Part 34 (2/2)

”No, of course not. I don't mean a widow. It is a maiden I have in my eye.”

”Nonsense, what maiden would have me?” said Shoss.h.i.+, a note of eagerness mingling with the diffidence of the words.

”What maiden? _Gott in Himmel_! A hundred. A fine, strong, healthy young man like you, who can make a good living!”

Shoss.h.i.+ put down his plane and straightened himself. There was a moment of silence. Then his frame collapsed again into a limp ma.s.s. His head drooped over his left shoulder. ”This is all foolishness you talk, the maidens make mock.”

”Be not a piece of clay! I know a maiden who has you quite in affection!”

The blush which had waned mantled in a full flood. Shoss.h.i.+ stood breathless, gazing half suspiciously, half credulously at his strictly honorable Mephistopheles.

It was about seven o'clock and the moon was a yellow crescent in the frosty heavens. The sky was punctured with clear-cut constellations. The back yard looked poetic with its blend of shadow and moonlight.

”A beautiful fine maid,” said Sugarman ecstatically, ”with pink cheeks and black eyes and forty pounds dowry.”

The moon sailed smilingly along. The water was running into the cistern with a soothing, peaceful sound. Shoss.h.i.+ consented to go and see Mr.

Belcovitch.

Mr. Belcovitch made no parade. Everything was as usual. On the wooden table were two halves of squeezed lemons, a piece of chalk, two cracked cups and some squashed soap. He was not overwhelmed by Shoss.h.i.+, but admitted he was solid. His father was known to be pious, and both his sisters had married reputable men. Above all, he was not a Dutchman.

Shoss.h.i.+ left No. 1 Royal Street, Belcovitch's accepted son-in-law.

Esther met him on the stairs and noted the radiance on his pimply countenance. He walked with his head almost erect. Shoss.h.i.+ was indeed very much in love and felt that all that was needed for his happiness was a sight of his future wife.

But he had no time to go and see her except on Sunday afternoons, and then she was always out. Mrs. Belcovitch, however, made amends by paying him considerable attention. The sickly-looking little woman chatted to him for hours at a time about her ailments and invited him to taste her medicine, which was a compliment Mrs. Belcovitch pa.s.sed only to her most esteemed visitors. By and by she even wore her night-cap in his presence as a sign that he had become one of the family. Under this encouragement Shoss.h.i.+ grew confidential and imparted to his future mother-in-law the details of his mother's disabilities. But he could mention nothing which Mrs. Belcovitch could not cap, for she was a woman extremely catholic in her maladies. She was possessed of considerable imagination, and once when f.a.n.n.y selected a bonnet for her in a milliner's window, the girl had much difficulty in persuading her it was not inferior to what turned out to be the reflection of itself in a side mirror.

”I'm so weak upon my legs,” she would boast to Shoss.h.i.+. ”I was born with ill-matched legs. One is a thick one and one is a thin one, and so one goes about.”

Shoss.h.i.+ expressed his sympathetic admiration and the courts.h.i.+p proceeded apace. Sometimes f.a.n.n.y and Pesach Weingott would be at home working, and they were very affable to him. He began to lose something of his shyness and his lurching gait, and he quite looked forward to his weekly visit to the Belcovitches. It was the story of Cymon and Iphigenia over again.

Love improved even his powers of conversation, for when Belcovitch held forth at length Shoss.h.i.+ came in several times with ”So?” and sometimes in the right place. Mr. Belcovitch loved his own voice and listened to it, the arrested press-iron in his hand. Occasionally in the middle of one of his harangues it would occur to him that some one was talking and wasting time, and then he would say to the room, ”Shah! Make an end, make an end,” and dry up. But to Shoss.h.i.+ he was especially polite, rarely interrupting himself when his son-in-law elect was hanging on his words. There was an intimate tender tone about these _causeries_.

”I should like to drop down dead suddenly,” he would say with the air of a philosopher, who had thought it all out. ”I shouldn't care to lie up in bed and mess about with medicine and doctors. To make a long job of dying is so expensive.”

”So?” said Shoss.h.i.+.

”Don't worry, Bear! I dare say the devil will seize you suddenly,”

interposed Mrs. Belcovitch drily.

”It will not be the devil,” said Mr. Belcovitch, confidently and in a confidential manner. ”If I had died as a young man, Shoss.h.i.+, it might have been different.”

Shoss.h.i.+ p.r.i.c.ked up his ears to listen to the tale of Bear's wild cubhood.

”One morning,” said Belcovitch, ”in Poland, I got up at four o'clock to go to Supplications for Forgiveness. The air was raw and there was no sign of dawn! Suddenly I noticed a black pig trotting behind me. I quickened my pace and the black pig did likewise. I broke into a run and I heard the pig's paws patting furiously upon the hard frozen ground. A cold sweat broke out all over me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the pig's eyes burning like red-hot coals in the darkness. Then I knew that the Not Good One was after me. 'Hear, O Israel,' I cried. I looked up to the heavens but there was a cold mist covering the stars. Faster and faster I flew and faster and faster flew the demon pig. At last the _Shool_ came in sight. I made one last wild effort and fell exhausted upon the holy threshold and the pig vanished.”

”So?” said Shoss.h.i.+, with a long breath.

”Immediately after _Shool_ I spake with the Rabbi and he said 'Bear, are thy _Tephillin_ in order?' So I said 'Yea, Rabbi, they are very large and I bought them of the pious scribe, Naphtali, and I look to the knots weekly.' But he said, 'I will examine them.' So I brought them to him and he opened the head-phylactery and lo! in place of the holy parchment he found bread crumbs.”

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