f.a.n.n.y"s reading, which was only an occasional performance, was confined to the cheapest stories published. Even the popular novels of the day, the "best sellers," seemed to be beyond her depth. Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her old-fashioned mother, whose literary attainments were restricted to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her father.
But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting. "She is expected to be a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper," I reflected, "and that she will know how to be. Everything else is nonsense. I don"t want to discuss Spencer with her, do I?"
Kaplan quoted the opening words of a pa.s.sage in the Talmud bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness. I took it up, finishing the pa.s.sage for him
"See?" he said to his wife. "I have told you he remembers his Talmud pretty well, haven"t I?"
"When a man has a good head he has a good head," she returned, radiantly
Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four hours every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic academy, or "yeshivah." There were two such "yeshivahs" on the East Side, and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in the Ghetto. I had never met such boys before. That an American school-boy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not take Rubie"s holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table I banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. He answered my question, and at his father"s command he ran up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge bookcases filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of holy lore, and came back with one containing the page he had named
"Find it and let David see what you can do," his father said
Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old. He even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to do. To complete the picture, his mother, watching him, beamed as my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the Preacher"s Synagogue or at home in our wretched bas.e.m.e.nt. I was deeply affected
"He"s all right!" I said
"He"s a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as much appet.i.te for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah interceded. "Doesn"t he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has an hour"s rest."
"There you have it! I didn"t speak respectfully enough of her "only son." I beg your pardon, Malkah," Mr. Kaplan said, facetiously
The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays included in the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months later. Mrs. Kaplan said something about her plans concerning the event. f.a.n.n.y objected.
Her mother insisted, and it looked like an altercation, when the head of the family called them to order
"And where are you going for your honeymoon, f.a.n.n.y?" asked Mary
"That"s none of your business," her sister retorted
"She"s stuck up because she"s going to be married," Mary jeered
"Shut your mouth," her father growled
"Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?" said I. "That is, if it were possible--if Russia didn"t have that accursed government of hers.
We should take a trip to Antomir." "Wouldn"t that be lovely!" said f.a.n.n.y. "We would stop in Paris, wouldn"t we?"
f.a.n.n.y and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet I was thrilled. I gazed at f.a.n.n.y, trying to picture her as the mother of my first child. "If it"s a girl she"ll be named for mother, of course," I mused. I reflected with mortification that my mother"s name could not be left in its original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for the moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me
My att.i.tude toward f.a.n.n.y and our prospective marriage was primitive enough, and yet our engagement had an enn.o.bling effect on me. I was in a lofty mood.
My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense.
While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning of the word, I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based on a sense of public duty. The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir seemed to represent not a creed, but unselfishness. I donated generously to it. Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side hospital of which Kaplan was a member, and to other inst.i.tutions.
The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir, and a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short sketch of my life. I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali, before leaving Antomir, to send him a "ship ticket." I had thought of it many times before, but I had never even sought to discover his whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a firm resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, to bring him over and liberally provide for his future
My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life. It appealed to my imagination as a new birth, like my coming to America. I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss
Three or four months later, however, something happened that played havoc with that feeling
BOOK XII
MISS TEVKIN
CHAPTER I
ON a Sat.u.r.day morning in August I took a train for Tannersville, Catskill Mountains, where the Kaplan family had a cottage. I was to stay with them over Sunday. I had been expected to be there the day before, but had been detained, August being part of our busiest season. While in the smoking-car it came over me that from Kaplan"s point of view my journey was a flagrant violation of the Sabbath and that it was sure to make things awkward.
Whether my riding on Sat.u.r.day would actually offend his religious sensibilities or not (for in America one gets used to seeing such sins committed even by the faithful), it was certain to offend his sense of the respect I owed him. And so, to avoid a sullen reception I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the following day
The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous results
It was lunch-time when I alighted from the train, amid a hubbub of gay voices. Women and children were greeting their husbands and fathers who had come from the city to join them for the week-end.
I had never been to the mountains before, nor practically ever taken a day"s vacation. It was so full of ozone, so full of health-giving balm, it was almost overpowering. I was inhaling it in deep, intoxicating gulps. It gave me a pleasure so keen it seemed to verge on pain. It was so unlike the air I had left in the sweltering city that the place seemed to belong to another planet
I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House. There were several other hotels or boarding-houses in the village, and all of them except one were occupied by our people, the Rigi Kulm being the largest and most expensive hostelry in the neighborhood. lt was crowded, and I had to content myself with sleeping-accommodations in one of the near-by cottages, in which the hotel-keeper hired rooms for his overflow business, taking my meals in the hotel
The Rigi Kulm stood at the end of the village and my cottage was across the main country road from it. Both were on high ground.
Viewed from the veranda of the hotel, the village lay to the right and the open country--a fascinating landscape of meadowland, timbered hills, and a brook that lost itself in a grove--to the left.
The mountains rose in two ranges, one in front of the hotel and one in the rear
The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up of families of cloak-manufacturers, shirt-manufacturers, ladies"-waist-manufacturers, cigar-manufacturers, clothiers, furriers, jewelers, leather-goods men, real-estate men, physicians, dentists, lawyers--in most cases people who had blossomed out into nabobs in the course of the last few years. The crowd was ablaze with diamonds, painted cheeks, and bright-colored silks. It was a babel of blatant self-consciousness, a miniature of the parvenu smugness that had spread like wild-fire over the country after a period of need and low spirits.
In addition to families who were there for the whole season--that is, from the Fourth of July to the first Monday in October--the hotel contained a considerable number of single young people, of both s.e.xes--salesmen, stenographers, bookkeepers, librarians--who came for a fortnight"s vacation.
These were known as "two-weekers." They occupied tiny rooms, usually two girls or two men in a room. Each of these girls had a large supply of dresses and shirt-waists of the latest style, and altogether the two weeks" vacation ate up, in many cases, the savings of months
To be sure, the "two-weekers" of the gentle s.e.x were not the only marriageable young women in the place. They had a number of heiresses to compete with
I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries for my name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like the Rigi Kulm House. Moreover, several of the people I found there were my personal acquaintances. One of these was Nodelman"s cousin, Mrs. Kalch, or Auntie Yetta, the gaunt, childless woman of the solemn countenance and the gay disposition, of the huge gold teeth, and the fingers heavily laden with diamonds. I had not seen her for months.
As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his great dining-room she rushed out to me, her teeth aglitter with hospitality, and made me take a seat at a table which she shared with her husband, the moving-van man, and two middle-aged women. I could see that she had not heard of my engagement, and to avoid awkward interrogations concerning the whereabouts of my fiancee I omitted to announce it
"I know what you have come here for," she said, archly. "You can"t fool Auntie Yetta. But you have come to the right place. I can tell you that a larger a.s.sortment of beautiful young ladies you never saw, Mr. Levinsky. And they"re educated, too. If you don"t find your predestined one here you"ll never find her. What do you say, Mr. Rivesman?" she addressed the proprietor of the hotel, who stood by and whom I had known for many years
"I agree with you thoroughly, Mrs. Kalch," he answered, smilingly.
"But Mr.
Levinsky tells me he can stay only one day with us."
"Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place like this.
Besides, you just tell him that you have a lot of fine, educated young ladies, Mr. Rivesman. He is an educated gentleman, Mr.
Levinsky is, and if he knows the kind of boarders you have he"ll stay longer." "I know Mr. Levinsky is an educated man,"
Rivesman answered. "As for our boarders, they"re all fine--superfine."
"So you"ve got to find your predestined one here," she resumed, turning to me again. "Otherwise you can"t leave this place. See?"