Chapter VIII

My lord, will’t please you to fall to?
_Richard II._

A limp, drab-coloured group was assembled in the drawing-room at Portland Place.

It was nearly half-past seven, and it only wanted the arrival of the Samuel Sachses--who came from the St. John’s Wood synagogue--for the whole party to descend into the dining-room, where the much-needed meal awaited them.

The Leunigers were there, of course, with the exception of Ernest and his mother, who had gone home; the Sachses; the Montague Cohens; Mrs. Kohnthal and Esther, who had left her bed at the eleventh hour prompted by a desire for society; Judith; Mr. and Mrs. Quixano, their son Jack, and two young sisters.

Bertie Lee-Harrison, who had come in with Reuben, pale, exhausted, but prepared to be impressed by every thing and every one he saw, confided to his friend that the twenty-four hours’ fast had been the severest ordeal he had as yet undergone in the service of religion--his experiences in Asia Minor not excepted.

Leo, whose mood had changed, overheard this confidence with an irresistible twitching of the lips. He was sitting on the big sofa with his two little brothers, making jokes below his breath to their immense delight; while Rose, at the other end of the same piece of furniture, was maintaining an animated conversation with her cousin Jack.

Jack Quixano was a spruce, dapper, polite young man of some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. Perhaps he was a little too spruce, a little too dapper, a little too anxious to put himself _en évidence_ by his assiduity in picking up handkerchiefs and opening doors. But few of his family noticed these defects, least of all Rose, on whom he was beginning to cast aspiring eyes, and whom he closely resembled in personal appearance.

The door opened at last, to every one’s relief, to admit the expected guests: a party of six--father, mother, grown-up son and daughter, a little girl and a little boy.

Samuel Sachs was the unsuccessful member of his family.

From the beginning, the atmosphere of the Stock Exchange had proved too strong for his not very strong brains, and his career had been inaugurated by a series of gambling debts.

His father paid his debts and forbade him the office, and he had gone his own way for many years, settling down ultimately in a humble way of business as a lithographer.

He had married a Polish Jewess with some money of her own, and in these latter days old Solomon made him an allowance, so there was enough and to spare in the home in Maida Vale where he and his family were established.

They came now into the crowded drawing-room with a curious mixture of deference and self-assertion.

To their eminently provincial minds, the Bayswater Sachses, the Leunigers and the Kohnthals were very great people indeed, and they derived no little prestige in Maida Vale from their connection with so distinguished a family.

But as regarded their occasional admittance into the charmed circle, that was a privilege which, though they would on no account have foregone it, was certainly not without its drawbacks.

It was splendid, but it was not comfortable.

Mrs. Sachs was a stout, dark-haired matron, who entirely overshadowed her shambling, neutral-tinted husband. Netta, the eldest daughter, was a black-eyed, richly coloured, bouncing maiden of two or three-and-twenty, wearing a white dress, with elbow sleeves, cut open a little at the neck, and a great deal of silver jewellery.

Alec, her brother, was a short, fair, exuberant-looking youth, with a complexion both glossy and florid, in whom the Sachses fitness for survival had re-asserted itself. He practised painless dentistry with great success in the heart of Maida Vale, and was writing a manual--destined to pass through several editions--on _Diseases of the Teeth and Gums_.

Adèle and Bernard (pronounced Adale and Bernàrd), the two children, strutted in behind the others, in all the glory of white cambric and black velveteen, respectively, much impressed by the situation, but no less on the defensive than the elder members of their family.

There was languid greeting all round; languor, under the circumstances, was excusable; and then the whole party poured down into the dining-room, where an abundant meal was set out.

Old Solomon prided himself on his hospitality, and the great table, which shone with snowy linen, gleaming china, and glittering silver, groaned, as the phrase goes, with good things to eat.

There were golden-brown blocks of cold fried fish in heavy silver dishes; rosy piles of smoked salmon; saffron-tinted masses of stewed fish; long twisted loaves covered with seeds; innumerable little plates of olives, pickled herrings, and pickled cucumbers; and the quick eyes of Lionel and Sidney had lighted at once on the many coloured surfaces of the almond puddings, which awaited the second course on the sideboard.

Aunt Rebecca, faint and yellow, behind a the silver urns, dispensed tea and coffee with rapid hand; while old Solomon, none the worse for his rigid fast, wielded the fish slice at the other end of the table.

Bertie, respectful, wondering, interested through all his hunger, was seated between Reuben and Mrs. Kohnthal.

Adelaide had chosen her seat as far as possible from the Samuel Sachses, whose presence was an offence to her. They, on their part, regarded her with a mixture of respect and dislike. She never gave them more than two fingers in her grandfather’s house, and ignored them altogether when she met them anywhere else. This conduct impressed them by its magnificence, and they followed the ups and downs of her career, as far as they were able, with a passionate interest that had in it something of the pride of possession.

Nor was Adelaide above taking an interest in the affairs of her humbler relatives behind their backs. I cannot help wishing that they had known this; it would have been to them the source of so much innocent gratification.

Reuben, who had his cousin Netta on the other side of him, and whose vanity was a far subtler, more complicated affair than his sister’s, was making himself agreeable with his accustomed urbanity, beneath which the delighted maiden was unable to detect a lurking irony.

The humours of the Samuel Sachses, their appearance, gestures, their excruciating method of pronouncing the English language, the hundred and one tribal peculiarities which clung to them, had long served their cousins as a favourite family joke into which it would have been difficult for the most observant of outsiders to enter.

They were indeed, as Reuben had said, a remarkable survival.

Born and bred in the very heart of nineteenth century London, belonging to an age and a city which has seen the throwing down of so many barriers, the levelling of so many distinctions of class, of caste, of race, of opinion, they had managed to retain the tribal characteristics, to live within the tribal pale to an extent which spoke worlds for the national conservatism.

They had been educated at Jewish schools, fed on Jewish food, brought up on Jewish traditions and Jewish prejudice.

Their friends, with few exceptions, were of their own race, the making of acquaintance outside the tribal barrier being sternly discouraged by the authorities. Mrs. Samuel Sachs indeed had been heard more than once to observe pleasantly that she would sooner see her daughters lying dead before her than married to Christians.

Netta tossed her head defiantly at these remarks, but contented herself with sowing her little crop of wild oats on the staircases of Bayswater and Maida Vale, where she “sat out” by the hour with the very indifferent specimens of Englishmen who frequented the dances in her set.

Generally speaking, the race instincts of Rebecca of York are strong, and she is less apt to give her heart to Ivanhoe, the Saxon knight, than might be imagined.

Bernard Sachs, a very smug-looking little boy, with inordinately thick lips and a disagreeable nasal twang, had been placed between the two young Leunigers, who regarded him with a mixture of disgust and amusement, which they were at small pains to conceal.

“Did you fast all day?” he said, by way of opening the conversation. “I did. I was _bar-mitz-vah_ last month. Is either of you fellows _bar-mitz-vah_?”

“I am thirteen, if that’s what you mean,” said Lionel, with his most man of-the-world air. He considered the introduction of the popular tribal phrases very bad form indeed.

“I suppose you were in _shool_ all day?” went on Bernard unabashed, and much on his dignity.

“I was only in synagogue in the morning,” answered Lionel. Then he kicked Sidney violently under the table, and the two little brothers went off into a series of chuckles; while Bernard, with a vague sense of being insulted, turned his attention to his fried salmon and Dutch herring.

Meanwhile Alec, who had been rather subdued at the beginning of the evening, was regaining his native confidence as the meal proceeded.

He happened to be sitting opposite Bertie, and having elicited from his neighbour, Mrs. Quixano, the explanation of an alien presence among them on such an occasion, had fixed his attention with great frankness on the stranger.

Very soon he was leaning across the table, and with much use of his fat red hands, and many liftings of his round shoulders, was expatiating to the astonished Bertie on the beauties and advantages of the faith which he had just embraced.

“Mr. Harrison,” he cried at last--he preferred to skip the difficulties of the double-barrelled name--“Mr. Harrison, take my word for it, it is the finest religion under the sun. Those who have left it for reasons of their own have always come back in the end. They’re bound to, they’re bound to!” (He pronounced the word “bound” with an indescribable twang.) “Look at Lord Beaconsfield”--he pointed with his short forefinger--“everyone knows he died with the _shemang_ on his lips!”

There was a sudden stifled explosion of laughter from Leo’s quarter of the table; and Judith glanced across rather anxiously at Reuben, on whose polite, impassive face she at once detected a look of annoyance.

She was sitting next to her father in the close-fitting white gown which displayed to advantage the charming lines of her arms and shoulders.

Now and then she caught the glance of Mr. Lee-Harrison, who was far too well-bred to obtrude his admiration by staring, fixed momentarily on her face.

The hunger and weariness natural, under the circumstances, to her youth and health had in no way marred the perfect freshness of her appearance; and there was a gentle kindliness in her manner to her father which added a charm, not always present, to her beauty.

Perhaps she felt instinctively, what Quixano himself was far too much in the clouds to notice, that no one made much account of him, that it behoved her to take him under her protection. He was one of this world’s failures; and the Jewish people, so eager to crown success in any form, so determined in laying claim to the successful among their number, have scant love for those unfortunates who have dropped behind in the race.

The meal came to an end at last, and there was a pushing back of chairs on the part of the men.

Bertie, about to rise, felt himself held down by main force; Reuben was gripping him hard by the wrist with one hand, and with the other was engaged in fishing out his hat from under the table; while Netta, leaning across her cousin, explained with her most fascinating smile that grandpa was going to _bench_.

Bertie, at a sign from Reuben, rose to the situation, and stooping for his own hat with alacrity, drew it from its place of concealment and placed it on his head. By this time all the men had unearthed and assumed their head-gear, with the exception of Samuel Sachs, whose hat by some mischance was not forthcoming; however, to avoid delay, he covered his head in all gravity with his table-napkin.

Bertie glanced round him, from one face to another, puzzled and inquiring.

It seemed to him a solemn moment, this gathering together of kinsfolk after the long day of prayer, of expiation; this offering up of thanksgiving; this performance of the ancient rites in the land of exile.

He could not understand the spirit of indifference, of levity even, which appeared to prevail.

A finer historic sense, other motives apart, should, it seemed, have prevented so obvious a display of the contempt which familiarity had bred.

Alec had put his hat on rakishly askew, and was winking across to him re-assuringly, as though to intimate that the whole thing was not to be taken seriously.

Rose, led on by Jack Quixano, giggled hysterically behind her pocket-handkerchief.

Leo and Esther took on airs of aggressive boredom. Judith, lifting her eyes, met Reuben’s in a smile, and even Montague Cohen permitted himself to yawn.

Only old Solomon at the head of the table, mumbling and droning out the long grace in his corrupt Hebrew--his great face impenetrably grave--appeared to take any interest in the proceeding, with perhaps the exception of his son Samuel, who joined in now and then from beneath the drooping shelter of his table-napkin.

Bertie stared and Bertie wondered. Needless to state, he was completely out of touch with these people whose faith his search for the true religion had led him, for the time being, to embrace.

Grace over, the women went up stairs, the men, with the exception of old Solomon, remaining behind to smoke.

Bertie, who was thoroughly tired out, soon rose to go.

“I will make your excuses up stairs,” said Reuben.

But the polite little man preferred to go to the drawing-room and perform his farewells in person.

“Thanks so much,” he said in the hall, where Leo and Reuben were speeding him.

“I hope you have been edified--that’s all.” Reuben laughed.

“I am deeply interested in the Jewish character,” answered Bertie; “the strongly marked contrasts; the underlying resemblances; the elaborate differentiations from a fundamental type--!”

“Ah, yes,” broke in Reuben, secretly irritated, his tribal sensitiveness a little hurt, “you will find among us all sorts and conditions of men.”

“Except perhaps Don Quixote, or even King Cophetua,” added Leo.

“King Cophetua,” repeated Reuben in a slow, reflective tone, as the door closed on Mr. Lee-Harrison; “King Cophetua had an assured position. It isn’t every one that can afford to marry beggar-maids.”