Part 29

* * * * *

Feigele has resumed her seat by the bright lamp, and sews and sews till far into the night, and with every seam that she sews, something is added to the credit of her new account.

This time the dowry must be a larger one, because for every stamp that is added to the account-book there is a new grey hair on Feigele's black head.

A JEWISH CHILD

The mother came out of the bride's chamber, and cast a piercing look at her husband, who was sitting beside a finished meal, and was making pellets of bread crumbs previous to saying grace.

"You go and talk to her! I haven't a bit of strength left!"

"So, Rochel-Leoh has brought up children, has she, and can't manage them! Why! People will be pointing at you and laughing--a ruin to your years!"

"To my years?! A ruin to _yours_! _My_ children, are they? Are they not yours, too? Couldn't you stay at home sometimes to care for them and help me to bring them up, instead of trapesing round--the black year knows where and with whom?"

"Rochel, Rochel, what has possessed you to start a quarrel with me now? The bridegroom's family will be arriving directly."

"And what do you expect me to do, Moishehle, eh?! For God's sake! Go in to her, we shall be made a laughing-stock."

The man rose from the table, and went into the next room to his daughter. The mother followed.

On the little sofa that stood by the window sat a girl about eighteen, her face hidden in her hands, her arms covered by her loose, thick, black hair. She was evidently crying, for her bosom rose and fell like a stormy sea. On the bed opposite lay the white silk wedding-dress, the Chuppeh-Kleid, with the black, silk Shool-Kleid, and the black stuff morning-dress, which the tailor who had undertaken the outfit had brought not long ago. By the door stood a woman with a black scarf round her head and holding boxes with wigs.

"Channehle! You are never going to do me this dishonor? to make me the talk of the town?" exclaimed the father. The bride was silent.

"Look at me, daughter of Moisheh Groiss! It's all very well for Genendel Freindel's daughter to wear a wig, but not for the daughter of Moisheh Groiss? Is that it?"

"And yet Genendel Freindel might very well think more of herself than you: she is more educated than you are, and has a larger dowry," put in the mother.

The bride made no reply.

"Daughter, think how much blood and treasure it has cost to help us to a bit of pleasure, and now you want to spoil it for us? Remember, for God's sake, what you are doing with yourself! We shall be excommunicated, the young man will run away home on foot!"

"Don't be foolish," said the mother, took a wig out of a box from the woman by the door, and approached her daughter. "Let us try on the wig, the hair is just the color of yours," and she laid the strange hair on the girl's head.

The girl felt the weight, put up her fingers to her head, met among her own soft, cool, living locks, the strange, dead hair of the wig, stiff and cold, and it flashed through her, Who knows where the head to which this hair belonged is now? A shuddering enveloped her, and as though she had come in contact with something unclean, she snatched off the wig, threw in onto the floor and hastily left the room.

Father and mother stood and looked at each other in dismay.

* * * * *

The day after the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom's mother rose early, and, bearing large scissors, and the wig and a hood which she had brought from her home as a present for the bride, she went to dress the latter for the "breakfast."

But the groom's mother remained outside the room, because the bride had locked herself in, and would open her door to no one.

The groom's mother ran calling aloud for help to her husband, who, together with a dozen uncles and brothers-in-law, was still sleeping soundly after the evening's festivity. She then sought out the bridegroom, an eighteen-year-old boy with his mother's milk still on his lips, who, in a silk caftan and a fur cap, was moving about the room in bewildered fashion, his eyes on the ground, ashamed to look anyone in the face. In the end she fell back on the mother of the bride, and these two went in to her together, having forced open the door between them.

"Why did you lock yourself in, dear daughter. There is no need to be ashamed."

"Marriage is a Jewish institution!" said the groom's mother, and kissed her future daughter-in-law on both cheeks.

The girl made no reply.

"Your mother-in-law has brought you a wig and a hood for the procession to the Shool," said her own mother.

The band had already struck up the "Good Morning" in the next room.

"Come now, Kallehshi, Kalleh-leben, the guests are beginning to assemble."

The groom's mother took hold of the plaits in order to loosen them.

The bride bent her head away from her, and fell on her own mother's neck.

"I can't, Mame-leben! My heart won't let me, Mame-kron!"

She held her hair with both hands, to protect it from the other's scissors.

"For God's sake, my daughter? my life," begged the mother.

"In the other world you will be plunged for this into rivers of fire. The apostate who wears her own hair after marriage will have her locks torn out with red hot pincers," said the other with the scissors.

A cold shiver went through the girl at these words.

"Mother-life, mother-crown!" she pleaded.

Her hands sought her hair, and the black silky tresses fell through them in waves. Her hair, the hair which had grown with her growth, and lived with her life, was to be cut off, and she was never, never to have it again--she was to wear strange hair, hair that had grown on another person's head, and no one knows whether that other person was alive or lying in the earth this long time, and whether she might not come any night to one's bedside, and whine in a dead voice:

"Give me back my hair, give me back my hair!"

A frost seized the girl to the marrow, she shivered and shook.

Then she heard the squeak of scissors over her head, tore herself out of her mother's arms, made one snatch at the scissors, flung them across the room, and said in a scarcely human voice:

"My own hair! May God Himself punish me!"

That day the bridegroom's mother took herself off home again, together with the sweet-cakes and the geese which she had brought for the wedding breakfast for her own guests. She wanted to take the bridegroom as well, but the bride's mother said: "I will not give him back to you! He belongs to me already!"

The following Sabbath they led the bride in procession to the Shool wearing her own hair in the face of all the town, covered only by a large hood.

But may all the names she was called by the way find their only echo in some uninhabited wilderness.

* * * * *

A summer evening, a few weeks after the wedding: The young man had just returned from the Stuebel, and went to his room. The wife was already asleep, and the soft light of the lamp fell on her pale face, showing here and there among the wealth of silky-black hair that bathed it. Her slender arms were flung round her head, as though she feared that someone might come by night to shear them off while she slept. He had come home excited and irritable: this was the fourth week of his married life, and they had not yet called him up to the Reading of the Law, the Chassidim pursued him, and to-day Chayyim Moisheh had blamed him in the presence of the whole congregation, and had shamed him, because _she_, his wife, went about in her own hair. "You're no better than a clay image," Reb Chayyim Moisheh had told him. "What do you mean by a woman's saying she won't? It is written: 'And he shall rule over thee.'"

And he had come home intending to go to her and say: "Woman, it is a precept in the Torah! If you persist in wearing your own hair, I may divorce you without returning the dowry," after which he would pack up his things and go home. But when he saw his little wife asleep in bed, and her pale face peeping out of the glory of her hair, he felt a great pity for her. He went up to the bed, and stood a long while looking at her, after which he called softly:

"Channehle ... Channehle ... Channehle...."

She opened her eyes with a frightened start, and looked round in sleepy wonder:

"Nosson, did you call? What do you want?

"Nothing, your cap has slipped off," he said, lifting up the white nightcap, which had fallen from her head.

She flung it on again, and wanted to turn towards the wall.

"Channehle, Channehle, I want to talk to you."

The words went to her heart. The whole time since their marriage he had, so to say, not spoken to her. During the day she saw nothing of him, for he spent it in the house-of-study or in the Stuebel. When he came home to dinner, he sat down to the table in silence. When he wanted anything, he asked for it speaking into the air, and when really obliged to exchange a word with her, he did so with his eyes fixed on the ground, too shy to look her in the face. And now he said he wanted to talk to her, and in such a gentle voice, and they two alone together in their room!

"What do you want to say to me?" she asked softly.

"Channehle," he began, "please, don't make a fool of me, and don't make a fool of yourself in people's eyes. Has not God decreed that we should belong together? You are my wife and I am your husband, and is it proper, and what does it look like, a married woman wearing her own hair?"

Sleep still half dimmed her eyes, and had altogether clouded her thought and will. She felt helpless, and her head fell lightly towards his breast.

"Child," he went on still more gently, "I know you are not so depraved as they say. I know you are a pious Jewish daughter, and His blessed Name will help us, and we shall have pious Jewish children. Put away this nonsense! Why should the whole world be talking about you? Are we not man and wife? Is not your shame mine?"

It seemed to her as though _someone_, at once very far away and very near, had come and was talking to her. Nobody had ever yet spoken to her so gently and confidingly. And he was her husband, with whom she would live so long, so long, and there would be children, and she would look after the house!

She leant her head lightly against him.

"I know you are very sorry to lose your hair, the ornament of your girlhood, I saw you with it when I was a guest in your home. I know that God gave you grace and loveliness, I know. It cuts me to the heart that your hair must be shorn off, but what is to be done? It is a rule, a law of our religion, and after all we are Jews. We might even, God forbid, have a child conceived to us in sin, may Heaven watch over and defend us."

She said nothing, but remained resting lightly in his arm, and his face lay in the stream of her silky-black hair with its cool odor. In that hair dwelt a soul, and he was conscious of it. He looked at her long and earnestly, and in his look was a prayer, a pleading with her for her own happiness, for her happiness and his.

"Shall I?" ... he asked, more with his eyes than with his lips.

She said nothing, she only bent her head over his lap.

He went quickly to the drawer, and took out a pair of scissors.

She laid her head in his lap, and gave her hair as a ransom for their happiness, still half-asleep and dreaming. The scissors squeaked over her head, shearing off one lock after the other, and Channehle lay and dreamt through the night.

On waking next morning, she threw a look into the glass which hung opposite the bed. A shock went through her, she thought she had gone mad, and was in the asylum! On the table beside her lay her shorn hair, dead!

She hid her face in her hands, and the little room was filled with the sound of weeping!

A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER

The market lies foursquare, surrounded on every side by low, whitewashed little houses. From the chimney of the one-storied house opposite the well and inhabited by the baker, issues thick smoke, which spreads low over the market-place. Beneath the smoke is a flying to and fro of white pigeons, and a tall boy standing outside the baker's door is whistling to them.

Equally opposite the well are stalls, doors laid across two chairs and covered with fruit and vegetables, and around them women, with head-kerchiefs gathered round their weary, sunburnt faces in the hottest weather, stand and quarrel over each other's wares.

"It's certainly worth my while to stand quarrelling with _you_! A tramp like you keeping a stall!"

Yente, a woman about forty, whose wide lips have just uttered the above, wears a large, dirty apron, and her broad, red face, with the composed glance of the eyes under the kerchief, gives support to her words.

"Do you suppose you have got the Almighty by the beard? He is mine as well as yours!" answers Taube, pulling her kerchief lower about her ears, and angrily stroking down her hair.

A new customer approached Yente's stall, and Taube, standing by idle, passed the time in vituperations.

"What do I want with the money of a fine lady like you? You'll die like the rest of us, and not a dog will say Kaddish for you," she shrieked, and came to a sudden stop, for Taube had intended to bring up the subject of her own son Yitzchokel, when she remembered that it is against good manners to praise one's own.

Yente, measuring out a quarter of pears to her customer, made answer:

"Well, if you were a little superior to what you are, your husband wouldn't have died, and your child wouldn't have to be ashamed of you, as we all know he is."

Whereon Taube flew into a rage, and shouted:

"Hussy! The idea of my son being ashamed of me! May you be a sacrifice for his littlest finger-nail, for you're not worthy to mention his name!"

She was about to burst out weeping at the accusation of having been the cause of her husband's death and of causing her son to be ashamed of her, but she kept back her tears with all her might in order not to give pleasure to Yente.

The sun was dropping lower behind the other end of the little town, Jews were hurrying across the market-place to Evening Prayer in the house-of-study street, and the Cheder-boys, just let out, began to gather round the well.

Taube collected her few little baskets into her arms (the door and the chairs she left in the market-place; nobody would steal them), and with two or three parting curses to the rude Yente, she quietly quitted the scene.

Walking home with her armful of baskets, she thought of her son Yitzchokel.

Yente's stinging remarks pursued her. It was not Yente's saying that she had caused her husband's death that she minded, for everyone knew how hard she had worked during his illness, it was her saying that Yitzchokel was ashamed of her, that she felt in her "ribs." It occurred to her that when he came home for the night, he never would touch anything in her house.

And thinking this over, she started once more abusing Yente.

"Let her not live to see such a thing, Lord of the World, the One Father!"

It seemed to her that this fancy of hers, that Yitzchokel was ashamed of her, was all Yente's fault, it was all her doing, the witch!

"My child, my Yitzchokel, what business is he of yours?" and the cry escaped her:

"Lord of the World, take up my quarrel, Thou art a Father to the orphaned, Thou shouldst not forgive her this!"

"Who is that? Whom are you scolding so, Taube?" called out Necheh, the rich man's wife, standing in the door of her shop, and overhearing Taube, as she scolded to herself on the walk home.

"Who should it be, housemistress, who but the hussy, the abortion, the witch," answered Taube, pointing with one finger towards the market-place, and, without so much as lifting her head to look at the person speaking to her, she went on her way.

She remembered, as she walked, how, that morning, when she went into Necheh's kitchen with a fowl, she heard her Yitzchokel's voice in the other room disputing with Necheh's boys over the Talmud. She knew that on Wednesdays Yitzchokel ate his "day" at Necheh's table, and she had taken the fowl there that day on purpose, so that her Yitzchokel should have a good plate of soup, for her poor child was but weakly.

When she heard her son's voice, she had been about to leave the kitchen, and yet she had stayed. Her Yitzchokel disputing with Necheh's children? What did they know as compared with him? Did they come up to his level? "He will be ashamed of me," she thought with a start, "when he finds me with a chicken in my hand. So his mother is a market-woman, they will say, there's a fine partner for you!" But she had not left the kitchen. A child who had never cost a farthing, and she should like to know how much Necheh's children cost their parents! If she had all the money that Yitzchokel ought to have cost, the money that ought to have been spent on him, she would be a rich woman too, and she stood and listened to his voice.

"Oi, _he_ should have lived to see Yitzchokel, it would have made him well." Soon the door opened, Necheh's boys appeared, and her Yitzchokel with them. His cheeks flamed.

"Good morning!" he said feebly, and was out at the door in no time. She knew that she had caused him vexation, that he was ashamed of her before his companions.

And she asked herself: Her child, her Yitzchokel, who had sucked her milk, what had Necheh to do with him? And she had poured out her bitterness of heart upon Yente's head for this also, that her son had cost her parents nothing, and was yet a better scholar than Necheh's children, and once more she exclaimed:

"Lord of the World! Avenge my quarrel, pay her out for it, let her not live to see another day!"

Passers-by, seeing a woman walking and scolding aloud, laughed.

Night came on, the little town was darkened.

Taube reached home with her armful of baskets, dragged herself up the steps, and opened the door.

"Mame, it's Ma-a-me!" came voices from within.

The house was full of smoke, the children clustered round her in the middle of the room, and never ceased calling out Mame! One child's voice was tearful: "Where have you been all day?" another's more cheerful: "How nice it is to have you back!" and all the voices mingled together into one.

"Be quiet! You don't give me time to draw my breath!" cried the mother, laying down the baskets.

She went to the fireplace, looked about for something, and presently the house was illumined by a smoky lamp.

The feeble shimmer lighted only the part round the hearth, where Taube was kindling two pieces of stick--an old dusty sewing-machine beside a bed, sign of a departed tailor, and a single bed opposite the lamp, strewn with straw, on which lay various fruits, the odor of which filled the room. The rest of the apartment with the remaining beds lay in shadow.

It is a year and a half since her husband, Lezer the tailor, died. While he was still alive, but when his cough had increased, and he could no longer provide for his family, Taube had started earning something on her own account, and the worse the cough, the harder she had to toil, so that by the time she became a widow, she was already used to supporting her whole family.

The eldest boy, Yitzchokel, had been the one consolation of Lezer the tailor's cheerless existence, and Lezer was comforted on his death-bed to think he should leave a good Kaddish behind him.

When he died, the householders had pity on the desolate widow, collected a few rubles, so that she might buy something to traffic with, and, seeing that Yitzchokel was a promising boy, they placed him in the house-of-study, arranged for him to have his daily meals in the houses of the rich, and bade him pass his time over the Talmud.

Taube, when she saw her Yitzchokel taking his meals with the rich, felt satisfied. A weakly boy, what could _she_ give him to eat? There, at the rich man's table, he had the best of everything, but it grieved her that he should eat in strange, rich houses--she herself did not know whether she had received a kindness or the reverse, when he was taken off her hands.

One day, sitting at her stall, she spied her Yitzchokel emerge from the Shool-Gass with his Tefillin-bag under his arm, and go straight into the house of Reb Zindel the rich, to breakfast, and a pang went through her heart. She was still on terms, then, with Yente, because immediately after the death of her husband everyone had been kind to her, and she said:

"Believe me, Yente, I don't know myself what it is. What right have I to complain of the householders? They have been very good to me and to my child, made provision for him in rich houses, treated him as if he were _no_ market-woman's son, but the child of gentlefolk, and yet every day when I give the other children their dinner, I forget, and lay a plate for my Yitzchokel too, and when I remember that he has his meals at other people's hands, I begin to cry."

"Go along with you for a foolish woman!" answered Yente. "How would he turn out if he were left to you? What is a poor person to give a child to eat, when you come to think of it?"

"You are right, Yente," Taube replied, "but when I portion out the dinner for the others, it cuts me to the heart."

And now, as she sat by the hearth cooking the children's supper, the same feeling came over her, that they had stolen her Yitzchokel away.

When the children had eaten and gone to bed, she stood the lamp on the table, and began mending a shirt for Yitzchokel.

Presently the door opened, and he, Yitzchokel, came in.

Yitzchokel was about fourteen, tall and thin, his pale face telling out sharply against his black cloak beneath his black cap.

"Good evening!" he said in a low tone.

The mother gave up her place to him, feeling that she owed him respect, without knowing exactly why, and it was borne in upon her that she and her poverty together were a misfortune for Yitzchokel.

He took a book out of the case, sat down, and opened it.

The mother gave the lamp a screw, wiped the globe with her apron, and pushed the lamp nearer to him.

"Will you have a glass of tea, Yitzchokel?" she asked softly, wishful to serve him.

"No, I have just had some."

"Or an apple?"

He was silent.

The mother cleaned a plate, laid two apples on it, and a knife, and placed it on the table beside him.

He peeled one of the apples as elegantly as a grown-up man, repeated the blessing aloud, and ate.

When Taube had seen Yitzchokel eat an apple, she felt more like his mother, and drew a little nearer to him.

And Yitzchokel, as he slowly peeled the second apple, began to talk more amiably:

"To-day I talked with the Dayan about going somewhere else. In the house-of-study here, there is nothing to do, nobody to study with, nobody to ask how and where, and in which book, and he advises me to go to the Academy at Makove; he will give me a letter to Reb Chayyim, the headmaster, and ask him to befriend me."

When Taube heard that her son was about to leave her, she experienced a great shock, but the words, Dayan, Rosh-Yeshiveh, mekarev-sein, and other high-sounding bits of Hebrew, which she did not understand, overawed her, and she felt she must control herself. Besides, the words held some comfort for her: Yitzchokel was holding counsel with her, with her--his mother!

"Of course, if the Dayan says so," she answered piously.

"Yes," Yitzchokel continued, "there one can hear lectures with all the commentaries; Reb Chayyim, the author of the book "Light of the Torah," is a well-known scholar, and there one has a chance of getting to be something decent."

His words entirely reassured her, she felt a certain happiness and exaltation, because he was her child, because she was the mother of such a child, such a son, and because, were it not for her, Yitzchokel would not be there at all. At the same time her heart pained her, and she grew sad.

Presently she remembered her husband, and burst out crying: