"Come, Avroomkely," said Mrs. Shmendrik, dropping suddenly from invective to insinuativeness. "Take fourteenpence. Shemah, beni! Fourteen Shtibbur's a lot of Gelt."
"Are you a-going?" cried Abraham in a terrible rage. "Ten bob's my price now."
"Avroomkely, noo, zoog (say now)! Fourteenpence 'apenny. I am a poor voman. Here, fifteenpence."
Abraham seized her by the shoulders and pushed her towards the wall, where she cursed picturesquely. Esther thought it was a bad time to attempt to get her own shilling's worth—she fought her way towards another fishmonger.
There was a kindly, weather-beaten old fellow with whom Esther had often chaffered job-lots when fortune smiled on the Ansells. Him, to her joy, Esther perceived—she saw a stack of gurnards on his improvised slab, and in imagination smelt herself frying them. Then a great shock as of a sudden icy douche traversed her frame, her heart seemed to stand still. For when she put her hand to her pocket to get her purse, she found but a thimble and a slate-pencil and a cotton handkerchief. It was some minutes before she could or would realize the truth that the four and sevenpence halfpenny on which so much depended was gone. Groceries and unleavened cakes Charity had given, raisin wine had been preparing for days, but fish and meat and all the minor accessories of a well-ordered Passover table—these were the prey of the pickpocket. A blank sense of desolation overcame the child, infinitely more horrible than that which she felt when she spilled the soup; the gurnards she could have touched with her finger seemed far off, inaccessible; in a moment more they and all things were blotted out by a hot rush of tears, and she was jostled as in a dream hither and thither by the double stream of crowd. Nothing since the death of Benjamin had given her so poignant a sense of the hollowness and uncertainty of existence. What would her father say, whose triumphant conviction that Providence had provided for his Passover was to be so rudely dispelled at the eleventh hour. Poor Moses! He had been so proud of having earned enough money to make a good Yontov, and was more convinced than ever that given a little capital to start with he could build up a colossal business! And now she would have to go home and spoil everybody's Yontov, and see the sour faces of her little ones round a barren Seder table. Oh, it was terrible! and the child wept piteously, unheeded in the block, unheard amid the Babel.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DEAD MONKEY.
An old Maaseh the grandmother had told her came back to her fevered brain. In a town in Russia lived an old Jew who earned scarce enough to eat, and half of what he did earn was stolen from him in bribes to the officials to let him be. Persecuted and spat upon, he yet trusted in his God and praised His name. And it came on towards Passover and the winter was severe and the Jew was nigh starving and his wife had made no preparations for the Festival. And in the bitterness of her soul she derided her husband's faith and made mock of him, but he said, "Have patience, my wife! Our Seder board shall be spread as in the days of yore and as in former years." But the Festival drew nearer and nearer and there was nothing in the house. And the wife taunted her husband yet further, saying, "Dost thou think that Elijah the prophet will call upon thee or that the Messiah will come?" But he answered: "Elijah the prophet walketh the earth, never having died; who knows but that he will cast an eye my way?" Whereat his wife laughed outright. And the days wore on to within a few hours of Passover and the larder was still empty of provender and the old Jew still full of faith. Now it befell that the Governor of the City, a hard and cruel man, sat counting out piles of gold into packets for the payment of the salaries of the officials and at his side sat his pet monkey, and as he heaped up the pieces, so his monkey imitated him, making little packets of its own to the amusement of the Governor. And when the Governor could not pick up a piece easily, he moistened his forefinger, putting it to his mouth, whereupon the monkey followed suit each time; only deeming its master was devouring the gold, it swallowed a coin every time he put his finger to his lips. So that of a sudden it was taken ill and died. And one of his men said, "Lo, the creature is dead. What shall we do with it?" And the Governor was sorely vexed in spirit, because he could not make his accounts straight and he answered gruffly, "Trouble me not! Throw it into the house of the old Jew down the street." So the man took the carcass and threw it with thunderous violence into the passage of the Jew's house and ran off as hard as he could. And the good wife came bustling out in alarm and saw a carcass hanging over an iron bucket that stood in the passage. And she knew that it was the act of a Christian and she took up the carrion to bury it when Lo! a rain of gold-pieces came from the stomach ripped up by the sharp rim of the vessel. And she called to her husband. "Hasten! See what Elijah the prophet hath sent us." And she scurried into the market-place and bought wine and unleavened bread, and bitter herbs and all things necessary for the Seder table, and a little fish therewith which might be hastily cooked before the Festival came in, and the old couple were happy and gave the monkey honorable burial and sang blithely of the deliverance at the Red Sea and filled Elijah's goblet to the brim till the wine ran over upon the white cloth.
Esther gave a scornful little sniff as the thought of this happy dénouement flashed upon her. No miracle like that would happen to her or hers, nobody was likely to leave a dead monkey on the stairs of the garret—hardly even the "stuffed monkey" of contemporary confectionery. And then her queer little brain forgot its grief in sudden speculations as to what she would think if her four and sevenpence halfpenny came back. She had never yet doubted the existence of the Unseen Power; only its workings seemed so incomprehensibly indifferent to human joys and sorrows. Would she believe that her father was right in holding that a special Providence watched over him? The spirit of her brother Solomon came upon her and she felt that she would. Speculation had checked her sobs; she dried her tears in stony scepticism and, looking up, saw Malka's gipsy-like face bending over her, breathing peppermint.
"What weepest thou, Esther?" she said not unkindly. "I did not know thou wast a gusher with the eyes."