The nearer Asriel, with the prodigy in tow, came to New York, the
deeper did Pravly sink into the golden mist of romance, and the more
real did the great American city grow in his mind. Every mile added
detail to the picture, and every new bit of detail made it dearer to
his heart.
He was going home. He felt it more keenly, more thrillingly every day,
every hour, every minute.
Sandy Hook hove in sight.
Can there be anything more beautiful, more sublime, and more uplifting
than the view, on a clear summer morning, of New York harbor from an
approaching ship? Shaya saw in the enchanting effect of sea, verdure,
and sky a new version of his visions of paradise, where, ensconced
behind luxuriant foliage, the righteous--venerable old men with
silvery beards--were nodding and swaying over gold-bound tomes of the
Talmud. Yet, overborne with its looming grandeur, his heart grew heavy
with suspense, and he clung close to Asriel.
All was bustle and expectation on board. The little deck engines never
ceased rumbling and the passengers, spruced up as if for church, were
busy about their baggage, or promenading with a festive, nervous air.
Asriel twitched and bit his lip in rapture.
"Oh, how blue the water is!" said Shaya wistfully.
"America is a fine country, is it not?" the old man rejoined. "But it
can't hold a candle to Flora. Wait till you see her. You just try to
be a good boy," he kept murmuring; "stick to your Talmud, and don't
give a _peper_ for anything else, and all God has given me shall be
yours. I have no son to say _Kaddish_ for my soul when I am dead. Will
you be my Kaddish, Shaya? Will you observe the anniversary of my
death?" he queried, in a beseeching tone which the young man had never
heard from him.
"Of course I will," Shaya returned, like a dutiful child.
"Will you? May you live long for it. In palaces will I house you, like
the eye in my head will I cherish you. I am only a boor, but she is my
daughter, my only child, and my whole life in this world."
* * * * *
Asriel kept Flora unadvised as to the name of the steamer or the date
of his arrival. Upon landing he did not go directly to his residence,
but first took his importation into a large "clothing and gents'
furnishing store" on Broadway, from which the _illoui_ emerged
completely transformed. Instead of his uncouth cap and the draggling
coat which had hidden his top-boots from view, he was now arrayed in
the costliest "Prince Albert," the finest summer derby, and the most
elegant button-shoes the store contained. This and a starched
shirt-front, a turned-down collar, and a gaudy puff-tie set into
higher relief the Byronic effect of his intellectual, winsome face.
Asriel snapped his fingers for delight. He thought him easily the
handsomest and best-dressed man on Broadway. "It is the Divine
Presence shining upon him!" he murmured to himself, dragging the young
man by the hand, as if he were a truant schoolboy. Barring the
prodigy's sidelocks (badges of divine learning and piety), which were
tightly curled into two little cushions in front of his ears, he now
thought him thoroughly Americanized.
The prodigy, however, felt tied and fettered in the garb of Gentile
civilization, and as he trudged along by his convoy's side, he viewed
his transformed self in the store windows, or stared, rabbit-like, at
the lumbering stage-coaches and the hurrying noblemen.
Asriel let himself and his charge in noiselessly with the latchkey,
which had accompanied him, together with a bunch of other keys, on
his tour. They entered the hallway on tiptoe.
The little house rang with the voluminous tones of Flora's piano,
through which trickled the doleful tremolo of her subdued contralto.
Since her father had left her pining for his return, "Home, Sweet
Home" had become her favorite tune.
Flora was alone in the house, and her unconscious welcome was all the
sweeter to Asriel's soul for the grieving note which ran through it.
His heart throbbed with violence. Shaya's sank in awe. He had never
heard a piano except through the window of some nobleman's house.
"Hush! Do you hear?" the old man whispered. "That's your predestined
bride." With that he led the way downstairs. There they paused to kiss
the divine name on the _Mezuzah_ of the door-post.
"Tamara!" Asriel called, under his breath, looking for the pious
housekeeper in the dining-room and in the kitchen. "She is not in.
Must be out marketing or about her good deeds. A dear soul she! Oh,
it's her fast day; she fasts Mondays and Thursdays."
Then he stepped up in front of a tin box that was nailed to one of
the kitchen doors and took out his pocket-book. It was one of the
contribution-boxes of the "Meyer-the-Wonder-worker Fund," which is
devoted to the support of pious old European Jews who go to end their
days in the Land of Israel. Every orthodox Jew in the world keeps a
similar box in his house and drops a coin into it whenever he escapes
some danger. Asriel had safely crossed the wide ocean, and his
offering was a handful of silver.
"Well, you stay here, Shaya, and don't budge till you are called," he
said; and leaving the young man to his perplexity he betook himself
upstairs, to surprise his daughter.
Flora burst into tears of joy, and hugged him again and again, while
he stroked her black hair or stood scowling and grinning for
admiration.
"Ah, you dear, cranky papa!" she burst out, for the fourth time
realizing that he was actually come back to her, and for the fourth
time attacking him.
At last he thought they had had enough. He was dying to protract the
scene, but there was that troublesome job to get rid of, and Asriel
was not the man to put such things off. Whenever he felt somewhat
timid he would grow facetious. This was the case at the present
juncture.
"Well, Flora, guess what sort of present your papa has brought you,"
he said, reddening to his ears. "I'll bet you you won't hit if you
keep on guessing till to-morrow. No girl has ever got such a present
as long as America is America."
Flora's eyes danced with joyous anticipation. Her mind was ablaze with
diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls.
"I have got a bridegroom for you--a fifteen-thousand-dollar one.
Handsomest and smartest fellow on earth. He is an _illoui_."
"A what?" she asked, in amazement.
"Oh, a wonderful chap, you know, deep in the Talmud and the other holy
books. He could knock all the rabbis of Europe to smithereens. The
biggest bug in Pravly was after him, but I beat him clean out of his
boots. Shaya! Come right up!"
The girl gazed at her father in bewilderment. Was he joking or was he
in dead, terrific earnest?
Shaya made his appearance, with his eyes on the floor, and wringing
the index finger of his right hand, as he was wont to do whenever he
felt ill at ease, which was seldom, however.
Flora's brain was in a whirl.
"This is your predestined bridegroom, my daughter. A fine present, is
it not? Did you ever expect such a raisin of a sweetheart, hey? Well,
children, I must go around to see about the baggage. Have a chat and
be acquainted." With that he advanced to the door.
"Papa! Papa!" Flora frantically called to him. But he never turned his
head and went his way.
In her despair she rushed at the young stranger, who was still
wringing his finger, as he stood in the middle of the parlor, eyeing
the carpet, and snapped out:--
"Mister, you had better go. If you think you are going to be my
bridegroom, you are sadly mistaken."
She spoke in Yiddish, but her pronunciation, particularly of the
letter "r," was so decidedly American that to Shaya it sounded at once
like his native tongue and the language of Gentiles. However, it was
Yiddish enough, and the fact of this imposing young lady speaking it
gave him the feeling of being in the presence of a Jewish princess of
biblical times.
"Where shall I go? I don't know anybody here." He said it with an air
of naïve desperation which touched the girl's heart. "Where is my
fault?" he added pleadingly.
She gave him a close look, and, taking him by his clean-cut beardless
chin, opened her eyes wide at him, and broke into a hearty laugh.
"My father has really brought you over to marry me?" she questioned,
for the first time awakening to the humorous side of the situation,
and again she burst out laughing.
Shaya blushed and took hold of his finger, but he forthwith released
it and also broke into a giggle. Her merriment set him at his ease,
and her labored Yiddish struck him as the prattle of a child.
Flora was amused and charmed as with a baby. Shaya felt as if he were
playing with another boy.
Of all the immigrants who had married or were engaged to marry some of
her girl friends, none had, just after landing, been so presentable,
so sweet-faced, and so droll as this scholarly-looking fellow. There
would have been nothing odd in her marrying him a year or two later,
after he had picked up some broken English and some of the customs of
the country. But then her mind was firmly made up, and she had boasted
to her friends that she was bound to marry a doctor, and here this boy
was not even going to be a business man, but an orthodox rabbi or
something of the sort. The word "rabbi" was associated in her mind
with the image of an unkempt, long-skirted man who knew nothing of the
world, took snuff, and made life a nuisance to himself and to others.
Is she going to be a _rabbitzen_ (a rabbi's wife)? No! No! No! Come
what may, none but a refined American gentleman shall lead her under
the nuptial canopy! And in her rage she fled from the parlor and went
to nurse her misery on the dining-room lounge.
Presently, as she lay with her hands clasped under her head, abandoned
to her despair and fury, and yet unable to realize that it was all in
real earnest, a fretting sensation settled somewhere in her heart. At
first it was only like a grain of sand, but it kept growing till it
lay a heavy, unbearable lump. She could not stand the idea of that
poor, funny dear being left alone and scared out of his wits. Still,
she would not stir. Let papa take him away or she will leave the house
and go to work in a factory.
"Tamara!" she suddenly raised herself to say, the moment the
housekeeper came into the room. "There is a man upstairs. He must be
hungry."
"Then why don't _you_ give him something to eat?" Tamara responded
tartly. "You know it is Monday and I am faint. But who is he and what
is he doing upstairs? Let him come down."
"Go and see him for yourself," snapped Flora. "You will find him one
of your set--a Talmudical scholar, a pious soul," she added, with a
venomous laugh.
Tamara bent upon her a look full of resentment as well as of devout
reproach, and betook herself upstairs.
When Asriel came he explained that Shaya was not going to be a rabbi,
nor dress otherwise than as an American gentleman, but that he would
lead a life of piety and spend his time studying the Talmud, partly at
home and partly at some synagogue. "What, then, have I worked all my
life for?" he pleaded. "I am only a boor, my daughter, and how long
does a fellow live? Don't darken my days, Flora."
Tamara kept nodding pious assent. "In the old country a girl like you
would be glad to marry such a child of the Law," she expostulated with
the girl. "It is only here that we are sinners and girls marry none
but worldly men. May every daughter of Israel be blessed with such a
match."
"Mind your own business!" Flora exploded. She understood her father's
explanation but vaguely, and it had the opposite of the desired effect
upon her.
"Leave her alone. The storm will blow over," Asriel whispered.
* * * * *
When Asriel's baggage arrived it proved to include a huge box full of
Hebrew books. They were of various sizes, but twenty-five of them were
large, uniform, leather-bound folio volumes, portly and resplendent in
a superabundance of gilding and varnish. Of these, twenty contained
the whole of the Babylonian Talmud together with the various
commentaries, the remaining five comprising the Alphos. After a little
a walnut bookcase made its appearance. It was accorded a place of
honor in the front parlor, and Asriel, Tamara, and Shaya busied
themselves with arranging the sacred books on its shelves.
Flora sat eyeing them sarcastically, till, sobs rising to her throat,
she retired to the seclusion of her bedroom, on the top floor, and
burst out crying as if her heart would break. The contents of all
those books, which her father had imported as accessories of her
would-be bridegroom, were Chinese to her. She had never seen so many
of them nor given a moment's attention to the occasional talks which
she had chanced to overhear concerning such books and the men who
spent their lives reading them. They now frightened her, as if they
were filled with weird incantations and Shaya were the master of some
uncanny art.
The prodigy was busy arranging his library, now and then opening a
book to examine its print. Presently, as he was squatting down before
a chair upon which he was turning over the leaves of a bulky volume,
his attention was arrested by a celebrated passage. Without changing
his posture, he proceeded to glance it over, until, completely
absorbed, he fell to humming the words, in that peculiar sing-song,
accompanied by indescribable controversial gesticulations, which seem
to be as indispensable in reading Talmud as a pair of eyes.
"Look, look!" Tamara nudged Asriel, whom she was helping to transfer
the remaining books to the marble table. Asriel turned his head toward
the prodigy, and for a few moments the two stood staring at the odd,
inspiring spectacle with gaping admiration. Then the housekeeper and
her employer exchanged a glance of intelligence, she nodding her
bewigged head piously, as much as to say: "What a find Heaven has
placed in your way!"
"The Uppermost has blessed you," she added in whispers.
"May he enjoy long life with us!" Asriel returned, with a sigh.
"Flora does not know what a treasure the Lord of the Universe has sent
her."
"She will," he rejoined curtly.