Nowhere was the poverty of the Pale bitterer than in the weavers'
colony, in which Srul betrothed himself to Biela. The dowries, which
had been wont to kindle so many young men's passions, had fallen to
freezing-point; and Biela, if she had no near prospect of marriage,
could console herself with the knowledge that she was romantically
loved. Even the attraction of _kest_--temporary maintenance of the
young couple by the father-in-law--was wanting in Biela's case, for
the simple reason that she had no father, both her parents having died
of the effort to get a living. For marriage-portion and _kest_, Biela
could only bring her dark beauty, and even that was perhaps less than
it seemed. For you scarcely ever saw Biela apart from her homely
quasi-mother, her elder sister Leah, who, like the original Leah, had
"tender eyes," which combined with a pock-marked face to ensure for
her premature recognition as an old maid. The inflamed eyelids were
the only legacy Leah's father had left her.
From Srul's side, though his parents were living, came even fainter
hope of the wedding-canopy. Srul's father was blind--perhaps a further
evidence that the local hygienic conditions were nocuous to the eye in
particular--and Srul himself, who had occupied most of his time in
learning to weave Rabbinic webs, had only just turned his attention
to cloth, though Heaven was doubtless pleased with the gear of
_Gemara_ he had gathered in his short sixteen years. The old weaver
had--in more than one sense--seen better days before his affliction
and the great factories came on: days when the independent hand-weaver
might sit busily before the loom from the raw dawn to the black
midnight, taking his meals at the bench; days when, moreover, the
"piece" of satin-faced cloth was many ells shorter. "But they make up
for the extra length," he would say with pathetic humour, "by cutting
the pay shorter."
The same sense of humour enabled him to bear up against the forced
rests that increasing slackness brought the hand-weavers, while the
factories whirred on. "Now is the proverb fulfilled," he cried to his
unsmiling wife, "for there are two Sabbaths a week." Alas! as the
winter grew older and colder, it became a week of Sabbaths. The wheels
stood still; in all the colony not a spool was reeled. It was
unprecedented. Gradually the factories had stolen the customers. Some
sat waiting dazedly for the raw yarns they knew could no longer come
at this season; others left the suburb in which the colony had drowsed
from time immemorial, and sought odd jobs in the town, in the frowning
shadows of the factories. But none would enter the factories
themselves, though these were ready to suck them in on one sole
condition.
Ah! here was the irony of the tragedy. The one condition was the one
condition the poor weavers could not accept. It was open to them to
reduce the week of Sabbaths to its ancient and diurnal dimensions,
provided the Sabbath itself came on Sunday. Nay, even the working-day
offered them was less, and the wage was more than their own. The
deeper irony within this irony was that the proprietor of every one of
these factories was a brother in Israel! Jeshurun grown fat and
kicking.
Even the old blind man's composure deserted him when it began to be
borne in on his darkness that the younger weavers meditated surrender.
The latent explosives generated through the years by their perusal of
un-Jewish books in insidious "Yiddish" versions, now bade fair to be
touched to eruption by this paraded prosperity of wickedness;
wickedness that had even discarded the caftan and shaved the corners
of its beard.
"But thou, apple of my eye," the old man said to Srul, "thou wilt die
rather than break the Sabbath?"
"Father," quoted the youth, with a shuddering emotion at the bare
idea, "I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread."
"My son! A true spark of the Patriarchs!" And the old man clasped the
boy to his arms and kissed him on the pious cheeks down which the
ear-locks dangled.
"But if Biela should tempt thee, so that thou couldst have the
wherewithal to marry her," put in his mother, who could not keep her
thoughts off grandchildren.
"Not for apples of gold, mother, will I enter the service of these
serpents."
"Nevertheless, Biela is fair to see, and thou art getting on in
years," murmured the mother.
"Leah would not give Biela to a Sabbath-breaker," said the old man
reassuringly.
"Yes, but suppose she gives her to a bread-winner," persisted the
mother. "Do not forget that Biela is already fifteen, only a year
younger than thyself."
But Leah kept firm to the troth she had plighted on behalf of Biela,
even though the young man's family sank lower and lower, till it was
at last reduced from the little suburban wooden cottage, with the
spacious courtyard, to one corner of a large town-cellar, whose
population became amphibious when the Vistula overflowed.
And Srul kept firm to the troth Israel had plighted with the
Sabbath-bride, even when his father's heart no longer beat, so could
not be broken. The old man remained to the last the most cheerful
denizen of the cellar: perhaps because he was spared the vision of his
emaciated fellow-troglodytes. He called the cellar "Arba Kanfos,"
after the four-cornered garment of fringes which he wore: and
sometimes he said these were the "Four Corners" from which, according
to the Prophets, God would gather Israel.