"That's all right!" murmured Philip. Before him waved green banners of grass towards the foothills, and white clouds sailed aloof over broken peaks.... "That's all right, mother! And if you forget thatkuggel..."
For the first day at Wenton Philip was almost drunk with the abrupt change from Doomington to the fresh air and the hills. The atmosphere in Wenton House, to be sure, was a little chilly. The relentless cleanliness of each conceivable detail was disturbing. The flaky boiled potatoes served up for midday dinner, Philip's first meal in the House, compared a little disagreeably with the potatoes baked in abundant fat as prepared by Mrs. Massel and only less ably by Dorah. There occurred also a slight contretemps with the implements for pudding. It seemed that most of the boys who sat at Philip's table had paid earlier visits to Wenton House: for Mrs. Kraft, as she stood at the door to receive her junior guests, was able, though the scheduled fortnight was only just beginning, to inquire from one youth, "Well, Abey, and did you get that job in the shipping office?" and from another, "Tell me, Hyman, is the other sister married yet?" and to warn a third, "I hope you will not throw stones, Jackie, at the Christian boys in the village!Iget blamed for it, and it won't do, it won't do!" To Philip she said, a smile emerging from the grimace of matronal hospitality, "What did you say your name was? Philip Massel? And how old? Oh, of course, Mr. Furness told me, getting on for sixteen! Well, we're glad to see you, Philip! See you have a good time!"
Far chillier than Mrs. Kraft were the boiled potatoes, and chillier the pictures on the walls. Wenton House was not wholly self-supporting; only the charity of several benevolent individuals in Doomington rendered a country fortnight possible to the boys on the easy terms of their acceptance. Hence perhaps the legends below the pictures, "How ready is the arm of Charity!" "Charity, the Handmaiden of God!"
Yet, despite the slight constriction in the atmosphere engendered by these details, the sight of Winckley Pike beyond the wide window of the dining-room, and the quick cry of swallows and the smell of clover atoned for the hygienic potatoes, and made of the pictured legends mere ingenuous statements of fact. The country was not so overwhelming a revolution in the mind of Philip as might have been expected. Poetry had long ago made real enough the unseen hills and the unsmelled blossoms. Bluebell Bank had given concreteness as well as subjective reality to his dreams, and such excursions into the country for a whole day as he had experienced several times, with Dorah once, with Harry and Alec once, and twice with a master at school, had continued the process of revelation. They had once climbed Bracken Hill to see far off the triangular mass of Winckley Pike, and beyond, the more desolate moors and the jagged hills.
It was at tea-time that he first thoroughly became aware of the dark eyes of a lady, a young lady, a lady who was chiefly dark eyes. He had had a dim feeling during dinner that some inexplicable thing was causing a disturbance in his blood. He had given it no name. It may have been nervousness merely due to the new surroundings. But at tea-time he ascertained quite clearly that among the ladies of appallingly mature age seated round the table between his own table and the windows, a young lady not fearfully much older than himself, was lifting lettuce to her virginal lips. She was sixteen, perhaps seventeen, certainly not eighteen! They were nice lips for eating lettuce with, but they were nothing to compare with her eyes. Dark eyes, a bit languishing and long, with long lashes. He wondered what she was doing there amid her staider companions. He wondered what the colour of her dark eyes really was. Would you call it brown, or a sort of deep shade of grey? He became aware of her awareness of him. She was conscious of his scrutiny and the dark eyes stared scorn. A chit of a boy like him! He realized he had held his cup of tea for long seconds arrested on its journey to his lips. He blushed and drained the chilled cup to its last drop. The lady was chattering vivaciously, her eyes quick and lovely, her lettuce-receiving lips making rich, full curves as she spoke.
"Make a good tea, you boys!" came the vigilant injunction of Mrs. Kraft.
"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" was the fervent and almost unanimous reply.
"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" hurried Philip, startled, belated. He observed quite distinctly the lips of the dark-eyed lady shape in mockery "Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" His veins burned resentment against the insolent mystery. The sun shouldered from behind a cloud and thrust his fingers into her thick hair. It sparkled and was alive with lights like a tray of gems in a jeweller's window. The flash and wealth of the girl's hair turned him swiftly veering towards Doomington, the thinning hair of his mother.
"Poor old mother!" he mused, deliberately switching his mind away from the lady of long lashes. "I wonder if the cough's eased down a bit? I wonder how many days it'll be before she's up and about again.... What a funny little nose she's got, a weird little cleft at the tip! What can she be doing in that lot? ... O blow the girl, what's she got to do with it anyhow? Why on earth shouldn't mother get away here, as soon as she's properly all right? Everything'skosherand all that sort of thing. He'll have to find the money somewhere, that's all! They could sell all thosebechersand the plush table-cloth. And we never use the samovar nowadays! Oh what a rotten cough it was, like something tearing! Poor old..."
"You won't leave that piece of bread and butter on the plate unfinished, Philip Massel, please!" broke in the voice of Mrs. Kraft.
"I'm so sorry!" he said, a quiver in his voice, the cough still jangling and echoing in his brain, "I didn't notice it!"
He again caught the eyes of the dark lady. It seemed that mysteriously she had caught the infection of his sadness. Her eyes were rounder than they had been, though not less dark. Her speech was more subdued.
Or perhaps it was an illusion. Perhaps? Of course it was an illusion! A laughter fell from her throat like a shower of pebbles. Surely she couldn't have meant that almost imperceptible wink for him? An elder person was muttering uncomfortably, "Not so much jam, Mamie!"
Mamie!
An ever so much nicer name, when you came to think of it, than "Edie." "Edie" began with a screech and its one consonant was a miserable dental. Strange how totally Edie and her nymphs had slipped from his thoughts of late months! He remembered the thoroughly nasty row at school after the Walton Street period had brought him so abysmally low down in form. They had been giddy months.... He had learned a lot.... Then the Chaucer came, then the school exams. Then she fell ill and got worse as the weeks went on.... There had been no room for Edie. She was a sly, deceiving creature, not really to be trusted, though beautiful in a sort of way of course. Now Mamie ... extraordinary name, Mamie....
The boys had begun to file out of the room, and Philip turned his eyes once more towards Mamie, absurdly daring to hope she was looking in his direction, or, if not actually looking towards him, at least showing the black jewels of her eyes. But her head was turned away; he could make out the leaf of lettuce that was delicately approaching the hidden mouth.
Duly the next day a letter came from Channah. Mother was getting on as well as might be expected, and be sure and get that glass of milk every day, and if ever you walk into streams, go back at once and change into your other boots. Below the girl's writing the wavering Yiddish letters of his mother's signature scrawled sacredly. With a sentimentalism he did not repress, despite a consciousness of Alec's probable attitude towards such behaviour, he placed the letter under his shirt until its successor of next day should displace it. He was walking alone, along a quiet lane behind the ambling shanks of cows. He had made efforts to develop friendly relations with some of the other boys at Wenton House. But most of them seemed to have got acquainted with each other in Doomington or on previous holidays and were already splitting up into exclusive groups of twos and threes. He could not help but feel that they looked upon him with some distrust. Many of them had already left their schools and were installed in warehouses and factories. Philip was obviously one of those stuck-up people who pronounced their "u's" almost as if they were "a's," which was absurd, and some of them their "a's" as if they were "ar's," which was intolerable. There was something too, he observed, of subtle contempt in their attitude. They had all paid a certain sum of shillings for their respective fortnights, but the rumour had gone abroad that an unknown capitalist was financing Philip's holiday. No, they decided, he was not their class; a little above, a little below, but not of them! So that, not entirely to his displeasure, he was left rather pointedly alone. Upon the second afternoon, then, he was sauntering slowly along at a little distance behind a herd of cows, when he saw far up the lane a female figure clothed in light blue turn round a bend with some speed, advance a little, and then apparently catching sight of the approaching cows, stop suddenly and flatten against a laneside tree. Then pursuing her round the bend lurched a red cow, followed by another and a third. The blue-clad figure sped onward again until the foremost of the advancing cows was not far from her, then she sank once more into the dry ditch. Philip had recognised the black hair. He had almost made out the brightness of the eyes. It was Mamie, the enchantress of the tea-table!
"Frightened of cows!" he thought a little contemptuously. "All right, I'll lend the poor girl a hand!" He came quickly forward and placed himself between the girl and the roadway.
"Excuse me, won't you!" he said, "I personally am not afraid of cows...."
The bent head was lifted with quick anger, the black hair tossing.
"Who said I was?" asked the girl.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Philip crestfallen. "I didn't understand why——" and he proceeded to move away, a flush of flame lining his ears.
"Don't go away!" the girl shrieked. "I am frightened! Horribly!"
He came back. "Right-ho!" he said, and folded his arms. The cows were filing past in the two directions. Mamie looked round from the side of Philip's legs. "They're nearly all gone!" he assured her.
"I hate cows!" she vowed.
He ventured a remark not strictlyà propos. "And I hate moths! Of course, not to mention beetles!"
"I don't like beetles—or moths!" she added speculatively. "But principally mice and cows. But then what would you expect from a sensintive girl like me?"
His mind went floundering after the meaning of "sensintive." Oh, of course, she meant what people usually called "sensitive." What a quaint old-world sort of word it was on Mamie's lips! "Exactly! Exactly!" he agreed politely.
"If I may say so, it isn't exactlydelincateto know which are bulls and which are cows. Only vulgar girls knowthatsort of thing!" What a fascinating little trick she had of putting "n's" into unexpected places.Delincate! It gave the very word a delicacy of its own.
"Oh, yes!" he said with conviction.
"I'd best be getting up!" she remarked after a slight silence. "It was verysweetof you to give me your protection. Thank you!" her lips shaped lusciously. "Thank you! So sweet of you! Quite chivalrous!" she completed, with a delightfully displaced accent.
"Not at all, not at all!" murmured Philip. Really girls did make an awful fool of him! It was about time he said something a little more elaborate than "Exactly!" or "Not at all!" He had said more before a crowd of working men in ten seconds than he seemed capable of in ten hours in the presence of this quite extraordinary young lady.
"You might," came her voice, a little waspishly, "help a lady to her feet when she gives you an invintation! That you might!" She was rising from the ditch. He bent over towards her, stung and foolish, and lifted her to her feet. The pout left her lips at once. "Oh, thank you so much!" she trilled. "Quite grown-up you are, somehow! How long are you staying in this dirty hole!"
"As long as you are!" he said recklessly, in a spurt of shy gallantry.
"Go hon, now!" she mocked, and flicked the tip of his nose with outstretched fingers. "That you aren't! I'll have to run away from you if you talk like that!" She broke into song—"Saucy and so young!" she quavered. Her voice sent little waves of pleasure coursing up and down his spine. "I'm older than you are, I'll bet!" he ventured maturely.
"How old, Percival?" she asked, signifying her pleasure with a smile of arch gratitude.
"About seventeen!" he lied.
"Well, I'm only just a bit older, nearly eighteen!" she said glibly. Her hand patted and smoothed her hair. "Nearly eighteen!" she repeated, as if the sound of the words gave her real pleasure.
"So we're sort of practically the same age!" suggested Philip.
"Arewe now? Well, you are taller than me and only a month or so younger, so we'll call itquits, as we say on the stage!"
"On thestage?" Philip asked breathlessly.
"On the concert-platform, Idomean! Not low-down music-halls and musical comedies! I'm a singer!"
"By Jove!" Philip whispered, "I didn't know you were one of those!"
"One of those what?" she asked sharply.
"Singers!" he replied innocently. "Why, what?"
"Oh, it's all right, what's-your-name!" she said. "Oh, by the way, whatisyour name?"
"Philip, my name is! Philip Massel!"
"Quite nice!" she approved. "Mine's Ursula!"
"But I heard a lady say 'Mamie!'"
She frowned. "Oh, that's only my Jewish name—Mamie Jacobovitch. Of course you'll have heard my professional name, 'Ursula Daventry.' But I don't mind being called Mamie on holidays! But how long," she asked, changing the subject, "did you say you were staying? A fortnight, I suppose? I'm staying three weeks!"
"I thought girls weren't supposed to stay at Mrs. Kraft's, are they?"
"Oh, it's my precious mother's doing! She's gone off to Chester to help Auntie Bessie have a baby, although what goodshe'lldo ... but I oughtn't to talk to you like this, you're only a kid after all!"
"You just said, you know, we're really the same age to all intents and purposes, didn't you?"
"Of course I did! Of course we are! Where was I! Oh, yes! Well, and mother's a cousin of Mrs. Hannetstein and Mrs. Hannetstein's a big friend of Mrs. Kraft and there you are.I'mjust shunted out of the way! Not wanted in Chester! Not trusted on my own in Doomington! It's filthy! And to be locked up with a lot of old women!"
"I hope it won't be so rotten for you after all! If the weather keeps fine——"
"Don't be sohinty, Philip! But all right, in any case there isn't any real reason why we shouldn't go out together sometimes, is there?—so long as we keep it dark. I suppose Mrs. Kraft would pack me off straight away, thewoman, if she sniffed that I was carrying on!"
"But talking isn't carrying on?"
"You have no idea what filthy minds they've got, all of them! But look here, Mr. Philip, we're out on the main road now and those are the back windows of Wenton House. They might be spying out even now, some of them! You can't tell with these females! I'll tell you what, just slip back into the lane and follow on in five minutes, don't you think? Good-bye, Percival, see you to-morrow?Suchthanks for rescuing me from the bulls! Good-bye!"
Philip slipped back into the lane, his head whirling. Bewildering, audacious, inexplicable girl! So beautifully friendly and candid, and so intelligent, and so much a woman of the world—a concert-singer! And she took one as one's equal, not as a nice school-boy who was only just putting his nose into the world. Philip was flattered and excited. He sat down against the hedge, and his hand wandered for his handkerchief towards the pocket sewn on his shirt. As he extracted the handkerchief, something crackled. The letter, Channah's letter, with his mother's signature! He had forgotten all about her! Oh, what a hog he was! Probably coughing her chest out on the sofa that very moment! A tiny feeling of revolt against the compelling Mamie entered his heart. Almost forgotten his mother! That would never do! But what eyes she had, smiling and dark and secret, even if she was so charmingly frank on the outside! There was tragedy in those eyes! Yes, he was sure there must be tragedy in her life somewhere. Poor girl! he murmured protectively. By the time he reached Wenton House he had constructed for her a sombre Greek background against which her proud bright spirit shone unyielding. Poor girl! he repeated. But what eyes! he mused finally, what eyes!
Next morning no letter arrived. He was furious, chiefly with Channah. "What does she mean by promising me and then letting me down like this! Another of her rotten old actor-heroes; absolutely sloppy about them, she is! I wonder how mother can be! They ought to know how anxious they'd make me not writing after they'd promised! Absolutely filthy, taking the bloom off a chap's holiday, the only holiday I've ever had!" He spilt his coffee with bad temper. Mrs. Kraft stared sourly from her post at the "ladies'" table. Philip rushed out after breakfast to compose a letter of fierce invective. It then occurred to him that if his mother was worse, his letter wouldn't help. He tried to convince himself that she was better and that Channah had therefore not thought the letter worth bothering about. He tore up the letter, but his bad temper increased. The morning passed very dully and he was too sullen to be interested in the munificent substitution of fried for boiled potatoes at dinner. But as the afternoon shadows deepened, his feet took him disconsolately towards the lane where the cow-and-Mamie episode had taken place. In that direction lay, he felt, the only oasis in the ennui of Wenton. An absurdity suddenly struck him. Here was the romantic, the poet, who had once rhapsodized over a blade of grass and shouted for glory at a bird's song, here was he, with strange sweet singers on every branch of unnamed trees, with wild flowers dappling the meadows, scented weeds filling the streamside air, here was he dull and sulky and stupid! What was coming over him? Had the year ended in too feverish a bout of work? But of course it was Channah and that letter! Hang the girl, why hadn't she written? Yet that wasn't all, there was something else making him unquiet, setting up cross currents in these free Wenton days which until recently had seemed a dream not for a dreary time capable of realization. What else beside Channah? Oh, yes, here was the lane where he had seen the huddling mass of blue. Mamie! Undoubtedly, it was that weird girl with the dark eyes putting things out of tune! He didn't like her! There was too much assurance about her.... By Heaven, here she was, sitting demure and watchful on the further side of a sycamore!
"Good afternoon, Philip!"
"Good afternoon, Miss—er, Miss Daventry!"
"Well, if you won't call me Mamie, I can't say I really mind, you know! But I don't think it's at all friendly of you! That I don't! Particularly after——"
"I'm fearfully sorry, Mamie! I didn't think you'd really like to, after only meeting yesterday!"
"After all, what does that matter with girls and boys like me and you! Won't you just sit down here, or are you going on...?"
"Oh, if you'll let me——"
"Yes, do! Now what is it is bringing that nasty frown on Philip's forehead! Out with it, he mustn't look so worried or Mamie will think all sorts of things!"
"It's about, well, it's about a letter!"
"Oh, oh!" said the girl teasingly. "Oh, oh! Tell us all about her! And you do look so young to be carrying on! I said to myself when I first saw you, I said, 'Now there's a young man an innocent girl like me's got to be careful of! I can see it in his eyes, I can'!" She hummed the words of a song. She momentarily forgot her friend as she pursued a phrase along a trilling tremolo. And then, "Oh, yes, where are we! A letter from his little sweetheart! Oh, oh, Philip!"
"It isn't!" Philip declared. He explained haltingly the nature of the letter.
"Oh, don't worry about that sort of thing on holiday!" enjoined Mamie airily. "Inever would, not if my mother were dying of the croup! And if your sister doesn't keep her promises, she's a cat and it's her own look-out! Oh no, no, no, don't let a little thing like that worry you!"
"Really, don't talk of her like that! She's a sport! She's not a cat!"
"Did I say your sister was a cat? Oh, I didn't mean that, you didn't get me proper. You see it's like this.... Oh, hell! It's not worth bothering about! What was I going to say? Let me see—yes! Don't be afraid of me, Philip, why don't you move up a bit, there's room enough? That's right! Now let's talk about something interesting, not letters and stuff!"
A flame of resentment was smouldering in Philip. He was searching round for something to say which would re-establish his self-respect. Peculiar girl! There was no making her out! What was she doing? She was holding his hand! What soft fingers she had! She stroked his wrist, then his forearm. Quaint waves of pleasure went tingling along his backbone. She was leaning her head on his shoulder. Her lovely hair was blowing against his cheek, her bosom was pressing warmly against him.
"Philip!" she said. He made no reply. "Philip!" she repeated. What was there to say? He liked the feel of her against him, he liked the eyelashes curling from her eyes. "Say something, Philip!"
"Mamie," he said lamely, "it's awfully nice of you to be so—to be——"
"Hush, Philip, do be quiet!"
They sat thus for some time, Philip's mind drowsing in an unfamiliar content. They rose at last and separated at the corner of the lane. When he thought, half an hour later, of the letter which had not been sent, he murmured, "Oh, it's all right, I'll hear to-morrow! Nothing's the matter, nothing!" He could feel still the softness of her hair on his cheek.
Channah's note next day was shorter than the last. She did not mention her oversight of the previous day. Once more the signature of his mother lay crooked and inexpressibly precious at the foot of the page.
"I told you so!" said Mamie triumphantly that evening. "Absolutelyno need to worry! Hold my arm a wee bit tighter!"
When no letter arrived the following day, it required no great effort to allay the pangs of unease. "To-morrow!" he said. "It'll be all right to-morrow! I wish Channah weren't so lazy. Now mother's getting better there really isn't any excuse...."
Channah's note of the next day was almost curt. "Mother getting on just the same. Looking forward to your coming back."
But surely there was a change in mother's signature! Oh, surely! He took his wallet from his pocket and removed the two letters he had already received. A numbing anxiety gripped him. It was quite impossible to doubt that the Yiddish letters of the latest signature were sprawling about weakly, the vertical strokes ending in impotent scratches. "God!" he exclaimed in sudden fright. "Nothing can be wrong!" He tried to reassure himself. "She was very tired, that's what it is! Oh,she'sall right! But what if anything were to happen to her while I'm away! That's absurd! Can't a person make a few scratches in signing a letter without giving rise to silly nightmare ideas? I don't know what on earth's wrong with me these last few days! I wish I hadn't met Mamie! She always seems to be quarrelling with mother inside me! What on earth is wrong with me! What have I got to drag Mamie in for! Quarrelling with mother! Isn't that a stupid thing to say about the poor girl! Poor Mamie! Oh, damn Mamie!"
They had made an appointment for that evening in a quiet angle between a barn and a hayrick. "I'll be damned if I'll go and see her!" But at tea that day she looked towards him with such careful languor and winked her large fine eye so solemnly that his resolve weakened. "After allshe'sdone nothing! I wish I weren't so anxious about mother, things would be so splendid ... Would you pass the bread and butter, please! Thank you!"
She kept him waiting for twenty minutes. He fumed, his temper was thoroughly chafed. "Curse it! I'll go back home to-morrow, I can't bear this filthy suspense! What does she mean by keeping me hanging about like this!" A corncrake creaked from an adjacent field. "Oh, the idiot!" he swore. "I'll wring its dirty neck! I'll go away if she doesn't turn up in three minutes! Can anything really be wrong at home! After all, the doctor said she was coming round—oh, blast that bird!" His foot knocked angrily. "Hello!" he whistled. "What's that?" From quite close at hand a low singing travelled towards him. It was a cold voice, but peculiarly sweet. It was a mere tune, without meaning or words, but it soothed him like a cool hand on the forehead. Its pitch was low, like a tiny bird's. Probably the voice could not be heard at all a few yards away. The singing was for himself, a message! Then he saw a slight foot and a blue skirt emerge beyond the corner of the hayrick and black hair floated into view. The warbling became clearer, though not less soft, the dark eyes of Mamie were beaming upon him and her rich red lips were ravishing their music upon the little space between the barn and the hayrick. Philip lay back, soothed and drowsed, the melody played about him like a fountain.
She was by his side, having said not a word; her singing was reduced to the very verge of sound. Then she was silent, her two arms round Philip's waist. The corncrake croaked unheard. He put his two hands on her cheeks and looked into her eyes. There was a glint of mockery lurking among their shadows.
"Can I——?" he asked whispering, yearning, afraid.
"You little fool!" she said. And saying this, she seemed old as the line of high hills which swung against the southward horizon. From a gloom of generations she spoke, a desiring animal voice sounding from a depth of many histories.
"You little fool! Haven't I been waiting for it! Oh, you slowcoach!"
His lips darted hungrily to hers. His body was aflame. He pressed her hard against his breast. His lips relaxed, but hers were still passionate, remorseless, unslacking. Then at last their lips fell apart.
"Oh!" she said, and there was a hint of a squeak in her voice. "Oh, now wasn't that really nice!"
Even now he had room to be shocked at her unfortunate choice of an adjective. "Sweetheart!" he said, "It was more! It was full and golden like the harvest moon! It was like a flooded river, foaming gold in the sunset! It was, it was—Oh, for God's sake don't let me make a speech! Kiss me!"
"Oh, but I like you to! Say it again, Philip! Take one hand away, put it on your heart, like so! Now fire away!"
"Mamie, how can you tease a chap, now—now! At a time when——"
"Now you're going to be sloppy! I can beat you at that game! Bend closer!" she enjoined, playing her fingers about in his hair. "How do you like this one?"
The lines of her bosom were soft and only half-secret as he held her, looking dazedly into her eyes. He was kissing her eyelids and the hollows under the eyes. "Philip!" she murmured, "How delincate of you!"
The word impinged, now as he kissed the slender fringe of those dark eyes, unpleasantly against his skin. But she lifted her eyelids once more and once more he was drowning in sensuous waters, flickering weakly down dim lights and warm opaque shadows.
They said little. It was all a playing with their faces and hands and lips. He seemed to be growing deeper and deeper into her. She was leaning against him, pale, a little tired, it seemed. Once more his head was stooping to her lips. Without warning, he found her rising to her feet and standing over him.
"Mamie!"
"We'd best stop! That'll do, Philip Massel! Leave some till next time...."
"Mamie, but what..."
"Good-night!"
He saw her pass swiftly from view as she flickered round the angle of the barn.
"Mamie!" he shouted. "What's the matter? What on earth have I done?"
No reply came back to him. He rose a little dizzily and came out into the evening. He saw the trees kissing each other in a little wind. The strange sweet smell of her kisses was on his lips. He saw two horses in a field rubbing their heads together. Clouds overhead kissed and mingled. Leaves fluttering kissed each other and darted aloof, only once more to bring their lips together. He heard a stream along the field where he was standing so crazed and tired, lipping and kissing the pebbles.
"Mamie!" he whispered. "She loves me!" Overhead the cry of rooks came, raucously, ironically. "Don't believe it! Don't believe it! Don't-you-believe it!" Who was being ironical? Was it he, was it the rooks? "Don't believe it!" they cawed. "To hell with you all!" he shouted into the black vortex. He lifted his hand to his mouth as if to retain there the impress of her lips.
"I needn't be a fool about it!" he muttered through his teeth.
He fell asleep that night with a sense of the closeness of her face. Dimly and dazed he remembered that her lips had seemed to drink him up. Engulfed in her, he lay sleeping at length. And yet was he truly asleep? From what world came this enamel can with the rusted edges, from the real world, from the world of unintelligible dreams? Oh, yes, of course; he recognized it! It was the can that hung on a nail over the scullery sink. They were filling the can with water, unseen and pale hands holding it to the guttering tap. "Don't think of them!" the girl said, "think of my lips! Aren't they juicy, aren't they sweet?" But processionally, as though that cheap can were a flagon of holy wines, they were bearing it away, along the lobby, and towards the front door. The cat was crying eerily from a shut room. Tick—tick—tick! moaned the clock. Candles fluttering! ... Good girl, Mamie! Here she was, with flushed cheeks and tossing hair! Wouldn't let them have it all their own way, she wouldn't! The can of water stood—why, why? stood at the pavement's edge. She lifted the can and threw the water away, but the can dropped from her fingers, and here once more was the can at the pavement's edge, full once more with dark, mournful waters. "Never mind them!" she whispered. She bent towards him, her eyes desirous. Yet ever quenchless, like a vase of tears, the can stood at the pavement's edge. And here was Mrs. Levine, sodden flour on her apron, and long, torn wools fluttering from her shawl. She was wringing her hands. She bent towards the can of water. "Look away!" said the girl fiercely. A rumbling of wheels...
A cock was crowing. The leaves of a full tree were swishing against the window. Philip opened to the dawn red and apprehensive eyes.
But his first remembrance as he stared towards the oblong of eight lights was not the girl, not all the grape-dark kissing; it was a sudden stab of contrition—"The letter! My mother's signature! By God, what a swine I was! I forgot!"
Mrs. Kraft read the names of the recipients of letters during breakfast. Nothing? Nothing for Philip Massel! He stared savagely towards Mrs. Kraft. She might have read out his name alongside of the fools she had mentioned; he needed his letter a thousand times more than they! He turned resentful eyes towards Mamie. Mamie was chattering sweetly with Mrs. Hannetstein. He stumbled into the garden and sat disconsolately against a trunk. The self-satisfied buzzing of a bee over its tremendously exaggerated labours annoyed him acutely. Minutes passed. His despondency and irritation became more and more unbearably stupid. He had allowed himself to forget her, he had allowed those hungry quiet eyes to slip from his heaven, he had allowed—oh, what a maddeningly fierce scarlet was the geranium in those precise window-boxes! What an insane monotony of triplicate phrases that shallow fat bird sang yonder, the bird with the mottled breast! What a gawky youth was this passing through the front gate with a bumpkin leer and corkscrew feet, a foolish little ochre envelope held stiffly before him! He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes tiredly. How long would it take before she would really be about? Of course it had been a boast, a joke, that she'd have a monstrouskuggelto greet his return! His head was buzzing foolishly.
"Philip Massel! A telegram for you!" Of course that had nothing to do with him! Who the hell was Philip Massel, anyhow? He heard the metallic tinkling of a grasshopper, and saw against his shut eyelids huge yellow spheres like brandy-balls and blue rings and spectral vapours.
"Philip Massel! Didn't you hear? A telegram, I said!"
The bumpkin was grinning towards him. At the front door Mrs. Kraft stood, arm outstretched. Philip turned a frightened face from youth to woman, from woman to youth. He came forward and opened the envelope.
"Mother dangerous return immediately.CHANNAH,"
he read.
A blare of terror sounded in his brain like trumpets.
"Mrs. Kraft!" he choked. "My mother's dying! Oh, quick, I've got to go home!"
From very far away her voice came. "You must have some hot coffee before you go! The next train's the eleven-twenty!"
"You don't know what she's like!" said Philip, burning with a sudden tremendous desire to make this woman understand over whose beloved, intolerably beloved head, lay hideous shadow.
"I know!" the woman was saying. "I've been through it all!" She had taken Philip's arm. "Come in now, you can't go off at once! Poor lad, I'm sorry! But then, perhaps, all will turn out well. Jane!" she shouted, "bring some strong coffee in at once!"
"I don't want anything!" he said. But he found the coffee scorching his palate and coursing hotly down his throat. He found Mrs. Kraft by his side, as he started to fold things into his bag with hands which, uselessly suspended at the wrists, seemed to be lumps of lead. A shirt fell from his fingers to the floor as though it were woven of metal threads. Mrs. Kraft bent quietly to the shirt, folded it and tucked it away; the boy for one moment swung round to look at her, through a gap in the clouds which had gathered about his head. "What's been wrong with me all this time?" he speculated. "I've never seen this woman before, I've never been in the same room!" She had passed repeatedly from his vision like a cart going by on a crowded road—bearing no lineaments of her own, being merely a thing of which his senses had been half-conscious. Was she stern, forbidding? He did not know. Was she, as she seemed now, a grave-eyed woman, quiet, full of pity? How could he argue it out now, while the straps were fumbling from his ineffectual fingers, and like a vigilant automaton, her hands had usurped his own?
"Harry Levi!" he heard her shout into the garden. "Go with Philip Massel to the station and carry his bag for him!"
She mumbled a difficult word of sympathy and the blank door lay between him and Mrs. Kraft. Three and four and five times Harry Levi asked, "Is she chucking you out, Massel, or wot is it, eh?" He had no quarrel with Harry Levi. There was no reason why he should not be civil to Harry Levi; but his lips would not move, and the roof of his mouth was like burnt crust. Harry Levi relapsed into an injured and simmering silence.
There were minutes of waiting at the station, minutes blank and ugly and high like the wall of a factory. The train came hurtling in from among the hills, uttering as it approached the station a lugubrious and prolonged howl. The howl reverberated through all the corners of Philip's heart, rocking, shuddering, dismally dying away.
He was in the train at last. "I must face the fact, I must face the fact!" Chu—chu—chu! the train went, chu—chu—chu! "Face the fact! Face the fact!" As he lay in the corner of the carriage, huddled like a discarded coat, he realized that the fool's paradise in which he had lived lay about him futile and desolate. A puff of wind and the walls had tottered, there was a groaning of uprooted beams, a smell of hot dust, overhead the intolerable eye of the sun looking sourly down! Fool he had been! Had he not seen her dying before his eyes, year by year, day by day!
A little specious voice whispered, "But Channah says she's only ill. She doesn't say—not that! Perhaps it won't ... really, Philip, you can't tell ... perhaps...!"
"Dangerously ill!" Philip countered, "Dangerously ill!"
"Quite, I see! But not—not the other thing.... Other people have been dangerously ill and yet, you know...."
It was only the somnolent fat man opposite to him, whose belly curved below a heavy gilt chain and whose huge red cheeks cushioned curved long eyelashes, who prevented Philip from leaping to his feet and shrieking wildly. "Enough of your lies! I've allowed myself to be taken in long enough! Oh, for God's sake be quiet now, be quiet, or I'll go mad!"
The puerility, the futility of it all! And had he assured himself that though all other women soever in the tremendous history of the world had died, she alone would be exonerate, for his sake, forsooth—she who now perhaps was lying dead...? No, that at least could not be! She would wait for him. By God, God would pay for it if she was not allowed to wait for him!
Oh, speed on, speed on, reluctant and sombre train! Devour the separating miles, throw the hills behind you, plunge forward to the cities, speed on or she shall be dead! Oh, carry me swiftly to her waiting eyes! Her eyelids are heavy! Keep them not waiting so long that they shall droop, droop! Oh, swifter, swifter!
What mercy could he expect from the train? Had he not known all along and kept the knowledge safely hidden in his furthest recesses? Of course she had insisted on his going away from her! She had known that this was coming! She had determined to keep him immune from the shadow whose fringes she knew to be even then hanging over the house in Angel Street! But it had been for him to stand fast, to say—"No, mother, I'm not going! Whatever you say, I must, I will be with you!" She would have understood with that wisdom of hers which lay far from her mere lips, was glimpsed but fitfully in the cloudy hollows of her eyes.
Of course he had known! What else had he meant by that insistence on her signature! It must have been patent to them all how he had dared to go in the teeth of so imperious a premonition that he demanded her handwriting from day to day. That girl....! The memory of her pecked at the flesh between his ribs like some insatiable bird! Kissing, fooling round with her hair, her lips, while she lay weakening, dying. A sound crawled through his teeth. In his own ears it was cavernous, heavy, loud. Suddenly self-conscious, he looked nervously up to the fat man, but the heavy chin still hung placidly relaxed and the shoulders were lifting a little to the incipient snores.
The window beside him was shut. His shirt and collar seemed to have fastened tight round his throat, choking him. He dropped the window with a crash and the cool air came surging in. It was not enough, and he set his face out against the jaws of the wind and felt its chilly comfort washing the roots of his hair.
Swifter, swifter, train, absorb the miles! That white house below the chimney stack on the horizon there, shall we never outstrip it? Grinning there in its unapproachable immobility! Ah, now, the horizon swivels round on a pivot, and swift for your callous face, oh, white, grinning house! Wind, wind, what message do you bring from her? Is she waiting? No, no, I shall not come too late!
Who's speaking? "That'll do, young feller-me-lad!" The draught has awakened the dozing fat man.
His lips vibrate with growing indignation. "Shoot that winder oop and sit tha down! Awake sin' fower o'th'clock and tha wilt go playin' tricks with winders, wilt'a... ?"
The window is replaced along the full length of its groove, and with a rumbling from the gills, a slight outraged crest-heavy swinging, the fat man once more slides away into somnolence.
What shall he do as the slow miles dawdle by? Poetry! How long he has deserted poetry! What strange affinity had there been between poetry and beetles! Rarely, rarely since those old days of crackling wall-paper and whisperful spent cinders where the beetles crawled, had a pencil, busy a moment ago on the annotation of vacuous texts, found itself scrawling rhymes and dreams. He had felt that poetry would not come his way again, but now ... as the train beat like a living pulse, now that his own heart seemed to be moving forward and backward again, a great shining piston ... He hunted in his pockets for a pencil, took out a blunt stump, and lifted an envelope from the same pocket. With a quick dart of anguish he realized it was the last letter he had received from Channah, where already the signature of his mother sprawled with the impotence of death. He flung the pencil away as if the impulse which had produced it from his pocket had been treason. He remembered with bitter mirth an anticipatory consolation he had once frequently imbibed. At the same time as he had persistently assured himself of his mother's immortality, he had whispered, smirking, "Yes, but when she does die, won't I start writing wonderful poetry! Marvellous elegies that'll make Gray sound like a threepenny kettledrum! I'll make 'em sit up! And I'll have a little book bound in soft red leather..." The tortured lad winced as he brought to mind the old fatuity. He would make capital out of her death, would he, little books bound in soft red leather! How well he knew now he would be like a fallen leaf on a road trodden by a thousand feet!
Oh, swifter, train! Never train moved so slowly! He moved from against the fat man and pushed the opposite seat ludicrously with his feet to bring the train sooner to Doomington.
He was holding the envelope in his hand. And he had allowed the girl called Mamie to persuade him to take no alarm in the weakening of the signature. He had suppressed the instinct from swimming into clear consciousness, the instinct to return at once before the hand weakened into the last torpor. Now at length the contest and the protagonists of which his mind had been the arena stood starkly before him, and he knew, with what shame, what despair, who had prevailed. Mamie and a tickling of the lips, shafts of shy pleasure about the loins—and his mother, waiting. With abrupt clarity, the enamelled can which last night had prevailed over the disorder of his dreams, returned. Now clearly he realized the heart-breaking symbolism of the enamel can; not merely symbolism! Soon the can should be not merely a symbol, but a fact; soon, perhaps now!
In all his forethought of death, not in especial relation with his mother, but with anybody he loved or knew, one element in the Jewish custom had brought him most distress. Frequent observation had instructed him that when a dead body lay beyond the doors of a Jewish house, a vessel of water and a bucket to replenish it were placed at the edge of the pavement. As the living passed by the place of death, the vessel was lifted to sluice from each hand alternately of the passer-by the contamination issuing from the melancholy doors. It was a sign of death which had sometimes come upon him so suddenly but with such incontrovertible assertion that it had long filled the crevices of his mind with horror.
The actual enamel tin of his dreams he also recognized. It had been condemned a long time ago to the scullery at Angel Street, because the enamel had been chipped by old service from its edges, and it now hung, he well remembered, on a rusted nail by the sink. It had been used by his father and himself for the hand-washing which preceded every meal. There could be no vestige of doubt that when the time came for this desperate and bitter use, the enamel can would be lifted from the nail and would contain cold water for cleansing at the pavement's edge.
Ah, how he realized now what Mamie was endeavouring to do when she had lifted the enamel can in his dreams and thrown away the water, and the can had fallen from her fingers. Once more she sought to delude him into believing that all was well, that the deadly need did not exist for the cleansing of hands at the enamel can. Even as she had sought to assure him that all was well with the writing in Channah's letter! Too late! There at the pavement's edge, despite her duplicity, the enamel can lay once more, its little lake of grey water reflecting the grey sky. Here came a woman, swaying in her sorrow, her shawl slipping from her head! She stooped. Over the knuckles of the left hand washed the water, over the knuckles of the right.
Philip shivered suddenly. What if he actually found the enamel can outside the doorsteps? Could he bear to go into the house? No, that at least he had not deserved! Not that! She would wait, he knew she would wait.
But see! the streets were now set thick along the path of the railway, dingy parallels, skulking streets at right angles. The fields had long been engulfed in red brick, grey brick. The town once more was gathering about his lungs. And there, pretentious, ugly, forbidding, like the policemen for whom it was their focal centre, reared the chimney of the prison on Doomington Road. The fat man blinked with alarm as the train jarred and jolted into the station.
"Doomington!" Philip murmured, "Be kind, God!"
The tramcar stopped at a corner nearer the station by one block of buildings than Angel Street. Rayman, the butcher, was hacking away with indecent enthusiasm at a hulk of ribs. At Lansky, the draper's, unconcerned girl assistants were measuring lengths of cloth by outstretching one corner and lifting the other to the teeth. Philip noticed with an acute realization of detail the stupid cat with a closed eye and a foolish blue ribbon round its neck which was arching its back lasciviously against a woman's leg. The distance he had walked could scarcely have been more than fifty yards, yet when he came to Moishele's shop at the corner it seemed to him for one moment that he had been walking and walking since dawn broke. Above him and across the intervening gap of the street, on the side wall of the "Crown Inn," and over the advertisement for Groves and Whitnall's Ale, he read on an oblong plaque, "Angel Street."
Angel Street! He dared not put into words what he feared. Must he turn into the street? Oh, turn swiftly, swiftly, never a moment to lose! A small clump of figures down the street brought momentary terror over his blurred eyes, until he made out the wheels and the containing boards of a fruit-handcart.
Thank God, nothing! Nothing at the pavement's edge outside the steps of his father's house! Quietly he knocked. He could hear his heart knocking loudly as the hand knocked. Channah came to the door; pale she was, with wide, dark eyes. A spurt of light came into her eyes when she saw Philip standing there, then the light flickered away.
"How is she?"
"Bad! Go in and see!"
"Just take my bag away. Oh, Channah, I thought I'd never get here!"
"Give it me and go in! She's been asking for you!"
"But why didn't you send for me before? Why did you let me stay away so long? How could you do it? If I hadn't come home in time, Channah, oh, think..."
"But it's all been so sudden, so sudden! Only two or three days ago she broke down suddenly. She just crumpled up. You never saw such a difference in a day or two! Oh, it's been terrible! Let's come away, we mustn't keep the door open! Why are you standing there like that, Philip! Shake yourself, be sensible!"
"Nothing, Channah, nothing! Oh, tell me, why did you persuade me to go away, both of you? If I ever forgive you, can I forgive myself?"
"Philip, let me close the front door! Come in, don't stand like a stone! I can't understand you; why don't you go in at once, she's been asking for you, I tell you!"
"Don't you see how I'm afraid? It's on my mind—what I just said! Why did you let me go?"
"We hadn't the least idea of anything. You'd have upset her if you'd missed the chance. You'd have brought it about sooner!"
"Do you think she really meant it—about thekuggel? Wasn't she just joking?"
"No. She wanted to get up to make you some and send it to you! Emmes, Philip, if it isn't true!"
He had been standing stiff in each joint, touched as with frost. Suddenly all his body drooped. His voice fell to an almost unintelligible whisper. "Let me go in to her....!"
He moved the few steps to the parlour door and turned the handle. He was at her bedside. Only her eyes he first saw. They were larger, warmer, deeper than they had been at any time before. Because of the eyes, he was not immediately conscious with the whole of his mind of the pallor in which they were set: not merely pallor, a bloodless yellow.
But the consciousness of this pallor was soaking through each pore of his body and mind, even as he bent to kiss her powerless lips; even as he rose and was saying, "Look, mother, mother! I'm back from Wenton!" The consciousness of her pallor so steeped each atom, each corpuscle in him that he became yellow as she. Still, for her sake, he held his lips firm against his teeth, subdued the impulse in his four limbs to fling themselves wildly, wildly, upon the floor. She was too weak to answer. He saw her mouth endeavour to frame words and abandon the attempt. Only by a lifting of the eyelids she showed the joy at the centre of that waning heart, and by the dim flush of colour which spread across her cheeks.
He knew not for what length of time he stood motionless over a body so thin it hardly seemed to break the line of the counterpane. At last he became aware that the door had opened and Channah had come through.
"Let me just come near her, Philip, I'll see if she can take a drop of milk! Dorah's in the kitchen! She wants you to go in and have some food!"
"Not now!" he whispered.
There was a shuffling with utensils on the bedside table. The sound seemed to relax a chain which had held the boy taut. He staggered a few steps and, perceiving the moth-eaten yellow plush arm-chair near him, he sank into it with convulsive abandonment. Now he became consciously and fully aware of the shock he had endured. Sometimes in his dreams he had seen her dead. One dream of them all had lifted his eyelids at midnight from eyes glassy with horror. Now as it came back to him, he winced and writhed. He had seen her head lying on that copper tray where each Sabbath eve she had placed the uncut bread before her husband. Beside her head lay a squat beaker of wine, the beaker over which, before the meal began, Reb Monash incanted thekiddushwith shut eyes. In a groping, childish way he had endeavoured to exorcise the terror of this dream by rationalizing it, by relating the hideous phantasm to the fabric of reality. He knew that the copper tray gleaming always like smooth dark mahogany might stand as symbol of the heavy labours which year by year reduced her to a ghost. She had the Jewish housewife's intense pride in the cleanliness and beauty of her home. Each Thursday evening the kitchen table was littered with trays, brass candlesticks, beakers, tins of polish, dusters. Though the reek of the polish was offensive to her lungs and sent her into fits of coughing, no Thursday evening saw the arduous ritual abated by one iota. But Philip knew that the significance of the dream lay deeper than this. Obscurely he realized that the beaker of wine represented all the sacerdotalism of his race; in some way far too profound for his guessing the vision of the severed head was complicated with that antique ritual, so magnificently alive and yet so ineffably dead. The head was lying on that tray of her own devoted polishing throughout the doomed years, lying as an offering to the impendent bearded God of his race. The cavernous lips opened as the beaker rose to their glooms. "I am that I am!" a voice moaned among endless colonnades of hills toppling towards the verges of space. How came it that the eyes of Jehovah aloof among the chasmed clouds were the eyes of Reb Monash, sitting upon his peculiar and inalienable chair in the corner of the kitchen? And the copper tray was a lake profound with many distances and many generations where dim ancestral shapes flickered from deep to deep. Twofold tyrannies along the deliberate reaches of the Nile, wildernesses and weak lads straggling and dying in the wake of the wanderers, smitten lands of exile,Kossackengalloping in with sabres and flung beards, a slight lad crumpled in a moth-eaten yellow plush armchair, crumpled, broken, too mournful for any tears.
He had seen her dead in dreams, but never so pale, so shrunken as now, her mouth retaining little if any at all of the weak, warm milk Channah was lifting on a spoon. An ague shivering visited his whole body. Clearly he brought her to mind as she hovered round him with cherries and tea on those immortal afternoons; he saw her struggling with the Acroceraunian mountains, her lips humorously twisting to shape the alien syllables. He remembered the quiet pride with which, long ago, she had regarded Reb Monash as he sat oracular in his chair, his admirers drinking with reverent avidity the wine of wisdom flowing from his lips. The boy's throat shook with harsh, suppressed sobs.
Channah spoke. "Philip, she's calling to you!"
Not a tear had risen to his eyes. He bent over his mother with a wan smile. Weakly, slowly, she spoke. He knew that she had been lying there, waiting to summon up the strength with which to frame a few words.
"Nu, Feivele, my own one. Art thou feeling stronger for being away?"
"Mother, loved one," he replied in her own Yiddish. "Yes, stronger. But I had rather I had been with thee!"
"Speak not thus! I was happy to think of thee among the fields. Didst thou have a special egg a day and milk?"
"I did! But no, mother, thou must not talk more! Thou art not strong now, but wait, wait ... when thou art better...."
"Be thou not a child! Feivele, I am going ... going...."
The words were smothered in a tiny dry coughing. Channah came forward to help her. He turned his head away from the forlorn struggle.
Reb Monash had been to thePolisher Shoolfor minchak. He returned, and stood at the door, large-eyed, haunted.
"Thou art back, Feivele?" he said. He seemed to be searching for further words, but nothing came. The voice seemed to Philip to strike against his skin, then to fall away dully to the floor.
"Yes,tatte, yes," he said mechanically, and the abstract sphere in which his mother dying and his grief and himself seemed to be encrystalled, closed round him again in separating completeness.
All day greedily he remained with her, knowing with a mournful exultance that when she gathered strength she would say a few words to him; yet when these moments came, saying "Hush, mamma, not now! Sweetest, hush!" bending over her, faintly touching her forehead.
A long time had passed, and he was conscious not merely of hunger, but of a concrete clawed weakness tearing at the pit of his stomach, before he allowed Channah to take him into the kitchen and cut some slices of bread and butter for him and fill a pint mug with tea. Dorah was there putting washed plates on the shelves, and as Channah sat down at the table, she moved away to the parlour to take her place. Channah was sitting opposite to him, herself sipping tea, not with any interest, but because she knew that nothing had crossed her lips since morning.
There had been long silence while Philip ate and drank, his attention wandering frequently from the food till Channah with a watchful word recalled his wits.
"Channah," he said suddenly, "when will she die?"
She was startled. Her cup clattered on the saucer.
"Philip!" she said, in remonstrance.
"Channah," he repeated, "tell me, when will she die? That's what I want to know, how long is there?"
He was speaking in regular, subdued tones, with hardly an inflection in his voice. It seemed the voice almost of one talking in his sleep. An instinct commanded her to remonstrate no further, to fall in at once with this strange mood, to adopt his tones, to reply with no equivocation.
"Not long. Three days ago the doctor said she'd last a week. Yesterday he said she couldn't last above two or three days. But only think—if it had happened before you came back!"
The last consideration made no impression. "Not more than two or three days more?" he repeated.
She nodded.
"That was yesterday?" he said. "So to-morrow is the latest."
"To-morrow is the latest."
"Mother will die to-morrow. The day after to-morrow she will be dead. What is the day after to-morrow?"
"To-day's Friday. It'll be Sunday!"
His voice gathered urgency. "Boys must go to funerals!" he demanded.
"They must," she said, "they always do! We don't go," she added. "You must go for us!"
"There will be no mother the day after to-morrow?"
"Philip," she wailed, "why must you go on like that? I can't bear it! It's been bad enough, but this is worse. You're looking and talking so funny I can't make you out. Go on with your tea, it's getting cold! I'll put in some tea from the teapot, shall I?" She hastened to the fire on unsteady feet.
"Cold," he was repeating, "the day after to-morrow!"
She left the fire and crossed over to him. "Philip, don't!" she implored. She shook him by the shoulders as if he were relapsing into dangerous sleep.
He blinked. There was a grinding in his head like a clock running down. "Poor old Channah, I'm sorry! I was hungry and it's made me dizzy. What a pig I've been! What have I been saying?"
"It's all right, I was only joking!" she assured him. "Be a good old boy, now, Philip, and have some more tea! You can't make things any better by not eating!" she insisted, "So let's try and be sensible!"
"Oh, it's all right, Channah! You just get on with your own, I've had enough. I can't stay away any longer. You've been attending to her all this time, while I've been—I've been—" he paused and grimaced, "I've been enjoying myself. I must go in straight away. You keep on with your tea."
But as soon as he closed the kitchen door behind him, she fumbled for her handkerchief in her blouse and withdrew to the scullery, her shoulders rocking.
He was only slightly conscious of the people that came in to see how she was and of his father sitting speechless in the corner, and Dorah busy with one thing and another. He resented the appearance of the doctor and his cursory examination of her, the negative shaking of his head towards Reb Monash. What was there still to be done! What need was there to underline so black, so ineluctable a fact? Perhaps if he had more frequently envisaged the possibility of her death formerly, even in the face of her lying so wasted on the bed before him he might have dared to entertain a wild flicker of hope. But having only in dreams seen her dead hitherto, and then with such indignation and terror even in the depths of his subconscious heart that he would awake fighting the dark, now the pulse of his soul was smothered in an icy certitude, and he would allow no forlorn gleam of hope to lead him away from her, from this last intense communion of which the sands were running out, moment by ashen moment.
There was a murmuring like wings about their heads and about them the shuffling of clumsy feet attempting to achieve a vain silence. Sometimes he would find Reb Monash hanging over them, or Channah and Dorah whispering together. One of them might smooth a pillow or lift a spoon to her lips. And though he knew that these things were happening within the same four walls as contained his mother and himself, in the limitless egotism of his grief it seemed to him that walls far other than these held them in a remote world, together, inseparable, undisturbed.
Imperceptibly day had thickened into dusk and dusk into night. The incandescent mantle chuckled and flared unevenly. The last neighbour had tearfully withdrawn. He knew that several times Dorah had spoken to him and that he had answered, yet with no knowledge of the words his lips were actually shaping. At last he realized that both his sisters were urging him to go away, to go to bed. Channah was trying to draw him from the chair where he sat leaning over the bed.
"No, no, I'm not going!" he said.
"But you must go! Channah and I..." started Dorah.
"Go!" said Channah, "only for a few hours!"
"I tell you I've been away all these days and I'm not going away for a second now! Let me be quiet, both of you! You go to bed! Can't I see you've been up every night, while I've been sleeping in comfort over there, not knowing anything!" He dropped his voice to a tone of appeal. "Dolet me stay! If she wants anything, I can manage it. Dorah, you ought to go up to be near father!" He found himself dimly conscious for the first time since his return of his father's pallor, his ghost-like silence. The vague picture of his father faded away.
"I'll go for two or three hours!" said Dorah. "When I come down, you must go up at once!" Her lanky figure bent awkwardly over Mrs. Massel. Her thin lips touched the forehead fleetingly. Channah threw herself down on her knees beside the bed and babbled incoherent words.
"Go thou, go, my own one!" murmured her mother. "Thou hast not slept—how long! Go, darling, sleep, sleep!"
There followed silence after the women had withdrawn. Not a word passed between his mother and Philip. Sometimes she would close her eyes for some minutes, then open them once more full and deep upon her son's. He remembered how Time had been so dilatory in the train; how he had wanted hours to shrivel into minutes, the long minutes to be brief as a spark. Now Time moved too swiftly, with deadly deliberate speed.
Beyond the parlour window and high beyond the houses on the other side of Angel Street, he heard the galloping of horses and the abateless revolutions of wheels. Oh, that the moments could expand into hours, and the hours once more into the years in which he had loved her so little and she had loved him so well, so well despite the danger that lay between and the cloud that had always enveloped them.
But now at least there was no danger, no cloud; nothing hindered their unity. The whispering of Doomington, that ceased not even in a snow-muffled winter midnight, now on all sides withdrew, leaving the dim parlour in Angel Street aloof and calm. The incandescent light choked and spat no more. A still light, steadier than the moon, less garish than the tree-shaded twilight of glades, invested the room, converting each object there into a significance beyond ugliness and beauty. All accidentals of space and birth and time were stripped from the woman on the bed, from the boy at her side. She was the mother, he was the son, nothing more. There was a pulsation in the air, between them and about them, linking them though they were far apart as Aldebaran and the Earth, though she lay crumbling under her wooden lid and he strode sun-engirdled over the morning hills.
How long this thing lasted the boy did not know at all, for he did not even know that it came. He only knew that Channah was peering round the door, fearful of waking them if they had fallen asleep. She wondered how it came that his face was shining as with dawn, though still the night was deep and the black incandescent gas flared and gasped. She wondered also at the smile which lay curled at the edges of her mother's lips. She saw, at one moment, how his eyes looked calmly towards hers, and how the next moment his head had fallen limply on his breast. She came forward swiftly to prevent him slipping to the ground.
He awoke to find himself lying under a blanket in his own former bedroom, whither, he learned later, Dorah and Reb Monash had lifted him. He stared unseeing for some time into the blotched ceiling, then the words came tolling against his ears, "The Last Morning! The Last Morning!" He did not at once seize the meaning of the phrase. He knew merely that this morning was to be an ending of things. But when the phrase became particularized,whoselast morning had dawned, slowly he rose from his bed as a doomed man for the gallows.
It was morning. The blind had been drawn, but they had left the gas feebly talking in the incandescent burner. Shadowy people had already gathered in the lobby and there were several neighbours in the parlour. Reb Monash was standing over her bed listening to the faint words she was endeavouring to shape. A flicker of jealousy touched the boy's heart.
"Monash," she said, "it isshabbos, yes?"
"Yah, Chayah, the Holy Day!"
"Ah,gutt, gutt!"
She could say no more. He observed how the neighbours would make way to give each other the privilege of being within the dying woman's room for some minutes. Death seemed to be in the room with all the actuality of physical presence. He seemed to be standing over Philip's head leaning dark branches about him like a tree.... No, he would not let the futile gas burn there while the sun, while even the warped sun of Doomington, shone into the room! What were all these people doing here, treading softly in and out? Did they hope that she would carry a brief for their souls into that country whither she was shortly adventuring?
The clock! the clock! How it ticked relentlessly on the mantelpiece, a large, round alarm clock with a pale face!
Channah was whispering. "I think she wants you!" He brought his ear close to his mother's lips.
"Shabbos," she said, "the Holy Day! Beforeshabbosgoes, I am no more, son mine!"
Should he say—the words were almost on his lips—"Mother, mother! The sun's shining! You will be strong yet! That dress of satin I always wanted to buy you, I will buy you soon. You will sit in the parlour like a queen, only making cakes sometimes, foryom tov! I will take your arm and we will go out into the green fields. Birds, mother! And blossom on the trees! Even yet, mother, even yet!" There was no time for lovely, false hopes. He said not a word, but she knew how he was closer than he had been since the days when he lay, a fluttering lifeless life, under her heart.
The clock! The clock! There was a whispering, a treading. Some one had arrived. They bent to his ear and said, "It's from theshool. Some one has come to say the 'Hear, O Israel!' Let him be near!"
Channah took him by the arm. "Come to the door. Just while the man's there! Come!"
A low wailing rose from the room. "Oh God, Channah," he cried, "Oh, why do they make all this ceremony out of dying! Why can't they let her lie quietly? Did you hear how her breathing went heavier? She wants to die, she's so tired! And they won't let her! Oh, listen to them, send them away! Let's be alone with her!"
The shadow in the room when they returned seemed palpable. He could make out no sound, no appearance clearly, save her face, and the laboured breathing. And the clock! always ticking, dispassionately, relentlessly! Always the clock! A rattling in her throat complicated her breathing.
"Channah," said the boy, "Channah, look at the clock!" His voice was hard, mechanical. "It's a quarter to nine. At nine o'clock she'll be dead!"
"Feivele!" his father whispered. "She's said thy name! Go!"
"Mother, lovely, I'm here! What wilt thou? Ah, see, I'm here!"
"Thou wilt be, Feivele, say it—thou wilt be always a good boy? And think ... of thy mother? Thou sayest yes?"
"Yes,mutter meine, yes!"
"And love Channah? And all, all? So, I am happy! Remember, thou, Feivele!"
The clock stealing, stealing forward! Not the banded powers of Heaven shall hold the clock-finger from moving forward over that space black with doom! Tick-tock! wild eyes of Channah, Dorah wringing her hands! Tick-tock! bearded face of Reb Monash, wrapped like a forest in its griefs! Tick-tock! a wailing in the air like trees when the wind goes about mournfully! Tick-tock! the rattling in her throat! Oh, the falling chin, the glazing eye, Oh, dead, dead...! Tick-tock...! tock....!
Waters flowing over his head where he lay prostrate on the beach! Dark green engulfing waters drowning him beyond grief or tears! Tricklings through his nostrils and oozings along the channels of his brain, runlets boring through the drums of his ears, surge after surge gurgling over his lips and into the bursting throat! And how bitter the taste of the foam, encrusting his palate with a scurf of salt, bitter as ashes, as sand! A low desolate bell swinging ceaselessly in this world of sunken waters, as if the doom of oceans and lands had been pronounced, and all souls must bestir themselves, howsoever long ago they were clad in flesh!
And always a whispering, and a secret sound of feet even so low under the water's rim, whither no sun attained, where the bell swung to and fro in the lapse of glooms. The fantastic denizens of these waters! Things with large phosphorescent eyes shedding tears that flickered down the watery darkness like worms of fire! Things with shuffling feet and lolling heads, bearded things with wise and cavernous skulls, and one, shaped like a small woman, appearing, disappearing, busy on important offices beyond all scrutiny! They would stand over him, staring with meaningless kindness through the weeds which swayed and swung over his body. They would endeavour to lift his hands from their laxity to receive the offerings they brought, would lift their offerings to his lips, but too bitter was the savour of brine on his tongue and his head too weary! He would turn away from them, burying his face in the clammy sands. There had long been a filtered light in the waters which engulfed the world; the light thickened into opaque walls. He could see no more the lolling heads, that busy strange woman who came and went. Only darkness, and for how long! Even the bell was muffled almost to nothingness, the bell was more a sense than a sound, the bell seemed to be tolling from the deeps of his own body where he lay unstarred, tolling from below his bones and making the arm which lay across his breast lift and fall away. Once more the light returning and the sound of feet and the bell louder tolling, louder and ever louder, until the metal against which the tongue beat and clamoured, burst into a thousand fragments, and he knew that he shook with sobs!