"Yes, father, I was just going to," he grumbled, submissively.

They repeated the last declaration of the dying Israelite together. It was in Hebrew. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one." Both understood that.

Benjamin lingered on a few more minutes, and died in a painless torpor.

"He is dead," said the doctor.

"Blessed be the true Judge," said Moses. He rent his coat, and closed the staring eyes. Then he went to the toilet table and turned the looking-gla.s.s to the wall, and opened the window and emptied the jug of water upon the green sunlit gra.s.s.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE JARGON PLAYERS.

"No, don't stop me, Pinchas," said Gabriel Hamburg. "I'm packing up, and I shall spend my Pa.s.sover in Stockholm. The Chief Rabbi there has discovered a ma.n.u.script which I am anxious to see, and as I have saved up a little money I shall speed thither."

"Ah, he pays well, that boy-fool, Raphael Leon," said Pinchas, emitting a lazy ring of smoke.

"What do you mean?" cried Gabriel, flushing angrily. "Do you mean, perhaps, that _you_ have been getting money out of him?"

"Precisely. That is what I _do_ mean," said the poet naively. "What else?"

"Well, don't let me hear you call him a fool. He _is_ one to send you money, but then it is for others to call him so. That boy will be a great man in Israel. The son of rich English Jews--a Harrow-boy, yet he already writes Hebrew almost grammatically."

Pinchas was aware of this fact: had he not written to the lad (in response to a crude Hebrew eulogium and a crisp Bank of England note): "I and thou are the only two people in England who write the Holy Tongue grammatically."

He replied now: "It is true; soon he will vie with me and you."

The old scholar took snuff impatiently. The humors of Pinchas were beginning to pall upon him.

"Good-bye," he said again.

"No, wait, yet a little," said Pinchas, b.u.t.tonholing him resolutely. "I want to show you my acrostic on Simon Wolf; ah! I will shoot him, the miserable labor-leader, the wretch who embezzles the money of the Socialist fools who trust him. Aha! it will sting like Juvenal, that acrostic."

"I haven't time," said the gentle savant, beginning to lose his temper.

"Well, have I time? I have to compose a three-act comedy by to-morrow at noon. I expect I shall have to sit up all night to get it done in time." Then, anxious to complete the conciliation of the old snuff-and-pepper-box, as he mentally christened him for his next acrostic, he added: "If there is anything in this ma.n.u.script that you cannot decipher or understand, a letter to me, care of Reb Shemuel, will always find me. Somehow I have a special genius for filling up _lacunae_ in ma.n.u.scripts. You remember the famous discovery that I made by rewriting the six lines torn out of the first page of that Midrash I discovered in Cyprus."

"Yes, those six lines proved it thoroughly," sneered the savant.

"Aha! You see!" said the poet, a gratified smile pervading his dusky features. "But I must tell you of this comedy--it will be a satirical picture (in the style of Moliere, only sharper) of Anglo-Jewish Society.

The Rev. Elkan Benjamin, with his four mistresses, they will all be there, and Gideon, the Man-of-the-Earth, M.P.,--ah, it will be terrible.

If I could only get them to see it performed, they should have free pa.s.ses."

"No, shoot them first; it would be more merciful. But where is this comedy to be played?" asked Hamburg curiously.

"At the Jargon Theatre, the great theatre in Prince's Street, the only real national theatre in England. The English stage--Drury Lane--pooh!

It is not in harmony with the people; it does not express them."

Hamburg could not help smiling. He knew the wretched little hall, since tragically famous for a ma.s.sacre of innocents, victims to the fatal cry of fire--more deadly than fiercest flame.

"But how will your audience understand it?" he asked.

"Aha!" said the poet, laying his finger on his nose and grinning. "They will understand. They know the corruptions of our society. All this conspiracy to crush me, to hound me out of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites wax fat--do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto? What! Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, of Jerusalem, of Paris, and here it shall not be known?

Besides, the leading actress will speak a prologue. Ah! she is beautiful, beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra! And how she acts! She and Rachel--both Jewesses! Think of it! Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me--but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he stirs the soul! It is like David playing before Saul."

"Yes, but it won't be javelins the people will throw," murmured Hamburg, adding aloud: "I suppose you have written the music of this overture."

"No, I cannot write music," said Pinchas.

"Good heavens! You don't say so?" gasped Gabriel Hamburg. "Let that be my last recollection of you! No! Don't say another word! Don't spoil it! Good-bye." And he tore himself away, leaving the poet bewildered.

"Mad! Mad!" said Pinchas, tapping his brow significantly; "mad, the old snuff-and-pepper-box." He smiled at the recollection of his latest phrase. "These scholars stagnate so. They see not enough of the women.

Ha! I will go and see my actress."

He threw out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and took his way to Petticoat Lane. The compatriot of Rachel was wrapping up a scrag of mutton. She was a butcher's daughter and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed to have flourished the domestic table-knife.

She was a simple, amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, and because there was no one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive. It embraced all the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known to the Danish saw-monger. There was nothing the company would not have undertaken to play or have come out of with a fair measure of success. Some of the plays were on Biblical subjects, but only a minority. There were also plays in rhyme, though Yiddish knows not blank verse. Melchitsedek accosted his interpretess and made sheep's-eyes at her. But an actress who serves in a butcher's shop is doubly accustomed to such, and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though the poet was paying marked attention to her.

"Kiss me, thou beauteous one, the gems of whose crown are foot-lights,"

said the poet, when the custom ebbed for a moment.

"If thou comest near me," said the actress whirling the chopper, "I'll chop thy ugly little head off."

"Unless thou lendest me thy lips thou shalt not play in my comedy,"

said Pinchas angrily.

"_My_ trouble!" said the leading lady, shrugging her shoulders.

Pinchas made several reappearances outside the open shop, with his insinuative finger on his nose and his insinuative smile on his face, but in the end went away with a flea in his ear and hunted up the actor-manager, the only person who made any money, to speak of, out of the performances. That gentleman had not yet consented to produce the play that Pinchas had ready in ma.n.u.script and which had been coveted by all the great theatres in the world, but which he, Pinchas, had reserved for the use of the only actor in Europe. The result of this interview was that the actor-manager yielded to Pinchas's solicitations, backed by frequent applications of poetic finger to poetic nose.

"But," said the actor-manager, with a sudden recollection, "how about the besom?"

"The besom!" repeated Pinchas, nonplussed for once.

"Yes, thou sayest thou hast seen all the plays I have produced. Hast thou not noticed that I have a besom in all my plays?"

"Aha! Yes, I remember," said Pinchas.

"An old garden-besom it is," said the actor-manager. "And it is the cause of all my luck." He took up a house-broom that stood in the corner. "In comedy I sweep the floor with it--so--and the people grin; in comic-opera I beat time with it as I sing--so--and the people laugh; in farce I beat my mother-in-law with it--so--and the people roar; in tragedy I lean upon it--so--and the people thrill; in melodrama I sweep away the snow with it--so--and the people burst into tears. Usually I have my plays written beforehand and the authors are aware of the besom.

Dost thou think," he concluded doubtfully, "that thou hast sufficient ingenuity to work in the besom now that the play is written?"

Pinchas put his finger to his nose and smiled rea.s.suringly.

"It shall be all besom," he said.

"And when wilt thou read it to me?"