VII[ToC]
THE KEEPER OF CONSCIENCE
I
Salvina Brill walked to and fro in the dingy Hackney Terrace, waiting till her mother should return with the house-key. So far as change of scene was concerned the little pupil-teacher might as well have stood still. Everywhere bow-windows, Venetian blinds, little front gardens—all that had represented domestic grandeur to her after a childhood of apartments in Spitalfields, though her subsequent glimpse of the West End home in which her sister Kitty was governess, had made her dazedly aware of Alps beyond Alps.
Though only seventeen, Salvina was not superficially sweet and could win no consideration from the seated males in the homeward train, and the heat of the weather and the crush of humanity—high hats sandwiched between workmen's tool-baskets—had made her head ache. Her day at the Whitechapel school had already been trying, and Thursday was always heavy with the accumulated fatigues of the week. It was unfortunate that her mother should be late, but she remembered how at breakfast the good creature had promised father to make a little excursion to the Borough and take a packet of tea to the house of some distant relatives of his, who were sitting shivah (seven days' mourning). The non-possession of a servant made it necessary to lock up the house and pull down the blinds, when its sole occupant went visiting.
After a few minutes of vain expectation, Salvina mechanically returned to her Greek grammar, which opened as automatically at the irregular verbs. She had just achieved the greatest distinction of her life, and one not often paralleled in Board School girl-circles, by matriculating at the London University. Hers was only a second-class pass, but gained by private night-study, supplemented by some evening lessons at the People's Palace, it was sufficiently remarkable; especially when one considered she had still other subjects to prepare for the Centres. Salvina was now audaciously aiming at the Bachelorhood of Arts, for which the Greek verbs were far more irregular. It was not only the love of knowledge that animated her: as a bachelor she might become a head-mistress, nay, might even aspire to follow the lead of her dashing elder sister and teach in a wealthy family that treated you as one of itself. Not that Kitty had ever matriculated, but an ugly duckling needs many plumes of learning ere it can ruffle itself like a beautiful swan.
Who should now come upon the promenading student but Sugarman the Shadchan, his hand full of papers, and his blue bandanna trailing from his left coat-tail!