Dr. May hesitated on the curb before the Chronicle Building at the corner of Market and Kearney streets.43 The hesitancy involved the trivial choice between paying a visit to the Otises, and receiving one from young Otis. Yet it was big with chance.
As he stood illumined in the white flicker of the electric light, a party of young men came down Kearney Street. Noticing the tall figure under the tall light, one of them gave an exclamation of surprise and murmured a word to his companions, who crossed, waiting for him on the farther side of Lotta’s fountain.44
The other moved briskly toward the man hesitating on the edge of the sidewalk. “Well, Phil,” he cried clapping him heartily upon the shoulder and holding out a hand, “shake, old fellow!”
Dr. May’s courteously distant eyes looked through the keen, acquisitive face, as through a pane of glass. “Ah, Mr.—Mr.—Weiss, I believe?” he said politely, vaguely, as though asking a strange patient what might be the trouble to-day.
Weiss took his cue; his hand slid easily into his trouser pocket. “Well,” he drawled, chuckling as with great amusement, “I’m glad to see my old schoolmate back. Town’s grown a little, you’ll find. Which reminds me of an incident which took place in the Sunday-school of the Temple Emanuel on Sutter Street when you and I were kids there.45 Teacher asked class, ‘What did Moses do before he wrote the Ten Commandments?’ Class nonplused until an embryo wit raised his hand and said, ‘Please, teacher, he kept a cloding-store!’ Remember? Droll analogy, wasn’t it? How’s your father?”
Without waiting for a reply, he sauntered jauntily over to his companions, and passed on.
Philip crossed the street, his excluding eyes fixed upon the brilliantly lighted hotel. He walked through the gleaming marble corridor with a frowning gratitude over the fact that no one knew him there, the idlers about, the elevator boy who gave him a passing glance, taking him at his own apparent valuation and dubbing him some visiting aristocrat.
He entered his room and lit the gas. His deliberate movements as he drew off his overcoat and seated himself before the table strewn with writing paraphernalia, betokened a quiet, undisturbed mental state. He opened the evening paper. But the printed words did not seem to hold his attention. Instead, a musing smile of cold disgust lit his fine eyes. The vulgar familiarity of the contretemps might have filled him only with amusement if it had not carried with it a baffling sense of defeat.
He shook himself, as though to shake from his person and memory the tang—the Ghetto tang—which lay so unmistakably in the voice, the accent, the motions, the very cast of mind as of feature of these people who had stood still. It all spoke out so aggressively to his finely attuned senses, to his sensitive ear, to his inflexible social standards and requirements, to his nice discrimination between presumptuous intrusiveness and that self-respecting unobtrusiveness which respects the unseen individuality of every other. It was the old sad story over again of the disillusioning effect of light.
For of course it was ugly—as everything pointing to ignorance and oppression is ugly.
“We Jews!”
His jaw set hard as though some one had accosted him. What had he to do with Jewry? He stood off, examining himself, giving himself full value. He huddled the rest together in a heap. Yet even as he huddled them, the face and form of his father escaped, smiting him accusingly. Yet why? He had desired to live in amity with him—he had never gulled himself with the idea that they would be mentally companionable. But he was not an ingrate, and had never questioned the urgency of his duty toward him though he had returned to him only at this late day. True, he had developed contrary to his father’s expectations and tastes and could never return to his limitations. He pictured himself introducing Joseph May as his father to certain high-bred friends—to the Otises—to Lilian Otis, for instance. His lips set in a grim smile over the imagined bewildering denouement. He laughed aloud, a stinging laugh, over her blue-book limitations frightened out of their sweet serenity by the alien touch upon her life.
He closed his eyes in sign of denial to the grotesque, obtruding contingency. But with the closing of his eyes, the clutch of the past, like a hand upon his shoulder, renewed its hold with impish malice. That there were Jews and Jews, Philip knew well—one sort mumbling and shaking out its prayers as at so many words a minute, keeping to the letter its minor fasts and great fasts, still happily believing themselves princes in Israel as soon as the praying-shawl went around their shoulders, the other erect, cool, skeptical to the top bent of the age, scanning the pages of prayer-book and life with the discriminating eye of intellect, but retaining, for all that, Ghetto ghosts and echoes in mien, or voice, or mentality. And he who had cultivated an unconquerable distaste for all these symptoms, knew that his greatest folly lay in his cheating himself with the philosophy of the ostrich. Fifteen years of absence were as a day to these Jews, with their ridiculous claim of kinship, their petty village curiosity in whoever or whatever bore the remotest identification with their race. Oh, the trail of the Ghetto was over them all.
He threw down his paper, passed his hand across his brow, and, with a sharp shrug of dismissal, turned to the writing-table, just as a knock sounded upon the door. A card was handed him.
A moment later, Daniel Willard, tall, elegant, dignified, a debonair carnation in his buttonhole, a charming light illumining his countenance, came toward him with outheld hand.
“Ah, Dr. May,” said the old gentleman, pressing his hand warmly, “this is a great pleasure for me.”
“As for me,” returned Philip, the vivid color shooting up his clear, dark cheek. He wheeled a chair round toward him. “You are looking well, sir. One would not be extravagant in thinking you had found the secret of eternal youth.”
“You think so?” said Daniel, wistfully, putting down his hat and seating himself. “But no. The truth came out in the car to-day when a young girl rose and offered me her seat. But of course I did not take it.”
“Of course not,” returned Philip, decidedly, conscious of keeping himself well in hand under the tender regard of the soft brown eyes opposite him which seemed to pass like a gentle hand over his soul, measuring its height. “No doubt she caught a glimpse of your mustache and let that signify the rest.”
“Perhaps,” he acquiesced, passing his hand over that silver military adjunct. “You see, I use no hair-dye, and so fill no one with illusion—except myself. I confess to that.” His curly eyebrow went up, seeming to knock off his eyeglass, which he caught dangling. “So you see, after all, I stand admittedly a back number—a man with illusions.”
“Yes? Then you’re out of the procession. The trend of all modern aim is to be without illusions.”
“But what shall one do when one is born with them?”
“Suit your appetite to your dinner—the cost of all idealism.”
“Your advice comes just about six thousand years too late, I am afraid.”
“You have heard of the Roentgen ray?”46
“Assuredly. It is the symbol of the age. It would seem as though a very stylish wit had discovered it. But me—I have another idea.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Oh, it is nothing. But I have thought that to see more—will be, perhaps, to see more that is admirable—beautiful. It is a purely material device, your Roentgen ray, and can no more convert me than your Darwinian theory can alter my belief in the divine origin of man—though I will confess that sometimes the divinity seems as far distant as the monkey does always. But what has all this to do with your home-coming! Tell me, you must speak French like a native now. You remember those abominable verbs and what headaches they gave us? Come, show off a little for your old teacher.”
Philip, laughing, drifted into gossip of the Parisian world of art, Daniel Willard’s fine old face flushing slowly, as with wine, while the life with which he had always kept himself in touch was charmingly, graphically unfolded for him. His glasses came off enthusiastically, were pointed argumentatively, were closed excitedly, were adjusted decidedly, as he agreed or questioned his companion, lending him finally his old experience, his minute encyclopedic knowledge, his personal acquaintance with some of the great, delightful men of his day whom he had met when, for a brief space of years, he had returned to Paris.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, with a sigh, “it is like living the old charm over again. I read my old Paris in your young one, as—as I read your mother’s features in your face, my dear Philip. It is wonderful—the resemblance.”
It came out naturally, uncontrollably, a trifle tremulously. He removed his glasses, polishing them solicitously.
The slow color rose to Philip May’s brow. He bent a trifle forward. “You knew my mother, I believe,” he said, swiftly. “Tell me about her.”
And Daniel Willard, gentle-eyed dreamer that he seemed, understood the whole harsh tragedy of the demand. It was as though the son of Joseph May had said, “Account for me!”
And Daniel the diplomat, Daniel the lover, Daniel the friend, answered.
“Often I tried to account to myself for her perfect loveliness,” he said, softly, reminiscently, “and the only answer I could find was that she was an inspiration of God. There are many such inspirations, I believe, but I doubt if he has been just so inspired since. I take off my hat to the thought of her.” He flushed tenderly up to the roots of his silvery hair, with a wistful smile toward her son.
A silence followed his words. Philip recovered himself with a quick, indrawn breath. “Thank you,” he said, laconically.
Daniel arose, picking up his hat. “I have enjoyed my little tête-à-tête with you very much,” he said, holding out his hand. “I am glad I came—as some of my young friends express it—although your father has asked me to dine with you and him Monday night, and the pleasure will be so soon renewed.”
“Monday night?” repeated Philip, questioningly.
“Certainly; so I understood him to say to-day in the Park.” He said it lightly, as though deciding, perhaps, a point in rhetoric. “We spent a few sunny hours in the Park this afternoon. I have not seen him since, but I hope he is not lonesome. You see, nearly every night we have a little game of picquet—it is the only game I know—but one must have some plaything when one has a friend. But before I go, Jean—my niece who lives with me and who plays the piano a little—she plays like an angel, though I say it who should not—Jean will play perhaps for an hour for me, and during that time Joseph reads the evening paper. It is then he likes to have some one come in. A lundi, then!”47 He held out his hand again.
“You are very intimate with my father,” remarked Philip, constrainedly, as he took his hand.
“Oh, yes. It is a very old intimacy. But of course you have heard that story.”
“I think not.”
“No? Then I will tell it to you. I am as amusing as a lady’s postscript, am I not? However—. Many years ago when I was a lad of twenty earning a precarious living in New Orleans and the neighboring villages by giving lessons in French and German, I was traveling one morning from the city to Biloxi, and was suddenly taken with the most excruciating cramps it has ever been my fortune to endure. I was in the depths of the woods, with no habitation in sight but a forsaken cabin. To this I crawled, thankful for the shelter from the blazing sun. There I lay in feverish agony the live-long day, begging for water from every passer-by, but at sight of me they all fled, crying, “The fever!” as they ran. And they were quite right to run—quite right, for the yellow fever was then raging. But just at nightfall I heard strong, heavy foot-steps, and a rough, kind voice exclaimed out of the darkness, ‘Gott im himmel!’48 and there stood a little Jewish peddler. Well, he staid with me, and twenty-four hours after, I arose a well man. I have told you I take off my hat to do your mother’s memory reverence, but I would take off my coat to fight for Joseph May. Good night.” He held out his hand again.
Philip watched him walk down the gallery, lightly, joyously, as one having glad, free thoughts. Then he shut the door.
Was the man an emissary, a poseur,49 or only a rare specimen of human simplicity? At any rate, he found the sands sliding perilously under his feet, found himself clutching at the vanishing land-marks of his journey hitherto, only to have them glide mockingly from his grasp. He flushed uncomfortably, as though some one had laughed at him. He frowned again upon his impotency, upon the intruding memory of the man with his manifest refinements of aspect and thought and manner; he wondered why he suddenly remembered the girl whose shadowy, glad gray eyes had startled his prejudices that morning.
But a second imperative knock again interrupted his thought. The lines fled from his brow at sight of the jovial-faced young fellow before him.
“Hello, Doctor,” the latter cried, coming into the room and depositing a violin case upon the floor as he sank into a chair. “Thought I’d knock you up on my way to my apartments up above and see whether you’d settled upon an office yet. Didn’t I see the Prince of Courtesy come out of here just now?”50
“I suppose you mean Mr. Willard.”
“Yes. Old friend of yours? Great old gentleman, isn’t he? One always looks for a decoration in his coat when speaking to him. He is quite out of the regulation run of people with his stately, exquisite manner,—and the surprising thing about him is that he’s a Jew. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Perfectly.”
“Exactly,” laughed the other. “He has the habit of always reminding one of the fact by some manner of means, as though he were afraid one might forget it or think he was ashamed of it. Queer infatuation for the inevitable, eh? But to get back to Gentile-ity—what about the office?”
“I’ve about decided on the one on Sutter Street,” he responded, bringing his galloping thought to rest upon his visitor. “But what do you mean by apartments up above? Don’t you live at the family home?”
“Did, but the workmen are all over the place, and I never could stand a mess. So I’ve pitched my tent here meanwhile, although my mother has me tied to her by a string. By the way, she sends you her love, and Lil—her respects.”
“Thanks,” laughed Philip. “I shall call upon them as soon as I get in calling spirit.”
“By Jove, I was almost forgetting! They want you to dine with them Monday night—without ceremony. They told me to secure you to-night, and they’ll ring you up in the morning.”
“Too bad,” returned Philip, with polite regret. “I have an appointment for Monday night.” He was surprised over his own decision, and stopped abruptly.
“Already! Our old sawbones said you had a neat little ovation at the college to-day. But I don’t suppose your date is with the medical department of your life.”
“No. With my father. These rooms were just a makeshift until now, when he finds himself ready to take me in.”
“A stranger, eh? But I can’t imagine any one’s taking you in—there’s something too cool and practical about you—businesslike, one might say. But about your father. Queer we don’t know him. May—May? John May, the newspaper man?”
“No,” said Philip, suppressing an internal grin. “Joseph May—a retired merchant—in fact, a retired man in every sense. He has cared little for the world since my mother’s death.”
“That accounts for our ignorance then of his personality. I should like to meet the father of Philip May.”
“Some day,” promised Philip, in careless dismissal.
“All right. And I want you to dine with me a month from to-day, April 1st, or 2d, will you?”
“What’s the occasion so long anticipated?”
“Well, the Omars meet for re-election of officers—and new members—March 31st, and I want to have a jollification in my rooms the night following—to celebrate your becoming one of us. You still play?—the piano, I mean, not cards.”
“I can take a hand at either on occasion,” laughed Philip. “My accomplishments are promiscuous, if nothing else.”
“It’s all art—or science,” returned Otis, rising. “And anything under those elastic heads goes with us. We’re not specialists in the art of life—we’re for the all together, as Stephen Forrest might put it.”
“Stephen Forrest? Surely I know that name.”
“Artist, lame. Devilish clever.”
“I think I knew the man a little—we went to school together.”
“I’m glad of that. It’s better having Stephen Forrest with you than agin you. He has all the attraction of a danger signal.”
Philip smiled. Being a San Franciscan born, and possessed of an excellent memory, the aristocratic prejudice of the Forrest family was not unknown to him. Besides which, he dimly remembered that between himself and this particular Forrest there had been, in the old days, little love lost or regretted.
Left to himself, he set his brow against the hostile thought, as he set the judgment of his senses against the obtruding argument of Daniel Willard’s personality. Suddenly a light flared up about the memory of the fleeting glimpse of those wonderful, glad gray eyes of the morning—his father’s insinuating words and tone, the diplomat’s careless allusion.
“Faugh!” he thought, disgustedly, “they’re all alike—shrewd, persuasive, crafty.”
Which goes to prove how a name may carry its own judgment with it.