The Ghetto Part 6

AARON.

[_Putting away packet of wool._] Oh, well, if you don't know a good thing when you see it. Ah! Those cakes of yours, Esther; I remember them, I remember them of old! Let me send my daughter to learn how to make them, will you?

ESTHER.

Certainly.

AARON.

 

That's the only thing under the sky that my daughter can't do to perfection. Well, how is that son of yours?

SACHEL.

Where is he, you had better ask! Unless I stay up till midnight, I never meet him.

AARON.

Oh, well, a young fellow has to have his day I suppose.

SACHEL.

Did I have my day? I was one of eight souls who crawled and starved in a room half as big as my shop parlour. I have known hunger to gnaw at my belly, till I cried myself to sleep, and dreamt that I was disembowelled. And my grandmother died, and my little sister too, from sheer want. Sheer want! At his age I could have bought and sold him twice a day. The fellow is a worthless vagabond!

AARON.

H'm. I suppose, if the truth be said, he _is_ a worthless vagabond!

SACHEL.

You--what affair is it of yours? You would give half you have--and that wouldn't be much--to have him in your household!

AARON.

Ha! My daughter has no haste to wed.

SACHEL.

Who said anything about wedding? It is you that seem to have the subject on your mind.

AARON.

With my girl? With Rebecca? You rely too much upon your son's good looks and upon the lot of money he will have.

SACHEL.

Who said he would have a lot of money? I am not dead yet.

AARON.

Even so, your only child is not going empty-handed.

SACHEL.

He will go empty-handed, by the Commandments, if he does not obey his father! And, in any case, I have not slaved my eyes away that another man's child may be fed.

_Enter REBECCA._

AARON.

Still he must marry some day.

SACHEL.

Marry whom? No girl who does not bring twelve thousand guilders shall marry my son!

[_Exit ESTHER._

[_REBECCA pauses at the bridge un.o.bserved and interested._

REBECCA.

[_Aside._] They are getting on!

AARON.

[_Swelling with indignation._] Twelve thousand guilders! Twelve thousand guilders! A snap of the finger! And is your son a prince? You talk like an imbecile. Suppose some one was fool enough to give his daughter such a dowry, what would you give your son?

SACHEL.

Nothing! He has his share in the business--or will have.

AARON.

Oh, you're enough to make a man jump into the sea!

SACHEL.

Did I ask anything of you? Why should you jump into the sea?

AARON.

Eh, what? Rebecca! How did _you_ happen to be here?

SACHEL.

[_Ironically._] Yes, how did you happen to be here?

REBECCA.