Quand il pâlit un soir, et que sa voix tremblante
S’éteignit tout à coup dans un mot commencé;
Quand ses yeux, soulevant leur paupière brûlante,
Me blessèrent d’un mal dont je le crus blessé;
* * * * *
Il n’aimait pas--j’aimais.
M. DESBORDES VALMORE.
Old Solomon Sachs awaited his guests in the drawing-room of his house in
Portland Place.
It was the night after Reuben’s arrival, in honour of which the feast
was given.
Such feasts were by no means rare events, the old man liking to assemble
his family round him in true patriarchal fashion. As for the family, it
always grumbled and always went.
He was a short, sturdy-looking man, with a flowing white beard, which
added size to a head already out of all proportion to the rest of him.
The enormous face was both powerful and shrewd; there was power too in
the coarse, square hands, in the square, firmly-planted feet.
You saw at a glance that he was blest with that fitness of which
survival is the inevitable reward.
He wore a skull-cap, and, at the present moment, was pacing the room,
performing what seemed to be an incantation in Hebrew below his breath.
As a matter of fact, he was saying his prayers, an occupation which
helped him to get rid of a great deal of his time, which hung heavily on
his hands, now that age had disabled him from active service on the
Stock Exchange.
His daughter Rebecca, a woman far advanced in middle-life, stitched
drearily at some fancy-work by the fire. She was unmarried, and hated
the position with the frank hatred of the women of her race, for whom it
is a peculiarly unenviable one.
Reuben’s mother, her daughter and son-in-law, were the first to arrive.
Old Solomon shook hands with them, still continuing his muttered
devotions, and they received in silence a greeting to which they were
too much accustomed to consider in any way remarkable.
“Grandpapa saying his prayers,” was an everyday phenomenon. Perhaps the
younger members of the party remembered that it had never been allowed
to interfere with the production of cake; the generous slices had not
been less welcome from the fact that they must be eaten without
acknowledgment.
Montague Cohen, Adelaide Sachs’s husband, belonged to that rapidly
dwindling section of the Community which attaches importance to the
observation of the Mosaic and Rabbinical laws in various minute points.
He would have half-starved himself sooner than eat meat killed according
to Gentile fashion, or leavened bread in the Passover week.
Adelaide chafed at the restrictions imposed by this constant making
clean of the outside of the cup and platter; but it was a point on which
her husband, amenable in everything else, remained firm.
He was an anæmic young man, destitute of the more brilliant qualities of
his race, with a rooted belief in himself and every thing that belonged
to him.
He was proud of his house, his wife and his children. He was proud,
Heaven knows why, of his personal appearance, his mental qualities, and
his sex; this last to an even greater extent than most men of his race,
with whom pride of sex is a characteristic quality.
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord my God, who hast not made me a woman.”
No prayer goes up from the synagogue with greater fervour than this.
This fact notwithstanding, it must be acknowledged that, save in the one
matter of religious observation, Montague Cohen was led by the nose by
his wife, whose intelligence and vitality far exceeded his own. Borne
along in her wake, he passed his life in pursuit of a shadow which is
called social advancement; going uncomplainingly over quagmires, into
stony places, up and down uncomfortable declivities; following patiently
and faithfully wherever the restless, energetic Adelaide led.
Esther and her mother were the next to arrive. Mrs. Kohnthal was old
Solomon’s eldest child, a stout, dark, exuberant-looking woman, between
whom and her daughter was waged a constant feud.
The whole party of the Leunigers, with the exception of Ernest, who
never dined out, was not long in following: Mrs. Leuniger, dejected,
monosyllabic, untidy as usual; Mr. Leuniger, cheerful, pompous,
important; Rose, loud-voiced, overdressed, good-tempered; Judith,
blooming, stately, calm, in her fashionable gown, which assorted oddly,
a close observer might have thought, with the exotic nature of her
beauty. Leo dragged in mournfully in the rear of his party; he was in
one of his worst moods. He hated these family gatherings, and had only
been prevailed on with great difficulty to put in an appearance.
“We are all here,” cried Adelaide, when greetings had been exchanged,
“with the exception of the hero of the feast.”
“Who has evidently,” added Esther, “a sense of dramatic propriety.”
“Reuben is at his club,” explained Mrs. Sachs, looking under her eyelids
at Judith, who had taken a seat opposite her.
She admired the girl immensely, and at the bottom of her heart was fond
of her.
Judith, on her part, would have found it hard to define her feelings
towards Mrs. Sachs.
With Reuben she was always calm; in his mother’s presence she was
conscious of a strange agitation, of the stirrings of an emotion which
was neither love, nor hate, nor fear, but which perhaps was compounded
of all three.
They had not long to wait before the door was thrown open and the
person expected entered.
He came straight across the room to old Solomon, a vivifying
presence--Reuben Sachs, with his bad figure, awkward movements, and
charming face, which wore to-night its air of greatest alertness.
The old man, who had finished his prayers and taken off his cap, greeted
the newcomer with something like emotion. Solomon Sachs, if report be
true, had been a hard man in his dealings with the world; never
overstepping the line of legal honesty, but taking an advantage wherever
he could do so with impunity.
But to his own kindred he had always been generous; the ties of race, of
family, were strong with him. His love for his children had been the
romance of an eminently unromantic career; and the death of his
favourite son, Reuben’s father, had been a grief whose marks he would
bear to his own dying day.
Something of the love for the father had been transferred to the son,
and Reuben stood high in the old man’s favour.
The greater subtlety of ambition which had made him while, comparatively
speaking, a poor man, prefer the chances of a professional career to the
certainties of a good berth in Capel Court, appealed to some kindred
feeling, had set vibrating some responsive cord in his grandfather’s
breast. Such a personality as Reuben’s seemed the crowning splendour of
that structure of gold which it had been his life-work to build up; a
luxury only to be afforded by the rich.
For poor Leo’s attainments, his violin-playing, his classical
scholarship, he had no respect whatever.
They went down to dinner without ceremony, taking their places, for the
most part, as chance directed; Reuben sitting next to old Solomon, on
the side of his best ear; Judith at the far end of the table opposite.
Conversation flagged, as it inevitably did at these family gatherings,
until after the meal, when crabbed age and youth, separating by mutual
consent, would grow loquacious enough in their respective circles.
Reuben, his voice raised, but not raised too much, for his grandfather’s
benefit, recounted the main incidents of his recent travels, while doing
ample justice to the excellent meal set before him.
It might have been thought that he did not show to advantage under the
circumstances; that his introduction of “good” names, and of his own
familiarity with their bearers was a little too frequent, too obtrusive;
that altogether there was an unpleasant flavour of brag about the whole
narration.
Esther smiled meaningly and lifted her shoulders. Leo frowned and winced
perceptibly, his taste offended to nausea; there were times when the
coarser strands woven into the bright woof of his cousin’s personality
affected him like a harsh sound or evil odour.
But, these two cavillers apart, Reuben understood his audience.
Old Solomon listened attentively, nodding his great head from time to
time with satisfaction; Mrs. Sachs, while apparently absorbed in her
dinner, never lost a word of the beloved voice; Monty and Adelaide who,
when all is said, were naïve creatures, were frankly impressed, and
revelled in a sense of reflected glory.
As for Judith, shall it be blamed her if she saw no fault? She sat there
silent, now and then lifting her eyes to the far-off corner of the
table where Reuben was, divided between admiration and that
unacknowledged sense of terror which came over her whenever the fact of
Reuben’s growing importance was brought home to her. Shall it be blamed
her, I say, that she saw no fault, she who, where others were concerned,
had sense of humour and critical faculty enough? Shall it be blamed her
that she had a kindness for everything he said and everything he did;
that he was the king and could do no wrong?
Only once during the meal did their eyes meet, then he smiled quietly,
almost imperceptibly--a smile for her alone.
“Mr. Lee-Harrison,” said Adelaide, stretching forward her sallow, eager,
inquisitive face, on either side of which the diamonds shone like lamps,
and plunging her dark, ring-laden fingers into a dish of olives as she
spoke; “Mr. Lee-Harrison was staying at our hotel one year at
Pontresina. He was a High Churchman in those days, and hardly knew a Jew
from a Mohammedan.”
“He is a cousin of Lord Norwood’s,” added Monty, who cultivated the
acquaintance of the peerage through the pages of _Truth_. After several
years’ study of that periodical he was beginning to feel on intimate
terms with many of the distinguished people who figure weekly therein.
“A friend of yours, Leo!” cried Adelaide nodding across to her cousin.
She had a great respect for the lad, who affected to despise class
distinctions, but succeeded in getting himself invited to such “good”
houses.
“I know Lord Norwood,” answered Leo with an impassive air, that caused
Reuben to smile under his moustache.
“He was at this year’s Academy private view, don’t you remember, Monty,
with that sister of his, Lady Geraldine?” went on Adelaide, undisturbed.
“They are both often to be seen at Sandown,” chimed in the faithful
Monty, “and at Kempton.”
The Montague Cohens, those two indefatigable Peris at the gate,
patronized art, and never missed a private view; patronized the turf,
and at every race-meeting, with any pretensions to “smartness,” were
familiar figures.
There was but a brief separation of the sexes at the end of dinner, the
whole party within a short space of time adjourning to the ugly,
old-fashioned splendours of the drawing-room, where card-playing went on
as usual.
A game of whist was got up among the elders for the benefit of old
Solomon, the others preferring to embark on the excitements of Polish
bank with the exception of Leo, who never played cards, and Judith, who
was anxious to finish a piece of embroidery she was preparing for her
mother’s birthday.
Reuben, who had dutifully offered himself as a whist-player and been cut
out, lingered a few moments, divided between the expediency of
challenging fortune at Polish bank, and the pleasantness of joining the
girlish figure at the far end of the room.
Adelaide, shuffling her cards with deft, accustomed fingers, looked up
and read something of his indecision in her brother’s face.
“There’s a place here, Reuben,” she called out, drawing her silken
skirts from a chair on to which they had overflowed.
She was not a person of tact; her remark, and the tone of it, turned the
balance.
“No, thanks,” said Reuben, dropping his lids and assuming his most
imperturbable air.
It was not his custom to single out Judith for his attentions at these
family gatherings, but to-night some irresistible magnetism drew him
towards her. It only wanted that little goad from Adelaide to send him
deliberately to the ottoman where she sat at work, her beautiful head
bent over the many-coloured embroidery.
Leo, lounging discontentedly a few paces off, with something of the air
of a petulant child who is ashamed of itself, twisted a bit of silk in
his long-brown fingers and hummed the air of _Ich grolle nicht_ below
his breath.
“Judith,” said Reuben, taking a seat very close beside her and looking
straight at her face, “poor Ronaldson, the member for St. Baldwin’s, is
dangerously ill.”
She looked up eagerly.
“Then you will be asked to stand?”
He smiled; partly at her readiness of comprehension, partly at the
frank, feminine hard-heartedness which realizes nothing beyond the
circle of its own affections.
“You mustn’t kill him off in that summary fashion, poor fellow.”
“I meant, of course, if he should die.”
“Under those circumstances I believe they will ask me to stand. That’s
the beauty of you, Judith,” he added, half-seriously, half jestingly,
“one never has to waste one’s breath with needless explanation.”
She blushed, and smiled naïvely at the little compliment with its
studied uncouthness.
There was something incongruous in the girl’s rich and stately beauty,
in the deep, serious gaze of the wonderful eyes, the severe, almost
tragic lines of the head and face, with her total lack of manner, her
little, abrupt, simple air, her apparent utter unconsciousness of her
own value and importance as a young and beautiful woman.
“Judith is not a woman of the world, certainly,” Reuben had said on one
occasion, in reply to a criticism of his sister’s; “but neither is she a
bad imitation of one.” And Adelaide, scenting a brotherly sarcasm, had
allowed the subject to drop.
Leo, who had broken his bit of silk and hummed his song to the end, rose
at this point, and went from the room without a word.
“Leo is in one of his moods,” said Judith looking after him. “I am sure
I don’t know what is the matter with him.”
Reuben, who understood perhaps more of Leopold’s state of mind than any
one suspected, of the struggles with himself, the revolt against his
surroundings which the lad was undergoing, answered slowly: “He is in a
ticklish stage of his growth. Horribly unpleasant, I grant you. But I
like the boy, though he regards me at present as an incarnation of the
seven deadly sins.”
“You know he is very fond of you.”
“That may be. All the same, he thinks I keep a golden calf in my bedroom
for purposes of devotion.”
Judith laughed, and Reuben, his face very close to hers, said: “Can you
keep a secret?”
“You know best.”
“Well, that poor boy is head over heels in love with Lord Norwood’s
sister.”
She looked up with her most matter-of-fact air.
“He will have to get over _that_!”
“Judith!” cried Reuben, piqued, provoked, inflamed by her manner; “I
believe there isn’t one grain of sentiment in your whole composition.
Oh, I know it’s a fine thing to be calm and cool and have one’s self
well in hand, but a woman is not always the worse for such a weakness as
possessing a heart.”
There was a note in his voice new to her; a look in the brown depths of
his eyes as they met hers which she had never seen there before. It
seemed to her that voice and eyes entreated her, cried to her for mercy;
that a wonderful answering emotion of pity stirred in her own breast.
A moment they sat there looking at one another, then came a rustle of
skirts, the sound of a penetrating, familiar voice, and Adelaide was
sitting beside them. She had lost her part in the game for the time
being, and, full of sisterly solicitude, had borne down on the pair
with the object of interrupting that dangerous _tête-à-tête_.
“Reuben,” she cried gaily, “I want you to dine with me to-morrow.”
“I don’t know that I can,” he answered ungraciously, the mask of apathy
falling over his features which a moment before had been instinct with
life.
“Caroline Cardozo is coming. She has £50,000, and will have more when
her father dies. You see,” turning to Judith, “I am a good sister, and
do not forget my duty.”
Judith made some commonplace rejoinder, and went on stitching, outwardly
calm.
Reuben, bitterly annoyed, tugged at the silks in the basket with those
broad, square hands of his, which, in spite of their superior delicacy,
were so much like his grandfather’s.
“And, by the by,” went on Adelaide, nothing daunted, “you must bring Mr.
Lee-Harrison to see me, and then I can ask him to dinner.”
“I don’t know about that,” answered Reuben slowly, looking at her from
under his eyelids; “he might swallow your Jews; he walks by faith as
regards _them_ just at present. But as for the rest--a man doesn’t care
to meet bad imitations of the people of his own set, does he?”
Having planted this poisoned shaft, and feeling rather ashamed of
himself, Reuben rose sullenly and went to the card-table, where Rose was
winning steadily, and Esther, who always sat down reluctantly and ended
by giving herself up completely to the excitement of the game, fingered
with flushed cheeks her own diminishing hoard.
Adelaide and Judith, each in her way shocked at this outburst of bad
temper from the urbane Reuben, plunged into lame and awkward
conversation. Only somewhere in the hidden depths of Judith’s being a
voice was singing of triumph and delight.