Children of the Ghetto Part 34

"Hush! what are you saying!" said Sugarman, "Gideon is a rich man, and then he is a director."

"It seems a good lot of directors," said Meckisch.

"Good to look at. But who can tell?" said Sugarman, shaking his head.

"The Queen of Sheba probably brought sapphires to Solomon, but she was not a virtuous woman."

"Ah, Solomon!" sighed Mrs. Shmendrik, p.r.i.c.king up her ears and interrupting this talk of stocks and stones, "If he'd had a thousand daughters instead of a thousand wives, even his treasury couldn't have held out. I had only two girls, praised be He, and yet it nearly ruined me to buy them husbands. A dirty _Greener_ comes over, without a shirt to his skin, and nothing else but he must have two hundred pounds in the hand. And then you've got to stick to his back to see that he doesn't take his breeches in his hand and off to America. In Poland he would have been glad to get a maiden, and would have said thank you."

"Well, but what about your own son?" said Sugarman; "Why haven't you asked me to find Shosshi a wife? It's a sin against the maidens of Israel. He must be long past the Talmudical age."

"He is twenty-four," replied Peleg Shmendrik.

"Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu!" said Sugarman, clacking his tongue in horror, "have you perhaps an objection to his marrying?"

"Save us and grant us peace!" said the father in deprecatory horror.

"Only Shosshi is so shy. You are aware, too, he is not handsome. Heaven alone knows whom he takes after."

"Peleg, I blush for you," said Mrs. Shmendrik. "What is the matter with the boy? Is he deaf, dumb, blind, unprovided with legs? If Shosshi is backward with the women, it is because he 'learns' so hard when he's not at work. He earns a good living by his cabinet-making and it is quite time he set up a Jewish household for himself. How much will you want for finding him a _Calloh_?"

"Hush!" said Sugarman sternly, "do you forget it is the Sabbath? Be a.s.sured I shall not charge more than last time, unless the bride has an extra good dowry."

On Sat.u.r.day night immediately after _Havdalah_, Sugarman went to Mr.

Belcovitch, who was just about to resume work, and informed him he had the very _Chosan_ for Becky. "I know," he said, "Becky has a lot of young men after her, but what are they but a pack of bare-backs? How much will you give for a solid man?"

After much haggling Belcovitch consented to give twenty pounds immediately before the marriage ceremony and another twenty at the end of twelve months.

"But no pretending you haven't got it about you, when we're at the _Shool_, no asking us to wait till we get home," said Sugarman, "or else I withdraw my man, even from under the _Chuppah_ itself. When shall I bring him for your inspection?"

"Oh, to-morrow afternoon, Sunday, when Becky will be out in the park with her young men. It's best I shall see him first!"

Sugarman now regarded Shosshi as a married man! He rubbed his hands and went to see him. He found him in a little shed in the back yard where he did extra work at home. Shosshi was busy completing little wooden articles--stools and wooden spoons and moneyboxes for sale in Petticoat Lane next day. He supplemented his wages that way.

"Good evening, Shosshi," said Sugarman.

"Good evening," murmured Shosshi, sawing away.

Shosshi was a gawky young man with a blotched sandy face ever ready to blush deeper with the suspicion that conversations going on at a distance were all about him. His eyes were shifty and catlike; one shoulder overbalanced the other, and when he walked, he swayed loosely to and fro. Sugarman was rarely remiss in the offices of piety and he was nigh murmuring the prayer at the sight of monstrosities. "Blessed art Thou who variest the creatures." But resisting the temptation he said aloud, "I have something to tell you."

Shosshi looked up suspiciously.

"Don't bother: I am busy," he said, and applied his plane to the leg of a stool.

"But this is more important than stools. How would you like to get married?"

Shosshi's face became like a peony.

"Don't make laughter," he said.

"But I mean it. You are twenty-four years old and ought to have a wife and four children by this time."

"But I don't want a wife and four children," said Shosshi.

"No, of course not. I don't mean a widow. It is a maiden I have in my eye."

"Nonsense, what maiden would have me?" said Shosshi, a note of eagerness mingling with the diffidence of the words.

"What maiden? _Gott in Himmel_! A hundred. A fine, strong, healthy young man like you, who can make a good living!"

Shosshi put down his plane and straightened himself. There was a moment of silence. Then his frame collapsed again into a limp ma.s.s. His head drooped over his left shoulder. "This is all foolishness you talk, the maidens make mock."

"Be not a piece of clay! I know a maiden who has you quite in affection!"

The blush which had waned mantled in a full flood. Shosshi stood breathless, gazing half suspiciously, half credulously at his strictly honorable Mephistopheles.

It was about seven o'clock and the moon was a yellow crescent in the frosty heavens. The sky was punctured with clear-cut constellations. The back yard looked poetic with its blend of shadow and moonlight.

"A beautiful fine maid," said Sugarman ecstatically, "with pink cheeks and black eyes and forty pounds dowry."

The moon sailed smilingly along. The water was running into the cistern with a soothing, peaceful sound. Shosshi consented to go and see Mr.

Belcovitch.

Mr. Belcovitch made no parade. Everything was as usual. On the wooden table were two halves of squeezed lemons, a piece of chalk, two cracked cups and some squashed soap. He was not overwhelmed by Shosshi, but admitted he was solid. His father was known to be pious, and both his sisters had married reputable men. Above all, he was not a Dutchman.

Shosshi left No. 1 Royal Street, Belcovitch's accepted son-in-law.

Esther met him on the stairs and noted the radiance on his pimply countenance. He walked with his head almost erect. Shosshi was indeed very much in love and felt that all that was needed for his happiness was a sight of his future wife.

But he had no time to go and see her except on Sunday afternoons, and then she was always out. Mrs. Belcovitch, however, made amends by paying him considerable attention. The sickly-looking little woman chatted to him for hours at a time about her ailments and invited him to taste her medicine, which was a compliment Mrs. Belcovitch pa.s.sed only to her most esteemed visitors. By and by she even wore her night-cap in his presence as a sign that he had become one of the family. Under this encouragement Shosshi grew confidential and imparted to his future mother-in-law the details of his mother's disabilities. But he could mention nothing which Mrs. Belcovitch could not cap, for she was a woman extremely catholic in her maladies. She was possessed of considerable imagination, and once when f.a.n.n.y selected a bonnet for her in a milliner's window, the girl had much difficulty in persuading her it was not inferior to what turned out to be the reflection of itself in a side mirror.

"I'm so weak upon my legs," she would boast to Shosshi. "I was born with ill-matched legs. One is a thick one and one is a thin one, and so one goes about."

Shosshi expressed his sympathetic admiration and the courtship proceeded apace. Sometimes f.a.n.n.y and Pesach Weingott would be at home working, and they were very affable to him. He began to lose something of his shyness and his lurching gait, and he quite looked forward to his weekly visit to the Belcovitches. It was the story of Cymon and Iphigenia over again.

Love improved even his powers of conversation, for when Belcovitch held forth at length Shosshi came in several times with "So?" and sometimes in the right place. Mr. Belcovitch loved his own voice and listened to it, the arrested press-iron in his hand. Occasionally in the middle of one of his harangues it would occur to him that some one was talking and wasting time, and then he would say to the room, "Shah! Make an end, make an end," and dry up. But to Shosshi he was especially polite, rarely interrupting himself when his son-in-law elect was hanging on his words. There was an intimate tender tone about these _causeries_.

"I should like to drop down dead suddenly," he would say with the air of a philosopher, who had thought it all out. "I shouldn't care to lie up in bed and mess about with medicine and doctors. To make a long job of dying is so expensive."

"So?" said Shosshi.

"Don't worry, Bear! I dare say the devil will seize you suddenly,"

interposed Mrs. Belcovitch drily.

"It will not be the devil," said Mr. Belcovitch, confidently and in a confidential manner. "If I had died as a young man, Shosshi, it might have been different."

Shosshi p.r.i.c.ked up his ears to listen to the tale of Bear's wild cubhood.

"One morning," said Belcovitch, "in Poland, I got up at four o'clock to go to Supplications for Forgiveness. The air was raw and there was no sign of dawn! Suddenly I noticed a black pig trotting behind me. I quickened my pace and the black pig did likewise. I broke into a run and I heard the pig's paws patting furiously upon the hard frozen ground. A cold sweat broke out all over me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the pig's eyes burning like red-hot coals in the darkness. Then I knew that the Not Good One was after me. 'Hear, O Israel,' I cried. I looked up to the heavens but there was a cold mist covering the stars. Faster and faster I flew and faster and faster flew the demon pig. At last the _Shool_ came in sight. I made one last wild effort and fell exhausted upon the holy threshold and the pig vanished."

"So?" said Shosshi, with a long breath.

"Immediately after _Shool_ I spake with the Rabbi and he said 'Bear, are thy _Tephillin_ in order?' So I said 'Yea, Rabbi, they are very large and I bought them of the pious scribe, Naphtali, and I look to the knots weekly.' But he said, 'I will examine them.' So I brought them to him and he opened the head-phylactery and lo! in place of the holy parchment he found bread crumbs."