There was one extraordinarily nice man whom Harry brought to the house. His name was Kuit, and he had failed as a boxer and had become a thief, a trade in which he was an expert. His talk fascinated Mendel, and indeed the whole family. None could fail to listen when he told of his adventures and his skill. He had begun as a pickpocket, plying his trade in Bishopsgate or the Mile End Road, and to show his expertise he would run his hands over Jacob’s pockets without his feeling it, and tell him what they contained. Or he would ask Golda to let him see her purse, and she would grope for it only to find that he had already taken it. He had advanced from picking pockets to the higher forms of theft: plundering hotels or dogging diamond merchants, and he was keenly interested in America. It was through him that the family knew the little that was ever revealed to them of Jacob’s doings there.
Kuit said he would go to America and not return until he had ten thousand pounds, all made by honest theft, for he would only rob the rich, and, indeed, he was most generous with his earnings, and gave Golda many handsome pieces of jewellery, and he lent Jacob money when he badly needed it. That, however, was not Jacob’s reason for admitting Kuit to his family circle. He liked the man, was fascinated by him, and thought his morals were his own affair. He knew his race and the poor too well to be squeamish, and never dreamed of extending his authority beyond his family. He warned Harry that if he took to Kuit’s practices he would no longer be a son of his, and as the accounts of prison given to Harry by some of his acquaintances were not cheering, Harry preferred not to run any risks. Instead, he devoted himself to training for the glory of the prize-ring.
For Mendel the moral aspect of Kuit’s profession had been settled once and for all by his seeing the Rabbi with his face turned to the wall, in the middle of the most terrible of prayers, filch some pennies from an overcoat. Religion therefore was one thing, life was another, and life included theft. Kuit was the only man who could think of painting apart from money, and it was Kuit who gave him a new box of oil colours, stolen from a studio which he broke into on purpose, and en passant from one rich house in Kensington to another. Kuit used to say: “One thing is true for one man and another for another. And what is true for a man is what he does best. For Harry it is boxing, for Issy it is women and dancing, and for Mr. Kühler it is being honest. For me it is showing the business thieves that they cannot have things all their own way, and outwitting the police. Oh yes! They know me and I know them, but they will never catch me.”
So charming was Mr. Kuit that Jacob could not object to taking care from time to time of the property that passed through his hands, and the kitchen was often splendid with marble clocks and Oriental china and Sheffield plate, which never looked anything but out of place among the cheap oleographs and the sideboard with its green paper frills round the flashing gilt china that was never used. The kitchen was the living-room of the house, for Jacob only ate when he was hungry, and it was rarely that two sat down to a meal together.
As often as not Mendel had his paints on the table, and the objects he was painting were not to be moved. He clung to his painting as the only comfort in his distress, and he would frequently work away with his brushes though he could hardly see what he was at, and knew that he was entirely devoid of the feeling that until the discomfort broke out in his soul had never failed him. He dared not look outside his circumstances for comfort, and within them was the most absolute denial of that cherished feeling for loveliness and colour. Beyond certain streets he never ventured. He felt lost outside the immediate neighbourhood of his home, and only Mr. Kuit reassured him with the confidence with which he spoke of such remote regions as Kensington and Bayswater and Mayfair. The rest clung to the little district where the shops and the language and the smells were Jewish. Yet there, too, Mendel felt lost, though he had an immense reverence for the old Jews, for the Rabbis who pored all day long over their books, and the ancient bearded men who, like his mother, could sit for hours together doing nothing at all. He loved their tragic, wrinkled faces and their steadfast peace, so stark a contrast to the chatter and the wrangling and the harshness that filled his home.
There were constant rows. Harry upset the household for weeks after his father forbade him to pursue his prize-fighting ambitions. Jacob would not have a son of his making a public show of himself. To that disturbance was added another when Issy began to court, or was courted by, a girl who was thought too poor and base-born. If he was out a minute later than half-past nine Jacob would go out and find him at the corner of the street with the girl in his arms. Issy would be dragged away. Then he would sulk or shout that he was a man, and Jacob would tell him in a cold, furious voice that he could go if he liked, but, if he went, he must never show his face there again. For a time Issy would submit. Poor though the home was, he could not think of leaving it except to make another for himself. But there was no keeping the girl away, and he would be for ever peeping into the street to see if she were there, and if she were he could not keep away from her.
Leah, the eldest girl, had her courtships too. The match-makers were busy with her, and a number of men, young and old, were brought to view her. She was dressed up to look fine, and Jacob and Golda would sit together to inspect the suitors, and at last they chose a huge, ugly Russian Jew, named Moscowitsch—Abraham Moscowitsch, a timber-merchant, who had pulled himself up out of the East End and had a house at Hackney. He was a friend of Kuit’s and was willing to take the girl without a dowry. Leah hid herself away and wept. It was in vain that Golda, primed by Jacob, told her that she would be rich, and would have servants and carriages, and could buy at the great shops: she could not forget the Russian’s bristling hair and thick lips and coarse, splayed nostrils. The tears were of no avail; the marriage had been offered and accepted. The wedding was fixed, and nothing was spared to make it a social triumph. The bride was decked out in conventional English white, with a heavy veil and a bouquet: and very lovely she looked. Jacob wore his first frock-coat and a white linen collar, Golda had a dress made of mauve cashmere, with a bodice heavily adorned with shining beads, and Mendel had a new sailor suit with a mortar-board cap. There were three carriages to drive the party the twenty yards to the synagogue. The wedding group was photographed, and a hall was taken for the feast and the dance in the evening. The wedding cost Jacob the savings of many years and more, but he grudged not a penny of it, because he had a rich son-in-law and wished it to be known. There were over fifty guests at the feast.
Within a week Leah came home again, pale, thin, and shrunken. Moscowitsch had been arrested. He had gone bankrupt and had done “something with his books.”
“Bankrupt!” said Jacob; “bankrupt!”
He stood in front of his weeping daughter and beat against the air with his clenched fists. She moaned and protested that she would never go back to him. Jacob shook her till her teeth chattered together.