The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 44

Here, lost in a sweet melancholy, Esther dreamed away the long grey day, only vaguely conscious of the stages of the service--morning dovetailing into afternoon service, and afternoon into evening; of the heavy-jowled woman behind her reciting a Jargon-version of the Atonement liturgy to a devout coterie; of the prostrations full-length on the floor, and the series of impa.s.sioned sermons; of the interminably rhyming poems, and the acrostics with their recurring burdens shouted in devotional frenzy, voice rising above voice as in emulation, with special staccato phrases flung heavenwards; of the wailing confessions of communal sin, with their accompaniment of sobs and tears and howls and grimaces and clenching of palms and beatings of the breast. She was lapped in a great ocean of sound that broke upon her consciousness like the waves upon a beach, now with a cooing murmur, now with a majestic crash, followed by a long receding moan.

She lost herself in the roar, in its barren sensuousness, while the leaden sky grew duskier and the twilight crept on, and the awful hour drew nigh when G.o.d would seal what He had written, and the annual scrolls of destiny would be closed, immutable. She saw them looming mystically through the skylight, the swaying forms below, in their white grave-clothes, oscillating weirdly backwards and forwards, bowed as by a mighty wind.

Suddenly there fell a vast silence; even from without no sound came to break the awful stillness. It was as if all creation paused to hear a pregnant word.

'"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is One!"' sang the cantor frenziedly.

And all the ghostly congregation answered with a great cry, closing their eyes and rocking frantically to and fro:

'"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is One!"'

They seemed like a great army of the sheeted dead risen to testify to the Unity. The magnetic tremor that ran through the synagogue thrilled the lonely girl to the core; once again her dead self woke, her dead ancestors that would not be shaken off lived and moved in her. She was sucked up into the great wave of pa.s.sionate faith, and from her lips came in rapturous surrender to an over-mastering impulse the half-hysterical protestation:

'"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is One!"'

And then in the brief instant while the congregation, with ever-ascending rhapsody, blessed G.o.d till the climax came with the sevenfold declaration, 'The Lord, He is G.o.d,' the whole history of her strange, unhappy race flashed through her mind in a whirl of resistless emotion. She was overwhelmed by the thought of its sons in every corner of the earth proclaiming to the sombre twilight sky the belief for which its generations had lived and died--the Jews of Russia sobbing it forth in their pale of enclosure, the Jews of Morocco in their _mellah_, and of South Africa in their tents by the diamond mines; the Jews of the New World in great free cities, in Canadian backwoods, in South American savannahs; the Australian Jews on the sheep-farms and the gold-fields and in the mushroom cities; the Jews of Asia in their reeking quarters begirt by barbarian populations. The shadow of a large mysterious destiny seemed to hang over these poor superst.i.tious zealots, whose lives she knew so well in all their everyday prose, and to invest the unconscious shuffling sons of the Ghetto with something of tragic grandeur. The grey dusk palpitated with floating shapes of prophets and martyrs, scholars and sages and poets, full of a yearning love and pity, lifting hands of benediction. By what great highroads and queer byways of history had they travelled hither, these wandering Jews, 'sated with contempt,'

these shrewd eager fanatics, these sensual ascetics, these human paradoxes, adaptive to every environment, energising in every field of activity, omnipresent like some great natural force, indestructible and almost inconvertible, surviving--with the incurable optimism that overlay all their poetic sadness--Babylon and Carthage, Greece and Rome; involuntarily financing the Crusades, outliving the Inquisition, illusive of all baits, unshaken by all persecutions--at once the greatest and meanest of races? Had the Jew come so far only to break down at last, sinking in mora.s.ses of modern doubt, and irresistibly dragging down with him the Christian and the Moslem; or was he yet fated to outlast them both, in continuous testimony to a hand moulding incomprehensibly the life of humanity? Would Israel develop into the sacred phalanx, the n.o.bler brotherhood that Raphael Leon had dreamed of, or would the race that had first proclaimed--through Moses for the ancient world, through Spinoza for the modern--

'One G.o.d, one Law, one Element,'

become, in the larger, wilder dream of the Russian idealist, the main factor in

'One far-off divine event To which the whole Creation moves'?

The roar dwindled to a solemn silence, as though in answer to her questionings. Then the ram's horn shrilled--a stern long-drawn-out note, that rose at last into a mighty peal of sacred jubilation. The Atonement was complete.

The crowd bore Esther downstairs and into the blank indifferent street. But the long exhausting fast, the fetid atmosphere, the strain upon her emotions, had overtaxed her beyond endurance. Up to now the frenzy of the service had sustained her, but as she stepped across the threshold on to the pavement she staggered and fell. One of the men pouring out from the lower synagogue caught her in his arms. It was Strelitski.

A group of three stood on the saloon deck of an outward-bound steamer.

Raphael Leon was bidding farewell to the man he reverenced without disciples.h.i.+p, and the woman he loved without blindness.

'Look!' he said, pointing compa.s.sionately to the wretched throng of Jewish emigrants huddled on the lower deck and scattered about the gangway amid jostling sailors and stevedores and bales and coils of rope; the men in peaked or fur caps, the women with shawls and babies, some gazing upwards with lackl.u.s.tre eyes, the majority brooding, despondent, apathetic. 'How could either of you have borne the sights and smells of the steerage? You are a pair of visionaries. You could not have breathed a day in that society. Look!'

Strelitski looked at Esther instead; perhaps he was thinking he could have breathed anywhere in her society--nay, breathed even more freely in the steerage than in the cabin if he had sailed away without telling Raphael that he had found her.

'You forget a common impulse took us into such society on the Day of Atonement,' he answered after a moment. 'You forget we are both Children of the Ghetto.'

'I can never forget that,' said Raphael fervently, 'else Esther would at this moment be lost amid the human flotsam and jetsam below, sailing away without you to protect her, without me to look forward to her return, without Addie's bouquet to a.s.sure her of a sister's love.'

He took Esther's little hand once more. It lingered confidingly in his own. There was no ring of betrothal upon it, nor would be, till Rachel Ansell in America, and Addie Leon in England, should have pa.s.sed under the wedding canopy, and Raphael, whose breast-pocket was bulging with a new meerschaum too sacred to smoke, should startle the West End with his eccentric choice, and confirm its impression of his insanity. The trio had said and resaid all they had to tell one another, all the reminders and the recommendations. They stood without speaking now, wrapt in that loving silence which is sweeter than speech.

The sun, which had been s.h.i.+ning intermittently, flooded the serried s.h.i.+pping with a burst of golden light, that coaxed the turbid waves to brightness, and cheered the wan emigrants, and made little children leap joyously in their mother's arms. The knell of parting sounded insistent.

'Your allegory seems turning in your favour, Raphael,' said Esther, with a sudden memory.

The pensive smile that made her face beautiful lit up the dark eyes.

'What allegory is that of Raphael's?' said Strelitski, reflecting her smile on his graver visage. 'The long one in his prize poem?'

'No,' said Raphael, catching the contagious smile. 'It is our little secret.'

Strelitski turned suddenly to look at the emigrants. The smile faded from his quivering mouth.

The last moment had come. Raphael stooped down towards the gentle softly-flas.h.i.+ng face, which was raised unhesitatingly to meet his, and their lips met in a first kiss, diviner than it is given most mortals to know--a kiss, sad and sweet, troth and parting in one: _Ave et vale_--'hail and farewell.'

'Good-bye, Strelitski,' said Raphael huskily. 'Success to your dreams.'

The idealist turned round with a start. His face was bright and resolute; the black curl streamed buoyantly on the breeze.

'Good-bye,' he responded, with a giant's grip of the hand. 'Success to your hopes.'

Raphael darted away with his long stride. The sun was still bright, but for a moment everything seemed chill and dim to Esther Ansell's vision. With a sudden fit of nervous foreboding she stretched out her arms towards the vanis.h.i.+ng figure of her lover. But she saw him once again in the tender, waving his handkerchief towards the throbbing vessel that glided with its freight of hopes and dreams across the great waters towards the New World.

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY

_H._ = Hebrew. _G._ = German. _Gk._ = Greek. _R._ = Russian.

_S._ = Spanish. _c._ = corrupt.

Achi-Nebb.i.+.c.h (_Etymology obscure_), Alas, poor thing (s.).

Afikoman (_Hebraicised Gk._), portion of a Pa.s.sover cake taken at the end of Seder-meal (_q.v._).

Amidah (_H._), series of Benedictions said standing.

Arbah Kanfus (_H._), lit. four corners; a garment consisting of two shoulder-straps supporting a front and back piece with fringes at each corner (Num. xv. 37-41).

Avirah (_H._), Sin.

Ashken.a.z.im (_H._), German, hence also Russian and Polish Jews.

Badchan (_H._), professional jester.

Bensh (?), say grace.

Beth Din (_H._), Court of Judgment.

Beth Medrash (_H._), College.

Bube (_G._), grandmother.