"But suppose she does want it?"
"How can I suppose such nonsense?" "Well, she might just want to see how much you love her."
"A nice test, that."
"Oh, well, she might just get that kind of notion. Women are liable to get any kind of notion, don"t you know."
"Well, if Madame Klesmer got that kind of notion I should tell her to walk to Philadelphia herself."
"Then you don"t love her."
"I love her as much as you do, but if she took it into her head to make a fool of me I should send her to the eighty devils."
He winced. "And you call that love, don"t you?" he said, with a sneer in the corner of his pretty mouth. "As for me, I should walk to Boston, if she wanted me to."
"Even if she did not promise to let you kiss her?"
"Even if she did not."
"And if she did?"
"I should walk to Chicago."
"And if she promised to be your mistress?"
"Oh, what"s the use talking that way?" he protested, blushing.
"Aren"t you shy! A regular bride-to-be, I declare." "Stop!" he said, coloring once again.
It dawned upon me that he was probably chaste, and, searching his face with a mocking look, I said: "I bet you you are still innocent."
"Leave me alone, please," he retorted, softly
"I have hit it, then," I importuned him, with a great sense of my own superiority.
"Do let me alone, will you?"
"I just want you to tell me whether you are innocent or not."
"It"s none of your business."
"Of course you are."
"And if I am? Is it a disgrace?" "Who says it is?"
I desisted. He became more attractive than ever to me
Nevertheless, I made repeated attempts to deprave him. His chast.i.ty bothered me. The idea of breaking it down became an irresistible temptation. I would ridicule him for a sissy, appeal to him in the name of his health, beg him as one does for a personal favor, all in vain
He spoke better English than I, with more ease, and in that pretty ba.s.so of his which I envied. He had never read d.i.c.kens or any other English author, but he was familiar with some subjects to which I was a stranger. He was well grounded in arithmetic, knew some geography, and now with a view of qualifying for the study of medicine, he was preparing, with the aid of a private teacher, for the Regents" examination in algebra, geometry, English composition, American and English history. I thought he did not study "deeply" enough, that he took more real interest in his collars and neckties, the shine of his shoes, or the hang of his trousers than he did in his algebra or history
By his cleanliness and tidiness he reminded me of Naphtali, which, indeed, had something to do with my attachment for him. My relations toward him echoed with the feelings I used to have for the reticent, omniscient boy of Abner"s Court, and with the hoa.r.s.e, studious young Talmudist with whom I would "famish in company." He had neither Naphtali"s brains nor his individuality, yet I looked up to him and was somewhat under his influence.
I adopted many of the English phrases he was in the habit of using and tried to imitate his way of dressing. As a consequence, he would sometimes a.s.sume a patronizing tone with me, addressing me with a good-natured sneer which I liked in spite of myself
We made a compact to speak nothing but English, and, to a considerable extent, we kept it
CHAPTER V
A FEW weeks of employment were succeeded by another period of enforced idleness. I took up arithmetic, but reading was still a great pa.s.sion with me. My mornings and forenoons during that slack season were mostly spent over d.i.c.kens or Thackeray
I now lived in a misshapen attic room which I rented of an Irish family in what was then a Gentile neighborhood. I had chosen that street for the English I had expected to hear around me. I had lived more than two months in that attic, and almost the only English I heard from my neighbors were the few words my landlady would say to me when I paid her my weekly rent.
Yet, somehow, the place seemed helpful to me, as though its very atmosphere exuded a feeling for the language I was so eager to master. I made all sorts of advances to the Irish family, all sorts of efforts to get into social relations with them, all to no purpose.
Finally, one evening I had a real conversation with one of my landlady"s sons. My window gave me trouble and he came up to put it in working order for me. We talked of his work and of mine.
I told him of my plans about going to college. He was interested and I thought him charmingly courteous and sociable. He remained about an hour and a half in my room. When he had departed I was in high spirits. I seemed to feel the progress my English had made in that hour and a half
My bed was so placed that by lying p.r.o.ne, diagonally across it, my head toward the window and my feet suspended in the air, I would get excellent daylight. So this became my favorite posture when I read in the daytime.
Thus, lying on my stomach, with a novel under my eyes and the dictionary by my side, I would devour scores of pages. In a few weeks, often reading literally day and night, I read through Nicholas Nickleby and Vanity Fair.
Thackeray"s masterpiece did not strike me as being in the same cla.s.s with anything by d.i.c.kens. It seemed to me that anybody in command of bookish English ought to be able to turn out a work like Vanity Fair, where men and things were so simple and so natural that they impressed me like people and things I had known. Indeed, I had a lurking feeling that I, too, could do it, after a while at least. On the other hand, Nicholas Nickleby and Dombey and Son were so full of extraordinary characters, unexpected wit, outbursts of beautiful rhetoric, and other wonderful things, that their author appealed to me as something more than a human being. And yet deep down in my heart I enjoyed Thackeray more than I did d.i.c.kens, It was at the East Side branch of the Young Men"s Hebrew a.s.sociation that I obtained my books. It was a sort of university settlement in which educated men and women from up-town acted as "workers." The advice these would give me as to my reading, their kindly manner, their native English, and, last but not least, the flattering way in which they would speak of my intellectual aspirations, led me to spend many an hour in the place. The great thing was to hear these American-born people speak their native tongue and to have them hear me speak it. It was the same as in the case of the chat I had with the son of my Irish landlady. Every time I had occasion to spend five or ten minutes in their company I would seem to be conscious of a perceptible improvement in my English
Some days I would be so carried away by my reading that I never opened my arithmetic. At other times I would drift into an arithmetical mood and sit up all night doing problems
When I happened to be in raptures over some book I would pester Jake with lengthy accounts of it, dwelling on the chapters I had read last and trying to force my exaltation upon him. As a rule, he was bored, but sometimes he would become interested in the plot or in some romantic scene.
One evening, as we were discussing love in general, I said: "Love is the greatest thing in the world."
"Sure it is," he answered. "But if you love and are not loved in return it is nothing but agony."
"Even then it is sweet," I rejoined, reflectively, the image of Matilda before me.
"How can pain be sweet?"
"But it can."
"If you were really in love with Madame Klesmer you wouldn"t think so
"I love her as much as you do."
"You are always saying you do, but you don"t."
"Yes, I do." And suddenly lapsing into a confidential tone, I questioned him: "By the way, Jake, is this the first time you have ever been in love?"
"Why?"
"I just want to know. Is it?"