The Rise of David Levinsky Part 74

There!" she said, with embarra.s.sed gaiety.

"A sort of birthday, isn't it? I congratulate you."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

A pause

"So you won't tell me how old you are, will you?" she resumed

"What do you want to know it for? Are you in the life-insurance business?"

Another pause

"Look at that girl over there," she said, trying to make conversation.

"She's showing off her slender figure. She thinks she looks awful American."

"You do have a sharp tongue."

"But you remember what Mrs. Kalch said: 'A sharp tongue, but a kind heart.'"

The band struck up a two-step

Ben was coming over to her, his freckled face the image of supplication. She shut her eyes and shook her head and the boy stopped short, his jaw dropping as he did so

"Don't be hard on the poor boy," I pleaded

"That's none of your business. I want you to dance with me. Come on. I'll teach you

I shut my eyes and shook my head precisely as she had done to Ben

She burst into a laugh. "Ain't you tired of being a wall-flower?"

"I love it."

"Do you really? Or maybe you want to watch somebody?"

"I want to watch everybody," I replied, coloring the least bit.

"When you were dancing I watched you, and I thought--well, I won't tell you what I thought."

A splash of color overspread her face

"Go ahead. Speak out!" she said, with a sick smile

I took pity on her. "I'm joking, of course. But I do like to watch people when they dance," I said, earnestly. "They do it in so many different ways, don't you know." I proceeded to point out couple after couple, commenting upon their peculiar manner and the special expression of their faces. One man was seemingly about to hurl his partner at somebody. Another man was eying other women over the shoulder of the one with whom he danced, apparently his wife. One woman was clinging to her partner with all her might, while her half-shut eyes and half-opened mouth seemed to say, "My, isn't it sweet!"

Miss Lazar greeted my observations with bursts of merry approval.

Encouraged by this and full of mischief and malice, I made her watch a man with tapering white side-whiskers and watery eyes who was staring at the bare bust of a fat woman

"You had better look out, for his watery eyes will soon be on you."

Miss Lazar lowered her head and burst into a confused giggle

"You're a holy terror," she declared.

I was tempted to take her out into the night and hug and kiss her and tell her that she was a nuisance, but the fear of a breach-of-promise suit held me in leash

I rose to go. As I picked my way through the crowd I watched Miss Tevkin, who sat between Miss Siegel and one of their cavaliers.

Our eyes met, but she hastened to look away

"She has certainly made up her mind to shun me," I thought, wretchedly. "She knows I am worth about a million, and yet she does not want to have anything to do with me. Must be a Socialist.

The idea of a typewriter girl cutting me! Pooh! I could get a prettier girl than she, and one well-educated, too, if I only cared for that kind of thing in a wife. Let her stick to her beggarly crowd!"

It all seemed so ridiculous. I was baffled, perplexed, full of contempt and misery at once. "Perhaps she is engaged, after all," I comforted myself, feeling that there was anything but comfort in the reflection

I was burning to have an explanation with her, to remove any bad impression I might have made upon her

An asphalt walk in front of the pavilion and the adjoining section of the lawn were astir with boarders. A tall woman of thirty, of excellent figure, and all but naked, pa.s.sed along like a flame, the men frankly gloating over her flesh.

"Wait a moment! What's your hurry?" a young stallion shouted, running after her hungrily

In another spot, on the lawn, I saw a young man in evening dress chaffing a bare-shouldered girl who looked no more than fifteen

"What! Sweet sixteen and not yet kissed?" he said to her, aloud.

"Go on! I don't believe it. Anyhow, I'd like to be the fellow who's going to get you."

"Would you? I'll tell your wife about it," the little girl replied, with the good humor of a woman of forty

"Never mind my wife. But how about the fellow who is going to marry you?"

"I'd like to see him myself. I hope he ain't going to be some b.o.o.b."

The air was redolent of gra.s.s, flowers, ozone, and s.e.x. All this was flavored with Miss Tevkin's antipathy for me

CHAPTER V

THE next morning I awoke utterly out of sorts. That I was going to take the first train for Tannersville seemed to be a matter of course, and yet I knew that I was not going to take that train, nor any other that day. I dressed myself and went out for a walk up the road, some distance beyond the grove.

The sun was out, but it had rained all night and the sandy road was damp, solid, and smooth, like baked clay. It was half an hour before breakfast-time when I returned to my cottage across the road from the hotel.

As I was about to take a chair on the tiny porch I perceived the sunlit figure of Miss Tevkin in the distance. She wore a large sailor hat and I thought it greatly enhanced the effect of her tall figure. She was making her way over a shaky little bridge. Then, reaching the road, she turned into it. I remained standing like one transfixed. The distance gave her new fascination. Every little while she would pause to look up through something that glittered in the sunshine, apparently an opera-gla.s.s. I had never heard that opera-gla.s.ses were used for observing birds, but this was evidently what she was doing at this moment, and the proceeding quickened my sense not only of her intellectual refinement, but also of her social distinction.

Presently she turned into a byway, pa.s.sed the grove, and was lost to view

I seated myself, my eye on the spot where I had seen her disappear.