The Seven-Branched Candlestick Part 11

I had had a letter from my Aunt Selina, to tell me curtly that she was back in New York, but intended starting out immediately upon an automobile tour through New England into Canada, in company with Mrs.

Fleming-Cohen and some s.h.i.+p-board acquaintances--"personages," she called them in her much underlined letter, which probably meant that she had succeeded in capturing some stray society folk. She bade me go back to our apartment and to have it ready for her on her return. The servants, she said, were already there, engaged in cleaning away the summer's dust. She hoped "I would be able to start the college year without her, and that I would comport myself on the campus in a manner creditable and befitting, etc., etc."

But in spite of the servants' efforts to make things bright and comfortable, the apartment was a dismal and lonely place. College kept me uptown all day long, of course, but when the evening came and I must return to the big, empty rooms that were our subst.i.tute for home, I did not like it. I began to linger more and more about the campus at night: it was truly the most beautiful time to be there, when the autumn moon silvered its lawns and gave the buildings a marble whiteness. There was singing on the fences, then, and all sorts of meetings of all kinds of college organizations. The campus hummed with a hundred undergraduate activities--so that I saw, as never before, how much I missed through having to go downtown each night to live. But so long as my aunt wanted it, I felt I owed it to her to obey, and would not even consider the renting of Trevelyan's suite of rooms in the princ.i.p.al dormitory.

Trevelyan had given up these rooms to move into his fraternity house.

"It's a dreadful bore," he said to me in his lazy, rueful way. "I'd be ten times more comfortable here--but I don't want to insult the brothers. However, you'll come up to the house and see me just as often, won't you?"

I promised him I would, but he seemed to know as well as I that I would not. A soph.o.m.ore paying nightly visits to a senior in the fraternity house where that soph.o.m.ore had only a year ago been smiled politely out--no, it didn't seem even probable. And so, when I had helped Trevelyan put his last bit of furniture upon a truck--and had tucked among the rungs of many Morris chairs the bundle of flags and college s.h.i.+elds which he had overlooked--I could hardly bear to shake hands with him. We both knew that it was something in the nature of a definite goodbye; at any rate, so far as college was concerned.

"A d.a.m.ned nuisance, this," he said thickly, his short-sighted eyes s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up oddly. "And if it wasn't for the brothers--" But the brothers did win him, and I lost a friend thereby.

The home to which I must go seemed lonelier than ever now. I was not expecting Aunt Selina for two more weeks, and so I hit upon the idea of inviting some one to stay with me until then.

Frank Cohen! Yes, I would ask Frank Cohen. He was going to high school now, and the branch which he attended was not so far from where I lived.

It would be convenient for him, and perhaps a happy change from the East Side crowdedness which he had had to encounter all his life.

He was as glad to come as I to have him. I gave him Aunt Selina's room to sleep in, and we sat there, when our homework was done, many evenings until past midnight, talking gently and thoughtfully of many things. He was a boy much as I had been--and perhaps, still was. He was shy to an uncomfortable degree, low of voice, dreamy in manner. But when he was aroused to something especial, he became uncontrollably intense, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng and his knees trembling, so that his whole small body seemed but the sheer vibration of his thoughts.

He was hoping to go to college, when his high school days were over. He had not dared mention it at home, though, because he knew how poor his father was, and how much of a help he would be when he could go to work and begin to carry home his weekly earnings. He hated to go into a shoddy little business; he wanted to study further, to take up some profession--perhaps the law. Or if he did go into business, he wanted to have had a few years of college first, so that he might see things broadly and with a mind trained for bigness. But he had only dreamed all this, only longed for it in secret. He would rather forego all of it than urge his father to make the big sacrifice.

I had come to be so fond of him, it was not long before I decided upon what seemed to be a proper solution. Without a word to Frank, I escaped from college early one afternoon and went downtown to that East Side street where he lived. I found his father in the cellar of the bakery shop which he owned, his beard all whitened with flour dust, his thin, bare arms thick with the paste of dough.

With rehea.r.s.ed gesticulations I made him understand what I offered. My own father had left me fairly well off; I wanted to lay out the money which would be necessary to afford Frank a college education. They could pay it back when they pleased--not for many years would I need it.

I had a distinct surprise, then. My generosity was taken somewhat aback by the man's apparent anger. He seemed to be resenting any suggestion of charity. I tried to a.s.sure him that this was not what I intended, but he did not understand. At length we had to call in one of the bakery's oven-tenders to act as interpreter. And through this third party Mr.

Cohen thanked me kindly. He appreciated all I offered, but he had long ago made arrangements for Frank.

"And what are those arrangements?" I asked anxiously, picturing the boy at work in this dark, mouldy cellar.

"It is a secret," said Mr. Cohen. "But it is time now for me to disclose what his mother and I have planned for him. For ten years we have saved.

And we have saved enough to send him to college. He shall go there and we ourselves shall send him." He drew himself up as he said it, so that I had a glimpse of that pride which all Jewish fathers seem to take in hards.h.i.+ps which they undergo for their children. "It is so with the son of the president of my synagogue," he said. "It shall be no less so with my son, either. He shall have what his father could not have, though his father starve and slave to give it to him!"

The dull interpreter gave me this in flat, spiritless tones; but I could see the clenched hands and the earnest face of Mr. Cohen, and I nodded quickly.

"I am very glad," I told him. "And I know it will mean ten times more in happiness to you because you are giving him all this with your own hands. Frank said to me he dared not ask it of you--he thought the sacrifice too great--and that is why I came to you with my offer. Do not think me rude, therefore."

He answered gravely. I was not rude, he a.s.sured me, and he owed me deep thanks. He had only one favor to ask; that I should not tell Frank the secret, but would leave it and the joy that it would bring, for him, his father. He would tell him immediately after Frank had returned home from his stay at my apartment.

I hurried home, for it was now nearly suppertime. To my amazement I found Frank sitting in the lobby of the apartment, his old suitcase beside him, his look one of fevered disconsolement.

"What's the trouble?" I asked him.

"Oh, I just wanted to say goodby to you," he said hurriedly. "I did not want to go without doing that. I've--I've had a pleasant time."

"But why are you going?"

"Oh, I want to be home ... you know, I get a little homesick." But he said it so stumblingly that I was sure he was not telling me all.

"Frank," I demanded, "tell me the truth. Has anything gone wrong? I had hoped you would stay until my aunt returned."

He laughed at that, and mystified me the more. "Have any of the servants offended you in any way?" I asked, searching my brain for some reason for his change of att.i.tude.

"The servants? Oh, no, of course not!" He picked up his suitcase and started for the street. "Well, goodby," he said. He stopped as if he wanted to explain, then thought better--or worse--of it, and went on. I was a little nettled by this time, and let him go.

As I went up in the elevator, it seemed to me a mighty mystery. But no sooner had I let myself into the apartment than I was due for a bigger surprise.

For there, blocking the hallway, a figure of offended pride, stood Aunt Selina.

I went to her to kiss her, but she stepped back and glared into my face.

"It's a lucky thing I came back unexpectedly," she said. "The idea of finding a little Jew boy like that in my room--sitting in my own bedroom with his copy books spread all over my directoire desk! A common little boy with an accent!"

I saw it all, now.

"That boy was one of my best friends," I told her as calmly as I could.

"Had I thought you would have objected to his presence here, I would never have invited him to stay with me for these weeks."

"Weeks? What, you have had that little East Side creature here for weeks?" She began to walk up and down the hall in feline fury. "Haven't you any idea of what is proper? Here I go away with some of the most cultured and well-known society people in New York--an absolute triumph--and you use my home as a refuge for nasty little sc.u.m of the slums. It isn't bad enough for you to spend your summer in such disgusting company. You have to cap it all by bringing them up into my own home. Think of the disgrace it would mean if any of these new friends of mine were to discover it!"

"I have my own friends to consider," I told her patiently. "And this boy is one of them. What did you tell him?"

"Tell him? What should I tell him?" She made a great show of shuddering.

"I told him to get out. To--to get out as fast as he could."

I looked at her evenly for as long a while as she could stand it. Then her miserable pose gave way to pettishness, and she cried:

"And what's more, you'll have to get out yourself, if you insist on trying any more of these outrageous things. I can't bear it, that's all. You'll have to get out before you disgrace me!"

"I shall," I agreed, and, pa.s.sing her, went into my own room and began to pack.

We had a silent, sullen supper. At the end of it I told her that my clothes were packed and that I intended moving on the morrow to Trevelyan's empty suite, up at college. I would take none of the furniture from my room, however, since I did not wish to inconvenience her. I would not trouble her at all after tonight.

She may have thought this was pure bragging, she may have been reconciled to it. At any rate she made no answer, and let me go to my room without a word of comment.

And it was only two weeks later, when I was comfortably settled in my room on the campus, that I received a stormy letter from her, calling me a "most ungrateful monster of a nephew."

XV

COLLEGE LIFE

Across the hall from Trevelyan's rooms lived one of the college "grinds." Now that I had moved there and came and went at all hours of the day, I saw this man often.

Fallon--that was his name--stood fully six-feet four, and had about a thirty-two-inch waist. He stooped until his thin shoulder blades were at directly right angles to each other. He would never talk to any one he met on his way; his nose was always deep in the book which he held outspread. He was the most ferocious grind I have ever known.