Part 12 (1/2)
”What d'ye mean, to-morrow is fixed for the wedding?” Fatkin retorted indignantly. ”Do you want to get married on my money yet?”
”I don't want the money to get married on,” Sternsilver protested. ”I want it for something else again.”
”My worries! What you want it for?” Fatkin concluded, with a note of finality in his tone. ”I would _oser_ give you twenty-five cents.”
”'S enough, Fatkin!” Sternsilver declared. ”I heard enough from you already. You was the one which got me into this _Schlemazel_ and now you should get me out again.”
”What do you mean, getting you into a _Schlemazel_?”
”You know very well what I mean,” Philip replied; ”and, furthermore, Fatkin, you are trying to make too free with me. Who are you, anyhow, you should turn me down when I ask you for a few days twenty-five dollars? You act so independent, like you would be the foreman.”
Hillel nodded slowly, not without dignity.
”Never mind, Sternsilver,” he said; ”if my family would got a relation, y'understand, which he is working in Poliakoff's Bank and he is got to run away on account he is missing in five thousand rubles, which it is the same name Sternsilver, and everybody in Kovno--the children even--knows about it, understand me, I wouldn't got to be so stuck up at all.”
Sternsilver flushed indignantly.
”Do you mean to told me,” he demanded, ”that I got in my family such a man which he is stealing five thousand rubles, Fatkin?”
”That's what I said,” Hillel retorted.
”Well, it only goes to show what a liar you are,” Sternsilver rejoined.
”Not only was it he stole ten thousand rubles, y'understand, but the bank was run by a feller by the name Louis Moser.”
”All right,” Fatkin said as he started up his sewing-machine by way of signifying that the interview was at an end. ”All right, Sternsilver; if you got such a relation which he _ganvered_ ten thousand rubles, y'understand, borrow from him the twenty-five dollars.”
Thus Sternsilver was obliged to amend his resolution by subst.i.tuting Jersey City for Philadelphia as the seat of his new start in life; and at half-past eleven that evening, when the good ferryboat _Cincinnati_ drew out of her slip at the foot of Desbrosses Street, a short, thick-set figure leaned over her bow and gazed sadly, perhaps for the last time, at the irregular sky-line of Manhattan. It was Sternsilver.
When Mr. Seiden arrived at his factory the following morning he found his entire force of operators gathered on the stairway and overflowing on to the sidewalk.
”What is the matter you are striking on me?” he cried.
”Striking!” Hillel Fatkin said. ”What do you mean, striking on you, Mr.
Seiden? We ain't striking. Sternsilver ain't come down this morning and n.o.body was here he should open up the shop.”
”Do you mean to told me Sternsilver ain't here?” Seiden exclaimed.
”All right; then I'm a liar, Mr. Seiden,” Hillel replied. ”You asked me a simple question, Mr. Seiden, and I give you a plain, straightforward answer. My _Grossvater_, _olav hasholam_, which he was a very learned man--for years a rabbi in Tels.h.i.+--used to say: 'If some one tells you you are lying, understand me, and----”
At this juncture Seiden opened the factory door and the entire mob of workmen plunged forward, sweeping Hillel along, with his quotation from the ethical maxims of his grandfather only half finished. For the next quarter of an hour Seiden busied himself in starting up his factory and then he repaired to the office to open the mail.
In addition to three or four acceptances of invitations there was a dirty envelope bearing on its upper left-hand corner the mark of a third-rate Jersey City hotel. Seiden ripped it open and unfolded a sheet of letter paper badly scrawled in Roman capitals as follows:
”December 12.
”I. SEIDEN:
”We are come to tell you which Mr. Philip Sternsilver is gone out West to Kenses Citter. So don't fool yourself he would not be at the wedding. What do you think a fine man like him would marry such a cow like Miss Bessie Saphir?