The Melting-Pot by Israel Zangwill (read me a book TXT) 📕

will grow up Americans!

MENDEL [Putting a pacifying hand on his shoulder and forcing him into a chair]

Sit down. I want to talk to you about your affairs.

DAVID [Sitting]

My affairs! But I've been talking about them all the time!

MENDEL

Nonsense, David.

[He sits beside him.]

Don't you think it's time you got into a wider world?

DAVID

Eh? This planet's wide enough for me.

MENDEL

Do be serious. You don't want to live all your life in this room.

DAVID [Looks round]

What's the matter with this room? It's princely.

MENDEL [Raising his hands in horror]

Princely!

DAVID

Imperial. Remember when I first saw it—after pigging a week in the rocking steerage, swinging in a berth as wide as my fiddle-case, hung near the cooking-engines; imagine the hot rancid smell of the food, the oil of the machinery, the odours of all that close-packed, sea-sick——

MENDEL [Putting his hand over David's mouth]

Don't! You make me ill! How could you ever bear it?

DAVID [Smiling]

I was quite happy—I only had to fancy I'd been shipwrecked, and that after clinging to a plank five days without food or water on the great lonely Atlantic, my frozen, sodden form had been picked up by this great safe steamer and given this delightful dry berth, regular meals, and the spectacle of all these friendly faces.... Do you know who was on board that boat? Quincy Davenport.

MENDEL

The lord of corn and oil?

DAVID [Smiling]

Yes, even we wretches in the steerage felt safe to think the lord was up above, we believed the company would never dare drown him. But could even Quincy Davenport command a cabin like this?

[Waving his arm round the room.]

Why, uncle, we have a cabin worth a thousand dollars—a thousand dollars a week—and what's more, it doesn't wobble!

[He plants his feet voluptuously upon the floor.]

MENDEL

Come, come, David, I asked you to be serious. Surely, some day you'd like your music produced?

DAVID [Jumps up]

Wouldn't it be glorious? To hear it all actually coming out of violins and 'cellos, drums and trumpets.

MENDEL

And you'd like it to go all over the world?

DAVID

All over the world and all down the ages.

MENDEL

But don't you see that unless you go and study seriously in Germany——?

[Enter Kathleen from kitchen, carrying a furnished tea-tray with ear-shaped cakes, bread and butter, etc., and wearing a grotesque false nose. Mendel cries out in amaze.]

Kathleen!

DAVID [Roaring with boyish laughter]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

KATHLEEN [Standing still with her tray]

Sure, what's the matter?

DAVID

Look in the glass!

KATHLEEN [Going to the mantel]

Houly Moses!

[She drops the tray, which Mendel catches, and snatches off the nose.]

Och, I forgot to take it off—'twas the misthress gave it me—I put it on to cheer her up.

DAVID

Is she so miserable, then?

KATHLEEN

Terrible low, Mr. David, to-day being Purim.

MENDEL

Purim! Is to-day Purim?

[Gives her the tea-tray back. Kathleen, to take it, drops her nose and forgets to pick it up.]

DAVID

But Purim is a merry time, Kathleen, like your Carnival. Haven't you read the book of Esther—how the Jews of Persia escaped massacre?

KATHLEEN

That's what the misthress is so miserable about. Ye don't keep the Carnival. There's noses for both of ye in the kitchen—didn't I go with her to Hester Street to buy 'em?—but ye don't be axin' for 'em. And to see your noses layin' around so solemn and neglected, faith, it nearly makes me chry meself.

MENDEL [Bitterly to himself]

Who can remember about Purim in America?

DAVID [Half-smiling]

Poor granny, tell her to come in and I'll play her Purim jig.

MENDEL [Hastily]

No, no, David, not here—the visitors!

DAVID

Visitors? What visitors?

MENDEL [Impatiently]

That's just what I've been trying to explain.

DAVID

Well, I can play in the kitchen.

[He takes his violin. Exit to kitchen. Mendel sighs and shrugs his shoulders hopelessly at the boy's perversity, then fingers the cups and saucers.]

MENDEL [Anxiously]

Is that the best tea-set?

KATHLEEN

Can't you see it's the Passover set!

[Ruefully]

And shpiled intirely it'll be now for our Passover.... And the misthress thought the visitors might like to thry some of her Purim cakes.

[Indicates ear-shaped cakes on tray.]

MENDEL [Bitterly]

Purim cakes!

[He turns his back on her and stares moodily out of the window.]

KATHLEEN [Mutters contemptuously]

Call yerself a Jew and you forgettin' to keep Purim!

[She is going back to the kitchen when a merry Slavic dance breaks out, softened by the door; her feet unconsciously get more and more into dance step, and at last she jigs out. As she opens and passes through the door, the music sounds louder.]

FRAU QUIXANO [Heard from kitchen]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Kathleen!!

[Mendel's feet, too, begin to take the swing of the music, and his feet dance as he stares out of the window. Suddenly the hoot of an automobile is heard, followed by the rattling up of the car.]

MENDEL

Ah, she has brought somebody swell!

[He throws open the doors and goes out eagerly to meet the visitors. The dance music goes on softly throughout the scene.]

QUINCY DAVENPORT [Outside]

Oh, thank you—I leave the coats in the car.

[Enter an instant later Quincy Davenport and Vera Revendal, Mendel in the rear. Vera is dressed much as before, but with a motor veil, which she takes off during the scene. Davenport is a dude, aping the air of a European sporting clubman. Aged about thirty-five and well set-up, he wears an orchid and an intermittent eyeglass, and gives the impression of a coarse-fibred and patronisingly facetious but not bad-hearted man, spoiled by prosperity.]

MENDEL

Won't you be seated?

VERA

First let me introduce my friend, who is good enough to interest himself in your nephew—Mr. Quincy Davenport.

MENDEL [Struck of a heap]

Mr. Quincy Davenport! How strange!

VERA

What is strange?

MENDEL

David just mentioned Mr. Davenport's name—said they travelled to New York on the same boat.

QUINCY

Impossible! Always travel on my own yacht. Slow but select. Must have been another man of the same name—my dad. Ha! Ha! Ha!

MENDEL

Ah, of course. I thought you were too young.

QUINCY

My dad, Miss Revendal, is one of those antiquated Americans who are always in a hurry!

VERA

He burns coal and you burn time.

QUINCY

Precisely! Ha! Ha! Ha!

MENDEL

Won't you sit down—I'll go and prepare David.

VERA [Sitting]

You've not prepared him yet?

MENDEL

I've tried to more than once—but I never really got to——

[He smiles]

to Germany.

[Quincy sits.]

VERA

Then prepare him for three visitors.

MENDEL

Three?

VERA

You see Mr. Davenport himself is no judge of music.

QUINCY [Jumps up]

I beg your pardon.

VERA

In manuscript.

QUINCY

Ah, of course not. Music should be heard, not seen—like that jolly jig. Is that your David?

MENDEL

Oh, you mustn't judge him by that. He's just fooling.

QUINCY

Oh, he'd better not fool with Poppy. Poppy's awful severe.

MENDEL

Poppy?

QUINCY

Pappelmeister—my private orchestra conductor.

MENDEL

Is it your orchestra Pappelmeister conducts?

QUINCY

Well, I pay the piper—and the drummer too!

[He chuckles.]

MENDEL [Sadly]

I wanted to play in it, but he turned me down.

QUINCY

I told you he was awful severe.

[To Vera]

He only allows me comic opera once a week. My wife calls him the Bismarck of the baton.

MENDEL [Reverently]

A great conductor!

QUINCY

Would he have a twenty-thousand-dollar job with me if he wasn't? Not that he'd get half that in the open market—only I have to stick it on to keep him for my guests exclusively.

[Looks at watch.]

But he ought to be here, confound him. A conductor should keep time, eh, Miss Revendal?

[He sniggers.]

MENDEL

I'll bring David. Won't you help yourselves to tea?

[To Vera]

You see there's lemon for you—as in Russia.

[Exit to kitchen—a moment afterwards the merry music stops in the middle of a bar.]

VERA

Thank you.

[Taking a cup.]

Do you like lemon, Mr. Davenport?

QUINCY [Flirtatiously]

That depends. The last I had was in Russia itself—from the fair hands of your mother, the Baroness.

VERA [Pained]

Please don't say my mother, my mother is dead.

QUINCY [Fatuously misunderstanding]

Oh, you have no call to be ashamed of your step-mother—she's a stunning creature; all the points of a tip-top Russian aristocrat, or Quincy Davenport's no judge of breed! Doesn't speak English like your father—but then the Baron is a wonder.

VERA [Takes up teapot]

Father once hoped to be British Ambassador—that's why I had an English governess. But you never told me you met him in Russia.

QUINCY

Surely! When I gave you all those love messages——

VERA [Pouring tea quickly]

You said you met him at Wiesbaden.

QUINCY

Yes, but we grew such pals I motored him and the Baroness back to St. Petersburg. Jolly country, Russia—they know how to live.

VERA [Coldly]

I saw more of those who know how to die.... Milk and sugar?

QUINCY [Sentimentally]

Oh, Miss Revendal! Have you forgotten?

VERA [Politely snubbing]

How should I remember?

QUINCY

You don't remember our first meeting? At the Settlement Bazaar? When I paid you a hundred dollars for every piece of sugar you put in?

VERA

Did you? Then I hope you drank syrup.

QUINCY

Ugh! I hate sugar—I sacrificed myself.

VERA

To the Settlement? How heroic of you!

QUINCY

No, not to the Settlement. To you!

VERA

Then I'll only put milk in.

QUINCY

I hate milk. But from you——

VERA

Then we must fall back on the lemon.

QUINCY

I loathe lemon. But from——

VERA

Then you shall have your tea neat.

QUINCY

I detest tea, and here it would be particularly cheap and nasty. But——

VERA

Then you shall have a cake!

[She offers plate.]

QUINCY [Taking one]

Would they be eatable?

[Tasting it.]

Humph! Not bad.

[Sentimentally]

A little cake was all you would eat the only time you came to one of my private concerts. Don't you remember? We went down to supper together.

VERA [Taking his tea for herself and putting in lemon]

I shall always remember the delicious music Herr Pappelmeister gave us.

QUINCY

How unkind of you!

VERA

Unkind?

[She sips the tea and puts down the cup.]

To be grateful for the music?

QUINCY

You know what I mean—to forget me!

[He tries to take her hand.]

VERA [Rising]

Aren't you forgetting yourself?

QUINCY

You mean because I'm married to that patched-and-painted creature? She's hankering for the stage again, the old witch.

VERA

Hush! Marriages with comic opera stars are not usually domestic idylls.

QUINCY

I fell a victim to my love of music.

VERA [Murmurs, smiling]

Music!

QUINCY

And I hadn't yet met the right breed—the true blue blood of Europe. I'll get a divorce.

[Approaching her]

Vera!

VERA [Retreating]

You will make me sorry I came to you.

QUINCY

No, don't say that—promised the Baron I'd always do all I could for——

VERA

You promised? You dared discuss my affairs?

QUINCY

It was your father began it. When he found I knew you, he almost wept with emotion. He asked a hundred questions about your life in America.

VERA

His life and mine are for ever separate. He is a Reactionary, I a Radical.

QUINCY

But he loves you dreadfully—he can't understand why you should go slaving away summer and winter in a Settlement—you a member of the