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 associate 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 vigor. 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 finishing dinner, when the expected ring came. To their surprise, the ringer was Sidney. He was shown into the dining-room.
"Good evening, all," he said. "I've come as a substitute for Raphael."
Esther grew white. "Why, what has happened to him?" she asked.
"Nothing, I had a telegram to say he was unexpectedly detained in the city, and asking me to take Addie and to call for you."
Esther turned from white to red. How rude of Raphael! How disappointing not to meet him, after all! And did he think she could thus unceremoniously be handed over to somebody else? She was about to beg to be excused, when it struck her a refusal would look too pointed. Besides, she did not fear Sidney now. It would be a test of her indifference. So she murmured instead, "What can detain him?"
"Charity, doubtless. Do you know, that after he is fagged out with upholding the Flag from early morning till late eve, he devotes the later eve to gratuitous tuition, lecturing and the like."
"No," said Esther, softened. "I knew he came home late, but I thought he had to report communal meetings."
"That, too. But Addie tells me he never came home at all one night last week. He was sitting up with some wretched dying pauper."
"He'll kill himself," said Esther, anxiously.
"People are right about him. He is quite hopeless," said Percy Saville, the solitary guest, tapping his forehead significantly.
"Perhaps it is we who are hopeless," said Esther, sharply.
"I wish we were all as sensible," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, turning on the unhappy stockbroker with her most superior air. "Mr. Leon always reminds me of Judas Maccabaeus."
He shrank before the blaze of her mature beauty, the fulness of her charms revealed by her rich evening dress, her hair radiating strange, subtle perfume. His eye sought Mr. Goldsmith's for refuge and consolation.
"That is so," said Mr. Goldsmith, rubbing his red chin. "He is an excellent young man."
"May I trouble you to put on your things at once, Miss Ansell?" said Sidney. "I have left Addie in the carriage, and we are rather late. I believe it is usual for ladies to put on 'things,' even when in evening dress. I may mention that there is a bouquet for you in the carriage, and, however unworthy a substitute I may be for Raphael, I may at least claim he would have forgotten to bring you that."
Esther smiled despite herself as she left the room to get her cloak. She was chagrined and disappointed, but she resolved not to inflict her ill-humor on her companions.
She had long since got used to carriages, and when they arrived at the theatre, she took her seat in the box without heart-fluttering. It was an old discovery now that boxes had no connection with oranges nor stalls with costers' barrows.
The house was brilliant. The orchestra was playing the overture.
"I wish Mr. Shakspeare would write a new play," grumbled Sidney. "All these revivals make him lazy. Heavens! what his fees must tot up to! If I were not sustained by the presence of you two girls, I should no more survive the fifth act than most of the characters. Why don't they brighten the piece up with ballet-girls?"
"Yes, I suppose you blessed Mr. Leon when you got his telegram," said Esther. "What a bore it must be to you to be saddled with his duties!"
"Awful!" admitted Sidney gravely. "Besides, it interferes with my work."
"Work?" said Addie. "You know you only work by sunlight."
"Yes, that's the best of my profession-in England. It gives you such opportunities of working-at other professions."
"Why, what do you work at?" inquired Esther, laughing.
"Well, there's amusement, the most difficult of all things to achieve! Then there's poetry. You don't know what a dab I am at rondeaux and barcarolles. And I write music, too, lovely little serenades to my lady-loves and reveries that are like dainty pastels."
"All the talents!" said Addie, looking at him with a fond smile. "But if you have any time to spare from the curling of your lovely silken moustache, which is entirely like a delicate pastel, will you kindly tell me what celebrities are present?"
"Yes, do," added Esther, "I have only been to two first nights, and then I had nobody to point out the lions."
"Well, first of all I see a very celebrated painter in a box-a man who has improved considerably on the weak draughtsmanship displayed by Nature in her human figures, and the amateurishness of her glaring sunsets."
"Who's that?" inquired Addie and Esther eagerly.
"I think he calls himself Sidney Graham-but that of course is only a nom de pinceau."
"Oh!" said, the girls, with a reproachful smile.
"Do be serious!" said Esther. "Who is that stout gentleman with the bald head?" She peered down curiously at the stalls through her opera-glass.
"What, the lion without the mane? That's Tom Day, the dramatic critic of a dozen papers. A terrible Philistine. Lucky for Shakspeare he didn't flourish in Elizabethan times."
He rattled on till the curtain rose and the hushed audience settled down to the enjoyment of the tragedy.
"This looks as if it is going to be the true Hamlet," said Esther, after the first act.
"What do you mean by the true Hamlet?" queried Sidney cynically.
"The Hamlet for whom life is at once too big and too little," said Esther.
"And who was at once mad and sane," laughed Sidney. "The plain truth is that Shakspeare followed the old tale, and what you take for subtlety is but the blur of uncertain handling. Aha! You look shocked. Have I found your religion at last?"
"No; my reverence for our national bard is based on reason," rejoined Esther seriously. "To conceive Hamlet, the typical nineteenth-century intellect, in that bustling picturesque Elizabethan time was a creative feat bordering on the miraculous. And then, look at the solemn inexorable march of destiny in his tragedies, awful as its advance in the Greek dramas. Just as the marvels of the old fairy-tales were an instinctive prevision of the miracles of modern science, so this idea of destiny seems to me an instinctive anticipation of the formulas of modern science. What we want to-day is a dramatist who shall show us the great natural silent forces, working the weal and woe of human life through the illusions of consciousness and free will."
"What you want to-night, Miss Ansell, is black coffee," said Sidney, "and I'll tell the attendant to get you a cup, for I dragged you away from dinner before the crown and climax of the meal; I have always noticed myself that when I am interrupted in my meals, all sorts of bugbears, scientific or otherwise, take possession of my mind."
He called the attendant.
"Esther has the most nonsensical opinions," said Addie gravely. "As if people weren't responsible for their actions! Do good and all shall be well with thee, is sound Bible teaching and sound common sense."
"Yes, but isn't it the Bible that says, 'The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the teeth of the children are set on edge'?" Esther retorted.
Addie looked perplexed. "It sounds contradictory," she said honestly.
"Not at all, Addie," said Esther. "The Bible is a literature, not a book. If you choose to bind Tennyson and Milton in one volume that doesn't make them a book. And you can't complain if you find contradictions in the text. Don't you think the sour grape text the truer, Mr. Graham?"
"Don't ask me, p
lease. I'm prejudiced against anything that appears in the Bible."
In his flippant way Sidney spoke the truth. He had an almost physical repugnance for his fathers' ways of looking at things.
"I think you're the two most wicked people in the world," exclaimed Addie gravely.
"We are," said Sidney lightly. "I wonder you consent to sit in the same box with us. How you can find my company endurable I can never make out."
Addie's lovely face flushed and her lip quivered a little.
"It's your friend who's the wickeder of the two," pursued Sidney. "For she's in earnest and I'm not. Life's too short for us to take the world's troubles on our shoulders, not to speak of the unborn millions. A little light and joy, the flush of sunset or of a lovely woman's face, a fleeting strain of melody, the scent of a rose, the flavor of old wine, the flash of a jest, and ah, yes, a cup of coffee-here's yours, Miss Ansell-that's the most we can hope for in life. Let us start a religion with one commandment: 'Enjoy thyself.'"
"That religion has too many disciples already," said Esther, stirring her coffee.
"Then why not start it if you wish to reform the world," asked Sidney. "All religions survive merely by being broken. With only one commandment to break, everybody would jump at the chance. But so long as you tell people they mustn't enjoy themselves, they will, it's human nature, and you can't alter that by Act of Parliament or Confession of Faith. Christ ran amuck at human nature, and human nature celebrates his birthday with pantomimes."
"Christ understood human nature better than the modern young man," said Esther scathingly, "and the proof lies in the almost limitless impress he has left on history."
"Oh, that was a fluke," said Sidney lightly. "His real influence is only superficial. Scratch the Christian and you find the Pagan-spoiled."
"He divined by genius what science is slowly finding out," said Esther, "when he said, 'Forgive them for they know not what they do'!-"
Sidney laughed heartily. "That seems to be your King Charles's head-seeing divinations of modern science in all the old ideas. Personally I honor him for discovering that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Strange he should have stopped half-way to the truth!"
"What is the truth?" asked Addie curiously.
"Why, that morality was made for man, not man for morality," said Sidney. "That chimera of meaningless virtue which the Hebrew has brought into the world is the last monster left to slay. The Hebrew view of life is too one-sided. The Bible is a literature without a laugh in it. Even Raphael thinks the great Radical of Galilee carried spirituality too far."
"Yes, he thinks he would have been reconciled to the Jewish doctors and would have understood them better," said Addie, "only he died so young."
"That's a good way of putting it!" said Sidney admiringly. "One can see Raphael is my cousin despite his religious aberrations. It opens up new historical vistas. Only it is just like Raphael to find excuses for everybody, and Judaism in everything. I am sure he considers the devil a good Jew at heart; if he admits any moral obliquity in him, he puts it down to the climate."
This made Esther laugh outright, even while there were tears for Raphael in the laugh. Sidney's intellectual fascination reasserted itself over her; there seemed something inspiring in standing with him on the free heights that left all the clogging vapors and fogs of moral problems somewhere below; where the sun shone and the clear wind blew and talk was a game of bowls with Puritan ideals for ninepins. He went on amusing her till the curtain rose, with a pretended theory of Mohammedology which he was working at. Just as for the Christian Apologist the Old Testament was full of hints of the New, so he contended was the New Testament full of foreshadowings of the Koran, and he cited as a most convincing text, "In Heaven, there shall be no marrying, nor giving in marriage." He professed to think that Mohammedanism was the dark horse that would come to the front in the race of religions and win in the west as it had won in the east.
"There's a man staring dreadfully at you, Esther," said Addie, when the curtain fell on the second act.
"Nonsense!" said Esther, reluctantly returning from the realities of the play to the insipidities of actual life. "Whoever it is, it must be at you."
She looked affectionately at the great glorious creature at her side, tall and stately, with that winning gentleness of expression which spiritualizes the most voluptuous beauty. Addie wore pale sea-green, and there were lilies of the valley at her bosom, and a diamond star in her hair. No man could admire her more than Esther, who felt quite vain of her friend's beauty and happy to bask in its reflected sunshine. Sidney followed her glance and his cousin's charms struck him with almost novel freshness. He was so much with Addie that he always took her for granted. The semi-unconscious liking he had for her society was based on other than physical traits. He let his eyes rest upon her for a moment in half-surprised appreciation, figuring her as half-bud, half-blossom. Really, if Addie had not been his cousin and a Jewess! She was not much of a cousin, when he came to cipher it out, but then she was a good deal of a Jewess!
"I'm sure it's you he's staring at," persisted Addie.
"Don't be ridiculous," persisted Esther. "Which man do you mean?"
"There! The fifth row of stalls, the one, two, four, seven, the seventh man from the end! He's been looking at you all through, but now he's gone in for a good long stare. There! next to that pretty girl in pink."
"Do you mean the young man with the dyed carnation in his buttonhole and the crimson handkerchief in his bosom?"
"Yes, that's the one. Do you know him?"
"No," said Esther, lowering her eyes and looking away. But when Addie informed her that the young man had renewed his attentions to the girl in pink, she levelled her opera-glass at him. Then she shook her head.
"There seems something familiar about his face, but I cannot for the life of me recall who it is."
"The something familiar about his face is his nose," said Addie laughing, "for it is emphatically Jewish."
"At that rate," said Sidney, "nearly half the theatre would be familiar, including a goodly proportion of the critics, and Hamlet and Ophelia themselves. But I know the fellow."
"You do? Who is he?" asked the girls eagerly.
"I don't know. He's one of the mashers of the Frivolity. I'm another, and so we often meet. But we never speak as we pass by. To tell the truth, I resent him."
"It's wonderful how fond Jews are of the theatre," said Esther, "and how they resent other Jews going."
"Thank you," said Sidney. "But as I'm not a Jew the arrow glances off."
"Not a Jew?" repeated Esther in amaze.
"No. Not in the current sense. I always deny I'm a Jew."
"How do you justify that?" said Addie incredulously.
"Because it would be a lie to say I was. It would be to produce a false impression. The conception of a Jew in the mind of the average Christian is a mixture of Fagin, Shylock, Rothschild and the caricatures of the American comic papers. I am certainly not like that, and I'm not going to tell a lie and say I am. In conversation always think of your audience. It takes two to make a truth. If an honest man told an old lady he was an atheist, that would be a lie, for to her it would mean he was a dissolute reprobate. To call myself 'Abrahams' would be to live a daily lie. I am not a bit like the picture called up by Abrahams. Graham is a far truer expression of myself."
"Extremely ingenious," said Esther smiling. "But ought you not rather to utilize yourself for the correction of the portrait of Abrahams?"
Sidney shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I subject myself to petty martyrdom for the sake of an outworn creed and a decaying sect?"
"We are not decaying," said Addie indignantly.
"Personally you are blossoming," said Sidney, with a mock bow. "But nobody can deny that our recent religious history has been a series of dissolving views. Look at that young masher there, who is still ogling your fascinating friend; rather, I suspect, to the annoyance of the young lady in pink,
and compare him with the old hard-shell Jew. When I was a lad named Abrahams, painfully training in the way I wasn't going to go, I got an insight into the lives of my ancestors. Think of the people who built up the Jewish prayer-book, who added line to line and precept to precept, and whose whole thought was intertwined with religion, and then look at that young fellow with the dyed carnation and the crimson silk handkerchief, who probably drives a drag to the Derby, and for aught I know runs a music hall. It seems almost incredible he should come of that Puritan old stock."
"Not at all," said Esther. "If you knew more of our history, you would see it is quite normal. We were always hankering after the gods of the heathen, and we always loved magnificence; remember our Temples. In every land we have produced great merchants and rulers, prime-ministers, viziers, nobles. We built castles in Spain (solid ones) and palaces in Venice. We have had saints and sinners, free livers and ascetics, martyrs and money-lenders. Polarity, Graetz calls the self-contradiction which runs through our history. I figure the Jew as the eldest-born of Time, touching the Creation and reaching forward into the future, the true blase of the Universe; the Wandering Jew who has been everywhere, seen everything, done everything, led everything, thought everything and suffered everything."
"Bravo, quite a bit of Beaconsfieldian fustian," said Sidney laughing, yet astonished. "One would think you were anxious to assert yourself against the ancient peerage of this mushroom realm."
"It is the bare historical truth," said Esther, quietly. "We are so ignorant of our own history-can we wonder at the world's ignorance of it? Think of the part the Jew has played-Moses giving the world its morality, Jesus its religion, Isaiah its millennial visions, Spinoza its cosmic philosophy, Ricardo its political economy, Karl Marx and Lassalle its socialism, Heine its loveliest poetry, Mendelssohn its most restful music, Rachael its supreme acting-and then think of the stock Jew of the American comic papers! There lies the real comedy, too deep for laughter."
"Yes, but most of the Jews you mention were outcasts or apostates," retorted Sidney. "There lies the real tragedy, too deep for tears. Ah, Heine summed it up best: 'Judaism is not a religion; it is a misfortune.' But do you wonder at the intolerance of every nation towards its Jews? It is a form of homage. Tolerate them and they spell 'Success,' and patriotism is an ineradicable prejudice. Since when have you developed this extraordinary enthusiasm for Jewish history? I always thought you were an anti-Semite."
Children of the Ghetto Page 44
