“You have done wrong, my boy,” said the doctor to Lionel in the calm which followed the storm. “It is never wise to make an enemy, especially such a man as Ben Yetzel. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ is his motto. I am afraid he will make you suffer for what you have said to-day. He holds the majority of the Palestinian Jews in the hollow of his hand.”
“Even if it is so, I could not have spoken otherwise,” rejoined the young man, his eyes still flashing with the intensity of his outraged feelings. “Ben Yetzel must do his worst. One generally has to suffer for right and truth in this world, I find.”
“H’m, perhaps so.” The doctor applied a match to his pipe. “But as ‘this world’—as you so contemptuously call it—is the only one with which we have to do, I think we ought to jog along with as few jars as possible. However, what’s done is done, and you will have to make the best of it. Be on your guard against Ben Yetzel—that’s all. He will never forget that he owes you a grudge.”
“He is welcome to pay me back whensoever he pleases,” Montella said carelessly.
He was too young and too strong to cherish the smallest fear.
Nevertheless he knew that the quarrel was to be regretted. He had come to Jerusalem, hoping to improve matters by the aid of diplomacy, and had failed. It was perhaps that the English method of handling such affairs did not work in Palestine; but he could not help that—he was British to the backbone. What he said he meant with his whole heart, and the foreign system of prevarication and petty quibbling was to him as distasteful as it was unintelligible. Therefore it was impossible for him to tolerate the slippery dealings of Ben Yetzel and his clan; a breach had been inevitable from the first.
“We may as well return to Haifa as soon as the Princess leaves,” he said to his wife, when he had given vent to his indignation. “I can do no good here, I am afraid.”
Patricia looked up at him with her blue eyes full of sympathy.
“Poor boy!” she exclaimed softly. “You always seem to be in hot water with these rabbis. They remind me of the Pharisees of old.”
“They are Pharisees—and hypocrites,” he returned, with a touch of bitterness. “However, I am not going to trouble about them; they are not worth it. I shall try to take a leaf out of Engelmacher’s book: instead of getting angry with them he simply laughs.”