One evening, as I complained of my restaurant meals and of certain inconveniences of my lodgings, Max said: "Nothing like being married, Levinsky. Take my advice and get you a nice little wifey. One like mine, for instance."
"Like yours! The trouble is that there is only one such, and you have captured her." "Don"t worry," Dora broke in. "There are plenty of others, and better ones, too."
"I have a scheme," I said, seriously. "Why shouldn"t you people let me board with you?"
Natural as the suggestion was, it took them by surprise. For a second or two Max gazed at his wife with a perplexed air. Then he said: "That would not he a bad idea. Would it, Dora?"
"I don"t know, I am sure," she answered, with a shrug and an embarra.s.sed smile. "We have never kept boarders."
"You will try to keep one now, then," I urged
"If there were room in the house, I should be glad. Upon my health and strength I should." "Oh, you can make room," I said.
"Of course you can," Max put in, warming to the plan somewhat.
"He could have the children"s bedroom, and they could sleep in this room."
She held to her veto
"Oh, you don"t know what an obstinate thing she is," Max said.
"Let her say that white is black, and black it must be, even if the world turned upside down."
"What do you want of me?" she protested. "Levinsky may think I really don"t care to have him. Let us move to a larger apartment and I"ll be but too glad to give him a room."
The upshot was a compromise. For the present I was to content myself with having my luncheons and dinners or suppers at their house, Dora charging me cost price
"Get him to move to one of those new houses with modern improvements," she said to me, earnestly; "to an apartment of five light rooms, and I shall give you a room at once. The rent would come cheaper than it is now. But Max would rather pay more and have the children grow in these damp rooms than budge."
"Don"t bother me. By and by we shall move out of here. All in due time.
Don"t bother. Meanwhile see that your dinners and suppers are all right.
Levinsky thinks you a good cook. Don"t disappoint him, then. Don"t run away with the idea it"s on your own account he wants to board with us. It is on account of your cooking. That"s all. Isn"t it, Levinsky?"
"It"s a good thing to know that I am not a bad cook, at least," she returned
"But how about the profits you are going to make on him? I"ll deduct them from your weekly allowance, you know," he chaffed her
"Oh no. I am just going to save them and buy a house on Fifth Avenue."
"You ought to allow me ten per cent. for cash," I said. "She does not want cash," Max replied. "Your note is good enough."
I had been taking my meals with them a little over a month when they moved into a new apartment, with me as their roomer and boarder. The apartment was on the third floor of a corner house on Clinton Street, one of a row of what was then a new type of tenement buildings. It consisted of five rooms and bath, all perfectly light, and it had a tiny private corridor or vestibule, a dumb-waiter, an enameled bath-tub, electric and gas light, and an electric door-bell. There was a rush for these apartments and Dora paid a deposit on the first month"s rent before the builder was quite through with his work.
My room opened into the vestibule, its window looking out upon a side-street. The rent for the whole apartment was thirty-two dollars, my board being five and a half dollars a week, which was supposed to include a monthly rental of six dollars for my room.
The Shorniks moved into the same house.
CHAPTER VII
MY growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at once, as it were. It happened at a moment which is distinctly fixed in my mind. At least I distinctly remember the moment when I became conscious of it
It was on an afternoon, four days after the Margolises had taken possession of the new place. The family was fully established in it, while I had just moved in. I had seen my room, furniture and all, several times before, but I had never seen it absolutely ready for my occupancy as I did now. It was by far the brightest, airiest, best-furnished, and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself.
Everything in it, from the wall-paper to the little wash-stand, was invitingly new. I can still smell its grateful odor of freshness.
When I was left to myself in it for the first time and I shut its door the room appealed to me as a compartment in the nest of a family of which I was a member. My lonely soul had a sense of home and domestic comfort that all but overpowered me. The sight of the new quilt and of the fresh white pillow, coupled with the knowledge that it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for me, sent a glow of delight through my heart
Dora"s name was whispering itself in my mind. I paused at the window, an enchanted man
A few minutes later, when I re-entered the living-room, where she was counting some freshly ironed napkins, her face seemed to have acquired a new meaning. I felt that a great change had come in my att.i.tude toward her
"Well, is everything all right?" she inquired
"First rate," I answered, in a voice that sounded unnatural to myself
Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor. The children were gamboling from room to room, testing the faucets, the dumb-waiter
"Get avey from there!" Dora shouted. "You"ll hurt yourself. Max, tell Lucy not to touch the dumb-vaiter, vill you?"
"Children! Children! What"s a madder vitch you?" he called out from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory snarl. Presently he came into the living-room. "Well, are you satisfied with your new palace?" he addressed me in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern "improvements," at the abundance of light, and at my new rank of "real boarder."
It is one of the old and deep-rooted customs of the Ghetto towns of Europe for a young couple to live with the parents of the bride for a year or two after the wedding. So Max gaily dubbed me his "boarding son-in-law
"Try to behave, boarding son-in-law," he bantered me. "If you don"t your mother-in-law will starve you."
The pleasantry grated on me
Dora"s ambition to learn to read and spell English was a pa.s.sion, and the little girl played a more important part in the efforts she made in this direction than Dora was willing to admit. Lucy would tell her the meaning of new words as she had heard it at school, but it often happened that the official definition she quoted was incomprehensible to both. This was apt to irritate Dora or even lead to a disagreeable scene
If I happened to be around I would explain things to her, but she seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of salt. She bowed before my intellectual status in a general way, but since she had good reason to doubt the quality of my English enunciation, she doubted my Yiddish interpretations as well. Indeed, she doubted everything that did not bear the indors.e.m.e.nt of Lucy"s school.
Whatever came from that sacred source was "real Yankee"; everything else was "greenhorn." If she failed to grasp some of the things that Lucy brought back from school, she would blame it on the child.
"Oh, you didn"t understand what your teacher said," she would scold her.
"You must have twisted it all up, you stupid."
One afternoon, when business was slow and there did not seem to be anything to preclude my staying at home and breathing the air that Dora breathed, I witnessed a painful scene between them. It was soon after Lucy returned from school. Her mother wanted her to go over her last reading-lesson with her, and the child would not do so, pleading a desire to call on Beckie
"Stay where you are and open your reader," Dora commanded
Lucy obeyed, whimperingly. "Read!" "I want to go to Beckie."
"Read, I say." And she slapped her hand
"Don"t," I remonstrated. "Let the poor child go enjoy herself." But it only spoiled matters
"Read!" she went on, with grim composure, hitting her on the shoulder
"I don"t want to! I want to go down-stairs," Lucy sobbed, defiantly