Read Ebook: The Midlander by Tarkington Booth

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Ebook has 1553 lines and 103581 words, and 32 pages

"To call me which?"

"A--a Jew," said Dan, still keeping his eyes upon the ground.

"Why, I am a Jew."

"Yes, he had," Sam returned, to his friend's surprise. "He could call me a Jew just the same I could call you English."

"English? I'm not English."

"No," Dan protested mildly. "Not for a couple o' hundred years, anyway."

"Well, I ain't from Jews a couple thousand years, maybe."

"But I'm full-blooded American," said Dan.

"So'm I," Sam insisted. "You're American from English, and I'm American from Jews. He's got a right to call me a Jew."

Dan stared at him incredulously. "Don't you mind it?"

"Yes," Sam admitted, "I do when he says it for a insult. He's got a right to call me a Jew, but he hasn't got no right to call me a Jew for a insult."

"Well, he did," Dan remarked gloomily. "He meant it the way you might call somebody 'Irish' or 'Dutchy' or 'Nigger.'"

"I know it. He called me dirty and little, too. Well, I am little, but I ain't no dirtier than what you are, Dan, and you're his own brother."

"Well, then, you oughtn't to mind his callin' you dirty, Sam."

"He wouldn't call you dirty the same way he would me," Sam returned shrewdly; and then, after a momentary pause, he sighed and turned to go.

"Yeh, I better," Sam said, not looking back, but continuing to move toward the distant gate. "I better go before your mamma comes to put me out."

Dan protested again, but Sam shook his head and went on across the lawn, his hands in his pockets, his head down. The high iron fence, painted white, culminated in an elaborate gateway, and, when Sam passed out to the sidewalk there, the iron gateposts rose far above him. Plodding out between these high white posts, the shabby little figure did not lack pathos; nor was pathos absent from it as it went doggedly down the street in the thinning gold of the late afternoon sunshine. Sam looked back not once; but Dan watched him until he was out of sight, then returned to the interior of the summer-house, sat down, and stared broodingly at the littered floor. The floor was not what he saw, however, for his actual eyes were without vision just then, and it was his mind's eye that was busy. It dwelt upon the picture of the exiled Sam Kohn departing forlornly, and the longer it thus dwelt the warmer and more threatening grew a painful feeling that seemed to locate itself in Dan's upper chest, not far below his collar bone.

This feeling remained there while he dressed; and it was still there when he sat down at his grandmother's table for dinner. In fact, it so increased in poignancy that he could not eat with his customary heartiness; and his lack of appetite, though he made play with seemingly busy fork and spoon to cover it, fell under the sharp eye of the lady at the head of the table. She was a handsome, dominant old woman, with high colour in her cheeks at seventy-eight, and thick hair, darker than it was gray, under her lace cap. She sat straight upright in her stiff chair, for she detested easy-chairs and had never in all her life lounged in one or sat with her knees crossed; such things were done not by ladies, but by hoodlums, she said. Her husband, a gentle, submissive old man, was frail and bent with his years, though they had brought him great worldly prosperity; and the grandchildren of this couple never spoke of the house as "Grandpa Savage's," but always as "Grandma Savage's," an intuitive discrimination that revealed the rulership. Mrs. Savage ruled by means of a talent she had for destructive criticism, which several times prevented her optimistic husband from venturing into ruin, and had established her as the voice of wisdom.

"Daniel," she said presently;--"you're not eating."

"Yes, I am, grandma."

"No. Ever since you came to the table, you've been sitting there with your head bent down like that and moving your hands to pretend you're eating, but not eating. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothin'," he muttered, not lifting his head. "I'm all right."

"Adelaide," Mrs. Savage said to his mother;--"has his appetite been failing lately?"

"Why, no, mamma," Mrs. Oliphant answered. She was a pretty woman, quietly cheerful and little given to alarms or anxieties. "Not seriously," she added, smiling. "He did very well at lunch, at least."

"He looks sickish," said Mrs. Savage grimly. "He looks as if he were beginning a serious illness. Well people don't sit with their heads down like that. What is the matter with you, Daniel?"

"Nothin'," he said. "I told you I'm all right."

"He isn't though," Mrs. Savage insisted, addressing the others. "Do you know what's the matter with him, Harlan?"

"Too much glue, I expect."

"What?"

"Too much glue," Harlan repeated. "He was playing with a lot of nasty glue and paint all afternoon, and I expect the smell's made him sick. Too much glue and too much Jew."

"Jew?" his grandmother inquired. "What do you mean by 'too much Jew,' Harlan?"

"He had a dirty little bow-legged Jew playing with him."

"See here!" Dan said huskily, but he did not look up. "You be careful!"

"Careful of what?" Harlan inquired scornfully.

"Careful of what you say."

"Daniel, were you playing with a Jew?" his grandmother asked.

"Yes, I was."

He still did not look up, but his voice had a tone, plaintive and badgered, that attracted the attention of his grandfather, and the old gentleman interposed soothingly: "Don't let 'em fret you, Dannie. It wasn't particularly wicked of you to play with a Jew, I expect."

"No," said Dan's father. "I don't believe I'd let myself be much worried over that, if I were you, Dan."

"No?" said Mrs. Savage, and inquired further, somewhat formidably: "You don't prefer your sons to choose companions from their own circle, Henry Oliphant?"

"Oh, yes, I do, ma'am," he returned amiably. "As a general thing I believe it's better for them to be intimate with the children of their mother's and father's old family friends; but at the same time I hope Dan and Harlan won't forget that we live in a country founded on democratic principles. The population seems to me to begin to show signs of altering with emigration from Europe; and it's no harm for the boys to know something of the new elements, though for that matter we've always had Jews, and they're certainly not bad citizens. I don't see any great harm in Dan's playing a little with a Jewish boy, if he wants to."

"I wasn't playin'," Dan said.

"Weren't you?" his father asked. "What were you doing?"

"We were--we were manufacturing. We were manufacturing useful articles."

"What were they?"

"Ornamental brackets to nail on walls and put things on. We were goin' to make good money out of it."

"Well, that was all right," Mr. Oliphant said genially. "Not a bad idea at all. You're all right, Dannie."

Unfortunately, a word of sympathy often undermines the composure of the recipient; and upon this Dan's lower lip began to quiver, though he inclined his head still farther to conceal the new tokens of his agitation.

He was not aided by his coolly observant young brother. "Going to cry about it?" Harlan asked, quietly amused.

"You let Dannie alone," said the grandfather; whereupon Harlan laughed. "You ought to see what he and his little Jew partner called brackets!" he said. "Dan's always thinking he's making something, and it's always something just awful. What he and that Sam Kohn were really making to-day was a horrible mess of our summer-house. It'll take a week's work for somebody to get it cleaned up, and he got mad at me and was going to hit me because mamma sent me to tell him to come in the house and get ready for dinner."

"I did not," Dan muttered.

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