_ 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 glassware, like
a magician. Fanny, 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 glasses 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 pass between Ichabod Crane
and Smike; Aloysius, with his bit of scandal burnished with
wit; who, after a long, hard Saturday, 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 mass, 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 Fanny 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 assure 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 apron.
"I have just had the pleasure of hearing your son play,"
began Schabelitz.
"Mr. Bauer called me out of my economics class 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
scraping! 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."
"Oh, Mother! Please!"
"I want to talk to Mr. Schabelitz and Mr. Bauer, alone."
She patted his shoulder, and the last pat ended in a gentle
push. "Run along."
"I'll work, Mother. You know perfectly well I'll work."
But he looked so startlingly like his father as he said it
that Mrs. Brandeis felt a clutching at her heart.
Theodore out of the way, they seemed to find very little to
discuss, after all. Schabelitz was so quietly certain,
Bauer so triumphantly proud.
Said Schabelitz, "Wolfsohn, of course, receives ten dollars
a lesson ordinarily."
"Ten dollars!"
"But a pupil like Theodore is in the nature of an
investment," Bauer hastened to explain. "An advertisement.
After hearing him play, and after what Schabelitz here will
have to say for him, Wolfsohn will certainly give Theodore
lessons for nothing, or next to nothing. You remember" --
proudly-- "I offered to teach him without charge, but you
would not have it."
Schabelitz smote his friend sharply on the shoulder "The
true musician! Oh, Bauer, Bauer! That you should bury
yourself in this----"
But Bauer stopped him with a gesture. "Mrs. Brandeis is a
busy woman. And as she says, this thing needs thinking
over."
"After all," said Mrs. Brandeis, "there isn't much to think
about. I know just where I stand. It's a case of
mathematics, that's all. This business of mine is just
beginning to pay. From now on I shall be able to save
something every year. It might be enough to cover his
musical education. It would mean that Fanny--my daughter--
and I would have to give up everything. For myself, I
should be only too happy, too proud. But it doesn't seem
fair to her. After all, a girl----"
"It isn't fair," broke in Schabelitz. "It isn't fair. But
that is the way of genius. It never is fair. It takes, and
takes, and takes. I know. My mother could tell you, if she
were alive. She sold the little farm, and my sisters gave
up their dowries, and with them their hopes of marriage, and
they lived on bread and cabbage. That was not to pay for my
lessons. They never could have done that. It was only to
send me to Moscow. We were very poor. They must have
starved. I have come to know, since, that it was not worth
it. That nothing could be worth it."
"But it was worth it. Your mother would do it all over
again, if she had the chance. That's what we're for."
Bauer pulled out his watch and uttered a horrified
exclamation. "Himmel! Four o'clock! And I have a pupil at
four." He turned hastily to Mrs. Brandeis. "I am giving a
little supper in my studio after the concert to-night."
"Oh, Gott!" groaned Schabelitz.
"It is in honor of Schabelitz here. You see how overcome he
is. Will you let me bring Theodore back with me after the
concert? There will be some music, and perhaps he will play
for us."
Schabelitz bent again in his queer little foreign bow. "And
you, of course, will honor us, Mrs. Brandeis." He had never
lived in Winnebago.
"Oh, certainly," Bauer hastened to say. He had.
"I!" Molly Brandeis looked down at her apron, and
stroked it with her fingers. Then she looked up with a
little smile that was not so pleasant as her smile usually
was. There had flashed across her quick mind a picture of
Mrs. G. Manville Smith. Mrs. G. Manville Smith, in an
evening gown whose decolletage was discussed from the Haley
House to Gerretson's department store next morning, was
always a guest at Bauer's studio affairs. "Thank you, but
it is impossible. And Theodore is only a schoolboy. Just
now he needs, more than anything else in the world, nine
hours of sleep every night. There will be plenty of time
for studio suppers later. When a boy's voice is changing,
and he doesn't know what to do with his hands and feet, he
is better off at home."
"God! These mothers!" exclaimed Schabelitz. "What do they
not know!"
"I suppose you are right." Bauer was both rueful and
relieved. It would have been fine to show off Theodore as
his pupil and Schabelitz's protege. But Mrs. Brandeis? No,
that would never do. "Well, I must go. We will talk about
this again, Mrs. Brandeis. In two weeks Schabelitz will
pass through Winnebago again on his way back to Chicago.
Meanwhile he will write Wolfsohn. I also. So! Come,
Schabelitz!"
He turned to see that gentleman strolling off in the
direction of the notion counter behind which his expert eye
had caught a glimpse of Sadie in her white shirtwaist and
her trim skirt. Sadie always knew what they were wearing on
State Street, Chicago, half an hour after Mrs. Brandeis
returned from one of her buying trips. Shirtwaists had just
come in, and with them those neat leather belts with a
buckle, and about the throat they were wearing folds of
white satin ribbon, smooth and high and tight, the two ends
tied pertly at the back. Sadie would never be the
saleswoman that Pearl was, but her unfailing good nature and
her cheery self-confidence made her an asset in the store.
Besides, she was pretty. Mrs. Brandeis knew the value
of a pretty clerk.
At the approach of this stranger Sadie leaned coyly against
the stocking rack and patted her paper sleevelets that were
secured at wrist and elbow with elastic bands. Her method
was sure death to traveling men. She prepared now to try it
on the world-famous virtuoso. The ease with which she
succeeded surprised even Sadie, accustomed though she was to
conquest.
"Come, come, Schabelitz!" said Bauer again. "I must get
along."
"Then go, my friend. Go along and make your preparations
for that studio supper. The only interesting woman in
Winnebago--" he bowed to Mrs. Brandeis-- "will not be there.
I know them, these small-town society women, with their
imitation city ways. And bony! Always! I am enjoying
myself. I shall stay here."
And he did stay. Sadie, talking it over afterward with
Pearl and Aloysius, put it thus:
"They say he's the grandest violin player in the world. Not
that I care much for the violin, myself. Kind of squeaky, I
always think. But it just goes to show they're all alike.
Ain't it the truth? I jollied him just like I did Sam
Bloom, of Ganz & Pick, Novelties, an hour before. He
laughed just where Sam did. And they both handed me a line
of talk about my hair and eyes, only Sam said I was a doll,
and this Schabelitz, or whatever his name is, said I was as
alluring as a Lorelei. I guess he thought he had me there,
but I didn't go through the seventh reader for nothing. `If
you think I'm flattered,' I said to him, `you're mistaken.
She was the mess who used to sit out on a rock with her back
hair down, combing away and singing like mad, and keeping an
eye out for sailors up and down the river. If I had to work
that hard to get some attention,' I said, `I'd give up the
struggle, and settle down with a cat and a teakettle.'
At that he just threw back his head and roared. And when
Mrs. Brandeis came up he said something about the wit of
these American women. `Work is a great sharpener of wit--
and wits,' Mrs. Brandeis said to him. `Pearl, did Aloysius
send Eddie out with that boiler, special?' And she didn't
pay any more attention to him, or make any more fuss over
him, than she would to a traveler with a line of samples she
wasn't interested in. I guess that's why he had such a good
time."
Sadie was right. That was the reason. Fanny, coming into
the store half an hour later, saw this man who had swayed
thousands with his music, down on his hands and knees in the
toy section at the rear of Brandeis' Bazaar. He and Sadie
and Aloysius were winding up toy bears, and clowns, and
engines, and carriages, and sending them madly racing across
the floor. Sometimes their careening career was threatened
with disaster in the form of a clump of brooms or a stack of
galvanized pails. But Schabelitz would scramble forward
with a shout and rescue them just before the crash came, and
set them deftly off again in the opposite direction.
"This I must have for my boy in New York." He held up a
miniature hook and ladder. "And this windmill that whirls
so busily. My Leo is seven, and his head is full of
engines, and motors, and things that run on wheels. He
cares no more for music, the little savage, than the son of
a bricklayer."
"Who is that man?" Fanny whispered, staring at him.
"Levine Schabelitz."
"Schabelitz! Not the--"
"Yes."
"But he's playing on the floor like--like a little boy! And
laughing! Why, Mother, he's just like anybody else, only
nicer."
If Fanny had been more than fourteen her mother might have
told her that all really great people are like that, finding
joy in simple things. I think that is the secret of their
genius--the child in them that keeps their viewpoint fresh,
and that makes us children again when we listen to them. It
is the Schabelitzes of this world who can shout over a toy
engine that would bore a Bauer to death.
Fanny stood looking at him thoughtfully. She knew all about
him. Theodore's talk of the past week had accomplished
that. Fanny knew that here was a man who did one thing
better than any one else in the world. She thrilled to that
thought. She adored the quality in people that caused them
to excel. Schabelitz had got hold of a jack-in-the-box, and
each time the absurd head popped out, with its grin and its
squawk, he laughed like a boy. Fanny, standing behind the
wrapping counter, and leaning on it with her elbows the
better to see this great man, smiled too, as her flexible
spirit and her mobile mind caught his mood. She did not
know she was smiling. Neither did she know why she suddenly
frowned in the intensity of her concentration, reached up
for one of the pencils on the desk next the wrapping
counter, and bent over the topmost sheet of yellow wrapping
paper that lay spread out before her. Her tongue-tip curled
excitedly at one corner of her mouth. Her head was cocked
to one side.
She was rapidly sketching a crude and startling likeness of
Levine Schabelitz as he stood there with the ridiculous toy
in his hand. It was a trick she often amused herself with
at school. She had drawn her school-teacher one day as she
had looked when gazing up into the eyes of the visiting
superintendent, who was a married man. Quite innocently and
unconsciously she had caught the adoring look in the eyes of
Miss McCook, the teacher, and that lady, happening upon the
sketch later, had dealt with Fanny in a manner seemingly
unwarranted. In the same way it was not only the exterior
likeness of the man which she was catching now--the
pompadour that stood stiffly perpendicular like a brush; the
square, yellow peasant teeth; the strong, slender hands and
wrists; the stocky figure; the high cheek bones; the square-
toed, foreign-looking shoes and the trousers too wide at the
instep to have been cut by an American tailor. She caught
and transmitted to paper, in some uncanny way, the
simplicity of the man who was grinning at the jack-in-the-
box that smirked back at him. Behind the veneer of poise
and polish born of success and adulation she had caught a
glimpse of the Russian peasant boy delighted with the crude
toy in his hand. And she put it down eagerly, wetting her
pencil between her lips, shading here, erasing there.
Mrs. Brandeis, bustling up to the desk for a customer's
change, and with a fancy dish to be wrapped, in her hand,
glanced over Fanny's shoulder. She leaned closer. "Why,
Fanny, you witch!"
Fanny gave a little crow of delight and tossed her head in a
way that switched her short curls back from where they had
fallen over her shoulders. "It's like him, isn't it?"
"It looks more like him than he does himself." With which
Molly Brandeis unconsciously defined the art of cartooning.
Fanny looked down at it, a smile curving her lips. Mrs.
Brandeis, dish in hand, counted her change expertly from the
till below the desk, and reached for the sheet of wrapping
paper just beneath that on which Fanny had made her drawing.
At that moment Schabelitz, glancing up, saw her, and came
forward, smiling, the jack-in-the-box still in his hand.
"Dear lady, I hope I have not entirely disorganized your
shop. I have had a most glorious time. Would you believe
it, this jack-in-the-box looks exactly--but exactly--
like my manager, Weber, when the box-office receipts are
good. He grins just--"
And then his eye fell on the drawing that Fanny was trying
to cover with one brown paw. "Hello! What's this?" Then
he looked at Fanny. Then he grasped her wrist in his
fingers of steel and looked at the sketch that grinned back
at him impishly. "Well, I'm damned!" exploded Schabelitz in
amusement, and surprise, and appreciation. And did not
apologize. "And who is this young lady with the sense of
humor?"
"This is my little girl, Fanny."
He looked down at the rough sketch again, with its clean-cut
satire, and up again at the little girl in the school coat
and the faded red tam o' shanter, who was looking at him
shyly, and defiantly, and provokingly, all at once.
"Your little girl Fanny, h'm? The one who is to give up
everything that the boy Theodore may become a great
violinist." He bent again over the crude, effective
cartoon, then put a forefinger gently under the child's chin
and tipped her glowing face up to the light. "I am not so
sure now that it will work. As for its being fair! Why,
no! No!"
Fanny waited for her mother that evening, and they walked
home together. Their step and swing were very much alike,
now that Fanny's legs were growing longer. She was at the
backfisch age.
"What did he mean, Mother, when he said that about Theodore
being a great violinist, and its not being fair? What isn't
fair? And how did he happen to be in the store, anyway? He
bought a heap of toys, didn't he? I suppose he's awfully
rich."
"To-night, when Theodore's at the concert, I'll tell you
what he meant, and all about it."
"I'd love to hear him play, wouldn't you? I'd just love
to."
Over Molly Brandeis's face there came a curious look.
"You could hear him, Fanny, in Theodore's place. Theodore
would have to stay home if I told him to."
Fanny's eyes and mouth grew round with horror. "Theodore
stay home! Why Mrs.--Molly--Brandeis!" Then she broke into
a little relieved laugh. "But you're just fooling, of
course."
"No, I'm not. If you really want to go I'll tell Theodore
to give up his ticket to his sister."
"Well, my goodness! I guess I'm not a pig. I wouldn't have
Theodore stay home, not for a million dollars."
"I knew you wouldn't," said Molly Brandeis as they swung
down Norris Street. And she told Fanny briefly of what
Schabelitz had said about Theodore.
It was typical of Theodore that he ate his usual supper that
night. He may have got his excitement vicariously from
Fanny. She was thrilled enough for two. Her food lay
almost untouched on her plate. She chattered incessantly.
When Theodore began to eat his second baked apple with
cream, her outraged feelings voiced their protest.
"But, Theodore, I don't see how you can!"
"Can what?"
"Eat like that. When you're going to hear him play. And
after what he said, and everything."
"Well, is that any reason why I should starve to death?"
"But I don't see how you can," repeated Fanny helplessly,
and looked at her mother. Mrs. Brandeis reached for the
cream pitcher and poured a little more cream over Theodore's
baked apple. Even as she did it her eyes met Fanny's, and
in them was a certain sly amusement, a little gleam of fun,
a look that said, "Neither do I." Fanny sat back,
satisfied. Here, at least, was some one who understood.
At half past seven Theodore, looking very brushed and
sleek, went off to meet Emil Bauer. Mrs. Brandeis had
looked him over, and had said, "Your nails!" and sent him
back to the bathroom, and she had resisted the desire to
kiss him because Theodore disliked demonstration. "He hated
to be pawed over," was the way he put it. After he had
gone, Mrs. Brandeis went into the dining-room where Fanny
was sitting. Mattie had cleared the table, and Fanny was
busy over a book and a tablet, by the light of the lamp that
they always used for studying. It was one of the rare
occasions when she had brought home a school lesson. It was
arithmetic, and Fanny loathed arithmetic. She had no head
for mathematics. The set of problems were eighth-grade
horrors, in which A is digging a well 20 feet deep and 9
feet wide; or in which A and B are papering two rooms, or
building two fences, or plastering a wall. If A does his
room in 9 1/2 days, the room being 12 feet high, 20 feet
long, and 15 1/2 feet wide, how long will it take B to do a
room 14 feet high, 11 3/4 feet, etc.
Fanny hated the indefatigable A and B with a bitter personal
hatred. And as for that occasional person named C, who
complicated matters still more--!
Sometimes Mrs. Brandeis helped to disentangle Fanny from the
mazes of her wall paper problems, or dragged her up from the
bottom of the well when it seemed that she was down there
for eternity unless a friendly hand rescued her. As a rule
she insisted that Fanny crack her own mathematical nuts.
She said it was good mental training, not to speak of the
moral side of it. But to-night she bent her quick mind upon
the problems that were puzzling her little daughter, and
cleared them up in no time.
When Fanny had folded her arithmetic papers neatly inside
her book and leaned back with a relieved sigh Molly Brandeis
bent forward in the lamplight and began to talk very
soberly. Fanny, red-cheeked and bright-eyed from her
recent mental struggles, listened interestedly, then
intently, then absorbedly. She attempted to interrupt,
sometimes, with an occasional, "But, Mother, how--" but Mrs.
Brandeis shook her head and went on. She told Fanny a few
things about her early married life--things that made Fanny
look at her with new eyes. She had always thought of her
mother as her mother, in the way a fourteen-year-old girl
does. It never occurred to her that this mother person, who
was so capable, so confident, so worldly-wise, had once been
a very young bride, with her life before her, and her hopes
stepping high, and her love keeping time with her hopes.
Fanny heard, fascinated, the story of this girl who had
married against the advice of her family and her friends.
Molly Brandeis talked curtly and briefly, and her very
brevity and lack of embroidering details made the story
stand out with stark realism. It was such a story of
courage, and pride, and indomitable will, and sheer pluck as
can only be found among the seemingly commonplace.
"And so," she finished, "I used to wonder, sometimes,
whether it was worth while to keep on, and what it was all
for. And now I know. Theodore is going to make up for
everything. Only we'll have to help him, first. It's going
to be hard on you, Fanchen. I'm talking to you as if you
were eighteen, instead of fourteen. But I want you to
understand. That isn't fair to you either--my expecting you
to understand. Only I don't want you to hate me too much
when you're a woman, and I'm gone, and you'll remember--"
"Why, Mother, what in the world are you talking about? Hate
you!"
"For what I took from you to give to him, Fanny. You don't
understand now. Things must be made easy for Theodore. It
will mean that you and I will have to scrimp and save. Not
now and then, but all the time. It will mean that we
can't go to the theater, even occasionally, or to lectures,
or concerts. It will mean that your clothes won't be as
pretty or as new as the other girls' clothes. You'll sit on
the front porch evenings, and watch them go by, and you'll
want to go too."
"As if I cared."
"But you will care. I know. I know. It's easy enough to
talk about sacrifice in a burst of feeling; but it's the
everyday, shriveling grind that's hard. You'll want
clothes, and books, and beaux, and education, and you ought
to have them. They're your right. You ought to have them!"
Suddenly Molly Brandeis' arms were folded on the table, and
her head came down on her arms and she was crying, quietly,
horribly, as a man cries. Fanny stared at her a moment in
unbelief. She had not seen her mother cry since the day of
Ferdinand Brandeis' death. She scrambled out of her chair
and thrust her head down next her mother's, so that her hot,
smooth cheek touched the wet, cold one. "Mother, don't!
Don't Molly dearie. I can't bear it. I'm going to cry too.
Do you think I care for old dresses and things? I should
say not. It's going to be fun going without things. It'll
be like having a secret or something. Now stop, and let's
talk about it."
Molly Brandeis wiped her eyes, and sat up, and smiled. It
was a watery and wavering smile, but it showed that she was
mistress of herself again.
"No," she said, "we just won't talk about it any more. I'm
tired, that's what's the matter with me, and I haven't sense
enough to know it. I'll tell you what. I'm going to put on
my kimono, and you'll make some fudge. Will you? We'll
have a party, all by ourselves, and if Mattie scolds about
the milk to-morrow you just tell her I said you could. And
I think there are some walnut meats in the third cocoa can
on the shelf in the pantry. Use 'em all." _