23 AUGUST 1890, Page 19

RECHA.* IT sometimes occurs to us to wonder whether writers

often know where their real talent lies. • It is not our place here to criticise Lady Baby, which has already been favourably re- viewed in the Spectator ; but a word of comparison is helpful, and we must venture to say that, while many novelists of the present day could have written Lady Baby, few, if any, could have written Itecha. It has the same singular power as its companion story, Orthodox, reviewed here two years ago,—tbe same, but intensified ; for its strength, simplicity, and direct- ness are even greater, the characters are fewer and more thoroughly worked out, the descriptions are more vivid, the tragedy is darker and more hopeless. It is better art too, we think, that the story should be allowed to tell itself, instead of being told by a friend of the hero, as in Orthodox.

Itecha is another of those unflattering pictures of Jewish and Christian life in Austrian Poland, in painting which Miss Gerard shows such distinguished talent,—we might say genius, for these stories give the reader a certain thrill which cannot be the work of any amount of were cleverness. For some mysterious reason, which neither he nor we understand till later in the book, Theodor Borkam, a good-hearted, open- handed, extravagant young Austrian officer, finds all his Jewish creditors reduced to one, in the person of a truly terrible old Jew, Gedeile Wolf, in whom all the most un- pleasant peculiarities of his nation appear in an exaggerated form. And more than this, when Theodor applies to the other Jews in Horoweska, one by one, for a small loan of two hundred florins, they one and all refuse to let him have it. By the will of a rich uncle, Theodor is to have a large fortune, but on certain conditions, one of which is that he must not be in debt. Thus it is not difficult to understand the calcula- tions of Gedeile Wolf, or with what diabolical cleverness he

• Becha. By Dorothea Gerard. Edinburgh and London W. Blackwood and Sons. MO.

no arranged matters as to have the young man entirely in his own power. He had possessed himself of all his notes -of hand ; he could at any moment betray him to the executor of his uncle's will ; and he had made a secret arrange- ment with the other Jews, of which Theodor naturally had no idea, and which entirely prevented his borrowing a single florin from any one but the vampire who meant to live on his life-blood. It is not till near the end of the story, when Theodor is on the edge of ruin more hopeless than any money troubles could bring, that the cruel Jew really explains to him the position in which he stands :—

" You belong to me,' said Gedeile. 'You are mine, my own property, for I have bought you—paid for you with heavy money —with silver florins that I took from my purse with groans. You are mine, and no other man's.'-4How ? What are you saying ? I cannot understand.'—' Of course you cannot understand : how should you, a Christian, understand the wise ways of our people ? Tell me, has it never occurred to you to wonder how it came that all the money-lenders of the place were unable to lend you money at that moment when you required it in spring ? If Samuel Lieblich was prevented from giving you the sum, then was it not to be expected that Golde Silber or Job Spiegelglas or Tobias Kornmehl would be ready to do so ? Did that coincidence never strike you ? Certainly it struck me.'— 'But you never went deeper into -the matter ? Now listen, I am going to let you see where you stand. In the early days of March I had occasion to make a journey to a town in a German province—the same town in which your uncle had just died. While there, I heard by chance of the inheritance which was on the point of falling to you. I had never lent you money ; but I was aware that many notes of hand of yours were in the possession of my colleagues. They did not know of the inheritance, therefore they would be ready to let those notes of hand go at next to no price. I saw before me a splendid opportunity, and I hastened home to buy up the papers before the news of your uncle's death should reach Horoweska. I also did another thing, but this you will not so readily understand. There exists among us a custom which we call "the buying of a man "—it is an ancient use. For this purpose a Jew goes to the head Rabbi and says to him, 4' I wish to purchase such and such a Christian." The sum of purchase is fixed by the Rabbi, and is then divided among the poor of the community. From the moment that it is paid down, that Christian becomes the property of that Jew ; this signifies that no one but he can henceforth have any business tranactions with the man whom he has purchased. No money can pass between that man and any other Jew. The whole of the community is warned. Under pain of the great cherem, every Jew in the place is forbidden to transact business with the Christian who has been bought. Word is sent to other communities far and near, so that at last the man becomes isolated, and finds himself, as it were, alone with his purchaser. This is what I did ; I went to the Rabbi and I became your pur- chaser: 2,000 heavy florins did I pay down for you. Do you think it likely that I shall let myself be cheated of my bargain ? ' "

The unfortunate Theodor had began his transactions with Gedeile Wolf by signing a promise to pay him 10,000 florins —his debt to him was 3,500—upon a certain day in that year when he supposed that he would be in possession of his in- heritance. This promise he signed "upon his honour as a gentleman and as an Austrian officer ; " and if it was broken, it meant a depth of disgrace which hardly any man could bear and live. Thus, on every side he was in the Jew's power; and

it seemed that there was no escape ; but on one condition alone old Gedeile was ready to give him back the paper, to set him free, to forego the finest Gescheift he had ever made in his life.

This condition was, that Theodor should give up Recha. For this Jew, like Shylock, like so many Jews in fiction, was not all made of stone. It was with him, too, "My ducats and -my daughter," and more human in this than some of his kind, he was ready to lose 10,000 florins rather than let his daughter marry a Christian.

The beauty of Recha was used by her villainous father— who had, however, a well-grounded faith in her power of taking care of herself—to draw foolish fish into his net. The „young officers found it hard to refuse her anything ; and it was by her persuasion that Theodor signed that terrible bond to the Jew, at the same time falling desperately in love with the Jew's daughter. Recha is a very powerful study. Her pride, her courage, her strong sense, her aspirations, the secret religious doubts which she is drawn by circumstances and by an irresistible sympathy to confide to Theodor ; the intense sadness of a life which, for a soul like hers, is nothing but one long degradation ; and yet the loyalty to her father which stands between her and every kind of happiness,—all these make up a noble and touching character. It was not only Recha's beauty that roused such passionate devotion in Theodor. His long pleading, her long resistance, seem only to gain in strength from standing out against that unutter- ably dreary background of Horoweska, the half-built, miser- able, decaying Galician town. And when at last Recha finds fate and love too strong for her, these lovers have a rendezvous so dismal, so tragic, that one cannot from the first believe in any happy end to the story.

Miss Gerard never gives too much description ; but when she wishes once for all to make a scene clear to us, we see it, we have been there. At the end of an unfinished street stands the Jewish synagogue :—

" Beyond the synagogue there was nothing more but a stretch of waste ground, covered with dwarfed bushes, twisted by the wind into fantastical knots, and in summer with tufts of white camomile flowers ; and beyond that again only the river. It was just here that the river took its sharpest curve, so that this stretch of ground was bordered on three sides by water, and as there was no means of crossing the river here—the bridge being higher up—the spot was the most lonely to be found for miles around, leading to nowhere and ending in itself, visited only by the birds that pecked at the berries on the bushes, or occasionally by some child collecting camomile-flowers to dry. The river- banks were in many places precipitous, in some spots overhanging, where the sluggish current had gradually eaten its way into the solid earth, and stood now in stagnant pools, choked by long grasses and by the leaves of water-plants that had taken root in these sheltered basins. These pools were very deep, but so screened by the overhanging brushwood as to be entirely invisible from the river-bank above, and even from the opposite side hardly to be detected."

This lonely place, undisturbed by human sounds, except "a thin stream of nasal prayer" from the synagogue, is, in fact, the scene of the tragedy. Here Theodor waits for his love, here is his joy, here is his desolation ; and then that cold, stealing current, which seems now and then all through the story to touch us with ice, has a secret that it keeps too well.

Recha's first meeting with Theodor by the river is a striking passage. She has just been almost unbearably tried by the insolence of one of his brother-officers, to whom she had gone, as usual, on her father's business. There has as yet been no word of love—on her side, no thought—between her and Theodor. These few lines are another excellent specimen of Miss Gerard's descriptive power :—

" She was walking on rapidly, though aimlessly, among the bushes, a little ahead of Theodor. The thorns caught her skirt and the fringe of her shawl, but she did not appear to notice it. She broke off the tips of the twigs in passing, and twisted them between her fingers. One of them she tore in two with her teeth. A deep streak of colour flamed in each of her cheeks. It was only when she had reached the very edge of the steep river-bank that she stood still. Down there in the water there were lumps of ice slowly floating past, but up here the blue hepaticas were strewn to the very edge of the bank, and the bushes already bore that faint red tint which comes before the green, when the husks of the buds have not yet burst. Recha looked round her with a sort of surprise, and the angry red faded in her cheek. It is very quiet here,' she said, drawing a deep breath ; then going a little nearer to the edge and straining her neck to look over, she added with a shudder, but it must be very cold down there in those black holes under the banks.'" As we have said, Recha is a very strong study of character. It is also an exceedingly powerful story. It has not the varied interest of Orthodox, and is hardly such a curious picture of the manners and customs of the Galician Jews ; but in its concentrated strength it is still more striking, and its human interest is certainly deeper. Theodor, in his simplicity, is a more natural hero than Count Ortenegg, and Recha is a far nobler conception than poor, helpless, golden-haired Salome.