Heirs of yesterday

Front matter

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Foreword

The tide of social culture sweeps literally upward with the grade in San Francisco, dropping inadequacies on the way. The tide of Jewish social culture runs its mimic parallel alongside of it, mounting hill for hill, matching inadequacy with inadequacy. Yet science proves that, this side infinity, parallels never meet.

And thereby hangs the comedy.

"If it takes six generations from the hod, or pick and shovel, to make a gentleman of an ordinary American,” asked the wag, “ how many generations from the Ghetto does it take to make a gentleman of a Jew? ”

“Bah!” said Philip May, contemptuously, “what have I to do with Ghettoes!”

And thereby also hangs the comedy, or — what you will — according to your light.

Chapter I

At sunset of a certain exquisite day toward the close of February, a young girl might have been seen making her way westward along Pacific avenue. She walked swiftly, lightly, the joyous wind of motion in her going. The waning afternoon was warm, and she had slipped off her jacket, carrying it under her arm, her slender shirt-waisted figure seeming to enjoy the freedom. The breath of violets was in the air, a marvelous sky of tender rose-shot gold before her — the spirit of the beauty of the hour had passed into her face.

In the serene light the houses rose, now stately, now picturesque, among velvety lawns and palms and rose-trees, here and there a red-stone mansion showing vivid and princely among the general scheme of perishable wooden architecture. Glimpses of the lovely island-dotted, hill-encircled bay smiled up to her as she passed the corners along the heights. She was in the midst of the fairest residence environs of the town.

Turning southward, she came abruptly upon two unpretentious little houses standing snugly together near the corner.

She ran up the steps of the nearer and rang the bell, scarcely conscious that she was happily humming a song while she waited.

The door was opened by a buxom, clean-aproned Irishwoman.

“ Well, Katie,” asked the girl, entering quickly, “how is everything getting along? Has any one been near the table since I left?” She did not pause; she moved as she spoke toward the dining-room.

“ There it is, Miss Jean, beautiful as a picter, same as you left it. What would the likes of my clumsy hands have to do wid anything you touches? And there’s nobody else.”

“ And the kitchen, Katie? ”

“ Come and take a smell.”

She tripped after her into the shining room steaming with importance and good savors.

“It smells like — like your kitchen, and that means it makes me hungry,” the girl assured her, critically approving.

“ Ah, go long wid the blarney eyes and tongue of you,” laughed the privileged old cook and housekeeper, in pleased excitement. “ Who wouldn’t have the best dinner in the land when her boy as was her baby is coming home to-night after ten long, lonesome years widout a sight of him. Laws, Miss Jean! when Mr. Mays stood and looked at that table two hours ago, his hands just trembled wid joy, even if his face did look like it did the day poor young Madame Mays died, and he sat and shivered for her.”

“ Sat and what, Katie? ”

“Shivered. That’s what all them old Jews does when some one dies as is dear to ’em. Leastways that’s what your own poor mother says to me when I see him sitting on a footstool and wanted to give the poor dear man a comfortable chair wid a back. ‘ Let him alone, Katie,’ says she. ‘ He has to sit low and shiver,’ says she. ‘It’s the Jewish custom.’ ”

The girl’s laugh rang out unrestrainedly.

“For shame, Miss Jean, to laugh over a poor young thing’s death; and she just a mother,” reproved the old woman, in shocked solemnity.

The laugh died lingeringly on J ean’s lips. “ I was not laughing at what you said, Katie,” she explained, with a vanishing ripple of mirth; “it was the way you said it. Probably my mother said he was sitting Shivah for her, which is — ”

“ It’s hay then English, then. Well, Miss Jean, all I hope is that Phily’ll like his dinner.”

“ Dr. May now, Katie. Remember he’s a grown man past thirty, and a physician besides. Of course he’ll like his old Katie’s dinner. Did you say Mr. May is at home? ”

“ Home and dressed these two hours. He’s in the sitting-room waiting.”

The girl slipped out, tiptoed softly through the hall, knocked gently, and then immediately opened the door in furtive, mischievous noiselessness.

Joseph May stood before the glass, absorbed in his own reflection. His deep-set eyes looked out from the brown, furrowed face set in its framework of grizzled hair and beard, taking stock of the overhanging brow, the long, thick nose, the straight, close-set lips — the upper one shaven; his eyes measured the thick-set, stooping figure, slightly below medium height. An eager anxiety dominated the whole attitude and aspect of the man.

“ Oh, vanity of vanities,” murmured the girl, her hand still upon the door-knob. “ Vanity of vanities, Uncle Joseph! ” She shook her head in tender mockery at him as he veered around.

He laughed sheepishly up into the dancing light of her dark gray eyes. “ Well, Jean,” he returned, with a helpless shrug, his palms turned upward and outward, “ what can a man do when he is such a dood like me?”

“ Dude! I should think you are a dude. Come here and turn around, sir, and let me admire you.”

He revolved in slow, solemn delight under her hand placed lightly upon his shoulder.

“ Who ever heard of a man’s making such a beauty of himself just for another man,” she observed, severely. “And a man of your years, too!”

“Then you think I will do, Jean?” he asked, in serious anxiety. “You think he won’t be ashamed from his old father? ” The man, although an American citizen of more than forty years standing, spoke with a marked foreign accent, composite of Jewish and German.

“ I wouldn’t give a penny for his taste if he were,” she returned, with a loyal uplift of her head, “ even if you do think he’s the Grand Mogul in person.”

“ CJiutspah ponim!” murmured Joseph, lovingly. “ Chutspah ponim — as if you don’t know he is yourself! ”

The girl’s alert senses — more alert than usual this evening — winced secretly under the familiar jargon.

“ Old man/’ she said, gently, argumentatively, “ do you happen to have a picture of a certain illustrious young surgeon about you? If you do, we might settle that point at once and for always.”

He clapped his hand to his breast-pocket, a look of comical surprise crossing his face as he felt its emptiness.

“ So you’ve forgotten it at last,” she laughed. “ How your friends will miss it! There, don’t mind my teasing, TJncle Joseph — you will have the original with you in just about an hour or two, and can pilot the man himself around to your old cronies. How sit down in that easy-chair so as not to disarrange your beauteous attire before the grand moment arrives. And remember, dear, you are not to get excited. You know Dr. Thallman — •”

“ Yes, yes, I know, Jean — I got my son to live for now. See how quiet I am.” He held up a trembling hand.

She stooped impulsively, pressing her lips to his bald forehead.

“ I’m going home now,” she said, moving toward the door. ee Greet the prodigal for me — without words.”

“ To-morrow night you and Daniel,” he called huskily after her.

“ Uncle Daniel, surely,” she replied, turning hack. “ And, Uncle Joseph! ”

“ Yes, dear child? ”

“ Please don’t take two plates of soup! ”

He chuckled softly after her entreating voice and retreating figure.

Shadows gathered in the quiet room. The old man sat motionless in his great chair

“ I tell you, boys, she’s a bonanza for one of you. A little princess, junge, mit hair what comes most to the floor down! ”

Out of what dim corner of his brain had the words sprung? — words scarcely noticed when spoken almost forty years before. Was it the suggestion of Jean Willard’s creamy girl-face with its shadowy eyes and her mass of shadowy dark hair? Was it the spirit-presence of one whose memory never left him in such silent moments as this? Was it the strange joy of calling her son — scarce known, grown to a man — his son? Was it — . He lost the links of thought.

He was back again in the office behind Simon

Alexander’s store, one of “the boys” crowded round the glowing stove, and Simon Alexander himself was making the announcement which caused them all to start with openly expressed interest over the pleasing thought that another fair young girl was coming into their rough lives.

That was the night young Goldschmitt, without an English word in his vocabulary or a cent in his pocket, had come staggering in, his pack on his hack, and demanded explanation of the cruel treatment he had received from the women he had approached with his wares. Whereupon they discovered that a certain wit, one Samuel Weiss by name, had written for the ignorant emigrant a list of questions to be asked, each one prefaced with a dainty oath, such as, “ Dam you, lady, here’s a dimity that will make your eyes water! ”

Young Goldschmitt wept tears of boyish grief over the unfolding, the others swore mysterious vengeance on the witless wit, and while Daniel Willard, the scribe, sat quietly down and wrote up an elegant text for the sale of his textures — “just like a book — just like a book,” they all agreed — Charlie Stein trolled out :

“ With a stone for a pillow and a sky for a sheet,

Oh, a peddler’s life, my dear ones, is a hard one to beat.”

To the truth of which sentiment several of those present could offer personal testimony.

But they were all chafing to get up and away to the home old Arnheim had prepared for his wife and daughter just arrived on the steamer from New Orleans, and when Simon, who gave all “ the hoys ” wide credit — which bore wider interest — had made a bed for poor Goldschmitt on the counter — for they were no sybarites in those days — they started in a body out into the raw night air.

He remembered their passing the historic gambling palace at the corner of Washington and Kearney streets, ablaze with lights, radiant with luxury and vice, glorious, sensuous music floating out above the noise of jingling gold, above the tragic shot of a pistol, above the monotonous cry of the croupier — a Frenchwoman this night — chanting persuasively, “ Make-a your bets, gentlemans — gentlemans, make-a your bets.” Some one was for stopping, but Daniel said, sternly, “ Boys, that is hell.” Yet a moment later, when they reached Arnheim’s house, the young Frenchman lifted his hat, and said, half quizzically, half reverentially, u But now, boys, we go to heaven.”

So they went to heaven through a pair of brown eyes, and many there were who gazed through thereat. And the way was long and sweet to Joseph May.

He remembered the night before the Eureka ball, when, after a long, silent walk under the stars with Daniel, his beloved friend, he had said, suddenly, “ Daniel, when you have no objection, to-morrow night at the ball, I will ask Jeannette Arnheim to marry me.” Such was Joseph’s way, short and direct. And Daniel, after a moment, had said, tenderly, “ if it is for your happiness, Joseph, and for hers, what objections can I, a poor occasional journalist, have to offer?”

And the next night — at that ball, whither she had gone with him in her simple, unadorned white silk gown cut low in the neck, a string of pearl beads around her lovely throat, her hands in small white silk gloves drawn tight with a dangling tassel — at that memorable Eureka ball, with all the boys fighting for a dance with her, he, Joseph May, the quietest of them all, had asked her for her hand — and won it.

And behold there was light divine for the quiet man on that long-ag. wedding day, when all the boys had kissed the bride — except Daniel Willard, who had only kissed her hand — and they had gone away to live happily together forever after. Forever after —

She brought success with her — everything he touched prospered. But five years passed before the promise of the long-awaited little one came to them, bringing with his glory —

Nay, why this mist of tears? Their plans? Had he not executed them — without her? Had not the long empty years —

“ My dear father,” broke in Philip May’s virile voice, “ I am glad to be with you again.”

The next minute the room was flooded with light, while, through mist-blinded eyes, the little old Jew felt his hand caught in a powerful grip, and looked up at his son’s broad-shouldered manhood.

Chapter II

As he followed his father into the dining-room, the wheel of time seemed to Philip May to leap back to the starting-point of memory. The past fifteen years, which had plunged him far beyond on the sea of life and thought, slipped from him and left him stranded on a shore which alone, in all the moving flux of things, seemed to have stood still. How much of this sensation was due to outward fact — the old-fashioned familiar furniture, the ancient Sabbath lamp — an heirloom — burning this Friday night with accustomed holy brilliancy, the square-set old man himself, whose hoartouched hair and beard but faintly suggested the silent passage of the years — he did not consider. He felt a sudden mental stooping, a bending to the cavern of a childhood which had been covered over, almost forgotten in the background of his experience.

From the farther doorway, Katie, the faithful housemaid, his quondam nurse, radiant, rosy, and rejoicing, courtesied to them as they entered.

His scrutinizing eyes fell instantly upon her, and with a flash of recognition of a different nature, he went toward her with hands outstretched.

“ Well, Katie,” he said, “ do you recognize the old plague of your life?”

Covered with confusion over the mastery of his voice and personality, she laid a rough, trembling hand in his, all the contemplated welcome of ecstatic words and embracing arms shrinking shamefacedly out of the back-door.

“ Thankee, Mr. Philip,” she stammered. “ I’m very well, thankee. You’ve growed some, sir, but I’d ’a’ knowed you was Phily anywhere.”

His laugh rang out heartily as he pressed her hand between both his. The lingering laugh startled the old woman — it was as an echo of something loved and lost. When she returned to her kitchen two unaccountable tears rolled down her cheeks.

“ Shall I take my old place? ” he asked, standing at the foot of the table.

“ For sure, Philip, for sure,” said J oseph, vainly endeavoring to keep the army of overpowering emotions from his voice and limbs. In the church of the old man’s soul there was an intoning of prayer and thanksgiving, the while he ladled soup — the while the dominant face opposite was engraving itself upon his intoxicated senses. It was a strong, intent face rather than a handsome one — a face with little room in it for frivolity, its very reticence proclaiming that strength, or narrowness, of purpose which bespeaks “ business ahead.” True, the brow, broad and thoughtful, beneath the wave of thick dark hair, might have belonged to an artist, a dreamer, but whatever the temperament of heredity it bespoke, the suggestion was overpowered by the doggedness of will of the individual as evidenced in the cool, discriminating hazel eyes and assertive mouth and jaw.

“ It’s hard to realize that so many years have passed since we dined together,” the younger man observed, picking up his napkin, grimly amused over a mellowing representation of Moses with the Decalogue benignly regarding him from the opposite wall. “I don’t know whether it is a trick of the gods,” he continued, lightly, “ or of Katie’s unrivaled soup, but I’m inclined to think I have never been away.”

“ I can tell you how long. You were away — leaving out vacations — just fifteen years, three months, twenty-three days and one-half.”

The ghost of a frown gathered into the doctor’s quiet regard. “ Perhaps,” he began, in the tranquil, sonorous voice which most of all seemed to measure an insurmountable distance between them, “ perhaps I staid too long. My duty, I know — ”

“ Ho, no,” interrupted the father, eagerly, apologetically. “ It was just like it should he. When you asked, didn’t I say yes? Didn’t I tell you I want you shall know everything money can buy when it will make you a better doctor — and a more happier? And besides, there was your friend — your poor sick friend.”

“ Yes.”

“ And you could not leave him. So I told to all who said, ‘ But why he don’t come home to his father — maybe he, too, needs him.’ Didn’t I always say to Daniel and J ean, ‘ Is it not fine a man shall stay by his friend so long he wants him?’ ”

Philip protested swiftly with his hand. “ Who is Jean?” he asked, abruptly.

“Jean? Oh, you don’t know who is Jean,” laughed the old man, delightedly, as though upon familiar ground. “ Well, you will know her soon — to-morrow night. You see, I said to Daniel, ‘You and Jean and Philip and me will have a nice little dinner together, and while we have a little game, the children can make a little music and get acquainted/ And Jean says, ‘ But, Uncle Joseph ’ — she calls me Uncle Joseph for short, because I too am short — ‘ who do you think this Dr. Philip May is that Jean Willard should come to call on him?’ And then she goes on, ‘ Now don’t tell me he is a prince — all the young Jews are princes to the old ones — tell me what he is, if you can/ But she don’t mean one word — she’s just a little lachachlis ponim — you know what that means? No? It means mischief-faced one — one who says things just out of spite. Oh, by’m-Bye you’ll learn Yiddish all over again when you stay long with me. But you don’t know who is Jean — . Wait. Will you take some more of Katie’s good soup? ”

“ It is good,” Philip acquiesced, cordially. “ But I always limit myself to one plate.”

“ Just like Jean. She always makes fun of me. Why? Is it more healthy? But when I learn you to speak Yiddish you will learn me what I must not eat. Of course Dr. Thallman is a fine doctor, but now when I have a doctor in the family, he don’t expect I will stay by him, I guess. Well, I will ring so Katie takes the plates out. You must not laugh when I make mistakes — I have seldom company for dinner— only Daniel and Jean sometimes, and then Jean does it all, and all me and Daniel has to do is to eat. But Jean knows better how it shall be done. To-night she wanted to order oysters and frogs and — ich weiss viel; but I said to her, ‘ No, Jean, better we have a good old-time dinner so Philip feels more to home : a good noodle soup — ’ ” here he began to intone like a cantor — “ fish a la Yitt , like Daniel calls it, some nice green peas and fried potatoes, a fine young roast duck, and salad — and for dessert, well, I compromised with her on a frozen something — but with coffee and cigars, I guess you’ll pull through, hey, Philip? ”

It was a long speech for Joseph May to make, but the excitement and happiness of this longanticipated, intimate moment had loosened the reserve of half a lifetime.

“ It could not suit me better,” returned Philip, the edge of his fine teeth showing in a suspicion of a smile, as he gave his attention to the fish. “ But who is this oracle of your manners and menus? Who is Jean? ”

“ I will tell you,” said Joseph seriously, holding up his fork in one hand and a bit of bread in the other. “ Help yourself to wine, Philip — Thallman says I mustn’t — I can guarantee you can get no better Sautexne nowhere — I paid a big price the case for it, years ago. Good? I knew you would like it. Well, what I was telling you? Oh, yes, about Jean. Jean is the chile of Daniel’s brother David, who lived in Los Angeles. Well, his wife died long before him, and when David died — now about ten years ago — there was no one to look after the little girl, who was about fourteen years, except an old aunt in Hew York. So Daniel comes to me — he always asks me what he shall do when it is business, just like I always ask him when it ain’t business — and he says, ‘ Joseph, you think I am good enough to take care of that young girl?’ And I said, ‘And when she was a young angel, and when she was a young devil, there is no one who can better take care of her as you.’ So Daniel went down and brought her up, and when once you see her, Philip — . Well, I won’t say no more about it now. You know I bought these two houses for an investment, account the view and location, but when Daniel brought the chile to the city he wanted to keep house, so I thought why not rent one to Daniel and keep one for myself, for when Philip comes home? And so you have it. And about Jean, there is not much to say. Only she looks after her two old men — like she calls us — and she says she has her hands full. All I know is she leads Daniel and me round by the nose and, schtiegen! I’ll tell you something — we make believe we don’t know it — because we like it! ”

As he glowed and expanded, enumerating all his homely loves under the pleasantly interested gaze of his son, it seemed to Joseph May — to his own surprise — that, despite the strong grief of his youth, life still held in reserve for him a bright spot into which he was now entering. And so, while they ate the savory dishes and drank the golden wine, he drew nearer the knowledge of his son, telling, with his unconquerable J ewish rhythm and accent, in quaint choice of English, now quite correct, now ridiculously faulty, occasionally mixed with the Yiddish jargon — the story of his simple life : the few hours passed in the downtown office, his fingers ever on the realty and stock market, with Daniel for his amanuensis; the sunny afternoons when he and Daniel would take the car and ride to the Park, where, sitting among the trees and flowers, they reviewed past and present through the medium of a good cigar; of the rainy or foggy evenings when Daniel or he would step across the connecting porch at the back and pass an hour or two together over a little game of picquet.

“ And sometimes we go to the the-ay-ter,” he concluded, with an air of reminiscent joy. “ Generally Jean gets the tickets for us, because she knows the good places and what Daniel and me will like. Daniel, he likes somethings sometimes what I wouldn’t like, so he and Jean goes alone. Say, Philip, you know about the time Daniel bought the tickets? ” He bent a laughing face upon him, his very nose seeming to scent the memory of the joke.

“No; what was that?” questioned Philip, the feeling that he was at some variety performance growing with the speeding minutes.

With a wave of the hand Joseph swept plate and glasses out of his way, and leaned his arms upon the table in an abandonment of enjoyment, his bushy eyebrows appearing to wink at Philip as he bent forward in confidential confab.

“ You know,” he said, speaking in a somewhat lower voice, as though fearful of being overheard, “ Daniel isn’t the man who gets the best of a bargain. He’s a little too good, you know. Where he has to do with business he is like a little chile. You know what the young people call him? — the Chevalier. Because, Jean explained to me, he is like some man who once lived who was ‘without reproach/ Well, he goes to the telephone, and takes off his hat, because he thought at first a lady’s voice answered him, and he asks for two good seats; ‘ the first seats, please/ he says — I give you my word — I heard him. And what do you think? When we come to our seats, sure enough we have the first seats — the first seats from the door! Daniel gets red in the face like fire, hut he only lifts up his head and says, ‘ There was some misunderstanding ’ — and could I tell him it was a joke? But that ain’t all. Now comes the joke on me. You know it’s a piece about a man what escapes from prison, and when they go running after him, somehow, in the excitement, they catch the wrong man, and I too got so excited I jump up and holler out, ‘ You’ve got the wrong man! You’ve got the wrong man! ’ And Daniel pulls me by the coat and says, ‘ Sit down, Joseph, sit down ; they’ve got the right man — it’s that way in the play’ — and he drags me into my seat. Gott! I thought I should die a-laughing.”

He wiped his eyes now, and as the appreciative response died from Philip May’s lips, the distance between them had widened as star from star.

“ I am not of this world,” thought the scion of cultured modernity, even as, centuries before, another young J ew said of another world and found

— Golgotha. But he continued to smile pleasantly upon his father.

“ Oh, we can tell you lots of little stories like that,” Joseph promised, tilting back his chair in order to reach the box of cigars on the side-table. “ But — I guess you won’t want to be sitting nights with an old stick-in-the-mud like me. Lots of young men they like to come and sit or talk with Daniel, but me, I guess I ain’t much company. Of course when you begin to practice you won’t have much time ” — he leaned across to light his cigar at Philip’s — “but — ”

He noticed that his companion’s attention had wandered, and presently realized that the room was filled with distant music.

“ Who is that? ” demanded Philip, briefly.

“That is Jean. You can always hear it like it was in the next room. What you think of that? ” He looked at him in placid triumph.

The music thrilled gloriously through the dividing-walls. Philip listened in artistic wonderment and enjoyment.

“ She knows how to play,” he returned, with the last note.

“Yah. So every one says. There she goes again.”

But in the midst of the mounting Schubert ecstasy there was a sudden crash of chords — and silence.

“ She often does like that/ 5 said Joseph, as though relieved. “But I was saying about the way you will pass your time. Of course you will join a club; I was thinking I will have your name put up at the Concordia, and Louis Waterman says he wants you in the Verein.”

Dr. May meditatively flicked the ash from his cigar. He had a singularly well-formed hand, and Joseph was attracted by its perfect control. Suddenly the cool hazel eyes looked up and met his father's.

“I may as well tell you at once," he said, in pleasant brevity, with a gentle intonation, as he might have used in addressing a woman or a patient, “ that I shall not join any Jewish club.”

The blood surged darkly over Joseph's face as if in response to a blow. “Why not?” he managed to ask.

“ Frankly,” explained Philip, lightly, “ beyond the blood I was born with, pretty nearly all the Jew has been knocked out of me.”

“ So,” said Joseph May.

“I rather think it got its first blow the day when, a little shaver, I ran howling to Katie demanding to know what the fellows in the street meant by calling me a ‘ Christ-killer ’ — they did such things here in the early seventies, you know. ‘ Sure/ said Katie — I remember her word for word — ‘ that’s what you be, I guess, my lamb/ * And who was Christ? ? I asked. You remember the name was taboo on Jewish lips in those same broad-minded days. ‘Bless the little haythen/ said Katie, ‘ don’t he know that Christ was the Lord?* ‘And when did I kill him?’ I asked, deeply interested in my forgotten crime. ‘ Oh, centuries ago/ replied the girl, ‘ hundreds of centuries ago/ ‘Before I was born?’ I asked, in astonishment. And, pityingly, she answered yes. It was a curious conundrum to start a child with on the road of investigation. I unraveled it as I went — knocked the meaning out of it against the bars, vague, yet ever discernible to a sensitive nature, which ever and again rose between my playmates, my schoolmates, my teachers, and myself, and huddled me into my inherited confines. It was not a pretty inheritance. It proscribed me here even in my boyhood. I was an American — with a difference. I hated the difference. I wanted to be successful — successful socially as well as professionally. I resolved to override every obstacle to obtain that perfect success.