“She must be going to a ball,” he explained, at the same moment casting a glance at the looking-glass.
The word “ball” had an imposing ring for Gitl’s ears. At home she had heard it used in connection with the sumptuous life of the Russian or Polish nobility, but had never formed a clear idea of its meaning.
“She looks a veritable panenke,”[15] ] she remarked, with hidden sarcasm. “Was she born here?”
“Nu, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one American born. We are used to speak in English when we talk shop. She came to ask me about a job.”
Gitl reflected that with Bernstein Jake was in the habit of talking shop in Yiddish, although the boarder could even read English books, which her husband could not do.
CHAPTER VI.
CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.
Jake was left by Mamie in a state of unspeakable misery. He felt discomfited, crushed, the universal butt of ridicule. Her perfumes lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away. Her venomous gaze stung his heart. She seemed to him elevated above the social plane upon which he had recently (though the interval appeared very long) stood by her side, nay, upon which he had had her at his beck and call; while he was degraded, as it were, wallowing in a mire, from which he yearningly looked up to his former equals, vainly begging for recognition. An uncontrollable desire took possession of him to run after her, to have an explanation, and to swear that he was the same Jake and as much of a Yankee and a gallant as ever. But here was his wife fixing him with a timid, piteous look, which at once exasperated and cowed him; and he dared not stir out of the house, as though nailed by that look of hers to the spot.
He lay down on the lounge, and shut his eyes. Gitl dutifully brought him a pillow. As she adjusted it under his head the touch of her hand on his face made him shrink, as if at the contact with a reptile. He was anxious to flee from his wretched self into oblivion, and his wish was soon gratified, the combined effect of a hard day’s work and a plentiful and well-relished supper plunging him into a heavy sleep.
While his snores resounded in the little kitchen, Gitl put the child to bed, and then passed with noiseless step into the boarders’ room. The door was ajar and she entered it without knocking, as was her wont. She found Bernstein bent over a book, with a ponderous dictionary by its side. A kerosene lamp with a red shade, occupying nearly all the remaining space on the table, spread a lurid mysterious light. Gitl asked the studious cloakmaker whether he knew a Polish girl named Mamie Fein.
“Mamie Fein? No. Why?” said Bernstein, with his index finger on the passage he had been reading, and his eyes on Gitl’s plumpish cheek, bathed in the roseate light.