And surely he knew as well as she that the dreadful legend was gathering again, that the slowly-growing Jew-hatred had reached a point at which it must find expression, that the Pritzim (nobles) in their great houses, and the peasants behind their high palings, alike sulked under the burden of debts. Indeed, had not the Passover Market hummed with the old, old story of a lost Christian child? Not murdered yet, thank God, nor even a corpse. But still, if a boy should be found with signs of violence upon him at this season of the Paschal Sacrifice, when the Greek Church brooded on the Crucifixion! O God of Abraham, guard us from these fiends unchained!

But the first part of the elaborate ritual, pleasantly punctuated with cups of raisin wine, passed peacefully by, and the evening meal, mercifully set in the middle, was reached, to the children's vast content. They made wry, humorous mouths, each jest endeared by annual repetition, over the horseradish that typified the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage, and ecstatic grimaces over the soft, sweet mixture of almonds, raisins, apples, and cinnamon, vaguely suggestive of the bondsmen's mortar; they relished the eggs sliced into salt water, and then—the symbols all duly swallowed—settled down with more prosaic satisfaction to the merely edible meats and fishes, though even to these the special Passover plates and dishes and the purified knives and forks lent a new relish.

By this time Golda was sufficiently cheered up to meditate her annual theft of the Afkuman, that segment of Passover cake under Aaron's pillow, morsels of which, distributed to each as the final food to be tasted that night, replaced the final mouthful of the Paschal Lamb in the ancient Palestinian meal.

II

But Elijah's goblet stood in the centre of the table untasted. Every time the ritual cup-drinking came round, the children had glanced at the great silver goblet placed for the Prophet of Redemption. Alas! the brimming raisin wine remained ever at the same level.

They found consolation in the thought that the great moment was still to come—the moment of the third cup, when, mother throwing open the door, father would rise, holding the goblet on high, and sonorously salute an unseen visitor.

True, in other years, though they had almost heard the rush of wings, the great shining cup had remained full, and when it was replaced on the white cloth, a vague resentment as at a spurned hospitality had stirred in each youthful breast. But many reasons could be found to exculpate Elijah—not omitting their own sins—and now, when Ben Amram nodded to his wife to open the door, expectation stood on tip-toe, credulous as ever, and the young hearts beat tattoo.

But the mother's heart was palpitating with another emotion. A faint clamour in the Polish quarter at the back, as she replaced the samovar in the kitchen, had recalled all her alarms, and she merely threw open the door of the room. But Ben Amram was not absent-minded enough to be beguiled by her air of obedient alacrity. Besides, he could see the shut street-door through the strip of passage. He gestured towards it.

Now she feigned laziness. 'Oh, never mind.'

'David, open the street-door.'

The eldest boy sprang up joyously. It would have been too bad of mother to keep Elijah on the doorstep.

'No, no, David!' Golda stopped him. 'It is too heavy; he could not undo the bolts and bars.'

'You have barred it?' Ben Amram asked.

'And why not? In this season you know how the heathen go mad like street-dogs.'

'Pooh! They will not bite us.'

'But, Aaron! You heard about the lost Christian child!'

'I have saved many a Christian child, Golda.'

'They will not remember that.'

'But I must remember the ritual.' And he made a movement.

'No, no, Aaron! Listen!'

The shrill noises seemed to have veered round towards the front of the house. He shrugged his shoulders. 'I hear only the goats bleating.'

She clung to him as he made for the door. 'For the sake of our children!'

'Do not be so childish yourself, my crown!'

'But I am not childish. Hark!'

He smiled calmly. 'The door must be opened.'

Her fears lent her scepticism. 'It is you that are childish. You know no Prophet of Redemption will come through the door.'

He caressed his venerable beard. 'Who knows?'

'I know. It is a Destroyer, not a Redeemer of Israel, who will come. Listen! Ah, God of Abraham! Do you not hear?'

Unmistakably the howl of a riotous mob was approaching, mingled with the reedy strains of an accordion.

'Down with the Zhits! Death to the dirty Jews!'

'God in heaven!' She released her husband, and ran towards the children with a gesture as of seeking to gather them all in her arms. Then, hearing the bolts shot back, she turned with a scream. 'Are you mad, Aaron?'

But he, holding her back with his gaze, threw wide the door with his left hand, while his right upheld Elijah's goblet, and over the ululation of the unseen mob and the shrill spasms of music rose his Hebrew welcome to the visitor: 'Baruch habaa!'

Hardly had the greeting left his lips when a wild flying figure in a rich furred coat dashed round the corner and almost into his arms, half-spilling the wine.

'In God's name, Reb Aaron!' panted the refugee, and fell half-dead across the threshold.

The physician dragged him hastily within, and slammed the door, just as two moujiks—drunken leaders of the chase—lurched past. The mother, who had sprung forward at the sound of the fall, frenziedly shot the bolts, and in another instant the hue and cry tore past the house and dwindled in the distance.

Ben Amram raised the white bloody face, and put Elijah's goblet to the lips. The strange visitor drained it to the dregs, the clustered children looking on dazedly. As the head fell back, it caught the light from the festive candles of the Passover board. The face was bare of hair; even the side curls were gone.

'Maimon the Meshummad!' cried the mother, shuddering back. 'You have saved the Apostate.'

'Did I not say the door must be opened?' replied Ben Amram gently. Then a smile of humour twitched his lips, and he smoothed his white beard. 'Maimon is the only Jew abroad to-night, and how were the poor drunken peasants to know he was baptized?'

Despite their thrill of horror at the traitor, David and his brothers and sisters were secretly pleased to see Elijah's goblet empty at last.

III

Next morning the Passover liturgy rang jubilantly through the vast, crowded synagogue. No violence had been reported, despite the passage of a noisy mob. The Ghetto, then, was not to be laid waste with fire and sword, and the worshippers within the moss-grown, turreted quadrangle drew free breath, and sent it out in great shouts of rhythmic prayer, as they swayed in their fringed shawls, with quivering hands of supplication. The Ark of the Law at one end of the great building, overbrooded by the Ten Commandments and the perpetual light, stood open to mark a supreme moment of devotion. Ben Amram had been given the honour of uncurtaining the shrine, and its richly clad scrolls of all sizes, with their silver bells and pointers, stood revealed in solemn splendour.

Through the ornate grating of their gallery the gaily-clad women looked down on the rocking figures, while the grace-notes of the cantor on his central dais, and the harmoniously interjected 'poms' of his male ministrants flew up to their ears, as though they were indeed angels on high. Suddenly, over the blended passion of cantor and congregation, an ominous sound broke from without—the complex clatter of cavalry, the curt ring of military orders. The swaying figures turned suddenly as under another wind, the women's eyes grew astare and ablaze with terror. The great doors flew open, and—oh, awful, incredible sight—a squadron of Cossacks rode slowly in, two abreast, with a heavy thud of hoofs on the sacred floor, and a rattle of ponderous sabres. Their black conical caps and long beards, their great side-buttoned coats, and pockets stuffed with protrusive cartridges, their prancing horses, their leaded knouts, struck a blood-curdling discord amid the prayerful, white-wrapped figures. The rumble of worship ceased, the cantor, suddenly isolated, was heard soaring ecstatically; then he, too, turned his head uneasily and his roulade died in his throat.

'Halt!' the officer cried. The moving column froze. Its bristling length stretched from the central platform, blocking the aisle, and the courtyard echoed with the clanging hoofs of its rear, which backed into the school and the poor-house. The Shamash (beadle) was seen to front the flamboyant invaders.

'Why does your Excellency intrude upon our prayers to God?'

The congregation felt its dignity return. Who would have suspected Red Judah of such courage—such apt speech? Why, the very Rabbi was petrified; the elders of the Kahal stood dumb. Ben Amram himself, their spokesman to the Government, whose praying-shawl was embroidered with a silver band, and whose coat was satin, remained immovable between the pillars of the Ark, staring stonily at the brave beadle.

'First of all, for the boy's blood!'

The words rang out with military precision, and the speaker's horse pawed clangorously, as if impatient for the charge. The men grew death-pale, the women wrung their hands.

'Ai, vai!' they moaned. 'Woe! woe!'

'What boy? What blood?' said the Shamash, undaunted.

'Don't palter, you rascal! You know well that a Christian child has disappeared.'

The aged Rabbi, stimulated by the Shamash, uplifted a quavering voice.

'The child will be found of a surety—if, indeed, it is lost,' he added with bitter sarcasm. 'And surely your Excellency cannot require the boy's blood at our hands ere your Excellency knows it is indeed spilt.'

'You misunderstand me, old dog—or rather you pretend to, old fox. The boy's blood is here—it is kept in this very synagogue—and I have come for it.'

The Shamash laughed explosively. 'Oh, Excellency!'

The synagogue, hysterically tense, caught the contagion of glad relief. It rang with strange laughter.

'There is no blood in this synagogue, Excellency,' said the Rabbi, his eyes a-twinkle, 'save what runs in living veins.'

'We shall see. Produce that bottle beneath the Ark.'

'That!' The Shamash grinned—almost indecorously. 'That is the Consecration wine—red as my beard,' quoth he.

'Ha! ha! the red Consecration wine!' repeated the synagogue in a happy buzz, and from the women's gallery came the same glad murmur of mutual explanation.

'We shall see,' repeated the officer, with iron imperturbability, and the happy hum died into a cold heart-faintness, fraught with an almost incredulous apprehension of some devilish treachery, some mock discovery that would give the Ghetto over to the frenzies of fanatical creditors, nay, to the vengeance of the law.

The officer's voice rose again. 'Let no one leave the synagogue—man, woman, or child. Kill anyone who attempts to escape.'

The screams of fainting women answered him from above, but impassively he urged his horse along the aisle that led to the Ark; its noisy hoofs trampled over every heart. Springing from his saddle he opened the little cupboard beneath the scrolls, and drew out a bottle, hideously red.

'Consecration wine, eh?' he said grimly.

'What else, Excellency?' stoutly replied the Shamash, who had followed him.

A savage laugh broke from the officer's lips. 'Drink me a mouthful!'

As the Shamash took the bottle, with a fearless shrug of the shoulders, every eye strained painfully towards him, save in the women's gallery, where many covered their faces with their hands. Every breath was held.

Keeping the same amused incredulous face, Red Judah gulped down a draught. But as the liquid met his palate a horrible distortion overcame his smile, his hands flew heavenwards. Dropping the bottle, and with a hoarse cry, 'Mercy, O God!' he fell before the Ark, foaming at the mouth. The red fluid spread in a vivid pool.

'Hear, O Israel!' A raucous cry of horror rose from all around, and was echoed more shrilly from above. Almighty Father! The Jew-haters had worked their fiendish trick. Now the men were become as the women, shrieking, wringing their hands, crying, 'Ai, vai!' 'Gewalt!' The Rabbi shook as with palsy. 'Satan! Satan!' chattered through his teeth.

But Ben Amram had moved at last, and was stooping over the scarlet stain.

'A soldier should know blood, Excellency!' the physician said quietly.

The officer's face relaxed into a faint smile.

'A soldier knows wine too,' he said, sniffing. And, indeed, the spicy reek of the Consecration wine was bewildering the nearer bystanders.

'Your Excellency frightened poor Judah into a fit,' said the physician, raising the beadle's head by its long red beard.

His Excellency shrugged his shoulders, sprang to his saddle, and cried a retreat. The Cossacks, unable to turn in the aisle, backed cumbrously with a manifold thudding and rearing and clanking, but ere the congregation had finished rubbing their eyes, the last conical hat and leaded knout had vanished, and only the tarry reek of their boots was left in proof of their actual passage. A deep silence hung for a moment like a heavy cloud, then it broke in a torrent of ejaculations.

But Ben Amram's voice rang through the din. 'Brethren!' He rose from wiping the frothing lips of the stricken creature, and his face had the fiery gloom of a seer's, and the din died under his uplifted palm. 'Brethren, the Lord hath saved us!'

'Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever!' The Rabbi began the phrase, and the congregation caught it up in thunder.

'But hearken how. Last night at the Seder, as I opened the door for Elijah, there entered Maimon the Meshummad! 'Twas he quaffed Elijah's cup!'

There was a rumble of imprecations.

'A pretty Elijah!' cried the Rabbi.

'Nay, but God sends the Prophet of Redemption in strange guise,' the physician said. 'Listen! Maimon was pursued by a drunken mob, ignorant he was a deserter from our camp. When he found how I had saved him and dressed his bleeding face, when he saw the spread Passover table, his child-soul came back to him, and in a burst of tears he confessed the diabolical plot against our community, hatched through his instrumentality by some desperate debtors; how, having raised the cry of a lost child, they were to have its blood found beneath our Holy Ark as in some mystic atonement. And while you all lolled joyously at the Seder table, a bottle of blood lay here instead of the Consecration wine, like a bomb waiting to burst and destroy us all.'

A shudder of awe traversed the synagogue.

'But the Guardian of Israel, who permits us to sleep on Passover night without night-prayer, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Maimon had bribed the Shamash to let him enter the synagogue and replace the Consecration wine.'

'Red Judah!' It was like the growl of ten thousand tigers. Some even precipitated themselves upon the writhing wretch.

'Back! back!' cried Ben Amram. 'The Almighty has smitten him.'

'"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,"' quoted the Rabbi solemnly.

'Hallelujah!' shouted a frenzied female voice, and 'Hallelujah!' the men responded in thunder.

'Red Judah had no true belief in the God of Israel,' the physician went on.

'May he be an atonement for us all!' interrupted the Cantor.

'Amen!' growled the congregation.

'For a hundred roubles and the promise of personal immunity Red Judah allowed Maimon the Meshummad to change the bottles while all Israel sat at the Seder. It was because the mob saw the Meshummad stealing out of the synagogue that they fell upon him for a pious Jew. Behold, brethren, how the Almighty weaves His threads together. After the repentant sinner had confessed all to me, and explained how the Cossacks were to be sent to catch all the community assembled helpless in synagogue, I deemed it best merely to get the bottles changed back again. The false bottle contained only bullock's blood, but it would have sufficed to madden the multitude. Since it is I who have the blessed privilege of supplying the Consecration wine it was easy enough to give Maimon another bottle, and armed with this he roused the Shamash in the dawn, pretending he had now obtained true human blood. A rouble easily procured him the keys again, and when he brought me back the bullock's blood, I awaited the sequel in peace.'

'Praise ye the Lord, for He is good,' sang the Cantor, carried away.

'For His mercy endureth for ever,' replied the congregation instinctively.

'I did not foresee the Shamash would put himself so brazenly forward to hide his guilt, or that he would be asked to drink. But when the Epikouros (atheist) put the bottle to his lips, expecting to taste blood, and found instead good red wine, doubtless he felt at once that the God of Israel was truly in heaven, that He had wrought a miracle and changed the blood back to wine.'

'And such a miracle God wrought verily,' cried the Rabbi, grasping the physician's hand, while the synagogue resounded with cries of 'May thy strength increase,' and the gallery heaved frantically with blessings and congratulations.

'What wonder,' the physician wound up, as he bent again over the ghastly head, with its pious ringlets writhing like red snakes, 'that he fell stricken by dread of the Almighty's wrath!'

And while men were bearing the convulsive form without, the Cantor began to recite the Grace after Redemption. And then the happy hymns rolled out, and the choristers cried 'Pom!' and a breath of jubilant hope passed through the synagogue. The mighty hand and the outstretched arm which had redeemed Israel from the Egyptian bondage were still hovering over them, nor would the Prophet Elijah for ever delay to announce the ultimate Messiah.



THE HIRELINGS



THE HIRELINGS

I

Crowded as was the steamer with cultured Americans invading Europe, few knew that Rozenoffski was on board, or even that Rozenoffski was a pianist. The name, casually seen on the passengers' list, conveyed nothing but a strong Russian and a vaguer Semitic flavour, and the mere outward man, despite a leonine head, was of insignificant port and somewhat shuffling gait, and drew scarcely a second glance.

He would not have had it otherwise, he told himself, as he paced the almost deserted deck after dinner—it was a blessing to escape from the perpetual adulation of music-sick matrons and schoolgirls—but every wounded fibre in him was yearning for consolation after his American failure.

Not that his fellow-passengers were aware of his failure; he had not put himself to the vulgar tests. His American expedition had followed the lines recommended to him by friendly connoisseurs—to come before the great public, if at all, only after being launched by great hostesses at small parties; to which end he had provided himself with unimpeachable introductions to unexceptionable ladies from irresistible personalities—a German Grand Duke, a Bulgarian Ambassador, Countesses, both French and Italian, and even a Belgian princess. But to his boundless amazement—for he had always heard that Americans were wax before titles—not one of the social leaders had been of the faintest assistance to him, not even the owner of the Chicago Palace, to whom he had been recommended by the Belgian princess. He had penetrated through one or two esoteric doors, only to find himself outside them again. Not once had he been asked to play. It was some weeks before it even dawned upon the minor prophet of European music-rooms that he was being shut out, still longer before it permeated to his brain that he had been shut out as a Jew!

Those barbarous Americans, so far behind Europe after all! Had they not even discovered that art levels all ranks and races? Poor bourgeois money-mongers with their mushroom civilization. It was not even as if he were really a Jew. Did they imagine he wore phylacteries or earlocks, or what? His few childish years in the Russian Pale—what were they to the long years of European art and European culture? And even if in Rome or Paris he had foregathered with Jews like Schneemann or Leopold Barstein, it was to the artist in them he had gravitated, not the Jew. Did these Yankee ignoramuses suppose he did not share their aversion from the gaberdine or the three brass balls? Oh the narrow-souled anti-Semites!

The deck-steward stacked the chairs, piled up the forgotten rugs and novels, tidying the deck for the night, but still the embittered musician tramped to and fro under the silent stars. Only from the smoking-room where the amateur auctioneer was still hilariously selling the numbers for a sweepstake, came sounds in discord with the solemnity of sky and sea, and the artist was newly jarred at this vulgar gaiety flung in the face of the spacious and starry mystery of the night. And these jocose, heavy-jowled, smoke-soused gamblers were the Americans whose drawing-rooms he would contaminate! He recalled the only party to which he had been asked—'To meet the Bright Lights'—and which to his amazement turned out to be a quasi-public entertainment with the guests seated in rows in a hall, and himself—with the other Bright Lights—planted on a platform and made to perform without a fee. The mean vulgarians! But perhaps it was better they had left him untainted with their dollars—better, comparatively poor though he was, that America should have meant pure loss to him. He had at least kept the spiritual satisfaction of despising the despiser, the dignity of righteous resentment, the artist's pride in the profitless. And this riot of ugliness and diamonds and third-rate celebrities was the fashionable society to which, forsooth, the Jew could not be permitted access!

The aroma of an expensive cigar wafted towards him, and the face between whose prominent teeth it was stuck loomed vividly in the glare of an electric light. Rozenoffski recognised those teeth. He had seen countless pictures and caricatures of them, for did they not almost hold the globe in their grip? This, then was the notorious multi-millionaire, 'the Napoleon in dollars,' as a wit had summed him up; and the first sight of Andrew P. Wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. Who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity—he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large things, to that environment in which he, poor degenerate artist, was but a little singing-bird. The long-forgotten word Rishus came suddenly into his mind—was not the man's anti-Semitism as obtruded as his teeth?—Rishus, that wicked malice, which to a persecuted people had become almost a synonym for Christianity. He had left the thought behind him, as he had left the Hebrew word, while he went sailing up into the rosy ether of success, and Rishus had sunk into the mere panic-word of the Ghetto's stunted brood, shrinking and quivering before phantasms, sinuously gliding through a misunderstood world, if it was not, indeed, rather a word conveniently cloaking from themselves a multitude of their own sins. But now, as incarnated in this millionaire mammoth, the shadowy word took on a sudden solidity, to which his teeth gave the necessary tearing and rending significance.

Yes, in very sooth—he remembered it suddenly—was it not this man's wife on whom he had built his main hopes? Was she not the leader of musical America, to whom the Belgian princess had given him the scented and crested note of introduction which was to open to him all doors and all ears? Was it not in her marvellous marble music-room—one of the boasts of Chicago—that he had mentally seen himself enthroned as the lord of the feast? And instead of these Olympian visions, lo! a typewritten note to clench his fist over—a note from a secretary regretting that the state of Mrs. Wilhammer's health forbade the pleasure of receiving a maestro with such credentials. Rishus—Rishus indubitable!

II

Turning with morbid interest to look after the retreating millionaire, he found him in converse with a feminine figure at the open door of a deck-cabin. Could this be the great She, the arbitress of art? He moved nearer. Why, this was but a girl—nay, unless his instinct was at fault, a Jewish girl—a glorious young Jewess, of that radiant red-haired type which the Russian Pale occasionally flowered with. What was she doing with this Christian Colossus? He tried vainly to see her left hand; the mere possibility that she might be Mrs. Wilhammer shocked his Semitic instinct. Wilhammer disappeared within—the relation was obviously intimate—but the girl still stood at the door, a brooding magical figure.

Almost a sense of brotherhood moved him to speak to her, but he conquered the abnormal and incorrect impulse, contenting himself to walk past her with a side-glance, while at the end of the deck-promenade, instead of returning on his footsteps, he even arched his path round to the windy side. After some minutes of buffeting he returned chilled to his prior pacing ground. She was still there, but had moved under the same electric light which had illuminated Wilhammer's face, and she was reading a letter. As his walk carried him past her, he was startled to see tears rolling down those radiant cheeks. A slight exclamation came involuntarily from him; the girl, even more startled to be caught thus, relaxed her grip of the letter—a puff of wind hastened to whirl it aloft. Rozenoffski grasped at it desperately, but it eluded him, and then descending sailed sternwards. He gave chase, stumbling over belated chairs and deck-quoits, but at last it was safe in his clutch, and as he handed it to the agitated owner whom he found at his elbow, he noted with a thrill that the characters were cursive Hebrew.

'How can I zank you, sir!' Her Teutonic-touched American gave him the courage to reply gallantly in German:

'By letting me help you more seriously.'

'Ach, mein Herr'—she jumped responsively into German—'it was for joy I was crying, not sorrow.' As her American was Germanic, so was her German like the Yiddish of his remote youth, and this, adding to the sweetness of her voice, dissolved the musician's heart within his breast. He noted now with satisfaction that her fingers were bare of rings.

'Then I am rejoiced too,' he ventured to reply.

She smiled pathetically, and began to walk back towards her cabin. 'With us Jews,' she said, 'tears and laughter are very close.'

'Us Jews!' He winced a little. It was so long since he had been thus classed to his face by a stranger. But perhaps he had misinterpreted her phrase; it was her way of referring to her race, not necessarily to his.

'It is a beautiful night,' he murmured uneasily. But he only opened wider the flood-gates of race-feeling.

'Yes,' she replied simply, 'and such a heaven of stars is beginning to arise over the night of Israel. Is it not wonderful—the transformation of our people? When I left Russia as a girl—so young,' she interpolated with a sad smile, 'that I had not even been married—I left a priest-ridden, paralysed people, a cringing, cowering, contorted people—I shall never forget the panic in our synagogue when a troop of Cossacks rode in with a bogus blood-accusation. Now it is a people alive with ideas and volitions; the young generation dreams noble dreams, and, what is stranger, dies to execute them. Our Bund is the soul of the Russian revolution; our self-defence bands are bringing back the days of Judas Maccabaeus. In the olden times of massacre our people fled to the synagogues to pray; now they march to the fight like men.'

They had arrived at her door, and she ended suddenly. The musician, fascinated, feared she was about to fade away within.

'But Jews can't fight!' he cried, half-incredulous, half to arrest her.

'Not fight!' She held up the Hebrew letter. 'They have scouts, ambulance corps, orderlies, surgeons, everything—my cousin David Ben Amram, who is little more than a boy, was told off to defend a large three-story house inhabited by the families of factory-labourers who were at work when the pogrom broke out. The poor frenzied women and children had barricaded themselves within at the first rumour, and hidden themselves in cellars and attics. My cousin had to climb to their defence over the neighbouring tiles and through a window in the roof. Soon the house was besieged by police, troops, and hooligans in devilish league. With his one Browning revolver David held them all at bay, firing from every window of the house in turn, so as to give the besiegers an impression of a large defensive force. At last his cartridges were exhausted—to procure cartridges is the greatest difficulty of our self-defence corps—they began battering in the big front-door. David, seeing further resistance was useless, calmly drew back the bolts, to the mob's amaze, and, as it poured in, he cried: 'Back! back! They have bombs!' and rushed into the street, as if to escape the explosion. The others followed wildly, and in the panic David ran down a dark alley, and disappeared in search of a new post of defence. Though the door stood open, and the cowering inhabitants were at their mercy, the assailants, afraid to enter, remained for over an hour at a safe distance firing at the house, till it was riddled with bullets. They counted nearly two hundred the next day, embedded in the walls or strewn about the rooms. And not a thing had been stolen—not a hooligan had dared enter. But David is only a type of the young generation—there are hundreds of Davids equally ready to take the field against Goliath. And shall I not rejoice, shall I not exult even unto tears?' Her eyes glowed, and the musician was kindled to equal fire. It seemed to him less a girl who was speaking than Truth and Purity and some dead muse of his own. 'The Pale that I left,' she went on, 'was truly a prison. But now—now it will be the forging-place of a regenerated people! Oh, I am counting the days till I can be back!'

'You are going back to Russia!' he gasped.

He had the sensation of cold steel passing through his heart. The pogroms, which had been as remote to him as the squabbles of savages in Central Africa, became suddenly vivid and near. And even vivider and nearer that greater danger—the heroic Cousin David!

'How can I live away from Russia at such a moment?' she answered quietly. 'Who or what needs me in America?'

'But to be massacred!' he cried incoherently.

She smiled radiantly. 'To live and die with my own people.'

The fire in his veins seemed upleaping in a sublime jet; he was like to crying, 'Thy people shall be my people,' but all he found himself saying was, 'You must not, you must not; what can a girl like you do?'

A bell rang sharply from the cabin.

'I must go to my mistress. Gute Nacht, mein Herr!'

His flame sank to sudden ashes. Only Mrs. Wilhammer's hireling!

III

The wind freshened towards the middle of the night, and Rozenoffski, rocking in his berth, cursed his encounter with the red-haired romanticist who had stirred up such a pother in his brain that he had not been able to fall asleep while the water was still calm. Not that he suffered physically from the sea; he was merely afraid of it. The shuddering and groaning of the ship found an echo in his soul. He could not shake off the conviction that he was doomed to drown. At intervals, during the tedious night, he found forgetfulness in translating into sound his sense of the mystic, masterless waste in which the continents swim like islands, but music was soon swallowed up in terror.

'No,' he sighed, with a touch of self-mockery. 'When I am safe on shore again, I shall weave my symphony of the sea.'

Sleep came at last, but only to perturb him with a Jewish Joan of Arc who—turned Admiral—recaptured Zion from her battleship, to the sound of Psalms droned by his dead grandfather. And, though he did not see her the next day, and was, indeed, rather glad not to meet a lady's maid in the unromantic daylight, the restlessness she had engendered remained, replacing the settled bitterness which was all he had brought back from America. In the afternoon this restlessness drove him to the piano in the deserted dining-hall, and his fever sought to work itself off in a fury of practice. But the inner turbulence persisted, and the new thoughts clung round the old music. He was playing Schumann's Fantasiestuecke, but through the stormy passion of In der Nacht he saw the red hair of the heroic Jewess, and into the wistful, questioning Warum insinuated itself not the world-question, but the Jewish question—the sad, unending Jewish question—surging up again and again in every part of the globe, as Schumann's theme in every part of the piano—the same haunting musical figure, never the same notes exactly, yet essentially always the same, the wistful, questioning Warum. Why all this ceaseless sorrow, this footsore wandering, this rootless life, this eternal curse?

Suddenly he became aware that he was no longer alone—forms were seated at the tables on the fixed dining-chairs, though there was no meal but his music; and as he played on, with swift side-peeps, other fellow-passengers entered into his consciousness, some standing about, others hovering on the stairs, and still others stealing in on reverent tip-toe and taking favourable seats. His breast filled with bitter satisfaction.

So they had to come, the arrogant Americans; they had to swarm like rats to the pied piper. He could draw them at will, the haughty heathen—draw them by the magic of his finger-touch on pieces of ivory. Lo, they were coming, more and more of them! Through the corner of his eye he espied the figures drifting in from the corridors, peering in spellbound at the doors.

With a great crash on the keys, he shook off his morbid mood, and plunged into Scarlatti's Sonata in A, his fingers frolicking all over the board, bent on a dominating exhibition of technique. As he stopped, there was a storm of hand-clapping. Rozenoffski gave a masterly start of surprise, and turned his leonine head in dazed bewilderment. Was he not then alone? 'Gott im Himmel!' he murmured, and, furiously banging down the piano-lid, stalked from these presumptuous mortals who had jarred the artist's soliloquy.

But the next afternoon found him again at the public piano, devoting all the magic of his genius to charming a contemptible Christendom. He gave them Beethoven and Bach, Paradies and Tschaikowski, unrolled to them the vast treasures of his art and memory. And very soon, lo! the Christian rats were pattering back again, only more wisely and cautiously. They came crawling from every part of the ship's compass. Newcomers were warned whisperingly to keep from applause. In vain. An enraptured greenhorn shouted 'Encore!' The musician awoke from his trance, stared dreamily at the Philistines; then, as the presence of listeners registered itself upon his expressive countenance, he rose again—but this time as more in sorrow than in anger—and stalked sublimely up the swarming stairs.

It became a tradition to post guards at the doors to warn all comers as to the habits of the great unknown, who could only beat his music out if he imagined himself unheard. Scouts watched his afternoon advance upon the piano in an empty hall, and the word was passed to the little army of music-lovers. Silently the rats gathered, scurrying in on noiseless paws, stealing into the chairs, swarming about the doorways, pricking up their ears in the corridors. And through the awful hush rose the master's silvery notes in rapturous self-oblivion till the day began to wane, and the stewards to appear with the tea-cups.

And the larger his audience grew, the fiercer grew his resentment against this complacent Christendom which took so much from the Jew and gave so little. 'Shylocks!' he would mutter between his clenched teeth as he played—'Shylocks all!'

IV

With no less punctuality did Rozenoffski pace the silent deck each night in the hope of again meeting the red-haired Jewess. He had soon recovered from her menial office; indeed, the paradox of her position in so anti-Semitic a household quickened his interest in her. He wondered if she ever listened to his playing, or had realized that she had entertained an angel unawares.

But three nights passed without glimpse of her. Nor was her mistress more visible. The Wilhammers kept royally to themselves in their palatial suite, though the husband sometimes deigned to parade his fangs in the smoking-room, where with the luck of the rich he won heavily in the pools. It was not till the penultimate night of the voyage that Rozenoffski caught his second glimpse of his red-haired muse. He had started his nocturnal pacing much earlier than usual, for the inevitable concert on behalf of marine charities had sucked the loungers from their steamer-chairs. He had himself, of course, been approached by the programme-organizer, a bouncing actress from 'Frisco, with an irresistible air, but he had defeated her hopelessly with the mysterious sarcasm: 'To meet the Bright Lights?' And his reward was to have the deck and the heavens almost to himself, and presently to find the stars outgleamed by a girl's hair. Yes, there she was, gazing pensively forth from the cabin window. He guessed the mistress was out for once—presumably at the concert. His heart beat faster as he came to a standstill, yet the reminder that she was a lady's maid brought an involuntary note of condescension into his voice.

'I hope Mrs. Wilhammer hasn't been keeping you too imprisoned?' he said.

She smiled faintly. 'Not so close as Neptune has kept her.'

'Ill?' he said, with a shade of malicious satisfaction.

'It is curious and even consoling to see the limitations of Croesus,' she replied. 'But she is lucky—she just recovered in time.'

'In time for what?'

'Can't you hear?'

Indeed, the shrill notes of an amateur soprano had been rending the air throughout, but they had scarcely penetrated through his exaltation. He now shuddered.

'Do you mean it is she singing?'

The girl laughed outright. 'She sing! No, no, she is a sensitive receiver. She receives; she gives out nothing. She exploits her soul as her husband exploits the globe. There isn't a sensation or an emotion she denies herself—unless it is painful. It was to escape the concert that she has left her couch—and sought refuge in a friend's cabin. You see, here sound travels straight from the dining-hall, and a false note, she says, gives her nerve-ache.'

'Then she can't return till the close of the concert,' he said eagerly. 'Won't you come outside and walk a bit under this beautiful moon?'

She came out without a word, with the simplicity of a comrade.

'Yes, it is a beautiful night,' she said, 'and very soon I shall be in Russia.'

'But is Mrs. Wilhammer going to Russia, then?' he asked, with a sudden thought, wondering that it had never occurred to him before.

'Of course not! I only joined her for this voyage. I have to work my passage, you see, and Providence, on the eve of sailing, robbed Mrs. Wilhammer of her maid.'

'Oh!' he murmured in relief. His red-haired muse was going back to her social pedestal. 'But you must have found it humiliating,' he said.

'Humiliating?' She laughed cheerfully. 'Why more than manicuring her?'

The muse shivered again on the pedestal.

'Manicuring?' he echoed in dismay.

'Sure!' she laughed in American. 'When, after a course of starvation and medicine at Berne University, I found I had to get a new degree for America....'

'You are a doctor?' he interrupted.

'And, therefore, peculiarly serviceable as a ship-maid.'

She smiled again, and her smile in the moonlight reminded him of a rippling passage of Chopin. Prosaic enough, however, was what she went on to tell him of her struggle for life by day and for learning by night. 'Of course, I could only attend the night medical school. I lived by lining cloaks with fur; my bed was the corner of a room inhabited by a whole family. A would-be graduate could not be seen with bundles; for fetching and carrying the work my good landlady extorted twenty cents to the dollar. When the fur season was slack I cooked in a restaurant, worked a typewriter, became a "hello girl"—at a telephone, you know—reported murder cases—anything, everything.'

'Manicuring,' he recalled tenderly.

'Manicuring,' she repeated smilingly. 'And you ask me if it is humiliating to wait upon an artistic sea-sick lady!'

'Artistic!' he sneered. His heart was full of pity and indignation.

'As surely as sea-sick!' she rejoined laughingly. 'Why are you prejudiced against her?'

He flushed. 'Prej-prejudiced?' he stammered. 'Why should I be prejudiced? From all I hear it's she that's prejudiced. It's a wonder she took a Jewess into her service.'

'Where's the wonder? Don't the Southerners have negro servants?' she asked quietly.

His flush deepened. 'You compare Jews to negroes!'

'I apologize to the negroes. The blacks have at least Liberia. There is a black President, a black Parliament. We have nothing, nothing!'

'We!' Again that ambiguous plural. But he still instinctively evaded co-classification.

'Nothing?' he retorted. 'I should have said everything. Every gift of genius that Nature can shower from her cornucopia.'

'Jewish geniuses!' Her voice had a stinging inflection. 'Don't talk to me of our geniuses; it is they that have betrayed us. Every other people has its great men; but our great men—they belong to every other people. The world absorbs our sap, and damns us for our putrid remains. Our best must pipe alien tunes and dance to the measures of the heathen. They build and paint; they write and legislate. But never a song of Israel do they fashion, nor a picture of Israel, nor a law of Israel, nor a temple of Israel. Bah! What are they but hirelings?'

Again the passion of her patriotism uplifted and enkindled him. Yes, it was true. He, too, was but a hireling. But he would become a Master; he would go back—back to the Ghetto, and this noble Jewess should be his mate. Thank God he had kept himself free for her. But ere he could pour out his soul, the bouncing San Franciscan actress appeared suddenly at his elbow, risking a last desperate assault, discharging a pathetic tale of a comedian with a cold. Rozenoffski repelled the attack savagely, but before he could exhaust the enemy's volubility his red-haired companion had given him a friendly nod and smile, and retreated into her shrine of duty.

V

He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea. He was afraid of nothing—not even of the pogroms that awaited them in Russia. Russia itself became dear to him again—the beautiful land of his boyhood, whose birds and whispering leaves and waters had made his earliest music.

But dearer than all resurged his Jewish memories. When he went almost mechanically to the piano on the last afternoon, all these slumbering forces wakened in him found vent in a rhapsody of synagogue melody to which he abandoned himself, for once forgetting his audience. When gradually he became aware of the incongruity, it did but intensify his inspiration. Let the heathen rats wallow in Hebrew music! But soon all self-consciousness passed away again, drowned in his deeper self.

It was a strange fantasia that poured itself through his obedient fingers; it held the wistful chants of ancient ritual, the festival roulades and plaintive yearnings of melodious cantors, the sing-song augmentation of Talmud-students oscillating in airless study-houses, the long, melancholy drone of Psalm-singers in darkening Sabbath twilights, the rustle of palm-branches and sobbings of penitence, the long-drawn notes of the ram's horn pealing through the Terrible Days, the passionate proclamation of the Unity, storming the gates of heaven. And fused with these merely physical memories, there flowed into the music the peace of Sabbath evenings and shining candles, the love and wonder of childhood's faith, the fantasy of Rabbinic legend, the weirdness of penitential prayers in raw winter dawns, the holy joy of the promised Zion, when God would wipe away the tears from all faces.

There were tears to be wiped from his own face when he ended, and he wiped them brazenly, unresentful of the frenzied approval of the audience, which now let itself go, out of stored-up gratitude, and because this must be the last performance. All his vanity, his artistic posing, was swallowed up in utter sincerity. He did not shut the piano; he sat brooding a moment or two in tender reverie. Suddenly he perceived his red-haired muse at his side. Ah, she had discovered him at last, knew him simultaneously for the genius and the patriot, was come to pour out her soul at his feet. But why was she mute? Why was she tendering this scented letter? Was it because she could not trust herself to speak before the crowd? He tore open the delicate envelope. Himmel! what was this? Would the maestro honour Mrs. Wilhammer by taking tea in her cabin?

He stared dazedly at the girl, who remained respectful and silent.

'Did you not hear what I was playing?' he murmured.

'Oh yes—a synagogue medley,' she replied quietly. 'They publish it on the East Side, nicht wahr?'

'East Side?' He was outraged. 'I know nothing of East Side.' Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not say, jarred upon his quivering nerves, chilled his high emotion. 'Will you say I shall have much pleasure?' he added coldly.

The red-haired maid nodded and was gone. Rozenoffski went mechanically to his cabin, scarcely seeing the worshippers he plodded through; presently he became aware that he was changing his linen, brushing his best frock-coat, thrilling with pleasurable excitement.

Anon he was tapping at the well-known door. A voice—of another sweetness—cried 'Come!' and instantly he had the sensation that his touch on the handle had launched upon him, as by some elaborate electric contrivance, a tall and beautiful American, a rustling tea-gown, a shimmer of rings, a reek of patchouli, and a flood of compliment.

'So delightful of you to come—I know you men of genius are farouches—it was awfully insolent of me, I know, but you have forgiven me, haven't you?'

'The pleasure is mine, gracious lady,' he murmured in German.

'Ach, so you are a German,' she replied in the same tongue. 'I thought no American or Englishman could have so much divine fire. You see, mein Herr, I do not even know your name—only your genius. Every afternoon I have lain here, lapped in your music, but I might never have had the courage to thank you had you not played that marvellous thing just now—such delicious heartbreak, such adorable gaiety, and now and then the thunder of the gods! I'm afraid you'll think me very ignorant—it wasn't Grieg, was it?'

He looked uncomfortable. 'Nothing so good, I fear—a mere impromptu of my own.'

'Your own!' She clapped her jewelled hands in girlish delight. 'Oh, where can I get it?'

'East Side,' some mocking demon tried to reply; but he crushed her down, and replied uneasily: 'You can't get it. It just came to me this afternoon. It came—and it has gone.'

'What a pity!' But she was visibly impressed by this fecundity and riotous extravagance of genius. 'I do hope you will try to remember it.'

'Impossible—it was just a mood.'

'And to think of all the other moods I seem to have missed! Why have I not heard you in America?'

He grew red. 'I—I haven't been playing there,' he murmured. 'You see, I'm not much known outside a few European circles.' Then, summoning up all his courage, he threw down his name 'Rozenoffski' like a bomb, and the red of his cheeks changed to the pallor of apprehension. But no explosion followed, save of enthusiasm. Evidently, the episode so lurid to his own memory, had left no impress on hers.

'Oh, but America must know you, Herr Rozenoffski. You must promise me to come back in the fall, give me the glory of launching you.' And, seeing the cloud on his face, she cried: 'You must, you must, you must!' clapping her hands at each 'must.'

He hesitated, distracted between rapture and anxiety lest she should remember.

'You have never heard of me, of course,' she persisted humbly; 'but positively everybody has played at my house in Chicago.'

'Ach so!' he muttered. Had he perhaps misinterpreted and magnified the attitude of these Americans? Was it possible that Mrs. Wilhammer had really been too ill to see him? She looked frail and feverish behind all her brilliant beauty. Or had she not even seen his letter? had her secretary presumed to guard her from Semitic invaders? Or was she deliberately choosing to forget and forgive his Jewishness? In any case, best let sleeping dogs lie. He was being sought; it would be the silliest of social blunders to recall that he had already been rejected.

'It is years since Chicago had a real musical sensation,' pleaded the temptress.

'I'm afraid my engagements will not permit me to return this autumn,' he replied tactfully.

'Do you take sugar?' she retorted unexpectedly; then, as she handed him his cup, she smiled archly into his eyes. 'You can't shake me off, you know; I shall follow you about Europe—to all your concerts.'

When he left her—after inscribing his autograph, his permanent Munich address, and the earliest possible date for his Chicago concert, in a dainty diary brought in by her red-haired maid—his whole being was swelling, expanding. He had burst the coils of this narrow tribalism that had suddenly retwined itself round him; he had got back again from the fusty conventicles and the sunless Ghettos—back to spacious salons and radiant hostesses and the great free life of art. He drew deep breaths of sea-air as he paced the deck, strewn so thickly with pleasant passengers to whom he felt drawn in a renewed sense of the human brotherhood. Rishus, forsooth!



SAMOOBORONA



SAMOOBORONA

I

Milovka was to be the next place reddened on the map of Holy Russia. The news of the projected Jewish massacre in this little Polish town travelled to the Samooborona (Self-Defence) Headquarters in Southern Russia through the indiscretion of a village pope who had had a drop of blood too much. It appeared that Milovka, though remote from the great centres of disturbance, had begun to seethe with political activity, and even to publish a newspaper, so that it was necessary to show by a first-class massacre that true Russian men were still loyal to God and the Czar. Milovka lay off the pogrom route, and had not of itself caught the contagion; careful injection of the virus was necessary. Moreover, the town was two-thirds Jewish, and consequently harder to fever with the lust of Jewish blood. But in revenge the pogrom would be easier; the Jewish quarter formed a practically separate town; no asking of dvorniks (janitors) to point out the Jewish apartments, no arming one's self with photographs of the victims; one had but to run amuck among these low wooden houses, the humblest of which doubtless oozed with inexhaustible subterranean wealth.

David Ben Amram was hurriedly despatched to Milovka to organize a local self-defence corps. He carried as many pistols as could be stowed away in a violin-case, which, with a music-roll holding cartridges, was an obtrusive feature of his luggage. The winter was just beginning, but mildly. The sun shone over the broad plains, and as David's train carried him towards Milovka, his heart swelled with thoughts of the Maccabean deeds to be wrought there by a regenerated Young Israel. But the journey was long. Towards the end he got into conversation with an old Russian peasant who, so far from sharing in the general political effervescence, made a long lament over the good old days of serfdom. 'Then, one had not to think—one ate and drank. Now, it is all toil and trouble.'

'But you were whipped at your lord's pleasure,' David reminded him.

'He was a nobleman,' retorted the peasant with dignity.

David fell silent. The Jew, too, had grown to kiss the rod. But it was not even a nobleman's rod; any moujik, any hooligan, could wield it. But, thank Heaven, this breed of Jew was passing away—killed by the pogroms. It was their one virtue.

At the station he hired a ramshackle droshky, and told his Jewish driver to take him to the best inn. Seated astride the old-fashioned bench of the vehicle, and grasping his violin-case like a loving musician, as they jolted over the rough roads, he broached the subject of the Jewish massacres.

'Be!' commented the driver, shrugging his shoulders. 'We are in Goluth (exile)!' He spoke with resignation, but not with apprehension, and David perceived at once that Milovka would not be easy to arouse. As every man thought every other man mortal, so Milovka regarded the massacres as a terrible reality—for other towns. It was no longer even shocked; Kishineff had been a horror almost beyond belief, but Jew-massacres had since become part of the natural order, which babes were born into.

II

The landlord shook his head.

'All our rooms are full.'

David, still hugging his violin-case, looked at the dirty, mustard-smeared tablecloth on the long table, and at the host's brats playing on the floor. If this was the best, what in Heaven's name awaited him elsewhere?

'For how long?' he asked.

The landlord shrugged his shoulders like the driver. 'Am I the All-knowing?'

He wore a black velvet cap, but not with the apex that would have professed piety. Its square cut indicated to the younger generation that he was a man of the world, in touch with the times; to the old its material and hue afforded sufficient guarantee of ritual orthodoxy. He was a true host, the friend of all who eat and drink.

'But how many rooms have you?' inquired David.

'And how many shall I have but one?' protested the landlord.

'Only one room!' David turned upon the driver. 'And you said this was the best inn! I suppose it's your brother-in-law's.'

'And what do I make out of it, if it is?' answered the driver. 'You see he can't take you.'

'Then why did you bring me?'

'Because there is no room anywhere else either.'

'What!' David stared.

'Law of Moses!' corroborated the landlord good-humouredly, 'you've just come at the recruiting. The young men have flocked here from all the neighbouring villages to draw their numbers. There are heathen peasants in all the Jewish inns—eating kosher,' he added with a chuckle.

David frowned. But he reflected instantly that if this was so, the pogrom would probably be postponed till the Christian conscripts had been packed off to their regiments or the lucky ones back to their villages. He would have time, therefore, to organize his Jewish corps. Yes, he reflected in grim amusement, Russia and he would be recruiting simultaneously. Still, where was he to sleep?

'You can have the lezhanka,' said the host, following his thoughts.

David looked ruefully at the high stove. Well, there were worse beds in winter than the top of a stove. And perhaps to bestow himself and his violin in such very public quarters would be the safest way of diverting police attention. 'Conspirators, please copy,' he thought, with a smile. Anyhow, he was very tired. He could refresh himself here; the day was yet young; time enough to find a better lodging.

'Bring in the luggage,' he said resignedly.

'Tea?' said the host, hovering over the samovar.

'Haven't you a drop of vodka?'

The landlord held up hands of horror. 'Monopolka?' (monopoly), he cried.

'Haven't they left any Jewish licenses?' asked David.

'Not unless one mixed holy water with the vodka, like the baptized Benjamin,' said the landlord with grim humour. He added hastily: 'But his inn is even fuller than mine, four beds in the room.'

It appeared that the dinner was already over, and David could obtain nothing but half-warmed remains. However, hunger and hope gave sauce to the miserable meal, and he profited by the absence of custom to pump the landlord anent the leading citizens.

'But you will not get violin lessons from any of them,' his host warned him. 'Tinowitz the corn-factor has daughters who are said to read Christian story-books, but is it likely he will risk their falling in love with a young man whose hair and clothes are cut like a Christian's? Not that I share his prejudices, of course. I have seen the great world, and understand that it is possible to carry a handkerchief on the Sabbath and still be a good man.'

'I haven't come to give lessons in music,' said David bluntly, 'but in shooting.'

'Shooting?' The landlord stared. 'Aren't you a Jew, then, sir? I beg your pardon.' His voice had suddenly taken on the same ring as when he addressed the Poritz (Polish nobleman). His oleaginous familiarity was gone.

'Salachti!' (I have forgiven), said David in Hebrew, and laughed at the man's bemused visage. 'Don't you think, considering what has been happening, it is high time the Jews of Milovka learned to shoot?'

The landlord looked involuntarily round the room for a possible spy. 'Guard your tongue!' he murmured, terror-stricken.

David laughed on. 'You, my friend, shall be my first pupil.'

'God forbid! And I must beg you to find other lodgings.'

David smiled grimly at this first response to his mission. 'I dare say I shall find another stove,' he said cheerfully—at which the landlord, who had never in his life taken such a decisive step, began to think he had gone too far. 'You will take the advice of a man who knows the world,' he said in a tone of compromise, 'and throw all those crazy notions into the river where you cast your sins at New Year. A young, fine-looking man like you! Why, I can find you a Shidduch (marriage) that will keep you in clover the rest of your life.'

'Ha! ha! ha! How do you know I'm not married?'

'Married men don't go shooting so lightheartedly. Come, let me take you in hand; my commission is a very small percentage of the dowry.'

'Ah, so you're a regular Shadchan' (marriage-broker).

'And how else should I live? Do you think I get fat on this inn? But people stay here from all towns around; I get to know a great circle of marriageable parties. I can show you a much larger stock than the ordinary Shadchan.'

'But I am so link' (irreligious).

'Nu! Let your ear-locks grow—the dowry grows with them.' Mine host had quite recovered his greasy familiarity.

'I can't wait for my locks to grow,' said David, with a sudden thought. 'But if you care to introduce me to Tinowitz, you will not fail to profit by it, if the thing turns out well.'

The landlord rubbed his hands. 'Now you speak like a sage.'

III

Tinowitz read the landlord's Hebrew note, and surveyed the suitor disapprovingly. And disapproval did not improve his face—a face in whose grotesque features David read a possible explanation of his surplus stock of daughters.

'I cannot say I am very taken with you,' the corn-factor said. 'Nor is it possible to give you my youngest daughter. I have other plans. Even the eldest——'

David waved his hand. 'I told my landlord as much. Am I a Talmud-sage that I should thus aspire? Forgive and forget my Chutzpah (impudence)!'

'But the eldest—perhaps—with a smaller dowry——'

'To tell the truth, Panie Tinowitz, it was the landlord who turned my head with false hopes. I came here not to promote marriages, but to prevent funerals!'

The corn-factor gasped, 'Funerals!'

'A pogrom is threatened——'

'Open not your mouth to Satan!' reprimanded Tinowitz, growing livid.

'If you prefer silence and slaughter——' said David, with a shrug.

'It is impossible—here!'

'And why not here, as well as in the six hundred and thirty-eight other towns?'

'In those towns there must have been bad blood; here Jew and Russian live together like brothers.'

'Cain and Abel were brothers. There were many peaceful years while Cain tilled the ground and Abel pastured his sheep.'

The Biblical reference was more convincing to Tinowitz than a wilderness of arguments.

'Then, what do you propose?' came from his white lips.

'To form a branch of the Samooborona. You must first summon a meeting of householders.'

'What for?'

'For a general committee—and for the expenses.'

'But how can we hold a meeting? The police——'

'There's the synagogue.'

'Profane the synagogue!'

'Did not the Jews always fly to the synagogue when there was danger?'

'Yes, but to pray.'

'We will pray by pistol.'

'Guard your tongue!'

'Guard your daughters.'

'The Uppermost will guard them.'

'The Uppermost guards them through me, as He feeds them through you. For the last time I ask you, will you or will you not summon me a meeting of householders?'

'You rush like a wild horse. I thank Heaven you will not be my son-in-law.'

Tinowitz ended by demanding time to think it over. David was to call the next day.

When, after a sleepless night on the stove, he betook himself to the corn-factor's house, he found it barred and shuttered. The neighbours reported that Tinowitz had gone off on sudden business, taking his wife and daughters with him for a little jaunt.

IV

The flight of Tinowitz brought two compensations, however. David was promoted from the stove to the bedroom. For the lodger he replaced had likewise departed hurriedly, and when it transpired that the landlord had betrothed this young man to the second of the Tinowitz girls, David divined that the corn-factor had made sure of a son-in-law. His other compensation was to find in the remaining bed a strapping young Jew named Ezekiel Leven, who had come up from an outlying village for the military lottery, and who proved to be a carl after his own heart. Half the night the young heroes planned the deeds of derringdo they might do for their people. Ezekiel Leven was indeed an ideal lieutenant, for he belonged to one of the rare farming colonies, and was already handy with his gun. He had even some kinsfolk in Milovka, and by their aid the Rabbi and a few householders were hurriedly prevailed upon to assemble in the bedroom on a business declared important. Ezekiel himself must, unfortunately, be away at the drawing, but he promised to hasten back to the meeting.

Each member strolled in casually, ordered a glass of tea, and drifted upstairs. The landlord, uneasily sniffing peril and profit, and dismally apprehending pistol lessons, left the inn to his wife, and stole up likewise to the fateful bedroom. Here, after protesting fearfully that they would ruin him by this conspirative meeting, he added that he was not out of sympathy with the times, and volunteered to stand sentinel. Accordingly, he was posted at the ragged window-curtain, where, with excess of caution, he signalled whenever he saw a Christian, in uniform or no. At every signal David's oratory ceased as suddenly as if it had been turned off at the main, and the gaberdined figures, distributed over the two beds and the one chair, gripped one another nervously. But David was used to oratory under difficulties. He lived on the same terms with the police as the most desperate criminals, and a foreigner who should have witnessed the secret meetings at which tactics were discussed, arms distributed, scouts despatched, and night-watches posted, would have imagined him engaged in a rebellion instead of in an attempt to strengthen the forces of law and order.

He had come to Milovka, he explained, to warn them that the Black Hundreds were soon to be loosed upon the Jewish quarter. But no longer must the Jew go like a lamb to the shambles. Too long, when smitten, had he turned the other cheek, only to get it smitten too. They must defend themselves. He was there to form a branch of the Samooborona. Browning revolvers must be purchased. The wood-choppers must be organized as a column of axe-bearers. There would be needed also an ambulance corps, with bandages, dressings, etc.

The shudder at the first mention of the pogrom was not so violent as that which followed the mention of bandages. Each man felt warm blood trickling down his limbs. To what end, then, had he escaped the conscription? The landlord at the window wiped the cold beads off his brow, and was surprised to find his hand not scarlet.

'Brethren,' Koski the timber-merchant burst out, 'this is a Haman in disguise. To hold firearms is the surest way of provoking——'

'I don't say you shall hold firearms!' David interrupted. 'It is your young men who must defend the town. But the Kahal (congregation) must pay the expenses—say, ten thousand roubles to start with.'

'Ten thousand roubles for a few pistols!' cried Mendel the horse-dealer. 'It is a swindle.'

David flushed. 'We have to buy three pistols for every one we get safely into the town. But one revolver may save ten thousand roubles of property, not to mention your life.'

'It will end our lives, not save them!' persisted the timber-merchant. 'This is a plot to destroy us!'

A growl of assent burst from the others.

'My friends,' said David quietly. 'A plot to destroy you has already been hatched; the question is, are you going to be destroyed like rats or like men?'

'Pooh!' said the horse-dealer. 'This is not the first time we have been threatened, if not with death, at least with extra taxes; but we have always sent Shtadlonim (ambassadors). We will make a collection, and the president of the Kahal shall go at once to the Governor, and present it to him'—here Mendel winked—'to enable him to take measures against the pogrom.'

'The Governor is in the plot,' said David.

'He can be bought out,' said the timber-merchant.

'Pogroms are more profitable than presents,' rejoined David drily. 'Let us rather prepare bombs.' A fresh shudder traversed the beds and the chairs, and agitated the window-curtain.

'Bombs! Presents!' burst forth the old Rabbi. 'These are godless instruments. We are in the hands of the Holy One—blessed be He! The Shomer (Guardian) of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.'

'Neither does the Shochet (slaughterer) of Israel,' said David savagely.

'Hush! Epicurean!' came from every quarter at this grim jest; for the Shomer and the Shochet are the official twain of ritual butchery.

The landlord, seeing how the tide was turning, added, 'Brazen Marshallik (buffoon)!'

'I will appoint a day of fasting and prayer,' concluded the Rabbi solemnly.

A breath of reassurance wafted through the room. 'And I, Rabbi,' said Guetels the grocer, 'will supply the synagogue with candles to equal in length the graves of all your predecessors.'

'May thy strength increase, Guetels!' came the universal gratitude, and the landlord at the window-curtain drew a great sigh of relief.

'Still, gentlemen,' he said, 'if I may intrude my humble opinion—Reb Mendel's advice is also good. God is, of course, our only protection. But there can be no harm in getting, lehavdil (not to compare them), the Governor's protection too.'

'True, true.' And the faces grew still cheerier.

'In God's name, wake up!' David burst forth. 'In Samooborona lies your only salvation. Give the money to us, not to the Governor. We can meet and practise in your Talmud-Torah Hall!'

'The holy hall of study!' gasped the Rabbi. 'Given over to unlawful meetings!'

'The hooligans will meet there, if you don't,' said David grimly. 'Don't you see it is the safest place for us? The police associate it only with learned weaklings.'

'Hush, Haman!' said the timber-merchant, and rose to go. David's voice changed to passion; memories of things he had seen came over him as in a red mist: an old man scalped with a sharp ladle; a white-hot poker driven through a woman's eye; a baby's skull ground under a True Russian's heel. 'Bourgeois!' he thundered, 'I will save you despite yourselves.' The landlord signalled in a frenzy, but David continued recklessly, 'Will you never learn manli——'

They flung themselves upon him in a panic, and held him hand-gagged and struggling upon the bed.

Suddenly a new figure burst into the room. There was a blood-freezing instant in which all gave themselves up for lost. Their grip on David relaxed. Then the mist cleared, and they saw it was only Ezekiel Leven.

'Blessed art thou who comest!' cried David, jumping to his feet. 'You and I, Ezekiel, will save Milovka.'

'Alas!' Ezekiel groaned. 'I drew a low number—I go to fight for Russia.'

V

Fifteen thousand roubles were soon collected for the Governor, but even before they were presented to him the Rabbi, in mortal terror of that firebrand of a David, had rushed to inquire whether Self-Defence was legal, and might the Talmud-Torah Hall be legitimately used for drilling. Sharp came an order that Jews found with firearms or in conclave for non-religious purposes should be summarily shot. And so, when the Shtadlonim arrived with the fifteen thousand roubles, the Governor was able to point out severely that if a pogrom did occur they would have only themselves to blame. The Jews of Milovka had begun to carry pistols like revolutionaries; they planned illegal assemblies in halls; was it to be wondered at if the League of True Russians grew restive? However, he would do his best with these inadequate roubles to have extra precautions taken, but let them root out the evil weeds that had sprung up in their midst, else even his authority might be overborne by the righteous indignation of the loyal children of the Little Father. Tremblingly the Ambassadors crept back with their empty money-bags.

Poor David now found it impossible to get anybody to a meeting. His landlord had forbidden any more gatherings in the inn, and his original audience would have called as a deputation upon David to beg him to withdraw from the town, but that might have been considered a conspirative meeting. So one of the Ambassadors was sent to inform the landlord instead.

'Don't you think I've already ordered him off my premises?'

'But he is still here!'

'Alas! He threatens to shoot me—or anybody who massers (informs),' said the poor landlord.

The Ambassador shivered.

'As if I would betray a brother-in-Israel!' added the landlord reproachfully.

'No, no—of course not,' said the Ambassador. 'These fellows are best left alone; they wear fuses under their waistcoats instead of Tsitsith (ritual fringes). Let us hope, however, a sudden death may rid us of him.'

'Amen,' said the landlord fervently.

Not that David had any reason for clinging to so squalid a hostel. But his blood was up, and he took a malicious pleasure in inflicting his perilous presence upon his prudential host.

Reduced now to buttonholing individuals, he consoled himself with the thought that the population was best tackled by units. One fool or coward was enough to infect or betray a whole gathering.

Still intent on the sinews of war, he sallied out after breakfast, and approached Erbstein the Banker. Erbstein held up his hands. 'But I've just given a thousand roubles to guard us from a pogrom!'

'That was for the Governor. Give me only a hundred for Self-Defence.'

The Banker puffed tranquilly at his big cigar. 'But our rights are bound to come in the end. We can only get them gradually. Full rights now are nonsense—impossible. It is bad tactics to ask for what you cannot get. Only in common with Russia can our emancipation——'

'I am not talking of our rights, but of our lives.' David grew impatient.

Being a Banker, Erbstein never listened, though he invariably replied. His success in finance had made him an authority upon religion and politics.

'Trust the Octobrists,' he said cheerily.

'I'd rather trust our revolvers.'

The Banker's cigar fell from his mouth.

'An anarchist! like my nephew Simon!'

David began to realize the limitations of the financial intellect. He saw that to get ideas into Bankers' brains is even more difficult than to get cheques from their pockets. Still, there was that promising scapegrace Simon! He hurried out on his scent, and ran him to earth in a cosy house near the town gate. Simon practised law, it appeared, and his surname was Rubensky.

The young barrister, informed of his uncle's accusation of anarchism, laughed contemptuously. 'Bourgeois! Every idea that makes no money he calls anarchy. As a matter of fact, I'm the exact opposite of an anarchist: I'm a socialist. I belong to the P.P.S. We're not even revolutionary like the S.R.'s.'

'I'm afraid I'm a great ignoramus,' said David. 'I don't even know what all these letters stand for.'

Simon Rubensky looked pityingly as at a bourgeois.

'S.R.'s are the silly Social Revolutionists; I belong to the Polish Party of Socialism.'

'Ah!' said David, with an air of comprehension. 'And I belong to the Jewish Party of Self-Defence! I hope you'll join it too.'

The young lawyer shook his head. 'A separate Jewish party! No, no! That would be putting back the clock of history. The non-isolation of the Jew is an unconditional historic necessity. Our emancipation must be worked out in common with Russia's.'

'Oh, then you agree with your uncle!'

'With that bourgeois! Never! But we are Poles of the Mosaic Faith—Jewish Poles, not Polish Jews.'

'The hooligans are murdering both impartially.'

'And the Intellectuals equally,' rejoined Simon.

'But the Intellectuals will triumph over the Reactionaries,' said David passionately, 'and then both will trample on the Jews. Didn't the Hungarian Jews join Kossuth? And yet after Hungary's freedom was won——'

Simon's wife and sister here entered the room, and he introduced David smilingly as a Ghetto reactionary. The young women—sober-clad students from a Swiss University—opened wide shocked eyes.

'So young, too!' Simon's wife murmured wonderingly.

'Would you have me stand by and see our people murdered?'

'Certainly,' she said, 'rather than see the Zeitgeist set back. The unconditional historic necessity will carry us on of itself towards a better social state.'

'There you go with your Marx and your Hegel!' cried Simon's sister. 'I object to your historic materialism. With Fichte, I assert——'

'She is an S.R.,' Simon interrupted her to explain.

'Ah,' said David. 'Not a P.P.S. like you and your wife.'

'Simon, did you tell him I was a P.P.S.?' inquired his wife indignantly.

'No, no, of course not. A Ghetto reactionary does not understand modern politics. My wife is an S.D., I regret to say.'

'But I have heard of Social Democrats!' said David triumphantly.

Simon's sister sniffed. 'Of course! Because they are a bourgeois party—risking nothing, waiting passively till the Revolution drops into their hands.'

'The name of bourgeois would be better applied to those who include the landed peasants among their forces,' said Simon's wife angrily.

'If I might venture to suggest,' said David soothingly, 'all these differences would be immaterial if you joined the Samooborona. I could make excellent use of you ladies in the ambulance department.'

'Outrageous!' cried Simon angrily. 'Our place is shoulder to shoulder with our fellow-Poles.'

Simon's sister intervened gently. Perhaps the mention of ambulances had awakened sympathy in her S.R. soul. 'You ought to look among your own Party,' she said.

'My Party?'

'The Ghetto reactionaries—Zionists, Territorialists, Itoists, or whatever they call themselves nowadays.'

'Are there any here?' cried David eagerly.

'One heard of nothing else,' cried Simon bitterly. 'Fortunately, when the police found they weren't really emigrating to Zion or Uganda, the meetings were stopped.'

David eagerly took down names. Simon particularly recommended two young men, Grodsky and Lerkoff, who had at least the grace of Socialism.

But Grodsky, David found, had his own panacea. 'Only the S.S.'s,' he said, 'can save Israel.'

'What are S.S.'s?' David asked.

'Socialistes Sionistes.'

'But can't there be Socialism outside Zion?'

'Of course. We have evolved from Zionism. The unconditional historic necessity is for a land, but not for a particular land. Our Minsk members already call themselves S.T.'s—Socialist Territorialists.'

'But while awaiting your territory, there are the hooligans,' David reminded him. 'Simon Rubensky thought you would be a good man for the self-defence corps.'

'Join Rubensky! A P.P.S.! Never will I associate with a bourgeois like that!'

'He isn't joining.'

The S.S. hesitated. 'I must consult my fellow-members. I must write to headquarters.'

'Letters do not travel very quickly or safely nowadays.'

'But Party Discipline is everything,' urged Grodsky.

David left him, and hunted up Lerkoff, who proved to be a doctor.

'I want to get together a Samooborona branch,' he explained. 'Herr Grodsky has half promised——'

'That bourgeois!' cried Lerkoff in disgust. 'We can have nothing to do with traitors like that!'

'Why are they traitors?' David asked.

'All Territorialists are traitors. We Poali Zion must jealously guard the sacred flame of Socialism and Nationality, since only in Palestine can our social problem be solved.'

'Why only in Palestine?' inquired David mildly.

The P.Z. glared. 'Palestine is an unconditional historic necessity. The attempt to form a Jewish State elsewhere can only result in failure and disappointment. Do you not see how the folk-instinct leads them to Palestine? No less than four thousand have gone there this year.'

'And a hundred and fifty thousand to America. How about that folk-instinct?'

'Oh, these are the mere bourgeois. I see you are an Americanist Assimilator.'

'I am no more an A.A. than I am a Z.Z.,' said David tartly, adding with a smile, 'if there is such a thing as a Z.Z.'

'Would to Heaven there were not!' said Lerkoff fervently. 'It is these miserable Zioni-Zionists, with their incapacity for political concepts, who——'

Milovka, amid all its medievalism, possessed a few incongruous telephones, and one of these now started ringing violently in Dr. Lerkoff's study.

'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'talk of the devil. There is a man who combines all the worst qualities of the Z.Z.'s and the Mizrachi. He also imagines he has a throat disease due to swallowing flecks of the furs he deals in.' After which harangue he collogued amiably with his patient, and said he would come instantly.

'Hasn't he the disease, then?' asked David.

'He has no disease except too much vanity and too much money.'

'While you cure him of the first, I should like to try my hand at the second,' said David laughingly.

'Oh, I'll introduce you, if you let me off.'

'You I don't ask for money, but your medical services would be invaluable. Milovka is in danger.'

'Milovka to the deuce!' cried Lerkoff. 'Our future lies not in Russia.'

'I talk of our present. Do let me appoint you army surgeon.'

'Next year—in Jerusalem!' replied the doctor airily.

VI

Lerkoff asked David to wait in another room while he saw Herr Cantberg professionally. There was an Ark with scrolls of the Law in the room, betiding a piety and a purse beyond the normal. Presently Lerkoff reappeared chuckling.

'He knows all about you, you infamous rascal,' he said.

'You have told him?'

'He told me; he always knows everything. You are a baptized police spy, posing as a P.P.S. I suppose he's heard of your visit to Herr Rubensky.'

'But I shall undeceive him!'

'Not if you want his money. Such a blow to his vanity would cost you dear. Go in; I did not tell him you were the young man he was telling me of. I must fly.' The P. Z shook David's hand. 'Don't forget he's the bourgeois type of Zionist; his object is not to create the future, but to resurrect the dead past.'

'And mine is to keep alive the living present. Won't you——?' But the doctor was gone.

The Mizrachi Z.Z. proved unexpectedly small in stature and owl-like in expression; but his 'Be seated, sir—be seated; what can I do for you?' had the grand manner. It evoked a resentful chord in David.

'It is something I propose to do for you,' he said bluntly. 'Milovka is in danger.'

'It is, indeed,' said the M.Z.Z. 'When men like Dr. Lerkoff (in whose company I was sorry to see you) command a hearing, it is in deadly danger. An excellent physician, but you know the Talmudical saying: "Hell awaits even the best of physicians." And he calls himself a Zionist! Bah! he's more dangerous than that young renegade spy who dubs himself P.P.S.'

'But he seems very zealous for Zion,' said David uneasily.

Herr Cantberg shook his head dolefully. 'He'd introduce vaccination and serum-insertions instead of the grand old laws. As if any human arrangement could equal the wisdom of Sinai! And he actually scoffs at the Restoration of the Sacrifices!'

'But do you propose to restore them?' David was astonished.

The owl's eyes shone. 'What have we sacrificed ourselves for, all these centuries, if not for the Sacrifices? What has sanctified and illumined the long night of our Exile except a vision of the High Priest in his jewelled breastplate officiating again at the altar of our Holy Temple? Now at last the vision begins to take shape, the hope of Israel begins to shine again. Like a rosy cloud, like a crescent moon, like a star in the desert, like a lighthouse over lonely seas——'

The telephone impolitely interrupted him. His fine frenzy disregarded the ringing, but it jangled his metaphors. 'But, alas! our people do not see clearly!' he broke off. 'False prophets, colossally vain—may their names be blotted out!—confuse the foolish crowd. But the wheat is being sifted from the chaff, the fine flour from the bran, the edible herbs from the evil weeds, and soon my people will see again that only I——'

The telephone insisted on a hearing. Having refused to buy furs at the price it demanded, he resumed: 'Territorialist traitors mislead the masses, but in so far as they may bring relief to our unhappy people, I wish them Godspeed.'

'But what relief can they bring?' put in David impatiently. 'Without Self-Defence——'

'Most true. They will but kill off a few hundred people with fever and famine on some savage shore. But let them; it will all be to the glory of Zionism——'

'How so?' David asked, amazed.

'It will show that the godless ideals of materialists can never be realized, that only in its old home can Israel again be a nation. Then will come the moment for Me to arise——'

'But the English came from Denmark. And they're nation enough!'

The owl blinked angrily. 'We are the Chosen People—no historic parallel applies to us. As the dove returned to the ark, as the swallow returns to the lands of the spring, as the tide returns to the sands, as the stars——'

'Yes, yes, I know,' said David; 'but where is there room in Palestine for the Russian Jews?'

'Where was there room in the Temple for the millions who came up at Passover?' retorted Herr Cantberg crushingly.

The telephone here interposed, offering the furs cheaper.

'A godless Bundist!' the owl explained between the deals.

'A Bundist!' David pricked up his ears. From the bravest revolutionary party in Russia he could surely cull a recruit or two. 'Who is he?'

The owl tried to look noble, producing only a twinkle of cunning. 'Oh, I can't betray him; after all, he's a brother-in-Israel. Not that he behaves as such, opposing our candidate for the Duma! Three hundred and thirteen roubles,' he told the telephone sternly. 'Not a kopeck more. Eh? What? He's rung off, the blood-sucker!' He rang him up again. David made a note of the number.

'But what have you Zionists to do with the Parliament in Russia?' he inquired of the owl.

But the owl was haggling with the telephone. 'Three hundred and fifteen! What! Do you want to skin me, like your martins and sables?'

'You are busy,' interposed David, fretting at the waste of his day. 'I shall take the liberty of calling again.'

A telephone-book soon betrayed the Bundist's shop, and David hurried off to enlist him. The shopkeeper proved, however, so corpulent and bovine that David's heart sank. But he began bluntly: 'I know you're a Bundist.'

'A what?' said the fur-dealer.

David smiled. 'Oh, you needn't pretend with me; I'm a fighter myself.' He let a revolver peep out of his hip-pocket.

'Help! Gewalt!' cried the fur-dealer.

A beardless youth came running out of the back room. David laughed. 'Herr Cantberg told me that you were a Bundist,' he explained to the shopkeeper. 'And I came to meet a kindred spirit. But I was warned Herr Cantberg is always wrong. Good-morning.'

'Stop!' cried the youth. 'Go in, Reb Yitzchok; let me deal with this fire-eater.' And as the corpulent man retired with an improbable alacrity, he continued gravely: 'This time Herr Cantberg was not more than a hundred versts from the truth.'

David smiled. 'You are the Bundist.'

'Hush! Here I am the son-in-law. I study Talmud and eat Kest (free food). What news from Warsaw?'

'I want both you and your father-in-law,' said David evasively—'his money and your muscles.'

'He gives no money to the Cause, save unwillingly what I squeeze out of Cantberg.' The youth permitted himself his first smile. 'When he deals with that bourgeois at the telephone, I always egg him on to stand out for more and more, and my profit is half the extra roubles we extort. But as for myself, my life, of course, is at the disposal of headquarters.'

David was moved by this refreshing simplicity. He felt a little embarrassment in explaining that headquarters to him meant Samooborona, not Bund. The youth's countenance changed completely.

'Defend the Jews!' he cried contemptuously. 'What have we to do with the Jewish bourgeoisie?'

'The Bund is exclusively Jewish, is it not?'

'Merely because we found the rest of the Revolutionary body too clumsy for words. It was always getting caught, its printing-presses exhumed, its leaders buried. So we split off, the better to help our fellow-working-men. But we are a Labour party, not a Jewish party. We have the whole Russian Revolution on our shoulders; how can we throw away our lives for the capitalists of the Milovka Ghetto? Then there are the elections at hand—I have to work for the Left. Ah, here come some of our bourgeois; ask them, if you like. I will keep my father-in-law out of the shop.'

Two men in close confabulation strolled in, a third disconnected, but on their heels. With five Jews the concourse soon became a congress.

One of the couple turned out to be a Progressive Pole. He mistook David for a Zionist, and denounced him for a foreigner.

'We of the P.P.P.,' he said, 'will peacefully acquire equal rights with our fellow-Poles—nay, we shall be allowed to become Poles ourselves. But you Zionists are less citizens than strangers, and if you were logical, you would all——'

'Where's your own logic?' interrupted the disconnected man. 'Why don't you join the P.P.N. at once?'

The Progressive Pole frowned. 'The Nationalists! They are anti-Semites. I'd as soon join the League of True Russian Men.'

'And do you trust the P.P.P.?' his companion asked him. 'I tell you, Nathan, that only in the Progressive Democratic Party, with its belief in the equality of all nationalities——'

'If you want a Party free from anti-Semites,' David intervened desperately, 'you must join the Samoo——'

'I fear you will get no recruits here,' interrupted the Bundist, not unkindly. He added with a sneer: 'These gentlemen of the P.P.P. and the P.P.N. and the P.P.D. are all good Poles.'

'Good Poles!' echoed David no less bitterly. 'And the Poles voted en bloc to keep every Jewish candidate out of the Duma.'

'Even so we must be better Poles than they,' sublimely replied the member of the P.P.P. 'We are joining even the Clerical Parties of the Right for the good of our country. And now that the Party of National Concentration——'

'Go to the Labour Parties,' advised the P.D. 'There you may perchance find sturdy young men with the necessary Ghetto taint.' Of the four great Labour Parties, he proceeded to recommend the P.S.D. as the most promising for David's purposes. 'Not the Bolshewiki faction,' he added, 'but the Menshewiki. Recruits might also be found in the Proletariat or the P.P.S.——'

'No, I've tried the P.P.S.,' said David. 'But at any rate, gentlemen, since you must all see that the defence of our own lives is no undesirable object, a little contribution to our funds——'

A violent chorus of protest broke out. It was scarcely credible that only four men were speaking. All explained elaborately that they had their own Party Funds, and what a tax it was to run their candidates for the Duma, not to mention their Party Organ.

'You see,' said the Bundist, 'your only chance lies with the men of no Party, who have only their own bourgeois pleasures.'

'Are there such?' asked David eagerly.

A universal laugh greeted this inquiry.

'Alas, too many!' everybody told him. 'Our people are such individualists.'

'But where are these individualists?' cried David desperately.

As if in answer, the bovine proprietor, encouraged by the laughter, crept in again.

'You still here!' he murmured to David, taken aback.

'Yes, but if you'll give me a subscription for Jewish Self-Defence——'

'Jewish Emancipation!' cried the fur-dealer. 'Why didn't you say so at first?' He put his hand in his pocket. 'That's my Party—or rather the National Group in it, the Anti-Zionist faction.'

The stern Bundist laughed. 'No, he doesn't mean he's a J.E. even of the other faction.'

His father-in-law took his hand out of his pocket.

David cast a rebuking glance at the Bundist. 'Why did you interfere? Perhaps my way may prove the shortest to Jewish Emancipation.'

His hearers smiled a superior smile, and the fur-dealer shook his head. 'I belong also to the Promotion of Education Party—I am for peaceful methods,' he announced.

'So I perceived,' said David drily.

To be rid of him, the Bundist gave him the address of a man who kept aloof from Polish politics—a bourgeois cousin of his, Belchevski by name, who might just as well be killed off in the Samooborona.

But even Belchevski turned out to be a Territorialist. David imprudently told him he had seen his fellow-Territorialist Grodsky, who had half promised——

'Associate with a brainless, bumptious platform-screamer!' he screamed. 'He's worse than the hysterical Zionists. It is a territory we need, not Socialism.'

'I agree. But even more do we need Self-Defence.'

'The only Self-Defence is to leave Russia for a land of our own.'

'Five and a quarter million of us? Why, if two ships—one from Libau for the north, and one from Odessa for the south—sailed away every week, each bearing two thousand passengers, it would take over a quarter of a century. And by that time a new generation of us would have grown up.'

The Territorialist looked uneasy.

'Besides,' David continued, 'what new country could receive us at the rate of two hundred thousand a year? It would be a cemetery, not a country.'

The Territorialist smiled disdainfully. 'Why didn't you say at first you were a bourgeois? The unconditional historic necessity which has created the I.T.O. may drive at what pace it will; enough that as soon as our autonomous land is ready to receive us, I intend to be in the first shipload.'

'Have you this land, then?'

'Not yet. We've only had time to draw up the Constitution. No Socialism as that idiot Grodsky imagines. But Democracy. Hereditary privileges will be abol——'

'But what land is there?'

'Surely there are virgin lands.'

'Even the virgin lands are betrothed!' said David. 'And if there was one still without a lord and master, it would probably be a very ugly and sickly virgin. And, anyhow, it will be a long wooing. So in the meantime let me teach you to fire a pistol.'

'With all my heart—but merely to shoot wild beasts.'

'That is all I am asking for,' said David grimly.

Encouraged by this semi-success, David boldly called upon a tea-merchant quite unknown to him, and asked for a subscription to buy revolvers.

The tea-merchant, who was a small stout man, with a black cap of dubious cut, protested vehemently against such materialistic measures. Let them put their trust in Cultur! To talk Hebrew—therein lay Israel's real salvation. Let little children once again lisp in the language of Isaiah and Hosea—that was true Zionism.