"Yes, it"s mine, from my mother," she stammered, brokenly. "The last memory from Russia. How many winters it took my mother to pick together the feathers. She began it when I was yet a little baby in the cradle--and--" She covered her face with her shawl and sobbed.
"Any one sick? Why do you got to p.a.w.n it?"
She raised her tear-stained face and mutely looked at him. How could she explain and how could he possibly understand her sudden savage desire for clothes?
Zaretsky, feeling that he had been clumsy and tactless, hastened to add, "Nu--I"ll give you--a--a--a--ten dollars," he finished with a motion of his hand, as if driving from him the onrush of generosity that seized him.
"Oi, mister!" cried Shenah Pessah, as the man handed her the bill. "You"re saving me my life! G.o.d will pay you for this goodness." And crumpling the money in her hand, she hurried back home elated.
The following evening, as soon as her work was over, Shenah Pessah scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of her innermost self. At last she espied a shining straw with cherries so red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, "Bite me!" That was the hat she bought.
The magic of those cherries on her hat brought back to her the green fields and orchards of her native Russia. Yes, a green dress was what she craved. And she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie.
That night, as she put on her beloved colors, she vainly tried to see herself from head to foot, but the broken bit of a mirror that she owned could only show her glorious parts of her. Her clothes seemed to enfold her in flames of desire leaping upon desire. "Only to be beautiful! Only to be beautiful!" she murmured breathlessly. "Not for myself, but only for him."
Time stood still for Shenah Pessah as she counted the days, the hours, and the minutes for the arrival of John Barnes. At last, through her bas.e.m.e.nt window, she saw him walk up the front steps. She longed to go over to him and fling herself at his feet and cry out to him with what hunger of heart she awaited his coming. But the very intensity of her longing left her faint and dumb.
He pa.s.sed to his room. Later, she saw him walk out without even stopping to look at her. The next day and the day after, she watched him from her hidden corner pa.s.s in and out of the house, but still he did not come to her.
Oh, how sweet it was to suffer the very hurt of his oblivion of her! She gloried in his great height that made him so utterly unaware of her existence. It was enough for her worshiping eyes just to glimpse him from afar. What was she to him? Could she expect him to greet the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked. She was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it.
For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things and waited. Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn"t the miracle happen again? This evening, however, she was so spent with the hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her adornments.
All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her window-pane. "How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?"
asked John Barnes.
"Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks--" she stammered in confusion.
"Well, to-morrow night, then, at seven. Thank you." He hurried out embarra.s.sed by the grateful look that shone to him out of her eyes. The gaze haunted him and hurt him. It was the beseeching look of a homeless dog, begging to be noticed. "Poor little immigrant," he thought, "how lonely she must be!"
"So he didn"t forget," rejoiced Shenah Pessah. "How only the sound from his voice opens the sky in my heart! How the deadness and emptiness in me flames up into life! Ach! The sun is again beginning to shine!"
An hour before the appointed time, Shenah Pessah dressed herself in all her finery for John Barnes. She swung open the door and stood in readiness watching the little clock on the mantel-shelf. The ticking thing seemed to throb with the unutterable hopes compressed in her heart, all the mute years of her stifled life. Each little thud of time sang a wild song of released joy--the joy of his coming nearer.
For the tenth time Shenah Pessah went over in her mind what she would say to him when he"d come.
"It was so kind from you to take from your dear time--to--"
"No--that sounds not good. I"ll begin like this--Mr. Barnes! I can"t give it out in words your kindness, to stop from your high thoughts to--to--"
"No--no! Oi weh! G.o.d from the world! Why should it be so hard for me to say to him what I mean? Why shouldn"t I be able to say to him plain out--Mr. Barnes! You are an angel from the sky! You are saving me my life to let me only give a look on you! I"m happier than a bird in the air when I think only that such goodness like you--"
The sudden ring of the bell shattered all her carefully rehea.r.s.ed phrases and she met his greeting in a flutter of confusion.
"My! Haven"t you blossomed out since last night!" exclaimed Mr. Barnes, startled by Shenah Pessah"s sudden display of color.
"Yes," she flushed, raising to him her radiant face. "I"m through for always with old women"s shawls. This is my first American dress-up."
"Splendid! So you want to be an American! The next step will be to take up some work that will bring you in touch with American people."
"Yes. You"ll help me? Yes?" Her eyes sought his with an appeal of unquestioning reliance.
"Have you ever thought what kind of work you would like to take up?" he asked, when they got out into the street.
"No--I want only to get away from the bas.e.m.e.nt. I"m crazy for people."
"Would you like to learn a trade in a factory?"
"Anything--anything! I"m burning to learn. Give me only an advice. What?"
"What can you do best with your hands?"
"With the hands the best? It"s all the same what I do with the hands. Think you not maybe now, I could begin already something with the head? Yes?"
"We"ll soon talk this over together, after you have read a book that will tell you how to find out what you are best fitted for."
When they entered the library, Shenah Pessah halted in awe. "What a stillness full from thinking! So beautiful, it comes on me like music!"
"Yes. This is quite a place," he acquiesced, seeing again the public library in a new light through her eyes. "Some of the best minds have worked to give us just this."
"How the book-ladies look so quiet like the things."
"Yes," he replied, with a tell-tale glance at her. "I too like to see a woman"s face above her clothes."
The approach of the librarian cut off further comment. As Mr. Barnes filled out the application card, Shenah Pessah noted the librarian"s simple attire. "What means he a woman"s face above her clothes?"
she wondered. And the first shadow of a doubt crossed her mind as to whether her dearly bought apparel was pleasing to his eyes. In the few brief words that pa.s.sed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian, Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that she was different. Her first contact with him in a well-lighted room made her aware that "there were other things to the person besides the dress-up." She had noticed their well-kept hands on the desk and she became aware that her own were calloused and rough. That is why she felt her dirty finger-nails curl in awkwardly to hide themselves as she held the pen to sign her name.
When they were out in the street again, he turned to her and said, "If you don"t mind, I"d prefer to walk back. The night is so fine and I"ve been in the stuffy office all day."
"I don"t mind"--the words echoed within her. If he only knew how above all else she wanted this walk.
"It was grand in there, but the electric lights are like so many eyes looking you over. In the street it is easier for me. The dark covers you up so good."
He laughed, refreshed by her unconscious self-revelation.
"As long as you feel in your element let"s walk on to the pier."
"Like for a holiday, it feels itself in me," she bubbled, as he took her arm in crossing the street. "Now see I America for the first time!"
It was all so wonderful to Barnes that in the dirt and noise of the overcrowded ghetto, this erstwhile drudge could be transfigured into such a vibrant creature of joy. Even her clothes that had seemed so bold and garish awhile ago, were now inexplicably in keeping with the carnival spirit that he felt steal over him.
As they neared the pier, he reflected strangely upon the fact that out of the thousands of needy, immigrant girls whom he might have befriended, this eager young being at his side was ordained by some peculiar providence to come under his personal protection.
"How long did you say you have been in this country, Shenah Pessah?"
"How long?" She echoed his words as though waking from a dream. "It"s two years already. But that didn"t count life. From now on I live."
"And you mean to tell me that in all this time, no one has taken you by the hand and shown you the ways of our country? The pity of it!"