I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security than the bare story or my venture. I made other efforts to raise the money. I approached several people, including the proprietor of the little music-store. All to no purpose
One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises", when I came to my "factory" I found under the door a closed envelope bearing the name of that Western firm. It contained a typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill. Also a circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty of capital, and naming as one of its new directors a man who, from the tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the financial world
My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale
I rushed over to Nodelman"s office, but found him gone for the day. The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with my partner. But Chaikin never came home before 7. So I first dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Max"s face and, incidentally, to see his wife
I found him playing with his fat boy
"h.e.l.lo, Max! I have good news!" I shouted, excitedly. Which actually meant: "Don"t be uneasy, Max. I am not going to ask you for a loan again."
When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: "Now you are all right. Why, something told me all along that you would get it." His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She returned my "Good evening" with free and easy amiability, without any shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. I felt annoyed. I was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good look at her
"Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust you for the four hundred dollars," Max said. "May I have four hundred days of distress if I have a cent. What few dollars I do have is buried in the business. So help me, G.o.d! Let a few of my customers stop paying and I would have to go begging. It"s the real truth I am telling you. Honest."
"I know, I know," I said, awkwardly. "Well, it was as if the check had dropped from heaven. Thank G.o.d! Now I can begin to do things."
I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with a touch of bl.u.s.ter.
And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine interest than he had done on the previous occasion. We discussed my plans and my prospects.
At one point, when I referred to the Western check, he asked to see it again, just for curiosity"s sake, and as I watched him look it over I could almost see the change that it was producing in his att.i.tude toward me. I do not know to what extent he had previously believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable ragam.u.f.fin."
Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my great check and she returned some trivialities. As we thus chatted, I made a mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh
He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. As though to make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his door, Max overwhelmed me with attention
We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old Ghetto way, with cream, bits of boiled egg, cuc.u.mber, and scallions
"How do you like it?" he asked
"Delicious! And the genuine article, too."
""The genuine article"!" he mocked me. "What"s the use praising it when you eat it like a bird? What"s the matter with you? Are you bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep quiet, Dvorah? Why don"t you tell him to eat like a man and not like a bird?"
"Maybe he doesn"t care for my cooking," she jested, demurely
"Why, why," I replied. "The sorrel soup is fit for a king."
"You mean for a president," Max corrected me. "We are in America, not in Europe."
"How do you know the President of the United States would care for a plate of cold sorrel soup?"
"And how do you know a king would?" "If you care for it, I am satisfied," the hostess said to me
"I certainly do. I haven"t eaten anything like it since I left home," I replied
"Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will soon be a millionaire, don"t you know. Then he won"t bother about calling on poor people like us."
"But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a king has many millions," I rejoined. "I shall always be glad to come, provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection." "You remember their names, don"t you?" Mrs. Margolis said, beamingly. "You certainly have a good memory."
"Who else should have one?" her husband chimed in. "I have told you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. Lucy, did you hear what uncle said? If you let him in he will come to see us even when he is worth a million. What do you say? Will you let him in?"
Lucy grinned childishly
Max did most of the talking. He entertained me with stories of some curious weddings which he said had recently been celebrated in his dance-halls, and, as usual, it was not easy to draw a line of demarkation between fact and fiction. Of one bridegroom, who had agreed to the marriage under threats of violence from the girl"s father, he said: "You should have seen the fellow! He looked like a man going to the electric chair. They were afraid he might bolt, so the bride"s father and brother, big, strapping fellows both, stuck to him like two detectives. "You had better not make monkey business," they said to him. "If you don"t want a wedding, you"ll have a funeral." That"s exactly what they said to him. I was standing close to them and I heard it with my own ears. May I not live till to-morrow if I did not." Mrs.
Margolis looked down shamefacedly. She certainly was not unaware of her husband"s failing, and she obviously took anything but pride in it. As I glanced at her face at this moment it struck me as a singularly truthful face. "Those eyes of hers do not express anger, but integrity," I said to myself. And the more I looked at her, watched her gestures, and listened to her voice, the stronger grew my impression that she was a serious-minded, ingenuous woman, incapable of playing a part. Her mannerisms were mostly her version of manners, and those that were not were frankly affected, as it were
The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis caused Lucy to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud, Lucy or I correcting her p.r.o.nunciation where it was faulty. She was frankly parading her intellectual achievements before me, and I could see that she took them quite seriously.
She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made. She accepted our corrections, Lucy"s and mine, with great earnestness, often with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her memory
When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in English, "Call again, Levinsky." And he added, in a mixture of English and Yiddish, "Don"t be a stranger, even if you are a manufacturer."
"Call again," his wife echoed, affably
"Call again!" shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice
I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two in a house where I was sincerely welcome
"It"s a good thing to have real friends," I soliloquized in a transport of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated station. "Now I sha"n"t feel all alone in the world. There is at least one house where I can call and feel at home."
I beheld Mrs. Margolis"s face and her slender figure and I was conscious of a remote desire to see her again
I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was carrying me up-town I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a s.p.a.cious factory full of machines and men. I saw myself building up a great business. An ugly thought flashed through my mind: Why be saddled with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat. But I instantly saw the other side of the situation: It was Chaikin"s models that had made the Manheimers what they were, and if I clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my factory. And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having entertained that thought even for a single moment. My heart warmed to Chaikin and his family. "I shall be faithful to them," I vowed inwardly.
"They have been so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to each other.
Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, it is so sweet to have friends, real friends."
It was close upon 10 o"clock when I reached the Chaikins" flat in Harlem. I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped out the check, and, dangling it before Mrs. Chaikin, I said, radiantly: "Good evening. Guess what it is!" "The check you expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you.
Is it?" she conjectured
"No. It"s something far better," I replied. "It"s a check from the Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of genuine pity, "Oh, G.o.d has been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!"
I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make out. Then her husband took a look at the check. He did know something about figures, so he read the sum out aloud
Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, she said to me, glumly: "And how do we know that you did not receive more?"
"But that was the bill," her husband put in
"I am not asking you, am I?" she disciplined him
"But it is the amount on the bill," I said, with a smile
"And how do we know that it is?" she demanded. "It"s you who write the bills, and it"s you who get the checks. What do we know?"
"Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Chaikin!" I remonstrated. "Why should you be so suspicious? Can"t you see that I am the most devoted friend you people ever had? G.o.d has blessed us; we are making a success of our business so we must be devoted to one another, while here you imagine all kinds of nonsense."