Part 47 (1/2)
”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, flus.h.i.+ng 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.