Part 37 (1/2)

”How do I look?” Theodore demanded, and stood up before her.

”Beautiful!” said f.a.n.n.y, and meant it.

Theodore pa.s.sed a hand over his cheek. ”Cut myself shaving, d.a.m.n it!”

”It doesn't show.”

He resumed his pacing. Now and then he stopped, and rubbed his hands together with a motion we use in was.h.i.+ng. Finally:

”I wish you'd go out front,” he said, almost pettishly. f.a.n.n.y rose, without a word. She looked very handsome. Excitement had given her color. The pupils of her eyes were dilated and they shone brilliantly.

She looked at her brother. He stared at her. They swayed together. They kissed, and clung together for a long moment. Then f.a.n.n.y turned and walked swiftly away, and stumbled a little as she groped for the stairway.

The bell in the foyer rang. The audience strolled to the auditorium.

They lagged, f.a.n.n.y thought. They crawled. She told herself that she must not allow her nerves to tease her like that. She looked about her, with outward calm. Her eyes met Fenger's. He was seated, alone. It was he who had got a subscription seat for her from a friend. She had said she preferred to be alone. She looked at him now and he at her, and they did not nod nor smile. The house settled itself flutteringly.

A man behind f.a.n.n.y spoke. ”Who's this Brandeis?”

”I don't know. A new one. German, I guess. They say he's good.

Kreisler's the boy who can play for me, though.”

The orchestra was seated now. Stock, the conductor, came out from the little side door. Behind him walked Theodore. There was a little, impersonal burst of applause. Stock mounted his conductor's platform and glanced paternally down at Theodore, who stood at the left, violin and bow in hand, bowing. The audience seemed to warm to his boyishness.

They applauded again, and he bowed in a little series of jerky bobs that waggled his coat-tails. Heels close together, knees close together. A German bow. And then a polite series of bobs addressed to Stock and his orchestra. Stock's long, slim hands poised in air. His fingertips seemed to draw from the men before him the first poignant strains of Theodore's concerto. Theodore stood, slim and straight. f.a.n.n.y's face, lifted toward him, was a prayerful thing. Theodore suddenly jerked back the left lapel of his coat in a little movement f.a.n.n.y remembered as typical in his boyish days, nuzzled his violin tenderly, and began to play.

It is the most excruciating of instruments, the violin, or the most exquisite. I think f.a.n.n.y actually heard very little of his playing. Her hands were icy. Her cheeks were hot. The man before her was not Theodore Brandeis, the violinist, but Teddy, the bright-haired, knickered schoolboy who played to those people seated in the yellow wooden pews of the temple in Winnebago. The years seemed to fade away. He crouched over his violin to get the 'cello tones for which he was to become famous, and it was the same hunched, almost awkward pose that the boy had used.

f.a.n.n.y found herself watching his feet as his s.h.i.+fted his position. He was nervous. And he was not taken out of himself. She knew that because she saw the play of his muscles about the jaw-bone. It followed that he was not playing his best. She could not tell that from listening to him.

Her music sense was dulled. She got it from these outward signs. The woman next to her was reading a program absorbedly, turning the pages regularly, and with care. f.a.n.n.y could have killed her with her two hands. She tried to listen detachedly. The music was familiar to her.

Theodore had played it for her, again and again. The last movement had never failed to shake her emotionally. It was the glorious and triumphant cry of a people tried and unafraid. She heard it now, unmoved.

And then Theodore was bowing his little jerky bows, and he was shaking hands with Stock, and with the First Violin. He was gone. f.a.n.n.y sat with her hands in her lap. The applause continued. Theodore appeared again.

Bowed. He bent very low now, with his arms hanging straight. There was something gracious and courtly about him. And foreign. He must keep that, f.a.n.n.y thought. They like it. She saw him off again. More applause.

Encores were against the house rules. She knew that. Then it meant they were pleased. He was to play again. A group of Hungarian dances this time. They were wild, gypsy things, rising to frenzy at times. He played them with spirit and poetry. To listen sent the blood singing through the veins. f.a.n.n.y found herself thinking clearly and exaltedly.

”This is what my mother drudged for, and died for, and it was worth it.

And you must do the same, if necessary. Nothing else matters. What he needs now is luxury. He's worn out with fighting. Ease. Peace. Leisure.

You've got to give them to him. It's no use, f.a.n.n.y. You lose.”

In that moment she reached a mark in her spiritual career that she was to outdistance but once.

Theodore was bowing again. f.a.n.n.y had scarcely realized that he had finished. The concert was over.

”... the group of dances,” the man behind her was saying as he helped the girl next him with her coat, ”but I didn't like that first thing.

Church music, not concert.”

f.a.n.n.y found her way back to the ante-room. Theodore was talking to the conductor, and one or two others. He looked tired, and his eyes found f.a.n.n.y's with appeal and relief in them. She came over to him. There were introductions, congratulations. f.a.n.n.y slipped her hand over his with a firm pressure.

”Come, dear. You must be tired.”