The next morning Salvina should have awakened with a sense through all her bones that it was Friday—the last day of the school-week, harbinger of such blessed rest that the mere expectation of it was also a rest. Alas! she woke from the nightmare of sleep to the nightmare of reality, and the week-end meant only time to sound the horror of the new situation.
In one point alone, Friday remained a consolation. Only one day to face her fellow-teachers and her children, and then two days for hiding from the world with her pain, for preparing to face it again; to say nothing of the leisure for practical recuperation of the home.
Lazarus turned up so late that the council of war was of the briefest and held almost on the door-step, for Salvina must be in school by nine. The thought of staying away—even in this crisis—simply did not occur to her.
She arranged that Lazarus was to meet her in the city after morning school, when she would have drawn her savings from the post-office: more than enough for the advance on the furniture, which must be delivered that very afternoon. Lazarus had been for telegraphing at once to Kitty for assistance, but Salvina put her foot down.
"Let us not frighten her—I will go and break it to her on Sunday afternoon. You know she can't spare any money; it is as much as she can do to dress up to the position."
"I do hope the scandal won't spread," said Lazarus gloomily. "It would be a nice thing if she lost the position and fell back on our hands."
"Yes, he has ruined all my children," sobbed Mrs. Brill, breaking out afresh. "But what did he care? Ah, if it wasn't for me, you would have been in the workhouse long ago."
"Well then, go and do your Sabbath marketing or else we'll have to go there now," said Lazarus not unkindly; "the tradespeople will give you credit."
"Rather! They knowInever ran away."
"And mind, mother," said Salvina as she snatched up her Greek grammar, "mind the fried fish is as good as usual; we're a long way from the workhouse yet! And if you're not in to-night, Lazarus," she whispered as she ran off, "I'll never forgive you."
"Well, I'm blowed!" said Lazarus, looking after the awkward little figure, flying to catch the 8.21.
"Yes, but I've no frying pan!" Mrs. Brill called after her.
"You'll have it by this afternoon," Salvina called back reassuringly.
The sun was already strong, the train packed, and Salvina stood so jammed in that she could scarcely hold her grammar open, and the irregular verbs danced before her eyes even more than their strange moods and tenses warranted. At the school her thrilling consciousness of her domestic tragedy interposed some strange veil between her and her fellow-teachers, and they seemed to stand away from her, enveloped in another atmosphere. She heard herself teaching—five elevens are fifty-five—and her own self seemed to stand away from her, too. She noted without protest two of the girls pulling each other's hair in some far-off hazy world, and the answering drone of the class—five elevens arefifty-five—seemed like the peaceful buzzing of a gigantic blue-bottle on a drowsy afternoon. It occurred to her suddenly that she was fifty-five years old, and when Miss Rolver, the Christian head-mistress, came into her room, Salvina had an unexpected feeling of advantage in life-experience over this desiccated specimen of femininity, redolent of time-tables, record-parchments, foolscap, and clean blotting-paper. Outside all this scheduled world pulsed a large irregular life of flesh and blood; all the primitive verbs in every language were irregular, it suddenly flashed upon her, and she had an instant of vivifying insight into the Greek language she had unquestioningly accepted as "dead"; saw Grecian men and women breathing their thoughts and passions—even expressing the shape of their throats and lips—through these erratic aorists.
"You look tired, dear," said the head-mistress.
"It's the heat," Salvina murmured.
"Never mind; the summer holidays will soon be here."
It sounded a mockery. Summer holidays would no longer mean Ramsgate, and delicious days of study on sunny cliffs, with the relaxation of novels and poems. These slowly achieved luxuries of the last two years were impossible for this year at least. And this thought of being penned up in London during the dog days oppressed her: she felt choking. Her next sensation was of water sprinkling on herface, and of Miss Rolver's kind anxious voice asking her if she felt better. Instead of replying, Salvina wondered in a clouded way where the school-managers were.
Even her naïve mind had been struck at last by the coincidence that whenever, after a managers' meeting, these omnipotent ladies and gentlemen from a higher world strolled through the school, Miss Rolver happened to be discovered in an interesting attitude. If it was the play-hour, she would be—for this occasion only—in the playground leading the games, surrounded by clamorously affectionate little ones. If it was working-time, she was found as a human island amid a sea of sewing: billows of pinafores and aprons heaved tumultuously around her. Or, with a large air of angelic motherhood, she would be tying up some child's bruised finger. Her greatest invention—so it had appeared to the scrupulous Salvina—was the stray, starved, half-frozen, sweet little kitten, lapping up milk from a saucer before a ruddy blazing fire at the very instant of the great personages' passage. How they had beamed, one and all, at the touching sight.
Hence it was that Salvina's dazed vision now sought vaguely for the school-managers. But in another instant she realized that this present solicitude was not for another but for herself, and that it had nothing of the theatrical. A remorseful pang of conscience added to her pains. She said tremulouslythat she felt better and was gently chided for over-study and admonished to go home and rest.
"Oh, no, I am all right now," she responded instinctively.
"But I'll take your class," Miss Rolver insisted, and Salvina found herself wandering outside in the free sunshine, with a sense of the forbidden. An acute consciousness of Board School classes droning dutifully all over London made the streets at that hour strange and almost sinful. She went to the post-office and drew out as much of her money as red tape allowed, and while wandering about in Whitechapel waiting for the hour of her rendezvous with Lazarus, she had time to purchase a coarse but white table-cloth, a plush cover embroidered with "Jerusalem" in Hebrew, and a gilt goblet. These were for the Friday-night table.
But the Sabbath brought no peace. Though miracles were wrought in that afternoon, and, except that it was laid in the kitchen, the Sabbath table had all its immemorial air, with the consecration cup, the long plaited loaves under the "Jerusalem" cover, and the dish of fried fish that had grown to seem no less religious; yet there could be no glossing over the absence of the gross-paunched paternal figure that had so unctuously presided over the ceremony. Hisvacant place held all the emptiness of death, and all the fulness of retrospective profanation. How like he was to Moss M. Rosenstein, Salvina thought suddenly. Lazarus had ignored the gilt goblet and the shilling bottle of claret, and was helping himself from the coffee-pot, when his mother cried bitterly: "What! are we to eat like the animals?"
"Oh bother!" Lazarus exclaimed. "You know I hate all these mummeries. I wouldn't say if they really made people good. But you see for yourself—"
"Oh, but you must sayKiddush, Lazarus," said Salvina, half pleadingly, half peremptorily. She fetched the prayer-book and Lazarus, grumbling inarticulately, took the head of the table, and stumbled through the prayer, thanking God for having chosen and sanctified Israel above all nations, and in love and favour given it the holy Sabbath as an inheritance.
But oh! how tamely the words sounded, how void of that melodious devotion thrilling through the joyous roulades of the father. It was a sort of symbol of the mutilated home, and thus Salvina felt it. And she remembered the last ceremony at which her father had presided—that of the Separation when the Sabbath faded into work-day—the ceremony of Division between the Holy and the Profane, and she shivered to think it had indeed marked for the unhappy man the line of demarcation.
"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hallowestthe Sabbath," Lazarus was mumbling, and in another instant he was awkwardly distributing the ritual morsels of bread.
But the mother could not swallow hers, for indignant imaginings of the rival Sabbath board. "Mayhermorsel choke her!" she cried, and nearly was choked by her own.
"Oh, mother, do not mention her—neither her nor him.—Never any more," said Salvina. And again the new note of peremptoriness rang in her voice, and her mother stopped suddenly short like a scolded child.
"Will you have plaice or sole, mother?" Salvina went on, her voice changing to a caress.
"I can't eat, Salvina. Don't ask me."
"But you must eat." And Salvina calmly helped her to fish and to coffee and put in the lumps of sugar; and the mother ate and drank with equal calm, as if hypnotized.
All through the meal Salvina's mind kept swinging betwixt the past and the future. Strange odds and ends of scenes came up in which her father figured, and her old and new conceptions of him interplayed bewilderingly. Her sudden vision of him as Moss M. Rosenstein persisted, and could only be laid by concentrating her thoughts on the early days when he used to take herself and Kitty to Victoria Park, carrying her in his arms when she was tired. But it made her cry to see that little tired happy figurecuddling the trusted giant, and she had to jump for refuge into the future.
They must move back to Hounsditch. She must give up the idea of becoming a "Bachelor": the hours of evening study must now be devoted to teaching others. Her University distinction was already great enough to give her an unusual chance of pupils, while her "Yiddish," sucked in with her mother's milk, had become exceptionally good German under study. She might hope for as much as two shillings an hour and thus earn a whole sovereign extra per week.
And over this poor helpless blighted mother, she would watch as over a child. All the maternal instinct in her awoke under the stress of this curiously inverted position. Her remorseful memory summoned a penitential procession of bygone petulances. Never again would she be cross or hasty with this ill-starred heroine. Yes, her mother was become a figure of romance to her, as well as a nursling. This woman, whose prosaic humours she had so often fretted under, was in truth a woman who had lived and loved. She had ceased to be a mere mother; a large being who presided over one's childhood. And this imaginative insight, she noted with surprise, would never have been hers but for her father's desertion: like one who realizes the virtues of a corpse, she had waited till love was slain to perceive its fragrance.
A postman's knock, as the meal was finished, madeher heart give a corresponding pit-a-pat, and she turned quite faint. All her nerves seemed to be on the rack, expecting new sensational developments. The letter was for Lazarus.
"Ah, you abomination!" cried his mother, as he tore open the envelope. He did not pause to defend his Sabbath breaking, but cried joyfully: "What did I tell you? Granders Brothers offer me travelling expenses and a commission!"
"Oh, thank God, thank God!" ejaculated his mother, her eyes raised piously. He took up his hat. "Where are you going?" said Mrs. Brill.
"To see Rhoda of course. Don't you think she's as anxious about it as you?"
Salvina's eyes were full of sympathetic tears: "Yes, yes, let him go, mother."
On the Sunday afternoon, feeling much better for the Saturday rest, and scrupulously gloved, shod, and robed in deference to the grandeur of her destination, Salvina boarded an omnibus, and after a tedious journey, involving a walk at the end, she arrived at the West End square in which her sister bloomed as governess and companion in a newly enriched Jewish family. She stood an instant in the porch to compose herself for the tragic task before her and felt in her pocket to be sure she hadnot lost the little bottle of smelling-salts with which she had considerately armed herself, in anticipation of a failure of Kitty's nerves. Then she knocked timidly at the door, which was opened by a speckless boy in buttons, who also opened up to her imagination endless vistas of aristocratic association. His impressive formality, as of the priest of a shrine, seemed untinged by any remembrance that on her one previous visit she had been made free of the holy of holies. But perhaps it was not the same boy. He was indeed less a boy to her than a row of buttons, and less a row of buttons than a symbol of all the elegances and opulences in which Kitty moved as to the manner born; the elaborate ritual of the toilette, the sacramental shaving of poodles, the mysterious panoramic dinners in which one had to be constantly aware of the appropriate fork.
Salvina had not waited a minute in the imposing hall, ere a radiant belle flew down the stairs—with a vivacity that troubled the sacro-sanct atmosphere—and caught Salvina in her arms.
"Oh, you dear Sally! I amsoglad to see you," and a fusillade of kisses accompanied the hug. "Whatever brings you here? Oh, and such a dowdy frock! You needn't flush up so, silly little child; nobody expects you to know how to dress like us ignoramuses, and it doesn't matter to-day, there's no one to see you, for they're all out driving, and I'm lying down with a headache."
"Poor Kitty. But then you ought to be out driving." She was divided between sympathy for the sufferer, and admiration of the finished, fine ladyhood implied in indifference to the chance of a carriage-drive.
"Yes, but I've so many letters to write, and they don't really drive on Sundays, just stop at house after house, and not good houses either. It is such a bore. They've never shaken off the society they had before they made their money."
"Well, but that's rather nice of them."
"Perhaps, but not nice for me. But come upstairs and you shall have some tea."
Salvina mounted the broad staircase with a reverence attuned to her own hushed footfalls, but her task of breaking the news to her sister weighed the heavier upon her for all this subdued magnificence. It seemed almost profane to bring the squalid episodes of Hackney into this atmosphere, appropriate indeed to the sinful romances of marquises and epauletted officers, but wholly out of accord with surreptitious furniture vans. What a blow to poor Kitty the news would be! She dallied weakly, till the tea was brought by a powdered footman. Then she had an ingenious idea for a little shock to lead up to a greater. She would say they were going to move. But as she took off her white glove not to sully it with the tea and cake, Kitty cried: "Why what have you done with my ring?"
Here was an excellent natural opening, but Salvina was taken too much aback to avail herself of it, especially as the artificial opening preoccupied her mind. "Oh, your ring's all right," she said hastily; "I came to tell you we are going to move."
Kitty clapped her hands. "Ah! so you've taken my advice at last! I'm so glad. It wasn't nice for me to stay with you at that dingy hole, even for a day or two a year. Mustn't mother be pleased!"
Salvina bit her lip. Her task was now heavier than ever.
"No, mother isn't pleased. She is crying about it."
"Crying? Disgusting. How she still hankers after Spitalfields and the Lane!"
"She isn't crying for that, but because father won't go with us."
"Oh, I have no patience with father. He hasn't a soul above red herrings and potatoes."
"Oh, yes he has. He has left us."
"What! Left you?" Kitty's pretty eyes opened wide. "Because he won't move to a better house!"
"No, we are moving to a worse house because he has moved to a better."
"Whatareyou talking about? Is it a joke? A riddle? I give it up."
"Father—can't you guess, Kitty?—father has gone away. There is some other woman."
"No?" gasped Kitty. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!"and she shook with long peals of silvery laughter. "Well, of all the funny things! Ha! ha! ha!"
"Funny!" and Salvina looked at her sternly.
"What, don't you see the humour of it? Father turning into the hero of a novelette. Romance and red herrings! Passion and potatoes! Ha! ha! ha!"
"If you had seen the havoc it wrought, you wouldn't have had the heart to laugh."
"Oh well, mother was crying. That I understand. But that's nothing new for her. She'd cry just as much if he were there. The average rainfall is—how many inches?"
Salvina's face was stern and white. "A mother's tears are sacred," she said in low but firm protest.
"Oh, dear me, Sally, I always forget you have no sense of humour. Well, what are you going to do about it?" and her own sense of humour continued to twitch and dimple the corners of her pretty mouth.
"I told you. We cannot afford to keep up the house—we must go back to apartments in Spitalfields."
Instantly Kitty's face grew as serious as Salvina's. "Oh, nonsense!" she said instinctively. The thought of her family returning to the discarded shell of apartments was humiliating; her own personality seemed being dragged back.
"We can't pay the rent. We must give a quarter's notice at once."
"Absurd! You'll only save a few shillings a week. Why can't you let apartments yourselves? At least you would preserve a decent appearance."
"Is it worth while having the responsibility of the rent? There's only mother and I—we shan't need a house."
"But there's Lazarus!"
"He'll have a place of his own. He'll marry before our notice expires."
"That same Jonas girl?"
"Yes."
"Ridiculous. Small tradespeople, and dreadfully common, all the lot. I thought he'd got over his passion for that bold black creature who's been seen licking ice-cream out of a street-glass. To connect us with that family! Men are so selfish. But I still don't see why you can't remain as you are—let your drawing-room, say, furnished."
"But it isn't furnished."
"Not furnished. Why, I've sat on the couch myself."
"Yes," said Salvina, a faint smile tempering her deadly gravity. "You are the only person who has ever done that. But there's no couch now. Father smuggled all the furniture away in a van."
Again Kitty's silver laughter rang out unquenchably.
"And you don't call that funny! Eloped with the chairs! I call it killing."
"Yes, for mother," said Salvina.
"Pooh! She'll outlive all of us. I wish you were as sure of getting the furniture back. She's not a bad mother, as mothers go, but you take her too seriously."
"But, Kitty, consider the disgrace!"
"The disgrace of having a wicked parent! I've endured for years the disgrace of having a poor one—and that's worse. My people—the Samuelsons, I mean—will never even hear of the pater's escapade—gossip keeps strictly to its station. And even if they do, they know already my family's under a cloud, and they have learned to accept me for myself."
"Well, I am glad you don't mind," said Salvina, half-relieved, half-shocked.
"I mind, if it makes you uncomfortable, you dear, silly Sally."
"Oh, don't worry about me. I think I'll go back to mother, now."
"Nonsense, why, we haven't begun to talk yet. Have another cup of tea. No? How's old Miss What's-a-name, your head-mistress? Any more frozen little kittens?"
"She's very kind, really. I'm sorry I told you about the kitten. She let me go home early on Friday."
"Why? To track the van?"
"No; I wasn't very well."
"Poor Sally!" and Kitty hugged her again. "I daresay you were more upset than mother."
Tears came into Salvina's eyes at her sister's affectionateness. "Oh, no; but please don't talk about it any more. Father is dead to us now."
"Then we must speak well of him."
Salvina shuddered. "He is a wicked, heartless man, and mother and I never wish to see his face again."
A cloud darkened Kitty's blonde brow.
"Yes, but she isn't going to marry another man, I hope."
"How can she?" said Salvina. "I wouldn't let her make any public scandal."
"But aren't there funny laws in our religion—Getand things like that—which dispense with the English courts."
"I believe there are—I read about something of the kind in a novel—oh, yes! and father did offer motherGetbefore he went off, so I suppose he considers his conscience clear."
"Well, I rely upon you, Sally, to see that she doesn't marry or complicate things more. We don't want two wicked parents."
"Of course not. But I am sure she doesn't dream of any new complications. You don't do her justice, Kitty. She's just broken-hearted; a perpetual widow, with worse than her husband's death to lament."
"Yes—her lost furniture."
"Oh, Kitty, do realize what it means."
"I do, my dear. I do realize it—it's too killing. Passion in a Pantechnicon or Elopements economically conducted. By the day or hour. Oh, dear, oh, dear! But do promise me, Salvina, that you won't go back to Spitalfields."
"I must be somewhere near the school, dearest. It will save train-fares."
Kitty pouted. "Well, you know I couldn't drive up to see you any more; Hackney was all but outside the radius—the radius of respectability. I couldn't ask coachman to go to Spitalfields—unless I pretended to be slumming."
"Well, pretend."
"Oh, Salvina! I thought you were so conscientious. No, I'll have to come in a cab. You're quite sure you won't have some more tea? Oh, do, I insist. One piece of sugar?"
"Yes, thank you, dear. By the way, has Sugarman the Shadchan been here?"
"You mean—has he gone?"
"Oh, poor Kitty! It was my fault. I let him know your address. I do hope the horrid man hasn't worried you."
"Sugarman?"
"No—Moss M. Rosenstein."
"How pat you have his name! But why do you call him horrid?"
Salvina stared. "But have you seen his photograph?"
"Oh, you can't go by photographs. He has been here."
"What! Sugarman had the impudence to bring him!"
Kitty flushed slightly. "No, he called alone—this afternoon, just before you."
"What impertinence! A brazen commercial courtship! You wouldn't receive him, of course."
"Oh, well, I thought it would be fun just to look at him," said Kitty uneasily. "A commercial courtship, as you express it, is not unamusing."
"I don't see anything amusing in it—it's an outrage."
"I told you you had no sense of humour. I find it comic to be loved before first sight by a man who has noh's, but onlyl's,s's, andd's."
"Sugarman says he did see you before loving you—noticed you before he went to the Cape. But you must have been a little girl then."
"He didn't tell me that—that would have been even more romantic. He only said he fell in love with my photograph, as paraded by Sugarman."
"Why, where should Sugarman get—"
"You never know what mother's been up to," interrupted Kitty dryly.
"Much more likely father."
"What's the odds? Do have another piece of cake."
"No, thank you. But what did you say to the man?"
"The same as you. Don't stare so, you stupid dear. I said, No, thank you."
"That I knew. Of course you couldn't possibly marry a bloated creature from the Cape. I meant, in what terms did you put him in his place?"
"Oh, really," said Kitty, laughing, but without her recent merriment. "This is too prejudiced. I can't admit that mere residence in the Cape is a disqualification."
"Oh, yes, it is. Why do they go there? Only to make money. A person whose one idea in life is money can't be a nice person."
"But money isn't his one idea—now his one idea is matrimony. That is a joke. You ought to laugh."
"It makes me cry to think that some nice girl may be driven into marrying him just for his money."
"Poor man! So because of his money he is to be prevented from having a nice wife."
Salvina was taken aback by this obverse view.
"How is he ever to improve?" asked Kitty, pursuing her advantage.
"Yes, that's true," Salvina admitted. "The best thing would be if some nice girl couldfall in lovewith him. But that doesn't make his methods less insulting. I wish all these Shadchans could be slaughtered off."
"What a savage little chit! They often make as good marriages as are made in heaven."
"Don't tease. You know you think as I do."
Salvina took an affectionate leave of her sister, and walked down the soft staircase, confused but cheerful. The boy in buttons let her out. To do so he hurriedly put down the infant of the house who was riding on his shoulders. Such a touch of humanity in a row of buttons gave Salvina a new insight and a suspicion that even the powdered footman who brought the tea might have an emotion behind his gorgeous waistcoat. But the crowds fighting for the omnibuses that fine Sunday afternoon depressed her again. All the seats outside were packed, and it was only after standing a long time on the pavement that she squeezed her way into an inside seat. The stuffiness and jolting made her feel sick and dizzy. By a happy accident her fingers encountered the bottle of smelling-salts in her pocket, and, as she pulled it out eagerly, she remembered it had been intended for Kitty.
Lazarus remained out late that evening, and, as he had forgotten to borrow the key, Salvina was sitting up for him.
She utilized the time in preparing her sewing. She was making a night-dress with dozens and dozensof tiny tucks at the breast, all run by hand, and she was putting into the fine calico an artistic needlework absolutely futile, and with its perpetual "count two, miss two,"—infinitely trying to the eyes, especially by gas-light. The insane competition of the teachers, refining upon a Code in itself stupidly exacting, made the needlework the most distressing of all the tasks of the girl-teachers of that day. Salvina herself, with her morbid conscientiousness and desire to excel, underwent nightmares from the vexatiousness of learning how to cut holes so that they could not possibly be darned, and then darning them. When, at the head-centre, the lady demonstrator, armed with a Brobdingnagian whalebone needle, threaded with a bright red cord, executed herringboned fantasias on a canvas frame resembling a violin stand, it all looked easy enough. But when Salvina herself had to unravel a little piece of stockinette with a real needle and then fill in the hole so as to leave no trace of the crime, she was reduced to hysteria. Even the coloured threads with which she worked were a scant relief to the eye. And all this elaborate fancywork was entirely useless. At home Salvina was always at work, darning and mending; never was there a defter needle. Even the "hedge-tear-down" was neatly and expeditiously repaired, so long as she avoided the scholastic methods. "What's all this madness?" her mother had asked once, when she had tried the orthodox "Swiss darning" on areal article. And Mrs. Brill surveyed in amazement the back of the darn, which looked like Turkish towelling.
To-night Salvina could not long continue her taxing work. Her eyes ached, and she at last resolved to rise early in the morning and proceed with the night-dress then. She turned the gas low, so as to reduce the bill, and it was as if she had turned down her own spirits, for a strange melancholy now took possession of her in the silent fuscous kitchen in the denuded house, and the emptiness of the other rooms seemed to strike a chill upon her senses. There were strange creaks and ghostly noises from all parts. She fixed her thought on the one furnished bed-room now occupied by her mother, as on a symbol of life and recuperation. But the uncanny noises went on; rustlings, and patterings, and Salvina felt that she might shriek and frighten her mother. She had almost resolved to turn up the gas, when the sound of a harmonium came muffled through the wall, and the softened voices of her Christian neighbours sang a Sunday hymn. Salvina ceased to be alone; and tears bathed her cheeks, as the crude melody lilted on. She felt absorbed in some great light and love, which was somehow both a present possession and a beckoning future that awaited her soul, and it was all mysteriously mixed with the blue skies of Victoria Park, in those far-off happy days when she had gone home on her father's shoulder;and with the blue skies of those enchanted sunlit lands of art and beauty, in which she would wander in the glorious future, when she should be making a hundred and fifty a year. Paris, Venice, Athens, Madrid—how the mellifluous syllables thrilled her! One by one, in her annual summer holiday, she and her mother might see them all. Meantime she saw them all in her imagination, bathed in the light that never was on sea or land, and it was not her mother with whom she journeyed but a noble young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted, who had imperceptibly slipped into her mother's place. Poor Salvina, with all her modesty, never saw herself as others saw her, never lost the dream of a romantic love. Lazarus's rat-tat recalled her to reality.
"I know I'm late," he said, with apologetic defiance, "but it's no pleasure to sit in an empty house.Youmay like it, but your tastes were always peculiar, and that straw mattress on the floor isn't inviting."
"I am so sorry, dear. But then mothermusthave the bed."
"Well, it won't last long, thank Heaven. I made the Jonases consent to the marriage before the scandal gets to them."
"So soon!" said Salvina with unconscious social satire.
"Yes, and we'll have our honeymoon travelling for Granders Brothers. She's a good sort, is Rhoda, she doesn't mind gypsying. And that saves us fromthe expense of completing the furniture." He paused, and added awkwardly, "I'd lend it to you, only that might give us away."
"But we don't need the furniture, dear, and don't you think theyoughtto know—it is the rest of the world that itdoesn'tconcern."
"They are bound to know after the marriage. We've kept it dark so far, thanks to being in Hackney away from our old acquaintances and to mother's stinginess in not having encouraged new people to drop in. I've told the Jonases father was ill and might have to go away for his health. That'll pave the way to his absence from the wedding. It sounds quite grand. We'll send him to a German Spa."
Salvina did not share her brother's respect for old Jonas, who bored her with trite quotations from English literature or the Hebrew Bible. He was in sooth a pompous ignoramus, acutely conscious of being an intellectual light in an ignorant society; a green shade he wore over his left eye added to his air of dignified distinction. Foreign Jews in especial were his scorn, and he seriously imagined that his own stereotyped phrases uttered with a good English pronunciation gave his conversation an immeasurable superiority over the most original thinking tainted by a German or Yiddish accent. Salvina's timid corrections of his English quotations made him angry and imperilled Lazarus's wooing. The young man was indeed the only member of the family who cultivatedrelations with the Jonases, though now it would be necessary to exchange perfunctory visits. Lazarus presided over these visits in fear and trembling, glossing over any slips as to the father, who was gone to the seaside for his health. On second thoughts, Lazarus had not ventured on a German Spa.
Ere the wedding-day arrived, Salvina had to go to the seaside. Clacton-on-Sea was the somewhat plebeian place and the school-fête the occasion. Salvina looked forward to it without much personal pleasure, because of the responsibilities involved, but it was a break in the pupil-teacher's monotonous round of teaching at the school and being taught at the Centres; and in the actual expedition the children's joy was contagious and made Salvina shed secret tears of sympathy. Arrived at the beach of the stony, treeless, popular watering-place, most of the happy little girls were instantly paddling in the surf with yells of delight, while the tamer sort dug sand-pits and erected castles. Salvina, whose office on this occasion was to assist an "assistant teacher," had to keep her eye on a particular contingent. She sat down on the noisy sunlit sands with her back to the sea-wall so as to sweep the field of vision. Her nervous conscientiousness made her count her sheep at frequent intervals, and be worried over missingnow this one, now that one. How her heart beat furiously and then almost stopped, when she saw a child wading out too far. No, decidedly it was a trying form of pleasure for the teacher. One bright little girl who had never beheld the sea before picked up a wonderfully smooth white pebble, and bringing it to Salvina asked if it was worth any money. Salvina held it up, extemporizing an object lesson for the benefit of the little bystanders.
"No," she said, "this is not worth any money, because you can get plenty of them without trouble, and even beautiful things are not considered valuable if anybody can have them. This stone was polished without charge by the action of the waves washing against it for millions and millions of years, and if it—"
The sudden blare of a brass band on the other side of the sea-wall made her turn her head, and there, in a brand-new room of a brand-new house on the glaring Promenade, a room radiating blatant prosperity from its stony balcony, she perceived her father, in holiday attire, and by his side a woman, buxom and yellow-haired. A hot wave of blood seemed to flood Salvina up to the eyes. So there he was luxuriating in the sun, rich and careless. All her homely instincts of work and duty rose in burning contempt. And poor Mrs. Brill had to remain cooped at home, drudging and wailing. For a second she felt she would like to throw the stone at him, buther next feeling was pain lest the sight of her should painfully embarrass him; and turning her face swiftly seawards she went on, with scarce a pause perceptible to the little girls, "If it gets worn away some more millions of years, it will be ground down to sand, like all the other stones that were once here," and as she spoke, she began to realize her own words, and a tragic sense of her own insignificance in this eternal wash of space and time seemed to reduce her to a grain of sand, and blow her about the great spaces. But the mood passed away before a fresh upwelling of concrete resentment against the self-pampered pair at the Promenade window. Nevertheless, her feeling of how their seeming satisfaction would be upset at the sight of her, made her carefully minimize the contingency, and the dread of it hovered over the day, adding to the worries over the children. But she vowed that her mother should be revenged; she, too, poor wronged one, should wallow in Promenade luxury in her future holidays; no more should she be housed in back streets without sea-views.
At night, after Mrs. Brill was in bed, Salvina could not resist saying to Lazarus, whose supper she had been keeping hot for him: "How strange! Fatherisat the seaside."
"The dickens!" He paused, fork in hand. "You saw him at Clacton-on-Sea?"
"Yes, but don't tell mother. So we didn't tell a lie after all. I'm so glad."
"Oh, go to blazes, you and your conscience. Where was he staying?"
"In a house in the very centre of the Promenade; it's simply shocking!"
"Make me some fresh mustard, and don't moralize. Did you have a good time?"
"Not very; a little cripple-girl in my class went paddling, and joking, and dropped her crutch, and it floated away—"
"Bother your little cripple-girls. They always seem to be in your class!"
"Because my class is on the ground floor."
"Ha! ha! ha! Just your luck. By the way," he became grave, "look what a beastly letter from Kitty! Not coming to the wedding. I call it awfully selfish of her."
Kitty wrote her deep regrets, but her people had suddenly determined to go abroad and she could not lose this chance of seeing the world; "the governess's honeymoon," she christened it. Paris, Switzerland, Rome,—all the magic places were to be hers,—and Salvina, reading the letter, gasped with sympathy and longing.
But the happy traveller was represented at the wedding by a large bronze-looking knight on horseback, which towered in shining green over the insignificant gifts of the Jonas's circle; the utilitarian salad-bowls, and fish-slices, and dessert sets. One other present stood out luridly, but only to Salvina.It was a glossy arm-chair, and on the seat lay a card: "From Rhoda's loving father-in-law." When Salvina first saw this—at a family card-party, the Sunday evening before the wedding—she started and flushed so furiously that Lazarus had to give her a warning nudge, and to whisper: "Only for appearance." At the supper-table old Jonas, who carved and jested with much appreciation of his own skill in both departments, referred facetiously to the absent father, who might, nevertheless, be said to be "in the chair" on that occasion.
Salvina dressed her mother as carefully for the ceremony as though Kitty's fears were being realized and Mrs. Brill was the bride of the occasion; and so debonair a figure emerged from the ordeal that you could recognize Kitty's mother instead of Salvina's. Lazarus had spent his farewell evening of bachelorhood at an hotel, justly complaining that a mirrorless bed-room with a straw mattress was no place for a bridegroom to issue from. Never had bridegroom been so ill-treated, he grumbled; and he shook his fist imaginatively at the father who had despoiled him.
But he joined his mother and sister in the cab; and as it approached the synagogue, he said suddenly: "Don't be shocked—but I rather expect father will be at theShool(synagogue)."
"What!" and Mrs. Brill appeared like to faint.
"He wouldn't have the cheek," Salvina saidreassuringly, as she pulled out the smelling-salts which Kitty had not needed.
"He wouldn't have the cheeknotto come," said Lazarus. "I asked him."
"You!" They glared at him in horror.
"Yes; I wasn't going to have things look funny—I hate explanations. The Jonases thought there was something queer the other night, when you both bungled the explanation of the rheumatism, spite all my coaching."
"But where did you find him?" said the mother excitedly.
"At Clacton-on-Sea."
Salvina bit her lip.
"I sent in my card,—'Laurence Beryl, of Granders Brothers.' When he saw me, I thought he would have had a fit. I told him if he didn't come up to the wedding and play heavy father, I'd summons him—"
"Summons him!" echoed Mrs. Brill.
"For stealing my old arm-chair. I remembered—ha! ha! ha!—it was I that had bought the easy-chair for myself, when we lived in Spitalfields and had only wooden chairs."
"So hedidsend that easy-chair!" said Salvina.
"Yes; that was rather clever of him. And don't you think it's clever of me to save appearances?"
"It'll be terrible for mother!" said Salvina hotly. "Didn't you think of that?"
"She won't have to talk to him. He'll only hang round. Nobody will notice."
"It would have been better to tell the truth," cried Salvina, "or even a lie. This is only acting a lie. And it must be as painful for him as for us."
"Serve him right—the old furniture-sneak!"
"It was a mistake," Salvina persisted.
"Hush, hush, Salvina!" said Mrs. Brill. "Don't disturb your brother's festival."
"He has disturbed it himself," said Salvina, bursting into tears. "I wish, mother, we had not come."
"Here, here! This is a pretty wedding," said Lazarus.
"Hush, Salvina, hush!" said Mrs. Brill. "What does it matter to us if a dog creeps into synagogue?"
At this point the cab stopped.
"We're not there!" cried Mrs. Brill.
"No," Lazarus explained; "but we pick up father here. We must appear to arrive together."
Ere the horrified pair could protest, he opened the door, sprang out, and pushed inside a stout, rubicund man with a festal rose in his holiday coat, but a miserable, shamefaced look in his eyes. Lazarus took his seat ere a word could be spoken. The cab rolled on.
"Good-morning, Esther," he muttered. "I offered youGet."
"Silence!" cried Salvina, as if she had beentalking to the little girls. "How dare you speak to her?" She held her mother's hand and felt the pulse beating madly.
"You old serpent—" began Mrs. Brill hotly.
"Mother!" pleaded Salvina; "not a word; he doesn't deserve it."
"In Jerusalem I could have two wives," he muttered. But no one replied.
The four human beings sat in painful silence, their knees touching. The culprit shot uneasy, surreptitious glances at his wife, so radiant in jewels and finery and with so Kitty-like a complexion. It was as if he saw her freshly, or as if he were shocked—even startled—by her retaining so much joy of life despite his desertion of her. Fortunately the strange drive only lasted a few minutes. The bridegroom's wedding-party passed into the synagogue through an avenue of sympathetic observers.
Mr. Brill had no part to play in the ceremony. The honours were carried off by Mr. Jonas, who stalked in slowly, with the bride on his arm, and a new green shade over his left eye. The rival father hovered meekly on the outskirts of the marriage-canopy amid a crowd of Jonases. Salvina stationed herself and her mother on the opposite border of the canopy, and throughout bristled, apprehensive, prohibitive, fiery, like a spaniel guarding its mistress against a bull-dog on the pounce. The bull-dog indeed was docile enough; avoiding the spaniel's eye,and trailing a spiritless tail. But the creature revived at the great wedding-feast in the hall of a hundred covers, and under the congratulations and the convivial influences tended to forget he was in disgrace. The bridegroom's parents were placed together, but Salvina changed seats with her mother, and became a buffer between the twain, a non-conducting medium through which the father could not communicate with the mother. With the latter she herself maintained a continuous conversation, and Mr. Brill soon found it more pleasant to forget his troubles in the charms of Mrs. Jonas, his other neighbour.
After the almond-pudding, a succession of speakers ranging from relatives to old friends, and even the officiating minister, gave certificates of character to the bride and the bridegroom, amid the tears of the ladies. Father Jonas made an elaborate speech beginning, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," and interlarded with Hebrew quotations. Father Brill expressed the pleasure it gave him to acknowledge on behalf of himself and his dear wife, the kind things which had been said, and the delight they felt in seeing their son settled in the paths of domestic happiness, especially in connection with a scion of the house of Jonas, of whose virtues much had been said so deservedly that night. Lazarus declared, amid roars of laughter, that on this occasion only he would respond for his dear wife, but he felt sure that for the rest of their lives she would have the last word. Thenthe tables were cleared away and dancing began, which grew livelier as the dawn grew nearer. But long before that, Salvina had borne her mother away from the hovering bull-dog. Not, however, without a terrible scene in the homeward cab. All the volcanic flames Salvina and etiquette had suppressed during the day shot forth luridly. Burning lava was hurled against her husband, against her son, against Salvina. An impassioned inventory of the lost furniture followed, and the refrain of the whole was that she had been taken to a wedding, when all she wanted was a funeral.