The Fortune Hunter | Page 4

Feuerstein did
Horwitz the honor of dining with him. At a quarter past seven, with his
two dollars intact, with a loan of one dollar added to it, and with five of
his original ten cents, he took himself away to the theater. Afterward,
by appointment, he met his new friend, and did him the honor of
accompanying him to the Young German Shooters' Society ball at
Terrace Garden.
It was one of those simple, entirely and genuinely gay entertainments
that assemble the society of 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