Part 5 (2/2)

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 a.s.sure 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 ap.r.o.n.

”I have just had the pleasure of hearing your son play,” began Schabelitz.

”Mr. Bauer called me out of my economics cla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ping! 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 was.h.i.+ng 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, cras.h.i.+ng 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.”

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