this suburban young person?" cried the Black Prince, feeling vaguely
boiling over with rage.
"Even so," answered his brother, "but guard thy tongue. The lady of
whom thou speakest so disrespectfully is none other than the Princess
of Paphlagonia."
"Eh? What?" gasped the Black Prince.
"She hath resided there since the twelfth moon of last year. The King
received her the first time he set out to meet her."
"Dost thou dare say the King hath spoken untruth?"
"Nay, nay. The King is a wise man. Wise men never mean what they say.
The King said she was confined to her room. It is true, for he had
confined her in the Tower with her maidens for fear she should fall in
love with the wrong Prince, or the reverse, before the rightful heir
was discovered. The King said she would not arrive in the city till
next year. This also is true. As thou didst rightly observe, the Tower
of Telifonia is situated in the suburbs. The King did not bargain for
my discovering that a beautiful woman lived in its topmost turret."
"Nay, how couldst thou discover that? The King did not lend thee the
magic car, and thou certainly couldst not see her at that height
without the magic glass!"
"I have not seen her. But through the embrasure I often saw the
sunlight flashing and leaping like a thing of life, and I knew it was
what the children call a 'Johnny Noddy.' Now a 'Johnny Noddy' argueth
a mirror, and a mirror argueth a woman, and frequent use thereof
argueth a beautiful woman. So, when in the Presence Chamber the King
told us of his dilemma as to the hand of the Princess of Paphlagonia,
it instantly dawned upon me who the beautiful woman was, and why the
King was keeping her hidden away, and why he had hidden away his
meaning also. Wherefore straightway I asked for a pigeon, knowing that
the pigeons of the town roost on the Tower of Telifonia, so that I had
but to fly my bird at the end of a long string like a kite to
establish communication between me and the fair captive. In time my
little messenger grew so used to the journey to and fro that I could
dispense with the string. Our courtship has been most satisfactory. We
love each other ardently, and--"
"But you have never seen each other!" interrupted the Black Prince.
"Thou forgettest we are both royal personages," said the Blue Prince
in astonished reproof.
"But this is gross treachery--what right hadst thou to make these
underhand advances in our absence?"
"Thou forgettest I had to scotch the Serpent," said the Blue Prince in
astonished reproof. "Thou forgettest also that she can only marry the
heir to the throne."
"Ah, true!" said the Black Prince, considerably relieved. "And as thou
hast chosen to fritter away the time in making love to her, thou hast
taken the best way to lose her."
"Thou forgettest I shall have to marry her," said the Blue Prince in
astonished reproof. "Not only because I have given my word to a lady,
but because I have promised the King to do my best to scotch the
Serpent of the Sea. Really thou seemest terribly dull to-day. Let me
put the matter in a nutshell. If he who scotches the Sea Serpent is to
marry the Princess, then would I scotch the Sea Serpent by marrying
the Princess, and marry the Princess to scotch the Sea Serpent. Thou
hast searched the face of the sea, and our brother has dragged its
depths, and nowhere have ye seen the Sea Serpent. Yet in the ninth
moon he will surely come, and the land will be covered with an inky
vomit as in former years. But if I marry the Princess of Paphlagonia
in the ninth moon, the Royal Wedding will ward off the Sea Serpent,
and not a scribe will shed ink to tell of his advent. Therefore,
instead of ranging through the earth, I stayed at home and paid my
addresses to the--"
"Yes, yes, what a fool I was!" interrupted the Black Prince, smiting
his brow with his palm, so that the pigeon escaped from between his
fingers, and winged its way back to the Tower of Telifonia as if to
carry his words to the Princess.
"Thou forgettest thou art a fool still," said the Blue Prince in
astonished reproof. "Prithee, unbind me forthwith."
"Nay, I am a fool no longer, for it is I that shall wed the Princess
of Paphlagonia and scotch the Sea Serpent, it is I that have sent the
pigeon to and fro, and unless thou makest me thine oath to be silent
on the matter I will slay thee and cast thy body into the river."
"Thou forgettest our brother, the Green Prince," said the Blue Prince
in astonished reproof.
"Bah! he hath eyes for naught but the odd ortolans and oysters I
sacrificed that he might gorge himself withal, while I spied out thy
secret. He shall be told that I returned to exchange my car for thy
pigeon even as I exchanged my boat for his car. Come, thine oath or
thou diest." And a jewelled scimitar shimmered in the starlight.
[Illustration: "A JEWELLED SCIMITAR SHIMMERED IN THE STARLIGHT."]
The Blue Prince reflected that though life without love was hardly
worth living, death was quite useless. So he swore and went in to
supper. When he found that the Green Prince had not spared even a
baked chestnut before he fell asleep, he swore again. And on the
morrow when the Princes approached the Tower of Telifonia, with its
flashing "Johnny Noddy," they met a courier from the King, who, having
informed himself of the Black Prince's success, ran ahead with the
rumour thereof. And lo! when the Princes passed through the city gate
they found the whole population abroad clad in all their bravery, and
flags flying and bells ringing and roses showering from the balconies,
and merry music swelling in all the streets for joy of the prospect of
the Sea Serpent's absence. And when the new moon rose, the three
Princes, escorted by flute-players, hied them to the Presence Chamber,
and the King embraced his sons, and the Black Prince stood forward and
explained that if a Prince were married in the ninth moon it would
prevent the monster's annual visit. Then the King fell upon the Black
Prince's neck and wept and said, "My son! my son! my pet! my baby! my
tootsicums! my popsy-wopsy!"
And then, recovering himself, and addressing the courtiers, he said:
"The gods have enabled me to discover my youngest son. If they will
only now continue as propitious, so that I may discover the elder of
the other two, I shall die not all unhappy."
[Illustration: "'THE GODS HAVE ENABLED ME TO DISCOVER MY YOUNGEST
SON.'"]
But the Black Prince could repress his astonishment no longer. "Am I
dreaming, sire?" he cried. "Surely I have proved myself the eldest,
not the youngest!"
"Thou forgettest that thou hast come off successful," replied the King
in astonished reproof. "Or art thou so ignorant of history or of the
sacred narratives handed down to us by our ancestors that thou art
unaware that when three brothers set out on the same quest, it is
always the youngest brother that emerges triumphant? Such is the will
of the gods. Cease, therefore, thy blasphemous talk, lest they
overhear thee and be put out."
A low, ominous murmur from the courtiers emphasised the King's
warning.
"But the Princess--she at least is mine," protested the unhappy
Prince. "We love each other--we are engaged."
"Thou forgettest she can only marry the heir," replied the King in
astonished reproof. "Wouldst thou have us repudiate our solemn
treaty?"
"But I wasn't really the first to hit on the idea at all!" cried the
Black Prince desperately. "Ask the Blue Prince! he never telleth
untruth."
"Thou forgettest I have taken an oath of silence on the matter,"
replied the Blue Prince in astonished reproof. "The Black Prince it
was that first hit on the idea," volunteered the Green Prince. "He
exchanged his boat for the car and the car for the pigeon."
So the three Princes were dismissed, while the King took counsel with
the magicians and the wise men who never mean what they say. And the
Court Chamberlain, wearing the orchid of office in his buttonhole, was
sent to interview the Princess, and returned saying that she refused
to marry any one but the proprietor of the pigeon, and that she still
had his letters as evidence in case of his marrying anyone else.
"Bah!" said the King, "she shall obey the treaty. Six feet of
parchment are not to be put aside for the whim of a girl five foot
eight. The only real difficulty remaining is to decide whether the
Blue Prince or the Green Prince is the elder. Let me see--what was it
the Oracle said? Perhaps it will be clearer now:--
"'The eldest is he that the Princess shall wed.'
"No, it still seems merely to avoid stating anything new."
"Pardon me, sire," replied the Chief Magician; "it seems perfectly
plain now. Obviously, thou art to let the Princess choose her husband,
and the Oracle guarantees that, other things being equal, she shall
select the eldest. If thou hadst let her have the pick from among the
three, she would have selected the one with whom she was in love--the
Black Prince to wit, and that would have interfered with the Oracle's
arrangements. But now that we know with whom she is in love, we can
remove that one, and then, there being no reason why she should choose
the Green Prince rather than the Blue Prince, the deities of the realm
undertake to inspire her to go by age only."
"Thou hast spoken well," said the King. "Let the Princess of
Paphlagonia be brought, and let the two Princes return."
So after a space the beautiful Princess, preceded by trumpeters, was
conducted to the Palace, blinking her eyes at the unaccustomed
splendour of the lights. And the King and all the courtiers blinked
their eyes, dazzled by her loveliness. She was clad in white samite,
and on her shoulder was perched a pet pigeon. The King sat in his
moiré robes on the old gold throne, and the Blue Prince stood on his
right hand, and the Green Prince on his left, the Black Prince as the
youngest having been sent to bed early. The Princess courtesied three
times, the third time so low that the pigeon was flustered, and flew
off her shoulder, and, after circling about, alighted on the head of
the Blue Prince.
[Illustration: "THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS, PRECEDED BY TRUMPETERS, WAS
CONDUCTED TO THE PALACE."]
"It is the Crown," said the Chief Magician, in an awestruck voice.
Then the Princess's eyes looked around in search of the pigeon, and
when they lighted on the Prince's head they kindled as the grey sea
kindles at sunrise.
An answering radiance shone in the Blue Prince's eyes, as, taking the
pigeon that nestled in his hair, he let it fly towards the Princess.
But the Princess, her bosom heaving as if another pigeon fluttered
beneath the white samite, caught it and set it free again, and again
it made for the Blue Prince.
Three times the bird sped to and fro. Then the Princess raised her
humid eyes heavenward, and from her sweet lips rippled like music the
verse:--
"Last night I watched its final flicker die."
And the Blue Prince answered:--
"_Now_ greet our moon of honey in the sky."
Half fainting with rapture the Princess fell into his arms, and from
all sides of the great hall arose the cries, "The Heir! The Heir! Long
live our future King! The eldest-born! The Oracle's fulfilled!"
Such was the origin of lawn tennis, which began with people tossing
pigeons to each other in imitation of the Prince and Princess in the
Palace Hall. And this is why love plays so great a part in the game,
and that is how the match was arranged between the Blue Prince and the
Princess of Paphlagonia.
_A Successful Operation._
Robert came home, anxious and perturbed. For the first time since his
return from their honeymoon he crossed the threshold of the tiny house
without a grateful sense of blessedness.
"What is it, Robert?" panted Mary, her sweet lips cold from his
perfunctory kiss.
"He is going blind," he said in low tones.
"Not your father!" she murmured, dazed.
"Yes, my father! I thought it was nothing, or rather I scarcely
thought about it at all. The doctor at the Eye Hospital merely asked
him to bring some one with him next time; naturally he came to me."
There was a touch of bitterness about the final phrase.
"Oh, how terrible!" said Mary. Her pretty face looked almost wan.
"I don't see that you're called upon to distress yourself so much,
dear," said Robert, a little resentfully. "He hasn't even been a
friend to you."
"Oh, Robert! how can you think of all that now? If he did try to keep
you from marrying a penniless, friendless girl, if he did force you to
work long years for me, was it not all for the best? Now that his
fortune has been swept away, where would you be without money or
occupation?"
"Where would Providence be without its women-defenders?" murmured
Robert. "You don't understand finance, dear. He might easily have
provided for me long before the crash came."
"Never mind, Robert. Are we not all the happier for having waited for
each other?" And in the spiritual ecstasy of her glance he forgot for
a while his latest trouble.
Robert's father lived in a little room on a small allowance made him
by his outcast son. Broken by age and misfortune, he pottered about
chess-rooms and debating forums, garrulous and dogmatic, and given to
tippling. But now the consciousness of his coming infirmity crushed
him, and he sat for days on his bed brooding, waiting in terror for
the darkness, and glad when day after day ended only in the shadows of
eve. Sometimes, instead of the dreaded darkness, sunlight came. That
was when Mary dropped in to cheer him up, and to repeat to him that
the hospital took a most hopeful view of his case, was only waiting
for the darkness to be thickest to bring back the dawn. It took four
months before the light faded utterly, and then another month before
the film was opaque enough to allow the cataract to be couched. The
old man was to go into the hospital for the operation. Robert hired a
lad to be with him during the month of waiting, and sometimes sat with
him in the evenings, after business, and now and then the landlady
looked in and told him her troubles, and the attendant was faithful
and went out frequently to buy him gin. But it was only Mary who could
really soothe him now, for the poor old creature's soul groped blindly
amid new apprehensions--a nervous dread of the chloroforming, the
puncturing, the strange sounds of voices of the great blank hospital,
where he felt confusedly he would be lost in an ocean of unfathomable
night, incapable even of divining, from past experience, the walls
about him or the ceiling over his head, and withal a paralysing
foreboding that the operation would be a failure, that he would live
out the rest of his days with the earth prematurely over his eyes.
"I am very glad to see you, my dear," he would say when Mary came, and
then he fell a-maundering self-pitifully.
Mary went home one day and said, "Robert, dear, I have been thinking."
"Yes, my pet," he said encouragingly, for she looked timid and
hesitant.
"Couldn't we have the operation performed here?"
He was startled; protested, pointed out the impossibility. But she had
answers for all his objections. They could give up their own bedroom
for a fortnight--it would only be a fortnight or three weeks at
most--turn their sitting-room into a bedroom for themselves. What if
infinite care would be necessary in regulating the "dark room," surely
they could be as careful as the indifferent hospital nurses if they
were only told what to do, and as for the trouble, that wasn't worth
considering.
"But you forget, my foolish little girl," he said at last, "if he
comes here we shall have to pay the expenses of the operation
ourselves."
"Well, would that be much?" she asked innocently.
"Only fifty guineas or so, I should think," he replied crushingly.
"What with the operating fee, and the nurse, and the subsequent
medical attendance."
But Mary was not altogether crushed. "It wouldn't be all our savings,"
she murmured.
"Are you forgetting what we shall be needing our savings for?" he said
with gentle reproach, as he stroked her soft hair.
She blushed angelically. "No, but surely there will be enough left
and--and I shall be making all his things myself--and by that time we
shall have put by a little more."
In the end she conquered. The old man, to whom no faintest glimmer now
penetrated, was installed in the best bedroom, which was darkened by
double blinds and strips of cloth over every chink and a screen before
the door; and a nurse sat on guard lest any ray or twinkle should find
its way into the pitchy gloom. The great specialist came with two
assistants, and departed in an odour of chloroform, conscious of
another dexterous deed, to return only when the critical moment of
raising the bandage should have arrived. During the fortnight of
suspense an assistant replaced him, and the old man lay quiet and
hopeful, rousing himself to talk dogmatically to his visitors. Mary
gave him such time as she could spare from household duties, and he
always kissed her on the forehead (so that his bandage just grazed her
hair), remarking he was very glad to see her. It was a strange
experience, these conversations carried on in absolute darkness, and
they gave her a feeling of kinship with the blind. She discovered that
smiles were futile, and that laughter alone availed in this uncanny
intercourse. For compensation, her face could wear an anxious
expression without alarming the patient. But it rarely did, for her
spirits mounted with his. Before the operation she had been terribly
anxious, wondering at the last moment if it would not have been
performed more safely at the hospital, and ready to take upon her
shoulders the responsibility for a failure. But as day after day went
by, and all seemed going well, her thoughts veered round. She felt
sure they would not have been so careful at the hospital. It was owing
to this new confidence that one fatal night, carrying her candle, she
walked mechanically into her bedroom, forgetting it was not hers. The
nurse sprang up instantly, rushed forward, and blew out the light.
Mary screamed, the screen fell with a clatter, the blind old man awoke
and shrieked nervously--it was a terrible moment.
After that Mary went through agonies of apprehension and remorse.
Fortunately the end of the operation was very near now. In a day or
two the great specialist came to remove the bandage, while the nurse
carefully admitted a feeble illumination. If the patient could see
now, the rest was a mere matter of time, of cautious gradation of
light in the sick chamber, so that there might be no relapse. Mary
dared not remain in the room at the instant of supreme crisis; she
lingered outside, overwrought. Slowly, with infinite solicitude, the
bandage was raised.
"Can you see anything?" burst from Robert's lips.
"Yes, but what makes the window look red?" grumbled the old man.
"I congratulate you," said the great specialist in loud, hearty
accents.
"Thank God!" sobbed Mary's voice outside.
When her child was born it was blind.
_Flutter-Duck._
_A GHETTO GROTESQUE._
CHAPTER I.
FLUTTER-DUCK IN FEATHER.
"So sitting, served by man and maid,
She felt her heart grow prouder."
--TENNYSON: _The Goose_.
Although everybody calls her "Flutter-Duck" now, there was a time when
the inventor had exclusive rights in the nickname, and used it only in
the privacy of his own apartment. That time did not last long, for the
inventor was Flutter-Duck's husband, and his apartment was a
public work-room among other things. He gave her the name in
Yiddish--_Flatterkatchki_--a descriptive music in syllables, full of
the flutter and quack of the farm-yard. It expressed his
dissatisfaction with her airy, flighty propensities, her love of
gaiety and gadding. She was a butterfly, irresponsible, off to balls
and parties almost once a month, and he, a self-conscious ant,
resented her. From the point of view of piety she was also sadly to
seek, rejecting wigs in favour of the fringe. In the weak moments of
early love her husband had acquiesced in the profanity, but later all
the gain to her soft prettiness did not compensate for the twinges of
his conscience.
Flutter-Duck's husband was a furrier--a master-furrier, for did he not
run a workshop? This workshop was also his living-room, and this
living-room was also his bedroom. It was a large front room on the
first floor, over a chandler's shop in an old-fashioned house in
Montague Street, Whitechapel. Its shape was peculiar--an oblong
stretching streetwards, interrupted in one of the longer walls by a
square projection that might have been accounted a room in itself (by
the landlord), and was, indeed, used as a kitchen. That the fireplace
had been built in this corner was thus an advantage. Entering through
the door on the grand staircase, you found yourself nearest the window
with the bulk of the room on your left, and the square recess at the
other end of your wall, so that you could not see it at first. At the
window, which, of course, gave on Montague Street, was the bare wooden
table at which the "hands"--man, woman, and boy--sat and stitched. The
finished work--a confusion of fur caps, boas, tippets, and
trimmings--hung over the dirty wainscot between the door and the
recess. The middle of the room was quite bare, to give the workers
freedom of movement, but the wall facing you was a background for
luxurious furniture. First--nearest the window--came a sofa, on which
even in the first years of marriage Flutter-Duck's husband sometimes
lay prone, too unwell to do more than superintend the operations, for
he was of a consumptive habit. Over the sofa hung a large gilt-framed
mirror, the gilt protected by muslin drapings, in the corners of which
flyblown paper flowers grew. Next to the sofa was a high chest of
drawers crowned with dusty decanters, and after an interval filled up
with the Sabbath clothes hanging on pegs and covered by a white sheet;
the bed used up the rest of the space, its head and one side touching
the walls, and its foot stretching towards the kitchen fire. On the
wall above this fire hung another mirror,--small and narrow, and full
of wavering, watery reflections,--also framed in muslin, though this
time the muslin served to conceal dirt, not to protect gilt. The
kitchen-dresser, decorated with pink needle-work paper, was at right
angles to the fireplace, and it faced the kitchen table, at which
Flutter-Duck cleaned fish, peeled potatoes, and made meat _kosher_ by
salting and soaking it, as Rabbinic law demanded.
By the foot of the bed, in the narrow wall opposite the window, was a
door leading to a tiny inner room. For years this door remained
locked; another family lived on the other side, and the furrier had
neither the means nor the need for an extra bedroom. It was a room
made for escapades and romances, connected with the back-yard by a
steep ladder, up and down which the family might be seen going, and
from which you could tumble into a broken-headed water-butt, or, by a
dexterous back-fall, arrive in a dustbin. Jacob's ladder the
neighbours called it, though the family name was Isaacs.
And over everything was the trail of the fur. The air was full of a
fine fluff--a million little hairs floated about the room covering
everything, insinuating themselves everywhere, getting down the backs
of the workers and tickling them, getting into their lungs and making
them cough, getting into their food and drink and sickening them till
they learnt callousness. They awoke with "furred" tongues, and they
went to bed with them. The irritating filaments gathered on their
clothes, on their faces, on the crockery, on the sofa, on the mirrors
(big and little), on the bed, on the decanters, on the sheet that hid
the Sabbath clothes--an impalpable down overlaying everything,
penetrating even to the drinking-water in the board-covered zinc
bucket, and covering "Rebbitzin," the household cat, with foreign
fur. And in this room, drawing such breath of life, they sat--man,
woman, boy--bending over boas bewitching young ladies would skate in;
stitch, stitch, from eight till two and from three to eight, with
occasional overtime that ran on now and again far into the next day;
till their eyelids would not keep open any longer, and they couched on
the floor on a heap of finished work; stitch, stitch, winter and
summer, all day long, swallowing hirsute bread and butter at nine in
the morning, and pausing at tea-time for five o'clock fur. And when
twilight fell the gas was lit in the crowded room, thickening still
further the clogged atmosphere, charged with human breaths and street
odours, and wafts from the kitchen corner and the leathery smell of
the dyed skins; and at times the yellow fog would steal in to
contribute its clammy vapours. And often of a winter's morning the fog
arrived early, and the gas that had lighted the first hours of work
would burn on all day in the thick air, flaring on the Oriental
figures with that strange glamour of gas-light in fog, and throwing
heavy shadows on the bare boards; glazing with satin sheen the pendent
snakes of fur, illuming the bowed heads of the workers and the
master's sickly face under the tasselled smoking-cap, and touching up
the faded fineries of Flutter-Duck, as she flitted about, chattering
and cooking.
Into such an atmosphere Flutter-Duck one day introduced a daughter,
the "hands" getting an afternoon off, in honour not of the occasion
but of decency. After that the crying of an infant became a feature of
existence in the furrier's workshop; gradually it got rarer, as little
Rachel grew up and reconciled herself to life. But the fountain of
tears never quite ran dry. Rachel was a passionate child, and did not
enjoy the best of parents.
Every morning Flutter-Duck, who felt very grateful to Heaven for this
crowning boon,--at one time bitterly dubious,--made the child say her
prayers. Flutter-Duck said them word by word, and Rachel repeated
them. They were in Hebrew, and neither Flutter-Duck nor Rachel had the
least idea what they meant. For years these prayers preluded stormy
scenes.
"_Médiâni!_" Flutter-Duck would begin.
"_Médiâni!_" little Rachel would lisp in her piping voice. It was two
words, but Flutter-Duck imagined it was one. She gave the syllables in
recitative, the _âni_ just two notes higher than the _médi_, and she
accented them quite wrongly. When Rachel first grew articulate,
Flutter-Duck was so overjoyed to hear the little girl echoing her,
that she would often turn to her husband with an exclamation of "Thou
hearest, Lewis, love?"
And he, impatiently: "Nee, nee, I hear."
Flutter-Duck, thus recalled from the pleasures of maternity to its
duties, would recommence the prayer. "_Médiâni!_"
Which little Rachel would silently ignore.
"_Médiâni!_" Flutter-Duck's tone would now be imperative and
ill-tempered.
Then little Rachel would turn to her father querulously. "She thayth
it again, _Médiâni_, father!"
And Flutter-Duck, outraged by this childish insolence, would exclaim,
"Thou hearest, Lewis, love?" and incontinently fall to clouting the
child. And the father, annoyed by the shrill ululation consequent upon
the clouting: "Nee, nee, I hear too much." Rachel's refusal to be
coerced into giving devotional over-measure was not merely due to her
sense of equity. Her appetite counted for more. Prayers were the
avenue to breakfast, and to pamper her featherheaded mother in
repetitions was to put back the meal. Flutter-Duck was quite capable
of breaking down, even in the middle, if her attention was distracted
for a moment, and of trying back from the very beginning. She would,
for example, get as far as "Hear--my daughter--the instruction--of thy
mother," giving out the words one by one in the sacred language which
was to her abracadabra.
And little Rachel, equally in the dark, would repeat obediently,
"Hear--my daughter--the instruction of--thy mother." Then the kettle
would boil, or Flutter-Duck would overhear a remark made by one of the
"hands," and interject: "Yes, I'd _give_ him!" or, "A fat lot _she_
knows about it," or some phrase of that sort; after which she would
grope for the lost thread of prayer, and end by ejaculating
desperately:--
"_Médiâni!_"
And the child sternly setting her face against this flippancy, there
would be slapping and screaming, and if the father protested,
Flutter-Duck would toss her head, and rejoin in her most dignified
English: "If I bin a mother, I bin a mother!"
To the logical adult it will be obvious that the little girl's
obstinacy put the breakfast still further back; but then, obstinate
little girls are not logical, and when Rachel had been beaten she
would eat no breakfast at all. She sat sullenly in the corner, her
pretty face swollen by weeping, and her great black eyes suffused with
tears. Only her father could coax her then. He would go so far as to
allow her to nurse "Rebbitzin," without reminding her that the
creature's touch would make her forget all she knew, and convert her
into a "cat's-head." And certainly Rachel always forgot not to touch
the cat. Possibly the basis of her father's psychological superstition
was the fact that the cat is an unclean animal, not to be handled,
for he would not touch puss himself, though her pious title of
"Rebbitzin," or Rabbi's wife, was the invention of this master of
nicknames. But for such flashes no one would have suspected the stern
little man of humour. But he had it--dry. He called the cat
"Rebbitzin" ever since the day she refused to drink milk after meat.
Perhaps she was gorged with the meat. But he insisted that the cat had
caught religion through living in a Jewish family, and he developed a
theory that she would not eat meat till it was _kosher_, so that in
its earlier stages it might be exposed without risk of feline larceny.
Cats are soothing to infants, but they ceased to satisfy Rachel when
she grew up. Her education, while it gratified Her Majesty's
Inspectors, was not calculated to eradicate the domestic rebel in her.
At school she learnt of the existence of two Hebrew words, called
_Moudeh anî_, but it was not till some time after that it flashed upon
her that they were closely related to _Médiâni_, and the discovery did
not improve her opinion of her mother. She was a bonny child, who
promised to be a beautiful girl, and her teachers petted her. They
dressed well, these teachers, and Rachel ceased to consider
Flutter-Duck's Sabbath shawl the standard of taste and splendour. Ere
she was in her teens she grumbled at her home surroundings, and even
fell foul of the all-pervading fur, thereby quarrelling with her
bread and butter in more senses than one. She would open the
window--strangely fastidious--to eat her bread and butter off the
broad ledge outside the room, but often the fur only came flying the
faster to the spot, as if in search of air; and in the winter her
pretentious queasiness set everybody remonstrating and shivering in
the sudden draught.
Her objection to fur did not, however, embrace the preparation of it,
for after school hours the little girl sat patiently stitching till
late at night, by way of apprenticeship to her future, buoyed up by
her earnings, and adding strip to strip, with the hair going all the
same way, till she had made a great black snake. Of course she did not
get anything near three-halfpence for twelve yards, like the real
"hands," but whatever she earnt went towards her Festival frocks,
which she would have got in any case. Not knowing this, she was happy
to deserve the pretty dresses she loved, and was least impatient of
her mother's chatter when Flutter-Duck dinned into her ears how pretty
she looked in them. Alas! it is to be feared Lewis was right, that
Flutter-Duck was a rattle-brain indeed. And the years which brought
Flutter-Duck prosperity, which emancipated her from personal
participation in the sewing, and gave Rachel the little bedroom to
herself, did not bring wisdom. When Flutter-Duck's felicity culminated
in a maid-servant (if only one who slept out), she was like a child
with a monkey-on-a-stick. She gave the servant orders merely to see
her arms and legs moving. She also lay late in bed to enjoy the
spectacle of the factotum making the nine o'clock coffee it had been
for so many years her own duty to prepare for the "hands." How sweetly
the waft of chicory came to her nostrils! At first her husband
remonstrated.
"It is not beautiful," he said. "You ought to get up before the
'hands' come."
Flutter-Duck flushed resentfully. "If I bin a missis, I bin a missis,"
she said with dignity. It became one of her formulæ. When the servant
developed insolence, as under Flutter-Duck's fostering familiarity she
did, Flutter-Duck would resume her dignity with a jerk.
"If I bin a missis," she would say, tossing her flighty head
haughtily, "I bin a missis."
CHAPTER II.
A MIGRATORY BIRD.
"There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather."
--TENNYSON: _The Goose_.
One day, when Rachel was nineteen, there came to the workshop a
handsome young man. He had been brought by a placard in the window of
the chandler's shop, and was found to answer perfectly to its wants.
He took his place at the work-table, and soon came to the front as a
wage-earner, wielding a dexterous needle that rarely snapped, even in
white fur. His name was Emanuel Lefkovitch, and his seat was next to
Rachel's. For Rachel had long since entered into her career, and the
beauty of her early-blossoming womanhood was bent day after day over
strips of rabbit-skin, which she made into sealskin jackets. For
compensation to her youth Rachel walked out on the Sabbath elegantly
attired in the latest fashion. She ordered her own frocks now, having
a banking account of her own, in a tin box that was hidden away in her
little bedroom. Her father honourably paid her a wage as large as she
would have got elsewhere--otherwise she would have gone there. Her
Sabbath walks extended as far as Hyde Park, and she loved to watch the
fine ladies cantering in the Row, or lolling in luxurious carriages.
Sometimes she even peeped into fashionable restaurants. She became the
admiring disciple of a girl who worked at a Jewish furrier's in Regent
Street, and whose occidental habitat gave her a halo of aristocracy.
Even on Friday nights Rachel would disappear from the sacred
domesticity of the Sabbath hearth, and Flutter-Duck suspected that
she went to the Cambridge Music Hall in Spitalfields. This led to
dramatic scenes, for Rachel's frowardness had not decreased with age.
If she had only gone out with some accredited young man, Flutter-Duck
could have borne the scandal in view of the joyous prospect of
becoming a grandmother. But no! Rachel tolerated no matrimonial
advances, not even from the most seductive of _Shadchanim_, though
her voluptuous figure and rosy lips marked her out for the
marriage-broker's eye. Her father had grown sterner with the growth of
his malady, and though at the bottom of his heart he loved and was
proud of his beautiful Rachel, the words that rose to his lips were
often as harsh and bitter as Flutter-Duck's own, so that the girl
would withdraw sullenly into herself and hold no converse with her
parents for days.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of halcyon intervals, especially in
the busy season, when the extra shillings made the whole work-room
brisk and happy, and the furriers gossiped of this and that, and told
stories more droll than decorous. And then, too, every day was a
delightfully inevitable sweep towards the Sabbath, and every Sabbath
was a spoke in the great revolving wheel that brought round to them
picturesque Festivals, or solemn Fasts, scarcely less enjoyable. And
so there was an undercurrent of poetry below the sordid prose of daily
life, and rifts in the grey fog, through which they caught glimpses of
the azure vastness overarching the world. And the advent of Emanuel
Lefkovitch distinctly lightened the atmosphere. His handsome face, his
gay spirits, were like an influx of ozone. Rachel was perceptibly the
brighter for his presence. She was gentler to everybody, even to her
parents, and chatted vivaciously, and walked with an airier step! The
sickly master-furrier's face lit up with pleasure as from his sofa he
watched Emanuel's assiduous attentions to his girl in the way of
picking up scissors and threading needles, and he frowned when
Flutter-Duck hovered about the young man, chattering and monopolising
his conversation.
But one fine morning, some months after Emanuel's arrival, a change
came over the spirit of the scene. There was a knock at the door, and
an ugly, shabby woman, in a green tartan shawl, entered. She
scrutinised the room sharply, then uttered a joyful cry of "Emanuel,
my love!" and threw herself upon the handsome young man with an
affectionate embrace. Emanuel, flushed and paralysed, was a ludicrous
figure, and the workers tittered, not unfamiliar with marital
_contretemps_.
"Let me be," he said sullenly at last, as he untwined her dogged arms.
"I tell you I won't have anything to do with you. It's no use."
"Oh no, Emanuel, love, don't say that; not after all these months?"
"Go away!" cried Emanuel hoarsely.
"Be not so obstinate," she persisted, in wheedling accents, stroking
his flaming cheeks. "Kiss little Joshua and little Miriam."
Here the spectators became aware of two woebegone infants dragging at
her skirts.
"Go away!" repeated Emanuel passionately, and pushed her from him with
violence.
The ugly, shabby woman burst into hysterical tears.
"My own husband, dear people," she sobbed, addressing the room. "My
own husband--married to me in Poland five years ago. See, I have the
_Cesubah_!" She half drew the marriage parchment from her bosom. "And
he won't live with me! Every time he runs away from me. Last time I
saw him was in Liverpool, on the eve of Tabernacles. And before that
I had to go and find him in Newcastle, and he promised me never to go
away again--yes, you did, you know you did, Emanuel, love. And here
have I been looking weeks for you at all the furriers and tailors,
without bread and salt for the children, and the Board of Guardians
won't believe me, and blame me for coming to London. Oh, Emanuel,
love, God shall forgive you."
Her dress was dishevelled, her wig awry; big tears streamed down her
cheeks.
"How can I live with an old witch like that?" asked Emanuel, in brutal
self-defence.
"There are worse than me in the world," rejoined the woman meekly.
"Nee, nee," roughly interposed the master-furrier, who had risen from
his sofa in the excitement of the scene. "It is not beautiful not to
live with one's wife." He paused to cough. "You must not put her to
shame."
"It's she who puts me to shame." Emanuel turned to Rachel, who had let
her work slip to the floor, and whose face had grown white and stern,
and continued deprecatingly, "I never wanted her. They caught me by a
trick."
"Don't talk to me," snapped Rachel, turning her back on him.
The woman looked at her suspiciously--the girl's beauty seemed to
burst upon her for the first time. "He is my husband," she repeated,
and made as if she would draw out the _Cesubah_ again.
"Nee, nee, enough!" said the master-furrier curtly. "You are wasting
our time. Your husband shall live with you, or he shall not work with
me."
"You have deceived us, you rogue!" put in Flutter-Duck shrilly.
"Did I ever say I was a single man?" retorted Emanuel, shrugging his
shoulders.
"There! He confesses it!" cried his wife in glee. "Come, Emanuel,
love," and she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him
passionately. "Do not be obstinate."
"I can't come now," he said, with sulky facetiousness. "Where are you
living?"
She told him, and he said he would come when work was over.
"On your faith?" she asked, with another uneasy glance at Rachel.
"On my faith," he answered.
She moved towards the door, with her draggle-tail of infants. As she
was vanishing, he called shame-facedly to the departing children,--
"Well, Joshua! Well, Miriam! Is this the way one treats a father? A
nice way your mother has brought you up!"
They came back to him dubiously, with unwashed, pathetic faces, and he
kissed them. Rachel bent down to pick up her rabbit-skin. Work was
resumed in dead silence.
CHAPTER III.
FLIGHT.
"The goose flew this way and flew that,
And filled the house with clamour."
--TENNYSON: _The Goose_.
Flutter-Duck could not resist rushing in to show the gorgeous goose
she had bought from a man in the street--a most wonderful bargain.
Although it was only a Wednesday, why should they not have a goose?
They were at the thick of the busy season, and the winter promised to
be bitter, so they could afford it.
"Nee, nee; there are enough Festivals in our religion already,"
grumbled her husband, who, despite his hacking cough, had been driven
to the work-table by the plentifulness of work and the scarcity of
"hands."
"Almost as big a goose as herself!" whispered Emanuel Lefkovitch to
his circle. He had made his peace with his wife, and was again become
the centre of the work-room's gaiety. "What a bargain!" he said aloud,
clucking his tongue with admiration. And Flutter-Duck, consoled for
her husband's criticism, scurried out again to have her bargain killed
by the official slaughterer.
When she returned, doleful and indignant, with the goose still in her
basket, and the news that the functionary had refused it Jewish
execution, and pronounced it _tripha_ (unclean) for some minute ritual
reason, she broke off her denunciation of the vendor from a sudden
perception that some graver misfortune had happened in her absence.
"Nee, nee," said Lewis, when she stopped her chatter. "Decidedly God
will not have us make Festival to-day. Even you must work."
"Me?" gasped Flutter-Duck.
Then she learnt that Emanuel Lefkovitch, whom she had left so gay, had
been taken with acute pains--and had had to go home. And work pressed,
and Flutter-Duck must under-study him in all her spare moments. She
was terribly vexed--she had arranged to go and see an old crony's
daughter married in the Synagogue that afternoon, and she would have
to give that up, if indeed her husband did not even expect her to give
up the ball in the evening. She temporarily tethered the goose's leg
to a bed-post by a long string, so that for the rest of the day the
big bird waddled pompously about the floor and under the bed,
unconscious to what or whom it owed its life, and blissfully unaware
that it was _tripha_.
"Nee, nee," sniggered Lewis, as Flutter-Duck savagely kicked the cat
out of her way. "Don't be alarmed, Rebbitzin won't attack it.
Rebbitzin is a better judge of _triphas_ than you."
It was another cat, but it was the same joke.
Flutter-Duck began to clean the fish with intensified viciousness. She
had bought them as a substitute for the goose, and they were a
constant reminder of her complex illhap. Very soon she cut her finger,
and scoured the walls vainly in search of cobweb ligature. Bitter was
her plaint of the servant's mismanagement; when she herself had looked
after the house there had been no lack of cobwebs in the corners. Nor
was this the end of Flutter-Duck's misfortunes. When, in the course of
the afternoon, she sent up to Mrs. Levy on the second floor to remind
her that she would be wanting her embroidered petticoat for the
evening, answer came back that it was the anniversary of Mrs. Levy's
mother's death, and she could not permit even her petticoat to go to a
wedding. Finally, the gloves that Flutter-Duck borrowed from the
chandler's wife were split at the thumbs. And so the servant was kept
running to and fro, spoiling the neighbours for the greater glory of
Flutter-Duck. It was only at the eleventh hour that an embroidered
petticoat was obtained.
Altogether there was electricity in the air, and Emanuel was not
present to divert it down the road of jocularity. The furriers stitched
sullenly, with a presentiment of storm. But it held over all day, and
there was hope the currents would pass harmlessly away.
With the rising of Flutter-Duck from the work-table, however, the
first rumblings began. Lewis did not attempt to restrain her from her
society dissipation, but he fumed inwardly throughout her toilette.
More than ever he realised, as he sat coughing and bending over the
ermine he was tufting with black spots, the incompatibility of this
union between ant and butterfly, and occasionally his thought would
shoot out in dry sarcasm. But Flutter-Duck had passed beyond the plane
in which Lewis existed as her husband. All day she had talked freely,
if a whit condescendingly, to her fellow-furriers, lamenting the
mischances of the day; but in proportion as she began to get clean and
beautiful, as the muslins of the great mirror became a frame for a
gorgeous picture of a lady, Flutter-Duck grew more and more aloof from
workaday interests, felt herself borne into a higher world of radiance
and elegance, into a rarefied atmosphere of gentility, that froze her
to statue-like frigidity.
She was not Flutter-Duck then.
And when she was quite dressed for the wedding, and had put on the
earrings with the coloured stones and the crowning glory of the
chignon of false plaits, stuck over with little artificial white
flowers, the female neighbours came crowding into the work-room
boudoir to see how she looked, and she revolved silently for their
inspection like a dressmaker's figure, at most acknowledging their
compliments with monosyllables. She had invited them to come and
admire her appearance, but by the time they came she had grown too
proud to speak to them. Even the women of whose finery she wore
fragments, and who had contributed to her splendour, seemed to her
poor dingy creatures, whose contact would sully her embroidered
petticoat. In grotesque contrast with her peacock-like stateliness,
the big _tripha_ goose began to get lively, cackling and flapping
about within its radius, as if the soul of Flutter-Duck had passed
into its body.
The moment of departure had come. The cab stood at the street-door,
and a composite crowd stood round the cab. In the Ghetto a cab has
special significance, and Flutter-Duck would have to pass to hers
through an avenue of polyglot commentators. At the last moment,
adjusting her fleecy wrap over her head like any _grande dame_ (from
whom she differed only in the modesty of her high bodice and her full
sleeves), Flutter-Duck discovered that there was a great rent in one
part of the wrap and a great stain in another. She uttered an
exclamation of dismay--this seemed to her the climax of the day's
misfortunes.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she cried, her dignity almost
melting in tears.
The by-standers made sympathetic but profitless noises.
"Oh, double it another way," jerked Rachel from the work-table. "Come
here, I'll do it for you."
"Are you too lazy to come here?" replied Flutter-Duck irritably.
Rachel rose and went towards her, and rearranged the wrap.
"Oh no, that won't do," complained Flutter-Duck, attitudinising before
the glass. "It shows as bad as ever. Oh, what shall I do?"
"Do you know what I'll tell you?" said her husband meditatively:
"Don't go!"
Flutter-Duck threw him a fiery look.
"Oh well," said Rachel, shrugging her shoulders and thrusting forward
her lip contemptuously, "it'll have to do."
"No, it won't--lend me your pink one."
"I'm not going to have my pink one dirtied, too," grumbled Rachel.
"Do you hear what I say?" exclaimed Flutter-Duck, with increasing
wrath. "Give me the pink wrap! When the mother says is said!" And she
looked around the group of spectators, in search of sympathy with her
trials and admiration for her maternal dignity.
"I can never keep anything for myself," said Rachel sullenly. "You
never take care of anything."
"I took care of you," screamed Flutter-Duck, goaded beyond endurance
by the thought that her neighbours were witnessing this filial
disrespect. "And a fat lot of good it's done me."
"Yes, much care you take of me. You only think of enjoying yourself.
It's young girls who ought to go out, not old women."
"You impudent face!" And with an irresistible impulse of savagery, a
reversion to the days of _Médiâni_, Flutter-Duck swung round her arm,
and struck Rachel violently on the cheek with her white-gloved hand.
[Illustration: "'YOU IMPUDENT FACE!'"]
The sound of the slap rang hollow and awful through the room.
The workers looked up and paused, the neighbours held their breath;
there was a dread silence, broken only by the hissings of the excited
goose, and the half involuntary apologetic murmurings of
Flutter-Duck's lips: "If I bin a mother, I bin a mother."
For an instant Rachel's face was a white mask, on which five fingers
stood out in fire; the next it was one burning mass of angry blood.
She clenched her fist, as if about to strike her mother, then let the
fingers relax; half from a relic of filial awe, half from respect for
the finery. There was a peculiar light in her eyes. Without a word she
turned slowly on her heel and walked into her little room, emerging,
after an instant of general suspense, with the pink wrap in her
hand. She gave it to her mother, without looking at her, and walked
back to her work, and poor foolish Flutter-Duck, relieved, triumphant,
and with an irreproachable head-wrap, passed majestically from the
room, amid the buzz of the neighbours (who accompanied her downstairs
with valedictory brushings of fur-fluff from her shoulders), through
the avenue of polyglot commentators, into the waiting cab.
All this time Flutter-Duck's husband had sat petrified, but now a
great burst of coughing shook him. He did not know what to say or do,
and prolonged the cough artificially to cover his embarrassment. Then
he opened his mouth several times, but shut it indecisively. At last
he said soothingly, with kindly clumsiness: "Nee, nee; you shouldn't
irritate the mother, Rachel. You know what she is."
Rachel's needle plodded on, and the uneasy silence resumed its sway.
Presently Rachel rose, put down her piece of work finished, and
without a word passed back to her bedroom, her beautiful figure erect
and haughty. Lewis heard her key turn in the lock. The hours passed,
and she did not return. Her father did not like to appear anxious
before the "hands," but he had a discomforting vision of her lying on
her bed, in a dumb agony of shame and rage. At last eight o'clock
struck, and, backward as the work was, Lewis did not suggest overtime.
He even dismissed the servant an hour before her time. He was in a
fever of impatience, but delicacy had kept him from intruding on his
daughter's grief before strangers. Now he hastened to her door, and
knocked timidly, then loudly.
"Nee, nee, Rachel," he cried, with sympathetic sternness, "Enough!"
But a chill silence alone answered him.
He burst open the rickety door, and saw a dark mass huddled up in the
shadow on the bed. A nearer glance showed him it was only clothes. He
opened the door that led on to Jacob's ladder, and called her name.
Then by the light streaming in from the other apartment he hastily
examined the room. It was obvious that she had put on her best
clothes, and gone out.
Half relieved, he returned to the sitting-room, leaving the door ajar,
and recited his evening prayer. Then he began to prepare a little meal
for himself, telling himself that she had gone for a walk, after her
manner; perhaps was shaking off her depression at the Cambridge Music
Hall. Supper over and grace said, he started doing the overwork, and
then, when sheer weariness forced him to stop, he drew his comfortless
wooden chair to the kitchen fire, and studied Rabbinical lore from a
minutely printed folio.
The Whitechapel Church clock, suddenly booming midnight, awoke him
from these sacred subtleties with a start of alarm. Rachel had not
returned.
The fire burnt low. He shivered, and threw on some coal. Half an hour
more he waited, listening for her footstep. Surely the music-hall must
be closed by now. He crept down the stairs, and wandered vaguely into
the cold, starless night, jostled by leering females, and returned
forlorn and coughing. Then the thought flashed upon him that his girl
had gone to her mother, had gone to fetch her from the wedding ball,
and to make it up with her. Yes; that would be it. Hence the best
clothes. It could be nothing else. He must not let any other thought
get a hold on his mind. He would have run round to the festive scene,
only he did not know precisely where it was, and it was too late to
ask the neighbours.
One o'clock!
A mournful monotone, stern in its absoluteness, like the clang of a
gate shutting out a lost soul.
One more hour of aching suspense, scarcely dulled by the task of
making hot coffee, and cutting bread and butter for his returning
womankind; then Flutter-Duck came back. Alone!
Came back in her cab, her fading features flushed with the joy of
life, with the artificial flowers in her false chignon, and the pink
wrap over her head.
"Where is Rachel?" gasped poor Lewis, meeting her at the street-door.
"Rachel! isn't she here? I left her with you," answered Flutter-Duck,
half sobered.
"Merciful God!" ejaculated her husband, and put his hand to his
breast, pierced by a shooting pain.
"I left her with you," repeated Flutter-Duck with white lips. "Why did
you let her go out? Why didn't you look after her?"
"Silence, you sinful mother!" cried Lewis. "You shamed her before
strangers, and she has gone out--to drown herself--what do I know?"
Flutter-Duck burst into hysterical sobbing.
"Yes, take her part against me! You always make me out wrong."
"Restrain yourself!" he whispered imperiously. "Do you wish to have
the neighbours hear you again?"
"I daresay she's only hiding somewhere, sulking, as she did when a
child," said Flutter-Duck. "Have you looked under the bed?"
Foolish as he knew her words were, they gave him a gleam of hope. He
led the way upstairs without answering, and taking a candle, examined
her bedroom again with ludicrous minuteness. This time the sight of
her old clothes was comforting; if she had wanted to drown herself,
she would not--he reasoned with perhaps too masculine a logic--have
taken her best clothes to spoil. With a sudden thought he displaced
the hearthstone. He had early discovered where she kept her savings,
though he had neither tampered with them nor betrayed his knowledge.
The tin box was broken open, empty! In the drawers there was not a
single article of her jewellery. Rachel had evidently left home! She
had gone by way of Jacob's ladder--secretly.
Prostrated by the discovery, the parents sat down in helpless silence.
Then Flutter-Duck began to wring her white-gloved hands, and to babble
incoherent suggestions and reproaches, and protestations that she was
not to blame. The hot coffee cooled untasted, the pink wrap lay
crumpled on the floor.
Lewis revolved the situation rapidly. What could be done? Evidently
nothing--for that night at least. Even the police could do nothing
till the morning, and to call them in at all would be to publish the
scandal to the whole world. Rachel had gone to some lodging--there
could be no doubt about that. And yet he could not go to bed, his
heart still expected her, though his brain had given up hope. He
walked about restlessly, racked by fits of coughing, then he dropped
back into his seat before the decaying fire. And Flutter-Duck,
frightened into silence at last, sat on the sofa, dazed, in her
trappings and gewgaws, with the white flowers glistening in her false
hair, and her pallid cheeks stained with tears.
And so they waited in the uncouth room in the solemn watches of the
night, pricking up their ears at a rare footstep in the street, and
hastening to peep out of the window; waiting for the knock that came
not, and the dawn that was distant. The silence lay upon them like a
pall.
Suddenly, in the weird stillness, they heard a fluttering and a
skurrying, and, looking up, they saw a great white thing floating
through the room. Flutter-Duck uttered a terrible cry. "Hear, O
Israel!" she shrieked.
"Nee, nee," said Lewis reassuringly, though scarcely less startled.
"It is only the _tripha_ goose got loose."
"Nay, nay, it is the Devil!" hoarsely whispered Flutter-Duck, who had
covered her face with her hands, and was shaking as with palsy.
Her terror communicated itself to her husband. "Hush, hush! Talk not
so," he said, shivering with indefinable awe.
"Say psalms, say psalms!" panted Flutter-Duck. "Drive him out."
Lewis opened the window, but the unclean bird showed no desire to
flit. It was evidently the Not-Good-One himself.
"Hear, O Israel!" wailed Flutter-Duck. "Since he came in this morning
everything has been upside down."
The goose chuckled.
Lewis was seized with a fell terror that gave him a mad courage.
Murmuring a holy phrase, he grabbed at the goose, which eluded him,
and fluttered flappingly hither and thither. Lewis gave chase, his
lips praying mechanically. At last he caught it by a wing, haled it,
hissing and struggling and uttering rasping cries, to the window,
flung it without, and closed the sash with a bang. Then he fell
impotent against the work-table, and spat out a mouthful of blood.
"God be praised!" said Flutter-Duck, slowly uncovering her eyes. "Now
Rachel will come back."
And with renewed hope they waited on, and the deathly silence again
possessed the room.
All at once they heard a light step under the window; the father threw
it open and saw a female form outlined in the darkness. There was a
rat-tat-tat at the door.
"Ah, there she is!" hysterically ejaculated Flutter-Duck, starting up.
"The Holy One be blessed!" cried Lewis, rushing down the stairs.
A strange figure, the head covered by a green tartan shawl, greeted
him. A cold ague passed over his limbs.
"Thank God, it's all right," said Mrs. Lefkovitch. "I see from your
light you are still working; but isn't it time my Emanuel left off?"
"Your Emanuel?" gasped Lewis, with a terrible suspicion. "He went home
early in the day; he was taken ill."
Flutter-Duck, who had crept at his heels bearing a candle, cried out,
"God in Israel! She has flown away with Emanuel."
"Hush, you piece of folly!" whispered Lewis furiously.
"Yes, it was already arranged, and you blamed me!" gasped
Flutter-Duck, with a last instinct of self-defence ere consciousness
left her, and she fell forward.
"Silence," Lewis began, but there was an awful desolation at his heart
and the salt of blood was in his mouth as he caught the falling form.
The candlestick rolled to the ground, and the group was left in the
heavy shadows of the staircase and the cold blast from the open door.
"God have mercy on me and the poor children! I knew all along it would
come to that!" wailed Emanuel's wife.
"And I advanced him his week's money on Monday," Lewis remembered in
the agony of the moment.
CHAPTER IV.
POOR FLUTTER-DUCK.
"Her cap blew off, her gown blew up,
And a whirlwind cleared the larder."
--TENNYSON: _The Goose_.
It was New Year's Eve.
In the Ghetto, where "the evening and the morning are one day," New
Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and
the joyous medley of squeezing humanity moves slowly through the crush
of mongers, pickpockets, and beggars. It is one of those festival
occasions on which even those who have migrated from the Ghetto
gravitate back to purchase those dainties whereof the heathen have not
the secret, and to look again upon the old familiar scene. There is a
stir of goodwill and gaiety, a reconciliation of old feuds in view of
the solemn season of repentance, and a washing-down of enmities in
rum.
At the point where the two main market-streets met, a grey-haired
elderly woman stood and begged.
Poor Flutter-Duck!
Her husband dead, after a protracted illness that frittered away his
savings; her daughter lost; her home a mattress in the corner of a
strange family's garret; her faded prettiness turned to ugliness: her
figure thin and wasted; her yellow-wrinkled face framed in a frowsy
shawl; her clothes tattered and flimsy; Flutter-Duck stood and
_schnorred_.
But Flutter-Duck did not do well. Her feather-head was not equal to
the demands of her profession. She had selected what was ostensibly
the coign of most vantage, forgetting that though everybody in the
market must pass her station, they would already have been mulcted in
the one street or the other.
[Illustration: MARKET-DAY IN THE GHETTO.]
But she held out her hand pertinaciously, appealing to every passer-by
of importance, and throwing audible curses after those that ignored
her. The cold of the bleak autumn day and the apathy of the public
chilled her to the bone; the tears came into her eyes as she thought
of all her misery and of the happy time--only a couple of years
ago--when New Year meant new dresses. Only a grey fringe--the last
vanity of pauperdom--remained of all her fashionableness. No more the
plaited chignon, the silk gown, the triple necklace,--the
dazzling exterior that made her too proud to speak to admiring
neighbours,--only hunger and cold and mockery and loneliness. No
plumes could she borrow, now that she really needed them to cover her
nakedness. She who had reigned over a work-room, who had owned a
husband and a marriageable daughter, who had commanded a maid-servant,
who had driven in shilling cabs!
Oh, if she could only find her daughter--that lost creature by whose
wedding-canopy she should have stood, radiant, the envy of Montague
Street! But this was not a thought of to-day. It was at the bottom of
all her thoughts always, ever since that fatal night. During the first
year she was always on the lookout, peering into every woman's face,
running after every young couple that looked like Emanuel and Rachel.
But repeated disappointment dulled her. She had no energy for anything
except begging. Yet the hope of finding Rachel was the gleam of
idealism that kept her soul alive.
The hours went by, but the streams of motley pedestrians and the babel
of vociferous vendors and chattering buyers did not slacken. Females
were in the great majority, housewives from far and near foraging for
Festival supplies. In vain Flutter-Duck wished them "A Good Sealing."
It seemed as if her own Festival would be black and bitter as the
Feast of Ab.
But she continued to hold out her bloodless hand. Towards three
o'clock a fine English lady, in a bonnet, passed by, carrying a
leather bag.
"Grant me a halfpenny, lady, dear! May you be written down for a good
year!"
The beautiful lady paused, startled. Then Flutter-Duck's heart gave a
great leap of joy. The impossible had happened at last. Behind the
veil shone the face of Rachel--a face of astonishment and horror.
"Rachel!" she shrieked, tottering.
"Mother!" cried Rachel, catching her by the arm. "What are you doing
here? What has happened?"
"Do not touch me, sinful girl!" answered Flutter-Duck, shaking her off
with a tragic passion that gave dignity to the grotesque figure. Now
that Rachel was there in the flesh, the remembrance of her shame
surged up, drowning everything. "You have disgraced the mother who
bore you and the father who gave you life."
The fine English lady--her whole soul full of sudden remorse at the
sight of her mother's incredible poverty, shrank before the blazing
eyes. The passers-by imagined Rachel had refused the beggar-woman
alms.
"What have I done?" she faltered.
"Where is Emanuel?"
"Emanuel!" repeated Rachel, puzzled.
"Emanuel Lefkovitch that you ran away with."
"Mother, are you mad? I have never seen him. I am married."
"Married!" gasped Flutter-Duck ecstatically. Then a new dread rose to
her mind. "To a Christian?"
"Me marry a Christian! The idea!"
Flutter-Duck fell a-sobbing on the fine lady's fur jacket. "And you
never ran away with Lefkovitch?"
"Me take another woman's leavings? Well, upon my word!"
"Oh," sobbed Flutter-Duck. "Oh, if your father could only have lived
to know the truth!"
Rachel's remorse became heartrending. "Is father dead?" she murmured
with white lips. After awhile she drew her mother out of the babel,
and giving her the bag to carry to save appearances, she walked slowly
towards Liverpool Street, and took train with her for her pretty
little cottage near Epping Forest.
Rachel's story was as simple as her mother's. After the showing up of
Emanuel's duplicity, home had no longer the least attraction for her.
Her nascent love for the migratory husband changed to a loathing that
embraced the whole Ghetto in which such things were possible. Weary of
Flutter-Duck's follies, indifferent to her father, she had long
meditated joining her West-end girl-friend in the fur establishment in
Regent Street, but the blow precipitated matters. She felt she could
not remain a night more under her mother's roof, and her father's
clumsy comment was but salt on her wound. Her heart was hard against
both; month after month passed before her passionate, sullen nature
would let her dwell on the thought of their trouble, and even then she
felt that the motive of her flight was so plain that they would feel
only remorse, not anxiety. They knew she could always earn her living,
just as she knew they could always earn theirs. Living "in," and going
out but rarely, and then in the fashionable districts, she never met
any drift from the Ghetto, and the busy life of the populous
establishment soon effaced the old, which faded to a forgotten dream.
One day the chief provincial traveller of the house saw her, fell in
love, married her, and took her about the country for six months. He
was coming back to her that very evening for the New Year. She had
gone back to the Ghetto that day to buy New Year honey, and, softened
by time and happiness, rather hoped to stumble across her mother in
the market-place, and so save the submission of a call. She never
dreamed of death and poverty. She would not blame herself for her
father's death--he had always been consumptive--but since death was
come at last, it was lucky she could offer her mother a home. Her
husband would be delighted to find a companion for his wife during his
country rounds.
"So you see, mother, everything is for the best."
Flutter-Duck listened in a delicious daze.
What! Was everything then to end happily after all? Was she--the
shabby old starveling--to be restored to comfort and fine clothes? Her
brain seemed bursting with the thought of so much happiness; as the
train flew along past green grass and autumn-tinted foliage, she
strove to articulate a prayer of gratitude to Heaven, but she only
mumbled "_Médiâni_," and lapsed into silence. And then, suddenly
remembering she had started a prayer and must finish it, she murmured
again "_Médiâni_."
When they came to the grand house with the front garden, and were
admitted by a surprised maid-servant, infinitely nattier than any
Flutter-Duck had ever ruled over, the poor creature was palsied with
excess of bliss. The fire was blazing merrily in the luxurious
parlour: could this haven of peace and pomp--these arm-chairs, those
vases, that side-board--be really for her? Was she to spend her New
Year's night surrounded by love and luxury, instead of huddling in the
corner of a cold garret?
And as soon as Rachel had got her mother installed in a wonderful
easy-chair, she hastened with all the eagerness of maternal pride,
with all the enthusiasm of remorse, to throw open the folding-doors
that led to her bedroom, so as to give Flutter-Duck the crowning
surprise--the secret titbit she had reserved for the grand climax.
"There's a fine boy!" she cried.
And as Flutter-Duck caught sight of the little red face peeping out
from the snowy draperies of the cradle, a rapture too great to bear
seemed almost to snap something within her foolish, overwrought brain.
"I have already a grandchild!" she shrieked, with a great sob of
ecstasy; and, running to the cradle-side, she fell on her knees, and
covered the little red face with frantic kisses, repeating "Lewis
love, Lewis love, Lewis love," till the babe screamed, and Rachel had
to tear the babbling creature away.
* * * * *
You may see her almost any day walking in the Ghetto market-place--a
meagre, old figure, with a sharp-featured face and a plaited chignon.
She dresses richly in silk, and her golden earrings are set with
coloured stones, and her bonnet is of the latest fashion. She lives
near Epping Forest, and almost always goes home to tea. Sometimes she
stands still at the point where the two market streets meet, extending
vacantly a gloved hand, but for the most part she wanders about the
by-streets and alleys of Whitechapel with an anxious countenance,
peering at every woman she meets, and following every young couple.
"If I could only find her!" she thinks yearningly.
Nobody knows whom she is looking for, but everybody knows she is only
"Flutter-Duck."
MACMILLAN'S DOLLAR SERIES OF WORKS BY POPULAR AUTHORS.
_Crown 8vo. Cloth extra. $1.00 each._
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
With the solitary exception of Mrs. Oliphant, we have no living
novelist more distinguished for variety of theme and range of
imaginative outlook than Mr. Marion Crawford.--_Spectator._
THE CHILDREN OF THE KING.
DON ORSINO.
MR. ISAACS: A Tale of Modern India.
DR. CLAUDIUS: A True Story.
ZOROASTER.
A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
SARACINESCA. A New Novel.
MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
WITH THE IMMORTALS.
GREIFENSTEIN.
SANT' ILARIO.
A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
KHALED: A Tale of Arabia.
THE WITCH OF PRAGUE. With numerous Illustrations by W. J. HENNESSY.
THE THREE FATES.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
It would be difficult to imagine a better edition of Dickens at the
price than that which is now appearing in Macmillan's Series of Dollar
Novels.--_Boston Beacon._
THE PICKWICK PAPERS. 50 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
OLIVER TWIST. 27 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 44 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. 41 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. 97 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
BARNABY RUDGE. 76 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
SKETCHES BY BOZ. 44 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
DOMBEY AND SON. 40 Illustrations. (_Ready._)
CHRISTMAS BOOKS. 65 Illustrations. (_December._)
DAVID COPPERFIELD. 41 Illustrations.(_January._)
AMERICAN NOTES, AND PICTURES FROM ITALY. 4 Illustrations. (_Feb._)
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY.
ALTON LOCKE.
HEREWARD.
HEROES.
WESTWARD HO!
HYPATIA.
TWO YEARS AGO.
WATER BABIES. Illustrated.
YEAST.
BY HENRY JAMES.
He has the power of seeing with the artistic perception of the few,
and of writing about what he has seen, so that the many can understand
and feel with him.--_Saturday Review._
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER AND OTHER STORIES.
THE REVERBERATOR.
THE ASPEN PAPERS AND OTHER STORIES.
A LONDON LIFE.
BY ANNIE KEARY.
In our opinion there have not been many novels published better worth
reading. The literary workmanship is excellent, and all the windings
of the stories are worked with patient fulness and a skill not often
found.--_Spectator._
JANET'S HOME.
CLEMENCY FRANKLYN.
A DOUBTING HEART.
THE HEROES OF ASGARD.
A YORK AND LANCASTER ROSE.
BY D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
Few modern novelists can tell a story of English country life better
than Mr. D. Christie Murray.--_Spectator._
AUNT RACHEL.
THE WEAKER VESSEL.
SCHWARZ.
BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
Has the charm of style, the literary quality and flavour that never
fails to please.--_Saturday Review._
At her best she is, with one or two exceptions, the best of living
English novelists.--_Academy._
A SON OF THE SOIL. New Edition.
THE CURATE IN CHARGE. New Edition.
YOUNG MUSGRAVE. New Edition.
HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY. New and Cheaper Edition.
SIR TOM. New Edition.
HESTER. A Story of Contemporary Life.
THE WIZARD'S SON. New Edition.
A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AND HIS FAMILY. New Edition.
NEIGHBOURS ON THE GREEN. New Edition.
AGNES HOPETOUN'S SCHOOLS AND HOLIDAYS. With Illustrations.
BY J. H. SHORTHOUSE.
Powerful, striking, and fascinating romances.--_Anti-Jacobin._
BLANCHE, LADY FALAISE.
JOHN INGLESANT.
SIR PERCIVAL.
THE COUNTESS EVE.
A TEACHER OF THE VIOLIN.
THE LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER MARK.
BY MRS. CRAIK.
(The Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman.")
LITTLE SUNSHINE'S HOLIDAY.
ADVENTURES OF A BROWNIE.
ALICE LEARMONT.
OUR YEAR.
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
Mrs. Ward, with her "Robert Elsmere" and "David Grieve," has
established with extraordinary rapidity an enduring reputation as one
who has expressed what is deepest and most real in the thought of the
time.... They are dramas of the time vitalized by the hopes, fears,
doubts, and despairing struggles after higher ideals which are swaying
the minds of men and women of this generation.--_New York Tribune._
ROBERT ELSMERE.
THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.
MILLY AND OLLY.
BY RUDYARD KIPLING.
Every one knows that it is not easy to write good short stories. Mr.
Kipling has changed all that. Here are forty of them, averaging less
than eight pages apiece; there is not a dull one in the lot. Some are
tragedy, some broad comedy, some tolerably sharp satire. The time has
passed to ignore or undervalue Mr. Kipling. He has won his spurs and
taken his prominent place in the arena. This, as the legitimate
edition, should be preferred to the pirated ones by all such as care
for honesty in letters.--_Churchman_, New York.
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS.
LIFE'S HANDICAP.
BY AMY LEVY.
REUBEN SACHS.
BY M. McLENNAN.
MUCKLE JOCK, AND OTHER STORIES.
BY THOMAS HUGHES.
TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS. Illustrated.
RUGBY, TENNESSEE.
BY ROLF BOLDREWOOD.
Mr. Boldrewood can tell what he knows with great point and vigour, and
there is no better reading than the adventurous parts of his
books.--_Saturday Review._
ROBBERY UNDER ARMS.
NEVERMORE.
SYDNEY-SIDE SAXON.
BY SIR HENRY CUNNINGHAM, K.C.I.E.
Interesting as specimens of romance, the style of writing is so
excellent--scholarly and at the same time easy and natural--that the
volumes are worth reading on that account alone. But there is also
masterly description of persons, places, and things; skilful analysis
of character; a constant play of wit and humour; and a happy gift of
instantaneous portraiture.--_St. James's Gazette._
THE COERULEANS: A VACATION IDYLL.
BY GEORGE GISSING.
We earnestly commend the book for its high literary merit, its deep
bright interest, and for the important and healthful lessons that it
teaches.--_Boston Home Journal._
DENZIL QUARRIER.
THE ODD WOMEN.
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.
The descriptions are wonderfully realistic ... and the breath of the
ocean is over and through every page. The plot is very novel indeed,
and is developed with skill and tact. Altogether one of the cleverest
and most entertaining of Mr. Russell's many works.--_Boston Times._
A STRANGE ELOPEMENT.
BY THE HON. EMILY LAWLESS.
It is a charming story, full of natural life, fresh in style and
thought, pure in tone, and refined in feeling.--_Nineteenth Century._
A strong and original story. It is marked by originality, freshness,
insight, a rare graphic power, and as rare a psychological perception.
It is in fact a better story than "Hurrish," and that is saying a good
deal.--_New York Tribune._
GRANIA: THE STORY OF AN ISLAND.
BY A NEW AUTHOR.
We should not be surprised if this should prove to be the most popular
book of the present season; it cannot fail to be one of the most
remarkable.--_Literary World._
TIM: A STORY OF SCHOOL LIFE.
BY LANOE FALCONER.
(Author of "Mademoiselle Ixe.")
It is written with cleverness and brightness, and there is so much
human nature in it that the attention of the reader is held to the
end.... The book shows far greater powers than were evident in
"Mademoiselle Ixe," and if the writer who is hidden behind the _nom de
guerre_ Lanoe Falconer goes on, she is likely to make for herself no
inconsiderable name in fiction.--_Boston Courier._
CECILIA DE NOËL.
BY THE REV. PROF. ALFRED J. CHURCH.
Rev. Alfred J. Church, M.A., has long been doing valiant service in
literature in presenting his stories of the early centuries, so clear
is his style and so remarkable his gift of enfolding historical events
and personages with the fabric of a romance, entertaining and
oftentimes fascinating.... One has the feeling that he is reading an
accurate description of real scenes, that the characters are
living--so masterly is Professor Church's ability to reclothe history
and make it as interesting as a romance.--_Boston Times._
STORIES FROM THE GREEK COMEDIANS.
ARISTOPHANES. PHILEMON.
DIPHILUS. MENANDER. APOLLODORUS.
_With Sixteen Illustrations after the Antique._
THE STORY OF THE ILIAD.
With Coloured Illustrations.
THE STORY OF THE ODYSSEY.
With Coloured Illustrations.
THE BURNING OF ROME.
BY MRS. F. A. STEEL.
The story is a delightful one, with a good plot, an abundance of
action and incident, well and naturally drawn characters, excellent in
sentiment, and with a good ending. Its interest begins with the
opening paragraph, and is well sustained to the end. Mrs. Steel
touches all her stories with the hand of a master, and she is yet to
write one that is any way dull or uninteresting.--_The Christian at
Work._
MISS STUART'S LEGACY.
BY PAUL CUSHING.
... A first-class detective story. Not a detective story of the
ordinary blood-and-thunder kind, but a really good story, that is told
in a vigorous and attractive way.... It is full of incident and
especially good dialogue. The people in it really talk. The story is
well worth reading.--_Commercial Gazette._
THE GREAT CHIN EPISODE.
BY MARY A. DICKENS.
Felicitous in style and simple enough in plot, it is powerfully vivid
and dramatic, and well sustains the interest throughout.... There is a
vein of grave pleasantry in the earlier portion of the work, which has
to be abandoned as the tragic portion of it develops; but it is
sufficient to show that the writer possesses the charm of pleasant
recital when she wishes to exert it, as becomes her father's
daughter.--_The Catholic World._
A MERE CYPHER.
BY MARY WEST.
The novel is admirably written. It has not only distinction of style,
but intellectual quality of an exceptionable order; and while the
treatment is never didactic, questions of ethical import come
naturally into evidence, and are dealt with in a decisive way.... A
remarkably well-executed piece of fiction.--_Utica News._
A BORN PLAYER.
BY THE MARCHESA THEODOLI.
A thoroughly pleasing and unpretentious story of modern Rome. The
pictures of home life in the princely Astalli family are most curious
and interesting; while the reader's sympathy with the charming and
delicate romance of the book, ending happily at last, in the face of
apparently insurmountable obstacles, will be readily enlisted from its
inception.--_The Art Amateur._
UNDER PRESSURE.
End of Project Gutenberg's The King of Schnorrers, by Israel Zangwill