'Is Mr. Elkman at home?' she asked.

'You know the name!' said the young woman, a little surprised.

'Yes, I have been here a good deal.' The old woman's sardonic accent

was lost on the listener.

'I am sorry there is nothing this time,' she replied.

'Not even a pair of old shoes?'

'No.'

'But the dead woman's----? Are you, then, standing in them?'

The words were so fierce and unexpected, the crone's eyes blazed so

weirdly, that the new wife recoiled with a little shriek.

'Henry!' she cried.

Fork in hand, he darted in from the living-room, but came to a sudden

standstill.

'What do you want here?' he muttered.

'Fanny's shoes!' she cried.

'Who is it?' his wife's eyes demanded.

'A half-witted creature we deal with out of charity,' he gestured

back. And he put her inside the room-door, whispering, 'Let me get rid

of her.'

'So, that's your painted poppet,' hissed his mother-in-law in Yiddish.

'Painted?' he said angrily. 'Madge painted? She's just as natural as a

rosy apple. She's a country girl, and her mother was a lady.'

'Her mother? Perhaps! But she? You see a glossy high hat marked

sixteen and sixpence, and you think it's new. But I know what it's

come from--a battered thing that has rolled in the gutter. Ah, how she

could have bewitched you, when there are so many honest Jewesses

without husbands!

'I am sorry she doesn't please you; but, after all, it's my business,

and not yours.'

'Not mine? After I gave you my Fanny, and she slaved for you and bore

you children?'

'It's just for her children that I had to marry.'

'What? You had to marry a Christian for the sake of Fanny's children?

Oh, God forgive you!'

'We are not in Poland now,' he said sulkily.

'Ah, I always said you were a sinner in Israel. My Fanny has been

taken for your sins. A black death on your bones.'

'If you don't leave off cursing, I shall call a policeman.'

'Oh, lock me up, lock me up--instead of your shame. Let the whole

world know that.'

'Go away, then. You have no right to come here and frighten Madge--my

wife. She is in delicate health, as it is.'

'May she be an atonement for all of us! I have the right to come here

as much as I please.'

'You have no right.'

'I have a right to the children. My blood is in their veins.'

'You have no right. The children are their father's.'

'Yes, their Father's in heaven,' and she raised her hand like an

ancient prophetess, while the other supported her bag over her

shoulder. 'The children are the children of Israel, and they must

carry forward the yoke of the Law.'

'And what do you propose?' he said, with a scornful sniff.

'Give me the children. I will elevate them in the fear of the Lord.

You go your own godless way, free of burdens--you and your Christian

poppet. You no longer belong to us. Give me the children, and I'll go

away.'

He looked at her quizzingly. 'You have been drinking, my good

mother-in-law.'

'Ay, the waters of affliction. Give me the children.'

'But they won't go with you. They love their step-mother.'

'Love that painted jade? They, with Jewish blood warm in their veins,

with the memory of their mother warm in their hearts? Impossible!'

He opened the door gently. 'Becky! Joe! No, don't you come, Madge,

darling. It's all right. The old lady wants to say "Good-day" to the

children.'

The two children tripped into the passage, with napkins tied round

their chins, their mouths greasy, but the rest of their persons

unfamiliarly speckless and tidy. They stood still at the sight of

their grandmother, so stern and frowning. Henry shut the door

carefully.

'My lambs!' Natalya cried, in her sweetest but harsh tones, 'Won't you

come and kiss me?'

Becky, a mature person of seven, advanced courageously and surrendered

her cheek to her grandmother.

'How are you, granny?' she said ceremoniously.

'And Joseph?' said Natalya, not replying. 'My heart and my crown, will

he not come?'

The four-and-a-half year old Joseph stood dubiously, with his fist in

his mouth.

'Bring him to me, Becky. Tell him I want you and him to come and live

with me.'

Becky shrugged her precocious shoulders. 'He may. I won't,' she said

laconically.

'Oh, Becky!' said the grandmother. 'Do you want to stay here and

torture your poor mother?'

Becky stared. 'She's dead,' she said.

'Yes, but her soul lives and watches over you. Come, Joseph, apple of

my eye, come with me.'

She beckoned enticingly, but the little boy, imagining the invitation

was to enter her bag and be literally carried away therein, set up a

terrific howl. Thereupon the pretty young woman emerged hastily, and

the child, with a great sob of love and confidence, ran to her and

nestled in her arms.

'Mamma, mamma,' he cried.

Henry looked at the old woman with a triumphant smile.

Natalya went hot and cold. It was not only that little Joseph had gone

to this creature. It was not even that he had accepted her maternity.

It was this word 'mamma' that stung. The word summed up all the

blasphemous foreignness of the new domesticity. 'Mamma' was redolent

of cold Christian houses in whose doorways the old clo'-woman

sometimes heard it. Fanny had been 'mother'--the dear, homely, Jewish

'mother.' This 'mamma,' taught to the orphans, was like the haughty

parade of Christian elegance across her grave.

'When _mamma's_ shoes are to be sold, don't forget me,' Natalya

hissed. 'I'll give you the best price in the market.'

Henry shuddered, but replied, half pushing her outside: 'Certainly,

certainly. Good-afternoon.'

'I'll buy them at your own price--ah, I see them coming, coming into

my bag.'

The door closed on her grotesque sibylline intensity, and Henry

clasped his wife tremblingly to his bosom and pressed a long kiss upon

her fragrant cherry lips.

Later on he explained that the crazy old clo'-woman was known to the

children, as to everyone in the neighbourhood, as 'Granny.'

III

In the bearing of her first child the second Mrs. Elkman died. The

rosy face became a white angelic mask, the dainty figure lay in

statuesque severity, and a screaming, bald-headed atom of humanity was

the compensation for this silence. Henry Elkman was overwhelmed by

grief and superstition.

'For three things women die in childbirth,' kept humming in his brain

from his ancient Hebrew lore. He did not remember what they were,

except that one was the omission of the wife to throw into the fire

the lump of dough from the Sabbath bread. But these neglects could not

be visited on a Christian, he thought dully. The only distraction of

his grief was the infant's pressing demand on his attention.

It was some days before the news penetrated to the old woman.

'It is his punishment,' she said with solemn satisfaction. 'Now my

Fanny's spirit will rest.'

But she did not gloat over the decree of the God of Israel as she had

imagined beforehand, nor did she call for the dead woman's old clo'.

She was simply content--an unrighteous universe had been set straight

again like a mended watch. But she did call, without her bag, to

inquire if she could be of service in this tragic crisis.

'Out of my sight, you and your evil eye!' cried Henry as he banged the

door in her face.

Natalya burst into tears, torn by a chaos of emotions. So she was

still to be shut out.

IV

The next news that leaked into Natalya's wizened ear was as startling

as Madge's death. Henry had married again. Doubtless with the same

pretext of the children's needs he had taken unto himself a third

wife, and again without the decencies of adequate delay. And this wife

was a Jewess, as of yore. Henry had reverted matrimonially to the

fold. Was it conscience, was it terror? Nobody knew. But everybody

knew that the third Mrs. Elkman was a bouncing beauty of a good

orthodox stock, that she brought with her fifty pounds in cash,

besides bedding and house-linen accumulated by her parents without

prevision that she would marry an old hand, already provided with

these household elements.

The old clo'-woman's emotions were more mingled than ever. She felt

vaguely that the Jewish minister should not so unquestioningly have

accorded the scamp the privileges of the hymeneal canopy. Some lustral

rite seemed necessary to purify him of his Christian conjunction. And

the memory of Fanny was still outraged by this burying of her, so to

speak, under layers of successive wives. On the other hand, the

children would revert to Judaism, and they would have a Jewish mother,

not a mamma, to care for them and to love them. The thought consoled

her for being shut out of their lives, as she felt she must have been,

even had Henry been friendlier. This third wife had alienated her from

the household, had made her kinship practically remote. She had sunk

to a sort of third cousin, or a mother-in-law twice removed.

The days went on, and again the Elkman household occupied the gossips,

and news of it--second-hand, like everything that came to her--was

picked up by Natalya on her rounds. Henry's third wife was, it

transpired, a melancholy failure. Her temper was frightful, she beat

her step-children, and--worst and rarest sin in the Jewish

housewife--she drank. Henry was said to be in despair.

'_Nebbich_, the poor little children!' cried Natalya, horrified. Her

brain began plotting how to interfere, but she could find no way.

The weeks passed, with gathering rumours of the iniquities of the

third Mrs. Elkman, and then at last came the thunder-clap--Henry had

disappeared without leaving a trace. The wicked wife and the innocent

brats had the four-roomed home to themselves. The Clothing Emporium

knew him no more. Some whispered suicide, others America. Benjamin

Beckenstein, the cutter of the Emporium, who favoured the latter

hypothesis reported a significant saying: 'I have lived with two

angels; I can't live with a demon.'

'Ah, at last he sees my Fanny was an angel,' said Natalya, neglecting

to draw the deduction anent America, and passing over the other angel.

And she embroidered the theme. How indeed could a man who had known

the blessing of a sober, God-fearing wife endure a drunkard and a

child-beater? 'No wonder he killed himself!'

The gossips pointed out that the saying implied flight rather than

suicide.

'You are right!' Natalya admitted illogically. 'Just what a coward and

blackguard like that would do--leave the children at the mercy of the

woman he couldn't face himself. How in Heaven's name will they live?'

'Oh, her father, the furrier, will have to look after them,' the

gossips assured her. 'He gave her good money, you know, fifty pounds

and the bedding. Ah, trust Elkman for that. He knew he wasn't leaving

the children to starve.'

'I don't know so much,' said the old woman, shaking her bewigged head.

What was to be done? Suppose the furrier refused the burden. But

Henry's flight, she felt, had removed her even farther from the Elkman

household. If she went to spy out the land, she would now have to face

the virago in possession. But no! on second thoughts it was this other

woman whom Henry's flight had changed to a stranger. What had the

wretch to do with the children? She was a mere intruder in the house.

Out with her, or at least out with the children.

Yes, she would go boldly there and demand them. 'Poor Becky! Poor

Joseph!' her heart wailed. 'You to be beaten and neglected after

having known the love of a mother.' True, it would not be easy to

support them. But a little more haggling, a little more tramping, a

little more mending, and a little less gorging and gormandising! They

would be at school during the day, so would not interfere with her

rounds, and in the evening she could have them with her as she sat

refurbishing the purchases of the day. Ah, what a blessed release from

the burden of loneliness, heavier than the heaviest sack! It was well

worth the price. And then at bedtime she would say the Hebrew

night-prayer with them and tuck them up, just as she had once done

with her Fanny.

But how if the woman refused to yield them up--as Natalya could fancy

her refusing--out of sheer temper and devilry? What if, amply

subsidized by her well-to-do parent, she wished to keep the little

ones by her and revenge upon them their father's desertion, or hold

them hostages for his return? Why, then, Natalya would use

cunning--ay, and force, too--she would even kidnap them. Once in their

grandmother's hands, the law would see to it that they did not go back

to this stranger, this bibulous brute, whose rights over them were

nil.

It was while buying up on a Sunday afternoon the sloughed vestments of

a Jewish family in Holloway that her resolve came to a head. A cab

would be necessary to carry her goods to her distant garret. What an

opportunity for carrying off the children at the same time! The house

was actually on her homeward route. The economy of it tickled her,

made her overestimate the chances of capture. As she packed the

motley, far-spreading heap into the symmetry of her sack, pressing and

squeezing the clothes incredibly tighter and tighter till it seemed a

magic sack that could swallow up even the Holloway Clothing Emporium,

Natalya's brain revolved feverish fancy-pictures of the coming

adventure.

Leaving the bag in the basement passage, she ran to fetch a cab.

Usually the hiring of the vehicle occupied Natalya half an hour. She

would harangue the Christian cabmen on the rank, pleading her poverty,

and begging to be conveyed with her goods for a ridiculous sum. At

first none of them would take notice of the old Jewish crone, but

would read their papers in contemptuous indifference. But gradually,

as they remained idly on the rank, the endless stream of persuasion

would begin to percolate, and at last one would relent, half out of

pity, and would end by bearing the sack gratuitously on his shoulder

from the house to his cab. Often there were two sacks, quite filling

the interior of a four-wheeler, and then Natalya would ride

triumphantly beside her cabby on the box, the two already the best of

friends. Things went ill if Natalya did not end by trading off

something in the sacks against the fare--at a new profit.

But to-day she was too excited to strike more than a mediocre bargain.

The cumbrous sack was hoisted into the cab. Natalya sprang in beside

it, and in a resolute voice bade the driver draw up for a moment at

the Elkman home.

V

The unwonted phenomenon of a cab brought Becky to the door ere her

grandmother could jump out. She was still under ten, but prematurely

developed in body as in mind. There was something unintentionally

insolent in her precocity, in her habitual treatment of adults as

equals; but now her face changed almost to a child's, and with a glad

tearful cry of 'Oh, grandmother!' she sprang into the old woman's

arms.

It was the compensation for little Joseph's 'mamma.' Tears ran down

the old woman's cheeks as she hugged the strayed lamb to her breast.

A petulant infantile wail came from within, but neither noted it.

'Where is your step-mother, my poor angel?' Natalya asked in a half

whisper.

Becky's forehead gloomed in an ugly frown. Her face became a woman's

again. 'One o'clock the public-houses open on Sundays,' she snorted.

'Oh, my God!' cried Natalya, forgetting that the circumstance was

favouring her project. 'A Jewish woman! You don't mean to say that she

drinks in public-houses?'

'You don't suppose I would let her drink here,' said Becky. 'We have

nice scenes, I can tell you. The only consolation is she's

better-tempered when she's quite drunk.'

The infant's wail rang out more clamorously.

'Hush, you little beast!' Becky ejaculated, but she moved mechanically

within, and her grandmother followed her.

All the ancient grandeur of the sitting-room seemed overclouded with

shabbiness and untidiness. To Natalya everything looked and smelt like

the things in her bag. And there in a stuffy cradle a baby wrinkled

its red face with shrieking.

Becky had bent over it, and was soothing it ere its existence

penetrated at all to the old woman's preoccupied brain. Its pipings

had been like an unheeded wail of wind round some centre of tragic

experience. Even when she realized the child's existence her brain

groped for some seconds in search of its identity.

Ah, the baby whose birth had cost that painted poppet's life! So it

still lived and howled in unwelcome reminder and perpetuation of that

brief but shameful episode. 'Grow dumb like your mother,' she murmured

resentfully. What a bequest of misery Henry Elkman had left behind

him! Ah, how right she had been to suspect him from the very first!

'But where is my little Joseph?' she said aloud.

'He's playing somewhere in the street.'

'_Ach, mein Gott!_ Playing, when he ought to be weeping like this

child of shame. Go and fetch him at once!'

'What do you want him for?'

'I am going to take you both away--out of this misery. You'd like to

come and live with me--eh, my lamb?'

'Rather--anything's better than this.'

Natalya caught her to her breast again.

'Go and fetch my Joseph! But quick, quick, before the public-house

woman comes back!'

Becky flew out, and Natalya sank into a chair, breathless with emotion

and fatigue. The baby in the cradle beside her howled more vigorously,

and automatically her foot sought the rocker, and she heard herself

singing:

'Sleep, little baby, sleep,

Thy father shall be a Rabbi;

Thy mother shall bring thee almonds;

Blessings on thy little head.'

As the howling diminished, she realized with a shock that she was

rocking this misbegotten infant--nay, singing to it a Jewish

cradle-song full of inappropriate phrases. She withdrew her foot as

though the rocker had grown suddenly red-hot. The yells broke out with

fresh vehemence, and she angrily restored her foot to its old place.

'_Nu, nu_,' she cried, rocking violently, 'go to sleep.'

She stole a glance at it, when it grew stiller, and saw that the teat

of its feeding-bottle was out of its mouth. 'There, there--suck!' she

said, readjusting it. The baby opened its eyes and shot a smile at

her, a wonderful, trustful smile from great blue eyes. Natalya

trembled; those were the blue eyes that had supplanted the memory of

Fanny's dark orbs, and the lips now sucking contentedly were the

cherry lips of the painted poppet.

'_Nebbich_; the poor, deserted little orphan,' she apologized to

herself. 'And this is how the new Jewish wife does her duty to her

step-children. She might as well have been a Christian.' Then a

remembrance that the Christian woman had seemingly been an

unimpeachable step-mother confused her thoughts further. And while she

was groping among them Becky returned, haling in Joseph, who in his

turn haled in a kite with a long tail.

The boy, now a sturdy lad of seven, did not palpitate towards his

grandmother with Becky's eagerness. Probably he felt the domestic

position less. But he surrendered himself to her long hug. 'Did she

beat him,' she murmured soothingly, 'beat my own little Joseph?'

'Don't waste time, granny,' Becky broke in petulantly, 'if we _are_

going.'

'No, my dear. We'll go at once.' And, releasing the boy, Natalya

partly undid the lower buttons of his waistcoat.

'You wear no four-corner fringes!' she exclaimed tragically. 'She

neglects even to see to that. Ah, it will be a good deed to carry you

from this godless home.'

'But I don't want to go with you,' he said sullenly, reminded of past

inquisitorial worryings about prayers.

'You little fool!' said Becky. 'You _are_ going--and in that cab.'

'In that cab?' he cried joyfully.

'Yes, my apple. And you will never be beaten again.'

'Oh, _she_ don't hurt!' he said contemptuously. 'She hasn't even got a

cane--like at school.'

'But shan't we take our things?' said Becky.

'No, only the things you stand in. They shan't have any excuse for

taking you back. I'll find you plenty of clothes, as good as new.'

'And little Daisy?'

'Oh, is it a girl? Your stepmother will look after that. She can't

complain of one burden.'

She hustled the children into the cab, where, with the sack and

herself, they made a tightly-packed quartette.

'I say, I didn't bargain for extras inside,' grumbled the cabman.

'You can't reckon these children,' said Natalya, with confused legal

recollections; 'they're both under seven.'

The cabman started. Becky stared out of the window. 'I wonder if we'll

pass Mrs. Elkman,' she said, amused. Joseph busied himself with

disentangling the tails of his kite.

But Natalya was too absorbed to notice their indifference to her. That

poor little Daisy! The image of the baby swam vividly before her. What

a terrible fate to be left in the hands of the public-house woman! Who

knew what would happen to it? What if, in her drunken fury at the

absence of Becky and Joseph, she did it a mischief? At the best the

besotted creature would not take cordially to the task of bringing it

up. It was no child of hers--had not even the appeal of pure Jewish

blood. And there it lay, smiling, with its beautiful blue eyes. It had

smiled trustfully on herself, not knowing she was to leave it to its

fate. And now it was crying; she heard it crying above the rattle of

the cab. But how could she charge herself with it--she, with her daily

rounds to make? The other children were grown up, passed the day at

school. No, it was impossible. And the child's cry went on in her

imagination louder and louder.

She put her head out of the window. 'Turn back! Turn back! I've

forgotten something.'

The cabman swore. 'D'ye think you've taken me by the week?'

'Threepence extra. Drive back.'

The cab turned round, the innocent horse got a stinging flip of the

whip, and set off briskly.

'What have you forgotten, grandmother?' said Becky. 'It's very

careless of you.'

The cab stopped at the door. Natalya looked round nervously, sprang

out, and then uttered a cry of despair.

'_Ach_, we shut the door!' And the inaccessible baby took on a tenfold

desirability.

'It's all right,' said Becky. 'Just turn the handle.'

Natalya obeyed and ran in. There was the baby, not crying, but

sleeping peacefully. Natalya snatched it up frenziedly, and hurried

the fresh-squalling bundle into the cab.

'Taking Daisy?' cried Becky. 'But she isn't yours!'

Natalya shut the cab-door with a silencing bang, and the vehicle

turned again Ghettowards.

VI

The fact that Natalya had taken possession of the children could not

be kept a secret, but the step-mother's family made no effort to

regain them, and, indeed, the woman herself shortly went the way of

all Henry Elkman's wives, though whether she, like the rest, had a

successor, is unknown.

The sudden change from a lone old lady to a mater-familias was not,

however, so charming as Natalya had imagined. The cost of putting

Daisy out to nurse was a terrible tax, but this was nothing compared

to the tax on her temper levied by her legitimate grandchildren, who

began to grumble on the first night at the poverty and pokiness of the

garret, and were thenceforward never without a lament for the good old

times. They had, indeed, been thoroughly spoilt by the father and the

irregular menage. The Christian wife's influence had been refining but

too temporary. It had been only long enough to wean Joseph from the

religious burdens indoctrinated by Fanny, and thus to add to the

grandmother's difficulties in coaxing him back to the yoke of piety.

The only sweet in Natalya's cup turned out to be the love of little

Daisy, who grew ever more beautiful, gracious, and winning.

Natalya had never known so lovable a child. All Daisy did seemed to

her perfect. For instant obedience and instant comprehension she

declared her matchless.

One day, when Daisy was three, the child told the grandmother that in

her momentary absence Becky had pulled Joseph's hair.

'Hush! You mustn't tell tales,' Natalya said reprovingly.

'Becky did not pull Joey's hair,' Daisy corrected herself instantly.

Much to the disgust of Becky, who wished to outgrow the Ghetto, even

while she unconsciously manifested its worst heritages, Daisy picked

up the Yiddish words and phrases, which, in spite of Becky's

remonstrances, Natalya was too old to give up. This was not the only

subject of dispute between Becky and the grandmother, whom she roundly

accused of favouritism of Daisy, and she had not reached fifteen when,

with an independence otherwise praiseworthy, she set up for herself on

her earnings in the fur establishment of her second step-mother's

father, lodging with a family who, she said, bored her less than her

grandmother.

In another year or so, freed from the compulsory education of the

School Board, Joseph joined her. And thus, by the unforeseen turns of

Fortune's wheel, the old-clo' woman of seventy-five was left alone

with the child of seven.

But this child was compensation for all she had undergone, for all

the years of trudging and grubbing and patching and turning. Daisy

threaded her needle for her at night when her keen eyes began to fail,

and while she made the old clo' into new, Daisy read aloud her English

story-books. Natalya took an absorbing interest in these nursery

tales, heard for the first time in her second childhood. 'Jack the

Giant-killer,' 'Aladdin,' 'Cinderella,' they were all delightful

novelties. The favourite story of both was 'Little Red Riding-Hood,'

with its refrain of 'Grandmother, what large eyes you've got!' That

could be said with pointed fun; it seemed to be written especially for

them. Often Daisy would look up suddenly and say: 'Grandmother, what a

large mouth you've got!' 'All the better to bite you with,'

grandmother would reply. And then there would be hugs and kisses.

But Friday night was the great night, the one night of the week on

which Natalya could be stopped from working. Only religion was strong

enough to achieve that. The two Sabbath candles in the copper

candlesticks stood on the white tablecloth, and were lighted as soon

as the welcome dusk announced the advent of the holy day, and they

shed their pious illumination on her dish of fish and the

ritually-twisted loaves. And after supper Natalya would sing the

Hebrew grace at much leisurely length and with great unction. Then she

would tell stories of her youth in Poland--comic tales mixed with

tales of oppression and the memories of ancient wrong. And Daisy would

weep and laugh and thrill. The fusion of races had indeed made her

sensitive and intelligent beyond the common, and Natalya was not

unjustified in planning out for her some illustrious future.

But after eighteen months of this delightful life Natalya's wonderful

vitality began slowly to collapse. She earned less and less, and, amid

her gratitude to God for having relieved her of the burden of Becky

and Joseph, a secret fear entered her heart. Would she be taken away

before Daisy became self-supporting? Nay, would she even be able to

endure the burden till the end? What made things worse was that, owing

to the increase of immigrants, her landlord now exacted an extra

shilling a week for rent. When Daisy was asleep the old woman hung

over the bed, praying for life, for strength.

It was a sultry summer, making the trudge from door to door, under the

ever-swelling sack, almost intolerable. And a little thing occurred to

bring home cruelly to Natalya the decline of all her resources,

physical and financial. The children's country holiday was in the air

at Daisy's Board School, throwing an aroma and a magic light over the

droning class-room. Daisy was to go, was to have a fortnight with a

cottager in Kent; but towards the expenses the child's parent or

guardian was expected to contribute four shillings. Daisy might have

gone free had she pleaded absolute poverty, but that would have meant

investigation. From such humiliation Natalya shrank. She shrank even

more from frightening the poor child by uncovering the skeleton of

poverty. Most of all she shrank from depriving Daisy of all the rural

delights on which the child's mind dwelt in fascinated anticipation.

Natalya did not think much of the country herself, having been born in

a poor Polish village, amid huts and pigs, but she would not

disillusion Daisy.

By miles of extra trudging in the heat, and miracles of bargaining

with bewildered housewives, Natalya raised the four shillings, and the

unconscious Daisy glided off in the happy, noisy train, while on the

platform Natalya waved her coloured handkerchief wet with tears.

That first night without the little sunshiny presence was terrible for

the old-clo' woman. The last prop against decay and collapse seemed

removed. But the next day a joyous postcard came from Daisy, which the

greengrocer downstairs read to Natalya, and she was able to take up

her sack again and go forth into the sweltering streets.

In the second week the child wrote a letter, saying that she had found

a particular friend in an old lady, very kind and rich, who took her

for drives in a chaise, and asked her many questions. This old lady

seemed to have taken a fancy to her from the moment she saw her

playing outside the cottage.

'Perhaps God has sent her to look after the child when I am gone,'

thought Natalya, for the task of going down and up the stairs to get

this letter read made her feel as if she would never go up and down

them again.

Beaten at last, she took to her bed. Her next-room neighbour, the

cobbler's wife, tended her and sent for the 'penny doctor.' But she

would not have word written to Daisy or her holiday cut short. On the

day Daisy was to come back she insisted, despite all advice and

warning, in being up and dressed. She sent everybody away, and lay on

her bed till she heard Daisy's footsteps, then she started to her

feet, and drew herself up in pretentious good health. But the sound of

other footsteps, and the entry of a spectacled, silver-haired old

gentlewoman with the child, spoilt her intended hug. Daisy's new

friend had passed from her memory, and she stared pathetically at the

strange lady and the sunburnt child.

'Oh, grandmother, what great eyes you've got!' And Daisy ran

laughingly towards her.

The usual repartee was wanting.

'And the room is not tidied up,' Natalya said reproachfully, and began

dusting a chair for the visitor. But the old lady waved it aside.

'I have come to thank you for all you have done for my grandchild.'

'_Your_ grandchild?' Natalya fell back on the bed.

'Yes. I have had inquiries made--it is quite certain. Daisy was even

called after me. I am glad of that, at least.' Her voice faltered.

Natalya sat as bolt upright as years of bending under sacks would

allow.

'And you have come to take her from me!' she shrieked.

Already Daisy's new ruddiness seemed to her the sign of life that

belonged elsewhere.

'No, no, do not be alarmed. I have suffered enough from my

selfishness. It was my bad temper drove my daughter from me.' She

bowed her silver head till her form seemed as bent as Natalya's. 'What

can I do to repair--to atone? Will you not come and live with me in

the country, and let me care for you? I am not rich, but I can offer

you every comfort.'

Natalya shook her head. 'I am a Jewess. I could not eat with you.'

'That's just what _I_ told her, grandmother,' added Daisy eagerly.

'Then the child must remain with you at my expense,' said the old

lady.

'But if she likes the country so----' murmured Natalya.

'I like you better, grandmother.' And Daisy laid her ruddied cheek to

the withered cheek, which grew wet with ecstasy.

'She calls _you_ "grandmother," not me,' said the old gentlewoman with

a sob.

'Yes, and I wished her mother dead. God forgive me!'

Natalya burst into a passion of tears and rocked to and fro, holding

Daisy tightly to her faintly pulsing heart.

'What did you say?' Daisy's grandmother flamed and blazed with her

ancient anger. 'You wished my Madge dead?'

Natalya nodded her head. Her arms unloosed their hold of Daisy. 'Dead,

dead, dead,' she repeated in a strange, crooning voice. Gradually a

vacant look crept over her face, and she fell back again on the bed.

She looked suddenly very old, despite her glossy black wig.

'She is ill!' Daisy shrieked.

The cobbler's wife ran in and helped to put her back between the

sheets, and described volubly her obstinacy in leaving her bed.

Natalya lived till near noon of the next day, and Daisy's real

grandmother was with her still at the end, side by side with the

Jewish death-watcher.

About eleven in the morning Natalya said: 'Light the candles, Daisy,

the Sabbath is coming in.' Daisy spread a white tablecloth on the old

wooden table, placed the copper candlesticks upon it, drew it to the

bedside, and lighted the candles. They burned with curious unreality

in the full August sunshine.

A holy peace overspread the old-clo' woman's face. Her dried-up lips

mumbled the Hebrew prayer, welcoming the Sabbath eve. Gradually they

grew rigid in death.

'Daisy,' said her grandmother, 'say the text I taught you.'

'"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,"' sobbed the

child obediently, '"and I will give you rest."'

THE LUFTMENSCH

THE LUFTMENSCH

I

Leopold Barstein, the sculptor, was sitting in his lonesome studio,

brooding blackly over his dead illusions, when the postman brought him

a letter in a large, straggling, unknown hand. It began 'Angel of

God!'

He laughed bitterly. 'Just when I am at my most diabolical!' He did

not at first read the letter, divining in it one of the many

begging-letters which were the aftermath of his East-End Zionist

period. But he turned over the page to see the name of the Orientally

effusive scribe. It was 'Nehemiah Silvermann, Dentist and

Restaurateur.' His laughter changed to a more genial note; his sense

of humour was still saving. The figure of the restaurateur-dentist

sprang to his imagination in marble on a pedestal. In one hand the

figure held a cornucopia, in the other a pair of pincers. He read the

letter.

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'ANGEL OF GOD,

'I have the honour now to ask Your very kind humane merciful

cordial nobility to assist me by Your clement philanthropical

liberal relief in my very hard troublesome sorrows and

worries, on which I suffer violently. I lost all my fortune,

and I am ruined by Russia. I am here at present without means

and dental practice, and my restaurant is impeded with lack of

a few frivolous pounds. I do not know really what to do in my

actual very disgraceful mischief. I heard the people saying

Your propitious magnanimous beneficent charities are

everywhere exceedingly well renowned and considerably

gracious. Thus I solicit and supplicate Your good very kind

genteel clement humanity by my very humble quite instant

request to support me by Your merciful aid, and please to

respond me as soon as possible according to Your generous very

philanthropy in my urgent extreme immense difficulty.

'Your obedient servant respectfully,

'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,

'_Dentist and Restaurateur._'

Such a flood of language carried away the last remnants of Barstein's

melancholia; he saw his imagined statue showering adjectives from its

cornucopia. 'It is the cry of a dictionary in distress!' he murmured,

re-reading the letter with unction.

It pleased his humour to reply in the baldest language. He asked for

details of Silvermann's circumstances and sorrows. Had he applied to

the Russo-Jewish Fund, which existed to help such refugees from

persecution? Did he know Jacobs, the dentist of the neighbouring

Mansel Place?

Jacobs had been one of Barstein's fellow-councillors in Zionism, a

pragmatic inexhaustible debater in the small back room, and the

voluble little man now loomed suddenly large as a possible authority

upon his brother-dentist.

By return of post a second eruption descended upon the studio from the

'dictionary in distress.'

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'MOST HONOURABLE AND ANGELICAL MR. LEOPOLD BARSTEIN,

'I have the honour now to thank You for Your kind answer of my

letter. I did not succeed here by my vital experience in the

last of ten years. I got my livelihood a certain time by my

dental practice so long there was not a hard violent

competition, then I had never any efficacious relief,

protection, then I have no relation, then we and the time are

changeable too, then without money is impossible to perform

any matter, if I had at present in my grieved desperate

position L4 for my restaurant, then I were rescued. I do not

earn anything, and I must despond at last, I perish here, in

Russia I was ruined, please to aid me in Your merciful

humanity by something, if I had L15 I could start off from

here to go somewhere to look for my daily bread, and if I had

L30 so I shall go to Jerusalem because I am convinced by my

bitter and sour troubles and shocking tribulations here is

nothing to do any more for me. I have not been in the

Russo-Jewish fund and do not know it where it is, and if it is

in the Jewish shelter of Leman Street so I have no protection,

no introduction, no recommendation for it. Poverty has very

seldom a few clement humane good people and little friends.

The people say Jacobs the dentist of Mansel Place is not a

good man, and so it is I tried it for he makes the impossible

competition. I ask Your good genteel cordial nobility

according to the universal good reputation of Your gracious

goodness to reply me quick by some help now.

'Your obedient Servant respectfully,

'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,

'_Dentist and Restaurateur._'

This letter threw a new but not reassuring light upon the situation.

Instead of being a victim of the Russian troubles, a recent refugee

from massacre and robbery, Nehemiah had already existed in London for

ten years, and although he might originally have been ruined by

Russia, he had survived his ruin by a decade. His ideas of his future

seemed as hazy as his past. Four pounds would be a very present help;

he could continue his London career. With fifteen pounds he was ready

to start off anywhither. With thirty pounds he would end all his

troubles in Jerusalem. Such nebulousness appeared to necessitate a

personal visit, and the next day, finding himself in bad form,

Barstein angrily bashed in a clay visage, clapped on his hat, and

repaired to the Minories. But he looked in vain for either a dentist

or a restaurant at No. 3A. It appeared a humble corner residence,

trying to edge itself into the important street. At last, after

wandering uncertainly up and down, he knocked at the shabby door. A

frowsy woman with long earrings opened it staring, and said that the

Silvermanns occupied two rooms on her second floor.

'What!' cried Barstein. 'Is he married?'

'I should hope so,' replied the landlady severely. 'He has eleven

children at least.'

Barstein mounted the narrow carpetless stairs, and was received by

Mrs. Silvermann and her brood with much consternation and ceremony.

The family filled the whole front room and overflowed into the back,

which appeared to be a sort of kitchen, for Mrs. Silvermann had rushed

thence with tucked-up sleeves, and sounds of frying still proceeded

from it. But Mr. Silvermann was not at home, the small, faded,

bewigged creature told him apologetically. Barstein looked curiously

round the room, half expecting indications of dentistry or dining. But

he saw only a minimum of broken-down furniture, bottomless cane

chairs, a wooden table and a cracked mirror, a hanging shelf heaped

with ragged books, and a standing cupboard which obviously turned into

a bedstead at night for half the family. But of a dentist's chair

there was not even the ruins. His eyes wandered over the broken-backed

books--some were indeed 'dictionaries in distress.' He noted a

Russo-German and a German-English. Then the sounds of frying

penetrated more keenly to his brain.

'You are the cook of the restaurant?' he inquired.

'Restaurant!' echoed the woman resentfully. 'Have I not enough cooking

to do for my own family? And where shall I find money to keep a

restaurant?'

'Your husband said----' murmured Barstein, as in guilty confusion.

A squalling from the overflow offspring in the kitchen drew off the

mother for a moment, leaving him surrounded by an open-eyed juvenile

mob. From the rear he heard smacks, loud whispers and whimperings.

Then the poor woman reappeared, bearing what seemed a scrubbing-board.

She placed it over one of the caneless chairs, and begged his

Excellency to be seated. It was a half holiday at the school, she

complained, otherwise her family would be less numerous.

'Where does your husband do his dentistry?' Barstein inquired, seating

himself cautiously upon the board.

'Do I know?' said his wife. 'He goes out, he comes in.' At this

moment, to Barstein's great satisfaction, he did come in.

'Holy angel!' he cried, rushing at the hem of Barstein's coat, and

kissing it reverently. He was a gaunt, melancholy figure, elongated to

over six feet, and still further exaggerated by a rusty top-hat of the

tallest possible chimneypot, and a threadbare frockcoat of the longest

possible tails. At his advent his wife, vastly relieved, shepherded

her flock into the kitchen and closed the door, leaving Barstein alone

with the long man, who seemed, as he stood gazing at his visitor,

positively soaring heavenwards with rapture.

But Barstein inquired brutally: 'Where do you do your dentistry?'

'Never mind me,' replied Nehemiah ecstatically. 'Let me look on you!'

And a more passionate worship came into his tranced gaze.

But Barstein, feeling duped, replied sternly: 'Where do you do your

dentistry?'

The question seemed to take some moments penetrating through

Nehemiah's rapt brain, but at last he replied pathetically: 'And where

shall I find achers? In Russia I had my living of it. Here I have no

friends.'

The homeliness of his vocabulary amused Barstein. Evidently the

dictionary _was_ his fount of inspiration. Without it Niagara was

reduced to a trickle. He seemed indeed quite shy of speech, preferring

to gaze with large liquid eyes.

'But you _have_ managed to live here for ten years,' Barstein pointed

out.

'You see how merciful God is!' Nehemiah rejoined eagerly. 'Never once

has He deserted me and my children.'

'But what have you done?' inquired Barstein.

The first shade of reproach came into Nehemiah's eyes.

'Ask sooner what the Almighty has done,' he said.

Barstein felt rebuked. One does not like to lose one's character as a

holy angel. 'But your restaurant?' he said. 'Where is that?'

'That is here.'

'Here!' echoed Barstein, staring round again.

'Where else? Here is a wide opening for a _kosher_ restaurant. There

are hundreds and hundreds of Greeners lodging all around--poor young

men with only a bed or a corner of a room to sleep on. They know not

where to go to eat, and my wife, God be thanked, is a knowing cook.'

'Oh, then, your restaurant is only an idea.'

'Naturally--a counsel that I have given myself.'

'But have you enough plates and dishes and tablecloths? Can you afford

to buy the food, and to risk it's not being eaten?'

Nehemiah raised his hands to heaven.

'Not being eaten! With a family like mine!'

Barstein laughed in spite of himself. And he was softened by noting

how sensitive and artistic were Nehemiah's outspread hands--they might

well have wielded the forceps. 'Yes, I dare say that is what will

happen,' he said. 'How can you keep a restaurant up two pairs of

stairs where no passer-by will ever see it?'

As he spoke, however, he remembered staying in an hotel in Sicily

which consisted entirely of one upper room. Perhaps in the Ghetto

Sicilian fashions were paralleled.

'I do not fly so high as a restaurant in once,' Nehemiah explained.

'But here is this great empty room. What am I to do with it? At night

of course most of us sleep on it, but by daylight it is a waste. Also

I receive several Hebrew and Yiddish papers a week from my friends in

Russia and America, and one of which I even buy here. When I have read

them these likewise are a waste. Therefore have I given myself a

counsel, if I would make here a reading-room they should come in the

evenings, many young men who have only a bed or a room-corner to go

to, and when once they have learnt to come here it will then be easy

to make them to eat and drink. First I will give to them only coffee

and cigarettes, but afterwards shall my wife cook them all the

_Delicatessen_ of Poland. When our custom will become too large we

shall take over Bergman's great fashionable restaurant in the

Whitechapel Road. He has already given me the option thereof; it is

only two hundred pounds. And if your gentility----'

'But I cannot afford two hundred pounds,' interrupted Barstein,

alarmed.

'No, no, it is the Almighty who will afford that,' said Nehemiah

reassuringly. 'From you I ask nothing.'

'In that case,' replied Barstein drily, 'I must say I consider it an

excellent plan. Your idea of building up from small foundations is

most sensible--some of the young men may even have toothache--but I do

not see where you need me--unless to supply a few papers.'

'Did I not say you were from heaven?' Nehemiah's eyes shone again.

'But I do not require the papers. It is enough for me that your holy

feet have stood in my homestead. I thought you might send money. But

to come with your own feet! Now I shall be able to tell I have spoken

with him face to face!'

Barstein was touched. 'I think you will need a larger table for the

reading-room,' he said.

The tall figure shook its tall hat. 'It is only gas that I need for my

operations.'

'Gas!' repeated Barstein, astonished. 'Then you propose to continue

your dentistry too.'

'It is for the restaurant I need the gas,' elucidated Nehemiah.

'Unless there shall be a cheerful shining here the young men will not

come. But the penny gas is all I need.'

'Well, if it costs only a penny----' began Barstein.

'A penny in the slot,' corrected Nehemiah. 'But then there is the

meter and the cost of the burners.' He calculated that four pounds

would convert the room into a salon of light that would attract all

the homeless moths of the neighbourhood.

So this was the four-pound solution, Barstein reflected with his first

sense of solid foothold. After all Nehemiah had sustained his surprise

visit fairly well--he was obviously no Croesus--and if four pounds

would not only save this swarming family but radiate cheer to the

whole neighbourhood--

He sprung open the sovereign-purse that hung on his watch-chain. It

contained only three pounds ten. He rummaged his pockets for silver,

finding only eight shillings.

'I'm afraid I haven't quite got it!' he murmured.

'As if I couldn't trust you!' cried Nehemiah reproachfully, and as he

lifted his long coat-tails to trouser-pocket the money, Barstein saw

that he had no waistcoat.

II

About six months later, when Barstein had utterly forgotten the

episode, he received another letter whose phraseology instantly

recalled everything.

'_To the most Honourable Competent Authentical Illustrious

Authority and Universal Celebrious Dignity of the very

Famous Sculptor._

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'DEAR SIR,

'I have the honour and pleasure now to render the real and

sincere gratitude of my very much obliged thanks for Your

grand gracious clement sympathical propitious merciful liberal

compassionable cordial nobility of your real humane generous

benevolent genuine very kind magnanimous philanthropy, which

afforded to me a great redemption of my very lamentable

desperate necessitous need, wherein I am at present very poor

indeed in my total ruination by the cruel cynical Russia,

therein is every day a daily tyrannous massacre and

assassinate, here is nothing to do any more for me previously,

I shall rather go to Bursia than to Russia. I received from

Your dear kind amiable amicable goodness recently L4 the same

was for me a momental recreateing aid in my actual very

indigent paltry miserable calamitous situation wherein I gain

now nothing and I only perish here. Even I cannot earn here my

daily bread by my perfect scientifick Knowledge of diverse

languages, I know the philological neology and archaiology,

the best way is for me to go to another country to wit, to

Bursia or Turkey. Thus, I solicit and supplicate Your

charitable generosity by my very humble and instant request to

make me go away from here as soon as possible according to

Your humane kind merciful clemency.

'Your obedient Servant respectfully,

'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,

'_Dentist and Professor of Languages_.'

So an Academy of Languages had evolved from the gas, not a restaurant.

Anyhow the dictionary was in distress again. Emigration appeared now

the only salvation.

But where in the world was Bursia? Possibly Persia was meant. But why

Persia? Wherein lay the attraction of that exotic land, and whatever

would Mrs. Silvermann and her overflowing progeny do in Persia?

Nehemiah's original suggestion of Jerusalem had been much more

intelligible. Perhaps it persisted still under the head of Turkey.

Not least characteristic Barstein found Nehemiah's tenacious gloating

over his ancient ruin at the hands of Russia.

For some days the sculptor went about weighed down by Nehemiah's

misfortunes, and the necessity of finding time to journey to the

Minories. But he had an absorbing piece of work, and before he could

tear himself away from it a still more urgent shower of words fell

upon him.

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'I have the honour now,' the new letter ran, 'to inquire about

my decided and expecting departure. I must sue by my quite

humble and very instant entreaty Your noble genteel cordial

humanity in my very hard troublous and bitter and sour

vexations and tribulations to effect for my poor position at

least a private anonymous prompt collection as soon as

possible according to Your clement magnanimous charitable

mercy of L15 if not L25 among Your very estimable and

respectfully good friends, in good order to go in another

country even Bursia to get my livelihood by my dental practice

or by my other scientifick and philological knowledge. The

great competition is here in anything very vigorous. I have

here no dental employment, no dental practice, no relations,

no relief, no gain, no earning, no introduction, no

protection, no recommendation, no money, no good friends, no

good connecting acquaintance, in Russia I am ruined and I

perish here, I am already desperate and despond entirely. I do

not know what to do and what shall I do, do now in my actual

urgent, extreme immense need. I am told by good many people,

that the board of guardians is very seldom to rescue by aid

the people, but very often is to find only faults, and vices

and to make them guilty. I have nothing to do there, and in

the russian jewish fund I found once Sir Asher Aaronsberg and

he is not to me sympathical. I supply and solicit considerably

Your kind humane clement mercy to answer me as soon as

possible quick according to Your very gracious mercy.

'Your obedient Servant respectfully,

'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,

'_Dentist and Professor of Languages._'

As soon as the light failed in his studio, Barstein summoned a hansom

and sped to the Minories.

III

Nehemiah's voice bade him walk in, and turning the door-handle he saw

the top-hatted figure sprawled in solitary gloom along a caneless

chair, reading a newspaper by the twinkle of a rushlight. Nehemiah

sprang up with a bark of joy, making his gigantic shadow bow to the

visitor. From chimney-pot to coat-tail he stretched unchanged, and the

same celestial rapture illumined his gaunt visage.

But Barstein drew back his own coat-tail from the attempted kiss.

'Where is the gas?' he asked drily.

'Alas, the company removed the meter.'

'But the gas-brackets?'

'What else had we to eat?' said Nehemiah simply.

Barstein in sudden suspicion raised his eyes to the ceiling. But a

fragment of gaspipe certainly came through it. He could not, however,

recall whether the pipe had been there before or not.

'So the young men would not come?' he said.

'Oh yes, they came, and they read, and they ate. Only they did not

pay.'

'You should have made it a rule--cash down.'

Again a fine shade of rebuke and astonishment crossed his lean and

melancholy visage.

'And could I oppress a brother-in-Israel? Where had those young men to

turn but to me?'

Again Barstein felt his angelic reputation imperilled. He hastened to

change the conversation.

'And why do you want to go to Bursia?' he said.

'Why shall I want to go to Bursia?' Nehemiah replied.

'You said so.' Barstein showed him the letter.

'Ah, I said I shall sooner go to Bursia than to Russia. Always Sir

Asher Aaronsberg speaks of sending us back to Russia.'

'He would,' said Barstein grimly. 'But where is Bursia?'

Nehemiah shrugged his shoulders. 'Shall I know? My little Rebeccah was

drawing a map thereof; she won a prize of five pounds with which we

lived two months. A genial child is my Rebeccah.'

'Ah, then, the Almighty did send you something.'

'And do I not trust Him?' said Nehemiah fervently. 'Otherwise,

burdened down as I am with a multitude of children----'

'You made your own burden,' Barstein could not help pointing out.

Again that look of pain, as if Nehemiah had caught sight of feet of

clay beneath Barstein's shining boots.

'"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,"' Nehemiah quoted in

Hebrew. 'Is not that the very first commandment in the Bible?'

'Well, then, you want to go to Turkey,' said the sculptor evasively.

'I suppose you mean Palestine?'

'No, Turkey. It is to Turkey we Zionists should ought to go, there to

work for Palestine. Are not many of the Sultan's own officials Jews?

If we can make of _them_ hot-hearted Zionists----'

It was an arresting conception, and Barstein found himself sitting on

the table to discuss it. The reverence with which Nehemiah listened to

his views was touching and disconcerting. Barstein felt humbled by the

celestial figure he cut in Nehemiah's mental mirror. Yet he could not

suspect the man of a glozing tongue, for of the leaders of Zionism

Nehemiah spoke with, if possible, greater veneration, with an awe

trembling on tears. His elongated figure grew even gaunter, his lean

visage unearthlier, as he unfolded his plan for the conquest of

Palestine, and Barstein's original impression of his simple sincerity

was repeated and re-enforced.

Presently, however, it occurred to Barstein that Nehemiah himself

would have scant opportunity of influential contact with Ottoman

officials, and that the real question at issue was, how Nehemiah, his

wife, and his 'at least eleven children,' were to be supported in

Turkey. He mentioned the point.

Nehemiah waved it away. 'And cannot the Almighty support us in Turkey

as well as in England?' he asked. 'Yes, even in Bursia itself the

Guardian of Israel is not sleepy.'

It was then that the word 'Luftmensch' flew into Barstein's mind.

Nehemiah was not an earth-man in gross contact with solidities. He was

an air-man, floating on facile wings through the aether. True, he spoke

of troublesome tribulations, but these were mainly dictionary

distresses, felt most keenly in the rhapsody of literary composition.

At worst they were mere clouds on the blue. They had nothing in common

with the fogs which frequently veiled heaven from his own vision.

Never for a moment had Nehemiah failed to remember the blue, never had

he lost his radiant outlook. His very pessimism was merely optimism in

disguise, since it was only a personal pessimism to be remedied by 'a

few frivolous pounds,' by a new crumb from the hand of Providence, not

that impersonal despair of the scheme of things which gave the thinker

such black moments. How had Nehemiah lived during those first ten

years in England? Who should say? But he had had the wild daring to

uproot himself from his childhood's home and adventure himself upon an

unknown shore, and there, by hook or crook, for better or for worse,

through vicissitudes innumerable and crises beyond calculation, ever

on the perilous verge of nothingness, he had scraped through the days

and the weeks and the years, fearlessly contributing perhaps more

important items to posterity than the dead stones, which were all he,

the sculptor, bade fair to leave behind him. Welcoming each new child

with feasting and psalmody, never for a moment had Nehemiah lost his

robustious faith in life, his belief in God, man, or himself.

Yes, even deeper than his own self-respect was his respect for

others. An impenetrable idealist, he lived surrounded by a radiant

humanity, by men become as Gods. With no conscious hyperbole did he

address one as 'Angel.' Intellect and goodness were his pole-stars.

And what airy courage in his mundane affairs, what invincible

resilience! He had once been a dentist, and he still considered

himself one. Before he owned a tablecloth he deemed himself the

proprietor of a restaurant. He enjoyed alike the pleasures of

anticipation and of memory, and having nothing, glided ever buoyantly

between two gilded horizons. The superficial might call him shiftless,

but more profoundly envisaged, was he not rather an education in the

art of living? Did he not incarnate the great Jewish gospel of the

improvident lilies?

'You shall not go to Bursia,' said Barstein in a burst of artistic

fervour. 'Thirteen people cannot possibly get there for fifteen pounds

or even twenty-five pounds, and for such a sum you could start a small

business here.'

Nehemiah stared at him. 'God's messenger!' was all he could gasp. Then

the tall melancholy man raised his eyes to heaven, and uttered a

Hebrew voluntary in which references to the ram whose horns were

caught in the thicket to save Isaac's life were distinctly audible.

Barstein waited patiently till the pious lips were at rest.

'But what business do you think you----?' he began.

'Shall I presume dictation to the angel?' asked Nehemiah with wet

shining eyes.

'I am thinking that perhaps we might find something in which your

children could help you. How old is the eldest?'

'I will ask my wife. Salome!' he cried. The dismal creature trotted

in.

'How old is Moshele?' he asked.

'And don't you remember he was twelve last Tabernacles?'

Nehemiah threw up his long arms. 'Merciful Heaven! He must soon begin

to learn his _Parshah_ (confirmation portion). What will it be? Where

is my _Chumash_ (Pentateuch)?' Mrs. Silvermann drew it down from the

row of ragged books, and Nehemiah, fluttering the pages and bending

over the rushlight, became lost to the problem of his future.

Barstein addressed himself to the wife. 'What business do you think

your husband could set up here?'

'Is he not a dentist?' she inquired in reply.

Barstein turned to the busy peering flutterer.

'Would you like to be a dentist again?'

'Ah, but how shall I find achers?'

'You put up a sign,' said Barstein. 'One of those cases of teeth. I

daresay the landlady will permit you to put it up by the front door,

especially if you take an extra room. I will buy you the instruments,

furnish the room attractively. You will put in your newspapers--why,

people will be glad to come as to a reading-room!' he added smiling.

Nehemiah addressed his wife. 'Did I not say he was a genteel

archangel?' he cried ecstatically.

IV

Barstein was sitting outside a cafe in Rome sipping vermouth with

Rozenoffski, the Russo-Jewish pianist, and Schneemann the

Galician-Jewish painter, when he next heard from Nehemiah.

He was anxiously expecting an important letter, which he had

instructed his studio-assistant to bring to him instantly. So when the

man appeared, he seized with avidity upon the envelope in his hand.

But the scrawling superscription at once dispelled his hope, and

recalled the forgotten _Luftmensch_. He threw the letter impatiently

on the table.

'Oh, you may read it,' his friends protested, misunderstanding.

'I can guess what it is,' he said grumpily. Here, in this classical

atmosphere, in this southern sunshine, he felt out of sympathy with

the gaunt godly Nehemiah, who had doubtless lapsed again into his

truly troublesome tribulations. Not a penny more for the

ne'er-do-well! Let his Providence look after him!

'Is she beautiful?' quizzed Schneemann.

Barstein roared with laughter. His irate mood was broken up. Nehemiah

as a petticoated romance was too tickling.

'You shall read the letter,' he said.

Schneemann protested comically. 'No, no, that would be

ungentlemanly--you read to us what the angel says.'

'It is I that am the angel,' Barstein laughed, as he tore open the

letter. He read it aloud, breaking down in almost hysterical laughter

at each eruption of adjectives from 'the dictionary in distress.'

Rozenoffski and Schneemann rolled in similar spasms of mirth, and the

Italians at the neighbouring tables, though entirely ignorant of the

motive of the merriment, caught the contagion, and rocked and shrieked

with the mad foreigners.

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'RIGHT HONOURABLE ANGELICAL MR. LEOPOLD BARSTEIN,

'I have now the honour to again solicit Your genteel genuine

sympathical humane philanthropic kind cordial nobility to

oblige me at present by Your merciful loan of gracious second

and propitious favourable aidance in my actually poor indigent

position in which I have no earn by my dental practice

likewise no help, also no protection, no recommendation, no

employment, and then the competition is here very violent. I

was ruined by Russia, and I have nothing for the celebration

of our Jewish new year. Consequentially upon your merciful

archangelical donative I was able to make my livelihood by my

dental practice even very difficult, but still I had my vital

subsistence by it till up now, but not further for the little

while, in consequence of it my circumstances are now in the

urgent extreme immense need. Thus I implore Your competent,

well famous good-hearted liberal magnanimous benevolent

generosity to respond me in Your beneficent relief as soon as

possible, according to Your kind grand clemence of Your good

ingenuous genteel humanity. I wish You a happy new year.

'Your obedient servant respectfully,

'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,

'_Dentist and Professor of Languages_.'

But when the reading was finished, Schneemann's comment was

unexpected.

'_Rosh Hashanah_ so near?' he said.

A rush of Ghetto memories swamped the three artists as they tried to

work out the date of the Jewish New Year, that solemn period of

earthly trumpets and celestial judgments.

'Why, it must be to-day!' cried Rozenoffski suddenly. The trio looked

at one another with rueful humour. Why, the Ghetto could not even

realize such indifference to the heavenly tribunals so busily

decreeing their life-or-death sentences!

Barstein raised his glass. 'Here's a happy new year, anyhow!' he said.

The three men clinked glasses.

Rozenoffski drew out a hundred-lire note.

'Send that to the poor devil,' he said.

'Oho!' laughed Schneemann. 'You still believe "Charity delivers from

death!" Well, I must be saved too!' And he threw down another

hundred-lire note.

To the acutely analytical Barstein it seemed as if an old

superstitious thrill lay behind Schneemann's laughter as behind

Rozenoffski's donation.

'You will only make the _Luftmensch_ believe still more obstinately in

his Providence,' he said, as he gathered up the New Year gifts. 'Again

will he declare that he has been accorded a good writing and a good

sealing by the Heavenly Tribunal!'

'Well, hasn't he?' laughed Schneemann.

'Perhaps he has,' said Rozenoffski musingly. '_Qui sa?_'

THE TUG OF LOVE

THE TUG OF LOVE

When Elias Goldenberg, Belcovitch's head cutter, betrothed himself to

Fanny Fersht, the prettiest of the machinists, the Ghetto blessed the

match, always excepting Sugarman the _Shadchan_ (whom love matches

shocked), and Goldenberg's relatives (who considered Fanny flighty and

fond of finery).

'That Fanny of yours was cut out for a rich man's wife,' insisted

Goldenberg's aunt, shaking her pious wig.

'He who marries Fanny _is_ rich,' retorted Elias.

'"Pawn your hide, but get a bride,"' quoted the old lady savagely.

As for the slighted marriage-broker, he remonstrated almost like a

relative.

'But I didn't want a negotiated marriage,' Elias protested.

'A love marriage I could also have arranged for you,' replied Sugarman

indignantly.

But Elias was quite content with his own arrangement, for Fanny's

glance was melting and her touch transporting. To deck that soft warm

hand with an engagement-ring, a month's wages had not seemed

disproportionate, and Fanny flashed the diamond bewitchingly. It lit

up the gloomy workshop with its signal of felicity. Even Belcovitch,

bent over his press-iron, sometimes omitted to rebuke Fanny's

badinage.

The course of true love seemed to run straight to the Canopy--Fanny

had already worked the bridegroom's praying shawl--when suddenly a

storm broke. At first the cloud was no bigger than a man's hand--in

fact, it was a man's hand. Elias espied it groping for Fanny's in the

dim space between the two machines. As Fanny's fingers fluttered

towards it, her other hand still guiding the cloth under the throbbing

needle, Elias felt the needle stabbing his heart up and down, through

and through. The very finger that held his costly ring lay in this

alien paw gratis.

The shameless minx! Ah, his relatives were right. He snapped the

scissors savagely like a dragon's jaw.

'Fanny, what dost thou?' he gasped in Yiddish.

Fanny's face flamed; her guilty fingers flew back.

'I thought thou wast on the other side,' she breathed.

Elias snorted incredulously.

As soon as Sugarman heard of the breaking of the engagement he flew to

Elias, his blue bandanna streaming from his coat-tail.

'If you had come to me,' he crowed, 'I should have found you a more

reliable article. However, Heaven has given you a second helping. A

well-built wage-earner like you can look as high as a greengrocer's

daughter even.'

'I never wish to look upon a woman again,' Elias groaned.

'_Schtuss!_' said the great marriage-broker. 'Three days after the

Fast of Atonement comes the Feast of Tabernacles. The Almighty,

blessed be He, who created both light and darkness, has made obedient

females as well as pleasure-seeking jades.' And he blew his nose

emphatically into his bandanna.

'Yes; but she won't return me my ring,' Elias lamented.

'What!' Sugarman gasped. 'Then she considers herself still engaged to

you.'

'Not at all. She laughs in my face.'

'And she has given you back your promise?'

'My promise--yes. The ring--no.'

'But on what ground?'

'She says I gave it to her.'

Sugarman clucked his tongue. 'Tututu! Better if we had followed our

old custom, and the man had worn the engagement-ring, not the woman!'

'In the workshop,' Elias went on miserably, 'she flashes it in my

eyes. Everybody makes mock. Oh, the Jezebel!'

'I should summons her!'

'It would only cost me more. Is it not true I gave her the ring?'

Sugarman mopped his brow. His vast experience was at fault. No maiden

had ever refused to return his client's ring; rather had she flung it

in the wooer's false teeth.

'This comes of your love matches!' he cried sternly. 'Next time there

must be a proper contract.'

'Next time!' repeated Elias. 'Why how am I to afford a new ring? Fanny

was ruinous in cups of chocolate and the pit of the Pavilion Theatre!'

'I should want my fee down!' said Sugarman sharply.

Elias shrugged his shoulders. 'If you bring me the ring.'

'I do not get old rings but new maidens,' Sugarman reminded him

haughtily. 'However, as you are a customer----' and crying 'Five per

cent. on the greengrocer's daughter,' he hurried away ere Elias had

time to dissent from the bargain.

Donning his sealskin vest to overawe the Fershts, Sugarman ploughed

his way up the dark staircase to their room. His attire was wasted on

the family, for Fanny herself opened the door.

'Peace to you,' he cried. 'I have come on behalf of Elias Goldenberg.'

'It is useless. I will not have him.' And she was shutting the door.

Her misconception, wilful or not, scattered all Sugarman's prepared

diplomacies. 'He does not want you, he wants the ring,' he cried

hastily.

Fanny indecorously put a finger to her nose. The diamond glittered

mockingly on it. Then she turned away giggling. 'But look at this

photograph!' panted Sugarman desperately through the closing door.

Surprise and curiosity brought her eyes back. She stared at the

sheepish features of a frock-coated stranger.

'Four pounds a week all the year round, head cutter at S. Cohn's,'

said Sugarman, pursuing this advantage. 'A good old English family;

Benjamin Beckenstein is his name, and he is dying to step into Elias's

shoes.'

'His feet are too large!' And she flicked the photograph floorwards

with her bediamonded finger.

'But why waste the engagement-ring?' pleaded Sugarman, stooping to

pick up the suitor.

'What an idea! A new man, a new ring!' And Fanny slammed the door.

'Impudence-face! Would you become a jewellery shop?' the baffled

_Shadchan_ shrieked through the woodwork.

He returned to Elias, brooding darkly.

'Well?' queried Elias.

'O, your love matches!' And Sugarman shook them away with shuddersome

palms.

'Then she won't----'

'No, she won't. Ah, how blessed you are to escape from that daughter

of Satan! The greengrocer's daughter now----'

'Speak me no more matches. I risk no more rings.'

'I will get you one on the hire system.'

'A maiden?'

'Guard your tongue! A ring, of course.'

Elias shook an obdurate head. 'No. I must have the old ring back.'

'That is impossible--unless you marry her to get it back. Stay! Why

should I not arrange that for you?'

'Leave me in peace! Heaven has opened my eyes.'

'Then see how economical she is!' urged Sugarman. 'A maiden who sticks

to a ring like that is not likely to be wasteful of your substance.'

'You have not seen her swallow "stuffed monkeys,"' said Elias grimly.

'Make an end! I have done with her.'

'No, you have not! You can still give yourself a counsel.' And

Sugarman looked a conscious sphinx. 'You may yet get back the ring.'

'How?'

'Of course, I have the next disposal of it?' said Sugarman.

'Yes, yes. Go on.'

'To-morrow in the workshop pretend to steal loving glances all day

long when she's not looking. When she catches you----'

'But she won't be looking!'

'Oh, yes, she will. When she catches you, you must blush.'

'But I can't blush at will,' Elias protested.

'I know it is hard. Well, look foolish. That will be easier for you.'

'But why shall I look foolish?'

'To make her think you are in love with her after all.'

'I should look foolish if I were.'

'Precisely. That is the idea. When she leaves the workshop in the

evening follow her, and as she passes the cake-shop, sigh and ask her

if she will not eat a "stuffed monkey" for the sake of peace-be-upon-him

times.'

'But she won't.'

'Why not? She is still in love.'

'With stuffed monkeys,' said Elias cynically.

'With you, too.'

Elias blushed quite easily. 'How do you know?'

'I offered her another man, and she slammed the door in my face!'

'You--you offered----' Elias stuttered angrily.

'Only to test her,' said Sugarman soothingly. He continued: 'Now, when

she has eaten the cake and drunk a cup of chocolate, too (for one must

play high with such a ring at stake), you must walk on by her side,

and when you come to a dark corner, take her hand and say "My

treasure" or "My angel," or whatever nonsense you modern young men

babble to your maidens--with the results you see!--and while she is

drinking it all in like more chocolate, her fingers in yours, give a

sudden tug, and off comes the ring!'

Elias gazed at him in admiration. 'You are as crafty as Jacob, our

father.'

'Heaven has not denied everybody brains,' replied Sugarman modestly.

'Be careful to seize the left hand.'

The admiring Elias followed the scheme to the letter.

Even the blush he had boggled at came to his cheeks punctually

whenever his sheep's-eyes met Fanny's. He was so surprised to find his

face burning that he looked foolish into the bargain.

They dallied long in the cake-shop, Elias trying to summon up courage

for the final feint. He would get a good grip on the ring finger. The

tug-of-war should be brief.

Meantime the couple clinked chocolate cups, and smiled into each

other's eyes.

'The good-for-nothing!' thought Elias hotly. 'She will make the same

eyes at the next man.'

And he went on gorging her, every speculative 'stuffed monkey'

increasing his nervous tension. Her white teeth, biting recklessly

into the cake, made him itch to slap her rosy cheek. Confectionery

palled at last, and Fanny led the way out. Elias followed, chattering

with feverish gaiety. Gradually he drew up even with her.

They turned down the deserted Fishmonger's Alley, lit by one dull

gas-lamp. Elias's limbs began to tremble with the excitement of the

critical moment. He felt like a footpad. Hither and thither he

peered--nobody was about. But--was he on the right side of her? 'The

right is the left,' he told himself, trying to smile, but his pulses

thumped, and in the tumult of heart and brain he was not sure he knew

her right hand from her left. Fortunately he caught the glitter of the

diamond in the gloom, and instinctively his robber hand closed upon

it.

But as he felt the warm responsive clasp of those soft fingers, that

ancient delicious thrill pierced every vein. Fool that he had been to

doubt that dear hand! And it was wearing his ring still--she could not

part with it! O blundering male ingrate!

'My treasure! My angel!' he murmured ecstatically.

THE YIDDISH 'HAMLET'

THE YIDDISH 'HAMLET'

I

The little poet sat in the East-side cafe looking six feet high.

Melchitsedek Pinchas--by dint of a five-pound note from Sir Asher

Aaronsberg in acknowledgement of the dedication to him of the poet's

'Songs of Zion'--had carried his genius to the great new Jewry across

the Atlantic. He had arrived in New York only that very March, and

already a crowd of votaries hung upon his lips and paid for all that

entered them. Again had the saying been verified that a prophet is

nowhere without honour save in his own country. The play that had

vainly plucked at the stage-doors of the Yiddish Theatres of Europe

had already been accepted by the leading Yiddish theatre of New York.

At least there were several Yiddish Theatres, each claiming this

supreme position, but the poet felt that the production of his play at

Goldwater's Theatre settled the question among them.

'It is the greatest play of the generation,' he told the young

socialists and free-thinkers who sat around him this Friday evening

imbibing chocolate. 'It will be translated into every tongue.' He had

passed with a characteristic bound from satisfaction with the Ghetto

triumph into cosmopolitan anticipations. 'See,' he added, 'my initials

make M.P.--Master Playwright.'

'Also Mud Pusher,' murmured from the next table Ostrovsky, the

socialist leader, who found himself almost deserted for the new lion.

'Who is this uncombed bunco-steerer?'

'He calls himself the "sweet singer in Israel,"' contemptuously

replied Ostrovsky's remaining parasite.

'But look here, Pinchas,' interposed Benjamin Tuch, another of the

displaced demigods, a politician with a delusion that he swayed

Presidential elections by his prestige in Brooklyn. 'You said the

other day that your initials made "Messianic Poet."'

'And don't they?' inquired the poet, his Dantesque, if dingy, face

flushing spiritedly. 'You call yourself a leader, and you don't know

your A B C!'

There was a laugh, and Benjamin Tuch scowled.

'They can't stand for everything,' he said.

'No--they can't stand for "Bowery Tough,"' admitted Pinchas; and the

table roared again, partly at the rapidity with which this linguistic

genius had picked up the local slang. 'But as our pious lunatics think

there are many meanings in every letter of the Torah,' went on the

pleased poet, 'so there are meanings innumerable in every letter of my

name. If I am playwright as well as poet, was not Shakespeare both

also?'

'You wouldn't class yourself with a low-down barnstormer like

Shakespeare?' said Tuch sarcastically.

'My superiority to Shakespeare I leave to others to discover,' replied

the poet seriously, and with unexpected modesty. 'I discovered it for

myself in writing this very play; but I cannot expect the world to

admit it till the play is produced.'

'How did you come to find it out yourself?' asked Witberg, the young

violinist, who was never sure whether he was guying the poet or

sitting at his feet.

'It happened most naturally--order me another cup of chocolate,

Witberg. You see, when Iselmann was touring with his Yiddish troupe

through Galicia, he had the idea of acquainting the Jewish masses with

"Hamlet," and he asked me to make the Yiddish translation, as one

great poet translating another--and some of those almond-cakes,

Witberg! Well, I started on the job, and then of course the discovery

was inevitable. The play, which I had not read since my youth, and

then only in a mediocre Hebrew version, appeared unspeakably childish

in places. Take, for example, the Ghost--these almond-cakes are as

stale as sermons; command me a cream-tart, Witberg. What was I

saying?'

'The Ghost,' murmured a dozen voices.

'Ah, yes--now, how can a ghost affect a modern audience which no

longer believes in ghosts?'

'That is true.' The table was visibly stimulated, as though the

chocolate had turned into champagne. The word 'modern' stirred the

souls of these refugees from the old Ghettos like a trumpet; unbelief,

if only in ghosts, was oxygen to the prisoners of a tradition of three

thousand years. The poet perceived his moment. He laid a black-nailed

finger impressively on the right side of his nose.

'I translated Shakespeare--yes, but into modern terms. The Ghost

vanished--Hamlet's tragedy remained only the internal incapacity of

the thinker for the lower activity of action.'

The men of action pricked up their ears.

'The higher activity, you mean,' corrected Ostrovsky.

'Thought,' said Benjamin Tuch, 'has no value till it is translated

into action.'

'Exactly; you've got to work it up,' said Colonel Klopsky, who had

large ranching and mining interests out West, and, with his florid

personality, looked entirely out of place in these old haunts of his.

'_Schtuss_ (nonsense)!' said the poet disrespectfully. 'Acts are only

soldiers. Thought is the general.'

Witberg demurred. 'It isn't much use _thinking_ about playing the

violin, Pinchas.'

'My friend,' said the poet, 'the thinker in music is the man who

writes your solos. His thoughts exist whether you play them or

not--and independently of your false notes. But you performers are all

alike--I have no doubt the leading man who plays my Hamlet will

imagine his is the higher activity. But woe be to those fellows if

they change a syllable!'

'_Your_ Hamlet?' sneered Ostrovsky. 'Since when?'

'Since I re-created him for the modern world, without tinsel and

pasteboard; since I conceived him in fire and bore him in agony;

since--even the cream of this tart is sour--since I carried him to and

fro in my pocket, as a young kangaroo is carried in the pouch of the

mother.'

'Then Iselmann did not produce it?' asked the Heathen Journalist, who

haunted the East Side for copy, and pronounced Pinchas 'Pin-cuss.'

'No, I changed his name to Eselmann, the Donkey-man. For I had hardly

read him ten lines before he brayed out, "Where is the Ghost?" "The

Ghost?" I said. "I have laid him. He cannot walk on the modern stage."

Eselmann tore his hair. "But it is for the Ghost I had him translated.

Our Yiddish audiences love a ghost." "They love your acting, too," I

replied witheringly. "But I am not here to consider the tastes of the

mob." Oh, I gave the Donkey-man a piece of my mind.'

'But he didn't take the piece!' jested Grunbitz, who in Poland had

been a _Badchan_ (marriage-jester), and was now a Zionist editor.

'Bah! These managers are all men-of-the-earth! Once, in my days of

obscurity, I was made to put a besom into the piece, and it swept all

my genius off the boards. Ah, the donkey-men! But I am glad Eselmann

gave me my "Hamlet" back, for before giving it to Goldwater I made it

even more subtle. No vulgar nonsense of fencing and poison at the

end--a pure mental tragedy, for in life the soul alone counts.

No--this cream is just as sour as the other--my play will be the

internal tragedy of the thinker.'

'The internal tragedy of the thinker is indigestion,' laughed the

ex-_Badchan_; 'you'd better be more careful with the cream-tarts.'

The Heathen Journalist broke through the laughter. 'Strikes me,

Pin-cuss, you're giving us Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.'

'Better than the Prince of Denmark without Hamlet,' retorted the poet,

cramming cream-tart down his throat in great ugly mouthfuls; 'that is

how he is usually played. In my version the Prince of Denmark indeed

vanishes, for Hamlet is a Hebrew and the Prince of Palestine.'

'You have made him a Hebrew?' cried Mieses, a pimply young poet.

'If he is to be the ideal thinker, let him belong to the nation of

thinkers,' said Pinchas. 'In fact, the play is virtually an

autobiography.'

'And do you call it "Hamlet" still?' asked the Heathen Journalist,

producing his notebook, for he began to see his way to a Sunday scoop.

'Why not? True, it is virtually a new work. But Shakespeare borrowed

his story from an old play called "Hamlet," and treated it to suit

himself; why, therefore, should I not treat Shakespeare as it suits

_me_. The cat eats the rat, and the dog bites the cat.' He laughed his

sniggering laugh. 'If I were to call it by another name, some learned

fool would point out it was stolen from Shakespeare, whereas at

present it challenges comparison.'

'But you discovered Shakespeare cannot sustain the comparison,' said

Benjamin Tuch, winking at the company.

'Only as the mediaeval astrologer is inferior to the astronomer of

to-day,' the poet explained with placid modesty. 'The muddle-headedness

of Shakespeare's ideas--which, incidentally, is the cause of the muddle

of Hamlet's character--has given way to the clear vision of the modern.

How could Shakespeare really describe the thinker? The Elizabethans

could not think. They were like our rabbis.'

The unexpected digression into contemporary satire made the whole cafe

laugh. Gradually other atoms had drifted toward the new magnet. From

the remotest corners eyes strayed and ears were pricked up. Pinchas

was indeed a figure of mark, with somebody else's frock-coat on his

meagre person, his hair flowing like a dark cascade under a

broad-brimmed dusky hat, and his sombre face aglow with genius and

cocksureness.

'Why should you expect thought from a rabbi?' said Grunbitz. 'You

don't expect truth from a tradesman. Besides, only youth thinks.'

'That is well said,' approved Pinchas. 'He who is ever thinking never

grows old. I shall die young, like all whom the gods love. Waiter,

give Mr. Grunbitz a cup of chocolate.'

'Thank you--but I don't care for any.'

'You cannot refuse--you will pain Witberg,' said the poet simply.

In the great city around them men jumped on and off electric cars,

whizzed up and down lifts, hustled through lobbies, hulloed through

telephones, tore open telegrams, dictated to clacking typists, filled

life with sound and flurry, with the bustle of the markets and the

chink of the eternal dollar; while here, serenely smoking and sipping,

ruffled only by the breezes of argument, leisurely as the philosophers

in the colonnades of Athens, the talkers of the Ghetto, earnest as

their forefathers before the great folios of the Talmud, made an

Oriental oasis amid the simoom whirl of the Occident. And the Heathen

Journalist who had discovered it felt, as so often before, that here

alone in this arid, mushroom New York was antiquity, was restfulness,

was romanticism; here was the Latin Quarter of the city of the Goths.

Encouraged by the Master's good humour, young Mieses timidly exhibited

his new verses. Pinchas read the manuscript aloud to the confusion of

the blushing boy.

'But it is full of genius!' he cried in genuine astonishment. 'I might

have written it myself, except that it is so unequal--a mixture of

diamonds and paste, like all Hebrew literature.' He indicated with

flawless taste the good lines, not knowing they were one and all

unconscious reproductions from the English masterpieces Mieses had

borrowed from the library in the Educational Alliance. The acolytes

listened respectfully, and the beardless, blotchy-faced Mieses began

to take importance in their eyes and to betray the importance he held

in his own.

'Perhaps I, too, shall write a play one day,' he said. 'My "M," too,

makes "Master."'

'It may be that you are destined to wear my mantle,' said Pinchas

graciously.

Mieses looked involuntarily at the ill-fitting frock-coat.

Pinchas rose. 'And now, Mieses, you must give me a car-fare. I have to

go and talk to the manager about rehearsals. One must superintend the

actors one's self--these pumpkin-heads are capable of any crime, even

of altering one's best phrases.'

Radsikoff smiled. He had sat still in his corner, this most prolific

of Ghetto dramatists, his big, furrowed forehead supported on his

fist, a huge, odorous cigar in his mouth.

'I suppose Goldwater plays "Hamlet,"' he said.

'We have not discussed it yet,' said Pinchas airily.

Radsikoff smiled again. 'Oh, he'll pull through--so long as Mrs.

Goldwater doesn't play "Ophelia."'

'She play "Ophelia"! She would not dream of such a thing. She is a

saucy soubrette; she belongs to vaudeville.'

'All right. I have warned you.'

'You don't think there is really a danger!' Pinchas was pale and

shaking.

'The Yiddish stage is so moral. Husbands and wives, unfortunately,

live and play together,' said the old dramatist drily.

'I'll drown her truly before I let her play my "Ophelia,"' said the

poet venomously.

Radsikoff shrugged his shoulders and dropped into American. 'Well,

it's up to you.'

'The minx!' Pinchas shook his fist at the air. 'But I'll manage her.

If the worst comes to the worst, I'll make love to her.'

The poet's sublime confidence in his charms was too much even for his

admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant

actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with

laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of

drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. He grinned placidly.

'And when is your play coming on?' asked Radsikoff.

'After Passover,' replied Pinchas, beginning to button his frock-coat

against the outer cold. If only to oust this 'Ophelia,' he must be at

the theatre instanter.

'Has Goldwater given you a contract?'

'I am a poet, not a lawyer,' said Pinchas proudly. 'Parchments are for

Philistines; honest men build on the word.'

'After all, it comes to the same thing--with Goldwater,' said

Radsikoff drily. 'But he's no worse than the others; I've never yet

found the contract any manager couldn't slip out of. I've never yet

met the playwright that the manager couldn't dodge.' Radsikoff,

indeed, divided his time between devising plays and devising

contracts. Every experience but suggested fresh clauses. He regarded

Pinchas with commiseration rather than jealousy. 'I shall come to your

first night,' he added.

'It will be a tribute which the audience will appreciate,' said

Pinchas. 'I am thinking that if I had one of these aromatic cigars I

too might offer a burnt-offering unto the Lord.'

There was general laughter at the blasphemy, for the Sabbath, with its

privation of fire, had long since begun.

'Try taking instead of thinking,' laughed the playwright, pushing

forward his case. 'Action is greater than Thought.'

'No, no, no!' Pinchas protested, as he fumbled for the finest cigar.

'Wait till you see my play--you must all come--I will send you all

boxes. Then you will learn that Thought is greater than Action--that

Thought is the greatest thing in the world.'

II

Sucking voluptuously at Radsikoff's cigar, Pinchas plunged from the

steam-heated, cheerful cafe into the raw, unlovely street, still

hummocked with an ancient, uncleared snowfall. He did not take the

horse-car which runs in this quarter; he was reserving the five cents

for a spirituous nightcap. His journey was slow, for a side street

that he had to pass through was, like nearly all the side streets of

the great city, an abomination of desolation, a tempestuous sea of

frozen, dirty snow, impassable by all save pedestrians, and scarcely

by them. Pinchas was glad of his cane; an alpenstock would not have

been superfluous. But the theatre with its brilliantly-lighted lobby

and flamboyant posters restored his spirits; the curtain was already

up, and a packed mass filled the house from roof to floor. Rebuffed by

the janitors, Pinchas haughtily asked for Goldwater. Goldwater was on

the stage, and could not see him. But nothing could down the poet,

whose head seemed to swell till it touched the gallery. This great

theatre was his, this mighty audience his to melt and fire.

'I will await him in a box,' he said.

'There's no room,' said the usher.

Pinchas threw up his head. 'I am the author of "Hamlet"!'

The usher winced as at a blow. All his life he had heard vaguely of

'Hamlet'--as a great play that was acted on Broadway. And now here was

the author himself! All the instinctive snobbery of the Ghetto toward

the grand world was excited. And yet this seedy figure conflicted

painfully with his ideas of the uptown type. But perhaps all

dramatists were alike. Pinchas was bowed forward.

In another instant the theatre was in an uproar. A man in a

comfortable fauteuil had been asked to accommodate the distinguished

stranger and had refused.

'I pay my dollar--what for shall I go?'

'But it is the author of "Hamlet"!'

'My money is as good as his.'

'But he doesn't pay.'

'And I shall give my good seat to a _Schnorrer_!'

'Sh! sh!' from all parts of the house, like water livening, not

killing, a flame. From every side came expostulations in Yiddish and

American. This was a free republic; the author of 'Hamlet' was no

better than anybody else. Goldwater, on the stage, glared at the

little poet.

At last a compromise was found. A chair was placed at the back of a

packed box. American boxes are constructed for publicity, not privacy,

but the other dozen occupants bulked between him and the house. He

could see, but he could not be seen. Sullen and mortified he listened

contemptuously to the play.

It was, indeed, a strange farrago, this romantic drama with which the

vast audience had replaced the Sabbath pieties, the home-keeping

ritual of the Ghetto, in their swift transformation to American life.

Confined entirely to Jewish characters, it had borrowed much from the

heroes and heroines of the Western world, remaining psychologically

true only in its minor characters, which were conceived and rendered

with wonderful realism by the gifted actors. And this naturalism was

shot through with streaks of pure fantasy, so that kangaroos suddenly

bounded on in a masque for the edification of a Russian tyrant. But

comedy and fantasy alike were subordinated to horror and tragedy:

these refugees from the brutality of Russia and Rumania, these

inheritors of the wailing melodies of a persecuted synagogue, craved

morbidly for gruesomeness and gore. The 'happy endings' of Broadway

would have spelled bankruptcy here. Players and audience made a large

family party--the unfailing result of a stable stock company with the

parts always cast in the same mould. And it was almost an impromptu

performance. Pinchas, from his proximity to the stage, could hear

every word from the prompter's box, which rose in the centre of the

footlights. The Yiddish prompter did not wait till the players 'dried

up'; it was his role to read the whole play ahead of them. 'Then you

are the woman who murdered my mother,' he would gabble. And the actor,

hearing, invented immediately the fit attitude and emphasis, spinning

out with elocutionary slowness and passion the raw material supplied

to him. No mechanical crossing and recrossing the stage, no

punctilious tuition by your stage-manager--all was inspiration and

fire. But to Pinchas this hearing of the play twice over--once raw and

once cooked--was maddening.

'The lazy-bones!' he murmured. 'Not thus shall they treat my lines.

Every syllable must be engraved upon their hearts, or I forbid the

curtain to go up. Not that it matters with this fool-dramatist's

words; they are ink-vomit, not literature.'

Another feature of the dialogue jarred upon his literary instinct.

Incongruously blended with the Yiddish were elementary American

expressions--the first the immigrants would pick up. 'All right,'

'Sure!' 'Yes, sir,' 'Say, how's the boss?' 'Good-bye.' 'Not a cent.'

'Take the elevated.' 'Yup.' 'Nup.' 'That's one on you!' 'Rubber-neck!'

A continuous fusillade of such phrases stimulated and flattered the

audience, pleased to find themselves on such easy terms with the new

language. But to Pinchas the idea of peppering his pure Yiddish with

such locutions was odious. The Prince of Palestine talking with a

twang--how could he permit such an outrage upon his Hebrew Hamlet?

Hardly had the curtain fallen on the act than he darted through the

iron door that led from the rear of the box to the stage, jostling the

cursing carpenters, and pushed aside by the perspiring principals, on

whom the curtain was rising and re-rising in a continuous roar. At

last he found himself in the little bureau and dressing-room in which

Goldwater was angrily changing his trousers. Kloot, the

actor-manager's factotum, a big-nosed insolent youth, sat on the table

beside the telephone, a peaked cap on his head, his legs swinging.

'Son of a witch! You come and disturb all my house. What do you want?'

cried Goldwater.

'I want to talk to you about rehearsals.'

'I told you I would let you know when rehearsals began.'

'But you forgot to take my address.'

'As if I don't know where to find you!'

Kloot grinned. 'Pinchas gets drinks from all the cafe,' he put in.

'They drink to the health of "Hamlet,"' said Pinchas proudly.

'All right; Kloot's gotten your address. Good-evening.'

'But when will it be? I must know.'

'We can't fix it to a day. There's plenty of money in this piece yet.'

'Money--bah! But merit?'

'You fellows are as jealous as the devil.'

'Me jealous of kangaroos! In Central Park you see giraffes--and

tortoises too. Central Park has more talent than this scribbler of

yours.'

'I doubt if there's a bigger peacock than here,' murmured Goldwater.

'I'll write you about rehearsals,' said Kloot, winking at Goldwater.

'But I must know weeks ahead--I may go lecturing. The great continent

calls for me. In Chicago, in Cincinnati----'

'Go, by all means,' said Goldwater. 'We can do without you.'

'Do without me? A nice mess you will make of it! I must teach you how

to say every line.'

'Teach _me_?' Goldwater could hardly believe his ears.

Pinchas wavered. 'I--I mean the company. I will show them the

accent--the gesture. I'm a great stage-manager as well as a great

poet. There shall be no more prompter.'

'Indeed!' Goldwater raised the eyebrow he was pencilling. 'And how are

you going to get on without a prompter?'

'Very simple--a month's rehearsals.'

Goldwater turned an apoplectic hue deeper than his rouge.

Kloot broke in impishly: 'It is very good of you to give us a month of

your valuable time.'

But Goldwater was too irate for irony. 'A month!' he gasped at last.

'I could put on six melodramas in a month.'

'But "Hamlet" is not a melodrama!' said Pinchas, shocked.

'Quite so; there is not half the scenery. It's the scenery that takes

time rehearsing, not the scenes.'

The poet was now as purple as the player. 'You would profane my divine

work by gabbling through it with your pack of parrots!'

'Here, just _you_ come off your perch!' said Kloot. 'You've written

the piece; we do the rest.' Kloot, though only nineteen and at a few

dollars a week, had a fine, careless equality not only with the whole

world, but even with his employer. He was now, to his amaze,

confronted by a superior.

'Silence, impudent-face! You are not talking to Radsikoff. I am a

Poet, and I demand my rights.'

Kloot was silent from sheer surprise.

Goldwater was similarly impressed. 'What rights?' he observed more

mildly. 'You've had your twenty dollars. And that was too much.'

'Too much! Twenty dollars for the masterpiece of the twentieth

century!'

'In the twenty-first century you shall have twenty-one dollars,' said

Kloot, recovering.

'Make mock as you please,' replied the poet superbly. 'I shall be

living in the fifty-first century even. Poets never die--though, alas!

they have to live. Twenty dollars too much, indeed! It is not a dollar

a century for the run of the play.'

'Very well,' said Goldwater grimly. 'Give them back. We return your

play.'

This time it was the poet that was disconcerted. 'No, no, Goldwater--I

must not disappoint my printer. I have promised him the twenty dollars

to print my Hebrew "Selections from Nietzsche."'

'You take your manuscript and give me my money,' said Goldwater

implacably.

'Exchange would be a robbery. I will not rob you. Keep your bargain.

See, here is the printer's letter.' He dragged from a tail-pocket a

mass of motley manuscripts and yellow letters, and laid them beside

the telephone as if to search among them.

Goldwater waved a repudiating hand.

'Be not a fool-man, Goldwater.' The poet's carneying forefinger was

laid on his nose. 'I and you are the only two people in New York who

serve the poetic drama--I by writing, you by producing.'

Goldwater still shook his head, albeit a whit appeased by the

flattery.

Kloot replied for him: 'Your manuscript shall be returned to you by

the first dustcart.'

Pinchas disregarded the youth. 'But I am willing you shall have only a

fortnight's rehearsals. I believe in you, Goldwater. I have always

said, "The only genius on the Yiddish stage is Goldwater."

Klostermann--bah! He produces not so badly, but act? My grandmother's

hen has a better stage presence. And there is Davidoff--a voice like a

frog and a walk like a spider. And these charlatans I only heard of

when I came to New York. But you, Goldwater--your fame has blown

across the Atlantic, over the Carpathians. I journeyed from Cracow

expressly to collaborate with you.'

'Then why do you spoil it all?' asked the mollified manager.

'It is my anxiety that Europe shall not be disappointed in you. Let us

talk of the cast.'

'It is so early yet.'

'"The early bird catches the worm."'

'But all our worms are caught,' grinned Kloot. 'We keep our talent

pinned on the premises.'

'I know, I know,' said Pinchas, paling. He saw Mrs. Goldwater tripping

on saucily as Ophelia.

'But we don't give all our talent to one play,' the manager reminded

him.

'No, of course not,' said Pinchas, with a breath of hope.

'We have to use all our people by turns. We divide our forces. With

myself as Hamlet you will have a cast that should satisfy any author.'