Children of the Ghetto Part 39

"He might have sent something to his nephew and his niece," she said half seriously.

"Perhaps he will when I get to America and tell him how pretty you are,"

said Mendel oracularly. He looked quite joyous and even ventured to pinch Miriam's flushed cheek roguishly, and she submitted to the indignity without a murmur.

"Why _you're_ looking as pleased as Punch too, mother," said Daniel, in half-rueful amazement. "You seem delighted at the idea of leaving us."

"I always wanted to see America," the old woman admitted with a smile.

"I also shall renew an old friendship in New York." She looked meaningly at her husband, and in his eye was an answering love-light.

"Well, that's cool!" Daniel burst forth. "But she doesn't mean it, does she, father?"

"I mean it." Hyams answered.

"But it can't be true," persisted Daniel, in ever-growing bewilderment.

"I believe it's all a hoax."

Mendel hastily drained his coffee-cup.

"A hoax!" he murmured, from behind the cup.

"Yes, I believe some one is having a lark with you."

"Nonsense!" cried Mendel vehemently, as he put down his coffee-cup and picked up the letter from the table. "Don't I know my own brother Yankov's writing. Besides, who else would know all the little things he writes about?"

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

"I shall write at once, accepting Yankov's offer," said his father.

"Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam. I can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel." Daniel expostulated yet further, but Mendel answered:

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

Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman.

"Why do you make so much bother?" Miriam said to Daniel in the evening.

"It's the best thing that could have happened. Who'd have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into possession of a relative who might actually have something to leave us. It'll be a good story to tell, too."

After _Shool_ next morning Mendel spoke to the President.

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

Belcovitch staggered.

"Six pounds!" he repeated, dazed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"With G.o.d'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 Pa.s.sover, 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."