The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 37

'Oh!' said Raphael.

'I thought she might possibly be writing for you still, and so, as I was pa.s.sing, I thought I'd drop in and inquire. Hasn't anything been heard of her? Where is she? Perhaps one could help her.'

'I'm sorry, I really know nothing, nothing at all,' said Raphael gravely. 'I wish I did. Is there any particular reason why you want to know?'

As he spoke a strange suspicion that was half an apprehension came into his head. He had been looking the whole time at Strelitski's face with his usual un.o.bservant gaze, just seeing it was gloomy. Now, as in a sudden flash, he saw it sallow and careworn to the last degree. The eyes were almost feverish, the black curl on the brow was unkempt, and there was a streak or two of grey easily visible against the intense sable. What change had come over him? Why this new-born interest in Esther? Raphael felt a vague unreasoning resentment rising in him, mingled with distress at Strelitski's discomposure.

'No; I don't know that there is any _particular_ reason why I want to know,' answered his friend slowly. 'She was a member of my congregation. I always had a certain interest in her, which has naturally not been diminished by her sudden departure from our midst, and by the knowledge that she was the author of that sensational novel. I think it was cruel of Mrs. Henry Goldsmith to turn her adrift; one must allow for the effervescence of genius.'

'Who told you Mrs. Henry Goldsmith turned her adrift?' asked Raphael hotly.

'Mrs. Henry Goldsmith,' said Strelitski with a slight accent of wonder.

'Then it's a lie!' Raphael exclaimed, thrusting out his arms in intense agitation. 'A mean, cowardly lie! I shall never go to see that woman again, unless it is to let her know what I think of her.'

'Ah then, you do know something about Miss Ansell?' said Strelitski, with growing surprise. Raphael in a rage was a new experience. There were those who a.s.serted that anger was not among his gifts.

'Nothing about her life since she left Mrs. Goldsmith; but I saw her before, and she told me it was her intention to cut herself adrift.

n.o.body knew about her authors.h.i.+p of the book; n.o.body would have known to this day if she had not chosen to reveal it.'

The minister was trembling.

'She cut herself adrift?' he repeated interrogatively. 'But why?'

'I will tell you,' said Raphael in low tones. 'I don't think it will be betraying her confidence to say that she found her position of dependence extremely irksome; it seemed to cripple her soul. Now I see what Mrs. Goldsmith is, I can understand better what life in her society meant for a girl like that.'

'And what has become of her?' asked the Russian. His face was agitated, the lips were almost white.

'I do not know,' said Raphael, almost in a whisper, his voice failing in a sudden upwelling of tumultuous feeling. The ever-whirling wheel of journalism--that modern realisation of the labour of Sisyphus--had carried him round and round without giving him even time to remember that time was flying. Day had slipped into week and week into month without his moving an inch from his groove in search of the girl whose unhappiness was yet always at the back of his thoughts. Now he was shaken with astonished self-reproach at his having allowed her to drift perhaps irretrievably beyond his ken.

'She is quite alone in the world, poor thing!' he said after a pause.

'She must be earning her own living, somehow. By journalism, perhaps.

But she prefers to live her own life. I am afraid it will be a hard one.' His voice trembled again. The minister's breast, too, was labouring with emotion that checked his speech, but after a moment utterance came to him--a strange choked utterance, almost blasphemous from those clerical lips.

'By G.o.d!' he gasped. 'That little girl!'

He turned his back upon his friend and covered his face with his hands, and Raphael saw his shoulders quivering. Then his own vision grew dim. Conjecture, resentment, wonder, self-reproach, were lost in a new and absorbing sense of the pathos of the poor girl's position.

Presently the minister turned round, showing a face that made no pretence of calm.

'That was bravely done,' he said brokenly. 'To cut herself adrift! She will not sink; strength will be given her even as she gives others strength. If I could only see her and tell her! But she never liked me; she always distrusted me. I was a hollow windbag in her eyes--a thing of shams and cant--she shuddered to look at me. Was it not so?

You are a friend of hers, you know what she felt.'

'I don't think it was you she disliked,' said Raphael in wondering pity. 'Only your office.'

'Then, by G.o.d, she was right!' cried the Russian hoa.r.s.ely. 'It was this--this that made me the target of her scorn!' He tore off his white tie madly as he spoke, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it. 'She and I were kindred in suffering; I read it in her eyes, averted as they were at the sight of this accursed thing! You stare at me--you think I have gone mad. Leon, you are not as other men. Can you not guess that this d.a.m.nable white tie has been choking the life and manhood out of me? But it is over now. Take your pen, Leon, as you are my friend, and write what I shall dictate.'

Silenced by the stress of a great soul, half dazed by the strange, unexpected revelation, Raphael seated himself, took his pen, and wrote:

'We understand that the Rev. Joseph Strelitski has resigned his position in the Kensington Synagogue.'

Not till he had written it did the full force of the paragraph overwhelm his soul.

'But you will not do this?' he said, looking up almost incredulously at the popular minister.

'I will; the position has become impossible. Leon, do you not understand? I am not what I was when I took it. I have lived, and life is change. Stagnation is death. Surely you can understand, for you, too, have changed. Cannot I read between the lines of your leaders?'

'Cannot you read in them?' said Raphael, with a wan smile. 'I have modified some opinions, it is true, and developed others; but I have disguised none.'

'Not consciously, perhaps, but you do not speak all your thought.'

'Perhaps I do not listen to it,' said Raphael, half to himself. 'But you--whatever your change--you have not lost faith in primaries?'

'No; not in what I consider such.'

'Then why give up your platform, your housetop, whence you may do so much good? You are loved, venerated.'

Strelitski placed his palms over his ears.

'Don't! don't!' he cried. 'Don't you be the _advocatus diaboli_! Do you think I have not told myself all these things a thousand times? Do you think I have not tried every kind of opiate? No, no; be silent, if you can say nothing to strengthen me in my resolution: am I not weak enough already? Promise me, give me your hand, swear to me that you will put that paragraph in the paper Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--in six days I shall change a hundred times. Swear to me, so that I may leave this room at peace, the long conflict ended. Promise me you will insert it, though I myself should ask you to cancel it.'

'But----' began Raphael.

Strelitski turned away impatiently and groaned.

'My G.o.d!' he cried hoa.r.s.ely. 'Leon, listen to me,' he said, turning round suddenly. 'Do you realise what sort of a position you are asking me to keep? Do you realise how it makes me the fief of a Rabbinate, that is an anachronism, the bondman of outworn forms, the slave of the _Shulchan Aruch_ (a book the Rabbinate would not dare publish in English), the professional panegyrist of the rich? Ours is a generation of whited sepulchres.' He had no difficulty about utterance now; the words flowed in a torrent. 'How can Judaism--and it alone--escape going through the fire of modern scepticism, from which, if religion emerge at all, it will emerge without its dross? Are not we Jews always the first prey of new ideas, with our alert intellect, our swift receptiveness, our keen critical sense? And if we are not hypocrites, we are indifferent--which is almost worse. Indifference is the only infidelity I recognise, and it is, unfortunately, as conservative as zeal. Indifference and hypocrisy between them keep orthodoxy alive--while they kill Judaism.'

'Oh, I can't quite admit that,' said Raphael. 'I admit that scepticism is better than stagnation, but I cannot see why orthodoxy is the ant.i.thesis to Judaism. Purified--and your sermons are doing something to purify it--orthodoxy----'

'Orthodoxy cannot be purified unless by juggling with words,'

interrupted Strelitski vehemently. 'Orthodoxy is inextricably entangled with ritual observance; and ceremonial religion is of the ancient world, not the modern.'

'But our ceremonialism is pregnant with sublime symbolism, and its discipline is most salutary. Ceremony is the casket of religion.'

'More often its coffin,' said Strelitski dryly. 'Ceremonial religion is so apt to stiffen in a _rigor mortis_. It is too dangerous an element; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism.

Add the Statute Book to the New Testament, and think of the network of laws hampering the feet of the Christian. No; much of our so-called ceremonialism is merely the primitive mix-up of everything with religion in a theocracy. The Mosaic code has been largely embodied in civil law, and superseded by it.'

'That is just the flaw of the modern world, to keep life and religion apart,' protested Raphael; 'to have one set of principles for week-days and another for Sundays; to grind the inexorable mechanism of supply and demand on pagan principles, and make it up out of the poor-box.'

Strelitski shook his head.

'We must make broad our platform, not our phylacteries. It is because I am with you in admiring the Rabbis that I would undo much of their work. Theirs was a wonderful statesmans.h.i.+p, and they built wiser than they knew; just as the patient labours of the superst.i.tious zealots who counted every letter of the Law preserved the text unimpaired for the benefit of modern scholars.h.i.+p. The Rabbis constructed a casket, if you will, which kept the jewel safe, though at the cost of concealing its l.u.s.tre. But the hour has come now to wear the jewel on our b.r.e.a.s.t.s before all the world. The Rabbis worked for their time--we must work for ours. Judaism was before the Rabbis. Scientific criticism shows its thoughts widening with the process of the suns--even as its G.o.d, Yahweh, broadened from a local patriotic Deity to the ineffable Name.

For Judaism was worked out from within--Abraham asked, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"--the thunders of Sinai were but the righteous indignation of the developed moral consciousness. In every age our great men have modified and developed Judaism. Why should it not be trimmed into concordance with the culture of the time?

Especially when the alternative is death. Yes, death! We babble about petty minutiae of ritual while Judaism is dying! We are like the crew of a sinking s.h.i.+p, holy-stoning the deck instead of being at the pumps. No, I must speak out; I cannot go on salving my conscience by unsigned letters to the press. Away with all this anonymous apostles.h.i.+p!'

He moved about restlessly with animated gestures, as he delivered his harangue at tornado speed, speech bursting from him like some dynamic energy which had been acc.u.mulating for years, and could no longer be kept in. It was an upheaval of the whole man under the stress of pent forces. Raphael was deeply moved. He scarcely knew how to act in this unique crisis. Dimly he foresaw the stir and pother there would be in the community. Conservative by instinct, apt to see the elements of good in attacked inst.i.tutions--perhaps, too, a little timid when it came to take action in the tremendous realm of realities--he was loth to help Strelitski to so decisive a step, though his whole heart went out to him in brotherly sympathy.

'Do not act so hastily,' he pleaded. 'Things are not so black as you see them--you are almost as bad as Miss Ansell. Don't think that I see them rosy; I might have done that three months ago. But don't you--don't all idealists--overlook the quieter phenomena? Is orthodoxy either so inefficacious or so moribund as you fancy? Is there not a steady, perhaps semi-conscious, stream of healthy life, thousands of cheerful, well-ordered households of people neither perfect nor cultured, but more good than bad? You cannot expect saints and heroes to grow like blackberries.'