Fanny Herself Part 4

"Umhmph."

"Only," Molly Brandeis was thinking aloud now, quite forgetting that she was talking to a very little girl, "only, life seems to take such special delight in offering temptation to those who are able to withstand it. I don't know why that's true, but it is. I hope--oh, my little girl, my baby--I hope----"

But f.a.n.n.y never knew whether her mother finished that sentence or not.

She remembered waiting for the end of it, to learn what it was her mother hoped. And she had felt a sudden, scalding drop on her hand where her mother bent over her. And the next thing she knew it was morning, with mellow September sunshine.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was the week following this feat of fasting that two things happened to f.a.n.n.y Brandeis--two seemingly unimportant and childish things--that were to affect the whole tenor of her life. It is pleasant to predict thus. It gives a certain weight to a story and a sense of inevitableness. It should insure, too, the readers's support to the point, at least, where the prediction is fulfilled. Sometimes a careless author loses sight altogether of his promise, and then the tricked reader is likely to go on to the very final page, teased by the expectation that that which was hinted at will be revealed.

f.a.n.n.y Brandeis had a way of going to the public library on Sat.u.r.day afternoons (with a bag of very sticky peanut candy in her pocket, the little sensualist!) and there, huddled in a chair, dreamily and almost automatically munching peanut brittle, her cheeks growing redder and redder in the close air of the ill-ventilated room, she would read, and read, and read. There was no one to censor her reading, so she read promiscuously, wading gloriously through trash and cla.s.sic and historical and hysterical alike, and finding something of interest in them all.

She read the sprightly "d.u.c.h.ess" novels, where mad offers of marriage were always made in flower-scented conservatories; she read d.i.c.kens, and Thelma, and old bound Cosmopolitans, and Zola, and de Maupa.s.sant, and the "Wide, Wide World," and "Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,"

and "Jane Eyre." All of which are merely mentioned as examples of her catholicism in literature. As she read she was unaware of the giggling boys and girls who came in noisily, and made dates, and were coldly frowned on by the austere Miss Perkins, the librarian. She would read until the fading light would remind her that the short fall or winter day was drawing to a close.

She would come, shivering a little after the fetid atmosphere of the overheated library, into the crisp, cold snap of the astringent Wisconsin air. Sometimes she would stop at the store for her mother.

Sometimes she would run home alone through the twilight, her heels scrunching the snow, her whole being filled with a vague and unchildish sadness and disquiet as she faced the tender rose, and orange, and mauve, and pale lemon of the winter sunset. There were times when her very heart ached with the beauty of that color-flooded sky; there were times, later, when it ached in much the same way at the look in the eyes of a pushcart peddler; there were times when it ached, seemingly, for no reason at all--as is sometimes the case when one is a little Jew girl, with whole centuries of suffering behind one.

On this day she had taken a book from the library Miss Perkins, at sight of the t.i.tle, had glared disapprovingly, and had hesitated a moment before stamping the card.

"Is this for yourself?" she had asked.

"Yes'm."

"It isn't a book for little girls," snapped Miss Perkins.

"I've read half of it already," f.a.n.n.y informed her sweetly. And went out with it under her arm. It was Zola's "The Ladies' Paradise" (Au Bonheur des Dames). The story of the shop girl, and the crushing of the little dealer by the great and moneyed company had thrilled and fascinated her.

Her mind was full of it as she turned the corner on Norris Street and ran full-tilt, into a yowling, taunting, torturing little pack of boys.

They were gathered in close formation about some object which they were teasing, and knocking about in the mud, and otherwise abusing with the savagery of their years. f.a.n.n.y, the fiery, stopped short. She pushed into the ring. The object of their efforts was a weak-kneed and hollow-chested little boy who could not fight because he was cowardly as well as weak, and his name (oh, pity!) was Clarence--Clarence Heyl.

There are few things that a mischievous group of small boys cannot do with a name like Clarence. They whined it, they catcalled it, they shrieked it in falsetto imitation of Clarence's mother. He was a wide-mouthed, sallow and pindling little boy, whose pipe-stemmed legs looked all the thinner for being contrasted with his feet, which were long and narrow. At that time he wore spectacles, too, to correct a muscular weakness, so that his one good feature--great soft, liquid eyes--pa.s.sed unnoticed. He was the kind of little boy whose mother insists on dressing him in cloth-top, b.u.t.toned, patent-leather shoes for school. His blue serge suit was never patched or shiny. His stockings were virgin at the knee. He wore an overcoat on cool autumn days. f.a.n.n.y despised and pitied him. We ask you not to, because in this puny, shy and ugly little boy of fifteen you behold Our Hero.

He staggered to his feet now, as f.a.n.n.y came up. His school reefer was mud-bespattered. His stockings were torn. His cap was gone and his hair was wild. There was a cut or scratch on one cheek, from which the blood flowed.

"I'll tell my mother on you!" he screamed impotently, and shook with rage and terror. "You'll see, you will! You let me alone, now!"

f.a.n.n.y felt a sick sensation at the pit of her stomach and in her throat.

Then:

"He'll tell his ma!" sneered the boys in chorus. "Oh, mamma!" And called him the Name. And at that a she wildcat broke loose among them. She pounced on them without warning, a little fury of blazing eyes and flying hair, and white teeth showing in a snarl. If she had fought fair, or if she had not taken them so by surprise, she would have been powerless among them. But she had sprung at them with the suddenness of rage. She kicked, and scratched, and bit, and clawed and spat. She seemed not to feel the defensive blows that were showered upon her in turn. Her own hard little fists were now doubled for a thump or opened, like a claw, for scratching.

"Go on home!" she yelled to Clarence, even while she fought. And Clarence, gathering up his tattered school books, went, and stood not on the order of his going. Whereupon f.a.n.n.y darted nimbly to one side, out of the way of boyish brown fists. In that moment she was transformed from a raging fury into a very meek and trembling little girl, who looked shyly and pleadingly out from a tangle of curls. The boys were for rushing at her again.

"Cowardy-cats! Five of you fighting one girl," cried f.a.n.n.y, her lower lip trembling ever so little. "Come on! Hit me! Afraid to fight anything but girls! Cowardy-cats!" A tear, pearly, pathetic, coursed down her cheek.

The drive was broken. Five sullen little boys stood and glared at her, impotently.

"You hit us first," declared one boy. "What business d' you have scratching around like that, I'd like to know! You old scratch cat!"

"He's sickly," said f.a.n.n.y. "He can't fight. There's something the matter with his lungs, or something, and they're going to make him quit school.

Besides, he's a billion times better than any of you, anyway."

At once, "f.a.n.n.y's stuck on Clar-ence! f.a.n.n.y's stuck on Clar-ence!"

f.a.n.n.y picked up her somewhat battered Zola from where it had flown at her first onslaught. "It's a lie!" she shouted. And fled, followed by the hateful chant.

She came in at the back door, trying to look casual. But Mattie's keen eye detected the marks of battle, even while her knife turned the frying potatoes.

"f.a.n.n.y Brandeis! Look at your sweater! And your hair!"

f.a.n.n.y glanced down at the torn pocket dangling untidily. "Oh, that!" she said airily. And, pa.s.sing the kitchen table, deftly filched a slice of cold veal from the platter, and mounted the back stairs to her room. It was a hungry business, this fighting. When Mrs. Brandeis came in at six her small daughter was demurely reading. At supper time Mrs. Brandeis looked up at her daughter with a sharp exclamation.

"f.a.n.n.y! There's a scratch on your cheek from your eye to your chin."

f.a.n.n.y put up her hand. "Is there?"

"Why, you must have felt it. How did you get it?"

f.a.n.n.y said nothing. "I'll bet she was fighting," said Theodore with the intuitive knowledge that one child has of another's ways.

"f.a.n.n.y!" The keen brown eyes were upon her. "Some boys were picking on Clarence Heyl, and it made me mad. They called him names."

"What names?"

"Oh, names."

"f.a.n.n.y dear, if you're going to fight every time you hear that name----"

f.a.n.n.y thought of the torn sweater, the battered Zola, the scratched cheek. "It is pretty expensive," she said reflectively.

After supper she settled down at once to her book. Theodore would labor over his algebra after the dining-room table was cleared. He stuck his cap on his head now, and slammed out of the door for a half-hour's play under the corner arc-light. f.a.n.n.y rarely brought books from school, and yet she seemed to get on rather brilliantly, especially in the studies she liked. During that winter following her husband's death Mrs.

Brandeis had a way of playing solitaire after supper; one of the simpler forms of the game. It seemed to help her to think out the day's problems, and to soothe her at the same time. She would turn down the front of the writing desk, and draw up the piano stool.

All through that winter f.a.n.n.y seemed to remember reading to the slap-slap of cards, and the whir of their shuffling. In after years she was never able to pick up a volume of d.i.c.kens without having her mind hark back to those long, quiet evenings. She read a great deal of d.i.c.kens at that time. She had a fine contempt for his sentiment, and his great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was because they were badly drawn. The humor she loved, and she read and reread the pa.s.sages dealing with Samuel Weller, and Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and f.a.n.n.y Squeers. It was rather trying to read d.i.c.kens before supper, she had discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, she had found. It sent one to the pantry in a sort of trance, to ransack for food--cookies, apples, cold meat, anything. But whatever one found, it always fell short of the succulent sounding beefsteak pies, and saddles of mutton, and hot pineapple toddy of the printed page.

To-night Mrs. Brandeis, coming in from the kitchen after a conference with Mattie, found her daughter in conversational mood, though book in hand.

"Mother, did you ever read this?" She held up "The Ladies' Paradise."

"Yes; but child alive, what ever made you get it? That isn't the kind of thing for you to read. Oh, I wish I had more time to give----"

f.a.n.n.y leaned forward eagerly. "It made me think a lot of you. You know--the way the big store was crushing the little one, and everything.

Like the thing you were talking to that man about the other day. You said it was killing the small-town dealer, and he said some day it would be illegal, and you said you'd never live to see it."

"Oh, that! We were talking about the mail-order business, and how hard it was to compete with it, when the farmers bought everything from a catalogue, and had whole boxes of household goods expressed to them. I didn't know you were listening, Fanchen."