The Rise of David Levinsky (58 page)

“Shall I convey your regards?” he asked.

“Very kind of you,” I answered, and I added in an undertone, out of Mrs. Kalch’s hearing, “Please tell Mr. Kaplan I’m here on an important matter and that I have been detained longer than I expected.”

When he had gone over to the next table I said to myself: “I don’t care. Come what may.”

 

In the evening, as the crowd swarmed out of the dining-room, it was greeted by a gorgeous sunset. Everybody appreciated its beauty, but Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel went into ecstasies over it, with something of the specialist in their exclamations. As for me, it was the first rich sunset I had seen since I crossed the ocean, and then I had scarcely known what it was. The play of color and light in the sky was a revelation to me. The edge of the sun, a vivid red, was peeping out of a gray patch of cloud that looked like a sack, the sack hanging with its mouth downward and the red disk slowly emerging from it. Spread directly underneath was a pool of molten gold into which the sun was seemingly about to drop. As the disk continued to glide out of the bag it gradually grew into a huge fiery ball of magnificent crimson, suffusing the valley with divine light. At the moment when it was just going to plunge into the golden pool the pool vanished. The crimson ball kept sinking until it was buried in a region of darkness. When the last fiery speck of it disappeared the sky broke into an evensong of color so solemn, so pensive that my wretched mood interpreted it as a visible dirge for the dead sun. Rose lapsed into purple, purple merged into blue, the blue bordering on a field of hammered gold that was changing shape and hue; all of which was eloquent of sadness. It seemed as though the heavens were in an ecstasy of grief and everybody about me were about to break into tears.

“Ah!” some of the old women gasped. “How nice!”

“Isn’t it lovely?” said several girls.

“Isn’t that glorious?” said Miss Tevkin. “It’s one of the most exquisite sunsets I have seen in a long time.” And she referred to certain “effects,” apparently in the work of a well-known landscape painter, which I did not understand.

I discovered a note of consciousness in her rapture, some-think like a patronizing approval of the sky by one who looked at it with a professional eye. Nevertheless, I felt that my poor soul was cringing before her.

An epigram occurred to me, something about the discrepancy between the spiritual quality of the sunset and the after-supper satisfaction of the onlookers. I essayed to express it, but was so embarrassed that I made a muddle of my English. Miss Tevkin took no notice of the remark.

The sunset was transformed into a thousand lumps of pearl, here and there edged with flame. In some places the pearl thinned away, dissolving into the color of the sky, while the outline of the lump remained—a map of glowing tracery on a ground of the subtlest blue. Drifts of gold were gleaming, blazing, going out. A vast heap of silver caught fire. The outlined map disappeared, its place being taken by a raised one, with continents, islands, mountains, and seas of ravishing azure.

What was the power behind this sublime spectacle? Where did it come from? What did it all mean? I visioned a chorus of angels. My heart was full of God, full of that stately girl, full of misery.

“If I only got a chance to have a decent talk with her!” I said to myself again and again.

I
T was Monday afternoon. The week-end boarders and many others had left, and I was still idling my precious time away on the big veranda, listening to the gossip of women who bored me and trying to keep track of a girl who shunned me. My establishment in New York was feverishly busy and my presence was urgently needed there. It was more than probable that Bender had wired to Tannersville to call me home. The situation was extremely awkward. Moreover, I was beginning to feel uneasy about certain payments that required my personal attendance.

It was a quiet, pleasant afternoon. The boarders were scattered over the various parts of the hotel and its surroundings. Twenty-four of them, forming two coach parties, had gone to see some celebrated Catskill views, one to the Old Mountain House and the other to East Windham. Some were in the village. Miss Tevkin, wearing her immense straw hat, and with her opera-glass in her hand, was looking at birds in the vicinity of the hotel. Thus rambling about leisurely, she sauntered over to the main road near the grove. A few minutes later she turned into the same path where I had watched her disappear on the morning of the day before. And once more I saw her vanish there.

 

I went out for a walk in the opposite direction. Soon, however, I turned back, strolling with studied aimlessness, toward that spot.

What was my purpose? At first I did not know, but by little and little, as I moved along, an idea took shape in my brain: If I met her alone I might force her to listen to me and let her see the stuff I was made of. I lacked courage, however. While I was priming myself for the coup I wished that it would be postponed. I dawdled. There were swarms of strange insects on the road, creatures I had never seen before. At first I thought they were grasshoppers, but they were gray and had wings. Every now and then I would pause to watch them leap (or were they flying?) and drop to the ground again, becoming part of the dusty road. I followed them with genuine interest, yet all the time I kept working on the speech that I was going to deliver to Miss Tevkin.

I was lingering at a spot a few yards from the grove on the opposite side of the main road when suddenly twilight fell over half of the valley. I raised my eyes. Behold! an inky cloud was crawling over the mountains, growing in size as it advanced. A flash of lightning snapped across the heavens. It was as though the sky screened a world of dazzling glory into which a glimpse had now been offered by a momentary crack in the screen. The flash was followed by a devout peal of thunder, as if a giant whose abode was in those dark clouds broke into a murmur of glorification at sight of the splendors above the sky. The trees shuddered, awe-stricken. I went under cover. A farmer was chasing a cow. As my eyes turned toward the grove they fell on Miss Tevkin, who was standing at the farther end of it, under its leafy roof, facing the main road. My heart beat fast. I dared not stir.

A shower broke loose, a great, torrential downpour. It came in sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an hour’s time it would reach the tops of the trees. I thought of Noah’s flood. I could almost see his dove winging her way over the waters. The storm had been in progress but seven or eight minutes when it came to an end. The sky broke into a smile again, as if it had all been a joke.

Miss Tevkin left the shelter of the trees and set out in the direction of the hotel. I do not know whether she was aware of my proximity.

It was clearing beautifully, when a new cloud gathered. This time a great, stern force, violent, vengeful, came into play. A lash of fire smote the firmament with frantic suddenness, shattering it into a myriad of blinding sparks, yet leaving it uninjured. There was a pause and then came a ferocious crash. The universe was falling to pieces. Then somebody seemed to be tearing an inner heaven of metal as one tears a sheet of linen. This released a torrent that descended with the roar of Niagara, as though the metal vault that had just been rent asunder had been its prison. Miss Tevkin ran back to cover. The torrent slackened, settling down to a steady rain, spirited, zealous, amicable again.

In a turmoil of agitation I crossed over to her. Instead, however, of beginning at the beginning of my well-prepared little speech, I blurted out something else.

“You can’t run away from me now,” I said, with timid flippancy.

“Please, leave me alone,” she besought, turning away.

I was literally stunned. Instead of trying to say what I had in my mind and to force her to listen, I slunk away, in the rain, like a beaten dog.

 

The shock seemed to have a sobering effect on me. I suddenly realized the imbecility of the part I had been playing, even the humor of it. The first thing I did upon reaching the hotel was to ask the clerk about the next train—not to Tannersville, but direct to New York. Going to see Fanny was out of the question now.

There was a late train connecting with a Hudson River boat and I took it.

W
HEN I got home and my business reasserted its multitudinous demands on my attention, the Catskill incident seemed to be fading into the character of a passing summer-resort episode, but I was mistaken; the pang it left in my heart persisted.

A fortnight after my return to the city I forced myself to take a trip to Tannersville. Fanny came to meet me at the train. As we kissed it was borne in upon me that I was irretrievably estranged from her. I tried to play my part, with poor success.

“Are you worried, Dave? What’s the matter with you?” Fanny demanded again and again.

Her “What’s the matter with you?” jarred on me.

I offered her sundry excuses, but I did not even take pains to make them ring true.

Finally she had a cry and I kissed her tears away. While doing so I worked myself into a mild fit of love, but my lips had scarcely released hers when it was again clear to me that she was not going to be my wife.

Our engagement was broken shortly after the family came back to the city. That burden lifted, it seemed as though the memory of my unfortunate acquaintance with Miss Tevkin had suddenly grown in clarity and painful acuteness.

 

 

Our rush season had passed, but we were busy preparing for our removal to new quarters, on Fifth Avenue near Twenty-third Street. That locality had already become the center of the cloak-and-suit trade, being built up with new sky-scrapers, full of up-to-date cloak-factories, dress-factories, and ladies’-waist-factories. The sight of the celebrated Avenue swarming with Jewish mechanics out for their lunch hour or going home after a day’s work was already a daily spectacle.

The new aspect of that section of the proud thoroughfare marked the advent of the Russian Jew as the head of one of the largest industries in the United States. Also, it meant that as master of that industry he had made good, for in his hands it had increased a hundredfold, garments that had formerly reached only the few having been placed within the reach of the masses. Foreigners ourselves, and mostly unable to speak English, we had Americanized the system of providing clothes for the American woman of moderate or humble means. The ingenuity and unyielding tenacity of our managers, foremen, and operatives had introduced a thousand and one devices for making by machine garments that used to be considered possible only as the product of handwork. This—added to a vastly increased division of labor, the invention, at our instance, of all sorts of machinery for the manufacture of trimmings, and the enormous scale upon which production was carried on by us—had the effect of cheapening the better class of garments prodigiously. We had done away with prohibitive prices and greatly improved the popular taste. Indeed, the Russian Jew had made the average American girl a “tailor-made” girl.

When I learned the trade a cloak made of the cheapest satinette cost eighteen dollars. To-day nobody would wear it. One can now buy a whole suit made of all-wool material and silk-lined for fifteen dollars.

What I have said of cloaks and suits applies also to skirts and dresses, the production of which is a branch of our trade. It was the Russian Jew who had introduced the factory-made gown, constantly perfecting it and reducing the cost of its production. The ready-made silk dress which the American woman of small means now buys for a few dollars is of the very latest style and as tasteful in its lines, color scheme, and trimming as a high-class designer can make it. A ten-dollar gown is copied from a hundred-dollar model. Whereupon our gifted dress-designers are indefatigably at work on the problem of providing a good fit for almost any figure, with as little alteration as possible, and the results achieved in this direction are truly phenomenal. Nor is it mere apish copying. We make it our business to know how the American woman wants to look, what sort of lines she would like her figure to have. Many a time when I saw a well-dressed American woman in the street I followed her for blocks, scanning the make-up of her cloak, jacket, or suit. I never wearied of studying the trend of the American woman’s taste. The subject had become a veritable
idée fixé
with me.

The average American woman is the best-dressed average woman in the world, and the Russian Jew has had a good deal to do with making her one.

My Fifth Avenue establishment occupied four vast floors, the rent being thirty-eight thousand dollars a year. The office floor, which was elaborately furnished, had an immense waiting-room with gold letters on doors of dull glass bearing the legends: “General Offices,” “Show-rooms,” “Private Offices,” “Salesmen. Please show samples of merchandise between 9 and 12 A.M.,” and “Information.” The “Private Office” door led to a secluded little kingdom with the inscription “David Levinsky” on one of its several doors, another door leading from my private office to the showrooms.

I employed a large staff of trained bookkeepers, stenographers, clerks, and cloak models. These models were all American girls of Anglo-Saxon origin, since a young woman of other stock is not likely to be built on American lines—with the exception of Scandinavian and Irish girls, who have the American figure. But the figure alone was not enough, I thought. In selecting my model-girls, I preferred a good-looking face and good manners, and, if possible, good grammar. Experience had taught me that refinement in a model was helpful in making a sale, even in the case of the least refined of customers. Indeed, often it is even more effectual than a tempting complexion.

My new place was the talk of the trade. Friends came to look it over. I received numerous letters of congratulation, from mill men, bankers, retail merchants, buyers, private friends. My range of acquaintance was very wide. In hundreds of American cities and towns there were business people with whom my firm was in correspondence or whom I knew personally, who called me Dave and whom I called Jim, Jack, or Ned. So, many of these people, having received my circular describing my new place, sent their felicitations. Some of these letters were inspired by genuine admiration for my enterprise and energy. All of them had genuine admiration for my success Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess of the hour. Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy splendors. Newspapers, magazines, and public speeches were full of her glory, and he who found favor in her eyes found favor in the eyes of man.