Fanny Herself. Edna Ferber

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ