Flora was all of a flutter with impatience to share her joy with
Shaya, and yearning for his presence. She had not seen him since he
had become her legal husband, and the two or three hours seemed a
week.
When the German landlady of the little Clinton Street house told her
that neither her lodger nor his friend were in the attic room the
young woman's heart sank within her. Her message seemed to be bubbling
over and her over-wrought mind too weak to bear it another minute. She
mentally berated her absent bridegroom, and not knowing whither to
bend her steps in quest of him she repaired to some girl friends to
while away the time and to deliver herself of part of her burden to
them.
"When he comes tell him he da's not leave for one second till I come
back. Tell him I've got some grand news for him," she instructed the
landlady, struggling hard against a wild temptation to unbosom herself
to the stranger.
It was about eight o'clock when she returned. Shaya met her in the
hallway.
"Well?" he inquired anxiously.
"Well?" she mocked him. "You are a daisy! Why didn't you wait?
Couldn't you guess I'd come?"
"How should I? But tell me what your father says. Why should you
torment me?"
"He says he don't want you," she replied. But her look told even a
more encouraging tale than the one she had to deliver, and they flew
into mutual embrace in an outburst of happiness which seemed to both
of them unlike any they had ever experienced before.
"A life into your little eyes! A health into your little hands and
feet!" he muttered, stroking her arm sheepishly. "You shall see how
fine it will all come out. You don't know me yet. I tell you you don't
begin to know me," he kept repeating with some braggadocio and without
distinctly knowing what he meant.
They were to return home at once and to try to pacify Asriel as best
they could. When Flora pressed him to take his hat and overcoat,
however, he looked reluctant and then said:--
"Floraly, you know what; come upstairs for just one minute. We are
reading the nicest book you ever saw, and there is a lot of such nice
gentlemen there!--several genuine Americans--Christians. Do come,
Floraly." He drew her up the two flights of stairs almost by force.
"Don't be afraid: the landlady knows all about it," he whispered.
"You'll see what nice people. I tell you they are so educated, and
they love Jews so much! A Jew is the same as a Gentile to them--even
better."
Flora felt a lump growing in her heart. The notion of Shaya being at
this minute interested in anything outside of herself and their mutual
happiness literally dazed her, and before she had time to recover from
her shock she was in the over-crowded attic.
There were some ten or twelve men in the room, some seated--two on
chairs, two on the host's trunk, and three on his bed--the others
standing by the window or propping the sloping wall with their heads.
They were clustered about a round table, littered with books, papers,
and cigarette stumps. A tin can was hissing on the flat top of a
little parlor stove, and some of the company were sipping Russian tea
from tumblers, each with a slice of lemon floating in it. The group
was made up of a middle-aged man with a handsome and intensely
intellectual Scotch face, who was a laborer by day and a philosopher
by night; a Swedish tailor with the face of a Catholic priest; a
Zurich Ph. D. in blue eyeglasses; a young Hindoo who eked out a
wretched existence by selling first-rate articles to second-rate
weeklies, and several Russian Jews, all of them insatiable debaters
and most of them with university or gymnasium diplomas. The group met
every Thursday to read and discuss Harriet Martineau's "Auguste
Comte," under the guidance of the Scotchman, who was a leading spirit
in positivist circles.
The philosopher surrendered his chair to the lady, in a flurry of
chivalry, but a seat was made for him on the trunk, and he forthwith
resumed his reading with well-bred impetuosity, the kerosene lamp in
the centre of the table casting a halo upon his frank, pleasant face.
His auditors were now listening with conscious attention, some of the
younger men affecting an absorbed mien or interrupting the reader with
unnecessary questions. Shaya's eyes were traveling between Flora and
the Scotchman's audience. "Did you ever see such a beautiful and
stylish young lady?" he seemed to be saying. "She is my bride--mine
and nobody else's in the world," and, "Look at these great men,
Flora--I am their chum." Presently, however, he became engrossed in
the reading; and only half-conscious of Flora's presence, he sat
leaning forward, his mouth wide open, his face rapt, and his fingers
quietly reproducing the mental gymnastics of Comte's system in the
air.
The young woman gazed about her in perplexity. The Scotchman and his
reading inspired her with respect, but the rest of the company and the
_tout ensemble_ of the scene impressed her as the haunt of queer
individuals, meeting for some sinister purpose. It was anything but
the world of intellectual and physical elegance into which she had
dreamed to be introduced by marriage to a doctor. Any society of
"custom peddlers" was better dressed than these men, who appeared to
her more like some of the grotesque and uncouth characters in
Dickens's novels than an assemblage of educated people. For a moment
even Shaya seemed a stranger and an enemy. Overcome by the stuffy,
overheated atmosphere of the misshapen apartment, she had a sense of
having been kidnaped into the den of some terrible creatures, and felt
like crying for help. Next she was wondering what her Shaya could have
in common with these shabby beings and what it all had to do with
becoming a doctor and riding in a buggy.
"Shaya!" she whispered, tugging him by the coat-sleeve.
"Just one moment, Floraly," he begged her. "Ah, it's so deep!"
A discussion engaged itself. The Russians fell to greedily. One of
them, in particular, a young man with a dignified bass, was hateful to
Flora. She could not have told you why, but his voice, coupled with
the red embroidery of his Little-Russian shirt-front, cut her to the
quick.
The room was full of smoke and broken English.
Shaya was brimful of arguments and questions which he had not the
courage to advance; and so he sat, now making a vehement gesture of
despair at somebody else's absurdities, now nodding violent approval,
and altogether fidgeting about in a St. Vitus's dance of impotent
pugnacity.
"Shaya, it is getting late, and papa"--
"One second, do please, Floraly, may you live long," he implored her,
with some irritation; and taking the book from the Scotchman's hand,
he fell to turning over its leaves in a feverish search of what struck
him as a misinterpreted passage.
Flora was going to protest and to threaten to leave without him, but
she could neither speak nor stir from her seat. A nightmare of
desolation and jealousy choked her--jealousy of the Scotchman's book,
of the Little-Russian shirt, of the empty tea-glasses with the slices
of lemon on their bottoms, of the whole excited crowd, and of Shaya's
entire future, from which she seemed excluded.