The night Mafeking was relieved, the Emporium was decorated with bunting from roof to basement, and a great illuminated window revealed nothing but stacks of khaki trouserings.
So that, although the good man still sulked over Simon to his wife, she was not deceived; and, the time drawing nigh for Simon's return, she began to look happily forward to a truly reunited family.
In her wildest anxiety it never occurred to her that it was her husband who would die. Yet this is what the irony of fate brought to pass. In the unending campaign which death wages with life, S. Cohn was slain, and Simon returned unscratched from the war to recite the Kaddish in his memory.
X
Simon came back bronzed and a man. The shock of finding his father buried had supplied the last transforming touch; and, somewhat to his mother's surprise, he settled down contentedly to the business he had inherited. And now that he had practically unlimited money to spend, he did not seem to be spending it, but to be keeping better hours than when dodging his father's eye. His only absences from home he accounted for as visits to Winstay, his pal of the campaign, with whom he had got chummier than ever since the affair of the cattle-guard. Winstay, he said, was of good English family, with an old house in Harrow—fortunately on the London and North Western Railway, so that he could easily get a breath of country air on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. He seemed to have forgotten (although the Emporium was still closed on Saturdays) that riding was forbidden, and his mother did not remind him of it. The life that had been risked for the larger cause, she vaguely felt as enfranchised from the limitations of the smaller.
Nearly two months after Simon's return, a special military service was held at the Great Synagogue on the feast of Chanukah—the commemoration of the heroic days of Judas Maccabæus—and the Jewish C.I.V.'s were among the soldiers invited. Mrs. Cohn, too, got a ticket for the imposing ceremony which was fixed for a Sunday afternoon.
As they sat at the midday meal on the exciting day, Mrs. Cohn said suddenly: 'Guess who paid me a visit yesterday.'
'Goodness knows,' said Simon.
'Mr. Sugarman.' And she smiled nervously.
'Sugarman?' repeated Simon blankly.