"God bless her, my good little Schnapsie!" he murmured. His dazed brain did not grasp all the bearings, was only conscious of a vast relief.
Disgust darkened all the faces.
He groped to understand it, putting his hand over the white hairs that straggled from his skull-cap.
"But then—then it's all right."
"Yes, all right," said Leah brutally. "But for how long?"
Her meaning seized him like an icy claw upon his heart. For the first time in his life he realized the certainty of death, and simultaneously with the certainty its imminence.
"We want you to put a stop to it now," said Sylvia. "For our sakes make her promise that even when—You're the only one who has any influence over her."
She rose, as if to wind up the painful interview, and the others rose, too, with a multiplex rustling of silken skirts. He shook the six jewelled hands as in a dream, and promised to do his best; and as he watched the little procession of carriages roll off, it seemed to him indeed a funeral, and his own.
VII
Ah God, that it should have come to this. Little Schnapsie could not be happy till he was dead. Well, why should he keep her waiting? What mattered the few odd years or months? He was already dead. There was his funeral going down the street.
To speak to Schnapsie he had never intended, even while he was promising it. Those years of silent life together had made real conversation impossible. The bridge on which his soul passed over to hers was a bridge over which hung a sacred silence. Under the weight of words, especially of angry parental words, it might break down forever. And that would be worse than death.
No; little Schnapsie had her own life, and he somehow knew he had not the right to question it, even though it seemed on the verge of deadly sin. He could not have expressed it in logical speech, was not even clearly conscious of it; but his tender relation with her had educated him to a sense of her moral rightness, which now survived and subsisted with his conviction that she was hopelessly astray. No, he had not the right to interfere with her life, with her prospect of happiness in her own way. He must give up living. Little Schnapsie must be nearly thirty; the best of her youth was gone. She should be happy with this strange man.
But if he killed himself, that would bring disgrace on the family—and little Schnapsie. Perhaps, too, Alfred would not marry her. Was there no way of slipping quietly out of existence? But then suicide was another deadly sin. If only that had really been his funeral procession!
"O God, God of Israel, tell me what to do!"
VIII
A sudden inspiration leapt to his heart. She should not have to wait for his death to be happy; he would live to see her happy. He would pretend that her marriage cost him no pang; indeed, would not truly the pang be swallowed up in the thought of her happiness? But would she be happy? Could she be happy with this alien? Ah, there was the chilling doubt! If a quarrel came, would not the man always throw it in her face that she was a Jewess? Well, that must be left to herself. She was old enough not to rush into misery. Through all these years he had taken her pensive brow as the seat of all wisdom, her tender eyes as the glow of all goodness, and he could not suddenly readjust himself to a contradictory conception. By the time she came in he had composed himself for his task.
"Ah, my dear," he said, with a beaming smile, "I have heard the good news."
The answering smile died out of her eyes. She looked frightened.
"It's all right, little Schnapsie," he said roguishly. "So now I shall have seven sons-in-law. And Alfred the Second, eh?"
"You have heard?"
"Yes," he said, pinching her ear. "Thinks she can keep anything from her old father, does she?"
"But do you know that he is a—a—"
"A Christian? Of course. What's the difference, as long as he's a good man, eh?" He laughed noisily.
Little Schnapsie looked more frightened than ever. Were her father's wits wandering at last?
"But I thought—"
"Thought I would want you to sacrifice yourself! No, no, my dear; we are not in India, where women are burnt alive to please their dead husbands."
Little Schnapsie had an irrelevant vision of herself treading on diamonds and gold. She murmured, "Who told you?"
"Leah."
"Leah! But Leah is angry about it!"
"So she is. She came to me in a tantrum, but I told her whatever little Schnapsie did was right."
"Father!" With a sudden cry of belief and affection she fell on his neck and kissed him. "But isn't the darling old Jew shocked?" she said, half smiling, half weeping.
Cunning lent him clairvoyance. "How much Judaism is there in your sisters' husbands?" he said. "And without the religion, what is the use of the race?"
"Why, father, that's what I'm always preaching!" she cried, in astonishment. "Think what our Judaism was in the dear old Portsmouth days. What is the Sabbath here? A mockery. Not one of your sons-in-law closes his business. But there, when the Sabbath came in, how beautiful! Gradually it glided, glided; you heard the angel's wings. Then its shining presence was upon you, and a holy peace settled over the house."
"Yes, yes." His eyes filled with tears. He saw the row of innocent girl faces at the white Sabbath table. What had London and prosperity brought him instead?
"And then the Atonement days, when the ram's horn thrilled us with a sense of sin and judgment, when we thought the heavenly scrolls were being signed and sealed. Who feels that here, father? Some of us don't even fast."
"True, true." He forgot his part. "Then you are a good Jewess still?"
She shook her head sadly. "We have outlived our destiny. Our isolation is a meaningless relic."
But she had kindled a new spark of hope.
"Can't you bring him over to us?"
"To what? To our empty synagogues?"
"Then you are going over to him?" He tried to keep his voice steady.
"I must; his father is an archdeacon."
"I know, I know," he said, though she might as well have said an archangel.
"But you do not believe in—in—"
"I believe in self-sacrifice; that is Christianity."
"Is it? I thought it was three Gods."
"That is not the essential."
"Thank God!" he said. Then he added hurriedly: "But will you be happy with him? Such different bringing up! You can't really feel close to him."
She laughed and blushed. "There are deeper things than one's bringing up, father."
"But if after marriage you should have a quarrel, he would always throw up to you that you are a Jewess."
"No, Alfred will never do that."
"Then make haste, little Schnapsie, or your old father won't live to see you under the canopy."
She smiled happily, believing him. "But there won't be any canopy," she said.
"Well, well, whatever it is," he laughed back, with horrid imagining that it might be a Cross.
IX
It