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