CHAPTER XV
Three times daily for the following seven days, a little community, necessarily never less than ten adults, and frequently intersprinkled with a few of those more pious chayder boys who wished specially to commend themselves to their rebbie, gathered for davenning in the Angel Street kitchen; the visitors on sofa and chairs, Reb Monash and Philip on low stools; the mourners uttering their kaddish, the visitors chiming amen with devout promptitude.
Davenning, perhaps by some deliberate charitable intention, seemed to take up most of the day, and effectively chequered Philip's moods of stagnant melancholy with the need for definite action and a brave show in the eyes of the world. Benjamin, Dorah's husband, a meek, pale-haired man, whose will had always been a useful and docile implement in the hands of his wife, attended the minyon with complete regularity, a praiseworthy fact in virtue of the commercial travelling which took him into far outlying villages. Dorah herself returned to Longton, leaving Philip in Angel Street for the period of the shiveh.
After the first week the family was permitted to resume ordinary chairs, but for a whole month the unshaved cheeks of Philip Massel testified biblically to his loss. Yet kaddish was not at end. Three times a day for the ensuing eleven months the prayer was to be uttered in one synagogue or another. And year after year thereafter candles were to be lit on the eve of the anniversary of the death and kaddish three times uttered next day.
For the Jewish mind the prayer is invested with extreme sanctity. The birth of a son conveys to his father and mother immediately the glad tidings of "Thank God! a kaddish for our souls!" In a precisely similar manner to the purchase of a mass and for precisely similar reasons, a kaddish, by a childless man and woman, will be bought for money. There are, indeed, old men who shuffle about the dark spaces of a synagogue, whose main livelihood is the recital, at a stated rate, of the prayer. But, it is needless to insist, the commercial commodity is held to possess by no means the same efficacy as the consanguineous kaddish. Dereliction of duty in this matter is held to be a flagrant betrayal of the dead. The image is held before the culprit's eye of the body attempting to shake free from its bondage of worms and mud, and for lack of intercession before the throne of God, enchained cruelly within the narrow territory of the coffin.
The state in which Philip had endured the climax of his mother's illness, her death and funeral, had involved, it has been evident, less a storm of suffering than a trance, a deadly level of hysteria. When he returned from Angel Street to Longton, he seemed to lose his faculty for quick reaction, for poignant contrition or grief. His mind reduplicated the sooty autumn which spread like a web about the city, entrapping the last evidences of summer and leaving them to hang bedraggled like sucked flies.
Whether or no, for one who had at least made such pretensions of affection towards his dead mother, he ought, from the point of view of an abstract decency, to have persisted with the prayer to which she herself had attached such importance, it is not easy to decide. It is possible that had he recited the kaddish in a language he understood, he would have persisted even to the end. On the other hand, it is possible that had he been faced with the task of reiterating for so long the same fixed number and sequence of words with their inelastic content of meaning, he would have defected even sooner: that, in fact, the mere unintelligibility of the prayer conferred upon it for a season the quality of the kabbalistic. But the essential fact is this, that the emotional part of him now flowed like a sluggish backwater, and in his emotion alone the ritual could have been steeped until it shone with beauty and urgency.
Only his mind moved with any clarity, and his mind had long ago decided that phylacteries belonged to Babylon, that all the terror of the Day of Atonement was an immense, an almost conquering hypnotism, from which with travail he had escaped. Kaddish was but an issue of the same quality as these, though more painful in its solution; for those others were related merely to the general problem presented to him by his race, whilst this was bound up so immediately with the lovely thing he had lost.
His first absence from the morning service at the little shool in Longton (his absences from the afternoon and evening services were not ostentatious and were therefore not commented on) produced a series of violent outbursts from Dorah, culminating in a threat that she would no longer allow him to pass her doors. When he informed her that he had had other struggles to determine and others still faced him, that he was too tired arguing the matter of kaddish with himself for any argument with her, that, in short, he would go, as she threatened, and become an errand boy or a clerk, her anger relaxed. It was certain he was very worn out, and if he actually left the bosom of his family, his last tie with Judaism would be snapped, and—who knew? he might, God forbid, even marry a Gentile, a goyah! What a scandal it would be! Benjamin would lose his Jewish clientele, it would shake Reb Monash's chayder to its foundations, and what would be thought of a maggid whose son ... No, the matter was too terrible to think of! They must be patient, perhaps God would be kind even yet! Yet it was hard, very hard to bear! Not for all her resolutions could she stifle periodic outbursts of wrath. Philip would rise from the table with shut lips and retire to his room and his books.
Poetry had begun to lose its savour for him. Poetry tinkled. He discovered a volume of the Poems and Ballads. It mystified and annoyed him. He was in no mood for the sheer unrelated beauty of Keats, and Tennyson seemed fit only to read on a bench among the tulip beds of Longton Park. His feet held him too heavily to the ground to allow, with Shelley, any excursion into the empyrean. As yet it was an atmosphere too rare for him to breathe again; there was too much of the graveyard damp in his lungs. The equilibristic clap-trap of "Ulalume" and "The Raven" filled him at first with indignation and then with mere mirth.
The routine of school made as yet hardly any break in the even tenour of his mind. Mr. Furness uttered a few words of sympathy, so quiet and unobtrusive that without scraping the wound they gave to Philip a sense of ease and understanding more than all the rhymed consolations of the poets. With Browning he had more success, and though the robust exuberance of the poet was out of harmony with Philip's prevailing mood, here at least was stuff of the earth earthy, sound stuff for his jaws to tackle with pertinacity. But the discovery he made which nearest met his mood was the discovery of prose. With fiction, of course, he had always been familiar. But this was no more prose in a strict sense than Pope was poetry. Each existed for a purpose beyond its medium, Dickens for his tale and Pope for his precept. But when he casually picked up at a handcart in the Swinford market a copy of the Religio Medici, chiefly for a melancholy delight in its mere odour of antique must, and thus casually stumbled on a music which had more than the subtlety of verse, and none of its arbitrary divisions, he was carried away upon an untravelled sea. The "Urn Burial" he chanted night after night. The History of Clarendon and the Compleat Angler were a similar experience, the mere narrative of the first and the piscatorial erudition of the other affecting him as not truly relevant to the prose in which they were written, being merely moulds to give their music one shape instead of another shape. He moved lazily towards the more troubled seas of Swift and was suddenly tossing helplessly in those furious waters; until release allowed him to seek amiable harbourage with Dick Steele and, disregarding lordlily an intervening century, in the pleasant coves of Lamb.
It was not that the agony of those summer days, the telegram at Wenton, the cemetery, the words he had uttered in Angel Street and their consequence, were submerged quickly or in the least. For long, periods of listless vacuity clogged Philip's feet and mind. He would sit musing for hours over an unfinished meal or stand in prolonged and joyless reverie before a hardware shop. The slow blood in his veins called for no action. No dream of sky or hills was potent enough to prick his limbs with desire to be moving beyond the bounds of the city and along the climbing roads. So for a time these voyages with the learned and dead doctors of prose were the only adventures of his soul.
Almost with the first quickening of spring, something of the old unease twitched his body. He realized that his friend Alec, from whom no word had come to him, had not once entered his mind; that even Harry, upon whom he had stumbled several times, had in no wise concerned him. He had seen him once or twice with a lady. Details of her had not impressed themselves upon him. He knew only that she seemed ten or twenty years older than his friend, and a plain woman; distinctly, a plain woman. He determined to call for Harry and suggest a tram ride into the country.
"I'm sorry," Harry had said awkwardly. "I'm afraid I can't! I'm quite fixed up. I never have time to go with any one else."
"I beg your pardon," said Philip huffily, "really I shouldn't like to intrude! It just occurred to me that we used to have something to do with one another not so very long ago. I think I'd best not keep you any longer now."
"Philip, try and be a sport, if you can!" Harry entreated. "My time's not my own. You're not old enough yet, so you can't possibly understand! No offence meant!"
"What's the good of crowing about—what's your haughty age—nearly eighteen? It's a privilege bought by mere waiting!"
"Of course I could trust you to misunderstand. The fact is there's every chance of my getting—for God's sake don't tell a word to any one—", he dropped his voice and looked carefully round, "of my getting married!"
"Good God, man, you're a baby! Don't be a fool!"
"Oh, don't try that game on me! I'm old enough for marrying, if I'm old enough to be a father. Don't look so startled! I don't mean to say that I am. That's the trouble! Yes, it was a pretty sound instinct that prevented me from going round to see you, even when they kept her in after hours! I see the sort of sympathy I could have expected!"
"But who on earth is it?"
"Didn't we see you somewhere or other about ten days ago when we were together?"
"Do you mean that——?"
"Yes, that's Miss Walpole!" he said austerely. "The trouble is that we can't really decide if I am the father actually or not!" he went on in a sudden burst of confidence. "But the baby's due before long and there's only one thing left for a decent chap to do. That's apart entirely from the fact that the girl means everything to me now!" he said with assumed airiness.
"Don't be so bloody, Harry!" Philip burst out. A clearer vision of the lady presented itself to him than when she passed before him in the flesh. "She's a hag of eighty!"
The face of the infatuated youth turned white with wrath. "I think the sooner you take your filthy face through that door the better! You and your blasted impertinence!"
Dignity demanded a frigid and immediate withdrawal.
"I'll be damned!" Philip murmured, "a chap with a mind like Harry's! Lord, it was as hard as a knife! Poor old devil, I suppose he'll wake up in a month and find himself up to the neck! Who's left? That's what I want to know! All the old landmarks are washed away. What the hell is a chap to do? Who's left?" The question drummed insistently into his ears. He found himself aching for friendship. For the last few months he had hardly uttered a word excepting a request for the sugar, perhaps, and a reply to a question at school. His general friendlessness filled him with humiliation. The Walton Street phase had drawn to its dull end long ago and not a figure remained who offered the least hope of companionship. Alec, like the callous swine he had always felt Alec fundamentally to be, had merely disappeared—bearing with him the telescope of high romance, as might have been expected. On Harry the gods had inflicted a terrible cerebral affliction. Philip remembered Harry's attendant lady and shuddered. And Harry had been sweet on Edie once! Oh, yes, Edie! What was it he had heard Dorah and Benjamin saying about Edie? He remembered. Her photograph had been seen by a "millionaire" in the house of a relative of Edie in Pittsburg, U.S.A. The "millionaire," promptly enamoured, had entered into negotiations with the authorities in Doomington, the negotiations were succeeded by a trunk of the most astounding dresses and a first-class ticket to Pittsburg. So much for Edie! In any case she had worn thin ages ago. Then it was that Mamie returned to his mind.
His first thought was "Damn that girl! I thought I'd forgotten her!" She filled him with a vivid sense of guilt. "I've had enough!" he vowed. His mind returned to the episode of the signature, and to escape his contrition, he fled from the house and walked swiftly down Blenheim Road. To his horror he discovered that every step he took was actually a step nearer the enchantress. To his horror he was forced to recognize that the thought of her made him tingle with pleasure. The recollection of her began to torture him. It was a double infliction, sensations of guilt and promptings of delight struggling for mastery. When his mind returned to his mother, his despair was more abandoned than it had been since the summer. Yet ever when his gloom was most profound, the girl re-entered his thoughts, whistling as she turned the corner of the barn, brushing his cheeks with her hair.
"By God!" he exclaimed. "I lent her that prose translation of Dante!" (He remembered that she had asked who had wrote Dante, and that she had thought it so delincate of him to lend her so sweet a book. And when she'd just finished the Pansy Bright-eye Library she was reading, she'd love to learn all about this here Dante. She was sure he'd be that interesting!)
Which lack of culture had then rather accentuated than diminished her charm, a quaint sort of sophisticated naïveté. "Of course, I've got to get my book back! I'll call for it to-morrow night!"
He knocked firmly at the door of the Mamie household. A miniature version of Mamie appeared. He asked if Philip Massel could see Miss Mamie.... The child disappeared into the sitting-room half-way along the passage. A whispering which seemed to last many minutes followed. Then the child reappeared and ushered him into the room. The glare of an admirable incandescent mantle blinded him for a moment. There were three or four people in the room but immediately he only recognized Mrs. Hannetstein. A familiar voice addressed him.
"Oh, good evening, Mr.—er—Massel, so glad you've called!"
He turned to the source of the voice. Good heavens, was that Mamie? Hell, she'd got her hair up! You couldn't quite compare her to Harry's discovery, but she was years older than she had seemed! He was aware she had called him Mr. Massel. He would have to follow suit. Perhaps it was mere intrigue. He held out his arm waveringly. "Good evening, Miss..." He found, to his despair, he had entirely forgotten her surname. "I mean, Miss..." He coughed unhappily. But Mamie, so far from assisting him in his embarrassment, was unaware of it.
"Mother, this is Mr. Massel! We met, where was it? Oh, of course, in Wenton. Do you remember this gentleman, auntie? He helped me to escape from some cows, didn't you?"
"Yes," he managed to stammer, "and they were ravenous as wolves! I was awfully brave!"
Everybody laughed politely.
"I was just going to practise my latest song, 'Red Hearts, Red Roses.' Do sit down, won't you?" Mamie pressed.
"Thank you!"
"So glad you've come, but you don't mind my practising this song before my accompanist comes, Mr. Mendel, you know, the famous violinist!"
"Ah, Mamie, ah!" exclaimed her aunt waggishly, shaking the first finger of her left hand in humorous admonition.
"Don't be silly, auntie!" Mamie cried with a skittishness almost elderly. She sat down at the piano, and struck a few chords. Then Red Hearts bled, Red Roses drooped for some minutes.
Philip sat stiffly on his chair, wondering at the precise reason that had brought him here. He wished she hadn't put her hair up. He wondered dimly if he was in love with her. If he was, he supposed he ought to keep his eyes glued on her face in a peculiarly tense way. But it was distracting to see her lips moving in that active manner—like red mice, twisting!
"Oh, by the way," said Mamie at the conclusion of her song. "I was sorry to hear of your loss. Mrs. Kraft told me. It must have been awfully unpleasant!"
"It was rather rotten!" Philip muttered with difficulty.
What a peculiarly unreal air the girl gave to sorrow and death. Inexplicable creature! Was this politely tittering oldish young lady the girl whose lips had sought his own like a bee? What was the matter with him now, or what had been wrong then? His own pose on the chair, the piano, everything was strained, a little false. But over in Wheatley, the cemetery, the grave, there was no unreality! Damp clay and the sprawling weeds! No, he must wrench his mind away from Wheatley, or he'd never be able to peel the apple that was lying in a plate on his knees.
"To be sure," said Mrs. Hannetstein comfortably, "Death comes to us all sooner or later! Don't you think so, Mr. Massel?"
There seemed no reason to repudiate the assertion.
Conversation trickled in a thin stream. Philip was conscious of a certain slight unease in the air. Wasn't it about time he was going? It certainly was time he set about doing what he came to do. Then what on earth was it he had come for?
There was a loud knock at the door. "That'll be Adolf!" declared Mamie, rising from the piano stool with a glad yelp. "Run to the door, Esther!"
A masterly tread was heard along the lobby.
"There you are, darling!" said Mamie, as a tall fair gentleman opened the door, and stared possessively into the room. "Won't you put your violin down first?"
He put his violin down in a corner with deliberation and as deliberately caught Mamie in his arms. That ceremony over, he sat down and blinked inquiringly towards Philip.
"Adolf, dear, this is a young gentleman who was staying in Wenton when I was there!" said Mamie, with vague discomfort.
"Very glad to meet him, to be sure!" said Adolf.
"Mr. Massel, this is Adolf Mendel, the violinist! My fiancé," she added with a note of deferential pride.
Her fiancé ... then she'd ... her fiancé...!
The blustering, big-boned lout, what the devil did he mean by taking everything for granted in this gruff cocksure way! Had he ever sat with her in the angle of a barn and a haystack, kissing like hell! Had her eyelashes ever ... and her lips...
And she there, the vampire, what did she mean by it! Oh, blast her and the whole empty-headed crowd of them with their Red Roses and squeaky violins!
Anyhow, thank God, it was over! She'd pricked the bubble of his insufferably stupid illusion! In her degree and kind she'd gone the way of all the rest—Edie, Alec, Harry! What an idiotic room it was, with its refined knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and that creature with her hair up and the red-plush-framed photograph of Blackpool on the piano! They were discussing music and songs with a wealth of ostentatious esoteric detail. That was obvious enough surely. They wanted him to clear. He rose to go. Mamie perceived it with alacrity from the corner of her eye.
"Oh, I'm so sorry you've got to go!" she said effusively. "And I'm awfully sorry about that too, you know! You will come round again? Shan't he, Adolf, you'd love to see Mr. Massel again! Not at all, not at all; oh, good night!"
On the other side of the door he remembered his translation of Dante.
"Blast Dante!" he exclaimed through his teeth.
It was the fit of profound misogyny which followed this entirely unsatisfactory incident that fitted him so completely for the effusiveness and glitter of Wilfrid Strauss, and for that interlude with Kate which, only too conventional in its mere detail, was nevertheless at once the end and the beginning of Philip Massel's boyhood.