"Prosaic miles of street stretch all around,
Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned
By arches that with thund'rous trains resound,
And throbbing wires that galvanize the land;
Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand;
The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;
The last burlesque is playing in the Strand--
In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned.
Yet in ten thousand homes this April night
An ancient people celebrates its birth
To Freedom, with a reverential mirth,
With customs quaint and many a hoary rite,
Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright,
Its God shall be the God of all the Earth."
To an imaginative child like Esther, _Seder_ night was a charmed time. The strange symbolic dishes--the bitter herbs and the sweet mixture of apples, almonds, spices and wine, the roasted bone and the lamb, the salt water and the four cups of raisin wine, the great round unleavened cakes, with their mottled surfaces, some specially thick and sacred, the special Hebrew melodies and verses with their jingle of rhymes and assonances, the quaint ceremonial with its striking moments, as when the finger was dipped in the wine and the drops sprinkled over the shoulder in repudiation of the ten plagues of Egypt cabalistically magnified to two hundred and fifty; all this penetrated deep into her consciousness and made the recurrence of every Passover coincide with a rush of pleasant anticipations and a sense of the special privilege of being born a happy Jewish child. Vaguely, indeed, did she co-ordinate the celebration with the history enshrined in it or with the prospective history of her race. It was like a tale out of the fairy-books, this miraculous deliverance of her forefathers in the dim haze of antiquity; true enough but not more definitely realized on that account. And yet not easily dissoluble links were being forged with her race, which has anticipated Positivism in vitalizing history by making it religion.
The _Matzoth_ that Esther ate were not dainty--they were coarse, of the quality called "seconds," for even the unleavened bread of charity is not necessarily delicate eating--but few things melted sweeter on the palate than a segment of a _Matso_ dipped in cheap raisin wine: the unconventionally of the food made life less common, more picturesque. Simple Ghetto children into whose existence the ceaseless round of fast and feast, of prohibited and enjoyed pleasures, of varying species of food, brought change and relief! Imprisoned in the area of a few narrow streets, unlovely and sombre, muddy and ill-smelling, immured in dreary houses and surrounded with mean and depressing sights and sounds, the spirit of childhood took radiance and color from its own inner light and the alchemy of youth could still transmute its lead to gold. No little princess in the courts of fairyland could feel a fresher interest and pleasure in life than Esther sitting at the _Seder_ table, where her father--no longer a slave in Egypt--leaned royally upon two chairs supplied with pillows as the _Din_ prescribes. Not even the monarch's prime minister could have had a meaner opinion of Pharaoh than Moses Ansell in this symbolically sybaritic attitude. A live dog is better than a dead lion, as a great teacher in Israel had said. How much better then a live lion than a dead dog? Pharaoh, for all his purple and fine linen and his treasure cities, was at the bottom of the Red Sea, smitten with two hundred and fifty plagues, and even if, as tradition asserted, he had been made to live on and on to be King of Nineveh, and to give ear to the warnings of Jonah, prophet and whale-explorer, even so he was but dust and ashes for other sinners to cover themselves withal; but he, Moses Ansell, was the honored master of his household, enjoying a foretaste of the lollings of the righteous in Paradise; nay, more, dispensing hospitality to the poor and the hungry. Little fleas have lesser fleas, and Moses Ansell had never fallen so low but that, on this night of nights when the slave sits with the master on equal terms, he could manage to entertain a Passover guest, usually some newly-arrived Greener, or some nondescript waif and stray returned to Judaism for the occasion and accepting a seat at the board in that spirit of _camaraderie_ which is one of the most delightful features of the Jewish pauper. _Seder_ was a ceremonial to be taken in none too solemn and sober a spirit, and there was an abundance of unreproved giggling throughout from the little ones, especially in those happy days when mother was alive and tried to steal the _Afikuman_ or _Matso_ specially laid aside for the final morsel, only to be surrendered to father when he promised to grant her whatever she wished. Alas! it is to be feared Mrs. Ansell's wishes did not soar high. There was more giggling when the youngest talking son--it was poor Benjamin in Esther's earliest recollections--opened the ball by inquiring in a peculiarly pitched incantation and with an air of blank ignorance why this night differed from all other nights--in view of the various astonishing peculiarities of food and behavior (enumerated in detail) visible to his vision. To which Moses and the _Bube_ and the rest of the company (including the questioner) invariably replied in corresponding sing-song: "Slaves have we been in Egypt," proceeding to recount at great length, stopping for refreshment in the middle, the never-cloying tale of the great deliverance, with irrelevant digressions concerning Haman and Daniel and the wise men of Bona Berak, the whole of this most ancient of the world's extant domestic rituals terminating with an allegorical ballad like the "house that Jack built," concerning a kid that was eaten by a cat, which was bitten by a dog, which was beaten by a stick, which was burned by a fire, which was quenched by some water, which was drunk by an ox, which was slaughtered by a slaughterer, who was slain by the Angel of Death, who was slain by the Holy One, blessed be He.
In wealthy houses this _Hagadah_ was read from manuscripts with rich illuminations--the one development of pictorial art among the Jews--but the Ansells had wretchedly-printed little books containing quaint but unintentionally comic wood-cuts, pre-Raphaelite in perspective and ludicrous in draughtsmanship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption, Moses burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text. In one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding bomb intended to represent the Shechinah or divine glory. In another, Sarah attired in a matronly cap and a fashionable jacket and skirt, was standing behind the door of the tent, a solid detached villa on the brink of a lake, whereon ships and gondolas floated, what time Abraham welcomed the three celestial messengers, unobtrusively disguised with heavy pinions. What delight as the quaking of each of the four cups of wine loomed in sight, what disappointment and mutual bantering when the cup had merely to be raised in the hand, what chaff of the greedy Solomon who was careful not to throw away a drop during the digital manoeuvres when the wine must be jerked from the cup at the mention of each plague. And what a solemn moment was that when the tallest goblet was filled to the brim for the delectation of the prophet Elijah and the door thrown open for his entry. Could one almost hear the rustling of the prophet's spirit through the room? And what though the level of the wine subsided not a barley-corn? Elijah, though there was no difficulty in his being in all parts of the world simultaneously, could hardly compass the greater miracle of emptying so many million goblets. Historians have traced this custom of opening the door to the necessity of asking the world to look in and see for itself that no blood of Christian child figured in the ceremonial--and for once science has illumined naive superstition with a tragic glow more poetic still. For the London Ghetto persecution had dwindled to an occasional bellowing through the keyhole, as the local rowdies heard the unaccustomed melodies trolled forth from jocund lungs and then the singers would stop for a moment, startled, and some one would say: "Oh, it's only a Christian rough," and take up the thread of song.
And then, when the _Ajikuman_ had been eaten and the last cup of wine drunk, and it was time to go to bed, what a sweet sense of sanctity and security still reigned. No need to say your prayers to-night, beseeching the guardian of Israel, who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, to watch over you and chase away the evil spirits; the angels are with you--Gabriel on your right and Raphael on your left, and Michael behind you. All about the Ghetto the light of the Passover rested, transfiguring the dreary rooms and illumining the gray lives.
Dutch Debby sat beside Mrs. Simons at the table of that good soul's married daughter; the same who had suckled little Sarah. Esther's frequent eulogiums had secured the poor lonely narrow-chested seamstress this enormous concession and privilege. Bobby squatted on the mat in the passage ready to challenge Elijah. At this table there were two pieces of fried fish sent to Mrs. Simons by Esther Ansell. They represented the greatest revenge of Esther's life, and she felt remorseful towards Malka, remembering to whose gold she owed this proud moment. She made up her mind to write her a letter of apology in her best hand.
At the Belcovitches' the ceremonial was long, for the master of it insisted on translating the Hebrew into jargon, phrase by phrase; but no one found it tedious, especially after supper. Pesach was there, hand in hand with Fanny, their wedding very near now; and Becky lolled royally in all her glory, aggressive of ringlet, insolently unattached, a conscious beacon of bedazzlement to the pauper _Pollack_ we last met at Reb Shemuel's Sabbath table, and there, too, was Chayah, she of the ill-matched legs. Be sure that Malka had returned the clothes-brush, and was throned in complacent majesty at Milly's table; and that Sugarman the _Shadchan_ forgave his monocular consort her lack of a fourth uncle; while Joseph Strelitski, dreamer of dreams, rich with commissions from "Passover" cigars, brooded on the Great Exodus. Nor could the Shalotten _Shammos_ be other than beaming, ordering the complex ceremonial with none to contradict; nor Karlkammer be otherwise than in the seven hundred and seventy-seventh heaven, which, calculated by _Gematriyah_, can easily be reduced to the seventh.
Shosshi Shmendrik did not fail to explain the deliverance to the ex-widow Finkelstein, nor Guedalyah, the greengrocer, omit to hold his annual revel at the head of half a hundred merry "pauper-aliens." Christian roughs bawled derisively in the street, especially when doors were opened for Elijah; but hard words break no bones, and the Ghetto was uplifted above insult.
Melchitsedek Pinchas was the Passover guest at Reb Shemuel's table, for the reek of his Sabbath cigar had not penetrated to the old man's nostrils. It was a great night for Pinchas; wrought up to fervid nationalistic aspirations by the memory of the Egyptian deliverance, which he yet regarded as mythical in its details. It was a terrible night for Hannah, sitting opposite to him under the fire of his poetic regard. She was pale and rigid, moving and speaking mechanically. Her father glanced towards her every now and again, compassionately, but with trust that the worst was over. Her mother realized the crisis much less keenly than he, not having been in the heart of the storm. She had never even seen her intended son-in-law except through the lens of a camera. She was sorry--that was all. Now that Hannah had broken the ice, and encouraged one young man, there was hope for the others.
Hannah's state of mind was divined by neither parent. Love itself is blind in those tragic silences which divide souls.
All night, after that agonizing scene, she did not sleep; the feverish activity of her mind rendered that impossible, and unerring instinct told her that David was awake also--that they two, amid the silence of a sleeping city, wrestled in the darkness with the same terrible problem, and were never so much at one as in this their separation. A letter came for her in the morning. It was unstamped, and had evidently been dropped into the letter-box by David's hand. It appointed an interview at ten o'clock at a corner of the Ruins; of course, he could not come to the house. Hannah was out: with a little basket to make some purchases. There was a cheery hum of life about the Ghetto; a pleasant festival bustle; the air resounded with the raucous clucking of innumerable fowls on their way to the feather-littered, blood-stained shambles, where professional cut-throats wielded sacred knives; boys armed with little braziers of glowing coal ran about the Ruins, offering halfpenny pyres for the immolation of the last crumbs of leaven. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the two tragic figures whose lives turned on the brief moments of conversation snatched in the thick of the hurrying crowd.
David's clouded face lightened a little as he saw Hannah advancing towards him.
I knew you would come, he said, taking her hand for a moment. His palm burned, hers was cold and limp. The stress of a great tempest of emotion had driven the blood from her face and limbs, but inwardly she was on fire. As they looked each read revolt in the other's eyes.
Let us walk on, he said.
They moved slowly forwards. The ground was slippery and muddy under foot. The sky was gray. But the gayety of the crowds neutralized the dull squalor of the scene.
Well? he said, in a low tone.
I thought you had something to propose, she murmured.
Let me carry your basket.
No, no; go on. What have you determined?
Not to give you up, Hannah, while I live.
Ah! she said quietly. "I have thought it all over, too, and I shall not leave you. But our marriage by Jewish law is impossible; we could not marry at any synagogue without my father's knowledge; and he would at once inform the authorities of the bar to our union."
I know, dear. But let us go to America, where no one will know. There we shall find plenty of Rabbis to marry us. There is nothing to tie me to this country. I can start my business in America just as well as here. Your parents, too, will think more kindly of you when you are across the seas. Forgiveness is easier at a distance. What do you say, dear?
She shook her head.
Why should we be married in a synagogue? she asked.
Why? repeated he, puzzled.
Yes, why?
Because we are Jews.
You would use Jewish forms to outwit Jewish laws? she asked quietly.
No, no. Why should you put it that way? I don't doubt the Bible is all right in making the laws it does. After the first heat of my anger was over, I saw the whole thing in its proper bearings. Those laws about priests were only intended for the days when we had a Temple, and in any case they cannot apply to a merely farcical divorce like yours. It is these old fools,--I beg your pardon,--it is these fanatical Rabbis who insist on giving them a rigidity God never meant them to have, just as they still make a fuss about _kosher_ meat. In America they are less strict; besides, they will not know I am a _Cohen_.
No. David, said Hannah firmly. "There must be no more deceit. What need have we to seek the sanction of any Rabbi? If Jewish law cannot marry us without our hiding something, then I will have nothing to do with Jewish law. You know my opinions: I haven't gone so deeply into religious questions as you have--"
Don't be sarcastic, he interrupted.
I have always been sick to death of this eternal ceremony, this endless coil of laws winding round us and cramping our lives at every turn; and now it has become too oppressive to be borne any longer. Why should we let it ruin our lives? And why, if we determine to break from it, shall we pretend to keep to it? What do you care for Judaism? You eat _triphas_, you smoke on _Shabbos_ when you want to--
Yes, I know, perhaps I'm wrong. But everybody does it now-a-days. When I was a boy nobody dared be seen riding in a 'bus on _Shabbos_--now you meet lots. But all that is only old-fashioned Judaism. There must be a God, else we shouldn't be here, and it's impossible to believe that Jesus was He. A man must have some religion, and there isn't anything better. But that's neither here nor there. If you don't care for my plan, he concluded anxiously, "what's yours?"
Let us be married honestly by a Registrar.
Any way you like, dear, he said readily, "so long as we are married--and quickly."
As quickly as you like.
He seized her disengaged hand and pressed it passionately. "That's my own darling Hannah. Oh, if you could realize what I felt last night when you seemed to be drifting away from me."
There was an interval of silence, each thinking excitedly. Then David said:
But have you the courage to do this and remain in London?
I have courage for anything. But, as you say, it might be better to travel. It will be less of a break if we break away altogether--change everything at once. It sounds contradictory, but you understand what I mean.
Perfectly. It is difficult to live a new life with all the old things round you. Besides, why should we give our friends the chance to cold-shoulder us? They will find all sorts of malicious reasons why we were not married in a _Shool_, and if they hit on the true one they may even regard our marriage as illegal. Let us go to America, as I proposed.
Very well. Do we go direct from London?
No, from Liverpool.
Then we can be married at Liverpool before sailing?
A good idea. But when do we start?
At once. To-night. The sooner the better.
He looked at her quickly. "Do you mean it?" he said. His heart beat violently as if it would burst. Waves of dazzling color swam before his eyes.
I mean it, she said gravely and quietly. "Do you think I could face my father and mother, knowing I was about to wound them to the heart? Each day of delay would be torture to me. Oh, why is religion such a curse?" She paused, overwhelmed for a moment by the emotion she had been suppressing. She resumed in the same quiet manner. "Yes, we must break away at once. We have kept our last Passover. We shall have to eat leavened food--it will be a decisive break. Take me to Liverpool, David, this very day. You are my chosen husband; I trust in you."
She looked at him frankly with her dark eyes that stood out in lustrous relief against the pale skin. He gazed into those eyes, and a flash as from the inner heaven of purity pierced his soul.
Thank you, dearest, he said in a voice with tears in it.
They walked on silently. Speech was as superfluous as it was inadequate. When they spoke again their voices were calm. The peace that comes of resolute decision was theirs at last, and each was full of the joy of daring greatly for the sake of their mutual love. Petty as their departure from convention might seem to the stranger, to them it loomed as a violent breach with all the traditions of the Ghetto and their past lives; they were venturing forth into untrodden paths, holding each other's hand.
Jostling the loquacious crowd, in the unsavory by-ways of the Ghetto, in the gray chillness of a cloudy morning, Hannah seemed to herself to walk in enchanted gardens, breathing the scent of love's own roses mingled with the keen salt air that blew in from the sea of liberty. A fresh, new blessed life was opening before her. The clogging vapors of the past were rolling away at last. The unreasoning instinctive rebellion, bred of ennui and brooding dissatisfaction with the conditions of her existence and the people about her, had by a curious series of accidents been hastened to its acutest development; thought had at last fermented into active resolution, and the anticipation of action flooded her soul with peace and joy, in which all recollection of outside humanity was submerged.
What time can you be ready by? he said before they parted.
Any time, she answered. "I can take nothing with me. I dare not pack anything. I suppose I can get necessaries in Liverpool. I have merely my hat and cloak to put on."
But that will be enough, he said ardently. "I want but you."
I know it, dear, she answered gently. "If you were as other Jewish young men I could not give up all else for you."
You shall never regret it, Hannah, he said, moved to his depths, as the full extent of her sacrifice for love dawned upon him. He was a vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was tearing herself away from deep roots in the soil of home, as well as from the conventions of her circle and her sex. Once again he trembled with a sense of unworthiness, a sudden anxious doubt if he were noble enough to repay her trust. Mastering his emotion, he went on: "I reckon my packing and arrangements for leaving the country will take me all day at least. I must see my bankers if nobody else. I shan't take leave of anybody, that would arouse suspicion. I will be at the corner of your street with a cab at nine, and we'll catch the ten o'clock express from Euston. If we missed that, we should have to wait till midnight. It will be dark; no one is likely to notice me. I will get a dressing-case for you and anything else I can think of and add it to my luggage."
Very well, she said simply.
They did not kiss; she gave him her hand, and, with a sudden inspiration, he slipped the ring he had brought the day before on her finger. The tears came into her eyes as she saw what he had done. They looked at each other through a mist, feeling bound beyond human intervention.
Good-bye, she faltered.
Good-bye, he said. "At nine."
At nine, she breathed. And hurried off without looking behind.
It was a hard day, the minutes crawling reluctantly into the hours, the hours dragging themselves wearily on towards the night. It was typical April weather--squalls and sunshine in capricious succession. When it drew towards dusk she put on her best clothes for the Festival, stuffing a few precious mementoes into her pockets and wearing her father's portrait next to her lover's at her breast. She hung a travelling cloak and a hat on a peg near the hall-door ready to hand as she left the house. Of little use was she in the kitchen that day, but her mother was tender to her as knowing her sorrow. Time after time Hannah ascended to her bedroom to take a last look at the things she had grown so tired of--the little iron bed, the wardrobe, the framed lithographs, the jug and basin with their floral designs. All things seemed strangely dear now she was seeing them for the last time. Hannah turned over everything--even the little curling iron, and the cardboard box full of tags and rags of ribbon and chiffon and lace and crushed artificial flowers, and the fans with broken sticks and the stays with broken ribs, and the petticoats with dingy frills and the twelve-button ball gloves with dirty fingers, and the soiled pink wraps. Some of her books, especially her school-prizes, she would have liked to take with her--but that could not be. She went over the rest of the house, too, from top to bottom. It weakened her but she could not conquer the impulse of farewell, finally she wrote a letter to her parents and hid it under her looking-glass, knowing they would search her room for traces of her. She looked curiously at herself as she did so; the color had not returned to her cheeks. She knew she was pretty and always strove to look nice for the mere pleasure of the thing. All her instincts were aesthetic. Now she had the air of a saint wrought up to spiritual exaltation. She was almost frightened by the vision. She had seen her face frowning, weeping, overcast with gloom, never with an expression so fateful. It seemed as if her resolution was writ large upon every feature for all to read.
In the evening she accompanied her father to _Shool_. She did not often go in the evening, and the thought of going only suddenly occurred to her. Heaven alone knew if she would ever enter a synagogue again--the visit would be part of her systematic farewell. Reb Shemuel took it as a symptom of resignation to the will of God, and he laid his hand lightly on her head in silent blessing, his eyes uplifted gratefully to Heaven. Too late Hannah felt the misconception and was remorseful. For the festival occasion Reb Shemuel elected to worship at the Great Synagogue; Hannah, seated among the sparse occupants of the Ladies' Gallery and mechanically fingering a _Machzor_, looked down for the last time on the crowded auditorium where the men sat in high hats and holiday garments. Tall wax-candles twinkled everywhere, in great gilt chandeliers depending from the ceiling, in sconces stuck about the window ledges, in candelabra branching from the walls. There was an air of holy joy about the solemn old structure with its massive pillars, its small side-windows, high ornate roof, and skylights, and its gilt-lettered tablets to the memory of pious donors.
The congregation gave the responses with joyous unction. Some of the worshippers tempered their devotion by petty gossip and the beadle marshalled the men in low hats within the iron railings, sonorously sounding his automatic amens. But to-night Hannah had no eye for the humors that were wont to awaken her scornful amusement--a real emotion possessed her, the same emotion of farewell which she had experienced in her own bedroom. Her eyes wandered towards the Ark, surmounted by the stone tablets of the Decalogue, and the sad dark orbs filled with the brooding light of childish reminiscence. Once when she was a little girl her father told her that on Passover night an angel sometimes came out of the doors of the Ark from among the scrolls of the Law. For years she looked out for that angel, keeping her eyes patiently fixed on the curtain. At last she gave him up, concluding her vision was insufficiently purified or that he was exhibiting at other synagogues. To-night her childish fancy recurred to her--she found herself involuntarily looking towards the Ark and half-expectant of the angel.
She had not thought of the _Seder_ service she would have to partially sit through, when she made her appointment with David in the morning, but when during the day it occurred to her, a cynical smile traversed her lips. How apposite it was! To-night would mark _her_ exodus from slavery. Like her ancestors leaving Egypt, she, too, would partake of a meal in haste, staff in hand ready for the journey. With what stout heart would she set forth, she, too, towards the promised land! Thus had she thought some hours since, but her mood was changed now. The nearer the _Seder_ approached, the more she shrank from the family ceremonial. A panic terror almost seized her now, in the synagogue, when the picture of the domestic interior flashed again before her mental vision--she felt like flying into the street, on towards her lover without ever looking behind. Oh, why could David not have fixed the hour earlier, so as to spare her an ordeal so trying to the nerves? The black-stoled choir was singing sweetly, Hannah banished her foolish flutter of alarm by joining in quietly, for congregational singing was regarded rather as an intrusion on the privileges of the choir and calculated to put them out in their elaborate four-part fugues unaided by an organ.
With everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of Israel, Thy people, she sang: "a Law and commandments, statutes and judgments hast thou taught us. Therefore, O Lord our God, when we lie down and when we rise up we will meditate on Thy statutes: yea, we will rejoice in the words of Thy Law and in Thy commandments for ever, for they are our life and the length of our days, and will meditate on them day and night. And mayest Thou never take away Thy love from us. Blessed art Thou. O Lord, who lovest Thy people Israel."
Hannah scanned the English version of the Hebrew in her _Machzor_ as she sang. Though she could translate every word, the meaning of what she sang was never completely conceived by her consciousness. The power of song over the soul depends but little on the words. Now the words seem fateful, pregnant with special message. Her eyes were misty when the fugues were over. Again she looked towards the Ark with its beautifully embroidered curtain, behind which were the precious scrolls with their silken swathes and their golden bells and shields and pomegranates. Ah, if the angel would come out now! If only the dazzling vision gleamed for a moment on the white steps. Oh, why did he not come and save her?
Save her? From what? She asked herself the question fiercely, in defiance of the still, small voice. What wrong had she ever done that she so young and gentle should be forced to make so cruel a choice between the old and the new? This was the synagogue she should have been married in; stepping gloriously and honorably under the canopy, amid the pleasant excitement of a congratulatory company. And now she was being driven to exile and the chillness of secret nuptials. No, no; she did not want to be saved in the sense of being kept in the fold: it was the creed that was culpable, not she.
The service drew to an end. The choir sang the final hymn, the _Chasan_ giving the last verse at great length and with many musical flourishes.
The dead will God quicken in the abundance of His loving kindness. Blessed for evermore be His glorious name.
There was a clattering of reading-flaps and seat-lids and the congregation poured out, amid the buzz of mutual "Good _Yomtovs."_ Hannah rejoined her father, the sense of injury and revolt still surging in her breast. In the fresh starlit air, stepping along the wet gleaming pavements, she shook off the last influences of the synagogue; all her thoughts converged on the meeting with David, on the wild flight northwards while good Jews were sleeping off the supper in celebration of their Redemption; her blood coursed quickly through her veins, she was in a fever of impatience for the hour to come.
And thus it was that she sat at the _Seder_ table, as in a dream, with images of desperate adventure flitting in her brain. The face of her lover floated before her eyes, close, close to her own as it should have been to-night had there been justice in Heaven. Now and again the scene about her flashed in upon her consciousness, piercing her to the heart. When Levi asked the introductory question, it set her wondering what would become of him? Would manhood bring enfranchisement to him as womanhood was doing to her? What sort of life would he lead the poor Reb and his wife? The omens were scarcely auspicious; but a man's charter is so much wider than a woman's; and Levi might do much without paining them as she would pain them. Poor father! The white hairs were predominating in his beard, she had never noticed before how old he was getting. And mother--her face was quite wrinkled. Ah, well; we must all grow old. What a curious man Melchitsedek Pinchas was, singing so heartily the wonderful story. Judaism certainly produced some curious types. A smile crossed her face as she thought of herself as his bride.
At supper she strove to eat a little, knowing she would need it. In bringing some plates from the kitchen she looked at her hat and cloak, carefully hung up on the peg in the hall nearest the street door. It would take but a second to slip them on. She nodded her head towards them, as who should say "Yes, we shall meet again very soon." During the meal she found herself listening to the poet's monologues delivered in his high-pitched creaking voice.
Melchitsedek Pinchas had much to say about a certain actor-manager who had spoiled the greatest jargon-play of the century and a certain labor-leader who, out of the funds of his gulls, had subsidized the audience to stay away, and (though here the Reb cut him short for Hannah's sake) a certain leading lady, one of the quartette of mistresses of a certain clergyman, who had been beguiled by her paramour into joining the great English conspiracy to hound down Melchitsedek Pinchas,--all of whom he would shoot presently and had in the meantime enshrined like dead flies in the amber of immortal acrostics. The wind began to shake the shutters as they finished supper and presently the rain began to patter afresh against the panes. Reb Shemuel distributed the pieces of _Afikuman_ with a happy sigh, and, lolling on his pillows and almost forgetting his family troubles in the sense of Israel's blessedness, began to chant the Grace like the saints in the Psalm who sing aloud on their couches. The little Dutch clock on the mantelpiece began to strike. Hannah did not move. Pale and trembling she sat riveted to her chair. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight. She counted the strokes, as if to count them was the only means of telling the hour, as if her eyes had not been following the hands creeping, creeping. She had a mad hope the striking would cease with the eight and there would be still time to think. _Nine_! She waited, her ear longing for the tenth stroke. If it were only ten o'clock, it would be too late. The danger would be over. She sat, mechanically watching the hands. They crept on. It was five minutes past the hour. She felt sure that David was already at the corner of the street, getting wet and a little impatient. She half rose from her chair. It was not a nice night for an elopement. She sank back into her seat. Perhaps they had best wait till to-morrow night. She would go and tell David so. But then he would not mind the weather; once they had met he would bundle her into the cab and they would roll on leaving the old world irrevocably behind. She sat in a paralysis of volition; rigid on her chair, magnetized by the warm comfortable room, the old familiar furniture, the Passover table--with its white table-cloth and its decanter and wine-glasses, the faces of her father and mother eloquent with the appeal of a thousand memories. The clock ticked on loudly, fiercely, like a summoning drum; the rain beat an impatient tattoo on the window-panes, the wind rattled the doors and casements. "Go forth, go forth," they called, "go forth where your lover waits you, to bear you of into the new and the unknown." And the louder they called the louder Reb Shemuel trolled his hilarious Grace: _May He who maketh Peace in the High Heavens, bestow Peace upon us and upon all Israel and say ye, Amen_.
The hands of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that her father was motioning to her. Instinctively she understood; rose automatically and went to the door; then a great shock of returning recollection whelmed her soul. She stood rooted to the floor. Her father had filled Elijah's goblet with wine and it was her annual privilege to open the door for the prophet's entry. Intuitively she knew that David was pacing madly in front of the house, not daring to make known his presence, and perhaps cursing her cowardice. A chill terror seized her. She was afraid to face him--his will was strong and mighty; her fevered imagination figured it as the wash of a great ocean breaking on the doorstep threatening to sweep her off into the roaring whirlpool of doom. She threw the door of the room wide and paused as if her duty were done.
_Nu, nu_, muttered Reb Shemuel, indicating the outer door. It was so near that he always had that opened, too.
Hannah tottered forwards through the few feet of hall. The cloak and hat on the peg nodded to her sardonically. A wild thrill of answering defiance shot through her: she stretched out her hands towards them. "Fly, fly; it is your last chance," said the blood throbbing in her ears. But her hand dropped to her side and in that brief instant of terrible illumination, Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her future life, stretching straight and unlovely between great blank walls, on, on to a solitary grave; knew that the strength had been denied her to diverge to the right or left, that for her there would be neither Exodus nor Redemption. Strong in the conviction of her weakness she noisily threw open the street door. The face of David, sallow and ghastly, loomed upon her in the darkness. Great drops of rain fell from his hat and ran down his cheeks like tears. His clothes seemed soaked with rain.
At last! he exclaimed in a hoarse, glad whisper. "What has kept you?"
_Boruch Habo_! (Welcome art thou who arrivest) came the voice of Reb Shemuel front within, greeting the prophet.
Hush! said Hannah. "Listen a moment."
The sing-song undulations of the old Rabbi's voice mingled harshly with the wail of the wind: "_Pour out Thy wrath on the heathen who acknowledge Thee not and upon the Kingdoms which invoke not Thy name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his Temple. Pour out Thy indignation upon them and cause Thy fierce anger to overtake them. Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord_."
Quick, Hannah! whispered David. "We can't wait a moment more. Put on your things. We shall miss the train."
A sudden inspiration came to her. For answer she drew his ring out of her pocket and slipped it into his hand.
Good-bye! she murmured in a strange hollow voice, and slammed the street door in his face.
Hannah!
His startled cry of agony and despair penetrated the woodwork, muffled to an inarticulate shriek. He rattled the door violently in unreasoning frenzy.
Who's that? What's that noise? asked the Rebbitzin.
Only some Christian rough shouting in the street, answered Hannah.
It was truer than she knew.
The rain fell faster, the wind grew shriller, but the Children of the Ghetto basked by their firesides in faith and hope and contentment. Hunted from shore to shore through the ages, they had found the national aspiration--Peace--in a country where Passover came, without menace of blood. In the garret of Number 1 Royal Street little Esther Ansell sat brooding, her heart full of a vague tender poetry and penetrated by the beauties of Judaism, which, please God, she would always cling to; her childish vision looking forward hopefully to the larger life that the years would bring.
Daintily embroidered napery, beautiful porcelain, Queen Anne silver, exotic flowers, glittering glass, soft rosy light, creamy expanses of shirt-front, elegant low-necked dresses--all the conventional accompaniments of Occidental gastronomy.
It was not a large party. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith professed to collect guests on artistic principles--as she did bric-a-brac--and with an eye to general conversation. The elements of the social salad were sufficiently incongruous to-night, yet all the ingredients were Jewish.
For the history of the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of isolation. "The Upper Ten" is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the middle-classes look up in worship and the lower-classes in supplication. "The Upper Ten" have no spirit of exclusiveness; they are willing to entertain royalty, rank and the arts with a catholic hospitality that is only Eastern in its magnificence, while some of them only remain Jews for fear of being considered snobs by society. But the middle-class Jew has been more jealous of his caste, and for caste reasons. To exchange hospitalities with the Christian when you cannot eat his dinners were to get the worse of the bargain; to invite his sons to your house when they cannot marry your daughters were to solicit awkward complications. In business, in civic affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with his fellow-citizens, but indiscriminate social relations only become possible through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate. A Christian in a company of middle-class Jews is like a lion in a den of Daniels. They show him deference and their prophetic side.
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith was of the upper middle-classes, and her husband was the financial representative of the Kensington Synagogue at the United Council, but her swan-like neck was still bowed beneath the yoke of North London, not to say provincial, Judaism. So to-night there were none of those external indications of Christmas which are so frequent at "good" Jewish houses; no plum-pudding, snapdragon, mistletoe, not even a Christmas tree. For Mrs. Henry Goldsmith did not countenance these coquettings with Christianity. She would have told you that the incidence of her dinner on Christmas Eve was merely an accident, though a lucky accident, in so far as Christmas found Jews perforce at leisure for social gatherings. What she was celebrating was the feast of Chanukah--of the re-dedication of the Temple after the pollutions of Antiochus Epiphanes--and the memory of the national hero, Judas Maccabaeus. Christmas crackers would have been incompatible with the Chanukah candles which the housekeeper, Mary O'Reilly, forced her master to light, and would have shocked that devout old dame. For Mary O'Reilly, as good a soul as she was a Catholic, had lived all her life with Jews, assisting while yet a girl in the kitchen of Henry Goldsmith's father, who was a pattern of ancient piety and a prop of the Great Synagogue. When the father died, Mary, with all the other family belongings, passed into the hands of the son, who came up to London from a provincial town, and with a grateful recollection of her motherliness domiciled her in his own establishment. Mary knew all the ritual laws and ceremonies far better than her new mistress, who although a native of the provincial town in which Mr. Henry Goldsmith had established a thriving business, had received her education at a Brussels boarding-school. Mary knew exactly how long to keep the meat in salt and the heinousness of frying steaks in butter. She knew that the fire must not be poked on the Sabbath, nor the gas lit or extinguished, and that her master must not smoke till three stars appeared in the sky. She knew when the family must fast, and when and how it must feast. She knew all the Hebrew and jargon expressions which her employers studiously boycotted, and she was the only member of the household who used them habitually in her intercourse with the other members. Too late the Henry Goldsmiths awoke to the consciousness of her tyranny which did not permit them to be irreligious even in private. In the fierce light which beats upon a provincial town with only one synagogue, they had been compelled to conform outwardly with many galling restrictions, and they had sub-consciously looked forward to emancipation in the mighty metropolis. But Mary had such implicit faith in their piety, and was so zealous in the practice of her own faith, that they had not the courage to confess that they scarcely cared a pin about a good deal of that for which she was so solicitous. They hesitated to admit that they did not respect their religion (or what she thought was their religion) as much as she did hers. It would have equally lowered them in her eyes to admit that their religion was not so good as hers, besides being disrespectful to the cherished memory of her ancient master. At first they had deferred to Mary's Jewish prejudices out of good nature and carelessness, but every day strengthened her hold upon them; every act of obedience to the ritual law was a tacit acknowledgment of its sanctity, which made it more and more difficult to disavow its obligation. The dread of shocking Mary came to dominate their lives, and the fashionable house near Kensington Gardens was still a veritable centre of true Jewish orthodoxy, with little or nothing to make old Aaron Goldsmith turn in his grave. It is probable, though, that Mrs. Henry Goldsmith would have kept a _kosher_ table, even if Mary had never been born. Many of their acquaintances and relatives were of an orthodox turn. A _kosher_ dinner could be eaten even by the heterodox; whereas a _tripha_ dinner choked off the orthodox. Thus it came about that even the Rabbinate might safely stoke its spiritual fires at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's.
Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, _Mordecai Josephs_, had scandalized West End Judaism.
Why didn't he describe our circles? asked the hostess, an angry fire in her beautiful eyes. "It would have, at least, corrected the picture. As it is, the public will fancy that we are all daubed with the same brush: that we have no thought in life beyond dress, money, and solo whist."
He probably painted the life he knew, said Sidney Graham, in defence.
Then I am sorry for him, retorted Mrs. Goldsmith. "It's a great pity he had such detestable acquaintances. Of course, he has cut himself off from the possibility of any better now."
The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinterested indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial grief.
I should hope so, put in Miss Cissy Levine, sharply. She was a pale, bent woman, with spectacles, who believed in the mission of Israel, and wrote domestic novels to prove that she had no sense of humor. "No one has a right to foul his own nest. Are there not plenty of subjects for the Jew's pen without his attacking his own people? The calumniator of his race should be ostracized from decent society."
As according to him there is none, laughed Graham, "I cannot see where the punishment comes in."
Oh, he may say so in that book, said Mrs. Montagu Samuels, an amiable, loose-thinking lady of florid complexion, who dabbled exasperatingly in her husband's philanthropic concerns from the vain idea that the wife of a committee-man is a committee-woman. "But he knows better."
Yes, indeed, said Mr. Montagu Samuels. "The rascal has only written this to make money. He knows it's all exaggeration and distortion; but anything spicy pays now-a-days."
As a West Indian merchant he ought to know, murmured Sidney Graham to his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon. The girl's soft eyes twinkled, as she surveyed the serious little city magnate with his placid spouse. Montagu Samuels was narrow-minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be pompous on a meagre allowance of body. He was earnest and charitable (except in religious wrangles, when he was earnest and uncharitable), and knew himself a pillar of the community, an exemplar to the drones and sluggards who shirked their share of public burdens and were callous to the dazzlement of communal honors.
Of course it was written for money, Monty, his brother, Percy Saville, the stockbroker, reminded him. "What else do authors write for? It's the way they earn their living."
Strangers found difficulty in understanding the fraternal relation of Percy Saville and Montagu Samuels; and did not readily grasp that Percy Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Samuels, more in tune with the handsome well-dressed personality it denoted. Montagu had stuck loyally to his colors, but Pizer had drooped under the burden of carrying his patronymic through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after business hours. Of such is the brotherhood of Israel.
The whole book's written with gall, went on Percy Saville, emphatically. "I suppose the man couldn't get into good Jewish houses, and he's revenged himself by slandering them."
Then he ought to have got into good Jewish houses, said Sidney. "The man has talent, nobody can deny that, and if he couldn't get into good Jewish society because he didn't have money enough, isn't that proof enough his picture is true?"
I don't deny that there are people among us who make money the one open sesame to their houses, said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, magnanimously.
Deny it, indeed? Money is the open sesame to everything, rejoined Sidney Graham, delightedly scenting an opening for a screed. He liked to talk bomb-shells, and did not often get pillars of the community to shatter. "Money manages the schools and the charities, and the synagogues, and indirectly controls the press. A small body of persons--always the same--sits on all councils, on all boards! Why? Because they pay the piper."
Well, sir, and is not that a good reason? asked Montagu Samuels. "The community is to be congratulated on having a few public-spirited men left in days when there are wealthy German Jews in our midst who not only disavow Judaism, but refuse to support its institutions. But, Mr. Graham, I would join issue with you. The men you allude to are elected not because they are rich, but because they are good men of business and most of the work to be done is financial."
Exactly, said Sidney Graham, in sinister agreement. "I have always maintained that the United Synagogue could be run as a joint-stock company for the sake of a dividend, and that there wouldn't be an atom of difference in the discussions if the councillors were directors. I do believe the pillars of the community figure the Millenium as a time when every Jew shall have enough to eat, a place to worship in, and a place to be buried in. Their State Church is simply a financial system, to which the doctrines of Judaism happen to be tacked on. How many of the councillors believe in their Established Religion? Why, the very beadles of their synagogues are prone to surreptitious shrimps and unobtrusive oysters! Then take that institution for supplying _kosher_ meat. I am sure there are lots of its Committee who never inquire into the necrologies of their own chops and steaks, and who regard kitchen Judaism as obsolete. But, all the same, they look after the finances with almost fanatical zeal. Finance fascinates them. Long after Judaism has ceased to exist, excellent gentlemen will be found regulating its finances."
There was that smile on the faces of the graver members of the party which arises from reluctance to take a dangerous speaker seriously.
Sidney Graham was one of those favorites of society who are allowed Touchstone's license. He had just as little wish to reform, and just as much wish to abuse society as society has to be reformed and abused. He was a dark, bright-eyed young artist with a silky moustache. He had lived much in Paris, where he studied impressionism and perfected his natural talent for _causerie_ and his inborn preference for the hedonistic view of life. Fortunately he had plenty of money, for he was a cousin of Raphael Leon on the mother's side, and the remotest twigs of the Leon genealogical tree bear apples of gold. His real name was Abrahams, which is a shade too Semitic. Sidney was the black sheep of the family; good-natured to the core and artistic to the finger-tips, he was an avowed infidel in a world where avowal is the unpardonable sin. He did not even pretend to fast on the Day of Atonement. Still Sidney Graham was a good deal talked of in artistic circles, his name was often in the newspapers, and so more orthodox people than Mrs. Henry Goldsmith were not averse from having him at their table, though they would have shrunk from being seen at his. Even cousin Addie, who had a charming religious cast of mind, liked to be with him, though she ascribed this to family piety. For there is a wonderful solidarity about many Jewish families, the richer members of which assemble loyally at one another's births, marriages, funerals, and card-parties, often to the entire exclusion of outsiders. An ordinary well-regulated family (so prolific is the stream of life), will include in its bosom ample elements for every occasion.
Really, Mr. Graham, I think you are wrong about the _kosher_ meat, said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. "Our statistics show no falling-off in the number of bullocks killed, while there is a rise of two per cent, in the sheep slaughtered. No, Judaism is in a far more healthy condition than pessimists imagine. So far from sacrificing our ancient faith we are learning to see how tuberculosis lurks in the lungs of unexamined carcasses and is communicated to the consumer. As for the members of the _Shechitah_ Board not eating _kosher_, look at me."
The only person who looked at the host was the hostess. Her look was one of approval. It could not be of aesthetic approval, like the look Percy Saville devoted to herself, for her husband was a cadaverous little man with prominent ears and teeth.
And if Mr. Graham should ever join us on the Council of the United Synagogue, added Montagu Samuels, addressing the table generally, "he will discover that there is no communal problem with which we do not loyally grapple."
No, thank you, said Sidney, with a shudder. "When I visit Raphael, I sometimes pick up a Jewish paper and amuse myself by reading the debates of your public bodies. I understand most of your verbiage is edited away." He looked Montagu Samuels full in the face with audacious _naivete_. "But there is enough left to show that our monotonous group of public men consists of narrow-minded mediocrities. The chief public work they appear to do outside finance is when public exams, fall on Sabbaths or holidays, getting special dates for Jewish candidates to whom these examinations are the avenues to atheism. They never see the joke. How can they? Why, they take even themselves seriously."
Oh, come! said Miss Cissy Levine indignantly. "You often see 'laughter' in the reports."
That must mean the speaker was laughing, explained Sidney, "for you never see anything to make the audience laugh. I appeal to Mr. Montagu Samuels."
It is useless discussing a subject with a man who admittedly speaks without knowledge, replied that gentleman with dignity.
Well, how do you expect me to get the knowledge? grumbled Sidney. "You exclude the public from your gatherings. I suppose to prevent their rubbing shoulders with the swells, the privilege of being snubbed by whom is the reward of public service. Wonderfully practical idea that--to utilize snobbery as a communal force. The United Synagogue is founded on it. Your community coheres through it."
There you are scarcely fair, said the hostess with a charming smile of reproof. "Of course there are snobs amongst us, but is it not the same in all sects?"
Emphatically not, said Sidney. "If one of our swells sticks to a shred of Judaism, people seem to think the God of Judah should be thankful, and if he goes to synagogue once or twice a year, it is regarded as a particular condescension to the Creator."
The mental attitude you caricature is not so snobbish as it seems, said Raphael Leon, breaking into the conversation for the first time. "The temptations to the wealthy and the honored to desert their struggling brethren are manifold, and sad experience has made our race accustomed to the loss of its brightest sons."
Thanks for the compliment, fair coz, said Sidney, not without a complacent cynical pleasure in the knowledge that Raphael spoke truly, that he owed his own immunity from the obligations of the faith to his artistic success, and that the outside world was disposed to accord him a larger charter of morality on the same grounds. "But if you can only deny nasty facts by accounting for them, I dare say Mr. Armitage's book will afford you ample opportunities for explanation. Or have Jews the brazenness to assert it is all invention?"
No, no one would do that, said Percy Saville, who had just done it. "Certainly there is a good deal of truth in the sketch of the ostentatious, over-dressed Johnsons who, as everybody knows, are meant for the Jonases."
Oh, yes, said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "And it is quite evident that the stockbroker who drops half his h's and all his poor acquaintances and believes in one Lord, is no other than Joel Friedman."
And the house where people drive up in broughams for supper and solo whist after the theatre is the Davises' in Maida Vale, said Miss Cissy Levine.
Yes, the book's true enough, began Mrs. Montagu Samuels. She stopped suddenly, catching her husband's eye, and the color heightened on her florid cheek. "What I say is," she concluded awkwardly, "he ought to have come among us, and shown the world a picture of the cultured Jews."
Quite so, quite so, said the hostess. Then turning to the tall thoughtful-looking young man who had hitherto contributed but one sentence to the conversation, she said, half in sly malice, half to draw him out: "Now you, Mr. Leon, whose culture is certified by our leading university, what do you think of this latest portrait of the Jew?"
I don't know, I haven't read it! replied Raphael apologetically.
No more have I, murmured the table generally.
I wouldn't touch it with a pitchfork, said Miss Cissy Levine.
I think it's a shame they circulate it at the libraries, said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "I just glanced over it at Mrs. Hugh Marston's house. It's vile. There are actually jargon words in it. Such vulgarity!"
Shameful! murmured Percy Saville; "Mr. Lazarus was telling me about it. It's plain treachery and disloyalty, this putting of weapons into the hands of our enemies. Of course we have our faults, but we should be told of them privately or from the pulpit."
That would be just as efficacious, said Sidney admiringly.
More efficacious, said Percy Saville, unsuspiciously. "A preacher speaks with authority, but this penny-a-liner--"
With truth? queried Sidney.
Saville stopped, disgusted, and the hostess answered Sidney half-coaxingly.
Oh, I am sure you can't think that. The book is so one-sided. Not a word about our generosity, our hospitality, our domesticity, the thousand-and-one good traits all the world allows us.
Of course not; since all the world allows them, it was unnecessary, said Sidney.
I wonder the Chief Rabbi doesn't stop it, said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.
My dear, how can he? inquired her husband. "He has no control over the publishing trade."
He ought to talk to the man, persisted Mrs. Samuels.
But we don't even know who he is, said Percy Saville, "probably Edward Armitage is only a _nom-de-plume_. You'd be surprised to learn the real names of some of the literary celebrities I meet about."
Oh, if he's a Jew you may be sure it isn't his real name, laughed Sidney. It was characteristic of him that he never spared a shot even when himself hurt by the kick of the gun. Percy colored slightly, unmollified by being in the same boat with the satirist.
I have never seen the name in the subscription lists, said the hostess with ready tact.
There is an Armitage who subscribes two guineas a year to the Board of Guardians, said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "But his Christian name is George."
'Christian' name is distinctly good for 'George,' murmured Sidney.
There was an Armitage who sent a cheque to the Russian Fund, said Mr. Henry Goldsmith, "but that can't be an author--it was quite a large cheque!"
I am sure I have seen Armitage among the Births, Marriages and Deaths, said Miss Cissy Levine.
How well-read they all are in the national literature, Sidney murmured to Addie.
Indeed the sectarian advertisements served to knit the race together, counteracting the unravelling induced by the fashionable dispersion of Israel and waxing the more important as the other links--the old traditional jokes, by-words, ceremonies, card-games, prejudices and tunes, which are more important than laws and more cementatory than ideals--were disappearing before the over-zealousness of a _parvenu_ refinement that had not yet attained to self-confidence. The Anglo-Saxon stolidity of the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the universal tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of the Orient for the sobrieties of fashionable civilization. When Jeshurun waxed fat he did not always kick, but he yearned to approximate as much as possible to John Bull without merging in him; to sink himself and yet not be absorbed, not to be and yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote in human mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to John Bull generally assimilating Jeshurun away. For such is the nature of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own way and you make a new man of him; persecute him and he is himself again.
But if nobody has read the man's book, Raphael Leon ventured to interrupt at last, "is it quite fair to assume his book isn't fit to read?"
The shy dark little girl he had taken down to dinner darted an appreciative glance at her neighbor. It was in accordance with Raphael's usual anxiety to give the devil his due, that he should be unwilling to condemn even the writer of an anti-Semitic novel unheard. But then it was an open secret in the family that Raphael was mad. They did their best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to earnest reasoned opinions.
But we know enough of the book to know we are badly treated, protested the hostess.
We have always been badly treated in literature, said Raphael. "We are made either angels or devils. On the one hand, Lessing and George Eliot, on the other, the stock dramatist and novelist with their low-comedy villain."
Oh, said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. "Do you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish character?"
They are the only writers who have ever understood it, affirmed Miss Cissy Levine, emphatically.
A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark little girl.
Stop a moment, said Sidney. "I've been so busy doing justice to this delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine nobody here has read _Mordecai Josephs_. I have, and I say there is more actuality in it than in _Daniel Deronda_ and _Nathan der Weise_ put together. It is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems handicapped by a dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over them--actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings after the indefinable--it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral."
Oh, Sidney, what are you saying? murmured Addie.
It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek.
It's not Greek, put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant _ateliers_ where you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek."
It's Greek to Addie, anyhow, laughed Sidney. "But that's what makes the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory."
We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it so cleverly, said the hostess.
We all felt it, said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.
Yes, that's it, said Sidney, blandly. "I could have forgiven the rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically painted."
Rose-color! gasped Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, "rose-color, indeed!" Not even Sidney's authority could persuade the table into that.
Poor rich Jews! The upper middle-classes had every excuse for being angry. They knew they were excellent persons, well-educated and well-travelled, interested in charities (both Jewish and Christian), people's concerts, district-visiting, new novels, magazines, reading-circles, operas, symphonies, politics, volunteer regiments, Show-Sunday and Corporation banquets; that they had sons at Rugby and Oxford, and daughters who played and painted and sang, and homes that were bright oases of optimism in a jaded society; that they were good Liberals and Tories, supplementing their duties as Englishmen with a solicitude for the best interests of Judaism; that they left no stone unturned to emancipate themselves from the secular thraldom of prejudice; and they felt it very hard that a little vulgar section should always be chosen by their own novelists, and their efforts to raise the tone of Jewish society passed by.
Sidney, whose conversation always had the air of aloofness from the race, so that his own foibles often came under the lash of his sarcasm, proceeded to justify his assertion of the rose-color picture in _Mordecai Josephs_. He denied that modern English Jews had any religion whatever; claiming that their faith consisted of forms that had to be kept up in public, but which they were too shrewd and cute to believe in or to practise in private, though every one might believe every one else did; that they looked upon due payment of their synagogue bills as discharging all their obligations to Heaven; that the preachers secretly despised the old formulas, and that the Rabbinate declared its intention of dying for Judaism only as a way of living by it; that the body politic was dead and rotten with hypocrisy, though the augurs said it was alive and well. He admitted that the same was true of Christianity. Raphael reminded him that a number of Jews had drifted quite openly from the traditional teaching, that thousands of well-ordered households found inspiration and spiritual satisfaction in every form of it, and that hypocrisy was too crude a word for the complex motives of those who obeyed it without inner conviction.
For instance, said he, "a gentleman said to me the other day--I was much touched by the expression--'I believe with my father's heart.'"
It is a good epigram, said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes? The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock. You catch your ministers young, when they are saturated with suppressed scepticism, and bribe them with small salaries that seem affluence to the sons of poor immigrants. That the ministry is not an honorable profession may be seen from the anxiety of the minister to raise his children in the social scale by bringing them up to some other line of business."
That is true, said Raphael, gravely. "Our wealthy families must be induced to devote a son each to the Synagogue."
I wish they would, said Sidney. "At present, every second man is a lawyer. We ought to have more officers and doctors, too. I like those old Jews who smote the Philistines hip and thigh; it is not good for a race to run all to brain: I suppose, though, we had to develop cunning to survive at all. There was an enlightened minister whose Friday evenings I used to go to when a youth--delightful talk we had there, too; you know whom I mean. Well, one of his sons is a solicitor, and the other a stockbroker. The rich men he preached to helped to place his sons. He was a charming man, but imagine him preaching to them the truths in _Mordecai Josephs_, as Mr. Saville suggested."
_Our_ minister lets us have it hot enough, though, said Mr. Henry Goldsmith with a guffaw.
His wife hastened to obliterate the unrefined expression.
Mr. Strelitski is a wonderfully eloquent young man, so quiet and reserved in society, but like an ancient prophet in the pulpit.
Yes, we were very lucky to get him, said Mr. Henry Goldsmith.
The little dark girl shuddered.
What is the matter? asked Raphael softly.
I don't know. I don't like the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. He is eloquent, but his dogmatism irritates me. I don't believe he is sincere. He doesn't like me, either.
Oh, you're both wrong, he said in concern.
Strelitski is a draw, I admit, said Mr. Montagu Samuels, who was the President of a rival synagogue. "But Rosenbaum is a good pull-down on the other side, eh?"
Mr. Henry Goldsmith groaned. The second minister of the Kensington synagogue was the scandal of the community. He wasn't expected to preach, and he didn't practise.
I've heard of that man, said Sidney laughing. "He's a bit of a gambler and a spendthrift, isn't he? Why do you keep him on?"
He has a fine voice, you see, said Mr. Goldsmith. "That makes a Rosenbaum faction at once. Then he has a wife and family. That makes another."
Strelitski isn't married, is he? asked Sidney.
No, said Mr. Goldsmith, "not yet. The congregation expects him to, though. I don't care to give him the hint myself; he is a little queer sometimes."
He owes it to his position, said Miss Cissy Levine.
That is what we think, said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, with the majestic manner that suited her opulent beauty.
I wish we had him in our synagogue, said Raphael. "Michaels is a well-meaning worthy man, but he is dreadfully dull."
Poor Raphael! said Sidney. "Why did you abolish the old style of minister who had to slaughter the sheep? Now the minister reserves all his powers of destruction for his own flock.'"
I have given him endless hints to preach only once a month, said Mr. Montagu Samuels dolefully. "But every Saturday our hearts sink as we see him walk to the pulpit."
You see, Addie, how a sense of duty makes a man criminal, said Sidney. "Isn't Michaels the minister who defends orthodoxy in a way that makes the orthodox rage over his unconscious heresies, while the heterodox enjoy themselves by looking out for his historical and grammatical blunders!"
Poor man, he works hard, said Raphael, gently. "Let him be."
Over the dessert the conversation turned by way of the Rev. Strelitski's marriage, to the growing willingness of the younger generation to marry out of Judaism. The table discerned in inter-marriage the beginning of the end.
But why postpone the inevitable? asked Sidney calmly. "What is this mania for keeping up an effete _ism_? Are we to cripple our lives for the sake of a word? It's all romantic fudge, the idea of perpetual isolation. You get into little cliques and mistaken narrow-mindedness for fidelity to an ideal. I can live for months and forget there are such beings as Jews in the world. I have floated down the Nile in a _dahabiya_ while you were beating your breasts in the Synagogue, and the palm-trees and pelicans knew nothing of your sacrosanct chronological crisis, your annual epidemic of remorse."
The table thrilled with horror, without, however, quite believing in the speaker's wickedness. Addie looked troubled.
A man and wife of different religions can never know true happiness, said the hostess.
Granted, retorted Sidney. "But why shouldn't Jews without Judaism marry Christians without Christianity? Must a Jew needs have a Jewess to help him break the Law?"
Inter-marriage must not be tolerated, said Raphael. "It would hurt us less if we had a country. Lacking that, we must preserve our human boundaries."
You have good phrases sometimes, admitted Sidney. "But why must we preserve any boundaries? Why must we exist at all as a separate people?"
To fulfil the mission of Israel, said Mr. Montagu Samuels solemnly.
Ah, what is that? That is one of the things nobody ever seems able to tell me.
We are God's witnesses, said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, snipping off for herself a little bunch of hot-house grapes.
False witnesses, mostly then, said Sidney. "A Christian friend of mine, an artist, fell in love with a girl and courted her regularly at her house for four years. Then he proposed; she told him to ask her father, and he then learned for the first time that the family were Jewish, and his suit could not therefore be entertained. Could a satirist have invented anything funnier? Whatever it was Jews have to bear witness to, these people had been bearing witness to so effectually that a daily visitor never heard a word of the evidence during four years. And this family is not an exception; it is a type. Abroad the English Jew keeps his Judaism in the background, at home in the back kitchen. When he travels, his Judaism is not packed up among his _impedimenta_. He never obtrudes his creed, and even his Jewish newspaper is sent to him in a wrapper labelled something else. How's that for witnesses? Mind you, I'm not blaming the men, being one of 'em. They may be the best fellows going, honorable, high-minded, generous--why expect them to be martyrs more than other Englishmen? Isn't life hard enough without inventing a new hardship? I declare there's no narrower creature in the world than your idealist; he sets up a moral standard which suits his own line of business, and rails at men of the world for not conforming to it. God's witnesses, indeed! I say nothing of those who are rather the Devil's witnesses, but think of the host of Jews like myself who, whether they marry Christians or not, simply drop out, and whose absence of all religion escapes notice in the medley of creeds. We no more give evidence than those old Spanish Jews--Marannos, they were called, weren't they?--who wore the Christian mask for generations. Practically, many of us are Marannos still; I don't mean the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that, but the Jews who have gone on believing. One Day of Atonement I amused myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops that were closed in the Strand. 'Our annual holiday,' Stock-taking day,' 'Our annual bean-feast.' 'Closed for repairs.'"
Well, it's something if they keep the Fast at all, said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. "It shows spirituality is not dead in them."
Spirituality! sneered Sidney. "Sheer superstition, rather. A dread of thunderbolts. Besides, fasting is a sensuous _attraction_. But for the fasting, the Day of Atonement would have long since died out for these men. 'Our annual bean-feast'! There's witnesses for you."
We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us, said Raphael Leon quietly. "Our mission is to spread the truth of the Torah till the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
But we don't spread it.
We do. Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one with the moral law.
Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are teaching.
By no means. Rather of one who stays on to protest against the false additions of his whilom pupils.
But we don't protest.
Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest, urged Raphael. "When the stress of persecution lightens, we may protest more consciously. We cannot have been preserved in vain through so many centuries of horrors, through the invasions of the Goths and Huns, through the Crusades, through the Holy Roman Empire, through the times of Torquemada. It is not for nothing that a handful of Jews loom so large in the history of the world that their past is bound up with every noble human effort, every high ideal, every development of science, literature and art. The ancient faith that has united us so long must not be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece and the Moors. If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us keep together still. Who knows but that it will be born again in us if we are only patient? Race affinity is a potent force; why be in a hurry to dissipate it? The Marannos you speak of were but maimed heroes, yet one day the olden flame burst through the layers of three generations of Christian profession and inter-marriage, and a brilliant company of illustrious Spaniards threw up their positions and sailed away in voluntary exile to serve the God of Israel. We shall yet see a spiritual revival even among our brilliant English Jews who have hid their face from their own flesh."
The dark little girl looked up into his face with ill-suppressed wonder.
Have you done preaching at me, Raphael? inquired Sidney. "If so, pass me a banana."
Raphael smiled sadly and obeyed.
I'm afraid if I see much of Raphael I shall be converted to Judaism, said Sidney, peeling the banana. "I had better take a hansom to the Riviera at once. I intended to spend Christmas there; I never dreamed I should be talking theology in London."
Oh, I think Christmas in London is best, said the hostess unguardedly.
Oh, I don't know. Give me Brighton, said the host.
Well, yes, I suppose Brighton _is_ pleasanter, said Mr. Montagu Samuels.
Oh, but so many Jews go there, said Percy Saville.
Yes, that _is_ the drawback, said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "Do you know, some years ago I discovered a delightful village in Devonshire, and took the household there in the summer. The very next year when I went down I found no less than two Jewish families temporarily located there. Of course, I have never gone there since."
Yes, it's wonderful how Jews scent out all the nicest places, agreed Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "Five years ago you could escape them by not going to Ramsgate; now even the Highlands are getting impossible."
Thereupon the hostess rose and the ladies retired to the drawing-room, leaving the gentlemen to discuss coffee, cigars and the paradoxes of Sidney, who, tired of religion, looked to dumb show plays for the salvation of dramatic literature.
There was a little milk-jug on the coffee-tray, it represented a victory over Mary O'Reilly. The late Aaron Goldsmith never took milk till six hours after meat, and it was with some trepidation that the present Mr. Goldsmith ordered it to be sent up one evening after dinner. He took an early opportunity of explaining apologetically to Mary that some of his guests were not so pious as himself, and hospitality demanded the concession.
Mr. Henry Goldsmith did not like his coffee black. His dinner-table was hardly ever without a guest.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies, Raphael instinctively returned to his companion of the dinner-table. She had been singularly silent during the meal, but her manner had attracted him. Over his black coffee and cigarette it struck him that she might have been unwell, and that he had been insufficiently attentive to the little duties of the table, and he hastened to ask if she had a headache.
No, no, she said, with a grateful smile. "At least not more than usual." Her smile was full of pensive sweetness, which made her face beautiful. It was a face that would have been almost plain but for the soul behind. It was dark, with great earnest eyes. The profile was disappointing, the curves were not perfect, and there was a reminder of Polish origin in the lower jaw and the cheek-bone. Seen from the front, the face fascinated again, in the Eastern glow of its coloring, in the flash of the white teeth, in the depths of the brooding eyes, in the strength of the features that yet softened to womanliest tenderness and charm when flooded by the sunshine of a smile. The figure was _petite_ and graceful, set off by a simple tight-fitting, high-necked dress of ivory silk draped with lace, with a spray of Neapolitan violets at the throat. They sat in a niche of the spacious and artistically furnished drawing-room, in the soft light of the candles, talking quietly while Addie played Chopin.
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's aesthetic instincts had had full play in the elaborate carelessness of the _ensemble_, and the result was a triumph, a medley of Persian luxury and Parisian grace, a dream of somniferous couches and arm-chairs, rich tapestry, vases, fans, engravings, books, bronzes, tiles, plaques and flowers. Mr. Henry Goldsmith was himself a connoisseur in the arts, his own and his father's fortunes having been built up in the curio and antique business, though to old Aaron Goldsmith appreciation had meant strictly pricing, despite his genius for detecting false Correggios and sham Louis Quatorze cabinets.
Do you suffer from headaches? inquired Raphael solicitously.
A little. The doctor says I studied too much and worked too hard when a little girl. Such is the punishment of perseverance. Life isn't like the copy-books.
Oh, but I wonder your parents let you over-exert yourself.
A melancholy smile played about the mobile lips. "I brought myself up," she said. "You look puzzled--Oh, I know! Confess you think I'm Miss Goldsmith!"
Why--are--you--not? he stammered.
No, my name is Ansell, Esther Ansell.
Pardon me. I am so bad at remembering names in introductions. But I've just come back from Oxford and it's the first time I've been to this house, and seeing you here without a cavalier when we arrived, I thought you lived here.
You thought rightly, I do live here. She laughed gently at his changing expression.
I wonder Sidney never mentioned you to me, he said.
Do you mean Mr. Graham? she said with a slight blush.
Yes, I know he visits here.
Oh, he is an artist. He has eyes only for the beautiful. She spoke quickly, a little embarrassed.
You wrong him; his interests are wider than that.
Do you know I am so glad you didn't pay me the obvious compliment? she said, recovering herself. "It looked as if I were fishing for it. I'm so stupid."
He looked at her blankly.
_I'm_ stupid, he said, "for I don't know what compliment I missed paying."
If you regret it I shall not think so well of you, she said. "You know I've heard all about your brilliant success at Oxford."
They put all those petty little things in the Jewish papers, don't they?
I read it in the _Times_, retorted Esther. "You took a double first and the prize for poetry and a heap of other things, but I noticed the prize for poetry, because it is so rare to find a Jew writing poetry."
Prize poetry is not poetry, he reminded her. "But, considering the Jewish Bible contains the finest poetry in the world, I do not see why you should be surprised to find a Jew trying to write some."
Oh, you know what I mean, answered Esther. "What is the use of talking about the old Jews? We seem to be a different race now. Who cares for poetry?"
Our poet's scroll reaches on uninterruptedly through the Middle Ages. The passing phenomenon of to-day must not blind us to the real traits of our race, said Raphael.
Nor must we be blind to the passing phenomenon of to-day, retorted Esther. "We have no ideals now."
I see Sidney has been infecting you, he said gently.
No, no; I beg you will not think that, she said, flushing almost resentfully. "I have thought these things, as the Scripture tells us to meditate on the Law, day and night, sleeping and waking, standing up and sitting down."
You cannot have thought of them without prejudice, then, he answered, "if you say we have no ideals."
I mean, we're not responsive to great poetry--to the message of a Browning for instance.
I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours, for hundreds of years every Saturday night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and Providence in 'Pisgah Sights.'
All's lend and borrow,
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil.
What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the Sabbath and welcoming in the days of toil, accepting the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?
Is that in the prayer-book? said Esther astonished.
Yes; you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities but can see nothing poetical in Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante but despise David.
I shall certainly look up the liturgy, said Esther. "But that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the passage in Hebrew--I see my father making _Havdolah_--the melody goes in my head like a sing-song. But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It sounds very shocking, I know."
Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which gave the world the Bible knows it least-- He stopped suddenly, for Addie was playing pianissimo, and although she was his sister, he did not like to put her out.
It comes to this, said Esther when Chopin spoke louder, "our prayer-book needs depolarization, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible."
Exactly, assented Raphael. "And what our people need is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument:
"'I see the whole design. I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too. Perfect I call Thy plan, Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.' It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us nobody denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom--there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And we are proud and happy in that the dread Unknown God of the infinite Universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over.""
"The sonata came to an end; Percy Saville started a comic song, playing his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.
And do you really believe that we are sanctified to God's service? said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.
Can there be any doubt of it? God made choice of one race to be messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily, the sacred duty is ours, he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by far the greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.
But isn't that a narrow conception of God's revelation? she asked.
No. Why should God not teach through a great race as through a great man?
And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually speaking?
How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human nature and the constitution of things. Ah, I wish I could get you to see with the eyes of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel; to look on this human life of ours, not with the pessimism of Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heartily yet spent in God's service--birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of God's praise; the morning stars singing together, as we say in the Dawn Service.
As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthusiasm always infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid universe seemed to be transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, full of infinite potentialities of worthy work and noble pleasure. A thunder of applausive hands marked the end of Percy Saville's comic song. Mr. Montagu Samuels was beaming at his brother's grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general conversation, followed by a round game in which Raphael and Esther had to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find themselves together again.
Ah, yes, said Esther, sadly, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break, "but this is a Judaism of your own creation. The real Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It does not call to the soul's depths like Christianity."
Again, it is a question of the point of view taken. From a practical, our ceremonialism is a training in self-conquest, while it links the generations 'bound each to each by natural piety,' and unifies our atoms dispersed to the four corners of the earth as nothing else could. From a theoretical, it is but an extension of the principle I tried to show you. Eating, drinking, every act of life is holy, is sanctified by some relation to heaven. We will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of life from religion, and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the devil, any more than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is no devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a mediator. Every Jew is in as direct relation with God as the Chief Rabbi. Christianity is an historical failure--its counsels of perfection, its command to turn the other cheek--a farce. When a modern spiritual genius, a Tolstoi, repeats it, all Christendom laughs, as at a new freak of insanity. All practical, honorable men are Jews at heart. Judaism has never tampered with human dignity, nor perverted the moral consciousness. Our housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sifter Addie, 'I'm so glad to see you do so much charity, Miss; _I_ need not, because I'm saved already.' Judaism is the true 'religion of humanity.' It does not seek to make men and women angels before their time. Our marriage service blesses the King of the Universe, who has created 'joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight, love, brotherhood, peace and fellowship.'
It is all very beautiful in theory, said Esther. "But so is Christianity, which is also not to be charged with its historical caricatures, nor with its superiority to average human nature. As for the doctrine of original sin, it is the one thing that the science of heredity has demonstrated, with a difference. But do not be alarmed, I do not call myself a Christian because I see some relation between the dogmas of Christianity and the truths of experience, nor even because"--here she smiled, wistfully--"I should like to believe in Jesus. But you are less logical. When you said there was no devil, I felt sure I was right; that you belong to the modern schools, who get rid of all the old beliefs but cannot give up the old names. You know, as well as I do, that, take away the belief in hell, a real old-fashioned hell of fire and brimstone, even such Judaism as survives would freeze to death without that genial warmth."
I know nothing of the kind, he said, "and I am in no sense a modern. I am (to adopt a phrase which is, to me, tautologous) an orthodox Jew."
Esther smiled. "Forgive my smiling," she said. "I am thinking of the orthodox Jews I used to know, who used to bind their phylacteries on their arms and foreheads every morning."
I bind my phylacteries on my arm and forehead every morning, he said, simply.
What! gasped Esther. "You an Oxford man!"
Yes, he said, gravely. "Is it so astonishing to you?"
Yes, it is. You are the first educated Jew I have ever met who believed in that sort of thing.
Nonsense? he said, inquiringly. "There are hundreds like me."
She shook her head.
There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I suppose _he_ does, but then he's paid for it.
Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski? he said, pained. "He has a noble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe my best understanding of Judaism."
Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much more convincing, from your lips, murmured Esther. "Now I know; because he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when he opens his mouth."
But I wear a white tie, too, said Raphael, his smile broadening in sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.
That's not a trade-mark, she protested. "But forgive me; I didn't know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more than the others to make Judaism more spiritual."
More spiritual! he repeated, the pained expression returning. "Why, the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualization of the material."
And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialization of the spiritual, she answered.
He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.
You have lived among your books, Esther went on. "I have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the misery."
God works through human suffering; his ways are large, said Raphael, almost in a whisper.
And wasteful, said Esther. "Spare me clerical platitudes a la Strelitski. I have seen so much."
And suffered much? he asked gently.
She nodded scarce perceptibly. "Oh, if you only knew my life!"
Tell it me, he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to hers.
I cannot, not now, she murmured. "There is so much to tell."
Tell me a little, he urged.
She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, forgetting he was a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it merely the spiritual affinity of souls that feel their identity through all differences of brain?
What is the use? she said. "You, with your childhood, could never realize mine. My mother died when I was seven; my father was a Russian pauper alien who rarely got work. I had an elder brother of brilliant promise. He died before he was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and sisters and a grandmother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret."
Her eyes grew humid at the recollection; she saw the spacious drawing-room and the dainty bric-a-brac through a mist.
Poor child! murmured Raphael.
Strelitski, by the way, lived in our street then. He sold cigars on commission and earned an honest living. Sometimes I used to think that is why he never cares to meet my eye; he remembers me and knows I remember him; at other times I thought he knew that I saw through his professions of orthodoxy. But as you champion him, I suppose I must look for a more creditable reason for his inability to look me straight in the face. Well, I grew up, I got on well at school, and about ten years ago I won a prize given by Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, whose kindly interest I excited thenceforward. At thirteen I became a teacher. This had always been my aspiration: when it was granted I was more unhappy than ever. I began to realize acutely that we were terribly poor. I found it difficult to dress so as to insure the respect of my pupils and colleagues; the work was unspeakably hard and unpleasant; tiresome and hungry little girls had to be ground to suit the inspectors, and fell victims to the then prevalent competition among teachers for a high percentage of passes. I had to teach Scripture history and I didn't believe in it. None of us believed in it; the talking serpent, the Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the whale, and all that. Everything about me was sordid and unlovely. I yearned for a fuller, wider life, for larger knowledge. I hungered for the sun. In short, I was intensely miserable. At home things went from bad to worse; often I was the sole bread-winner, and my few shillings a week were our only income. My brother Solomon grew up, but could not get into a decent situation because he must not work on the Sabbath. Oh, if you knew how young lives are cramped and shipwrecked at the start by this one curse of the Sabbath, you would not wish us to persevere in our isolation. It sent a mad thrill of indignation through me to find my father daily entreating the deaf heavens.
He would not argue now. His eyes were misty.
Go on! he murmured.
The rest is nothing. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stepped in as the _dea ex machina_. She had no children, and she took it into her head to adopt me. Naturally I was dazzled, though anxious about my brothers and sisters. But my father looked upon it as a godsend. Without consulting me, Mrs. Goldsmith arranged that he and the other children should be shipped to America: she got him some work at a relative's in Chicago. I suppose she was afraid of having the family permanently hanging about the Terrace. At first I was grieved; but when the pain of parting was over I found myself relieved to be rid of them, especially of my father. It sounds shocking, I know, but I can confess all my vanities now, for I have learned all is vanity. I thought Paradise was opening before me; I was educated by the best masters, and graduated at the London University. I travelled and saw the Continent; had my fill of sunshine and beauty. I have had many happy moments, realized many childish ambitions, but happiness is as far away as ever. My old school-colleagues envy me, yet I do not know whether I would not go back without regret.
Is there anything lacking in your life, then? he asked gently.
No, I happen to be a nasty, discontented little thing, that is all, she said, with a faint smile. "Look on me as a psychological paradox, or a text for the preacher."
And do the Goldsmiths know of your discontent?
Heaven forbid! They have been so very kind to me. We get along very well together. I never discuss religion with them, only the services and the minister.
And your relatives?
Ah, they are all well and happy. Solomon has a store in Detroit. He is only nineteen and dreadfully enterprising. Father is a pillar of a Chicago _Chevra_. He still talks Yiddish. He has escaped learning American just as he escaped learning English. I buy him a queer old Hebrew book sometimes with my pocket-money and he is happy. One little sister is a type-writer, and the other is just out of school and does the housework. I suppose I shall go out and see them all some day.
What became of the grandmother you mentioned?
She had a Charity Funeral a year before the miracle happened. She was very weak and ill, and the Charity Doctor warned her that she must not fast on the Day of Atonement. But she wouldn't even moisten her parched lips with a drop of cold water. And so she died; exhorting my father with her last breath to beware of Mrs. Simons (a good-hearted widow who was very kind to us), and to marry a pious Polish woman.
And did he?
No, I am still stepmotherless. Your white tie's gone wrong. It's all on one side.
It generally is, said Raphael, fumbling perfunctorily at the little bow.
Let me put it straight. There! And now you know all about me. I hope you are going to repay my confidences in kind.
I am afraid I cannot oblige with anything so romantic, he said smiling. "I was born of rich but honest parents, of a family settled in England for three generations, and went to Harrow and Oxford in due course. That is all. I saw a little of the Ghetto, though, when I was a boy. I had some correspondence on Hebrew Literature with a great Jewish scholar, Gabriel Hamburg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I was up from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at the foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by Gideon, the member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by the enthusiasm; it was there I made the acquaintance of Strelitski. He spoke as if inspired. I also met a poverty-stricken poet, Melchitsedek Pinchas, who afterwards sent me his work, _Metatoron's Flames_, to Harrow. A real neglected genius. Now there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and poetry. After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with the Ghetto, and have been there several times lately."
But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine?
I do. Why should we not have our own country?
It would be too chaotic! Fancy all the Ghettos of the world amalgamating. Everybody would want to be ambassador at Paris, as the old joke says.
It would be a problem for the statesmen among us. Dissenters, Churchmen, Atheists, Slum Savages, Clodhoppers, Philosophers, Aristocrats--make up Protestant England. It is the popular ignorance of the fact that Jews are as diverse as Protestants that makes such novels as we were discussing at dinner harmful.
But is the author to blame for that? He does not claim to present the whole truth but a facet. English society lionized Thackeray for his pictures of it. Good heavens! Do Jews suppose they alone are free from the snobbery, hypocrisy and vulgarity that have shadowed every society that has ever existed?
In no work of art can the spectator be left out of account, he urged. "In a world full of smouldering prejudices a scrap of paper may start the bonfire. English society can afford to laugh where Jewish society must weep. That is why our papers are always so effusively grateful for Christian compliments. You see it is quite true that the author paints not the Jews but bad Jews, but, in the absence of paintings of good Jews, bad Jews are taken as identical with Jews."
Oh, then you agree with the others about the book? she said in a disappointed tone.
I haven't read it; I am speaking generally. Have you?
Yes.
And what did you think of it? I don't remember your expressing an opinion at table.
She pondered an instant.
I thought highly of it and agreed with every word of it. She paused. He looked expectantly into the dark intense face. He saw it was charged with further speech.
Till I met you, she concluded abruptly.
A wave of emotion passed over his face.
You don't mean that? he murmured.
Yes, I do. You have shown me new lights.
I thought I was speaking platitudes, he said simply. "It would be nearer the truth to say you have given _me_ new lights."
The little face flushed with pleasure; the dark skin shining, the eyes sparkling. Esther looked quite pretty.
How is that possible? she said. "You have read and thought twice as much as I."
Then you must be indeed poorly off, he said, smiling. "But I am really glad we met. I have been asked to edit a new Jewish paper, and our talk has made me see more clearly the lines on which it must be run, if it is to do any good. I am awfully indebted to you."
A new Jewish paper? she said, deeply interested. "We have so many already. What is its _raison d'etre_?"
To convert you, he said smiling, but with a ring of seriousness in the words.
Isn't that like a steam-hammer cracking a nut or Hoti burning down his house to roast a pig? And suppose I refuse to take in the new Jewish paper? Will it suspend publication? He laughed.
What's this about a new Jewish paper? said Mrs. Goldsmith, suddenly appearing in front of them with her large genial smile. "Is that what you two have been plotting? I noticed you've laid your heads together all the evening. Ah well, birds of a feather flock together. Do you know my little Esther took the scholarship for logic at London? I wanted her to proceed to the M.A. at once, but the doctor said she must have a rest." She laid her hand affectionately on the girl's hair.
Esther looked embarrassed.
And so she is still a Bachelor, said Raphael, smiling but evidently impressed.
Yes, but not for long I hope, returned Mrs. Goldsmith. "Come, darling, everybody's dying to hear one of your little songs."
The dying is premature, said Esther. "You know I only sing for my own amusement."
Sing for mine, then, pleaded Raphael.
To make you laugh? queried Esther. "I know you'll laugh at the way I play the accompaniment. One's fingers have to be used to it from childhood--"
Her eyes finished the sentence, "and you know what mine was."
The look seemed to seal their secret sympathy.
She went to the piano and sang in a thin but trained soprano. The song was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and heartbreak. To Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic wails of "The Sons of the Covenant" or the Polish ditties of Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed also full of originality. He wished to lose himself in the sweet melancholy, but Mrs. Goldsmith, who had taken Esther's seat at his side, would not let him.
Her own composition--words and music, she whispered. "I wanted her to publish it, but she is so shy and retiring. Who would think she was the child of a pauper emigrant, a rough jewel one has picked up and polished? If you really are going to start a new Jewish paper, she might be of use to you. And then there is Miss Cissy Levine--you have read her novels, of course? Sweetly pretty! Do you know, I think we are badly in want of a new paper, and you are the only man in the community who could give it us. We want educating, we poor people, we know so little of our faith and our literature."
I am so glad you feel the want of it, whispered Raphael, forgetting Esther in his pleasure at finding a soul yearning for the light.
Intensely. I suppose it will be advanced?
Raphael looked at her a moment a little bewildered.
No, it will be orthodox. It is the orthodox party that supplies the funds.
A flash of light leaped into Mrs. Goldsmith's eyes.
I am so glad it is not as I feared. she said. "The rival party has hitherto monopolized the press, and I was afraid that like most of our young men of talent you would give it that tendency. Now at last we poor orthodox will have a voice. It will be written in English?"
As far as I can, he said, smiling.
No, you know what I mean. I thought the majority of the orthodox couldn't read English and that they have their jargon papers. Will you be able to get a circulation?
There are thousands of families in the East End now among whom English is read if not written. The evening papers sell as well there as anywhere else in London.
Bravo! murmured Mrs. Goldsmith, clapping her hands.
Esther had finished her song. Raphael awoke to the remembrance of her. But she did not come to him again, sitting down instead on a lounge near the piano, where Sidney bantered Addie with his most paradoxical persiflage.
Raphael looked at her. Her expression was abstracted, her eyes had an inward look. He hoped her headache had not got worse. She did not look at all pretty now. She seemed a frail little creature with a sad thoughtful face and an air of being alone in the midst of a merry company. Poor little thing! He felt as if he had known her for years. She seemed curiously out of harmony with all these people. He doubted even his own capacity to commune with her inmost soul. He wished he could be of service to her, could do anything for her that might lighten her gloom and turn her morbid thoughts in healthier directions.
The butler brought in some claret negus. It was the break-up signal. Raphael drank his negus with a pleasant sense of arming himself against the cold air. He wanted to walk home smoking his pipe, which he always carried in his overcoat. He clasped Esther's hand with a cordial smile of farewell.
We shall meet again soon, I trust, he said.
I hope so, said Esther; "put me down as a subscriber to that paper."
Thank you, he said; "I won't forget."
What's that? said Sidney, pricking up his ears; "doubled your circulation already?"
Sidney put his cousin Addie into a hansom, as she did not care to walk, and got in beside her.
My feet are tired, she said; "I danced a lot last night, and was out a lot this afternoon. It's all very well for Raphael, who doesn't know whether he's walking on his head or his heels. Here, put your collar up, Raphael, not like that, it's all crumpled. Haven't you got a handkerchief to put round your throat? Where's that one I gave you? Lend him yours, Sidney."
You don't mind if _I_ catch my death of cold; I've got to go on a Christmas dance when I deposit you on your doorstep, grumbled Sidney. "Catch! There, you duffer! It's gone into the mud. Sure you won't jump in? Plenty of room. Addie can sit on my knee. Well, ta, ta! Merry Christmas."
Raphael lit his pipe and strode off with long ungainly strides. It was a clear frosty night, and the moonlight glistened on the silent spaces of street and square.
Go to bed, my dear, said Mrs. Goldsmith, returning to the lounge where Esther still sat brooding. "You look quite worn out."
Left alone, Mrs. Goldsmith smiled pleasantly at Mr. Goldsmith, who, uncertain of how he had behaved himself, always waited anxiously for the verdict. He was pleased to find it was "not guilty" this time.
I think that went off very well, she said. She was looking very lovely to-night, the low bodice emphasizing the voluptuous outlines of the bust.
Splendidly, he returned. He stood with his coat-tails to the fire, his coarse-grained face beaming like an extra lamp. "The people and those croquettes were A1. The way Mary's picked up French cookery is wonderful."
Yes, especially considering she denies herself butter. But I'm not thinking of that nor of our guests. He looked at her wonderingly. "Henry," she continued impressively, "how would you like to get into Parliament?"
Eh, Parliament? Me? he stammered.
Yes, why not? I've always had it in my eye.
His face grew gloomy. "It is not practicable," he said, shaking the head with the prominent teeth and ears.
Not practicable? she echoed sharply. "Just think of what you've achieved already, and don't tell me you're going to stop now. Not practicable, indeed! Why, that's the very word you used years ago in the provinces when I said you ought to be President. You said old Winkelstein had been in the position too long to be ousted. And yet I felt certain your superior English would tell in the long run in such a miserable congregation of foreigners, and when Winkelstein had made that delicious blunder about the 'university' of the Exodus instead of the 'anniversary,' and I went about laughing over it in all the best circles, the poor man's day was over. And when we came to London, and seemed to fall again to the bottom of the ladder because our greatness was swallowed up in the vastness, didn't you despair then? Didn't you tell me that we should never rise to the surface?"
It didn't seem probable, did it? he murmured in self-defence.
Of course not. That's just my point. Your getting into the House of Commons doesn't seem probable now. But in those days your getting merely to know M.P.'s was equally improbable. The synagogal dignities were all filled up by old hands, there was no way of getting on the Council and meeting our magnates.
Yes, but your solution of that difficulty won't do here. I had not much difficulty in persuading the United Synagogue that a new synagogue was a crying want in Kensington, but I could hardly persuade the government that a new constituency is a crying want in London. He spoke pettishly; his ambition always required rousing and was easily daunted.
No, but somebody's going to start a new something else, Henry, said Mrs. Goldsmith with enigmatic cheerfulness. "Trust in me; think of what we have done in less than a dozen years at comparatively trifling costs, thanks to that happy idea of a new synagogue--you the representative of the Kensington synagogue, with a 'Sir' for a colleague and a congregation that from exceptionally small beginnings has sprung up to be the most fashionable in London; likewise a member of the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Association and an honorary officer of the _Shechitah_ Board; I, connected with several first-class charities, on the Committee of our leading school, and the acknowledged discoverer of a girl who gives promise of doing something notable in literature or music. We have a reputation for wealth, culture and hospitality, and it is quite two years since we shook off the last of the Maida Vale lot, who are so graphically painted in that novel of Mr. Armitage's. Who are our guests now? Take to-night's! A celebrated artist, a brilliant young Oxford man, both scions of the same wealthy and well-considered family, an authoress of repute who dedicates her books (by permission) to the very first families of the community; and lastly the Montagu Samuels with the brother, Percy Saville, who both go only to the best houses. Is there any other house, where the company is so exclusively Jewish, that could boast of a better gathering?"
I don't say anything against the company, said her husband awkwardly, "it's better than we got in the Provinces. But your company isn't your constituency. What constituency would have me?"
Certainly, no ordinary constituency would have you, admitted his wife frankly. "I am thinking of Whitechapel."
But Gideon represents Whitechapel.
Certainly; as Sidney Graham says, he represents it very well. But he has made himself unpopular, his name has appeared in print as a guest at City banquets, where the food can't be _kosher_. He has alienated a goodly proportion of the Jewish vote.
Well? said Mr. Goldsmith, still wonderingly.
Now is the time to bid for his shoes. Raphael Leon is about to establish a new Jewish paper. I was mistaken about that young man. You remember my telling you I had heard he was eccentric and despite his brilliant career a little touched on religious matters. I naturally supposed his case was like that of one or two other Jewish young men we know and that he yearned for spirituality, and his remarks at table rather confirmed the impression. But he is worse than that--and I nearly put my foot in it--his craziness is on the score of orthodoxy! Fancy that! A man who has been to Harrow and Oxford longing for a gaberdine and side curls! Well, well, live and learn. What a sad trial for his parents! She paused, musing.
But, Rosetta, what has Raphael Leon to do with my getting into Parliament?
Don't be stupid, Henry. Haven't I explained to you that Leon is going to start an orthodox paper which will be circulated among your future constituents. It's extremely fortunate that we have always kept our religion. We have a widespread reputation for orthodoxy. We are friends with Leon, and we can get Esther to write for the paper (I could see he was rather struck by her). Through this paper we can keep you and your orthodoxy constantly before the constituency. The poor people are quite fascinated by the idea of rich Jews like us keeping a strictly _kosher_ table; but the image of a Member of Parliament with phylacteries on his forehead will simply intoxicate them. She smiled, herself, at the image; the smile that always intoxicated Percy Saville.
You're a wonderful woman, Rosetta, said Henry, smiling in response with admiring affection and making his incisors more prominent. He drew her head down to him and kissed her lips. She returned his kiss lingeringly and they had a flash of that happiness which is born of mutual fidelity and trust.
Can I do anything for you, mum, afore I go to bed? said stout old Mary O'Reilly, appearing at the door. Mary was a privileged person, unappalled even by the butler. Having no relatives, she never took a holiday and never went out except to Chapel.
No, Mary, thank you. The dinner was excellent. Good night and merry Christmas.
Same to you, mum, and as the unconscious instrument of Henry Goldsmith's candidature turned away, the Christmas bells broke merrily upon the night. The peals fell upon the ears of Raphael Leon, still striding along, casting a gaunt shadow on the hoar-frosted pavement, but he marked them not; upon Addie sitting by her bedroom mirror thinking of Sidney speeding to the Christmas dance; upon Esther turning restlessly on the luxurious eider-down, oppressed by panoramic pictures of the martyrdom of her race. Lying between sleep and waking, especially when her brain had been excited, she had the faculty of seeing wonderful vivid visions, indistinguishable from realities. The martyrs who mounted the scaffold and the stake all had the face of Raphael.
The mission of Israel buzzed through her brain. Oh, the irony of history! Here was another life going to be wasted on an illusory dream. The figures of Raphael and her father suddenly came into grotesque juxtaposition. A bitter smile passed across her face.
The Christmas bells rang on, proclaiming Peace in the name of Him who came to bring a sword into the world.
Surely, she thought, "the people of Christ has been the Christ of peoples."
And then she sobbed meaninglessly in the darkness
The call to edit the new Jewish paper seemed to Raphael the voice of Providence. It came just when he was hesitating about his future, divided between the attractions of the ministry, pure Hebrew scholarship and philanthropy. The idea of a paper destroyed these conflicting claims by comprehending them all. A paper would be at once a pulpit, a medium for organizing effective human service, and an incentive to serious study in the preparation of scholarly articles.
The paper was to be the property of the Co-operative Kosher Society, an association originally founded to supply unimpeachable Passover cakes. It was suspected by the pious that there was a taint of heresy in the flour used by the ordinary bakers, and it was remarked that the Rabbinate itself imported its _Matzoth_ from abroad. Successful in its first object, the Co-operative Kosher Society extended its operations to more perennial commodities, and sought to save Judaism from dubious cheese and butter, as well as to provide public baths for women in accordance with the precepts of Leviticus. But these ideals were not so easy to achieve, and so gradually the idea of a paper to preach them to a godless age formed itself. The members of the Society met in Aaron Schlesinger's back office to consider them. Schlesinger was a cigar merchant, and the discussions of the Society were invariably obscured by gratuitous smoke Schlesinger's junior partner, Lewis De Haan, who also had a separate business as a surveyor, was the soul of the Society, and talked a great deal. He was a stalwart old man, with a fine imagination and figure, boundless optimism, a big biceps, a long venerable white beard, a keen sense of humor, and a versatility which enabled him to turn from the price of real estate to the elucidation of a Talmudical difficulty, and from the consignment of cigars to the organization of apostolic movements. Among the leading spirits were our old friends, Karlkammer the red-haired zealot, Sugarman the _Shadchan_, and Guedalyah the greengrocer, together with Gradkoski the scholar, fancy goods merchant and man of the world. A furniture-dealer, who was always failing, was also an important personage, while Ebenezer Sugarman, a young man who had once translated a romance from the Dutch, acted as secretary. Melchitsedek Pinchas invariably turned up at the meetings and smoked Schlesinger's cigars. He was not a member; he had not qualified himself by taking ten pound shares (far from fully paid up), but nobody liked to eject him, and no hint less strong than a physical would have moved the poet.
All the members of the Council of the Co-operative Kosher Society spoke English volubly and more or less grammatically, but none had sufficient confidence in the others to propose one of them for editor, though it is possible that none would have shrunk from having a shot. Diffidence is not a mark of the Jew. The claims of Ebenezer Sugarman and of Melchitsedek Pinchas were put forth most vehemently by Ebenezer and Melchitsedek respectively, and their mutual accusations of incompetence enlivened Mr. Schlesinger's back office.
He ain't able to spell the commonest English words, said Ebenezer, with a contemptuous guffaw that sounded like the croak of a raven.
The young litterateur, the sumptuousness of whose _Barmitzvah_-party was still a memory with his father, had lank black hair, with a long nose that supported blue spectacles.
What does he know of the Holy Tongue? croaked Melchitsedek witheringly, adding in a confidential whisper to the cigar merchant: "I and you, Schlesinger, are the only two men in England who can write the Holy Tongue grammatically."
The little poet was as insinutive and volcanic (by turns) as ever. His beard was, however, better trimmed and his complexion healthier, and he looked younger than ten years ago. His clothes were quite spruce. For several years he had travelled about the Continent, mainly at Raphael's expense. He said his ideas came better in touring and at a distance from the unappreciative English Jewry. It was a pity, for with his linguistic genius his English would have been immaculate by this time. As it was, there was a considerable improvement in his writing, if not so much in his accent.
What do I know of the Holy Tongue! repeated Ebenezer scornfully. "Hold yours!"
The Committee laughed, but Schlesinger, who was a serious man, said, "Business, gentlemen, business."
Come, then! I'll challenge you to translate a page of _Metatoron's Flames_, said Pinchas, skipping about the office like a sprightly flea. "You know no more than the Reverend Joseph Strelitski vith his vite tie and his princely income."
De Haan seized the poet by the collar, swung him off his feet and tucked him up in the coal-scuttle.
Yah! croaked Ebenezer. "Here's a fine editor. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
We cannot have either of them. It's the only way to keep them quiet, said the furniture-dealer who was always failing.
Ebenezer's face fell and his voice rose.
I don't see why I should be sacrificed to _'im_. There ain't a man in England who can write English better than me. Why, everybody says so. Look at the success of my book, _The Old Burgomaster_, the best Dutch novel ever written. The _St. Pancras Press_ said it reminded them of Lord Lytton, it did indeed. I can show you the paper. I can give you one each if you like. And then it ain't as if I didn't know 'Ebrew, too. Even if I was in doubt about anything, I could always go to my father. You give me this paper to manage and I'll make your fortunes for you in a twelvemonth; I will as sure as I stand here.
Pinchas had made spluttering interruptions as frequently as he could in resistance of De Haan's brawny, hairy hand which was pressed against his nose and mouth to keep him down in the coal-scuttle, but now he exploded with a force that shook off the hand like a bottle of soda water expelling its cork.
You Man-of-the-Earth, he cried, sitting up in the coal-scuttle. "You are not even orthodox. Here, my dear gentlemen, is the very position created by Heaven for me--in this disgraceful country where genius starves. Here at last you have the opportunity of covering yourselves vid eternal glory. Have I not given you the idea of starting this paper? And vas I not born to be a Redacteur, a Editor, as you call it? Into the paper I vill pour all the fires of my song--"
Yes, burn it up, croaked Ebenezer.
I vill lead the Freethinkers and the Reformers back into the fold. I vill be Elijah and my vings shall be quill pens. I vill save Judaism. He started up, swelling, but De Haan caught him by his waistcoat and readjusted him in the coal-scuttle.
Here, take another cigar, Pinchas, he said, passing Schlesinger's private box, as if with a twinge of remorse for his treatment of one he admired as a poet though he could not take him seriously as a man.
The discussion proceeded; the furniture-dealer's counsel was followed; it was definitely decided to let the two candidates neutralize each other.
Vat vill you give me, if I find you a Redacteur? suddenly asked Pinchas. "I give up my editorial seat--"
Editorial coal-scuttle, growled Ebenezer.
Pooh! I find you a first-class Redacteur who vill not want a big salary; perhaps he vill do it for nothing. How much commission vill you give me?
Ten shillings on every pound if he does not want a big salary, said De Haan instantly, "and twelve and sixpence on every pound if he does it for nothing."
And Pinchas, who was easily bamboozled when finance became complex, went out to find Raphael.
Thus at the next meeting the poet produced Raphael in triumph, and Gradkoski, who loved a reputation for sagacity, turned a little green with disgust at his own forgetfulness. Gradkoski was among those founders of the Holy Land League with whom Raphael had kept up relations, and he could not deny that the young enthusiast was the ideal man for the post. De Haan, who was busy directing the clerks to write out ten thousand wrappers for the first number, and who had never heard of Raphael before, held a whispered confabulation with Gradkoski and Schlesinger and in a few moments Raphael was rescued from obscurity and appointed to the editorship of the _Flag of Judah_ at a salary of nothing a year. De Haan immediately conceived a vast contemptuous admiration of the man.
You von't forget me, whispered Pinchas, buttonholing the editor at the first opportunity, and placing his forefinger insinuatingly alongside his nose. "You vill remember that I expect a commission on your salary."
Raphael smiled good-naturedly and, turning to De Haan, said: "But do you think there is any hope of a circulation?"
A circulation, sir, a circulation! repeated De Haan. "Why, we shall not be able to print fast enough. There are seventy-thousand orthodox Jews in London alone."
And besides, added Gradkoski, in a corroboration strongly like a contradiction, "we shall not have to rely on the circulation. Newspapers depend on their advertisements."
Do they? said Raphael, helplessly.
Of course, said Gradkoski with his air of worldly wisdom, "And don't you see, being a religious paper we are bound to get all the communal advertisements. Why, we get the Co-operative Kosher Society to start with."
Yes, but we ain't: going to pay for that,' said Sugarman the _Shadchan_.
That doesn't matter, said De Haan. "It'll look well--we can fill up a whole page with it. You know what Jews are--they won't ask 'is this paper wanted?' they'll balance it in their hand, as if weighing up the value of the advertisements, and ask 'does it pay?' But it _will_ pay, it must pay; with you at the head of it, Mr. Leon, a man whose fame and piety are known and respected wherever a _Mezuzah_ adorns a door-post, a man who is in sympathy with the East End, and has the ear of the West, a man who will preach the purest Judaism in the best English, with such a man at the head of it, we shall be able to ask bigger prices for advertisements than the existing Jewish papers."
Raphael left the office in a transport of enthusiasm, full of Messianic emotions. At the next meeting he announced that he was afraid he could not undertake the charge of the paper. Amid universal consternation, tempered by the exultation of Ebenezer, he explained that he had been thinking it over and did not see how it could be done. He said he had been carefully studying the existing communal organs, and saw that they dealt with many matters of which he knew nothing; whilst he might be competent to form the taste of the community in religious and literary matters, it appeared that the community was chiefly excited about elections and charities. "Moreover," said he, "I noticed that it is expected of these papers to publish obituaries of communal celebrities, for whose biographies no adequate materials are anywhere extant. It would scarcely be decent to obtrude upon the sacred grief of the bereaved relatives with a request for particulars."
Oh, that's all right, laughed De Haan. "I'm sure _my_ wife would be glad to give you any information."
Of course, of course, said Gradkoski, soothingly. "You will get the obituaries sent in of themselves by the relatives."
Raphael's brow expressed surprise and incredulity.
And besides, we are not going to crack up the same people as the other papers, said De Haan; "otherwise we should not supply a want. We must dole out our praise and blame quite differently, and we must be very scrupulous to give only a little praise so that it shall be valued the more." He stroked his white, beard tranquilly.
But how about meetings? urged Raphael. "I find that sometimes two take place at once. I can go to one, but I can't be at both."
Oh, that will be all right, said De Haan airily. "We will leave out one and people will think it is unimportant. We are bringing out a paper for our own ends, not to report the speeches of busybodies."
Raphael was already exhibiting a conscientiousness which must be nipped in the bud. Seeing him silenced, Ebenezer burst forth anxiously:
But Mr. Leon is right. There must be a sub-editor.
Certainly there must be a sub-editor, cried Pinchas eagerly.
Very well, then, said De Haan, struck with a sudden thought. "It is true Mr. Leon cannot do all the work. I know a young fellow who'll be just the very thing. He'll come for a pound a week."
But I'll come for a pound a week, said Ebenezer.
Yes, but you won't get it, said Schlesinger impatiently.
_Sha_, Ebenezer, said old Sugarman imperiously.
De Haan thereupon hunted up a young gentleman, who dwelt in his mind as "Little Sampson," and straightway secured him at the price named. He was a lively young Bohemian born in Australia, who had served an apprenticeship on the Anglo-Jewish press, worked his way up into the larger journalistic world without, and was now engaged in organizing a comic-opera touring company, and in drifting back again into Jewish journalism. This young gentleman, who always wore long curling locks, an eye-glass and a romantic cloak which covered a multitude of shabbinesses, fully allayed Raphael's fears as to the difficulties of editorship.
Obituaries! he said scornfully. "You rely on me for that! The people who are worth chronicling are sure to have lived in the back numbers of our contemporaries, and I can always hunt them up in the Museum. As for the people who are not, their families will send them in, and your only trouble will be to conciliate the families of those you ignore."
But about all those meetings? said Raphael.
I'll go to some, said the sub-editor good-naturedly, "whenever they don't interfere with the rehearsals of my opera. You know of course I am bringing out a comic-opera, composed by myself, some lovely tunes in it; one goes like this: Ta ra ra ta, ta dee dum dee--that'll knock 'em. Well, as I was saying, I'll help you as much as I can find time for. You rely on me for that."
Yes, said poor Raphael with a sickly smile, "but suppose neither of us goes to some important meeting."
No harm done. God bless you, I know the styles of all our chief speakers--ahem--ha!--pauperization of the East End, ha!--I would emphatically say that this scheme--ahem!--his lordship's untiring zeal for hum!--the welfare of--and so on. Ta dee dum da, ta, ra, rum dee. They always send on the agenda beforehand. That's all I want, and I'll lay you twenty to one I'll turn out as good a report as any of our rivals. You rely on me for _that_! I know exactly how debates go. At the worst I can always swop with another reporter--a prize distribution for an obituary, or a funeral for a concert.
And do you really think we two between us can fill up the paper every week? said Raphael doubtfully.
Little Sampson broke into a shriek of laughter, dropped his eyeglass and collapsed helplessly into the coal-scuttle. The Committeemen looked up from their confabulations in astonishment.
Fill up the paper! Ho! Ho! Ho! roared little Sampson, still doubled up. "Evidently _you've_ never had anything to do with papers. Why, the reports of London and provincial sermons alone would fill three papers a week."
Yes, but how are we to get these reports, especially from the provinces?
How? Ho! Ho! Ho! And for some time little Sampson was physically incapable of speech. "Don't you know," he gasped, "that the ministers always send up their own sermons, pages upon pages of foolscap?"
Indeed? murmured Raphael.
What, haven't you noticed all Jewish sermons are eloquent?.
They write that themselves?
Of course; sometimes they put 'able,' and sometimes 'learned,' but, as a rule, they prefer to be 'eloquent.' The run on that epithet is tremendous. Ta dee dum da. In holiday seasons they are also very fond of 'enthralling the audience,' and of 'melting them to tears,' but this is chiefly during the Ten Days of Repentance, or when a boy is _Barmitzvah_. Then, think of the people who send in accounts of the oranges they gave away to distressed widows, or of the prizes won by their children at fourth-rate schools, or of the silver pointers they present to the synagogue. Whenever a reader sends a letter to an evening paper, he will want you to quote it; and, if he writes a paragraph in the obscurest leaflet, he will want you to note it as 'Literary Intelligence.' Why, my dear fellow, your chief task will be to cut down. Ta, ra, ra, ta! Any Jewish paper could be entirely supported by voluntary contributions--as, for the matter of that, could any newspaper in the world. He got up and shook the coal-dust languidly from his cloak.
Besides, we shall all be helping you with articles, said De Haan, encouragingly.
Yes, we shall all be helping you, said Ebenezer.
I vill give you from the Pierian spring--bucketsful, said Pinchas in a flush of generosity.
Thank you, I shall be much obliged, said Raphael, heartily, "for I don't quite see the use of a paper filled up as Mr. Sampson suggests." He flung his arms out and drew them in again. It was a way he had when in earnest. "Then, I should like to have some foreign news. Where's that to come from?"
You rely on me for _that_, said little Sampson, cheerfully. "I will write at once to all the chief Jewish papers in the world, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and American, asking them to exchange with us. There is never any dearth of foreign news. I translate a thing from the Italian _Vessillo Israelitico_, and the _Israelitische Nieuwsbode_ copies it from us; _Der Israelit_ then translates it into German, whence it gets into Hebrew, in _Hamagid_, thence into _L'Univers Israelite_, of Paris, and thence into the _American Hebrew_. When I see it in American, not having to translate it, it strikes me as fresh, and so I transfer it bodily to our columns, whence it gets translated into Italian, and so the merry-go-round goes eternally on. Ta dee rum day. You rely on me for your foreign news. Why, I can get you foreign telegrams if you'll only allow me to stick 'Trieste, December 21,' or things of that sort at the top. Ti, tum, tee ti." He went on humming a sprightly air, then, suddenly interrupting himself, he said, "but have you got an advertisement canvasser, Mr. De Haan?"
No, not yet, said De Haan, turning around. The committee had resolved itself into animated groups, dotted about the office, each group marked by a smoke-drift. The clerks were still writing the ten thousand wrappers, swearing inaudibly.
Well, when are you going to get him?
Oh, we shall have advertisements rolling in of themselves, said De Haan, with a magnificent sweep of the arm. "And we shall all assist in that department! Help yourself to another cigar, Sampson." And he passed Schlesinger's box. Raphael and Karlkammer were the only two men in the room not smoking cigars--Raphael, because he preferred his pipe, and Karlkammer for some more mystic reason.
We must not ignore Cabalah, the zealot's voice was heard to observe.
You can't get advertisements by Cabalah, drily interrupted Guedalyah, the greengrocer, a practical man, as everybody knew.
No, indeed, protested Sampson. "The advertisement canvasser is a more important man than the editor."
Ebenezer pricked up his ears.
I thought _you_ undertook to do some canvassing for your money, said De Haan.
So I will, so I will; rely on me for that. I shouldn't be surprised if I get the capitalists who are backing up my opera to give you the advertisements of the tour, and I'll do all I can in my spare time. But I feel sure you'll want another man--only, you must pay him well and give him a good commission. It'll pay best in the long run to have a good man, there are so many seedy duffers about, said little Sampson, drawing his faded cloak loftily around him. "You want an eloquent, persuasive man, with a gift of the gab--"
Didn't I tell you so? interrupted Pinchas, putting his finger to his nose. "I vill go to the advertisers and speak burning words to them. I vill--"
Garn! They'd kick you out! croaked Ebenezer. "They'll only listen to an Englishman." His coarse-featured face glistened with spite.
My Ebenezer has a good appearance, said old Sugarman, "and his English is fine, and dat is half de battle."
Schlesinger, appealed to, intimated that Ebenezer might try, but that they could not well spare him any percentage at the start. After much haggling, Ebenezer consented to waive his commission, if the committee would consent to allow an original tale of his to appear in the paper.
The stipulation having been agreed to, he capered joyously about the office and winked periodically at Pinchas from behind the battery of his blue spectacles. The poet was, however, rapt in a discussion as to the best printer. The Committee were for having Gluck, who had done odd jobs for most of them, but Pinchas launched into a narrative of how, when he edited a great organ in Buda-Pesth, he had effected vast economies by starting a little printing-office of his own in connection with the paper.
You vill set up a little establishment, he said. "I vill manage it for a few pounds a veek. Then I vill not only print your paper, I vill get you large profits from extra printing. Vith a man of great business talent at the head of it--"
De Haan made a threatening movement, and Pinchas edged away from the proximity of the coal-scuttle.
Gluck's our printer! said De Haan peremptorily. "He has Hebrew type. We shall want a lot of that. We must have a lot of Hebrew quotations--not spell Hebrew words in English like the other papers. And the Hebrew date must come before the English. The public must see at once that our principles are superior. Besides, Gluck's a Jew, which will save us from the danger of having any of the printing done on Saturdays."
But shan't we want a publisher? asked Sampson.
That's vat I say, cried Pinchas. "If I set up this office, I can be your publisher too. Ve must do things business-like."
Nonsense, nonsense! We are our own publishers, said De Haan. "Our clerks will send out the invoices and the subscription copies, and an extra office-boy can sell the papers across the counter."
Sampson smiled in his sleeve.
All right. That will do--for the first number, he said cordially. "Ta ra ra ta."
Now then, Mr. Leon, everything is settled, said De Haan, stroking his beard briskly. "I think I'll ask you to help us to draw up the posters. We shall cover all London, sir, all London."
But wouldn't that be wasting money? said Raphael.
Oh, we're going to do the thing properly. I don't believe in meanness.
It'll be enough if we cover the East End, said Schlesinger, drily.
Quite so. The East End _is_ London as far as we're concerned, said De Haan readily.
Raphael took the pen and the paper which De Haan tendered him and wrote _The Flag of Judah_, the title having been fixed at their first interview.
The only orthodox paper! dictated De Haan. "Largest circulation of any Jewish paper in the world!"
No, how can we say that? said Raphael, pausing.
No, of course not, said De Haan. "I was thinking of the subsequent posters. Look out for the first number--on Friday, January 1st. The best Jewish writers! The truest Jewish teachings! Latest Jewish news and finest Jewish stories. Every Friday. Twopence."
Twopence? echoed Raphael, looking up. "I thought you wanted to appeal to the masses. I should say it must be a penny."
It _will_ be a penny, said De Haan oracularly.
We have thought it all over, interposed Gradkoski. "The first number will be bought up out of curiosity, whether at a penny or at twopence. The second will go almost as well, for people will be anxious to see how it compares with the first. In that number we shall announce that owing to the enormous success we have been able to reduce it to a penny; meantime we make all the extra pennies."
I see, said Raphael dubiously.
We must have _Chochma_ said De Haan. "Our sages recommend that."
Raphael still had his doubts, but he had also a painful sense of his lack of the "practical wisdom" recommended by the sages cited. He thought these men were probably in the right. Even religion could not be pushed on the masses without business methods, and so long as they were in earnest about the doctrines to be preached, he could even feel a dim admiration for their superior shrewdness in executing a task in which he himself would have hopelessly broken down. Raphael's mind was large; and larger by being conscious of its cloistral limitations. And the men were in earnest; not even their most intimate friends could call this into question.
We are going to save London, De Haan put it in one of his dithyrambic moments. "Orthodoxy has too long been voiceless, and yet it is five-sixths of Judaea. A small minority has had all the say. We must redress the balance. We must plead the cause of the People against the Few."
Raphael's breast throbbed with similar hopes. His Messianic emotions resurged. Sugarman's solicitous request that he should buy a Hamburg Lottery Ticket scarcely penetrated his consciousness. Carrying the copy of the poster, he accompanied De Haan to Gluck's. It was a small shop in a back street with jargon-papers and hand-bills in the window and a pervasive heavy oleaginous odor. A hand-press occupied the centre of the interior, the back of which was partitioned of and marked "Private." Gluck came forward, grinning welcome. He wore an unkempt beard and a dusky apron.
Can you undertake to print an eight-page paper? inquired De Haan.
If I can print at all, I can print anything, responded Gluck reproachfully. "How many shall you want?"
It's the orthodox paper we've been planning so long, said De Haan evasively.
Gluck nodded his head.
There are seventy thousand orthodox Jews in London alone, said De Haan, with rotund enunciation. "So you see what you may have to print. It'll be worth your while to do it extra cheap."
Gluck agreed readily, naming a low figure. After half an hour's discussion it was reduced by ten per cent.
Good-bye, then, said De Haan. "So let it stand. We shall start with a thousand copies of the first number, but where we shall end, the Holy One, blessed be He, alone knows. I will now leave you and the editor to talk over the rest. To-day's Monday. We must have the first number out by Friday week. Can you do that, Mr. Leon?"
Oh, that will be ample, said Raphael, shooting out his arms.
He did not remain of that opinion. Never had he gone through such an awful, anxious time, not even in his preparations for the stiffest exams. He worked sixteen hours a day at the paper. The only evening he allowed himself off was when he dined with Mrs. Henry Goldsmith and met Esther. First numbers invariably take twice as long to produce as second numbers, even in the best regulated establishments. All sorts of mysterious sticks and leads, and fonts and forms, are found wanting at the eleventh hour. As a substitute for gray hair-dye there is nothing in the market to compete with the production of first numbers. But in Gluck's establishment, these difficulties were multiplied by a hundred. Gluck spent a great deal of time in going round the corner to get something from a brother printer. It took an enormous time to get a proof of any article out of Gluck.
My men are so careful, Gluck explained. "They don't like to pass anything till it's free from typos."
The men must have been highly disappointed, for the proofs were invariably returned bristling with corrections and having a highly hieroglyphic appearance. Then Gluck would go in and slang his men. He kept them behind the partition painted "Private."
The fatal Friday drew nearer and nearer. By Thursday not a single page had been made up. Still Gluck pointed out that there were only eight, and the day was long. Raphael had not the least idea in the world how to make up a paper, but about eleven little Sampson kindly strolled into Gluck's, and explained to his editor his own method of pasting the proofs on sheets of paper of the size of the pages. He even made up one page himself to a blithe vocal accompaniment. When the busy composer and acting-manager hurried off to conduct a rehearsal, Raphael expressed his gratitude warmly. The hours flew; the paper evolved as by geologic stages. As the fateful day wore on, Gluck was scarcely visible for a moment. Raphael was left alone eating his heart out in the shop, and solacing himself with huge whiffs of smoke. At immense intervals Gluck appeared from behind the partition bearing a page or a galley slip. He said his men could not be trusted to do their work unless he was present. Raphael replied that he had not seen the compositors come through the shop to get their dinners, and he hoped Gluck would not find it necessary to cut off their meal-times. Gluck reassured him on this point; he said his men were so loyal that they preferred to bring their food with them rather than have the paper delayed. Later on he casually mentioned that there was a back entrance. He would not allow Raphael to talk to his workmen personally, arguing that it spoiled their discipline. By eleven o'clock at night seven pages had been pulled and corrected: but the eighth page was not forthcoming. The _Flag_ had to be machined, dried, folded, and a number of copies put into wrappers and posted by three in the morning. The situation looked desperate. At a quarter to twelve, Gluck explained that a column of matter already set up had been "pied" by a careless compositor. It happened to be the column containing the latest news and Raphael had not even seen a proof of it. Still, Gluck conjured him not to trouble further: he would give his reader strict injunctions not to miss the slightest error. Raphael had already seen and passed the first column of this page, let him leave it to Gluck to attend to this second column; all would be well without his remaining later, and he would receive a copy of the _Flag_ by the first post. The poor editor, whose head was splitting, weakly yielded; he just caught the midnight train to the West End and he went to bed feeling happy and hopeful.
At seven o'clock the next morning the whole Leon household was roused by a thunderous double rat-tat at the door. Addie was even heard to scream. A housemaid knocked at Raphael's door and pushed a telegram under it. Raphael jumped out of bed and read: "Third of column more matter wanted. Come at once. Gluck."
How can that be? he asked himself in consternation. "If the latest news made a column when it was first set up before the accident, how can it make less now?"
He dashed up to Gluck's office in a hansom and put the conundrum to him.
You see we had no time to distribute the 'pie,' and we had no more type of that kind, so we had to reset it smaller, answered Gluck glibly. His eyes were blood-shot, his face was haggard. The door of the private compartment stood open.
Your men are not come yet, I suppose, said Raphael.
No, said Gluck. "They didn't go away till two, poor fellows. Is that the copy?" he asked, as Raphael handed him a couple of slips he had distractedly scribbled in the cab under the heading of "Talmudic Tales." "Thank you, it's just about the size. I shall have to set it myself."
But won't we be terribly late? said poor Raphael.
We shall be out to-day, responded Gluck cheerfully. "We shall be in time for the Sabbath, and that's the important thing. Don't you see they're half-printed already?" He indicated a huge pile of sheets. Raphael examined them with beating heart. "We've only got to print 'em on the other side and the thing's done," said Gluck.
Where are your machines?
There, said Gluck, pointing.
That hand-press! cried Raphael, astonished. "Do you mean to say you print them all with your own hand?"
Why not? said the dauntless Gluck. "I shall wrap them up for the post, too." And he shut himself up with the last of the "copy."
Raphael having exhausted his interest in the half-paper, fell to striding about the little shop, when who should come in but Pinchas, smoking a cigar of the Schlesinger brand.
Ah, my Prince of Redacteurs, said Pinchas, darting at Raphael's hand and kissing it. "Did I not say you vould produce the finest paper in the kingdom? But vy have I not my copy by post? You must not listen to Ebenezer ven he says I must not be on the free list, the blackguard."
Raphael explained to the incredulous poet that Ebenezer had not said anything of the kind. Suddenly Pinchas's eye caught sight of the sheets. He swooped down upon them like a hawk. Then he uttered a shriek of grief.
Vere's my poem, my great poesie?
Raphael looked embarrassed.
This is only half the paper, he said evasively.
Ha, then it vill appear in the other half, _hein_? he said with hope tempered by a terrible suspicion.
N--n--o, stammered Raphael timidly.
No? shrieked Pinchas.
You see--the--fact is, it wouldn't scan. Your Hebrew poetry is perfect, but English poetry is made rather differently and I've been too busy to correct it.
But it is exactly like Lord Byron's! shrieked Pinchas. "Mein Gott! All night I lie avake--vaiting for the post. At eight o'clock the post comes--but _The Flag of Judah_ she vaves not! I rush round here--and now my beautiful poem vill not appear." He seized the sheet again, then cried fiercely: "You have a tale, 'The Waters of Babylon,' by Ebenezer the fool-boy, but my poesie have you not. _Gott in Himmel_!" He tore the sheet frantically across and rushed from the shop. In five minutes he reappeared. Raphael was absorbed in reading the last proof. Pinchas plucked timidly at his coat-tails.
You vill put it in next veek? he said winningly.
I dare say, said Raphael gently.
Ah, promise me. I vill love you like a brother, I vill be grateful to you for ever and ever. I vill never ask another favor of you in all my life. Ve are already like brothers--_hein_? I and you, the only two men--
Yes, yes, interrupted Raphael, "it shall appear next week."
God bless you! said Pinchas, kissing Raphael's coat-tails passionately and rushing without.
Looking up accidentally some minutes afterwards, Raphael was astonished to see the poet's carneying head thrust through the half-open door with a finger laid insinuatingly on the side of the nose. The head was fixed there as if petrified, waiting to catch the editor's eye.
The first number of _The Flag of Judah_ appeared early in the afternoon.
The new organ did not create a profound impression. By the rival party it was mildly derided, though many fair-minded persons were impressed by the rather unusual combination of rigid orthodoxy with a high spiritual tone and Raphael's conception of Judaism as outlined in his first leader, his view of it as a happy human compromise between an empty unpractical spiritualism and a choked-up over-practical formalism, avoiding the opposite extremes of its offshoots, Christianity and Mohammedanism, was novel to many of his readers, unaccustomed to think about their faith. Dissatisfied as Raphael was with the number, he felt he had fluttered some of the dove-cotes at least. Several people of taste congratulated him during Saturday and Sunday, and it was with a continuance of Messianic emotions and with agreeable anticipations that he repaired on Monday morning to the little den which had been inexpensively fitted up for him above the offices of Messrs. Schlesinger and De Haan. To his surprise he found it crammed with the committee; all gathered round little Sampson, who, with flushed face and cloak tragically folded, was expostulating at the top of his voice. Pinchas stood at the back in silent amusement. As Raphael entered jauntily, from a dozen lips, the lowering faces turned quickly towards him. Involuntarily Raphael started back in alarm, then stood rooted to the threshold. There was a dread ominous silence. Then the storm burst.
_Du Shegetz! Du Pasha Yisroile!_ came from all quarters of the compass.
To be called a graceless Gentile and a sinner in Israel is not pleasant to a pious Jew: but all Raphael's minor sensations were swallowed up in a great wonderment.
We are ruined! moaned the furniture-dealer, who was always failing.
You have ruined us! came the chorus from the thick, sensuous lips, and swarthy fists were shaken threateningly. Sugarman's hairy paw was almost against his face. Raphael turned cold, then a rush of red-hot blood flooded his veins. He put out his good right hand and smote the nearest fist aside. Sugarman blenched and skipped back and the line of fists wavered.
Don't be fools, gentlemen, said De Haan, his keen sense of humor asserting itself. "Let Mr. Leon sit down."
Raphael, still dazed, took his seat on the editorial chair. "Now, what can I do for you?" he said courteously. The fists dropped at his calm.
Do for us, said Schlesinger drily. "You've done for the paper. It's not worth twopence."
Well, bring it out at a penny at once then, laughed little Sampson, reinforced by the arrival of his editor.
Guedalyah the greengrocer glowered at him.
I am very sorry, gentlemen, I have not been able to satisfy you, said Raphael. "But in a first number one can't do much."
Can't they? said De Haan. "You've done so much damage to orthodoxy that we don't know whether to go on with the paper."
You're joking, murmured Raphael.
I wish I was, laughed De Haan bitterly.
But you astonish me. persisted Raphael. "Would you be so good as to point out where I have gone wrong?"
With pleasure. Or rather with pain, said De Haan. Each of the committee drew a tattered copy from his pocket, and followed De Haan's demonstration with a murmured accompaniment of lamentation.
The paper was founded to inculcate the inspection of cheese, the better supervision of the sale of meat, the construction of ladies' baths, and all the principles of true Judaism, said De Haan gloomily, "and there's not one word about these things, but a great deal about spirituality and the significance of the ritual. But I will begin at the beginning. Page 1--"
But that's advertisements, muttered Raphael.
"The part surest to be read! The very first line of the paper is simply shocking. It reads: Death: On the 59th ult., at 22 Buckley St., the Rev. Abraham Barnett, in his fifty-fourth--""
"But death is always shocking; what's wrong about that? interposed little Sampson.
Wrong! repeated De Haan, witheringly. "Where did you get that from? That was never sent in."
No, of course not, said the sub-editor. "But we had to have at least one advertisement of that kind; just to show we should be pleased to advertise our readers' deaths. I looked in the daily papers to see if there were any births or marriages with Jewish names, but I couldn't find any, and that was the only Jewish-sounding death I could see."
But the Rev. Abraham Barnett was a _Meshumad_, shrieked Sugarman the _Shadchan_. Raphael turned pale. To have inserted an advertisement about an apostate missionary was indeed terrible. But little Sampson's audacity did not desert him.
I thought the orthodox party would be pleased to hear of the death of a _Meshumad_, he said suavely, screwing his eyeglass more tightly into its orbit, "on the same principle that anti-Semites take in the Jewish papers to hear of the death of Jews."
For a moment De Haan was staggered. "That would be all very well," he said; "let him be an atonement for us all, but then you've gone and put 'May his soul he bound up in the bundle of life.'"
It was true. The stock Hebrew equivalent for R.I.P. glared from the page.
Fortunately, that taking advertisement of _kosher_ trousers comes just underneath, said De Haan, "and that may draw off the attention. On page 2 you actually say in a note that Rabbenu Bachja's great poem on repentance should be incorporated in the ritual and might advantageously replace the obscure _Piyut_ by Kalir. But this is rank Reform--it's worse than the papers we come to supersede."
But surely you know it is only the Printing Press that has stereotyped our liturgy, that for Maimonides and Ibn Ezra, for David Kimchi and Joseph Albo, the contents were fluid, that--
We don't deny that, interrupted Schlesinger drily. "But we can't have any more alterations now-a-days. Who is there worthy to alter them? You?"
Certainly not. I merely suggest.
You are playing into the hands of our enemies, said De Haan, shaking his head. "We must not let our readers even imagine that the prayer-book can be tampered with. It's the thin end of the wedge. To trim our liturgy is like trimming living flesh; wherever you cut, the blood oozes. The four cubits of the _Halacha_--that is what is wanted, not changes in the liturgy. Once touch anything, and where are you to stop? Our religion becomes a flux. Our old Judaism is like an old family mansion, where each generation has left a memorial and where every room is hallowed with traditions of merrymaking and mourning. We do not want our fathers' home decorated in the latest style; the next step will be removal to a new dwelling altogether. On page 3 you refer to the second Isaiah."
But I deny that there were two Isaiahs.
So you do; but it is better for our readers not to hear of such impious theories. The space would be much better occupied in explaining the Portion for the week. The next leaderette has a flippant tone, which has excited unfavorable comment among some of the most important members of the Dalston Synagogue. They object to humor in a religious paper. On page 4 you have deliberately missed an opportunity of puffing the Kosher Co-operative Society. Indeed, there is not a word throughout about our Society. But I like Mr. Henry Goldsmith's letter on this page, though; he is a good orthodox man and he writes from a good address. It will show we are not only read in the East End. Pity he's such a Man-of-the-Earth, though. Yes, and that's good--the communication from the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I think he's a bit of an _Epikouros_ but it looks as if the whole of the Kensington Synagogue was with us. I understand he is a friend of yours: it will be as well for you to continue friendly. Several of us here knew him well in _Olov Hasholom_ times, but he is become so grand and rarely shows himself at the Holy Land League Meetings. He can help us a lot if he will.
Oh, I'm sure he will, said Raphael.
That's good, said De Haan, caressing his white beard. Then growing gloomy again, he went on, "On page 5 you have a little article by Gabriel Hamburg, a well-known _Epikouros_."
Oh, but he's one of the greatest scholars in Europe! broke in Raphael. "I thought you'd be extra pleased to have it. He sent it to me from Stockholm as a special favor." He did not mention he had secretly paid for it. "I know some of his views are heterodox, and I don't agree with half he says, but this article is perfectly harmless."
Well, let it pass--very few of our readers have ever heard of him. But on the same page you have a Latin quotation. I don't say there's anything wrong in that, but it smacks of Reform. Our readers don't understand it and it looks as if our Hebrew were poor. The Mishna contains texts suited for all purposes. We are in no need of Roman writers. On page 6 you speak of the Reform _Shool_, as if it were to be reasoned with. Sir, if we mention these freethinkers at all, it must be in the strongest language. By worshipping bare-headed and by seating the sexes together they have denied Judaism.
Stop a minute! interrupted Raphael warmly. "Who told you the Reformers do this?"
Who told me, indeed? Why, it's common knowledge. That's how they've been going on for the last fifty years. "Everybody knows it," said the Committee in chorus.
Has one of you ever been there? said Raphael, rising in excitement.
God forbid! said the chorus.
Well, I have, and it's a lie, said Raphael. His arms whirled round to the discomfort of the Committee.
You ought not to have gone there, said Schlesinger severely. "Besides, will you deny they have the organ in their Sabbath services?"
No, I won't!
Well, then! said De Haan, triumphantly. "If they are capable of that, they are capable of any wickedness. Orthodox people can have nothing to do with them."
But orthodox immigrants take their money, said Raphael.
Their money is _kosher_', they are _tripha_, said De Haan sententiously. "Page 7, now we get to the most dreadful thing of all!" A solemn silence fell on the room, Pinchas sniggered unobtrusively.
You have a little article headed, 'Talmudic Tales.' Why in heaven's name you couldn't have finished the column with bits of news I don't know. Satan himself must have put the thought into your head. Just at the end of the paper, too! For I can't reckon page 8, which is simply our own advertisement.
I thought it would be amusing, said Raphael.
Amusing! If you had simply told the tales, it might have been. But look how you introduce them! 'These amusing tales occur in the fifth chapter of Baba Bathra, and are related by Rabbi Bar Bar Channah. Our readers will see that they are parables or allegories rather than actual facts.'
But do you mean to say you look upon them as facts? cried Raphael, sawing the air wildly and pacing about on the toes of the Committee.
Surely! said De Haan, while a low growl at his blasphemous doubts ran along the lips of the Committee.
Was it treacherously to undermine Judaism that you so eagerly offered to edit for nothing? said the furniture-dealer who was always failing.
But listen here! cried Raphael, exasperated. "Harmez, the son of Lilith, a demon, saddled two mules and made them stand on opposite sides of the River Doneg. He then jumped from the back of one to that of the other. He had, at the time, a cup of wine in each hand, and as he jumped, he threw the wine from each cup into the other without spilling a drop, although a hurricane was blowing at the time. When the King of demons heard that Harmez had been thus showing off to mortals, he slew him. Does any of you believe that?"
Vould our Sages (their memories for a blessing) put anything into the Talmud that vasn't true? queried Sugarman. "Ve know there are demons because it stands that Solomon knew their language."
But then, what about this? pursued Raphael. "'I saw a frog which was as big as the district of Akra Hagronia. A sea-monster came and swallowed the frog, and a raven came and ate the sea-monster. The raven then went and perched on a tree' Consider how strong that tree must have been. R. Papa ben Samuel remarks, 'Had I not been present, I should not have believed it.' Doesn't this appendix about ben Samuel show that it was never meant to be taken seriously?"
It has some high meaning we do not understand in these degenerate times, said Guedalyah the greengrocer. "It is not for our paper to weaken faith in the Talmud."
Hear, hear! said De Haan, while "_Epikouros_" rumbled through the air, like distant thunder.
Didn't I say an Englishman could never master the Talmud? Sugarman asked in triumph.
This reminder of Raphael's congenital incompetence softened their minds towards him, so that when he straightway resigned his editorship, their self-constituted spokesman besought him to remain. Perhaps they remembered, too, that he was cheap.
But we must all edit the paper, said De Haan enthusiastically, when peace was re-established. "We must have meetings every day and every article must he read aloud before it is printed."
Little Sampson winked cynically, passing his hand pensively through his thick tangled locks, but Raphael saw no objection to the arrangement. As before, he felt his own impracticability borne in upon him, and he decided to sacrifice himself for the Cause as far as conscience permitted. Excessive as it was the zeal of these men, it was after all in the true groove. His annoyance returned for a while, however, when Sugarman the _Shadchan_ seized the auspicious moment of restored amity to inquire insinuatingly if his sister was engaged. Pinchas and little Sampson went down the stairs, quivering with noiseless laughter, which became boisterous when they reached the street. Pinchas was in high feather.
The fool-men! he said, as he led the sub-editor into a public-house and regaled him on stout and sandwiches. "They believe any _Narrischkeit_. I and you are the only two sensible Jews in England. You vill see that my poesie goes in next week--promise me that! To your life!" here they touched glasses. "Ah, it is beautiful poesie. Such high tragic ideas! You vill kiss me when you read them!" He laughed in childish light-heartedness. "Perhaps I write you a comic opera for your company--_hein_? Already I love you like a brother. Another glass stout? Bring us two more, thou Hebe of the hops-nectar. You have seen my comedy 'The Hornet of Judah'--No?--Ah, she vas a great comedy, Sampson. All London talked of her. She has been translated into every tongue. Perhaps I play in your company. I am a great actor--_hein_? You know not my forte is voman's parts--I make myself so lovely complexion vith red paint, I fall in love vith me." He sniggered over his stout. "The Redacteur vill not redact long, _hein_?" he said presently. "He is a fool-man. If he work for nothing they think that is what he is worth. They are orthodox, he, he!"
But he is orthodox too, said little Sampson.
Yes, replied Pinchas musingly. "It is strange. It is very strange. I cannot understand him. Never in all my experience have I met another such man. There vas an Italian exile I talked vith once in the island of Chios, his eyes were like Leon's, soft vith a shining splendor like the stars vich are the eyes of the angels of love. Ah, he is a good man, and he writes sharp; he has ideas, not like an English Jew at all. I could throw my arms round him sometimes. I love him like a brother." His voice softened. "Another glass stout; ve vill drink to him."
Raphael did not find the editing by Committee feasible. The friction was incessant, the waste of time monstrous. The second number cost him even more headaches than the first, and this, although the gallant Gluck abandoning his single-handed emprise fortified himself with a real live compositor and had arranged for the paper to be printed by machinery. The position was intolerable. It put a touch of acid into his dulciferous mildness! Just before going to press he was positively rude to Pinchas. It would seem that little Sampson sheltering himself behind his capitalists had refused to give the poet a commission for a comic opera, and Pinchas raved at Gideon, M.P., who he was sure was Sampson's financial backer, and threatened to shoot him and danced maniacally about the office.
I have written an attack on the Member for Vitechapel, he said, growing calmer, "to hand him down to the execration of posterity, and I have brought it to the _Flag_. It must go in this veek."
We have already your poem, said Raphael.
I know, but I do not grudge my work, I am not like your money-making English Jews.
There is no room. The paper is full.
Leave out Ebenezer's tale--with the blue spectacles.
There is none. It was completed in one number.
Well, must you put in your leader?
Absolutely; please go away. I have this page to read.
But you can leave out some advertisements?
I must not. We have too few as it is.
The poet put his finger alongside his nose, but Raphael was adamant.
Do me this one favor, he pleaded. "I love you like a brother; just this one little thing. I vill never ask another favor of you all my life."
I would not put it in, even if there was room. Go away, said Raphael, almost roughly.
The unaccustomed accents gave Pinchas a salutary shock. He borrowed two shillings and left, and Raphael was afraid to look up lest he should see his head wedged in the doorway. Soon after Gluck and his one compositor carried out the forms to be machined. Little Sampson, arriving with a gay air on his lips, met them at the door.
On the Friday, Raphael sat in the editorial chair, utterly dispirited, a battered wreck. The Committee had just left him. A heresy had crept into a bit of late news not inspected by them, and they declared that the paper was not worth twopence and had better be stopped. The demand for this second number was, moreover, rather poor, and each man felt his ten pound share melting away, and resolved not to pay up the half yet unpaid. It was Raphael's first real experience of men--after the enchanted towers of Oxford, where he had foregathered with dreamers.
His pipe hung listless in his mouth; an extinct volcano. His first fit of distrust in human nature, nay, even in the purifying powers of orthodoxy, was racking him. Strangely enough this wave of scepticism tossed up the thought of Esther Ansell, and stranger still on the top of this thought, in walked Mr. Henry Goldsmith. Raphael jumped up and welcomed his late host, whose leathery countenance shone with the polish of a sweet smile. It appeared that the communal pillar had been passing casually, and thought he'd look Raphael up.
So you don't pull well together, he said, when he had elicited an outline of the situation from the editor.
No, not altogether, admitted Raphael.
Do you think the paper'll live?
I can't say, said Raphael, dropping limply into his chair. "Even if it does. I don't know whether it will do much good if run on their lines, for although it is of great importance that we get _kosher_ food and baths. I hardly think they go about it in the right spirit. I may be wrong. They are older men than I and have seen more of actual life, and know the class we appeal to better."
No, no, you are not wrong, said Mr. Goldsmith vehemently. "I am myself dissatisfied with some of the Committee's contributions to this second number. It is a great opportunity to save English Judaism, but it is being frittered away."
I am afraid it is, said Raphael, removing his empty pipe from his mouth, and staring at it blankly.
Mr. Goldsmith brought his fist down sharp on the soft litter that covered the editorial table.
It shall not be frittered away! he cried. "No, not if I have to buy the paper!"
Raphael looked up eagerly.
What do you say? said Goldsmith. "Shall I buy it up and let you work it on your lines?"
I shall be very glad, said Raphael, the Messianic look returning to his face.
How much will they want for it?
Oh, I think they'll be glad to let you take it over. They say it's not worth twopence, and I'm sure they haven't got the funds to carry it on, replied Raphael, rising. "I'll go down about it at once. The Committee have just been here, and I dare say they are still in Schlesinger's office."
No, no, said Goldsmith, pushing him down into his seat. "It will never do if people know I'm the proprietor."
Why not?
Oh, lots of reasons. I'm not a man to brag; if I want to do a good thing for Judaism, there's no reason for all the world to know it. Then again, from my position on all sorts of committees I shall be able to influence the communal advertisements in a way I couldn't if people knew I had any connection with the paper. So, too, I shall be able to recommend it to my wealthy friends (as no doubt it will deserve to be recommended) without my praise being discounted.
Well, but then what am I to say to the Committee?
Can't you say you want to buy it for yourself? They know you can afford it.
Raphael hesitated. "But why shouldn't I buy it for myself?"
Pooh! Haven't you got better use for your money?
It was true. Raphael had designs more tangibly philanthropic for the five thousand pounds left him by his aunt. And he was business-like enough to see that Mr. Goldsmith's money might as well be utilized for the good of Judaism. He was not quite easy about the little fiction that would he necessary for the transaction, but the combined assurances of Mr. Goldsmith and his own common sense that there was no real deception or harm involved in it, ultimately prevailed. Mr. Goldsmith left, promising to call again in an hour, and Raphael, full of new hopes, burst upon the Committee.
But his first experience of bargaining was no happier than the rest of his worldly experience. When he professed his willingness to relieve them of the burden of carrying on the paper they first stared, then laughed, then shook their fists. As if they would leave him to corrupt the Faith! When they understood he was willing to pay something, the value of _The Flag of Judah_ went up from less than twopence to more than two hundred pounds. Everybody was talking about it, its reputation was made, they were going to print double next week.
But it has not cost you forty pounds yet? said the astonished Raphael.
What are you saying? Look at the posters alone! said Sugarman.
But you don't look at it fairly, argued De Haan, whose Talmudical studies had sharpened wits already super-subtle. "Whatever it has cost us, it would have cost as much more if we had had to pay our editor, and it is very unfair of you to leave that out of account."
Raphael was overwhelmed. "It's taking away with the left hand what you gave us with the right," added De Haan, with infinite sadness. "I had thought better of you, Mr. Leon."
But you got a good many twopences back, murmured Raphael.
It's the future profits that we're losing, explained Schlesinger.
In the end Raphael agreed to give a hundred pounds, which made the members inwardly determine to pay up the residue on their shares at once. De Haan also extorted a condition that the _Flag_ should continue to be the organ of the Kosher Co-operative Society, for at least six months, doubtless perceiving that should the paper live and thrive over that period, it would not then pay the proprietor to alter its principles. By which bargain the Society secured for itself a sum of money together with an organ, gratis, for six months and, to all seeming, in perpetuity, for at bottom they knew well that Raphael's heart was sound. They were all on the free list, too, and they knew he would not trouble to remove them.
Mr. Henry Goldsmith, returning, was rather annoyed at the price, but did not care to repudiate his agent.
Be economical, he said. "I will get you a better office and find a proper publisher and canvasser. But cut it as close as you can."
Raphael's face beamed with joy. "Oh, depend upon me," he said.
What is your own salary? asked Goldsmith.
Nothing, said Raphael.
A flash passed across Goldsmith's face, then he considered a moment.
I wish you would let it be a guinea, he said. "Quite nominal, you know. Only I like to have things in proper form. And if you ever want to go, you know, you'll give me a month's notice and," here he laughed genially, "I'll do ditto when I want to get rid of you. Ha! Ha! Ha! Is that a bargain?"
Raphael smiled in reply and the two men's hands met in a hearty clasp.
Miss Ansell will help you, I know, said Goldsmith cheerily. "That girl's got it in her, I can tell you. She'll take the shine out of some of our West Enders. Do you know I picked her out of the gutter, so to speak?"
Yes, I know, said Raphael. "It was very good and discriminating of you. How is she?"
She's all right. Come up and see her about doing something for you. She goes to the Museum sometimes in the afternoons, but you'll always find her in on Sundays, or most Sundays. Come up and dine with us again soon, will you? Mrs. Goldsmith will be so pleased.
I will, said Raphael fervently. And when the door closed upon the communal pillar, he fell to striding feverishly about his little den. His trust in human nature was restored and the receding wave of scepticism bore off again the image of Esther Ansell. Now to work for Judaism!
The sub-editor made his first appearance that day, carolling joyously.
Sampson, said Raphael abruptly, "your salary is raised by a guinea a week."
The joyous song died away on little Sampson's lips. His eyeglass dropped. He let himself fall backwards, impinging noiselessly upon a heap of "returns" of number one.
The sloppy Sunday afternoon, which was the first opportunity Raphael had of profiting by Mr. Henry Goldsmith's general invitation to call and see Esther, happened to be that selected by the worthy couple for a round of formal visits. Esther was left at home with a headache, little expecting pleasanter company. She hesitated about receiving Raphael, but on hearing that he had come to see her rather than her patrons, she smoothed her hair, put on a prettier frock, and went down into the drawing-room, where she found him striding restlessly in bespattered boots and moist overcoat. When he became aware of her presence, he went towards her eagerly, and shook her hand with jerky awkwardness.
How are you? he said heartily.
Very well, thank you, she replied automatically. Then a twinge, as of reproach at the falsehood, darted across her brow, and she added, "A trifle of the usual headache. I hope you are well."
Quite, thank you, he rejoined.
His face rather contradicted him. It looked thin, pale, and weary. Journalism writes lines on the healthiest countenance. Esther looked at him disapprovingly; she had the woman's artistic instinct if not the artist's, and Raphael, with his damp overcoat, everlastingly crumpled at the collar, was not an aesthetic object. Whether in her pretty moods or her plain, Esther was always neat and dainty. There was a bit of ruffled lace at her throat, and the heliotrope of her gown contrasted agreeably with the dark skin of the vivid face.
Do take off your overcoat and dry yourself at the fire, she said.
While he was disposing of it, she poked the fire into a big cheerful blaze, seating herself opposite him in a capacious arm-chair, where the flame picked her out in bright tints upon the dusky background of the great dim room.
And how is _The Flag of Judah_? she said.
Still waving, he replied. "It is about that that I have come."
About that? she said wonderingly. "Oh, I see; you want to know if the one person it is written at has read it. Well, make your mind easy. I have. I have read it religiously--No, I don't mean that; yes, I do; it's the appropriate word."
Really? He tried to penetrate behind the bantering tone.
Yes, really. You put your side of the case eloquently and well. I look forward to Friday with interest. I hope the paper is selling?
So, so, he said. "It is uphill work. The Jewish public looks on journalism as a branch of philanthropy, I fear, and Sidney suggests publishing our free-list as a 'Jewish Directory.'"
She smiled. "Mr. Graham is very amusing. Only, he is too well aware of it. He has been here once since that dinner, and we discussed you. He says he can't understand how you came to be a cousin of his, even a second cousin. He says he is _L'Homme qui rit_, and you are _L'Homme qui prie_."
He has let that off on me already, supplemented by the explanation that every extensive Jewish family embraces a genius and a lunatic. He admits that he is the genius. The unfortunate part for me, ended Raphael, laughing, "is, that he _is_ a genius."
I saw two of his little things the other day at the Impressionist Exhibition in Piccadilly. They are very clever and dashing.
I am told he draws ballet-girls, said Raphael, moodily.
Yes, he is a disciple of Degas.
You don't like that style of art? he said, a shade of concern in his voice.
I do not, said Esther, emphatically. "I am a curious mixture. In art, I have discovered in myself two conflicting tastes, and neither is for the modern realism, which I yet admire in literature. I like poetic pictures, impregnated with vague romantic melancholy; and I like the white lucidity of classic statuary. I suppose the one taste is the offspring of temperament, the other of thought; for intellectually, I admire the Greek ideas, and was glad to hear you correct Sidney's perversion of the adjective. I wonder," she added, reflectively, "if one can worship the gods of the Greeks without believing in them."
But you wouldn't make a cult of beauty?
Not if you take beauty in the narrow sense in which I should fancy your cousin uses the word; but, in a higher and broader sense, is it not the one fine thing in life which is a certainty, the one ideal which is not illusion?
Nothing is illusion, said Raphael, earnestly. "At least, not in your sense. Why should the Creator deceive us?"
Oh well, don't let us get into metaphysics. We argue from different platforms, she said. "Tell me what you really came about in connection with the _Flag_."
Mr. Goldsmith was kind enough to suggest that you might write for it.
What! exclaimed Esther, sitting upright in her arm-chair. "I? I write for an orthodox paper?"
Yes, why not?
Do you mean I'm to take part in my own conversion?
The paper is not entirely religious, he reminded her.
No, there are the advertisements. she said slily.
Pardon me, he said. "We don't insert any advertisements contrary to the principles of orthodoxy. Not that we are much tempted."
You advertise soap, she murmured.
Oh, please! Don't you go in for those cheap sarcasms.
Forgive me, she said. "Remember my conceptions of orthodoxy are drawn mainly from the Ghetto, where cleanliness, so far from being next to godliness, is nowhere in the vicinity. But what can I do for you?"
I don't know. At present the staff, the _Flag_-staff as Sidney calls it, consists of myself and a sub-editor, who take it in turn to translate the only regular outside contributor's articles into English.
Who's that?
Melchitsedek Pinchas, the poet I told you of.
I suppose he writes in Hebrew.
No, if he did the translation would be plain sailing enough. The trouble is that he will write in English. I must admit, though, he improves daily. Our correspondents, too, have the same weakness for the vernacular, and I grieve to add that when they do introduce a Hebrew word, they do not invariably spell it correctly.
She smiled; her smile was never so fascinating as by firelight.
Raphael rose and paced the room nervously, flinging out his arms in uncouth fashion to emphasize his speech.
I was thinking you might introduce a secular department of some sort which would brighten up the paper. My articles are so plaguy dull.
Not so dull, for religious articles, she assured him.
Could you treat Jewish matters from a social standpoint--gossipy sort of thing.
She shook her head. "I'm afraid to trust myself to write on Jewish subjects. I should be sure to tread on somebody's corns."
Oh, I have it! he cried, bringing his arms in contact with a small Venetian vase which Esther, with great presence of mind, just managed to catch ere it reached the ground.
No, I have it, she said, laughing. "Do sit down, else nobody can answer for the consequences."
She half pushed him into his chair, where he fell to warming his hands contemplatively.
Well? she said after a pause. "I thought you had an idea."
Yes, yes, he said, rousing himself. "The subject we were just discussing--Art."
But there is nothing Jewish about art.
All noble work has its religious aspects. Then there are Jewish artists.
Oh yes! your contemporaries do notice their exhibits, and there seem to be more of them than the world ever hears of. But if I went to a gathering for you how should I know which were Jews?
By their names, of course.
By no means of course. Some artistic Jews have forgotten their own names.
That's a dig at Sidney.
Really, I wasn't thinking of him for the moment, she said a little sharply. "However, in any case there's nothing worth doing till May, and that's some months ahead. I'll do the Academy for you if you like."
Thank you. Won't Sidney stare if you pulverize him in _The Flag of Judah_? Some of the pictures have also Jewish subjects, you know.
Yes, but if I mistake not, they're invariably done by Christian artists.
Nearly always, he admitted pensively. "I wish we had a Jewish allegorical painter to express the high conceptions of our sages."
As he would probably not know what they are,--she murmured. Then, seeing him rise as if to go, she said: "Won't you have a cup of tea?"
No, don't trouble, he answered.
Oh yes, do! she pleaded. "Or else I shall think you're angry with me for not asking you before." And she rang the bell. She discovered, to her amusement, that Raphael took two pieces of sugar per cup, but that if they were not inserted, he did not notice their absence. Over tea, too, Raphael had a new idea, this time fraught with peril to the Sevres tea-pot.
Why couldn't you write us a Jewish serial story? he said suddenly. "That would be a novelty in communal journalism."
Esther looked startled by the proposition.
How do you know I could? she said after a silence.
I don't know, he replied. "Only I fancy you could. Why not?" he said encouragingly. "You don't know what you can do till you try. Besides you write poetry."
The Jewish public doesn't like the looking-glass, she answered him, shaking her head.
Oh, you can't say that. They've only objected as yet to the distorting mirror. You're thinking of the row over that man Armitage's book. Now, why not write an antidote to that book? There now, there's an idea for you.
It _is_ an idea! said Esther with overt sarcasm. "You think art can be degraded into an antidote."
Art is not a fetish, he urged. "What degradation is there in art teaching a noble lesson?"
Ah, that is what you religious people will never understand, she said scathingly. "You want everything to preach."
Everything does preach something, he retorted. "Why not have the sermon good?"
I consider the original sermon _was_ good, she said defiantly. "It doesn't need an antidote."
How can you say that? Surely, merely as one who was born a Jewess, you wouldn't care for the sombre picture drawn by this Armitage to stand as a portrait of your people.
She shrugged her shoulders--the ungraceful shrug of the Ghetto. "Why not? It is one-sided, but it is true."
I don't deny that; probably the man was sincerely indignant at certain aspects. I am ready to allow he did not even see he was one-sided. But if _you_ see it, why not show the world the other side of the shield?
She put her hand wearily to her brow.
Do not ask me, she said. "To have my work appreciated merely because the moral tickled the reader's vanity would be a mockery. The suffrages of the Jewish public--I might have valued them once; now I despise them." She sank further back on the chair, pale and silent.
Why, what harm have they done you? he asked.
They are so stupid, she said, with a gesture of distaste.
That is a new charge against the Jews.
Look at the way they have denounced this Armitage, saying his book is vulgar and wretched and written for gain, and all because it does not flatter them.
Can you wonder at it? To say 'you're another' may not be criticism, but it is human nature.
Esther smiled sadly. "I cannot make you out at all," she said.
Why? What is there strange about me?
You say such shrewd, humorous things sometimes; I wonder how you can remain orthodox.
Now I can't understand _you_, he said, puzzled.
Oh well. Perhaps if you could, you wouldn't be orthodox. Let us remain mutual enigmas. And will you do me a favor?
With pleasure, he said, his face lighting up.
Don't mention Mr. Armitage's book to me again. I am sick of hearing about it.
So am I, he said, rather disappointed. "After that dinner I thought it only fair to read it, and although I detect considerable crude power in it, still I am very sorry it was ever published. The presentation of Judaism is most ignorant. All the mystical yearnings of the heroine might have found as much satisfaction in the faith of her own race as they find expression in its poetry."
He rose to go. "Well, I am to take it for granted you will not write that antidote?"
I'm afraid it would be impossible for me to undertake it, she said more mildly than before, and pressed her hand again to her brow.
Pardon me, he said in much concern. "I am too selfish. I forgot you are not well. How is your head feeling now?"
About the same, thank you, she said, forcing a grateful smile. "You may rely on me for art; yes, and music, too, if you like."
Thank you, he said. "You read a great deal, don't you?"
She nodded her head. "Well, every week books are published of more or less direct Jewish interest. I should be glad of notes about such to brighten up the paper."
For anything strictly unorthodox you may count on me. If that antidote turns up, I shall not fail to cackle over it in your columns. By the by, are you going to review the poison? Excuse so many mixed metaphors, she added, with a rather forced laugh.
No, I shan't say anything about it. Why give it an extra advertisement by slating it?
Slating, she repeated with a faint smile. "I see you have mastered all the slang of your profession."
Ah, that's the influence of my sub-editor, he said, smiling in return. "Well, good-bye."
You're forgetting your overcoat, she said, and having smoothed out that crumpled collar, she accompanied him down the wide soft-carpeted staircase into the hall with its rich bronzes and glistening statues.
How are your people in America? he bethought himself to ask on the way down.
They are very well, thank you, she said. "I send my brother Solomon _The Flag of Judah_. He is also, I am afraid, one of the unregenerate. You see I am doing my best to enlarge your congregation."
He could not tell whether it was sarcasm or earnest.
Well, good-bye, he said, holding out his hand. "Thank you for your promise."
Oh, that's not worth thanking me for, she said, touching his long white fingers for an instant. "Look at the glory of seeing myself in print. I hope you're not annoyed with me for refusing to contribute fiction," she ended, growing suddenly remorseful at the moment of parting.
Of course not. How could I be?
Couldn't your sister Adelaide do you a story?
Addle? he repeated laughing, "Fancy Addie writing stories! Addie has no literary ability."
That's always the way with brothers. Solomon says-- She paused suddenly.
I don't remember for the moment that Solomon has any proverb on the subject, he said, still amused at the idea of Addie as an authoress.
I was thinking of something else. Good-bye. Remember me to your sister, please.
Certainly, he said. Then he exclaimed, "Oh, what a block-head I am! I forgot to remember her to you. She says she would be so pleased if you would come and have tea and a chat with her some day. I should like you and Addie to know each other."
Thanks, I will. I will write to her some day. Good-bye, once more.
He shook hands with her and fumbled at the door.
Allow me! she said, and opened it upon the gray dulness of the dripping street. "When may I hope for the honor of another visit from a real live editor?"
I don't know, he said, smiling. "I'm awfully busy, I have to read a paper on Ibn Ezra at Jews' College to-day fortnight."
Outsiders admitted? she asked.
The lectures _are_ for outsiders, he said. "To spread the knowledge of our literature. Only they won't come. Have you never been to one?"
She shook her head.
There! he said. "You complain of our want of culture, and you don't even know what's going on."
She tried to take the reproof with a smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered. He raised his hat and went down the steps.
She followed him a little way along the Terrace, with eyes growing dim with tears she could not account for. She went back to the drawing-room and threw herself into the arm-chair where he had sat, and made her headache worse by thinking of all her unhappiness. The great room was filling with dusk, and in the twilight pictures gathered and dissolved. What girlish dreams and revolts had gone to make that unfortunate book, which after endless boomerang-like returns from the publishers, had appeared, only to be denounced by Jewry, ignored by its journals and scantily noticed by outside criticisms. _Mordecai Josephs_ had fallen almost still-born from the press; the sweet secret she had hoped to tell her patroness had turned bitter like that other secret of her dead love for Sidney, in the reaction from which she had written most of her book. How fortunate at least that her love had flickered out, had proved but the ephemeral sentiment of a romantic girl for the first brilliant man she had met. Sidney had fascinated her by his verbal audacities in a world of narrow conventions; he had for the moment laughed away spiritual aspirations and yearnings with a raillery that was almost like ozone to a young woman avid of martyrdom for the happiness of the world. How, indeed, could she have expected the handsome young artist to feel the magic that hovered about her talks with him, to know the thrill that lay in the formal hand-clasp, to be aware that he interpreted for her poems and pictures, and incarnated the undefined ideal of girlish day-dreams? How could he ever have had other than an intellectual thought of her; how could any man, even the religious Raphael? Sickly, ugly little thing that she was! She got up and looked in the glass now to see herself thus, but the shadows had gathered too thickly. She snatched up a newspaper that lay on a couch, lit it, and held it before the glass; it flared up threateningly and she beat it out, laughing hysterically and asking herself if she was mad. But she had seen the ugly little face; its expression frightened her. Yes, love was not for her; she could only love a man of brilliancy and culture, and she was nothing but a Petticoat Lane girl, after all. Its coarseness, its vulgarity underlay all her veneer. They had got into her book; everybody said so. Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of Raphael's people? She an upstart, an outsider? She went to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's history of the Jews, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back to the great dim drawing-room and played amateurish fantasias on the melancholy Polish melodies of her childhood till Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith returned. They had captured the Rev. Joseph Strelitski and brought him back to dinner, Esther would have excused herself from the meal, but Mrs. Goldsmith insisted the minister would think her absence intentionally discourteous. In point of fact, Mrs. Goldsmith, like all Jewesses a born match-maker, was not disinclined to think of the popular preacher as a sort of adopted son-in-law. She did not tell herself so, but she instinctively resented the idea of Esther marrying into the station of her patroness. Strelitski, though his position was one of distinction for a Jewish clergyman, was, like Esther, of humble origin; it would be a match which she could bless from her pedestal in genuine good-will towards both parties.
The fashionable minister was looking careworn and troubled. He had aged twice ten years since his outburst at the Holy Land League. The black curl hung disconsolately on his forehead. He sat at Esther's side, but rarely looking at her, or addressing her, so that her taciturnity and scarcely-veiled dislike did not noticeably increase his gloom. He rallied now and again out of politeness to his hostess, flashing out a pregnant phrase or two. But prosperity did not seem to have brought happiness to the whilom, poor Russian student, even though he had fought his way to it unaided.