After dinner the house felt very warm and stuffy. It was crisply cold and sunny outdoors. The snow was piled high except on the sidewalks, where it had been neatly shoveled away by the m.u.f.flered Winnebago sons and fathers. There was no man in the Brandeis household, and Aloysius had been too busy to perform the ch.o.r.es usually considered his work about the house. The snow lay in drifts upon the sidewalk in front of the Brandeis house, except where pa.s.sing feet had trampled it a bit.

"I'm going to shovel the walk," f.a.n.n.y announced suddenly. "Way around to the woodshed. Where are those old mittens of mine? Annie, where's the snow shovel? Sure I am. Why not?"

She shoveled and sc.r.a.ped and pounded, bending rhythmically to the work, lifting each heaping shovelful with her strong young arms, tossing it to the side, digging in again, and under. An occasional neighbor pa.s.sed by, or a friend, and she waved at them, gayly, and tossed back their badinage. "Merry Christmas!" she called, again and again, in reply to a pa.s.sing acquaintance. "Same to you!"

At two o'clock Bella Weinberg telephoned to say that a little party of them were going to the river to skate. The ice was wonderful. Oh, come on! f.a.n.n.y skated very well. But she hesitated. Mrs. Brandeis, dozing on the couch, sensed what was going on in her daughter's mind, and roused herself with something of her old asperity.

"Don't be foolish, child. Run along! You don't intend to sit here and gaze upon your sleeping beauty of a mother all afternoon, do you? Well, then!"

So f.a.n.n.y changed her clothes, got her skates, and ran out into the snap and sparkle of the day. The winter darkness had settled down before she returned, all glowing and rosy, and bright-eyed. Her blood was racing through her body. Her lips were parted. The drudgery of the past three weeks seemed to have been blotted out by this one radiant afternoon.

The house was dark when she entered. It seemed very quiet, and close, and depressing after the sparkle and rush of the afternoon on the river.

"Mother! Mother dear! Still sleeping?"

Mrs. Brandeis stirred, sighed, awoke. f.a.n.n.y flicked on the light. Her mother was huddled in a kimono on the sofa. She sat up rather dazedly now, and stared at f.a.n.n.y.

"Why--what time is it? What? Have I been sleeping all afternoon? Your mother's getting old."

She yawned, and in the midst of it caught her breath with a little cry of pain.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Molly Brandeis pressed a hand to her breast. "A st.i.tch, I guess. It's this miserable cold coming on. Is there any asperin in the house? I'll dose myself after supper, and take a hot foot bath and go to bed. I'm dead."

She ate less for supper than she had for dinner. She hardly tasted the cup of tea that f.a.n.n.y insisted on making for her. She swayed a little as she sat, and her lids came down over her eyes, flutteringly, as if the weight of them was too great to keep up. At seven she was up-stairs, in bed, sleeping, and breathing heavily.

At eleven, or thereabouts, f.a.n.n.y woke up with a start. She sat up in bed, wide-eyed, peering into the darkness and listening. Some one was talking in a high, queer voice, a voice like her mother's, and yet unlike. She ran, shivering with the cold, into her mother's bedroom. She switched on the light. Mrs. Brandeis was lying on the pillow, her eyes almost closed, except for a terrifying slit of white that showed between the lids. Her head was tossing to and fro on the pillow. She was talking, sometimes clearly, and sometimes mumblingly.

"One gross cups and saucers... and now what do you think you'd like for a second prize... in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Aloysius... the trains... I'll see that they get there to-day... yours of the tenth at hand..."

"Mother! Mother! Molly dear!" She shook her gently, then almost roughly.

The voice ceased. The eyes remained the same. "Oh, G.o.d!" She ran to the back of the house. "Annie! Annie, get up! Mother's sick. She's out of her head. I'm going to 'phone for the doctor. Go in with her."

She got the doctor at last. She tried to keep her voice under control, and thought, with a certain pride, that she was succeeding. She ran up-stairs again. The voice had begun again, but it seemed thicker now.

She got into her clothes, shaking with cold and terror, and yet thinking very clearly, as she always did in a crisis. She put clean towels in the bathroom, pushed the table up to the bed, got a gla.s.s of water, straightened the covers, put away the clothes that the tired woman had left about the room. Doctor Hertz came. He went through the usual preliminaries, listened, tapped, counted, straightened up at last.

"Fresh air," he said. "Cold air. All the windows open." They rigged up a device of screens and sheets to protect the bed from the drafts. f.a.n.n.y obeyed orders silently, like a soldier. But her eyes went from the face on the pillow to that of the man bent over the bed. Something vague, cold, clammy, seemed to be closing itself around her heart. It was like an icy hand, squeezing there. There had suddenly sprung up that indefinable atmosphere of the sick-room--a sick-room in which a fight is being waged. Bottles on the table, gla.s.ses, a spoon, a paper shade over the electric light globe.

"What is it?" said f.a.n.n.y, at last. "Grip?--grip?"

Doctor Hertz hesitated a moment. "Pneumonia."

f.a.n.n.y's hands grasped the footboard tightly. "Do you think we'd better have a nurse?"

"Yes."

The nurse seemed to be there, somehow, miraculously. And the morning came. And in the kitchen Annie went about her work, a little more quietly than usual. And yesterday seemed far away. It was afternoon; it was twilight. Doctor Hertz had been there for hours. The last time he brought another doctor with him--Thorn. Mrs. Brandeis was not talking now. But she was breathing. It filled the room, that breathing; it filled the house. f.a.n.n.y took her mother's hand, that hand with the work-hardened palm and the broken nails. It was very cold. She looked down at it. The nails were blue. She began to rub it. She looked up into the faces of the two men. She picked up the other hand--s.n.a.t.c.hed at it.

"Look here!" she said. "Look here!" And then she stood up. The vague, clammy thing that had been wound about her heart suddenly relaxed. And at that something icy hot rushed all over her body and shook her. She came around to the foot of the bed, and gripped it with her two hands.

Her chin was thrust forward, and her eyes were bright and staring. She looked very much like her mother, just then. It was a fighting face. A desperate face.

"Look here," she began, and was surprised to find that she was only whispering. She wet her lips and smiled, and tried again, forming the words carefully with her lips. "Look here. She's dying--isn't she? Isn't she! She's dying, isn't she?"

Doctor Hertz pursed his lips. The nurse came over to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. f.a.n.n.y shook her off.

"Answer me. I've got a right to know. Look at this!" She reached forward and picked up that inert, cold, strangely shriveled blue hand again.

"My dear child--I'm afraid so."

There came from f.a.n.n.y's throat a moan that began high, and poignant, and quavering, and ended in a shiver that seemed to die in her heart. The room was still again, except for the breathing, and even that was less raucous.

f.a.n.n.y stared at the woman on the bed--at the long, finely-shaped head, with the black hair wadded up so carelessly now; at the long, straight, clever nose; the full, generous mouth. There flooded her whole being a great, blinding rage. What had she had of life? she demanded fiercely.

What? What? Her teeth came together grindingly. She breathed heavily through her nostrils, as if she had been running. And suddenly she began to pray, not with the sounding, unctions thees and thous of the Church and Bible; not elegantly or eloquently, with well-rounded phrases, as the righteous pray, but threateningly, hoa.r.s.ely, as a desperate woman prays. It was not a prayer so much as a cry of defiance---a challenge.

"Look here, G.o.d!" and there was nothing profane as she said it. "Look here, G.o.d! She's done her part. It's up to You now. Don't You let her die! Look at her. Look at her!" She choked and shook herself angrily, and went on. "Is that fair? That's a rotten trick to play on a woman that gave what she gave! What did she ever have of life? Nothing! That little miserable, dirty store, and those little miserable, dirty people.

You give her a chance, d'You hear? You give her a chance, G.o.d, or I'll----"

Her voice broke in a thin, cracked quaver. The nurse turned her around, suddenly and sharply, and led her from the room.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"You can come down now. They're all here, I guess. Doctor Thalmann's going to begin." f.a.n.n.y, huddled in a chair in her bedroom, looked up into the plump, kindly face of the woman who was bending over her.

Then she stood up, docilely, and walked toward the stairs with a heavy, stumbling step.

"I'd put down my veil if I were you," said the neighbor woman. And reached up for the black folds that draped f.a.n.n.y's hat. f.a.n.n.y's fingers reached for them too, fumblingly. "I'd forgotten about it," she said.

The heavy c.r.a.pe fell about her shoulders, mercifully hiding the swollen, discolored face. She went down the stairs. There was a little stir, a swaying toward her, a sibilant murmur of sympathy from the crowded sitting-room as she pa.s.sed through to the parlor where Rabbi Thalmann stood waiting, prayer book in hand, in front of that which was covered with flowers. f.a.n.n.y sat down. A feeling of unreality was strong upon her. Doctor Thalmann cleared his throat and opened the book.

After all, it was not Rabbi Thalmann's funeral sermon that testified to Mrs. Brandeis's standing in the community. It was the character of the gathering that listened to what he had to say. Each had his own opinion of Molly Brandeis, and needed no final eulogy to confirm it. Father Fitzpatrick was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a leading man. He had been of those who had sat in what he called Mrs. Brandeis's confessional, there in the quiet little store. The two had talked of things theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it was, was no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense and a drama sense, and one day they discovered, queerly enough, that they worshiped the same G.o.d. Any one of these things is basis enough for a friendship.

Besides, Molly Brandeis could tell an Irish story inimitably. And you should have heard Father Fitzpatrick do the one about Ikey and the nickel. No, I think the Catholic priest, seeming to listen with such respectful attention, really heard very little of what Rabbi Thalmann had to say.

Herman Walthers was there, he of the First National Bank of Winnebago, whose visits had once brought such terror to Molly Brandeis. Augustus G.

Gerretson was there, and three of his department heads. Emil Bauer sat just behind him. In a corner was Sadie, the erstwhile coquette, very subdued now, and months behind the fashions in everything but baby clothes. Hen Cody, who had done all of Molly Brandeis's draying, sat, in unaccustomed black, next to Mayor A. J. Dawes. Temple Emmanu-el was there, almost a unit. The officers of Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid Society sat in a row. They had never honored Molly Brandeis with office in the society--she who could have managed its business, politics and social activities with one hand tied behind her, and both her bright eyes shut. In the kitchen and on the porch and in the hallway stood certain obscure people--women whose finger tips stuck out of their cotton gloves, and whose skirts dipped ludicrously in the back. Only Molly Brandeis could have identified them for you. Mrs. Brosch, the b.u.t.ter and egg woman, hovered in the dining-room doorway. She had brought a pound of b.u.t.ter. It was her contribution to the funeral baked meats. She had deposited it furtively on the kitchen table. Birdie Callahan, head waitress at the Haley House, found a seat just next to the elegant Mrs. Morehouse, who led the Golf Club crowd. A haughty young lady in the dining-room, Birdie Callahan, in her stiffly starched white, but beneath the icy crust of her hauteur was a molten ma.s.s of good humor and friendliness. She and Molly Brandeis had had much in common.

But no one--not even f.a.n.n.y Brandeis--ever knew who sent the great cl.u.s.ter of American Beauty roses that had come all the way from Milwaukee. There had been no card, so who could have guessed that they came from Blanche Devine. Blanche Devine, of the white powder, and the minks, and the diamonds, and the high-heeled shoes, and the plumes, lived in the house with the closed shutters, near the freight depot.

She often came into Brandeis' Bazaar. Molly Brandeis had never allowed Sadie, or Pearl, or f.a.n.n.y or Aloysius to wait on her. She had attended to her herself. And one day, for some reason, Blanche Devine found herself telling Molly Brandeis how she had come to be Blanche Devine, and it was a moving and terrible story. And now her cardless flowers, a great, scarlet sheaf of them, lay next the chaste white roses that had been sent by the Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid. Truly, death is a great leveler.

In a vague way f.a.n.n.y seemed to realize that all these people were there. I think she must even have found a certain grim comfort in their presence. Hers had not been the dry-eyed grief of the strong, such as you read about. She had wept, night and day, hopelessly, inconsolably, torturing herself with remorseful questions. If she had not gone skating, might she not have seen how ill her mother was? Why hadn't she insisted on the doctor when her mother refused to eat the Christmas dinner? Blind and selfish, she told herself; blind and selfish. Her face was swollen and distorted now, and she was thankful for the black veil that shielded her. Winnebago was scandalized to see that she wore no other black. Mrs. Brandeis had never wanted f.a.n.n.y to wear it; she hadn't enough color, she said. So now she was dressed in her winter suit of blue, and her hat with the pert blue quill. And the little rabbi's voice went on and on, and f.a.n.n.y knew that it could not be true. What had all this dust-to-dust talk to do with any one as vital, and electric, and constructive as Molly Brandeis. In the midst of the service there was a sharp cry, and a little stir, and the sound of stifled sobbing. It was Aloysius the merry, Aloysius the faithful, whose Irish heart was quite broken. f.a.n.n.y ground her teeth together in an effort at self-control.

And so to the end, and out past the little hushed, respectful group on the porch, to the Jewish cemetery on the state road. The snow of Christmas week was quite virgin there, except for that one spot where the s.e.xton and his men had been at work. Then back at a smart jog trot through the early dusk of the winter afternoon, the carriage wheels creaking upon the hard, dry snow. And f.a.n.n.y Brandeis said to herself (she must have been a little light-headed from hunger and weeping):

"Now I'll know whether it's true or not. When I go into the house. If she's there she'll say, 'Well Fanchen! Hungry? Oh, but my little girl's hands are cold! Come here to the register and warm them.' O G.o.d, let her be there! Let her be there!"

But she wasn't. The house had been set to rights by brisk and unaccustomed hands. There was a bustle and stir in the dining-room, and from the kitchen came the appetizing odors of cooking food. f.a.n.n.y went up to a chair that was out of its place, and shoved it back against the wall where it belonged. She straightened a rug, carried the waste basket from the desk to the spot near the living-room table where it had always served to hide the shabby, worn place in the rug. f.a.n.n.y went up-stairs, past The Room that was once more just a comfortable, old fashioned bedroom, instead of a mysterious and awful chamber; bathed her face, tidied her hair, came down-stairs again, ate and drank things hot and revivifying. The house was full of kindly women.

f.a.n.n.y found herself clinging to them--clinging desperately to these ample, broad-bosomed, soothing women whom she had scarcely known before.

They were always there, those women, and their husbands too; kindly, awkward men, who patted her shoulder, and who spoke of Molly Brandeis with that sincerity of admiration such as men usually give only to men.

People were constantly popping in at the back door with napkin-covered trays, and dishes and baskets. A wonderful and beautiful thing, that homely small-town sympathy that knows the value of physical comfort in time of spiritual anguish.