When the pain in Jack's heart over Ruth became unbearable, there was
always one refuge left--one balm which never failed to soothe, and that
was Peter.
For though he held himself in readiness for her call, being seldom
absent lest she might need his services, their constrained intercourse
brought with it more pain than pleasure. It was then that he longed for
the comfort which only his dear mentor could give.
On these occasions Mrs. McGuffey would take the lace cover off Miss
Felicia's bureau, as a matter of precaution, provided that lady was
away and the room available, and roll in a big tub for the young
gentleman--“who do be washin' hisself all the time and he that sloppy
that I'm afeared everything will be spi'lt for the mistress,” and Jack
would slip out of his working clothes (he would often come away in his
flannel shirt and loose tie, especially when he was late in paying off)
and shed his heavy boots with the red clay of Jersey still clinging to
their soles, and get into his white linen and black clothes and dress
shoes, and then the two chums would lock arms and saunter up Fifth
Avenue to dine either at one of Peter's clubs or at some house where
he and that “handsome young ward of yours, Mr. Grayson--do bring him
again,” were so welcome.
If Miss Felicia was in town and her room in use, there was never any
change in the programme, Mrs. McGuffey rising to the emergency and
discovering another and somewhat larger apartment in the next house
but two--“for one of the finest gintlemen ye ever saw and that quiet,”
etc.--into which Jack would move and which the good woman would insist
on taking full charge of herself.
It was on one of these blessed and always welcome nights, after the
two had been dining at “a little crack in the wall,” as Peter called a
near-by Italian restaurant, that he and Jack stopped to speak to Isaac
Cohen whom they found closing his shop for the night. Cohen invited
them in and Jack, after following the little tailor through the
deserted shop--all the work people had left--found himself, to his great
surprise, in a small room at the rear, which Isaac opened with a key
taken from his vest pocket, and which even in the dim light of a single
gas jet had more the appearance of the den of a scholar, or the workshop
of a scientist, than the private office of a fashioner of clothes.
Peter only stayed a moment--long enough to borrow the second volume of
one of Isaac's books, but the quaint interior and what it contained
made a great impression on Jack,--so much so that when the two had
said good-night and mounted the stairs to Peter's rooms, it was with
increased interest that the boy listened to the old fellow who stopped
on every landing to tell him some incident connected with the little
tailor and his life: How after his wife's death some years before, and
his only daughter's marriage--“and a great affair it was, my boy, I was
there and know,”--Cohen had moved down to his shop and fitted up the
back room for a little shelter of his own, where he had lived with his
books and his personal belongings and where he had met the queerest
looking people--with big heads and bushy beards--foreigners, some of
them--speaking all kinds of languages, as well as many highly educated
men in town.
Once inside his own cosey rooms Peter bustled about, poking the fire
into life, drawing the red curtains closer, moving a vase of roses so he
could catch their fragrance from where he sat, wheeling two big, easy,
all-embracing arm-chairs to the blaze, rolling a small table laden
with various burnables and pourables within reach of their elbows, and
otherwise disporting himself after the manner of the most cheery
and lovable of hosts. This done, he again took up the thread of his
discourse.
“Yes! He's a wonderful old fellow, this Isaac Cohen,” he rattled on when
the two were seated. “You had only a glimpse of that den of his, but you
should see his books on costumes,--he's an authority, you know,--and
his miniatures,--Oh, a Cosway, which he keeps in his safe, that is a
wonder!--and his old manuscripts. Those are locked up too. And he's a
gentleman, too, Jack; not once in all the years I have known him have
I ever heard him mention the word money in an objectionable way, and he
has plenty of it even if he does press off my coat with his own hands.
Can you recall anybody you know, my boy--even in the houses where you
and I have been lately, who doesn't let the word slip out in a dozen
different ways before the evening is over? And best of all, he's
sane,--one of the few men whom it is safe to let walk around loose.”
“And you like him?”
“Immensely.”
“And you never remember he is a Jew?” This was one of the things Jack
had never understood.
“Never;--that's not his fault,--rather to his credit.”
“Why?”
“Because the world is against both him and his race, and yet in all the
years I have known him, nothing has ever soured his temper.”
Jack struck a match, relit his cigar and settling himself more
comfortably in his chair, said in a positive tone:
“Sour or sweet,--I don't like Jews,--never did.”
“You don't like him because you don't know him. That's your fault, not
his. But you would like him, let me tell you, if you could hear him
talk. And now I think of it, I am determined you shall know him, and
right away. Not that he cares--Cohen's friends are among the best men in
London, especially the better grade of theatrical people, whose
clothes he has made and whose purses he has kept full--yes--and whom he
sometimes had to bury to keep them out of Potter's field; and those he
knows here--his kind of people, I mean, not yours.”
“All in his line of business, Uncle Peter,” Jack laughed. “How much
interest did they pay,--cent per cent?”
“I am ashamed of you, Jack. Not a penny. Don't let your mind get clogged
up, my boy, with such prejudices,--keep the slate of your judgment
sponged clean.”
“But you believe everybody is clean, Uncle Peter.”
“And so must you, until you prove them dirty. Now, will you do me a very
great kindness and yourself one as well? Please go downstairs, rap three
times at Mr. Cohen's shutters--hard, so that he can hear you--that's my
signal--present my compliments and ask him to be kind enough to come up
and have a cigar with us.”
Jack leaned forward in his seat, his face showing his astonishment.
“You don't mean it?”
“I do.”
“All right.”
The boy was out of his chair and clattering down-stairs before Peter
could add another word to his message. If he had asked him to crawl out
on the roof and drop himself into the third-story window of the next
house, he would have obeyed him with the same alacrity.
Peter wheeled up another chair; added some small and large glasses to
the collection on the tray and awaited Jack's return. The experience
was not new. The stupid, illogical prejudice was not confined to
inexperienced lads.
He had had the same thing to contend with dozens of times before. Even
Holker had once said: “Peter, what the devil do you find in that little
shrimp of a Hebrew to interest you? Is he cold that you warm him, or
hungry that you feed him,--or lonely that--”
“Stop right there, Holker! You've said it,--lonely--that's it--LONELY!
That's what made me bring him up the first time he was ever here.
It seemed such a wicked thing to me to have him at one end of the
house--the bottom end, too--crooning over a fire, and I at the top end
crooning over another, when one blaze could warm us both. So up he came,
Holker, and now it is I who am lonely when a week passes and Isaac does
not tap at my door, or I tap at his.”
The distinguished architect understood it all a week later when the
new uptown synagogue was being talked of and he was invited to meet the
board, and found to his astonishment that the wise little man with the
big gold spectacles, occupying the chair was none other than Peter's
tailor.
“Our mutual friend Mr. Grayson, of the Exeter Bank, spoke to me about
you, Mr. Morris,” said the little man without a trace of foreign accent
and with all the composure of a great banker making a government loan;
rising at the same time, with great dignity introducing Morris to his
brother trustees and then placing him in the empty seat next his own.
After that, and on more than one occasion, there were three chairs
around Peter's blaze, with Morris in one of them.
All these thoughts coursed through Peter's head as Jack and Cohen were
mounting the three flights of stairs.
“Ah, Isaac,” he cried at first sight of his friend, “I just wanted you
to know my boy, Jack Breen, better, and as his legs are younger than
mine, I sent him down instead of going myself--you don't mind, do you?”
“Mind!--of course I do not mind,--but I do know Mr. Breen. I first met
him many months ago--when your sister was here--and then I see him going
in and out all the time--and--”
“Stop your nonsense, Isaac;--that's not the way to know a man; that's
the way not to know him, but what's more to the point is, I want Jack to
know you. These young fellows have very peculiar ideas about a good many
things,--and this boy is like all the rest--some of which ought to
be knocked out of his head,--your race, for one thing. He thinks that
because you are a Jew that you--”
Jack uttered a smothered, “Oh, Uncle Peter!” but the old fellow who now
had the tailor in one of his big chairs and was filling a thin wineglass
with a brown liquid (ten years in the wood)--Holker sent it--kept
straight on. “Jack's all right inside, or I wouldn't love him, but there
are a good many things he has got to learn, and you happen to be one of
them.”
Cohen lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“Do not mind him, Mr. Breen,--do not mind a word he says. He mortifies
me that same way. And now--” here he turned his head to Peter--“what
does he think of my race?”
“Oh! He thinks you are a lot of money-getters and pawnbrokers, gouging
the poor and squeezing the rich.”
Jack broke out into a cold perspiration: “Really, Uncle Peter! Now,
Mr. Cohen, won't you please believe that I never said one word of it,”
exclaimed Jack in pleading tones, his face expressing his embarrassment.
“I never said you did, Jack,” rejoined Peter with mock solemnity in his
voice. “I said you THOUGHT so. And now here he is,--look at him. Does he
look like Scrooge or Shylock or some old skinflint who--” here he faced
Cohen, his eyes brimming with merriment--“What are we going to do with
this blasphemer, Isaac? Shall we boil him in oil as they did that old
sixteenth-century saint you were telling me about the other night, or
shall we--?”
The little tailor threw out his hands--each finger an exclamation
point--and laughed heartily, cutting short Peter's tirade.
“No--no--we do none of these dreadful things to Mr. Breen; he is too
good to be a saint,” and he patted Jack's knees--“and then again it
is only the truth. Mr. Breen is quite right; we are a race of
money-getters, and we are also the world's pawnbrokers and will always
be. Sometimes we make a loan on a watch or a wedding ring to keep
some poor soul from starving; sometimes it is a railroad to give a
millionaire a yacht, or help buy his wife a string of pearls. It is
quite the same, only over one shop we hang three gilt balls: on the
other we nail a sign which reads: 'Financial Agents.' And it is the
same Jew, remember, who stands behind both counters. The first Jew is
overhauled almost every day by the police; the second Jew is regarded
as our public-spirited citizen. So you see, my young friend, that it is
only a question of the amount of money you have got whether you loan on
rings or railroads.”
“And whether the Christian lifts his hat or his boot,” laughed Peter.
Cohen leaned his elbows on his plump knees and went on, the slender
glass still in his hand, from which now and then he took a sip. Peter
sat buried in his chair, his cigar between his fingers. Jack held his
peace; it was not for him to air his opinions in the presence of the two
older men, and then again the tailor had suddenly become a savant.
“Of course, there are many things I wish were different,” the tailor
continued in a more thoughtful tone. “Many of my people forget their
birthright and force themselves on the Christian, trying to break down
the fence which has always divided us, and which is really our
best protection. As long as we keep to ourselves we are a power.
Persecution,--and sometimes it amounts to that--is better than
amalgamation; it brings out our better fighting qualities and makes us
rely on ourselves. This is the view of our best thinkers, and they are
right. Just hear me run on! Why talk about these things? They are
for graybeards, not young fellows with the world before them.” Cohen
straightened up--laid his glass on the small table, waved his hand in
denial to Peter who started to refill it, and continued, turning to
Jack: “And now let me hear something about your own work, Mr. Breen,” he
said in his kindest and most interested voice. “Mr. Grayson tells me you
are cutting a great tunnel. Under a mountain, is it not? Ah!--that is
something worth doing. And here is this old uncle of yours with his
fine clothes and his old wine, who does nothing but pore over his musty
bank-books, and here am I in the cellar below, who can only sew on
buttons, and yet we have the impudence to criticise you. Really, I never
heard of such conceit!”
“Oh!--but it isn't my tunnel,” Jack eagerly protested, greatly amused
at the Jew's talk; “I am just an assistant, Mr. Cohen.” Somehow he had
grown suddenly smaller since the little man had been talking.
“Yes,--of course, we are all assistants; Mr. Grayson assists at the
bank, and I assist my man, Jacob, who makes such funny mistakes in the
cut of his trousers. Oh, yes, that is quite the way life is made up. But
about this tunnel? It is part of this new branch, is it not? Some of
my friends have told me about it. And it is going straight through the
mountain.”
And then before Jack or Peter could reply the speaker branched out into
an account of the financing of the great Mt. Cenis tunnel, and why
the founder of the house of Rothschild, who had “assisted” in its
construction, got so many decorations from foreign governments; the talk
finally switching off to the enamelled and jewelled snuff boxes of Baron
James Rothschild, whose collection had been the largest in Europe; and
what had become of it; and then by one of those illogical jumps--often
indulged in by well-informed men discussing any subject that absorbs
them--brought up at Voltaire and Taine and the earlier days of the
Revolution in which one of the little tailor's ancestors had suffered
spoliation and death.
Jack sat silent--he had long since found himself out of his
depth--drinking in every word of the talk, his wonderment increasing
every moment, not only over Cohen, but over Peter as well, whom he had
never before heard so eloquent or so learned, or so entertaining.
When at last the little man rose to go, the boy, with one of those
spontaneous impulses which was part of his nature, sprang from his seat,
found the tailor's hat himself, and conducting him to the door, wished
him good-night with all the grace and well-meant courtesy he would show
a prince of the blood, should he ever be fortunate enough to meet one.
Peter was standing on the mat, his back to the fire, when the boy
returned.
“Jack, you delight me!” the old fellow cried. “Your father couldn't have
played host better. Really, I am beginning to believe I won't have to
lock you up in an asylum. You're getting wonderfully sane, my boy,--real
human. Jack, do you know that if you keep on this way I shall really
begin to love you!”
“But what an extraordinary man,” exclaimed Jack, ignoring Peter's
compliment and badinage. “Is there anything he does not know?”
“Yes,--many things. Oh! a great many things. He doesn't know how to be
rude, or ill bred, or purse-proud. He doesn't know how to snub people
who are poorer than he is, or to push himself in where he isn't
wanted; or to talk behind people's backs after he has accepted their
hospitality. Just plain gentleman journeyman tailor, Jack. And now, my
boy, be honest. Isn't he a relief after some of the people you and I
meet every day?”
Jack settled again in his chair. His mind was not at all easy.
“Yes, he is, and that makes me afraid I was rude. I didn't mean to be.”
“No,--you acted just right. I wanted to draw him out so you could hear,
and you must say that he was charming. And the best of it is that he
could have talked equally well on a dozen other subjects.”
For some time Jack did not answer. Despite Peter's good opinion of him,
he still felt that he had either said or done something he should be
ashamed of. He knew it was his snap judgment about Cohen that had been
the cause of the object lesson he had just received. Peter had not
said so in so many words--it was always with a jest or a laugh that he
corrected his faults, but he felt their truth all the same.
For some minutes he leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling;
then he said in a tone of conviction:
“I WAS wrong about Mr. Cohen, Uncle Peter. I am always putting my
foot in it. He is an extraordinary man. He certainly is, to listen to,
whatever he is in his business.”
“No, Jack, my boy--you were only honest,” Peter rejoined, passing over
the covert allusion to the financial side of the tailor. “You didn't
like his race and you said so. Act first. Then you found out you were
wrong and you said so. Act second. Then you discovered you owed him an
ample apology and you bowed him out as if he had been a duke. Act third.
And now comes the epilogue--Better be kind and human than be king! Eh,
Jack?” and the old gentleman threw back his head and laughed heartily.
Jack made no reply. He was through with Cohen;--something else was on
his mind of far more importance than the likes and dislikes of all the
Jews in Christendom. Something he had intended to lay before Peter at
the very moment the old fellow had sent him for Isaac--something he had
come all the way to New York to discuss with him; something that had
worried him for days. There was but half an hour left; then he must get
his bag and say good-night and good-by for another week or more.
Peter noticed the boy's mood and laid his hand on his wrist. Somehow
this was not the same Jack.
“I haven't hurt you, my son, have I?” he asked with a note of tenderness
in his voice.
“Hurt me! You couldn't hurt me, Uncle Peter!” There was no question of
his sincerity as he spoke. It sprang straight from his heart.
“Well, then, what's the matter?--out with it. No secrets from blundering
old Peter,” he rejoined in a satisfied tone.
Jack laughed gently: “Well, sir, it's about the work.” It wasn't; but it
might lead to it later on.
“Work!--what's the matter with the work! Anything wrong?” There was a
note of alarm now that made Jack reply hastily:
“No, it will be finished next month: we are lining up the arches this
week and the railroad people have already begun to dump their cross ties
along the road bed. It's about another job. Mr. MacFarlane, I am afraid,
hasn't made much money on the fill and tunnel, but he has some other
work offered him up in Western Maryland, which he may take, and which,
if he does, may pay handsomely. He wants me to go with him. It means
a shanty and a negro cook, as near as I can figure it, but I shall get
used to that, I suppose. What do you think about it?”
“Well,” chuckled Peter--it was not news; MacFarlane had told him all
about it the week before at the Century--“if you can keep the shanty
tight and the cook sober you may weather it. It must be great fun living
in a shanty. I never tried it, but I would like to.”
“Yes, perhaps it is,--but it has its drawbacks. I can't come to see you
for one thing, and then the home will be broken up. Miss Ruth will go
back to her grandmother's for a while, she says, and later on she
will visit the Fosters at Newport and perhaps spend a month with Aunt
Felicia.” He called her so now.
Jack paused for some further expression of opinion from his always ready
adviser, but Peter's eyes were still fixed on the slow, dying fire.
“It will be rather a rough job from what I saw of it,” Jack went on. “We
are to run a horizontal shaft into some ore deposits. Mr. MacFarlane and
I have been studying the plans for some time; we went over the ground
together last month. That's why I didn't come to you last week.”
Peter twisted his head: “What's the name of the nearest town?”
MacFarlane had told him but he had forgotten.
“Morfordsburg. I was there once with my father when I was a boy. He had
some ore lands near where these are;--those he left me. The Cumberland
property we always called it. I told you about it once. It will never
amount to anything,--except by expensive boring. That is also what hurts
the value of this new property the Maryland Mining Company owns. That's
what they want Mr. MacFarlane for. Now, what would you do if you were
me?”
“What sort of a town is Morfordsburg?” inquired Peter, ignoring Jack's
question, his head still buried between his shoulders.
“Oh, like all other country villages, away from railroad connection.”
“Any good houses,--any to rent?”
“Yes,--I saw two.”
“And you want my advice, do you, Jack?” he burst out, rising erect in
his seat.
“Yes.”
“Well, I'd stick to MacFarlane and take Ruth with me.”
Jack broke out into a forced laugh. Peter had arrived by a short cut!
Now he knew, he was a mind reader.
“She won't go,” he answered in a voice that showed he was open to
conviction. Peter, perhaps, had something up his sleeve.
“Have you asked her?” The old fellow's eyes were upon him now.
“No,--not in so many words.”
“Well, try it. She has always gone with her father; she loves the
outdoor life and it loves her. I never saw her look as pretty as she is
now, and she has her horse too. Try asking her yourself, beg her to come
along and keep house and make a home for the three of you.”
Jack leaned back in his seat, his face a tangle of hopes and fears. What
was Uncle Peter driving at, anyhow?
“I have tried other things, and she would not listen,” he said in a more
positive tone. Again the two interviews he had had with Ruth came into
his mind; the last one as if it had been yesterday.
“Try until she DOES listen,” continued Peter. “Tell her you will be
very lonely if she doesn't go, and that she is the one and only thing
in Corklesville that interests you outside of your work--and be sure you
mention the dear girl first and the work last--and that you won't have
another happy hour if she leaves you in the--”
“Oh!--Uncle Peter!”
“And why not? It's a fact, isn't it? You were honest about Isaac; why
not be honest with Ruth?”
“I am.”
“No, you're not,--you only tell her half what's in your heart. Tell
her all of it! The poor child has been very much depressed of late, so
Felicia tells me, over something that troubles her, and I wouldn't be
at all surprised if you were at the bottom of it. Give yourself an
overhauling and find out what you have said or done to hurt her. She
will never forget you for pulling her father out of that hole, nor will
he.”
Jack bristled up: “I don't want her to think of me in that way!”
“Oh, you don't! don't you? Oh, of course not! You want her to think of
you as a great and glorious young knight who goes prancing about
the world doing good from habit, and yet you are so high and mighty
that--Jack, you rascal, do you know you are the stupidest thing that
breathes? You're like a turkey, my boy, trying to get over the top rail
of a pen with its head in the air, when all it has to do is to stoop a
little and march out on its toes.”
Jack rose from his seat and walked toward the fire, where he stood with
one hand on the mantel. He knew Peter had a purpose in all his raillery
and yet he dared not voice the words that trembled on his lips; he could
tell the old fellow everything in his life except his love for Ruth
and her refusal to listen to him. This was the bitterest of all his
failures, and this he would not and could not pour into Peter's ears.
Neither did he want Ruth to have Peter's help, nor Miss Felicia's; nor
MacFarlane's; not anybody's help where her heart was concerned. If Ruth
loved him that was enough, but he wouldn't have anybody persuade her to
love him, or advise with her about loving him. How much Peter knew he
could not say. Perhaps!--perhaps Ruth told him something!--something he
was keeping to himself!
As this last thought forced itself into his brain a great surge of joy
swept over him. For a brief moment he stood irresolute. One of Peter's
phrases now rang clear: “Stoop a little!” Stoop?--hadn't he done
everything a man could do to win a woman, and had he not found the bars
always facing him?
With this his heart sank again. No, there was no use of thinking
anything more about it, nor would he tell him. There were some things
that even Peter couldn't understand,--and no wonder, when you think how
many years had gone by since he loved any woman.
The chime of the little clock rang out.
Jack turned quickly: “Eleven o'clock, Uncle Peter, and I must go; time's
up. I hate to leave you.”
“And what about the shanty and the cook?” said Peter, his eyes searching
Jack's.
“I'll go,--I intended to go all the time if you approved.”
“And what about Ruth?”
“Don't ask me, Uncle Peter, not now.” And he hurried off to pack his
bag.