THE family occupied a large, old, private house in the Harlem section of Fifth Avenue, a locality swarming with our people. I called at 8 in the evening. It was in the latter part of March, nearly eight months after my unfortunate experience in the Catskills. I was received in the hall by Tevkin. He took me into a spacious parlor whose walls were lined with old book-cases and book-stands. There I found Anna and two of the other children of the numerous family. She wore a blouse of green velvet and a black four-in-hand tie. She welcomed me with a cordial handshake and a gay smile, as though all that had transpired between us had been a childish misunderstanding, but she was ill at ease. As for me, I was literally panic-stricken. It was at this moment, when I came face to face with her for the first time in the eight months following that Catskill incident, that I became aware of being definitely in love with her
The book-cases and book-stands were full to bursting. There was a piano in the room and two tables littered with books, prints, and photographs. The space between book-cases and over the piano was hung with etchings, crayons, pen-and-ink drawings, and photographs. The other two of Tevkin's children present were a chubby girl of twelve, named Gracie, and a young man of twenty-eight, two or three years older than Anna, named Sasha. Sasha had a half-interest in an evening preparatory school in which he taught mathematics, being now confined to the house by a slight indisposition
Mrs. Tevkin made her appearance—a handsome old woman of striking presence, tall, almost majestic, with a mass of white hair, with the beautiful features of the girl who was the cause of my being there. I thought of Naphtali. I had a desire to discover his address and to write him about my meeting with the hero and heroine of the romance of which he had told me a few months before I left Antomir. "I go to their house. She is still beautiful," I pictured myself saying to him. Her demeanor and the very intonation of her speech seemed to proclaim the fact that she was the daughter of that illustrious physician of Odessa. It did not take me long to discover, however, that under the surface of her good breeding and refinement was a woman of scant intellect
Seeing me look at the book-cases, she said: "These are not all the books we have. There are some in the other rooms, too. Plenty of them. It's quite a job for an American servant-girl to dust them."
Anna smiled good-humoredly
The next utterance of Mrs. Tevkin's was to the effect that one had to put up with crowded quarters in America—a hint at the better days which the family had seen in Russia
Anna's younger sister, Elsie, a school-teacher, came in. She had quicker movements and a sharper look than the stenographer and she bore strong resemblance to her father. Anna was the prettier of the two. We went down into the dining-room, where we found Russian tea, cake, and preserves.
Presently we were joined by George, an insurance-collector, who was between Anna and Sasha, and Emil, an artist employed on a Sunday paper, who was between Anna and Elsie. Emil was a handsome fellow with a picturesque face which betrayed his vocation. The crayons and the pen-and-ink drawings that I had seen in the library were his work. He had a pale, high forehead and a thick, upright grove of very soft, brown hair which I pictured as billowing in a breeze like a field of rye. "Just the kind of son for a poet to have," I thought
There was another son, Moissey. He was married and I did not see him that evening. His mother was continually referring to him
"I can see that you miss him," I said
"I should say so," Anna broke in. "He's her pet."
"Don't mind what she says, Mr. Levinsky," her mother exhorted me. "She just loves to tease me."
"Mother is right," Elsie interposed. "Moissey is not her pet. lf somebody is, it's I, isn't it, ma?"
Anna smiled good-naturedly
"Gracie is my pet," Mrs. Tevkin rejoined
"Gracie and Moissey, both," Tevkin amended. "Moissey is her first-born, don't you know. But the great point is that he has been married only three months, and she has not yet got used to having him live somewhere else. She feels as if somebody had snatched him from her. When a day passes without her seeing him she is uneasy."
"Not at all," Mrs. Tevkin demurred. "I am thinking of him just now because—because—well, because we have all been introduced to Mr. Levinsky except him!"
"If two or three of the family were missing it wouldn't be so marked," Tevkin supported her, chivalrously. "But only one is missing, only one. That somehow makes you think of him. I feel the same way."
As he spoke it seemed to me that in his home atmosphere he bore himself with more self-confidence and repose than at the café or at his office. His hospitality had made him ill at ease at first, but that had worn off
"You can depend on father to find some defense for mother," remarked the picturesque Emil
At her husband's suggestion and after some urging the hostess led the way back to the parlor, or library, where she was to play us something. As we were passing out of the dining-room and up the stairs Tevkin seized the opportunity to say to me: "We live on the communistic principle, as you see. Each of us, except Mrs.
Tevkin and the little one contributes his earnings or part of them to the general treasury, my wife acting as treasurer and manager. Still, in the near future I hope to be able to turn the commune into a family of the good old type. My affairs are making headway, thank God. I sha'n't need my children's contributions much longer."
Mrs. Tevkin played some classical pieces. She had a pleasing tone and apparently felt at home at the keyboard, but it was to my eye rather than to my ear that her playing appealed. A white-haired Jewish woman at a piano was something which, in Antomir, had been associated in my mind with the life of the highest aristocracy exclusively. But then Mrs. Tevkin's father had been a physician, and Jewish physicians belonged, in the conception of my childhood and youth, to the highest social level. Another mark of her noble birth, according to my Antomir ideas, was the fact that she often addressed her husband and her older children, not in Yiddish or English, but in Russian. Compared to her, Matilda's mother was a plebeian
The only other person in the family who played the piano with facility and confidence was Emil.
I had never been in a house of this kind in my life. I was fascinated beyond expression
Anna's constraint soon wore off and she treated me with charming hospitality. So did Elsie. There was absolutely no difference in their manner toward me. Elsie gave me the attention which a girl usually accords to a close friend of her father's, and this was also the sort of attention I received from her older sister. It was as if the Catskill episode had never taken place and she were now seeing me for the first time
I met Moissey and his wife at my next visit. He was a man of thirty-two or more, tall, wiry, nervous, with large, protruding, dark eyes. He was "a dentist by profession and a Russian social democrat by religion," as his father introduced him to me
"Karl Marx is his god and Pleenanoff, the Russian socialist leader, is his Moses," the old man added
Moissey's wife looked strikingly Semitic. She seemed to have just stepped out of the Old Testament. She had been only about a year in the country, and the only language she could speak was Russian, which she enunciated without a trace of a Jewish accent or intonation. She scarcely understood Yiddish.
All this was uncannily at variance with her Biblical face. It seemed incredable that her speech and outward appearance should belong to the same person. To add to the discrepancy, she was smoking cigarette after cigarette, a performance certainly not in keeping with one's notion of a Jewish woman of the old type
The oldest two sons, Moissey and Sasha, spoke English with a Russian accent from which the English of all the other children was absolutely free. Mrs.
Tevkin's Russian sounded more Russian than her husband's. Emil,Elsie, and Gracie did not speak Russian at all
Barring Mrs. Tevkin, each adult in the family worshiped at the shrine of some "ism." Anna professed Israel Zangwill's modified Zionism or Territorialism. This, however, was merely a platonic interest with her. It took up little or none of her time. Her real passion was Minority, a struggling little magazine of "modernistic literature and thought." It was published by a group of radicals of which she was a member. Elsie, on the other hand, who was a socialist, was an ardent member of the Socialist party and of the Socialist Press Club. Politically the two sisters were supposed to be irreconcilable opponents, yet Anna often worked in the interests of Elsie's party. Indeed, the more I knew them the clearer it became to me that the older sister was under the influence of the younger
The two girls and their brothers had many visitors—socialist and anarchist writers, poets, critics, artists. These were of both sexes and some of them were Gentiles. Two of the most frequent callers were Miss Siegel and the sallow-faced, homely man who had danced with Anna at the Rigi Kulm pavilion.
He was an instructor in an art school. From his talks with Emil and Anna I learned of a whole world whose existence I had never even suspected—the world of East Side art students, of the gifted boys among them, some of whom had gone to study in Paris, of their struggles, prospects, jealousies. I was introduced to several of these people, but I never came into sympathetic touch with them. I was ever conscious, never my real self in their midst.
Perhaps it was because they did not like me; perhaps it was because I failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key note to their mental attitude. However that may have been, I always felt wretched in their company, and my attempts at saying something out of the common usually missed fire
Was Anna interested in any of the young men who came to the house? I was inclined to think that she was not, but I was not sure
Among Elsie's closest friends or "comrades" was an American millionaire—a member of one of the best-known families in New York—and his wife, who was a Jewess, of whom I had read in the papers. I never saw them at the Tevkins', but I knew that they occasionally called on the school-teacher and that she saw a good deal of them at their house and at various meetings, a fact the discovery of which produced a disheartening impression on me. It was as though the sole advantage I enjoyed over Anna—the possession of money—suddenly had been wiped out
I sometimes wondered whether at the bottom of her heart Elsie did not feel elated by her close relations with that couple. That she herself was a stranger to all money interests there could be no doubt, however. And this was true of Anna and the other children. Elsie and Moissey were the strongest individualities in the family. Theirs were truly religious natures, and socialism was their religion in the purest sense of the term.
Elsie scarcely had any other great interest in life. Her socialism amused me, but her devotion to it inspired me with reverence. As for Moissey, good literature, as the term is understood in Russia, was nearly as much of a passion with him as Marxian socialism. His fervent talks of what he considered good fiction and his ferocious assaults upon what he termed "candy stories" were very impressive, though I did not always understand what he was talking about. Sometimes he would pick a quarrel with Anna over Minority and her literary hobbies generally. Once he brought her to tears by his attacks. I could not see why people should quarrel over mere stories. I thought Moissey crazy, but I must confess that his views on literature were not without influence upon my tastes. I did not do much reading in these days, so I may not have become aware of it at once. But at a later period, when I did do much reading, Moissey's opinions came back to me and I seemed to find myself in accord with them
To return to my visits at the Tevkins'. I told myself again and again that their world was not mine, that there was no hope for me, and that there was nothing for it but to discontinue my calls, but I had not the strength to do so. I never went away from this house otherwise than dejected and forlorn
Tevkin was charming in the fervent, yet tactful, hospitality with which he endeavored to assuage the bitterness of my visits. He seemed to say, "I see everything, my dear friend, and my heart goes out to you, but how can I help you?"
His wife tried to be diplomatic
"American young people imagine they own the earth," she once said to me, with a knowing glint in her beautiful eyes. "Some day they'll find out their mistake."
The hot months set in. The family nominally moved to Rockaway Beach for the season and my visits were suspended. Nominally, because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the Harlem house more often than in their summer home. Elsie was wrapped up in the socialist campaign, which kept her busy every night from the middle of July to Election Day. She practically had no vacation. Anna made arrangements to spend her brief vacation with some of her literary friends who had a camp in Maine, but while she was in the city she came home to her mother and Gracie almost every evening. As for her father, whom I saw several times during that summer, he often sat up far into the night in Malbin's or some other restaurant, talking "parcels." He had become so absorbed in his real-estate speculations that he was rarely seen at Yampolsky's café these days. One evening, when he was dining with me at the private hotel in which I lived, and we were discussing his ventures, he said: "Do you know, my friend, I have made more than twelve thousand dollars?"
He tried to say it in a matter-of-fact, business-like way, but his face melted into an expression of joy before he finished the sentence.
"I tell it to you because I know that you are a real friend and that you will be sincerely glad to hear it," he went on
"I certainly am. I'm awfully glad," I rejoined, fervently
"I expect to make more. No more chipping in by the children! Anna shall give up her typewriting and Elsie her teaching. Yes, things are coming my way at last."
"Still, if I were you, I should go slow. The real-estate market is an uncertain thing, after all."
"Of course it is," he answered, mechanically
Since I bought that Brooklyn parcel and refused to go into further real-estate operations he had never approached me with business schemes again. There was not the slightest alloy of self-interest in his friendship, and he was careful not to have it appear that there was. He never initiated me into the details of his speculations, lest I should offer him a loan. He was quite squeamish about it
One day I offered him a hundred-dollar check for The Pen, the Hebrew weekly with which he was connected and upon which I knew him to spend more than he could afford
"I don't want it," he said, reddening and shaking his head
"Why?" I asked, also reddening
I was sorely hurt and he noticed it
"I know that you do it whole-heartedly," he hastened to explain, "but I don't want to feel that you do it for my sake."
"But I don't do it for your sake. I just want to help the paper. Can't I—" He interrupted me with assurances of his regard for me and for my motives, and accepted the check.
Was he dreaming of Anna ultimately agreeing to marry me—and my money? He certainly considered me a most desirable match. But I felt sure that he was fond of me on my personal account and that he would have liked to have me for his son-in-law even if my income had not exceeded three or four thousand dollars a year. He did not share the radical views of his children. He was much nearer to my point of view than they
IT was December. There was an air of prosperity in Tevkin's house, but the girls would not give up their jobs. I was a frequent caller again. I was burning to take Anna, Elsie, and their parents to the theater, but was afraid the two girls would spurn the invitation
One day I was agreeably surprised by Elsie asking me to buy some tickets for a socialist ball. They were fifty cents apiece
"How many do you want me to take?" I asked
"As many as you can afford," she answered, roguishly
"Will you sell me twenty-five dollars' worth?"
"Oh, that would be lovely!" she said, in high glee
When I handed her the money I was on the brink of asking if it might not be rejected as "tainted," but suppressed the pleasantry
For me to attend a socialist ball would have meant to face a crowd of union men. It was out of the question. But the twenty-five dollars somehow brought me nearer to Elsie, and that meant to Anna also. I began to feel more at home in their company. Elsie was as dear as a sister to me. I went so far as to venture to invite them and their parents to the opera, and my invitation was accepted. I was still merely "a friend of father's," something like an uncle, but I saw a ray of hope now
"Suppose a commonplace business man like myself offered you a check for Minority," I once said to Anna.
"A check for Minority?" she echoed, with joyful surprise. "Well, it would be accepted with thanks, of course, but you would first have to withdraw the libel 'the commonplace business man.' Another condition is that you must promise to read the magazine." As I was making out the check I told her that I had read some issues of it and that I "solemnly swore" to read it regularly now. That I had found it an unqualified bore I omitted to announce. Shortly after that opera night Tevkin provided a box at one of the Jewish theaters for a play by Jacob Gordin
I was quite chummy with the girls. They would jokingly call me"Mr.
Capitalist" and, despite their father's protests, "bleed" me for all sorts of contributions. One of these came near embroiling me with Moissey. It was for a revolutionary leader, a Jew, who had recently escaped from a Siberian prison in a barrel of cabbage and whose arrival in New York (by way of Japan and San Francisco) had been the great sensation of the year among the socialists of the East Side. The new-comer was the founder of a party of terrorists and had organized a plot which had resulted in the killing of an uncle of the Czar and of a prime minister. Now, Moissey, in his rabid, uncompromising way, sympathized with another party of Russian revolutionists, with one that was bitterly opposed to the theories and methods of the terrorists. So when he learned that Anna was collecting funds for the man who had been smuggled out of jail in a barrel, and that I had given her a check for him, he flared up and called her "busybody."
"You had better mind your own affairs, Moissey," she retorted, coloring
She essayed to defend her position, contending that the methods of the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable, but inevitable
"The question is not whether it is justifiable, but whether there is any sense to it," Moissey replied, sneeringly. "Revolutions are not made by plotting or bomb-throwing. They must take the form of an uprising by the masses."
"As if the Russian terrorists did not have the masses back of them!The peasantry and the educated classes are with them."
"How do you know they are?" Moissey asked, with a good-natured, but patronizing, smile
He spoke of the Russian working class as the great element that was destined to work out the political and economic salvation of the country, and at this he tactlessly dwelt on the Russian trade-unions, on what he termed their revolutionary strikes, and upon the aid Russian capitalists gave the Government in its crusade upon the struggle for liberty
I felt quite awkward. I wondered whether he was not saying these things designedly to punish me for the check I had given Anna for the terrorists.
He had always seemed to hold aloof from me, as if he were opposed to the visits of the "money-bag" that I was at his father's house. At this minute I felt as though his eyes said, "The idea of this fleecer of labor contributing to the struggle for liberty!"
I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners, and to assail trade-unionism, but I restrained myself, of course
Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social question or literature, subjects upon which they assured me that I held "naïve" views. But all my efforts to get Anna into a more intimate conversation failed. For all our familiarity, it seemed as if we held our conversations through a thick window-pane. Nevertheless, in a very vague way, and for no particular reason that I was aware of, I thought that I sensed encouragement
Tevkin never again approached me with his real-estate ventures, but the very air of his house these days was full of such ventures. I met other real-estate men at his home. Their talk was tempting. my enormous income notwithstanding. Huge fortunes seemed to be growing like mushrooms all over the five Ghettos of New York and Brooklyn. I saw men who three years ago had not been worth a cent and who were now buying and selling blocks of property. How much they were actually worth was a question which in the excitement of the "boom" did not seem to matter. It is never a rare incident among our people for a man with a nebulous fortune of a few hundred dollars to plunge into a commercial undertaking involving many thousands; but during that period this was an every-day affair. At first I treated it like something that was going on in another country. But I had a good deal of uninvested money and my resistance was slackening.
At last I succumbed
One of the men I met at Tevkin's was Volodsky, the old-time street peddler, the man of the beautiful teeth whose push-cart had adjoined mine in those gloomy days when I tried to sell goods in the streets, and who had told me of the dower-money which his sister had lent him for his journey to America.
I had not seen him since then—an interval of over twenty years—and we recognized each other with some difficulty
The real-estate boom had found him eking out a wretched livelihood by selling goods on the instalment plan. Most of his business had been in the Italian quarter and he had learned to speak Italian far more fluently than he had English. A short time before I stumbled upon him at the Tevkins' he had built an enormous block of high, brick apartment-houses in Harlem. He had gone into the undertaking with only five thousand dollars of his own, and before the houses were half completed he had sold them all, pocketing an enormous profit. When we were peddlers together he had been considered a failure and a fool. He now struck me as a clever fellow, full of dash.
Nor did Volodsky represent the only metamorphosis of this kind that I came across. It was as though there were something in the atmosphere which turned paupers into capitalists and inane milksops into men of brains and pluck.
Volodsky succeeded in luring me into a network of speculations
Tevkin had an interest in some of these operations, and, as they were mostly concerned with property in Harlem or in the Bronx, his house became my real-estate headquarters. There were two classes of callers at his home now: the socialists and the literary men or artists who visited Tevkin's children and the "real-estate crowd" who came to see Tevkin himself. It came to be tacitly understood that the library was to be left to the former, while the dining-room, in the basement, was used as Tevkin's office. Being "a friend of the family," I had the freedom of both
"You're making a big mistake, Levinsky," Nodelman once said to me, with a gesture of deep concern. "What is biting you? Aren't you making money fast enough? Mark my word, if you try to swallow too fast you'll choke. Any doctor will tell you that."
I urged him to join me, but he would not hear of it. Instead, he exhorted me to sell out my holdings and give all my attention to my cloak business
"Take pity on your hard-earned pennies, Levinsky," he would say. "Else you'll wake up some day like the fellow who has dreamed he has found a treasure. He's holding on to the treasure tight, and when he opens his eyes he finds it's nothing but a handful of wind." "I'll tell you what, Levinsky," he began on one occasion. "You ought to see some of those magician fellows."
"What for?" I asked
"Did you ever see them at their game? They'll put an egg into a hat; say, 'One, two, three,' and pull out a chicken. And then they say, 'One, two, three,' again and there's neither a chicken nor an egg. That's the way all this real-estate racket will end. Mark my word, Levinsky."
Bender nagged and pleaded with me without let-up. If I had had the remotest doubt of his devotion to me it would have been dispelled now. I was at my great mahogany desk every morning, as usual, but I seldom stayed more than two hours, and even during those two hours my mind was divided between cloaks and real estate or between cloaks and Anna. Bender was practically in full charge of the business. Instead, however, of welcoming the power it gave him, he made unrelenting efforts to restore things to their former state. He was constantly haranguing me on the risks I was incurring, beseeching me to drop my new ventures, and threatening to leave me unless I did so. Once, as he was thus expostulating with me, he broke down
"I appeal to you as your friend, as your old-time teacher," he said, and burst into tears
If it had not been for him I should have neglected my cloak business beyond repair. He handled me as a gambler's wife does her husband. He would seek me out in front of some unfinished building, at Tevkin's, or at some "boom" café, and make me sign some checks, consult me on something or other, or wheedle me into accompanying him to my factory for an hour or two. But the next day he would have to go hunting for me again
I had invested considerable money in my new affairs, and releasing it at short notice would not have been an easy matter. But the great point was that I was literally intoxicated by my new interests, and the fact that they were intimately associated with the atmosphere of Anna's home had much—perhaps everything—to do with it
I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of my being. I knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie, for example, but that seemed to be a point in her favor rather than against her. "She is a good girl," I would muse, "mild, kindly, girlish. As for her 'radical' notions, they really don't matter much. I could easily knock them out of her. I should be happy with her. Oh, how happy!" And, in spite of the fact that I thought her weak, the sight of her would fill me with awe.
One's first love is said to be the most passionate love of which one is capable. I do not think it is. I think my feeling for Anna was stronger, deeper, more tender, and more overpowering than either of my previous two infatuations. But then, of course, there is no way of measuring and comparing things of this kind. Anna was the first virgin I had ever loved.
Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling? "Oh, I must have her or I'll fall to pieces," I would say to myself, yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic
My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love-maddened brain. How could Bender or Nodelman understand it? I found myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men who had simply been knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains. My money had come slowly and through work and worry. Theirs had dropped from the sky. So they could scarcely believe their senses that it was not all a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful amazement; they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves; and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real
One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him a few hundred dollars more.
One man in this party, who was said to be worth three-quarters of a million, had only recently worked as a common brick-layer. He is fixed in my memory by his struggles to live up to his new position, more especially by the efforts he would make to break himself of certain habits of speech. He always seemed to be on his guard lest some coarse word or phrase should escape him, and when a foul expression eluded his vigilance he would give a start, as if he had broken something. There was often a wistful look in his eye, as if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of living were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often, as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife's cabbage soup."
Once he said: "Do you really like champagne? I don't. You may say I am a common, ignorant fellow, but to me it doesn't come up to the bread cider mother used to make. Honest." And he gave a chuckle
I knew a man who bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and a full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. He always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it gingerly, as if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he would carefully fold it again. The effect money had on this man was of quite another nature than it was in the case of the bricklayer.
It had made him boisterously arrogant, blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice of exaggerating his profits and expenditures. There was an abundance of side-splitting comedy in the things I saw about me, but there was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a certain high-class restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one of the tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, but whom I was at first unable to locate. Presently I recognized him. Three or four years before he had peddled apples among the employees of my cloak-shop. He had then been literally in tatters. That was why I was now slow to connect his former image with his present surroundings. I had heard of his windfall. He had had a job as watchman at houses in process of construction. While there he had noticed things, overheard conversations, put two and two together, and finally made fifty thousand dollars in a few months as a real-estate broker
We were furtively eying each other. Finally our eyes met. He greeted me with a respectful nod and then his face broke into a good-humored smile. He moved over to my table and told me his story in detail. He spoke in brief, pithy sentences, revealing a remarkable understanding of the world. In conclusion he said, with a sigh: "But what is the good of it all? The Upper One has blessed me with one hand, but He has punished me with the other."
It appeared that his wife had died, in Austria, just when she was about to come to join him and he was preparing to surprise her with what, to her, would have been a palatial apartment
"For six years I tried to bring her over, but could not manage it," he said, simply. "I barely made enough to feed one mouth. When good luck came at last, she died. She was a good woman, but I never gave her a day's happiness. For eighteen years she shared my poverty. And now, that there is something better to share, she is gone."
ONE of the many Jewish immigrants who were drawn into the whirl of real-estate speculation was Max Margolis, Dora's husband. I had heard his name in connection with some deals, and one afternoon in February we found ourselves side by side in a crowd of other "boomers." The scene was the corner of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks from Tevkin's residence, a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname "The Curb" by which that corner was getting to be known
I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on the back
"Hello, Levinsky! Hello!"
"Margolis!"
His face had the florid hue of worn, nervous, middle age. "I heard you were buying. Is it true? Well, how goes it, great man?"
"How have you been?"
"Can't kick. Of course, compared to a big fellow like DavidLevinsky, I am a fly."
I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the quieter side of the Avenue
"Glad to see you, upon my word," he said. "Well, let bygones by bygones.
It's about time we forgot it all."
"There is nothing to forget."
"Honest?"
"Honest! Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your brain?"
"Why, no. Not at all. May I not live till to-morrow if it does. You are not angry at me, are you? Come, now, say that you are not."
I smiled and shrugged my shoulders
"Well, shake hands, then."
We did and he offered to sell me a "parcel." As I did not care for it, he went on to talk of the real-estate market in general. There was a restaurant on that side of the block—The Curb Café we used to call it—so we went in, ordered something, and he continued to talk. He was plainly striving to sound me, in the hope of "hanging on" to some of my deals. Of a sudden he said: "Say, you must think I'm still jealous? May I not live till to-morrow if I am." And to prove that he was not he added: "Come, Levinsky, come up to the house and let's be friends again, as we used to be. I have always wished you well." He gave me his address. "Will you come?"
"Some day."
"You aren't still angry at Dora, are you?"
"Why, no. But then she may be still angry at me," I said, indifferently
"Nonsense. Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call on small people like us? Come, forget that you are a great capitalist and let us all spend an evening together as we used to." Was he ready to suppress his jealousy for the prospect of getting under my financial wing? The answer to this question came to me through a most unexpected channel
The next morning, when I came to my Fifth Avenue office (it was some eighty blocks—about four miles—downtown from "The Curb" section of Fifth Avenue), I found Dora waiting for me. I recognized her the moment I entered the waiting-room on my office floor. Her hair was almost white and she had grown rather fleshy, but her face had not changed. She wore a large, becoming hat and was quite neatly dressed generally
The blood surged to my face. Her presence was a bewildering surprise to me
There were three other people in the room and I had to be on my guard
"How are you?" I said, rushing over to her
She stood up and we shook hands. I took her into my private office through my private corridor.
"Dora! Well, well!" I murmured in a delirium of embarrassment
"I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to call at the house," she said, gravely, looking me full in the face. "It would be awful if you did. He is out of his mind. He is—"
"Wait a minute, Dora," I interrupted her. "There'll be plenty of time to talk of that. First tell me something about yourself. How have you been? How are the children?" She was like an old song that had once held me under its sway, but which now appealed to me as a memory only. I was conscious of my consuming passion for Anna. Dora interested and annoyed me at once
I treated her as a dear old friend. She, however, persisted in wearing a mask of politeness, as if she had come strictly on business and there had never been any other relations between us
"Everybody is all right, thank you," she answered
"Is Lucy married?"
"Oh, she has a beautiful little girl of two years. But I do want to tell you about Margolis. The man is simply crazy, and I want to warn you not to take him seriously. Above all, don't let him take you up to the house. Not for anything in the world. That's what brings me here this morning."
"Why? What's the trouble?"
"Oh, it would take too long to tell," she answered. "And it isn't important, either. The main thing is that you should not let him get into business relations with you, or into any other kind of relations, for that matter."
Her English was a striking improvement upon what it had been sixteen years before. As we continued to talk it became evident to me that she was a well-read, well-informed woman. I made some efforts to break her reserve, but they failed. Nor, indeed, was I over-anxious to have them succeed. She did speak of her husband's jealousy, however (though she dropped her glance and slurred over the word as she did so); and from what she said, as well as by reading between the lines of her statement, I gathered a fairly clear picture of the situation. Echoes of Max's old jealousy would still make themselves felt in his domestic life. A clash, an irritation, would sometimes bring my name to his lips. He still, sometimes, tortured her with questions concerning our relations
"I never answer these questions of his," she said, her eyes on my office rug. "Not a word. I just let him talk. But sometimes I feel like putting an end to my life," she concluded, with a smile
I listened with expressions of surprise and sympathy and with a feeling of compunction. A thought was sluggishly trailing through my mind: "Does she still care for me?"
Margolis had built up some sort of auction business, but his real-estate mania had ruined it and eaten up all he had except three thousand dollars, which Dora had contrived to save from the wreck. With this she had bought a cigar-and-stationery store on Washington Heights by means of which she now supported the family. He spent his days and evenings hanging around real-estate haunts as a penniless drunkard does around liquor-shops. He was always importuning Dora for "a couple of hundred dollars" for a "sure thing." This was often the cause of an altercation. Quarrels had, in fact, never been such a frequent occurrence in the house as they had been since he lost his money in real estate, and one of his favorite thrusts in the course of these brawls was to allude to me
"If Levinsky asked you for money you would not refuse him, would you?" he would taunt her
Now, that he had met me at "The Curb," he had taken it into his head that his jealousy had worn off long since and that he had the best of feelings for me. His heart was set upon regaining my friendship. He had spoken to her of our meeting as a "predestined thing" that was to result in my "letting him in" on some of my deals. Dora, however, felt sure that a renewal of our acquaintance would only rekindle the worst forms of his jealousy and make life impossible to her. She dreaded to imagine it
We spoke of Lucy again. It was so stirring to think of her as a mother. Dora told me that Lucy's husband was in the jewelry business and quite well-to-do
She rose to go. I escorted her, continuing to question her about Lucy, Dannie, her husband. It would have been natural for me to take her out by way of my private little corridor, but I preferred to pilot her through my luxurious show-rooms. We found two customers there to whom some of my office men and a designer were showing our "line." I greeted the customers, and, turning to Dora again, I asked her to finish an interrupted remark. We paused by one of the windows. What she was saying about Lucy was beginning to puzzle me. She did not seem to be pleased with her daughter's marriage
"She has three servants and a machine," she said, with a peculiar smile.
"She wanted it and she got what she wanted."
"Why?" I said, perplexed
"Everything is all right," she answered, with another smile
We spoke in an undertone, so that nobody could overhear us. The fact, however, that we were no longer alone had the effect of relieving our constraint. Dora unbent somewhat. A certain note of intimacy that had been lacking in our talk while we were by ourselves stole into it now that we were in the presence of other people
In the course of our love-affair she had often spoken to me of her determination not to let Lucy repeat her mistake, not to let her marry otherwise than a man she loved. We were both thinking of it at this minute, and it seemed to be tacitly understood between us that we were
At last I ventured to ask: "What's the trouble, Dora: Tell me all about it.
It interests me very much."
"I don't know whether there's anything to tell," she answered, coloring slightly. "She says she cares for her husband, and they really get along very well. He certainly worships her. Why shouldn't he? She is so beautiful—a regular flower—and he is old enough to be her father."
"You don't say!" I ejaculated, with genuine distress
"She is satisfied."
"Are you?"
"As if it mattered whether I was or not. I had other ideas about her happiness, but I am only a mother and was not even born in this country. So what does my opinion amount to? I begged her not to break my heart, but she would have her automobile."
"Perhaps she does love him."
She shook her head ruefully. "She was quite frank about it. She called it being practical. She thought my ideas weren't American, that I was a dreamer.
She talked that way ever since she was eighteen, in fact. 'I don't care if I marry a man with white hair, provided he can make a nice living for me,' she used to say. I thought it would drive me mad. And the girls she went with had the same ideas. When they got together it would be, 'This girl married a fellow who's worth a hundred thousand,' and, 'That girl goes with a fellow who's worth half a million.' If that's what they learn at college, what's the use going to college?"
"It's prosperity ideas," I suggested. "It's a temporary craze."
"I don't care what it is. A girl should be a girl. She ought to think of love, of real happiness." (Her glance seemed to be the least bit unsteady.) "But I ain't 'practical,' don't you know. Exactly what my mother—peace upon her [this in Hebrew]—used to say. She, too, did not think it was necessary to be in love with the man you marry. But then she did not go to college, not even to school. Of what good is education, then?"
It was evident that she spoke from an overflowing heart, and that she could speak for hours on the subject. But she cut herself short and took another tack
"You must not think her husband is a kike, though," she said. "He is no fool and he writes a pretty good English letter. And he is a very nice man."
She started to go
"Tell me some more about Dannie," I said, on our way to the elevator
"He's going to college. Always first or second in his class. And one of the best men on the football team, too." She smiled, the first radiant smile I had seen on her that morning
"He's all right," she continued. And in Yiddish, "He is my only consolation." And again in English, "If it wasn't for him life wouldn't be worth living. Good-by," she said, as we paused in front of the elevator door. "Don't forget what I told you." She was ill at ease again
The elevator came down from the upper floors. We shook hands and she entered it. It sank out of sight. I stood still for a second and then returned to my private office with a sense of relief and sadness. My heart was full of love for Anna
IN a vague, timid way I had been planning to propose to Anna all along. My meeting with Dora gave these plans shape. Her unexpected visit revived in my mind the whole history of my acquaintance with her. I said to myself: "It was through tenacity and persistence that I won her. It was persistence, too, that gave me success in business. Anna is a meek, good-natured girl.
She has far less backbone than Dora. I can win her, and I will." It seemed so convincing. It was like a discovery. It aroused the fighting blood in my veins. I was throbbing with love and determination. I was priming myself for a formal proposal. I expected to take her by storm. I was only waiting for an opportunity. In case she said no, I was prepared for a long and vigorous campaign. "I won't give her up. She shall be mine, whether she wants it or not," I said to myself again and again. These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all kinds of circumstances—while I was pushing my way through a crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Bender's scoldings, while I was parleying with some real-estate man over a piece of property. They often made me so absent-minded that I would pace the floor of my hotel room, for instance, with one foot socked and the other bare, and then distressedly search for the other sock, which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my mahogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to myself: "Women like a man with a strong will. My very persistence will fascinate her." And this, too, seemed like a discovery to me. The banker answered my call. It was an important matter, yet all the while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna would be mine
At last I thought I saw my opportunity. It was an evening in April.
According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night, when Israel's liberation from the bondage of Egypt is commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the greatest event in the domestic life of our people
Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I deeply regretted not being able to spend the great evening at her father's table. This time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins'. They were not a religious family by any means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker since his early manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish Ingersoll, had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in their house. Of late years, however—that is, since Tevkin had espoused the cause of Zionism or nationalism—he had insisted on the Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his free thought. They suspected that he was getting timid about it, fearful of the hereafter. As a rule, they saw only the humorous side of the change that was apparently coming over him, but sometimes they would awaken to the pathos of it
As we all sat in the library, waiting to be called to the great feast, he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense of the prospective ceremony
"You needn't take his atheism seriously, Mr. Levinsky," said Anna, the sound of my name on her lips sending a thrill of delight through me. "'Way down at the bottom of his heart father is getting to be really religious, I'm afraid." And, as though taking pity on him, she crossed over to where he sat and nestled up to him in a manner that put a choking sensation into my throat and filled me with an impulse to embrace them both
At last the signal was given and we filed down into the dining-room. A long table, flanked by two rows of chairs, with a sofa, instead of the usual arm-chair, at its head, was set with bottles of wine, bottles of mead, wine-glasses, and little piles of matzos (thin, flat cakes of unleavened bread). The sofa was cushioned with two huge Russian pillows, inclosed in fresh white cases, for the master of the house to lean on, in commemoration of the freedom and ease which came to the Children of Israel upon their deliverance from Egypt. Placed on three covered matzos, within easy reach of the master, were a shank bone, an egg, some horseradish, salt water, and a mush made of nuts and wine. These were symbols, the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal lamb, and the egg of the other sacrifices brought during the festival in ancient times, while the horseradish and the salt water represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for Pharaoh, and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made brick for him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was the Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, accompanied by an English translation
Moissey, the uncompromising atheist and Internationalist, was demonstratively absent, much to the distress of his mother and resentment of his father. His Biblical-looking wife was at the table. So were Elsie and Emil. They were as uncompromising in their atheism as Moissey, but they had consented to attend the quaint supper to please their parents. As to Anna, Sasha, and George, each of them had his or her socialism "diluted" with some species of nationalism, so they were here as a matter of principle, their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. But even they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all partly as a joke. In the case of the poet, however, it was quite obvious that his levity was pretended. For all his jesting and frivolity, he looked nervous. I could almost see the memories of his childhood days which the scene evoked in his mind. I could feel the solemnity that swelled his heart. It appeared that this time he had decided to add to the ceremony certain features which he had foregone on the previous few Passover festivals he had observed. He was now bent upon having a Passover feast service precisely like the one he had seen his father conduct, not omitting even the white shroud which his father had worn on the occasion. As a consequence, several of these details were a novel sight to his children. A white shroud lay ready for him on his sofa, and as he slipped it on, with smiles and blushes, there was an outburst of mirth
"Oh, daddy!" Anna shouted
"Father looks like a Catholic priest," said Emil
"Don't say that, Emil," I rebuked him
Fun was made of the big white pillows upon which Tevkin leaned, "king-like," and of the piece of unleavened bread which he "hid" under them for Gracie to "steal."
As he raised the first of the Four Cups of wine he said, solemnly, with an effort of shaking off all pretense of flippancy: "Well, let us raise our glasses. Let us drink the First Cup."
We all did so, and he added, "This is the Fourth of July of our unhappy people." After the glasses were drained and refilled he said: "Scenes like this bind us to the Jews of the whole world, and not only to those living, but to the past generations as well. This is no time for speaking of the Christian religion, but as I look at this wine an idea strikes me which I cannot help submitting: The Christians drink wine, imagining that it is the blood of Jesus. Well, the wine we are drinking to-night reminds me of the martyr blood of our massacred brethren of all ages."
Anna gave me a merry wink. I felt myself one of the family. I was in the seventh heaven. She seemed to be particularly attentive to me this evening
"I shall speak to her to-night," I decided. "I sha'n't wait another day." And the fact that she was a nationalist and not an unqualified socialist, like Elsie, for instance, seemed to me a new source of encouragement. I was in a quiver of blissful excitement
The Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest son, but Emil, the Internationalist, could not be expected to take an active part in the ceremony, so Sasha, the Zionist, took his place. Sasha, however, did not read Hebrew, and old Tevkin had to be content with having the Four Questions read in English, the general answer to them being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew. It reminded me of an operatic performance in which the part of Faust, for instance, is sung in French, while that of Margarita is performed in some other language. We went on with the Story of the Deliverance. Tevkin made frequent pauses to explain and comment upon the text, often with a burst of oratory. Mrs. Tevkin and some of the children were obviously bored.
Gracie pleaded hunger
Finally the end of the first part of the story was reached and supper was served. It was a typical Passover supper, with matzo balls, and it was an excellent repast. Everybody was talkative and gay. I addressed some remarks to Anna, and she received them all cordially
By way of attesting her recognition of Passover as a "national holiday" she was in festive array, wearing her newest dress, a garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old rose, with a crêpe collar of gray. It mellowed the glow of her healthful pink complexion. She was the most beautiful creature at the table, excluding neither her picturesque younger brother nor her majestic old mother. She shone. She flooded my soul with ecstasy
Tevkin's religion was Judaism, Zionism. Mine was Anna. The second half of the story is usually read with less pomp and circumstance than the first, many a passage in it being often skipped altogether. So Tevkin dismissed us all, remaining alone at the table to chant the three final ballads, which he had characterized to his children as "charming bits of folk-lore."
When Mrs. Tevkin, the children, and myself were mounting the stairs leading up from the dining-room, I was by Anna's side, my nerves as taut as those of a soldier waiting for the command to charge. I charged sooner than I expected.
"Sasha asked the Four Questions," I found myself saying. "There is one question which I should like to ask of you, Miss Tevkin."
I said it so simply and at a moment so little suited to a proposal of marriage that the trend of my words was lost upon her
"Something about Jewish nationalism?" she asked
"About that and about something else."
We were passing through the hallway now. When we entered the library I took her into a corner, and before we were seated I said: "Well, my question has really nothing to do with nationalism. It's quite another thing I want to ask of you. Don't refuse me. Marry me. Make me happy."
She listened like one stunned
"I am terribly in love with you," I added
"Oh!" she then exclaimed. Her delicate pink skin became a fiery red. She looked down and shook her head with confused stiffness.
"I see you're taken aback. Take a seat; get your bearings," I said, lightly, pulling up a chair that stood near by, "and say, 'Yes.'"
"Why, that's impossible!" she said, with an awkward smile, without seating herself. "I need not tell you that I have long since changed my mind about you—"
"I am no more repellent, am I?" I jested
"No. Not at all," she returned, with another smile. "But what you say is quite another thing. I am very sorry, indeed." She made to move away from me, but I checked her
"That does not discourage me," I said. "I'll just go on loving you and waiting for a favorable answer. You are still unjust to me. You don't know me well enough. Anyhow, I can't give you up. I won't give you up. ("That's it," I thought. "I am speaking like a man of firm purpose.") "I am resolved to win you."
"Oh, that's entirely out of the question," she said, with a gesture of impatience and finality. And, bursting into tears of child-like indignation, she added: "Father assured me you would never hint at such a thing—never.
If you mean to persist, then—"
The sentence was left eloquently unfinished. She turned away, walked over to her mother and took a seat by her side, like a little girl mutely seeking her mamma's protection
The room seemed to be in a whirl. I felt the cold perspiration break out on my forehead. I was conscious of Mrs. Tevkin's and Elsie's glances. I was sick at heart. Anna's bitter resentment was a black surprise to me. I had a crushing sense of final defeat
IT was a severe blow. It caused me indescribable suffering. It would not have been unnatural to attribute my fiasco to my age. Had I been ten years younger, Anna's attitude toward me might have been different. But this point of view I loathed to accept. Instead, I put the blame on Anna's environment.
"I was in the 'enemy's country' there," I would muse. "The atmosphere around her was against me." I hated the socialists with a novel venom. Finally I pulled myself together. Then it was that I discovered the real condition of my affairs. I had gone into those speculations far deeper than I could afford. There were indications that made me seriously uneasy. Things were even worse than Bender imagined. Ruin stared me in the face. I was panic-stricken. One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch with me in a private dining-room of a well-known hotel. He was dignifiedly steel-gray and he had the appearance of a college professor or successful physician rather than of a business man. He liked me. I had long been one of his most important customers and I had always sought to build up a good record with him. For example: other cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for merchandise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so. It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things. In the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss of material, and if it cannot, I will sustain the small loss rather than incur the mill's disfavor. In the long run it pays. And so this cloth merchant was well disposed toward me. He had done me some favors before. He addressed me as Dave. (There was a note of condescension as well as of admiration in this "Dave" of his. It implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer, singularly successful and reliable, but that I was his inferior, all the same—a Jew, a social pariah. At the bottom of my heart I considered myself his superior, finding an amusing discrepancy between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual interests; but he was a Gentile, and an American, and a much wealthier man than I, so I looked up to him.) To make my appeal as effective as possible I initiated him into the human side of my troubles. I told him of my unfortunate courtship as well as of the real-estate ventures into which it had led me
He was interested and moved, and, as he had confidence in me, he granted my request at once.
"It's all right, Dave," he said, slapping my back, a queer look in his eye.
"You can always count on me. Only throw that girl out of your mind."
I grasped his hand silently. I wanted to say something, but the words stuck in my throat. He helped me out of my difficulties and I devoted myself to the cloak business with fresh energy. The agonies of my love for Anna were more persistent than those I had suffered after I moved out of Dora's house.
But, somehow, instead of interfering with my business activities, these agonies stimulated them. I was like the victim of a toothache who seeks relief in hard work. I toiled day and night, entering into the minutest detail of the business and performing duties that were ordinarily left to some inferior employee.
Business was good. Things went humming. Bender, who now had an interest in my factory, was happy
Some time later the same woolen man who had come to my assistance did me another good turn, one that brought me a rich harvest of profits. A certain weave was in great vogue that season, the demand far exceeding the output, and it so happened that the mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few that produced that fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply of it than any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my overhead expenses remained the same. My net profits exceeded two hundred thousand dollars that year
One afternoon in the summer of the same year, as I walked along Broadway in the vicinity of Canal Street, my attention was attracted by a shabby, white-haired, feeble-looking old peddler, with a wide, sneering mouth, who seemed disquietingly familiar and in whom I gradually recognized one of my Antomir teachers—one of those who used to punish me for the sins of their other pupils. The past suddenly sprang into life with detailed, colorful vividness. The black pit of poverty in which I had been raised; my misery at school, where I had been treated as an outcast and a scapegoat because my mother could not afford even the few pennies that were charged for my tuition; the joy of my childish existence in spite of that gloom and martyrdom—all this rose from the dead before me
The poor old peddler I now saw trying to cross Broadway was Shmerl the Pincher, the man with whom my mother had a pinching and hair-pulling duel after she found the marks of his cruelty on my young body. He had been one of the most heartless of my tormentors, yet it was so thrillingly sweet to see him in New York! In my schooldays I would dream of becoming a rich and influential man and wreaking vengeance upon my brutal teachers, more especially upon Shmerl the Pincher and "the Cossack," the man whose little daughter, Sarah-Leah, had been the heroine of my first romance. I now rushed after Shmerl, greatly excited, one of the feelings in my heart being a keen desire to help him
A tangle of wagons and trolley-cars caused me some delay. I stood gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way. I had known him as a young man, although to my childish eye he had looked old—a strong fellow, probably of twenty-eight, with jet-black side-whiskers and beard, with bright, black eyes and alert movements. At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have been about sixty, but he looked much older
As I was thus waiting impatiently for the cars to start so that I could cross the street and greet him, a cold, practical voice whispered to me: "Why court trouble? Leave him alone."
My exaltation was gone. The spell was broken.
The block was presently relieved, but I did not stir. Instead of crossing the street and accosting the old man, I stood still, following him with my eyes until he vanished from view. Then I resumed my walk up Broadway. As I trudged along, a feeling of compunction took hold of me. By way of defending myself before my conscience, I tried to think of the unmerited beatings he used to give me. But it was of no avail. The idea of avenging myself on this decrepit, tattered old peddler for what he had done more than thirty years before made me feel small. "Poor devil! I must help him," I said to myself.
I was conscious of a desire to go back and to try to overtake him; but I did not. The desire was a meandering, sluggish sort of feeling. The spell was broken irretrievably