Children of the Ghetto Part 76

"Oh, nonsense. I'm sure Esther doesn't think less of him because he keeps a time-table."

"You forget your friend has what you haven't--artistic instinct. It's ugly. A man should be a man, not a railway system. If I were you, Addie, I'd capture that time-table, erase lecturing and subst.i.tute 'cricketing.' Raphael would never know, and every afternoon, say at 2 P.M., he'd consult his time-table, and seeing he had to cricket, he'd take up his stumps and walk to Regent's Park."

"Yes, but he can't play cricket," said Esther, laughing and glad of the opportunity.

"Oh, can't he?" Sidney whistled. "Don't insult him by telling him that.

Why, he was in the Harrow eleven and scored his century in the match with Eton; those long arms of his send the ball flying as if it were a drawing-room ornament."

"Oh yes," affirmed Addie. "Even now, cricket is his one temptation."

Esther was silent. Her Raphael seemed toppling to pieces. The silence seemed to communicate itself to her companions. Addie broke it by sending Sidney to smoke a cigarette in the lobby. "Or else I shall feel quite too selfish," she said. "I know you're just dying to talk to some sensible people. Oh, I beg your pardon, Esther."

The squire of dames smiled but hesitated.

"Yes, do go," said Esther. "There's six or seven minutes more interval.

This is the longest wait."

"Ladies' will is my law," said Sidney, gallantly, and, taking a cigarette case from his cloak, which was hung on a peg at the back of a box, he strolled out. "Perhaps," he said, "I shall skip some Shakspeare if I meet a congenial intellectual soul to gossip with."

He had scarce been gone two minutes when there came a gentle tapping at the door and, the visitor being invited to come in, the girls were astonished to behold the young gentleman with the dyed carnation and the crimson silk handkerchief. He looked at Esther with an affable smile.

"Don't you remember me?" he said. The ring of his voice woke some far-off echo in her brain. But no recollection came to her.

"I remembered you almost at once," he went on, in a half-reproachful tone, "though I didn't care about coming up while you had another fellow in the box. Look at me carefully, Esther."

The sound of her name on the stranger's lips set all the chords of memory vibrating--she looked again at the dark oval face with the aquiline nose, the glittering eyes, the neat black moustache, the close-shaved cheeks and chin, and in a flash the past resurged and she murmured almost incredulously, "Levi!"

The young man got rather red. "Ye-e-s!" he stammered. "Allow me to present you my card." He took it out of a little ivory case and handed it to her. It read, "Mr. Leonard James."

An amused smile flitted over Esther's face, pa.s.sing into one of welcome.

She was not at all displeased to see him.

"Addie," she said. "This is Mr. Leonard James, a friend I used to know in my girlhood."

"Yes, we were boys together, as the song says," said Leonard James, smiling facetiously.

Addie inclined her head in the stately fashion which accorded so well with her beauty and resumed her investigation of the stalls. Presently she became absorbed in a tender reverie induced by the pa.s.sionate waltz music and she forgot all about Esther's strange visitor, whose words fell as insensibly on her ears as the ticking of a familiar clock. But to Esther, Leonard James's conversation was full of interest. The two ugly ducklings of the back-pond had become to all appearance swans of the ornamental water, and it was natural that they should gabble of auld lang syne and the devious routes by which they had come together again.

"You see, I'm like you, Esther," explained the young man. "I'm not fitted for the narrow life that suits my father and mother and my sister. They've got no ideas beyond the house, and religion, and all that sort of thing. What do you think my father wanted me to be? A minister! Think of it! Ha! ha! ha! Me a minister! I actually did go for a couple of terms to Jews' College. Oh, yes, you remember! Why, I was there when you were a school-teacher and got taken up by the swells. But our stroke of fortune came soon after yours. Did you never hear of it?

My, you must have dropped all your old acquaintances if no one ever told you that! Why, father came in for a couple of thousand pounds! I thought I'd make you stare. Guess who from?"

"I give it up," said Esther.

"Thank you. It was never yours to give," said Leonard, laughing jovially at his wit. "Old Steinwein--you remember his death. It was in all the papers; the eccentric old buffer, who was touched in the upper story, and used to give so much time and money to Jewish affairs, setting up lazy old rabbis in Jerusalem to shake themselves over their Talmuds. You remember his gifts to the poor--six shillings sevenpence each because he was seventy-nine years old and all that. Well, he used to send the pater a basket of fruit every _Yomtov_. But he used to do that to every Rabbi, all around, and my old man had not the least idea he was the object of special regard till the old chap pegged out. Ah, there's nothing like Torah, after all."

"You don't know what you may have lost through not becoming a minister,"

suggested Esther slily.

"Ah, but I know what I've gained. Do you think I could stand having my hands and feet tied with phylacteries?" asked Leonard, becoming vividly metaphoric in the intensity of his repugnance to the galling bonds of orthodoxy. "Now, I do as I like, go where I please, eat what I please.

Just fancy not being able to join fellows at supper, because you mustn't eat oysters or steak? Might as well go into a monastery at once. All very well in ancient Jerusalem, where everybody was rowing in the same boat. Have you ever tasted pork, Esther?"

"No," said Esther, with a faint smile.

"I have," said Leonard. "I don't say it to boast, but I have had it times without number. I didn't like it the first time--thought it would choke me, you know, but that soon wears off. Now I breakfast off ham and eggs regularly. I go the whole hog, you see. Ha! ha! ha!"

"If I didn't see from your card you're not living at home, that would have apprised me of it," said Esther.

"Of course, I couldn't live at home. Why the guvnor couldn't bear to let me shave. Ha! ha! ha! Fancy a religion that makes you keep your hair on unless you use a depilatory. I was articled to a swell solicitor. The old man resisted a long time, but he gave in at last, and let me live near the office."

"Ah, then I presume you came in for some of the two thousand, despite your non-connection with Torah?"

"There isn't much left of it now," said Leonard, laughing. "What's two thousand in seven years in London? There were over four hundred guineas swallowed up by the premium, and the fees, and all that."

"Well, let us hope it'll all come back in costs."

"Well, between you and me," said Leonard, seriously, "I should be surprised if it does. You see, I haven't yet sc.r.a.ped through the Final; they're making the beastly exam. stiffer every year. No, it isn't to that quarter I look to recoup myself for the outlay on my education."

"No?" said Esther.

"No. Fact is--between you and me--I'm going to be an actor."

"Oh!" said Esther.

"Yes. I've played several times in private theatricals; you know we Jews have a knack for the stage; you'd be surprised to know how many pros are Jews. There's heaps of money to be made now-a-days on the boards. I'm in with lots of 'em, and ought to know. It's the only profession where you don't want any training, and these law books are as dry as the Mishna the old man used to make me study. Why, they say to-night's 'Hamlet' was in a counting-house four years ago."

"I wish you success," said Esther, somewhat dubiously. "And how is your sister Hannah? Is she married yet?"

"Married! Not she! She's got no money, and you know what our Jewish young men are. Mother wanted her to have the two thousand pounds for a dowry, but fortunately Hannah had the sense to see that it's the man that's got to make his way in the world. Hannah is always certain of her bread and b.u.t.ter, which is a good deal in these hard times. Besides, she's naturally grumpy, and she doesn't go out of her way to make herself agreeable to young men. It's my belief she'll die an old maid.

Well, there's no accounting for tastes."

"And your father and mother?"

"They're all right, I believe. I shall see them to-morrow night--Pa.s.sover, you know. I haven't missed a single _Seder_ at home,"

he said, with conscious virtue. "It's an awful bore, you know. I often laugh to think of the chappies' faces if they could see me leaning on a pillow and gravely asking the old man why we eat Pa.s.sover cakes." He laughed now to think of it. "But I never miss; they'd cut up rough, I expect, if I did."

"Well, that's something in your favor," murmured Esther gravely.

He looked at her sharply; suddenly suspecting that his auditor was not perfectly sympathetic. She smiled a little at the images pa.s.sing through her mind, and Leonard, taking her remark for badinage, allowed his own features to relax to their original amiability.

"You're not married, either, I suppose," he remarked.

"No," said Esther. "I'm like your sister Hannah."

He shook his head sceptically.

"Ah, I expect you'll be looking very high," he said.

"Nonsense," murmured Esther, playing with her bouquet.