Part 34 (1/2)

It was a frouzy, unsightly group that sat on the pavement, surrounded by a semi-sympathetic crowd--the father in a long grimy coat; the mother covered, as to her head, with a shawl, which also contained the baby. But the elders were navely childish, and the children uncannily elderly; and something in Esther's breast seemed to stir with a strange sense of kins.h.i.+p. The race instinct awoke to consciousness of itself. Dulled by contact with cultured Jews, transformed almost to repulsion by the spectacle of the coa.r.s.ely prosperous, it leapt into life at the appeal of squalor and misery. In the morning the Ghetto had simply chilled her; her heart had turned to it as to a haven and the reality was dismal. Now that the first ugliness had worn off, she felt her heart warming. Her eyes moistened. She thrilled from head to foot with the sense of a mission--of a niche in the temple of human service which she had been predestined to fill. Who could comprehend as she these stunted souls, limited in all save suffering? Happiness was not for her; but service remained. Penetrated by the new emotion, she seemed to herself to have found the key to Hannah's holy calm.

With the money now in hand, the two girls sought a lodging for the poor waifs. Esther suddenly remembered the empty back-garret in No. 1 Royal Street, and here, after due negotiations with the pickled-herring dealer next door, the family was installed. Esther's emotions at the sight of the old place were poignant; happily the bustle of installation, of laying down a couple of mattresses, of borrowing Dutch Debby's tea-things, and of getting ready a meal, alloyed their intensity. That little figure with the masculine boots showed itself but by fits and flashes. But the strangeness of the episode formed the undercurrent of all her thoughts; it seemed to carry to a climax the irony of her initial gift to Hannah.

Escaping from the blessings of the _Greeners_, she accompanied her new friend to Reb Shemuel's. She was shocked to see the change in the venerable old man; he looked quite broken-up. But he was chivalrous as of yore; the vein of quiet humour was still there, though his voice was charged with gentle melancholy. The Rebbitzin's nose had grown sharper than ever; her soul seemed to have fed on vinegar. Even in the presence of a stranger, the Rebbitzin could not quite conceal her dominant thought. It hardly needed a woman to divine how it fretted Mrs. Jacobs that Hannah was an old maid; it needed a woman like Esther to divine that Hannah's renunciation was voluntary; though even Esther could not divine her history, nor understand that her mother's daily nagging was the greater because the pettier part of her martyrdom.

They all jumbled themselves into grotesque combinations, the things of to-day and the things of endless yesterdays, as Esther slept in the narrow little bed next to Dutch Debby, who squeezed herself into the wall, pretending to revel in exuberant s.p.a.ciousness. It was long before she could get to sleep. The excitement of the day had brought on her headache; she was depressed by restriking the courses of so many narrow lives; the glow of her new-found mission had already faded in the thought that she was herself a pauper, and she wished she had let the dead past lie in its halo, not peered into the crude face of reality. But at bottom she felt a subtle melancholy joy in understanding herself at last, despite Hannah's scepticism, in penetrating the secret of her pessimism, in knowing herself a Child of the Ghetto.

And yet Pesach Weingott played the fiddle merrily enough when she went to Becky's engagement-party in her dreams, and galloped with Shoss.h.i.+ Shmendrik, disregarding the terrible eyes of the bride to be; when Hannah, wearing an aureole like a bridal veil, paired off with Meckish, frothing at the mouth with soap, and Mrs. Belcovitch, whirling a medicine-bottle, went down the middle on a pair of huge stilts, one a thick one and one a thin one, while Malka spun round like a teetotum, throwing Ezekiel in long-clothes through a hoop! what time Moses Ansell waltzed superbly with the dazzling Addie Leon, quite cutting out Levi and Miriam Hyams, and Raphael awkwardly twisted the Widow Finkelstein to the evident delight of Sugarman the Shadchan, who had effected the introduction. It was wonderful how agile they all were, and how dexterously they avoided treading on her brother Benjamin, who lay unconcernedly in the centre of the floor, taking a.s.siduous notes in a little copy-book for incorporation in a great novel, while Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stooped down to pat his brown hair patronisingly.

Esther thought it very proper of the grateful _Greeners_ to go about offering the dancers rum from Dutch Debby's tea-kettle, and very selfish of Sidney to stand in a corner refusing to join in the dance and making cynical remarks about the whole thing for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the earnest little figure she had met on the stairs.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN

Esther woke early, little refreshed. The mattress was hard, and in her restricted allowance of s.p.a.ce she had to deny herself the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situations have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could no longer be s.h.i.+rked. Malka's words rang in her ears. How, indeed, could she earn a living? Literature had failed her; with journalism she had no point of contact save the _Flag of Judah_, and that journal was out of the question. Teaching--the last resort of the hopeless--alone remained. Maybe even in the Ghetto there were parents who wanted their children to learn the piano; and who would find Esther's mediocre digital ability good enough. She might teach as of old in an elementary school. But she would not go back to her own--all the human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discoloured wall-paper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It was not easy to avert her thoughts from her dainty bedroom of yesterday. But she succeeded; the cheerlessness of the little chamber turned her thoughts backwards to the years of girlhood, and when she had finished dressing she almost mechanically lit the fire and put the kettle to boil. Her childish dexterity returned, unimpaired by disuse. When Debby awoke, she awoke to a cup of tea ready for her to drink in bed--an unprecedented luxury which she received with infinite consternation and pleasure.

'Why, it's like the d.u.c.h.esses who have lady's-maids,' she said, 'and read French novels before getting up.' To complete the picture, her hand dived underneath the bed and extracted a _London Journal_ at the risk of upsetting the tea. 'But it's you who ought to be in bed, not me.'

'I've been a sluggard too often,' laughed Esther, catching the contagion of good spirits from Debby's radiant delight. Perhaps the capacity for simple pleasures would come back to her, too.

At breakfast they discussed the situation.

'I'm afraid the bed's too small,' said Esther, when Debby kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality.

'Perhaps I took up too much room,' said the hostess.

'No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have a wider bed, and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room.'

'There's the back-garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks on the back-yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there,' said Debby, 'though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that I value the view of the back-yard, or else he'd raise the rent.'

'You forget the _Greeners_ who moved in yesterday.'

'Oh, so I do!' answered Debby, with a sigh.

'Strange,' said Esther musingly, 'that I should have shut myself out of my own home.'

The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her reflections. In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to each room separately; fortunately the tenants got few letters. Debby was intensely surprised to get one.

'It isn't for me at all,' she cried at last, after a protracted examination of the envelope; 'it's for you, care of me.'

'But that's stranger still,' said Esther. 'n.o.body in the world knows my address.'

The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a half-sovereign rolled out. The postmark was Houndsditch. After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the beautiful copy-book penmans.h.i.+p of the address, Esther gave up the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called.

She betook herself to their office, walking. The day was bright, but Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior partner welcomed her heartily.

'I suppose you've come about your account,' he said. 'I have been intending to send it you for some months, but we are so busy bringing out new things before the dead summer season comes on.' He consulted his books. 'Perhaps you would rather not be bothered,' he said, 'with a formal statement. I have it all clearly here--the book's been doing fairly well--let me write you a cheque at once!'