GOING HOME
No need to delay longer; every need for instant flight. Esther had
found courage to confess her crime against the community to Raphael;
there was no seething of the blood to nerve her to face Mrs. Henry
Goldsmith. She retired to her own room soon after dinner on the plea
(which was not a pretext) of a headache. Then she wrote:
'DEAR MRS. GOLDSMITH,
'When you read this I shall have left your house, never to
return. It would be idle to attempt to explain my reasons. I
could not hope to make you see through my eyes. Suffice it to
say that I cannot any longer endure a life of dependence, and
that I feel I have abused your favours by writing that Jewish
novel of which you disapprove so vehemently. I never intended to
keep the secret from you after publication. I thought the book
would succeed and you would be pleased; at the same time, I
dimly felt that you might object to certain things and ask to
have them altered, and I have always wanted to write my own
ideas, and not other people's. With my temperament, I see now
that it was a mistake to fetter myself by obligations to
anybody; but the mistake was made in my girlhood, when I knew
little of the world and perhaps less of myself. Nevertheless, I
wish you to believe, dear Mrs. Goldsmith, that all the blame for
the unhappy situation which has arisen I put upon my own
shoulders, and that I have nothing for you but the greatest
affection and gratitude for all the kindnesses I have received
at your hands. I beg you not to think that I make the slightest
reproach against you; on the contrary, I shall always henceforth
reproach myself with the thought that I have made you so poor a
return for your generosity and incessant thoughtfulness. But
the sphere in which you move is too high for me; I cannot
assimilate with it, and I return, not without gladness, to the
humble sphere whence you took me. With kindest regards and best
wishes,
'I am,
'Yours ever gratefully,
'ESTHER ANSELL.'
There were tears in Esther's eyes when she finished, and she was
penetrated with admiration of her own generosity in so freely
admitting Mrs. Goldsmith's and in allowing that her patron got nothing
out of the bargain. She was doubtful whether the sentence about the
high sphere was satirical or serious. People do not know what they
mean almost as often as they do not say it.
Esther put the letter into an envelope and placed it on the open
writing-desk she kept on her dressing-table. She then packed a few
toilette essentials in a little bag, together with some American
photographs of her brother and sisters in various stages of
adolescence. She was determined to go back empty-handed as she came,
and was reluctant to carry off the few sovereigns of pocket-money in
her purse, and hunted up a little gold locket she had received while
yet a teacher in celebration of the marriage of a communal magnate's
daughter. Thrown aside seven years ago, it now bade fair to be the
corner-stone of the temple; she had meditated pledging it and living
on the proceeds till she found work, but when she realised its puny
pretensions to cozen pawnbrokers, it flashed upon her that she could
always repay Mrs. Goldsmith the few pounds she was taking away. In a
drawer there was a heap of manuscript carefully locked away; she took
it and looked through it hurriedly, contemptuously. Some of it was
music, some poetry, the bulk prose. At last she threw it suddenly on
the bright fire which good Mary O'Reilly had providentially provided
in her room; then, as it flared up, stricken with remorse, she tried
to pluck the sheets from the flames; only by scorching her fingers and
raising blisters did she succeed, and then, with scornful
resignation, she instantly threw them back again, warming her feverish
hands merrily at the bonfire. Rapidly looking through all her drawers,
lest perchance in some stray manuscript she should leave her soul
naked behind her, she came upon a forgotten faded rose. The faint
fragrance was charged with strange memories of Sidney. The handsome
young artist had given it her in the earlier days of their
acquaintanceship. To Esther to-night it seemed to belong to a period
infinitely more remote than her childhood. When the shrivelled rose
had been further crumpled into a little ball and then picked to bits,
it only remained to inquire where to go; what to do she could settle
when there. She tried to collect her thoughts. Alas! it was not so
easy as collecting her luggage. For a long time she crouched on the
fender and looked into the fire, seeing in it only fragmentary
pictures of the last seven years--bits of scenery, great cathedral
interiors arousing mysterious yearnings, petty incidents of travel,
moments with Sidney, drawing-room episodes, strange passionate scenes
with herself as single performer, long silent watches of study and
aspiration--like the souls of the burnt manuscripts made visible. Even
that very afternoon's scene with Raphael was part of the 'old unhappy
far-off things' that could only live henceforwards in fantastic
arcades of glowing coal, out of all relation to future realities. Her
new-born love for Raphael appeared as ancient and as arid as the
girlish ambitions that had seemed on the point of blossoming when she
was transplanted from the Ghetto. That, too, was in the flames--and
should remain there.
At last she started up with a confused sense of wasted time, and began
to undress mechanically, trying to concentrate her thoughts the while
on the problem that faced her. But they wandered back to her first
night in the fine house--when a separate bedroom was a new experience
and she was afraid to sleep alone, though turned fifteen. But she was
more afraid of appearing a great baby, and so no one in the world
would ever know what the imaginative little creature had lived down.
In the middle of brushing her hair she ran to the door and locked it,
from a sudden dread that she might oversleep herself and some one
would come in and see the letter on the writing-desk. She had not
solved the problem even by the time she got into bed; the fire
opposite the foot was burning down, but there was a red glow
penetrating the dimness. She had forgotten to draw the blind, and she
saw the clear stars shining peacefully in the sky. She looked and
looked at them, and they led her thoughts away from the problem once
more. She seemed to be lying in Victoria Park, looking up with
innocent mystic rapture and restfulness at the brooding blue sky. The
blood-and-thunder boys' story she had borrowed from Solomon had fallen
from her hand and lay unheeded on the grass. Solomon was tossing a
ball to Rachel which he had acquired by a colossal accumulation of
buttons, and Isaac and Sarah were rolling and wrangling on the grass.
Oh, why had she deserted them? What were they doing now, without her
mother-care, out and away beyond the great seas? For weeks together
the thought of them had not once crossed her mind; to-night she
stretched her arms involuntarily towards her loved ones, not towards
the shadowy figures of reality--scarcely less phantasmal than the dead
Benjamin--but towards the childish figures of the past. What happy
times they had had together in the dear old garret!
In her strange half-waking hallucination, her outstretched arms were
clasped round little Sarah. She was putting her to bed, and the tiny
thing was repeating after her--in broken Hebrew--the children's night
prayer, 'Suffer me to lie down in peace, and let me rise up in peace.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,' with its
unauthorised appendix in baby-English, 'Dod teep me and mate me a dood
dirl, orways.'
She woke to full consciousness with a start; her arms chilled, her
face wet. But the problem was solved.
She would go back to them--back to her true home, where loving faces
waited to welcome her, where hearts were open and life was simple and
the weary brain could find rest from the stress and struggle of
obstinate questionings of destiny. Life was so simple at bottom; it
was she that was so perversely complex. She would go back to her
father, whose naive, devout face swam glorified upon a sea of tears;
yea, and back to her father's primitive faith like a tired lost child
that spies its home at last. The quaint, monotonous cadence of her
father's prayers rang pathetically in her ears, and a great light--the
light that Raphael had shown her--seemed to blend mystically with the
once meaningless sounds. Yea, all things were from Him who created
light and darkness, good and evil. She felt her cares falling from
her, her soul absorbing itself in the sense of a Divine love--awful,
profound, immeasurable--underlying and transcending all things,
incomprehensibly satisfying the soul and justifying and explaining the
universe. The infinite fret and fume of life seemed like the petulance
of an infant in the presence of this restful tenderness diffused
through the great spaces. How holy the stars seemed up there in the
quiet sky, like so many Sabbath lights shedding visible consecration
and blessing!
Yes, she would go back to her loved ones--back from this dainty room,
with its white laces and perfumed draperies, back if need be to a
Ghetto garret. And in the ecstasy of her abandonment of all worldly
things, a great peace fell upon her soul.
In the morning the nostalgia of the Ghetto was still upon her, blent
with a passion of martyrdom that made her yearn for a lower social
depth than was really necessary. But the more human aspects of the
situation were paramount in the grey chillness of a bleak May dawn.
Her resolution to cross the Atlantic forthwith seemed a little hasty,
and though she did not flinch from it, she was not sorry to remember
she had not money enough for the journey. She must perforce stay in
London till she had earned it; meantime she would go back to the
districts and the people she knew so well, and accustom herself again
to the old ways, the old simplicities of existence.
She dressed herself in her plainest apparel, though she could not help
her spring bonnet being pretty. She hesitated between a hat and a
bonnet, but decided that her solitary position demanded as womanly an
appearance as possible. Do what she would, she could not prevent
herself looking exquisitely refined, and the excitement of adventure
had lent that touch of colour to her face which made it fascinating.
About seven o'clock she left her room noiselessly and descended the
stairs cautiously, holding her little black bag in her hand.
'Och, be the holy mother, Miss Esther, phwat a turn ye gave me!' said
Mary O'Reilly, emerging unexpectedly from the dining-room and meeting
her at the foot of the stairs. 'Phwat's the matther?'
'I'm going out, Mary,' she said, her heart beating violently.
'Sure, an' it's rale purty ye look, Miss Esther; but it's divil a bit
the marnin' for a walk. It looks a raw kind of a day, as if the
weather was sorry for bein' so bright yisterday.'
'Oh, but I must go, Mary!'
'Ah, the saints bliss your kind heart!' said Mary, catching sight of
the bag. 'Sure, then, it's a charity irrand you're bent on. I mind me
how my blissed old masther, Mr. Goldsmith's father--_Olov
Hasholom_--who's gone to glory, used to walk to _Shool_ in all winds
and weathers: sometimes it was five o'clock of a winter's marnin', and
I used to git up and make him an iligant cup of coffee before he went
to _Selichoth_; he niver would take milk and sugar in it, becaz that
would be atin' belike, poor dear old ginthleman. Ah, the Holy Virgin
be kind to him!'
'And may she be kind to you, Mary!' said Esther. And she impulsively
pressed her lips to the old woman's seamed and wrinkled cheek, to the
astonishment of the guardian of Judaism. Virtue was its own reward;
for Esther profited by the moment of the loquacious creature's
breathlessness to escape. She opened the hall-door and passed into the
silent street, whose cold pavements seemed to reflect the bleak stony
tints of the sky.
For the first few minutes she walked hastily, almost at a run. Then
her pace slackened, she told herself there was no hurry, and she shook
her head when a cabman interrogated her. The omnibuses were not
running yet. When they commenced, she would take one to Whitechapel.
The sign of awakening labour stirred her with new emotions--the early
milkman with his cans, casual artisans with their tools, a grimy
sweep, a work-girl with a paper lunch package, an apprentice
whistling. Great sleeping houses lined her path like gorged monsters
drowsing voluptuously. The world she was leaving behind her grew alien
and repulsive, her heart went out to the patient world of toil. What
had she been doing all these years--amid her books and her music and
her rose-leaves--aloof from realities?
The first 'bus overtook her half-way, and bore her back to the Ghetto.
* * * * *
The Ghetto was all astir, for it was half-past eight of a workaday
morning. But Esther had not walked a hundred yards before her breast
was heavy with inauspicious emotions. The well-known street she had
entered was strangely broadened. Instead of the dirty picturesque
houses rose an appalling series of artisans' dwellings, monotonous
brick barracks, whose dead, dull prose weighed upon the spirits. But,
as in revenge, other streets, unaltered, seemed incredibly narrow. Was
it possible it could have taken even her childish feet six strides to
cross them, as she plainly remembered? And they seemed so unspeakably
sordid and squalid. Could she ever really have walked them with light
heart, unconscious of the ugliness? Did the grey atmosphere that
overhung them ever lift, or was it their natural and appropriate
mantle? Surely the sun could never shine upon these slimy pavements,
kissing them to warmth and life.
Great magic shops where all things were to be had--peppermints and
cotton, china-faced dolls and lemons--had dwindled into the front
windows of tiny private dwelling-houses; the black-wigged crones, the
greasy, shambling men, were uglier and greasier than she had ever
conceived them. They seemed caricatures of humanity--scarecrows in
battered hats or draggled skirts. But gradually, as the scene grew
upon her, she perceived that, in spite of the 'model dwellings'
builder, it was essentially unchanged. No vestige of improvement had
come over Wentworth Street--the narrow noisy market street, where
serried barrows flanked the reeking roadway exactly as of old, and
where Esther trod on mud and refuse and babies. Babies! they were
everywhere; at the breasts of unwashed women, on the knees of
grandfathers smoking pipes; playing under the barrows, sprawling in
the gutters and the alleys. All the babies' faces were sickly and
dirty, with pathetic childish prettinesses asserting themselves
against the neglect and the sallowness. One female mite in a dingy
tattered frock sat in an orange box, surveying the bustling scene with
a preternaturally grave expression, and realising literally Esther's
early conception of the theatre.
There was a sense of blankness in the wanderer's heart, of
unfamiliarity in the midst of familiarity. What had she in common with
all this mean wretchedness, with this semi-barbarous breed of beings?
The more she looked, the more her heart sank. There was no flaunting
vice, no rowdiness, no drunkenness, only the squalor of an Oriental
city without its quaintness and colour. She studied the posters and
the shop-windows, and caught old snatches of gossip from the groups in
the butcher's shop. All seemed as of yore. And yet here and there the
hand of Time had traced new inscriptions. For Baruch Emanuel the hand
of Time had written a new placard. It was a mixture of German, bad
English and Cockneyese, phonetically spelt in Hebrew letters:
'Mens Solens Und Eelen 2/6
Lydies Deeto 1/6
Kindersche Deeto 1/6
Hier wird gemacht
Aller Hant Sleepers
Fur Trebbelers
Zu De Billigsten Preissen.'
Baruch Emanuel had prospered since the days when he wanted 'lasters
and riveters' without being able to afford them. He no longer
gratuitously advertised _Mordecai Schwartz_ in envious emulation, for
he had several establishments, and owned five two-story houses, and
was treasurer of his little synagogue, and spoke of Socialists as an
inferior variety of Atheists. Not that all this bourgeoning was to be
counted to leather, for Baruch had developed enterprises in all
directions, having all the versatility of Moses Ansell without his
catholic capacity for failure.
The hand of Time had also constructed a 'working-men's Metropole'
almost opposite Baruch Emanuel's shop, and papered its outside walls
with moral pictorial posters, headed 'Where have you been to, Thomas
Brown?' 'Mike and his moke,' and so on. Here single-bedded cabins could
be had as low as fourpence a night. From the journals in a
tobacconist's window Esther gathered that the reading public had
increased, for there were importations from New York, both in Jargon
and in pure Hebrew, and from a large poster in Yiddish and English,
announcing a public meeting, she learnt of the existence of an offshoot
of the Holy Land League--'The Flowers of Zion Society'--'established by
East End youths for the study of Hebrew and the propagation of the
Jewish National Idea.' Side by side with this, as if in ironic
illustration of the other side of the life of the Ghetto, was a
seemingly royal proclamation, headed 'V.R.,' informing the public that
by order of the Secretary of State for War a sale of wrought and cast
iron, zinc, canvas, tools, and leather, would take place at the Royal
Arsenal, Woolwich.
As she wandered on, the great school-bell began to ring; involuntarily
she quickened her step and joined the chattering children's
procession. She could have fancied the last ten years a dream. Were
they, indeed, other children, or were they not the same that jostled
her when she picked her way through this very slush in her clumsy
masculine boots? Surely those little girls in lilac print frocks were
her classmates! It was hard to realise that Time's wheel had been
whirling on, fashioning her to a woman; that, while she had been
living and learning, and seeing the manners of men and cities, the
Ghetto, unaffected by her experiences, had gone on in the same narrow
rut. A new generation of children had arisen to suffer and sport in
room of the old, and that was all. The thought overwhelmed her, gave
her a new and poignant sense of brute, blind forces; she seemed to
catch in this familiar scene of childhood the secret of the grey
atmosphere of her spirit. It was here she had, all insensibly,
absorbed those heavy vapours that formed the background of her being,
a permanent sombre canvas behind all the iridescent colours of joyous
emotion. _What_ had she in common with all this mean wretchedness?
Why, everything. This it was with which her soul had intangible
affinities, not the glory of sun and sea and forest, 'the palms and
temples of the South.'
The heavy vibrations of the bell ceased; the street cleared; Esther
turned back and walked instinctively homewards to Royal Street. Her
soul was full of the sense of the futility of life; yet the sight of
the great shabby house could still give her a chill. Outside the door
a wizened old woman, with a chronic sniff, had established a stall for
wizened old apples; but Esther passed her by heedless of her stare,
and ascended the two miry steps that led to the mud-carpeted passage.
The apple-woman took her for a philanthropist paying a surprise visit
to one of the families of the house, and resented her as a spy. She
was discussing the meanness of the thing with the pickled-herring
dealer next door, while Esther was mounting the dark stairs with the
confidence of old habit. She was making automatically for the garret,
like a somnambulist, with no definite object, morbidly drawn towards
the old home. The unchanging musty smells that clung to the staircase
flew to greet her nostrils, and at once a host of sleeping memories
started to life, besieging her and pressing upon her on every side.
After a tumultuous intolerable moment, a childish figure seemed to
break from the gloom ahead--the figure of a little girl, with a grave
face and candid eyes--a dutiful, obedient, shabby little girl so
anxious to please her schoolmistress, so full of craving to learn and
to be good and to be loved by God, so audaciously ambitious of
becoming a teacher, and so confident of being a good Jewess always.
Satchel in hand, the little girl sped up the stairs swiftly, despite
her cumbrous, slatternly boots; and Esther, holding her bag, followed
her more slowly, as if she feared to contaminate her by the touch of
one so weary-worldly-wise, so full of revolt and despair.
All at once Esther sidled timidly towards the balustrade with an
instinctive movement, holding her bag out protectingly. The figure
vanished, and Esther awoke to the knowledge that 'Bobby' was not at
his post. Then with a flash came the recollection of Bobby's
mistress--the pale, unfortunate young seamstress she had so
unconscionably neglected. She wondered if she were alive or dead. A
waft of sickly odours surged from below. Esther felt a deadly
faintness coming over her; she had walked far, and nothing had yet
passed her lips since yesterday's dinner, and at this moment, too, an
overwhelming terrifying feeling of loneliness pressed like an icy hand
upon her heart. She felt that in another instant she must swoon,
there, upon the foul landing. She sank against the door, beating
passionately at the panels. It was opened from within; she had just
strength enough to clutch the door-post so as not to fall. A thin,
careworn woman swam uncertainly before her eyes. Esther could not
recognise her, but the plain iron bed, almost corresponding in area
with that of the room, was as of old; and so was the little round
table, with a teapot and a cup and saucer, and half a loaf standing
out amid a litter of sewing, as if the owner had been interrupted in
the middle of breakfast. Stay! what was that journal resting against
the half-loaf as for perusal during the meal? Was it not the _London
Journal_? Again she looked, but with more confidence, at the woman's
face. A wave of curiosity, of astonishment at the stylishly dressed
visitor, passed over it, but in the curves of the mouth, in the
movement of the eyebrows, Esther renewed indescribably subtle
memories.
'Debby!' she cried hysterically. A great flood of joy swamped her
soul. She was not alone in the world, after all! Dutch Debby uttered a
little startled scream. 'I've come back, Debby, I've come back!' and
the next moment the brilliant girl-graduate fell fainting into the
seamstress's arms.