CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.
Jake was left by Mamie in a state of unspeakable misery. He felt
discomfited, crushed, the universal butt of ridicule. Her perfumes
lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away. Her venomous gaze
stung his heart. She seemed to him elevated above the social plane upon
which he had recently (though the interval appeared very long) stood by
her side, nay, upon which he had had her at his beck and call; while he
was degraded, as it were, wallowing in a mire, from which he yearningly
looked up to his former equals, vainly begging for recognition. An
uncontrollable desire took possession of him to run after her, to have
an explanation, and to swear that he was the same Jake and as much of a
Yankee and a gallant as ever. But here was his wife fixing him with a
timid, piteous look, which at once exasperated and cowed him; and he
dared not stir out of the house, as though nailed by that look of hers
to the spot.
He lay down on the lounge, and shut his eyes. Gitl dutifully brought
him a pillow. As she adjusted it under his head the touch of her hand
on his face made him shrink, as if at the contact with a reptile. He
was anxious to flee from his wretched self into oblivion, and his wish
was soon gratified, the combined effect of a hard day's work and a
plentiful and well-relished supper plunging him into a heavy sleep.
While his snores resounded in the little kitchen, Gitl put the child to
bed, and then passed with noiseless step into the boarders' room. The
door was ajar and she entered it without knocking, as was her wont. She
found Bernstein bent over a book, with a ponderous dictionary by its
side. A kerosene lamp with a red shade, occupying nearly all the
remaining space on the table, spread a lurid mysterious light. Gitl
asked the studious cloakmaker whether he knew a Polish girl named Mamie
Fein.
"Mamie Fein? No. Why?" said Bernstein, with his index finger on the
passage he had been reading, and his eyes on Gitl's plumpish cheek,
bathed in the roseate light.
"Nothing. May not one ask?"
"What is the matter? Speak out! Are you afraid to tell me?" he
insisted.
"What should be the matter? She was here. A nice _lada_."
"Your husband knows many nice _ladies_," he said, with a faint but
significant smile. And immediately regretting the remark he went on to
smooth it down by characterizing Jake as an honest and good-natured
fellow.
"You ought to think yourself fortunate in having him for your husband,"
he added.
"Yes, but what did you mean by what you said first?" she demanded, with
an anxious air.
"What did I mean? What should I have meant? I meant what I said. _'F
cou'se_ he knows many girls. But who does not? You know there are
always girls in the shops where we work. Never fear, Jake has nothing
to do with them."
"Who says I fear! Did I say I did? Why should I?"
Encouraged by the cheering effect which his words were obviously having
on the credulous, unsophisticated woman, he pursued: "May no Jewish
daughter have a worse husband. Be easy, be easy. I tell you he is
melting away for you. He never looked as happy as he does since you
came."
"Go away! You must be making fun of me!" she said, beaming with
delight.
"Don't you believe me? Why, are you not a pretty young woman?" he
remarked, with an oily look in his eye.
The crimson came into her cheek, and she lowered her glance.
"Stop making fun of me, I beg you," she said softly. "Is it true?"
"Is what true? That you are a pretty young woman? Take a looking-glass
and see for yourself."
"Strange man that you are!" she returned, with confused deprecation. "I
mean what you said before about Jake," she faltered.
"Oh, about Jake! Then say so," he jested. "Really he loves you as
life."
"How do you know?" she queried, wistfully.
"How do I know!" he repeated, with an amused smile. "As if one could
not see!"
"But he never told you himself!"
"How do you know he did not? You have guessed wrongly, see! He did,
lots of times," he concluded gravely, touched by the anxiety of the
poor woman.
She left Bernstein's room all thrilling with joy, and repentant for her
excess of communicativeness. "A wife must not tell other people what
happens to her husband," she lectured herself, in the best of humours.
Still, the words "Your husband knows many nice _ladas_," kept echoing
at the bottom of her soul, and in another few minutes she was at Mrs.
Kavarsky's, confidentially describing Mamie's visit as well as her talk
with the boarder, omitting nothing save the latter's compliments to her
looks.
Mrs. Kavarsky was an eccentric, scraggy little woman, with a vehement
manner and no end of words and gesticulations. Her dry face was full of
warts and surmounted by a chaotic mass of ringlets and curls of a faded
brown. None too tidy about her person, and rather slattern in general
appearance, she zealously kept up the over-scrupulous cleanliness for
which the fame of her apartments reached far and wide. Her neighbours
and townsfolk pronounced her crazy but "with a heart of diamond," that
is to say, the diametrical opposite of the precious stone in point of
hardness, and resembling it in the general sense of excellence of
quality. She was neighbourly enough, and as she was the most prosperous
and her establishment the best equipped in the whole tenement, many a
woman would come to borrow some cooking utensil or other, or even a few
dollars on rent day, which Mrs. Kavarsky always started by refusing in
the most pointed terms, and almost always finished by granting.
She started to listen to Gitl's report with a fierce mien which
gradually thawed into a sage smile. When the young neighbour had rested
her case, she first nodded her head, as who should say, "What fools
this young generation be!" and then burst out:
"Do you know what _I_ have to tell you? Guess!"
Gitl thought Heaven knows what revelations awaited her.
"That you are a lump of horse and a greenhorn and nothing else!" (Gitl
felt much relieved.) "That piece of ugliness should _try_ and come to
_my_ house! Then she would know the price of a pound of evil. I should
open the door and--_march_ to eighty black years! Let her go to where
she came from! America is not Russia, thanked be the Lord of the world.
Here one must only know how to handle a husband. Here a husband must
remember '_ladas foist_'--but then you do not even know what that
means!" she exclaimed, with a despairing wave of her hand.
"What does it mean?" Gitl inquired, pensively.
"What does it mean? What should it mean? It means but too well, _never
min'_. It means that when a husband does not _behabe_ as he should, one
does not stroke his cheeks for it. A prohibition upon me if one does.
If the wife is no greenhorn she gets him shoved into the oven, over
there, across the river."
"You mean they send him to prison?"
"Where else--to the theatre?" Mrs. Kavarsky mocked her furiously.
"A weeping to me!" Gitl said, with horror. "May God save me from such
things!"
In due course Mrs. Kavarsky arrived at the subject of head-gear, and
for the third or fourth time she elicited from her pupil a promise to
discard the kerchief and to sell the wig.
"No wonder he does hate you, seeing you in that horrid rag, which makes
a grandma of you. Drop it, I tell you! Drop it so that no survivor nor
any refugee is left of it. If you don't obey me this time, dare not
cross my threshold any more, do you hear?" she thundered. "One might as
well talk to the wall as to her!" she proceeded, actually addressing
herself to the opposite wall of her kitchen, and referring to her
interlocutrice in the third person. "I am working and working for her,
and here she appreciates it as much as the cat. Fie!" With which the
irate lady averted her face in disgust.
"I shall take it off; now for sure--as sure as this is Wednesday," said
Gitl, beseechingly.
Mrs. Kavarsky turned back to her pacified.
"Remember now! If you _deshepoitn_ [disappoint] me this time,
well!--look at me! I should think I was no Gentile woman, either. I am
as pious as you _anyhull_, and come from no mean family, either. You
know I hate to boast; _but_ my father--peace be upon him!--was fit to
be a rabbi. _Vell_, and yet I am not afraid to go with my own hair. May
no greater sins be committed! Then it would be _never min'_ enough.
Plenty of time for putting on the patch [meaning the wig] when I get
old; _but_ as long as I am young, I am young _an' dot's ull_! It can
not be helped; when one lives in an _edzecate_ country, one must live
like _edzecate peoples_. As they play, so one dances, as the saying is.
But I think it is time for you to be going. Go, my little kitten," Mrs.
Kavarsky said, suddenly lapsing into accents of the most tender
affection. "He may be up by this time and wanting _tea_. Go, my little
lamb, go and _try_ to make yourself agreeable to him and the Uppermost
will help. In America one must take care not to displease a husband.
Here one is to-day in New York and to-morrow in Chicago; do you
understand? As if there were any shame or decency here! A father is no
father, a wife, no wife--_not'ing_! Go now, my baby! Go and throw away
your rag and be a nice woman, and everything will be _ull right_." And
so hurrying Gitl to go, she detained her with ever a fresh torrent of
loquacity for another ten minutes, till the young woman, standing on
pins and needles and scarcely lending an ear, plucked up courage to
plead her household duties and take a hasty departure.
She found Jake fast asleep. It was after eleven when he slowly awoke.
He got up with a heavy burden on his soul--a vague sense of having met
with some horrible rebuff. In his semiconsciousness he was unaware,
however, of his wife's and son's existence and of the change which
their advent had produced in his life, feeling himself the same free
bird that he had been a fortnight ago. He stared about the room, as if
wondering where he was. Noticing Gitl, who at that moment came out of
the bedroom, he instantly realized the situation, recalling Mamie, hat,
perfumes, and all, and his heart sank within him. The atmosphere of the
room became stifling to him. After sitting on the lounge for some time
with a drooping head, he was tempted to fling himself on the pillow
again, but instead of doing so he slipped on his hat and coat and went
out.
Gitl was used to his goings and comings without explanation. Yet this
time his slam of the door sent a sharp pang through her heart. She had
no doubt but that he was bending his steps to another interview with
the Polish witch, as she mentally branded Miss Fein.
Nor was she mistaken, for Jake did start, mechanically, in the
direction of Chrystie Street, where Mamie lodged. He felt sure that she
was away to some ball, but the very house in which she roomed seemed to
draw him with magnetic force. Moreover, he had a lurking hope that he
might, after all, find her about the building. Ah, if by a stroke of
good luck he came upon her on the street! All he wished was to have a
talk, and that for the sole purpose of amending her unfavourable
impression of him. Then he would never so much as think of Mamie, for,
indeed, she was hateful to him, he persuaded himself.
Arrived at his destination, and failing to find Mamie on the sidewalk,
he was tempted to wait till she came from the ball, when he was seized
with a sudden sense of the impropriety of his expedition, and he
forthwith returned home, deciding in his mind, as he walked, to move
with his wife and child to Chicago.
Meanwhile Mamie lay brooding in her cot-bed in the parlour, which she
shared with her landlady's two daughters. She was in the most wretched
frame of mind, ineffectually struggling to fall asleep. She had made
her way down the stairs leading from the Podkovniks with a violently
palpitating heart. She had been bound for no more imposing a place than
Joe's academy, and before repairing thither she had had to betake
herself home to change her stately toilet for a humbler attire. For, as
a matter of fact, it was expressly for her visit to the Podkovniks that
she had thus pranked herself out, and that would have been much too
gorgeous an appearance to make at Joe's establishment on one of its
regular dancing evenings. Having changed her toilet she did call at
Joe's; but so full was her mind of Jake and his wife and, accordingly,
she was so irritable, that in the middle of a quadrille she picked a
quarrel with the dancing master, and abruptly left the hall.
* * * * *
The next day Jake's work fared badly. When it was at last over he did
not go direct home as usual, but first repaired to Mamie's. He found
her with her landlady in the kitchen. She looked careworn and was in a
white blouse which lent her face a convalescent, touching effect.
"Good-eveni'g, Mrs. Bunetzky! Good-eveni'g, Mamie!" he fairly roared,
as he playfully fillipped his hat backward. And after addressing a
pleasantry or two to the mistress of the house, he boldly proposed to
her boarder to go out with him for a talk. For a moment Mamie
hesitated, fearing lest her landlady had become aware of the existence
of a Mrs. Podkovnik; but instantly flinging all considerations to the
wind, she followed him out into the street.
"You'sh afraid I vouldn't pay you, Mamie?" he began, with bravado, in
spite of his intention to start on a different line, he knew not
exactly which.
Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than
he. "I ain't afraid a bit," she answered, sullenly.
"Do you think my _kshpenshesh_ are larger now?" he resumed in Yiddish.
"May I lose as much through sickness. On the countrary, I _shpend_ even
much less than I used to. We have two nice boarders--I keep them only
for company's sake--and I have a _shteada job_--_a puddin' of a job_. I
shall have still more money to _shpend outshite_," he added,
falteringly.
"Outside?"--and she burst into an artificial laugh which sent the blood
to Jake's face.
"Why, do you think I sha'n't go to Joe's, nor to the theatre, nor
anywhere any more? Still oftener than before! _Hoy much vill you bet?_"
"_Rats!_ A married man, a papa go to a dancing school! Not unless your
wife drags along with you and never lets go of your skirts," she said
sneeringly, adding the declaration that Jake's "bluffs" gave her a
"regula' pain in de neck."
Jake, writhing under her lashes, protested his freedom as emphatically
as he could; but it only served to whet Mamie's spite, and against her
will she went on twitting him as a henpecked husband and an
old-fashioned Jew. Finally she reverted to the subject of his debt,
whereupon he took fire, and after an interchange of threats and some
quite forcible language they parted company.
* * * * *
From that evening the spectre of Mamie dressed in her white blouse
almost unremittingly preyed on Jake's mind. The mournful sneer which
had lit her pale, invalid-looking face on their last interview, when
she wore that blouse, relentlessly stared down into his heart; gnawed
at it with tantalizing deliberation; "drew out his soul," as he once
put it to himself, dropping his arms and head in despair. "Is this what
they call love?" he wondered, thinking of the strange, hitherto
unexperienced kind of malady, which seemed to be gradually consuming
his whole being. He felt as if Mamie had breathed a delicious poison
into his veins, which was now taking effect, spreading a devouring fire
through his soul, and kindling him with a frantic thirst for more of
the same virus. His features became distended, as it were, and acquired
a feverish effect; his eyes had a pitiable, beseeching look, like those
of a child in the period of teething.
He grew more irritable with Gitl every day, the energy failing him to
dissemble his hatred for her. There were moments when, in his hopeless
craving for the presence of Mamie, he would consciously seek refuge in
a feeling of compunction and of pity for his wife; and on several such
occasions he made an effort to take an affectionate tone with her. But
the unnatural sound of his voice each time only accentuated to himself
the depth of his repugnance, while the hysterical promptness of her
answers, the servile gratitude which trembled in her voice and shone
out of her radiant face would, at such instances, make him breathless
with rage. Poor Gitl! she strained every effort to please him; she
tried to charm him by all the simple-minded little coquetries she knew,
by every art which her artless brain could invent; and only succeeded
in making herself more offensive than ever.
As to Jake's feelings for Joey, they now alternated between periods of
indifference and gusts of exaggerated affection; while, in some
instances, when the boy let himself be fondled by his mother or
returned her caresses in his childish way, he would appear to Jake as
siding with his enemy, and share with Gitl his father's odium.
* * * * *
One afternoon, shortly after Jake's interview with Mamie in front of
the Chrystie Street tenement house, Fanny called on Gitl.
"Are you Mrs. Podkovnik?" she inquired, with an embarrassed air.
"Yes; why?" Mrs. Podkovnik replied, turning pale. "She is come to tell
me that Jake has eloped with that Polish girl," flashed upon her
overwrought mind. At the same moment Fanny, sizing her up, exclaimed
inwardly, "So this is the kind of woman she is, poor thing!"
"Nothing. I _just_ want to speak to you," the visitor uttered,
mysteriously.
"What is it?"
"As I say, nothing at all. Is there nobody else in the house?" Fanny
demanded, looking about.
"May I not live till to-morrow if there is a living soul except my boy,
and he is asleep. You may speak; never fear. But first tell me who you
are; do not take ill my question. Be seated."
The girl's appearance and manner began to inspire Gitl with confidence.
"My name is Rosy--Rosy Blank," said Fanny, as she took a seat on the
further end of the lounge. "_'F cou'se_, you don't know me, how should
you? But I know you well enough, never mind that we have never seen
each other before. I used to work with your husband in one shop. I have
come to tell you such an important thing! You must know it. It makes no
difference that you don't know who I am. May God grant me as good a
year as my friendship is for you."
"Something about Jake?" Gitl blurted out, all anxiety, and instantly
regretted the question.
"How did you guess? About Jake it is! About him and somebody else. But
see how you did guess! Swear that you won't tell anybody that I have
been here."
"May I be left speechless, may my arms and legs be paralyzed, if I ever
say a word!" Gitl recited vehemently, thrilling with anxiety and
impatience. "So it is! they have eloped!" she added in her heart,
seating herself close to her caller. "A darkness upon my years! What
will become of me and Yosselé now?"
"Remember, now, not a word, either to Jake or to anybody else in the
world. I had a mountain of _trouble_ before I found out where you
lived, and I _stopped_ work on purpose to come and speak to you. As
true as you see me alive. I wanted to call when I was sure to find you
alone, you understand. Is there really nobody about?" And after a
preliminary glance at the door and exacting another oath of discretion
from Mrs. Podkovnik, Fanny began in an undertone:
"There is a girl; well, her name is Mamie; well, she and your husband
used to go to the same dancing school--that is a place where _fellers_
and _ladies_ learn to dance," she explained. "I go there, too; but I
know your husband from the shop."
"But that _lada_ has also worked in the same shop with him, hasn't
she?" Gitl broke in, with a desolate look in her eye.
"Why, did Jake tell you she had?" Fanny asked in surprise.
"No, not at all, not at all! I am just asking. May I be sick if I know
anything."
"The idea! How could they work together, seeing that she is a
shirtmaker and he a cloakmaker. Ah, if you knew what a witch she is!
She has set her mind on your husband, and is bound to take him away
from you. She hitched on to him long ago. But since you came I thought
she would have God in her heart, and be ashamed of people. Not she! She
be ashamed! You may sling a cat into her face and she won't mind it.
The black year knows where she grew up. I tell you there is not a girl
in the whole dancing school but can not bear the sight of that Polish
lizard!"
"Why, do they meet and kiss?" Gitl moaned out. "Tell me, do tell me
all, my little crown, keep nothing from me, tell me my whole dark lot."
"_Ull right_, but be sure not to speak to anybody. I'll tell you the
truth: My name is not Rosy Blank at all. It is Fanny Scutelsky. You
see, I am telling you the whole truth. The other evening they stood
near the house where she _boards_, on Chrystie Street; so they were
looking into each other's eyes and talking like a pair of little doves.
A _lady_ who is a _particla_ friend of mine saw them; so she says a
child could have guessed that she was making love to him and _trying_
to get him away from you. _'F cou'se_ it is none of my _business_. Is
it my _business_, then? What do _I care_? It is only _becuss_ I pity
you. It is like the nature I have; I can not bear to see anybody in
trouble. Other people would not _care_, but I do. Such is my nature. So
I thought to myself I must go and tell Mrs. Podkovnik all about it, in
order that she might know what to do."
For several moments Gitl sat speechless, her head hung down, and her
bosom heaving rapidly. Then she fell to swaying her frame sidewise, and
vehemently wringing her hands.
"_Oi! Oi!_ Little mother! A pain to me!" she moaned. "What is to be
done? Lord of the world, what is to be done? Come to the rescue!
People, do take pity, come to the rescue!" She broke into a fit of low
sobbing, which shook her whole form and was followed by a torrent of
tears.
Whereupon Fanny also burst out crying, and falling upon Gitl's shoulder
she murmured: "My little heart! you don't know what a friend I am to
you! Oh, if you knew what a serpent that Polish thief is!"