The breakfast-table on the morrow morn was very like a battlefield; there were storms in five tea-cups. His family opposed his good intentions with earnestness, broken English, and some quotation of the Pentateuch, and thereby through the rule of contrariness, kept him to his purpose. Their obstinacy strengthened his. He stuck gamely to his guns, and began his course at once by doubling Ernie Jenkins' wages, enabling that young patriot to enlarge his indulgence in bitter beer, to wear three clean collars a week, and to promise Emily--with a few safeguarding "ifs"--that some day she might be "Mrs. J."
Emmanuel's family yielded to his wishes when he bought them over. He gave Mrs. Oldstein a purple silk dress trimmed with jet, a big bangle, and a gold watch so small that its works could never move. Max, who presumed to strange heights of impudent sarcasm on the subject of "the guvnor's flum," was given a minor partnership in the emporium, provided he was not merely just, but generous, in all his dealings.
He quickly agreed, and became a pompous person, forgetful of old associates.
Keeping the resolutions was certainly a hard and bitter business to the old man; but it did him good. He never lost sight of the promise of tea with the Archdeacon.
The hardest effort came when those pious folk next door took the bait, and approached Jabez Gordon of Jermyn Street for a loan--"to extend their efforts for the Cause."
Emmanuel unwisely informed Hannah of the fact. Her eyes blazed with angry happiness. At last! At last!
"Now squelch 'em, Pa!" she pleaded, in her commanding manner.
"Thertainly, my dear!" he said evasively; and hurriedly put on his hat to commune with himself in a walk round the squares. Here was a pass!
The undying remembrance of persecution, endured through ages by his people, flamed within him. Years of petty trading and the practices of sharp finance had not entirely subdued his inherited racial fire. And of all the Anti-Semite persecutors, none were so exasperating as those infatuated, contemptible sentimentalists--the pin-prick fanatics--who hoped to "convert" him, asking him to exchange the breadths of his own faith, based on centuries of national sacrifice and fighting history, for their traditionless, unimaginative, sapless sectarianism. It was a hard effort to spare those people at that moment of possible revenge.
Shylock had his twentieth-century opportunity.