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"My poor Zussmann!" she cried reproachfully. "Give them back give them back at once! Call after the boy." "Why?" stammered Zussmann. "Call after the boy!" she repeated imperatively. "Good God! If the ladies were to be seen coming up here, it would be all over with your Idea. And on the Sabbath, too! People already look upon you as a tool of the missionaries. Quick! quick!"
One Friday evening of December, when miry snow underfoot and grayish fog all around combined to make Spitalfields a malarious marsh, the Red Beadle, coming in with the week's wages, found to his horror a doctor hovering over Hulda's bed like the shadow of death. From the look that Zussmann gave him he saw a sudden change for the worse had set in.
"Besides, what should we make it up with the Christians for the stupid people?" he asked, as he received his steaming coffee cup from Frau Herz. "It is a question of the Future of the World," said Zussmann gravely, as he shared out the herring, which had already been cut into many thin slices by the vendor and pickler. "This antagonism is a perversion of the principles of both religions.
And yet, here was Zussmann an assiduous attendant at the synagogue of the first floor nay, a scholar so conversant with Hebrew, not to mention European, lore, that the Red Beadle felt himself a Man-of-the-Earth, only retaining his superiority by remembering that learning did not always mean logic. "Nature make herself!" Zussmann now retorted, with a tolerant smile.
'Wilt thou be satisfied if I overthrow the universe, so that perhaps thou mayest be created again in a time of plenty? No, no, my friend, we must trust the scheme." "But the fools enjoy prosperity," said the Red Beadle. "It is only a fool who would enjoy prosperity," replied Zussmann. "If the righteous sometimes suffer and the wicked sometimes flourish, that is just the very condition of virtue.
But on parting he could not help saying to Zussmann, who accompanied him to the dark spider-webbed landing, "Your God has forgotten you." "Do you mean that men have forgotten Him?" replied Zussmann. "If I am come to poverty, my suffering is in the scheme of things. Do you not remember what the Almighty says to Eleazar ben Pedos, in the Talmud, when the Rabbi complains of poverty?
Zussmann gave him the Hebrew congratulation, but softly, with finger on lip, to indicate Hulda was asleep. "With whom?" "Harris the Gabbai." "Harris! What, despite your opinions?" The Red Beadle looked away. "So it seems!" "Thank God!" said Hulda. "The Idea works." Both men turned to the bed, startled to see her sitting up with a rapt smile. "How so?" said the Red Beadle uneasily.
"As it says in Corinthians," broke in Zussmann eagerly: "'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." "So," said the Red Beadle, visibly impressed. "Assuredly," affirmed Hulda.
If the Red Beadle had not been a widower, the unfeigned success of the Herz union might have turned his own thoughts to that happy state. As it was, the sight of their happiness occasionally shot through his breast renewed pangs of vain longing for his Leah, whose death from cancer had completed his conception of Nature. Lucky Zussmann, to have found so sympathetic a partner in a pretty female!
Three ragged Irish urchins, who had been buffeting each other with whirling hats knotted into the ends of dingy handkerchiefs, relaxed their enmities in a common rush for the projecting ladder behind the dray and collided with Zussmann on the way. A one-legged, misery-eyed hunchback offered him penny diaries. He shook his head in impotent pity, and passed on, pondering.
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