CHAPTER XXV.

SEDER NIGHT.

"Prosaic miles of street stretch all around,

Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned

By arches that with thund'rous trains resound,

And throbbing wires that galvanize the land;

Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand;

The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;

The last burlesque is playing in the Strand--

In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned.

Yet in ten thousand homes this April night

An ancient people celebrates its birth

To Freedom, with a reverential mirth,

With customs quaint and many a hoary rite,

Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright,

Its God shall be the God of all the Earth."

To an imaginative child like Esther, _Seder_ night was a charmed time.

The strange symbolic dishes--the bitter herbs and the sweet mixture of

apples, almonds, spices and wine, the roasted bone and the lamb, the

salt water and the four cups of raisin wine, the great round unleavened

cakes, with their mottled surfaces, some specially thick and sacred, the

special Hebrew melodies and verses with their jingle of rhymes and

assonances, the quaint ceremonial with its striking moments, as when the

finger was dipped in the wine and the drops sprinkled over the shoulder

in repudiation of the ten plagues of Egypt cabalistically magnified to

two hundred and fifty; all this penetrated deep into her consciousness

and made the recurrence of every Passover coincide with a rush of

pleasant anticipations and a sense of the special privilege of being

born a happy Jewish child. Vaguely, indeed, did she co-ordinate the

celebration with the history enshrined in it or with the prospective

history of her race. It was like a tale out of the fairy-books, this

miraculous deliverance of her forefathers in the dim haze of antiquity;

true enough but not more definitely realized on that account. And yet

not easily dissoluble links were being forged with her race, which has

anticipated Positivism in vitalizing history by making it religion.

The _Matzoth_ that Esther ate were not dainty--they were coarse, of the

quality called "seconds," for even the unleavened bread of charity is

not necessarily delicate eating--but few things melted sweeter on the

palate than a segment of a _Matso_ dipped in cheap raisin wine: the

unconventionally of the food made life less common, more picturesque.

Simple Ghetto children into whose existence the ceaseless round of fast

and feast, of prohibited and enjoyed pleasures, of varying species of

food, brought change and relief! Imprisoned in the area of a few narrow

streets, unlovely and sombre, muddy and ill-smelling, immured in dreary

houses and surrounded with mean and depressing sights and sounds, the

spirit of childhood took radiance and color from its own inner light and

the alchemy of youth could still transmute its lead to gold. No little

princess in the courts of fairyland could feel a fresher interest and

pleasure in life than Esther sitting at the _Seder_ table, where her

father--no longer a slave in Egypt--leaned royally upon two chairs

supplied with pillows as the _Din_ prescribes. Not even the monarch's

prime minister could have had a meaner opinion of Pharaoh than Moses

Ansell in this symbolically sybaritic attitude. A live dog is better

than a dead lion, as a great teacher in Israel had said. How much better

then a live lion than a dead dog? Pharaoh, for all his purple and fine

linen and his treasure cities, was at the bottom of the Red Sea, smitten

with two hundred and fifty plagues, and even if, as tradition asserted,

he had been made to live on and on to be King of Nineveh, and to give

ear to the warnings of Jonah, prophet and whale-explorer, even so he was

but dust and ashes for other sinners to cover themselves withal; but he,

Moses Ansell, was the honored master of his household, enjoying a

foretaste of the lollings of the righteous in Paradise; nay, more,

dispensing hospitality to the poor and the hungry. Little fleas have

lesser fleas, and Moses Ansell had never fallen so low but that, on this

night of nights when the slave sits with the master on equal terms, he

could manage to entertain a Passover guest, usually some newly-arrived

Greener, or some nondescript waif and stray returned to Judaism for the

occasion and accepting a seat at the board in that spirit of

_camaraderie_ which is one of the most delightful features of the Jewish

pauper. _Seder_ was a ceremonial to be taken in none too solemn and

sober a spirit, and there was an abundance of unreproved giggling

throughout from the little ones, especially in those happy days when

mother was alive and tried to steal the _Afikuman_ or _Matso_ specially

laid aside for the final morsel, only to be surrendered to father when

he promised to grant her whatever she wished. Alas! it is to be feared

Mrs. Ansell's wishes did not soar high. There was more giggling when the

youngest talking son--it was poor Benjamin in Esther's earliest

recollections--opened the ball by inquiring in a peculiarly pitched

incantation and with an air of blank ignorance why this night differed

from all other nights--in view of the various astonishing peculiarities

of food and behavior (enumerated in detail) visible to his vision. To

which Moses and the _Bube_ and the rest of the company (including the

questioner) invariably replied in corresponding sing-song: "Slaves have

we been in Egypt," proceeding to recount at great length, stopping for

refreshment in the middle, the never-cloying tale of the great

deliverance, with irrelevant digressions concerning Haman and Daniel and

the wise men of Bona Berak, the whole of this most ancient of the

world's extant domestic rituals terminating with an allegorical ballad

like the "house that Jack built," concerning a kid that was eaten by a

cat, which was bitten by a dog, which was beaten by a stick, which was

burned by a fire, which was quenched by some water, which was drunk by

an ox, which was slaughtered by a slaughterer, who was slain by the

Angel of Death, who was slain by the Holy One, blessed be He.

In wealthy houses this _Hagadah_ was read from manuscripts with rich

illuminations--the one development of pictorial art among the Jews--but

the Ansells had wretchedly-printed little books containing quaint but

unintentionally comic wood-cuts, pre-Raphaelite in perspective and

ludicrous in draughtsmanship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption,

Moses burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text. In

one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding bomb intended to

represent the Shechinah or divine glory. In another, Sarah attired in a

matronly cap and a fashionable jacket and skirt, was standing behind the

door of the tent, a solid detached villa on the brink of a lake, whereon

ships and gondolas floated, what time Abraham welcomed the three

celestial messengers, unobtrusively disguised with heavy pinions. What

delight as the quaking of each of the four cups of wine loomed in sight,

what disappointment and mutual bantering when the cup had merely to be

raised in the hand, what chaff of the greedy Solomon who was careful not

to throw away a drop during the digital manoeuvres when the wine must be

jerked from the cup at the mention of each plague. And what a solemn

moment was that when the tallest goblet was filled to the brim for the

delectation of the prophet Elijah and the door thrown open for his

entry. Could one almost hear the rustling of the prophet's spirit

through the room? And what though the level of the wine subsided not a

barley-corn? Elijah, though there was no difficulty in his being in all

parts of the world simultaneously, could hardly compass the greater

miracle of emptying so many million goblets. Historians have traced this

custom of opening the door to the necessity of asking the world to look

in and see for itself that no blood of Christian child figured in the

ceremonial--and for once science has illumined naïve superstition with a

tragic glow more poetic still. For the London Ghetto persecution had

dwindled to an occasional bellowing through the keyhole, as the local

rowdies heard the unaccustomed melodies trolled forth from jocund lungs

and then the singers would stop for a moment, startled, and some one

would say: "Oh, it's only a Christian rough," and take up the thread of

song.

And then, when the _Ajikuman_ had been eaten and the last cup of wine

drunk, and it was time to go to bed, what a sweet sense of sanctity and

security still reigned. No need to say your prayers to-night, beseeching

the guardian of Israel, who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, to watch

over you and chase away the evil spirits; the angels are with

you--Gabriel on your right and Raphael on your left, and Michael behind

you. All about the Ghetto the light of the Passover rested,

transfiguring the dreary rooms and illumining the gray lives.

Dutch Debby sat beside Mrs. Simons at the table of that good soul's

married daughter; the same who had suckled little Sarah. Esther's

frequent eulogiums had secured the poor lonely narrow-chested seamstress

this enormous concession and privilege. Bobby squatted on the mat in the

passage ready to challenge Elijah. At this table there were two pieces

of fried fish sent to Mrs. Simons by Esther Ansell. They represented the

greatest revenge of Esther's life, and she felt remorseful towards

Malka, remembering to whose gold she owed this proud moment. She made up

her mind to write her a letter of apology in her best hand.

At the Belcovitches' the ceremonial was long, for the master of it

insisted on translating the Hebrew into jargon, phrase by phrase; but no

one found it tedious, especially after supper. Pesach was there, hand in

hand with Fanny, their wedding very near now; and Becky lolled royally

in all her glory, aggressive of ringlet, insolently unattached, a

conscious beacon of bedazzlement to the pauper _Pollack_ we last met at

Reb Shemuel's Sabbath table, and there, too, was Chayah, she of the

ill-matched legs. Be sure that Malka had returned the clothes-brush, and

was throned in complacent majesty at Milly's table; and that Sugarman

the _Shadchan_ forgave his monocular consort her lack of a fourth uncle;

while Joseph Strelitski, dreamer of dreams, rich with commissions from

"Passover" cigars, brooded on the Great Exodus. Nor could the Shalotten

_Shammos_ be other than beaming, ordering the complex ceremonial with

none to contradict; nor Karlkammer be otherwise than in the seven

hundred and seventy-seventh heaven, which, calculated by _Gematriyah_,

can easily be reduced to the seventh.

Shosshi Shmendrik did not fail to explain the deliverance to the

ex-widow Finkelstein, nor Guedalyah, the greengrocer, omit to hold his

annual revel at the head of half a hundred merry "pauper-aliens."

Christian roughs bawled derisively in the street, especially when doors

were opened for Elijah; but hard words break no bones, and the Ghetto

was uplifted above insult.

Melchitsedek Pinchas was the Passover guest at Reb Shemuel's table, for

the reek of his Sabbath cigar had not penetrated to the old man's

nostrils. It was a great night for Pinchas; wrought up to fervid

nationalistic aspirations by the memory of the Egyptian deliverance,

which he yet regarded as mythical in its details. It was a terrible

night for Hannah, sitting opposite to him under the fire of his poetic

regard. She was pale and rigid, moving and speaking mechanically. Her

father glanced towards her every now and again, compassionately, but

with trust that the worst was over. Her mother realized the crisis much

less keenly than he, not having been in the heart of the storm. She had

never even seen her intended son-in-law except through the lens of a

camera. She was sorry--that was all. Now that Hannah had broken the ice,

and encouraged one young man, there was hope for the others.

Hannah's state of mind was divined by neither parent. Love itself is

blind in those tragic silences which divide souls.

All night, after that agonizing scene, she did not sleep; the feverish

activity of her mind rendered that impossible, and unerring instinct

told her that David was awake also--that they two, amid the silence of a

sleeping city, wrestled in the darkness with the same terrible problem,

and were never so much at one as in this their separation. A letter came

for her in the morning. It was unstamped, and had evidently been dropped

into the letter-box by David's hand. It appointed an interview at ten

o'clock at a corner of the Ruins; of course, he could not come to the

house. Hannah was out: with a little basket to make some purchases.

There was a cheery hum of life about the Ghetto; a pleasant festival

bustle; the air resounded with the raucous clucking of innumerable fowls

on their way to the feather-littered, blood-stained shambles, where

professional cut-throats wielded sacred knives; boys armed with little

braziers of glowing coal ran about the Ruins, offering halfpenny pyres

for the immolation of the last crumbs of leaven. Nobody paid the

slightest attention to the two tragic figures whose lives turned on the

brief moments of conversation snatched in the thick of the hurrying

crowd.

David's clouded face lightened a little as he saw Hannah advancing

towards him.

"I knew you would come," he said, taking her hand for a moment. His palm

burned, hers was cold and limp. The stress of a great tempest of emotion

had driven the blood from her face and limbs, but inwardly she was on

fire. As they looked each read revolt in the other's eyes.

"Let us walk on," he said.

They moved slowly forwards. The ground was slippery and muddy under

foot. The sky was gray. But the gayety of the crowds neutralized the

dull squalor of the scene.

"Well?" he said, in a low tone.

"I thought you had something to propose," she murmured.

"Let me carry your basket."

"No, no; go on. What have you determined?"

"Not to give you up, Hannah, while I live."

"Ah!" she said quietly. "I have thought it all over, too, and I shall

not leave you. But our marriage by Jewish law is impossible; we could

not marry at any synagogue without my father's knowledge; and he would

at once inform the authorities of the bar to our union."

"I know, dear. But let us go to America, where no one will know. There

we shall find plenty of Rabbis to marry us. There is nothing to tie me

to this country. I can start my business in America just as well as

here. Your parents, too, will think more kindly of you when you are

across the seas. Forgiveness is easier at a distance. What do you say,

dear?"

She shook her head.

"Why should we be married in a synagogue?" she asked.

"Why?" repeated he, puzzled.

"Yes, why?"

"Because we are Jews."

"You would use Jewish forms to outwit Jewish laws?" she asked quietly.

"No, no. Why should you put it that way? I don't doubt the Bible is all

right in making the laws it does. After the first heat of my anger was

over, I saw the whole thing in its proper bearings. Those laws about

priests were only intended for the days when we had a Temple, and in any

case they cannot apply to a merely farcical divorce like yours. It is

these old fools,--I beg your pardon,--it is these fanatical Rabbis who

insist on giving them a rigidity God never meant them to have, just as

they still make a fuss about _kosher_ meat. In America they are less

strict; besides, they will not know I am a _Cohen_."

"No. David," said Hannah firmly. "There must be no more deceit. What

need have we to seek the sanction of any Rabbi? If Jewish law cannot

marry us without our hiding something, then I will have nothing to do

with Jewish law. You know my opinions: I haven't gone so deeply into

religious questions as you have--"

"Don't be sarcastic," he interrupted.

"I have always been sick to death of this eternal ceremony, this endless

coil of laws winding round us and cramping our lives at every turn; and

now it has become too oppressive to be borne any longer. Why should we

let it ruin our lives? And why, if we determine to break from it, shall

we pretend to keep to it? What do you care for Judaism? You eat

_triphas_, you smoke on _Shabbos_ when you want to--"

"Yes, I know, perhaps I'm wrong. But everybody does it now-a-days. When

I was a boy nobody dared be seen riding in a 'bus on _Shabbos_--now you

meet lots. But all that is only old-fashioned Judaism. There must be a

God, else we shouldn't be here, and it's impossible to believe that

Jesus was He. A man must have some religion, and there isn't anything

better. But that's neither here nor there. If you don't care for my

plan," he concluded anxiously, "what's yours?"

"Let us be married honestly by a Registrar."

"Any way you like, dear," he said readily, "so long as we are

married--and quickly."

"As quickly as you like."

He seized her disengaged hand and pressed it passionately. "That's my

own darling Hannah. Oh, if you could realize what I felt last night when

you seemed to be drifting away from me."

There was an interval of silence, each thinking excitedly. Then David

said:

"But have you the courage to do this and remain in London?"

"I have courage for anything. But, as you say, it might be better to

travel. It will be less of a break if we break away altogether--change

everything at once. It sounds contradictory, but you understand what I

mean."

"Perfectly. It is difficult to live a new life with all the old things

round you. Besides, why should we give our friends the chance to

cold-shoulder us? They will find all sorts of malicious reasons why we

were not married in a _Shool_, and if they hit on the true one they may

even regard our marriage as illegal. Let us go to America, as I

proposed."

"Very well. Do we go direct from London?"

"No, from Liverpool."

"Then we can be married at Liverpool before sailing?"

"A good idea. But when do we start?"

"At once. To-night. The sooner the better."

He looked at her quickly. "Do you mean it?" he said. His heart beat

violently as if it would burst. Waves of dazzling color swam before his

eyes.

"I mean it," she said gravely and quietly. "Do you think I could face my

father and mother, knowing I was about to wound them to the heart? Each

day of delay would be torture to me. Oh, why is religion such a curse?"

She paused, overwhelmed for a moment by the emotion she had been

suppressing. She resumed in the same quiet manner. "Yes, we must break

away at once. We have kept our last Passover. We shall have to eat

leavened food--it will be a decisive break. Take me to Liverpool, David,

this very day. You are my chosen husband; I trust in you."

She looked at him frankly with her dark eyes that stood out in lustrous

relief against the pale skin. He gazed into those eyes, and a flash as

from the inner heaven of purity pierced his soul.

"Thank you, dearest," he said in a voice with tears in it.

They walked on silently. Speech was as superfluous as it was

inadequate. When they spoke again their voices were calm. The peace that

comes of resolute decision was theirs at last, and each was full of the

joy of daring greatly for the sake of their mutual love. Petty as their

departure from convention might seem to the stranger, to them it loomed

as a violent breach with all the traditions of the Ghetto and their past

lives; they were venturing forth into untrodden paths, holding each

other's hand.

Jostling the loquacious crowd, in the unsavory by-ways of the Ghetto, in

the gray chillness of a cloudy morning, Hannah seemed to herself to walk

in enchanted gardens, breathing the scent of love's own roses mingled

with the keen salt air that blew in from the sea of liberty. A fresh,

new blessed life was opening before her. The clogging vapors of the past

were rolling away at last. The unreasoning instinctive rebellion, bred

of ennui and brooding dissatisfaction with the conditions of her

existence and the people about her, had by a curious series of accidents

been hastened to its acutest development; thought had at last fermented

into active resolution, and the anticipation of action flooded her soul

with peace and joy, in which all recollection of outside humanity was

submerged.

"What time can you be ready by?" he said before they parted.

"Any time," she answered. "I can take nothing with me. I dare not pack

anything. I suppose I can get necessaries in Liverpool. I have merely my

hat and cloak to put on."

"But that will be enough," he said ardently. "I want but you."

"I know it, dear," she answered gently. "If you were as other Jewish

young men I could not give up all else for you."

"You shall never regret it, Hannah," he said, moved to his depths, as

the full extent of her sacrifice for love dawned upon him. He was a

vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was tearing herself away from

deep roots in the soil of home, as well as from the conventions of her

circle and her sex. Once again he trembled with a sense of unworthiness,

a sudden anxious doubt if he were noble enough to repay her trust.

Mastering his emotion, he went on: "I reckon my packing and arrangements

for leaving the country will take me all day at least. I must see my

bankers if nobody else. I shan't take leave of anybody, that would

arouse suspicion. I will be at the corner of your street with a cab at

nine, and we'll catch the ten o'clock express from Euston. If we missed

that, we should have to wait till midnight. It will be dark; no one is

likely to notice me. I will get a dressing-case for you and anything

else I can think of and add it to my luggage."

"Very well," she said simply.

They did not kiss; she gave him her hand, and, with a sudden

inspiration, he slipped the ring he had brought the day before on her

finger. The tears came into her eyes as she saw what he had done. They

looked at each other through a mist, feeling bound beyond human

intervention.

"Good-bye," she faltered.

"Good-bye," he said. "At nine."

"At nine," she breathed. And hurried off without looking behind.

It was a hard day, the minutes crawling reluctantly into the hours, the

hours dragging themselves wearily on towards the night. It was typical

April weather--squalls and sunshine in capricious succession. When it

drew towards dusk she put on her best clothes for the Festival, stuffing

a few precious mementoes into her pockets and wearing her father's

portrait next to her lover's at her breast. She hung a travelling cloak

and a hat on a peg near the hall-door ready to hand as she left the

house. Of little use was she in the kitchen that day, but her mother was

tender to her as knowing her sorrow. Time after time Hannah ascended to

her bedroom to take a last look at the things she had grown so tired

of--the little iron bed, the wardrobe, the framed lithographs, the jug

and basin with their floral designs. All things seemed strangely dear

now she was seeing them for the last time. Hannah turned over

everything--even the little curling iron, and the cardboard box full of

tags and rags of ribbon and chiffon and lace and crushed artificial

flowers, and the fans with broken sticks and the stays with broken

ribs, and the petticoats with dingy frills and the twelve-button ball

gloves with dirty fingers, and the soiled pink wraps. Some of her books,

especially her school-prizes, she would have liked to take with her--but

that could not be. She went over the rest of the house, too, from top to

bottom. It weakened her but she could not conquer the impulse of

farewell, finally she wrote a letter to her parents and hid it under her

looking-glass, knowing they would search her room for traces of her. She

looked curiously at herself as she did so; the color had not returned to

her cheeks. She knew she was pretty and always strove to look nice for

the mere pleasure of the thing. All her instincts were aesthetic. Now

she had the air of a saint wrought up to spiritual exaltation. She was

almost frightened by the vision. She had seen her face frowning,

weeping, overcast with gloom, never with an expression so fateful. It

seemed as if her resolution was writ large upon every feature for all to

read.

In the evening she accompanied her father to _Shool_. She did not often

go in the evening, and the thought of going only suddenly occurred to

her. Heaven alone knew if she would ever enter a synagogue again--the

visit would be part of her systematic farewell. Reb Shemuel took it as a

symptom of resignation to the will of God, and he laid his hand lightly

on her head in silent blessing, his eyes uplifted gratefully to Heaven.

Too late Hannah felt the misconception and was remorseful. For the

festival occasion Reb Shemuel elected to worship at the Great Synagogue;

Hannah, seated among the sparse occupants of the Ladies' Gallery and

mechanically fingering a _Machzor_, looked down for the last time on the

crowded auditorium where the men sat in high hats and holiday garments.

Tall wax-candles twinkled everywhere, in great gilt chandeliers

depending from the ceiling, in sconces stuck about the window ledges, in

candelabra branching from the walls. There was an air of holy joy about

the solemn old structure with its massive pillars, its small

side-windows, high ornate roof, and skylights, and its gilt-lettered

tablets to the memory of pious donors.

The congregation gave the responses with joyous unction. Some of the

worshippers tempered their devotion by petty gossip and the beadle

marshalled the men in low hats within the iron railings, sonorously

sounding his automatic amens. But to-night Hannah had no eye for the

humors that were wont to awaken her scornful amusement--a real emotion

possessed her, the same emotion of farewell which she had experienced in

her own bedroom. Her eyes wandered towards the Ark, surmounted by the

stone tablets of the Decalogue, and the sad dark orbs filled with the

brooding light of childish reminiscence. Once when she was a little girl

her father told her that on Passover night an angel sometimes came out

of the doors of the Ark from among the scrolls of the Law. For years she

looked out for that angel, keeping her eyes patiently fixed on the

curtain. At last she gave him up, concluding her vision was

insufficiently purified or that he was exhibiting at other synagogues.

To-night her childish fancy recurred to her--she found herself

involuntarily looking towards the Ark and half-expectant of the angel.

She had not thought of the _Seder_ service she would have to partially

sit through, when she made her appointment with David in the morning,

but when during the day it occurred to her, a cynical smile traversed

her lips. How apposite it was! To-night would mark _her_ exodus from

slavery. Like her ancestors leaving Egypt, she, too, would partake of a

meal in haste, staff in hand ready for the journey. With what stout

heart would she set forth, she, too, towards the promised land! Thus had

she thought some hours since, but her mood was changed now. The nearer

the _Seder_ approached, the more she shrank from the family ceremonial.

A panic terror almost seized her now, in the synagogue, when the picture

of the domestic interior flashed again before her mental vision--she

felt like flying into the street, on towards her lover without ever

looking behind. Oh, why could David not have fixed the hour earlier, so

as to spare her an ordeal so trying to the nerves? The black-stoled

choir was singing sweetly, Hannah banished her foolish flutter of alarm

by joining in quietly, for congregational singing was regarded rather as

an intrusion on the privileges of the choir and calculated to put them

out in their elaborate four-part fugues unaided by an organ.

"With everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of Israel, Thy people,"

she sang: "a Law and commandments, statutes and judgments hast thou

taught us. Therefore, O Lord our God, when we lie down and when we rise

up we will meditate on Thy statutes: yea, we will rejoice in the words

of Thy Law and in Thy commandments for ever, for they are our life and

the length of our days, and will meditate on them day and night. And

mayest Thou never take away Thy love from us. Blessed art Thou. O Lord,

who lovest Thy people Israel."

Hannah scanned the English version of the Hebrew in her _Machzor_ as she

sang. Though she could translate every word, the meaning of what she

sang was never completely conceived by her consciousness. The power of

song over the soul depends but little on the words. Now the words seem

fateful, pregnant with special message. Her eyes were misty when the

fugues were over. Again she looked towards the Ark with its beautifully

embroidered curtain, behind which were the precious scrolls with their

silken swathes and their golden bells and shields and pomegranates. Ah,

if the angel would come out now! If only the dazzling vision gleamed for

a moment on the white steps. Oh, why did he not come and save her?

Save her? From what? She asked herself the question fiercely, in

defiance of the still, small voice. What wrong had she ever done that

she so young and gentle should be forced to make so cruel a choice

between the old and the new? This was the synagogue she should have been

married in; stepping gloriously and honorably under the canopy, amid the

pleasant excitement of a congratulatory company. And now she was being

driven to exile and the chillness of secret nuptials. No, no; she did

not want to be saved in the sense of being kept in the fold: it was the

creed that was culpable, not she.

The service drew to an end. The choir sang the final hymn, the _Chasan_

giving the last verse at great length and with many musical flourishes.

"The dead will God quicken in the abundance of His loving kindness.

Blessed for evermore be His glorious name."

There was a clattering of reading-flaps and seat-lids and the

congregation poured out, amid the buzz of mutual "Good _Yomtovs."_

Hannah rejoined her father, the sense of injury and revolt still surging

in her breast. In the fresh starlit air, stepping along the wet gleaming

pavements, she shook off the last influences of the synagogue; all her

thoughts converged on the meeting with David, on the wild flight

northwards while good Jews were sleeping off the supper in celebration

of their Redemption; her blood coursed quickly through her veins, she

was in a fever of impatience for the hour to come.

And thus it was that she sat at the _Seder_ table, as in a dream, with

images of desperate adventure flitting in her brain. The face of her

lover floated before her eyes, close, close to her own as it should have

been to-night had there been justice in Heaven. Now and again the scene

about her flashed in upon her consciousness, piercing her to the heart.

When Levi asked the introductory question, it set her wondering what

would become of him? Would manhood bring enfranchisement to him as

womanhood was doing to her? What sort of life would he lead the poor Reb

and his wife? The omens were scarcely auspicious; but a man's charter is

so much wider than a woman's; and Levi might do much without paining

them as she would pain them. Poor father! The white hairs were

predominating in his beard, she had never noticed before how old he was

getting. And mother--her face was quite wrinkled. Ah, well; we must all

grow old. What a curious man Melchitsedek Pinchas was, singing so

heartily the wonderful story. Judaism certainly produced some curious

types. A smile crossed her face as she thought of herself as his bride.

At supper she strove to eat a little, knowing she would need it. In

bringing some plates from the kitchen she looked at her hat and cloak,

carefully hung up on the peg in the hall nearest the street door. It

would take but a second to slip them on. She nodded her head towards

them, as who should say "Yes, we shall meet again very soon." During the

meal she found herself listening to the poet's monologues delivered in

his high-pitched creaking voice.

Melchitsedek Pinchas had much to say about a certain actor-manager who

had spoiled the greatest jargon-play of the century and a certain

labor-leader who, out of the funds of his gulls, had subsidized the

audience to stay away, and (though here the Reb cut him short for

Hannah's sake) a certain leading lady, one of the quartette of

mistresses of a certain clergyman, who had been beguiled by her paramour

into joining the great English conspiracy to hound down Melchitsedek

Pinchas,--all of whom he would shoot presently and had in the meantime

enshrined like dead flies in the amber of immortal acrostics. The wind

began to shake the shutters as they finished supper and presently the

rain began to patter afresh against the panes. Reb Shemuel distributed

the pieces of _Afikuman_ with a happy sigh, and, lolling on his pillows

and almost forgetting his family troubles in the sense of Israel's

blessedness, began to chant the Grace like the saints in the Psalm who

sing aloud on their couches. The little Dutch clock on the mantelpiece

began to strike. Hannah did not move. Pale and trembling she sat riveted

to her chair. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight. She

counted the strokes, as if to count them was the only means of telling

the hour, as if her eyes had not been following the hands creeping,

creeping. She had a mad hope the striking would cease with the eight and

there would be still time to think. _Nine_! She waited, her ear longing

for the tenth stroke. If it were only ten o'clock, it would be too late.

The danger would be over. She sat, mechanically watching the hands. They

crept on. It was five minutes past the hour. She felt sure that David

was already at the corner of the street, getting wet and a little

impatient. She half rose from her chair. It was not a nice night for an

elopement. She sank back into her seat. Perhaps they had best wait till

to-morrow night. She would go and tell David so. But then he would not

mind the weather; once they had met he would bundle her into the cab and

they would roll on leaving the old world irrevocably behind. She sat in

a paralysis of volition; rigid on her chair, magnetized by the warm

comfortable room, the old familiar furniture, the Passover table--with

its white table-cloth and its decanter and wine-glasses, the faces of

her father and mother eloquent with the appeal of a thousand memories.

The clock ticked on loudly, fiercely, like a summoning drum; the rain

beat an impatient tattoo on the window-panes, the wind rattled the doors

and casements. "Go forth, go forth," they called, "go forth where your

lover waits you, to bear you of into the new and the unknown." And the

louder they called the louder Reb Shemuel trolled his hilarious Grace:

_May He who maketh Peace in the High Heavens, bestow Peace upon us and

upon all Israel and say ye, Amen_.

The hands of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat

lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid,

her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a

trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that

the others had risen and that her father was motioning to her.

Instinctively she understood; rose automatically and went to the door;

then a great shock of returning recollection whelmed her soul. She stood

rooted to the floor. Her father had filled Elijah's goblet with wine and

it was her annual privilege to open the door for the prophet's entry.

Intuitively she knew that David was pacing madly in front of the house,

not daring to make known his presence, and perhaps cursing her

cowardice. A chill terror seized her. She was afraid to face him--his

will was strong and mighty; her fevered imagination figured it as the

wash of a great ocean breaking on the doorstep threatening to sweep her

off into the roaring whirlpool of doom. She threw the door of the room

wide and paused as if her duty were done.

"_Nu, nu_," muttered Reb Shemuel, indicating the outer door. It was so

near that he always had that opened, too.

Hannah tottered forwards through the few feet of hall. The cloak and hat

on the peg nodded to her sardonically. A wild thrill of answering

defiance shot through her: she stretched out her hands towards them.

"Fly, fly; it is your last chance," said the blood throbbing in her

ears. But her hand dropped to her side and in that brief instant of

terrible illumination, Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her

future life, stretching straight and unlovely between great blank walls,

on, on to a solitary grave; knew that the strength had been denied her

to diverge to the right or left, that for her there would be neither

Exodus nor Redemption. Strong in the conviction of her weakness she

noisily threw open the street door. The face of David, sallow and

ghastly, loomed upon her in the darkness. Great drops of rain fell from

his hat and ran down his cheeks like tears. His clothes seemed soaked

with rain.

"At last!" he exclaimed in a hoarse, glad whisper. "What has kept you?"

"_Boruch Habo_! (Welcome art thou who arrivest)" came the voice of Reb

Shemuel front within, greeting the prophet.

"Hush!" said Hannah. "Listen a moment."

The sing-song undulations of the old Rabbi's voice mingled harshly with

the wail of the wind: "_Pour out Thy wrath on the heathen who

acknowledge Thee not and upon the Kingdoms which invoke not Thy name,

for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his Temple. Pour out Thy

indignation upon them and cause Thy fierce anger to overtake them.

Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens of the

Lord_."

"Quick, Hannah!" whispered David. "We can't wait a moment more. Put on

your things. We shall miss the train."

A sudden inspiration came to her. For answer she drew his ring out of

her pocket and slipped it into his hand.

"Good-bye!" she murmured in a strange hollow voice, and slammed the

street door in his face.

"Hannah!"

His startled cry of agony and despair penetrated the woodwork, muffled

to an inarticulate shriek. He rattled the door violently in unreasoning

frenzy.

"Who's that? What's that noise?" asked the Rebbitzin.

"Only some Christian rough shouting in the street," answered Hannah.

It was truer than she knew.

* * * * *

The rain fell faster, the wind grew shriller, but the Children of the

Ghetto basked by their firesides in faith and hope and contentment.

Hunted from shore to shore through the ages, they had found the national

aspiration--Peace--in a country where Passover came, without menace of

blood. In the garret of Number 1 Royal Street little Esther Ansell sat

brooding, her heart full of a vague tender poetry and penetrated by the

beauties of Judaism, which, please God, she would always cling to; her

childish vision looking forward hopefully to the larger life that the

years would bring.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHRISTMAS DINNER.

Daintily embroidered napery, beautiful porcelain, Queen Anne silver,

exotic flowers, glittering glass, soft rosy light, creamy expanses of

shirt-front, elegant low-necked dresses--all the conventional

accompaniments of Occidental gastronomy.

It was not a large party. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith professed to collect

guests on artistic principles--as she did bric-à-brac--and with an eye

to general conversation. The elements of the social salad were

sufficiently incongruous to-night, yet all the ingredients were Jewish.

For the history of the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a

history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of isolation. "The

Upper Ten" is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about

suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with

its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the

middle-classes look up in worship and the lower-classes in supplication.

"The Upper Ten" have no spirit of exclusiveness; they are willing to

entertain royalty, rank and the arts with a catholic hospitality that is

only Eastern in its magnificence, while some of them only remain Jews

for fear of being considered snobs by society. But the middle-class Jew

has been more jealous of his caste, and for caste reasons. To exchange

hospitalities with the Christian when you cannot eat his dinners were to

get the worse of the bargain; to invite his sons to your house when they

cannot marry your daughters were to solicit awkward complications. In

business, in civic affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with

his fellow-citizens, but indiscriminate social relations only become

possible through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate.

A Christian in a company of middle-class Jews is like a lion in a den of

Daniels. They show him deference and their prophetic side.

Mrs. Henry Goldsmith was of the upper middle-classes, and her husband

was the financial representative of the Kensington Synagogue at the

United Council, but her swan-like neck was still bowed beneath the yoke

of North London, not to say provincial, Judaism. So to-night there were

none of those external indications of Christmas which are so frequent at

"good" Jewish houses; no plum-pudding, snapdragon, mistletoe, not even a

Christmas tree. For Mrs. Henry Goldsmith did not countenance these

coquettings with Christianity. She would have told you that the

incidence of her dinner on Christmas Eve was merely an accident, though

a lucky accident, in so far as Christmas found Jews perforce at leisure

for social gatherings. What she was celebrating was the feast of

Chanukah--of the re-dedication of the Temple after the pollutions of

Antiochus Epiphanes--and the memory of the national hero, Judas

Maccabaeus. Christmas crackers would have been incompatible with the

Chanukah candles which the housekeeper, Mary O'Reilly, forced her master

to light, and would have shocked that devout old dame. For Mary

O'Reilly, as good a soul as she was a Catholic, had lived all her life

with Jews, assisting while yet a girl in the kitchen of Henry

Goldsmith's father, who was a pattern of ancient piety and a prop of the

Great Synagogue. When the father died, Mary, with all the other family

belongings, passed into the hands of the son, who came up to London from

a provincial town, and with a grateful recollection of her motherliness

domiciled her in his own establishment. Mary knew all the ritual laws

and ceremonies far better than her new mistress, who although a native

of the provincial town in which Mr. Henry Goldsmith had established a

thriving business, had received her education at a Brussels

boarding-school. Mary knew exactly how long to keep the meat in salt and

the heinousness of frying steaks in butter. She knew that the fire must

not be poked on the Sabbath, nor the gas lit or extinguished, and that

her master must not smoke till three stars appeared in the sky. She knew

when the family must fast, and when and how it must feast. She knew all

the Hebrew and jargon expressions which her employers studiously

boycotted, and she was the only member of the household who used them

habitually in her intercourse with the other members. Too late the Henry

Goldsmiths awoke to the consciousness of her tyranny which did not

permit them to be irreligious even in private. In the fierce light which

beats upon a provincial town with only one synagogue, they had been

compelled to conform outwardly with many galling restrictions, and they

had sub-consciously looked forward to emancipation in the mighty

metropolis. But Mary had such implicit faith in their piety, and was so

zealous in the practice of her own faith, that they had not the courage

to confess that they scarcely cared a pin about a good deal of that for

which she was so solicitous. They hesitated to admit that they did not

respect their religion (or what she thought was their religion) as much

as she did hers. It would have equally lowered them in her eyes to admit

that their religion was not so good as hers, besides being disrespectful

to the cherished memory of her ancient master. At first they had

deferred to Mary's Jewish prejudices out of good nature and

carelessness, but every day strengthened her hold upon them; every act

of obedience to the ritual law was a tacit acknowledgment of its

sanctity, which made it more and more difficult to disavow its

obligation. The dread of shocking Mary came to dominate their lives, and

the fashionable house near Kensington Gardens was still a veritable

centre of true Jewish orthodoxy, with little or nothing to make old

Aaron Goldsmith turn in his grave. It is probable, though, that Mrs.

Henry Goldsmith would have kept a _kosher_ table, even if Mary had never

been born. Many of their acquaintances and relatives were of an orthodox

turn. A _kosher_ dinner could be eaten even by the heterodox; whereas a

_tripha_ dinner choked off the orthodox. Thus it came about that even

the Rabbinate might safely stoke its spiritual fires at Mrs. Henry

Goldsmith's.

Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not

be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, nobody

knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question,

whose opprobrious production, _Mordecai Josephs_, had scandalized West

End Judaism.

"Why didn't he describe our circles?" asked the hostess, an angry fire

in her beautiful eyes. "It would have, at least, corrected the picture.

As it is, the public will fancy that we are all daubed with the same

brush: that we have no thought in life beyond dress, money, and solo

whist."

"He probably painted the life he knew," said Sidney Graham, in defence.

"Then I am sorry for him," retorted Mrs. Goldsmith. "It's a great pity

he had such detestable acquaintances. Of course, he has cut himself off

from the possibility of any better now."

The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinterested

indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial grief.

"I should hope so," put in Miss Cissy Levine, sharply. She was a pale,

bent woman, with spectacles, who believed in the mission of Israel, and

wrote domestic novels to prove that she had no sense of humor. "No one

has a right to foul his own nest. Are there not plenty of subjects for

the Jew's pen without his attacking his own people? The calumniator of

his race should be ostracized from decent society."

"As according to him there is none," laughed Graham, "I cannot see where

the punishment comes in."

"Oh, he may say so in that book," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels, an amiable,

loose-thinking lady of florid complexion, who dabbled exasperatingly in

her husband's philanthropic concerns from the vain idea that the wife of

a committee-man is a committee-woman. "But he knows better."

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Montagu Samuels. "The rascal has only written

this to make money. He knows it's all exaggeration and distortion; but

anything spicy pays now-a-days."

"As a West Indian merchant he ought to know," murmured Sidney Graham to

his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon. The girl's soft eyes twinkled, as

she surveyed the serious little city magnate with his placid spouse.

Montagu Samuels was narrow-minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be

pompous on a meagre allowance of body. He was earnest and charitable

(except in religious wrangles, when he was earnest and uncharitable),

and knew himself a pillar of the community, an exemplar to the drones

and sluggards who shirked their share of public burdens and were callous

to the dazzlement of communal honors.

"Of course it was written for money, Monty," his brother, Percy Saville,

the stockbroker, reminded him. "What else do authors write for? It's the

way they earn their living."

Strangers found difficulty in understanding the fraternal relation of

Percy Saville and Montagu Samuels; and did not readily grasp that Percy

Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Samuels, more in tune with the

handsome well-dressed personality it denoted. Montagu had stuck loyally

to his colors, but Pizer had drooped under the burden of carrying his

patronymic through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after

business hours. Of such is the brotherhood of Israel.

"The whole book's written with gall," went on Percy Saville,

emphatically. "I suppose the man couldn't get into good Jewish houses,

and he's revenged himself by slandering them."

"Then he ought to have got into good Jewish houses," said Sidney. "The

man has talent, nobody can deny that, and if he couldn't get into good

Jewish society because he didn't have money enough, isn't that proof

enough his picture is true?"

"I don't deny that there are people among us who make money the one open

sesame to their houses," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, magnanimously.

"Deny it, indeed? Money is the open sesame to everything," rejoined

Sidney Graham, delightedly scenting an opening for a screed. He liked to

talk bomb-shells, and did not often get pillars of the community to

shatter. "Money manages the schools and the charities, and the

synagogues, and indirectly controls the press. A small body of

persons--always the same--sits on all councils, on all boards! Why?

Because they pay the piper."

"Well, sir, and is not that a good reason?" asked Montagu Samuels. "The

community is to be congratulated on having a few public-spirited men

left in days when there are wealthy German Jews in our midst who not

only disavow Judaism, but refuse to support its institutions. But, Mr.

Graham, I would join issue with you. The men you allude to are elected

not because they are rich, but because they are good men of business and

most of the work to be done is financial."

"Exactly," said Sidney Graham, in sinister agreement. "I have always

maintained that the United Synagogue could be run as a joint-stock

company for the sake of a dividend, and that there wouldn't be an atom

of difference in the discussions if the councillors were directors. I do

believe the pillars of the community figure the Millenium as a time when

every Jew shall have enough to eat, a place to worship in, and a place

to be buried in. Their State Church is simply a financial system, to

which the doctrines of Judaism happen to be tacked on. How many of the

councillors believe in their Established Religion? Why, the very beadles

of their synagogues are prone to surreptitious shrimps and unobtrusive

oysters! Then take that institution for supplying _kosher_ meat. I am

sure there are lots of its Committee who never inquire into the

necrologies of their own chops and steaks, and who regard kitchen

Judaism as obsolete. But, all the same, they look after the finances

with almost fanatical zeal. Finance fascinates them. Long after Judaism

has ceased to exist, excellent gentlemen will be found regulating its

finances."

There was that smile on the faces of the graver members of the party

which arises from reluctance to take a dangerous speaker seriously.

Sidney Graham was one of those favorites of society who are allowed

Touchstone's license. He had just as little wish to reform, and just as

much wish to abuse society as society has to be reformed and abused. He

was a dark, bright-eyed young artist with a silky moustache. He had

lived much in Paris, where he studied impressionism and perfected his

natural talent for _causerie_ and his inborn preference for the

hedonistic view of life. Fortunately he had plenty of money, for he was

a cousin of Raphael Leon on the mother's side, and the remotest twigs of

the Leon genealogical tree bear apples of gold. His real name was

Abrahams, which is a shade too Semitic. Sidney was the black sheep of

the family; good-natured to the core and artistic to the finger-tips,

he was an avowed infidel in a world where avowal is the unpardonable

sin. He did not even pretend to fast on the Day of Atonement. Still

Sidney Graham was a good deal talked of in artistic circles, his name

was often in the newspapers, and so more orthodox people than Mrs. Henry

Goldsmith were not averse from having him at their table, though they

would have shrunk from being seen at his. Even cousin Addie, who had a

charming religious cast of mind, liked to be with him, though she

ascribed this to family piety. For there is a wonderful solidarity about

many Jewish families, the richer members of which assemble loyally at

one another's births, marriages, funerals, and card-parties, often to

the entire exclusion of outsiders. An ordinary well-regulated family (so

prolific is the stream of life), will include in its bosom ample

elements for every occasion.

"Really, Mr. Graham, I think you are wrong about the _kosher_ meat,"

said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. "Our statistics show no falling-off in the

number of bullocks killed, while there is a rise of two per cent, in the

sheep slaughtered. No, Judaism is in a far more healthy condition than

pessimists imagine. So far from sacrificing our ancient faith we are

learning to see how tuberculosis lurks in the lungs of unexamined

carcasses and is communicated to the consumer. As for the members of the

_Shechitah_ Board not eating _kosher_, look at me."

The only person who looked at the host was the hostess. Her look was one

of approval. It could not be of aesthetic approval, like the look Percy

Saville devoted to herself, for her husband was a cadaverous little man

with prominent ears and teeth.

"And if Mr. Graham should ever join us on the Council of the United

Synagogue," added Montagu Samuels, addressing the table generally, "he

will discover that there is no communal problem with which we do not

loyally grapple."

"No, thank you," said Sidney, with a shudder. "When I visit Raphael, I

sometimes pick up a Jewish paper and amuse myself by reading the debates

of your public bodies. I understand most of your verbiage is edited

away." He looked Montagu Samuels full in the face with audacious

_naïveté_. "But there is enough left to show that our monotonous group

of public men consists of narrow-minded mediocrities. The chief public

work they appear to do outside finance is when public exams, fall on

Sabbaths or holidays, getting special dates for Jewish candidates to

whom these examinations are the avenues to atheism. They never see the

joke. How can they? Why, they take even themselves seriously."

"Oh, come!" said Miss Cissy Levine indignantly. "You often see

'laughter' in the reports."

"That must mean the speaker was laughing," explained Sidney, "for you

never see anything to make the audience laugh. I appeal to Mr. Montagu

Samuels."

"It is useless discussing a subject with a man who admittedly speaks

without knowledge," replied that gentleman with dignity.

"Well, how do you expect me to get the knowledge?" grumbled Sidney. "You

exclude the public from your gatherings. I suppose to prevent their

rubbing shoulders with the swells, the privilege of being snubbed by

whom is the reward of public service. Wonderfully practical idea

that--to utilize snobbery as a communal force. The United Synagogue is

founded on it. Your community coheres through it."

"There you are scarcely fair," said the hostess with a charming smile of

reproof. "Of course there are snobs amongst us, but is it not the same

in all sects?"

"Emphatically not," said Sidney. "If one of our swells sticks to a shred

of Judaism, people seem to think the God of Judah should be thankful,

and if he goes to synagogue once or twice a year, it is regarded as a

particular condescension to the Creator."

"The mental attitude you caricature is not so snobbish as it seems,"

said Raphael Leon, breaking into the conversation for the first time.

"The temptations to the wealthy and the honored to desert their

struggling brethren are manifold, and sad experience has made our race

accustomed to the loss of its brightest sons."

"Thanks for the compliment, fair coz," said Sidney, not without a

complacent cynical pleasure in the knowledge that Raphael spoke truly,

that he owed his own immunity from the obligations of the faith to his

artistic success, and that the outside world was disposed to accord him

a larger charter of morality on the same grounds. "But if you can only

deny nasty facts by accounting for them, I dare say Mr. Armitage's book

will afford you ample opportunities for explanation. Or have Jews the

brazenness to assert it is all invention?"

"No, no one would do that," said Percy Saville, who had just done it.

"Certainly there is a good deal of truth in the sketch of the

ostentatious, over-dressed Johnsons who, as everybody knows, are meant

for the Jonases."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "And it is quite evident that the

stockbroker who drops half his h's and all his poor acquaintances and

believes in one Lord, is no other than Joel Friedman."

"And the house where people drive up in broughams for supper and solo

whist after the theatre is the Davises' in Maida Vale," said Miss Cissy

Levine.

"Yes, the book's true enough," began Mrs. Montagu Samuels. She stopped

suddenly, catching her husband's eye, and the color heightened on her

florid cheek. "What I say is," she concluded awkwardly, "he ought to

have come among us, and shown the world a picture of the cultured Jews."

"Quite so, quite so," said the hostess. Then turning to the tall

thoughtful-looking young man who had hitherto contributed but one

sentence to the conversation, she said, half in sly malice, half to draw

him out: "Now you, Mr. Leon, whose culture is certified by our leading

university, what do you think of this latest portrait of the Jew?"

"I don't know, I haven't read it!" replied Raphael apologetically.

"No more have I," murmured the table generally.

"I wouldn't touch it with a pitchfork," said Miss Cissy Levine.

"I think it's a shame they circulate it at the libraries," said Mrs.

Montagu Samuels. "I just glanced over it at Mrs. Hugh Marston's house.

It's vile. There are actually jargon words in it. Such vulgarity!"

"Shameful!" murmured Percy Saville; "Mr. Lazarus was telling me about

it. It's plain treachery and disloyalty, this putting of weapons into

the hands of our enemies. Of course we have our faults, but we should be

told of them privately or from the pulpit."

"That would be just as efficacious," said Sidney admiringly.

"More efficacious," said Percy Saville, unsuspiciously. "A preacher

speaks with authority, but this penny-a-liner--"

"With truth?" queried Sidney.

Saville stopped, disgusted, and the hostess answered Sidney

half-coaxingly.

"Oh, I am sure you can't think that. The book is so one-sided. Not a

word about our generosity, our hospitality, our domesticity, the

thousand-and-one good traits all the world allows us."

"Of course not; since all the world allows them, it was unnecessary,"

said Sidney.

"I wonder the Chief Rabbi doesn't stop it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.

"My dear, how can he?" inquired her husband. "He has no control over the

publishing trade."

"He ought to talk to the man," persisted Mrs. Samuels.

"But we don't even know who he is," said Percy Saville, "probably Edward

Armitage is only a _nom-de-plume_. You'd be surprised to learn the real

names of some of the literary celebrities I meet about."

"Oh, if he's a Jew you may be sure it isn't his real name," laughed

Sidney. It was characteristic of him that he never spared a shot even

when himself hurt by the kick of the gun. Percy colored slightly,

unmollified by being in the same boat with the satirist.

"I have never seen the name in the subscription lists," said the hostess

with ready tact.

"There is an Armitage who subscribes two guineas a year to the Board of

Guardians," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "But his Christian name is

George."

"'Christian' name is distinctly good for 'George,'" murmured Sidney.

"There was an Armitage who sent a cheque to the Russian Fund," said Mr.

Henry Goldsmith, "but that can't be an author--it was quite a large

cheque!"

"I am sure I have seen Armitage among the Births, Marriages and Deaths,"

said Miss Cissy Levine.

"How well-read they all are in the national literature," Sidney murmured

to Addie.

Indeed the sectarian advertisements served to knit the race together,

counteracting the unravelling induced by the fashionable dispersion of

Israel and waxing the more important as the other links--the old

traditional jokes, by-words, ceremonies, card-games, prejudices and

tunes, which are more important than laws and more cementatory than

ideals--were disappearing before the over-zealousness of a _parvenu_

refinement that had not yet attained to self-confidence. The Anglo-Saxon

stolidity of the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given

over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the universal

tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of the Orient for the

sobrieties of fashionable civilization. When Jeshurun waxed fat he did

not always kick, but he yearned to approximate as much as possible to

John Bull without merging in him; to sink himself and yet not be

absorbed, not to be and yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote

in human mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to

John Bull generally assimilating Jeshurun away. For such is the nature

of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own way and you make a new

man of him; persecute him and he is himself again.

"But if nobody has read the man's book," Raphael Leon ventured to

interrupt at last, "is it quite fair to assume his book isn't fit to

read?"

The shy dark little girl he had taken down to dinner darted an

appreciative glance at her neighbor. It was in accordance with Raphael's

usual anxiety to give the devil his due, that he should be unwilling to

condemn even the writer of an anti-Semitic novel unheard. But then it

was an open secret in the family that Raphael was mad. They did their

best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his

back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue

too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to

earnest reasoned opinions.

"But we know enough of the book to know we are badly treated," protested

the hostess.

"We have always been badly treated in literature," said Raphael. "We are

made either angels or devils. On the one hand, Lessing and George Eliot,

on the other, the stock dramatist and novelist with their low-comedy

villain."

"Oh," said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think

Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. "Do

you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish

character?"

"They are the only writers who have ever understood it," affirmed Miss

Cissy Levine, emphatically.

A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark

little girl.

"Stop a moment," said Sidney. "I've been so busy doing justice to this

delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine nobody here

has read _Mordecai Josephs_. I have, and I say there is more actuality

in it than in _Daniel Deronda_ and _Nathan der Weise_ put together. It

is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems

handicapped by a dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and

even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over

them--actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings

after the indefinable--it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied

that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually

laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to

make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral."

"Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?" murmured Addie.

"It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek."

"It's not Greek," put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of soul and

beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant

_ateliers_ where you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek."

"It's Greek to Addie, anyhow," laughed Sidney. "But that's what makes

the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory."

"We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it so

cleverly," said the hostess.

"We all felt it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.

"Yes, that's it," said Sidney, blandly. "I could have forgiven the

rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically painted."

"Rose-color!" gasped Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, "rose-color, indeed!" Not

even Sidney's authority could persuade the table into that.

Poor rich Jews! The upper middle-classes had every excuse for being

angry. They knew they were excellent persons, well-educated and

well-travelled, interested in charities (both Jewish and Christian),

people's concerts, district-visiting, new novels, magazines,

reading-circles, operas, symphonies, politics, volunteer regiments,

Show-Sunday and Corporation banquets; that they had sons at Rugby and

Oxford, and daughters who played and painted and sang, and homes that

were bright oases of optimism in a jaded society; that they were good

Liberals and Tories, supplementing their duties as Englishmen with a

solicitude for the best interests of Judaism; that they left no stone

unturned to emancipate themselves from the secular thraldom of

prejudice; and they felt it very hard that a little vulgar section

should always be chosen by their own novelists, and their efforts to

raise the tone of Jewish society passed by.

Sidney, whose conversation always had the air of aloofness from the

race, so that his own foibles often came under the lash of his sarcasm,

proceeded to justify his assertion of the rose-color picture in

_Mordecai Josephs_. He denied that modern English Jews had any religion

whatever; claiming that their faith consisted of forms that had to be

kept up in public, but which they were too shrewd and cute to believe in

or to practise in private, though every one might believe every one else

did; that they looked upon due payment of their synagogue bills as

discharging all their obligations to Heaven; that the preachers secretly

despised the old formulas, and that the Rabbinate declared its

intention of dying for Judaism only as a way of living by it; that the

body politic was dead and rotten with hypocrisy, though the augurs said

it was alive and well. He admitted that the same was true of

Christianity. Raphael reminded him that a number of Jews had drifted

quite openly from the traditional teaching, that thousands of

well-ordered households found inspiration and spiritual satisfaction in

every form of it, and that hypocrisy was too crude a word for the

complex motives of those who obeyed it without inner conviction.

"For instance," said he, "a gentleman said to me the other day--I was

much touched by the expression--'I believe with my father's heart.'"

"It is a good epigram," said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said

of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes?

The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among

poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock.

You catch your ministers young, when they are saturated with suppressed

scepticism, and bribe them with small salaries that seem affluence to

the sons of poor immigrants. That the ministry is not an honorable

profession may be seen from the anxiety of the minister to raise his

children in the social scale by bringing them up to some other line of

business."

"That is true," said Raphael, gravely. "Our wealthy families must be

induced to devote a son each to the Synagogue."

"I wish they would," said Sidney. "At present, every second man is a

lawyer. We ought to have more officers and doctors, too. I like those

old Jews who smote the Philistines hip and thigh; it is not good for a

race to run all to brain: I suppose, though, we had to develop cunning

to survive at all. There was an enlightened minister whose Friday

evenings I used to go to when a youth--delightful talk we had there,

too; you know whom I mean. Well, one of his sons is a solicitor, and the

other a stockbroker. The rich men he preached to helped to place his

sons. He was a charming man, but imagine him preaching to them the

truths in _Mordecai Josephs_, as Mr. Saville suggested."

"_Our_ minister lets us have it hot enough, though," said Mr. Henry

Goldsmith with a guffaw.

His wife hastened to obliterate the unrefined expression.

"Mr. Strelitski is a wonderfully eloquent young man, so quiet and

reserved in society, but like an ancient prophet in the pulpit."

"Yes, we were very lucky to get him," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith.

The little dark girl shuddered.

"What is the matter?" asked Raphael softly.

"I don't know. I don't like the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. He is eloquent,

but his dogmatism irritates me. I don't believe he is sincere. He

doesn't like me, either."

"Oh, you're both wrong," he said in concern.

"Strelitski is a draw, I admit," said Mr. Montagu Samuels, who was the

President of a rival synagogue. "But Rosenbaum is a good pull-down on

the other side, eh?"

Mr. Henry Goldsmith groaned. The second minister of the Kensington

synagogue was the scandal of the community. He wasn't expected to

preach, and he didn't practise.

"I've heard of that man," said Sidney laughing. "He's a bit of a gambler

and a spendthrift, isn't he? Why do you keep him on?"

"He has a fine voice, you see," said Mr. Goldsmith. "That makes a

Rosenbaum faction at once. Then he has a wife and family. That makes

another."

"Strelitski isn't married, is he?" asked Sidney.

"No," said Mr. Goldsmith, "not yet. The congregation expects him to,

though. I don't care to give him the hint myself; he is a little queer

sometimes."

"He owes it to his position," said Miss Cissy Levine.

"That is what we think," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, with the majestic

manner that suited her opulent beauty.

"I wish we had him in our synagogue," said Raphael. "Michaels is a

well-meaning worthy man, but he is dreadfully dull."

"Poor Raphael!" said Sidney. "Why did you abolish the old style of

minister who had to slaughter the sheep? Now the minister reserves all

his powers of destruction for his own flock.'"

"I have given him endless hints to preach only once a month," said Mr.

Montagu Samuels dolefully. "But every Saturday our hearts sink as we see

him walk to the pulpit."

"You see, Addie, how a sense of duty makes a man criminal," said

Sidney. "Isn't Michaels the minister who defends orthodoxy in a way that

makes the orthodox rage over his unconscious heresies, while the

heterodox enjoy themselves by looking out for his historical and

grammatical blunders!"

"Poor man, he works hard," said Raphael, gently. "Let him be."

Over the dessert the conversation turned by way of the Rev. Strelitski's

marriage, to the growing willingness of the younger generation to marry

out of Judaism. The table discerned in inter-marriage the beginning of

the end.

"But why postpone the inevitable?" asked Sidney calmly. "What is this

mania for keeping up an effete _ism_? Are we to cripple our lives for

the sake of a word? It's all romantic fudge, the idea of perpetual

isolation. You get into little cliques and mistaken narrow-mindedness

for fidelity to an ideal. I can live for months and forget there are

such beings as Jews in the world. I have floated down the Nile in a

_dahabiya_ while you were beating your breasts in the Synagogue, and the

palm-trees and pelicans knew nothing of your sacrosanct chronological

crisis, your annual epidemic of remorse."

The table thrilled with horror, without, however, quite believing in the

speaker's wickedness. Addie looked troubled.

"A man and wife of different religions can never know true happiness,"

said the hostess.

"Granted," retorted Sidney. "But why shouldn't Jews without Judaism

marry Christians without Christianity? Must a Jew needs have a Jewess to

help him break the Law?"

"Inter-marriage must not be tolerated," said Raphael. "It would hurt us

less if we had a country. Lacking that, we must preserve our human

boundaries."

"You have good phrases sometimes," admitted Sidney. "But why must we

preserve any boundaries? Why must we exist at all as a separate people?"

"To fulfil the mission of Israel," said Mr. Montagu Samuels solemnly.

"Ah, what is that? That is one of the things nobody ever seems able to

tell me."

"We are God's witnesses," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, snipping off for

herself a little bunch of hot-house grapes.

"False witnesses, mostly then," said Sidney. "A Christian friend of

mine, an artist, fell in love with a girl and courted her regularly at

her house for four years. Then he proposed; she told him to ask her

father, and he then learned for the first time that the family were

Jewish, and his suit could not therefore be entertained. Could a

satirist have invented anything funnier? Whatever it was Jews have to

bear witness to, these people had been bearing witness to so effectually

that a daily visitor never heard a word of the evidence during four

years. And this family is not an exception; it is a type. Abroad the

English Jew keeps his Judaism in the background, at home in the back

kitchen. When he travels, his Judaism is not packed up among his

_impedimenta_. He never obtrudes his creed, and even his Jewish

newspaper is sent to him in a wrapper labelled something else. How's

that for witnesses? Mind you, I'm not blaming the men, being one of 'em.

They may be the best fellows going, honorable, high-minded,

generous--why expect them to be martyrs more than other Englishmen?

Isn't life hard enough without inventing a new hardship? I declare

there's no narrower creature in the world than your idealist; he sets up

a moral standard which suits his own line of business, and rails at men

of the world for not conforming to it. God's witnesses, indeed! I say

nothing of those who are rather the Devil's witnesses, but think of the

host of Jews like myself who, whether they marry Christians or not,

simply drop out, and whose absence of all religion escapes notice in the

medley of creeds. We no more give evidence than those old Spanish

Jews--Marannos, they were called, weren't they?--who wore the Christian

mask for generations. Practically, many of us are Marannos still; I

don't mean the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that,

but the Jews who have gone on believing. One Day of Atonement I amused

myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops that were closed

in the Strand. 'Our annual holiday,' Stock-taking day,' 'Our annual

bean-feast.' 'Closed for repairs.'"

"Well, it's something if they keep the Fast at all," said Mr. Henry

Goldsmith. "It shows spirituality is not dead in them."

"Spirituality!" sneered Sidney. "Sheer superstition, rather. A dread of

thunderbolts. Besides, fasting is a sensuous _attraction_. But for the

fasting, the Day of Atonement would have long since died out for these

men. 'Our annual bean-feast'! There's witnesses for you."

"We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us," said Raphael Leon

quietly. "Our mission is to spread the truth of the Torah till the earth

is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

"But we don't spread it."

"We do. Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through

them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one

with the moral law."

"Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master

lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are

teaching."

"By no means. Rather of one who stays on to protest against the false

additions of his whilom pupils."

"But we don't protest."

"Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest," urged Raphael.

"When the stress of persecution lightens, we may protest more

consciously. We cannot have been preserved in vain through so many

centuries of horrors, through the invasions of the Goths and Huns,

through the Crusades, through the Holy Roman Empire, through the times

of Torquemada. It is not for nothing that a handful of Jews loom so

large in the history of the world that their past is bound up with every

noble human effort, every high ideal, every development of science,

literature and art. The ancient faith that has united us so long must

not be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that

sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece

and the Moors. If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us keep together

still. Who knows but that it will be born again in us if we are only

patient? Race affinity is a potent force; why be in a hurry to dissipate

it? The Marannos you speak of were but maimed heroes, yet one day the

olden flame burst through the layers of three generations of Christian

profession and inter-marriage, and a brilliant company of illustrious

Spaniards threw up their positions and sailed away in voluntary exile to

serve the God of Israel. We shall yet see a spiritual revival even among

our brilliant English Jews who have hid their face from their own

flesh."

The dark little girl looked up into his face with ill-suppressed wonder.

"Have you done preaching at me, Raphael?" inquired Sidney. "If so, pass

me a banana."

Raphael smiled sadly and obeyed.

"I'm afraid if I see much of Raphael I shall be converted to Judaism,"

said Sidney, peeling the banana. "I had better take a hansom to the

Riviera at once. I intended to spend Christmas there; I never dreamed I

should be talking theology in London."

"Oh, I think Christmas in London is best," said the hostess unguardedly.

"Oh, I don't know. Give me Brighton," said the host.

"Well, yes, I suppose Brighton _is_ pleasanter," said Mr. Montagu

Samuels.

"Oh, but so many Jews go there," said Percy Saville.

"Yes, that _is_ the drawback," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. "Do you know,

some years ago I discovered a delightful village in Devonshire, and took

the household there in the summer. The very next year when I went down I

found no less than two Jewish families temporarily located there. Of

course, I have never gone there since."

"Yes, it's wonderful how Jews scent out all the nicest places," agreed

Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "Five years ago you could escape them by not going

to Ramsgate; now even the Highlands are getting impossible."

Thereupon the hostess rose and the ladies retired to the drawing-room,

leaving the gentlemen to discuss coffee, cigars and the paradoxes of

Sidney, who, tired of religion, looked to dumb show plays for the

salvation of dramatic literature.

There was a little milk-jug on the coffee-tray, it represented a victory

over Mary O'Reilly. The late Aaron Goldsmith never took milk till six

hours after meat, and it was with some trepidation that the present Mr.

Goldsmith ordered it to be sent up one evening after dinner. He took an

early opportunity of explaining apologetically to Mary that some of his

guests were not so pious as himself, and hospitality demanded the

concession.

Mr. Henry Goldsmith did not like his coffee black. His dinner-table was

hardly ever without a guest.

CHAPTER II.

RAPHAEL LEON.

When the gentlemen joined the ladies, Raphael instinctively returned to

his companion of the dinner-table. She had been singularly silent during

the meal, but her manner had attracted him. Over his black coffee and

cigarette it struck him that she might have been unwell, and that he had

been insufficiently attentive to the little duties of the table, and he

hastened to ask if she had a headache.

"No, no," she said, with a grateful smile. "At least not more than

usual." Her smile was full of pensive sweetness, which made her face

beautiful. It was a face that would have been almost plain but for the

soul behind. It was dark, with great earnest eyes. The profile was

disappointing, the curves were not perfect, and there was a reminder of

Polish origin in the lower jaw and the cheek-bone. Seen from the front,

the face fascinated again, in the Eastern glow of its coloring, in the

flash of the white teeth, in the depths of the brooding eyes, in the

strength of the features that yet softened to womanliest tenderness and

charm when flooded by the sunshine of a smile. The figure was _petite_

and graceful, set off by a simple tight-fitting, high-necked dress of

ivory silk draped with lace, with a spray of Neapolitan violets at the

throat. They sat in a niche of the spacious and artistically furnished

drawing-room, in the soft light of the candles, talking quietly while

Addie played Chopin.

Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's aesthetic instincts had had full play in the

elaborate carelessness of the _ensemble_, and the result was a triumph,

a medley of Persian luxury and Parisian grace, a dream of somniferous

couches and arm-chairs, rich tapestry, vases, fans, engravings, books,

bronzes, tiles, plaques and flowers. Mr. Henry Goldsmith was himself a

connoisseur in the arts, his own and his father's fortunes having been

built up in the curio and antique business, though to old Aaron

Goldsmith appreciation had meant strictly pricing, despite his genius

for detecting false Correggios and sham Louis Quatorze cabinets.

"Do you suffer from headaches?" inquired Raphael solicitously.

"A little. The doctor says I studied too much and worked too hard when a

little girl. Such is the punishment of perseverance. Life isn't like the

copy-books."

"Oh, but I wonder your parents let you over-exert yourself."

A melancholy smile played about the mobile lips. "I brought myself up,"

she said. "You look puzzled--Oh, I know! Confess you think I'm Miss

Goldsmith!"

"Why--are--you--not?" he stammered.

"No, my name is Ansell, Esther Ansell."

"Pardon me. I am so bad at remembering names in introductions. But I've

just come back from Oxford and it's the first time I've been to this

house, and seeing you here without a cavalier when we arrived, I thought

you lived here."

"You thought rightly, I do live here." She laughed gently at his

changing expression.

"I wonder Sidney never mentioned you to me," he said.

"Do you mean Mr. Graham?" she said with a slight blush.

"Yes, I know he visits here."

"Oh, he is an artist. He has eyes only for the beautiful." She spoke

quickly, a little embarrassed.

"You wrong him; his interests are wider than that."

"Do you know I am so glad you didn't pay me the obvious compliment?" she

said, recovering herself. "It looked as if I were fishing for it. I'm so

stupid."

He looked at her blankly.

"_I'm_ stupid," he said, "for I don't know what compliment I missed

paying."

"If you regret it I shall not think so well of you," she said. "You know

I've heard all about your brilliant success at Oxford."

"They put all those petty little things in the Jewish papers, don't

they?"

"I read it in the _Times_," retorted Esther. "You took a double first

and the prize for poetry and a heap of other things, but I noticed the

prize for poetry, because it is so rare to find a Jew writing poetry."

"Prize poetry is not poetry," he reminded her. "But, considering the

Jewish Bible contains the finest poetry in the world, I do not see why

you should be surprised to find a Jew trying to write some."

"Oh, you know what I mean," answered Esther. "What is the use of talking

about the old Jews? We seem to be a different race now. Who cares for

poetry?"

"Our poet's scroll reaches on uninterruptedly through the Middle Ages.

The passing phenomenon of to-day must not blind us to the real traits of

our race," said Raphael.

"Nor must we be blind to the passing phenomenon of to-day," retorted

Esther. "We have no ideals now."

"I see Sidney has been infecting you," he said gently.

"No, no; I beg you will not think that," she said, flushing almost

resentfully. "I have thought these things, as the Scripture tells us to

meditate on the Law, day and night, sleeping and waking, standing up and

sitting down."

"You cannot have thought of them without prejudice, then," he answered,

"if you say we have no ideals."

"I mean, we're not responsive to great poetry--to the message of a

Browning for instance."

"I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I

would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's

philosophy of religion is already ours, for hundreds of years every

Saturday night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and

Providence in 'Pisgah Sights.'"

All's lend and borrow,

Good, see, wants evil,

Joy demands sorrow,

Angel weds devil.

"What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the

Sabbath and welcoming in the days of toil, accepting the holy and the

profane, the light and the darkness?"

"Is that in the prayer-book?" said Esther astonished.

"Yes; you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring

everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there

are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities but can see

nothing poetical in Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante but despise

David."

"I shall certainly look up the liturgy," said Esther. "But that will not

alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a

tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the passage in Hebrew--I see my

father making _Havdolah_--the melody goes in my head like a sing-song.

But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always

got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It

sounds very shocking, I know."

"Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious

edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from

meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be

below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which

gave the world the Bible knows it least--" He stopped suddenly, for

Addie was playing pianissimo, and although she was his sister, he did

not like to put her out.

"It comes to this," said Esther when Chopin spoke louder, "our

prayer-book needs depolarization, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible."

"Exactly," assented Raphael. "And what our people need is to make

acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning

for theism, when the words of his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' are but a synopsis of

a famous Jewish argument:

"'I see the whole design.

I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too.

Perfect I call Thy plan,

Thanks that I was a man!

Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.'

"It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us nobody

denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely, is not so hard to

grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature.

Power, Love, Wisdom--there you have a real trinity which makes up the

Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways,

unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy

thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern

philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the

faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And we are

proud and happy in that the dread Unknown God of the infinite Universe

has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the

world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has

verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly

as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through

the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our

mission is not yet over."

The sonata came to an end; Percy Saville started a comic song, playing

his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.

"And do you really believe that we are sanctified to God's service?"

said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.

"Can there be any doubt of it? God made choice of one race to be

messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily, the

sacred duty is ours," he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the

incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by

far the greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept

it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more

penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for

breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the

trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she

could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have

admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.

"But isn't that a narrow conception of God's revelation?" she asked.

"No. Why should God not teach through a great race as through a great

man?"

"And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually

speaking?"

"How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human nature and the

constitution of things. Ah, I wish I could get you to see with the eyes

of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel; to look on this human life of

ours, not with the pessimism of Christianity, but as a holy and precious

gift, to be enjoyed heartily yet spent in God's service--birth,

marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's

earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of God's

praise; the morning stars singing together, as we say in the Dawn

Service."

As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthusiasm always

infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid universe seemed to be

transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, full of infinite potentialities

of worthy work and noble pleasure. A thunder of applausive hands marked

the end of Percy Saville's comic song. Mr. Montagu Samuels was beaming

at his brother's grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general

conversation, followed by a round game in which Raphael and Esther had

to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find themselves

together again.

"Ah, yes," said Esther, sadly, resuming the conversation as if there

had been no break, "but this is a Judaism of your own creation. The real

Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It does not call to the soul's

depths like Christianity."

"Again, it is a question of the point of view taken. From a practical,

our ceremonialism is a training in self-conquest, while it links the

generations 'bound each to each by natural piety,' and unifies our atoms

dispersed to the four corners of the earth as nothing else could. From a

theoretical, it is but an extension of the principle I tried to show

you. Eating, drinking, every act of life is holy, is sanctified by some

relation to heaven. We will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of

life from religion, and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the

devil, any more than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is

no devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a

mediator. Every Jew is in as direct relation with God as the Chief

Rabbi. Christianity is an historical failure--its counsels of

perfection, its command to turn the other cheek--a farce. When a modern

spiritual genius, a Tolstoi, repeats it, all Christendom laughs, as at a

new freak of insanity. All practical, honorable men are Jews at heart.

Judaism has never tampered with human dignity, nor perverted the moral

consciousness. Our housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sifter

Addie, 'I'm so glad to see you do so much charity, Miss; _I_ need not,

because I'm saved already.' Judaism is the true 'religion of humanity.'

It does not seek to make men and women angels before their time. Our

marriage service blesses the King of the Universe, who has created 'joy

and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and

delight, love, brotherhood, peace and fellowship.'"

"It is all very beautiful in theory," said Esther. "But so is

Christianity, which is also not to be charged with its historical

caricatures, nor with its superiority to average human nature. As for

the doctrine of original sin, it is the one thing that the science of

heredity has demonstrated, with a difference. But do not be alarmed, I

do not call myself a Christian because I see some relation between the

dogmas of Christianity and the truths of experience, nor even

because"--here she smiled, wistfully--"I should like to believe in

Jesus. But you are less logical. When you said there was no devil, I

felt sure I was right; that you belong to the modern schools, who get

rid of all the old beliefs but cannot give up the old names. You know,

as well as I do, that, take away the belief in hell, a real

old-fashioned hell of fire and brimstone, even such Judaism as survives

would freeze to death without that genial warmth."

"I know nothing of the kind," he said, "and I am in no sense a modern. I

am (to adopt a phrase which is, to me, tautologous) an orthodox Jew."

Esther smiled. "Forgive my smiling," she said. "I am thinking of the

orthodox Jews I used to know, who used to bind their phylacteries on

their arms and foreheads every morning."

"I bind my phylacteries on my arm and forehead every morning," he said,

simply.

"What!" gasped Esther. "You an Oxford man!"

"Yes," he said, gravely. "Is it so astonishing to you?"

"Yes, it is. You are the first educated Jew I have ever met who believed

in that sort of thing."

"Nonsense?" he said, inquiringly. "There are hundreds like me."

She shook her head.

"There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I suppose _he_ does, but then he's

paid for it."

"Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski?" he said, pained. "He has a noble

soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe my best

understanding of Judaism."

"Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much

more convincing, from your lips," murmured Esther. "Now I know; because

he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when

he opens his mouth."

"But I wear a white tie, too," said Raphael, his smile broadening in

sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.

"That's not a trade-mark," she protested. "But forgive me; I didn't

know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him

any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more

than the others to make Judaism more spiritual."

"More spiritual!" he repeated, the pained expression returning. "Why,

the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualization of the

material."

"And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialization of the

spiritual," she answered.

He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.

"You have lived among your books," Esther went on. "I have lived among

the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the

mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think

of the squalor and the misery."

"God works through human suffering; his ways are large," said Raphael,

almost in a whisper.

"And wasteful," said Esther. "Spare me clerical platitudes à la

Strelitski. I have seen so much."

"And suffered much?" he asked gently.

She nodded scarce perceptibly. "Oh, if you only knew my life!"

"Tell it me," he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul

seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to

hers.

"I cannot, not now," she murmured. "There is so much to tell."

"Tell me a little," he urged.

She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, forgetting he was

a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it merely the spiritual

affinity of souls that feel their identity through all differences of

brain?

"What is the use?" she said. "You, with your childhood, could never

realize mine. My mother died when I was seven; my father was a Russian

pauper alien who rarely got work. I had an elder brother of brilliant

promise. He died before he was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and

sisters and a grandmother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret."

Her eyes grew humid at the recollection; she saw the spacious

drawing-room and the dainty bric-à-brac through a mist.

"Poor child!" murmured Raphael.

"Strelitski, by the way, lived in our street then. He sold cigars on

commission and earned an honest living. Sometimes I used to think that

is why he never cares to meet my eye; he remembers me and knows I

remember him; at other times I thought he knew that I saw through his

professions of orthodoxy. But as you champion him, I suppose I must look

for a more creditable reason for his inability to look me straight in

the face. Well, I grew up, I got on well at school, and about ten years

ago I won a prize given by Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, whose kindly interest I

excited thenceforward. At thirteen I became a teacher. This had always

been my aspiration: when it was granted I was more unhappy than ever. I

began to realize acutely that we were terribly poor. I found it

difficult to dress so as to insure the respect of my pupils and

colleagues; the work was unspeakably hard and unpleasant; tiresome and

hungry little girls had to be ground to suit the inspectors, and fell

victims to the then prevalent competition among teachers for a high

percentage of passes. I had to teach Scripture history and I didn't

believe in it. None of us believed in it; the talking serpent, the

Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the whale, and all that. Everything

about me was sordid and unlovely. I yearned for a fuller, wider life,

for larger knowledge. I hungered for the sun. In short, I was intensely

miserable. At home things went from bad to worse; often I was the sole

bread-winner, and my few shillings a week were our only income. My

brother Solomon grew up, but could not get into a decent situation

because he must not work on the Sabbath. Oh, if you knew how young lives

are cramped and shipwrecked at the start by this one curse of the

Sabbath, you would not wish us to persevere in our isolation. It sent a

mad thrill of indignation through me to find my father daily entreating

the deaf heavens."

He would not argue now. His eyes were misty.

"Go on!" he murmured.

"The rest is nothing. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stepped in as the _dea ex

machina_. She had no children, and she took it into her head to adopt

me. Naturally I was dazzled, though anxious about my brothers and

sisters. But my father looked upon it as a godsend. Without consulting

me, Mrs. Goldsmith arranged that he and the other children should be

shipped to America: she got him some work at a relative's in Chicago. I

suppose she was afraid of having the family permanently hanging about

the Terrace. At first I was grieved; but when the pain of parting was

over I found myself relieved to be rid of them, especially of my father.

It sounds shocking, I know, but I can confess all my vanities now, for I

have learned all is vanity. I thought Paradise was opening before me; I

was educated by the best masters, and graduated at the London

University. I travelled and saw the Continent; had my fill of sunshine

and beauty. I have had many happy moments, realized many childish

ambitions, but happiness is as far away as ever. My old

school-colleagues envy me, yet I do not know whether I would not go back

without regret."

"Is there anything lacking in your life, then?" he asked gently.

"No, I happen to be a nasty, discontented little thing, that is all,"

she said, with a faint smile. "Look on me as a psychological paradox, or

a text for the preacher."

"And do the Goldsmiths know of your discontent?"

"Heaven forbid! They have been so very kind to me. We get along very

well together. I never discuss religion with them, only the services and

the minister."

"And your relatives?"

"Ah, they are all well and happy. Solomon has a store in Detroit. He is

only nineteen and dreadfully enterprising. Father is a pillar of a

Chicago _Chevra_. He still talks Yiddish. He has escaped learning

American just as he escaped learning English. I buy him a queer old

Hebrew book sometimes with my pocket-money and he is happy. One little

sister is a type-writer, and the other is just out of school and does

the housework. I suppose I shall go out and see them all some day."

"What became of the grandmother you mentioned?"

"She had a Charity Funeral a year before the miracle happened. She was

very weak and ill, and the Charity Doctor warned her that she must not

fast on the Day of Atonement. But she wouldn't even moisten her parched

lips with a drop of cold water. And so she died; exhorting my father

with her last breath to beware of Mrs. Simons (a good-hearted widow who

was very kind to us), and to marry a pious Polish woman."

"And did he?"

"No, I am still stepmotherless. Your white tie's gone wrong. It's all on

one side."

"It generally is," said Raphael, fumbling perfunctorily at the little

bow.

"Let me put it straight. There! And now you know all about me. I hope

you are going to repay my confidences in kind."

"I am afraid I cannot oblige with anything so romantic," he said

smiling. "I was born of rich but honest parents, of a family settled in

England for three generations, and went to Harrow and Oxford in due

course. That is all. I saw a little of the Ghetto, though, when I was a

boy. I had some correspondence on Hebrew Literature with a great Jewish

scholar, Gabriel Hamburg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I

was up from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at the

foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by Gideon, the

member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by the enthusiasm; it was

there I made the acquaintance of Strelitski. He spoke as if inspired. I

also met a poverty-stricken poet, Melchitsedek Pinchas, who afterwards

sent me his work, _Metatoron's Flames_, to Harrow. A real neglected

genius. Now there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and

poetry. After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with the

Ghetto, and have been there several times lately."

"But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine?"

"I do. Why should we not have our own country?"

"It would be too chaotic! Fancy all the Ghettos of the world

amalgamating. Everybody would want to be ambassador at Paris, as the old

joke says."

"It would be a problem for the statesmen among us. Dissenters,

Churchmen, Atheists, Slum Savages, Clodhoppers, Philosophers,

Aristocrats--make up Protestant England. It is the popular ignorance of

the fact that Jews are as diverse as Protestants that makes such novels

as we were discussing at dinner harmful."

"But is the author to blame for that? He does not claim to present the

whole truth but a facet. English society lionized Thackeray for his

pictures of it. Good heavens! Do Jews suppose they alone are free from

the snobbery, hypocrisy and vulgarity that have shadowed every society

that has ever existed?"

"In no work of art can the spectator be left out of account," he urged.

"In a world full of smouldering prejudices a scrap of paper may start

the bonfire. English society can afford to laugh where Jewish society

must weep. That is why our papers are always so effusively grateful for

Christian compliments. You see it is quite true that the author paints

not the Jews but bad Jews, but, in the absence of paintings of good

Jews, bad Jews are taken as identical with Jews."

"Oh, then you agree with the others about the book?" she said in a

disappointed tone.

"I haven't read it; I am speaking generally. Have you?"

"Yes."

"And what did you think of it? I don't remember your expressing an

opinion at table."

She pondered an instant.

"I thought highly of it and agreed with every word of it." She paused.

He looked expectantly into the dark intense face. He saw it was charged

with further speech.

"Till I met you," she concluded abruptly.

A wave of emotion passed over his face.

"You don't mean that?" he murmured.

"Yes, I do. You have shown me new lights."

"I thought I was speaking platitudes," he said simply. "It would be

nearer the truth to say you have given _me_ new lights."

The little face flushed with pleasure; the dark skin shining, the eyes

sparkling. Esther looked quite pretty.

"How is that possible?" she said. "You have read and thought twice as

much as I."

"Then you must be indeed poorly off," he said, smiling. "But I am really

glad we met. I have been asked to edit a new Jewish paper, and our talk

has made me see more clearly the lines on which it must be run, if it is

to do any good. I am awfully indebted to you."

"A new Jewish paper?" she said, deeply interested. "We have so many

already. What is its _raison d'être_?"

"To convert you," he said smiling, but with a ring of seriousness in the

words.

"Isn't that like a steam-hammer cracking a nut or Hoti burning down his

house to roast a pig? And suppose I refuse to take in the new Jewish

paper? Will it suspend publication?" He laughed.

"What's this about a new Jewish paper?" said Mrs. Goldsmith, suddenly

appearing in front of them with her large genial smile. "Is that what

you two have been plotting? I noticed you've laid your heads together

all the evening. Ah well, birds of a feather flock together. Do you know

my little Esther took the scholarship for logic at London? I wanted her

to proceed to the M.A. at once, but the doctor said she must have a

rest." She laid her hand affectionately on the girl's hair.

Esther looked embarrassed.

"And so she is still a Bachelor," said Raphael, smiling but evidently

impressed.

"Yes, but not for long I hope," returned Mrs. Goldsmith. "Come, darling,

everybody's dying to hear one of your little songs."

"The dying is premature," said Esther. "You know I only sing for my own

amusement."

"Sing for mine, then," pleaded Raphael.

"To make you laugh?" queried Esther. "I know you'll laugh at the way I

play the accompaniment. One's fingers have to be used to it from

childhood--"

Her eyes finished the sentence, "and you know what mine was."

The look seemed to seal their secret sympathy.

She went to the piano and sang in a thin but trained soprano. The song

was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and heartbreak. To

Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic wails of "The Sons of the

Covenant" or the Polish ditties of Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed also full

of originality. He wished to lose himself in the sweet melancholy, but

Mrs. Goldsmith, who had taken Esther's seat at his side, would not let

him.

"Her own composition--words and music," she whispered. "I wanted her to

publish it, but she is so shy and retiring. Who would think she was the

child of a pauper emigrant, a rough jewel one has picked up and

polished? If you really are going to start a new Jewish paper, she might

be of use to you. And then there is Miss Cissy Levine--you have read her

novels, of course? Sweetly pretty! Do you know, I think we are badly in

want of a new paper, and you are the only man in the community who could

give it us. We want educating, we poor people, we know so little of our

faith and our literature."

"I am so glad you feel the want of it," whispered Raphael, forgetting

Esther in his pleasure at finding a soul yearning for the light.

"Intensely. I suppose it will be advanced?"

Raphael looked at her a moment a little bewildered.

"No, it will be orthodox. It is the orthodox party that supplies the

funds."

A flash of light leaped into Mrs. Goldsmith's eyes.

"I am so glad it is not as I feared." she said. "The rival party has

hitherto monopolized the press, and I was afraid that like most of our

young men of talent you would give it that tendency. Now at last we poor

orthodox will have a voice. It will be written in English?"

"As far as I can," he said, smiling.

"No, you know what I mean. I thought the majority of the orthodox

couldn't read English and that they have their jargon papers. Will you

be able to get a circulation?"

"There are thousands of families in the East End now among whom English

is read if not written. The evening papers sell as well there as

anywhere else in London."

"Bravo!" murmured Mrs. Goldsmith, clapping her hands.

Esther had finished her song. Raphael awoke to the remembrance of her.

But she did not come to him again, sitting down instead on a lounge near

the piano, where Sidney bantered Addie with his most paradoxical

persiflage.