Dorah was a tall, raw-boned woman, carrying all the implicit angles of
Reb Monash to an explicit extreme. In the civil strife at Angel Street
her sympathy had always been on the side of tradition and Reb Monash,
as against licence and Philip. Channah likewise had, in a weak and
somewhat hopeless way, taken sides. Not openly, not with unabashed
self-declaration, and far less through philosophy than sentiment, she
had been steadily at Philip's side--when, at least, she was not
absorbed in her collection of Vesta Tilley post cards and her long
waitings at gallery doors for the performances of Lewis Waller or
Martin Harvey.
The veins of Dorah's temper were less easily tapped than Reb Monash's,
but when tapped, they yielded richer ore. When her temper was at its
most exuberant, her voice was of a dovey stillness which boded much
woe. But the contradiction in her household which most concerned
Philip was, in a word, weak tea. So well defined and dark and abrupt
was Dorah, that one would have imagined that tea of her brewing would
be raven as Acheron. Yet it was, in fact, as weak as a rickety child.
It was tepid. It was served in a large pint mug, so that its quantity
the more ruthlessly exposed the invariable defects of its quality.
Much and cold milk annihilated its last semblance to the potent brews
of Angel Street and copious sugar rendered it, at length, unpleasant as
an inverse castor oil.
Compare with weak tea, tea almost leonine; also cherries in the skim of
milk, and Mrs. Massel sitting hard by, humming happily like a kettle,
or moving about the kitchen with happy bird-like noises, and producing
finally a remnant of Saturday's _kuggel_ (which is a thick brown soft
pudding with many raisins and a celestial crisp crust)! ... Until the
shuffling of Reb Monash's feet overhead might be heard, and there is
the last gulping of tea and swallowing of _kuggel_, and the lifting of
a laden satchel of books, and from Philip's lips a fatuous "So long,
old mother, toodle-oo!" which is a valediction juvenile indeed from the
lips of a young man to whom at last the secrets of the universe have
been laid bare, from the genesis of the baby to the real nature of God
and the perfidy of Edie....
"So long, old mother!"
Since the exodus from Angel Street, relations between Philip and his
father had not been clearly defined. Philip still descended from
Longton each Saturday morning to accompany Reb Monash to the _Polisher
Shool_. He had at first been extremely reluctant to go, but Dorah
threatened unstated oppressions, and though tea could hardly have been
more pallid, Philip felt it wise to fall in with her request. He still
came down to join in festival meals, but no word of intimacy passed
between them. In _shool_, the watchful eye of Reb Monash no longer
guarded Philip's Prayer Book lest two pages be turned over in place of
one; which very remission compelled Philip to reiterate the cryptic
prayers with a blank, dull fidelity.
Thus, therefore, though they were on conversational terms with each
other, as a man might be with a youth he disliked or feared but in whom
he was compelled to take an interest, out of loyalty towards a dead
friend, invariably the awakening of Reb Monash brought about the
dissolution of such a cherry-séance as I have spoken of. For Mrs.
Massel and her son had now made a tacit pact by which Philip always
came home from Doomington School via Angel Street instead of by the
upper road to Longton called Brownel Gap. It meant an uninterrupted
hour with his mother, and these months, howsoever disastrous and dark
the day might be before and after this golden hour, were their halcyon
days.
"And yet," apprehensively muttered Philip to himself, "how thin she is
getting!"
"Mother!" he would say, "Aren't you well? Can't you take something?
You don't look half so--you know--half so fat and jolly as ordinary
mothers do. Look at Alec Segal's mother! She adds another chin every
month and she keeps on getting further out in front! You don't!
What'll we do about it, mother; it can't go on, you know!"
"Channah, God bless her!" she would reply, "out of her hard-earned
wages--and you know how much he makes her bring into the house--and
then her new dress she's bought for Betsy's wedding, it's all purple
like wine, a _par-shane_, that's what the dear girl looks, a beauty
straight out of the picture book! Vesta Tilley me thou no Vesta
Tilleys! Going on the stage like a boy, smoking cigarettes! But she
always wears wigs! Perhaps she wants to make herself out a daughter of
Israel, with her wearing wigs! Well, if she ever dresses up like an
honest woman, I say Channah's new back comb, even if it hasn't got real
diamonds, is just as lovely as Vesta Tilley's! Don't forget the sugar
in thy tea, Feivele!"
"Yes, right, mother! But what about Channah, her hard-earned wages?"
"Oh yes! My head, my head! Thou dost not get thy brains from my old
silly head, Feivele! _Nu_, where were we! _Yah_! I was saying, out
of her hard-earned wages, cod-liver oil she buys me, and sometimes two
fresh eggs she buys me! The extravagant girl, two fresh eggs! Make me
a poetry out of two fresh eggs! It's all right making poetry out of
trees and rivers! Thou hast ever seen trees and rivers, yes? No! Ah,
those were _takke_ trees by the Dneister, and that was a river in a
thousand! Will I ever smell again the grass in the fields by the
river, when they cut it and it lies in heaps, and the moon, it comes up
like a feather! This is not for me, Feivele! But when I'm dead,
Feivele...."
"No, no, no, mother! Look here, I don't think you ought to talk like
that! It isn't sensible!"
"I mean over a hundred years--thou shalt see a lot of countries and
hills and thou shalt smell the grass cut by the river, maybe thou shalt
see even the Dneister! Perhaps my brother Benya's daughter--she is how
many years old, eight, nine--perhaps she will be a _studentka_ and thou
wilt teach her English and she will teach thee _Russ_ and you'll get
married--and thy old mamma, she'll not be there to see!"
"Mother, it's not decent of you! You talk like that more and more, I
don't know why, and if you'd only take more care of yourself, you could
be the Fat Woman in a show!"
"I'm sorry, son, I'm sorry," covering up her traces wistfully, "I mean
I'll be over the sea in Angel Street, and you'll not want to wait till
you come to England, thou and Rivkah--yes, yes, Rivkah is her name, God
bless her! before you get married!"
Some days later, after another sitting where conversation ranges over
continents and stars, and there is no fatigue in their wings--"Say,
mother! here's two more new-laid eggs! I think one's a duck's, does it
matter?"
"Oh a _katchky_! A big blue _katchky's_ egg! Oh, Feivele, where didst
thou--
"Now don't ask! And anyhow, I've been sick of Longfellow for ages!"
"See, I'll boil it now! There's time before he comes down! Thou wilt
have half!"
Stoutly, "Nothing, nothing! It's yours!" The egg is boiled.
Sacredly, as if duck-egg-eating were a holy rite, Mrs. Massel eats her
duck's egg. Once or twice she throws in fervent appreciations of the
race of _katchkies_. Philip half hopes her cheeks will here and now
take on a shade more colour from the nourishment he has provided for
her out of the disposal of Evangeline. Her face still is pale, and
there are still drawn lines at the mouth. Ah well, only wait till
she's taken a lot more cod-liver oil and a lot more new-laid eggs,
including as many _katchkies_ as discarded poets will provide....!
"Feivele, he comes!"
"Humph--ho! I'm going! Oh, look at your hands, how liny and seamy
they are! Come, _do_ leave those brasses alone, they're so much work!
And you know, when you don't clean 'em the only difference is they look
like copper instead of brass! Ototototoi! I must be off, I suppose!
What fat cherries they were--like babies! Well, you huge bullying
monster of a mother, till to-morrow, till to-morrow!"
So the months passed, with their half-surreptitious visits to Mrs.
Massel, which gained something of their too short delight from their
shallow secrecy. At the extremes of the day, there were, on the one
hand, school, on the other hand, Walton Street. At school he generally
maintained an unambitious head above the waters, still fitfully
persecuted by his fellows, or ignored, or dimly tolerated as one who
took no interest in societies, sports and camps, but from whom no
positive evil was to be expected, saving sometimes an ugly spurt of
temper which did not cringe even before the towering creatures who at
all other times carried universal terror in their wake. At the other
extreme of the day were the sporadic flirtations in Walton Street which
began somewhat to lose their attractions as he moved towards his
sixteenth year. There were subfusc rumours about the migration of Alec
Segal's family to another town for reasons unspecified. Harry Sewelson
became entangled with two barmaids and a German governess successively.
The simpering graces of the Edie ménage, it is grievous to add, began
to wear thinner and thinner, excepting for the grosser souls of a
George or a Willy Levi the Barber. Moreover, Philip had received so
feeble a move as a consequence of an Edie-deteriorated school year,
that he determined violently to regain his academic self-esteem. Of
the fact that he became a competitor for the five-pound prize to be
awarded to the greatest authority on Chaucer in the middle school at
Doomington, Philip had left Dorah unaware. She was ready to expend
over him the vials of her maternal love (she had no children) only as
soon as he consented to be what she termed "a Jew among Jews." The
history of Angel Street had taught her the futility of positive
compulsion in this direction. But she placed before her the definite
policy of treating Philip in a manner neither hostile nor affectionate,
until, maybe, the sheer force of frigidity brought him creeping to the
warmth. Whilst Philip had spent all the evening in the pursuit of
Edie's lips instead of in the pursuit of a high place in form, she had
merely said nothing. When now till a late hour he began to concern
himself with his school work and his tales of Chaucer, she said nothing
still, and was told as little. But likewise Philip said nothing to his
mother. Suppose, and after all many of his competitors were in senior
forms, suppose he should fail badly! Only Channah was his confidante,
and from her he obtained the gift of a certain most desirable complete
Chaucer which Cartwright had displayed in his curiosity shop for
fruitless months.
Philip still remembered the almost dizzy delight he had occasioned his
mother by the winning of a mere form prize as second-in-class two years
ago. She still treasured it alongside of her Yiddish translations of
Holy Writ, in the most intimate recess of her cupboard. Not a word was
intelligible to her, of course; she was capable even of holding the
book upside down. Yet she would carefully wipe her spectacles and
proceed to move her eyes in leisurely transports from page to
hieroglyphic page. She was so much attached to the book that he had
not had the heart to take it away with him on the melancholy handcart
which had transported his goods to Longton.
The decision of the Chaucer prize was to be decided an hour after
school on a certain day and the official announcement to be made at
prayers the following day. In an agony of sick apprehension Philip
slunk about the corridors of the school. He was in a state of comatose
despair and was staring unseeingly into a case of stuffed beavers and
stoats, when a hearty and heavy hand descended on his shoulder.
"Well, Philip!" exclaimed the robust voice of Mr. Furness, "and who do
you think has won the Chaucer prize?"
"Albert Chapman, sir!" suggested Philip weakly.
"Try again!"
"Jack Lord, sir!"
"No, my lad! He lives nearer Angel Street than that! Oh, of course,
you live in Longton now! How's your sister?"
"You ... you don't mean _me_, sir?"
"But I do! Come into my room, I've a poet I think you'll like.
Henley! You've not met Henley?
_It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll!_
Won't your mother be glad, eh? I'm pleased, Philip, very! You're
making good again! Let me see, we were quoting Henley. Of course, you
remember:
_In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud._
No? Here's the book then! ..."
Philip ran to Angel Street breathlessly and burst into the kitchen.
Reb Monash had already come down and was sipping his glass of
lemon-tea. But Philip had no eyes for Reb Monash.
"Mother!" he shouted, "I've won! I've won the Chaucer! A five-pound
prize! Isn't it grand! I'll be able to buy you a blouse for _yom
tov_! And hordes of eggs! Isn't it grand!"
She looked towards Reb Monash. He had contracted his forehead.
"Hush!" she said in a thin, even voice. "Thy father has a head this
afternoon. Make not so much noise!"
"Don't you understand? I've won an awfully big prize and I've worked
so hard for it!" he said, crestfallen. He had expected she would flush
with delight and seize his hands and lift them to her lips, as she did
when she was tremendously pleased with him. Instead, here she was
showing no sign of pleasure, hardly of interest.
"It is well!" she said. "But thou must be quiet! Thou wilt have a cup
of tea, wilt thou?"
"No!" he muttered, suppressing in his throat a lump of acute
disappointment. "I've got to go to Dorah's at once! I promised to do
something for her!"
His eyes had a suspicion of dampness when he arrived at Longton. He
ate a chilled dinner sullenly.
Next day he had not the heart to go and see his mother. He spent the
hour in an alcove of the school library ostensibly reading De Quincey,
actually playing a game at that time gathering momentum at Doomington
School, the game called "push penny," where two pair of nibs stuck in a
table served as goal posts, and two rival pocket knives impelling two
rival pennies attempted to introduce a further coin into the respective
pen-nib goals. But he turned up in Angel Street as usual the following
day. He was sulky. "A nice mother you are..." he began. But he had
not time to say more. She had seated him beside her on the sofa and
was stroking his head. "Feivele, Feivele, didst thou not understand?
When he is here, dare I show what I think, how glad I am...?" A fit of
coughing interrupted her. The boy looked up anxiously. "Thou
knowest," she began again, "thou knowest what he will think, that I
encourage thee in they _goyishkeit_. Ah, would that thou _wert_ a
holier Jew, my son! It does not matter how far thou wilt go in the
world, once a Jew, remain a Jew! Thou wilt have high friends. They
will say to thy face 'How thou art wonderful, Mr. Massel!' Is not that
true? And behind thee they will murmur 'Jew! Jew!' _Yah, yah_, that
is a long way ahead! Where I shall be, who knows? And now again, what
hast thou won? What? No! Not five pounds! For just sitting down and
writing for three hours? No, that cannot be! Mr. Furness likes thee,
no? It is Mr. Furness, he knows thou art cleverer than all the other
boys...."
"No it wasn't, mother! He hadn't anything to do with it!"
"Tell me not! No sane man will give away five pounds because one sits
oneself down at a desk and writes words! Ah well, let it be, if thou
wilt have it so! ... But thou must not work so hard, thine eyes ... Oh,
this coughing! I went to the market to buy a hen for _shabbos_. It is
cheaper there. And it was raining one of your English rains ... lakes,
it rained!"
"You know, mother, it's rotten of you! You shouldn't do it!"
"It will pass, it will pass! But the kettle's boiling! Tea! And look
what I have bought thee, to-day! Cakes with ice, eh? I know how thou
art a sweet tooth! Dost thou remember swallowing a whole box of pills
because thou thought they were sweets! And how I took thee in this
shawl, the red one, to the chemist! And he made thee sick with his
finger, and thou bit his hand, thou _yungatsch_! See! It boils over
on my clean fender! _Kum shen, kum_!"
The summer examinations followed. For some weeks preceding them,
Philip worked hard all day and long into the night. It was during this
period that Mrs. Massel took to her bed. Her cough had become heavy
and persistent. Philip would come in after school with frightened eyes.
"It will pass, it will pass!" she repeated. He tried to overwhelm in a
frenzied absorption in his work the lurking fear which gnawed at his
heart-strings. Soon it was found imperative to move her bed from the
upstairs bedroom to the parlour below. The pale thinning face would
intervene between him and the page. He would draw back in a sudden
access of terror. "It will be all right!" he assured himself, "All the
really hot days of summer are to come yet!" One thing at least he
could do. He would get a first-rate place in the exams. He knew how
that would delight her. He was sure it would help her no end. He
thrust himself wholly into his books.
He did so well at the examination that a bursary was awarded him which
put his position at school beyond all peril for another two years.
"Mother!" he burst in one day. "Such good news!"
She lifted her head tiredly. "Tell me, my son!"
"I've got a huge scholarship and school's absolutely right now, nothing
to fear! Tell me, mother, aren't you horribly excited! Isn't it fine!"
But looking down on her face, he found it wet with tears. An ice-sharp
dismay leapt to his heart.
"Mother, aren't you glad? You ought to be laughing! I never expected
anything like it! Oh, mother, why on earth are you crying? What's it
all about?"
"Thou wilt not understand, Philip! But it is nothing! I'm not really
crying! Nothing, nothing! See, my face is dry! Kiss me, Feivele!"
He bent down to her. For an hour he talked to her of the new
confidence his success had brought him and what he was going to do when
he left school. He might even go to the University! No, he would not
be a doctor! His ambitions hadn't taken shape yet, but he might be....
Oh, he didn't know what he mightn't be if he only tried! And he'd have
such a house for her to live in...!
He fell to describing the house of his dreams ... until at length
Channah came in. She was ending her button-hole labours earlier,
nowadays, in order to have more time to attend to her mother.
The summer holidays had already begun when Mr. Furness wrote to Philip
informing him that he had made arrangements for the boy to spend a
fortnight in the country. It was characteristic of Mr. Furness. He
realized that unless he himself engineered it there was no chance of
Philip obtaining the holiday the boy seemed badly to need. It was
better, he decided, not to broach the matter at all, but by definitely
presenting Philip with the _fait accompli_, and by placing himself
behind the vantage of the impersonal post, to simplify Philip's
position as far as possible. The idea had occurred to him of inviting
Philip to the annual Doomington camp among the Westmoreland hills,
particularly as the camp regularly contained a fair proportion of the
Jewish boys at the school. But the thought of Reb Monash seemed
rigidly to disqualify the idea. It was obvious that with the most
courteous intentions in the world the ceremonial minutiae of Angel
Street could hardly be repeated to their last austerity in the divine
welter of camp. He cast about in his mind, therefore, for a means of
satisfying at once the scruples of Reb Monash and his own determination
that Philip should breathe smokeless air. The Jewish "guest house"
kept by Mrs. Kraft under the Wenton Hills seemed as amiable a solution
as he could find.
It was run on "strictly _kosher_" lines for boys between the ages of
thirteen and sixteen, and ladies over the decorous age of thirty. The
determination to avoid complications _du coeur_ seemed, he considered,
perhaps a little ostentatious. The important point, however, was that
Wenton House was at once "_kosher_" and in the country, and he was
satisfied that Mrs. Kraft was a capable and excellent lady.
For one moment only Mr. Furness's letter brought to Philip a wild joy,
then the joy flickered and was quenched.
"Absolutely impossible!" he determined. "How can I go and leave her
lying ill in the parlour, coughing! I'm not going, that's final!"
But the matter was by no means so easily decided. "Not going!" cried
Mrs. Massel. "Not going!" echoed Channah.
"Be thou not a fool, my son!" the mother urged. "How I have yearned it
should come to pass for thee! What, a Yiddisher house in the country!
Of course thou wilt go! Thou wilt come back a _labe_, a lion, with a
big chest, a sight for God and Man! Perhaps there will be a real river
there? No? Not like the Mitchen! A river they call it, such a year
upon them! Yes, and the men in the fields will be cutting the grass,
or is it too soon? The year is slower in this England of thine than in
Terkass, but what knows one of the year, how it comes or goes, in thy
lovely Dum--ing--tonn!"
"Don't be silly, mother! How on earth can I go when you're like this!
I can't! I can't think of it!"
"A question! Thou must go, I say! Annotate for me no passages!
_Mirtsaschem_, I'll be well again when thou returnest. I will make
thee, all for thyself, a _kuggel_ ... _oi, oi_, this coughing ...
_mishkosheh_, it will pass ... a large _kuggel_, with large raisins,
larger raisins are not!"
"Of course you must go!" broke in Channah, adding her pressure, "Look
how hard you've been working with all your Chaucers and things! We'll
be having you to look after as well, if you're not careful! And you
know yourself how it'll cheer mother up to think you're in the open air
with no worries and nothing to do but get fat! I'll tell you what,
I'll give you an extra half-crown--if you promise not to spend it on
your smelly old books--and you must go to a farm every morning----"
But as she went on talking, a shadow, the sensation of a picture rather
than a picture itself, established itself in Philip's mind. A figure
shrouded, very calm, very cold! Candles fluttering somewhere! Hunched
shadows ... calm ... cold....!
"I can't go! I can't go!" he shouted suddenly.
"Feivele!" his mother begged. "What is with you? Speak to him,
Channah, speak to him!"
"You're a beast, Philip! Look how you're upsetting her! You _must_
go! _Emmes adonoi_, the doctor said she's getting on nicely. It's
only rest she wants and good food, he said, and no worry. No worry,
mind you!"
He looked away from Channah and saw the appeal in his mother's eyes.
"All right, I'll go!" he said heavily.
"Good old lad! The first thing..."
"Look here, Channah!" he interrupted. An idea had suddenly occurred to
him. "I'll go on one condition. You must write a note to me every day
I'm away, it doesn't matter how small, a post-card if you like! And
every day mother must write her name on it, without fail! Promise
that!"
Channah looked at him strangely.
"Of course I'll promise! And I'll do it! Won't we, mother?"
"The foolish boy with his poetry-ideas! Of course we will! _Nu, shen,
nu_, thou art happy now? He will say to me a poetry, Channah, and thou
must go this moment to boil thyself an egg! Go thou, go, _tochterel_!"
"That's all right!" murmured Philip. Before him waved green banners of
grass towards the foothills, and white clouds sailed aloof over broken
peaks.... "That's all right, mother! And if you forget that _kuggel_
..."