Part 49 (2/2)

said Mrs. Belcovitch. ”She is with one of her chosen young men. I am so feeble, I can hardly crawl around, and my Becky ought to carry home the cabbages. She has well-matched legs, not one a thick one and one a thin one.”'

Around the fishmongers the press was great. The fish-trade was almost monopolized by English Jews--blonde, healthy-looking fellows, with brawny, bare arms, who were approached with dread by all but the bravest foreign Jewesses. Their scale of prices and politeness varied with the status of the buyer. Esther, who had an observant eye and ear for such things, often found amus.e.m.e.nt standing un.o.btrusively by. To-night there was the usual comedy awaiting her enjoyment. A well-dressed dame came up to ”Uncle Abe's” stall, where half a dozen lots of fishy miscellanaea were spread out.

”Good evening, madam. Cold night but fine. That lot? Well, you're an old customer and fish are cheap to-day, so I can let you have 'em for a sovereign. Eighteen? Well, it's hard, but--boy! take the lady's fish.

Thank you. Good evening.”

”How much that?” says a neatly dressed woman, pointing to a precisely similar lot.

”Can't take less than nine bob. Fish are dear to-day. You won't get anything cheaper in the Lane, by G---- you won't. Five s.h.i.+llings! By my life and by my children's life, they cost me more than that. So sure as I stand here and--well, come, gie's seven and six and they're yours. You can't afford more? Well, 'old up your ap.r.o.n, old gal. I'll make it up out of the rich. By your life and mine, you've got a _Metsiah_ (bargain) there!”

Here old Mrs. Shmendrik, Shoss.h.i.+'s mother, came up, a rich Paisley shawl over her head in lieu of a bonnet. Lane women who went out without bonnets were on the same plane as Lane men who went out without collars.

One of the terrors of the English fishmongers was that they required the customer to speak English, thus fulfilling an important educative function in the community. They allowed a certain percentage of jargon-words, for they themselves took licenses in this direction, but they professed not to understand pure Yiddish.

”Abraham, 'ow mosh for dees lot,” said old Mrs. Shmendrik, turning over a third similar heap and feeling the fish all over.

”Paws off!” said Abraham roughly. ”Look here! I know the tricks of you Polakinties. I'll name you the lowest price and won't stand a farthing's bating. I'll lose by you, but you ain't, going to worry me. Eight bob!

There!”

”Avroomkely (dear little Abraham) take lebbenpence!”

”Elevenpence! By G----,” cried Uncle Abe, desperately tearing his hair.

”I knew it!” And seizing a huge plaice by the tail he whirled it round and struck Mrs. Shmendrik full in the face, shouting, ”Take that, you old witch! Sling your hook or I'll murder you.”

”Thou dog!” shrieked Mrs. Shmendrik, falling back on the more copious resources of her native idiom. ”A black year on thee! Mayest thou swell and die! May the hand that struck me rot away! Mayest thou be burned alive! Thy father was a _Gonof_ and thou art a _Gonof_ and thy whole family are _Gonovim_. May Pharaoh's ten plagues--”

There was little malice at the back of it all--the mere imaginative exuberance of a race whose early poetry consisted in saying things twice over.

Uncle Abraham menacingly caught up the plaice, crying:

”May I be struck dead on the spot, if you ain't gone in one second I won't answer for the consequences. Now, then, clear off!”

”Come, Avroomkely,” said Mrs. Shmendrik, dropping suddenly from invective to insinuativeness. ”Take fourteenpence. _Shemah, beni_!

Fourteen _Shtibbur's_ a lot of _Gelt.”_

”Are you a-going?” cried Abraham in a terrible rage. ”Ten bob's my price now.”

”Avroomkely, _noo, zoog_ (say now)! Fourteenpence 'apenny. I am a poor voman. Here, fifteenpence.”

Abraham seized her by the shoulders and pushed her towards the wall, where she cursed picturesquely. Esther thought it was a bad time to attempt to get her own s.h.i.+lling's worth--she fought her way towards another fishmonger.

There was a kindly, weather-beaten old fellow with whom Esther had often chaffered job-lots when fortune smiled on the Ansells. Him, to her joy, Esther perceived--she saw a stack of gurnards on his improvised slab, and in imagination smelt herself frying them. Then a great shock as of a sudden icy douche traversed her frame, her heart seemed to stand still.

For when she put her hand to her pocket to get her purse, she found but a thimble and a slate-pencil and a cotton handkerchief. It was some minutes before she could or would realize the truth that the four and sevenpence halfpenny on which so much depended was gone. Groceries and unleavened cakes Charity had given, raisin wine had been preparing for days, but fish and meat and all the minor accessories of a well-ordered Pa.s.sover table--these were the prey of the pickpocket. A blank sense of desolation overcame the child, infinitely more horrible than that which she felt when she spilled the soup; the gurnards she could have touched with her finger seemed far off, inaccessible; in a moment more they and all things were blotted out by a hot rush of tears, and she was jostled as in a dream hither and thither by the double stream of crowd. Nothing since the death of Benjamin had given her so poignant a sense of the hollowness and uncertainty of existence. What would her father say, whose triumphant conviction that Providence had provided for his Pa.s.sover was to be so rudely dispelled at the eleventh hour. Poor Moses!

He had been so proud of having earned enough money to make a good _Yontov_, and was more convinced than ever that given a little capital to start with he could build up a colossal business! And now she would have to go home and spoil everybody's _Yontov_, and see the sour faces of her little ones round a barren _Seder_ table. Oh, it was terrible!

and the child wept piteously, unheeded in the block, unheard amid the Babel.

<script>