Part 12 (2/2)

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!”

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