The Melting-Pot

But not for always?

[VERA hangs her head. He comes nearer. Passionately] Promise me that you-that I--

[He takes her hand again.]

VERA [Melting at his touch, breathes]

Yes, yes, David.

DAVID

Miss Revendal!

[She falls into his arms.]

VERA

My dear! my dear!

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 nobility in particular.

DAVID [Amazed, half-releasing her]

You are noble?

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 [Hoarsely]

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 God are fusing our race with all the others.

MENDEL [Passionately]

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 superstitions, the fasts and the feasts, things noble 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 passionately 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.