Ghetto Tragedies. Israel Zangwill
its golden-flashing columns.
"Where are we, mother?" said Brum at last.
"We are waiting for the doctor."
"But where?"
"In the waiting-room."
"It seems very large, mother."
"No, I am walking round and round."
"There is a strange smell, mother—I don't know what—something religious."
"Oh, nonsense!" She laughed uneasily.
"I know what it smells like: cold marble pillars and warm coloured windows."
Her blood froze at such uncanny sensibility.
"It is the smell of the medicines," she murmured. Somehow his divination made it more difficult to confess to him.
"It feels like being in St. Paul's or the Abbey," he persisted, "when I used to shut my eyes to hear the organ better." He had scarcely ceased speaking, when a soft, slow music began to thrill with life the great stone spaces.
Brum's grasp tightened convulsively: a light leapt into the blind face. Both came to a standstill, silent. In Zillah's breast rapture made confusion more confounded; and as this pealing grandeur, swelling more passionately, uplifted her high as the mighty Dome, she forgot everything—even the need of explanation to Brum—in this wonderful sense of a Power that could heal, and her Hebrew benediction flowed out into sobbing speech:—
"'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the blind.'"
But Brum had fainted, and hung heavy on her arm.
XVII
When Brum awoke, in bed again, after his long fainting-fit, he related with surprise his vivid dream of St. Paul's, and Zillah weakly acquiesced in the new deception, especially as the doctor warned her against exciting the boy. But her hopes were brighter than ever; for the old lady had beneficently appeared from behind a pillar in St. Peter's to offer eau de Cologne for the unconscious Brum, and had then, interesting herself in the couple, promised to procure for her fellow-Catholics admission to the next Papal reception. Being a very rich and fashionable old lady, she kept her word; but unfortunately, when the day came round, Brum was terribly low and forbidden to leave his bed.
Zillah was distracted. If she should miss the great chance after all! It might never recur again.
"Brum," she said at last, "this is the only day for a long time that the great eye-doctor receives patients. Do you think you could go, my lamb?"
"Why won't he come here—like the other doctors?"
"He is too great."
"Well, I daresay I can manage. It's miserable lying in bed. Fancy coming to Rome and seeing nothing!"
With infinite care Brum was dressed and wrapped up, and placed in a specially comfortable brougham; and thus at last mother and son stood waiting in one of the ante-chambers of the Vatican, amid twenty other pilgrims whispering in strange languages. Zillah was radiantly assured: the mighty Power, whatever it was, that spoke in music and in mountains, would never permit such weary journeyings and waitings to end in the old darkness; the malice of witches could not prevail against this great spirit of sunshine. For Brum, too, the long pilgrimage had enveloped the doctor with a miraculous glamour as of an eighth wonder of the world.
Drooping wearily on his mother's arm, but wrought up to joyous anticipation, Brum had an undoubting sense of the patient crowd around him waiting, as in his old hospital days, for admission to the doctor's sanctum. His ear was strung for the ting-ting of the bell summoning the sufferers one by one.
At last a wave of awe swept over the little fashionable gathering, and set Zillah's heart thumping and the room fading in mist, through which the tall, venerable, robed figure, the eagle features softened in benediction, gleamed like a god's. Then she found herself on her knees, with Brum at her side, and the wonderful figure passing between two rows of reverent pilgrims.
"Why must I kneel, mother?" murmured Brum feebly.
"Hush! hush!" she whispered. "The great doc—" she hesitated in awe of the venerable figure—"the great healer is here."
"The great healer!" breathed Brum. His face was transfigured with ecstatic forevision. "'Who openeth the eyes of the blind,'" he murmured, as he fell forward in death.
II
TRANSITIONAL
IIToC
TRANSITIONAL
I
The day came when old Daniel Peyser could no longer withstand his wife's desire for a wider social sphere and a horizon blacker with advancing bachelors. For there were seven daughters, and not a man to the pack. Indeed, there had been only one marriage in the whole Portsmouth congregation during the last five years, and the Christian papers had had reports of the novel ceremony, with the ritual bathing of the bride and the breaking of the glass under the bridegroom's heel. To Mrs. Peyser, brought up amid the facile pairing of the Russian pale, this congestion of celibacy approached immorality.
Portsmouth with its careless soldiers and sailors might be an excellent town for pawnbroking, especially when one was not too punctiliously acceptant of the ethics of the heathen, but as a market for maidens—even with dowries and pretty faces—it was hopeless. But it was not wholly as an emporium for bachelors that London appealed. It was the natural goal of the provincial Jew, the reward of his industry. The best people had all drifted to the mighty magic city, whose fascination survived even cheap excursions to it.
Would father deny that they had now made enough to warrant the migration? No, father would not deny it. Ever since he had left Germany as a boy he had been saving money, and his surplus he had shrewdly invested in the neighbouring soil of Southsea, fast growing into a watering-place. Even allowing three thousand pounds for each daughter's dowry, he would still have a goodly estate.
Was there any social reason why they should not cut as great a dash as the Benjamins or the Rosenweilers? No, father would not deny that his girls were prettier and more polished than the daughters of these pioneers, especially when six of them crowded around the stern granite figure, arguing, imploring, cajoling, kissing.
"But I don't see why we should waste the money," he urged, with the cautious instincts of early poverty.
"Waste!" and the pretty lips made reproachful "Oh's!"
"Yes, waste!" he retorted. "In India one treads on diamonds and gold, but in London the land one treads on costs diamonds and gold."
"But are we never to have a grandson?" cried Mrs. Peyser.
The Indian item was left unquestioned, so that little Schnapsie, whose childish imagination was greatly impressed by these eventful family debates, had for years a vivid picture of picking her way with bare feet over