Children of the Ghetto

And he turned and spoke to the astonished Bessie, and so the two strange lonely vessels that had hailed each other across the darkness drifted away and apart for ever in the waste of waters.

But Jonathan Sugarman's eye was on more tragic episodes. Gradually the plates emptied, for the guests openly followed up the more substantial elements of the repast by dessert, more devastating even than the rear manoeuvres. At last there was nothing but an aching china blank. The men looked round the table for something else to 'nash,' but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the great Bar-mitzvah cake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the Shalotten Shammos shook off his awe and stretched out his hand leisurely towards the cake, as became the master of ceremonies. But when Sugarman the Shadchan beheld his hand moving like a creeping flame forward, he sprang towards him, as the tigress springs when the hunter threatens her cub. And speaking no word he snatched the great cake from under the hand of the spoiler and tucked it under his arm, in the place where he carried Nehemiah, and sped therewith from the room. Then consternation fell upon the scene till Solomon Ansell, crawling on hands and knees in search of windfalls, discovered a basket of apples stored under the centre of the table, and the Shalotten Shammos's son told his father thereof ere Solomon could do more than secure a few for his brother and sisters. And the Shalotten Shammos laughed joyously, 'Apples,' and dived under the table, and his long form reached to the other side and beyond, and graybearded men echoed the joyous cry and scrambled on the ground like schoolboys.

'Leolom tikkach-always take,' quoted the Badchan gleefully.

When Sugarman returned, radiant, he found his absence had been fatal.

'Piece of fool! Two-eyed lump of flesh,' said Mrs. Sugarman in a loud whisper. 'Flying out of the room as if thou hadst the ague.'

'Shall I sit still like thee while our home is eaten up around us?' Sugarman whispered back. 'Couldst thou not look to the apples? Plaster image! Leaden fool! See, they have emptied the basket, too.'

'Well, dost thou expect luck and blessing to crawl into it? Even five shillings' worth of nash cannot last for ever. May ten ammunition wagons of black curses be discharged on thee!' replied Mrs. Sugarman, her one eye shooting fire.

This was the last straw of insult added to injury. Sugarman was exasperated beyond endurance. He forgot that he had a wider audience than his wife; he lost all control of himself, and cried aloud in a frenzy of rage, 'What a pity thou hadst not a fourth uncle!'

Mrs. Sugarman collapsed, speechless.

'A greedy lot, marm,' Sugarman reported to Mrs. Hyams on the Monday. 'I was very glad you and your people didn't come; dere was noding left except de prospectuses of the Hamburg lotter_ee vich I left laying all about for de guests to take. Being Shabbos I could not give dem out.'

'We were sorry not to come, but neither Mr. Hyams nor myself felt well,' said the white-haired broken-down old woman with her painfully slow enunciation. Her English words rarely went beyond two syllables.

'Ah!' said Sugarman. 'But I've come to give you back your corkscrew.'

'Why, it's broken,' said Mrs. Hyams, as she took it.

'So it is, marm,' he admitted readily. 'But if you taink dat I ought to pay for de damage you're mistaken. If you lend me your cat'-here he began to make the argumentative movement with his thumb, as though scooping out imaginary kosher cheese with it; 'If you lend me your cat to kill my rat,' his tones took on the strange Talmudic singsong-'and my rat instead kills your cat, then it is the fault of your cat and not the fault of my rat.'

Poor Mrs. Hyams could not meet this argument. If Mendel had been at home, he might have found a counter-analogy. As it was, Sugarman re-tucked Nehemiah under his arm and departed triumphant, almost consoled for the raid on his provisions by the thought of money saved. In the street he met the Shalotten Shammos.

'Blessed art thou who comest,' said the giant, in Hebrew; then relapsing into Yiddish he cried: 'I've been wanting to see you. What did you mean by telling your wife you were sorry she had not a fourth uncle?'

'Soorka knew what I meant,' said Sugarman with a little croak of victory, 'I have told her the story before. When the Almighty Shadchan was making marriages in Heaven, before we were yet born, the name of my wife was coupled with my own. The spirit of her eldest uncle hearing this flew up to the Angel who made the proclamation and said: 'Angel! thou art making a mistake. The man of whom thou makest mention will be of a lower status than this future niece of mine.' Said the Angel; 'Sh! It is all right. She will halt on one leg.' Came then the spirit of her second uncle and said: 'Angel, what blazonest thou? A niece of mine marry a man of such family?' Says the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will be blind in one eye.' Came the spirit of her third uncle and said: 'Angel, hast thou not erred? Surely thou canst not mean to marry my future niece into such a humble family.' Said the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will be deaf in one ear.' Now, do you see? If she had only had a fourth uncle, she would have been dumb into the bargain; there is only one mouth and my life would have been a happy one. Before I told Soorka that history she used to throw up her better breeding and finer family to me. Even in public she would shed my blood. Now she does not do it even in private.'

Sugarman the Shadchan winked, readjusted Nehemiah and went his way.

CHAPTER XIV. THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY.

It was a cold, bleak Sunday afternoon, and the Ansells were spending it as usual. Little Sarah was with Mrs. Simons, Rachel had gone to Victoria Park with a party of school-mates, the grandmother was asleep on the bed, covered with one of her son's old coats (for there was no fire in the grate), with her pious vade mecum in her hand; Esther had prepared her lessons and was reading a little brown book at Dutch Debby's, not being able to forget the London Journal sufficiently; Solomon had not prepared his and was playing 'rounder' in the street, Isaac being permitted to 'feed' the strikers, in return for a prospective occupation of his new bed; Moses Ansell was at Shool, listening to a Hesped or funeral oration at the German Synagogue, preached by Reb Shemuel over one of the lights of the Ghetto, prematurely gone out-no other than the consumptive Maggid, who had departed suddenly for a less fashionable place than Bournemouth. 'He has fallen,' said the Reb, 'not laden with age, nor sighing for release because the grasshopper was a burden. But He who holds the keys said: 'Thou hast done thy share of the work; it is not thine to complete it. It was in thy heart to serve Me, from Me thou shalt receive thy reward.''

And all the perspiring crowd in the black-draped hall shook with grief, and thousands of working men followed the body, weeping, to the grave, walking all the way to the great cemetery in Bow.

A slim, black-haired, handsome lad of about twelve, dressed in a neat black suit, with a shining white Eton collar, stumbled up the dark stairs of No. 1 Royal Street, with an air of unfamiliarity and disgust. At Dutch Debby's door he was delayed by a brief altercation with Bobby. He burst open the door of the Ansell apartment without knocking, though he took off his hat involuntarily as he entered Then he stood still with an air of disappointment. The room seemed empty.

'What dost thou want, Esther?' murmured the grandmother rousing herself sleepily.

The boy looked towards the bed with a start He could not make out what the grandmother was saying. It was four years since he had heard Yiddish spoken, and he had almost forgotten the existence of the dialect The room, too, seemed chill and alien.-so unspeakably poverty-stricken.

'Oh, how are you, grandmother?' he said, going up to her and kissing her perfunctorily. 'Where's everybody?'

'Art thou Benjamin?' said the grandmother, her stern, wrinkled face shadowed with surprise and doubt.

Benjamin guessed what she was asking and nodded.

'But how richly they have dressed thee! Alas, I suppose they have taken away thy Judaism instead. For four whole years-is it not-thou hast been with English folk. Woe! Woe! If thy father had married a pious woman, she would have been living still and thou wouldst have been able to live happily in our midst instead of being exiled