Part 25 (1/2)
f.a.n.n.y, smiling, glanced about the room, her eyes unconsciously following the track his had taken. About the room, and out, to the icy street.
”The most interesting thing?” Back to the flower-scented room, with its music, and tinkle, and animation. Out again, to the street. ”You see that man, standing at the curb, across the street. He's sort of crouched against the lamp post. See him? Yes, there, just this side of that big gray car? He's all drawn up in a heap. You can feel him s.h.i.+vering. He looks as if he were trying to crawl inside himself for warmth. Ever since we came in I've noticed him staring straight across at these windows where we're all sitting so grandly, lunching. I know what he's thinking, don't you? And I wish I didn't feel so uncomfortable, knowing it. I wish we hadn't ordered lobster thermidor. I wish--there! the policeman's moving him on.”
Father Fitzpatrick reached over and took her hand, as it lay on the table, in his great grasp. ”f.a.n.n.y, girl, you've told me what I wanted to know. Haynes-Cooper or no Haynes-Cooper, millions or no millions, your ravines aren't choked up with ashes yet, my dear. Thank G.o.d.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
From now on f.a.n.n.y Brandeis' life became such a swift-moving thing that your trilogist would have regarded her with disgust. Here was no slow unfolding, petal by petal. Here were two processes going on, side by side. f.a.n.n.y, the woman of business, flourished and throve like a weed, arrogantly flaunting its head above the timid, white flower that lay close to the soil, and crept, and spread, and multiplied. Between the two the fight went on silently.
Fate, or Chance, or whatever it is that directs our movements, was forever throwing tragic or comic little life-groups in her path, and then, pointing an arresting finger at her, implying, ”This means you!”
f.a.n.n.y stepped over these obstructions, or walked around them, or stared straight through them.
She had told herself that she would observe the first anniversary of her mother's death with none of those ancient customs by which your pious Jew honors his dead. There would be no Yahrzeit light burning for twenty-four hours. She would not go to Temple for Kaddish prayer. But the thing was too strong for her, too anciently inbred. Her ancestors would have lighted a candle, or an oil lamp. f.a.n.n.y, coming home at six, found herself turning on the shaded electric lamp in her hall. She went through to the kitchen.
”Princess, when you come in to-morrow morning you'll find a light in the hall. Don't turn it off until to-morrow evening at six.”
”All day long, Miss Fan! Mah sakes, wa' foh?”
”It's just a religious custom.”
”Didn't know yo' had no relijin, Miss Fan. Leastways, Ah nevah could figgah----”
”I haven't,” said f.a.n.n.y, shortly. ”Dinner ready soon, Princess? I'm starved.”
She had entered a Jewish house of wors.h.i.+p only once in this year. It was the stately, white-columned edifice on Grand Boulevard that housed the congregation presided over by the famous Kirsch. She had heard of him, naturally. She was there out of curiosity, like any other newcomer to Chicago. The beauty of the auditorium enchanted her--a magnificently proportioned room, and restful without being in the least gloomy.
Then she had been interested in the congregation as it rustled in. She thought she had never seen so many modishly gowned women in one room in all her life. The men were sleekly broadclothed, but they lacked the well-dressed air, somehow. The women were slimly elegant in tailor suits and furs. They all looked as if they had been turned out by the same tailor. An artist, in his line, but of limited imagination. Dr. Kirsch, sociologist and savant, aquiline, semi-bald, grimly satiric, sat in his splendid, high-backed chair, surveying his silken flock through half-closed lids. He looked tired, and rather ill, f.a.n.n.y thought, but distinctly a personage. She wondered if he held them or they him. That recalled to her the little Winnebago Temple and Rabbi Thalmann.
She remembered the frequent rudeness and open inattention of that congregation. No doubt Mrs. Nathan Pereles had her counterpart here, and the hypocritical Bella Weinberg, too, and the giggling Aarons girls, and old Ben Reitman. Here Dr. Kirsch had risen, and, coming forward, had paused to lean over his desk and, with an awful geniality, had looked down upon two rustling, exquisitely gowned late-comers. They sank into their seats, cowed. f.a.n.n.y grinned. He began his lecture something about modern politics. f.a.n.n.y was fascinated and resentful by turns. His brilliant satire probed, cut, jabbed like a surgeon's scalpel; or he railed, scolded, snarled, like a dyspeptic schoolmaster. Often he was in wretched taste. He mimicked, postured, sneered. But he had this millionaire congregation of his in hand. f.a.n.n.y found herself smiling up at him, delightedly. Perhaps this wasn't religion, as she had been taught to look upon it, but it certainly was tonic. She told herself that she would have come to the same conclusion if Kirsch had occupied a Methodist pulpit.
There were no Kaddish prayers in Kirsch's Temple. On the Friday following the first anniversary of Molly Brandeis's death f.a.n.n.y did not go home after working hours, but took a bite of supper in a neighborhood restaurant. Then she found her way to one of the orthodox Russian Jewish synagogues on the west side. It was a dim, odorous, bare little place, this house of wors.h.i.+p. f.a.n.n.y had never seen one like it before. She was herded up in the gallery, where the women sat. And when the patriarchal rabbi began to intone the prayer for the dead f.a.n.n.y threw the gallery into wild panic by rising for it--a thing that no woman is allowed to do in an orthodox Jewish church. She stood, calmly, though the beshawled women to right and left of her yanked at her coat.
In January f.a.n.n.y discovered New York. She went as selector for her department. Hereafter Slosson would do only the actual buying. Styles, prices, and materials would be decided by her. Ella Monahan accompanied her, it being the time for her monthly trip. f.a.n.n.y openly envied her her knowledge of New York's wholesale district. Ella offered to help her.
”No,” f.a.n.n.y had replied, ”I think not, thanks. You've your own work. And besides I know pretty well what I want, and where to go to get it. It's making them give it to me that will be hard.”
They went to the same hotel, and took connecting rooms. Each went her own way, not seeing the other from morning until night, but they often found kimonoed comfort in each other's presence.
f.a.n.n.y had spent weeks outlining her plan of attack. She had determined to retain the cheap grades, but to add a finer line as well. She recalled those lace-bedecked bundles that the farmer women and mill hands had born so tenderly in their arms. Here was one direction in which they allowed extravagance free rein. As a canny business woman, she would trade on her knowledge of their weakness.
At Haynes-Cooper order is never a thing to be despised by a wholesaler.
f.a.n.n.y, knowing this, had made up her mind to go straight to Horn & Udell. Now, Horn & Udell are responsible for the bloomers your small daughter wears under her play frock, in place of the troublesome and extravagant petticoat of the old days. It was they who introduced smocked pinafores to you; and those modish patent-leather belts for children at which your grandmothers would have raised horrified hands.
They taught you that an inch of hand embroidery is worth a yard of cheap lace. And as for style, cut, line--you can tell a Horn & Udell child from among a flock of thirty.
f.a.n.n.y, entering their office, felt much as Molly Brandeis had felt that January many, many years before, when she had made that first terrifying trip to the Chicago market. The engagement had been made days before.
f.a.n.n.y never knew the shock that her youthfully expectant face gave old Sid Udell. He turned from his desk to greet her, his polite smile of greeting giving way to a look of bewilderment.
”But you are not the buyer, are you, Miss Brandeis?”
”No, Mr. Slosson buys.”
”I thought so.”