"I wonder," gurgled Pinchas, deep in his coffee.
"But, father," asked Hannah, "don't you believe any Jew ever really believes in Christianity?"
"How is it possible?" answered Reb Shemuel. "A Jew who has the Law from Sinai, the Law that will never be changed, to whom God has given a sensible religion and common-sense, how can such a person believe in the farrago of nonsense that makes up the worship of the Christians! No Jew has ever apostatized except to fill his purse or his stomach or to avoid persecution. 'Getting grace' they call it in English; but with poor Jews it is always grace after meals. Look at the Crypto-Jews, the Marranos, who for centuries lived a double life, outwardly Christians, but handing down secretly from generation to generation the faith, the traditions, the observances of Judaism."
"Yes, no Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man," said the poet paradoxically. "Have you not, my sweet, innocent young lady, heard the story of the two Jews in Burgos Cathedral?"
"No, what is it?" said Levi, eagerly.
"Well, pass my cup up to your highly superior mother who is waiting to fill it with coffee. Your eminent father knows the story—I can see by the twinkle in his learned eye."
"Yes, that story has a beard," said the Reb.
"Two Spanish Jews," said the poet, addressing himself deferentially to Levi, "who had got grace were waiting to be baptized at Burgos Cathedral. There was a great throng of Catholics and a special Cardinal was coming to conduct the ceremony, for their conversion was a great triumph. But the Cardinal was late and the Jews fumed and fretted at the delay. The shadows of evening were falling on vault and transept. At last one turned to the other and said, 'Knowest them what, Moses? If the Holy Father does not arrive soon, we shall be too late to saymincha."
Levi laughed heartily; the reference to the Jewish afternoon prayer went home to him.
"That story sums up in a nutshell the whole history of the great movement for the conversion of the Jews. We dip ourselves in baptismal water and wipe ourselves with aTalith. We are not a race to be lured out of the fixed feelings of countless centuries by the empty spirituality of a religion in which, as I soon found out when I lived among the soul-dealers, its very professors no longer believe. We are too fond of solid things," said the poet, upon whom a good breakfast was beginning to produce a soothing materialistic effect. "Do you know that anecdote about the two Jews in the Transvaal?" Pinchas went on. "That's a realChine."
"I don't think I know thatMaaseh," said Reb Shemuel.
"Oh, the two Jews had made atrekand were travelling onwards exploring unknown country. One night they were sitting by their campfire playing cards when suddenly one threw up his cards, tore his hair and beat his breast in terrible agony. 'What's the matter?' cried the other. 'Woe, woe,' said the first. 'To-day was the Day of Atonement! and we have eaten and gone on as usual.' 'Oh, don't take on so,' said his friend. 'After all, Heaven will take into consideration that we lost count of the Jewish calendar and didn't mean to be so wicked. And we can make up for it by fasting to-morrow.'
"'Oh, no! Not for me,' said the first. 'To-day was the Day ofAtonement.'"
All laughed, the Reb appreciating most keenly the sly dig at his race. He had a kindly sense of human frailty. Jews are very fond of telling stories against themselves—for their sense of humor is too strong not to be aware of their own foibles—but they tell them with closed doors, and resent them from the outside. They chastise themselves because they love themselves, as members of the same family insult one another. The secret is, that insiders understand the limitations of the criticism, which outsiders are apt to take in bulk. No race in the world possesses a richer anecdotal lore than the Jews—such pawky, even blasphemous humor, not understandable of the heathen, and to a suspicious mind Pinchas's overflowing cornucopia of such would have suggested a prior period of Continental wandering from town to town, like theMinnesingersof the middle ages, repaying the hospitality of his Jewish entertainers with a budget of good stories and gossip from the scenes of his pilgrimages.
"Do you know the story?" he went on, encouraged by Simcha's smiling face, "of the old Reb and theHavdolah? His wife left town for a few days and when she returned the Reb took out a bottle of wine, poured some into the consecration cup and began to recite the blessing. 'What art thou doing?' demanded his wife in amaze.' I am makingHavdolah,' replied the Reb. 'But it is not the conclusion of a festival to-night,' she said. 'Oh, yes, it is,' he answered. 'My Festival's over. You've come back.'"
The Reb laughed so much over this story that Simcha's brow grew as the solid Egyptian darkness, and Pinchas perceived he had made a mistake.
"But listen to the end," he said with a creditable impromptu. "The wife said—'No, you're mistaken. Your Festival's only beginning. You get no supper. It's the commencement of the Day of Atonement.'"
Simcha's brow cleared and the Reb laughed heartily.
"But I don't seethe point, father," said Levi.
"Point! Listen, my son. First of all he was to have a Day of Atonement, beginning with no supper, for his sin of rudeness to his faithful wife. Secondly, dost thou not know that with us the Day of Atonement is called a festival, because we rejoice at the Creator's goodness in giving us the privilege of fasting? That's it, Pinchas, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's the point of the story, and I think the Rebbitzin had the best of it, eh?"
"Rebbitzins always have the last word," said the Reb. "But did I tell you the story of the woman who asked me a question the other day? She brought me a fowl in the morning and said that in cutting open the gizzard she had found a rusty pin which the fowl must have swallowed. She wanted to know whether the fowl might be eaten. It was a very difficult point, for how could you tell whether the pin had in any way contributed to the fowl's death? I searched theShassand a heap ofShaalotku-Tshuvos. I went and consulted theMaggidand Sugarman theShadchanand Mr. Karlkammer, and at last we decided that the fowl wastriphaand could not be eaten. So the same evening I sent for the woman, and when I told her of our decision she burst into tears and wrung her hands. 'Do not grieve so,' I said, taking compassion upon her, 'I will buy thee another fowl.' But she wept on, uncomforted. 'O woe! woe!' she cried. 'We ate it all up yesterday.'"
Pinchas was convulsed with laughter. Recovering himself, he lit his half-smoked cigar without asking leave.
"I thought it would turn out differently," he said. "Like that story of the peacock. A man had one presented to him, and as this is such rare diet he went to the Reb to ask if it waskosher. The Rabbi said 'no' and confiscated the peacock. Later on the man heard that the Rabbi had given a banquet at which his peacock was the crowning dish. He went to his Rabbi and reproached him. 'Imay eat it,' replied the Rabbi, 'because my father considers it permitted and we may always go by what some eminent Son of the Law decides. But you unfortunately came tomefor an opinion, and the permissibility of peacock is a point on which I have always disagreed with my father.'"
Hannah seemed to find peculiar enjoyment in the story.
"Anyhow," concluded Pinchas, "you have a more pious flock than the Rabbi of my native place, who, one day, announced to his congregation that he was going to resign. Startled, they sent to him a delegate, who asked, in the name of the congregation, why he was leaving them. 'Because,' answered the Rabbi, 'this is the first question any one has ever asked me!'"
"Tell Mr. Pinchas your repartee about the donkey," said Hannah, smiling.
"Oh, no, it's not worth while," said the Reb.
"Thou art always so backward with thine own," cried the Rebbitzin warmly. "Last Purim an impudent of face sent my husband a donkey made of sugar. My husband had a Rabbi baked in gingerbread and sent it in exchange to the donor, with the inscription 'A Rabbi sends a Rabbi.'"
Reb Shemuel laughed heartily, hearing this afresh at the lips of his wife. But Pinchas was bent double like a convulsive note of interrogation.
The clock on the mantelshelf began to strike nine. Levi jumped to his feet.
"I shall be late for school!" he cried, making for the door.
"Stop! stop!" shouted his father. "Thou hast not yet said grace."
"Oh, yes, I have, father. While you were all telling stories I wasbenshingquietly to myself."
"Is Saul also among the prophets, is Levi also among the story-tellers?" murmured Pinchas to himself. Aloud he said: "The child speaks truth; I saw his lips moving."
Levi gave the poet a grateful look, snatched up his satchel and ran off to No. 1 Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, inwardly upbraiding Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as yet had his breakfast for his book. Perhaps it was Simcha's presence that was to blame. She was the Reb's right hand and he did not care to let her know what his left was doing.
He retired to his study when Pinchas departed, and the Rebbitzin clattered about with a besom.
The study was a large square room lined with book-shelves and hung with portraits of the great continental Rabbis. The books were bibliographical monsters to which the Family Bibles of the Christian are mere pocket-books. They were all printed purely with the consonants, the vowels being divined grammatically or known by heart. In each there was an island of text in a sea of commentary, itself lost in an ocean of super-commentary that was bordered by a continent of super-super-commentary. Reb Shemuel knew many of these immense folios—with all their tortuous windings of argument and anecdote—much as the child knows the village it was born in, the crooked by-ways and the field paths. Such and such a Rabbi gave such and such an opinion on such and such a line from the bottom of such and such a page—his memory of it was a visual picture. And just as the child does not connect its native village with the broader world without, does not trace its streets and turnings till they lead to the great towns, does not inquire as to its origins and its history, does not view it in relation to other villages, to the country, to the continent, to the world, but loves it for itself and in itself, so Reb Shemuel regarded and reverenced and loved these gigantic pages with their serried battalions of varied type. They were facts—absolute as the globe itself—regions of wisdom, perfect and self-sufficing. A little obscure here and there, perhaps, and in need of amplification or explication for inferior intellects—a half-finished manuscript commentary on one of the super-commentaries, to be called "The Garden of Lilies," was lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk—but yet the only true encyclopaedia of things terrestrial and divine. And, indeed, they were wonderful books. It was as difficult to say what was not in them as what was. Through them the old Rabbi held communion with his God whom he loved with all his heart and soul and thought of as a genial Father, watching tenderly over His froward children and chastising them because He loved them. Generations of saints and scholars linked Reb Shemuel with the marvels of Sinai. The infinite network of ceremonial never hampered his soul; it was his joyous privilege to obey his Father in all things and like the king who offered to reward the man who invented a new pleasure, he was ready to embrace the sage who could deduce a new commandment. He rose at four every morning to study, and snatched every odd moment he could during the day. Rabbi Meir, that ancient ethical teacher, wrote: "Whosoever labors in the Torah for its own sake, the whole world is indebted to him; he is called friend, beloved, a lover of the All-present, a lover of mankind; it clothes him in meekness and reverence; it fits him to become just, pious, upright and faithful; he becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of insult."
Reb Shemuel would have been scandalized if any one had applied these words to him.
At about eleven o'clock Hannah came into the room, an open letter in her hand.
"Father," she said, "I have just had a letter from Samuel Levine."
"Your husband?" he said, looking up with a smile.
"My husband," she replied, with a fainter smile.
"And what does he say?"
"It isn't a very serious letter; he only wants to reassure me that he is coming back by Sunday week to be divorced."
"All right; tell him it shall be done at cost price," he said, with the foreign accent that made him somehow seem more lovable to his daughter when he spoke English. "He shall only be charged for the scribe."
"He'll take that for granted," Hannah replied. "Fathers are expected to do these little things for their own children. But how much nicer it would be if you could give me theGettyourself."
"I would marry you with pleasure," said Reb Shemuel, "but divorce is another matter. TheDinhas too much regard for a father's feelings to allow that."
"And you really think I am Sam Levine's wife?"
"How many times shall I tell you? Some authorities do take theintentioninto account, but the letter of the law is clearly against you. It is far safer to be formally divorced."
"Then if he were to die—"
"Save us and grant us peace," interrupted the Reb in horror.
"I should be his widow."
"Yes, I suppose you would. But whatNarrischkeit! Why should he die? It isn't as if you were really married to him," said the Reb, his eye twinkling.
"But isn't it all absurd, father?"
"Do not talk so," said Reb Shemuel, resuming his gravity. "Is it absurd that you should be scorched if you play with fire?"
Hannah did not reply to the question.
"You never told me how you got on at Manchester," she said. "Did you settle the dispute satisfactorily?"
"Oh, yes," said the Reb; "but it was very difficult. Both parties were so envenomed, and it seems that the feud has been going on in the congregation ever since the Day of Atonement, when the minister refused to blow theShofarthree minutes too early, as the President requested. The Treasurer sided with the minister, and there has almost been a split."
"The sounding of the New Year trumpet seems often to be the signal for war," said Hannah, sarcastically.
"It is so," said the Reb, sadly.
"And how did you repair the breach?"
"Just by laughing at both sides. They would have turned a deaf ear to reasoning. I told them that Midrash about Jacob's journey to Laban."
"What is that?"
"Oh, it's an amplification of the Biblical narrative. The verse in Genesis says that he lighted on the place, and he put up there for the night because the sun had set, and he took of the stones of the place and he made them into pillows. But later on it says that he rose up in the morning and he tookthestone which he had put as his pillows. Now what is the explanation?" Reb Shemuel's tone became momently more sing-song: "In the night the stones quarrelled for the honor of supporting the Patriarch's head, and so by a miracle they were turned into one stone to satisfy them all. 'Now you remember that when Jacob arose in the morning he said: 'How fearful is this place; this is none other than the House of God.' So I said to the wranglers: 'Why did Jacob say that? He said it because his rest had been so disturbed by the quarrelling stones that it reminded him of the House of God—the Synagogue.' I pointed out how much better it would be if they ceased their quarrellings and became one stone. And so I made peace again in theKehillah."
"Till next year," said Hannah, laughing. "But, father, I have often wondered why they allow the ram's horn in the service. I thought all musical instruments were forbidden."
"It is not a musical instrument—in practice," said the Reb, with evasive facetiousness. And, indeed, the performers were nearly always incompetent, marring the solemnity of great moments by asthmatic wheezings and thin far-away tootlings.
"But it would be if we had trained trumpeters," persisted Hannah, smiling.
"If you really want the explanation, it is that since the fall of the second Temple we have dropped out of our worship all musical instruments connected with the old Temple worship, especially such as have become associated with Christianity. But the ram's horn on the New Year is an institution older than the Temple, and specially enjoined in the Bible."
"But surely there is something spiritualizing about an organ."
For reply the Reb pinched her ear. "Ah, you are a sadEpikouros" he said, half seriously. "If you loved God you would not want an organ to take your thoughts to heaven."
He released her ear and took up his pen, humming with unction a synagogue air full of joyous flourishes.
Hannah turned to go, then turned back.
"Father," she said nervously, blushing a little, "who was that you said you had in your eye?"
"Oh, nobody in particular," said the Reb, equally embarrassed and avoiding meeting her eye, as if to conceal the person in his.
"But you must have meant something by it," she said gravely. "You knowI'm not going to be married off to please other people."
The Reb wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. "It was only a thought—an idea. If it does not come to you, too, it shall be nothing. I didn't mean anything serious—really, my dear, I didn't. To tell you the truth," he finished suddenly with a frank, heavenly smile, "the person I had mainly in my eye when I spoke was your mother."
This time his eye met hers, and they smiled at each other with the consciousness of the humors of the situation. The Rebbitzin's broom was heard banging viciously in the passage. Hannah bent down and kissed the ample forehead beneath the black skull-cap.
"Mr. Levine also writes insisting that I must go to the Purim ball with him and Leah," she said, glancing at the letter.
"A husband's wishes must be obeyed," answered the Reb.
"No, I will treat him as if he were really my husband," retorted Hannah."I will have my own way: I shan't go."
The door was thrown open suddenly.
"Oh yes thou wilt," said the Rebbitzin. "Thou art not going to bury thyself alive."
Esther Ansell did not welcome Levi Jacobs warmly. She had just cleared away the breakfast things and was looking forward to a glorious day's reading, and the advent of a visitor did not gratify her. And yet Levi Jacobs was a good-looking boy with brown hair and eyes, a dark glowing complexion and ruddy lips—a sort of reduced masculine edition of Hannah.
"I've come to play I-spy-I, Solomon," he said when he entered "My, don't you live high up!"
"I thought you had to go to school," Solomon observed with a stare.
"Ours isn't a board school," Levi explained. "You might introduce a fellow to your sister."
"Garn! You know Esther right enough," said Solomon and began to whistle carelessly.
"How are you, Esther?" said Levi awkwardly.
"I'm very well, thank you," said Esther, looking up from a little brown-covered book and looking down at it again.
She was crouching on the fender trying to get some warmth at the little fire extracted from Reb Shemuel's half-crown. December continued gray; the room was dim and a spurt of flame played on her pale earnest face. It was a face that never lost a certain ardency of color even at its palest: the hair was dark and abundant, the eyes were large and thoughtful, the nose slightly aquiline and the whole cast of the features betrayed the Polish origin. The forehead was rather low. Esther had nice teeth which accident had preserved white. It was an arrestive rather than a beautiful face, though charming enough when she smiled. If the grace and candor of childhood could have been disengaged from the face, it would have been easier to say whether it was absolutely pretty. It came nearer being so on Sabbaths and holidays when scholastic supervision was removed and the hair was free to fall loosely about the shoulders instead of being screwed up into the pendulous plait so dear to the educational eye. Esther could have earned a penny quite easily by sacrificing her tresses and going about with close-cropped head like a boy, for her teacher never failed thus to reward the shorn, but in the darkest hours of hunger she held on to her hair as her mother had done before her. The prospects of Esther's post-nuptial wig were not brilliant. She was not tall for a girl who is getting on for twelve; but some little girls shoot up suddenly and there was considerable room for hope.
Sarah and Isaac were romping noisily about and under the beds; Rachel was at the table, knitting a scarf for Solomon; the grandmother pored over a bulky enchiridion for pious women, written in jargon. Moses was out in search of work. No one took any notice of the visitor.
"What's that you're reading?" he asked Esther politely.
"Oh nothing," said Esther with a start, closing the book as if fearful he might want to look over her shoulder.
"I don't see the fun of reading books out of school," said Levi.
"Oh, but we don't read school books," said Solomon defensively.
"I don't care. It's stupid."
"At that rate you could never read books when you're grown up," saidEsther contemptuously.
"No, of course not," admitted Levi. "Otherwise where would be the fun of being grown up? After I leave school I don't intend to open a book."
"No? Perhaps you'll open a shop," said Solomon.
"What will you do when it rains?" asked Esther crushingly.
"I shall smoke," replied Levi loftily.
"Yes, but suppose it'sShabbos," swiftly rejoined Esther.
Levi was nonplussed. "Well, it can't rain all day and there are only fifty-twoShabbosimin the year," he said lamely. "A man can always do something."
"I think there's more pleasure in reading than in doing something," remarked Esther.
"Yes, you're a girl," Levi reminded her, "and girls are expected to stay indoors. Look at my sister Hannah. She reads, too. But a man can be out doing what he pleases, eh, Solomon?"
"Yes, of course we've got the best of it," said Solomon. "ThePrayer-book shows that. Don't I say every morning 'Blessed art Thou, OLord our God, who hast not made me a woman'?"
"I don't know whether you do say it. You certainly have got to," saidEsther witheringly.
"'Sh," said Solomon, winking in the direction of the grandmother.
"It doesn't matter," said Esther calmly. "She can't understand what I'm saying."
"I don't know," said Solomon dubiously. "She sometimes catches more than you bargain for."
"And then,youcatch more than you bargain for," said Rachel, looking up roguishly from her knitting.
Solomon stuck his tongue in his cheek and grimaced.
Isaac came behind Levi and gave his coat a pull and toddled off with a yell of delight.
"Be quiet, Ikey!" cried Esther. "If you don't behave better I shan't sleep in your new bed."
"Oh yeth, you mutht, Ethty," lisped Ikey, his elfish face growing grave.He went about depressed for some seconds.
"Kids are a beastly nuisance," said Levi, "don't you think so, Esther?"
"Oh no, not always," said the little girl. "Besides we were all kids once."
"That's what I complain of," said Levi. "We ought to be all born grown-up."
"But that's impossible!" put in Rachel.
"It isn't impossible at all," said Esther. "Look at Adam and Eve!"
Levi looked at Esther gratefully instead. He felt nearer to her and thought of persuading her into playing Kiss-in-the-Ring. But he found it difficult to back out of his undertaking to play I-spy-I with Solomon; and in the end he had to leave Esther to her book.
She had little in common with her brother Solomon, least of all humor and animal spirits. Even before the responsibilities of headship had come upon her she was a preternaturally thoughtful little girl who had strange intuitions about things and was doomed to work out her own salvation as a metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the isolated head. When her mother was being tied up in grave-clothes, Esther hovered about with a real thirst for knowledge while the thoughts of all the other children were sensuously concentrated on the funeral and the glory of seeing a vehicle drive away from their own door. Esther was also disappointed at not seeing her mother's soul fly up to heaven though she watched vigilantly at the death-bed for the ascent of the long yellow hook-shaped thing. The genesis of this conception of the soul was probably to be sought in the pictorial representations of ghosts in the story-papers brought home by her eldest brother Benjamin. Strange shadowy conceptions of things more corporeal floated up from her solitary reading. Theatres she came across often, and a theatre was a kind of Babel plain or Vanity Fair in which performers and spectators were promiscuously mingled and wherein the richer folk clad in evening dress sat in thin deal boxes—the cases in Spitalfields market being Esther's main association with boxes. One of her day-dreams of the future was going to the theatre in a night-gown and being accommodated with an orange-box. Little rectification of such distorted views of life was to be expected from Moses Ansell, who went down to his grave without seeing even a circus, and had no interest in art apart from the "Police News" and his "Mizrach" and the synagogue decorations. Even when Esther's sceptical instinct drove her to inquire of her father how people knew that Moses got the Law on Mount Sinai, he could only repeat in horror that the Books of Moses said so, and could never be brought to see that his arguments travelled on roundabouts. She sometimes regretted that her brilliant brother Benjamin had been swallowed up by the orphan asylum, for she imagined she could have discussed many a knotty point with him. Solomon was both flippant and incompetent. But in spite of her theoretical latitudinarianism, in practice she was pious to the point of fanaticism and could scarce conceive the depths of degradation of which she heard vague horror-struck talk. There were Jews about—grown-up men and women, not insane—who struck lucifer matches on the Sabbath and housewives who carelessly mixed their butter-plates with their meat-plates even when they did not actually eat butter with meat. Esther promised herself that, please God, she would never do anything so wicked when she grew up. She at least would never fail to light the Sabbath candles nor tokasherthe meat. Never was child more alive to the beauty of duty, more open to the appeal of virtue, self-control, abnegation. She fasted till two o'clock on the Great White Fast when she was seven years old and accomplished the perfect feat at nine. When she read a simple little story in a prize-book, inculcating the homely moralities at which the cynic sneers, her eyes filled with tears and her breast with unselfish and dutiful determinations. She had something of the temperament of the stoic, fortified by that spiritual pride which does not look for equal goodness in others; and though she disapproved of Solomon's dodgings of duty, she did not sneak or preach, even gave him surreptitious crusts of bread before he had said his prayers, especially on Saturdays and Festivals when the praying took place inShooland was liable to be prolonged till mid-day.
Esther often went to synagogue and sat in the ladies' compartment. The drone of the "Sons of the Covenant" downstairs was part of her consciousness of home, like the musty smell of the stairs, or Becky's young men through whom she had to plough her way when she went for the morning milk, or the odors of Mr. Belcovitch's rum or the whirr of his machines, or the bent, snuffy personality of the Hebrew scholar in the adjoining garret, or the dread of Dutch Debby's dog that was ultimately transformed to friendly expectation. Esther led a double life, just as she spoke two tongues. The knowledge that she was a Jewish child, whose people had had a special history, was always at the back of her consciousness; sometimes it was brought to the front by the scoffing rhymes of Christian children, who informed her that they had stuck a piece of pork upon a fork and given it to a member of her race.
But far more vividly did she realize that she was an English girl; far keener than her pride in Judas Maccabaeus was her pride in Nelson and Wellington; she rejoiced to find that her ancestors had always beaten the French from the days of Cressy and Poictiers to the days of Waterloo, that Alfred the Great was the wisest of kings, and that Englishmen dominated the world and had planted colonies in every corner of it, that the English language was the noblest in the world and men speaking it had invented railway trains, steamships, telegraphs, and everything worth inventing. Esther absorbed these ideas from the school reading books. The experience of a month will overlay the hereditary bequest of a century. And yet, beneath all, the prepared plate remains most sensitive to the old impressions.
Sarah and Isaac had developed as distinct individualities as was possible in the time at their disposal. Isaac was just five and Sarah—who had never known her mother—just four. The thoughts of both ran strongly in the direction of sensuous enjoyment, and they preferred baked potatoes, especially potatoes touched with gravy, to all the joys of the kindergarten. Isaac's ambition ran in the direction of eider-down beds such as he had once felt at Malka's and Moses soothed him by the horizon-like prospect of such a new bed. Places of honor had already been conceded by the generous little chap to his father and brother. Heaven alone knows how he had come to conceive their common bed as his own peculiar property in which the other three resided at night on sufferance. He could not even plead it was his by right of birth in it. But Isaac was not after all wholly given over to worldly thoughts, for an intellectual problem often occupied his thoughts and led him to slap little Sarah's arms. He had been born on the 4th of December while Sarah had been born a year later on the 3d.
"It ain't, it can't be," he would say. "Your birfday can't be afore mine."
"'Tis, Esty thays so," Sarah would reply.
"Esty's a liar," Isaac responded imperturbably.
"AskTatah."
"Tatahdunno. Ain't I five?"
"Yeth."
"And ain't you four?"
"Yeth."
"And ain't I older than you?"
"Courth."
"And wasn't I born afore you?"
"Yeth, Ikey."
"Then 'ow can your birfday come afore mine?"
"'Cos it doth."
"Stoopid!"
"It doth, arx Esty," Sarah would insist.
"Than't teep in my new bed," Ikey would threaten.
"Thall if I like."
"Than't!"
Here Sarah would generally break down in tears and Isaac with premature economic instinct, feeling it wicked to waste a cry, would proceed to justify it by hitting her. Thereupon little Sarah would hit him back and develop a terrible howl.
"Hi, woe is unto me," she would wail in jargon, throwing herself on the ground in a corner and rocking herself to and fro like her far-away ancestresses remembering Zion by the waters of Babylon.
Little Sarah's lamentations never ceased till she had been avenged by a higher hand. There were several great powers but Esther was the most trusty instrument of reprisal. If Esther was out little Sarah's sobs ceased speedily, for she, too, felt the folly of fruitless tears. Though she nursed in her breast the sense of injury, she would even resume her amicable romps with Isaac. But the moment the step of the avenger was heard on the stairs, little Sarah would betake herself to the corner and howl with the pain of Isaac's pummellings. She had a strong love of abstract justice and felt that if the wrongdoer were to go unpunished, there was no security for the constitution of things.
To-day's holiday did not pass without an outbreak of this sort. It occurred about tea-time. Perhaps the infants were fractious because there was no tea. Esther had to economize her resources and a repast at seven would serve for both tea and supper. Among the poor, combination meals are as common as combination beds and chests. Esther had quieted Sarah by slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the gain was dubious. She had to put a fresh piece of coal on the fire and sing to them while their shadows contorted themselves grotesquely on the beds and then upwards along the sloping walls, terminating with twisted necks on the ceiling.
Esther usually sang melancholy things in minor keys. They seemed most attuned to the dim straggling room. There was a song her mother used to sing. It was taken from aPurim-Spiel, itself based upon a Midrash, one of the endless legends with which the People of One Book have broidered it, amplifying every minute detail with all the exuberance of oriental imagination and justifying their fancies with all the ingenuity of a race of lawyers. After his brethren sold Joseph to the Midianite merchants, the lad escaped from the caravan and wandered foot-sore and hungry to Bethlehem, to the grave of his mother, Rachel. And he threw himself upon the ground and wept aloud and sang to a heart-breaking melody in Yiddish.
Und hei weh ist mir,Wie schlecht ist doch mir,Ich bin vertrieben geworenJunger held voon dir.
Whereof the English runs:
Alas! woe is me!How wretched to beDriven away and banished,Yet so young, from thee.
Thereupon the voice of his beloved mother Rachel was heard from the grave, comforting him and bidding him be of good cheer, for that his future should be great and glorious.
Esther could not sing this without the tears trickling down her cheeks. Was it that she thought of her own dead mother and applied the lines to herself? Isaac's ill-humor scarcely ever survived the anodyne of these mournful cadences. There was another melodious wail which Alte Belcovitch had brought from Poland. The chorus ran:
Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohsHi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!
They tear away their lovers from the maidens,Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!
The air mingled the melancholy of Polish music with the sadness ofJewish and the words hinted of God knew what.
"Old unhappy far-off thingsAnd battles long ago."
And so over all the songs and stories was the trail of tragedy, under all the heart-ache of a hunted race. There are few more plaintive chants in the world than the recitation of the Psalms by the "Sons of the Covenant" on Sabbath afternoons amid the gathering shadows of twilight. Esther often stood in the passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears of pensive pleasure in her eyes. Even the little jargon story-book which Moses Ansell read out that night to hisKinder, after tea-supper, by the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. "These stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah and the Midrash, wonderful stories, and we have translated the beautiful stories, using the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, little or big, shall be able to read them, and shall know that there is a God in the world who forsaketh not His people Israel and who even for us will likewise work miracles and wonders and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily in our days, Amen." Of this same Messiah the children heard endless tales. Oriental fancy had been exhausted in picturing him for the consolation of exiled and suffering Israel. Before his days there would be a wicked Messiah of the House of Joseph; later, a king with one ear deaf to hear good but acute to hear evil; there would be a scar on his forehead, one of his hands would be an inch long and the other three miles, apparently a subtle symbol of the persecutor. The jargon story-book among its "stories, wonderful stories," had also extracts from the famous romance, or diary, of Eldad the Danite, who professed to have discovered the lost Ten Tribes. Eldad's book appeared towards the end of the ninth century and became the Arabian Nights of the Jews, and it had filtered down through the ages into the Ansell garret, in common with many other tales from the rich storehouse of mediaeval folk-lore in the diffusion of which the wandering few has played so great a part.
Sometimes Moses read to his charmed hearers the description of Heaven and Hell by Immanuel, the friend and contemporary of Dante, sometimes a jargon version of Robinson Crusoe. To-night he chose Eldad's account of the tribe of Moses dwelling beyond the wonderful river, Sambatyon, which never flows on the Sabbath.
"There is also the tribe of Moses, our just master, which is called the tribe that flees, because it fled from idol worship and clung to the fear of God. A river flows round their land for a distance of four days' journey on every side. They dwell in beautiful houses provided with handsome towers, which they have built themselves. There is nothing unclean among them, neither in the case of birds, venison nor domesticated animals; there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no vermin, no serpents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm; they have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow and reap; there are all sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fruits and cereals, viz.: beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, wheat and barley, and the seed grows a hundred fold. They have faith; they know the Law, the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Agadah; but their Talmud is in Hebrew. They introduce their sayings in the name of the fathers, the wise men, who heard them from the mouth of Joshua, who himself heard them from the mouth of God. They have no knowledge of the Tanaim (doctors of the Mishnah) and Amoraim (doctors of the Talmud), who flourished during the time of the second Temple, which was, of course, not known to these tribes. They speak only Hebrew, and are very strict as regards the use of wine made by others than themselves, as well as the rules of slaughtering animals; in this respect the Law of Moses is much more rigorous than that of the Tribes. They do not swear by the name of God, for fear that their breath may leave them, and they become angry with those who swear; they reprimand them, saying, 'Woe, ye poor, why do you swear with the mention of the name of God upon your lips? Use your mouth for eating bread and drinking water. Do you not know that for the sin of swearing your children die young?' And in this way they exhort every one to serve God with fear and integrity of heart. Therefore, the children of Moses, the servant of God, live long, to the age of 100 or 120 years. No child, be it son or daughter, dies during the lifetime of its parent, but they reach a third and a fourth generation, and see grandchildren and great-grandchildren with their offspring. They do all field work themselves, having no male or female servants; there are also merchants among them. They do not close their houses at night, for there is no thief nor any wicked man among them. Thus a little lad might go for days with his flock without fear of robbers, demons or danger of any other kind; they are, indeed, all holy and clean. These Levites busy themselves with the Law and with the commandments, and they still live in the holiness of our master, Moses; therefore, God has given them all this good. Moreover, they see nobody and nobody sees them, except the four tribes who dwell on the other side of the rivers of Cush; they see them, and speak to them, but the river Sambatyon is between them, as it is said: 'That thou mayest say to prisoners, Go forth' (Isaiah xlix., 9). They have plenty of gold and silver; they sow flax and cultivate the crimson worm, and make beautiful garments. Their number is double or four times the number that went out from Egypt.
"The river Sambatyon is 200 yards broad—'about as far as a bowshot' (Gen. xxi., 16), full of sand and stones, but without water; the stones make a great noise like the waves of the sea and a stormy wind, so that in the night the noise is heard at a distance of half a day's journey. There are sources of water which collect themselves in one pool, out of which they water the fields. There are fish in it, and all kinds of clean birds fly round it. And this river of stone and sand rolls during the six working days and rests on the Sabbath day. As soon as the Sabbath begins fire surrounds the river and the flames remain till the next evening, when the Sabbath ends. Thus no human being can reach the river for a distance of half a mile on either side; the fire consumes all that grows there. The four tribes, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, stand on the borders of the river. When shearing their flocks here, for the land is flat and clean without any thorns, if the children of Moses see them gathered together on the border they shout, saying, 'Brethren, tribes of Jeshurun, show us your camels, dogs and asses,' and they make their remarks about the length of the camel's neck and the shortness of the tail. Then they greet one another and go their way."
When this was done, Solomon called for Hell. He liked to hear about the punishment of the sinners; it gave a zest to life. Moses hardly needed a book to tell them about Hell. It had no secrets for him. The Old Testament has no reference to a future existence, but the poor Jew has no more been able to live without the hope of Hell than the poor Christian. When the wicked man has waxed fat and kicked the righteous skinny man, shall the two lie down in the same dust and the game be over? Perish the thought! One of the Hells was that in which the sinner was condemned to do over and over again the sins he had done in life.
"Why, that must be jolly!" said Solomon.
"No, that is frightful," maintained Moses Ansell. He spoke Yiddish, the children English.
"Of course, it is," said Esther. "Just fancy, Solomon, having to eat toffy all day."
"It's better than eating nothing all day," replied Solomon.
"But to eat it every day for ever and ever!" said Moses. "There's no rest for the wicked."
"What! Not even on the Sabbath?" said Esther.
"Oh, yes: of course, then. Like the river Sambatyon, even the flames ofHell rest onShabbos."
"Haven't they got no fire-goyas?"; inquired Ikey, and everybody laughed.
"Shabbosis a holiday in Hell," Moses explained to the little one. "So thou seest the result of thy making out Sabbath too early on Saturday night, thou sendest the poor souls back to their tortures before the proper time."
Moses never lost an opportunity of enforcing the claims of the ceremonial law. Esther had a vivid picture flashed upon her of poor, yellow hook-shaped souls floating sullenly back towards the flames.
Solomon's chief respect for his father sprang from the halo of military service encircling Moses ever since it leaked out through the lips of theBube, that he had been a conscript in Russia and been brutally treated by the sergeant. But Moses could not be got to speak of his exploits. Solomon pressed him to do so, especially when his father gave symptoms of inviting him to the study of Rashi's Commentary. To-night Moses brought out a Hebrew tome, and said, "Come, Solomon. Enough of stories. We must learn a little."
"To-day is a holiday," grumbled Solomon.
"It is never a holiday for the study of the Law."
"Only this once, father; let's play draughts."
Moses weakly yielded. Draughts was his sole relaxation and when Solomon acquired a draught board by barter his father taught him the game. Moses played the Polish variety, in which the men are like English kings that leap backwards and forwards and the kings shoot diagonally across like bishops at chess. Solomon could not withstand these gigantic grasshoppers, whose stopping places he could never anticipate. Moses won every game to-night and was full of glee and told theKinderanother story. It was about the Emperor Nicholas and is not to be found in the official histories of Russia.
"Nicholas, was a wicked king, who oppressed the Jews and made their lives sore and bitter. And one day he made it known to the Jews that if a million roubles were not raised for him in a month's time they should be driven from their homes. Then the Jews prayed unto God and besought him to help them for the merits of the forefathers, but no help came. Then they tried to bribe the officials, but the officials pocketed their gold and the Emperor still demanded his tax. Then they went to the great Masters of Cabalah, who, by pondering day and night on the name and its transmutations, had won the control of all things, and they said, 'Can ye do naught for us?' Then the Masters of Cabalah took counsel together and at midnight they called up the spirits of Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah the prophet, who wept to hear of their children's sorrows. And Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah the prophet took the bed whereon Nicholas the Emperor slept and transported it to a wild place. And they took Nicholas the Emperor out of his warm bed and whipped him soundly so that he yelled for mercy. Then they asked: 'Wilt thou rescind the edict against the Jews?' And he said 'I will.' But in the morning Nicholas the Emperor woke up and called for the chief of the bed-chamber and said, 'How darest thou allow my bed to be carried out in the middle of the night into the forest?' And the chief of the bed-chamber grew pale and said that the Emperor's guards had watched all night outside the door, neither was there space for the bed to pass out. And Nicholas the Emperor, thinking he had dreamed, let the man go unhung. But the next night lo! the bed was transported again to the wild place and Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah the prophet drubbed him doubly and again he promised to remit the tax. So in the morning the chief of the bed-chamber was hanged and at night the guards were doubled. But the bed sailed away to the wild place and Nicholas the Emperor was trebly whipped. Then Nicholas the Emperor annulled the edict and the Jews rejoiced and fell at the knees of the Masters of Cabalah."
"But why can't they save the Jews altogether?" queried Esther.
"Oh," said Moses mysteriously. "Cabalah is a great force and must not be abused. The Holy Name must not be made common. Moreover one might lose one's life."
"Could the Masters make men?" inquired Esther, who had recently come across Frankenstein.
"Certainly," said Moses. "And what is more, it stands written that Reb Chanina and Reb Osheya fashioned a fine fat calf on Friday and enjoyed it on the Sabbath."
"Oh, father!" said Solomon, piteously, "don't you know Cabalah?"
A year before we got to know Esther Ansell she got to know Dutch Debby and it changed her life. Dutch Debby was a tall sallow ungainly girl who lived in the wee back room on the second floor behind Mrs. Simons and supported herself and her dog by needle-work. Nobody ever came to see her, for it was whispered that her parents had cast her out when she presented them with an illegitimate grandchild. The baby was fortunate enough to die, but she still continued to incur suspicion by keeping a dog, which is an un-Jewish trait. Bobby often squatted on the stairs guarding her door and, as it was very dark on the staircase, Esther suffered great agonies lest she should tread on his tail and provoke reprisals. Her anxiety led her to do so one afternoon and Bobby's teeth just penetrated through her stocking. The clamor brought out Dutch Debby, who took the girl into her room and soothed her. Esther had often wondered what uncanny mysteries lay behind that dark dog-guarded door and she was rather more afraid of Debby than of Bobby.
But that afternoon saw the beginning of a friendship which added one to the many factors which were moulding the future woman. For Debby turned out a very mild bogie, indeed, with a good English vocabulary and a stock of oldLondon Journals, more precious to Esther than mines of Ind. Debby kept them under the bed, which, as the size of the bed all but coincided with the area of the room, was a wise arrangement. And on the long summer evenings and the Sunday afternoons when her little ones needed no looking after and were traipsing about playing "whoop!" and pussy-cat in the street downstairs, Esther slipped into the wee back room, where the treasures lay, and there, by the open window, overlooking the dingy back yard and the slanting perspectives of sun-decked red tiles where cats prowled and dingy sparrows hopped, in an atmosphere laden with whiffs from a neighboring dairyman's stables, Esther lost herself in wild tales of passion and romance. She frequently read them aloud for the benefit of the sallow-faced needle-woman, who had found romance square so sadly with the realities of her own existence. And so all a summer afternoon, Dutch Debby and Esther would be rapt away to a world of brave men and fair women, a world of fine linen and purple, of champagne and wickedness and cigarettes, a world where nobody worked or washed shirts or was hungry or had holes in boots, a world utterly ignorant of Judaism and the heinousness of eating meat with butter. Not that Esther for her part correlated her conception of this world with facts. She never realized that it was an actually possible world—never indeed asked herself whether it existed outside print or not. She never thought of it in that way at all, any more than it ever occurred to her that people once spoke the Hebrew she learned to read and translate. "Bobby" was often present at these readings, but he kept his thoughts to himself, sitting on his hind legs with his delightfully ugly nose tilted up inquiringly at Esther. For the best of all this new friendship was that Bobby was not jealous. He was only a sorry dun-colored mongrel to outsiders, but Esther learned to see him almost through Dutch Debby's eyes. And she could run up the stairs freely, knowing that if she trod on his tail now, he would take it as a mark ofcamaraderie.
"I used to pay a penny a week for theLondon Journal," said Debby early in their acquaintanceship, "till one day I discovered I had a dreadful bad memory."
"And what was the good of that?" said Esther.
"Why, it was worth shillings and shillings to me. You see I used to save up all the back numbers of theLondon Journalbecause of the answers to correspondents, telling you how to do your hair and trim your nails and give yourself a nice complexion. I used to bother my head about that sort of thing in those days, dear; and one day I happened to get reading a story in a back number only about a year old and I found I was just as interested as if I had never read it before and I hadn't the slightest remembrance of it. After that I left off buying theJournaland took to reading my big heap of back numbers. I get through them once every two years." Debby interrupted herself with a fit of coughing, for lengthy monologue is inadvisable for persons who bend over needle-work in dark back rooms. Recovering herself, she added, "And then I start afresh. You couldn't do that, could you?"
"No," admitted Esther, with a painful feeling of inferiority. "I remember all I've ever read."
"Ah, you will grow up a clever woman!" said Debby, patting her hair.
"Oh, do you think so?" said Esther, her dark eyes lighting up with pleasure.
"Oh yes, you're always first in your class, ain't you?"
"Is that what you judge by, Debby?" said Esther, disappointed. "The other girls are so stupid and take no thought for anything but their hats and their frocks. They would rather play gobs or shuttlecock or hopscotch than read about the 'Forty Thieves.' They don't mind being kept a whole year in one class but I—oh, I feel so mad at getting on so slow. I could easily learn the standard work in three months. I want to know everything—so that I can grow up to be a teacher at our school."
"And does your teacher know everything?"
"Oh yes! She knows the meaning of every word and all about foreign countries."
"And would you like to be a teacher?"
"If I could only be clever enough!" sighed Esther. "But then you see the teachers at our school are real ladies and they dress, oh, so beautifully! With fur tippets and six-button gloves. I could never afford it, for even when I was earning five shillings a week I should have to give most of it to father and the children."
"But if you're very good—I dare say some of the great ladies like the Rothschilds will buy you nice clothes. I have heard they are very good to clever children."
"No, then the other teachers would know I was getting charity! And they would mock at me. I heard Miss Hyams make fun of a teacher because she wore the same dress as last winter. I don't think I should like to be a teacher after all, though it is nice to be able to stand with your back to the fire in the winter. The girls would know—'" Esther stopped and blushed.
"Would know what, dear?"
"Well, they would know father," said Esther in low tones. "They would see him selling things in the Lane and they wouldn't do what I told them."
"Nonsense, Esther. I believe most of the teachers' fathers are just as bad—I mean as poor. Look at Miss Hyams's own father."
"Oh Debby! I do hope that's true. Besides when I was earning five shillings a week, I could buy father a new coat, couldn't I? And then there would be no need for him to stand in the Lane with lemons or 'four-corner fringes,' would there?"
"No, dear. You shall be a teacher, I prophesy, and who knows? Some day you may be Head Mistress!"
Esther laughed a startled little laugh of delight, with a suspicion of a sob in it. "What! Me! Me go round and make all the teachers do their work. Oh, wouldn't I catch them gossiping! I know their tricks!"
"You seem to look after your teacher well. Do you ever call her over the coals for gossiping?" inquired Dutch Debby, amused.
"No, no," protested Esther quite seriously. "I like to hear them gossiping. When my teacher and Miss Davis, who's in the next room, and a few other teachers get together, I learn—Oh such a lot!—from their conversation."
"Then they do teach you after all," laughed Debby.
"Yes, but it's not on the Time Table," said Esther, shaking her little head sapiently. "It's mostly about young men. Did you ever have a young man, Debby?"
"Don't—don't ask such questions, child!" Debby bent over her needle-work.
"Why not?" persisted Esther. "If I only had a young man when I grew up,I should be proud of him. Yes, you're trying to turn your head away. I'msure you had. Was he nice like Lord Eversmonde or Captain AndrewSinclair? Why you're crying, Debby!"
"Don't be a little fool, Esther! A tiny fly has just flown into my eye—poor little thing! He hurts me and does himself no good."
"Let me see, Debby," said Esther. "Perhaps I shall be in time to save him."
"No, don't trouble."
"Don't be so cruel, Debby. You're as bad as Solomon, who pulls off flies' wings to see if they can fly without them."
"He's dead now. Go on with 'Lady Ann's Rival;' we've been wasting the whole afternoon talking. Take my advice, Esther, and don't stuff your head with ideas about young men. You're too young. Now, dear, I'm ready. Go on."
"Where was I? Oh yes. 'Lord Eversmonde folded the fair young form to his manly bosom and pressed kiss after kiss upon her ripe young lips, which responded passionately to his own. At last she recovered herself and cried reproachfully, Oh Sigismund, why do you persist in coming here, when the Duke forbids it?' Oh, do you know, Debby, father said the other day I oughtn't to come here?"
"Oh no, you must," cried Debby impulsively. "I couldn't part with you now."
"Father says people say you are not good," said Esther candidly.
Debby breathed painfully. "Well!" she whispered.
"But I said people were liars. Youaregood!"
"Oh, Esther, Esther!" sobbed Debby, kissing the earnest little face with a vehemence that surprised the child.
"I think father only said that," Esther went on, "because he fancies I neglect Sarah and Isaac when he's atShooland they quarrel so about their birthdays when they're together. But they don't slap one another hard. I'll tell you what! Suppose I bring Sarah down here!"
"Well, but won't she cry and be miserable here, if you read, and with no Isaac to play with?"
"Oh no," said Esther confidently. "She'll keep Bobby company."
Bobby took kindly to little Sarah also. He knew no other dogs and in such circumstances a sensible animal falls back on human beings. He had first met Debby herself quite casually and the two lonely beings took to each other. Before that meeting Dutch Debby was subject to wild temptations. Once she half starved herself and put aside ninepence a week for almost three months and purchased one-eighth of a lottery ticket from Sugarman theShadchan, who recognized her existence for the occasion. The fortune did not come off.
Debby saw less and less of Esther as the months crept on again towards winter, for the little girl feared her hostess might feel constrained to offer her food, and the children required more soothing. Esther would say very little about her home life, though Debby got to know a great deal about her school-mates and her teacher.
One summer evening after Esther had passed into the hands of Miss MiriamHyams she came to Dutch Debby with a grave face and said: "Oh, Debby.Miss Hyams is not a heroine."
"No?" said Debby, amused. "You were so charmed with her at first."
"Yes, she is very pretty and her hats are lovely. But she is not a heroine."
"Why, what's happened?"
"You know what lovely weather it's been all day?"
"Yes."
"Well, this morning all in the middle of the Scripture lesson, she said to us, 'What a pity, girls, we've got to stay cooped up here this bright weather'—you know she chats to us so nicely—'in some schools they have half-holidays on Wednesday afternoons in the summer. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have them and be out in the sunshine in Victoria Park?' 'Hoo, yes, teacher, wouldn't that be jolly?' we all cried. Then teacher said: 'Well, why not ask the Head Mistress for a holiday this afternoon? You're the highest standard in the school—I dare say if you ask for it, the whole school will get a holiday. Who will be spokes-woman?' Then all the girls said I must be because I was the first girl in the class and sounded all my h's, and when the Head Mistress came into the room I up and curtseyed and asked her if we could have a holiday this afternoon on account of the beautiful sunshine. Then the Head Mistress put on her eye-glasses and her face grew black and the sunshine seemed to go out of the room. And she said 'What! After all the holidays we have here, a month at New Year and a fortnight at Passover, and all the fast-days! I am surprised that you girls should be so lazy and idle and ask for more. Why don't you take example by your teacher? Look at Miss Hyams." We all looked at Miss Hyams, but she was looking for some papers in her desk. 'Look how Miss Hyams works!' said the Head Mistress. 'Shenever grumbles,shenever asks for a holiday!' We all looked again at Miss Hyams, but she hadn't yet found the papers. There was an awful silence; you could have heard a pin drop. There wasn't a single cough or rustle of a dress. Then the Head Mistress turned to me and she said: 'And you, Esther Ansell, whom I always thought so highly of, I'm surprised at your being the ringleader in such a disgraceful request. You ought to know better. I shall bear it in mind, Esther Ansell.' With that she sailed out, stiff and straight as a poker, and the door closed behind her with a bang."
"Well, and what did Miss Hyams say then?" asked Debby, deeply interested.
"She said: 'Selina Green, and what did Moses do when the Children of Israel grumbled for water?' She just went on with the Scripture lesson, as if nothing had happened."
"I should tell the Head Mistress who sent me on," cried Debby indignantly.
"Oh, no," said Esther shaking her head. "That would be mean. It's a matter for her own conscience. Oh, but I do wish," she concluded, "we had had a holiday. It would have been so lovely out in the Park."
Victoria Park wasthePark to the Ghetto. A couple of miles off, far enough to make a visit to it an excursion, it was a perpetual blessing to the Ghetto. On rare Sunday afternoons the Ansell family minus theBubetoiled there and backen masse, Moses carrying Isaac and Sarah by turns upon his shoulder. Esther loved the Park in all weathers, but best of all in the summer, when the great lake was bright and busy with boats, and the birds twittered in the leafy trees and the lobelias and calceolarias were woven into wonderful patterns by the gardeners. Then she would throw herself down on the thick grass and look up in mystic rapture at the brooding blue sky and forget to read the book she had brought with her, while the other children chased one another about in savage delight. Only once on a Saturday afternoon when her father was not with them, did she get Dutch Debby to break through her retired habits and accompany them, and then it was not summer but late autumn. There was an indefinable melancholy about the sere landscape. Russet refuse strewed the paths and the gaunt trees waved fleshless arms in the breeze. The November haze rose from the moist ground and dulled the blue of heaven with smoky clouds amid which the sun, a red sailless boat, floated at anchor among golden and crimson furrows and glimmering far-dotted fleeces. The small lake was slimy, reflecting the trees on its borders as a network of dirty branches. A solitary swan ruffled its plumes and elongated its throat, doubled in quivering outlines beneath the muddy surface. All at once the splash of oars was heard and the sluggish waters were stirred by the passage of a boat in which a heroic young man was rowing a no less heroic young woman.
Dutch Debby burst into tears and went home. After that she fell back entirely on Bobby and Esther and theLondon Journaland never even saved up nine shillings again.