The Melting-Pot Part 18

DAVID It is a dream. You cannot care for me--you so far above me.

VERA Above you, you simple boy? Your genius lifts you to the stars.

DAVID No, no; it is you who lift me there----

VERA [_Smoothing his hair_]

Oh, David. And to think that I was brought up to despise your race.

DAVID [_Sadly_]

Yes, all Russians are.

VERA But we of the n.o.bility in particular.

DAVID [_Amazed, half-releasing her_]

You are n.o.ble?

VERA My father is Baron Revendal, but I have long since carved out a life of my own.

DAVID Then he will not separate us?

VERA No.

[_Re-embracing him._]

Nothing can separate us.

[_A knock at the street-door. They separate. The automobile is heard clattering off._]

DAVID It is my uncle coming back.

VERA [_In low, tense tones_]

Then I shall slip out. I could not bear a third. I will write.

[_She goes to the door._]

DAVID Yes, yes ... Vera.

[_He follows her to the door. He opens it and she slips out._]

MENDEL [_Half-seen at the door, expostulating_]

You, too, Miss Revendal----?

[_Re-enters._]

Oh, David, you have driven away all your friends.

DAVID [_Going to window and looking after VERA_]

Not all, uncle. Not all.

[_He throws his arms boyishly round his uncle._]

I am so happy.

MENDEL Happy?

DAVID She loves me--Vera loves me.

MENDEL Vera?

DAVID Miss Revendal.

MENDEL Have you lost your wits?

[_He throws DAVID off._]

DAVID I don't wonder you're amazed. Maybe you think _I_ wasn't. It is as if an angel should stoop down----

MENDEL [_Hoa.r.s.ely_]

This is true? This is not some stupid _Purim_ joke?

DAVID True and sacred as the sunrise.

MENDEL But you are a Jew!

DAVID Yes, and just think! She was bred up to despise Jews--her father was a Russian baron----

MENDEL If she was the daughter of fifty barons, you cannot marry her.

DAVID [_In pained amaze_]

Uncle!

[_Slowly_]

Then your hankering after the synagogue was serious after all.

MENDEL It is not so much the synagogue--it is the call of our blood through immemorial generations.

DAVID _You_ say that! You who have come to the heart of the Crucible, where the roaring fires of G.o.d are fusing our race with all the others.

MENDEL [_Pa.s.sionately_]

Not _our_ race, not your race and mine.

DAVID What immunity has our race?

[_Meditatively_]

The pride and the prejudice, the dreams and the sacrifices, the traditions and the superst.i.tions, the fasts and the feasts, things n.o.ble and things sordid--they must all into the Crucible.

MENDEL [_With prophetic fury_]

The Jew has been tried in a thousand fires and only tempered and annealed.

DAVID Fires of hate, not fires of love. That is what melts.

MENDEL [_Sneeringly_]

So I see.

DAVID Your sneer is false. The love that melted me was not Vera's--it was the love _America_ showed me--the day she gathered me to her breast.

MENDEL [_Speaking pa.s.sionately and rapidly_]

Many countries have gathered us. Holland took us when we were driven from Spain--but we did not become Dutchmen. Turkey took us when Germany oppressed us, but we have not become Turks.

DAVID These countries were not in the making. They were old civilisations stamped with the seal of creed. In such countries the Jew may be right to stand out. But here in this new secular Republic we must look forward----