Channah was not so easily subdued as Reb Monash. She had heard ugly reports—the girls at the hat factory were very eloquent on the subject—concerning Mr. Strauss and his "goings on." "Oh, Philip, Philip, there's a dear! Won't you now ... come, Feivele! Oh, do give him up! I hate him, I hate him! Give him up for my sake!" ... She returned frequently to the attack and knew devastatingly where his defences were weakest. "Not for me, give him up for mother's sake!"
Philip temporized. He'd think about it. What was all the worry about; couldn't he take care of himself? Channah, really, old girl, what on earth was there to sing about?
"But think! What would she have said? She'd have..."
"She'd have loved him! Just those little ways that any woman..."
"Any woman! That's just what I said!"
"Oh, shut up, Channah, for Heaven's sake, shut up!"
The collapse came suddenly. It was a shoddy enough affair. When Strauss left him with Kate in Kate's house in Carnford Avenue in order to repair next door with her friend, Patsy of the broad bosom and the yellow hair, what was there for the youth to do, when Kate with half-closed eyes, through soft lips purred, "Coming, honey?" what was there but thickly to reply, "I'm following, Kate!" while the temples beat like hammers and the banisters seemed clammy with desire and shame.
Somewhat intently Dorah examined him when he returned to Longton next morning. She dropped into the Yiddish suitable for the expression of deep feeling. "Nu, and where hast thou been all night? Not enough for thee to come in at twelve, at one, but thou must spend the night too! What was? Thy socialistic friends or thy wonderful Lord Backstreet?Blegatchies, knockabouts, thy whole brotherhood!"
Philip winced. "Astronomy!" he declared sickly. "We've been examining a new ... a new comet!"
"It is no good for thee, thy Astronomy!" she declared categorically. "Thou art a tablecloth! An evening indoors with a book would do thee no harm. Or thou hast forgotten how to read, say?"
All that day he spent sitting in his own bedroom, a closed book before him, staring into the wall-paper beyond. Neither thoughts nor emotions stirred within him; only somewhere far down, there was a sensation as of a finger plucking at the strings of an instrument.
He had arranged to see Kate once more, about a week later. There was no conflict now. Heavily he saw the clock fingers creeping towards the hour of his appointment, and listlessly he closed the door behind him. A cool, clear evening was about them as Strauss and Philip repaired towards Carnford Avenue, with a wind in their faces which, in higher levels, was chasing clouds like yachts along the channels of the sky. As Kate's door closed behind them, the passing wind seemed to Philip a hand which had endeavoured to seize his coat, but, failing, moaned and subsided in the dark threshold of the house.
The sensation of something calling and something forsworn did not desert him. Now it was once more a wind attempting to circumvent the crooked chimney and sobbing away at length with a rattle in its throat. Now it was a finger of flame leaping from the fire in sudden appeal, or the sight of his own face in a looking-glass, curiously impressing upon him the fact that he had not only brought one self to this place, but many selves, some of whom had once played a seemlier part in the comedy of his days than he who now produced a distracted image in Kate's looking-glass.
Conversation flowed in the room like beer from a public house tap, surfaced with froth and smelling stalely. He was talking with the others, but the lips seemed to be as much another's as his own, the lips of one over whom he had triumphed once and again, but who was triumphing now. Wilfrid Strauss seemed a mannikin manufactured from a pliant glass, though he showed his rings and crossed his legs as if his limbs were flesh and bone; transparent almost he seemed, so that the ugly design of the wall-paper was not intercepted by his contour; almost brittle, as if, were someone to handle him roughly, he would fall to the ground in fragments tinkling sharply. And when finally he withdrew with Patsy, the peculiar illusion remained with Philip that he had never in his life encountered a person whose farcical name was Wilfrid Strauss.
Yet when the woman whispered "Come!" the friend of Wilfrid Strauss did not disobey. The wind was still clawing at the window-pane as they entered her room. It was only when his eyes were closing in sleep that he saw moonlight invade the room and heard the wind wailing in the last horizon.
When he awoke the room was aflood with moonlight. It flowed over the bed making the sheets and counterpane cloth of silver. The walls dropped from the ceiling in straight falls of frozen mist, the floor shone like a beaten metal. It seemed to him that a voice came upon the path of the moonrays, a voice not of sound but light, saying: Go! If it was the mother who had seemed to be dead or perhaps—could it be?—that woman he had met once in the central gloom of Doomington and whom he could so clearly envision now, he could not decide—that woman who had long ago taken him to her bed on the night when he had fled from his early terrors. Or perhaps it was none other than his own voice—for he was about to break free at last—insistently saying, Go, do not delay!
It was with no sense of shame that he rose from the bed and dressed quietly in that wizard room. In this world of cool clear beauty, at this time of vision, shame had no place. Had he departed from beauty, from vision? He would return thither again.
Kate's hair lay over her face as she slept. He bent and smoothed her hair aside and moved away quietly.
He opened the front door of the house and walked along the deserted pavement of Carnford Avenue. Walking was not swift enough, it was too deliberate. He ran, his limbs loosely swinging over the dark streets. He ran effortlessly like a deer glimpsed through woods. He had no consciousness of direction and though he ran far he was not fatigued. No thought kept pace beside him beyond the knowledge of his running.
A policeman appeared suddenly from the gloom of a shop entrance. He brought down his hand menacingly on Philip's shoulder. Philip stopped dead.
"Just a tick, my fine young feller!" the policeman exclaimed. "Where are you coming from?"
"From Babylon!" Philip shouted. "Let me go! Get out of my way!"
"B—b—babel—what?" the policeman stammered. His upraised arm fell to his side. The lad was fifty yards away, once more running swiftly and evenly. Yet no! He wasn't a burglar! It wasn't that! He wasn't carrying anything, and he certainly wasn't frightened! Drunk? Oh no, not drunk! Well then, what the 'ell? If it came to anybody being frightened...! He lifted his helmet, passed his hand over his hair and withdrew again into the shop entrance.
Baxter's Hill! No sense of recognition or surprise arrested Philip when he found himself skirting the foot of the hill and, before long, running over the grassy path by the Mitchen River. Here he had found escape before to-night, here wall after wall that girdled the city of his slaveries had come crashing down! But as he left the bridge behind him and followed two or three broad curves of the river, out toward the cleaner spaces of water, he was conscious only that his strength was almost spent and his feet were dragging. Suddenly he collapsed. His legs gave way at the knees and his forehead fell into thick grass. The strange elation which had impelled him into the night, in a single moment deserted him. His body was racked with misery, his face twitched. With a last effort he turned his body round, stretched out his arms, and lay staring into passionless night. Stark misery held him clamped to the ground.
Vain and vain, he felt, his life had been, his life consummated now by this last treachery! Each of his little philosophies had but pandered to his conceit, to his sentimental stupidities, immured him the more closely in the stinking castle of Self. Sex had led him away and he had wallowed in its sty—he who had been granted, by his living mother and his dead, the surest path into open spaces and a wind from the sea....
So for some time in this black despair he reproached himself with having at no time accepted the clean way; as having been always odious, an insect in rotten wood. The mood passed. Another came, not armed with talons, but cold, profound, like a fog. How long this mood lasted there can be no telling. Yet it was at the very heart of this desolation that he became aware of a warmth and a benediction which had descended upon him. His face was being soothed with the contact of kindly flesh! He heard the breathing of an animal. At last he knew that a horse was moving its soft mouth up and down his face, assuring him that now he might throw aside his sorrow, enter once more into the company of innocent things. A few yards away he perceived another horse grazing, a misty sweetness against the background of night. The beauty of the arched line of its neck seemed almost to arrest his heart. The horse over him, as having achieved its intent, brought its head away. He could hear the champing of its jaws, the tearing of grass.
The lad looked steadily towards the waned stars and the clear moon. Much lay behind him, he knew. More lay in front of him. Beyond the bridge along the road, deep in his city, lay a little thing and a great, the first republic, School, whose citizenship he must yet earn. He had moved there hitherto with averted eyes, a stranger. Thence great affairs and greater expanded circle-wise, beyond race, beyond country, beyond even the gigantic world, out beyond the moon, the sun; even—he laughed aloud—even into the hazard of the very stars.
He rose from the grass and walked over to the water's edge. The air was warm with the new summer. The two horses moved about near him, like friends. He was young, young! Come, it would be morning soon! Was a sleepy bird already singing a first song?
He slipped off his clothes swiftly and dived into the water. When he rose again, the water-drops flung from his hair gleamed like gems. It was cold, harshly, superbly cold; but he shouted for joy as he struck for the bank in the first breath of the morning. The horses rubbed their noses together and communed.
(The following Yiddish words—mainly, of course, of Hebrew or German extraction—are spelt in such a fashion as rather to recall their actual pronunciation than to indicate what is often a dubious or mixed origin.)
Becher. Beaker.
Blintsie. A thin cake, usually of mashed potatoes, and fried in oil.
Bobbie. Grandmother.
Chayder. A Hebrew school.
Chazan. A professional cantor at services.
Davenning. The reciting of prayers, which must not be interrupted by extraneous matter.
Folg mir. Obey me.
Gollus. The dispersion; the exile.
Goyishke. Gentile (adj.).
Ligner. Liar.
Machzer. Festival prayer-book.
Maggid. Professional orator.
Minchah. Afternoon service.
Minyon. The quorum of ten worshippers for prayer.
Mishkosheh. Be content; that will do.
Mitzvah. Lit. a command; hence, a pious act.
Nekaveh. A female.
Perinny. An exaggerated eiderdown.
Shabbos. The Sabbath Day, Saturday, on which, among many prohibitions, it is forbidden to ride.
Shiksah. A Gentile girl.
Shmaltz. Fat, usually of fowls.
Shmeis. To give a whipping.
Shool. Synagogue.
Takke. Indeed.
Tallus and Tephilim. Praying-shawl and phylacteries.
Yamelke. Skull-cap.
Yeshiveh. A highly advancedchayder.
Yom tov. Lit. a good day; hence, festival.
Zadie. Grandfather.
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.