Part 75 (1/2)
”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 b.u.t.tonhole 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-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 f.a.gin, 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 n.o.body 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-sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds of the heathen, and we always loved magnificence; remember our Temples. In every land we have produced great merchants and rulers, prime-ministers, viziers, n.o.bles. 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 a.s.sert 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 La.s.salle 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.”
Esther blushed and meditatively sniffed at her bouquet, but fortunately the rise of the curtain relieved her of the necessity far a reply. It was only a temporary relief, however, for the quizzical young artist returned to the subject immediately the act was over.