How should Love,
Whom the cross-lightnings of four chance-met eyes
Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow
Such dear familiarities of dawn?
Seldom; but when he does, Master of all.
_Aylmer’s Field._
The Leunigers’ drawing-room, in which Reuben now found himself, was a
spacious apartment, hung with primrose coloured satin, furnished
throughout in impeccable Louis XV. and lighted with incandescent gas
from innumerable chandeliers and sconces. Beyond, divided by a
plush-draped alcove, was a room of smaller size, where, at present,
could be discerned the intent, Semitic faces of some half-dozen
card-players.
In the front room four or five young people in evening dress were
grouped, but at Reuben’s entrance they all came forward with various
exclamations of greeting.
“Thought you weren’t coming back till to-morrow!”
“I shouldn’t have known you; you’re as brown as a berry!”
“See the conquering hero comes!”
This last from Rose Leuniger, a fat girl of twenty, in a tight-fitting
blue silk dress, with the red hair and light eyes _à fleur de tête_ of
her little brother.
“I am awfully glad to see you looking so well,” added Leopold Leuniger,
the owner of the voice.
He was a short, slight person of one or two-and-twenty, with a
picturesque head of markedly tribal character.
The dark, oval face, bright, melancholy eyes, alternately dreamy and
shrewd; the charming, humorous smile, with its flash of white even
teeth, might have belonged to some poet or musician, instead of to the
son of a successful Jewish stockbroker.
By his side stood a small, dark, gnome-like creature, apparently
entirely overpowered by the rich, untidy garments she was wearing. She
was a girl, or woman, whose age it would be difficult to determine, with
small, glittering eyes that outshone the diamonds in her ears.
Her trailing gown of heavy flowered brocade was made with an attempt at
picturesqueness; an intention which was further evidenced by the studied
untidiness of the tousled hair, and by the thick strings of amber coiled
round the lean brown neck.
This was Esther Kohnthal, the only child of poor Kohnthal; and,
according to her own account, the biggest heiress and the ugliest woman
in all Bayswater.
Shuffling up awkwardly behind her came Ernest Leuniger, the eldest son
of the house, of whom it would be unfair to say that he was an idiot. He
was nervous, delicate; had a rooted aversion to society; and was obliged
by his state of health to spend the greater part of his time in the
country.
Esther used to shrug her shoulders and smile shrewdly and unpleasantly
whenever this description of what she chose to consider the family
skeleton was given out in her hearing; she told every one, quite
frankly, that her own father was in a madhouse.
Judith Quixano came up a little behind the others, with a hesitation in
her manner which was new to her, and of which she herself was
unconscious.
She was twenty-two years of age, in the very prime of her youth and
beauty; a tall, regal-looking creature, with an exquisite dark head,
features like those of a face cut on gem or cameo, and wonderful,
lustrous, mournful eyes, entirely out of keeping with the accepted
characteristics of their owner.
Her smooth, oval cheek glowed with a rich, yet subdued, hue of perfect
health; and her tight-fitting fashionable white evening dress showed to
advantage the generous lines of a figure which was distinguished for
stateliness rather than grace.
Reuben Sachs had looked straight at this girl on entering the room; but
he shook hands with her last of all, clasping her fingers closely and
searching her face with his eyes. They were not cousins, her
relationship to the Leunigers coming from the father’s side; but there
had always been between them a fiction of cousinship, which had made
possible what is rare all the world over, but rarer than ever in the
Jewish community--an intimacy between young people of opposite sexes.
“I thought I had better come while I could. We were before our time,”
said Reuben as they sat down, the whole party of them grouped close
together, with the exception of Ernest, who returned to his solitaire
board, a plaything which afforded him perpetual occupation. After
several years of practice he had never arrived at leaving the glass
marble in solitary state on the board; but he lived in hopes.
“While you could! Before, in fact, fashion had again claimed Mr. Reuben
Sachs for her own,” cried Esther.
“I don’t know about fashion,” answered Reuben with perfect good temper;
Esther was Esther, and if you began to mind what she said, you would
never know where to stop; “but there are a hundred things to be attended
to. I suppose every one is going to the grandpater’s feed to-morrow?”
Every one was going; then, turning to Leo, Reuben said: “When do you go
up?”
“Not till October 14th.”
Leopold Leuniger was on the eve of his third year at Cambridge.
“What have you been doing this Long?”
“Oh ... staying about.”
“Leo has been stopping with Lord Norwood, but we are not allowed to
mention it,” cried Rose in her loud, penetrating voice, “in case it
should seem that we are proud.”
Leo, who was passing through a sensitive phase of his growth, winced
visibly, and Reuben said in a matter-of-fact way: “Oh, by the by, I came
across a cousin of Lord Norwood’s abroad--Lee-Harrison; a curious
fellow, but a good fellow.”
“A howling swell,” added Esther, “with a double-barrelled name.”
“Exactly. But the point about him is that he has gone over body and soul
to the Jewish community.”
There was an ironical exclamation all round. The Jews, the most clannish
and exclusive of peoples, the most keen to resent outside criticism, can
say hard things of one another within the walls of the ghetto.
“He says himself,” went on Reuben, “that he has a taste for religion. I
believe he flirted with the Holy Mother for some years, but didn’t get
caught. Then he joined a set of mystics, and lived for three months on a
mountain, somewhere in Asia Minor. Now he has come round to thinking
Judaism the one religion, and has been regularly received into the
synagogue.”
“And expects, no doubt,” said Esther, “to be rejoiced over as the one
sinner that repenteth. I hope you didn’t shatter his illusions by
telling him that he would more likely be considered a fool for his
pains?”
Reuben laughed, and with an amused expression on his now animated face
went on: “He has a seat in Berkeley Street, and a brand new _talith_,
but still he is not happy. He complains that the Jews he meets in
society are unsatisfactory; they have no local colour. I said I thought
I could promise him a little local colour; I hope to have the pleasure
of introducing him to you all.”
They all laughed with the exception of Rose, who said, rather offended:
“I don’t know about local colour. We don’t wear turbans.”
Reuben put back his head, laughing a little, and seeking Judith’s eyes
for the answering smile he knew he should find there.
She had been keeping rather in the background to-night, quietly but
intensely happy.
Reuben was back again! How delightfully familiar was every tone, every
inflection of his voice! And how well she knew the changes of his face:
the heavy dreaminess, the imperturbable air of Eastern gravity; then lo!
the lifting of the mask; the flash and play of kindling features; the
fire of speaking eyes; the hundred lights and shades of expression that
she could so well interpret.
“What do his people say to it all?” asked Leo.
“Lee-Harrison’s? Oh, I believe they take it very sensibly. They say it’s
only Bertie,” answered Reuben, rising and holding out his hand to his
uncle, who sauntered in from the card-room.
He was a short, stout, red-haired man, closely resembling his daughter,
and at the present moment looked annoyed. The play was high and he had
been losing heavily.
“Let’s have some music, Leo,” he said, flinging himself into an
arm-chair at some distance from the young people. Rose, who was a
skilled musician, went over to the piano, and Leopold took his violin
from its case.
Reuben moved closer to Judith, and, under cover of the violin tuning,
they exchanged a few words.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to get back.”
“You look all the better for your trip. But you must take care and not
overdo it again. It’s bad policy.”
“It is almost impossible not to.”
“But those committees and meetings and things” (she smiled), “surely
they might be cut down?”
“They are often very useful, indirectly, to a man in my position,”
answered Reuben, who had no intention of saying anything cynical.
There was a good deal of genuine benevolence in his nature, and an
almost insatiable energy.
He took naturally to the modern forms of philanthropy: the committees,
the classes, the concerts and meetings. He found indeed that they had
their uses, both social and political; higher motives for attending them
were not wanting; and he liked them for their own sake besides. Out-door
sports he detested; the pleasures of dancing he had exhausted long ago;
the practice of philanthropy provided a vent for his many-sided
energies.
The tuning had come to an end by now, and the musicians had taken up
their position.
Immediately silence fell upon the little audience, broken only by the
click of counters, the crackle of a bank-note in the room beyond; and
the sound of Ernest’s solitaire balls as they dropped into their holes.
Mrs. Leuniger, at the first notes of the tuning, had stolen in and taken
up a position near the door; Esther had moved to a further corner of the
room, where she lay buried in a deep lounge.
Then, all at once, the music broke forth. The great, vulgar,
over-decorated room, with its garish lights, its stifling fumes of gas,
was filled with the sound of dreams; and over the keen faces stole, like
a softening mist, a far-away air of dreamy sensuousness. The long,
delicate hands of the violinist, the dusky, sensitive face, as he bent
lovingly over the instrument, seemed to vibrate with the strings over
which he had such mastery.
The voice of a troubled soul cried out to-night in Leo’s music, whose
accents even the hard brilliance of his accompanist failed to drown.
As the bow was drawn across the strings for the last time, Ernest’s
solitaire board fell to the ground with a crash, the little balls of
Venetian glass rolling audibly in every direction.
The spell was broken; every one rose, and the card-players, who by this
time were hungry, came strolling in from the other room.
Reuben found himself the centre of much handshaking and congratulation
on his improved appearance. He was popular with his relatives, enjoying
his popularity and accepting it gracefully.
“No airs, like that stuck up Leo,” the aunts and uncles used to say.
“There’s a spread in the dining-room; won’t you stay?” said Rose, as
Reuben held out his hand in farewell.
“Not to-night.” He turned last of all to Judith, who stood there silent,
with smiling eyes.
“To-morrow in Portland Place,” he said, clasping her hand with lingering
fingers.
As he walked home in the warm September night he had for once neither
ears nor eyes for the city pageant so dear to him.
He heard and saw nothing but the sound of Leo’s violin, and the face of
Judith Quixano.