Chapter XIX

... This life’s end, and this love-bliss have been lost here.
Doubt you whether
This she felt, as looking at me, mine and her souls rushed together?
BROWNING: _Christina_.

Esther sat a little apart, watching the lovers.

“Does she think he is a cardboard man to play with, or an umbrella to take shelter under?” she reflected. “A lover may be a shadowy creature, but husbands are made of flesh and blood. Doesn’t she see already that he is as obstinate as a mule, and as whimsical as a goat?”

And she repeated the phrase to herself well pleased with it.

It was Sunday, the day following that of the election. A great family party had dined in Kensington Palace Gardens, and now were awaiting Reuben in the primrose-coloured drawing-room.

Judith, side by side with Bertie, was listening amiably to a fluent account of his adventures in Asia Minor, in which he dwelt a great deal on his state of mind and state of health at the time; while Rose played scraps of music for the benefit of Jack Quixano, who had a taste for comic opera.

Judith was in such a state of tension as scarcely to be conscious of pain. Her duties as _fiancée_ were clearly marked out; anything was better than those days of chaos, of upheaval, which had preceded her engagement.

Esther’s favourite phrase, that marriage was an opiate, had occurred to her more than once during the past week.

“I sat up all night long, and read every word of it. I was determined to make up my mind once for all,” Bertie was saying.

Rose, at the piano, put her hand on her hip and hummed a scrap from a music-hall song, while Jack whistled an accompaniment:

“Stop the cab,
Stop the cab,
Woh, woh, woh!”

The hall-door banged to with some violence.

The voices of Lionel and Sidney were heard upraised without:

“Vote for Sachs! Vote for Sachs, the people’s friend!”

Then came the sound of another voice--

“My head was like a live coal, and my feet were as cold as stones ...” went on Bertie.

Judith looked sympathetic, and her heart leaped suddenly within her: it had not yet unlearnt the trick of leaping at the sound of Reuben’s voice. Lionel flung open the door and capered into the room.

Behind him came Reuben Sachs.

Judith knew nothing more till she and Reuben were standing face to face, holding one another’s hands.

Whatever had happened before, whatever happened afterwards, she will remember to the day of her death that in that one moment, at least, they understood one another.

No need for question, for answer, for explanation of motives and feelings.

It was all as clear as daylight, in that strange, brief, interminable moment which to the onlookers showed nothing more than a pale, tired-looking gentleman offering his congratulations on her engagement to a flushed, bright-eyed lady.

Even that sharp battery of eyes could discover nothing more than this.

It was not long before the hall-door closed again upon Reuben.

He flung out into the night.

“Good God, good God!” he said to himself. Not till he had actually seen her had he been able to realize what had happened; to understand what manner of change had come into his life; to see what might have been, and what was.

He had so many things to tell her, which might never now be told. The blind, choking rage of a baffled creature came over him; he sped on, stifled, through the darkness.

Judith, sitting dazed and smiling in the gaslight, said over and over again in her heart:

“Oh my poor Reuben, my poor, poor Reuben!”

At the piano Rose and Jack sang in chorus:

“For he’s going to marry, Yum Yum,
Yum Yum.

Your anger pray bury,
For all will be merry,
I think you had better succumb,
cumb--cumb!”

* * * * *

At the beginning of January there was a wedding at the synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street which excited unusual interest.

The beautiful bride in her white silk dress was greatly admired. She was very pale, certainly, and in her wide-open eyes an acute observer might have read an expression of something like terror; but acute observers, fortunately, are few and far between. The bridegroom, to all appearance, enjoyed himself immensely, going through the whole pageant with great exactness, smashing the wine-glass vigorously with his little foot, and sipping the wine daintily from the silver cup.

Old Solomon Sachs, whose own daughters had been married in the drawing-room at Portland Place, but who had no prejudice against the new fashion of weddings in the synagogue, occupied a prominent place near the ark, surrounded by his family.

Reuben Sachs stood close to Leopold Leuniger, a little in the background. His face was absolutely expressionless, unless weariness may be allowed to count as expression. He wanted yet a year or two of thirty, and already he was beginning to lose his look of youth. Leo, it must be owned, paid little attention to the ceremony. His eyes roved constantly to where the bridegroom’s family, the Lee-Harrisons and the Norwoods, stood together in a rather chilly group; to where, in particular, Lady Geraldine Sydenham, in her unassertive, unaccentuated costume, leaned lightly against a porphyry column.

Bertie’s people had accepted the situation with philosophy, and were really fond of Judith, but they found her family, especially in its collateral branches, uncongenial, if not worse.

On the outskirts of this group hovered Montague Cohen, absolutely rigid with importance. Near him Adelaide tossed her head in its smart new bonnet from side to side, her sallow face and diamond earrings flashing this way and that throughout the ceremony.

She knew that such restlessness was not good manners, but for the life of her she could not resist the temptation of seeing all that was to be seen.

Poor Mrs. Quixano, proud, but vaguely distressed, stood near her husband; while Jack, the picture of nimble smartness, ushered every one into their places and made himself generally useful.

The wedding was followed by a reception; and afterwards, amid showers of rice from Lionel and Sidney, the newly-married pair set out _en route_ for Italy.