Chapter 6

“You don’t mean to say that you give up a boot and shoe manufacturer merely because his daughter has round shoulders!” he exclaimed, incredulously.

“It is more than round shoulders--it is a hump!” cried Leibel.

“And suppose? See how much better off you will be when you get your own machines! We do not refuse to let camels carry our burdens because they have humps.”

“Ah, but a wife is not a camel,” said Leibel, with a sage air.

“And a cutter is not a master tailor,” retorted Sugarman.

“Enough, enough!” cried Leibel. “I tell you, I would not have her if she were a machine warehouse.”

“There sticks something behind,” persisted Sugarman, unconvinced.

Leibel shook his head. “Only her hump” he said with a flash of humour.

“Moses Mendelssohn had a hump,” expostulated Sugarman, reproachfully.

“Yes, but he was a heretic,” rejoined Leibel, who was not without reading. “And then he was a man! A man with two humps could find a wife for each. But a woman with a hump cannot expect a husband in addition.”

“Guard your tongue from evil,” quoth the Shadchan, angrily. “If everybody were to talk like you Leah Volcovitch would never be married at all.”

Leibel shrugged his shoulders, and reminded him that hunchbacked girls who stammered and squinted and halted on left legs were not usually led under the canopy.

“Nonsense! Stuff!” cried Sugarman, angrily. “That is because they do not come to me.”

“Leah Volcovitch _has_ come to you,” said Leibel, “but she shall not come to me.” And he rose, anxious to escape.

Instantly Sugarman gave a sigh of resignation. “Be it so! Then I shall have to look out for another, that’s all.”

“No, I don’t want any,” replied Leibel, quickly.

Sugarman stopped eating. “You don’t want any?” he cried. “But you came to me for one?”

“I--I--know,” stammered Leibel. “But I’ve--I’ve altered my mind.”

“One needs Hillel’s patience to deal with you!” cried Sugarman. “But I shall charge you, all the same, for my trouble. You cannot cancel an order like this in the middle! No, no! You can play fast and loose with Leah Volcovitch, but you shall not make a fool of me.”

“But if I don’t want one?” said Leibel, sullenly.

Sugarman gazed at him with a cunning look of suspicion. “Didn’t I say there was something sticking behind?”

Leibel felt guilty. “But whom have you got in your eye?” he inquired, desperately.

“Perhaps you may have some one in yours!” naively answered Sugarman.

Leibel gave a hypocritic long-drawn “U-m-m-m! I wonder if Rose Green--where I work--” he said, and stopped.

“I fear not,” said Sugarman. “She is on my list. Her father gave her to me some months ago, but he is hard to please. Even the maiden herself is not easy, being pretty.”

“Perhaps she has waited for some one,” suggested Leibel.

Sugarman’s keen ear caught the note of complacent triumph.

“You have been asking her yourself!” he exclaimed, in horror-stricken accents.

“And if I have?” said Leibel, defiantly.

“You have cheated me! And so has Eliphaz Green--I always knew he was tricky! You have both defrauded me!”

“I did not mean to,” said Leibel, mildly.

“You _did_ mean to. You had no business to take the matter out of my hands. What right had you to propose to Rose Green?”

“I did not,” cried Leibel, excitedly.

“Then you asked her father!”

“No; I have not asked her father yet.”

“Then how do you know she will have you?”

“I--I know,” stammered Leibel, feeling himself somehow a liar as well as a thief. His brain was in a whirl; he could not remember how the thing had come about. Certainly he had not proposed; nor could he say that she had.

“You know she will have you,” repeated Sugarman, reflectively. “And does _she_ know?”

“Yes. In fact,” he blurted out, “we arranged it together.”

“Ah, you both know. And does her father know?”

“Not yet.”

“Ah, then I must get his consent,” said Sugarman, decisively.

“I--I thought of speaking to him myself.”

“Yourself!” echoed Sugarman, in horror. “Are you unsound in the head? Why, that would be worse than the mistake you have already made!”

“What mistake?” asked Leibel, firing up.

“The mistake of asking the maiden herself. When you quarrel with her after your marriage she will always throw it in your teeth that you wished to marry her. Moreover, if you tell a maiden you love her, her father will think you ought to marry her as she stands. Still, what is done is done.” And he sighed regretfully.

“And what more do I want? I love her.”

“You piece of clay!” cried Sugarman, contemptuously. “Love will not turn machines, much less buy them. You must have a dowry. Her father has a big stocking; he can well afford it.”

Leibel’s eyes lit up. There was really no reason why he should not have bread and cheese with his kisses.

“Now, if _you_ went to her father,” pursued the Shadchan, “the odds are that he would not even give you his daughter--to say nothing of the dowry. After all, it is a cheek of you to aspire so high. As you told me from the first, you haven’t saved a penny. Even my commission you won’t be able to pay till you get the dowry. But if _I_ go I do not despair of getting a substantial sum--to say nothing of the daughter.”

“Yes, I think you had better go,” said Leibel, eagerly.

“But if I do this thing for you I shall want a pound more,” rejoined Sugarman.

“A pound more!” echoed Leibel, in dismay. “Why?”

“Because Rose Green’s hump is of gold,” replied Sugarman, oracularly. “Also, she is fair to see, and many men desire her.”

“But you have always your five per cent, on the dowry.”

“It will be less than Volcovitch’s,” explained Sugarman. “You see, Green has other and less beautiful daughters.”

“Yes, but then it settles itself more easily. Say five shillings.”

“Eliphaz Green is a hard man,” said the Shadchan instead.

“Ten shillings is the most I will give!”

“Twelve and sixpence is the least I will take. Eliphaz Green haggles so terribly.”

They split the difference, and so eleven and threepence represented the predominance of Eliphaz Green’s stinginess over Volcovitch’s.

The very next day Sugarman invaded the Green workroom. Rose bent over her seams, her heart fluttering. Leibel had duly apprised her of the roundabout manner in which she would have to be won, and she had acquiesced in the comedy. At the least it would save her the trouble of father-taming.

Sugarman’s entry was brusque and breathless. He was overwhelmed with joyous emotion. His blue bandana trailed agitatedly from his coat-tail.

“At last!” he cried, addressing the little white-haired master tailor; “I have the very man for you.”

“Yes?” grunted Eliphaz, unimpressed. The monosyllable was packed with emotion. It said, “Have you really the face to come to me again with an ideal man?”

“He has all the qualities that you desire,” began the Shadchan, in a tone that repudiated the implications of the monosyllable. “He is young, strong, God-fearing--”

“Has he any money?” grumpily interrupted Eliphaz.

“He _will_ have money,” replied Sugarman, unhesitatingly, “when he marries.”

“Ah!” The father’s voice relaxed, and his foot lay limp on the treadle. He worked one of his machines himself, and paid himself the wages so as to enjoy the profit. “How much will he have?”

“I think he will have fifty pounds; and the least you can do is to let him have fifty pounds,” replied Sugarman, with the same happy ambiguity.

Eliphaz shook his head on principle.

“Yes, you will,” said Sugarman, “when you learn how fine a man he is.”

The flush of confusion and trepidation already on Leibel’s countenance became a rosy glow of modesty, for he could not help overhearing what was being said, owing to the lull of the master tailor’s machine.

“Tell me, then,” rejoined Eliphaz.

“Tell me, first, if you will give fifty to a young, healthy, hard-working, God-fearing man, whose idea it is to start as a master tailor on his own account? And you know how profitable that is!”

“To a man like that,” said Eliphaz, in a burst of enthusiasm, “I would give as much as twenty-seven pounds ten!”

Sugarman groaned inwardly, but Leibel’s heart leaped with joy. To get four months’ wages at a stroke! With twenty-seven pounds ten he could certainly procure several machines, especially on the instalment system. Out of the corners of his eyes he shot a glance at Rose, who was beyond earshot.

“Unless you can promise thirty it is waste of time mentioning his name,” said Sugarman.

“Well, well--who is he?”

Sugarman bent down, lowering his voice into the father’s ear.

“What! Leibel!” cried Eliphaz, outraged.

“Sh!” said Sugarman, “or he will overhear your delight, and ask more. He has his nose high enough, as it is.”

“B--b--b--ut,” sputtered the bewildered parent, “I know Leibel myself. I see him every day. I don’t want a Shadchan to find me a man I know--a mere hand in my own workshop!”

“Your talk has neither face nor figure,” answered Sugarman, sternly. “It is just the people one sees every day that one knows least. I warrant that if I had not put it into your head you would never have dreamt of Leibel as a son-in-law. Come now, confess.”

Eliphaz grunted vaguely, and the Shadchan went on triumphantly: “I thought as much. And yet where could you find a better man to keep your daughter?”

“He ought to be content with her alone,” grumbled her father.

Sugarman saw the signs of weakening, and dashed in, full strength: “It’s a question whether he will have her at all. I have not been to him about her yet. I awaited your approval of the idea.” Leibel admired the verbal accuracy of these statements, which he had just caught.

“But I didn’t know he would be having money,” murmured Eliphaz.

“Of course you didn’t know. That’s what the Shadchan is for--to point out the things that are under your nose.”

“But where will he be getting this money from?”

“From you,” said Sugarman, frankly.

“From me?”

“From whom else? Are you not his employer? It has been put by for his marriage day.”

“He has saved it?”

“He has not _spent_ it,” said Sugarman, impatiently.

“But do you mean to say he has saved fifty pounds?”

“If he could manage to save fifty pounds out of your wages he would be indeed a treasure,” said Sugarman. “Perhaps it might be thirty.”

“But you said fifty.”

“Well, _you_ came down to thirty,” retorted the Shadchan. “You cannot expect him to have more than your daughter brings.”

“I never said thirty,” Eliphaz reminded him. “Twenty-seven ten was my last bid.”

“Very well; that will do as a basis of negotiations,” said Sugarman, resignedly. “I will call upon him this evening. If I were to go over and speak to him now, he would perceive you were anxious, and raise his terms, and that will never do. Of course you will not mind allowing me a pound more for finding you so economical a son-in-law?”

“Not a penny more.”

“You need not fear,” said Sugarman, resentfully. “It is not likely I shall be able to persuade him to take so economical a father-in-law. So you will be none the worse for promising.”

“Be it so,” said Eliphaz, with a gesture of weariness, and he started his machine again.

“Twenty-seven pounds ten, remember,” said Sugarman, above the whir.

Eliphaz nodded his head, whirring his wheel-work louder.

“And paid before the wedding, mind.”

The machine took no notice.

“Before the wedding, mind,” repeated Sugarman. “Before we go under the canopy.”

“Go now, go now!” grunted Eliphaz, with a gesture of impatience. “It shall all be well.” And the white-haired head bowed immovably over its work.

In the evening Rose extracted from her father the motive of Sugarman’s visit, and confessed that the idea was to her liking.

“But dost thou think he will have me, little father?” she asked, with cajoling eyes.

“Any one would have my Rose.”

“Ah, but Leibel is different. So many years he has sat at my side and said nothing.”

“He had his work to think of. He is a good, saving youth.”

“At this very moment Sugarman is trying to persuade him--not so? I suppose he will want much money.”

“Be easy, my child.” And he passed his discoloured hand over her hair.

Sugarman turned up the next day, and reported that Leibel was unobtainable under thirty pounds, and Eliphaz, weary of the contest, called over Leibel, till that moment carefully absorbed in his scientific chalk marks, and mentioned the thing to him for the first time. “I am not a man to bargain,” Eliphaz said, and so he gave the young man his tawny hand, and a bottle of rum sprang from somewhere, and work was suspended for five minutes, and the “hands” all drank amid surprised excitement. Sugarman’s visits had prepared them to congratulate Rose; but Leibel was a shock.

The formal engagement was marked by even greater junketing, and at last the marriage day came. Leibel was resplendent in a diagonal frockcoat, cut by his own hand; and Rose stepped from the cab a medley of flowers, fairness, and white silk, and behind her came two bridesmaids,--her sisters,--a trio that glorified the spectator-strewn pavement outside the synagogue. Eliphaz looked almost tall in his shiny high hat and frilled shirt-front. Sugarman arrived on foot, carrying red-socked little Ebenezer tucked under his arm.

Leibel and Rose were not the only couple to be disposed of, for it was the thirty-third day of the Omer--a day fruitful in marriages.

But at last their turn came. They did not, however, come in their turn, and their special friends among the audience wondered why they had lost their precedence. After several later marriages had taken place a whisper began to circulate. The rumour of a hitch gained ground steadily, and the sensation was proportionate. And, indeed, the rose was not to be picked without a touch of the thorn.

Gradually the facts leaked out, and a buzz of talk and comment ran through the waiting synagogue. Eliphaz had not paid up!

At first he declared he would put down the money immediately after the ceremony. But the wary Sugarman, schooled by experience, demanded its instant delivery on behalf of his other client. Hard pressed, Eliphaz produced ten sovereigns from his trousers-pocket, and tendered them on account. These Sugarman disdainfully refused, and the negotiations were suspended. The bridegroom’s party was encamped in one room, the bride’s in another, and after a painful delay Eliphaz sent an emissary to say that half the amount should be forthcoming, the extra five pounds in a bright new Bank of England note. Leibel, instructed and encouraged by Sugarman, stood firm.

And then arose a hubbub of voices, a chaos of suggestions; friends rushed to and fro between the camps, some emerging from their seats in the synagogue to add to the confusion. But Eliphaz had taken his stand upon a rock--he had no more ready money. To-morrow, the next day, he would have some. And Leibel, pale and dogged, clutched tighter at those machines that were slipping away momently from him. He had not yet seen his bride that morning, and so her face was shadowy compared with the tangibility of those machines. Most of the other maidens were married women by now, and the situation was growing desperate. From the female camp came terrible rumours of bridesmaids in hysterics, and a bride that tore her wreath in a passion of shame and humiliation. Eliphaz sent word that he would give an I O U for the balance, but that he really could not muster any more current coin. Sugarman instructed the ambassador to suggest that Eliphaz should raise the money among his friends.

And the short spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues, as minute succeeded minute and the final bridal party still failed to appear. The latest bulletin pictured the bride in a dead faint. The afternoon was waning fast. The minister left his post near the canopy, under which so many lives had been united, and came to add his white tie to the forces for compromise. But he fared no better than the others. Incensed at the obstinacy of the antagonists, he declared he would close the synagogue. He gave the couple ten minutes to marry in or quit. Then chaos came, and pandemonium--a frantic babel of suggestion and exhortation from the crowd. When five minutes had passed a legate from Eliphaz announced that his side had scraped together twenty pounds, and that this was their final bid.

Leibel wavered; the long day’s combat had told upon him; the reports of the bride’s distress had weakened him. Even Sugarman had lost his cocksureness of victory. A few minutes more and both commissions might slip through his fingers. Once the parties left the synagogue, it would not be easy to drive them there another day. But he cheered on his man still: one could always surrender at the tenth minute.

At the eighth the buzz of tongues faltered suddenly, to be transposed into a new key, so to speak. Through the gesticulating assembly swept that murmur of expectation which crowds know when the procession is coming at last. By some mysterious magnetism all were aware that the BRIDE herself--the poor hysteric bride--had left the paternal camp, was coming in person to plead with her mercenary lover.

And as the glory of her and the flowers and the white draperies loomed upon Leibel’s vision his heart melted in worship, and he knew his citadel would crumble in ruins at her first glance, at her first touch. Was it fair fighting? As his troubled vision cleared, and as she came nigh unto him, he saw to his amazement that she was speckless and composed--no trace of tears dimmed the fairness of her face, there was no disarray in her bridal wreath.

The clock showed the ninth minute.

She put her hand appeallingly on his arm, while a heavenly light came into her face--the expression of a Joan of Arc animating her country.

“Do not give in, Leibel!” she said. “Do not have me! Do not let them persuade thee! By my life, thou must not! Go home!”

So at the eleventh minute the vanquished Eliphaz produced the balance, and they all lived happily ever afterward.

AN IDYL OF LONDON, By Beatrice Harraden

It was one o’clock, and many of the students in the National Gallery had left off work and were refreshing themselves with lunch and conversation. There was one old worker who had not stirred from his place, but he had put down his brush, and had taken from his pocket a small book, which was like its owner--thin and shabby of covering. He seemed to find pleasure in reading it, for he turned over its pages with all the tenderness characteristic of one who loves what he reads. Now and again he glanced at his unfinished copy of the beautiful portrait of Andrea del Sarto, and once his eyes rested on another copy next to his, better and truer than his, and once he stopped to pick up a girl’s prune-coloured tie, which had fallen from the neighbouring easel. After this he seemed to become unconscious of his surroundings, as unconscious, indeed, as any one of the pictures near him. Any one might have been justified in mistaking him for the portrait of a man, but that his lips moved; for it was his custom to read softly to himself.

The students passed back to their places, not troubling to notice him, because they knew from experience that he never noticed them, and that all greetings were wasted on him and all words were wanton expenditure of breath. They had come to regard him very much in the same way as many of us regard the wonders of nature, without astonishment, without any questionings, and often without any interest. One girl, a new-comer, did chance to say to her companion:

“How ill that old man looks!”

“Oh, he always looks like that,” was the answer. “You will soon get accustomed to him. Come along! I must finish my ‘Blind Beggar’ this afternoon.”

In a few minutes most of the workers were busy again, although there were some who continued to chat quietly, and several young men who seemed reluctant to leave their girl friends, and who were by no means encouraged to go! One young man came to claim his book and pipe, which he had left in the charge of a bright-eyed girl, who was copying Sir Joshua’s “Angels.” She gave him his treasures, and received in exchange a dark-red rose, which she fastened in her belt; and then he returned to his portrait of Mrs. Siddons. But there was something in his disconsolate manner which made one suspect that he thought less of Mrs. Siddons’s beauty than of the beauty of the girl who was wearing the dark-red rose! The strangers, strolling through the rooms, stopped now and again to peer curiously at the students’ work. They were stared at indignantly by the students themselves, but they made no attempt to move away, and even ventured sometimes to pass criticisms of no tender character on some of the copies. The fierce-looking man who was copying “The Horse Fair” deliberately put down his brushes, folded his arms, and waited defiantly until they had gone by; but others, wiser in their generation, went on painting calmly. Several workers were painting the new Raphael; one of them was a white-haired old gentlewoman, whose hand was trembling, and yet skilful still. More than once she turned to give a few hints to the young girl near her, who looked in some distress and doubt. Just the needful help was given, and then the girl plied her brush merrily, smiling the while with pleasure and gratitude. There seemed to be a genial, kindly influence at work, a certain homeliness too, which must needs assert itself where many are gathered together, working side by side. All made a harmony; the wonderful pictures, collected from many lands and many centuries, each with its meaning and its message from the past; the ever-present memories of the painters themselves, who had worked and striven and conquered; and the living human beings, each with his wealth of earnest endeavour and hope.

Meanwhile the old man read on uninterruptedly until two hands were put over his book and a gentle voice said:

“Mr. Lindall, you have had no lunch again. Do you know, I begin to hate Lucretius. He always makes you forget your food.”

The old man looked up, and something like a smile passed over his joyless face when he saw Helen Stanley bending over him.

“Ah,” he answered, “you must not hate Lucretius. I have had more pleasant hours with him than with any living person.”

He rose and came forward to examine her copy of Andrea del Sarto’s portrait.

“Yours is better than mine,” he said, critically; “in fact, mine is a failure. I think I shall only get a small price for mine; indeed, I doubt whether I shall get sufficient to pay for my funeral.”

“You speak dismally,” she answered, smiling.

“I missed you yesterday,” he continued, half dreamily. “I left my work, and I wandered through the rooms, and I did not even read Lucretius. Something seemed to have gone from my life. At first I thought it must be my favourite Raphael, or the Murillo; but it was neither the one nor the other; it was you. That was strange, wasn’t it? But you know we get accustomed to anything, and perhaps I should have missed you less the second day, and by the end of a week I should not have missed you at all. Mercifully, we have in us the power of forgetting.”

“I do not wish to plead for myself,” she said, “but I do not believe that you or any one could really forget. That which outsiders call forgetfulness might be called by the better name of resignation.”