VII
Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived home at seven o'clock to find his dinner smoking on the table. His daughter Fannie always attended to the carving, but on the night of the foreclosure sale it was Birdie who presided at the head of the board.
"Where's Fannie?" he asked.
"She went out to dinner," Birdie explained.
Elkan nodded and lapsed into gloomy silence.
"What's the matter now?" Birdie inquired.
"That lowlife Margolius," he said, "what do you think from that loafer? He goes to work and gets married."
Birdie gasped and turned white, all of which her father mistook for symptoms of astonishment.
"Ain't that a loafer for you?" he continued. "All the time he hangs around here, and then he goes to work and gets married."
"Who did he marry?" Birdie asked innocently.
"A question!" Goldblatt exclaimed. "Who can tell it who a lowlife like him would marry?"
"He ain't no lowlife just because he gets married," she retorted. "What's more, any girl would be glad to get a good-looking, decent young feller like Philip Margolius."
Goldblatt laid down his knife and fork.
"You are crazy in the head," he said. "Why should you stick up for a young feller what comes around here and upsets my whole house? You I don't care about, because you could always get a husband; but Fannie—that's different again. It ain't enough for that loafer that he disappointed her himself, but he also got to bring around here that one-eyed feller—another such lowlife as Margolius—and he also disappoints Fannie. That feller Margolius is a dawg, Birdie, believe me."
Birdie rose from her seat and threw her napkin on to the floor.
"I won't sit here and listen to such talk," she cried and ran out of the room. For a moment Goldblatt essayed to finish his dinner, and then he, too, rose and followed Birdie. He found her weeping on the parlour lounge.
"Birdie!" he cried. "Birdiechen, what are you taking on so for?"
"I won't have you say such things about Ph-Ph—Feigenbaum," she sobbed.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came here this afternoon and proposed to Fannie," she explained to her father, "and they're downtown now getting the ring from a friend of his what keeps a jewellery store on Grand Street."
Goldblatt sat down heavily on the lounge and wiped his forehead. For ten minutes he sat motionless in the shrouded gloom of that front parlour before he could realize his daughter's good fortune.
"After all," he said finally, "when a feller's got six stores you could easy excuse him one eye."
"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr. Feigenbaum is a decent business man, and if it wouldn't be for Philip—Philip Margolius—Fannie would of lived and died an old maid."
At this juncture came a ring at the bell and the sound of voices in the hall. It was Fannie and her fiancé, who had returned from Grand Street, and the next moment Goldblatt clasped his affianced daughter in his arms and bestowed on her great kisses that fairly resounded down the block. Next he grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and shook it up and down.
"The happiest day what I ever lived," he cried, slapping his new son-in-law on the back. For almost a quarter of an hour Fannie and Birdie mingled their tears with their father's embraces, and in the midst of the excitement the bell rang again. When the maid opened the street door some one inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a barytone voice whose familiar timbre chilled into silence the joyful uproar.
"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed. He started for the hall with blood in his eye, when Feigenbaum seized him by the arm.
"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for my sake don't make no fuss with Margolius. He's a friend of mine, and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie and me would never of met already."
As Philip entered the darkened front parlour there was a silence so profound that he believed the room to be empty.
"Excuse me," he cried when he recognized the assembled company. "I thought Mr. Goldblatt was alone."
He turned to his father-in-law.
"Mr. Goldblatt, could I speak to you for a minute by yourself?" he asked.
Goldblatt coughed impressively.
"Margolius," he announced, "if you got anything to say to me, say it right here. I ain't got no private business with you."
"All right," Philip replied cheerfully. "I come here to ask you how much would you take it for them second mortgages what you hold on my Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street property?"
Goldblatt waved his hand haughtily.
"You come to the wrong party, Margolius," he said. "Because I just made up my mind to something. I made up my mind that because Mr. Feigenbaum is engaged to my Fannie I will give her them mortgages as a marriage portion. So you should ask Feigenbaum that question, not me."
While Philip turned pale at this announcement, Feigenbaum grew positively crimson.
"Looky here, Goldblatt," he protested to his proposed father-in-law; "I don't want you should unload them second mortgages on me."
"What's the matter with you, Feigenbaum?" Goldblatt retorted. "Them second mortgages is as good as gold. Only thing is they got to be foreclosed against Margolius' wife."
"His wife!" Feigenbaum and Fannie cried with one voice, for Birdie had kept her secret well.
"Yes," Goldblatt replied, "his wife. That lowlife has got a wife. But who or what she is nobody don't know."
"Hold on, Goldblatt!" cried a voice from the hall. "There's somebody that does know."
The next moment a short, stout person entered the parlour. It was Eleazer Levy, who had rung the bell and had been admitted to the house unnoticed.
"Yes, Margolius," he said, "you thought you could fool an old practitioner like me. I seen you didn't get out no license in this county, so I hiked over to Jersey City and, sure enough, I spotted you."
He turned to Birdie.
"Mrs. Margolius," he said, "here's four copies of the supplemental summons and amended complaint in the foreclosure suits of Goldblatt vs. Margolius, actions numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4."
"What do you mean?" Goldblatt cried.
"I mean," Levy answered, "that your daughter Birdie married Philip Margolius in Jersey City on the twentieth of October last."
Elkan Goldblatt collapsed in the nearest chair, while Feigenbaum ran downstairs for the bottle of schnapps. At length Goldblatt was restored.
"So, Margolius," he croaked, "you are a thief, too. You steal my daughter on me?"
"That ain't here nor there," Margolius said with his arm around Birdie's waist and her head on his shoulder. "That ain't here nor there. How much will you take it now for a satisfaction piece of them mortgages?"
Goldblatt looked at Feigenbaum, who returned his glance unmoved.
"For a marriage portion," Feigenbaum declared, "second mortgages is nix."
There was an embarrassing silence, and finally Goldblatt cleared his throat.
"All right, Margolius," he said; "you married my Birdie, and I suppose I got to stand for it, so you can take them four second mortgages and keep 'em as a marriage portion yourself."
Birdie seized her father around the neck and kissed him on the ear.
"Then we are forgiven? Ain't it?" she cried.
"Sure you are forgiven," Goldblatt said. "Only, Margolius has got to pay Levy's costs and disbursements."
"And the referee's fees and the auctioneer's fees," Levy added.
"I am agreeable," Philip replied.
Levy turned and beamed a benediction on his client's reunited family. "I wish you all joy," he said.
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Transcriber Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.