University of Virginia Library

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."