The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer--it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph--he ended his part of the service.
And then the choir sang the last hymn--a lovely hymn, not in the least like a Christian, or at least an English hymn--a psalm that breathed a tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One needed no words to understand the full meaning and beauty and depth of that hymn.
The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs and folded them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few minutes, gradually melting away. As for the men under the gallery, who had been whispering and laughing, they trooped out of the synagogue all together. Evidently, to them the service was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a form, to the baser sort?
The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the stairs. Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself--- all those wonderful things above enumerated--Francesca wondered what it meant to a girl who heard it every Sabbath morning. But she refrained from asking. Custom too often takes the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry out of the verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere--in other forms of faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not seen him in the congregation, probably because it is difficult to recognize a man merely by the top of his hat.
"Come," he said, "let us look around the place. Afterwards, perhaps, we will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on the site of the one erected by Manasseh and his friends when Oliver Cromwell permitted them to return to London after four hundred years of exile. They were forced to wear yellow hats at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse, like many other abominable laws. When you read about mediaeval laws, Francesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were seldom carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was weak. Who was there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat? The police? There were no police. The people? What did the people care about the yellow hat? When the Fire burned down London, sparing not even the great Cathedral, to say nothing of the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in splendor to the first. At that time all the Jews in London were Sephardim of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Spanish, just as there are Askenazim who speak nothing among themselves but Yiddish. Come with me; I will show you something that will please you."
He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the first. There were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved passages, a suggestion of a cloister, an open space or square, and buildings on all sides with windows opening upon the court.
"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have seen something like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and a few bright hangings and a black-haired woman at the open windows, and perhaps a coat of arms carved upon the wall, it would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a strange place to find in the heart of London."
"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we saying yesterday? Spain places her own seal upon everything that belongs to her--people, buildings, all. What you see here is the central Institute of our People, the Sephardim--the Spanish part of our People. Here is our synagogue, here are schools, alms-houses, residence of the Rabbi, and all sorts of things. You can come here sometimes and think of Spain, where your ancestors lived. Many generations in Spain have made you--as they have made me--a Spaniard."
They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they passed the synagogue, there came running across the court a girl of fifteen or so. She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair was curled round her shapely head; her figure was that of an English girl of twenty; her eyes showed black and large and bright as she glanced at the group standing in the court; her skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed in a grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind--a picture to be remembered.
"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might have worn to grace the triumph of David the King."