The Rise of David Levinsky Part 50

To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me repeat it and then jot it down. As she turned to go upstairs she said, in a melancholy whisper: "Good-by, dearest."

When I reached the appointed place the bra.s.s hands of the clock on the steeple high overhead indicated ten minutes of 4. It was June, but the day was a typical November day, mildly warm, clear, and charged with the exhilarating breath of a New York autumn.

Dora had not yet arrived. The benches in the little park were for the most part occupied by housewives or servant-girls who sat gossiping in front of baby-carriages, amid the noise of romping children. Here and there an elderly man sat smoking his pipe broodingly. They were mostly Germans or Czechs. There were scarcely any of our people in the neighborhood at the period in question, and that was why Dora had selected the place

I stood outside the iron gate, gazing down the avenue. The minutes were insupportably long.

At last her womanly figure came into dim view. My heart leaped. I was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and joyous antic.i.p.ation. "Oh, she'll back down," I persuaded myself.

She was walking fast, apparently under the impression that she was late. Her face was growing more distinct every moment. The blue hat she wore and the parasol she carried gave her a new aspect. I had more than once seen her leave the house in street array, but watching her come up the street thus formally attired somehow gave her a different appearance.

She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady-like she almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst, produced a singular effect upon me.

"Am I very late?" she asked

"No. Not at all, Dora!" I said, yearningly

She made no answer

We could not find an empty bench, and to let Germans overhear our Yiddish, which is merely a German dialect, would have been rather risky. So she delivered her message as we walked round and round, both of us eying the asphalt all the while. Her beautiful complexion and our manner attracted much attention. The people on the benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our interview. One white-haired little man with a terrier face never took his eyes off her

"First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the most important days in my life," she began. "It is certainly not a happy day. It's Yom Kippur [note] with me. I want to say right here that I am willing to die for you, Levinsky. I am terribly in love with you, Levinsky. Yes--"

Her voice broke. She was confused and agitated, but she soon regained her self-mastery. She spoke in sad, solemn, quietly pa.s.sionate tones, and gradually developed a homespun sort of eloquence which I had never heard from her before. But then the gift of homely rhetoric is rather a common talent among Yiddish-speaking women

The revolting sight of the dog-faced old fellow who was ogling Dora so fascinated me that it interfered with my listening. I made a point of looking away from him every time we came round to his bench, but that only kept me thinking of him instead of listening to Dora. Finally we confined our walk to the farther side of the little park, giving him a wide berth

"I love you more than I can tell you, Levinsky," she resumed. "But it is not my good luck to be happy. I dreamed all my life of love, and now that it is here, right here in my heart, I must choke it with my own hands." "Why? Why?" I said, with vehemence. "Why must you?"

"Why!" she echoed, bitterly. "Because the Upper One brought you to me only to punish me, to tease me. That's all. That's all. That's all."

"Why should you take it that way?" "Don't interrupt me, Levinsky," she said, chanting, rather than speaking. As she proceeded, her voice lapsed into a quaint, doleful singsong, not unlike the lament of our women over a grave. "No, Levinsky. It is not given to me to be happy. But I ask no questions of the Upper One. I used to live in peace. I was not happy, but I lived in peace.

I did not know what happiness was, so I did not miss it much. I only dreamed of it. But the Lord of the World would have me taste it, so that I might miss it and that my heart might be left with a big, big wound. I want you to know exactly how I feel.

Oh, if I could turn this poor heart of mine inside out! Then you could see all that is going on there. Listen, Levinsky. If it were not for my children, my dear children, my all in all in the world, I should not live with Margolis another day. If he gave me a divorce, well and good; if not, then I don't know what I might do. I shouldn't care. I love you so and I want to be happy. I do, I do, I do."

A sob rang through her voice as she repeated the words. "You do, and yet you are bound to make both of us miserable," I said

"Can I help it?"

"If you would you could," I said, grimly. "Get a divorce and let us be married and have it over."

She shook her head sadly

"Thousands of couples get divorced." She kept shaking her head

"Then what's the use pretending you love me?"

"Pretending! Shall I turn my heart inside out to show you how hard it is to live without you? But you can't understand. No, Levinsky. I have no right to be happy. Lucy shall be happy. She certainly sha'n't marry without love. Her happiness will be mine, too. That's the only kind I am ent.i.tled to. She shall go to college. She shall be educated. She shall marry the loved one of her heart. She shall not be buried alive as her mother was. Let her profit by what little sense I have been able to pick up."

A bench became vacant and we occupied it. The momentary interruption and the change in her physical att.i.tude broke the spell. The solemnity was gone out of her voice. She resumed in a distracted and somewhat listless manner, but she soon warmed up again

"What would you have me do? Let Lucy find out some day that her mother was a bad woman? I should take poison first."

"A bad woman!" I protested. "A better woman could not be found anywhere in the world. You are a saint, Dora."

"No, I am not. I am a bad, wicked, nasty woman. I hate myself."

"'S-sh! You mustn't speak like that," I said, stopping my ears. " I cannot bear it."

"Yes, that's what I am, a nasty creature. I used to be pure as gold.

There was not a speck on my soul, and now, woe is me, pain is me! What has come over me?"

When she finally got down to the practical side of her resolution it turned out that she wanted me to move out of her house and never to see her again

I was shocked. I flouted the idea of it. I argued, I poured out my lovelorn heart. But she insisted with an iron-clad finality. I argued again, entreated, raved, all to no purpose

"I'll never come close to you. All I want is to be able to see you, to live in the same house with you."

"Don't be tearing my heart to pieces," she said. "It is torn badly enough as it is. Do as I say, Levinsky." "Don't you want to see me at all?" "Oh, it's cruel of you to ask questions like that. You have no heart, Levinsky. It's just because I am crazy to see you that you have got to move."

"Don't you want me even to call at your house?" I asked, with an ironical smile, as though I did not take the matter seriously

"Well, that would look strange. Call sometimes, not often, though, and never when Margolis is out."

"Oh, I shall commit suicide," I snarled

"Oh, well. It isn't as bad as all that."

"I will. I certainly will," I said, knowing that I was talking nonsense

"Don't torment me, Levinsky. Don't sprinkle salt over my wound.

Take pity on me. Do as I wish and let the tooth be pulled out with as little pain as possible."

I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston Street, where she insisted upon our parting. Before we did, however, she indulged in another outburst of funereal oratory, bewailing her happiness as she would a dead child. It was apparently not easy for her to take leave of me, but her purpose to make our romance a thing of the past and to have me move to other lodgings remained unshaken

"This is the last time I shall ever speak to you of my love, Levinsky," she said. "I must tear it out of my heart, even if I have to tear out a piece of my heart along with it. Such is my fate.

Good-by, Levinsky. Good luck to you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Remember you have a good head. Waste no time. Study as much as you can. G.o.d grant you luck in your business, but try to find time for your books, too. You must become a great man. Do you promise me to read and study a lot?"

"I do. I do. But I won't move out. I can't live without you. We belong to each other, and all you say is nothing but a woman's whim. It's all bosh," I concluded, with an air of masculine superiority. "I won't move out."

"You shall, dearest. Good-by. Good-by."

She broke into a fit of sobbing, but checked it, shook my hand vehemently and hastened away.

[note: Yom Kippur] Day of Atonement; figuratively, a day of anguish and tears.