 | The Apostate of Chego-Chegg |  |
THE APOSTATE OF CHEGO-CHEGG.
BY ABRAHAM CAHAN.
WITH PICTURES BY LOUIS LOEB.
1. I.
"SO this is America, and I am a Jewess no longer!" brooded Michalina, as she looked at the stretch of vegetable gardens across the road from the threshold where she sat. "They say farm-hands work shorter hours on Saturdays, yet God knows when Wincas will get home." Her slow, black eyes returned to the stocking and the big darning-needle in her hands.
She was yearning for her Gentile husband and their common birthplace, and she was yearning for her father's house and her Jewish past. Wincas kept buzzing in her ear that she was a Catholic, but he did not understand her. She was a meshumedeste — a convert Jewess, an apostate, a renegade, a traitoress, something beyond the vituperative resources of Gentile speech. The bonfires of the Inquisition had burned into her people a point of view to which Wincas was a stranger. Years of religious persecution and enforced clannishness had taught them to look upon the Jew who deserts his faith for that of his oppressors with a horror and a loathing which the Gentile brain could not conceive. Michalina's father had sat seven days shoeless on the ground, as for the dead, but death was what he naturally invoked upon the "defiled head," as the lesser of two evils. Atheism would have been a malady; shmad (conversion to a Gentile creed) was far worse than death. Michalina felt herself buried alive. She was a meshumedeste. She shuddered to think what the word meant.
At first she seemed anxious to realize the change she had undergone. "You are a Jewess no longer — you are a Gentile woman," she would say to herself. But the words were as painful as they were futile, and she turned herself adrift on the feeling that she was the same girl as of old, except that something terrible had befallen her. "God knows where it will all end," she would whisper. She had a foreboding that something far more terrible, a great crushing blow that was to smite her, was gathering force somewhere.
Hatred would rise in her heart at such moments — hatred for her "sorceress of a stepmother," whose cruel treatment of Michalina had driven her into the arms of the Gentile lad and to America. It was owing to her that Rivka (Rebecca) had become a Michalina, a meshumedeste.
The Long Island village (one of a dozen within half an hour's walk from one another)
MICHALINA.
"'BUT I AM MARRIED TO A GENTILE.'" (SEE PAGE 103.)
Wincas and Michalina had been only a few days in the place, and although they spoke Polish as well as Lithuanian, they were shy of the other peasants and felt lonely. Michalina had not seen any of her former coreligionists since she and her husband had left the immigrant station, and she longed for them as one for the first time in mid-ocean longs for a sight of land. She had heard that there were two Jewish settlements near by. Often she would stand gazing at the horizon, wondering where they might be; whereupon her vague image of them at once allured and terrified her.
The sun shone dreamily, like an old man smiling at his own drowsiness. It was a little world of blue, green, gray, and gold, heavy with sleep. A spot of white and a spot of red came gleaming down the road. Rabbi Nehemiah was on his way home from Greyton, where he had dined with the "finest householder" and "said some law" to the little congregation at the afternoon service. For it was Sabbath, and that was why his unstarched shirt-collar was so fresh and his red bandana was tied around the waist of his long-skirted coat. Carrying things on the seventh day being prohibited, Rabbi Nehemiah wore his handkerchief.
The door of the general store (it was also the inn), overlooking the cross-roads from a raised platform, was wide open. A Polish peasant in American trousers and undershirt, but with a Warsaw pipe dangling from his mouth, sat on a porch, smoking quietly. A barefooted boy was fast asleep in the grass across the road, a soldier's cap by his side, like a corpse on the battle-field.
As Michalina glanced up the gray road to see if Wincas was not coming, her eye fell upon Rabbi Nehemiah. A thrill ran through her. She could tell by his figure, his huge white collar, and the handkerchief around his waist that he was a pious, learned Jew. As he drew near she saw that his face was overgrown with wisps of silken beard of a yellowish shade, and that he was a man of about twenty-seven.
As he walked along he gesticulated and murmured to himself. It was one of his bickerings with Satan.
"It's labor lost, Mr. Satan!" he said, with a withering smile. "You won't catch me again, if you burst. Go try your tricks on somebody else. If you hope to get me among your regular customers you are a very poor business man, I tell you that. Nehemiah is as clever as you, depend upon it. Go, mister, go!"
All this he said quite audibly, in his velvety, purring bass, which set one wondering where his voice came from.
As he came abreast of Michalina he stopped short in consternation.
"Woe is me, on the holy Sabbath!" he exclaimed in Yiddish, dropping his hands to his sides.
The color rushed to Michalina's face. She stole a glance at the Pole down the road. He seemed to be half asleep. She lowered her eyes and went on with her work.
"Will you not stop this, my daughter? Come, go indoors and dress in honor of the Sabbath," he purred on, with a troubled, appealing look.
"I don't understand what you say, sir," she answered, in Lithuanian, without raising her eyes.
The devout man started. "I thought she was a child of Israel!" he exclaimed, in his native tongue, as he hastily resumed his way. "Fie upon her! But what a pretty Gentile maiden! — just like a Jewess —" Suddenly he interrupted himself. "You are at it again, aren't you?" he burst out upon Satan. "Leave me alone, will you?"
Michalina's face was on fire. She was following the pious man with her glance. He was apparently going to one of those two Jewish villages. Every step he took gave her a pang, as if he were tied to her heart. As he disappeared on a side road behind some trees she hastily took her darning indoors and set out after him.
2. II.
ABOUT three quarters of an hour had passed when, following the pious little man, she came in sight of a new town that looked as if it had sprung up overnight. It was Burkdale, the newest offshoot of an old hamlet, and it owed its existence to the "Land Improvement Company," to the president of which, Madison Burke, it owed its name. Some tailoring contractors had moved their "sweat-shops" here, after a prolonged strike in New York, and there were, besides, some fifty or sixty peddlers who spent the week scouring the island for custom and who came here for the two Sabbath days — their own and that of their Christian patrons. The improvised little town was lively with the whir of sewing-machines and the many-colored display of shop windows.
As the man with the red girdle made his appearance, a large, stout woman in a black wig greeted him from across the street.
"Good Sabbath, Rabbi Nehemiah!" she called out to him, with a faint smile.
"A good Sabbath and a good year!" he returned.
Michalina was thrilled once more. She was now following close behind the pious man. She ran the risk of attracting his attention, but she no longer cared. Seeing a boy break some twigs, Rabbi Nehemiah made a dash at him, as though to rescue him from death, and seizing him by the arms, he shook the sticks out of his hands. Then, stroking the urchin's swarthy cheeks, he said fondly:
"It is prohibited, my son. God will give
A sob rose to Michalina's throat.
A short distance farther on Rabbi Nehemiah paused to remonstrate with a group of young men who stood smoking cigarettes and chatting by a merchandise wagon.
"Woe! Woe! Woe!" he exclaimed. "Do throw it away, pray! Are you not children of Israel? Do drop your cigarettes."
"Rabbi Nehemiah is right," said a big fellow, with a wink, concealing his cigarette behind him. The others followed his example, and Rabbi Nehemiah, flushed with his easy victory, went on pleading for a life of piety and divine study. He spoke from the bottom of his heart, and his face shone, but this did not prevent his plea from being flavored with a certain humor, for the most part at his own expense.
"The world to come is the tree, while this world is only the shadow it casts," he said in his soft, thick voice. "Smoking on the Sabbath, staying away from the synagogue, backbiting, cheating in business, dancing with maidens, or ogling somebody else's wife — all this is a great pleasure, is it not? Well, the sages of this world, the dudes, the educated, and even a high-priced adornment like myself, think it is. We hunt for these delights. Behold, we have caught them. Close your fist tight! Hold the precious find with might and main, Rabbi Nehemiah! Presently, hark! the Angel of Death is coming. 'Please, open your hand, Rabbi Nehemiah. Let us see what you have got.' Alas! it's empty, empty, empty — Ai-ai!" he suddenly shrieked in a frightened, piteous voice. While he was speaking the big fellow had stolen up behind him and clapped his enormous high hat over his eyes. The next moment another young man slipped up to Rabbi Nehemiah's side, snatched off his bandana, and set it on fire.
"Woe is me! Woe is me! On the holy Sabbath!" cried the devout man, in despair.
Michalina, who had been looking on at a distance, every minute making ready to go home, rushed up to Rabbi Nehemiah's side.
"Don't — pray don't!" she begged his tormentors, in Yiddish. "You know he did not touch you; why should you hurt him?"
A crowd gathered. The learned man was looking about him with a perplexed air, when along came Sorah-Elka, the bewigged tall woman who had saluted him a short while ago. The young men made way for her.
"What's the matter? Got a licking again?" she inquired, between a frown and a smile, and speaking in phlegmatic, articulate accents. Her smile was like her voice — pleasingly cold. She was the cleverest, the most pious, and the most ill-natured woman in the place. "Serves you right, Rabbi Nehemiah. You look for trouble and you get it. What more do you want? What did they do to him, the scamps?"
"Nothing. They only knocked his hat over his eyes. They were fooling," answered a little boy.
Sorah-Elka's humor and her calm, authoritative manner won Michalina's heart. Oh, if she were one of this Jewish crowd! She wished she could speak to them. Well, who knew her here? As to Rabbi Nehemiah, he did not seem to recognize her, so she ventured to say, ingratiatingly:
"He didn't do them anything. He only talked to them and they hit him on the head."
Many eyes were leveled at the stranger. The young fellow who had burned Rabbi Nehemiah's handkerchief was scanning her face.
Suddenly he exclaimed:
"I sha'n't live till next week if she is not the meshumedeste of Chego-Chegg! I peddle over there."
The terrible untranslatable word, the most loathsome to the Yiddish ear, struck Michalina cold. She wondered whether this was the great calamity which her heart had been predicting. Was it the beginning of her end? Rabbi Nehemiah recognized her. With a shriek of horror, and drawing his skirts about him, as if for fear of contamination, he proceeded to describe his meeting with Michalina at the Polish village.
"What! this plague the meshumedeste who has a peasant for a husband!" said Sorah-Elka, as she swept the young woman with contemptuous curiosity. "May all the woes that are to befall me, you, or any good Jew — may they all strike the head of this horrid thing — fie upon her!" And the big woman spat with the same imperturbable smile with which she had drawled out her malediction.
Michalina went off toward Chego-Chegg. When the crowd was a few yards behind her somebody shouted:
"Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste!"
The children and some full-grown rowdies took up the cry:
"Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste!" they sang in chorus, running after her and pelting her with stones.
Michalina was frightened to death. And yet her pursuers and the whole Jewish town became dearer to her heart than ever.
"Don't! Don't! People are looking!" she protested, in her quietly strenuous way.
The village was astir. Children were running about; women sat on the porches, gossiping; two fiddles were squeaking themselves hoarse in the tavern. A young negro, lank, tattered, and grinning, was twanging a banjo to a crowd of simpering Poles. He it was who got the peasants to forsake their accordions, or even fiddles, for banjos. He was the civilizing and Americanizing genius of the place, although he had learned to jabber Polish long before any of his pupils picked up a dozen English words.
"Tell me where you have been," raged Wincas.
"Suppose I don't? Am I afraid of you? I felt lonesome — so lonesome! I thought I would die of loneliness, so I went for a walk and lost my way. Are you satisfied?"
They went indoors, where their landlady had prepared for them a meal of herring, potatoes, and beef-stew.
Half an hour later they were seated on the lawn, conversing in whispers amid the compact blackness of the night. The two tavern windows gleamed like suspended sheets of gold. Diving out of these into the sea of darkness was a frisky host of banjo notes.
"How dark it is!" whispered Michalina.
"Are you afraid of devils?"
"No — why?"
"I thought you might be," he said.
After a pause he suddenly pointed at his heart.
"Does it hurt you?" he asked.
"What do you mean, darling?" she demanded, interlacing her fingers over his shoulder and peering into his beardless face.
"Something has got into me. It's right here. It's pulling me to pieces, Michalinka!"
"That's nothing," she said. "It's only homesickness. It will wear off."
Wincas complained of his employer, the queer ways of American farming, the tastelessness of American food.
"God has cursed this place and taken the life out of everything," he said. "I suppose it's all because the people here are so wicked. Everything looks as it should, but you just try to put it into your mouth, and you find out the swindle. Look here, Michalinka, maybe it is the Jewish god getting even on me?"
She was bent upon her own thoughts and made no reply. Presently she began to caress him as she would a sick baby.
"Don't worry, my love," she comforted him. "America is a good country. Everybody says so. Wait till we get used to it. Then you won't go, even if you are driven with sticks from here."
They sat mutely clinging to each other, their eyes on the bright tavern windows, when a fresh, fragrant breeze came blowing upon them. Wincas fell to inhaling it thirstily. The breeze brought his native village to his nostrils.
"Mi-Michalinka darling!" he suddenly sobbed out, clasping her to his heart.
3. III.
WHEN Michalina, pale, weak, and beautiful, lay in bed, and the midwife bade her look at her daughter, the young mother opened her flashing black eyes and forthwith shut them again. The handful of flesh and her own splitting headache seemed one and the same thing. After a little, as her agonizing sleep was broken and her torpid gaze found the baby by the wall, she was overcome with terror and disgust. It was a shikse (Gentile girl), a heap of defilement. What was it doing by her side?
She had not nursed the baby a week before she grew attached to it. By the time little Marysia was a month old, she was dearer than her own life to her.
The little railroad-station about midway between the two settlements became Michalina's favorite resort. Her neighbors she shunned. She had been brought up to look down upon their people as "a race like unto an ass." At home she could afford to like them. Now that she was one of them, they were repugnant to her. They, in their turn, often mocked her and called her "Jew woman." And so she would often go to spend an hour or two in the waiting-room of the station or on the platform outside. Some of the passengers were Jews, and these would eye her curiously, as if they had heard of her. She blushed under their glances, yet she awaited them impatiently each time a train was due.
One morning a peddler, bending under his pack, stopped to look at her. When he had dropped his burden his face seemed familiar to Michalina. He was an insignificant little man, clean-shaven, with close-clipped yellowish hair, and he wore a derby hat and a sack-coat.
All at once his face broke into a broad, affectionate smile.
"How do you do?" he burst out in a deep,
"You look ten years younger," she said in a daze of embarrassment.
"I am Rabbi Nehemiah no longer," he explained bashfully. "They call me Nehemiah the Atheist now."
"Another sinner!" Michalina thought, with a little thrill of pleasure.
Nehemiah continued, with a shamefaced smile:
"When my coat and my side-locks were long my sight was short, while now — why, now I am so saturated with wisdom that pious Jews keep away from me for fear of getting wet, don't you know? Well, joking aside, I had ears, but could not hear because of my ear-locks; I had eyes, and could not see because they were closed in prayer. Now I am cured of my idiocy. And how are you? How are you getting along in America?"
His face beamed. Michalina's wore a pained look. She was bemoaning the fall of an idol.
"I am all right, thank you. Don't the Burkdale people trouble you?" she asked, reddening violently.
"Men will be men and rogues will be rogues. Do you remember that Saturday? It was not the only beating I got, either. They regaled me quite often — the oxen! However, I bear them no ill will. Who knows but it was their cuffs and buffets that woke me up? The one thing that gives me pain is this: the same fellows who used to break my bones for preaching religion now beat me because I expose its idiocies. I am like the great rabbi who had once been a chief of highwaymen. 'What of it?' he used to say. 'I was a leader then, and a leader I am now.' I was whipped when I was Rabbi Nehemiah, and now that I am Nehemiah the Atheist I am whipped again. By the way, do you remember how they hooted you? There's nothing to blush about, missus. Religion is all humbug. There are no Jews and no Gentiles, missus. This is America. All are noblemen here, and all are brothers — children of one mother — Nature, dear little missus." The word was apparently a titbit to his tongue. He uttered it with relish, peering admiringly into Michalina's face. "Go forth, dear little missus! Go forth, O thou daughter of Zion, and proclaim to all those who are groveling in the mire of Judaism —"
"S-s-s-sh!" she interrupted imploringly. "Why should you speak like that? Don't — oh, don't!"
He began a long and heated argument. She could not follow him.
Marysia was asleep in her arms, munching her little lips and smiling. As Michalina stole a glance at her, she could not help smiling, too. She gazed at the child again and again, pretending to listen. For the twentieth time she noticed that in the upper part of her face Marysia bore a striking resemblance to Wincas.
Michalina and Nehemiah often met. All she understood of his talk was that it was in Yiddish, and this was enough. Though he preached atheism, to her ear his words were echoes from the world of synagogues, rabbis, purified meat, blessed Sabbath lights. Another thing she gathered from his monologues was that he was a fellow-outcast. Of herself she never spoke. Being a mystery to him made her a still deeper mystery to herself, and their secret interviews had an irresistible charm for her.
One day Michalina found him clean-shaven and in a new necktie.
"Good morning!" he said, with unusual solemnity. And drawing a big red apple from his pocket, he shamefacedly placed it in her hand.
"What was it you wanted to tell me?" she inquired, blushing.
"Oh, nothing. I meant it for fun. It's only a story I read. It's about a great man who was in love with a beautiful woman all his life. She was married to another man and true to him, yet the stranger loved her. His soul was bewitched. He sang of her, he dreamed of her. The man's name was Petrarca and the woman's was Laura."
"I don't know what you mean by your story," she said, with an embarrassed shrug of her shoulders.
"How do you know it is only a story?" he rejoined, his eye on the glistening rail. "Maybe it is only a parable? Maybe you are Laura? Laura mine!" he whispered.
"Stop that!" she cried, with a pained gesture.
At that moment he was repulsive.
"Hush, don't eat your heart, little kitten. I was only joking."
4. IV.
MICHALINA ventured to visit Burkdale once again. This time she was not bothered. Only here and there some one would whisper, "Here comes the apostate of Chego-Chegg." Little by little she got to making the most of
By this time they had moved into a shanty on the outskirts of the village, within a short distance from Burkdale.
At first Michalina forbade Wincas to write to his father, but he mailed a letter secretly. The answer inclosed a note from Michalina's father, in Yiddish, which Wincas, having in his ecstasy let out his secret, handed her.
"What does he write?" asked Wincas.
"Nothing. He is angry," she muttered. In her heart she asked herself: "Who is this Gentile? What is he doing here?" At this moment she felt sure that her end was near. NEHEMIAH and Michalina had taken root in the little town as the representatives of two inevitable institutions. Burkdale without an atheist and a convert seemed as impossible as it would have been without a marriage-broker, a synagogue, or a bath-house "for all daughters of Israel."
Nehemiah continued his frenzied agitation. Neglecting his business, half-starved, and the fair game of every jester, but plumed with some success, the zealot went on scouting religious ceremonies, denouncing rabbis, and preaching assimilation with the enlightened Gentiles. Nehemiah was an incurably religious man, and when he had lost his belief disbelief became his religion.
And so the two were known as the appikoros (atheist) and the meshumedeste. Between the two there was, however, a wide difference. Disclaim Judaism as Nehemiah would, he could not get the Jews to disclaim him; while Michalina was more alien to the Mosaic community than any of its Christian neighbors. With her child in her arms she moved about among the people of the place like a lone shadow. Nehemiah was a Jew who "sinned and led others to sin"; she was not a Jewess who had transgressed, but a living stigma, all the more accursed because she had once been a Jewess.
Some of the Jewish women were friendly to her. Zelda the Busybody exchanged little favors with her, but even she stopped at cooking-utensils, for Michalina's food was treife [1] and all her dishes were contaminated. One day, when the dumpy little woman called at the lonely hovel, the convert offered her a wedge of her first lemon-pie. It was Zelda who had taught her to make it, and in her exultation and shamefacedness Michalina forgot the chasm that separated her from her caller.
"Taste it and tell me what is wrong about it," she said, blushing.
Zelda became confused.
"No, thank you. I've just had dinner, as true as I'm living," she stammered.
The light in Michalina's eyes went out. For a moment she stood with the saucer containing the piece of pie in her hand. When the Burkdale woman was gone she threw the pie away.
She bought a special set of dishes which she kept kosher, according to the faith of the people of Burkdale. Sometimes she would buy her meat of a Jewish butcher, and, on coming home, she would salt and purify it. Not that she expected this to be set to her credit in the world to come, for there was no hope for her soul, but she could not help, at least, playing the Jewess. It both soothed and harrowed her to prepare food or to bless Sabbath light as they did over in Burkdale. But her Sabbath candles burned so stern, so cold, so unhallowed. As she embraced the space about them and with a scooping movement brought her hands together over her shut eyes and fell to whispering the benediction, her heart beat fast. She felt like a thief.
"Praised be Thou, O Lord, King of the world, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments and commanded us to kindle the light of Sabbath."
When she attempted to recite this she could not speak after the third word.
Michalina received another letter from
Written by me, who curse the moment when I became your father.
Michalina was in a rage. "We cannot raise our heads"? Who are "we"? He and his sorceress of a wife? First she makes him drive his own daughter to "the impurity" of the Gentile faith, and then she gets him to curse this unhappy child of his for the disgrace she brought on her head! What are they worrying about? Is it that they are afraid it will be hard for Michalina's stepsister to get a husband because there is a meshumedeste in the family? Ah, she is writhing and twitching with pain, the sorceress, isn't she? Writhe away, murderess! Let her taste some of the misery she has heaped on her stepdaughter. "Rejoice, apostate, rejoice!" Michalina did rejoice. She was almost glad to be a meshumedeste.
"But why should it have come out like this?" Michalina thought. "Suppose I had never become a meshumedeste, and Nehemiah, or some handsomer Jew, had married me at home. . . . Would not the sorceress and her daughter burst with envy! Or suppose I became a Jewess again, and married a pious, learned, and wealthy Jew who fainted with love for me, and my stepmother heard of it, and I sent my little brother lots of money — wouldn't she burst, the sorceress! . . . And I should live in Burkdale, and Sorah-Elka and the other Jews and Jewesses would call at my house, and eat, and drink. On Saturdays I should go to the synagogue with a big prayer-book, and on meeting me on the road people would say, 'Good Sabbath!' and I should answer, 'A good Sabbath and a good year!'"
Michalina began to cry.
5. V.
SPRING was coming. The air was mild, pensive, yearning. Michalina was full of tears.
"Don't rail at the rabbis — don't!" she said, with unusual irritation, to Nehemiah at her house. "Do you think I can bear to hear it?"
She cried. Nehemiah's eyes also filled with tears.
"Don't, little kitten," he said; "I didn't mean to hurt you. Are you sorry you became a Christian?" he added, in an embarrassed whisper.
For the first time she recounted her story to him. When she had finished the atheist was walking up and down.
"Ai-ai-ai! Ai-ai!" All at once he stopped. "So it was out of revenge for your stepmother that you married Wincas!" he exclaimed. Then he dropped his voice to a shamefaced undertone. "I thought you had fallen in love with him."
"What's that got to do with him?" she flamed out.
His face changed. She went on:
"Anyhow, he is my husband, and I am his wife and a Gentile woman, an accursed soul, doomed to have no rest either in this world or in the other. May the sorceress have as much darkness on her heart as I have on mine!"
"Why should you speak like that, little kitten? Of course I am an atheist, and religion is humbug, but you are grieving for nothing. According to the Jewish law, you are neither his wife nor a Gentile woman. You are a Jewess. Mind, I don't believe in the Talmud; but, according to the Talmud, your marriage does not count. Yes, you are unmarried!" he repeated, noting her interest. "You are a maiden, free as the birds in the sky, my kitten. You can marry a Jew 'according to the laws of Moses and Israel,' and be happy."
His voice died away.
"Lau-au-ra!" he wailed, as he seized her hand and began to kiss its fingers.
"Stop — oh, stop! What has come to you!" she shrieked. Her face was crimson. After an awkward silence, she sobbed out: "Nobody will give me anything but misery — nobody, nobody, nobody! What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?" UNDER the pretense of consulting a celebrated physician, Michalina had obtained Wincas's permission to go to New York. In a secluded room, full of dust and old books, on the third floor of an Orchard street tenement-house, she found a gray-bearded man with a withered face. Before him were an open folio and a glass half filled with tea. His rusty skullcap was pushed back on his head.
The blood rushed to her face as she stepped to the table. She could not speak.
Being addressed by the venerable man as a Jewess melted her embarrassment and her fear into tears.
"I have married a Gentile," she murmured, with bowed head.
"A Gentile! Woe is me!" exclaimed the rabbi, with a look of dismay and pity.
"And I have been baptized, too."
Here an old bonnetless woman came in with a chicken. The rabbi was annoyed. After hastily inspecting the fowl, he cried:
"Kosher! Kosher! You may eat it in good health."
When the old woman was gone he leaped up from his seat and bolted the door.
"Well, do you want to do penance?" he demanded, adjusting his skullcap.
She nodded ruefully.
"Well, where is the hindrance? Go ahead, my daughter; and if you do it from a pure heart, the Most High will help you."
"But how am I to become a Jewess again? Rabbi, a man told me I never ceased to be one. Is it true?"
"Foolish young woman! What, then, are you? A Frenchwoman? The God of Israel is not in the habit of refunding one's money. Oh, no! 'Once a Jew, forever a Jew' — that's the way he does business."
"But I am married to a Gentile," she urged, with new light in her black eyes.
"Married? Not in the eye of our faith, my child. You were born a Jewess, and a Jewess cannot marry a Gentile. Now, if your marriage is no marriage — what, then, is it? A sin! Leave the Gentile, if you want to return to God. Cease sinning, and live like a daughter of Israel. Of course — of course the laws of the land — of America — do you understand? — they look upon you as a married woman, and they must be obeyed. But the laws of our faith say you are not married, and were a Jew to put the ring of dedication on your finger, you would be his wife. Do you understand, my child?"
"And how about the baby, rabbi? Suppose I wanted to make a proselyte of her?"
"A proselyte! Your learning does not seem to go very far," laughed the old man. "Why, your little girl is even a better Jewess than you have been, for she has not sinned, while you have."
"But her father —"
"Her father! What of him? Did he go through the throes of childbirth when the girl was born to you? Don't be uneasy, my daughter. According to our faith, children follow their mother. You are a Jewess, and so is she. She is a pure child of Israel. What is her name? Marysia? Well, call her some Jewish name — say Mindele or Shayndele. What does it amount to?"
As Michalina was making her way down the dingy staircase, she hugged the child and kissed her convulsively.
"Sheindele! Sheindele! Pure child of Israel," she said between sobs, for the first time addressing her in Yiddish. "A Jewish girlie! A Jewish girlie!"
6. VI.
THE charitable souls who had joined to buy the steamship tickets were up with the larks. At seven o'clock Sorah-Elka's apartments on the second floor of a spick-and-span frame-house were full of pious women come to behold their "good deed" in the flesh. It was the greatest event in the eventful history of Burkdale. Michalina, restored to her Hebrew name, was, of course, the center of attention. Sorah-Elka and Zelda addressed her in the affectionate diminutive; the other women, in the most dignified form of the name; and so "Rievele dear" and "Rieva, if you please" flew thick and fast.
Nehemiah kept assuring everybody that he was an atheist, and that it was only to humor Rebecca that he was going to marry her according to the laws of Moses and Israel. But then nobody paid any heed to him. The pious souls were all taken up with the young woman they were "rescuing from the impurity."
Rebecca was polite, grateful, smiling, and nervous. Sorah-Elka was hovering about, flushed and morose.
"You have kissed her enough," she snarled at Zelda. "Kisses won't take her to the ship. You had better see about the lemons. As long as the ship is in harbor I won't be sure of the job. For one thing, too many people are in the secret. I wish we were in New York, at least."
The preparations were delayed by hitch after hitch. Besides, a prosperous rescuer bethought herself at the eleventh hour that she had a muff, as good as new, which might be of service to Rebecca; and then another rescuer, as prosperous and as pious, remembered that her jar of preserved cherries would be a godsend to Rebecca on shipboard. Still, the train was due fully an hour later; the English steamer would not sail before two o'clock, so there was plenty of time.
As to Wincas, he had gone to work at five in the morning and would not be back before seven in the evening.
Zelda was frisking about with the little girl, whom she exultantly addressed as Shayndele; and so curious was it to call a former Gentile child by a Yiddish name that the next minute everybody in the room was shouting: "Shayndele, come to me!" "Shayndele, look!" "Shayndele going to London to be a pious Jewess!" or "Shayndele, a health to your head, arms, and feet!"
"Never fear, Nehemiah will be a good father to her, won't you, Nehemiah?" said one matron.
Suddenly a woman who stood by the window gave a start.
"Her husband!" she gasped.
There was a panic. Sorah-Elka was excitedly signing to the others to be cool. Rebecca, pale and wild-eyed, burst into the bedroom, whence she presently emerged on tiptoe, flushed and biting her lip.
"What can he be doing here at this hour? I told him I was going to the New York professor," she said under her breath. Concealing herself behind the window-frame, she peeped down into the street.
"Get away from there!" whizzed Sorah-Elka, gnashing her teeth and waving her arms violently.
Rebecca lingered. She saw the stalwart figure of her husband, his long blond hair curling at the end, and his pale, oval face. He was trudging along aimlessly, gaping about him in a perplexed, forlorn way.
"He is wandering about like a cow in search of her calf," Michalina remarked, awkwardly.
"Let him go whistle!" snapped Sorah-Elka. "We shall have to tuck you away somewhere. When the coast is clear again, I'll take you to the other railroad station. Depend upon it, we'll get you over to New York and on board the ship before his pumpkin-head knows what world he is in. But I said that too many people were in the secret."
Sorah-Elka was a fighter. She was mistaken, however, as to the cause of Wincas's sudden appearance. Even the few Poles who worked in the Burkdale sweat-shops knew nothing of the great conspiracy. Water and oil won't swap secrets even when in the same bottle. It was Michalina's manner during the last few days, especially on parting with him this morning, which had kindled suspicion in the peasant's breast. What had made her weep so bitterly, clinging to him and kissing him as he was leaving? As the details of it came back to him, anxiety and an overpowering sense of loneliness had gripped his heart. He could not go on with his work.
There was a cowardly stillness in Sorah-Elka's parlor. Nehemiah was rubbing his hands and gazing at Rebecca like a prisoner mutely praying for his life. Her eye was on the window.
"What can he be doing here at such an early hour?" she muttered, sheepishly. "Maybe he has lost his job."
"And what if he did? Is it any business of yours? Let him hang and drown himself!" declared Sorah-Elka.
"Why should you curse him like that? Where is his fault?" Rebecca protested feebly.
"Look at her — look at her! She is dead stuck on the lump of uncleanliness, isn't she? Well, hurry up, Rievela darling. Zelda will see to the express. Come, Rievela, come!"
Rebecca tarried.
"What has got into you? Why don't you get a move on you? You know one minute may cost us the whole game."
There was a minute of suspense. All at once Rebecca burst out sobbing:
"I cannot! I cannot!" she said, with her fists at her temples. "Curse me; I deserve it. I know I am doomed to have no rest either in this world or in the other, but I cannot leave him — I cannot. Forgive me, Nehemiah, but I cannot. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?"
The gathering was dumfounded. Sorah-Elka dropped her immense arms. For several moments she stood bewildered. Then she said:
"A pain on my head! The good women have spent so much on the tickets!"
"I'll pay it all back — every cent — every single cent of it," pleaded Michalina. Again her own Yiddish sounded like a foreign tongue to her.
"You pay back! From the treasures of your beggarly peasant husband, perhaps? May you spend on doctor's bills a thousand dollars for every cent you have cost us, plaguy meshumedeste that you are!"
A bedlam of curses let itself loose. Michalina fled.
"Let her go to all the eighty dark, bitter and swampy years!" Sorah-Elka concluded, as the door closed upon the apostate. "A meshumedeste will be a meshumedeste."
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