IV THE BOY AND THE SCHOOL

High school's terrors developed for me into a more personal terror of that young tough, Jim Geoghen. A thorough bully, he made me feel always that he was aware of my religion, that he could at any moment disclose it to the rest of my classmates and make me the subject of their taunts. No doubt, they all knew as well as he that I was a Jew—but, for the most part, they paid little attention to that fact. A large number of them were Jews themselves: bright-eyed, poorly-dressed little fellows who led the class in studies, but who mingled little with any other element.

Something stronger than myself made me take up a half-hearted companionship with these Jewish boys. I did not want to: I dreaded being one of them—and yet, for all my aunt's sneers and warnings, and my own perverted pride, I always felt more comfortable with them—more as if, in walking home with one of them after school, instead of with some Christian boy, I was where I belonged. I know it was only self-consciousness that gave me this feeling—but after all, comfort must play a big part in our companionships.

Geoghen, with his towering, menacing form, his dull, animal's face, his swinging crutch, his mysterious scapular, haunted me continuously. I remember distinctly dreaming of him once or twice at night—and that he stood over my bedside, in those dreams, with his crutch upraised to strike, and his little leather scapular writhing and hissing like a coiled snake.

One day he did strike me. It was during the noon recess when a group of us were in the asphalted yard, eating our lunches. Mine was always an elaborate package of dainties, wrapped in much tissue paper and doilies. Geoghen, on the other hand, had just a chunk of rye bread, covered over with a slice of ham. His glance, long and greedy, betrayed how envious of me he was.

"Eat ham?" he asked with a snicker.

He did not wait for an answer, but crammed a few shreds of it towards my mouth, his dirty fingers striking my teeth. I jumped away from him and he followed after me, hobbling with amazing swiftness.

"Tried to bite me, eh?" he cried.

I denied it—but he did not listen and, raising his crutch, dealt me a stinging blow with the smaller end of it—though, at that, I was let off easy.

Towards our teacher, Mr. Levi, Geoghen and some of the other boys acted with all the pent-up meanness and savagery of mischievous youth. Mr. Levi's manner invited the twitting, perhaps: his pale, thin face bore always a nettled look, his eyes seemed ever hungry with some dark sorrow, and his mouth was always twitching. There was a fine timidity about his way of handling us. He did not seem to be able to scold or be authoritative.

But when he would be teaching us our Roman History, for instance, and would tell us of the beauties of Italian scenery or of Caesar's centurions lost in the dark, tangled German forests or of how Cleopatra came with purple sails—or of how Cleopatra came to meet Mark Antony in a golden barge with purple sails—then his face would light up with a look that was glorious, and even the rattiest, coarsest of us would thrill and be hushed with the thrill—and know, no matter how dimly, that he was in the presence of a great and beautiful spirit.

But those times were rare; and, as a rule, we made life miserable for Mr. Levi. He seemed to feel, I am sure, the handicap of his religion—to know that the Irish boys of the class, and dark, sullen-faced Italians, were thinking it an insult to be taught by a Jew—and that they were only waiting for the opportunity for an outburst.

It came at the end of my year in high school. That last month is always a rebellious one. The spring weather, the sense of approaching vacation make gamins of the quietest of us.

Mr. Levi had been absent from the room for a little while. Geoghen in that time had left his seat, hobbled up to the dais and opened the teacher's desk. This bit of boldness drew a crowd of laughing boys to the front of the room. They rummaged the desk, overturning and scattering its papers, tumbling books to the floor.

Suddenly one of them stooped and picked up a book which lay sprawled with its pages open. There was an immediate shouting, coarse and repellent to hear.

The book of Mr. Levi's which they had found, was a Hebrew prayer book.

Geoghen took it from the other boy. He held it open and up close to his leering face. Then slowly, with the others in his trail, he began to march around the room, making believe to sing a heathenish jargon which he must have thought to resemble Hebrew, twisting his face grotesquely to seem like a Jew's, making lewd gestures—breaking off now and again to shriek with laughter at the comicality of it all.

Then suddenly Mr. Levi returned.

He charged into the line, spun Geoghen about and tore the book from his hands. Geoghen reached for it, as if loath to let go of so much fun—his face impudent, grossly humorous—and Mr. Levi knocked him down.

I shall never forget how the teacher looked. His pale face, paler than ever, gleamed as if it were cut smooth out of marble. The eyes flashed with a noble fury. The mouth had stopped its twitching and was drawn taut, and his teeth showed at the corners of it. And when he struck at Geoghen his whole slender tenseness seemed to be thrown into the blow.

The crippled lad lay there for a moment, stunned. Then he got unsteadily to his feet and picked up his crutch. A stream of profanity began to come from his mouth. I don't think any of us had ever heard such talk before. All the obscene things which the lowest scum of humanity can pick up in the course of living years in the gutter, he spat out at Mr. Levi.

But the teacher had gone back to his dais and desk and stood facing him silently, calmly, a look of mild reproach taking the place of the anger in his eyes. He let Geoghen have his miserable say, and then silently pointed to the door and motioned to him to get out. And Geoghen went.

That wasn't the end of it, though. For, within a week the newspapers had taken up the incident and enlarged it, exaggerated it—and Geoghen's father who, it seems, was a political vassal of the alderman of this district, had managed to have Mr. Levi brought before the Board of Education for an investigation.

Mr. Levi had no show in that trial. He told his story truthfully. I remember that, according to the newspapers, he made scarcely any effort to defend himself. He merely explained that he had caught this boy defiling the traditions of the Jewish faith, mocking what was most sacred to him, and that he was indeed sorry that, in order to wrest the book away from his impure hands, he had had to strike and knock down a crippled pupil.

The newspapers called Mr. Levi a dangerous and cruel fanatic, the Board of Education decided that he was incompetent, and Mr. Levi—his face paler than ever, his manner more mild and saddened—announced to us on the last day of school that he would not be with us in the next year.

I felt somehow that I would have liked to say goodby to him, but I was afraid that he would ask me why I, in his absence on that terrible day, had not prevented Geoghen from doing what he did—and my conscience made a coward of me. I had a foolish idea, besides, that he did not like me. Any man who cared so much for his religion would not be able to respect a boy in my position. It was all very unfortunate—I was sorry for him, to be sure—but I must not sympathize too much with him.

I told my aunt of the affair, of course, and she shuddered with distaste.

"What a fearful lot of ruffians they must be!" she sighed. "And worst of all, a Russian Jew for a teacher!"

I spent the summer at a Y. M. C. A. camp on the Maine coast. There were no other Jewish boys there, but my aunt had managed to have me placed on the roll-call somehow. I was glad enough of it. I did not want another summer at a fashionable hotel in her and other ladies' company.

Of course, I was "Ike" to the boys of the camp. They were a good, rough-and-ready sort who swam well, ran, tramped, sang rollicking songs on weekdays and hymns on Sundays, grew brown and muscle-bound and manly. Such teasing as I had from them was good-natured, and I suppose I should have taken it in the same spirit. But I had none of their assurance, was like a stranger in a strange land—and came out of the summer with a still deeper shrinking from contact with other boys.

High school began again, went on and on from lagging month to month, and soon enough was over for a second year. But this time my aunt had been as much aroused as she could be to the baffling condition of my mind and spirits. I had by no means lost the old loneliness. I had learned to bear it with greater patience, but it still galled and depressed me.

Only, after that evening when I stood outside the synagogue, I had some dim conception of what the inevitable cure would have to be.

At any rate, my aunt called in the nerve specialist a second time. He insisted that I must be sent away. Perhaps he saw into the unsympathetic quality of our home life.

This sent my aunt into tremors of delight. She had now a legitimate excuse for shipping me off to a fashionable boarding school of some sort. For days she made a feverish study of monogrammed and photogravured catalogues from various schools in the East. It was upon a military school on the upper Hudson that her choice finally fell. And I am sure that this was due to the expensive appearance, the coat of arms and Latin motto of the catalogue's cover.

What ever it was, her choice was made. She talked a good deal of splendid uniforms, of flags unfurled to the sunset—and fired me with a lust for the new chapter in my life.