The Ghetto was all astir, for it was half-past eight of a workaday morning. But Esther had not walked a hundred yards before her breast was heavy with inauspicious emotions. The well-known street she had entered was strangely broadened. Instead of the dirty picturesque houses rose an appalling series of artisans' dwellings, monotonous brick barracks, whose dead, dull prose weighed upon the spirits. But, as in revenge, other streets, unaltered, seemed incredibly narrow. Was it possible it could have taken even her childish feet six strides to cross them, as she plainly remembered? And they seemed so unspeakably sordid and squalid. Could she ever really have walked them with light heart, unconscious of the ugliness? Did the grey atmosphere that overhung them ever lift, or was it their natural and appropriate mantle? Surely the sun could never shine upon these slimy pavements, kissing them to warmth and life.
Great magic shops where all things were to be had—peppermints and cotton, china-faced dolls and lemons—had dwindled into the front windows of tiny private dwelling-houses; the black-wigged crones, the greasy, shambling men, were uglier and greasier than she had ever conceived them. They seemed caricatures of humanity—scarecrows in battered hats or draggled skirts. But gradually, as the scene grew upon her, she perceived that, in spite of the 'model dwellings' builder, it was essentially unchanged. No vestige of improvement had come over Wentworth Street—the narrow noisy market street, where serried barrows flanked the reeking roadway exactly as of old, and where Esther trod on mud and refuse and babies. Babies! they were everywhere; at the breasts of unwashed women, on the knees of grandfathers smoking pipes; playing under the barrows, sprawling in the gutters and the alleys. All the babies' faces were sickly and dirty, with pathetic childish prettinesses asserting themselves against the neglect and the sallowness. One female mite in a dingy tattered frock sat in an orange box, surveying the bustling scene with a preternaturally grave expression, and realising literally Esther's early conception of the theatre.
There was a sense of blankness in the wanderer's heart, of unfamiliarity in the midst of familiarity. What had she in common with all this mean wretchedness, with this semi-barbarous breed of beings? The more she looked, the more her heart sank. There was no flaunting vice, no rowdiness, no drunkenness, only the squalor of an Oriental city without its quaintness and colour. She studied the posters and the shop-windows, and caught old snatches of gossip from the groups in the butcher's shop. All seemed as of yore. And yet here and there the hand of Time had traced new inscriptions. For Baruch Emanuel the hand of Time had written a new placard. It was a mixture of German, bad English and Cockneyese, phonetically spelt in Hebrew letters:
| 'Mens Solens Und Eelen | 2/6 |
| Lydies Deeto | 1/6 |
| Kindersche Deeto | 1/6 |
| Hier wird gemacht | |
| Aller Hant Sleepers | |
| Fur Trebbelers | |
| Zu De Billigsten Preissen.' |
Baruch Emanuel had prospered since the days when he wanted 'lasters and riveters' without being able to afford them. He no longer gratuitously advertised Mordecai Schwartz in envious emulation, for he had several establishments, and owned five two-story houses, and was treasurer of his little synagogue, and spoke of Socialists as an inferior variety of Atheists. Not that all this bourgeoning was to be counted to leather, for Baruch had developed enterprises in all directions, having all the versatility of Moses Ansell without his catholic capacity for failure.
The hand of Time had also constructed a 'working-men's Métropole' almost opposite Baruch Emanuel's shop, and papered its outside walls with moral pictorial posters, headed 'Where have you been to, Thomas Brown?' 'Mike and his moke,' and so on. Here single-bedded cabins could be had as low as fourpence a night. From the journals in a tobacconist's window Esther gathered that the reading public had increased, for there were importations from New York, both in Jargon and in pure Hebrew, and from a large poster in Yiddish and English, announcing a public meeting, she learnt of the existence of an offshoot of the Holy Land League—'The Flowers of Zion Society'—'established by East End youths for the study of Hebrew and the propagation of the Jewish National Idea.' Side by side with this, as if in ironic illustration of the other side of the life of the Ghetto, was a seemingly royal proclamation, headed 'V.R.,' informing the public that by order of the Secretary of State for War a sale of wrought and cast iron, zinc, canvas, tools, and leather, would take place at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.
As she wandered on, the great school-bell began to ring; involuntarily she quickened her step and joined the chattering children's procession. She could have fancied the last ten years a dream. Were they, indeed, other children, or were they not the same that jostled her when she picked her way through this very slush in her clumsy masculine boots? Surely those little girls in lilac print frocks were her classmates! It was hard to realise that Time's wheel had been whirling on, fashioning her to a woman; that, while she had been living and learning, and seeing the manners of men and cities, the Ghetto, unaffected by her experiences, had gone on in the same narrow rut. A new generation of children had arisen to suffer and sport in room of the old, and that was all. The thought overwhelmed her, gave her a new and poignant sense of brute, blind forces; she seemed to catch in this familiar scene of childhood the secret of the grey atmosphere of her spirit. It was here she had, all insensibly, absorbed those heavy vapours that formed the background of her being, a permanent sombre canvas behind all the iridescent colours of joyous emotion. What had she in common with all this mean wretchedness? Why, everything. This it was with which her soul had intangible affinities, not the glory of sun and sea and forest, 'the palms and temples of the South.'
The heavy vibrations of the bell ceased; the street cleared; Esther turned back and walked instinctively homewards to Royal Street. Her soul was full of the sense of the futility of life; yet the sight of the great shabby house could still give her a chill. Outside the door a wizened old woman, with a chronic sniff, had established a stall for wizened old apples; but Esther passed her by heedless of her stare, and ascended the two miry steps that led to the mud-carpeted passage.
The apple-woman took her for a philanthropist paying a surprise visit to one of the families of the house, and resented her as a spy. She was discussing the meanness of the thing with the pickled-herring dealer next door, while Esther was mounting the dark stairs with the confidence of old habit. She was making automatically for the garret, like a somnambulist, with no definite object, morbidly drawn towards the old home. The unchanging musty smells that clung to the staircase flew to greet her nostrils, and at once a host of sleeping memories started to life, besieging her and pressing upon her on every side. After a tumultuous intolerable moment, a childish figure seemed to break from the gloom ahead—the figure of a little girl, with a grave face and candid eyes—a dutiful, obedient, shabby little girl so anxious to please her schoolmistress, so full of craving to learn and to be good and to be loved by God, so audaciously ambitious of becoming a teacher, and so confident of being a good Jewess always. Satchel in hand, the little girl sped up the stairs swiftly, despite her cumbrous, slatternly boots; and Esther, holding her bag, followed her more slowly, as if she feared to contaminate her by the touch of one so weary-worldly-wise, so full of revolt and despair.