Ghetto Tragedies Part 33

"He made mother go on a visit to the Borough."

"The old fox! That's your religious chaps. I'll go and give 'em both brimstone. Where are they?"

"I don't know where--but you must not--it is all too horrible. There's nothing even to sleep on. We thought of borrowing your furniture!"

"What! And give the whole thing away to the Jonases--and lose Rhoda, perhaps. Good heavens, Sally. Don't be so beastly selfish. Think of the disgrace, if we can't cover it up."

"The disgrace is for father, not for you."

"Don't be an idiot. Old Jonas looked down on us enough already, and if it hadn't been for Kitty's calling on him in the Samuelsons' carriage, he might never have consented to the engagement."

"Oh, dear!" said Salvina, melted afresh by this new aspect. "My poor Lazarus!" and she gazed dolefully at the handsome youth who had divided with Kitty the good looks of the family. "But still," she added consolingly, "you couldn't have married for a long time, anyhow."

"I don't know so much. I had a very promising interview this afternoon with the manager of Granders Brothers, the big sponge-people."

"But you don't understand travelling in sponge."

"Pooh! Travelling's travelling. There's nothing to understand.

Whatever the article is, you just tell lies about it."

"Oh, Lazarus!"

"Don't make eyes--you ain't pretty enough. What do you know of the world, you who live mewed up in a Board School? I daresay you believe all the rot you have to tell the little girls."

Her brother's shot made a wound he had not intended. Salvina was at last reminded of her own relation to the sordid tragedy, of what the other teachers would think, ay, even the little girls, so sharp in all that did not concern school-learning. Would her pupils have any inkling of the cloud on teacher's home? Ah, her brother was right.

This disgrace besplashed them all, and she saw herself confusedly as a tainted figure holding forth on honour and duty to rows of white pinafores.

III

Meantime, her mother had toiled up--her jewels glittering curiously in the dusk--and now poured herself out to the fresh auditor in a breathless wail; recapitulated her long years of devotion and the abstracted contents of the house. But Lazarus soon wearied of the inventory of her virtues and furniture.

"What's the use of crying over spilt milk?" he said. "You must get a new jug."

"A new jug! And what about the basin and the coffee-pot and the saucepans and the plates! And my new blue dish with the willow-pattern. Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Don't be so stupid."

"She's a little dazed, Lazarus, dear. Have patience with her. Lazarus says it's no use crying and letting the neighbours hear you: we must make the best of a bad job, and cover it up."

"You'll soon cover me up. I won't need my clothes then--only a clean shroud. After twenty years--he wipes his mouth and he goes away! Tear the rent in your garments, children mine, your mother is dead."

"How can any one have patience with her?" cried Lazarus. "One would think it was such a treat for her to live with father. Judging by the rows you've had, mother, you ought to be thankful to be rid of him."

"I _am_ thankful," she retorted hysterically. "Who said I wasn't? A grumbling, grunting pig, who grudged me my horsehair couch because he couldn't sit on it. Well, let him squat on it now with his lady. I don't care. All my enemies will pity me, will they? If they only knew how glad I was!" and she broke into more sobs.

"Come, mother; come downstairs, Lazarus: don't let us stay up in the dark."

"Not me," said Lazarus. "I'm not going down to hear this all over again. Besides, where am I to sit or to sleep? I must go to an hotel."

He struck a match to relight his cigar and it flared weirdly upon the tear-smudged female faces. "Got any money, Salvina," he said more gently.

"Only five s.h.i.+llings."

"Well, I daresay I can manage on that. Good-night, mother, don't take on so, it'll be all the same a hundred years hence." He opened the door; then paused with his hand on the k.n.o.b, and said awkwardly: "I suppose you'll manage to find something to sleep on just for to-night."

"Oh, yes," said Salvina rea.s.suringly; "we'll manage. Don't worry, dear."

"I'll be in the first thing in the morning. We'll have a council of war. Good-night. It _is_ a beastly mean trick," and he went out meditatively.

When he was gone, Salvina remembered that the five s.h.i.+llings were for the mattress. But she further bethought herself that the sum would scarcely have sufficed even for a straw mattress, and that the little gold ring Kitty had given her when she matriculated would fetch more.

Her mother's jewellery must be left sacred; the poor creature was smarting enough from the sense of loss. Bidding her sit on the stairs till she returned, she hastened into Mare Street, the great Hackney highway, christened "The Devil's Mile" by the Salvation Army. Early experience had familiarized her with the process of p.a.w.ning, but now she slipped furtively into the first p.a.w.n-shop and did not stay to make a good bargain. She spent on a telegram to the central post-office sixpence of the proceeds, so that she might be able to draw out without delay the few pounds she had laid by for her summer holiday. While she was purchasing the mattress at the garishly illuminated furniture store, the words "Hire System" caught her eye, and seemed a providential solution of the position. She broached negotiations for the furnis.h.i.+ng of a bed-room and a kitchen, minus carpet and oilcloth (for these would not fit the cheaper apartments into which they would now have to revert), but she found there were tedious formalities to be gone through, and that her own signature would be invalid, as she was legally a child. However, she was able to secure the porterage of the mattress at once, and, followed by a bending Atlas, she hurried back to her mother--who sat on her stair, moaning--and diverted her from her griefs by teaching her to sign her name, in view of the legal exigencies of the morrow. It was a curious wind-up to her day's teaching. Poor Mrs. Brill's obstinate objection to education had to give way at last under such unexpected conditions, but she insisted on the shortest possible spelling, and so the uncouth "Esther Brills" pencilled at the top of the sheet were exchanged for more flowing "E. Brills" lower down. Even then, the good woman took the thing as a pictorial flourish, or a section of a map, and disdained acquaintance with the const.i.tuent letters, so that her progress in learning remained only nominal.

Then the "infant" at law put her mother to bed and lay down beside her on the mattress, both in their clothes for lack of blankets. The mother soon dozed off, but the "child" lay turning from side to side.

The pressure of her little tasks had dulled the edge of emotion, but now, in the silence of the night, the whole tragic position came back with all its sordid romanticism, its pathetic meanness; and when at last she slept, its obsession lay heavy upon her dreams, and she sat at her examination desk in the London University, striving horridly to recall the irregularities of Greek verbs, and to set them down with a pen that could never dip up any ink, while the inexorable hands of the clock went round, and her father, in the coveted Bachelor's gown, waited to spirit away her desk and seat as soon as the hour should strike.

IV

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 a.s.sistance, 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 know _I_ never ran away."

"And mind, mother," said Salvina as she s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 rea.s.suringly.

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 cla.s.s--five elevens are fifty-five--seemed like the peaceful buzzing of a gigantic blue-bottle on a drowsy afternoon. It occurred to her suddenly that she was fifty-five years old, and when Miss Rolver, the Christian head-mistress, came into her room, Salvina had an unexpected feeling of advantage in life-experience over this desiccated specimen of femininity, redolent of time-tables, record-parchments, foolscap, and clean blotting-paper. Outside all this scheduled world pulsed a large irregular life of flesh and blood; all the primitive verbs in every language were irregular, it suddenly flashed upon her, and she had an instant of vivifying insight into the Greek language she had unquestioningly accepted as "dead"; saw Grecian men and women breathing their thoughts and pa.s.sions--even expressing the shape of their throats and lips--through these erratic aorists.

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