“Money for ship tickets!” stammered Moisheh. He drew forth a sweaty
moneybag that lay hid beneath his torn grey shirt and with trembling
hands began counting the greasy bills. “Only four hundred and
thirty-three dollars! Woe is me!” He cracked the knuckles of his
fingers in a paroxysm of grief. “It’s six hundred I got to have!”
“_Gottuniu!_ Listen to him only!” Hanneh Breineh shook Moisheh roughly.
“You’d think he was living by wild Indians--not by people with
hearts....”
“Boarders!” she called. “Moisheh’s old mother and his two brothers are
in Smirsk where there’s a pogrom.”
The word “pogrom” struck like a bombshell. From the sink, the
stove, they gathered, in various stages of undress, around Moisheh,
electrified into one bond of suffering brotherhood.
Hanneh Breineh, hand convulsively clutching her breast, began an
impassioned appeal. “Which from us here needs me to tell what’s a
pogrom? It drips yet the blood from my heart when I only begin to
remember. Only nine years old I was--the _pogromschiks_ fell on our
village.... Frightened!... You all know what’s to be frightened from
death--frightened from being burned alive or torn to pieces by wild
wolves--but what’s that compared to the cold shiverings that shook us
by the hands and feet when we heard the drunken Cossacks coming nearer
and nearer our hut. The last second my mother, like a crazy, pushed
me and my little sister into the chimney. We heard the house tremble
with shots--cries from my mother--father--then stillness. In the middle
of the black night my little sister and I crawled ourselves out to
see----” Hanneh Breineh covered her eyes as though to shut out the
hideous vision.
Again Hanneh Breineh’s voice arose. “I got no more breath for
words--only this--the last bite from our mouths, the last shirt from
our backs we got to take away to help out Moisheh. It’s not only
Moisheh’s old mother that’s out there--it’s our own old mother--our own
flesh-and-blood brothers.... Even I--beggar that I am--even I will give
my only feather bed to the pawn.”
A hush, and then a tumult of suppressed emotion. The room seethed with
wild longings of the people to give--to help--to ease their aching
hearts sharing Moisheh’s sorrow.
Shoolem, a grey, tottering ragpicker, brought forth a grimy cigar-box
full of change. “Here is all the pennies and nickels and dimes I was
saving and saving myself for fifteen years. I was holding by life on
one hope--the hope that some day I would yet die before the holy walls
from Jerusalem.” With the gesture of a Rothschild he waved it in the
air as he handed it over. “But here you got it, Moisheh. May it help to
bring your brothers in good luck to America!”
Sosheh, the finisher, turned aside as she dug into her stocking and
drew forth a crisp five-dollar bill. “That all I got till my next pay.
Only it should help them,” she gulped. “I wish I had somebody left
alive that I could send a ship ticket to.”
Zaretsky, the matchmaker, snuffed noisily a pinch of tobacco and pulled
from his overcoat pocket a book of War Savings stamps. “I got fourteen
dollars of American Liberty. Only let them come in good luck and I’ll
fix them out yet with the two grandest girls in New York.”
* * * * *
The ship bearing Moisheh’s family was to dock the next morning at
eleven o’clock. The night before Hanneh Breineh and all of us were busy
decorating the house in honour of the arrivals. The sound of hammering
and sweeping and raised, excited voices filled the air.
Sosheh, the finisher, standing on top of a soap box, was garnishing the
chandelier with red-paper flowers.
Hanneh Breineh tacked bright, checked oilcloth on top of the washtubs.
Zaretsky was nailing together the broken leg of the table.
“I should live so,” laughed Sosheh, her sallow face flushed with
holiday joy. “This kitchen almost shines like a parlour, but for only
this----” pointing to the sagging lounge where the stained mattress
protruded.
“_Shah!_ I’ll fix this up in a minute so it’ll look like new from
the store.” And Hanneh Breineh took out the red-flowered, Sabbath
tablecloth from the bureau and tucked it around the lounge.
Meantime Moisheh, his eyes popping with excitement, raised clouds of
dust as he swept dirt that had been gathering since Passover from the
corners of the room.
Unable to wait any longer for the big moment, he had been secretly
planning for weeks, zip! under the bed went the mountain of dirt, to be
followed by the broom, which he kicked out of sight.
“Enough with the cleaning!” he commanded. “Come only around,” and he
pulled out from the corner his Russian steamer basket.
“Oi--oi--oi--oi, and ai--ai!” the boarders shouted, hilariously. “Will
you treat us to a holiday cake maybe?”
“Wait only!” He gesticulated grandly as he loosened the lock.
One by one he held up and displayed the treasured trousseau which
little by little he had gathered together for his loved ones.
A set of red-woollen underwear for each of the brothers, and for his
mother a thick, grey shirt. Heavy cotton socks, a blue-checked apron,
and a red-velvet waist appeared next. And then--Moisheh was reduced
to guttural grunts of primitive joy as he unfolded a rainbow tie for
Feivel, the doctor, and pink suspenders for his “baby” brother.
Moisheh did not remove his clothes--no sleep for him that night. It
was still dark when the sound of his heavy shoes, clumping around the
kitchen as he cooked his breakfast, woke the rest of us.
“You got to come with me--I can’t hold myself together with so much
joy,” he implored. There was no evading his entreaties, so I promised
to get away as soon as I could and meet him at the dock.
I arrived at Ellis Island to find Moisheh stamping up and down like a
wild horse. “What are they holding them so long?” he cried, mad with
anxiety to reach those for whom he had so long waited and hungered.
I had to shake him roughly before I could make him aware of my
presence, and immediately he was again lost in his eager search of the
mob that crowded the gates.
The faces of the immigrants, from the tiniest babe at its mother’s
breast to the most decrepit old grey-haired man, were all stamped with
the same transfigured look--a look of those who gazed for the first
time upon the radiance of the dawn. The bosoms of the women heaved
with excitement. The men seemed to be expanding, growing with the surge
of realized hopes, of dreams come true. They inhaled deeply, eager to
fill their stifled bodies and souls with the first life-giving breath
of free air. Their eyes were luminous with hope, bewildered joy and
vague forebodings. A voice was heard above the shouted orders and
shuffling feet--above the clamour of the pressing crowds--“_Gott sei
dank!_” The pæan of thanksgiving was echoed and re-echoed--a pæan of
nations released--America.
I had to hold tight to the bars not to be trampled underfoot by the
crowd that surged through the gates. Suddenly a wild animal cry
tore from Moisheh’s throat. “_Mammeniu! Mammeniu!_” And a pair of
gorilla-like arms infolded a gaunt, wasted little figure wrapped in a
shawl.
“Moisheh! my heart!” she sobbed, devouring him with hunger-ravaged eyes.
“_Ach!_” She trembled--drawing back to survey her first-born. “From
the bare feet and rags of Smirsk to leather shoes and a suit like a
Rothschild!” she cried in Yiddish. “_Ach!_--I lived to see America!”
A dumb thing laughing and crying he stood there, a primitive figure,
pathetic, yet sublime in the purity of his passionate love, his first
love--his love for his mother.
The toil-worn little hand pulled at his neck as she whispered in
Moisheh’s ear, and as in a dream he turned with outstretched arms to
greet his brothers.
“Feivel--_mein_ doctor!” he cried.
“Yes, yes, we’re here,” said the high-browed young doctor in a tone
that I thought was a little impatient. “Now let’s divide up these
bundles and get started.” Moisheh’s willing arms reached out for the
heaviest sack.
“And here is my _teacherin_!” Moisheh’s grin was that of a small boy
displaying his most prized possession.
Berel, the baby, with the first down of young manhood still soft on his
cheeks, shyly enveloped my hand in his long, sensitive fingers. “How
nice for you to come--a _teacherin_--an _Amerikanerin_!”
“Well--are we going?” came imperiously from the doctor.
“Yeh--yeh!” answered Moisheh. “I’m so out of my head from joy, my
feet don’t work.” And, gathering the few remaining lighter packages
together, we threaded our way through the crowded streets--the two
newly arrived brothers walking silently together.
“Has Moisheh changed much?” I asked the doctor as I watched the big man
help his mother tenderly across the car tracks.
“The same Moisheh,” he said, with an amused, slightly superior air.
I looked at Berel to see if he was of the same cloth as the doctor, but
he was lost in dreamy contemplation of the towering sky-scrapers.
“Like granite mountains--the tower of Babel,” Berel mused aloud.
“How do they ever walk up to the top?” asked the bewildered old mother.
“Walk!” cried Moisheh, overjoyed at the chance to hand out information.
“There are elevators in America. You push a button and up you fly like
on wings.”
Elated with this opportunity to show off his superior knowledge, he
went on: “I learned myself to sign my name in America. Stop only and
I’ll read for you the sign from the lamp-post,” and he spelled aloud,
“W-a-l-l--Wall.”
“And what street is this?” asked the doctor, as we came to another
corner.
Moisheh coloured with confusion, and the eyes he raised to his brother
were like the eyes of a trapped deer pleading to be spared. “L-i-b----”
He stopped. “Oh, _weh_!” he groaned, “the word is too long for me.”
“Liberty,” scorned the doctor. “You are an _Amerikaner_ already and you
don’t know Liberty?”
His own humiliation forgot in pride of his brother’s knowledge, Moisheh
nodded his head humbly.
“Yeh--yeh! You a _greener_ and yet you know Liberty. And I, an
_Amerikaner_, is stuck by the word.” He turned to me with a pride that
brought tears to his eyes. “Didn’t I tell you my brothers were high
educated? Never mind--they won’t shame me in America.”
A look of adoration drank in the wonder of his beloved family. Overcome
with a sense of his own unworthiness, he exclaimed, “Look only on me--a
nothing and a nobody.” He breathed in my ear, “And such brothers!” With
a new, deeper tenderness, he pressed his mother’s slight form more
closely to him.
“More Bolsheviki!” scoffed a passer-by.
“Trotzky’s ambassadors,” sneered another.
And the ridicule was taken up by a number of jeering voices.
“Poor devils!” came from a richly dressed Hebrew, resplendent in
his fur collar and a diamond stud. There was in his eyes a wistful,
reminiscent look. Perhaps the sight of these immigrants brought back to
him the day he himself had landed, barefoot and in rags, with nothing
but his dreams of America.
The street was thronged with hurrying lunch seekers as we reached
lower Broadway. I glanced at Moisheh’s brothers, and I could not help
noticing how different was the calm and carefree expression of their
faces from the furtive, frantic acquisitive look of the men in the
financial district.
But the moment we reached our block the people from the stoops and
windows waved their welcome. Hanneh Breineh and all the boarders,
dressed up in their best, ran to meet us.
“Home!” cried the glowing Moisheh. “_Mazel-tuff!_ Good luck!” answered
Hanneh Breineh.
Instantly we were surrounded by the excited neighbours whose voices of
welcome rose above the familiar cries of the hucksters and pedlars that
lined the street.
“Give a help!” commanded Hanneh Breineh as she seized the bundles from
Moisheh’s numbed arms and divided them among the boarders. Then she led
the procession triumphantly into her kitchen.
The table, with a profusion of festive dishes, sang aloud its welcome.
“Rockefeller’s only daughter couldn’t wish herself grander eatings
by her own wedding,” bragged the hostess as she waved the travellers
to the feast. A brass pot filled with _gefulte_ fish was under the
festooned chandelier. A tin platter heaped high with chopped liver
and onions sent forth its inviting aroma. _Tzimmes_--_blintzes_--a
golden-roasted goose swimming in its own fat ravished the senses. Eyes
and mouths watered at sight of such luscious plenty.
“White bread!--_Ach!_--white bread!” gasped the hunger-ravaged old
mother. Reaching across the table, she seized the loaf in her trembling
hands. “All those starving years--all those years!” she moaned, kissing
its flaky whiteness as though it were a living thing.
“Sit yourself down--_mutterel_!” Hanneh Breineh soothed the old woman
and helped her into the chair of honour. “White bread--even white bread
is nothing in America. Even the charities--a black year on them!--even
the charities give white bread to the beggars.”
Moisheh, beaming with joy of his loved ones’ nearness, was so busy
passing and repassing the various dishes to his folks that he forgot
his own meal.
“_Nu_--ain’t it time for you also to sit yourself down like a person?”
urged Hanneh Breineh.
“_Tekeh--tekeh!_” added his mother. “Take something to your mouth.”
Thereupon Moisheh rolled up his sleeves and with the zest of a hungry
caveman attacked the leg of a goose. He no sooner finished than he bent
ravenously over the meat platter, his forehead working in rhythm to his
jaws.
“Excuse me,” stammered Moisheh, wiping his lips with the end of his
shirt-sleeve and sticking the meat on a fork.
“What’s the difference how you eat so long you got what to eat?” broke
in Zaretsky, grabbing the breast of the goose and holding it to his
thick lips.
His sensibilities recoiling at this cannibalistic devouring of food,
Berel rose and walked to the air-shaft window. His arms shot out as
though to break down the darkening wall which blotted out the daylight
from the little room. “Plenty of food for the body, but no light for
the soul,” he murmured, not intending to be heard.
Feivel, the doctor, lit a cigarette and walked up and down the room
restlessly. He stopped and faced his younger brother with a cynical
smile. “I guess America is like the rest of the world--you get what you
take--sunlight as well as other things----”
“How take sunlight? What do you mean?”
“I mean America is like a dish of cheese _blintzes_ at a poor house.
The beggars who are the head of the table and get their hands in first,
they live and laugh----”
Hanneh Breineh wiped her lips with the corner of her apron and faced
him indignantly. “You ain’t yet finished with your first meal in
America and already you’re blowing from yourself like it’s coming to
you yet better.”
“But why come to America?” defended Berel, the poet, “unless it gives
you what’s lacking in other lands? Even in the darkest days in Russia
the peasants had light and air.”
“Hey, Mr. Greenhorn Doctor--and you, young feller,” broke in Zaretsky,
the block politician, “if you don’t like it here, then the President
from America will give you a free ride back on the same ship on which
you came from.”
Silenced by Zaretsky’s biting retort, the doctor lit a cigarette and
sent leisurely clouds of smoke ceilingward.
Moisheh, who had been too absorbed in his food to follow the talk,
suddenly looked up from his plate. Though unable to grasp the trend of
the conversation, he intuitively sensed the hostile feeling in the room.
“Why so much high language,” he asked, “when there’s yet the nuts and
raisins and the almonds to eat?”
* * * * *
A few months later Hanneh Breineh came into my room while peeling
potatoes in her apron. “Greenhorns ain’t what greenhorns used to be,”
she said, as she sat down on the edge of my cot. “Once when greenhorns
came, a bone from a herring, a slice from an onion, was to them milk
and honey; and now pour golden chicken fat into their necks, and they
turn up their nose like it’s coming to them yet better.”
“What is it now?” I laughed.
Hanneh Breineh rose. “Listen only to what is going on,” she whispered,
as she noiselessly pushed open the door and winked to me to come over
and hear.
“I’m yet in debt over my neck. In God’s name, how could you spend out
so much money for only a little pleasure,” remonstrated Moisheh.
“Do you think I’m a _schnorrer_ like you? I’m a man, and I have to
live,” retorted the doctor.
“But two dollars for one evening in the opera only, when for ten cents
you could have seen the grandest show in the movies!”
The doctor’s contemptuous glance softened into a look of condescending
pity. “After all, my presser of pants, what a waste the opera would be
on you. Your America is the movies.”
“Two dollars!” cried the little old mother, wringing her hands
despairingly. “Moisheh didn’t yet pay out for the ship tickets.”
“Ship tickets--bah!--I wish he had never brought us to this golden
country--dirt, darkness, houses like stalls for cattle!” And in a
fury of disgust, not unmitigated with shame at his loss of temper, he
slammed the door behind him.
“_Oi weh!_” wailed the careworn old mother. “Two dollars for an opera,
and in such bad times!”
“_Ach! Mammeniu_,” Moisheh defended, “maybe Feivel ain’t like us.
Remember he’s high-educated. He needs the opera like I need the bite of
bread. Maybe even more yet. I can live through without even the bite of
bread, but Feivel must have what wills itself in him.”
Hanneh Breineh closed the door and turned to me accusingly. “What’s the
use from all your education, if that’s what kind of people it makes?”
“Yes,” I agreed with Hanneh Breineh. “Education without heart is a
curse.”
Hanneh Breineh bristled. “I wish I should only be cursed with an
education. It’s only by the Americans education is nothing. It used to
be an honour in Russia to shine a doctor’s shoes for him.”
“So you’re for education, after all?” I ventured, trying the
impossible--to pin Hanneh Breineh down.
“Bloodsuckers!” Hanneh Breineh hissed. “Moisheh dries out the marrow
from his head worrying for the dollar, and these high-educated brothers
sit themselves on top of his neck like leeches. Greenhorns--opera--the
world is coming to an end!”
Work with the Immigration Department took me to Washington for almost
a year. As soon as I returned to New York I went to the only home I
knew--Hanneh Breineh’s lodging-house.
My old friend, Moisheh, greeted me at the door. “_Teacherin!_” he
cried, with a shout of welcome, and then called to his mother. “Come
quick. See only who is here!”
Sleeves rolled up and hands full of dough, the little soul hurried in.
“The sky is falling to the earth!” she cried. “You here? And are you
going to stay?”
“Sure will she stay,” said Moisheh, helping me remove my things.
“And where are Hanneh Breineh and the boarders?” I questioned.
“Out on a picnic by Coney Island.”
“And why didn’t you and your mother go?”
“I got to cook Feivel’s dinner,” she gesticulated with doughy palms.
“And I got my Coney Island here,” said Moisheh.
To my great delight I saw he had been reading the life of Lincoln--the
book I had left him the day I went away.
“My head is on fire thinking and dreaming from Lincoln. It shines
before my face so real, I feel myself almost talking to him.”
Moisheh’s eyes were alive with light, and as I looked at him I felt
for the first time a strange psychic resemblance between Moisheh and
Lincoln. Could it be that the love for his hero had so transformed him
as to make him almost resemble him?
“Lincoln started life as a nothing and a nobody,” Moisheh went on,
dreamily, “and he made himself for the President from America--maybe
there’s yet a chance for me to make something from myself?”
“Sure there is. Show only what’s in you and all America reaches out to
help you.”
“I used to think that I’d die a presser by pants. But since I read
from Lincoln, something happened in me. I feel I got something for
America--only I don’t know how to give it out. I’m yet too much of a
dummox----”
“What’s in us must come out. I feel America needs you and me as much as
she needs her Rockefellers and Morgans. Rockefellers and Morgans only
pile up mountains of money; we bring to America the dreams and desires
of ages--the youth that never had a chance to be young--the choked
lives that never had a chance to live.”
A shadow filmed Moisheh’s brooding eyes. “I can’t begin yet to think
from myself for a few years. First comes my brothers. If only Feivel
would work for himself up for a big doctor and Berel for a big writer
then I’ll feel myself free to do something....
“Shah! I got great news for you,” Moisheh announced. “Feivel has
already his doctor’s office.”
“Where did he get all the money?”
“On the instalment plan I got him the chair and the office things. Now
he’s beginning to earn already enough to pay almost half his rent.”
“Soon he’ll be for dinner.” The old lady jumped up. “I got to get his
eating ready before he comes.” And she hastened back to the kitchen
stove.
“And Berel--what does he do?” I inquired.
“Berel ain’t working yet. He’s still writing from his head,” explained
Moisheh. “Wait only and I’ll call him. He’s locked himself up in his
bedroom; nobody should bother him.”
“Berel!” he called, tapping respectfully at the door.
“_Yuk!_” came in a voice of nervous irritation. “What is it?”
“The _teacherin_ is here,” replied Moisheh.
“Only a minute.”
“It’s me,” I added. “I’d like to see you.”
Berel came out, hair dishevelled, with dreamy, absent look, holding
pencil and paper in his hand. “I was just finishing a poem,” he said in
greeting to me.
“I have been looking for your name in the magazines. Have you published
anything yet?”
“I--publish in the American magazines?” he flung, hurt beyond words. “I
wouldn’t mix my art with their empty drivel.”
“But, surely, there are some better magazines,” I protested.
“Pshah! Their best magazines--the pink-and-white jingles that they call
poetry are not worth the paper they’re printed on. America don’t want
poets. She wants plumbers.”
“But what will you do with the poetry you write?”
“I’ll publish it myself. Art should be free, like sunlight and beauty.
The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry
hearts. If only Moisheh could give me the hundred dollars I’d have my
volume printed at once.”
“But how can I raise all that money when I’m not yet paid out with
Feivel’s doctor’s office?” remonstrated Moisheh. “Don’t you think
if--maybe you’d get a little job?”
An expression of abstraction came over Betel’s face, and he snapped,
impatiently: “Yes--yes--I told you that I would look for a job. But I
must write this while I have the inspiration.”
“Can’t you write your inspiration out in the evening?” faltered
Moisheh. “If you could only bring in a few dollars a week to help pay
ourselves out to the instalment man.”
Berel looked at his brother with compassionate tolerance. “What are to
you the things of the soul? All you care for is money--money--money!
You’d want me to sell my soul, my poetry, my creative fire--to hand you
a few dirty dollars.”
The postman’s whistle and the cry, “Berel Cinski!”
Moisheh hurried downstairs and brought back a large return envelope.
“Another one of those letters back,” deplored the mother, untactfully.
“You’re only for making the post office rich with the stamps from
Moisheh’s blood money.”
“Dammit!” Defeat enraged the young poet to the point of brutality.
“Stop nagging me and mixing in with things you don’t understand!” He
struck the rude table with his clenched fist. “It’s impossible to live
with you thickheads--numskulls--money-grubbing worms.”
He threw on his hat and coat and paused for a moment glowering in the
doorway. “Moisheh,” he demanded, “give me a quarter for car fare. I
have to go uptown to the library.” Silently the big brother handed him
the money, and Berel flung himself out of the room.
The door had no sooner closed on the poet than the doctor sauntered
into the room. After a hasty “Hallo!” he turned to Moisheh. “I’ve had a
wonderful opportunity offered me--but I can’t take advantage of it.”
“What!” cried Moisheh, his face brightening.
“My landlord invited me to his house to-night, to meet his only
daughter.”
“Why not go?” demanded Moisheh.
“Sure you got to go,” urged the mother, as she placed the food before
him. “The landlord only got to see how smart you are and he’ll pull
you in the richest customers from uptown.”
Feivel looked at his clothes with resigned contempt. “H--m,” he smiled
bitterly. “Go in this shabby suit? I have too much respect for myself.”
There was troubled silence. Both brother and mother were miserable that
their dear one should be so deprived.
Moisheh moved over to the window, a worried look on his face. Presently
he turned to his brother. “I’d give you the blood from under my nails
for you but I’m yet so behind with the instalment man.”
The doctor stamped his foot impatiently. “I simply have to have a suit!
It’s a question of life and death.... Think of the chance! The landlord
took a liking to me--rich as Rockefeller--and an only daughter. If he
gives me a start in an uptown office I could _coin_ money. All I need
is a chance--the right location. Ten--twenty--fifty dollars an hour.
There’s no limit to a dentist’s fee. If he sets me up on Riverside
Drive I could charge a hundred dollars for work I get five for in
Rutgers Street!”
“Can I tear myself in pieces? Squeeze the money from my flesh?”
“But do you realize that, once I get uptown, I could earn more in an
hour than you could in a month? I’ll pay you back every penny a hundred
times over.”
“_Nu_--tell me only--what can I do? Anything you’ll say----”
“Why--you have your gold watch.”
Moisheh’s hand leaped to the watch in his vest pocket. “My gold
watch! My prize from the night school?” he pleaded. “It ain’t just a
watch--it’s given me by the principal for never being absent for a
whole year.”
“Oh, rot!--you, with your sentimentality! Try to understand something
once.” The doctor waved his objections aside. “Once I get my start in
an uptown office I can buy you a dozen watches. I’m telling you my
whole future depends on the front I put up at the landlord’s house, and
still you hesitate!”
Moisheh looked at his watch, fingering it. His eyes filled with tears.
“_Oi weh!_” he groaned. “It’s like a piece from my heart. My prize from
the night school,” he mumbled, brokenly; “but take it if you got to
have it.”
“You’ll get it back,” confidently promised the doctor, “get it back
a hundred times over.” And as he slipped the watch into his pocket,
Moisheh’s eyes followed it doggedly. “So long, _mammeniu_; no dinner
for me to-day.” Feivel bestowed a hasty good-bye caress upon his old
mother.
* * * * *
The doctor was now living in an uptown boarding-house, having moved
some weeks before, giving the excuse that for his business it was
necessary to cultivate an uptown acquaintance. But he still kept up his
office in Rutgers Street.
One morning after he had finished treating my teeth, he took up a
cigarette, nervously lit it, attempted to smoke, and then threw
it away. I had never seen the suave, complacent man so unnerved
and fidgety. Abruptly he stopped in front of me and smiled almost
affectionately.
“You are the very person I want to speak to this morning--you are the
only person I want to speak to,” he repeated.
I was a little startled, for his manner was most unlike him. Seldom did
he even notice me, just as he did not notice most of Moisheh’s friends.
But his exuberant joyousness called out my instinctive response, and
before I knew it I was saying, “If there’s anything I can do for you
I’ll be only too happy.”
He took a bill from his pocket, placed it in my hand, and said, with
repressed excitement: “I want you to take my mother and Moisheh to see
‘Welcome Stranger.’ It’s a great show. It’s going to be a big night
with me, and I want them to be happy, too.”
I must have looked puzzled, for he narrowed his eyes and studied me,
twice starting to speak, and both times stopping himself.
“You must have thought me a selfish brute all this time,” he began.
“But I’ve only been biding my time. I must make the most of myself, and
now is my only chance--to rise in the world.”
He stopped again, paced the floor several times, placed a chair before
me, and said: “Please sit down. I want to talk to you.”
There was a wistful pleading in his voice that none could resist, and
for the first time I was aware of the compelling humanness of this
arrogant intellectual.
“I’ll tell you everything just as it is,” he started. And then he
stopped again. “_Ach!_” he groaned. “There’s something I would like
to talk over with you--but I just can’t. You wouldn’t understand....
A great thing is happening in my life to-night--but I can’t confide
it to anyone--none can understand. But--I ask of you just this: will
you give Moisheh and my mother a good time? Let the poor devils enjoy
themselves for once?”
As I walked out of the office, the bill still crumpled in my hand,
I reproached myself for my former harsh condemnation of the doctor.
Perhaps all those months, when I had thought him so brutally selfish,
he had been building for the future.
But what was this mysterious good fortune that he could not confide to
anyone--and that none could understand?
“Doctor Feivel gave me money to take you to the theatre,” I announced
as I entered the house.
“Theatre!” chorused Moisheh and his mother, excitedly.
“Yes,” I said. “Feivel seemed so happy to-day, and he wanted you to
share his happiness.”
“Feivel, the golden heart!” The old mother’s eyes were misty with
emotion.
“_Ach!_ Didn’t I tell you even if my brother is high-educated, he
won’t shame himself from us?” Moisheh faced me triumphantly. “I was so
afraid since he moved himself into an uptown boarding-house that maybe
we are losing him, even though he still kept up his office on Rutgers
Street.” Moisheh’s eyes shone with delight.
“I’ll tell you a little secret,” said he, leaning forward
confidentially. “I’m planning to give a surprise to Feivel. In another
month I’ll pay myself out for the last of Feivel’s office things. And
for days and nights I’m going around thinking and dreaming about buying
him an electric sign. Already I made the price with the instalment man
for it.” By this time his recital was ecstatic. “And think only--what
_mein_ doctor will say, when he’ll come one morning from his uptown
boarding-house and find my grand surprise waiting for him over his
office door!”
All the way to the theatre Moisheh and his mother drank in the glamour
and the glitter of the electric signs of Broadway.
“_Gottuniu!_ If I only had the money for such a sign for Feivel,”
Moisheh sighed, pointing to the chewing-gum advertisement on the roof
of a building near the Astor. “If I only had Rockefeller’s money, I’d
light up America with Feivel’s doctor sign!”
When we reached the theatre, we found we had come almost an hour too
early.
“Never mind--_mammeniu_!” Moisheh took his mother’s arm tenderly.
“We’ll have time now to walk ourselves along and see the riches and
lights from America.”
“I should live so,” he said, surveying his mother affectionately. “That
red velvet waist and this new shawl over your head makes your face so
shine, everybody stops to give a look on you.”
“Yeh--yeh! You’re always saying love words to every woman you see.”
“But this time it’s my mother, so I mean it from my heart.”
Moisheh nudged me confidentially. “_Teacherin!_ See only how a little
holiday lifts up my _mammeniu_! Don’t it dance from her eyes the joy
like from a young girl?”
“Stop already making fun from your old mother.”
“You old?” Moisheh put his strong arm around his mother’s waist. “Why,
people think we’re a young couple on our honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon--_ach_!” The faded face shone with inward visioning. “My
only wish is to see for my eyes my sons marry themselves in good luck.
What’s my life--but only the little hope from my children? To dance
with the bride on my son’s wedding will make me the happiest mother
from America.”
“Feivel will soon give you that happiness,” responded Moisheh. “You
know how the richest American-born girls are trying to catch on to him.
And no matter how grand the girl he’ll marry himself to, you’ll have
the first place of honour by the wedding.”
As we turned in at Forty-fifth Street a curious crowd blocked our path.
A row of sleek limousines stood before the arched entrance of the Van
Suydden Hotel.
“Look only--a wedding! Let’s give a look on the bride!” exclaimed
Moisheh’s mother, eagerly. A wedding was, in her religion, the most
significant ceremony in life. And for her sake we elbowed our way
towards the front.
A procession of bridesmaids in shimmering chiffons, bedecked with
flowers, were the first to tread the carpeted steps.
Then we saw the bride.... And then----Good God!--was it possible?
Moisheh clutched his mother’s hand convulsively. Could it really be
their Feivel?
The two stood gaping blindly, paralysed by the scene before them.
Suddenly--roused by the terrible betrayal--the mother uttered a
distorted sob of grief. “Feivel--son _mein_! What have you done to me?”
Moisheh grasped the old woman more firmly as the bride tossed her head
coquettishly and turned possessive eyes on her husband--their son and
brother.
The onlookers murmured appreciatively, thrilled by the pretty romance.
Enraged by the stupid joy of the crowd which mocked her misery, the old
mother broke from Moisheh’s hold with wiry strength and clawed wildly
at the people around her.
“Feivel--black curses----!” she hissed--and then she crumpled,
fainting, into Moisheh’s arms.
Unaware of the disturbance outside, the happy couple passed into the
festive reception hall.
With quick self-control, Moisheh motioned to a taxicab out of which had
just emerged another wedding guest. Then he gently lifted the fainting
form of the little mother in beside him.
And all through the night the bitter tears of betrayed motherhood
poured over the shrunken bosom where Feivel, as a suckling infant, had
once helped himself to life.