I TRAVELED quite often, sometimes staying away from New York for two or three days, but more frequently for only one day. On one occasion, however, I was detained on the road for five days in succession. It was the beginning of June, a little over a year since the Margolises moved into the Clinton Street flat with myself as their boarder. I was homesick. I missed Dora acutely. I loved her passionately, tenderly, devotedly. I now felt it with special force. Her face and figure loomed up a hundred times a day.
"Dora dear! Bridie mine!" I would whisper, all but going to pieces with tenderness and yearning
One afternoon, after closing an unexpectedly large sale in a department store, I went to the jewelry department of the same firm and paid a hundred and twenty dollars for a bracelet. I knew that she would not be able to wear it, yet I was determined to make her accept it
"Let her keep it in some hiding-place," I thought. "Let her steal an occasional look at it. I don't care what she does with it. I want her to know that I think of her, that I am crazy for her."
It was Friday evening when I returned to New York, having been on the road since the preceding Monday morning. I first went to my place of business and then to a restaurant for supper. I would not make my appearance at the house until half past 10, when the coast was sure to be clear. With thrills of anticipation that verged on physical pain I was looking forward to the moment when I should close the bracelet about her slender white wrist
At the fixed minute I was at the door of the Clinton Street apartment. I pulled the bell. I expected an excited rush, a violent opening of the door, a tremulous: "My loved one! My loved one!"
There was a peculiar disappointment in store for me. She received me icily, not letting me come near her
"Why, what's the matter? What's up?" "Nothing," she muttered
When we reached the light of the Sabbath candles in the dining-room I noticed that she looked worn and haggard
"What has happened?" I asked, greatly perplexed. "I have something for you," I said, producing the blue-velvet box containing the bracelet and opening it. "Here, my bride!"
"How dare you call me 'bride,' you hypocrite?" she gasped. "Away with you, your present and all!"
"Why? Why? What does it all mean?" I asked, between mirth and perplexity
For an answer she merely continued: "You thought you could bribe me by this present of yours, did you? You can fool me no longer. I have found you out.
You have fallen into your own trap. You have. How dare you buy me presents?"
At this she tore the bracelet out of my hand and flung it into the little corridor. She was on the verge of a fit of hysterics. I fetched her a glass of water, but she dashed it out of my hand. Then, frightened and sobered by the crash, she first tiptoed to the bedroom to ascertain if Lucy was not awake and listening, and then went to the little corridor, picked up the bracelet and slipped it into my pocket
"If you have decided to get married, I can't stop you, of course," she began, in a ghastly undertone, as she crouched to gather up the fragments of the glass and to wipe the floor.
"Decided to get married?" I interrupted her. "Where on earth did you get that? What 'trap' are you talking about, Dora?"
She made no answer. I continued to protest my innocence. Finally, when she had removed the broken glass, she said: "It's no use pretending you don't know anything about it. It won't do you any good. You have been very foxy about it, but you made a break, and there you are! You think you are very clever. If you were you wouldn't let your shadchen [note] know where you live—"
Oh, I see," I said, with a hearty laugh. "Has he been here?" And I gave way to another guffaw
Shadchen was a conspiracy name for a man who would bring an employer together with cloak-makers who were willing to cheat the union. The one who performed these services for me was one of my own "hands." He was thoroughly dishonest, but he possessed a gentle disposition and a certain gift of expression. This gave him power over his shopmates. He was their "shop chairman" and a member of their "price committee." He was the only man in my employ who actually received the full union price. In addition to this, I paid him his broker's commission for every new man he furnished me, and various sums as bribes pure and simple
I explained it all to Dora. The ardor with which I spoke and the details of my dealings with the shadchen must have made my explanation convincing, for she accepted it at once
"You're not fooling me, are you?" she asked, piteously, yet in a tone of immense relief.
"Strike me dumb if—"
"'S-sh! Don't curse yourself," she said, clapping her hand over my mouth. "I can't bear to hear it. I believe you. If you knew what I have gone through!"
"Poor, poor child!" I said, kissing her soft white fingers tenderly. "Poor, poor baby! How could you think of such a thing! There is only one bride for me in all the world, and that is my own Dora darling."
Her face shone with a wan, beseeching kind of light
Again I drew forth the bracelet
"Foolish child!" I said, examining it. "Thank God, it isn't damaged.Not a bit."
I took her by the hand, opened the bracelet, and closed it over her wrist.
She instantly took it off again, with an instinctive side-glance at the door. Then, holding it up to the light admiringly, she said: "Oh! Oh! Must have cost a pile of money! Why did you spend so much? I can't wear it, anyway. Better return it."
"Never! It's yours, my sweetheart. Do whatever you like with it. Put it away somewhere. If you wear it for one minute every week I shall be happy. If you only look at it once in a while I shall be happy."
"I am afraid to keep it. Somebody may come across it some day. Better return it, my loved one! I am happy as it is. It would make me nervous to have it in the house."
She made me take it back
"Thank God it wasn't a real shadchen! I thought I was going to commit suicide," she said
I seized her in my arms. She abandoned herself to a transport of gratitude and happiness in which her usual fortitude melted away
The next morning she had the appearance of one doomed to death. Her eyes avoided everybody, not only her husband and Lucy, but myself as well. She pleaded indisposition
Max left for the synagogue, as he always did on Saturday morning. I accompanied him out of the house, on my way to business. We parted at a corner where I was to wait for a street-car. Instead of boarding a car, however, I returned home. I was burning to be alone with Dora, to cuddle her out of her forlorn mood
"I have come back for a minute just to tell you how dear you are to me," I whispered to her in the presence of the children, who were having their breakfast. I signed to her to follow me into the parlor, and she did. "Just one kiss, dearest!" I said, clasping her to me and kissing her. "I'd let myself be cut to pieces for you."
She nestled to me for a moment ,gave me a hasty kiss, and ran back to the children, all without looking at me
I went away with a broken heart
Late that evening, when we found ourselves alone, and I rushed at her, she gently pushed me off
"Why? What's the trouble?" I asked.
"No trouble at all," she answered, looking down, with shamefaced gravity
"Do you hate me?"
"Hate you! I wish I could," she answered, with a sad smile, still looking down.
"Why this new way, then?" I said, rather impatiently. "You are dearer than ever to me, Levinsky. Tell me to jump into fire, and I will. But—can't we love each other and be good?"
"What are you talking about, Dora? What has got into you? Do you know what you are to me now?" I demanded, melodramatically
I made another attempt at kissing her, but was repulsed again
"Not now, anyway, my loved one," she said, entreatingly. "Let a few days pass. You don't want me to feel bad, do you, dearest?"
I looked sheepish. I was convinced that it was merely a passing mood
[note: shadchen]: Marriage broker, match-maker
NEXT Monday, when I was ready to go to my place of business, Dora left the house, pitcher in hand, before I rose from the breakfast-table. She was going for milk, but a side-glance which she cast at the floor in my direction as she turned to shut the door behind her told me that she wanted to see me in the street. After letting some minutes pass I put on my overcoat and hat, bade Max a studiously casual good-by, and departed
I awaited her on the stoop. Presently she emerged from the grocery in the adjoining building
"Could you be free at 4 o'clock this afternoon?" she asked, ascending the few steps, and pausing by my side. "I want to have a talk with you.
Somewhere else. Not at home."
"Why not at home, in the evening?" "No. That won't do," sheoverruled me, softly. "Somebody might come in and interrupt me.I'll wait for you in the little park on Second Avenue and FifteenthStreet. You know the place, don't you?"
She meant Stuyvesant Park, which the sunny Second Avenue cuts in two, and she explained that our meeting was to take place on the west side of the thoroughfare
"Will you come?" she asked, nervously
"I will, I will. But what's up? Why do you look so serious? Dora!Dora mine!"
"'S-sh! You had better go. When we meet I'll explain everything. At 4 o'clock, then. Don't forget. As you come up the avenue, going up-town, it is on the left-hand side. Write it down."
To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me repeat it and then jot it down. As she turned to go upstairs she said, in a melancholy whisper: "Good-by, dearest."
When I reached the appointed place the brass hands of the clock on the steeple high overhead indicated ten minutes of 4. It was June, but the day was a typical November day, mildly warm, clear, and charged with the exhilarating breath of a New York autumn. Dora had not yet arrived. The benches in the little park were for the most part occupied by housewives or servant-girls who sat gossiping in front of baby-carriages, amid the noise of romping children. Here and there an elderly man sat smoking his pipe broodingly. They were mostly Germans or Czechs. There were scarcely any of our people in the neighborhood at the period in question, and that was why Dora had selected the place
I stood outside the iron gate, gazing down the avenue. The minutes were insupportably long.
At last her womanly figure came into dim view. My heart leaped. I was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and joyous anticipation. "Oh, she'll back down," I persuaded myself.
She was walking fast, apparently under the impression that she was late. Her face was growing more distinct every moment. The blue hat she wore and the parasol she carried gave her a new aspect. I had more than once seen her leave the house in street array, but watching her come up the street thus formally attired somehow gave her a different appearance.
She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady-like she almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst, produced a singular effect upon me.
"Am I very late?" she asked
"No. Not at all, Dora!" I said, yearningly
She made no answer
We could not find an empty bench, and to let Germans overhear our Yiddish, which is merely a German dialect, would have been rather risky. So she delivered her message as we walked round and round, both of us eying the asphalt all the while. Her beautiful complexion and our manner attracted much attention. The people on the benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our interview. One white-haired little man with a terrier face never took his eyes off her
"First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the most important days in my life," she began. "It is certainly not a happy day. It's Yom Kippur [note] with me. I want to say right here that I am willing to die for you, Levinsky. I am terribly in love with you, Levinsky. Yes—"
Her voice broke. She was confused and agitated, but she soon regained her self-mastery. She spoke in sad, solemn, quietly passionate tones, and gradually developed a homespun sort of eloquence which I had never heard from her before. But then the gift of homely rhetoric is rather a common talent among Yiddish-speaking women
The revolting sight of the dog-faced old fellow who was ogling Dora so fascinated me that it interfered with my listening. I made a point of looking away from him every time we came round to his bench, but that only kept me thinking of him instead of listening to Dora. Finally we confined our walk to the farther side of the little park, giving him a wide berth
"I love you more than I can tell you, Levinsky," she resumed. "But it is not my good luck to be happy. I dreamed all my life of love, and now that it is here, right here in my heart, I must choke it with my own hands." "Why? Why?" I said, with vehemence. "Why must you?"
"Why!" she echoed, bitterly. "Because the Upper One brought you to me only to punish me, to tease me. That's all. That's all. That's all."
"Why should you take it that way?" "Don't interrupt me, Levinsky," she said, chanting, rather than speaking. As she proceeded, her voice lapsed into a quaint, doleful singsong, not unlike the lament of our women over a grave. "No, Levinsky. It is not given to me to be happy. But I ask no questions of the Upper One. I used to live in peace. I was not happy, but I lived in peace. I did not know what happiness was, so I did not miss it much. I only dreamed of it. But the Lord of the World would have me taste it, so that I might miss it and that my heart might be left with a big, big wound. I want you to know exactly how I feel.
Oh, if I could turn this poor heart of mine inside out! Then you could see all that is going on there. Listen, Levinsky. If it were not for my children, my dear children, my all in all in the world, I should not live with Margolis another day. If he gave me a divorce, well and good; if not, then I don't know what I might do. I shouldn't care. I love you so and I want to be happy. I do, I do, I do."
A sob rang through her voice as she repeated the words. "You do, and yet you are bound to make both of us miserable," I said
"Can I help it?"
"If you would you could," I said, grimly. "Get a divorce and let us be married and have it over."
She shook her head sadly
"Thousands of couples get divorced." She kept shaking her head
"Then what's the use pretending you love me?"
"Pretending! Shall I turn my heart inside out to show you how hard it is to live without you? But you can't understand. No, Levinsky. I have no right to be happy. Lucy shall be happy. She certainly sha'n't marry without love. Her happiness will be mine, too. That's the only kind I am entitled to. She shall go to college. She shall be educated. She shall marry the loved one of her heart. She shall not be buried alive as her mother was. Let her profit by what little sense I have been able to pick up."
A bench became vacant and we occupied it. The momentary interruption and the change in her physical attitude broke the spell. The solemnity was gone out of her voice. She resumed in a distracted and somewhat listless manner, but she soon warmed up again
"What would you have me do? Let Lucy find out some day that her mother was a bad woman? I should take poison first."
"A bad woman!" I protested. "A better woman could not be found anywhere in the world. You are a saint, Dora."
"No, I am not. I am a bad, wicked, nasty woman. I hate myself."
"'S-sh! You mustn't speak like that," I said, stopping my ears. " I cannot bear it."
"Yes, that's what I am, a nasty creature. I used to be pure as gold. There was not a speck on my soul, and now, woe is me, pain is me! What has come over me?"
When she finally got down to the practical side of her resolution it turned out that she wanted me to move out of her house and never to see her again
I was shocked. I flouted the idea of it. I argued, I poured out my lovelorn heart. But she insisted with an iron-clad finality. I argued again, entreated, raved, all to no purpose
"I'll never come close to you. All I want is to be able to see you, to live in the same house with you."
"Don't be tearing my heart to pieces," she said. "It is torn badly enough as it is. Do as I say, Levinsky." "Don't you want to see me at all?" "Oh, it's cruel of you to ask questions like that. You have no heart, Levinsky. It's just because I am crazy to see you that you have got to move."
"Don't you want me even to call at your house?" I asked, with an ironical smile, as though I did not take the matter seriously
"Well, that would look strange. Call sometimes, not often, though, and never when Margolis is out."
"Oh, I shall commit suicide," I snarled
"Oh, well. It isn't as bad as all that."
"I will. I certainly will," I said, knowing that I was talking nonsense
"Don't torment me, Levinsky. Don't sprinkle salt over my wound. Take pity on me. Do as I wish and let the tooth be pulled out with as little pain as possible."
I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston Street, where she insisted upon our parting. Before we did, however, she indulged in another outburst of funereal oratory, bewailing her happiness as she would a dead child. It was apparently not easy for her to take leave of me, but her purpose to make our romance a thing of the past and to have me move to other lodgings remained unshaken
"This is the last time I shall ever speak to you of my love, Levinsky," she said. "I must tear it out of my heart, even if I have to tear out a piece of my heart along with it. Such is my fate. Good-by, Levinsky. Good luck to you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Remember you have a good head. Waste no time. Study as much as you can. God grant you luck in your business, but try to find time for your books, too. You must become a great man. Do you promise me to read and study a lot?"
"I do. I do. But I won't move out. I can't live without you. We belong to each other, and all you say is nothing but a woman's whim. It's all bosh," I concluded, with an air of masculine superiority. "I won't move out."
"You shall, dearest. Good-by. Good-by."
She broke into a fit of sobbing, but checked it, shook my hand vehemently and hastened away.
[note: Yom Kippur] Day of Atonement; figuratively, a day of anguish and tears.
I HOPED she would yield, but she did not. I found myself in the grip of an iron will and I did as I was bidden
When I set out in quest of a furnished room I instinctively betook myself to the neighborhood of Stuyvesant Park. That park had acquired a melancholy fascination for me. As though to make amends for my agonies, I determined to move into a good, spacious room, even if I had to pay three or four times as much as I had been paying at the Margolises'. I found a sunny front room with two windows in an old brown-stone house on East Nineteenth Street, between Second Avenue and First, a short distance from the little park and near an Elevated station. The curtains, the carpet, the huge, soft arm-chair, and the lounge struck me as decidedly "aristocratic." To cap the climax of comfort and "swellness," the landlady—a gray little German-American—had, at my request, a bookcase placed between the mantelpiece and one of the windows. It was a "regular" bookcase, doors and all, not a mere "what-not," and the sight of it swelled my breast
"I shall forget all my troubles here," I thought. "I am going to buy a complete set of Spencer and some other books. Won't the bookcase look fine! I shall read, read, read."
When I reported to Dora that I was ready to move, her face clouded
"You seem to be glad to," she said, with venom, dropping her eyes
"Glad? Glad? Why, I am not going to move, then. May I stay here, darling mine? May I?"
"Are you really sorry you have to move?" she asked, fixing a loving glance at me. "Do you really love me?"
There were tears in her eyes. I attempted to come close to her, to kiss her, but she held me back
"No, dearest," she said, shaking her head. "Move out to-morrow, will you? Let's be done with it."
"And what will Max say?" I asked, sardonically. Will nothing seem strange to him nothing at all?"
"Never mind that."
She never mentioned Max to me now, not even by pronoun
"Then you must know him to be an idiot." Now I hated Max with all my heart.
"Don't," she implored
"Oh, I see. He's dear to you now," I laughed
"Have a heart, Levinsky. Have a heart. Must you keep shedding my blood? Have you no pity at all?"
"But it is all so ridiculous. It will look strange," I argued, seriously.
"He is bound to get suspicious."
"I have thought it all out. Don't be uneasy. I'll say we had a quarrel over your board bill."
"A nice dodge, indeed! It may fool Dannie, not him."
"Leave it all to me. Better tell me what sort of lodgings you have got. Is it a decent room? Plenty of air and sunshine? But, no. Don't tell me anything. I mustn't know." I sneered
She was absorbed in thought, flushed, nervous.
Presently she said, with an effect of speaking to herself: "It's sweet to suffer for what is right."
I moved out according to her program. I came home at 10 the first evening.
My double room, with its great arm-chair, carpets, bookcase, imposing lace curtains, and the genteel silence of the street outside, was a prison to me.
I attempted to read, but there was a lump in my throat and the lines swam before me
I went out, roamed about the streets, dropped in at a Hungarian café, took another ramble, and returned to my room
I tossed about on my great double bed. I sat up in front of one of my two windows, gazing at a street-lamp. It was not solely Dora, but also Lucy and Dannie that I missed. Only the image of Max now aroused hostile feelings in me
Max called at my shop the very next day. The sight of him cut me to the quick. I received him in morose silence
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he inquired, with pained amazement.
"What did you two quarrel about?"
I made no answer. His presence oppressed me. My surly reticence was no mere acting. But I knew that he misinterpreted it into grim resentment of Dora's sally, as though I said, "Your wife's conduct had better be left undiscussed."
"What nonsense! She charged you too much, did she? Is that the way it all began? Did she insult you? Well, women-folk are liable to flare up, you know. Tell me all about it. I'll straighten it out between you. The children miss you awfully. Come, don't be a fool, Levinsky. Who ever took the words of a woman seriously? What did she say that you should take it so hard?"
"You had better ask her," I replied, with a well-acted frown
"Ask her! She gets wild when I do. I never saw her so wild. She thinks you insulted her first. Well, she is a woman, but you aren't one, are you? Come to the house this evening, will you?"
"That's out of the question."
"Then meet me somewhere else. I want to have a talk with you. It's all so foolish." I pleaded important other engagements, but he insisted that I should meet him later in the evening, and I had to make the appointment. I promised to be at a Canal Street café on condition that he did not mention the disagreeable episode nor offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora and myself
"You're a tough customer. As tough as Dora," he said
When I came to the café, at about 11, I found him waiting for me. He kept his promise about avoiding the subject of Dora, but he talked of women, which jarred on me inordinately now. His lecherous fibs and philosophy made him literally unbearable to me. To turn the conversation I talked shop, and this bored him.
About a week later he called on me again. He informed me that Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem, where the rooms were even more modern and cheaper than on Clinton Street
"I wouldn't mind staying where we are," he observed. "But you know how women are. Everybody is moving up-town, so she must move, too."
My face hardened, as if to say: "Why will you speak of your wife? You know I can't bear to hear of her." At the same time I said to myself: "Poor Dora! She must have found it awful to live in the old place, now that I am no longer there."
His next visit at my shop took place after a lapse of three or four weeks.
He descanted upon his new home and the Harlem dwellings in general, and I made an effort to show him cordial attention and to bear myself generally as though there were no cause for estrangement between us, but I failed
At last he said, resentfully: "What's the matter with you? Why are you so sour? If you and Dora have had a falling out, is that any reason why you and I should not be good friends?" "Why, why?" I protested. "Who says I am sour?"
We parted on very friendly terms. But it was a long time before I saw him again, and then under circumstances that were a disagreeable surprise to me
WEEKS went by. My desolation seemed to be growing in excruciating intensity.
From time to time, when I chanced to recall some trait or trick of Dora's, her person would come back to me with special vividness, smiting me with sudden cruelty. The very odor of her flesh would grip my consciousness. At such moments my agony would be so great that I seemed to be on the brink of a physical collapse. During intervals there was a steady gnawing pain. It was as though the unrelenting tortures of a dull toothache had settled somewhere in the region of my heart or stomach, I knew not exactly where. I recognized the pang as an old acquaintance. It had the same flavor as the terrors of my tantalizing love for Matilda
My shop had lost all meaning to me. I vaguely longed to flee from myself
There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity, with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the "marriage broker." But even my worrying seemed to be done automatically
Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin, who now gave all his time to his newly established factory, I filled the gap with all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances. An employee of one of the big shops, a tailor, stole designs for me. These were used in my shop by a psalm-muttering old tailor with a greenish-white beard full of snuff, who would have become a Chaikin if he had been twenty years younger. Later I hired the services of a newly graduated cloak-designer who would drop in of an afternoon. Officially the old man was my foreman, but in reality he acted as a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my sample-makers, as well as foreman
I was forming new connections, obtaining orders from new sources. Things were coming my way in spite of myself, as it were. There was so much work and bustle that it became next to impossible to manage it all single-handed.
The need of a bookkeeper, at least, was felt more keenly every day.But I simply lacked the initiative to get one
While I was thus cudgeling my brains, hovering about my shop, meeting people, signing checks, reading or writing letters, that dull pain would keep nibbling, nibbling, nibbling at me. At times, during some of those violent onslaughts I would seek the partial privacy of my second-hand desk for the express purpose of abandoning myself to the tortures of my helpless love. There is pleasure in this kind of pain. It was as though I were two men at once, one being in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled with the joy of loving, all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding
One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an impulsive, "Hello, Levinsky!"
It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. I had not seen him for more than three years, during which time he had developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, though his apple face had lost none of its roseate freshness. He looked spruce as ever, his clothes spick and span, his "four-in-hand" tastefully tied, his collar and cuffs immaculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a worn and wistful look in them.
"Quite an American, I declare," he exclaimed, with patronizing admiration and pride, as who should say, "My work has borne fruit, hasn't it?"
"Well, how is the world treating you?" he questioned me, after having looked me over more carefully. "You seem to be doing well."
When he heard that I was "trying to manufacture cloaks and suits" he surveyed me once again, with novel interest
"Are you really? That's good. Glad to hear you're getting on in the world."
"Do you remember the two books you gave me—Dombey and Son and the little dictionary?"
I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented me on my English
He wanted to know more about my business, and I sketched for him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now making. My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as, "my growing credit," "my "in my desk," "dinner with a buyer from Ohio," all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. He congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again. Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil
He still taught evening school during the winter months. When I asked about his work at the custom-house, which had been his chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how "the new Republican broom swept clean," and how he had lost his job because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the Republicans with "offensive partisanship," a Cleveland phrase then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he proceeded to describe certain injustices (of which he apparently considered himself a victim) within the fold of his own party. His immediate ambition was to obtain a "permanent appointment" as teacher of a public day school
He was a singular surprise to me. Formerly I had looked up to him as infinitely my superior, whereas now he struck me as being piteously beneath me
"Can't you think of something better?" I said, with mild contempt. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I exclaimed: "I have a scheme for you, Mr.
Bender! Suppose you try to sell cloaks? There's lots of money in it."
The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to spend a week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting orders for me, at first in the city and then on the road
Our interview lasted a little over an hour, but that hour produced a world of difference in our relations. He had met me with a patronizing, "Hello, Levinsky." When we parted there was a note of gratitude and of something like obsequiousness in his voice
ON a Friday afternoon, during the first week of Bender's connection with my establishment, as he and I were crossing a side-street on our way from luncheon, I ran into the loosely built, bulky figure of Max Margolis. Max and I paused with a start, both embarrassed. I greeted him complaisantly
"And how are you?" he said, looking at the lower part of my face
I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of trivialities we were about to part, when Max detained me
"Wait. What's your hurry?" he said. "There is something I want to speak to you about. In fact, it was to your shop I was going."
His manner disturbed me. "Were you? Come on, then," I said
"Hold on. What's your hurry? We might as well talk here."
Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away, leaving us to ourselves
"What is it?" I repeated, with studied indifference
"Well, I should like to have a plain, frank talk with you, Levinsky," he answered. "There is something that is bothering my mind. I never thought I should speak to you about it, but at last I decided to see you and have it out. I was going to call on you and to ask you to go out with me, because you have no private office."
There was a nervous, under-dog kind of air about him. His damp lips revolted me
"But what is it? What are all these preliminaries for? Come to the point and be done with it. What is it?" Then I asked, with well-simulated indignation, "Your wife has not persuaded you that I have cheated her out of some money, has she?"
"Why, no. Not at all," he answered, looking at the pavement. "It isn't that at all. The thing is driving me mad."
"But what is it?" I shouted, in a rage
"'S-sh!" he said, nervously. "If you are going to be excited like that it's no use speaking at all. Perhaps you are doing it on purpose to get out of it."
Get out of what? What on earth are you prating about?" I demanded, with a fine display of perplexity and sarcasm
We were attracting attention. Bystanders were eying us. An old woman, leading a boy by the hand, even paused to watch us, and then her example was followed by some others
"Come on, for God's sake!" he implored me. "All I want is a friendly talk with you. We might talk in your shop, but you have no private office."
"Whether I have one or not is none of your business" I retorted, with irrelevant resentment
We walked on. He proposed to take me to one of the ball and meeting-room places in which he did business, and I acquiesced
A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion of red plush covering one of the benches in a long, narrow meeting-hall. We were close to the window, in the full glare of daylight. A few feet off the room was in semi-darkness which, still farther off, lapsed into night. As the plush cushions stretched their lengths into the deepening gloom their live red died away. There was a touch of weirdness to the scene, adding to the oppressiveness of the interview
"I want to ask you a plain question," he began, in a strange voice. "And I want you to answer it frankly. I assure you I sha'n't be angry. On the contrary, I shall be much obliged to you if you tell me the whole truth.
Tell me what happened between you and Dora." I was about to burst into laughter, but I felt that it would not do. Before I knew how to act he added, with a sort of solemnity: "She has confessed everything."
"Confessed everything!" I exclaimed, with a feigned compound of hauteur, indignation, and amusement, playing for time
"That's what she did."
A frenzy of hate took hold of me. I panted to be away from him, to be out of this room, semi-darkness, red cushions, and all, and let the future take care of itself. And so, jumping to my feet, I said, in a fury: "You always were a liar and an idiot. I don't want to have anything to do with you." With which I made for the door
"Oh, don't be excited. Don't go yet, Levinsky dear, please," he implored, hysterically, running after me. "I have the best of feelings for you. May the things that I wish you come to me. Levinsky! Dear friend! Darling!"
"What do you want of me?" I demanded, with quiet rancor, pausing at the door and half opening it, without moving on
"If you tell me it isn't true I'll believe you, even if she did confess. I don't know if she meant what she said. If only you were not excited! I want to tell you everything, everything."
I laughed sardonically. My desire to escape the ordeal gave way to strange curiosity. He seemed to be aware of it, for he boldly shut the door. He begged me to take a seat again, and I did, a short distance from the door, where the gloom was almost thick enough to hide our faces from each other's view
"Why, you are simply crazy, Max!" I said. "You probably bothered the life out of her and she 'confessed' to put an end to it all. You might as well have made her confess to murder."
"That's what she says now. But I don't know. When she confessed she confessed. I could see it was the truth."
"You are crazy, Max! It is all nonsense. Ab-solutely."
"Is it?" he demanded, straining to make out the expression of my face through the dusk. "Do assure me it is all untrue. Take pity, dear friend. Do take pity."
"How can I assure you, seeing that you have taken that crazy notion into your head and don't seem to be able to get rid of it? Come, throw that stuff out of your mind!" I scolded him, mentorially. "It's enough to make one sick. Come to reason. Don't be a fool. I am no saint, but in this case you are absolutely mistaken. Why, Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman, a fellow would never dare have the slightest kind of fun with her. The idea!"—with a little laugh. "You are a baby, Max. Upon my word, you are.
Dora and I had some words over my bill and—well, she insulted me and I wouldn't take it from her. That's all there was to it. Why, look here, Max.
With your knowledge of men and women, do you mean to say that something was going on under your very nose and you never noticed anything? Don't you see how ridiculous it is?"
"Well, I believe you, Levinsky," he said, lukewarmly. "Now that you assure me you don't know anything about it, I believe you. I know you are not an enemy of mine. I have always considered you a true friend. You know I have.
That's why I am having this talk with you. I am feeling better already. But you have no idea what I have been through the last few weeks. She is so dear to me. I love her so." His voice broke
I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and sympathy
"You are a child," I said, taking him by the hand. As I did so every vestige of hostility faded out of me. My heart went out to him. "Come, Max, pull yourself together! Be a man!"
"I have always known you to be my friend. I believe all you say. I first began to think of this trouble a few days after you moved out. But at first I made no fuss about it. I thought she was not well. I came to see you a few times and you did not behave like a fellow who was guilty."
I gave a silent little laugh
He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused his first twinge of suspicion. He was revoltingly frank
"I spoke to her plainly," he said. "'What's the matter with you, Dora?' I asked her. 'Don't you like me any more?' And she got wild and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted, cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought I was going mad.
Maybe she was just missing you. You were like one of the family, don't you know. And, well, you are a good-looking fellow, Levinsky, and she is only a woman."
"Nonsense!" I returned, the hot color mounting to my cheeks. "I am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind—"
"But she confessed," he interrupted me. "She said she was crazy for you and I could do as I pleased."
"But you know she did not mean it. She said it just for spite, just to make you feel bad, because you were quarreling with her."
He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora as answering: "Yes, yes, yes! And if you don't like it you can sue me for divorce."
I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could. "It's all ridiculous nonsense, Max," I said. "You made life miserable to her and she was ready to say anything. She may have been worried over something, and you imagined all sorts of things. Maybe it was something about her education that worried her. You know how ambitious she is to be educated, and how hard she takes these things."
Max shook his head pensively
"I am sure it is as I say," I continued. "Dora is a peculiar woman. The trouble is, you judge her as if she were like the other women you meet. Hers is a different character."
This point apparently interested him
"She is always taken up with her thoughts," I pursued. "She is not so easy to understand, anyway. I lived over a year in your house, and yet I'll be hanged if I know what kind of woman she is. Of course you're her husband, but still—can you say you know what she is thinking of most of the time?"
"There is something in what you say," he assented, half-heartedly
As we rose to go he said, timidly: "There is only one more questionI want to ask of you, Levinsky. You won't be angry, will you?""What is it?" I demanded, with a good-natured laugh. "What isbothering your head?"
"I mean if you meet her now, sometimes?"
"Now, look here, Max. You are simply crazy," I said, earnestly. "I swear to you by my mother that I have not seen Dora since I moved out of your house, and that all your suspicions are nonsense" (to keep the memory of my mother from desecration I declared mutely that my oath referred to the truthful part of my declaration only— that is, exclusively to the fact that I no longer met Dora)
"I believe you, I believe you, Levinsky," he rejoined. We parted more than cordially, Max promising to call on me again and to spend an evening with me.
I was left in a singular state of mind. I was eaten up with compunction, and yet the pain of my love reasserted itself with the tantalizing force of two months before.
Max never called on me again.
AS a salesman Bender proved a dismal failure, but I retained him in my employ as a bookkeeper and a sort of general supervisor. I could offer him only ten dollars a week, with a promise to raise his salary as soon as I could afford it, and he accepted the job "temporarily." As general supervisor under my orders he developed considerable efficiency, although he lacked initiative and his naïveté was a frequent cause of annoyance to me. I found him spotlessly honest and devoted
I quickly raised his salary to fifteen dollars a week
He was the embodiment of method and precision and he often nagged me for my deficiency in these qualities. Sometimes these naggings of his or some display of poor judgment on his part would give rise to a tiff between us.
Otherwise we got along splendidly. We were supposed to be great chums. In reality, however, I would freely order him about, while he would address me with a familiarity which had an echo of respectful distance to it
With him to take care of my place when I was away, it became possible for me gradually to extend my territory as traveling salesman till it reached Nebraska and Louisiana. Thus, having failed as a drummer himself, he made up for it by enabling me to act as one
He had been less than a year with me when his salary was twenty dollars
Charles Eaton, the Pennsylvanian of the hemispherical forehead and bushy eyebrows who had given me my first lesson in restaurant manners, was now my sponsor at the beginning of my career as a full-fledged traveling salesman.
He took a warm interest in me. Having spent many years on the road himself, more particularly in the Middle West and Canada, he had formed many a close friendship among retailers, so he now gave me some valuable letters of intro duction to merchants in several cities
When I asked him for suggestions to guide me on the road he looked perplexed
"Oh, well, I guess you'll do well," he said
"Still, you have had so much experience, Mr. Eaton."
"Well, I really don't know. It's all a matter of common sense, I guess. And, after all, the merchandise is the thing, the merchandise and the price."
He added a word or two about the futility of laying down rules, and that was all I could get out of him. That a man of few words like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of the gab" was an indispensable element of success in a salesman.
Indeed, one of my faults as a drummer, during that period at least, was that I was apt to talk too much. I would do so partly for the sheer lust of hearing myself use the jargon of the market, but chiefly, of course, from eagerness to make a sale, from over-insistence. I was too exuberant in praising my own goods and too harsh in criticising those of my competitors.
Altogether there was more emphasis than dignity in my appeal.
One day, as I was haranguing the proprietor of a small department store in a Michigan town, he suddenly interrupted me by placing a friendly hand on my shoulder. His name was Henry Gans. He was a stout man of fifty, with the stamp of American birth on a strong Jewish face.
"Let me give you a bit of advice, young man," he said, with paternal geniality. "You won't mind, will you?"
I uttered a perplexed, "Why, no"; and he proceeded: "If you want to make good as a salesman, observe these two rules: Don't knock the other fellow and don't talk too much."
For a minute I stood silent, utterly nonplussed. Then, pulling myself together, I said, with a bow: "Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I am only a beginner, and only a few years in the country. I know I have still a great deal to learn. It's very kind of you to point out my mistakes to me. The gay light of Gans's eye gave way to a look of heart-to-heart earnestness.
"It ain't nice to run down your competitor," he said. "Besides, it don't pay. It makes a bad impression on the man you are trying to get an order from."
We had a long conversation, gradually passing from business to affairs of a personal nature. He was interested in my early struggles in America, in my mode of living, in the state of my business, and I told him the whole story.
He seemed to be well disposed toward me, but it was evident that he did not take my "one-horse" establishment seriously, and I left his store without an order. I was berating myself for having revealed the true size of my business. Somehow my failure in this instance galled me with special poignancy. I roamed around the streets, casting about for some scheme to make good my mistake
Less than an hour after I left Gans's store I re-entered it, full of fresh spirit and pluck.
"I beg your pardon for troubling you again, Mr. Gans," I began, stopping him in the middle of an aisle. "You've been so kind to me. I should like to ask you one more question. Only one. I trust I am not intruding?"
"Go ahead," he said, patiently
"I shall do as you advise me. I shall never knock the other fellow," I began, with a smile. "But suppose his merchandise is really good, and I can outbid him. Why should it not be proper for me to say so? If you'll permit me"—pointing at one of the suits displayed in the store, a brown cheviot trimmed with velvet. "Take that suit, for instance. It's certainly a fine garment. It has style and dash. It's really a beautiful garment. I haven't the least idea how much you pay for it, of course, but I do know that I could make you the identical coat for a much smaller price. So why shouldn't it be right for me to say so?"
He contemplated me for a moment, broke into a hearty laugh, and said: "You're a pretty shrewd fellow. Why, of course, there's nothing wrong in selling cheaper than your competitor. That's what we're all trying to do.
That's the game, provided you really can sell cheaper than the other man, and there are no other drawbacks in doing business with you."
What I said about the brown suit piqued him. He had his bookkeeper show me the bill, and defied me to sell him a garment of exactly the same material, cut, and workmanship for less. I accepted the challenge, offering to reduce the price by four dollars and a half before I had any idea whether I could afford to do so. I was ready to lose money on the transaction, so long as I got a start with this man
Gans expressed doubt of my ability to make good my offer. I proceeded to explain the special conditions under which I ran my business. I waxed eloquent
"Doing business on a gigantic scale is not always an advantage, Mr. Gans," I sang out, with an affected Yankee twang. "There are exceptions. And the cloak-and-suit industry is one of these exceptions, especially now that the Cloak-makers' Union has come to stay. By dealing with a very big firm you've got to pay for union labor, while a modest fellow like myself has no trouble in getting cheap labor. And when I say cheap I don't mean poor labor, but just the opposite. I mean the very best tailors, the most skilled mechanics in the country. It sounds queer, doesn't it? But it's a fact, nevertheless, Mr. Gans. It is a fact that the best ladies' tailors are old-fashioned, pious people, green in the country, who hate to work in big places, and who keep away from Socialists, anarchists, unionists, and their whole crew. They need very little, and they love their work. They willingly stay in the shop from early in the morning till late at night."
"They are dead stuck on it, hey?" Gans said, quizzically. "They are used to it," I explained. "In Russia a tailor works about fourteen hours a day. Of course, I don't let them overwork themselves. I treat them as if they were my brothers or uncles. We get along like a family, and they earn twice as much as the strict union people, too."
"I see. They get low wages and don't work too much and are ahead of the game, after all. Is that it? Well, well. But you're a smart fellow, just the same."
I explained to him why my men earned more than they would in the big shops, and the upshot was an order for a hundred suits. Twenty of these were to be copies of the brown-cheviot garment which was the subject of his challenge, I buying that suit of him, so as to use it as a sample
On my way home I exhibited that suit to merchants in other cities, giving it out for my own product. It was really an attractive garment and it brought me half a dozen additional sales.
I developed into an excellent salesman. If I were asked to name some single element of my success on the road I should mention the enthusiasm with which I usually spoke of my merchandise. It was genuine, and it was contagious.
Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my goods.
THE road was a great school of business and life to me. I visited scores of cities. I met hundreds of human types. I saw much of the United States.
Every time I returned home I felt as though, in comparison with the places which I had just visited, New York was not an American city at all, and as though my last trip had greatly added to the "real American" quality in me
Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in the world. I could not go to bed in a Pullman car, walk over the springy "runner" of a hotel corridor, unfold the immense napkin of a hotel dining-room, or shake down my trousers upon alighting from a boot-black's chair, without being conscious of the difference between my present life and my life in Antomir
I was full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but there was usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. While on the road I would feel homesick for New York, and at the same time I would feel that I had no home anywhere, that my mother was dead and I was all alone in the world.
I missed Dora many months after she made me move from her house. As for Max, the thought of him, his jealousy and the way he groveled before me the last time I had seen him, would give me a bad taste in the mouth. I both pitied and despised him, and I hated my guilty conscience; so I would try to keep him out of my mind. What I missed almost as much as I did Dora was her home.
There was no other to take its place. There was not a single family in New York or in any other American town who would invite me to its nest and make me feel at home there. I saw a good deal of Meyer Nodelman, but he never asked me to the house. And so I was forever homesick, not for Antomir—for my native town had become a mere poem—but for a home
I did some reading on the road. There was always some book in my hand-bag—some volume of Spencer, Emerson, or Schopenhauer (in an English translation), perhaps. I would also read articles in the magazines, not to mention the newspapers. But I would chiefly spend my time in the smoker, talking to the other drummers or listening to their talk. There was a good deal of card-playing in the cars, but that never had any attraction for me.
I tried to learn poker, but found it tedious.
The cigarette stumps by which I had sought to counteract my hunger pangs at the period of my dire need had developed the cigarette habit in me. This had subsequently become a cigar habit. I had discovered the psychological significance of smoking "the cigar of peace and good will." I had realized the importance of offering a cigar to some of the people I met. I would watch American smokers and study their ways, as though there were a special American manner of smoking and such a thing as smoking with a foreign accent. I came to the conclusion that the dignity of smoking a cigar lasted only while the cigar was still long and fresh. There seemed to be special elegance in a smoker taking a newly lighted cigar out of his mouth and throwing a glance at its glowing end to see if it was smoking well.
Accordingly, I never did so without being conscious of my gestures and trying to make them as "American" as possible
The other cloak salesmen I met on the road in those days were mostly representatives of much bigger houses than mine. They treated me with ill-concealed contempt, and I would retaliate by overstating my sales. One of the drummers who were fond of taunting me was an American by birth, a fellow named Loeb
"Well, Levinsky," he would begin. "Had a big day, didn't you?"
"I certainly did," I would retort.
"How much? Twenty-five thousand?" "Well, it's no use trying to be funny, but I've pulled in five thousand dollars to-day." "Is that all?"
"Well, if you don't believe me, what's the use asking? What good would it do me to brag? If I say five thousand. it is five thousand. As a matter of fact, it 'll amount to more." Whereupon he would slap his knee and roar
He was a good-looking, florid-faced man with sparkling black eyes—a gay, boisterous fellow, one of those who are the first to laugh at their own jests. He was connected with the largest house in the cloak trade. Our relations were of a singular character. He was incessantly poking fun at me; nothing seemed to afford him more pleasure than to set a smokerful of passengers laughing at my expense. At the same time he seemed to like me.
But then he hated me, too. As for me, I reciprocated both feelings
One day, on the road, he made me the victim of a practical joke that proved an expensive lesson to me. The incident took place in a hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He "confidentially" let me see one of his samples, hinting that it was his "leader," or best seller. He then went to do some telephoning, leaving the garment with me the while. Whereupon I lost no time in making a pencil-sketch of it, with a few notes as to materials, tints, and other details. I subsequently had the garment copied and spent time and money offering it to merchants in New York and on the road. It proved an unmitigated failure.
"You are a nice one, you are," he said to me, with mock gravity, on a subsequent trip. "You copied that garment I showed you in Cincinnati, didn't you?"
"What garment? What on earth are you talking about?" I lied, my face on fire.
"Come, come, Levinsky. You know very well what garment I mean. While I was away telephoning you went to work and made a sketch of it. It was downright robbery. That's what I call it. Well, have you sold a lot of them?" And he gave me a merry wink that cut me as with a knife
One of the things about which he often made fun of me was my Talmud gesticulations, a habit that worried me like a physical defect. It was so distressingly un-American. I struggled hard against it. I had made efforts to speak with my hands in my pockets; I had devised other means for keeping them from participating in my speech. All of no avail. I still gesticulate a great deal, though much less than I used to
One afternoon, on a west-bound train, Loeb entertained a group of passengers of which I was one with worn-out stories of gesticulating Russian Jews. He told of a man who never opened his mouth when he was out of doors and it was too cold for him to expose his hands; of another man who never spoke when it was so dark that his hands could not be seen. I laughed with the others, but I felt like a cripple who is forced to make fun of his own deformity. It seemed to me as though Loeb, who was a Jew, was holding up our whole race to the ridicule of Gentiles. I could have executed him as a traitor to his people. Presently he turned on me
"By the way, Levinsky, you never use a telephone, do you?"
"Why? Who says I don't?" I protested, timidly
"Because it's of no use to you," he replied. "The fellow at the other end of the wire couldn't see your hands, could he?" And he broke into a peal of self-satisfied mirth in which some of his listeners involuntarily joined.
"You think you're awfully smart," I retorted, in abject misery
"And you think you're awfully grammatical." And once more he roared
"You are making fun of the Jewish people," I said, in a rage."Aren't you a Jew yourself?"
"Of course I am," he answered, wiping the tears from his laughing black eyes. "And a good one, too. I am a member of a synagogue. But what has that got to do with it? I can speak on the telephone, all right." And again the car rang with his laughter
I was aching to hurl back some fitting repartee, but could think of none, and to my horror the moments were slipping by, and presently the conversation was changed
At the request of a gay little Chicagoan who wore a skull-cap a very fat Chicagoan told a story that was rather risqué. Loeb went him one better. The man in the skull-cap declared that while he could not bring himself to tell a smutty story himself, he was "as good as any man in appreciating one." He then offered a box of cigars for the most daring anecdote, and there ensued an orgy of obscenity that kept us shouting (I could not help thinking of similar talks at the cloak-shops). Loeb suggested that the smoking-room be dubbed "smutty room" and was applauded by the little Chicagoan. The prize was awarded, by a vote, to a man who had told his story in the gravest tone of voice and without a hint of a smile
Frivolity gave way to a discussion of general business conditions. A lanky man with a gray beard, neatly trimmed, and with the most refined manners in our group, said something about competition in the abstract. I made a remark which seemed to attract attention and then I hastened to refer to the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Loeb dared not burlesque me. I was in high feather
Dinner was announced. To keep my traveling expenses down I was usually very frugal on the road. I had not yet seen the inside of a dining-car (while stopping at a hotel I would not indulge in a dining-room meal unless I deemed it advisable to do so for business considerations). On this occasion, however, when most of our group went to the dining-car I could not help joining them. The lanky man, the little Chicagoan, and the fleshy Chicagoan—the three "stars" of the smoker—went to the same table, and I hastened, with their ready permission, to occupy the remaining seat at that table. I ordered an expensive dinner. At my instance the chat turned on national politics, a subject in which I felt at home, owing to my passion for newspaper editorials. I said something which met with an encouraging reception, and then I entered upon a somewhat elaborate discourse. My listeners seemed to be interested. I was so absorbed in the topic and in the success I was apparently scoring that I was utterly oblivious to the taste of the food in my mouth. But I was aware that it was "aristocratic American" food, that I was in the company of well-dressed American Gentiles, eating and conversing with them, a nobleman among noblemen. I throbbed with love for America
"Don't be excited," I was saying to myself. "Speak in a calm, low voice, as these Americans do. And for goodness' sake don't gesticulate!"
I went on to speak with exaggerated apathy, my hands so strenuously still that they fairly tingled with the effort, and, of course, I was so conscious of the whole performance that I did not know what I was talking about. This state of my mind soon wore off, however
Neither the meal nor the appointments of the car contained anything that I had not enjoyed scores of times before—in the hotels at which I stopped or at the restaurants at which I would dine and wine some of my customers; but to eat such a meal amid such surroundings while on the move was a novel experience. The electric lights, the soft red glint of the mahogany walls, the whiteness of the table linen, the silent efficiency of the colored waiters, coupled with the fact that all this was speeding onward through the night, made me feel as though I were partaking of a repast in an enchanted palace. The easy urbanity of the three well-dressed Americans gave me a sense of uncanny gentility and bliss
"Can it be that I am I?" I seemed to be wondering
The gaunt, elderly man, who was a member of a wholesale butcher concern, was seated diagonally across the table from me, but my eye was for the most part fixed on him rather than on the fat man who occupied the seat directly opposite mine. He was the most refined-looking man of the three and his vocabulary matched his appearance and manner. He fascinated me. His cultured English and ways conflicted in my mind with the character of his business. I could not help thinking of raw beef, bones, and congealed blood. I said to myself, "It takes a country like America to produce butchers who look and speak like noblemen." The United States was still full of surprises for me.
I was still discovering America
After dinner, when we were in the smoking-room again, it seemed to me that the three Gentiles were tired of me. Had I talked too much? Had I made a nuisance of myself? I was wretched