IIIPRISONTHIStime in America Jacob had fared better, and by dint of half-starving himself and sleeping when he had nothing to do, he had managed to save over fifty pounds. Abramovich borrowed another fifty, and once again they set up in business as furriers. They took one of the old Georgian houses off Bishopsgate, started a workshop in the top rooms, and in the lower rooms the Kühler family lived, with Abramovich in lodgings round the corner. They were only twenty yards from the synagogue and Golda was happy; Jacob too, for in such a house he felt a solid man. And, indeed, amid the extreme poverty with which they were surrounded he could pass for wealthy. He had his name on a brass plate on the door and was always proud when he wrote it on a cheque. He took his eldest son into his workshop to rescue him from the fate of working for another master, and he assumed a patriarchal authority over his family. His sons were never allowed out after half-past nine, and, tall youths though they were, if they crossed his will he thrashed them. The girls were forbidden to go out alone. They were kept at home to await their fate.The eldest boy flung all his ardour into dancing, and was the champion slow waltzer of the neighbourhood. With egg-shells on his heels to show that he never brought them to the ground, he could keep it up for hours and won many prizes. Harry scorned this polite prowess. For him theromance of the streets was irresistible: easy amorous conquests, battles of tongues and fists, visits to the prize-ring, upon which his young ambition centred. A bout between a Jew and a Christian would lead to a free-fight in the audience, for the Jews yelled in Yiddish to their champion, and the British would suspect insults to them or vile instructions, and would try to enforce silence . . . And Harry would bring gruff young men to the house, youths with puffy eyes and swollen or crooked or broken noses, and he would treat them with an enthusiastic deference which found no echo in any member of the family save Mendel, who found the world opened up to him by Harry large and adventurous, like the open sea stretching away and away from the whirlpool.There was one extraordinarily nice man whom Harry brought to the house. His name was Kuit, and he had failed as a boxer and had become a thief, a trade in which he was an expert. His talk fascinated Mendel, and indeed the whole family. None could fail to listen when he told of his adventures and his skill. He had begun as a pickpocket, plying his trade in Bishopsgate or the Mile End Road, and to show his expertise he would run his hands over Jacob’s pockets without his feeling it, and tell him what they contained. Or he would ask Golda to let him see her purse, and she would grope for it only to find that he had already taken it. He had advanced from picking pockets to the higher forms of theft: plundering hotels or dogging diamond merchants, and he was keenly interested in America. It was through him that the family knew the little that was ever revealed to them of Jacob’s doings there.Kuit said he would go to America and not return until he had ten thousand pounds, all made by honest theft, for he would only rob the rich, and, indeed, he was most generous with his earnings,and gave Golda many handsome pieces of jewellery, and he lent Jacob money when he badly needed it. That, however, was not Jacob’s reason for admitting Kuit to his family circle. He liked the man, was fascinated by him, and thought his morals were his own affair. He knew his race and the poor too well to be squeamish, and never dreamed of extending his authority beyond his family. He warned Harry that if he took to Kuit’s practices he would no longer be a son of his, and as the accounts of prison given to Harry by some of his acquaintances were not cheering, Harry preferred not to run any risks. Instead, he devoted himself to training for the glory of the prize-ring.For Mendel the moral aspect of Kuit’s profession had been settled once and for all by his seeing the Rabbi with his face turned to the wall, in the middle of the most terrible of prayers, filch some pennies from an overcoat. Religion therefore was one thing, life was another, and life included theft. Kuit was the only man who could think of painting apart from money, and it was Kuit who gave him a new box of oil colours, stolen from a studio which he broke into on purpose, anden passantfrom one rich house in Kensington to another. Kuit used to say: “One thing is true for one man and another for another. And what is true for a man is what he does best. For Harry it is boxing, for Issy it is women and dancing, and for Mr. Kühler it is being honest. For me it is showing the business thieves that they cannot have things all their own way, and outwitting the police. Oh yes! They know me and I know them, but they will never catch me.”So charming was Mr. Kuit that Jacob could not object to taking care from time to time of the property that passed through his hands, and the kitchen was often splendid with marble clocks and Oriental china and Sheffield plate, which neverlooked anything but out of place among the cheap oleographs and the sideboard with its green paper frills round the flashing gilt china that was never used. The kitchen was the living-room of the house, for Jacob only ate when he was hungry, and it was rarely that two sat down to a meal together.As often as not Mendel had his paints on the table, and the objects he was painting were not to be moved. He clung to his painting as the only comfort in his distress, and he would frequently work away with his brushes though he could hardly see what he was at, and knew that he was entirely devoid of the feeling that until the discomfort broke out in his soul had never failed him. He dared not look outside his circumstances for comfort, and within them was the most absolute denial of that cherished feeling for loveliness and colour. Beyond certain streets he never ventured. He felt lost outside the immediate neighbourhood of his home, and only Mr. Kuit reassured him with the confidence with which he spoke of such remote regions as Kensington and Bayswater and Mayfair. The rest clung to the little district where the shops and the language and the smells were Jewish. Yet there, too, Mendel felt lost, though he had an immense reverence for the old Jews, for the Rabbis who pored all day long over their books, and the ancient bearded men who, like his mother, could sit for hours together doing nothing at all. He loved their tragic, wrinkled faces and their steadfast peace, so stark a contrast to the chatter and the wrangling and the harshness that filled his home.There were constant rows. Harry upset the household for weeks after his father forbade him to pursue his prize-fighting ambitions. Jacob would not have a son of his making a public show of himself. To that disturbance was addedanother when Issy began to court, or was courted by, a girl who was thought too poor and base-born. If he was out a minute later than half-past nine Jacob would go out and find him at the corner of the street with the girl in his arms. Issy would be dragged away. Then he would sulk or shout that he was a man, and Jacob would tell him in a cold, furious voice that he could go if he liked, but, if he went, he must never show his face there again. For a time Issy would submit. Poor though the home was, he could not think of leaving it except to make another for himself. But there was no keeping the girl away, and he would be for ever peeping into the street to see if she were there, and if she were he could not keep away from her.Leah, the eldest girl, had her courtships too. The match-makers were busy with her, and a number of men, young and old, were brought to view her. She was dressed up to look fine, and Jacob and Golda would sit together to inspect the suitors, and at last they chose a huge, ugly Russian Jew, named Moscowitsch—Abraham Moscowitsch, a timber-merchant, who had pulled himself up out of the East End and had a house at Hackney. He was a friend of Kuit’s and was willing to take the girl without a dowry. Leah hid herself away and wept. It was in vain that Golda, primed by Jacob, told her that she would be rich, and would have servants and carriages, and could buy at the great shops: she could not forget the Russian’s bristling hair and thick lips and coarse, splayed nostrils. The tears were of no avail; the marriage had been offered and accepted. The wedding was fixed, and nothing was spared to make it a social triumph. The bride was decked out in conventional English white, with a heavy veil and a bouquet: and very lovely she looked. Jacob wore his first frock-coat and a white linen collar, Golda had a dress madeof mauve cashmere, with a bodice heavily adorned with shining beads, and Mendel had a new sailor suit with a mortar-board cap. There were three carriages to drive the party the twenty yards to the synagogue. The wedding group was photographed, and a hall was taken for the feast and the dance in the evening. The wedding cost Jacob the savings of many years and more, but he grudged not a penny of it, because he had a rich son-in-law and wished it to be known. There were over fifty guests at the feast.Within a week Leah came home again, pale, thin, and shrunken. Moscowitsch had been arrested. He had gone bankrupt and had done “something with his books.”“Bankrupt!” said Jacob; “bankrupt!”He stood in front of his weeping daughter and beat against the air with his clenched fists. She moaned and protested that she would never go back to him. Jacob shook her till her teeth chattered together.“You dare talk like that! He is your husband. You are his wife. It is a misfortune. You should be with the lawyers to find out when you can see him. I am to lose everything because he is unfortunate! A dog will not turn from a man in his misery, and must a woman learn from a dog? You are a soft girl! Go, I say, and find out when you can see him. Was ever a man so crossed by Fate! Where I go, there luck takes wings.”His violence shook Leah out of the dazed misery in which she had come home, having no other idea, no other place to which to go. Jacob was at first for making his daughter wait in her new home until her husband was returned to her. His simple imagination seized on the idea and visualized it. It seemed to him admirable, and Golda had hard work to shake it out of his head. As a piece of unnecessary cruelty he couldnot realize it, but when it was brought home to him that he would have to pay the rent of the house in Hackney, he yielded and allowed the girl to stay at home.Moscowitsch was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and a gloom, such as not the darkest days of poverty had been able to create, descended upon the house. Jacob was ashamed and irritable. He insisted upon the most scrupulous observance of all the rites of his religion, and he forbade Mendel to paint. Painting had nothing to do with religion and he would have none of it. He trampled on Mendel’s friendship with Artie Beech. The Christian world of police and judges and the law had destroyed his happiness, and not the faintest smell of Christendom should cross his door. Friction between the father and his two sons was exasperated, and it seemed to Mendel that Hell was let loose. He was nearly of an age to leave school, and he dreamed by the hour of the freedom he would have when he went to work. He would go out early in the morning and come home late in the evening. He would stay in the streets and look at the shops and watch the girls go by. He would go one day out beyond London to see what the world was like there. He would find a place where there were pictures, and he would feast on them: for when he went to work he would paint no more, since painting would be shed with the miserable childhood that was so fast slipping away from him.Yet a worse calamity was to happen. Once again the Christian world of police, law, and judges was to invade the home of the Kühlers, and this time it was Jacob himself who was taken. He was charged with receiving stolen goods. A detective-inspector and two constables invaded the house and took possession of an ormolu clock, a number of silver knives, and a brooch which Mr. Kuit had given to Golda.Five of Mr. Kuit’s friends had been arrested, but Mr. Kuit himself was not implicated. He paid for the defence of the prisoners and took charge of the Kühler family, transferred the business into Issy’s name, and advanced money to keep it going. He spared neither time nor trouble to try to establish Jacob’s innocence, but it looked almost as though some one else was taking an equal amount of trouble to prove his guilt, for every move of Mr. Kuit’s was countered, and Jacob himself was so bewildered and enraged that he could not give a coherent answer to the questions put to him. He babbled and raved of an enemy who had done this thing, of a rival who had plotted his ruin, but as he could not give a satisfactory account of the articles found in his possession, his passionate protestations and his fanatical belief in his own honesty were of no avail. From the dock in which he was placed with Mr. Kuit’s other friends he delivered a vehement harangue in broken English, not more than ten words of which were intelligible to the judge and jury. The judge was kindly, the jury somnolent. Jacob was the only member of the party with a clean record, and he received the light sentence of eighteen months; the rest had double that term and more. In the Sunday papers they were described as a dangerous gang, and their portraits were drawn like profiles on a coin by an artist whose business it was to make villains look villainous for the delectation of the sober millions who tasted the joys of wickedness only in print. Golda was staggered by the blank indifference of the world to her husband’s honesty. His word to her was law, but the judge and the newspapers swept it aside, and he was regarded as one with the wicked men whose crooked dealings had involved the innocent. This was the worst disaster that had ever broken upon her: husband and son-in-law both swept away from her, as itseemed now, in one moment. The sympathy she received from the neighbours touched her profoundly, and she accepted their view that the sudden abstraction of male relatives was a natural calamity, like sickness or fire. Thanks to Mr. Kuit the business would be kept together, and thanks to Abramovich she never lacked company. That faithful friend would come in in the evenings and go over the trial, every moment of which he had heard, and recount every word of Jacob’s speech, which to him was a piece of magnificent oratory. “Not a tear was left in my eyes,” he said. “Not a throb was left in my heart, and the judge was moved, for his face sank into his hands and I could see that he knew how unjust he must be.” And he spent many days ferreting out a villain to be the cause of it all, some inveterate, implacable enemy who had plotted the downfall of the most honest man in London. He fixed on a certain Mr. Rosenthal, who years ago had tried to sell them machines for the business when they had already bought all that were necessary. He was quite sure it was Mr. Rosenthal who had bribed the thieves to hold their tongues, when any one of them could have cleared Jacob in a moment. And Golda believed that it was Mr. Rosenthal and dreamed of unattainable acts of revenge.Mendel used to listen to them talking, and their voices seemed to him to come from very far away. The upheaval had stunned him, had destroyed his volition and paralysed his dreams. He felt as though a tight band were fixed round his head. He had neither desire nor will. The world could do as it liked with him. If the world could suddenly invade his home and brand its head and lawgiver as thief, then the world was empty and foolish and it did not matter what happened. It amazed him that his brothers and sisters could go about as usual: that Harry could come homeand talk of prize-fighters and sit writing to girls, and that Issy could go out to meet his Rosa at the corner of the street. It was astonishing that his mother could still cook and they could still eat, and that every morning Harry could go down and open the door to let in the workpeople to clatter up the stairs. . . . And Harry disliked getting out of bed in the morning. In his father’s absence he ventured to apply his considerable ingenuity to the problem, and rigged up a wire from his bed to the knob of the front-door. Nor was this the only sign of the removal of the centre of authority from the family, for Issy actually brought his girl Rosa to the house and made his mother be pleasant to her. . . . Golda felt that her children were growing beyond her, and she thought it was time Issy was thinking of getting married, though not to Rosa, whose father was a poor cobbler and could give her no money.At regular intervals. Golda swallowed down her dread of the busy streets and went to Pentonville, where through the bars of the visitors’-room Jacob received her report and gave his instructions. He decreed against Rosa, who accordingly was forbidden to enter the house again. He had orders for every one of his children except Mendel, as to whom Golda did not consult him. Deep in her inmost heart she was in revolt against her husband, for she had begun to see that he had carried pride to the point of folly, and all her hopes, all her dreams, all her ambitions were centred upon her darling boy. Her ambitions were not worldly. She knew nothing at all about the world, and did not believe three parts of what she heard of it. Only she longed for him to escape the bitterness and bareness that had been her portion. The boy was so beautiful and could be so gay and could dance so lightly, and would sometimes be so tempestuous and masterful. It would be a sin if he were to be cramped over a board orwere sent to work in a tailoring shop. She herself had a love of flowers and of moonlight and the stars shining through the smoky sky, and she would sometimes find herself being urged to the use of strange words, which would make Mendel raise his head and cock his ears as though he were listening to the very beat of her heart. To that no one in the world had ever listened, and her life seemed very full and worthy when Mendel in his childish fashion was awake to it. . . . Pentonville seemed to suit Jacob. He looked almost fat and said the cocoa was very good.The time came for Mendel to leave school and Issy said he had better be taken into the workshop. Harry wanted him in the timber-yard in which he loafed away his days. Abramovich was for getting Mr. Jacobson to take him into his office, for Mr. Jacobson never failed to ask after the boy who painted the pictures. Now it so happened that Mendel had found a bookshop, outside which he had discovered a life of W. P. Frith, R.A. In daily visits over a period of three weeks he had read it from cover to cover, the story of a poor boy who had become an artist, rising to such fame that he had painted the portrait of the Queen. There it was in print, and must be true. Mr. Jacobson’s boy was only in a story, but here it was set down in a book, with reproductions of the artist’s wonderful pictures—“The Railway Station,” “Derby Day.” The book said they were wonderful. The book spoke with reverence and enthusiasm of pictures and the men who painted them.With tremulous excitement he secretly produced his box of paints again, and squeezed out the colours on to the plate he used for a palette. He adored the colours and amused himself with painting smooth strips of blue, yellow, green, red, orange, grey, for the sheer delight of handling the delicious stuff. It was a new pleasure, the joyof colours in themselves without reference to any object, or any feeling inside himself except this simple thrilling delight. He could forget everything in it, for it was his first taste of childish glee. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever again so oppress and overwhelm him as distasteful and even pleasant things had done in the past. He would be an artist, a wonderful artist, like W. P. Frith, R.A.So when he was called into the kitchen one night and they told him he was to go into Mr. Jacobson’s office, he looked as though their words had no meaning for him, and he said:—“I want to be an artist.”An artist? Nobody knew quite what that meant. Golda thought it meant painting pictures, but she could not imagine a man devoting all his time to it—a child’s pastime.“He means the drawing!” said Abramovich. “I had a friend at home who used to paint the flowers on the cups.”“I’m going to be an artist,” said Mendel.“But you’ve got to make your money like everybody else,” replied Issy.Mendel retorted with details of what he could remember of the career of his idol. Issy said that was aChristlicher kop.There weren’t such things as Jewish artists; whereon Harry threw in the word “Rubinstein.” Asked to explain what he meant, he did not know, but had just remembered the name.Abramovich said he thought Rubinstein was a conductor at the Opera, and there were Jewish singers and actors.“My father,” said Harry, “won’t hear of that. He won’t have a son of his making a public show of himself.”Mendel by this time was white in the face, and his eyes were glaring out of his head. He knew that not one of them had understood his meaning,and he felt that Issy was bent on having his way with him. He was in despair at his helplessness, and at last, when he could endure no more, he flung himself down on the floor and howled. Issy lost his temper with him, picked him up, and carried him, kicking and biting, upstairs, and flung him on his bed.The subject was dropped for a time, but Mendel refused to eat, or to sleep, or to leave the house. He was afraid that if he put his nose outside the door Abramovich would pounce on him and drag him off to Mr. Jacobson’s office.However, the matter could not be postponed for long, because money was very scarce and the boy must be put into the way of providing for himself. Golda asked Abramovich to find out what an artist was and how much a week could be made at the trade. Abramovich came in one evening with a note-book full of facts and figures. He had read of a picture being sold for tens of thousands of pounds, and this had made a great impression on him. Mendel was called down from the room in which he had exiled himself.“Well?” said Abramovich kindly. “So you want to be an artist? But how?”“I don’t know. I shall paint pictures.”“But who will feed you? Who will buy you paints, brushes?”“I shall sell my pictures.”“Where, then? How?”“To the shops.”“Where are the shops? Tell me of any shop near here, for I don’t know a single one.”Again Mendel felt that they were too clever for him, and he was on the brink of another fit of despair when, fortunately for him, Mr. Macalister, a commercial traveller in furs, came in. When he was in London he made a point of calling on the Kühlers, whom he liked, much as he liked strong drink. He was a man of some attainments, astudent of Edinburgh, who had found the ordinary walks and the ordinary people of life too tame for his chaotic and vigorous temper, and he went from place to place collecting just such strange people as these Polacks, as he used to call them. He looked for passion in men and women, and accepted it gratefully and even greedily wherever he found it. . . . He had red hair and a complexion like a white-heart cherry, with little twinkling eyes as blue as forget-me-nots.He kindled at once to the passion with which Mendel was bursting, stooped over Golda’s hand and kissed it—for he knew that was how foreigners greeted a lady—and then he sat heavily waiting for the situation to be explained to him. Mendel instinctively appealed to him. . . . Oh yes! he knew what an artist was, and some painters had made tidy fortunes, though they were not the best of them. There were Reynolds, and Lawrence, and Raeburn, and Landseer, and some young fellows at Glasgow, and Michael Angelo—a tidy lot, indeed. Never a Jew, that he had heard of.“I told you so!” said Abramovich.Golda showed Mr. Macalister the boy’s pictures, and he was genuinely impressed, especially by a picture of three oranges in a basket.“It’s not,” he said, “that they make you want to eat them, as that they make you look at them as you look at oranges. I’ll look closer at every orange I see now. That’s talent. Yes. That’s talent. Aye.”Mendel was so grateful to him that he forgot the others and began to point out to him how well the oranges were painted, with all their fleshiness and rotundity brought out. And very soon they were all laughing at him, and that made the meeting happier.Mr. Macalister explained that in old days artists used to take boys into their studios, but that now there were Schools of Art where only very talentedpeople could survive. He certainly thought that Mendel ought to be given a chance, and if it were a question of money, he, poor though he was, would be only too glad to help. Golda would not hear of that, and Abramovich protested that, in an unhappy time like this, he regarded himself as the representative of his unfortunate friend.The corner was turned. Feeling was now all with Mendel, and he went to bed singing in head and heart: “I’m an artist! I’m an artist! I’m an artist!”So the ball was set rolling. Jacob, seen behind the bars, raised no objection. He had had time to think, and, to the extent of his capacity, availed himself of it. When he was told that his youngest son wanted to be an artist and wept at the suggestion of anything else, he thought: “Who am I to say ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’?” and he said “Yea.” “Let the boy have a little happiness while he may, for the Christians are very powerful and will take all that he cherishes from him.”The question of ways and means was considered, and here Abe Moscowitsch took charge. His business had prospered during his enforced absence, and his bankruptcy had been very profitable. He was a decent man, and anxious to make amends to his young wife and her family for the trouble his adventurousness had brought on them. To please her he took a new house with bow-windows and a garage, and to please them he jumped at the opportunity of helping Mendel, and offered to pay his fees at a School of Art. When the boy heard this he ran to his brother-in-law’s office and, before all his workmen, flung his arms round his neck and embraced him.“That’ll do. That’ll do,” said Moscowitsch. “Don’t forget us if you’re a rich man before I am.”“I shall never leave home,” said Mendel. “I shall never marry. I shall live all my days with my mother, painting.”There arose the difficulty that no one had ever heard of a School of Art. Mr. Macalister was deputed to look into the matter. He inquired, and was recommended to the Polytechnic as being cheap and good, and the Polytechnic was decided on.Mr. Kuit came in at the tail of all this excitement, and added to it by saying that he was just off to America, first-class by the Cunard Line, for he was going to start in style, live in style, and come back in style. He was delighted to hear of the brilliant future opening up before Mendel, and told wonderful stories of famous pictures that had been stolen, cut out of their frames and taken away under the very noses of the owners. He was wonderfully overdressed, not loudly or vulgarly, but through his eagerness to be and to look first-class. He produced a pack of cards and showed how he could shuffle them to suit himself, and three times out of five, through the fineness of the touch, he could “spot” a card. He was a wonderful man. The Kühlers gaped at him, and Moscowitsch, in emulation, was led on to brag of his smartness in business, and how he had thrice burned down his timber-yard and made the insurance people pay up. Yet, though he warmed up as he boasted, he lacked the magic of Mr. Kuit and could not conceal the meanness of his deeds behind their glamour. He lumbered along like a great bear behind Mr. Kuit, and was vexed because he could not overtake him, and when the glittering little Jew, who seemed more magician than thief, said he would give Mendel a new suit of clothes for his entry into the world of art, Moscowitsch promised to provide a new pair of boots. Mr. Kuit countered with two new hats, Moscowitsch with underclothes. On they went in competition until Mendel was magnificently equipped, and at last Moscowitsch laid two new sovereigns on the table and said they were for the boy’s pocket-money.Not to be outdone, Mr. Kuit produced a five-pound note and gave it to Golda to be put into the Post Office Savings Bank.In her inmost heart Golda was alarmed. For the first time she began to realize the vast powerful London with which she was surrounded. At home, in Austria, people stole because they were poor, because they were starving. She herself had often sent Harry and Issy out into the market with a sack and a spiked stick with which to pick up potatoes and cabbages and bread, but here the old simplicity was lacking. The swagger and the magnitude of Mr. Kuit’s operations and her son-in-law’s frauds alarmed her, and she felt that no good could come of it. They belonged to some power which moved too fast for her, and it was being invoked for Mendel, her youngest-born, her treasure. Truly it was a black day that took Jacob from her. Where he was, there was simplicity. Everything was kept in its place when he was in authority. Everything was kept down on the earth. There was the good smell of the earth in all his dealings, all his emotions. Never in him was the easy fantastic excitement of Kuit and Moscowitsch . . . They were mad. Surely they were mad. Their excitement infected everybody. Golda could feel it creeping in her veins like a poison. It came from the world to which these men belonged, the world of prison. That one word expressed it all for Golda. She had only been out into it to go to the prison, and to her that seemed to be the cold empty centre of it all. The bustle and glitter of the streets led to the prison, and she had always to fight to get back into her own life, where things were simple and definite—ugly, maybe—but clear and actual. . . . And now into that world of hectic excitement playing about the prison and about Mendel was to go, to be she knew not what, to learn to play with brushes and colours, to practise tricks whichseemed to her not essentially different from Mr. Kuit’s sleight with the cards. She was sure no good could come of it; but for the present the boy had his happiness, and to that she yielded.
THIStime in America Jacob had fared better, and by dint of half-starving himself and sleeping when he had nothing to do, he had managed to save over fifty pounds. Abramovich borrowed another fifty, and once again they set up in business as furriers. They took one of the old Georgian houses off Bishopsgate, started a workshop in the top rooms, and in the lower rooms the Kühler family lived, with Abramovich in lodgings round the corner. They were only twenty yards from the synagogue and Golda was happy; Jacob too, for in such a house he felt a solid man. And, indeed, amid the extreme poverty with which they were surrounded he could pass for wealthy. He had his name on a brass plate on the door and was always proud when he wrote it on a cheque. He took his eldest son into his workshop to rescue him from the fate of working for another master, and he assumed a patriarchal authority over his family. His sons were never allowed out after half-past nine, and, tall youths though they were, if they crossed his will he thrashed them. The girls were forbidden to go out alone. They were kept at home to await their fate.
The eldest boy flung all his ardour into dancing, and was the champion slow waltzer of the neighbourhood. With egg-shells on his heels to show that he never brought them to the ground, he could keep it up for hours and won many prizes. Harry scorned this polite prowess. For him theromance of the streets was irresistible: easy amorous conquests, battles of tongues and fists, visits to the prize-ring, upon which his young ambition centred. A bout between a Jew and a Christian would lead to a free-fight in the audience, for the Jews yelled in Yiddish to their champion, and the British would suspect insults to them or vile instructions, and would try to enforce silence . . . And Harry would bring gruff young men to the house, youths with puffy eyes and swollen or crooked or broken noses, and he would treat them with an enthusiastic deference which found no echo in any member of the family save Mendel, who found the world opened up to him by Harry large and adventurous, like the open sea stretching away and away from the whirlpool.
There was one extraordinarily nice man whom Harry brought to the house. His name was Kuit, and he had failed as a boxer and had become a thief, a trade in which he was an expert. His talk fascinated Mendel, and indeed the whole family. None could fail to listen when he told of his adventures and his skill. He had begun as a pickpocket, plying his trade in Bishopsgate or the Mile End Road, and to show his expertise he would run his hands over Jacob’s pockets without his feeling it, and tell him what they contained. Or he would ask Golda to let him see her purse, and she would grope for it only to find that he had already taken it. He had advanced from picking pockets to the higher forms of theft: plundering hotels or dogging diamond merchants, and he was keenly interested in America. It was through him that the family knew the little that was ever revealed to them of Jacob’s doings there.
Kuit said he would go to America and not return until he had ten thousand pounds, all made by honest theft, for he would only rob the rich, and, indeed, he was most generous with his earnings,and gave Golda many handsome pieces of jewellery, and he lent Jacob money when he badly needed it. That, however, was not Jacob’s reason for admitting Kuit to his family circle. He liked the man, was fascinated by him, and thought his morals were his own affair. He knew his race and the poor too well to be squeamish, and never dreamed of extending his authority beyond his family. He warned Harry that if he took to Kuit’s practices he would no longer be a son of his, and as the accounts of prison given to Harry by some of his acquaintances were not cheering, Harry preferred not to run any risks. Instead, he devoted himself to training for the glory of the prize-ring.
For Mendel the moral aspect of Kuit’s profession had been settled once and for all by his seeing the Rabbi with his face turned to the wall, in the middle of the most terrible of prayers, filch some pennies from an overcoat. Religion therefore was one thing, life was another, and life included theft. Kuit was the only man who could think of painting apart from money, and it was Kuit who gave him a new box of oil colours, stolen from a studio which he broke into on purpose, anden passantfrom one rich house in Kensington to another. Kuit used to say: “One thing is true for one man and another for another. And what is true for a man is what he does best. For Harry it is boxing, for Issy it is women and dancing, and for Mr. Kühler it is being honest. For me it is showing the business thieves that they cannot have things all their own way, and outwitting the police. Oh yes! They know me and I know them, but they will never catch me.”
So charming was Mr. Kuit that Jacob could not object to taking care from time to time of the property that passed through his hands, and the kitchen was often splendid with marble clocks and Oriental china and Sheffield plate, which neverlooked anything but out of place among the cheap oleographs and the sideboard with its green paper frills round the flashing gilt china that was never used. The kitchen was the living-room of the house, for Jacob only ate when he was hungry, and it was rarely that two sat down to a meal together.
As often as not Mendel had his paints on the table, and the objects he was painting were not to be moved. He clung to his painting as the only comfort in his distress, and he would frequently work away with his brushes though he could hardly see what he was at, and knew that he was entirely devoid of the feeling that until the discomfort broke out in his soul had never failed him. He dared not look outside his circumstances for comfort, and within them was the most absolute denial of that cherished feeling for loveliness and colour. Beyond certain streets he never ventured. He felt lost outside the immediate neighbourhood of his home, and only Mr. Kuit reassured him with the confidence with which he spoke of such remote regions as Kensington and Bayswater and Mayfair. The rest clung to the little district where the shops and the language and the smells were Jewish. Yet there, too, Mendel felt lost, though he had an immense reverence for the old Jews, for the Rabbis who pored all day long over their books, and the ancient bearded men who, like his mother, could sit for hours together doing nothing at all. He loved their tragic, wrinkled faces and their steadfast peace, so stark a contrast to the chatter and the wrangling and the harshness that filled his home.
There were constant rows. Harry upset the household for weeks after his father forbade him to pursue his prize-fighting ambitions. Jacob would not have a son of his making a public show of himself. To that disturbance was addedanother when Issy began to court, or was courted by, a girl who was thought too poor and base-born. If he was out a minute later than half-past nine Jacob would go out and find him at the corner of the street with the girl in his arms. Issy would be dragged away. Then he would sulk or shout that he was a man, and Jacob would tell him in a cold, furious voice that he could go if he liked, but, if he went, he must never show his face there again. For a time Issy would submit. Poor though the home was, he could not think of leaving it except to make another for himself. But there was no keeping the girl away, and he would be for ever peeping into the street to see if she were there, and if she were he could not keep away from her.
Leah, the eldest girl, had her courtships too. The match-makers were busy with her, and a number of men, young and old, were brought to view her. She was dressed up to look fine, and Jacob and Golda would sit together to inspect the suitors, and at last they chose a huge, ugly Russian Jew, named Moscowitsch—Abraham Moscowitsch, a timber-merchant, who had pulled himself up out of the East End and had a house at Hackney. He was a friend of Kuit’s and was willing to take the girl without a dowry. Leah hid herself away and wept. It was in vain that Golda, primed by Jacob, told her that she would be rich, and would have servants and carriages, and could buy at the great shops: she could not forget the Russian’s bristling hair and thick lips and coarse, splayed nostrils. The tears were of no avail; the marriage had been offered and accepted. The wedding was fixed, and nothing was spared to make it a social triumph. The bride was decked out in conventional English white, with a heavy veil and a bouquet: and very lovely she looked. Jacob wore his first frock-coat and a white linen collar, Golda had a dress madeof mauve cashmere, with a bodice heavily adorned with shining beads, and Mendel had a new sailor suit with a mortar-board cap. There were three carriages to drive the party the twenty yards to the synagogue. The wedding group was photographed, and a hall was taken for the feast and the dance in the evening. The wedding cost Jacob the savings of many years and more, but he grudged not a penny of it, because he had a rich son-in-law and wished it to be known. There were over fifty guests at the feast.
Within a week Leah came home again, pale, thin, and shrunken. Moscowitsch had been arrested. He had gone bankrupt and had done “something with his books.”
“Bankrupt!” said Jacob; “bankrupt!”
He stood in front of his weeping daughter and beat against the air with his clenched fists. She moaned and protested that she would never go back to him. Jacob shook her till her teeth chattered together.
“You dare talk like that! He is your husband. You are his wife. It is a misfortune. You should be with the lawyers to find out when you can see him. I am to lose everything because he is unfortunate! A dog will not turn from a man in his misery, and must a woman learn from a dog? You are a soft girl! Go, I say, and find out when you can see him. Was ever a man so crossed by Fate! Where I go, there luck takes wings.”
His violence shook Leah out of the dazed misery in which she had come home, having no other idea, no other place to which to go. Jacob was at first for making his daughter wait in her new home until her husband was returned to her. His simple imagination seized on the idea and visualized it. It seemed to him admirable, and Golda had hard work to shake it out of his head. As a piece of unnecessary cruelty he couldnot realize it, but when it was brought home to him that he would have to pay the rent of the house in Hackney, he yielded and allowed the girl to stay at home.
Moscowitsch was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and a gloom, such as not the darkest days of poverty had been able to create, descended upon the house. Jacob was ashamed and irritable. He insisted upon the most scrupulous observance of all the rites of his religion, and he forbade Mendel to paint. Painting had nothing to do with religion and he would have none of it. He trampled on Mendel’s friendship with Artie Beech. The Christian world of police and judges and the law had destroyed his happiness, and not the faintest smell of Christendom should cross his door. Friction between the father and his two sons was exasperated, and it seemed to Mendel that Hell was let loose. He was nearly of an age to leave school, and he dreamed by the hour of the freedom he would have when he went to work. He would go out early in the morning and come home late in the evening. He would stay in the streets and look at the shops and watch the girls go by. He would go one day out beyond London to see what the world was like there. He would find a place where there were pictures, and he would feast on them: for when he went to work he would paint no more, since painting would be shed with the miserable childhood that was so fast slipping away from him.
Yet a worse calamity was to happen. Once again the Christian world of police, law, and judges was to invade the home of the Kühlers, and this time it was Jacob himself who was taken. He was charged with receiving stolen goods. A detective-inspector and two constables invaded the house and took possession of an ormolu clock, a number of silver knives, and a brooch which Mr. Kuit had given to Golda.Five of Mr. Kuit’s friends had been arrested, but Mr. Kuit himself was not implicated. He paid for the defence of the prisoners and took charge of the Kühler family, transferred the business into Issy’s name, and advanced money to keep it going. He spared neither time nor trouble to try to establish Jacob’s innocence, but it looked almost as though some one else was taking an equal amount of trouble to prove his guilt, for every move of Mr. Kuit’s was countered, and Jacob himself was so bewildered and enraged that he could not give a coherent answer to the questions put to him. He babbled and raved of an enemy who had done this thing, of a rival who had plotted his ruin, but as he could not give a satisfactory account of the articles found in his possession, his passionate protestations and his fanatical belief in his own honesty were of no avail. From the dock in which he was placed with Mr. Kuit’s other friends he delivered a vehement harangue in broken English, not more than ten words of which were intelligible to the judge and jury. The judge was kindly, the jury somnolent. Jacob was the only member of the party with a clean record, and he received the light sentence of eighteen months; the rest had double that term and more. In the Sunday papers they were described as a dangerous gang, and their portraits were drawn like profiles on a coin by an artist whose business it was to make villains look villainous for the delectation of the sober millions who tasted the joys of wickedness only in print. Golda was staggered by the blank indifference of the world to her husband’s honesty. His word to her was law, but the judge and the newspapers swept it aside, and he was regarded as one with the wicked men whose crooked dealings had involved the innocent. This was the worst disaster that had ever broken upon her: husband and son-in-law both swept away from her, as itseemed now, in one moment. The sympathy she received from the neighbours touched her profoundly, and she accepted their view that the sudden abstraction of male relatives was a natural calamity, like sickness or fire. Thanks to Mr. Kuit the business would be kept together, and thanks to Abramovich she never lacked company. That faithful friend would come in in the evenings and go over the trial, every moment of which he had heard, and recount every word of Jacob’s speech, which to him was a piece of magnificent oratory. “Not a tear was left in my eyes,” he said. “Not a throb was left in my heart, and the judge was moved, for his face sank into his hands and I could see that he knew how unjust he must be.” And he spent many days ferreting out a villain to be the cause of it all, some inveterate, implacable enemy who had plotted the downfall of the most honest man in London. He fixed on a certain Mr. Rosenthal, who years ago had tried to sell them machines for the business when they had already bought all that were necessary. He was quite sure it was Mr. Rosenthal who had bribed the thieves to hold their tongues, when any one of them could have cleared Jacob in a moment. And Golda believed that it was Mr. Rosenthal and dreamed of unattainable acts of revenge.
Mendel used to listen to them talking, and their voices seemed to him to come from very far away. The upheaval had stunned him, had destroyed his volition and paralysed his dreams. He felt as though a tight band were fixed round his head. He had neither desire nor will. The world could do as it liked with him. If the world could suddenly invade his home and brand its head and lawgiver as thief, then the world was empty and foolish and it did not matter what happened. It amazed him that his brothers and sisters could go about as usual: that Harry could come homeand talk of prize-fighters and sit writing to girls, and that Issy could go out to meet his Rosa at the corner of the street. It was astonishing that his mother could still cook and they could still eat, and that every morning Harry could go down and open the door to let in the workpeople to clatter up the stairs. . . . And Harry disliked getting out of bed in the morning. In his father’s absence he ventured to apply his considerable ingenuity to the problem, and rigged up a wire from his bed to the knob of the front-door. Nor was this the only sign of the removal of the centre of authority from the family, for Issy actually brought his girl Rosa to the house and made his mother be pleasant to her. . . . Golda felt that her children were growing beyond her, and she thought it was time Issy was thinking of getting married, though not to Rosa, whose father was a poor cobbler and could give her no money.
At regular intervals. Golda swallowed down her dread of the busy streets and went to Pentonville, where through the bars of the visitors’-room Jacob received her report and gave his instructions. He decreed against Rosa, who accordingly was forbidden to enter the house again. He had orders for every one of his children except Mendel, as to whom Golda did not consult him. Deep in her inmost heart she was in revolt against her husband, for she had begun to see that he had carried pride to the point of folly, and all her hopes, all her dreams, all her ambitions were centred upon her darling boy. Her ambitions were not worldly. She knew nothing at all about the world, and did not believe three parts of what she heard of it. Only she longed for him to escape the bitterness and bareness that had been her portion. The boy was so beautiful and could be so gay and could dance so lightly, and would sometimes be so tempestuous and masterful. It would be a sin if he were to be cramped over a board orwere sent to work in a tailoring shop. She herself had a love of flowers and of moonlight and the stars shining through the smoky sky, and she would sometimes find herself being urged to the use of strange words, which would make Mendel raise his head and cock his ears as though he were listening to the very beat of her heart. To that no one in the world had ever listened, and her life seemed very full and worthy when Mendel in his childish fashion was awake to it. . . . Pentonville seemed to suit Jacob. He looked almost fat and said the cocoa was very good.
The time came for Mendel to leave school and Issy said he had better be taken into the workshop. Harry wanted him in the timber-yard in which he loafed away his days. Abramovich was for getting Mr. Jacobson to take him into his office, for Mr. Jacobson never failed to ask after the boy who painted the pictures. Now it so happened that Mendel had found a bookshop, outside which he had discovered a life of W. P. Frith, R.A. In daily visits over a period of three weeks he had read it from cover to cover, the story of a poor boy who had become an artist, rising to such fame that he had painted the portrait of the Queen. There it was in print, and must be true. Mr. Jacobson’s boy was only in a story, but here it was set down in a book, with reproductions of the artist’s wonderful pictures—“The Railway Station,” “Derby Day.” The book said they were wonderful. The book spoke with reverence and enthusiasm of pictures and the men who painted them.
With tremulous excitement he secretly produced his box of paints again, and squeezed out the colours on to the plate he used for a palette. He adored the colours and amused himself with painting smooth strips of blue, yellow, green, red, orange, grey, for the sheer delight of handling the delicious stuff. It was a new pleasure, the joyof colours in themselves without reference to any object, or any feeling inside himself except this simple thrilling delight. He could forget everything in it, for it was his first taste of childish glee. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever again so oppress and overwhelm him as distasteful and even pleasant things had done in the past. He would be an artist, a wonderful artist, like W. P. Frith, R.A.
So when he was called into the kitchen one night and they told him he was to go into Mr. Jacobson’s office, he looked as though their words had no meaning for him, and he said:—
“I want to be an artist.”
An artist? Nobody knew quite what that meant. Golda thought it meant painting pictures, but she could not imagine a man devoting all his time to it—a child’s pastime.
“He means the drawing!” said Abramovich. “I had a friend at home who used to paint the flowers on the cups.”
“I’m going to be an artist,” said Mendel.
“But you’ve got to make your money like everybody else,” replied Issy.
Mendel retorted with details of what he could remember of the career of his idol. Issy said that was aChristlicher kop.There weren’t such things as Jewish artists; whereon Harry threw in the word “Rubinstein.” Asked to explain what he meant, he did not know, but had just remembered the name.
Abramovich said he thought Rubinstein was a conductor at the Opera, and there were Jewish singers and actors.
“My father,” said Harry, “won’t hear of that. He won’t have a son of his making a public show of himself.”
Mendel by this time was white in the face, and his eyes were glaring out of his head. He knew that not one of them had understood his meaning,and he felt that Issy was bent on having his way with him. He was in despair at his helplessness, and at last, when he could endure no more, he flung himself down on the floor and howled. Issy lost his temper with him, picked him up, and carried him, kicking and biting, upstairs, and flung him on his bed.
The subject was dropped for a time, but Mendel refused to eat, or to sleep, or to leave the house. He was afraid that if he put his nose outside the door Abramovich would pounce on him and drag him off to Mr. Jacobson’s office.
However, the matter could not be postponed for long, because money was very scarce and the boy must be put into the way of providing for himself. Golda asked Abramovich to find out what an artist was and how much a week could be made at the trade. Abramovich came in one evening with a note-book full of facts and figures. He had read of a picture being sold for tens of thousands of pounds, and this had made a great impression on him. Mendel was called down from the room in which he had exiled himself.
“Well?” said Abramovich kindly. “So you want to be an artist? But how?”
“I don’t know. I shall paint pictures.”
“But who will feed you? Who will buy you paints, brushes?”
“I shall sell my pictures.”
“Where, then? How?”
“To the shops.”
“Where are the shops? Tell me of any shop near here, for I don’t know a single one.”
Again Mendel felt that they were too clever for him, and he was on the brink of another fit of despair when, fortunately for him, Mr. Macalister, a commercial traveller in furs, came in. When he was in London he made a point of calling on the Kühlers, whom he liked, much as he liked strong drink. He was a man of some attainments, astudent of Edinburgh, who had found the ordinary walks and the ordinary people of life too tame for his chaotic and vigorous temper, and he went from place to place collecting just such strange people as these Polacks, as he used to call them. He looked for passion in men and women, and accepted it gratefully and even greedily wherever he found it. . . . He had red hair and a complexion like a white-heart cherry, with little twinkling eyes as blue as forget-me-nots.
He kindled at once to the passion with which Mendel was bursting, stooped over Golda’s hand and kissed it—for he knew that was how foreigners greeted a lady—and then he sat heavily waiting for the situation to be explained to him. Mendel instinctively appealed to him. . . . Oh yes! he knew what an artist was, and some painters had made tidy fortunes, though they were not the best of them. There were Reynolds, and Lawrence, and Raeburn, and Landseer, and some young fellows at Glasgow, and Michael Angelo—a tidy lot, indeed. Never a Jew, that he had heard of.
“I told you so!” said Abramovich.
Golda showed Mr. Macalister the boy’s pictures, and he was genuinely impressed, especially by a picture of three oranges in a basket.
“It’s not,” he said, “that they make you want to eat them, as that they make you look at them as you look at oranges. I’ll look closer at every orange I see now. That’s talent. Yes. That’s talent. Aye.”
Mendel was so grateful to him that he forgot the others and began to point out to him how well the oranges were painted, with all their fleshiness and rotundity brought out. And very soon they were all laughing at him, and that made the meeting happier.
Mr. Macalister explained that in old days artists used to take boys into their studios, but that now there were Schools of Art where only very talentedpeople could survive. He certainly thought that Mendel ought to be given a chance, and if it were a question of money, he, poor though he was, would be only too glad to help. Golda would not hear of that, and Abramovich protested that, in an unhappy time like this, he regarded himself as the representative of his unfortunate friend.
The corner was turned. Feeling was now all with Mendel, and he went to bed singing in head and heart: “I’m an artist! I’m an artist! I’m an artist!”
So the ball was set rolling. Jacob, seen behind the bars, raised no objection. He had had time to think, and, to the extent of his capacity, availed himself of it. When he was told that his youngest son wanted to be an artist and wept at the suggestion of anything else, he thought: “Who am I to say ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’?” and he said “Yea.” “Let the boy have a little happiness while he may, for the Christians are very powerful and will take all that he cherishes from him.”
The question of ways and means was considered, and here Abe Moscowitsch took charge. His business had prospered during his enforced absence, and his bankruptcy had been very profitable. He was a decent man, and anxious to make amends to his young wife and her family for the trouble his adventurousness had brought on them. To please her he took a new house with bow-windows and a garage, and to please them he jumped at the opportunity of helping Mendel, and offered to pay his fees at a School of Art. When the boy heard this he ran to his brother-in-law’s office and, before all his workmen, flung his arms round his neck and embraced him.
“That’ll do. That’ll do,” said Moscowitsch. “Don’t forget us if you’re a rich man before I am.”
“I shall never leave home,” said Mendel. “I shall never marry. I shall live all my days with my mother, painting.”
There arose the difficulty that no one had ever heard of a School of Art. Mr. Macalister was deputed to look into the matter. He inquired, and was recommended to the Polytechnic as being cheap and good, and the Polytechnic was decided on.
Mr. Kuit came in at the tail of all this excitement, and added to it by saying that he was just off to America, first-class by the Cunard Line, for he was going to start in style, live in style, and come back in style. He was delighted to hear of the brilliant future opening up before Mendel, and told wonderful stories of famous pictures that had been stolen, cut out of their frames and taken away under the very noses of the owners. He was wonderfully overdressed, not loudly or vulgarly, but through his eagerness to be and to look first-class. He produced a pack of cards and showed how he could shuffle them to suit himself, and three times out of five, through the fineness of the touch, he could “spot” a card. He was a wonderful man. The Kühlers gaped at him, and Moscowitsch, in emulation, was led on to brag of his smartness in business, and how he had thrice burned down his timber-yard and made the insurance people pay up. Yet, though he warmed up as he boasted, he lacked the magic of Mr. Kuit and could not conceal the meanness of his deeds behind their glamour. He lumbered along like a great bear behind Mr. Kuit, and was vexed because he could not overtake him, and when the glittering little Jew, who seemed more magician than thief, said he would give Mendel a new suit of clothes for his entry into the world of art, Moscowitsch promised to provide a new pair of boots. Mr. Kuit countered with two new hats, Moscowitsch with underclothes. On they went in competition until Mendel was magnificently equipped, and at last Moscowitsch laid two new sovereigns on the table and said they were for the boy’s pocket-money.Not to be outdone, Mr. Kuit produced a five-pound note and gave it to Golda to be put into the Post Office Savings Bank.
In her inmost heart Golda was alarmed. For the first time she began to realize the vast powerful London with which she was surrounded. At home, in Austria, people stole because they were poor, because they were starving. She herself had often sent Harry and Issy out into the market with a sack and a spiked stick with which to pick up potatoes and cabbages and bread, but here the old simplicity was lacking. The swagger and the magnitude of Mr. Kuit’s operations and her son-in-law’s frauds alarmed her, and she felt that no good could come of it. They belonged to some power which moved too fast for her, and it was being invoked for Mendel, her youngest-born, her treasure. Truly it was a black day that took Jacob from her. Where he was, there was simplicity. Everything was kept in its place when he was in authority. Everything was kept down on the earth. There was the good smell of the earth in all his dealings, all his emotions. Never in him was the easy fantastic excitement of Kuit and Moscowitsch . . . They were mad. Surely they were mad. Their excitement infected everybody. Golda could feel it creeping in her veins like a poison. It came from the world to which these men belonged, the world of prison. That one word expressed it all for Golda. She had only been out into it to go to the prison, and to her that seemed to be the cold empty centre of it all. The bustle and glitter of the streets led to the prison, and she had always to fight to get back into her own life, where things were simple and definite—ugly, maybe—but clear and actual. . . . And now into that world of hectic excitement playing about the prison and about Mendel was to go, to be she knew not what, to learn to play with brushes and colours, to practise tricks whichseemed to her not essentially different from Mr. Kuit’s sleight with the cards. She was sure no good could come of it; but for the present the boy had his happiness, and to that she yielded.