The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies. Zangwill Israel
me in your own name," said Grobstock. "I mean tell it me."
"I am Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa," he answered simply.
"A Sephardi!" exclaimed the philanthropist.
"Is it not written on my face, even as it is written on yours that you are a Tedesco? It is the first time that I have taken gold from one of your lineage."
"Oh, indeed!" murmured Grobstock, beginning to feel small again.
"Yes – are we not far richer than your community? What need have I to take the good deeds away from my own people – they have too few opportunities for beneficence as it is, being so many of them wealthy; brokers and West India merchants, and – "
"But I, too, am a financier, and an East India Director," Grobstock reminded him.
"Maybe; but your community is yet young and struggling – your rich men are as the good men in Sodom for multitude. You are the immigrants of yesterday – refugees from the Ghettoes of Russia and Poland and Germany. But we, as you are aware, have been established here for generations; in the Peninsula our ancestors graced the courts of kings, and controlled the purse-strings of princes; in Holland we held the empery of trade. Ours have been the poets and scholars in Israel. You cannot expect that we should recognise your rabble, which prejudices us in the eyes of England. We made the name of Jew honourable; you degrade it. You are as the mixed multitude which came up with our forefathers out of Egypt."
"Nonsense!" said Grobstock sharply. "All Israel are brethren."
"Esau was the brother of Israel," answered Manasseh sententiously. "But you will excuse me if I go a-marketing, it is such a pleasure to handle gold." There was a note of wistful pathos in the latter remark which took off the edge of the former, and touched Joseph with compunction for bandying words with a hungry man whose loved ones were probably starving patiently at home.
"Certainly, haste away," he said kindly.
"I shall see you again," said Manasseh, with a valedictory wave of his hand, and digging his staff into the cobblestones he journeyed forwards without bestowing a single backward glance upon his benefactor.
Grobstock's road took him to Petticoat Lane in the wake of Manasseh. He had no intention of following him, but did not see why he should change his route for fear of the Schnorrer, more especially as Manasseh did not look back. By this time he had become conscious again of the bag he carried, but he had no heart to proceed with the fun. He felt conscience stricken, and had recourse to his pockets instead in his progress through the narrow jostling market-street, where he scarcely ever bought anything personally save fish and good deeds. He was a connoisseur in both. To-day he picked up many a good deed cheap, paying pennies for articles he did not take away – shoe-latchets and cane-strings, barley-sugar and butter-cakes. Suddenly, through a chink in an opaque mass of human beings, he caught sight of a small attractive salmon on a fishmonger's slab. His eye glittered, his chops watered. He elbowed his way to the vendor, whose eye caught a corresponding gleam, and whose finger went to his hat in respectful greeting.
"Good afternoon, Jonathan," said Grobstock jovially, "I'll take that salmon there – how much?"
"Pardon me," said a voice in the crowd, "I am just bargaining for it."
Grobstock started. It was the voice of Manasseh.
"Stop that nonsense, da Costa," responded the fishmonger. "You know you won't give me my price. It is the only one I have left," he added, half for the benefit of Grobstock. "I couldn't let it go under a couple of guineas."
"Here's your money," cried Manasseh with passionate contempt, and sent two golden coins spinning musically upon the slab.
In the crowd sensation, in Grobstock's breast astonishment, indignation, and bitterness. He was struck momentarily dumb. His face purpled. The scales of the salmon shone like a celestial vision that was fading from him by his own stupidity.
"I'll take that salmon, Jonathan," he repeated, spluttering. "Three guineas."
"Pardon me," repeated Manasseh, "it is too late. This is not an auction." He seized the fish by the tail.
Grobstock turned upon him, goaded to the point of apoplexy. "You!" he cried. "You – you – rogue! How dare you buy salmon!"
"Rogue yourself!" retorted Manasseh. "Would you have me steal salmon?"
"You have stolen my money, knave, rascal!"
"Murderer! Shedder of blood! Did you not give me the money as a free-will offering, for the good of your wife's soul? I call on you before all these witnesses to confess yourself a slanderer!"
"Slanderer, indeed! I repeat, you are a knave and a jackanapes. You – a pauper – a beggar – with a wife and children. How can you have the face to go and spend two guineas – two whole guineas – all you have in the world – on a mere luxury like salmon?"
Manasseh elevated his arched eyebrows.
"If I do not buy salmon when I have two guineas," he answered quietly, "when shall I buy salmon? As you say, it is a luxury; very dear. It is only on rare occasions like this that my means run to it." There was a dignified pathos about the rebuke that mollified the magnate. He felt that there was reason in the beggar's point of view – though it was a point to which he would never himself have risen, unaided. But righteous anger still simmered in him; he felt vaguely that there was something to be said in reply, though he also felt that even if he knew what it was, it would have to be said in a lower key to correspond with Manasseh's transition from the high pitch of the opening passages. Not finding the requisite repartee he was silent.
"In the name of my wife," went on Manasseh, swinging the salmon by the tail, "I ask you to clear my good name which you have bespattered in the presence of my very tradesmen. Again I call upon you to confess before these witnesses that you gave me the money yourself in charity. Come! Do you deny it?"
"No, I don't deny it," murmured Grobstock, unable to understand why he appeared to himself like a whipped cur, or how what should have been a boast had been transformed into an apology to a beggar.
"In the name of my wife, I thank you," said Manasseh. "She loves salmon, and fries with unction. And now, since you have no further use for that bag of yours, I will relieve you of its burden by taking my salmon home in it." He took the canvas bag from the limp grasp of the astonished Tedesco, and dropped the fish in. The head protruded, surveying the scene with a cold, glassy, ironical eye.
"Good afternoon all," said the Schnorrer courteously.
"One moment," called out the philanthropist, when he found his tongue. "The bag is not empty – there are a number of packets still left in it."
"So much the better!" said Manasseh soothingly. "You will be saved from the temptation to continue shedding the blood of the poor, and I shall be saved from spending all your bounty upon salmon – an extravagance you were right to deplore."
"But – but!" began Grobstock.
"No – no 'buts,'" protested Manasseh, waving his bag deprecatingly. "You were right. You admitted you were wrong before; shall I be less magnanimous now? In the presence of all these witnesses I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke. I ought not to have wasted two guineas on one fish. It was not worth it. Come over here, and I will tell you something." He walked out of earshot of the by-standers, turning down a side alley opposite the stall, and beckoned with his salmon bag. The East India Director had no course but to obey. He would probably have followed him in any case, to have it out with him, but now he had a humiliating sense of being at the Schnorrer's beck and call.
"Well, what more have you to say?" he demanded gruffly.
"I wish to save you money in future," said the beggar in low, confidential tones. "That Jonathan is a son of the separation! The salmon is not worth two guineas – no, on my soul! If you had not come up I should have got it for twenty-five shillings. Jonathan stuck on the price when he thought you would buy. I trust you will not let me be the loser by your arrival, and that if I should find less than seventeen shillings in the bag you will make it up to me."
The bewildered financier felt his grievance disappearing