Children of the Ghetto Part 21

"He doesn't like to be seen with us," Beenah Hyams thought. But she was silent.

"He has never forgiven my putting him to the fancy goods," thought Mendel Hyams when told. But he was silent.

It was of no good discussing it with his wife. Those two had rather halved their joys than their sorrows. They had been married forty years and had never had an intimate moment. Their marriage had been a matter of contract. Forty years ago, in Poland, Mendel Hyams had awoke one morning to find a face he had never seen before on the pillow beside his. Not even on the wedding-day had he been allowed a glimpse of his bride's countenance. That was the custom of the country and the time.

Beenah bore her husband four children, of whom the elder two died; but the marriage did not beget affection, often the inverse offspring of such unions. Beenah was a dutiful housewife and Mendel Hyams supported her faithfully so long as his children would let him. Love never flew out of the window for he was never in the house. They did not talk to each other much. Beenah did the housework unaided by the sprig of a servant who was engaged to satisfy the neighbors. In his enforced idleness Mendel fell back on his religion, almost a profession in itself. They were a silent couple.

At sixty there is not much chance of a forty year old silence being broken on this side of the grave. So far as his personal happiness was concerned, Mendel had only one hope left in the world--to die in Jerusalem. His feeling for Jerusalem was unique. All the hunted Jew in him combined with all the battered man to transfigure Zion with the splendor of sacred dreams and girdle it with the rainbows that are builded of bitter tears. And with it all a dread that if he were buried elsewhere, when the last trump sounded he would have to roll under the earth and under the sea to Jerusalem, the rendezvous of resurrection.

Every year at the Pa.s.sover table he gave his hope voice: "Next year in Jerusalem." In her deepest soul Miriam echoed this wish of his. She felt she could like him better at a distance. Beenah Hyams had only one hope left in the world--to die.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PURIM BALL.

Sam Levine duly returned for the Purim ball. Malka was away and so it was safe to arrive on the Sabbath. Sam and Leah called for Hannah in a cab, for the pavements were unfavorable to dancing shoes, and the three drove to the "Club," which was not a sixth of a mile off.

"The Club" was the People's Palace of the Ghetto; but that it did not reach the bed-rock of the inhabitants was sufficiently evident from the fact that its language was English. The very lowest stratum was of secondary formation--the children of immigrants--while the highest touched the lower middle-cla.s.s, on the mere fringes of the Ghetto. It was a happy place where young men and maidens met on equal terms and similar subscriptions, where billiards and flirtations and concerts and laughter and gay gossip were always on, and lemonade and cakes never off; a heaven where marriages were made, books borrowed and newspapers read. Muscular Judaism was well to the fore at "the Club," and entertainments were frequent. The middle cla.s.ses of the community, overflowing with artistic instinct, supplied a phenomenal number of reciters, vocalists and instrumentalists ready to oblige, and the greatest favorites of the London footlights were pleased to come down, partly because they found such keenly appreciative audiences, and partly because they were so much mixed up with the race, both professionally and socially. There were serious lectures now and again, but few of the members took them seriously; they came to the Club not to improve their minds but to relax them. The Club was a blessing without disguise to the daughters of Judah, and certainly kept their brothers from harm. The ball-room, with its decorations of evergreens and winter blossoms, was a gay sight. Most of the dancers were in evening dress, and it would have been impossible to tell the ball from a Belgravian gathering, except by the preponderance of youth and beauty. Where could you match such a bevy of brunettes, where find such blondes? They were anything but lymphatic, these oriental blondes, if their eyes did not sparkle so intoxicatingly as those of the darker majority. The young men had carefully curled moustaches and ringlets oiled like the a.s.syrian bull, and figure-six noses, and studs glittering on their creamy shirt-fronts.

How they did it on their wages was one of the many miracles of Jewish history. For socially and even in most cases financially they were only on the level of the Christian artisan. These young men in dress-coats were epitomes of one aspect of Jewish history. Not in every respect improvements on the "Sons of the Covenant," though; replacing the primitive manners and the piety of the foreign Jew by a veneer of cheap culture and a laxity of ceremonial observance. It was a merry party, almost like a family gathering, not merely because most of the dancers knew one another, but because "all Israel are brothers"--and sisters.

They danced very buoyantly, not boisterously; the square dances symmetrically executed, every performer knowing his part; the waltzing full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they accompanied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond the bounds of decorum. A few Dutch dancers tried to introduce the more gymnastic methods in vogue in their own clubs, where the kangaroo is dancing master, but the sentiment of the floor was against them. Hannah danced little, a voluntary wallflower, for she looked radiant in tussore silk, and there was an air of refinement about the slight, pretty girl that attracted the beaux of the Club. But she only gave a duty dance to Sam, and a waltz to Daniel Hyams, who had been brought by his sister, though he did not boast a swallow-tail to match her flowing draperies. Hannah caught a rather unamiable glance from pretty Bessie Sugarman, whom poor Daniel was trying hard not to see in the crush.

"Is your sister engaged yet?" Hannah asked, for want of something to say.

"You would know it if she was," said Daniel, looking so troubled that Hannah reproached herself for the meaningless remark.

"How well she dances!" she made haste to say.

"Not better than you," said Daniel, gallantly.

"I see compliments are among the fancy goods you deal in. Do you reverse?" she added, as they came to an awkward corner.

"Yes--but not my compliments," he said smiling. "Miriam taught me."

"She makes me think of Miriam dancing by the Red Sea," she said, laughing at the incongruous idea.

"She played a timbrel, though, didn't she?" he asked. "I confess I don't quite know what a timbrel is."

"A sort of tambourine, I suppose," said Hannah merrily, "and she sang because the children of Israel were saved."

They both laughed heartily, but when the waltz was over they returned to their individual gloom. Towards supper-time, in the middle of a square dance, Sam suddenly noticing Hannah's solitude, brought her a tall bronzed gentlemanly young man in a frock coat, mumbled an introduction and rushed back to the arms of the exacting Leah.

"Excuse me, I am not dancing to-night," Hannah said coldly in reply to the stranger's demand for her programme.

"Well, I'm not half sorry," he said, with a frank smile. "I had to ask you, you know. But I should feel quite out of place b.u.mping such a lot of swells."

There was something unusual about the words and the manner which impressed Hannah agreeably, in spite of herself. Her face relaxed a little as she said:

"Why, haven't you been to one of these affairs before?"

"Oh yes, six or seven years ago, but the place seems quite altered.

They've rebuilt it, haven't they? Very few of us sported dress-coats here in the days before I went to the Cape. I only came back the other day and somebody gave me a ticket and so I've looked in for auld lang syne."

An unsympathetic hearer would have detected a note of condescension in the last sentence. Hannah detected it, for the announcement that the young man had returned from the Cape froze all her nascent sympathy. She was turned to ice again. Hannah knew him well--the young man from the Cape. He was a higher and more disagreeable development of the young man in the dress-coat. He had put South African money in his purse--whether honestly or not, no one inquired--the fact remained he had put it in his purse. Sometimes the law confiscated it, pretending he had purchased diamonds illegally, or what not, but then the young man did _not_ return from the Cape. But, to do him justice, the secret of his success was less dishonesty than the opportunities for initiative energy in unexploited districts. Besides, not having to keep up appearances, he descended to menial occupations and toiled so long and terribly that he would probably have made just as much money at home, if he had had the courage. Be this as it may, there the money was, and, armed with it, the young man set sail literally for England, home and beauty, resuming his cast-off gentility with several extra layers of superciliousness. Pretty Jewesses, pranked in their prettiest clothes, hastened, metaphorically speaking, to the port to welcome the wanderer; for they knew it was from among them he would make his pick. There were several varieties of him--marked by financial ciphers--but whether he married in his old station or higher up the scale, he was always faithful to the sectarian tradition of the race, and this less from religious motives than from hereditary instinct. Like the young man in the dress-coat, he held the Christian girl to be cold of heart, and unsprightly of temperament. He laid it down that all Yiddishe girls possessed that warmth and _chic_ which, among Christians, were the birthright of a few actresses and music-hall artistes--themselves, probably, Jewesses! And on things theatrical this young man spoke as one having authority. Perhaps, though he was scarce conscious of it, at the bottom of his repulsion was the certainty that the Christian girl could not fry fish. She might be delightful for flirtation of all degrees, but had not been formed to make him permanently happy. Such was the conception which Hannah had formed for herself of the young man from the Cape. This latest specimen of the genus was prepossessing into the bargain. There was no denying he was well built, with a shapely head and a lovely moustache. Good looks alone were vouchers for insolence and conceit, but, backed by the aforesaid purse--! She turned her head away and stared at the evolutions of the "Lancers" with much interest.

"They've got some pretty girls in that set," he observed admiringly.

Evidently the young man did not intend to go away.

Hannah felt very annoyed. "Yes," she said, sharply, "which would you like?"

"I shouldn't care to make invidious distinctions," he replied with a little laugh.

"Odious prig!" thought Hannah. "He actually doesn't see I'm sitting on him!" Aloud she said, "No? But you can't marry them all."

"Why should I marry any?" he asked in the same light tone, though there was a shade of surprise in it.

"Haven't you come back to England to get a wife? Most young men do, when they don't have one exported to them in Africa."

He laughed with genuine enjoyment and strove to catch the answering gleam in her eyes, but she kept them averted. They were standing with their backs to the wall and he could only see the profile and note the graceful poise of the head upon the warm-colored neck that stood out against the white bodice. The frank ring of his laughter mixed with the merry jingle of the fifth figure--

"Well, I'm afraid I'm going to be an exception," he said.

"You think n.o.body good enough, perhaps," she could not help saying.

"Oh! Why should you think that?"

"Perhaps you're married already."

"Oh no, I'm not," he said earnestly. "You're not, either, are you?"

"Me?" she asked; then, with a barely perceptible pause, she said, "Of course I am."

The thought of posing as the married woman she theoretically was, flashed upon her suddenly and appealed irresistibly to her sense of fun.

The recollection that the nature of the ring on her finger was concealed by her glove afforded her supplementary amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh!" was all he said. "I didn't catch your name exactly."

"I didn't catch yours," she replied evasively.

"David Brandon," he said readily.

"It's a pretty name," she said, turning smilingly to him. The infinite possibilities of making fun of him latent in the joke quite warmed her towards him. "How unfortunate for me I have destroyed my chance of getting it."

It was the first time she had smiled, and he liked the play of light round the curves of her mouth, amid the shadows of the soft dark skin, in the black depths of the eyes.

"How unfortunate for me!" he said, smiling in return.