Part 14 (1/2)

”No you're not. You're different. And I'll tell you why. You're a Jew.”

”Yes, I've got that handicap.”

”That isn't a handicap, f.a.n.n.y. It's an a.s.set. Outwardly you're like any other girl of your age. Inwardly you've been molded by occupation, training, religion, history, temperament, race, into something--”

”Ethnologists have proved that there is no such thing as a Jewish race,”

she interrupted pertly.

”H'm. Maybe. I don't know what you'd call it, then. You can't take a people and persecute them for thousands of years, hounding them from place to place, herding them in dark and filthy streets, without leaving some sort of brand on them--a mark that differentiates. Sometimes it doesn't show outwardly. But it's there, inside. You know, f.a.n.n.y, how it's always been said that no artist can became a genius until he has suffered. You've suffered, you Jews, for centuries and centuries, until you're all artists--quick to see drama because you've lived in it, emotional, oversensitive, cringing, or swaggering, high-strung, demonstrative, affectionate, generous.

”Maybe they're right. Perhaps it isn't a race. But what do you call the thing, then, that made you draw me as you did that morning when you came to ten o'clock ma.s.s and did a caricature of me in the pulpit. You showed up something that I've been trying to hide for twenty years, till I'd fooled everybody, including myself. My church is always packed. n.o.body else there ever saw it. I'll tell you, f.a.n.n.y, what I've always said: the Irish would be the greatest people in the world--if it weren't for the Jews.”

They laughed together at that, and the tension was relieved.

”Well, anyway,” said f.a.n.n.y, and patted his great arm, ”I'd rather talk to you than to any man in the world.”

”I hope you won't be able to say that a year from now, dear girl.”

And so they parted. He took her to the door himself, and watched her slim figure down the street and across the ravine bridge, and thought she walked very much like her mother, shoulders squared, chin high, hips firm. He went back into the house, after surveying the sunset largely, and encountered the dour Casey in the hall.

”I'll type your sermon now, sir--if it's done.”

”It isn't done, Casey. And you know it. Oh, Casey,”--(I wish your imagination would supply that brogue, because it was such a deliciously soft and racy thing)--”Oh, Casey, Casey! you're a better priest than I am--but a poorer man.”

f.a.n.n.y was to leave Winnebago the following Sat.u.r.day. She had sold the last of the household furniture, and had taken a room at the Haley House. She felt very old and experienced--and sad. That, she told herself, was only natural. Leaving things to which one is accustomed is always hard. Queerly enough, it was her good-by to Aloysius that most unnerved her. Aloysius had been taken on at Gerretson's, and the dignity of his new position sat heavily upon him. You should have seen his ties.

f.a.n.n.y sought him out at Gerretson's.

”It's flure-manager of the bas.e.m.e.nt I am,” he said, and struck an elegant att.i.tude against the case of misses'-ready-to-wear coats. ”And when you come back to Winnebago, Miss f.a.n.n.y,--and the saints send it be soon--I'll bet ye'll see me on th' first flure, keepin' a stern but kindly eye on the swellest trade in town. Ev'ry last thing I know I learned off yur poor ma.”

”I hope it will serve you here, Aloysius.”

”Sarve me!” He bent closer. ”Meanin' no offense, Miss f.a.n.n.y; but say, listen: Oncet ye get a Yiddish business education into an Irish head, and there's no limit to the length ye can go. If I ain't a dry-goods king be th' time I'm thirty I hope a packin' case'll fall on me.”

The sight of Aloysius seemed to recall so vividly all that was happy and all that was hateful about Brandeis' Bazaar; all the bravery and pluck, and resourcefulness of the bright-eyed woman he had admiringly called his boss, that f.a.n.n.y found her self-control slipping. She put out her hand rather blindly to meet his great red paw (a dressy striped cuff seemed to make it all the redder), murmured a word of thanks in return for his fervent good wishes, and fled up the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

On Friday night (she was to leave next day) she went to the temple. The evening service began at seven. At half past six f.a.n.n.y had finished her early supper. She would drop in at Doctor Thalmann's house and walk with him to temple, if he had not already gone.

”Nein, der Herr Rabbi ist noch hier--sure,” the maid said in answer to f.a.n.n.y's question. The Thalmann's had a German maid--one Minna--who bullied the invalid Mrs. Thalmann, was famous for her cookies with walnuts on the top, and who made life exceedingly difficult for unlinguistic callers.

Rabbi Thalmann was up in his study. f.a.n.n.y ran lightly up the stairs.

”Who is it, Emil? That Minna! Next Monday her week is up. She goes.”

”It's I, Mrs. Thalmann. f.a.n.n.y Brandeis.”

”Na, f.a.n.n.y! Now what do you think!”

In the brightly-lighted doorway of his little study appeared Rabbi Thalmann, on one foot a comfortable old romeo, on the other a street shoe. He held out both hands. ”Only at supper we talked about you. Isn't that so, Harriet?” He called into the darkened room.

”I came to say good-by. And I thought we might walk to temple together.

How's Mrs. Thalmann tonight?”