The Imported Bridegroom | Page 9

filled Asriel's heart with a new dread of the world to come
and with a rankling grudge against Reb Lippe. He came away from the
synagogue utterly crushed, and when he reached his inn the prodigy
was the prevailing subject of his chat with the landlord.

V
In the evening of the same day, at the conclusion of the Sabbath, the
auction of another good deed took place, and once more the purses of
Reb Lippe and Asriel clashed in desperate combat.
This time the good deed assumed the form of a prodigy of Talmudic
learning in the character of a prospective son-in-law.
The room (at the residence of one of the young man's uncles) was full
of bearded Jews, tobacco smoke, and noise. There were Shaya, the
prodigy himself, his two uncles, Reb Lippe, his eldest son, and two of
his lieutenants, Asriel, his landlord, and a matchmaker. A live
broad-shouldered samovar, its air-holes like so many glowing eyes,
stood in the center of the table. Near it lay Flora's photograph,
representing her in all the splendor of Grand Street millinery.
The youthful hero of the day eyed the portrait with undisguised,
open-mouthed curiosity, till, looked out of countenance by the young
lady's doleful, penetrating eyes, he turned from it, but went on viewing
it with furtive interest.
His own formula of a bride was a hatless image. The notion, therefore,
of this princess becoming his wife both awed him and staggered his

sense of decorum. Then the smiling melancholy of the Semitic face
upset his image of himself in his mind and set it afloat in a haze of
phantasy. "I say you need not look at me like that," he seemed to say to
the picture. "Pshaw! you are a Jewish girl after all, and I am not afraid
of you a bit. But what makes you so sad? Can I do anything for you?
Why don't you answer? Do take off that hat, will you?"
Reb Lippe's daughter did not wear a hat, but she was not to his liking,
and he now became aware of it. On the other hand, the word "America"
had a fascinating ring, and the picture it conjured was a blend of
Talmudic and modern glory.
Reb Lippe's venerable beard was rippled with a nervous smile.
"Yes, I am only a boor!" roared Asriel, with a touch of Bounderby
ostentation. "But you know it is not myself I want the boy to marry.
Twenty thousand rubles, spot cash, then, and when the old boor takes
himself off, Shaya will inherit ten times as much. She is my only child,
and when I die--may I be choked if I take any of my houses into the
grave. Worms don't eat houses, you know."
The quality of his unhackneyed phrase vexed the sedate old talmudists,
and one of them remarked, as he pointed a sarcastic finger at the
photograph: "Your girl looks like the daughter of some titled Gentile.
Shaya is a Jewish boy."
"You don't like my girl, don't you?" Asriel darted back. "And why, pray?
Is it because she is not a lump of ugliness and wears a hat? The grand
rabbi of Wilna is as pious as any of you, isn't he? Well, when I was
there, on my way here, I saw his daughter, and she also wore a hat and
was also pretty. Twenty thousand rubles!"
By this time the prodigy was so absorbed in the proceedings that he
forgot the American photograph, as well as the bearing which the
auction in progress had upon himself. Leaning over the table as far as
the samovar would allow, and propping up his face with both arms, he
watched the scene with thrilling but absolutely disinterested relish.

After a great deal of whispering and suppressed excitement in the camp
of Asriel's foe, Reb Lippe's son announced: "Ten thousand rubles and
five years' board." This, added to Reb Lippe's advantages over his
opponent by virtue of his birth, social station, and learning, as well as
of his residing in Russia, was supposed to exceed the figure named by
Asriel. In point of fact, everybody in the room knew that the old
talmudist's bid was much beyond his depth; but the assemblage had no
time to be surprised by his sum, for no sooner had it been uttered than
Asriel yelled out, with impatient sarcasm: "Thirty thousand rubles, and
life-long board, and lodging, and bath money, and stocking darning,
and cigarettes, and matches, and mustard, and soap--and what else?"
The prodigy burst into a chuckle, and was forthwith pulled down to his
chair. He took a liking to the rough-and-ready straightforwardness of
the American.
There was a pause. Shaya and his uncles were obviously leaning
toward the "boor." Asriel was clearly the master