After the almond-pudding, a succession of speakers ranging from relatives to old friends, and even the officiating minister, gave certificates of character to the bride and the bridegroom, amid the tears of the ladies. Father Jonas made an elaborate speech beginning, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," and interlarded with Hebrew quotations. Father Brill expressed the pleasure it gave him to acknowledge on behalf of himself and his dear wife, the kind things which had been said, and the delight they felt in seeing their son settled in the paths of domestic happiness, especially in connection with a scion of the house of Jonas, of whose virtues much had been said so deservedly that night. Lazarus declared, amid roars of laughter, that on this occasion only he would respond for his dear wife, but he felt sure that for the rest of their lives she would have the last word. Then the tables were cleared away and dancing began, which grew livelier as the dawn grew nearer. But long before that, Salvina had borne her mother away from the hovering bull-dog. Not, however, without a terrible scene in the homeward cab. All the volcanic flames Salvina and etiquette had suppressed during the day shot forth luridly. Burning lava was hurled against her husband, against her son, against Salvina. An impassioned inventory of the lost furniture followed, and the refrain of the whole was that she had been taken to a wedding, when all she wanted was a funeral.
IX
Salvina did not count this break-down against her mother. It was the natural revolt of nerves tried beyond endurance by Lazarus's trick. The whole episode intensified her sense of the romantic situation of her mother, and of the noble courage and dignity with which she confronted it. She wondered whether she herself would have emerged so stanchly from the ordeal of meeting a loved but faithless one, and her protective pity was tempered by a new admiration. Her admiration increased, when, as the secret gradually leaked out, her mother maintained an attitude of defiance against the world's sympathy, refused to hear stigmatizations of her husband, even from old Jonas, reserving the privilege of denunciation for her own mouth and Salvina's ear.
And now began the new life of mother and daughter. With Kitty on the Continent, Lazarus married, and the father blotted out, they had only each other. They moved back to the skirts of the Ghetto, and Mrs. Brill resumed with secret joy her old place among her old cronies. Inwardly, she had fretted at the loss of them, for which the dignity of Hackney had been but a shadowy compensation. But to Salvina she only expressed her outraged pride, the humiliation of it all, and the poor girl, unconscious of how happy her mother really was among the Ghetto gossips, tortured her brain during school-hours with the thought of her mother's lonely misery. And even if Salvina had not been compelled to give private lessons in the evenings to supplement their income, she would in any case have relinquished her Bachelorhood aspirations in order to give her time to her mother. For Mrs. Brill had no resources within herself, so far as Salvina knew. Even the great artificial universe of books and newspapers was closed to her. Salvina resolved to overcome her obstinate reluctance to learn to read, as soon as the pressure of the other private lessons relaxed. Meantime, she lived for her mother and her mother on her.
Oh, the bitterness of those private lessons after the fag of the day; the toiling to distant places on tired feet; the grinding bargains imposed by the well-to-do!
One of these fiends was a beautiful lady, haughty, with fair complexion and frosted hair, and somehow suggested to Salvina a steel engraving. She arranged graciously that Salvina should teach her little girl conversational German at half-a-crown an hour, but when Salvina started on the first lesson in the luxurious sanctum, she found two sweetly dressed sisters; who, she was informed, could not bear to be separated, and might therefore be considered one. The steel engraving herself sat there, as if to superintend, occasionally asking for the elucidation of a point. At the second lesson there were two other little girls, neighbours, the lady informed her, who had thought it would be a good opportunity for them to learn, too. Salvina expressed her pleasure and her gratitude to her patroness. At the third lesson the aunt of the two little girls was also present with a suspicious air of discipleship. When at end of the month, Salvina presented her bill at five shillings an hour, the patroness flew into a towering rage. What did it matter to her how many children partook of the hour? An hour was an hour and a bargain a bargain. Salvina had not the courage or the capital to resist. And this life of ever teaching and never learning went on, week after week, year after year. For when her salary at the school increased, the additional burden of Lazarus and his wife and children fell upon her. For her feckless brother had soon exhausted the patience of Granders Brothers; he had passed shiftlessly from employment to employment, frequently dependent on Salvina and his father-in-law till old Jonas had declared, with all the dignity of his green shade, that his son-in-law—graceless offspring of a graceless sire—must never darken his door-step again.
But the joy Mrs. Brill found in her grandchildren, the filling-out of her life, repaid Salvina amply for all the pinching necessary to subsidize her brother's household. She winced, though, to see her mother drop thoughtlessly into the glossy arm-chair presented by her absentee husband, and therein ensconced dandle Lazarus's children. Salvina was too sensitive to remind her mother, and shrank also from appearing fantastic. But that chair inspired a morbid repugnance, and one day, taking advantage of the fact that the stuffing began to extrude, she bought Lazarus a new and better easy-chair without saying why, and had the satisfaction of noting the relegation of the old one to a bed-room.
Two bright spots of colour dappled those long, monotonous years. One was Kitty; the other was the summer holiday. Kitty's mere letters from the Continent—she wrote twice during the tour—were a source of exhilaration as well as of instruction. She brought nearer all those wonderful places which Salvina still promised herself to behold one day, though year after year she went steadily to Ramsgate. For her mother shrank from sea-voyages and strange places, as much as she loved the familiar beach swarming with Jewish faces and nigger minstrels. Even Salvina's little scheme of enthroning her mother expensively on the parade at Clacton-on-Sea, that mother unconsciously thwarted, though she endured equivalent splendour at Ramsgate at three guineas a week, with much grumbling over her daughter's extravagance.
Once indeed when Salvina had seriously projected Paris in the interest of her French, there had been a quarrel on the subject. There were many quarrels on many subjects, but it was always one quarrel and had always the same groundwork of dialogue on Mrs. Brill's part, whatever the temporal variations.
"A nice daughter! To trample under foot her own flesh and blood, because she thinks I'm dependent on her! Well, well, do your own marketing, you little ignoramus who don't know a skirt steak from a loin chop; you'll soon see if I don't earn my keep. I earned my living before you were born, and I can do so still. I'd rather live in one room than have my blood shed a day longer. I'll send for Kitty—she never stamps on the little mother. She shan't slave her heart out any more among strangers, my poor fatherless Kitty. No, we'll live together, Kitty and I. Lazarus would jump at us—my own dear, handsome Lazarus. I never see him but he tells me how the children are crying day and night for their granny, and why don't I go and live with him? He wouldn't spit upon the mother who suckled him, and even Rhoda has more respect for me than my own real daughter."