CHAPTER XI
WE talked about my first love-affair for weeks. She asked me many questions ahout Matilda, mostly with that pretended air of amused curiosity. Every time I had something good to say about Matilda she would assail her brutally
The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the presence of her husband was a tacit confession that we had a secret from him. Outwardly it meant that the secret was mine, not hers; that she had nothing to do with it; but then there was another secret—the fact that she was my sole confidante in a matter of this nature—and this secret was ours in common
On one occasion, in the course of one of these confabs of ours, she said, with ill-concealed malice: "Do you really think she cared for you? Not that much," marking off the tip of her little finger
"Why should you say that? Why should you hurt my feelings?" I protested
"It still hurts your feelings, then, does it? There is a faithful lover for you! But what would you have me say? That she loved you as much as you loved her?"
At this Dora jerked her head backward, with a laugh that rang so charmingly false and so virulent that I was impelled both to slap her face and to kiss it
"But tell me," she said, with a sudden affectation of sedate curiosity, "was she really so beautiful?"
"I never said she was 'so beautiful,' did I? You are far more beautiful than she." "Oh, stop joking, please! Can't you answer seriously?"
"I really mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That you are prettier than Matilda." "Is that the way you are faithful to her?"
"Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody else I am faithful to."
She was silent. Her cheeks glowed
"Why don't you ask who that somebody is?"
"Because I don't care. What do I care? And please don't talk like that. I mean what I say. You must promise me never to talk like that," she said, gravely
During the following few days Dora firmly barred all more or less intimate conversation. She treated me with her usual friendly familiarity, but there was something new in her demeanor, something that seemed to say, "I don't deny that I enjoy our talks, but that's all the more reason why you must behave yourself."
The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough, so she let me tell her bits of it, and before she was aware of it she was following my childish love-affair with the daughter of one of my despotic school-teachers, my struggles with Satan, and my early dreams of marriage. Gradually she let me draw her out concerning her own past.
One evening, while Lucy was playing school-teacher, with Dannie for the class, Dora told me of an episode connected with her betrothal to Max
"Was that a love match?" I asked, with a casual air, when she had finished
She winced. "What difference does it make?" she said, with an annoyed look.
"We were engaged as most couples are engaged. Much I knew of the love business in those days."
"You speak as though you married when you were a mere baby.
You certainly knew how you felt toward him."
"I don't think I felt anything," she answered
"Still," I insisted, "you said to yourself, 'This man is going to be my husband; he will kiss me, embrace me.' How did you feel then?"
"You want to know too much, Levinsky," she said, coloring. "You know the saying, 'If you know too much you get old too quick.' Well, I don't think I gave him any thought at all. I was too busy thinking of the wedding and of the pretty dress they were making for me. Besides. I was so rattled and so shy. Much I understood. I was not quite nineteen."
It called to my mind that in the excitement following my mother's death I was so overwhelmed by the attentions showered on me that it was a day or two before I realized the magnitude of my calamity
"Anyhow, you certainly knew that marriage is the most serious thing in life," I persisted
"Oh, I don't think I knew much of anything."
"And after the wedding?"
"After the wedding I knew that I was a married woman and must be contented," she parried
"But this is not love," I pressed her
"Oh, let us not talk of these things, pray! Don't ask me questions like that," she said in a low, entreating voice. "It isn't right."
"I don't know if it is right or wrong," I replied, also in a low voice. "All I do know is that I am interested in everything that ever happened to you
Silence fell. She was the first to break it. She tried to talk of trivialities. I scarcely listened. She broke off again
"Dora!" I said, amorously. "My heart is so full."
"Don't," she whispered, with a gesture of pained supplication.
"Talk of something else, pray."
"I can't. I can't talk of anything else. Nor think of anything else, either."
"You mustn't, you mustn't, you mustn't," she said, with sudden vehemence, though still with a beseeching ring in her voice. "I won't let you. May I not live to see my children again if I will. Do you hear, Levinsky? Do you hear? Do you hear? I want you to understand it. Be a man. Have a heart, Levinsky. You must behave yourself. If you don't you'll have to move. There can't be any other way about it. If you are a real friend of mine, not an enemy, you must behave yourself." She spoke with deep, solemn earnestness, somewhat in the singsong of a woman reading the Yiddish Commentary on the Five Books of Moses or wailing over a grave. She went on: "Why should you vex me? You are a respectable man. You don't want to do what is wrong. You don't want to make me miserable, do you? So be good, Levinsky. I beg of you.
I beg of you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Let us never have another talk like this. Do you promise?"
I was silent
"Do you promise, Levinsky? You must. You must. Do you promise me never to come back to this kind of talk?"
"I do," I said, like a guilty school-boy
She was terribly in earnest. She almost broke my heart. I could not thwart her will
She was in love with me
Days passed. There was no lack of unspoken tenderness between us. That she was tremulously glad to see me every time I came home was quite obvious, but she bore herself in such a manner that I never ventured to allude to my feeling, much less to touch her hand or sit close to her.
"It is as well that I should not," I often said to myself. "Am I not happy as it is? Is it not bliss enough to have a home—her home? It would be too awful to forfeit it." I registered a vow to live up to the promise she had exacted from me, but I knew that I would break it
She was in love with me. She had an iron will, but I hoped that this, too, would soon be broken.
There were moments when I would work myself up to an exalted, religious kind of mood over it. "I should be a vile creature if I interfered with the peace of this house," I would exhort myself, passionately. "Max has been a warm friend to me. Oh, I will be good."
Dora talked less than usual. She, too, seemed to be a changed person. She was particularly taciturn when we happened to be alone in the house, and then it would be difficult for us to look each other in the face. Such tête-à-têtes occurred once or twice a week, quite late in the evening. I was very busy at the shop and I could never leave it before 10, 11, or even 12, except on Sabbath eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those evenings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little dining-room, sewing, mending, or—more often—poring over Lucy's school reader or story-book
After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her, each of us aware of the other's embarrassment, I would take a seat a considerable distance from her and take up a newspaper or clipping from one, while she went on with her work or reading. Lucy had begun to take juvenile books out of the circulating library of the Educational Alliance, so her mother would read them also. The words were all short and simple and Dora had not much difficulty in deciphering their meaning. Anyhow, she now never sought my assistance for her reading. I can still see her seated at the table, a considerable distance from me, moving her head from word to word and from line to line, and silently working her lips, as though muttering an incantation. I would do her all sorts of little services (though she never asked for any), all silently, softly, as if performing a religious rite
I have said that on such occasions I would read my newspaper or some clipping from it. In truth I read little else in those days. Editorials of the daily press interested me as much as the most sensational news, and if some of the more important leading articles in my paper had to be left unread on the day of their publication I would clip them and glance them over at the next leisure moment, sometimes days later
The financial column was followed by me with a sense of being a member of a caste for which it was especially intended, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. At first the jargon of that column made me feel as though I had never learned any English at all. But I was making headway in this jargon, too, and when I struck a recondite sentence I would cut the few lines out and put them in my pocket, on the chance of coming across somebody who could interpret them for me. Often, too, I would clip and put away a paragraph containing some curious piece of information or a bit of English that was an addition to my knowledge of the language. My inside pocket was always full of all sorts of clippings