Yekl Part 3

[4] A crucifix.

"You must tink you are a peach of a dancer, ain' it? Bennie can dance a ---- sight better dan you," she recurred to her English.

"Alla right!" he said tartly. "So you don' vonted?"

"O sugar! He is gettin' mad again. Vell, who is de getzke, me or you?

All right, I'll dance vid de slob. But it's only becuss you ask me, mind you!" she added fawningly.

"Dot'sh alla right!" he rejoined, with an affectation of gravity, concealing his triumph. "But you makin' too much fush. I like to shpeak plain, shee? Dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am."

The next two waltzes Mamie danced with the ungainly novice, taking exaggerated pains with him. Then came a lancers, Joe calling out the successive movements huckster fas.h.i.+on. His command was followed by less than half of the cla.s.s, however, for the greater part preferred to avail themselves of the same music for waltzing. Jake was bent upon giving Mamie what he called a "sholid good time"; and, as she shared his view that a square or fancy dance was as flimsy an affair as a stick of candy, they joined or, rather, led the seceding majority. They spun along with all-forgetful gusto; every little while he lifted her on his powerful arm and gave her a "mill," he yelping and she squeaking for sheer ecstasy, as he did so; and throughout the performance his face and his whole figure seemed to be exclaiming, "Dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am!"

Several waifs stood in a cl.u.s.ter admiring or begrudging the antics of the star couple. Among these was lanky Miss Jacobs and f.a.n.n.y the Preacher, who had shortly before made her appearance in the hall, and now stood pale and forlorn by the "ap.r.o.n-check" girl's side.

"Look at the way she is stickin' to him!" the little girl observed with envious venom, her gaze riveted to Mamie, whose shapely head was at this moment reclining on Jake's shoulders, with her eyes half shut, as if melting in a transport of bliss.

f.a.n.n.y felt cut to the quick.

"You are jealous, ain't you?" she jerked out.

"Who, me? Vy should I be jealous?" Miss Jacobs protested, colouring.

"On my part let them both go to ----. _You_ must be jealous. Here, here! See how your eyes are creeping out looking! Here, here!" she teased her offender in Yiddish, poking her little finger at her as she spoke.

"Will you shut your scurvy mouth, little piece of ugliness, you? Such a piggish ap.r.o.n check!" poor f.a.n.n.y burst out under breath, tears starting to her eyes.

"Such a nasty little runt!" another girl chimed in.

"Such a little cricket already knows what 'jealous' is!" a third of the bystanders put in. "You had better go home or your mamma will give you a spanking." Whereat the little cricket made a retort, which had better be left unrecorded.

"To think of a bit of a flea like that having so much _cheek_! Here is America for you!"

"America for a country and '_dod'll do_' [that'll do] for a language!"

observed one of the young men of the group, indulging one of the stereotype jokes of the Ghetto.

The pa.s.sage at arms drew Jake's attention to the little knot of spectators, and his eye fell on f.a.n.n.y. Whereupon he summarily relinquished his partner on the floor, and advanced toward his shopmate, who, seeing him approach, hastened to retreat to the girls'

bench, where she remained seated with a drooping head.

"h.e.l.lo, f.a.n.n.y!" he shouted briskly, coming up in front of her.

"h.e.l.lo!" she returned rigidly, her eyes fixed on the dirty floor.

"Come, give ush a tvisht, vill you?"

"But you ain't goin' by Joe to-night!" she answered, with a withering curl of her lip, her glance still on the ground. "Go to your lady, she'll be mad atch you."

"I didn't vonted to gu here, honesht, f.a.n.n.y. I o'ly come to tell Jaw shometin', an' dot'sh ull," he said guiltily.

"Why should you apologize?" she addressed the tip of her shoe in her mother tongue. "As if he was obliged to apologize to me! _For my part_ you can _dance_ with her day and night. _Vot do I care?_ As if I _cared_! I have only come to see what a _bluffer_ you are. Do you think I am a _fool_? As _smart_ as your Mamie, _anyvay_. As if I had not known he wanted to make me stay at home! What are you afraid of? Am I in your way then? As if I was in his way! What business have I to be in your way? Who is in your way?"

While she was thus speaking in her voluble, querulous, hara.s.sing manner, Jake stood with his hands in his trousers' pockets, in an att.i.tude of mock attention. Then, suddenly losing patience, he said:

"_Dot'sh alla right!_ You will finish your sermon afterward. And in the meantime _lesh have a valtz_ from the land of _valtzes_!" With which he forcibly dragged her off her seat, catching her round the waist.

"But I don't need it, I don't wish it! Go to your Mamie!" she protested, struggling. "I tell you I don't need it, I don't----" The rest of the sentence was choked off by her violent breathing; for by this time she was spinning with Jake like a top. After another moment's pretense at struggling to free herself she succ.u.mbed, and presently clung to her partner, the picture of triumph and beat.i.tude.

Meanwhile Mamie had walked up to Joe's side, and without much difficulty caused him to abandon the lancers party to themselves, and to resume with her the waltz which Jake had so abruptly broken off.

In the course of the following intermission she diplomatically seated herself beside her rival, and paraded her tranquillity of mind by accosting her with a question on shop matters. f.a.n.n.y was not blind to the manoeuvre, but her exultation was all the greater for it, and she partic.i.p.ated in the ensuing conversation with exuberant geniality.

By-and-bye they were joined by Jake.

"Vell, vill you treat, Jake?" said Mamie.

"Vot you vant, a kish?" he replied, putting his offer in action as well as in language.

Mamie slapped his arm.

"May the Angel of Death kiss you!" said her lips in Yiddish. "Try again!" her glowing face overruled them in a dialect of its own.

f.a.n.n.y laughed.

"Once I am _treating_, both _ladas_ must be _treated_ alike, _ain'

it_?" remarked the gallant, and again he proved himself as good as his word, although f.a.n.n.y struggled with greater energy and ostensibly with more real indignation.

"But vy don't you treat, you stingy loafer you?"

"Vot elsh you vant? A peench?" He was again on the point of suiting the action to the word, but Mamie contrived to repay the pinch before she had received it, and added a generous piece of profanity into the bargain. Whereupon there ensued a scuffle of a character which defies description in more senses than one.

Nevertheless Jake marched his two "ladas" up to the marble fountain, and regaled them with two cents' worth of soda each.

An hour or so later, when Jake got out into the street, his breast pocket was loaded with a fresh batch of "Professor Peltner's Grand Annual Ball" tickets, and his two arms--with Mamie and f.a.n.n.y respectively.

"As soon as I get my wages I'll call on the installment agent and give him a deposit for a steams.h.i.+p ticket," presently glimmered through his mind, as he adjusted his hold upon the two girls, snugly gathering them to his sides.

CHAPTER III.

IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST.

Jake had never even vaguely abandoned the idea of supplying his wife and child with the means of coming to join him. He was more or less prompt in remitting her monthly allowance of ten rubles, and the visit to the draft and pa.s.sage office had become part of the routine of his life. It had the invariable effect of arousing his dormant scruples, and he hardly ever left the office without ascertaining the price of a steerage voyage from Hamburg to New York. But no sooner did he emerge from the dingy bas.e.m.e.nt into the noisy scenes of Ess.e.x Street, than he would consciously let his mind wander off to other topics.

Formerly, during the early part of his sojourn in Boston, his landing place, where some of his townsfolk resided and where he had pa.s.sed his first two years in America, he used to mention his Gitl and his Yossele so frequently and so enthusiastically, that some wags among the Hanover Street tailors would sing "Yekl and wife and the baby" to the tune of Molly and I and the Baby. In the natural course of things, however, these retrospective effusions gradually became far between, and since he had s.h.i.+fted his abode to New York he carefully avoided all reference to his antecedents. The Jewish quarter of the metropolis, which is a vast and compact city within a city, offers its denizens incomparably fewer chances of contact with the English-speaking portion of the population than any of the three separate Ghettos of Boston. As a consequence, since Jake's advent to New York his pa.s.sion for American sport had considerably cooled off. And, to make up for this, his enthusiastic nature before long found vent in dancing and in a general life of gallantry. His proved knack with the gentle s.e.x had turned his head and now cost him all his leisure time. Still, he would occasionally attend some variety show in which boxing was the main drawing card, and somehow managed to keep track of the salient events of the sporting world generally. Judging from his unstaid habits and happy-go-lucky abandon to the pleasures of life, his present a.s.sociates took it for granted that he was single, and instead of twitting him with the feigned a.s.sumption that he had deserted a family--a piece of burlesque as old as the Ghetto--they would quiz him as to which of his girls he was "dead struck" on, and as to the day fixed for the wedding.

On more than one such occasion he had on the tip of his tongue the seemingly jocular question, "How do you know I am not married already?"

But he never let the sentence cross his lips, and would, instead, observe facetiously that he was not "shtruck on nu goil," and that he was dead struck on all of them in "whulshale." "I hate retail beesnesh, shee? Dot'sh a' kin' a man _I_ am!" One day, in the course of an intimate conversation with Joe, Jake, dropping into a philosophical mood, remarked:

"It's something like a baker, _ain't it_? The more _cakes_ he has the less he likes them. You and I have a _lot_ of girls; that's why we don't _care_ for any one of them."