Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

I explained the whole thing to him and showed him our genealogical tree.

I fancy he was more surprised than he appeared to be, for although he had always been very kind to me there had been just the faintest suspicion of patronage in his manner. It was perhaps only natural. A semi-Hebrew lad, in humble circumstances, with no prospects to speak of, was not in the ordinary course of things the most natural companion for the son of a successful city merchant.

I knew he told Sibella, for she condescendingly informed me that I was not such a story-teller as she had thought, adding, however, that it wasn’t very much to boast of, as the six lives between me and the peerage would probably be sixty-six before very long, and it was quite evident that the Gascoynes did not even know of my existence. She became quite friendly again, but when I tried to kiss her she refused to allow me to do so; or rather, she attempted to prevent it and was really furious when I did so by force. I detected in her resistance that I no longer occupied her thoughts. Indeed, I was soon made aware that I was expected to be content with the place of an ordinary friend. Lionel Holland managed to be constantly at the house. Grahame had expressed his disinclination to bring him, but Sibella and her sister evidently had an understanding by which they were to meet him by appointment on Saturday afternoons and bring him back to tea. Mr. and Mrs. Hallward were too easy-going to notice these manœuvres, and would have treated them quite good-naturedly even had they done so.

The Hallward children were allowed to do pretty well as they liked, with the result that careful mothers of the neighbourhood, resentful of their extreme good looks, made Cynthia and Sibella the subject of much spiteful gossip and whispered inuendoes which I verily believe had little truth in them. Compelled to stand by and watch Lionel Holland’s triumph, I suffered terribly, and my mother grew quite anxious at my appearance, but attributed it to overwork.

Once, and once only, did I implore Sibella to have pity on me. She laughed in the most silvery manner, and frankly said she was tired of me. I recall my abjectness with humiliation. Lionel Holland’s was a nature quite devoid of sympathy for his own sex, and where another lad might have decently veiled his triumph from his rival, he displayed it on every possible occasion. His manner was insufferably self-complacent. He had the natural contempt of all Westerns for anything Jewish, and he had not the breeding to disguise the fact. He told a mutual friend that ‘it was just like a beastly little Jew to make up to a girl like Sibella.’

I affected indifference because I knew the remark had been repeated to me with the object of goading me into fighting him; and that was a matter which required thinking out. At the same time I planned the first attempt of my life to deal a secret blow at an enemy. It was crude, but youth and inexperience must be my excuse.

Lionel Holland was training for a mile handicap, and I knew that in the evening he used to go to the school sports ground, with a friend to time him, and train till after dusk.

The track, half a mile in circumference, ran round the entire ground, skirting the backs of houses, and bounded at one part for the length of about a hundred yards by a hedge. I conceived the idea of throwing him as he was running. The track was hard, and he might hurt himself seriously or not at all. There was at any rate the chance of a full retaliation.

I chose a spot about midway along the hedge opposite, where on the inner side of the track, just upon the grass, and facing the cricket pitch, was an iron seat firmly fixed to the ground.

One evening I followed Holland and his friend to the sports ground and, having seen them go in, reached the back of the hedge by a circuitous way. There was an aperture just large enough for me to crawl through. I waited. In about ten minutes I heard his measured stride on the hard asphalt. He passed me going at a good pace. As he disappeared in the dusk I crept swiftly through the hedge, passed a cord I had with me round the upper part of one of the legs of the iron seat, and, holding both ends in my hand, crept back. In a few moments he came round again. I pulled the cord as tight as I could. He tripped, fell full length and lay still. I hauled in the cord and stole away.