Chapter XI

I do not like this manner of a dance,
This game of two and two; it were much better
To mix between the pauses than to sit
Each lady out of earshot with her friend.
SWINBURNE: _Chastelard_.

The Leunigers were giving a dance at the beginning of November, and the female part of the household was greatly taken up with preparations for the event.

There was much revising of invitation lists, discussion of the social claims of their friends and acquaintance, and the usual anxious beating up of every available dancing-man.

“Addie will bring Mr. Griffiths, and Esther Mr. Peck,” said Rose. “They go well, look nice, and one sees them everywhere, although Reuben calls them ‘outsiders.’”

Rose loved dances, as well she might, for from the first she had been a success.

Rose, with her fair, plump shoulders and blonde hair, her high spirits and good-nature, her nimble feet and nimble tongue; Rose with her £50,000 and twenty guinea ball-gowns; Rose went down--magic phrase!--as not one girl in ten succeeds in doing.

“I suppose,” said Judith, “that the Samuel Sachses will have to be asked?”

She, though of course she had her admirers, was by no means such a success as her cousin.

“Yes, isn’t it a nuisance?” cried Rose; “and the Lazarus Harts.”

If there is a strong family feeling among the children of Israel, it takes often the form of acute family jealousy.

The Jew who will open his doors in reckless ignorance to every sort and condition of Gentile is morbidly sensitive as regards the social standing of the compatriot whom he admits to his hospitality.

The Leunigers, as we know, were not people of long standing in the Community, and numbered among their acquaintance Jews of every rank and shade; from the Cardozos, who were rich, cultivated, could almost trace their descent from Hillel, the son of David, and had a footing in English society, to such children of nature as the Samuel Sachses.

“We must have Nellie Hepburn and the Strettel girls,” went on Rose, consulting her list; “the men all rush at them, though I don’t see that they are so pretty myself.”

“I suppose they make a change from ourselves,” answered Judith smiling, “whose faces are known by heart.”

Judith was entering with spirit, with a zeal that was almost feverish, into the preparations for the forthcoming festivity.

She and Reuben had scarcely spoken to one another since the Day of Atonement. They had met once or twice at family gatherings, at which, either by accident, or design on Reuben’s part, there had been no opportunity for private conversation.

Perhaps an instinctive feeling that the old relations were imperilled and that no new ones could ever be so satisfactory held them apart.

Meanwhile Judith unconsciously fixed her mind on the one definite fact that Reuben would be at the Leunigers’ dance. It was in the crowded solitude of ball-rooms that they had hitherto found their best opportunity.

The night so much prepared for came round at last, and the house in Kensington Palace Gardens became for the time being the scene of ceaseless activity.

Ernest had gone away into the country with the person who was always talked of as his valet; and Leo, of course, was in Cambridge; but the rest of the family--not excepting Lionel and Sidney, who handed programmes--had mustered in great force to do honour to the event.

From an early hour poor Mrs. Leuniger had taken up her station in the doorway of the primrose-coloured drawing-room, where she stood dejectedly welcoming her guests. She was wearing a quantity of valuable lace, very much crumpled, and had a profusion of diamonds scattered about her person, but had apparently forgotten to do her hair.

Rose, in short, voluminous skirts of pink tulle, and a pale pink satin bodice fitting close about her plump person, defining the lines of her ample hips, was performing introductions with noisy zeal, with the help of Jack Quixano, whom she had constituted her _aide-de-camp_. The Montague Cohens had come early, and Adelaide, in a very grand gown, scrutinized the scene with breathless interest, secretly wondering why more people had not asked her to dance.

Judith was looking very well. Her short, diaphanous white ball-gown, with its low-cut, tight-fitting satin bodice was not exactly a dignified garment, but she managed to maintain, in spite of it, her customary air of stateliness.

Moreover to-night some indefinable change had come over the character of her beauty, heightening it, intensifying it, giving it new life and colour. The calm, unawakened look which many people had found so baffling, had left her face; the eyes, always curiously mournful, shone out with a new soft fire.

Bertie Lee-Harrison, tripping jauntily into the ball-room, remained transfixed a moment in excited admiration.

What a beautiful woman was this cousin, or pseudo-cousin, of Sachs’s! How infinitely better bred she seemed than the people surrounding her!

The Quixanos, as Reuben had told him, were _sephardim_, for whose claim to birth he had the greatest respect. But as for that red-headed young man, her brother--there were no marks of breeding about _him_!

Bertie was puzzled, as the stranger is so often puzzled, by the violent contrasts which exist among Jews, even in the case of members of the same family.

Judith was standing some way off, where Bertie stood observing her, while two or three men wrote their names on her dancing-card.

She was one of the few people of her race who look well in a crowd or at a distance. The charms of person which a Jew or Jewess may possess are not usually such as will bear the test of being regarded as a whole.

Some quite commonplace English girls and men who were here to-night looked positively beautiful as they moved about among the ill-made sons and daughters of Shem, whose interesting faces gain so infinitely on a nearer view, even where it is a case of genuine good-looks.

Bertie waited a minute till the men had moved off, then advanced to Miss Quixano and humbly asked for two dances. Judith gave them to him with a smile. He was a poor creature, certainly, but he was Reuben’s friend, and she knew that, in one way at least, Reuben thought well of him: he was one of the few Gentiles of her acquaintance whom he had not stigmatized as an “outsider.”

Moreover Bertie’s little air of deference was a pleasant change from the rather patronizing attitude of the young men of her set, whose number was very limited, and who were aggressively conscious of commanding the market.

Bertie, his dances secured, moved off regretfully. He would have liked to sue for further favours, but his sense of decorum restrained him. Had he but known it, he might without exciting notice have claimed a third, at least, of the dances on Judith’s card. Hard flirtation was the order of the day, and the chaperons, who were few in number, gossiped comfortably together, while their charges sat out half the night with the same partner.

Rose fell upon Bertie at this point, and fired him off like a gun at one or two partnerless damsels; while Judith, her partner in her wake, moved over to the doorway, where Adelaide was standing with Caroline Cardozo.

It was eleven o’clock and Reuben had not come. Judith had, it must be owned, changed her position with a view to consulting the hall-clock, and perhaps Adelaide had some inkling of this, for she said very loudly to her companion:

“It is a first night at the Thalian; my brother never misses one. I don’t expect we shall see him to-night. Young men have so many ways of amusing themselves, I wonder they care about dances at all.”

The musicians struck up a fresh waltz, and Bertie came over to claim the first of his dances with Judith.

He danced very nicely, in a straightforward, unambitious way, never reversing his partner round a corner without saying, “I beg your pardon.”

Esther, her sharp brown shoulders shuffling restlessly in and out of a gold-coloured gown of _moiré_ silk, and with a string of pearls round her neck worth a king’s ransom, surveyed the scene with shrewd, miserable eyes, while rattling on aimlessly to her partner and _protégé_, Mr. Peck.

It was indeed a motley throng which was whirling and laughing and shouting across the music, in the bare, bright, flower-scented apartment.

The great majority of the people were Jews--Jews belonging to varying shades of caste and clique in that socially sensitive Community. But besides these, there was a goodly contingent of Gentile dancing men--“outsiders,” according to Reuben, every one--and a smaller band of Gentile ladies who were the fashion of the hour among the sons of Shem.

(“Bad form” was the label affixed by Reuben to these attractive maids and matrons.)

To give distinction to the scene, there were a well-known R.A., who had painted Rose’s portrait for last year’s Academy; two or three pretty actresses; an ex-Lord Mayor, who had been knighted while in office; and last, though by no means least in the eyes of the clannish children of Israel, Caroline Cardozo and her father.

“‘What a pretty girl’?” did you say, remarked Esther as the music died away. “Yes, Judith Quixano is very good-looking, but I don’t know that she goes down particularly well.”

Mr. Peck made some complimentary remark, of a general character, as to the beauty of Jewish ladies.

“Yes, we have some pretty women,” Esther answered; “but our men! No, the Jew, unlike the horse, is not a noble animal.”

Esther, it will be seen, was of those who walk naked and are not ashamed.

At this point, a fashionably late hour, a new arrival was announced, and in marched Netta and Alec Sachs, their heads very much in the air, the self-assertion of self-distrust written on every line of their ingenuous countenances.

Netta, who had had a new dress from Paris for the occasion, really looked rather well in her own style, which was of the exuberant, black-haired, highly-coloured kind, and was at once greeted by one of the “outsiders” as an old friend.

This was no less a person than Adelaide’s particular _protégé_, Mr. Griffiths, who, ignorant of the fine shades of Community class-distinction, engaged Miss Sachs for several dances under the eyes of his mortified patroness. Mr. Griffiths indeed was an impartial person, who, so long as you gave him a good floor, a decent supper, and a partner who could “go,” would lend the light of his presence to any ball-room whatever, whether situated in South Kensington or Maida Vale.

Alec Sachs was less fortunate than his sister. There were plenty of men, and the girls whom he thought worthy of inviting to dance for the most part declared themselves engaged.

This was a new experience to him. His skilful dancing--it was of the acrobatic or gymnastic order--his powers of “chaff” and repartee, above all, his reputation as a _parti_, had secured him a high place among the maidens of Maida Vale.

He stood now, his back to the wall, an air of contempt for the whole proceeding written on his florid face, exclaiming loudly and petulantly to his sister, whenever he had an opportunity: “They don’t introduce, they don’t introduce!”

Twelve o’clock was striking as Reuben Sachs stepped into the hall, which by this time was filled with couples “sitting out”; a few of them really enjoying themselves, the great majority gay with that rather spurious gaiety, that forcing of the note, which is so marked a characteristic of festivities. Sounds of waltz music were borne from the drawing-room, and the draped aperture of the doorway--the door itself had been removed--showed a capering throng of dancers of varying degrees of agility.

Reuben advanced languidly; his face wore the mingled look of exhaustion and nerve-tension which with him denoted great fatigue.

It had been a long day: in and out of court all the morning; two committee meetings, political and philanthropical, respectively, later on; a hurried club dinner; and an interminable first night, with hitches in the scene-shifting, and long waits between the acts.

He had told himself over and over again that he would “cut” the dance at his uncle’s, and here he was--alleging to himself as an excuse the impossibility of getting to sleep directly after the theatre.

It was little more than a month that he had been home, and already his old enemy, insomnia, showed signs of being on the track.

Reuben made his way to a position near the foot of the stairs, which afforded a good view of the ball-room.

He could not see Judith, a circumstance which irritated him, as he did not wish to go in search of her.

Beyond, in the crowded refreshment room, he had a glimpse of Rose, who was exceedingly _friande_, giggling behind a large pink ice, while Jack Quixano, a look of conscious waggishness on his face, dropped confidential remarks into her ear. Esther, on the stairs behind him, was delivering herself freely of cheap epigrams to an impecunious partner; and in a rose-lit recess was to be seen Montague Cohen, his pale, pompous, feeble face wreathed in smiles, enjoying himself hugely with a light-hearted matron from the Gentile camp.

The whole scene was familiar enough to Reuben, who from his boyhood upward had taken part in the festivities of his tribe, with their gorgeously gowned and bejewelled women, elaborate floral decorations and costly suppers.

The Jew, it may be remarked in passing, eats and dresses at least two degrees above his Gentile brother in the same rank of life.

The music came to an end, and the dancers streamed out from the ball-room.

Alec Sachs, who had been dancing with his sister, brushed past Reuben in the throng, and the latter was mechanically aware of hearing him say to his partner:

“Mixed, very mixed! A scratch lot of people _I_ call it.”

Lionel Leuniger came rushing up to him in all the glory of an Eton suit and a white gardenia.

“So you’ve come at last, Reuben! You are very late, and all the pretty girls are engaged. Have a programme?”

Reuben did not answer. By this time the ball-room was almost empty, and he could see clearly into the room beyond, where a red cloth recess had been built in from the balcony.