The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 16

'So am I,' he said, rather disappointed. 'After that dinner I thought it only fair to read it; and although I detect considerable crude power in it, still I am very sorry it was ever published. The presentation of Judaism is most ignorant. All the mystical yearnings of the heroine might have found as much satisfaction in the faith of her own race as they find expression in its poetry.'

He rose to go.

'Well, I am to take it for granted you will not write that antidote?'

'I'm afraid it would be impossible for me to undertake it,' she said, more mildly than before, and pressed her hand again to her brow.

'Pardon me,' he said, in much concern. 'I am too selfish. I forgot you are not well. How is your head feeling now?'

'About the same, thank you,' she said, forcing a grateful smile. 'You may rely on me for art, yes; and music, too, if you like.'

'Thank you,' he said. 'You read a great deal, don't you?'

She nodded her head.

'Well, every week books are published of more or less direct Jewish interest; I should be glad of notes about such, to brighten up the paper.'

'For anything strictly unorthodox you may count on me. If that antidote turns up, I shall not fail to cackle over it in your columns.

By-the-bye, are you going to review the poison? Excuse so many mixed metaphors,' she added, with a rather forced laugh.

'No, I shan't say anything about it. Why give it an extra advertis.e.m.e.nt by slating it?'

'Slating,' she repeated, with a faint smile. 'I see you have mastered all the slang of your profession.'

'Ah, that's the influence of my sub-editor,' he said, smiling in return. 'Well, good-bye.'

'You're forgetting your overcoat,' she said; and having smoothed out that crumpled collar, she accompanied him down the wide soft-carpeted staircase into the hall, with its rich bronzes and glistening statues.

'How are your people in America?' he bethought himself to ask on the way down.

'They are very well, thank you,' she said. 'I send my brother Solomon the _Flag of Judah_. He is also, I am afraid, one of the unregenerate.

You see, I am doing my best to enlarge your congregation.'

He could not tell whether it was sarcasm or earnest.

'Well, good-bye,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Thank you for your promise.'

'Oh, that's not worth thanking me for,' she said, touching his long white fingers for an instant. 'Look at the glory of seeing myself in print. I hope you're not annoyed with me for refusing to contribute fiction?' she ended, growing suddenly remorseful at the moment of parting.

'Of course not. How could I be?'

'Couldn't your sister Adelaide do you a story?'

'Addie?' he repeated, laughing. 'Fancy Addie writing stories! Addie has no literary ability.'

'That's always the way with brothers. Solomon says----'

She paused suddenly.

'I don't remember for the moment that Solomon has any proverb on the subject,' he said, still amused at the idea of Addie as an auth.o.r.ess.

'I was thinking of something else. Good-bye. Remember me to your sister, please.'

'Certainly,' he said; then he exclaimed: 'Oh, what a blockhead I am! I forgot to remember her to you. She says she would be so pleased if you would come and have tea and a chat with her some day. I should like you and Addie to know each other.'

'Thanks, I will. I will write to her some day. Good-bye once more.'

He shook hands with her and fumbled at the door.

'Allow me,' she said, and opened it upon the grey dulness of the dripping street. 'When may I hope for the honour of another visit from a real live editor?'

'I don't know,' he said, smiling; 'I'm awfully busy. I have to read a paper on Ibn Ezra at Jews' College to-day fortnight.'

'Outsiders admitted?' she asked.

'The lectures _are_ for outsiders,' he said, 'to spread the knowledge of our literature--only they won't come. Have you never been to one?'

She shook her head.

'There!' he said. 'You complain of our want of culture, and you don't even know what's going on.'

She tried to take the reproof with a smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered.

He raised his hat and went down the steps.

She followed him a little way along the Terrace, with eyes growing dim with tears she could not account for. She went back to the drawing-room and threw herself into the arm-chair where he had sat, and made her headache worse by thinking of all her unhappiness. The great room was filling with dusk, and in the twilight pictures gathered and dissolved. What girlish dreams and revolts had gone to make that unfortunate book, which, after endless boomerang-like returns from the publishers, had appeared--only to be denounced by Jewry, ignored by its journals, and scantily noticed by outside criticism. _Mordecai Josephs_ had fallen almost still-born from the press; the sweet secret she had hoped to tell her patroness had turned bitter, like that other secret of her dead love for Sidney, in the reaction from which she had written most of her book. How fortunate, at least, that her love had flickered out--had proved but the ephemeral sentiment of a romantic girl for the first brilliant man she had met. Sidney had fascinated her by his verbal audacities in a world of narrow conventions; he had for the moment laughed away spiritual aspirations and yearnings with a raillery that was almost like ozone to a young woman avid of martyrdom for the happiness of the world. How, indeed, could she have expected the handsome young artist to feel the magic that hovered about her talks with him, to know the thrill that lay in the formal hand-clasp, to be aware that he interpreted for her poems and pictures, and incarnated the undefined ideal of girlish day-dreams? How could he ever have had other than an intellectual thought of her--how could any man, even the religious Raphael, sickly, ugly little thing that she was? She got up and looked in the gla.s.s now to see herself thus, but the shadows had gathered too thickly. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a newspaper that lay on the couch, lit it, and held it before the gla.s.s. It flared up threateningly, and she beat it out--laughing hysterically and asking herself if she was mad. But she had seen the ugly little face--its expression frightened her. Yes, love was not for her; she could only love a man of brilliancy and culture, and she was nothing but a Petticoat Lane girl, after all. Its coa.r.s.eness, its vulgarity, underlay all her veneer. They had got into her book--everybody said so, Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of Raphael's people?--she, an upstart, an outsider!

She went to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's _History of the Jews_, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back to the great dim drawing-room, and played amateurish fantasias on the melancholy Polish melodies of her childhood, till Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith returned. They had captured the Rev. Joseph Strelitski, and brought him back to dinner. Esther would have excused herself from the meal, but Mrs. Goldsmith insisted the minister would think her absence intentionally discourteous. In point of fact, Mrs.

Goldsmith--like all Jewesses, a born matchmaker--was not disinclined to think of the popular preacher as a sort of adopted son-in-law. She did not tell herself so, but she instinctively resented the idea of Esther marrying into the station of her patroness. Strelitski, though his position was one of distinction for a Jewish clergyman, was, like Esther, of humble origin. It would be a match which she could bless from her pedestal in genuine good-will towards both parties.

The fas.h.i.+onable minister was looking careworn and troubled. He had aged twice ten years since his outburst at the Holy Land League. The black curl hung disconsolately on his forehead. He sat at Esther's side, but rarely looking at her or addressing her, so that her taciturnity and scarcely-veiled dislike did not noticeably increase his gloom. He rallied now and again out of politeness to his hostess, flas.h.i.+ng out a pregnant phrase or two. But prosperity did not seem to have brought happiness to the whilom poor Russian student, even though he had fought his way to it unaided.

CHAPTER VI

COMEDY OR TRAGEDY?

The weeks went on and Pa.s.sover drew nigh. The recurrence of the feast brought no thrill to Esther now. It was no longer a charmed time, with strange things to eat and drink, and a comparative plenty of them--stranger still. Lack of appet.i.te was the chief dietary want now.

n.o.body had any best clothes to put on, in a world where everything was for the best in the way of clothes. Except for the speckled Pa.s.sover cakes, there was hardly any external symptom of the sacred Festival.

While the Ghetto was turning itself inside out, the Kensington Terrace was calm in the dignity of continuous cleanliness. Nor did Henry Goldsmith himself go prowling about the house in quest of vagrant crumbs. Mary O'Reilly attended to all that, and the Goldsmiths had implicit confidence in her fidelity to the traditions of their faith.

Wherefore the evening of the day before Pa.s.sover, instead of being devoted to frying fish and provisioning, was free for more secular occupations. Esther, for example, had arranged to go to see the _debut_ of a new Hamlet, with Addie. Addie had asked her to go, mentioning that Raphael, who was taking her, had suggested that she should bring her friend--for they had become great friends, had Addie and Esther, ever since Esther had gone to take that cup of tea, with the chat that is more essential than milk or sugar.

The girls met or wrote every week. Raphael Esther never met nor heard from directly. She found Addie a sweet, lovable girl, full of frank simplicity and unquestioning piety. Though dazzlingly beautiful, she had none of the coquetry which Esther, with a touch of jealousy, had been accustomed to a.s.sociate with beauty, and she had little of the petty malice of girlish gossip. Esther summed her up as Raphael's heart without his head. It was unfair, for Addie's own head was by no means despicable. But Esther was not alone in taking eccentric opinions as the touchstone of intellectual vigour. Anyhow, she was distinctly happier since Addie had come into her life, and she admired her as a mountain torrent might admire a crystal pool, half envying her happier temperament.

The Goldsmiths were just finis.h.i.+ng dinner when the expected ring came.