surprised me, somehow, because, I had never before heard him mention the
name of the Deity. It gave me a new question to ask.
"Why is it that you don't lay more stress on religion down here? Don't
the boys and girls need it?"
"Need it? Who doesn't?" A shadow crossed his face. His vivacity gave way
for a moment before deep thoughtfulness. "But they get all they need,
these kids. They are mostly all of them members of strictly orthodox
Jewish families. Religion is given them at all hours in their own homes.
Many of them get more of it than they can ever need. They get so much of
it that they flee from it, just anxious for the freedom of the streets
and the novelty of the bar room and the brothel and the gambling den. I
have made investigations. I know that half of the East Side boys who
land in the police court have been driven there by the religious
strictness of their parents."
"Mr. Richards," I began ... but stopped in dismay. What I had been about
to say was no more nor less than a hot, strong denial of his opinion. I
felt sure he was wrong--and yet it seemed humorous to me that I, who a
year ago, had hated all things Jewish, was now defending all the worth
and venerability of its ritual.
"I do not agree with you altogether," I said lamely. "But ... but still,
don't think I am a very enthusiastic Jew. Because I'm not."
"Aren't you? Why not?"
I did not answer--had no answer to make, in fact. I did not want to tell
him of my aunt, of her influence, of my own cowardice. But, looking at
me, I think he did guess something of the longing I had had ...
something of that strange night when I had stood outside the synagogue
and heard the music coming from within the depths of its golden haze.
For he put his hand on my shoulder and bade me think for a moment why I
was not a Jew in spirit as well as in name.
"You're not a snob," he said, trying to help me. "You're not thinking
that, because your religion is in the minority in the midst of a
Christian land, it is necessarily an ignominy to be a Jew--and to act as
one."
My silence held. I let him go on talking. "Anyhow, you need religion.
Every man does to a variable extent. I should feel sorry for the man who
didn't. And do you mind my telling you--" he paused only for a
second--"that you are one of those who need it most?"
I hung my head. He had hit so truly upon what was right, what was most
secret in me.... I could not ask him how he had guessed it, I remembered
his assertion that he knew men--all men--and saw now that he had not
been boasting.
He went on, presently, to explain that religion was a thing for the
fathers and mothers and rabbis to teach to the children--not for the
settlement to teach them. He knew that boys needed the guidance of
religion ... but he felt that it was supplied in even too large doses
already.
"The pity of it is," he said in closing, "that wherever Jewish children
turn away from the faith of their fathers, they have nothing to turn
towards next. They are at sea ..." he gave me another of his quick, deep
set glances ... "and that applies to rich and poor alike. Christians
forget their religion when they feel they have outgrown it ... because
they have lost interest in it. Jews forsake theirs but never forget it.
Under certain circumstances they grow impatient with it, slink from the
inconveniences which it entails ... but their hearts are always
desperate for the Faith. It is a hidden loneliness, a stifled longing to
them."
I thought of Aunt Selina and wondered if she had ever felt that
loneliness, that longing, as I had. I could hardly imagine her happy in
devoutness to Judaism. It was so comical, I laughed aloud ... and got up
and left Mr. Richards, lest he should ask me at what I was laughing.
It was his remark about Jewish children getting all the religion they
need which nettled me the most. I felt that I would like to go out upon
the streets and see for myself. The streets are the East Side's
parliament, its court of law and high opinion.
They were hot and glaring with the noonday sun when first I appealed to
them. Their pavements, white and littered with unspeakable confusion,
gave off a dancing wave of heat. Old women, squatting on their
doorsteps, their coarse wigs low upon perspiring foreheads, dozed and
woke and gabbled to each other and dozed again. Old men, with long grey
beards, long, tousled hair and melancholy eyes shuffled listlessly up
and down, stopping only to make way for playing children or to pat them
on the head. The gutters had their Jewish peddlers, each window its fat
Jewish matron who leaned upon a cushioned window-sill and gazed
apathetically at nothing. There was a Babel of Yiddish and Russian and
guttural English. At one corner there was a crap-game going on in full
sight of the policeman across the street. Young men of my age were in
it; youths with mean, furtive faces and laughs that were cruel and
raucous.
So this was Judea? This was where religion played too strong a part ...
where parents and rabbis taught so fully to their charges the word and
the comfort of God? It did not seem so to me. It seemed all hateful,
smeared, repellant. And, with the question unanswered, I fled from it.
But the next morning, in the settlement playground, something happened
which began the solution for me. It was an accident and I regretted it
for a long while, feeling that it was my fault.
I had been teaching little Frank Cohen some tricks on the horizontal
bar. Frank, the boy on parole for petty theft, was daring in this
gymnastic work. No sooner was my back turned on him than he tried one of
the tricks without my help. His fingers slipped, he fell heavily from
the bar to the ground. When we picked him up, his arm was found to be
broken.
We got him home in Mr. Richards' little run-about, and put the boy to
bed. The doctor set his arm and put it into splints. I met Frank's
mother here, and, later on, his father who, having heard of the
accident, came rushing upstairs from his bakery shop. They were a
nervous, frightened pair; and it needed all the talk my lungs were
capable of to assure them that their son would soon recover the use of
his arm and be out of his bandage.
As I left their stuffy little flat, they were reciting some Hebrew
prayers of gratitude. Tears were on the cheeks of both of them, and
their eyes were uplifted to a God I could not know. I went downstairs
bitterly conscious of that.
And this was why, when Frank Cohen, pale, his arm in a sling, but the
hero of his comrades, came again to the settlement, I sought him out and
made an especial friend of him. Of what that friendship should become I
had then no plan.
XIII
CHILD AND PARENT
One hot evening, when the fire-escapes were crowded with hundreds of
sleeping children, and the streets were shrieking canyons of heated
stone and iron, and men and women lay in the grass of little parks,
breathing heavily as if in prayer for coolness, I learned the secret in
the heart of young Frank Cohen.
He was sitting beside me in the amateur roof-garden which Mr. Richards
had contrived atop the settlement. We had wicker chairs there, a few
potted palms and a solitary, tiny goldfish in a small glass bowl. That
was the extent of its furnishings; but in the later afternoons the old
Jewish mothers would come and sit here and doze in the sun, grateful for
the breeze, city-fed and redolent, which might carry relief towards
them.
This afternoon Frank's mother had been among them. I had seen her there,
a pale, little woman who sat with her sewing in her lap, staring dully
out over the roofs below her. I had been detailed to go around among
these women and to make them as comfortable as I could. Hardly a one,
however, could understand English; and Frank's mother, when I came to
her, took no notice of anything that I said or mentioned. She looked at
me from under lowered eyebrows. Later on Mr. Richards, who had had her
under his attention for some months, told me how frightened she had been
by her son's misdemeanor--it had been no more than that, according to
the police report--and it was easy to imagine that she looked with
suspicion upon every comrade whom Frank followed, now. The fact that I
was so much older and was a member of the staff of the settlement
workers was not enough to overcome the whole of her distrust.
And when the evening came, and Frank and I had emerged from one of the
club meetings--for he was president of his particular club of boys of
his own age--hot and tired from wrangling over Robert's Rules of Order
and the wording of a baseball challenge to be sent to a rival
organization, he told me the entire story of that misdemeanor. He would
not speak of it readily. He too felt the shame of it, differently of
course, but no less heavily. He had been in bad company. He had been
going for months with some sons of one of the East Side's notorious
gamblers--boys who were wise beyond their years and brutal beyond their
strength. Cowardly, sneaky, they had prompted him to steal things at the
counters of all the shops on their street. He had never realized, under
their whispered urgings, how wrong it was--and he had never had a chance
to profit by his thefts himself. The petty business had gone on for a
couple of weeks, the other boys praising him, bullying him by turn, and
dividing the loot between them. And when the inevitable happened and
Frank found himself locked for the night in a police court, frantic at
the disgrace which the loathsome night exaggerated, these boys informed
against him.
When he told me of this, and how they had come snivelling before the
police lieutenant, and had lied to make that fat, gruff, old master
believe that Frank had stolen even more than he actually had, and all
for the sake of becoming the chief of their "gang"--then his narrow face
darkened and writhed with a hate that was too great for him to bear--and
presently tears came into his black eyes.
"Were they Jewish boys?" I asked him. "No," he answered passionately. "I
think I should have gone crazy if they had been."
I glanced at him quickly. He did not smile as he said it, nor was there
anything too melodramatic about his manner.
"Why do you say that? That you would have gone crazy?"
"Don't you see? You're a Jew, ain't you?"
I said, "Yes."
"Well, I couldn't talk about it to you at all if you wasn't. And if they
had been Jews--my own people--and had gone back on me like that, it
would've been just a little too much. They were just tough kids--and so
they didn't know any better. If they had been Jews they wouldn't have
taught me to steal, they wouldn't have done what they--God, my father
and mother were right about it, for sure!"
"Your father and mother? Why, what had they to do with it?"
"Oh, you know how parents are. They used to warn me against going with
those tough kids. They seemed to know from the beginning that
something'd happen out of it. They said--you know, it's like old
folks--that Christian boys would never want to go with me unless to gain
their own ends--and then to desert me, see? They wanted me to go with
the Jewish boys I'd been going with all my life, before then. But I
laughed and didn't listen. And--and when I had to pay back for all the
things I stole, it was--well, it was the Jewish boys I knew who clubbed
together and earned money by odd jobs after school--and if it wasn't for
them, I'd be in the workhouse."
"But all Christian boys aren't like the ones you went with," I argued.
"No, I suppose not. But I like to think that all Jewish boys are like
the ones on this street. They made a good Jew of me!"
I turned on him quickly. "Did they? How?"
"They made me proud of being one of them. They made me feel the close
something-or-other--well, I ain't much when it comes to speeches but you
know what I mean."
Perhaps I did, but I would not admit it to myself. Perhaps I did see the
faith reborn in him through the faith that other boys had given him.
Perhaps, too, I could picture something of the welling joy that had come
to his parents when he returned to the only right path that their
simple, unquestioning eyes could see. And how jealously they must be
guarding him now, to keep him in that code which was their life's law
and had become his daily lesson!
"Don't you see?" he begged. "Can't you? Why, a fellow's just _got_ to
have a side to fight on--and to fight for. And he's got to believe that
his side is the only one, the right one. Life wouldn't be worth living
without it. You don't know what it means to be _fighting for the
right_!"
From below came the droning of the unquiet streets. A little higher up a
hot wind went almost noiselessly among the chimneys, so that we heard
but faint sighs. The roof garden was in darkness, naught gleaming but
the little glass bowl of gold fish. There was a sense of utter darkness
and loneliness--and yet into it had come, like the glad, brave blast of
New Year's trumpet, a battle cry of the One God. A battle cry which made
throb the heart of a young, rough boy; a battle cry which would be his
whole life's secret well of gratitude and bravery.
"_You don't know what it means to be fighting for the right!_"
He was so slight, so meagre in appearance, that I could not help finding
something gently humorous about his utterance. But when I looked at him
and saw how his eyes glowed through the dark, and how he stood straight
and at full height, his narrow shoulders thrown back, in spite of his
bandaged arm, and his face upraised to the summer stars, my smile passed
quickly.
There came over me that same queer panging sense of being only on the
outside of things--only on Life's outermost border. I was looking
straight into the heart of a boy and seeing the gladness which blazed
there--and yet I could not have it, as he had it. Here was this sudden,
all-forgetting boldness of belief which he had won--and I could only
watch it covetously through the bars of my exiled doubts.
No, no, he was right--a thousand times more right than I. If faith in
the One God did all of this for him, then that faith was surely
justified.
And if I could only bring myself to believe as deeply, as powerfully as
he did--then my whole life would be remade as his had been--and I, too,
would fight for what I must believe: would fight--_for the right_!
I did not let him talk any further, but sent him home. I did not want
his parents to be worrying as to where he was, this time of night. I
stayed on a little while, looking over the roofs and the white-faced
huddlings of the fire-escapes, and then I went to bed, to toss with heat
and battle with my thoughts throughout the night.
When the morning came, I went early to Frank's house. The pavements were
fresh and damp with the water of a sprinkling cart, and the shops, just
beginning to open, had a Sabbath air of cleanliness. It was cooler than
yesterday, too, and the street corners were still cleared and quiet.
I had been granted permission to take Frank and two other boys on a
picnic to Westchester. He was ready for me when I knocked at his door,
and let me into the darkened kitchen.
His mother was there, too, cutting bread for sandwiches which we would
take along. Her old morning wrapper and her hastily-shawled head gave
her an even more forbidding appearance than ever. But when her
sandwiches were packed into a box and wrapped and tied, she wiped her
hands on a towel and looked at me steadfastly, not unkindly, for fully a
minute.
I could not understand what she said. It was in Yiddish, and I have
never learned that tongue. But here and there I caught a word which gave
me enough of her meaning.
She was telling me that Frank had spoken to her of me last night when he
returned from the blessed settlement. He always came to her bedside,
nowadays, knowing that she would be awake and waiting to hear where he
had been. And so he had whispered, while his father slept, of the
strange young man who was so kind--a Jew, like them--and yet who had no
faith in God.
Then suddenly she began to beg something. "Mutter, mutter," was all I
could make of it--and I guessed that she was asking me of my mother, and
wondering why I did not listen at her knee as Frank had done at his own
mother's. And when I told her that my mother was dead, tears came into
her eyes, and this was the finest sympathy I had ever known.
For she put her big, buttery hand on mine and shook her head. "You must
learn to know God," I think she said. "He alone can take your mother's
place. He made my son what I longed he should be. He will make you what
you most desire. In God alone is there happiness."
And so Frank and I went out and down the dirty, narrow stairs, and came
into a street of Heaven itself--a street of early sunlight, and a clear
sky above--and morning smiles upon the faces of all passersby. Or so it
seemed to me, at any rate.
Because, for once in my life, I had seen the happiness of mother and
child swept up into glory that is God's.
And I laughed to think of Mr. Richard's remark that religion works harm
among these East Side people.
XIV
AN UNGRATEFUL NEPHEW
The summer came to an end only too quickly. I had enjoyed every moment
of it, every opportunity. I had built up three clubs of which I was
personal leader; I had given service in the gymnasium and playground; I
had helped in the development of a roof-garden cordiality between the
settlement workers and the mothers of children on the street. Mr.
Richards, the last night I was there, presented me with a loving-cup on
behalf of the other workers.
It was at supper that he did this, in front of them all. He called upon
me, then, to describe to them the most interesting experience I had had
in the course of the summer. So I told them the incident of Frank Cohen
and his mother--but I do not think they saw much that was interesting
about it. Mr. Richards may have, perhaps, because he must have
remembered that dictum of his which the incident disproved; but even he
could guess little of the impression it had made upon my thought and
character.
I had had a letter from my Aunt Selina, to tell me curtly that she was
back in New York, but intended starting out immediately upon an
automobile tour through New England into Canada, in company with Mrs.
Fleming-Cohen and some ship-board acquaintances--"personages," she
called them in her much underlined letter, which probably meant that she
had succeeded in capturing some stray society folk. She bade me go back
to our apartment and to have it ready for her on her return. The
servants, she said, were already there, engaged in cleaning away the
summer's dust. She hoped "I would be able to start the college year
without her, and that I would comport myself on the campus in a manner
creditable and befitting, etc., etc."
But in spite of the servants' efforts to make things bright and
comfortable, the apartment was a dismal and lonely place. College kept
me uptown all day long, of course, but when the evening came and I must
return to the big, empty rooms that were our substitute for home, I did
not like it. I began to linger more and more about the campus at night:
it was truly the most beautiful time to be there, when the autumn moon
silvered its lawns and gave the buildings a marble whiteness. There was
singing on the fences, then, and all sorts of meetings of all kinds of
college organizations. The campus hummed with a hundred undergraduate
activities--so that I saw, as never before, how much I missed through
having to go downtown each night to live. But so long as my aunt wanted
it, I felt I owed it to her to obey, and would not even consider the
renting of Trevelyan's suite of rooms in the principal dormitory.
Trevelyan had given up these rooms to move into his fraternity house.
"It's a dreadful bore," he said to me in his lazy, rueful way. "I'd be
ten times more comfortable here--but I don't want to insult the
brothers. However, you'll come up to the house and see me just as often,
won't you?"
I promised him I would, but he seemed to know as well as I that I would
not. A sophomore paying nightly visits to a senior in the fraternity
house where that sophomore had only a year ago been smiled politely
out--no, it didn't seem even probable. And so, when I had helped
Trevelyan put his last bit of furniture upon a truck--and had tucked
among the rungs of many Morris chairs the bundle of flags and college
shields which he had overlooked--I could hardly bear to shake hands with
him. We both knew that it was something in the nature of a definite
goodbye; at any rate, so far as college was concerned.
"A damned nuisance, this," he said thickly, his short-sighted eyes
screwing up oddly. "And if it wasn't for the brothers--" But the
brothers did win him, and I lost a friend thereby.
The home to which I must go seemed lonelier than ever now. I was not
expecting Aunt Selina for two more weeks, and so I hit upon the idea of
inviting some one to stay with me until then.
Frank Cohen! Yes, I would ask Frank Cohen. He was going to high school
now, and the branch which he attended was not so far from where I lived.
It would be convenient for him, and perhaps a happy change from the East
Side crowdedness which he had had to encounter all his life.
He was as glad to come as I to have him. I gave him Aunt Selina's room
to sleep in, and we sat there, when our homework was done, many evenings
until past midnight, talking gently and thoughtfully of many things. He
was a boy much as I had been--and perhaps, still was. He was shy to an
uncomfortable degree, low of voice, dreamy in manner. But when he was
aroused to something especial, he became uncontrollably intense, his
eyes flashing and his knees trembling, so that his whole small body
seemed but the sheer vibration of his thoughts.
He was hoping to go to college, when his high school days were over. He
had not dared mention it at home, though, because he knew how poor his
father was, and how much of a help he would be when he could go to work
and begin to carry home his weekly earnings. He hated to go into a
shoddy little business; he wanted to study further, to take up some
profession--perhaps the law. Or if he did go into business, he wanted to
have had a few years of college first, so that he might see things
broadly and with a mind trained for bigness. But he had only dreamed all
this, only longed for it in secret. He would rather forego all of it
than urge his father to make the big sacrifice.
I had come to be so fond of him, it was not long before I decided upon
what seemed to be a proper solution. Without a word to Frank, I escaped
from college early one afternoon and went downtown to that East Side
street where he lived. I found his father in the cellar of the bakery
shop which he owned, his beard all whitened with flour dust, his thin,
bare arms thick with the paste of dough.
With rehearsed gesticulations I made him understand what I offered. My
own father had left me fairly well off; I wanted to lay out the money
which would be necessary to afford Frank a college education. They could
pay it back when they pleased--not for many years would I need it.
I had a distinct surprise, then. My generosity was taken somewhat aback
by the man's apparent anger. He seemed to be resenting any suggestion of
charity. I tried to assure him that this was not what I intended, but he
did not understand. At length we had to call in one of the bakery's
oven-tenders to act as interpreter. And through this third party Mr.
Cohen thanked me kindly. He appreciated all I offered, but he had long
ago made arrangements for Frank.
"And what are those arrangements?" I asked anxiously, picturing the boy
at work in this dark, mouldy cellar.
"It is a secret," said Mr. Cohen. "But it is time now for me to disclose
what his mother and I have planned for him. For ten years we have saved.
And we have saved enough to send him to college. He shall go there and
we ourselves shall send him." He drew himself up as he said it, so that
I had a glimpse of that pride which all Jewish fathers seem to take in
hardships which they undergo for their children. "It is so with the son
of the president of my synagogue," he said. "It shall be no less so with
my son, either. He shall have what his father could not have, though his
father starve and slave to give it to him!"
The dull interpreter gave me this in flat, spiritless tones; but I could
see the clenched hands and the earnest face of Mr. Cohen, and I nodded
quickly.