Fanny Brandeis had a way of going to the public library on Saturday afternoons (with a bag of very sticky peanut candy in her pocket, the little sensualist!) and there, huddled4 in a chair, dreamily and almost automatically munching5 peanut brittle6, her cheeks growing redder and redder in the close air of the ill-ventilated room, she would read, and read, and read. There was no one to censor7 her reading, so she read promiscuously8, wading9 gloriously through trash and classic and historical and hysterical10 alike, and finding something of interest in them all.
She read the sprightly11 “Duchess” novels, where mad offers of marriage were always made in flower-scented conservatories12; she read Dickens, and Thelma, and old bound Cosmopolitans13, and Zola, and de Maupassant, and the “Wide, Wide World,” and “Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,” and “Jane Eyre.” All of which are merely mentioned as examples of her catholicism in literature. As she read she was unaware14 of the giggling15 boys and girls who came in noisily, and made dates, and were coldly frowned on by the austere16 Miss Perkins, the librarian. She would read until the fading light would remind her that the short fall or winter day was drawing to a close.
She would come, shivering a little after the fetid atmosphere of the overheated library, into the crisp, cold snap of the astringent17 Wisconsin air. Sometimes she would stop at the store for her mother. Sometimes she would run home alone through the twilight18, her heels scrunching19 the snow, her whole being filled with a vague and unchildish sadness and disquiet20 as she faced the tender rose, and orange, and mauve, and pale lemon of the winter sunset. There were times when her very heart ached with the beauty of that color-flooded sky; there were times, later, when it ached in much the same way at the look in the eyes of a pushcart21 peddler; there were times when it ached, seemingly, for no reason at all—as is sometimes the case when one is a little Jew girl, with whole centuries of suffering behind one.
On this day she had taken a book from the library Miss Perkins, at sight of the title, had glared disapprovingly22, and had hesitated a moment before stamping the card.
“Is this for yourself?” she had asked.
“Yes'm.”
“It isn't a book for little girls,” snapped Miss Perkins.
“I've read half of it already,” Fanny informed her sweetly. And went out with it under her arm. It was Zola's “The Ladies' Paradise” (Au Bonheur des Dames). The story of the shop girl, and the crushing of the little dealer23 by the great and moneyed company had thrilled and fascinated her.
Her mind was full of it as she turned the corner on Norris Street and ran full-tilt, into a yowling, taunting24, torturing little pack of boys. They were gathered in close formation about some object which they were teasing, and knocking about in the mud, and otherwise abusing with the savagery25 of their years. Fanny, the fiery26, stopped short. She pushed into the ring. The object of their efforts was a weak-kneed and hollow-chested little boy who could not fight because he was cowardly as well as weak, and his name (oh, pity!) was Clarence—Clarence Heyl. There are few things that a mischievous27 group of small boys cannot do with a name like Clarence. They whined28 it, they catcalled it, they shrieked29 it in falsetto imitation of Clarence's mother. He was a wide-mouthed, sallow and pindling little boy, whose pipe-stemmed legs looked all the thinner for being contrasted with his feet, which were long and narrow. At that time he wore spectacles, too, to correct a muscular weakness, so that his one good feature—great soft, liquid eyes—passed unnoticed. He was the kind of little boy whose mother insists on dressing30 him in cloth-top, buttoned, patent-leather shoes for school. His blue serge suit was never patched or shiny. His stockings were virgin31 at the knee. He wore an overcoat on cool autumn days. Fanny despised and pitied him. We ask you not to, because in this puny32, shy and ugly little boy of fifteen you behold33 Our Hero.
He staggered to his feet now, as Fanny came up. His school reefer was mud-bespattered. His stockings were torn. His cap was gone and his hair was wild. There was a cut or scratch on one cheek, from which the blood flowed.
“I'll tell my mother on you!” he screamed impotently, and shook with rage and terror. “You'll see, you will! You let me alone, now!”
Fanny felt a sick sensation at the pit of her stomach and in her throat. Then:
“He'll tell his ma!” sneered35 the boys in chorus. “Oh, mamma!” And called him the Name. And at that a she wildcat broke loose among them. She pounced36 on them without warning, a little fury of blazing eyes and flying hair, and white teeth showing in a snarl37. If she had fought fair, or if she had not taken them so by surprise, she would have been powerless among them. But she had sprung at them with the suddenness of rage. She kicked, and scratched, and bit, and clawed and spat34. She seemed not to feel the defensive38 blows that were showered upon her in turn. Her own hard little fists were now doubled for a thump39 or opened, like a claw, for scratching.
“Go on home!” she yelled to Clarence, even while she fought. And Clarence, gathering40 up his tattered41 school books, went, and stood not on the order of his going. Whereupon Fanny darted42 nimbly to one side, out of the way of boyish brown fists. In that moment she was transformed from a raging fury into a very meek43 and trembling little girl, who looked shyly and pleadingly out from a tangle44 of curls. The boys were for rushing at her again.
“Cowardy-cats! Five of you fighting one girl,” cried Fanny, her lower lip trembling ever so little. “Come on! Hit me! Afraid to fight anything but girls! Cowardy-cats!” A tear, pearly, pathetic, coursed down her cheek.
The drive was broken. Five sullen45 little boys stood and glared at her, impotently.
“You hit us first,” declared one boy. “What business d' you have scratching around like that, I'd like to know! You old scratch cat!”
“He's sickly,” said Fanny. “He can't fight. There's something the matter with his lungs, or something, and they're going to make him quit school. Besides, he's a billion times better than any of you, anyway.”
At once, “Fanny's stuck on Clar-ence! Fanny's stuck on Clar-ence!”
Fanny picked up her somewhat battered46 Zola from where it had flown at her first onslaught. “It's a lie!” she shouted. And fled, followed by the hateful chant.
She came in at the back door, trying to look casual. But Mattie's keen eye detected the marks of battle, even while her knife turned the frying potatoes.
“Fanny Brandeis! Look at your sweater! And your hair!”
Fanny glanced down at the torn pocket dangling47 untidily. “Oh, that!” she said airily. And, passing the kitchen table, deftly48 filched49 a slice of cold veal3 from the platter, and mounted the back stairs to her room. It was a hungry business, this fighting. When Mrs. Brandeis came in at six her small daughter was demurely50 reading. At supper time Mrs. Brandeis looked up at her daughter with a sharp exclamation51.
“Fanny! There's a scratch on your cheek from your eye to your chin.”
Fanny put up her hand. “Is there?”
“Why, you must have felt it. How did you get it?”
Fanny said nothing. “I'll bet she was fighting,” said Theodore with the intuitive knowledge that one child has of another's ways.
“Fanny!” The keen brown eyes were upon her. “Some boys were picking on Clarence Heyl, and it made me mad. They called him names.”
“What names?”
“Oh, names.”
“Fanny dear, if you're going to fight every time you hear that name——”
Fanny thought of the torn sweater, the battered Zola, the scratched cheek. “It is pretty expensive,” she said reflectively.
After supper she settled down at once to her book. Theodore would labor52 over his algebra53 after the dining-room table was cleared. He stuck his cap on his head now, and slammed out of the door for a half-hour's play under the corner arc-light. Fanny rarely brought books from school, and yet she seemed to get on rather brilliantly, especially in the studies she liked. During that winter following her husband's death Mrs. Brandeis had a way of playing solitaire after supper; one of the simpler forms of the game. It seemed to help her to think out the day's problems, and to soothe54 her at the same time. She would turn down the front of the writing desk, and draw up the piano stool.
All through that winter Fanny seemed to remember reading to the slap-slap of cards, and the whir of their shuffling55. In after years she was never able to pick up a volume of Dickens without having her mind hark back to those long, quiet evenings. She read a great deal of Dickens at that time. She had a fine contempt for his sentiment, and his great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was because they were badly drawn56. The humor she loved, and she read and reread the passages dealing57 with Samuel Weller, and Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she had discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, she had found. It sent one to the pantry in a sort of trance, to ransack58 for food—cookies, apples, cold meat, anything. But whatever one found, it always fell short of the succulent sounding beefsteak pies, and saddles of mutton, and hot pineapple toddy of the printed page.
To-night Mrs. Brandeis, coming in from the kitchen after a conference with Mattie, found her daughter in conversational59 mood, though book in hand.
“Mother, did you ever read this?” She held up “The Ladies' Paradise.”
“Yes; but child alive, what ever made you get it? That isn't the kind of thing for you to read. Oh, I wish I had more time to give——”
Fanny leaned forward eagerly. “It made me think a lot of you. You know—the way the big store was crushing the little one, and everything. Like the thing you were talking to that man about the other day. You said it was killing60 the small-town dealer, and he said some day it would be illegal, and you said you'd never live to see it.”
“Oh, that! We were talking about the mail-order business, and how hard it was to compete with it, when the farmers bought everything from a catalogue, and had whole boxes of household goods expressed to them. I didn't know you were listening, Fanchen.”
“I was. I almost always do when you and some traveling man or somebody like that are talking. It—it's interesting.”
Fanny went back to her book then. But Molly Brandeis sat a moment, eyeing her queer little daughter thoughtfully. Then she sighed, and laid out her cards for solitaire. By eight o'clock she was usually so sleepy that she would fall, dead-tired, asleep on the worn leather couch in the sitting-room61. She must have been fearfully exhausted62, mind and body. The house would be very quiet, except for Mattie, perhaps, moving about in the kitchen or in her corner room upstairs. Sometimes the weary woman on the couch would start suddenly from her sleep and cry out, choked and gasping63, “No! No! No!” The children would jump, terrified, and come running to her at first, but later they got used to it, and only looked up to say, when she asked them, bewildered, what it was that wakened her, “You had the no-no-nos.”
She had never told of the thing that made her start out of her sleep and cry out like that. Perhaps it was just the protest of the exhausted body and the overwrought nerves. Usually, after that, she would sit up, haggardly, and take the hairpins64 out of her short thick hair, and announce her intention of going to bed. She always insisted that the children go too, though they often won an extra half hour by protesting and teasing. It was a good thing for them, these nine o'clock bed hours, for it gave them the tonic65 sleep that their young, high-strung natures demanded.
“Come, children,” she would say, yawning.
“Oh, mother, please just let me finish this chapter!”
“How much?”
“Just this little bit. See? Just this.”
“Well, just that, then,” for Mrs. Brandeis was a reasonable woman, and she had the book-lover's knowledge of the fascination66 of the unfinished chapter.
Fanny and Theodore were not always honest about the bargain. They would gallop67, hot-cheeked, through the allotted68 chapter. Mrs. Brandeis would have fallen into a doze69, perhaps. And the two conspirators70 would read on, turning the leaves softly and swiftly, gulping71 the pages, cramming72 them down in an orgy of mental bolting, like naughty children stuffing cake when their mother's back is turned. But the very concentration of their dread73 of waking her often brought about the feared result. Mrs. Brandeis would start up rather wildly, look about her, and see the two buried, red-cheeked and eager, in their books.
“Fanny! Theodore! Come now! Not another minute!”
Fanny, shameless little glutton74, would try it again. “Just to the end of this chapter! Just this weenty bit!”
“Fiddlesticks! You've read four chapters since I spoke75 to you the last time. Come now!”
Molly Brandeis would see to the doors, and the windows, and the clock, and then, waiting for the weary little figures to climb the stairs, would turn out the light, and, hairpins in one hand, corset in the other, perhaps, mount to bed.
By nine o'clock the little household would be sleeping, the children sweetly and dreamlessly, the tired woman restlessly and fitfully, her overwrought brain still surging with the day's problems. It was not like a household at rest, somehow. It was like a spirited thing standing76, quivering for a moment, its nerves tense, its muscles twitching77.
Perhaps you have quite forgotten that here were to be retailed78 two epochal events in Fanny Brandeis's life. If you have remembered, you will have guessed that the one was the reading of that book of social protest, though its writer has fallen into disfavor in these fickle79 days. The other was the wild and unladylike street brawl80 in which she took part so that a terrified and tortured little boy might escape his tormentors.
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1
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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3
veal
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| n.小牛肉 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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6
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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7
censor
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| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
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promiscuously
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| adv.杂乱地，混杂地 | |
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wading
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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10
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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sprightly
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| adj.愉快的，活泼的 | |
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12
conservatories
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| n.（培植植物的）温室，暖房( conservatory的名词复数 ) | |
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13
cosmopolitans
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| 世界性的( cosmopolitan的名词复数 )； 全球各国的； 有各国人的； 受各国文化影响的 | |
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14
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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15
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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16
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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astringent
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| adj.止血的，收缩的，涩的；n.收缩剂，止血剂 | |
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18
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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19
scrunching
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| v.发出喀嚓声( scrunch的现在分词 )；蜷缩；压；挤压 | |
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20
disquiet
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| n.担心，焦虑 | |
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pushcart
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| n.手推车 | |
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22
disapprovingly
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| adv.不以为然地，不赞成地，非难地 | |
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23
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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24
taunting
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| 嘲讽( taunt的现在分词 )； 嘲弄； 辱骂； 奚落 | |
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25
savagery
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| n.野性 | |
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26
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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28
whined
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| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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29
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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31
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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32
puny
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| adj.微不足道的，弱小的 | |
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33
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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35
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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37
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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38
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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39
thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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40
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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41
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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42
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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43
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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44
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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45
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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46
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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47
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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48
deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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49
filched
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
demurely
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| adv.装成端庄地，认真地 | |
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51
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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52
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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53
algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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54
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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55
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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56
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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57
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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58
ransack
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| v.彻底搜索，洗劫 | |
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59
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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60
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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61
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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62
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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63
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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64
hairpins
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| n.发夹( hairpin的名词复数 ) | |
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65
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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66
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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67
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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68
allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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70
conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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71
gulping
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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72
cramming
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| n.塞满，填鸭式的用功v.塞入( cram的现在分词 )；填塞；塞满；（为考试而）死记硬背功课 | |
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73
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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74
glutton
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| n.贪食者，好食者 | |
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75
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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76
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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77
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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78
retailed
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| vt.零售（retail的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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79
fickle
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| adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的，不坚定的 | |
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80
brawl
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| n.大声争吵，喧嚷；v.吵架，对骂 | |
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