Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "Dismissed!" she echoed incredulously. "I thought the Flag was your own?"

  He grew troubled. "I bought it-but for another. We-he-has dispensed with my services."

  "Oh, how shameful!"

  The latent sympathy of her indignation cheered him again.

  "I am not sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I really was outgrowing its original platform."

  "What?" she asked, with a note of mockery in her voice. "You have left off being orthodox?"

  "I don't say that, it seems to me, rather, that I have come to understand I never was orthodox in the sense that the orthodox understand the word. I had never come into contact with them before. I never realized how unfair orthodox writers are to Judaism. But I do not abate one word of what I have ever said or written, except, of course, on questions of scholarship, which are always open to revision."

  "But what is to become of me-of my conversion?" she said, with mock piteousness.

  "You need no conversion!" he answered passionately, abandoning without a twinge all those criteria of Judaism for which he had fought with Strelitski. "You are a Jewess not only in blood, but in spirit. Deny it as you may, you have all the Jewish ideals,-they are implied in your attack on our society."

  She shook her head obstinately.

  "You read all that into me, as you read your modern thought into the old naive books."

  "I read what is in you. Your soul is in the right, whatever your brain says." He went on, almost to echo Strelitski's words, "Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion. In the language of our Hillel, this is the text of the Law; the rest is commentary. You and I are at one in believing that, despite all and after all, the world turns on righteousness, on justice"-his voice became a whisper-"on love."

  The old thrill went through her, as when first they met. Once again the universe seemed bathed in holy joy. But she shook off the spell almost angrily. Her face was definitely set towards the life of the New World. Why should he disturb her anew?

  "Ah, well, I'm glad you allow me a little goodness," she said sarcastically. "It is quite evident how you have drifted from orthodoxy. Strange result of The Flag of Judah! Started to convert me, it has ended by alienating you-its editor-from the true faith. Oh, the irony of circumstance! But don't look so glum. It has fulfilled its mission all the same; it has converted me-I will confess it to you." Her face grew grave, her tones earnest "So I haven't an atom of sympathy with your broader attitude. I am full of longing for the old impossible Judaism."

  His face took on a look of anxious solicitude. He was uncertain whether she spoke ironically or seriously. Only one thing was certain-that she was slipping from him again. She seemed so complex, paradoxical, elusive-and yet growing every moment more dear and desirable.

  "Where are you living?" he asked abruptly. "It doesn't matter where," she answered. "I sail for America in three weeks."

  The world seemed suddenly empty. It was hopeless, then-she was almost in his grasp, yet he could not hold her. Some greater force was sweeping her into strange alien solitudes. A storm of protest raged in his heart-all he had meant to say to her rose to his lips, but he only said, "Must you go?"

  "I must. My little sister marries. I have timed my visit so as to arrive just for the wedding-like a fairy godmother." She smiled wistfully.

  "Then you will live with your people, I suppose?"

  "I suppose so. I dare say I shall become quite good again. Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its imperfections. They will never keep the race together through shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevitable dissolution. It is beautiful-that old childlike faith in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, I dare say, is a mere symbol." Again the wistful look lit up her eyes. "That's what you rich people will never understand-it doesn't seem to go with dinners in seven courses, somehow."

  "Oh, but I do understand," he protested. "It's what I told Strelitski, who is all for intellect in religion. He is going to America, too," he said, with a sudden pang of jealous apprehension.

  "On a holiday?"

  "No; he is going to resign his ministry here."

  "What! Has he got a better offer from America?"

  "Still so cruel to him," he said reprovingly. "He is resigning for conscience' sake."

  "After all these years?" she queried sarcastically.

  "Miss Ansell, you wrong him! He was not happy in his position. You were right so far. But he cannot endure his shackles any longer. And it is you who have inspired him to break them."

  "I?" she exclaimed, startled.

  "Yes, I told him why you had left Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's-it seemed to act like an electrical stimulus. Then and there he made me write a paragraph announcing his resignation. It will appear to-morrow."

  Esther's eyes filled with soft light. She walked on in silence; then, noticing she had automatically walked too much in the direction of her place of concealment, she came to an abrupt stop.

  "We must part here," she said. "If I ever come across my old shepherd in America, I will be nicer to him. It is really quite heroic of him-you must have exaggerated my own petty sacrifice alarmingly if it really supplied him with inspiration. What is he going to do in America?"

  "To preach a universal Judaism. He is a born idealist; his ideas have always such a magnificent sweep. Years ago he wanted all the Jews to return to Palestine."

  Esther smiled faintly, not at Strelitski, but at Raphael's calling another man an idealist. She had never yet done justice to the strain of common-sense that saved him from being a great man; he and the new Strelitski were of one breed to her.

  "He will make Jews no happier and Christians no wiser," she said sceptically. "The great populations will sweep on, as little affected by the Jews as this crowd by you and me. The world will not go back on itself-rather will Christianity transform itself and take the credit. We are such a handful of outsiders. Judaism-old or new-is a forlorn hope."

  "The forlorn hope will yet save the world," he answered quietly, "but it has first to be saved to the world."

  "Be happy in your hope," she said gently. "Good-bye." She held out her little hand. He had no option but to take it.

  "But we are not going to part like this," he said desperately. "I shall see you again before you go to America?"

  "No, why should you?"

  "Because I love you," rose to his lips. But the avowal seemed too plump. He prevaricated by retorting, "Why should I not?"

  "Because I fear you," was in her heart, but nothing rose to her lips. He looked into her eyes to read an answer there, but she dropped them. He saw his opportunity.

  "Why should I not?" he repeated.

  "Your time is valuable," she said faintly.

  "I could not spend it better than with you," he answered boldly.

  "Please don't insist," she said in distress.

  "But I shall; I am your friend. So far as I know, you are lonely. If you are bent upon going away, why deny me the pleasure of the society I am about to lose for ever?"

  "Oh, how can you call it a pleasure-such poor melancholy company as I am!"

  "Such poor melancholy company that I came expressly to seek it, for some one told me you were at the Museum. Such poor melancholy company that if I am robbed of it life will be a blank."

  He had not let go her hand; his tones were low and passionate; the heedless traffic of the sultry London street was all about them.

  Esther trembled from head to foot; she could not look at him. There was no mistaking his meaning now; her breast was a whirl of delicious pain.

  But in proportion as the happiness at her beck and call dazzled her, so she recoiled from it. Bent on self-effacement, attuned to the peace of despair, she almost resented the solicitation to be happy; she had suffered so much that she had grown to think suffering her natural element, out of which she could not breathe; she was
almost in love with misery. And in so sad a world was there not something ignoble about happiness, a selfish aloofness from the life of humanity? And, illogically blent with this questioning, and strengthening her recoil, was an obstinate conviction that there could never be happiness for her, a being of ignominious birth, without roots in life, futile, shadowy, out of relation to the tangible solidities of ordinary existence. To offer her a warm fireside seemed to be to tempt her to be false to something-she knew not what. Perhaps it was because the warm fireside was in the circle she had quitted, and her heart was yet bitter against it, finding no palliative even in the thought of a triumphant return. She did not belong to it; she was not of Raphael's world. But she felt grateful to the point of tears for his incomprehensible love for a plain, penniless, low-born girl. Surely, it was only his chivalry. Other men had not found her attractive. Sidney had not; Levi only fancied himself in love. And yet beneath all her humility was a sense of being loved for the best in her, for the hidden qualities Raphael alone had the insight to divine. She could never think so meanly of herself or of humanity again. He had helped and strengthened her for her lonely future; the remembrance of him would always be an inspiration, and a reminder of the nobler side of human nature.

  All this contradictory medley of thought and feeling occupied but a few seconds of consciousness. She answered him without any perceptible pause, lightly enough.

  "Really, Mr. Leon, I don't expect you to say such things. Why should we be so conventional, you and I? How can your life be a blank, with Judaism yet to be saved?"

  "Who am I to save Judaism? I want to save you," he said passionately.

  "What a descent! For heaven's sake, stick to your earlier ambition!"

  "No, the two are one to me. Somehow you seem to stand for Judaism, too. I cannot disentwine my hopes; I have come to conceive your life as an allegory of Judaism, the offspring of a great and tragic past with the germs of a rich blossoming, yet wasting with an inward canker, I have grown to think of its future as somehow bound up with yours. I want to see your eyes laughing, the shadows lifted from your brow; I want to see you face life courageously, not in passionate revolt nor in passionless despair, but in faith and hope and the joy that springs from them. I want you to seek peace, not in a despairing surrender of the intellect to the faith of childhood, but in that faith intellectually justified. And while I want to help you, and to fill your life with the sunshine it needs, I want you to help me, to inspire me when I falter, to complete my life, to make me happier than I had ever dreamed. Be my wife, Esther. Let me save you from yourself."

  "Let me save you from yourself, Raphael. Is it wise to wed with the gray spirit of the Ghetto that doubts itself?"

  And like a spirit she glided from his grasp and disappeared in the crowd.

  CHAPTER XVII. THE PRODIGAL SON.

  The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor and perturbation.

  "What is the matter, my dear?" asked the Reb, anxiously.

  "Oh, father," she cried, "read this! Bad news of Levi."

  A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed countenance.

  "Mention not his name!" he said harshly "He is dead."

  "He may be by now!" Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. "You were right, Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now he is laid up with typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One of his friends writes to tell us. He must have caught it in one of those insanitary dressing-rooms we were reading about."

  Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret when the fatal telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never faded from her mind. She had an instant conviction that it was all over with poor Levi.

  "My poor lamb!" cried the Rebbitzin, the coffee-cup dropping from her nerveless hand.

  "Simcha," said Reb Shemuel sternly, "calm thyself; we have no son to lose. The Holy One-blessed be He!-hath taken him from us. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

  Hannah rose. Her face was white and resolute. She moved towards the door.

  "Whither goest thou?" inquired her father in German.

  "I am going to my room, to put on my hat and jacket," replied Hannah quietly.

  "Whither goest thou?" repeated Reb Shemuel.

  "To Stockbridge. Mother, you and I must go at once."

  The Reb sprang to his feet. His brow was dark; his eyes gleamed with anger and pain.

  "Sit down and finish thy breakfast," he said.

  "How can I eat? Levi is dying," said Hannah, in low, firm tones. "Will you come, mother, or must I go alone?"

  The Rebbitzin began to wring her hands and weep. Esther stole gently to Hannah's side and pressed the poor girl's hand. "You and I will go," her clasp said.

  "Hannah!" said Reb Shemuel. "What madness is this? Dost thou think thy mother will obey thee rather than her husband?"

  "Levi is dying. It is our duty to go to him." Hannah's gentle face was rigid. But there was exaltation rather than defiance in the eyes.

  "It is not the duty of women," said Reb Shemuel harshly. "I will go to Stockbridge. If he dies (God have mercy upon his soul!) I will see that he is buried among his own people. Thou knowest women go not to funerals." He reseated himself at the table, pushing aside his scarcely touched meal, and began saying the grace. Dominated by his will and by old habit, the three trembling women remained in reverential silence.

  "The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with Peace," concluded the old man in unfaltering accents. He rose from the table and strode to the door, stern and erect "Thou wilt remain here, Hannah, and thou, Simcha," he said. In the passage his shoulders relaxed their stiffness, so that the long snow-white beard drooped upon his breast. The three women looked at one another.

  "Mother," said Hannah, passionately breaking the silence, "are you going to stay here while Levi is dying in a strange town?"

  "My husband wills it," said the Rebbitzin, sobbing. "Levi is a sinner in Israel. Thy father will not see him; he will not go to him till he is dead."

  "Oh yes, surely he will," said Esther. "But be comforted. Levi is young and strong. Let us hope he will pull through."

  "No, no!" moaned the Rebbitzin. "He will die, and my husband will but read the psalms at his death-bed. He will not forgive him; he will not speak to him of his mother and sister."

  "Let me go. I will give him your messages," said Esther.

  "No, no," interrupted Hannah. "What are you to him? Why should you risk infection for our sakes?"

  "Go, Hannah, but secretly," said the Rebbitzin in a wailing whisper. "Let not thy father see thee till thou arrive; then he will not send thee back. Tell Levi that I-oh, my poor child, my poor lamb!" Sobs overpowered her speech.

  "No, mother," said Hannah quietly, "thou and I shall go. I will tell father we are accompanying him."

  She left the room, while the Rebbitzin fell weeping and terrified into a chair, and Esther vainly endeavored to soothe her. The Reb was changing his coat when Hannah knocked at the door and called "Father."

  "Speak not to me, Hannah," answered the Reb, roughly. "It is useless." Then, as if repentant of his tone, he threw open the door, and passed his great trembling hand lovingly over her hair. "Thou art a good daughter," he said tenderly. "Forget that thou hast had a brother."

  "But how can I forget?" she answered him in his own idiom. "Why should I forget? What hath he done?"

  He ceased to smooth her hair-his voice grew sad and stern.

  "He hath profaned the Name. He hath lived like a heathen; he dieth like a heathen now. His blasphemy was a by-word in the congregation. I alone knew it not till last Passover. He hath brought down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave."

  "Yes, father, I know,
" said Hannah, more gently. "But he is not all to blame!"

  "Thou meanest that I am not guiltless; that I should have kept him at my side?" said the Reb, his voice faltering a little.

  "No, father, not that! Levi could not always be a baby. He had to walk alone some day."

  "Yes, and did I not teach him to walk alone?" asked the Reb eagerly. "My God, thou canst not say I did not teach him Thy Law, day and night." He uplifted his eyes in anguished appeal.

  "Yes, but he is not all to blame," she repeated. "Thy teaching did not reach his soul; he is of another generation, the air is different, his life was cast amid conditions for which the Law doth not allow."

  "Hannah!" Reb Shemuel's accents became harsh and chiding again. "What sayest thou? The Law of Moses is eternal; it will never be changed. Levi knew God's commandments, but he followed the desire of his own heart and his own eyes. If God's Word were obeyed, he should have been stoned with stones. But Heaven itself hath punished him; he will die, for it is ordained that whosoever is stubborn and disobedient, that soul shall surely be cut off from among his people. 'Keep My commandments, that thy days may be long in the land,' God Himself hath said it. Is it not written: 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things the Lord will bring thee into judgment'? But thou, my Hannah," he started caressing her hair again, "art a good Jewish maiden. Between Levi and thee there is naught in common. His touch would profane thee. Sadden not thy innocent eyes with the sight of his end. Think of him as one who died in boyhood. My God! why didst thou not take him then?" He turned away, stifling a sob.

  "Father," she put her hand on his shoulder, "we will go with thee to Stockbridge-I and the mother."

  He faced her again, stern and rigid.

  "Cease thy entreaties. I will go alone."

  "No, we will all go."

  "Hannah," he said, his voice tremulous with pain and astonishment, "dost thou, too, set light by thy father?"

  "Yes," she cried, and there was no answering tremor in her voice. "Now thou knowest! I am not a good Jewish maiden. Levi and I are brother and sister. His touch profane me, forsooth!" She laughed bitterly.