They had laughed at that, and so had she, but she had been grimly in earnest just the same.
She shook her head now at Fenger's suggestion. “Imagine Mrs. Fenger's face at sight of Mizzi, and Theodore with his violin, and Otti with her shawls and paraphernalia. Though,” she added, seriously, “it's mighty kind of you, and generous—and just like a man.”
“It isn't kindness nor generosity that makes me want to do things for you.”
“Modest,” murmured Fanny, wickedly, “as always.”
Fenger bent his look upon her. “Don't try the ingenue on me, Fanny.”
Theodore's manager, Kurt Stein, was to have followed him in ten days. The war changed that. The war was to change many things. Fanny seemed to sense the influx of musicians that was to burst upon the United States following the first few weeks of the catastrophe, and she set about forestalling it. Advertising. That was what Theodore needed. She had faith enough in his genius. But her business sense told her that this genius must be enhanced by the proper setting. She set about creating this setting. She overlooked no chance to fix his personality in the kaleidoscopic mind of the American public—or as much of it as she could reach. His publicity man was a dignified German-American whose methods were legitimate and uninspired. Fanny's enthusiasm and superb confidence in Theodore's genius infected Fenger, Fascinating Facts, even Nathan Haynes himself. Nathan Haynes had never posed as a patron of the arts, in spite of his fantastic millions. But by the middle of September there were few of his friends, or his wife's friends, who had not heard of this Theodore Brandeis. In Chicago, Illinois, no one lives in houses, it is said, except the city's old families, and new millionaires. The rest of the vast population is flat-dwelling. To say that Nathan Haynes' spoken praise reached the city's house-dwellers would carry with it a significance plain to any Chicagoan.
As for Fanny's method; here is a typical example of her somewhat crude effectiveness in showmanship. Otti had brought with her from Vienna her native peasant costume. It is a costume seen daily in the Austrian capital, on the Ring, in the Stadt Park, wherever Viennese nurses convene with their small charges. To the American eye it is a musical comedy costume, picturesque, bouffant, amazing. Your Austrian takes it quite for granted. Regardless of the age of the nurse, the skirt is short, coming a few inches below the knees, and built like a lamp shade, in color usually a bright scarlet, with rows of black velvet ribbon at the bottom. Beneath it are worn skirts and skirts, and skirts, so that the opera-bouffe effect is complete. The bodice is black velvet, laced over a chemise of white. The head-gear a soaring winged affair of stiffly starched white, that is a pass between the Breton peasant woman's cap and an aeroplane. Black stockings and slippers finish the costume.
Otti and Mizzi spent the glorious September days in Lincoln park, Otti garbed in staid American stripes and apron, Mizzi resplendent in smartest of children's dresses provided for her lavishly by her aunt. Her fat and dimpled hands smoothed the blue, or pink or white folds with a complacency astonishing in one of her years. “That's her mother in her,” Fanny thought.
One rainy autumn day Fanny entered her brother's apartment to find Otti resplendent in her Viennese nurse's costume. Mizzi had been cross and fretful, and the sight of the familiar scarlet and black and white, and the great winged cap seemed to soothe her.
“Otti!” Fanny exclaimed. “You gorgeous creature! What is it? A dress rehearsal?” Otti got the import, if not the English.