The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery

by Viola Brothers Shore

  “All right—a week.”

  She knew it could make no difference. He would not tell his mother in a week. He would never tell his mother. Something impersonal in her sat in judgment over him and saw him as she had never seen him before. Let him have a week if that would make it easier for her to get away now. He helped her into a taxi.

  “You’ll hear from me!”

  He pressed her hand and she felt a fleeting response to the sheer animal beauty of him, his blue eyes alight with the exaltation of the moment. But swiftly her judgment reasserted itself and the thrill subsided. She knew she would not hear from him in a week—that she would never hear from him—that he would let things slide and drift as he always had until they broke themselves into bits on the rocks of nothingness. She knew that this was really goodbye. But there was no bitterness for her in the realization. She was quite numb.

  Tomorrow, she had a feeling, she would be crying bitterly over it all. But today it did not matter. Today nothing mattered but getting away. Today she would permit her pride the luxury of smashing things to little bits, even though tomorrow were to be spent in weeping over the pieces—perhaps even in trying to put them together again.

  * * * *

  It was the beginning of July. The Broadstreams were at their summer home near Roslyn. Doctor Broadstream never left his bed any more, and it was evident the end was near. Miriam hardly ever left him now, except when David came to take her for a ride or a walk at the doctor’s orders.

  One day they left the car in the road and, climbing over an old stone fence, seated themselves on the other side, overlooking the Sound. She was very tired, and David spread a robe on the grass for her, her white dress and raspberry sweater gleaming vividly in the afternoon sunlight against the old stone fence.

  David was a big man, more than six feet tall, distinctly a Jew, though not typically so. His curly hair was light chestnut in color and he wore it parted on the side and brushed straight across his high, rather wide, forehead. He had light brown eyes, set far apart on a broad, square face, and his chin escaped being massive looking by reason of the vertical cleft which all but bisected it.

  “How wonderful you’ve been, David!” There was a little film of grateful moisture across her gray eyes. “I don’t think anyone in the world ever had a friend like you!”

  “Tush!” he replied, sweeping away an aimless bee with a branch from a near-by apple tree. “Tired children always get sentimental.”

  He spoke slowly, distinctly, perfectly, the very care of his enunciation, however, marking his foreign birth. Every tangible trace of accent had been painstakingly eradicated, but all the intangible ones remained.

  “Don’t stop me every time I try to say anything nice to you. I never would have believed anyone could be so wonderful as you have been. There’s never been a moment when I haven’t felt your kindness and patience and strength in back of me.”

  It was true. She had never known before what it meant to have someone always within call, always eager to be called, always responsive to her slightest change of mood, anticipating her wishes, avoiding her dislikes and, above all, understanding, so that she never felt the need for defending herself. Not that he always agreed with her—not at all. There were many things upon which they did not agree. But the discussions which those divergences of opinion precipitated never seemed in any way to shake the fundamental understanding there was between them.

  “Really,” Miriam went on, “you’ve spoiled me so horribly I don’t know how I shall ever be able to face any trouble in life without you.”

  She wanted him to say that she would never need to; that he would always be there. Of late something delicate, exquisite, elusive had hovered at times between them, and there were occasions when desire for it made her irritable, emotional, unreasonable. She was impatient for him to break down the thin barrier that remained between them. She knew what it was—that barrier. It was one of those irreconcilable differences of opinion which existed between them. It was the point of view she had acquired from years of living under the influence of her aunt and cousins. It was the fact that she wished she had not been born a Jewess; that she felt that to be a Jew was something rather unfortunate, something to be lived down if possible; but not so determinedly as she had formerly intended to live it down. Her point of view had undergone a great change of late. But she still could not help wishing that his name were not Goldberg. Once she had even hinted to him on the subject of changing it. She would not readily forget the way he had answered her.

  “Never!” he had said, his brows coming together in a straight brown line across his high, wide forehead, his jaws snapping closed in a new, ugly expression which frightened her yet attracted her compellingly. “My name is as much a part of me as my skin or my eyes. I have tried to make it stand for something, and before I die I hope it will stand for something, both as a Jew and as an American. You must understand once and for all time that I am proud of my name! It means a great deal to me.”

  “More,” she had suggested, “than any mere woman ever could, I suppose?”

  Men are constantly being put to the necessity of replying to this sort of logic. He had considered a moment before answering in his careful, deliberate voice: “No, I do not think the two could ever be opposed that way. I would expect the woman I cared about to feel that I had done all I could to make her proud of it too.” And that, of course, had silenced her and made her feel rather small.

  Well, she knew she would never have her own way with him. He would never yield an inch where his principles were concerned, and she liked the feeling of that. She even liked her own feeling of smallness, of insignificance, of being submerged and swallowed up. It was a trifling matter after all—a name. They were all trifles, the things that stood between them. The only thing that really counted was David. She wanted him. She wanted to belong to him and to feel that he belonged to her. She would have liked him to see that those other things did not matter to her any more, but she did not know how to go about making him see it. He always seemed to overlook the openings she gave him.

  “How is Van these days?” he asked, leaning back against the fence so that his arm almost brushed her shoulder. “I hear he called here yesterday.”

  “Well, not exactly.” She was much more conscious of the nearness of his arm than of what they were talking about. “The girls met him on the road and brought him back with them.”

  “Were you glad to see him again?”

  She looked up quickly, but his eyes were on a handful of moss he had just gathered and she could not see their expression.

  “Well, yes and no. Of course I was glad to see him, but—”

  He looked at her then as though he meant to see through her. She was glad. She wanted him to see through her—through and through.

  “Of course,” she added, dropping her eyes, “I’m awfully fond of Clifford. I guess I always will be. Only—well, I seem to be a different person from the Mimi I used to be when I was in love with him.”

  “Oh, then you aren’t in love with him anymore?”

  She looked hurt.

  “You know I’m not,” she replied without looking up, and waited.

  “And he,” he inquired at length—“is he still in love with you?”

  She shook her head, the sun bringing out unexpected hints of red in her soft, dark hair.

  “Don’t you think, if he were really in love with me, he wouldn’t have let all this time go by without trying to see me? I think it was just seeing me again that made him feel—well, a bit cut up. He says I’ve spoiled him for other girls. I don’t know—I have a feeling he’ll discover one of these days that Virginia Dresser was just made for him. I asked him not to try to see me anymore. What’s the use?” She shrugged her shoulders with a little gesture of finality. “Even if I hadn’t given my promise to uncle, the thing is dead—quite dead. I seem to have acquired a differ
ent set of values.”

  Again she waited for him to say something, and as she half reclined there, her clear gray eyes on the sky through the branches of the apple tree, she began to wonder what would happen if she didn’t wait for him to begin at all, if she turned to him now and simply said: “I love you, David.” What would happen? Or, “Why don’t you want me anymore?” she could ask, and what would he say then? What could he say? Wouldn’t he have to—or if she said: “David, I wish you loved me—just a little!” That appealed to her immensely. “David, I wish you loved me—just a little.” She did not realize that her face was mirroring everything she thought, and there are certain expressions a man must be blind not to recognize.

  “Don’t,” he said, putting his big hand over her eyes so suddenly that she sat up sharply, her face the color of her sweater.

  “Don’t what?” she asked.

  “Don’t make it any harder for me than it is already.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked innocently, but her heart beat suffocatingly against her throat.

  “Well, sometimes you make it hard for me to remember some of the things you have told me—unless, of course, you have changed your mind about not wanting to be a Jew.”

  If he had only put it in some other way! But what could she say in answer to that? She had not changed her mind. Only those things did not matter anymore.

  “Well,” she commenced with difficulty, “if you want me to say I’m proud to be a Jew and all that—”

  “Yes, some day you will say—just that. Some day you will feel that any handicap you may have suffered—any humiliation you may have undergone—are insignificant things in comparison to being a part of one of the greatest races on earth—perhaps the greatest race.

  “Doesn’t it ever seem to you—well—rather wrong for you to shirk your responsibilities, the debt you owe your people? Doesn’t it mean anything to you—the feeling of pride, and the loyalty you owe those fine, brave ancestors of yours who carried on through so many centuries of persecution and suffering just so that you might be what you are today?”

  “No,” she shook her head; “I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel it.”

  It was not stubbornness. It was merely that she did not feel those things, and she would not bring herself to lie about it. Oh, certainly it was not stubbornness! There was not an inch of her that did not ache to yield, to give in, to lose itself in his firmer purpose and stronger will. If he had only gone about it in some other way!

  * * * *

  It was two days later that he found her, a black-gowned heap under a tree. When he sat down beside her he found that her eyes were quite dry. But he thought he had never seen such a look of grief as he saw in them.

  “Why don’t I cry, David?” she asked him piteously. “Why can’t I cry? Isn’t it funny? He’s gone—dead. Uncle Philip is dead. He’ll never speak to me any more—and yet I can’t cry. Why is it?”

  “There, there—you’ve cried so much you haven’t any tears left. It’s better this way. They’ll come later—the tears.”

  “David, David, how can you be so calm when he’s gone—gone—and we’ll never see him any more—never any more again?”

  “I don’t believe that, dear. I don’t believe that.”

  “David,” she cried, “teach me to believe!”

  “I wish I could.” There were real tears in his eyes, and the hand that patted her shoulder was unsteady. “But belief is a strange thing. It must come from within. I have always had mine. Perhaps in time it will come to you.”

  “I never thought I would need it. But, oh, I do so want to believe something now! David, I can’t tell you how I feel—in here. It’s as if it were a part of myself that is gone, and I can’t bear the thought that it will never be there anymore; that this place inside me—here—will always be empty! Oh, David, there will never be anybody like him! Nobody can ever take his place, and he’s gone forever, and I can’t even cry—not a tear!” She looked out with dry, grief-stricken eyes over the hills.

  “Love isn’t measured by tears,” he told her. “We all know how much you loved him, and he knew it too.”

  “His last words,” she said half to herself, “were to me.”

  He put his hand over hers where it lay on the earth.

  “He seemed worried at the end, David. He asked me to see that he was buried—like a Jew. Aunt Irene says he will lie where he wished—next to my mother. But all last night his mind wasn’t at rest. Over and over he whispered to me, dragging himself out of the snatches of sleep that we always thought were going to be the last, ‘I’ve lived a Jew and I die a Jew. And, Miriam, you see that I’m buried like a Jew—in Jewish ground.’” She shuddered slightly. “Over and over he said it to me—‘Remember, Miriam, I’ve lived a Jew—and I die—a Jew.’ They were his last words before he went to sleep—the last time.”

  The body of Doctor Broadstream lay in the big front living room of the Roslyn home. Because of his public spirit, his life of tireless work and unstinted charity, the temple in Brooklyn had offered to hold the funeral services for him in order that his hundreds of friends and patients throughout the city might have the opportunity of taking a last look at him and paying him their tribute of love and respect at the end.

  Mimi, who had not been consulted about any of the arrangements, felt nevertheless that her aunt was justified in declining this honor. The doctor had been of simple tastes, averse to ostentation, and his burying should be of the simplest. But David said bitterly that a life such as the doctor’s should have been fittingly crowned with some such mark of respect; that a private funeral was only an excuse for excluding the doctor’s poorer patients; that now at last, since he could no longer make a stand for them, she was to have her own way about them for once.

  Mimi had not shed a single tear. And now she sat on one of the little camp stools in the dining room, which opened from the living room, sunk in apathetic reverie, her black dress hanging loosely from her slender, drooping shoulders. Until somebody whispered: “There’s Doctor MacDermott. Now they’ll begin the services.” And she sat up with a sharp stab.

  “Doctor MacDermott?” she asked with a terrible sensation of pain in the region of her heart. “Is he going to—”

  “He’s to read the services,” explained George Langdon, who sat at her right.

  “But who asked him?” she demanded angrily.

  “Why, he’s been our—”

  She did not wait to hear, but turned furiously to Agatha, who was on her other side. “Why did they ask Doctor MacDermott to come? He’s not a Jew!”

  “S-sh! Uncle Monty made all the arrangements. It doesn’t matter who reads the services. They’re nonsectarian.”

  “But why?” she cried in a furious undertone—“why? Why not Jewish services? Why not a rabbi? Uncle was a Jew!”

  “Hush!” another voice told her, and the minister entered the room.

  At the sight of his vestments—the black robe, the collar—such a feeling of shame, of indignation, of outrage came over her that she wanted to get up, to protest, to cry aloud. She wanted to cry out: “Stop! For shame! How dare you?” But of course she did not; only sat there feeling like a trapped thing, suffering unendurable pain, and illimitable grief.

  Her uncle had trusted her to see that he was buried like a Jew, and she had failed. She had let them make a mockery of his last wishes, of his beliefs, of his life. She looked round the room—nothing but Aunt Irene’s family, Aunt Irene’s friends. She caught a glimpse of David, and turned her eyes away quickly.

  She felt that if her eyes met his she would die of pain and shame.

  And just as her suffering became intolerable—just at the moment when she could no longer breathe beneath the suffocating pressure of it—strangely it was lifted from her, and something like peace poured over her suddenly and possessed her. And with it came the feelin
g that her uncle was there—somewhere near at hand—within that very room.

  The feeling was so strong that she did not question it, but glanced up, half expecting her eyes to encounter those of her uncle—the sad brown ones with the white and pupil slightly blurred. Nothing met her eyes, however, except the familiar paneling of the dining room and the unfamiliar rows of camp stools and the kind, gentle face of Doctor MacDermott in low-toned conversation with Monty Langdon. But the feeling persisted, and her eye, still traveling, came to rest finally among the folds of the portieres that hung between the dining and the living rooms; and as unaccountably as it had come to her, the feeling that he was there grew into a conviction.

  The minister commenced his nonsectarian address. Mimi did not hear one word of it. As the sweet, deep voice dwelt on the life of the deceased, his great heart, his many fine qualities, there began to be heard sounds of muffled weeping—a sob caught in a throat. But Mimi did not notice. She was only dimly aware of what was going on about her. All her capacity for thinking, for feeling, for understanding, were directed toward that fold in the portiere.

  A sob from her aunt brought her to a consciousness of what was going on. Irritation seized her. She could have strangled her aunt. What right had she to sob? Or any of these outsiders who had never really known him? She, Mimi, was not sobbing, and she would have had the right to, for he belonged to her, he was her dead.

  She felt for the first time that there was a gulf separating her from all these other people. She could feel a difference now. The something which bound her and Uncle Philip and David together at the same time separated them from all these others. She had thought she belonged with them—the Langdons and the rest. But now she knew that she did not; that she never would; that some part of her kept her apart and made her different. But it was not with any sense of inferiority she felt it, but rather with a sense of pride—a great new dignity and pride.

  The minister’s voice had ceased, and she hardly knew it. Only when someone pulled her sleeve she rose mechanically. The family were to take their last look at the dead. She followed Bridget. But her eyes never left the shadows whence had come to her this new understanding, this wonderful sense of having found herself. And then suddenly she dropped her eyes and it was gone—all of it; the peace, the immunity from pain, the sense of his presence. He was here—here—and he was dead. Uncle Philip was dead, and she was taking her last look at him. A terrible wave of pain swept over her. Her last look! Her last look!