Part 12

Before long Mr. Koch came in. He wore alligator-skin slippers, and a jacket of pongee silk. Between the fingers of his left hand, he carried a half-smoked cigar. He was a short, thick-set, pale-complexioned man, of forty, or thereabouts; inclined to baldness; with clear, light-gray eyes, and a straw-colored mustache waxed in the style of the Second Empire. He looked very clean, very alert, very good-tempered, and yet as though he could become as hard and as sharp as flint, if occasion demanded. He welcomed the rabbi with warm and deferential courtesy. Then, turning to Elias, in hearty, jovial, hail-fellow-well-met manner: “Well, Mr. Bacharach, how goes it? It's a dog's age since we've seen you, and no mistake. Have a cigar?”

With one hand, he was subjecting Elias's arm to a vigorous pumping. With the other, he offered him a tortoise-shell cigar-case.

“They're genuine,” he remarked. “I'll warrant them. Imported by my brother-in-law for his private consumption. Cost you a quarter apiece straight, if you bought them in New York. _Hoyo de Montereys_.”

Elias selected one. Mr. Koch produced a silver match-box, extracted a wax match, scratched it, and held it while his guest got his cigar alight.

“Now,” said he, flirting the match flame into extinction, “I'm going to ask you gentlemen to step down stairs to the basement. You'll find the whole family down there, engaged in an impressive ceremony. They're bidding good-night to the baby, whom my wife is about to put to bed.”

In the basement, or dining-room (which, in the Koch establishment, pursuant to a common Jewish habit, was made to serve also as a general sitting-room), as many as seven or eight ladies and gentlemen, some seated, some standing, were gathered around the extension-table, upon which, in the approximate center of it, sprawled a fair, fat, two-year-old baby. The spectators were all smiling benevolently at him, addressing complimentary remarks to him, and exchanging complimentary notes about him among themselves. All the gentlemen were smoking.

“Lester, was you a good boy?”

“Mein Gott! He kroes bigger every day.”

“Laistair, was you sleeby?”

“Tust look at that smile! Ain't it perfectly grand?”

“Laistair, haif you got a kiss for grainpa, before you go to bed?”

And so forth, and so forth: all of which Master Lester acknowledged with a vague grin, and a gutteral goo-goo-goo.

But at the entrance of Mr. Koch, flanked by Elias and the rabbi, the whole company deserted Lester, and making a rush forward, surrounded the visitors. The rabbi, every body greeted with subdued respect, as was due to his sacerdotal quality. But over Elias, they gushed.

Mrs. Koch, a thin, wiry little woman, with a prominent nose and a pleasant manner, piped in her shrill treble: “Oh, Meester Bacharach! I didn't naifer expaict to haif this honor. I ain't seen you in this house for two--for three--years, already: dot time you called with your mamma.”

Mrs. Koch's mother, Mrs. Blum, a dumpy, rubicund old lady, with rather a sly, rollicking air about her, held his hand, and swayed her head like an inverted pendulum from side to side, and smiled incredulously, and kept repeating, “Vail, vail, vail!”

Then came sprightly Mr. Blum, short, corpulent, and florid, like his wife; with a glossy bald pate, a drooping white mustache, and white mutton-chop whiskers, which left exposed a very red and shiny double chin. “My kracious? Was dot Elias Bacharach? Du lieber Gott! How you haif krown, since laist time you was here!” He held Elias off at arm's-length, and scrutinized him carefully. “Excuse me,” he demanded all at once; “where you get dot coat mait? Washington, come over here, and look at Elias Bacharach's coat. Dem must be Chairman goots, hey?” He plucked at the material of the unfortunate garment with his thumb and forefinger, and stroked it with the palm of his hand. “Dot's a goot coat,” he declared at last. “What you pay for it?” He lifted up one of the skirts, and examined the lining. He was a veritable child of nature, this Mr. Blum; and besides, he and his son-in-law constituted the firm of Blum & Koch, manufacturers and jobbers of ready-made clothing, Franklin Street, near Broadway.

Elias and the rabbi paid their respects to the baby; after which, Mrs. Koch picked him up and carried him off.

“Mr. Bacharach,” said Mr. Koch, grasping him by the elbow, “don't you know my brother-in-law, Mr. Sternberg?--Guggenheim & Sternberg, wholesale tobacco. My sister, Mrs. Sternberg; my other sister, Mrs. Morgenthau; my niece, Miss Tillie Morgenthau: Mr. Bacharach.”

To each of these persons, in turn, Elias made his obeisance.

Mrs. Morgenthau was in appearance a feminine duplicate of her brother; short, thick-set, smart-looking, and with an air of having lots of _go_; what is called a bouncing woman.

“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” she announced, in a loud, robust voice, and with emphasis, as though she wanted it understood that she wasn't fooling, but meant exactly what she said. She shook his hand, giving it a virile grip.

Miss Tillie Morgenthau was a young lady of eighteen or twenty, taller than her mother, exceedingly taper in the waist, and of an exceedingly fresh complexion; decidedly a pretty girl, with plenty of waving black hair, a pair of bright blue eyes, a shapely red mouth, and a generous provision of tiny teeth, regular and of pearly whiteness.

“Oh, I suppose Mr. Bacharach don't remember me,” she said, pouting playfully. She pronounced the personal pronoun _I_, like the interjection _Ah_.

“Oh, on the contrary,” protested Elias, trying hard to remember whether he had ever seen her before.

“Now, Ah'm perfectly sure you don't,” she insisted. “But All'll tell you. It was at the Advance Club, winter before last. Mr. Greenleaf introduced you to me--Charley Greenleaf. Do you belong to the Advance?”

No, Elias said; he was not a member of any club.

“Well, now,” called out Mr. Koch, to the company generally, “now that the baby's gone to bed, I propose that we adjourn to the summer-house, and try to get cooled off.”

An exodus at once began; and presently they were all established, a picturesque, free-and-easy group, upon the stoop. Elias found himself at Miss Tillie's side.

“Fearfully hot, isn't it?” she observed.

“Very, indeed,” agreed Elias.

“It always is hot over here on Lexington Avenue--Jerusalem Avenue, I call it, on account of the number of Jews that live over here. Pretty good name for it, don't you think so?”

“Quite good, yes,” he assented.

“But over where we live, it's much cooler. Have a breeze there most all the time.”

“Ah, where is that?”

“Beekman Place--clear down on the edge of the river. Number 57. Be happy to have you call on us there. We--mamma and I--we live with my uncle and aunt, the Sternbergs. It's fearfully out of the way, but it's grand when you get there.”

“Yes, I've heard so,” Elias said.

“Musical, Mr. Bacharach?” she inquired.

“Well, I don't know. I'm very fond of music.”

“Sing?”

“No.”

“Play?”

“No, not any more. I used to, a little. But I gave it up.”

“Oh, my! What a pity! I think it's perfectly elegant for a gentleman to play, don't you? But so few of them do. I think it's simply awful.”

“I suppose you play, of course?”

“Oh, I should say so. Yes, indeed. Music's my forte. I teach, too. Give lessons in Dr. Meyer's conservatory, and take private pupils.”

“Won't you play for us a little to-night, then?”

“Oh, gracious, no. It's too hot. Ah'm about melted, as it is. Ain't you?”

“Well, it _is_ pretty warm,” Elias confessed, in & reflective tone.

At this juncture, the white-capped maid-servant began to circulate among the people, bearing a large tray, upon which reposed a pitcher, a couple of slim bottles, and half a score of cut-glass tumblers.

“Beer or wine, Mr. Bacharach?” cried Mr. Koch, from above. “Take your choice, and help yourself. They're both gratis.”

Elias poured out a glass of wine for Miss Tillie, and for himself a glass of beer.

“Have a fresh cigar?” cried Mr. Koch.

“No, thank you. I haven't finished this one,” returned Elias, who had allowed the fire of his cigar to go out.

“Well, if you ain't comfortable, speak up, that's all,” his host concluded, and became silent.

“Oh, by the way, Meester Bacharach,” piped Mrs. Koch, who, having disposed of Lester, had rejoined the company, “I hear dot we haif to con-kratulate you.”

“Indeed? What about?” inquired Elias, unsuspiciously.

“We hear dot you was encaged. Was it true?”

“Oh!” he cried, taken aback. He colored up; but the darkness hid his blushes.

“Vail?” pursued his good-natured tormentress.

“No--not at all--an entire mistake,” he stammered.

“Oh, dot's too baid. Ain't you naifer going to get married?”

“I don't know. I guess not,” he said.

At this, there was a universal murmur of disapproval.

“Dot's just the way with all the young fellers, now-a-days,” Mr. Blum exclaimed. “They don't none of them want to get married. It's simply fearful; hey, Dr. Gedaza? When me and you was young men, we'd be ashamed to be single at his age, hey? Why, a man ain't a goot Jew, if he don't get married. Might just as well be an American right out. If I was you, Elias Bacharach, I'd be afraid. The Lord will punish you. You better get married, or look out.”

“Yes, that's so.”

“There ain't any doubt about that.”

“A young fellow ought to get married, and no mistake.”

Remarks such as these went up from all directions; and poor Elias felt like the most miserable of sinners.

Tillie came to his rescue. “Oh, let Mr. Bacharach alone,” she cried. “He ain't dead yet. Give him time.” Then, turning to the victim, “Don't you mind them. They've got marriage on the brain.--How are you going to spend this summer? In the country?”

“Well I haven't made any plans yet,” he answered; “have you?”

“Oh, yes--we're going to the Catskills--Tannerstown--all of us. Ever been there? It's perfectly ideal--the grandest place I ever did see. And such a lot of nice people! I must know a hundred at the very least, who are going there this season--Advance Club people--friends of my uncle Wash. You said you didn't belong to the Advance. Why don't you join? If I were a man, wouldn't I, though! They give the most elegant balls that you can possibly imagine. Mamma and I go to all of them. Mamma took the prize at the last.”

“Prize for what?” asked Elias.

“Why, don't you know? They give a prize for the most original costume; generally a book, or a work of art. Mamma's was a magnificent picture album, with hinges and clasps of hammered silver--solid, not plated. The ladies all go in costume, and each one tries to wear the most curious and surprising. Well, for instance, one lady represented a match. She had a dress just perfectly covered with burned matches, and matches in her hair, and for ear-rings, and every thing. Then, another lady, she went as a pack of cards; and her dress was just one mass of patch-work, and each patch was a card. And then mamma--Well, guess. What do you suppose mamma represented?”

“I give it up.”

“Well, it was simply the grandest idea you can possibly imagine. It took the whole room by storm. Gracious me, how they did laugh and applaud! She went as a fireman.”

“A--what? M gasped Elias.

“Yes, a fireman. She had a red shirt with brass buttons, and a helmet, and a badge, and a hatchet, and a big black mustache, like a regular member of the department. Well, she did look just too funny for any thing. You ought to have been there. You'd have laughed to die. I had a side-ache for a week afterward. She and the match were rivals; and there was quite a lot of betting as to who would come in first. But, as the judge who made the awards said, she did her duty, and _extinguished_ the match. That was pretty good, wasn't it? She got the prize, and the match got an honorable mention.”

“And your own costume?” Elias questioned. “What was that like?”

“Oh, I went in an ordinary white dress. Mamma thought I was too young to take a character. But next fall--Promise you won't tell. You mustn't breathe a word of it, will you? Next fall, I'm going as an ear of corn.”

“Why,” exclaimed Elias, “how can that be managed?”

“Oh, we've got it all designed; and my Uncle Wash, he's having some stuff woven on purpose, to represent the kernels. It's right in his line, you know. You wait till you see it. It will be simply the most ideal thing you can possibly imagine. But _please_ don't mention it. Some one else might do it first, and get in ahead of me, if you did.”

“You may rely upon me,” Elias vowed. “I'll be as secret as the grave.”

The rabbi now rose, and began to make his adieux. Elias followed his example.

“You two gentlemen come up here to dinner next Sunday afternoon, will you?” demanded Mr. Koch.

Before Elias had had a chance to decline, if he had been disposed to do so, the rabbi replied, “We will, with pleasure. Thank you.”

On the way home, “Well,” the rabbi asked, “did you have a good time?”

“Oh, fair,” returned Elias. “Queer set, aren't they?”

“Well, they have certain mannerisms, yes. But you mustn't mind a superficial thing like that. They talk too loud, and their grammar isn't of the choicest; but they're thoroughly kind-hearted and well-meaning; and they're not wanting in brains, either, though they may be a trifle unpolished. Mr. Koch himself is a remarkably intelligent man, a man of ideas. You get to talking to him sometime, and you'll find out. How did you like that little Miss Morgenthau?”

“Oh, she's quite amusing. Not a bad little thing. Very raw and untamed, but good-natured enough, I dare say.”

“Her father, Reuben Morgenthau, was a professional, musician--one of the best pianists I ever heard; and she is said to have inherited his talent. He was lost at sea when she was a baby. Good-looking girl, isn't she? I suppose Washington I. Koch will make her a handsome settlement, when she gets married. Yes, I suppose he'll do something very handsome, indeed.”

XVI

THE sluggishness, the dull, dead-and-alive feeling, of which Elias had complained to his uncle, seemed to be tightening its hold upon him. From morning to-night, each day, he went about in a state of profound apathy. His customary occupations had lost their power to interest him. His painting he pursued listlessly, getting no pleasure from it, and producing wretched stuff. He would sit at his studio window for hours at a stretch, moping; trying to think of something to do that would cause him a little sensation; wondering what the matter with himself could be; pitying himself from the bottom of his heart. He craved excitement as the toper craves his grog. But there were grog-shops on every corner; he knew of no excitement-shop. The entire emotional side of his nature appeared to have become congealed and unsusceptible. Even his five bodily senses had lost their edge. His food, unless he deluged it with salt and pepper, was vapid, flavorless. The cold water with which he bathed in the morning, felt lukewarm to his skin. Whatsoever his eye looked upon, straightway forfeited all its beauty, all its suggestiveness. He fancied he would enjoy a horse-whipping. It would stir him up, and start his blood to circulating. Already his memory of Christine had begun to grow dim and shadowy, like the memory of a person known only in a dream. His whole acquaintance with her, from first to last, as he reviewed it, seemed unreal and dream-like. As a matter of curiosity, he tried now and then to call up her face and figure; with none but the vaguest, meagerest results. She had gone quite out of his life, and was fading rapidly quite out of his thought. When Sunday came, and the rabbi reminded him of their engagement to dine at the Kochs', he experienced something almost like a distinct and positive pleasure. These people, at least, with their high-pitched voices and peculiar manners, would afford him a small measure of amusement. He hoped Miss Tillie would be there. Her aggressive crudity, which, a few weeks ago, would have cut him like a knife, would now simply have the effect of an agreeable irritant.

His hope in this respect was not disappointed. The dinner party consisted of precisely the same lot of people whom he had met the other evening, without an addition or a subtraction. When he and the rabbi arrived, they were all assembled in the parlor, forming the circumference of a circle, of which Lester, sprawling upon the carpet, and smiling a smile of beatific inanition, was the center. They were in ecstasies of admiration, which, evidently, they expected the new-comers to share. It was a monstrously fat baby, without any features to speak of; and it had a horrid red eruption all over one side of its face. Yet, very gravely, Mr. Koch asked, “Isn't that the handsomest baby you ever saw, Mr. Bacharach? Wouldn't you like to paint his portrait?” And Elias felt constrained to reply that it was, and that he would.

By and by his nurse came, and bore Master Lester away.

Mr. Blum sidled up, and taking Elias by the arm, remarked, “You was an artist-painter, Mr. Bacharach. Come; I show you a work of art.”

He led his victim to the worsted-work enormity above the mantel-piece.

“Hey? What you think of dot?” he inquired, with a connoisseurish smile. “I give dot to my daughter for a birthday present. Dot's immense, hey? I had it mait to order. Dot coast me a heap of money. How much you think dot coast?”

Elias had no idea. A great deal, he supposed.

“Vail, sir, dot coast me two hundred and fifty dollars, cash down. But it's worth it. I don't consider no money wasted, dot's spent for a work of art.”

Suddenly a look of intense vacancy spread over Mr. Blum's countenance; which was as suddenly followed by one of liveliest interest. Bringing his forefinger with a swoop down upon Elias's cravat-pin--a Roman coin, set in a ring of gold--“Excuse me,” he demanded eagerly, “is dot a genuine aintique?”

“I don't know, I'm sure. I dare say not,” Elias answered, smothering his impulse to laugh.

“Where you bought it?”

Elias told him.

“What you pay for it?”

Elias told him.

“Oh, vail, dot must be an imitation. You couldn't get no genuine aintique for a price like dot.”

Pretty soon a servant appeared, and announced that dinner was ready.

“Take partners,” Mr. Koch called out.

They went down to the dining-room, and distributed themselves about the table in accordance with the instructions, verbal and gestural, issued by Mrs. Koch. Elias sat between Miss Tillie and Mrs. Blum.

The men covered their heads with their handkerchiefs. There was an instant of silence. Mr. Koch glanced over at the rabbi, nodding significantly; whereupon, in his best voice, the rabbi intoned a grace. The men joined in the amen, which they pronounced omen.

The dinner began with a cocktail, and wound up with a liqueur. There were ten courses, and five kinds of wine. After the French, the Jews are the best cooks in the world; and the present repast fully sustained their reputation. The banqueters sat down at one o'clock. At a quarter to five the gentlemen lit their cigars. It was not until six o'clock that the table was finally deserted.

During the soup not a word was spoken. Everybody devoted himself religiously to his spoon. At last, however, leaning back in his chair, heaving a long-drawn sigh, and wiping the tears of enjoyment from his eyes, Mr. Blum exclaimed fervently: “Ach! Dot was a splendid soup!” And his spouse wagged her jolly old head approvingly at him, from across the table, and gurgled: “Du lieber Gott!”

This was the signal for a general loosening of tongues. A very loud and animated conversation at once broke forth from all directions. It was carried on, for the most part, in something like English; but every now and then it betrayed a tendency to lapse into German.

“Vail,” announced Mr. Blum, with a pathetically reflective air, “when I look around this table, and see all these smiling faces, and smell dot cooking, and drink dot wine--my Gott!--dot reminds me of the day I lainded at the Baittery, forty-five years ago, with just exactly six dollars in my pocket. I didn't much think then that I'd be here to-day. Hey, Rebecca?”

“Ach, Gott is goot,” Mrs. Blum responded, lifting her hand and casting her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Oh, papa,” murmured Mrs. Koch, with profound emotion, “and you didn't think you'd be a graindpa, neither, with such a loafly little graind-son, did you?”

“I didn't think I'd be much of any thing at all, dot's a faict. I didn't haif no prospects, and I didn't haif no friends. If it hadn't been for my religion, I don't know what I done. I guess I commit suicide. But I was a good Jew, and I knew the Lord would help me. Then I got married, and dot brought me goot luck. When me and Rebecca got married, I was earning just exactly five dollars a week, as a journeyman tailor. There's an exaimple for you, Elias Bacharach.”

“Your success has been very remarkable,” observed the rabbi.

“My success--what you think my success has been due to, Elias Bacharach?”

“Oh, to business wisdom--to what they call genius, I suppose.”

“No, sir--no, siree. Nodings of the kind. I owe my success to three things: to my God, my wife, and my industry. I ain't no smarter than any other man. But all my life I been industrious; and the Lord has given me good health; and my wife has taken care of my earnings. All my life I go to work at six or seven o'clock every morning; and I don't never leave my work till it can spare me. You aisk my son-in-law. He tell you that I get down-town every morning at seven o'clock; and I don't go home in the busy season till ten or eleven at night; and I'm sixty-five years old. Dot's what mait my success. Hey, Rebecca?”

“Ach, Gott!” cried Mrs. Blum. There was a frog in her voice, and her merry little eyes were dim with tears. She turned to Elias, and whispered: “Oh, he's such a _goot_ man, that man of mine!”

“Elias Bacharach,” pursued Mr. Blum, “you see dot lady there, next to you--my wife? Vail, she's pretty near as old as I am, and maybe you don't think she's very hainsome. But I tell you this. She's just exactly as hainsome in my eyes to-day, as she was on the day when we got married; and that's forty years ago already.”

Mrs. Blum was blushing now, peony red; and she cried out, “Oh, go'vay! Shut up!” And all around the table a laugh went, at the fond old couple's expense.

When sobriety was restored, “I saw by the papers,” said the rabbi, “that the manufacturers of clothing have been having trouble with their workmen, lately--strikes, and that sort of thing. How have you got along with yours?”

“Oh, we--we got along maiknificent,” Mr. Blum replied. “You see my son-in-law over there? He mainage the whole affair. You aisk him.”