The Rise of David Levinsky (55 page)

Miss Tevkin, however, took them seriously. She followed them with the air of a “good girl” listening to a lecture by her mother or teacher.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” she would say, weakly, from time to time, and resume listening with charming resignation.

The noise made by the two brothers attracted several other boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all over his face. By profession he was a photographer. His name was Mendelson. He took a hand in our discussion, and it at once became apparent that he had read more and knew more than the bald-headed brothers. He was overflowing with withering sarcasm and easily sneered them into silence.

Miss Tevkin was happy. But the slovenly boarder proved to be one of those people who know what they do not want rather than what they do. And so he proceeded, in a spirit of chivalrous banter, to make game of her literary gods as well.

“You don’t really mean to tell us that you enjoy an Ibsen play?” he demanded. “Why, you are too full of life for that.”

“But that’s just what the Ibsen plays are—full of life,” she answered. “If you’re bored by them it’s because you’re probably looking for stories, for ‘action.’ But art is something more significant than that. There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the old masters.”

“That’s exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the up-to-date rabbis are always talking about—moral force, moral beauty, and moral clam-chowder,” Mendelson retorted.

The real-estate man uttered a chuckle.

“Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue?” the photographer continued. “People go to see a play because they want to enjoy themselves, not because they feel that their morals need darning.”

“But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon,” Miss Tevkin replied. “It naturally follows from the life it presents. Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page after page and there doesn’t seem to be any substance to it.” She said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding views of this kind.

“Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens, too?” I ventured.

“I do,” she answered, in the same doleful tone.

She went on to develop her argument. We did not interrupt her, the two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying. There was a congealed sneer on the photographer’s face as he followed her plea, but it was full of the magic of her presence.

“You’re a silly child,” his countenance seemed to say. “But I could eat you, all the same.”

She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen, Strindberg, Knut Hamsen, Hauptmann, and a number of others, mostly names I did not recollect ever having heard before, and she often used the word “decadent,” which she pronounced in the French way and which I did not then understand. Now and then she would quote some critic, or some remark heard from a friend or from her father, and once she dwelt on an argument of her oldest brother, who seemed to be well versed in Russian literature and to have clear-cut opinions on literature in general. She spoke with an even-voiced fluency, with a charming gift of language. Words came readily, pleasantly from her pretty lips. It was evident, too, that she was thoroughly familiar with the many authors whose praises she was sounding. Yet I could not help feeling that she had not much to say. The opinions she voiced were manifestly not her own, as though she was reciting a well-mastered lesson. And I was glad of it. “She’s merely a girl, after all,” I thought, fondly. “She’s the sweetest thing I ever knew, and her father is the man who wrote those love-letters, and her mother is the celebrated beauty with whom he was in love.”

Whether the views she set forth were her own or somebody else’s, I could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naïve sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures had a rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her movements in the tennis-court.

Miss Lazar passed by us, giving me a smiling look, which seemed to say, “I knew you would sooner or later be in her 416 company.” I felt myself blushing. “To-morrow I’ll be in Tannersville and all this nonsense will be over,” I said to myself.

The long-faced, short girl with whom Miss Tevkin had played tennis emerged from the lobby door and was introduced to me as Miss Siegel. As I soon gathered from a bit of pleasantry by the lawyer, she was a school-teacher.

At Miss Tevkin’s suggestion we all went to see the crowd waiting for the last “husband train.”

As we rose to go I made a point of asking Miss Tevkin for the name of the best Ibsen play, my object being to be by her side on our walk down to the village. The photographer hastened to answer my question, thus occupying the place on the other side of her.

We were crossing the sloping lawn, Miss Tevkin on a narrow flagged walk, while we were trotting along through the grass on either side of her, with the other three of our group bringing up the rear. Presently, as we reached the main sidewalk, we were held up by Auntie Yetta, who was apparently returning from one of the cottages across the road.

“Is this the one you are after?” she demanded of me, with a wink in the direction of Miss Tevkin. And, looking her over, “You do know a good thing when you see it.” Then to her: “Hold on to him, young lady. Hold on tight. Mr. Levinsky is said to be worth a million, you know.”

“She’s always joking,” I said, awkwardly, as we resumed our walk.

Miss Tevkin made no answer, but I felt that Auntie Yetta’s joke had made a disagreeable impression on her. I sought to efface it by a humorous sketch of Auntie Yetta, and seemed to be successful.

The village was astir. The great “husband train,” the last and longest of the day, was due in about ten minutes. Groups of women and children in gala dress were emerging from the various boarding-houses, feeding the main human stream. Some boarders were out to meet the train, others were on their way to the post-office for letters. A sunset of pale gold hung broodingly over the mountains. Miss Tevkin’s voice seemed to have something to do with it.

Presently we reached the crowd at the station. The train was late. The children were getting restless. At last it arrived, the first of two sections, with a few minutes’ headway between them. There was a jam and a babel of voices. Interminable strings of passengers, travel-worn, begrimed, their eyes searching the throng, came dribbling out of the cars with tantalizing slowness. Men in livery caps were chanting the names of their respective boarding-houses. Passengers were shouting the pet names of their wives or children; women and children were calling to their newly arrived husbands and fathers, some gaily, others shrieking, as though the train were on fire. There were a large number of handsome, well-groomed women in expensive dresses and diamonds, and some of these were being kissed by puny, but successful-looking, men. “They married them for their money,” I said to myself. An absurd-looking shirt-waist-manufacturer of my acquaintance, a man with the face of a squirrel, swooped down upon a large young matron of dazzling animal beauty who had come in an automobile. He introduced me to her, with a beaming air of triumph. “I can afford a machine and a beautiful wife,” his radiant squirrel-face seemed to say. He was parading the fact that this tempting female had married him in spite of his ugliness. He was mutely boasting as much of his own homeliness as of her coarse beauty.

Prosperity was picking the cream of the “bride market” for her favorite sons. I thought of Lenox Avenue, a great, broad thoroughfare up-town that had almost suddenly begun to swarm with good-looking and flashily gowned brides of Ghetto upstarts, like a meadow bursting into bloom in spring.

“And how about your own case?” a voice retorted within me. “Could you get a girl like Fanny if it were not for your money? Ah, but I’m a good-looking chap myself and not as ignorant as most of the other fellows who have succeeded,” I answered, inwardly. “Yes, and I am entitled to a better girl than Fanny, too.” And I became conscious of Miss Tevkin’s presence by my side.

Conversation with the poet’s daughter was practically monopolized by the misanthropic photographer. I was seized with a desire to dislodge him. I was determined to break into the conversation and to try to eclipse him. With a fast-beating heart I began:

“What an array of beautiful women! Present company” —with a bow to Miss Tevkin and her long-faced chum—“not excepted, of course. Far from it.”

The two girls smiled.

“Why! Why! Whence this sudden fit of gallantry?” asked the photographer, his sneer and the rasping Yiddish enunciation with which he spoke English filling me with hate.

“Come, Mr. Mendelson,” I answered, “it’s about time you cast off your grouch. Look! The sky is so beautiful, the mountains so majestic. Cheer up, old man.”

The real-estate man burst into a laugh. The two girls smiled, looking me over curiously. I hastened to follow up my advantage.

“One does get into a peculiar mood on an evening like this,” I pursued. “The air is so divine and the people are so happy.”

“That’s what we all come to the mountains for,” the photographer retorted.

Ignoring his remark, I resumed: “It may seem a contradiction of terms, but these family reunions, these shouts of welcome, are so thrilling it makes one feel as if there was something pathetic in them.”

“Pathetic?” the bald-headed real-estate man asked in surprise.

“Mr. Levinsky is in a pathetic mood, don’t you know,” the photographer cut in.

“Yes, pathetic,” I defied him. “But pathos has nothing to do with grouch, has it?” I asked, addressing myself to the girls.

“Why, no,” Miss Siegel replied, with a perfunctory smile. “Still, I should rather see people meet than part. It’s heartbreaking to watch a train move out of a station, with those white handkerchiefs waving, and getting smaller, smaller. Oh, those handkerchiefs!”

It was practically the first remark I had heard from her. It produced a stronger impression on my mind than all Miss Tevkin had said. Nevertheless, I felt that I should much rather listen to Miss Tevkin.

“Of course, of course,” I said. “Leave-taking is a very touching scene to witness. But still, when people meet again after a considerable separation, it’s also touching. Don’t you think it is?”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” Miss Siegel assented, somewhat aloofly.

“People cry for joy,” Miss Tevkin put in, non-commit-tally.

“Yes, but they cry, all the same. There are tears,” I urged.

“ I had no idea you were such a cry-baby, Mr. Levinsky,” the photographer said. “Perhaps you’ll feel better when you’ve had dinner. But I thought you said this weather made you happy.”

“It simply means that at the bottom of our hearts we Jews are a sad people,” Miss Tevkin interceded. “There is a broad streak of tragedy in our psychology. It’s the result of many centuries of persecution and homelessness. Gentiles take life more easily than we do. My father has a beautiful poem on the theme. But then the Russians are even more melancholy than we are. Russian literature is full of it. My oldest brother, who is a great stickler for everything Russian, is always speaking about it.”

“Always referring to her papa and her brother,” I thought. “What a sweet child.”

Presently she and her long-faced chum were hailed by a group of young men and women, and, excusing themselves to us, they ran over to join them. I felt like a man sipping at a glass of wine when the glass is suddenly seized from his hand.

Some time later I sat on a cane chair amid flower-beds in front of the Rigi Kulm, inhaling the scented evening air and gazing down the sloping side of the lawn. Women and girls were returning from the post-office, many of them with letters in their hands. Some of these were so impatient to know their contents that they were straining their eyes to read them in the sickly light that fell from a sparse row of electric lamps. I watched their faces. In one case it was quite evident that the letter was a love-message, and that the girl who was reading it was tremendously happy. In another I wondered whether the missive had come from a son. It was for Miss Tevkin’s return that I was watching. But the dinner-gong sounded before she made her appearance.

D
INNER at the Rigi Kulm on a Saturday evening was not merely a meal. It was, in addition, or chiefly, a great social function and a gown contest.

The band was playing. As each matron or girl made her appearance in the vast dining-room the female boarders already seated would look her over with feverish interest, comparing her gown and diamonds with their own. It was as though it were especially for this parade of dresses and finery that the band was playing. As the women came trooping in, arrayed for the exhibition, some timid, others brazenly self-confident, they seemed to be marching in time to the music, like so many chorus-girls tripping before a theater audience, or like a procession of model-girls at a style-display in a big department store. Many of the women strutted affectedly, with “refined” mien. Indeed, I knew that most of them had a feeling as though wearing a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress was in itself culture and education.

Mrs. Kalch kept talking to me, now aloud, now in whispers. She was passing judgment on the gowns and incidentally initiating me into some of the innermost details of the gown race. It appeared that the women kept tab on one another’s dresses, shirt-waists, shoes, ribbons, pins, earrings. She pointed out two matrons who had never been seen twice in the same dress, waist, or skirt, although they had lived in the hotel for more than five weeks. Of one woman she informed me that she could afford to wear a new gown every hour in the year, but that she was “too big a slob to dress up and too lazy to undress even when she went to bed”; of another, that she would owe her grocer and butcher rather than go to the country with less than ten big trunks full of duds; of a third, that she was repeatedly threatening to leave the hotel because its bills of fare were typewritten, whereas “for the money she paid she could go to a place with printed menu-cards.”