Fanny Herself Part 33

"Want a job?"

"N-no."

His knowing eye missed no detail of the suit, the hat, the gloves, the shoes.

"What's your salary now?"

"Ten thousand."

"Satisfied?"

"No."

"You've hit the heart of that parade. I don't know whether you could do that every day, or not. But if you struck twelve half the time, it would be enough. When you want a job, come back."

"Thanks," said f.a.n.n.y quietly. And held out her hand.

She returned in the subway. It was a Bronx train, full of sagging faces, l.u.s.terless eyes, grizzled beards; of heavy, black-eyed girls in soiled white shoes; of stoop-shouldered men, poring over newspapers in Hebrew script; of smells and sounds and glaring light.

And though to-morrow would bring its reaction, and common sense would have her again in its cold grip, she was radiant to-night and glowing with the exaltation that comes with creation. And over and over a voice within her was saying:

These are my people! These are my people!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The ship that brought Theodore Brandeis to America was the last of its kind to leave German ports for years. The day after he sailed from Bremen came the war. f.a.n.n.y Brandeis was only one of the millions of Americans who refused to accept the idea of war. She took it as a personal affront. It was uncivilized, it was old fashioned, it was inconvenient. Especially inconvenient. She had just come from Europe, where she had negotiated a million-dollar deal. War would mean that she could not get the goods ordered. Consequently there could be no war.

Theodore landed the first week in August. f.a.n.n.y stole two days from the ravenous bins to meet him in New York. I think she must have been a very love-hungry woman in the years since her mother's death. She had never admitted it. But only emotions denied to the point of starvation could have been so shaken now at the thought of the feast before them. She had trained herself to think of him as Theodore the selfish, Theodore the callous, Theodore the voracious. "An unsuccessful genius," she told herself. "He'll be impossible. They're bad enough when they're successful."

But now her eyes, her thoughts, her longings, her long-pent emotions were straining toward the boat whose great prow was looming toward her, a terrifying bulk. The crowd awaiting the ship was enormous. A dramatic enough scene at any time, the great Hoboken pier this morning was filled with an unrehea.r.s.ed mob, anxious, thrilled, hysterical. The morning papers had carried wireless news that the ship had been chased by a French gunboat and had escaped only through the timely warning of the Dresden, a German gunboat. That had added the last fillip to an already tense situation. Tears were streaming down half the faces upturned toward the crowded decks. And from every side:

"Do you see her?"

"That's Jessie. There she is! Jessie!"

"Heh! Jim, old boy! Come on down!"

f.a.n.n.y's eyes were searching the packed rails. "Ted!" she called, and choked back a sob. "Teddy!" Still she did not see him. She was searching, womanlike, for a tall, blondish boy, with a sulky mouth, and humorous eyes, and an unruly lock of hair that would insist on escaping from the rest and straggling down over his forehead. I think she was even looking for a boy with a violin in his arms. A boy in knickers.

Women lose all sense of time and proportion at such times. Still she did not see him. The pa.s.sengers were filing down the gangplank now; rushing down as quickly as the careful hands of the crew would allow them, and hurling themselves into the arms of friends and family crowded below.

f.a.n.n.y strained her eyes toward that narrow pa.s.sageway, anxious, hopeful, fearful, heartsick. For the moment Olga and the baby did not exist for her. And then she saw him.

She saw him through an unimaginable disguise. She saw him, and knew him in spite of the fact that the fair-haired, sulky, handsome boy had vanished, and in his place walked a man. His hair was close-cropped, German-fashion; his face careworn and older than she had ever thought possible; his bearing, his features, his whole personality stamped with an unmistakable distinction. And his clothes were appallingly, inconceivably German. So she saw him, and he was her brother, and she was his sister, and she stretched out her arms to him.

"Teddy!" She hugged him close, her face buried in his shoulder. "Teddy, you--you Spitzbube you!" She laughed at that, a little hysterically.

"Not that I know what a Spitzbube is, but it's the Germanest word I can think of." That shaven head. Those trousers. That linen. The awful boots. The tie! "Oh, Teddy, and you're the Germanest thing I ever saw."

She kissed him again, rapturously.

He kissed her, too, wordlessly at first. They moved aside a little, out of the crowd. Then he spoke for the first time.

"G.o.d! I'm glad to see you, f.a.n.n.y." There was tragedy, not profanation in his voice. His hand gripped hers. He turned, and now, for the first time, f.a.n.n.y saw that at his elbow stood a buxom, peasant woman, evidently a nurse, and in her arms a child. A child with Molly Brandeis'

mouth, and Ferdinand Brandeis' forehead, and f.a.n.n.y Brandeis' eyes, and Theodore Brandeis' roseleaf skin, and over, and above all these, weaving in and out through the whole, an expression or cast--a vague, undefinable thing which we call a resemblance--that could only have come from the woman of the picture, Theodore Brandeis' wife, Olga.

"Why--it's the baby!" cried f.a.n.n.y, and swung her out of the nurse's protesting arms. Such a German-looking baby. Such an adorably German-looking baby. "Du kleine, du!" f.a.n.n.y kissed the roseleaf cheek.

"Du suszes--" She turned suddenly to Theodore. "Olga--where's Olga?"

"She did not come."

f.a.n.n.y tightened her hold of the little squirming bundle in her arms.

"Didn't come?"

Theodore shook his head, dumbly. In his eyes was an agony of pain. And suddenly all those inexplicable things in his face were made clear to f.a.n.n.y. She placed the little Mizzi in the nurse's arms again. "Then we'll go, dear. They won't be a minute over your trunks, I'm sure. Just follow me."

Her arm was linked through Theodore's. Her hand was on his. Her head was up. Her chin was thrust out, and she never knew how startlingly she resembled the Molly Brandeis who used to march so bravely down Norris street on her way to Brandeis' Bazaar. She was facing a situation, and she recognized it. There was about her an a.s.surance, a composure, a blithe capability that imparted itself to the three bewildered and helpless ones in her charge. Theodore felt it, and the strained look in his face began to lift just a little. The heavy-witted peasant woman felt it, and trudged along, cheerfully. The baby in her arms seemed to sense it, and began to converse volubly and unintelligibly with the blue uniformed customs inspector.

They were out of the great shed in an incredibly short time. f.a.n.n.y seemed equal to every situation. She had taken the tube to Hoboken, but now she found a commodious open car, and drove a shrewd bargain with the chauffeur. She bundled the three into it. Of the three, perhaps Theodore seemed the most bewildered and helpless. He clung to his violin and f.a.n.n.y.

"I feel like an immigrant," he said. "Fan, you're a wonder. You don't know how much you look and act like mother. I've been watching you. It's startling."

f.a.n.n.y laughed and took his hand, and held his hand up to her breast, and crushed it there. "And you look like an ill.u.s.tration out of the Fliegende Blaetter. It isn't only your clothes. Your face is German.

As for Mizzi here--" she gathered the child in her arms again--"you've never explained that name to me. Why, by the way, Mizzi? Of all the names in the world."

Theodore smiled a wry little smile. "Mizzi is named after Olga's chum.

You see, in Vienna every other--well, chorus girl I suppose you'd call them--is named Mizzi. Like all the Gladyses and Flossies here in America. Well, Olga's special friend Mizzi--"

"I see," said f.a.n.n.y quietly. "Well, anything's better than f.a.n.n.y. Always did make me think of an old white horse." And at that the small German person in her arms screwed her mouth into a fascinating bunch, and then unscrewed it and, having made these preparations said, "Tante f.a.n.n.y.

Shecago. Tante f.a.n.n.y."

"Why, Mizzi Brandeis, you darling! Teddy, did you hear that! She said 'Tante f.a.n.n.y' and 'Chicago' just as plainly!" "Did I hear it? Have I heard anything else for weeks?"

The plump person on the opposite seat, who had been shaking her head violently all this time here threatened to burst if not encouraged to speak. f.a.n.n.y nodded to her. Whereupon the flood broke.

"Wunderbar, nicht war! Ich kuss' die handt, gnadiges Fraulein." She actually did it, to f.a.n.n.y's consternation. "Ich hab' ihr das gelernt, Gnadige. Selbst. Ist es nicht ganz entzuckend! Tante f.a.n.n.y. Auch Shecago."

f.a.n.n.y nodded a number of times, first up and down, signifying a.s.sent, then sideways, signifying unbounded wonder and admiration. She made a gigantic effort to summon her forgotten German.

"Was ist Ihre Name?" she managed to ask.

"Otti."

"Oh, my!" exclaimed f.a.n.n.y, weakly. "Mizzi and Otti. It sounds like the first act of the 'Merry Widow.'" She turned to Theodore. "I wish you'd sit back, and relax, and if you must clutch that violin case, do it more comfortably. I don't want you to tell me a thing, now. New York is ghastly in August. We'll get a train out of here to-morrow. My apartment in Chicago is cool, and high, and quiet, and the lake is in the front yard, practically. To-night, perhaps, we'll talk about--things. And, oh, Teddy, how glad I am to see you--to have you--to--" she put out a hand and patted his thin cheek--"to touch you."

And at that the man became a boy again. His face worked a moment, painfully and then his head came down in her lap that held the baby, and so she had them both for a moment, one arm about the child, one hand smoothing the boy's close-cropped hair. And in that moment she was more splendidly maternal than either of the women who had borne these whom she now comforted.

It was f.a.n.n.y who attended to the hotel rooms, to the baby's comfort, to the railroad tickets, to the ordering of the meals. Theodore was like a stranger in a strange land. Not only that, he seemed dazed.

"We'll have it out to-night," f.a.n.n.y said to herself. "He'll never get that look off his face until he has told it all. I knew she was a beast."