Peter Part 29

"Better not laugh at Jack, Cory," Garry had replied; "you'll be taking your own hat off to him one of these days; we all shall. Arthur Breen missed it when he let him go. Jack's queer about some things, but he's a thoroughbred and he's got brains!"

"He insulted Mr. Breen in his own house, that's why he let him go," snapped Corinne. The idea of her ever taking off her hat, even figuratively, to John Breen, was not to be brooked,--not for an instant.

"Yes, that's one way of looking at it, Cory, but I tell you if Arthur Breen had had Jack with him these last few months--ever since he left him, in fact,--and had listened once in a while to what Jack thought was fair and square, the firm of A. B. & Co. would have a better hold on things than they've got now; and he wouldn't have dropped that million either. The cards don't always come up the right way, even when they're stacked."

"It just served my stepfather right for not giving us some of it, and I'm glad he lost it," Corinne rejoined, her anger rising again. "I have never forgiven him for not making me an allowance after I married, and I never will. He could, at least, have continued the one he always gave me."

Garry winked sententiously, and remarked in reply that he might be making the distinguished money-bags an allowance himself one of these fine days, and he could if some of the things he was counting on came out top side up, but Corinne's opinions did not change either toward Jack or her stepfather.

CHAPTER XIX

When the pain in Jack's heart over Ruth became unbearable, there was always one refuge left--one balm which never failed to soothe, and that was Peter.

For though he held himself in readiness for her call, being seldom absent lest she might need his services, their constrained intercourse brought with it more pain than pleasure. It was then that he longed for the comfort which only his dear mentor could give.

On these occasions Mrs. McGuffey would take the lace cover off Miss Felicia's bureau, as a matter of precaution, provided that lady was away and the room available, and roll in a big tub for the young gentleman--"who do be washin' hisself all the time and he that sloppy that I'm afeared everything will be spi'lt for the mistress," and Jack would slip out of his working clothes (he would often come away in his flannel shirt and loose tie, especially when he was late in paying off) and shed his heavy boots with the red clay of Jersey still clinging to their soles, and get into his white linen and black clothes and dress shoes, and then the two chums would lock arms and saunter up Fifth Avenue to dine either at one of Peter's clubs or at some house where he and that "handsome young ward of yours, Mr. Grayson--do bring him again," were so welcome.

If Miss Felicia was in town and her room in use, there was never any change in the programme, Mrs. McGuffey rising to the emergency and discovering another and somewhat larger apartment in the next house but two--"for one of the finest gintlemen ye ever saw and that quiet,"

etc.--into which Jack would move and which the good woman would insist on taking full charge of herself.

It was on one of these blessed and always welcome nights, after the two had been dining at "a little crack in the wall," as Peter called a near-by Italian restaurant, that he and Jack stopped to speak to Isaac Cohen whom they found closing his shop for the night. Cohen invited them in and Jack, after following the little tailor through the deserted shop--all the work people had left--found himself, to his great surprise, in a small room at the rear, which Isaac opened with a key taken from his vest pocket, and which even in the dim light of a single gas jet had more the appearance of the den of a scholar, or the workshop of a scientist, than the private office of a fashioner of clothes.

Peter only stayed a moment--long enough to borrow the second volume of one of Isaac's books, but the quaint interior and what it contained made a great impression on Jack,--so much so that when the two had said good-night and mounted the stairs to Peter's rooms, it was with increased interest that the boy listened to the old fellow who stopped on every landing to tell him some incident connected with the little tailor and his life: How after his wife's death some years before, and his only daughter's marriage--"and a great affair it was, my boy, I was there and know,"--Cohen had moved down to his shop and fitted up the back room for a little shelter of his own, where he had lived with his books and his personal belongings and where he had met the queerest looking people--with big heads and bushy beards--foreigners, some of them--speaking all kinds of languages, as well as many highly educated men in town.

Once inside his own cosey rooms Peter bustled about, poking the fire into life, drawing the red curtains closer, moving a vase of roses so he could catch their fragrance from where he sat, wheeling two big, easy, all-embracing arm-chairs to the blaze, rolling a small table laden with various burnables and pourables within reach of their elbows, and otherwise disporting himself after the manner of the most cheery and lovable of hosts. This done, he again took up the thread of his discourse.

"Yes! He's a wonderful old fellow, this Isaac Cohen," he rattled on when the two were seated. "You had only a glimpse of that den of his, but you should see his books on costumes,--he's an authority, you know,--and his miniatures,--Oh, a Cosway, which he keeps in his safe, that is a wonder!--and his old ma.n.u.scripts. Those are locked up too. And he's a gentleman, too, Jack; not once in all the years I have known him have I ever heard him mention the word money in an objectionable way, and he has plenty of it even if he does press off my coat with his own hands.

Can you recall anybody you know, my boy--even in the houses where you and I have been lately, who doesn't let the word slip out in a dozen different ways before the evening is over? And best of all, he's sane,--one of the few men whom it is safe to let walk around loose."

"And you like him?"

"Immensely."

"And you never remember he is a Jew?" This was one of the things Jack had never understood.

"Never;--that's not his fault,--rather to his credit."

"Why?"

"Because the world is against both him and his race, and yet in all the years I have known him, nothing has ever soured his temper."

Jack struck a match, relit his cigar and settling himself more comfortably in his chair, said in a positive tone:

"Sour or sweet,--I don't like Jews,--never did."

"You don't like him because you don't know him. That's your fault, not his. But you would like him, let me tell you, if you could hear him talk. And now I think of it, I am determined you shall know him, and right away. Not that he cares--Cohen's friends are among the best men in London, especially the better grade of theatrical people, whose clothes he has made and whose purses he has kept full--yes--and whom he sometimes had to bury to keep them out of Potter's field; and those he knows here--his kind of people, I mean, not yours."

"All in his line of business, Uncle Peter," Jack laughed. "How much interest did they pay,--cent per cent?"

"I am ashamed of you, Jack. Not a penny. Don't let your mind get clogged up, my boy, with such prejudices,--keep the slate of your judgment sponged clean."

"But you believe everybody is clean, Uncle Peter."

"And so must you, until you prove them dirty. Now, will you do me a very great kindness and yourself one as well? Please go downstairs, rap three times at Mr. Cohen's shutters--hard, so that he can hear you--that's my signal--present my compliments and ask him to be kind enough to come up and have a cigar with us."

Jack leaned forward in his seat, his face showing his astonishment.

"You don't mean it?"

"I do."

"All right."

The boy was out of his chair and clattering down-stairs before Peter could add another word to his message. If he had asked him to crawl out on the roof and drop himself into the third-story window of the next house, he would have obeyed him with the same alacrity.

Peter wheeled up another chair; added some small and large gla.s.ses to the collection on the tray and awaited Jack's return. The experience was not new. The stupid, illogical prejudice was not confined to inexperienced lads.

He had had the same thing to contend with dozens of times before. Even Holker had once said: "Peter, what the devil do you find in that little shrimp of a Hebrew to interest you? Is he cold that you warm him, or hungry that you feed him,--or lonely that--"

"Stop right there, Holker! You've said it,--lonely--that's it--LONELY!

That's what made me bring him up the first time he was ever here.

It seemed such a wicked thing to me to have him at one end of the house--the bottom end, too--crooning over a fire, and I at the top end crooning over another, when one blaze could warm us both. So up he came, Holker, and now it is I who am lonely when a week pa.s.ses and Isaac does not tap at my door, or I tap at his."

The distinguished architect understood it all a week later when the new uptown synagogue was being talked of and he was invited to meet the board, and found to his astonishment that the wise little man with the big gold spectacles, occupying the chair was none other than Peter's tailor.

"Our mutual friend Mr. Grayson, of the Exeter Bank, spoke to me about you, Mr. Morris," said the little man without a trace of foreign accent and with all the composure of a great banker making a government loan; rising at the same time, with great dignity introducing Morris to his brother trustees and then placing him in the empty seat next his own.

After that, and on more than one occasion, there were three chairs around Peter's blaze, with Morris in one of them.

All these thoughts coursed through Peter's head as Jack and Cohen were mounting the three flights of stairs.

"Ah, Isaac," he cried at first sight of his friend, "I just wanted you to know my boy, Jack Breen, better, and as his legs are younger than mine, I sent him down instead of going myself--you don't mind, do you?"

"Mind!--of course I do not mind,--but I do know Mr. Breen. I first met him many months ago--when your sister was here--and then I see him going in and out all the time--and--"

"Stop your nonsense, Isaac;--that's not the way to know a man; that's the way not to know him, but what's more to the point is, I want Jack to know you. These young fellows have very peculiar ideas about a good many things,--and this boy is like all the rest--some of which ought to be knocked out of his head,--your race, for one thing. He thinks that because you are a Jew that you--"

Jack uttered a smothered, "Oh, Uncle Peter!" but the old fellow who now had the tailor in one of his big chairs and was filling a thin winegla.s.s with a brown liquid (ten years in the wood)--Holker sent it--kept straight on. "Jack's all right inside, or I wouldn't love him, but there are a good many things he has got to learn, and you happen to be one of them."

Cohen lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.

"Do not mind him, Mr. Breen,--do not mind a word he says. He mortifies me that same way. And now--" here he turned his head to Peter--"what does he think of my race?"

"Oh! He thinks you are a lot of money-getters and p.a.w.nbrokers, gouging the poor and squeezing the rich."

Jack broke out into a cold perspiration: "Really, Uncle Peter! Now, Mr. Cohen, won't you please believe that I never said one word of it,"