So far in my college course I had met with actually little outspoken insult. Once or twice in my freshman year some loutish sophomore had not stopped at making comments upon my religion. There had been that incident at Trevelyan's fraternity house, too. But, generally speaking, the prejudice had been of a negative sort, restricting rather than driving—though none the less offensive and chafing on that account. There was nothing on which I could actually lay my finger to complain. I had no actual proof that I had been kept off any college organization because of my religion. I might have had, had I cared at the time to follow up the favoritism shown in the dramatic society—but that was a small affair, by now, and I preferred to let it rest forgotten.
Otherwise, I was treated with a fair amount of kindness by almost all of the college. The members of my own class, in which I was gradually acquiring such positions as work and merit could win me, had begun to show me a good, clean respect; and those in the class above soonfollowed their lead. All that I asked was fair play, and the chance to overcome that handicap which I knew existed. This was easier, now that I lived at college, and I gave to the various activities in which I was interested, all the spare time which I could afford from my studies. I was beginning to realize what that preachment meant: "The college will give you back all that you give to it in work."
Thus, at the end of my sophomore year, when I again went to the settlement for the summer, I was planning big and enthusiastic things for the autumn term.
Mr. Richards placed me in charge of one of the settlement's fresh-air camps, up the state. I had two other boys to help me in my work, and one of them was Frank Cohen. It had taken me a long time to overcome Frank's sensitiveness, after his encounter with my aunt; but we were fast friends again now, and it was good to have him with me where I could help him with his daily noon-time studying for his "preliminaries." When the fall came, he passed them easily—and it was now definitely decided that he would enter my college when I was a senior.
My own return to the university, however, gave me an unpleasant shock. I had arrived a few days late, because I had wanted to help Mr. Richards with some of his coming year'sprograms. The campus was already alive and crowded, therefore, and the dormitory windows were all thrown open and overflowing with the rugs and chair cushions of autumn cleaning. The campus teemed with a thousand youths who grasped each other cordially by the wrist and went through all sorts of contortions to prove that they "were glad to see you, old man!"
But there was a difference! The first glimpse I had of it, I called myself a self-conscious fool. I tried to reassure myself, everybody's greeting had been as cordial as I could expect. Everybody had said he was glad to see me—and—yet!
Then, the second day that I was at college, I had my first proof of the truth of my suspicions. I had it through eavesdropping—but I was justified. For I heard little Waters, the genial popularist, talking of it to another classmate in front of the laboratory steps.
"It's a rotten shame," he was declaiming. "Haven't you noticed? I don't see how it could escape you! Jews and Jews! The freshman class is just swarming with 'em!"
"What? Really?"
"Honestly. If there's one Jew in the freshman class, there are fifty. And such Jewy-looking Jews!"
"Gee whizz, it's a disgrace. It was bad enough when they used to come in four or five—or eventen—in a class. But fifty! Are there really fifty?"
"Oh, easily! Maybe a hundred—I don't know. They are swarming all over the place! Gosh, we'll have to do something to get rid of them. It just simply ruins the college name to have so many of them around."
"You bet! A campaign for ours!"
I watched them going off together, arm in arm, towards "fraternity row"—and wondered what that campaign would be.
It did not take me long to investigate the real state of affairs. There were some thirty members of the freshman class listed in the dean's office under the designation of "Jew," "Hebrew" or "Ethical Culturist." And the faces that I met under freshman caps were certainly Semitic, to a large percentage.
At first it annoyed me. Annoyed me more, too, when the first member of the freshman class to be expelled for ungentlemanly conduct was a Jew. There were one or two others, I noticed, who would sooner or later reach the same end if they did not keep away from the city at night—and from the things the city teaches.
These one or two gradually became scape-goats for the rest of the Jewish boys in the class. They were sons of rich fathers; they paraded their automobiles about the campus—and thusbroke the rule number one in the "freshman bible." They had unbridled tongues, and used them ungraciously. One of them, a big, swaggering chap, "went out" for his class football team—and, having been selected to play in a minor game, developed a dying aunt overnight and disappeared for the day. When he came back, on Sunday night, he was caught and hazed. His automobile was dumped on its side in the middle of the campus. His face, when I saw him the next day, was a network of plaster strips. Three days after that he left college—and I, for one, was devoutly thankful for his resigning. He did not belong in our college, had done nothing to fit himself into its environment, had talked loudly, acted the cad and the coward—and had reaped the reward of such a person, Jew or Gentile, in whatever community.
The persecution—for it had taken on proportions worthy of that name—went forward, however. There was an annual "freshman parade," for instance, when the entering class was dressed in grotesque costumes and sent marching in and out a lane of laughing spectators to the football field. In my own freshman year this was a good-natured affair—and each class, including the victimized one, took it for the boisterous joke that it was.
But this year, when the parade was startingat the gymnasium, and the big, card-board placards were being lifted to the marchers' shoulders, I noticed that all the Jewish boys were being put conspicuously into one group. They would march together. And those placards! The sickening succession of them was only a repetition of "Oi oi" and the pawnbroker's symbol—and humor of that high order. And these Jewish freshmen went down the street amid the jeering—and I had to stand by and see them, some with heads high and eyes blazing with pride, others stumbling and bowed, one of them with tears running inanely down his cheeks—had to stand there and watch it all, and curse myself for a coward because I would not, could not, go out into the middle of the road and tear down, one by one, the daubed, cheap jests that they had to carry.
A few weeks later there was another such celebration. There were speeches to be made. The class wits—and what class is without them?—were to have their turn.
And their wit—what did it consist of? One after another, they made blunt, exaggerated references to the "invasion of the Huns," to the "Jews coming unto Jordan," to "the lost Ten Tribes ..." and hoots of applause went up to the night sky like the roar of a Philistine army!
One of the men who spoke was a classmateof mine—a fellow-member of the joke paper's board. I knew him well, for he had been to see me often. It was only a few nights ago that he had told me he was chosen to speak at this celebration, and had promised me he would make no reference to the Jewish influx.
"I don't agree with you about it," he had said. "You're too sensitive, all you Jews—and anyhow, you know perfectly well we're not aiming this campaign at you personally. It's against this big bunch of them in the freshman class."
"So it's a regular campaign, is it?" I demanded.
He evaded the question—but satisfied me with his promise.
But when I heard him break it—heard him, more than any other speaker, launch one smiling epithet after another against the "sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," I lost all the gnawing consciousness that I had had as to the justice of this remark about Jewish sensitiveness—and I went forward to the cart-end from which he was speaking. I meant to pull him down and get up there in his place, and to speak hotly, straight from the shoulder—I didn't care what I said so long as I put them all to disgrace!
But when I was within a few feet of him in the jostling, laughing crowd, I could go no further. I tried to cry out, but that was denied me.My courage gave me only the power to glare and sneer at him—and once, as he spoke, he looked down and saw my face, I think. For his own grew paler in the light of the gas lantern which flared windily beside him, and he faltered in his speech.
Later on he came over to my room and asked to speak to me. I heard him through; listened to his smooth explanation about the committee of arrangements demanding that he put something into his speech about the Jews—and he was sorry he had broken his word to me—only, of course, I was to consider myself an exception to all this sort of thing. Everybody knew I was a good fellow and was doing bully work for the name of the college—and what right had I to class myself with these insignificant little Jews in the Freshman class? and he didn't want it to break up our friendship, because he thought the world of me.
And so I showed him the door.
The next day I began to pay for that stroke of arrogance. The classmates who belonged to that man's fraternity snubbed me on the street.
It didn't matter much, I thought—but in reality, it did. Because these men, as it happened, had been my closest friends. I was beginning to worry myself into a maudlin state, and no doubt did attribute hostility to altogether too many ofthe undergraduates. But it is hard to choose and distinguish surely in a land that is generally hostile and strange. I began to stay more and more within the shelter of my room, working at my studies and at those activities which had already given me recognition. I wanted to be plucky about it. I wanted to keep on smiling—but there were times, I must confess, when I wished that I were through with college and all its rough-and-tumble boyishness.
I did not care so much myself. There were all these freshmen who were probably ten times lonelier than I was, ten times more bewildered and disheartened by the welcome they had had. I tried to visit as many of them as lived in dormitories. I wanted to talk things over with them, to help them in some possible way. But it wasn't much of a success—I could make no progress out of condonement and asking them to wait patiently until the foolish campaign had dwindled away.
Then, one day, as I crossed the campus to a first recitation, I saw that the brick walls of the oldest of the dormitories had been adorned with huge painted letters:
"OUT WITH THE JEWS."
I went into a telephone booth and called up the house of one of the professors with whomI had become friendly. He was a kindly, well-meaning man, and an alumnus of the college.
His telephone line was busy when I called it. I heard him talking with some one. I was about to ring off when suddenly I heard my own name mentioned.
The professor was an alumnus member of one of the college fraternities. And this other man—evidently an undergraduate, though I never tried to identify him—was asking the professor what he thought of offering me an election to this fraternity.
And I heard the professor sigh in his patient way.
"I like him—I like him very much, mind you," I heard him say, "but—er, er—I do think it would be disastrous—nothing short of disastrous to elect a Jew to any of our fraternities in the present situation."
I rang off. It was something to know that I was even being considered for membership—but it was disastrous, that was all—disastrous!
When I was out upon the campus again I saw that painters were already at work obliterating the sign. They had whitewashed the "Out With the" away, and there was nothing left upon the wall but a huge, red
"JEWS."
And thank God, I could laugh at the incident!
Fair play comes first—and reasoning follows it. For fair play is always an impulse. It comes when least expected.
That is how it was at the university. The incident of the big, painted sign was practically the last demonstration against the influx of Jewish boys. Waters, who made capital of everything, attempted to found a formal organization dignified by the title of the Anti-Hebrew Collegiate League, but when, at the first meeting, he was not elected to the presidency, abandoned the project with bitter complaints against the ingratitude of his fellow members. A little later on, when the tide had turned in the opposite direction, he became the head of the Helping Hand League, and was atop the wave of contrition.
For the tide did turn. Men are always afraid to carry their propaganda beyond the point of the ridiculous. When tomfoolery turns to foolishness its perpetrators are only too anxious for a chance to abandon it.
It was impossible to keep the thing out of the newspapers. The day after that sign incident, there was a lurid story to be read at each of the city's breakfast tables and in the evening subways. New York took it up and made it a matter of shocked debate for a day and a half. The president of the university, in his quarterly sermon in chapel, spoke fervently of toleration and the gentle spirit.
The reaction was almost as hysterical as the movement itself. The little Jewish freshmen—timid, frightened little mice, who had been going about their classroom work and scurrying home and out of reach for so many months—suddenly found themselves lauded as martyrs, as the best of fellows.
One evening a deputation of them were waiting for me when I came in from supper. They had formed a Jewish fraternity, and wished me to join with them. Appeal to a Jewish philanthropist had brought them enough money to lease a house near the campus. They were sure that they would have sanction and support from the rest of the college, now that the prejudice had abated. And since they could not join any of the other fraternities, why should they not have one of their own?
I thought it over carefully. I wanted to be fair to myself as well as to them. That sameold repugnance of being identified with a distinctly Jewish propaganda troubled me and made me turn from them. And yet it wasn't only that, either. For when I thought it out, I knew that, according to my point of view, theirs was not the proper solution. Fire can fight fire, perhaps—in proverbs, anyhow—but discrimination is not to be overpowered by a like amount of secularity. If Jewish college men objected to that unwritten rule of fraternities; if they contended that fraternities should be democratic; if they wanted equal rights in those fraternities ... how, then, were they justified in standing apart and founding a fraternity of their own—a brotherhood which should be open only to Jews?
That is what I thought. I may have been wrong—and the excellent records of the Jewish fraternity chapters in various colleges and universities do perhaps prove me wrong—but I could not bring myself to join them. I was heartily glad the whole heated question of race and race prejudice was abated. I asked, for myself, only that I be given something of the fair-play that other men had. I was working hard for the college. I was doing all that my talents enabled me to do and I was sure that, sooner or later, there would be the reward.
This reward did come, definitely. It came atthe end of May when, at the height of the reaction against the whole year of prejudice, I was chosen for the college senior society. It was a public election, held on the afternoon of one of the most important baseball games. There were crowds to watch the ceremony—students and graduates, young girls and parents ... so that the memory of the green campus and the banks of pretty gowns and parasols, the sunshine and the cheering will be with me till I die. I remember that there were tears in my eyes as I was chosen ... and that there came to me, with all the cool freshness of the spring winds, the thought that this was the end, the salvation from out of all the year's mean, squalid troubles. Here was I, a Jew, raised above all the other Jews who had ever entered this college ... raised among the highest, to be a power in the land, to be the champion of all those who had suffered, the winner through hardship and handicap, a vindicated Dreyfus, an example to all the lower classes.... For, at twenty-one, alas, we are our own best heroes, and none can take our place!
College closed in a blaze of glory for me. There was even a note from Aunt Selina Haberman, wishing me well of this new honor and informing me that "Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, when she heard it, was green with envy!" Aunt Selinawanted to know, was I going to be a wicked boy, however, and stay away from her all next year, too. She was sure that, now I had won out, we could get along much more smoothly than we had.
I fear I began to think a little too highly of my position in the community. I was now capable of going to no less a person than the dean of the college and talking over with him, as if man to man, the possibility of an anti-Jewish agitation, the next year, and demanding in none too deferential tones that, should it come, the college authorities must do their share to stamp it out.
"Really, Mr.-er-er-,—what's your name?"
I told him very slowly, but it did not mean much to him. I rather pitied the old gentleman for not paying more attention to the undergraduate contests and triumphs.
But he did hear me out, and gave me information which I thought worth acting on. The large majority of the Jewish boys in the freshman class had prepared for college at one school—a large private preparatory school in New York City. Perhaps it would be as well, suggested the dean, for me to go to the principal of this school and talk things over with him.
"Do you mean, I should warn him against sending so many of his boys to our college?" I asked.
The dean appeared dreadfully shocked. "Oh, no—dear me, no. That wouldn't do at all. Only—well, it seems that this school caters almost entirely to the sons of wealthy Jewish men—and that this principal is very fond of our college ... and so he grievously sends us all the boys that he can. You know, so many boys don't know where to go to college—and the principal often has a chance to suggest one, don't you see!"
The dean had a very sober face, but his eyes were twinkling. It relieved me to know, he was not taking this principal's bad judgment too seriously.
"So you think it would be wiser if there weren't so many Jewish boys in next year's entering class?"
"Precise—oh, no, I shouldn't dare say that, even if I thought so. Remember, I am in an official capacity here. But come around to my house tonight, when I've doffed my scholastic robe and am in my shirt sleeves—and perhaps I'll tell you, then, the name of that principal."
I did not even bother to do this. Without waiting for further advice, I went down to this school to beard the foolish principal in his den.
It was a hard matter to work my way into his presence. He had an office and inner office, and stenographers to guard them both. Iwrote on my card, however, that I wished to speak to him regarding affairs at my college, and evidently piqued his curiosity to the extent of his giving me the interview.
In that inner office I found a youngish man whose face was adorned with a heavy black beard. He seemed strangely familiar, but I could not place him.
"Come in," he said, looking hard at me. His restless eyes did not leave my face all the while I was talking.
"What is it you want me to do?" he asked me when I had given him some stumbling hint of my mission.
"I think you ought to keep Jewish boys out of my college," I told him. "It—it isn't altogether fair, and it would only provoke a renewal of the prejudice, if there should be as many freshmen next year as there were this."
"You are a Jew yourself," he said accusingly.
"Yes, I am. But don't judge by me.... I have always been an exception to all that prejudice."
"Oh, have you? I wonder why?"
I resented his tone, but went on to explain how I had entered college long before the antagonism had broken out; had worked hard, with Christian friends to help me, until I had won honors which assured me immunity from any unpleasantness.
"I congratulate you," he said dryly. "You no doubt deserve these honors. Your sort always does."
I stood up angrily and looked him square in the face. Then suddenly I recognized him.... Pictures of my public school days came up before me.... The class room and the big, crippled bully, Geoghen.... That finding of the Hebrew prayer book when the teacher was out of the room, and the hooting and mocking ... and then the teacher's return—and the fight.
It was Mr. Levi.
He smiled when he saw that I knew him, now. "I remembered you more readily," he said. "You have no beard to change your appearance." But it was more than his beard: there was a complete change in him from the dreamy, pale young man who had learned so harsh a lesson in those old days. There was a bitter twist to his mouth. His lips were set sternly, his eyebrows were lowered, his brow crossed by scowling lines.
"There's one thing about you that I remember," he snapped at me. "You were a Jew—and yet you stood aside and let those little cads take the book of God and make nasty fun of it—and never raised your hand or even your voice to stop them. That's the sort of boy you were. And, I suppose, you're still the same. It'd seemso, anyhow. You probably won all your college honors through standing aside. And now you have the audacity to ask me to do the same, lest you be made uncomfortable by the number of other Jewish boys at your college. You want me to stand aside, do you? Well, I wish I had a thousand Jewish boys to enter into your college's next year's class!"
He glared at me. "If you want to know the truth, I can't get a single boy in my school to go to your college, now. I wish I could. Because I'm training them to fight like men. They aren't the sort who win honors by allowing themselves to be classed as exceptions...."
As for myself, I knew that he was half wrong, half right—and that there was nothing more for me to say. I had learned what I came to learn. So I got up to go.
"And if there's another such demonstration, next year," he sneered, "you and your precious honors will have to stand aside again, eh? It must keep you very light on your feet!"
Thus it happened that only five Jews enrolled in the entering freshman class. One of them, of course, was Frank Cohen.
Mr. Levi's accusations had stung deeply. My anger at them was all the more intense because my heart admitted half their truth. Nevertheless, I was glad to see that there could be no possible aggravation this year: surely, with only five Jewish freshmen, the percentage would be small and unnoticed. It was all very well, that venom of Mr. Levi's—but it was unreasonable. I would be glad if the Jewish question would never again be mentioned during my college course.
The opening of the senior year found Frank Cohen and me on the Palisades, talking eagerly of what his college course would mean to him. He made me smile, his dreams were so like my own had been when I, too, was a freshman. Made me wonder, too, how much I had fulfilled those dreams. Something accomplished, yes—and as much unfulfilled, disregarded, leftundone. Well, perhaps, in this last year, I would have the chance again—and would not flinch.
The chance came just two days after the opening of college. It came when Frank Cohen burst into my room about nine o'clock at night, in company with another Jewish freshman. The other one was dogged, frightened, and, when he was behind my closed door, began to cry noiselessly. As for Frank, who was made of stronger stuff, he sat silent in his chair, grasping its arms and trying to control the intensity of some revulsion which had come over him.
They told me quickly what had happened. They were just from a meeting of freshman candidates for the college newspaper. The meeting had been called in order to instruct these candidates in the rules and qualifications of the competition. All men who cared to enter the competition had been invited. Two men had made speeches: the editor-in-chief and the managing editor of the paper, Sayer and Braley by name.
These had been cordial speeches, urging all men present at the meeting to work hard in this competition. There had been speeches of encouragement, in glowing colors—and then, at the end of it all, in front of the fifty-odd youths who were assembled there, Braley had closed his speech with this:
"We wish to say that any Jew who may have it in mind to enter this competition might as well save himself the pains. We shall not even consider the election of a Jew to the board."
Immediately a gasp, then a snicker had run through the roomful; then necks had craned and heads turned to catch looks at Frank and the other freshman who stood, flushed and humiliated, in their midst.
Then the meeting had broken up, and the other candidates, taking their cue from Braley's speech, stood aside to let Frank and his companion pass down through whispering, giggling aisles. They had tried to go calmly, unconcernedly, as if the shock of the insult meant nothing to them. But the other Jewish freshman had broken down, and Frank had to put his arm around him to keep him up and straight upon his path through the crowd's midst, out upon the campus and over to my dormitory.
I sat a little while silent after I heard them tell of it. I was as much stunned as they—and sickened too. I had thought all that sort of thing was done with. I had hoped it was all past, even forgotten—and here it was, leaping up again to confront, to threaten, to jeer at us. I had only dimly imagined the possibility of it. I had no plan, no hint of how I should go about it.
Two years ago, if this had happened, I should not have cared one way or the other. I should have crawled away into a corner and buried my face to hide my fear's approach. I should have waited to see how others acted, how others fought—and then, at best I should have fought along in a half-hearted, half-dreading fashion. Even now, I had nothing to fight for. I knew what Judaism was—and that it was for the God and the people of Judaism that I should be making my little fight—but—
I turned about and saw the eyes of the two freshmen glued upon me. Frank's especially—and they were beginning to fill with a troubled distrust which I had never allowed to be there before. I could not fail Frank. I would do what I could.
"All right," I said, drawing on my coat. "Go ahead home and get to bed. I will see what I can do."
I went with them across the campus to the other freshman's room. Frank would sleep there for the night, though he usually went back to his parents. I think he did not have the heart tonight to face them, and when they asked their usual breathless questions of the day's work and play, lie to them and hide from them the galling incident. He did not seem to feel the insult for his own sake; he was thinking, rather, ofhis mother and of how she would feel, should she ever know.
"Good night," said the other freshman soberly.
"Good night," said Frank—and I felt in his voice all of the cheery obligation of friendship. He was expecting wonders of me.
Walking on alone, across the open gloominess of deserted paths and night winds in the shrubbery, a thousand foolish fears tramped by my side and sang into my ears. I had hidden my empty spirit from those two boys—but I could not hide it from myself. I wondered what sort of a fight was ahead of me, and how long it would last, and what would be the final result. Those two men, Sayer and Braley, were among the most influential of the class. They were members of my senior society. They could hold me down by sentimental ties of brotherhood, much as Trevelyan had been held down by his fraternity mates; failing that, they could use their popularity, their clinch upon college opinion to force me literally into silence. They could run me out of college, if they pleased. I knew this, did not deny it to myself as I went forward to the first skirmish.
Once I turned around and almost retreated to my rooms. But the remembrance of the sting that was in Frank's reproachful look would not let me do that.
So I came to the steps of the big Y. M. C. A. building. They were many, these white stone steps, and they shone in the moonlight with a mottling of hazardous shadows. I mounted them and went into the huge assembly hall on the first floor. I heard the awkward, self-conscious benediction and adjournment of the meeting—for they were all young fellows, and had not yet learned to be entirely glib towards their meetings—and stood aside to let them pass out. As the first of them went through the door and out upon the campus, they burst into the giddy laughs which moonlight conjures—and I heard them singing foolish glees—snatches of song that were utterly pagan and gleeful, and far from the heated stuffiness of their prayer meeting. They seemed to have found their Kindly Light more easily in the open.
The man for whom I now waited had always been the leader of my class; this year, he was the idol of the entire university. Captain of football, a 'varsity baseball man, he had the finest, sincerest character that I had ever known. He was not merely popular, in our undergraduate sense. Underclassmen worshipped him from afar, and upperclassmen, who knew him and the life that he led, loved him and respected him with a love and respect which few men can ever win.
He and I had become friendly, lately. It was due, perhaps, to the fact that we now belonged to the same senior society. Before, I had worshipped from afar; now I knew him well and warmly—and, as I look back upon my college life, I am amazed to realize how much of his influence went into the making of it.
As he came out, I noticed how his broad shoulders filled the doorway and blocked out its light completely. But his face was above the shadows, and I had a sudden sense of comfort from the resolute kindliness that shone upon it.
"Fred," I said, "I want your help on something."
As president of the Y. M. C. A. he had a room allotted him in the building where he might sleep. I knew that he had a suite in his fraternity house, too—but he preferred to stay here, for some reason, in this smaller, simpler place, where he would be nearer his duties.
When he had me in the plain little den, sitting before the miniature wood fire which he heaped with broken twigs, he sat me down and gave me a few minutes of tactful silence. I was thinking it all out. I wanted to tell it to him fairly, concisely, with no imprecations, and yet with no weakening of attitude. Then I did tell it, simply, just as the two boys had told it to me.
I saw Fred's face grow troubled. Before Iwas through he had begun to walk up and down the little room with a nervousness that made his pace almost such a jog as football players use when they come out upon the field.
"You're right," he said when I was done. "You're so right that everything else connected with the incident is wrong—and that's the hardest part for me to admit. You deserve to fight this out alone—it belongs to you. I wish I had a fight like yours to make. But if you'll let me help you—?"
"Let you? Why, Ineedyour help!"
"Then you'll have it. I'll be glad—mighty glad to chime in with you—"
He stopped short, his tremendous frame red-lined in the fire's glow, his cheeks above his square jaw as bright as the flames themselves.
I could not answer him sentimentally. My comfort and gratitude were too deep, my suddenly gained encouragement too surging for the narrow outlet of words. But after a while we began to plan. We would fight it together—and immediately.
When I got up to go, his Bible was lying open at the beginning of the New Testament, with a ribbon and tiny silver cross to mark the place. When Fred saw me looking at it, he must have felt some part of the strange, shivery misgiving which had come over me. For he took theribbon in his fingers, so that the cross lay gleaming in his palm.
"It is Christ's symbol," he said. "It is the sign of one who suffered—and who was a Jew."
Then, as if he must leave me no doubt of his meaning in my mind:
"Don't worry. The cross won't stand between us. Though—" His eyes travelled slowly to the shelf above the fireplace. "Look! There's a symbol ofyourreligion, too."
So I looked. Gleaming brass, its seven uplifting arms gracefully curved, stood a—Menorah!
I awoke the next morning to an insistent knocking at my door. I sprang out of bed and opened it. In the hall, their dress showing signs of much haste, stood Sayer and Braley. They did not wait my invitation, but strode at once into the room and, throwing the rumpled covers from the bed, plumped down upon it.
"See here," said Braley, without prelude, "what's this talk about Fred's calling a special meeting of the senior class for tonight? Do you know anything about it?"
I smiled my way out of a pajama top. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Well, I did hear Fred say something about it last night."
"Oh, so you talked it over with him? Did you ask for the meeting?"
I had thrown on a bathrobe. "Yes, I did. Why?"
"That's what we want to know. Why, why?"
I looked up from tying the cord about my waist. "That's just what I'm not going to tell. Not until the meeting."
"Well, perhaps we know."
"You probably do. You deserve to."
"What do you mean by that?" Sayer jumped up and towards me. He was doing his best to fight, I could see—but I would not give him the chance—not prematurely!
Braley waved a conciliatory hand. He was a large, stoop-shouldered fellow with long, light hair and an enormous forehead. He had the most important and sumptuous manners I have ever met.
"See here, now," he said, "you really must tell us all you know about this thing. You really must." He was very earnest about it. They were both uneasy, it was easy to see.
"I'll tell you nothing," I said. "You will have to wait until tonight, and then——"
"Threatening us, are you?"
"No. I'm kind enough to warn you, that's all. I don't want you to go to the meeting unprepared."
"Oh, so it has to do with my remarks to the freshmen candidates, has it?"
"And mine?"
"I've given you all the warning that fair play demands," I said. "Look to your consciences for means of defense." And, flinging a towel over my shoulder, I darted away for my morning shower, leaving them in possession of the room.When I came back, a few minutes later, it was apparently empty, and I thought them gone.
I was almost dressed when I went into the clothes closet to select a tie from the rack I had there. There was a sudden rustle and movement of the clothes at the back of the dark little place. Two men closed in on me, dragged me into the depths of the closet. I reached out blindly, furiously. My fists hit only against the rows of my own clothes hanging there. A couple of coat-hangers clattered down. I stumbled and fell over my satchel. Then the door slammed shut. As I lay there, stunned, in the darkness, I heard the key turning in the lock, from the outside. They had sealed me in.
I had no doubts but they had been Sayer and Braley. Though I had never imagined they would go as far as this—and the fools! what did they think they could accomplish by locking me up for the day?
It was easy enough to breathe in the tiny, black square. I was in no danger. I groped my way to the suitcase and sat down on it for a few minutes. My head pained me terrifically. My forehead was hot. I put my hand up to it and felt a fast-swelling bruise. My fingers grew wet with something warm. It wasn't just perspiration.... I knew that—and that, in the struggle, I must have hit my head againstone of the hooks. Or had one of them hit me in the dark with some sharp thing that he held in his hands?
I stood up again unsteadily, found the door handle—yes, it was locked. I was in my stocking feet; I could not kick through a panel. I reached along the wall, found a hook. I flung the clothes from it, gave it both my hands and all my strength in a sudden pull. It gave way with a spurting of loosened plaster.
It was a large, heavy hook. It made a good ram. I crashed upon the two upper panels with it. One of them split at length—and when I rammed the ugly iron thing against it again, it broke into splinters and my arm went through it. Light came through dimly—and, three minutes later, I had knocked out the whole panel, climbed through and staggered out into the room.
The mirror showed me a bad cut over my right eye. I staunched the flow of blood as best I could. It was so humorous an incident—like one of the famous adventures of Frank Merriwell!
I played it out, though. I did not go out of my room the whole day. In the afternoon I telephoned Fred, the class president, about it. He came over to see me—and he didn't treat it as lightly as I did. He wanted me to have adoctor, for one thing. I promised I would see one, as soon as the meeting was over, that night.
"You'd better," he said. "That cut is mighty close to some of the most important nerves of the eye."
It was evening when I ventured out. Over in the big assembly hall the meeting of the senior class had already begun. I stole across the campus with my coat collar turned up and my hat far down to hide my face. I did not want to be recognized until I was ready. I hung about outside the ruddy windows of the hall, watching the crowded groups that sat within. They were listening intently to someone on the platform that I could not see—but I knew that it was Fred, presiding. Fred—and he was explaining it all to them, perhaps, in that deep-voiced way of his.
Then, as I watched, I saw how the heads of all who sat within the scope of my spying craned suddenly towards the side of the room. I knew what that meant, too. It meant that either Sayer or Braley had risen from his seat to make reply to the president's accusation.
Then, amazed, I heard applause and laughter. The muffled clapping of hands went on for minutes. So they approved these things that the two editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how Sayer and Braleyhad crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front of fifty other freshmen?
I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue—I wasn't going to "stand aside" a moment longer!
I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights, the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within—all of it gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.
It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the last of them—but that was enough:
"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community. And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that, then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has instigated this protest against Sayerand myself, wishes to refute this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."
He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.
I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door, turned pale when he saw me now.
I went slowly to the front of the room. My eyes pained me and I was nauseated. But I had ceased to tremble and was calm with a fury that checked all nervousness.
"The Jew who instigated this protest is here to back it up," I said slowly. "He is here to appeal to the 'real Anglo-Saxon fair play.'"
I could feel in the air the antagonism which I must down. I knew, as never before, how bitter and insensate was the prejudice which I must conquer by fifteen minutes of quiet words.
What I said doesn't count: I hardly remember most of it, anyhow. Before me, as I talked, the faces swam away into a dim and meaningless strip. I was not talking to these raw, swankering college boys. I was talking to something beyond—to something that was infinitelybrighter and more glorious than I had ever known before. I was talking to something beyond all earth—to Someone....
And I was appealing, was summoning, calling Him down to my aid. I was speaking His words, in the spirit of His ancient fighting prophets. I was fighting His fight. The calm frenzy in my heart was of His instillation. For years I had sought Him. For years I had shunned Him, knowing my need of Him. For all the days of my life I had borne the fierce justice of His words as a lonely burden—and now, now....
"And I shall fight and fight," I cried, "in the name of God—the God that is over all of us, of whatever race, creed or color—for the things that are fair and right and just. I shall have justice for a little East Side Jewish freshman as you shall have it, too."
Then suddenly, as if blinded by the refulgence of what I saw, my eyes began to water and grow dim. I stood there, tense, and did not mind the pain that was in them. But I could speak no more.
And slowly the men rose and went out, quietly, strangely—looking back sometimes to where I stood—not comprehending everything, I suppose, but moved beyond all common approbation. They had been conquered.
Braley remained alone with me in the desertedhall. I looked at him across a row of seats and began to laugh.
"You didn't even say a word to them about that rotten trick we played on you," he said, shamefacedly, his glib manners gone.
"I didn't have to," I replied. "Besides, I forgot."
"Well—er—thanks! You could have had us expelled!"
But the pain and dizziness were beyond standing now. I tore off my hat, so that he had a glimpse of the long, sullen cut over my eye.
"Look out!" he cried, leaping up on the platform, to hold me—for I was falling to the floor.
I remember laughing again, long but weakly. "I didn't have to! I didn't have to!"
And after so much light, there came the darkness.