Part 32 (1/2)

They had tea at Claremont, at a table overlooking the river and the Palisades. Fenger was the kind of man to whom waiters always give a table overlooking anything that should be overlooked. After tea they drove out along the river and came back in the cool of the evening.

f.a.n.n.y was very quiet now. Fenger followed her mood. Ella sustained the conversation, somewhat doggedly. It was almost seven when they reached the plaza exit. And there f.a.n.n.y, sitting forward suddenly, gave a little cry.

”Why--they're marching yet!” she said, and her voice was high with wonder. ”They're marching yet! All the time we've been driving and teaing, they've been marching.”

And so they had. Thousands upon thousands, they had flowed along as relentlessly, and seemingly as endlessly as a river. They were marching yet. For six hours the thousands had poured up that street, making it a moving ma.s.s of white. And the end was not yet. What pen, and tongue, and sense of justice had failed to do, they were doing now by sheer, crude force of numbers. The red-faced hooligan, who had stood next to f.a.n.n.y in the crowd hours before, had long ago ceased his jibes and slunk away, bored, if not impressed. After all, one might jeer at ten, or fifty, or a hundred women, or even five hundred. But not at forty thousand.

Their car turned down Madison Avenue, and Fenger twisted about for a last look at the throng in the plaza. He was plainly impressed. The magnitude of the thing appealed to him. To a Haynes-Cooper-trained mind, forty thousand women, marching for whatever the cause, must be impressive. Forty thousand of anything had the respect of Michael Fenger. His eyes narrowed, thoughtfully.

”They seem to have put it over,” he said. ”And yet, what's the idea?

Oh, I'm for suffrage, of course. Naturally. And all those thousands of women, in white--still, a thing as huge as this parade has to be reduced to a common denominator, to be really successful. If somebody could take the whole thing, boil it down, and make the country see what this huge demonstration stands for.”

f.a.n.n.y leaned forward suddenly. ”Tell the man to stop. I want to get out.”

Fenger and Ella stared. ”What for?” But Fenger obeyed.

”I want to get something at this stationer's shop.” She had jumped down almost before the motor had stopped at the curb.

”But let me get it.”

”No. You can't. Wait here.” She disappeared within the shop. She was back in five minutes, a flat, loosely wrapped square under her arm.

”Cardboard,” she explained briefly, in answer to their questions.

Fenger, about to leave them at their hotel, presented his plans for the evening. f.a.n.n.y, looking up at him, her head full of other plans, thought he looked and sounded very much like Big Business. And, for the moment at least, f.a.n.n.y Brandeis loathed Big Business, and all that it stood for.

”It's almost seven,” Fenger was saying. ”We'll be rubes in New York, this evening. You girls will just have time to freshen up a bit--I suppose you want to--and then we'll have dinner, and go to the theater, and to supper afterward. What do you want to see?”

Ella looked at f.a.n.n.y. And f.a.n.n.y shook her head, ”Thanks. You're awfully kind. But--no.”

”Why not?” demanded Fenger, gruffly.

”Perhaps because I'm tired. And there's something else I must do.”

Ella looked relieved. Fenger's eyes bored down upon f.a.n.n.y, but she seemed not to feel them. She held out her hand.

”You're going back to-morrow?” Fenger asked. ”I'm not leaving until Thursday.”

”To-morrow, with Ella. Good-by. It's been a glorious drive. I feel quite rested.”

”You just said you were tired.”

The elevator door clanged, shutting out the sight of Fenger's resentful frown.

”He's as sensitive as a soubrette,” said Ella. ”I'm glad you decided not to go out. I'm dead, myself. A kimono for the rest of the evening.”

f.a.n.n.y seemed scarcely to hear her. With a nod she left Ella, and entered her own room. There she wasted no time. She threw her hat and coat on the bed. Her suitcase was on the baggage stand. She turned on all the lights, swung the closed suitcase up to the table, shoved the table against the wall, up-ended the suitcase so that its leather side presented a smooth surface, and propped a firm sheet of white cardboard against the impromptu rack. She brought her chair up close, fumbled in her bag for the pens she had just purchased. Her eyes were on the blank white surface of the paper. The table was the kind that has a sub-shelf.

It prevented f.a.n.n.y from crossing her legs under it, and that bothered her. While she fitted her pens, and blocked her paper, she kept on barking her s.h.i.+ns in unconscious protest against the uncomfortable conditions under which she must work.

She sat staring at the paper now, after having marked it off into blocks, with a pencil. She got up, and walked across the room, aimlessly, and stood there a moment, and came back. She picked up a thread on the floor. Sat down again. Picked up her pencil, rolled it a moment in her palms, then, catching her toes behind either foreleg of her chair, in an att.i.tude that was as workmanlike as it was ungraceful, she began to draw, nervously, tentatively at first, but gaining in firmness and a.s.surance as she went on.

If you had been standing behind her chair you would have seen, emerging miraculously from the white surface under f.a.n.n.y's pencil, a thin, undersized little figure in sleazy black and white, whose face, under the cheap hat, was upturned and rapturous. Her skirts were wind-blown, and the wind tugged, too, at the banner whose pole she hugged so tightly in her arms. Dimly you could see the crowds that lined the street on either side. Vaguely, too, you saw the faces and stunted figures of the little group of girls she led. But she, the central figure, stood out among all the rest. f.a.n.n.y Brandeis, the artist, and f.a.n.n.y Brandeis, the salesman, combined shrewdly to omit no telling detail. The wrong kind of feet in the wrong kind of shoes; the absurd hat; the shabby skirt--every bit of grotesquerie was there, serving to emphasize the glory of the face. f.a.n.n.y Brandeis' face, as the figure grew, line by line, was a glorious thing, too.