Fanny Herself Part 14

"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?"

The little rabbi shook his head darkly, and waved a dismal hand. But that was for f.a.n.n.y alone. What he said was: "She's really splendid to-day. A little tired, perhaps; but what is that?"

"Emil!" from the darkened bedroom. "How can you say that? But how! What I have suffered to-day, only! Torture! And because I say nothing I'm not sick."

"Go in," said Rabbi Thalmann.

So f.a.n.n.y went in to the woman lying, yellow-faced, on the pillows of the dim old-fas.h.i.+oned bedroom with its walnut furniture, and its red plush mantel drape. Mrs. Thalmann held out a hand. f.a.n.n.y took it in hers, and perched herself on the edge of the bed. She patted the dry, devitalized hand, and pressed it in her own strong, electric grip. Mrs. Thalmann raised her head from the pillow.

"Tell me, did she have her white ap.r.o.n on?"

"White ap.r.o.n?"

"Minna, the girl."

"Oh!" f.a.n.n.y's mind jerked back to the gingham-covered figure that had opened the door for her. "Yes," she lied, "a white one--with crochet around the bottom. Quite grand."

Mrs. Thalmann sank back on the pillow with a satisfied sigh. "A wonder."

She shook her head. "What that girl wastes alone, when I am helpless here."

Rabbi Thalmann came into the room, both feet booted now, and placed his slippers neatly, toes out, under the bed. "Ach, Harriet, the girl is all right. You imagine. Come, f.a.n.n.y." He took a great, fat watch out of his pocket. "It is time to go."

Mrs. Thalmann laid a detaining hand on f.a.n.n.y's arm. "You will come often back here to Winnebago?"

"I'm afraid not. Once a year, perhaps, to visit my graves."

The sick eyes regarded the fresh young face. "Your mother, f.a.n.n.y, we didn't understand her so well, here in Winnebago, among us Jewish ladies. She was different."

f.a.n.n.y's face hardened. She stood up. "Yes, she was different."

"She comes often into my mind now, when I am here alone, with only the four walls. We were aber dumm, we women--but how dumm! She was too smart for us, your mother. Too smart. Und eine sehr brave frau."

And suddenly f.a.n.n.y, she who had resolved to set her face against all emotion, and all sentiment, found herself with her glowing cheek pressed against the withered one, and it was the weak old hand that patted her now. So she lay for a moment, silent. Then she got up, straightened her hat, smiled.

"Auf Wiedersehen," she said in her best German. "Und gute Besserung."

But the rabbi's wife shook her head. "Good-by."

From the hall below Doctor Thalmann called to her. "Come, child, come!"

Then, "Ach, the light in my study! I forgot to turn it out, f.a.n.n.y, be so good, yes?"

f.a.n.n.y entered the bright little room, reached up to turn off the light, and paused a moment to glance about her. It was an ugly, comfortable, old-fas.h.i.+oned room that had never progressed beyond the what-not period.

f.a.n.n.y's eye was caught by certain framed pictures on the walls.

They were photographs of Rabbi Thalmann's confirmation cla.s.ses.

Spindling-legged little boys in the splendor of patent-leather b.u.t.toned shoes, stiff white s.h.i.+rts, black broadcloth suits with satin lapels; self-conscious and awkward little girls--these in the minority--in white dresses and stiff white hair bows. In the center of each group sat the little rabbi, very proud and alert. f.a.n.n.y was not among these. She had never formally taken the vows of her creed. As she turned down the light now, and found her way down the stairs, she told herself that she was glad this was so.

It was a matter of only four blocks to the temple. But they were late, and so they hurried, and there was little conversation. f.a.n.n.y's arm was tucked comfortably in his. It felt, somehow, startlingly thin, that arm.