I
Salvina Brill walked to and fro in the dingy Hackney Terrace, waiting
till her mother should return with the house-key. So far as change of
scene was concerned the little pupil-teacher might as well have stood
still. Everywhere bow-windows, Venetian blinds, little front
gardens--all that had represented domestic grandeur to her after a
childhood of apartments in Spitalfields, though her subsequent glimpse
of the West End home in which her sister Kitty was governess, had made
her dazedly aware of Alps beyond Alps.
Though only seventeen, Salvina was not superficially sweet and could
win no consideration from the seated males in the homeward train, and
the heat of the weather and the crush of humanity--high hats
sandwiched between workmen's tool-baskets--had made her head ache. Her
day at the Whitechapel school had already been trying, and Thursday
was always heavy with the accumulated fatigues of the week. It was
unfortunate that her mother should be late, but she remembered how at
breakfast the good creature had promised father to make a little
excursion to the Borough and take a packet of tea to the house of some
distant relatives of his, who were sitting _shivah_ (seven days'
mourning). The non-possession of a servant made it necessary to lock
up the house and pull down the blinds, when its sole occupant went
visiting.
After a few minutes of vain expectation, Salvina mechanically returned
to her Greek grammar, which opened as automatically at the irregular
verbs. She had just achieved the greatest distinction of her life, and
one not often paralleled in Board School girl-circles, by
matriculating at the London University. Hers was only a second-class
pass, but gained by private night-study, supplemented by some evening
lessons at the People's Palace, it was sufficiently remarkable;
especially when one considered she had still other subjects to prepare
for the Centres. Salvina was now audaciously aiming at the
Bachelorhood of Arts, for which the Greek verbs were far more
irregular. It was not only the love of knowledge that animated her: as
a bachelor she might become a head-mistress, nay, might even aspire to
follow the lead of her dashing elder sister and teach in a wealthy
family that treated you as one of itself. Not that Kitty had ever
matriculated, but an ugly duckling needs many plumes of learning ere
it can ruffle itself like a beautiful swan.
Who should now come upon the promenading student but Sugarman the
Shadchan, his hand full of papers, and his blue bandanna trailing from
his left coat-tail!
"Ah, you are the very person I was coming to see," he cried gleefully
in his corrupt German accent. "What is your sister's address now?"
"Why?" said Salvina distrustfully.
"I have a fine young man for her!"
Salvina's pallid cheek coloured with modesty and resentment. "My
sister doesn't need your services."
"Maybe not," said Sugarman, unruffled. "But the young man does. He saw
your sister once years ago, before he went to the Cape. Now he is a
_Takif_ (rich man) and wants a wife."
"He's not rich enough to buy Kitty." Salvina's romantic soul was
outraged, and she spoke with unwonted asperity.
"He is rich enough to buy Kitty all she wants. He is quite in love
with her--she can ask for anything."
"Then let him go and tell her so himself. What does he come to you
for? He must be a very poor lover."
"Poor! I tell you he is rolling in gold. It's the luckiest thing that
could have happened to your family. You will all ride in your
carriage. You ought to fall on your knees and bless me. Your sister is
not so young any more, at nineteen a girl can't afford to sniff.
Believe me there are thousands of girls who would jump at the
chance--yes, girls with dowries, too. And your sister hasn't a penny."
"My sister has a heart and a soul," retorted Salvina witheringly, "and
she wants a heart and a soul to sympathize with hers, not a
money-bag."
"Then, won't you take a ticket for the lotte_ree_?" rejoined Sugarman
pleasantly. "Then you get a money-bag of your own."
"No, thank you."
"Not even half a ticket? Only thirty-six shillings! You needn't pay me
now. I trust you."
She shook her head.
"But think--I may win you the great prize--a hundred thousand marks."
The sum fascinated Salvina, and for an instant her imagination played
with its marvellous potentialities. They could all move to the
country, and there among the birds and the flowers she could study all
day long, and even try for a degree with Honours. Her father would be
saved from the cigar factory, her sister from exile amid strangers,
her mother should have a servant, her brother the wife he coveted. All
her Spitalfields circle had speculated through Sugarman, not without
encouraging hits. She smiled as she remembered the vendor of slippers
who had won sixty pounds and was so puffed up that when his wife
stopped in the street to speak to a shabby acquaintance, he cried
vehemently, "Betsey, Betsey, do learn to behave according to your
station."
"You don't believe me?" said Sugarman, misapprehending her smile. "You
can read it all for yourself. A hundred thousand marks, so sure my
little Nehemiah shall see rejoicings. Look!"
But Salvina waved back the thin rustling papers with their exotic
Continental flavour. "Gambling is wicked," she said.
Sugarman was incensed. "Me in a wicked business! Why, I know more
Talmud than anybody in London, and can be called up the Law as
_Morenu_! You'll say marrying is wicked, next. But they are both State
Institutions. England is the only country in the world without a
lotte_ree_."
Salvina wavered, but her instinct was repugnant to money that did not
accumulate itself by slow, painful economies, and her multifarious
reading had made the word "Speculation" a prism of glittering vice.
"I daresay _you_ think it's not wrong," she said, "and I apologize if
I hurt your feelings. But don't you see how you go about unsettling
people?"
"Me! Why, I settle them! And if you'd only give me your sister's
address--"
His persistency played upon Salvina's delicate conscience; made her
feel she must not refuse the poor man everything. Besides, the grand
address would choke him off.
"She's at Bedford Square, with the Samuelsons."
"Ah, I know. Two daughters, Lily and Mabel," and Sugarman instead of
being impressed nodded his head, as if even the Samuelsons were
mortal and marriageable.
"Yes, my sister is their governess and companion. But you'll only
waste your time."
"You think so?" he said triumphantly. "Look at this likeness!"
And he drew out the photograph of a coarse-faced middle-aged man, with
a jaunty flower in his frock-coat and a prosperous abdomen supporting
a heavily trinketed watch-chain. Underneath swaggered the signature,
"Yours truly, Moss M. Rosenstein."
Salvina shuddered: "He was wise to send _you_," she said slyly.
"Is it not so? Ah, and your brother, too, would have done better to
come to me instead of falling in love with a girl with a hundred
pounds. But I bear your family no grudge, you see. Perhaps it is not
too late yet. Tell Lazarus that if he should come to break with the
Jonases, there are better fish in the sea--gold fish, too. Good-bye.
We shall both dance at your sister's wedding." And he tripped off.
Salvina resumed her Greek, but the grotesque aorists could not hold
her attention. She was hungry and worn out, and even when her mother
came, it would be some time before her evening meal could be prepared.
She felt she must sit down, if only on her doorsteps, but their
whiteness was inordinately marred as by many dirty boots--she wondered
whose and why--and she had to content herself with leaning against
the stucco balustrade. And gradually as the summer twilight faded, the
grammar dropped in her hand, and Salvina fell a-dreaming.
What did she dream of, this Board School drudge, whose pasty face was
craned curiously forward on sloping shoulders? Was it of the enchanted
land of love of which Sugarman had reminded her, but over whose roses
he had tramped so grossly? Alas! Sugarman himself had never thought of
her as a client for any but the lottery section of his business.
Within, she was one glow of eager romance, of honour, of quixotic
duty, but no ray of this pierced without to give a sparkle to the eye,
a colour to the cheek. No faintest dash of coquetry betrayed the
yearning of the soul or gave grace to walk or gesture: her dress was
merely a tidy covering. Her exquisite sensibility found bodily
expression only as a clumsy shyness.
Poor Salvina!