The words came in a cry of bitter agony.
“I am so ashamed, Daniel—I am so ashamed.”
The two old men sat in the Park on a bench facing the Scott Key monument.24 It was an ideal end-of-February day; grass and flowers were deluged with spring sunshine; from the distance came the clamor of happy birds; children ran by, the springtime spell in their cheeks, their eyes, their joyous limbs. A serene, cloudless sky, transparent as a jewel, overtopped it all.
They had wandered up to and through the aviary to the grand court of the Midwinter Fair grounds, past the reminiscent Museum and Japanese village, and now, after a detour through shaded and unshaded walks, had been sitting here for almost an hour, Joseph gazing dumbly before him, only relaxing when a perfunctory “yah” or “no” was dragged from him by Daniel’s tender garrulity.25 The Frenchman himself had been silent for several seconds when the irresistible cry came.
He turned his gently strong face toward his friend. “Don’t speak about it—if it hurts, Joseph,” he said, in loving solicitude, yet with controlled curiosity.
“Hurts! I wish I could close my eyes forever.” The straight lips shut against each other as if for mutual support.
“No, no. It is not so bad. It cannot be. We must not judge so quickly.”
“My son is a meshumad.”
“Ah, he is no criminal. He is only in style.”
“Tell me, is it too the style that a man shall be ashamed from his father?”
“Bah! You speak banalities, Joseph.”
“I know from what I speak. I can read under his fine English of it. I wish I had no more to speak.”
“Will you break my heart, Joseph?”
“What is that—when a heart breaks?”
“Come, come. Are you a man?”
“No. I am a dog—a Jew—an ignorant, uneducated Jew. The son is ashamed from his father.”
“Joseph, if you talk any more such nonsense, I will go home. I give you my word I cannot bear it. Come—what was it all about? Tell me—if you care to.”
The heavy, darkened eyes looked straight ahead. He began to speak in slow, biting sarcasm, turning the knife in his own heart. “My son is so educated. You don’t know how fine he is. We—me—not you—yes, you too, perhaps—you are a Jew, I think? Well, we will go some day and ask him if we can black his boots. You never knowed how mean and low and stupid you and me always was, Daniel. Well, I know—my son told me last night. Jews is what the niggers down South used to call po’ white trash. My son told me so last night. It ain’t good to be a Jew because then the Christians don’t like you. It ain’t good to be a Jew, because when the Christians don’t like you, you can’t get along in this world. So it is better you turn round and be something else. My son told me so last night. And if you have a Jew for a father, you must not say he is your father, because then you will be found out, and then how all would laugh! And for a religion—that is the funniest thing of all—the Jews have for a religion a dead body, but they make believe it is alive! Yes, it is true. Didn’t my son told me so last night?” The sneering voice ended in a miserable groan.
Daniel laid his gloved hand heavily upon Joseph’s, but Joseph threw it off fiercely.
“Don’t,” he said, roughly. “What do I care what he thinks about any religion. When he can live better without it—let him. But you—you cannot know what a father knows when his chile is ashamed to look him in the face. I tell you I know, Daniel.” He turned his eyes passionately upon the protest of the other, his mouth setting bull-doggedly. “And I’ll tell you how I answered him.” His tone changed suddenly to heart-bursting suavity. “I made out a new will this morning, according. I sent for Paul Stein. A fine will, like you talk so much about—with University Scholarships and Hospitals in, and ich weiss viel! So well he can go alone and has no more use for his father, so well he has no use for his father’s money. I put it all in the will, and it sounds kind and grand the way Stein wrote it—and nobody will understand—because I fooled even Stein. But whenever it is read, you’ll know—and he’ll know, just what it means. I left him a dollar—that’s the law, Stein says—and he can make Shabos with it, or put it in a crepe band on his hat when it is still the style to make believe you care.26 But it won’t make me nothing out. For me—I will be silent in my grave.”
Daniel could not speak for grief. His own face was eloquent with repression. But, “I will speak to him,” he said, finally.
“Speak to him! Speak to that stone.” He pointed his cane toward the glistening marble of the monument. “Will you tell him—nicely—because you always speak nicely—will you tell him, ‘Philip, you must love your father’? And will he come and give me his arm? Ach, Daniel, lass mich gehen.”27
“You go too quickly, Joseph. Me, I do not jump like you. No; I will go to him and tell him why he should love his father and—his religion.”
Joseph’s laugh rang out jeeringly. “You always did tell yourself pretty moshelich,” he said, gruffly. “Did they never end bad—your pretty moshelich?”28
“Once. But that was a foolish one.”
“And you think you can move a rock?”
“I know from where the rock springs. You, too, are a rock, Joseph—but you are only his father.”
“Be still,” commanded Joseph, flashing a pair of resentful eyes upon him. Then he continued more calmly. “You remember how he used to plant his little legs and say, ‘I won’t!’—and nobody could whip him? You remember? Well, he has only grown up.”
“What a fine little fellow he was,” mused Daniel. “You remember, Joseph?”
Perhaps in all the vocabulary there is nothing wider in its yearning tenderness, sooner calculated to find the rift in the rough wall of sorrow, than the word spoken as Daniel spoke it.
“Ach Gott!”29 said Joseph, brokenly.
“Listen. I think I know your boy. The more you oppose him or combat him, the more he will set his face against you. I know the type. But seem to give in to him, while, without his knowing, you gently lead him around your way, and, sooner or later, he will give in.”
“I am not smart enough.”
“It is not smart you must be—it requires only a little tact.” He raised a suggestive, deeply experienced eyebrow.
“That is the same thing,” said Joseph, bluntly. “Do you expect I will take my hat under my arm and make him a deep bow, and say, ‘Good son, kind son, I am sorry that my father was not rich like yours—because if he was you would not be ashamed of me—but I made a fool of myself last night. Forgive me—I will not do it again.’”
Daniel turned from him in pain.
“Well, what do you want I shall do?” demanded the other, savagely.
“Me? What do I know?”
“You know you know better than me. Why are you so stubborn, Daniel?”
Daniel flashed a radiant face upon him. “When he comes home to-night—” he began.
“He will not come home to-night,” said Joseph.
“You mean—”
“He did not stay last night; I did not ask him.”
“Then you have not seen him since?”
“He came this morning. I would not see him.”
“Ah.”
“He left a card.”
“Where is it?”
“I threw it away.”
“Then you do not know where he is stopping?”
“I looked before I threw it away.”
“Do you remember his address?”
“I think it was the Palace Hotel.”30
“You are not sure?”
“Yes; I am quite sure.”
“Joseph, do you want me to go for you?”
“You think it will pay, Daniel?”
“We can risk a little visit. It will not cost much. Is it not proper that I should welcome my young friend home?”
“What will you say?”
“Will you leave it to me?”
“And, Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“No one will know about it? Not Jean?”
“Not from me, Joseph.”
“Daniel?”
“Joseph?”
“Nix.31 Shall we smoke a little before we go home, Daniel?”