The first year at Highbury, that genteel suburb in the north of
London, was an enchanted ecstasy for the mother and the Jewish group
of girls, taken at once to the bosom of a great German clan, and
admitted to a new world of dances and dinners, of "at homes" and
theatres and card parties. The eldest of the pagan group,
Sylvia--tyrannically kept young in the interests of her sisters--was
the only one who grumbled at the change, for Lily and Daisy found
sufficient gain in the prospect of replacing the elder group when it
should have passed away in an odour of orange blossom. The scent of
that was always in the air, and Mrs. Peyser and her three hopefuls
sniffed it night and day.
"No, no; Rebecca shall have him."
"Not me! I am not going to marry a man with carroty hair. Leah's the
eldest; it's her turn first."
"Thank you, my dear. Don't give away what you haven't got."
Every new young man who showed the faintest signs of liking to drop
in, provoked a similar semi-facetious but also semi-serious
canvassing--his person, his income, and the girl to whom he should be
allotted supplying the sauce of every meal at which he--or his
fellow--was not present.
Thus, whether in the flesh or the spirit, the Young Man--for so many
of him appeared on the scene that he hovered in the air rather as a
type than an individual--was a permanent guest at the Peyser table.
But all this new domestic excitement did not compensate little
Schnapsie for her moonlit waters and the strange ships that came and
went with their cargo of mystery.
And poor old Daniel found no cronies to appeal to him like the old,
nothing in the roar of London to compensate for the Saturday night
bustle of the pawn-shop, no dingy little synagogue desirous of his
presidential pomp. He sat inconspicuously in a handsome half-empty
edifice, and knew himself a superfluous atom in a vast lonely
wilderness.
He was not, indeed, an imposing figure, with his ragged graying
whiskers and his boyish blue eyes. In the street he had the stoop and
shuffle of the Ghetto, and forgot to hide his coarse red hands with
gloves; in the house he persisted in wearing a pious skull-cap. At
first his more adaptable wife and his English-bred daughters tried to
fit him for decent society, and to make him feel at home during their
"at homes." But he was soon relegated to the background of these
brilliant social tableaux; for he was either too silent or too
talkative, with old-fashioned Jewish jokes which disconcerted the
smart young men, and with Hebrew quotations which they could not even
understand. And sometimes there thrilled through the small-talk the
trumpet-note of his nose, as he blew it into a coloured handkerchief.
Gradually he was eliminated from the drawing-room altogether.
But for some years longer he reigned supreme in the dining-room--when
there was no company. Old habit kept the girls at table when he
intoned with noisy unction the Hebrew grace after meals; they even
joined in the melodious morceaux that diversified the plain-chant. But
little by little their contributions dwindled to silence. And when
they had smart company to dinner, the old man himself was hushed by
rows of blond and bugle eyebrows; especially after he had once or
twice put young men to shame by offering them the honour of reciting
the grace they did not know.
Daniel's prayer on such occasions was at length reduced to a pious
mumbling, which went unobserved amid the joyous clatter of dessert,
even as his pious skull-cap passed as a preventive against cold.
Last stage of all, the mumbling of his company manners passed over
into the domestic circle; and this humble whispering to God became
symbolic of his suppression.