It was the same voice, the English lady’s voice, bringing all Christendom about her, all the traditions within which, so lately, she had felt herself committed steadfastly to tread. But there was something left out of it, a warmth was missing, it had not in it the glow that was in those other women’s voices, of kindliness towards the generous things they had secretly, willingly renounced. It had, instead, something that was like a cold clean blade thrusting into an intelligible future, something inexorable, founded not upon fixed ideas, but upon ideas, single and cold. This woman would not make concessions; she would always stand, uncompromisingly, in face of everyone, men and women, for the same things, clear cut, delicate and narrowly determining as her voice.
“You are considering the possibility of embracing the Jewish faith?”
“Well, no,” said Miriam startled into briskness by the too quickly developing accumulation of speech. “I heard that you had done so; and wondered, how it was possible, for an Englishwoman.”
“You are a Christian?”
“I don’t know. I was brought up in the Anglican Church.”
“Much depends upon the standpoint from which one approaches the very definite and simple creed of Judaism. I myself was a Unitarian, and therefore able to take the step without making a break with my earlier convictions.”
“I see,” said Miriam coldly. Fate had deceived her, holding in reserve the trick of this simple explanation. She gazed at the seated figure. The glow of her surroundings was quenched by the chill of a perpetually active reason. … Science, ethics, withering common sense playing over everything in life, making a harsh bareness everywhere, seeing nothing alive but the cold processes of the human mind; having Tennyson read at services because poetry was one of the superior things produced by humanity. … She wondered whether this woman, so exactly prepared to meet a Jewish reform movement, had been helplessly born into Unitarianism, or had taken it up as she herself had nearly done.
“Much of course depends upon the synagogue through which one is admitted.” Ah; she had felt the impossibilities. She had compromised and was excusing her compromise.
“Of course I have heard of the reform movement.” … The silence quivered with the assertion that the reformers were as much cut off from Judaism as Unitarianism from Anglican Christianity. To enter a synagogue that made special arrangements for the recognition of women was to admit that women were dependent on recognition. The silence admitted the dilemma. Mrs. Bergstein had passed through these thoughts, suffering? Though she had found a way through, following her cold clear reason, she still suffered?
“I think I should find it impossible to associate with Jewish women.”
“That is a point you must consider very carefully indeed.” The room leapt into glowing reality. They were at one; Englishwomen with a common incommunicable sense. Outcasts. … Far away, within the warm magic circle of English life, sounded the careless easy slipshod voices of Englishmen, she saw their averted talking forms, aware in every line, and protective, of something that Englishwomen held in their hands.
“Don’t you find,” she began breathlessly, but calm even tones drove across her eagerness: “What is your fiancé’s attitude towards religion?”
“He is not exactly religious and not fully in sympathy with the reform movement because he is a Zionist and thinks that the old ritual is the only link between the persecuted Jews and those who are better placed; that it would be treachery to break with it as long as any are persecuted. … Nevertheless, he is willing to renounce his Judaism.”
The Queen, who is religious, puts love before religion, for woman. Her Protestantism. He for God only, she for God in him and able to change her creed when she marries. A Catholic couldn’t. And she would call Catholics idolators. She is an idolator; of men.
Mrs. Bergstein was amazed at his willingness. Envious … I am a Jew, a “head” man incapable of “love.” … It is your eyes. I must see them always. … I know now what is meant by love. … I am even willing to renounce my Judaism. … Michael to think and say that. I am crowned, for life; by a sacrifice I cannot accept. He must keep his Judaism. … You must marry me. … The discovery, flowing through the grey noisy street, of the secret of the “mastery” idea; that women can only be sure that a man is sure when—
“There is then no common religious feeling between you?”
She had moved. The light fell upon her. She was about forty. She had come forth, so late, from the secret numbness of her successful independent life, and had not found what she came to seek. She was still alone in her circling day. At the period of evening dress she put on a heavy gold bracelet, ugly, a heavy ugly shape. Her face was pinched and drawn; before her lay the ordeal of belated motherhood. Vulgarly violating her refined endurance had come this incident. Dignified condemnation spoke from her averted eyes. She had said her say and was desiring that there should be no further waste of time.
Miriam made no sound. In the stillness that followed the blow she faced the horrible summary, stricken to her feet, her strength ebbing with her thoughts into the gathering swirling darkness. She waited for a moment. But Mrs. Bergstein made no sign. Imponderable, conscious only of the weight of her body about her holding her to the ground beneath her feet, she went away from the room and the house. In the lamplit darkness her feet carried her joyously forward into the freshness of the tree-filled
