Chapter VII

On this day shall He make an atonement for you, to purify you; you
shall be clean from all your sins. _Leviticus_ xvi. 30.

Herbert, or, as he was generally spoken of, Bertie Lee-Harrison, called at Lancaster Gate on the day of the New Year, to make acquaintance with Reuben’s people and offer his best wishes for the year 564-.

He was a small, fair, fluent person, very carefully dressed, assiduously polite, and bearing on his amiable, commonplace, neatly modelled little face no traces of the spiritual conflict which any one knowing his history might have supposed him to have passed through.

Esther, who happened to be calling on her aunt at the time of Bertie’s visit, classified him at once as an intelligent fool; but Adelaide professed herself delighted with the little man, and had had the joy of informing him that she had once met his sister, Lady Kemys, at a garden-party.

“Lady Kemys is charming,” Reuben said when the matter was being discussed. “Sir Nicholas, too, is a good fellow. They have a place some miles out of St. Baldwin’s.”

His mind ran a good deal on St. Baldwin’s in these days, and on poor Ronaldson, its Conservative member, lying hopelessly ill in Grosvenor Place.

Reuben, it may be added, was true to the traditions of his race, and wore the primrose; while Leo, who knew nothing about politics, gave himself out as a social democrat.

Mr. Lee-Harrison was to break his fast in Portland Place on the evening of the Day of Atonement, when it was old Solomon’s custom to assemble his family round him in great numbers.

Adelaide objected to this arrangement.

“It will give him such a bad impression,” she said.

“He asked for local colour, and local colour he shall have,” answered Reuben, amused.

“It is disloyal to your own people to assume such an attitude regarding them to a stranger. After all, he is not one of us,” cried Adelaide, taking a high tone.

“Your accusations are a little vague, Addie; but to tell you the truth I had no choice in the matter. I took him up yesterday to Portland Place, and the old man gave him the invitation. He simply jumped at it.”

“Those dreadful Samuel Sachses!” groaned Adelaide.

“Oh, they are a remarkable survival. You should learn to take them in the right spirit,” answered her brother.

He was dining that night at the house of an important Conservative M.P., and was disposed to take a cheerful view of things.

* * * * *

The Fast Day, or Day of Atonement, is the greatest national occasion of the whole year.

Even those lax Jews who practise their callings on Saturdays and other religious holidays, are withheld by public opinion on either side the tribal barrier from doing so on this day of days.

The synagogues are thronged; and if the number of people who rigidly adhere to total abstinence from food for twenty-four hours is rapidly diminishing, there are still many to be found who continue to do so.

Solomon Sachs, his daughter Rebecca, and the Montague Cohens worshipped in the Bayswater synagogue; the rest of the family had seats in the Reformed synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street, an arrangement to which the old man was too liberal-minded to take objection.

The Quixano family attended the synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Bryanston Street, with the exception of Judith, who shared with her cousins the simplified service, the beautiful music, and other innovations of Upper Berkeley Street.

The morning of the particular Day of Atonement of which I write dawned bright and clear; and from an early hour, in all quarters of the town, the Chosen People--a breakfastless band--might have been seen making their way to the synagogues.

Many of the women were in white, which is considered appropriate wear for the occasion; and if traces of depression were discernible on many faces, in view of the long day before them, it is scarcely to be wondered at.

It was about ten o’clock when the Leunigers, who had all breakfasted, made their way into the great hall of the synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street, where the people were streaming in, in great numbers. As they paused a moment at the bottom of the staircase leading to the ladies’ gallery, for their party to divide according to sex, Reuben came up to them with Bertie Lee-Harrison in his wake.

There was a general hand-shaking, and Reuben, as he pressed her fingers, smiled a half-humorous, half-rueful smile at Judith--a protest against the rigours and _longueurs_ of the day which lay before them.

She managed to say to him over her shoulder:

“How is Mr. Ronaldson?”

“He has taken a turn for the better.”

They laughed in one another’s faces.

Bertie, struck by the effect of that sudden, rapidly checked wave of mirth passing over the beautiful, serious face, remarked to Reuben as they turned towards the entrance to their part of the building, that the Jewish ladies were certainly very lovely. Reuben said nothing; they were by this time well within the synagogue, but he glanced quickly and coldly under his eyelids at Bertie picking his way jauntily to his seat.

Ernest Leuniger, who was very devout, and who loved the exercise of his religion even more than the game of solitaire, had already enwound himself in his _talith_, exchanged his tall hat for an embroidered cap, and was muttering his prayers in Hebrew below his breath.

Leo, his small, slight, picturesque figure swathed carelessly in the long white garment, with the fringes and the border of blue, his hat tilted over his eyes, leaned against a porphyry column, lost to everything but the glorious music which rolled out from the great organ.

He had come to-day under protest, to prevent a definite break with his father, who exacted attendance at synagogue on no other day of the year.

The time was yet to come when he should acknowledge to himself the depth of tribal feeling, of love for his race, which lay at the root of his nature. At present he was aware of nothing but revolt against, almost of hatred of, a people who, as far as he could see, lived without ideals, and was given up body and soul to the pursuit of material advantage.

Behind him his two little brothers were quarrelling for possession of a prayer-book. Near him stood his father, swaying from side to side, and mumbling his prayers in the corrupt German-Hebrew of his youth--a jargon not recognized by the modern culture of Upper Berkeley Street.

Reuben and his friend had seats opposite; seats moreover which commanded a good view of the ladies of the Leuniger household in the gallery above: Mrs. Leuniger, in a rich lace shawl, very much crumpled, and a new bonnet hopelessly askew; Rose, in a tight-fitting costume of white, with blue ribbons; Judith, in white also, her dusky hair, the clear, soft oval of her face surmounted by a flippant French bonnet--the very latest fashion.

It was a long day, growing less and less endurable as it went on; the atmosphere getting thicker and hotter and sickly with the smell of stale perfume.

The people, for the most part, stuck to their posts throughout. A few disappeared boldly about lunch time, returning within an hour refreshed and cheerful. Some--these were chiefly men--fidgeted in and out of the building to the disturbance of their neighbours. One or two ladies fainted; one or two others gossiped audibly from morning till evening; but, on the whole, decorum was admirably maintained.

Judith Quixano went through her devotions upheld by that sense of fitness, of obedience to law and order, which characterized her every action.

But it cannot be said that her religion had any strong hold over her; she accepted it unthinkingly.

These prayers, read so diligently, in a language of which her knowledge was exceedingly imperfect, these reiterated praises of an austere tribal deity, these expressions of a hope whose consummation was neither desired nor expected, what connection could they have with the personal needs, the human longings of this touchingly ignorant and limited creature?

Now and then, when she lifted her eyes, she saw the bored, resigned face of Reuben opposite, and the respectful, attentive countenance of Mr. Lee-Harrison, who was going through the day’s proceedings with all the zeal of a convert.

Leo had absented himself early in the day, and was wandering about the streets in one of those intolerable fits of restless misery which sometimes laid their hold on him.

Esther was not in synagogue. She had had a sharp wrangle with her mother the night before, which had ended in her staying in bed with _Good-bye, Sweetheart!_ for company.

She, poor soul, was of those who deny utterly the existence of the Friend of whom she stood so sorely in need.