The Rise of David Levinsky (28 page)

I thought of Meyer Nodelman, of Mr. Even and his wealthy son-in-law, of Maximum Max. But the idea of approaching them with my venture could not be taken seriously. The images of Gitelson and of Gussie crossed my mind almost simultaneously. I rejected them both. Gitelson and I might, perhaps, start manufacturing on a small scale, leaving Chaikin out. But Chaikin was the very soul of my project. Without him there was no life to it. Besides, where was he, Gitelson? Was it worth while hunting for him?

As for Gussie, the notion of marrying her for her money seemed a joke, even if she were better-looking and younger. That her dower was anywhere near three thousand dollars was exceedingly doubtful. However, the image of her washed-out face would not leave my mind. Her hoarding might amount to over one thousand, and in my despair the sum was tempting. “She is a good girl, the best of all I know,” I defended myself before the “Good Spirit” in me. “Also she is a most sensible girl. Just the kind of wife a business man needs.” In addition I urged the time-honored theory that a homely wife is less likely to flirt with other men and to neglect her duties than a good-looking one.

I took the car down-town and made my way to Gussie’s lodgings that very afternoon. I did so before I had made up my mind that I was prepared to marry her. “I’ll call on her, anyhow,” I decided. “Then we shall see. There can be no harm in speaking to her.”

I was impelled by the adventure of it more than by anything else.

In spite of the unbearable heat, I almost felt sure that I should find her at home. Going out of a Sunday required presentable clothes, which she did not possess. She was saving for her dower with her usual intensity.

I was not mistaken. I found her on the stoop in a crowd of women and children.

“ I must speak to you, Gussie,” I said, as she descended to the sidewalk to meet me. “Let’s go somewhere. I have something very important I want to say to you.”

“ Is it again something about your studying to be a smart man at my expense?” she asked, rather good-naturedly.

“No, no. Not at all. It’s something altogether different, Gussie.”

The nervous emphasis with which I said it piqued her interest. Without going up-stairs for her hat she took me to the Grand Street dock, not many blocks away. The best spots were already engaged, but we found one that suited our purpose better than the water edge would have done. It was a secluded nook where I could give the rein to my eloquence.

I told her of my talk with the Chaikins, omitting names, but inventing details and bits of “local color” calculated to appeal to my listener’s imagination and business sense. She followed my story with an air of stiff aloofness, but this only added fuel to the fervor with which I depicted the opportunity before me.

“So you have thrown that college of yours out of your mind, haven’t you?” she said in a dry, non-committal way.

I felt the color mounting to my face. “Well, not entirely,” I answered.

“Not entirely?”

“I mean—Well, anyhow, what do they do at college? They read books. Can’t I read them at home? One can find time for everything.” Returning to my new project, I said: “It’s a great chance, Gussie. It would be an awful thing if I had to let it slip out of my hand.”

That what I wanted was her dower (with herself as an unavoidable appendage) went without saying. It was implied, as a matter of course.

“How much would your great designer want you to invest?” she asked, with an air of one guided by mere curiosity, and with a touch of irony to boot.

“A couple of thousand dollars might do, I suppose.”

“A couple of thousand!” she said, lukewarmly. “Tell your great designer he is riding too high a horse.”

“Still, in order to start a decent business—’ I said, throwing a covert glance at her.

“Cloak-factories have been started with a good deal less,” she snapped back.

“On Division Street, perhaps.”

“And what do you fellows expect to do—start on Broadway?”

“Well, it takes some money to get started even on Division Street.”

“Not two thousand. It has been done for a good deal less.”

“I know; but still—I am sure a fellow must have some money.”

“It depends on what you call ‘some.’ ”

It was the same kind of fencing contest as that which I had had with Mrs. Chaikin. I was sounding Gussie’s purse as the designer’s wife had mine. Finally she took me in hand for a severe cross-examination. She was obviously interested. I contradicted myself in some minor points, but, upon the whole, I stood the test well.

“ If it is all as you say,” she finally declared, “there seems to be something in it.”

“Gussie!” I said, tremulously, “there is a great chance for us—”

“Wait,” she interrupted me, suddenly bethinking herself of a new point. “If he is as great a designer as you say he is, and he works for a big firm, how is it, then, that he can’t find a partner with big money?”

“He could, any number of them, but he has confidence in me. He says he would much rather start with me on two thousand than with somebody else on twenty. He thinks I should make an excellent business man, and that between the two of us we should make a great success of it. Money is nothing—so he says—money can be made, but with a fool of an outside man even more than twenty thousand dollars might go up in smoke.”

“That’s so,” Gussie assented, musingly.

There was a pause.

“Well, Gussie?” I mustered courage to demand.

“You don’t want me to give you an answer right off, do you? Things like that are not decided in a hurry.”

We went on to discuss the project and some indifferent topics. It was rapidly growing dark and cool. Looming through the thickening dusk, somewhat diagonally across the dock from us, was the figure of a young fellow with his head reclining on the shoulder of a young woman. A little further off and nearer to the water I could discern a white shirt-waist in the embrace of a dark coat. A song made itself heard. It was “After the Ball is Over,” one of the sentimental songs of that day. “Tara-ra-boom-de-aye” followed, a tune usually full of joyous snap and go, but now performed in a subdued, brooding tempo, tinged with sadness. It rang in a girlish soprano, the rest of the crowd listening silently. By this time the gloom was so dense that the majority of us could not see the singer, which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all in the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, with the love-enraptured solemnity of the spring night.

I had not the heart even to think of business, much less to talk it. We fell silent, both of us, listening to the singing. Poor Gussie! She was not a pretty girl, and she did not interest me in the least. Yet at this moment I was drawn to her. The brooding, plaintive tones which resounded around us had a bewitching effect on me. It filled me with yearning; it filled me with love. Gussie was a woman to me now. My hand sought hers. It was an honest proffer of endearment, for my soul was praying for communion with hers.

She withdrew her hand. “This should not be done in a hurry, either,” she explained, pensively.

“Gussie ! Dear Gussie!” I said, sincerely, though not unaware of the temporary nature of my feeling.

“ Don’t!” she implored me.

There was something in her plea which seemed to say: “You know you don’t care for me. It’s my money that has brought you here. Alas! It is not my lot to be loved for my own sake.”

Her unspoken words broke my heart.

“Gussie! I swear to you you’re dear to me. Can’t you believe me?”

The singing night was too much for her. She yielded to my arms. Urged on by the chill air, we clung together in a delirium of love-making. There were passionate embraces and kisses. I felt that her thin, dried-up lips were not to my taste, but I went on kissing them with unfeigned fervor.

The singing echoed dolefully. We remained in that secluded nook until the growing chill woke us from our trance. I took her home. When we reached a tiny square jammed with express-wagons we paused to kiss once more, and when we found ourselves in front of her stoop, which was now deserted, the vigorous hand-clasp with which I took my leave was symbolic of another kiss. I went away without discovering the size of her hoard. I was to call on her the next evening.

As I trudged along through the swarming streets on my way home the predominant feeling in my heart was one of physical distaste. Poor thing! I felt that marrying her was out of the question.

Nevertheless, the next evening I went to see her as arranged. I found her out. Her landlady handed me a letter. It was in Yiddish:

 

Mr. Levinsky [it read], I do not write this myself, for I cannot write, and I do not want you to think that I want to make believe that I can. A man is writing it for me for ten cents. I am telling him the words and he is writing just as I tell him. It was all a mistake. You know what I mean. I don’t care to marry you. You are too smart for me and too young, too. I am afraid of you. I am a simple girl and you are educated. I must look for my equal. If I married you, both of us would be sorry for it. Excuse me, and I wish you well. Please don’t come to see me any more.

GUSSIE.

The message left me with a feeling of shame, sadness, and commiseration. During that evening and the forenoon of the following day I was badly out of spirits.

 

There was nothing to do at the shop, yet I went there just to see Chaikin, so as to keep up his interest in my scheme. He was glad to see me. He had a message from his wife, who wanted me to call in the evening. Gussie’s letter was blotted out of my memory. I was once more absorbed in my project.

I spent the evening at the designer’s house. Mrs. Chaikin made new attempts at worming out the size of my fortune and, in addition, something concerning its origin.

“Is it an inheritance?” she queried.

“An inheritance? Why, would you like me to get one?” I said, playfully, as though talking to a child.

She could not help laughing. “Well, then, is it from a rich brother or a sister, or is it your own money?” she pursued, falling in with the facetious tone that I was affecting.

“Any kind of money you wish, Mrs. Chaikin. But, seriously, there will be no trouble about cash. The main point is that I want to go into manufacturing and that I should prefer to have Mr. Chaikin for my partner. There is plenty of money in cloaks, and I am bent upon making heaps, great heaps, of it—for Mr. Chaikin and myself. Really, isn’t it maddening to think that he should be making other people rich, while all he gets is a miserable few dollars a week? It’s simply outrageous.”

So speaking, I worked Mrs. Chaikin up to a high sense of the absurdity of the thing. I was rapidly gaining ground with her.

And so, pending that mysterious something to which I was often alluding as the source of my prospective fortune, I became a frequent visitor at her house. Sometimes she would invite me to supper; once or twice we spent Sunday together. As for little Maxie, he invariably hailed me with joy. I was actually fond of him, and I was glad of it.

T
HE time I speak of, the late ‘80’s and the early ’go’s, is connected with an important and interesting chapter in the history of the American cloak business. Hitherto in the control of German Jews, it was now beginning to pass into the hands of their Russian co-religionists, the change being effected under peculiar conditions that were destined to lead to a stupendous development of the industry. If the average American woman is to-day dressed infinitely better than she was a quarter of a century ago, and if she is now easily the best-dressed average woman in the world, the fact is due, in a large measure, to the change I refer to.

The transition was inevitable. While the manufacturers were German Jews, their contractors, tailors, and machine operators were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia or Austrian Galicia. Although the former were of a superior commercial civilization, it was, after all, a case of Greek meeting Greek, and the circumstances were such that just because they represented a superior commercial civilization they were doomed to be beaten.

The German manufacturers were the pioneers of the industry in America. It was a new industry, in fact, scarcely twenty years old. Formerly, and as late as the ‘70’s, women’s cloaks and jackets were little known in the United States. Shawls were worn by the masses. What few cloaks were seen on women of means and fashion were imported from Germany. But the demand grew. So, gradually, some German-American merchants and an American shawl firm bethought themselves of manufacturing these garments at home. The industry progressed, the new-born great Russian immigration—a child of the massacres of 1881 and 1882—bringing the needed army oi tailors for it. There was big money in the cloak business, and it would have been unnatural if some of these tailors had not, sooner or later, begun to think of going into business on their own hook. At first it was a hard struggle. The American business world was slow to appreciate the commercial possibilities which these new-comers represented, but it learned them in course of time.

It was at the beginning of this transition period that my scheme was born in my mind. Schemes of that kind were in the air.

Meyer Nodelman, the son of my landlady, had not the remotest inkling of my plans, yet I had consulted him about them more than once. Of course, it was all done in a purely abstract way. Like the majority of our people, he was a talkative man, so I would try to keep him talking shop. By a system of seemingly casual questioning I would pump him on sundry details of the clothing business, on the differences and similarities between it and the cloak trade, and, more especially, on how one started on a very small capital.