his best to fight, I could see--but I would not give him the chance--not
prematurely!
Braley waved a conciliatory hand. He was a large, stoop-shouldered
fellow with long, light hair and an enormous forehead. He had the most
important and sumptuous manners I have ever met.
"See here, now," he said, "you really must tell us all you know about
this thing. You really must." He was very earnest about it. They were
both uneasy, it was easy to see.
"I'll tell you nothing," I said. "You will have to wait until tonight,
and then----"
"Threatening us, are you?"
"No. I'm kind enough to warn you, that's all. I don't want you to go to
the meeting unprepared."
"Oh, so it has to do with my remarks to the freshmen candidates, has
it?"
"And mine?"
"I've given you all the warning that fair play demands," I said. "Look
to your consciences for means of defense." And, flinging a towel over my
shoulder, I darted away for my morning shower, leaving them in
possession of the room. When I came back, a few minutes later, it was
apparently empty, and I thought them gone.
I was almost dressed when I went into the clothes closet to select a tie
from the rack I had there. There was a sudden rustle and movement of the
clothes at the back of the dark little place. Two men closed in on me,
dragged me into the depths of the closet. I reached out blindly,
furiously. My fists hit only against the rows of my own clothes hanging
there. A couple of coat-hangers clattered down. I stumbled and fell over
my satchel. Then the door slammed shut. As I lay there, stunned, in the
darkness, I heard the key turning in the lock, from the outside. They
had sealed me in.
I had no doubts but they had been Sayer and Braley. Though I had never
imagined they would go as far as this--and the fools! what did they
think they could accomplish by locking me up for the day?
It was easy enough to breathe in the tiny, black square. I was in no
danger. I groped my way to the suitcase and sat down on it for a few
minutes. My head pained me terrifically. My forehead was hot. I put my
hand up to it and felt a fast-swelling bruise. My fingers grew wet with
something warm. It wasn't just perspiration.... I knew that--and that,
in the struggle, I must have hit my head against one of the hooks. Or
had one of them hit me in the dark with some sharp thing that he held in
his hands?
I stood up again unsteadily, found the door handle--yes, it was locked.
I was in my stocking feet; I could not kick through a panel. I reached
along the wall, found a hook. I flung the clothes from it, gave it both
my hands and all my strength in a sudden pull. It gave way with a
spurting of loosened plaster.
It was a large, heavy hook. It made a good ram. I crashed upon the two
upper panels with it. One of them split at length--and when I rammed the
ugly iron thing against it again, it broke into splinters and my arm
went through it. Light came through dimly--and, three minutes later, I
had knocked out the whole panel, climbed through and staggered out into
the room.
The mirror showed me a bad cut over my right eye. I staunched the flow
of blood as best I could. It was so humorous an incident--like one of
the famous adventures of Frank Merriwell!
I played it out, though. I did not go out of my room the whole day. In
the afternoon I telephoned Fred, the class president, about it. He came
over to see me--and he didn't treat it as lightly as I did. He wanted me
to have a doctor, for one thing. I promised I would see one, as soon as
the meeting was over, that night.
"You'd better," he said. "That cut is mighty close to some of the most
important nerves of the eye."
It was evening when I ventured out. Over in the big assembly hall the
meeting of the senior class had already begun. I stole across the campus
with my coat collar turned up and my hat far down to hide my face. I did
not want to be recognized until I was ready. I hung about outside the
ruddy windows of the hall, watching the crowded groups that sat within.
They were listening intently to someone on the platform that I could not
see--but I knew that it was Fred, presiding. Fred--and he was explaining
it all to them, perhaps, in that deep-voiced way of his.
Then, as I watched, I saw how the heads of all who sat within the scope
of my spying craned suddenly towards the side of the room. I knew what
that meant, too. It meant that either Sayer or Braley had risen from his
seat to make reply to the president's accusation.
Then, amazed, I heard applause and laughter. The muffled clapping of
hands went on for minutes. So they approved these things that the two
editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how
Sayer and Braley had crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front
of fifty other freshmen?
I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the
background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue--I wasn't
going to "stand aside" a moment longer!
I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at
the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights,
the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within--all of it
gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.
It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual
sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the
last of them--but that was enough:
"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two
poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less
a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way
of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community.
And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten
times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that,
then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real
Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has
instigated this protest against Sayer and myself, wishes to refute
this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."
He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.
I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated
during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so
famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the
vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to
come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door,
turned pale when he saw me now.
I went slowly to the front of the room. My eyes pained me and I was
nauseated. But I had ceased to tremble and was calm with a fury that
checked all nervousness.
"The Jew who instigated this protest is here to back it up," I said
slowly. "He is here to appeal to the 'real Anglo-Saxon fair play.'"
I could feel in the air the antagonism which I must down. I knew, as
never before, how bitter and insensate was the prejudice which I must
conquer by fifteen minutes of quiet words.
What I said doesn't count: I hardly remember most of it, anyhow. Before
me, as I talked, the faces swam away into a dim and meaningless strip. I
was not talking to these raw, swankering college boys. I was talking to
something beyond--to something that was infinitely brighter and more
glorious than I had ever known before. I was talking to something beyond
all earth--to Someone....
And I was appealing, was summoning, calling Him down to my aid. I was
speaking His words, in the spirit of His ancient fighting prophets. I
was fighting His fight. The calm frenzy in my heart was of His
instillation. For years I had sought Him. For years I had shunned Him,
knowing my need of Him. For all the days of my life I had borne the
fierce justice of His words as a lonely burden--and now, now....
"And I shall fight and fight," I cried, "in the name of God--the God
that is over all of us, of whatever race, creed or color--for the things
that are fair and right and just. I shall have justice for a little East
Side Jewish freshman as you shall have it, too."
Then suddenly, as if blinded by the refulgence of what I saw, my eyes
began to water and grow dim. I stood there, tense, and did not mind the
pain that was in them. But I could speak no more.
And slowly the men rose and went out, quietly, strangely--looking back
sometimes to where I stood--not comprehending everything, I suppose, but
moved beyond all common approbation. They had been conquered.
Braley remained alone with me in the deserted hall. I looked at him
across a row of seats and began to laugh.
"You didn't even say a word to them about that rotten trick we played on
you," he said, shamefacedly, his glib manners gone.
"I didn't have to," I replied. "Besides, I forgot."
"Well--er--thanks! You could have had us expelled!"
But the pain and dizziness were beyond standing now. I tore off my hat,
so that he had a glimpse of the long, sullen cut over my eye.
"Look out!" he cried, leaping up on the platform, to hold me--for I was
falling to the floor.
I remember laughing again, long but weakly. "I didn't have to! I didn't
have to!"
And after so much light, there came the darkness.
XX
THE CANDLES ARE LIGHTED
When I rose from a hospital bed of fever and darkness, ten days later,
it was with a feeling of rebirth--as if, in the dripping delirium of
threatened blindness, the last doubts had sloughed away.
And when the bandage was taken from my eyes, and I had, for the first
time in so long a while, a short and tempered bit of sunshine that came
through the shaded windows and across the clean, white floors, it was as
if I saw things, now, as I had never seen them--face to face.
I must not return immediately to college, the doctors said. There must
be another fortnight of convalescence, with absolute rest for my eyes.
They gave me my choice as to where I wanted to go--and I chose the
settlement. I should be among friends, down there; I should have the
sunny roof-garden to loiter in--and Jewish faces everywhere about me.
It was good old Trevelyan, squinting and stuttering and strangely moved,
who called for me in his car and took me away from the hospital. He had
wanted me to go to his Adirondack lodge, instead, and resigned me into
Mr. Richards' care at the settlement as if he were consigning me
reluctantly to one of the Inferno's inner limbos.
It was then the second day of the Jewish New Year. The whole teeming
neighborhood was in holiday garb and mood. From the roof that night Mr.
Richards and I stood watching the streets and their carnival crowds,
swarming indistinctly under the lamps and about the corners.
"The little people," quoted Mr. Richards, "God and the little people...."
"They are not little when they have God," I answered.
He nodded. "I was wrong in what I said in that argument of ours. Do you
remember? I said they didn't need their religion--that it was working
more harm than good among the younger generation. I've learned, now....
There isn't a person on earth that doesn't need it--all that he can get
of it--and these little people of the East Side most of all."
From below there rose to us the clang and clatter of traffic, the
indescribable rustle of the crowd, the shriek of a demon fire engine,
many streets away. But, above it all, we heard singing, on the floor
below us, of a solemn chant in rehearsal. It was the settlement Choral
Society, singing the plaintive "Kol Nidre"--and when the parts swelled
into unison, all other sounds seemed suddenly engulfed in the rich,
melancholy texture of the harmony.
Mr. Richards smiled. "There it is, you see: the grim, sad faith of the
Jewish people. It is all they have had in all their wanderings--but it
is everything."
* * * * *
The cut across my forehead healed quickly. Resting from all tasks, my
eyes regained their strength without relapse.
I had visitors. Several of the men from college came down each day. I
had not known there were so many persons who cared. Braley was among
them, once--and he sat and twisted his hat and said nothing. Whether or
not his friendship is worth anything to me, I have made a friend of him.
Once or twice, since then, he has tried to speak of the trick which he
and Sayer attempted, but I have stopped him. There is no need of going
over _that_.
Only, a few days after I went to the hospital, there was a long and
flowery retraction published in the college newspaper, inviting all
freshmen "of whatever race or creed to enter the editorial competition,
with the assurance that the most democratic principles would prevail."
At any rate, when Frank Cohen ran in to see me, on his way home, a few
days later, I advised him to re-enter the contest. Frank, with a
freshman's capacity for hero worship, leaped to act on my advice.
"And hurry up back to college," he said, with a little catch in his
voice. "There are twenty other Jewish underclassmen who want the same
sort of counsel from you. You see--they didn't know they had a
leader--and they do need one!"
It is not part of the tale, perhaps, but I cannot help intruding the
fact that Frank was the first freshman to be elected to the editorial
board of the college paper--and that, in his senior year, he became its
managing editor.
* * * * *
My aunt came, too. I had been secretly expecting her--hoping, perhaps,
for no especial reason, that she would come.
She wept a little at the sight of my healing scar. It was a long while
since I had seen her, and it shocked me--she looked so worn. She clung
to my hand for several minutes before she would speak.
"I read about it," she sobbed. "It was in the papers--and they said the
nicest things of you.... But I didn't come sooner because--because I
didn't know whether you wanted--you wanted--"
"Yes, Aunt Selina, I am very glad to see you."
She drew a deep sigh. "It has been so long--and I am growing old. I'm
just a lonely old woman, boy. And there's no comfort in old age."
I looked at her. She had changed much, I thought. "But you had so many
friends," I remonstrated. "All those intellectual society folk!"
"I don't know--they don't seem to interest me any more. I'm growing old.
That's all--old and lonely. And they are such fools, every one of
them--almost as foolish as I am--and hypocrites, all."
Her hand went tighter about mine, and her rheumy eyes sought mine and
searched them. "You seem so happy, boy--so changed. What's the secret of
it--can't you tell me?"
I shook my head. It would be of no use, I thought.
"I want it," she begged. "The comfort of it--I did not know I should
need it when I was old--and when all else fell away."
So I reached for a book which was on a table nearby, and gave it to her.
It was an old Union Prayer Book.
She took it with the barest flicker of lashes. "It's--it's Hebrew," she
protested. "I don't know how to read it."
"There is always an English translation on the opposite page," I showed
her. "You will be able to read that. Perhaps it will help you."
"Perhaps," she said after me, her thin voice quavering.
"Read it all. You will come at any rate to a better understanding of
your fellow Jews."
Her head went down, as if in shame of some unpleasant reminiscence.
"Perhaps--I will try, anyhow--and perhaps--"
"Aunt Selina," I told her hastily, "I am coming home to live with you at
the end of this college year. We shall begin all over again."
Then her tears began afresh. "I did not dare ask it--but oh, if you
could only know how I have wanted it--and for how long! I would have
prayed for it--yes, really, prayed for it--if I had only had someone to
pray to!"
And then, as if suddenly remembering, she hugged the shabby leather book
to her breast, and smiled.
But, before she left, I opened it up to show her why I prized this
particular copy. For, on the yellowed flyleaf in old ink, was the name,
"Isidore Levi." And below it, newly written, these words:
"_To a Jew who could not stand aside._"
He had sent it to me immediately after he had learned of that last
incident at college. And he did not need to explain where I had seen
this prayer book last.
* * * * *
Yom Kippur was my last day at the settlement before returning to
college. I went with Frank Cohen and his father to the service of their
orthodox congregation. The little synagogue, just off the Bowery, had
had to be abandoned, for once, in favor of a huge bare hall that usually
served political meetings. But, large as it was, it was packed tightly;
and from the gallery, where I stole once to look on, it seemed a vast
black sea--wave upon wave of derbies and shiny top hats, with the flicker
of white prayer shawls for froth. The prayers and the chantings came up
to me almost like mystic exhalations. The great, drab, smeared walls had
the splendor of the afternoon sun upon them; the cheap chairs, the
improvised altar, the temporary gilt ark behind it--the long gray beards
of the patriarchs, the wan faces of the fasting children--everything,
children--everything, every one had been gradually drenched in the glory
that poured through the windows.
It was the setting sun upon Israel--and Israel prayed and sang in the
gold of it.
* * * * *
I went back to college the next day. Mr. Richards and I had breakfast
together, so that we might say slowly and easily the last things that
were to be said.
"I'm glad you're going to finish it out," he began. "You've proved what
I once told you; that college isn't all child's play. Some things about
it are, of course." He paused a moment, a little embarrassed. "Trevelyan
phoned me last night, after you'd gone to bed."
"Yes? About me?"
"Well, in a way. He'd just come from one of our fraternity meetings. He
wanted to tell me that, when you are back, they will probably offer you
an election."
"What? To your fraternity?"
"Yes." He paused and watched me amusedly. "It doesn't seem to thrill
you."
I smiled back at him. "No, not the way I would have in freshman year."
"Yes--that's how I thought you'd feel. You needn't be afraid of hurting
my feelings--or Trevelyan's, either--by declining. They're a little too
late, aren't they?"
"Oh, it isn't that. I don't want them to think me ungrateful, you
see--but I've passed that stage. There are so many other things for me
to care about, now." I was thinking of Frank Cohen's remark about the
number of Jewish underclassmen who wanted counsel, leadership--and, now
more than ever, I was sure of myself.
"I understand," said Mr. Richards, shaking my hand at parting. "Good
luck to you--or better still, good faith to you! A man's work and a
man's God--you've found them at last."
* * * * *
That night, in my room at college, I found on the mantle shelf the big,
brass, seven-branched candlestick which I had seen in the room of the
class president. It was Fred's gift to me.
And, thinking of those years, I lit the seven candles, one by one, and
watched them struggle feebly, desperately, until all of them were calm
and bright, their flicker ended--until the Menorah, with its uplifted
arms, and all the little space about it, shone with a radiance that was
firm and beautiful.
+-----------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Typographical errors corrected in the text: |
| |
| Page 13 friendhsip changed to friendship |
| Page 22 aint changed to ain't |
| Page 32 is changed to it |
| Page 43 stifly changed to stiffly |
| Page 53 Sidney changed to Sydney |
| Page 54 Sidney changed to Sydney |
| Page 56 Sidney changed to Sydney |
| Page 69 "be began to laugh" changed to |
| "he began to laugh" |
| Page 80 occurences changed to occurrences |
| Page 115 checks changed to cheeks |
| Page 123 guesed changed to guessed |
| Page 182 relunctantly changed to reluctantly |
| Page 188 embarrased changed to embarrassed |
+-----------------------------------------------+