind of you, and
generous--and just like a man."
"It isn't kindness nor generosity that makes me want to do
things for you."
"Modest," murmured Fanny, wickedly, "as always."
Fenger bent his look upon her. "Don't try the ingenue on
me, Fanny."
Theodore's manager, Kurt Stein, was to have followed him in
ten days. The war changed that. The war was to change many
things. Fanny seemed to sense the influx of musicians that
was to burst upon the United States following the first few
weeks of the catastrophe, and she set about forestalling it.
Advertising. That was what Theodore needed. She had
faith enough in his genius. But her business sense told her
that this genius must be enhanced by the proper setting.
She set about creating this setting. She overlooked no
chance to fix his personality in the kaleidoscopic mind of
the American public--or as much of it as she could reach.
His publicity man was a dignified German-American whose
methods were legitimate and uninspired. Fanny's enthusiasm
and superb confidence in Theodore's genius infected Fenger,
Fascinating Facts, even Nathan Haynes himself. Nathan
Haynes had never posed as a patron of the arts, in spite of
his fantastic millions. But by the middle of September
there were few of his friends, or his wife's friends, who
had not heard of this Theodore Brandeis. In Chicago,
Illinois, no one lives in houses, it is said, except the
city's old families, and new millionaires. The rest of the
vast population is flat-dwelling. To say that Nathan
Haynes' spoken praise reached the city's house-dwellers
would carry with it a significance plain to any Chicagoan.
As for Fanny's method; here is a typical example of her
somewhat crude effectiveness in showmanship. Otti had
brought with her from Vienna her native peasant costume. It
is a costume seen daily in the Austrian capital, on the
Ring, in the Stadt Park, wherever Viennese nurses convene
with their small charges. To the American eye it is a
musical comedy costume, picturesque, bouffant, amazing.
Your Austrian takes it quite for granted. Regardless of the
age of the nurse, the skirt is short, coming a few inches
below the knees, and built like a lamp shade, in color
usually a bright scarlet, with rows of black velvet ribbon
at the bottom. Beneath it are worn skirts and skirts, and
skirts, so that the opera-bouffe effect is complete. The
bodice is black velvet, laced over a chemise of white. The
head-gear a soaring winged affair of stiffly starched
white, that is a pass between the Breton peasant
woman's cap and an aeroplane. Black stockings and slippers
finish the costume.
Otti and Mizzi spent the glorious September days in Lincoln
park, Otti garbed in staid American stripes and apron, Mizzi
resplendent in smartest of children's dresses provided for
her lavishly by her aunt. Her fat and dimpled hands
smoothed the blue, or pink or white folds with a complacency
astonishing in one of her years. "That's her mother in
her," Fanny thought.
One rainy autumn day Fanny entered her brother's apartment
to find Otti resplendent in her Viennese nurse's costume.
Mizzi had been cross and fretful, and the sight of the
familiar scarlet and black and white, and the great winged
cap seemed to soothe her.
"Otti!" Fanny exclaimed. "You gorgeous creature! What is
it? A dress rehearsal?" Otti got the import, if not the
English.
"So gehen wir im Wien," she explained, and struck a killing
pose.
"Everybody? All the nurses? Alle?"
"Aber sure," Otti displayed her half dozen English words
whenever possible.
Fanny stared a moment. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"To-morrow's Saturday," she said, in German. "If it's fair
and warm you put on that costume and take Mizzi to the
park. . . . Certainly the animal cages, if you want to. If
any one annoys you, come home. If a policeman asks you why
you are dressed that way tell him it is the costume worn by
nurses in Vienna. Give him your name. Tell him who your
master is. If he doesn't speak German--and he won't, in
Chicago--some one will translate for you."
Not a Sunday paper in Chicago that did not carry a startling
picture of the resplendent Otti and the dimpled and smiling
Mizzi. The omnipresent staff photographer seemed to sniff
his victim from afar. He pounced on Theodore Brandeis'
baby daughter, accompanied by her Viennese nurse (in
costume) and he played her up in a Sunday special that was
worth thousands of dollars, Fanny assured the bewildered and
resentful Theodore, as he floundered wildly through the
billowing waves of the Sunday newspaper flood.
Theodore's first appearance was to be in Chicago as soloist
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the season's opening
program in October. Any music-wise Chicagoan will tell you
that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is not only a musical
organization functioning marvelously (when playing
Beethoven). It is an institution. Its patrons will admit
the existence, but not the superiority of similar
organizations in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. On
Friday afternoons, during the season, Orchestra Hall,
situate on Michigan Boulevard, holds more pretty girls and
fewer men than one might expect to see at any one gathering
other than, perhaps, a wholesale debutante tea crush. A
Friday afternoon ticket is as impossible of attainment for
one not a subscriber as a seat in heaven for a sinner.
Saturday night's audience is staider, more masculine, less
staccato. Gallery, balcony, parquet, it represents the
city's best. Its men prefer Beethoven to Berlin. Its women
could wear pearl necklaces, and don't. Between the audience
and the solemn black-and-white rows on the platform there
exists an entente cordiale. The Konzert-Meister bows to
his friend in the third row, as he tucks his violin under
his chin. The fifth row, aisle, smiles and nods to the
sausage-fingered 'cellist.
"Fritz is playing well to-night."
In a rarefied form, it is the atmosphere that existed
between audience and players in the days of the old and
famous Daly stock company.
Such was the character of the audience Theodore was to face
on his first appearance in America. Fanny explained
its nature to him. He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture
as German as it was expressive.
Theodore seemed to have become irrevocably German during the
years of his absence from America. He had a queer stock of
little foreign tricks. He lifted his hat to men
acquaintances on the street. He had learned to smack his
heels smartly together and to bow stiffly from the waist,
and to kiss the hand of the matrons--and they adored him for
it. He was quite innocent of pose in these things. He
seemed to have imbibed them, together with his queer German
haircut, and his incredibly German clothes.
Fanny allowed him to retain the bow, and the courtly hand-
kiss, but she insisted that he change the clothes and the
haircut.
"You'll have to let it grow, Ted. I don't mean that I want
you to have a mane, like Ysaye. But I do think you ought to
discard that convict cut. Besides, it isn't becoming. And
if you're going to be an American violinist you'll have to
look it--with a foreign finish."
He let his hair grow. Fanny watched with interest for the
appearance of the unruly lock which had been wont to
straggle over his white forehead in his schoolboy days. The
new and well-cut American clothes effected surprisingly
little change. Fanny, surveying him, shook her head.
"When you stepped off the ship you looked like a German in
German clothes. Now you look like a German in American
clothes. I don't know--I do believe it's your face, Ted. I
wouldn't have thought that ten years or so in any country
could change the shape of one's nose, and mouth and
cheekbones. Do you suppose it's the umlauts?"
"Cut it out!" laughed Ted, that being his idea of modern
American slang. He was fascinated by these crisp phrases,
but he was ten years or so behind the times, and he
sometimes startled his hearers by an exhibition of slang so
old as to be almost new. It was all the more startling in
contrast with his conversational English, which was as
carefully correct as a born German's.
As for the rest, it was plain that he was interested, but
unhappy. He practiced for hours daily. He often took Mizzi
to the park and came back storming about the dirt, the
noise, the haste, the rudeness, the crowds, the
mismanagement of the entire city. Dummheit, he called it.
They profaned the lake. They allowed the people to trample
the grass. They threw papers and banana skins about. And
they wasted! His years in Germany had taught him to regard
all these things as sacrilege, and the last as downright
criminal. He was lonesome for his Germany. That was plain.
He hated it, and loved it, much as he hated and loved the
woman who had so nearly spoiled his life. The maelstrom
known as the southwest corner of State and Madison streets
appalled him.
"Gott!" he exclaimed. "Es ist unglaublich! Aber ganz
unglaublich! Ich werde bald veruckt." He somehow lapsed
into German when excited.
Fanny took him to the Haynes-Cooper plant one day, and it
left him dazed, and incredulous. She quoted millions at
him. He was not interested. He looked at the office
workers, the mail-room girls, and shook his head, dumbly.
They were using bicycles now, with a bundle rack in the
front, in the vast stock rooms, and the roller skates had
been discarded as too slow. The stock boys skimmed around
corners on these lightweight bicycles, up one aisle, and
down the next, snatching bundles out of bins, shooting
bundles into bins, as expertly as players in a gymkhana.
Theodore saw the uncanny rapidity with which the letter-
opening machines did their work. He watched the great
presses that turned out the catalogue--the catalogue
whose message meant millions; he sat in Fenger's office and
stared at the etchings, and said, "Certainly," with
politeness, when Fenger excused himself in the midst of a
conversation to pick up the telephone receiver and talk to
their shoe factory in Maine. He ended up finally in Fanny's
office, no longer a dingy and undesirable corner, but a
quietly brisk center that sent out vibrations over the
entire plant. Slosson, incidentally, was no longer of the
infants' wear. He had been transferred to a subordinate
position in the grocery section.
"Well," said Fanny, seating herself at her desk, and smiling
radiantly upon her brother. "Well, what do you think of
us?"
And then Theodore Brandeis, the careless, the selfish, the
blind, said a most amazing thing.
"Fanny, I'll work. I'll soon get some of these millions
that are lying about everywhere in this country. And then
I'll take you out of this. I promise you."
Fanny stared at him, a picture of ludicrous astonishment.
"Why, you talk as if you were--sorry for me!"
"I am, dear. God knows I am. I'll make it up to you,
somehow."
It was the first time in all her dashing and successful
career that Fanny Brandeis had felt the sting of pity. She
resented it, hotly. And from Theodore, the groper, the--
"But at any rate," something within her said, "he has always
been true to himself."
Theodore's manager arrived in September, on a Holland boat,
on which he had been obliged to share a stuffy inside cabin
with three others. Kurt Stein was German born, but American
bred, and he had the American love of luxurious travel. He
was still testy when he reached Chicago and his charge.
"How goes the work?" he demanded at once, of Theodore. He
eyed him sharply. "That's better. You have lost some
of the look you had when you left Wien. The ladies would
have liked that look, here in America. But it is bad for
the work."
He took Fanny aside before he left. His face was serious.
It was plain that he was disturbed. "That woman," he began.
"Pardon me, Mrs. Brandeis. She came to me. She says she is
starving. She is alone there, in Vienna. Her--well, she is
alone. The war is everywhere. They say it will last for
years. She wept and pleaded with me to take her here."
"No!" cried Fanny. "Don't let him hear it. He mustn't
know. He----"
"Yes, I know. She is a paradox, that woman. I tell you,
she almost prevailed on me. There is something about her;
something that repels and compels." That struck him as
being a very fine phrase indeed, and he repeated it
appreciatively.
"I'll send her money, somehow," said Fanny.
"Yes. But they say that money is not reaching them over
there. I don't know what becomes of it. It vanishes." He
turned to leave. "Oh, a message for you. On my boat was
Schabelitz. It looks very much as if his great fortune, the
accumulation of years, would be swept away by this war.
Already they are tramping up and down his lands in Poland.
His money--much of it--is invested in great hotels in Poland
and Russia, and they are using them for barracks and
hospitals."
"Schabelitz! You mean a message for Theodore? From him?
That's wonderful."
"For Theodore, and for you, too."
"For me! I made a picture of him once when I was a little
girl. I didn't see him again for years. Then I heard him
play. It was on his last tour here. I wanted to speak to
him. But I was afraid. And my face was red with weeping."
"He remembers you. And he means to see Theodore and you.
He can do much for Theodore in this country, and I
think he will. His message for you was this: `Tell her I
still have the picture that she made of me, with the jack-
in-the-box in my hand, and that look on my face. Tell her I
have often wondered about that little girl in the red cap
and the black curls. I've wondered if she went on, catching
that look back of people's faces. If she did, she should be
more famous than her brother."'
"He said that! About me!"
"I am telling you as nearly as I can. He said, `Tell her it
was a woman who ruined Bauer's career, and caused him to end
his days a music teacher in--in--Gott! I can't remember the
name of that town----"
"Winnebago."
"Winnebago. That was it. `Tell her not to let the brother
spoil his life that way.' So. That is the message. He
said you would understand."
Theodore's face was ominous when she returned to him, after
Stein had left.
"I wish you and Stein wouldn't stand out there in the hall
whispering about me as if I were an idiot patient. What
were you saying?"
"Nothing, Ted. Really."
He brooded a moment. Then his face lighted up with a flash
of intuition. He flung an accusing finger at Fanny.
"He has seen her."
"Ted! You promised."
"She's in trouble. This war. And she hasn't any money. I
know. Look here. We've got to send her money. Cable it."
"I will. Just leave it all to me."
"If she's here, in this country, and you're lying to me----"
"She isn't. My word of honor, Ted."
He relaxed.
Life was a very complicated thing for Fanny these days.
Ted was leaning on her; Mizzi, Otti, and now Fenger. Nathan
Haynes was poking a disturbing finger into that delicate and
complicated mechanism of System which Fenger had built up in
the Haynes-Cooper plant. And Fenger, snarling, was trying
to guard his treasure. He came to Fanny with his grievance.
Fanny had always stimulated him, reassured him, given him
the mental readjustment that he needed.
He strode into her office one morning in late September.
Ordinarily he sent for her. He stood by her desk now, a
sheaf of papers in his hand, palpably stage props, and
lifted significant eyebrows in the direction of the
stenographer busy at her typewriter in the corner.
"You may leave that, Miss Mahin," Fanny said. Miss Mahin, a
comprehending young woman, left it, and the room as well.
Fenger sat down. He was under great excitement, though he
was quite controlled. Fanny, knowing him, waited quietly.
His eyes held hers.
"It's come," Fenger began. "You know that for the last year
Haynes has been milling around with a herd of sociologists,
philanthropists, and students of economics. He had some
scheme in the back of his head, but I thought it was just
another of his impractical ideas. It appears that it
wasn't. Between the lot of them they've evolved a savings
and profit-sharing plan that's founded on a kind of
practical universal brotherhood dream. Haynes's millions
are bothering him. If they actually put this thing through
I'll get out. It'll mean that everything I've built up will
be torn down. It will mean that any six-dollar-a-week
girl----"
"As I understand it," interrupted Fanny, "it will mean that
there will be no more six-dollar-a-week girls."
"That's it. And let me tell you, once you get the ignorant,
unskilled type to believing they're actually capable of
earning decent money, actually worth something, they're
worse than useless. They're dangerous."
"You don't believe that."
"I do."
"But it's a theory that belongs to the Dark Ages. We've
disproved it. We've got beyond that."
"Yes. So was war. We'd got beyond it. But it's here. I
tell you, there are only two classes: the governing and the
governed. That has always been true. It always will be.
Let the Socialists rave. It has never got them anywhere. I
know. I come from the mucker class myself. I know what
they stand for. Boost them, and they'll turn on you. If
there's anything in any of them, he'll pull himself up by
his own bootstraps."
"They're not all potential Fengers."
"Then let 'em stay what they are."
Fanny's pencil was tracing and retracing a tortured and
meaningless figure on the paper before her. "Tell me, do
you remember a girl named Sarah Sapinsky?"
"Never heard of her."
"That's fitting. Sarah Sapinsky was a very pretty, very
dissatisfied girl who was a slave to the bundle chute. One
day there was a period of two seconds when a bundle didn't
pop out at her, and she had time to think. Anyway, she
left. I asked about her. She's on the streets."
"Well?"
"Thanks to you and your system."
"Look here, Fanny. I didn't come to you for that kind of
talk. Don't, for heaven's sake, give me any sociological
drivel to-day. I'm not here just to tell you my troubles.
You know what my contract is here with Haynes-Cooper. And
you know the amount of stock I hold. If this scheme of
Haynes's goes in, I go out. Voluntarily. But at my own
price. The Haynes-Cooper plant is at the height of its
efficiency now." He dropped his voice. "But the mail order
business is in its infancy. There's no limit to what can be
done with it in the next few years. Understand? Do you get
what I'm trying to tell you?" He leaned forward, tense and
terribly in earnest.
Fanny stared at him. Then her hand went to her head in a
gesture of weariness. "Not to-day. Please. And not here.
Don't think I'm ungrateful for your confidence. But--this
month has been a terrific strain. Just let me pass the
fifteenth of October. Let me see Theodore on the way----"
Fenger's fingers closed about her wrist. Fanny got to her
feet angrily. They glared at each other a moment. Then the
humor of the picture they must be making struck Fanny. She
began to laugh. Fenger's glare became a frown. He turned
abruptly and left the office. Fanny looked down at her
wrist ruefully. Four circlets of red marked its smooth
whiteness. She laughed again, a little uncertainly this
time.
When she got home that night she found, in her mail, a
letter for Theodore, postmarked Vienna, and stamped with the
mark of the censor. Theodore had given her his word of
honor that he would not write Olga, or give her his address.
Olga was risking Fanny's address. She stood looking at the
letter now. Theodore was coming in for dinner, as he did
five nights out of the week. As she stood in the hallway,
she heard the rattle of his key in the lock. She flew down
the hall and into her bedroom, her letters in her hand. She
opened her dressing table drawer and threw them into it,
switched on the light and turned to face Theodore in the
doorway.
"'Lo, Sis."
"Hello, Teddy. Kiss me. Phew! That pipe again. How'd the
work go to-day?"
"So--so. Any mail for me?"
"No."
That night, when he had gone, she took out the letter and
stood turning it over and over in her hands. She had no
thought of reading it. It was its destruction she was
contemplating. Finally she tucked it away in her
handkerchief box. Perhaps, after the fifteenth of October.
Everything depended on that.
And the fifteenth of October came. It had dragged for
weeks, and then, at the end, it galloped. By that time
Fanny had got used to seeing Theodore's picture and name
outside Orchestra Hall, and in the musical columns of the
papers. Brandeis. Theodore Brandeis, the violinist. The
name sang in her ears. When she walked on Michigan Avenue
during that last week she would force herself to march
straight on past Orchestra Hall, contenting herself with a
furtive and oblique glance at the announcement board. The
advance programs hung, a little bundle of them, suspended by
a string from a nail on the wall near the box office, so
that ticket purchasers might rip one off and peruse the
week's musical menu. Fanny longed to hear the comment of
the little groups that were constantly forming and
dispersing about the box office window. She never dreamed
of allowing herself to hover near it. She thought sometimes
of the woman in the businesslike gray skirt and the black
sateen apron who had drudged so cheerfully in the little
shop so that Theodore Brandeis' name might shine now from
the very top of the program, in heavy black letters:
Soloist: MR. THEODORE BRANDEIS, Violin
The injustice of it. Fanny had never ceased to rage at
that.
In the years to come Theodore Brandeis was to have that
adulation which the American public, temperamentally so
cold, gives its favorite, once the ice of its reserve is
thawed. He was to look down on that surging, tempestuous
crowd which sometimes packs itself about the foot of
the platform in Carnegie Hall, demanding more, more, more,
after a generous concert is concluded. He had to learn to
protect himself from those hysterical, enraptured, wholly
feminine adorers who swarmed about him, scaling the platform
itself. But of all this there was nothing on that Friday
and Saturday in October. Orchestra Hall audiences are not,
as a rule, wildly demonstrative. They were no exception.
They listened attentively, appreciatively. They talked,
critically and favorably, on the way home. They applauded
generously. They behaved as an Orchestra Hall audience
always behaves, and would behave, even if it were confronted
with a composite Elman-Kreisler-Ysaye soloist. Theodore's
playing was, as a whole, perhaps the worst of his career.
Not that he did not rise to magnificent heights at times.
But it was what is known as uneven playing. He was torn
emotionally, nervously, mentally. His playing showed it.
Fanny, seated in the auditorium, her hands clasped tight,
her heart hammering, had a sense of unreality as she waited
for Theodore to appear from the little door at the left. He
was to play after the intermission. Fanny had arrived late,
with Theodore, that Friday afternoon. She felt she could
not sit through the first part of the program. They waited
together in the anteroom. Theodore, looking very slim and
boyish in his frock coat, walked up and down, up and down.
Fanny wanted to straighten his tie. She wanted to pick an
imaginary thread off his lapel. She wanted to adjust the
white flower in his buttonhole (he jerked it out presently,
because it interfered with his violin, he said). She wanted
to do any one of the foolish, futile things that would have
served to relieve her own surcharged feelings. But she had
learned control in these years. And she yielded to none of
them.
The things they said and did were, perhaps, almost
ludicrous.
"How do I look?" Theodore demanded, and stood up before her.
"Beautiful!" said Fanny, and meant it.
Theodore passed a hand over his cheek. "Cut myself shaving,
damn it!"
"It doesn't show."
He resumed his pacing. Now and then he stopped, and rubbed
his hands together with a motion we use in washing.
Finally:
"I wish you'd go out front," he said, almost pettishly.
Fanny rose, without a word. She looked very handsome.
Excitement had given her color. The pupils of her eyes were
dilated and they shone brilliantly. She looked at her
brother. He stared at her. They swayed together. They
kissed, and clung together for a long moment. Then Fanny
turned and walked swiftly away, and stumbled a little as she
groped for the stairway.
The bell in the foyer rang. The audience strolled to the
auditorium. They lagged, Fanny thought. They crawled. She
told herself that she must not allow her nerves to tease her
like that. She looked about her, with outward calm. Her
eyes met Fenger's. He was seated, alone. It was he who had
got a subscription seat for her from a friend. She had said
she preferred to be alone. She looked at him now and he at
her, and they did not nod nor smile. The house settled
itself flutteringly.
A man behind Fanny spoke. "Who's this Brandeis?"
"I don't know. A new one. German, I guess. They say he's
good. Kreisler's the boy who can play for me, though."
The orchestra was seated now. Stock, the conductor, came
out from the little side door. Behind him walked Theodore.
There was a little, impersonal burst of applause. Stock
mounted his conductor's platform and glanced paternally
down at Theodore, who stood at the left, violin and bow in
hand, bowing. The audience seemed to warm to his
boyishness. They applauded again, and he bowed in a little
series of jerky bobs that waggled his coat-tails. Heels
close together, knees close together. A German bow. And
then a polite series of bobs addressed to Stock and his
orchestra. Stock's long, slim hands poised in air. His
fingertips seemed to draw from the men before him the first
poignant strains of Theodore's concerto. Theodore stood,
slim and straight. Fanny's face, lifted toward him, was a
prayerful thing. Theodore suddenly jerked back the left
lapel of his coat in a little movement Fanny remembered as
typical in his boyish days, nuzzled his violin tenderly, and
began to play.
It is the most excruciating of instruments, the violin, or
the most exquisite. I think Fanny actually heard very
little of his playing. Her hands were icy. Her cheeks were
hot. The man before her was not Theodore Brandeis, the
violinist, but Teddy, the bright-haired, knickered schoolboy
who played to those people seated in the yellow wooden pews
of the temple in Winnebago. The years seemed to fade away.
He crouched over his violin to get the 'cello tones for
which he was to become famous, and it was the same hunched,
almost awkward pose that the boy had used. Fanny found
herself watching his feet as his shifted his position. He
was nervous. And he was not taken out of himself. She knew
that because she saw the play of his muscles about the jaw-
bone. It followed that he was not playing his best. She
could not tell that from listening to him. Her music sense
was dulled. She got it from these outward signs. The woman
next to her was reading a program absorbedly, turning the
pages regularly, and with care. Fanny could have killed her
with her two hands. She tried to listen detachedly. The
music was familiar to her. Theodore had played it for
her, again and again. The last movement had never
failed to shake her emotionally. It was the glorious and
triumphant cry of a people tried and unafraid. She heard it
now, unmoved.
And then Theodore was bowing his little jerky bows, and he
was shaking hands with Stock, and with the First Violin. He
was gone. Fanny sat with her hands in her lap. The
applause continued. Theodore appeared again. Bowed. He
bent very low now, with his arms hanging straight. There
was something gracious and courtly about him. And foreign.
He must keep that, Fanny thought. They like it. She saw
him off again. More applause. Encores were against the
house rules. She knew that. Then it meant they were
pleased. He was to play again. A group of Hungarian dances
this time. They were wild, gypsy things, rising to frenzy
at times. He played them with spirit and poetry. To listen
sent the blood singing through the veins. Fanny found
herself thinking clearly and exaltedly.
"This is what my mother drudged for, and died for, and it
was worth it. And you must do the same, if necessary.
Nothing else matters. What he needs now is luxury. He's
worn out with fighting. Ease. Peace. Leisure. You've got
to give them to him. It's no use, Fanny. You lose."
In that moment she reached a mark in her spiritual career
that she was to outdistance but once.
Theodore was bowing again. Fanny had scarcely realized that
he had finished. The concert was over.
". . . the group of dances," the man behind her was saying
as he helped the girl next him with her coat, "but I didn't
like that first thing. Church music, not concert."
Fanny found her way back to the ante-room. Theodore was
talking to the conductor, and one or two others. He looked
tired, and his eyes found Fanny's with appeal and
relief in them. She came over to him. There were
introductions, congratulations. Fanny slipped her hand over
his with a firm pressure.
"Come, dear. You must be tired."
At the door they found Fenger waiting. Theodore received
his well-worded congratulations with an ill-concealed scowl.
"My car's waiting," said Fenger. "Won't you let me take you
home?"
A warning pressure from Theodore. "Thanks, no. We have a
car. Theodore's very tired."
"I can quite believe that."
"Not tired," growled Theodore, like a great boy. "I'm
hungry. Starved. I never eat before playing."
Kurt Stein, Theodore's manager, had been hovering over him
solicitously. "You must remember to-morrow night. I should
advise you to rest now, as quickly as possible." He, too,
glared at Fenger.
Fenger fell back, almost humbly. "I've great news for you.
I must see you Sunday. After this is over. I'll telephone
you. Don't try to come to work to-morrow." All this is a
hurried aside to Fanny.
Fanny nodded and moved away with Theodore.
Theodore leaned back in the car, but there was no hint of
relaxation. He was as tense and vibrant as one of his own
violin strings.
"It went, didn't it? They're like clods, these American
audiences." It was on the tip of Fanny's tongue to say that
he had professed indifference to audiences, but she wisely
refrained. "Gad! I'm hungry. What makes this Fenger hang
around so? I'm going to tell him to keep away, some day.
The way he stares at you. Let's go somewhere to-night, Fan.
Or have some people in. I can't sit about after I've
played. Olga always used to have a supper party, or
something."
"All right, Ted. Would you like the theater?"
For the first time in her life she felt a little whisper of
sympathy for the despised Olga. Perhaps, after all, she had
not been wholly to blame.
He was to leave Sunday morning for Cleveland, where he would
play Monday. He had insisted on taking Mizzi with him,
though Fanny had railed and stormed. Theodore had had his
way.
"She's used to it. She likes to travel, don't you, Mizzi?
You should have seen her in Russia, and all over Germany,
and in Sweden. She's a better traveler than her dad."
Saturday morning's papers were kind, but cool. They used
words such as promising, uneven, overambitious, gifted.
Theodore crumpled the lot into a ball and hurled them across
the room, swearing horribly. Then he smoothed them out,
clipped them, and saved them carefully. His playing that
night was tinged with bravado, and the Saturday evening
audience rose to it. There was about his performance a
glow, a spirit that had been lacking on the previous day.
Inconsistently enough, he missed the antagonism of the
European critics. He was puzzled and resentful.
"They hardly say a word about the meaning of the concerto.
They accept it as a piece of music, Jewish in theme. It
might as well be entitled Springtime."
"This isn't France or Russia," said Fanny. "Antagonism here
isn't religious. It's personal, almost. You've been away
so many years you've forgotten. They don't object to us as
a sect, or a race, but as a type. That's the trouble,
Clarence Heyl says. We're free to build as many synagogues
as we like, and worship in them all day, if we want to. But
we don't want to. The struggle isn't racial any more, but
individual. For some reason or other one flashy, loud-
talking Hebrew in a restaurant can cause more ill feeling
than ten thousand of them holding a religious mass meeting
in Union Square."
Theodore pondered a moment. "Then here each one of us is
responsible. Is that it?"
"I suppose so."
"But look here. I've been here ten weeks, and I've met your
friends, and not one of them is a Jew. How's that?"
Fanny flushed a little. "Oh, it just worked out that way."
Theodore looked at her hard. "You mean you worked it out
that way?"
"Yes."
"Fan, we're a couple of weaklings, both of us, to have
sprung from a mother like ours. I don't know which is
worse; my selfishness, or yours." Then, at the hurt that
showed in her face, he was all contrition. "Forgive me,
Sis. You've been so wonderful to me, and to Mizzi, and to
all of us. I'm a good-for-nothing fiddler, that's all.
You're the strong one."
Fenger had telephoned her on Saturday. He and his wife were
at their place in the country. Fanny was to take the train
out there Sunday morning. She looked forward to it with a
certain relief. The weather had turned unseasonably warm,
as Chicago Octobers sometimes do. Up to the last moment she
had tried to shake Theodore's determination to take Mizzi
and Otti with him. But he was stubborn.
"I've got to have her," he said.
Michael Fenger's voice over the telephone had been as
vibrant with suppressed excitement as Michael Fenger's dry,
hard tones could be.
"Fanny, it's done--finished," he said. "We had a meeting
to-day. This is my last month with Haynes-Cooper."
"But you can't mean it. Why, you ARE Haynes-Cooper. How
can they let you go?"
"I can't tell you now. We'll go over it all to-morrow.
I've new plans. They've bought me out. D'you see? At
a price that--well, I thought I'd got used to juggling
millions at Haynes-Cooper. But this surprised even me.
Will you come? Early? Take the eight-ten."
"That's too early. I'll get the ten."
The mid-October country was a lovely thing. Fanny, with the
strain of Theodore's debut and leave-taking behind her, and
the prospect of a high-tension business talk with Fenger
ahead, drank in the beauty of the wayside woods gratefully.
Fenger met her at the station. She had never seen him so
boyish, so exuberant. He almost pranced.
"Hop in," he said. He had driven down in a runabout.
"Brother get off all right? Gad! He CAN play. And
you've made the whole thing possible." He turned to look at
her. "You're a wonder."
"In your present frame of mind and state of being," laughed
Fanny, "you'd consider any one a wonder. You're so pleased
with yourself you're fairly gummy."
Fenger laughed softly and sped the car on. They turned in
at the gate. There was scarlet salvia, now, to take the
place of the red geraniums. The gay awnings, too, were
gone.
"This is our last week," Fenger explained. "It's too cold
out here for Katherine. We're moving into town to-morrow.
We're more or less camping out here, with only the Jap to
take care of us."
"Don't apologize, please. I'm grateful just to be here,
after the week I've had. Let's have the news now."
"We'll have lunch first. I'm afraid you'll have to excuse
Katherine. She probably won't be down for lunch." The Jap
had spread the luncheon table on the veranda, but a brisk
lake breeze had sprung up, and he was busy now transferring
his table from the porch to the dining room. "Would you
have believed it," said Fenger, "when you left town?
Good old lake. Mrs. Fenger coming down?" to the man.
The Jap shook his head. "Nossa."
Their talk at luncheon was all about Theodore and his
future. Fenger said that what Theodore needed was a firm
and guiding hand. "A sort of combination manager and slave-
driver. An ambitious and intelligent wife would do it.
That's what we all need. A woman to work for, and to make
us work."
Fanny smiled. "Mizzi will have to be woman enough, I'm
afraid. Poor Ted."
They rose. "Now for the talk," said Fenger. But the
telephone had sounded shrilly a moment before, and the
omnipresent little Jap summoned Fenger. He was back in a
minute, frowning. "It's Haynes. I'm sorry. I'm afraid
it'll take a half hour of telephoning. Don't you want to
take a cat-nap? Or a stroll down to the lake?"
"Don't bother about me. I'll probably take a run outdoors."
"Be back in half an hour."
But when she returned he was still at the telephone. She
got a book and stretched luxuriously among the cushions of
one of the great lounging chairs, and fell asleep. When she
awoke Fenger was seated opposite her. He was not reading.
He was not smoking. He evidently had been sitting there,
looking at her.
"Oh, gracious! Mouth open?"
"No."
Fanny fought down an impulse to look as cross as she felt.
"What time? Why didn't you wake me?" The house was very
quiet. She patted her hair deftly, straightened her collar.
"Where's everybody? Isn't Mrs. Fenger down yet?"
"No. Don't you want to hear about my plans now?"
"Of course I do. That's what I came for. I don't see
why you didn't tell me hours ago. You're as slow in action
as a Chinese play. Out with it."
Fenger got up and began to pace the floor, not excitedly,
but with an air of repression. He looked very powerful and
compelling, there in the low-ceilinged, luxurious room.
"I'll make it brief. We met yesterday in Haynes's office.
Of course we had discussed the thing before. You know that.
Haynes knew that I'd never run the plant under the new
conditions. Why, it would kill every efficiency rule I've
ever made. Here I had trimmed that enormous plant down to
fighting weight. There wasn't a useless inch or ounce about
the whole enormous billionaire bulk of it. And then to have
Haynes come along, with his burdensome notions, and his
socialistic slop. They'd cripple any business, no matter
how great a start it had. I told him all that. We didn't
waste much time on argument, though. We knew we'd never get
together. In half an hour we were talking terms. You know
my contract and the amount of stock I hold. Well, we
threshed that out, and Haynes is settling for two million
and a half."
He came to a stop before Fanny's chair.
"Two million and a half what?" asked Fanny, feebly.
"Dollars." He smiled rather grimly. "In a check."
"One--check?"
"One check."
Fanny digested that in her orderly mind. "I thought I was
used to thinking in millions. But this--I'd like to touch
the check, just once."
"You shall." He drew up a chair near her. "Now get this,
Fanny. There's nothing that you and I can't do with two
millions and a half. Nothing. We know this mail order game
as no two people in the world know it. And it's in its
infancy. I know the technical side of it. You know the
human side of it. I tell you that in five years' time you
and I can be a national power. Not merely the heads of
a prosperous mail order business, but figures in finance.
See what's happened to Haynes-Cooper in the last five years!
Why, it's incredible. It's grotesque. And it's nothing to
what you and I can do, working together. You know people,
somehow. You've a genius for sensing their wants, or
feelings, or emotions--I don't know just what it is. And I
know facts. And we have two million and a half--I can make
it nearly three millions--to start with. Haynes, fifteen
years ago, had a couple of hundred thousand. In five years
we can make the Haynes-Cooper organization look as modern
and competent as a cross-roads store. This isn't a dream.
These are facts. You know how my mind works. Like a cold
chisel. I can see this whole country--and Europe, too,
after the war--God, yes!--stretched out before us like a
patient before expert surgeons. You to attend to its heart,
and I to its bones and ligaments. I can put you where no
other woman has ever been. I've a hundred new plans this
minute, and a hundred more waiting to be born. So have you.
I tell you it's just a matter of buildings. Of bricks and
stone, and machinery and people to make the machinery go.
Once we get those--and it's only a matter of months--we can
accomplish things I daren't even dream of. What was Haynes-
Cooper fifteen years ago? What was the North American Cloak
and Suit Company? The Peter Johnston Stores, of New York?
Wells-Kayser? Nothing. They didn't exist. And this year
Haynes-Cooper is declaring a twenty-five per cent dividend.
Do you get what that means? But of course you do. That's
the wonder of it. I never need explain things to you.
You've a genius for understanding."
Fanny had been sitting back in her chair, crouching almost,
her eyes fixed upon the man's face, so terrible in its
earnestness and indomitable strength. When he stopped
talking now, and stood looking down at her, she rose,
too, her eyes still on his face. She was twisting the
fingers of one hand in the fingers of the other, in a
frightened sort of way.
"I'm not really a business woman. I--wait a minute,
please--I have a knack of knowing what people are thinking
and wanting. But that isn't business."
"It isn't, eh? It's the finest kind of business sense.
It's the thing the bugs call psychology, and it's as
necessary to-day as capital was yesterday. You can get
along without the last. You can't without the first. One
can be acquired. The other you've got to be born with."
"But I--you know, of late, it's only the human side of it
that has appealed to me. I don't know why. I seem to have
lost interest in the actual mechanics of it."
Fenger stood looking at her, his head lowered. A scarlet
stripe, that she had never noticed before, seemed to stand
out suddenly, like a welt, on his forehead. Then he came
toward her. She raised her hand in a little futile gesture.
She took an involuntary step backward, encountered the chair
she had just left, and sank into it coweringly. She sat
there, looking up at him, fascinated. His hand, on the wing
of the great chair, was shaking. So, too, was his voice.
"Fanny, Katherine's not here."
Fanny still looked up at him, wordlessly.
"Katherine left here yesterday. She's in town." Then, at
the look in her face, "She was here when I telephoned you
yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon she had one of her
fantastic notions. She insisted that she must go into town.
It was too cold for her here. Too damp. Too--well, she
went. And I let her go. And I didn't telephone you again.
I wanted you to come."
Fanny Brandeis, knowing him, must have felt a great qualm of
terror and helplessness. But she was angry, too, a
wholesome ingredient in a situation such as this. The thing
she said and did now was inspired. She laughed--a little
uncertainly, it is true--but still she laughed. And she
said, in a matter-of-fact tone:
"Well, I must say that's a rather shabby trick. Still, I
suppose the tired business man has got to have his little
melodrama. What do I do? H'm? Beat my breast and howl?
Or pound on the door panel?"
Fenger stood looking at her. "Don't laugh at me, Fanny."
She stood up, still smiling. It was rather a brilliant
piece of work. Fenger, taken out of himself though he was,
still was artist enough to appreciate it.
"Why not laugh," she said, "if I'm amused? And I am. Come
now, Mr. Fenger. Be serious. And let's get back to the
billions. I want to catch the five-fifteen."
"I AM serious."
"Well, if you expect me to play the hunted heroine, I'm
sorry." She pointed an accusing finger at him. "I know
now. You're quitting Haynes-Cooper for the movies. And
this is a rehearsal for a vampire film."
"You nervy little devil, you!" He reached out with one
great, irresistible hand and gripped her shoulder. "You
wonderful, glorious girl!" The hand that gripped her
shoulder swung her to him. She saw his face with veins she
had never noticed before standing out, in knots, on his
temples, and his eyes were fixed and queer. And he was
talking, rather incoherently, and rapidly. He was saying
the same thing over and over again: "I'm crazy about you.
I've been looking for a woman like you--all my life. I'm
crazy about you. I'm crazy----"
And then Fanny's fine composure and self control fled, and
she thought of her mother. She began to struggle, too, and
to say, like any other girl, "Let me go! Let me go!
You're hurting me. Let me go! You! You!"
And then, quite clearly, from that part of her brain where
it had been tucked away until she should need it, came
Clarence Heyl's whimsical bit of advice. Her mind released
it now, complete.
"If you double your fist this way, and tuck your thumb
alongside, like that, and aim for this spot right here,
about two inches this side of the chin, bringing your arm
back and up quickly, like a piston, the person you hit will
go down, limp. There's a nerve right here that communicates
with the brain. The blow makes you see stars, and bright
lights----"
She went limp in his arms. She shut her eyes, flutteringly.
"All men--like you--have a yellow streak," she whispered,
and opened her eyes, and looked up at him, smiling a little.
He relaxed his hold, in surprise and relief. And with her
eyes on that spot barely two inches to the side of the chin
she brought her right arm down, slowly, slowly, fist
doubled, and then up like a piston--snap! His teeth came
together with a sharp little crack. His face, in that
second, was a comic mask, surprised, stunned, almost
idiotic. Then he went down, as Clarence Heyl had predicted,
limp. Not with a crash, but slowly, crumpingly, so that he
almost dragged her with him.
Fanny stood looking down at him a moment. Then she wiped
her mouth with the back of her hand. She walked out of the
room, and down the hall. She saw the little Jap dart
suddenly back from a doorway, and she stamped her foot and
said, "S-s-cat!" as if he had been a rat. She gathered up
her hat and bag from the hall table, and so, out of the
door, and down the walk, to the road. And then she began to
run. She ran, and ran, and ran. It was a longish stretch
to the pretty, vine-covered station. She seemed unconscious
of fatigue, or distance. She must have been at least a
half hour on the way. When she reached the station the
ticket agent told her there was no train until six. So she
waited, quietly. She put on her hat (she had carried it in
her hand all the way) and patted her hair into place. When
the train came she found a seat quite alone, and sank into
its corner, and rested her head against her open palm. It
was not until then that she felt a stab of pain. She looked
at her hand, and saw that the skin of her knuckles was
bruised and bleeding.
"Well, if this," she said to herself, "isn't the most
idiotic thing that ever happened to a woman outside a near-
novel."
She looked at her knuckles, critically, as though the hand
belonged to some one else. Then she smiled. And even as
she smiled a great lump came into her throat, and the bruise
blurred before her eyes, and she was crying rackingly,
relievedly, huddled there in her red plush corner. _
Read next: CHAPTER 18
Read previous: CHAPTER 16
Table of content of Fanny Herself
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
