New York! Dresden! It was too much even for Molly Brandeis' well-balanced brain. She was conscious of feeling a little dizzy. At that moment Pearl approached apologetically. “Pardon me, Mis' Brandeis, but Mrs. Trost wants to know if you'll send the boiler special this afternoon. She wants it for the washing early to-morrow morning.”
That served to steady her.
“Tell Mrs. Trost I'll send it before six to-night.” Her eyes rested on Theodore's face, flushed now, and glowing. Then she turned and faced Schabelitz squarely. “Perhaps you do not know that this store is our support. I earn a living here for myself and my two children. You see what it is — just a novelty and notion store in a country town. I speak of this because it is the important thing. I have known for a long time that Theodore's playing was not the playing of the average boy, musically gifted. So what you tell me does not altogether surprise me. But when you say Dresden — well, from Brandeis' Bazaar in Winnebago, Wisconsin, to Auer, in Dresden, Germany, is a long journey for one afternoon.”
“But of course you must have time to think it over. It must be brought about, somehow.”
“Somehow —— ” Mrs. Brandeis stared straight ahead, and you could almost hear that indomitable will of hers working, crashing over obstacles, plowing through difficulties. Theodore watched her, breathless, as though expecting an immediate solution. His mother's eyes met his own intent ones, and at that her mobile mouth quirked in a sudden smile. “You look as if you expected pearls to pop out of my mouth, son. And, by the way, if you're going to a concert this evening don't you think it would be a good idea to squander an hour on study this afternoon? You may be a musical prodigy, but geometry's geometry.”
“Oh, Mother! Please!”
“I want to talk to Mr. Schabelitz and Mr. Bauer, alone.” She patted his shoulder, and the last pat ended in a gentle push. “Run along.”
“I'll work, Mother. You know perfectly well I'll work.” But he looked so startlingly like his father as he said it that Mrs. Brandeis felt a clutching at her heart.
Theodore out of the way, they seemed to find very little to discuss, after all. Schabelitz was so quietly certain, Bauer so triumphantly proud.
Said Schabelitz, “Wolfsohn, of course, receives ten dollars a lesson ordinarily.”
“Ten dollars!”
“But a pupil like Theodore is in the nature of an investment,” Bauer hastened to explain. “An advertisement. After hearing him play, and after what Schabelitz here will have to say for him, Wolfsohn will certainly give Theodore lessons for nothing, or next to nothing. You remember” — proudly — “I offered to teach him without charge, but you would not have it.”
Schabelitz smote his friend sharply on the shoulder “The true musician! Oh, Bauer, Bauer! That you should bury yourself in this —— ”
But Bauer stopped him with a gesture. “Mrs. Brandeis is a busy woman. And as she says, this thing needs thinking over.”
“After all,” said Mrs. Brandeis, “there isn't much to think about. I know just where I stand. It's a case of mathematics, that's all. This business of mine is just beginning to pay. From now on I shall be able to save something every year. It might be enough to cover his musical education. It would mean that Fanny — my daughter — and I would have to give up everything. For myself, I should be only too happy, too proud. But it doesn't seem fair to her. After all, a girl —— ”
“It isn't fair,” broke in Schabelitz. “It isn't fair. But that is the way of genius. It never is fair. It takes, and takes, and takes. I know. My mother could tell you, if she were alive. She sold the little farm, and my sisters gave up their dowries, and with them their hopes of marriage, and they lived on bread and cabbage. That was not to pay for my lessons. They never could have done that. It was only to send me to Moscow. We were very poor. They must have starved. I have come to know, since, that it was not worth it. That nothing could be worth it.”
“But it was worth it. Your mother would do it all over again, if she had the chance. That's what we're for.”
Bauer pulled out his watch and uttered a horrified exclamation. “Himmel! Four o'clock! And I have a pupil at four.” He turned hastily to Mrs. Brandeis. “I am giving a little supper in my studio after the concert to-night.”
“Oh, Gott!” groaned Schabelitz.
“It is in honor of Schabelitz here. You see how overcome he is. Will you let me bring Theodore back with me after the concert? There will be some music, and perhaps he will play for us.”
Schabelitz bent again in his queer little foreign bow. “And you, of course, will honor us, Mrs. Brandeis.” He had never lived in Winnebago.
“Oh, certainly,” Bauer hastened to say. He had.
“I!” Molly Brandeis looked down at her apron, and stroked it with her fingers. Then she looked up with a little smile that was not so pleasant as her smile usually was. There had flashed across her quick mind a picture of Mrs. G. Manville Smith. Mrs. G. Manville Smith, in an evening gown whose decolletage was discussed from the Haley House to Gerretson's department store next morning, was always a guest at Bauer's studio affairs. “Thank you, but it is impossible. And Theodore is only a schoolboy. Just now he needs, more than anything else in the world, nine hours of sleep every night. There will be plenty of time for studio suppers later. When a boy's voice is changing, and he doesn't know what to do with his hands and feet, he is better off at home.”
“God! These mothers!” exclaimed Schabelitz. “What do they not know!”
“I suppose you are right.” Bauer was both rueful and relieved. It would have been fine to show off Theodore as his pupil and Schabelitz's protege. But Mrs. Brandeis? No, that would never do. “Well, I must go. We will talk about this again, Mrs. Brandeis. In two weeks Schabelitz will pass through Winnebago again on his way back to Chicago. Meanwhile he will write Wolfsohn. I also. So! Come, Schabelitz!”
He turned to see that gentleman strolling off in the direction of the notion counter behind which his expert eye had caught a glimpse of Sadie in her white shirtwaist and her trim skirt. Sadie always knew what they were wearing on State Street, Chicago, half an hour after Mrs. Brandeis returned from one of her buying trips. Shirtwaists had just come in, and with them those neat leather belts with a buckle, and about the throat they were wearing folds of white satin ribbon, smooth and high and tight, the two ends tied pertly at the back. Sadie would never be the saleswoman that Pearl was, but her unfailing good nature and her cheery self-confidence made her an asset in the store. Besides, she was pretty. Mrs. Brandeis knew the value of a pretty clerk.
At the approach of this stranger Sadie leaned coyly against the stocking rack and patted her paper sleevelets that were secured at wrist and elbow with elastic bands. Her method was sure death to traveling men. She prepared now to try it on the world-famous virtuoso. The ease with which she succeeded surprised even Sadie, accustomed though she was to conquest.
“Come, come, Schabelitz!” said Bauer again. “I must get along.”
“Then go, my friend. Go along and make your preparations for that studio supper. The only interesting woman in Winnebago — ” he bowed to Mrs. Brandeis — “will not be there. I know them, these small-town society women, with their imitation city ways. And bony! Always! I am enjoying myself. I shall stay here.”
And he did stay. Sadie, talking it over afterward with Pearl and Aloysius,
