Children of the Ghetto

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII. THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rabbi laughed at the quibble and said:

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

Pinchas laughed enthusiastically in his turn, but replied:

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

'But have you the wherewithal to support her?'

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

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

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

'Good Shabbos, Simcha,' said Reb Shemuel.

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

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