It was clear, however, that of the alternatives--giving up the
night-work or returning to Hackney--the latter was the one favoured by
Providence. Kitty might at any moment return to the parental roof, and
there must be something, that Kitty would consider a roof, to shelter
her.
On Saturday Salvina went house-hunting alone in Hackney, and there--as
if further pointed out by Providence--stood their old house "To let!"
It had a dilapidated air, as if it had stood empty for many moons and
had lost hope. It seemed to her symbolic of her mother's fortunes, and
her imagination leapt at the idea of recuperating both. Very soon she
had re-rented the house, though from another landlord, and the workmen
were in possession, making everything bright and beautiful. Salvina
chose wall-papers of the exact pattern of aforetime, and ordered the
painting and decorations to repeat the old effects. They were to move
in, a few days before the quarter.
Her happy secret shone in her cheeks, and she felt all bright and
refreshed, as if she, too, were being painted and cleaned and
redecorated. The task of keeping it all from her mother was a great
daily strain, and the secret had to overbrim for the edification of
Lazarus. Lazarus hailed the change with expressions of unselfish joy,
that brought tears into Salvina's eyes. He even went with her to see
how the repairs were getting on, chatted with the workmen, disapproved
of the landlord's stinginess in not putting down new drain pipes, and
made a special call upon that gentleman.
One day on her return from school Salvina found a postcard to the
effect that the house was ready for occupation. Salvina was for once
glad that she had never yet found time to persuade her mother to learn
to read. She went to feast her eyes on the new-old house and came home
with the key, which she hid carefully till the Sunday afternoon, when
she induced her mother to make an excursion to Victoria Park. The
weather was dull, and the old woman needed a deal of coaxing,
especially as the coaxing must be so subtle as not to arouse
suspicion.
On the way back in the evening from the Park, which, as there was an
unexpected band playing popular airs, her mother enjoyed, Salvina led
her by the old familiar highways and byways back to the old home,
keeping her engrossed in conversation lest it should suddenly befall
her to ask why they were going that way. The expedient was even more
successful than she had bargained for, Mrs. Brill's sub-consciousness
calmly accepting all the old unchanged streets and sights and sounds,
while her central consciousness was absorbed by the talk. Her legs
trod automatically the dingy Hackney Terrace to which she had so often
returned from her Park outing, her hand pushed open mechanically the
old garden-gate, and as Salvina, breathlessly wondering if the spell
could be kept up till the very last, opened the door with the
latch-key, her mother sank wearily, and with a sigh of satisfaction,
upon the accustomed hall-chair. In that instant of maternal apathy,
the astonishment was wholly Salvina's. That hall-chair on which her
mother sat was the very one which had stood there in the bygone happy
years; the hat-rack was the one with which her father had "eloped"; on
it stood the little flower-pots and on the wall hung the two
engravings of the trials of Lord William Russell and Earl Stafford
exactly in the same place, and facing her stood the open parlour with
all the old furniture and colour. In that uncanny instant Salvina
wondered if she had passed through years of hallucination. There was
her mother, natural and unconcerned, bonneted and jewelled, exactly as
she had come from Camberwell years ago when they had entered the house
together. Perhaps they were still at that moment; she knew from her
studies as well as from experience that you can dream years of
harassing and multiplex experience in a single second. Perhaps there
had been no waking hallucination; perhaps the long waiting for her
mother to appear with the house-key had made her sleepy, and in that
instant of doze she had dreamed all those horrible things--the empty
house, her father's flight, his reappearance at her brother's
marriage; the long years of evening lessons. Perhaps she was still
seventeen, studying the Greek verbs for the Bachelorhood of Arts,
perhaps her mother was still a happy wife. Her eyes filled with tears,
and she let herself dwell upon the wondrous possibility a second or so
longer than she believed in it. For the smell of new paint was too
potent; it routed the persuasions of the old furniture. And in another
instant it had penetrated through Mrs. Brill's fatigue. She started
up, aware of something subtly wrong, ere clearer consciousness dawned.
"Michael!" she shrieked, groping.
"Hush, hush, mother!" said Salvina, with a pain as of swords at her
heart. She felt her mother had stumbled--with whatever significance--upon
the word of the enigma. "Another trick has been played on us."
"A trick!" Mrs. Brill groped further. "But _you_ brought me. How comes
this house here? What has happened?"
"I wanted to surprise you. I have rented the old house, and some one
else has put in the old furniture."
"Michael is coming back! You and your father have plotted."
"Oh, mother! How can you accuse me of such a thing!" All the expected
joy of the surprise had been changed to anguish, she felt, both for
her and for her mother. Oh, what a fatal mistake! "I won't have the
furniture, we'll pitch it into the street--we are going to live here
together, mammy, you and I, in the old home. We can afford it now."
She laid her cheek to her mother's, but Mrs. Brill broke away
petulantly and ran toward the parlour. "And does he think I'll have
anything to do with him after all these years!" she cried.
"Dear mother, he doesn't know you if he thinks that!" said Salvina,
following her.
"No, indeed! And a chip out of my best vase, just as I thought! And
that isn't my chair--he's shoved me in one of a worse set. The
horsehair may seem the same, but look at the legs--no carving at all.
And where's the extra leaf of the table? Gone, too, I daresay. And my
little gilt shovel that used to stand in the fender here, what's
become of that? And do you call this a sofa? with the castors all off!
Oh, my God, she has ruined all my furniture," and she burst into
hysteric tears.
Salvina could do nothing till the torrent had spent itself. But she
was busy, thinking. She saw that again her brother and her father had
conspired together. Hence Lazarus's officiousness toward the landlord
and the workmen--that he might easily get the entry to the house. But
perhaps the conspiracy had not the significance her mother put upon
it. Perhaps Lazarus was principal, not agent; in the flush of his new
prosperity he had really projected a generous act; perhaps he had
resolved to put the coping-stone on the surprise Salvina was preparing
for her mother, and had hence negotiated with the father for the old
things. If so, she felt she had not the right to make her mother
refuse them; the rather, she must hasten at once to Lazarus to pour
out her appreciation of his thoughtfulness.
"Come along, mother," she said at last, "don't sit there, crying. I
think Lazarus must have bought back the things for you. You see,
mammy, I wanted to give you a little surprise, and dear Lazarus has
given _me_ a little surprise."
"Do you really think it's only Lazarus?" asked Mrs. Brill, and to
Salvina's anxious ear there seemed a shade of disappointment in the
tone.
"I'm sure it is--father couldn't possibly have the impudence. After
all these years, too!"
But when she at last got her mother to Lazarus, that gentleman
confessed aggressively that he had been only the agent.
"I don't see why you shouldn't let the poor old man come back," he
said. "The other person died a year ago, only nobody liked to tell
mother, she was so bristly and snappy."
"Ah," interrupted Mrs. Brill exultantly, "then Heaven has heard my
curses. May she burn in the lowest Gehenna. May her body become one
yellow flame like her dyed hair."
"Hush!" said Salvina sternly. "God shall judge the dead."
"Oh, of course you always take everybody's part against your mother."
And Mrs. Brill burst into tears again and sank into the new
easy-chair.
"I do think mother's right," said Lazarus sullenly. "Why do you stand
in her way?"
"I?" Salvina was paralyzed.
"Yes, if it wasn't for you--"
"Mother, do you hear what Lazarus is saying? That I keep you from
father!"
"Father! A pretty father to you! He waits till she's dead, and then he
wants to creep back to us. But let him lie on her grave. He'll swell
to bursting before he crosses my door-step."
"There, Lazarus, do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear," he said incredulously. "But does she know what father
offers her--every comfort, every luxury? He is rich now."
"Rich?" said Mrs. Brill. "The old swindler!"
"He didn't swindle--he's very sorry for the past now, and awfully kind
and generous."
Salvina had a flash of insight. "Ho! So this is why--" She checked
herself and looked round the handsome room, and the new easy-chair in
which her mother sat became suddenly as hateful as the old.
"Well, suppose it is?" said Lazarus defiantly. "I don't see why we
shouldn't share in his luck."
"And where does the luck come from?" Salvina demanded.
"What's that to do with us? From the Stock Exchange, I believe."
"And where did he get the money to gamble with?"
"Oh, they always had money."
Salvina's eyes blazed. The nerveless creature of the school became a
fury. "And you'd touch that!"
"Hang it all, he owes us reparation. You, too, Salvina--he is anxious
to do everything for you. He says you must chuck up school--it's
simply wearing you away. He says he wants to take you abroad--to
Paris."
"Oh, and so he thinks he'll get round mother by getting round me, does
he? But let him take his furniture away at once, or we'll pitch it
into the street. At once, do you hear?"
"He won't mind." Lazarus smiled irritatingly. "He wants to put better
furniture in, and his real desire is to move to a big house in
Highbury New Park. But I persuaded him to put back the old
furniture--I thought it would touch you--a token, you know, that he
wanted 'auld lang syne.'"
"Yes, yes, I understood," said Salvina, and then she thought suddenly
of Kitty and a burst of hysteric laughter caught her. "Elopements
economically conducted," went through her mind. "By the day or hour!"
And she imagined the new phrases Kitty would coin. "The Prodigal
Father and the Pantechnicon"--"The old Love and the old Furniture,"
and the wild laughter rang on, till Lazarus was quite disconcerted.
"I don't see where the fun comes in," he said wrathfully. "Father is
very sorry, indeed he is. He quite cried to me--on that very chair
where mother is sitting. I swear to you he did. And you have the heart
to laugh!"
"Would you have me cry, too? No, no; I am glad he is punished."
"Yes--a nice miserable lonely old age he has before him."
"He has plenty of money."
"You're a cold, unfeeling minx! I don't envy the man who marries you,
Salvina."
Salvina flushed. "I don't, either--if he were to treat me as mother
has been treated."
"Yes, no one has had a life like mine, since the world began," moaned
Mrs. Brill, and her waning tears returned in full flood.
"My poor mammy," and Salvina put a handkerchief to the flooded cheeks.
"Come home, we have had enough of this."
Mrs. Brill rose obediently.
"Oh, yes, take her home," said Lazarus savagely, "take her to your
shabby, stinking lodging, when she might have a house in Highbury New
Park and three servants."
"She has a house at Hackney, and I'll give her a servant, too. Come,
mother."
Salvina mopped up her mother's remaining tears, and with an
inspiration of arrogant independence, she rang for Lazarus's servant
and bade her hail a hansom cab.
"If you don't want all Hackney to come and gaze at a furnished road,"
she said, in parting, "you'll take away that furniture yourself."
Mrs. Brill bowled homeward, half consoled for everything by this
charioted magnificence. Some neighbours stood by gossiping as she
alighted, and then her unspoken satisfaction was complete.