Children of the Ghetto Part 23

"I'm so glad you think so," said Hannah flus.h.i.+ng with pleasure.

"Of course I do. Does he still have all those _Greeners_ coming to ask him questions?"

"Oh, yes. Their piety is just the same as ever."

"They're poor," observed David. "It's always those poorest in worldly goods who are richest in religion."

"Well, isn't that a compensation?" returned Hannah, with a little sigh.

"But from my father's point of view, the truth is rather that those who have most pecuniary difficulties have most religious difficulties."

"Ah, I suppose they come to your father as much to solve the first as the second."

"Father is very good," she said simply.

They had by this time obtained something to eat, and for a minute or so the dialogue became merely dietary.

"Do you know," he said in the course of the meal, "I feel I ought not to have told you what a wicked person I am? I put my foot into it there, too."

"No, why?"

"Because you are Reb Shemuel's daughter."

"Oh, what nonsense! I like to hear people speak their minds. Besides, you mustn't fancy I'm as _froom_ as my father."

"I don't fancy that. Not quite," he laughed. "I know there's some blessed old law or other by which women haven't got the same chance of distinguis.h.i.+ng themselves that way as men. I have a vague recollection of saying a prayer thanking G.o.d for not having made me a woman."

"Ah, that must have been a long time ago," she said slyly.

"Yes, when I was a boy," he admitted. Then the oddity of the premature thanksgiving struck them both and they laughed.

"You've got a different form provided for you, haven't you?" he said.

"Yes, I have to thank G.o.d for having made me according to His will."

"You don't seem satisfied for all that," he said, struck by something in the way she said it.

"How can a woman be satisfied?" she asked, looking up frankly. "She has no voice in her destinies. She must shut her eyes and open her mouth and swallow what it pleases G.o.d to send her."

"All right, shut your eyes," he said, and putting his hand over them he gave her a t.i.tbit and restored the conversation to a more flippant level.

"You mustn't do that," she said. "Suppose my husband were to see you."

"Oh, bother!" he said. "I don't know why it is, but I don't seem to realize you're a married woman."

"Am I playing the part so badly as all that?"

"Is it a part?" he cried eagerly.

She shook her head. His face fell again. She could hardly fail to note the change.

"No, it's a stern reality," she said. "I wish it wasn't."

It seemed a bold confession, but it was easy to understand. Sam had been an old school-fellow of his, and David had not thought highly of him. He was silent a moment.

"Are you not happy?" he said gently.

"Not in my marriage."

"Sam must be a regular brute!" he cried indignantly. "He doesn't know how to treat you. He ought to have his head punched the way he's going on with that fat thing in red."

"Oh, don't run her down," said Hannah, struggling to repress her emotions, which were not purely of laughter. "She's my dearest friend."

"They always are," said David oracularly. "But how came you to marry him?"

"Accident," she said indifferently.

"Accident!" he repeated, open-eyed.

"Ah, well, it doesn't matter," said Hannah, meditatively conveying a spoonful of trifle to her mouth. "I shall be divorced from him to-morrow. Be careful! You nearly broke that plate."

David stared at her, open-mouthed.

"Going to be divorced from him to-morrow?"

"Yes, is there anything odd about it?"

"Oh," he said, after staring at her impa.s.sive face for a full minute.

"Now I'm sure you've been making fun of me all along."

"My dear Mr. Brandon, why will you persist in making me out a liar?"

He was forced to apologize again and became such a model of perplexity and embarra.s.sment that Hannah's gravity broke down at last and her merry peal of laughter mingled with the clatter of plates and the hubbub of voices.

"I must take pity on you and enlighten you," she said, "but promise me it shall go no further. It's only our own little circle that knows about it and I don't want to be the laughing-stock of the Lane."

"Of course I will promise," he said eagerly.

She kept his curiosity on the _qui vive_ to amuse herself a little longer, but ended by telling him all, amid frequent exclamations of surprise.

"Well, I never!" he said when it was over. "Fancy a religion in which only two per cent. of the people who profess it have ever heard of its laws. I suppose we're so mixed up with the English, that it never occurs to us we've got marriage laws of our own--like the Scotch. Anyhow I'm real glad and I congratulate you."

"On what?"

"On not being really married to Sam."

"Well, you're a nice friend of his, I must say. I don't congratulate myself, I can tell you."

"You don't?" he said in a disappointed tone.