Salvina did not count this break-down against her mother. It was the
natural revolt of nerves tried beyond endurance by Lazarus's trick.
The whole episode intensified her sense of the romantic situation of
her mother, and of the noble courage and dignity with which she
confronted it. She wondered whether she herself would have emerged so
stanchly from the ordeal of meeting a loved but faithless one, and her
protective pity was tempered by a new admiration. Her admiration
increased, when, as the secret gradually leaked out, her mother
maintained an attitude of defiance against the world's sympathy,
refused to hear stigmatizations of her husband, even from old Jonas,
reserving the privilege of denunciation for her own mouth and
Salvina's ear.
And now began the new life of mother and daughter. With Kitty on the
Continent, Lazarus married, and the father blotted out, they had only
each other. They moved back to the skirts of the Ghetto, and Mrs.
Brill resumed with secret joy her old place among her old cronies.
Inwardly, she had fretted at the loss of them, for which the dignity
of Hackney had been but a shadowy compensation. But to Salvina she
only expressed her outraged pride, the humiliation of it all, and the
poor girl, unconscious of how happy her mother really was among the
Ghetto gossips, tortured her brain during school-hours with the
thought of her mother's lonely misery. And even if Salvina had not
been compelled to give private lessons in the evenings to supplement
their income, she would in any case have relinquished her Bachelorhood
aspirations in order to give her time to her mother. For Mrs. Brill
had no resources within herself, so far as Salvina knew. Even the
great artificial universe of books and newspapers was closed to her.
Salvina resolved to overcome her obstinate reluctance to learn to
read, as soon as the pressure of the other private lessons relaxed.
Meantime, she lived for her mother and her mother on her.
Oh, the bitterness of those private lessons after the fag of the day;
the toiling to distant places on tired feet; the grinding bargains
imposed by the well-to-do!
One of these fiends was a beautiful lady, haughty, with fair
complexion and frosted hair, and somehow suggested to Salvina a steel
engraving. She arranged graciously that Salvina should teach her
little girl conversational German at half-a-crown an hour, but when
Salvina started on the first lesson in the luxurious sanctum, she
found two sweetly dressed sisters; who, she was informed, could not
bear to be separated, and might therefore be considered one. The steel
engraving herself sat there, as if to superintend, occasionally asking
for the elucidation of a point. At the second lesson there were two
other little girls, neighbours, the lady informed her, who had thought
it would be a good opportunity for them to learn, too. Salvina
expressed her pleasure and her gratitude to her patroness. At the
third lesson the aunt of the two little girls was also present with a
suspicious air of discipleship. When at end of the month, Salvina
presented her bill at five shillings an hour, the patroness flew into
a towering rage. What did it matter to her how many children partook
of the hour? An hour was an hour and a bargain a bargain. Salvina had
not the courage or the capital to resist. And this life of ever
teaching and never learning went on, week after week, year after year.
For when her salary at the school increased, the additional burden of
Lazarus and his wife and children fell upon her. For her feckless
brother had soon exhausted the patience of Granders Brothers; he had
passed shiftlessly from employment to employment, frequently
dependent on Salvina and his father-in-law till old Jonas had
declared, with all the dignity of his green shade, that his
son-in-law--graceless offspring of a graceless sire--must never darken
his door-step again.
But the joy Mrs. Brill found in her grandchildren, the filling-out of
her life, repaid Salvina amply for all the pinching necessary to
subsidize her brother's household. She winced, though, to see her
mother drop thoughtlessly into the glossy arm-chair presented by her
absentee husband, and therein ensconced dandle Lazarus's children.
Salvina was too sensitive to remind her mother, and shrank also from
appearing fantastic. But that chair inspired a morbid repugnance, and
one day, taking advantage of the fact that the stuffing began to
extrude, she bought Lazarus a new and better easy-chair without saying
why, and had the satisfaction of noting the relegation of the old one
to a bed-room.
Two bright spots of colour dappled those long, monotonous years. One
was Kitty; the other was the summer holiday. Kitty's mere letters from
the Continent--she wrote twice during the tour--were a source of
exhilaration as well as of instruction. She brought nearer all those
wonderful places which Salvina still promised herself to behold one
day, though year after year she went steadily to Ramsgate. For her
mother shrank from sea-voyages and strange places, as much as she
loved the familiar beach swarming with Jewish faces and nigger
minstrels. Even Salvina's little scheme of enthroning her mother
expensively on the parade at Clacton-on-Sea, that mother unconsciously
thwarted, though she endured equivalent splendour at Ramsgate at three
guineas a week, with much grumbling over her daughter's extravagance.
Once indeed when Salvina had seriously projected Paris in the interest
of her French, there had been a quarrel on the subject. There were
many quarrels on many subjects, but it was always one quarrel and had
always the same groundwork of dialogue on Mrs. Brill's part, whatever
the temporal variations.
"A nice daughter! To trample under foot her own flesh and blood,
because she thinks I'm dependent on her! Well, well, do your own
marketing, you little ignoramus who don't know a skirt steak from a
loin chop; you'll soon see if I don't earn my keep. I earned my living
before you were born, and I can do so still. I'd rather live in one
room than have my blood shed a day longer. I'll send for Kitty--she
never stamps on the little mother. She shan't slave her heart out any
more among strangers, my poor fatherless Kitty. No, we'll live
together, Kitty and I. Lazarus would jump at us--my own dear, handsome
Lazarus. I never see him but he tells me how the children are crying
day and night for their granny, and why don't I go and live with him?
_He_ wouldn't spit upon the mother who suckled him, and even Rhoda
has more respect for me than my own real daughter."
Such was the basal theme; the particular variation, when the holiday
was concerned, took the shape of religious remonstrance. "And where am
I to get _kosher_ food in Paris? In Ramsgate I enjoy myself; there's a
_kosher_ butcher, and all the people I know. It's as good as London."
Tears always conquered Salvina. She had an infinite patience with her
mother on these occasions, not resenting the basal theme, but
regarding it as a mere mechanic explosion of nervous irritation,
generated by her lonely life. Sometimes she forgot this and argued,
but was always the more sorry afterward. Not that she did not enjoy
Ramsgate. Her nature that craved for so much and was content with so
little found even Ramsgate a Paradise after a year of the slum-school,
to which she always returned looking almost healthy. But this constant
absorption in her mother's personality narrowed her almost to the same
mental bookless horizon. All the red blood of ambition was sucked away
as by a vampire; her energy was sapped and the unchanging rut of
school-existence combined to fray away her individuality. She never
went into any society; the rare invitation to a social event was
always refused with heart-shrinking. Every year made her more shy and
ungainly, more bent in on herself, and on the little round of school
and home life, which left her indeed too weary in brain and body for
aught beside. She sank into the scholastic old maid, unconsciously
taking on the very gait and accent of Miss Rolver, into the
limitations of whose life she had once had a flash of insight. Yet she
was unaware of her decay; her automatic brain was still alive in one
corner, where the dreams hived and nested. Paris and Rome and the
wonder-places still shone on the horizon, together with the noble
young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted. And twice or thrice a year
Kitty would flash upon the scene to remind her that there was truly a
world of elegance and adventure. Her mother had begun to worry over
the beautiful Kitty's failure to marry; she had imagined that in those
gilded regions she would have snapped up a South African millionaire
or other ingenuous person. How nearly Kitty had actually come to doing
so, even without the spring-board of Bedford Square, Salvina never
told her. She had kept both Sugarman and Moss M. Rosenstein from
pestering her mother, by telling the Shadchan that Kitty's voice and
Kitty's alone weighed with Kitty in such a matter. When the swarthy
capitalist returned to the Cape, despairing, Salvina had written to
congratulate her sister on her high-mindedness. In the years that
followed, she had to endure many a bad quarter of an hour of maternal
reproach because Kitty did not marry, but Mrs. Brill's vengeance was
unconscious. Kitty herself never heard a word of these complaints; to
her the mother was all wreathed smiles, for she never came without
bringing a trinket, and every one of these trinkets meant days of
happiness. The little lockets and brooches were shown about to all the
neighbours and hitched them on to the bright spheres which Kitty
adorned. Carriages and footmen, soft carpets and gilded mirrors
gleamed in the air. "My Kitty!" rolled under Mrs. Brill's tongue like
a honeyed sweet. Kitty's little gifts, flashing splendidly on the
everyday dulness, made more impression than all the steady monotonous
services of Salvina. For the rest, Salvina conscientiously repaid
these gifts in kind on Kitty's birthdays and other high days.
X
When Salvina was twenty-three years old a change came. Lazarus ceased
to demand assistance: he was cheery and self-confident, and inclined
to chaff Salvina on her prim ways. He removed to a larger house and
her easy-chair disappeared before a more elegant. And the apparent
brightness of her brother's prospects brightened Salvina's. Her
savings increased, and, under the continuous profit of his
self-support, she was soon able to meditate changes on her own
account. Either she would give up her night-teaching--which had been
more and more undermining her system--or she would procure her mother
and Kitty a delightful surprise by migrating back to Hackney.
Her mind hesitated between the joyous alternatives, lingering
voluptuously now on one, now on the other, but somehow aware that it
would ultimately choose the latter, for Kitty on her rare visits never
failed to grumble at the lowness of the neighbourhood and the expense
of cabs, and Mrs. Brill still yearned to see horses pawing outside her
door-step. But an unexpected visit from Kitty, not six weeks after her
last, and equally unexpected in place--for it was at Salvina's
school--decided the matter suddenly.
It was about half-past twelve, and Salvina, long since a full
"assistant teacher," was seated at her desk, correcting the German
exercises of a private pupil. Sparsely dotted about the symmetric
benches were a few demure criminals undergoing the punishment of being
kept in, and the air was still heavy with the breaths and odours of
the blissful departed. A severe museum-case, with neatly ticketed
specimens, backed Salvina's chair, and around the spacious room hung
coloured diagrams of animals and plants. Kitty seemed a specimen from
another world as her coquettish Leghorn hat flowering with poppies
burst upon the scholastic scene.
"Oh, dear, I thought you'd be alone," she said pettishly.
"Is it anything important? The children don't matter," said Salvina.
"You can tell me in German. I do hope nothing is the matter."
"No, nothing so alarming as that," Kitty replied in German. "But I
thought I'd find you alone and have a chat."
"I had to stay here with the children. They must be punished."
"Seems more like punishing yourself. But have you lunched, then?"
"No." Salvina flushed slightly.
"No? What's up? A Jewish fast! Ninth day of Ab, fall of Temple, and
funny things like that. One always seems to stumble upon them in the
East End."
"How you do rattle on, Kitty!" and Salvina smiled. "No, I shall lunch
as soon as these children are released."
"But why wait for that?"
Salvina's blush deepened. "Well, one doesn't want to eat a good dinner
before hungry girls."
"A good dinner! Why, what in heaven's name do you get? Truffles and
plovers' eggs?"
"No, but I get a very good meal sent in from the Cooking Centre
opposite, and compared with what these girls get at home, steak and
potatoes are the luxuries of Lucullus."
"Oh, I don't believe it. They all look fatter than you. Then this is
double punishment for you--extra work and hunger. Do send them away.
They get on my nerves. And have your lunch like a sensible being."
And without waiting for Salvina's assent: "Go along, girls," she said
airily.
The girls hesitated and looked at Salvina, who coloured afresh, but
said, "Yes, this lady pleads for you, and I said that if you all
promised to--"
"Oh, yes, teacher," they interrupted enthusiastically, and were off.
"Well, what I came to tell you, Sally, is that I'm not sure of my
place much longer."
Salvina turned pale, and that much-tried heart of hers thumped like a
hammer. She waited in silence for the facts.
"Lily is going to be married."
"Well? All the more reason for Mabel to have a companion."
Kitty shook her head. "It's the beginning of the end. Marriage is a
contagious complaint in a family. First one member is taken off, then
another. But that's not the worst."
"No?" Poor Salvina held her breath.
"Who do you think is the happy man? You'll never guess."
"How should I? I don't know their circle."
"Yes, you do. I mean, you know him."
Salvina wrinkled her forehead vainly.
"No, you'll never guess after all these years! Moss M. Rosenstein!"
"Is it possible?" Salvina gasped. "Lily Samuelson!"
"Yes--Lily Samuelson!"
"But he must be an old man by now."
"Well, _she_ isn't a chicken. And you thought it was such an outrage
of him to ask for _me_. I suppose having once got inside the door to
see me, he had the idea of aspiring higher."
"Oh, don't say higher, Kitty. Richer, that's all--and now, I should
say, lower, inasmuch as Lily Samuelson stoops to pick up what you
passed by with scorn. And picks him up out of Sugarman's hand,
probably."
"Yes, it's all very well, and it's revenge enough in a way to think to
myself what I do think to myself, when I see the young couple going
on, and Moss is mortally scared of me, as I shoot him a glare, now and
again. I shouldn't be surprised if he eggs them on to get rid of me.
It would be too bad to be done out of everything."
"Well, we must hope for the best," said Salvina, kissing her. "After
all, you can always get another place."
"I'm getting old," Kitty said glumly.
"You old!" and the anaemic little school-mistress looked with laughing
admiration at her sister's untarnished radiance. But when Kitty went,
and lunch came, Salvina could not eat it.