Part 41 (2/2)

'All the same, you might lend me a nickel for car-fare.'

Kloot thought his departure cheap at five cents. He handed it over.

The poet went. An instant afterwards the door reopened and his head reappeared, the nose adorned with a pleading forefinger.

'You promise me all this?'

'Haven't I promised?'

'But swear to me.'

'Will you go--if I swear?'

'Yup,' said Pinchas, airing his American.

'And you won't come back till rehearsals begin?'

'Nup.'

'Then I swear--on my father's and mother's life!'

Pinchas departed gleefully, not knowing that Kloot was an orphan.

III

On the very verge of Pa.s.sover, Pinchas, lying in bed at noon with a cigarette in his mouth, was reading his morning paper by candle-light; for he tenanted one of those innumerable dark rooms which should make New York the photographer's paradise. The yellow glow illumined his prophetic and unshaven countenance, agitated by grimaces and sniffs, as he critically perused the paragraphs whose Hebrew letters served as the channel for the mongrel Yiddish and American dialect, in which 'congressman,' 'sweater,' and such-like crudities of to-day had all the outer Oriental robing of the Old Testament. Suddenly a strange gurgle spluttered through the cigarette smoke. He read the announcement again.

The Yiddish 'Hamlet' was to be the Pa.s.sover production at Goldwater's Theatre. The author was the world-renowned poet Melchitsedek Pinchas, and the music was by Ignatz Levitsky, the world-famous composer.

'World-famous composer, indeed!' cried Pinchas to his garret walls.

'Who ever heard of Ignatz Levitsky? And who wants his music? The tragedy of a thinker needs no caterwauling of violins. Does Goldwater imagine I have written a melodrama? At most will I permit an overture--or the cymbals shall clash as I take my call.'

He leaped out of bed. Even greater than his irritation at this intrusion of Levitsky was his joyful indignation at the imminence of his play. The dogs! The liars! The first night was almost at hand, and no sign had been vouchsafed to him. He had been true to his promise; he had kept away from the theatre. But Goldwater! But Kloot! Ah, the G.o.dless gambler with his parents' lives! With such ghouls hovering around the Hebrew 'Hamlet,' who could say how the masterpiece had been mangled? Line upon line had probably been cut; nay, who knew that a whole scene had not been shorn away, perhaps to give more time for that miserable music!

He flung himself into his clothes and, taking his cane, hurried off to the theatre, breathless and breakfastless. Orchestral music vibrated through the lobby and almost killed his pleasure in the placards of the Yiddish 'Hamlet.' He gave but a moment to absorbing the great capital letters of his name; a dash at a swinging-door, and he faced a glowing, crowded stage at the end of a gloomy hall. Goldwater, limelit, occupied the centre of the boards. Hamlet trod the battlements of the tower of David, and gazed on the cupolas and minarets of Jerusalem.

With a raucous cry, half anger, half ecstasy, Pinchas galloped toward the fiddling and banging orchestra. A harmless sweeper in his path was herself swept aside. But her fallen broom tripped up the runner.

He fell with an echoing clamour, to which his clattering cane contributed, and clouds of dust arose and gathered where erst had stood a poet.

Goldwater stopped dead. 'Can't you sweep quietly?' he thundered terribly through the music.

Ignatz Levitsky tapped his baton, and the orchestra paused.

'It is I, the author!' said Pinchas, struggling up through clouds like some pagan deity.

Hamlet's face grew as inky as his cloak. 'And what do you want?'

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