Toward the eighth hour of the evening of the same day, Daniel and Jean Willard were seated together, as they generally sat directly after dining, when socially disengaged. The girl was at the piano, flooding the room with music. The man sat in a glow of lamplight, having drawn his chair close to the table, and his fine leonine head was thrown into strong relief; his eyes were on his book. It was a pleasant room at any time, expressive of its inmates, cozy with love of physical comfort, unpretentiously interesting in artistic and intellectual enthusiasms happily confessed.
They had been sitting thus for nearly an hour, each lost in his and her own occupation, each only sub-consciously awake to the other’s presence, when Daniel Willard looked at his watch, laid his pencil within his book, and rising, softly left the room. The girl played on until the quietude of the background stealing to her senses, she turned her head and found herself alone. She lingered a moment, then strayed over to the table.
An interested, puzzled light passed into her eyes as they fell upon the open book, attracted there by the penciled annotations. She was smiling perplexedly over them when her uncle reappeared in the doorway. He wore a handsome dark overcoat; his top-hat was in his gloved hand.
“Going out, uncle?” she asked, absently, scarcely glancing up. “Well, before you go—tell me what m-e-s-h-u-m-a-d means.” She spelled it carefully, looking up at him as she finished.
He started perceptibly, coming farther into the room. “Are you studying Hebrew, dear child?” he asked, with smiling restraint.
“Not I,” laughed the girl. “There are so many more useful and ornamental things to learn. But you have written the word here all over the margins of these two pages and—”
“I!” His startled exclamation was accompanied by his swift approach. “Let me see,” he said, laying down his hat and taking the book from her. As he adjusted his eyeglass he colored deeply.
“It is strange,” he observed, finally, “how unconsciously one’s thought will pass into one’s pencil and father the word. It is very strange.” He laid down the book and picked up his hat.
“But what does the word mean, uncle?” the girl insisted.
“Oh, yes, yes. Let me see—” reflected the scholar. “The root is shomad or shamad, which means to destroy—hence, meshumad, as ordinarily pronounced, means one who is destroyed; but as generally accepted, it means the destroying spirit, or one who is destructive or inimical to his religion. Hence, an apostate.”
Her gray eyes opened wide, a dull, intuitive flush creeping to her cheek. “And what has Philip May to do with apostates?” she asked.
“Philip May? Why do you speak of him?”
“Why, dear, your page is as black with his name as with the other word.”
He gave an ejaculation of annoyance, but immediately recovered his naive equanimity. “Ah,” he smiled, placing his hand under her uplifted chin, and kissing her good night, “did I not tell you that the conscious thought is father to the written act?—I am going to call upon Philip May at his hotel to-night.”
“At his hotel? Uncle, you are keeping something from me.” Her lifted face was stern and pleading.
A sudden fear shook Daniel Willard’s conscience. “Why, it is nothing, chérie,” he said, gently.32 “But—you must know that Joseph and his son are—what shall I call it?—at the two Jewish social extremes—esthetically speaking.”
“Oh, vile!” breathed the girl on impulse, understanding instinctively.
“No, only products of different ages. And this, of which Philip May is a product, is a very artificial age, my dear—one in which even ideals have become artificial. Society is a matter of tastes, not of opinions. Appearances are the only arguments for or against a man—all the heaven in the human soul becoming pulled down, hedged round, slaved in by the tyrant Good Form—the shibboleth of modern social pharisaism. But, being of this age,” he smiled, “one must subscribe to the age’s requirements, or fall out of line, n’est-ce pas?33—The right coat—the right manner—when the Jew will have regained these—especially the latter—he will have arrived at his renaissance. I speak in all simplicity and without bitterness,” said Daniel Willard, moving into the hall.
She followed him silently to the door. “I saw him this morning,” she said, with apparent irrelevance.
“And?”
“He was going up his father’s steps when I came out here. And he saw me.”
“That was pleasant for him.”
She laughed angrily, and again a sense of fear, not unmixed with guilt, assailed Daniel’s conscience as he went down the steps.
Jean returned to the sitting-room. She picked up a magazine and threw herself into her uncle’s great chair. She made no pretense at reading. A vague sense of exclusion, of being out in the cold, was upon her, and she shivered as though an open door whither she had been approaching unawares had been suddenly slammed in her face. She stood still, in quivering, girlish shame and confusion.
If Jean Willard had a fad, it was for things of the mind; if she had a passion it was for people with minds. She had, theoretically, an enthusiastic sympathy with the Hegelian concept of Beauty’s being Spirit shining through matter—though you might easily have doubted this, judging from her outspoken worship of all beauties seen of the eye. Yet it was on the former basis that she had made her own atmosphere and chosen or discarded her associates. She therefore belonged to none and to all of the finely demarcated circles which go to make Jewish society. Morally free and independent, never rich, but always provided with the necessities and a few of the comparative luxuries of life, sought after for her talent and seeking others for theirs, frankly amused or disgusted over the strenuous climbing up the social ladder of those who had not yet arrived, or of those little Alexanders, who, having conquered their own, look around for more worlds to conquer—she held an individual position.
Society, so called, had a bowing, not an intimate, acquaintance with her. Among those she loved she was a magnetic, an imperious power. To most people she was a sealed book, but once known she was known by heart. Of high enthusiasms, bravely loyal and optimistic, hating narrow-minded hypocrisy as she loved broad-shouldered dauntlessness, she had reached her twenty-fifth year, one of those modern anachronisms, a woman with ideals. Had she ever expressed herself to the rank and file upon certain subjects, she would have been as one speaking a dead, hence ridiculed, language. But she never expressed herself—fully—upon certain subjects—to any one.
Nevertheless, a delicate sympathy had always existed between herself and her uncle—they understood each other as most high-minded people, dwelling together, must understand one another. In all probability she could have been no more confidential to a mother or a sister, had she had either, than she was to him. He, imagining her, loved her,—chivalrously; she, knowing him, loved him reverentially. They were the best of good comrades.
And thus it was that, from the beginning, Daniel Willard had discoursed to her upon what, to him, was the wonder, past and to be, of Philip May. Thus she, with her passion for perfection, began to burn her candles. Thus, as his coming drew near, and the two old men, nourishing a tender hope, waxed warm and eloquent over his loyalty to his friend, his professional success, his goodly appearance as evidenced in his portraits, his love of music and of all things artistic, the girl’s imagination was loosed. And thus we come to the anomaly of a woman’s loving an idea, an unknown quantity.
In the reaction caused by her uncle’s veiled explanation, her intuitive grasp caught at the unadorned facts of the situation: the coldly ambitious man whom culture had estranged from, made lost to sympathy with the illiterate old Jew, his father. She had the faculty of putting herself in his place, could understand the shock to his refined ear and tastes, could gauge the shudder of his amour propre34 when confronted by his origin. Yet, knowing Joseph May’s unworldly worth, his limitless generosity and good-nature, his yearning tenderness for this same gifted son upon whom he had showered all the advantages which had been denied him,—accepting unquestioningly and unconditionally the wisdom of the fifth commandment—for having known neither father nor mother since maturing, she had never been troubled by the cynicism of the “choice of parents”—her gentle womanhood set its face against her colder, keener estimate of the man.35 Woman-like—she understood the ugly truth, but could not excuse.
As she sat there, her bitter knowledge of the snarl of things growing hopelessly wider and deeper, she heard the door-bell ring, and rose mechanically to the convention of the moment.
A slight young man with a sensitive, delicate face, limped into the room.
“Why, Mr. Forrest,” exclaimed Jean, hastening forward, both hands outheld, “what a charming surprise!”
“Is it?” he asked eagerly, holding her hands close, and looking with almost brutal effrontery into her eyes. “I was not sure that you would not consider it an intrusion. You have never asked me to call upon you.”
“No,” she conceded, drawing her hands from his and pushing a chair forward. “But do sit down.”
He frowned quickly in answer. “I am able to stand a minute,” he said roughly. “Why not sit down yourself?” He turned the chair peremptorily toward her, and, with a laugh of assumed carelessness, she complied. She was diffident about combating Stephen Forrest’s vagaries.
“I can only stay a second,” he said, leaning against the table near her. “I dropped in to let you know that the workmen have left my studio, and it and I are in readiness for that sitting you promised me. When will you come?”
“Do you still cherish that fantastic Judith notion?36 I assure you I am much too slight a creature.”
“Not with your coloring—inner, I mean. Outwardly, I know, you’re just a study in black and white. To-night, especially, your eyes—for whom are they in mourning?”
She craned her neck for a view of them in the glass. “For their sins, I suppose,” she laughed.
“The desire of the eyes?”
“Ah, that’s another story,” she said lightly. “How is Kate?”
“She’s all right. When will you come? Monday?”
“You seem in a dreadful hurry. Think it over again—about my fitness as a model, I mean. There are any number of girls in the city better suited to the rôle.”
“Don’t. Of course I know the streets are full of Jews of all descriptions—if that’s what you mean—you knock against them at every corner, in every car. They’re a bit of local coloring—a prominent feature—the nose, in short,”—he laughed genially—“on the landscape, which our artists have forgotten to work up. But, speaking of Jews, reminds me. Do you happen to know a fellow named May—Dr. Philip May who has just returned from Europe—fellow with thick black hair, cocksure eyes, and proud lift to his head?”
In an agony of self-consciousness, Jean felt the disgraceful, uncontrollable blood rush to her brow—felt herself a victim of the peculiar insight of Stephen Forrest’s gaze. “Not personally,” she answered quietly.
The artist turned inconsistently and seated himself upon the couch directly opposite her.
“He’s a Jew, isn’t he?” he demanded insolently, with a sudden ugly gleam in his eye.
“Yes—by birth.”
“The birth-sentence is life-sentence—isn’t it?” he laughed daringly. “Then I wonder why he is trying to sneak into our Club with that disbarment.”
“What disbarment?”
“Why, being a Jew.”
“Do you belong to such a Club? What narrow doors you build! And is being a Jew a fault or a crime?”
“It’s a misfortune—it keeps the unfortunates out of our Club.” He laughed airily, yet with deliberation.
“Why?”
“Quién sabe?”37 he shrugged. “The reason’s beyond me. It’s one of those inherited reasons passed down, like a title, from father to son. Oh, it’s a very aristocratic prejudice, I assure you.”
“You mean bigotry.”
“Now don’t be clannish—and pray don’t grow argumentative.”
“I suppose you know you are saying rather extraordinary things to me—or have you forgotten that I am a Jewess?”
“Oh, you,” he said, his brilliant eyes recording his valuation of her—“you are a woman. Your sex unsects you.”
She raised her head arrogantly. “One always allows you great latitude, Mr. Forrest,” she vouchsafed icily. “I did not think you would make capital of my indulgence.”
He leaned impulsively toward her. “Don’t indulge me,” he commanded angrily. “And don’t pity me. Hate me, rather. That, at least, implies no weakness in the object thought of.”
She was startled by the full display of feeling, although she had had, time and again, ample proof of his total lack of self-control. She had always pitied him as a potentially strong character warped, through affliction, into an ungovernable, selfish temperament. But his present insolence had aroused a sense stronger than any sentiment she could even bear for him—a defensive sense which only announced itself when assailed.
“You are not worth hating,” she returned, slowly, distantly, her eyes traveling from his feet to his head and away.
He turned a dull, dark red. “Why, what is Philip May to you?” he asked, all regard for the sound of things swept out of him by a sudden unreasoning jealousy.
“What he is probably to you—a Jew,” she returned calmly, her eyes down-glancing at him.
“Bah! Even half-closed, your eyes can’t lie. And as for myself—he isn’t worth the lying about—as I am not worth the hating. But I’ll tell you what he is to me. I went to school with him. He started out to be clever, and when a Jew starts out to be clever there’s no telling how far his cleverness will take him—which sentiment you may interpret according to your own lights and—prejudices. Well, I always hated him. I had that hate for him that the fellow who always comes in second has for him who always comes in first. Can you understand that kind of hate? Things came to him; I had to go to them. He strolled—I struggled; he came in victor, laughing—I came in beaten, panting. We both had brains—he just more than I; we both were artistic—I just more than he. But he had money and was launched—while I had none and was stranded—here.” The girl trembled under the corroding envy which left him pallid.
“But what’s that the poet says about the first being last, and all that rot?” he laughed sneeringly. “Well,”—he sprang up—“teach it to Philip May—candidate for membership in the Omar Club of San Francisco.38 Oh, I’ve been making a display of myself again, I know,” he added with studied carelessness, “but you have such ‘divine tenderness,’ as my sister Kate says in describing some of your playing, that I know you’ll forgive—and shake hands?” He held his hand out with a feint at contrition.
“Oh, no,” she returned playfully, holding her own hand behind her, “what are you thinking of, Mr. Forrest? Mine is a Jewish hand, you know. It wouldn’t dream of putting itself where it would not be given the honor due its ancient lineage.”
“Oh, come now,” he pleaded, “let’s not split straws. Whatever I have suggested or said with that confounded loose tongue of mine doesn’t concern you. And—when are you coming to sit for me?”
“Why, never, Mr. Forrest.”
“Good heavens, you would not be so childish—you would not destroy a conception that has taken fast possession of me ever since that twilight when I came upon you playing that Beethoven adagio. Oh, impossible, Miss Willard, impossible!” He spoke in imploring eagerness.
“You don’t know my possibilities,” she returned with iron gentleness. “I am a Jewess—Jew rather, when it comes to my people’s being insulted by those who know nothing about them. Now, I’m going to give you a little gratuitous lesson: Every one of us carries the blood, the history of all of us in his veins, no matter how different we may appear, and when you sneer at one of us, you sneer, by implication, at all of us—a communal sentiment, not always comfortable, or commendable, or justifiable, I know. But there it is. So you see I could not cross your threshold without bringing all those shocking old Ghettites and their diversified grandchildren with me—and I could not allow them to be coldly treated.”
“You have a very mixed identity,” he admitted sarcastically.
“Yes. Droll, isn’t it?” she returned as though suddenly struck by the thought.
“And you won’t come?”
“No,” she looked him straight between the eyes.
He set his teeth over his futile plea. “And all this wasted race-valor for a—Philip May,” he said derisively with raised brows. “Well, I never could compete with him on any proposition. I might as well say good-night.” He bowed, waited a moment for her to give some response, but as she made no movement, he turned and limped from the room.
She did not follow him. She heard the front door close behind him with a sigh of mingled relief and pain. It seemed to her as though he had made his disagreeable visit in a flash of time.
Once before she had heard a rumor pointing to the fact that the Forrests were, had always been, Jew-haters, but she generally gave “they say”—gossip’s Mrs. Harris—the benefit of the doubt, and when she met Kate Forrest for the first time in the studio of their mutual music-master, had met her gracefully half-way. The musical friendship, thus begun, had never been troubled by the rumored clovenfoot,39 Kate Forrest keeping it well-hidden—if it existed—while she knelt in homage to her artist superior. And Stephen Forrest, the painter, lamed through an accident in childhood, hovering between his attic-studio and the family living-rooms, had, in his passionate love of beauty, drawn, like a moth to the flame, toward this music-souled Jewish girl with her lovely countenance.
As for Jean, to speak truly, her religion had always lain lightly upon her. It slept in the suburbs of her soul, out of the track and traffic of her life’s uses. She could not have recited the Thirteen Articles of faith40 at the point of a sword, but she might have said there was something in them about the glory of the Ineffable to which she unhesitatingly subscribed. She might even have stumbled over the Ten Commandments, having been told by her uncle when she was years younger that the First was as the whole of which the rest were but elucidation; and, being a lazy little thing, glad of any chance for concentration of energy, she had never troubled herself to review them. However, she could remember a few stories of the Talmud and a number of beautiful quotations from the same, through having lived so long with that same gentle scholar, her uncle. But she knew her Bible—that is, she knew it literarily—its music and imagery having found instinctive response in her being long before she had the power to discern the good within the song. She could not have defined her religion by a dogma, and that was because she also read the daily papers and other current literature,—and, from the life-point view, a dogma only proves how truth may be a lie. And, nevertheless, she was a Jewess—having been born one.41
But of late, as mentioned before, she had made for herself a secret breviary which ran somewhat in this wise: “In all Israel there was none to be so much praised as one Unnamed, for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”42
It seemed to her now, as the house-door closed after Stephen Forrest, that all the hitherto straight rays of her life were being deflected, focused toward one isolated figure—the challenging figure of Philip May.