The sentence was left eloquently unfinished. She turned away, walked over to her mother and took a seat by her side, like a little girl mutely seeking her mamma's protection
The room seemed to be in a whirl. I felt the cold perspiration break out on my forehead. I was conscious of Mrs. Tevkin's and Elsie's glances. I was sick at heart. Anna's bitter resentment was a black surprise to me. I had a crushing sense of final defeat
BOOK XIV
EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE
CHAPTER I
IT was a severe blow. It caused me indescribable suffering. It would not have been unnatural to attribute my fiasco to my age. Had I been ten years younger, Anna's attitude toward me might have been different. But this point of view I loathed to accept. Instead, I put the blame on Anna's environment.
"I was in the 'enemy's country' there," I would muse. "The atmosphere around her was against me." I hated the socialists with a novel venom. Finally I pulled myself together. Then it was that I discovered the real condition of my affairs. I had gone into those speculations far deeper than I could afford. There were indications that made me seriously uneasy. Things were even worse than Bender imagined. Ruin stared me in the face. I was panic-stricken. One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch with me in a private dining-room of a well-known hotel. He was dignifiedly steel-gray and he had the appearance of a college professor or successful physician rather than of a business man. He liked me. I had long been one of his most important customers and I had always sought to build up a good record with him. For example: other cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for merchandise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so. It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things. In the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss of material, and if it cannot, I will sustain the small loss rather than incur the mill's disfavor. In the long run it pays. And so this cloth merchant was well disposed toward me. He had done me some favors before. He addressed me as Dave. (There was a note of condescension as well as of admiration in this "Dave" of his. It implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer, singularly successful and reliable, but that I was his inferior, all the same—a Jew, a social pariah. At the bottom of my heart I considered myself his superior, finding an amusing discrepancy between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual interests; but he was a Gentile, and an American, and a much wealthier man than I, so I looked up to him.) To make my appeal as effective as possible I initiated him into the human side of my troubles. I told him of my unfortunate courtship as well as of the real-estate ventures into which it had led me
He was interested and moved, and, as he had confidence in me, he granted my request at once.
"It's all right, Dave," he said, slapping my back, a queer look in his eye.
"You can always count on me. Only throw that girl out of your mind."