Fanny Herself Part 31

Ella busied herself with the unpacking of a bag. She showed a disposition to spoil f.a.n.n.y. "You haven't asked after your friend, Mr.

Heyl. My land! If I had a friend like that--" "Oh, yes," said f.a.n.n.y, vaguely. "I suppose you and he are great chums by this time. He's a nice boy."

"You don't suppose anything of the kind," Ella retorted, crisply. "That boy, as you call him--and it isn't always the man with the biggest fists that's got the most fight in him--is about as far above me as--as--"

she sat down on the floor, ponderously, beside the open bag, and gesticulated with a hairbrush, at loss for a simile "as an eagle is above a waddling old duck. No, I don't mean that, either, because I never did think much of the eagle, morally. But you get me. Not that he knows it, or shows it. Heyl, I mean. Lord, no! But he's got something--something kind of spiritual in him that makes you that way, too. He doesn't say much, either. That's the funny part of it. I do all the talking, seems, when I'm with him. But I find myself saying things I didn't know I knew. He makes you think about things you're afraid to face by yourself. Big things. Things inside of you." She fell silent a moment, sitting cross-legged before the bag. Then she got up, snapped the bag shut, and bore it across the room to a corner. "You know he's gone, I s'pose."

"Gone?"

"To those mountains, or wherever it is he gets that look in his eyes from. That's my notion of a job. They let him go for the whole summer, roaming around being a naturalist, just so's he'll come back in the winter."

"And the column?" f.a.n.n.y asked. "Do they let that go, too?"

"I guess he's going to do some writing for them up there. After all, he's the column. It doesn't make much difference where he writes from.

Did you know it's being syndicated now, all over the country? Well, it is. That's the secret of its success, I suppose. It isn't only a column written about New York for a New York paper. It's about everything, for anybody. It's the humanest stuff. And he isn't afraid of anything. New York's crazy about him. They say he's getting a salary you wouldn't believe. I'm a tongue-tied old fool when I'm with him, but then, he likes to talk about you, mostly, so it doesn't matter."

f.a.n.n.y turned swiftly from the dressing-table, where she was taking the pins out of her vigorous, abundant hair.

"What kind of thing does he say about me, Ellen girl. H'm? What kind of thing?"

"Abuse, mostly. I'll be running along to my own room now. I'll be out for lunch, but back at four, for that airing Fenger's so wild to have me take. If I were you I'd lie down for an hour, till you get your land-legs." She poked her head in at the door again. "Not that you look as if you needed it. You've got a different look, somehow. Kind of rested. After all, there's nothing like an ocean voyage."

She was gone. f.a.n.n.y stood a moment, in the center of the room. There was nothing relaxed or inert about her. Had you seen her standing there, motionless, you would still have got a sense of action from her. She looked so splendidly alive. She walked to the window, now, and stood looking down upon New York in early June. Summer had not yet turned the city into a cauldron of stone and steel. From her height she could glimpse the green of the park, with a glint of silver in its heart, that was the lake. Her mind was milling around, aimlessly, in a manner far removed from its usual orderly functioning. Now she thought of Theodore, her little brother--his promised return. It had been a slow and painful thing, his climb. Perhaps if she had been more ready to help, if she had not always waited until he asked the aid that she might have volunteered--she thrust that thought out of her mind, rudely, and slammed the door on it.... Fenger. He had said, "d.a.m.n!" when she had told him about Ella. And his voice had been--well--she pushed that thought outside her mind, too.... Clarence Heyl.... "He makes you think about things you're afraid to face by yourself. Big things. Things inside of you...."

f.a.n.n.y turned away from the window. She decided she must be tired, after all. Because here she was, with everything to make her happy: Theodore coming home; her foreign trip a success; Ella and Fenger to praise her and make much of her; a drive and tea this afternoon (she wasn't above these creature comforts)--and still she felt unexhilarated, dull. She decided to go down for a bit of lunch, and perhaps a stroll of ten or fifteen minutes, just to see what Fifth avenue was showing. It was half-past one when she reached that ordinarily well-regulated thoroughfare. She found its sidewalks packed solid, up and down, as far as the eye could see, with a quiet, orderly, expectant ma.s.s of people.

Squads of mounted police clattered up and down, keeping the middle of the street cleared. Whatever it was that had called forth that incredible ma.s.s, was scheduled to proceed uptown from far downtown, and that very soon. Heads were turned that way. f.a.n.n.y, wedged in the crowd, stood a-tiptoe, but she could see nothing. It brought to her mind the Circus Day of her Winnebago childhood, with Elm street packed with townspeople and farmers, all straining their eyes up toward Cherry street, the first turn in the line of march. Then, far away, the blare of a band. "Here they come!" Just then, far down the canyon of Fifth avenue, sounded the cry that had always swayed Elm street, Winnebago.

"Here they come!"

"What is it?" f.a.n.n.y asked a woman against whom she found herself close-packed. "What are they waiting for?"

"It's the suffrage parade," replied the woman. "The big suffrage parade.

Don't you know?"

"No. I haven't been here." f.a.n.n.y was a little disappointed. The crowd had surged forward, so that it was impossible for her to extricate herself. She found herself near the curb. She could see down the broad street now, and below Twenty-third street it was a moving, glittering ma.s.s, pennants, banners, streamers flying. The woman next her volunteered additional information.

"The mayor refused permission to let them march. But they fought it, and they say it's the greatest suffrage parade ever held. I'd march myself, only--"

"Only what?"

"I don't know. I'm scared to, I think. I'm not a New Yorker."

"Neither am I," said f.a.n.n.y. f.a.n.n.y always became friendly with the woman next her in a crowd. That was her mother in her. One could hear the music of the band, now. f.a.n.n.y glanced at her watch. It was not quite two. Oh, well, she would wait and see some of it. Her mind was still too freshly packed with European impressions to receive any real idea of the value of this pageant, she told herself. She knew she did not feel particularly interested. But she waited.

Another surging forward. It was no longer, "Here they come!" but, "Here they are!"

And here they were.

A squad of mounted police, on very prancy horses. The men looked very ruddy, and well set-up and imposing. f.a.n.n.y had always thrilled to anything in uniform, given sufficient numbers of them. Another police squad. A bra.s.s band, on foot. And then, in white, on a snow-white charger, holding a white banner aloft, her eyes looking straight ahead, her face very serious and youthful, the famous beauty and suffrage leader, Mildred Inness. One of the few famous beauties who actually was a beauty. And after that women, women, women! Hundreds of them, thousands of them, a river of them flowing up Fifth avenue to the park.

More bands. More horses. Women! Women! They bore banners. This section, that section. Artists. School teachers. Lawyers. Doctors. Writers. Women in college caps and gowns. Women in white, from shoes to hats. Young women. Girls. Gray-haired women. A woman in a wheel chair, smiling. A man next to f.a.n.n.y began to jeer. He was a red-faced young man, with a coa.r.s.e, blotchy skin, and thick lips. He smoked a cigar, and called to the women in a falsetto voice, "h.e.l.lo, Sadie!" he called. "h.e.l.lo, kid!"

And the women marched on, serious-faced, calm-eyed. There came floats; elaborate affairs, with girls in Greek robes. f.a.n.n.y did not care for these. More solid ranks. And then a strange and pitiful and tragic and eloquent group. Their banner said, "Garment Workers. Infants' Wear Section." And at their head marched a girl, carrying a banner. I don't know how she attained that honor. I think she must have been one of those fiery, eloquent leaders in her factory clique. The banner she carried was a large one, and it flapped prodigiously in the breeze, and its pole was thick and heavy. She was a very small girl, even in that group of pale-faced, under-sized, under-fed girls. A Russian Jewess, evidently. Her shoes were ludicrous. They curled up at the toes, and the heels were run down. Her dress was a sort of parody on the prevailing fas.h.i.+on. But on her face, as she trudged along, hugging the pole of the great pennant that flapped in the breeze, was stamped a look.--well, you see that same look in some pictures of Joan of Arc. It wasn't merely a look. It was a story. It was tragedy. It was the history of a people.

You saw in it that which told of centuries of oppression in Russia. You saw eager groups of student Intellectuals, gathered in secret places for low-voiced, fiery talk. There was in it the unspeakable misery of Siberia. It spoke eloquently of pogroms, of ma.s.sacres, of Kiev and its sister-horror, Kis.h.i.+neff. You saw mean and narrow streets, and carefully darkened windows, and, on the other side of those windows the warm yellow glow of the seven-branched Shabbos light. Above this there shone the courage of a race serene in the knowledge that it cannot die.

And illuminating all, so that her pinched face, beneath the flapping pennant, was the rapt, uplifted countenance of the Crusader, there blazed the great glow of hope. This woman movement, spoken of so glibly as Suffrage, was, to the mind of this over-read, under-fed, emotional, dreamy little Russian garment worker the glorious means to a long hoped for end. She had idealized it, with the imagery of her kind. She had endowed it with promise that it would never actually hold for her, perhaps. And so she marched on, down the great, glittering avenue, proudly clutching her unwieldy banner, a stunted, grotesque, magnificent figure. More than a figure. A symbol.

f.a.n.n.y's eyes followed her until she pa.s.sed out of sight. She put up her hand to her cheek, and her face was wet. She stood there, and the parade went on, endlessly, it seemed, and she saw it through a haze. Bands.

More bands. Pennants. Floats. Women. Women. Women.

"I always cry at parades," said f.a.n.n.y, to the woman who stood next her--the woman who wanted to march, but was scared to. "That's all right," said the woman. "That's all right." And she laughed, because she was crying, too. And then she did a surprising thing. She elbowed her way to the edge of the crowd, past the red-faced man with the cigar, out to the street, and fell into line, and marched on up the street, shoulders squared, head high.

f.a.n.n.y glanced down at her watch. It was quarter after four. With a little gasp she turned to work her way through the close-packed crowd.

It was an actual physical struggle, from which she emerged disheveled, breathless, uncomfortably warm, and minus her handkerchief, but she had gained the comparative quiet of the side street, and she made the short distance that lay between the Avenue and her hotel a matter of little more than a minute. In the hotel corridor stood Ella and Fenger, the former looking worried, the latter savage.

"Where in the world--" began Ella.

"Caught in the jam. And I didn't want to get out. It was--it was--glorious!" She was shaking hands with Fenger, and realizing for the first time that she must be looking decidedly sketchy and that she had lost her handkerchief. She fished for it in her bag, hopelessly, when Fenger released her hand. He had not spoken. Now he said:

"What's the matter with your eyes?"

"I've been crying," f.a.n.n.y confessed cheerfully.

"Crying!"

"The parade. There was a little girl in it--" she stopped. Fenger would not be interested in that little girl. Now Clancy would have--but Ella broke in on that thought.

"I guess you don't realize that out in front of this hotel there's a kind of a glorified taxi waiting, with the top rolled back, and it's been there half an hour. I never expect to see the time when I could enjoy keeping a taxi waiting. It goes against me."

"I'm sorry. Really. Let's go. I'm ready."

"You are not. Your hair's a sight; and those eyes!"

Fenger put a hand on her arm. "Go on up and powder your nose, Miss Brandeis. And don't hurry. I want you to enjoy this drive."

On her way up in the elevator f.a.n.n.y thought, "He has lost his waistline.

Now, that couldn't have happened in a month. Queer I didn't notice it before. And he looks soft. Not enough exercise."

When she rejoined them she was freshly bloused and gloved and all traces of the tell-tale red had vanished from her eyelids. Fifth avenue was impossible. Their car sped up Madison avenue, and made for the Park. The Plaza was a jam of tired marchers. They dispersed from there, but there seemed no end to the line that still flowed up Fifth avenue. Fenger seemed scarcely to see it. He had plunged at once into talk of the European trip. f.a.n.n.y gave him every detail, omitting nothing. She repeated all that her letters and cables had told. Fenger was more excited than she had ever seen him. He questioned, cross-questioned, criticized, probed, exacted an account of every conversation. Usually it was not method that interested him, but results. f.a.n.n.y, having accomplished the thing she had set out to do, had lost interest in it now. The actual millions so glibly bandied in the Haynes-Cooper plant had never thrilled her. The methods by which they were made possible had.

Ella had been listening with the shrewd comprehension of one who admires the superior art of a fellow craftsman.

"I'll say this, Mr. Fenger. If I could make you look like that, by going to Europe and putting it over those foreign boys, I'd feel I'd earned a year's salary right there, and quit. Not to speak of the cross-examination you're putting her through."

Fenger laughed, a little self-consciously. "It's just that I want to be sure it's real. I needn't tell you how important this trick is that Miss Brandeis has just turned." He turned to f.a.n.n.y, with a boyish laugh. "Now don't pose. You know you can't be as bored as you look."

"Anyway," put in Ella, briskly, "I move that the witness step down. She may not be bored, but she certainly must be tired, and she's beginning to look it. Just lean back, f.a.n.n.y, and let the green of this park soak in. At that, it isn't so awfully green, when you get right close, except that one stretch of meadow. Kind of ugly, Central Park, isn't it? Bare."

f.a.n.n.y sat forward. There was more sparkle in her face than at any time during the drive. They were skimming along those green-shaded drives that are so sophisticatedly sylvan.

"I used to think it was bare, too, and bony as an old maid, with no soft cuddly places like the parks at home; no gracious green stretches, and no rose gardens. But somehow, it grows on you. The reticence of it. And that stretch of meadow near the Mall, in the late afternoon, with the mist on it, and the sky faintly pink, and that electric sign--Somebody's Tires or other--winking off and on--"

"You're a queer child," interrupted Fenger. "As wooden as an Indian while talking about a million-a-year deal, and lyrical over a combination of electric sign, sunset, and moth-eaten park. Oh, well, perhaps that's what makes you as you are."

Even Ella looked a little startled at that.