* * *
It was about eleven o'clock when Dr. Rosenfeld left his friend, and Hugo was surprised when scarcely a quarter of an hour later, some one rapped at his door. Elkish, the old clerk of the firm of Joshua Benas, stepped in. His bachelor dwelling was in a wing of the house. Here his unmarried sister kept house for him according to the strictest Jewish observances. Certain privileges were extended to him as the confidant of the family. The assured devotion of the whimsical old man was the excuse for allowing him to do as he wished. In business he was all conscientiousness, faithfulness, and capability. The younger clerks knew that their weal or their woe lay in his hands, for the Geheimrat took no step in business matters without Elkish's advice. He therefore imagined he had a right to concern himself about family matters as well, and he was good-naturedly allowed his way. The Benases were confident that he held the welfare of their house dearer than his own, and though it was not always possible to yield to his peculiar wishes, his interference was tolerated without great opposition. Jewish homes often harbor such characters, to whom loyalty gives privileges justified by long service, though their manners are not in harmony with the present order of things. Even in the old days in Lissa, Elkish had been a confidant of Benas senior; and this had endeared him to the son, and later to the children of the third generation. To Rita and Hugo he used the language of the most familiar intercourse, and both of them felt a peculiar attachment to him. As children they had spent many an hour daily in his rooms. He and his sister were most ingenious in preparing surprises and pleasures for them, and it was there that they had learnt to know the charm of the old Jewish life. The services of the coming in and the going out of the Sabbath, of the Seder evenings, and of the high festivals, were strictly observed. A lost world was thus brought back to the bright and eager children. In their parents' home the old life was shown sacred respect, but without adherence to ceremonies. In Rita the ceremonies appealed to the imagination, in Hugo to the intellect. To the girl the peculiar customs had been sources of pleasure, but to Hugo of earnest reflection. Rita had frolicked and laughed when Uncle Elkish on such occasions went through the consecrated forms with solemnity and dignity; Hugo, even as a boy, had experienced a feeling of awe for the noble past from which these customs came. So the children had lived in two worlds. Their parents' household was entirely "modern." While Rita and Hugo were quite young children they had discarded—as many others of the Jewish faith had done at the same time—the observances that differentiated them from those of other faiths. When, however, the time came which forced them back upon their own resources, the son and daughter, now grown up, did not find the changed circumstances as strange as they would have, had they not come under Elkish's influence. They appreciated why sacrifices were demanded, and why they should not desert from the ranks of a religion whose principles, founded in a glorious past, formed the bond that held the race together though scattered through all countries. Elkish's importance thus increased in their eyes. Hadn't he been right in holding aloof from the stranger? As a result, he did not feel the repulses under which they suffered so intensely. Hugo was particularly affected, because as a student, soldier, and lawyer, he was brought in constant contact with a Jew-hating world, and exposed to continual mortifications and secret and open attacks. All this embittered him; and he drew closer than ever to the old man, who was inspired alike with great hate for the oppressor and with zeal for the faith. And so Hugo greeted his visitor with sincere pleasure.
"Why so late, Elkish?" he called to him cheerily. "What brings you here? Pity you did not come sooner. You should have heard Dr. Rosenfeld this evening; it would have warmed the cockles of your heart."
"My heart in this old body cries and laments. Hugo, what will it all come to? I'll never laugh again, Hugo, never. With Tzores I shall go to the grave."
"What are you talking about, Elkish? Before that happens, you still have a lot to do; and you really would have been pleased to see our friends here this evening—Dr. Rosenfeld, Dr. Magnus, and Sternberg."
"What do I care about doctors and lawyers when, God forbid, danger threatens us?"
"What danger?"
"Are you blind, Hugoleben, and deaf? Don't you want to see and hear, or don't you really see and hear? On this floor, you form Jewish societies, you and your friends. Rosenfeld talks, and Sternberg scolds, and the 'Olive Branch' hopes, and you think,—but you don't think of what's nearest to you, of what is going on below. Day after day that Posheh Yisroel, the aristocratic Herr Regierungsrat, comes and makes himself agreeable, and poses as being one of the Mishpocheh and Chavrusseh, and Rita is there, my Ritaleben, and listens to the Chochmes and the brilliant conversation, and gazes at the handsome, noble gentleman .... and .... and...."
"But, Elkish, don't get excited. What's gotten into your head? Papa and mamma are there, and I, too, and very often the other relatives."
"Just because of that! I am not afraid that he will seduce her the way a Baal-Milchomoh seduces a Shicksel. Such a thing, thank God, does not happen with us Jews. But he will lead her astray with his fine thoughts and noble manners, and his great position, and heaven knows what else, and he will make her forsake her religion, become an apostate as he himself is."