Ghetto Tragedies Part 37

She's a good sort, is Rhoda, she doesn't mind gypsying. And that saves us from the 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 they _ought_ to know--it is the rest of the world that it _doesn't_ concern."

"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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 cultivated relations 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.

VIII

Ere the wedding-day arrived, Salvina had to go to the seaside.

Clacton-on-Sea was the somewhat plebeian place and the school-fete 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 a.s.sist an "a.s.sistant 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 missing now 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 was.h.i.+ng against it for millions and millions of years, and if it--"

The sudden blare of a bra.s.s 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, but her next feeling was pain lest the sight of her should painfully embarra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce and time seemed to reduce her to a grain of sand, and blow her about the great s.p.a.ces. But the mood pa.s.sed 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! Father _is_ at the seaside."

"The d.i.c.kens!" 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 cla.s.s went paddling, and joking, and dropped her crutch, and it floated away--"

"Bother your little cripple-girls. They always seem to be in your cla.s.s!"

"Because my cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 the _Shool_ (synagogue)."

"What!" and Mrs. Brill appeared like to faint.

"He wouldn't have the cheek," Salvina said rea.s.suringly, as she pulled out the smelling-salts which Kitty had not needed.

"He wouldn't have the cheek _not_ to 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 he _did_ send 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. n.o.body 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, hus.h.!.+" 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.