Fanny Herself

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"Answer me. I've got a right to know. Look at this!" She
reached forward and picked up that inert, cold, strangely
shriveled blue hand again.

"My dear child--I'm afraid so."

There came from Fanny's throat a moan that began high, and
poignant, and quavering, and ended in a shiver that seemed
to die in her heart. The room was still again, except for
the breathing, and even that was less raucous.

Fanny stared at the woman on the bed--at the long, finely-
shaped head, with the black hair wadded up so carelessly
now; at the long, straight, clever nose; the full,
generous mouth. There flooded her whole being a great,
blinding rage. What had she had of life? she demanded
fiercely. What? What? Her teeth came together grindingly.
She breathed heavily through her nostrils, as if she had
been running. And suddenly she began to pray, not with the
sounding, unctions thees and thous of the Church and Bible;
not elegantly or eloquently, with well-rounded phrases, as
the righteous pray, but threateningly, hoarsely, as a
desperate woman prays. It was not a prayer so much as a cry
of defiance---a challenge.

"Look here, God!" and there was nothing profane as she said
it. "Look here, God! She's done her part. It's up to You
now. Don't You let her die! Look at her. Look at her!"
She choked and shook herself angrily, and went on. "Is that
fair? That's a rotten trick to play on a woman that gave
what she gave! What did she ever have of life? Nothing!
That little miserable, dirty store, and those little
miserable, dirty people. You give her a chance, d'You hear?
You give her a chance, God, or I'll----"

Her voice broke in a thin, cracked quaver. The nurse turned
her around, suddenly and sharply, and led her from the room.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"You can come down now. They're all here, I guess. Doctor
Thalmann's going to begin." Fanny, huddled in a chair in
her bedroom, looked up into the plump, kindly face of the
woman who was bending over her. Then she stood up,
docilely, and walked toward the stairs with a heavy,
stumbling step.

"I'd put down my veil if I were you," said the neighbor
woman. And reached up for the black folds that draped
Fanny's hat. Fanny's fingers reached for them too,
fumblingly. "I'd forgotten about it," she said. The heavy
crape fell about her shoulders, mercifully hiding the
swollen, discolored face. She went down the stairs. There
was a little stir, a swaying toward her, a sibilant murmur
of sympathy from the crowded sitting-room as she passed
through to the parlor where Rabbi Thalmann stood waiting,
prayer book in hand, in front of that which was covered with
flowers. Fanny sat down. A feeling of unreality was strong
upon her. Doctor Thalmann cleared his throat and opened the
book.

After all, it was not Rabbi Thalmann's funeral sermon that
testified to Mrs. Brandeis's standing in the community. It
was the character of the gathering that listened to what he
had to say. Each had his own opinion of Molly Brandeis, and
needed no final eulogy to confirm it. Father Fitzpatrick
was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white
showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a
leading man. He had been of those who had sat in what he
called Mrs. Brandeis's confessional, there in the quiet
little store. The two had talked of things
theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it
was, was no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense
and a drama sense, and one day they discovered, queerly
enough, that they worshiped the same God. Any one of these
things is basis enough for a friendship. Besides, Molly
Brandeis could tell an Irish story inimitably. And you
should have heard Father Fitzpatrick do the one about Ikey
and the nickel. No, I think the Catholic priest, seeming to
listen with such respectful attention, really heard very
little of what Rabbi Thalmann had to say.

Herman Walthers was there, he of the First National Bank of
Winnebago, whose visits had once brought such terror to
Molly Brandeis. Augustus G. Gerretson was there, and three
of his department heads. Emil Bauer sat just behind him.
In a corner was Sadie, the erstwhile coquette, very subdued
now, and months behind the fashions in everything but baby
clothes. Hen Cody, who had done all of Molly Brandeis's
draying, sat, in unaccustomed black, next to Mayor A. J.
Dawes. Temple Emmanu-el was there, almost a unit. The
officers of Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid Society sat in a
row. They had never honored Molly Brandeis with office in
the society--she who could have managed its business,
politics and social activities with one hand tied behind
her, and both her bright eyes shut. In the kitchen and on
the porch and in the hallway stood certain obscure people--
women whose finger tips stuck out of their cotton gloves,
and whose skirts dipped ludicrously in the back. Only Molly
Brandeis could have identified them for you. Mrs. Brosch,
the butter and egg woman, hovered in the dining-room
doorway. She had brought a pound of butter. It was her
contribution to the funeral baked meats. She had deposited
it furtively on the kitchen table. Birdie Callahan, head
waitress at the Haley House, found a seat just next to
the elegant Mrs. Morehouse, who led the Golf Club crowd. A
haughty young lady in the dining-room, Birdie Callahan, in
her stiffly starched white, but beneath the icy crust of her
hauteur was a molten mass of good humor and friendliness.
She and Molly Brandeis had had much in common.

But no one--not even Fanny Brandeis--ever knew who sent the
great cluster of American Beauty roses that had come all the
way from Milwaukee. There had been no card, so who could
have guessed that they came from Blanche Devine. Blanche
Devine, of the white powder, and the minks, and the
diamonds, and the high-heeled shoes, and the plumes, lived
in the house with the closed shutters, near the freight
depot. She often came into Brandeis' Bazaar. Molly
Brandeis had never allowed Sadie, or Pearl, or Fanny or
Aloysius to wait on her. She had attended to her herself.
And one day, for some reason, Blanche Devine found herself
telling Molly Brandeis how she had come to be Blanche
Devine, and it was a moving and terrible story. And now her
cardless flowers, a great, scarlet sheaf of them, lay next
the chaste white roses that had been sent by the Temple
Emanu-el Ladies' Aid. Truly, death is a great leveler.

In a vague way Fanny seemed to realize that all these people
were there. I think she must even have found a certain grim
comfort in their presence. Hers had not been the dry-eyed
grief of the strong, such as you read about. She had wept,
night and day, hopelessly, inconsolably, torturing herself
with remorseful questions. If she had not gone skating,
might she not have seen how ill her mother was? Why hadn't
she insisted on the doctor when her mother refused to eat
the Christmas dinner? Blind and selfish, she told herself;
blind and selfish. Her face was swollen and distorted now,
and she was thankful for the black veil that shielded
her. Winnebago was scandalized to see that she wore no
other black. Mrs. Brandeis had never wanted Fanny to wear
it; she hadn't enough color, she said. So now she was
dressed in her winter suit of blue, and her hat with the
pert blue quill. And the little rabbi's voice went on and
on, and Fanny knew that it could not be true. What had all
this dust-to-dust talk to do with any one as vital, and
electric, and constructive as Molly Brandeis. In the midst
of the service there was a sharp cry, and a little stir, and
the sound of stifled sobbing. It was Aloysius the merry,
Aloysius the faithful, whose Irish heart was quite broken.
Fanny ground her teeth together in an effort at self-
control.

And so to the end, and out past the little hushed,
respectful group on the porch, to the Jewish cemetery on the
state road. The snow of Christmas week was quite virgin
there, except for that one spot where the sexton and his men
had been at work. Then back at a smart jog trot through the
early dusk of the winter afternoon, the carriage wheels
creaking upon the hard, dry snow. And Fanny Brandeis said
to herself (she must have been a little light-headed from
hunger and weeping):

"Now I'll know whether it's true or not. When I go into the
house. If she's there she'll say, `Well Fanchen! Hungry?
Oh, but my little girl's hands are cold! Come here to the
register and warm them.' O God, let her be there! Let her
be there!"

But she wasn't. The house had been set to rights by brisk
and unaccustomed hands. There was a bustle and stir in the
dining-room, and from the kitchen came the appetizing odors
of cooking food. Fanny went up to a chair that was out of
its place, and shoved it back against the wall where it
belonged. She straightened a rug, carried the waste basket
from the desk to the spot near the living-room table where
it had always served to hide the shabby, worn place in
the rug. Fanny went up-stairs, past The Room that was once
more just a comfortable, old fashioned bedroom, instead of a
mysterious and awful chamber; bathed her face, tidied her
hair, came down-stairs again, ate and drank things hot and
revivifying. The house was full of kindly women.

Fanny found herself clinging to them--clinging desperately
to these ample, broad-bosomed, soothing women whom she had
scarcely known before. They were always there, those women,
and their husbands too; kindly, awkward men, who patted her
shoulder, and who spoke of Molly Brandeis with that
sincerity of admiration such as men usually give only to
men. People were constantly popping in at the back door
with napkin-covered trays, and dishes and baskets. A
wonderful and beautiful thing, that homely small-town
sympathy that knows the value of physical comfort in time of
spiritual anguish.

Two days after the funeral Fanny Brandeis went back to the
store, much as her mother had done many years before, after
her husband's death. She looked about at the bright, well-
stocked shelves and tables with a new eye--a speculative
eye. The Christmas season was over. January was the time
for inventory and for replenishment. Mrs. Brandeis had
always gone to Chicago the second week in January for the
spring stock. But something was forming in Fanny Brandeis's
mind--a resolve that grew so rapidly as to take her breath
away. Her brain felt strangely clear and keen after the
crashing storm of grief that had shaken her during the past
week.

"What are you going to do now?" people had asked her,
curious and interested. "Is Theodore coming back?"

"I don't know--yet." In answer to the first. And, "No.
Why should he? He has his work."

"But he could be of such help to you."

"I'll help myself," said Fanny Brandeis, and smiled a
curious smile that had in it more of bitterness and less of
mirth than any smile has a right to have.

Mrs. Brandeis had left a will, far-sighted business woman
that she was. It was a terse, clear-headed document, that
gave "to Fanny Brandeis, my daughter," the six-thousand-
dollar insurance, the stock, good-will and fixtures of
Brandeis' Bazaar, the house furnishings, the few pieces of
jewelry in their old-fashioned setting. To Theodore was
left the sum of fifteen hundred dollars. He had received
his share in the years of his musical education.

Fanny Brandeis did not go to Chicago that January. She took
inventory of Brandeis' Bazaar, carefully and minutely. And
then, just as carefully and minutely she took stock of Fanny
Brandeis. There was something relentless and terrible in
the way she went about this self-analysis. She walked a
great deal that winter, often out through the drifts to the
little cemetery. As she walked her mind was working,
working. She held long mental conversations with herself
during these walks, and once she was rather frightened to
find herself talking aloud. She wondered if she had done
that before. And a plan was maturing in her brain, while
the fight went on within herself, thus:

"You'll never do it, Fanny. You're not built that way."

"Oh, won't I! Watch me! Give me time."

"You'll think of what your mother would have done under the
same conditions, and you'll do that thing."

"I won't. Not unless it's the long-headed thing to do. I'm
through being sentimental and unselfish. What did it bring
her? Nothing!"

The weeks went by. Fanny worked hard in the store, and
bought little. February came, and with the spring her
months of private thinking bore fruit. There came to Fanny
Brandeis a great resolve. She would put herself in a high
place. Every talent she possessed, every advantage, every
scrap of knowledge, every bit of experience, would be used
toward that end. She would make something of herself. It
was a worldly, selfish resolve, born of a bitter sorrow, and
ambition, and resentment. She made up her mind that she
would admit no handicaps. Race, religion, training, natural
impulses--she would discard them all if they stood in her
way. She would leave Winnebago behind. At best, if she
stayed there, she could never accomplish more than to make
her business a more than ordinarily successful small-town
store. And she would be--nobody. No, she had had enough of
that. She would crush and destroy the little girl who had
fasted on that Day of Atonement; the more mature girl who
had written the thesis about the paper mill rag-room; the
young woman who had drudged in the store on Elm Street. In
her place she would mold a hard, keen-eyed, resolute woman,
whose godhead was to be success, and to whom success would
mean money and position. She had not a head for
mathematics, but out of the puzzling problems and syllogisms
in geometry she had retained in her memory this one
immovable truth:

A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

With her mental eye she marked her two points, and then,
starting from the first, made directly for the second. But
she forgot to reckon with the law of tangents. She forgot,
too, how paradoxical a creature was this Fanny Brandeis
whose eyes filled with tears at sight of a parade--just the
sheer drama of it--were the marchers G. A. R. veterans,
school children in white, soldiers, Foresters, political
marching clubs; and whose eyes burned dry and bright as she
stood over the white mound in the cemetery on the state
road. Generous, spontaneous, impulsive, warm-hearted,
she would be cold, calculating, deliberate, she told
herself.

Thousands of years of persecution behind her made her quick
to appreciate suffering in others, and gave her an innate
sense of fellowship with the downtrodden. She resolved to
use that sense as a searchlight aiding her to see and
overcome obstacles. She told herself that she was done with
maudlin sentimentality. On the rare occasions when she had
accompanied her mother to Chicago, the two women had found
delight in wandering about the city's foreign quarters.
When other small-town women buyers snatched occasional
moments of leisure for the theater or personal shopping,
these two had spent hours in the ghetto around Jefferson and
Taylor, and Fourteenth Streets. Something in the sight of
these people--alien, hopeful, emotional, often grotesque--
thrilled and interested both the women. And at sight of an
ill-clad Italian, with his slovenly, wrinkled old-young
wife, turning the handle of his grind organ whilst both
pairs of eyes searched windows and porches and doorsteps
with a hopeless sort of hopefulness, she lost her head
entirely and emptied her limp pocketbook of dimes, and
nickels, and pennies. Incidentally it might be stated that
she loved the cheap and florid music of the hand organ
itself.

It was rumored that Brandeis' Bazaar was for sale. In the
spring Gerretson's offered Fanny the position of buyer and
head of the china, glassware, and kitchenware sections.
Gerretson's showed an imposing block of gleaming plate-glass
front now, and drew custom from a dozen thrifty little towns
throughout the Fox River Valley. Fanny refused the offer.
In March she sold outright the stock, good-will, and
fixtures of Brandeis' Bazaar. The purchaser was a thrifty,
farsighted traveling man who had wearied of the road
and wanted to settle down. She sold the household
goods too--those intimate, personal pieces of wood and cloth
that had become, somehow, part of her life. She had grown
up with them. She knew the history of every nick, every
scratch and worn spot. Her mother lived again in every
piece. The old couch went off in a farmer's wagon. Fanny
turned away when they joggled it down the front steps and
into the rude vehicle. It was like another funeral. She
was furious to find herself weeping again. She promised
herself punishment for that.

Up in her bedroom she opened the bottom drawer of her
bureau. That bureau and its history and the history of
every piece of furniture in the room bore mute testimony to
the character of its occupant; to her protest against things
as she found them, and her determination to make them over
to suit her. She had spent innumerable Sunday mornings
wielding the magic paint brush that had transformed the
bedroom from dingy oak to gleaming cream enamel. She sat
down on the floor now, before the bureau, and opened the
bottom drawer.

In a corner at the back, under the neat pile of garments,
was a tightly-rolled bundle of cloth. Fanny reached for it,
took it out, and held it in her hands a moment. Then she
unrolled it slowly, and the bundle revealed itself to be a
faded, stained, voluminous gingham apron, blue and white.
It was the kind of apron women don when they perform some
very special household ritual--baking, preserving, house
cleaning. It crossed over the shoulders with straps, and
its generous fullness ran all the way around the waist. It
was discolored in many places with the brown and reddish
stains of fruit juices. It had been Molly Brandeis' canning
apron. Fanny had come upon it hanging on a hook behind the
kitchen door, after that week in December. And at sight of
it all her fortitude and forced calm had fled. She had
spread her arms over the limp, mute, yet speaking thing
dangling there, and had wept so wildly and uncontrollably as
to alarm even herself.

Nothing in connection with her mother's death had power to
call up such poignant memories as did this homely, intimate
garment. She saw again the steamy kitchen, deliciously
scented with the perfume of cooking fruit, or the
tantalizing, mouth-watering spiciness of vinegar and
pickles. On the stove the big dishpan, in which the jelly
glasses and fruit jars, with their tops and rubbers, bobbed
about in hot water. In the great granite kettle simmered
the cooking fruit Molly Brandeis, enveloped in the familiar
blue-and-white apron, stood over it, like a priestess,
stirring, stirring, slowly, rhythmically. Her face would be
hot and moist with the steam, and very tired too, for she
often came home from the store utterly weary, to stand over
the kettle until ten or eleven o'clock. But the pride in it
as she counted the golden or ruby tinted tumblers gleaming
in orderly rows as they cooled on the kitchen table!

"Fifteen glasses of grape jell, Fan! And I didn't mix a bit
of apple with it. I didn't think I'd get more than ten.
And nine of the quince preserve. That makes--let me see--
eighty-three, ninety-eight--one hundred and seven
altogether."

"We'll never eat it, Mother."

"You said that last year, and by April my preserve cupboard
looked like Old Mother Hubbard's."

But then, Mrs. Brandeis was famous for her preserves, as
Father Fitzpatrick, and Aloysius, and Doctor Thalmann, and a
dozen others could testify. After the strain and flurry of
a busy day at the store there was something about this
homely household rite that brought a certain sense of rest
and peace to Molly Brandeis.

All this moved through Fanny Brandeis's mind as she sat with
the crumpled apron in her lap, her eyes swimming with hot
tears. The very stains that discolored it, the faded blue
of the front breadth, the frayed buttonhole, the little
scorched place where she had burned a hole when trying
unwisely to lift a steaming kettle from the stove with the
apron's corner, spoke to her with eloquent lips. That apron
had become a vice with Fanny. She brooded over it as a
mother broods over the shapeless, scuffled bit of leather
that was a baby's shoe; as a woman, widowed, clings to a
shabby, frayed old smoking jacket. More than once she had
cried herself to sleep with the apron clasped tightly in her
arms.

She got up from the floor now, with the apron in her hands,
and went down the stairs, opened the door that led to the
cellar, walked heavily down those steps and over to the
furnace. She flung open the furnace door. Red and purple
the coal bed gleamed, with little white flame sprites
dancing over it. Fanny stared at it a moment, fascinated.
Her face was set, her eyes brilliant. Suddenly she flung
the tightly-rolled apron into the heart of the gleaming
mass. She shut her eyes then. The fire seemed to hold its
breath for a moment. Then, with a gasp, it sprang upon its
food. The bundle stiffened, writhed, crumpled, sank, lay a
blackened heap, was dissolved. The fire bed glowed red and
purple as before, except for a dark spot in its heart.
Fanny shivered a little. She shut the furnace door and went
up-stairs again.

"Smells like something burning--cloth, or something," called
Annie, from the kitchen.

"It's only an old apron that was cluttering up my--my bureau
drawer."

Thus she successfully demonstrated the first lesson in the
cruel and rigid course of mental training she had mapped out
for herself.

Leaving Winnebago was not easy. There is something about a
small town that holds you. Your life is so intimately
interwoven with that of your neighbor. Existence is so
safe, so sane, so sure. Fanny knew that when she turned the
corner of Elm Street every third person she met would speak
to her. Life was made up of minute details, too trivial for
the notice of the hurrying city crowds. You knew when Milly
Glaenzer changed the baby buggy for a go-cart. The youngest
Hupp boy--Sammy--who was graduated from High School in June,
is driving A. J. Dawes's automobile now. My goodness, how
time flies! Doeppler's grocery has put in plate-glass
windows, and they're getting out-of-season vegetables every
day now from Milwaukee. As you pass you get the coral glow
of tomatoes, and the tender green of lettuces. And that
vivid green? Fresh young peas! And in February. Well!
They've torn down the old yellow brick National Bank, and in
its place a chaste Greek Temple of a building looks rather
contemptuously down its classic columns upon the farmer's
wagons drawn up along the curb. If Fanny Brandeis' sense of
proportion had not been out of plumb she might have realized
that, to Winnebago, the new First National Bank building was
as significant and epochal as had been the Woolworth
Building to New York.

The very intimacy of these details, Fanny argued, was
another reason for leaving Winnebago. They were like
detaining fingers that grasped at your skirts, impeding your
progress.

She had early set about pulling every wire within her reach
that might lead, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance
of her ambition. She got two offers from Milwaukee retail
stores. She did not consider them for a moment. Even a
Chicago department store of the second grade (one of those
on the wrong side of State Street) did not tempt her. She
knew her value. She could afford to wait. There was
money enough on which to live comfortably until the right
chance presented itself. She knew every item of her
equipment, and she conned them to herself greedily:
Definite charm of manner; the thing that is called
magnetism; brains; imagination; driving force; health;
youth; and, most precious of all, that which money could not
buy, nor education provide--experience. Experience, a
priceless weapon, that is beaten into shape only by much
contact with men and women, and that is sharpened by much
rubbing against the rough edges of this world.

In April her chance came to her; came in that accidental,
haphazard way that momentous happenings have. She met on
Elm Street a traveling man from whom Molly Brandeis had
bought for years. He dropped both sample cases and shook
hands with Fanny, eying her expertly and approvingly, and
yet without insolence. He was a wise, road-weary, skillful
member of his fraternity, grown gray in years of service,
and a little bitter. Though perhaps that was due partly to
traveling man's dyspepsia, brought on by years of small-town
hotel food.

"So you've sold out."

"Yes. Over a month ago."

"H'm. That was a nice little business you had there. Your
ma built it up herself. There was a woman! Gosh!
Discounted her bills, even during the panic."

Fanny smiled a reflective little smile. "That line is a
complete characterization of my mother. Her life was a
series of panics. But she never lost her head. And she
always discounted."

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