The Rise of David Levinsky Part 42

"Read!" And once more she hit her.

My heart went out to the child, but I dared not intercede again

Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded, sobbingly

I left the room in disgust. The scene preyed upon my mind all that afternoon. I remained in my room until supper-time. Then I found Dora taciturn and downcast and I noticed that she treated Lucy with exceptional, though undemonstrative, tenderness

"Must have given her a licking," Max explained to me, with a wink

I kept my counsel

She beat her quite often, sometimes violently, each scene of this kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her part. Her devotion to her children was above that of the average mother.

Lucy had been going to school for over two years, yet she missed her every morning as though she were away to another city; and when the little girl came back, Dora's face would brighten, as if a flood of new suns.h.i.+ne had burst into the house.

On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and daughter over the result of a spelling-match between them which I had umpired and which Lucy had won. Dora took her defeat so hard that she was dejected all that evening

I have said that despite her pa.s.sionate devotion to Lucy she was jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the school education she was receiving, but also of her American birth

She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the "real American syle," and the realization of her helplessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair. She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of table manners, and whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise, and make Lucy practise, with amusing pomp and circ.u.mstance.

"Don't reach out for the herring, Lucy!" she would say, sternly.

"How many times must I tell you about it? What do you say?"

"Pa.s.s me the herring, mamma, please." "Not 'mamma.'"

"Pa.s.s me the herring, mother, please."

The herring is pa.s.sed with what Dora regards as a lady-like gesture

"Thank you, ma'am," says Lucy

"There is another way," Dora might add in a case of this kind.

"Instead of saying, 'Pa.s.s me the herring or the b.u.t.ter,' you can say--What is it, Lucy?"

"May I trouble you for the herring, mother?"

I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and she did.

Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly, or with a burst of merriment, or with a scandalized air, as if she had caught me in the act of committing a felony. This was her revenge for my general intellectual superiority, which she could not help admitting and envying

"You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you," Max would say to me.

Sometimes, when I misp.r.o.nounced an English word with which she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English phrase in my Talmudic singsong, she would mock me gloatingly. On one such occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by pointing out that she had said "nice" where "nicely" was in order

"What do you mean?" she asked, perplexedly

My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth.

It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school, at least, as you did. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will be educated for both of us, for herself and for her poor mamma. If my mother had understood as much as I do it would have been different." She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resumed: "But I can't complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of a woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not America.

No, I can't complain of my parents. My father was a poor man, but ask Max or some of our fellow-townspeople and they will tell you what a fine name he had."

She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman of her cla.s.s, but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her. Moreover, the tireless a.s.siduity and precision which she brought to her housework and, above all, the grim pa.s.sion of her intellectual struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that inspired me with something like reverence.

Living in that atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me

Attempting a lark with her, as I had done with Mrs. Dienstog and Mrs.

Levinsky, my first two landladies in New York, was out of the question.

Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not prevent my eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious complexion, her clear, honest voice, and all else that made me feel both happy and forlorn in her company. Nor would she, aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of s.e.x across the barrier of decorum.

These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which I should have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade. When away from the magnetic force of her presence I would attend to business with unabated intensity.

Her image visited my brain often, but it did not disturb me. Rather, it was the image of some customer or creditor or of some new style of jacket or cloak that would interfere with my peace of mind. My brain was full of prices, bills, notes, checks, fabrics, color effects, "lines." Not infrequently, while walking in the street or sitting in a street-car, I would catch myself describing some of those garment lines in the air.

And yet, through all these preoccupations I seemed to be constantly aware that something unusual had happened to me, giving a novel tinge to my being; that I was a changed man

CHAPTER VIII

MAX saw nothing. His wife was a very womanly woman with a splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly complexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never seemed to feel anything like apprehension about us. This man who plumed himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually had a great deal of insight in these matters, this man, I say, was absolutely blind to his wife's power over me. He suspected every man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less often than that other joke of his--about my being his and Dora's son-in-law

"Look out, mother-in-law," he would say to her. "If you don't treat your son-in-law right you'll lose him."

I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, while she stood on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant window-shade, he drew my attention to her efforts admiringly

"Look at her!" he said under his breath. "Another woman would make her husband do it. Not she. I can't kick. She is not a lazy slob, is she?"

"Certainly not," I a.s.serted

We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, fit the pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. It was in good working order now

"No, she is not a slob," he repeated, exultantly. "And she is not a gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own business."

At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. "Move along!" he said, gaily. "Don't disturb us. I am telling Levinsky what a bad girl you are. Run along."

She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried the first germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away

"No, she is no slob, thank G.o.d," he resumed. He boasted of her tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned to read and spell, with little Lucy for her teacher. He depicted the tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school. "Once she makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the world went under. That's the kind of woman she is. And she is no mean, foxy thing, either. When she says something you may be sure she means it, if I do say so. You ought to know her by this time. Have you ever heard her say things that are not so? Or have you heard her talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will do? Have you, now? Just tell me," he pressed me.

"Of course I have not," I answered, awkwardly. "There are not many women like her."

"I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to her hubby, I don't know who is," he added, sheepishly.

CHAPTER IX