Читать книгу Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series - William Addleman Ganoe - Страница 9

'DEAR TEACHER MISS RALSTON,—

'I can’t be George Washington any more because I have lied to you. I must not tell you about what, because you would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong.

'Your friend,

'DAVID RUDINSKY.'

Again and again Miss Ralston read the note, unable to understand it. David, her David, whose soul was a mirror for every noble idea, had lied to her! What could he mean? What had impelled him? Somebody who didn’t do wrong. So it was not David alone; there was some complication with another person. She studied the note word for word and her eyes slowly filled with tears. If the boy had really lied—if the whole thing were not a chimera of his fevered nights—then what must he have suffered of remorse and shame! Her heart went out to him even while her brain was busy with the mystery.

She made a swift resolution. She would go to David at once. She was sure he would tell her more than he had written, and it would relieve his mind. She did not dread the possible disclosures. Her knowledge of the boy made her certain that she would find nothing ignoble at the bottom of his mystery. He was only a child, after all—an overwrought, sensitive child. No doubt he exaggerated his sin, if sin there were. It was her duty to go and put him at rest.

She knew that David’s father kept a candy shop in the basement of his tenement, and she had no trouble in finding the place. Half the children in the neighborhood escorted her to the door, attracted by the phenomenon of a teacher loose on their streets.

The tinkle of the shop-bell brought Mr. Rudinsky from the little kitchen in the rear.

'Well, well!' he exclaimed, shaking hands heartily. 'This is a great honor—a great honor.' He sounded the initial h. 'I wish I had a palace for you to come in, ma’am. I don’t think there was such company in this house since it was built.'

His tone was one of genuine gratification. Ushering her into the kitchen, he set a chair for her, and himself sat down at a respectful distance.

'I’m sorry,' he began, with a wave of his hand around the room. 'Such company ought not to sit in the kitchen, but you see—'

He was interrupted by Bennie, who had clattered in at the visitor’s heels, panting for recognition.

'Never mind, teacher,' the youngster spoke up, 'we got a parlor upstairs, with a mantelpiece and everything, but David sleeps up there—the doctor said it’s the most air—and you dassn’t wake him up till he wakes himself.'

Bennie’s father frowned, but the visitor smiled a cordial smile.

'I like a friendly kitchen like this,' she said quietly. 'My mother did not keep any help when I was a little girl and I was a great deal in the kitchen.'

Her host showed his appreciation of her tact by dropping the subject.

'I’m sure you came about David,' he said.

'I did. How is he?'

'Pretty sick, ma’am. The doctor says it’s not the sickness so much, but David is so weak and small. He says David studies too much altogether. Maybe he’s right. What do you think, ma’am?'

Miss Ralston answered remorsefully.

'I agree with the doctor. I think we are all to blame. We push him too much when we ought to hold him back.'

Here Bennie made another raid on the conversation.

'He’s going to be a great man, a doctor maybe. My mother says—'

Mr. Rudinsky did not let him finish. He thought it time to insure the peace of so important an interview.

'Bennie,' said he, 'you will go mind the store, and keep the kitchen door shut.'

Bennie’s discomfiture was evident in his face. He obeyed, but not without a murmur.

'Let us make a covenant to take better care of David in the future.'

Miss Ralston was speaking when Mrs. Rudinsky appeared in the doorway. She was flushed from the exertions of a hasty toilet, for which she had fled upstairs at the approach of 'company.' She came forward timidly, holding out a hand on which the scrubbing brush and the paring knife had left their respective marks.

'How do you do, ma’am?' she said, cordially, but shyly. 'I’m glad to see you. I wish I can speak English better, I’d like to say how proud I am to see David’s teacher in my house.'

'Why, you speak wonderfully!' Miss Ralston exclaimed, with genuine enthusiasm. 'I don’t understand how you pick up the language in such a short time. I couldn’t learn Russian so fast, I’m sure.'

'My husband makes us speak English all the time,' Mrs. Rudinsky replied. 'From the fust day he said to speak English. He scolds the children if he hears they speak Jewish.'

'Sure,' put in her husband, 'I don’t want my family to be greenhorns.'

Miss Ralston turned a glowing face to him.

'Mr. Rudinsky, I think you’ve done wonders for your family. If all immigrants were like you, we wouldn’t need any restriction laws.' She threw all possible emphasis into her cordial voice. 'Why, you’re a better American than some natives I know!'

Mrs. Rudinsky sent her husband a look of loving pride.

'He wants to be a Yankee,' she said.

Her husband took up the cue in earnest.

'Yes, ma’am,' he said, 'that’s my ambition. When I was a young man, in the old country, I wanted to be a scholar. But a Jew has no chance in the old country; perhaps you know how it is. It wasn’t the Hebrew books I wanted. I wanted to learn what the rest of the world learned, but a poor Jew had no chance in Russia. When I got to America, it was too late for me to go to school. It took me all my time and strength to make a living—I’ve never been much good in business, ma’am—and when I got my family over, I saw that it was the children would go to school for me. I’m glad to be a plain citizen, if my children will be educated Americans.'

People with eyes and hands like Mr. Rudinsky’s can say a great deal in a few words. Miss Ralston felt as if she had known him all his life, and followed his strivings in two worlds.

'I’m glad to know you, Mr. Rudinsky,' she said in a low voice. 'I wish more of my pupils had fathers like David’s.'

Her host changed the subject very neatly.

'And I wish the school children had more teachers like you. David likes you so much.'

'Oh, he liked you!' the wife confirmed. 'Please stay till he veks up. He’ll be sorry to missed your visit.'

While his wife moved quietly around the stove, making tea, Mr. Rudinsky entertained their guest with anecdotes of David’s Hebrew-school days, and of his vain efforts to get at secular books.

'He was just like me,' he said. 'He wanted to learn everything. I couldn’t afford a private teacher, and they wouldn’t take him in the public school. He learned Russian all alone, and if he got a book from somewhere—a history or anything—he wouldn’t eat or drink till he read it all.'

Mrs. Rudinsky often glanced at David’s teacher, to see how her husband’s stories were impressing her. She was too shy with her English to say more than was required of her as hostess, but her face, aglow with motherly pride, showed how she participated in her husband’s enthusiasm.

'You see yourself, ma’am, what he is,' said David’s father, 'but what could I make of him in Russia? I was happy when he got here, only it was a little late. I wished he started in school younger.'

'He has time enough,' said Miss Ralston. 'He’ll get through grammar school before he’s fourteen. He’s twelve now, isn’t he?'

'Yes, ma’am—no, ma’am! He’s really fourteen now, but I made him out younger on purpose.'

Miss Ralston looked puzzled. Mr. Rudinsky explained.

'You see, ma’am, he was twelve years when he came, and I wanted he should go to school as long as possible, so when I made his school certificate, I said he was only ten. I have seven children, and David is the oldest one, and I was afraid he’d have to go to work, if business was bad, or if I was sick. The state is a good father to the children in America, if the real fathers don’t mix in. Why should my David lose his chance to get educated and be somebody, because I am a poor business man, and have too many children? So I made out that he had to go to school two years more.'

He narrated this anecdote in the same simple manner in which he had told a dozen others. He seemed pleased to rehearse the little plot whereby he had insured his boy’s education. As Miss Ralston did not make any comment immediately, he went on, as if sure of her sympathy.

'I told you I got my citizen papers right away when I came to America. I worked hard before I could bring my family—it took me four years to save the money—and they found a very poor home when they got here, but they were citizens right away. But it wouldn’t do them much good, if they didn’t get educated. I found out all about the compulsory education, and I said to myself that’s the policeman that will keep me from robbing my David if I fail in business.'

He did not overestimate his visitor’s sympathy. Miss Ralston followed his story with quick appreciation of his ideals and motives, but in her ingenuous American mind one fact separated itself from the others: namely, that Mr. Rudinsky had falsified his boy’s age, and had recorded the falsehood in a public document. Her recognition of the fact carried with it no criticism. She realized that Mr. Rudinsky’s conscience was the product of an environment vastly different from hers. It was merely that to her mind the element of deceit was something to be accounted for, be it ever so charitably, whereas in Mr. Rudinsky’s mind it evidently had no existence at all.

'So David is really fourteen years old?' she repeated incredulously. 'Why, he seems too little even for twelve! Does he know?—Of course he would know! I wonder that he consented—'

She broke off, struck by a sudden thought. 'Consented to tell a lie' she had meant to say, but the unspoken words diverted her mind from the conversation. It came upon her in a flash that she had found the key to David’s mystery. His note was in her pocketbook, but she knew every word of it, and now everything was plain to her. The lie was this lie about his age, and the person he wanted to shield was his father. And for that he was suffering so!

She began to ask questions eagerly.

'Has David said anything about—about a little trouble he had in school the day he became ill?'

Both parents showed concern.

'Trouble? what trouble?'

'Oh, it was hardly trouble—at least, I couldn’t tell myself.'

'David is so hard to understand sometimes,' his father said.

'Oh, I don’t think so!' the teacher cried. 'Not when you make friends with him. He doesn’t say much, it’s true, but his heart is like a crystal.'

'He’s too still,' the mother insisted, shaking her head. 'All the time he’s sick, he don’t say anything, only when we ask him something. The doctor thinks he’s worrying about something, but he don’t tell.'

The mother sighed, but Miss Ralston cut short her reflections.

'Mrs. Rudinsky—Mr. Rudinsky,' she began eagerly, 'I can tell you what David’s troubled about.'

And she told them the story of her last talk with David, and finally read them his note.

'And this lie,' she ended, 'you know what it is, don’t you? You’ve just told me yourself, Mr. Rudinsky.'

She looked pleadingly at him, longing to have him understand David’s mind as she understood it. But Mr. Rudinsky was very slow to grasp the point.

'You mean—about the certificate? Because I made out that he was younger?'

Miss Ralston nodded.

'You know David has such a sense of honor,' she explained, speaking slowly, embarrassed by the effort of following Mr. Rudinsky’s train of thought and her own at the same time. 'You know how he questions everything—sooner or later he makes everything clear to himself—and something must have started him thinking of this old matter lately—Why, of course! I remember I asked him his age that day, when he tried on the costume, and he answered as usual, and then, I suppose, he suddenly realized what he was saying. I don’t believe he ever thought about it since—since you arranged it so, and now, all of a sudden—'

She did not finish, because she saw that her listeners did not follow her. Both their faces expressed pain and perplexity. After a long silence, David’s father spoke.

'And what do you think, ma’am?'

Miss Ralston was touched by the undertone of submission in his voice. Her swift sympathy had taken her far into his thoughts. She recognized in his story one of those ethical paradoxes which the helpless Jews of the Pale, in their search for a weapon that their oppressors could not confiscate, have evolved for their self-defence. She knew that to many honest Jewish minds a lie was not a lie when told to an official; and she divined that no ghost of a scruple had disturbed Mr. Rudinsky in his sense of triumph over circumstances, when he invented the lie that was to insure the education of his gifted child. With David, of course, the same philosophy had been valid. His father’s plan for the protection of his future, hingeing on a too familiar sophistry, had dropped innocuous into his consciousness, until, in a moment of spiritual sensitiveness, it took on the visage of sin.

'And what do you think, ma’am?'

David’s father did not have to wait a moment for her answer, so readily did her insight come to his defense. In a few eager sentences she made him feel that she understood perfectly, and understood David perfectly.

'I respect you the more for that lie, Mr. Rudinsky. It was—a noble lie!' There was the least tremor in her voice. 'And I love David for the way he sees it.'

Mr. Rudinsky got up and paced slowly across the room. Then he stopped before Miss Ralston.

'You are very kind to talk like that, Miss Ralston,' he said, with peculiar dignity. 'You see the whole thing. In the old country we had to do such things so many times that we—got used to them. Here—here we don’t have to.' His voice took on a musing quality. 'But we don’t see it right away when we get here. I meant nothing, only just to keep my boy in school. It was not to cheat anybody. The state is willing to educate the children. I said to myself I will tie my own hands, so that I can’t pull my child after me if I drown. I did want my David should have the best chance in America.'

Miss Ralston was thrilled by the suppressed passion in his voice. She held out her hand to him, saying again, in the low tones that come from the heart, 'I am glad I know you, Mr. Rudinsky.'

There was unconscious chivalry in Mr. Rudinsky’s next words. Stepping to his wife’s side, he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and said quietly, 'My wife has been my helper in everything.'

Miss Ralston, as we know, was given to seeing things. She saw now, not a poor immigrant couple in the first stage of American respectability, which was all there was in the room to see, but a phantom procession of men with the faces of prophets, muffled in striped praying-shawls, and women radiant in the light of many candles, and youths and maidens with smouldering depths in their eyes, and silent children who pushed away joyous things for—for—

Dreams don’t use up much time. Mr. Rudinsky was not aware that there had been a pause before he spoke again.

'You understand so well, Miss Ralston. But David'—he hesitated a moment, then finished quickly. 'How can he respect me if he feels like that?'

His wife spoke tremulously from her corner.

'That’s what I think.'

'Oh, don’t think that!' Miss Ralston cried. 'He does respect you—he understands. Don’t you see what he says: I can’t tell you—because you would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong. He doesn’t blame you. He only blames himself. He’s afraid to tell me because he thinks I can’t understand.'

The teacher laughed a happy little laugh. In her eagerness to comfort David’s parents, she said just the right things, and every word summed up an instantaneous discovery. One of her useful gifts was the ability to find out truths just when she desperately needed them. There are people like that, and some of them are school-teachers hired by the year. When David’s father cried, 'How can he respect me?' Miss Ralston’s heart was frightened while it beat one beat. Only one. Then she knew all David’s thoughts between the terrible, 'I have lied,' and the generous, 'But my father did no wrong.' She guessed what the struggle had cost to reconcile the contradictions; she imagined his bewilderment as he tried to rule himself by his new-found standards, while seeking excuses for his father in the one he cast away from him as unworthy of an American. Problems like David’s are not very common, but then Miss Ralston was good at guessing.

'Don’t worry, Mr. Rudinsky,' she said, looking out of her glad eyes. 'And you, Mrs. Rudinsky, don’t think for a moment that David doesn’t understand. He’s had a bad time, the poor boy, but I know—Oh, I must speak to him! Will he wake soon, do you think?'

Mr. Rudinsky left the room without a word.

'It’s all right,' said David’s mother, in reply to an anxious look from Miss Ralston. 'He sleeps already the whole afternoon.'

It had grown almost dark while they talked. Mrs. Rudinsky now lighted the lamps, apologizing to her guest for not having done so sooner, and then she released Bennie from his prolonged attendance in the store.

Bennie came into the kitchen chewing his reward, some very gummy confection. He was obliged to look the pent-up things he wanted to say, until such time as he could clear his clogged talking-gear.

'Teacher,' he began, before he had finished swallowing, 'What for did you say—'

'Bennie!' his mother reproved him, 'You must shame yourself to listen by the door.'

'Well, there wasn’t any trade, ma,' he defended himself, 'only Bessie Katz, and she brought back the peppermints she bought this morning, to change them for taffy, but I didn’t because they were all dirty, and one was broken—'

Bennie never had a chance to bring his speeches to a voluntary stop: somebody always interrupted. This time it was his father, who came down the stairs, looking so grave that even Bennie was impressed.

'He’s awake,' said Mr. Rudinsky. 'I lighted the lamp. Will you please come up, ma’am?'

He showed her to the room where David lay, and closed the door on them both. It was not he, but Miss Ralston, the American teacher, that his boy needed. He went softly down to the kitchen, where his wife smiled at him through unnecessary tears.

Miss Ralston never forgot the next hour, and David never forgot. The woman always remembered how the boy’s eyes burned through the dusk of the shadowed corner where he lay. The boy remembered how his teacher’s voice palpitated in his heart, how her cool hands rested on his, how the lamplight made a halo out of her hair. To each of them the dim room with its scant furnishings became a spiritual rendezvous.

What did the woman say, that drew the sting of remorse from the child’s heart, without robbing him of the bloom of his idealism? What did she tell him that transmuted the offense of ages into the marrow and blood of persecuted virtue? How did she weld in the boy’s consciousness the scraps of his mixed inheritance, so that he saw his whole experience as an unbroken thing at last? There was nobody to report how it was done. The woman did not know nor the child. It was a secret born of the boy’s need and the woman’s longing to serve him; just as in nature every want creates its satisfaction.

When she was ready to leave him, Miss Ralston knelt for a moment at David’s bedside, and once more took his small hot hands in hers.

'And I have made a discovery, David,' she said, smiling in a way of her own. 'Talking with your parents downstairs I saw why it was that the Russian Jews are so soon at home here in our dear country. In the hearts of men like your father, dear, is the true America.'