III
SHE continued to treat me in a patronizing, playful way; but we were supposed to be great friends and I asked myself no questions.
"The money is assured," she once announced. "You shall get it in a few days.
You may begin to pack your great baggage," she jested
My heart sank within me, but I feigned exultation
"Do you deserve it, pious soul that you are?" she laughed. And casting a glance at my side-locks, she added: "I do wish you would cut off those horrid things of yours. You won't take them to America, will you?"
I smiled. Small as was my stock of information of the New World, I knew enough of it to understand, in a general way, that side-locks were out of place there
She proceeded to put my side-locks behind my ears, and this time I did not object. She then smoothed them down, the touch of her fingers thrilling me through and through. Then she brought a hand-glass and made me look at myself.
"Do you see the difference?" she demanded. "If you were not rigged out like the savage that you are you wouldn't be a bad-looking fellow, after all.
Why, girls might even fall in love with you. But then what does a pious soul like you know about such things as love?"
"How do you know I don't?" I ventured to say, blushing like a poppy
"Do you, really?" she said, with mischievous surprise
I nodded
"Well, well. So you are not quite so saintly as I thought you were! Perhaps you have even been in love yourself? Have you? Tell me."
I kept silent. My heart was throbbing wildly.
"Do you love me?"
I nodded once more. My heart stood still.
"Kiss me, then."
She put my arms around her, made me clasp her to my breast, and we kissed, passionately
I suddenly felt ten years older
She broke away from me, jumping around, slapping her hands and bubbling over with triumphant mirth, as she shouted: "There is a pious soul for you! There is a pious soul for you!"
A thought of little Red Esther of my childhood days flashed through my brain, of the way she would force me to "sin" and then gloat over my "fall."
"A penny for your piety," Matilda added, gravely. "When you are in America you'll dress like a Gentile and even shave. Then you won't look so ridiculous. Good clothes would make another man of you." At this she looked me over in a business-like sort of way. "Pretty good figure, that," she concluded
In the evening of that day, when there was company in the house, she bore herself as though she did not know me. But the next morning, after the children had gone to school and her mother was away on her various missions, she made me put on the glittering coat and cap of her brother's Sunday uniform
"It's rather too small for you, but it's becoming all the same," she said, enthusiastically. "If mamma came in now she would not know you. But then there would be a nice how-do-you-do if she did." She gave a titter which rolled through my very heart. "Well, Mr. Gymnasist, are you really in love with me?"
"Don't make fun of me, pray," I implored her. "It hurts, you know."
"Very well, I sha'n't. But you haven't answered my question."
"What question?"
"What a poor memory you have! And yet mother says you have 'a good head.' Try to remember."
"I do remember your question."
"Then what is your answer?"
"Yes."
"Yes!" she mocked me. "That's not the way gentlemen declare their love." "What else shall I say?"
"What else! Well, say: 'I am ready to die for you. You are the sunshine of my life.'" "'You are the sunshine of my life,'" I echoed, with a smile that was a combination of mirth and resentment
"'You are my happiness, my soul. The world would be dark without you.'"
"I am no baby to parrot somebody else's words."
"Then you don't love me."
"Yes, I do. But I hate to be made fun of. Don't! Please don't!" I said it with a beseeching, passionate tremor in my voice, and all at once I clasped her violently to me and was about to kiss her. She put up her lips responsively, but suddenly she wrenched herself back
"Easy, easy, you saintly Talmudist," she said, good-naturedly. "You must not forget that you are not a gymnasist, that to kiss a woman is a sin, a great sin. You'll be beaten with rods of iron in the world to come. Well, good-by," she concluded, gravely. "I must go. Take off that coat and cap.
Mamma may come in at any moment." She showed me where to hang them
IV
In my incessant reveries of her I developed the theory that if I abandoned my plan about going to America she would have her father send me to college with a view to my marrying her. Indeed, matches of this kind were not an unusual arrangement in our town (nor are they in the Jewish districts of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago, for example)
My bed was usually made on the enormous green sofa in the spacious sitting-room. One night, when I was asleep on that great sofa, I was suddenly aroused by the touch of a hand
"'S-sh," I heard Matilda's whisper. "I want to talk to you. I can't sleep, anyhow. I don't know why. So I was thinking of all kinds of things till I came to your plan about America. It is foolish. Why go so far? Perhaps something can be done to get you into high school and then into the university."
"I have guessed it right, then," I exclaimed within myself. The room was pitch-dark. Her white kimono was all I could see of her
She explained certain details. She spoke in a very low undertone, with great earnestness. I took her by the hand and drew her down to a seat on the edge of the sofa beside me. She offered no resistance. She continued to talk, partly in the same undertone, partly in whispers, with her hand remaining in mine. I was aflame with happiness, yet I listened intently. I felt sure that she was my bride-to-be, that it was only a matter of days when our engagement would be celebrated. My heart went out to her with a passion that seemed to be sanctioned by God and men. I strained down her head and kissed her, but that was the stainless kiss of a man yearning upon the lips of his betrothed. I clasped her flimsily garmented form, kissed her again and again, let her kiss and bite me; and still it all seemed legitimate, or nearly so. I saw in it an emphatic confirmation of my feeling that she did not regard herself a stranger to me. That mattered more than anything else at this moment
"You're a devil," she whispered, slapping me on both cheeks, "a devil with side-locks." And she broke into a suppressed laugh
"I'll study as hard as I can," I assured her, with boyish exultation.
"You'll see what I can do. The Gentile books are child's play in comparison with the Talmud."
I went into details. She took no part in my talk, but she let me go on. I became so absorbed in what I was saying that my caresses ceased. I sat up and spoke quite audibly
"'S-sh!" she cautioned me in an irritated whisper
I dropped my voice. She listened for another minute or two and then, suddenly rising, she said: "Oh, you are a Talmud student, after all," and her indistinct kimono vanished in the darkness
I felt crushed, but I was sure that the words "Talmud student," which are Yiddish for "ninny," merely referred to my rendering our confab dangerous by speaking too loud
The next afternoon she kissed me once more, calling me Talmud student again.
But she was apparently getting somewhat fidgety about our relations. She was more guarded, more on the alert for eavesdroppers, as though somebody had become suspicious. My Gentile education she never broached again. Finally when a letter came from her father announcing his speedy return and Shiphrah hastened to terminate my stay at the house, Matilda was obviously glad to have me go.
"I shall bring you the money to the synagogue," she whispered as I was about to leave
I was stunned. I left in a turmoil of misery and perplexity, yet not in despair
When I returned to the synagogue everybody and everything in it looked strange to me. Reb Sender was dearer than ever, but that was chiefly because I was longing for a devoted friend. I was dying to relieve my fevered mind by telling him all and seeking advice, but I did not
"Are you still weak?" he asked, tenderly, looking close into niy eyes
"Oh, it is not that, Reb Sender." "Is it the death of your dear mother—peace upon her?"
"Yes, of course. That and lots of other things."
"It will all pass. She will have a bright paradise, and The Upper
One will help you. Don't lose heart, my boy."
I ran over to Naphtali's place. We talked of Shiphrah and her children—at least I did. He asked about Matilda, and I answered reluctantly. Now and again I felt impelled to tell him all. It would have been such a relief to ease my mind of its cruel burden and to hear somebody's, anybody's opinion about it. But his laconical questions and answers were anything but encouraging
I spent many an hour in his company, but he was always absorbed in the Talmud, or in some of his infidel books. The specific character of my restlessness was lost upon him
I was in the grip of a dull, enervating, overpowering agony that seemed to be weighing my heart down and filling my throat with pent-up sobs. I was writhing inwardly, praying for Matilda's mercy. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I remember it distinctly in every detail. If I now wished to imagine a state of mind driving one to suicide I could not do it better than by recalling my mental condition in those days
In point of fact I took pride in my misery. "I am in love. I am no mere slouch of a Talmud student," I would say to myself
In the evening of the fourth day, as I was making a pretense at reading Talmud, a poor boy came in to call me out. In the alley outside the house of worship I found Matilda. She had the money with her
"I don't think I want it now," I said. "I don't care to go to America." "Why?" she asked, impatiently. "Oh, take it and let me be done with it," she said, forcing a small packet into my hand. "I have no time to bother with you. Go to America. I wish you good luck."
"But I'll miss you. I sha'n't be able to live without you."
"What? Are you crazy?" she said, sternly. "You forget your place, young man!"
She stalked hastily away, her form, at once an angel of light and a messenger of death, being swallowed up by the gloom
Ten minutes later, when I was at my book again, my heart bleeding and my head in a daze, I was called out once more
Again I found her standing in the lane
"I did not mean to hurt your feelings," she said. "I wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart."
She uttered it with a warm cordiality, and yet the note of impatience which rang in her voice ten minutes before was again there
"Try to become an educated man in America," she added. "That's the main thing. Good-by. You have my best wishes. Good-by."
And before I had time to say anything she shook my hand and was gone.