Fanny Herself. Edna Ferber
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apologize. “And who is this young lady with the sense of humor?”
“This is my little girl, Fanny.”
He looked down at the rough sketch again, with its clean-cut satire, and up again at the little girl in the school coat and the faded red tam o' shanter, who was looking at him shyly, and defiantly, and provokingly, all at once.
“Your little girl Fanny, h'm? The one who is to give up everything that the boy Theodore may become a great violinist.” He bent again over the crude, effective cartoon, then put a forefinger gently under the child's chin and tipped her glowing face up to the light. “I am not so sure now that it will work. As for its being fair! Why, no! No!”
Fanny waited for her mother that evening, and they walked home together. Their step and swing were very much alike, now that Fanny's legs were growing longer. She was at the backfisch age.
“What did he mean, Mother, when he said that about Theodore being a great violinist, and its not being fair? What isn't fair? And how did he happen to be in the store, anyway? He bought a heap of toys, didn't he? I suppose he's awfully rich.”
“To-night, when Theodore's at the concert, I'll tell you what he meant, and all about it.”
“I'd love to hear him play, wouldn't you? I'd just love to.”
Over Molly Brandeis's face there came a curious look. “You could hear him, Fanny, in Theodore's place. Theodore would have to stay home if I told him to.”
Fanny's eyes and mouth grew round with horror. “Theodore stay home! Why Mrs. — Molly — Brandeis!” Then she broke into a little relieved laugh. “But you're just fooling, of course.”
“No, I'm not. If you really want to go I'll tell Theodore to give up his ticket to his sister.”
“Well, my goodness! I guess I'm not a pig. I wouldn't have Theodore stay home, not for a million dollars.”
“I knew you wouldn't,” said Molly Brandeis as they swung down Norris Street. And she told Fanny briefly of what Schabelitz had said about Theodore.
It was typical of Theodore that he ate his usual supper that night. He may have got his excitement vicariously from Fanny. She was thrilled enough for two. Her food lay almost untouched on her plate. She chattered incessantly. When Theodore began to eat his second baked apple with cream, her outraged feelings voiced their protest.
“But, Theodore, I don't see how you can!”
“Can what?”
“Eat like that. When you're going to hear him play. And after what he said, and everything.”
“Well, is that any reason why I should starve to death?”
“But I don't see how you can,” repeated Fanny helplessly, and looked at her mother. Mrs. Brandeis reached for the cream pitcher and poured a little more cream over Theodore's baked apple. Even as she did it her eyes met Fanny's, and in them was a certain sly amusement, a little gleam of fun, a look that said, “Neither do I.” Fanny sat back, satisfied. Here, at least, was some one who understood.
At half past seven Theodore, looking very brushed and sleek, went off to meet Emil Bauer. Mrs. Brandeis had looked him over, and had said, “Your nails!” and sent him back to the bathroom, and she had resisted the desire to kiss him because Theodore disliked demonstration. “He hated to be pawed over,” was the way he put it. After he had gone, Mrs. Brandeis went into the dining-room where Fanny was sitting. Mattie had cleared the table, and Fanny was busy over a book and a tablet, by the light of the lamp that they always used for studying. It was one of the rare occasions when she had brought home a school lesson. It was arithmetic, and Fanny loathed arithmetic. She had no head for mathematics. The set of problems were eighth-grade horrors, in which A is digging a well 20 feet deep and 9 feet wide; or in which A and B are papering two rooms, or building two fences, or plastering a wall. If A does his room in 9 1/2 days, the room being 12 feet high, 20 feet long, and 15 1/2 feet wide, how long will it take B to do a room 14 feet high, 11 3/4 feet, etc.
Fanny hated the indefatigable A and B with a bitter personal hatred. And as for that occasional person named C, who complicated matters still more — !
Sometimes Mrs. Brandeis helped to disentangle Fanny from the mazes of her wall paper problems, or dragged her up from the bottom of the well when it seemed that she was down there for eternity unless a friendly hand rescued her. As a rule she insisted that Fanny crack her own mathematical nuts. She said it was good mental training, not to speak of the moral side of it. But to-night she bent her quick mind upon the problems that were puzzling her little daughter, and cleared them up in no time.
When Fanny had folded her arithmetic papers neatly inside her book and leaned back with a relieved sigh Molly Brandeis bent forward in the lamplight and began to talk very soberly. Fanny, red-cheeked and bright-eyed from her recent mental struggles, listened interestedly, then intently, then absorbedly. She attempted to interrupt, sometimes, with an occasional, “But, Mother, how — ” but Mrs. Brandeis shook her head and went on. She told Fanny a few things about her early married life — things that made Fanny look at her with new eyes. She had always thought of her mother as her mother, in the way a fourteen-year-old girl does. It never occurred to her that this mother person, who was so capable, so confident, so worldly-wise, had once been a very young bride, with her life before her, and her hopes stepping high, and her love keeping time with her hopes. Fanny heard, fascinated, the story of this girl who had married against the advice of her family and her friends.
Molly Brandeis talked curtly and briefly, and her very brevity and lack of embroidering details made the story stand out with stark realism. It was such a story of courage, and pride, and indomitable will, and sheer pluck as can only be found among the seemingly commonplace.
“And so,” she finished, “I used to wonder, sometimes, whether it was worth while to keep on, and what it was all for. And now I know. Theodore is going to make up for everything. Only we'll have to help him, first. It's going to be hard on you, Fanchen. I'm talking to you as if you were eighteen, instead of fourteen. But I want you to understand. That isn't fair to you either — my expecting you to understand. Only I don't want you to hate me too much when you're a woman, and I'm gone, and you'll remember — ”
“Why, Mother, what in the world are you talking about? Hate you!”
“For what I took from you to give to him, Fanny. You don't understand now. Things must be made easy for Theodore. It will mean that you and I will have to scrimp and save. Not now and then, but all the time. It will mean that we can't go to the theater, even occasionally, or to lectures, or concerts. It will mean that your clothes won't be as pretty or as new as the other girls' clothes. You'll sit on the front porch evenings, and watch them go by, and you'll want to go too.”
“As if I cared.”
“But you will care. I know. I know. It's easy enough to talk about sacrifice in a burst of feeling; but it's the everyday, shriveling grind that's hard. You'll want clothes, and books, and beaux, and education, and you ought to have them. They're your right. You ought to have them!” Suddenly Molly Brandeis' arms were folded on the table, and her head came down on her arms and she was crying, quietly, horribly, as a man cries. Fanny stared at her a moment in unbelief. She had not seen her mother cry since the day of Ferdinand Brandeis' death. She scrambled out of her chair and thrust her head down next her mother's, so that her hot, smooth cheek touched the wet, cold one. “Mother, don't! Don't Molly dearie. I can't bear it. I'm going to cry too. Do you think I care for old dresses and things? I should say not. It's going to be fun going without things. It'll be like having a secret or something. Now stop, and let's talk about it.”
Molly Brandeis wiped her eyes, and sat up, and smiled. It was a watery and wavering smile, but it showed that she was mistress of herself again.
“No,” she said, “we just won't talk about it any more. I'm tired, that's what's the matter with me, and I haven't sense enough to know it. I'll tell you what. I'm going to put on my kimono, and you'll make some fudge. Will you? We'll have a party, all by ourselves, and if Mattie scolds about