Children of the Ghetto Part 69

"Has one of you ever been there?" said Raphael, rising in excitement.

"G.o.d forbid!" said the chorus.

"Well, I have, and it's a lie," said Raphael. His arms whirled round to the discomfort of the Committee.

"You ought not to have gone there," said Schlesinger severely. "Besides, will you deny they have the organ in their Sabbath services?"

"No, I won't!"

"Well, then!" said De Haan, triumphantly. "If they are capable of that, they are capable of any wickedness. Orthodox people can have nothing to do with them."

"But orthodox immigrants take their money," said Raphael.

"Their money is _kosher_', they are _tripha_," said De Haan sententiously. "Page 7, now we get to the most dreadful thing of all!" A solemn silence fell on the room, Pinchas sn.i.g.g.e.red un.o.btrusively.

"You have a little article headed, 'Talmudic Tales.' Why in heaven's name you couldn't have finished the column with bits of news I don't know. Satan himself must have put the thought into your head. Just at the end of the paper, too! For I can't reckon page 8, which is simply our own advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"I thought it would be amusing," said Raphael.

"Amusing! If you had simply told the tales, it might have been. But look how you introduce them! 'These amusing tales occur in the fifth chapter of Baba Bathra, and are related by Rabbi Bar Bar Channah. Our readers will see that they are parables or allegories rather than actual facts.'"

"But do you mean to say you look upon them as facts?" cried Raphael, sawing the air wildly and pacing about on the toes of the Committee.

"Surely!" said De Haan, while a low growl at his blasphemous doubts ran along the lips of the Committee.

"Was it treacherously to undermine Judaism that you so eagerly offered to edit for nothing?" said the furniture-dealer who was always failing.

"But listen here!" cried Raphael, exasperated. "Harmez, the son of Lilith, a demon, saddled two mules and made them stand on opposite sides of the River Doneg. He then jumped from the back of one to that of the other. He had, at the time, a cup of wine in each hand, and as he jumped, he threw the wine from each cup into the other without spilling a drop, although a hurricane was blowing at the time. When the King of demons heard that Harmez had been thus showing off to mortals, he slew him. Does any of you believe that?"

"Vould our Sages (their memories for a blessing) put anything into the Talmud that vasn't true?" queried Sugarman. "Ve know there are demons because it stands that Solomon knew their language."

"But then, what about this?" pursued Raphael. "'I saw a frog which was as big as the district of Akra Hagronia. A sea-monster came and swallowed the frog, and a raven came and ate the sea-monster. The raven then went and perched on a tree' Consider how strong that tree must have been. R. Papa ben Samuel remarks, 'Had I not been present, I should not have believed it.' Doesn't this appendix about ben Samuel show that it was never meant to be taken seriously?"

"It has some high meaning we do not understand in these degenerate times," said Guedalyah the greengrocer. "It is not for our paper to weaken faith in the Talmud."

"Hear, hear!" said De Haan, while "_Epikouros_" rumbled through the air, like distant thunder.

"Didn't I say an Englishman could never master the Talmud?" Sugarman asked in triumph.

This reminder of Raphael's congenital incompetence softened their minds towards him, so that when he straightway resigned his editors.h.i.+p, their self-const.i.tuted spokesman besought him to remain. Perhaps they remembered, too, that he was cheap.

"But we must all edit the paper," said De Haan enthusiastically, when peace was re-established. "We must have meetings every day and every article must he read aloud before it is printed."

Little Sampson winked cynically, pa.s.sing his hand pensively through his thick tangled locks, but Raphael saw no objection to the arrangement. As before, he felt his own impracticability borne in upon him, and he decided to sacrifice himself for the Cause as far as conscience permitted. Excessive as it was the zeal of these men, it was after all in the true groove. His annoyance returned for a while, however, when Sugarman the _Shadchan_ seized the auspicious moment of restored amity to inquire insinuatingly if his sister was engaged. Pinchas and little Sampson went down the stairs, quivering with noiseless laughter, which became boisterous when they reached the street. Pinchas was in high feather.

"The fool-men!" he said, as he led the sub-editor into a public-house and regaled him on stout and sandwiches. "They believe any _Narrischkeit_. I and you are the only two sensible Jews in England. You vill see that my poesie goes in next week--promise me that! To your life!" here they touched gla.s.ses. "Ah, it is beautiful poesie. Such high tragic ideas! You vill kiss me when you read them!" He laughed in childish light-heartedness. "Perhaps I write you a comic opera for your company--_hein_? Already I love you like a brother. Another gla.s.s stout?

Bring us two more, thou Hebe of the hops-nectar. You have seen my comedy 'The Hornet of Judah'--No?--Ah, she vas a great comedy, Sampson. All London talked of her. She has been translated into every tongue. Perhaps I play in your company. I am a great actor--_hein_? You know not my forte is voman's parts--I make myself so lovely complexion vith red paint, I fall in love vith me." He sn.i.g.g.e.red over his stout. "The Redacteur vill not redact long, _hein_?" he said presently. "He is a fool-man. If he work for nothing they think that is what he is worth.

They are orthodox, he, he!"

"But he is orthodox too," said little Sampson.

"Yes," replied Pinchas musingly. "It is strange. It is very strange. I cannot understand him. Never in all my experience have I met another such man. There vas an Italian exile I talked vith once in the island of Chios, his eyes were like Leon's, soft vith a s.h.i.+ning splendor like the stars vich are the eyes of the angels of love. Ah, he is a good man, and he writes sharp; he has ideas, not like an English Jew at all. I could throw my arms round him sometimes. I love him like a brother." His voice softened. "Another gla.s.s stout; ve vill drink to him."

Raphael did not find the editing by Committee feasible. The friction was incessant, the waste of time monstrous. The second number cost him even more headaches than the first, and this, although the gallant Gluck abandoning his single-handed emprise fortified himself with a real live compositor and had arranged for the paper to be printed by machinery.

The position was intolerable. It put a touch of acid into his dulciferous mildness! Just before going to press he was positively rude to Pinchas. It would seem that little Sampson sheltering himself behind his capitalists had refused to give the poet a commission for a comic opera, and Pinchas raved at Gideon, M.P., who he was sure was Sampson's financial backer, and threatened to shoot him and danced maniacally about the office.

"I have written an attack on the Member for Vitechapel," he said, growing calmer, "to hand him down to the execration of posterity, and I have brought it to the _Flag_. It must go in this veek."

"We have already your poem," said Raphael.

"I know, but I do not grudge my work, I am not like your money-making English Jews."

"There is no room. The paper is full."

"Leave out Ebenezer's tale--with the blue spectacles."

"There is none. It was completed in one number."

"Well, must you put in your leader?"

"Absolutely; please go away. I have this page to read."

"But you can leave out some advertis.e.m.e.nts?"

"I must not. We have too few as it is."

The poet put his finger alongside his nose, but Raphael was adamant.

"Do me this one favor," he pleaded. "I love you like a brother; just this one little thing. I vill never ask another favor of you all my life."

"I would not put it in, even if there was room. Go away," said Raphael, almost roughly.

The unaccustomed accents gave Pinchas a salutary shock. He borrowed two s.h.i.+llings and left, and Raphael was afraid to look up lest he should see his head wedged in the doorway. Soon after Gluck and his one compositor carried out the forms to be machined. Little Sampson, arriving with a gay air on his lips, met them at the door.

On the Friday, Raphael sat in the editorial chair, utterly dispirited, a battered wreck. The Committee had just left him. A heresy had crept into a bit of late news not inspected by them, and they declared that the paper was not worth twopence and had better be stopped. The demand for this second number was, moreover, rather poor, and each man felt his ten pound share melting away, and resolved not to pay up the half yet unpaid. It was Raphael's first real experience of men--after the enchanted towers of Oxford, where he had foregathered with dreamers.

His pipe hung listless in his mouth; an extinct volcano. His first fit of distrust in human nature, nay, even in the purifying powers of orthodoxy, was racking him. Strangely enough this wave of scepticism tossed up the thought of Esther Ansell, and stranger still on the top of this thought, in walked Mr. Henry Goldsmith. Raphael jumped up and welcomed his late host, whose leathery countenance shone with the polish of a sweet smile. It appeared that the communal pillar had been pa.s.sing casually, and thought he'd look Raphael up.

"So you don't pull well together," he said, when he had elicited an outline of the situation from the editor.

"No, not altogether," admitted Raphael.

"Do you think the paper'll live?"

"I can't say," said Raphael, dropping limply into his chair. "Even if it does. I don't know whether it will do much good if run on their lines, for although it is of great importance that we get _kosher_ food and baths. I hardly think they go about it in the right spirit. I may be wrong. They are older men than I and have seen more of actual life, and know the cla.s.s we appeal to better."

"No, no, you are not wrong," said Mr. Goldsmith vehemently. "I am myself dissatisfied with some of the Committee's contributions to this second number. It is a great opportunity to save English Judaism, but it is being frittered away."