Thus did Philip May set about defying and humbugging tradition, the present—and himself. He was young, he was strong, he was free—he acknowledged no overlord but his own will and inclination. The adverse past he simply kicked off as a man might a pair of shoes grown shabby or uncomfortable, the only apparent obstacle to his consequent comfort being his frequent stumblings against the discarded in unconsidered places.
During the first two weeks following the memorable evening of his return and the anti-climax of the wordless reconciliation between his father and himself, he found little time for introspection or politic forethought. His professional reputation had preceded him through his writings, and chance, in the form of mischance for others, came to greet him. Dr. Otis, succumbing to a contingency of the grip, was forced to put his patients and himself in other hands—whereby two of the most critical operations of his experience fell to Philip May’s account. The fortunate victims happened to be men prominent in the city’s doings, and the fame of the newcomer’s hand of steel might have spread sensationally, had not the young physician’s professional reticence saved him from that indignity of popular quackery. He was used to success, and dismissed it with matter-of-fact brevity.
Virtually, however, it was not to be thus dismissed. The personal attraction of the man brought his name too easily to the lips of those with whom he came in contact. Lilian Otis, welcoming him, not only as the devoted friend and attendant of her cousin, John Harleigh, but as one of the most abiding memories of her last European jaunt, gladly added these later credentials after presenting him or his name to the inner court of her charming and influential set. Within a month he felt his grasp firm upon the life upon which he had entered.
With a single exception: he had effectually barred himself out of the proud, silent heart of his father. Nominally drawn together under the same roof, they were more grimly estranged than they had been when divided by a continent and sea. Any effort toward the simplest converse was strained and painful. Philip felt the lack of intimacy, but recognized it as another insurmountable proof of their being kindred only through accident of birth. Joseph May, exponent of the most intense and sensitive race under the sun in the matter of family ties, crushed his knowledge into the bitter pill of lovelessness, and chewed it, folding his lips close over the bitterness in that wildest of all misery—misery which keeps its mouth shut. Even Daniel Willard heard no further word of complaint or reproach. His talk of him was full of boast and bluster.
“Never he gives himself any rest,” he said, with a helpless shrug of indulgent pride. “When he don’t go nights to the hospital, he writes or studies, and when he don’t write nor study he has a call to make, or something like that. Last night he wanted I should take a walk with him. But what for? I was tired, and better he goes with younger men. But he likes it when Jean plays. One night he most broke his appointment because he waited till she finished.”
“I shall ask him to dine with us Sedar night,” said Daniel, dealing the cards in absent fashion.70 “I have not seen so much of him as I should like, and that will be a good chance. We shall have no one but Mr. and Mrs. Brookman and Paul Stein, and you two. Then he can ask Jean to play whatever he likes—after the singing is over. Do you think he will come, Joseph?”
“You can ask him.—Forty kings—a tierce to the jack.71—Jean is a nix-nuts.72 Never she comes to see me no more.”
“No?” said Daniel, discarding as if in deep thought. “She is a little busy with the Boys’ Club.73 Particularly with one of the boys—little Joel Slinsky. You should see some of the drawings he makes of the people of his neighborhood—unconscious caricatures of the Russian Jew. But to me it is not all funny. Jean does not mean to neglect you; she asks how you are feeling every day.”
“So,” commented Joseph. But in some manner, too subtle for his defining, he knew that the sudden ceasing of the girl’s unceremonious comings and goings had coincided with the advent of his son. And another dream was laid aside with his broken potsherds.
And Jean, during the two or three weeks following her evening with the Brookmans, had been quietly, though uncertainly, divorcing herself from the same romance. Final proof of his positive alienation was still wanting, and a loyal spirit breaks its idols slowly. But her days were occupied with her customary obligations and pleasures, many self-imposed, many necessary, and she allowed herself no quarter for a morbid sentiment. Stephen Forrest was harassing her with importunate letters, so passionately pleading against her dogged stand, so ironically bitter against his limited opportunities, so humorously humble, that sympathy was playing ball with her resolution.
Besides, the gods were with her, for the moment, in giving her another Nemesis to contend with. Theodore Hart, who, before meeting her, had lived all things but a pure passion, had been suddenly, surprisingly, overwhelmed by that novelty and given himself wholly to its influence. With all his intentions written openly in his attentions, in the good, old-fashioned Jewish way, he had come to tempt her from her moorings. He represented the carnival, the luxe of life—he represented to her clear-eyed, end-of-the-nineteenth-century knowledge, all gifts—save one. And in the material sunlight of the end of the century he easily stood for a temptation.
In withdrawing from her pretty old-time intimacy with Joseph May, she had not forgotten that it would hurt and astonish him, but she was determined to risk no running against Philip May’s courteous surprise should he happen upon her innocent familiarity with his household.
However, pulling down a blind one morning before setting out for town, she espied her old friend pacing the safe back porch in smoking-jacket and velvet skull-cap, and she was down upon him in a minute.
“Good morning, Uncle Joseph,” she sang out, blithely; “why aren’t you down at your office this sunny morning?”
The stocky figure stopped short. “Good morning, Miss Willard,” he returned, with biting dignity. “I am surprised you still know me.”
“Miss Willard, indeed, old humbug! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Kiss me and tell me why you are still at home at half-past ten?”
He submitted his forehead to her imperious caress. “I have a little headache,” he explained, with an unintentional sigh, “and my son said better I don’t go to the office. I telephoned your uncle when there is any important mail he shall come up with it.”
“Is there anything I can do for you in town? I have some shopping to do and—. But there is Uncle Daniel now.”
He came hurriedly out of Joseph’s doorway, a look of concern furrowing his brow.
“Feeling a little lazy this morning, Joseph?” he asked, brightly, laying his arm across the stooping shoulders.
“Oh, so-so. Nothing to speak about, but when you have a doctor in the house always you can find a little pain. What you got there, Daniel?”
“Only a catalogue of the sale of the Powers estate.” He handed him the booklet. “Well, Jean, have you and Joseph been making up?”
“He calls me Miss Willard,” she answered, in mock despair, “and is altogether very proud and haughty. But if he doesn’t behave, he can’t come to our dinner party, can he, Uncle Daniel?”
“What dinner party?” asked the old man, smoothing her hand as it lay upon his arm. “You know I don’t go to dinner parties.”
“But considering that you come every year to—”
“Oh, you mean the Sedar. When it is, Daniel?”
At that moment the door giving upon the porch was again hastily opened and Philip May appeared upon the threshold.
“Don’t let me startle you,” he laughed, coming out, as his father rose nervously from the settee. “Nothing is wrong, father. I have just remembered that I forgot to tell Katie about a box of books that is coming for me. How is your head?” He stood beside him, an attractive, manly figure, hat in hand. Jean leaned against the box of mignonette on the rail, clasping her gloves.
“It is still a little heavy,” returned Joseph, reseating himself. “But that will go soon.”
“With the morning—if you keep quiet. By the way, Mr. Willard, I have intended dropping in upon you some evening, but have not yet found the opportunity. I’m glad of the chance of telling you I’m coming, just the same.” He smiled, winningly holding out a hand.
“I understand,” returned Daniel, without a trace of resentment. “But we were just asking your father to dine with us on the second of next month in the hope that you would come too.”
“The second—second—. I should be delighted, but it seems to me something was said about that date.” He pressed his hand to his brow. “Ah, yes,” his eyes lightened. “Otis—an engagement made a month ago. Well, I am truly sorry, but if I can break away, I’ll drop in upon you during the evening. Next Tuesday, isn’t it? I shall not forget. Good morning. Good morning, Miss Willard.” The next minute he had passed through the doorway, an utter stranger to the girl.
“You did not say whether I could get anything for you in town, Uncle Joseph,” she resumed, coming toward the two old gentlemen, the pretty note of her voice slightly strained. And then she noticed that the catalogue in the dark-veined hands was waving as if in a violent wind, that the heavy eyes were raised apologetically to her, seeking to cry down some unspeakable pain.
“Will you ask Katie?” he returned, slowly, speaking correctly, as he sometimes did when under stress of a relentless spur. “She said something to me to-day about curtains. Will you ask her, please? And, Jean, my dear, you know Philip is very busy—and he has many invitations—and he cannot always arrange his time. I hope you will not think it is anything else.” He did not look toward Daniel—he addressed his half-plea, half-apology, away from the eyes of his friend.
The girl flushed under the old man’s ponderous artlessness as she would not have done in a more worldly atmosphere. But her uncle saved her an evasion.
“Surely, Joseph,” came the brisk, cheery rebuke, “you cannot think we would doubt his sincerity. It is only surprising that a man like Dr. May has not always a previous engagement”; and he laughed over his little conceit, meeting Joseph’s eyes with frank cloudlessness.
Jean went in to consult the housekeeper.
“Oh, no, Katie,” she answered, decidedly, when that functionary had made known her wants. “Let Dr. May furnish his own study. Is that all?”
“But, Miss Jean, you always does choose them things for us, and how can you ask a man to know anything about it?” She was following her persuasively through the hall.
“I have told you, Katie, that it is impossible,” she reiterated, turning quietly upon her. “No doubt Dr. May has every intention of choosing his own carpet or rugs.” Her sentence halted—a footfall upon the stairs apprising her that Dr. May was still in the house. She wished herself well out of the door—in Jericho—anywhere but there.
“Well, there now, I’ll just ask him,” exclaimed the woman, planting her hands triumphantly upon her hips as he came down the stairs at the foot of which they were standing. “I’ve been asking Miss Jean, Dr. Philip, to get them things for your study, and she says as you knows more about it than she do and will be wanting to be doing of it all yourself. Is that true, now?”
Philip, standing on the last step, smiled amusedly, glancing down at the distant dignity of the girl in her dark tailor-gown. The black velvet of her hat cast a soft shadow upon the creamy whiteness of her face. She made a charming figure in the dim light of the hall.
“Her pleading is quite thrown away,” she hastened to say, with pleasant carelessness, turning toward the door. “Your father often used to ask me to relieve him of such household nuisances, but this, of course, is different.”
The housekeeper moved reluctantly away. He put out his hand to take the book from within her arm.
“What are you reading?” he asked, prolonging the grace of the short moment. “What! Carlyle?74 You don’t pretend to like the old growler?”
“I love him. He is a fire-god—all shams come to his stake. And as for me—I’d like to be his fuel-bearer!”
Her intensities set the healthy blood in his young veins stirring. At least—at any rate her eyes were irresistibly lovely. He was forced to put the book back into her hand as she turned the doorknob with the other. “And such violent cures attract you? But—one moment—why is this different?”
“Different?”
“Isn’t my room part of my father’s house?”
“Oh, I had forgotten that. Why should I inflict my provincial tastes upon you? Surely, you have cultivated your own, in all things, in all these long years and experiences.” She had the door open, was half way down the steps, before he could decide whether in her words or in the nonchalant lift to her little head had lain a dim suggestion of contempt. He knew nothing of her but her music and the mutable gleams of thought fleeting over her expressive face. He raised his brows in amusement over the contempt, vaguely surmising its origin.
A half hour later, making his daily call upon his bed-ridden friend, Dr. Otis, flattered by gentle, white-haired Mrs. Otis, coquetted with by golden-haired Miss Otis—in that atmosphere of accustomed high breeding which had become his own—their nature having grown his habit—he quite forgot the scarcely grasped attraction of Jean Willard. Young Otis had been haunting him like a shadow. Weeks before the coming of Dr. May, his enthusiasm had aroused the interest of the quietly cynical “Omars” almost to lionizing pitch, but their curiosity was forced to suspend judgment owing to the jealous attention the doctor gave the unexpected practice which had absorbed him almost from the day of his arrival. He had, however, met several of the members casually, and judging from these glimpses, he was contemplating with pleasure his introduction to the modest little circle.
Nevertheless, he was forced to break his dinner engagement with Otis when the appointed evening arrived. “An unforeseen consultation detains me,” his message ran, “so be reasonable, dine without me, and I shall be at your rooms as near 7:30 as will be possible, that you may coach me in regard to those club matters, individualities, etc., which are bothering your conscientious ciceroneship.”
Near the hour named, Otis admitted him. The room bore a company expectancy in the open piano, the cards and counters upon the table, the wine cooling in the corner beside the genially appointed buffet.
“This looks promising,” remarked Philip, putting down his hat and topcoat, and coming forward to the full light. With a faint motion, as of weariness satisfied, he threw himself upon the couch near the center of the room and glanced approvingly about him. “I regretted having to send that message, Otis, but you know a physician’s time is always half-mortgaged.”
“Yes, I was sorry,” returned his host, shortly, nervously throwing one leg over the other as he lounged opposite in the deep-cushioned easy chair.
The doctor’s quick ear detected an unfamiliar restraint.
His expressive eyebrows met in a fleeting question. “You had something to tell me?” he asked, pleasantly.
“Well—yes. But of course—now that you are here—” He smiled a vague conclusion to his sentence. Philip noticed that, despite his easy attitude, the young fellow’s supple hand was twitching the heavy tassel on the chair arm, his glance roving unsteadily about the room.
“You would perhaps have asked me not to come, had we met earlier in the evening—is that it?” he asked, with amused interest. “Out with it. You are expecting somebody whom it would be pleasanter for me not to meet?”
“Oh, no, no. Not at all, not at all,” reiterated Otis, with extravagant politeness. “No one is coming but Taylor, and Griswold, and Stephen Forrest. You have met them all, I believe.”
“All but Forrest—and he and I used to be daily neighbors—at least, bodily.”
“So I understand. Were you—were you at all—friendly during those school days?” The frank, clear-eyed face was uncomfortably flushed, the voice distant and cold.
Philip’s fine hand closed involuntarily upon itself. His intuition was on the alert. “There was no friendship between us,” he returned, candidly. “I believe he considered me his rival—he was very seriously ambitious.”
Otis drew in a deep, uneasy breath. “As you were. I—that may account for his antagonism—although, of course, as our electing is conducted—one never knows who drops the dissenting ball.”
“You mean,” questioned Philip, with reassuring gentleness, “that my name has been discredited?”
“Oh, confound it!” burst forth the other, apoplectically. “The man has it bruited that you are a Jew.75 But, of course, I am only waiting for your denial of the damned preposterous libel.”
“Why damned—why preposterous?” He was leaning forward as though to study his vis-à-vis more closely. His eyes were steady, his mouth half smiled. A slight, warm flush tinged his cheek.
“But—but you’re not,” combated Otis, lamely, sitting up in consternation.
“But I am,” asserted the other in calm conclusiveness. “Don’t you see that I am, now that you look at me?” He spoke kindly, as a superior might lead a child he desired to teach.
“Surely you never said—” began Otis, icily.
“You never asked.”
“But there are means of apprisal.”
“I saw no necessity. The gates were nominally down. You required no passport proclaiming the contrary.”
“Did Harleigh know?”
“No. And if he had?”
“By Jove—he hated a hypocrite!” The word came in resistless passion.
“Which more—that or a Jew?”
“I must judge him by myself. We out here are still unregenerate enough to damn the hypocrite with the lowest of criminals.”
“You mean you could have forgiven—cared for—the avowed Jew?”
“Before the hypocrite.”
“Bosh!”
The cool comment acted like a probe. Otis’s hot young eyes met his skeptical challenge with prompt reply. “I admire—respect many Jews,” he returned defiantly.
“At a distance.”
“You are a stranger to your own birth-place,” Otis returned, quietly. “Otherwise you would know that here and there one meets a young fellow who is frankly Jewish, yet welcome in any set.”
“Here and there. How did the exceptions come to be tolerated? Was the card of admission heavily tipped with gold, promising prodigal spending—or with the fame of talent, promising rare entertainment? You imply some excuse for the open door.”
Otis met his gaze directly, uncontrolledly now. “You are a man of the world,” he replied, without more ado. “You know from what center all social circles are drawn. You know equality rounds them all. You also know—although you may choose to ignore it—that not only equality of individuality, but coincidence of family tradition, is the barbed wire fence hemming all round—and out.”
“And there we naturally separate,” supplemented the apt pupil, thoughtfully. “But inform me further—I own to a hitherto unsuspected myopia—what becomes then of our grand scheme of democracy? What becomes of the glory of the self-made man?”
“A shibboleth. There are no self-made men—in society. Nor elsewhere.”
Dr. May studied him. “I think I understand your reservation,” he answered, slowly. “Then it is true—the age of miracles is past. The gods no longer conceive—we are all essentially fellow-made. What a responsibility!” He leaned forward in an attitude of the deepest musing. Then, as with a sudden start of self-consciousness, he said quickly, “But don’t let us trouble ourselves with the analysis—it requires delicate handling. My little venture was just one of those operations, as it were, which we call successful when the patient does not die under the knife, although he may succumb later to nature’s weakness or unforeseen complications. Queer how a man incognito may meet all requirements—and how, with just a birth-mark exposed, is the same man never again.”
Otis eyed him closely, with a sudden sharp pain at heart, thinking to find in the face the sarcasm so dangerously absent from the voice. But the face was quite as quietly intent—it wore the expression of one engaged in reading an interesting, impersonal phase of life.
However, after a moment, “Confess,” laughed Philip abruptly, “you feel as though you had been made game of by a clever rogue.”
“You were under false colors,” Otis flashed back through set teeth.
“What! Under the Stars and Stripes? Think a moment, my countryman.”
“By heavens!” exclaimed the young man, springing to his feet. “Do you think we can forget the man you stood for? There’s the torturing inconsistency of it—the honorable man of brains, the perfect, worshiped friend, but—”
“Yet a Jew. It is strange. No, don’t torture yourself. Perhaps even Harleigh would have drawn back from the ugly revelation. If Harleigh had known, there might never have been a friendship—if there had been no friendship, there might never have been a deception to unveil. Who knows? The premises are too hypothetical. There is someone knocking at your door.”
In fact, a chorus of knocks was in progress.
“You will stay, of course,” said Otis, quickly. “I—I trust you will not impute any narrow prejudice to my attitude. But in my surprise—. I hope you will stay.”
“Thank you. It will be rather interesting meeting Stephen Forrest.” His perfect repose, judged in the new light seemed merely a refined impudence. Otis turned from him as from a stranger. A new, subtle mystery emanated from him—the mystery of ghostly ages.
The three men entered hilariously, Stephen Forrest limping in last. At sight of Dr. May, who had risen, a perceptible embarrassment fell restrainingly upon them. They had counted upon Otis’s averting his coming.
“You have all met Dr. May, I think,” said Otis, off-handedly, as Taylor and Griswold bowed. Forrest, with a curt nod, seated himself at the table and began laying out the cards in a game of solitaire.
“I scarcely think Mr. Forrest remembers me,” suggested Philip, leaning his strong, well-knit figure against the piano, his eyes deliberately fixed upon the delicate face of the artist. “Yet we ran each other rather close when we were youngsters.”
“I remember you distinctly. But I never ran,” returned the artist, absorbed in the careful placing of his cards. “You will remember that you always got in first. Success and you ran hand in hand. Always have, I hear.”
“I have been most successful in hiding my failures. How else?”
“Otis can enlighten you. I have also heard somewhat of you from—er—our mutual friend—the lovely Jewess—Miss Jean Willard.” The cards required all his attention. Philip treated the insolent face and tone to a speculative regard.
“Do you mean Daniel Willard’s niece?” broke in Otis, hurriedly assuming the office of sentinel. “What a glorious pianist she is! I heard her play last week at the benefit for the Children’s Hospital. Taylor, you ought to know her.”
“Miss Willard? Certainly. She is one of the finest amateurs in town, in my estimation,” returned the ’cellist, sincerely wishing the uncomfortable moment over.
Philip’s eyes still held the feignedly nonchalant face of the artist. He resented the unnecessary introduction of Jean Willard’s name in the hostile assemblage—he could not understand the introduction, nor yet his own resentment.
Forrest lifted his eyes from his play with a provoking sneer into the steady hazel eyes still covering him. Then he passed his glance on to his host. “I thought we were going to play,” he said, impatiently.
“You’re in a hurry, but I suppose we’ll have to humor your proverbial restlessness. Of course, doctor, you’ll take a hand.”
“What is your game?”
“Poker, in plain American—what the English call Bluff,” said Forrest, swiftly. “You know it, I presume.”
“That is another of my successes,” returned Philip, with smiling imperturbability, from his position at the piano.
“Ah, but before we begin,” drawled Griswold, striving against the discord, “won’t you play something for us, Dr. May? We have been hearing marvelous eulogiums of your skill with the keys.”
“It is merely a race propensity,” said Philip pleasantly, seating himself and running his fingers over the keyboard. “I have not touched the piano in months, so you will excuse my undisciplined fingers. I believe the last time I played was on the last night of January of this year.” The piano was turned so that he faced them. His eyes, grown strangely brilliant, were raised to Otis standing pale and disturbed behind Stephen Forrest’s chair. Otis knew the date as that of John Harleigh’s death, but his senses had grown confused under the spirit of aloofness breathed by the magnetic figure at the piano, under the probing gaze compelling him like a confessional the while the harmonious fingers ran a haunting, incessant accompaniment of sombre, pursuing chords. Years before, in a German gallery he had met just such a gaze from a head of the Christ, and the resemblance before him now was a bewildering revelation. But his thronging thoughts were submerged in a sudden mad rush of melody, rhapsodic, barbaric, fierce, uncontrolled, yet melody throughout, which swept out to them.
“My Bedouin ancestry,” smiled the player out of the storm beating, retreating, engulfing itself. But presently the tones mourned into quiet, crept out, climbed, soared like a soul out of materiality.
“A Mosaic flight,” annotated the doctor’s voice through the profound majesty. “Or, rather, Beethoven. But what odds? They’re both god-heads.”
And then, pursuing the same flight he merged into the Lohengrin prelude, the swelling spiritual strains increasing, diminishing, choiring toward—a brutal crash.76
“There’s a Heine-esque finale for you,” he laughed, as he rose in the throbbing silence. “I never hear that prelude without thinking of the story Catulle Mendes tells of the Jew who possessed an exquisite bust of Wagner, about the brows of which he had placed a laurel wreath, and about the throat—a cord.77 But enough of revelation—let’s get down to reality and bluff.”
His face was deeply flushed as he crossed the room to the table. They felt his mastery of the moment, of themselves. But he was no longer master of himself—and he knew it: knew that the Jew, crushed to earth within him, had defied him throughout his playing, was defying his strong control now.
He seated himself and, with imperious assertiveness, picked up the cards. A cork popped, cards were dealt. The game proceeded. The players ‘passed,’ ‘bet,’ ‘stood,’ ‘called,’—the terms ringing out with the chink of money, while from the beginning Philip May kept up a constant hum of song,—snatches of opera, popular airs, costermonger78 and coon songs, never pausing, never allowing it to interfere with his own cool, fortunate play, but driving Stephen Forrest to the verge of frenzy.
“Quit that confounded singing,” he ordered finally, quite beside himself as his vis-à-vis drew in the pool with careless ease.
Philip bent his head in profound acquiescence. The next minute he was whistling, softly, clearly, charmingly, as though it were impossible to be still. The excitement had brought out the bravado. It was a phase of reversion—the rich, strong emotiveness of primal nature showing through the veneer of culture. And in that moment when he stood alone, revealed, he seemed more the man, more the individual, than he had ever seemed before, and Otis almost feared him—his unknowableness. And all the while the winnings piled up about him, and he smiled between his whistling, and the hours flew, and Stephen Forrest’s breathing grew quicker as he felt the man opposite him winning his slender means with the ease and indifference of an experienced gambler with whom the gods were in league.
“One,” said Griswold, discarding.
“Pat,” said Forrest.
“Pass,” said Otis.
“Two,” said Taylor.
“Three,” announced Philip, the dealer.
The betting began with Griswold, rose with Forrest. Taylor dropped out. Philip raised Forrest two-fold. Griswold laid down his hand.
“I call you,” said Stephen, hoarsely, throwing down his last gold piece, his face white and shaken as he leaned across the table.
“Think twice,” admonished the winner pleasantly.
Stephen half rose from his chair, “I have called you,” he said, incoherently, glaring at his opponent.
Philip took up his interrupted whistling, laid open his cards—the highest possible hand.
Forrest bent forward to look. An unutterable hate flared into the face he lifted to Philip’s. “You dealt,” he ground out—“you dealt—you damned whistling Jew—you’ve been—”
There was a flashing movement, a chair was overturned—the singularly well-shaped hand had gripped the slender throat.
But before the protest could be voiced as the others sprang to their feet, the hand relaxed. Forrest sank back livid and speechless.
“I beg your pardon,” said Philip, standing pale and haughty before his host. “I am sorry to have spoiled your evening. You had better look to your friend.”
He did not offer his hand. Another moment and the door clicked behind him.