Part 57 (2/2)

His startled cry of agony and despair penetrated the woodwork, m.u.f.fled to an inarticulate shriek. He rattled the door violently in unreasoning frenzy.

”Who's that? What's that noise?” asked the Rebbitzin.

”Only some Christian rough shouting in the street,” answered Hannah.

It was truer than she knew.

The rain fell faster, the wind grew shriller, but the Children of the Ghetto basked by their firesides in faith and hope and contentment.

Hunted from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e through the ages, they had found the national aspiration--Peace--in a country where Pa.s.sover came, without menace of blood. In the garret of Number 1 Royal Street little Esther Ansell sat brooding, her heart full of a vague tender poetry and penetrated by the beauties of Judaism, which, please G.o.d, she would always cling to; her childish vision looking forward hopefully to the larger life that the years would bring.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHRISTMAS DINNER.

Daintily embroidered napery, beautiful porcelain, Queen Anne silver, exotic flowers, glittering gla.s.s, soft rosy light, creamy expanses of s.h.i.+rt-front, elegant low-necked dresses--all the conventional accompaniments of Occidental gastronomy.

It was not a large party. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith professed to collect guests on artistic principles--as she did bric-a-brac--and with an eye to general conversation. The elements of the social salad were sufficiently incongruous to-night, yet all the ingredients were Jewish.

For the history of the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a history of the middle-cla.s.ses, is mainly a history of isolation. ”The Upper Ten” is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the middle-cla.s.ses look up in wors.h.i.+p and the lower-cla.s.ses in supplication.

”The Upper Ten” have no spirit of exclusiveness; they are willing to entertain royalty, rank and the arts with a catholic hospitality that is only Eastern in its magnificence, while some of them only remain Jews for fear of being considered sn.o.bs by society. But the middle-cla.s.s Jew has been more jealous of his caste, and for caste reasons. To exchange hospitalities with the Christian when you cannot eat his dinners were to get the worse of the bargain; to invite his sons to your house when they cannot marry your daughters were to solicit awkward complications. In business, in civic affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with his fellow-citizens, but indiscriminate social relations only become possible through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate.

A Christian in a company of middle-cla.s.s Jews is like a lion in a den of Daniels. They show him deference and their prophetic side.

Mrs. Henry Goldsmith was of the upper middle-cla.s.ses, and her husband was the financial representative of the Kensington Synagogue at the United Council, but her swan-like neck was still bowed beneath the yoke of North London, not to say provincial, Judaism. So to-night there were none of those external indications of Christmas which are so frequent at ”good” Jewish houses; no plum-pudding, snapdragon, mistletoe, not even a Christmas tree. For Mrs. Henry Goldsmith did not countenance these coquettings with Christianity. She would have told you that the incidence of her dinner on Christmas Eve was merely an accident, though a lucky accident, in so far as Christmas found Jews perforce at leisure for social gatherings. What she was celebrating was the feast of Chanukah--of the re-dedication of the Temple after the pollutions of Antiochus Epiphanes--and the memory of the national hero, Judas Maccabaeus. Christmas crackers would have been incompatible with the Chanukah candles which the housekeeper, Mary O'Reilly, forced her master to light, and would have shocked that devout old dame. For Mary O'Reilly, as good a soul as she was a Catholic, had lived all her life with Jews, a.s.sisting while yet a girl in the kitchen of Henry Goldsmith's father, who was a pattern of ancient piety and a prop of the Great Synagogue. When the father died, Mary, with all the other family belongings, pa.s.sed into the hands of the son, who came up to London from a provincial town, and with a grateful recollection of her motherliness domiciled her in his own establishment. Mary knew all the ritual laws and ceremonies far better than her new mistress, who although a native of the provincial town in which Mr. Henry Goldsmith had established a thriving business, had received her education at a Brussels boarding-school. Mary knew exactly how long to keep the meat in salt and the heinousness of frying steaks in b.u.t.ter. She knew that the fire must not be poked on the Sabbath, nor the gas lit or extinguished, and that her master must not smoke till three stars appeared in the sky. She knew when the family must fast, and when and how it must feast. She knew all the Hebrew and jargon expressions which her employers studiously boycotted, and she was the only member of the household who used them habitually in her intercourse with the other members. Too late the Henry Goldsmiths awoke to the consciousness of her tyranny which did not permit them to be irreligious even in private. In the fierce light which beats upon a provincial town with only one synagogue, they had been compelled to conform outwardly with many galling restrictions, and they had sub-consciously looked forward to emanc.i.p.ation in the mighty metropolis. But Mary had such implicit faith in their piety, and was so zealous in the practice of her own faith, that they had not the courage to confess that they scarcely cared a pin about a good deal of that for which she was so solicitous. They hesitated to admit that they did not respect their religion (or what she thought was their religion) as much as she did hers. It would have equally lowered them in her eyes to admit that their religion was not so good as hers, besides being disrespectful to the cherished memory of her ancient master. At first they had deferred to Mary's Jewish prejudices out of good nature and carelessness, but every day strengthened her hold upon them; every act of obedience to the ritual law was a tacit acknowledgment of its sanct.i.ty, which made it more and more difficult to disavow its obligation. The dread of shocking Mary came to dominate their lives, and the fas.h.i.+onable house near Kensington Gardens was still a veritable centre of true Jewish orthodoxy, with little or nothing to make old Aaron Goldsmith turn in his grave. It is probable, though, that Mrs.

Henry Goldsmith would have kept a _kosher_ table, even if Mary had never been born. Many of their acquaintances and relatives were of an orthodox turn. A _kosher_ dinner could be eaten even by the heterodox; whereas a _tripha_ dinner choked off the orthodox. Thus it came about that even the Rabbinate might safely stoke its spiritual fires at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's.

Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, n.o.body knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, _Mordecai Josephs_, had scandalized West End Judaism.

”Why didn't he describe our circles?” asked the hostess, an angry fire in her beautiful eyes. ”It would have, at least, corrected the picture.

As it is, the public will fancy that we are all daubed with the same brush: that we have no thought in life beyond dress, money, and solo whist.”

”He probably painted the life he knew,” said Sidney Graham, in defence.

”Then I am sorry for him,” retorted Mrs. Goldsmith. ”It's a great pity he had such detestable acquaintances. Of course, he has cut himself off from the possibility of any better now.”

The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinterested indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial grief.

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