Part 7 (1/2)

So that, although the good man still sulked over Simon to his wife, she was not deceived; and, the time drawing nigh for Simon's return, she began to look happily forward to a truly reunited family.

In her wildest anxiety it never occurred to her that it was her husband who would die. Yet this is what the irony of fate brought to pa.s.s. In the unending campaign which death wages with life, S. Cohn was slain, and Simon returned unscratched from the war to recite the _Kaddish_ in his memory.

X

Simon came back bronzed and a man. The shock of finding his father buried had supplied the last transforming touch; and, somewhat to his mother's surprise, he settled down contentedly to the business he had inherited. And now that he had practically unlimited money to spend, he did not seem to be spending it, but to be keeping better hours than when dodging his father's eye. His only absences from home he accounted for as visits to Winstay, his pal of the campaign, with whom he had got chummier than ever since the affair of the cattle-guard.

Winstay, he said, was of good English family, with an old house in Harrow--fortunately on the London and North Western Railway, so that he could easily get a breath of country air on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday afternoons. He seemed to have forgotten (although the Emporium was still closed on Sat.u.r.days) that riding was forbidden, and his mother did not remind him of it. The life that had been risked for the larger cause, she vaguely felt as enfranchised from the limitations of the smaller.

Nearly two months after Simon's return, a special military service was held at the Great Synagogue on the feast of _Chanukah_--the commemoration of the heroic days of Judas Maccabaeus--and the Jewish C.I.V.'s were among the soldiers invited. Mrs. Cohn, too, got a ticket for the imposing ceremony which was fixed for a Sunday afternoon.

As they sat at the midday meal on the exciting day, Mrs. Cohn said suddenly: 'Guess who paid me a visit yesterday.'

'Goodness knows,' said Simon.

'Mr. Sugarman.' And she smiled nervously.

'Sugarman?' repeated Simon blankly.

'The--the--er--the matrimonial agent.'

'What impudence! Before your year of mourning is up!'

Mrs. Cohn's sallow face became one flame. 'Not me! You!' she blurted.

'Me! Well, of all the cheek!' And Simon's flush matched his mother's.

'Oh, it's not so unreasonable,' she murmured deprecatingly. 'I suppose he thought you would be looking for a wife before long; and naturally,' she added, her voice growing bolder, 'I should like to see you settled before I follow your father. After all, you are no ordinary match. Sugarman says there isn't a girl in Bayswater, even, who would refuse you.'

'The very reason for refusing them,' cried Simon hotly. 'What a ghastly idea, that your wife would just as soon have married any other fellow with the same income!'

Mrs. Cohn cowered under his scorn, yet felt vaguely exalted by it, as by the organ in St. Paul's, and strange tears of shame came to complicate her emotions further. She remembered how she had been exported from Poland to marry the unseen S. Cohn. Ah! how this new young generation was snapping asunder the ancient coils! how the new and diviner sap ran in its veins!

'I shall only marry a girl I love, mother. And it's not likely to be one of these Jewish girls, I tell you frankly.'

She trembled. 'One of which Jewish girls?' she faltered.

'Oh, any sort. They don't appeal to me.'

Her face grew sallower. 'I am glad your father isn't alive to hear that,' she breathed.

'But father said intermarriage is the solution,' retorted Simon.

Mrs. Cohn was struck dumb. 'He was thinking how to make the Boers English,' she said at last.

'And didn't he say the Jews must be English, too?'

'Aren't there plenty of Jewish girls who are English?' she murmured miserably.