Part 72 (1/2)

”Really, I wasn't thinking of him for the moment,” she said a little sharply. ”However, in any case there's nothing worth doing till May, and that's some months ahead. I'll do the Academy for you if you like.”

”Thank you. Won't Sidney stare if you pulverize him in _The Flag of Judah_? Some of the pictures have also Jewish subjects, you know.”

”Yes, but if I mistake not, they're invariably done by Christian artists.”

”Nearly always,” he admitted pensively. ”I wish we had a Jewish allegorical painter to express the high conceptions of our sages.”

”As he would probably not know what they are,”--she murmured. Then, seeing him rise as if to go, she said: ”Won't you have a cup of tea?”

”No, don't trouble,” he answered.

”Oh yes, do!” she pleaded. ”Or else I shall think you're angry with me for not asking you before.” And she rang the bell. She discovered, to her amus.e.m.e.nt, that Raphael took two pieces of sugar per cup, but that if they were not inserted, he did not notice their absence. Over tea, too, Raphael had a new idea, this time fraught with peril to the Sevres tea-pot.

”Why couldn't you write us a Jewish serial story?” he said suddenly.

”That would be a novelty in communal journalism.”

Esther looked startled by the proposition.

”How do you know I could?” she said after a silence.

”I don't know,” he replied. ”Only I fancy you could. Why not?” he said encouragingly. ”You don't know what you can do till you try. Besides you write poetry.”

”The Jewish public doesn't like the looking-gla.s.s,” she answered him, shaking her head.

”Oh, you can't say that. They've only objected as yet to the distorting mirror. You're thinking of the row over that man Armitage's book. Now, why not write an antidote to that book? There now, there's an idea for you.”

”It _is_ an idea!” said Esther with overt sarcasm. ”You think art can be degraded into an antidote.”

”Art is not a fetish,” he urged. ”What degradation is there in art teaching a n.o.ble lesson?”

”Ah, that is what you religious people will never understand,” she said scathingly. ”You want everything to preach.”

”Everything does preach something,” he retorted. ”Why not have the sermon good?”

”I consider the original sermon _was_ good,” she said defiantly. ”It doesn't need an antidote.”

”How can you say that? Surely, merely as one who was born a Jewess, you wouldn't care for the sombre picture drawn by this Armitage to stand as a portrait of your people.”

She shrugged her shoulders--the ungraceful shrug of the Ghetto. ”Why not? It is one-sided, but it is true.”

”I don't deny that; probably the man was sincerely indignant at certain aspects. I am ready to allow he did not even see he was one-sided. But if _you_ see it, why not show the world the other side of the s.h.i.+eld?”

She put her hand wearily to her brow.

”Do not ask me,” she said. ”To have my work appreciated merely because the moral tickled the reader's vanity would be a mockery. The suffrages of the Jewish public--I might have valued them once; now I despise them.” She sank further back on the chair, pale and silent.

”Why, what harm have they done you?” he asked.

”They are so stupid,” she said, with a gesture of distaste.