intended to go to college, our school day was confined to about three
hours at the most--and under teachers who were always surly, sneering
and uncouth. The standard of work in the classroom was very low. At
first I did not have any trouble at all in leading the entire school in
scholarship; but gradually, under the careless and relaxed conditions, I
grew unambitious, lazy--and found myself failing among a class of boys
who, I secretly knew, were my mental inferiors. It is so much a matter
of competition, of environment.
Of friends I made few: even of those schoolboy friends who are your
"pals" one day, your sworn enemies the next. I had one or two
sentimental encounters with a brewer's son--a great, beefy ox of a boy
who lorded it over all of us because he kept his own private horse in
the town livery stable and had his room furnished with real mission
furniture. But he had no use for me when he realized that I was a Jew,
and took particular pains to transfer me from the company of which he
was first sergeant into the band.
The band, so-called in spite of the fact that it was composed of only
fifes, drums and bugles, was a sadly amateurish thing. The little
knowledge of music that I had was just so much more than that possessed
by any other member of the organization. As a result I soon rose to the
magnificence of cadet drum-major, an office which involved a tall,
silvered stick and a shako of sweltering bear-skin. Thus, my military
training consisted mostly of learning to twirl the baton; and when
semi-annual examinations resulted in disaster for me, I was reduced to
the humility of a private without having gained more than the knack of
sending a silvered rod in rapid circles about my stiff and sorely-tried
thumb.
At that, I was glad to return to the ranks. There had been plenty of
criticism of the fact that a "plebe" should have risen so quickly to an
officership. And, of course, as Jewish boys always do, I imagined that
the demonstration was just another evidence of race prejudice.
Undoubtedly it was, to some extent--but I know that I have always been
too suspicious in that direction. Had I been braver about it, I should
have been less suspicious.
One friend I did make: a lieutenant-adjutant whose first name was Sydney
and who was in charge of the punishment marks that were allotted us for
our various misdemeanors. Many a time did Sydney, for my sake, forget
to record the two or four marks which some crabbed teacher had charged
against me for inattention or disorderly conduct.
He was a big, handsome chap, with the most attractive manners I have
ever met. He was a scholarship boy--so that he had begun his school year
with a hundred and one unpleasant tasks to perform. But somehow or other
he had managed to be rid of them all excepting this dignified one of
"keeping the books"--and I am sure it must have been a lucrative one, in
a small way, for Sydney's room was full of pictures which had been given
him from other boys' rooms, of canes and banners--even of a half dozen
pair of patent leather shoes--which may or may not have come to him in
return for his apt juggling of those hated punishment marks.
I am not attempting to judge him--and I will tell you much more of him
later on--but I must remember him as one of the most wonderful of
friends: always smiling, always ready to join in upon whatever lark was
planning--a bit of a daredevil, very much of a protector when the
bullies of the school were pressing too close for comfort.
During the year, of course, I saw or heard nothing that could remind me
of my Faith. We had to go to church on Sunday mornings. I was given my
choice, and tried accompanying one squad after another. I went to the
Episcopal, the Methodist, the Presbyterian--and it was the last that I
finally selected for good. There was a splendid old pastor there; his
white hair and trumpeting voice gave him venerableness, even when he
spoke of things that seemed to me very childish and obvious.
Once the commandant, twirling his mustaches, asked me whether I should
not like to go to the synagogue on Friday nights (there was a small one
at the edge of the town). I did not care much about the religious
inspiration to be gained from the Hebrew service, but I did think it
would be jolly fun to be allowed to go down into the town at night. And
yet I knew that some of my schoolmates would come to know why I went,
and what sort of services I attended, and--reluctantly--I declined the
opportunity.
I do not know what the bumptious commandant thought of it, but he pulled
his mustaches very, very hard.
VI
MY STEERFORTH
I wish I could write this episode in quite a different tone from all the
others. I wish I could summon all the tenderness of which boyhood
has--and which it loses--and put it into the lines of the recital that
is now due. Because, then, perhaps, you would have some knowledge and
appreciation of what the last few months of my stay at the military
school meant for me.
David Copperfield had his Steerforth. Every boy must have one.
Certainly, _I_ did. And I worshipped him with all the ardor and
unquestioning devotion that could come fresh from a boy-heart which had
never yet given itself to friendship. Steerforth was a villain; but in
David's eye he was always, unalterably, a glorious hero. This is how it
was, perhaps, with Sydney--though he was no villain, I am sure.
I spoke of him in my last chapter: told you that he was a poor student,
much in favor with the commandant for his good services. I have told
you, he was tall, fair-haired, with locks that waved back from his
white forehead (as Steerforth's did, as I remember) and merry, blue
eyes.
He befriended me because it was of his generous nature to befriend all
the lonelier boys. He used to pal with all the school "freaks," to
counsel them, to drill them privately, so that they should be more
proficient on parade. He used to make me very jealous of his large
circle of small worshippers. I thought that privilege ought to be kept
for me alone.
He used to read with me, on spring nights, in the school's dingy
library. We read "David Copperfield" together; and would glance up from
the page to watch, from the windows, the pale but glowing battle of
sunset colors over the hills and mirrored in the darkling stretch of the
Hudson. And sometimes, when the story would not give us respite, he
would smuggle the book up into the dormitory--and when all was dark
there, and the proctor slept, we would creep into the hall and read by
its dusky light until long into the night. I have read "David
Copperfield" again since then--but not with so exquisite a thrill.
And reading of Steerforth, I used to look up at Sydney and imagine that
he was that fine, attractive fellow--and that I, dumb but ecstatic in my
pride of friendship, was little David.
It seemed so wonderful to me, especially, that he was a Christian and I
a Jew, and yet there had never been any question of difference between
us. Other boys who had given me something of their friendship had made
such a brave point of telling me that they didn't mind my being a
Jew--that there were just as many good Jews as there were bad ones--and
all those other stupid and inevitable remarks that we must swallow and
forget. But with Sydney it was not like that. He had never mentioned it,
and it seemed as if he knew that I dreaded the subject--and so kept
silent on it out of kindness.
Sometimes, when the days were warm and the trees were budding, we went
off together on long walks through the country. Sydney taught me to
smoke cigarettes, and we would stop on our way at a little village store
that lay at the end of a hilly road.
An old man, who was an invalid, owned the store. But he sat all day at
his little card table in the dark, untidy rear, playing solitaire; and
it was his young daughter who would wait on us behind the counter.
She was a thin, dull-looking girl, scarcely pretty, yet with large,
sombre eyes that her lonely task explained. She was ignorant, I am sure,
and knew little of what went on in the town at the river's edge or in
the big city, fifty-odd miles away. But there was something pathetic
about her position--and when Sydney made it more and more a custom to
talk to her, to make friendly advances, I thought it only the big
generosity of his heart pouring out to succor another such shy soul as
mine.
Once or twice it was not until evening that we could steal "off bounds,"
and then we would make straight for the little store, as if we knew
that, if we did not hurry, it would be closed for the night. And we
would have only a few hurried words, but laughing, with the girl--and
she would look up at Sydney with a light in those big eyes of hers that
I had never seen before in any woman's. She left her counter, once, and
walked all the way home with us; and I saw, in the blue of the gloaming,
that her hand was tightly clasped in Sydney's, and that he whispered
things to her under his breath, as soon as I was gone a little way ahead
of them, and that they both laughed--and she looked up at him as a dumb
animal to its master. She came as far as the school gate; and after I
had gotten within, they stood for a moment together--and I thought I
could hear the sound of kissing. It was only then that I began to be
troubled.
Sydney, who was a lieutenant in the cadet battalion, had more privileges
than I. He could leave the premises when he pleased. He never had to
sign the big book in the hall when leaving and arriving back. He needed
never to give account of what he did "off bounds." It was an easy matter
for him--and there were many times, now, that he went off alone. No one
knew why he used to take that little country road that led up the hill
towards a stupid old country store. No one, that is, but me.
At first I did not think much of the girl's side of it. I was bitterly
disappointed that some one else had come between my friend and me. I was
jealous of all the time he spent with her, of the hours of reading and
walking and jesting that once were mine--and of which the lure of her
had robbed me.
But once, when we were at the store, and I stood aside from them,
watching the humped back of her old father, bent over his card table,
and saw the feeble shaking of his hand, I began to comprehend what it
might mean to him if anything should happen. Not that I knew what might
happen. I was still very young--but I felt the chill foreboding of
tragedy lurking somewhere in the background of it all. The dingy little
shop, with its flyspecked glass cases and its dusty rows of untouched
stock; the lights dimmed and blackened by clusters of whirling insects;
the old father with his bent back--and the two of them standing there
and laughing, gazing into each other's faces with the look of youth and
the Springtime.
And I went out quickly and stumbled my way home alone, leaving Sydney to
follow after.
When Sydney came in, after taps, I stole from my bed to his to speak to
him of it. But the words would not form themselves suitably, and he
laughed at my poor stammerings, and sent me off to bed again.
But one night, just before "tattoo," when the fruit trees were frothing
with light blossoms and the scent of lilacs was heavy in the air, Sydney
sent for me. He was officer-of-the-day, today, and could not leave the
premises. He wanted me to go in his place, to meet the girl and to
explain why he could not keep his appointment.
I looked at him in amazement. "Do you mean to say, you've been meeting
her every night. As late as this? Alone?"
He was playing with the tassel at the end of the red sash which the
officer-of-the-day wears about his waist. He let it drop and gave me a
quick glance.
"Yes," he said, "and mind you don't tell anybody, either. You'll have to
sneak off bounds--but I'll see you don't run much of a risk. You can
leave that part to me."
Then, when he saw me hesitate, he began to plead. "Oh, say, you won't go
back on me, will you? I've been a good friend to you and done you lots
of favors--and now when I ask you to take a little risk for me...."
I smiled. "You don't understand, Sydney," I said. "It isn't the risk."
"Then what is it?"
"It's--it's the girl."
He stepped back from me, and his face took on a coldness I had never
seen before. "Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "That's my
business."
Then, as I hesitated, he burst out: "Hurry up, now, you little Jew!"
I stood very still for a minute. Then I felt my face flush hot and I
flung away from him.
It had come at last. He, my best friend--my only friend--he had called
me a Jew!
I wanted to scream back at him, to beat him with my fist, to denounce
him and curse him. I felt betrayed, degraded as I had never been before.
Then I gulped hard and controlled myself.
I said nothing. I merely saluted and set off upon his errand.
But I did not find the girl at the street corner he had mentioned. I
went on, only a few hundred yards, to the store. There was a dim blue
light in one of its windows, and I crept up and pressed my face against
the glass, knowing that she was probably sitting up and waiting.
Yes, she was there--behind the counter with her shawl still over her
head and her eyes fixed on the cheap wall clock. She could not see me in
the darkness outside--not even when she turned her head and gave me a
full view of her face, so that I could see how strangely pale and set it
was, and how deeply lurking in her eyes was the fear of the moment.
I did not go in and tell her anything. I could not. The sight of her and
the appeal of her thin, tragic little body sent me hurrying back with my
errand uncompleted--and glad, madly glad that it was so.
I crept up to bed as soon as I was "in bounds" again. I wanted to avoid
Sydney. Nor would I give him a chance to speak to me the next morning. I
felt that I knew now, almost in its entirety, the scheme he was
laying--and the climax which was fast approaching. And, after having
seen her, as I did last night, I knew that I could never go walking with
him again or have more to do with him, and that I must go back to her,
some day soon, traitor-wise, and warn her against him who had been my
best friend.
In the afternoon, after school was done, a crowd of us obtained
permission to go swimming in a nearby lake. Sydney was among us: the
leader of us, in fact. He tried to speak to me--perhaps he was going to
apologize to me for having called me a Jew--I do not know. But, though I
did not give him the chance, I remember well how tall and brave he
looked, and how his hair waved back from his forehead like Steerforth's.
And like Steerforth, too, he was drowned.
Schoolboys are careless of their swimming. We did not notice until it
was long too late that Sydney had disappeared. When his body was
recovered, the doctors worked over it for fully two hours. But it was no
use.
* * * * *
His funeral was held in the school parlor the next morning. But it had
been a night of terrors, of whispering groups, of Death's shadow over us
all--and we were but children. His empty bed, his dress uniform tossed
carelessly over the back of a chair, the knowledge of his insensible
presence in the undertaker's shop at the other end of town ... brought
fear and wakefulness to us all.
And as for me, I sat all night at the dormitory window and listening to
the creak and groan of the old Revolutionary oak in the quadrangle,
thought of many things: of the walks we had taken, of the hundred
smiling adventures we had shared, of all the glad things he had taught
me--and then, of the girl--and of the tragic face of her--as I had seen
it last.
And I wished that he had lived only a few minutes longer so that I might
have pleaded with him and shown him where he was wrong. And, perhaps, in
those few minutes he would have reached out his hand to me, and begged
forgiveness for having called me what he did--perhaps he might have done
so--and oh, I wanted with all my heart to forgive him and tell him it
did not matter--and to wish him God-speed.
But in a few days, when I summoned enough courage to go up the hilly
road in search of the little old store, I found it closed. The cracked
shades were down before the windows, and a "For Sale" sign was on the
door. The father and daughter had moved away, I heard in the town; but
no one knew where--or why.
But when I was back in the dormitory, I took the book of "David
Copperfield" from under my pillow, and put it back in the library, and
did not attempt to read further in it, then.
VII
FRESHMAN YEAR
New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant
the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions--and seemed to me an
opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of
real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty,
whose breadth of mind unfailing.
It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college
entrance examinations. I had taken the "preliminaries" the year before,
and I entered upon these "finals" low in spirit, disinterested, very
much aware of how poor a training for them this last year at military
school had given me.
Nevertheless, I managed to pass them. Not brilliantly, to be sure, but
by a small margin which left no doubt but that I should be accepted in
the freshman class of the city's university.
I have not called my alma mater by any other name than this: I do not
wish, out of a sense of loyalty, to define it more closely. You will
say, before I am through, that I am perverse in that loyalty; perhaps
so--but I do not wish to transgress upon it. Suffice it then, that my
college days were spent at one of the two universities which New York
has within its borders.
I shall never forget how my heart bounded when I received, through the
mail, that little leather covered book which college men know as the
"Freshman Bible." It is the directory of undergraduate activities issued
by the university Y. M. C. A., and is sent to all members of the
incoming class. I read each little page and its small, fine print as if
my life depended upon its reading. When I came to understand that
freshman must wear a black, green-buttoned cap upon the campus, a deep
awe of collegiate law and order came over me. When I saw the little
half-tone prints of the chapel, the gymnasium, the baseball field, I
felt that I was glimpsing, before my proper time, the sacred precincts
of a land which would be magical, splendid with an eternal sunlight,
peopled only with a chivalrous and knightly manhood. I suppose that
college was to me, as to most subfreshman, a place of green swards and
track meets and those musical harmonies which glee clubs can so
throatily accomplish.
I was at the hotel in New Hampshire when this book arrived. The very
same mail brought me the definite results of my college entrance
examinations. I remember that I was just starting to walk down to the
lake with my aunt when they arrived. I knew what was in the big ominous
envelope--and I was afraid to open it. I crammed it into my coat pocket,
careful not to let my Aunt Selina see it, and went on to the boat house,
hired a boat and rowed her dutifully around the lake for a full two
hours. She remarked upon my silence--but I did not tell her that my fate
was in my pocket--and that I dared not look upon it.
But when I was back at the hotel, I went straightway to my room and
opened the envelope, stripped out the blue, bank-note sheet and
read--yes, I had passed every examination. And I was a regularly
enrolled student at the university.
I told my aunt of it at lunch, as if it were a casual thing--and she
treated it as such, too. If I had had any doubts of her lack of genuine
interest in me, I knew it now for certain. It was just a matter of
course to her--this entrance into college--and to me, in turn, it meant
so much: a new work, a new land, a life entirely new and shot through
with hopes. I did not tell her that, but let her change the topic
quickly. She was intent upon talking fashions with Mrs. Fleming-Cohen.
I had hated to come to this hotel for another year. The people persisted
in making things graciously unpleasant for us. I was beginning to be
old enough to feel it keenly--and not old enough to overlook. I wonder,
for that matter, if Jews are ever old enough to overlook it?
But Aunt Selina was dictatress of my destinies. She had declared I must
either come along to the hotel or else I would not be allowed to enter
college. In the face of such an alternative I had yielded quickly. But
there had already begun between my aunt and me a chasm that grew daily
wider, deeper, more hopelessly incapable of bridging. When one has been
away for a year, one returns to find grim truths. I had met other
people, seen other lives and other souls since I had been in boarding
school: I was not clouded now by my blood relationship to Mrs. Haberman
or by day after day of close but unintimate companionship. I saw her as
she was: a shallow, flighty woman whose thoughts were always upon that
sort of society which spells itself with a capital S, whose petulance
found no ease--always restless, always ambitious for petty things,
wanting only what she could not have--an idle woman, foolish in her
idleness.
In spite of her taking it as a matter of course, she spent the whole
day, after she had learned my news, in spreading it about the porch and
parlors of the hotel. She seemed to imagine that it would interest
every one--even Mrs. Van Brunt, the arbiter of elegance of the mountain
clique, who, on hearing it, sniffed, patted her lorgnette with a lace
handkerchief, and inquired if a great many Jews did not attend this
particular university.
"Really, I should not think of sending any relative of mine there," she
sniffed. "Not that I have a prejudice against Jews, of course--in fact,
I consider myself very democratic. I have many Jewish acquaintances.
Many of my best friends are Jews."
My aunt, who had undoubtedly had to listen to these catchwords as often
as any other Jew or Jewess must, attempted not to understand why Mrs.
Van Brunt had spoken them. A few minutes later she made a few unblinking
and pointed remarks about having to attend a convention of Christian
Science workers in the fall--as if to protest that Mrs. Van Brunt had
made a grievous and embarrassing error.
I asked my aunt, a few days later, if I was not to be allowed to live in
one of the university dormitories. Whether or not his college is in his
home town, every boy wants the full flavor of undergraduate life--wants
to live on the campus, to throw himself heart and soul into the college
games and customs. I could not see how college would mean anything to me
if I were to go on living at home in that dull, comfortless apartment
of Aunt Selina's.
Youth is always eager for emancipation--always a little too thoughtless
in its eagerness.
Perhaps I was wrong in forgetting what I owed Aunt Selina. She took
great offense at my wish. She spoke, her voice choked with tears, of the
many years that she had cared for me, fostered me, guarded me from a
world of foreign things--"ruffians and kikes and niggers," was the way
she described it.
At any rate, I remember that I spent a whole day in thinking it out for
myself upon a lonely walk, and that, at the end of it, I came to tell
her that she was right and that I was ashamed of wanting to leave
her--that I would live home with her, and try to gain the best of
college in that way. Privately, I knew that I could never gain as
much--but I had made up my mind not to pain her, confident that it would
be worth the sacrifice.
The days lagged slowly to the end of that summer. I was preparing in a
hundred little ways for the great adventure: sending for all sorts of
stereotyped books on the moral conduct of college men, on the art of
making friends, on the history and traditions of my university. I was
prepared to be its most loyal son. I could hardly wait for the stupid
weeks at this mountain hotel to pass by, for the opening day to arrive.
And then, when the trees were beginning to fleck with scarlet and the
summer heather streaked with goldenrod, we did depart for the city. It
was only a week before college would begin.
Then five days, four days, three, two, one. And on the night before
registration day, which would commence the college year, I sat for a
long while at my table-desk, dreaming high things--hope and fear
mingling with my dreams, charging them with an exquisite uncertainty,
making them pulse with the things that were innermost in me.