Part 3 (1/2)

I returned, however, to my central interest in life--the piece-sorting. It occurred to me afterwards that possibly I ought not to have insisted on such a secular subject on a Jewish holiday, but, after all, the landlord had broached it, and both men now entered most cordially into the discussion. The landlord started repeating his lament--what a pity it would be if Quarriar were really forced to accept Conn's partner--when Quarriar timidly blurted out that he had already signed the deed of partners.h.i.+p, though he had not yet received the promised capital from Conn, nor spoken over matters with the partner provided. The landlord seemed astonished and angry at learning this, p.r.i.c.king up his ears curiously at the word 'signed,' and giving Quarriar a look of horror.

'Signed!' he cried in Yiddish. '_What_ hast thou signed?'

At this point the landlord's wife joined us in the parlour, with a pretty child in her arms and another shy one clinging to her skirts, completing the picture of felicity and prosperity, and throwing into greater shadow the attic to which I shortly afterwards climbed my way up the steep, airless stairs. I was hardly prepared for the depressing spectacle that awaited me at their summit. It was not so much the shabby, fusty rooms, devoid of everything save a couple of mattresses, a rickety wooden table, a chair or two, and a heap of Pa.s.sover cakes, as the unloveliness of the three women who stood there, awkward and flus.h.i.+ng before their important visitor. The wife-and-mother was dwarfed and black-wigged, the daughters were squat, with tallow-coloured round faces, vaguely suggestive of Caucasian peasants, while the sightless eye of the elder lent a final touch of ugliness.

How little my academic friends know me who imagine I am allured by the ugly! It is only that sometimes I see through it a beauty that they are blind to. But here I confess I saw nothing but the ghastly misery and squalor, and I was oppressed almost to sickness as much by the scene as by the atmosphere.

'May I open a window?' I could not help inquiring.

The genial landlord, who had followed in my footsteps, rushed to antic.i.p.ate me, and when I could breathe more freely, I found something of the tragedy that had been swallowed in the sordidness. My eye fell again on the figure of my host standing in his drooping majesty, the droop being now necessary to avoid striking the ceiling with his kingly head.

Surely a pretty wife and graceful daughters would have detracted from the splendour of the tragedy. Israel stood there, surrounded by all that was mean, yet losing nothing of his regal dignity--indeed the Man of Sorrows.

Ere I left I suddenly remembered to ask after the three younger children. They were still with their kind benefactor, the father told me.

'I suppose you will resume possession of them when you make your fortune by the piece-sorting?' I said.

'G.o.d grant it,' he replied. 'My bowels yearn for that day.'

Against my intention I slipped into his hand the final seven pounds I was prepared to pay. 'If your partners.h.i.+p scheme fails, try again alone,' I said.

His blessings pursued me down the steep staircase. His womankind remained shy and dumb.

When I got home I found a telegram from the Parsonage. My father was dangerously ill. I left everything and hastened to help nurse him. My picture was not sent in to any Exhibition--I could not let it go without seeing it again, without a last touch or two. When, some months later, I returned to town, my first thought--inspired by the sight of my picture--was how Quarriar was faring. I left the studio and telephoned to Sir Asher Aaronsberg at the London office of his great Middleton business.

'That!' His contempt penetrated even through the wires. 'Smashed up long ago. Just as I expected.'

And the sneer of the professional philanthropist vibrated triumphantly. I was much upset, but ere I could recover my composure Sir Asher was cut off. In the evening I received a note saying Quarriar was a rogue, who had to flee from Russia for illicit sale of spirits. He had only two, at most three, elderly daughters; the three younger girls were a myth. For a moment I was staggered; then all my faith in Israel returned. Those three children a figment of the imagination! Impossible! Why, I remembered countless little anecdotes about these very children, told me with the most evident fatherly pride. He had even repeated the quaint remarks the youngest had made on her return home from her first morning at the English school.

Impossible that these things could have been invented on the spur of the moment. No; I could not possibly doubt the genuineness of my model's spontaneous talk, especially as in those days he had had no reason for expecting anything from me, and he had most certainly not demanded anything. And then I remembered that tragic pa.s.sage describing how these three little ones, sheltered and fed by a kindly soul, hid themselves when their father came to see them, fearing to be reclaimed by him to hunger and cold. If Quarriar could invent such things, he was indeed a poet, for in the whole literature of starvation I could recall no better touch.

I went to Sir Asher. He said that Quarriar, challenged by Conn to produce these children, had refused to do so, or to answer any further questions. I found myself approving of his conduct. 'A man ought not to be insulted by such absurd charges,' I said. Sir Asher merely smiled and took up his usual unshakable position behind his impregnable wall of official distrust and pessimism.

I wrote to Quarriar to call on me without delay. He came immediately, his head bowed, his features care-worn and full of infinite suffering.

Yes, it was true; the piece-sorting had failed. For a few weeks all had gone well. He had bought cuttings himself, had given the partner thrust upon him by Conn various sums for the same purpose. They had worked together, sorting in a cellar rented for the purpose, of which his partner kept the key. So smoothly had things gone that he had felt encouraged to invest even the reserve seven pounds I had given him, but when the cellar was full of their common stock, and his own suspicions had been lulled by the regular division of the profits--seventeen s.h.i.+llings per week for each--one morning, on arriving at the cellar to start the day's work, he found the place locked, and when he called at the partner's house for an explanation, the man laughed in his face. Everything in the cellar now belonged to him, he claimed, insisting that Quarriar had eaten up the original capital and his share of the profits besides.

'Besides, it never _was_ your money,' was the rogue's ultimate argument. 'Why shouldn't _I_ profit, too, by the Christian's simplicity?'

Conn blindly believed his own man, for the transactions had not been recorded in writing, and it was only a case of Quarriar's word against the partner's. It was the latter who in his venomous craft had told Conn the younger children did not exist. But, thank Heaven! his quiver was not empty of them. He had blissfully taken them home when prosperity began, but now that he was again face to face with starvation, they had returned to his hospitable countryman, Nathan Beck.

'You are sure you could absolutely produce the little ones?'

He looked grieved at my distrusting him. My faith in his probity was, he said with dignity, the one thing he valued in this world. I dismissed him with a little to tide him over the next week, thoroughly determined that the man's good name should be cleared. The crocodile partner must disgorge, and the eyes of my benevolent friend and of Conn must be finally opened to the injustice they had unwittingly sanctioned. Again I wrote to my friend. As usual, Sir Asher replied kindly and without a trace of impatience. Would I get some intelligible written statement from Quarriar as to what had taken place?

So, at my request, Quarriar sent me a statement in quaint English--probably the landlord's--alleging specifically that the partner had detained goods and money belonging to Quarriar to the amount of 7 9s. 5d., and had a.s.saulted him into the bargain. When the partner was threatened with police-court proceedings, he had defied Quarriar with the remark that Mr. Conn would bear out his honesty.

Quarriar could give as references, to show that _he_ was an honest man and had made a true statement as to the number of his children, seven Russians (named) who would attest that the partner provided by Conn was well known as a swindler. Though he was starving, Quarriar refused to have anything further to say to Conn. Quarriar further referred to his landlord, who would willingly testify to his honesty. But being afraid of Conn, and not inclined to commit himself in writing, the landlord would give his version verbally.