His Family - Ernest Poole [39]
"And perhaps at last you will have a religion," he continued, in fervent tones. "You see, with us Jews--and with Christians, too--the old religion, it is gone. And in its place there is nothing strong. And so the young people go all to pieces. They dance and they drink. If you go to those dance halls you say, 'They are crazy!' For dancing alone is not enough. And you say, 'These people must have a religion.' You ask, 'Where can I find a new God?' And you reply, 'There is no God.' And then you must be very sad. You know how it is? You feel too free. And you feel scared and lonely. You look up at the stars. There are millions. You are only a speck of dust--on one.
"But then you come to my library. And you see those hungry people--more hungry than men have ever been. And you see those books upon the shelves. And you know when they come together at last, when that power to think as clear as the sun comes into the souls of those people so hungry, then we shall have a new god for the world. For there is no end to what they shall do," Isadore ended huskily.
Roger felt a lump in his throat. He glanced into his daughter's eyes and saw a suspicious brightness there. Isadore looked at her happily.
"You see?" he said to Roger. "When she came here to-night she was tired, half sick. But now she is all filled with life!"
* * * * *
Later, on the street outside when Isadore had left them, Deborah turned to her father:
"Before we go home, there's one place more."
And they went to a building not far away, a new structure twelve floors high which rose out of the neighboring tenements. It had been built, she told him, by a socialist daily paper. A dull night watchman half asleep took them in the elevator up to the top floor of the building, where in a bustling, clanking loft the paper was just going to press. Deborah seemed to know one of the foremen. He smiled and nodded and led the way through the noise and bustle to a large glass door at one end. This she opened and stepped out upon a fire escape so broad it was more like a balcony. And with the noise of the presses subdued, from their high perch they looked silently down.
All around them for miles, it seemed, stretched dark uneven fields of roofs, with the narrow East River winding its way through the midst of them to the harbor below, silvery, dim and cool and serene, opening to the distant sea. From the bridges rearing high over the river, lights by thousands sparkled down. But directly below the spot where they stood was only a dull hazy glow, rising out of dark tenement streets where dimly they could just make out numberless moving shadowy forms, restless crowds too hot to sleep. The roofs were covered everywhere with men and women and children--families, families, families, all merged together in the dark. And from them rose into the night a ceaseless murmur of voices, laughing and joking, quarreling, loving and hating, demanding, complaining, and fighting and slaving and scheming for bread and the means of stark existence. But among these struggling multitudes confusedly did Roger feel the brighter presence here and there of more aspiring figures, small groups in glaring, stilling rooms down there beneath the murky dark, young people fiercely arguing, groping blindly for new gods. And all these voices, to his ears, merged into one deep thrilling hum, these lights into one quivering glow, that went up toward the silent stars.
And there came to him a feeling which he had often had before in many different places--that he himself was a part of all this, the great, blind, wistful soul of mankind, which had been here before he was born and would be here when he was dead--still groping, yearning, struggling upward, on and on--to something distant as the sun. And still would he be a part of it all, through the eager lives