"No, Fanny, if a half-hour will suffice; in half an hour I expect Elkish. At half-past five, Francis."
The servant withdrew as quietly as he had entered, and husband and wife were left alone.
With the eye of the careful housewife she glanced about the room. The luxury of her surroundings had not diminished the traditional concern for minute details of housekeeping. From her mother she had acquired her loving devotion to the affairs of the house. She guarded its growing prosperity, and with a keen eye, as well as a careful hand, she treasured the beautiful and choice possessions with which a fondness for collecting and a feeling for art had enriched her home. Her large corps of servants was capable and well-trained; yet Mrs. Benas would delegate to none the supervision of her household and the inspection of its details.
Her appearance did not betray her habits. She was forty-nine years old; her dark hair, with a touch of grey, was becomingly arranged over a rather high forehead. Her generous mouth, showing well-preserved teeth, and her full double chin gave her countenance a look of energy, softened by the mild and intelligent expression of her eyes. The slight curve of her nose was sufficient to impart to her countenance the unmistakable stamp of her race. But it did not detract from the air of distinction that characterized Frau Geheimrat Benas.
The rapid survey satisfied her that everything was in the best of order in the luxuriously equipped workroom of her husband. Not a particle of dust rested upon the costly bronzes, standing about on desk and mantel, on tables and stands, with designed carelessness. Not too obtrusively, and yet effectively, they revealed the Geheimrat as a patron of the arts, able to surround himself with the choicest works of the most distinguished artists.
Glorious old Flemish tapestries hung above the sofa, forming the background for book-cases filled with the classics of all literatures, and for various objets d'art, which a discerning taste had collected. Mrs. Benas's glance rested with particular tenderness upon a few antique pieces of silver, which seemed a curious anachronism in a room furnished in its up-to-date style. They were heirlooms from her parents' home in Rogasen, where her father, Samuel Friedheim—Reb Salme Friedheim as he was called—had been held in high regard. There was the Kiddush cup, the Besomim box, the Menorah, and the large silver Seder platter, used by her father; and there were the silver candelabra, the lights of which her mother had "blessed". Her father had been a thrifty dealer in wools, not too greatly blessed with worldly goods; a great Talmudic scholar he had been, however, worthy to marry the great-granddaughter of the celebrated Rabbi Akiba Friedländer, under whom he had studied.
Mrs. Benas's demeanor unconsciously reflected the dignity of such ancestry. She took it as a matter of course that her lot in life should have been cast in the high financial circles, the sphere which gives importance and position to the modern Jew. The son-in-law of Reb Salme Friedheim could not be other than a Geheimrat, unless, continuing the traditions, he had been a student of the Talmud. But, after all, nowadays a Geheimrat is to be preferred to a Jewish scholar or to a modern rabbi; and with pride becoming to her and no offense to her husband she gloried in the aristocracy of her family, without overlooking the advantages her husband's wealth had brought.
The home of her husband had also been in the province of Posen; and it was the respect in which her father had been held throughout the province that had attracted his father, Isidor Benas of Lissa, to the match. Although the dowry was smaller than Benas senior thought he was entitled to demand for his son, the rank of her family weighed so heavily in the balance that Joshua was allowed to court Fanny and win her as his life companion.
His father died shortly after the marriage. Joshua moved the banking and grain business, in which he had been a partner, to Berlin. Here the business prospered to such an extent that the firm of Joshua Benas was soon reckoned among the most influential of the rapidly developing capital. Indeed, it headed all financial and industrial undertakings. Joshua Benas, prominent in the establishment of a large bank, member of the boards of the principal industrial corporations, was appointed Kommerzienrat at the end of the "seventies", and a few years later, in recognition of special services to the Government in the supply of arms, he was made Geheimrat. At the time there were rumors of a high order, which were never made true; and Mrs. Benas gave up the hope she had probably cherished in secret, for the growth of anti-Semitism set a short limit to the honors conferred on Jews, and rendered the dignity of a Geheimer Kommerzienrat the highest to which they dared aspire.
"Credit to whom credit is due," a distinguished professor had equivocally remarked in her drawing-room some years before, in reference to the appointment of a banker distinguished for nothing but his wealth as Geheimer Kommerzienrat. The words ever echoed in her ears. Since then the lesson to remain modestly in the background and be content with the achievements of better times had been well learned. In the meantime, Benas's income had continued to increase; his home grew in splendor and artistic attractiveness, and while his wife watched over the comfort of her establishment and the carefully planned education of the children, she kept pride of ancestry alive in the secret recesses of her soul. The more she felt herself cut off from intercourse with those of her own station in life—the social circle of the elect—the more she cherished the consciousness of her noble descent. The feeling that had been sacred merely as a tradition in the years of social advance, developed in the present days of social isolation—half voluntary and half enforced—into something more intimate and personal. She spoke but seldom of this; all the deeper and keener was the hurt to her pride.