Children of the Ghetto Part 12

Work is very slack at this time of year. But G.o.d is good."

"Can't you sell something?" said Reb Shemuel, thoughtfully caressing his long, gray-streaked black beard.

"I have sold lemons, but the four or five s.h.i.+llings I made went in bread for the children and in rent. Money runs through the fingers somehow, with a family of five and a frosty winter. When the lemons were gone I stood where I started."

The Rabbi sighed sympathetically and slipped half-a-crown into Moses's palm. Then he hurried out. His boy, Levi, stayed behind a moment to finish a transaction involving the barter of a pea-shooter for some of Solomon's b.u.t.tons. Levi was two years older than Solomon, and was further removed from him by going to a "middle cla.s.s school." His manner towards Solomon was of a corresponding condescension. But it took a great deal to overawe Solomon, who, with the national humor, possessed the national _Chutzpah_, which is variously translated enterprise, audacity, brazen impudence and cheek.

"I say, Levi," he said, "we've got no school to-day. Won't you come round this morning and play I-spy-I in our street? There are some splendid corners for hiding, and they are putting up new buildings all round with lovely h.o.a.rdings, and they're knocking down a pickle warehouse, and while you are hiding in the rubbish you sometimes pick up scrumptious bits of pickled walnut. Oh, golly, ain't they prime!'"

Levi turned up his nose.

"We've got plenty of whole walnuts at home," he said.

Solomon felt snubbed. He became aware that this tall boy had smart black clothes, which would not be improved by rubbing against his own greasy corduroys.

"Oh, well," he said, "I can get lots of boys, and girls, too."

"Say," said Levi, turning back a little. "That little girl your father brought upstairs here on the Rejoicing of the Law, that was your sister, wasn't it?"

"Esther, d'ye mean?"

"How should I know? A little, dark girl, with a print dress, rather pretty--not a bit like you."

"Yes, that's our Esther--she's in the sixth standard and only eleven."

"We don't have standards in our school!" said Levi contemptuously. "Will your sister join in the I-spy-I?"

"No, she can't run," replied Solomon, half apologetically. "She only likes to read. She reads all my 'Boys of England' and things, and now she's got hold of a little brown book she keeps all to herself. I like reading, too, but I do it in school or in _Shool_, where there's nothing better to do."

"Has she got a holiday to-day, too?"

"Yes," said Solomon.

"But my school's open," said Levi enviously, and Solomon lost the feeling of inferiority, and felt avenged.

"Come, then, Solomon," said his father, who had reached the door. The two converted part of the half-crown into French loaves and carried them home to form an unexpected breakfast.

Meantime Reb Shemuel, whose full name was the Reverend Samuel Jacobs, also proceeded to breakfast. His house lay near the _Shool_, and was approached by an avenue of mendicants. He arrived in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.

"Quick, Simcha, give me my new coat. It is very cold this morning."

"You've given away your coat again!" shrieked his wife, who, though her name meant "Rejoicing," was more often upbraiding.

"Yes, it was only an old one, Simcha," said the Rabbi deprecatingly. He took off his high hat and replaced it by a little black cap which he carried in his tail pocket.

"You'll ruin me, Shemuel!" moaned Simcha, wringing her hands. "You'd give away the s.h.i.+rt off your skin to a pack of good-for-nothing _Schnorrers_."

"Yes, if they had only their skin in the world. Why not?" said the old Rabbi, a pacific gleam in his large gazelle-like eyes. "Perhaps my coat may have the honor to cover Elijah the prophet."

"Elijah the prophet!" snorted Simcha. "Elijah has sense enough to stay in heaven and not go wandering about s.h.i.+vering in the fog and frost of this G.o.d-accursed country."

The old Rabbi answered, "Atschew!"

"For thy salvation do I hope, O Lord," murmured Simcha piously in Hebrew, adding excitedly in English, "Ah, you'll kill yourself, Shemuel." She rushed upstairs and returned with another coat and a new terror.

"Here, you fool, you've been and done a fine thing this time! All your silver was in the coat you've given away!"

"Was it?" said Reb Shemuel, startled. Then the tranquil look returned to his brown eyes. "No, I took it all out before I gave away the coat."

"G.o.d be thanked!" said Simcha fervently in Yiddish. "Where is it? I want a few s.h.i.+llings for grocery."

"I gave it away before, I tell you!"

Simcha groaned and fell into her chair with a crash that rattled the tray and shook the cups.

"Here's the end of the week coming," she sobbed, "and I shall have no fish for _Shabbos_."

"Do not blaspheme!" said Reb Shemuel, tugging a little angrily at his venerable beard. "The Holy One, blessed be He, will provide for our _Shabbos_"

Simcha made a sceptical mouth, knowing that it was she and n.o.body else whose economies would provide for the due celebration of the Sabbath.

Only by a constant course of vigilance, mendacity and petty peculation at her husband's expense could she manage to support the family of four comfortably on his pretty considerable salary. Reb Shemuel went and kissed her on the sceptical mouth, because in another instant she would have him at her mercy. He washed his hands and durst not speak between that and the first bite.

He was an official of heterogeneous duties--he preached and taught and lectured. He married people and divorced them. He released bachelors from the duty of marrying their deceased brothers' wives. He superintended a slaughtering department, licensed men as competent killers, examined the sharpness of their knives that the victims might be put to as little pain as possible, and inspected dead cattle in the shambles to see if they were perfectly sound and free from pulmonary disease. But his greatest function was _paskening_, or answering inquiries ranging from the simplest to the most complicated problems of ceremonial ethics and civil law. He had added a volume of _Shaaloth-u-Tshuvoth_, or "Questions and Answers" to the colossal casuistic literature of his race. His aid was also invoked as a _Shadchan_, though he forgot to take his commissions and lacked the restless zeal for the mating of mankind which animated Sugarman, the professional match-maker. In fine, he was a witty old fellow and everybody loved him. He and his wife spoke English with a strong foreign accent; in their more intimate causeries they dropped into Yiddish.

The Rebbitzin poured out the Rabbi's coffee and whitened it with milk drawn direct from the cow into her own jug. The b.u.t.ter and cheese were equally _kosher_, coming straight from Hebrew Hollanders and having pa.s.sed through none but Jewish vessels. As the Reb sat himself down at the head of the table Hannah entered the room.

"Good morning, father," she said, kissing him. "What have you got your new coat on for? Any weddings to-day?"

"No, my dear," said Reb Shemuel, "marriages are falling off. There hasn't even been an engagement since Belcovitch's eldest daughter betrothed herself to Pesach Weingott."

"Oh, these Jewish young men!" said the Rebbitzin. "Look at my Hannah--as pretty a girl as you could meet in the whole Lane--and yet here she is wasting her youth."

Hannah bit her lip, instead of her bread and b.u.t.ter, for she felt she had brought the talk on herself. She had heard the same grumblings from her mother for two years. Mrs. Jacobs's maternal anxiety had begun when her daughter was seventeen. "When _I_ was seventeen," she went on, "I was a married woman. Now-a-days the girls don't begin to get a _Chosan_ till they're twenty."

"We are not living in Poland," the Reb reminded her.

"What's that to do with it? It's the Jewish young men who want to marry gold."

"Why blame them? A Jewish young man can marry several pieces of gold, but since Rabbenu Gershom he can only marry one woman," said the Reb, laughing feebly and forcing his humor for his daughter's sake.

"One woman is more than thou canst support," said the Rebbitzin, irritated into Yiddish, "giving away the flesh from off thy children's bones. If thou hadst been a proper father thou wouldst have saved thy money for Hannah's dowry, instead of wasting it on a parcel of vagabond _Schnorrers_. Even so I can give her a good stock of bedding and under-linen. It's a reproach and a shame that thou hast not yet found her a husband. Thou canst find husbands quick enough for other men's daughters!"

"I found a husband for thy father's daughter," said the Reb, with a roguish gleam in his brown eyes.

"Don't throw that up to me! I could have got plenty better. And my daughter wouldn't have known the shame of finding n.o.body to marry her.

In Poland at least the youths would have flocked to marry her because she was a Rabbi's daughter, and they'd think It an honor to be a son-in-law of a Son of the Law. But in this G.o.dless country! Why in my village the Chief Rabbi's daughter, who was so ugly as to make one spit out, carried off the finest man in the district."

"But thou, my Simcha, hadst no need to be connected with Rabbonim!"