In all that long quest of the canopy, Leah had never come so near
fainting as now. The horror of Ellis Island was nothing to this. That
scene resurged, and Tsirrele's fresh beauty, unflecked by the voyage,
came up luridly before her; the "baby," whom the unnoted years had
made a young woman of fifteen, while they had been aging and staling
Biela.
"But--but this will break Biela's heart," she whispered, heart-broken.
"How was I to know Biela would _ever_ get in?" he said, trying to be
angry. "Was I to remain a bachelor all my life, breaking the
Almighty's ordinance? Did I not wait and wait faithfully for Biela all
those years?"
"You could have migrated elsewhere," she said faintly.
"And ruin my connection--and starve?" His anger was real by now.
"Besides I have married into the family--it is almost the same thing.
And the old mother is just as pleased."
"Oh, she!" and all the endured bitterness of the long years was in the
exclamation. "All she wants is grandchildren."
"No, it isn't," he retorted. "Grandchildren with good eyes."
"God forgive you," was all the lump in Leah's throat allowed her to
reply. She steadied herself with a hand on the counter, striving to
repossess her soul for Biela's sake.
A customer came in, and the tragic universe dwindled to a prosaic
place in which ribbons existed in unsatisfactory shades.
"Of course we must go this minute," Leah said, as Srul clanked the
coins into the till. "Biela cannot ever live here with you now."
"Yes, it is better so," he assented sulkily. "Besides, you may as well
know at once. I keep open on the Sabbath, and that would not have
pleased Biela. That is another reason why it was best not to marry
Biela. Tsirrele doesn't seem to mind."
The very ruins of her world seemed toppling now. But this new
revelation of Tsirrele's and his own wickedness seemed only of a piece
with the first--indeed, went far to account for it.
"You break the Sabbath, after all!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "We are not in Poland any longer. No dead
flies here. Everybody does it. Shut the store two days a week! I
should get left."
"And you bring your mother's gray hairs down with sorrow to the
grave."
"My mother's gray hairs are no longer hidden by a stupid black
_Shaitel_. That is all. I have explained to her that America is the
land of enlightenment and freedom. Her eyes are opened."
"I trust to God, your father's--peace be upon him!--are still shut!"
said Leah as she walked with slow steady steps into the parlour, to
bear off her wounded lamb.
* * * * *
V