“I have something serious to say to you, my daughter.”
The speaker was Israel Hart. The place, his study, a commodious
apartment overlooking the front drive, of which the most striking
features were a great library table and a solid iron safe. The time was
a mid-autumn Sunday afternoon. A cheerful fire showed up the warmth of a
Turkey carpet, and cast flickering gleams upon the varnished surfaces of
the three oil pictures on the walls. The money-lender was sitting at the
table, with some correspondence in front of him, when he greeted Minna,
who had come in obedience to a summons, with this announcement. He was
a man of over sixty, stout and loose-featured, with grizzling hair and
beard. His race was clearly written on his countenance, which bore, too,
that stamp of his calling which can best be suggested negatively as an
absence of spirituality. The absorbing pursuit of money hardens the eyes
and leaves the lower part of the face undetermined. One meets a thousand
such, morning and evening, in suburban trains. Yet the face of
Israel Hart was not without marks of integrity and even of a certain
benevolence.
Minna crossed the room slowly to the fireplace and rested one small shoe
on the fender.
“Yes, papa?”
“I have here a formal letter from my good friend, Simeon Goldberg, which
I wish you to read.”
“About marrying me?”
“Yes. It deals exclusively with the subject.”
“What is the use of my reading the letter?” she said, without shifting
her attitude, and ignoring the letter which her father had wheeled round
in his chair in order to offer her. “I can guess what’s in it. Oh, dear!
Why does he worry?”
“I desire you to read it, Minna,” said her father. She moved, took it
from him, read it nonchalantly, with a contemptuous smile, and threw it,
with a woman’s charming awkwardness in throwing, upon the table.
“I might be shares in a new company he was asking you for. Do I look
like a scrip or a bond? I won’t have him, of course, but when you write
to him, tell him that that’s not the way to win a woman with blood in
her veins.”
“You’re a foolish girl, Minna. If you have any kind of regard for my
wishes you will give this matter further consideration. Where will you,
Minna Hart, find a better match?”
“Oh, in a penny box!” she cried, flippantly.
“At least it would have some latent fire at the end of it!”
“You will regret it,” said her father.
“It will be something to do, then. Tell him I’ll try. It may soothe his
vanity.”
“Come here, my daughter,” said the old man.
She moved obediently to his side and put her hand in his that was held
open.
“You and I have managed to drift quite apart, but I am your father and
must think for you. What are you going to do, when I am gone, if you
don’t get some good man to take care of you?”
She looked at him rather pityingly. It was such a futile question. Her
undeveloped sympathies saw only its ludicrous, not its pathetic side.
“Oh, I shall marry some day,” she said, lightly. “You need have no fear
of that.”
“Ay. But whom?”
She shrugged her shoulders and tapped her toe on the carpet with a shade
of irritation. It was ridiculous to stand there like a tableau vivant,
holding her father’s hand.
“Think of Simeon Goldberg, a good friend, a man not so careless in
observance of the Law as we--but still of the Reformed faith--and
worth”--his voice grew unconsciously reverential--“five hundred thousand
pounds, if he’s worth a penny.”
The girl’s eyes flashed for a second, then grew again contemptuous.
“It’s an absolute impossibility. You must let this drop, papa. We don’t
live in the Middle Ages when you could put me on bread and water and
lock me up until I consented; or in patriarchal times, when you could
curse me for disobeying you--so why discuss the matter further? I shall
marry in my own good time. I am not the sort that old maids are made
of.”
He released her hand and turned towards the table. “Very well,” he said,
taking up a pen, “I will not force you. But remember that your choice
among our people is limited.”
“I might choose outside them,” she said, pausing in her lazy walk
towards the door.
Israel Hart started round in the chair and bent his brows upon her. She
tried saucily to meet his eyes, but hers sank abashed.
“My daughter,” he said, sternly. “Let me never hear you say such a thing
again, even in jest. Remember you are a Jewess.”
She stood for a moment or two twitching her fingers, longing to retort.
But she did not dare. It was only when she found herself outside his
door that she gave vent to the passionate outburst:
“Would to God the accursed race had perished with the other ten tribes!”
She went upstairs to her bedroom with anger and foreboding at her
heart, and put on hat and jacket, casting mere mechanical glances at the
mirror, for the sake of adjustment. Six months before, her dressing
to meet Hugh had been a matter of sweet and import and coquetry. She
looked, however, very pretty in her dark-blue costume, with dainty
ruffle at her throat when she met him three-quarters of an hour later in
Kensington Gardens. He was walking moodily up and down the broad walk,
near their appointed meeting place; but when he caught sight of her he
quickened his step.
“I am sorry I’m late,” she said, with some petulance; “but when you will
make me take these long journeys----”
“It is not my fault, dear,” he said, casually. “I told you I was
lunching at Lancaster Gate and was going to put in a call near by before
dinner. It was my only hour.”
“Oh, well, never mind. I’m here now. It was papa who kept me. I’ve been
discussing matrimony with him.”
“In the abstract, or----”
“Both. It began with the all too concrete Goldberg. Refusing him, I’m to
marry an abstract Jew or the curse of Abraham will fall upon me.”
“Be more precise, if you don’t mind,” he said seriously.
She gave him a detailed account of the conversation, picturesquely
satiric. Hugh listened sombrely, holding his stick with both hands
behind his back, as they strolled slowly down among the fallen leaves.
“So he’ll never consent,” she concluded. “I suppose we’ll have to wait
until--well--the ordinary way of nature. He’s an old man.”
“We mustn’t think of that, my child,” said Hugh, with some gentleness.
“I don’t see why not. It will solve all our difficulties.”
“What a mixture of flint and flesh you are, Minna,” he said, regarding
her curiously.
“I never pretend to love where I don’t,” she replied. “And when people
thwart me I begin to dislike.”
They walked on a little in silence, turned and retraced their steps.
The dusk began to gather round them and the autumn mist to hang upon the
thinning branches. Minna shivered a little and took his arm.
“Why don’t you say something kind to me, Hugh dear?” she said,
plaintively.
He stooped and kissed her, and they went on their way less far apart
than before. Presently she asked him where he was going to dine.
“At the Merriams.”
“I wish to goodness you wouldn’t!” she exclaimed, petulantly.
“My dear girl, because I am secretly married to you, I am not going to
give up my dearest and oldest friends.”
“I hate them. You know I do.”
“It’s a pity, my dear, but it can’t be helped. And haven’t we discussed
this rather too often lately?”
“You do very little to please me,” she said.
“I would do anything in reason.”
“If you loved me, you would not think of reason.”
“Look here, Minna,” said Hugh, losing patience, “what do you want? Of
course I love you. But as things are, I must lead my own life. If you
were always with me, there would be modifications--naturally. I am
getting as tired of this half and half state as you are. I was going
soon to approach your father on the subject. But what you have told me
this afternoon has somewhat disturbed my plans. We must wait a little
longer. But in the meantime----”
“I don’t mind waiting at all,” she interrupted. “It isn’t that.”
“Well, what is it, dear, that I can do for you?”
“I see so little of you--and you don’t seem to care. If you go on like
this, I feel I shall grow to dislike you--and you are my husband--and
oh, darling, I want you so sometimes!”
All the seductive richness in her voice toned the last appeal. Hugh’s
conscience pricked him. He had of late felt himself drifting far from
her and had made no efforts to reapproach. Now, however, the pathetic
and languorous appeal caused him to bend his head very tenderly.
“Tell me what to do, sweetheart.”
“Ah! you know,” she murmured.
“The window?”
She pressed his arm tightly. “I shall go to sleep so happy.”
So he promised and the girl’s face brightened. Soon afterwards they
parted. Minna drove homewards in a cab, kissing her hand to him as
it moved off, and Hugh walked along towards Lancaster Gate, deep in
troubled thought. It was an ill-starred marriage, already he regretted
his folly and his weakness. If they had shared the same home, living a
common life, he felt that he could have maintained a constantly tender
attitude towards her, by means of a passive acceptance of his lot. But
in the present circumstances, the nature of things demanded of him
active demonstration. The necessary intriguing was repugnant to him. To
visit his wife like a thief in the night was an act from which he shrank
as from something mean and degrading. A passionate love would have swept
away pettier feelings. It is only such a love that laughs at locksmiths;
a waning passion be-bestows on them irritable curses. The prospect of
entering The Lindens, late at night, by a window which Minna secretly
unlatched, and creeping thief-wise up the stairs to her apartments, had
lost its edge of romance. He had promised, however, and it became a
disagreeable duty.
It damped his spirits for the evening. Even Irene could not cheer him.
Conversation degenerated into futile bar gossip between Gerard and
himself, which they protracted sleepily till a late hour. When at last
he found himself with Minna, who had taken infinite pains to make
her beauty as attractive as possible, she reopened, with feminine
inconsistency, the chapter of the Merriams and sent him away, after a
little, angry and disheartened.
His unqualified refusal to allow his regard for her to affect his
relations with his friends gradually magnified itself, through the
girl’s jealousy, into a great wrong. Once at the turn of a road she met
him with them face to face. The after-glow of laughter was in Irene’s
eyes. Minna acknowledged their salute with sullen stiffness, and when
Hugh fell back a pace and turned to her with outstretched hand, she
dismissed him angrily. Her face wore the hardened expression he had seen
on it once before. Then he had attributed it to strength. But now it
seemed to reveal only sulky ill-breeding. A phrase defining her flashed
through his mind. She looked common.
“What a peculiarly disagreeable young woman,” said Gerard, as he
rejoined his friends.
Hugh winced. Although not ill pleased to see that Gerard had no
suspicions of the relations between himself and Minna, the outspoken
judgment on his wife was anything but gratifying.
He struggled, however, to atone by gentleness for his grievous fault
in marrying her. But it was a futile task to try to convince a jealous,
untrained girl, who reasoned from her appetites and argued from her
passions. At last he gave it up with a helpless gesture of impatience.
“It seems beyond your nature to comprehend the bond between the Merriams
and myself,” he said, one day.
She laughed scornfully. “It would appeal to the meanest understanding.
‘A man and his wife and the Tertium Quid.’”
It was the first time she had made such an insinuation. A second passed
before he could quite realise the scope of her words. Then the anger
blazed in his eyes and the girl shrank back frightened.
“If you ever say such a silly and wicked thing again,” he said, “I will
not speak to you again as long as I live.”
He left her there and then, in the middle of the road, and returned
homewards with angry strides. The first available post brought him
a repentant letter. A semblance of harmony was re-established.
Thenceforward Minna kept silence concerning Irene, but she none the less
harboured a bitter resentment against her husband. The habit of brooding
over grievances grew into a disastrous occupation. They rarely spent a
non-recriminative hour. The issue of dispute, no longer Irene, became in
turns his work, his social engagements his neglect, his aloofness, even
his Gentile birth and inherited instincts.
And so the dreary months wore on. At last certain horrible fears
that had been vaguely haunting the girl’s ignorance developed into
certainties. The prospect of maternity was inexpressibly repugnant to
her idle, sensuous nature. The thought became a nightmare. So bitterly
did she resent Hugh’s attitude towards her, that she shrank from telling
him. At last she made up her mind, wrote to him asking for an interview
at his chambers. He replied that he would be engaged in court at the
time she mentioned, and regretted that he could not see her until the
next day. Quite an affectionate and courteous letter from a busy and
unsuspecting man. But it sent her into an unreasoning passion of anger.
She tore the letter into tiny fragments, ordered her boxes to be packed
and went off forthwith to Brighton.
It was only a fortnight afterwards that Hugh received a letter from Anna
Cassaba telling of an accident, illness and a premature end of troubles.
In consternation he took the first train down. Minna refused to see him.
Old Anna was in great distress. Hugh’s handsome face and proud bearing
had won her heart. To act the stern janitress taxed all her love for
her darling. She sought to alleviate his disappointment, suggested that
women often had strange, unaccountable fancies and aversions. Better to
leave the poor child alone for the present. When she recovered she
would be her own gay self again--forget the irrational dislike she had
conceived for him, love him with all her old love and there would yet
be a bonny babe of theirs for old Anna to dandle on her knees before she
died.
The man’s pity and tenderness were wonderfully quickened. If she had
willed, he would have folded her in his arms and made her sick bed
sweet. He scribbled a hasty line.
“Darling--I am grieved to the heart. Your husband loves you, dear, with
a fresher love. Let me tell you so--and tell you to get well, when all
things will be different and dear again.”
The old woman took the note to Minna. He crept up to the bedroom door,
listened, heard the faint rustle of the paper in her hands, and then
came her voice, irritable and peevish:
“Tell him to go away and let me be.”
So Hugh returned to London heavy-hearted, with a gnawing sense of having
ruined the girl’s life. The weeks went past. Early in the New Year Minna
returned to her father’s house, looking ill and worn. Israel noticed the
change, grew solicitous as to her well-being. Why had she not told him
she had been poorly at Brighton? He would have given her all the care
and nursing that money could provide. His kind words caused her a faint
stirring of emotion--an adumbration of a tenderness that might have
been; and as the loneliness and aimlessness of her life grew more
oppressive, an instinct of self-preservation drew her nearer to his
side. The horror of her illness still clung to her. It was a kind of
Maccabre dance over her dead passion. Yet she was conscious of wrong
done to Hugh, and received him kindly when he came to see her one
afternoon shortly after her return. He was anxious to make reparation.
“We are bound together for the rest of our lives, dear,” he said.
“Perhaps it was a mistake to begin with--and certainly the secrecy has
been a terrible blunder. Let us brave it all out now and be done with
it, and start life afresh.”
“Do you think we can ever be happy again together?”
“My dear little girl, I have wronged you--but I will try to make amends.
I have a certain position in society--even if you don’t love me, your
life will be brighter than it is now.”
She leaned back in one of her indolent attitudes. “Perhaps. Not now. I
am afraid of my father. He might curse me--and that would be annoying.”
Hugh paused, somewhat baffled at this new idea. “They will be merely
words of anger,” he replied. “It will not be long lived.”
But she shook her head. It was better to wait. Perhaps she might
gradually influence him--and then all would be smooth sailing. Hugh saw
an element of reason in her proposal, and for a time returned to his
briefs. For his own sake, he was not loth to postpone the announcement.
The debt to Israel weighed heavily upon his conscience. But as long as
his marriage remained a secret, and as long as his uncle lived, he could
spare himself the galling reproach of trickery. Meanwhile his practice
was showing signs of improvement. A brilliant cast might land him at a
bound into affluence, and then he could raise the money, cry quits with
the urbane and gentle mannered Shylock on the score of his ducats, and
brave his reproaches on the score of his daughter. Thus doth hope spring
eternal in the human breast.
But unforeseen action on the part of old Anna Cassaba suddenly hastened
events. She let her house in Brighton for an indefinite period, and
announced her return to Smyrna. A lawsuit had arisen over some property
which Minna’s Syrian mother had bequeathed to the old nurse, and which
formed the chief source of her comfortable income. Anna was summoned to
look after her interests. The nostalgia of her native East, which she
had not visited for over twenty years, grew strong upon her. She could
not tell how long she might be absent from England.
Minna contemplated her departure with sinking heart. Anna was the
saving spar to which she clung. Sheltering her, temporarily, in her
own dressing-room at The Lindens, Minna wept in her arms and implored
a speedy return. The old nurse cried, too, and spoke of death, as old
folks will, and comforted her in such wise that at last the girl
grew desperate in her anticipated desolation. The result was a sudden
determination that Hugh should speak.
“I have come to the end of my tether,” she said to him. “Anything would
be better than this. I’ll get papa to ask you to dinner. He likes you,
and has been enquiring why you come so seldom now.”
In the course of a day or two he received and accepted an invitation for
the following Monday. He felt happier. The die was cast. If Hart called
him a scamp for thus tricking him out of five thousand pounds, he would
bear it as an atoning humiliation for Minna’s sake. He prepared to go
through the ordeal with an air of disdain. But in his category of scorn
he himself was included.