I had invested considerable money in my new affairs, and releasing it at short notice would not have been an easy matter. But the great point was that I was literally intoxicated by my new interests, and the fact that they were intimately a.s.sociated with the atmosphere of Anna"s home had much--perhaps everything--to do with it
I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of my being. I knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie, for example, but that seemed to be a point in her favor rather than against her. "She is a good girl," I would muse, "mild, kindly, girlish. As for her "radical" notions, they really don"t matter much. I could easily knock them out of her. I should be happy with her.
Oh, how happy!" And, in spite of the fact that I thought her weak, the sight of her would fill me with awe.
One"s first love is said to be the most pa.s.sionate love of which one is capable. I do not think it is. I think my feeling for Anna was stronger, deeper, more tender, and more overpowering than either of my previous two infatuations. But then, of course, there is no way of measuring and comparing things of this kind. Anna was the first virgin I had ever loved.
Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling? "Oh, I must have her or I"ll fall to pieces," I would say to myself, yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic
My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love-maddened brain. How could Bender or Nodelman understand it? I found myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men who had simply been knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains. My money had come slowly and through work and worry. Theirs had dropped from the sky. So they could scarcely believe their senses that it was not all a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful amazement; they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves; and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real
One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him a few hundred dollars more.
One man in this party, who was said to be worth three-quarters of a million, had only recently worked as a common brick-layer. He is fixed in my memory by his struggles to live up to his new position, more especially by the efforts he would make to break himself of certain habits of speech. He always seemed to be on his guard lest some coa.r.s.e word or phrase should escape him, and when a foul expression eluded his vigilance he would give a start, as if he had broken something. There was often a wistful look in his eye, as if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of living were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often, as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it"s all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife"s cabbage soup."
Once he said: "Do you really like champagne? I don"t. You may say I am a common, ignorant fellow, but to me it doesn"t come up to the bread cider mother used to make. Honest." And he gave a chuckle
I knew a man who bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and a full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. He always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it gingerly, as if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he would carefully fold it again. The effect money had on this man was of quite another nature than it was in the case of the bricklayer.
It had made him boisterously arrogant, bl.u.s.teringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don"t have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I d.a.m.n please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice of exaggerating his profits and expenditures. There was an abundance of side-splitting comedy in the things I saw about me, but there was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a certain high-cla.s.s restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one of the tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, but whom I was at first unable to locate. Presently I recognized him. Three or four years before he had peddled apples among the employees of my cloak-shop. He had then been literally in tatters. That was why I was now slow to connect his former image with his present surroundings. I had heard of his windfall. He had had a job as watchman at houses in process of construction. While there he had noticed things, overheard conversations, put two and two together, and finally made fifty thousand dollars in a few months as a real-estate broker
We were furtively eying each other. Finally our eyes met. He greeted me with a respectful nod and then his face broke into a good-humored smile. He moved over to my table and told me his story in detail. He spoke in brief, pithy sentences, revealing a remarkable understanding of the world. In conclusion he said, with a sigh: "But what is the good of it all? The Upper One has blessed me with one hand, but He has punished me with the other."
It appeared that his wife had died, in Austria, just when she was about to come to join him and he was preparing to surprise her with what, to her, would have been a palatial apartment
"For six years I tried to bring her over, but could not manage it," he said, simply. "I barely made enough to feed one mouth. When good luck came at last, she died. She was a good woman, but I never gave her a day"s happiness. For eighteen years she shared my poverty. And now, that there is something better to share, she is gone."
CHAPTER VI
ONE of the many Jewish immigrants who were drawn into the whirl of real-estate speculation was Max Margolis, Dora"s husband. I had heard his name in connection with some deals, and one afternoon in February we found ourselves side by side in a crowd of other "boomers." The scene was the corner of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks from Tevkin"s residence, a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname "The Curb" by which that corner was getting to be known
I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on the back
"h.e.l.lo, Levinsky! h.e.l.lo!"
"Margolis!"
His face had the florid hue of worn, nervous, middle age. "I heard you were buying. Is it true? Well, how goes it, great man?"
"How have you been?"
"Can"t kick. Of course, compared to a big fellow like David Levinsky, I am a fly."
I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the quieter side of the Avenue
"Glad to see you, upon my word," he said. "Well, let bygones by bygones.
It"s about time we forgot it all."
"There is nothing to forget."
"Honest?"
"Honest! Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your brain?"
"Why, no. Not at all. May I not live till to-morrow if it does. You are not angry at me, are you? Come, now, say that you are not."
I smiled and shrugged my shoulders
"Well, shake hands, then."
We did and he offered to sell me a "parcel." As I did not care for it, he went on to talk of the real-estate market in general. There was a restaurant on that side of the block--The Curb Cafe we used to call it--so we went in, ordered something, and he continued to talk. He was plainly striving to sound me, in the hope of "hanging on" to some of my deals. Of a sudden he said: "Say, you must think I"m still jealous? May I not live till to-morrow if I am." And to prove that he was not he added: "Come, Levinsky, come up to the house and let"s be friends again, as we used to be. I have always wished you well." He gave me his address. "Will you come?"
"Some day."
"You aren"t still angry at Dora, are you?"
"Why, no. But then she may be still angry at me," I said, indifferently
"Nonsense. Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call on small people like us? Come, forget that you are a great capitalist and let us all spend an evening together as we used to." Was he ready to suppress his jealousy for the prospect of getting under my financial wing? The answer to this question came to me through a most unexpected channel
The next morning, when I came to my Fifth Avenue office (it was some eighty blocks--about four miles--downtown from "The Curb" section of Fifth Avenue), I found Dora waiting for me. I recognized her the moment I entered the waiting-room on my office floor. Her hair was almost white and she had grown rather fleshy, but her face had not changed. She wore a large, becoming hat and was quite neatly dressed generally
The blood surged to my face. Her presence was a bewildering surprise to me
There were three other people in the room and I had to be on my guard
"How are you?" I said, rushing over to her
She stood up and we shook hands. I took her into my private office through my private corridor.
"Dora! Well, well!" I murmured in a delirium of embarra.s.sment
"I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to call at the house," she said, gravely, looking me full in the face. "It would be awful if you did. He is out of his mind. He is--"
"Wait a minute, Dora," I interrupted her. "There"ll be plenty of time to talk of that. First tell me something about yourself. How have you been? How are the children?" She was like an old song that had once held me under its sway, but which now appealed to me as a memory only. I was conscious of my consuming pa.s.sion for Anna. Dora interested and annoyed me at once
I treated her as a dear old friend. She, however, persisted in wearing a mask of politeness, as if she had come strictly on business and there had never been any other relations between us
"Everybody is all right, thank you," she answered
"Is Lucy married?"
"Oh, she has a beautiful little girl of two years. But I do want to tell you about Margolis. The man is simply crazy, and I want to warn you not to take him seriously. Above all, don"t let him take you up to the house. Not for anything in the world. That"s what brings me here this morning."
"Why? What"s the trouble?"