Daniel was silenced, but lingered on after Miriam had departed to her wearisome duties.

"I shall write at once, accepting Yankov's offer," said his father. "Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam. I can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel." Daniel expostulated yet further, but Mendel answered:

"He is so lonely. He cannot well come over here by himself because he is half paralyzed. After all, what have I to do in England? And the mother naturally does not care to leave me. Perhaps I shall get my brother to travel with me to the land of Israel, and then we shall all end our days in Jerusalem, which you know has always been my heart's desire."

Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman.

"Why do you make so much bother?" Miriam said to Daniel in the evening. "It's the best thing that could have happened. Who'd have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into possession of a relative who might actually have something to leave us. It'll be a good story to tell, too."

After Shool next morning Mendel spoke to the President.

"Can you lend me six pounds?" he asked.

Belcovitch staggered.

"Six pounds!" he repeated, dazed.

"Yes. I wish to go to America with my wife. And I want you moreover to give your hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till I get work."

"But six pounds is a very great sum—without sureties," said Belcovitch, rubbing his time-worn workaday high hat in his agitation.

"I know it is!" answered Mendel, "but God is my witness that I mean to pay you. And if I die before I can do so I vow to send word to my son Daniel, who will pay you the balance. You know my son Daniel. His word is an oath."

"But where shall I get six pounds from?" said Bear helplessly. "I am only a poor tailor, and my daughter gets married soon. It is a great sum. By my honorable word, it is. I have never lent so much in my life, nor even been security for such an amount."

Mendel dropped his head. There was a moment of anxious silence. Bear thought deeply.

"I tell you what I'll do," said Bear at last. "I'll lend you five if you can manage to come out with that."

Mendel gave a great sigh of relief. "God shall bless you," he said. He wrung the sweater's hand passionately. "I dare say we shall find another sovereign's-worth to sell." Mendel clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom. If the worst come to the worst now, he had still had something for his money.

And so Mendel and Beenah sailed away over the Atlantic. Daniel accompanied them to Liverpool, but Miriam said she could not get a day's holiday—perhaps she remembered the rebuke Esther Ansell had drawn down on herself, and was chary of asking.

At the dock in the chill dawn, Mendel Hyams kissed his son Daniel on the forehead and said in a broken voice:

"Good-bye. God bless you." He dared not add and God bless your Bessie, my daughter-in-law to be; but the benediction was in his heart.

Daniel turned away heavy-hearted, but the old man touched him on the shoulder and said in a low tremulous voice:

"Won't you forgive me for putting you into the fancy goods?"

"Father! What do you mean?" said Daniel choking. "Surely you are not thinking of the wild words I spoke years and years ago. I have long forgotten them."

"Then you will remain a good Jew," said Mendel, trembling all over, "even when we are far away?"

"With God's help," said Daniel. And then Mendel turned to Beenah and kissed her, weeping, and the faces of the old couple were radiant behind their tears.

Daniel stood on the clamorous hustling wharf, watching the ship move slowly from her moorings towards the open river, and neither he nor any one in the world but the happy pair knew that Mendel and Beenah were on their honeymoon.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hyams died two years after her honeymoon, and old Hyams laid a lover's kiss upon her sealed eyelids. Then, being absolutely alone in the world, he sold off his scanty furniture, sent the balance of the debt with a sovereign of undemanded interest to Bear Belcovitch, and girded up his loins for the journey to Jerusalem, which had been the dream of his life.

But the dream of his life had better have remained a dream Mendel saw the hills of Palestine and the holy Jordan and Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple, and the tombs of Absalom and Melchitsedek, and the gate of Zion and the aqueduct built by Solomon, and all that he had longed to see from boyhood. But somehow it was not his Jerusalem—scarce more than his London Ghetto transplanted, only grown filthier and narrower and more ragged, with cripples for beggars and lepers in lieu of hawkers. The magic of his dream-city was not here. This was something prosaic, almost sordid. It made his heart sink as he thought of the sacred splendors of the Zion he had imaged in his suffering soul. The rainbows builded of his bitter tears did not span the firmament of this dingy Eastern city, set amid sterile hills. Where were the roses and lilies, the cedars and the fountains? Mount Moriah was here indeed, but it bore the Mosque of Omar, and the Temple of Jehovah was but one ruined wall. The Shechinah, the Divine Glory, had faded into cold sunshine. "Who shall go up into the Mount of Jehovah." Lo, the Moslem worshipper and the Christian tourist. Barracks and convents stood on Zion's hill. His brethren, rulers by divine right of the soil they trod, were lost in the chaos of populations—Syrians, Armenians, Turks, Copts, Abyssinians, Europeans—as their synagogues were lost amid the domes and minarets of the Gentiles. The city was full of venerated relics of the Christ his people had lived—and died—to deny, and over all flew the crescent flag of the Mussulman.

And so every Friday, heedless of scoffing on-lookers, Mendel Hyams kissed the stones of the Wailing Place, bedewing their barrenness with tears; and every year at Passover, until he was gathered to his fathers, he continued to pray: "Next year—in Jerusalem!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT.

"Ah, the Men-of-the-Earth!" said Pinchas to Reb Shemuel, "ignorant fanatics, how shall a movement prosper in their hands? They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole's; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers? with Karlkammer's red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski's nose blowing for a trumpet-peal. But I have written an acrostic against Guedalyah the greengrocer, virulent as serpent's gall. He the Redeemer, indeed, with his diseased potatoes and his flat ginger-beer! Not thus did the great prophets and teachers in Israel figure the Return. Let a great signal-fire be lit in Israel and lo! the beacons will leap up on every mountain and tongue of flame shall call to tongue. Yea, I, even I, Melchitsedek Pinchas, will light the fire forthwith."

"Nay, not to-day," said Reb Shemuel, with his humorous twinkle; "it is the Sabbath."

The Rabbi was returning from synagogue and Pinchas was giving him his company on the short homeward journey. At their heels trudged Levi and on the other side of Reb Shemuel walked Eliphaz Chowchoski, a miserable-looking Pole whom Reb Shemuel was taking home to supper. In those days Reb Shemuel was not alone in taking to his hearth "the Sabbath guest"—some forlorn starveling or other—to sit at the table in like honor with the master. It was an object lesson in equality and fraternity for the children of many a well-to-do household, nor did it fail altogether in the homes of the poor. "All Israel are brothers," and how better honor the Sabbath than by making the lip-babble a reality?

"You will speak to your daughter?" said Pinchas, changing the subject abruptly. "You will tell her that what I wrote to her is not a millionth part of what I feel—that she is my sun by day and my moon and stars by night, that I must marry her at once or die, that I think of nothing in the world but her, that I can do, write, plan, nothing without her, that once she smiles on me I will write her great love-poems, greater than Byron's, greater than Heine's—the real Song of Songs, which is Pinchas's—that I will make her immortal as Dante made Beatrice, as Petrarch made Laura, that I walk about wretched, bedewing the pavements with my tears, that I sleep not by night nor eat by day—you will tell her this?" He laid his finger pleadingly on his nose.

"I will tell her," said Reb Shemuel. "You are a son-in-law to gladden the heart of any man. But I fear the maiden looks but coldly on wooers. Besides you are fourteen years older than she."

"Then I love her twice as much as Jacob loved Rachel—for it is written 'seven years were but as a day in his love for her.' To me fourteen years are but as a day in my love for Hannah."

The Rabbi laughed at the quibble and said:

"You are like the man who when he was accused of being twenty years older than the maiden he desired, replied 'but when I look at her I shall become ten years younger, and when she looks at me she will become ten years older, and thus we shall be even.'"

Pinchas laughed enthusiastically in his turn, but replied:

"Surely you will plead my cause, you whose motto is the Hebrew saying—'the husband help the housewife, God help the bachelor.'"

"But have you the wherewithal to support her?"

"Shall my writings not suffice? If there are none to protect literature in England, we will go abroad—to your birthplace, Reb Shemuel, the cradle of great scholars."

The poet spoke yet more, but in the end his excited stridulous accents fell on Reb Shemuel's ears as a storm without on the ears of the slippered reader by the fireside. He had dropped into a delicious reverie—tasting in advance the Sabbath peace. The work of the week was over. The faithful Jew could enter on his rest—the narrow, miry streets faded before the brighter image of his brain. "Come, my beloved, to meet the Bride, the face of the Sabbath let us welcome."

To-night his sweetheart would wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, love for all the wonderful Creation dissolved him in tenderness. As he approached the door, cheerful lights gleamed on him like a heavenly smile. He invited Pinchas to enter, but the poet in view of his passion thought it prudent to let others plead for him and went off with his finger to his nose in final reminder. The Reb kissed the Mezuzah on the outside of the door and his daughter, who met him, on the inside. Everything was as he had pictured it—the two tall wax candles in quaint heavy silver candlesticks, the spotless table-cloth, the dish of fried fish made picturesque with sprigs of parsley, the Sabbath loaves shaped like boys' tip-cats, with a curious plait of crust from point to point and thickly sprinkled with a drift of poppy-seed, and covered with a velvet cloth embroidered with Hebrew words; the flask of wine and the silver goblet. The sight was familiar yet it always struck the simple old Reb anew, with a sense of special blessing.

"Good Shabbos, Simcha," said Reb Shemuel.

"Good Shabbos, Shemuel." said Simcha. The light of love was in her eyes, and in her hair her newest comb. Her sharp features shone with peace and good-will and the consciousness of having duly lit the Sabbath candles and thrown the morsel of dough into the fire. Shemuel kissed her, then he laid his hands upon Hannah's head and murmured:

"May God make thee as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah," and upon Levi's, murmuring: "May God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh."

Even the callous Levi felt the breath of sanctity in the air and had a vague restful sense of his Sabbath Angel hovering about and causing him to cast two shadows on the wall while his Evil Angel shivered impotent on the door-step.

Then Reb Shemuel repeated three times a series of sentences commencing: "Peace be unto you, ye ministering Angels," and thereupon the wonderful picture of an ideal woman from Proverbs, looking affectionately at Simcha the while. "A woman of worth, whoso findeth her, her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusteth in her; good and not evil will she do him all the days of her life; she riseth, while it is yet night, giveth food to her household and a task to her maidens. She putteth her own hands to the spindle; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor—strength and honor are her clothing and she looketh forth smilingly to the morrow; she openeth her mouth with wisdom and the law of kindness is on her tongue—she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. Deceitful is favor and vain is beauty, but the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."

Then, washing his hands with the due benediction, he filled the goblet with wine, and while every one reverently stood he "made Kiddish," in a traditional joyous recitative "... blessed art thou, O Lord, our God! King of the Universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine, who doth sanctify us with His commandments and hath delight in us.... Thou hast chosen and sanctified us above all peoples and with love and favor hast made us to inherit Thy holy Sabbath...."

And all the household, and the hungry Pole, answered "Amen," each sipping of the cup in due gradation, then eating a special morsel of bread cut by the father and dipped in salt; after which the good wife served the fish, and cups and saucers clattered and knives and forks rattled. And after a few mouthfuls, the Pole knew himself a Prince in Israel and felt he must forthwith make choice of a maiden to grace his royal Sabbath board. Soup followed the fish; it was not served direct from the saucepan but transferred by way of a large tureen; since any creeping thing that might have got into the soup would have rendered the plateful in which it appeared not legally potable, whereas if it were detected in the large tureen, its polluting powers would be dissipated by being diffused over such a large mass of fluid. For like religious reasons, another feature of the etiquette of the modern fashionable table had been anticipated by many centuries—the eaters washed their hands in a little bowl of water after their meal. The Pollack was thus kept by main religious force in touch with a liquid with which he had no external sympathy.

When supper was over, grace was chanted and then the Zemiroth was sung—songs summing up in light and jingling metre the very essence of holy joyousness—neither riotous nor ascetic—the note of spiritualized common sense which has been the key-note of historical Judaism. For to feel "the delight of Sabbath" is a duty and to take three meals thereon a religions obligation—the sanctification of the sensuous by a creed to which everything is holy. The Sabbath is the hub of the Jew's universe; to protract it is a virtue, to love it a liberal education. It cancels all mourning—even for Jerusalem. The candles may gutter out at their own greasy will—unsnuffed, untended—is not Sabbath its own self-sufficient light?

This is the sanctified rest-day; Happy the man who observes it, Thinks of it over the wine-cup, Feeling no pang at his heart-strings For that his purse-strings are empty, Joyous, and if he must borrow God will repay the good lender, Meat, wine and fish in profusion— See no delight is deficient. Let but the table be spread well, Angels of God answer "Amen!" So when a soul is in dolor, Cometh the sweet restful Sabbath, Singing and joy in its footsteps, Rapidly floweth Sambatyon, Till that, of God's love the symbol, Sabbath, the holy, the peaceful, Husheth its turbulent waters.

* * * * * Bless Him, O constant companions, Rock from whose stores we have eaten, Eaten have we and have left, too, Just as the Lord hath commanded Father and Shepherd and Feeder. His is the bread we have eaten, His is the wine we have drunken, Wherefore with lips let us praise Him, Lord of the land of our fathers, Gratefully, ceaselessly chaunting "None like Jehovah is holy."

* * * * * Light and rejoicing to Israel, Sabbath, the soother of sorrows, Comfort of down-trodden Israel, Healing the hearts that were broken! Banish despair! Here is Hope come, What! A soul crushed! Lo a stranger Bringeth the balsamous Sabbath. Build, O rebuild thou, Thy Temple, Fill again Zion, Thy city, Clad with delight will we go there, Other and new songs to sing there, Merciful One and All-Holy, Praised for ever and ever.

During the meal the Pollack began to speak with his host about the persecution in the land whence he had come, the bright spot in his picture being the fidelity of his brethren under trial, only a minority deserting and those already tainted with Epicureanism—students wishful of University distinction and such like. Orthodox Jews are rather surprised when men of (secular) education remain in the fold.

Hannah took advantage of a pause in their conversation to say in German:

"I am so glad, father, thou didst not bring that man home."

"What man?" said Reb Shemuel.

"The dirty monkey-faced little man who talks so much."

The Reb considered.

"I know none such."

"Pinchas she means," said her mother. "The poet!"

Reb Shemuel looked at her gravely. This did not sound promising.

"Why dost thou speak so harshly of thy fellow-creatures?" he said. "The man is a scholar and a poet, such as we have too few in Israel."

"We have too many Schnorrers in Israel already," retorted Hannah.

"Sh!" whispered Reb Shemuel reddening and indicating his guest with a slight movement of the eye.

Hannah bit her lip in self-humiliation and hastened to load the lucky Pole's plate with an extra piece of fish.

"He has written me a letter," she went on.

"He has told me so," he answered. "He loves thee with a great love."

"What nonsense, Shemuel!" broke in Simcha, setting down her coffee-cup with work-a-day violence. "The idea of a man who has not a penny to bless himself with marrying our Hannah! They would be on the Board of Guardians in a month."

"Money is not everything. Wisdom and learning outweigh much. And as the Midrash says: 'As a scarlet ribbon becometh a black horse, so poverty becometh the daughter of Jacob.' The world stands on the Torah, not on gold; as it is written: 'Better is the Law of Thy mouth to me than thousands of gold or silver.' He is greater than I, for he studies the law for nothing like the fathers of the Mishna while I am paid a salary."

"Methinks thou art little inferior," said Simcha, "for thou retainest little enough thereof. Let Pinchas get nothing for himself, 'tis his affair, but, if he wants my Hannah, he must get something for her. Were the fathers of the Mishna also fathers of families?"

"Certainly; is it not a command—'Be fruitful and multiply'?"

"And how did their families live?"

"Many of our sages were artisans."

"Aha!" snorted Simcha triumphantly.

"And says not the Talmud," put in the Pole as if he were on the family council, "'Flay a carcass in the streets rather than be under an obligation'?" This with supreme unconsciousness of any personal application. "Yea, and said not Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince, 'it is commendable to join the study of the Law with worldly employment'? Did not Moses our teacher keep sheep?

"Truth," replied the host. "I agree with Maimonides that man should first secure a living, then prepare a residence and after that seek a wife; and that they are fools who invert the order. But Pinchas works also with his pen. He writes articles in the papers. But the great thing, Hannah, is that he loves the Law."

"H'm!" said Hannah. "Let him marry the Law, then."

"He is in a hurry," said Reb Shemuel with a flash of irreverent facetiousness. "And he cannot become the Bridegroom of the Law till Simchath Torah."

All laughed. The Bridegroom of the Law is the temporary title of the Jew who enjoys the distinction of being "called up" to the public reading of the last fragment of the Pentateuch, which is got through once a year.

Under the encouragement of the laughter, the Rabbi added:

"But he will know much more of his Bride than the majority of the Law's Bridegrooms."

Hannah took advantage of her father's pleasure in the effect of his jokes to show him Pinchas's epistle, which he deciphered laboriously. It commenced:

Hebrew Hebe All-fair Maid, Next to Heaven Nightly laid Ah, I love you Half afraid.

The Pole, looking a different being from the wretch who had come empty, departed invoking Peace on the household; Simcha went into the kitchen to superintend the removal of the crockery thither; Levi slipped out to pay his respects to Esther Ansell, for the evening was yet young, and father and daughter were left alone.

Reb Shemuel was already poring over a Pentateuch in his Friday night duty of reading the Portion twice in Hebrew and once in Chaldaic.

Hannah sat opposite him, studying the kindly furrowed face, the massive head set on rounded shoulders, the shaggy eyebrows, the long whitening beard moving with the mumble of the pious lips, the brown peering eyes held close to the sacred tome, the high forehead crowned with the black skullcap.

She felt a moisture gathering under her eyelids as she looked at him.

"Father," she said at last, in a gentle voice.

"Did you call me, Hannah?" he asked, looking up.

"Yes, dear. About this man, Pinchas."

"Yes, Hannah."

"I am sorry I spoke harshly of him,''

"Ah, that is right, my daughter. If he is poor and ill-clad we must only honor him the more. Wisdom and learning must be respected if they appear in rags. Abraham entertained God's messengers though they came as weary travellers."

"I know, father, it is not because of his appearance that I do not like him. If he is really a scholar and a poet, I will try to admire him as you do."

"Now you speak like a true daughter of Israel."

"But about my marrying him—you are not really in earnest?"

"He is." said Reb Shemuel, evasively.

"Ah, I knew you were not," she said, catching the lurking twinkle in his eye. "You know I could never marry a man like that."

"Your mother could," said the Reb.

"Dear old goose," she said, leaning across to pull his beard. "You are not a bit like that—you know a thousand times more, you know you do."

The old Rabbi held up his hands in comic deprecation.

"Yes, you do," she persisted. "Only you let him talk so much; you let everybody talk and bamboozle you."

Reb Shemuel drew the hand that fondled his beard in his own, feeling the fresh warm skin with a puzzled look.

"The hands are the hands of Hannah," he said, "but the voice is the voice of Simcha."

Hannah laughed merrily.

"All right, dear, I won't scold you any more. I'm so glad it didn't really enter your great stupid, clever old head that I was likely to care for Pinchas."

"My dear daughter, Pinchas wished to take you to wife, and I felt pleased. It is a union with a son of the Torah, who has also the pen of a ready writer. He asked me to tell you and I did."

"But you would not like me to marry any one I did not like."

"God forbid! My little Hannah shall marry whomever she pleases."

A wave of emotion passed over the girl's face.

"You don't mean that, father," she said, shaking her head.

"True as the Torah! Why should I not?"

"Suppose," she said slowly, "I wanted to marry a Christian?"

Her heart beat painfully as she put the question.

Reb Shemuel laughed heartily.

"My Hannah would have made a good Talmudist. Of course, I don't mean it in that sense."

"Yes, but if I was to marry a very link Jew, you'd think it almost as bad."

"No, no!" said the Reb, shaking his head. "That's a different thing altogether; a Jew is a Jew, and a Christian a Christian."

"But you can't always distinguish between them," argued Hannah. "There are Jews who behave as if they were Christians, except, of course, they don't believe in the Crucified One."

Still the old Reb shook his head.

"The worst of Jews cannot put off his Judaism. His unborn soul undertook the yoke of the Torah at Sinai."

"Then you really wouldn't mind if I married a link Jew!"

He looked at her, startled, a suspicion dawning in his eyes.

"I should mind," he said slowly. "But if you loved him he would become a good Jew."

The simple conviction of his words moved her to tears, but she kept them back.

"But if he wouldn't?"

"I should pray. While there is life there is hope for the sinner in Israel."

She fell back on her old question.

"And you would really not mind whom I married?"

"Follow your heart, my little one," said Reb Shemuel. "It is a good heart and it will not lead you wrong."

Hannah turned away to hide the tears that could no longer be stayed. Her father resumed his reading of the Law.

But he had got through very few verses ere he felt a soft warm arm round his neck and a wet cheek laid close to his.

"Father, forgive me," whispered the lips. "I am so sorry. I thought, that—that I—that you—oh father, father! I feel as if I had never known you before to-night."

"What is it, my daughter?" said Reb Shemuel, stumbling into Yiddish in his anxiety. "What hast thou done?"

"I have betrothed myself," she answered, unwittingly adopting his dialect. "I have betrothed myself without telling thee or mother."

"To whom?" he asked anxiously.

"To a Jew," she hastened to assure him, "But he is neither a Talmud-sage nor pious. He is newly returned from the Cape."

"Ah, they are a link lot," muttered the Reb anxiously. "Where didst thou first meet him?"

"At the Club," she answered. "At the Purim Ball—the night before Sam Levine came round here to be divorced from me."

He wrinkled his great brow. "Thy mother would have thee go," he said. "Thou didst not deserve I should get thee the divorce. What is his name?"

"David Brandon. He is not like other Jewish young men; I thought he was and did him wrong and mocked at him when first he spoke to me, so that afterwards I felt tender towards him. His conversation is agreeable, for he thinks for himself, and deeming thou wouldst not hear of such a match and that there was no danger, I met him at the Club several times in the evening, and—and—thou knowest the rest."

She turned away her face, blushing, contrite, happy, anxious.

Her love-story was as simple as her telling of it. David Brandon was not the shadowy Prince of her maiden dreams, nor was the passion exactly as she had imagined it; it was both stronger and stranger, and the sense of secrecy and impending opposition instilled into her love a poignant sweetness.

The Reb stroked her hair silently.

"I would not have said 'Yea' so quick, father," she went on, "but David had to go to Germany to take a message to the aged parents of his Cape chum, who died in the gold-fields. David had promised the dying man to go personally as soon as he returned to England—I think it was a request for forgiveness and blessing—but after meeting me he delayed going, and when I learned of it I reproached him, but he said he could not tear himself away, and he would not go till I had confessed I loved him. At last I said if he would go home the moment I said it and not bother about getting me a ring or anything, but go off to Germany the first thing the next morning, I would admit I loved him a little bit. Thus did it occur. He went off last Wednesday. Oh, isn't it cruel to think, father, that he should be going with love and joy in his heart to the parents of his dead friend!"

Her father's head was bent. She lifted it up by the chin and looked pleadingly into the big brown eyes.

"Thou art not angry with me, father?"

"No, Hannah. But thou shouldst have told me from the first."

"I always meant to, father. But I feared to grieve thee."

"Wherefore? The man is a Jew. And thou lovest him, dost thou not?"

"As my life, father."

He kissed her lips.

"It is enough, my Hannah. With thee to love him, he will become pious. When a man has a good Jewish wife like my beloved daughter, who will keep a good Jewish house, he cannot be long among the sinners. The light of a true Jewish home will lead his footsteps back to God."

Hannah pressed her face to his in silence. She could not speak. She had not strength to undeceive him further, to tell him she had no care for trivial forms. Besides, in the flush of gratitude and surprise at her father's tolerance, she felt stirrings of responsive tolerance to his religion. It was not the moment to analyze her feelings or to enunciate her state of mind regarding religion. She simply let herself sink in the sweet sense of restored confidence and love, her head resting against his.

Presently Reb Shemuel put his hands on her head and murmured again: "May God make thee as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah."

Then he added: "Go now, my daughter, and make glad the heart of thy mother."

Hannah suspected a shade of satire in the words, but was not sure.

* * * * *

The roaring Sambatyon of life was at rest in the Ghetto; on thousands of squalid homes the light of Sinai shone. The Sabbath Angels whispered words of hope and comfort to the foot-sore hawker and the aching machinist, and refreshed their parched souls with celestial anodyne and made them kings of the hour, with leisure to dream of the golden chairs that awaited them in Paradise.

The Ghetto welcomed the Bride with proud song and humble feast, and sped her parting with optimistic symbolisms of fire and wine, of spice and light and shadow. All around their neighbors sought distraction in the blazing public-houses, and their tipsy bellowings resounded through the streets and mingled with the Hebrew hymns. Here and there the voice of a beaten woman rose on the air. But no Son of the Covenant was among the revellers or the wife-beaters; the Jews remained a chosen race, a peculiar people, faulty enough, but redeemed at least from the grosser vices, a little human islet won from the waters of animalism by the genius of ancient engineers. For while the genius of the Greek or the Roman, the Egyptian or the Phoenician, survives but in word and stone, the Hebrew word alone was made flesh.



CHAPTER XIX.

WITH THE STRIKERS.

"Ignorant donkey-heads!" cried Pinchas next Friday morning. "Him they make a Rabbi and give him the right of answering questions, and he know no more of Judaism," the patriotic poet paused to take a bite out of his ham-sandwich, "than a cow of Sunday. I lof his daughter and I tell him so and he tells me she lof another. But I haf held him up on the point of my pen to the contempt of posterity. I haf written an acrostic on him; it is terrible. Her vill I shoot."

"Ah, they are a bad lot, these Rabbis," said Simon Wolf, sipping his sherry. The conversation took place in English and the two men were seated in a small private room in a public-house, awaiting the advent of the Strike Committee.

"Dey are like de rest of de Community. I vash my hands of dem," said the poet, waving his cigar in a fiery crescent.

"I have long since washed my hands of them," said Simon Wolf, though the fact was not obvious. "We can trust neither our Rabbis nor our philanthropists. The Rabbis engrossed in the hypocritical endeavor to galvanize the corpse of Judaism into a vitality that shall last at least their own lifetime, have neither time nor thought for the great labor question. Our philanthropists do but scratch the surface. They give the working-man with their right hand what they have stolen from him with the left."

Simon Wolf was the great Jewish labor leader. Most of his cronies were rampant atheists, disgusted with the commercialism of the believers. They were clever young artisans from Russia and Poland with a smattering of education, a feverish receptiveness for all the iconoclastic ideas that were in the London air, a hatred of capitalism and strong social sympathies. They wrote vigorous jargon for the Friend of Labor and compassed the extreme proverbial limits of impiety by "eating pork on the Day of Atonement." This was done partly to vindicate their religious opinions whose correctness was demonstrated by the non-appearance of thunderbolts, partly to show that nothing one way or the other was to be expected from Providence or its professors.

"The only way for our poor brethren to be saved from their slavery," went on Simon Wolf, "is for them to combine against the sweaters and to let the West-End Jews go and hang themselves."

"Ah, dat is mine policee," said Pinchas, "dat was mine policee ven I founded de Holy Land League. Help yourselves and Pinchas vill help you. You muz combine, and den I vill be de Moses to lead you out of de land of bondage. Nein, I vill be more dan Moses, for he had not de gift of eloquence."

"And he was the meekest man that ever lived," added Wolf.

"Yes, he was a fool-man," said Pinchas imperturbably. "I agree with Goethe—nur Lumpen sind bescheiden, only clods are modaist. I am not modaist. Is the Almighty modaist? I know, I feel vat I am, vat I can do."

"Look here, Pinchas, you're a very clever fellow, I know, and I'm very glad to have you with us—but remember I have organized this movement for years, planned it out as I sat toiling in Belcovitch's machine-room, written on it till I've got the cramp, spoken on it till I was hoarse, given evidence before innumerable Commissions. It is I who have stirred up the East-End Jews and sent the echo of their cry into Parliament, and I will not be interfered with. Do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear. Vy you not listen to me? You no understand vat I mean!"

"Oh, I understand you well enough. You want to oust me from my position."

"Me? Me?" repeated the poet in an injured and astonished tone. "Vy midout you de movement vould crumble like a mummy in de air; be not such a fool-man. To everybody I haf said—ah, dat Simon Wolf he is a great man, a vair great man; he is de only man among de English Jews who can save de East-End; it is he that should be member for Vitechapel—not that fool-man Gideon. Be not such a fool-man! Haf anoder glaz sherry and some more ham-sandwiches." The poet had a simple child-like delight in occasionally assuming the host.

"Very well, so long as I have your assurance," said the mollified labor-leader, mumbling the conclusion of the sentence into his wine-glass. "But you know how it is! After I have worked the thing for years, I don't want to see a drone come in and take the credit."

"Yes, sic vos non vobis, as the Talmud says. Do you know I haf proved that Virgil stole all his ideas from the Talmud?"

"First there was Black and then there was Cohen—now Gideon, M.P., sees he can get some advertisement out of it in the press, he wants to preside at the meetings. Members of Parliament are a bad lot!"

"Yes—but dey shall not take de credit from you. I will write and expose dem—the world shall know what humbugs dey are, how de whole wealthy West-End stood idly by with her hands in de working-men's pockets while you vere building up de great organization. You know all de jargon-papers jump at vat I write, dey sign my name in vair large type—Melchitsedek Pinchas—under every ting, and I am so pleased with deir homage, I do not ask for payment, for dey are vair poor. By dis time I am famous everywhere, my name has been in de evening papers, and ven I write about you to de Times, you vill become as famous as me. And den you vill write about me—ve vill put up for Vitechapel at de elections, ve vill both become membairs of Parliament, I and you, eh?"

"I'm afraid there's not much chance of that," sighed Simon Wolf.

"Vy not? Dere are two seats. Vy should you not haf de Oder?"

"Ain't you forgetting about election expenses, Pinchas?"

"Nein!" repeated the poet emphatically. "I forgets noding. Ve vill start a fund."

"We can't start funds for ourselves."

"Be not a fool-man; of course not. You for me, I for you."

"You won't get much," said Simon, laughing ruefully at the idea.

"Tink not? Praps not. But you vill for me. Ven I am in Parliament, de load vill be easier for us both. Besides I vill go to de Continent soon to give avay de rest of de copies of my book. I expect to make dousands of pounds by it—for dey know how to honor scholars and poets abroad. Dere dey haf not stupid-head stockbrokers like Gideon, M.P., ministers like the Reverend Elkan Benjamin who keep four mistresses, and Rabbis like Reb Shemuel vid long white beards outside and emptiness vidin who sell deir daughters."

"I don't want to look so far ahead," said Simon Wolf. "At present, what we have to do is to carry this strike through. Once we get our demands from the masters a powerful blow will have been struck for the emancipation of ten thousand working-men. They will have more money and more leisure, a little less of hell and a little more of heaven. The coming Passover would, indeed, be an appropriate festival even for the most heterodox among them if we could strike oft their chains in the interim. But it seems impossible to get unity among them—a large section appears to mistrust me, though I swear to you, Pinchas, I am actuated by nothing but an unselfish desire for their good. May this morsel of sandwich choke me if I have ever been swayed by anything but sympathy with their wrongs. And yet you saw that malicious pamphlet that was circulated against me in Yiddish—silly, illiterate scribble."

"Oh, no!" said Pinchas. "It was vair beautiful; sharp as de sting of de hornet. But vat can you expect? Christ suffered. All great benefactors suffer. Am I happy? But it is only your own foolishness that you must tank if dere is dissension in de camp. De Gomorah says ve muz be vize, chocham, ve muz haf tact. See vat you haf done. You haf frighten avay de ortodox fool-men. Dey are oppressed, dey sweat—but dey tink deir God make dem sweat. Why you tell dem, no? Vat mattairs? Free dem from hunger and tirst first, den freedom from deir fool-superstitions vill come of itself. Jeshurun vax fat and kick? Hey? You go de wrong vay."

"Do you mean I'm to pretend to be froom," said Simon Wolf.

"And ven? Vat mattairs? You are a fool, man. To get to de goal one muz go crooked vays. Ah, you have no stadesmanship. You frighten dem. You lead processions vid bands and banners on Shabbos to de Shools. Many who vould be glad to be delivered by you tremble for de heavenly lightning. Dey go not in de procession. Many go when deir head is on fire—afterwards, dey take fright and beat deir breasts. Vat vill happen? De ortodox are de majority; in time dere vill come a leader who vill be, or pretend to be, ortodox as veil as socialist. Den vat become of you? You are left vid von, two, tree ateists—not enough to make Minyan. No, ve muz be chocham, ve muz take de men as ve find dem. God has made two classes of men—vise-men and fool-men. Dere! is one vise-man to a million fool-men—and he sits on deir head and dey support him. If dese fool-men vant to go to Shool and to fast on Yom Kippur, vat for you make a feast of pig and shock dem, so dey not believe in your socialism? Ven you vant to eat pig, you do it here, like ve do now, in private. In public, ve spit out ven ve see pig. Ah, you are a fool-man. I am a stadesman, a politician. I vill be de Machiavelli of de movement."

"Ah, Pinchas, you are a devil of a chap," said Wolf, laughing. "And yet you say you are the poet of patriotism and Palestine."

"Vy not? Vy should we lif here in captivity? Vy we shall not have our own state—and our own President, a man who combine deep politic vid knowledge of Hebrew literature and de pen of a poet. No, let us fight to get back our country—ve vill not hang our harps on the villows of Babylon and veep—ve vill take our swords vid Ezra and Judas Maccabaeus, and—"

"One thing at a time, Pinchas," said Simon Wolf. "At present, we have to consider how to distribute these food-tickets. The committee-men are late; I wonder if there has been any fighting at the centres, where they have been addressing meetings."

"Ah, dat is anoder point," said Pinchas. "Vy you no let me address meetings—not de little ones in de street, but de great ones in de hall of de Club? Dere my vords vould rush like de moundain dorrents, sveeping avay de corruptions. But you let all dese fool-men talk. You know, Simon, I and you are de only two persons in de East-End who speak Ainglish properly."

"I know. But these speeches must be in Yiddish."

"Gewiss. But who speak her like me and you? You muz gif me a speech to-night."

"I can't; really not," said Simon. "The programme's arranged. You know they're all jealous of me already. I dare not leave one out."

"Ah, no; do not say dat!" said Pinchas, laying his finger pleadingly on the side of his nose.

"I must."

"You tear my heart in two. I lof you like a brother—almost like a voman. Just von!" There was an appealing smile in his eye.

"I cannot. I shall have a hornet's nest about my ears."

"Von leedle von, Simon Wolf!" Again his finger was on his nose.

"It is impossible."

"You haf not considair how my Yiddish shall make kindle every heart, strike tears from every eye, as Moses did from de rock."

"I have. I know. But what am I to do?"

"Jus dis leedle favor; and I vill be gradeful to you all mine life."

"You know I would if I could."

Pinchas's finger was laid more insistently on his nose.

"Just dis vonce. Grant me dis, and I vill nevair ask anyding of you in all my life."

"No, no. Don't bother, Pinchas. Go away now," said Wolf, getting annoyed. "I have lots to do."

"I vill never gif you mine ideas again!" said the poet, flashing up, and he went out and banged the door.

The labor-leader settled to his papers with a sigh of relief.

The relief was transient. A moment afterwards the door was slightly opened, and Pinchas's head was protruded through the aperture. The poet wore his most endearing smile, the finger was laid coaxingly against the nose.

"Just von leedle speech, Simon. Tink how I lof you."

"Oh, well, go away. I'll see," replied Wolf, laughing amid all his annoyance.

The poet rushed in and kissed the hem of Wolf's coat.

"Oh, you be a great man!" he said. Then he walked out, closing the door gently. A moment afterwards, a vision of the dusky head, with the carneying smile and the finger on the nose, reappeared.

"You von't forget your promise," said the head.

"No, no. Go to the devil. I won't forget."

Pinchas walked home through streets thronged with excited strikers, discussing the situation with oriental exuberance of gesture, with any one who would listen. The demands of these poor slop-hands (who could only count upon six hours out of the twenty-four for themselves, and who, by the help of their wives and little ones in finishing, might earn a pound a week) were moderate enough—hours from eight to eight, with an hour for dinner and half an hour for tea, two shillings from the government contractors for making a policeman's great-coat instead of one and ninepence halfpenny, and so on and so on. Their intentions were strictly peaceful. Every face was stamped with the marks of intellect and ill-health—the hue of a muddy pallor relieved by the flash of eyes and teeth. Their shoulders stooped, their chests were narrow, their arms flabby. They came in their hundreds to the hall at night. It was square-shaped with a stage and galleries, for a jargon-company sometimes thrilled the Ghetto with tragedy and tickled it with farce. Both species were playing to-night, and in jargon to boot. In real life you always get your drama mixed, and the sock of comedy galls the buskin of tragedy. It was an episode in the pitiful tussle of hunger and greed, yet its humors were grotesque enough.

Full as the Hall was, it was not crowded, for it was Friday night and a large contingent of strikers refused to desecrate the Sabbath by attending the meeting. But these were the zealots—Moses Ansell among them, for he, too, had struck. Having been out of work already he had nothing to lose by augmenting the numerical importance of the agitation. The moderately pious argued that there was no financial business to transact and attendance could hardly come under the denomination of work. It was rather analogous to attendance at a lecture—they would simply have to listen to speeches. Besides it would be but a black Sabbath at home with a barren larder, and they had already been to synagogue. Thus degenerates ancient piety in the stress of modern social problems. Some of the men had not even changed their everyday face for their Sabbath countenance by washing it. Some wore collars, and shiny threadbare garments of dignified origin, others were unaffectedly poverty-stricken with dingy shirt-cuffs peeping out of frayed sleeve edges and unhealthily colored scarfs folded complexly round their necks. A minority belonged to the Free-thinking party, but the majority only availed themselves of Wolf's services because they were indispensable. For the moment he was the only possible leader, and they were sufficiently Jesuitic to use the Devil himself for good ends.

Though Wolf would not give up a Friday-night meeting—especially valuable, as permitting of the attendance of tailors who had not yet struck—Pinchas's politic advice had not failed to make an impression. Like so many reformers who have started with blatant atheism, he was beginning to see the insignificance of irreligious dissent as compared with the solution of the social problem, and Pinchas's seed had fallen on ready soil. As a labor-leader, pure and simple, he could count upon a far larger following than as a preacher of militant impiety. He resolved to keep his atheism in the background for the future and devote himself to the enfranchisement of the body before tampering with the soul. He was too proud ever to acknowledge his indebtedness to the poet's suggestion, but he felt grateful to him all the same.

"My brothers," he said in Yiddish, when his turn came to speak. "It pains me much to note how disunited we are. The capitalists, the Belcovitches, would rejoice if they but knew all that is going on. Have we not enemies enough that we must quarrel and split up into little factions among ourselves? (Hear, hear.) How can we hope to succeed unless we are thoroughly organized? It has come to my ears that there are men who insinuate things even about me and before I go on further to-night I wish to put this question to you." He paused and there was a breathless silence. The orator threw his chest forwards and gazing fearlessly at the assembly cried in a stentorian voice:

"Sind sie zufrieden mit ihrer Chairman?" (Are you satisfied with your chairman?)

His audacity made an impression. The discontented cowered timidly in their places.

"Yes," rolled back from the assembly, proud of its English monosyllables.

"Nein," cried a solitary voice from the topmost gallery.

Instantly the assembly was on its legs, eyeing the dissentient angrily. "Get down! Go on the platform!" mingled with cries of "order" from the Chairman, who in vain summoned him on to the stage. The dissentient waved a roll of paper violently and refused to modify his standpoint. He was evidently speaking, for his jaws were making movements, which in the din and uproar could not rise above grimaces. There was a battered high hat on the back of his head, and his hair was uncombed, and his face unwashed. At last silence was restored and the tirade became audible.

"Cursed sweaters—capitalists—stealing men's brains—leaving us to rot and starve in darkness and filth. Curse them! Curse them!" The speaker's voice rose to a hysterical scream, as he rambled on.

Some of the men knew him and soon there flew from lip to lip, "Oh, it's only Meshuggene David."

Mad Davy was a gifted Russian university student, who had been mixed up with nihilistic conspiracies and had fled to England where the struggle to find employ for his clerical talents had addled his brain. He had a gift for chess and mechanical invention, and in the early days had saved himself from starvation by the sale of some ingenious patents to a swaggering co-religionist who owned race-horses and a music-hall, but he sank into squaring the circle and inventing perpetual motion. He lived now on the casual crumbs of indigent neighbors, for the charitable organizations had marked him "dangerous." He was a man of infinite loquacity, with an intense jealousy of Simon Wolf or any such uninstructed person who assumed to lead the populace, but when the assembly accorded him his hearing he forgot the occasion of his rising in a burst of passionate invective against society.

When the irrelevancy of his remarks became apparent, he was rudely howled down and his neighbors pulled him into his seat, where he gibbered and mowed inaudibly.

Wolf continued his address.

"Sind sie zufrieden mit ihrer Secretary?"

This time there was no dissent. The "Yes" came like thunder.

"Sind sie zufrieden mit ihrer Treasurer?"

Yeas and nays mingled. The question of the retention, of the functionary was put to the vote. But there was much confusion, for the East-End Jew is only slowly becoming a political animal. The ayes had it, but Wolf was not yet satisfied with the satisfaction of the gathering. He repeated the entire batch of questions in a new formula so as to drive them home.

"Hot aner etwas zu sagen gegen mir?" Which is Yiddish for "has any one anything to say against me?"

"No!" came in a vehement roar.

"Hot aner etwas zu sagen gegen dem secretary?"

"No!"

"Hot aner etwas zu sagen gegen dem treasurer?"

"No!"

Having thus shown his grasp of logical exhaustiveness in a manner unduly exhausting to the more intelligent, Wolf consented to resume his oration. He had scored a victory, and triumph lent him added eloquence. When he ceased he left his audience in a frenzy of resolution and loyalty. In the flush of conscious power and freshly added influence, he found a niche for Pinchas's oratory.

"Brethren in exile," said the poet in his best Yiddish.

Pinchas spoke German which is an outlandish form of Yiddish and scarce understanded of the people, so that to be intelligible he had to divest himself of sundry inflections, and to throw gender to the winds and to say "wet" for "wird" and mix hybrid Hebrew and ill-pronounced English with his vocabulary. There was some cheering as Pinchas tossed his dishevelled locks and addressed the gathering, for everybody to whom he had ever spoken knew that he was a wise and learned man and a great singer in Israel.

"Brethren in exile," said the poet. "The hour has come for laying the sweaters low. Singly we are sand-grains, together we are the simoom. Our great teacher, Moses, was the first Socialist. The legislation of the Old Testament—the land laws, the jubilee regulations, the tender care for the poor, the subordination of the rights of property to the interests of the working-men—all this is pure Socialism!"

The poet paused for the cheers which came in a mighty volume. Few of those present knew what Socialism was, but all knew the word as a shibboleth of salvation from sweaters. Socialism meant shorter hours and higher wages and was obtainable by marching with banners and brass bands—what need to inquire further?

"In short," pursued the poet, "Socialism is Judaism and Judaism is Socialism, and Karl Marx and Lassalle, the founders of Socialism, were Jews. Judaism does not bother with the next world. It says, 'Eat, drink and be satisfied and thank the Lord, thy God, who brought thee out of Egypt from the land of bondage.' But we have nothing to eat, we have nothing to drink, we have nothing to be satisfied with, we are still in the land of bondage." (Cheers.) "My brothers, how can we keep Judaism in a land where there is no Socialism? We must become better Jews, we must bring on Socialism, for the period of Socialism on earth and of peace and plenty and brotherly love is what all our prophets and great teachers meant by Messiah-times."

A little murmur of dissent rose here and there, but Pinchas went on.

"When Hillel the Great summed up the law to the would-be proselyte while standing on one leg, how did he express it? 'Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto you.' This is Socialism in a nut-shell. Do not keep your riches for yourself, spread them abroad. Do not fatten on the labor of the poor, but share it. Do not eat the food others have earned, but earn your own. Yes, brothers, the only true Jews in England are the Socialists. Phylacteries, praying-shawls—all nonsense. Work for Socialism—that pleases the Almighty. The Messiah will be a Socialist."

There were mingled sounds, men asking each other dubiously, "What says he?" They began to sniff brimstone. Wolf, shifting uneasily on his chair, kicked the poet's leg in reminder of his own warning. But Pinchas's head was touching the stars again. Mundane considerations were left behind somewhere in the depths of space below his feet.

"But how is the Messiah to redeem his people?" he asked. "Not now-a-days by the sword but by the tongue. He will plead the cause of Judaism, the cause of Socialism, in Parliament. He will not come with mock miracle like Bar Cochba or Zevi. At the general election, brothers, I will stand as the candidate for Whitechapel. I, a poor man, one of yourselves, will take my stand in that mighty assembly and touch the hearts of the legislators. They shall bend before my oratory as the bulrushes of the Nile when the wind passes. They will make me Prime Minister like Lord Beaconsfield, only he was no true lover of his people, he was not the Messiah. To hell with the rich bankers and the stockbrokers—we want them not. We will free ourselves."

The extraordinary vigor of the poet's language and gestures told. Only half comprehending, the majority stamped and huzzahed. Pinchas swelled visibly. His slim, lithe form, five and a quarter feet high, towered over the assembly. His complexion was as burnished copper, his eyes flashed flame.

"Yes, brethren," he resumed. "These Anglo-Jewish swine trample unheeding on the pearls of poetry and scholarship, they choose for Ministers men with four mistresses, for Chief Rabbis hypocrites who cannot even write the holy tongue grammatically, for Dayanim men who sell their daughters to the rich, for Members of Parliament stockbrokers who cannot speak English, for philanthropists greengrocers who embezzle funds. Let us have nothing to do with these swine—Moses our teacher forbade it. (Laughter.) I will be the Member for Whitechapel. See, my name Melchitsedek Pinchas already makes M.P.—it was foreordained. If every letter of the Torah has its special meaning, and none was put by chance, why should the finger of heaven not have written my name thus: M.P.—Melchitsedek Pinchas. Ah, our brother Wolf speaks truth—wisdom issues from his lips. Put aside your petty quarrels and unite in working for my election to Parliament. Thus and thus only shall you be redeemed from bondage, made from beasts of burden into men, from slaves to citizens, from false Jews to true Jews. Thus and thus only shall you eat, drink and be satisfied, and thank me for bringing you out of the land of bondage. Thus and thus only shall Judaism cover the world as the waters cover the sea."

The fervid peroration overbalanced the audience, and from all sides except the platform applause warmed the poet's ears. He resumed his seat, and as he did so he automatically drew out a match and a cigar, and lit the one with the other. Instantly the applause dwindled, died; there was a moment of astonished silence, then a roar of execration. The bulk of the audience, as Pinchas, sober, had been shrewd enough to see, was still orthodox. This public desecration of the Sabbath by smoking was intolerable. How should the God of Israel aid the spread of Socialism and the shorter hours movement and the rise of prices a penny on a coat, if such devil's incense were borne to His nostrils? Their vague admiration of Pinchas changed into definite distrust. "Epikouros, Epikouros, Meshumad" resounded from all sides. The poet looked wonderingly about him, failing to grasp the situation. Simon Wolf saw his opportunity. With an angry jerk he knocked the glowing cigar from between the poet's teeth. There was a yell of delight and approbation.

Wolf jumped to his feet. "Brothers," he roared, "you know I am not froom, but I will not have anybody else's feelings trampled upon." So saying, he ground the cigar under his heel.

Immediately an abortive blow from the poet's puny arm swished the air. Pinchas was roused, the veins on his forehead swelled, his heart thumped rapidly in his bosom. Wolf shook his knobby fist laughingly at the poet, who made no further effort to use any other weapon of offence but his tongue.

"Hypocrite!" he shrieked. "Liar! Machiavelli! Child of the separation! A black year on thee! An evil spirit in thy bones and in the bones of thy father and mother. Thy father was a proselyte and thy mother an abomination. The curses of Deuteronomy light on thee. Mayest thou become covered with boils like Job! And you," he added, turning on the audience, "pack of Men-of-the-earth! Stupid animals! How much longer will you bend your neck to the yoke of superstition while your bellies are empty? Who says I shall not smoke? Was tobacco known to Moses our Teacher? If so he would have enjoyed it on the Shabbos. He was a wise man like me. Did the Rabbis know of it? No, fortunately, else they were so stupid they would have forbidden it. You are all so ignorant that you think not of these things. Can any one show me where it stands that we must not smoke on Shabbos? Is not Shabbos a day of rest, and how can we rest if we smoke not? I believe with the Baal-Shem that God is more pleased when I smoke my cigar than at the prayers of all the stupid Rabbis. How dare you rob me of my cigar—is that keeping Shabbos?" He turned back to Wolf, and tried to push his foot from off the cigar. There was a brief struggle. A dozen men leaped on the platform and dragged the poet away from his convulsive clasp of the labor-leader's leg. A few opponents of Wolf on the platform cried, "Let the man alone, give him his cigar," and thrust themselves amongst the invaders. The hall was in tumult. From the gallery the voice of Mad Davy resounded again:

"Cursed sweaters—stealing men's brains—darkness and filth—curse them! Blow them up I as we blew up Alexander. Curse them!"

Pinchas was carried, shrieking hysterically, and striving to bite the arms of his bearers, through the tumultuous crowd, amid a little ineffective opposition, and deposited outside the door.

Wolf made another speech, sealing the impression he had made. Then the poor narrow-chested pious men went home through the cold air to recite the Song of Solomon in their stuffy back-rooms and garrets. "Behold thou art fair, my love," they intoned in a strange chant. "Behold thou art fair, thou hast doves' eyes. Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant; also our couch is green. The beams of our house are cedar and our rafters are fir. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear upon the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, calamus, cinnamon with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloe with all the chief spices; a fountain of gardens; a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind and come, thou south, blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out."



CHAPTER XX.

THE HOPE EXTINCT.

The strike came to an end soon after. To the delight of Melchitsedek Pinchas, Gideon, M.P., intervened at the eleventh hour, unceremoniously elbowing Simon Wolf out of his central position. A compromise was arranged and jubilance and tranquillity reigned for some months, till the corruptions of competitive human nature brought back the old state of things—for employers have quite a diplomatic reverence for treaties and the brotherly love of employees breaks down under the strain of supporting families. Rather to his own surprise Moses Ansell found himself in work at least three days a week, the other three being spent in hanging round the workshop waiting for it. It is an uncertain trade, is the manufacture of slops, which was all Moses was fitted for, but if you are not at hand you may miss the "work" when it does come.

It never rains but it pours, and so more luck came to the garret of No. 1 Royal Street. Esther won five pounds at school. It was the Henry Goldsmith prize, a new annual prize for general knowledge, instituted by a lady named Mrs. Henry Goldsmith who had just joined the committee, and the semi-divine person herself—a surpassingly beautiful radiant being, like a princess in a fairy tale—personally congratulated her upon her success. The money was not available for a year, but the neighbors hastened to congratulate the family on its rise to wealth. Even Levi Jacob's visits became more frequent, though this could scarcely be ascribed to mercenary motives.

The Belcovitches recognized their improved status so far as to send to borrow some salt: for the colony of No. 1 Royal Street carried on an extensive system of mutual accommodation, coals, potatoes, chunks of bread, saucepans, needles, wood-choppers, all passing daily to and fro. Even garments and jewelry were lent on great occasions, and when that dear old soul Mrs. Simons went to a wedding she was decked out in contributions from a dozen wardrobes. The Ansells themselves were too proud to borrow though they were not above lending.

It was early morning and Moses in his big phylacteries was droning his orisons. His mother had had an attack of spasms and so he was praying at home to be at hand in case of need. Everybody was up, and Moses was superintending the household even while he was gabbling psalms. He never minded breaking off his intercourse with Heaven to discuss domestic affairs, for he was on free and easy terms with the powers that be, and there was scarce a prayer in the liturgy which he would not interrupt to reprimand Solomon for lack of absorption in the same. The exception was the Amidah or eighteen Blessings, so-called because there are twenty-two. This section must be said standing and inaudibly and when Moses was engaged upon it, a message from an earthly monarch would have extorted no reply from him. There were other sacred silences which Moses would not break save of dire necessity and then only by talking Hebrew; but the Amidah was the silence of silences. This was why the utterly unprecedented arrival of a telegraph boy did not move him. Not even Esther's cry of alarm when she opened the telegram had any visible effect upon him, though in reality he whispered off his prayer at a record-beating rate and duly danced three times on his toes with spasmodic celerity at the finale.

"Father," said Esther, the never before received species of letter trembling in her hand, "we must go at once to see Benjy. He is very ill."

"Has he written to say so?"

"No, this is a telegram. I have read of such. Oh! perhaps he is dead. It is always so in books. They break the news by saying the dead are still alive." Her tones died away in a sob. The children clustered round her—Rachel and Solomon fought for the telegram in their anxiety to read it. Ikey and Sarah stood grave and interested. The sick grandmother sat up in bed excited.

"He never showed me his 'four corners,'" she moaned. "Perhaps he did not wear the fringes at all."

"Father, dost thou hear?" said Esther, for Moses Ansell was fingering the russet envelope with a dazed air. "We must go to the Orphanage at once."

"Read it! What stands in the letter?" said Moses Ansell.

She took the telegram from the hands of Solomon. "It stands, 'Come up at once. Your son Benjamin very ill.'"

"Tu! Tu! Tu!" clucked Moses. "The poor child. But how can we go up? Thou canst not walk there. It will take me more than three hours."

His praying-shawl slid from his shoulders in his agitation.

"Thou must not walk, either!" cried Esther excitedly. "We must get to him at once! Who knows if he will be alive when we come? We must go by train from London Bridge the way Benjy came that Sunday. Oh, my poor Benjy!"

"Give me back the paper, Esther," interrupted Solomon, taking it from her limp hand. "The boys have never seen a telegram."

"But we cannot spare the money," urged Moses helplessly. "We have just enough money to get along with to-day. Solomon, go on with thy prayers; thou seizest every excuse to interrupt them. Rachel, go away from him. Thou art also a disturbing Satan to him. I do not wonder his teacher flogged him black and blue yesterday—he is a stubborn and rebellious son who should be stoned, according to Deuteronomy."

"We must do without dinner," said Esther impulsively.

Sarah sat down on the floor and howled "Woe is me! Woe is me!"

"I didden touch 'er," cried Ikey in indignant bewilderment.

"'Tain't Ikey!" sobbed Sarah. "Little Tharah wants 'er dinner."

"Thou hearest?" said Moses pitifully. "How can we spare the money?"

"How much is it?" asked Esther.

"It will be a shilling each there and back," replied Moses, who from his long periods of peregrination was a connoisseur in fares. "How can we afford it when I lose a morning's work into the bargain?"

"No, what talkest thou?" said Esther. "Thou art looking a few months ahead—thou deemest perhaps, I am already twelve. It will be only sixpence for me."

Moses did not disclaim the implied compliment to his rigid honesty but answered:

"Where is my head? Of course thou goest half-price. But even so where is the eighteenpence to come from?"

"But it is not eighteenpence!" ejaculated Esther with a new inspiration. Necessity was sharpening her wits to extraordinary acuteness. "We need not take return tickets. We can walk back."

"But we cannot be so long away from the mother—both of us," said Moses. "She, too, is ill. And how will the children do without thee? I will go by myself."

"No, I must see Benjy!" Esther cried.

"Be not so stiff-necked, Esther! Besides, it stands in the letter that I am to come—they do not ask thee. Who knows that the great people will not be angry if I bring thee with me? I dare say Benjamin will soon be better. He cannot have been ill long."

"But, quick, then, father, quick!" cried Esther, yielding to the complex difficulties of the position. "Go at once."

"Immediately, Esther. Wait only till I have finished my prayers. I am nearly done."

"No! No!" cried Esther agonized. "Thou prayest so much—God will let thee off a little bit just for once. Thou must go at once and ride both ways, else how shall we know what has happened? I will pawn my new prize and that will give thee money enough."

"Good!" said Moses. "While thou art pledging the book I shall have time to finish davening." He hitched up his Talith and commenced to gabble off, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house; ever shall they praise Thee, Selah," and was already saying, "And a Redeemer shall come unto Zion," by the time Esther rushed out through the door with the pledge. It was a gaudily bound volume called "Treasures of Science," and Esther knew it almost by heart, having read it twice from gilt cover to gilt cover. All the same, she would miss it sorely. The pawnbroker lived only round the corner, for like the publican he springs up wherever the conditions are favorable. He was a Christian; by a curious anomaly the Ghetto does not supply its own pawnbrokers, but sends them out to the provinces or the West End. Perhaps the business instinct dreads the solicitation of the racial.

Esther's pawnbroker was a rubicund portly man. He knew the fortunes of a hundred families by the things left with him or taken back. It was on his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin's coat had lain compressed and packed away when it might have had a beautiful airing in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. It was from his stuffy shelves that Esther's mother had redeemed it—a day after the fair—soon to be herself compressed and packed away in a pauper's coffin, awaiting in silence whatsoever Redemption might be. The best coat itself had long since been sold to a ragman, for Solomon, upon whose back it devolved, when Benjamin was so happily translated, could never be got to keep a best coat longer than a year, and when a best coat is degraded to every-day wear its attrition is much more than six times as rapid.

"Good mornen, my little dear," said the rubicund man. "You're early this mornen." The apprentice had, indeed, only just taken down the shutters. "What can I do for you to-day? You look pale, my dear; what's the matter?"

"I have a bran-new seven and sixpenny book," she answered hurriedly, passing it to him.

He turned instinctively to the fly-leaf.

"Bran-new book!" he said contemptuously. "'Esther Ansell—For improvement!' When a book's spiled like that, what can you expect for it?"

"Why, it's the inscription that makes it valuable," said Esther tearfully.

"Maybe," said the rubicund man gruffly. "But d'yer suppose I should just find a buyer named Esther Ansell?" Do you suppose everybody in the world's named Esther Ansell or is capable of improvement?"

"No," breathed Esther dolefully. "But I shall take it out myself soon."

"In this world," said the rubicund man, shaking his head sceptically, "there ain't never no knowing. Well, how much d'yer want?"

"I only want a shilling," said Esther, "and threepence," she added as a happy thought.

"All right," said the rubicund man softened. "I won't 'aggle this mornen. You look quite knocked up. Here you are!" and Esther darted out of the shop with the money clasped tightly in her palm.

Moses had folded his phylacteries with pious primness and put them away in a little bag, and he was hastily swallowing a cup of coffee.

"Here is the shilling," she cried. "And twopence extra for the 'bus to London Bridge. Quick!" She put the ticket away carefully among its companions in a discolored leather purse her father had once picked up in the street, and hurried him off. When his steps ceased on the stairs, she yearned to run after him and go with him, but Ikey was clamoring for breakfast and the children had to run off to school. She remained at home herself, for the grandmother groaned heavily. When the other children had gone off she tidied up the vacant bed and smoothed the old woman's pillows. Suddenly Benjamin's reluctance to have his father exhibited before his new companions recurred to her; she hoped Moses would not be needlessly obtrusive and felt that if she had gone with him she might have supplied tact in this direction. She reproached herself for not having made him a bit more presentable. She should have spared another halfpenny for a new collar, and seen that he was washed; but in the rush and alarm all thoughts of propriety had been submerged. Then her thoughts went off at a tangent and she saw her class-room, where new things were being taught, and new marks gained. It galled her to think she was missing both. She felt so lonely in the company of her grandmother, she could have gone downstairs and cried on Dutch Debby's musty lap. Then she strove to picture the room where Benjy was lying, but her imagination lacked the data. She would not let herself think the brilliant Benjamin was dead, that he would be sewn up in a shroud just like his poor mother, who had no literary talent whatever, but she wondered whether he was groaning like the grandmother. And so, half distracted, pricking up her ears at the slightest creak on the stairs, Esther waited for news of her Benjy. The hours dragged on and on, and the children coming home at one found dinner ready but Esther still waiting. A dusty sunbeam streamed in through the garret window as though to give her hope.

Benjamin had been beguiled from his books into an unaccustomed game of ball in the cold March air. He had taken off his jacket and had got very hot with his unwonted exertions. A reactionary chill followed. Benjamin had a slight cold, which being ignored, developed rapidly into a heavy one, still without inducing the energetic lad to ask to be put upon the sick list. Was not the publishing day of Our Own at hand?

The cold became graver with the same rapidity, and almost as soon as the boy had made complaint he was in a high fever, and the official doctor declared that pneumonia had set in. In the night Benjamin was delirious, and the nurse summoned the doctor, and next morning his condition was so critical that his father was telegraphed for. There was little to be done by science—all depended on the patient's constitution. Alas! the four years of plenty and country breezes had not counteracted the eight and three-quarter years of privation and foul air, especially in a lad more intent on emulating Dickens and Thackeray than on profiting by the advantages of his situation.

When Moses arrived he found his boy tossing restlessly in a little bed, in a private little room away from the great dormitories. "The matron"—a sweet-faced young lady—was bending tenderly over him, and a nurse sat at the bedside. The doctor stood—waiting—at the foot of the bed. Moses took his boy's hand. The matron silently stepped aside. Benjamin stared at him with wide, unrecognizing eyes.

"Nu, how goes it, Benjamin?" cried Moses in Yiddish, with mock heartiness.

"Thank you, old Four-Eyes. It's very good of you to come. I always said there mustn't be any hits at you in the paper. I always told the fellows you were a very decent chap."

"What says he?" asked Moses, turning to the company. "I cannot understand English."

They could not understand his own question, but the matron guessed it. She tapped her forehead and shook her head for reply. Benjamin closed his eyes and there was silence. Presently he opened them and looked straight at his father. A deeper crimson mantled on the flushed cheek as Benjamin beheld the dingy stooping being to whom he owed birth. Moses wore a dirty red scarf below his untrimmed beard, his clothes were greasy, his face had not yet been washed, and—for a climax—he had not removed his hat, which other considerations than those of etiquette should have impelled him to keep out of sight.

"I thought you were old Four-Eyes," the boy murmured in confusion—"Wasn't he here just now?"

"Go and fetch Mr. Coleman," said the matron, to the nurse, half-smiling through tears at her own knowledge of the teacher's nickname and wondering what endearing term she was herself known by.

"Cheer up, Benjamin," said his father, seeing his boy had become sensible of his presence. "Thou wilt be all right soon. Thou hast been much worse than this."

"What does he say?" asked Benjamin, turning his eyes towards the matron.

"He says he is sorry to see you so bad," said the matron, at a venture.

"But I shall be up soon, won't I? I can't have Our Own delayed," whispered Benjamin.

"Don't worry about Our Own, my poor boy," murmured the matron, pressing his forehead. Moses respectfully made way for her.

"What says he?" he asked. The matron repeated the words, but Moses could not understand the English.

Old Four-Eyes arrived—a mild spectacled young man. He looked at the doctor, and the doctor's eye told him all.

"Ah, Mr. Coleman," said Benjamin, with joyous huskiness, "you'll see that Our Own comes out this week as usual. Tell Jack Simmonds he must not forget to rule black lines around the page containing Bruno's epitaph. Bony-nose—I—I mean Mr. Bernstein, wrote it for us in dog-Latin. Isn't it a lark? Thick, black lines, tell him. He was a good dog and only bit one boy in his life."

"All right. I'll see to it," old Four-Eyes assured him with answering huskiness.

"What says he?" helplessly inquired Moses, addressing himself to the newcomer.

"Isn't it a sad case, Mr. Coleman?" said the matron, in a low tone. "They can't understand each other."

"You ought to keep an interpreter on the premises," said the doctor, blowing his nose. Coleman struggled with himself. He knew the jargon to perfection, for his parents spoke it still, but he had always posed as being ignorant of it.

"Tell my father to go home, and not to bother; I'm all right—only a little weak," whispered Benjamin.

Coleman was deeply perturbed. He was wondering whether he should plead guilty to a little knowledge, when a change of expression came over the wan face on the pillow. The doctor came and felt the boy's pulse.

"No, I don't want to hear that Maaseh," cried Benjamin. "Tell me about the Sambatyon, father, which refuses to flow on Shabbos."

He spoke Yiddish, grown a child again. Moses's face lit up with joy. His eldest born had returned to intelligibility. There was hope still then. A sudden burst of sunshine flooded the room. In London the sun would not break through the clouds for some hours. Moses leaned over the pillow, his face working with blended emotions. Me let a hot tear fall on his boy's upturned face.

"Hush, hush, my little Benjamin, don't cry," said Benjamin, and began to sing in his mothers jargon:

"Sleep, little father, sleep, Thy father shall be a Rav, Thy mother shall bring little apples, Blessings on thy little head,"

Moses saw his dead Gittel lulling his boy to sleep. Blinded by his tears, he did not see that they were falling thick upon the little white face.

"Nay, dry thy tears, I tell thee, my little Benjamin," said Benjamin, in tones more tender and soothing, and launched into the strange wailing melody:

"Alas, woe is me! How wretched to be Driven away and banished, Yet so young, from thee."

"And Joseph's mother called to him from the grave: Be comforted, my son, a great future shall be thine."

"The end is near," old Four-Eyes whispered to the father in jargon. Moses trembled from head to foot. "My poor lamb! My poor Benjamin," he wailed. "I thought thou wouldst say Kaddish after me, not I for thee." Then he began to recite quietly the Hebrew prayers. The hat he should have removed was appropriate enough now.

Benjamin sat up excitedly in bed: "There's mother, Esther!" he cried in English. "Coming back with my coat. But what's the use of it now?"

His head fell back again. Presently a look of yearning came over the face so full of boyish beauty. "Esther," he said. "Wouldn't you like to be in the green country to-day? Look how the sun shines."

It shone, indeed, with deceptive warmth, bathing in gold the green country that stretched beyond, and dazzling the eyes of the dying boy. The birds twittered outside the window. "Esther!" he said, wistfully, "do you think there'll be another funeral soon?".

The matron burst into tears and turned away.

"Benjamin," cried the father, frantically, thinking the end had come, "say the Shemang."

The boy stared at him, a clearer look in his eyes.

"Say the Shemang!" said Moses peremptorily. The word Shemang, the old authoritative tone, penetrated the consciousness of the dying boy.

"Yes, father, I was just going to," he grumbled, submissively.

They repeated the last declaration of the dying Israelite together. It was in Hebrew. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Both understood that.

Benjamin lingered on a few more minutes, and died in a painless torpor.

"He is dead," said the doctor.

"Blessed be the true Judge," said Moses. He rent his coat, and closed the staring eyes. Then he went to the toilet table and turned the looking-glass to the wall, and opened the window and emptied the jug of water upon the green sunlit grass.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE JARGON PLAYERS.

"No, don't stop me, Pinchas," said Gabriel Hamburg. "I'm packing up, and I shall spend my Passover in Stockholm. The Chief Rabbi there has discovered a manuscript which I am anxious to see, and as I have saved up a little money I shall speed thither."

"Ah, he pays well, that boy-fool, Raphael Leon," said Pinchas, emitting a lazy ring of smoke.

"What do you mean?" cried Gabriel, flushing angrily. "Do you mean, perhaps, that you have been getting money out of him?"

"Precisely. That is what I do mean," said the poet naively. "What else?"

"Well, don't let me hear you call him a fool. He is one to send you money, but then it is for others to call him so. That boy will be a great man in Israel. The son of rich English Jews—a Harrow-boy, yet he already writes Hebrew almost grammatically."

Pinchas was aware of this fact: had he not written to the lad (in response to a crude Hebrew eulogium and a crisp Bank of England note): "I and thou are the only two people in England who write the Holy Tongue grammatically."

He replied now: "It is true; soon he will vie with me and you."

The old scholar took snuff impatiently. The humors of Pinchas were beginning to pall upon him.

"Good-bye," he said again.

"No, wait, yet a little," said Pinchas, buttonholing him resolutely. "I want to show you my acrostic on Simon Wolf; ah! I will shoot him, the miserable labor-leader, the wretch who embezzles the money of the Socialist fools who trust him. Aha! it will sting like Juvenal, that acrostic."

"I haven't time," said the gentle savant, beginning to lose his temper.

"Well, have I time? I have to compose a three-act comedy by to-morrow at noon. I expect I shall have to sit up all night to get it done in time." Then, anxious to complete the conciliation of the old snuff-and-pepper-box, as he mentally christened him for his next acrostic, he added: "If there is anything in this manuscript that you cannot decipher or understand, a letter to me, care of Reb Shemuel, will always find me. Somehow I have a special genius for filling up lacunae in manuscripts. You remember the famous discovery that I made by rewriting the six lines torn out of the first page of that Midrash I discovered in Cyprus."

"Yes, those six lines proved it thoroughly," sneered the savant.

"Aha! You see!" said the poet, a gratified smile pervading his dusky features. "But I must tell you of this comedy—it will be a satirical picture (in the style of Moliere, only sharper) of Anglo-Jewish Society. The Rev. Elkan Benjamin, with his four mistresses, they will all be there, and Gideon, the Man-of-the-Earth, M.P.,—ah, it will be terrible. If I could only get them to see it performed, they should have free passes."

"No, shoot them first; it would be more merciful. But where is this comedy to be played?" asked Hamburg curiously.

"At the Jargon Theatre, the great theatre in Prince's Street, the only real national theatre in England. The English stage—Drury Lane—pooh! It is not in harmony with the people; it does not express them."

Hamburg could not help smiling. He knew the wretched little hall, since tragically famous for a massacre of innocents, victims to the fatal cry of fire—more deadly than fiercest flame.

"But how will your audience understand it?" he asked.

"Aha!" said the poet, laying his finger on his nose and grinning. "They will understand. They know the corruptions of our society. All this conspiracy to crush me, to hound me out of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites wax fat—do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto? What! Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, of Jerusalem, of Paris, and here it shall not be known? Besides, the leading actress will speak a prologue. Ah! she is beautiful, beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra! And how she acts! She and Rachel—both Jewesses! Think of it! Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me—but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he stirs the soul! It is like David playing before Saul."

"Yes, but it won't be javelins the people will throw," murmured Hamburg, adding aloud: "I suppose you have written the music of this overture."

"No, I cannot write music," said Pinchas.

"Good heavens! You don't say so?" gasped Gabriel Hamburg. "Let that be my last recollection of you! No! Don't say another word! Don't spoil it! Good-bye." And he tore himself away, leaving the poet bewildered.

"Mad! Mad!" said Pinchas, tapping his brow significantly; "mad, the old snuff-and-pepper-box." He smiled at the recollection of his latest phrase. "These scholars stagnate so. They see not enough of the women. Ha! I will go and see my actress."

He threw out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and took his way to Petticoat Lane. The compatriot of Rachel was wrapping up a scrag of mutton. She was a butcher's daughter and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed to have flourished the domestic table-knife. She was a simple, amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, and because there was no one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive. It embraced all the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known to the Danish saw-monger. There was nothing the company would not have undertaken to play or have come out of with a fair measure of success. Some of the plays were on Biblical subjects, but only a minority. There were also plays in rhyme, though Yiddish knows not blank verse. Melchitsedek accosted his interpretess and made sheep's-eyes at her. But an actress who serves in a butcher's shop is doubly accustomed to such, and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though the poet was paying marked attention to her.

"Kiss me, thou beauteous one, the gems of whose crown are foot-lights," said the poet, when the custom ebbed for a moment.

"If thou comest near me," said the actress whirling the chopper, "I'll chop thy ugly little head off."

"Unless thou lendest me thy lips thou shalt not play in my comedy," said Pinchas angrily.

"My trouble!" said the leading lady, shrugging her shoulders.

Pinchas made several reappearances outside the open shop, with his insinuative finger on his nose and his insinuative smile on his face, but in the end went away with a flea in his ear and hunted up the actor-manager, the only person who made any money, to speak of, out of the performances. That gentleman had not yet consented to produce the play that Pinchas had ready in manuscript and which had been coveted by all the great theatres in the world, but which he, Pinchas, had reserved for the use of the only actor in Europe. The result of this interview was that the actor-manager yielded to Pinchas's solicitations, backed by frequent applications of poetic finger to poetic nose.

"But," said the actor-manager, with a sudden recollection, "how about the besom?"

"The besom!" repeated Pinchas, nonplussed for once.

"Yes, thou sayest thou hast seen all the plays I have produced. Hast thou not noticed that I have a besom in all my plays?"

"Aha! Yes, I remember," said Pinchas.

"An old garden-besom it is," said the actor-manager. "And it is the cause of all my luck." He took up a house-broom that stood in the corner. "In comedy I sweep the floor with it—so—and the people grin; in comic-opera I beat time with it as I sing—so—and the people laugh; in farce I beat my mother-in-law with it—so—and the people roar; in tragedy I lean upon it—so—and the people thrill; in melodrama I sweep away the snow with it—so—and the people burst into tears. Usually I have my plays written beforehand and the authors are aware of the besom. Dost thou think," he concluded doubtfully, "that thou hast sufficient ingenuity to work in the besom now that the play is written?"

Pinchas put his finger to his nose and smiled reassuringly.

"It shall be all besom," he said.

"And when wilt thou read it to me?"

"Will to-morrow this time suit thee?"

"As honey a bear."

"Good, then!" said Pinchas; "I shall not fail."

The door closed upon him. In another moment it reopened a bit and he thrust his grinning face through the aperture.

"Ten per cent. of the receipts!" he said with his cajoling digito-nasal gesture.

"Certainly," rejoined the actor-manager briskly. "After paying the expenses—ten per cent. of the receipts."

"Thou wilt not forget?"

"I shall not forget."

Pinchas strode forth into the street and lit a new cigar in his exultation. How lucky the play was not yet written! Now he would be able to make it all turn round the axis of the besom. "It shall be all besom!" His own phrase rang in his ears like voluptuous marriage bells. Yes, it should, indeed, be all besom. With that besom he would sweep all his enemies—all the foul conspirators—in one clean sweep, down, down to Sheol. He would sweep them along the floor with it—so—and grin; he would beat time to their yells of agony—so—and laugh; he would beat them over the heads—so—and roar; he would lean upon it in statuesque greatness—so—and thrill; he would sweep away their remains with it—so—and weep for joy of countermining and quelling the long persecution.

All night he wrote the play at railway speed, like a night express—puffing out volumes of smoke as he panted along. "I dip my pen in their blood," he said from time to time, and threw back his head and laughed aloud in the silence of the small hours.

Pinchas had a good deal to do to explain the next day to the actor-manager where the fun came in. "Thou dost not grasp all the allusions, the back-handed slaps, the hidden poniards; perhaps not," the author acknowledged. "But the great heart of the people—it will understand."

The actor-manager was unconvinced, but he admitted there was a good deal of besom, and in consideration of the poet bating his terms to five per cent. of the receipts he agreed to give it a chance. The piece was billed widely in several streets under the title of "The Hornet of Judah," and the name of Melchitsedek Pinchas appeared in letters of the size stipulated by the finger on the nose.

But the leading actress threw up her part at the last moment, disgusted by the poet's amorous advances; Pinchas volunteered to play the part himself and, although his offer was rejected, he attired himself in skirts and streaked his complexion with red and white to replace the promoted second actress, and shaved off his beard.

But in spite of this heroic sacrifice, the gods were unpropitious. They chaffed the poet in polished Yiddish throughout the first two acts. There was only a sprinkling of audience (most of it paper) in the dimly-lit hall, for the fame of the great writer had not spread from Berlin, Mogadore, Constantinople and the rest of the universe.

No one could make head or tail of the piece with its incessant play of occult satire against clergymen with four mistresses, Rabbis who sold their daughters, stockbrokers ignorant of Hebrew and destitute of English, greengrocers blowing Messianic and their own trumpets, labor-leaders embezzling funds, and the like. In vain the actor-manager swept the floor with the besom, beat time with the besom, beat his mother-in-law with the besom, leaned on the besom, swept bits of white paper with the besom. The hall, empty of its usual crowd, was fuller of derisive laughter. At last the spectators tired of laughter and the rafters re-echoed with hoots. At the end of the second act, Melchitsedek Pinchas addressed the audience from the stage, in his ample petticoats, his brow streaming with paint and perspiration. He spoke of the great English conspiracy and expressed his grief and astonishment at finding it had infected the entire Ghetto.

There was no third act. It was the poet's first—and last—appearance on any stage.



CHAPTER XXII.

"FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR."

The learned say that Passover was a Spring festival even before it was associated with the Redemption from Egypt, but there is not much Nature to worship in the Ghetto and the historical elements of the Festival swamp all the others. Passover still remains the most picturesque of the "Three Festivals" with its entire transmogrification of things culinary, its thorough taboo of leaven. The audacious archaeologist of the thirtieth century may trace back the origin of the festival to the Spring Cleaning, the annual revel of the English housewife, for it is now that the Ghetto whitewashes itself and scrubs itself and paints itself and pranks itself and purifies its pans in a baptism of fire. Now, too, the publican gets unto himself a white sheet and suspends it at his door and proclaims that he sells Kosher rum by permission of the Chief Rabbi. Now the confectioner exchanges his "stuffed monkeys," and his bolas and his jam-puffs, and his cheese-cakes for unleavened "palavas," and worsted balls and almond cakes. Time was when the Passover dietary was restricted to fruit and meat and vegetables, but year by year the circle is expanding, and it should not be beyond the reach of ingenuity to make bread itself Passoverian. It is now that the pious shopkeeper whose store is tainted with leaven sells his business to a friendly Christian, buying it back at the conclusion of the festival. Now the Shalotten Shammos is busy from morning to night filling up charity-forms, artistically multiplying the poor man's children and dividing his rooms. Now is holocaust made of a people's bread-crumbs, and now is the national salutation changed to "How do the Motsos agree with you?" half of the race growing facetious, and the other half finical over the spotted Passover cakes.

It was on the evening preceding the opening of Passover that Esther Ansell set forth to purchase a shilling's worth of fish in Petticoat Lane, involuntarily storing up in her mind vivid impressions of the bustling scene. It is one of the compensations of poverty that it allows no time for mourning. Daily duty is the poor man's nepenthe.

Esther and her father were the only two members of the family upon whom the death of Benjamin made a deep impression. He had been so long away from home that he was the merest shadow to the rest. But Moses bore the loss with resignation, his emotions discharging themselves in the daily Kaddish. Blent with his personal grief was a sorrow for the commentaries lost to Hebrew literature by his boy's premature transference to Paradise. Esther's grief was more bitter and defiant. All the children were delicate, but it was the first time death had taken one. The meaningless tragedy of Benjamin's end shook the child's soul to its depths. Poor lad! How horrible to be lying cold and ghastly beneath the winter snow! What had been the use of all his long prepay rations to write great novels? The name of Ansell would now become ingloriously extinct. She wondered whether Our Own would collapse and secretly felt it must. And then what of the hopes of worldly wealth she had built on Benjamin's genius? Alas! the emancipation of the Ansells from the yoke of poverty was clearly postponed. To her and her alone must the family now look for deliverance. Well, she would take up the mantle of the dead boy, and fill it as best she might. She clenched her little hands in iron determination. Moses Ansell knew nothing either of her doubts or her ambitions. Work was still plentiful three days a week, and he was unconscious he was not supporting his family in comparative affluence. But even with Esther the incessant grind of school-life and quasi-motherhood speedily rubbed away the sharper edges of sorrow, though the custom prohibiting obvious pleasures during the year of mourning went in no danger of transgression, for poor little Esther gadded neither to children's balls nor to theatres. Her thoughts were full of the prospects of piscine bargains, as she pushed her way through a crowd so closely wedged, and lit up by such a flare of gas from the shops and such streamers of flame from the barrows that the cold wind of early April lost its sting.