The Fortune Hunter | Page 4

the real New York--the three and a half millions who work and play hard and live plainly and without pretense, whose ideals center about the hearth, and whose aspirations are to retire with a competence early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth placidly to assist in the prosperity of their children and to have their youth over again in their grandchildren.
Feuerstein's gaze wandered from face to face among the young women, to pause at last upon a dark, handsome, strong-looking daughter of the people. She had coal-black hair that curled about a low forehead. Her eyes were dreamy and stormy. Her mouth was sweet, if a trifle petulant. ``And who is she?'' he asked.
``That's Hilda Brauner,'' replied Horwitz. ``Her father has a delicatessen in Avenue A. He's very rich--owns three flat-houses. They must bring him in at least ten thousand net, not to speak of what he makes in the store. They're fine people, those Brauners; none nicer anywhere.''
``A beautiful creature,'' said Feuerstein, who was feeling like a prince who, for reasons of sordid necessity, had condescended to a party in Fifth Avenue. ``I'd like to meet her.''
``Certainly,'' replied Horwitz. ``I'll introduce her to you.''
She blushed and was painfully ill at ease in presence of his grand and lofty courtesy--she who had been used to the offhand manners which prevail wherever there is equality of the sexes and the custom of frank sociability. And when he asked her to dance she would have refused had she been able to speak at all. But he bore her off and soon made her forget herself in the happiness of being drifted in his strong arm upon the rhythmic billows of the waltz. At the end he led her to a seat and fell to complimenting her--his eyes eloquent, his voice, it seemed to her, as entrancing as the waltz music. When he spoke in German it was without the harsh sputtering and growling, the slovenly slurring and clipping to which she had been accustomed. She could answer only with monosyllables or appreciative looks, though usually she was a great talker and, as she had much common sense and not a little wit, a good talker. But her awe of him, which increased when she learned that he was on the stage, did not prevent her from getting the two main impressions he wished to make upon her--that Mr. Feuerstein was a very grand person indeed, and that he was condescending to be profoundly smitten of her charms.
She was the ``catch'' of Avenue A, taking prospects and looks together, and the men she knew had let her rule them. In Mr. Feuerstein she had found what she had been unconsciously seeking with the Idealismus of genuine youth--a man who compelled her to look far up to him, a man who seemed to her to embody those vague dreams of a life grand and beautiful, away off somewhere, which are dreamed by all young people, and by not a few older ones, who have less excuse for not knowing where happiness is to be found. He spent the whole evening with her; Mrs. Liebers and Sophie, with whom she had come, did not dare interrupt her pleasure, but had to stay, yawning and cross, until the last strain of Home, Sweet Home.
At parting he pressed her hand. ``I have been happy,'' he murmured in a tone which said, ``Mine is a sorrow-shadowed soul that has rarely tasted happiness.''
She glanced up at him with ingenuous feeling in her eyes and managed to stammer: ``I hope we'll meet again.''
``Couldn't I come down to see you Sunday evening?''
``There's a concert in the Square. If you're there I might see you.''
``Until Sunday night,'' he said, and made her feel that the three intervening days would be for him three eternities.
She thought of him all the way home in the car, and until she fell asleep. His sonorous name was in her mind when she awoke in the morning; and, as she stood in the store that day, waiting on the customers, she looked often at the door, and, with the childhood-surviving faith of youth in the improbable and impossible, hoped that he would appear. For the first time she was definitely discontented with her lot, was definitely fascinated by the idea that there might be something higher and finer than the simple occupations and simple enjoyments which had filled her life thus far.
In the evening after supper her father and mother left her and her brother August in charge, and took their usual stroll for exercise and for the profound delight of a look at their flat-houses--those reminders of many years of toil and thrift. They had spent their youth, she as cook, he as helper, in one of New York's earliest delicatessen shops. When they had saved