Читать книгу The Collection of Jewish Stories - Isaac Loeb Peretz - Страница 7

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(Told by a Woman)

I remember myself at the time when I played marbles and made mud cakes in the yard; in winter I sat all day indoors and rocked a little brother who was born sickly, and who lingered on into his seventh year, when he died of a decline.

In summer, whenever it was sunny, the poor little creature sat in the yard, warmed itself in the sun, and watched me playing marbles.

In winter it never left its cradle, and I told it stories and sang to it. The other boys all went to Cheder.

Mother was always busy, she had at least ten Parnossehs. Poor mother! she peddled, she baked gingerbread, she helped at circumcisions and weddings, she was a Tikerin, a grave-measurer,10 recited prayers, and bought in provisions for better-class households.

Father earned three rubles a week keeping accounts for Reb Zeinwill Terkelbaum in the forest. And those were the good times; teachers were paid, and the rent, too—almost on rent-day,—and we never had to eat our bread dry.

Sometimes mother would bake a cake for supper; then there was quite a feast. But that happened seldom.

Mother usually came home late and tired; often with red eyes and in a bitter mood. She would complain that the well-to-do ladies owed her money. They would get her to lay out her money for them, and then tell her to come for the money to-morrow, the day after; meantime more purchases were made, and when it came to a reckoning, the house-mistress could not remember if she hadn't already paid for the day before yesterday's quarter of a pound of butter—and she "put it aside" to ask her husband about it, who was there at the time—he has a tenacious memory, and will certainly remember how it was. Next morning it turns out the husband came home too late from the house-of-study, and she forgot to ask him. On the third day she says, with a pleased expression, that she asked her husband about it, and he was angry with her for bothering him, "as if he had nothing better to do than attend to the affairs of a couple of women;" and it is settled that she, the madam, shall try to remember herself.

Presently she begins to feel sure the butter was included in the account after all; a little later, she is ready to build on it; and when poor mother reminded her of the butter again, she was called a pert hussy, who was trying to get an extra gulden by trickery—and she was assured that if they heard any more about the butter, she need never show herself there again.

Mother, who was herself the daughter of well-to-do parents, and would have been a lady herself, were it not for the nobleman who took her dowry, could not accept this meekly. She frequently came home with swollen eyelids, threw herself on the bed with a burst of tears, and lay there weeping bitterly till her heart was eased, when she stood up and cooked us Kliskelech11 with beans.

At other times she vented her anger on us; that is, on me; she never scolded the sick Beril, and the other boys only very seldom—they, poor things, used to come home from Cheder with their cheeks pinched brown and blue and with swollen under-lids; I, on the other hand, came in for many an undeserved tweak to my hair or else a slap.

"You were not so sick all this time, but you could have laid the fire, put on a kettleful of water, were you?" And if I had done it, I caught it worse: "Look at my fine lady! Goes and makes a fire and lets the wood burn away for nothing and nobody—never a thought of me toiling all day! Shell be the ruin of us!"

Sometimes when father was at work in the woods, mother would sit down on the bed with her face to the window and complain, as she stared before her: "What does he care! There he sits out in the woods like a lord, breathes fresh air, lies about on the grass, eats sour milk, perhaps even cream, how do I know? and here am I, skin and bone!"

And with all that, those were good days. We never knew want, and after a week of little worries came a cheerful, or at all events a peaceful, Sabbath. Father often came home for it, and mother was busy all about the house and smiled to herself in secret.

Friday evening, just before blessing the candles, she would often kiss me on the head. I knew what that meant. Because if it so happened that father did not come home, then I was an idle hussy. Even when mother pulled out half my hair while combing it, and gave me a few slaps on the shoulders besides, I didn't cry. My childish heart felt that it was not me she meant, but her unhappy fate. When the wood was all cut down, my father stayed at home, and then food began to grow scarce. It was my father, my mother, and myself, really, who hadn't enough; the other children knew very little about it. Beril wanted next to nothing—took a cup of porridge when it was given him, and stared all the time at the ceiling. The other poor children had to go to Cheder, "they must have something hot," but I often went hungry.

Father and mother were always recalling by-gone days with tears in their eyes. I, on the contrary, was happier in the bad times than I had been in the good. Now that bread was often lacking in the house, I received a double portion of my mother's love; she never pulled a hair out of my head when combing it, or hit my thin bones; my father would stroke my head at supper and play with me, so that I should not observe the smallness of my share of food; and I was quite proud whenever there came a fast, because I fasted with my parents, like a grown-up girl.

It was about that time that Beril died. It happened this way: Mother woke up one morning and said to father across the bed: "Do you know, Beril must be better; he has slept the whole night through."

I heard it—I have always been a light sleeper—sprang joyfully from my bed on the chest, and ran to look at my "pet of a brother" (that is how I called him—I was so fond of him). I hoped to see a smile on the wan little face, such as came over it once a year—but it was a dead face I saw.

There was a week's mourning.

After that my father's health failed, and the Röfeh began to come to the house.

So long as there was money to pay his fee, the old Röfeh came in person; later on, when all the bed-clothes and the hanging-lamp, with father's book-case, which for a while my mother wouldn't touch, had gone in medicines, the Röfeh began to send his "boy," the assistant.

The "boy" displeased my mother dreadfully; he had merely a suspicion of pointed whiskers, was dressed like a Gentile, and was continually introducing Polish words into his speech.

I was afraid of him, to this day I don't know why. But when I knew he was to come, I ran and hid in the yard, and waited there till he had gone.

One day a neighbor fell ill, also a poor man, and one whose furniture had apparently gone, too, and the "boy" (to this day I don't know what his name was) went to him straight from our house. Crossing the yard, he found me sitting on a log.

I looked down. Aware of his approach, I felt a chill run through me, and my heart began to beat faster.

He came up to me, took me by the chin, lifted my face and said:

"A pretty girl like you ought not to have untidy hair! And she ought not to be ashamed before any lad in the world."

He let me go, and I ran into the house. I felt that all the blood had rushed into my face at once. I squeezed into the darkest corner behind the stove, under pretense of counting the soiled linen. That was on a Wednesday.

On Friday, for the first time, I reminded my mother of my own accord that my head needed washing, that it was frowzy.

"More shame to me!" exclaimed my mother, wringing her hands. "I haven't combed her hair these three weeks."

Suddenly she grew angry: "Lazy thing!" she cried; "a great girl like you and not able to comb her own hair! Another at your age would have washed the other children."

"Sarah'le, don't scream," begged father; but her anger only grew more violent.

"Lazy girl, you shall comb your own hair, and this minute. Do you hear?"

But I was afraid to go to the fire-place, where the hot water stood, because I had to pass mother, who would have given me a slap. Father saved me, as usual.

"Sarah'le," he moaned, "don't scream, my head does ache so."

That was enough. My mother's anger vanished. I ran freely across the room to the hot water.

As I awkwardly combed my hair, I saw my mother go up to my father and point at me with a heavy sigh:

"Lord of the world, the poor child grows taller every day," she whispered to my father, but my ears caught every word. "Fine as gold—and what's to be done with her?"

Father answered with a still heavier sigh.

The Röfeh assured us several times that father had nothing serious the matter with him. Worry of mind had gone to his liver, and this had swollen and pressed against the heart; nothing worse. He was to drink milk and not trouble any more, walk out into the street, talk with his friends, and find something to do; but father said his feet refused to carry him. Why, I only knew later.

Early one summer morning I was awakened by the following conversation between my parents:

"Did you knock yourself up in the woods?" asked my mother.

"Looks like it," answered my father. "They were cutting down in twenty places at once. You see, the wood is the nobleman's, but the peasants have certain privileges;12 they get the twigs that fall and lie about on the ground, and the wood of any tree that is struck by lightning. Well, when the trees are cut down they lose their privileges, and have to buy wood for building and for heating purposes. So, of course, they wanted to stop it and bring down a commissioner. But they set about it too late. Reb Zeinwill no sooner saw them scratching their heads than he gave orders to put on forty axes. It was a Gehenna! They were felling in perhaps twenty different places, and one had to be everywhere. Well, what could you expect? My feet swelled like toadstools."

"Sinner that I am," sighed my mother. "And there was I fancying you had nothing to do."

"Nothing at all," my father smiled sadly; "I was only on my feet from dawn to dark."

"And three rubles a week wages," added my mother, angrily.

"He consented to raise them; meanwhile, you know, the timber raft was sunk, and he told me he was a poor man."

"And you believe it?"

"It may be."

"He is always saying that" (angrily), "and yet the fortune goes on increasing."

"With God's help," sighed father.

There was silence for a while.

"Do you know what he is doing now?" asked father, who had scarcely left the house for a year.

"What should he? He trades in flax and eggs; he has a public-house."

"And she?"

"Sick, poor thing."

"A pity; she was a good woman."

"A jewel. The only lady who was not allowed to put up a groschen's worth of preserves! She would have paid me regularly, but she hadn't much to say in the matter."

"I fancy she is his third wife," said my father.

"She is," my mother agreed.

"Well, Sarah, here we have a rich Jew, one who might live comfortably, and, lo and behold, he has no luck with his wives—we all have our troubles."

"Such a young woman, too," said my mother; "not more than two or three and twenty."

"There's no accounting for these things; he must be seventy, and he's solid as iron."

"You don't say so."

"And no spectacles."

"And when he walks, he shakes the planks."

"And here am I in bed."

These last words gave me a pang.

"God will help," mother consoled him.

"Only she—she—," sighed my mother, and glanced toward my box, "she is growing taller and taller, do you see?"

"Of course, I see!"

"And a face—bright as the sun."

There is a silence.

"Sarah'le, we are not doing our duty."

"In what respect?"

"In respect to her. How old were you when you married?"

"I was younger than she is."

"Well?"

"Well—what?"

At that moment there were two raps at the shutter.

Mother sprang out of bed; in one minute she had torn down the string by which the shutter was held to, and thrown open the window, which had long been without a fastening.

"What is it?" she called into the street.

"Rebekah Zeinwill is dead!"

Mother left the window.

"Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my father. "To die is nothing."

"Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my mother. "We were just talking about her."

* * * * *

I was very restless in those days. I don't know myself what ailed me.

Sometimes I would lie awake all night. Hammers beat in my temples, and my heart pained me as though filled with fear, or else with a longing after something for which it had no name. At other times it grew so warm and tender, I could have taken everything and everyone round me in my arms and kissed them and hugged them.

Only whom? The little brothers wouldn't let me—even the five-year old Yochanan butted and screamed; he wouldn't play with a girl. My mother, besides my being afraid of her, was always cross and overdriven; my father—growing from bad to worse.

In a short time he was as gray as a pigeon, his face shrivelled like parchment, and his eyes had such a helpless, pleading stare, it needed only one glance at them to send me out of the room crying.

Then I used to think of Beril. I could have told him everything, I could have hugged and kissed him. Now he lay in the cold earth, and I cried more bitterly than ever.

Indeed, the tears often came without any reason at all. Sometimes I would be looking out of the window into the yard and see the moon swimming nearer and nearer to the whitewashed fence opposite, and not able to swim over it.

And I would be seized with pity for the moon and feel a sudden contraction of the heart, and the tears flowed and flowed.

Other days I was listless. I hung round with no energy and a pale face with drooping eyelids. There was a rushing in my ears, my head was heavy, and life seemed so little worth living, it would be best to die.

At these times I envied Beril his lot. He lay in the earth, where it is quiet.

And I often dreamt that I was dead; that I lay in the grave, or else that I was flying about in heaven in a shift with my hair loose, and that I looked down to see what people were about on the earth.

Just about then I lost all the companions with whom I used to play at marbles in days gone by, and they were not replaced. One of them already went out on Sabbath with a satin skirt and a watch and chain. It was soon to be her wedding. Others were "Kallah-Mädlich";13 match-makers and future fathers-in-law were "breaking in the doors," and there was combing and washing and dressing, when I was still going barefoot, in an old bodice and a short skirt and a faded cotton waist, which had burst in several places right in front, and which I had patched with calico of a different color. The "Kallah-Mädlich" avoided me, and I was ashamed to play with younger children; besides, marbles amused me no longer. So I never showed myself in the street by day. Mother never sent me out on errands, and one day when I intended to go somewhere, she prevented me. I often used to slip out after dark, and walk about behind the house near the barns, or else sit down beside the river.

In summer time, I sat there till quite late at night.

Some evenings, mother would come out after me. She never came up to me, but would stand in the gateway, look round—and I could almost hear the sigh she gave as she watched me in the distance.

That also came to an end in time; I would sit by myself there for hours, listening to the noise of the little mill stream, watching the frogs jump out of the grass into the water, or following a cloud through the sky.

At times I would fall half asleep with my eyes open.

One evening I heard a melancholy song. The voice was young and fresh, and yet the song thrilled me with emotion; it was a Jewish song.

"That is the Röfeh-boy singing," I said to myself. "Another would have sung hymns, not a song."

I also said to myself that one should go indoors, so as not to hear it or meet the Röfeh-boy, and yet I remained sitting; I was in a dreamy state, with no energy to move, and I sat on, though my heart was beating anxiously.

The song drew nearer; it was coming from the opposite bank—across the bridge.

Already I hear steps in the sand, I want to run away, but my limbs are disobedient, and I remain sitting.

At last he comes to the spot where I am.

"Is it you, Leah?"

I do not answer.

The noise in my ears is louder than ever, the hammering in my temples, busier, and it seems to me the kindest and sweetest voice I ever heard.

My not answering matters little to him, he sits down beside me on the log, and looks me straight in the face.

I do not see his look, because I dare not raise my eyes, but I feel how it is scorching me.

"You are a pretty girl, Leah," he says, "it's a pity to hide yourself."

A dreadful crying fit seizes hold of me, and I run away.

The next evening I stayed at home, and the one after. On the third, Friday night, my heart was so heavy, I had to go out—I felt I should suffocate indoors. He was apparently waiting for me in the shadow round a corner of the house, for hardly had I sat down in my accustomed place when he stood before me as though he had grown out of the ground.

"Don't run away from me, Leah," he begged gently. "Believe me, I will do you no harm."

His gentle, earnest voice touched me. Then he began to sing a low, sad song, and again the tears came into my eyes. I could not keep them back, and began to cry quietly.

"Why are you crying, Leah," he broke off, and took my hand.

"You sing so sadly," I answered, and withdrew my hand from his.

"I am an orphan," he said, "unhappy—among strangers."

Someone appeared in the street and we fled in different directions.

I learned the song and used to hum it softly over to myself in bed; I went to sleep with it, and I rose with it next morning. And yet I frequently had remorse, and cried because I had made acquaintance with a Röfeh-boy who dressed German fashion and shaved his chin. Had he dressed like the old Röfeh, had he at least been pious! I knew that if my father heard of it, the grief would kill him; my mother would do herself a mischief, and the secret lay on my heart like a stone.

I go up to my father's bed to hand him something, and my mother comes in from the street, and my sin overwhelms me, so that hands and feet shake, and all the color goes from my face. And yet every night I consented to come out again the next, and I felt no desire to run away from him now. He never took my hand again and told me I was a pretty girl. He only talked with me, taught me songs; but one day he brought me a bit of St. John's Bread.

"Eat it, Leah."

I wouldn't take it.

"Why not?" he asked sadly. "Why will you not take anything from me?"

I blurted out that I would rather have a piece of bread.

* * * * *

How long our sitting together and singing lasted, I don't know.

But one day he came sadder than usual; I saw it in his face and asked him what was the matter.

"I have to go."

"Where to?" I asked faintly.

"To the recruiting station."

I caught hold of his hand.

"You are going into the army?"

"No," he replied, and pressed my fingers, "I am not strong. I suffer from the heart. I shall not be taken for a soldier, but I must present myself."

"Shall you come back?"

"Of course!"

We are both silent.

"It will only be for a few weeks," he said.

I was silent, and he looked at me pleadingly.

"Shall you miss me?"

"Yes." I scarcely heard my own reply.

Another silence.

"Let us say good-bye."

My hand still lay in his.

"Go in health," I said in a trembling voice.

He leaned over, kissed me, and vanished.

I stood there a long time like one tipsy.

"Leah!" It was mother's voice, but the old, gentle, almost singing voice of the days when father was well.

"Leah'she!"

I had not been called that for a long time. One more quiver, and I ran indoors with lips still burning from his kiss. I scarcely recognized the room. On the table stood two strange candle-sticks with lighted candles, and beside them, brandy and gingerbread. Father was sitting on a chair propped up with cushions, joy smiling out of every wrinkle in his face. And round the table were strange chairs with strange people—and mother caught me in her arms and kissed me.

"Good luck to you, daughter, my little daughter, Leah'she! good luck to you!"

I don't understand, but I am frightened, and my heart beats wildly. When my mother let me loose, my father called me. I had no strength to stand, and I dropped on my knees beside him, and laid my head in his lap. He stroked my head, curled my hair with his fingers.

"My child you will never suffer want and hunger again, you will never go barefoot—you will be a lady—you will be rich—you will pay for the teaching of your little brothers—so that they shall not be turned out of the Cheder—you will help us, too—I-shall get well."

"And do you know who the suitor is?" asked mother, excitedly. "Reb Zeinwill! fancy, Reb Zeinwill! He sent the match-maker himself."

* * * * *

I don't know what happened to me, but I woke to find myself on my bed in broad daylight.

"God be praised!" cried my mother.

"Praised be His dear Name!" said my father.

And they continued to embrace and kiss me. They even offered me preserves.... Would I like syrup in water?... Perhaps a sip of wine?

I shut my eyes again, and was choked with a terrible fit of crying.

"Never mind, never mind," said my mother, joyfully. "Poor child, let her have her cry out. It is our fault for telling her the good news all at once, so suddenly. She might have burst a vein, which heaven forbid. But God be praised! Yes, cry your heart out. May all sorrow swim away with the tears, and a new life begin for you—a new life."

Man has two angels, a good and a bad, and I felt convinced that the good angel bade me forget my Röfeh-boy, eat Reb Zeinwill's preserves, drink his syrup in water, and dress at his expense, while the bad angel urged me to tell my parents, once and for all, that I would not consent, that on no account would I consent.

I did not know Reb Zeinwill, unless I had seen him once and then forgotten—or else not known who it was—but I disliked him.

The second night I dreamed that I stood under the wedding canopy.

The bridegroom is Reb Zeinwill, and they lead me round him seven times, but my feet are as if paralyzed, and they carry me in their hands.

Then I am taken home.

My mother comes to meet me with a cake, and they are bringing the golden broth.14

I am afraid to raise my eyes. I feel sure I shall see before me a blind man, both eyes gone, with a dreadfully long nose—a cold shudder runs through me—but someone whispers in my ear:

"Leah, what a pretty girl you are!" And the voice is not that of an old man; it is his voice. I open my eyes a little way; it is his face: "Sst!" he whispers; "don't tell! I enticed Reb Zeinwill into the wood, put him into a sack, tied it up, and threw it into the river (this was out of a story my mother once told me), and I am here in his place!"

I woke trembling.

Pale moonshine was lighting the whole room through a chink in the shutter, and I noticed, for the first time, that the lamp was once more hanging from the ceiling, and that my parents were sleeping in bed-clothes. Father smiled in his sleep; mother breathed quietly, and the good angel said to me:

"If you are obedient and pious, your father will recover his health; your mother will not have to toil into her old age, and your little brothers will become learned men—rabbis, authorities in the Law, great, great Jews. Their school fees will be paid."

"Only," put in the bad angel, "Reb Zeinwill will kiss you with his damp whiskers, and clasp you in his bony arms; and he will torment you as he did the other wives, and send you to an early grave, and he will come back and grieve, and he will teach you no more songs, or sit with you evening after evening—you will be sitting with Reb Zeinwill!"

No! not if the heavens should fall about the earth! Tear up the contract!

I did not sleep again till morning. My mother was the first to wake. I wanted to talk with her, but I was accustomed to go for help to my father.

There, he wakes.

"Do you know, Sarah'le," are his first words, "I feel so well to-day. You will see, I shall go out."

"Praise to His dear Name! It is all owing to our daughter's good fortune, all thanks to her merit."

"And the Röfeh was quite right: the milk agrees very well with me."

They are silent, and the good angel repeats:

"If you are good and pious, your father will get well, while if your lips let fall wicked words, he will decline and die."

"Listen, Sarah'le," continued my father, "you are not to go about peddling any more."

"What do you mean?"

"What I say! I will go to-day to Reb Zeinwill; he will take me into a business, or lend me a few rubles, and we will have a little shop; I will serve a bit, and you a bit—and later I will deal in produce."

"God grant it."

"He will grant it. If you want a dress for the wedding, buy it—even two dresses. Why not? He said we were to get what we wanted. You are not going in your old clothes?"

"Go along with you! The thing is to have something made for the children. Reuben has been going barefoot—last week he got a splinter in his sole, and he is limping now. Winter is coming on, too, they want coats and shirts and warm cloaks."

"Buy, buy!"

"You hear?" said the good angel. "If you speak out, your mother will have no new dress, and you know the old one is falling to bits; the little brothers will run barefoot to Cheder in the sharpest frost, and in summer they will get splinters in their soles."

"I tell you what it is," said my mother, "everything ought to be talked over and settled in detail, because he is not a very good man. Whatever settlement he intends to make on her ought to be put down in writing. There will be any quantity to inherit. Even if it isn't a deed, let him give a written promise, because how long is such a one likely to live? Another year or so!"

"One can live a long time in comfort!" sighed my father.

"A long time! Remember, he's seventy, and sometimes he looks dead behind his ears."

And the bad angel whispered: "If you keep silence, you will marry a dead man; you will live with a corpse; they will lead you to the bridal chamber with a lifeless body."

Mother sighed.

"Everything is in God's hands," said my father.

Mother sighed again, and father said:

"And what could we do? Anything better? If I only could have gotten well, and earned something, and we had had at least dry bread in the house——"

He broke off; I had a feeling that something wept within him.

"If she had been a year or two younger, I would have risked it all—perhaps even bought lottery tickets."

And I said nothing.

* * * * *

My seventy-year-old bridegroom gave my father a few hundred gulden for clothes for the wedding, and me a check for one hundred and fifty gulden.

People said, "A fine match."

I recovered my companions. The one with the satin skirt and the watch and chain came two or three times a day.

She was the happiest creature in the world, because I had caught her up, and we were to be married in the same month. I had others, but this one stuck to me like a leech. The others were "common girls, there was no saying how long they wouldn't have to wait!"

Rivkah's fiancé was a stranger, but she was to board at home for two or three years. During that time we would be close friends; she would run in to me for chicory-coffee; I to her on Sabbath, after the mid-day rest, for chicken-broth and pear cider.

"And when I am expecting a baby," said Rivkah once, and her face shone, "you will come and sit by me?"

I made no reply.

"Well," exclaimed Rivkah, "why so sad? There's no saying but you, too.... Cheer up!" she went on, "if God will, one can fire off a broom. Besides, how long do you suppose it will last? No one can live forever. My word, what a young widow you will make, to be sure. Won't you be run after!"

Rivkah wished Reb Zeinwill no harm.

"To be sure, he's a wretch; he tormented that other woman; but she was sickly, and you are sound as a nut. He will treat you well enough."

* * * * *

He came back!

My father was better, but he fancied a little dry-cupping—he was afraid, otherwise, of going out. He felt that after lying down so long, and then sitting for so many weeks on end, the blood had all settled in one place, and should be stirred. Also his shoulders ached, and dry-cupping is the sovereign remedy for that.

I shook as with ague. When there was dry-cupping to be done, the "boy" came, not the Röfeh himself.

"Will you go and fetch the Röfeh?" asked my father.

"The idea!" exclaimed my mother. "A Kallah-Mädel!"

She went herself.

"Why have you grown so pale?" asked my father, in alarm.

"Nothing."

"It's some days now," he persisted.

"You imagine it, Tate."15

"Your mother says the same."

"Eh!"

"To-day"—father wanted to cheer me up—"they are coming to measure you for the wedding dress."

I was silent.

"Aren't you pleased?" he asked.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"You don't even know what they are making you!"

"But they've measured me once already."

Hereupon my mother came in with the Röfeh himself.

I felt relieved, and yet all the time something mourned within me: "Perhaps you will never see him again."

"What a world it is!" Thus the Röfeh coming in panting and groaning. "Reb Zeinwill marries a young girl, and the treasurer's Leezerl has turned ascetic and run away from his wife."

"Leezerl!" cried mother, in astonishment.

"As I tell you; and here am I at sixty about early and late, and my assistant goes to bed."

I began to tremble again.

"Don't keep such a Gentile!" said my mother.

"A Gentile?" said the Röfeh. "Why a Gentile?"

"What's all that to me?" interrupted father, impatiently. "You'd better set to work."

Father was naturally good-tempered; he always seemed to me incapable of hurting a fly, and yet his tone was so full of contempt for the Röfeh.

When he lay sick in bed, he was always glad if anyone came in to have a chat with him, but he could never get on with the Röfeh; he always interrupted him and told him to see to his own business, but this was the first time he had spoken so strongly. It pained me, because how much rougher would he not have been with the other, who was lying ill?

What is wrong with him?

He had said his heart was weak.

What that meant exactly, I did not know; it must be something for which one had to go to bed, and yet my heart told me that I had something to answer for in the matter.

That night I cried in my sleep; my mother woke me, and sat down beside me on my bed.

"Hush, my child," she said, "don't let us wake father." And our conversation was whispered into each other's ears.

I noticed that mother was greatly disturbed; she looked at me inquiringly, as though determined to get at the truth, and I resolved to say nothing, at all events so long as my father slept.

"My child, why have you been crying?"

"I don't know, mother."

"Do you feel well?"

"Yes, Mamishe; only sometimes my head aches."

She sat on my bed, leaning half way over, and I drew nearer her and laid my head on her breast.

"Mother," I asked, "why does your heart beat so loud?"

"For fear, Tochter'she."

"Are you afraid at night, too?"

"Night and day; I am afraid all the time."

"What for are you afraid?"

"I am afraid for you."

"For me?"

No reply, but I felt a warm tear fall on my face.

"Mother, you are crying now."

The tears fell faster.

I won't say! my resolve strengthened.

Suddenly she asked:

"Has Rivkah been telling you anything?"

"What about, mother?"

"About your intended?"

"How should she know him?"

"If she really knew him, she would hold her tongue. I only mean, did she repeat any gossip? Out of jealousy—when a rich man marries a young girl in his old age, people always talk. I don't know—has no one told you that his last wife died because of the life he led her?"

I answered coolly that I had heard something like it, but that I had forgotten from whom.

"I'm sure it was Rivkah—I wish her mouth were in the back of her head!" (angrily).

"Then why was it," I inquired, "that she died no suddenly?"

"Why? She had a weak heart."

"But—do people die of a weak heart?"

"Certainly."....

Something seemed to snap inside my brain.

* * * * *

I became a "silken child," my praise was in everyone's mouth. Parents could not understand it—neither could the tailor: I asked for nothing; mother chose everything—material, color, and cut, just as she fancied.

Rivkah used to come in and pinch her own red cheeks.

"Who would trust a mother in matters of dress? An old-fashioned Jewess? You won't dare to show yourself on Sabbath either in Shool or in the street or anywhere else!

"You've done for yourself," she wound up.

It occurred to me that I had done for myself a long time, and I waited indifferently for the Sabbath of Consolation, when Reb Zeinwill was to be invited to supper.

Then there would follow the "calling up,"16 and then the wedding.

Father was really better, he sometimes went out and began to inquire about produce. He thought it too soon to speak to Reb Zeinwill about anything further; he intended to ask him on Sabbath to come again for the "third meal," and to put in a word for himself after that.

All being so well, it was time to dismiss the Röfeh; there was no difficulty now about credit—he never reminded us of what was owing him, never sent the "boy," but came himself. Still, it was time this should end. I don't know how much they sent him, but the messenger was my brother Avremele, who was to leave the money on his way to Cheder.

But the "boy" appeared a few days later.

"How, wasn't it enough?" said my father, on seeing him.

"Yes, Reb Yehùdah; I have come to say good-bye."

"To me?" asked my father in surprise.

I had dropped down, when he came in, on the nearest chair, but at these words I stood up; it had flashed across me that I must protect him, not let him be insulted. He hadn't come for that.

"I used to come to see you at one time," he said, with his gentle, melancholy voice, which was like sweet oil to my heart, "now I am leaving for good, so I thought—"

"Well, well, certainly," replied father, quite politely. "Take a seat, young man. It was very nice of you to think of it, very nice, indeed."

"Daughter," he called to me, "we must offer him some refreshment."

He sprang up, pale, with quivering lips and burning eyes, but the next instant his face had taken on its old melancholy expression.

"No, Reb Yehùdah, I want nothing, thank you. Farewell!"

He put out his hand to no one, and barely gave me a glance.

And yet, in that one glance, I read that he reproached me, that he would never forgive me. For what? I hardly knew myself.

And again I fainted.

"The third time," I hear my mother say to my father. "It is of no consequence—at her age it often happens—but heaven forbid that Reb Zeinwill should hear of it. He would break off the match. He had enough of that with the last one—the invalid."

I was not an invalid. And I only fainted once more—on the wedding-day, when I saw Reb Zeinwill for the first time.

Never again.

Yesterday even, when the Röfeh, who cuts my Reb Zeinwill's nails every month (otherwise they grow into his fingers), asked me, as he left, if I remembered his "boy," because he had died in a hospital in Warsaw—even then I didn't faint; I only shed one tear. And I was not aware of that, only it seemed to please the Röfeh.

"You are a kind soul," he said, and then I felt it on my cheek.

Nothing more.

I am healthy; I have lived with Reb Zeinwill five years.

How? Perhaps I shall tell another time.