"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 pa.s.sed 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.
XI
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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed 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 hara.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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 princ.i.p.al, 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 n.o.body 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. "G.o.d 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."