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diff --git a/23893.txt b/23893.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3a5863 --- /dev/null +++ b/23893.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6761 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Melting-Pot, by Israel Zangwill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Melting-Pot + +Author: Israel Zangwill + +Release Date: December 18, 2007 [EBook #23893] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MELTING-POT *** + + + + +Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +WORKS OF ISRAEL ZANGWILL + +THE MELTING-POT + + + + +THE AMERICAN JEWISH BOOK COMPANY +NEW YORK +1921 + +THE MELTING-POT +COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1914, +BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + + +Printed by +THE LORD BALTIMORE PRESS +Baltimore, Md. + + + + +TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT + +IN RESPECTFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS STRENUOUS STRUGGLE AGAINST THE +FORCES THAT THREATEN TO SHIPWRECK THE GREAT REPUBLIC WHICH +CARRIES MANKIND AND ITS FORTUNES, THIS PLAY IS, BY HIS KIND +PERMISSION, CORDIALLY DEDICATED + + + + +_The rights of performing or publishing this play in any country +or language are strictly reserved by the author._ + + + + + +THE CAST + +[As first produced at the Columbia Theatre, Washington, on the fifth of +October 1908] + +David Quixano WALKER WHITESIDE +Mendel Quixano HENRY BERGMAN +Baron Revendal JOHN BLAIR +Quincy Davenport, Jr. GRANT STEWART +Herr Pappelmeister HENRY VOGEL +Vera Revendal CHRYSTAL HERNE +Baroness Revendal LEONORA VON OTTINGER +Frau Quixano LOUISE MULDENER +Kathleen O'Reilly MOLLIE REVEL +Settlement Servant ANNIE HARRIS + +Produced by HUGH FORD + + +[As first produced by the Play Actors at the Court Theatre, London on +the twenty-fifth of January 1914] + +David Quixano HAROLD CHAPIN +Mendel Quixano HUGH TABBERER +Baron Revendal H. LAWRENCE LEYTON +Quincy Davenport, Jr. P. PERCEVAL CLARK +Herr Pappelmeister CLIFTON ALDERSON +Vera Revendal PHYLLIS RELPH +Baroness Revendal GILLIAN SCAIFE +Frau Quixano INEZ BENSUSAN +Kathleen O'Reilly E. NOLAN O'CONNOR +Settlement Servant RUTH PARROTT + +Produced by NORMAN PAGE + + + + +Act I + + + _The scene is laid in the living-room of the small home of the + QUIXANOS in the Richmond or non-Jewish borough of New York, about + five o'clock of a February afternoon. At centre back is a double + street-door giving on a columned veranda in the Colonial style. + Nailed on the right-hand door-post gleams a_ Mezuzah, _a tiny + metal case, containing a Biblical passage. On the right of the + door is a small hat-stand holding MENDEL'S overcoat, umbrella, + etc. There are two windows, one on either side of the door, and + three exits, one down-stage on the left leading to the stairs and + family bedrooms, and two on the right, the upper leading to + KATHLEEN'S bedroom and the lower to the kitchen. Over the street + door is pinned the Stars-and-Stripes. On the left wall, in the + upper corner of which is a music-stand, are bookshelves of large + mouldering Hebrew books, and over them is hung a_ Mizrach, _or + Hebrew picture, to show it is the East Wall. Other pictures round + the room include Wagner, Columbus, Lincoln, and "Jews at the + Wailing place." Down-stage, about a yard from the left wall, + stands DAVID'S roll-desk, open and displaying a medley of music, + a quill pen, etc. On the wall behind the desk hangs a book-rack + with brightly bound English books. A grand piano stands at left + centre back, holding a pile of music and one huge Hebrew tome. + There is a table in the middle of the room covered with a red + cloth and a litter of objects, music, and newspapers. The + fireplace, in which a fire is burning, occupies the centre of the + right wall, and by it stands an armchair on which lies another + heavy mouldy Hebrew tome. The mantel holds a clock, two silver + candlesticks, etc. A chiffonier stands against the back wall on + the right. There are a few cheap chairs. The whole effect is a + curious blend of shabbiness, Americanism, Jewishness, and music, + all four being combined in the figure of MENDEL QUIXANO, who, in + a black skull-cap, a seedy velvet jacket, and red + carpet-slippers, is discovered standing at the open street-door. + He is an elderly music master with a fine Jewish face, + pathetically furrowed by misfortunes, and a short grizzled + beard._ + +MENDEL +Good-bye, Johnny!... And don't forget to practise your scales. + [_Shutting door, shivers._] +Ugh! It'll snow again, I guess. + [_He yawns, heaves a great sigh of relief, walks toward the + table, and perceives a music-roll._] +The chump! He's forgotten his music! + [_He picks it up and runs toward the window on the left, + muttering furiously_] +Brainless, earless, thumb-fingered Gentile! + [_Throwing open the window_] +Here, Johnny! You can't practise your scales if you leave 'em here! + [_He throws out the music-roll and shivers again at the cold as + he shuts the window._] +Ugh! And I must go out to that miserable dancing class to scrape the +rent together. + [_He goes to the fire and warms his hands._] +_Ach Gott!_ What a life! What a life! + [_He drops dejectedly into the armchair. Finding himself sitting + uncomfortably on the big book, he half rises and pushes it to the + side of the seat. After an instant an irate Irish voice is heard + from behind the kitchen door._] + +KATHLEEN [_Without_] +Divil take the butther! I wouldn't put up with ye, not for a hundred +dollars a week. + +MENDEL [_Raising himself to listen, heaves great sigh_] +_Ach!_ Mother and Kathleen again! + +KATHLEEN [_Still louder_] +Pots and pans and plates and knives! Sure 'tis enough to make a saint +chrazy. + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Equally loudly from kitchen_] +_Wos schreist du? Gott in Himmel, dieses Amerika!_ + +KATHLEEN [_Opening door of kitchen toward the end of FRAU QUIXANO'S + speech, but turning back, with her hand visible on the door_] +What's that ye're afther jabberin' about America? If ye don't like God's +own counthry, sure ye can go back to your own Jerusalem, so ye can. + +MENDEL +One's very servants are anti-Semites. + +KATHLEEN [_Bangs her door as she enters excitedly, carrying a folded + white table-cloth. She is a young and pretty Irish + maid-of-all-work_] +Bad luck to me, if iver I take sarvice again with haythen Jews. + [_She perceives MENDEL huddled up in the armchair, gives a little + scream, and drops the cloth._] +Och, I thought ye was out! + +MENDEL [_Rising_] +And so you dared to be rude to my mother. + +KATHLEEN [_Angrily, as she picks up the cloth_] +She said I put mate on a butther-plate. + +MENDEL +Well, you know that's against her religion. + +KATHLEEN +But I didn't do nothing of the soort. I ounly put butther on a +mate-plate. + +MENDEL +That's just as bad. What the Bible forbids---- + +KATHLEEN [_Lays the cloth on a chair and vigorously clears off the + litter of things on the table._] +Sure, the Pope himself couldn't remimber it all. Why don't ye have a +sinsible religion? + +MENDEL +You are impertinent. Attend to your work. + [_He seats himself at the piano._] + +KATHLEEN +And isn't it laying the Sabbath cloth I am? + [_She bangs down articles from the table into their right + places._] + +MENDEL +Don't answer me back. + [_He begins to play softly._] + +KATHLEEN +Faith, I must answer _somebody_ back--and sorra a word of English _she_ +understands. I might as well talk to a tree. + +MENDEL +You are not paid to talk, but to work. + [_Playing on softly._] + +KATHLEEN +And who _can_ work wid an ould woman nagglin' and grizzlin' and faultin' +me? + [_She removes the red table-cloth._] +Mate-plates, butther-plates, _kosher_, _trepha_, sure I've smashed up +folks' crockery and they makin' less fuss ouver it. + +MENDEL [_Stops playing._] +Breaking crockery is one thing, and breaking a religion another. Didn't +you tell me when I engaged you that you had lived in other Jewish +families? + +KATHLEEN [_Angrily_] +And is it a liar ye'd make me out now? I've lived wid clothiers and +pawnbrokers and Vaudeville actors, but I niver shtruck a house where +mate and butther couldn't be as paceable on the same plate as eggs and +bacon--the most was that some wouldn't ate the bacon onless 'twas killed +_kosher_. + +MENDEL [_Tickled_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +KATHLEEN [_Furious, pauses with the white table-cloth half on._] +And who's ye laughin' at? I give ye a week's notice. I won't be the joke +of Jews, no, begorra, that I won't. + [_She pulls the cloth on viciously._] + +MENDEL [_Sobered, rising from the piano_] +Don't talk nonsense, Kathleen. Nobody is making a joke of you. Have a +little patience--you'll soon learn our ways. + +KATHLEEN [_More mildly_] +Whose ways, yours or the ould lady's or Mr. David's? To-night being yer +Sabbath, _you'll_ be blowing out yer bedroom candle, though ye won't +light it; Mr. David'll light his and blow it out too; and the misthress +won't even touch the candleshtick. There's three religions in this +house, not wan. + +MENDEL [_Coughs uneasily._] +Hem! Well, you learn the mistress's ways--that will be enough. + +KATHLEEN [_Going to mantelpiece_] +But what way can I understand her jabberin' and jibberin'?--I'm not a +monkey! + [_She takes up a silver candlestick._] +Why doesn't she talk English like a Christian? + +MENDEL [_Irritated_] +If you are going on like that, perhaps you had better _not_ remain here. + +KATHLEEN [_Blazing up, forgetting to take the second candlestick_] +And who's axin' ye to remain here? Faith, I'll quit off this blissid +minit! + +MENDEL [_Taken aback_] +No, you can't do that. + +KATHLEEN +And why can't I? Ye can keep yer dirthy wages. + [_She dumps down the candlestick violently on the table, and exit + hysterically into her bedroom._] + +MENDEL [_Sighing heavily_] +She might have put on the other candlestick. + [_He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door._] +Who can that be? + [_Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully + low._] +Kathleen! There's a visitor! + +KATHLEEN [_Angrily from within_] +I'm not here! + +MENDEL +So long as you're in this house, you must do your work. + [_KATHLEEN'S head emerges sulkily._] + +KATHLEEN +I tould ye I was lavin' at wanst. Let you open the door yerself. + +MENDEL +I'm not dressed to receive visitors--it may be a new pupil. + [_He goes toward staircase, automatically carrying off the + candlestick which KATHLEEN has not caught sight of. Exit on the + left._] + +KATHLEEN [_Moving toward the street-door_] +The divil fly away wid me if ivir from this 'our I set foot again among +haythen furriners---- + [_She throws open the door angrily and then the outer door. VERA + REVENDAL, a beautiful girl in furs and muff, with a touch of the + exotic in her appearance, steps into the little vestibule._] + +VERA +Is Mr. Quixano at home? + +KATHLEEN [_Sulkily_] +Which Mr. Quixano? + +VERA [_Surprised_] +Are there two Mr. Quixanos? + +KATHLEEN [_Tartly_] +Didn't I say there was? + +VERA +Then I want the one who plays. + +KATHLEEN +There isn't a one who plays. + +VERA +Oh, surely! + +KATHLEEN +Ye're wrong entirely. They both plays. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Oh, dear! And I suppose they both play the violin. + +KATHLEEN +Ye're wrong again. One plays the piano--ounly the young ginthleman plays +the fiddle--Mr. David! + +VERA [_Eagerly_] +Ah, Mr. David--that's the one I want to see. + +KATHLEEN +He's out. + [_She abruptly shuts the door._] + +VERA [_Stopping its closing_] +Don't shut the door! + +KATHLEEN [_Snappily_] +More chanst of seeing him out there than in here! + +VERA +But I want to leave a message. + +KATHLEEN +Then why don't ye come inside? It's freezin' me to the bone. + [_She sneezes._] +Atchoo! + +VERA +I'm sorry. + [_She comes in and closes the door_] +Will you please say Miss Revendal called from the Settlement, and we are +anxiously awaiting his answer to the letter asking him to play for us +on---- + +KATHLEEN +What way will I be tellin' him all that? I'm not here. + +VERA +Eh? + +KATHLEEN +I'm lavin'--just as soon as I've me thrunk packed. + +VERA +Then I must _write_ the message--can I write at this desk? + +KATHLEEN +If the ould woman don't come in and shpy you. + +VERA +What old woman? + +KATHLEEN +Ould Mr. Quixano's mother--she wears a black wig, she's that houly. + +VERA [_Bewildered_] +What?... But why should she mind my writing? + +KATHLEEN +Look at the clock. + [_VERA looks at the clock, more puzzled than ever._] +If ye're not quick, it'll be _Shabbos_. + +VERA +Be what? + +KATHLEEN [_Holds up hands of horror_] +Ye don't know what _Shabbos_ is! A Jewess not know her own Sunday! + +VERA [_Outraged_] +I, a Jewess! How dare you? + +KATHLEEN [_Flustered_] +Axin' your pardon, miss, but ye looked a bit furrin and I---- + +VERA [_Frozen_] +I am a Russian. + [_Slowly and dazedly_] +Do I understand that Mr. Quixano is a Jew? + +KATHLEEN +Two Jews, miss. Both of 'em. + +VERA +Oh, but it is impossible. + [_Dazedly to herself_] +He had such charming manners. + [_Aloud again_] +You seem to think everybody Jewish. Are you sure Mr. Quixano is not +Spanish?--the name sounds Spanish. + +KATHLEEN +Shpanish! + [_She picks up the old Hebrew book on the armchair._] +Look at the ould lady's book. Is that Shpanish? + [_She points to the Mizrach._] +And that houly picture the ould lady says her pater-noster to! Is that +Shpanish? And that houly table-cloth with the houly silver candle---- + [_Cry of sudden astonishment_] +Why, I've ounly put---- + [_She looks toward mantel and utters a great cry of alarm as she + drops the Hebrew book on the floor._] +Why, where's the other candleshtick! Mother in hivin, they'll say I +shtole the candleshtick! + [_Perceiving that VERA is dazedly moving toward door_] +Beggin' your pardon, miss---- + [_She is about to move a chair toward the desk._] + +VERA +Thank you, I've changed my mind. + +KATHLEEN +That's more than I'll do. + +VERA [_Hand on door_] +Don't say I called at all. + +KATHLEEN +Plaze yerself. What name did ye say? + [_MENDEL enters hastily from his bedroom, completely + transmogrified, minus the skull-cap, with a Prince Albert coat, + and boots instead of slippers, so that his appearance is + gentlemanly. KATHLEEN begins to search quietly and + unostentatiously in the table-drawers, the chiffonier, etc., + etc., for the candlestick._ + +MENDEL +I am sorry if I have kept you waiting---- + [_He rubs his hands importantly._] +You see I have so many pupils already. Won't you sit down? + [_He indicates a chair._] + +VERA [_Flushing, embarrassed, releasing her hold of the door handle_] +Thank you--I--I--I didn't come about pianoforte lessons. + +MENDEL [_Sighing in disappointment_] +_Ach!_ + +VERA +In fact I--er--it wasn't you I wanted at all--I was just going. + +MENDEL [_Politely_] +Perhaps I can direct you to the house you are looking for. + +VERA +Thank you, I won't trouble you. + [_She turns toward the door again._] + +MENDEL +Allow me! + [_He opens the door for her._] + +VERA [_Hesitating, struck by his manners, struggling with her + anti-Jewish prejudice_] +It--it--was your son I wanted. + +MENDEL [_His face lighting up_] +You mean my nephew, David. Yes, _he_ gives violin lessons. + [_He closes the door._] + +VERA +Oh, is he your nephew? + +MENDEL +I am sorry he is out--he, too, has so many pupils, though at the moment +he is only at the Crippled Children's Home--playing to them. + +VERA +How lovely of him! + [_Touched and deciding to conquer her prejudice_] +But that's just what _I_ came about--I mean we'd like him to play again +at our Settlement. Please ask him why he hasn't answered Miss Andrews's +letter. + +MENDEL [_Astonished_] +He hasn't answered your letter? + +VERA +Oh, I'm not Miss Andrews; I'm only her assistant. + +MENDEL +I see--Kathleen, whatever are you doing under the table? + [_KATHLEEN, in her hunting around for the candlestick, is now + stooping and lifting up the table-cloth._] + +KATHLEEN +Sure the fiend's after witching away the candleshtick. + +MENDEL [_Embarrassed_] +The candlestick? Oh--I--I think you'll find it in my bedroom. + +KATHLEEN +Wisha, now! + [_She goes into his bedroom._] + +MENDEL [_Turning apologetically to VERA_] +I beg your pardon, Miss Andrews, I mean Miss--er---- + +VERA +Revendal. + +MENDEL [_Slightly more interested_] +Revendal? Then you must be the Miss Revendal David told me about! + +VERA [_Blushing_] +Why, he has only seen me once--the time he played at our Roof-Garden +Concert. + +MENDEL +Yes, but he was so impressed by the way you handled those new +immigrants--the Spirit of the Settlement, he called you. + +VERA [_Modestly_] +Ah, no--Miss Andrews is that. And you will tell him to answer her letter +at once, won't you, because there's only a week now to our Concert. + [_A gust of wind shakes the windows. She smiles._] +Naturally it will _not_ be on the Roof Garden. + +MENDEL [_Half to himself_] +Fancy David not saying a word about it to me! Are you sure the letter +was mailed? + +VERA +I mailed it myself--a week ago. And even in New York---- + [_She smiles. Re-enter KATHLEEN with the recovered candlestick._] + +KATHLEEN +Bedad, ye're as great a shleep-walker as Mr. David! + [_She places the candlestick on the table and moves toward her + bedroom._] + +MENDEL +Kathleen! + +KATHLEEN [_Pursuing her walk without turning_] +I'm not here! + +MENDEL +Did you take in a letter for Mr. David about a week ago? + [_Smiling at MISS REVENDAL_] +He doesn't get many, you see. + +KATHLEEN [_Turning_] +A letter? Sure, I took in ounly a postcard from Miss Johnson, an' that +ounly sayin'---- + +VERA +And you don't remember a letter--a large letter--last Saturday--with the +seal of our Settlement? + +KATHLEEN +Last Saturday wid a seal, is it? Sure, how could I forgit it? + +MENDEL +Then you _did_ take it in? + +KATHLEEN +Ye're wrong entirely. 'Twas the misthress took it in. + +MENDEL [_To VERA_] +I am sorry the boy has been so rude. + +KATHLEEN +But the misthress didn't give it him at wanst--she hid it away bekaz it +was _Shabbos_. + +MENDEL +Oh, dear--and she has forgotten to give it to him. Excuse me. + [_He makes a hurried exit to the kitchen._] + +KATHLEEN +And excuse _me_--I've me thrunk to pack. + [_She goes toward her bedroom, pauses at the door._] +And ye'll witness I don't pack the candleshtick. + [_Emphatic exit._] + +VERA [_Still dazed_] +A Jew! That wonderful boy a Jew!... But then so was David the shepherd +youth with his harp and his psalms, the sweet singer in Israel. + [_She surveys the room and its contents with interest. The + windows rattle once or twice in the rising wind. The light gets + gradually less. She picks up the huge Hebrew tome on the piano + and puts it down with a slight smile as if overwhelmed by the + weight of alien antiquity. Then she goes over to the desk and + picks up the printed music._] +Mendelssohn's Concerto, Tartini's Sonata in G Minor, Bach's Chaconne... + [_She looks up at the book-rack._] +"History of the American Commonwealth," "Cyclopaedia of History," +"History of the Jews"--he seems very fond of history. Ah, there's +Shelley and Tennyson. + [_With surprise_] +Nietzsche next to the Bible? No Russian books apparently---- + [_Re-enter MENDEL triumphantly with a large sealed letter._] + +MENDEL +Here it is! As it came on Saturday, my mother was afraid David would +open it! + +VERA [_Smiling_] +But what _can_ you do with a letter except open it? Any more than with +an oyster? + +MENDEL [_Smiling as he puts the letter on DAVID'S desk_] +To a pious Jew letters and oysters are alike forbidden--at least letters +may not be opened on our day of rest. + +VERA +I'm sure I couldn't rest till I'd opened mine. + [_Enter from the kitchen FRAU QUIXANO, defending herself with + excited gesticulation. She is an old lady with a black wig, but + her appearance is dignified, venerable even, in no way comic. She + speaks Yiddish exclusively, that being largely the language of + the Russian Pale._] + +FRAU QUIXANO +_Obber ich hob gesogt zu Kathleen_---- + +MENDEL [_Turning and going to her_] +Yes, yes, mother, that's all right now. + +FRAU QUIXANO [_In horror, perceiving her Hebrew book on the floor, where + KATHLEEN has dropped it_] +_Mein Buch!_ + [_She picks it up and kisses it piously._] + +MENDEL [_Presses her into her fireside chair_] +_Ruhig, ruhig, Mutter!_ + [_To VERA_] +She understands barely a word of English--she won't disturb us. + +VERA +Oh, but I must be going--I was so long finding the house, and look! it +has begun to snow! + [_They both turn their heads and look at the falling snow._] + +MENDEL +All the more reason to wait for David--it may leave off. He can't be +long now. Do sit down. + [_He offers a chair._] + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Looking round suspiciously_] +_Wos will die Shikseh?_ + +VERA +What does your mother say? + +MENDEL [_Half-smiling_] +Oh, only asking what your heathen ladyship desires. + +VERA +Tell her I hope she is well. + +MENDEL +_Das Fraeulein hofft dass es geht gut_---- + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Shrugging her shoulders in despairing astonishment_] +_Gut? Un' wie soll es gut gehen--in Amerika!_ + [_She takes out her spectacles, and begins slowly polishing and + adjusting them._] + +VERA [_Smiling_] +I understood that last word. + +MENDEL +She asks how can anything possibly go well in America! + +VERA +Ah, she doesn't like America. + +MENDEL [_Half-smiling_] +Her favourite exclamation is "_A Klog zu Columbessen!_" + +VERA +What does that mean? + +MENDEL +Cursed be Columbus! + +VERA [_Laughingly_] +Poor Columbus! I suppose she's just come over. + +MENDEL +Oh, no, it must be ten years since I sent for her. + +VERA +Really! But your nephew was born here? + +MENDEL +No, he's Russian too. But please sit down, you had better get his answer +at once. + [_VERA sits._] + +VERA +I suppose _you_ taught him music. + +MENDEL +I? I can't play the violin. He is self-taught. In the Russian Pale he +was a wonder-child. Poor David! He always looked forward to coming to +America; he imagined I was a famous musician over here. He found me +conductor in a cheap theatre--a converted beer-hall. + +VERA +Was he very disappointed? + +MENDEL +Disappointed? He was enchanted! He is crazy about America. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Ah, _he_ doesn't curse Columbus. + +MENDEL +My mother came with her life behind her: David with his life before him. +Poor boy! + +VERA +Why do you say poor boy? + +MENDEL +What is there before him here but a terrible struggle for life? If he +doesn't curse Columbus, he'll curse fate. Music-lessons and dance-halls, +beer-halls and weddings--every hope and ambition will be ground out of +him, and he will die obscure and unknown. + [_His head sinks on his breast, FRAU QUIXANO is heard faintly + sobbing over her book. The sobbing continues throughout the + scene._] + +VERA [_Half rising_] +You have made your mother cry. + +MENDEL +Oh, no--she understood nothing. She always cries on the eve of the +Sabbath. + +VERA [_Mystified, sinking back into her chair_] +Always cries? Why? + +MENDEL [_Embarrassed_] +Oh, well, a Christian wouldn't understand---- + +VERA +Yes I could--do tell me! + +MENDEL +She knows that in this great grinding America, David and I must go out +to earn our bread on Sabbath as on week-days. She never says a word to +us, but her heart is full of tears. + +VERA +Poor old woman. It was wrong of us to ask your nephew to play at the +Settlement for nothing. + +MENDEL [_Rising fiercely_] +If you offer him a fee, he shall not play. Did you think I was begging +of you? + +VERA +I beg your pardon---- + [_She smiles._] +There, _I_ am begging of _you_. Sit down, please. + +MENDEL [_Walking away to piano_] +I ought not to have burdened you with our troubles--you are too young. + +VERA [_Pathetically_] +I young? If you only knew how old I am! + +MENDEL +You? + +VERA +I left my youth in Russia--eternities ago. + +MENDEL +You know our Russia! + [_He goes over to her and sits down._] + +VERA +Can't you see I'm a Russian, too? + [_With a faint tremulous smile_] +I might even have been a Siberian had I stayed. But I escaped from my +gaolers. + +MENDEL +You were a Revolutionist! + +VERA +Who can live in Russia and not be? So you see trouble and I are not such +strangers. + +MENDEL +Who would have thought it to look at you? Siberia, gaolers, revolutions! + [_Rising_] +What terrible things life holds! + +VERA +Yes, even in free America. + [_FRAU QUIXANO'S sobbing grows slightly louder._] + +MENDEL +That Settlement work must be full of tragedies. + +VERA +Sometimes one sees nothing but the tragedy of things. + [_Looking toward the window_] +The snow is getting thicker. How pitilessly it falls--like fate. + +MENDEL [_Following her gaze_] +Yes, icy and inexorable. + [_The faint sobbing of FRAU QUIXANO over her book, which has been + heard throughout the scene as a sort of musical accompaniment, + has combined to work it up to a mood of intense sadness, + intensified by the growing dusk, so that as the two now gaze at + the falling snow, the atmosphere seems overbrooded with + melancholy. There is a moment or two without dialogue, given over + to the sobbing of FRAU QUIXANO, the roar of the wind shaking the + windows, the quick falling of the snow. Suddenly a happy voice + singing "My Country 'tis of Thee" is heard from without._] + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Pricking up her ears, joyously_] +_Do ist Dovidel!_ + +MENDEL +That's David! + [_He springs up._] + +VERA [_Murmurs in relief_] +Ah! + [_The whole atmosphere is changed to one of joyous expectation, + DAVID is seen and heard passing the left window, still singing + the national hymn, but it breaks off abruptly as he throws open + the door and appears on the threshold, a buoyant snow-covered + figure in a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, carrying a violin + case. He is a sunny, handsome youth of the finest Russo-Jewish + type. He speaks with a slight German accent._] + +DAVID +Isn't it a beautiful world, uncle? + [_He closes the inner door._] +Snow, the divine white snow---- + [_Perceiving the visitor with amaze_] +Miss Revendal here! + [_He removes his hat and looks at her with boyish reverence and + wonder._] + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Don't look so surprised--I haven't fallen from heaven like the snow. +Take off your wet things. + +DAVID +Oh, it's nothing; it's dry snow. + [_He lays down his violin case and brushes off the snow from his + cloak, which MENDEL takes from him and hangs on the rack, all + without interrupting the dialogue._] +If I had only known you were waiting---- + +VERA +I am glad you didn't--I wouldn't have had those poor little cripples +cheated out of a moment of your music. + +DAVID +Uncle has told you? Ah, it was bully! You should have seen the cripples +waltzing with their crutches! + [_He has moved toward the old woman, and while he holds one hand + to the blaze now pats her cheek with the other in greeting, to + which she responds with a loving smile ere she settles + contentedly to slumber over her book._] +_Es war grossartig_, Granny. Even the paralysed danced. + +MENDEL +Don't exaggerate, David. + +DAVID +Exaggerate, uncle! Why, if they hadn't the use of their legs, their arms +danced on the counterpane; if their arms couldn't dance, their hands +danced from the wrist; and if their hands couldn't dance, they danced +with their fingers; and if their fingers couldn't dance, their heads +danced; and if their heads were paralysed, why, their eyes danced--God +never curses so utterly but you've _something_ left to dance with! + [_He moves toward his desk._] + +VERA [_Infected with his gaiety_] +You'll tell us next the beds danced. + +DAVID +So they did--they shook their legs like mad! + +VERA +Oh, why wasn't I there? + [_His eyes meet hers at the thought of her presence._] + +DAVID +Dear little cripples, I felt as if I could play them all straight again +with the love and joy jumping out of this old fiddle. + [_He lays his hand caressingly on the violin._] + +MENDEL [_Gloomily_] +But in reality you left them as crooked as ever. + +DAVID +No, I didn't. + [_He caresses the back of his uncle's head in affectionate + rebuke._] +I couldn't play their bones straight, but I played their brains +straight. And hunch-_brains_ are worse than hunch-_backs_.... + [_Suddenly perceiving his letter on the desk_] +A letter for _me_! + [_He takes it with boyish eagerness, then hesitates to open it._] + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Oh, you may open it! + +DAVID [_Wistfully_] +May I? + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Yes, and quick--or it'll be _Shabbos_! + [_DAVID looks up at her in wonder._] + +MENDEL [_Smiling_] +You read your letter! + +DAVID [_Opens it eagerly, then smiles broadly with pleasure._] +Oh, Miss Revendal! Isn't that great! To play again at your Settlement. I +_am_ getting famous. + +VERA +But we can't offer you a fee. + +MENDEL [_Quickly sotto voce to VERA_] +Thank you! + +DAVID +A fee! I'd pay a fee to see all those happy immigrants you gather +together--Dutchmen and Greeks, Poles and Norwegians, Welsh and +Armenians. If you only had Jews, it would be as good as going to Ellis +Island. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +What a strange taste! Who on earth wants to go to Ellis Island? + +DAVID +Oh, I love going to Ellis Island to watch the ships coming in from +Europe, and to think that all those weary, sea-tossed wanderers are +feeling what _I_ felt when America first stretched out her great +mother-hand to _me_! + +VERA [_Softly_] +Were you very happy? + +DAVID +It was heaven. You must remember that all my life I had heard of +America--everybody in our town had friends there or was going there or +got money orders from there. The earliest game I played at was selling +off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All my life America was +waiting, beckoning, shining--the place where God would wipe away tears +from off all faces. + [_He ends in a half-sob._] + +MENDEL [_Rises, as in terror_] +Now, now, David, don't get excited. + [_Approaches him._] + +DAVID +To think that the same great torch of liberty which threw its light +across all the broad seas and lands into my little garret in Russia, is +shining also for all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining +wherever men hunger and are oppressed---- + +MENDEL [_Soothingly_] +Yes, yes, David. + [_Laying hand on his shoulder_] +Now sit down and---- + +DAVID [_Unheeding_] +Shining over the starving villages of Italy and Ireland, over the +swarming stony cities of Poland and Galicia, over the ruined farms of +Roumania, over the shambles of Russia---- + +MENDEL [_Pleadingly_] +David! + +DAVID +Oh, Miss Revendal, when I look at our Statue of Liberty, I just seem to +hear the voice of America crying: "Come unto me all ye that labour and +are heavy laden and I will give you rest--rest----" + [_He is now almost sobbing._] + +MENDEL +Don't talk any more--you know it is bad for you. + +DAVID +But Miss Revendal asked--and I want to explain to her what America means +to me. + +MENDEL +You can explain it in your American symphony. + +VERA [_Eagerly--to DAVID_] +You compose? + +DAVID [_Embarrassed_] +Oh, uncle, why did you talk of--? Uncle always--my music is so thin and +tinkling. When I am _writing_ my American symphony, it seems like +thunder crashing through a forest full of bird songs. But next day--oh, +next day! + [_He laughs dolefully and turns away._] + +VERA +So your music finds inspiration in America? + +DAVID +Yes--in the seething of the Crucible. + +VERA +The Crucible? I don't understand! + +DAVID +Not understand! You, the Spirit of the Settlement! + [_He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing + her._] +Not understand that America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot +where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you +stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you +stand + [_Graphically illustrating it on the table_] +in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your +fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, +brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to--these are the +fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, +Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians--into the Crucible with you +all! God is making the American. + +MENDEL +I should have thought the American was made already--eighty millions of +him. + +DAVID +Eighty millions! + [_He smiles toward VERA in good-humoured derision._] +Eighty millions! Over a continent! Why, that cockleshell of a Britain +has forty millions! No, uncle, the real American has not yet arrived. He +is only in the Crucible, I tell you--he will be the fusion of all races, +perhaps the coming superman. Ah, what a glorious Finale for my +symphony--if I can only write it. + +VERA +But you have written some of it already! May I not see it? + +DAVID [_Relapsing into boyish shyness_] +No, if you please, don't ask---- + [_He moves over to his desk and nervously shuts it down and turns + the keys of drawers as though protecting his MS._] + +VERA +Won't you give a bit of it at our Concert? + +DAVID +Oh, it needs an orchestra. + +VERA +But you at the violin and I at the piano---- + +MENDEL +You didn't tell me you played, Miss Revendal! + +VERA +I told you less commonplace things. + +DAVID +Miss Revendal plays quite like a professional. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +I don't feel so complimented as you expect. You see I did have a +professional training. + +MENDEL [_Smiling_] +And I thought you came to _me_ for lessons! + [_DAVID laughs._] + +VERA [_Smiling_] +No, I went to Petersburg---- + +DAVID [_Dazed_] +To Petersburg----? + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Naturally. To the Conservatoire. There wasn't much music to be had at +Kishineff, a town where---- + +DAVID +Kishineff! + [_He begins to tremble._] + +VERA [_Still smiling_] +My birthplace. + +MENDEL [_Coming toward him, protectingly_] +Calm yourself, David. + +DAVID +Yes, yes--so you are a Russian! + [_He shudders violently, staggers._] + +VERA [_Alarmed_] +You are ill! + +DAVID +It is nothing, I--not much music at Kishineff! No, only the +Death-March!... Mother! Father! Ah--cowards, murderers! And you! + [_He shakes his fist at the air._] +You, looking on with your cold butcher's face! O God! O God! + [_He bursts into hysterical sobs and runs, shamefacedly, through + the door to his room._] + +VERA [_Wildly_] +What have I said? What have I done? + +MENDEL +Oh, I was afraid of this, I was afraid of this. + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Who has fallen asleep over her book, wakes as if with a + sense of the horror and gazes dazedly around, adding to the + thrillingness of the moment_] +_Dovidel! Wu is' Dovidel! Mir dacht sach_---- + +MENDEL [_Pressing her back to her slumbers_] +_Du traeumst, Mutter! Schlaf!_ + [_She sinks back to sleep._] + +VERA [_In hoarse whisper_] +His father and mother were massacred? + +MENDEL [_In same tense tone_] +Before his eyes--father, mother, sisters, down to the youngest babe, +whose skull was battered in by a hooligan's heel. + +VERA +How did _he_ escape? + +MENDEL +He was shot in the shoulder, and fell unconscious. As he wasn't a girl, +the hooligans left him for dead and hurried to fresh sport. + +VERA +Terrible! Terrible! + [_Almost in tears._] + +MENDEL [_Shrugging shoulders, hopelessly_] +It is only Jewish history!... David belongs to the species of _pogrom_ +orphan--they arrive in the States by almost every ship. + +VERA +Poor boy! Poor boy! And he looked so happy! + [_She half sobs._] + +MENDEL +So he is, most of the time--a sunbeam took human shape when he was born. +But naturally that dreadful scene left a scar on his brain, as the +bullet left a scar on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see red +when Kishineff is mentioned. + +VERA +I will never mention my miserable birthplace to him again. + +MENDEL +But you see every few months the newspapers tell us of another _pogrom_, +and then he screams out against what he calls that butcher's face, so +that I tremble for his reason. I tremble even when I see him writing +that crazy music about America, for it only means he is brooding over +the difference between America and Russia. + +VERA +But perhaps--perhaps--all the terrible memory will pass peacefully away +in his music. + +MENDEL +There will always be the scar on his shoulder to remind him--whenever +the wound twinges, it brings up these terrible faces and visions. + +VERA +Is it on his right shoulder? + +MENDEL +No--on his left. For a violinist that is even worse. + +VERA +Ah, of course--the weight and the fingering. + [_Subconsciously placing and fingering an imaginary violin._] + +MENDEL +That is why I fear so for his future--he will never be strong enough for +the feats of bravura that the public demands. + +VERA +The wild beasts! I feel more ashamed of my country than ever. But +there's his symphony. + +MENDEL +And who will look at that amateurish stuff? He knows so little of +harmony and counterpoint--he breaks all the rules. I've tried to give +him a few pointers--but he ought to have gone to Germany. + +VERA +Perhaps it's not too late. + +MENDEL [_Passionately_] +Ah, if you and your friends could help him! See--I'm begging after all. +But it's not for myself. + +VERA +My father loves music. Perhaps _he_--but no! he lives in Kishineff. But +I will think--there are people here--I will write to you. + +MENDEL [_Fervently_] +Thank you! Thank you! + +VERA +Now you must go to him. Good-bye. Tell him I count upon him for the +Concert. + +MENDEL +How good you are! + [_He follows her to the street-door._] + +VERA [_At door_] +Say good-bye for me to your mother--she seems asleep. + +MENDEL [_Opening outer door_] +I am sorry it is snowing so. + +VERA +We Russians are used to it. + [_Smiling, at exit_] +Good-bye--let us hope your David will turn out a Rubinstein. + +MENDEL [_Closing the doors softly_] +I never thought a Russian Christian could be so human. + [_He looks at the clock._] +_Gott in Himmel_--my dancing class! + [_He hurries into the overcoat hanging on the hat-rack. Re-enter + DAVID, having composed himself, but still somewhat dazed._] + +DAVID +She is gone? Oh, but I have driven her away by my craziness. Is she very +angry? + +MENDEL +Quite the contrary--she expects you at the Concert, and what is more---- + +DAVID [_Ecstatically_] +And she understood! She understood my Crucible of God! Oh, uncle, you +don't know what it means to me to have somebody who understands me. Even +you have never understood---- + +MENDEL [_Wounded_] +Nonsense! How can Miss Revendal understand you better than your own +uncle? + +DAVID [_Mystically exalted_] +I can't explain--I feel it. + +MENDEL +Of course she's interested in your music, thank Heaven. But what true +understanding can there be between a Russian Jew and a Russian +Christian? + +DAVID +What understanding? Aren't we both Americans? + +MENDEL +Well, I haven't time to discuss it now. + [_He winds his muffler round his throat._] + +DAVID +Why, where are you going? + +MENDEL [_Ironically_] +Where _should_ I be going--in the snow--on the eve of the Sabbath? +Suppose we say to synagogue! + +DAVID +Oh, uncle--how you always seem to hanker after those old things! + +MENDEL [_Tartly_] +Nonsense! + [_He takes his umbrella from the stand._] +I don't like to see our people going to pieces, that's all. + +DAVID +Then why did you come to America? Why didn't you work for a Jewish land? +You're not even a Zionist. + +MENDEL +I can't argue now. There's a pack of giggling schoolgirls waiting to +waltz. + +DAVID +The fresh romping young things! Think of their happiness! I should love +to play for them. + +MENDEL [_Sarcastically_] +I can see you are yourself again. + [_He opens the street-door--turns back._] +What about your own lesson? Can't we go together? + +DAVID +I must first write down what is singing in my soul--oh, uncle, it seems +as if I knew suddenly what was wanting in my music! + +MENDEL [_Drily_] +Well, don't forget what is wanting in the house! The rent isn't paid +yet. + [_Exit through street-door. As he goes out, he touches and kisses + the_ Mezuzah _on the door-post, with a subconsciously + antagonistic revival of religious impulse. DAVID opens his desk, + takes out a pile of musical manuscript, sprawls over his chair + and, humming to himself, scribbles feverishly with the quill. + After a few moments FRAU QUIXANO yawns, wakes, and stretches + herself. Then she looks at the clock._] + +FRAU QUIXANO +_Shabbos!_ + [_She rises and goes to the table and sees there are no candles, + walks to the chiffonier and gets them and places them in the + candlesticks, then lights the candles, muttering a ceremonial + Hebrew benediction._] +_Boruch atto haddoshem elloheinu melech hoolam assher kiddishonu +bemitzvosov vettzivonu lehadlik neir shel shabbos._ + [_She pulls down the blinds of the two windows, then she goes to + the rapt composer and touches him, remindingly, on the shoulder. + He does not move, but continues writing._] +_Dovidel!_ + [_He looks up dazedly. She points to the candles._] +_Shabbos!_ + [_A sweet smile comes over his face, he throws the quill + resignedly away and submits his head to her hands and her + muttered Hebrew blessing._] +_Yesimcho elohim ke-efrayim vechimnasseh--yevorechecho haddoshem +veyishmerecho, yoer hadoshem ponov eilecho vechunecho, yisso hadoshem +ponov eilecho veyosem lecho sholom._ + [_Then she goes toward the kitchen. As she turns at the door, he + is again writing. She shakes her finger at him, repeating_] +_Gut Shabbos!_ + +DAVID +_Gut Shabbos!_ + [_Puts down the pen and smiles after her till the door closes, + then with a deep sigh takes his cape from the peg and his + violin-case, pauses, still humming, to take up his pen and write + down a fresh phrase, finally puts on his hat and is just about to + open the street-door when KATHLEEN enters from her bedroom fully + dressed to go, and laden with a large brown paper parcel and an + umbrella. He turns at the sound of her footsteps and remains at + the door, holding his violin-case during the ensuing dialogue._] + +DAVID +You're not going out this bitter weather? + +KATHLEEN [_Sharply fending him off with her umbrella_] +And who's to shtay me? + +DAVID +Oh, but you mustn't--_I'll_ do your errand--what is it? + +KATHLEEN [_Indignantly_] +Errand, is it, indeed! I'm not here! + +DAVID +Not here? + +KATHLEEN +I'm lavin', they'll come for me thrunk--and ye'll witness I don't take +the candleshtick. + +DAVID +But who's sending you away? + +KATHLEEN +It's sending meself away I am--yer houly grandmother has me disthroyed +intirely. + +DAVID +Why, what has the poor old la----? + +KATHLEEN +I don't be saltin' the mate and I do be mixin' the crockery and----! + +DAVID [_Gently_] +I know, I know--but, Kathleen, remember she was brought up to these +things from childhood. And her father was a Rabbi. + +KATHLEEN +What's that? A priest? + +DAVID +A sort of priest. In Russia he was a great man. Her husband, too, was a +mighty scholar, and to give him time to study the holy books she had to +do chores all day for him and the children. + +KATHLEEN +Oh, those priests! + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +No, _he_ wasn't a priest. But he took sick and died and the children +left her--went to America or heaven or other far-off places--and she was +left all penniless and alone. + +KATHLEEN +Poor ould lady. + +DAVID +Not so old yet, for she was married at fifteen. + +KATHLEEN +Poor young crathur! + +DAVID +But she was still the good angel of the congregation--sat up with the +sick and watched over the dead. + +KATHLEEN +Saints alive! And not scared? + +DAVID +No, nothing scared her--except me. I got a broken-down fiddle and used +to play it even on _Shabbos_--I was very naughty. But she was so lovely +to me. I still remember the heavenly taste of a piece of _Motso_ she +gave me dipped in raisin wine! Passover cake, you know. + +KATHLEEN [_Proudly_] +Oh, I know _Motso_. + +DAVID [_Smacks his lips, repeats_] +Heavenly! + +KATHLEEN +Sure, I must tashte it. + +DAVID [_Shaking his head, mysteriously_] +Only little boys get that tashte. + +KATHLEEN +That's quare. + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +Very quare. And then one day my uncle sent the old lady a ticket to come +to America. But it is not so happy for her here because you see my uncle +has to be near his theatre and can't live in the Jewish quarter, and so +nobody understands her, and she sits all the livelong day alone--alone +with her book and her religion and her memories---- + +KATHLEEN [_Breaking down_] +Oh, Mr. David! + +DAVID +And now all this long, cold, snowy evening she'll sit by the fire alone, +thinking of her dead, and the fire will sink lower and lower, and she +won't be able to touch it, because it's the holy Sabbath, and there'll +be no kind Kathleen to brighten up the grey ashes, and then at last, sad +and shivering, she'll creep up to her room without a candlestick, and +there in the dark and the cold---- + +KATHLEEN [_Hysterically bursting into tears, dropping her parcel, and + untying her bonnet-strings_] +Oh, Mr. David, I won't mix the crockery, I won't---- + +DAVID [_Heartily_] +Of course you won't. Good night. + [_He slips out hurriedly through the street-door as KATHLEEN + throws off her bonnet, and the curtain falls quickly. As it rises + again, she is seen strenuously poking the fire, illumined by its + red glow._] + + + + + +Act II + + + _The same scene on an afternoon a month later. DAVID is + discovered at his desk, scribbling music in a fever of + enthusiasm. MENDEL, dressed in his best, is playing softly on the + piano, watching DAVID. After an instant or two of indecision, he + puts down the piano-lid with a bang and rises decisively._ + +MENDEL +David! + +DAVID [_Putting up his left hand_] +Please, please---- + [_He writes feverishly._] + +MENDEL +But I want to talk to you seriously--at once. + +DAVID +I'm just re-writing the Finale. Oh, such a splendid inspiration! + [_He writes on._] + +MENDEL [_Shrugs his shoulders and reseats himself at piano. He plays a + bar or two. Looks at watch impatiently. Resolutely_] +David, I've got wonderful news for you. Miss Revendal is bringing +somebody to see you, and we have hopes of getting you sent to Germany to +study composition. + [_DAVID does not reply, but writes rapidly on._] +Why, he hasn't heard a word! + [_He shouts._] +David! + +DAVID [_Writing on_] +I can't, uncle. I _must_ put it down while that glorious impression is +fresh. + +MENDEL +What impression? You only went to the People's Alliance. + +DAVID +Yes, and there I saw the Jewish children--a thousand of 'em--saluting +the Flag. + [_He writes on._] + +MENDEL +Well, what of that? + +DAVID +What of that? + [_He throws down his quill and jumps up._] +But just fancy it, uncle. The Stars and Stripes unfurled, and a thousand +childish voices, piping and foreign, fresh from the lands of oppression, +hailing its fluttering folds. I cried like a baby. + +MENDEL +I'm afraid you _are_ one. + +DAVID +Ah, but if you had heard them--"Flag of our Great Republic"--the words +have gone singing at my heart ever since-- + [_He turns to the flag over the door._] +"Flag of our Great Republic, guardian of our homes, whose stars and +stripes stand for Bravery, Purity, Truth, and Union, we salute thee. We, +the natives of distant lands, who find + [_Half-sobbing_] +rest under thy folds, do pledge our hearts, our lives, our sacred honour +to love and protect thee, our Country, and the liberty of the American +people for ever." + [_He ends almost hysterically._] + +MENDEL [_Soothingly_] +Quite right. But you needn't get so excited over it. + +DAVID +Not when one hears the roaring of the fires of God? Not when one sees +the souls melting in the Crucible? Uncle, all those little Jews will +grow up Americans! + +MENDEL [_Putting a pacifying hand on his shoulder and forcing him into a + chair_] +Sit down. I want to talk to you about your affairs. + +DAVID [_Sitting_] +_My_ affairs! But I've been talking about them all the time! + +MENDEL +Nonsense, David. + [_He sits beside him._] +Don't you think it's time you got into a wider world? + +DAVID +Eh? This planet's wide enough for me. + +MENDEL +Do be serious. You don't want to live all your life in this room. + +DAVID [_Looks round_] +What's the matter with this room? It's princely. + +MENDEL [_Raising his hands in horror_] +Princely! + +DAVID +Imperial. Remember when I first saw it--after pigging a week in the +rocking steerage, swinging in a berth as wide as my fiddle-case, hung +near the cooking-engines; imagine the hot rancid smell of the food, the +oil of the machinery, the odours of all that close-packed, sea-sick---- + +MENDEL [_Putting his hand over DAVID'S mouth_] +Don't! You make me ill! How could you ever bear it? + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +I was quite happy--I only had to fancy I'd been shipwrecked, and that +after clinging to a plank five days without food or water on the great +lonely Atlantic, my frozen, sodden form had been picked up by this great +safe steamer and given this delightful dry berth, regular meals, and the +spectacle of all these friendly faces.... Do you know who was on board +that boat? Quincy Davenport. + +MENDEL +The lord of corn and oil? + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +Yes, even we wretches in the steerage felt safe to think the lord was up +above, we believed the company would never dare drown _him_. But could +even Quincy Davenport command a cabin like this? + [_Waving his arm round the room._] +Why, uncle, we have a cabin worth a thousand dollars--a thousand dollars +a _week_--and what's more, it doesn't wobble! + [_He plants his feet voluptuously upon the floor._] + +MENDEL +Come, come, David, I asked you to be serious. Surely, some day you'd +like your music produced? + +DAVID [_Jumps up_] +Wouldn't it be glorious? To hear it all actually coming out of violins +and 'cellos, drums and trumpets. + +MENDEL +And you'd like it to go all over the world? + +DAVID +All over the world and all down the ages. + +MENDEL +But don't you see that unless you go and study seriously in Germany----? + [_Enter KATHLEEN from kitchen, carrying a furnished tea-tray with + ear-shaped cakes, bread and butter, etc., and wearing a grotesque + false nose. MENDEL cries out in amaze._] +Kathleen! + +DAVID [_Roaring with boyish laughter_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +KATHLEEN [_Standing still with her tray_] +Sure, what's the matter? + +DAVID +Look in the glass! + +KATHLEEN [_Going to the mantel_] +Houly Moses! + [_She drops the tray, which MENDEL catches, and snatches off the + nose._] +Och, I forgot to take it off--'twas the misthress gave it me--I put it +on to cheer her up. + +DAVID +Is she so miserable, then? + +KATHLEEN +Terrible low, Mr. David, to-day being _Purim_. + +MENDEL +_Purim!_ Is to-day _Purim_? + [_Gives her the tea-tray back. KATHLEEN, to take it, drops her + nose and forgets to pick it up._] + +DAVID +But _Purim_ is a merry time, Kathleen, like your Carnival. Haven't you +read the book of Esther--how the Jews of Persia escaped massacre? + +KATHLEEN +That's what the misthress is so miserable about. Ye don't _keep_ the +Carnival. There's noses for both of ye in the kitchen--didn't I go with +her to Hester Street to buy 'em?--but ye don't be axin' for 'em. And to +see your noses layin' around so solemn and neglected, faith, it nearly +makes me chry meself. + +MENDEL [_Bitterly to himself_] +Who can remember about _Purim_ in America? + +DAVID [_Half-smiling_] +Poor granny, tell her to come in and I'll play her _Purim_ jig. + +MENDEL [_Hastily_] +No, no, David, not here--the visitors! + +DAVID +Visitors? What visitors? + +MENDEL [_Impatiently_] +That's just what I've been trying to explain. + +DAVID +Well, I can play in the kitchen. + [_He takes his violin. Exit to kitchen. MENDEL sighs and shrugs + his shoulders hopelessly at the boy's perversity, then fingers + the cups and saucers._] + +MENDEL [_Anxiously_] +Is that the _best_ tea-set? + +KATHLEEN +Can't you see it's the Passover set! + [_Ruefully_] +And shpiled intirely it'll be now for our Passover.... And the misthress +thought the visitors might like to thry some of her _Purim_ cakes. + [_Indicates ear-shaped cakes on tray._] + +MENDEL [_Bitterly_] +_Purim_ cakes! + [_He turns his back on her and stares moodily out of the + window._] + +KATHLEEN [_Mutters contemptuously_] +Call yerself a Jew and you forgettin' to keep _Purim_! + [_She is going back to the kitchen when a merry Slavic dance + breaks out, softened by the door; her feet unconsciously get more + and more into dance step, and at last she jigs out. As she opens + and passes through the door, the music sounds louder._] + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Heard from kitchen_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Kathleen!! + [_MENDEL'S feet, too, begin to take the swing of the music, and + his feet dance as he stares out of the window. Suddenly the hoot + of an automobile is heard, followed by the rattling up of the + car._] + +MENDEL +Ah, she has brought somebody swell! + [_He throws open the doors and goes out eagerly to meet the + visitors. The dance music goes on softly throughout the scene._] + +QUINCY DAVENPORT [_Outside_] +Oh, thank you--I leave the coats in the car. + [_Enter an instant later QUINCY DAVENPORT and VERA REVENDAL, + MENDEL in the rear. VERA is dressed much as before, but with a + motor veil, which she takes off during the scene. DAVENPORT is a + dude, aping the air of a European sporting clubman. Aged about + thirty-five and well set-up, he wears an orchid and an + intermittent eyeglass, and gives the impression of a + coarse-fibred and patronisingly facetious but not bad-hearted + man, spoiled by prosperity._] + +MENDEL +Won't you be seated? + +VERA +First let me introduce my friend, who is good enough to interest himself +in your nephew--Mr. Quincy Davenport. + +MENDEL [_Struck of a heap_] +Mr. Quincy Davenport! How strange! + +VERA +What is strange? + +MENDEL +David just mentioned Mr. Davenport's name--said they travelled to New +York on the same boat. + +QUINCY +Impossible! Always travel on my own yacht. Slow but select. Must have +been another man of the same name--my dad. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +MENDEL +Ah, of course. I thought you were too young. + +QUINCY +My dad, Miss Revendal, is one of those antiquated Americans who are +always in a hurry! + +VERA +He burns coal and you burn time. + +QUINCY +Precisely! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +MENDEL +Won't you sit down--I'll go and prepare David. + +VERA [_Sitting_] +You've not prepared him yet? + +MENDEL +I've tried to more than once--but I never really got to---- + [_He smiles_] +to Germany. + [_QUINCY sits._] + +VERA +Then prepare him for _three_ visitors. + +MENDEL +Three? + +VERA +You see Mr. Davenport himself is no judge of music. + +QUINCY [_Jumps up_] +I beg your pardon. + +VERA +In manuscript. + +QUINCY +Ah, of course not. Music should be heard, not seen--like that jolly jig. +Is that your David? + +MENDEL +Oh, you mustn't judge him by that. He's just fooling. + +QUINCY +Oh, he'd better not fool with Poppy. Poppy's awful severe. + +MENDEL +Poppy? + +QUINCY +Pappelmeister--my private orchestra conductor. + +MENDEL +Is it _your_ orchestra Pappelmeister conducts? + +QUINCY +Well, I pay the piper--and the drummer too! + [_He chuckles._] + +MENDEL [_Sadly_] +_I_ wanted to play in it, but he turned me down. + +QUINCY +I told you he was awful severe. + [_To VERA_] +He only allows me comic opera once a week. My wife calls him the +Bismarck of the baton. + +MENDEL [_Reverently_] +A great conductor! + +QUINCY +Would he have a twenty-thousand-dollar job with me if he wasn't? Not +that he'd get half that in the open market--only I have to stick it on +to keep him for my guests exclusively. + [_Looks at watch._] +But he ought to be here, confound him. A conductor should keep time, eh, +Miss Revendal? + [_He sniggers._] + +MENDEL +I'll bring David. Won't you help yourselves to tea? + [_To VERA_] +You see there's lemon for you--as in Russia. + [_Exit to kitchen--a moment afterwards the merry music stops in + the middle of a bar._] + +VERA +Thank you. + [_Taking a cup._] +Do _you_ like lemon, Mr. Davenport? + +QUINCY [_Flirtatiously_] +That depends. The last I had was in Russia itself--from the fair hands +of your mother, the Baroness. + +VERA [_Pained_] +Please don't say my mother, my mother is dead. + +QUINCY [_Fatuously misunderstanding_] +Oh, you have no call to be ashamed of your step-mother--she's a stunning +creature; all the points of a tip-top Russian aristocrat, or Quincy +Davenport's no judge of breed! Doesn't speak English like your +father--but then the Baron is a wonder. + +VERA [_Takes up teapot_] +Father once hoped to be British Ambassador--that's why _I_ had an +English governess. But you never told me you met him in _Russia_. + +QUINCY +Surely! When I gave you all those love messages---- + +VERA [_Pouring tea quickly_] +You said you met him at Wiesbaden. + +QUINCY +Yes, but we grew such pals I motored him and the Baroness back to St. +Petersburg. Jolly country, Russia--they know how to live. + +VERA [_Coldly_] +I saw more of those who know how to die.... Milk and sugar? + +QUINCY [_Sentimentally_] +Oh, Miss Revendal! Have you forgotten? + +VERA [_Politely snubbing_] +How should I remember? + +QUINCY +You don't remember our first meeting? At the Settlement Bazaar? When I +paid you a hundred dollars for every piece of sugar you put in? + +VERA +Did you? Then I hope you drank syrup. + +QUINCY +Ugh! I hate sugar--I sacrificed myself. + +VERA +To the Settlement? How heroic of you! + +QUINCY +No, not to the Settlement. To you! + +VERA +Then I'll only put milk in. + +QUINCY +I hate milk. But from you---- + +VERA +Then we _must_ fall back on the lemon. + +QUINCY +I loathe lemon. But from---- + +VERA +Then you shall have your tea neat. + +QUINCY +I detest tea, and here it would be particularly cheap and nasty. But---- + +VERA +Then you shall have a cake! + [_She offers plate._] + +QUINCY [_Taking one_] +Would they be eatable? + [_Tasting it._] +Humph! Not bad. + [_Sentimentally_] +A little cake was all you would eat the only time you came to one of my +private concerts. Don't you remember? We went down to supper together. + +VERA [_Taking his tea for herself and putting in lemon_] +I shall always remember the delicious music Herr Pappelmeister gave us. + +QUINCY +How unkind of you! + +VERA +Unkind? + [_She sips the tea and puts down the cup._] +To be grateful for the music? + +QUINCY +You know what I mean--to forget _me_! + [_He tries to take her hand._] + +VERA [_Rising_] +Aren't you forgetting yourself? + +QUINCY +You mean because I'm married to that patched-and-painted creature? She's +hankering for the stage again, the old witch. + +VERA +Hush! Marriages with comic opera stars are not usually domestic idylls. + +QUINCY +I fell a victim to my love of music. + +VERA [_Murmurs, smiling_] +Music! + +QUINCY +And I hadn't yet met the right breed--the true blue blood of Europe. +I'll get a divorce. + [_Approaching her_] +Vera! + +VERA [_Retreating_] +You will make me sorry I came to you. + +QUINCY +No, don't say that--promised the Baron I'd always do all I could for---- + +VERA +You promised? You dared discuss my affairs? + +QUINCY +It was your father began it. When he found I knew you, he almost wept +with emotion. He asked a hundred questions about your life in America. + +VERA +His life and mine are for ever separate. He is a Reactionary, I a +Radical. + +QUINCY +But he loves you dreadfully--he can't understand why you should go +slaving away summer and winter in a Settlement--you a member of the +Russian nobility! + +VERA [_With faint smile_] +I might say, _noblesse oblige_. But the truth is, I earn my living that +way. It would do _you_ good to slave there too! + +QUINCY [_Eagerly_] +Would they chain us together? I'd come to-morrow. + [_He moves nearer her. There is a double knock at the door._] + +VERA [_Relieved_] +Here's Pappelmeister! + +QUINCY +Bother Poppy--why is he so darned punctual? + [_Enter KATHLEEN from the kitchen._] + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Ah, you're still here. + +KATHLEEN +And why would I not be here? + [_She goes to open the door._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +Mr. Quixano? + +KATHLEEN +Yes, come in. + [_Enter HERR PAPPELMEISTER, a burly German figure with a leonine + head, spectacles, and a mane of white hair--a figure that makes + his employer look even coarser. He carries an umbrella, which he + never lets go. He is at first grave and silent, which makes any + burst of emotion the more striking. He and QUINCY DAVENPORT + suggest a picture of "Dignity and Impudence." His English, as + roughly indicated in the text, is extremely Teutonic._] + +QUINCY +You're late, Poppy! + [_PAPPELMEISTER silently bows to VERA._] + +VERA [_Smilingly goes and offers her hand._] +Proud to meet you, Herr Pappelmeister! + +QUINCY +Excuse me---- + [_Introducing_] +Miss Revendal!--I forgot you and Poppy hadn't been introduced--curiously +enough it was at Wiesbaden I picked him up too--he was conducting the +opera--your folks were in my box. I don't think I ever met anyone so mad +on music as the Baron. And the Baroness told me he had retired from +active service in the Army because of the torture of listening to the +average military band. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +VERA +Yes, my father once hoped _my_ music would comfort him. + [_She smiles sadly._] +Poor father! But a soldier must bear defeat. Herr Pappelmeister, may I +not give you some tea? + [_She sits again at the table._] + +QUINCY +Tea! Lager's more in Poppy's line. + [_He chuckles._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Gravely_] +_Bitte._ Tea. + [_She pours out, he sits._] +Lemon. Four lumps.... _Nun_, five!... Or six! + [_She hands him the cup._] +_Danke._ + [_As he receives the cup, he utters an exclamation, for KATHLEEN + after opening the door has lingered on, hunting around + everywhere, and having finally crawled under the table has now + brushed against his leg._] + +VERA +What are you looking for? + +KATHLEEN [_Her head emerging_] +My nose! + [_They are all startled and amused._] + +VERA +Your nose? + +KATHLEEN +I forgot me nose! + +QUINCY +Well, follow your nose--and you'll find it. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +KATHLEEN [_Pouncing on it_] +Here it is! + [_Picks it up near the armchair._] + +OMNES +Oh! + +KATHLEEN +Sure, it's gotten all dirthy. + [_She takes out a handkerchief and wipes the nose carefully._] + +QUINCY +But why do you want a nose like that? + +KATHLEEN [_Proudly_] +Bekaz we're Hebrews! + +QUINCY +What! + +VERA +What _do_ you mean? + +KATHLEEN +It's our Carnival to-day! _Purim._ + [_She carries her nose carefully and piously toward the + kitchen._] + +VERA +Oh! I see. + [_Exit KATHLEEN._] + +QUINCY [_In horror_] +Miss Revendal, you don't mean to say you've brought me to a Jew! + +VERA +I'm afraid I have. I was thinking only of his genius, not his race. And +you see, so many musicians are Jews. + +QUINCY +Not _my_ musicians. No Jew's harp in my orchestra, eh? + [_He sniggers._] +I wouldn't have a Jew if he paid _me_. + +VERA +I daresay you have some, all the same. + +QUINCY +Impossible. Poppy! Are there any Jews in my orchestra? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Removing the cup from his mouth and speaking with + sepulchral solemnity_] +Do you mean are dere any Christians? + +QUINCY [_In horror_] +Gee-rusalem! Perhaps _you're_ a Jew! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Gravely_] +I haf not de honour. But, if you brefer, I will gut out from my +brogrammes all de Chewish composers. _Was?_ + +QUINCY +Why, of course. Fire 'em out, every mother's son of 'em. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Unsmiling_] +_Also_--no more comic operas! + +QUINCY +What!!! + +PAPPELMEISTER +Dey write all de comic operas! + +QUINCY +Brute! + [_PAPPELMEISTER'S chuckle is heard gurgling in his cup. Re-enter + MENDEL from kitchen._] + +MENDEL [_To VERA_] +I'm so sorry--I can't get him to come in--he's terrible shy. + +QUINCY +Won't face the music, eh? + [_He sniggers._] + +VERA +Did you tell him _I_ was here? + +MENDEL +Of course. + +VERA [_Disappointed_] +Oh! + +MENDEL +But I've persuaded him to let me show his MS. + +VERA [_With forced satisfaction_] +Oh, well, that's all we want. + [_MENDEL goes to the desk, opens it, and gets the MS. and offers + it to QUINCY DAVENPORT._] + +QUINCY +Not for me--Poppy! + [_MENDEL offers it to PAPPELMEISTER, who takes it solemnly._] + +MENDEL [_Anxiously to PAPPELMEISTER_] +Of course you must remember his youth and his lack of musical +education---- + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Bitte, das Pult!_ + [_MENDEL moves DAVID'S music-stand from the corner to the centre + of the room. PAPPELMEISTER puts MS. on it._] +_So!_ + [_All eyes centre on him eagerly, MENDEL standing uneasily, the + others sitting. PAPPELMEISTER polishes his glasses with + irritating elaborateness and weary "achs," then reads in absolute + silence. A pause._] + +QUINCY [_Bored by the silence_] +But won't you play it to us? + +PAPPELMEISTER +Blay it? Am I an orchestra? I blay it in my brain. + [_He goes on reading, his brow gets wrinkled. He ruffles his hair + unconsciously. All watch him anxiously--he turns the page._] +_So!_ + +VERA [_Anxiously_] +You don't seem to like it! + +PAPPELMEISTER +I do not comprehend it. + +MENDEL +I knew it was crazy--it is supposed to be about America or a Crucible or +something. And of course there are heaps of mistakes. + +VERA +That is why I am suggesting to Mr. Davenport to send him to Germany. + +QUINCY +I'll send as many Jews as you like to Germany. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Absorbed, turning pages_] +_Ach!--ach!--So!_ + +QUINCY +I'd even lend my own yacht to take 'em back. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +VERA +Sh! We're disturbing Herr Pappelmeister. + +QUINCY +Oh, Poppy's all right. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Sublimely unconscious_] +_Ach so--so--SO! Das ist etwas neues!_ + [_His umbrella begins to beat time, moving more and more + vigorously, till at last he is conducting elaborately, stretching + out his left palm for pianissimo passages, and raising it + vigorously for forte, with every now and then an exclamation._] +_Wunderschoen!... pianissimo!_--now the flutes! Clarinets! _Ach, +ergoetzlich_ ... bassoons and drums!... _Fortissimo!... Kolossal! +Kolossal!_ + [_Conducting in a fury of enthusiasm._] + +VERA [_Clapping her hands_] +Bravo! Bravo! I'm so excited! + +QUINCY [_Yawning_] +Then it isn't bad, Poppy? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Not listening, never ceasing to conduct_] +_Und_ de harp solo ... _ach, reizend!_ ... Second violins----! + +QUINCY +But Poppy! We can't be here all day. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Not listening, continuing pantomime action_] +Sh! Sh! _Piano._ + +QUINCY [_Outraged_] +Sh to _me_! + [_Rises._] + +VERA +He doesn't know it's you. + +QUINCY +But look here, Poppy---- + [_He seizes the wildly-moving umbrella. Blank stare of + PAPPELMEISTER gradually returning to consciousness._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Was giebt's...?_ + +QUINCY +We've had enough. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Indignant_] +Enough? Enough? Of such a beaudiful symphony? + +QUINCY +It may be beautiful to you, but to us it's damn dull. See here, Poppy, +if you're satisfied that the young fellow has sufficient talent to be +sent to study in Germany---- + +PAPPELMEISTER +In Germany! Germany has nodings to teach him, he has to teach Germany. + +VERA +Bravo! + [_She springs up._] + +MENDEL +I always said he was a genius! + +QUINCY +Well, at that rate you could put this stuff of his in one of my +programmes. _Sinfonia Americana_, eh? + +VERA +Oh, that _is_ good of you. + +PAPPELMEISTER +I should be broud to indroduce it to de vorld. + +VERA +And will it be played in that wonderful marble music-room overlooking +the Hudson? + +QUINCY +Sure. Before five hundred of the smartest folk in America. + +MENDEL +Oh, thank you, thank you. That will mean fame! + +QUINCY +And dollars. Don't forget the dollars. + +MENDEL +I'll run and tell him. + [_He hastens into the kitchen, PAPPELMEISTER is re-absorbed in + the MS., but no longer conducting._] + +QUINCY +You see, I'll help even a Jew for your sake. + +VERA +Hush! + [_Indicating PAPPELMEISTER._] + +QUINCY +Oh, Poppy's in the moon. + +VERA +You must help him for his own sake, for art's sake. + +QUINCY +And why not for heart's sake--for my sake? + [_He comes nearer._] + +VERA [_Crossing to PAPPELMEISTER_] +Herr Pappelmeister! When do you think you can produce it? + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Wunderbar!..._ + [_Becoming half-conscious of VERA_] +Four lumps.... + [_Waking up_] +_Bitte?_ + +VERA +How soon can you produce it? + +PAPPELMEISTER +How soon can he finish it? + +VERA +Isn't it finished? + +PAPPELMEISTER +I see von Finale scratched out and anoder not quite completed. But +anyhow, ve couldn't broduce it before Saturday fortnight. + +QUINCY +Saturday fortnight! Not time to get my crowd. + +PAPPELMEISTER +Den ve say Saturday dree veeks. Yes? + +QUINCY +Yes. Stop a minute! Did you say Saturday? That's my comic opera night! +You thief! + +PAPPELMEISTER +Somedings must be sagrificed. + +MENDEL [_Outside_] +But you _must_ come, David. + [_The kitchen door opens, and MENDEL drags in the boyishly + shrinking DAVID. PAPPELMEISTER thumps with his umbrella, VERA + claps her hands, QUINCY DAVENPORT produces his eyeglass and + surveys DAVID curiously._] + +VERA +Oh, Mr. Quixano, I am so glad! Mr. Davenport is going to produce your +symphony in his wonderful music-room. + +QUINCY +Yes, young man, I'm going to give you the smartest audience in America. +And if Poppy is right, you're just going to rake in the dollars. America +wants a composer. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Raises hands emphatically._] +_Ach Gott, ja!_ + +VERA [_To DAVID_] +Why don't you speak? You're not angry with me for interfering----? + +DAVID +I can never be grateful enough to you---- + +VERA +Oh, not to me. It is to Mr. Davenport you---- + +DAVID +And I can never be grateful enough to Herr Pappelmeister. It is an +honour even to meet him. + [_Bows._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Choking with emotion, goes and pats him on the back._] +_Mein braver Junge!_ + +VERA [_Anxiously_] +But it is Mr. Davenport---- + +DAVID +Before I accept Mr. Davenport's kindness, I must know to whom I am +indebted--and if Mr. Davenport is the man who---- + +QUINCY +Who travelled with you to New York? Ha! Ha! Ha! No, _I'm_ only the +junior. + +DAVID +Oh, I know, sir, you don't make the money you spend. + +QUINCY +Eh? + +VERA [_Anxiously_] +He means he knows you're not in business. + +DAVID +Yes, sir; but is it true you are in pleasure? + +QUINCY [_Puzzled_] +I beg your pardon? + +DAVID +Are all the stories the papers print about you true? + +QUINCY +_All_ the stories. That's a tall order. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +DAVID +Well, anyhow, is it true that----? + +VERA +Mr. Quixano! What _are_ you driving at? + +QUINCY +Oh, it's rather fun to hear what the masses read about me. Fire ahead. +Is what true? + +DAVID +That you were married in a balloon? + +QUINCY +Ho! Ha! Ha! That's true enough. Marriage in high life, they said, didn't +they? Ha! Ha! Ha! + +DAVID +And is it true you live in America only two months in the year, and then +only to entertain Europeans who wander to these wild parts? + +QUINCY +Lucky for you, young man. You'll have an Italian prince and a British +duke to hear your scribblings. + +DAVID +And the palace where they will hear my scribblings--is it true that----? + +VERA [_Who has been on pins and needles_] +Mr. Quixano, what possible----? + +DAVID [_Entreatingly holds up a hand._] +Miss Revendal! + [_To QUINCY DAVENPORT_] +Is this palace the same whose grounds were turned into Venetian canals +where the guests ate in gondolas--gondolas that were draped with the +most wonderful trailing silks in imitation of the Venetian nobility in +the great water fetes? + +QUINCY [_Turns to VERA_] +Ah, Miss Revendal--what a pity you refused that invitation! It was a +fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness--each couple had +their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-canal to slip down. Eh? +Ha! Ha! Ha! + +DAVID +And the same night, women and children died of hunger in New York! + +QUINCY [_Startled, drops eyeglass._] +Eh? + +DAVID [_Furiously_] +And this is the sort of people you would invite to hear my +symphony--these gondola-guzzlers! + +VERA +Mr. Quixano! + +MENDEL +David! + +DAVID +These magnificent animals who went into the gondolas two by two, to feed +and flirt! + +QUINCY [_Dazed_] +Sir! + +DAVID +I should be a new freak for you for a new freak evening--I and my dreams +and my music! + +QUINCY +You low-down, ungrateful---- + +DAVID +Not for you and such as you have I sat here writing and dreaming; not +for you who are killing my America! + +QUINCY +_Your_ America, forsooth, you Jew-immigrant! + +VERA +Mr. Davenport! + +DAVID +Yes--Jew-immigrant! But a Jew who knows that your Pilgrim Fathers came +straight out of his Old Testament, and that our Jew-immigrants are a +greater factor in the glory of this great commonwealth than some of you +sons of the soil. It is you, freak-fashionables, who are undoing the +work of Washington and Lincoln, vulgarising your high heritage, and +turning the last and noblest hope of humanity into a caricature. + +QUINCY [_Rocking with laughter_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! + [_To VERA._] +You never told me your Jew-scribbler was a socialist! + +DAVID +I am nothing but a simple artist, but I come from Europe, one of her +victims, and I know that she is a failure; that her palaces and peerages +are outworn toys of the human spirit, and that the only hope of mankind +lies in a new world. And here--in the land of to-morrow--you are trying +to bring back Europe---- + +QUINCY [_Interjecting_] +I wish we could!---- + +DAVID +Europe with her comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage +decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a morass of crime and +misery---- + +QUINCY [_With sneering laugh_] +Morass! + +DAVID [_With prophetic passion_] +But you shall not kill my dream! There shall come a fire round the +Crucible that will melt you and your breed like wax in a blowpipe---- + +QUINCY [_Furiously, with clenched fist_] +You---- + +DAVID +America _shall_ make good...! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Who has sat down and remained imperturbably seated + throughout all this scene, springs up and waves his umbrella + hysterically_] +_Hoch Quixano! Hoch! Hoch! Es lebe Quixano! Hoch!_ + +QUINCY +Poppy! You're dismissed! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Goes to DAVID with outstretched hand_] +_Danke._ + [_They grip hands. PAPPELMEISTER turns to QUINCY DAVENPORT._] +Comic Opera! Ouf! + +QUINCY [_Goes to street-door, at white heat._] +Are you coming, Miss Revendal? + [_He opens the door._] + +VERA [_To QUINCY, but not moving_] +Pray, pray, accept my apologies--believe me, if I had known---- + +QUINCY [_Furiously_] +Then stop with your Jew! + [_Exit._] + +MENDEL [_Frantically_] +But, Mr. Davenport--don't go! He is only a boy. + [_Exit after QUINCY DAVENPORT._] +You must consider---- + +DAVID +Oh, Herr Pappelmeister, you have lost your place! + +PAPPELMEISTER +And saved my soul. Dollars are de devil. Now I must to an appointment. +_Auf baldiges Wiedersehen._ + [_He shakes DAVID'S hand._] +Fraeulein Revendal! + [_He takes her hand and kisses it. Exit. DAVID and VERA stand + gazing at each other._] + +VERA +What have you done? What have you done? + +DAVID +What else could I do? + +VERA +I hate the smart set as much as you--but as your ladder and your +trumpet---- + +DAVID +I would not stand indebted to them. I know you meant it for my good, +but what would these Europe-apers have understood of _my_ America--the +America of my music? They look back on Europe as a pleasure ground, a +palace of art--but I know + [_Getting hysterical_] +it is sodden with blood, red with bestial massacres---- + +VERA [_Alarmed, anxious_] +Let us talk no more about it. + [_She holds out her hand._] +Good-bye. + +DAVID [_Frozen, taking it, holding it_] +Ah, you are offended by my ingratitude--I shall never see you again. + +VERA +No, I am not offended. But I have failed to help you. We have nothing +else to meet for. + [_She disengages her hand._] + +DAVID +Why will you punish me so? I have only hurt myself. + +VERA +It is not a _punishment_. + +DAVID +What else? When you are with me, all the air seems to tremble with fairy +music played by some unseen fairy orchestra. + +VERA [_Tremulous_] +And yet you wouldn't come in just now when I---- + +DAVID +I was too frightened of the others.... + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Frightened indeed! + +DAVID +Yes, I know I became overbold--but to take all that magic sweetness out +of my life for ever--you don't call that a punishment? + +VERA [_Blushing_] +How could I wish to punish you? I was proud of you! + [_Drops her eyes, murmurs_] +Besides it would be punishing _myself_. + +DAVID [_In passionate amaze_] +Miss Revendal!... But no, it cannot be. It is too impossible. + +VERA [_Frightened_] +Yes, too impossible. Good-bye. + [_She turns._] + +DAVID +But not for always? + [_VERA hangs her head. He comes nearer. Passionately_] +Promise me that you--that I---- + [_He takes her hand again._] + +VERA [_Melting at his touch, breathes_] +Yes, yes, David. + +DAVID +Miss Revendal! + [_She falls into his arms._] + +VERA +My dear! my dear! + +DAVID +It is a dream. You cannot care for me--you so far above me. + +VERA +Above you, you simple boy? Your genius lifts you to the stars. + +DAVID +No, no; it is you who lift me there---- + +VERA [_Smoothing his hair_] +Oh, David. And to think that I was brought up to despise your race. + +DAVID [_Sadly_] +Yes, all Russians are. + +VERA +But we of the nobility in particular. + +DAVID [_Amazed, half-releasing her_] +You are noble? + +VERA +My father is Baron Revendal, but I have long since carved out a life of +my own. + +DAVID +Then he will not separate us? + +VERA +No. + [_Re-embracing him._] +Nothing can separate us. + [_A knock at the street-door. They separate. The automobile is + heard clattering off._] + +DAVID +It is my uncle coming back. + +VERA [_In low, tense tones_] +Then I shall slip out. I could not bear a third. I will write. + [_She goes to the door._] + +DAVID +Yes, yes ... Vera. + [_He follows her to the door. He opens it and she slips out._] + +MENDEL [_Half-seen at the door, expostulating_] +You, too, Miss Revendal----? + [_Re-enters._] +Oh, David, you have driven away all your friends. + +DAVID [_Going to window and looking after VERA_] +Not all, uncle. Not all. + [_He throws his arms boyishly round his uncle._] +I am so happy. + +MENDEL +Happy? + +DAVID +She loves me--Vera loves me. + +MENDEL +Vera? + +DAVID +Miss Revendal. + +MENDEL +Have you lost your wits? + [_He throws DAVID off._] + +DAVID +I don't wonder you're amazed. Maybe you think _I_ wasn't. It is as if an +angel should stoop down---- + +MENDEL [_Hoarsely_] +This is true? This is not some stupid _Purim_ joke? + +DAVID +True and sacred as the sunrise. + +MENDEL +But you are a Jew! + +DAVID +Yes, and just think! She was bred up to despise Jews--her father was a +Russian baron---- + +MENDEL +If she was the daughter of fifty barons, you cannot marry her. + +DAVID [_In pained amaze_] +Uncle! + [_Slowly_] +Then your hankering after the synagogue was serious after all. + +MENDEL +It is not so much the synagogue--it is the call of our blood through +immemorial generations. + +DAVID +_You_ say that! You who have come to the heart of the Crucible, where +the roaring fires of God are fusing our race with all the others. + +MENDEL [_Passionately_] +Not _our_ race, not your race and mine. + +DAVID +What immunity has our race? + [_Meditatively_] +The pride and the prejudice, the dreams and the sacrifices, the +traditions and the superstitions, the fasts and the feasts, things noble +and things sordid--they must all into the Crucible. + +MENDEL [_With prophetic fury_] +The Jew has been tried in a thousand fires and only tempered and +annealed. + +DAVID +Fires of hate, not fires of love. That is what melts. + +MENDEL [_Sneeringly_] +So I see. + +DAVID +Your sneer is false. The love that melted me was not Vera's--it was the +love _America_ showed me--the day she gathered me to her breast. + +MENDEL [_Speaking passionately and rapidly_] +Many countries have gathered us. Holland took us when we were driven +from Spain--but we did not become Dutchmen. Turkey took us when Germany +oppressed us, but we have not become Turks. + +DAVID +These countries were not in the making. They were old civilisations +stamped with the seal of creed. In such countries the Jew may be right +to stand out. But here in this new secular Republic we must look +forward---- + +MENDEL [_Passionately interrupting_] +We must look backwards, too. + +DAVID [_Hysterically_] +To what? To Kishineff? + [_As if seeing his vision_] +To that butcher's face directing the slaughter? To those----? + +MENDEL [_Alarmed_] +Hush! Calm yourself! + +DAVID [_Struggling with himself_] +Yes, I will calm myself--but how else shall I calm myself save by +forgetting all that nightmare of religions and races, save by holding +out my hands with prayer and music toward the Republic of Man and the +Kingdom of God! The Past I cannot mend--its evil outlines are stamped in +immortal rigidity. Take away the hope that I can mend the Future, and +you make me mad. + +MENDEL +You are mad already--your dreams are mad--the Jew is hated here as +everywhere--you are false to your race. + +DAVID +I keep faith with America. I have faith America will keep faith with us. + [_He raises his hands in religious rapture toward the flag over + the door._] +Flag of our great Republic, guardian of our homes, whose stars and---- + +MENDEL +Spare me that rigmarole. Go out and marry your Gentile and be happy. + +DAVID +You turn me out? + +MENDEL +Would you stay and break my mother's heart? You know she would mourn for +you with the rending of garments and the seven days' sitting on the +floor. Go! You have cast off the God of our fathers! + +DAVID [_Thundrously_] +And the God of our children--does _He_ demand no service? + [_Quieter, coming toward his uncle and touching him + affectionately on the shoulder._] +You are right--I do need a wider world. + [_Expands his lungs._] +I must go away. + +MENDEL +Go, then--I'll hide the truth--she must never suspect--lest she mourn +you as dead. + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Outside, in the kitchen_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_Both men turn toward the kitchen and listen._] + +KATHLEEN +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +FRAU QUIXANO AND KATHLEEN +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +MENDEL [_Bitterly_] +A merry _Purim_! + [_The kitchen door opens and remains ajar. FRAU QUIXANO rushes + in, carrying DAVID'S violin and bow. KATHLEEN looks in, + grinning._] + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Hilariously_] +_Nu spiel noch! spiel!_ + [_She holds the violin and bow appealingly toward DAVID._] + +MENDEL [_Putting out a protesting hand_] +No, no, David--I couldn't bear it. + +DAVID +But I must! You said she mustn't suspect. + [_He looks lovingly at her as he loudly utters these words, which + are unintelligible to her._] +And it may be the last time I shall ever play for her. + [_Changing to a mock merry smile as he takes the violin and bow + from her_] +_Gewiss_, Granny! + [_He starts the same old Slavic dance._] + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Childishly pleased_] +He! He! He! + [_She claps on a false grotesque nose from her pocket._] + +DAVID [_Torn between laughter and tears_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + +MENDEL [_Shocked_] +_Mutter!_ + +FRAU QUIXANO +_Un' du auch_! + [_She claps another false nose on MENDEL, laughing in childish + glee at the effect. Then she starts dancing to the music, and + KATHLEEN slips in and joyously dances beside her._] + +DAVID [_Joining tearfully in the laughter_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_The curtain falls quickly. It rises again upon the picture of + FRAU QUIXANO fallen back into a chair, exhausted with laughter, + fanning herself with her apron, while KATHLEEN has dropped + breathless across the arm of the armchair; DAVID is still + playing on, and MENDEL, his false nose torn off, stands by, + glowering. The curtain falls again and rises upon a final tableau + of DAVID in his cloak and hat, stealing out of the door with his + violin, casting a sad farewell glance at the old woman and at the + home which has sheltered him._] + + + + +Act III + + + _April, about a month later. The scene changes to MISS REVENDAL'S + sitting-room at the Settlement House on a sunny day. Simple, + pretty furniture: a sofa, chairs, small table, etc. An open piano + with music. Flowers and books about. Fine art reproductions on + walls. The fireplace is on the left. A door on the left leads to + the hall, and a door on the right to the interior. A servant + enters from the left, ushering in BARON and BARONESS REVENDAL and + QUINCY DAVENPORT. The BARON is a tall, stern, grizzled man of + military bearing, with a narrow, fanatical forehead and martinet + manners, but otherwise of honest and distinguished appearance, + with a short, well-trimmed white beard and well-cut European + clothes. Although his dignity is diminished by the constant + nervous suspiciousness of the Russian official, it is never lost; + his nervousness, despite its comic side, being visibly the tragic + shadow of his position. His English has only a touch of the + foreign in accent and vocabulary and is much superior to his + wife's, which comes to her through her French. The BARONESS is + pretty and dressed in red in the height of Paris fashion, but + blazes with barbaric jewels at neck and throat and wrist. She + gestures freely with her hand, which, when ungloved, glitters + with heavy rings. She is much younger than the BARON and + self-consciously fascinating. Her parasol, which matches her + costume, suggests the sunshine without. QUINCY DAVENPORT is in a + smart spring suit with a motor dust-coat and cap, which last he + lays down on the mantelpiece_. + +SERVANT +Miss Revendal is on the roof-garden. I'll go and tell her. + [_Exit, toward the hall._] + +BARON +A marvellous people, you Americans. Gardens in the sky! + +QUINCY +Gardens, forsooth! We plant a tub and call it Paradise. No, Baron. New +York is the great stone desert. + +BARONESS +But ze big beautiful Park vere ve drove tru? + +QUINCY +No taste, Baroness, modern sculpture and menageries! Think of the Medici +gardens at Rome. + +BARONESS +Ah, Rome! + [_With an ecstatic sigh, she drops into an armchair. Then she + takes out a dainty cigarette-case, pulls off her right-hand + glove, exhibiting her rings, and chooses a cigarette. The BARON, + seeing this, produces his match-box._] + +QUINCY +And now, dear Baron Revendal, having brought you safely to the den of +the lioness--if I may venture to call your daughter so--I must leave +_you_ to do the taming, eh? + +BARON +You are always of the most amiable. + [_He strikes a match._] + +BARONESS +_Tout a fait charmant._ + [_The BARON lights her cigarette._] + +QUINCY [_Bows gallantly_] +Don't mention it. I'll just have my auto take me to the Club, and then +I'll send it back for you. + +BARONESS +Ah, zank you--zat street-car looks horreeble. + [_She puffs out smoke._] + +BARON +Quite impossible. What is to prevent an anarchist sitting next to you +and shooting out your brains? + +QUINCY +We haven't much of that here--I don't mean brains. Ha! Ha! Ha! + +BARON +But I saw desperadoes spying as we came off your yacht. + +QUINCY +Oh, that was newspaper chaps. + +BARON [_Shakes his head_] +No--they are circulating my appearance to all the gang in the States. +They took snapshots. + +QUINCY +Then you're quite safe from recognition. + [_He sniggers._] +Didn't they ask you questions? + +BARON +Yes, but I am a diplomat. I do not reply. + +QUINCY +That's not very diplomatic here. Ha! Ha! + +BARON +_Diable!_ + [_He claps his hand to his hip pocket, half-producing a pistol. + The BARONESS looks equally anxious._] + +QUINCY +What's up? + +BARON [_Points to window, whispers hoarsely_] +Regard! A hooligan peeped in! + +QUINCY [_Goes to window_] +Only some poor devil come to the Settlement. + +BARON [_Hoarsely_] +But under his arm--a bomb! + +QUINCY [_Shaking his head smilingly_] +A soup bowl. + +BARONESS +Ha! Ha! Ha! + +QUINCY +What makes you so nervous, Baron? + [_The BARON slips back his pistol, a little ashamed._] + +BARONESS +Ze Intellectuals and ze _Bund_, zey all hate my husband because he is +faizful to Christ + [_Crossing herself_] +and ze Tsar. + +QUINCY +But the Intellectuals are in Russia. + +BARON +They have their branches here--the refugees are the leaders--it is a +diabolical network. + +QUINCY +Well, anyhow, _we're_ not in Russia, eh? No, no, Baron, you're quite +safe. Still, you can keep my automobile as long as you like--I've +plenty. + +BARON +A thousand thanks. + [_Wiping his forehead._] +But surely no gentleman would sit in the public car, squeezed between +working-men and shop-girls, not to say Jews and Blacks. + +QUINCY +It _is_ done here. But we shall change all that. Already we have a few +taxi-cabs. Give us time, my dear Baron, give us time. You mustn't judge +us by your European standard. + +BARON +By the European standard, Mr. Davenport, you put our hospitality to the +shame. From the moment you sent your yacht for us to Odessa---- + +QUINCY +Pray, don't ever speak of that again--you know how anxious I was to get +you to New York. + +BARON +Provided we have arrived in time! + +QUINCY +That's all right, I keep telling you. They aren't married yet---- + +BARON [_Grinding his teeth and shaking his fist_] +Those Jew-vermin--all my life I have suffered from them! + +QUINCY +We all suffer from them. + +BARONESS +Zey are ze pests of ze civilisation. + +BARON +But this supreme insult Vera shall not put on the blood of the +Revendals--not if I have to shoot her down with my own hand--and myself +after! + +QUINCY +No, no, Baron, that's not done here. Besides, if you shoot her down, +where do _I_ come in, eh? + +BARON [_Puzzled_] +Where _you_ come in? + +QUINCY +Oh, Baron! Surely you have guessed that it is not merely Jew-hate, +but--er--Christian love. Eh? + [_Laughing uneasily._] + +BARON +You! + +BARONESS [_Clapping her hands_] +Oh, _charmant, charmant_! But it ees a romance! + +BARON +But you are married! + +BARONESS [_Downcast_] +_Ah, oui._ _Quel dommage_, vat a peety! + +QUINCY +You forget, Baron, we are in America. The law giveth and the law taketh +away. + [_He sniggers._] + +BARONESS +It ees a vonderful country! But your vife--_hein?_--vould she consent? + +QUINCY +She's mad to get back on the stage--I'll run a theatre for her. It's +your daughter's consent that's the real trouble--she won't see me +because I lost my temper and told her to stop with her Jew. So I look to +you to straighten things out. + +BARONESS +_Mais parfaitement._ + +BARON [_Frowning at her_] +You go too quick, Katusha. What influence have I on Vera? And _you_ she +has never even seen! To kick out the Jew-beast is one thing.... + +QUINCY +Well, anyhow, don't _shoot_ her--shoot the beast rather. + [_Sniggeringly._] + +BARON +Shooting is too good for the enemies of Christ. + [_Crossing himself._] +At Kishineff we stick the swine. + +QUINCY [_Interested_] +Ah! I read about that. Did you see the massacre? + +BARON +Which one? Give me a cigarette, Katusha. + [_She obeys._] +We've had several Jew-massacres in Kishineff. + +QUINCY +Have you? The papers only boomed one--four or five years ago--about +Easter time, I think---- + +BARON +Ah, yes--when the Jews insulted the procession of the Host! + [_Taking a light from the cigarette in his wife's mouth._] + +QUINCY +Did they? I thought---- + +BARON [_Sarcastically_] +I daresay. That's the lies they spread in the West. They have the Press +in their hands, damn 'em. But you see I was on the spot. + [_He drops into a chair._] +I had charge of the whole district. + +QUINCY [_Startled_] +You! + +BARON +Yes, and I hurried a regiment up to teach the blaspheming brutes +manners---- + [_He puffs out a leisurely cloud._] + +QUINCY [_Whistling_] +Whew!... I--I say, old chap, I mean Baron, you'd better not say that +here. + +BARON +Why not? I am proud of it. + +BARONESS +My husband vas decorated for it--he has ze order of St. Vladimir. + +BARON [_Proudly_] +Second class! Shall we allow these bigots to mock at all we hold sacred? +The Jews are the deadliest enemies of our holy autocracy and of the only +orthodox Church. Their _Bund_ is behind all the Revolution. + +BARONESS +A plague-spot muz be cut out! + +QUINCY +Well, I'd keep it dark if I were you. Kishineff is a back number, and we +don't take much stock in the new massacres. Still, we're a bit +squeamish---- + +BARON +Squeamish! Don't you lynch and roast your niggers? + +QUINCY +Not officially. Whereas your Black Hundreds---- + +BARON +Black Hundreds! My dear Mr. Davenport, they are the white hosts of +Christ + [_Crossing himself_] +and of the Tsar, who is God's vicegerent on earth. Have you not read the +works of our sainted Pobiedonostzeff, Procurator of the Most Holy Synod? + +QUINCY +Well, of course, I always felt there was another side to it, but +still---- + +BARONESS +Perhaps he has right, Alexis. Our Ambassador vonce told me ze Americans +are more sentimental zan civilised. + +BARON +Ah, let them wait till they have ten million vermin overrunning _their_ +country--we shall see how long they will be sentimental. Think of it! A +burrowing swarm creeping and crawling everywhere, ugh! They ruin our +peasantry with their loans and their drink shops, ruin our army with +their revolutionary propaganda, ruin our professional classes by +snatching all the prizes and professorships, ruin our commercial +classes by monopolising our sugar industries, our oil-fields, our +timber-trade.... Why, if we gave them equal rights, our Holy Russia +would be entirely run by them. + +BARONESS +_Mon dieu! C'est vrai._ Ve real Russians vould become slaves. + +QUINCY +Then what are you going to do with them? + +BARON +One-third will be baptized, one-third massacred, the other third +emigrated here. + [_He strikes a match to relight his cigarette._] + +QUINCY [_Shudderingly_] +Thank you, my dear Baron,--you've already sent me one Jew too many. +We're going to stop all alien immigration. + +BARON +To stop _all_ alien--? But that is barbarous! + +QUINCY +Well, don't let us waste our time on the Jew-problem ... our own little +Jew-problem is enough, eh? Get rid of this little fiddler. Then _I_ may +have a look in. Adieu, Baron. + +BARON +Adieu. + [_Holding his hand_] +But you are not really serious about Vera? + [_The BARONESS makes a gesture of annoyance._] + +QUINCY +Not serious, Baron? Why, to marry her is the only thing I have ever +wanted that I couldn't get. It is torture! Baroness, I rely on your +sympathy. + [_He kisses her hand with a pretentious foreign air._] + +BARONESS [_In sentimental approval_] +_Ah! l'amour! l'amour!_ + [_Exit QUINCY DAVENPORT, taking his cap in passing._] +You might have given him a little encouragement, Alexis. + +BARON +Silence, Katusha. I only tolerated the man in Europe because he was a +link with Vera. + +BARONESS +You accepted his yacht and his---- + +BARON +If I had known his loose views on divorce---- + +BARONESS +I am sick of your scruples. You are ze only poor official in +Bessarabia. + +BARON +Be silent! Have I not forbidden----? + +BARONESS [_Petulantly_] +Forbidden! Forbidden! All your life you have served ze Tsar, and you +cannot afford a single automobile. A millionaire son-in-law is just vat +you owe me. + +BARON +What I owe you? + +BARONESS +Yes, ven I married you, I vas tinking you had a good position. I did not +know you were too honest to use it. You vere not open viz me, Alexis. + +BARON +You knew I was a Revendal. The Revendals keep their hands clean.... + [_With a sudden start he tiptoes noiselessly to the door leading + to the hall and throws it open. Nobody is visible. He closes it + shamefacedly._] + +BARONESS [_Has shared his nervousness till the door was opened, but now + bursts into mocking laughter_] +If you thought less about your precious safety, and more about me and +Vera---- + +BARON +Hush! You do not know Vera. You saw I was even afraid to give my name. +She might have sent me away as she sent away the Tsar's plate of +mutton. + +BARONESS +The Tsar's plate of----? + +BARON +Did I never tell you? When she was only a school-girl--at the Imperial +High School--the Tsar on his annual visit tasted the food, and Vera, as +the show pupil, was given the honour of finishing his Majesty's plate. + +BARONESS [_In incredulous horror_] +And she sent it avay? + +BARON +Gave it to a servant. + [_Awed silence._] +And then you think I can impose a husband on her. No, Katusha, I have to +win her love for myself, not for millionaires. + +BARONESS [_Angry again_] +Alvays so affrightfully selfish! + +BARON +I have no control over her, I tell you! + [_Bitterly_] +I never could control my womenkind. + +BARONESS +Because you zink zey are your soldiers. Silence! Halt! Forbidden! Right +Veel! March! + +BARON [_Sullenly_] +I wish I did think they were my soldiers--I might try the lash. + +BARONESS [_Springing up angrily, shakes parasol at him_] +You British barbarian! + +VERA [_Outside the door leading to the interior_] +Yes, thank you, Miss Andrews. I know I have visitors. + +BARON [_Ecstatically_] +Vera's voice! + [_The BARONESS lowers her parasol. He looks yearningly toward the + door. It opens. Enter VERA with inquiring gaze._] + +VERA [_With a great shock of surprise_] +Father!! + +BARON +_Verotschka!_ My dearest darling!... + [_He makes a movement toward her, but is checked by her + irresponsiveness._] +Why, you've grown more beautiful than ever. + +VERA +You in New York! + +BARON +The Baroness wished to see America. Katusha, this is my daughter. + +BARONESS [_In sugared sweetness_] +And mine, too, if she vill let me love her. + +VERA [_Bowing coldly, but still addressing her father_] +But how? When? + +BARON +We have just come and---- + +BARONESS [_Dashing in_] +Zat charming young man lent us his yacht--he is adorahble. + +VERA +What charming young man? + +BARONESS +Ah, she has many, ze little coquette--ha! ha! ha! + [_She touches VERA playfully with her parasol._] + +BARON +We wished to give you a pleasant surprise. + +VERA +It is certainly a surprise. + +BARON [_Chilled_] +You are not very ... daughterly. + +VERA +Do you remember when you last saw me? You did not claim me as a daughter +then. + +BARON [_Covers his eyes with his hand_] +Do not recall it; it hurts too much. + +VERA +I was in the dock. + +BARON +It was horrible. I hated you for the devil of rebellion that had entered +into your soul. But I thanked God when you escaped. + +VERA [_Softened_] +I think I was more sorry for you than for myself. I hope, at least, no +suspicion fell on you. + +BARONESS [_Eagerly_] +But it did--an avalanche of suspicion. He is still buried under it. Vy +else did they make Skovaloff Ambassador instead of him? Even now he +risks everyting to see you again. Ah, _mon enfant_, you owe your fazer a +grand reparation! + +VERA +What reparation can I possibly make? + +BARON [_Passionately_] +You can love me again, Vera. + +BARONESS [_Stamping foot_] +Alexis, you are interrupting---- + +VERA +I fear, father, we have grown too estranged--our ideas are so +opposite---- + +BARON +But not now, Vera, surely not now? You are no longer + [_He lowers his voice and looks around_] +a Revolutionist? + +VERA +Not with bombs, perhaps. I thank Heaven I was caught before I had done +any _practical_ work. But if you think I accept the order of things, you +are mistaken. In Russia I fought against the autocracy---- + +BARON +Hush! Hush! + [_He looks round nervously._] + +VERA +Here I fight against the poverty. No, father, a woman who has once heard +the call will always be a wild creature. + +BARON +But + [_Lowering his voice_] +those revolutionary Russian clubs here--you are not a member? + +VERA +I do not believe in Revolutions carried on at a safe distance. I have +found my life-work in America. + +BARON +I am enchanted, Vera, enchanted. + +BARONESS [_Gushingly_] +Permit me to kiss you, _belle enfant_. + +VERA +I do not know you enough yet; I will kiss my father. + +BARON [_With a great cry of joy_] +Vera! + [_He embraces her passionately._] +At last! At last! I have found my little Vera again! + +VERA +No, father, _your_ Vera belongs to Russia with her mother and the happy +days of childhood. But for their sakes---- + [_She breaks down in emotion._] + +BARON +Ah, your poor mother! + +BARONESS [_Tartly_] +Alexis, I perceive I am too many! + [_She begins to go toward the door._] + +BARON +No, no, Katusha. Vera will learn to love you, too. + +VERA [_To BARONESS_] +What does my loving you matter? I can never return to Russia. + +BARONESS [_Pausing_] +But ve can come here--often--ven you are married. + +VERA [_Surprised_] +When I am married? + [_Softly, blushing_] +You know? + +BARONESS [_Smiling_] +Ve know zat charming young man adores ze floor your foot treads on! + +VERA [_Blushing_] +You have seen David? + +BARON [_Hoarsely_] +David! + [_He clenches his fist._] + +BARONESS [_Half aside, as much gestured as spoken_] +Sh! Leave it to me. + [_Sweetly._] +Oh, no, ve have not seen David. + +VERA [_Looking from one to the other_] +Not seen--? Then what--whom are you talking about? + +BARONESS +About zat handsome, quite adorahble Mr. Davenport. + +VERA +Davenport! + +BARONESS +Who combines ze manners of Europe viz ze millions of America! + +VERA [_Breaks into girlish laughter_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! So Mr. Davenport has been talking to you! But you all seem +to forget one small point--bigamy is not permitted even to millionaires. + +BARONESS +Ah, not boz at vonce, but---- + +VERA +And do you think I would take another woman's leavings? No, not even if +she were dead. + +BARONESS +You are insulting! + +VERA +I beg your pardon--I wasn't even thinking of you. Father, to put an end +at once to this absurd conversation, let me inform you I am already +engaged. + +BARON [_Trembling, hoarse_] +By name, David. + +VERA +Yes--David Quixano. + +BARON +A Jew! + +VERA +How did you know? Yes, he is a Jew, a noble Jew. + +BARON +A Jew noble! + [_He laughs bitterly._] + +VERA +Yes--even as you esteem nobility--by pedigree. In Spain his ancestors +were hidalgos, favourites at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella; but in +the great expulsion of 1492 they preferred exile in Poland to baptism. + +BARON +And you, a Revendal, would mate with an unbaptized dog? + +VERA +Dog! You call my husband a dog! + +BARON +Husband! God in heaven--are you married already? + +VERA +No! But not being unemployed millionaires like Mr. Davenport, we hold +even our troth eternal. + [_Calmer_] +Our poverty, not your prejudice, stands in the way of our marriage. But +David is a musician of genius, and some day---- + +BARONESS +A fiddler in a beer-hall! She prefers a fiddler to a millionaire of ze +first families of America! + +VERA [_Contemptuously_] +First families! I told you David's family came to Poland in 1492--some +months before America was discovered. + +BARON +Christ save us! You have become a Jewess! + +VERA +No more than David has become a Christian. We were already at one--all +honest people are. Surely, father, all religions must serve the same +God--since there is only one God to serve. + +BARONESS +But ze girl is an ateist! + +BARON +Silence, Katusha! Leave me to deal with my daughter. + [_Changing tone to pathos, taking her face between his hands_] + +Oh, Vera, _Verotschka_, my dearest darling, I had sooner you had +remained buried in Siberia than that---- + [_He breaks down._] + +VERA [_Touched, sitting beside him_] +For you, father, I _was_ as though buried in Siberia. Why did you come +here to stab yourself afresh? + +BARON +I wish to God I had come here earlier. I wish I had not been so nervous +of Russian spies. Ah, _Verotschka_, if you only knew how I have pored +over the newspaper pictures of you, and the reports of your life in this +Settlement! + +VERA +You asked me not to send letters. + +BARON +I know, I know--and yet sometimes I felt as if I could risk Siberia +myself to read your dear, dainty handwriting again. + +VERA [_Still more softened_] +Father, if you love me so much, surely you will love David a little +too--for my sake. + +BARON [_Dazed_] +I--love--a Jew? Impossible. + [_He shudders._] + +VERA [_Moving away, icily_] +Then so is any love from me to you. You have chosen to come back into my +life, and after our years of pain and separation I would gladly remember +only my old childish affection. But not if you hate David. You must make +your choice. + +BARON [_Pitifully_] +Choice? I have no choice. Can I carry mountains? No more can I love a +Jew. + [_He rises resolutely._] + +BARONESS [_Who has turned away, fretting and fuming, turns back to her + husband, clapping her hands_] +Bravo! + +VERA [_Going to him again, coaxingly_] +I don't ask you to carry mountains, but to drop the mountains you +carry--the mountains of prejudice. Wait till you see him. + +BARON +I will not see him. + +VERA +Then you will hear him--he is going to make music for all the world. You +can't escape him, _papasha_, you with your love of music, any more than +you escaped Rubinstein. + +BARONESS +Rubinstein vas not a Jew. + +VERA +Rubinstein was a Jewish boy-genius, just like my David. + +BARONESS +But his parents vere baptized soon after his birth. I had it from his +patroness, ze Grande Duchesse Helena Pavlovna. + +VERA +And did the water outside change the blood within? Rubinstein was our +Court pianist and was decorated by the Tsar. And you, the Tsar's +servant, dare to say you could not meet a Rubinstein. + +BARON [_Wavering_] +I did not say I could not meet a _Rubinstein_. + +VERA +You practically said so. David will be even greater than Rubinstein. +Come, father, I'll telephone for him; he is only round the corner. + +BARONESS [_Excitedly_] +Ve vill not see him! + +VERA [_Ignoring her_] +He shall bring his violin and play to you. There! You see, little +father, you are already less frowning--now take that last wrinkle out of +your forehead. + [_She caresses his forehead._] +Never mind! David will smooth it out with his music as his Biblical +ancestor smoothed that surly old Saul. + +BARONESS +Ve vill not hear him! + +BARON +Silence, Katusha! Oh, my little Vera, I little thought when I let you +study music at Petersburg---- + +VERA [_Smiling wheedlingly_] +That I should marry a musician. But you see, little father, it all ends +in music after all. Now I will go and perform on the telephone, I'm not +angel enough to bear one in here. + [_She goes toward the door of the hall, smiling happily._] + +BARON [_With a last agonized cry of resistance_] +Halt! + +VERA [_Turning, makes mock military salute_] +Yes, _papasha_. + +BARON [_Overcome by her roguish smile_] +You--I--he--do you love this J--this David so much? + +VERA [_Suddenly tragic_] +It would kill me to give him up. + [_Resuming smile_] +But don't let us talk of funerals on this happy day of sunshine and +reunion. + [_She kisses her hand to him and exit toward the hall._] + +BARONESS [_Angrily_] +You are in her hands as vax! + +BARON +She is the only child I have ever had, Katusha. Her baby arms curled +round my neck; in her baby sorrows her wet face nestled against little +father's. + [_He drops on a chair, and leans his head on the table._] + +BARONESS [_Approaching tauntingly_] +So you vill have a Jew son-in-law! + +BARON +You don't know what it meant to me to feel her arms round me again. + +BARONESS +And a hook-nosed brat to call you grandpapa, and nestle his greasy face +against yours. + +BARON [_Banging his fist on the table_] +Don't drive me mad! + [_His head drops again._] + +BARONESS +Then drive me home--I vill not meet him.... Alexis! + [_She taps him on the shoulder with her parasol. He does not + move._] +Alexis Ivanovitch! Do you not listen!... + [_She stamps her foot._] +Zen I go to ze hotel alone. + [_She walks angrily toward the hall. Just before she reaches the + door, it opens, and the servant ushers in HERR PAPPELMEISTER with + his umbrella. The BARONESS'S tone changes instantly to a sugared + society accent._] +How do you do, Herr Pappelmeister? + [_She extends her hand, which he takes limply._] +You don't remember me? _Non?_ + [_Exit servant._] +Ve vere with Mr. Quincy Davenport at Wiesbaden---ze Baroness Revendal. + +PAPPELMEISTER +_So!_ + [_He drops her hand._] + +BARONESS +Yes, it vas ze Baron's entousiasm for you zat got you your present +position. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Arching his eyebrows_] +_So!_ + +BARONESS +Yes--zere he is! + [_She turns toward the BARON._] +Alexis, rouse yourself! + [_She taps him with her parasol._] +Zis American air makes ze Baron so sleepy. + +BARON [_Rises dazedly and bows_] +Charmed to meet you, Herr---- + +BARONESS +Pappelmeister! You remember ze great Pappelmeister. + +BARON [_Waking up, becomes keen_] +Ah, yes, yes, charmed--why do you never bring your orchestra to Russia, +Herr Pappelmeister? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Surprised_] +Russia? It never occurred to me to go to Russia--she seems so +uncivilised. + +BARONESS [_Angry_] +Uncivilised! Vy, ve have ze finest restaurants in ze vorld! And ze best +telephones! + +PAPPELMEISTER +_So?_ + +BARONESS +Yes, and the most beautiful ballets--Russia is affrightfully +misunderstood. + [_She sweeps away in burning indignation. PAPPELMEISTER murmurs + in deprecation. Re-enter VERA from the hall. She is gay and + happy._] + +VERA +He is coming round at once---- + [_She utters a cry of pleased surprise._] +Herr Pappelmeister! This is indeed a pleasure! + [_She gives PAPPELMEISTER her hand, which he kisses._] + +BARONESS [_Sotto voce to the BARON_] +Let us go before he comes. + [_The BARON ignores her, his eyes hungrily on VERA._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_To VERA_] +But I come again--you have visitors. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Only my father and---- + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Surprised_] +Your fader? _Ach so!_ + [_He taps his forehead._] +Revendal! + +BARONESS [_Sotto voce to the BARON_] +I vill not meet a Jew, I tell you. + +PAPPELMEISTER +But you vill vant to talk to your fader, and all _I_ vant is Mr. +Quixano's address. De Irish maiden at de house says de bird is flown. + +VERA [_Gravely_] +I don't know if I ought to tell you where the new nest is---- + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Disappointed_] +_Ach!_ + +VERA [_Smiling_] +But I will produce the bird. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Looks round_] +You vill broduce Mr. Quixano? + +VERA [_Merrily_] +By clapping my hands. + [_Mysteriously_] +I am a magician. + +BARON [_Whose eyes have been glued on VERA_] +You are, indeed! I don't know how you have bewitched me. + [_The BARONESS glares at him._] + +VERA +Dear little father! + [_She crosses to him and strokes his hair._] +Herr Pappelmeister, tell father about Mr. Quixano's music. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Shaking his head_] +Music cannot be talked about. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +That's a nasty one for the critics. But tell father what a genius +Da--Mr. Quixano is. + +BARONESS [_Desperately intervening_] +Good-bye, Vera. + [_She thrusts out her hand, which VERA takes._] +I have a headache. You muz excuse me. Herr Pappelmeister, _au plaisir de +vous revoir_. + [_PAPPELMEISTER hastens to the door, which he holds open. The + BARONESS turns and glares at the BARON._] + +BARON [_Agitated_] +Let me see you to the auto---- + +BARONESS +You could see me to ze hotel almost as quick. + +BARON [_To VERA_] +I won't say good-bye, _Verotschka_--I shall be back. + [_He goes toward the hall, then turns._] +You will keep your Rubinstein waiting? + [_VERA smiles lovingly._] + +BARONESS +You are keeping _me_ vaiting. + [_He turns quickly. Exeunt BARON and BARONESS._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +And now broduce Mr. Quixano! + +VERA +Not so fast. What are you going to do with him? + +PAPPELMEISTER +Put him in my orchestra! + +VERA [_Ecstatic_] +Oh, you dear! + [_Then her tone changes to disappointment._] +But he won't go into Mr. Davenport's orchestra. + +PAPPELMEISTER +It is no more Mr. Davenport's orchestra. He fired me, don't you +remember? Now I boss--how say you in American? + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Your own show. + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Ja_, my own band. Ven I left dat comic opera millionaire, dey all +shtick to me almost to von man. + +VERA +How nice of them! + +PAPPELMEISTER +All egsept de Christian--he vas de von man. He shtick to de millionaire. +So I lose my brincipal first violin. + +VERA +And Mr. Quixano is to--oh, how delightful! + [_She claps her hands girlishly._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Looks round mischievously_] +_Ach_, de magic failed. + +VERA [_Puzzled_] +Eh! + +PAPPELMEISTER +You do not broduce him. You clap de hands--but you do not broduce him. +Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_He breaks into a great roar of genial laughter._] + +VERA [_Chiming in merrily_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! But I said I have to know everything first. Will he get a +good salary? + +PAPPELMEISTER +Enough to keep a vife and eight children! + +VERA [_Blushing_] +But he hasn't a---- + +PAPPELMEISTER +No, but de Christian had--he get de same--I mean salary, ha! ha! ha! not +children. Den he can be independent--vedder de fool-public like his +American symphony or not--_nicht wahr?_ + +VERA +You _are_ good to us---- + [_Hastily correcting herself_] +to Mr. Quixano. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Smiling_] +And aldough you cannot broduce him, I broduce his symphony. _Was?_ + +VERA +Oh, Herr Pappelmeister! You are an angel. + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Nein, nein, mein liebes Kind!_ I fear I haf not de correct shape for an +angel. + [_He laughs heartily. A knock at the door from the hall._] + +VERA [_Merrily_] +_Now_ I clap my hands. + [_She claps._] +Come! + [_The door opens._] +Behold him! + [_She makes a conjurer's gesture. DAVID, bare-headed, carrying + his fiddle, opens the door, and stands staring in amazement at + PAPPELMEISTER._] + +DAVID +I thought you asked me to meet your father. + +PAPPELMEISTER +She is a magician. She has changed us. + [_He waves his umbrella._] +Hey presto, _was_? Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_He goes to DAVID, and shakes hands._] +_Und wie geht's?_ I hear you've left home. + +DAVID +Yes, but I've such a bully cabin---- + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Alarmed_] +You are sailing avay? + +VERA [_Laughing_] +No, no--that's only his way of describing his two-dollar-a-month garret. + +DAVID +Yes--my state-room on the top deck! + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Six foot square. + +DAVID +But three other passengers aren't squeezed in, and it never pitches and +tosses. It's heavenly. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Smiling_] +And from heaven you flew down to blay in dat beer-hall. _Was?_ + [_DAVID looks surprised._] +_I_ heard you. + +DAVID +You! What on earth did you go _there_ for? + +PAPPELMEISTER +Vat on earth does one go to a beer-hall for? Ha! Ha! Ha! For vawter! Ha! +Ha! Ha! Ven I hear you blay, I dink mit myself--if my blans succeed and +I get Carnegie Hall for Saturday Symphony Concerts, dat boy shall be one +of my first violins. _Was?_ + [_He slaps DAVID on the left shoulder._] + +DAVID [_Overwhelmed, ecstatic, yet wincing a little at the slap on his + wound._] +Be one of your first---- + [_Remembering_] +Oh, but it is impossible. + +VERA [_Alarmed_] +Mr. Quixano! You must not refuse. + +DAVID +But does Herr Pappelmeister know about the wound in my shoulder? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Agitated_] +You haf been vounded? + +DAVID +Only a legacy from Russia--but it twinges in some weathers. + +PAPPELMEISTER +And de pain ubsets your blaying? + +DAVID +Not so much the pain--it's all the dreadful memories-- + +VERA [_Alarmed_] +Don't talk of them. + +DAVID +I _must_ explain to Herr Pappelmeister--it wouldn't be fair. Even now + [_Shuddering_] +there comes up before me the bleeding body of my mother, the cold, +fiendish face of the Russian officer, supervising the slaughter---- + +VERA +Hush! Hush! + +DAVID [_Hysterically_] +Oh, that butcher's face--there it is--hovering in the air, that narrow, +fanatical forehead, that---- + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Brings down his umbrella with a bang_] +_Schluss!_ No man ever dared break down under me. My baton will beat +avay all dese faces and fancies. Out with your violin! + [_He taps his umbrella imperiously on the table._] +_Keinen Mut verlieren!_ + [_DAVID takes out his violin from its case and puts it to his + shoulder, PAPPELMEISTER keeping up a hypnotic torrent of + encouraging German cries._] +_Also! Fertig! Anfangen!_ + [_He raises and waves his umbrella like a baton._] +Von, dwo, dree, four---- + +DAVID [_With a great sigh of relief_] +Thanks, thanks--they are gone already. + +PAPPELMEISTER +Ha! Ha! Ha! You see. And ven ve blay your American symphony---- + +DAVID [_Dazed_] +You will play my American symphony? + +VERA [_Disappointed_] +Don't you jump for joy? + +DAVID [_Still dazed but ecstatic_] +Herr Pappelmeister! + [_Changing back to despondency_] +But what certainty is there your Carnegie Hall audience would understand +me? It would be the same smart set. + [_He drops dejectedly into a chair and lays down his violin._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Ach, nein._ Of course, some--ve can't keep peoble out merely because +dey pay for deir seats. _Was?_ + [_He laughs._] + +DAVID +It was always my dream to play it first to the new immigrants--those who +have known the pain of the old world and the hope of the new. + +PAPPELMEISTER +Try it on the dog. _Was?_ + +DAVID +Yes--on the dog that here will become a man! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Shakes his head_] +I fear neider dogs nor men are a musical breed. + +DAVID +The immigrants will not understand my music with their brains or their +ears, but with their hearts and their souls. + +VERA +Well, then, why shouldn't it be done here--on our Roof-Garden? + +DAVID [_Jumping up_] +A _Bas-Kol_! A _Bas-Kol_! + +VERA +What _are_ you talking? + +DAVID +Hebrew! It means a voice from heaven. + +VERA +Ah, but will Herr Pappelmeister consent? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Bowing_] +Who can disobey a voice from heaven?... But ven? + +VERA +On some holiday evening.... Why not the Fourth of July? + +DAVID [_Still more ecstatic_] +Another _Bas-Kol_!... My American Symphony! Played to the People! Under +God's sky! On Independence Day! With all the---- + [_Waving his hand expressively, sighs voluptuously._] +That will be too perfect. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Smiling_] +Dat has to be seen. You must permit me to invite---- + +DAVID [_In horror_] +Not the musical critics! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Raising both hands with umbrella in equal horror_] +_Gott bewahre!_ But I'd like to invite all de persons in New York who +really undershtand music. + +VERA +Splendid! But should we have room? + +PAPPELMEISTER +Room? I vant four blaces. + +VERA [_Smiling_] +You are severe! Mr. Davenport was right. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Smiling_] +Perhaps de oders vill be out of town. _Also!_ + [_Holding out his hand to DAVID_] +You come to Carnegie to-morrow at eleven. Yes? _Fraeulein._ + [_Kisses her hand._] +_Auf Wiedersehen!_ + [_Going_] +On de Roof-Garden--_nicht wahr?_ + +VERA [_Smiling_] +Wind and weather permitting. + +PAPPELMEISTER +I haf alvays mein umbrella. _Was?_ Ha! Ha! Ha! + +VERA [_Murmuring_] +Isn't he a darling? Isn't he----? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Pausing suddenly_] +But ve never settled de salary. + +DAVID +Salary! + [_He looks dazedly from one to the other._] +For the honour of playing in your orchestra! + +PAPPELMEISTER +Shylock!!... Never mind--ve settle de pound of flesh to-morrow. _Lebe +wohl!_ + [_Exit, the door closes._] + +VERA [_Suddenly miserable_] +How selfish of you, David! + +DAVID +Selfish, Vera? + +VERA +Yes--not to think of your salary. It looks as if you didn't really love +me. + +DAVID +Not love you? I don't understand. + +VERA [_Half in tears_] +Just when I was so happy to think that now we shall be able to marry. + +DAVID +Shall we? Marry? On my salary as first violin? + +VERA +Not if you don't want to. + +DAVID +Sweetheart! Can it be true? How do you know? + +VERA [_Smiling_] +_I'm_ not a Jew. I asked. + +DAVID +My guardian angel! + [_Embracing her. He sits down, she lovingly at his feet._] + +VERA [_Looking up at him_] +Then you _do_ care? + +DAVID +What a question! + +VERA +And you don't think wholly of your music and forget me? + +DAVID +Why, you are behind all I write and play! + +VERA [_With jealous passion_] +Behind? But I want to be before! I want you to love me first, before +everything. + +DAVID +I do put you before everything. + +VERA +You are sure? And nothing shall part us? + +DAVID +Not all the seven seas could part you and me. + +VERA +And you won't grow tired of me--not even when you are world-famous----? + +DAVID [_A shade petulant_] +Sweetheart, considering I should owe it all to you---- + +VERA [_Drawing his head down to her breast_] +Oh, David! David! Don't be angry with poor little Vera if she doubts, if +she wants to feel quite sure. You see father has talked so terribly, and +after all I was brought up in the Greek Church, and we oughtn't to cause +all this suffering unless---- + +DAVID +Those who love us _must_ suffer, and _we_ must suffer in their +suffering. It is live things, not dead metals, that are being melted in +the Crucible. + +VERA +Still, we ought to soften the suffering as much as---- + +DAVID +Yes, but only Time can heal it. + +VERA [_With transition to happiness_] +But father seems half-reconciled already! Dear little father, if only he +were not so narrow about Holy Russia! + +DAVID +If only _my_ folks were not so narrow about Holy Judea! But the ideals +of the fathers shall not be foisted on the children. Each generation +must live and die for its own dream. + +VERA +Yes, David, yes. You are the prophet of the living present. I am so +happy. + [_She looks up wistfully._] +You are happy, too? + +DAVID +I am dazed--I cannot realise that all our troubles have melted away--it +is so sudden. + +VERA +You, David? Who always see everything in such rosy colours? Now that the +whole horizon is one great splendid rose, you almost seem as if gazing +out toward a blackness---- + +DAVID +We Jews are cheerful in gloom, mistrustful in joy. It is our tragic +history---- + +VERA +But you have come to end the tragic history; to throw off the coils of +the centuries. + +DAVID [_Smiling again_] +Yes, yes, Vera. You bring back my sunnier self. I must be a pioneer on +the lost road of happiness. To-day shall be all joy, all lyric ecstasy. + [_He takes up his violin._] +Yes, I will make my old fiddle-strings _burst_ with joy! + [_He dashes into a jubilant tarantella. After a few bars there is + a knock at the door leading from the hall; their happy faces + betray no sign of hearing it; then the door slightly opens, and + BARON REVENDAL'S head looks hesitatingly in. As DAVID perceives + it, his features work convulsively, his string breaks with a + tragic snap, and he totters backward into VERA'S arms. Hoarsely_] +The face! The face! + +VERA +David--my dearest! + +DAVID [_His eyes closed, his violin clasped mechanically_] +Don't be anxious--I shall be better soon--I oughtn't to have talked +about it--the hallucination has never been so complete. + +VERA +Don't speak--rest against Vera's heart--till it has passed away. + [_The BARON comes dazedly forward, half with a shocked sense of + VERA'S impropriety, half to relieve her of her burden. She + motions him back._] +This is the work of your Holy Russia. + +BARON [_Harshly_] +What is the matter with him? + [_DAVID'S violin and bow drop from his grasp and fall on the + table._] + +DAVID +The voice! + [_He opens his eyes, stares frenziedly at the BARON, then + struggles out of VERA'S arms._] + +VERA [_Trying to stop him_] +Dearest---- + +DAVID +Let me go. + [_He moves like a sleep-walker toward the paralysed BARON, puts + out his hand, and testingly touches the face._] + +BARON [_Shuddering back_] +Hands off! + +DAVID [_With a great cry_] +A-a-a-h! It is flesh and blood. No, it is stone--the man of stone! +Monster! + [_He raises his hand frenziedly._] + +BARON [_Whipping out his pistol_] +Back, dog! + [_VERA darts between them with a shriek._] + +DAVID [_Frozen again, surveying the pistol stonily_] +Ha! You want _my_ life, too. Is the cry not yet loud enough? + +BARON +The cry? + +DAVID [_Mystically_] +Can you not hear it? The voice of the blood of my brothers crying out +against you from the ground? Oh, how can you bear not to turn that +pistol against yourself and execute upon yourself the justice which +Russia denies you? + +BARON +Tush! + [_Pocketing the pistol a little shamefacedly._] + +VERA +Justice on himself? For what? + +DAVID +For crimes beyond human penalty, for obscenities beyond human utterance, +for---- + +VERA +You are raving. + +DAVID +Would to heaven I were! + +VERA +But this is my father. + +DAVID +Your father!... God! + [_He staggers._] + +BARON [_Drawing her to him_] +Come, Vera, I told you---- + +VERA [_Frantically, shrinking back_] +Don't touch me! + +BARON [_Starting back in amaze_] +Vera! + +VERA [_Hoarsely_] +Say it's not true. + +BARON +What is not true? + +VERA +What David said. It was the mob that massacred--_you_ had no hand in it. + +BARON [_Sullenly_] +I was there with my soldiers. + +DAVID [_Leaning, pale, against a chair, hisses_] +And you looked on with that cold face of hate--while my mother--my +sister---- + +BARON [_Sullenly_] +I could not see everything. + +DAVID +Now and again you ordered your soldiers to fire---- + +VERA [_In joyous relief_] +Ah, he _did_ check the mob--he _did_ tell his soldiers to fire. + +DAVID +At any Jew who tried to defend himself. + +VERA +Great God! + [_She falls on the sofa and buries her head on the cushion, + moaning_] +Is there no pity in heaven? + +DAVID +There was no pity on earth. + +BARON +It was the People avenging itself, Vera. The People rose like a flood. +It had centuries of spoliation to wipe out. The voice of the People is +the voice of God. + +VERA [_Moaning_] +But you could have stopped them. + +BARON +I had no orders to defend the foes of Christ and + [_Crossing himself_] +the Tsar. The People---- + +VERA +But you could have stopped them. + +BARON +Who can stop a flood? I did my duty. A soldier's duty is not so pretty +as a musician's. + +VERA +But you could have stopped them. + +BARON [_Losing all patience_] +Silence! You talk like an ignorant girl, blinded by passion. The +_pogrom_ is a holy crusade. Are we Russians the first people to crush +down the Jew? No--from the dawn of history the nations have had to stamp +upon him--the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, +the Greeks, the Romans---- + +DAVID +Yes, it is true. Even Christianity did not invent hatred. But not till +Holy Church arose were we burnt at the stake, and not till Holy Russia +arose were our babes torn limb from limb. Oh, it is too much! Delivered +from Egypt four thousand years ago, to be slaves to the Russian Pharaoh +to-day. + [_He falls as if kneeling on a chair, and, leans his head on the + rail._] +O God, shall we always be broken on the wheel of history? How long, O +Lord, how long? + +BARON [_Savagely_] +Till you are all stamped out, ground into your dirt. + [_Tenderly_] +Look up, little Vera! You saw how _papasha_ loves you--how he was ready +to hold out his hand--and how this cur tried to bite it. Be calm--tell +him a daughter of Russia cannot mate with dirt. + +VERA +Father, I will be calm. I will speak without passion or blindness. I +will tell David the truth. I was never absolutely sure of my love for +him--perhaps that was why I doubted his love for me--often after our +enchanted moments there would come a nameless uneasiness, some vague +instinct, relic of the long centuries of Jew-loathing, some strange +shrinking from his Christless creed---- + +BARON [_With an exultant cry_] +Ah! She is a Revendal. + +VERA +But now---- + [_She rises and walks firmly toward DAVID_] +now, David, I come to you, and I say in the words of Ruth, thy people +shall be my people and thy God my God! + [_She stretches out her hands to DAVID._] + +BARON +You shameless----! + [_He stops as he perceives DAVID remains impassive._] + +VERA [_With agonised cry_] +David! + +DAVID [_In low, icy tones_] +You cannot come to me. There is a river of blood between us. + +VERA +Were it seven seas, our love must cross them. + +DAVID +Easy words to you. You never saw that red flood bearing the mangled +breasts of women and the spattered brains of babes and sucklings. Oh! + [_He covers his eyes with his hands. The BARON turns away in + gloomy impotence. At last DAVID begins to speak quietly, almost + dreamily._] +It was your Easter, and the air was full of holy bells and the streets +of holy processions--priests in black and girls in white and waving +palms and crucifixes, and everybody exchanging Easter eggs and kissing +one another three times on the mouth in token of peace and goodwill, and +even the Jew-boy felt the spirit of love brooding over the earth, though +he did not then know that this Christ, whom holy chants proclaimed +re-risen, was born in the form of a brother Jew. And what added to the +peace and holy joy was that our own Passover was shining before us. My +mother had already made the raisin wine, and my greedy little brother +Solomon had sipped it on the sly that very morning. We were all at +home--all except my father--he was away in the little Synagogue at which +he was cantor. Ah, such a voice he had--a voice of tears and +thunder--when he prayed it was like a wounded soul beating at the gates +of Heaven--but he sang even more beautifully in the ritual of home, and +how we were looking forward to his hymns at the Passover table---- + [_He breaks down. The BARON has gradually turned round under the + spell of DAVID'S story and now listens hypnotised._] +I was playing my cracked little fiddle. Little Miriam was making her +doll dance to it. Ah, that decrepit old china doll--the only one the +poor child had ever had--I can see it now--one eye, no nose, half an +arm. We were all laughing to see it caper to my music.... My father +flies in through the door, desperately clasping to his breast the Holy +Scroll. We cry out to him to explain, and then we see that in that +beloved mouth of song there is no longer a tongue--only blood. He tries +to bar the door--a mob breaks in--we dash out through the back into the +street. There are the soldiers--and the Face---- + [_VERA'S eyes involuntarily seek the face of her father, who + shrinks away as their eyes meet._] + +VERA [_In a low sob_] +O God! + +DAVID +When I came to myself, with a curious aching in my left shoulder, I saw +lying beside me a strange shapeless Something.... + [_DAVID points weirdly to the floor, and VERA, hunched forwards, + gazes stonily at it, as if seeing the horror._] +By the crimson doll in what seemed a hand I knew it must be little +Miriam. The doll was a dream of beauty and perfection beside the +mutilated mass which was all that remained of my sister, of my mother, +of greedy little Solomon-- Oh! You Christians can only see that rosy +splendour on the horizon of happiness. And the Jew didn't see rosily +enough for you, ha! ha! ha! the Jew who gropes in one great crimson +mist. + [_He breaks down in spasmodic, ironic, long-drawn, terrible + laughter._] + +VERA [_Trying vainly to tranquillise him_] +Hush, David! Your laughter hurts more than tears. Let Vera comfort you. + [_She kneels by his chair, tries to put her arms round him._] + +DAVID [_Shuddering_] +Take them away! Don't you feel the cold dead pushing between us? + +VERA [_Unfaltering, moving his face toward her lips_] +Kiss me! + +DAVID +I should feel the blood on my lips. + +VERA +My love shall wipe it out. + +DAVID +Love! Christian love! + [_He unwinds her clinging arms; she sinks prostrate on the floor + as he rises._] +For this I gave up my people--darkened the home that sheltered me--there +was always a still, small voice at my heart calling me back, but I +heeded nothing--only the voice of the butcher's daughter. + [_Brokenly_] +Let me go home, let me go home. + [_He looks lingeringly at VERA'S prostrate form, but overcoming + the instinct to touch and comfort her, begins tottering with + uncertain pauses toward the door leading to the hall._] + +BARON [_Extending his arms in relief and longing_] +And here is _your_ home, Vera! + [_He raises her gradually from the floor; she is dazed, but + suddenly she becomes conscious of whose arms she is in, and + utters a cry of repulsion._] + +VERA +Those arms reeking from that crimson river! + [_She falls back._] + +BARON [_Sullenly_] +Don't echo that babble. You came to these arms often enough when they +were fresh from the battlefield. + +VERA +But not from the shambles! You heard what he called you. Not +soldier--butcher! Oh, I dared to dream of happiness after my nightmare +of Siberia, but you--you---- + [_She breaks down for the first time in hysterical sobs._] + +BARON [_Brokenly_] +Vera! Little Vera! Don't cry! You stab me! + +VERA +You thought you were ordering your soldiers to fire at the Jews, but it +was my heart they pierced. + [_She sobs on._] + +BARON +... And my own.... But we will comfort each other. I will go to the Tsar +myself--with my forehead to the earth--to beg for your pardon!... Come, +put your wet face to little father's.... + +VERA [_Violently pushing his face away_] +I hate you! I curse the day I was born your daughter! + [_She staggers toward the door leading to the interior. At the + same moment DAVID, who has reached the door leading to the hall, + now feeling subconsciously that VERA is going and that his last + reason for lingering on is removed, turns the door-handle. The + click attracts the BARON'S attention, he veers round._] + +BARON [_To DAVID_] +Halt! + [_DAVID turns mechanically. VERA drifts out through her door, + leaving the two men face to face. The BARON beckons to DAVID, who + as if hypnotised moves nearer. The BARON whips out his pistol, + slowly crosses to DAVID, who stands as if awaiting his fate. The + BARON hands the pistol to DAVID._] +You were right! + [_He steps back swiftly with a touch of stern heroism into the + attitude of the culprit at a military execution, awaiting the + bullet._] +Shoot me! + +DAVID [_Takes the pistol mechanically, looks long and pensively at it as + with a sense of its irrelevance. Gradually his arm droops and lets + the pistol fall on the table, and there his hand touches a string + of his violin, which yields a little note. Thus reminded of it, he + picks up the violin, and as his fingers draw out the broken string + he murmurs_] +I must get a new string. + [_He resumes his dragging march toward the door, repeating + maunderingly_] +I must get a new string. + [_The curtain falls._] + + + + +Act IV + + + _Saturday, July 4, evening. The Roof-Garden of the Settlement + House, showing a beautiful, far-stretching panorama of New York, + with its irregular sky-buildings on the left, and the harbour + with its Statue of Liberty on the right. Everything is wet and + gleaming after rain. Parapet at the back. Elevator on the right. + Entrance from the stairs on the left. In the sky hang heavy + clouds through which thin, golden lines of sunset are just + beginning to labour. DAVID is discovered on a bench, hugging his + violin-case to his breast, gazing moodily at the sky. A muffled + sound of applause comes up from below and continues with varying + intensity through the early part of the scene. Through it comes + the noise of the elevator ascending. MENDEL steps out and hurries + forward_. + +MENDEL +Come down, David! Don't you hear them shouting for you? + [_He passes his hand over the wet bench._] +Good heavens! You will get rheumatic fever! + +DAVID +Why have you followed me? + +MENDEL +Get up--everything is still damp. + +DAVID [_Rising, gloomily_] +Yes, there's a damper over everything. + +MENDEL +Nonsense--the rain hasn't damped your triumph in the least. In fact, the +more delicate effects wouldn't have gone so well in the open air. +Listen! + +DAVID +Let them shout. Who told you I was up here? + +MENDEL +Miss Revendal, of course. + +DAVID [_Agitated_] +Miss Revendal? How should _she_ know? + +MENDEL [_Sullenly_] +She seems to understand your crazy ways. + +DAVID [_Passing his hand over his eyes_] +Ah, _you_ never understood me, uncle.... How did she look? Was she pale? + +MENDEL +Never mind about Miss Revendal. Pappelmeister wants you--the people +insist on seeing you. Nobody can quiet them. + +DAVID +They saw me all through the symphony in my place in the orchestra. + +MENDEL +They didn't know you were the composer as well as the first violin. Now +Miss Revendal has told them. + [_Louder applause._] +There! Eleven minutes it has gone on--like for an office-seeker. You +_must_ come and show yourself. + +DAVID +I won't--I'm not an office-seeker. Leave me to my misery. + +MENDEL +Your misery? With all this glory and greatness opening before you? Wait +till you're _my_ age---- + [_Shouts of "QUIXANO!"_] +You hear! What is to be done with them? + +DAVID +Send somebody on the platform to remind them this is the interval for +refreshments! + +MENDEL +Don't be cynical. You know your dearest wish was to melt these simple +souls with your music. And now---- + +DAVID +Now I have only made my own stony. + +MENDEL +You are right. You are stone all over--ever since you came back home to +us. Turned into a pillar of salt, mother says--like Lot's wife. + +DAVID +That was the punishment for looking backward. Ah, uncle, there's more +sense in that old Bible than the Rabbis suspect. Perhaps that is the +secret of our people's paralysis--we are always looking backward. + [_He drops hopelessly into an iron garden-chair behind him._] + +MENDEL [_Stopping him before he touches the seat_] +Take care--it's sopping wet. You don't look backward enough. + [_He takes out his handkerchief and begins drying the chair._] + +DAVID [_Faintly smiling_] +I thought you wanted the salt to melt. + +MENDEL +It _is_ melting a little if you can smile. Do you know, David, I haven't +seen you smile since that _Purim_ afternoon? + +DAVID +You haven't worn a false nose since, uncle. + [_He laughs bitterly._] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America because twenty-five centuries +ago the Jews escaped a _pogrom_ in Persia. Two thousand five hundred +years ago! Aren't we uncanny? + [_He drops into the wiped chair._] + +MENDEL [_Angrily_] +Better you should leave us altogether than mock at us. I thought it was +your Jewish heart that drove you back home to us; but if you are still +hankering after Miss Revendal---- + +DAVID [_Pained_] +Uncle! + +MENDEL +I'd rather see you marry her than go about like this. You couldn't make +the house any gloomier. + +DAVID +Go back to the concert, please. They have quieted down. + +MENDEL [_Hesitating_] +And you? + +DAVID +Oh, I'm not playing in the popular after-pieces. Pappelmeister guessed +I'd be broken up with the stress of my own symphony--he has violins +enough. + +MENDEL +Then you don't want to carry this about. + [_Taking the violin from DAVID'S arms._] + +DAVID [_Clinging to it_] +Don't rob me of my music--it's all I have. + +MENDEL +You'll spoil it in the wet. I'll take it home. + +DAVID +No---- + [_He suddenly catches sight of two figures entering from the + left--FRAU QUIXANO and KATHLEEN clad in their best, and wearing + tiny American flags in honour of Independence Day. KATHLEEN + escorts the old lady, with the air of a guardian angel, on her + slow, tottering course toward DAVID. FRAU QUIXANO is puffing and + panting after the many stairs. DAVID jumps up in surprise, + releases the violin-case to MENDEL._] +They at my symphony! + +MENDEL +Mother _would_ come--even though, being _Shabbos_, she had to walk. + +DAVID +But wasn't she shocked at my playing on the Sabbath? + +MENDEL +No--that's the curious part of it. She said that even as a boy you +played your fiddle on _Shabbos_, and that if the Lord has stood it all +these years, He must consider you an exception. + +DAVID +You see! She's more sensible than you thought. I daresay whatever I +were to do she'd consider me an exception. + +MENDEL [_In sullen acquiescence_] +I suppose geniuses _are_. + +KATHLEEN [_Reaching them; panting with admiration and breathlessness_] +Oh, Mr. David! it was like midnight mass! But the misthress was ashleep. + +DAVID +Asleep! + [_Laughs half-merrily, half-sadly._] +Ha! Ha! Ha! + +FRAU QUIXANO [_Panting and laughing in response_] +He! He! He! _Dovidel lacht widder._ He! He! He! + [_She touches his arm affectionately, but feeling his wet coat, + utters a cry of horror._] +_Du bist nass!_ + +DAVID +_Es ist gor nicht_, Granny--my clothes are thick. + [_She fusses over him, wiping him down with her gloved hand._] + +MENDEL +But what brought you up here, Kathleen? + +KATHLEEN +Sure, not the elevator. The misthress said 'twould be breaking the +_Shabbos_ to ride up in it. + +DAVID [_Uneasily_] +But did---did Miss Revendal send you up? + +KATHLEEN +And who else should be axin' the misthress if she wasn't proud of Mr. +David? Faith, she's a sweet lady. + +MENDEL [_Impatiently_] +Don't chatter, Kathleen. + +KATHLEEN +But, Mr. Quixano----! + +DAVID [_Sweetly_] +Please take your mistress down again--don't let her walk. + +KATHLEEN +But _Shabbos_ isn't out yet! + +MENDEL +Chattering again! + +DAVID [_Gently_] +There's no harm, Kathleen, in going _down_ in the elevator. + +KATHLEEN +Troth, I'll egshplain to her that droppin' down isn't ridin'. + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +Yes, tell her dropping down is natural--not _work_, like flying up. + [_Kathleen begins to move toward the stairs, explaining to FRAU + QUIXANO._] +And, Kathleen! You'll get her some refreshments. + +KATHLEEN [_Turns, glaring_] +Refrishments, is it? Give her refrishments where they mix the mate with +the butther plates! Oh, Mr. David! + [_She moves off toward the stairs in reproachful sorrow._] + +MENDEL [_Smiling_] +I'll get her some coffee. + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +Yes, that'll keep her awake. Besides, Pappelmeister was so sure the +people wouldn't understand me, he's relaxing them on Gounod and Rossini. + +MENDEL +Pappelmeister's idea of relaxation! _I_ should have given them comic +opera. + [_With sudden call to KATHLEEN, who with her mistress is at the + wrong exit._] +Kathleen! The elevator's _this_ side! + +KATHLEEN [_Turning_] +What way can that be, when I came up _this_ side? + +MENDEL +You chatter too much. + [_FRAU QUIXANO, not understanding, exit._] +Come this way. Can't you see the elevator? + +KATHLEEN [_Perceives FRAU QUIXANO has gone, calls after her in + Irish-sounding Yiddish_] +_Wu geht Ihr_, bedad?... + [_Impatiently_] +Houly Moses, _komm' zurick_! + [_Exit anxiously, re-enter with FRAU QUIXANO._] +Begorra, we Jews never know our way. + [_MENDEL, carrying the violin, escorts his mother and KATHLEEN to + the elevator. When they are near it, it stops with a thud, and + PAPPELMEISTER springs out, his umbrella up, meeting them face to + face. He looks happy and beaming over DAVID'S triumph._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_In loud, joyous voice_] +_Nun, Frau Quixano, was sagen Sie?_ Vat you tink of your David? + +FRAU QUIXANO +_Dovid? Er ist meshuggah._ + [_She taps her forehead._] + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Puzzled, to MENDEL_] +_Meshuggah!_ Vat means _meshuggah_? Crazy? + +MENDEL [_Half-smiling_] +You've struck it. She says David doesn't know enough to go in out of the +rain. + [_General laughter._] + +DAVID [_Rising_] +But it's stopped raining, Herr Pappelmeister. You don't want your +umbrella. + [_General laughter._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +_So._ + [_Shuts it down._] + +MENDEL +_Herein, Mutter._ + [_He pushes FRAU QUIXANO'S somewhat shrinking form into the + elevator. KATHLEEN follows, then MENDEL._] +Herr Pappelmeister, we are all your grateful servants. + [_PAPPELMEISTER bows; the gates close, the elevator descends._] + +DAVID +And you won't think _me_ ungrateful for running away--you know my thanks +are too deep to be spoken. + +PAPPELMEISTER +And zo are my congratulations! + +DAVID +Then, don't speak them, please. + +PAPPELMEISTER +But you _must_ come and speak to all de people in America who +undershtand music. + +DAVID [_Half-smiling_] +To your four connoisseurs? + [_Seriously_] +Oh, please! I really could not meet strangers, especially musical +vampires. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Half-startled, half-angry_] +Vampires? Oh, come! + +DAVID +Voluptuaries, then--rich, idle aesthetes to whom art and life have no +connection, parasites who suck our music---- + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Laughs good-naturedly_] +Ha! Ha! Ha! Vait till you hear vat dey say. + +DAVID +I will wait as long as you like. + +PAPPELMEISTER +Den I like to tell you now. + [_He roars with mischievous laughter._] +Ha! Ha! Ha! De first vampire says it is a great vork, but poorly +performed. + +DAVID [_Indignant_] +Oh! + +PAPPELMEISTER +De second vampire says it is a poor vork, but greatly performed. + +DAVID [_Disappointed_] +Oh! + +PAPPELMEISTER +De dird vampire says it is a great vork greatly performed. + +DAVID [_Complacently_] +Ah! + +PAPPELMEISTER +And de fourz vampire says it is a poor vork poorly performed. + +DAVID [_Angry and disappointed_] +Oh! + [_Then smiling_] +You see you _have_ to go by the people after all. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Shakes head, smiling_] +_Nein._ Ven critics disagree--I agree mit mineself. Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_He slaps DAVID on the back._] +A great vork dat vill be even better performed next time! Ha! Ha! Ha! +Ten dousand congratulations. + [_He seizes DAVID'S hand and grips it heartily._] + +DAVID +Don't! You hurt me. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Dropping DAVID'S hand,--misunderstanding_] +Pardon! I forgot your vound. + +DAVID +No--no--what does my wound matter? That never stung half so much as +these clappings and congratulations. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Puzzled but solicitous_] +I knew your nerves vould be all shnapping like fiddle-shtrings. Oh, you +cheniuses! + [_Smiling._] +You like neider de clappings nor de criticisms,--_was_? + +DAVID +They are equally--irrelevant. One has to wrestle with one's own art, +one's own soul, _alone_! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Patting him soothingly_] +I am glad I did not let you blay in Part Two. + +DAVID +Dear Herr Pappelmeister! Don't think I don't appreciate all your +kindnesses--you are almost a father to me. + +PAPPELMEISTER +And you disobey me like a son. Ha! Ha! Ha! Vell, I vill make your +excuses to de--vampires. Ha! Ha! _Also_, David. + [_He lays his hand again affectionately on DAVID'S right + shoulder._] +_Lebe wohl!_ I must go down to my popular classics. + [_Gloomily_] +Truly a going down! _Was?_ + +DAVID [_Smiling_] +Oh, it isn't such a descent as all that. Uncle said you ought to have +given them comic opera. + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Shuddering convulsively_] +Comic opera.... Ouf! + [_He goes toward the elevator and rings the bell. Then he turns + to DAVID._] +Vat vas dat vord, David? + +DAVID +What word? + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Groping for it_] +_Mega--megasshu_.... + +DAVID [_Puzzled_] +_Megasshu?_ + [_The elevator comes up; the gates open._] + +PAPPELMEISTER +_Megusshah!_ You know. + [_He taps his forehead with his umbrella._] + +DAVID +Ah, _meshuggah_! + +PAPPELMEISTER [_Joyously_] +_Ja, meshuggah!_ + [_He gives a great roar of laughter._] +Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_He waves umbrella at DAVID._] +Well, don't be ... _meshuggah_. + [_He steps into the elevator._] +Ha! Ha! Ha! + [_The gates close, and it descends with his laughter._] + +DAVID [_After a pause_] +Perhaps I _am_ ... _meshuggah_. + [_He walks up and down moodily, approaches the parapet at back._] +Dropping down is indeed natural. + [_He looks over._] +How it tugs and drags at one! + [_He moves back resolutely and shakes his head._] +That would be even a greater descent than Pappelmeister's to comic +opera. One _must_ fly upward--somehow. + [_He drops on the chair that MENDEL dried. A faint music steals + up and makes an accompaniment to all the rest of the scene._] +Ah! the popular classics! + [_His head sinks on a little table. The elevator comes up again, + but he does not raise his head. VERA, pale and sad, steps out and + walks gently over to him; stands looking at him with maternal + pity; then decides not to disturb him and is stealing away when + suddenly he looks up and perceives her and springs to his feet + with a dazed glad cry._] +Vera! + +VERA [_Turns, speaks with grave dignity_] +Miss Andrews has charged me to convey to you the heart-felt thanks and +congratulations of the Settlement. + +DAVID [_Frozen_] +Miss Andrews is very kind.... I trust you are well. + +VERA +Thank you, Mr. Quixano. Very well and very busy. So you'll excuse me. + [_She turns to go._] + +DAVID +Certainly.... How are your folks? + +VERA [_Turns her head_] +They are gone back to Russia. And yours? + +DAVID +You just saw them all. + +VERA [_Confused_] +Yes--yes--of course--I forgot! Good-bye, Mr. Quixano. + +DAVID +Good-bye, Miss Revendal. + [_He drops back on the chair. VERA walks to the elevator, then + just before ringing turns again._] + +VERA +I shouldn't advise you to sit here in the damp. + +DAVID +My uncle dried the chair. + [_Bitterly_] +Curious how every one is concerned about my body and no one about my +soul. + +VERA +Because your soul is so much stronger than your body. Why, think! It has +just lifted a thousand people far higher than this roof-garden. + +DAVID +Please don't you congratulate me, too! That would be too ironical. + +VERA [_Agitated, coming nearer_] +Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in +my congratulations. + +DAVID +The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when I +know what a terrible failure I have made! + +VERA +Failure! Because the critics are all divided? That is the surest proof +of success. You have produced something real and new. + +DAVID +I am not thinking of Pappelmeister's connoisseurs--_I_ am the only +connoisseur, the only one who knows. And every bar of my music cried +"Failure! Failure!" It shrieked from the violins, blared from the +trombones, thundered from the drums. It was written on all the +faces---- + +VERA [_Vehemently, coming still nearer_] +Oh, no! no! I watched the faces--those faces of toil and sorrow, those +faces from many lands. They were fired by your vision of their coming +brotherhood, lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And I could see +that you were right in speaking to the people. In some strange, +beautiful, way the inner meaning of your music stole into all those +simple souls---- + +DAVID [_Springing up_] +And _my_ soul? What of _my_ soul? False to its own music, its own +mission, its own dream. That is what I mean by failure, Vera. I preached +of God's Crucible, this great new continent that could melt up all +race-differences and vendettas, that could purge and re-create, and God +tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old +World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, "Cast it all into my +Crucible." And I said, "Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot +drink up this blood." And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating +over the old blood-stains--I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the +God of our children. Oh--how my music mocked me! And you--so fearless, +so high above fate--how you must despise me! + +VERA +I? Ah no! + +DAVID +You must. You do. Your words still sting. Were it seven seas between +us, you said, our love must cross them. And I--I who had prated of seven +seas---- + +VERA +Not seas of blood--I spoke selfishly, thoughtlessly. I had not realised +that crimson flood. Now I see it day and night. O God! + [_She shudders and covers her eyes._] + +DAVID +There lies my failure--to have brought it to your eyes, instead of +blotting it from my own. + +VERA +No man could have blotted it out. + +DAVID +Yes--by faith in the Crucible. From the blood of battlefields spring +daisies and buttercups. In the divine chemistry the very garbage turns +to roses. But in the supreme moment my faith was found wanting. You came +to me--and I thrust you away. + +VERA +I ought not to have come to you.... I ought not to have come to you +to-day. We must not meet again. + +DAVID +Ah, you cannot forgive me! + +VERA +Forgive? It is I that should go down on my knees for my father's sin. + [_She is half-sinking to her knees. He stops her by a gesture and + a cry._] + +DAVID +No! The sins of the fathers shall not be visited on the children. + +VERA +My brain follows you, but not my heart. It is heavy with the sense of +unpaid debts--debts that can only cry for forgiveness. + +DAVID +You owe me nothing---- + +VERA +But my father, my people, my country.... + [_She breaks down. Recovers herself._] +My only consolation is, you need nothing. + +DAVID [_Dazed_] +I--need--nothing? + +VERA +Nothing but your music ... your dreams. + +DAVID +And your love? Do I not need that? + +VERA [_Shaking her head sadly_] +No. + +DAVID +You say that because I have forfeited it. + +VERA +It is my only consolation, I tell you, that you do not need me. In our +happiest moments a suspicion of this truth used to lacerate me. But now +it is my one comfort in the doom that divides us. See how you stand up +here above the world, alone and self-sufficient. No woman could ever +have more than the second place in your life. + +DAVID +But you have the _first_ place, Vera! + +VERA [_Shakes her head again_] +No--I no longer even desire it. I have gotten over that womanly +weakness. + +DAVID +You torture me. What do you mean? + +VERA +What can be simpler? I used to be jealous of your music, your prophetic +visions. I wanted to come first--before them all! Now, dear David, I +only pray that they may fill your life to the brim. + +DAVID +But they cannot. + +VERA +They will--have faith in yourself, in your mission--good-bye. + +DAVID [_Dazed_] +You love me and you leave me? + +VERA +What else can I do? Shall the shadow of Kishineff hang over all your +years to come? Shall I kiss you and leave blood upon your lips, cling to +you and be pushed away by all those cold, dead hands? + +DAVID [_Taking both her hands_] +Yes, cling to me, despite them all, cling to me till all these ghosts +are exorcised, cling to me till our love triumphs over death. Kiss me, +kiss me now. + +VERA [_Resisting, drawing back_] +I dare not! It will make you remember. + +DAVID +It will make me forget. Kiss me. + [_There is a pause of hesitation, filled up by the Cathedral + music from "Faust" surging up softly from below._] + +VERA [_Slowly_] +I will kiss you as we Russians kiss at Easter--the three kisses of +peace. + [_She kisses him three times on the mouth as in ritual + solemnity._] + +DAVID [_Very calmly_] +Easter was the date of the massacre--see! I am at peace. + +VERA +God grant it endure! + [_They stand quietly hand in hand._] +Look! How beautiful the sunset is after the storm! + [_DAVID turns. The sunset, which has begun to grow beautiful just + after VERA'S entrance, has now reached its most magnificent + moment; below there are narrow lines of saffron and pale gold, + but above the whole sky is one glory of burning flame._] + +DAVID [_Prophetically exalted by the spectacle_] +It is the fires of God round His Crucible. + [_He drops her hand and points downward._] +There she lies, the great Melting Pot--listen! Can't you hear the +roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth + [_He points east_] +--the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the +world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a +seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,--black and +yellow---- + +VERA [_Softly, nestling to him_] +Jew and Gentile---- + +DAVID +Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the +pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross--how the great +Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they +all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, +what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come +to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all +races and nations come to labour and look forward! + [_He raises his hands in benediction over the shining city._] +Peace, peace, to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill this giant +continent--the God of our _children_ give you Peace. + [_An instant's solemn pause. The sunset is swiftly fading, and + the vast panorama is suffused with a more restful twilight, to + which the many-gleaming lights of the town add the tender poetry + of the night. Far back, like a lonely, guiding star, twinkles + over the darkening water the torch of the Statue of Liberty. From + below comes up the softened sound of voices and instruments + joining in "My Country, 'tis of Thee." The curtain falls + slowly._] + + + + +APPENDIX A + +THE MELTING POT IN ACTION + + +ALIENS ADMITTED TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE YEAR ENDED JUNE 30TH, 1913 + +African (black) 9,734 +Armenian 9,554 +Bohemian and Moravian 11,852 +Bulgarian, Servian, Montenegrin 10,083 +Chinese 3,487 +Croatian and Slavonian 44,754 +Cuban 6,121 +Dalmatian, Bosnian, Herzegovinian 4,775 +Dutch and Flemish 18,746 +East Indian 233 +English 100,062 +Finnish 14,920 +French 26,509 +German 101,764 +Greek 40,933 +Hebrew 105,826 +Irish 48,103 +Italian (north) 54,171 +Italian (south) 264,348 +Japanese 11,672 +Korean 74 +Lithuanian 25,529 +Magyar 33,561 +Mexican 15,495 +Pacific Islander 27 +Polish 185,207 +Portuguese 14,631 +Roumanian 14,780 +Russian 58,380 +Ruthenian (Russniak) 39,405 +Scandinavian 51,650 +Scotch 31,434 +Slovak 29,094 +Spanish 15,017 +Spanish-American 3,409 +Syrian 10,019 +Turkish 2,132 +Welsh 3,922 +West Indian (except Cuban) 2,302 +Other peoples 3,512 +-------- +Total 1,427,227 + + + + +APPENDIX B + +THE POGROM + + +(I) A RUSSIAN ON ITS REASONS + +[From _The Nation_, November 15, 1913] + +It is now over thirty years since the crew of the sinking ship +of Russian absolutism first tried this unworthy weapon to save +their failing cause. This was when Plehve organised an anti-Semitic +agitation and Jewish pogroms in 1883 in South Russia, +where the Jews formed almost the only merchant class in the +villages, and where the ignorant peasants, together with some +crafty Russian tradesmen, had a natural grudge against them. +The result was that the prevailing discontent of the masses +was diverted against the Jews. A large public meeting of +protest was organised at that time in the London Mansion +House, the Lord Mayor taking the chair. English public +opinion rightly appreciated the value of this criminal method +of using Jews as scapegoats for political purposes. Now we see +merely a further, and let us hope a final, development of the +same tactics. They have been used on many occasions since +1883. One of the largest Jewish pogroms of the latest series +in Kishineff in 1903 has been clearly traced to the same experienced +hand of Plehve, when the passive attitude of the local +administration and the military was explained by the presence +in the town of a mysterious colonel of the Imperial Gendarmerie +who arrived with secret orders and a large supply of pogrom +literature from St. Petersburg, and who organised the scum of +the town population for the purpose of looting and killing Jews. + +The repulsive stories of further pogroms all over the country +immediately after the issue of the constitutional manifesto of +October 17, 1905, are fresh in the memory of the civilised world. +At that time anti-Semitic doctrine was openly preached, not +only against Jews, but against the whole constitutional and +revolutionary upheaval. Pogroms against both were organised +under the same pretext of saving the Tsar, the orthodoxy, and +the Fatherland. Local police and military officials had secret +orders to abstain from interference with the looting and murdering +of Jews or "their hirelings." Processions of peaceful +citizens and children were trampled down by the Cossack +horses, and the Cossacks received formal thanks from high +quarters for their excellent exploits.... + + N. W. TCHAYKOVSKY. + + +(II) A NURSE ON ITS RESULTS + +[From _Public Health_, Nurses' Quarterly, Cleveland, Ohio, October 1913] + +I was a Red Cross nurse on the battlefield. + +The words of the chief doctor of the Jewish Hospital of Odessa still +ring in my ears. When the telephone message came, he said, "Moldvanko is +running in blood; send nurses and doctors." This meant that the Pogrom +(massacre) was going on. + +Dr. P---- came into the wards with these words: "Sisters, there is no +time for weeping. Those who have no one dependent upon them, come. Put +on your white surgical gowns, and the red cross. Make ready to go on the +battlefield at once. God knows how many of our sisters and brothers are +already killed." Tears were just running down his cheeks as he spoke. In +a minute twelve nurses and eight doctors had volunteered. There was one +Red Cross nurse who was in bed waiting to be operated on. She got up and +made ready too. Nobody could keep her from going with us. "Where my +sisters and brothers fall, there shall I fall," she said, and with these +words, jumped into the ambulance and went on to the City Hospital with +us. There they had better equipment, and they sent out three times as +many nurses as the Jewish Hospital. At the City Hospital they hung +silver crosses about our necks. We wore the silver crosses so that we +would not be recognised as Jewish by the Holiganes (Hooligans). + +Then we went to Molorosiskia Street in the Moldvanko (slums). We could +not see, for the feathers were flying like snow. The blood was already +up to our ankles on the pavement and in the yards. The uproar was +deafening but we could hear the Holiganes' fierce cries of "Hooray, kill +the Jews," on all sides. It was enough to hear such words. They could +turn your hair grey, but we went on. We had no time to think. All our +thoughts were to pick up wounded ones, and to try to rescue some +uninjured ones. We succeeded in rescuing some uninjured who were in +hiding. We put bandages on them to make it appear that they were +wounded. We put them in the ambulance and carried them to the hospital, +too. So at the Jewish Hospital we had five thousand injured and seven +thousand uninjured to feed and protect for two weeks. Some were left +without homes, without clothes, and children were even without parents. + +My dear reader, I want to tell you one thing before I describe the +scenes of the massacre any further; do not think that you are reading a +story which could not happen! No, I want you to know that everything you +read is just exactly as it was. My hair is a little grey, but I am +surprised it is not quite white after what I witnessed. + +The procession of the Pogrom was led by about ten Catholic (Greek) +Sisters with about forty or fifty of their school children. They carried +ikons or pictures of Jesus and sang "God Save the Tsar." They were +followed by a crowd containing hundreds of men and women murderers +yelling "Bey Zhida," which means "Kill the Jews." With these words they +ran into the yards where there were fifty or a hundred tenants. They +rushed in like tigers. Soon they began to throw children out of the +windows of the second, third, and fourth stories. They would take a +poor, innocent six-months-old baby, who could not possibly have done any +harm in this world and throw it down on to the pavement. You can +imagine it could not live after it struck the ground, but this did not +satisfy the stony-hearted murderers. They then rushed up to the child, +seized it and broke its little arm and leg bones into three or four +pieces, then wrung its neck too. They laughed and yelled, so carried +away with pleasure at their successful work. + + +I do wish a few Americans could have been there to see, and they would +know what America is, and what it means to live in the United States. It +was not enough for them to open up a woman's abdomen and take out the +child which she carried, but they took time to stuff the abdomen with +straw and fill it up. Can you imagine human beings able to do such +things? I do not think anybody could, because I could not imagine it +myself when a few years before I read the news of the massacre in +Kishineff, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. It was not enough +for them to cut out an old man's tongue and cut off his nose, but they +drove nails into the eyes also. You wonder how they had enough time to +carry away everything of value--money, gold, silver, jewels--and still +be able to do so much fancy killing, but oh, my friends, all the time +for three days and three nights was theirs. + +The last day and night it poured down rain, and you would think that +might stop them, but no, they worked just as hard as ever. We could wear +shoes no longer. Our feet were swollen, so we wore rubbers over our +stockings, and in this way worked until some power was able to stop +these horrors. They not only killed, but they had time to abuse young +girls of twelve and fourteen years of age, who died immediately after +being operated upon. + +I remember what happened to my own class-mates. They were two who came +from a small town to Odessa to become midwives. These girls ran to the +school to hide themselves as it was a government school, and they knew +the Holiganes would not dare to come in there. But the dean of the +school had ordered they should not be admitted, because they were +Jewish, as if they had different blood running in their veins. So when +they came, the watchman refused to open the doors, according to his +instructions. The crowd of Holiganes found them outside the doors of the +hospital. They abused them right there in the middle of the street. One +was eighteen years old and the other was twenty. One died after the +operation and the other went insane from shame. + +Some people ask why the Jews did not leave everything and go away. But +how could they go and where could they go? The murderers were scattered +throughout the Jewish quarters. All they could do was hide where they +were in the cellars and garrets. The Holiganes searched them out and +killed them where they were hidden. Others may ask, why did they not +resist the murderers with their knives and pistols? The grown men +organised by the second day. They were helped by the Vigilantes, too, +who brought them arms. The Vigilantes were composed of students at the +University and high-school boys, and also the strongest man from each +Jewish family. There were a good many Gentiles among the students who +belonged to the Vigilantes because they wanted justice. So on the second +day the Vigilantes stood before the doors and gave resistance to the +murderers. Some will ask where were the soldiers and the police? They +were sent to protect, but on arriving, joined in with the murderers. +However, the police put disguises on over their uniforms. Later, when +they were brought to the hospital with other wounded, we found their +uniforms underneath their disguises. + +When the Vigilantes took their stations, the scene was like a +battlefield. Bullets were flying from both sides of the Red Cross +carriages. We expected to be killed any minute, but notwithstanding, we +rushed wherever there were shots heard in order to carry away the +wounded. Whenever we arrived we shouted "Red Cross, Red Cross," in order +to help make them realise we were not Vigilantes. Then they would stop +and let us pick up the wounded. They did this on account of their own +wounded. + +The Vigilantes could not stop the butchery entirely because they were +not strong enough in numbers. On the fourth day, the Jewish people of +Odessa, through Dr. P----, succeeded in communicating to the Mayor of a +different State. Soldiers from outside, strangers to the murderers, came +in and took charge of the city. The city was put under martial law until +order could be restored. + +On the fifth day the doctors and nurses were called to the cemetery, +where there were four hundred unidentified dead. Their friends and +relatives who came to search for them were crazed and hysterical and +needed our attention. Wives came to look for husbands, parents hunting +children, a mother for her only son, and so on. It took eight days to +identify the bodies and by that time four hundred of the wounded had +died, and so we had eight hundred to bury. If you visit Odessa, you will +be shown two long graves, about one hundred feet long, beside the Jewish +Cemetery. There lie the victims of the massacre. Among them are Gentile +Vigilantes whose parents asked that they be buried with the Jews.... + +Another case I knew was that of a married man. He left his wife, who was +pregnant, and three children, to go on a business trip. When he got back +the massacre had occurred. His home was in ruins, his family gone. He +went to the hospital, then to the cemetery. There he found his wife with +her abdomen stuffed with straw, and his three children dead. It simply +broke his heart, and he lost his mind. But he was harmless, and was to +be seen wandering about the hospital as though in search of some one, +and daily he grew more thin and suffering. + +This story is told in the hope that Americans will appreciate the safety +and freedom in which they live and that they will help others to gain +that freedom. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +THE STORY OF DANIEL MELSA + + +Another example of Nature aping Art is afforded by the romantic story of +Daniel Melsa, a young Russo-Jewish violinist who has carried audiences +by storm in Berlin, Paris and London, and who had arranged to go to +America last November. The following extract from an interview in the +_Jewish Chronicle_ of January 24, 1913, shows the curious coincidence +between his beginnings and David Quixano's: + +"Melsa is not yet twenty years of age, but he looks somewhat older. He +is of slight build and has a sad expression, which increased to almost a +painful degree when recounting some of his past experiences. He seems +singularly devoid of any affectation, while modesty is obviously the +keynote of his nature. + +"After some persuasion, Melsa put aside his reticence, and, complying +with the request, outlined briefly his career, the early part of which, +he said, was overshadowed by a great tragedy. He was born in Warsaw, +and, at the age of three, his parents moved to Lodz, where shortly after +a private tutor was engaged for him. + +"'Although I exhibited a passion for music quite early, I did not +receive any lessons on the subject till my seventh birthday, but before +that my father obtained a cheap violin for me upon which I was soon able +to play simple melodies by ear.' + +"By chance a well-known professor of the town heard him play, and so +impressed was he with the talent exhibited by the boy that he advised +the father to have him educated. Acting upon this advice, as far as +limited means allowed, tutors were engaged, and so much progress did he +make that at the age of nine he was admitted to the local Conservatorium +of Professor Grudzinski, where he remained two years. It was at the age +of eleven that a great calamity overtook the family, his father and +sister falling victims to the pogroms. + +"Melsa's story runs as follows: + +"'It was in June of 1905, at the time of the pogroms, when one afternoon +my father, accompanied by my little sister, ventured out into the +street, from which they never returned. They were both killed,' he added +sadly, 'by Cossacks. A week later I found my sister in a Christian +churchyard riddled with bullets, but I have not been able to trace the +remains of my father, who must have been buried in some out-of-the-way +place. During this awful period my mother and myself lived in imminent +danger of our lives, and it was only the recollection of my playing that +saved us also falling a prey to the vodka-besodden Cossacks.'" + + + + +APPENDIX D + +BEILIS AND AMERICA + + +The close relation in Jewish thought between Russo-Jewish persecution +and America as the land of escape from it is well illustrated by the +recent remarks of the _Jewish Chronicle_ on the future of the victim of +the Blood-Ritual Prosecution in Kieff. "So long as Beilis continues to +live in Russia, his life is unsafe. The Black Hundreds, he himself says, +have solemnly decided on his death, and we have seen, in the not distant +past, that they can carry out diabolical plots of this description with +complete immunity.... He would gladly go to America, provided he was +sure of a living. The condition should not be difficult to fulfil, and +if this victim of a barbarous _regime_--we cannot say latest victim, +for, as we write, comes the news of an expulsion order against 1200 +Jewish students of Kieff--should find a home and place under the +sheltering wing of freedom, it would be a fitting ending to a painful +chapter in our Jewish history." + +That it is the natural ending even the Jew-baiting Russian organ, the +_Novoe Vremya_, indirectly testifies, for it has published a sneering +cartoon representing a number of Jews crowded on the Statue of Liberty +to welcome the arrival of Beilis. One wonders that the Russian censor +should have permitted the masses to become aware that Liberty exists on +earth, if only in the form of a statue. + + + + +APPENDIX E + +THE ALIEN IN THE MELTING POT + + +Mr. Frederick J. Haskin has recently published in the _Chicago Daily +News_ the following graphic summary of what immigrants have done and do +for the United States: + +I am the immigrant. + +Since the dawn of creation my restless feet have beaten new paths across +the earth. + +My uneasy bark has tossed on all seas. + +My wanderlust was born of the craving for more liberty and a better wage +for the sweat of my face. + +I looked towards the United States with eyes kindled by the fire of +ambition and heart quickened with new-born hope. + +I approached its gates with great expectation. + +I entered in with fine hopes. + +I have shouldered my burden as the American man of all work. + +I contribute eighty-five per cent. of all the labour in the slaughtering +and meat-packing industries. + +I do seven-tenths of the bituminous coal mining. + +I do seventy-eight per cent. of all the work in the woollen mills. + +I contribute nine-tenths of all the labour in the cotton mills. + +I make nine-twentieths of all the clothing. + +I manufacture more than half the shoes. + +I build four-fifths of all the furniture. + +I make half of the collars, cuffs, and shirts. + +I turn out four-fifths of all the leather. + +I make half the gloves. + +I refine nearly nineteen-twentieths of the sugar. + +I make half of the tobacco and cigars. + +And yet, I am the great American problem. + +When I pour out my blood on your altar of labour, and lay down my life +as a sacrifice to your god of toil, men make no more comment than at the +fall of a sparrow. + +But my brawn is woven into the warp and woof of the fabric of your +national being. + +My children shall be your children and your land shall be my land +because my sweat and my blood will cement the foundations of the America +of To-Morrow. + +If I can be fused into the body politic, the Melting-Pot will have stood +the supreme test. + + + + +Afterword + + +I + +_The Melting Pot_ is the third of the writer's plays to be published in +book form, though the first of the three in order of composition. But +unlike _The War God_ and _The Next Religion_, which are dramatisations +of the spiritual duels of our time, _The Melting Pot_ sprang directly +from the author's concrete experience as President of the Emigration +Regulation Department of the Jewish Territorial Organisation, which, +founded shortly after the great massacres of Jews in Russia, will soon +have fostered the settlement of ten thousand Russian Jews in the West of +the United States. + +"Romantic claptrap," wrote Mr. A. B. Walkley in the _Times_ of "this +rhapsodising over music and crucibles and statues of Liberty." As if +these things were not the homeliest of realities, and rhapsodising the +natural response to them of the Russo-Jewish psychology, incurably +optimist. The statue of Liberty is a large visible object at the mouth +of New York harbour; the crucible, if visible only to the eye of +imagination like the inner reality of the sunrise to the eye of Blake, +is none the less a roaring and flaming actuality. These things are as +substantial, if not as important, as Adeline Genee and Anna Pavlova, the +objects of Mr. Walkley's own rhapsodising. Mr. Walkley, never having +lacked Liberty, nor cowered for days in a cellar in terror of a howling +mob, can see only theatrical exaggeration in the enthusiasm for a land +of freedom, just as, never having known or never having had eyes to see +the grotesque and tragic creatures existing all around us, he has +doubted the reality of some of Balzac's creations. It is to be feared +that for such a play as _The Melting Pot_ Mr. Walkley is far from being +the [Greek: charieis] of Aristotle. The ideal spectator must have known and felt +more of life than Mr. Walkley, who resembles too much the library-fed +man of letters whose denunciation by Walter Bagehot he himself quotes +without suspecting _de te fabula narratur_. Even the critic, who has to +deal with a refracted world, cannot dispense with primary experience of +his own. For "the adventures of a soul among masterpieces" it is not +only necessary there should be masterpieces, there must also be a soul. +Mr. Walkley, one of the wittiest of contemporary writers and within his +urban range one of the wisest, can scarcely be accused of lacking a +soul, though Mr. Bernard Shaw's long-enduring misconception of him as a +brother in the spirit is one of the comedies of literature. But such +spiritual vitality as Oxford failed to sterilise in him has been largely +torpified by his profession of play-taster, with its divorcement from +reality in the raw. His cry of "romantic claptrap" is merely the +reaction of the club armchair to the "drums and tramplings" of the +street. It is in fact (he will welcome an allusion to Dickens almost as +much as one to Aristotle) the higher Podsnappery. "Thus happily +acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr. Podsnap settled that +whatever he put behind him he put out of existence.... The world got up +at eight, shaved close at a quarter past, breakfasted at nine, went to +the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined at seven." + +Mr. Roosevelt, with his multifarious American experience as soldier and +cowboy, hunter and historian, police-captain and President, comes far +nearer the ideal spectator, for this play at least, than Mr. Walkley. +Yet his enthusiasm for it has been dismissed by our critic as +"stupendous _naivete_." Mr. Roosevelt apparently falls under that class +of "people who knowing no rules, are at the mercy of their undisciplined +taste," which Mr. Walkley excludes altogether from his classification of +critics, in despite of Dr. Johnson's opinion that "natural judges" are +only second to "those who know but are above the rules." It is +comforting, therefore, to find Mr. Augustus Thomas, the famous American +playwright, who is familiar with the rules to the point of contempt, +chivalrously associating himself, in defence of a British rival, with +Mr. Roosevelt's "stupendous _naivete_." + +"Mr. Zangwill's 'rhapsodising' over music and crucibles and statues of +Liberty is," says Mr. Thomas, "a very effective use of a most potent +symbolism, and I have never seen men and women more sincerely stirred +than the audience at _The Melting Pot_. The impulses awakened by the +Zangwill play were those of wide human sympathy, charity, and +compassion; and, for my own part, I would rather retire from the theatre +and retire from all direct or indirect association with journalism than +write down the employment of these factors by Mr. Zangwill as mere +claptrap." + +"As a work of art for art's sake," also wrote Mr. William Archer, "the +play simply does not exist." He added: "but Mr. Zangwill would not dream +of appealing to such a standard." Mr. Archer had the misfortune to see +the play in New York side by side with his more cynical _confrere_, and +thus his very praise has an air of apologia to Mr. Walkley and the great +doctrine of "art for art's sake." It would almost seem as if he even +takes a "work of art" and a "work of art for art's sake" as synonymous. +Nothing, in fact, could be more inartistic. "Art for art's sake" is one +species of art, whose right to existence the author has amply recognised +in other works. (_The King of Schnorrers_ was even read aloud by Oscar +Wilde to a duchess.) But he roundly denies that art is any the less +artistic for being inspired by life, and seeking in its turn to inspire +life. Such a contention is tainted by the very Philistinism it would +repudiate, since it seeks a negative test of art in something outside +art--to wit, purpose, whose presence is surely as irrelevant to art as +its absence. The only test of art is artistic quality, and this quality +_occurs_ perhaps more frequently than it is achieved, as in the words of +the Hebrew prophets, or the vision of a slum at night, the former +consciously aiming at something quite different, the latter achieving +its beauty in utter unconsciousness. + +II + +It will be seen from the official table of immigration that the Russian +Jew is only one and not even the largest of the fifty elements that, to +the tune of nearly a million and a half a year, are being fused in the +greatest "Melting Pot" the world has ever known; but if he has been +selected as the typical immigrant, it is because he alone of all the +fifty has no homeland. Some few other races, such as the Armenians, are +almost equally devoid of political power, and, in consequence, equally +obnoxious to massacre; but except the gipsy, whose essence is to be +homeless, there is no other race--black, white, red, or yellow--that has +not remained at least a majority of the population in some area of its +own. There is none, therefore, more in need of a land of liberty, none +to whose future it is more vital that America should preserve that +spirit of William Penn which President Wilson has so nobly +characterised. And there is assuredly none which has more valuable +elements to contribute to the ethnic and psychical amalgam of the people +of to-morrow. + +The process of American amalgamation is not assimilation or simple +surrender to the dominant type, as is popularly supposed, but an +all-round give-and-take by which the final type may be enriched or +impoverished. Thus the intelligent reader will have remarked how the +somewhat anti-Semitic Irish servant of the first act talks Yiddish +herself in the fourth. Even as to the ultimate language of the United +States, it is unreasonable to suppose that American, though fortunately +protected by English literature, will not bear traces of the fifty +languages now being spoken side by side with it, and of which this play +alone presents scraps in German, French, Russian, Yiddish, Irish, +Hebrew, and Italian. + +That in the crucible of love, or even co-citizenship, the most violent +antitheses of the past may be fused into a higher unity is a truth of +both ethics and observation, and it was in order to present historic +enmities at their extremes that the persecuted Jew of Russia and the +persecuting Russian race have been taken for protagonists--"the fell +incensed points of mighty opposites." + +The Jewish immigrant is, moreover, the toughest of all the white +elements that have been poured into the American crucible, the race +having, by its unique experience of several thousand years of exposure +to alien majorities, developed a salamandrine power of survival. And +this asbestoid fibre is made even more fireproof by the anti-Semitism of +American uncivilisation. Nevertheless, to suppose that America will +remain permanently afflicted by all the old European diseases would be +to despair of humanity, not to mention super-humanity. + +III + +Even the negrophobia is not likely to remain eternally at its present +barbarous pitch. Mr. William Archer, who has won a new fame as student +of that black problem, which is America's nemesis for her ancient +slave-raiding, and who favours the creation of a Black State as one of +the United States, observes: "It is noteworthy that neither David +Quixano nor anyone else in the play makes the slightest reference to +that inconvenient element in the crucible of God--the negro." This is an +oversight of Mr. Archer's, for Baron Revendal defends the Jew-baiting of +Russia by asking of an American: "Don't you lynch and roast your +niggers?" And David Quixano expressly throws both "black and yellow" +into the crucible. No doubt there is an instinctive antipathy which +tends to keep the white man free from black blood, though this antipathy +having been overcome by a large minority in all the many periods and all +the many countries of their contiguity, it is equally certain that there +are at work forces of attraction as well as of repulsion, and that even +upon the negro the "Melting Pot" of America will not fail to act in a +measure as it has acted on the Red Indian, who has found it almost as +facile to mate with his white neighbours as with his black. Indeed, it +is as much social prejudice as racial antipathy that to-day divides +black and white in the New World; and Sir Sydney Olivier has recorded +that in Jamaica the white is far more on his guard and his dignity +against the half-white than against the all-black, while in Guiana, +according to Sir Harry Johnston in his great work "The Negro in the New +World," it is the half-white that, in his turn, despises the black and +succeeds in marrying still further whitewards. It might have been +thought that the dark-white races on the northern shore of the +Mediterranean--the Spaniards, Sicilians, &c.--who have already been +crossed with the sons of Ham from its southern shore, would, among the +American immigrants, be the natural links towards the fusion of white +and black, but a similar instinct of pride and peril seems to hold them +back. But whether the antipathy in America be a race instinct or a +social prejudice, the accusations against the black are largely +panic-born myths, for the alleged repulsive smell of the negro is +consistent with being shaved by him, and the immorality of the negress +is consistent with her control of the nurseries of the South. The devil +is not so black nor the black so devilish as he is painted. This is not +to deny that the prognathous face is an ugly and undesirable type of +countenance or that it connotes a lower average of intellect and ethics, +or that white and black are as yet too far apart for profitable fusion. +Melanophobia, or fear of the black, may be pragmatically as valuable a +racial defence for the white as the counter-instinct of philoleucosis, +or love of the white, is a force of racial uplifting for the black. But +neither colour has succeeded in monopolising all the virtues and graces +in its specific evolution from the common ancestral ape, and a +superficial acquaintance with the work of Dr. Arthur Keith teaches that +if the black man is nearer the ape in some ways (having even the remains +of throat-pouches), the white man is nearer in other ways (as in his +greater hairiness). + +And besides being, as Sir Sydney Olivier says, "a matrix of emotional +and spiritual energies that have yet to find their human expression," +the African negro has obviously already not a few valuable ethnic +elements--joy of life, love of colour, keen senses, beautiful voice, and +ear for music--contributions that might somewhat compensate for the +dragging-down of the white and, in small doses at least, might one day +prove a tonic to an anaemic and art-less America. A musician like +Coleridge-Taylor is no despicable product of the "Melting Pot," while +the negroes of genius whom the writer has been privileged to know--men +like Henry O. Tanner, the painter, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, the +poet--show the potentialities of the race even without white admixture; +and as men of this stamp are capable of attracting cultured white +wives, the fusing process, beginning at the top with types like these, +should be far less unwelcome than that which starts with the dregs of +both races. But the negroid hair and complexion being, in Mendelian +language, "dominant," these black traits are not easy to eliminate from +the hybrid posterity; and in view of all the unpleasantness, both +immediate and contingent, that attends the blending of colours, only +heroic souls on either side should dare the adventure of intermarriage. +Blacks of this temper, however, would serve their race better by making +Liberia a success or building up an American negro State, as Mr. William +Archer recommends, or at least asserting their rights as American +citizens in that sub-tropical South which without their labour could +never have been opened up. Meantime, however scrupulously and +justifiably America avoids physical intermarriage with the negro, the +comic spirit cannot fail to note the spiritual miscegenation which, +while clothing, commercialising, and Christianising the ex-African, has +given "rag-time" and the sex-dances that go to it, first to white +America and thence to the whole white world. + +The action of the crucible is thus not exclusively physical--a +consideration particularly important as regards the Jew. The Jew may be +Americanised and the American Judaised without any gamic interaction. + + + + +IV + +Among the Jews _The Melting Pot_, though it has in some instances served +to interpret to each other the old generation and the new, has more +frequently been misunderstood by both. While a distinguished Christian +clergyman wrote that it was "calculated to do for the Jewish race what +'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the coloured man," the Jewish pulpits of +America have resounded with denunciation of its supposed solution of the +Jewish problem by dissolution. As if even a play with a purpose could do +more than suggest and interpret! It is true that its leading figure, +David Quixano, advocates absorption in America, but even he is speaking +solely of the American Jews and asks his uncle why, if he objects to the +dissolving process, he did not work for a separate Jewish land. He is +not offering a panacea for the Jewish problem, universally applicable. +But he urges that the conditions offered to the Jew in America are +without parallel throughout the world. + +And, in sooth, the Jew is here citizen of a republic without a State +religion--a republic resting, moreover, on the same simple principles of +justice and equal rights as the Mosaic Commonwealth from which the +Puritan Fathers drew their inspiration. In America, therefore, the Jew, +by a roundabout journey from Zion, has come into his own again. It is by +no mere accident that when an inscription was needed for the colossal +statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, that "Mother of Exiles" whose +torch lights the entrance to the New Jerusalem, the best expression of +the spirit of Americanism was found in the sonnet of the Jewess, Emma +Lazarus: + + _Give me your tired, your poor,_ + _Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,_ + _The wretched refuse of your teeming shore._ + _Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,_ + _I lift my lamp beside the golden door._ + +And if, alas! passing through the golden door, the Jew finds his New +Jerusalem as much a caricature by the crumbling of its early ideals as +the old became by the fading of the visions of Isaiah and Amos, he may +find his mission in fighting for the preservation of the original +Hebraic pattern. In this fight he will not be alone, and intermarriage +with his fellow-crusaders in the new Land of Promise will naturally +follow wherever, as with David Quixano and Vera Revendal, no theological +differences divide. There will be neither Jew nor Greek. Intermarriage, +wherever there is social intimacy, will follow, even when the parties +stand in opposite religious camps; but this is less advisable as leading +to a house divided against itself and to dissension in the upbringing of +the children. It is only when a common outlook has been reached, +transcending the old doctrinal differences, that intermarriage is +denuded of those latent discords which the instinct of mankind divines, +and which keep even Catholic and Protestant wisely apart. + +These discords, together with the prevalent anti-Semitism and his own +ingrained persistence, tend to preserve the Jew even in the "Melting +Pot," so that his dissolution must be necessarily slower than that of +the similar aggregations of Germans, Italians, or Poles. But the process +for all is the same, however tempered by specific factors. Beginning as +broken-off bits of Germany, Italy, or Poland, with newspapers and +theatres in German, Italian, or Polish, these colonies gradually become +Americanised, their vernaculars, even when jealously cherished, become a +mere medium for American conceptions of life; while in the third +generation the child is ashamed both of its parents and their lingo, the +newspapers dwindle in circulation, the theatres languish. The reality of +this process has been denied by no less distinguished an American than +Dr. Charles Eliot, ex-President of Harvard University, whose prophecy of +Jewish solidarity in America and of the contribution of Judaism to the +world's future is more optimistic than my own. Dr. Eliot points to the +still unmelted heaps of racial matter, without suspecting--although he +is a chemist--that their semblance of solidity is only kept up by the +constant immigration of similar atoms to the base to replace those +liquefied at the apex. Once America slams her doors, the crucible will +roar like a closed furnace. + +Heaven forbid, however, that the doors shall be slammed for centuries +yet. The notion that the few millions of people in America have a moral +right to exclude others is monstrous. Exclusiveness may have some +justification in countries, especially when old and well-populated; but +for continents like the United States--or for the matter of that Canada +and Australia--to mistake themselves for mere countries is an +intolerable injustice to the rest of the human race. + +The exclusion of criminals even is as impossible in practice as the +exclusion of the sick and ailing is unchristian. Infinitely more +important were it to keep the gates of _birth_ free from undesirables. +As for the exclusion of the able-bodied, whether illiterate or literate, +that is sheer economic madness in so empty a continent, especially with +the Panama Canal to divert them to the least developed States. +Fortunately, any serious restriction will avenge itself not only by the +stagnation of many of the States, but by the paralysis of the great +liners which depend on steerage passengers, without whom freights and +fares will rise and saloon passengers be docked of their sailing +facilities. Meantime the inquisition at Ellis Island has to its account +cruelties no less atrocious than the ancient Spanish--cruelties that +only flash into momentary prominence when some luxurious music-hall lady +of dubious morals has a taste of the barbarities meted out daily to +blameless and hard-working refugees from oppression or hunger, who, +having staked their all on the great adventure, find themselves hustled +back, penniless and heartbroken, to the Old World. + + +V + +Whether any country will ever again be based like those of the Old World +upon a unity of race or religion is a matter of doubt. New England, of +course, like Pennsylvania and Maryland, owes its inception to religion, +but the original impulse has long been submerged by purely economic +pressures. And the same motley immigration from the Old World is +building up the bulk of the coming countries. At most, the dominant +language gives a semblance of unity and serves to attract a considerable +stream of immigrants who speak it, as of Portuguese to Brazil, Spaniards +to the Argentine. But the chief magnet remains economic, for Brazil +draws six times as many Italians as Portuguese, and the Argentine two +and a half times as many Italians as Spanish. It may be urged, of +course, that the Italian gravitation to these countries is still a +matter of race, and that, in the absence of an El Dorado of his own, the +Italian is attracted towards States that are at least Latin. But though +Brazil and the Argentine be predominantly Latin, the minority of +Germans, Austrians, and Swiss is by no means insignificant. The great +modern steamship, in fact--supplemented by its wandering and seductive +agent--is playing the part in the world formerly played by invasions and +crusades, while the "economic" immigrant is more and more replacing the +refugee, just as the purely commercial company working under native law +is replacing the Chartered Company which was a law to itself. How small +a part in the modern movement is played by patriotism proper may be seen +from the avidity with which the farmers of the United States cross the +borders to Canada to obtain the large free holdings which enable them to +sell off their American properties. How little the proudest tradition +counts against the environment is shown in the shame felt by +Argentine-born children for the English spoken by their British parents. + +The difference in the method of importing the ingredients makes thus no +difference to the action of the crucible. Though the peoples now in +process of formation in the New World are being recruited by mainly +economic forces, it may be predicted they will ultimately harden into +homogeneity of race, if not even of belief. For internationalism in +religion seems to be again receding in favour of national religions (if, +indeed, these were ever more than superficially superseded), at any rate +in favour of nationalism raised into religion. + +If racial homogeneity has not yet been evolved completely even in +England--and, of course, the tendency can never be more than +asymptotic--it is because cheap and easy transport and communication, +with freedom of economic movement, have been late developments and are +still far from perfect. Hence, there has never been a thorough shake-up +and admixture of elements, so that certain counties and corners have +retained types and breeds peculiar to them. But with the ever-growing +interconnection of all parts of the country, and with the multiplication +of labour bureaux, these breeds and types will be--alas, for local +colour!--increasingly absorbed in the general mass. For fusion and +unification are part of the historic life-process. "Normans and Saxons +and Danes" are we here in England, yes and Huguenots and Flemings and +Gascons and Angevins and Jews and many other things. + +In fact, according to Sir Harry Johnston, there is hardly an ethnic +element that has not entered into the Englishman, including even the +missing link, as the Piltdown skull would seem to testify. The earlier +discovery at Galley Hill showed Britannia rising from the apes with an +extinct Tasmanian type, not unlike the surviving aboriginal Australian. +Then the west of Britain was invaded by a negroid type from France +followed by an Eskimo type of which traces are still to be seen in the +West of Ireland and parts of Scotland. Next came the true Mediterranean +white man, the Iberian, with dark hair and eyes and a white skin; and +then the round-headed people of the Bronze Age, probably Asiatic. And +then the Gael, the long-headed, fair-haired Aryan, who ruled by iron and +whose Keltic vocabulary was tinged with Iberian, and who was followed by +the Brython or Belgian. And, at some unknown date, we have to allow for +the invasion of North Britain by another Germanic type, the Caledonian, +which would seem to have been a Norse stock, foreshadowing the later +Norman Conquest. And, as if this mish-mash was not confusion enough, +came to make it worse confounded the Roman conquerors, trailing like a +mantle of many colours the subject-races of their far-flung Empire. + +Is it wonderful if the crucible, capable of fusing such a motley of +types into "the true-born Briton," should be melting up its Jews like +old silver? The comparison belongs to Mr. Walkley, who was more moved by +the beauty of the old and the pathos of its passing than by the +resplendence of the new, and who seemed to forget that it is for the +dramatist to register both impartially--their conflict constituting +another of those spiritual duels which are peculiarly his affair. Jews +are, unlike negroes, a "recessive" type, whose physical traits tend to +disappear in the blended offspring. There does not exist in England +to-day a single representative of the Jewish families whom Cromwell +admitted, though their lineage may be traced in not a few noble +families. Thus every country has been and is a "Melting Pot." But +America, exhibiting the normal fusing process magnified many thousand +diameters and diversified beyond all historic experience, and fed not by +successive waves of immigration but by a hodge-podge of simultaneous +hordes, is, in Bacon's phrase, an "ostensive instance" of a universal +phenomenon. America is _the_ "Melting Pot." + +Her people has already begun to take on such a complexion of its own, it +is already so emphatically tending to a new race, crossed with every +European type, that the British illusion of a cousinly Anglo-Saxon +people with whom war is unthinkable is sheer wilful blindness. Even +to-day, while the mixture is still largely mechanical not chemical, the +Anglo-Saxon element is only preponderant; it is very far from being the +sum total. + + +VI + +While our sluggish and sensual English stage has resisted and even +burked the writer's attempt to express in terms of the theatre our +European problems of war and religion, and to interpret through art the +"years of the modern, years of the unperformed," it remains to be +acknowledged with gratitude that this play, designed to bring home to +America both its comparative rawness and emptiness and its true +significance and potentiality for history and civilisation, has been +universally acclaimed by Americans as a revelation of Americanism, +despite that it contains only one native-born American character, and +that a bad one. Played throughout the length and breadth of the States +since its original production in 1908, given, moreover, in Universities +and Women's Colleges, passing through edition after edition in book +form, cited by preachers and journalists, politicians and Presidential +candidates, even calling into existence a "Melting Pot" Club in Boston, +it has had the happy fortune to contribute its title to current thought, +and, in the testimony of Jane Addams, to "perform a great service to +America by reminding us of the high hopes of the founders of the +Republic." + + I. Z. +_January 1914._ + + + + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Melting-Pot, by Israel Zangwill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MELTING-POT *** + +***** This file should be named 23893.txt or 23893.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/8/9/23893/ + +Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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