Lord Mowbray urged Mrs. Coates on with “How, for instance?” “Oh, how! why, my lord, a hundred times I’ve hurt her to the quick. One can’t always be thinking of people’s different persuasions you know—and if one asked a question, just for information’s sake, or made a natural remark, as I did t’other day, Queeney, you know, just about Jew butchers, and pigeons—‘It’s a pity,’ said I, ‘that Jews must always have Jew butchers, Miss Berry, and that there is so many things they can’t touch: one can’t have pigeons nor hares at one’s table,’ said I, thinking only of my second course; ‘as to pork, Henny,’ says I, ‘that’s a coarse butcher’s meat, which I don’t regret, nor the alderman, a pinch o’ snuff’—now, you know, I thought that was kind of me; but Miss Montenero took it all the wrong way, quite to heart so, you’ve no idear! After all, she may say what she pleases, but it’s my notion the Jews is both a very unsocial and a very revengeful people; for, do you know, my lord, they wouldn’t dine with us next day, though the alderman called himself.”
My mother was so placed that she could not avoid hearing all that Mrs. Coates said to Lord Mowbray; and though she never uttered a syllable, or raised her eyes, or moved the fan she held in her hand, I knew by her countenance the impression that was made on her mind: she would have scorned, on any other subject of human life or manners, to have allowed the judgment of Mrs. Coates to weigh with her in the estimation of a single hair; yet here her opinion and idears were admitted to be decisive.
Such is prejudice! thought I. Prejudice, even in the proudest people, will stoop to accept of nourishment from any hand. Prejudice not only grows on what it feeds upon, but converts every thing it meets with into nourishment.
How clear-sighted I was to the nature of prejudice at this moment, and how many reflections passed in one instant, which I had never made before in the course of my life!—Meantime Mrs. Coates had beckoned to her son Peter, and Peter had drawn near, and was called upon by his mother to explain to my lord the cause of the coolness betwixt the alderman and Mr. Montenero: “It was,” she said, “about the Manessas, and a young man called Jacob.”
Peter was not as fluent as his mother, and she went on. “It was some money matter. Mr. Montenero had begun by acting a very generous part, she understood, at first, by way of being the benevolent Jew, but had not come up to the alderman’s expectations latterly, and had shown a most illiberal partiality to the Manessas, and this Jacob, only because they was Jews; which, you know,” said Mrs. Coates, “was very ungentleman-like to the alderman, after all the civilities we had shown the Monteneros on their coming to Lon’on—as Peter, if he could open his mouth, could tell you.”
Peter had just opened his mouth, when Mr. Montenero appearing, he closed it again. To my inexpressible disappointment, Miss Montenero was not with her father. Mr. Montenero smiled the instant he caught my eye, but seeing my mother as he approached, he bowed gravely, and passed on.
“And never noticed me, I declare,” said Mrs. Coates: “that’s too good!”
“But Miss Montenero! I thought she was to be here?” cried Mowbray.
Mrs. Coates, after her fashion, stretching across two of her daughters, whispered to the third, loud enough for all to hear, “Queeney, this comes of airs!—This comes of her not choosing for to go abroad with me, I suppose.”
“If people doesn’t know their friends when they has ‘em,” replied Queeney, “they may go farther and fare worse: that’s all I have to say.”