The Rise of David Levinsky

by Abraham Cahan

CHAPTER XIV

THE situation could not last. One morning about three weeks subsequent to the above conversation Max left town for a day. One of his debtors, a dancing-master, had disappeared without settling his account and Max had recently discovered that he was running a dance-hall and meeting-rooms in New Haven; so he went there to see what he could do toward collecting his bill. His absence for a whole day was nothing new, and yet the house seemed to have assumed a novel appearance that morning. When, after breakfast, Lucy ran out into the street I felt as though Dora and I were alone for the first time, and from her constraint I could see that she was experiencing a similar feeling. I hung around the house awkwardly. She was trying to keep herself busy. Finally I said: "I think I'll be going. Maybe there is some news about the lockout."

I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat, but on my way thither, as I came abreast of her, I paused, and with amorous mien I drew her to me.

She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance, and when I kissed her she responded, our lips clinging together hungrily. It all seemed to have happened in a most natural way. When our lips parted at last her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes looked filmed

"Dearest," I whispered

"I must go out," she said, shrinking back, her embarrassed gaze on the floor. "I have some marketing to do."

"Don't. Don't go away from me, Dora. Please don't," I said in
Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee,
Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar
pronoun

"You ought not to speak to me like that," she said, limply, with frank happiness in her voice. "It's terrible. What has got into me?"

I strained her to me once again, and again we abandoned ourselves to a transport of kisses and hugs

"Dost thou love me, Dora? Tell me. I want to hear it from thine own lips."

She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with all her might. That was her answer to my question. Then, with a hurried parting kiss on my forehead, she said: "Go. Attend to business, dearest." As I walked through the street I was all but shouting to myself: "Dora has kissed me! Dora dear is mine!" My heart was dancing with joy over my conquest of her, and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her. It was a blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved her

I attended to my affairs (that is, to some of the affairs of the Manufacturers' Organization) that day; but while thus engaged I was ever tremulously conscious of my happiness, ever in an uplifted state of mind. I was bubbling over with a desire to be good to somebody, to everybody—except, of course, the Cloak-makers' Union. My membership in the Manufacturers' Association flattered my vanity inordinately, and I always danced attendance upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an alacrity that was not mere servility

I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my second love-affair, as if it were something to be proud of. My love for Matilda was remote as a piece of art, while my passion for Dora was a flaming reality. "Matilda only tortured me," I said to myself, without malice. "She treated me as she would a dog, whereas Dora is an angel. I would jump into fire for her. Dora dear! Sweetheart mine!" I had not the patience to wait until evening. I ran in to see her in the middle of the day

She flung herself at me and we embraced and kissed as if we had been separated for years. Then, holding me by both hands, she gave me a long look full of pensive bliss and clasped me to her bosom again. When she had calmed down she smoothed my hair, adjusted my necktie, told me she did not like it and offered to get me one more becoming

"Do you love me? Do you really?" she asked, with deep earnestness

"I do, I do. Dora mine, I am crazy for you," I replied. "Now I know what real love means."

She sighed, and after a pause her grave, strained mien broke into a smile

"So all you told me about Matilda was a lie, was it?" she said, roguishly.

"There is no such person in the world, is there?"

"Don't talk about her, pray. You don't understand me. I never was happy before. Never in my life."

"Never at all?" she questioned me, earnestly

"Never, Dora dearest. Anyhow, let bygones be bygones. All I know is that I love you, that I am going crazy for you. Oh, I do love you." "And nobody else?"

"And nobody else."

"And you are not lying?"

"Lying? Why should you talk like that, dearest?"

"Why, have you forgotten Matilda so soon?"

"Do you call that soon? It's more than five years."

"But you told me that you had been in love with her a considerable time after you came to this country. Will you forget me so soon, too?"

I squirmed, I writhed. "Don't be tormenting me, dearest," I implored, my voice quavering with impatience. "I love thee and nobody else."

She fell into a muse. Then she said, with a far-away look in her eyes: "I don't know where this will land me. It seems as if a great misfortune had befallen me. But I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Come what may. I can't help it. At last I know what it means to be happy. I have been dreaming of it all my life. Now I know what it is like, and I am willing to suffer for it. Yes, I am willing to suffer for you, Levinsky." She spoke with profound, even-voiced earnestness, with peculiar solemnity, as though chanting a prayer. I was somewhat bored. Presently she paused, and, changing her tone, she asked. "Matilda talked to you of education. She wanted you to be an educated man, did she? Yes, but what did she do for you? She drank your blood, the leech, and when she got tired of it she dropped you. A woman like that ought to be torn to pieces. May every bit of the suffering she caused you come back to her a thousandfold. May her blood be shed as she shed yours." Suddenly she checked herself and said: "But, no, I am not going to curse her. I don't want you to think badly of her. Your love must be sacred, Levinsky. If you ever go back on me and love somebody else, don't let her curse me. Don't let anybody say a cross word about me." Max came home after midnight and I did not see him until the next evening.

When we met at supper (Dora was out at that moment) I had to make an effort to meet his eye. But he did not seem to notice anything out of the usual, and my awkwardness soon wore off

Nor, indeed, was there any change in my feelings toward him. I had expected that he would now be hateful to me. He was not. He was absolutely the same man as he had always been, except, perhaps, that I vaguely felt like a thief in his presence. Only I hated to think of Dora while I looked at him

Presently Dora made her appearance. My embarrassment returned, more acute than ever. The consciousness of her confusion and, above all, the consciousness of the three of us being together, was insupportable. It was a terrible repast, though Max was absolutely unaware of anything unnatural in our demeanor. I retired to my room soon after supper

I had a what-not half filled with books, so I drew a volume from it. I found it difficult to get my mind on it. My thoughts were circling round Dora and Max, round my precarious happiness, round the novelty of carrying on a romantic conspiracy with a married woman. Dora was so dear to me. I seemed to be vibrating with devotion to her. Regardless of the fact that she was somebody else's wife and a mother of two children, my love impressed me as something sacred. I seemed to accept the general rule that a wife-stealer is a despicable creature, a thief, a vile, immoral wretch. But now, that I was not facing Max, that rule, somehow, did not apply to my relations with Dora.

Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which excused my conduct on the theory that everybody was at the bottom of his heart likewise ready to set that rule at defiance and to make a mistress of his friend's wife, provided it could be done with absolute secrecy and safety. Max in my place would certainly not have scrupled to act as I did. But then I hated to think of him in this connection. I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would a vicious fly. I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a moment's compunction. I treated myself as a doting mother does a wayward son

The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert Spencer's Sociology. My interest in this author and in Darwin was of recent origin. It had been born of my hatred for the Cloak-makers' Union, in fact. This is how I came to discover the existence of the two great names and to develop a passion for the ideas with which they are identified

In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had often characterized them as so many good-for-nothings, jealous of those who had succeeded in business by their superior brains, industry, and efficiency.

One day I found a long editorial in my newspaper, an answer to a letter from a socialist. The editorial derived its inspiration from the theory of the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest. Unlike many of the other editorials I had read, it breathed conviction. It was obviously a work of love. When the central idea of the argument came home to me I was in a turmoil of surprise and elation. "Why, that's just what I have been saying all these days!" I exclaimed in my heart. "The able fellows succeed, and the misfits fail. Then the misfits begrudge those who accomplish things." I almost felt as though Darwin and Spencer had plagiarized a discovery of mine. Then, as I visualized the Struggle for Existence, I recalled Meyer Nodelman's parable of chickens fighting for food, and it seemed to me that, between the two of us, Nodelman and I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine. Later, however, when I dipped into Social Statics, I was over-borne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense of my own futility, ignorance, and cheapness. I felt at the gates of a great world of knowledge whose existence I had not even suspected. I had to read the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, and then Spencer again. I sat up nights reading these books. Apart from the purely intellectual intoxication they gave me, they flattered my vanity as one of the "fittest." It was as though all the wonders of learning, acumen, ingenuity, and assiduity displayed in these works had been intended, among other purposes, to establish my title as one of the victors of Existence

A working-man, and every one else who was poor, was an object of contempt to me—a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one of the ruck.