Chapter XVI

....What help is there? There is no help, for all these things are so. A. C. SWINBURNE.

“Come over here, Judith, and I will show you something,” said Ernest Leuniger as he sat by the fire in the morning-room.

It was two days after Reuben’s departure for St. Baldwin’s, and Ernest had returned from the country that morning.

She went over to him, drawing a chair close to his. Judith was always very kind to him, and he admired her immensely, treating her at intervals with a sort of gallantry.

“Now look at me!” He had the solitaire board on his knee, and a little glass ball, with coloured threads spun into it, between his fingers.

“There, and there, and there!”

Judith bent forward dutifully, watching how he lifted the marbles, one after the other, from their holes.

“Don’t you see?”

He looked at her triumphantly, but a little irritated at her obtuseness.

“Oh, yes,” said Judith vaguely.

“The figure eight--don’t you see?”

He pointed to the balls remaining on the board.

“So it is! Where did you learn to do that?” she asked, smiling gently.

“Ah, that’s telling, isn’t it?” He chuckled slily, swept the balls together with his hand, and announced his intention of going in search of his man, with a view to a game of billiards.

Judith sank back in her chair as the door closed on him. The firelight played about her face, which, though not less beautiful, had grown to look older. She had been living hard these last few days.

The door opened, and Rose came in with her hat on and a parcel in her hand.

“No tea?” she cried, kneeling down on the hearthrug and holding out her hands to the fire.

“It isn’t five o’clock yet.”

There was an air of tension, of expectancy almost about Judith which contrasted markedly with her habitual serenity.

Rose turned suddenly. “When, Judith, _when_?” she cried with immense archness.

“I don’t know,” said Judith quietly.

There had been a dance the night before at the Kohnthals, where Bertie’s unconcealed devotion to herself had been one of the events of the hour.

“Judith!”--Rose regarded her with excitement--“do you mean to say he has--spoken? Or are you humbugging in that serious way of yours?”

“Mr. Lee-Harrison has not proposed to me, if that is what you want to know.”

Rose unfastened her fur mantle in silence. Something in Judith’s manner puzzled her.

“He really is a nice little person,” Rose went on after a pause; “such beautiful manners!”

“Oh, he hands plates and opens doors very prettily.”

Judith spoke with a certain weary scorn, which Rose accepted as the tone of depreciation natural to a woman who discusses an undeclared admirer.

As a matter of fact, Judith recognized clearly the marks of breeding, the hundred and one fine differences which distinguished Bertie from the people of her set, whose manners were almost invariably tinged with respect of persons--that sure foe to respect of humanity. She recognized them and their value as hallmarks, wondering all the time with a dreary wonder, that any one should attach importance to such things as these.

For in her heart she despised the man. His intelligent fluency, his unfailing, monotonous politeness were a weariness to her.

His very readiness to fall down utterly before her, seemed to her--alas, poor Judith!--in itself a brand of inferiority.

“Tea at last,” cried Rose, as the door opened. “And Adelaide. What a scent you have for tea, Addie.”

Mrs. Montague Cohen swept in past the servant with the tray and took possession of the best chair.

“Mamma is here too,” she cried; “she and aunt Ada will be in in a minute.”

She drew off her gloves and the two girls rose to greet Mrs. Sachs, who at this point came with Mrs. Leuniger into the room.

Judith gave her hand very quietly to Reuben’s mother, then took her seat at some distance from the group round the tea-table, occupying herself with cutting the leaves of a novel that had just arrived from Mudie’s.

“Reuben is nominated,” cried Adelaide, as she helped herself liberally to tea-cake. “We had a telegram this morning.”

“He expects to get in _this_ time?” said Mrs. Leuniger, her pessimistic mind reverting naturally to her nephew’s first unsuccessful attempt at embarking on a political career.

“It won’t be for want of interest if he doesn’t,” said Mrs. Sachs; “Sir Nicholas Kemys and his wife are working day and night for him--day and night.”

“And Miss Lee-Harrison, Lady Kemys’ sister, _she_ seems to be quite specially zealous in the good cause,” put in Adelaide with meaning.

Secretly she was mortified at not having been asked down to St. Baldwin’s for the campaign, Reuben having met her hints on the subject in a very decided manner. There was some satisfaction in venting her feelings on Judith, for whose benefit her last remark was uttered.

“When is the election?” said Rose, turning to her aunt.

“Not till to-day week. But I may safely say there is no real cause for anxiety.”

“Did you see last night’s _Globe_?” cried Adelaide, “and the _St. James’s_? They cracked up Reuben no end.”

Judith had seen them; she had seen also the _Pall Mall Gazette_, which expressed itself in very different terms.

She had put back _Poems and Ballads_ on its shelf, and had taken to reading all the articles respecting the prospects of the St. Baldwin’s elections that she could lay hands on.

At least she had a right to be interested in what she had been told so much about, but there were times when she felt, as she read, that her interest was intrusive, a thing to be ashamed of.

“I suppose,” said Rose, “that he is too busy to write much.”

“We had a letter yesterday--just a line. He seemed in splendid spirits, and has promised to wire from time to time,” answered Adelaide.

“A good son,” said Mrs. Sachs half tenderly, half jestingly, very proudly, “who never forgets his mother.”

So the talk went on.

Judith sat there listening, cutting open her novel, and throwing in a remark from time to time.

Every word that was uttered seemed a brick in the wall that was building between herself and Reuben.

In this crisis of his career, so long looked forward to, so often discussed, he had no need, no thought of her. Adelaide, Esther, Rose, all had more claim on him than she; she was shut out from his life.

Reuben, disappointed, defeated: in such a one she would always, in spite of himself, have felt her rights. But Reuben, hopeful, successful, surrounded by admiring friends and relatives, fenced in more closely still by his mother’s love: from the contemplation of this glittering figure, cruel, triumphant, she turned away in a stony agony of self-contempt.

There was a sound of carriage wheels outside, and Lionel, who had been reconnoitring in the hall, burst in with the announcement, “Grandpapa has come.”

Mrs. Leuniger received the news with something like agitation. Old Solomon’s visits were few and far between, and now as he came, with pompous uncertainty of step across the room, the whole group by the fireplace rose hastily and went to meet him.

“Reuben is nominated,” cried Adelaide, when the old man had been established in a chair.

“Yes, yes,” said Solomon Sachs, “so I hear.”

He turned to his niece: “He ain’t looking well, that boy of yours.”

Mrs. Sachs shifted uneasily.

“You saw him just before he went, uncle Solomon, when he was tired out and not himself. He had been running from pillar to post all the week.”

Mrs. Leuniger muttered dejectedly: “He is getting to look like his father.”

Old Solomon raised his square hand to his beard, lifting his eyebrows high above the grave, shrewd, melancholy eyes.

Mrs. Sachs started; a sudden look of terror came into her face; the whites of her little hard eyes grew visible.

“Why don’t he marry?” said Solomon Sachs after a pause; “why don’t he marry that daughter of Cardozo’s? She’s not much to look at, certainly,” he added, and a wave of whimsical amusement broke out suddenly over the large, grave face.

“Yes,” put in Mrs. Leuniger, unusually loquacious, “his wife might see that he didn’t work himself to death.”

“I don’t see how he can work less,” cried Adelaide; “he has his way to make. And making your way, in these days, means pulling a great many strings.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sachs, relieved by this view of the case, “he must get on.”

Judith began to feel that her powers of endurance had their limits. She rose slowly, went over to the fireplace for a moment, threw a casual remark to Rose, and went from the room.

As she made her way up stairs the postman’s knock sounded through the house, and then Lionel came running to her with a letter.

Her correspondence was very small, and she glanced with but faint interest at the little packet in her cousin’s hand.

He was carrying it seal upwards, and suddenly her heart beat with a wild, mad beating, and the colour leapt to her pale cheeks.

She could see that it was sealed with wax. There was only one person that she knew who fastened his letters so. Reuben invariably made use of the signet ring which had belonged to his father, engraved with a crest duly bought and paid for at the Heralds’ College.

She took the precious thing in her hand, closing her fingers over it, and smiled radiantly at the little boy.

“Thank you, Lionel.”

Her room gained, she locked the door, sat down on the bed, and looked at her letter--

“To Miss Judith Quixano.”

The writing was certainly not Reuben’s, and he never used the “To.”

Then she turned it over and examined the seal, the seal that was totally unfamiliar. She felt a little sick, a little dazed, and leaned her head against the wall.

After a time she opened the letter and read it.

It was from Bertie Lee-Harrison, who asked her to be his wife.

It was a long letter, and stated, amongst other things, that he had already obtained his uncle’s permission to address her.

Old Solomon’s words as to his grandson’s marriage flashed into her mind. It struck her that these plans for Reuben, for herself, were nothing less than an outrage.

It struck her also that she might marry Bertie.

All her courage had deserted her, all her daring of thought and feeling, in the face of a world where thought and feeling were kept apart from word and deed.

She too must fall down and worship at the shrine of the great god Expediency.

For how, otherwise, could she live her life?

Thrust out from Reuben’s friendship, from all that made her happiness; shorn of self-respect, of the respect of her world; how could she bear to go on in the old track?

To her blind misery, her ignorance, Bertie was nothing more than a polite little figure holding open for her a door of escape.