The Imported Bridegroom | Page 7

rapid succession: "Nine gildens for the Third! Ten
gildens for the Third! Eleven gildens, twelve, thirteen, fourteen gildens
for the Third!"
The other bidders, one by one, dropped out of the race, and when the
sum reached sixty gildens the field was left to Reb Lippe and Asriel.
The congregation was spellbound. Some with gaping mouths, others
with absorbed simpers on their faces, but all with sportsman-like fire in
their eyes, the worshipers craned their necks in the direction of the two
contestants alternately.
The prodigy had edged away from his seat to a coign of vantage. He
was repeatedly called back by winks from his uncle, but was too deeply
interested in the progress of the auction to heed them.
"Seventy gildens for the Third! Seventy-one, seventy-two, three, four,
five, seventy-six, seventy-seven, eight, nine, eighty gildens for the
Third!"

The skirmish waxed so hot, shots flew so thick and so fast, that the
perspiring sexton, and with him some of the spectators, was swiveling
his head from right to left and from left to right with the swift regularity
of gymnastic exercise.
It must be owned that so far as mute partisanship was concerned, Asriel
had the advantage of his adversary, for even some of Reb Lippe's
stanchest friends and admirers had a lurking relish for seeing it brought
home to their leading citizen that there were wealthier people than he in
the world.
The women, too, shared in the excitement of the morning. Their
windows were glistening with eyes, and the reports of their lucky
occupants to the anxious knots in the rear evoked hubbubs of
conflicting interjections which came near involving the matronly
assemblage in civil war.
The Third Section brought some twenty-eight rubles, net. Asriel was
certain that the last bid had been made by him, and that the honor and
the good deed were accordingly his. When it came to the reading,
however, and the Third Section was reached, the reader called out Reb
Lippe's name.
Asriel was stupefied.
"Hold on! That won't do!" he thundered, suddenly feeling himself an
American citizen. "I have bought it and I mean to have it." His face was
fire; his eyes looked havoc.
A wave of deprecation swept over the room. Dozens of reading desks
were slapped for order. Reb Lippe strode up to the platform, pompous,
devout, resplendent in the gold lace of his praying-shawl and the
flowing silver of his beard, as though the outburst of indignation
against Asriel were only an ovation to himself. He had the cunning of a
fox, the vanity of a peacock, and the sentimentality of a woman during
the Ten Days of Penance. There were many skeptics as to the fairness
of the transaction, but these were too deeply impressed by the grandeur
of his triumphal march to whisper an opinion. The prodigy alone spoke

his mind.
"Why, I do think the other man was the last to nod--may I be ill if he
was not," the enfant terrible said quite audibly, and was hushed by his
uncle.
"Is he really going to get it?" Asriel resumed, drowning all opposition
with his voice. "Milk a billy goat! You can't play that trick on me!
Mine was the last bid. Twenty-eight scurvy rubles! Pshaw! I am willing
to pay a hundred, two hundred, five hundred. I can buy up all Pravly,
Reb Lippe, his gold lace and all, and sell him at a loss, too!" He made a
dash at the reading platform, as if to take the Third Section by force,
but the bedlam which his sally called forth checked him.
"Is this a market place?" cried the second trustee, with conscious
indignation.
"Shut the mouth of that boor!" screamed a member, in sincere disgust.
"Put him out!" yelled another, with relish in the scene.
"If he can't behave in a holy place let him go back to his America!"
exclaimed a third, merely to be in the running. But his words had the
best effect: they reminded Asriel that he was a stranger and that the
noise might attract the police.
At the same moment he saw the peaked face of the aged rabbi by his
side. Taking him by the arm, the old man begged him not to disturb the
Sabbath.
Whether the mistake was on Asriel's side or on the sexton's, or whether
there was any foul play in the matter, is not known; but Asriel relented
and settled down at his desk to follow the remainder of the reading in
his Pentateuch, although the storm of revenge which was raging in his
breast soon carried off his attention, and he lost track.
The easy success of his first exhortation brought the rabbi to Asriel's
side once again.

"I knew your father--peace upon him! He was a righteous Jew," he