Ghetto Comedies Part 51

A savage laugh broke from the officer's lips. 'Drink me a mouthful!'

As the _Shamash_ took the bottle, with a fearless shrug of the shoulders, every eye strained painfully towards him, save in the women's gallery, where many covered their faces with their hands.

Every breath was held.

Keeping the same amused incredulous face, Red Judah gulped down a draught. But as the liquid met his palate a horrible distortion overcame his smile, his hands flew heavenwards. Dropping the bottle, and with a hoa.r.s.e cry, 'Mercy, O G.o.d!' he fell before the Ark, foaming at the mouth. The red fluid spread in a vivid pool.

'Hear, O Israel!' A raucous cry of horror rose from all around, and was echoed more shrilly from above. Almighty Father! The Jew-haters had worked their fiendish trick. Now the men were become as the women, shrieking, wringing their hands, crying, '_Ai, vai!_' '_Gewalt!_' The Rabbi shook as with palsy. 'Satan! Satan!' chattered through his teeth.

But Ben Amram had moved at last, and was stooping over the scarlet stain.

'A soldier should know blood, Excellency!' the physician said quietly.

The officer's face relaxed into a faint smile.

'A soldier knows wine too,' he said, sniffing. And, indeed, the spicy reek of the Consecration wine was bewildering the nearer bystanders.

'Your Excellency frightened poor Judah into a fit,' said the physician, raising the beadle's head by its long red beard.

His Excellency shrugged his shoulders, sprang to his saddle, and cried a retreat. The Cossacks, unable to turn in the aisle, backed c.u.mbrously with a manifold thudding and rearing and clanking, but ere the congregation had finished rubbing their eyes, the last conical hat and leaded knout had vanished, and only the tarry reek of their boots was left in proof of their actual pa.s.sage. A deep silence hung for a moment like a heavy cloud, then it broke in a torrent of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

But Ben Amram's voice rang through the din. 'Brethren!' He rose from wiping the frothing lips of the stricken creature, and his face had the fiery gloom of a seer's, and the din died under his uplifted palm.

'Brethren, the Lord hath saved us!'

'Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever!' The Rabbi began the phrase, and the congregation caught it up in thunder.

'But hearken how. Last night at the _Seder_, as I opened the door for Elijah, there entered Maimon the _Meshummad_! 'Twas he quaffed Elijah's cup!'

There was a rumble of imprecations.

'A pretty Elijah!' cried the Rabbi.

'Nay, but G.o.d sends the Prophet of Redemption in strange guise,' the physician said. 'Listen! Maimon was pursued by a drunken mob, ignorant he was a deserter from our camp. When he found how I had saved him and dressed his bleeding face, when he saw the spread Pa.s.sover table, his child-soul came back to him, and in a burst of tears he confessed the diabolical plot against our community, hatched through his instrumentality by some desperate debtors; how, having raised the cry of a lost child, they were to have its blood found beneath our Holy Ark as in some mystic atonement. And while you all lolled joyously at the _Seder_ table, a bottle of blood lay here instead of the Consecration wine, like a bomb waiting to burst and destroy us all.'

A shudder of awe traversed the synagogue.

'But the Guardian of Israel, who permits us to sleep on Pa.s.sover night without night-prayer, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Maimon had bribed the _Shamash_ to let him enter the synagogue and replace the Consecration wine.'

'Red Judah!' It was like the growl of ten thousand tigers. Some even precipitated themselves upon the writhing wretch.

'Back! back!' cried Ben Amram. 'The Almighty has smitten him.'

'"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,"' quoted the Rabbi solemnly.

'Hallelujah!' shouted a frenzied female voice, and 'Hallelujah!' the men responded in thunder.

'Red Judah had no true belief in the G.o.d of Israel,' the physician went on.

'May he be an atonement for us all!' interrupted the Cantor.

'Amen!' growled the congregation.

'For a hundred roubles and the promise of personal immunity Red Judah allowed Maimon the _Meshummad_ to change the bottles while all Israel sat at the Seder. It was because the mob saw the _Meshummad_ stealing out of the synagogue that they fell upon him for a pious Jew. Behold, brethren, how the Almighty weaves His threads together. After the repentant sinner had confessed all to me, and explained how the Cossacks were to be sent to catch all the community a.s.sembled helpless in synagogue, I deemed it best merely to get the bottles changed back again. The false bottle contained only bullock's blood, but it would have sufficed to madden the mult.i.tude. Since it is I who have the blessed privilege of supplying the Consecration wine it was easy enough to give Maimon another bottle, and armed with this he roused the _Shamash_ in the dawn, pretending he had now obtained true human blood. A rouble easily procured him the keys again, and when he brought me back the bullock's blood, I awaited the sequel in peace.'

'Praise ye the Lord, for He is good,' sang the Cantor, carried away.

'For His mercy endureth for ever,' replied the congregation instinctively.

'I did not foresee the _Shamash_ would put himself so brazenly forward to hide his guilt, or that he would be asked to drink. But when the _Epikouros_ (atheist) put the bottle to his lips, expecting to taste blood, and found instead good red wine, doubtless he felt at once that the G.o.d of Israel was truly in heaven, that He had wrought a miracle and changed the blood back to wine.'

'And such a miracle G.o.d wrought verily,' cried the Rabbi, grasping the physician's hand, while the synagogue resounded with cries of 'May thy strength increase,' and the gallery heaved frantically with blessings and congratulations.

'What wonder,' the physician wound up, as he bent again over the ghastly head, with its pious ringlets writhing like red snakes, 'that he fell stricken by dread of the Almighty's wrath!'

And while men were bearing the convulsive form without, the Cantor began to recite the Grace after Redemption. And then the happy hymns rolled out, and the choristers cried 'Pom!' and a breath of jubilant hope pa.s.sed through the synagogue. The mighty hand and the outstretched arm which had redeemed Israel from the Egyptian bondage were still hovering over them, nor would the Prophet Elijah for ever delay to announce the ultimate Messiah.

THE HIRELINGS

THE HIRELINGS

I

Crowded as was the steamer with cultured Americans invading Europe, few knew that Rozenoffski was on board, or even that Rozenoffski was a pianist. The name, casually seen on the pa.s.sengers' list, conveyed nothing but a strong Russian and a vaguer Semitic flavour, and the mere outward man, despite a leonine head, was of insignificant port and somewhat shuffling gait, and drew scarcely a second glance.

He would not have had it otherwise, he told himself, as he paced the almost deserted deck after dinner--it was a blessing to escape from the perpetual adulation of music-sick matrons and schoolgirls--but every wounded fibre in him was yearning for consolation after his American failure.

Not that his fellow-pa.s.sengers were aware of his failure; he had not put himself to the vulgar tests. His American expedition had followed the lines recommended to him by friendly connoisseurs--to come before the great public, if at all, only after being launched by great hostesses at small parties; to which end he had provided himself with unimpeachable introductions to unexceptionable ladies from irresistible personalities--a German Grand Duke, a Bulgarian Amba.s.sador, Countesses, both French and Italian, and even a Belgian princess. But to his boundless amazement--for he had always heard that Americans were wax before t.i.tles--not one of the social leaders had been of the faintest a.s.sistance to him, not even the owner of the Chicago Palace, to whom he had been recommended by the Belgian princess. He had penetrated through one or two esoteric doors, only to find himself outside them again. Not once had he been asked to play.

It was some weeks before it even dawned upon the minor prophet of European music-rooms that he was being shut out, still longer before it permeated to his brain that he had been shut out as a Jew!

Those barbarous Americans, so far behind Europe after all! Had they not even discovered that art levels all ranks and races? Poor bourgeois money-mongers with their mushroom civilization. It was not even as if he were really a Jew. Did they imagine he wore phylacteries or earlocks, or what? His few childish years in the Russian Pale--what were they to the long years of European art and European culture? And even if in Rome or Paris he had foregathered with Jews like Schneemann or Leopold Barstein, it was to the artist in them he had gravitated, not the Jew. Did these Yankee ignoramuses suppose he did not share their aversion from the gaberdine or the three bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s? Oh the narrow-souled anti-Semites!

The deck-steward stacked the chairs, piled up the forgotten rugs and novels, tidying the deck for the night, but still the embittered musician tramped to and fro under the silent stars. Only from the smoking-room where the amateur auctioneer was still hilariously selling the numbers for a sweepstake, came sounds in discord with the solemnity of sky and sea, and the artist was newly jarred at this vulgar gaiety flung in the face of the s.p.a.cious and starry mystery of the night. And these jocose, heavy-jowled, smoke-soused gamblers were the Americans whose drawing-rooms he would contaminate! He recalled the only party to which he had been asked--'To meet the Bright Lights'--and which to his amazement turned out to be a quasi-public entertainment with the guests seated in rows in a hall, and himself--with the other Bright Lights--planted on a platform and made to perform without a fee. The mean vulgarians! But perhaps it was better they had left him untainted with their dollars--better, comparatively poor though he was, that America should have meant pure loss to him. He had at least kept the spiritual satisfaction of despising the despiser, the dignity of righteous resentment, the artist's pride in the profitless. And this riot of ugliness and diamonds and third-rate celebrities was the fashionable society to which, forsooth, the Jew could not be permitted access!

The aroma of an expensive cigar wafted towards him, and the face between whose prominent teeth it was stuck loomed vividly in the glare of an electric light. Rozenoffski recognised those teeth. He had seen countless pictures and caricatures of them, for did they not almost hold the globe in their grip? This, then was the notorious multi-millionaire, 'the Napoleon in dollars,' as a wit had summed him up; and the first sight of Andrew P. Wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. Who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity--he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large things, to that environment in which he, poor degenerate artist, was but a little singing-bird. The long-forgotten word _Rishus_ came suddenly into his mind--was not the man's anti-Semitism as obtruded as his teeth?--_Rishus_, that wicked malice, which to a persecuted people had become almost a synonym for Christianity. He had left the thought behind him, as he had left the Hebrew word, while he went sailing up into the rosy ether of success, and _Rishus_ had sunk into the mere panic-word of the Ghetto's stunted brood, shrinking and quivering before phantasms, sinuously gliding through a misunderstood world, if it was not, indeed, rather a word conveniently cloaking from themselves a mult.i.tude of their own sins. But now, as incarnated in this millionaire mammoth, the shadowy word took on a sudden solidity, to which his teeth gave the necessary tearing and rending significance.

Yes, in very sooth--he remembered it suddenly--was it not this man's wife on whom he had built his main hopes? Was she not the leader of musical America, to whom the Belgian princess had given him the scented and crested note of introduction which was to open to him all doors and all ears? Was it not in her marvellous marble music-room--one of the boasts of Chicago--that he had mentally seen himself enthroned as the lord of the feast? And instead of these Olympian visions, lo! a typewritten note to clench his fist over--a note from a secretary regretting that the state of Mrs. Wilhammer's health forbade the pleasure of receiving a maestro with such credentials. _Rishus--Rishus_ indubitable!

II

Turning with morbid interest to look after the retreating millionaire, he found him in converse with a feminine figure at the open door of a deck-cabin. Could this be the great She, the arbitress of art? He moved nearer. Why, this was but a girl--nay, unless his instinct was at fault, a Jewish girl--a glorious young Jewess, of that radiant red-haired type which the Russian Pale occasionally flowered with.

What was she doing with this Christian Colossus? He tried vainly to see her left hand; the mere possibility that she might be Mrs.