"Nonsense. If you know how to handle her, she will realize that she must keep her mouth shut until after she gets the money back."
"Oh, what"s the use?" I said, impatiently. "I must get the cash at once, or all is lost."
Again he spoke of money-lenders. He went into details about one of them and offered to ascertain his address for me. He evidently felt awkward about his part in the matter and eager to atone for it in some way
"Why should a usurer trust me?" I said, rising to go.
"Wait. What"s your hurry? If that money-lender hears your story, he may trust you. He is a peculiar fellow, don"t you know. When he takes a fancy to a man he is willing to take a chance on him. Of course, the interest would be rather high." He paused abruptly, wrinkled his forehead with an effect of pondering some new scheme, and said: "Wait. I think I have a better plan.
I"ll see if I can"t get you the money without a money-lender." With this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his coat and hat. "I"ll be back in less than half an hour," he said. "Dvorah dear, give Levinsky some more tea, will you? I am going out for a few minutes. Don"t let him be downhearted." Then, shaking a finger of warning at me, he said, playfully, "Only take care that you don"t fall in love with her!" And he was gone
"It"s all play-acting," I thought. "He just wants me to believe he is trying to do something for me." But, of course, I was not altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken and that he was making a sincere effort to raise a loan for me
Mrs. Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her husband departed.
Presently she came back, carrying a gla.s.s of tea on a saucer. She placed it before me with an embarra.s.sed side-glance, brought some cookies, and seated herself at the far end of the table. I uttered some complimentary trivialities about the children
When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is neither his wife nor a close relative, both feel awkward. It is as though they heard a whisper, "There is n.o.body to watch the two of you."
Still, confused as I was, I was fully aware of her tempting complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely interesting.
Upon the whole, however, I do not think she made any appeal to me save by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and that we were alone. I was tense with the consciousness of that fact, and everything about her disturbed me. She wore a navy-blue summer wrapper and I noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her neck. I remarked to myself that she looked younger than her husband, that she must be about twenty-eight or thirty, perhaps.
My glances apparently caused her painful embarra.s.sment. Finally she got up again, making a pretense of bustling about the room. It seemed to me that when she was on her feet she looked younger than when she was seated
I asked the boy his name, and he answered in lugubrious, but distinct, accents: "Daniel Margolis."
"He speaks like a grown person," I said
"She used to speak like that, too, when she was of his age," my hostess replied, with a glance in the direction of her daughter
"Did you?" I said to Lucy
The little girl grinned coyly
"Why don"t you answer the gentleman"s question?" her mother rebuked her, in English. "It"s Mr. Levinsky, a friend of papa"s."
Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me. "Don"t you like me at all? Not even a little bit?" I pleaded
She soon unbent and took to plying me with questions. Where did I live? Was I a "customer peddler "like her papa? How long had I been in America? (A question which a child of the East Side hears as often as it does queries about the weather.) "Can you spell?"
"No," I answered. "Not at all?"
"Not at all!"
"Shame! But my papa can"t spell, neither."
"Shut up, you bad girl you!" her mother broke in with a laugh.
"Vere you lea"n such nasty things? By your mamma? The gentleman will think by your mamma."
She delivered her a little lecture in English, taking pains to produce the "th" and the American "r," though her "w"s" were "v"s."
She urged me not to let the tea get cold. As I took hold of the tall, thin, cylindrical gla.s.s I noted that it was scrupulously clean and that its contents had a good clear color. I threw a glance around the room and I saw that it was well kept and tidy
Mrs. Margolis took a seat again. Lucy, with part of a cooky in her mouth, stepped over to her and seated herself on her lap, throwing her arm around her. She struck me as the very image of her mother. Presently, however, I discovered that she resembled her father quite as closely. It seemed as though the one likeness lay on the surface of her face, while the other loomed up from underneath, as the reflection of a face does from under the surface of water. Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my side. I put her on my lap. She would not let me pat her, but she did not mind sitting on my knees.
"Are you a good speller?" I asked
"I c"n spell all the words we get at school," she answered, sagely
"How do you spell "colonel"?"
"We never got it at school. But you can"t spell it, either."
"How do you know I can"t? Maybe I can. Well, let us take an easier word. How do you spell "because"?"
She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. I gave them other words, addressing myself to both, and they made a race of it, each trying to head off or outshout the other. At first Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned gaiety, but her face soon set into a grave look and glowed with excitement
At last I asked them to spell "coefficient."
"We never got it at school," Lucy demurred
"I don"t know what it means," said Mrs. Margolis, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"It means something in mathematics, in high figuring," I explained in Yiddish
Mrs. Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more
I asked Lucy to try me in spelling. She did and I acquitted myself so well that she exclaimed: "Oh, you liar you! Why did you say you didn"t know how to spell?"
Once more her mother took her to task for her manners
"Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman? Shame! Vere you lea"n up to be such a pig? Not by your mamma!"
When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that I could spell "awful good." To which he replied in Yiddish that he knew I was a smart fellow, that I could read and write "everything," and that I had studied to go to college and "to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything."
His wife looked me over with bashful side-glances. "Really?" she said.
Max told me a lame story about his errand and promised to let me know the "final result." It was clearer than ever to me that he was making a fool of me.
CHAPTER III
WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it, but it is almost sure to rea.s.sert itself later on. I scarcely ever think of it during the first two, three, or four days, but then, all of a sudden, it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession, humming itself and nagging me like a living thing.
This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs.
Margolis. During the first two days after I left her house I never gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black, serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white, strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere blur in my memory
I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I was so low-spirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate or of the streets through which I pa.s.sed, yet her manner of darting embarra.s.sed glances out of the corner of her eye and her complexion were never absent from my mind. I felt like seeing her once more. However, the prospect of calling at her house was now anything but alluring. I could almost see the annoyed air with which her husband would receive me