Within half an hour Esther was smiling pallidly and drinking tea out of Debby's own cup, to Debby's unlimited satisfaction. Debby had no spare cup, but she had a spare chair without a back, and Esther was of course seated on the other. Her bonnet and cloak were on the bed.
And where is Bobby? inquired the young lady visitor.
Debby's joyous face clouded.
Bobby is dead, she said softly. "He died four years ago, come next _Shevuos_."
I'm so sorry, said Esther, pausing in her tea-drinking with a pang of genuine emotion. "At first I was afraid of him, but that was before I knew him."
There never beat a kinder heart on God's earth, said Debby, emphatically. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."
Esther had often seen him snapping at flies, but she could not smile.
I buried him secretly in the back yard, Debby confessed. "See! there, where the paving stone is loose."
Esther gratified her by looking through the little back window into the sloppy enclosure where washing hung. She noticed a cat sauntering quietly over the spot without any of the satisfaction it might have felt had it known it was walking over the grave of an hereditary enemy.
So I don't feel as if he was far away, said Debby. "I can always look out and picture him squatting above the stone instead of beneath it."
But didn't you get another?
Oh, how can you talk so heartlessly?
Forgive me, dear; of course you couldn't replace him. And haven't you had any other friends?
Who would make friends with me, Miss Ansell? Debby asked quietly.
I shall 'make out friends' with you, Debby, if you call me that, said Esther, half laughing, half crying. "What was it we used to say in school? I forget, but I know we used to wet our little fingers in our mouths and jerk them abruptly toward the other party. That's what I shall have to do with you."
Oh well, Esther, don't be cross. But you do look such a real lady. I always said you would grow up clever, didn't I, though?
You did, dear, you did. I can never forgive myself for not having looked you up.
Oh, but you had so much to do, I have no doubt, said Debby magnanimously, though she was not a little curious to hear all Esther's wonderful adventures and to gather more about the reasons of the girl's mysterious return than had yet been vouchsafed her. All she had dared to ask was about the family in America.
Still, it was wrong of me, said Esther, in a tone that brooked no protest. "Suppose you had been in want and I could have helped you?"
Oh, but you know I never take any help, said Debby stiffly.
I didn't know that, said Esther, touched. "Have you never taken soup at the Kitchen?"
I wouldn't dream of such a thing. Do you ever remember me going to the Board of Guardians? I wouldn't go there to be bullied, not if I was starving. It's only the cadgers who don't want it who get relief. But, thank God, in the worst seasons I have always been able to earn a crust and a cup of tea. You see I am only a small family, concluded Debby with a sad smile, "and the less one has to do with other people the better."
Esther started slightly, feeling a strange new kinship with this lonely soul.
But surely you would have taken help of me, she said. Debby shook her head obstinately.
Well, I'm not so proud, said Esther with a tremulous smile, "for see, I have come to take help of you."
Then the tears welled forth and Debby with an impulsive movement pressed the little sobbing form against her faded bodice bristling with pin-heads. Esther recovered herself in a moment and drank some more tea.
Are the same people living here? she said.
Not altogether. The Belcovitches have gone up in the world. They live on the first floor now.
Not much of a rise that, said Esther smiling, for the Belcovitches had always lived on the third floor.
Oh, they could have gone to a better street altogether, explained Debby, "only Mr. Belcovitch didn't like the expense of a van."
Then, Sugarman the _Shadchan_ must have moved, too, said Esther. "He used to have the first floor."
Yes, he's got the third now. You see, people get tired of living in the same place. Then Ebenezer, who became very famous through writing a book (so he told me), went to live by himself, so they didn't want to be so grand. The back apartment at the top of the house you used once to inhabit,--Debby put it as delicately as she could--"is vacant. The last family had the brokers in."
Are the Belcovitches all well? I remember Fanny married and went to Manchester before I left here.
Oh yes, they are all well.
What? Even Mrs. Belcovitch?
She still takes medicine, but she seems just as strong as ever.
Becky married yet?
Oh no, but she has won two breach of promise cases.
She must be getting old.
She is a fine young woman, but the young men are afraid of her now.
Then they don't sit on the stairs in the morning any more?
No, young men seem so much less romantic now-a-days, said Debby, sighing. "Besides there's one flight less now and half the stairs face the street door. The next flight was so private."
I suppose I shall look in and see them all, said Esther, smiling. "But tell me. Is Mrs. Simons living here still?"
No.
Where, then? I should like to see her. She was so very kind to little Sarah, you know. Nearly all our fried fish came from her.
She is dead. She died of cancer. She suffered a great deal.
Oh! Esther put her cup down and sat back with face grown white.
I am afraid to ask about any one else, she said at last. "I suppose the Sons of the Covenant are getting on all right; _they_ can't be dead, at least not all of them."
They have split up, said Debby gravely, "into two communities. Mr. Belcovitch and the Shalotten _Shammos_ quarrelled about the sale of the _Mitzvahs_ at the Rejoicing of the Law two years ago. As far as I could gather, the carrying of the smallest scroll of the Law was knocked down to the Shalotten _Shammos_, for eighteenpence, but Mr. Belcovitch, who had gone outside a moment, said he had bought up the privilege in advance to present to Daniel Hyams, who was a visitor, and whose old father had just died in Jerusalem. There was nearly a free fight in the _Shool_. So the Shalotten _Shammos_ seceded with nineteen followers and their wives and set up a rival _Chevrah_ round the corner. The other twenty-five still come here. The deserters tried to take Greenberg the _Chazan_ with them, but Greenberg wanted a stipulation that they wouldn't engage an extra Reader to do his work during the High Festivals; he even offered to do it cheaper if they would let him do all the work, but they wouldn't consent. As a compromise, they proposed to replace him only on the Day of Atonement, as his voice was not agreeable enough for that. But Greenberg was obstinate. Now I believe there is a movement for the Sons of the Covenant to connect their _Chevrah_ with the Federation of minor synagogues, but Mr. Belcovitch says he won't join the Federation unless the term 'minor' is omitted. He is a great politician now."
Ah, I dare say he reads _The Flag of Judah_, said Esther, laughing, though Debby recounted all this history quite seriously. "Do you ever see that paper?"
I never heard of it before, said Debby simply. "Why should I waste money on new papers when I can always forget the _London journal_ sufficiently?" Perhaps Mr. Belcovitch buys it: I have seen him with a Yiddish paper. The 'hands' say that instead of breaking off suddenly in the middle of a speech, as of old, he sometimes stops pressing for five minutes together to denounce Gideon, the member for Whitechapel, and to say that Mr. Henry Goldsmith is the only possible saviour of Judaism in the House of Commons."
Ah, then he does read _The flag of Judah_! His English must have improved.
I was glad to hear him say that, added Debby, when she had finished struggling with the fit of coughing brought on by too much monologue, "because I thought it must be the husband of the lady who was so good to you. I never forgot her name."
Esther took up the _London Journal_ to hide her reddening cheeks.
Oh, read some of it aloud, cried Dutch Debby. "It'll be like old times."
Esther hesitated, a little ashamed of such childish behavior. But, deciding to fall in for a moment with the poor woman's humor, and glad to change the subject, she read: "Soft scents steeped the dainty conservatory in delicious drowsiness. Reclining on a blue silk couch, her wonderful beauty rather revealed than concealed by the soft clinging draperies she wore, Rosaline smiled bewitchingly at the poor young peer, who could not pluck up courage to utter the words of flame that were scorching his lips. The moon silvered the tropical palms, and from the brilliant ball-room were wafted the sweet penetrating strains of the 'Blue Danube' waltz--"
Dutch Debby heaved a great sigh of rapture.
And you have seen such sights! she said in awed admiration.
I have been in brilliant ball-rooms and moonlit conservatories, said Esther evasively. She did not care to rob Dutch Debby of her ideals by explaining that high life was not all passion and palm-trees.
I am so glad, said Debby affectionately. "I have often wished to myself, only a make-believe wish, you know, not a real wish, if you understand what I mean, for of course I know it's impossible. I sometimes sit at that window before going to bed and look at the moon as it silvers the swaying clothes-props, and I can easily imagine they are great tropical palms, especially when an organ is playing round the corner. Sometimes the moon shines straight down on Bobby's tombstone, and then I am glad. Ah, now you're smiling. I know you think me a crazy old thing."
Indeed, indeed, dear, I think you're the darlingest creature in the world, and Esther jumped up and kissed her to hide her emotion. "But I mustn't waste your time," she said briskly. "I know you have your sewing to do. It's too long to tell you my story now; suffice it to say (as the _London Journal_ says) that I am going to take a lodging in the neighborhood. Oh, dear, don't make those great eyes! I want to live in the East End."
You want to live here like a Princess in disguise. I see.
No you don't, you romantic old darling. I want to live here like everybody else. I'm going to earn my own living.
Oh, but you can never live by yourself.
Why not? Now from romantic you become conventional. _You've_ lived by yourself.
Oh, but I'm different, said Debby, flushing.
Nonsense, I'm just as good as you. But if you think it improper, here Esther had a sudden idea, "come and live with me."
What, be your chaperon! cried Debby in responsive excitement; then her voice dropped again. "Oh, no, how could I?"
Yes, yes, you must, said Esther eagerly.
Debby's obstinate shake of the head repelled the idea. "I couldn't leave Bobby," she said. After a pause, she asked timidly: "Why not stay here?"
Don't be ridiculous, Esther answered. Then she examined the bed. "Two couldn't sleep here," she said.
Oh yes, they could, said Debby, thoughtfully bisecting the blanket with her hand. "And the bed's quite clean or I wouldn't venture to ask you. Maybe it's not so soft as you've been used to."
Esther pondered; she was fatigued and she had undergone too many poignant emotions already to relish the hunt for a lodging. It was really lucky this haven offered itself. "I'll stay for to-night, anyhow," she announced, while Debby's face lit up as with a bonfire of joy. "To-morrow we'll discuss matters further. And now, dear, can I help you with your sewing?"
No, Esther, thank you kindly. You see there's only enough for one, said Debby apologetically. "To-morrow there may be more. Besides you were never as clever with your needle as your pen. You always used to lose marks for needlework, and don't you remember how you herring-boned the tucks of those petticoats instead of feather-stitching them? Ha, ha, ha! I have often laughed at the recollection."
Oh, that was only absence of mind, said Esther, tossing her head in affected indignation. "If my work isn't good enough for you, I think I'll go down and help Becky with her machine." She put on her bonnet, and, not without curiosity, descended a flight, of stairs and knocked at a door which, from the steady whirr going on behind it, she judged to be that of the work-room.
Art thou a man or a woman? came in Yiddish the well-remembered tones of the valetudinarian lady.
A woman! answered Esther in German. She was glad she learned German; it would be the best substitute for Yiddish in her new-old life.
_Herein_! said Mrs. Belcovitch, with sentry-like brevity.
Esther turned the handle, and her surprise was not diminished when she found herself not in the work-room, but in the invalid's bedroom. She almost stumbled over the pail of fresh water, the supply of which was always kept there. A coarse bouncing full-figured young woman, with frizzly black hair, paused, with her foot on the treadle of her machine, to stare at the newcomer. Mrs. Belcovitch, attired in a skirt and a night-cap, stopped aghast in the act of combing out her wig, which hung over an edge of the back of a chair, that served as a barber's block. Like the apple-woman, she fancied the apparition a lady philanthropist--and though she had long ceased to take charity, the old instincts leaped out under the sudden shock.
Becky, quick rub my leg with liniment, the thick one, she whispered in Yiddish.
It's only me, Esther Ansell! cried the visitor.
What! Esther! cried Mrs. Belcovitch. "_Gott in Himmel!"_ and, throwing down the comb, she fell in excess of emotion upon Esther's neck. "I have so often wanted to see you," cried the sickly-looking little woman who hadn't altered a wrinkle. "Often have I said to my Becky, where is little Esther?--gold one sees and silver one sees, but Esther sees one not. Is it not so, Becky? Oh, how fine you look! Why, I mistook you for a lady! You are married--not? Ah well, you'll find wooers as thick as the street dogs. And how goes it with the father and the family in America?"
Excellently, answered Esther. "How are you, Becky?"
Becky murmured something, and the two young women shook hands. Esther had an olden awe of Becky, and Becky was now a little impressed by Esther.
I suppose Mr. Weingott is getting a good living now in Manchester? Esther remarked cheerfully to Mrs. Belcovitch.
No, he has a hard struggle, answered his mother-in-law, "but I have seven grandchildren, God be thanked, and I expect an eighth. If my poor lambkin had been alive now, she would have been a great-grandmother. My eldest grandchild, Hertzel, has a talent for the fiddle. A gentleman is paying for his lessons, God be thanked. I suppose you have heard I won four pounds on the lotter_ee_. You see I have not tried thirty years for nothing! If I only had my health, I should have little to grumble at. Yes, four pounds, and what think you I have bought with it? You shall see it inside. A cupboard with glass doors, such as we left behind in Poland, and we have hung the shelves with pink paper and made loops for silver forks to rest in--it makes me feel as if I had just cut off my tresses. But then I look on my Becky and I remember that--go thou inside, Becky, my life! Thou makest it too hard for him. Give him a word while I speak with Esther."
Becky made a grimace and shrugged her shoulders, but disappeared through the door that led to the real workshop.
A fine maid! said the mother, her eyes following the girl with pride. "No wonder she is so hard to please. She vexes him so that he eats out his heart. He comes every morning with a bag of cakes or an orange or a fat Dutch herring, and now she has moved her machine to my bedroom, where he can't follow her, the unhappy youth."
Who is it now? inquired Esther in amusement.
Shosshi Shmendrik.
Shosshi Shmendrik! Wasn't that the young man who married the Widow Finkelstein?
Yes--a very honorable and seemly youth. But she preferred her first husband, said Mrs. Belcovitch laughing, "and followed him only four years after Shosshi's marriage. Shosshi has now all her money--a very seemly and honorable youth."
But will it come to anything?
It is already settled. Becky gave in two days ago. After all, she will not always be young. The _Tanaim_ will be held next Sunday. Perhaps you would like to come and see the betrothal contract signed. The Kovna _Maggid_ will be here, and there will be rum and cakes to the heart's desire. Becky has Shosshi in great affection; they are just suited. Only she likes to tease, poor little thing. And then she is so shy. Go in and see them, and the cupboard with glass doors.
Esther pushed open the door, and Mrs. Belcovitch resumed her loving manipulation of the wig.
The Belcovitch workshop was another of the landmarks of the past that had undergone no change, despite the cupboard with glass doors and the slight difference in the shape of the room. The paper roses still bloomed in the corners of the mirror, the cotton-labels still adorned the wall around it. The master's new umbrella still stood unopened in a corner. The "hands" were other, but then Mr. Belcovitch's hands were always changing. He never employed "union-men," and his hirelings never stayed with him longer than they could help. One of the present batch, a bent, middle-aged man, with a deeply-lined face, was Simon Wolf, long since thrown over by the labor party he had created, and fallen lower and lower till he returned to the Belcovitch workshop whence he sprang. Wolf, who had a wife and six children, was grateful to Mr. Belcovitch in a dumb, sullen way, remembering how that capitalist had figured in his red rhetoric, though it was an extra pang of martyrdom to have to listen deferentially to Belcovitch's numerous political and economical fallacies. He would have preferred the curter dogmatism of earlier days. Shosshi Shmendrik was chatting quite gaily with Becky, and held her finger-tips cavalierly in his coarse fist, without obvious objection on her part. His face was still pimply, but it had lost its painful shyness and its readiness to blush without provocation. His bearing, too, was less clumsy and uncouth. Evidently, to love the Widow Finkelstein had been a liberal education to him. Becky had broken the news of Esther's arrival to her father, as was evident from the odor of turpentine emanating from the opened bottle of rum on the central table. Mr. Belcovitch, whose hair was gray now, but who seemed to have as much stamina as ever, held out his left hand (the right was wielding the pressing-iron) without moving another muscle.
_Nu_, it gladdens me to see you are better off than of old, he said gravely in Yiddish.
Thank you. I am glad to see you looking so fresh and healthy, replied Esther in German.
You were taken away to be educated, was it not?
Yes.
And how many tongues do you know?
Four or five, said Esther, smiling.
Four or five! repeated Mr. Belcovitch, so impressed that he stopped pressing. "Then you can aspire to be a clerk! I know several firms where they have young women now."
Don't be ridiculous, father, interposed Becky. "Clerks aren't so grand now-a-days as they used to be. Very likely she would turn up her nose at a clerkship."
I'm sure I wouldn't, said Esther.
There! thou hearest! said Mr. Belcovitch, with angry satisfaction. "It is thou who hast too many flies in thy nostrils. Thou wouldst throw over Shosshi if thou hadst thine own way. Thou art the only person in the world who listens not to me. Abroad my word decides great matters. Three times has my name been printed in _The Flag of Judah_. Little Esther had not such a father as thou, but never did she make mock of him."
Of course, everybody's better than me, said Becky petulantly, as she snatched her fingers away from Shosshi.
No, thou art better than the whole world, protested Shosshi Shmendrik, feeling for the fingers.
Who spoke to thee? demanded Belcovitch, incensed.
Who spoke to thee? echoed Becky. And when Shosshi, with empurpled pimples, cowered before both, father and daughter felt allies again, and peace was re-established at Shosshi's expense. But Esther's curiosity was satisfied. She seemed to see the whole future of this domestic group: Belcovitch accumulating gold-pieces and Mrs. Belcovitch medicine-bottles till they died, and the lucky but henpecked Shosshi gathering up half the treasure on behalf of the buxom Becky. Refusing the glass of rum, she escaped.
The dinner which Debby (under protest) did not pay for, consisted of viands from the beloved old cook-shop, the potatoes and rice of childhood being supplemented by a square piece of baked meat, likewise knives and forks. Esther was anxious to experience again the magic taste and savor of the once coveted delicacies. Alas! the preliminary sniff failed to make her mouth water, the first bite betrayed the inferiority of the potatoes used. Even so the unattainable tart of infancy mocks the moneyed but dyspeptic adult. But she concealed her disillusionment bravely.
Do you know, said Debby, pausing in her voluptuous scouring of the gravy-lined plate with a bit of bread, "I can hardly believe my eyes. It seems a dream that you are sitting at dinner with me. Pinch me, will you?"
You have been pinched enough, said Esther sadly. Which shows that one can pun with a heavy heart. This is one of the things Shakspeare knew and Dr. Johnson didn't.
In the afternoon, Esther went round to Zachariah Square. She did not meet any of the old faces as she walked through the Ghetto, though a little crowd that blocked her way at one point turned out to be merely spectators of an epileptic performance by Meckisch. Esther turned away, in amused disgust. She wondered whether Mrs. Meckisch still flaunted it in satins and heavy necklaces, or whether Meckisch had divorced her, or survived her, or something equally inconsiderate. Hard by the old Ruins (which she found "ruined" by a railway) Esther was almost run over by an iron hoop driven by a boy with a long swarthy face that irresistibly recalled Malka's.
Is your grandmother in town? she said at a venture.
Y--e--s, said the driver wonderingly. "She is over in her own house."
Esther did not hasten towards it.
Your name's Ezekiel, isn't it?
Yes, replied the boy; and then Esther was sure it was the Redeemed Son of whom her father had told her.
Are your mother and father well?
Father's away travelling. Ezekiel's tone was a little impatient, his feet shuffled uneasily, itching to chase the flying hoop.
How's your aunt--your aunt--I forget her name.
Aunt Leah. She's gone to Liverpool.
What for?
She lives there; she has opened a branch store of granma's business. Who are you? concluded Ezekiel candidly.
You won't remember me, said Esther. "Tell me, your aunt is called Mrs. Levine, isn't she?"
Oh yes, but, with a shade of contempt, "she hasn't got any children."
How many brothers and sisters have _you_ got? said Esther with a little laugh.
Heaps. Oh, but you won't see them if you go in; they're in school, most of 'em.
And why aren't you at school?
The Redeemed Son became scarlet. "I've got a bad leg," ran mechanically off his tongue. Then, administering a savage thwack to his hoop, he set out in pursuit of it. "It's no good calling on mother," he yelled back, turning his head unexpectedly. "She ain't in."
Esther walked into the Square, where the same big-headed babies were still rocking in swings suspended from the lintels, and where the same ruddy-faced septuagenarians sat smoking short pipes and playing nap on trays in the sun. From several doorways came the reek of fish frying. The houses looked ineffably petty and shabby. Esther wondered how she could ever have conceived this a region of opulence; still more how she could ever have located Malka and her family on the very outskirt of the semi-divine classes. But the semi-divine persons themselves had long since shrunk and dwindled.
She found Malka brooding over the fire; on the side-table was the clothes-brush. The great events of a crowded decade of European history had left Malka's domestic interior untouched. The fall of dynasties, philosophies and religions had not shaken one china dog from its place; she had not turned a hair of her wig; the black silk bodice might have been the same; the gold chain at her bosom was. Time had written a few more lines on the tan-colored equine face, but his influence had been only skin deep. Everybody grows old: few people grow. Malka was of the majority.
It was only with difficulty that she recollected Esther, and she was visibly impressed by the young lady's appearance.
It's very good of you to come and see an old woman, she said in her mixed dialect, which skipped irresponsibly from English to Yiddish and back again. "It's more than my own _Kinder_ do. I wonder they let you come across and see me."
I haven't been to see them yet, Esther interrupted.
Ah, that explains it, said Malka with satisfaction. "They'd have told you, 'Don't go and see the old woman, she's _meshuggah_, she ought to be in the asylum.' I bring children into the world and buy them husbands and businesses and bed-clothes, and this is my profit. The other day my Milly--the impudent-face! I would have boxed her ears if she hadn't been suckling Nathaniel. Let her tell me again that ink isn't good for the ring-worm, and my five fingers shall leave a mark on her face worse than any of Gabriel's ring-worms. But I have washed my hands of her; she can go her way and I'll go mine. I've taken an oath I'll have nothing to do with her and her children--no, not if I live a thousand years. It's all through Milly's ignorance she has had such heavy losses."
What! Mr. Phillips's business been doing badly? I'm so sorry.
No, no! my family never does bad business. It's my Milly's children. She lost two. As for my Leah, God bless her, she's been more unfortunate still; I always said that old beggar-woman had the Evil Eye! I sent her to Liverpool with her Sam.
I know, murmured Esther.
But she is a good daughter. I wish I had a thousand such. She writes to me every week and my little Ezekiel writes back; English they learn them in that heathen school, Malka interrupted herself sarcastically, "and it was I who had to learn him to begin a letter properly with 'I write you these few lines hoping to find you in good health as, thank God, it leaves me at present;' he used to begin anyhow--"
She came to a stop, having tangled the thread of her discourse and bethought herself of offering Esther a peppermint. But Esther refused and bethought herself of inquiring after Mr. Birnbaum.
My Michael is quite well, thank God, said Malka, "though he is still pig-headed in business matters! He buys so badly, you know; gives a hundred pounds for what's not worth twenty."
But you said business was all right?
Ah, that's different. Of course he sells at a good profit,--thank God. If I wanted to provoke Providence I could keep my carriage like any of your grand West-End ladies. But that doesn't make him a good buyer. And the worst of it is he always thinks he has got a bargain. He won't listen to reason, at all, said Malka, shaking her head dolefully. "He might be a child of mine, instead of my husband. If God didn't send him such luck and blessing, we might come to want bread, coal, and meat tickets ourselves, instead of giving them away. Do you know I found out that Mrs. Isaacs, across the square, only speculates her guinea in the drawings to give away the tickets she wins to her poor relations, so that she gets all the credit of charity and her name in the papers, while saving the money she'd have to give to her poor relations all the same! Nobody can say I give my tickets to my poor relations. You should just see how much my Michael vows away at _Shool_--he's been _Parnass_ for the last twelve years straight off; all the members respect him so much; it isn't often you see a business man with such fear of Heaven. Wait! my Ezekiel will be _Barmitzvah_ in a few years; then you shall see what I will do for that _Shool_. You shall see what an example of _Yiddshkeit_ I will give to a _link_ generation. Mrs. Benjamin, of the Ruins, purified her knives and forks for Passover by sticking them between the boards of the floor. Would you believe she didn't make them red hot first? I gave her a bit of my mind. She said she forgot. But not she! She's no cat's head. She's a regular Christian, that's what she is. I shouldn't wonder if she becomes one like that blackguard, David Brandon; I always told my Milly he was not the sort of person to allow across the threshold. It was Sam Levine who brought him. You see what comes of having the son of a proselyte in the family! Some say Reb Shemuel's daughter narrowly escaped being engaged to him. But that story has a beard already. I suppose it's the sight of you brings up _Olov Hashotom_ times. Well, and how _are_ you?" she concluded abruptly, becoming suddenly conscious of imperfect courtesy.
Oh, I'm very well, thank you, said Esther.
Ah, that's right. You're looking very well, _imbeshreer_. Quite a grand lady. I always knew you'd be one some day. There was your poor mother, peace be upon him! She went and married your father, though I warned her he was a _Schnorrer_ and only wanted her because she had a rich family; he'd have sent you out with matches if I hadn't stopped it. I remember saying to him, 'That little Esther has Aristotle's head--let her learn all she can, as sure as I stand here she will grow up to be a lady; I shall have no need to be ashamed of owning her for a cousin.' He was not so pig-headed as your mother, and you see the result.
She surveyed the result with an affectionate smile, feeling genuinely proud of her share in its production. "If my Ezekiel were only a few years older," she added musingly.
Oh, but I am not a great lady, said Esther, hastening to disclaim false pretensions to the hand of the hero of the hoop, "I've left the Goldsmiths and come back to live in the East End."
What! said Malka. "Left the West End!" Her swarthy face grew darker; the skin about her black eyebrows was wrinkled with wrath.
Are you _Meshuggah_? she asked after an awful silence. "Or have you, perhaps, saved up a tidy sum of money?"
Esther flushed and shook her head.
There's no use coming to me. I'm not a rich woman, far from it; and I have been blessed with _Kinder_ who are helpless without me. It's as I always said to your father. 'Meshe,' I said, 'you're a _Schnorrer_ and your children'll grow up _Schnorrers_.'
Esther turned white, but the dwindling of Malka's semi-divinity had diminished the old woman's power of annoying her.
I want to earn my own living, she said, with a smile that was almost contemptuous. "Do you call that being a _Schnorrer_?"
Don't argue with me. You're just like your poor mother, peace be upon him! cried the irate old woman. "You God's fool! You were provided for in life and you have no right to come upon the family."
But isn't it _Schnorring_ to be dependent on strangers? inquired Esther with bitter amusement.
Don't stand there with your impudence-face! cried Malka, her eyes blazing fire. "You know as well as I do that a _Schnorrer_ is a person you give sixpences to. When a rich family takes in a motherless girl like you and clothes her and feeds her, why it's mocking Heaven to run away and want to earn your own living. Earn your living. Pooh! What living can you earn, you with your gloves? You're all by yourself in the world now; your father can't help you any more. He did enough for you when you were little, keeping you at school when you ought to have been out selling matches. You'll starve and come to me, that's what you'll do."
I may starve, but I'll never come to you, said Esther, now really irritated by the truth in Malka's words. What living, indeed, could she earn! She turned her back haughtily on the old woman; not without a recollection of a similar scene in her childhood. History was repeating itself on a smaller scale than seemed consistent with its dignity. When she got outside she saw Milly in conversation with a young lady at the door of her little house, diagonally opposite. Milly had noticed the strange visitor to her mother, for the rival camps carried on a system of espionage from behind their respective gauze blinds, and she had come to the door to catch a better glimpse of her when she left. Esther was passing through Zachariah Square without any intention of recognizing Milly. The daughter's flaccid personality was not so attractive as the mother's; besides, a visit to her might be construed into a mean revenge on the old woman. But, as if in response to a remark of Milly's, the young lady turned her face to look at Esther, and then Esther saw that it was Hannah Jacobs. She felt hot and uncomfortable, and half reluctant to renew acquaintance with Levi's family, but with another impulse she crossed over to the group, and went through the inevitable formulae. Then, refusing Milly's warm-hearted invitation to have a cup of tea, she shook hands and walked away.
Wait a minute, Miss Ansell, said Hannah. "I'll come with you."
Milly gave her a shilling, with a facetious grimace, and she rejoined Esther.
I'm collecting money for a poor family of _Greeners_ just landed, she said. "They had a few roubles, but they fell among the usual sharks at the docks, and the cabman took all the rest of their money to drive them to the Lane. I left them all crying and rocking themselves to and fro in the street while I ran round to collect a little to get them a lodging."
Poor things! said Esther.
Ah, I can see you've been away from the Jews, said Hannah smiling. "In the olden days you would have said _Achi-nebbich_."
Should I? said Esther, smiling in return and beginning to like Hannah. She had seen very little of her in those olden days, for Hannah had been an adult and well-to-do as long as Esther could remember; it seemed amusing now to walk side by side with her in perfect equality and apparently little younger. For Hannah's appearance had not aged perceptibly, which was perhaps why Esther recognized her at once. She had not become angular like her mother, nor coarse and stout like other mothers. She remained slim and graceful, with a virginal charm of expression. But the pretty face had gained in refinement; it looked earnest, almost spiritual, telling of suffering and patience, not unblent with peace.
Esther silently extracted half-a-crown from her purse and handed it to Hannah.
I didn't mean to ask you, indeed I didn't, said Hannah.
Oh, I am glad you told me, said Esther tremulously.
The idea of _her_ giving charity, after the account of herself she had just heard, seemed ironical enough. She wished the transfer of the coin had taken place within eyeshot of Malka; then dismissed the thought as unworthy.
You'll come in and have a cup of tea with us, won't you, after we've lodged the _Greeners_? said Hannah. "Now don't say no. It'll brighten up my father to see 'Reb Moshe's little girl.'"
Esther tacitly assented.
I heard of all of you recently, she said, when they had hurried on a little further. "I met your brother at the theatre."
Hannah's face lit up.
How long was that ago? she said anxiously.
I remember exactly. It was the night before the first _Seder_ night.
Was he well?
Perfectly.
Oh, I am so glad.
She told Esther of Levi's strange failure to appear at the annual family festival. "My father went out to look for him. Our anxiety was intolerable. He did not return until half-past one in the morning. He was in a terrible state. 'Well,' we asked, 'have you seen him?' 'I have seen him,' he answered. 'He is dead.'"
Esther grew pallid. Was this the sequel to the strange episode in Mr. Henry Goldsmith's library?
Of course he wasn't really dead, pursued Hannah to Esther's relief. "My father would hardly speak a word more, but we gathered he had seen him doing something very dreadful, and that henceforth Levi would be dead to him. Since then we dare not speak his name. Please don't refer to him at tea. I went to his rooms on the sly a few days afterwards, but he had left them, and since then I haven't been able to hear anything of him. Sometimes I fancy he's gone off to the Cape."
More likely to the provinces with a band of strolling players. He told me he thought of throwing up the law for the boards, and I know you cannot make a beginning in London.
Do you think that's it? said Hannah, looking relieved in her turn.
I feel sure that's the explanation, if he's not in London. But what in Heaven's name can your father have seen him doing?
Nothing very dreadful, depend upon it, said Hannah, a slight shade of bitterness crossing her wistful features. "I know he's inclined to be wild, and he should never have been allowed to get the bit between his teeth, but I dare say it was only some ceremonial crime Levi was caught committing."
Certainly. That would be it, said Esther. "He confessed to me that he was very _link_. Judging by your tone, you seem rather inclined that way yourself," she said, smiling and a little surprised.
Do I? I don't know, said Hannah, simply. "Sometimes I think I'm very _froom_."
Surely you know what you are? persisted Esther. Hannah shook her head.
Well, you know whether you believe in Judaism or not?
I don't know what I believe. I do everything a Jewess ought to do, I suppose. And yet--oh, I don't know.
Esther's smile faded; she looked at her companion with fresh interest. Hannah's face was full of brooding thought, and she had unconsciously come to a standstill. "I wonder whether anybody understands herself," she said reflectively. "Do you?"
Esther flushed at the abrupt question without knowing why. "I--I don't know," she stammered.
No, I don't think anybody does, quite, Hannah answered. "I feel sure I don't. And yet--yes, I do. I must be a good Jewess. I must believe my life."
Somehow the tears came into her eyes; her face had the look of a saint. Esther's eyes met hers in a strange subtle glance. Then their souls were knit. They walked on rapidly.
Well, I do hope you'll hear from him soon, said Esther.
It's cruel of him not to write, replied Hannah, knowing she meant Levi; "he might easily send me a line in a disguised hand. But then, as Miriam Hyams always says, brothers are so selfish."
Oh, how is Miss Hyams? I used to be in her class.
I could guess that from your still calling her Miss, said Hannah with a gentle smile.
Why, is she married?
No, no; I don't mean that. She still lives with her brother and his wife; he married Sugarman the _Shadchan's_ daughter, you know.
Bessie, wasn't it?
Yes; they are a devoted couple, and I suspect Miriam is a little jealous; but she seems to enjoy herself anyway. I don't think there is a piece at the theatres she can't tell you about, and she makes Daniel take her to all the dances going.
Is she still as pretty? asked Esther. "I know all her girls used to rave over her and throw her in the faces of girls with ugly teachers. She certainly knew how to dress."
She dresses better than ever, said Hannah evasively.
That sounds ominous, observed Esther, laughingly.
Oh, she's good-looking enough! Her nose seems to have turned up more; but perhaps that's an optical illusion; she talks so sarcastically now-a-days that I seem to see it. Hannah smiled a little. "She doesn't think much of Jewish young men. By the way, are you engaged yet, Esther?"
What an idea! murmured Esther, blushing beneath her spotted veil.
Well, you're very young, said Hannah, glancing down at the smaller figure with a sweet matronly smile.
I shall never marry, Esther said in low tones.
Don't be ridiculous, Esther! There's no happiness for a woman without it. You needn't talk like Miriam Hyams--at least not yet. Oh yes, I know what you're thinking--
No, I'm not, faintly protested Esther
Yes, you are, said Hannah, smiling at the paradoxical denial. "But who'd have _me_? Ah, here are the _Greeners_!" and her smile softened to angelic tenderness.
It was a frowzy, unsightly group that sat on the pavement, surrounded by a semi-sympathetic crowd--the father in a long grimy coat, the mother covered, as to her head, with a shawl, which also contained the baby. But the elders were naively childish and the children uncannily elderly; and something in Esther's breast seemed to stir with a strange sense of kinship. The race instinct awoke to consciousness of itself. Dulled by contact with cultured Jews, transformed almost to repulsion by the spectacle of the coarsely prosperous, it leaped into life at the appeal of squalor and misery. In the morning the Ghetto had simply chilled her; her heart had turned to it as to a haven, and the reality was dismal. Now that the first ugliness had worn off, she felt her heart warming. Her eyes moistened. She thrilled from head to foot with the sense of a mission--of a niche in the temple of human service which she had been predestined to fill. Who could comprehend as she these stunted souls, limited in all save suffering? Happiness was not for her; but service remained. Penetrated by the new emotion, she seemed to herself to have found the key to Hannah's holy calm.
With the money now in hand, the two girls sought a lodging for the poor waifs. Esther suddenly remembered the empty back garret in No. 1 Royal Street, and here, after due negotiations with the pickled-herring dealer next door, the family was installed. Esther's emotions at the sight of the old place were poignant; happily the bustle of installation, of laying down a couple of mattresses, of borrowing Dutch Debby's tea-things, and of getting ready a meal, allayed their intensity. That little figure with the masculine boots showed itself but by fits and flashes. But the strangeness of the episode formed the undercurrent of all her thoughts; it seemed to carry to a climax the irony of her initial gift to Hannah.
Escaping from the blessings of the _Greeners_, she accompanied her new friend to Reb Shemuel's. She was shocked to see the change in the venerable old man; he looked quite broken up. But he was chivalrous as of yore: the vein of quiet humor was still there, though his voice was charged with gentle melancholy. The Rebbitzin's nose had grown sharper than ever; her soul seemed to have fed on vinegar. Even in the presence of a stranger the Rebbitzin could not quite conceal her dominant thought. It hardly needed a woman to divine how it fretted Mrs. Jacobs that Hannah was an old maid; it needed a woman like Esther to divine that Hannah's renunciation was voluntary, though even Esther could not divine her history nor understand that her mother's daily nagging was the greater because the pettier part of her martyrdom.
They all jumbled themselves into grotesque combinations, the things of to-day and the things of endless yesterdays, as Esther slept in the narrow little bed next to Dutch Debby, who squeezed herself into the wall, pretending to revel in exuberant spaciousness. It was long before she could get to sleep. The excitement of the day had brought on her headache; she was depressed by restriking the courses of so many narrow lives; the glow of her new-found mission had already faded in the thought that she was herself a pauper, and she wished she had let the dead past lie in its halo, not peered into the crude face of reality. But at bottom she felt a subtle melancholy joy in understanding herself at last, despite Hannah's scepticism; in penetrating the secret of her pessimism, in knowing herself a Child of the Ghetto.
And yet Pesach Weingott played the fiddle merrily enough when she went to Becky's engagement-party in her dreams, and galoped with Shosshi Shmendrik, disregarding the terrible eyes of the bride to be: when Hannah, wearing an aureole like a bridal veil, paired off with Meckisch, frothing at the mouth with soap, and Mrs. Belcovitch, whirling a medicine-bottle, went down the middle on a pair of huge stilts, one a thick one and one a thin one, while Malka spun round like a teetotum, throwing Ezekiel in long clothes through a hoop; what time Moses Ansell waltzed superbly with the dazzling Addie Leon, quite cutting out Levi and Miriam Hyams, and Raphael awkwardly twisted the Widow Finkelstein, to the evident delight of Sugarman the _Shadchan_, who had effected the introduction. It was wonderful how agile they all were, and how dexterously they avoided treading on her brother Benjamin, who lay unconcernedly in the centre of the floor, taking assiduous notes in a little copy-book for incorporation in a great novel, while Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stooped down to pat his brown hair patronizingly.
Esther thought it very proper of the grateful _Greeners_ to go about offering the dancers rum from Dutch Debby's tea-kettle, and very selfish of Sidney to stand in a corner, refusing to join in the dance and making cynical remarks about the whole thing for the amusement of the earnest little figure she had met on the stairs.
Esther woke early, little refreshed. The mattress was hard, and in her restricted allowance of space she had to deny herself the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situations have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could no longer be shirked. Malka's words rang in her ears. How, indeed, could she earn a living? Literature had failed her; with journalism she had no point of contact save _The Flag of Judah_, and that journal was out of the question. Teaching--the last resort of the hopeless--alone remained. Maybe even in the Ghetto there were parents who wanted their children to learn the piano, and who would find Esther's mediocre digital ability good enough. She might teach as of old in an elementary school. But she would not go back to her own--all the human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discolored wallpaper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It was not easy to avert her thoughts from her dainty bedroom of yesterday. But she succeeded; the cheerlessness of the little chamber turned her thoughts backwards to the years of girlhood, and when she had finished dressing she almost mechanically lit the fire and put the kettle to boil. Her childish dexterity returned, unimpaired by disuse. When Debby awoke, she awoke to a cup of tea ready for her to drink in bed--an unprecedented luxury, which she received with infinite consternation and pleasure.
Why, it's like the duchesses who have lady's-maids, she said, "and read French novels before getting up." To complete the picture, her hand dived underneath the bed and extracted a _London Journal_, at the risk of upsetting the tea. "But it's you who ought to be in bed, not me."
I've been a sluggard too often, laughed Esther, catching the contagion of good spirits from Debby's radiant delight. Perhaps the capacity for simple pleasures would come back to her, too.
At breakfast they discussed the situation.
I'm afraid the bed's too small, said Esther, when Debby kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality.
Perhaps I took up too much room, said the hostess.
No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have a wider bed and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room.
There's the back garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks on the back yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there, said Debby, "though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that I value the view of the back yard, or else he'd raise the rent."
You forget the _Greeners_ who moved in yesterday.
Oh, so I do! answered Debby with a sigh.
Strange, said Esther, musingly, "that I should have shut myself out of my old home."
The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her reflections. In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to each room separately; fortunately, the tenants got few letters. Debby was intensely surprised to get one.
It isn't for me at all, she cried, at last, after a protracted examination of the envelope; "it's for you, care of me."
But that's stranger still. said Esther. "Nobody in the world knows my address."
The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a half-sovereign rolled out. The postmark was Houndsditch. After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the beautiful copy-book penmanship of the address, Esther gave up the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called. She betook herself to their offices, walking. The day was bright, but Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior partner welcomed her heartily.
I suppose you've come about your account, he said. "I have been intending to send it you for some months, but we are so busy bringing out new things before the dead summer season comes on." He consulted his books. "Perhaps you would rather not be bothered," he said, "with a formal statement. I have it all clearly here--the book's doing fairly well--let me write you a cheque at once!"
She murmured assent, her cheeks blanching, her heart throbbing with excitement and surprise.
There you are--sixty-two pounds ten, he said. "Our profits are just one hundred and twenty-five. If you'll endorse it, I'll send a clerk to the bank round the corner and get it cashed for you at once."
The pen scrawled an agitated autograph that would not have been accepted at the foot of a cheque, if Esther had had a banking account of her own.
But I thought you said the book was a failure, she said.
So it was, he answered cheerfully, "so it was at first. But gradually, as its nature leaked out, the demand increased. I understand from Mudie's that it was greatly asked for by their Jewish clients. You see, when there's a run on a three-volume book, the profits are pretty fair. I believed in it myself, or I should never have given you such good terms nor printed seven hundred and fifty copies. I shouldn't be surprised if we find ourselves able to bring it out in one-volume form in the autumn. We shall always be happy to consider any further work of yours; something on the same lines, I should recommend."
The recommendation did not convey any definite meaning to her at the moment. Still in a pleasant haze, she stuffed the twelve five-pound notes and the three gold-pieces into her purse, scribbled a receipt, and departed. Afterwards the recommendation rang mockingly in her ears. She felt herself sterile, written out already. As for writing again on the same lines, she wondered what Raphael would think if he knew of the profits she had reaped by bespattering his people. But there! Raphael was a prig like the rest. It was no use worrying about _his_ opinions. Affluence had come to her--that was the one important and exhilarating fact. Besides, had not the hypocrites really enjoyed her book? A new wave of emotion swept over her--again she felt strong enough to defy the whole world.
When she got "home," Debby said, "Hannah Jacobs called to see you."
Oh, indeed, what did she want?
I don't know, but from something she said I believe I can guess who sent the half-sovereign.
Not Reb Shemuel? said Esther, astonished.
No, _your_ cousin Malka. It seems that she saw Hannah leaving Zachariah Square with you, and so went to her house last night to get your address.
Esther did not know whether to laugh or be angry; she compromised by crying. People were not so bad, after all, nor the fates so hard to her. It was only a little April shower of tears, and soon she was smiling and running upstairs to give the half-sovereign to the _Greeners_. It would have been ungracious to return it to Malka, and she purchased all the luxury of doing good, including the effusive benedictions of the whole family, on terms usually obtainable only by professional almoners.
Then she told Debby of her luck with the publishers. Profound was Debby's awe at the revelation that Esther was able to write stories equal to those in the _London Journal_. After that, Debby gave up the idea of Esther living or sleeping with her; she would as soon have thought of offering a share of her bed to the authoresses of the tales under it. Debby suffered scarce any pang when her one-night companion transferred herself to Reb Shemuel's.
For it was to suggest this that Hannah had called. The idea was her father's; it came to him when she told him of Esther's strange position. But Esther said she was going to America forthwith, and she only consented on condition of being allowed to pay for her keep during her stay. The haggling was hard, but Esther won. Hannah gave up her room to Esther, and removed her own belongings to Levi's bedroom, which except at Festival seasons had been unused for years, though the bed was always kept ready for him. Latterly the women had had to make the bed from time to time, and air the room, when Reb Shemuel was at synagogue. Esther sent her new address to her brothers and sisters, and made inquiries as to the prospects of educated girls in the States. In reply she learned that Rachel was engaged to be married. Her correspondents were too taken up with this gigantic fact to pay satisfactory attention to her inquiries. The old sense of protecting motherhood came back to Esther when she learned the news. Rachel was only eighteen, but at once Esther felt middle-aged. It seemed of the fitness of things that she should go to America and resume her interrupted maternal duties. Isaac and Sarah were still little more than children, perhaps they had not yet ceased bickering about their birthdays. She knew her little ones would jump for joy, and Isaac still volunteer sleeping accommodation in his new bed, even though the necessity for it had ceased. She cried when she received the cutting from the American Jewish paper; under other circumstances she would have laughed. It was one of a batch headed "Personals," and ran: "Sam Wiseberg, the handsome young drummer, of Cincinnati, has become engaged to Rachel Ansell, the fair eighteen-year-old type-writer and daughter of Moses Ansell, a well-known Chicago Hebrew. Life's sweetest blessings on the pair! The marriage will take place in the Fall." Esther dried her eyes and determined to be present at the ceremony. It is so grateful to the hesitant soul to be presented with a landmark. There was nothing to be gained now by arriving before the marriage; nay, her arrival just in time for it would clench the festivities. Meantime she attached herself to Hannah's charitable leading-strings, alternately attracted to the Children of the Ghetto by their misery, and repulsed by their failings. She seemed to see them now in their true perspective, correcting the vivid impressions of childhood by the insight born of wider knowledge of life. The accretion of pagan superstition was greater than she had recollected. Mothers averted fever by a murmured charm and an expectoration, children in new raiment carried bits of coal or salt in their pockets to ward off the evil-eve. On the other hand, there was more resourcefulness, more pride of independence. Her knowledge of Moses Ansell had misled her into too sweeping a generalization. And she was surprised to realize afresh how much illogical happiness flourished amid penury, ugliness and pain. After school-hours the muggy air vibrated with the joyous laughter of little children, tossing their shuttlecocks, spinning their tops, turning their skipping-ropes, dancing to barrel-organs or circling hand-in-hand in rings to the sound of the merry traditional chants of childhood. Esther often purchased a pennyworth of exquisite pleasure by enriching some sad-eyed urchin. Hannah (whose own scanty surplus was fortunately augmented by an anonymous West-End Reform Jew, who employed her as his agent) had no prepossessions to correct, no pendulum-oscillations to distract her, no sentimental illusions to sustain her. She knew the Ghetto as it was; neither expected gratitude from the poor, nor feared she might "pauperize them," knowing that the poor Jew never exchanges his self-respect for respect for his benefactor, but takes by way of rightful supplement to his income. She did not drive families into trickery, like ladies of the West, by being horrified to find them eating meat. If she presided at a stall at a charitable sale of clothing, she was not disheartened if articles were snatched from under her hand, nor did she refuse loans because borrowers sometimes merely used them to evade the tallyman by getting their jewelry at cash prices. She not only gave alms to the poor, but made them givers, organizing their own farthings into a powerful auxiliary of the institutions which helped them. Hannah's sweet patience soothed Esther, who had no natural aptitude for personal philanthropy; the primitive, ordered pieties of the Reb's household helping to give her calm. Though she accepted the inevitable, and had laughed in melancholy mockery at the exaggerated importance given to love by the novelists (including her cruder self), she dreaded meeting Raphael Leon. It was very unlikely her whereabouts would penetrate to the West; and she rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic analogy between the instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read _The Flag of Judah_. She was not surprised to find Reb Shemuel beginning to look askance at his favorite paper. She noted a growing tendency in it to insist mainly on the ethical side of Judaism, salvation by works being contrasted with the salvation by spasm of popular Christianity. Once Kingsley's line, "Do noble things, not dream them all day long," was put forth as "Judaism _versus_ Christianity in a nut-shell;" and the writer added, "for so thy dreams shall become noble, too." Sometimes she fancied phrases and lines of argument were aimed at her. Was it the editor's way of keeping in touch with her, using his leaders as a medium of communication--a subtly sweet secret known only to him and her? Was it fair to his readers? Then she would remember his joke about the paper being started merely to convert her, and she would laugh. Sometimes he repeated what he already said to her privately, so that she seemed to hear him talking.
Then she would shake her head, and say, "I love you for your blindness, but I have the terrible gift of vision."
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's newest seaside resort had the artistic charm which characterized everything she selected. It was a straggling, hilly, leafy village, full of archaic relics--human as well as architectural--sloping down to a gracefully curved bay, where the blue waves broke in whispers, for on summer days a halcyon calm overhung this magic spot, and the great sea stretched away, unwrinkled, ever young. There were no neutral tones in the colors of this divine picture--the sea was sapphire, the sky amethyst. There were dark-red houses nestling amid foliage, and green-haired monsters of gray stone squatted about on the yellow sand, which was strewn with quaint shells and mimic earth-worms, cunningly wrought by the waves. Half a mile to the east a blue river rippled into the bay. The white bathing tents which Mrs. Goldsmith had pitched stood out picturesquely, in harmonious contrast with the rich boscage that began to climb the hills in the background.
Mrs. Goldsmith's party lived in the Manse; it was pretty numerous, and gradually overflowed into the bedrooms of the neighboring cottages. Mr. Goldsmith only came down on Saturday, returning on Monday. One Friday Mr. Percy Saville, who had been staying for the week, left suddenly for London, and next day the beautiful hostess poured into her husband's projecting ears a tale that made him gnash his projecting teeth, and cut the handsome stockbroker off his visiting-list for ever. It was only an indiscreet word that the susceptible stockbroker had spoken--under the poetic influences of the scene. His bedroom came in handy, for Sidney unexpectedly dropped down from Norway, _via_ London, on the very Friday. The poetic influences of the scene soon infected the newcomer, too. On the Saturday he was lost for hours, and came up smiling, with Addie on his arm. On the Sunday afternoon the party went boating up the river--a picturesque medley of flannels and parasols. Once landed, Sidney and Addie did not return for tea, prior to re-embarking. While Mr. Montagu Samuels was gallantly handing round the sugar, they were sitting somewhere along the bank, half covered with leaves, like babes in the wood. The sunset burned behind the willows--a fiery rhapsody of crimson and orange. The gay laughter of the picnic-party just reached their ears; otherwise, an almost solemn calm prevailed--not a bird twittered, not a leaf stirred.
It'll be all over London to-morrow, said Sidney in a despondent tone.
I'm afraid so, said Addie, with a delicious laugh.
The sweet English meadows over which her humid eyes wandered were studded with simple wild-flowers. Addie vaguely felt the angels had planted such in Eden. Sidney could not take his eyes off his terrestrial angel clad in appropriate white. Confessed love had given the last touch to her intoxicating beauty. She gratified his artistic sense almost completely. But she seemed to satisfy deeper instincts, too. As he looked into her limpid, trustful eyes, he felt he had been a weak fool. An irresistible yearning to tell her all his past and crave forgiveness swept over him.
Addie, he said, "isn't it funny I should be marrying a Jewish girl, after all?"
He wanted to work round to it like that, to tell her of his engagement to Miss Hannibal at least, and how, on discovering with whom he was really in love, he had got out of it simply by writing to the Wesleyan M.P. that he was a Jew--a fact sufficient to disgust the disciple of Dissent and the claimant champion of religious liberty. But Addie only smiled at the question.
You smile, he said: "I see you do think it funny."
That's not why I am smiling.
Then why are you smiling? The lovely face piqued him; he kissed the lips quickly with a bird-like peck.
Oh--I--no, you wouldn't understand.
That means _you_ don't understand. But there! I suppose when a girl is in love, she's not accountable for her expression. All the same, it is strange. You know, Addie dear, I have come to the conclusion that Judaism exercises a strange centrifugal and centripetal effect on its sons--sometimes it repulses them, sometimes it draws them; only it never leaves them neutral. Now, here had I deliberately made up my mind not to marry a Jewess.
Oh! Why not? said Addie, pouting.
Merely because she would be a Jewess. It's a fact.
And why have you broken your resolution? she said, looking up naively into his face, so that the scent of her hair thrilled him.
I don't know. he said frankly, scarcely giving the answer to be expected. "_C'est plus fort que moi_. I've struggled hard, but I'm beaten. Isn't there something of the kind in Esther--in Miss Ansell's book? I know I've read it somewhere--and anything that's beastly subtle I always connect with her."
Poor Esther! murmured Addie.
Sidney patted her soft warm hand, and smoothed the finely-curved arm, and did not seem disposed to let the shadow of Esther mar the moment, though he would ever remain grateful to her for the hint which had simultaneously opened his eyes to Addie's affection for him, and to his own answering affection so imperceptibly grown up. The river glided on softly, glorified by the sunset.
It makes one believe in a dogged destiny, he grumbled, "shaping the ends of the race, and keeping it together, despite all human volition. To think that I should be doomed to fall in love, not only with a Jewess but with a pious Jewess! But clever men always fall in love with conventional women. I wonder what makes you so conventional, Addie."
Addie, still smiling, pressed his hand in silence, and gazed at him in fond admiration.
Ah, well, since you are so conventional, you may as well kiss me.
Addie's blush deepened, her eyes sparkled ere she lowered them, and subtly fascinating waves of expression passed across the lovely face.
They'll be wondering what on earth has become of us, she said.
It shall be nothing on earth--something in heaven, he answered. "Kiss me, or I shall call you unconventional."
She touched his cheek hurriedly with her soft lips.
A very crude and amateur kiss, he said critically. "However, after all, I have an excuse for marrying you--which all clever Jews who marry conventional Jewesses haven't got--you're a fine model. That is another of the many advantages of my profession. I suppose you'll be a model wife, in the ordinary sense, too. Do you know, my darling, I begin to understand that I could not love you so much if you were not so religious, if you were not so curiously like a Festival Prayer-Book, with gilt edges and a beautiful binding."
Ah, I am so glad, dear, to hear you say that, said Addie, with the faintest suspicion of implied past disapproval.
Yes, he said musingly. "It adds the last artistic touch to your relation to me."
But you will reform! said Addie, with girlish confidence.
Do you think so? I might commence by becoming a vegetarian--that would prevent me eating forbidden flesh. Have I ever told you my idea that vegetarianism is the first step in a great secret conspiracy for gradually converting the world to Judaism? But I'm afraid I can't be caught as easily as the Gentiles, Addie dear. You see, a Jewish sceptic beats all others. _Corruptio optimi pessima_, probably. Perhaps you would like me to marry in a synagogue?
Why, of course! Where else?
Heavens! said Sidney, in comic despair. "I feared it would come to that. I shall become a pillar of the synagogue when I am married, I suppose."
Well, you'll have to take a seat, said Addie seriously, "because otherwise you can't get buried."
Gracious, what ghoulish thoughts for an embryo bride! Personally, I have no objection to haunting the Council of the United Synagogue till they give me a decently comfortable grave. But I see what it will be! I shall be whitewashed by the Jewish press, eulogized by platform orators as a shining light in Israel, the brilliant impressionist painter, and all that. I shall pay my synagogue bill and never go. In short, I shall be converted to Philistinism, and die in the odor of respectability. And Judaism will continue to flourish. Oh, Addie, Addie, if I had thought of all that, I should never have asked you to be my wife.
I am glad you didn't think of it, laughed Addie, ingenuously.
There! You never will take me seriously! he grumbled. "Nobody ever takes me seriously--I suppose because I speak the truth. The only time you ever took me seriously in my life was a few minutes ago. So you actually think I'm going to submit to the benedictions of a Rabbi."
You must, said Addie.
I'll be blest If I do, he said.
Of course you will, said Addie, laughing merrily.
Thanks--I'm glad you appreciate my joke. You perhaps fancy it's yours. However, I'm in earnest. I won't be a respectable high-hatted member of the community--not even for your sake, dear. Why, I might as well go back to my ugly real name, Samuel Abrahams, at once.
So you might, dear, said Addie boldly, and smiled into his eyes to temper her audacity.
Ah, well, I think it'll be quite enough if _you_ change your name, he said, smiling back.
It's just as easy for me to change it to Abrahams as to Graham, she said with charming obstinacy.
He contemplated her for some moments in silence, with a whimsical look on his face. Then he looked up at the sky--the brilliant color harmonies were deepening into a more sober magnificence.
I'll tell you what I will do. Ill join the Asmoneans. There! that's a great concession to your absurd prejudices. But you must make a concession to mine. You know how I hate the Jewish canvassing of engagements. Let us keep ours entirely _entre nous_ a fortnight--so that the gossips shall at least get their material stale, and we shall be hardened. I wonder why you're so conventional, he said again, when she had consented without enthusiasm. "You had the advantage of Esther--of Miss Ansell's society."
Call her Esther if you like; I don't mind, said Addie.
I wonder Esther didn't convert you, he went on musingly. "But I suppose you had Raphael on your right hand, as some prayer or other says. And so you really don't know what's become of her?"
Nothing beyond what I wrote to you. Mrs. Goldsmith discovered she had written the nasty book, and sent her packing. I have never liked to broach the subject myself to Mrs. Goldsmith, knowing how unpleasant it must be to her. Raphael's version is that Esther went away of her own accord; but I can't see what grounds he has for judging.
I would rather trust Raphael's version, said Sidney, with an adumbration of a wink in his left eyelid. "But didn't you look for her?"
Where? If she's in London, she's swallowed up. If she's gone to another place, it's still more difficult to find her.
There's the Agony Column!
If Esther wanted us to know her address, what can prevent her sending it? asked Addie, with dignity.
I'd find her soon enough, if I wanted to, murmured Sidney.
Yes; but I'm not sure we want to. After all, she cannot be so nice as I thought. She certainly behaved very ungratefully to Mrs. Goldsmith. You see what becomes of wild opinions.
Addie! Addie! said Sidney reproachfully, "how _can_ you be so conventional?"
I'm _not_ conventional! protested Addie, provoked at last. "I always liked Esther very much. Even now, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have her for a bridesmaid. But I can't help feeling she deceived us all."
Stuff and nonsense! said Sidney warmly. "An author has a right to be anonymous. Don't you think I'd paint anonymously if I dared? Only, if I didn't put my name to my things no one would buy them. That's another of the advantages of my profession. Once make your name as an artist, and you can get a colossal income by giving up art."
It was a vulgar book! persisted Addie, sticking to the point.
Fiddlesticks! It was an artistic book--bungled.
Oh, well! said Addie, as the tears welled from her eyes, "if you're so fond of unconventional girls, you'd better marry them."
I would, said Sidney, "but for the absurd restriction against polygamy."
Addie got up with an indignant jerk. "You think I'm a child to be played with!"
She turned her back upon him. His face changed instantly; he stood still a moment, admiring the magnificent pose. Then he recaptured her reluctant hand.
Don't be jealous already, Addie, he said. "It's a healthy sign of affection, is a storm-cloud, but don't you think it's just a wee, tiny, weeny bit too previous?"
A pressure of the hand accompanied each of the little adjectives. Addie sat down again, feeling deliriously happy. She seemed to be lapped in a great drowsy ecstasy of bliss.
The sunset was fading into sombre grays before Sidney broke the silence; then his train of thought revealed itself.
If you're so down on Esther, I wonder how you can put up with me! How is it?
Addie did not hear the question.
You think I'm a very wicked, blasphemous boy, he insisted. "Isn't that the thought deep down in your heart of hearts?"
I'm sure tea must be over long ago, said Addie anxiously.
Answer me, said Sidney inexorably.
Don't bother. Aren't they cooeying for us?
Answer me.
I do believe that was a water-rat. Look! the water is still eddying.
I'm a very wicked, blasphemous boy. Isn't that the thought deep down in your heart of hearts?
You are there, too, she breathed at last, and then Sidney forgot her beauty for an instant, and lost himself in unaccustomed humility. It seemed passing wonderful to him--that he should be the deity of such a spotless shrine. Could any man deserve the trust of this celestial soul?
Suddenly the thought that he had not told her about Miss Hannibal after all, gave him a chilling shock. But he rallied quickly. Was it really worth while to trouble the clear depths of her spirit with his turbid past? No; wiser to inhale the odor of the rose at her bosom, sweeter to surrender himself to the intoxicating perfume of her personality, to the magic of a moment that must fade like the sunset, already grown gray.
So Addie never knew.
On the Friday that Percy Saville returned to town, Raphael, in a state of mental prostration modified by tobacco, was sitting in the editorial chair. He was engaged in his pleasing weekly occupation of discovering, from a comparison with the great rival organ, the deficiencies of _The Flag of Judah_ in the matter of news, his organization for the collection of which partook of the happy-go-lucky character of little Sampson. Fortunately, to-day there were no flagrant omissions, no palpable shortcomings such as had once and again thrown the office of the _Flag_ into mourning when communal pillars were found dead in the opposition paper.
The arrival of a visitor put an end to the invidious comparison.
Ah, Strelitski! cried Raphael, jumping up in glad surprise. "What an age it is since I've seen you!" He shook the black-gloved hand of the fashionable minister heartily; then his face grew rueful with a sudden recollection. "I suppose you have come to scold me for not answering the invitation to speak at the distribution of prizes to your religion class?" he said; "but I _have_ been so busy. My conscience has kept up a dull pricking on the subject, though, for ever so many weeks. You're such an epitome of all the virtues that you can't understand the sensation, and even I can't understand why one submits to this undercurrent of reproach rather than take the simple step it exhorts one to. But I suppose it's human nature." He puffed at his pipe in humorous sadness.
I suppose it is, said Strelitski wearily.
But of course I'll come. You know that, my dear fellow. When my conscience was noisy, the _advocatus diaboli_ used to silence it by saying, 'Oh, Strelitski'll take it for granted.' You can never catch the _advocatus diaboli_ asleep, concluded Raphael, laughing.
No, assented Strelitski. But he did not laugh.
Oh! said Raphael, his laugh ceasing suddenly and his face growing long. "Perhaps the prize-distribution is over?"
Strelitski's expression seemed so stern that for a second it really occurred to Raphael that he might have missed the great event. But before the words were well out of his mouth he remembered that it was an event that made "copy," and little Sampson would have arranged with him as to the reporting thereof.
No; it's Sunday week. But I didn't come to talk about my religion class at all, he said pettishly, while a shudder traversed his form. "I came to ask if you know anything about Miss Ansell."
Raphael's heart stood still, then began to beat furiously. The sound of her name always affected him incomprehensibly. He began to stammer, then took his pipe out of his mouth and said more calmly;
How should I know anything about Miss Ansell?
I thought you would, said Strelitski, without much disappointment in his tone.
Why?
Wasn't she your art-critic?
Who told you that?
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith.
Oh! said Raphael.
I thought she might possibly be writing for you still, and so, as I was passing, I thought I'd drop in and inquire. Hasn't anything been heard of her? Where is she? Perhaps one could help her.
I'm sorry, I really know nothing, nothing at all, said Raphael gravely. "I wish I did. Is there any particular reason why you want to know?"
As he spoke, a strange suspicion that was half an apprehension came into his head. He had been looking the whole time at Strelitski's face with his usual unobservant gaze, just seeing it was gloomy. Now, as in a sudden flash, he saw it sallow and careworn to the last degree. The eyes were almost feverish, the black curl on the brow was unkempt, and there was a streak or two of gray easily visible against the intense sable. What change had come over him? Why this new-born interest in Esther? Raphael felt a vague unreasoning resentment rising in him, mingled with distress at Strelitski's discomposure.
No; I don't know that there is any _particular_ reason why I want to know, answered his friend slowly. "She was a member of my congregation. I always had a certain interest in her, which has naturally not been diminished by her sudden departure from our midst, and by the knowledge that she was the author of that sensational novel. I think it was cruel of Mrs. Henry Goldsmith to turn her adrift; one must allow for the effervescence of genius."
Who told you Mrs. Henry Goldsmith turned her adrift? asked Raphael hotly.
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, said Strelitski with a slight accent of wonder.
Then it's a lie! Raphael exclaimed, thrusting out his arms in intense agitation. "A mean, cowardly lie! I shall never go to see that woman again, unless it is to let her know what I think of her."
Ah, then you do know something about Miss Ansell? said Strelitski, with growing surprise. Raphael in a rage was a new experience. There were those who asserted that anger was not among his gifts.
Nothing about her life since she left Mrs. Goldsmith; but I saw her before, and she told me it was her intention to cut herself adrift. Nobody knew about her authorship of the book; nobody would have known to this day if she had not chosen to reveal it.
The minister was trembling.
She cut herself adrift? he repeated interrogatively. "But why?"
I will tell you, said Raphael in low tones. "I don't think it will be betraying her confidence to say that she found her position of dependence extremely irksome; it seemed to cripple her soul. Now I see what Mrs. Goldsmith is. I can understand better what life in her society meant for a girl like that."
And what has become of her? asked the Russian. His face was agitated, the lips were almost white.
I do not know, said Raphael, almost in a whisper, his voice failing in a sudden upwelling of tumultuous feeling. The ever-whirling wheel of journalism--that modern realization of the labor of Sisyphus--had carried him round without giving him even time to remember that time was flying. Day had slipped into week and week into month, without his moving an inch from his groove in search of the girl whose unhappiness was yet always at the back of his thoughts. Now he was shaken with astonished self-reproach at his having allowed her to drift perhaps irretrievably beyond his ken.
She is quite alone in the world, poor thing! he said after a pause. "She must be earning her own living, somehow. By journalism, perhaps. But she prefers to live her own life. I am afraid it will be a hard one." His voice trembled again. The minister's breast, too, was laboring with emotion that checked his speech, but after a moment utterance came to him--a strange choked utterance, almost blasphemous from those clerical lips.
By God! he gasped. "That little girl!"
He turned his back upon his friend and covered his face with his hands, and Raphael saw his shoulders quivering. Then his own vision grew dim. Conjecture, resentment, wonder, self-reproach, were lost in a new and absorbing sense of the pathos of the poor girl's position.
Presently the minister turned round, showing a face that made no pretence of calm.
That was bravely done, he said brokenly. "To cut herself adrift! She will not sink; strength will be given her even as she gives others strength. If I could only see her and tell her! But she never liked me; she always distrusted me. I was a hollow windbag in her eyes--a thing of shams and cant--she shuddered to look at me. Was it not so? You are a friend of hers, you know what she felt."
I don't think it was you she disliked, said Raphael in wondering pity. "Only your office."
Then, by God, she was right! cried the Russian hoarsely. "It was this--this that made me the target of her scorn." He tore off his white tie madly as he spoke, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it. "She and I were kindred in suffering; I read it in her eyes, averted as they were at the sight of this accursed thing! You stare at me--you think I have gone mad. Leon, you are not as other men. Can you not guess that this damnable white tie has been choking the life and manhood out of me? But it is over now. Take your pen, Leon, as you are my friend, and write what I shall dictate."
Silenced by the stress of a great soul, half dazed by the strange, unexpected revelation, Raphael seated himself, took his pen, and wrote:
We understand that the Rev. Joseph Strelitski has resigned his position in the Kensington Synagogue.
Not till he had written it did the full force of the paragraph overwhelm his soul.
But you will not do this? he said, looking up almost incredulously at the popular minister.
I will; the position has become impossible. Leon, do you not understand? I am not what I was when I took it. I have lived, and life is change. Stagnation is death. Surely you can understand, for you, too, have changed. Cannot I read between the lines of your leaders?
Cannot you read in them? said Raphael with a wan smile. "I have modified some opinions, it is true, and developed others; but I have disguised none."
Not consciously, perhaps, but you do not speak all your thought.
Perhaps I do not listen to it, said Raphael, half to himself. "But you--whatever your change--you have not lost faith in primaries?"
No; not in what I consider such.
Then why give up your platform, your housetop, whence you may do so much good? You are loved, venerated.
Strelitski placed his palms over his ears.
Don't! don't! he cried. "Don't you be the _advocatus diaboli_! Do you think I have not told myself all these things a thousand times? Do you think I have not tried every kind of opiate? No, no, be silent if you can say nothing to strengthen me in my resolution: am I not weak enough already? Promise me, give me your hand, swear to me that you will put that paragraph in the paper. Saturday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--in six days I shall change a hundred times. Swear to me, so that I may leave this room at peace, the long conflict ended. Promise me you will insert it, though I myself should ask you to cancel it."
But-- began Raphael.
Strelitski turned away impatiently and groaned.
My God! he cried hoarsely. "Leon, listen to me," he said, turning round suddenly. "Do you realize what sort of a position you are asking me to keep? Do you realize how it makes me the fief of a Rabbinate that is an anachronism, the bondman of outworn forms, the slave of the _Shulcan Aruch_ (a book the Rabbinate would not dare publish in English), the professional panegyrist of the rich? Ours is a generation of whited sepulchres." He had no difficulty about utterance now; the words flowed in a torrent. "How can Judaism--and it alone--escape going through the fire of modern scepticism, from which, if religion emerge at all, it will emerge without its dross? Are not we Jews always the first prey of new ideas, with our alert intellect, our swift receptiveness, our keen critical sense? And if we are not hypocrites, we are indifferent--which is almost worse. Indifference is the only infidelity I recognize, and it is unfortunately as conservative as zeal. Indifference and hypocrisy between them keep orthodoxy alive--while they kill Judaism."
Oh, I can't quite admit that, said Raphael. "I admit that scepticism is better than stagnation, but I cannot see why orthodoxy is the antithesis to Judaism Purified--and your own sermons are doing something to purify it--orthodoxy--"
Orthodoxy cannot be purified unless by juggling with words, interrupted Strelitski vehemently. "Orthodoxy is inextricably entangled with ritual observance; and ceremonial religion is of the ancient world, not the modern."
But our ceremonialism is pregnant with sublime symbolism, and its discipline is most salutary. Ceremony is the casket of religion.
More often its coffin, said Strelitski drily. "Ceremonial religion is so apt to stiffen in a _rigor mortis_. It is too dangerous an element; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism. Add the Statute Book to the New Testament, and think of the network of laws hampering the feet of the Christian. No; much of our so-called ceremonialism is merely the primitive mix-up of everything with religion in a theocracy. The Mosaic code has been largely embodied in civil law, and superseded by it."
That is just the flaw of the modern world, to keep life and religion apart, protested Raphael; "to have one set of principles for week-days and another for Sundays; to grind the inexorable mechanism of supply and demand on pagan principles, and make it up out of the poor-box."
Strelitski shook his head.
We must make broad our platform, not our phylacteries. It is because I am with you in admiring the Rabbis that I would undo much of their work. Theirs was a wonderful statesmanship, and they built wiser than they knew; just as the patient labors of the superstitious zealots who counted every letter of the Law preserved the text unimpaired for the benefit of modern scholarship. The Rabbis constructed a casket, if you will, which kept the jewel safe, though at the cost of concealing its lustre. But the hour has come now to wear the jewel on our breasts before all the world. The Rabbis worked for their time--we must work for ours. Judaism was before the Rabbis. Scientific criticism shows its thoughts widening with the process of the suns--even as its God, Yahweh, broadened from a local patriotic Deity to the ineffable Name. For Judaism was worked out from within--Abraham asked, 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'--the thunders of Sinai were but the righteous indignation of the developed moral consciousness. In every age our great men have modified and developed Judaism. Why should it not be trimmed into concordance with the culture of the time? Especially when the alternative is death. Yes, death! We babble about petty minutiae of ritual while Judaism is dying! We are like the crew of a sinking ship, holy-stoning the deck instead of being at the pumps. No, I must speak out; I cannot go on salving my conscience by unsigned letters to the press. Away with all this anonymous apostleship!
He moved about restlessly with animated gestures as he delivered his harangue at tornado speed, speech bursting from him like some dynamic energy which had been accumulating for years, and could no longer be kept in. It was an upheaval of the whole man under the stress of pent forces. Raphael was deeply moved. He scarcely knew how to act in this unique crisis. Dimly he foresaw the stir and pother there would be in the community. Conservative by instinct, apt to see the elements of good in attacked institutions--perhaps, too, a little timid when it came to take action in the tremendous realm of realities--he was loth to help Strelitski to so decisive a step, though his whole heart went out to him in brotherly sympathy.
Do not act so hastily, he pleaded. "Things are not so black as you see them--you are almost as bad as Miss Ansell. Don't think that I see them rosy: I might have done that three months ago. But don't you--don't all idealists--overlook the quieter phenomena? Is orthodoxy either so inefficacious or so moribund as you fancy? Is there not a steady, perhaps semi-conscious, stream of healthy life, thousands of cheerful, well-ordered households, of people neither perfect nor cultured, but more good than bad? You cannot expect saints and heroes to grow like blackberries."
Yes; but look what Jews set up to be--God's witnesses! interrupted Strelitski. "This mediocrity may pass in the rest of the world."
And does lack of modern lights constitute ignorance? went on Raphael, disregarding the interruption. He began walking up and down, and thrashing the air with his arms. Hitherto he had remained comparatively quiet, dominated by Strelitski's superior restlessness. "I cannot help thinking there is a profound lesson in the Bible story of the oxen who, unguided, bore safely the Ark of the Covenant. Intellect obscures more than it illumines."
Oh, Leon, Leon, you'll turn Catholic, soon! said Strelitski reprovingly.
Not with a capital C, said Raphael, laughing a little. "But I am so sick of hearing about culture, I say more than I mean. Judaism is so human--that's why I like it. No abstract metaphysics, but a lovable way of living the common life, sanctified by the centuries. Culture is all very well--doesn't the Talmud say the world stands on the breath of the school-children?--but it has become a cant. Too often it saps the moral fibre."
You have all the old Jewish narrowness, said Strelitski.
I'd rather have that than the new Parisian narrowness--the cant of decadence. Look at my cousin Sidney. He talks as if the Jew only introduced moral-headache into the world--in face of the corruptions of paganism which are still flagrant all over Asia and Africa and Polynesia--the idol worship, the abominations, the disregard of human life, of truth, of justice.
But is the civilized world any better? Think of the dishonesty of business, the self-seeking of public life, the infamies and hypocrisies of society, the prostitutions of soul and body! No, the Jew has yet to play a part in history. Supplement his Hebraism by what Hellenic ideals you will, but the Jew's ideals must ever remain the indispensable ones, said Strelitski, becoming exalted again. "Without righteousness a kingdom cannot stand. The world is longing for a broad simple faith that shall look on science as its friend and reason as its inspirer. People are turning in their despair even to table-rappings and Mahatmas. Now, for the first time in history, is the hour of Judaism. Only it must enlarge itself; its platform must be all-inclusive. Judaism is but a specialized form of Hebraism; even if Jews stick to their own special historical and ritual ceremonies, it is only Hebraism--the pure spiritual kernel--that they can offer the world."
But that is quite the orthodox Jewish idea on the subject, said Raphael.
Yes, but orthodox ideas have a way of remaining ideas, retorted Strelitski. "Where I am heterodox is in thinking the time has come to work them out. Also in thinking that the monotheism is not the element that needs the most accentuation. The formula of the religion of the future will be a Jewish formula--Character, not Creed. The provincial period of Judaism is over though even its Dark Ages are still lingering on in England. It must become cosmic, universal. Judaism is too timid, too apologetic, too deferential. Doubtless this is the result of persecution, but it does not tend to diminish persecution. We may as well try the other attitude. It is the world the Jewish preacher should address, not a Kensington congregation. Perhaps, when the Kensington congregation sees the world is listening, it will listen, too," he said, with a touch of bitterness.
But it listens to you now, said Raphael.
A pleasing illusion which has kept me too long in my false position. With all its love and reverence, do you think it forgets I am its hireling? I may perhaps have a little more prestige than the bulk of my fellows--though even that is partly due to my congregants being rich and fashionable--but at bottom everybody knows I am taken like a house--on a three years' agreement. And I dare not speak, I cannot, while I wear the badge of office; it would be disloyal; my own congregation would take alarm. The position of a minister is like that of a judicious editor--which, by the way, you are not; he is led, rather than leads. He has to feel his way, to let in light wherever he sees a chink, a cranny. But let them get another man to preach to them the echo of their own voices; there will be no lack of candidates for the salary. For my part, I am sick of this petty jesuitry; in vain I tell myself it is spiritual statesmanship like that of so many Christian clergymen who are silently bringing Christianity back to Judaism.
But it _is_ spiritual statesmanship, asserted Raphael.
Perhaps. You are wiser, deeper, calmer than I. You are an Englishman, I am a Russian. I am all for action, action, action! In Russia I should have been a Nihilist, not a philosopher. I can only go by my feelings, and I feel choking. When I first came to England, before the horror of Russia wore off, I used to go about breathing in deep breaths of air, exulting in the sense of freedom. Now I am stifling again. Do you not understand? Have you never guessed it? And yet I have often said things to you that should have opened your eyes. I must escape from the house of bondage--must be master of myself, of my word and thought. Oh, the world is so wide, so wide--and we are so narrow! Only gradually did the web mesh itself about me. At first my fetters were flowery bands, for I believed all I taught and could teach all I believed. Insensibly the flowers changed to iron chains, because I was changing as I probed deeper into life and thought, and saw my dreams of influencing English Judaism fading in the harsh daylight of fact. And yet at moments the iron links would soften to flowers again. Do you think there is no sweetness in adulation, in prosperity--no subtle cajolery that soothes the conscience and coaxes the soul to take its pleasure in a world of make-believe? Spiritual statesmanship, forsooth! He made a gesture of resolution. "No, the Judaism of you English weighs upon my spirits. It is so parochial. Everything turns on finance; the United Synagogue keeps your community orthodox because it has the funds and owns the burying-grounds. Truly a dismal allegory--a creed whose strength lies in its cemeteries. Money is the sole avenue to distinction and to authority; it has its coarse thumb over education, worship, society. In my country--even in your own Ghetto--the Jews do not despise money, but at least piety and learning are the titles to position and honor. Here the scholar is classed with the _Schnorrer_; if an artist or an author is admired, it is for his success. You are right; it is oxen that carry your Ark of the Covenant--fat oxen. You admire them, Leon; you are an Englishman, and cannot stand outside it all. But I am stifling under this weight of moneyed mediocrity, this _regime_ of dull respectability. I want the atmosphere of ideas and ideals."
He tore at his high clerical collar as though suffocating literally.
Raphael was too moved to defend English Judaism. Besides, he was used to these jeremiads now--had he not often heard them from Sidney? Had he not read them in Esther's book? Nor was it the first time he had listened to the Russian's tirades, though he had lacked the key to the internal conflict that embittered them.
But how will you live? he asked, tacitly accepting the situation. "You will not, I suppose, go over to the Reform Synagogue?"
That fossil, so proud of its petty reforms half a century ago that it has stood still ever since to admire them! It is a synagogue for snobs--who never go there.
Raphael smiled faintly. It was obvious that Strelitski on the war-path did not pause to weigh his utterances.
I am glad you are not going over, anyhow. Your congregation would--
Crucify me between two money-lenders?
Never mind. But how will you live?'
How does Miss Ansell live? I can always travel with cigars--I know the line thoroughly. He smiled mournfully. "But probably I shall go to America--the idea has been floating in my mind for months. There Judaism is grander, larger, nobler. There is room for all parties. The dead bones are not worshipped as relics. Free thought has its vent-holes--it is not repressed into hypocrisy as among us. There is care for literature, for national ideals. And one deals with millions, not petty thousands. This English community, with its squabbles about rituals, its four Chief Rabbis all in love with one another, its stupid Sephardim, its narrow-minded Reformers, its fatuous self-importance, its invincible ignorance, is but an ant-hill, a negligible quantity in the future of the faith. Westward the course of Judaism as of empire takes its way--from the Euphrates and Tigris it emigrated to Cordova and Toledo, and the year that saw its expulsion from Spain was the year of the Discovery of America. _Ex Oriente lux_. Perhaps it will return to you here by way of the Occident. Russia and America are the two strongholds of the race, and Russia is pouring her streams into America, where they will be made free men and free thinkers. It is in America, then, that the last great battle of Judaism will be fought out; amid the temples of the New World it will make its last struggle to survive. It is there that the men who have faith in its necessity must be, so that the psychical force conserved at such a cost may not radiate uselessly away. Though Israel has sunk low, like a tree once green and living, and has become petrified and blackened, there is stored-up sunlight in him. Our racial isolation is a mere superstition unless turned to great purposes. We have done nothing _as Jews_ for centuries, though our Old Testament has always been an arsenal of texts for the European champions of civil and religious liberty. We have been unconsciously pioneers of modern commerce, diffusers of folk-lore and what not. Cannot we be a conscious force, making for nobler ends? Could we not, for instance, be the link of federation among the nations, acting everywhere in favor of Peace? Could we not be the centre of new sociologic movements in each country, as a few American Jews have been the centre of the Ethical Culture movement?"
You forget, said Raphael, "that, wherever the old Judaism has not been overlaid by the veneer of Philistine civilization, we are already sociological object-lessons in good fellowship, unpretentious charity, domestic poetry, respect for learning, disrespect for respectability. Our social system is a bequest from the ancient world by which the modern may yet benefit. The demerits you censure in English Judaism are all departures from the old way of living. Why should we not revive or strengthen that, rather than waste ourselves on impracticable novelties? And in your prognostications of the future of the Jews have you not forgotten the all-important factor of Palestine?"
No; I simply leave it out of count. You know how I have persuaded the Holy Land League to co-operate with the movements for directing the streams of the persecuted towards America. I have alleged with truth that Palestine is impracticable for the moment. I have not said what I have gradually come to think--that the salvation of Judaism is not in the national idea at all. That is the dream of visionaries--and young men, he added with a melancholy smile. "May we not dream nobler dreams than political independence? For, after all, political independence is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, as it might easily become, and as it appears to other nations. To be merely one among the nations--that is not, despite George Eliot, so satisfactory an ideal. The restoration to Palestine, or the acquisition of a national centre, may be a political solution, but it is not a spiritual idea. We must abandon it--it cannot be held consistently with our professed attachment to the countries in which our lot is cast--and we have abandoned it. We have fought and slain one another in the Franco-German war, and in the war of the North and the South. Your whole difficulty with your pauper immigrants arises from your effort to keep two contradictory ideals going at once. As Englishmen, you may have a right to shelter the exile; but not as Jews. Certainly, if the nations cast us out, we could, draw together and form a nation as of yore. But persecution, expulsion, is never simultaneous; our dispersal has saved Judaism, and it may yet save the world. For I prefer the dream that we are divinely dispersed to bless it, wind-sown seeds to fertilize its waste places. To be a nation without a fatherland, yet with a mother-tongue, Hebrew--there is the spiritual originality, the miracle of history. Such has been the real kingdom of Israel in the past--we have been 'sons of the Law' as other men have been sons of France, of Italy, of Germany. Such may our fatherland continue, with 'the higher life' substituted for 'the law'--a kingdom not of space, not measured by the vulgar meteyard of an Alexander, but a great spiritual Republic, as devoid of material form as Israel's God, and congruous with his conception of the Divine. And the conquest of this kingdom needs no violent movement--if Jews only practised what they preach, it would be achieved to-morrow; for all expressions of Judaism, even to the lowest, have common sublimities. And this kingdom--as it has no space, so it has no limits; it must grow till all mankind, are its subjects. The brotherhood of Israel will be the nucleus of the brotherhood of man."
It is magnificent, said Raphael; "but it is not Judaism. If the Jews have the future you dream of, the future will have no Jews. America is already decimating them with Sunday-Sabbaths and English Prayer-Books. Your Judaism is as eviscerated as the Christianity I found in vogue when I was at Oxford, which might be summed up: There is no God, but Jesus Christ is His Son. George Eliot was right. Men are men, not pure spirit. A fatherland focusses a people. Without it we are but the gypsies of religion. All over the world, at every prayer, every Jew turns towards Jerusalem. We must not give up the dream. The countries we live in can never be more than 'step-fatherlands' to us. Why, if your visions were realized, the prophecy of Genesis, already practically fulfilled, 'Thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed,' would be so remarkably consummated that we might reasonably hope to come to our own again according to the promises."
Well, well, said Strelitski, good-humoredly, "so long as you admit it is not within the range of practical politics now."
It is your own dream that is premature, retorted Raphael; "at any rate, the cosmic part of it. You are thinking of throwing open the citizenship of your Republic to the world. But to-day's task is to make its citizens by blood worthier of their privilege."
You will never do it with the old generation, said Strelitski. "My hope is in the new. Moses led the Jews forty years through the wilderness merely to eliminate the old. Give me young men, and I will move the world."
You will do nothing by attempting too much, said Raphael; "you will only dissipate your strength. For my part, I shall be content to raise Judaea an inch."
Go on, then, said Strelitski. "That will give me a barley-corn. But I've wasted too much' of your time, I fear. Good-bye. Remember your promise."
He held out his hand. He had grown quite calm, now his decision was taken.
Good-bye, said Raphael, shaking it warmly. "I think I shall cable to America, 'Behold, Joseph the dreamer cometh.'"
Dreams are our life, replied Strelitski. "Lessing was right--aspiration is everything."
And yet you would rob the orthodox Jew of his dream of Jerusalem! Well, if you must go, don't go without your tie, said Raphael, picking it up, and feeling a stolid, practical Englishman in presence of this enthusiast. "It is dreadfully dirty, but you must wear it a little longer."
Only till the New Year, which is bearing down upon us, said Strelitski, thrusting it into his pocket. "Cost what it may, I shall no longer countenance the ritual and ceremonial of the season of Repentance. Good-bye again. If you should be writing to Miss Ansell, I should like her to know how much I owe her."
But I tell you I don't know her address, said Raphael, his uneasiness reawakening.
Surely you can write to her publishers?
And the door closed upon the Russian dreamer, leaving the practical Englishman dumbfounded at his never having thought of this simple expedient. But before he could adopt it the door was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him. The poet, tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through his fingers on to the literature that carpeted the floor.
What is the matter? inquired Raphael in alarm.
I am miserable--vairy miserable.
Has anything happened?
Nothing. But I have been thinking vat have I come to after all these years, all these vanderings. Nothing! Vat vill be my end? Oh. I am so unhappy.
But you are better off than you ever were in your life. You no longer live amid the squalor of the Ghetto; you are clean and well dressed: you yourself admit that you can afford to give charity now. That looks as if you'd come to something--not nothing.
Yes, said the poet, looking up eagerly, "and I am famous through the vorld. _Metatoron's Flames_ vill shine eternally." His head drooped again. "I have all I vant, and you are the best man in the vorld. But I am the most miserable."
Nonsense! cheer up, said Raphael.
I can never cheer up any more. I vill shoot myself. I have realized the emptiness of life. Fame, money, love--all is Dead Sea fruit.
His shoulders heaved convulsively; he was sobbing. Raphael stood by helpless, his respect for Pinchas as a poet and for himself as a practical Englishman returning. He pondered over the strange fate that had thrown him among three geniuses--a male idealist, a female pessimist, and a poet who seemed to belong to both sexes and categories. And yet there was not one of the three to whom he seemed able to be of real service. A letter brought in by the office-boy rudely snapped the thread of reflection. It contained three enclosures. The first was an epistle; the hand was the hand of Mr. Goldsmith, but the voice was the voice of his beautiful spouse.
"DEAR MR. LEON: I have perceived many symptoms lately of your growing divergency from the ideas with which _The Flag of Judah_ was started. It is obvious that you find yourself unable to emphasize the olden features of our faith--the questions of _kosher_ meat, etc.--as forcibly as our readers desire. You no doubt cherish ideals which are neither practical nor within the grasp of the masses to whom we appeal. I fully appreciate the delicacy that makes you reluctant--in the dearth of genius and Hebrew learning--to saddle me with the task of finding a substitute, but I feel it is time for me to restore your peace of mind even at the expense of my own. I have been thinking that, with your kind occasional supervision, it might be possible for Mr. Pinchas, of whom you have always spoken so highly, to undertake the duties of editorship, Mr. Sampson remaining sub-editor as before. Of course I count on you to continue your purely scholarly articles, and to impress upon the two gentlemen who will now have direct relations with me my wish to remain in the background.
" "Yours sincerely, HENRY GOLDSMITH.
"P.S.--On second thoughts I beg to enclose a cheque for four guineas, which will serve instead of a formal month's notice, and will enable you to accept at once my wife's invitation, likewise enclosed herewith. Your sister seconds Mrs. Goldsmith in the hope that you will do so. Our tenancy of the Manse only lasts a few weeks longer, for of course we return for the New Year holidays.
This was the last straw. It was not so much the dismissal that staggered him, but to be called a genius and an idealist himself--to have his own orthodoxy impugned--just at this moment, was a rough shock.
Pinchas! he said, recovering himself. Pinchas would not look up. His face was still hidden in his hands. "Pinchas, listen! You are appointed editor of the paper, instead of me. You are to edit the next number."
Pinchas's head shot up like a catapult. He bounded to his feet, then bent down again to Raphael's coat-tail and kissed it passionately.
Ah, my benefactor, my benefactor! he cried, in a joyous frenzy. "Now vill I give it to English Judaism. She is in my power. Oh, my benefactor!"
No, no, said Raphael, disengaging himself. "I have nothing to do with it."
But de paper--she is yours! said the poet, forgetting his English in his excitement.
No, I am only the editor. I have been dismissed, and you are appointed instead of me.
Pinchas dropped back into his chair like a lump of lead. He hung his head again and folded his arms.
Then they get not me for editor, he said moodily.
Nonsense, why not? said Raphael, flushing.
Vat you think me? Pinchas asked indignantly. "Do you think I have a stone for a heart like Gideon M.P. or your English stockbrokers and Rabbis? No, you shall go on being editor. They think you are not able enough, not orthodox enough--they vant me--but do not fear. I shall not accept."
But then what will become of the next number? remonstrated Raphael, touched. "I must not edit it."
Vat you care? Let her die! cried Pinchas, in gloomy complacency. "You have made her; vy should she survive you? It is not right another should valk in your shoes--least of all, _I_."
But I don't mind--I don't mind a bit, Raphael assured him. Pinchas shook his head obstinately. "If the paper dies, Sampson will have nothing to live upon," Raphael reminded him.
True, vairy true, said the poet, patently beginning to yield. "That alters things. Ve cannot let Sampson starve."
No, you see! said Raphael. "So you must keep it alive."
Yes, but, said Pinchas, getting up thoughtfully, "Sampson is going off soon on tour vith his comic opera. He vill not need the _Flag_."
Oh, well, edit it till then.
Be it so, said the poet resignedly. "Till Sampson's comic-opera tour."
Till Sampson's comic-opera tour, repeated Raphael contentedly.
Raphael walked out of the office, a free man. Mountains of responsibility seemed to roll off his shoulders. His Messianic emotions were conscious of no laceration at the failure of this episode of his life; they were merged in greater. What a fool he had been to waste so much time, to make no effort to find the lonely girl! Surely, Esther must have expected him, if only as a friend, to give some sign that he did not share in the popular execration. Perchance she had already left London or the country, only to be found again by protracted knightly quest! He felt grateful to Providence for setting him free for her salvation. He made at once for the publishers' and asked for her address. The junior partner knew of no such person. In vain Raphael reminded him that they had published _Mordecai Josephs_. That was by Mr. Edward Armitage. Raphael accepted the convention, and demanded this gentleman's address instead. That, too, was refused, but all letters would be forwarded. Was Mr. Armitage in England? All letters would be forwarded. Upon that the junior partner stood, inexpugnable.
Raphael went out, not uncomforted. He would write to her at once. He got letter-paper at the nearest restaurant and wrote, "Dear Miss Ansell." The rest was a blank. He had not the least idea how to renew the relationship after what seemed an eternity of silence. He stared helplessly round the mirrored walls, seeing mainly his own helpless stare. The placard "Smoking not permitted till 8 P.M.," gave him a sudden shock. He felt for his pipe, and ultimately found it stuck, half full of charred bird's eye, in his breast-pocket. He had apparently not been smoking for some hours. That completed his perturbation. He felt he had undergone too much that day to be in a fit state to write a judicious letter. He would go home and rest a bit, and write the letter--very diplomatically--in the evening. When he got home, he found to his astonishment it was Friday evening, when letter-writing is of the devil. Habit carried him to synagogue, where he sang the Sabbath hymn, "Come, my beloved, to meet the bride," with strange sweet tears and a complete indifference to its sacred allegorical signification. Next afternoon he haunted the publishers' doorstep with the brilliant idea that Mr. Armitage sometimes crossed it. In this hope, he did _not_ write the letter; his phrases, he felt, would be better for the inspiration of that gentleman's presence. Meanwhile he had ample time to mature them, to review the situation in every possible light, to figure Esther under the most poetical images, to see his future alternately radiant and sombre. Four long summer days of espionage only left him with a heartache, and a specialist knowledge of the sort of persons who visit publishers. A temptation to bribe the office-boy he resisted as unworthy.
Not only had he not written that letter, but Mr. Henry Goldsmith's edict and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's invitation were still unacknowledged. On Thursday morning a letter from Addie indirectly reminded him both of his remissness to her hostess, and of the existence of _The Flag of Judah_. He remembered it was the day of going to press; a vision of the difficulties of the day flashed vividly upon his consciousness; he wondered if his ex-lieutenants were finding new ones. The smell of the machine-room was in his nostrils; it co-operated with the appeal of his good-nature to draw him to his successor's help. Virtue proved its own reward. Arriving at eleven o'clock, he found little Sampson in great excitement, with the fountain of melody dried up on his lips.--
Thank God! he cried. "I thought you'd come when you heard the news."
What news?
Gideon the member for Whitechapel's dead. Died suddenly, early this morning.
How shocking! said Raphael, growing white.
Yes, isn't it? said little Sampson. "If he had died yesterday, I shouldn't have minded it so much, while to-morrow would have given us a clear week. He hasn't even been ill," he grumbled. "I've had to send Pinchas to the Museum in a deuce of a hurry, to find out about his early life. I'm awfully upset about it, and what makes it worse is a telegram from Goldsmith, ordering a page obituary at least with black rules, besides a leader. It's simply sickening. The proofs are awful enough as it is--my blessed editor has been writing four columns of his autobiography in his most original English, and he wants to leave out all the news part to make room for 'em. In one way Gideon's death is a boon; even Pinchas'll see his stuff must be crowded out. It's frightful having to edit your editor. Why wasn't he made sub?"
That would have been just as trying for you, said Raphael with a melancholy smile. He took up a galley-proof and began to correct it. To his surprise he came upon his own paragraph about Strelitski's resignation: it caused him fresh emotion. This great spiritual crisis had quite slipped his memory, so egoistic are the best of us at times. "Please be careful that Pinchas's autobiography does not crowd that out," he said.
Pinchas arrived late, when little Sampson was almost in despair. "It is all right." he shouted, waving a roll of manuscript. "I have him from the cradle--the stupid stockbroker, the Man-of-the-Earth, who sent me back my poesie, and vould not let me teach his boy Judaism. And vhile I had the inspiration I wrote the leader also in the Museum--it is here--oh, vairy beautiful! Listen to the first sentence. 'The Angel of Death has passed again over Judaea; he has flown off vith our visest and our best, but the black shadow of his ving vill long rest upon the House of Israel.' And the end is vordy of the beginning. He is dead: but he lives for ever enshrined in the noble tribute to his genius in _Metatoron's Flames_."
Little Sampson seized the "copy" and darted with it to the composing-room, where Raphael was busy giving directions. By his joyful face Raphael saw the crisis was over. Little Sampson handed the manuscript to the foreman, then drawing a deep breath of relief, he began to hum a sprightly march.
I say, you're a nice chap! he grumbled, cutting himself short with a staccato that was not in the music.
What have I done? asked Raphael.
Done? You've got me into a nice mess. The guvnor--the new guvnor, the old guvnor, it seems--called the other day to fix things with me and Pinchas. He asked me if I was satisfied to go on at the same screw. I said he might make it two pound ten. 'What, more than double?' says he. 'No, only nine shillings extra,' says I, 'and for that I'll throw in some foreign telegrams the late editor never cared for.' And then it came out that he only knew of a sovereign, and fancied I was trying it on.
Oh, I'm so sorry, said Raphael, in deep scarlet distress.
You must have been paying a guinea out of your own pocket! said little Sampson sharply.
Raphael's confusion increased. "I--I--didn't want it myself," he faltered. "You see, it was paid me just for form, and you really did the work. Which reminds me I have a cheque of yours now," he ended boldly. "That'll make it right for the coming month, anyhow."
He hunted out Goldsmith's final cheque, and tendered it sheepishly.
Oh no, I can't take it now, said little Sampson. He folded his arms, and drew his cloak around him like a toga. No August sun ever divested little Sampson of his cloak.
Has Goldsmith agreed to your terms, then? inquired Raphael timidly.
Oh no, not he. But--
Then I must go on paying the difference, said Raphael decisively. "I am responsible to you that you get the salary you're used to; it's my fault that things are changed, and I must pay the penalty," He crammed the cheque forcibly into the pocket of the toga.
Well, if you put it in that way, said little Sampson, "I won't say I couldn't do with it. But only as a loan, mind."
All right, murmured Raphael.
And you'll take it back when my comic opera goes on tour. You won't back out?
No.
Give us your hand on it, said little Sampson huskily. Raphael gave him his hand, and little Sampson swung it up and down like a baton.
Hang it all! and that man calls himself a Jew! he thought. Aloud he said: "When my comic opera goes on tour."
They returned to the editorial den, where they found Pinchas raging, a telegram in his hand.
Ah, the Man-of-the-Earth! he cried. "All my beautiful peroration he spoils." He crumpled up the telegram and threw it pettishly at little Sampson, then greeted Raphael with effusive joy and hilarity. Little Sampson read the telegram. It ran as follows:
Last sentence of Gideon leader. 'It is too early yet in this moment of grief to speculate as to his successor in the constituency. But, difficult as it will be to replace him, we may find some solace in the thought that it will not be impossible. The spirit of the illustrious dead would itself rejoice to acknowledge the special qualifications of one whose name will at once rise to every lip as that of a brother Jew whose sincere piety and genuine public spirit mark him out as the one worthy substitute in the representation of a district embracing so many of our poor Jewish brethren. Is it too much to hope that he will be induced to stand?' Goldsmith.
That's a cut above Henry, murmured little Sampson, who knew nearly everything, save the facts he had to supply to the public. "He wired to the wife, and it's hers. Well, it saves him from writing his own puffs, anyhow. I suppose Goldsmith's only the signature, not intended to be the last word on the subject. Wants touching up, though; can't have 'spirit' twice within four lines. How lucky for him Leon is just off the box seat! That queer beggar would never have submitted to any dictation any more than the boss would have dared show his hand so openly."
While the sub-editor mused thus, a remark dropped from the editor's lips, which turned Raphael whiter than the news of the death of Gideon had done.
Yes, and in the middle of writing I look up and see the maiden--oh, vairy beautiful! How she gives it to English Judaism sharp in that book--the stupid heads,--the Men-of-the-Earth! I could kiss her for it, only I have never been introduced. Gideon, he is there! Ho! ho! he sniggered, with purely intellectual appreciation of the pungency.
What maiden? What are you talking about? asked Raphael, his breath coming painfully.
Your maiden, said Pinchas, surveying him with affectionate roguishness. "The maiden that came to see you here. She was reading; I walk by and see it is about America."
At the British Museum? gasped Raphael. A thousand hammers beat "Fool!" upon his brain. Why had he not thought of so likely a place for a _litterateur_?
He rushed out of the office and into a hansom. He put his pipe out in anticipation. In seven minutes he was at the gates, just in time--heaven be thanked!--to meet her abstractedly descending the steps. His heart gave a great leap of joy. He studied the pensive little countenance for an instant before it became aware of him; its sadness shot a pang of reproach through him. Then a great light, as of wonder and joy, came into the dark eyes, and glorified the pale, passionate face. But it was only a flash that faded, leaving the cheeks more pallid than before, the lips quivering.
Mr. Leon! she muttered.
He raised his hat, then held out a trembling hand that closed upon hers with a grip that hurt her.
I'm so glad to see you again! he said, with unconcealed enthusiasm. "I have been meaning to write to you for days--care of your publishers. I wonder if you will ever forgive me!"
You had nothing to write to me, she said, striving to speak coldly.
Oh yes, I had! he protested.
She shook her head.
Our journalistic relations are over--there were no others.
Oh! he said reproachfully, feeling his heart grow chill. "Surely we were friends?"
She did not answer.
I wanted to write and tell you how much, he began desperately, then stammered, and ended--"how much I liked _Mordecai Josephs_."
This time the reproachful "Oh!" came from her lips. "I thought better of you," she said. "You didn't say that in _The Flag of Judah_; writing it privately to me wouldn't do me any good in any case."
He felt miserable; from the crude standpoint of facts, there was no answer to give. He gave none.
I suppose it is all about now? she went on, seeing him silent.
Pretty well, he answered, understanding the question. Then, with an indignant accent, he said, "Mrs. Goldsmith tells everybody she found it out; and sent you away."
I am glad she says that, she remarked enigmatically. "And, naturally, everybody detests me?"
Not everybody, he began threateningly.
Don't let us stand on the steps, she interrupted. "People will be looking at us." They moved slowly downwards, and into the hot, bustling streets. "Why are you not at the _Flag_? I thought this was your busy day." She did not add, "And so I ventured to the Museum, knowing there was no chance of your turning up;" but such was the fact.
"I am not the editor any longer, he replied. Not?"" She almost came to a stop. ""So much for my critical faculty; I could have sworn to your hand in every number.""
"Your critical faculty equals your creative, he began.
Journalism has taught you sarcasm.
No, no! please do not be so unkind. I spoke in earnestness. I have only just been dismissed.
Dismissed! she echoed incredulously. "I thought the _Flag_ was your own?"
He grew troubled. "I bought it--but for another. We--he--has dispensed with my services."
Oh, how shameful!
The latent sympathy of her indignation cheered him again.
I am not sorry, he said. "I'm afraid I really was outgrowing its original platform."
What? she asked, with a note of mockery in her voice. "You have left off being orthodox?"
I don't say that, it seems to me, rather, that I have come to understand I never was orthodox in the sense that the orthodox understand the word. I had never come into contact with them before. I never realized how unfair orthodox writers are to Judaism. But I do not abate one word of what I have ever said or written, except, of course, on questions of scholarship, which are always open to revision.
But what is to become of me--of my conversion? she said, with mock piteousness.
You need no conversion! he answered passionately, abandoning without a twinge all those criteria of Judaism for which he had fought with Strelitski. "You are a Jewess not only in blood, but in spirit. Deny it as you may, you have all the Jewish ideals,--they are implied in your attack on our society."
She shook her head obstinately.
You read all that into me, as you read your modern thought into the old naive books.
I read what is in you. Your soul is in the right, whatever your brain says. He went on, almost to echo Strelitski's words, "Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion. In the language of our Hillel, this is the text of the Law; the rest is commentary. You and I are at one in believing that, despite all and after all, the world turns on righteousness, on justice"--his voice became a whisper--"on love."
The old thrill went through her, as when first they met. Once again the universe seemed bathed in holy joy. But she shook off the spell almost angrily. Her face was definitely set towards the life of the New World. Why should he disturb her anew?
Ah, well, I'm glad you allow me a little goodness, she said sarcastically. "It is quite evident how you have drifted from orthodoxy. Strange result of _The Flag of Judah_! Started to convert me, it has ended by alienating you--its editor--from the true faith. Oh, the irony of circumstance! But don't look so glum. It has fulfilled its mission all the same; it _has_ converted me--I will confess it to you." Her face grew grave, her tones earnest "So I haven't an atom of sympathy with your broader attitude. I am full of longing for the old impossible Judaism."
His face took on a look of anxious solicitude. He was uncertain whether she spoke ironically or seriously. Only one thing was certain--that she was slipping from him again. She seemed so complex, paradoxical, elusive--and yet growing every moment more dear and desirable.
Where are you living? he asked abruptly. "It doesn't matter where," she answered. "I sail for America in three weeks."
The world seemed suddenly empty. It was hopeless, then--she was almost in his grasp, yet he could not hold her. Some greater force was sweeping her into strange alien solitudes. A storm of protest raged in his heart--all he had meant to say to her rose to his lips, but he only said, "Must you go?"
I must. My little sister marries. I have timed my visit so as to arrive just for the wedding--like a fairy godmother. She smiled wistfully.
Then you will live with your people, I suppose?
I suppose so. I dare say I shall become quite good again. Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its imperfections. They will never keep the race together through shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevitable dissolution. It is beautiful--that old childlike faith in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, I dare say, is a mere symbol. Again the wistful look lit up her eyes. "That's what you rich people will never understand--it doesn't seem to go with dinners in seven courses, somehow."
Oh, but I do understand, he protested. "It's what I told Strelitski, who is all for intellect in religion. He is going to America, too," he said, with a sudden pang of jealous apprehension.
On a holiday?
No; he is going to resign his ministry here.
What! Has he got a better offer from America?
Still so cruel to him, he said reprovingly. "He is resigning for conscience' sake."
After all these years? she queried sarcastically.
Miss Ansell, you wrong him! He was not happy in his position. You were right so far. But he cannot endure his shackles any longer. And it is you who have inspired him to break them.
I? she exclaimed, startled.
Yes, I told him why you had left Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's--it seemed to act like an electrical stimulus. Then and there he made me write a paragraph announcing his resignation. It will appear to-morrow.
Esther's eyes filled with soft light. She walked on in silence; then, noticing she had automatically walked too much in the direction of her place of concealment, she came to an abrupt stop.
We must part here, she said. "If I ever come across my old shepherd in America, I will be nicer to him. It is really quite heroic of him--you must have exaggerated my own petty sacrifice alarmingly if it really supplied him with inspiration. What is he going to do in America?"
To preach a universal Judaism. He is a born idealist; his ideas have always such a magnificent sweep. Years ago he wanted all the Jews to return to Palestine.
Esther smiled faintly, not at Strelitski, but at Raphael's calling another man an idealist. She had never yet done justice to the strain of common-sense that saved him from being a great man; he and the new Strelitski were of one breed to her.
He will make Jews no happier and Christians no wiser, she said sceptically. "The great populations will sweep on, as little affected by the Jews as this crowd by you and me. The world will not go back on itself--rather will Christianity transform itself and take the credit. We are such a handful of outsiders. Judaism--old or new--is a forlorn hope."
The forlorn hope will yet save the world, he answered quietly, "but it has first to be saved to the world."
Be happy in your hope, she said gently. "Good-bye." She held out her little hand. He had no option but to take it.
But we are not going to part like this, he said desperately. "I shall see you again before you go to America?"
No, why should you?
Because I love you, rose to his lips. But the avowal seemed too plump. He prevaricated by retorting, "Why should I not?"
Because I fear you, was in her heart, but nothing rose to her lips. He looked into her eyes to read an answer there, but she dropped them. He saw his opportunity.
Why should I not? he repeated.
Your time is valuable, she said faintly.
I could not spend it better than with you, he answered boldly.
Please don't insist, she said in distress.
But I shall; I am your friend. So far as I know, you are lonely. If you are bent upon going away, why deny me the pleasure of the society I am about to lose for ever?
Oh, how can you call it a pleasure--such poor melancholy company as I am!
Such poor melancholy company that I came expressly to seek it, for some one told me you were at the Museum. Such poor melancholy company that if I am robbed of it life will be a blank.
He had not let go her hand; his tones were low and passionate; the heedless traffic of the sultry London street was all about them.
Esther trembled from head to foot; she could not look at him. There was no mistaking his meaning now; her breast was a whirl of delicious pain.
But in proportion as the happiness at her beck and call dazzled her, so she recoiled from it. Bent on self-effacement, attuned to the peace of despair, she almost resented the solicitation to be happy; she had suffered so much that she had grown to think suffering her natural element, out of which she could not breathe; she was almost in love with misery. And in so sad a world was there not something ignoble about happiness, a selfish aloofness from the life of humanity? And, illogically blent with this questioning, and strengthening her recoil, was an obstinate conviction that there could never be happiness for her, a being of ignominious birth, without roots in life, futile, shadowy, out of relation to the tangible solidities of ordinary existence. To offer her a warm fireside seemed to be to tempt her to be false to something--she knew not what. Perhaps it was because the warm fireside was in the circle she had quitted, and her heart was yet bitter against it, finding no palliative even in the thought of a triumphant return. She did not belong to it; she was not of Raphael's world. But she felt grateful to the point of tears for his incomprehensible love for a plain, penniless, low-born girl. Surely, it was only his chivalry. Other men had not found her attractive. Sidney had not; Levi only fancied himself in love. And yet beneath all her humility was a sense of being loved for the best in her, for the hidden qualities Raphael alone had the insight to divine. She could never think so meanly of herself or of humanity again. He had helped and strengthened her for her lonely future; the remembrance of him would always be an inspiration, and a reminder of the nobler side of human nature.
All this contradictory medley of thought and feeling occupied but a few seconds of consciousness. She answered him without any perceptible pause, lightly enough.
Really, Mr. Leon, I don't expect _you_ to say such things. Why should we be so conventional, you and I? How can your life be a blank, with Judaism yet to be saved?
Who am I to save Judaism? I want to save you, he said passionately.
What a descent! For heaven's sake, stick to your earlier ambition!
No, the two are one to me. Somehow you seem to stand for Judaism, too. I cannot disentwine my hopes; I have come to conceive your life as an allegory of Judaism, the offspring of a great and tragic past with the germs of a rich blossoming, yet wasting with an inward canker, I have grown to think of its future as somehow bound up with yours. I want to see your eyes laughing, the shadows lifted from your brow; I want to see you face life courageously, not in passionate revolt nor in passionless despair, but in faith and hope and the joy that springs from them. I want you to seek peace, not in a despairing surrender of the intellect to the faith of childhood, but in that faith intellectually justified. And while I want to help you, and to fill your life with the sunshine it needs, I want you to help me, to inspire me when I falter, to complete my life, to make me happier than I had ever dreamed. Be my wife, Esther. Let me save you from yourself.
Let me save you from yourself, Raphael. Is it wise to wed with the gray spirit of the Ghetto that doubts itself?
And like a spirit she glided from his grasp and disappeared in the crowd.
The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor and perturbation.
What is the matter, my dear? asked the Reb, anxiously.
Oh, father, she cried, "read this! Bad news of Levi."
A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed countenance.
Mention not his name! he said harshly "He is dead."
He may be by now! Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. "You were right, Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now he is laid up with typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One of his friends writes to tell us. He must have caught it in one of those insanitary dressing-rooms we were reading about."
Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret when the fatal telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never faded from her mind. She had an instant conviction that it was all over with poor Levi.
My poor lamb! cried the Rebbitzin, the coffee-cup dropping from her nerveless hand.
Simcha, said Reb Shemuel sternly, "calm thyself; we have no son to lose. The Holy One--blessed be He!--hath taken him from us. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
Hannah rose. Her face was white and resolute. She moved towards the door.
Whither goest thou? inquired her father in German.
I am going to my room, to put on my hat and jacket, replied Hannah quietly.
Whither goest thou? repeated Reb Shemuel.
To Stockbridge. Mother, you and I must go at once.
The Reb sprang to his feet. His brow was dark; his eyes gleamed with anger and pain.
Sit down and finish thy breakfast, he said.
How can I eat? Levi is dying, said Hannah, in low, firm tones. "Will you come, mother, or must I go alone?"
The Rebbitzin began to wring her hands and weep. Esther stole gently to Hannah's side and pressed the poor girl's hand. "You and I will go," her clasp said.
Hannah! said Reb Shemuel. "What madness is this? Dost thou think thy mother will obey thee rather than her husband?"
Levi is dying. It is our duty to go to him. Hannah's gentle face was rigid. But there was exaltation rather than defiance in the eyes.
It is not the duty of women, said Reb Shemuel harshly. "I will go to Stockbridge. If he dies (God have mercy upon his soul!) I will see that he is buried among his own people. Thou knowest women go not to funerals." He reseated himself at the table, pushing aside his scarcely touched meal, and began saying the grace. Dominated by his will and by old habit, the three trembling women remained in reverential silence.
The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with Peace, concluded the old man in unfaltering accents. He rose from the table and strode to the door, stern and erect "Thou wilt remain here, Hannah, and thou, Simcha," he said. In the passage his shoulders relaxed their stiffness, so that the long snow-white beard drooped upon his breast. The three women looked at one another.
Mother, said Hannah, passionately breaking the silence, "are you going to stay here while Levi is dying in a strange town?"
My husband wills it, said the Rebbitzin, sobbing. "Levi is a sinner in Israel. Thy father will not see him; he will not go to him till he is dead."
Oh yes, surely he will, said Esther. "But be comforted. Levi is young and strong. Let us hope he will pull through."
No, no! moaned the Rebbitzin. "He will die, and my husband will but read the psalms at his death-bed. He will not forgive him; he will not speak to him of his mother and sister."
Let _me_ go. I will give him your messages, said Esther.
No, no, interrupted Hannah. "What are you to him? Why should you risk infection for our sakes?"
Go, Hannah, but secretly, said the Rebbitzin in a wailing whisper. "Let not thy father see thee till thou arrive; then he will not send thee back. Tell Levi that I--oh, my poor child, my poor lamb!" Sobs overpowered her speech.
No, mother, said Hannah quietly, "thou and I shall go. I will tell father we are accompanying him."
She left the room, while the Rebbitzin fell weeping and terrified into a chair, and Esther vainly endeavored to soothe her. The Reb was changing his coat when Hannah knocked at the door and called "Father."
Speak not to me, Hannah, answered the Reb, roughly. "It is useless." Then, as if repentant of his tone, he threw open the door, and passed his great trembling hand lovingly over her hair. "Thou art a good daughter," he said tenderly. "Forget that thou hast had a brother."
But how can I forget? she answered him in his own idiom. "Why should I forget? What hath he done?"
He ceased to smooth her hair--his voice grew sad and stern.
He hath profaned the Name. He hath lived like a heathen; he dieth like a heathen now. His blasphemy was a by-word in the congregation. I alone knew it not till last Passover. He hath brought down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.
Yes, father, I know, said Hannah, more gently. "But he is not all to blame!"
Thou meanest that I am not guiltless; that I should have kept him at my side? said the Reb, his voice faltering a little.
No, father, not that! Levi could not always be a baby. He had to walk alone some day.
Yes, and did I not teach him to walk alone? asked the Reb eagerly. "My God, thou canst not say I did not teach him Thy Law, day and night." He uplifted his eyes in anguished appeal.
Yes, but he is not all to blame, she repeated. "Thy teaching did not reach his soul; he is of another generation, the air is different, his life was cast amid conditions for which the Law doth not allow."
Hannah! Reb Shemuel's accents became harsh and chiding again. "What sayest thou? The Law of Moses is eternal; it will never be changed. Levi knew God's commandments, but he followed the desire of his own heart and his own eyes. If God's Word were obeyed, he should have been stoned with stones. But Heaven itself hath punished him; he will die, for it is ordained that whosoever is stubborn and disobedient, that soul shall surely be cut off from among his people. 'Keep My commandments, that thy days may be long in the land,' God Himself hath said it. Is it not written: 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things the Lord will bring thee into judgment'? But thou, my Hannah," he started caressing her hair again, "art a good Jewish maiden. Between Levi and thee there is naught in common. His touch would profane thee. Sadden not thy innocent eyes with the sight of his end. Think of him as one who died in boyhood. My God! why didst thou not take him then?" He turned away, stifling a sob.
Father, she put her hand on his shoulder, "we will go with thee to Stockbridge--I and the mother."
He faced her again, stern and rigid.
Cease thy entreaties. I will go alone.
No, we will all go.
Hannah, he said, his voice tremulous with pain and astonishment, "dost thou, too, set light by thy father?"
Yes, she cried, and there was no answering tremor in her voice. "Now thou knowest! I am not a good Jewish maiden. Levi and I are brother and sister. His touch profane me, forsooth!" She laughed bitterly.
Thou wilt take this journey though I forbid thee? he cried in acrid accents, still mingled with surprise.
Yes; would I had taken the journey thou wouldst have forbidden ten years ago!
What journey? thou talkest madness.
I talk truth. Thou hast forgotten David Brandon; I have not. Ten years last Passover I arranged to fly with him, to marry him, in defiance of the Law and thee.
A new pallor overspread the Reb's countenance, already ashen. He trembled and almost fell backwards.
But thou didst not? he whispered hoarsely.
I did not, I know not why, she said sullenly; "else thou wouldst never have seen me again. It may be I respected thy religion, although thou didst not dream what was in my mind. But thy religion shall not keep me from this journey."
The Reb had hidden his face in his hands. His lips were moving; was it in grateful prayer, in self-reproach, or merely in nervous trembling? Hannah never knew. Presently the Reb's arms dropped, great tears rolled down towards the white beard. When he spoke, his tones were hushed as with awe.
This man--tell me, my daughter, thou lovest him still?
She shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of reckless despair.
What does it matter? My life is but a shadow.
The Reb took her to his breast, though she remained stony to his touch, and laid his wet face against her burning cheeks.
My child, my poor Hannah; I thought God had sent thee peace ten years ago; that He had rewarded thee for thy obedience to His Law.
She drew her face away from his.
It was not His Law; it was a miserable juggling with texts. Thou alone interpretedst God's law thus. No one knew of the matter.
He could not argue; the breast against which he held her was shaken by a tempest of grief, which swept away all save human remorse, human love.
My daughter, he sobbed, "I have ruined thy life!" After an agonized pause, he said: "Tell me, Hannah, is there nothing I can do to make atonement to thee?"
Only one thing, father, she articulated chokingly; "forgive Levi."
There was a moment of solemn silence. Then the Reb spake.
Tell thy mother to put on her things and take what she needs for the journey. Perchance we may be away for days.
They mingled their tears in sweet reconciliation. Presently, the Reb said:
Go now to thy mother, and see also that the boy's room be made ready as of old. Perchance God will hear my prayer, and he will yet be restored to us.
A new peace fell upon Hannah's soul. "My sacrifice was not in vain after all," she thought, with a throb of happiness that was almost exultation.
But Levi never came back. The news of his death arrived on the eve of _Yom Kippur_, the Day of Atonement, in a letter to Esther who had been left in charge of the house.
He died quietly at the end, Hannah wrote, "happy in the consciousness of father's forgiveness, and leaning trustfully upon his interposition with Heaven; but he had delirious moments, during which he raved painfully. The poor boy was in great fear of death, moaning prayers that he might be spared till after _Yom Kippur_, when he would be cleansed of sin, and babbling about serpents that would twine themselves round his arm and brow, like the phylacteries he had not worn. He made father repeat his 'Verse' to him over and over again, so that he might remember his name when the angel of the grave asked it; and borrowed father's phylacteries, the headpiece of which was much too large for him with his shaven crown. When he had them on, and the _Talith_ round him, he grew easier, and began murmuring the death-bed prayers with father. One of them runs: 'O may my death be an atonement for all the sins, iniquities and transgressions of which I have been guilty against Thee!' I trust it may be so indeed. It seems so hard for a young man full of life and high spirits to be cut down, while the wretched are left alive. Your name was often on his lips. I was glad to learn he thought so much of you. 'Be sure to give Esther my love,' he said almost with his last breath, 'and ask her to forgive me.' I know not if you have anything to forgive, or whether this was delirium. He looks quite calm now--but oh! so worn. They have closed the eyes. The beard he shocked father so by shaving off, has sprouted scrubbily during his illness. On the dead face it seems a mockery, like the _Talith_ and phylacteries that have not been removed."
A phrase of Leonard James vibrated in Esther's ears: "If the chappies could see me!"
The morning of the Great White Fast broke bleak and gray. Esther, alone in the house save for the servant, wandered from room to room in dull misery. The day before had been almost a feast-day in the Ghetto--everybody providing for the morrow. Esther had scarcely eaten anything. Nevertheless she was fasting, and would fast for over twenty-four hours, till the night fell. She knew not why. Her record was unbroken, and instinct resented a breach now. She had always fasted--even the Henry Goldsmiths fasted, and greater than the Henry Goldsmiths! Q.C.'s fasted, and peers, and prize-fighters and actors. And yet Esther, like many far more pious persons, did not think of her sins for a moment. She thought of everything but them--of the bereaved family in that strange provincial town; of her own family in that strange distant land. Well, she would soon be with them now. Her passage was booked--a steerage passage it was, not because she could not afford cabin fare, but from her morbid impulse to identify herself with poverty. The same impulse led her to choose a vessel in which a party of Jewish pauper immigrants was being shipped farther West. She thought also of Dutch Debby, with whom she had spent the previous evening; and of Raphael Leon, who had sent her, _via_ the publishers, a letter which she could not trust herself to answer cruelly, and which she deemed it most prudent to leave unanswered. Uncertain of her powers of resistance, she scarcely ventured outside the house for fear of his stumbling across her. Happily, every day diminished the chance of her whereabouts leaking out through some unsuspected channel.
About noon, her restlessness carried her into the streets. There was a festal solemnity about the air. Women and children, not at synagogue, showed themselves at the doors, pranked in their best. Indifferently pious young men sought relief from the ennui of the day-long service in lounging about for a breath of fresh air; some even strolled towards the Strand, and turned into the National Gallery, satisfied to reappear for the twilight service. On all sides came the fervent roar of prayer which indicated a synagogue or a _Chevrah_, the number of places of worship having been indefinitely increased to accommodate those who made their appearance for this occasion only.
Everywhere friends and neighbors were asking one another how they were bearing the fast, exhibiting their white tongues and generally comparing symptoms, the physical aspects of the Day of Atonement more or less completely diverting attention from the spiritual. Smelling-salts passed from hand to hand, and men explained to one another that, but for the deprivation of their cigars, they could endure _Yom Kippur_ with complacency.
Esther passed the Ghetto school, within which free services were going on even in the playground, poor Russians and Poles, fanatically observant, fore-gathering with lax fishmongers and welshers; and without which hulking young men hovered uneasily, feeling too out of tune with religion to go in, too conscious of the terrors of the day to stay entirely away. From the interior came from sunrise to nightfall a throbbing thunder of supplication, now pealing in passionate outcry, now subsiding to a low rumble. The sounds of prayer that pervaded the Ghetto, and burst upon her at every turn, wrought upon Esther strangely; all her soul went out in sympathy with these yearning outbursts; she stopped every now and then to listen, as in those far-off days when the Sons of the Covenant drew her with their melancholy cadences.
At last, moved by an irresistible instinct, she crossed the threshold of a large _Chevrah_ she had known in her girlhood, mounted the stairs and entered the female compartment without hostile challenge. The reek of many breaths and candles nearly drove her back, but she pressed forwards towards a remembered window, through a crowd of be-wigged women, shaking their bodies fervently to and fro.
This room had no connection with the men's; it was simply the room above part of theirs, and the declamations of the unseen cantor came but faintly through the flooring, though the clamor of the general masculine chorus kept the pious _au courant_ with their husbands. When weather or the whims of the more important ladies permitted, the window at the end was opened; it gave upon a little balcony, below which the men's chamber projected considerably, having been built out into the back yard. When this window was opened simultaneously with the skylight in the men's synagogue, the fervid roulades of the cantor were as audible to the women as to their masters.
Esther had always affected the balcony: there the air was comparatively fresh, and on fine days there was a glimpse of blue sky, and a perspective of sunny red tiles, where brown birds fluttered and cats lounged and little episodes arose to temper the tedium of endless invocation: and farther off there was a back view of a nunnery, with visions of placid black-hooded faces at windows; and from the distance came a pleasant drone of monosyllabic spelling from fresh young voices, to relieve the ear from the monotony of long stretches of meaningless mumbling.
Here, lost in a sweet melancholy, Esther dreamed away the long gray day, only vaguely conscious of the stages of the service--morning dovetailing into afternoon service, and afternoon into evening; of the heavy-jowled woman behind her reciting a jargon-version of the Atonement liturgy to a devout coterie; of the prostrations full-length on the floor, and the series of impassioned sermons; of the interminably rhyming poems, and the acrostics with their recurring burdens shouted in devotional frenzy, voice rising above voice as in emulation, with special staccato phrases flung heavenwards; of the wailing confessions of communal sin, with their accompaniment of sobs and tears and howls and grimaces and clenchings of palms and beatings of the breast. She was lapped in a great ocean of sound that broke upon her consciousness like the waves upon a beach, now with a cooing murmur, now with a majestic crash, followed by a long receding moan. She lost herself in the roar, in its barren sensuousness, while the leaden sky grew duskier and the twilight crept on, and the awful hour drew nigh when God would seal what He had written, and the annual scrolls of destiny would be closed, immutable. She saw them looming mystically through the skylight, the swaying forms below, in their white grave-clothes, oscillating weirdly backwards and forwards, bowed as by a mighty wind.
Suddenly there fell a vast silence; even from without no sound came to break the awful stillness. It was as if all creation paused to hear a pregnant word.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One! sang the cantor frenziedly.
And all the ghostly congregation answered with a great cry, closing their eyes and rocking frantically to and fro:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!
They seemed like a great army of the sheeted dead risen to testify to the Unity. The magnetic tremor that ran through the synagogue thrilled the lonely girl to the core; once again her dead self woke, her dead ancestors that would not be shaken off lived and moved in her. She was sucked up into the great wave of passionate faith, and from her lips came, in rapturous surrender to an overmastering impulse, the half-hysterical protestation:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!
And then in the brief instant while the congregation, with ever-ascending rhapsody, blessed God till the climax came with the sevenfold declaration, "the Lord, He is God," the whole history of her strange, unhappy race flashed through her mind in a whirl of resistless emotion. She was overwhelmed by the thought of its sons in every corner of the earth proclaiming to the sombre twilight sky the belief for which its generations had lived and died--the Jews of Russia sobbing it forth in their pale of enclosure, the Jews of Morocco in their _mellah_, and of South Africa in their tents by the diamond mines: the Jews of the New World in great free cities, in Canadian backwoods, in South American savannahs: the Australian Jews on the sheep-farms and the gold-fields and in the mushroom cities; the Jews of Asia in their reeking quarters begirt by barbarian populations. The shadow of a large mysterious destiny seemed to hang over these poor superstitious zealots, whose lives she knew so well in all their everyday prose, and to invest the unconscious shunning sons of the Ghetto with something of tragic grandeur. The gray dusk palpitated with floating shapes of prophets and martyrs, scholars and sages and poets, full of a yearning love and pity, lifting hands of benediction. By what great high-roads and queer by-ways of history had they travelled hither, these wandering Jews, "sated with contempt," these shrewd eager fanatics, these sensual ascetics, these human paradoxes, adaptive to every environment, energizing in every field of activity, omnipresent like sonic great natural force, indestructible and almost inconvertible, surviving--with the incurable optimism that overlay all their poetic sadness--Babylon and Carthage, Greece and Rome; involuntarily financing the Crusades, outliving the Inquisition, illusive of all baits, unshaken by all persecutions--at once the greatest and meanest of races? Had the Jew come so far only to break down at last, sinking in morasses of modern doubt, and irresistibly dragging down with him the Christian and the Moslem; or was he yet fated to outlast them both, in continuous testimony to a hand moulding incomprehensibly the life of humanity? Would Israel develop into the sacred phalanx, the nobler brotherhood that Raphael Leon had dreamed of, or would the race that had first proclaimed--through Moses for the ancient world, through Spinoza for the modern--
One God, one Law, one Element,
become, in the larger, wilder dream of the Russian _idealist_, the main factor in
"One far-off divine event To which the whole Creation moves?
"The roar dwindled to a solemn silence, as though in answer to her questionings. Then the ram's horn shrilled--a stern long-drawn-out note, that rose at last into a mighty peal of sacred jubilation. The Atonement was complete.
The crowd bore Esther downstairs and into the blank indifferent street. But the long exhausting fast, the fetid atmosphere, the strain upon her emotions, had overtaxed her beyond endurance. Up to now the frenzy of the service had sustained her, but as she stepped across the threshold on to the pavement she staggered and fell. One of the men pouring out from the lower synagogue caught her in his arms. It was Strelitski.
A group of three stood on the saloon deck of an outward-bound steamer. Raphael Leon was bidding farewell to the man he reverenced without discipleship, and the woman he loved without blindness.
Look! he said, pointing compassionately to the wretched throng of Jewish emigrants huddling on the lower deck and scattered about the gangway amid jostling sailors and stevedores and bales and coils of rope; the men in peaked or fur caps, the women with shawls and babies, some gazing upwards with lacklustre eyes, the majority brooding, despondent, apathetic. "How could either of you have borne the sights and smells of the steerage? You are a pair of visionaries. You could not have breathed a day in that society. Look!"
Strelitski looked at Esther instead; perhaps he was thinking he could have breathed anywhere in her society--nay, breathed even more freely in the steerage than in the cabin if he had sailed away without telling Raphael that he had found her.
You forget a common impulse took us into such society on the Day of Atonement, he answered after a moment. "You forget we are both Children of the Ghetto."
I can never forget that, said Raphael fervently, "else Esther would at this moment be lost amid the human flotsam and jetsam below, sailing away without you to protect her, without me to look forward to her return, without Addie's bouquet to assure her of a sister's love."
He took Esther's little hand once more It lingered confidingly in his own. There was no ring of betrothal upon it, nor would be, till Rachel Ansell in America, and Addie Leon in England, should have passed under the wedding canopy, and Raphael, whose breast pocket was bulging with a new meerschaum too sacred to smoke, should startle the West End with his eccentric choice, and confirm its impression of his insanity. The trio had said and resaid all they had to tell one another, all the reminders and the recommendations. They stood without speaking now, wrapped in that loving silence which is sweeter than speech.
The sun, which, had been shining intermittently, flooded the serried shipping with a burst of golden light, that coaxed the turbid waves to brightness, and cheered the wan emigrants, and made little children leap joyously in their mothers' arms. The knell of parting sounded insistent.
Your allegory seems turning in your favor, Raphael, said Esther, with a sudden memory.
The pensive smile that made her face beautiful lit up the dark eyes.
What allegory is that of Raphael's? said Strelitski, reflecting her smile on his graver visage. "The long one in his prize poem?"
No, said Raphael, catching the contagious smile. "It is our little secret."
Strelitski turned suddenly to look at the emigrants. The smile faded from his quivering mouth.
The last moment had come. Raphael stooped down towards the gentle softly-flushing face, which was raised unhesitatingly to meet his, and their lips met in a first kiss, diviner than it is given most mortals to know--a kiss, sad and sweet, troth and parting in one: _Ave et vale_--hail and farewell."
Good-bye, Strelitski, said Raphael huskily. "Success to your dreams."
The idealist turned round with a start. His face was bright and resolute; the black curl streamed buoyantly on the breeze.
Good-bye, he responded, with a giant's grip of the hand. "Success to your hopes."
Raphael darted away with his long stride. The sun was still bright, but for a moment everything seemed chill and dim to Esther Ansell's vision. With a sudden fit of nervous foreboding she stretched out her arms towards the vanishing figure of her lover. But she saw him once again in the tender, waving his handkerchief towards the throbbing vessel that glided with its freight of hopes and dreams across the great waters towards the New World.
The End