Part 13 (1/2)

'All right so long as we're under others!' gasped the artist. 'Do you realize what you're saying, Sir Asher? The Boers against whom you equipped volunteers fought frenziedly for three years not to be under others! And we--the thought of Jewish autonomy makes us foam at the mouth. The idea of independence makes us turn in the graves we call our fatherlands.'

Sir Asher dismissed the subject with a Podsnappian wave of the hand.

'This is all a waste of breath. Fortunately the acquisition of Palestine is impossible.'

'Then why do you pray for it--”speedily and in our days”?'

Sir Asher glared at the bold questioner.

'That seems a worse waste of breath,' added Barstein drily.

'I said you were a mocker,' said Sir Asher severely. 'It is a Divine event I pray for--not the creation of a Ghetto.'

'A Ghetto!' Barstein groaned in sheer hopelessness. 'Yes, you're an anti-Semite too--like your daughter, like your son, like all of us.

We're all anti-Semites.'

'I an anti-Semite! Ho! ho! ho!' Sir Asher's anger broke down in sheer amus.e.m.e.nt. 'I have made every allowance for your excitement,' he said, recovering his magisterial note. 'I was once in love myself. But when it comes to calling _me_ an anti-Semite, it is obvious you are not in a fit state to continue this interview. Indeed, I no longer wonder that you think yourself the Messiah.'

'Even if I do, our tradition only makes the Messiah a man; somebody some day will have to win your belief. But what I said was that G.o.d acts through man.'

'Ah yes,' said Sir Asher good-humouredly. 'Three-in-one and one-in-three.'

'And why not?' said Barstein with a flash of angry intuition. 'Aren't you a trinity yourself?'

'Me?' Sir Asher was now quite sure of the sculptor's derangement.

'Yes--the Briton, the Jew, and the anti-Semite--three-in-one and one-in-three.'

Sir Asher touched one of the electric bells with a jerk. He was quite alarmed.

Barstein turned white with rage at his dismissal. Never would he marry into these triune tribes. 'And it's the same in every land where we're emanc.i.p.ated, as it is called,' he went on furiously. 'The Jew's a patriot everywhere, and a Jew everywhere and an anti-Semite everywhere. Pa.s.sionate Hungarians, and true-born Italians, eagle-waving Americans, and loyal Frenchmen, imperial Germans, and double Dutchmen, we are dispersed to preach the Unity, and what we ill.u.s.trate is the Jewish trinity. A delicious irony! Three-in-one and one-in-three.' He laughed; to Sir Asher his laugh sounded maniacal.

The old gentleman was relieved to see his stalwart doorkeeper enter.

Barstein turned scornfully on his heel. 'Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance,' he ended grimly.

THE SABBATH QUESTION IN SUDMINSTER

THE SABBATH QUESTION IN SUDMINSTER

I

There was a storm in Sudminster, not on the waters which washed its leading Jews their living, but in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of these same marine storekeepers. For a compet.i.tor had appeared in their hive of industry--an alien immigrant, without roots or even relatives at Sudminster. And Simeon Samuels was equipped not only with capital and enterprise--the showy plate-gla.s.s front of his shop revealed an enticing miscellany--but with blasphemy and bravado. For he did not close on Friday eve, and he opened on Sat.u.r.day morning as usual.

The rumour did not get round all Sudminster the first Friday night, but by the Sabbath morning the synagogue hummed with it. It set a clammy horror in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the congregants, distracted their prayers, gave an unreal tone to the cantor's roulades, brought a tremor of insecurity into the very foundations of their universe. For nearly three generations a congregation had been established in Sudminster--like every Jewish congregation, a camp in not friendly country--struggling at every sacrifice to keep the Holy Day despite the supplementary burden of Sunday closing, and the G.o.d of their fathers had not left unperformed His part of the contract. For 'the harvests' of profit were abundant, and if 'the latter and the former rain' of their unchanging supplication were mere dried metaphors to a people divorced from Palestine and the soil for eighteen centuries, the wine and the oil came in casks, and the corn in cakes. The poor were few and well provided for; even the mortgage on the synagogue was paid off. And now this Epicurean was come to trouble the snug security, to break the long chain of Sabbath observance which stretched from Sinai. What wonder if some of the wors.h.i.+ppers, especially such as had pa.s.sed his blatant shop-window on their return from synagogue on Friday evening, were literally surprised that the earth had not opened beneath him as it had opened beneath Korah.

'Even the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath was stoned to death,'