Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  Dutch Debby burst into tears and went home. After that she fell back entirely on Bobby and Esther and the London Journal and never even saved up nine shillings again.

  CHAPTER X. A SILENT FAMILY.

  Sugarman the Shadchan arrived one evening a few days before Purim at the tiny two-storied house in which Esther's teacher lived, with little Nehemiah tucked under his arm. Nehemiah wore shoes and short red socks. The rest of his legs was bare. Sugarman always carried him so as to demonstrate this fact. Sugarman himself was rigged out in a handsome manner, and the day not being holy, his blue bandanna peeped out from his left coat-tail, instead of being tied round his trouser band.

  "Good morning, marm," he said cheerfully.

  "Good morning, Sugarman," said Mrs. Hyams.

  She was a little careworn old woman of sixty with white hair. Had she been more pious her hair would never have turned gray. But Miriam had long since put her veto on her mother's black wig. Mrs. Hyams was a meek, weak person and submitted in silence to the outrage on her deepest instincts. Old Hyams was stronger, but not strong enough. He, too, was a silent person.

  "P'raps you're surprised," said Sugarman, "to get a call from me in my sealskin vest-coat. But de fact is, marm, I put it on to call on a lady. I only dropped in here on my vay."

  "Won't you take a chair?" said Mrs. Hyams. She spoke English painfully and slowly, having been schooled by Miriam.

  "No, I'm not tired. But I vill put Nechemyah down on one, if you permit. Dere! Sit still or I potch you! P'raps you could lend me your corkscrew."

  "With pleasure," said Mrs. Hyams.

  "I dank you. You see my boy, Ebenezer, is Barmitzvah next Shabbos a veek, and I may not be passing again. You vill come?"

  "I don't know," said Mrs. Hyams hesitatingly. She was not certain whether Miriam considered Sugarman on their visiting list.

  "Don't say dat, I expect to open dirteen bottles of lemonade! You must come, you and Mr. Hyams and the whole family."

  "Thank you. I will tell Miriam and Daniel and my husband."

  "Dat's right. Nechemyah, don't dance on de good lady's chair. Did you hear, Mrs. Hyams, of Mrs. Jonas's luck?"

  "No."

  "I won her eleven pounds on the lotter_ee."

  "How nice," said Mrs. Hyams, a little fluttered.

  "I would let you have half a ticket for two pounds."

  "I haven't the money."

  "Vell, dirty-six shillings! Dere! I have to pay dat myself."

  "I would if I could, but I can't."

  "But you can have an eighth for nine shillings."

  Mrs. Hyams shook her head hopelessly.

  "How is your son Daniel?" Sugarman asked.

  "Pretty well, thank you. How is your wife?"

  "Tank Gawd!"

  "And your Bessie?"

  "Tank Gawd! Is your Daniel in?"

  "Yes."

  "Tank Gawd! I mean, can I see him?"

  "It won't do any good."

  "No, not dat," said Sugarman. "I should like to ask him to de Confirmation myself."

  "Daniel!" called Mrs. Hyams.

  He came from the back yard in rolled-up shirt-sleeves, soap-suds drying on his arms. He was a pleasant-faced, flaxen-haired young fellow, the junior of Miriam by eighteen months. There was will in the lower part of the face and tenderness in the eyes.

  "Good morning, sir," said Sugarman. "My Ebenezer is Barmitzvah next Shabbos week; vill you do me the honor to drop in wid your moder and fader after Shool?"

  Daniel crimsoned suddenly. He had "No" on his lips, but suppressed it and ultimately articulated it in some polite periphrasis. His mother noticed the crimson. On a blonde face it tells.

  "Don't say dat," said Sugarman. "I expect to open dirteen bottles of lemonade. I have lent your good moder's corkscrew."

  "I shall be pleased to send Ebenezer a little present, but I can't come, I really can't. You must excuse me." Daniel turned away.

  "Vell," said Sugarman, anxious to assure him he bore no malice. "If you send a present I reckon it de same as if you come."

  "That's all right," said Daniel with strained heartiness.

  Sugarman tucked Nehemiah under his arm but lingered on the threshold. He did not know how to broach the subject. But the inspiration came.

  "Do you know I have summonsed Morris Kerlinski?"

  "No," said Daniel. "What for?"

  "He owes me dirty shillings. I found him a very fine maiden, but, now he is married, he says it was only worth a suvran. He offered it me but I vouldn't take it. A poor man he vas, too, and got ten pun from a marriage portion society."

  "Is it worth while bringing a scandal on the community for the sake of ten shillings? It will be in all the papers, and Shadchan will be spelt shatcan, shodkin, shatkin, chodcan, shotgun, and goodness knows what else."

  "Yes, but it isn't ten shillings," said Sugarman. "It's dirty shillings."

  "But you say he offered you a sovereign."

  "So he did. He arranged for two pun ten. I took the suvran-but not in full payment."

  "You ought to settle it before the Beth-din," said Daniel vehemently, "or get some Jew to arbitrate. You make the Jews a laughing-stock. It is true all marriages depend on money," he added bitterly, "only it is the fashion of police court reporters to pretend the custom is limited to the Jews."

  "Vell, I did go to Reb Shemuel," said Sugarman "I dought he'd be the very man to arbitrate."

  "Why?" asked Daniel.

  "Vy? Hasn't he been a Shadchan himself? From who else shall we look for sympaty?"

  "I see," said Daniel smiling a little. "And apparently you got none."

  "No," said Sugarman, growing wroth at the recollection. "He said ve are not in Poland."

  "Quite true."

  "Yes, but I gave him an answer he didn't like," said Sugarman. "I said, and ven ve are not in Poland mustn't ve keep none of our religion?"

  His tone changed from indignation to insinuation.

  "Vy vill you not let me get you a vife, Mr. Hyams? I have several extra fine maidens in my eye. Come now, don't look so angry. How much commission vill you give me if I find you a maiden vid a hundred pound?"

  "The maiden!" thundered Daniel. Then it dawned upon him that he had said a humorous thing and he laughed. There was merriment as well as mysticism in Daniel's blue eyes.

  But Sugarman went away, down-hearted. Love is blind, and even marriage-brokers may be myopic. Most people not concerned knew that Daniel Hyams was "sweet on" Sugarman's Bessie. And it was so. Daniel loved Bessie, and Bessie loved Daniel. Only Bessie did not speak because she was a woman and Daniel did not speak because he was a man. They were a quiet family-the Hyamses. They all bore their crosses in a silence unbroken even at home. Miriam herself, the least reticent, did not give the impression that she could not have husbands for the winking. Her demands were so high-that was all. Daniel was proud of her and her position and her cleverness and was confident she would marry as well as she dressed. He did not expect her to contribute towards the expenses of the household-though she did-for he felt he had broad shoulders. He bore his father and mother on those shoulders, semi-invalids both. In the bold bad years of shameless poverty, Hyams had been a wandering metropolitan glazier, but this open degradation became intolerable as Miriam's prospects improved. It was partly for her sake that Daniel ultimately supported his parents in idleness and refrained from speaking to Bessie. For he was only an employe in a fancy-goods warehouse, and on forty-five shillings a week you cannot keep up two respectable establishments.

  Bessie was a bonnie girl and could not in the nature of things be long uncaught. There was a certain night on which Daniel did not sleep-hardly a white night as our French neighbors say; a tear-stained night rather. In the morning he was resolved to deny himself Bessie. Peace would be his instead. If it did not come immediately he knew it was on the way. For once before he had struggled and been so rewarded. That was in his eighteenth year when he awoke to the glories of free thought, and knew himself a victi
m to the Moloch of the Sabbath, to which fathers sacrifice their children. The proprietor of the fancy goods was a Jew, and moreover closed on Saturdays. But for this anachronism of keeping Saturday holy when you had Sunday also to laze on, Daniel felt a hundred higher careers would have been open to him. Later, when free thought waned (it was after Daniel had met Bessie), although he never returned to his father's narrowness, he found the abhorred Sabbath sanctifying his life. It made life a conscious voluntary sacrifice to an ideal, and the reward was a touch of consecration once a week. Daniel could not have described these things, nor did he speak of them, which was a pity. Once and once only in the ferment of free thought he had uncorked his soul, and it had run over with much froth, and thenceforward old Mendel Hyams and Beenah, his wife, opposed more furrowed foreheads to a world too strong for them. If Daniel had taken back his words and told them he was happier for the ruin they had made of his prospects, their gait might not have been so listless. But he was a silent man.

  "You will go to Sugarman's, mother," he said now. "You and father. Don't mind that I'm not going. I have another appointment for the afternoon."

  It was a superfluous lie for so silent a man.

  "He doesn't like to be seen with us," Beenah Hyams thought. But she was silent.

  "He has never forgiven my putting him to the fancy goods," thought Mendel Hyams when told. But he was silent.

  It was of no good discussing it with his wife. Those two had rather halved their joys than their sorrows. They had been married forty years and had never had an intimate moment. Their marriage had been a matter of contract. Forty years ago, in Poland, Mendel Hyams had awoke one morning to find a face he had never seen before on the pillow beside his. Not even on the wedding-day had he been allowed a glimpse of his bride's countenance. That was the custom of the country and the time. Beenah bore her husband four children, of whom the elder two died; but the marriage did not beget affection, often the inverse offspring of such unions. Beenah was a dutiful housewife and Mendel Hyams supported her faithfully so long as his children would let him. Love never flew out of the window for he was never in the house. They did not talk to each other much. Beenah did the housework unaided by the sprig of a servant who was engaged to satisfy the neighbors. In his enforced idleness Mendel fell back on his religion, almost a profession in itself. They were a silent couple.

  At sixty there is not much chance of a forty year old silence being broken on this side of the grave. So far as his personal happiness was concerned, Mendel had only one hope left in the world-to die in Jerusalem. His feeling for Jerusalem was unique. All the hunted Jew in him combined with all the battered man to transfigure Zion with the splendor of sacred dreams and girdle it with the rainbows that are builded of bitter tears. And with it all a dread that if he were buried elsewhere, when the last trump sounded he would have to roll under the earth and under the sea to Jerusalem, the rendezvous of resurrection.

  Every year at the Passover table he gave his hope voice: "Next year in Jerusalem." In her deepest soul Miriam echoed this wish of his. She felt she could like him better at a distance. Beenah Hyams had only one hope left in the world-to die.

  CHAPTER XI. THE PURIM BALL.

  Sam Levine duly returned for the Purim ball. Malka was away and so it was safe to arrive on the Sabbath. Sam and Leah called for Hannah in a cab, for the pavements were unfavorable to dancing shoes, and the three drove to the "Club," which was not a sixth of a mile off.

  "The Club" was the People's Palace of the Ghetto; but that it did not reach the bed-rock of the inhabitants was sufficiently evident from the fact that its language was English. The very lowest stratum was of secondary formation-the children of immigrants-while the highest touched the lower middle-class, on the mere fringes of the Ghetto. It was a happy place where young men and maidens met on equal terms and similar subscriptions, where billiards and flirtations and concerts and laughter and gay gossip were always on, and lemonade and cakes never off; a heaven where marriages were made, books borrowed and newspapers read. Muscular Judaism was well to the fore at "the Club," and entertainments were frequent. The middle classes of the community, overflowing with artistic instinct, supplied a phenomenal number of reciters, vocalists and instrumentalists ready to oblige, and the greatest favorites of the London footlights were pleased to come down, partly because they found such keenly appreciative audiences, and partly because they were so much mixed up with the race, both professionally and socially. There were serious lectures now and again, but few of the members took them seriously; they came to the Club not to improve their minds but to relax them. The Club was a blessing without disguise to the daughters of Judah, and certainly kept their brothers from harm. The ball-room, with its decorations of evergreens and winter blossoms, was a gay sight. Most of the dancers were in evening dress, and it would have been impossible to tell the ball from a Belgravian gathering, except by the preponderance of youth and beauty. Where could you match such a bevy of brunettes, where find such blondes? They were anything but lymphatic, these oriental blondes, if their eyes did not sparkle so intoxicatingly as those of the darker majority. The young men had carefully curled moustaches and ringlets oiled like the Assyrian bull, and figure-six noses, and studs glittering on their creamy shirt-fronts. How they did it on their wages was one of the many miracles of Jewish history. For socially and even in most cases financially they were only on the level of the Christian artisan. These young men in dress-coats were epitomes of one aspect of Jewish history. Not in every respect improvements on the "Sons of the Covenant," though; replacing the primitive manners and the piety of the foreign Jew by a veneer of cheap culture and a laxity of ceremonial observance. It was a merry party, almost like a family gathering, not merely because most of the dancers knew one another, but because "all Israel are brothers"-and sisters. They danced very buoyantly, not boisterously; the square dances symmetrically executed, every performer knowing his part; the waltzing full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they accompanied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond the bounds of decorum. A few Dutch dancers tried to introduce the more gymnastic methods in vogue in their own clubs, where the kangaroo is dancing master, but the sentiment of the floor was against them. Hannah danced little, a voluntary wallflower, for she looked radiant in tussore silk, and there was an air of refinement about the slight, pretty girl that attracted the beaux of the Club. But she only gave a duty dance to Sam, and a waltz to Daniel Hyams, who had been brought by his sister, though he did not boast a swallow-tail to match her flowing draperies. Hannah caught a rather unamiable glance from pretty Bessie Sugarman, whom poor Daniel was trying hard not to see in the crush.

  "Is your sister engaged yet?" Hannah asked, for want of something to say.

  "You would know it if she was," said Daniel, looking so troubled that Hannah reproached herself for the meaningless remark.

  "How well she dances!" she made haste to say.

  "Not better than you," said Daniel, gallantly.

  "I see compliments are among the fancy goods you deal in. Do you reverse?" she added, as they came to an awkward corner.

  "Yes-but not my compliments," he said smiling. "Miriam taught me."

  "She makes me think of Miriam dancing by the Red Sea," she said, laughing at the incongruous idea.

  "She played a timbrel, though, didn't she?" he asked. "I confess I don't quite know what a timbrel is."

  "A sort of tambourine, I suppose," said Hannah merrily, "and she sang because the children of Israel were saved."

  They both laughed heartily, but when the waltz was over they returned to their individual gloom. Towards supper-time, in the middle of a square dance, Sam suddenly noticing Hannah's solitude, brought her a tall bronzed gentlemanly young man in a frock coat, mumbled an introduction and rushed back to the arms of the exacting Leah.

  "Excuse me, I am not dancing to-night," Hannah said coldly in reply to the stranger's demand for he
r programme.

  "Well, I'm not half sorry," he said, with a frank smile. "I had to ask you, you know. But I should feel quite out of place bumping such a lot of swells."

  There was something unusual about the words and the manner which impressed Hannah agreeably, in spite of herself. Her face relaxed a little as she said:

  "Why, haven't you been to one of these affairs before?"

  "Oh yes, six or seven years ago, but the place seems quite altered. They've rebuilt it, haven't they? Very few of us sported dress-coats here in the days before I went to the Cape. I only came back the other day and somebody gave me a ticket and so I've looked in for auld lang syne."