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," she
overruled me, softly. "Somebody might come in and interrupt me.
I'll wait for you in the little park on Second Avenue and Fifteenth
Street. 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.