Part 7

He gradually became a new sort of Rouvke. Formerly, when he was subjected to the tortures of an introduction to a "yoong ladda," the ordeal would result in a mere blush, accompanied by one or two minutes' violent throbbing. Whereas now, every time a similar accident befell him, he would, after the calamity was over, hasten to find himself in front of a looking-glass, and fall to inspecting his glaring necktie and more particularly the pockmarks on his nose. In times past he was hardly ever conscious of these traces of smallpox on his face; now they dwelt in his mind with such pertinacity that one night he dreamed of seeing a watermelon, which was somehow at the same time a dog with a huge nose all covered with pocks. And when he awoke in the morning he felt so sick at heart that he could not relish his breakfast, and was so dazed all that day that he had a carpet sent to an Irishwoman who had ordered some satin for a dress.

Rouvke enrolled in a public evening school for immigrants, and when he had achieved the wisdom of piecing together the letters in "cat," "rat," "mat," of the First Reader, he one afternoon bought a newspaper, and applied himself to looking for an advertisement of some physician who would undertake to remove the footprints of smallpox. He had an idea that the papers contained kindred advertisements. The undertaking proved a failure, however, for Rouvke could detect in the paper neither "cat" nor "rat," while the other words only swam before his eyes. And his heart was "stretching" and "stretching."

It would be unfair to Rouvke, however, to ascribe his attending evening school to the sole purpose of being able to make out a medical advertisement. His chief motive therefor was twofold: In the first place, he would often say to himself: "Robert, bear in mind that you are Rouvke no longer; the chances are that in a year or two you may open a peddler's supply-store of your own: now, you know that the owner of a store who cannot read and write is in danger of being robbed by his bookkeeper." In the second place, his "stretching" heart seemed to whisper: "Robert, remember those ladies have nothing but sneers for a gentleman who does not know how to read a newspaper."

Moreover, those of his fellow peddlers who had studied the Talmud in Russia, and having, therefore, some mental training, found no trouble in picking up some crumbs of broken English in its written form, would often rally him on the "iron head" he must possess to retain the ponderous load of the addresses and accounts of his numerous customers without committing them to writing. These pleasantries pierced Rouvke to the heart; but the pain they gave him was not half so cruel as his moral pangs at the jokes which were showered at him on the subject of his shyness in the presence of ladies. Often he would be entrapped into the company of a "nearly American-born" daughter of Israel; but a still more frequent prank at his expense was for a facetious fellow to drag him out to the middle of the floor in a peddler-supply store, and to force him into a waltz, or to jestingly measure his legs, by way of ascertaining their potential adroitness in a dancing-hall. "Eh, Robert!" they would torment him, "buy a teecket for a ball, veel you? A ball fi'sht clesh, I tell you. Come, ven the laddas veel shee you, dey veel get shtuck--in de co'ners." Robert would struggle, scream, swear, and, after all, steal up to the front of the looking-glass. And his heart would be "stretching" and "stretching."

Whenever he heard of a new marriage, he would apply for details as to the bride and the bridegroom--how much he earned a week, how they came to be engaged, what space of time interposed between the engagement and the wedding. One Saturday morning, while mounting the stairs which led to his miniature hall bedroom, he saw through an open door a young woman buttoning the shirt-collar for her husband; whereupon his heart swelled with a feeling of mixed envy and extreme friendliness for the young couple. "Who is he?" he remarked to himself, on reaching his room, which now seemed to him desolate and lonely. "Only a tailor, a penniless workman. When I am married I shall not live in a tenement house." And at this his fancy unfolded a picture: A parlor with bronze clock on the mantelpiece; a mirror between two lace window-curtains; a dark-eyed little woman in a chocolate-colored wrapper sweeping a carpet of flaming red and yellow; and, behold! he, Robert, comes in from business, and the young woman addresses him in a piping little voice: "Hello, Rob! Will you have dinner?" just as he had the day before seen in the house of a newly married custom-peddler.

And it came to pass, in those days of "heart-stretching," that one Saturday morning Robert met at the "Sons of Kropovetz" Synagogue a new arrival from his native place in the person of Feive the _melamed_. As the Hebrew term implies, this tall and bony old gentleman, with the face of a martyr, had at home conducted one of the schools in which a Jewish boy passes the day, learning the Word of God. As is not unusual with melameds, Feive's profession yielded him an income which made it necessary for him to devote his spare hours to the business of _shadchen_, or _shidech_ agent--that is, of matchmaker in the matrimonial sense of the word. In course of time the shadchen spirit had become so deeply imbedded in Reb Feive's soul that even on finding himself in New York, and before his draggling satin coat had had time to exhale its lingering traces of steerage odors, his long and snuff-stocked nose fell to smelling for shidechs.

"Ah, Reb Feive!" Rouvke accosted his townsman, "how do you do? Quite an unexpected guest, as sure as I am a Jew! When did you arrive?"

And after a perfunctory catechism upon the health of his mother and Kropovetz matters in general, he inquired about his old master.

"Peretz?" the old man echoed Rouvke's interrogation. "May the Uppermost have mercy on him! You have heard that he is now in reduced circumstances, have you not? The distillery is closed."

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, he is in a very bad way," Reb Feive resumed, curling one of his long yellowish-gray sidelocks. "You know what hard times the Jews are now having in Russia. Things are getting from bad to worse--may He whom I dare not mention without washing my hands deliver us and preserve!--a Jew can nowadays hardly engage in any business, much less in the liquor line. Poor Peretz, he looks so careworn!"

"Can it be true that the distillery has been closed? I am _very_ sorry."

Rouvke was moved with profound pity for his old employer, who had been kind to him, and to whom he had been devoted. But this feeling of commiseration was instantly succeeded by a vague sense of triumph. "What have I lived to see!" Rouvke seemed to exclaim. "I am now richer than Reb Peretz, as sure as I am a Jew!" And at this he became aware of the bank-book in his breast-pocket.

"Oh, I am _very, very_ sorry for him!" he added, with renewed sincerity, after a slight pause. "Why, such an honest Jew! And how is Hanele?"

"As usual," the shadchen rejoined--"still unmarried. But it serves Peretz right (may God not punish me for my hard words!). When I offered her the best matches in the world, he was hard to please. Nothing short of a king would have suited his ambition."

As the old shadchen spoke his right arm, hand, and fingers were busily engaged punctuating his words with a system of the most intricate and most diversified evolutions in the air.

"And how does she look?" Rouvke again broke in. "Is she still as pretty as she used to be?"

"That she is," the matchmaker returned grimly. "But all the worse for her. Would she were plainer looking, for then her father would not have been so fastidious about a young man for her, and she might be a mother of three children by this time."

"Oh, she will have no trouble in making a match; such a beauty!" Rouvke observed.

In the afternoon of the same day, Rouvke lay across his bed with his legs stretched on a chair, after his wont, and his head lost in recollections of Hanele. She had recently all but faded away from his memory, and when he did have occasion to recall her, her portrait before his mind's eye would be a mere faint-drawn outline. But now, singularly enough, he could somehow again vividly see her good-natured, deep, dark eyes, and her rosy lips perpetually exposing the dazzling whiteness of her teeth and illuminating her pallid face with inextinguishable good humor; he could hear the rustle of her fresh calico dress as she friskily ran up to answer her father's solemnly affectionate "Good Sabbath," on Reb Peretz's return from synagogue, the last Saturday before Rouvke's departure.

The image did not send a yearning thrill through Rouvke, as it would have done during his first few months in America; still, on the other hand, it now had for his wearied soul a quieting, benign charm, which it had never exercised before, and the more deeply to indulge in its soothing effect, he shut his eyes. "Suppose I marry her." The thought flashed through his mind, but was instantly dismissed as an absurdity too gross to be indulged even for a pastime. But the thought carried him back to his old days in Kropovetz, and he wished he could go there in flesh for a visit. What a glorious time it would be to let them see his stylish American dress, his business-like manners and general air of prosperity and "echucation"! Ah, how they would be stupefied to see the once Rouvke Arbel thus elegantly attired, "like a regula' dood"! For who in all Kropovetz wears a cut-away, a brown derby, a necktie, and a collar like his? And would it not be lovely to donate a round sum to the synagogue? Oh, how he would be sought after and paraded!

"Poor Reb Peretz!" he said to himself, transferring his thoughts to the news of his old employer's adversity. "Poor Hanele!" Whereat the Kropovetz girl loomed up, her head lowered and tears trickling down her cheeks, as he had once seen her when she sat quietly lamenting her defeated expectation of a new dress. Rouvke conceived the vague idea of sending Reb Peretz fifty dollars, which would make the respectable sum of one hundred rubles. But the generous plan was presently lost in a labyrinth of figures, accounts of his customers, and reflections upon his prospective store, which the notion of fifty dollars called forth in his dollar-ridden brain.

He thus lay plunged in meditation until his reverie was broken by the door flying open.

"Good Sabbath! Good Sabbath!" Reb Feive greeted his young townsman with his martyr-like features relaxed into a significant smile, as he squeezed himself through the narrow space between the half-opened door and the foot of the bedstead. "Do not take ill my not knocking at the door first. I am not yet used to your customs here, greenhorn that I am."

"Ah, Reb Feive! Good Sabbath!" Rouvke returned, starting up with an anxious air and foreboding an appeal for pecuniary assistance.

"Guess what brings me, Rouven."

"How can I tell?" the host rejoined, with a forced simper. "And why should you not call just for a visit in honor of the Sabbath? You are a welcome guest. Be seated," he added, indicating his solitary chair and himself keeping his seat on the bed, which rendered the additional service of lounge.

"How dare these beggarly greenhorns beset me in this manner?" he left unsaid. "Indeed, what business have they to come to America at all?"

"Well, how are things going on in Kropovetz?" he asked, audibly. "Business is very dull _here_--_very_ dull, indeed--may I not be punished for talking business on Sabbath"--

"Well, _do_ leave business alone! You had better hear my errand, Rouven," the matchmaker said, working his fingers. "Suppose I had a shidech for you, eh?"

"A shidech?" Rouvke ejaculated, much relieved from his misgivings, only to become all of a flutter with delicious surprise.

"Yes, a shidech; and what sort of a one! You never dreamed of such a shidech, I can assure you. Never mind blushing like that. Why, is it not high time for a young man like you to get married?"

"I am not blushing at all," Rouvke protested, coloring still more deeply, and missing the sentence by which he had been about to inform himself of the fair one's name without betraying his feverish impatience.

"Well," Reb Feive resumed, with a smile, and twisting his sidelock into a corkscrew, "it would be too cruel to try your patience. Let us come straight to the point, then. I mean--guess whom--well, I mean Hanele, Peretz the distiller's Hanele! What do you think of that?" the shadchen added in a whisper, as he let go of his corkscrew, and started back in well-acted ecstasy to watch the produced effect.

Rouvke flushed up to the roots of his hair, while his mouth opened in one of those embarrassed grins which seem to be especially adapted to the mouths of Kropovetz horse-drivers,--one which makes the general expression of the face such that you are at a loss whether to take it for a smile or for the preliminary to a cry.

"You must be joking, Reb Feive. Why I a-a-a-I am not thinking of getting married as yet; a-a-you had better tell me some news," he faltered.

The fact is that the shadchen's attack had taken him so unawares that it gave him no time to analyze his own mind, and although the subject thrilled his soul with delightful curiosity, he dreaded the risk of committing himself. But Feive was not the man to let himself be put off so easily in matters of a professional nature; and so, warming up to the beloved topic, he launched out in a flood of garrulity, emphasizing his speech now by striking some figure in space, now by an energetic twirl of his yellowish gray appendages. He enlarged with real shadchenlike gusto on the prospective bride's virtues and accomplishments; on the love which, according to him, she had always professed for Rouvke; on the frivolity of American girls; on the honor it would confer upon his listener to marry into the family of Reb Peretz the distiller.

Rouvke followed Reb Feive with breathless attention, but never uttered a word or a gesture which might be interpreted into an encouragement. This, however, mattered but little to the old matrimonial commission agent, for, carried away with his own eloquence, he talked himself into the impression that Rouvke "was willing," if I may be permitted to borrow a phrase from a more famous horse-driver. At any rate, when Reb Feive suddenly bethought himself that he came near missing the afternoon service at the synagogue, and abruptly got up from his seat, Rouvke seemed anxious to detain him; and as he returned "What is your hurry, Reb Feive?" to his departing visitor's "Good-pie!--is that the way you say here on leaving?" he felt for the old man a kind of filial tenderness.

_Choson_ is a term applied to a Jewish young man, embracing the period from the time he is placed on the matrimonial market down to the termination of the nuptial festivities. There is all the difference in the world between a choson and a common unmarried mortal of the male sex, who is left to the bare designation of _bocher_, the very sound of the hymeneal title possessing an indefinable charm, an element of solemnity, which seems to invest its bearer with a glittering halo.

Reb Feive thus suddenly, as if by a magic wand, converted Rouvke from a simple bocher into a choson. And so keenly alive was Rouvke to his unexpected transformation, that for some time after the wizard's departure his face was wreathed in bashful smiles, as if his new self, by its dazzling presence, embarrassed him. He felt the change in himself in a general way, however, and quite apart from the idea of Hanele. As to Peretz's daughter, the notion of her assenting to marry him again seemed preposterous. Besides, admitting for argument's sake, as the phrase goes, that she would accept him, Rouvke reflected that he would then not be fool enough to enter into wedlock with a portionless girl; that if he waited a year or two longer (although it seemed much too long to wait), that is, until he was a prospering storekeeper, he could get for a wife the daughter of some Division Street merchant with two or three thousand dollars into the bargain.

So he relinquished the thought of Hanele as a thing out of the question and proceeded to picture himself the choson of some American girl. But as he was making that effort, the image of the Kropovetz maiden kept intruding upon his imagination, interfering with the mental process, and his heart seemed all the while to be longing after the dismissed subject and filled with the desire that he might have both matches to choose from. Finally, he yielded and resumed the discussion of Reb Feive's project. The idea of a Division Street business man for a father-in-law, beside the assumption of becoming the son-in-law of Reb Peretz, appeared prosaic and vulgar. Those New York merchants had risen from the mire, like himself, while his old master looked at the world from the lofty height of distinguished birth, added to Talmudical learning and exceeding social importance. And here the ties of traditional reverence and adoration which bound Rouvke to his former employer made themselves keenly felt in his heart. Ah, for the privilege of calling Reb Peretz father-in-law! To think of the stir the news would make among his townsfolk, both in Kropovetz and here in New York! Besides, the American-born or "nearly American-born" girls inspire him with fear. These young ladies are brought up at picnics and balls, while to him the very thought of inviting a lady for a dance is embarrassing. What are they good for, anyway? They look more Christian than Jewish, and are only great hands at squandering their husbands' money on candy, dresses, and theatres. A woman like that would domineer over him, treat him haughtily, and generally make life a burden to him. Hanele, dear Hanele, on the other hand, is a true daughter of Israel. She would make a good housekeeper; would occasionally also mind the store; would accompany him to synagogue every Saturday; and that is just what a man like him wants in a wife. An English-speaking Mrs. Friedman he would have to call "darling," a word barren of any charm or meaning for his heart, whereas Hanele he would address in the melodious terms of "_Kreinele meine! Gold meine!_"[14] Ah, the very music of these sounds would make him cry with happiness!

[14] "My little crown! My gold!"

The thought of a walk to synagogue with Hanele, dressed in a plush cloak and an enormous hat, by his side, and of whispering these words of endearment in her ear was enchanting enough; but then, enchantment-like, the spectacle soon faded away before the hard, retrospective fact of Rouvke, the horse-driver, in top-boots, serving tea to Hanele, the only daughter of Reb Peretz the distiller. "Oh, it cannot be! Feive _is a greener_ to take such a match into his head!" he mentally exclaimed in black despair. And forthwith he once more sought consolation in the prospect of a marriage portion which a New York wife would bring him, and fell to adding the probable amount to his own future capital. Hanele will reject him? Why, so much the better! That makes it impossible for him to commit the folly of sacrificing at least two thousand dollars. And his spirits rose at the narrow escape he was having from a ruinous temptation. Still, lurking in a deeper corner of his heart, there lingered something which wounded his pride and made him feel as if he would much rather have _that_ means of escape cut off from him and the temptation left for himself to grapple with.

Feive, the melamed, had another talk with Rouvke; but although he did not hesitate to speak authoritatively of Reb Peretz's and Hanele's assent, he utterly failed to elicit from his interlocutor any positive hint. Nothing daunted, however, the shadchen despatched a lengthy epistle to Reb Peretz. He went off in raptures over Rouvke's wealth, social rank in America, and religious habits, and gave him credit for newly acquired education. "It is not the Rouvke of yore," read at least one line on each of the ten pages of the letter. The installment peddling business was elevated to the dignity of a combination of large concerns in furniture, jewelry, and clothing. The owner of this thriving establishment was depicted as panting with love for Hanele, and this again was pointed out as proof that the match had been foreordained by Providence.

Reb Peretz's answer had not reached its destination when in New York there occurred two events which came to the daring matchmaker's assistance.

The daughter of a Seventh Ward landlord had been betrothed to a successful custom peddler, her father promising one thousand dollars in cash, in addition to a complete household outfit, as her marriage portion. As the fixed wedding-day drew near, the choson was one day shocked to receive from his would-be father-in-law the intimation that his girl and the household outfit were good enough on their own merits, and that the thousand dollars would have to be dispensed with. The young man immediately cut short his visits to the landlord's daughter; but a fortnight had hardly elapsed before he found himself behind prison bars on an action brought in the name of his brokenhearted sweetheart. How the matter was compromised does not concern our story; but the news, which for several days was the main topic of gossip in the peddler stores, reached Rouvke; and the effect it had on him the reader may well imagine: it riddled to pieces the only unfavorable argument in his discussion of Feive's offer.

A still more powerful element in reaching a conclusion was with Rouvke the following incident:--

One day he went to see the shadchen, who had his lodging in the house of a fellow townsman. While he stood behind the door adjusting his necktie, as he now invariably did before entering a house, he overheard a loud dialogue between the housewife and her boarder. Catching his own name, Rouvke paused with bated breath to listen.

"Pray, don't be talking nonsense, Reb Feive," came to the ears of our eavesdropper. "Peretz the distiller give his Hanele in marriage to Rouvke Arbel!--That pock-pitted bugbear and Hanele! Such a beauty, such a pampered child! Why, anybody would be glad to marry her, penniless as she may be. She marry that horrid thing, slop-tub, cholera that he is!"

Rouvke was cut to the quick; and shivering before the prospect of hearing some further uncomplimentary allusions to himself, he was on the point of beating retreat; but the very thought of those epithets continuing to be uttered at his expense, even though beyond his hearing, was too painful to bear; and so he put a stop to them by a knock at the door.

"But are you really sure, Reb Feive, that Reb Peretz will have me?" he queried, after a little, all of a flutter, in a private conversation with the shadchen, in the bedroom.

"Leave it to me," the marriage-broker replied. "I have managed greater things in my lifetime. It is as good as settled."

"See if I do not marry Hanele after all, if only to spite you, grudging witch that you are!" Rouvke, in his heart, addressed to his townswoman, on emerging from the pitchy darkness of the little bedroom.

"Good-by, Mrs. Kohen!" his tongue then said, as his eyes looked daggers at her.