The Conciliator Of Christendom

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_ I

The Red Beadle shook his head. "There is nothing but Nature," he said obstinately, as his hot iron polished the boot between his knees. He was called the Red Beadle because, though his irreligious opinions had long since lost him his synagogue appointment and driven him back to his old work of bootmaking, his beard was still ruddy.

"Yes, but who made Nature?" retorted his new employer, his strange, scholarly face aglow with argument, and the flame of the lamp suspended over his bench by strings from the ceiling. The other clickers and riveters of the Spitalfields workshop, in their shocked interest in the problem of the origin of Nature, ceased for an instant breathing in the odors of burnt grease, cobbler's wax, and a coke fire replenished with scraps of leather.

"Nature makes herself," answered the Red Beadle. It was his declaration of faith--or of war. Possibly it was the familiarity with divine things which synagogue beadledom involves that had bred his contempt for them. At any rate, he was not now to be coerced by Zussmann Herz, even though he was fully alive to the fact that Zussmann's unique book-lined workshop was the only one that had opened to him, when the more pious shoemakers of the Ghetto had professed to be "full up." He was, indeed, surprised to find Zussmann a believer in the Supernatural, having heard whispers that the man was as great an "Epicurean" as himself. Had not Zussmann--ay, and his wigless wife, Hulda, too--been seen emerging from the mighty Church that stood in frowsy majesty amid its tall, neglected box-like tombs, and was to the Ghetto merely a topographical point and the chronometric standard? And yet, here was Zussmann an assiduous attendant at the synagogue of the first floor--nay, a scholar so conversant with Hebrew, not to mention European, lore, that the Red Beadle felt himself a Man-of-the-Earth, only retaining his superiority by remembering that learning did not always mean logic.

"Nature make herself!" Zussmann now retorted, with a tolerant smile. "As well say this boot made itself! The theory of Evolution only puts the mystery further back, and already in the Talmud we find--"

"_Nature_ made the boot," interrupted the Red Beadle. "Nature made you, and you made the boot. But nobody made Nature."

"But what is Nature?" cried Zussmann. "The garment of God, as Goethe says. Call Him Noumenon with Kant or Thought and Extension with Spinoza--I care not."

The Red Beadle was awed into temporary silence by these unknown names and ideas, expressed, moreover, in German words foreign to his limited vocabulary of Yiddish.

The room in which Zussmann thought and worked was one of two that he rented from the Christian corn-factor who owned the tall house--a stout Cockney who spent his life book-keeping in a little office on wheels, but whom the specimens of oats and dog-biscuits in his window invested with an air of roseate rurality. This personage drew a little income from the population of his house, whose staircases exhibited strata of children of different social developments, and to which the synagogue on the first floor added a large floating population. Zussmann's attendance thereat was not the only thing in him that astonished the Red Beadle. There was also a gentle deference of manner not usual with masters, or with pious persons. His consideration for his employes amounted, in the Beadle's eyes, to maladministration, and the grave loss he sustained through one of his hands selling off a crate of finished goods and flying to America was deservedly due to confidence in another pious person.

II

Despite the Red Beadle's Rationalism, which, basing itself on the facts of life, was not to be crushed by high-flown German words, the master-shoemaker showed him marked favor and often invited him to stay on to supper. Although the Beadle felt this was but the due recognition of one intellect by another, if an inferior intellect, he was at times irrationally grateful for the privilege of a place to spend his evenings in. For the Ghetto had cut him--there could be no doubt of that. The worshippers in his old synagogue whom he had once dominated as Beadle now passed him by with sour looks--"a dog one does not treat thus," the Beadle told himself, tugging miserably at his red beard.

"It is not as if I were a Meshummad--a convert to Christianity." Some hereditary instinct admitted _that_ as a just excuse for execration. "I can't make friends with the Christians, and so I am cut off from both."

When after a thunderstorm two of the hands resigned their places at Zussmann's benches on the avowed ground that atheism attracts lightning, Zussmann's loyalty to the freethinker converted the Beadle's gratitude from fitfulness into a steady glow.

And, other considerations apart, those were enjoyable suppers after the toil and grime of the day. The Beadle especially admired Zussmann's hands when the black grease had been washed off them, the fingers were so long and tapering. Why had his own fingers been made so stumpy and square-tipped? Since Nature made herself, why was she so uneven a worker? Nay, why could she not have given him white teeth like Zussmann's wife? Not that these were ostentatious--you thought more of the sweetness of the smile of which they were part. Still, as Nature's irregularity was particularly manifest in his own teeth, he could not help the reflection.

If the Red Beadle had not been a widower, the unfeigned success of the Herz union might have turned his own thoughts to that happy state. As it was, the sight of their happiness occasionally shot through his breast renewed pangs of vain longing for his Leah, whose death from cancer had completed his conception of Nature. Lucky Zussmann, to have found so sympathetic a partner in a pretty female! For Hulda shared Zussmann's dreams, and was even copying out his great work for the press, for business was brisk and he would soon have saved up enough money to print it. The great work, in the secret of which the Red Beadle came to participate, was written in Hebrew, and the elegant curves and strokes would have done honor to a Scribe. The Beadle himself could not understand it, knowing only the formal alphabet such as appears in books and scrolls, but the first peep at it which the proud Zussmann permitted him removed his last disrespect for the intellect of his master, without, however, removing the mystery of that intellect's aberrations.

"But you dream with the eyes open," he said, when the theme of the work was explained to him.

"How so?" asked Hulda gently, with that wonderful smile of hers.

"Reconcile the Jews and the Christians! _Meshuggas_--madness." He laughed bitterly. "Do you forget what we went through in Poland? And even here in free England, can you walk in the street without every little _shegetz_ calling after you and asking, 'Who killed Christ?'"

"Yes, but herein my husband explains that it was not the Jews who killed Christ, but Herod and Pilate."

"As it says in Corinthians," broke in Zussmann eagerly: "'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.'"

"So," said the Red Beadle, visibly impressed.

"Assuredly," affirmed Hulda. "But, as Zussmann explains here, they threw the guilt upon the Jews, who were too afraid of the Romans to deny it."

The Beadle pondered.

"Once the Christians understand that," said Zussmann, pursuing his advantage, "they will stretch out the hand to us."

The Beadle had a flash. "But how will the Christians read you? No Christian understands Hebrew."

Zussmann was taken momentarily aback. "But it is not so much for the Christians," he explained. "It is for the Jews--that they should stretch out the hand to the Christians."

The Red Beadle stared at him in shocked silent amaze. "Still greater madness!" he gasped at length. "They will treat you worse than they treat me."

"Not when they read my book."

"Just when they read your book."

Hulda was smiling serenely. "They can do nothing to my husband; he is his own master, God be thanked; no one can turn him away."

"They can insult him."

Zussmann shook his head gently. "No one can insult me!" he said simply. "When a dog barks at me I pity it that it does not know I love it. Now draw to the table. The pickled herring smells well."

But the Red Beadle was unconvinced. "Besides, what should we make it up with the Christians for--the stupid people?" he asked, as he received his steaming coffee cup from Frau Herz.

"It is a question of the Future of the World," said Zussmann gravely, as he shared out the herring, which had already been cut into many thin slices by the vendor and pickler. "This antagonism is a perversion of the principles of both religions. Shall we allow it to continue for ever?"

"It will continue till they both understand that Nature makes herself," said the Red Beadle.

"It will continue till they both understand my husband's book," corrected Hulda.

"Not while Jews live among Christians. Even here they say we take the bread out of the mouths of the Christian shoemakers. If we had our own country now--"

"Hush!" said Zussmann. "Do you share that materialistic dream? Our realm is spiritual. Nationality--the world stinks with it! Germany for the Germans, Russia for the Russians. Foreigners to the devil--pah! Egomania posing as patriotism. Human brotherhood is what we stand for. Have you forgotten how the Midrash explains the verse in the Song of Solomon: 'I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love till he please'?"

The Red Beadle, who had never read a line of the Midrash, did not deny that he had forgotten the explanation, but persisted: "And even if we didn't kill Christ, what good will it do to tell the Jews so? It will only make them angry."

"Why so?" said Zussmann, puzzled.

"They will be annoyed to have been punished for nothing."

"But they have not been punished for nothing!" cried Zussmann, setting down his fork in excitement. "They have denied their greatest son. For, as He said in Matthew, 'I come to fulfil the Law of Moses,' Did not all the Prophets, His predecessors, cry out likewise against mere form and sacrifice? Did not the teachers in Israel who followed Him likewise insist on a pure heart and a sinless soul? Jesus must be restored to His true place in the glorious chain of Hebrew Prophets. As I explain in my chapter on the Philosophy of Religion, which I have founded on Immanuel Kant, the ground-work of Reason is--"

But here the Red Beadle, whose coffee had with difficulty got itself sucked into the right channel, gasped--"You have put that into your book?"

The wife touched the manuscript with reverent pride. "It all stands here," she said.

"What! Quotations from the New Testament?"

"From our Jewish Apostles!" said Zussmann. "Naturally! On every page!"

"Then God help you!" said the Red Beadle.

III

_The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ was published. Though the bill was far heavier than the Hebrew printer's estimate--there being all sorts of mysterious charges for corrections, which took away the last _Groschen_ of their savings, Hulda and her husband were happy. They had sown the seed, and waited in serene faith the ingathering, the reconciliation of Israel with the Gentiles.

The book, which was in paper covers, was published at a shilling; five hundred copies had been struck off for the edition. After six months the account stood thus: Sales, eighty-four copies; press notices, two in the jargon papers (printed in the same office as his book and thus amenable to backstairs influence). The Jewish papers written in English, which loomed before Zussmann's vision as world-shaking, did not even mention its appearance; perhaps it had been better if the jargon papers had been equally silent, for, though less than one hundred copies of _The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ were in circulation, the book was in everybody's mouth--like a piece of pork to be spat out again shudderingly. The Red Beadle's instinct had been only too sound. The Ghetto, accustomed by this time to insidious attacks on its spiritual citadel, feared writers even bringing Hebrew. Despite the Oriental sandal which the cunning shoemaker had fashioned, his fellow-Jews saw the cloven hoof. They were not to be deceived by the specious sanctity which Darwin and Schopenhauer--probably Bishops of the Established Church--borrowed from their Hebrew lettering. Why, that was the very trick of the Satans who sprinkled the sacred tongue freely about handbills inviting souls that sought for light to come and find it in the Whitechapel Road between three and seven. It had been abandoned as hopeless even by the thin-nosed gentlewomen who had begun by painting a Hebrew designation over their bureau of beneficence. But the fact that the Ghetto was perspicacious did not mitigate the author's treachery to his race and faith. Zussmann was given violently to understand that his presence in the little synagogue would lead to disturbances in the service. "The Jew needs no house of prayer," he said; "his life is a prayer, his workshop a temple."

His workmen deserted him one by one as vacancies occurred elsewhere.

"We will get Christians," he said.

But the work itself began to fail. He was dependent upon a large firm whose head was Parnass of a North London congregation, and when one of Zussmann's workers, anxious to set up for himself, went to him with the tale, the contract was transferred to him, and Zussmann's security-deposit returned. But far heavier than all these blows was Hulda's sudden illness, and though the returned trust-money came in handy to defray the expense of doctors, the outlook was not cheerful. But "I will become a hand myself," said Zussmann cheerfully. "The annoyance of my brethren will pass away when they really understand my Idea; meantime it is working in them, for even to hate an Idea is to meditate upon it."

The Red Beadle grunted angrily. He could hear Hulda coughing in the next room, and that hurt his chest.

But it was summer now, and quite a considerable strip of blue sky could be seen from the window, and the mote-laden sun-rays that streamed in encouraged Hulda to grow better. She was soon up and about again, but the doctor said her system was thoroughly upset and she aught to have sea air. But that, of course, was impossible now. Hulda herself declared there was much better air to be got higher up, in the garret, which was fortunately "to let." It is true there was only one room there. Still, it was much cheaper. The Red Beadle's heart was heavier than the furniture he helped to carry upstairs. But the unsympathetic couple did not share his gloom. They jested and laughed, as light of heart as the excited children on the staircases who assisted at the function. "My Idea has raised me nearer heaven," said Zussmann. That night, after the Red Beadle had screwed up the four-poster, he allowed himself to be persuaded to stay to supper. He had given up the habit as soon as Zussmann's finances began to fail.

By way of house-warming, Hulda had ordered in baked potatoes and liver from the cook-shop, and there were also three tepid slices of plum-pudding.

"Plum-pudding!" cried Zussmann in delight, as his nostrils scented the dainty. "What a good omen for the Idea!"

"How an omen?" inquired the Red Beadle.

"Is not plum-pudding associated with Christmas, with peace on earth?"

Hulda's eyes flashed. "Yes, it is a sign--the Brotherhood of the Peoples! The Jew will be the peace-messenger of the world." The Red Beadle ate on sceptically. He had studied _The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ to the great improvement of his Hebrew but with little edification. He had even studied it in Hulda's original manuscript, which he had borrowed and never intended to return. But still he could not share his friends' belief in the perfectibility of mankind. Perhaps if they had known how he had tippled away his savings after his wife's death, they might have thought less well of humanity and its potentialities of perfection. After all, Huldas were too rare to make the world sober, much less fraternal. And, charming as they were, honesty demanded one should not curry favor with them by fostering their delusions.

"What put such an idea into your head, Zussmann!" he cried unsympathetically. Zussmann answered naively, as if to a question--

"I have had the idea from a boy. I remember sitting stocking-footed on the floor of the synagogue in Poland on the Fast of Ab, wondering why we should weep so over the destruction of Jerusalem, which scattered us among the nations as fertilizing seeds. How else should the mission of Israel be fulfilled? I remember"--and here he smiled pensively--"I was awakened from my day-dream by a _Patsch_ (smack) in the face from my poor old father, who was angry because I wasn't saying the prayers."

"There will be always somebody to give you that _Patsch_," said the Red Beadle gloomily. "But in what way is Israel dispersed? It seems to me our life is everywhere as hidden from the nations as if we were all together in Palestine."

"You touch a great truth! Oh, if I could only write in English! But though I read it almost as easily as the German, I can write it as little. You know how one has to learn German in Poland--by stealth--the Christians jealous on one hand, the Jews suspicious on the other. I could not risk the Christians laughing at my bad German--that would hurt my Idea. And English is a language like the Vale of Siddim--full of pits."

"We ought to have it translated," said Hulda. "Not only for the Christians, but for the rich Jews, who are more liberal-minded than those who live in our quarter."

"But we cannot afford to pay for the translating now," said Zussmann.

"Nonsense; one has always a jewel left," said Hulda.

Zussmann's eyes grew wet. "Yes," he said, drawing her to his breast, "one has always a jewel left."

"More _meshuggas!_" cried the Red Beadle huskily. "Much the English Jews care about ideas! Did they even acknowledge your book in their journals? But probably they couldn't read it," he added with a laugh. "A fat lot of Hebrew little Sampson knows! You know little Sampson--he came to report the boot-strike for _The Flag of Judah_. I got into conversation with him--a rank pork-gorger. He believes with me that Nature makes herself."

But Zussmann was scarcely eating, much less listening.

"You have given me a new scheme, Hulda," he said, with exaltation. "I will send my book to the leading English Jews--yes, especially to the ministers. They will see my Idea, they will spread it abroad, they will convert first the Jews and then the Christians."

"Yes, but they will give it as their own Idea," said Hulda.

"And what then? He who has faith in an Idea, his Idea it is. How great for me to have had the Idea first! Is not that enough to thank God for? If only my Idea gets spread in English! English! Have you ever thought what that means, Hulda? The language of the future! Already the language of the greatest nations, and the most on the lips of men everywhere--in a century it will cover the world." He murmured in Hebrew, uplifting his eyes to the rain-streaked sloping ceiling. "And in that day God shall be One and His name One."

"Your supper is getting cold," said Hulda gently.

He began to wield his knife and fork as hypnotized by her suggestion, but his vision was inwards.

IV

Fifty copies of _The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ went off by post the next day to the clergy and gentry of the larger Jewry. In the course of the next fortnight seventeen of the recipients acknowledged the receipt with formal thanks, four sent the shilling mentioned on the cover, and one sent five shillings. This last depressed Zussmann more than all the others. "Does he take me for a _Schnorrer_?" he said, almost angrily, as he returned the postal order.

He did not forsee the day when, a _Schnorrer_ indeed, he would have taken five shillings from anybody who could afford it: had no prophetic intuition of that long, slow progression of penurious days which was to break down his spirit. For though he managed for a time to secure enough work to keep himself and the Red Beadle going, his ruin was only delayed. Little by little his apparatus was sold off, his benches and polishing-irons vanished from the garret, only one indispensable set remaining, and master and man must needs quest each for himself for work elsewhere. The Red Beadle dropped out of the menage, and was reduced to semi-starvation. Zussmann and Hulda, by the gradual disposition of their bits of jewellery and their Sabbath garments, held out a little longer, and Hulda also got some sewing of children's under-garments. But with the return of winter, Hulda's illness returned, and then the beloved books began to leave bare the nakedness of the plastered walls. At first, Hulda, refusing to be visited by doctors who charged, struggled out bravely through rain and fog to a free dispensary, where she was jostled by a crowd of head-shawled Polish crones, and where a harassed Christian physician, tired of jargon-speaking Jewesses, bawled and bullied. But at last Hulda grew too ill to stir out, and Zussmann, still out of employment, was driven to look about him for help. Charities enough there were in the Ghetto, but to charity, as to work, one requires an apprenticeship. He knew vaguely that there were persons who had the luck to be ill and to get broths and jellies. To others, also, a board of guardian angels doled out payments, though some one had once told him you had scant chance unless you were a Dutchman. But the inexperienced in begging are naturally not so successful as those always at it. 'Twas vain for Zussmann to kick his heels among the dismal crowd in the corridor, the whisper of his misdeeds had been before him, borne by some competitor in the fierce struggle for assistance. What! help a hypocrite to sit on the twin stools of Christendom and Judaism, fed by the bounty of both! In this dark hour he was approached by the thin-nosed gentlewomen, who had got wind of his book and who scented souls. Zussmann wavered. Why, indeed, should he refuse their assistance? He knew their self-sacrificing days, their genuine joy in salvation. On their generosities he was far better posted than on Jewish--the lurid legend of these Mephistophelian matrons included blankets, clothes, port wine, and all the delicacies of the season. He admitted that Hulda had indeed been brought low, and permitted them to call. Then he went home to cut dry bread for the bedridden, emaciated creature who had once been beautiful, and to comfort her--for it was Friday evening--by reading the Sabbath prayers; winding up, "A virtuous woman who can find? For her price is far above rubies."

On the forenoon of the next day arrived a basket, scenting the air with delicious odors of exquisite edibles.

Zussmann received it with delight from the boy who bore it. "God bless them!" he said. "A chicken--grapes--wine. Look, Hulda!"

Hulda raised herself in bed; her eyes sparkled, a flush of color returned to the wan cheeks.

"Where do these come from?" she asked.

Zussmann hesitated. Then he told her they were the harbingers of a visit from the good sisters.

The flush in her cheek deepened to scarlet.

"My poor Zussmann!" she cried reproachfully. "Give them back--give them back at once! Call after the boy."

"Why?" stammered Zussmann.

"Call after the boy!" she repeated imperatively. "Good God! If the ladies were to be seen coming up here, it would be all over with your Idea. And on the Sabbath, too! People already look upon you as a tool of the missionaries. Quick! quick!"

His heart aching with mingled love and pain, he took up the basket and hurried after the boy. Hulda sank back on her pillow with a sigh of relief.

"Dear heart!" she thought, as she took advantage of his absence to cough freely. "For me he does what he would starve rather than do for himself. A nice thing to imperil his Idea--the dream of his life! When the Jews see he makes no profit by it, they will begin to consider it. If he did not have the burden of me he would not be tempted. He could go out more and find work farther afield. This must end--I must die or be on my feet again soon."

Zussmann came back, empty-handed and heavy-hearted.

"Kiss me, my own life!" she cried. "I shall be better soon."

He bent down and touched her hot, dry lips. "Now I see," she whispered, "why God did not send us children. We thought it was an affliction, but lo! it is that your Idea shall not be hindered."

"The English Rabbis have not yet drawn attention to it," said Zussmann huskily.

"All the better," replied Hulda. "One day it will be translated into English--I know it, I feel it here." She touched her chest, and the action made her cough.

Going out later for a little fresh air, at Hulda's insistence, he was stopped in the broad hall on which the stairs debouched by Cohen, the ground-floor tenant, a black-bearded Russian Jew, pompous in Sabbath broadcloth.

"What's the matter with my milk?" abruptly asked Cohen, who supplied the local trade besides selling retail. "You might have complained, instead of taking your custom out of the house. Believe me, I don't make a treasure heap out of it. One has to be up at Euston to meet the trains in the middle of the night, and the competition is so cut-throat that one has to sell at eighteen pence a barn gallon. And on Sabbath one earns nothing at all. And then the analyst comes poking his nose into the milk."

"You see--my wife--my wife--is ill," stammered Zussmann. "So she doesn't drink it."

"Hum!" said Cohen. "Well, _you_ might oblige me then. I have so much left over every day, it makes my reputation turn quite sour. Do, do me a favor and let me send you up a can of the leavings every night. For nothing, of course; would I talk business on the Sabbath? I don't like to be seen pouring it away. It would pay me to pay _you_ a penny a pint," he wound up emphatically.

Zussmann accepted unsuspiciously, grateful to Providence for enabling him to benefit at once himself and his neighbor. He bore a can upstairs now and explained the situation to the shrewder Hulda, who, however, said nothing but, "You see the Idea commences to work. When the book first came out, didn't he--though he sells secretly to the trade on Sabbath mornings--call you an Epicurean?"

"Worse," said Zussmann joyously, with a flash of recollection.

He went out again, lightened and exalted. "Yes, the Idea works," he said, as he came out into the gray street. "The Brotherhood of the Peoples will come, not in my time, but it will come." And he murmured again the Hebrew aspiration: "In that day shall God be One and His name One."

"Whoa, where's your ---- eyes?"

Awakened by the oath, he just got out of the way of a huge Flemish dray-horse dragging a brewer's cart. Three ragged Irish urchins, who had been buffeting each other with whirling hats knotted into the ends of dingy handkerchiefs, relaxed their enmities in a common rush for the projecting ladder behind the dray and collided with Zussmann on the way. A one-legged, misery-eyed hunchback offered him penny diaries. He shook his head in impotent pity, and passed on, pondering.

"In time God will make the crooked straight," he thought.

Jews with tall black hats and badly made frock-coats slouched along, their shoulders bent. Wives stood at the open doors of the old houses, some in Sabbath finery, some flaunting irreligiously their every-day shabbiness, without troubling even to arrange their one dress differently, as a pious Rabbi recommended. They looked used-up and haggard, all these mothers in Israel. But there were dark-eyed damsels still gay and fresh, with artistic bodices of violet and green picked out with gold arabesque.

He turned a corner and came into a narrow street that throbbed with the joyous melody of a piano-organ. His heart leapt up. The roadway bubbled with Jewish children, mainly girls, footing it gleefully in the graying light, inventing complex steps with a grace and an abandon that lit their eyes with sparkles and painted deeper flushes on their olive cheeks. A bounding little bow-legged girl seemed unconscious of her deformity; her toes met each other as though in merry dexterity.

Zussmann's eyes were full of tears. "Dance on, dance on," he murmured. "God shall indeed make the crooked straight."

Fixed to one side of the piano-organ on the level of the handle he saw a little box, in which lay, as in a cradle, what looked like a monkey, then like a doll, but on closer inspection turned into a tiny live child, flaxen-haired, staring with wide gray eyes from under a blue cap, and sucking at a milk-bottle with preternatural placidity, regardless of the music throbbing through its resting-place.

"Even so shall humanity live," thought Zussmann, "peaceful as a babe, cradled in music. God hath sent me a sign."

He returned home, comforted, and told Hulda of the sign.

"Was it an Italian child?" she asked.

"An English child," he answered. "Fair-eyed and fair-haired."

"Then it is a sign that through the English tongue shall the Idea move the world. Your book will be translated into English--I shall live to see it."

V

A few afternoons later the Red Beadle, his patched garments pathetically spruced up, came to see his friends, goaded by the news of Hulda's illness. There was no ruddiness in his face, the lips of which were pressed together in defiance of a cruel and credulous world. That Nature in making herself should have produced creatures who attributed their creation elsewhere, and who refused to allow her one acknowledger to make boots, was indeed a proof, albeit vexatious, of her blind workings.

When he saw what she had done to Hulda and to Zussmann, his lips were pressed tighter, but as much to keep back a sob as to express extra resentment.

But on parting he could not help saying to Zussmann, who accompanied him to the dark spider-webbed landing, "Your God has forgotten you."

"Do you mean that men have forgotten Him?" replied Zussmann. "If I am come to poverty, my suffering is in the scheme of things. Do you not remember what the Almighty says to Eleazar ben Pedos, in the Talmud, when the Rabbi complains of poverty? 'Wilt thou be satisfied if I overthrow the universe, so that perhaps thou mayest be created again in a time of plenty?' No, no, my friend, we must trust the scheme."

"But the fools enjoy prosperity," said the Red Beadle.

"It is only a fool who _would_ enjoy prosperity," replied Zussmann. "If the righteous sometimes suffer and the wicked sometimes flourish, that is just the very condition of virtue. What! would you have righteousness always pay and wickedness always fail! Where then would be the virtue in virtue? It would be a mere branch of commerce. Do you forget what the Chassid said of the man who foreknew in his lifetime that for him there was to be no heaven? 'What a unique and enviable chance that man had of doing right without fear of reward!'"

The Red Beadle, as usual, acquiesced in the idea that he had forgotten these quotations from the Hebrew, but to acquiesce in their teachings was another matter. "A man who had no hope of heaven would be a fool not to enjoy himself," he said doggedly, and went downstairs, his heart almost bursting. He went straight to his old synagogue, where he knew a _Hesped_ or funeral service on a famous _Maggid_ (preacher) was to be held. He could scarcely get in, so dense was the throng. Not a few eyes, wet with tears, were turned angrily on him as on a mocker come to gloat, but he hastened to weep too, which was easy when he thought of Hulda coughing in her bed in the garret. So violently did he weep that the _Gabbai_ or treasurer--one of the most pious master-bootmakers--gave him the "Peace" salutation after the service.

"I did not expect to see you weeping," said he.

"Alas!" answered the Red Beadle. "It is not only the fallen Prince in Israel that I weep; it is my own transgressions that are brought home to me by his sudden end. How often have I heard him thunder and lighten from this very pulpit!" He heaved a deep sigh at his own hypocrisy, and the _Gabbai_ sighed in response. "Even from the grave the _Tsaddik_ (saint) works good," said the pious master-bootmaker. "May my latter end be like his!"

"Mine, too!" suspired the Red Beadle. "How blessed am I not to have been cut off in my sin, denying the Maker of Nature!" They walked along the street together.

The next morning, at the luncheon-hour, a breathless Beadle, with a red beard and a very red face, knocked joyously at the door of the Herz garret.

"I am in work again," he explained.

"_Mazzeltov!_" Zussmann gave him the Hebrew congratulation, but softly, with finger on lip, to indicate Hulda was asleep. "With whom?"

"Harris the _Gabbai_."

"Harris! What, despite your opinions?"

The Red Beadle looked away.

"So it seems!"

"Thank God!" said Hulda. "The Idea works."

Both men turned to the bed, startled to see her sitting up with a rapt smile.

"How so?" said the Red Beadle uneasily. "I am not a _Goy_ (Christian) befriended by a _Gabbai_."

"No, but it is the brotherhood of humanity."

"Bother the brotherhood of humanity, Frau Herz!" said the Red Beadle gruffly. He glanced round the denuded room. "The important thing is that you will now be able to have a few delicacies."

"_I?_" Hulda opened her eyes wide.

"Who else? What I earn is for all of us."

"God bless you!" said Zussmann; "but you have enough to do to keep yourself."

"Indeed he has!" said Hulda. "We couldn't dream of taking a farthing!" But her eyes were wet.

"I insist!" said the Red Beadle.

She thanked him sweetly, but held firm.

"I will advance the money on loan till Zussmann gets work."

Zussmann wavered, his eyes beseeching her, but she was inflexible.

The Red Beadle lost his temper. "And this is what you call the brotherhood of humanity!"

"He is right, Hulda. Why should we not take from one another? Pride perverts brotherhood."

"Dear husband," said Hulda, "it is not pride to refuse to rob the poor. Besides, what delicacies do I need? Is not this a land flowing with milk?"

"You take Cohen's milk and refuse my honey!" shouted the Red Beadle unappeased.

"Give me of the honey of your tongue and I shall not refuse it," said Hulda, with that wonderful smile of hers which showed the white teeth Nature had made; the smile which, as always, melted the Beadle's mood. That smile could repair all the ravages of disease and give back her memoried face.

After the Beadle had been at work a day or two in the _Gabbai's_ workshop, he broached the matter of a fellow-penitent, one Zussmann Herz, with no work and a bedridden wife.

"That _Meshummad!_" (apostate) cried the _Gabbai_." He deserves all that God has sent him."

Undaunted, the Red Beadle demonstrated that the man could not be of the missionary camp, else had he not been left to starve, one converted Jew being worth a thousand pounds of fresh subscriptions. Moreover he, the Red Beadle, had now convinced the man of his spiritual errors, and _The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ was no longer on sale. Also, being unable to leave his wife's bedside, Zussmann would do the work at home below the Union rates prevalent in public. So, trade being brisk, the _Gabbai_ relented and bargained, and the Red Beadle sped to his friend's abode and flew up the four flights of stairs.

"Good news!" he cried. "The _Gabbai_ wants another hand, and he is ready to take you."

"Me?" Zussmann was paralyzed with joy and surprise.

"Now will you deny that the Idea works?" cried Hulda, her face flushed and her eyes glittering. And she fell a-coughing.

"You are right, Hulda; you are always right," cried Zussmann, in responsive radiance. "Thank God! Thank God!"

"God forgive me," muttered the Red Beadle.

"Go at once, Zussmann," said Hulda. "I shall do very well here--this has given me strength. I shall be up in a day or two."

"No, no, Zussmann," said the Beadle hurriedly. "There is no need to leave your wife. I have arranged it all. The _Gabbai_ does not want you to come there or to speak to him, because, though the Idea works in him, the other 'hands' are not yet so large-minded: I am to bring you the orders, and I shall come here to fetch them."

The set of tools to which Zussmann clung in desperate hope made the plan both feasible and pleasant.

And so the Red Beadle's visits resumed their ancient frequency even as his Sabbath clothes resumed their ancient gloss, and every week's-end he paid over Zussmann's wages to him--full Union rate.

But Hulda, although she now accepted illogically the Red Beadle's honey in various shapes, did not appear to progress as much as the Idea, or as the new book which she stimulated Zussmann to start for its further propagation.

VI

One Friday evening of December, when miry snow underfoot and grayish fog all around combined to make Spitalfields a malarious marsh, the Red Beadle, coming in with the week's wages, found to his horror a doctor hovering over Hulda's bed like the shadow of death.

From the look that Zussmann gave him he saw a sudden change for the worse had set in. The cold of the weather seemed to strike right to his heart. He took the sufferer's limp chill hand.

"How goes it?" he said cheerily.

"A trifle weak. But I shall be better soon."

He turned away. Zussmann whispered to him that the doctor who had been called in that morning had found the crisis so threatening that he was come again in the evening.

The Red Beadle, grown very white, accompanied the doctor downstairs, and learned that with care the patient might pull through.

The Beadle felt like tearing out his red beard. "And to think that I have not yet arranged the matter!" he thought distractedly.

He ran through the gray bleak night to the office of _The Flag of Judah_; but as he was crossing the threshold he remembered that it was the eve of the Sabbath, and that neither little Sampson nor anybody else would be there. But little Sampson _was_ there, working busily.

"Hullo! Come in," he said, astonished.

The Red Beadle had already struck up a drinking acquaintanceship with the little journalist, in view of the great negotiation he was plotting. Not in vain did the proverbial wisdom of the Ghetto bid one beware of the red-haired.

"I won't keep you five minutes," apologized little Sampson. "But, you see, Christmas comes next week, and the compositors won't work. So I have to invent the news in advance."

Presently little Sampson, lighting an unhallowed cigarette by way of Sabbath lamp, and slinging on his shabby cloak, repaired with the Red Beadle to a restaurant, where he ordered "forbidden" food for himself and drinks for both.

The Red Beadle felt his way so cautiously and cunningly that the negotiation was unduly prolonged. After an hour or two, however, all was settled. For five pounds, paid in five monthly instalments, little Sampson would translate _The Brotherhood of the Peoples_ into English, provided the Beadle would tell him what the Hebrew meant. This the Beadle, from his loving study of Hulda's manuscript, was now prepared for. Little Sampson also promised to run the translation through _The Flag of Judah_, and thus the Beadle could buy the plates cheap for book purposes, with only the extra cost of printing such passages, if any, as were too dangerous for _The Flag of Judah_. This unexpected generosity, coupled with the new audience it offered the Idea, enchanted the Red Beadle. He did not see that the journalist was getting gratuitous "copy," he saw only the bliss of Hulda and Zussmann, and in some strange exaltation, compact of whisky and affection, he shared in their vision of the miraculous spread of the Idea, once it had got into the dominant language of the world.

In his gratitude to little Sampson he plied him with fresh whisky; in his excitement he drew the paper-covered book from his pocket, and insisted that the journalist must translate the first page then and there, as a hansel. By the time it was done it was near eleven o'clock. Vaguely the Red Beadle felt that it was too late to return to Zussmann's to-night. Besides, he was liking little Sampson very much. They did not separate till the restaurant closed at midnight.

Quite drunk, the Red Beadle staggered towards Zussmann's house. He held the page of the translation tightly in his hand. The Hebrew original he had forgotten on the restaurant table, but he knew in some troubled nightmare way that Zussmann and Hulda must see that paper at once, that he had been charged to deliver it safely, and must die sooner than disobey.

The fog had lifted, but the heaps of snow were a terrible hindrance to his erratic progression. The cold air and the shock of a fall lessened his inebriety, but the imperative impulse of his imaginary mission still hypnotized him. It was past one before he reached the tall house. He did not think it at all curious that the great outer portals should be open; nor, though he saw the milk-cart at the door, and noted Cohen's uncomfortable look, did he remember that he had discovered the milk-purveyor nocturnally infringing the Sabbath. He stumbled up the stairs and knocked at the garret door, through the chinks of which light streamed. The thought of Hulda smote him almost sober. Zussmann's face, when the door opened, restored him completely to his senses. It was years older.

"She is not dead?" the visitor whispered hoarsely.

"She is dying, I fear--she cannot rouse herself." Zussmann's voice broke in a sob.

"But she must not die--I bring great news--_The Flag of Judah_ has read your book--it will translate it into English--it will print it in its own paper--and then it will make a book of it for you. See, here is the beginning!"

"Into English!" breathed Zussmann, taking the little journalist's scrawl. His whole face grew crimson, his eye shone as with madness. "Hulda! Hulda!" he cried, "the Idea works! God be thanked! English! Through the world! Hulda! Hulda!" He was bending over her, raising her head.

She opened her eyes.

"Hulda! the Idea wins. The book is coming out in English. The great English paper will print it. In that day God shall be One and His name One. Do you understand?" Her lips twitched faintly, but only her eyes spoke with the light of love and joy. His own look met hers, and for a moment husband and wife were one in a spiritual ecstasy.

Then the light in Hulda's eyes went out, and the two men were left in darkness.

The Red Beadle turned away and left Zussmann to his dead, and, with scalding tears running down his cheek, pulled up the cotton window blind and gazed out unseeing into the night.

Presently his vision cleared: he found himself watching the milk-cart drive off, and, following it towards the frowsy avenue of Brick Lane, he beheld what seemed to be a drunken fight in progress. He saw a policeman, gesticulating females, the nondescript nocturnal crowd of the sleepless city. The old dull hopelessness came over him. "Nature makes herself," he murmured in despairing resignation.

Suddenly he became aware that Zussmann was beside him, looking up at the stars. _

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