"With God's help," said Daniel. And then Mendel turned to Beenah and kissed her, weeping, and the faces of the old couple were radiant behind their tears.
Daniel stood on the clamorous hustling wharf, watching the ship move slowly from her moorings towards the open river, and neither he nor any one in the world but the happy pair knew that Mendel and Beenah were on their honeymoon.
* * * * *
Mrs. Hyams died two years after her honeymoon, and old Hyams laid a lover's kiss upon her sealed eyelids. Then, being absolutely alone in the world, he sold off his scanty furniture, sent the balance of the debt with a sovereign of undemanded interest to Bear Belcovitch, and girded up his loins for the journey to Jerusalem, which had been the dream of his life.
But the dream of his life had better have remained a dream Mendel saw the hills of Palestine and the holy Jordan and Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple, and the tombs of Absalom and Melchitsedek, and the gate of Zion and the aqueduct built by Solomon, and all that he had longed to see from boyhood. But somehow it was not his Jerusalem—scarce more than his London Ghetto transplanted, only grown filthier and narrower and more ragged, with cripples for beggars and lepers in lieu of hawkers. The magic of his dream-city was not here. This was something prosaic, almost sordid. It made his heart sink as he thought of the sacred splendors of the Zion he had imaged in his suffering soul. The rainbows builded of his bitter tears did not span the firmament of this dingy Eastern city, set amid sterile hills. Where were the roses and lilies, the cedars and the fountains? Mount Moriah was here indeed, but it bore the Mosque of Omar, and the Temple of Jehovah was but one ruined wall. The Shechinah, the Divine Glory, had faded into cold sunshine. "Who shall go up into the Mount of Jehovah." Lo, the Moslem worshipper and the Christian tourist. Barracks and convents stood on Zion's hill. His brethren, rulers by divine right of the soil they trod, were lost in the chaos of populations—Syrians, Armenians, Turks, Copts, Abyssinians, Europeans—as their synagogues were lost amid the domes and minarets of the Gentiles. The city was full of venerated relics of the Christ his people had lived—and died—to deny, and over all flew the crescent flag of the Mussulman.
And so every Friday, heedless of scoffing on-lookers, Mendel Hyams kissed the stones of the Wailing Place, bedewing their barrenness with tears; and every year at Passover, until he was gathered to his fathers, he continued to pray: "Next year—in Jerusalem!"
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT.
"Ah, the Men-of-the-Earth!" said Pinchas to Reb Shemuel, "ignorant fanatics, how shall a movement prosper in their hands? They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole's; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers? with Karlkammer's red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski's nose blowing for a trumpet-peal. But I have written an acrostic against Guedalyah the greengrocer, virulent as serpent's gall. He the Redeemer, indeed, with his diseased potatoes and his flat ginger-beer! Not thus did the great prophets and teachers in Israel figure the Return. Let a great signal-fire be lit in Israel and lo! the beacons will leap up on every mountain and tongue of flame shall call to tongue. Yea, I, even I, Melchitsedek Pinchas, will light the fire forthwith."
"Nay, not to-day," said Reb Shemuel, with his humorous twinkle; "it is the Sabbath."