第47章 Chapter XVII(2)

"It is an old and just custom for parents to be consulted by their children upon their choice of husband or wife. In France the parents are consulted before the daughter; it is not a bad plan. It often saves some unnecessary pangs--for the daughter. I am sorry in this case that we are not living in France."

"Then you object?" Kemp almost hurled the words at him.

"I crave your patience," answered the old man, slowly; "I have grown accustomed to doing things deliberately, and will not be hurried in this instance. But as you have put the question, I may answer you now. I do most solemnly and seriously object."

Ruth, sitting intently listening to her father, paled slowly. The doctor also changed color.

"My child," Levice continued, looking her sadly in the face, "by allowing you to fall blindly into this trouble, without warning, with my apparent sanction for any relationship with Christians, I have done you a great wrong; I admit it with anguish. I ask your forgiveness."

"Don't, Father!"

Dr. Kemp's clinched hand came down with force upon his knee. He was white to the lips, for though Levice spoke so quietly, a strong decisiveness rang unmistakably in every word.

"Mr. Levice, I trust I am not speaking disrespectfully," he began, his manly voice plainly agitated, "but I must say that it was a great oversight on your part when you threw your daughter, equipped as she is, into Christian society, --put her right in the way of loving or being loved by any Christian, knowing all along that such a state of affairs could lead to nothing. It was not only wrong, but, holding such views, it was cruel."

"I acknowledge my culpability; my only excuse lies in the fact that such an event never presented itself as a possibility to my imagination. If it had, I should probably have trusted that her own Jewish conscience and bringing-up would protest against her allowing herself to think seriously upon such an issue."

"But, sir, I do not understand your exception; you are not orthodox."

"No; but I am intensely Jewish," answered the old man, proudly regarding his antagonist. "I tell you I object to this marriage; that is not saying I oppose it. There are certain things connected with it of which neither you nor my daughter have probably thought. To me they are all-powerful obstacles to your happiness. Being an old man and more experienced, will you permit me to suggest these points? My friend, I am seeking nothing but my child's happiness; if, by opening the eyes of both of you to what menaces her future welfare, I can avert what promises but a sometime misery, I must do it, late though it may be. If, when I have stated my view, you can convince me that I am wrong, I shall be persuaded and admit it. Will you accept my plan?"

Kemp bowed his head. The dogged earnestness about his mouth and eyes deepened; he kept his gaze steadily and attentively fixed upon Levice.

Ruth, who was the cause of the whole painful scene, seemed remote and shadowy.

"As you say," began Levice, "we are not orthodox; but before we become orthodox or reform, we are born, and being born, we are invested with certain hereditary traits that are unconvertible. Every Jew bears in his blood the glory, the triumph, the misery, the abjectness of Israel. The farther we move in the generations, the fainter grown the inheritance. In most countries in these times the abjectness is vanishing; we have been set upon our feet; we have been allowed to walk; we are beginning to smile, --that is, some of us. Those whose fathers were helped on are nearer the man as he should be than those whose fathers are still grovelling. My child, I think, stands a perfect type of what culture and refinement can give. She is not an exception; there are thousands like her among our Jewish girls. Take any intrinsically pure-souled Jew from his coarser surroundings and give him the highest advantages, and he will stand forth the equal, at least, of any man; but he could not mix forever with pitch and remain undefiled."

"No man could," observed Kemp, as Levice paused. "But what are these things to me?"

"Nothing; but to Ruth, much. That is part of the bar-sinister between you.

Possibly your sense of refinement has never been offended in my family; but there are many families, people we visit and love, who, though possessing all the substrata of goodness, have never been moved to cast off the surface thorns that would prick your good taste as sharply as any physical pain. This, of course, is not because they are Jews, but because they lack refining influences in their surroundings. We look for and excuse these signs; many Christians take them as the inevitable marks of the race, and without looking further, conclude that a cultured Jew is an impossibility."

"Mr. Levice, I am but an atom in the Christian world, and you who number so many of them among your friends should not make such sweeping assertions.

The world is narrow-minded; individuals are broader."

"True; but I speak of the majority, who decide the vote, and by whom my child would be, without doubt, ostracized. This only by your people; by ours it would be worse, --for she will have raised a terrible barrier by renouncing her religion."

"I shall never renounce my religion, Father."

"Such a marriage would mean only that to the world; and so you would be cut adrift from both sides, as all women are who move from where they rightfully belong to where they are not wanted."

"Sir," interrupted Kemp, "allow me to show you wherein such a state of affairs would, if it should happen, be of no consequence. The friends we care for and who care for us will not drop off if we remain unchanged.

Because I love your daughter and she loves me, and because we both desire our love to be honored in the sight of God and man, wherein have we erred?

We shall still remain the same man and woman."

"Unhappily the world would not think so."

"Then let them hold to their bigoted opinion; it is valueless, and having each other, we can dispense with them."