Part 37 (2/2)

At the door they found Fenger waiting. Theodore received his well-worded congratulations with an ill-concealed scowl.

”My car's waiting,” said Fenger. ”Won't you let me take you home?”

A warning pressure from Theodore. ”Thanks, no. We have a car. Theodore's very tired.”

”I can quite believe that.”

”Not tired,” growled Theodore, like a great boy. ”I'm hungry. Starved. I never eat before playing.”

Kurt Stein, Theodore's manager, had been hovering over him solicitously.

”You must remember to-morrow night. I should advise you to rest now, as quickly as possible.” He, too, glared at Fenger.

Fenger fell back, almost humbly. ”I've great news for you. I must see you Sunday. After this is over. I'll telephone you. Don't try to come to work to-morrow.” All this is a hurried aside to f.a.n.n.y.

f.a.n.n.y nodded and moved away with Theodore.

Theodore leaned back in the car, but there was no hint of relaxation. He was as tense and vibrant as one of his own violin strings.

”It went, didn't it? They're like clods, these American audiences.”

It was on the tip of f.a.n.n.y's tongue to say that he had professed indifference to audiences, but she wisely refrained. ”Gad! I'm hungry.

What makes this Fenger hang around so? I'm going to tell him to keep away, some day. The way he stares at you. Let's go somewhere to-night, Fan. Or have some people in. I can't sit about after I've played. Olga always used to have a supper party, or something.”

”All right, Ted. Would you like the theater?”

For the first time in her life she felt a little whisper of sympathy for the despised Olga. Perhaps, after all, she had not been wholly to blame.

He was to leave Sunday morning for Cleveland, where he would play Monday. He had insisted on taking Mizzi with him, though f.a.n.n.y had railed and stormed. Theodore had had his way.

”She's used to it. She likes to travel, don't you, Mizzi? You should have seen her in Russia, and all over Germany, and in Sweden. She's a better traveler than her dad.”

Sat.u.r.day morning's papers were kind, but cool. They used words such as promising, uneven, overambitious, gifted. Theodore crumpled the lot into a ball and hurled them across the room, swearing horribly. Then he smoothed them out, clipped them, and saved them carefully. His playing that night was tinged with bravado, and the Sat.u.r.day evening audience rose to it. There was about his performance a glow, a spirit that had been lacking on the previous day.

Inconsistently enough, he missed the antagonism of the European critics.

He was puzzled and resentful.

”They hardly say a word about the meaning of the concerto. They accept it as a piece of music, Jewish in theme. It might as well be ent.i.tled Springtime.”

”This isn't France or Russia,” said f.a.n.n.y. ”Antagonism here isn't religious. It's personal, almost. You've been away so many years you've forgotten. They don't object to us as a sect, or a race, but as a type.

That's the trouble, Clarence Heyl says. We're free to build as many synagogues as we like, and wors.h.i.+p in them all day, if we want to. But we don't want to. The struggle isn't racial any more, but individual.

For some reason or other one flashy, loud-talking Hebrew in a restaurant can cause more ill feeling than ten thousand of them holding a religious ma.s.s meeting in Union Square.”

Theodore pondered a moment. ”Then here each one of us is responsible. Is that it?”

”I suppose so.”

”But look here. I've been here ten weeks, and I've met your friends, and not one of them is a Jew. How's that?”

f.a.n.n.y flushed a little. ”Oh, it just worked out that way.”

Theodore looked at her hard. ”You mean you worked it out that way?”

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