Amy Levy

“ Steeped to the lips in sordidness, as we have all been from the cradle, how is it possible that any one among us, by any effort of his own, can wipe off from his soul the hereditary stain?”
“My dear boy,” said Reuben, touched by the personal note which sounded at the close of poor Leo’s heroics, and speaking with sudden earnestness, “you put things in too lurid a light. We have our faults; you seem to forget what our virtues are. Have you forgotten for how long, and at what a cruel disadvantage, the Jewish people has gone its way, until at last it has shamed the nations into respect? ”

“ Judith listened passively as the advantages of her future position were laid before her.
Then she made her protest, fully conscious of its weakness.
“I do not like Mr. Lee-Harrison.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Quixano. “I should be sorry to hear that you did. No girl likes her intended—at first.”
Judith bowed her head, conscious, ashamed.
Only that afternoon Rose had said to her:
“We all have to marry the men we don’t care for. I shall, I know, although I have a lot of money. I am not sure that it is not best in the end.” ”

“ The greater subtlety of ambition which had made him while, comparatively speaking, a poor man, prefer the chances of a professional career to the certainties of a good berth in Capel Court, appealed to some kindred feeling, had set vibrating some responsive cord in his grandfather’s breast. Such a personality as Reuben’s seemed the crowning splendour of that structure of gold which it had been his life-work to build up; a luxury only to be afforded by the rich.
For poor Leo’s attainments, his violin-playing, his classical scholarship, he had no respect whatever. ”

“ Reuben and his friend had seats opposite; seats moreover which commanded a good view of the ladies of the Leuniger household in the gallery above: Mrs. Leuniger, in a rich lace shawl, very much crumpled, and a new bonnet hopelessly askew; Rose, in a tight-fitting costume of white, with blue ribbons; Judith, in white also, her dusky hair, the clear, soft oval of her face surmounted by a flippant French bonnet—the very latest fashion.
It was a long day, growing less and less endurable as it went on; the atmosphere getting thicker and hotter and sickly with the smell of stale perfume. ”

“ In these days the reins of government in Capel Court had fallen almost entirely into his hands. Solomon Sachs, though a wonderful man of his years, was too old for regular attendance in the city, while poor Kohnthal, the other member of the firm, and, like Leuniger, son-in-law to old Solomon, had been shut up in a madhouse for the last ten years and more.
As Reuben advanced into the large, heavily upholstered vestibule, one of the many surrounding doors opened slowly, and a woman emerged with a vague, uncertain movement into the light. ”

“ It will come into play when it is least expected. Jew will gravitate to Jew, though each may call himself by another name. If prejudice died, if difference of opinion died, if all the world, metaphorically speaking, thought one thought and spoke one language, there would still remain those unspeakable mysteries, affinity and—love.”
Reuben’s voice sounded curiously moved, and in his eyes, as he spoke, glowed a dreamy flame, as of some deep and tender emotion.
Judith, leaning forward with parted lips, lifted her shining eyes to his face in a long, unconscious gaze. ”

“ It was the very hatred of the position into which she had been forced, the very loathing of what was so alien to her whole way of life and mode of thought that was giving Judith courage; if she could not vindicate herself, she must be simply crushed beneath the load of shame.
On one point, the nature and extent of her feeling for Reuben, there could no longer be illusion or self-deception ”

“ He appraised Lord Norwood very justly; recognized instinctively the charms of mind and manner which had cast such glamour over him in his cousin’s eyes; recognized also his limitations, with an irritated consciousness that he, Reuben, was being judged at a far less open-minded tribunal. In such cases, it is always the more intelligent person who is at a disadvantage—he appreciates, and is not appreciated. ”

“ Judith was looking very well. Her short, diaphanous white ball-gown, with its low-cut, tight-fitting satin bodice was not exactly a dignified garment, but she managed to maintain, in spite of it, her customary air of stateliness.
Moreover to-night some indefinable change had come over the character of her beauty, heightening it, intensifying it, giving it new life and colour. The calm, unawakened look which many people had{151} found so baffling, had left her face; the eyes, always curiously mournful, shone out with a new soft fire. ”

“ She was disappointed with her life, but she made the best of it; loving her husband, though unable to sympathize with him; planning, working unremittingly for her six children; extracting the utmost benefit from the narrowest of means; a capable person who did her duty according to her own lights.
“So Reuben Sachs has come back,” she said, after some conversation.
Judith glanced up quickly with a bright, gentle look. ”

“ Is life indeed over for Judith, or at least all that makes life beautiful, worthy—a thing in any way tolerable?
The ways of joy like the ways of sorrow are many; and hidden away in the depths of Judith’s life—though as yet she knows it not—is the germ of another life, which shall quicken, grow, and come forth at last. Shall bring with it no doubt, pain and sorrow, and tears; but shall bring also{267} hope and joy, and that quickening of purpose which is perhaps as much as any of us should expect or demand from Fate. ”

“ Reuben said nothing; they were by this time well within the synagogue, but he glanced quickly and coldly under his eyelids at Bertie picking his way jauntily to his seat.
Ernest Leuniger, who was very devout, and who loved the exercise of his religion even more than the game of solitaire, had already enwound himself in his talith, exchanged his tall hat for an embroidered cap, and was muttering his prayers in Hebrew below his breath. ”

“ From the midst of this confusion of dust and sunlight rose a tall, lean, shabby figure: a middle-aged man, with stooping shoulders, a very dark skin, dark, straight, lank hair, growing close round the cheek-bones, deep-set eyes, and long features.
“Why, Judith, my dear,” he said, with his vague, pleasant smile, as she came forward and submitted her fresh cheek to his lips. ”

“ Harrison, take my word for it, it is the finest religion under the sun. Those who have left it for reasons of their own have always come back in the end. They’re bound to, they’re bound to!” (He pronounced the word “bound” with an indescribable twang.) “Look at Lord Beaconsfield”—he pointed with his short forefinger—“everyone knows he died with the shemang on his lips!”
There was a sudden stifled explosion of laughter from Leo’s quarter of the table; and Judith glanced across rather anxiously at Reuben, on whose polite, impassive face she at once detected a look of annoyance. ”

“ Judith laughed, and Reuben, his face very close to hers, said: “Can you keep a secret?”
“You know best.”
“Well, that poor boy is head over heels in love with Lord Norwood’s sister.”
She looked up with her most matter-of-fact air.
“He will have to get over that!{64}”
“Judith!” cried Reuben, piqued, provoked, inflamed by her manner; “I believe there isn’t one grain of sentiment in your whole composition. Oh, I know it’s a fine thing to be calm and cool and have one’s self well in hand, but a woman is not always the worse for such a weakness as possessing a heart.” ”

“ I always say there is nothing like being engaged for improving a girl’s complexion.”
“Am I my young man’s keeper?” answered Judith lightly. “But I believe he is at Christie’s.”
“When can you come and dine with us?” went on Adelaide, who had never asked Judith to dinner before. “I will get some pleasant people to meet you. You shall choose your own night. Reuben must come as well—if he is not too jealous.”
Adelaide did not mean to be cruel. She honestly believed that before the solid reality of an engagement, such vapour as unspoken, unacknowledged feeling must at once have melted. ”

“ Books were a luxury in the Leuniger household. We all have our economies, even the richest of us; and the Leunigers, who{39} begrudged no money for food, clothes or furniture, who went constantly into the stalls of the theatre, without considering the expense, regarded every shilling spent on books as pure extravagance.
Reuben indeed was the only person who had any conception of Judith’s possibilities, or, of those surrounding her, who even estimated at its full her rich and stately beauty. ”

“ You and I sitting here, self-conscious, discussing our own race-attributes, race-position—are we not as sure a token of what is to come as anything well could be?”
“Yours is a sweeping theory,” said Reuben; “and at present, I don’t feel inclined to go into the rights and wrongs of it; still less to deny its soundness. I can only say that, should I live to see it borne out, I should be very sorry. It may be a weakness on my part, but I am exceedingly fond of my people. If we are to die as a race, we shall die harder than{121} you think. The tide will ebb in the intervals of flowing. ”

“ The Quixanos were a large family, and they had grown poorer with the years; very gratefully did they welcome the offer of the rich uncle to adopt their eldest daughter.
So Judith had been borne away from the little crowded house in a dreary region lying somewhere between Westbourne Park and Maida Vale to the splendours of Kensington Palace Gardens.
Here she had shared everything with her cousin Rose: the French and German governesses, the expensive music lessons, the useless, pretentious “finishing” lessons from innumerable masters. ”

“ Esther, on the stairs behind him, was delivering herself freely of cheap epigrams to an impecunious partner; and in a rose-lit recess was to be seen Montague Cohen, his pale, pompous, feeble face wreathed in smiles, enjoying himself hugely with a light-hearted matron from the Gentile camp.
The whole scene was familiar enough to Reuben, who from his boyhood upward had taken part in the festivities of his{162} tribe, with their gorgeously gowned and bejewelled women, elaborate floral decorations and costly suppers. ”

“ While the matrons sat in conclave in{224} the primrose-coloured drawing-room, Judith up stairs in her own little domain was trying to come to a decision on the subject of their discussion.
She had asked for time, for a few days in which to make up her mind, and of these, three had already gone by. But from the first there had always been this thing in her mind, this thing from which she shrank—that she would marry Bertie.
Her loneliness, her utter isolation of spirit in that crowded house where she was for the moment a centre of interest, a mark for observation, are difficult to realize. ”

“ Even Rose was not without her affairs de cœur; but she, Judith, was utterly free from such sentimental aberrations.
That was why perhaps a man like Reuben, who had not much opinion of women in general, considering them creatures easily snared, should find it possible to make a friend of her.{43}
She understood perfectly Adelaide’s snubs, Mrs. Sachs’s repressive attitude, Esther’s clumsily veiled warnings.
She understood and was indignant. Did they think her such a fool; a person incapable of friendship with a man without misinterpretation of his motives? ”

“ Reuben, bitterly annoyed, tugged at the silks in the basket with those broad, square hands of his, which, in spite of their superior delicacy, were so much like his grandfather’s.{66}
“And, by the by,” went on Adelaide, nothing daunted, “you must bring Mr. Lee-Harrison to see me, and then I can ask him to dinner.”
“I don’t know about that,” answered Reuben slowly, looking at her from under his eyelids; “he might swallow your Jews; he walks by faith as regards them just at present. But as for the rest—a man doesn’t care to meet bad imitations of the people of his own set, does he?” ”

“ Lee-Harrison was to break his fast in Portland Place on the evening of the Day{85} of Atonement, when it was old Solomon’s custom to assemble his family round him in great numbers.
Adelaide objected to this arrangement.
“It will give him such a bad impression,” she said.
“He asked for local colour, and local colour he shall have,” answered Reuben, amused.
“It is disloyal to your own people to assume such an attitude regarding them to a stranger. After all, he is not one of us,” cried Adelaide, taking a high tone. ”

“ The tuning had come to an end by now, and the musicians had taken up their position.
Immediately silence fell upon the little audience, broken only by the click of counters, the crackle of a bank-note in the room beyond; and the sound of Ernest’s solitaire balls as they dropped into their holes.
Mrs. Leuniger, at the first notes of the tuning, had stolen in and taken up a position near the door; Esther had moved to a further corner of the room, where she lay buried in a deep lounge. ”