Ghetto Comedies Part 11

Mabel drew a great breath, as if throwing off a suffocating weight.

'One couldn't breathe,' she explained.

'Aren't you living among Jews now?'

'Don't look so glum, silly. You don't want Jews as background as well as foreground. A great Ghetto!' And again she shuddered instinctively.

'Every other people is background as well as foreground. And you don't call France a Ghetto or Italy a Ghetto?' There was anti-Semitism, he felt--unconscious anti-Semitism--behind Mabel's instinctive repugnance to an aggregation of Jews. And he knew that her instinct would be shared by every Jew in that festive aggregation around him. His heart sank. Never--even in those East End back-rooms where the pitiful disproportion of his consumptive-looking collaborators to their great task was sometimes borne in dismally upon him--had he felt so black a despair as in this brilliant supper-room, surrounded by all that was strong and strenuous in the race--lawyers and soldiers, and men of affairs, whose united forces and finances could achieve almost anything they set their heart upon.

'Jews can't live off one another,' Mabel explained with an air of philosophy.

Barstein did not reply. He was asking himself with an artist's a.n.a.lytical curiosity whence came this suicidal anti-Semitism. Was it the self-contempt natural to a race that had not the strength to build and fend for itself? No, alas! it did not even spring from so comparatively n.o.ble a source. It was merely a part of their general imitation of their neighbours--Jews, reflecting everything, had reflected even the dislike for the Jew; only since the individual could not dislike himself, he applied the dislike to the race. And this unconscious a.s.sumption of the prevailing point of view was quickened by the fact that the Jewish firstcomers were always aware of an existence on sufferance, with their slowly-won privileges jeopardized if too many other Jews came in their wake. He consulted his own pre-Zionist psychology. 'Yes,' he decided. 'Every Jew who moves into our country, our city, our watering-place, our street even, seems to us an invader or an interloper. He draws attention to us, he accentuates our difference from the normal, he increases the chance of the renewal of _Rishus_ (malice). And so we become anti-Semites ourselves. But by what a comical confusion of logic is it that we carry over the objection to Jewish aggregation even to an aggregation in Palestine, in our own land! Or is it only too logical? Is it that the rise of a Jewish autonomous power would be a standing reminder to our fellow-citizens that we others are not so radically British or German or French or American as we have vaunted ourselves? Are we afraid of being packed off to Palestine and is the fulfilment of the dream of eighteen centuries our deadliest dread?'

The thought forced from him a sardonic smile.

'And I feared you were like King Henry--never going to smile again.'

Mabel smiled back in relief.

'We're such a ridiculous people,' he answered, his smile fading into sombreness. 'Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.'

'Well, finish your good white fowl,' laughed Mabel. She had felt her hold over him slipping, and her own apprehensions now vanished in the effort to banish his gloom.

But she had only started him on a new tack. 'Fowl!' he cried grimly.

'_Kosher_, of course, but with bits of fried _Wurst_ to ape the sc.r.a.ps of bacon. And presently we shall be having water ices to simulate cream. We can't even preserve our dietary individuality. Truly said Feuerbach, "Der Mensch ist was er isst." In Palestine we shall at least dare to be true to our own gullets.' He laughed bitterly.

'You're not very romantic,' Mabel pouted. Indeed, this Barstein, whose mere ideal could so interrupt the rhapsodies due to her admissions of affection, was distinctly unsatisfactory. She touched his hand furtively under the tablecloth.

'After all, she is very young,' he thought, thrilling. And youth was plastic--he, the sculptor, could surely mould her. Besides, was she not Sir Asher's daughter? She must surely have inherited some of his love for Palestine and his people. It was this Philistine set that had spoiled her. Julius, too, that young Oxford prig--he reflected illogically--had no doubt been a baleful influence.

'Shall I give you some almond-pudding?' he replied tenderly.

Mabel laughed uneasily. 'I ask for romance, and you offer me almond-pudding. Oh, I _should_ like to go to a Jewish party where there wasn't almond-pudding!'

'You shall--in Palestine,' he laughed back.

She pouted again. 'All roads lead to Palestine.'

'They do,' he said seriously. 'Without Palestine our past is a shipwreck and our future a quicksand.'

She looked frightened again. 'But what should we do there? We can't pray all day long.'

'Of course not,' he said eagerly. 'There's the new generation to train for its glorious future. I shall teach in the Arts and Crafts School.

_Bezalel_, it's called; isn't that a beautiful name? It's from Bezalel, the first man mentioned in the Bible as filled with Divine wisdom and understanding in all manner of workmanship.'

She shook her head. 'You'll be excommunicated. The Palestine Rabbis always excommunicate everything and everybody.'

He laughed. 'What do you know about Palestine?'

'More than you think. Father gets endless letters from there with pressed flowers and citrons, and olive-wood boxes and paper-knives--a perennial shower. The letters are generally in the most killing English. And he won't let me laugh at them because he has a vague feeling that even Palestine spelling and grammar are holy.'

Barstein laughed again. 'We'll send all the Rabbis to Jericho.'

She smiled, but retorted: 'That's where they'll send you, you maker of graven images. Why, your very profession is forbidden.'

'I'll corner 'em with this very Bezalel text. The cutting of stones is just one of the arts which G.o.d says He had inspired Bezalel with.

Besides, you forget my statue at the Bale Congress.'

'Bale isn't Palestine. There's nothing but superst.i.tion and squalor, and I'm sorry to say father's always bolstering it all up with his cheques.'

'Bravo, Sir Asher! Unconsciously he has been bolstering up the eventual Renaissance. Your father and his kind have kept the seed alive; we shall bring it to blossom.'

His prophetic a.s.surance cast a fresh shade of apprehension over her marmoreal brow. But her face lightened with a sudden thought. 'Well, perhaps, after all, we shan't need to elope.'

'I never thought for a moment we should,' he answered as cheerfully.

'But, all the same, we can spend our honeymoon in Palestine.'

'Oh, I don't mind that,' said Mabel. 'Lots of Christians do that.

There was a Cook's party went out from Middleton for last Easter.'

The lover was too pleased with her acquiescence in the Palestinian honeymoon to a.n.a.lyse the terms in which it was given. He looked into her eyes, and saw there the _Shechinah_--the Divine glory that once rested on Zion.

V

It was in this happier mood that Barstein ran down to Middleton to plead his suit verbally with Sir Asher Aaronsberg. Mabel had feared to commit their fates to a letter, whether from herself or her lover. A plump negative would be so difficult to fight against. A personal interview permitted one to sound the ground, to break the thing delicately, to reason, to explain, to charm away objections. It was clearly the man's duty to face the music.

Not that Barstein expected anything but the music of the Wedding March. He was glad that his original contempt for Sir Asher had been exchanged for sincere respect, and that the bluff Briton was a mere veneer. It was to the Palestinian patriarch that he would pour out his hopes and his dreams.

Alas! he found only the bluff Briton, and a Briton no longer genially, but bluntly, bluff.

'It is perfectly impossible.'

Barstein, bewildered, pleaded for enlightenment. Was he not pious enough, or not rich enough, too artistic or too low-born? Or did Sir Asher consider his past life improper or his future behaviour dubious?

Let Sir Asher say.

But Sir Asher would not say. 'I am not bound to give my reasons. We are all proud of your work--it confers honour on our community. The Mayor alluded to it only yesterday.' He spoke in his best platform manner. 'But to receive you into my family--that is another matter.'

And all the talk advanced things no further.

'It would be an entirely unsuitable match.' Sir Asher caressed his long beard with an air of finality.

With a lover's impatience, Barstein had made the mistake of seeking Sir Asher in his counting-house, where the munic.i.p.al magnate sat among his solidities. The mahogany furniture, the iron safes, the ledgers, the silent obsequious clerks and attendants through whom Barstein had had to penetrate, the factory buildings stretching around, with their sense of throbbing machinery and disciplined workers, all gave the burly Briton a background against which visions and emotions seemed as unreal as ghosts under gaslight. The artist felt all this solid life closing round him like the walls of a torture-chamber, squeezing out his confidence, his aspirations, his very life.

'Then you prefer to break your daughter's heart!' he cried desperately.

'Break my daughter's heart!' echoed Sir Asher in amaze. It was apparently a new aspect to him.

'You don't suppose she won't suffer dreadfully?' Barstein went on, perceiving his advantage.