Children of the Ghetto Part 36

Shosshi gathered up his specimens in his arms and fled through the door. Becky was still in hilarious eruption outside. The sight of her made confusion worse confounded. The k.n.o.bs and rockers rolled thunderously down the stairs; Shosshi stumbled after them, picking them up on his course and wishing himself dead.

All Sugarman's strenuous efforts to patch up the affair failed. Shosshi went about broken-hearted for several days. To have been so near the goal--and then not to arrive after all! What made failure more bitter was that he had boasted of his conquest to his acquaintances, especially to the two who kept the stalls to the right and left of him on Sundays in Petticoat Lane. They made a b.u.t.t of him as it was; he felt he could never stand between them for a whole morning now, and have Attic salt put upon his wounds. He shifted his position, arranging to pay sixpence a time for the privilege of fixing himself outside Widow Finkelstein's shop, which stood at the corner of a street, and might be presumed to intercept two streams of pedestrians. Widow Finkelstein's shop was a chandler's, and she did a large business in farthing-worths of boiling water. There was thus no possible rivalry between her ware and Shosshi's, which consisted of wooden candlesticks, little rocking chairs, stools, ash-trays, etc., piled up artistically on a barrow.

But Shosshi's luck had gone with the change of _locus_. His _clientele_ went to the old spot but did not find him. He did not even make a hansel. At two o'clock he tied his articles to the barrow with a complicated arrangement of cords. Widow Finkelstein waddled out and demanded her sixpence. Shosshi replied that he had not taken sixpence, that the coign was not one of vantage. Widow Finkelstein stood up for her rights, and even hung on to the barrow for them. There was a short, sharp argument, a simultaneous jabbering, as of a pair of monkeys.

Shosshi Shmendrik's pimply face worked with excited expostulation, Widow Finkelstein's cushion-like countenance was agitated by waves of righteous indignation. Suddenly Shosshi darted between the shafts and made a dash off with the barrow down the side street. But Widow Finkelstein pressed it down with all her force, arresting the motion like a drag. Incensed by the laughter of the spectators, Shosshi put forth all his strength at the shafts, jerked the widow off her feet and see-sawed her sky-wards, huddled up spherically like a balloon, but clinging as grimly as ever to the defalcating barrow. Then Shosshi started off at a run, the carpentry rattling, and the dead weight of his living burden making his muscles ache.

Right to the end of the street he dragged her, pursued by a hooting crowd. Then he stopped, worn out.

"Will you give me that sixpence, you _Ganef_!"

"No, I haven't got it. You'd better go back to your shop, else you'll suffer from worse thieves."

It was true. Widow Finkelstein smote her wig in horror and hurried back to purvey treacle.

But that night when she shut up the shutters, she hurried off to Shosshi's address, which she had learned in the interim. His little brother opened the door and said Shosshi was in the shed.

He was just nailing the thicker of those rockers on to the body of a cradle. His soul was full of bitter-sweet memories. Widow Finkelstein suddenly appeared in the moonlight. For a moment Shosshi's heart beat wildly. He thought the buxom figure was Becky's.

"I have come for my sixpence."

Ah! The words awoke him from his dream. It was only the Widow Finkelstein.

And yet--! Verily, the widow, too, was plump and agreeable; if only her errand had been pleasant, Shosshi felt she might have brightened his back yard. He had been moved to his depths latterly and a new tenderness and a new boldness towards women shone in his eyes.

He rose and put his head on one side and smiled amiably and said, "Be not so foolish. I did not take a copper. I am a poor young man. You have plenty of money in your stocking."

"How know you that?" said the widow, stretching forward her right foot meditatively and gazing at the strip of stocking revealed.

"Never mind!" said Shosshi, shaking his head sapiently.

"Well, it's true," she admitted. "I have two hundred and seventeen golden sovereigns besides my shop. But for all that why should you keep my sixpence?" She asked it with the same good-humored smile.

The logic of that smile was unanswerable. Shosshi's mouth opened, but no sound issued from it. He did not even say the Evening Prayer. The moon sailed slowly across the heavens. The water flowed into the cistern with a soft soothing sound.

Suddenly it occurred to Shosshi that the widow's waist was not very unlike that which he had engirdled imaginatively. He thought he would just try if the sensation was anything like what he had fancied. His arm strayed timidly round her black-beaded mantle. The sense of his audacity was delicious. He was wondering whether he ought to say _She-hechyoni_--the prayer over a new pleasure. But the Widow Finkelstein stopped his mouth with a kiss. After that Shosshi forgot his pious instincts.

Except old Mrs. Ansell, Sugarman was the only person scandalized.

Shosshi's irrepressible spirit of romance had robbed him of his commission. But Meckisch danced with Shosshi Shmendrik at the wedding, while the _Calloh_ footed it with the Russian giantess. The men danced in one-half of the room, the women in the other.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE HYAMS'S HONEYMOON.

"Beenah, hast thou heard aught about our Daniel?" There was a note of anxiety in old Hyams's voice.

"Naught, Mendel."

"Thou hast not heard talk of him and Sugarman's daughter?"

"No, is there aught between them?" The listless old woman spoke a little eagerly.

"Only that a man told me that his son saw our Daniel pay court to the maiden."

"Where?"

"At the Purim Ball."

"The man is a tool; a youth must dance with some maiden or other."

Miriam came in, f.a.gged out from teaching. Old Hyams dropped from Yiddish into English.

"You are right, he must."

Beenah replied in her slow painful English.

"Would he not have told us?"

Mendel repeated:--"Would he not have told us?"

Each avoided the others eye. Beenah dragged herself about the room, laying Miriam's tea.

"Mother, I wish you wouldn't sc.r.a.pe your feet along the floor so. It gets on my nerves and I _am_ so worn out. Would he not have told you what? And who's he?"

Beenah looked at her husband.

"I heard Daniel was engaged," said old Hyams jerkily.

Miriam started and flushed.

"To whom?" she cried, in excitement.

"Bessie Sugarman."

"Sugarman's daughter?" Miriam's voice was pitched high.

"Yes."

Miriam's voice rose to a higher pitch.

"Sugarman the _Shadchan's_ daughter?"

"Yes."

Miriam burst into a fit of incredulous laughter.