"Well, but do you think it's honorable?"
"Hear, O Israel!" cried the ShalottenShammos, spreading out his palms impatiently. "Haven't I written letters for twenty years?"
TheMaggidwas silenced. He walked on brooding. "And what is this place, Burnmud, I ask to go to?" he inquired.
"Bournemouth," corrected the other. "It is a place on the South coast where all the most aristocratic consumptives go."
"But it must be very dear," said the poorMaggid, affrighted.
"Dear? Of course it's dear," said the ShalottenShammospompously."But shall we consider expense where your health is concerned?"
TheMaggidfelt so grateful he was almost ashamed to ask whether he could eatkosherthere, but the ShalottenShammos, who had the air of a tall encyclopaedia, set his soul at rest on all points.
The day of Ebenezer Sugarman'sBar-mitzvahduly arrived. All his sins would henceforth be on his own head and everybody rejoiced. By the Friday evening so many presents had arrived—four breastpins, two rings, six pocket-knives, three sets ofMachzorimor Festival Prayer-books, and the like—that his father barred up the door very carefully and in the middle of the night, hearing a mouse scampering across the floor, woke up in a cold sweat and threw open the bedroom window and cried "Ho! Buglers!" But the "Buglers" made no sign of being scared, everything was still and nothing purloined, so Jonathan took a reprimand from his disturbed wife and curled himself up again in bed.
Sugarman did things in style and through the influence of a client the confirmation ceremony was celebrated in "Duke's Plaizer Shool." Ebenezer, who was tall and weak-eyed, with lank black hair, had a fine new black cloth suit and a beautiful silk praying-shawl with blue stripes, and a glittering watch-chain and a gold ring and a nice new Prayer-book with gilt edges, and all the boys under thirteen made up their minds to grow up and be responsible for their sins as quick as possible. Ebenezer walked up to the Reading Desk with a dauntless stride and intoned his Portion of the Law with no more tremor than was necessitated by the musical roulades, and then marched upstairs, as bold as brass, to his mother, who was sitting up in the gallery, and who gave him a loud smacking kiss that could be heard in the four corners of the synagogue, just as if she were a real lady.
Then there was theBar-mitzvahbreakfast, at which Ebenezer delivered an English sermon and a speech, both openly written by the ShalottenShammos, and everybody commended the boy's beautiful sentiments and the beautiful language in which they were couched. Mrs. Sugarman forgot all the trouble Ebenezer had given her in the face of his assurances of respect and affection and she wept copiously. Having only one eye she could not see what her Jonathan saw, and what was spoiling his enjoyment of Ebenezer's effusive gratitude to his dear parents for having trained him up in lofty principles.
It was chiefly male cronies who had been invited to breakfast, and the table had been decorated with biscuits and fruit and sweets not appertaining to the meal, but provided for the refreshment of the less-favored visitors—such as Mr. and Mrs. Hyams—who would be dropping in during the day. Now, nearly every one of the guests had brought a little boy with him, each of whom stood like a page behind his father's chair.
Before starting on their prandial fried fish, these trencher-men took from the dainties wherewith the ornamental plates were laden and gave thereof to their offspring. Now this was only right and proper, because it is the prerogative of children to "nash" on these occasions. But as the meal progressed, each father from time to time, while talking briskly to his neighbor, allowed his hand to stray mechanically into the plates and thence negligently backwards into the hand of his infant, who stuffed the treasure into his pockets. Sugarman fidgeted about uneasily; not one surreptitious seizure escaped him, and every one pricked him like a needle. Soon his soul grew punctured like a pin-cushion. The ShalottenShammoswas among the worst offenders, and he covered his back-handed proceedings with a ceaseless flow of complimentary conversation.
"Excellent fish, Mrs. Sugarman," he said, dexterously slipping some almonds behind his chair.
"What?" said Mrs. Sugarman, who was hard of hearing.
"First-class plaice!" shouted the ShalottenShammos, negligently conveying a bunch of raisins.
"So they ought to be," said Mrs. Sugarman in her thin tinkling accents, "they were all alive in the pan."
"Ah, did they twitter?" said Mr. Belcovitch, pricking up his ears.
"No," Bessie interposed. "What do you mean?"
"At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a fish made a noise in the pan one Friday."
"Well? and suppose?" said the ShalottenShammos, passing a fig to the rear, "the oil frizzles."
"Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily, "A real living noise. The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with it to the Rabbi. But he did not know what to do. Fortunately there was staying with him for the Sabbath a travelling Saint from the far city of Ridnik, aChasid, very skilful in plagues and purifications, and able to make clean a creeping thing by a hundred and fifty reasons. He directed the woman to wrap the fish in a shroud and give it honorable burial as quickly as possible. The funeral took place the same afternoon and a lot of people went in solemn procession to the woman's back garden and buried it with all seemly rites, and the knife with which it had been cut was buried in the same grave, having been defiled by contact with the demon. One man said it should be burned, but that was absurd because the demon would be only too glad to find itself in its native element, but to prevent Satan from rebuking the woman any more its mouth was stopped with furnace ashes. There was no time to obtain Palestine earth, which would have completely crushed the demon."
"The woman must have committed someAvirah" said Karlkammer.
"A true story!" said the ShalottenShammos, ironically. "That tale has been over Warsaw this twelvemonth."
"It occurred when I was a boy," affirmed Belcovitch indignantly. "I remember it quite well. Some people explained it favorably. Others were of opinion that the soul of the fishmonger had transmigrated into the fish, an opinion borne out by the death of the fishmonger a few days before. And the Rabbi is still alive to prove it—may his light continue to shine—though they write that he has lost his memory."
The ShalottenShammossceptically passed a pear to his son. Old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, came compassionately to the raconteur's assistance.
"Rabbi Solomon Maimon," he said, "has left it on record that he witnessed a similar funeral in Posen."
"It was well she buried it," said Karlkammer. "It was an atonement for a child, and saved its life."
The ShalottenShammoslaughed outright.
"Ah, laugh not," said Mrs. Belcovitch. "Or you might laugh with blood.It isn't for my own sins that I was born with ill-matched legs."
"I must laugh when I hear of God's fools burying fish anywhere but in their stomach," said the ShalottenShammos, transporting a Brazil nut to the rear, where it was quickly annexed by Solomon Ansell, who had sneaked in uninvited and ousted the other boy from his coign of vantage.
The conversation was becoming heated; Breckeloff turned the topic.
"My sister has married a man who can't play cards," he said lugubriously.
"How lucky for her," answered several voices.
"No, it's just her black luck," he rejoined. "For hewillplay."
There was a burst of laughter and then the company remembered thatBreckeloff was aBadchanor jester.
"Why, your sister's husband is a splendid player," said Sugarman with a flash of memory, and the company laughed afresh.
"Yes," said Breckeloff. "But he doesn't give me the chance of losing to him now, he's got such a stuck-upKotzon. He belongs to Duke's PlaizerShooland comes there very late, and when you ask him his birthplace he forgets he was aPullackand says becomes from 'behind Berlin.'"
These strokes of true satire occasioned more merriment and were worth a biscuit to Solomon Ansellvicethe son of the ShalottenShammos.
Among the inoffensive guests were old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, and young Joseph Strelitski, the student, who sat together. On the left of the somewhat seedy Strelitski pretty Bessie in blue silk presided over the coffee-pot. Nobody knew whence Bessie had stolen her good looks: probably some remote ancestress! Bessie was in every way the most agreeable member of the family, inheriting some of her father's brains, but wisely going for the rest of herself to that remote ancestress.
Gabriel Hamburg and Joseph Strelitski had both had relations with No. 1 Royal Street for some time, yet they had hardly exchanged a word and their meeting at this breakfast table found them as great strangers as though they had never seen each other. Strelitski came because he boarded with the Sugarmans, and Hamburg came because he sometimes consulted Jonathan Sugarman about a Talmudical passage. Sugarman was charged with the oral traditions of a chain of Rabbis, like an actor who knows all the "business" elaborated by his predecessors, and even a scientific scholar like Hamburg found him occasionally and fortuitously illuminating. Even so Karlkammer's red hair was a pillar of fire in the trackless wilderness of Hebrew literature. Gabriel Hamburg was a mighty savant who endured all things for the love of knowledge and the sake of six men in Europe who followed his work and profited by its results. Verily, fit audience though few. But such is the fate of great scholars whose readers are sown throughout the lands more sparsely than monarchs. One by one Hamburg grappled with the countless problems of Jewish literary history, settling dates and authors, disintegrating the Books of the Bible into their constituent parts, now inserting a gap of centuries between two halves of the same chapter, now flashing the light of new theories upon the development of Jewish theology. He lived at Royal Street and the British Museum, for he spent most of his time groping among the folios and manuscripts, and had no need for more than the little back bedroom, behind the Ansells, stuffed with mouldy books. Nobody (who was anybody) had heard of him in England, and he worked on, unencumbered by patronage or a full stomach. The Ghetto, itself, knew little of him, for there were but few with whom he found intercourse satisfying. He was not "orthodox" in belief though eminently so in practice—which is all the Ghetto demands—not from hypocrisy but from ancient prejudice. Scholarship had not shrivelled up his humanity, for he had a genial fund of humor and a gentle play of satire and loved his neighbors for their folly and narrowmindedness. Unlike Spinoza, too, he did not go out of his way to inform them of his heterodox views, content to comprehend the crowd rather than be misunderstood by it. He knew that the bigger soul includes the smaller and that the smaller can never circumscribe the bigger. Such money as was indispensable for the endowment of research he earned by copying texts and hunting out references for the numerous scholars and clergymen who infest the Museum and prevent the general reader from having elbow room. In person he was small and bent and snuffy. Superficially more intelligible, Joseph Strelitski was really a deeper mystery than Gabriel Hamburg. He was known to be a recent arrival on English soil, yet he spoke English fluently. He studied at Jews' College by day and was preparing for the examinations at the London University. None of the other students knew where he lived nor a bit of his past history. There was a vague idea afloat that he was an only child whose parents had been hounded to penury and death by Russian persecution, but who launched it nobody knew. His eyes were sad and earnest, a curl of raven hair fell forwards on his high brow; his clothing was shabby and darned in places by his own hand. Beyond accepting the gift of education at the hands of dead men he would take no help. On several distinct occasions, the magic name, Rothschild, was appealed to on his behalf by well-wishers, and through its avenue of almoners it responded with its eternal quenchless unquestioning generosity to students. But Joseph Strelitski always quietly sent back these bounties. He made enough to exist upon by touting for a cigar-firm in the evenings. In the streets he walked with tight-pursed lips, dreaming no one knew what.
And yet there were times when his tight-pursed lips unclenched themselves and he drew in great breaths even of Ghetto air with the huge contentment of one who has known suffocation. "One can breathe here," he seemed to be saying. The atmosphere, untainted by spies, venal officials, and jeering soldiery, seemed fresh and sweet. Here the ground was stable, not mined in all directions; no arbitrary ukase—veritable sword of Damocles—hung over the head and darkened the sunshine. In such a country, where faith was free and action untrammelled, mere living was an ecstasy when remembrance came over one, and so Joseph Strelitski sometimes threw back his head and breathed in liberty. The voluptuousness of the sensation cannot be known by born freemen.
When Joseph Strelitski's father was sent to Siberia, he took his nine-year old boy with him in infringement of the law which prohibits exiles from taking children above five years of age. The police authorities, however, raised no objection, and they permitted Joseph to attend the public school at Kansk, Yeniseisk province, where the Strelitski family resided. A year or so afterwards the Yeniseisk authorities accorded the family permission to reside in Yeniseisk, and Joseph, having given proof of brilliant abilities, was placed in the Yeniseisk gymnasium. For nigh three years the boy studied here, astonishing the gymnasium with his extraordinary ability, when suddenly the Government authorities ordered the boy to return at once "to the place where he was born." In vain the directors of the gymnasium, won over by the poor boy's talent and enthusiasm for study, petitioned the Government. The Yeniseisk authorities were again ordered to expel him. No respite was granted and the thirteen-year old lad was sent to Sokolk in the Government of Grodno at the other extreme of European Russia, where he was quite alone in the world. Before he was sixteen, he escaped to England, his soul branded by terrible memories, and steeled by solitude to a stern strength.
At Sugarman's he spoke little and then mainly with the father on scholastic points. After meals he retired quickly to his business or his sleeping-den, which was across the road. Bessie loved Daniel Hyams, but she was a woman and Strelitski's neutrality piqued her. Even to-day it is possible he might not have spoken to Gabriel Hamburg if his other neighbor had not been Bessie. Gabriel Hamburg was glad to talk to the youth, the outlines of whose English history were known to him. Strelitski seemed to expand under the sunshine of a congenial spirit; he answered Hamburg's sympathetic inquiries about his work without reluctance and even made some remarks on his own initiative.
And as they spoke, an undercurrent of pensive thought was flowing in the old scholar's soul and his tones grew tenderer and tenderer. The echoes of Ebenezer's effusive speech were in his ears and the artificial notes rang strangely genuine. All round him sat happy fathers of happy children, men who warmed their hands at the home-fire of life, men who lived while he was thinking. Yet he, too, had had his chance far back in the dim and dusty years, his chance of love and money with it. He had let it slip away for poverty and learning, and only six men in Europe cared whether he lived or died. The sense of his own loneliness smote him with a sudden aching desolation. His gaze grew humid; the face of the young student was covered with a veil of mist and seemed to shine with the radiance of an unstained soul. If he had been as other men he might have had such a son. At this moment Gabriel Hamburg was speaking of paragoge in Hebrew grammar, but his voice faltered and in imagination he was laying hands of paternal benediction on Joseph Strelitski's head. Swayed by an overmastering impulse he burst out at last.
"An idea strikes me!"
Strelitski looked up in silent interrogation at the old man's agitated face.
"You live by yourself. I live by myself. We are both students. Why should we not live together as students, too?"
A swift wave of surprise traversed Strelitski's face, and his eyes grew soft. For an instant the one solitary soul visibly yearned towards the other; he hesitated.
"Do not think I am too old," said the great scholar, trembling all over. "I know it is the young who chum together, but still I am a student. And you shall see how lively and cheerful I will be." He forced a smile that hovered on tears. "We shall be two rackety young students, every night raising a thousand devils.Gaudeamus igitur." He began to hum in his cracked hoarse voice theBurschen-liedof his early days at the Berlin Gymnasium.
But Strelitski's face had grown dusky with a gradual flush and a deepening gloom; his black eyebrows were knit and his lips set together and his eyes full of sullen ire. He suspected a snare to assist him.
He shook his head. "Thank you," he said slowly. "But I prefer to live alone."
And he turned and spoke to the astonished Bessie, and so the two strange lonely vessels that had hailed each other across the darkness drifted away and apart for ever in the waste of waters.
But Jonathan Sugarman's eye was on more tragic episodes. Gradually the plates emptied, for the guests openly followed up the more substantial elements of the repast by dessert, more devastating even than the rear manoeuvres. At last there was nothing but an aching china blank. The men looked round the table for something else to "nash," but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the greatBar-mitzvahcake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the ShalottenShammosshook off his awe and stretched out his hand leisurely towards the cake, as became the master of ceremonies. But when Sugarman theShadchanbeheld his hand moving like a creeping flame forward, he sprang towards him, as the tigress springs when the hunter threatens her cub. And speaking no word he snatched the great cake from under the hand of the spoiler and tucked it under his arm, in the place where he carried Nehemiah, and sped therewith from the room. Then consternation fell upon the scene till Solomon Ansell, crawling on hands and knees in search of windfalls, discovered a basket of apples stored under the centre of the table, and the ShalottenShammos'sson told his father thereof ere Solomon could do more than secure a few for his brother and sisters. And the ShalottenShammoslaughed joyously, "Apples," and dived under the table, and his long form reached to the other side and beyond, and graybearded men echoed the joyous cry and scrambled on the ground like schoolboys.
"Leolom tikkach—always take," quoted theBadchangleefully.
When Sugarman returned, radiant, he found his absence had been fatal.
"Piece of fool! Two-eyed lump of flesh," said Mrs. Sugarman in a loud whisper. "Flying out of the room as if thou hadst the ague."
"Shall I sit still like thee while our home is eaten up around us?" Sugarman whispered back. "Couldst thou not look to the apples? Plaster image! Leaden fool! See, they have emptied the basket, too."
"Well, dost thou expect luck and blessing to crawl into it? Even five shillings' worth ofnashcannot last for ever. May ten ammunition wagons of black curses be discharged on thee!" replied Mrs. Sugarman, her one eye shooting fire.
This was the last straw of insult added to injury. Sugarman was exasperated beyond endurance. He forgot that he had a wider audience than his wife; he lost all control of himself, and cried aloud in a frenzy of rage, "What a pity thou hadst not a fourth uncle!"
Mrs. Sugarman collapsed, speechless.
"A greedy lot, marm," Sugarman reported to Mrs. Hyams on the Monday. "I was very glad you and your people didn't come; dere was noding left except de prospectuses of the Hamburg lotter_ee_ vich I left laying all about for de guests to take. BeingShabbosI could not give dem out."
"We were sorry not to come, but neither Mr. Hyams nor myself felt well," said the white-haired broken-down old woman with her painfully slow enunciation. Her English words rarely went beyond two syllables.
"Ah!" said Sugarman. "But I've come to give you back your corkscrew."
"Why, it's broken," said Mrs. Hyams, as she took it.
"So it is, marm," he admitted readily. "But if you taink dat I ought to pay for de damage you're mistaken. If you lend me your cat"—here he began to make the argumentative movement with his thumb, as though scooping out imaginarykoshercheese with it; "If you lend me your cat to kill my rat," his tones took on the strange Talmudic singsong—"and my rat instead kills your cat, then it is the fault of your cat and not the fault of my rat."
Poor Mrs. Hyams could not meet this argument. If Mendel had been at home, he might have found a counter-analogy. As it was, Sugarman re-tucked Nehemiah under his arm and departed triumphant, almost consoled for the raid on his provisions by the thought of money saved. In the street he met the ShalottenShammos.
"Blessed art thou who comest," said the giant, in Hebrew; then relapsing into Yiddish he cried: "I've been wanting to see you. What did you mean by telling your wife you were sorry she had not a fourth uncle?"
"Soorka knew what I meant," said Sugarman with a little croak of victory, "I have told her the story before. When the AlmightyShadchanwas making marriages in Heaven, before we were yet born, the name of my wife was coupled with my own. The spirit of her eldest uncle hearing this flew up to the Angel who made the proclamation and said: 'Angel! thou art making a mistake. The man of whom thou makest mention will be of a lower status than this future niece of mine.' Said the Angel; 'Sh! It is all right. She will halt on one leg.' Came then the spirit of her second uncle and said: 'Angel, what blazonest thou? A niece of mine marry a man of such family?' Says the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will be blind in one eye.' Came the spirit of her third uncle and said: 'Angel, hast thou not erred? Surely thou canst not mean to marry my future niece into such a humble family.' Said the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will be deaf in one ear.' Now, do you see? If she had only had a fourth uncle, she would have been dumb into the bargain; there is only one mouth and my life would have been a happy one. Before I told Soorka that history she used to throw up her better breeding and finer family to me. Even in public she would shed my blood. Now she does not do it even in private."
Sugarman theShadchanwinked, readjusted Nehemiah and went his way.
It was a cold, bleak Sunday afternoon, and the Ansells were spending it as usual. Little Sarah was with Mrs. Simons, Rachel had gone to Victoria Park with a party of school-mates, the grandmother was asleep on the bed, covered with one of her son's old coats (for there was no fire in the grate), with her pious vade mecum in her hand; Esther had prepared her lessons and was reading a little brown book at Dutch Debby's, not being able to forget theLondon Journalsufficiently; Solomon had not prepared his and was playing "rounder" in the street, Isaac being permitted to "feed" the strikers, in return for a prospective occupation of his new bed; Moses Ansell was atShool, listening to aHespedor funeral oration at the German Synagogue, preached by Reb Shemuel over one of the lights of the Ghetto, prematurely gone out—no other than the consumptiveMaggid, who had departed suddenly for a less fashionable place than Bournemouth. "He has fallen," said the Reb, "not laden with age, nor sighing for release because the grasshopper was a burden. But He who holds the keys said: 'Thou hast done thy share of the work; it is not thine to complete it. It was in thy heart to serve Me, from Me thou shalt receive thy reward.'"
And all the perspiring crowd in the black-draped hall shook with grief, and thousands of working men followed the body, weeping, to the grave, walking all the way to the great cemetery in Bow.
A slim, black-haired, handsome lad of about twelve, dressed in a neat black suit, with a shining white Eton collar, stumbled up the dark stairs of No. 1 Royal Street, with an air of unfamiliarity and disgust. At Dutch Debby's door he was delayed by a brief altercation with Bobby. He burst open the door of the Ansell apartment without knocking, though he took off his hat involuntarily as he entered Then he stood still with an air of disappointment. The room seemed empty.
"What dost thou want, Esther?" murmured the grandmother rousing herself sleepily.
The boy looked towards the bed with a start He could not make out what the grandmother was saying. It was four years since he had heard Yiddish spoken, and he had almost forgotten the existence of the dialect The room, too, seemed chill and alien.—so unspeakably poverty-stricken.
"Oh, how are you, grandmother?" he said, going up to her and kissing her perfunctorily. "Where's everybody?"
"Art thou Benjamin?" said the grandmother, her stern, wrinkled face shadowed with surprise and doubt.
Benjamin guessed what she was asking and nodded.
"But how richly they have dressed thee! Alas, I suppose they have taken away thy Judaism instead. For four whole years—is it not—thou hast been with English folk. Woe! Woe! If thy father had married a pious woman, she would have been living still and thou wouldst have been able to live happily in our midst instead of being exiled among strangers, who feed thy body and starve thy soul. If thy father had left me in Poland, I should have died happy and my old eyes would never have seen the sorrow. Unbutton thy waistcoat, let me see if thou wearest the 'four-corners' at least." Of this harangue, poured forth at the rate natural to thoughts running ever in the same groove, Benjamin understood but a word here and there. For four years he had read and read and read English books, absorbed himself in English composition, heard nothing but English spoken about him. Nay, he had even deliberately put the jargon out of his mind at the commencement as something degrading and humiliating. Now it struck vague notes of old outgrown associations but called up no definite images.
"Where's Esther?" he said.
"Esther," grumbled the grandmother, catching the name. "Esther is with Dutch Debby. She's always with her. Dutch Debby pretends to love her like a mother—and why? Because she wants tobeher mother. She aims at marrying my Moses. But not for us. This time we shall marry the woman I select. No person like that who knows as much about Judaism as the cow of Sunday, nor like Mrs. Simons, who coddles our little Sarah because she thinks my Moses will have her. It's plain as the eye in her head what she wants. But the Widow Finkelstein is the woman we're going to marry. She is a true Jewess, shuts up her shop the momentShabboscomes in, not works right into the Sabbath like so many, and goes toShooleven on Friday nights. Look how she brought up her Avromkely, who intoned the whole Portion of the Law and the Prophets inShoolbefore he was six years old. Besides she has money and has cast eyes upon him."
The boy, seeing conversation was hopeless, murmured something inarticulate and ran down the stairs to find some traces of the intelligible members of his family. Happily Bobby, remembering their former altercation, and determining to have the last word, barred Benjamin's path with such pertinacity that Esther came out to quiet him and leapt into her brother's arms with a great cry of joy, dropping the book she held full on Bobby's nose.
"O Benjy—Is it really you? Oh, I am so glad. I am so glad. I knew you would come some day. O Benjy! Bobby, you bad dog, this is Benjy, my brother. Debby, I'm going upstairs. Benjamin's come back. Benjamin's come back."
"All right, dear," Debby called out. "Let me have a look at him soon.Send me in Bobby if you're going away." The words ended in a cough.
Esther hurriedly drove in Bobby, and then half led, half dragged Benjamin upstairs. The grandmother had fallen asleep again and was snoring peacefully.
"Speak low, Benjy," said Esther. "Grandmother's asleep."
"All right, Esther. I don't want to wake her, I'm sure. I was up here just now, and couldn't make out a word she was jabbering."
"I know. She's losing all her teeth, poor thing."
"No, it, isn't that. She speaks that beastly Yiddish—I made sure she'd have learned English by this time. I hopeyoudon't speak it, Esther."
"I must, Benjy. You see father and grandmother never speak anything else at home, and only know a few words of English. But I don't let the children speak it except to them. You should hear little Sarah speak English. It's beautiful. Only when she cries she says 'Woe is me' in Yiddish. I have had to slap her for it—but that makes her cry 'Woe is me' all the more. Oh, how nice you look, Benjy, with your white collar, just like the pictures of little Lord Launceston in the Fourth Standard Reader. I wish I could show you to the girls! Oh, my, what'll Solomon say when he sees you! He's always wearing his corduroys away at the knees."
"But where is everybody? And why is there no fire?" said Benjamin impatiently. "It's beastly cold."
"Father hopes to get a bread, coal and meat ticket to-morrow, dear."
"Well, this is a pretty welcome for a fellow!" grumbled Benjamin.
"I'm so sorry, Benjy! If I'd only known you were coming I might have borrowed some coals from Mrs. Belcovitch. But just stamp your feet a little if they freeze. No, do it outside the door; grandmother's asleep. Why didn't you write to me you were coming?"
"I didn't know. Old Four-Eyes—that's one of our teachers—was going up to London this afternoon, and he wanted a boy to carry some parcels, and as I'm the best boy in my class he let me come. He let me run up and see you all, and I'm to meet him at London Bridge Station at seven o'clock. You're not much altered, Esther."
"Ain't I?" she said, with a little pathetic smile. "Ain't I bigger?"
"Not four years bigger. For a moment I could fancy I'd never been away.How the years slip by! I shall beBarmitzvahsoon."
"Yes, and now I've got you again I've so much to say I don't know where to begin. That time father went to see you I couldn't get much out of him about you, and your own letters have been so few."
"A letter costs a penny, Esther. Where am I to get pennies from?"
"I know, dear. I know you would have liked to write. But now you shall tell me everything. Have you missed us very much?"
"No, I don't think so," said Benjamin.
"Oh, not at all?" asked Esther in disappointed tones.
"Yes, I missedyou, Esther, at first," he said, soothingly. "But there's such a lot to do and to think about. It's a new life."
"And have you been happy, Benjy?"
"Oh yes. Quite. Just think! Regular meals, with oranges and sweets and entertainments every now and then, a bed all to yourself, good fires, a mansion with a noble staircase and hall, a field to play in, with balls and toys—"
"A field!" echoed Esther. "Why it must be like going to Greenwich every day."
"Oh, better than Greenwich where they take you girls for a measly day's holiday once a year."
"Better than the Crystal Palace, where they take the boys?"
"Why, the Crystal Palace is quite near. We can see the fire-works everyThursday night in the season."
Esther's eyes opened wider. "And have you been inside?"
"Lots of times."
"Do you remember the time you didn't go?" Esther said softly.
"A fellow doesn't forget that sort of thing," he grumbled. "I so wanted to go—I had heard such a lot about it from the boys who had been. When the day of the excursion came myShabboscoat was in pawn, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Esther, her eyes growing humid. "I was so sorry for you, dear. You didn't want to go in your corduroy coat and let the boys know you didn't have a best coat. It was quite right, Benjy."
"I remember mother gave me a treat instead," said Benjamin with a comic grimace. "She took me round to Zachariah Square and let me play there while she was scrubbing Malka's floor. I think Milly gave me a penny, and I remember Leah let me take a couple of licks from a glass of ice cream she was eating on the Ruins. It was a hot day—I shall never forget that ice cream. But fancy parents pawning a chap's only decent coat." He smoothed his well-brushed jacket complacently.
"Yes, but don't you remember mother took it out the very next morning before school with the money she earnt at Malka's."
"But what was the use of that? I put it on of course when I went to school and told the teacher I was ill the day before, just to show the boys I was telling the truth. But it was too late to take me to the Palace."
"Ah, but it came in handy—don't you remember, Benjy, how one of theGreat Ladies died suddenly the next week!"
"Oh yes! Yoicks! Tallyho!" cried Benjamin, with sudden excitement. "We went down on hired omnibuses to the cemetery ever so far into the country, six of the best boys in each class, and I was on the box seat next to the driver, and I thought of the old mail-coach days and looked out for highwaymen. We stood along the path in the cemetery and the sun was shining and the grass was so green and there were such lovely flowers on the coffin when it came past with the gentlemen crying behind it and then we had lemonade and cakes on the way back. Oh, it was just beautiful! I went to two other funerals after that, but that was the one I enjoyed most. Yes, that coat did come in useful after all for a day in the country."
Benjamin evidently did not think of his own mother's interment as a funeral. Esther did and she changed the subject quickly.
"Well, tell me more about your place."
"Well, it's like going to funerals every day. It's all country all round about, with trees and flowers and birds. Why, I've helped to make hay in the autumn."
Esther drew a sigh of ecstasy. "It's like a book," she said.
"Books!" he said. "We've got hundreds and hundreds, a whole library—Dickens, Mayne Reid, George Eliot, Captain Marryat, Thackeray—I've read them all."
"Oh, Benjy!" said Esther, clasping her hands in admiration, both of the library and her brother. "I wish I were you."
"Well, you could be me easily enough."
"How?" said Esther, eagerly.
"Why, we have a girls' department, too. You're an orphan as much as me.You get father to enter you as a candidate."
"Oh, how could I, Benjy?" said Esther, her face falling. "What would become of Solomon and Ikey and little Sarah?"
"They've got a father, haven't they? and a grandmother?"
"Father can't do washing and cooking, you silly boy! And grandmother's too old."
"Well, I call it a beastly shame. Why can't father earn a living and give out the washing? He never has a penny to bless himself with."
"It isn't his fault, Benjy. He tries hard. I'm sure he often grieves that he's so poor that he can't afford the railway fare to visit you on visiting days. That time he did go he only got the money by selling a work-box I had for a prize. But he often speaks about you."
"Well, I don't grumble at his not coming," said Benjamin. "I forgive him that because you know he's not very presentable, is he, Esther?"
Esther was silent. "Oh, well, everybody knows he's poor. They don't expect father to be a gentleman."
"Yes, but he might look decent. Does he still wear those two beastly little curls at the side of his head? Oh, I did hate it when I was at school here, and he used to come to see the master about something. Some of the boys had such respectable fathers, it was quite a pleasure to see them come in and overawe the teacher. Mother used to be as bad, coming in with a shawl over her head."
"Yes, Benjy, but she used to bring us in bread and butter when there had been none in the house at breakfast-time. Don't you remember, Benjy?"
"Oh, yes, I remember. We've been through some beastly bad times, haven't we, Esther? All I say is you wouldn't like father coming in before all the girls in your class, would you, now?"
Esther blushed. "There is no occasion for him to come," she said evasively.
"Well, I know what I shall do!" said Benjamin decisively; "I'm going to be a very rich man—"
"Are you, Benjy?" inquired Esther.
"Yes, of course. I'm going to write books—like Dickens and those fellows. Dickens made a pile of money, just by writing down plain every-day things going on around."
"But you can't write!"
Benjamin laughed a superior laugh, "Oh, can't I? What aboutOur Own, eh?"
"What's that?"
"That's our journal. I edit it. Didn't I tell you about it? Yes, I'm running a story through it, called 'The Soldier's Bride,' all about life in Afghanistan."
"Oh, where could I get a number?"
"You can't get a number. It ain't printed, stupid. It's all copied by hand, and we've only got a few copies. If you came down, you could see it."
"Yes, but I can't come down," said Esther, with tears in her eyes.
"Well, never mind. You'll see it some day. Well, what was I telling you? Oh, yes! About my prospects. You see, I'm going in for a scholarship in a few months, and everybody says I shall get it. Then, perhaps I might go to a higher school, perhaps to Oxford or Cambridge!"
"And row in the boat-race!" said Esther, flushing with excitement.
"No, bother the boat-race. I'm going in for Latin and Greek. I've begun to learn French already. So I shall know three foreign languages."
"Four!" said Esther, "you forget Hebrew!"
"Oh, of course, Hebrew. I don't reckon Hebrew. Everybody knows Hebrew. Hebrew's no good to any one. What I want is something that'll get me on in the world and enable me to write my books."
"But Dickens—did he know Latin or Greek?" asked Esther.
"No, he didn't," said Benjamin proudly. "That's just where I shall have the pull of him. Well, when I've got rich I shall buy father a new suit of clothes and a high hat—itisso beastly cold here, Esther, just feel my hands, like ice!—and I shall make him live with grandmother in a decent room, and give him an allowance so that he can study beastly big books all day long—does he still take a week to read a page? And Sarah and Isaac and Rachel shall go to a proper boarding school, and Solomon—how old will he be then?"
Esther looked puzzled. "Oh, but suppose it takes you ten years getting famous! Solomon will be nearly twenty."
"It can't take me ten years. But never mind! We shall see what is to be done with Solomon when the time comes. As for you—"
"Well, Benjy," she said, for his imagination was breaking down.
"I'll give you a dowry and you'll get married. See!" he concluded triumphantly.
"Oh, but suppose I shan't want to get married?"
"Nonsense—every girl wants to get married. I overheard Old Four-Eyes say all the teachers in the girls' department were dying to marry him. I've got several sweethearts already, and I dare say you have." He looked at her quizzingly.
"No, dear," she said earnestly. "There's only Levi Jacobs, Reb Shemuel's son, who's been coming round sometimes to play with Solomon, and brings me almond-rock. But I don't care for him—at least not in that way. Besides, he's quite above us."
"Oh, is he? Wait till I write my novels!"
"I wish you'd write them now. Because then I should have something to read—Oh!"
"What's the matter?"
"I've lost my book. What have I done with my little brown book?"
"Didn't you drop it on that beastly dog?"
"Oh, did I? People'll tread on it on the stairs. Oh dear! I'll run down and get it. But don't call Bobby beastly, please."
"Why not? Dogs are beasts, aren't they?"
Esther puzzled over the retort as she flew downstairs, but could find no reply. She found the book, however, and that consoled her.
"What have you got hold of?" replied Benjamin, when she returned.
"Oh, nothing! It wouldn't interest you."
"All books interest me," announced Benjamin with dignity.
Esther reluctantly gave him the book. He turned over the pages carelessly, then his face grew serious and astonished.
"Esther!" he said, "how did you come by this?"
"One of the girls gave it me in exchange for a stick of slate pencil. She said she got it from the missionaries—she went to their night-school for a lark and they gave her it and a pair of boots as well."
"And you have been reading it?"
"Yes, Benjy," said Esther meekly.
"You naughty girl! Don't you know the New Testament is a wicked book?Look here! There's the word 'Christ' on nearly every page, and the word'Jesus' on every other. And you haven't even scratched them out! Oh, ifany one was to catch you reading this book!"
"I don't read it in school hours," said the little girl deprecatingly.
"But you have no business to read it at all!"
"Why not?" she said doggedly. "I like it. It seems just as interesting as the Old Testament, and there are more miracles to the page.''
"You wicked girl!" said her brother, overwhelmed by her audacity."Surely you know that all these miracles were false?"
"Why were they false?" persisted Esther.
"Because miracles left off after the Old Testament! There are no miracles now-a-days, are there?"
"No," admitted Esther.
"Well, then," he said triumphantly, "if miracles had gone overlapping into New Testament times we might just as well expect to have them now."
"But why shouldn't we have them now?"
"Esther, I'm surprised at you. I should like to set Old Four-Eyes on to you. He'd soon tell you why. Religion all happened in the past. God couldn't be always talking to His creatures."
"I wish I'd lived in the past, when Religion was happening," said Esther ruefully. "But why do Christians all reverence this book? I'm sure there are many more millions of them than of Jews!"
"Of course there are, Esther. Good things are scarce. We are so few because we are God's chosen people."
"But why do I feel good when I read what Jesus said?"
"Because you are so bad," he answered, in a shocked tone. "Here, give me the book, I'll burn it."
"No, no!" said Esther. "Besides there's no fire."
"No, hang it," he said, rubbing his hands. "Well, it'll never do if you have to fall back on this sort of thing. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll send youOur Own."
"Oh, will you, Benjy? That is good of you," she said joyfully, and was kissing him when Solomon and Isaac came romping in and woke up the grandmother.
"How are you, Solomon?" said Benjamin. "How are you, my little man," he added, patting Isaac on his curly head. Solomon was overawed for a moment. Then he said, "Hullo, Benjy, have you got any spare buttons?"
But Isaac was utterly ignorant who the stranger could be and hung back with his finger in his mouth.
"That's your brother Benjamin, Ikey," said Solomon.
"Don't want no more brovers," said Ikey.
"Oh, but I was here before you," said Benjamin laughing.
"Does oor birfday come before mine, then?"
"Yes, if I remember."
Isaac looked tauntingly at the door. "See!" he cried to the absent Sarah. Then turning graciously to Benjamin he said, "I thant kiss oo, but I'll lat oo teep in my new bed."
"But youmustkiss him," said Esther, and saw that he did it before she left the room to fetch little Sarah from Mrs. Simons.
When she came back Solomon was letting Benjamin inspect his Plevna peep-show without charge and Moses Ansell was back, too. His eyes were red with weeping, but that was on account of theMaggid. His nose was blue with the chill of the cemetery.
"He was a great man." he was saying to the grandmother. "He could lecture for four hours together on any text and he would always manage to get back to the text before the end. Such exegetics, such homiletics! He was greater than the Emperor of Russia. Woe! Woe!"
"Woe! Woe!" echoed the grandmother. "If women were allowed to go tofunerals, I would gladly have, followed him. Why did he come to England?In Poland he would still have been alive. And why did I come to England?Woe! Woe'"
Her head dropped back on the pillow and her sighs passed gently into snores. Moses turned again to his eldest born, feeling that he was secondary in importance only to theMaggid, and proud at heart of his genteel English appearance.
"Well, you'll soon beBar-mitzvah, Benjamin." he said, with clumsy geniality blent with respect, as he patted his boy's cheeks with his discolored fingers.
Benjamin caught the last two words and nodded his head.
"And then you'll be coming back to us. I suppose they will apprentice you to something."
"What does he say, Esther?" asked Benjamin, impatiently.
Esther interpreted.
"Apprentice me to something!" he repeated, disgusted. "Father's ideas are so beastly humble. He would like everybody to dance on him. Why he'd be content to see me a cigar-maker or a presser. Tell him I'm not coming home, that I'm going to win a scholarship and to go to the University."
Moses's eyes dilated with pride. "Ah, you will become a Rav," he said, and lifted up his boy's chin and looked lovingly into the handsome face.
"What's that about a Rav, Esther?" said Benjamin. "Does he want me to become a Rabbi—Ugh! Tell him I'm going to write books."
"My blessed boy! A good commentary on the Song of Songs is much needed.Perhaps you will begin by writing that."
"Oh, it's no use talking to him, Esther. Let him be. Why can't he speakEnglish?"
"He can—but you'd understand even less," said Esther with a sad smile.
"Well, all I say is it's a beastly disgrace. Look at the years he's been in England—just as long as we have." Then the humor of the remark dawned upon him and he laughed. "I suppose he's out of work, as usual," he added.
Moses's ears pricked up at the syllables "out-of-work," which to him was a single word of baneful meaning.
"Yes," he said in Yiddish. "But if I only had a few pounds to start withI could work up a splendid business."
"Wait! He shall have a business," said Benjamin when Esther interpreted.
"Don't listen to him," said Esther. "The Board of Guardians has started him again and again. But he likes to think he is a man of business."
Meantime Isaac had been busy explaining Benjamin to Sarah, and pointing out the remarkable confirmation of his own views as to birthdays. This will account for Esther's next remark being, "Now, dears, no fighting to-day. We must celebrate Benjy's return. We ought to kill a fatted calf—like the man in the Bible."
"What are you talking about, Esther?" said Benjamin suspiciously.
"I'm so sorry, nothing, only foolishness," said Esther. "We really must do something to make a holiday of the occasion. Oh, I know; we'll have tea before you go, instead of waiting till supper-time. Perhaps Rachel'll be back from the Park. You haven't seen her yet."
"No, I can't stay," said Benjy. "It'll take me three-quarters of an hour getting to the station. And you've got no fire to make tea with either."
"Nonsense, Benjy. You seem to have forgotten everything; we've got a loaf and a penn'uth of tea in the cupboard. Solomon, fetch a farthing's worth of boiling water from the Widow Finkelstein."
At the words "widow Finkelstein," the grandmother awoke and sat up.
"No, I'm too tired," said Solomon. "Isaac can go."
"No," said Isaac. "Let Estie go."
Esther took a jug and went to the door.
"Méshe," said the grandmother. "Go thou to the Widow Finkelstein."
"But Esther can go," said Moses.
"Yes, I'm going," said Esther.
"Méshe!" repeated the Bube inexorably. "Go thou to the WidowFinkelstein."
Moses went.
"Have you said the afternoon prayer, boys?" the old woman asked.
"Yes," said Solomon. "While you were asleep."
"Oh-h-h!" said Esther under her breath. And she looked reproachfully atSolomon.
"Well, didn't you say we must make a holiday to-day?" he whispered back.
"Oh, these English Jews!" said Melchitsedek Pinchas, in German.
"What have they done to you now?" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, inYiddish.
The two languages are relatives and often speak as they pass by.
"I have presented my book to every one of them, but they have paid me scarce enough to purchase poison for them all," said the little poet scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply beneath the tense bronzed skin. The black hair was tangled and unkempt and the beard untrimmed, the eyes darted venom. "One of them—Gideon, M.P., the stockbroker, engaged me to teach his son for hisBar-mitzvah, But the boy is so stupid! So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow up to be a Rabbi. I teach him his Portion—I sing the words to him with a most beautiful voice, but he has as much ear as soul. Then I write him a speech—a wonderful speech for him to make to his parents and the company at the breakfast, and in it, after he thanks them for their kindness, I make him say how, with the blessing of the Almighty, he will grow up to be a good Jew, and munificently support Hebrew literature and learned men like his revered teacher, Melchitsedek Pinchas. And he shows it to his father, and his father says it is not written in good English, and that another scholar has already written him a speech. Good English! Gideon has as much knowledge or style as the Rev. Elkan Benjamin of decency. Ah, I will shoot them both. I know I do not speak English like a native—but what language under the sun is there I cannot write? French, German, Spanish, Arabic—they flow from my pen like honey from a rod. As for Hebrew, you know, Guedalyah, I and you are the only two men in England who can write Holy Language grammatically. And yet these miserable stockbrokers, Men-of-the-Earth, they dare to say I cannot write English, and they have given me the sack. I, who was teaching the boy true Judaism and the value of Hebrew literature."
"What! They didn't let you finish teaching the boy his Portion because you couldn't write English?"
"No; they had another pretext—one of the servant girls said I wanted to kiss her—lies and falsehood. I was kissing my finger after kissing theMezuzah, and the stupid abomination thought I was kissing my hand to her. It sees itself that they don't kiss theMezuzahsoften in that house—the impious crew. And what will be now? The stupid boy will go home to breakfast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the stupid speech written by the fool of an Englishman, and the ladies will weep. But where will be the Judaism in all this? Who will vaccinate him against free-thinking as I would have done? Who will infuse into him the true patriotic fervor, the love of his race, the love of Zion, the land of his fathers?"
"Ah, you are verily a man after my own heart!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, overswept by a wave of admiration. "Why should you not come with me to myBeth-Hamidrashto-night, to the meeting for the foundation of the Holy Land League? That cauliflower will be four-pence, mum."
"Ah, what is that?" said Pinchas.
"I have an idea; a score of us meet to-night to discuss it."
"Ah, yes! You have always ideas. You are a sage and a saint, Guedalyah. TheBeth-Hamidrashwhich you have established is the only centre of real orthodoxy and Jewish literature in London. The ideas you expound in the Jewish papers for the amelioration of the lot of our poor brethren are most statesmanlike. But these donkey-head English rich people—what help can you expect from them? They do not even understand your plans. They have only sympathy with needs of the stomach."
"You are right! You are right, Pinchas!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, eagerly. He was a tall, loosely-built man, with a pasty complexion capable of shining with enthusiasm. He was dressed shabbily, and in the intervals of selling cabbages projected the regeneration of Judah.
"That is just what is beginning to dawn upon me, Pinchas," he went on. "Our rich people give plenty away in charity; they have good hearts but not Jewish hearts. As the verse says,—A bundle of rhubarb and two pounds of Brussels sprouts and threepence halfpenny change. Thank you. Much obliged.—Now I have bethought myself why should we not work out our own salvation? It is the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, whose souls pant after the Land of Israel as the hart after the water-brooks. Let us help ourselves. Let us put our hands in our own pockets. With ourGroschenlet us rebuild Jerusalem and our Holy Temple. We will collect a fund slowly but surely—from all parts of the East End and the provinces the pious will give. With the first fruits we will send out a little party of persecuted Jews to Palestine; and then another; and another. The movement will grow like a sliding snow-ball that becomes an avalanche."
"Yes, then the rich will come to you," said Pinchas, intensely excited. "Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will come, I will make a mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, have been touched with the burning coal. I will inspire all hearts to start the movement at once. I will write its Marseillaise this very night, bedewing my couch with a poet's tears. We shall no longer be dumb—we shall roar like the lions of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from the four corners of the earth—yea, I shall be the Messiah himself," said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting to puff at his cigar.
"I rejoice to see you so ardent; but mention not the word Messiah, for I fear some of our friends will take alarm and say that these are not Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, King of Magog, nor any of the portents have yet appeared. Kidneys or regents, my child?"
"Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not myself who will help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall from heaven? Who knows but I am the Messiah? Was I not born on the ninth of Ab?"
"Hush, hush!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. "Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to Palestine."
"Yes, yes," said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle it. "But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the hands of the Jews—the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish state, a President who is equally accomplished with the sword and the pen,—the whole campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike."
"Truly we wish that," said the greengrocer cautiously. "But to-night it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society."
"Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right—people about here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. I will come beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, and you shall see what I will write for theMizpehand theArbeiter-freund. You know all these papers jump at me—their readers are the class to which you appeal—in them will I write my burning verses and leaders advocating the cause. I shall be your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How blessed that I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy Land—the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. And yet I will not go rashly—slow and sure—my plan is to collect small amounts from the poor to start by sending one family at a time to Palestine. That is how we must do it. How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You agree?"
"Yes, yes. That is also my opinion."
"You see I am not a Napoleon only in great ideas. I understand detail, though as a poet I abhor it. Ah, the Jew is king of the world. He alone conceives great ideas and executes them by petty means. The heathen are so stupid, so stupid! Yes, you shall see at supper how practically I will draw up the scheme. And then I will show you, too, what I have written about Gideon, M.P., the dog of a stockbroker—a satirical poem have I written about him, in Hebrew—an acrostic, with his name for the mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in theMizpehto-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it—not it me."
"But they don't see theMizpehand couldn't read it if they did."
"No matter. I send it abroad—I have friends, great Rabbis, great scholars, everywhere, who send me their learned manuscripts, their commentaries, their ideas, for revision and improvement. Let the Anglo-Jewish community hug itself in its stupid prosperity—but I will make it the laughing-stock of Europe and Asia. Then some day it will find out its mistake; it will not have ministers like the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who keeps four mistresses, it will depose the lump of flesh who reigns over it and it will seize the hem of my coat and beseech me to be its Rabbi."
"We should have a more orthodox Chief Rabbi, certainly," admittedGuedalyah.
"Orthodox? Then and only then shall we have true Judaism in London and a burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of the much overpraised Spanish School, none of whom had that true lyrical gift which is like the carol of the bird in the pairing season. O why have I not the bird's privileges as well as its gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh the stupid Rabbis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says: The Law of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes—marriage, divorce, all is regulated with the height of wisdom. Why must we adopt the stupid customs of the heathen? At present I have not even one mate—but I love—ah Guedalyah! I love! The women are so beautiful. You love the women, hey?"
"I love my Rivkah," said Guedalyah. "A penny on each ginger-beer bottle."
"Yes, but why haven'tIgot a wife? Eh?" demanded the little poet fiercely, his black eyes glittering. "I am a fine tall well-built good-looking man. In Palestine and on the Continent all the girls would go about sighing and casting sheep's eyes at me, for there the Jews love poetry and literature. But here! I can go into a room with a maiden in it and she makes herself unconscious of my presence. There is Reb Shemuel's daughter—a fine beautiful virgin. I kiss her hand—and it is ice to my lips. Ah, if I only had money! And money I should have, if these English Jews were not so stupid and if they elected me Chief Rabbi. Then I would marry—one, two, three maidens."
"Talk not such foolishness," said Guedalyah, laughing, for he thought the poet jested. Pinchas saw his enthusiasm had carried him too far, but his tongue was the most reckless of organs and often slipped into the truth. He was a real poet with an extraordinary faculty for language and a gift of unerring rhythm. He wrote after the mediaeval model—with a profusion of acrostics and double rhyming—not with the bald duplications of primitive Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined things like a woman—with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness and inaccuracy. He saw into people's souls through a dark refracting suspiciousness. The same bent of mind, the same individuality of distorted insight made him overflow with ingenious explanations of the Bible and the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history, philology, medicine—anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To himself his stature sometimes seemed to expand till his head touched the sun—but that was mostly after wine—and his brain retained a permanent glow from the contact.
"Well, peace be with you!" said Pinchas. "I will leave you to your customers, who besiege you as I have been besieged by the maidens. But what you have just told me has gladdened my heart. I always had an affection for you, but now I love you like a woman. We will found this Holy Land League, you and I. You shall be President—I waive all claims in your favor—and I will be Treasurer. Hey?"
"We shall see; we shall see," said Guedalyah the greengrocer.
"No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand. Shall we say done?"
He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose.
"We shall see," repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently.
"No, say! I love you like a brother. Grant me this favor and I will never ask anything of you so long as I live."
"Well, if the others—" began Guedalyah feebly.
"Ah! You are a Prince in Israel," Pinchas cried enthusiastically. "If I could only show you my heart, how it loves you."
He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge volumes of smoke. Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin of potatoes. Looking up suddenly he was startled to see the head fixed in the open front of the shop window. It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with an insinuative smile. A dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of the nose.
"You won't forget," said the head coaxingly.
"Of course I won't forget," cried the greengrocer querulously.
The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamidrash founded by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up as a synagogue and approached by reeking staircases, unsavory as the neighborhood. On one of the black benches a shabby youth with very long hair and lank fleshless limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong. Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair that crowned his head like the light of a pharos, was a conspicuous figure.
"Peace be to you, Karlkammer!" said Pinchas to him in Hebrew.
"To you be peace, Pinchas!" replied Karlkammer.
"Ah!" went on Pinchas. "Sweeter than honey it is to me, yea than fine honey, to talk to a man in the Holy Tongue. Woe, the speakers are few in these latter days. I and thou, Karlkammer, are the only two people who can speak the Holy Tongue grammatically on this isle of the sea. Lo, it is a great thing we are met to do this night—I see Zion laughing on her mountains and her fig-trees skipping for joy. I will be the treasurer of the fund, Karlkammer—do thou vote for me, for so our society shall flourish as the green bay tree."
Karlkammer grunted vaguely, not having humor enough to recall the usual associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on to salute Hamburg. To Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion for half-respectful amusement. He could not but reverence the poet's genius even while he laughed at his pretensions to omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet offered as plain prose. For when in their arguments Pinchas came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who knew every inch of it.
"Blessed art thou who arrivest," he said when he perceived Pinchas. Then dropping into German he continued—"I did not know you would join in the rebuilding of Zion."
"Why not?" inquired Pinchas.
"Because you have written so many poems thereupon."
"Be not so foolish," said Pinchas, annoyed. "Did not King David fight the Philistines as well as write the Psalms?"