Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/341



next day was Saturday. Philip Moses kept the Sabbath in his own room, and prayed for his unhappy people; but he often started, and a look of pain seemed to contract his features when he overheard his son talking loudly to his customers in the shop, and rattling the money in the till; while his wife, in the other apartments, was engaged in various household duties, in all of which Benjamina was obliged to assist her. He frequently heard her aunt scolding her, and she had scarcely been able to snatch more than a minute to carry her grandfather's breakfast to him, and affectionately to bid him good morning. On that short visit he perceived that she had been weeping; but he would not deprive her of the comfort of fancying she had concealed her tears from him, by letting her know that he had observed them.

Philip Moses was lying with his old head literally bowed into the dust, and was engaged in prayer, when Benjamina returned and called him to dinner. His daughter-in-law had slightly hoped he would be able to put up with such accommodation as their house afforded, but she was neither able nor willing to conceal her ill-humour; and the old man sat silently at table without tasting any of the dishes placed on it, for these consisted of the very things that the Mosaic law particularly forbade. His son did not seem to notice all this; but poor Benjamina did, and fasted also, though she was very hungry. The tumult of the preceding night was talked of, and it was told that there had not been one window left unbroken in Samuel's residence, nor in many of the handsomest houses belonging to the Jews; also, that a couple of Jew old-clothesmen, who were perambulating the streets, had been very ill-used by the mob.

"Why do the rich make so much useless display?" said Isaac, "and why do the poor seek, by their needless oddity, to draw public observation upon themselves?"

"Have you become a Christian, my son?" demanded the old man; "or perhaps this is not the Sabbath-day?"

"I adhere to the doctrines of my forefathers," replied his son, "in what I consider to be of consequence, and in what is applicable to the age in which we live, and to the ideas of what is holy and unholy that my reason and my senses can acknowledge. I wish my father would do the same, and not be scandalised at what is really quite innocent"

"My father-in-law must try to put up with our fare," said the mistress of the house, handing him, with thoughtless indifference, a plate of roast pork. "Our house is quite in disorder to-day," she added, by way of apology, when he silently handed her back the plate, "and I really did not bethink me of our guest; but I shall have something else another time, when I am accustomed to remember what he will not eat."