The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, page 33
"I am thirteen, if that's what you mean," said Lionel, with his most man-of-the-world air. He considered the introduction of the popular tribal phrases very bad form indeed.
"I suppose you were in shool31 all day?" went on Bernard unabashed, and much on his dignity.
"I was only in synagogue in the morning," answered Lionel. Then he kicked Sidney violently under the table, and the two little brothers went off into a series of chuckles; while Bernard, with a vague sense of being insulted, turned his attention to his fried salmon and Dutch herring.
Meanwhile Alec, who had been rather subdued at the beginning of the evening, was regaining his native confidence as the meal proceeded.
He happened to be sitting opposite Bertie, and having elicited from his neighbour, Mrs. Quixano, the explanation of an alien presence among them on such an occasion, had fixed his attention with great frankness on the stranger.
Very soon he was leaning across the table, and with much use of his fat red hands, and many liftings of his round shoulders, was expatiating to the astonished Bertie on the beauties and advantages of the faith which he had just embraced.
"Mr. Harrison," he cried at lasthe preferred to skip the difficulties of the double-barrelled name"Mr. Harrison, take my word for it, it is the finest religion under the sun. Those who have left it for reasons of their own have always come back in the end. They're bound to, they're bound
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to!" (He pronounced the word "bound" with an indescribable twang.) "Look at Lord Beaconsfield" 32he pointed with his short forefinger''everyone knows he died with the shemang33 on his lips!''
There was a sudden stifled explosion of laughter from Leo's quarter of the table; and Judith glanced across rather anxiously at Reuben, on whose polite, impassive face she at once detected a look of annoyance.
She was sitting next to her father in the close-fitting white gown which displayed to advantage the charming lines of her arms and shoulders.
Now and then she caught the glance of Mr. Lee-Harrison, who was far too well-bred to obtrude his admiration by staring, fixed momentarily on her face.
The hunger and weariness natural, under the circumstances, to her youth and health had in no way marred the perfect freshness of her appearance; and there was a gentle kindliness in her manner to her father which added a charm, not always present, to her beauty.
Perhaps she felt instinctively, what Quixano himself was far too much in the clouds to notice, that no one made much account of him, that it behoved her to take him under her protection. He was one of this world's failures; and the Jewish people, so eager to crown success in any form, so determined in laying claim to the successful among their number, have scant love for those unfortunates who have dropped behind in the race.
The meal came to an end at last, and there was a pushing back of chairs on the part of the men.
Bertie, about to rise, felt himself held down by main force; Reuben was gripping him hard by the wrist with one hand, and with the other was engaged in fishing out his hat from under the table; while Netta, leaning across her cousin, explained with her most fascinating smile that grandpa was going to bench.
Bertie, at a sign from Reuben, rose to the situation, and stooping for his own hat with alacrity, drew it from its place of concealment and placed it on his head. By this time all the men had unearthed and assumed their head-gear, with the exception of Samuel Sachs, whose hat by some mischance was not forthcoming; however, to avoid delay, he covered his head in all gravity with his table-napkin.
Bertie glanced round him, from one face to another, puzzled and inquiring.
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It seemed to him a solemn moment, this gathering together of kinsfolk after the long day of prayer, of expiation; this offering up of thanksgiving; this performance of the ancient rites in the land of exile.
He could not understand the spirit of indifference, of levity even, which appeared to prevail.
A finer historic sense, other motives apart, should, it seemed, have prevented so obvious a display of the contempt which familiarity had bred.
Alec had put his hat on rakishly askew, and was winking across to him re-assuringly, as though to intimate that the whole thing was not to be taken seriously.
Rose, led on by Jack Quixano, giggled hysterically behind her pocket-handkerchief.
Leo and Esther took on airs of aggressive boredom. Judith, lifting her eyes, met Reuben's in a smile, and even Montague Cohen permitted himself to yawn.
Only old Solomon at the head of the table, mumbling and droning out the long grace in his corrupt Hebrewhis great face impenetrably graveappeared to take an interest in the proceeding, with perhaps the exception of his son Samuel, who joined in now and then from beneath the drooping shelter of his table-napkin.
Bertie stared and Bertie wondered. Needless to state, he was completely out of touch with these people whose faith his search for the true religion had led him, for the time being, to embrace.
Grace over, the women went up stairs, the men, with the exception of old Solomon, remaining behind to smoke.
Bertie, who was thoroughly tired out, soon rose to go.
"I will make your excuses up stairs," said Reuben.
But the polite little man preferred to go to the drawing-room and perform his farewells in person.
"Thanks so much," he said in the hall, where Leo and Reuben were speeding him.
"I hope you have been edifiedthat's all." Reuben laughed.
"I am deeply interested in the Jewish character," answered Bertie; "the strongly marked contrasts; the underlying resemblances; the elaborate differentiations from a fundamental type!"
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"Ah, yes," broke in Reuben, secretly irritated, his tribal sensitiveness a little hurt, "you will find among us all sorts and conditions of men."
"Except perhaps Don Quixote, or even King Cophetua," 34 added Leo.
"King Cophetua," repeated Reuben in a slow, reflective tone, as the door closed on Mr. Lee-Harrison; "King Cophetua had an assured position. It isn't every one that can afford to marry beggar-maids."
Chapter 9
Never by passion quite possessed,
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway.
Matthew Arnold35
The party was never prolonged to a late hour on these occasions, and by ten o'clock there was no one left in the drawing-room in Portland Place except Mrs. Sachs, Mr. Leuniger, Mrs. Kohnthal and the young people in their respective trains.
The elders had got up a game of whist for the amusement of old Solomon, the termination of which their juniors awaited in conclave at the other end of the room.
Lionel and Sidney meanwhile, sleepy and overfed, quarrelled in a corner over the possession of a bound volume of the Graphic.36
"Judith," said Reuben, who had taken a seat opposite her, "do you know that you have made a conquest?"
"Is that such an unheard-of occurrence?"
Reuben laughed gently, and Rose cried:
"It is Mr. Lee-Harrison! I know it from the way he looked at supper."
"Yes, it is Bertie." Reuben looked straight in Judith's eyes. "He says you exactly fulfil his idea of Queen Esther."
"Ah," cried Esther Kohnthal, "I have always had a theory about her. When she was kneeling at the feet of that detestable Ahasuerus,37 she was thinking all the time of some young Jew whom she mashed, and who mashed her, and whom she renounced for the sake of her people!"
A momentary silence fell among them, then Reuben, looking down, said slowly: "Or perhaps she preferred the splendours of the royal position
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even to the attractions of that youth whom you suppose her toerhave mashed."
He was not fond of Esther at the best of times; now he glanced at her under his eyelids with an expression of unmistakable dislike.
"I wonder," cried Rose, throwing herself into the breach, "what Mr. Lee-Harrison thought of it all."
"I think," said Leo, "that he was shocked at finding us so little like the people in Daniel Deronda." 38
"Did he expect," cried Esther, "to see our boxes in the hall, ready packed and labelled Palestine?"
"I have always been touched," said Leo, "at the immense good faith with which George Eliot carried out that elaborate misconception of hers."
"Now Leo is going to begin," cried Rose; "he never has a good word for his people. He is always running them down."
"Horrid bad form," said Reuben; "besides being altogether a mistake."
"Oh, I have nothing to say against us at all," answered Leo ironically, "except that we are materialists to our fingers' ends. That we have outlived, from the nature of things, such ideals as we ever had."
"Idealists don't grow on every bush," answered Reuben, "and I think we have our fair share of them. This is a materialistic age, a materialistic country."
"And ours the religion of materialism. The corn and the wine and the oil; the multiplication of the seed; the conquest of the hostile tribesthese have always had more attraction for us than the harp and crown of a spiritualized existence."
"It is no good to pretend," answered Reuben in his reasonable, pacific way, "that our religion remains a vital force among the cultivated and thoughtful Jews of to-day. Of course it has been modified, as we ourselves have been modified, by the influence of western thought and western morality. And belief, among thinking people of all races, has become, as you know perfectly, a matter of personal idiosyncrasy."
"That does not alter my position," said Leo, "as to the character of the national religion and the significance of the fact. Ah, look at us," he cried with sudden passion, ''where else do you see such eagerness to take advantage; such sickening, hideous greed; such cruel, remorseless striving for power and importance; such ever-active, ever-hungry vanity, that must be
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fed at any cost? Steeped to the lips in sordidness, as we have all been from the cradle, how is it possible that any one among us, by any effort of his own, can wipe off from his soul the hereditary stain?"
"My dear boy," said Reuben, touched by the personal note which sounded at the close of poor Leo's heroics, and speaking with sudden earnestness, "you put things in too lurid a light. We have our faults; you seem to forget what our virtues are. Have you forgotten for how long, and at what a cruel disadvantage, the Jewish people has gone its way, until at last it has shamed the nations into respect? Our self-restraint, our self-respect, our industry, our power of endurance, our love of race, home and kindred, and our regard for their tiesare none of these things to be set down to our account?"
"Oh, our instincts of self-preservation are remarkably strong; I grant you that."
Leo tossed back his head with its longish hair as he spoke, and Reuben went on:
"And where would you find a truer hospitality, a more generous charity than among us?"
"A charity whose right hand is so remarkably well posted up in the doings of its left!"
"Oh, come, that's a libeland not even true."
"There is one good thing," cried Leo, taking a fresh start, "and that is the inevitabilityat least as regards us English Jewsof our disintegration; of our absorption by the people of the country. That is the price we are bound to pay for restored freedom and consideration. The Community will grow more and more to consist of mediocrities, and worse, as the general world claims our choicer specimens for its own. We may continue to exist as a separate clan, reinforced from below by German and Polish Jews for some time to come: but absorption complete, inevitablethat is only a matter of time. You and I sitting here, self-conscious, discussing our own race-attributes, race-positionare we not as sure a token of what is to come as anything well could be?"
"Yours is a sweeping theory," said Reuben; "and at present, I don't feel inclined to go into the rights and wrongs of it; still less to deny its soundness. I can only say that, should I live to see it borne out, I should be very sorry. It may be a weakness on my part, but I am exceedingly fond of my
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people. If we are to die as a race, we shall die harder than you think. The tide will ebb in the intervals of flowing. That strange, strong instinct which has held us so long together is not a thing easily eradicated. It will come into play when it is least expected. Jew will gravitate to Jew, though each may call himself by another name. If prejudice died, if difference of opinion died, if all the world, metaphorically speaking, thought one thought and spoke one language, there would still remain those unspeakable mysteries, affinity andlove."
Reuben's voice sounded curiously moved, and in his eyes, as he spoke, glowed a dreamy flame, as of some deep and tender emotion.
Judith, leaning forward with parted lips, lifted her shining eyes to his face in a long, unconscious gaze. Reuben with his sword in his hand, fighting the battle for his people, seemed to her a figure noble and heroic beyond speech.
In her own breast was kindled the flame of a great emotion; she felt the love of her race grow stronger at every word.
Reuben, conscious to the finger-tips of Judith's presence, of her gaze, which he did not return, was stirred, on his part, with a new enthusiasm.
He praised her in the race, and the race in her; and this was conveyed in some subtle manner to her consciousness.
Thus they acted and reacted on one another, deceiving and deceived, with that strange, unconscious hypocrisy of lovers.
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The game of whist had come to an end, and every one rose, preparatory to departure.
"Good-night, uncle Solomon," said Reuben's mother. She, too, was a Sachs, who had married her cousin.
"Come along, mamma," cried Esther yawning, "I am dead beat. The domestic habits of the cobra are not adapted to the human constitution, that is clear."
Reuben was standing in the hall with his mother, as Rose and Judith came down stairs in their outdoor clothes.
"Your carriage is at the door," said Israel Leuniger to Mrs. Sachs as he lit his cigar.
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Mrs. Sachs turned to her son:
"Aren't you coming, Reuben?"
"No, but I do not expect to be late." He answered gently and seriously, stooping down and folding a shawl about her shoulders as he spoke.
Mrs. Sachs raised her wide, sallow, wrinkled face to her son's, looked at him a moment, then with a sudden impulse of tenderness, lifted her hand and stroked back the hair from his forehead.
Ah, what had come to Judith, standing in a corner of the hall watching the little scene?
Ah, what did it mean, what was it, this beating and throbbing of all her pulses, this strange, choked feeling in her throat, this mist that swam before her eyesight?
The dining-room door, near which she stood, was ajar; moved by the blind impulse of her terror, she pushed it open; and trembling, ashamed, not daring to analyse her own emotions, she sought the shelter of the darkness.
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While Judith was being driven to Kensington Palace Gardens, lying back pale and tired in a corner of the carriage, Reuben was sauntering towards Piccadilly with a cigar in his mouth.
For the moment, his mind dwelt on the fact that he had not been able to say good-night to Judith.
