Children of the Ghetto Part 90

At breakfast they discussed the situation.

"I'm afraid the bed's too small," said Esther, when Debby kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality.

"Perhaps I took up too much room," said the hostess.

"No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have a wider bed and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room."

"There's the back garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks on the back yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there," said Debby, "though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that I value the view of the back yard, or else he'd raise the rent."

"You forget the _Greeners_ who moved in yesterday."

"Oh, so I do!" answered Debby with a sigh.

"Strange," said Esther, musingly, "that I should have shut myself out of my old home."

The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her reflections.

In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to each room separately; fortunately, the tenants got few letters. Debby was intensely surprised to get one.

"It isn't for me at all," she cried, at last, after a protracted examination of the envelope; "it's for you, care of me."

"But that's stranger still." said Esther. "n.o.body in the world knows my address."

The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a half-sovereign rolled out.

The postmark was Houndsditch. After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the beautiful copy-book penmans.h.i.+p of the address, Esther gave up the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called. She betook herself to their offices, walking. The day was bright, but Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior partner welcomed her heartily.

"I suppose you've come about your account," he said. "I have been intending to send it you for some months, but we are so busy bringing out new things before the dead summer season comes on." He consulted his books. "Perhaps you would rather not be bothered," he said, "with a formal statement. I have it all clearly here--the book's doing fairly well--let me write you a cheque at once!"

She murmured a.s.sent, her cheeks blanching, her heart throbbing with excitement and surprise.

"There you are--sixty-two pounds ten," he said. "Our profits are just one hundred and twenty-five. If you'll endorse it, I'll send a clerk to the bank round the corner and get it cashed for you at once."

The pen scrawled an agitated autograph that would not have been accepted at the foot of a cheque, if Esther had had a banking account of her own.

"But I thought you said the book was a failure," she said.

"So it was," he answered cheerfully, "so it was at first. But gradually, as its nature leaked out, the demand increased. I understand from Mudie's that it was greatly asked for by their Jewish clients. You see, when there's a run on a three-volume book, the profits are pretty fair.

I believed in it myself, or I should never have given you such good terms nor printed seven hundred and fifty copies. I shouldn't be surprised if we find ourselves able to bring it out in one-volume form in the autumn. We shall always be happy to consider any further work of yours; something on the same lines, I should recommend."

The recommendation did not convey any definite meaning to her at the moment. Still in a pleasant haze, she stuffed the twelve five-pound notes and the three gold-pieces into her purse, scribbled a receipt, and departed. Afterwards the recommendation rang mockingly in her ears. She felt herself sterile, written out already. As for writing again on the same lines, she wondered what Raphael would think if he knew of the profits she had reaped by bespattering his people. But there! Raphael was a prig like the rest. It was no use worrying about _his_ opinions.

Affluence had come to her--that was the one important and exhilarating fact. Besides, had not the hypocrites really enjoyed her book? A new wave of emotion swept over her--again she felt strong enough to defy the whole world.

When she got "home," Debby said, "Hannah Jacobs called to see you."

"Oh, indeed, what did she want?"

"I don't know, but from something she said I believe I can guess who sent the half-sovereign."

"Not Reb Shemuel?" said Esther, astonished.

"No, _your_ cousin Malka. It seems that she saw Hannah leaving Zachariah Square with you, and so went to her house last night to get your address."

Esther did not know whether to laugh or be angry; she compromised by crying. People were not so bad, after all, nor the fates so hard to her.

It was only a little April shower of tears, and soon she was smiling and running upstairs to give the half-sovereign to the _Greeners_. It would have been ungracious to return it to Malka, and she purchased all the luxury of doing good, including the effusive benedictions of the whole family, on terms usually obtainable only by professional almoners.

Then she told Debby of her luck with the publishers. Profound was Debby's awe at the revelation that Esther was able to write stories equal to those in the _London Journal_. After that, Debby gave up the idea of Esther living or sleeping with her; she would as soon have thought of offering a share of her bed to the auth.o.r.esses of the tales under it. Debby suffered scarce any pang when her one-night companion transferred herself to Reb Shemuel's.

For it was to suggest this that Hannah had called. The idea was her father's; it came to him when she told him of Esther's strange position.

But Esther said she was going to America forthwith, and she only consented on condition of being allowed to pay for her keep during her stay. The haggling was hard, but Esther won. Hannah gave up her room to Esther, and removed her own belongings to Levi's bedroom, which except at Festival seasons had been unused for years, though the bed was always kept ready for him. Latterly the women had had to make the bed from time to time, and air the room, when Reb Shemuel was at synagogue. Esther sent her new address to her brothers and sisters, and made inquiries as to the prospects of educated girls in the States. In reply she learned that Rachel was engaged to be married. Her correspondents were too taken up with this gigantic fact to pay satisfactory attention to her inquiries. The old sense of protecting motherhood came back to Esther when she learned the news. Rachel was only eighteen, but at once Esther felt middle-aged. It seemed of the fitness of things that she should go to America and resume her interrupted maternal duties. Isaac and Sarah were still little more than children, perhaps they had not yet ceased bickering about their birthdays. She knew her little ones would jump for joy, and Isaac still volunteer sleeping accommodation in his new bed, even though the necessity for it had ceased. She cried when she received the cutting from the American Jewish paper; under other circ.u.mstances she would have laughed. It was one of a batch headed "Personals," and ran: "Sam Wiseberg, the handsome young drummer, of Cincinnati, has become engaged to Rachel Ansell, the fair eighteen-year-old type-writer and daughter of Moses Ansell, a well-known Chicago Hebrew. Life's sweetest blessings on the pair! The marriage will take place in the Fall." Esther dried her eyes and determined to be present at the ceremony. It is so grateful to the hesitant soul to be presented with a landmark. There was nothing to be gained now by arriving before the marriage; nay, her arrival just in time for it would clench the festivities. Meantime she attached herself to Hannah's charitable leading-strings, alternately attracted to the Children of the Ghetto by their misery, and repulsed by their failings. She seemed to see them now in their true perspective, correcting the vivid impressions of childhood by the insight born of wider knowledge of life. The accretion of pagan superst.i.tion was greater than she had recollected. Mothers averted fever by a murmured charm and an expectoration, children in new raiment carried bits of coal or salt in their pockets to ward off the evil-eve.

On the other hand, there was more resourcefulness, more pride of independence. Her knowledge of Moses Ansell had misled her into too sweeping a generalization. And she was surprised to realize afresh how much illogical happiness flourished amid penury, ugliness and pain.

After school-hours the muggy air vibrated with the joyous laughter of little children, tossing their shuttlec.o.c.ks, spinning their tops, turning their skipping-ropes, dancing to barrel-organs or circling hand-in-hand in rings to the sound of the merry traditional chants of childhood. Esther often purchased a pennyworth of exquisite pleasure by enriching some sad-eyed urchin. Hannah (whose own scanty surplus was fortunately augmented by an anonymous West-End Reform Jew, who employed her as his agent) had no prepossessions to correct, no pendulum-oscillations to distract her, no sentimental illusions to sustain her. She knew the Ghetto as it was; neither expected grat.i.tude from the poor, nor feared she might "pauperize them," knowing that the poor Jew never exchanges his self-respect for respect for his benefactor, but takes by way of rightful supplement to his income. She did not drive families into trickery, like ladies of the West, by being horrified to find them eating meat. If she presided at a stall at a charitable sale of clothing, she was not disheartened if articles were s.n.a.t.c.hed from under her hand, nor did she refuse loans because borrowers sometimes merely used them to evade the tallyman by getting their jewelry at cash prices. She not only gave alms to the poor, but made them givers, organizing their own farthings into a powerful auxiliary of the inst.i.tutions which helped them. Hannah's sweet patience soothed Esther, who had no natural apt.i.tude for personal philanthropy; the primitive, ordered pieties of the Reb's household helping to give her calm. Though she accepted the inevitable, and had laughed in melancholy mockery at the exaggerated importance given to love by the novelists (including her cruder self), she dreaded meeting Raphael Leon. It was very unlikely her whereabouts would penetrate to the West; and she rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played on Hannah's disused old-fas.h.i.+oned grand piano. It had one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic a.n.a.logy between the instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read _The Flag of Judah_. She was not surprised to find Reb Shemuel beginning to look askance at his favorite paper. She noted a growing tendency in it to insist mainly on the ethical side of Judaism, salvation by works being contrasted with the salvation by spasm of popular Christianity. Once Kingsley's line, "Do n.o.ble things, not dream them all day long," was put forth as "Judaism _versus_ Christianity in a nut-sh.e.l.l;" and the writer added, "for so thy dreams shall become n.o.ble, too." Sometimes she fancied phrases and lines of argument were aimed at her. Was it the editor's way of keeping in touch with her, using his leaders as a medium of communication--a subtly sweet secret known only to him and her? Was it fair to his readers? Then she would remember his joke about the paper being started merely to convert her, and she would laugh. Sometimes he repeated what he already said to her privately, so that she seemed to hear him talking.

Then she would shake her head, and say, "I love you for your blindness, but I have the terrible gift of vision."

CHAPTER XIV.

SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN.

Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's newest seaside resort had the artistic charm which characterized everything she selected. It was a straggling, hilly, leafy village, full of archaic relics--human as well as architectural--sloping down to a gracefully curved bay, where the blue waves broke in whispers, for on summer days a halcyon calm overhung this magic spot, and the great sea stretched away, unwrinkled, ever young.

There were no neutral tones in the colors of this divine picture--the sea was sapphire, the sky amethyst. There were dark-red houses nestling amid foliage, and green-haired monsters of gray stone squatted about on the yellow sand, which was strewn with quaint sh.e.l.ls and mimic earth-worms, cunningly wrought by the waves. Half a mile to the east a blue river rippled into the bay. The white bathing tents which Mrs.

Goldsmith had pitched stood out picturesquely, in harmonious contrast with the rich boscage that began to climb the hills in the background.

Mrs. Goldsmith's party lived in the Manse; it was pretty numerous, and gradually overflowed into the bedrooms of the neighboring cottages. Mr.

Goldsmith only came down on Sat.u.r.day, returning on Monday. One Friday Mr. Percy Saville, who had been staying for the week, left suddenly for London, and next day the beautiful hostess poured into her husband's projecting ears a tale that made him gnash his projecting teeth, and cut the handsome stockbroker off his visiting-list for ever. It was only an indiscreet word that the susceptible stockbroker had spoken--under the poetic influences of the scene. His bedroom came in handy, for Sidney unexpectedly dropped down from Norway, _via_ London, on the very Friday.

The poetic influences of the scene soon infected the newcomer, too. On the Sat.u.r.day he was lost for hours, and came up smiling, with Addie on his arm. On the Sunday afternoon the party went boating up the river--a picturesque medley of flannels and parasols. Once landed, Sidney and Addie did not return for tea, prior to re-embarking. While Mr. Montagu Samuels was gallantly handing round the sugar, they were sitting somewhere along the bank, half covered with leaves, like babes in the wood. The sunset burned behind the willows--a fiery rhapsody of crimson and orange. The gay laughter of the picnic-party just reached their ears; otherwise, an almost solemn calm prevailed--not a bird twittered, not a leaf stirred.

"It'll be all over London to-morrow," said Sidney in a despondent tone.

"I'm afraid so," said Addie, with a delicious laugh.

The sweet English meadows over which her humid eyes wandered were studded with simple wild-flowers. Addie vaguely felt the angels had planted such in Eden. Sidney could not take his eyes off his terrestrial angel clad in appropriate white. Confessed love had given the last touch to her intoxicating beauty. She gratified his artistic sense almost completely. But she seemed to satisfy deeper instincts, too. As he looked into her limpid, trustful eyes, he felt he had been a weak fool.

An irresistible yearning to tell her all his past and crave forgiveness swept over him.

"Addie," he said, "isn't it funny I should be marrying a Jewish girl, after all?"

He wanted to work round to it like that, to tell her of his engagement to Miss Hannibal at least, and how, on discovering with whom he was really in love, he had got out of it simply by writing to the Wesleyan M.P. that he was a Jew--a fact sufficient to disgust the disciple of Dissent and the claimant champion of religious liberty. But Addie only smiled at the question.

"You smile," he said: "I see you do think it funny."

"That's not why I am smiling."

"Then why are you smiling?" The lovely face piqued him; he kissed the lips quickly with a bird-like peck.

"Oh--I--no, you wouldn't understand."

"That means _you_ don't understand. But there! I suppose when a girl is in love, she's not accountable for her expression. All the same, it is strange. You know, Addie dear, I have come to the conclusion that Judaism exercises a strange centrifugal and centripetal effect on its sons--sometimes it repulses them, sometimes it draws them; only it never leaves them neutral. Now, here had I deliberately made up my mind not to marry a Jewess."