At lunch the reprobate appeared, looking downcast.
'Where have you been?' thundered S. Cohn, who, never growing older, imagined Simon likewise stationary.
'I went out for a walk--it was a fine morning.'
He grew sullen. 'It doesn't matter--they won't have me.'
'Eh?' Mr. Cohn looked blankly from one to the other.
'It is nothing--he went to see the enlisting and all that. Your soup is getting cold.'
But S. Cohn had taken off his gold spectacles and was polishing them with his serviette--always a sign of a stormy meal.
'It seems to me something has been going on behind my back,' he said, looking from mother to son.
'Well, I didn't want to annoy you with Simon's madcap ideas,' Hannah murmured. 'But it's all over now, thank God!'
'Oh, he'd better know,' said Simon sulkily, 'especially as I am not going to be choked off. It's all stuff what the doctor says. I'm as strong as a horse. And, what's more, I'm one of the few applicants who can ride one.'
'Hannah, will you explain to me what this _Meshuggas_ (madness) is?' cried S. Cohn, lapsing into a non-Anglicism.
'I've got to go to the front, just like other young men!'
'What!' shrieked S. Cohn. 'Enlist! You, that I brought up as a gentleman!'
'It's gentlemen that's going--the City Imperial Volunteers!'
'The volunteers! But that's my own clerks.'
'No; there are gentlemen among them. Read your paper.'
'Oh, yes. I saw several chaps from Bayswater.'
'We Jews of this favoured country,' put in Hannah eagerly, 'grateful to the noble people who have given us every right, every liberty, must----'
S. Cohn was taken aback by this half-unconscious quotation from the war-sermon of the morning. 'Yes, we must subscribe and all that,' he interrupted.
'You fight!' His father laughed half-hysterically. 'Why, you'd shoot yourself with your own gun!' He had not been so upset since the day the minister had disregarded his erudition.
'Oh, would I, though?' And Simon pursed his lips and nodded meaningly.
'As sure as to-day is the Holy Sabbath. And you'd be stuck on your own bayonet, like an obstinate pig.'
Simon got up and left the table and the room.
Hannah kept back her tears before the servant. 'There!' she said. 'And now he's turned sulky and won't eat.'
'Didn't I say an obstinate pig? He's always been like that from a baby. But his stomach always surrenders.' He resumed his meal with a wronged air, keeping his spectacles on the table, for frequent nervous polishing.