It was truer than she knew.
* * * * *
The rain fell faster, the wind grew shriller, but the Children of the Ghetto basked by their firesides in faith and hope and contentment. Hunted from shore to shore through the ages, they had found the national aspiration—Peace—in a country where Passover came, without menace of blood. In the garret of Number 1 Royal Street little Esther Ansell sat brooding, her heart full of a vague tender poetry and penetrated by the beauties of Judaism, which, please God, she would always cling to; her childish vision looking forward hopefully to the larger life that the years would bring.
Daintily embroidered napery, beautiful porcelain, Queen Anne silver, exotic flowers, glittering glass, soft rosy light, creamy expanses of shirt-front, elegant low-necked dresses—all the conventional accompaniments of Occidental gastronomy.
It was not a large party. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith professed to collect guests on artistic principles—as she did bric-à-brac—and with an eye to general conversation. The elements of the social salad were sufficiently incongruous to-night, yet all the ingredients were Jewish.
For the history of the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of isolation. "The Upper Ten" is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the middle-classes look up in worship and the lower-classes in supplication. "The Upper Ten" have no spirit of exclusiveness; they are willing to entertain royalty, rank and the arts with a catholic hospitality that is only Eastern in its magnificence, while some of them only remain Jews for fear of being considered snobs by society. But the middle-class Jew has been more jealous of his caste, and for caste reasons. To exchange hospitalities with the Christian when you cannot eat his dinners were to get the worse of the bargain; to invite his sons to your house when they cannot marry your daughters were to solicit awkward complications. In business, in civic affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with his fellow-citizens, but indiscriminate social relations only become possible through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate. A Christian in a company of middle-class Jews is like a lion in a den of Daniels. They show him deference and their prophetic side.
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith was of the upper middle-classes, and her husband was the financial representative of the Kensington Synagogue at the United Council, but her swan-like neck was still bowed beneath the yoke of North London, not to say provincial, Judaism. So to-night there were none of those external indications of Christmas which are so frequent at "good" Jewish houses; no plum-pudding, snapdragon, mistletoe, not even a Christmas tree. For Mrs. Henry Goldsmith did not countenance these coquettings with Christianity. She would have told you that the incidence of her dinner on Christmas Eve was merely an accident, though a lucky accident, in so far as Christmas found Jews perforce at leisure for social gatherings. What she was celebrating was the feast of Chanukah—of the re-dedication of the Temple after the pollutions of Antiochus Epiphanes—and the memory of the national hero, Judas Maccabaeus. Christmas crackers would have been incompatible with the Chanukah candles which the housekeeper, Mary O'Reilly, forced her master to light, and would have shocked that devout old dame. For Mary O'Reilly, as good a soul as she was a Catholic, had lived all her life with Jews, assisting while yet a girl in the kitchen of Henry Goldsmith's father, who was a pattern of ancient piety and a prop of the Great Synagogue. When the father died, Mary, with all the other family belongings, passed into the hands of the son, who came up to London from a provincial town, and with a grateful recollection of her motherliness domiciled her in his own establishment. Mary knew all the ritual laws and ceremonies far better than her new mistress, who although a native of the provincial town in which Mr. Henry Goldsmith had established a thriving business, had received her education at a Brussels boarding-school. Mary knew exactly how long to keep the meat in salt and the heinousness of frying steaks in butter. She knew that the fire must not be poked on the Sabbath, nor the gas lit or extinguished, and that her master must not smoke till three stars appeared in the sky. She knew when the family must fast, and when and how it must feast. She knew all the Hebrew and jargon expressions which her employers studiously boycotted, and she was the only member of the household who used them habitually in her intercourse with the other members. Too late the Henry Goldsmiths awoke to the consciousness of her tyranny which did not permit them to be irreligious even in private. In the fierce light which beats upon a provincial town with only one synagogue, they had been compelled to conform outwardly with many galling restrictions, and they had sub-consciously looked forward to emancipation in the mighty metropolis. But Mary had such implicit faith in their piety, and was so zealous in the practice of her own faith, that they had not the courage to confess that they scarcely cared a pin about a good deal of that for which she was so solicitous. They hesitated to admit that they did not respect their religion (or what she thought was their religion) as much as she did hers. It would have equally lowered them in her eyes to admit that their religion was not so good as hers, besides being disrespectful to the cherished memory of her ancient master. At first they had deferred to Mary's Jewish prejudices out of good nature and carelessness, but every day strengthened her hold upon them; every act of obedience to the ritual law was a tacit acknowledgment of its sanctity, which made it more and more difficult to disavow its obligation. The dread of shocking Mary came to dominate their lives, and the fashionable house near Kensington Gardens was still a veritable centre of true Jewish orthodoxy, with little or nothing to make old Aaron Goldsmith turn in his grave. It is probable, though, that Mrs. Henry Goldsmith would have kept akoshertable, even if Mary had never been born. Many of their acquaintances and relatives were of an orthodox turn. Akosherdinner could be eaten even by the heterodox; whereas atriphadinner choked off the orthodox. Thus it came about that even the Rabbinate might safely stoke its spiritual fires at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's.
Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production,Mordecai Josephs, had scandalized West End Judaism.
"Why didn't he describe our circles?" asked the hostess, an angry fire in her beautiful eyes. "It would have, at least, corrected the picture. As it is, the public will fancy that we are all daubed with the same brush: that we have no thought in life beyond dress, money, and solo whist."
"He probably painted the life he knew," said Sidney Graham, in defence.
"Then I am sorry for him," retorted Mrs. Goldsmith. "It's a great pity he had such detestable acquaintances. Of course, he has cut himself off from the possibility of any better now."
The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinterested indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial grief.
"I should hope so," put in Miss Cissy Levine, sharply. She was a pale, bent woman, with spectacles, who believed in the mission of Israel, and wrote domestic novels to prove that she had no sense of humor. "No one has a right to foul his own nest. Are there not plenty of subjects for the Jew's pen without his attacking his own people? The calumniator of his race should be ostracized from decent society."
"As according to him there is none," laughed Graham, "I cannot see where the punishment comes in."
"Oh, he may say so in that book," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels, an amiable, loose-thinking lady of florid complexion, who dabbled exasperatingly in her husband's philanthropic concerns from the vain idea that the wife of a committee-man is a committee-woman. "But he knows better."
"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Montagu Samuels. "The rascal has only written this to make money. He knows it's all exaggeration and distortion; but anything spicy pays now-a-days."
"As a West Indian merchant he ought to know," murmured Sidney Graham to his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon. The girl's soft eyes twinkled, as she surveyed the serious little city magnate with his placid spouse. Montagu Samuels was narrow-minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be pompous on a meagre allowance of body. He was earnest and charitable (except in religious wrangles, when he was earnest and uncharitable), and knew himself a pillar of the community, an exemplar to the drones and sluggards who shirked their share of public burdens and were callous to the dazzlement of communal honors.
"Of course it was written for money, Monty," his brother, Percy Saville, the stockbroker, reminded him. "What else do authors write for? It's the way they earn their living."
Strangers found difficulty in understanding the fraternal relation of Percy Saville and Montagu Samuels; and did not readily grasp that Percy Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Samuels, more in tune with the handsome well-dressed personality it denoted. Montagu had stuck loyally to his colors, but Pizer had drooped under the burden of carrying his patronymic through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after business hours. Of such is the brotherhood of Israel.
"The whole book's written with gall," went on Percy Saville, emphatically. "I suppose the man couldn't get into good Jewish houses, and he's revenged himself by slandering them."
"Then he ought to have got into good Jewish houses," said Sidney. "The man has talent, nobody can deny that, and if he couldn't get into good Jewish society because he didn't have money enough, isn't that proof enough his picture is true?"
"I don't deny that there are people among us who make money the one open sesame to their houses," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, magnanimously.
"Deny it, indeed? Money is the open sesame to everything," rejoined Sidney Graham, delightedly scenting an opening for a screed. He liked to talk bomb-shells, and did not often get pillars of the community to shatter. "Money manages the schools and the charities, and the synagogues, and indirectly controls the press. A small body of persons—always the same—sits on all councils, on all boards! Why? Because they pay the piper."
"Well, sir, and is not that a good reason?" asked Montagu Samuels. "The community is to be congratulated on having a few public-spirited men left in days when there are wealthy German Jews in our midst who not only disavow Judaism, but refuse to support its institutions. But, Mr. Graham, I would join issue with you. The men you allude to are elected not because they are rich, but because they are good men of business and most of the work to be done is financial."
"Exactly," said Sidney Graham, in sinister agreement. "I have always maintained that the United Synagogue could be run as a joint-stock company for the sake of a dividend, and that there wouldn't be an atom of difference in the discussions if the councillors were directors. I do believe the pillars of the community figure the Millenium as a time when every Jew shall have enough to eat, a place to worship in, and a place to be buried in. Their State Church is simply a financial system, to which the doctrines of Judaism happen to be tacked on. How many of the councillors believe in their Established Religion? Why, the very beadles of their synagogues are prone to surreptitious shrimps and unobtrusive oysters! Then take that institution for supplyingkoshermeat. I am sure there are lots of its Committee who never inquire into the necrologies of their own chops and steaks, and who regard kitchen Judaism as obsolete. But, all the same, they look after the finances with almost fanatical zeal. Finance fascinates them. Long after Judaism has ceased to exist, excellent gentlemen will be found regulating its finances."
There was that smile on the faces of the graver members of the party which arises from reluctance to take a dangerous speaker seriously.
Sidney Graham was one of those favorites of society who are allowed Touchstone's license. He had just as little wish to reform, and just as much wish to abuse society as society has to be reformed and abused. He was a dark, bright-eyed young artist with a silky moustache. He had lived much in Paris, where he studied impressionism and perfected his natural talent forcauserieand his inborn preference for the hedonistic view of life. Fortunately he had plenty of money, for he was a cousin of Raphael Leon on the mother's side, and the remotest twigs of the Leon genealogical tree bear apples of gold. His real name was Abrahams, which is a shade too Semitic. Sidney was the black sheep of the family; good-natured to the core and artistic to the finger-tips, he was an avowed infidel in a world where avowal is the unpardonable sin. He did not even pretend to fast on the Day of Atonement. Still Sidney Graham was a good deal talked of in artistic circles, his name was often in the newspapers, and so more orthodox people than Mrs. Henry Goldsmith were not averse from having him at their table, though they would have shrunk from being seen at his. Even cousin Addie, who had a charming religious cast of mind, liked to be with him, though she ascribed this to family piety. For there is a wonderful solidarity about many Jewish families, the richer members of which assemble loyally at one another's births, marriages, funerals, and card-parties, often to the entire exclusion of outsiders. An ordinary well-regulated family (so prolific is the stream of life), will include in its bosom ample elements for every occasion.
"Really, Mr. Graham, I think you are wrong about thekoshermeat," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. "Our statistics show no falling-off in the number of bullocks killed, while there is a rise of two per cent, in the sheep slaughtered. No, Judaism is in a far more healthy condition than pessimists imagine. So far from sacrificing our ancient faith we are learning to see how tuberculosis lurks in the lungs of unexamined carcasses and is communicated to the consumer. As for the members of theShechitahBoard not eatingkosher, look at me."
The only person who looked at the host was the hostess. Her look was one of approval. It could not be of aesthetic approval, like the look Percy Saville devoted to herself, for her husband was a cadaverous little man with prominent ears and teeth.
"And if Mr. Graham should ever join us on the Council of the United Synagogue," added Montagu Samuels, addressing the table generally, "he will discover that there is no communal problem with which we do not loyally grapple."
"No, thank you," said Sidney, with a shudder. "When I visit Raphael, I sometimes pick up a Jewish paper and amuse myself by reading the debates of your public bodies. I understand most of your verbiage is edited away." He looked Montagu Samuels full in the face with audaciousnaïveté. "But there is enough left to show that our monotonous group of public men consists of narrow-minded mediocrities. The chief public work they appear to do outside finance is when public exams, fall on Sabbaths or holidays, getting special dates for Jewish candidates to whom these examinations are the avenues to atheism. They never see the joke. How can they? Why, they take even themselves seriously."
"Oh, come!" said Miss Cissy Levine indignantly. "You often see 'laughter' in the reports."
"That must mean the speaker was laughing," explained Sidney, "for you never see anything to make the audience laugh. I appeal to Mr. Montagu Samuels."
"It is useless discussing a subject with a man who admittedly speaks without knowledge," replied that gentleman with dignity.
"Well, how do you expect me to get the knowledge?" grumbled Sidney. "You exclude the public from your gatherings. I suppose to prevent their rubbing shoulders with the swells, the privilege of being snubbed by whom is the reward of public service. Wonderfully practical idea that—to utilize snobbery as a communal force. The United Synagogue is founded on it. Your community coheres through it."
"There you are scarcely fair," said the hostess with a charming smile of reproof. "Of course there are snobs amongst us, but is it not the same in all sects?"
"Emphatically not," said Sidney. "If one of our swells sticks to a shred of Judaism, people seem to think the God of Judah should be thankful, and if he goes to synagogue once or twice a year, it is regarded as a particular condescension to the Creator."
"The mental attitude you caricature is not so snobbish as it seems," said Raphael Leon, breaking into the conversation for the first time. "The temptations to the wealthy and the honored to desert their struggling brethren are manifold, and sad experience has made our race accustomed to the loss of its brightest sons."
"Thanks for the compliment, fair coz," said Sidney, not without a complacent cynical pleasure in the knowledge that Raphael spoke truly, that he owed his own immunity from the obligations of the faith to his artistic success, and that the outside world was disposed to accord him a larger charter of morality on the same grounds. "But if you can only deny nasty facts by accounting for them, I dare say Mr. Armitage's book will afford you ample opportunities for explanation. Or have Jews the brazenness to assert it is all invention?"
"No, no one would do that," said Percy Saville, who had just done it. "Certainly there is a good deal of truth in the sketch of the ostentatious, over-dressed Johnsons who, as everybody knows, are meant for the Jonases."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "And it is quite evident that the stockbroker who drops half his h's and all his poor acquaintances and believes in one Lord, is no other than Joel Friedman."
"And the house where people drive up in broughams for supper and solo whist after the theatre is the Davises' in Maida Vale," said Miss Cissy Levine.
"Yes, the book's true enough," began Mrs. Montagu Samuels. She stopped suddenly, catching her husband's eye, and the color heightened on her florid cheek. "What I say is," she concluded awkwardly, "he ought to have come among us, and shown the world a picture of the cultured Jews."
"Quite so, quite so," said the hostess. Then turning to the tall thoughtful-looking young man who had hitherto contributed but one sentence to the conversation, she said, half in sly malice, half to draw him out: "Now you, Mr. Leon, whose culture is certified by our leading university, what do you think of this latest portrait of the Jew?"
"I don't know, I haven't read it!" replied Raphael apologetically.
"No more have I," murmured the table generally.
"I wouldn't touch it with a pitchfork," said Miss Cissy Levine.
"I think it's a shame they circulate it at the libraries," said Mrs.Montagu Samuels. "I just glanced over it at Mrs. Hugh Marston's house.It's vile. There are actually jargon words in it. Such vulgarity!"
"Shameful!" murmured Percy Saville; "Mr. Lazarus was telling me about it. It's plain treachery and disloyalty, this putting of weapons into the hands of our enemies. Of course we have our faults, but we should be told of them privately or from the pulpit."
"That would be just as efficacious," said Sidney admiringly.
"More efficacious," said Percy Saville, unsuspiciously. "A preacher speaks with authority, but this penny-a-liner—"
"With truth?" queried Sidney.
Saville stopped, disgusted, and the hostess answered Sidney half-coaxingly.
"Oh, I am sure you can't think that. The book is so one-sided. Not a word about our generosity, our hospitality, our domesticity, the thousand-and-one good traits all the world allows us."
"Of course not; since all the world allows them, it was unnecessary," said Sidney.
"I wonder the Chief Rabbi doesn't stop it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.
"My dear, how can he?" inquired her husband. "He has no control over the publishing trade."
"He ought to talk to the man," persisted Mrs. Samuels.
"But we don't even know who he is," said Percy Saville, "probably Edward Armitage is only anom-de-plume. You'd be surprised to learn the real names of some of the literary celebrities I meet about."
"Oh, if he's a Jew you may be sure it isn't his real name," laughed Sidney. It was characteristic of him that he never spared a shot even when himself hurt by the kick of the gun. Percy colored slightly, unmollified by being in the same boat with the satirist.
"I have never seen the name in the subscription lists," said the hostess with ready tact.
"There is an Armitage who subscribes two guineas a year to the Board ofGuardians," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "But his Christian name isGeorge."
"'Christian' name is distinctly good for 'George,'" murmured Sidney.
"There was an Armitage who sent a cheque to the Russian Fund," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith, "but that can't be an author—it was quite a large cheque!"
"I am sure I have seen Armitage among the Births, Marriages and Deaths," said Miss Cissy Levine.
"How well-read they all are in the national literature," Sidney murmured to Addie.
Indeed the sectarian advertisements served to knit the race together, counteracting the unravelling induced by the fashionable dispersion of Israel and waxing the more important as the other links—the old traditional jokes, by-words, ceremonies, card-games, prejudices and tunes, which are more important than laws and more cementatory than ideals—were disappearing before the over-zealousness of aparvenurefinement that had not yet attained to self-confidence. The Anglo-Saxon stolidity of the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the universal tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of the Orient for the sobrieties of fashionable civilization. When Jeshurun waxed fat he did not always kick, but he yearned to approximate as much as possible to John Bull without merging in him; to sink himself and yet not be absorbed, not to be and yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote in human mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to John Bull generally assimilating Jeshurun away. For such is the nature of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own way and you make a new man of him; persecute him and he is himself again.
"But if nobody has read the man's book," Raphael Leon ventured to interrupt at last, "is it quite fair to assume his book isn't fit to read?"
The shy dark little girl he had taken down to dinner darted an appreciative glance at her neighbor. It was in accordance with Raphael's usual anxiety to give the devil his due, that he should be unwilling to condemn even the writer of an anti-Semitic novel unheard. But then it was an open secret in the family that Raphael was mad. They did their best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to earnest reasoned opinions.
"But we know enough of the book to know we are badly treated," protested the hostess.
"We have always been badly treated in literature," said Raphael. "We are made either angels or devils. On the one hand, Lessing and George Eliot, on the other, the stock dramatist and novelist with their low-comedy villain."
"Oh," said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. "Do you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish character?"
"They are the only writers who have ever understood it," affirmed MissCissy Levine, emphatically.
A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark little girl.
"Stop a moment," said Sidney. "I've been so busy doing justice to this delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine nobody here has readMordecai Josephs. I have, and I say there is more actuality in it than inDaniel DerondaandNathan der Weiseput together. It is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems handicapped by a dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over them—actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings after the indefinable—it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral."
"Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?" murmured Addie.
"It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek."
"It's not Greek," put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorantatelierswhere you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek."
"It's Greek to Addie, anyhow," laughed Sidney. "But that's what makes the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory."
"We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it so cleverly," said the hostess.
"We all felt it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.
"Yes, that's it," said Sidney, blandly. "I could have forgiven the rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically painted."
"Rose-color!" gasped Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, "rose-color, indeed!" Not even Sidney's authority could persuade the table into that.
Poor rich Jews! The upper middle-classes had every excuse for being angry. They knew they were excellent persons, well-educated and well-travelled, interested in charities (both Jewish and Christian), people's concerts, district-visiting, new novels, magazines, reading-circles, operas, symphonies, politics, volunteer regiments, Show-Sunday and Corporation banquets; that they had sons at Rugby and Oxford, and daughters who played and painted and sang, and homes that were bright oases of optimism in a jaded society; that they were good Liberals and Tories, supplementing their duties as Englishmen with a solicitude for the best interests of Judaism; that they left no stone unturned to emancipate themselves from the secular thraldom of prejudice; and they felt it very hard that a little vulgar section should always be chosen by their own novelists, and their efforts to raise the tone of Jewish society passed by.
Sidney, whose conversation always had the air of aloofness from the race, so that his own foibles often came under the lash of his sarcasm, proceeded to justify his assertion of the rose-color picture inMordecai Josephs. He denied that modern English Jews had any religion whatever; claiming that their faith consisted of forms that had to be kept up in public, but which they were too shrewd and cute to believe in or to practise in private, though every one might believe every one else did; that they looked upon due payment of their synagogue bills as discharging all their obligations to Heaven; that the preachers secretly despised the old formulas, and that the Rabbinate declared its intention of dying for Judaism only as a way of living by it; that the body politic was dead and rotten with hypocrisy, though the augurs said it was alive and well. He admitted that the same was true of Christianity. Raphael reminded him that a number of Jews had drifted quite openly from the traditional teaching, that thousands of well-ordered households found inspiration and spiritual satisfaction in every form of it, and that hypocrisy was too crude a word for the complex motives of those who obeyed it without inner conviction.
"For instance," said he, "a gentleman said to me the other day—I was much touched by the expression—'I believe with my father's heart.'"
"It is a good epigram," said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes? The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock. You catch your ministers young, when they are saturated with suppressed scepticism, and bribe them with small salaries that seem affluence to the sons of poor immigrants. That the ministry is not an honorable profession may be seen from the anxiety of the minister to raise his children in the social scale by bringing them up to some other line of business."
"That is true," said Raphael, gravely. "Our wealthy families must be induced to devote a son each to the Synagogue."
"I wish they would," said Sidney. "At present, every second man is a lawyer. We ought to have more officers and doctors, too. I like those old Jews who smote the Philistines hip and thigh; it is not good for a race to run all to brain: I suppose, though, we had to develop cunning to survive at all. There was an enlightened minister whose Friday evenings I used to go to when a youth—delightful talk we had there, too; you know whom I mean. Well, one of his sons is a solicitor, and the other a stockbroker. The rich men he preached to helped to place his sons. He was a charming man, but imagine him preaching to them the truths inMordecai Josephs, as Mr. Saville suggested."
"Ourminister lets us have it hot enough, though," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith with a guffaw.
His wife hastened to obliterate the unrefined expression.
"Mr. Strelitski is a wonderfully eloquent young man, so quiet and reserved in society, but like an ancient prophet in the pulpit."
"Yes, we were very lucky to get him," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith.
The little dark girl shuddered.
"What is the matter?" asked Raphael softly.
"I don't know. I don't like the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. He is eloquent, but his dogmatism irritates me. I don't believe he is sincere. He doesn't like me, either."
"Oh, you're both wrong," he said in concern.
"Strelitski is a draw, I admit," said Mr. Montagu Samuels, who was the President of a rival synagogue. "But Rosenbaum is a good pull-down on the other side, eh?"
Mr. Henry Goldsmith groaned. The second minister of the Kensington synagogue was the scandal of the community. He wasn't expected to preach, and he didn't practise.
"I've heard of that man," said Sidney laughing. "He's a bit of a gambler and a spendthrift, isn't he? Why do you keep him on?"
"He has a fine voice, you see," said Mr. Goldsmith. "That makes a Rosenbaum faction at once. Then he has a wife and family. That makes another."
"Strelitski isn't married, is he?" asked Sidney.
"No," said Mr. Goldsmith, "not yet. The congregation expects him to, though. I don't care to give him the hint myself; he is a little queer sometimes."
"He owes it to his position," said Miss Cissy Levine.
"That is what we think," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, with the majestic manner that suited her opulent beauty.
"I wish we had him in our synagogue," said Raphael. "Michaels is a well-meaning worthy man, but he is dreadfully dull."
"Poor Raphael!" said Sidney. "Why did you abolish the old style of minister who had to slaughter the sheep? Now the minister reserves all his powers of destruction for his own flock.'"
"I have given him endless hints to preach only once a month," said Mr. Montagu Samuels dolefully. "But every Saturday our hearts sink as we see him walk to the pulpit."
"You see, Addie, how a sense of duty makes a man criminal," said Sidney. "Isn't Michaels the minister who defends orthodoxy in a way that makes the orthodox rage over his unconscious heresies, while the heterodox enjoy themselves by looking out for his historical and grammatical blunders!"
"Poor man, he works hard," said Raphael, gently. "Let him be."
Over the dessert the conversation turned by way of the Rev. Strelitski's marriage, to the growing willingness of the younger generation to marry out of Judaism. The table discerned in inter-marriage the beginning of the end.
"But why postpone the inevitable?" asked Sidney calmly. "What is this mania for keeping up an effeteism? Are we to cripple our lives for the sake of a word? It's all romantic fudge, the idea of perpetual isolation. You get into little cliques and mistaken narrow-mindedness for fidelity to an ideal. I can live for months and forget there are such beings as Jews in the world. I have floated down the Nile in adahabiyawhile you were beating your breasts in the Synagogue, and the palm-trees and pelicans knew nothing of your sacrosanct chronological crisis, your annual epidemic of remorse."
The table thrilled with horror, without, however, quite believing in the speaker's wickedness. Addie looked troubled.
"A man and wife of different religions can never know true happiness," said the hostess.
"Granted," retorted Sidney. "But why shouldn't Jews without Judaism marry Christians without Christianity? Must a Jew needs have a Jewess to help him break the Law?"
"Inter-marriage must not be tolerated," said Raphael. "It would hurt us less if we had a country. Lacking that, we must preserve our human boundaries."
"You have good phrases sometimes," admitted Sidney. "But why must we preserve any boundaries? Why must we exist at all as a separate people?"
"To fulfil the mission of Israel," said Mr. Montagu Samuels solemnly.
"Ah, what is that? That is one of the things nobody ever seems able to tell me."
"We are God's witnesses," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, snipping off for herself a little bunch of hot-house grapes.
"False witnesses, mostly then," said Sidney. "A Christian friend of mine, an artist, fell in love with a girl and courted her regularly at her house for four years. Then he proposed; she told him to ask her father, and he then learned for the first time that the family were Jewish, and his suit could not therefore be entertained. Could a satirist have invented anything funnier? Whatever it was Jews have to bear witness to, these people had been bearing witness to so effectually that a daily visitor never heard a word of the evidence during four years. And this family is not an exception; it is a type. Abroad the English Jew keeps his Judaism in the background, at home in the back kitchen. When he travels, his Judaism is not packed up among hisimpedimenta. He never obtrudes his creed, and even his Jewish newspaper is sent to him in a wrapper labelled something else. How's that for witnesses? Mind you, I'm not blaming the men, being one of 'em. They may be the best fellows going, honorable, high-minded, generous—why expect them to be martyrs more than other Englishmen? Isn't life hard enough without inventing a new hardship? I declare there's no narrower creature in the world than your idealist; he sets up a moral standard which suits his own line of business, and rails at men of the world for not conforming to it. God's witnesses, indeed! I say nothing of those who are rather the Devil's witnesses, but think of the host of Jews like myself who, whether they marry Christians or not, simply drop out, and whose absence of all religion escapes notice in the medley of creeds. We no more give evidence than those old Spanish Jews—Marannos, they were called, weren't they?—who wore the Christian mask for generations. Practically, many of us are Marannos still; I don't mean the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that, but the Jews who have gone on believing. One Day of Atonement I amused myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops that were closed in the Strand. 'Our annual holiday,' Stock-taking day,' 'Our annual bean-feast.' 'Closed for repairs.'"
"Well, it's something if they keep the Fast at all," said Mr. HenryGoldsmith. "It shows spirituality is not dead in them."
"Spirituality!" sneered Sidney. "Sheer superstition, rather. A dread of thunderbolts. Besides, fasting is a sensuousattraction. But for the fasting, the Day of Atonement would have long since died out for these men. 'Our annual bean-feast'! There's witnesses for you."
"We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us," said Raphael Leon quietly. "Our mission is to spread the truth of the Torah till the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
"But we don't spread it."
"We do. Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one with the moral law."
"Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are teaching."
"By no means. Rather of one who stays on to protest against the false additions of his whilom pupils."
"But we don't protest."
"Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest," urged Raphael. "When the stress of persecution lightens, we may protest more consciously. We cannot have been preserved in vain through so many centuries of horrors, through the invasions of the Goths and Huns, through the Crusades, through the Holy Roman Empire, through the times of Torquemada. It is not for nothing that a handful of Jews loom so large in the history of the world that their past is bound up with every noble human effort, every high ideal, every development of science, literature and art. The ancient faith that has united us so long must not be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece and the Moors. If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us keep together still. Who knows but that it will be born again in us if we are only patient? Race affinity is a potent force; why be in a hurry to dissipate it? The Marannos you speak of were but maimed heroes, yet one day the olden flame burst through the layers of three generations of Christian profession and inter-marriage, and a brilliant company of illustrious Spaniards threw up their positions and sailed away in voluntary exile to serve the God of Israel. We shall yet see a spiritual revival even among our brilliant English Jews who have hid their face from their own flesh."
The dark little girl looked up into his face with ill-suppressed wonder.
"Have you done preaching at me, Raphael?" inquired Sidney. "If so, pass me a banana."
Raphael smiled sadly and obeyed.
"I'm afraid if I see much of Raphael I shall be converted to Judaism," said Sidney, peeling the banana. "I had better take a hansom to the Riviera at once. I intended to spend Christmas there; I never dreamed I should be talking theology in London."
"Oh, I think Christmas in London is best," said the hostess unguardedly.
"Oh, I don't know. Give me Brighton," said the host.
"Well, yes, I suppose Brightonispleasanter," said Mr. MontaguSamuels.
"Oh, but so many Jews go there," said Percy Saville.
"Yes, thatisthe drawback," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "Do you know, some years ago I discovered a delightful village in Devonshire, and took the household there in the summer. The very next year when I went down I found no less than two Jewish families temporarily located there. Of course, I have never gone there since."
"Yes, it's wonderful how Jews scent out all the nicest places," agreed Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "Five years ago you could escape them by not going to Ramsgate; now even the Highlands are getting impossible."
Thereupon the hostess rose and the ladies retired to the drawing-room, leaving the gentlemen to discuss coffee, cigars and the paradoxes of Sidney, who, tired of religion, looked to dumb show plays for the salvation of dramatic literature.
There was a little milk-jug on the coffee-tray, it represented a victory over Mary O'Reilly. The late Aaron Goldsmith never took milk till six hours after meat, and it was with some trepidation that the present Mr. Goldsmith ordered it to be sent up one evening after dinner. He took an early opportunity of explaining apologetically to Mary that some of his guests were not so pious as himself, and hospitality demanded the concession.
Mr. Henry Goldsmith did not like his coffee black. His dinner-table was hardly ever without a guest.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies, Raphael instinctively returned to his companion of the dinner-table. She had been singularly silent during the meal, but her manner had attracted him. Over his black coffee and cigarette it struck him that she might have been unwell, and that he had been insufficiently attentive to the little duties of the table, and he hastened to ask if she had a headache.
"No, no," she said, with a grateful smile. "At least not more than usual." Her smile was full of pensive sweetness, which made her face beautiful. It was a face that would have been almost plain but for the soul behind. It was dark, with great earnest eyes. The profile was disappointing, the curves were not perfect, and there was a reminder of Polish origin in the lower jaw and the cheek-bone. Seen from the front, the face fascinated again, in the Eastern glow of its coloring, in the flash of the white teeth, in the depths of the brooding eyes, in the strength of the features that yet softened to womanliest tenderness and charm when flooded by the sunshine of a smile. The figure waspetiteand graceful, set off by a simple tight-fitting, high-necked dress of ivory silk draped with lace, with a spray of Neapolitan violets at the throat. They sat in a niche of the spacious and artistically furnished drawing-room, in the soft light of the candles, talking quietly while Addie played Chopin.
Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's aesthetic instincts had had full play in the elaborate carelessness of theensemble, and the result was a triumph, a medley of Persian luxury and Parisian grace, a dream of somniferous couches and arm-chairs, rich tapestry, vases, fans, engravings, books, bronzes, tiles, plaques and flowers. Mr. Henry Goldsmith was himself a connoisseur in the arts, his own and his father's fortunes having been built up in the curio and antique business, though to old Aaron Goldsmith appreciation had meant strictly pricing, despite his genius for detecting false Correggios and sham Louis Quatorze cabinets.
"Do you suffer from headaches?" inquired Raphael solicitously.
"A little. The doctor says I studied too much and worked too hard when a little girl. Such is the punishment of perseverance. Life isn't like the copy-books."
"Oh, but I wonder your parents let you over-exert yourself."
A melancholy smile played about the mobile lips. "I brought myself up," she said. "You look puzzled—Oh, I know! Confess you think I'm Miss Goldsmith!"
"Why—are—you—not?" he stammered.
"No, my name is Ansell, Esther Ansell."
"Pardon me. I am so bad at remembering names in introductions. But I've just come back from Oxford and it's the first time I've been to this house, and seeing you here without a cavalier when we arrived, I thought you lived here."
"You thought rightly, I do live here." She laughed gently at his changing expression.
"I wonder Sidney never mentioned you to me," he said.
"Do you mean Mr. Graham?" she said with a slight blush.
"Yes, I know he visits here."
"Oh, he is an artist. He has eyes only for the beautiful." She spoke quickly, a little embarrassed.
"You wrong him; his interests are wider than that."
"Do you know I am so glad you didn't pay me the obvious compliment?" she said, recovering herself. "It looked as if I were fishing for it. I'm so stupid."
He looked at her blankly.
"I'mstupid," he said, "for I don't know what compliment I missed paying."
"If you regret it I shall not think so well of you," she said. "You knowI've heard all about your brilliant success at Oxford."
"They put all those petty little things in the Jewish papers, don't they?"
"I read it in theTimes," retorted Esther. "You took a double first and the prize for poetry and a heap of other things, but I noticed the prize for poetry, because it is so rare to find a Jew writing poetry."
"Prize poetry is not poetry," he reminded her. "But, considering the Jewish Bible contains the finest poetry in the world, I do not see why you should be surprised to find a Jew trying to write some."
"Oh, you know what I mean," answered Esther. "What is the use of talking about the old Jews? We seem to be a different race now. Who cares for poetry?"
"Our poet's scroll reaches on uninterruptedly through the Middle Ages. The passing phenomenon of to-day must not blind us to the real traits of our race," said Raphael.
"Nor must we be blind to the passing phenomenon of to-day," retortedEsther. "We have no ideals now."
"I see Sidney has been infecting you," he said gently.
"No, no; I beg you will not think that," she said, flushing almost resentfully. "I have thought these things, as the Scripture tells us to meditate on the Law, day and night, sleeping and waking, standing up and sitting down."
"You cannot have thought of them without prejudice, then," he answered, "if you say we have no ideals."
"I mean, we're not responsive to great poetry—to the message of aBrowning for instance."
"I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours, for hundreds of years every Saturday night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and Providence in 'Pisgah Sights.'"
All's lend and borrow,Good, see, wants evil,Joy demands sorrow,Angel weds devil.
"What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the Sabbath and welcoming in the days of toil, accepting the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?"
"Is that in the prayer-book?" said Esther astonished.
"Yes; you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities but can see nothing poetical in Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante but despise David."
"I shall certainly look up the liturgy," said Esther. "But that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the passage in Hebrew—I see my father makingHavdolah—the melody goes in my head like a sing-song. But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It sounds very shocking, I know."
"Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which gave the world the Bible knows it least—" He stopped suddenly, for Addie was playing pianissimo, and although she was his sister, he did not like to put her out.
"It comes to this," said Esther when Chopin spoke louder, "our prayer-book needs depolarization, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible."
"Exactly," assented Raphael. "And what our people need is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument:
"'I see the whole design.I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too.Perfect I call Thy plan,Thanks that I was a man!Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.'
"It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us nobody denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom—there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And we are proud and happy in that the dread Unknown God of the infinite Universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over."
The sonata came to an end; Percy Saville started a comic song, playing his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.
"And do you really believe that we are sanctified to God's service?" said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.
"Can there be any doubt of it? God made choice of one race to be messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily, the sacred duty is ours," he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by far the greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.
"But isn't that a narrow conception of God's revelation?" she asked.
"No. Why should God not teach through a great race as through a great man?"
"And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually speaking?"
"How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human nature and the constitution of things. Ah, I wish I could get you to see with the eyes of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel; to look on this human life of ours, not with the pessimism of Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heartily yet spent in God's service—birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of God's praise; the morning stars singing together, as we say in the Dawn Service."
As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthusiasm always infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid universe seemed to be transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, full of infinite potentialities of worthy work and noble pleasure. A thunder of applausive hands marked the end of Percy Saville's comic song. Mr. Montagu Samuels was beaming at his brother's grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general conversation, followed by a round game in which Raphael and Esther had to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find themselves together again.
"Ah, yes," said Esther, sadly, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break, "but this is a Judaism of your own creation. The real Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It does not call to the soul's depths like Christianity."
"Again, it is a question of the point of view taken. From a practical, our ceremonialism is a training in self-conquest, while it links the generations 'bound each to each by natural piety,' and unifies our atoms dispersed to the four corners of the earth as nothing else could. From a theoretical, it is but an extension of the principle I tried to show you. Eating, drinking, every act of life is holy, is sanctified by some relation to heaven. We will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of life from religion, and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the devil, any more than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is no devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a mediator. Every Jew is in as direct relation with God as the Chief Rabbi. Christianity is an historical failure—its counsels of perfection, its command to turn the other cheek—a farce. When a modern spiritual genius, a Tolstoi, repeats it, all Christendom laughs, as at a new freak of insanity. All practical, honorable men are Jews at heart. Judaism has never tampered with human dignity, nor perverted the moral consciousness. Our housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sifter Addie, 'I'm so glad to see you do so much charity, Miss;Ineed not, because I'm saved already.' Judaism is the true 'religion of humanity.' It does not seek to make men and women angels before their time. Our marriage service blesses the King of the Universe, who has created 'joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight, love, brotherhood, peace and fellowship.'"
"It is all very beautiful in theory," said Esther. "But so is Christianity, which is also not to be charged with its historical caricatures, nor with its superiority to average human nature. As for the doctrine of original sin, it is the one thing that the science of heredity has demonstrated, with a difference. But do not be alarmed, I do not call myself a Christian because I see some relation between the dogmas of Christianity and the truths of experience, nor even because"—here she smiled, wistfully—"I should like to believe in Jesus. But you are less logical. When you said there was no devil, I felt sure I was right; that you belong to the modern schools, who get rid of all the old beliefs but cannot give up the old names. You know, as well as I do, that, take away the belief in hell, a real old-fashioned hell of fire and brimstone, even such Judaism as survives would freeze to death without that genial warmth."
"I know nothing of the kind," he said, "and I am in no sense a modern. I am (to adopt a phrase which is, to me, tautologous) an orthodox Jew."
Esther smiled. "Forgive my smiling," she said. "I am thinking of the orthodox Jews I used to know, who used to bind their phylacteries on their arms and foreheads every morning."
"I bind my phylacteries on my arm and forehead every morning," he said, simply.
"What!" gasped Esther. "You an Oxford man!"
"Yes," he said, gravely. "Is it so astonishing to you?"
"Yes, it is. You are the first educated Jew I have ever met who believed in that sort of thing."
"Nonsense?" he said, inquiringly. "There are hundreds like me."
She shook her head.
"There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I supposehedoes, but then he's paid for it."
"Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski?" he said, pained. "He has a noble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe my best understanding of Judaism."
"Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much more convincing, from your lips," murmured Esther. "Now I know; because he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when he opens his mouth."
"But I wear a white tie, too," said Raphael, his smile broadening in sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.
"That's not a trade-mark," she protested. "But forgive me; I didn't know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more than the others to make Judaism more spiritual."
"More spiritual!" he repeated, the pained expression returning. "Why, the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualization of the material."
"And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialization of the spiritual," she answered.
He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.
"You have lived among your books," Esther went on. "I have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the misery."
"God works through human suffering; his ways are large," said Raphael, almost in a whisper.
"And wasteful," said Esther. "Spare me clerical platitudes à laStrelitski. I have seen so much."
"And suffered much?" he asked gently.
She nodded scarce perceptibly. "Oh, if you only knew my life!"
"Tell it me," he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to hers.
"I cannot, not now," she murmured. "There is so much to tell."
"Tell me a little," he urged.
She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, forgetting he was a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it merely the spiritual affinity of souls that feel their identity through all differences of brain?
"What is the use?" she said. "You, with your childhood, could never realize mine. My mother died when I was seven; my father was a Russian pauper alien who rarely got work. I had an elder brother of brilliant promise. He died before he was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and sisters and a grandmother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret."
Her eyes grew humid at the recollection; she saw the spacious drawing-room and the dainty bric-à-brac through a mist.
"Poor child!" murmured Raphael.
"Strelitski, by the way, lived in our street then. He sold cigars on commission and earned an honest living. Sometimes I used to think that is why he never cares to meet my eye; he remembers me and knows I remember him; at other times I thought he knew that I saw through his professions of orthodoxy. But as you champion him, I suppose I must look for a more creditable reason for his inability to look me straight in the face. Well, I grew up, I got on well at school, and about ten years ago I won a prize given by Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, whose kindly interest I excited thenceforward. At thirteen I became a teacher. This had always been my aspiration: when it was granted I was more unhappy than ever. I began to realize acutely that we were terribly poor. I found it difficult to dress so as to insure the respect of my pupils and colleagues; the work was unspeakably hard and unpleasant; tiresome and hungry little girls had to be ground to suit the inspectors, and fell victims to the then prevalent competition among teachers for a high percentage of passes. I had to teach Scripture history and I didn't believe in it. None of us believed in it; the talking serpent, the Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the whale, and all that. Everything about me was sordid and unlovely. I yearned for a fuller, wider life, for larger knowledge. I hungered for the sun. In short, I was intensely miserable. At home things went from bad to worse; often I was the sole bread-winner, and my few shillings a week were our only income. My brother Solomon grew up, but could not get into a decent situation because he must not work on the Sabbath. Oh, if you knew how young lives are cramped and shipwrecked at the start by this one curse of the Sabbath, you would not wish us to persevere in our isolation. It sent a mad thrill of indignation through me to find my father daily entreating the deaf heavens."
He would not argue now. His eyes were misty.
"Go on!" he murmured.
"The rest is nothing. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stepped in as thedea ex machina. She had no children, and she took it into her head to adopt me. Naturally I was dazzled, though anxious about my brothers and sisters. But my father looked upon it as a godsend. Without consulting me, Mrs. Goldsmith arranged that he and the other children should be shipped to America: she got him some work at a relative's in Chicago. I suppose she was afraid of having the family permanently hanging about the Terrace. At first I was grieved; but when the pain of parting was over I found myself relieved to be rid of them, especially of my father. It sounds shocking, I know, but I can confess all my vanities now, for I have learned all is vanity. I thought Paradise was opening before me; I was educated by the best masters, and graduated at the London University. I travelled and saw the Continent; had my fill of sunshine and beauty. I have had many happy moments, realized many childish ambitions, but happiness is as far away as ever. My old school-colleagues envy me, yet I do not know whether I would not go back without regret."
"Is there anything lacking in your life, then?" he asked gently.
"No, I happen to be a nasty, discontented little thing, that is all," she said, with a faint smile. "Look on me as a psychological paradox, or a text for the preacher."
"And do the Goldsmiths know of your discontent?"
"Heaven forbid! They have been so very kind to me. We get along very well together. I never discuss religion with them, only the services and the minister."
"And your relatives?"
"Ah, they are all well and happy. Solomon has a store in Detroit. He is only nineteen and dreadfully enterprising. Father is a pillar of a ChicagoChevra. He still talks Yiddish. He has escaped learning American just as he escaped learning English. I buy him a queer old Hebrew book sometimes with my pocket-money and he is happy. One little sister is a type-writer, and the other is just out of school and does the housework. I suppose I shall go out and see them all some day."
"What became of the grandmother you mentioned?"
"She had a Charity Funeral a year before the miracle happened. She was very weak and ill, and the Charity Doctor warned her that she must not fast on the Day of Atonement. But she wouldn't even moisten her parched lips with a drop of cold water. And so she died; exhorting my father with her last breath to beware of Mrs. Simons (a good-hearted widow who was very kind to us), and to marry a pious Polish woman."
"And did he?"
"No, I am still stepmotherless. Your white tie's gone wrong. It's all on one side."
"It generally is," said Raphael, fumbling perfunctorily at the little bow.
"Let me put it straight. There! And now you know all about me. I hope you are going to repay my confidences in kind."
"I am afraid I cannot oblige with anything so romantic," he said smiling. "I was born of rich but honest parents, of a family settled in England for three generations, and went to Harrow and Oxford in due course. That is all. I saw a little of the Ghetto, though, when I was a boy. I had some correspondence on Hebrew Literature with a great Jewish scholar, Gabriel Hamburg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I was up from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at the foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by Gideon, the member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by the enthusiasm; it was there I made the acquaintance of Strelitski. He spoke as if inspired. I also met a poverty-stricken poet, Melchitsedek Pinchas, who afterwards sent me his work,Metatoron's Flames, to Harrow. A real neglected genius. Now there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and poetry. After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with the Ghetto, and have been there several times lately."
"But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine?"
"I do. Why should we not have our own country?"
"It would be too chaotic! Fancy all the Ghettos of the world amalgamating. Everybody would want to be ambassador at Paris, as the old joke says."
"It would be a problem for the statesmen among us. Dissenters, Churchmen, Atheists, Slum Savages, Clodhoppers, Philosophers, Aristocrats—make up Protestant England. It is the popular ignorance of the fact that Jews are as diverse as Protestants that makes such novels as we were discussing at dinner harmful."
"But is the author to blame for that? He does not claim to present the whole truth but a facet. English society lionized Thackeray for his pictures of it. Good heavens! Do Jews suppose they alone are free from the snobbery, hypocrisy and vulgarity that have shadowed every society that has ever existed?"
"In no work of art can the spectator be left out of account," he urged. "In a world full of smouldering prejudices a scrap of paper may start the bonfire. English society can afford to laugh where Jewish society must weep. That is why our papers are always so effusively grateful for Christian compliments. You see it is quite true that the author paints not the Jews but bad Jews, but, in the absence of paintings of good Jews, bad Jews are taken as identical with Jews."
"Oh, then you agree with the others about the book?" she said in a disappointed tone.
"I haven't read it; I am speaking generally. Have you?"
"Yes."
"And what did you think of it? I don't remember your expressing an opinion at table."
She pondered an instant.
"I thought highly of it and agreed with every word of it." She paused. He looked expectantly into the dark intense face. He saw it was charged with further speech.
"Till I met you," she concluded abruptly.
A wave of emotion passed over his face.
"You don't mean that?" he murmured.
"Yes, I do. You have shown me new lights."
"I thought I was speaking platitudes," he said simply. "It would be nearer the truth to say you have givenmenew lights."
The little face flushed with pleasure; the dark skin shining, the eyes sparkling. Esther looked quite pretty.
"How is that possible?" she said. "You have read and thought twice as much as I."
"Then you must be indeed poorly off," he said, smiling. "But I am really glad we met. I have been asked to edit a new Jewish paper, and our talk has made me see more clearly the lines on which it must be run, if it is to do any good. I am awfully indebted to you."