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The Hirelings
by
The aroma of an expensive cigar wafted towards him, and the face between whose prominent teeth it was stuck loomed vividly in the glare of an electric light. Rozenoffski recognised those teeth. He had seen countless pictures and caricatures of them, for did they not almost hold the globe in their grip? This, then was the notorious multi-millionaire, ‘the Napoleon in dollars,’ as a wit had summed him up; and the first sight of Andrew P. Wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. Who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist’s showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity–he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large things, to that environment in which he, poor degenerate artist, was but a little singing-bird. The long-forgotten word Rishus came suddenly into his mind–was not the man’s anti-Semitism as obtruded as his teeth?–Rishus, that wicked malice, which to a persecuted people had become almost a synonym for Christianity. He had left the thought behind him, as he had left the Hebrew word, while he went sailing up into the rosy ether of success, and Rishus had sunk into the mere panic-word of the Ghetto’s stunted brood, shrinking and quivering before phantasms, sinuously gliding through a misunderstood world, if it was not, indeed, rather a word conveniently cloaking from themselves a multitude of their own sins. But now, as incarnated in this millionaire mammoth, the shadowy word took on a sudden solidity, to which his teeth gave the necessary tearing and rending significance.
Yes, in very sooth–he remembered it suddenly–was it not this man’s wife on whom he had built his main hopes? Was she not the leader of musical America, to whom the Belgian princess had given him the scented and crested note of introduction which was to open to him all doors and all ears? Was it not in her marvellous marble music-room–one of the boasts of Chicago–that he had mentally seen himself enthroned as the lord of the feast? And instead of these Olympian visions, lo! a typewritten note to clench his fist over–a note from a secretary regretting that the state of Mrs. Wilhammer’s health forbade the pleasure of receiving a maestro with such credentials. Rishus–Rishus indubitable!
II
Turning with morbid interest to look after the retreating millionaire, he found him in converse with a feminine figure at the open door of a deck-cabin. Could this be the great She, the arbitress of art? He moved nearer. Why, this was but a girl–nay, unless his instinct was at fault, a Jewish girl–a glorious young Jewess, of that radiant red-haired type which the Russian Pale occasionally flowered with. What was she doing with this Christian Colossus? He tried vainly to see her left hand; the mere possibility that she might be Mrs. Wilhammer shocked his Semitic instinct. Wilhammer disappeared within–the relation was obviously intimate–but the girl still stood at the door, a brooding magical figure.
Almost a sense of brotherhood moved him to speak to her, but he conquered the abnormal and incorrect impulse, contenting himself to walk past her with a side-glance, while at the end of the deck-promenade, instead of returning on his footsteps, he even arched his path round to the windy side. After some minutes of buffeting he returned chilled to his prior pacing ground. She was still there, but had moved under the same electric light which had illuminated Wilhammer’s face, and she was reading a letter. As his walk carried him past her, he was startled to see tears rolling down those radiant cheeks. A slight exclamation came involuntarily from him; the girl, even more startled to be caught thus, relaxed her grip of the letter–a puff of wind hastened to whirl it aloft. Rozenoffski grasped at it desperately, but it eluded him, and then descending sailed sternwards. He gave chase, stumbling over belated chairs and deck-quoits, but at last it was safe in his clutch, and as he handed it to the agitated owner whom he found at his elbow, he noted with a thrill that the characters were cursive Hebrew.