7
Mr. Garrison was getting into his coat in the hall; it was after nine.
“Good-bye, Julie, I’m off.”
Her answer came from above.
“Don’t go yet. I want to speak to you; it is something important.”
With a suppressed feeling of impatience, he took off his coat and went up the stairs. He wondered how much Julie would ask for. She was very extravagant. He was surprised to find her waiting at the door of the sitting-room for him. She had slipped out of bed and thrown on a filmy wrapper; he was struck anew by her youthfulness. Her skin was like satin. She was forty and could easily be taken for ten years younger; but her beauty had ceased to disturb him. It was an accepted fact, like his luck in business.
As he bent to kiss her, she noticed his hair was getting thin on the top. He would soon be bald.
He dropped down on the sofa beside her.
“You looked tired this morning; didn’t you sleep well?” said Julie.
“As well as usual.”
Floyd’s mind was overstrained; his accumulating interests kept him on a severe tension. His eyes troubled him and he wore strong owl-like spectacles framed in tortoise shell which gave him a look of comic solemnity. He didn’t tell Julie how very badly he slept; his many speculations took gibbering forms and danced around his pillow. He spent whole nights in his den, where a man had “sweated blood.” He was beginning to feel the significance of that expression. At first the thought of possessing a million made his head reel, now he laughed at his modest pretensions. Desire grows until it ceases to be servant and becomes master. He hunted gain like a gambler who risks his last dollar. Envious competitors said, “Garrison’s getting to be a skin-flint; he’d sell his soul for money.”
It came back to him from a friend; he wasn’t annoyed, but wondered in a vague way if it were really true.
When the news arrived of Cardinal Cabello’s sudden death and Joseph’s decision, Julie took it very hard; she spent days in the convent praying for her son’s soul.
Floyd consulted with Dr. McClaren.
“She’ll get over it. It’s only a temporary disturbance. A bit of good news now will set her all right again. And how are you, Mr. Garrison? My medicine worked well, I see.”
“Oh! yes,” said Floyd, “but times are bad—a man must be careful how he invests his money.”
“That never troubles me; I haven’t any to invest.”
“You’ve been a successful doctor, haven’t you?”
“I hope so.”
The trouble with Dr. McClaren was that his bills were ridiculously small.
“He underestimates his own ability,” said Floyd to Julie. “A man must set the price of his life’s work, and as he appraises himself, the world values him.”
“I have a letter from Joseph,” answered Julie.
“So have I; he keeps me well posted on complications abroad; I am sure, if he will only get down to it, he’ll make a first-class financier.”
This was Floyd’s ambition for his son.
She took a letter from the table beside her. It was long, covering many sheets of paper.
“The Gonzalas have been very good to him; he is in much better spirits. It was terrible, that struggle with His Eminence. I would have given in.”
She always thought now of Cabello as “His Eminence,” in glittering robes, sparkling with jewels.
“Yes,” said Floyd. “You always gave in. That was the trouble.” He turned to go.
“Stop a moment; you must hear this.”
He pushed away the call of business; he would rather have read it himself, when he found time, at luncheon perhaps. He hated to be read to. He couldn’t concentrate; his mind wandered off in figures. She read in a low voice very rapidly, stopping now and again; he knew she was skipping something; he wasn’t offended. He had always felt like a third party, and thought of Joseph as “Julie’s boy.” It was an interesting letter written in picturesque metaphors, just the way Julie’s mother used to speak, thought Floyd. The boy told of his many visits to Frankfort, and of closer acquaintance with Pedro Gonzala, and his granddaughter. They had given a costume ball to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.
“A costume ball—that’s rather sporty,” remarked Floyd. He had in mind those French masquerades given in his youth, where Martin danced the Can-Can with indecent French women.
“Oh, no,” answered Julie, “listen; Joseph explains it.
“This was a ball, where the family personated their ancestors, the portraits in the gallery. Ruth took me around, told me their history for generations back. Wonderful, so full of struggle, tragedy, romance. I couldn’t hear enough of it!”
“It didn’t affect me like that—those portraits you sent away gave me a cold chill.”
“They were not your ancestors,” said Julie with a touch of sarcasm. Then she went on reading.
“They called one of the portraits ‘the unhappy Pedro Gonzala,’ because he was an illegitimate son. That was Grandfather! I couldn’t tear myself away from him; he had such brave defiant eyes. Dearest Mother, I think it is a great injustice to brand a human being like that. There is nothing illegitimate in Nature. I’d rather be the child of love, than of calculation born in wedlock.”
Floyd frowned.
“I don’t approve of those views. I’m afraid the boy is catching European radicalism.”
Julie didn’t answer; she was absorbed in the letter. Floyd looked at his watch and jumped up.
“Wait, wait, it is not finished.
“Mother, I’ve written you often about Ruth, but I’m sure you don’t know what she is like. When I am with her, I’m afraid to look at her, and when I’m away, I can’t imagine how she looks. She’s something indescribable. Mother, I have fought with all my might against her, because I knew it was hopeless, but when she said she loved me, I went straight to her grandfather. I told him about the struggle with my conscience and our dear friend’s sudden death—he was very much moved, and put his hand over my head and blessed me; then I took courage and asked him for Ruth. He was silent a long time before he answered. I could see he was thinking deeply. Then he said: ‘The uncompromising adherence of our people to the Law in the days of the Ghetto preserved the virility of the Race; but today our blood is in the veins of the world. That obstinate orthodoxy with which we are reproached has saved us from being swept away in a great tidal wave of assimilation. Come to us! We will leave you free in all worldly matters, but you must live according to our ritual, you must worship in our synagogue, you must bring up your children in our tradition. You will realize as you get older the righteousness of my demands.’”
Floyd was annoyed.
“They will keep harping on those future generations. How can we lay down the law for our grandchildren; they’ll know a lot more than we do.”
Julie evidently didn’t agree, she kept on reading.
“I walked about for days—trying to find some way—I wanted Ruth! Mother—you don’t know how much! I couldn’t keep away from her—she was waiting for me in the garden; she knew I would come. Mother, there was something so pure about her; such sweetness, I have never seen in any human thing. She was pale, but she spoke quietly. ‘Joseph, I know what Grandfather has asked you to do for my sake; you mustn’t do it. It wouldn’t be right for you. We try to bring the Past into the Present, to preserve our religion. We think we live, but it is only a waking dream, and we are happy they let us dream; but dreams are not for you. Joseph, you must go out on the high road of Progress—and I—I must stay here with my grandfather.’ Then I fell into the depths of despair and cried, how I cried. ‘I won’t let you; it is a living death; you are young! young!’ Mother, I’ll never forget her face when she answered. ‘I look young, but my soul is old.’”
A sob choked Julie’s voice; herself at sixteen, with that “old soul.”
Floyd took the letter and read it rapidly to the finish.
“She has shown me the way; it is all clear to me now, and I am not unhappy. We are only separated for a little while; and Mother, I want you to write a letter to her grandfather—and plead for us. It might do some good. You are always asking me what I want. I want Ruth; give me Ruth!”
It was pathetic how the boy clung to his childish illusions. His mother could give him everything. Julie was crying silently.
The letter dropped from Floyd’s hand; waves of memory swept over him. The struggle between Joseph Abravanel and Father Cabello against him—the bitterness, the tragedy. He was on his feet; there was a youthful ring in his voice which had long been absent. He flung his spectacles, that badge of age, on the table. His eyes were young again.
“We must bring it about; the boy must not be disappointed. He must have his love dream; he must not lose the best part of his life.”
With a cry of joy Julie came to him and put her arms around his neck; they stood together, the light of that young romance across the sea reflected in their faces. Floyd bent down and whispered: “I was an ardent lover, wasn’t I, Julie? You were so sweet, so sweet.”
Then he remembered a business deal, and put on his spectacles. At the door he stopped.
“I shall write at once to Pedro Gonzala and make him a business proposition, which it would be madness to refuse; it will be a brilliant future for Joseph. This will cure him. He will see now that money can buy him everything! Don’t cry, Julie; it’s all for the best, and don’t miss the mail. It’s a five-cent stamp to Germany.”
The Colonel lunched that day at the club, with Floyd, who was full of his plan to “dazzle” the Gonzolas. The Colonel was very sympathetic, then he said with a touch of sadness,
“I’m getting old. People have no use for a bachelor, when he ceases to be eligible. If I had a boy like yours, a wife like yours, I’d be a happy man.”
Floyd thought a moment.
“I have been lucky; I come out well from very serious complications.”
The Colonel thought he meant business deals.
“You often risked too much; you were once on the brink of disaster.”
“More than once,” answered Floyd, “but now things seem to be going my way. I would like to do some philanthropic construction work; a man must have something to keep him from drying up.”
There was a responsive flash from the Colonel.
“I thought I was the only one who thought like that.”
Floyd looked around at the crowded room; there was laughter, jingling of glasses, the perfume of good tobacco.
“I think they all do!”