The Rise of David Levinsky (40 page)

Other things that I would enter in my note-book were names of dishes on the bills of fare of the better restaurants, with explanations of my own. I would describe the difference between Roquefort cheese and Liederkranz cheese, between consommé Celestine and consommé princesse; I would make a note of the composition of macaroni au gratin, the appearance and taste of potatoes Lyonnaise, of various salad-dressings. But I gradually picked up this information in a practical way and really had no need of my culinary notes. I had many occasions to eat in high-class restaurants and I was getting to feel quite at home in them.

 

Max’s conjecture regarding Chaikin was borne out. The talented designer had given up his job at the Manheimer Brothers’ and opened a cloak-and-suit house with a man who had made considerable money as a cloak salesman, and as a landlord for a partner. When Max heard of it he was overjoyed.

“I tell you what, Levinsky,” he said, half in jest and half in earnest. “Let the two of us make a partnership of it. I could put some money into the business.”

I reflected that when I approached him for a loan of four hundred dollars, on my first visit at his house, he had pleaded poverty.

“I could do a good deal of hustling, too,” he added, gravely. “Between the two of us we should make a great success of it.”

I gave him an evasive answer. I must have looked annoyed, for he exclaimed:

“Look at him! Look at him, Dora! Scared to death, isn’t he?” And to me: “Don’t be uneasy, old chap! I am not going to snatch your factory from you. But you are a big hog, all the same. I can tell you that. How will you manage all alone? Who will take care of your business when you go traveling?”

“Oh, I’ll manage it somehow,” I answered, making an effort to be pleasant. “ Chaikin was scarcely ever in the shop, anyhow.”

I
TRAVELED quite often, sometimes staying away from New York for two or three days, but more frequently for only one day. On one occasion, however, I was detained on the road for five days in succession. It was the beginning of June, a little over a year since the Margolises moved into the Clinton Street flat with myself as their boarder. I was homesick. I missed Dora acutely. I loved her passionately, tenderly, devotedly. I now felt it with special force. Her face and figure loomed up a hundred times a day.

“Dora dear! Bridie mine!” I would whisper, all but going to pieces with tenderness and yearning.

One afternoon, after closing an unexpectedly large sale in a department store, I went to the jewelry department of the same firm and paid a hundred and twenty dollars for a bracelet. I knew that she would not be able to wear it, yet I was determined to make her accept it.

“Let her keep it in some hiding-place,” I thought. “Let her steal an occasional look at it. I don’t care what she does with it. I want her to know that I think of her, that I am crazy for her.”

It was Friday evening when I returned to New York, having been on the road since the preceding Monday morning. I first went to my place of business and then to a restaurant for supper. I would not make my appearance at the house until half past 10, when the coast was sure to be clear. With thrills of anticipation that verged on physical pain I was looking forward to the moment when I should close the bracelet about her slender white wrist.

At the fixed minute I was at the door of the Clinton Street apartment. I pulled the bell. I expected an excited rush, a violent opening of the door, a tremulous: “My loved one! My loved one!”

There was a peculiar disappointment in store for me. She received me icily, not letting me come near her.

“Why, what’s the matter? What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she muttered.

When we reached the light of the Sabbath candles in the dining-room I noticed that she looked worn and haggard.

“What has happened?” I asked, greatly perplexed. “I have something for you,” I said, producing the blue-velvet box containing the bracelet and opening it. “Here, my bride!”

“How dare you call me ‘bride,’ you hypocrite?” she gasped. “Away with you, your present and all!”

“Why? Why? What does it all mean?” I asked, between mirth and perplexity.

For an answer she merely continued: “You thought you could bribe me by this present of yours, did you? You can fool me no longer. I have found you out. You have fallen into your own trap. You have. How dare you buy me presents?”

At this she tore the bracelet out of my hand and flung it into the little corridor. She was on the verge of a fit of hysterics. I fetched her a glass of water, but she dashed it out of my hand. Then, frightened and sobered by the crash, she first tiptoed to the bedroom to ascertain if Lucy was not awake and listening, and then went to the little corridor, picked up the bracelet and slipped it into my pocket.

“If you have decided to get married, I can’t stop you, of course,” she began, in a ghastly undertone, as she crouched to gather up the fragments of the glass and to wipe the floor.

“Decided to get married?” I interrupted her. “Where on earth did you get that? What ‘trap’ are you talking about, Dora?”

She made no answer. I continued to protest my innocence. Finally, when she had removed the broken glass, she said:

“It’s no use pretending you don’t know anything about it. It won’t do you any good. You have been very foxy about it, but you made a break, and there you are! You think you are very clever. If you were you wouldn’t let your
shadchen
^d
know where you live—”

“Shadchen!
Oh, I see,” I said, with a hearty laugh. “Has he been here?” And I gave way to another guffaw.

Shadchen
was a conspiracy name for a man who would bring an employer together with cloak-makers who were willing to cheat the union. The one who performed these services for me was one of my own “hands.” He was thoroughly dishonest, but he possessed a gentle disposition and a certain gift of expression. This gave him power over his shopmates. He was their “shop chairman” and a member of their “price committee.” He was the only man in my employ who actually received the full union price. In addition to this, I paid him his broker’s commission for every new man he furnished me, and various sums as bribes pure and simple.

I explained it all to Dora. The ardor with which I spoke and the details of my dealings with the
shadchen
must have made my explanation convincing, for she accepted it at once.

“You’re not fooling me, are you?” she asked, piteously, yet in a tone of immense relief.

“Strike me dumb if—”

“ ‘S-sh! Don’t curse yourself,” she said, clapping her hand over my mouth. “I can’t bear to hear it. I believe you. If you knew what I have gone through!”

“Poor, poor child!” I said, kissing her soft white fingers tenderly. “Poor, poor baby! How could you think of such a thing! There is only one bride for me in all the world, and that is my own Dora darling.”

Her face shone with a wan, beseeching kind of light.

Again I drew forth the bracelet.

“Foolish child!” I said, examining it. “Thank God, it isn’t damaged. Not a bit.”

I took her by the hand, opened the bracelet, and closed it over her wrist. She instantly took it off again, with an instinctive side-glance at the door. Then, holding it up to the light admiringly, she said:

“Oh! Oh! Must have cost a pile of money! Why did you spend so much? I can’t wear it, anyway. Better return it.“

“Never! It’s yours, my sweetheart. Do whatever you like with it. Put it away somewhere. If you wear it for one minute every week I shall be happy. If you only look at it once in a while I shall be happy.”

“ I am afraid to keep it. Somebody may come across it some day. Better return it, my loved one! I am happy as it is. It would make me nervous to have it in the house.”

She made me take it back.

“Thank God it wasn’t a real
shadchen!
I thought I was going to commit suicide,” she said.

I seized her in my arms. She abandoned herself to a transport of gratitude and happiness in which her usual fortitude melted away.

The next morning she had the appearance of one doomed to death. Her eyes avoided everybody, not only her husband and Lucy, but myself as well. She pleaded indisposition.

Max left for the synagogue, as he always did on Saturday morning. I accompanied him out of the house, on my way to business. We parted at a corner where I was to wait for a street-car. Instead of boarding a car, however, I returned home. I was burning to be alone with Dora, to cuddle her out of her forlorn mood.

“I have come back for a minute just to tell you how dear you are to me,” I whispered to her in the presence of the children, who were having their breakfast. I signed to her to follow me into the parlor, and she did. “Just one kiss, dearest!” I said, clasping her to me and kissing her. “I’d let myself be cut to pieces for you.”

She nestled to me for a moment, gave me a hasty kiss, and ran back to the children, all without looking at me.

I went away with a broken heart.

Late that evening, when we found ourselves alone, and I rushed at her, she gently pushed me off.

“Why? What’s the trouble?” I asked.

“No trouble at all,” she answered, looking down, with shamefaced gravity.

“Do you hate me?”

“Hate you! I wish I could,” she answered, with a sad smile, still looking down.

“Why this new way, then?” I said, rather impatiently.

“You are dearer than ever to me, Levinsky. Tell me to jump into fire, and I will. But—can’t we love each other and be good?”

“What are you talking about, Dora? What has got into you? Do you know what you are to me now?” I demanded, melodramatically.

I made another attempt at kissing her, but was repulsed again.

“Not now, anyway, my loved one,” she said, entreatingly. “Let a few days pass. You don’t want me to feel bad, do you, dearest?”

I looked sheepish. I was convinced that it was merely a passing mood.

N
EXT Monday, when I was ready to go to my place of business, Dora left the house, pitcher in hand, before I rose from the breakfast-table. She was going for milk, but a side-glance which she cast at the floor in my direction as she turned to shut the door behind her told me that she wanted to see me in the street. After letting some minutes pass I put on my overcoat and hat, bade Max a studiously casual good-by, and departed.

I awaited her on the stoop. Presently she emerged from the grocery in the adjoining building.

“Could you be free at 4 o’clock this afternoon?” she asked, ascending the few steps, and pausing by my side. “ I want to have a talk with you. Somewhere else. Not at home.”

“Why not at home, in the evening?”

“No. That won’t do,” she overruled me, softly. “Somebody might come in and interrupt me. I’ll wait for you in the little park on Second Avenue and Fifteenth Street. You know the place, don’t you?”

She meant Stuyvesant Park, which the sunny Second Avenue cuts in two, and she explained that our meeting was to take place on the west side of the thoroughfare.

“Will you come?” she asked, nervously.

“I will, I will. But what’s up? Why do you look so serious? Dora! Dora mine!”

“‘S-sh! You had better go. When we meet I’ll explain everything. At 4 o’clock, then. Don’t forget. As you come up the avenue, going up-town, it is on the left-hand side. Write it down.”

To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me repeat it and then jot it down. As she turned to go up-stairs she said, in a melancholy whisper:

“Good-by, dearest.”

When I reached the appointed place the brass hands of the clock on the steeple high overhead indicated ten minutes of 4. It was June, but the day was a typical November day, mildly warm, clear, and charged with the exhilarating breath of a New York autumn. Dora had not yet arrived. The benches in the little park were for the most part occupied by housewives or servant-girls who sat gossiping in front of baby-carriages, amid the noise of romping children. Here and there an elderly man sat smoking his pipe broodingly. They were mostly Germans or Czechs. There were scarcely any of our people in the neighborhood at the period in question, and that was why Dora had selected the place.

I stood outside the iron gate, gazing down the avenue. The minutes were insupportably long.

At last her womanly figure came into dim view. My heart leaped. I was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and joyous anticipation. “Oh, she’ll back down,” I persuaded myself.

She was walking fast, apparently under the impression that she was late. Her face was growing more distinct every moment. The blue hat she wore and the parasol she carried gave her a new aspect. I had more than once seen her leave the house in street array, but watching her come up the street thus formally attired somehow gave her a different appearance.

She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady-like she almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst, produced a singular effect upon me.

“Am I very late?” she asked.

“No. Not at all, Dora!” I said, yearningly.

She made no answer.

We could not find an empty bench, and to let Germans overhear our Yiddish, which is merely a German dialect, would have been rather risky. So she delivered her message as we walked round and round, both of us eying the asphalt all the while. Her beautiful complexion and our manner attracted much attention. The people on the benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our interview. One white-haired little man with a terrier face never took his eyes off her.

“First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the most important days in my life,” she began. “It is certainly not a happy day. It’s Yom Kippur
^e
with me. I want to say right here that I am willing to die for you, Levinsky. I am terribly in love with you, Levinsky. Yes—”