Leizer Lipman was one of those contract tailors who are classed by
their hands under the head of "cockroaches," which--translating the
term into lay English--means that he ran a very small shop, giving
employment to a single team of one sewing-machine operator, one
baster, one finisher, and one presser.
The shop was one of a suite of three rooms on the third floor of a
rickety old tenement house on Essex Street, and did the additional
duty of the family's kitchen and dining-room. It faced a dingy little
courtyard, and was connected by a windowless bedroom with the parlor,
which commanded the very heart of the Jewish markets. Bundles of
cloth, cut to be made into coats, littered the floor, lay in chaotic
piles by one of the walls, cumbered Mrs. Lipman's kitchen table and
one or two chairs, and formed, in a corner, an improvised bed upon
which a dirty two-year-old boy, Leizer's heir apparent, was enjoying
his siesta.
Dangling against the door or scattered among the bundles, there were
cooking utensils, dirty linen, Lipman's velvet skull-cap, hats, shoes,
shears, cotton-spools, and whatnot. A red-hot kitchen stove and a
blazing grate full of glowing flat-irons combined to keep up the
overpowering temperature of the room, and helped to justify its
nickname of sweat-shop in the literal sense of the epithet.
Work was rather scarce, but the designer of the Broadway clothing
firm, of whose army of contractors Lipman was a member, was a second
cousin to the latter's wife, and he saw to it that his relative's
husband was kept busy. And so operations in Leizer's shop were in full
swing. Heyman, the operator, with his bared brawny arms, pushed away
at an unfinished coat, over which his head, presenting to view a
wealth of curly brown hair, hung like an eagle bent on his prey. He
swayed in unison to the rhythmic whirr of his machine, whose music,
supported by the energetic thumps of Meyer's press-iron, formed an
orchestral accompaniment to the sonorous and plaintive strains of a
vocal duet performed by Beile, the finisher girl, and David, the
baster.
Leizer was gone to the Broadway firm's offices, while Zlate, his wife,
was out on a prolonged haggling expedition among the tradeswomen of
Hester Street. This circumstance gave the hands a respite from the
restrictions usually placed on their liberties by the presence of the
"boss" and the "Missis," and they freely beguiled the tedium and
fatigue of their work, now by singing, now by a bantering match at the
expense of their employer and his wife, or of each other.
"Well, I suppose you might as well quit," said Meyer, a chubby,
red-haired, freckled fellow of forty, emphasizing his remark by an
angry stroke of his iron. "You have been over that song now fifty
times without taking breath. You make me tired."
"Don't you like it? Stuff up your ears, then," Beile retorted, without
lifting her head from the coat in her lap.
"Why, I do like it, first-rate and a half," Meyer returned, "but when
you keep your mouth shut I like it better still, see?"
The silvery tinkle of Beile's voice, as she was singing, thrilled
Heyman with delicious melancholy, gave him fresh relish for his work,
and infused additional activity into his limbs: and as her singing
was interrupted by the presser's gibe, he involuntarily stopped his
machine with that annoying feeling which is experienced by dancers
when brought to an unexpected standstill by an abrupt pause of the
music.
"And you?"--he addressed himself to Meyer, facing about on his chair
with an irritated countenance. "It's all right enough when you speak,
but it is much better when you hold your tongue. Don't mind him,
Beile. Sing away!" he then said to the girl, his dazzlingly fair face
relaxing and his little eyes shutting into a sweet smile of
self-confident gallantry.
"You had better stick to your work, Heyman. Why, you might have made
half a cent the while," Meyer fired back, with an ironical look, which
had reference to the operator's reputation of being a niggardly
fellow, who overworked himself, denied himself every pleasure, and
grew fat by feasting his eyes on his savings-bank book.
A sharp altercation ensued, which drifted to the subject of Heyman's
servile conduct toward his employer.
"It was you, wasn't it," Meyer said, "who started that collection for
a birthday present for the boss? Of course, we couldn't help chipping
in. Why is David independent?"
"Did I compel you?" Heyman rejoined. "And am I to blame that it was to
me that the boss threw out the hint about that present? It is so slack
everywhere, and you ought to thank God for the steady job you have
here," he concluded, pouncing down upon the coat on his machine.
David, who had also cut short his singing, kept silently plying his
needle upon pieces of stuff which lay stretched on his master's
dining-table. Presently he paused to adjust his disheveled jet-black
hair, with his fingers for a comb, and to wipe the perspiration from
his swarthy, beardless and typically Israelitic face with his
shirt-sleeve.
While this was in progress, his languid hazel eyes were fixed on the
finisher girl. She instinctively became conscious of his gaze, and
raised her head from the needle. Her fresh buxom face, flushed with
the heat of the room and with exertion, shone full upon the young
baster. Their eyes met. David colored, and, to conceal his
embarrassment, he asked: "Well, is he going to raise your wages?"
Beile nodded affirmatively, and again plunged her head into her work.
"He is? So you will now get five dollars a week. I am afraid you will
be putting on airs now, won't you?"
"Do you begrudge me? Then I am willing to swap wages with you. I'll
let you have my five dollars, and I'll take your twelve dollars every
week."
Lipman's was a task shop, and, according to the signification which
the term has in the political economy of the sweating world, his
operator, baster, and finisher, while nominally engaged at so much a
week, were in reality paid by the piece, the economical week being
determined by a stipulated quantity of made-up coats rather than by a
fixed number of the earth's revolutions around its axis; for the
sweat-shop day will not coincide with the solar day unless a given
amount of work be accomplished in its course. As to the presser, he is
invariably a piece-worker, pure and simple.
For a more lucid account of the task system in the tailoring branch, I
beg to refer the reader to David, although his exposition happens to
be presented rather in the form of a satire on the subject. Indeed,
David, while rather inclined to taciturnity, was an inveterate jester,
and what few remarks he indulged in during his work would often cause
boisterous merriment among his shop-mates, although he delivered them
with a nonchalant manner and with the same look of good-humored irony,
mingled in strange harmony with a general expression of gruffness,
which his face usually wore.
"My twelve dollars every week?" David echoed. "Oh, I see; you mean a
week of twelve days!" And his needle resumed its duck-like sport in
the cloth.
"How do you make it out?" Meyer demanded, in order to elicit a joke
from the witty young man by his side.
"Of course, _you_ don't know how to make that out. But ask Heyman or
Beile. The three of us do."
"Tell him, then, and he will know too," Beile urged, laughing in
advance at the expected fun.
A request coming from the finisher was--yet unknown to
herself--resistless with David, and in the present instance it
loosened his tongue.
"Well, I get twelve dollars a week, and Heyman fourteen. Now a working
week has six days, but--hem--that 'but' gets stuck in my throat--but a
day is neither a Sunday nor a Monday nor anything unless we make
twelve coats. The calendars are a lot of liars."
"What do you mean?"
"They say a day has twenty-four hours. That's a bluff. A day has
twelve coats."
Beile's rapturous chuckle whetted his appetite for persiflage, and he
went on:--
"They read the Tuesday Psalm in the synagogue this morning, but I
should have read the Monday one."
"Why?"
"You see, Meyer's wife will soon come up with his dinner, and here I
have still two coats to make of the twelve that I got yesterday. So
it's still Monday with me. My Tuesday won't begin before about two
o'clock this afternoon."
"How much will you make this week?" Meyer questioned.
"I don't expect to finish more than four days' work by the end of the
week, and will only get eight dollars on Friday--that is, provided the
Missis has not spent our wages by that time. So when it's Friday I'll
call it Wednesday, see?"
"When I am married," he added, after a pause, "and the old woman asks
me for Sabbath expenses, I'll tell her it is only Wednesday--it isn't
yet Friday--and I have no money to give her."
David relapsed into silence, but mutely continued his burlesque,
hopping from subject to subject.
David thought himself a very queer fellow. He often wondered at the
pranks which his own imagination was in the habit of playing, and at
the grotesque combinations it frequently evolved. As he now stood,
leaning forward over his work, he was striving to make out how it was
that Meyer reminded him of the figure "7."
"What nonsense!" he inwardly exclaimed, branding himself for a crank.
"And what does Heyman look like?" his mind queried, as though for
spite. He contemplated the operator askance, and ran over all the
digits of the Arabic system, and even the whole Hebrew alphabet, in
quest of a counterpart to the young man, but failed to find anything
suitable. "His face would much better become a girl," he at last
decided, and mentally proceeded to envelop Heyman's head in Beile's
shawl. But the proceeding somehow stung him, and he went on to
meditate upon the operator's chunky nose. "No, that nose is too ugly
for a girl. It wants a little planing. It's an unfinished job, as it
were. But for that nose Heyman would really be the nice fellow they
say he is. His snow-white skin--his elegant heavy mustache--yes, if he
did not have that nose he would be all right," he maliciously joked in
his heart. "And I, too, would be all right if Heyman were noseless,"
he added, transferring his thoughts to Beile, and wondering why she
looked so sweet. "Why, _her_ nose is not much of a beauty, either.
Entirely too straight, and too--too foolish. Her eyes look old and as
if constantly on the point of bursting into tears. Ah, but then her
lips--that kindly smile of theirs, coming out of one corner of her
mouth!" And a strong impulse seized him to throw himself on those lips
and to kiss them, which he did mentally, and which shot an electric
current through his whole frame. And at this Beile's old-looking eyes
both charmed and pierced him to the heart, and her nose, far from
looking foolish, seemed to contemplate him contemptuously,
triumphantly, and knowingly, as if it had read his thoughts.
While this was going on in David's brain and heart, Beile was taken up
with Heyman and with their mutual relations. His attentions to her
were an open secret. He did not go out of his way to conceal them. On
the contrary, he regularly escorted her home after work, and took her
out to balls and picnics--a thing involving great sacrifices to a
fellow who trembled over every cent he spent, and who was sure to make
up for these losses to his pocket-book by foregoing his meals. While
alone with her in the hallway of her mother's residence, his voice
would become so tender, so tremulous, and on several occasions he even
addressed her by the endearing form of Beilinke. And yet all this had
been going on now for over three months, and he had not as much as
alluded to marriage, nor even bought her the most trifling present.
Her mother made life a burden to her, and urged the point-blank
declaration of the alternative between a formal engagement and an
arrest for breach of promise. Beile would have died rather than make
herself the heroine of such a sensation; and, besides, the idea of
Heyman handcuffed to a police detective was too terrible to entertain
even for a moment.
She loved him. She liked his blooming face, his gentleman-like
mustache, the quaint jerk of his head, as he walked; she was fond of
his company; she was sure she was in love with him: her confidant, her
fellow country girl and playmate, who had recently married Meyer, the
presser, had told her so.
But somehow she felt disappointed. She had imagined love to be a much
sweeter thing. She had thought that a girl in love admired
_everything_ in the object of her affections, and was blind to all his
faults. She had heard that love was something like a perpetual
blissful fluttering of the heart.
"I feel as if something was melting here," a girl friend who was about
to be married once confided to her, pointing to her heart. "You see,
it aches and yet it is so sweet at the same time." And here she never
feels anything melting, nor can she help disliking some things about
Heyman. His smile sometimes appears to her fulsome. Ah, if he did not
shut his eyes as he does when smiling! That he is so slow to spend
money is rather one of the things she likes in him. If he ever marries
her she will be sure to get every cent of his wages. But then when
they are together at a ball he never goes up to the bar to treat her
to a glass of soda, as the other fellows do to their girls, and all he
offers her is an apple or a pear, which he generally stops to buy on
the street on their way to the dancing-hall. Is she in love at all?
Maybe she is mistaken? But no! he is after all so dear to her. She
must have herself to blame. It is not in vain that her mother calls
her a whimpering, nagging thing, who gives no peace to herself nor to
anybody around her. But why does he not come out with his declaration?
Is it because he is too stingy to wish to support a wife? Has he been
making a fool of her? What does he take her for, then?
In fairness to Heyman, it must be stated that on the point of his
intentions, at least, her judgment of him was without foundation, and
her misgivings gratuitous. Pecuniary considerations had nothing to do
with his slowness in proposing to her. And if she could have watched
him and penetrated his mind at the moments when he examined his
bank-book,--which he did quite often,--she would have ascertained that
little images of herself kept hovering before his eyes between the
figures of its credit columns, and that the sum total conjured up to
him a picture of prospective felicity with her for a central figure.
Poor thing; she did not know that when he lingeringly fondled her
hand, on taking his leave in the hallway, the proposal lay on the tip
of his tongue, and that lacking the strength to relieve himself of its
burden he every time left her, consoling himself that the moment was
inopportune, and that "to-morrow he would surely settle it." She did
not know that only two days ago the idea had occurred to him to have
recourse to the aid of a messenger in the form of a lady's watch, and
that while she now sat worrying lest she was being made a fool of, the
golden emissary lay in Heyman's vest-pocket, throbbing in company with
his heart with impatient expectation of the evening hour, which had
been fixed for the delivery of its message.
"I shall let mother speak to him," Beile resolved, in her musings over
her needle. She went on to picture the scene, but at this point her
meditations were suddenly broken by something clutching and pulling at
her hair. It was her employer's boy. He had just got up from his
after-dinner nap, and, for want of any other occupation, he passed his
dirty little hand into her raven locks.
"He is practicing to be a boss," observed David, whose attention was
attracted to the spectacle by the finisher's shriek.
Beile's voice brought Heyman to his feet, and disentangling the little
fellow's fingers from the girl's hair, he fell to "plastering his
nasty cheeks for him," as he put it. At this juncture the door opened
to admit the little culprit's father. Heyman skulked away to his seat,
and, burying his head in his work, he proceeded to drown, in the
whir-r, whir-r of his machine, the screams of the boy, who would have
struck a much higher key had his mamma happened on the spot.
Lipman took off his coat, substituted his greasy velvet skull-cap for
his derby, and lighting a cigar with an air of good-natured
business-like importance, he advanced to Meyer's corner and fell to
examining a coat.
"And what does _he_ look like?" David asked himself, scrutinizing his
task-master. "Like a broom with its stick downward," he concluded to
his own satisfaction. "And his snuff-box?"--meaning Lipman's huge
nose--"A perfect fiddle!--And his mouth? Deaf-mutes usually have such
mouths. And his beard? He has entirely too much of it, and it's too
pretty for his face. It must have got there by mistake."
Presently the door again flew open, and Mrs. Lipman, heavily loaded
with parcels and panting for breath, came waddling in with an elderly
couple in tow.
"Greenhorns," Meyer remarked. "Must be fellow townspeople of
hers--lately arrived."
"She looks like a tea-kettle, and she is puffing like one, too," David
thought, after an indifferent gaze at the newcomers, looking askance
at his stout, dowdyish little "Missis." "No," he then corrected
himself, "she rather resembles a broom with its stick out. That's it!
And wouldn't it be a treat to tie a stick to her head and to sweep the
floor with the horrid thing! And her mouth? Why, it makes me think she
does nothing but sneeze."
"Here is Leizer! Leizer, look at the guests I have brought you!" Zlate
exclaimed, as she threw down her bundles. "Be seated, Reb Avrom; be
seated, Basse. This is our factory," she went on, with a smile of
mixed welcome and triumph, after the demonstrative greetings were
over. "It is rather too small, isn't it? but we are going to move into
larger and better quarters."
Meyer was not mistaken. Zlate's visitors had recently arrived from her
birthplace, a poor town in Western Russia, where they had occupied a
much higher social position than their present hostess, and Mrs.
Lipman, coming upon them on Hester Street, lost no time in inviting
them to her house, in order to overwhelm them with her American
achievements.
"Come, I want to show you my parlor," Mrs. Lipman said, beckoning to
her country people, and before they were given an opportunity to avail
themselves of the chairs which she had offered them, they were towed
into the front room.
When the procession returned, Leizer, in obedience to an order from
his wife, took Reb Avrom in charge and proceeded to initiate him into
the secrets of the "American style of tailoring."
"Oh, my!" Zlate suddenly ejaculated, with a smile. "I came near
forgetting to treat. Beilke!" she then addressed herself to the
finisher girl in a tone of imperious nonchalance, "here is a nickel.
Fetch two bottles of soda from the grocery."
"Don't go, Beile!" David whispered across his table, perceiving the
girl's reluctance.
It was not unusual for Beile to go on an errand for the wife of her
employer, though she always did it unwillingly, and merely for fear of
losing her place; but then Zlate generally exacted these services as a
favor. In the present instance, however, Beile felt mortally offended
by her commanding tone, and the idea of being paraded before the
strangers as a domestic cut her to the quick, as a stream of color
rushing into her face indicated. Nevertheless the prospect of having
to look for a job again persuaded her to avoid trouble with Zlate, and
she was about to reach out her hand for the coin, when David's
exhortation piqued her sense of self-esteem, and she went on with her
sewing. Heyman, who, being interrupted in his work by the visitor's
inspection, was a witness of the scene, at this point turned his face
from it, and cringing by his machine, he made a pretense of busying
himself with the shuttle. His heart shrank with the awkwardness of
his situation, and he nervously grated his teeth and shut his eyes,
awaiting still more painful developments. His veins tingled with pity
for his sweetheart and with deadly hatred for David. What could he do?
he apologized to himself. Isn't it foolish to risk losing a steady job
at this slack season on account of such a trifle as fetching up a
bottle of soda? What business has David to interfere?
"You are not deaf, are you? I say go and bring some soda, quick!" Mrs.
Lipman screamed, fearing lest she was going too far.
"Don't budge, Beile!" the baster prompted, with fire in his eyes.
Beile did not.
"I say go!" Zlate thundered, reddening like a beet, to use a phrase in
vogue with herself.
"Never mind, Zlate," Basse interposed, to relieve the embarrassing
situation. "We just had tea."
"Never mind. It is not worth the trouble," Avrom chimed in.
But this only served to lash Zlate into a greater fury, and unmindful
of consequences, she strode up to the cause of her predicament, and
tearing the coat out of her hands, she squeaked out:--
"Either fetch the soda, or leave my shop at once!"
Heyman was about to say, to do something, he knew not exactly what,
but his tongue seemed seized with palsy, the blood turned chill in his
veins, and he could neither speak nor stir.
Leizer, who was of a quiet, peaceful disposition, and very much under
the thumb of his wife, stood nervously smiling and toying with his
beard.
David grew ashen pale, and trembling with rage he said aloud and in
deliberate accents:--
"Don't mind her, Beile, and never worry. Come along. I'll find you a
better job. This racket won't work, Missis. Your friends see through
it, anyhow, don't you?" he addressed himself to the newcomers. "She
wanted to brag to you. That's what she troubled you for. She showed
off her parlor carpet to you, didn't she? But did she tell you that it
had been bought on the installment plan, and that the custom-peddler
threatened to take it away unless she paid more regularly?"
"Leizer! are you--are you drunk?" Mrs. Lipman gasped, her face
distorted with rage and desperation.
"Get out of here!" Leizer said, in a tone which would have been better
suited to a cordial invitation.
The command was unnecessary, however, for by this time David was
buttoning up his overcoat, and had his hat on. Involuntarily following
his example, Beile also dressed to go. And as she stood in her new
beaver cloak and freshly trimmed large old hat by the side of her
discomfited commander, Basse reflected that it was the finisher girl
who looked like a lady, with Zlate for her servant, rather than the
reverse.
"See that you have our wages ready for Friday, and all the arrears,
too!" was David's parting shot as the two left the room with a defiant
slam of the door.
"That's like America!" Zlate remarked, with an attempt at a scornful
smile. "The meanest beggar girl will put on airs."
"Why _should_ one be ordered about like that? She is no servant, is
she?" Heyman murmured, addressing the corner of the room, and fell to
at his machine to smother his misery.
* * * * *
When his day's work was over, Heyman's heart failed him to face Beile,
and although he was panting to see her, he did not call at her house.
On the following morning he awoke with a headache, and this he used as
a pretext to himself for going to bed right after supper.
On the next evening he did betake himself to the Division Street
tenement house, where his sweetheart lived with her mother on the top
floor, but on coming in front of the building his courage melted away.
Added to his cowardly part in the memorable scene of two days before,
there now was his apparent indifference to the finisher, as manifested
by his two evenings' absence at such a critical time. He armed himself
with a fib to explain his conduct. But all in vain; he could not nerve
himself up to the terrible meeting. And so day after day passed, each
day increasing the barrier to the coveted visit.
At last, one evening, about a fortnight after the date of Mrs.
Lipman's fiasco, Heyman, forgetting to lose courage, as it were,
briskly mounted the four flights of stairs of the Division Street
tenement. As he was about to rap for admission he was greeted by a
sharp noise within of something, like a china plate or a bowl, being
dashed to pieces against the very door which he was going to open. The
noise was followed by merry voices: "Good luck! Good luck!" and there
was no mistaking its meaning. There was evidently an engagement party
inside. The Rabbi had just read the writ of betrothment, and it was
the mutual pledges of the contracting parties which were emphasized by
the "breaking of the plate."
Presently Heyman heard exclamations which dissipated his every doubt
as to the identity of the chief actors in the ceremony which had just
been completed within.
"Good luck to you, David! Good luck to you, Beile! May you live to a
happy old age together!" "Feige, why don't you take some cake? Don't
be so bashful!" "Here is luck!" came through the door, piercing a
muffled hum inside.
Heyman was dumbfounded, and with his head swimming, he made a hasty
retreat.
Ever since the tragi-comical incident at Lipman's shop, Heyman was not
present to Beile's thoughts except in the pitiful, cowering attitude
in which he had sat through that awful scene by his machine. She was
sure she hated him now. And yet her heart was, during the first few
days, constantly throbbing with the expectation of his visit; and as
she settled in her mind that even if he came she would have nothing to
do with him, her deeper consciousness seemed to say, with a smile of
conviction: "Oh no, you know you would not refuse him. You wouldn't
risk to remain an old maid, would you?" The idea of his jilting her
harrowed her day and night. Did he avail himself of her leaving
Lipman's shop to back out of the proposal which was naturally expected
of him, but which he never perhaps contemplated? Did he make game of
her?
When a week had elapsed without Heyman's putting in an appearance, she
determined to let her mother see a lawyer about breach-of-promise
proceedings. But an image, whose outlines had kept defining themselves
in her heart for several days past, overruled this decision. It was
the image of a pluckier fellow than Heyman--of one with whom there was
more protection in store for a wife, who inspired her with more
respect and confidence, and, what is more, who seemed on the point of
proposing to her.
It was the image of David. The young baster pursued his courtship with
a quiet persistency and a suppressed fervor which was not long in
winning the girl's heart. He found work for her and for himself in the
same shop; saw her home every evening; regularly came after supper to
take her out for a walk, in the course of which he would treat her to
candy and invite her to a coffee saloon,--a thing which Heyman had
never done;--kept her chuckling over his jokes; and at the end of ten
days, while sitting by her side in Central Park, one night, he said,
in reply to her remark that it was so dark that she knew not where she
was:--
"I'll tell you where you are--guess."
"Where?"
"Here, in my heart, and keeping me awake nights, too. Say, Beile, what
have I ever done to you to have my rest disturbed by you in that
manner?"
Her heart was beating like a sledge-hammer. She tried to laugh, as she
returned:--
"I don't know--You can never stop making fun, can you?"
"Fun? Do you want me to cry? I will, gladly, if I only know that you
will agree to have an engagement party," he rejoined, deeply blushing
under cover of the darkness.
"When?" she questioned, the word crossing her lips before she knew it.
"On my part, to-morrow."