My lord, will’t please you to fall to?Richard II.
My lord, will’t please you to fall to?Richard II.
My lord, will’t please you to fall to?Richard II.
Alimp, drab-coloured group was assembled in the drawing-room at Portland Place.
It was nearly half-past seven, and it only wanted the arrival of the Samuel Sachses—who came from the St. John’s Wood synagogue—for the whole party to descend into the dining-room, where the much-needed meal awaited them.
The Leunigers were there, of course, with the exception of Ernest and his mother, who had gone home; the Sachses; the Montague Cohens; Mrs. Kohnthal and Esther, whohad left her bed at the eleventh hour prompted by a desire for society; Judith; Mr. and Mrs. Quixano, their son Jack, and two young sisters.
Bertie Lee-Harrison, who had come in with Reuben, pale, exhausted, but prepared to be impressed by every thing and every one he saw, confided to his friend that the twenty-four hours’ fast had been the severest ordeal he had as yet undergone in the service of religion—his experiences in Asia Minor not excepted.
Leo, whose mood had changed, overheard this confidence with an irresistible twitching of the lips. He was sitting on the big sofa with his two little brothers, making jokes below his breath to their immense delight; while Rose, at the other end of the same piece of furniture, was maintaining an animated conversation with her cousin Jack.
Jack Quixano was a spruce, dapper, politeyoung man of some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. Perhaps he was a little too spruce, a little too dapper, a little too anxious to put himselfen évidenceby his assiduity in picking up handkerchiefs and opening doors. But few of his family noticed these defects, least of all Rose, on whom he was beginning to cast aspiring eyes, and whom he closely resembled in personal appearance.
The door opened at last, to every one’s relief, to admit the expected guests: a party of six—father, mother, grown-up son and daughter, a little girl and a little boy.
Samuel Sachs was the unsuccessful member of his family.
From the beginning, the atmosphere of the Stock Exchange had proved too strong for his not very strong brains, and his career had been inaugurated by a series of gambling debts.
His father paid his debts and forbadehim the office, and he had gone his own way for many years, settling down ultimately in a humble way of business as a lithographer.
He had married a Polish Jewess with some money of her own, and in these latter days old Solomon made him an allowance, so there was enough and to spare in the home in Maida Vale where he and his family were established.
They came now into the crowded drawing-room with a curious mixture of deference and self-assertion.
To their eminently provincial minds, the Bayswater Sachses, the Leunigers and the Kohnthals were very great people indeed, and they derived no little prestige in Maida Vale from their connection with so distinguished a family.
But as regarded their occasional admittance into the charmed circle, that was a privilege which, though they would on no accounthave foregone it, was certainly not without its drawbacks.
It was splendid, but it was not comfortable.
Mrs. Sachs was a stout, dark-haired matron, who entirely overshadowed her shambling, neutral-tinted husband. Netta, the eldest daughter, was a black-eyed, richly coloured, bouncing maiden of two or three-and-twenty, wearing a white dress, with elbow sleeves, cut open a little at the neck, and a great deal of silver jewellery.
Alec, her brother, was a short, fair, exuberant-looking youth, with a complexion both glossy and florid, in whom the Sachses fitness for survival had re-asserted itself. He practised painless dentistry with great success in the heart of Maida Vale, and was writing a manual—destined to pass through several editions—onDiseases of the Teeth and Gums.
Adèle and Bernard (pronounced Adale and Bernàrd), the two children, strutted in behind the others, in all the glory of white cambric and black velveteen, respectively, much impressed by the situation, but no less on the defensive than the elder members of their family.
There was languid greeting all round; languor, under the circumstances, was excusable; and then the whole party poured down into the dining-room, where an abundant meal was set out.
Old Solomon prided himself on his hospitality, and the great table, which shone with snowy linen, gleaming china, and glittering silver, groaned, as the phrase goes, with good things to eat.
There were golden-brown blocks of cold fried fish in heavy silver dishes; rosy piles of smoked salmon; saffron-tinted masses of stewed fish; long twisted loaves coveredwith seeds; innumerable little plates of olives, pickled herrings, and pickled cucumbers; and the quick eyes of Lionel and Sidney had lighted at once on the many coloured surfaces of the almond puddings, which awaited the second course on the sideboard.
Aunt Rebecca, faint and yellow, behind a the silver urns, dispensed tea and coffee with rapid hand; while old Solomon, none the worse for his rigid fast, wielded the fish slice at the other end of the table.
Bertie, respectful, wondering, interested through all his hunger, was seated between Reuben and Mrs. Kohnthal.
Adelaide had chosen her seat as far as possible from the Samuel Sachses, whose presence was an offence to her. They, on their part, regarded her with a mixture of respect and dislike. She never gave them more than two fingers in her grandfather’s house, and ignored them altogether when she met them anywhere else. This conduct impressed them by its magnificence, and they followed the ups and downs of her career, as far as they were able, with a passionate interest that had in it something of the pride of possession.
Nor was Adelaide above taking an interest in the affairs of her humbler relatives behind their backs. I cannot help wishing that they had known this; it would have been to them the source of so much innocent gratification.
Reuben, who had his cousin Netta on the other side of him, and whose vanity was a far subtler, more complicated affair than his sister’s, was making himself agreeable with his accustomed urbanity, beneath which the delighted maiden was unable to detect a lurking irony.
The humours of the Samuel Sachses, theirappearance, gestures, their excruciating method of pronouncing the English language, the hundred and one tribal peculiarities which clung to them, had long served their cousins as a favourite family joke into which it would have been difficult for the most observant of outsiders to enter.
They were indeed, as Reuben had said, a remarkable survival.
Born and bred in the very heart of nineteenth century London, belonging to an age and a city which has seen the throwing down of so many barriers, the levelling of so many distinctions of class, of caste, of race, of opinion, they had managed to retain the tribal characteristics, to live within the tribal pale to an extent which spoke worlds for the national conservatism.
They had been educated at Jewish schools, fed on Jewish food, brought up on Jewish traditions and Jewish prejudice.
Their friends, with few exceptions, were of their own race, the making of acquaintance outside the tribal barrier being sternly discouraged by the authorities. Mrs. Samuel Sachs indeed had been heard more than once to observe pleasantly that she would sooner see her daughters lying dead before her than married to Christians.
Netta tossed her head defiantly at these remarks, but contented herself with sowing her little crop of wild oats on the staircases of Bayswater and Maida Vale, where she “sat out” by the hour with the very indifferent specimens of Englishmen who frequented the dances in her set.
Generally speaking, the race instincts of Rebecca of York are strong, and she is less apt to give her heart to Ivanhoe, the Saxon knight, than might be imagined.
Bernard Sachs, a very smug-looking little boy, with inordinately thick lips and a disagreeable nasal twang, had been placed between the two young Leunigers, who regarded him with a mixture of disgust and amusement, which they were at small pains to conceal.
“Did you fast all day?” he said, by way of opening the conversation. “I did. I wasbar-mitz-vahlast month. Is either of you fellowsbar-mitz-vah?”
“I am thirteen, if that’s what you mean,” said Lionel, with his most man of-the-world air. He considered the introduction of the popular tribal phrases very bad form indeed.
“I suppose you were inshoolall day?” went on Bernard unabashed, and much on his dignity.
“I was only in synagogue in the morning,” answered Lionel. Then he kicked Sidney violently under the table, and the two little brothers went off into aseries of chuckles; while Bernard, with a vague sense of being insulted, turned his attention to his fried salmon and Dutch herring.
Meanwhile Alec, who had been rather subdued at the beginning of the evening, was regaining his native confidence as the meal proceeded.
He happened to be sitting opposite Bertie, and having elicited from his neighbour, Mrs. Quixano, the explanation of an alien presence among them on such an occasion, had fixed his attention with great frankness on the stranger.
Very soon he was leaning across the table, and with much use of his fat red hands, and many liftings of his round shoulders, was expatiating to the astonished Bertie on the beauties and advantages of the faith which he had just embraced.
“Mr. Harrison,” he cried at last—hepreferred to skip the difficulties of the double-barrelled name—“Mr. Harrison, take my word for it, it is the finest religion under the sun. Those who have left it for reasons of their own have always come back in the end. They’re bound to, they’re bound to!” (He pronounced the word “bound” with an indescribable twang.) “Look at Lord Beaconsfield”—he pointed with his short forefinger—“everyone knows he died with theshemangon his lips!”
There was a sudden stifled explosion of laughter from Leo’s quarter of the table; and Judith glanced across rather anxiously at Reuben, on whose polite, impassive face she at once detected a look of annoyance.
She was sitting next to her father in the close-fitting white gown which displayed to advantage the charming lines of her arms and shoulders.
Now and then she caught the glance of Mr. Lee-Harrison, who was far too well-bred to obtrude his admiration by staring, fixed momentarily on her face.
The hunger and weariness natural, under the circumstances, to her youth and health had in no way marred the perfect freshness of her appearance; and there was a gentle kindliness in her manner to her father which added a charm, not always present, to her beauty.
Perhaps she felt instinctively, what Quixano himself was far too much in the clouds to notice, that no one made much account of him, that it behoved her to take him under her protection. He was one of this world’s failures; and the Jewish people, so eager to crown success in any form, so determined in laying claim to the successful among their number, have scant love for those unfortunates who have dropped behind in the race.
The meal came to an end at last, and there was a pushing back of chairs on the part of the men.
Bertie, about to rise, felt himself held down by main force; Reuben was gripping him hard by the wrist with one hand, and with the other was engaged in fishing out his hat from under the table; while Netta, leaning across her cousin, explained with her most fascinating smile that grandpa was going tobench.
Bertie, at a sign from Reuben, rose to the situation, and stooping for his own hat with alacrity, drew it from its place of concealment and placed it on his head. By this time all the men had unearthed and assumed their head-gear, with the exception of Samuel Sachs, whose hat by some mischance was not forthcoming; however, to avoid delay, he covered his head in all gravity with his table-napkin.
Bertie glanced round him, from one face to another, puzzled and inquiring.
It seemed to him a solemn moment, this gathering together of kinsfolk after the long day of prayer, of expiation; this offering up of thanksgiving; this performance of the ancient rites in the land of exile.
He could not understand the spirit of indifference, of levity even, which appeared to prevail.
A finer historic sense, other motives apart, should, it seemed, have prevented so obvious a display of the contempt which familiarity had bred.
Alec had put his hat on rakishly askew, and was winking across to him re-assuringly, as though to intimate that the whole thing was not to be taken seriously.
Rose, led on by Jack Quixano, giggled hysterically behind her pocket-handkerchief.
Leo and Esther took on airs of aggressive boredom. Judith, lifting her eyes, met Reuben’s in a smile, and even Montague Cohen permitted himself to yawn.
Only old Solomon at the head of the table, mumbling and droning out the long grace in his corrupt Hebrew—his great face impenetrably grave—appeared to take any interest in the proceeding, with perhaps the exception of his son Samuel, who joined in now and then from beneath the drooping shelter of his table-napkin.
Bertie stared and Bertie wondered. Needless to state, he was completely out of touch with these people whose faith his search for the true religion had led him, for the time being, to embrace.
Grace over, the women went up stairs, the men, with the exception of old Solomon, remaining behind to smoke.
Bertie, who was thoroughly tired out, soon rose to go.
“I will make your excuses up stairs,” said Reuben.
But the polite little man preferred to go to the drawing-room and perform his farewells in person.
“Thanks so much,” he said in the hall, where Leo and Reuben were speeding him.
“I hope you have been edified—that’s all.” Reuben laughed.
“I am deeply interested in the Jewish character,” answered Bertie; “the strongly marked contrasts; the underlying resemblances; the elaborate differentiations from a fundamental type—!”
“Ah, yes,” broke in Reuben, secretly irritated, his tribal sensitiveness a little hurt, “you will find among us all sorts and conditions of men.”
“Except perhaps Don Quixote, or even King Cophetua,” added Leo.
“King Cophetua,” repeated Reuben in a slow, reflective tone, as the door closed on Mr. Lee-Harrison; “King Cophetua had an assured position. It isn’t every one that can afford to marry beggar-maids.”
Never by passion quite possessed,And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway.Matthew Arnold.
Never by passion quite possessed,And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway.Matthew Arnold.
Never by passion quite possessed,And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway.Matthew Arnold.
Theparty was never prolonged to a late hour on these occasions, and by ten o’clock there was no one left in the drawing-room in Portland Place except Mrs. Sachs, Mr. Leuniger, Mrs. Kohnthal and the young people in their respective trains.
The elders had got up a game of whist for the amusement of old Solomon, the termination of which their juniors awaited in conclave at the other end of the room.
Lionel and Sidney meanwhile, sleepyand overfed, quarrelled in a corner over the possession of a bound volume of theGraphic.
“Judith,” said Reuben, who had taken a seat opposite her, “do you know that you have made a conquest?”
“Is that such an unheard-of occurrence?”
Reuben laughed gently, and Rose cried:
“It is Mr. Lee-Harrison! I know it from the way he looked at supper.”
“Yes, it is Bertie.” Reuben looked straight in Judith’s eyes. “He says you exactly fulfil his idea of Queen Esther.”
“Ah,” cried Esther Kohnthal, “I have always had a theory abouther. When she was kneeling at the feet of that detestable Ahasuerus, she was thinking all the time of some young Jew whom she mashed, and who mashed her, and whom she renounced for the sake of her people!”
A momentary silence fell among them, then Reuben, looking down, said slowly: “Or perhaps she preferred the splendours of the royal position even to the attractions of that youth whom you suppose her to—er—have mashed.”
He was not fond of Esther at the best of times; now he glanced at her under his eyelids with an expression of unmistakable dislike.
“I wonder,” cried Rose, throwing herself into the breach, “what Mr. Lee-Harrison thought of it all.”
“I think,” said Leo, “that he was shocked at finding us so little like the people inDaniel Deronda.”
“Did he expect,” cried Esther, “to see our boxes in the hall, ready packed and labelledPalestine?”
“I have always been touched,” said Leo, “at the immense good faith with whichGeorge Eliot carried out that elaborate misconception of hers.”
“Now Leo is going to begin,” cried Rose; “he never has a good word for his people. He is always running them down.”
“Horrid bad form,” said Reuben; “besides being altogether a mistake.”
“Oh, I have nothing to say against us at all,” answered Leo ironically, “except that we are materialists to our fingers’ ends. That we have outlived, from the nature of things, such ideals as we ever had.”
“Idealists don’t grow on every bush,” answered Reuben, “and I think we have our fair share of them. This is a materialistic age, a materialistic country.”
“And ours the religion of materialism. The corn and the wine and the oil; the multiplication of the seed; the conquestof the hostile tribes—these have always had more attraction for us than the harp and crown of a spiritualized existence.”
“It is no good to pretend,” answered Reuben in his reasonable, pacific way, “that our religion remains a vital force among the cultivated and thoughtful Jews of to-day. Of course it has been modified, as we ourselves have been modified, by the influence of western thought and western morality. And belief, among thinking people of all races, has become, as you know perfectly, a matter of personal idiosyncrasy.”
“That does not alter my position,” said Leo, “as to the character of the national religion and the significance of the fact. Ah, look at us,” he cried with sudden passion, “where else do you see such eagerness to take advantage; such sickening, hideous greed; such cruel, remorselessstriving for power and importance; such ever-active, ever-hungry vanity, that must be fed at any cost? Steeped to the lips in sordidness, as we have all been from the cradle, how is it possible that any one among us, by any effort of his own, can wipe off from his soul the hereditary stain?”
“My dear boy,” said Reuben, touched by the personal note which sounded at the close of poor Leo’s heroics, and speaking with sudden earnestness, “you put things in too lurid a light. We have our faults; you seem to forget what our virtues are. Have you forgotten for how long, and at what a cruel disadvantage, the Jewish people has gone its way, until at last it has shamed the nations into respect? Our self-restraint, our self-respect, our industry, our power of endurance, our love of race, home and kindred, and our regard for their ties—arenone of these things to be set down to our account?”
“Oh, our instincts of self-preservation are remarkably strong; I grant you that.”
Leo tossed back his head with its longish hair as he spoke, and Reuben went on:
“And where would you find a truer hospitality, a more generous charity than among us?”
“A charity whose right hand is so remarkably well posted up in the doings of its left!”
“Oh, come, that’s a libel—and not even true.”
“There is one good thing,” cried Leo, taking a fresh start, “and that is the inevitability—at least as regards us English Jews—of our disintegration; of our absorption by the people of the country. That is the price we are bound to pay for restored freedom and consideration. The Community will grow more and more to consist of mediocrities, and worse, as the general world claims our choicer specimens for its own. We may continue to exist as a separate clan, reinforced from below by German and Polish Jews for some time to come: but absorption complete, inevitable—that is only a matter of time. You and I sitting here, self-conscious, discussing our own race-attributes, race-position—are we not as sure a token of what is to come as anything well could be?”
“Yours is a sweeping theory,” said Reuben; “and at present, I don’t feel inclined to go into the rights and wrongs of it; still less to deny its soundness. I can only say that, should I live to see it borne out, I should be very sorry. It may be a weakness on my part, but I am exceedingly fond of my people. If we are to die as a race, we shall die harder thanyou think. The tide will ebb in the intervals of flowing. That strange, strong instinct which has held us so long together is not a thing easily eradicated. It will come into play when it is least expected. Jew will gravitate to Jew, though each may call himself by another name. If prejudice died, if difference of opinion died, if all the world, metaphorically speaking, thought one thought and spoke one language, there would still remain those unspeakable mysteries, affinity and—love.”
Reuben’s voice sounded curiously moved, and in his eyes, as he spoke, glowed a dreamy flame, as of some deep and tender emotion.
Judith, leaning forward with parted lips, lifted her shining eyes to his face in a long, unconscious gaze. Reuben with his sword in his hand, fighting the battle for his people, seemed to her a figure noble and heroic beyond speech.
In her own breast was kindled the flame of a great emotion; she felt the love of her race grow stronger at every word.
Reuben, conscious to the finger-tips of Judith’s presence, of her gaze, which he did not return, was stirred, on his part, with a new enthusiasm.
He praised her in the race, and the race in her; and this was conveyed in some subtle manner to her consciousness.
Thus they acted and reacted on one another, deceiving and deceived, with that strange, unconscious hypocrisy of lovers.
. . . .
The game of whist had come to an end, and every one rose, preparatory to departure.
“Good-night, uncle Solomon,” said Reuben’s mother. She, too, was a Sachs, who had married her cousin.
“Come along, mamma,” cried Esther yawning, “I am dead beat. The domestichabits of the cobra are not adapted to the human constitution, that is clear.”
Reuben was standing in the hall with his mother, as Rose and Judith came down stairs in their outdoor clothes.
“Your carriage is at the door,” said Israel Leuniger to Mrs. Sachs as he lit his cigar.
Mrs. Sachs turned to her son:
“Aren’t you coming, Reuben?”
“No, but I do not expect to be late.” He answered gently and seriously, stooping down and folding a shawl about her shoulders as he spoke.
Mrs. Sachs raised her wide, sallow, wrinkled face to her son’s, looked at him a moment, then, with a sudden impulse of tenderness, lifted her hand and stroked back the hair from his forehead.
Ah, what had come to Judith, standing in a corner of the hall watching the little scene?
Ah, what did it mean, what was it, this beating and throbbing of all her pulses, this strange, choked feeling in her throat, this mist that swam before her eyesight?
The dining-room door, near which she stood, was ajar; moved by the blind impulse of her terror, she pushed it open; and trembling, ashamed, not daring to analyse her own emotions, she sought the shelter of the darkness.
. . . .
While Judith was being driven to Kensington Palace Gardens, lying back pale and tired in a corner of the carriage, Reuben was sauntering towards Piccadilly with a cigar in his mouth.
For the moment, his mind dwelt on the fact that he had not been able to say good-night to Judith.
“Where did she make off to?” he asked himself persistently.
He was strangely irritated and baffled by the little accident.
As he went slowly down Regent Street, which was full of light and of people returning from the theatres, the thought of Judith took more and more possession of him, till his pulses beat and his senses swam.
Ah, why not, why not?
Children on his hearth with Judith’s eyes, and Judith there herself amongst them: Judith, calm, dignified, stately, yet a creature so gentle withal, so sweet, so teachable!
He looked again and again at this picture of his fancy, fascinated, alarmed at his own fascination.
Whatever happened, he would never be a poor man. There was the money which would come to him at his grandfather’s death, and at his mother’s: no inconsiderable sums. There was his own little income, besides what his practice brought him.
But it was not altogether a question of money. He had no wish to fetter himself at this early stage of his career; his ambition was boundless; and the possibilities of the future looked almost boundless too.
He had an immense idea of his own market value; an instinctive aversion to making a bad bargain.
From his cradle he had imbibed the creed that it is noble and desirable to have everything better than your neighbour; from the first had been impressed on him the sacred duty of doing the very best for yourself.
Yes, he was in love; cruelly, inconveniently, most unfortunately in love. But ten years hence, when he would still be a young man, the fever would certainly have abated, would be a dream of the past, while his ambition he had no doubt would be as lusty as ever.
Thus he swayed from side to side,balancing this way and that; pitying himself and Judith as the victims of fate; full of tenderness, of sentiment for his own thwarted desires.
He believed himself to hesitate, to waver; but at the bottom of Reuben’s heart there was that which never wavered.
He put the question by at last, wearied with the conflict, and gave himself up to pleasant dreams.
He thought of the look in Judith’s eyes, of the vibration in her voice when she spoke to him.
“Ah, she does not know it herself!”
Triumph, joy, compunction, an overwhelming tenderness, set his pulses beating, his whole being aglow.
It was late when, tired and haggard, he reached his home and let himself in with the key.
His mother came out on the landing with a candle.
She did not present a charming spectacleen déshabille, her large, partially bald head deprived of the sheltering, softening cap, her withered neck exposed, the lines of her figure revealed by a dingy old dressing-gown.
She gave an exclamation as she saw him; the wide, yellow expanse of her face, with its unwholesome yet undying air, lighted up by the twinkling diamonds on either side of it, looked agitated and alarmed.
“My dear boy, thank God it is you! I have been dreaming about you—a terrible dream.”
Dusty purlieus of the law.Tennyson.
Dusty purlieus of the law.Tennyson.
Dusty purlieus of the law.Tennyson.
Leopold Leunigercame slouching down Chancery Lane, his hat at the back of his head, a woe-begone air on his expressive face, dejection written in his graceless, characteristic walk, and in the droop of his picturesque head, which was, it must be owned, a little too large for his small, slight figure. He turned up under the archway leading to Lincoln’s Inn, and made his way to New Square, where Reuben’s chambers were situated.
Reuben, the clerk told him, was in court,but was expected every minute, and Leo passed into the inner room, which was his cousin’s private sanctum. It was two or three days after the Day of Atonement, and in less than a week he would be back in Cambridge.
He paced restlessly to and fro in the little dingy room with its professional litter of books and papers, pausing now and then to look out of window, or to examine the mass of cards, photographs, notes and tickets which adorned the mantelpiece.
Leo was by no means free from the tribal foible of inquisitiveness.
It was not long before the door burst open, and Reuben rushed in, in his wig and gown. The former decoration imparted a curious air of sageness to his keen face, and brought out more strongly its peculiarities of colour: the clear, dark pallor of the skin, the red lights in the eyes and moustache.
“Hullo!” said Leo, still standing by the mantelpiece, his hat tilted back at a very acute angle, his restless fingers busy with the cards on the mantelpiece, “a nice gay time you appear to be having, old man: Jewish Board of Guardians, committee meeting; Anglo-Jewish Association, committee meeting; Bell Lane Free Schools, committee meeting—shall I go on?”
Reuben laughed.
“You see, it consolidates one’s position both ways to stand well with the Community; and I am a very good Jew at heart, as I have often told you. But if you continue your investigations among my list of engagements you will find a good many meetings of all sorts, which are not communal; not to speak of first nights at the Terpischore and the Thalian.”
Leo, abandoning the subject, flung himself into a chair and said: “Ah, by the by, how is Ronaldson?”
“Much the same as ever. It may be a long business. The doctors have left off issuing bulletins.”
Reuben took the chair opposite his cousin, then said shortly:
“You have come to tell me something.”
“Yes. I have been having it out with my governor.”
“Ah?” interrogatively.
“I told him,” went on Leo, leaning forward and speaking with some excitement, “that I hadn’t the faintest idea of going on the Stock Exchange, or even of reading for the bar; that my plan was this: to work hard for my degree, and then stay on, on chance of a fellowship. Every one up there seems to think the matter lies virtually in my own hands.”
“What did my uncle say to that?”
“Oh, he was furious; wouldn’t listen to reason for a moment. I think”—with a boyish, bitter laugh—“that he rather confounds a fellow of Trinity with the assistant-master at a Jewish boarding-school. The word ‘usher’ figured very largely in his arguments.”
“I think,” said Reuben slowly, “that you are making a mistake.”
“Ah,” cried Leo, flinging out his hand, “you don’t understand. I can’t live—I can’t breathe in this atmosphere; I should choke. Up there, somehow, it is freer, purer; life is simpler, nobler.”
Reuben looked down: “I quite agree with you on that point. All the same, you were never cut out for a University don. Do you want me to tell you that you are a musician?”
Leo blushed like a girl, and his face quivered. He did not altogether approveof Reuben, but Reuben’s approval was very precious to him.
Moreover he greatly respected his cousin’s intelligent appreciation of music.
“Do you think so?” he cried. “That’s what Norwood says. But there is plenty of opportunity for cultivating music; we have Silver up there, remember. He is immensely kind.”
“You might talk it over with Silver. But think it well over and do nothing rash. There is plenty of time between now and taking your degree.”
He rose and proceeded to take off his wig and gown.
“I don’t know that my advice is worth much,” he said, “but I should say a year or two in Germany—Leipsic, Berlin, Vienna—and if by then you feel justified in setting your face against the substantial attractions of Capel Court, nodoubt your governor can be brought round.”
“You will have to put it to him, Reuben. He believes in no one as he does in you.”
“Very handsome of him. But doubtless he will welcome the idea after the usher scheme.”
“You will have to paint the splendours of a musical success,” cried Leo, his spirits rising, his white teeth flashing as he smiled. “You must employ rather crude colours, and go in for obvious effects—such as the Prince of Wales, the Lord Mayor, and the Archbishop of Canterbury seated in the front row of the stalls at St. James’s Hall.”
Reuben laughed as he put on his well brushed hat before the glass.
“I will impress upon him how fashionable is the pursuit of the arts in these democratic days.” He added slowly, looking furtivelyat the lad: “And shall I tell him that one of these days you will marry very well indeed?”
Leo rose hastily, jarred discomposed.
“Aren’t you coming to lunch, Reuben?”
“Yes, I am ready.” He smiled to himself, and the two young men passed out together into the paved court-yard of the old inn.
They made their way up Chancery Lane into Holborn. Leo hated London almost as vehemently as his cousin loved it. It was the place, he said, which had succeeded better than any other in reducing life to a huge competitive examination. Its busy, characteristic streets, which Reuben regarded with an interest both passionate and affectionate, filled him with a dreary sensation of disgust and depression.
As they sat down to lunch at the First Avenue Hotel, Lord Norwood came intothe dining-room. He was a tall, fair, aristocratic-looking young man, with a refined and thoughtful face, which, as he advanced towards his friend, broke into a peculiarly charming smile.
Leo exclaimed with impetuosity: “Oh, there’s Norwood!” But as the latter approached he stiffened into self-consciousness; somehow, he did not welcome the juxtaposition of his cousin and his friend. Acting on a sudden impulse he rose and met the latter half-way, and the two young men stood talking together in the middle of the room.
Reuben, after a moment’s hesitation, rose also and joined them. He greeted Lord Norwood, whom he had met once or twice before, with a little emphasis of deference, which was not lost on poor Leo, who hated himself at the same time for noticing it. Lord Norwood returnedReuben’s greeting with markedhauteur; that cousin of Leuniger’s was a snob, was not a person to be encouraged. In the young nobleman’s delicate, fastidious, but exceedinglybornémind there was no mercy for such as he.
Reuben, though he showed no signs of it, was keenly alive to the fact that he had been snubbed; was alive no less keenly to the many points in favour of the offender.
The Norwoods were people whom it hurt the subtler part of his vanity not to stand well with.
They were not rich, not “smart,” not politically important; but in their own fashion they were people of the very best sort, true aristocrats, such as few remain to us in these degenerate days.
For generations they had borne the reputation of high personal character and of scholarly attainment. They were, in the truesense of the word, exclusive; and their pride was of that nature which, as the poet has it, asserts an inward honour by denying outward show.
The friendship existing between Lord Norwood and Leo was founded on mutual admiration.
The Jew’s many-sided talent, his brilliant scholarship, his mental quickness and versatility, above all, his musical genius, had fairly dazzled the scholarly young Englishman, who loved art, but had not a drop of artist’s blood in his veins.
Leo, on his part, had fallen down before the other’s refinement of mind and soul and body, and before the delicate strength of his character.
It was a strange friendship perhaps, but one which had stood, and was destined long to stand, the test of time.
Meanwhile Reuben, who knew that it ishalf the battle not to know when you are vanquished, quietly invited Lord Norwood to join them at table.
He pleaded, coldly, an appointment with a friend, and after a few words with Leo withdrew to a further apartment.
Leo had taken in the slight, brief, yet significant episode in all its bearings, hating himself meanwhile for his own shrewdness, which he considered a mark of latent meanness.
Reuben returned thoughtfully, if quite composedly, to the discussion of his roast pheasant and potato chips.
His method of wiping out a snub was the grandly simple one of making a conquest of the snubber. Persons less completely equipped for the battle of life have been known to prefer certain defeat to the chances of such a victory.
But Reuben was possessed of a bottomlessfund of silent energy, of quiet resistance and persistence, which had stood him ere now in good stead under like circumstances.
He appraised Lord Norwood very justly; recognized instinctively the charms of mind and manner which had cast such glamour over him in his cousin’s eyes; recognized also his limitations, with an irritated consciousness that he, Reuben, was being judged at a far less open-minded tribunal. In such cases, it is always the more intelligent person who is at a disadvantage—he appreciates, and is not appreciated.
I have no intention of following out Reuben’s relations with Lord Norwood, throughout which, it may be added, he had little to gain, even in the matter of social prestige, for he numbered people far more important among his acquaintance. But it was not long before an invitation to Norwood Towers was given and accepted. By one atleast of the people concerned however, the circumstances which had marked the earlier stages of their acquaintance were never forgotten.
. . . .
A few days later saw Leo back at Trinity with his lexicon, his violin, and the friend of his heart. Here he alternately worked furiously and gave himself up to spells of complete idleness; to sauntering, sociable days spent in cheerful, excited discussion of the vexed problems of the universe, or long days of moody solitude. At these latter times he pondered deeply on the unsatisfactoriness of life in general, and of his own life in particular, and underwent a good many uncomfortable sensations which he ascribed to a hopeless passion for his friend’s sister.
Lady Geraldine Sydenham was a gentle, kindly, cultivated young woman, who had not the faintest idea of having inspired any onewith hopeless passion, least of all young Leuniger.
She was two or three years older than Leo—a thin, pale person, with faint colouring, a rather receding chin, and slightly prominent teeth.
She dressed dowdily, and even Leo did not credit her with being pretty. Indeed he took a fanciful pleasure in dwelling on the fact that she was plain, and in quoting to himself the verse from Browning’sToo Late: