The elevator came down from the upper floors. We shook hands and she entered it. It sank out of sight. I stood still for a second and then returned to my private office with a sense of relief and sadness. My heart was full of love for Anna
CHAPTER VII
IN a vague, timid way I had been planning to propose to Anna all along. My meeting with Dora gave these plans shape. Her unexpected visit revived in my mind the whole history of my acquaintance with her. I said to myself: "It was through tenacity and persistence that I won her. It was persistence, too, that gave me success in business. Anna is a meek, good-natured girl.
She has far less backbone than Dora. I can win her, and I will." It seemed so convincing. It was like a discovery. It aroused the fighting blood in my veins. I was throbbing with love and determination. I was priming myself for a formal proposal. I expected to take her by storm. I was only waiting for an opportunity. In case she said no, I was prepared for a long and vigorous campaign. "I won't give her up. She shall be mine, whether she wants it or not," I said to myself again and again. These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all kinds of circumstances—while I was pushing my way through a crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Bender's scoldings, while I was parleying with some real-estate man over a piece of property. They often made me so absent-minded that I would pace the floor of my hotel room, for instance, with one foot socked and the other bare, and then distressedly search for the other sock, which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my mahogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to myself: "Women like a man with a strong will. My very persistence will fascinate her." And this, too, seemed like a discovery to me. The banker answered my call. It was an important matter, yet all the while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna would be mine
At last I thought I saw my opportunity. It was an evening in April.
According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night, when Israel's liberation from the bondage of Egypt is commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the greatest event in the domestic life of our people
Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I deeply regretted not being able to spend the great evening at her father's table. This time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins'. They were not a religious family by any means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker since his early manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish Ingersoll, had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in their house. Of late years, however—that is, since Tevkin had espoused the cause of Zionism or nationalism—he had insisted on the Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his free thought. They suspected that he was getting timid about it, fearful of the hereafter. As a rule, they saw only the humorous side of the change that was apparently coming over him, but sometimes they would awaken to the pathos of it
As we all sat in the library, waiting to be called to the great feast, he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense of the prospective ceremony
"You needn't take his atheism seriously, Mr. Levinsky," said Anna, the sound of my name on her lips sending a thrill of delight through me. "'Way down at the bottom of his heart father is getting to be really religious, I'm afraid." And, as though taking pity on him, she crossed over to where he sat and nestled up to him in a manner that put a choking sensation into my throat and filled me with an impulse to embrace them both
At last the signal was given and we filed down into the dining-room. A long table, flanked by two rows of chairs, with a sofa, instead of the usual arm-chair, at its head, was set with bottles of wine, bottles of mead, wine-glasses, and little piles of matzos (thin, flat cakes of unleavened bread). The sofa was cushioned with two huge Russian pillows, inclosed in fresh white cases, for the master of the house to lean on, in commemoration of the freedom and ease which came to the Children of Israel upon their deliverance from Egypt. Placed on three covered matzos, within easy reach of the master, were a shank bone, an egg, some horseradish, salt water, and a mush made of nuts and wine. These were symbols, the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal lamb, and the egg of the other sacrifices brought during the festival in ancient times, while the horseradish and the salt water represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for Pharaoh, and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made brick for him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was the Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, accompanied by an English translation