Whenever he heard of a new marriage, he would apply for details as to the bride and the bridegroom—how much he earned a week, how they came to be engaged, what space of time interposed between the engagement and the wedding. One Saturday morning, while mounting the stairs which led to his miniature hall bedroom, he saw through an open door a young woman buttoning the shirt-collar for her husband; whereupon his heart swelled with a feeling of mixed envy and extreme friendliness for the young couple. "Who is he?" he remarked to himself, on reaching his room, which now seemed to him desolate and lonely. "Only a tailor, a penniless workman. When I am married I shall not live in a tenement house." And at this his fancy unfolded a picture: A parlor with bronze clock on the mantelpiece; a mirror between two lace window-curtains; a dark-eyed little woman in a chocolate-colored wrapper sweeping a carpet of flaming red and yellow; and, behold! he, Robert, comes in from business, and the young woman addresses him in a piping little voice: "Hello, Rob! Will you have dinner?" just as he had the day before seen in the house of a newly married custom-peddler.
And it came to pass, in those days of "heart-stretching," that one Saturday morning Robert met at the "Sons of Kropovetz" Synagogue a new arrival from his native place in the person of Feive the melamed. As the Hebrew term implies, this tall and bony old gentleman, with the face of a martyr, had at home conducted one of the schools in which a Jewish boy passes the day, learning the Word of God. As is not unusual with melameds, Feive's profession yielded him an income which made it necessary for him to devote his spare hours to the business of shadchen, or shidech agent—that is, of matchmaker in the matrimonial sense of the word. In course of time the shadchen spirit had become so deeply imbedded in Reb Feive's soul that even on finding himself in New York, and before his draggling satin coat had had time to exhale its lingering traces of steerage odors, his long and snuff-stocked nose fell to smelling for shidechs.
"Ah, Reb Feive!" Rouvke accosted his townsman, "how do you do? Quite an unexpected guest, as sure as I am a Jew! When did you arrive?"
And after a perfunctory catechism upon the health of his mother and Kropovetz matters in general, he inquired about his old master.
"Peretz?" the old man echoed Rouvke's interrogation. "May the Uppermost have mercy on him! You have heard that he is now in reduced circumstances, have you not? The distillery is closed."
"You don't say so!"
"Yes, he is in a very bad way," Reb Feive resumed, curling one of his long yellowish-gray sidelocks. "You know what hard times the Jews are now having in Russia. Things are getting from bad to worse—may He whom I dare not mention without washing my hands deliver us and preserve!—a Jew can nowadays hardly engage in any business, much less in the liquor line. Poor Peretz, he looks so careworn!"
"Can it be true that the distillery has been closed? I am very sorry."
Rouvke was moved with profound pity for his old employer, who had been kind to him, and to whom he had been devoted. But this feeling of commiseration was instantly succeeded by a vague sense of triumph. "What have I lived to see!" Rouvke seemed to exclaim. "I am now richer than Reb Peretz, as sure as I am a Jew!" And at this he became aware of the bank-book in his breast-pocket.
"Oh, I am very, very sorry for him!" he added, with renewed sincerity, after a slight pause. "Why, such an honest Jew! And how is Hanele?"