Ghetto Comedies Part 2

'Goy-Fox was yesterday,' she shouted with wrath and slammed the door on my heart; and I sat down on the pavement without, and I became a pillar of salt, all frozen tears. But when I looked up, I saw the Angel of the Lord.

CHAPTER III

THE PICTURE EVOLVES

Such was my model's simple narrative, the homely realism of which appealed to me on my most imaginative side, for through all its sordid details stood revealed to me the tragedy of the Wandering Jew. Was it Heine or another who said 'The people of Christ is the Christ of peoples'? At any rate, such was the idea that began to take possession of me as I painted away at the sorrow-haunted face of my much-tried model--to paint, not the Christ that I had started out to paint, but the Christ incarnated in a race, suffering--and who knew that He did not suffer over again?--in its Pa.s.sion. Yes, Israel Quarriar could still be my model, but after another conception altogether.

It was an idea that called for no change in what I had already done.

For I had worked mainly upon the head, and now that I purposed to clothe the figure in its native gaberdine, there would be little to re-draw. And so I fell to work with renewed intensity, feeling even safer now that I was painting and interpreting a real thing than when I was trying to reconstruct retrospectively the sacred figure that had walked in Galilee.

And no sooner had I fallen to work on this new conception than I found everywhere how old it was. It appeared even to have Scriptural warrant, for from a brief report of a historical-theological lecture by a Protestant German Professor I gleaned that many of the pa.s.sages in the Prophets which had been interpreted as pointing to a coming Messiah, really applied to Israel, the people. Israel it was whom Isaiah, in that famous fifty-third chapter, had described as 'despised and rejected of men: a man of sorrows.' Israel it was who bore the sins of the world. 'He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.' Yes, Israel was the Man of Sorrows. And in this view the German Professor, I found, was only re-echoing Rabbinic opinion. My model proved a mine of lore upon this as upon so many other points. Even the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, he had never shared, he said--that the _Mess.h.i.+ach_ would come riding upon a white a.s.s. Israel would be redeemed by itself, though his neighbours would have called the sentiment 'epicurean.'

'Whoever saves me is my _Mess.h.i.+ach_,' he declared suddenly, and plucked at my hand to kiss it.

'Now, you shock _me_,' I said, pus.h.i.+ng him away.

'No, no,' he said; 'I agree with the word of the moujik: "the good people _are_ G.o.d."'

'Then I suppose you are what is called a Zionist,' I said.

'Yes,' he replied; 'now that you have saved me, I see that G.o.d works only through men. As for the _Mess.h.i.+ach_ on the white a.s.s, they do not really believe it, but they won't let another believe otherwise. For my own part, when I say the prayer, "Blessed be Thou who restorest the dead to life," I always mean it of _you_.'

Such Oriental hyperbolic grat.i.tude would have satisfied the greediest benefactor, and was infinitely in excess of what he owed me. He seemed unconscious that he was doing work, journeying punctually long miles to my studio in any and every weather. It is true that I early helped him to redeem his household G.o.ds, but could I do less for a man who had still no bed to sleep in?

My recovery of the Rotterdam bundle served to unveil further complications. The agents at the East End charged him three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per letter, and conducted the business with a fine legal delay. But it was not till Kazelia was eulogized by one of these gentry as a very fine man that both the model and I grew suspicious that the long chain of roguery reached even unto London, and that the confederates on this side were playing for time, so that the option should expire, and the railway sell the unredeemed luggage, which they would doubtless buy in cheap, making another profit.

Ultimately Quarriar told me his second daughter--for the eldest was blind of one eye--was prepared to journey alone to Rotterdam, as the safest way of redeeming the goods. Admiring her pluck, I added her fare to the expenses.

One fine morning Israel appeared, transfigured with happiness.

'When does man rejoice most?' he cried. 'When he loses and finds again.'

'Ah, then you have got your bedding at last,' I cried, now accustomed to his methods of expression. 'I hope you slept well.'

'We could not sleep for blessing you,' he replied unexpectedly. 'As the Psalmist says, "All my bones praise the Lord!"'

Not that the matter had gone smoothly even now. The Kazelia gang at Rotterdam denied all knowledge of the luggage, sent the girl to the railway, where the dues had now mounted to 10 6s. Again the cup was dashed from her lips, for I had only given her 9. But she went to the Rabbi, and offered if he supplied the balance to repledge the Sabbath silver candlesticks that were the one family heirloom in the bundle, and therewith repay him instantly. While she was pleading with him, in came a n.o.ble Jew, paid the balance, lodged her and fed her, and saw her safely on board with the long-lost treasures.

CHAPTER IV

I BECOME A SORTER

As the weeks went by, my satisfaction with the progress I was making was largely tempered by the knowledge that after the completion of my picture my model would be thrown again on the pavement, and several times I fancied I detected him gazing at it sadly as if watching its advancing stages with a sort of hopeless fear. My anxiety about him and his family grew from day to day, but I could not see any possible way of helping him. He was touchingly faithful, anxious to please, and uncomplaining either of cold or hunger. Once I gave him a few s.h.i.+llings to purchase a second-hand pair of top-boots, which were necessary for the picture, and these he was able to procure in the Ghetto Sunday market for a minute sum, and he conscientiously returned me the balance--about two-thirds.

I happened to have sold an English landscape to Sir Asher Aaronsberg, the famous philanthropist and picture-buyer of Middleton, then up in town in connection with his Parliamentary duties, and knowing how indefatigably he was in touch with the London Jewish charities, I inquired whether some committee could not do anything to a.s.sist Quarriar. Sir Asher was not very encouraging. The man knew no trade.

However, if he would make application on the form enclosed and answer the questions, he would see what could be done. I saw that the details were duly filled in--the ages and s.e.x of his five children, etc.

But the committee came to the conclusion that the only thing they could do was to repatriate the man. 'Return to Russia!' cried Israel in horror.

Occasionally I inquired if any plan for the future had occurred to him. But he never raised the subject of his difficulties of his own accord, and his very silence, born, as it seemed to me, of the majestic dignity of the man, was infinitely pathetic. Now and again came a fitful gleam of light. His second daughter would be given a week's work for a few s.h.i.+llings by his landlord, a working master-tailor in a small way, from whom he now rented two tiny rooms on the top floor. But that was only when there was an extra spasm of activity. His half-blind daughter would do a little was.h.i.+ng, and the landlord would allow her the use of the backyard.

At last one day I found he had an idea, and an idea, moreover, that was carefully worked out in all its details. The scheme was certainly a novel and surprising one to me, but it showed how the art of forcing a livelihood amid impossible circ.u.mstances had been cultivated among these people, forced for centuries to exist under impossible conditions.

Briefly his scheme was this. In the innumerable tailors' workshops of his district great piles of cuttings of every kind and quality of cloth acc.u.mulated, and for the purchase of these cuttings a certain compet.i.tion existed among a cla.s.s of people, known as piece-sorters.

The sale of these cuttings by weight and for cash brought the master-tailors a pleasant little revenue, which was the more prized as it was a sort of perquisite. The masters were able to command payment for their cuttings in advance, and the sorter would call to collect them week by week as they acc.u.mulated, till the amount he had advanced was exhausted. Quarriar would set up as a piece-sorter, and thus be able to employ his daughters too. The whole family would find occupation in sorting out their purchases, and each quality and size would be readily saleable as raw material, to be woven again into the cheaper woollen materials. Through the recommendation of his countrymen, there were several tailors who had readily agreed to give him the preference. His own landlord in particular had promised to befriend him, and even now was allowing his cuttings to acc.u.mulate at some inconvenience, since he might have had ready money for them.

Moreover, his friends had introduced him to a very respectable and honest sorter, who would take him into partners.h.i.+p, teach him, and allow his daughters to partake in the sorting, if he could put down twenty pounds! His friends would jointly advance him eight on the security of his silver candlesticks, if only he could raise the other twelve.

This promising scheme took an incubus off my mind, and I hastened, somewhat revengefully, to acquaint the professional philanthropist, who had been so barren of ideas, with my intention to set up Quarriar as a piece-sorter.

'Ah,' Sir Asher replied, unmoved. 'Then you had better employ my man Conn; he does a good deal of this sort of work for me. He will find Quarriar a partner and professor.'

'But Quarriar has already found a partner.' I explained the scheme.

'The partner will cheat him. Twenty pounds is ridiculous. Five pounds is quite enough. Take my advice, and let it all go through Conn. If I wanted my portrait painted, you wouldn't advise me to go to an amateur. By the way, here are the five pounds, but please don't tell Conn I gave them. I don't believe the money'll do any good, and Conn will lose his respect for me.'

My interest in piece-sorting--an occupation I had never even heard of before--had grown abnormally, and I had gone into the figures and quant.i.ties--so many hundredweights, purchased at fifteen s.h.i.+llings, sorted into lots, and sold at various prices--with as thorough-going an eagerness as if my own livelihood were to depend upon it.

I confess I was now rather bewildered by so serious a difference of estimate as to the cost of a partners.h.i.+p, but I was inclined to set down Sir Asher's scepticism to that pessimism which is the penalty of professional philanthropy.

On the other hand, I felt that whether the partners.h.i.+p was to cost five pounds or twenty, Quarriar's future would be safer from Kazelias under the auspices of Sir Asher and his Conn. So I handed the latter the five pounds, and bade him find Quarriar a guide, philosopher, and partner.

With the advent of Conn, all my troubles began, and the picture pa.s.sed into its third and last stage.

I soon elicited that Quarriar and his friends were rather sorry Conn had been introduced into the matter. He was alleged to favour some people at the expense of others, and to be not at all popular among the people amid whom he worked. And altogether it was abundantly clear that Quarriar would rather have gone on with the scheme in his own way without official interference.

Later, Sir Asher wrote to me direct that the partner put forward by the Quarriar faction was a shady customer; Conn had selected his own man, but even so there was little hope Quarriar's future would be thus provided for.

There seemed, moreover, a note of suspicion of Quarriar sounding underneath, but I found comfort in the reflection that to Sir Asher my model was nothing more than the usual applicant for a.s.sistance, whereas to me who had lived for months in daily contact with him he was something infinitely more human.

Spring was now nearing; I finished my picture early in March--after four months' strenuous labour--shook hands with my model, and received his blessing. I was somewhat put out at learning that Conn had not yet given him the five pounds necessary to start him, as I had been hoping he might begin his new calling immediately the sittings ended. I gave him a small present to help tide over the time of waiting.

But that tragic face on my own canvas remained to haunt me, to ask the question of his future, and few days elapsed ere I found myself starting out to visit him at his home. He lived near Ratcliffe Highway, a district which I found had none of that boisterous marine romance with which I had a.s.sociated it.

The house was a narrow building of at least the sixteenth century, with the number marked up in chalk on the rusty little door. I happened to have stumbled on the Jewish Pa.s.sover. Quarriar was called down, evidently astonished and unprepared for my appearance at his humble abode, but he expressed pleasure, and led me up the narrow, steep stairway, whose ceiling almost touched my head as I climbed up after him. On the first floor the landlord, in festal raiment, intercepted us, introduced himself in English (which he spoke with pretentious inaccuracy), and, barring my further ascent, took possession of me, and led the way to his best parlour, as if it were entirely unbecoming for his tenant to receive a gentleman in his attic.

He was a strapping young fellow, full of acuteness and vigour--a marked contrast to Quarriar's drooping, dignified figure standing silently near by, and radiating poverty and suffering all the more in the little old panelled room, elegant with a big carved walnut cabinet, and gay with chromos and stuffed birds. Effusively the master-tailor painted himself as the champion of the poor fellow, and protested against this outside partners.h.i.+p that was being imposed on him by the notorious Conn. He himself, though he could scarcely afford it, was keeping his cuttings for him, in spite of tempting offers from other quarters, even of a s.h.i.+lling a sack. But of course he didn't see why an outsider foisted upon him by a philanthropic factotum should benefit by this goodness of his. He discoursed to me in moved terms of the sorrows and privations of his tenants in their two tiny rooms upstairs. And all the while Quarriar preserved his att.i.tude of drooping dignity, saying no syllable except under special appeal.

The landlord produced a goblet of rum and shrub for the benefit of the high-born visitor, and we all clinked gla.s.ses, the young master-tailor beaming at me unctuously as he set down his gla.s.s.

'I love company,' he cried, with no apparent consciousness of impudent familiarity.