“Dr. Engelmacher!” exclaimed Lionel, with pleasure, as he took up the card. “I had no idea that he was in London. Show him in here please, Mary.”
“Dr. Engelmacher!” repeated Lady Montella, her eyes brightening at the name. “He must have come here for some special purpose.”
Max Engelmacher was the great leader of the Zionists in Germany, a man whose fame had spread throughout every Jewish centre. In appearance he was a typical German, with fair hair, light blue eyes covered with spectacles, and rugged features. No less Oriental-looking man could ever have been found; nevertheless, he was a very Jew of the Jews—to some a second Moses ready to lead his people to the promised land, to others the one who should come in the power and spirit of Elijah before the advent of the national Messiah. As a young man he—in common with others—had seen his visions and dreamed his dreams; but experience had hardened him into a genial cynic who was practical before everything else.
Lady Montella rose as his burly figure blocked the doorway, and held out her hand with almost the first smile which had passed across her face since her husband’s death. There was no doubt as to the sincerity of her welcome.
“This bad business has had one good effect, since it has brought you here,” she said.
“A bad business indeed, lady,” he replied, in German. “Yet if it stirs up some of you English Jews to action, I shall not call it altogether bad.”
“You think we are too cold, eh, doctor?”
“Cold? Um Gotteswillen! yes. You sit at home in your fine houses, with your maids and footmen, your electric light and your telephone, and you will scarcely spare a nebbich[[6]] for those of your own race who are hounded from one place to another, who are scarcely allowed to take a free breath of God’s air because they are Jews. You metaphorically gather your skirts together lest you should be defiled by contact with those whom you choose to call the scum of the earth; but you do not take the trouble to consider what has brought them so low. And you tie up your heart-strings and your purse-strings tight, lest you should be tempted to throw good money away. Cold! You are a nation of icebergs, so civilised and anglicised that what feeling you ever possessed has been refined out of you long ago. That is my opinion of the English Jews, madam. I am bound to speak the truth.”
[6]. “Poor things!”
“Dear old Engelmacher!” exclaimed Montella, sotto voce. “A voice of thunder, and a heart of gold!”