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 Molière, 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.