Part 17

Once indeed when Salvina had seriously projected Paris in the interest of her French, there had been a quarrel on the subject. There were many quarrels on many subjects, but it was always one quarrel and had always the same groundwork of dialogue on Mrs. Brill's part, whatever the temporal variations.

"A nice daughter! To trample under foot her own flesh and blood, because she thinks I'm dependent on her! Well, well, do your own marketing, you little ignoramus who don't know a skirt steak from a loin chop; you'll soon see if I don't earn my keep. I earned my living before you were born, and I can do so still. I'd rather live in one room than have my blood shed a day longer. I'll send for Kitty--she never stamps on the little mother. She shan't slave her heart out any more among strangers, my poor fatherless Kitty. No, we'll live together, Kitty and I. Lazarus would jump at us--my own dear, handsome Lazarus. I never see him but he tells me how the children are crying day and night for their granny, and why don't I go and live with him? _He_ wouldn't spit upon the mother who suckled him, and even Rhoda has more respect for me than my own real daughter."

Such was the basal theme; the particular variation, when the holiday was concerned, took the shape of religious remonstrance. "And where am I to get _kosher_ food in Paris? In Ramsgate I enjoy myself; there's a _kosher_ butcher, and all the people I know. It's as good as London."

Tears always conquered Salvina. She had an infinite patience with her mother on these occasions, not resenting the basal theme, but regarding it as a mere mechanic explosion of nervous irritation, generated by her lonely life. Sometimes she forgot this and argued, but was always the more sorry afterward. Not that she did not enjoy Ramsgate. Her nature that craved for so much and was content with so little found even Ramsgate a Paradise after a year of the slum-school, to which she always returned looking almost healthy. But this constant absorption in her mother's personality narrowed her almost to the same mental bookless horizon. All the red blood of ambition was sucked away as by a vampire; her energy was sapped and the unchanging rut of school-existence combined to fray away her individuality. She never went into any society; the rare invitation to a social event was always refused with heart-shrinking. Every year made her more shy and ungainly, more bent in on herself, and on the little round of school and home life, which left her indeed too weary in brain and body for aught beside. She sank into the scholastic old maid, unconsciously taking on the very gait and accent of Miss Rolver, into the limitations of whose life she had once had a flash of insight. Yet she was unaware of her decay; her automatic brain was still alive in one corner, where the dreams hived and nested. Paris and Rome and the wonder-places still shone on the horizon, together with the noble young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted. And twice or thrice a year Kitty would flash upon the scene to remind her that there was truly a world of elegance and adventure. Her mother had begun to worry over the beautiful Kitty's failure to marry; she had imagined that in those gilded regions she would have snapped up a South African millionaire or other ingenuous person. How nearly Kitty had actually come to doing so, even without the spring-board of Bedford Square, Salvina never told her. She had kept both Sugarman and Moss M. Rosenstein from pestering her mother, by telling the Shadchan that Kitty's voice and Kitty's alone weighed with Kitty in such a matter. When the swarthy capitalist returned to the Cape, despairing, Salvina had written to congratulate her sister on her high-mindedness. In the years that followed, she had to endure many a bad quarter of an hour of maternal reproach because Kitty did not marry, but Mrs. Brill's vengeance was unconscious. Kitty herself never heard a word of these complaints; to her the mother was all wreathed smiles, for she never came without bringing a trinket, and every one of these trinkets meant days of happiness. The little lockets and brooches were shown about to all the neighbours and hitched them on to the bright spheres which Kitty adorned. Carriages and footmen, soft carpets and gilded mirrors gleamed in the air. "My Kitty!" rolled under Mrs. Brill's tongue like a honeyed sweet. Kitty's little gifts, flashing splendidly on the everyday dulness, made more impression than all the steady monotonous services of Salvina. For the rest, Salvina conscientiously repaid these gifts in kind on Kitty's birthdays and other high days.

X

When Salvina was twenty-three years old a change came. Lazarus ceased to demand assistance: he was cheery and self-confident, and inclined to chaff Salvina on her prim ways. He removed to a larger house and her easy-chair disappeared before a more elegant. And the apparent brightness of her brother's prospects brightened Salvina's. Her savings increased, and, under the continuous profit of his self-support, she was soon able to meditate changes on her own account. Either she would give up her night-teaching--which had been more and more undermining her system--or she would procure her mother and Kitty a delightful surprise by migrating back to Hackney.

Her mind hesitated between the joyous alternatives, lingering voluptuously now on one, now on the other, but somehow aware that it would ultimately choose the latter, for Kitty on her rare visits never failed to grumble at the lowness of the neighbourhood and the expense of cabs, and Mrs. Brill still yearned to see horses pawing outside her door-step. But an unexpected visit from Kitty, not six weeks after her last, and equally unexpected in place--for it was at Salvina's school--decided the matter suddenly.

It was about half-past twelve, and Salvina, long since a full "assistant teacher," was seated at her desk, correcting the German exercises of a private pupil. Sparsely dotted about the symmetric benches were a few demure criminals undergoing the punishment of being kept in, and the air was still heavy with the breaths and odours of the blissful departed. A severe museum-case, with neatly ticketed specimens, backed Salvina's chair, and around the spacious room hung coloured diagrams of animals and plants. Kitty seemed a specimen from another world as her coquettish Leghorn hat flowering with poppies burst upon the scholastic scene.

"Oh, dear, I thought you'd be alone," she said pettishly.

"Is it anything important? The children don't matter," said Salvina. "You can tell me in German. I do hope nothing is the matter."

"No, nothing so alarming as that," Kitty replied in German. "But I thought I'd find you alone and have a chat."

"I had to stay here with the children. They must be punished."

"Seems more like punishing yourself. But have you lunched, then?"

"No." Salvina flushed slightly.

"No? What's up? A Jewish fast! Ninth day of Ab, fall of Temple, and funny things like that. One always seems to stumble upon them in the East End."

"How you do rattle on, Kitty!" and Salvina smiled. "No, I shall lunch as soon as these children are released."

"But why wait for that?"

Salvina's blush deepened. "Well, one doesn't want to eat a good dinner before hungry girls."

"A good dinner! Why, what in heaven's name do you get? Truffles and plovers' eggs?"

"No, but I get a very good meal sent in from the Cooking Centre opposite, and compared with what these girls get at home, steak and potatoes are the luxuries of Lucullus."

"Oh, I don't believe it. They all look fatter than you. Then this is double punishment for you--extra work and hunger. Do send them away. They get on my nerves. And have your lunch like a sensible being." And without waiting for Salvina's assent: "Go along, girls," she said airily.

The girls hesitated and looked at Salvina, who coloured afresh, but said, "Yes, this lady pleads for you, and I said that if you all promised to--"

"Oh, yes, teacher," they interrupted enthusiastically, and were off.

"Well, what I came to tell you, Sally, is that I'm not sure of my place much longer."

Salvina turned pale, and that much-tried heart of hers thumped like a hammer. She waited in silence for the facts.

"Lily is going to be married."

"Well? All the more reason for Mabel to have a companion."

Kitty shook her head. "It's the beginning of the end. Marriage is a contagious complaint in a family. First one member is taken off, then another. But that's not the worst."

"No?" Poor Salvina held her breath.

"Who do you think is the happy man? You'll never guess."

"How should I? I don't know their circle."

"Yes, you do. I mean, you know him."

Salvina wrinkled her forehead vainly.

"No, you'll never guess after all these years! Moss M. Rosenstein!"

"Is it possible?" Salvina gasped. "Lily Samuelson!"

"Yes--Lily Samuelson!"

"But he must be an old man by now."

"Well, _she_ isn't a chicken. And you thought it was such an outrage of him to ask for _me_. I suppose having once got inside the door to see me, he had the idea of aspiring higher."

"Oh, don't say higher, Kitty. Richer, that's all--and now, I should say, lower, inasmuch as Lily Samuelson stoops to pick up what you passed by with scorn. And picks him up out of Sugarman's hand, probably."

"Yes, it's all very well, and it's revenge enough in a way to think to myself what I do think to myself, when I see the young couple going on, and Moss is mortally scared of me, as I shoot him a glare, now and again. I shouldn't be surprised if he eggs them on to get rid of me. It would be too bad to be done out of everything."

"Well, we must hope for the best," said Salvina, kissing her. "After all, you can always get another place."

"I'm getting old," Kitty said glumly.

"You old!" and the anaemic little school-mistress looked with laughing admiration at her sister's untarnished radiance. But when Kitty went, and lunch came, Salvina could not eat it.

XI

It was clear, however, that of the alternatives--giving up the night-work or returning to Hackney--the latter was the one favoured by Providence. Kitty might at any moment return to the parental roof, and there must be something, that Kitty would consider a roof, to shelter her.

On Saturday Salvina went house-hunting alone in Hackney, and there--as if further pointed out by Providence--stood their old house "To let!" It had a dilapidated air, as if it had stood empty for many moons and had lost hope. It seemed to her symbolic of her mother's fortunes, and her imagination leapt at the idea of recuperating both. Very soon she had re-rented the house, though from another landlord, and the workmen were in possession, making everything bright and beautiful. Salvina chose wall-papers of the exact pattern of aforetime, and ordered the painting and decorations to repeat the old effects. They were to move in, a few days before the quarter.

Her happy secret shone in her cheeks, and she felt all bright and refreshed, as if she, too, were being painted and cleaned and redecorated. The task of keeping it all from her mother was a great daily strain, and the secret had to overbrim for the edification of Lazarus. Lazarus hailed the change with expressions of unselfish joy, that brought tears into Salvina's eyes. He even went with her to see how the repairs were getting on, chatted with the workmen, disapproved of the landlord's stinginess in not putting down new drain pipes, and made a special call upon that gentleman.

One day on her return from school Salvina found a postcard to the effect that the house was ready for occupation. Salvina was for once glad that she had never yet found time to persuade her mother to learn to read. She went to feast her eyes on the new-old house and came home with the key, which she hid carefully till the Sunday afternoon, when she induced her mother to make an excursion to Victoria Park. The weather was dull, and the old woman needed a deal of coaxing, especially as the coaxing must be so subtle as not to arouse suspicion.

On the way back in the evening from the Park, which, as there was an unexpected band playing popular airs, her mother enjoyed, Salvina led her by the old familiar highways and byways back to the old home, keeping her engrossed in conversation lest it should suddenly befall her to ask why they were going that way. The expedient was even more successful than she had bargained for, Mrs. Brill's sub-consciousness calmly accepting all the old unchanged streets and sights and sounds, while her central consciousness was absorbed by the talk. Her legs trod automatically the dingy Hackney Terrace to which she had so often returned from her Park outing, her hand pushed open mechanically the old garden-gate, and as Salvina, breathlessly wondering if the spell could be kept up till the very last, opened the door with the latch-key, her mother sank wearily, and with a sigh of satisfaction, upon the accustomed hall-chair. In that instant of maternal apathy, the astonishment was wholly Salvina's. That hall-chair on which her mother sat was the very one which had stood there in the bygone happy years; the hat-rack was the one with which her father had "eloped"; on it stood the little flower-pots and on the wall hung the two engravings of the trials of Lord William Russell and Earl Stafford exactly in the same place, and facing her stood the open parlour with all the old furniture and colour. In that uncanny instant Salvina wondered if she had passed through years of hallucination. There was her mother, natural and unconcerned, bonneted and jewelled, exactly as she had come from Camberwell years ago when they had entered the house together. Perhaps they were still at that moment; she knew from her studies as well as from experience that you can dream years of harassing and multiplex experience in a single second. Perhaps there had been no waking hallucination; perhaps the long waiting for her mother to appear with the house-key had made her sleepy, and in that instant of doze she had dreamed all those horrible things--the empty house, her father's flight, his reappearance at her brother's marriage; the long years of evening lessons. Perhaps she was still seventeen, studying the Greek verbs for the Bachelorhood of Arts, perhaps her mother was still a happy wife. Her eyes filled with tears, and she let herself dwell upon the wondrous possibility a second or so longer than she believed in it. For the smell of new paint was too potent; it routed the persuasions of the old furniture. And in another instant it had penetrated through Mrs. Brill's fatigue. She started up, aware of something subtly wrong, ere clearer consciousness dawned.

"Michael!" she shrieked, groping.

"Hush, hush, mother!" said Salvina, with a pain as of swords at her heart. She felt her mother had stumbled--with whatever significance--upon the word of the enigma. "Another trick has been played on us."

"A trick!" Mrs. Brill groped further. "But _you_ brought me. How comes this house here? What has happened?"

"I wanted to surprise you. I have rented the old house, and some one else has put in the old furniture."

"Michael is coming back! You and your father have plotted."

"Oh, mother! How can you accuse me of such a thing!" All the expected joy of the surprise had been changed to anguish, she felt, both for her and for her mother. Oh, what a fatal mistake! "I won't have the furniture, we'll pitch it into the street--we are going to live here together, mammy, you and I, in the old home. We can afford it now."

She laid her cheek to her mother's, but Mrs. Brill broke away petulantly and ran toward the parlour. "And does he think I'll have anything to do with him after all these years!" she cried.

"Dear mother, he doesn't know you if he thinks that!" said Salvina, following her.

"No, indeed! And a chip out of my best vase, just as I thought! And that isn't my chair--he's shoved me in one of a worse set. The horsehair may seem the same, but look at the legs--no carving at all. And where's the extra leaf of the table? Gone, too, I daresay. And my little gilt shovel that used to stand in the fender here, what's become of that? And do you call this a sofa? with the castors all off! Oh, my God, she has ruined all my furniture," and she burst into hysteric tears.

Salvina could do nothing till the torrent had spent itself. But she was busy, thinking. She saw that again her brother and her father had conspired together. Hence Lazarus's officiousness toward the landlord and the workmen--that he might easily get the entry to the house. But perhaps the conspiracy had not the significance her mother put upon it. Perhaps Lazarus was principal, not agent; in the flush of his new prosperity he had really projected a generous act; perhaps he had resolved to put the coping-stone on the surprise Salvina was preparing for her mother, and had hence negotiated with the father for the old things. If so, she felt she had not the right to make her mother refuse them; the rather, she must hasten at once to Lazarus to pour out her appreciation of his thoughtfulness.

"Come along, mother," she said at last, "don't sit there, crying. I think Lazarus must have bought back the things for you. You see, mammy, I wanted to give you a little surprise, and dear Lazarus has given _me_ a little surprise."

"Do you really think it's only Lazarus?" asked Mrs. Brill, and to Salvina's anxious ear there seemed a shade of disappointment in the tone.

"I'm sure it is--father couldn't possibly have the impudence. After all these years, too!"

But when she at last got her mother to Lazarus, that gentleman confessed aggressively that he had been only the agent.

"I don't see why you shouldn't let the poor old man come back," he said. "The other person died a year ago, only nobody liked to tell mother, she was so bristly and snappy."

"Ah," interrupted Mrs. Brill exultantly, "then Heaven has heard my curses. May she burn in the lowest Gehenna. May her body become one yellow flame like her dyed hair."

"Hush!" said Salvina sternly. "God shall judge the dead."

"Oh, of course you always take everybody's part against your mother." And Mrs. Brill burst into tears again and sank into the new easy-chair.

"I do think mother's right," said Lazarus sullenly. "Why do you stand in her way?"

"I?" Salvina was paralyzed.

"Yes, if it wasn't for you--"

"Mother, do you hear what Lazarus is saying? That I keep you from father!"

"Father! A pretty father to you! He waits till she's dead, and then he wants to creep back to us. But let him lie on her grave. He'll swell to bursting before he crosses my door-step."

"There, Lazarus, do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear," he said incredulously. "But does she know what father offers her--every comfort, every luxury? He is rich now."

"Rich?" said Mrs. Brill. "The old swindler!"

"He didn't swindle--he's very sorry for the past now, and awfully kind and generous."

Salvina had a flash of insight. "Ho! So this is why--" She checked herself and looked round the handsome room, and the new easy-chair in which her mother sat became suddenly as hateful as the old.

"Well, suppose it is?" said Lazarus defiantly. "I don't see why we shouldn't share in his luck."

"And where does the luck come from?" Salvina demanded.

"What's that to do with us? From the Stock Exchange, I believe."

"And where did he get the money to gamble with?"

"Oh, they always had money."

Salvina's eyes blazed. The nerveless creature of the school became a fury. "And you'd touch that!"

"Hang it all, he owes us reparation. You, too, Salvina--he is anxious to do everything for you. He says you must chuck up school--it's simply wearing you away. He says he wants to take you abroad--to Paris."

"Oh, and so he thinks he'll get round mother by getting round me, does he? But let him take his furniture away at once, or we'll pitch it into the street. At once, do you hear?"

"He won't mind." Lazarus smiled irritatingly. "He wants to put better furniture in, and his real desire is to move to a big house in Highbury New Park. But I persuaded him to put back the old furniture--I thought it would touch you--a token, you know, that he wanted 'auld lang syne.'"

"Yes, yes, I understood," said Salvina, and then she thought suddenly of Kitty and a burst of hysteric laughter caught her. "Elopements economically conducted," went through her mind. "By the day or hour!" And she imagined the new phrases Kitty would coin. "The Prodigal Father and the Pantechnicon"--"The old Love and the old Furniture," and the wild laughter rang on, till Lazarus was quite disconcerted.

"I don't see where the fun comes in," he said wrathfully. "Father is very sorry, indeed he is. He quite cried to me--on that very chair where mother is sitting. I swear to you he did. And you have the heart to laugh!"

"Would you have me cry, too? No, no; I am glad he is punished."

"Yes--a nice miserable lonely old age he has before him."

"He has plenty of money."

"You're a cold, unfeeling minx! I don't envy the man who marries you, Salvina."

Salvina flushed. "I don't, either--if he were to treat me as mother has been treated."

"Yes, no one has had a life like mine, since the world began," moaned Mrs. Brill, and her waning tears returned in full flood.

"My poor mammy," and Salvina put a handkerchief to the flooded cheeks. "Come home, we have had enough of this."

Mrs. Brill rose obediently.

"Oh, yes, take her home," said Lazarus savagely, "take her to your shabby, stinking lodging, when she might have a house in Highbury New Park and three servants."

"She has a house at Hackney, and I'll give her a servant, too. Come, mother."

Salvina mopped up her mother's remaining tears, and with an inspiration of arrogant independence, she rang for Lazarus's servant and bade her hail a hansom cab.

"If you don't want all Hackney to come and gaze at a furnished road," she said, in parting, "you'll take away that furniture yourself."

Mrs. Brill bowled homeward, half consoled for everything by this charioted magnificence. Some neighbours stood by gossiping as she alighted, and then her unspoken satisfaction was complete.

XII

They moved into the new-old house, after Salvina had carefully ascertained that the furniture had returned to the cloud under which it had so long lived. In her resentment against its reappearance, she spent more than she could afford on the rival furniture that succeeded it, and which she now studied to make unlike it, so that quite without any touch of conscious taste, it became light, elegant, and even artistic in comparison with the old horsehair massiveness.

Then began a very bad year for Salvina, even though the Damocles sword of Kitty's dismissal never fell, and Lily's migration to the Cape with Moss M. Rosenstein left Kitty still in power as companion to Mabel, to judge at least by Kitty's not seeking the parental roof, even as visitor. Mrs. Brill's happiness did not keep pace with the restored grandeurs and Salvina's own spurt of hope died down. She grew wanner than ever, going listlessly to her work and returning limp and fagged out.

"You mew me up here with not a soul to speak to from morning till night," her mother burst forth one day.