Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

Her mind went back to that day of the street fight. She smiled. At that moment Clarence Heyl, who had been screwing about most shockingly, as though searching for some one, turned and met her smile, intended for no one, with a startlingly radiant one of his own, intended most plainly for her. He half started forward in his pew, and then remembered, and sat back again, but with an effect of impermanence that was ludicrous. It had been years since he had left Winnebago. At the time of his mother's death they had tried to reach him, and had been unable to get in touch with him for weeks. He had been off on some mountain expedition, hundreds of miles from railroad or telegraph. Fanny remembered having read about him in the Winnebago Courier. He seemed to be climbing mountains a great deal--rather difficult mountains, evidently, from the fuss they made over it. A queer enough occupation for a cowardy-cat. There had been a book, too. About the Rockies. She had not read it. She rather disliked these nature books, as do most nature lovers. She told herself that when she came upon a flaming golden maple in October she was content to know it was a maple, and to warm her soul at its blaze.

There had been something in the Chicago Herald, though-- oh, yes; it had spoken of him as the brilliant young naturalist, Clarence Heyl. He was to have gone on an expedition with Roosevelt. A sprained ankle, or some such thing, had prevented. Fanny smiled again, to herself. His mother, the fussy person who had been responsible for his boyhood reefers and too-shiny shoes, and his cowardice too, no doubt, had dreamed of seeing her Clarence a rabbi.

From that point Fanny's thoughts wandered to the brave old man in the pulpit. She had heard almost nothing of the service. She looked at him now--at him, and then at his congregation, inattentive and palpably bored. As always with her, the thing stamped itself on her mind as a picture. She was forever seeing a situation in terms of its human value. How small he looked, how frail, against the background of the massive Ark with its red velvet curtain. And how bravely he glared over his blue glasses at the two Aarons girls who were whispering and giggling together, eyes on the newcomer.