Altogether there was electricity in the air, and Emanuel was not present to divert it down the road of jocularity. The furriers stitched sullenly, with a presentiment of storm. But it held over all day, and there was hope the currents would pass harmlessly away.
With the rising of Flutter-Duck from the work-table, however, the first rumblings began. Lewis did not attempt to restrain her from her society dissipation, but he fumed inwardly throughout her toilette. More than ever he realised, as he sat coughing and bending over the ermine he was tufting with black spots, the incompatibility of this union between ant and butterfly, and occasionally his thought would shoot out in dry sarcasm. But Flutter-Duck had passed beyond the plane in which Lewis existed as her husband. All day she had talked freely, if a whit condescendingly, to her fellow-furriers, lamenting the mischances of the day; but in proportion as she began to get clean and beautiful, as the muslins of the great mirror became a frame for a gorgeous picture of a lady, Flutter-Duck grew more and more aloof from workaday interests, felt herself borne into a higher world of radiance and elegance, into a rarefied atmosphere of gentility, that froze her to statue-like frigidity.
She was not Flutter-Duck then.
And when she was quite dressed for the wedding, and had put on the earrings with the coloured stones and the crowning glory of the chignon of false plaits, stuck over with little artificial white flowers, the female neighbours came crowding into the work-room boudoir to see how she looked, and she revolved silently for their inspection like a dressmaker's figure, at most acknowledging their compliments with monosyllables. She had invited them to come and admire her appearance, but by the time they came she had grown too proud to speak to them. Even the women of whose finery she wore fragments, and who had contributed to her splendour, seemed to her poor dingy creatures, whose contact would sully her embroidered petticoat. In grotesque contrast with her peacock-like stateliness, the big tripha goose began to get lively, cackling and flapping about within its radius, as if the soul of Flutter-Duck had passed into its body.
The moment of departure had come. The cab stood at the street-door, and a composite crowd stood round the cab. In the Ghetto a cab has special significance, and Flutter-Duck would have to pass to hers through an avenue of polyglot commentators. At the last moment, adjusting her fleecy wrap over her head like any grande dame (from whom she differed only in the modesty of her high bodice and her full sleeves), Flutter-Duck discovered that there was a great rent in one part of the wrap and a great stain in another. She uttered an exclamation of dismay—this seemed to her the climax of the day's misfortunes.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she cried, her dignity almost melting in tears.
The by-standers made sympathetic but profitless noises.
"Oh, double it another way," jerked Rachel from the work-table. "Come here, I'll do it for you."
"Are you too lazy to come here?" replied Flutter-Duck irritably. Rachel rose and went towards her, and rearranged the wrap.
"Oh no, that won't do," complained Flutter-Duck, attitudinising before the glass. "It shows as bad as ever. Oh, what shall I do?"