"I was. I almost always do when you and some traveling man or somebody like that are talking. It--it"s interesting."
f.a.n.n.y went back to her book then. But Molly Brandeis sat a moment, eyeing her queer little daughter thoughtfully. Then she sighed, and laid out her cards for solitaire. By eight o"clock she was usually so sleepy that she would fall, dead-tired, asleep on the worn leather couch in the sitting-room. She must have been fearfully exhausted, mind and body. The house would be very quiet, except for Mattie, perhaps, moving about in the kitchen or in her corner room upstairs. Sometimes the weary woman on the couch would start suddenly from her sleep and cry out, choked and gasping, "No! No! No!" The children would jump, terrified, and come running to her at first, but later they got used to it, and only looked up to say, when she asked them, bewildered, what it was that wakened her, "You had the no-no-nos."
She had never told of the thing that made her start out of her sleep and cry out like that. Perhaps it was just the protest of the exhausted body and the overwrought nerves. Usually, after that, she would sit up, haggardly, and take the hairpins out of her short thick hair, and announce her intention of going to bed. She always insisted that the children go too, though they often won an extra half hour by protesting and teasing. It was a good thing for them, these nine o"clock bed hours, for it gave them the tonic sleep that their young, high-strung natures demanded.
"Come, children," she would say, yawning.
"Oh, mother, please just let me finish this chapter!"
"How much?"
"Just this little bit. See? Just this."
"Well, just that, then," for Mrs. Brandeis was a reasonable woman, and she had the book-lover"s knowledge of the fascination of the unfinished chapter.
f.a.n.n.y and Theodore were not always honest about the bargain. They would gallop, hot-cheeked, through the allotted chapter. Mrs. Brandeis would have fallen into a doze, perhaps. And the two conspirators would read on, turning the leaves softly and swiftly, gulping the pages, cramming them down in an orgy of mental bolting, like naughty children stuffing cake when their mother"s back is turned. But the very concentration of their dread of waking her often brought about the feared result. Mrs.
Brandeis would start up rather wildly, look about her, and see the two buried, red-cheeked and eager, in their books.
"f.a.n.n.y! Theodore! Come now! Not another minute!"
f.a.n.n.y, shameless little glutton, would try it again. "Just to the end of this chapter! Just this weenty bit!"
"Fiddlesticks! You"ve read four chapters since I spoke to you the last time. Come now!"
Molly Brandeis would see to the doors, and the windows, and the clock, and then, waiting for the weary little figures to climb the stairs, would turn out the light, and, hairpins in one hand, corset in the other, perhaps, mount to bed.
By nine o"clock the little household would be sleeping, the children sweetly and dreamlessly, the tired woman restlessly and fitfully, her overwrought brain still surging with the day"s problems. It was not like a household at rest, somehow. It was like a spirited thing standing, quivering for a moment, its nerves tense, its muscles twitching.
Perhaps you have quite forgotten that here were to be retailed two epochal events in f.a.n.n.y Brandeis"s life. If you have remembered, you will have guessed that the one was the reading of that book of social protest, though its writer has fallen into disfavor in these fickle days. The other was the wild and unladylike street brawl in which she took part so that a terrified and tortured little boy might escape his tormentors.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was no hard stock in Brandeis" Bazaar now. The packing-room was always littered with straw and excelsior dug from hogsheads and great crates. Aloysius lorded it over a small red-headed satellite who disappeared inside barrels and dived head first into huge boxes, coming up again with a lamp, or a doll, or a piece of gla.s.sware, like a magician. f.a.n.n.y, perched on an overturned box, used to watch him, fascinated, while he laboriously completed a water set, or a tea set.
A preliminary dive would bring up the first of a half dozen related pieces, each swathed in tissue paper. A deft twist on the part of the attendant Aloysius would strip the paper wrappings and disclose a ruby-tinted tumbler, perhaps. Another dive, and another, until six gleaming gla.s.ses stood revealed, like chicks without a hen mother. A final dip, much scratching and burrowing, during which armfuls of hay and excelsior were thrown out, and then the red-headed genie of the barrel would emerge, flushed and triumphant, with the water pitcher itself, thus completing the happy family.
Aloysius, meanwhile, would regale her with one of those choice bits of gossip he had always about him, like a jewel concealed, and only to be brought out for the appreciative. Mrs. Brandeis disapproved of store gossip, and frowned on Sadie and Pearl whenever she found them, their heads close together, their stifled shrieks testifying to his wit. There were times when Molly Brandeis herself could not resist the spell of his tongue. No one knew where Aloysius got his information. He had news that Winnebago"s two daily papers never could get, and wouldn"t have dared to print if they had.
"Did you hear about Myrtle Krieger," he would begin, "that"s marryin"
the Hempel boy next month? The one in the bank. She"s exhibiting her trewsow at the Outagamie County Fair this week, for the handwork and embroid"ry prize. Ain"t it brazen? They say the crowd"s so thick around the table that they had to take down the more pers"nal pieces. The first day of the fair the grand-stand was, you might say, empty, even when they was pullin" off the trottin" races and the balloon ascension. It"s funny--ain"t it?--how them garmints that you wouldn"t turn for a second look at on the clothesline or in a store winda" becomes kind of wicked and interestin" the minute they get what they call the human note. There it lays, that virgin lawnjerie, for all the county to look at, with pink ribbons run through everything, and the poor Krieger girl never dreamin"
she"s doin" somethin" indelicate. She says yesterday if she wins the prize she"s going to put it toward one of these kitchen cabinets."
I wish we could stop a while with Aloysius. He is well worth it.
Aloysius, who looked a pa.s.s between Ichabod Crane and Smike; Aloysius, with his bit of scandal burnished with wit; who, after a long, hard Sat.u.r.day, would go home to scrub the floor of the dingy lodgings where he lived with his invalid mother, and who rose in the cold dawn of Sunday morning to go to early ma.s.s, so that he might return to cook the dinner and wait upon the sick woman. Aloysius, whose trousers flapped grotesquely about his bony legs, and whose thin red wrists hung awkwardly from his too-short sleeves, had in him that tender, faithful and courageous stuff of which unsung heroes are made. And he adored his clever, resourceful boss to the point of imitation. You should have seen him trying to sell a sled or a doll"s go-cart in her best style. But we cannot stop for Aloysius. He is irrelevant, and irrelevant matter halts the progress of a story. Any one, from Barrie to Harold Bell Wright, will tell you that a story, to be successful, must march.
We"ll keep step, then, with Molly Brandeis until she drops out of the ranks. There is no detouring with Mrs. Brandeis for a leader. She is the sort that, once her face is set toward her goal, looks neither to right nor left until she has reached it.
When f.a.n.n.y Brandeis was fourteen, and Theodore was not quite sixteen, a tremendous thing happened. Schabelitz, the famous violinist, came to Winnebago to give a concert under the auspices of the Young Men"s Sunday Evening Club.
The Young Men"s Sunday Evening Club of the Congregational Church prided itself (and justifiably) on what the papers called its "auspices." It scorned to present to Winnebago the usual lyceum attractions--Swiss bell ringers, negro glee clubs, and Family Fours. Instead, Schumann-Heink sang her lieder for them; McCutcheon talked and cartooned for them; Madame Bloomfield-Zeisler played. Winnebago was one of those wealthy little Mid-Western towns whose people appreciate the best and set out to acquire it for themselves.
To the Easterner, Winnebago, and Oshkosh, and Kalamazoo, and Emporia are names invented to get a laugh from a vaudeville audience. Yet it is the people from Winnebago and Emporia and the like whom you meet in Egypt, and the Catalina Islands, and at Honolulu, and St. Moritz. It is in the Winnebago living-room that you are likely to find a prayer rug got in Persia, a bit of gorgeous glaze from China, a scarf from some temple in India, and on it a book, hand-tooled and rare. The Winnebagoans seem to know what is being served and worn, from salad to veilings, surprisingly soon after New York has informed itself on those subjects. The 7:52 Northwestern morning train out of Winnebago was always pretty comfortably crowded with shoppers who were taking a five-hour run down to Chicago to get a hat and see the new musical show at the Illinois.
So Schabelitz"s coming was an event, but not an unprecedented one.
Except to Theodore. Theodore had a ticket for the concert (his mother had seen to that), and he talked of nothing else. He was going with his violin teacher, Emil Bauer. There were strange stories as to why Emil Bauer, with his gift of teaching, should choose to bury himself in this obscure little Wisconsin town. It was known that he had acquaintance with the great and famous of the musical world. The East End set fawned upon him, and his studio suppers were the exclusive social events in Winnebago.
Schabelitz was to play in the evening. At half past three that afternoon there entered Brandeis" Bazaar a white-faced, wide-eyed boy who was Theodore Brandeis; a plump, voluble, and excited person who was Emil Bauer; and a short, stocky man who looked rather like a foreign-born artisan--plumber or steam-fitter--in his Sunday clothes. This was Levine Schabelitz.
Molly Brandeis was selling a wash boiler to a fussy housewife who, in her anxiety to a.s.sure herself of the flawlessness of her purchase, had done everything but climb inside it. It had early been instilled in the minds of Mrs. Brandeis"s children that she was never to be approached when busy with a customer. There were times when they rushed into the store bursting with news or plans, but they had learned to control their eagerness. This, though, was no ordinary news that had blanched Theodore"s face. At sight of the three, Mrs. Brandeis quietly turned her boiler purchaser over to Pearl and came forward from the rear of the store.
"Oh, Mother!" cried Theodore, an hysterical note in his voice. "Oh, Mother!"
And in that moment Molly Brandeis knew. Emil Bauer introduced them, floridly. Molly Brandeis held out her hand, and her keen brown eyes looked straight and long into the gifted Russian"s pale blue ones.
According to all rules he should have started a dramatic speech, beginning with "Madame!" hand on heart. But Schabelitz the great had sprung from Schabelitz the peasant boy, and in the process he had managed, somehow, to retain the simplicity which was his charm. Still, there was something queer and foreign in the way he bent over Mrs.
Brandeis"s hand. We do not bow like that in Winnebago.
"Mrs. Brandeis, I am honored to meet you."
"And I to meet you," replied the shopkeeper in the black sateen ap.r.o.n.
"I have just had the pleasure of hearing your son play," began Schabelitz.
"Mr. Bauer called me out of my economics cla.s.s at school, Mother, and said that----"
"Theodore!" Theodore subsided. "He is only a boy," went on Schabelitz, and put one hand on Theodore"s shoulder. "A very gifted boy. I hear hundreds. Oh, how I suffer, sometimes, to listen to their devilish sc.r.a.ping! To-day, my friend Bauer met me with that old plea, "You must hear this pupil play. He has genius." "Bah! Genius!" I said, and I swore at him a little, for he is my friend, Bauer. But I went with him to his studio--Bauer, that is a remarkably fine place you have there, above that drug store; a room of exceptional proportions. And those rugs, let me tell you----"
"Never mind the rugs, Schabelitz. Mrs. Brandeis here----"
"Oh, yes, yes! Well, dear lady, this boy of yours will be a great violinist if he is willing to work, and work, and work. He has what you in America call the spark. To make it a flame he must work, always work.
You must send him to Dresden, under Auer."
"Dresden!" echoed Molly Brandeis faintly, and put one hand on the table that held the fancy cups and saucers, and they jingled a little.
"A year, perhaps, first, in New York with Wolfsohn."
Wolfsohn! New York! Dresden! It was too much even for Molly Brandeis"
well-balanced brain. She was conscious of feeling a little dizzy. At that moment Pearl approached apologetically. "Pardon me, Mis" Brandeis, but Mrs. Trost wants to know if you"ll send the boiler special this afternoon. She wants it for the washing early to-morrow morning."
That served to steady her.
"Tell Mrs. Trost I"ll send it before six to-night." Her eyes rested on Theodore"s face, flushed now, and glowing. Then she turned and faced Schabelitz squarely. "Perhaps you do not know that this store is our support. I earn a living here for myself and my two children. You see what it is--just a novelty and notion store in a country town. I speak of this because it is the important thing. I have known for a long time that Theodore"s playing was not the playing of the average boy, musically gifted. So what you tell me does not altogether surprise me.
But when you say Dresden--well, from Brandeis" Bazaar in Winnebago, Wisconsin, to Auer, in Dresden, Germany, is a long journey for one afternoon."
"But of course you must have time to think it over. It must be brought about, somehow."
"Somehow----" Mrs. Brandeis stared straight ahead, and you could almost hear that indomitable will of hers working, crashing over obstacles, plowing through difficulties. Theodore watched her, breathless, as though expecting an immediate solution. His mother"s eyes met his own intent ones, and at that her mobile mouth quirked in a sudden smile.
"You look as if you expected pearls to pop out of my mouth, son. And, by the way, if you"re going to a concert this evening don"t you think it would be a good idea to squander an hour on study this afternoon? You may be a musical prodigy, but geometry"s geometry."