MAX saw nothing. His wife was a very womanly woman with a splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly complexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never seemed to feel anything like apprehension about us. This man who plumed himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually had a great deal of insight in these matters, this man, I say, was absolutely blind to his wife's power over me. He suspected every man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less often than that other joke of his—about my being his and Dora's son-in-law
"Look out, mother-in-law," he would say to her. "If you don't treat your son-in-law right you'll lose him."
I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, while she stood on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant window-shade, he drew my attention to her efforts admiringly
"Look at her!" he said under his breath. "Another woman would make her husband do it. Not she. I can't kick. She is not a lazy slob, is she?"
"Certainly not," I asserted
We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, fit the pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. It was in good working order now
"No, she is not a slob," he repeated, exultantly. "And she is not a gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own business."
At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. "Move along!" he said, gaily. "Don't disturb us. I am telling Levinsky what a bad girl you are. Run along."
She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried the first germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away
"No, she is no slob, thank God," he resumed. He boasted of her tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned to read and spell, with little Lucy for her teacher. He depicted the tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school. "Once she makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the world went under. That's the kind of woman she is. And she is no mean, foxy thing, either. When she says something you may be sure she means it, if I do say so. You ought to know her by this time. Have you ever heard her say things that are not so? Or have you heard her talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will do? Have you, now? Just tell me," he pressed me.
"Of course I have not," I answered, awkwardly. "There are not many women like her."
"I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to her hubby,I don't know who is," he added, sheepishly.
IT was during this period that I received my first baptism of dismay as patron of a high-class restaurant. The occasion was a lunch to which I had invited a buyer from Philadelphia. The word "buyer" had a bewitching sound for me, inspiring me with awe and enthusiasm at once. The word "king" certainly did not mean so much to me. The august person to whom I was doing homage on the occasion in question was a man named Charles M. Eaton, a full-blooded Anglo-Saxon of New England origin, with a huge round forehead and small, blue, extremely genial eyes. He was a large, fair-complexioned man, and the way his kindly little eyes looked from under his hemispherical forehead, like two swallows viewing the world from under the eaves of a roof, gave him a striking appearance. The immense restaurant, with its high, frescoed ceiling, the dazzling whiteness of its rows and rows of table-cloths, the crowd of well-dressed customers, the glint and rattle of knives and forks, the subdued tones of the orchestra, and the imposing black-and-white figures of the waiters struck terror into my Antomir heart.
The bill of fare was, of course, Chinese to me, though I made a pretense of reading it. The words swam before me. My inside pocket contained sufficient money to foot the most extravagant bill our lordly waiter was likely to present, but I was in constant dread lest my treasure disappear in some mysterious way; so, from time to time, I felt my breast to ascertain whether it was still there
The worst part of it all was that I had not the least idea what I was to say or do. The occasion seemed to call for a sort of table manners which were beyond the resources not only of a poor novice like myself, but also of a trained specialist like Dora
Finally my instinct of self-preservation whispered in my ear, "Make a clean breast of it." And so, dropping the bill of fare with an air of mock despair, I said, jovially: "I'm afraid you'll have to tell me what to do, Mr. Eaton. It's no use bluffing. I have never been in such a fine restaurant in my life. I am scared to death, Mr. Eaton. Take pity."
The Philadelphian, who was a slow-spoken, slow-witted, though shrewd, man, was perplexed at first
"I see," he said, coloring, and looking confusedly at me. The next minute he seemed to realize the situation and to enjoy it, too, but even then he was apparently embarrassed. I cracked another joke or two at my own expense, until finally he burst into a hearty laugh and cheerfully agreed to act as master of ceremonies. Not only did he do the ordering, explaining things to me when the waiter was not around, but he also showed me how to use my napkin, how to eat the soup, the fish, the meat, what to do with the finger-bowl, and so forth and so on, to the minutest detail
"I am afraid one lesson won't be enough," I said. "You must give me another chance."
"With pleasure," he replied. "Only the next 'lesson' will be on me."And then he had to tell me what "on me" meant
He took a fancy to me and that meant orders, not only from him, but also from some people of his acquaintance, buyers from other towns
I sought to dress like a genteel American, my favorite color for clothes and hats being (and still is) dark brown. It became my dark hair well, I thought. The difference between taste and vulgar ostentation was coming slowly, but surely, I hope. I remember the passionate efforts I made to learn to tie a four-in-hand cravat, then a recent invention. I was forever watching and striving to imitate the dress and the ways of the well-bred American merchants with whom I was, or trying to be, thrown. All this, I felt, was an essential element in achieving business success; but the ambition to act and look like a gentleman grew in me quite apart from these motives
Now, Dora seemed to notice these things in me, and to like them. So I would parade my newly acquired manners before her as I did my neckties or my English vocabulary.
After that lecture I gave her on adverbs she no longer called my English in question. To be educated and an "American lady" had, thanks to Lucy's influence, become the great passion of her life. It almost amounted to an obsession. She thought me educated and a good deal of an American, so she looked up to me and would listen to my harangues reverently.
ONE Saturday evening she said to me: "Lord! you are so educated. I wish I had a head like yours."
"Why, you have an excellent head, Dora," I replied. "You have no reason to complain."
She sighed
"I wish I had not gone into business," I resumed
I had already told her, more than once, in fact, how I had been about to enter college when an accident had led me astray; so I now referred to those events, dwelling regretfully upon the sudden change I had made in my life plans
"It was the devil that put it in my head to become a manufacturer," I said, bitterly, yet with relish in the "manufacturer." "Well, one can be a manufacturer and educated man at the same time," she consoled me
"Of course. That's exactly what I always say," I returned, joyously."Still, I wish I had stuck to my original plan. There was a lady inAntomir who advised me to prepare for college. She was alwaysspeaking to me about it."
It was about 10 o'clock. Max was away to his dancing-schools. The children were asleep. We were alone in the living-room
I expected her to ask who that Antomir lady was, but she did not, so I went on speaking of Matilda of my own accord. I sketched her as an "aristocratic" young woman, the daughter of one of the leading families in town, accomplished, clever, pretty, and "modern."
"It was she, in fact, who got me the money for my trip to America," I said, lowering my voice, as one will when a conversation assumes an intimate character
"Was it?" Dora said, also in a low voice
"Yes. It is a long story. It is nearly five years since I left home, but I still think of it a good deal. Sometimes I feel as if my heart would snap unless I had somebody to tell about it."
This was my way of drawing Dora into a flirtation, my first attempt in that direction, though in my heart I had been making love to her for weeks
I told her the story of my acquaintance with Matilda. She listened with non-committal interest, with an amused, patronizing glimmer of a smile
"You did not fall in love with her, did you?" she quizzed me as she might Lucy
"That's the worst part of it," I said, gravely
"Is it?" she asked, still gaily, but with frank interest now
I recounted the episode at length. To put it in plain English, I was using my affair with Matilda (or shall I say her affair with me?) as a basis for an adventure with Dora. At first I took pains to gloss over those details in which I had cut an undignified figure, but I soon dropped all embellishments. The episode stood out so bold in my memory. its appeal to my imagination was so poignant, that I found an intoxicating satisfaction in conveying the facts as faithfully as I knew how. To be telling a complete, unvarnished truth is in itself a pleasure. It is as though there were a special sense of truth and sincerity in our make-up (just as there is a sense of musical harmony, for example), and the gratification of it were a source of delight.
Nor was this my only motive for telling Dora all. I had long since realized that the disdain and mockery with which Matilda handled me had been but a cloak for her interest in my person. So when I was relating to Dora the scenes of my ignominy I felt that the piquant circumstances surrounding them were not unfavorable to me
Anyhow, I was having a singularly intimate talk with Dora and she was listening with the profoundest interest, all the little tricks she employed to disguise it notwithstanding
In depicting the scene of the memorable night when Matilda came to talk to me at my bedside I emphasized the fact that she had called me a ninny
"I did not know what she meant," I said.
Dora tittered, looking at the floor shamefacedly. "The nasty thing!" she said
"What do you mean?" I inquired, dishonestly
"I mean just what I say. She is a nasty thing, that grand lady of yours." And she added another word—the East Side name for a woman of the streets—that gave me a shock
"Don't call her that," I entreated. "Please don't. You are mistaken about her. I assure you she is a highly respectable lady. She has a heart of gold," I added, irrelevantly
"Well, well! You are still in love with her, aren't you?"
I was tempted to say: "No. It is you I now love." But I merely said, dolefully: "No. Not any more."
She contemplated me amusedly and broke into a soft laugh
The next time we were alone in the house I came back to it. I added some details. I found a lascivious interest in dwelling on our passionate kisses, Matilda's and mine. Also, it gave me morbid pleasure to have her behold me at Matilda's feet, lovelorn, disdained, crushed, yet coveted, kissed, triumphant
Dora listened intently. She strove to keep up an amused air, as though listening to some childish nonsense, but the look of her eye, tense or flinching, and the warm color that often overspread her cheeks, betrayed her
WE talked about my first love-affair for weeks. She asked me many questions ahout Matilda, mostly with that pretended air of amused curiosity. Every time I had something good to say about Matilda she would assail her brutally
The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the presence of her husband was a tacit confession that we had a secret from him. Outwardly it meant that the secret was mine, not hers; that she had nothing to do with it; but then there was another secret—the fact that she was my sole confidante in a matter of this nature—and this secret was ours in common
On one occasion, in the course of one of these confabs of ours, she said, with ill-concealed malice: "Do you really think she cared for you? Not that much," marking off the tip of her little finger
"Why should you say that? Why should you hurt my feelings?" I protested
"It still hurts your feelings, then, does it? There is a faithful lover for you! But what would you have me say? That she loved you as much as you loved her?"
At this Dora jerked her head backward, with a laugh that rang so charmingly false and so virulent that I was impelled both to slap her face and to kiss it
"But tell me," she said, with a sudden affectation of sedate curiosity, "was she really so beautiful?"
"I never said she was 'so beautiful,' did I? You are far more beautiful than she." "Oh, stop joking, please! Can't you answer seriously?"
"I really mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That you are prettier than Matilda." "Is that the way you are faithful to her?"
"Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody else I am faithful to."
She was silent. Her cheeks glowed
"Why don't you ask who that somebody is?"
"Because I don't care. What do I care? And please don't talk like that. I mean what I say. You must promise me never to talk like that," she said, gravely
During the following few days Dora firmly barred all more or less intimate conversation. She treated me with her usual friendly familiarity, but there was something new in her demeanor, something that seemed to say, "I don't deny that I enjoy our talks, but that's all the more reason why you must behave yourself."
The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough, so she let me tell her bits of it, and before she was aware of it she was following my childish love-affair with the daughter of one of my despotic school-teachers, my struggles with Satan, and my early dreams of marriage. Gradually she let me draw her out concerning her own past.
One evening, while Lucy was playing school-teacher, with Dannie for the class, Dora told me of an episode connected with her betrothal to Max
"Was that a love match?" I asked, with a casual air, when she had finished
She winced. "What difference does it make?" she said, with an annoyed look.
"We were engaged as most couples are engaged. Much I knew of the love business in those days."
"You speak as though you married when you were a mere baby.You certainly knew how you felt toward him."
"I don't think I felt anything," she answered
"Still," I insisted, "you said to yourself, 'This man is going to be my husband; he will kiss me, embrace me.' How did you feel then?"
"You want to know too much, Levinsky," she said, coloring. "You know the saying, 'If you know too much you get old too quick.' Well, I don't think I gave him any thought at all. I was too busy thinking of the wedding and of the pretty dress they were making for me. Besides. I was so rattled and so shy. Much I understood. I was not quite nineteen."
It called to my mind that in the excitement following my mother's death I was so overwhelmed by the attentions showered on me that it was a day or two before I realized the magnitude of my calamity
"Anyhow, you certainly knew that marriage is the most serious thing in life," I persisted
"Oh, I don't think I knew much of anything."
"And after the wedding?"
"After the wedding I knew that I was a married woman and must be contented," she parried
"But this is not love," I pressed her
"Oh, let us not talk of these things, pray! Don't ask me questions like that," she said in a low, entreating voice. "It isn't right."
"I don't know if it is right or wrong," I replied, also in a low voice. "All I do know is that I am interested in everything that ever happened to you
Silence fell. She was the first to break it. She tried to talk of trivialities. I scarcely listened. She broke off again
"Dora!" I said, amorously. "My heart is so full."
"Don't," she whispered, with a gesture of pained supplication."Talk of something else, pray."
"I can't. I can't talk of anything else. Nor think of anything else, either."
"You mustn't, you mustn't, you mustn't," she said, with sudden vehemence, though still with a beseeching ring in her voice. "I won't let you. May I not live to see my children again if I will. Do you hear, Levinsky? Do you hear? Do you hear? I want you to understand it. Be a man. Have a heart, Levinsky. You must behave yourself. If you don't you'll have to move. There can't be any other way about it. If you are a real friend of mine, not an enemy, you must behave yourself." She spoke with deep, solemn earnestness, somewhat in the singsong of a woman reading the Yiddish Commentary on the Five Books of Moses or wailing over a grave. She went on: "Why should you vex me? You are a respectable man. You don't want to do what is wrong. You don't want to make me miserable, do you? So be good, Levinsky. I beg of you.
I beg of you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Let us never have another talk like this. Do you promise?"
I was silent
"Do you promise, Levinsky? You must. You must. Do you promise me never to come back to this kind of talk?"
"I do," I said, like a guilty school-boy
She was terribly in earnest. She almost broke my heart. I could not thwart her will
She was in love with me
Days passed. There was no lack of unspoken tenderness between us. That she was tremulously glad to see me every time I came home was quite obvious, but she bore herself in such a manner that I never ventured to allude to my feeling, much less to touch her hand or sit close to her.
"It is as well that I should not," I often said to myself. "Am I not happy as it is? Is it not bliss enough to have a home—her home? It would be too awful to forfeit it." I registered a vow to live up to the promise she had exacted from me, but I knew that I would break it
She was in love with me. She had an iron will, but I hoped that this, too, would soon be broken.
There were moments when I would work myself up to an exalted, religious kind of mood over it. "I should be a vile creature if I interfered with the peace of this house," I would exhort myself, passionately. "Max has been a warm friend to me. Oh, I will be good."
Dora talked less than usual. She, too, seemed to be a changed person. She was particularly taciturn when we happened to be alone in the house, and then it would be difficult for us to look each other in the face. Such tête-à-têtes occurred once or twice a week, quite late in the evening. I was very busy at the shop and I could never leave it before 10, 11, or even 12, except on Sabbath eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those evenings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little dining-room, sewing, mending, or—more often—poring over Lucy's school reader or story-book
After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her, each of us aware of the other's embarrassment, I would take a seat a considerable distance from her and take up a newspaper or clipping from one, while she went on with her work or reading. Lucy had begun to take juvenile books out of the circulating library of the Educational Alliance, so her mother would read them also. The words were all short and simple and Dora had not much difficulty in deciphering their meaning. Anyhow, she now never sought my assistance for her reading. I can still see her seated at the table, a considerable distance from me, moving her head from word to word and from line to line, and silently working her lips, as though muttering an incantation. I would do her all sorts of little services (though she never asked for any), all silently, softly, as if performing a religious rite
I have said that on such occasions I would read my newspaper or some clipping from it. In truth I read little else in those days. Editorials of the daily press interested me as much as the most sensational news, and if some of the more important leading articles in my paper had to be left unread on the day of their publication I would clip them and glance them over at the next leisure moment, sometimes days later
The financial column was followed by me with a sense of being a member of a caste for which it was especially intended, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. At first the jargon of that column made me feel as though I had never learned any English at all. But I was making headway in this jargon, too, and when I struck a recondite sentence I would cut the few lines out and put them in my pocket, on the chance of coming across somebody who could interpret them for me. Often, too, I would clip and put away a paragraph containing some curious piece of information or a bit of English that was an addition to my knowledge of the language. My inside pocket was always full of all sorts of clippings
It was about this time that I found myself confronted with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business affairs. There were several circumstances that made it possible for a financial midget like myself to outbid the lions of the cloak-and-suit industry. Now, however, a new circumstance arose which threatened to rob me of my chief advantage and to undermine the very foundation of my future
The rent of my loft, which was in the slums, was, comparatively speaking, a mere trifle, while my overhead expense amounted to scarcely anything at all.
I did my own bookkeeping, and a thirteen-year-old girl, American-born, school-bred, and bright, whose bewigged mother was one of my finishers, took care of the shop while I was out, helped me with my mail, and sewed on buttons between-whiles—all for four dollars a week. Another finisher, a young widow, saved me the expense of a figure woman. To which should be added that I did business on a profit margin far beneath the consideration of the well-known firms. All this, however, does not include the most important of all the items that gave me an advantage over the princes of the trade. That was cheap labor
Three of my men were excellent tailors. They could have easily procured employment in some of the largest factories, where they would have been paid at least twice as much as I paid them. They were bewhiskered, elderly people, strictly orthodox and extremely old-fashioned as to dress and habits. They felt perfectly at home in my shop, and would rather work for me and be underpaid than be employed in an up-to-date factory where a tailor was expected to wear a starched collar and necktie and was made the butt of ridicule if he covered his head every time he took a drink of water. These, however, were minor advantages. The important thing, the insurmountable obstacle which kept these three skilled tailors away from the big cloak-shops, was the fact that one had to work on Saturdays there, while in my place one could work on Sunday instead of Saturday
My pressers were of the same class as my tailors. As for my operators, who were younger fellows and had adopted American ways, my shop had other attractions for them. For example, my operations were limited to a very small number of styles, and, as theirs was piece-work, it meant greater earnings. While the employee of a Broadway firm (or of one of its contractors) was engaged on a large variety of garments, being continually shifted from one kind of work to another, a man working for me would be taken up with the same style for many days in succession, thus developing a much higher rate of speed and a fatter pay-envelope
Altogether, I always contrived to procure the cheapest labor obtainable, although this, as we have seen, by no means implied that my "hands" were inferior mechanics. The sum and substance of it all was that I could afford to sell a garment for less than what was its cost of production in the best-known cloak-houses
My business was making headway when the Cloak and Suit Makers' Union sprang into life again, with the usual rush and commotion, but with unusual portents of strength and stability. It seemed as if this time it had come to stay. My budding little establishment was too small, in fact, to be in immediate danger. It was one of a scattered number of insignificant places which the union found it difficult to control. Still, cheap labor being my chief excuse for being, the organization caused me no end of worry
"Just when a fellow is beginning to make a living all sorts of black dreams will come along and trip him up," I complained to Meyer Nodelman, bitterly.
"A bunch of good-for-nothings, too lazy to work, will stir up trouble, and there you are."
"Oh, it won't last long," Meyer Nodelman consoled me. "Don't be excited, anyhow. Business does not always go like grease, you know. You must be ready for trouble too."
He told me of his own experiences with unions and he drifted into a philosophic view of the matter. "You and I want to make as much money as possible, don't we?" he said. "Well, the working-men want the same. Can you blame them? We are fighting them and they are fighting us. The world is not a wedding-feast, Levinsky. It is a big barn-yard full of chickens and they are scratching one another, and scrambling over one another. Why? Because there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each chicken wants to get as much of it as possible. So let us try our best. But why be mad at the other chickens? Scratch away, Levinsky, but what's the use being excited?"
He gave a chuckle, and I could not help smiling, but at heart I was bored and wretched.
The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages, yet they were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could not afford to pay high wages.
If I had to, I should have to get out of business.
Officially mine had become a union shop, yet my men continued to work on non-union terms. They made considerably more money by working for non-union wages than they would in the places that were under stringent union supervision. They could work any number of hours in my shop, and that was what my piece-workers wanted. To toil from sunrise till long after sunset was what every tailor was accustomed to in Antomir, for instance. Only over there one received a paltry few shillings at the end of the week. while I paid my men many dollars
So far, then, I had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the walking delegates and my shop was in full blast from 5 in the morning to midnight, whereas in the genuine union shops the regular workday was restricted to ten hours, and overtime to three, which, coupled with the especial advantage accruing from a limited number of styles handled, made my shop a desirable place to my "hands."
A storm broke. All cloak-manufacturers formed a coalition and locked out their union men. A bitter struggle ensued. As it was rich in quaint "human-nature" material, the newspapers bestowed a good deal of space upon it
I made a pretense of joining in the lockout, my men clandestinely continuing to work for me. More than that, my working force was trebled, for, besides filling my own orders, I did some of the work of a well-known firm which found it much more difficult to procure non-union labor than I did. What was a great calamity to the trade in general seemed to be a source of overwhelming prosperity to me. But the golden windfall did not last long.
The agitation and the picketing activities of the union, aided by the Arbeiter Zeitung, a Yiddish socialist weekly, were spreading a spell of enthusiasm (or fear) to which my men gradually succumbed. My best operator, a young fellow who exercised much influence over his shopmates and who had hitherto been genuinely devoted to me, became an ardent convert to union principles and led all my operatives out of the shop. I organized a shop elsewhere, but it was soon discovered
Somebody must have reported to the editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung that at one time I had been a member of the union myself, for that weekly published a scurrilous paragraph, branding me as a traitor
I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain, and yet the sight of my name in print flattered my vanity, and when the heat of my fury subsided I became conscious of a sneaking feeling of gratitude to the socialist editor for printing the attack on me. For, behold! the same organ assailed the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Rothschilds, and by calling me "a fleecer of labor" it placed me in their class. I felt in good company. I felt, too, that while there were people by whom "fleecers" were cursed, there were many others who held them in high esteem, and that even those who cursed them had a secret envy for them, hoping some day to be fleecers of labor like them
The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the appellation of "cockroach manufacturer" by which it referred to me. I was going to parade the "quip" before Max and Dora, but thought better of it. The notion of Dora hearing me called "cockroach" made me squirm
But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph, and one evening as I came home for supper he said, good-naturedly: "You got a spanking, didn't you? I have seen what they say in the Arbeiter Zeitung about you."
"Oh, to the eighty black years with them!" I answered, blushing, and hastened to switch the conversation to the lockout and strike in general.
"Oh, we'll get all the men we want," I said. "It's only a matter of time.
We'll teach these scoundrels a lesson they'll never forget."
"If only you manufacturers stick together."
"You bet we will. We can wait. We are in no hurry. We can wait till those tramps come begging for a job," I said. For the benefit of Dora I added a little disquisition on the opportunities America offered to every man who had brains and industry, and on the grudge which men like myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows. "Those union leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work. That's why they can't work themselves up," I said. "Yes, and that's why they begrudge those who can. All those scoundrels are able to do is to hatch trouble."
I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes and of long standing. That some of the big cloak firms had promised to back me with funds to keep me from yielding to the union I never mentioned.
MY shop being practically closed, I was at home most of the time, not only in the evening, but many a forenoon or afternoon as well. Dora and I would hold interminable conversations. Our love was never alluded to. A relationship on new terms seemed to have been established between us. It was as if she were saying: "Now, isn't this better? Why can't we go on like this forever?"
Sometimes I would watch her read with Lucy. Or else I would take up a newspaper or a book and sit reading it at the same table. Dora was making rapid headway in her studies. It was July and Lucy was free from school, so she would let her spend many an hour in the street, but she caused her to spend a good deal of time with her, too. If she did not read with her she would talk or listen to her. I often wondered whether it was for fear of being too much thrown into my company that she would make the child stay indoors. At all events, her readings, spelling contests, or talks with Lucy bore perceptible fruit. Her English seemed to be improving every day, so much so that we gradually came to use a good deal of that language even when we were alone in the house; even when every word we said had an echo of intimacy with which the tongue we were learning to speak seemed to be out of accord
One evening mother and daughter sat at the open parlor window. While I was reclining in an easy-chair at the other end of the room Lucy was narrating something and Dora was listening, apparently with rapt attention. I watched their profiles. Finally I said: "She must be telling you something important, considering the interest you are taking in it."
"Everything she says is important to me," Dora answered
"What has she been telling you?"
"Oh, about her girls, about their brothers and their baseball games, about lots of things," she said, with a far-away tone in her voice. "I want to know everything about her. Everything. I wish I could get right into her. I wish I could be a child like her. Oh, why can't a person be born over again?"
Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with her feelings for me than with her feelings for her child. Anyhow, what she said about her being interested in everything that Lucy had to say was true. And, whether she listened to the child's prattle or not, it always seemed to me as though she absorbed every English word Lucy uttered and every American gesture she made. The American school-girl radiated a subtle influence, a spiritual ozone, which her mother breathed in greedily
"My own life is lost, but she shall be educated"— these words dropped from her lips quite often. On one occasion they came from her with a modification that lent them unusual meaning. It was on a Friday evening. Max was out, as usual, and the children were asleep. "My own life is lost, but Lucy shall be happy," she said
"Why?" I said, feelingly. "Why should you think yourself lost? I can't bear it, Dora."
She made no answer. I attempted to renew the conversation, but without avail. She answered in melancholy monosyllables and my voice had a constrained note
At last I burst out, in our native tongue: "Why do you torture me,Dora? Why don't you let me talk and pour my heart out?"
"'S-sh! You mustn't," she said, peremptorily, also in Yiddish. "You'll get me in trouble if you do. It'll be the ruin of me and of the children, too.
You mustn't."
"But you say your life is lost," I retorted, coming up close to the chair on which she sat. "Do you think it's easy for me to hear it? Do you think my heart is made of iron?"
"'S-sh! You know everything without my speaking," she said, slowly rising and drawing back. "You know well enough that I am not happy. Can't you rest until you have heard me say so again and again? Must you drink my blood? All right, then. Go ahead. Here. I am unhappy, I am unhappy, I am unhappy. Max is a good husband to me. I can't complain. And we get along well, too. And I shall be true to him. May I choke right here, may darkness come upon me, if I ever cease to be a faithful wife to him. But you know that my heart has never been happy. Lucy will be happy and that will be my happiness, too. She shall go to college and be an educated American lady, and, if God lets me live, I shall see to it that she doesn't marry unless she meets the choice of her heart. She must be happy. She must make up for her mother's lost life, too. If my mother had understood things as I do, I, too, should have been happy. But she was an old-fashioned woman and she would have me marry in the old-fashioned way, as she herself had married: without laying her eyes on her 'predestined one' until the morning after the wedding." She laughed bitterly. "Of course I did see Max before the wedding, but it made no difference. I obeyed my mother, peace upon her soul. I thought love-marriages were something which none but educated girls could dream of.
My mother—peace upon her soul—told me to throw all fancies out of my mind, that I was a simple girl and must get married without fuss. And I did. In this country people have different notions. But I am already married and a mother. All I can do now is to see to it that Lucy shall be both educated and happy, and, well, I beg of you, I beg of you, I beg of you, Levinsky, never let me talk of these things again. They must be locked up in my heart and the key must be thrown into the river, Levinsky. It cannot be otherwise, Levinsky. Do you hear?"
THE situation could not last. One morning about three weeks subsequent to the above conversation Max left town for a day. One of his debtors, a dancing-master, had disappeared without settling his account and Max had recently discovered that he was running a dance-hall and meeting-rooms in New Haven; so he went there to see what he could do toward collecting his bill. His absence for a whole day was nothing new, and yet the house seemed to have assumed a novel appearance that morning. When, after breakfast, Lucy ran out into the street I felt as though Dora and I were alone for the first time, and from her constraint I could see that she was experiencing a similar feeling. I hung around the house awkwardly. She was trying to keep herself busy. Finally I said: "I think I'll be going. Maybe there is some news about the lockout."
I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat, but on my way thither, as I came abreast of her, I paused, and with amorous mien I drew her to me.
She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance, and when I kissed her she responded, our lips clinging together hungrily. It all seemed to have happened in a most natural way. When our lips parted at last her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes looked filmed
"Dearest," I whispered
"I must go out," she said, shrinking back, her embarrassed gaze on the floor. "I have some marketing to do."
"Don't. Don't go away from me, Dora. Please don't," I said inYiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee,Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiarpronoun
"You ought not to speak to me like that," she said, limply, with frank happiness in her voice. "It's terrible. What has got into me?"
I strained her to me once again, and again we abandoned ourselves to a transport of kisses and hugs
"Dost thou love me, Dora? Tell me. I want to hear it from thine own lips."
She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with all her might. That was her answer to my question. Then, with a hurried parting kiss on my forehead, she said: "Go. Attend to business, dearest." As I walked through the street I was all but shouting to myself: "Dora has kissed me! Dora dear is mine!" My heart was dancing with joy over my conquest of her, and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her. It was a blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved her
I attended to my affairs (that is, to some of the affairs of the Manufacturers' Organization) that day; but while thus engaged I was ever tremulously conscious of my happiness, ever in an uplifted state of mind. I was bubbling over with a desire to be good to somebody, to everybody—except, of course, the Cloak-makers' Union. My membership in the Manufacturers' Association flattered my vanity inordinately, and I always danced attendance upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an alacrity that was not mere servility
I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my second love-affair, as if it were something to be proud of. My love for Matilda was remote as a piece of art, while my passion for Dora was a flaming reality. "Matilda only tortured me," I said to myself, without malice. "She treated me as she would a dog, whereas Dora is an angel. I would jump into fire for her. Dora dear! Sweetheart mine!" I had not the patience to wait until evening. I ran in to see her in the middle of the day
She flung herself at me and we embraced and kissed as if we had been separated for years. Then, holding me by both hands, she gave me a long look full of pensive bliss and clasped me to her bosom again. When she had calmed down she smoothed my hair, adjusted my necktie, told me she did not like it and offered to get me one more becoming
"Do you love me? Do you really?" she asked, with deep earnestness
"I do, I do. Dora mine, I am crazy for you," I replied. "Now I know what real love means."
She sighed, and after a pause her grave, strained mien broke into a smile
"So all you told me about Matilda was a lie, was it?" she said, roguishly.
"There is no such person in the world, is there?"
"Don't talk about her, pray. You don't understand me. I never was happy before. Never in my life."
"Never at all?" she questioned me, earnestly
"Never, Dora dearest. Anyhow, let bygones be bygones. All I know is that I love you, that I am going crazy for you. Oh, I do love you." "And nobody else?"
"And nobody else."
"And you are not lying?"
"Lying? Why should you talk like that, dearest?"
"Why, have you forgotten Matilda so soon?"
"Do you call that soon? It's more than five years."
"But you told me that you had been in love with her a considerable time after you came to this country. Will you forget me so soon, too?"
I squirmed, I writhed. "Don't be tormenting me, dearest," I implored, my voice quavering with impatience. "I love thee and nobody else."
She fell into a muse. Then she said, with a far-away look in her eyes: "I don't know where this will land me. It seems as if a great misfortune had befallen me. But I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Come what may. I can't help it. At last I know what it means to be happy. I have been dreaming of it all my life. Now I know what it is like, and I am willing to suffer for it. Yes, I am willing to suffer for you, Levinsky." She spoke with profound, even-voiced earnestness, with peculiar solemnity, as though chanting a prayer. I was somewhat bored. Presently she paused, and, changing her tone, she asked. "Matilda talked to you of education. She wanted you to be an educated man, did she? Yes, but what did she do for you? She drank your blood, the leech, and when she got tired of it she dropped you. A woman like that ought to be torn to pieces. May every bit of the suffering she caused you come back to her a thousandfold. May her blood be shed as she shed yours." Suddenly she checked herself and said: "But, no, I am not going to curse her. I don't want you to think badly of her. Your love must be sacred, Levinsky. If you ever go back on me and love somebody else, don't let her curse me. Don't let anybody say a cross word about me." Max came home after midnight and I did not see him until the next evening.
When we met at supper (Dora was out at that moment) I had to make an effort to meet his eye. But he did not seem to notice anything out of the usual, and my awkwardness soon wore off
Nor, indeed, was there any change in my feelings toward him. I had expected that he would now be hateful to me. He was not. He was absolutely the same man as he had always been, except, perhaps, that I vaguely felt like a thief in his presence. Only I hated to think of Dora while I looked at him
Presently Dora made her appearance. My embarrassment returned, more acute than ever. The consciousness of her confusion and, above all, the consciousness of the three of us being together, was insupportable. It was a terrible repast, though Max was absolutely unaware of anything unnatural in our demeanor. I retired to my room soon after supper
I had a what-not half filled with books, so I drew a volume from it. I found it difficult to get my mind on it. My thoughts were circling round Dora and Max, round my precarious happiness, round the novelty of carrying on a romantic conspiracy with a married woman. Dora was so dear to me. I seemed to be vibrating with devotion to her. Regardless of the fact that she was somebody else's wife and a mother of two children, my love impressed me as something sacred. I seemed to accept the general rule that a wife-stealer is a despicable creature, a thief, a vile, immoral wretch. But now, that I was not facing Max, that rule, somehow, did not apply to my relations with Dora.
Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which excused my conduct on the theory that everybody was at the bottom of his heart likewise ready to set that rule at defiance and to make a mistress of his friend's wife, provided it could be done with absolute secrecy and safety. Max in my place would certainly not have scrupled to act as I did. But then I hated to think of him in this connection. I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would a vicious fly. I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a moment's compunction. I treated myself as a doting mother does a wayward son
The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert Spencer's Sociology. My interest in this author and in Darwin was of recent origin. It had been born of my hatred for the Cloak-makers' Union, in fact. This is how I came to discover the existence of the two great names and to develop a passion for the ideas with which they are identified
In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had often characterized them as so many good-for-nothings, jealous of those who had succeeded in business by their superior brains, industry, and efficiency.
One day I found a long editorial in my newspaper, an answer to a letter from a socialist. The editorial derived its inspiration from the theory of the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest. Unlike many of the other editorials I had read, it breathed conviction. It was obviously a work of love. When the central idea of the argument came home to me I was in a turmoil of surprise and elation. "Why, that's just what I have been saying all these days!" I exclaimed in my heart. "The able fellows succeed, and the misfits fail. Then the misfits begrudge those who accomplish things." I almost felt as though Darwin and Spencer had plagiarized a discovery of mine. Then, as I visualized the Struggle for Existence, I recalled Meyer Nodelman's parable of chickens fighting for food, and it seemed to me that, between the two of us, Nodelman and I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine. Later, however, when I dipped into Social Statics, I was over-borne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense of my own futility, ignorance, and cheapness. I felt at the gates of a great world of knowledge whose existence I had not even suspected. I had to read the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, and then Spencer again. I sat up nights reading these books. Apart from the purely intellectual intoxication they gave me, they flattered my vanity as one of the "fittest." It was as though all the wonders of learning, acumen, ingenuity, and assiduity displayed in these works had been intended, among other purposes, to establish my title as one of the victors of Existence
A working-man, and every one else who was poor, was an object of contempt to me—a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one of the ruck.
IT was August. In normal times this would have been the beginning of the great "winter season" in our trade. As it was, the deadlock continued. The stubbornness of the men, far from showing signs of wilting under the strain of so many weeks of enforced idleness and suffering, seemed to be gathering strength, while our own people, the manufacturers, were frankly weakening.
The danger of having the great season pass without one being able to fill a single order overcame the fighting blood of the most pugnacious among them.
One was confronted with the risk of losing one's best customers. The trade threatened to pass from New York to Philadelphia and Chicago. If you called the attention of a manufacturer to the unyielding courage of the workmen, the reply invariably was, first, that it was all mere bravado; and, second, that, anyhow, the poor devils had nothing to lose, while the manufacturers had their investments to lose
The press supported the strikers. It did so, not because they were working-people, but because they were East-Siders. Their district was the great field of activity for the American University Settlement worker and fashionable slummer. The East Side was a place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and "local color," as well as for purposes of philanthropy and "uplift" work. To spend an evening in some East Side café was regarded as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre so much so that one such café, in the depth of East Houston Street, was making a fortune by purveying expensive wine dinners to people from up-town who came there ostensibly to see "how the other half lived," but who only saw one another eat and drink in freedom from the restraint of manners. Accordingly, to show sympathy for East Side strikers was within the bounds of the highest propriety. It was as "correct" as belonging to the Episcopal Church. And so public opinion was wholly on the side of the Cloak-makers' Union. This hastened the end. We succumbed. A settlement was patched up. We were beaten.
But even this did not appease the men. They repudiated the agreement between their organization and ours, branding it as a trap, and the strike was continued. Then the manufacturers yielded completely, acceding to every demand of the union
I became busy. I continued to curse the union, but at the bottom of my heart I wished it well, for the vigor with which it enforced its increased wage scale in all larger factories gave me greater advantages than ever. I was still able to get men who were willing to trick the organization. Every Friday afternoon these men received pay-envelopes which bore figures in strict conformity with the union's schedule, but the contents of which were considerably below the sum marked outside. Subsequently this proved to be a risky practice to pursue, for the walking delegates were wide awake and apt to examine the envelopes as the operatives were emerging from the shop.
Accordingly, I adopted another system: the men would receive the union pay in full, but on the following Monday each of them would pay me back the difference between the official and the actual wage. The usual practice was for the employee to put the few dollars into his little wage-book, which he would then place on my desk for the ostensible purpose of having his account verified
By thus cheating the union I could now undersell the bigger manufacturers more easily than I had been able to do previous to the lockout and strike. I had more orders than I could fill. Money was coming in in floods
The lockout and the absolute triumph of the union was practically the making of me
I saw much less of Dora than I had done during the five months of the lockout, and our happiness when we managed to be left alone was all the keener for it. Our best time for a tê-à-tˆte were the hours between 10 and 12 on the evenings, when Max was sure to be away at his dancing-schools, but then it often happened that those were among my busiest hours at the shop.
Sometimes I would snatch half an hour from my work in the middle of a busy day to surprise her with my caresses. If a week passed without my doing so she would punish me with mute scenes of jealousy, of which none but she and I were aware. She would avoid looking at me, and I would press my hand to my heart and raise a pleading gaze at her, which said: "I couldn't get away, dearest. Honest, I couldn't."
One evening I bought her some roses. As I carried them home I was thrilled as much by the fact that I, David of Abner's Court, was taking flowers to a lady as I was by visioning the moment when I should hand them to Dora. When I came home and put my offering into her hand she was in a flurry of delight over it, but she was scared to death lest it should betray our secret. After giving way to bursts of admiration for the flowers and myself, and smelling her fill, and covering me with kisses, she burned the bouquet in the stove and forbade me to use this method of showing her attention again
"Your dear eyes are the best flowers you can bring me," she said
Her love burned with a steady flame, bright and even. It manifested itself in a thousand little things which she did for the double purpose of ministering to my comfort and keeping me in mind of herself. I felt it in the taste of the coffee I drank, in the quality of my cup and saucer, in the painstaking darning on my socks, in the frequency with which my room was swept, my towel changed, my books dusted
"Did you notice the new soap-dish on your wash-stand?" she asked me, one morning. "Do you deserve it? Do you know how often I am in your room every day? Just guess."
"A million times a day."
"To you it's a joke. But if you loved as I do you would not be up to joking."
"Very well, I'll cry." And I personated a boy crying. "Don't. It breaks my heart," she said, earnestly. "I can't see you crying even for fun." She kissed my eyes. "No, really, I go to your room twenty times a day, perhaps.
When I am there it seems to me that I am nearer to you. I kiss the pillow on which you sleep. I pat the blanket, the pitcher, every book of yours—everything your dear little hands touch. I want you to know it. I want you to know how I love you. I knew that love was sweet, but I never knew that it was so sweet. Oh, my loved one!"
She would pour out all sorts of endearments on me, some of them rather of a fantastic nature, but "my loved one" became her favorite appellation, while I found special relish in calling her "my bride" or "bridie mine."
I can almost feel her white fingers as they played with my abundant dark hair or rested on my shoulders while she looked into my eyes and murmured, yearningly: "My loved one! My loved one! My loved one!"
The set of my shoulders was a special object of her admiration. She would shake them tenderly, call me monkey, and ask me if I realized how much she loved me and if I deserved it all, bad boy that I was
She held me in check with an iron hand. Whenever my caresses threatened to overstep the bounds of what she termed "respectable love" she would stop them. With clouded eyes she would slap my hand and then kiss it, saying: "Be a gentleman, Levinsky. Be a gentleman. Can't you be a gentleman?"
"Oh, you don't love me," I would grunt
"I don't? I don't? I wish you would love me half as much," with a sigh. "If you did you would not behave the way you do. That's all your love amounts to—behaving like that. All men are hogs, after all." With which she would take to lecturing me and pouring out her infatuated heart in that solemn singsong of hers, which somewhat bored me
If she thought my kisses unduly passionate and the amorous look of my eye dangerous she would move away from me
"Don't be angry at me, sweetheart," she would say, cooingly
"I am not angry, but you don't love me."
"Why should you hurt my feelings like that? Why should you shed my blood? Am I not yours, heart and soul? Am I not ready to cut myself to pieces to please you? Why should you torture me?"
"What are you afraid of? He won't know any more than he does now," I once urged.
She blushed, looking at the floor. After a minute's silence she said, dolefully: "It isn't so much on account of that as on account of the children. How could I look Lucy in the face?"
Her eyes grew humid. My heart went out to her.
"I understand. You are right," I yielded
The scene repeated itself not many days after. It occurred again and again at almost regular intervals. She fought bravely
Many months passed, and still she was able "to look Lucy in the face."
At first, for a period of six or seven weeks, my moral conduct outside the house was immaculate. Then I renewed my excursions to certain streets. I made rather frequent calls at the apartment of a handsome Hungarian woman who called herself Cleo. Once, in a frenzy, I tried to imagine that she was Dora, and then I experienced qualms of abject compunction and self-loathing
Sometimes Lucy would arouse my jealous rancor, as a living barrier between her mother and myself. But she was really dear to me. I revered Dora for her fortitude, and Lucy appealed to me as the embodiment of her mother's saintliness
I would watch Lucy. She was an interesting study. Her manner of speaking, her giggle, her childish little affectations seemed to grow more American every day. She was like a little foreigner in the house
Dora was watching and studying her with a feeling akin to despair, I thought. It was as though she was pursuing the little girl, with outstretched arms, vainly trying to overtake her
I WAS rapidly advancing on the road to financial triumphs. I was planning to move my business to larger quarters, in the same modest neighborhood. Mrs.
Chaikin, my partner's wife, failed to realize the situation, however. She could not forgive me the false representations I had made to her regarding my assets
"And where is the treasure you were expecting?" she would twit me. "You never tell a lie, do you? You simply don't know how to do it. Poor thing!"
When we were in the midst of an avalanche of lucrative orders promising a brilliant winter season she took it into her head to withdraw her husband from the firm, in which he was a silent partner. Her decision was apparently based on the extreme efforts she had once seen me making to raise five hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, this was due to the rapidity of our growth. I lacked capital. But then my credit was growing, too, and altogether things were in a most encouraging condition
"What is the use worrying along like that?" she said. "You deceived me from the start. You made me believe you had a lot of money, while you were really a beggar. Yes, you are a beggar, and a beggar you are bound to stay. A beggar and a swindler—that's what you are. You have fooled me long enough.
You can't fool me any longer. So there!"
Her husband was still employed by the German firm, attending to the needs of our growing little factory surreptitiously every evening and on Sundays. The day seemed near when it would pay him to give all his time to our shop. And he was aware of it, too; to some extent, at least. But Mrs. Chaikin ordained otherwise
I attempted to present the actual state of affairs to her, but broke off in the middle of a sentence. It suddenly flashed upon my mind that it might all be to my advantage. "A designer can be hired," I said to myself. "The business is progressing rapidly. To make him my life partner is too high a price to pay for his skill. Besides, having him for a partner actually means having his nuisance of a wife for a partner. It will be a good thing to get rid of her." I consulted Max, as I did quite often now. Not that I thought myself in need of his advice, or anybody else's, for that matter. Success had made me too self-confident for that. I played the intimate and ardent friend, and this was simply part of my personation. To flatter his vanity I would make him think his suggestions had been acted upon and that they had brought good results. As a consequence, he was developing the notion that my success was largely due to his guidance, a notion which jarred on me, but which I humored, nevertheless
"Do you know what's the matter?" he said, sagely. "Mrs. Chaikin must have found another partner for her husband. Some fellow with big money, I suppose."
"You are right, Max," I said, sincerely. "How stupid I am."
"Why, of course they have got another partner. Of course they have," he repeated, with elation. "So much the better for you. Let them go to the eighty black years. Don't run after him. Just do as I tell you and you'll be all right, Levinsky. My advice has never got you in trouble, has it?"
"Indeed not. Indeed not," I answered
Max's blindness to what was going on between Dora and myself was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution. That this cynic who charged every man and woman with immorality should, in the circumstances, be so absolutely undisturbed in his confidence regarding his wife seemed nothing short of a miracle. When I now think of the riddle I see its solution in a modified version of the old rule concerning the mote in thy neighbor's eye and the beam in thine own eve. Your worst pessimist is, after all, an optimist with regard to himself. We are quick to recognize the gravity of ill health in somebody else, yet we ourselves may be on the very brink of death without realizing it. It is a special phase of selfishness. We are loath to connect the idea of a catastrophe with our own person. Max, who saw a mote in the eye of everybody else's wife, failed to perceive the beam in the eye of his own
As for Sadie, who lived in the same house now, and who visited Dora's apartment at all hours, she was too silly and too deeply infatuated with her friend to suspect her of anything wrong
I idolized Dora. It seemed to me that I adored her soul even more than I did her body. I was under her moral influence, and the firmness with which she maintained the distance between us added to my respect for her. And yet I never ceased to dream of and to seek her moral downfall
I had extended my canvassing activities to a number of cities outside New York, my territory being a semicircle with a radius of about a hundred and fifty miles. I had long since picked up some of the business jargon of the country and I was thirstily drinking in more and more
"What do you think of this number, Mr. So-and-so?" I would say, self-consciously, to a merchant, as I dangled a garment in front of him.
"You can make a run on it. It's the kind of suit that gives the wearer an air of distinction."
If I heard a bit of business rhetoric that I thought effective I would jot it down and commit it to memory. In like manner I would write down every new piece of slang, the use of the latest popular phrase being, as I thought, helpful in making oneself popular with Americans, especially with those of the young generation. But somehow a slang phrase would be in general use for a considerable time before it attracted my attention. The Americans I met were so quick to discern and adopt these phrases it seemed as if they were born with a special slang sense which I, poor foreigner that I was, lacked.
That I was not born in America was something like a physical defect that asserted itself in many disagreeable ways—a physical defect which, alas! no surgeon in the world was capable of removing
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."