Children of the Ghetto Part 61

"A little. The doctor says I studied too much and worked too hard when a little girl. Such is the punishment of perseverance. Life isn't like the copy-books."

"Oh, but I wonder your parents let you over-exert yourself."

A melancholy smile played about the mobile lips. "I brought myself up,"

she said. "You look puzzled--Oh, I know! Confess you think I'm Miss Goldsmith!"

"Why--are--you--not?" he stammered.

"No, my name is Ansell, Esther Ansell."

"Pardon me. I am so bad at remembering names in introductions. But I've just come back from Oxford and it's the first time I've been to this house, and seeing you here without a cavalier when we arrived, I thought you lived here."

"You thought rightly, I do live here." She laughed gently at his changing expression.

"I wonder Sidney never mentioned you to me," he said.

"Do you mean Mr. Graham?" she said with a slight blush.

"Yes, I know he visits here."

"Oh, he is an artist. He has eyes only for the beautiful." She spoke quickly, a little embarra.s.sed.

"You wrong him; his interests are wider than that."

"Do you know I am so glad you didn't pay me the obvious compliment?" she said, recovering herself. "It looked as if I were fishing for it. I'm so stupid."

He looked at her blankly.

"_I'm_ stupid," he said, "for I don't know what compliment I missed paying."

"If you regret it I shall not think so well of you," she said. "You know I've heard all about your brilliant success at Oxford."

"They put all those petty little things in the Jewish papers, don't they?"

"I read it in the _Times_," retorted Esther. "You took a double first and the prize for poetry and a heap of other things, but I noticed the prize for poetry, because it is so rare to find a Jew writing poetry."

"Prize poetry is not poetry," he reminded her. "But, considering the Jewish Bible contains the finest poetry in the world, I do not see why you should be surprised to find a Jew trying to write some."

"Oh, you know what I mean," answered Esther. "What is the use of talking about the old Jews? We seem to be a different race now. Who cares for poetry?"

"Our poet's scroll reaches on uninterruptedly through the Middle Ages.

The pa.s.sing phenomenon of to-day must not blind us to the real traits of our race," said Raphael.

"Nor must we be blind to the pa.s.sing phenomenon of to-day," retorted Esther. "We have no ideals now."

"I see Sidney has been infecting you," he said gently.

"No, no; I beg you will not think that," she said, flushing almost resentfully. "I have thought these things, as the Scripture tells us to meditate on the Law, day and night, sleeping and waking, standing up and sitting down."

"You cannot have thought of them without prejudice, then," he answered, "if you say we have no ideals."

"I mean, we're not responsive to great poetry--to the message of a Browning for instance."

"I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours, for hundreds of years every Sat.u.r.day night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and Providence in 'Pisgah Sights.'"

All's lend and borrow, Good, see, wants evil, Joy demands sorrow, Angel weds devil.

"What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the Sabbath and welcoming in the days of toil, accepting the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?"

"Is that in the prayer-book?" said Esther astonished.

"Yes; you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities but can see nothing poetical in Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante but despise David."

"I shall certainly look up the liturgy," said Esther. "But that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the pa.s.sage in Hebrew--I see my father making _Havdolah_--the melody goes in my head like a sing-song.

But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It sounds very shocking, I know."

"Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which gave the world the Bible knows it least--" He stopped suddenly, for Addie was playing pianissimo, and although she was his sister, he did not like to put her out.

"It comes to this," said Esther when Chopin spoke louder, "our prayer-book needs depolarization, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible."

"Exactly," a.s.sented Raphael. "And what our people need is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument:

"'I see the whole design.

I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too.

Perfect I call Thy plan, Thanks that I was a man!

Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.'

"It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us n.o.body denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature.

Power, Love, Wisdom--there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish G.o.d. And in this G.o.d we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And we are proud and happy in that the dread Unknown G.o.d of the infinite Universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over."

The sonata came to an end; Percy Saville started a comic song, playing his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.

"And do you really believe that we are sanctified to G.o.d's service?"

said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.

"Can there be any doubt of it? G.o.d made choice of one race to be messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily, the sacred duty is ours," he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by far the greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.

"But isn't that a narrow conception of G.o.d's revelation?" she asked.

"No. Why should G.o.d not teach through a great race as through a great man?"

"And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually speaking?"

"How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human nature and the const.i.tution of things. Ah, I wish I could get you to see with the eyes of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel; to look on this human life of ours, not with the pessimism of Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heartily yet spent in G.o.d's service--birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on G.o.d's earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of G.o.d's praise; the morning stars singing together, as we say in the Dawn Service."

As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthusiasm always infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid universe seemed to be transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, full of infinite potentialities of worthy work and n.o.ble pleasure. A thunder of applausive hands marked the end of Percy Saville's comic song. Mr. Montagu Samuels was beaming at his brother's grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general conversation, followed by a round game in which Raphael and Esther had to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find themselves together again.

"Ah, yes," said Esther, sadly, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break, "but this is a Judaism of your own creation. The real Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It does not call to the soul's depths like Christianity."