Part 15

The sun was already strong, the train packed, and Salvina stood so jammed in that she could scarcely hold her grammar open, and the irregular verbs danced before her eyes even more than their strange moods and tenses warranted. At the school her thrilling consciousness of her domestic tragedy interposed some strange veil between her and her fellow-teachers, and they seemed to stand away from her, enveloped in another atmosphere. She heard herself teaching--five elevens are fifty-five--and her own self seemed to stand away from her, too. She noted without protest two of the girls pulling each other's hair in some far-off hazy world, and the answering drone of the class--five elevens are fifty-five--seemed like the peaceful buzzing of a gigantic blue-bottle on a drowsy afternoon. It occurred to her suddenly that she was fifty-five years old, and when Miss Rolver, the Christian head-mistress, came into her room, Salvina had an unexpected feeling of advantage in life-experience over this desiccated specimen of femininity, redolent of time-tables, record-parchments, foolscap, and clean blotting-paper. Outside all this scheduled world pulsed a large irregular life of flesh and blood; all the primitive verbs in every language were irregular, it suddenly flashed upon her, and she had an instant of vivifying insight into the Greek language she had unquestioningly accepted as "dead"; saw Grecian men and women breathing their thoughts and passions--even expressing the shape of their throats and lips--through these erratic aorists.

"You look tired, dear," said the head-mistress.

"It's the heat," Salvina murmured.

"Never mind; the summer holidays will soon be here."

It sounded a mockery. Summer holidays would no longer mean Ramsgate, and delicious days of study on sunny cliffs, with the relaxation of novels and poems. These slowly achieved luxuries of the last two years were impossible for this year at least. And this thought of being penned up in London during the dog days oppressed her: she felt choking. Her next sensation was of water sprinkling on her face, and of Miss Rolver's kind anxious voice asking her if she felt better. Instead of replying, Salvina wondered in a clouded way where the school-managers were.

Even her naive mind had been struck at last by the coincidence that whenever, after a managers' meeting, these omnipotent ladies and gentlemen from a higher world strolled through the school, Miss Rolver happened to be discovered in an interesting attitude. If it was the play-hour, she would be--for this occasion only--in the playground leading the games, surrounded by clamorously affectionate little ones. If it was working-time, she was found as a human island amid a sea of sewing: billows of pinafores and aprons heaved tumultuously around her. Or, with a large air of angelic motherhood, she would be tying up some child's bruised finger. Her greatest invention--so it had appeared to the scrupulous Salvina--was the stray, starved, half-frozen, sweet little kitten, lapping up milk from a saucer before a ruddy blazing fire at the very instant of the great personages' passage. How they had beamed, one and all, at the touching sight.

Hence it was that Salvina's dazed vision now sought vaguely for the school-managers. But in another instant she realized that this present solicitude was not for another but for herself, and that it had nothing of the theatrical. A remorseful pang of conscience added to her pains. She said tremulously that she felt better and was gently chided for over-study and admonished to go home and rest.

"Oh, no, I am all right now," she responded instinctively.

"But I'll take your class," Miss Rolver insisted, and Salvina found herself wandering outside in the free sunshine, with a sense of the forbidden. An acute consciousness of Board School classes droning dutifully all over London made the streets at that hour strange and almost sinful. She went to the post-office and drew out as much of her money as red tape allowed, and while wandering about in Whitechapel waiting for the hour of her rendezvous with Lazarus, she had time to purchase a coarse but white table-cloth, a plush cover embroidered with "Jerusalem" in Hebrew, and a gilt goblet. These were for the Friday-night table.

V

But the Sabbath brought no peace. Though miracles were wrought in that afternoon, and, except that it was laid in the kitchen, the Sabbath table had all its immemorial air, with the consecration cup, the long plaited loaves under the "Jerusalem" cover, and the dish of fried fish that had grown to seem no less religious; yet there could be no glossing over the absence of the gross-paunched paternal figure that had so unctuously presided over the ceremony. His vacant place held all the emptiness of death, and all the fulness of retrospective profanation. How like he was to Moss M. Rosenstein, Salvina thought suddenly. Lazarus had ignored the gilt goblet and the shilling bottle of claret, and was helping himself from the coffee-pot, when his mother cried bitterly: "What! are we to eat like the animals?"

"Oh bother!" Lazarus exclaimed. "You know I hate all these mummeries. I wouldn't say if they really made people good. But you see for yourself--"

"Oh, but you must say _Kiddush_, Lazarus," said Salvina, half pleadingly, half peremptorily. She fetched the prayer-book and Lazarus, grumbling inarticulately, took the head of the table, and stumbled through the prayer, thanking God for having chosen and sanctified Israel above all nations, and in love and favour given it the holy Sabbath as an inheritance.

But oh! how tamely the words sounded, how void of that melodious devotion thrilling through the joyous roulades of the father. It was a sort of symbol of the mutilated home, and thus Salvina felt it. And she remembered the last ceremony at which her father had presided--that of the Separation when the Sabbath faded into work-day--the ceremony of Division between the Holy and the Profane, and she shivered to think it had indeed marked for the unhappy man the line of demarcation.

"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hallowest the Sabbath," Lazarus was mumbling, and in another instant he was awkwardly distributing the ritual morsels of bread.

But the mother could not swallow hers, for indignant imaginings of the rival Sabbath board. "May _her_ morsel choke her!" she cried, and nearly was choked by her own.

"Oh, mother, do not mention her--neither her nor him.--_Never any more_," said Salvina. And again the new note of peremptoriness rang in her voice, and her mother stopped suddenly short like a scolded child.

"Will you have plaice or sole, mother?" Salvina went on, her voice changing to a caress.

"I can't eat, Salvina. Don't ask me."

"But you must eat." And Salvina calmly helped her to fish and to coffee and put in the lumps of sugar; and the mother ate and drank with equal calm, as if hypnotized.

All through the meal Salvina's mind kept swinging betwixt the past and the future. Strange odds and ends of scenes came up in which her father figured, and her old and new conceptions of him interplayed bewilderingly. Her sudden vision of him as Moss M. Rosenstein persisted, and could only be laid by concentrating her thoughts on the early days when he used to take herself and Kitty to Victoria Park, carrying her in his arms when she was tired. But it made her cry to see that little tired happy figure cuddling the trusted giant, and she had to jump for refuge into the future.

They must move back to Hounsditch. She must give up the idea of becoming a "Bachelor": the hours of evening study must now be devoted to teaching others. Her University distinction was already great enough to give her an unusual chance of pupils, while her "Yiddish," sucked in with her mother's milk, had become exceptionally good German under study. She might hope for as much as two shillings an hour and thus earn a whole sovereign extra per week.

And over this poor helpless blighted mother, she would watch as over a child. All the maternal instinct in her awoke under the stress of this curiously inverted position. Her remorseful memory summoned a penitential procession of bygone petulances. Never again would she be cross or hasty with this ill-starred heroine. Yes, her mother was become a figure of romance to her, as well as a nursling. This woman, whose prosaic humours she had so often fretted under, was in truth a woman who had lived and loved. She had ceased to be a mere mother; a large being who presided over one's childhood. And this imaginative insight, she noted with surprise, would never have been hers but for her father's desertion: like one who realizes the virtues of a corpse, she had waited till love was slain to perceive its fragrance.

A postman's knock, as the meal was finished, made her heart give a corresponding pit-a-pat, and she turned quite faint. All her nerves seemed to be on the rack, expecting new sensational developments. The letter was for Lazarus.

"Ah, you abomination!" cried his mother, as he tore open the envelope. He did not pause to defend his Sabbath breaking, but cried joyfully: "What did I tell you? Granders Brothers offer me travelling expenses and a commission!"

"Oh, thank God, thank God!" ejaculated his mother, her eyes raised piously. He took up his hat. "Where are you going?" said Mrs. Brill.

"To see Rhoda of course. Don't you think she's as anxious about it as you?"

Salvina's eyes were full of sympathetic tears: "Yes, yes, let him go, mother."

VI

On the Sunday afternoon, feeling much better for the Saturday rest, and scrupulously gloved, shod, and robed in deference to the grandeur of her destination, Salvina boarded an omnibus, and after a tedious journey, involving a walk at the end, she arrived at the West End square in which her sister bloomed as governess and companion in a newly enriched Jewish family. She stood an instant in the porch to compose herself for the tragic task before her and felt in her pocket to be sure she had not lost the little bottle of smelling-salts with which she had considerately armed herself, in anticipation of a failure of Kitty's nerves. Then she knocked timidly at the door, which was opened by a speckless boy in buttons, who also opened up to her imagination endless vistas of aristocratic association. His impressive formality, as of the priest of a shrine, seemed untinged by any remembrance that on her one previous visit she had been made free of the holy of holies. But perhaps it was not the same boy. He was indeed less a boy to her than a row of buttons, and less a row of buttons than a symbol of all the elegances and opulences in which Kitty moved as to the manner born; the elaborate ritual of the toilette, the sacramental shaving of poodles, the mysterious panoramic dinners in which one had to be constantly aware of the appropriate fork.

Salvina had not waited a minute in the imposing hall, ere a radiant belle flew down the stairs--with a vivacity that troubled the sacro-sanct atmosphere--and caught Salvina in her arms.

"Oh, you dear Sally! I am _so_ glad to see you," and a fusillade of kisses accompanied the hug. "Whatever brings you here? Oh, and such a dowdy frock! You needn't flush up so, silly little child; nobody expects you to know how to dress like us ignoramuses, and it doesn't matter to-day, there's no one to see you, for they're all out driving, and I'm lying down with a headache."

"Poor Kitty. But then you ought to be out driving." She was divided between sympathy for the sufferer, and admiration of the finished, fine ladyhood implied in indifference to the chance of a carriage-drive.

"Yes, but I've so many letters to write, and they don't really drive on Sundays, just stop at house after house, and not good houses either. It is such a bore. They've never shaken off the society they had before they made their money."

"Well, but that's rather nice of them."

"Perhaps, but not nice for me. But come upstairs and you shall have some tea."

Salvina mounted the broad staircase with a reverence attuned to her own hushed footfalls, but her task of breaking the news to her sister weighed the heavier upon her for all this subdued magnificence. It seemed almost profane to bring the squalid episodes of Hackney into this atmosphere, appropriate indeed to the sinful romances of marquises and epauletted officers, but wholly out of accord with surreptitious furniture vans. What a blow to poor Kitty the news would be! She dallied weakly, till the tea was brought by a powdered footman. Then she had an ingenious idea for a little shock to lead up to a greater. She would say they were going to move. But as she took off her white glove not to sully it with the tea and cake, Kitty cried: "Why what have you done with my ring?"

Here was an excellent natural opening, but Salvina was taken too much aback to avail herself of it, especially as the artificial opening preoccupied her mind. "Oh, your ring's all right," she said hastily; "I came to tell you we are going to move."

Kitty clapped her hands. "Ah! so you've taken my advice at last! I'm so glad. It wasn't nice for me to stay with you at that dingy hole, even for a day or two a year. Mustn't mother be pleased!"

Salvina bit her lip. Her task was now heavier than ever.

"No, mother isn't pleased. She is crying about it."

"Crying? Disgusting. How she still hankers after Spitalfields and the Lane!"

"She isn't crying for that, but because father won't go with us."

"Oh, I have no patience with father. He hasn't a soul above red herrings and potatoes."

"Oh, yes he has. He has left us."

"What! Left you?" Kitty's pretty eyes opened wide. "Because he won't move to a better house!"

"No, we are moving to a worse house because he has moved to a better."

"What _are_ you talking about? Is it a joke? A riddle? I give it up."

"Father--can't you guess, Kitty?--father has gone away. There is some other woman."

"No?" gasped Kitty. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!" and she shook with long peals of silvery laughter. "Well, of all the funny things! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Funny!" and Salvina looked at her sternly.

"What, don't you see the humour of it? Father turning into the hero of a novelette. Romance and red herrings! Passion and potatoes! Ha! ha! ha!"

"If you had seen the havoc it wrought, you wouldn't have had the heart to laugh."

"Oh well, mother was crying. That I understand. But that's nothing new for her. She'd cry just as much if he were there. The average rainfall is--how many inches?"

Salvina's face was stern and white. "A mother's tears are sacred," she said in low but firm protest.

"Oh, dear me, Sally, I always forget you have no sense of humour. Well, what are you going to do about it?" and her own sense of humour continued to twitch and dimple the corners of her pretty mouth.

"I told you. We cannot afford to keep up the house--we must go back to apartments in Spitalfields."

Instantly Kitty's face grew as serious as Salvina's. "Oh, nonsense!" she said instinctively. The thought of her family returning to the discarded shell of apartments was humiliating; her own personality seemed being dragged back.

"We can't pay the rent. We must give a quarter's notice at once."

"Absurd! You'll only save a few shillings a week. Why can't you let apartments yourselves? At least you would preserve a decent appearance."

"Is it worth while having the responsibility of the rent? There's only mother and I--we shan't need a house."

"But there's Lazarus!"

"He'll have a place of his own. He'll marry before our notice expires."

"That same Jonas girl?"

"Yes."

"Ridiculous. Small tradespeople, and dreadfully common, all the lot. I thought he'd got over his passion for that bold black creature who's been seen licking ice-cream out of a street-glass. To connect us with that family! Men are so selfish. But I still don't see why you can't remain as you are--let your drawing-room, say, furnished."

"But it isn't furnished."

"Not furnished. Why, I've sat on the couch myself."

"Yes," said Salvina, a faint smile tempering her deadly gravity. "You are the only person who has ever done that. But there's no couch now. Father smuggled all the furniture away in a van."

Again Kitty's silver laughter rang out unquenchably.

"And you don't call that funny! Eloped with the chairs! I call it killing."

"Yes, for mother," said Salvina.

"Pooh! She'll outlive all of us. I wish you were as sure of getting the furniture back. She's not a bad mother, as mothers go, but you take her too seriously."

"But, Kitty, consider the disgrace!"

"The disgrace of having a wicked parent! I've endured for years the disgrace of having a poor one--and that's worse. My people--the Samuelsons, I mean--will never even hear of the pater's escapade--gossip keeps strictly to its station. And even if they do, they know already my family's under a cloud, and they have learned to accept me for myself."

"Well, I am glad you don't mind," said Salvina, half-relieved, half-shocked.

"I mind, if it makes you uncomfortable, you dear, silly Sally."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I think I'll go back to mother, now."

"Nonsense, why, we haven't begun to talk yet. Have another cup of tea. No? How's old Miss What's-a-name, your head-mistress? Any more frozen little kittens?"

"She's very kind, really. I'm sorry I told you about the kitten. She let me go home early on Friday."

"Why? To track the van?"

"No; I wasn't very well."

"Poor Sally!" and Kitty hugged her again. "I daresay you were more upset than mother."

Tears came into Salvina's eyes at her sister's affectionateness. "Oh, no; but please don't talk about it any more. Father is dead to us now."

"Then we must speak well of him."

Salvina shuddered. "He is a wicked, heartless man, and mother and I never wish to see his face again."

A cloud darkened Kitty's blonde brow.

"Yes, but she isn't going to marry another man, I hope."

"How can she?" said Salvina. "I wouldn't let her make any public scandal."

"But aren't there funny laws in our religion--_Get_ and things like that--which dispense with the English courts."

"I believe there are--I read about something of the kind in a novel--oh, yes! and father did offer mother _Get_ before he went off, so I suppose he considers his conscience clear."

"Well, I rely upon you, Sally, to see that she doesn't marry or complicate things more. We don't want two wicked parents."

"Of course not. But I am sure she doesn't dream of any new complications. You don't do her justice, Kitty. She's just broken-hearted; a perpetual widow, with worse than her husband's death to lament."

"Yes--her lost furniture."

"Oh, Kitty, do realize what it means."

"I do, my dear. I do realize it--it's too killing. Passion in a Pantechnicon or Elopements economically conducted. By the day or hour. Oh, dear, oh, dear! But do promise me, Salvina, that you won't go back to Spitalfields."

"I must be somewhere near the school, dearest. It will save train-fares."

Kitty pouted. "Well, you know I couldn't drive up to see you any more; Hackney was all but outside the radius--the radius of respectability. I couldn't ask coachman to go to Spitalfields--unless I pretended to be slumming."

"Well, pretend."

"Oh, Salvina! I thought you were so conscientious. No, I'll have to come in a cab. You're quite sure you won't have some more tea? Oh, do, I insist. One piece of sugar?"

"Yes, thank you, dear. By the way, has Sugarman the Shadchan been here?"

"You mean--has he gone?"

"Oh, poor Kitty! It was my fault. I let him know your address. I do hope the horrid man hasn't worried you."

"Sugarman?"

"No--Moss M. Rosenstein."

"How pat you have his name! But why do you call him horrid?"

Salvina stared. "But have you seen his photograph?"

"Oh, you can't go by photographs. He has been here."

"What! Sugarman had the impudence to bring him!"

Kitty flushed slightly. "No, he called alone--this afternoon, just before you."

"What impertinence! A brazen commercial courtship! You wouldn't receive him, of course."

"Oh, well, I thought it would be fun just to look at him," said Kitty uneasily. "A commercial courtship, as you express it, is not unamusing."

"I don't see anything amusing in it--it's an outrage."

"I told you you had no sense of humour. I find it comic to be loved before first sight by a man who has no _h_'s, but only _l_'s, _s_'s, and _d_'s."

"Sugarman says he did see you before loving you--noticed you before he went to the Cape. But you must have been a little girl then."

"He didn't tell me that--that would have been even more romantic. He only said he fell in love with my photograph, as paraded by Sugarman."

"Why, where should Sugarman get--"

"You never know what mother's been up to," interrupted Kitty dryly.

"Much more likely father."

"What's the odds? Do have another piece of cake."

"No, thank you. But what did you say to the man?"

"The same as you. Don't stare so, you stupid dear. I said, No, thank you."

"That I knew. Of course you couldn't possibly marry a bloated creature from the Cape. I meant, in what terms did you put him in his place?"

"Oh, really," said Kitty, laughing, but without her recent merriment. "This is too prejudiced. I can't admit that mere residence in the Cape is a disqualification."

"Oh, yes, it is. Why do they go there? Only to make money. A person whose one idea in life is money can't be a nice person."

"But money isn't his one idea--now his one idea is matrimony. That is a joke. You ought to laugh."

"It makes me cry to think that some nice girl may be driven into marrying him just for his money."

"Poor man! So because of his money he is to be prevented from having a nice wife."

Salvina was taken aback by this obverse view.

"How is he ever to improve?" asked Kitty, pursuing her advantage.

"Yes, that's true," Salvina admitted. "The best thing would be if some nice girl could _fall in love_ with him. But that doesn't make his methods less insulting. I wish all these Shadchans could be slaughtered off."

"What a savage little chit! They often make as good marriages as are made in heaven."

"Don't tease. You know you think as I do."

Salvina took an affectionate leave of her sister, and walked down the soft staircase, confused but cheerful. The boy in buttons let her out. To do so he hurriedly put down the infant of the house who was riding on his shoulders. Such a touch of humanity in a row of buttons gave Salvina a new insight and a suspicion that even the powdered footman who brought the tea might have an emotion behind his gorgeous waistcoat. But the crowds fighting for the omnibuses that fine Sunday afternoon depressed her again. All the seats outside were packed, and it was only after standing a long time on the pavement that she squeezed her way into an inside seat. The stuffiness and jolting made her feel sick and dizzy. By a happy accident her fingers encountered the bottle of smelling-salts in her pocket, and, as she pulled it out eagerly, she remembered it had been intended for Kitty.

VII

Lazarus remained out late that evening, and, as he had forgotten to borrow the key, Salvina was sitting up for him.