"Where could they take her?" asked Lotta. "No; they could not take her anywhere."
"Not into a convent--out of the way somewhere in Italy?"
"Oh, heaven, no! They are afraid of that sort of thing now. All Prague would know of it, and would talk; and the Jews would be stronger than the priests; and the English people would hear of it, and there would be the very mischief."
"The times have come to be very bad, Lotta."
"That"s as may be," said Lotta as though she had her doubts upon the subject. "That"s as may be. But it isn"t easy to put a young woman away now without her will. Things have changed--partly for the worse, perhaps, and partly for the better. Things are changing every day. My wonder is that he should wish to many her."
"The men think her very pretty. Ziska is mad about her," said Madame Zamenoy.
"But Ziska is a calf to Anton Trendellsohn. Anton Trendellsohn has cut his wise teeth. Like them all, he loves his money; and she has not got a kreutzer."
"But he has promised to marry her. You may be sure of that."
"Very likely. A man always promises that when he wants a girl to be kind to him. But why should he stick to it? What can he get by marrying Nina--a penniless girl, with a pauper for a father? The Trendellsohns have squeezed that sponge dry already."
This was a new light to Madame Zamenoy, and one that was not altogether unpleasant to her eyes. That her niece should have promised herself to a Jew was dreadful, and that her niece should be afterwards jilted by the Jew was a poor remedy. But still it was a remedy, and therefore she listened.
"If nothing else can be done, we could perhaps put him against it,"
said Lotta Luxa.
Madame Zamenoy on that occasion said but little more, but she agreed with her servant that it would be better to resort to any means than to submit to the degradation of an alliance with the Jew.
CHAPTER III
On the third day after Nina"s visit to her aunt, Ziska Zamenoy came across to the Kleinseite on a visit to old Balatka. In the mean time Nina had told the story of her love to her father, and the effect on Balatka had simply been that he had not got out of his bed since. For himself he would have cared, perhaps, but little as to the Jewish marriage, had he not known that those belonging to him would have cared so much. He had no strong religious prejudice of his own, nor indeed had he strong feeling of any kind. He loved his daughter, and wished her well; but even for her he had been unable to exert himself in his younger days, and now simply expected from her hands all the comfort which remained to him in this world. The priest he knew would attack him, and to the priest he would be able to make no answer. But to Trendellsohn, Jew as he was, he would trust in worldly matters, rather than to the Zamenoys; and were it not that he feared the Zamenoys, and could not escape from his close connection with them, he would have been half inclined to let the girl marry the Jew. Souchey, indeed, had frightened him on the subject when it had first been mentioned to him; and Nina, coming with her own a.s.surance so quickly after Souchey"s suspicion, had upset him; but his feeling in regard to Nina had none of that bitter anger, no touch of that abhorrence which animated the breast of his sister-in-law. When Ziska came to him he was alone in his bedroom. Ziska had heard the news, as had all the household in the Windberg-ga.s.se, and had come over to his uncle"s house to see what he could do, by his own diplomacy, to put an end to an engagement which was to him doubly calamitous. "Uncle Josef," he said, sitting by the old man"s bed, "have you heard what Nina is doing?"
"What she is doing!" said the uncle. "What is she doing?" Balatka feared all the Zamenoys, down to Lotta Luxa; but he feared Ziska less than he feared any other of the household.
"Have you heard of Anton Trendellsohn?"
"What of Anton Trendellsohn? I have been hearing of Anton Trendellsohn for the last thirty years. I have known him since he was born."
"Do you wish to have him for a son-in-law?"
"For a son-in-law?"
"Yes, for a son-in-law--Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew. Would he be a good husband for our Nina? You say nothing, uncle Josef."
"What am I to say?"
"You have heard of it, then? Why can you not answer me, uncle Josef?
Have you heard that Trendellsohn has dared to ask Nina to be his wife?"
"There is not so much of daring in it, Ziska. Among you all the poor girl is a beggar. If some one does not take pity on her, she will starve soon."
"Take pity on her! Do not we all take pity on her?"
"No," said Josef Balatka, turning angrily against his nephew; "not a sc.r.a.p of pity--not a morsel of love. You cannot rid yourself of her quite--of her or me--and that is your pity."
"You are wrong there."
"Very well; then let me be wrong. I can understand what is before my eyes. Look round the house and see what we are coming to. Nina at the present moment has not got a florin in her purse. We are starving, or next to it, and yet you wonder that she should be willing to marry an honest man who has plenty of money."
"But he is a Jew!"
"Yes; he is a Jew. I know that."
"And Nina knows it."
"Of course she does. Do you go home and eat nothing for a week, and then see whether a Jew"s bread will poison you."
"But to marry him, uncle Josef!"
"It is very bad. I know it is bad, but what can I do? If she says she will do it, how can I help it? She has been a good child to me--a very good child; and am I to lie here and see her starve? You would not give to your dog the morsel of bread which she ate this morning before she went out."
All this was a new light to Ziska. He knew that his uncle and cousin were very poor, and had halted in his love because he was ashamed of their poverty; but he had never thought of them as people hungry from want of food, or cold from want of clothes. It may be said of him, to his credit, that his love had been too strong for his shame, and that he had made up his mind to marry his cousin Nina in spite of her poverty. When Lotta Luxa had called him a calf she had not inappropriately defined one side of his character. He was a good-looking well-grown young man, not very wise, quickly susceptible to female influences, and gifted with eyes capable of convincing him that Nina Balatka was by far the prettiest woman whom he ever saw. But, in connection with such calf-like propensities, Ziska was endowed with something of his mother"s bitterness and of his father"s persistency; and the old Zamenoys did not fear but that the fortunes of the family would prosper in the hands of their son. And when it was known to Madame Zamenoy and to her husband Karil that Ziska had set his heart upon having his cousin, they had expressed no displeasure at the prospect, poor as the Balatkas were. "There is no knowing how it may go about the houses in the Kleinseite," Karil Zamenoy had said. "Old Trendellsohn gets the rent and the interest, but he has little or nothing to show for them--merely a written surrender from Josef, which is worth nothing." No hindrance, therefore was placed in the way of Ziska"s suit, and Nina might have been already accepted in the Windberg-ga.s.se had Nina chosen to smile upon Ziska. Now Ziska was told that the girl he loved was to marry a Jew because she was starving, and the tidings threw a new light upon him. Why had he not offered a.s.sistance to Nina? It was not surprising that Nina should be so hard to him--to him who had as yet offered her nothing in her poverty but a few cold compliments.
"She shall have bread enough, if that is what she wants," said Ziska.
"Bread and kindness," said the old man.
"She shall have kindness too, uncle Josef. I love Nina better than any Jew in Prague can love her."
"Why should not a Jew love? I believe the man loves her well. Why else should he wish to make her his wife?"
"And I love her well--and I would make her my wife."
"You want to marry Nina!"
"Yes, uncle Josef. I wish to marry Nina. I will marry her to-morrow-- or, for that matter, to-day--if she will have me."
"You! Ziska Zamenoy!"
"I, Ziska Zamenoy."
"And what would your mother say?"
"Both father and mother will consent. There need be no hindrance if Nina will agree. I did not know that you were so badly off. I did not indeed, or I would have come to you myself and seen to it."
Old Balatka did not answer for a while, having turned himself in his bed to think of the proposition which had been made to him. "Would you not like to have me for a son-in-law better than a Jew, uncle Josef?"
said Ziska, pleading for himself as best he knew how to plead.