The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery

by Viola Brothers Shore

  “You are young, Miriam—only a child. How should you know these things? I did not know them either at your age.” He looked out with weary brown eyes over the housetops. “I never thought to open again the bitter pages of my life. But if it will spare you the pain of learning, as I had to learn, through the blood of your heart—Mimi”—he broke in on himself passionately—“do not make the mistake I made! A marriage like mine where there is no love, no respect, no companionship; where everything is misunderstood and perverted; where everything beautiful and sacred is trampled underfoot and everything false and tawdry raised up and worshiped; where your pride is a quivering, bleeding thing, your affections starved, your ambitions withered; where every day deals you fresh wounds and every hour reopens the old. Life holds no greater hell than such a marriage!”

  Miriam’s eyes were wide gray mirrors of pain and unbelief.

  “You think I exaggerate—that my life has seemed smooth, peaceful, contented? Yes, because I learned early to dry up the springs of pain, and that means to cease living. It was my pride to keep it from the world! But there were years when I hated her so I could have killed her!”

  Involuntarily she drew back to look at him, her straight black brows arching over incredulous eyes. He relaxed abruptly, shrugging his wasted shoulders wearily.

  “But all things wear thin in life, especially hate. When I had closed myself against her so that she could no longer hurt me I did not hate her any more. Though she made a mockery of my life, though she stood between me and all the things I might have been, even though she built up a wall of prejudice between me and my children—I do not hate her any more. Why should I—now?”

  He lapsed into a dreamy, almost impersonal manner, a little half smile playing about his lips.

  “Ah, but long ago, when I was young—the dreams and the high hopes and the love of life! Your mother—there was a woman! There were willing hands and a brave heart! I, Philip Breitenbach, friendless, penniless—I wanted to be a great doctor! It seemed like an impossible dream. But her courage never faltered. How we worked and I studied, and little by little we saved until I could buy the store! And together we tended it and saved more and I studied more until I went to Bellevue, and then she took care of it all alone.” He lost himself in reverie, his eyes soft with the old forgotten dreams and hopes and affections.

  “And you gave her the store for a wedding present,” Miriam reminded him gratefully.

  “She had more than earned it. Child, with a woman like your mother—a good woman to understand and be patient and brave—I would have risen to the top—the very top! But I always had to take the moneyed way. It was always money—money to compensate for the shame of having married a Jew! No patience for the things whereby a man may make for himself a name and rise in later years to a position of respect. No! Make money! Move in the proper circle! Kiss the feet of the rich! Waste no time on the poor! Smile, cringe, fawn—always, always! Never a moment for the people who might bring a little color into living—a little meaning! Never a moment to stand face to face with your own soul! She made me break my life into little bits and feed them to her vanity! She was a leech, I tell you! She sucked my strength and gave me nothing in return—nothing!

  “I never thought”—the tenseness was gone from his voice and manner, and he shook his head at his own theatricalism—“that I would speak like this! But I love you, Miriam, better than my own. You are sweeter, warmer, truer. Though,” he added defensively, “I could have made something of them, too, if she had not come in between; if she had not poisoned their minds against me. When they were little—very, very little”—a thin film of tears blurred his unseeing eyes—“they used to cling to me with their little warm arms round my neck. But she made them ashamed of their Jewish father!” His voice had risen to a sobbing crescendo, and he broke off abruptly, wiping away the tears with a shamed motion of the back of his hand. “But between us, Miriam,” he went on quietly, “there is a bond which nothing can sever. We are both Jews. You can see for yourself what a bond that is, outwearing the tie which binds a father to his children!” He regarded her tenderly.

  “You are like your dear mother, Miriam—honest, loyal, a home maker.”

  She felt a pang for poor Uncle Philip, who thought her honest and loyal when she knew she was neither. It is common with the young to think that nobody can understand them, when it is only they who do not understand themselves, attributing to themselves unreal virtues and exaggerated vice.

  “A little self-willed, too, like her. I realize the danger of trying to drive you. Perhaps David was right, and you would have come to it in time. But I feel now that I cannot wait any longer. Miriam, you must give up this foolish fancy!” Instantly she was in arms against him.

  “It’s not a foolish fancy! I love Clifford!”

  “Love—love! He is a pretty boy, I grant you, and you may be romantically attracted to him. But marriage must mean more than that! Marriage must mean that one shall love what the other loves; that one shall not mock what the other holds sacred; that both shall strive for the same things, respect the same principles, serve the same gods.”

  “I do love Clifford!” she repeated firmly. “Just because he’s not a Jew you—”

  “No, no, darling, not because he isn’t a Jew! There are intermarriages which are perfect. But they are founded on mutual understanding, mutual respect. If I thought your young man was marrying you, admiring and loving you for what you are, and not in spite of it, I would not interfere. But scrape off the veneer once and find out for yourself what he thinks of you—what he thinks of your Jewish blood, which is you. I know! He does not respect you. He is ashamed—apologetic. You yourself are ashamed—apologetic. And if he does not respect you and you do not respect yourself—oh, my darling, what a life!

  “You must face life squarely. Do not say ‘I am not a Jew.’ That is a lie. Or if you must lie, then lean the other way and say, ‘I am a Jew and I am proud of it!’ Then at least you will respect yourself, and others will respect you. To be a Jew does not mean to be called Levy or to have a long nose or to speak with an accent. To be a Jew means that in your veins flow generations of Jewish blood, and to be false to that blood is to be false to yourself!”

  He was completely carried out of himself. He was no longer a sick old man talking to his niece, but a prophet bearing a great message from a great race to its wavering young. Miriam, too, was carried away, but as a spectator at some gripping play is moved and carried away, vibrating in response to the drama, but in a detached way, her personal ego untouched, intact. But his next words changed all that, tearing her from the comfortable seat of the spectator and flinging her upon the stage.

  “Miriam,” her uncle was saying in his natural voice once more, “I have not much longer to live. My days are indeed numbered. But I cannot go in peace until I know you are safe, until I know you are not going to wreck your life as I wrecked mine. You may trust me, Miriam. I have contemplated death so long that I am wise, with the wisdom of those who stand apart and watch.”

  She found herself following his words, understanding them, even realizing in a vague way what they foreshadowed, but without any capacity for assimilating them. They seemed to enter her mind and then glance off, unable to deliver their cargo of pain. Her entire active consciousness was paralyzed by the one benumbing, overpowering realization that now at last she was face to face with the specter she had kept so long at arm’s length. Now, now she could no longer shut her mind and eyes to it! It had come! He was going to die! Uncle Philip was going to die! He was going to be gone—dead for all time, forever and ever—dead—buried—gone!

  “I am not sorry to go,” he was saying, his voice seeming to filter through to her consciousness. “There is nothing left for me to do that another could not do as well. It is not in bitterness I say it. I have had thirty useful years. And now at the end I have the peace that comes of knowing I have been of use.”


  Her fingers tightened about his knees with that human impulse to cling physically to what is going far beyond our physical reach forever. He laid his hand on her head and patted it with his yellowing fingers.

  “I am sorry to distress you, Miriam. But it seems to me that you, of all of them, are woman enough to hear the truth. This disease has undermined the very foundations of my vitality; it has sapped my life. In three years they have made no headway against it—and it has made great headway against me. I am still enough the physician to realize what that means. Just how soon the end will come I do not know, and that is why I ask you to promise me that if he will not acknowledge you openly, if he will not treat you with the respect you deserve and I deserve, you will give him up forever. It is the only thing I have ever asked of you; the only thing I will ever ask of you. If he will not prove himself the kind of man I want for my Miriam, promise me you will give him up, so that I may close my eyes in peace and face my God knowing that I have finished all my tasks on earth.”

  “Uncle!” She was on the floor at his side, her face buried in his lap, her arms clinging to his knees. “Uncle, don’t! Don’t say you’re going to die! You’re not! You mustn’t! You can’t! We need you, Uncle Philip! We couldn’t get along without you—any of us! You’re not going to die! You’re going to get better! I know it!” She looked up at him with stricken eyes, the tears falling unheeded down her face. “Oh, Uncle Philip, don’t go! I love you so much, Uncle Philip! Better than anyone in the world! I know it now! Even better than him! I’ll do anything you want, Uncle Philip—anything! I promise I’ll never see him again as long as I live if he won’t do what you want! I promise, Uncle Philip—I promise, I promise!”

  * * * *

  Clifford was waiting for her at the little tea room on Fortieth Street where they often lunched together. As she entered, chic, slim, blue-suited, he rose from one of the blue-painted tables along the wall, and she felt the old thrill of pride in him—his blond good looks, the hang of his well-cut clothes, the glances he always evoked from other women—the old thrill intensified a hundredfold by the new dangers which menaced. And while they ate she told him all about it, softening it and trying to spare him as much as possible.

  Poor Clifford Van Buskirk! He really loved the girl beside him. But she wanted something of him, at that moment, beyond his powers to give. He did not understand her language. Heaven knows he had never claimed to be able to understand women! But he had never thought Mimi was going to turn into the kind a fellow had to understand. That was one thing about Virginia. She couldn’t touch Mimi when it came to talent, versatility, charm. But where you left her the last time there you found her the next. And she never wanted to be understood.

  He was sorry Mimi’s uncle was dying. Darn sorry! He didn’t wish the old gentleman any hard luck, even if he did always make him, Van, feel like a worm. Shucks! The old gentleman had always been more than square to Mimi, and Van was darn sorry he was so sick. Hang it all, you hate to think of anyone dying, especially anyone you know!

  But the thing she wanted was impossible. To go up to his old lady and just tell her out and out he was going to marry Mimi—right on top of the talk she had given him the day before about Virginia and family and all that rot, and the things she had nagged him into promising her—why, it would kill her! Or at any rate she would throw a terrible fit! Why, he couldn’t imagine himself doing a thing like that to his mother! The thing would have to be broken to her gently. It would take time. Shucks, once his mother got to know Mimi she’d be sure to see what a wonderful girl she was, and there’d be nothing to it! He wanted to spare Mimi the pain of putting the thing in so many words—the brutality of telling her the raw truth. He was trying to be tactful. Miriam, too, was trying to be tactful. And so the talk went back and forth for an hour, arriving nowhere.

  At last Miriam found herself saying in quite a calm, matter-of-fact voice, though inwardly she was far from calm: “But if you simply had to take your choice, Van, between telling your mother and—and giving me up, what would you do?”

  “Why hang it all, Mimi, I wouldn’t know what to do! You don’t know how the old lady is, once she gets started! She harps on a thing, and harps till—well, I just wouldn’t be able to live in the house with her anymore!”

  She felt a twinge of pity for him, but also a twinge of contempt. The latter she fought down quickly.

  “Perhaps, like a lot of things we dread, it won’t really be so terrible once you get to it.”

  “I can’t do it, Mimi! Really I can’t! Oh, why did he have to start a thing like that? We were getting along all right together, and now all of a sudden he—”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s not all of a sudden, dear. He never approved.”

  “But why? Why? What has he got against me?”

  She tried patiently to make it all clear to him again. “He doesn’t think you’ll make the right husband for me,” she concluded wistfully.

  He laughed harshly. His pride was hurt.

  “Don’t, Van dear! You don’t understand.”

  “There’s isn’t much to understand, is there, about a man thinking I’m not good enough for his niece?” The humor of it suddenly struck him and he laughed mirthlessly. “If anybody heard about this I’d be a laughingstock. Me, not good enough for—”

  His meaning cut across her pride like the lash of a whip.

  “It’s no worse than your mother thinking I’m not good enough for you!”

  He sobered instantly.

  “I never said that—”

  “But if you didn’t think it you would have told her about me long ago.”

  “I did try to tell her about you, Mimi. I did. Only—”

  “Only what?” And when he did not answer she persisted: “Only what? What did she say when you tried to tell her about me? I have a right to know.”

  “Oh, Mimi,” he began miserably, but she looked at him so coldly that he tried to tell her the truth, though it made him blush to the line of his blond hair and he could not meet her eyes, “she said—she said—oh, I never meant to tell you, Mimi! But if you make me, well, she said”—he had grown white to the lips—“she said—oh, I can’t tell you!”

  It was as bad as that! And yet he had permitted his mother to say it; had even gone home to her night after night after she had said it! She felt a scorn for him shriveling all the fondness she had ever felt.

  “And, anyway, it’s not so. I’m not afraid of it. Your aunt married a Jew and it turned out all right. The girls aren’t—shucks, they haven’t—well, they don’t look Jewish or anything!”

  So that was it! Every nerve in her rose against him. She could have screamed aloud for pain, disgust, nausea. Instead she sat toying with the little blue-and-white napkin that served for a tablecloth.

  “I’m going to tell her that, too, the next time she says anything. Besides, we wouldn’t need to have any children. I wouldn’t care if we didn’t.”

  More shame than anger made her suddenly long to end it all. Never in her life had she suffered so much humiliation. The man she loved was proposing to her that they need have no children because he was afraid of the heritage they might receive from her! He was afraid they might look like her people! She said it over twice in her own mind. She did not want to lose hold of it. Everything else was swimming round furiously, but here was one thing she had straight. She must not lose sight of it. The rest might whirl round—Van, the things she had felt for him, the things she felt for him now, the things her uncle had told her and those she had told herself, this sudden overturning of all her dreams, this sudden loss of all her old desires. But this one fact remained fixed—the man she loved would be ashamed of the children she would go through hell to bear for him! She wanted to go home.

  “Pay your check, Van, I want to go,” she interrupted him wearily.

  “Mimi”—there was real con
cern in his voice—“everything’s all right between us—isn’t it?”

  She looked at him with wide gray eyes out of a white face.

  “No,” she replied truthfully, “I don’t think it is.”

  “What do you mean, Mimi?”

  “I don’t think everything will ever be all right between us again.”

  Manlike, he was far from the truth. “You mean you’re going to let your uncle come between us?”

  She looked at him hopelessly. She was too weary to make it clear to him now. Besides, she knew that she never could. She shrugged indifferently.

  “Mimi—”

  “I can’t help it”—she took the easiest way—“I gave my word. I promised if you didn’t want me enough to make it clear to everyone that you did want me I’d never see you again. Well—”

  “But Mimi, be reasonable! I’ve tried to explain—”

  She shrugged again.

  “I understand! Poor Van,” she went on tonelessly, “it’s too bad, isn’t it?”

  “Too bad? Why, Mimi, you don’t know how hard this is on me!”

  “It’s sort of hard—on both of us, don’t you think?”

  She achieved a little smile with her lips. Inwardly she was numb. Even the one thing that had been so clear a little while before had disappeared, and there was nothing left now but this beneficent numbness.

  “But Mimi, you don’t realize what this means!”

  “Yes, I realize,” she answered quite gravely. “It means goodbye.”

  “But I can’t—I won’t let you go this way! I won’t give you up like this—I won’t!” One corner of her mouth yielded to a little crooked smile. “Give me a little time, Mimi! A day—two days—a week!”