The Melting-Pot Part 16

PAPPELMEISTER [_Choking with emotion, goes and pats him on the back._]

_Mein braver Junge!_

VERA [_Anxiously_]

But it is Mr. Davenport----

DAVID Before I accept Mr. Davenport's kindness, I must know to whom I am indebted--and if Mr. Davenport is the man who----

QUINCY Who travelled with you to New York? Ha! Ha! Ha! No, _I'm_ only the junior.

DAVID Oh, I know, sir, you don't make the money you spend.

QUINCY Eh?

VERA [_Anxiously_]

He means he knows you're not in business.

DAVID Yes, sir; but is it true you are in pleasure?

QUINCY [_Puzzled_]

I beg your pardon?

DAVID Are all the stories the papers print about you true?

QUINCY _All_ the stories. That's a tall order. Ha! Ha! Ha!

DAVID Well, anyhow, is it true that----?

VERA Mr. Quixano! What _are_ you driving at?

QUINCY Oh, it's rather fun to hear what the ma.s.ses read about me. Fire ahead.

Is what true?

DAVID That you were married in a balloon?

QUINCY Ho! Ha! Ha! That's true enough. Marriage in high life, they said, didn't they? Ha! Ha! Ha!

DAVID And is it true you live in America only two months in the year, and then only to entertain Europeans who wander to these wild parts?

QUINCY Lucky for you, young man. You'll have an Italian prince and a British duke to hear your scribblings.

DAVID And the palace where they will hear my scribblings--is it true that----?

VERA [_Who has been on pins and needles_]

Mr. Quixano, what possible----?

DAVID [_Entreatingly holds up a hand._]

Miss Revendal!

[_To QUINCY DAVENPORT_]

Is this palace the same whose grounds were turned into Venetian ca.n.a.ls where the guests ate in gondolas--gondolas that were draped with the most wonderful trailing silks in imitation of the Venetian n.o.bility in the great water fetes?

QUINCY [_Turns to VERA_]

Ah, Miss Revendal--what a pity you refused that invitation! It was a fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness--each couple had their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-ca.n.a.l to slip down. Eh?

Ha! Ha! Ha!

DAVID And the same night, women and children died of hunger in New York!

QUINCY [_Startled, drops eyegla.s.s._]

Eh?

DAVID [_Furiously_]

And this is the sort of people you would invite to hear my symphony--these gondola-guzzlers!

VERA Mr. Quixano!

MENDEL David!

DAVID These magnificent animals who went into the gondolas two by two, to feed and flirt!

QUINCY [_Dazed_]

Sir!

DAVID I should be a new freak for you for a new freak evening--I and my dreams and my music!

QUINCY You low-down, ungrateful----

DAVID Not for you and such as you have I sat here writing and dreaming; not for you who are killing my America!

QUINCY _Your_ America, forsooth, you Jew-immigrant!

VERA Mr. Davenport!

DAVID Yes--Jew-immigrant! But a Jew who knows that your Pilgrim Fathers came straight out of his Old Testament, and that our Jew-immigrants are a greater factor in the glory of this great commonwealth than some of you sons of the soil. It is you, freak-fashionables, who are undoing the work of Washington and Lincoln, vulgarising your high heritage, and turning the last and n.o.blest hope of humanity into a caricature.

QUINCY [_Rocking with laughter_]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!

[_To VERA._]

You never told me your Jew-scribbler was a socialist!

DAVID I am nothing but a simple artist, but I come from Europe, one of her victims, and I know that she is a failure; that her palaces and peerages are outworn toys of the human spirit, and that the only hope of mankind lies in a new world. And here--in the land of to-morrow--you are trying to bring back Europe----

QUINCY [_Interjecting_]

I wish we could!----

DAVID Europe with her comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a mora.s.s of crime and misery----

QUINCY [_With sneering laugh_]

Mora.s.s!