You'll tell us next the beds danced.
DAVID
So they did—they shook their legs like mad!
VERA
Oh, why wasn't I there?
[His eyes meet hers at the thought of her presence.]
DAVID
Dear little cripples, I felt as if I could play them all straight again with the love and joy jumping out of this old fiddle.
[He lays his hand caressingly on the violin.]
MENDEL [Gloomily]
But in reality you left them as crooked as ever.
DAVID
No, I didn't.
[He caresses the back of his uncle's head in affectionate rebuke.]
I couldn't play their bones straight, but I played their brains straight. And hunch-brains are worse than hunch-backs. …
[Suddenly perceiving his letter on the desk]
A letter for me!
[He takes it with boyish eagerness, then hesitates to open it.]
VERA [Smiling]
Oh, you may open it!
DAVID [Wistfully]
May I?
VERA [Smiling]
Yes, and quick—or it'll be Shabbos!
[David looks up at her in wonder.]
MENDEL [Smiling]
You read your letter!
DAVID [Opens it eagerly, then smiles broadly with pleasure.]
Oh, Miss Revendal! Isn't that great! To play again at your Settlement. I am getting famous.
VERA
But we can't offer you a fee.
MENDEL [Quickly sotto voce to Vera]
Thank you!
DAVID
A fee! I'd pay a fee to see all those happy immigrants you gather together—Dutchmen and Greeks, Poles and Norwegians, Welsh and Armenians. If you only had Jews, it would be as good as going to Ellis Island.
VERA [Smiling]
What a strange taste! Who on earth wants to go to Ellis Island?
DAVID
Oh, I love going to Ellis Island to watch the ships coming in from Europe, and to think that all those weary, sea-tossed wanderers are feeling what I felt when America first stretched out her great mother-hand to me!
VERA [Softly]
Were you very happy?
DAVID
It was heaven. You must remember that all my life I had heard of America—everybody in our town had friends there or was going there or got money orders from there. The earliest game I played at was selling off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All my life America was waiting, beckoning, shining—the place where God would wipe away tears from off all faces.
[He ends in a half-sob.]
MENDEL [Rises, as in terror]
Now, now, David, don't get excited.
[Approaches him.]
DAVID
To think that the same great torch of liberty which threw its light across all the broad seas and lands into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining wherever men hunger and are oppressed——
MENDEL [Soothingly]
Yes, yes, David.
[Laying hand on his shoulder]
Now sit down and——
DAVID [Unheeding]
Shining over the starving villages of Italy and Ireland, over the swarming stony cities of Poland and Galicia, over the ruined farms of Roumania, over the shambles of Russia——
MENDEL [Pleadingly]
David!
DAVID
Oh, Miss Revendal, when I look at our Statue of Liberty, I just seem to hear the voice of America crying: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest—rest——"
[He is now almost sobbing.]
MENDEL
Don't talk any more—you know it is bad for you.
DAVID
But Miss Revendal asked—and I want to explain to her what America means to me.
MENDEL
You can explain it in your American symphony.
VERA [Eagerly—to David]
You compose?
DAVID [Embarrassed]
Oh, uncle, why did you talk of—? Uncle always—my music is so thin and tinkling. When I am writing my American symphony, it seems like thunder crashing through a forest full of bird songs. But next day—oh, next day!
[He laughs dolefully and turns away.]
VERA
So your music finds inspiration in America?
DAVID
Yes—in the seething of the Crucible.
VERA
The Crucible? I don't understand!
DAVID
Not understand! You, the Spirit of the Settlement!
[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing her.]
Not understand
