Chapter V

"What? ... Who? ... Me! ... Great Moses in the Bulrushes!" ...

"Profane not the name of the Lawgiver," said Mendel sternly. "Is it not reasonable that the father of your father should desire you to cast off your Epicureanism, take upon you the Yoke of the Torah, and cease to become a sinner in Israel?"

"Reasonable--from his point of view! But--Me kiss a Mezuzah nailed on the doorpost, and reel off long prayers in a synagogue with my hat on--and my head wrapped in a shawl!"

"The Orthodox would respect instead of despising you."

"But my own set! What price they, I should like to know?"

"Their price--do you ask their price?" The fierce eyes flashed, the beaky nose looked capable of pecking. "For half of the great sum that is in question, there are not three among your associates--lewd men and loose women!--that would not kiss the buttocks of the Goat of Mendes, and spit upon the Cross! For they are not even Christians. They are as the brutes that perish. And you--another brute!--plant your hoofs and lay your ears back--and bite at the hand that tries to pluck you by the garment back from the brink of the bottomless Abyss!"

"Look here! ..."

Under the accusing glare of Mendel's little red-hot eyes, various deviations from the straight path of morality condoned by John as natural and even pardonable,--assumed a much less harmless character, and even took on an ugly and sinister hue....

Since John Hazel had left school at the age of eighteen, a string of young women of garish attractions and uncommonly easy virtue,--flaunting blossoms plucked by the wayside--in the City or the West End--had succeeded one another in his temporary affections. There had been several more or less quite serious entanglements, one of which had threatened to effloresce in a Divorce Case, but fortunately had not. There had been--previous to John's engagement--numberless rather rowdy jaunts; all-night Launch Parties; excursions to Pleasure Resorts: Seaside-hotel, Thames-side-hostelry-Saturday-to-Mondays,--enjoyed by John as member of an association, small, select, eclectic, expensive; rather artistic, decidedly sporting; semi-literary, slightly theatrical and wholly Bohemian in character,--rejoicing in the title of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club.

Not so out-and-out Improper, these gay and giddy galas.... Of course you couldn't take your mother to them! but you could, with a little careful editing, tell her amusing stories about them--now and then.

It was at a symposium of Club members, assembled at a riverside hostelry in the summer of 1913, that John had encountered Birdie Bright. Ostensibly a Beauty of the Chorus, Birdie, a young person of lowly origin, pronounced good looks, accommodating affections and expensive tastes in jewelry, furs, sweets and _lingerie_, had played the part of Zobeide to John's Harûn Er Raschid--practically until the arrival of Beryl on the scene.

She had vowed herself "broaken harted" in several despairing letters, written in an immense angular hand in ink of vivid green, upon sheets of pink ribbed note. But John had been generous--even Birdie admitted it!--as she took his advice, and put away the consolatory wad of crisp ten-pound notes that had sweetened the bitterness of parting, carefully in the Brixton Branch of a solid and reliable Bank.

Since Beryl's heartless breakage of her betrothal vows, the image of Miss Birdie Bright, previously effaced from the surface of John's heart, had revived in all its pristine charm through the whitewash that had coated it. To a letter from John in Hospital, Birdie had effusively responded--in passionate purple ink this time,--and in a bigger hand-writing than ever. The telegram appointing a day and an hour for her visit to her erstwhile lover's bedside was written, and wrapped round a half-crown in the pocket of his pyjama-jacket, in readiness for despatch.

That wire would have been sent an hour ago--had not the convalescent Sapper of Engineers--to whom belonged the next bed--gone off in such a hurry to the Pictures with his young woman that he forgot--and now Birdie would never get it! Nor would the letter enclosing John's cheque, soliciting from the Secretary of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club, re-election as a member of that interesting association, ever be posted now....

Seen through the stern medium of Old Mendel's spectacles, the periodical revels of the C.L.H.P. took on a tinge of hellishness--became a very Witches' Sabbat. And Birdie, viewed through the same merciless, unsparing lenses, became even as one of the harpies that devour young men and lead them in the Way of Destruction.