In the process of diamond-cutting, of course, the stone loses about 60 per cent. of its weight; and the cutter told me that the filings that come from the stone, mixed with the oil of the lathe, make the finest lubricant for a razor-strop. The making of his smooth cheeks was the perfect razor sharpened with diamond filings!
Before we parted, he showed me casually a green diamond. This is the most rare form of stone, and there are only six known examples in the world. No, he didn't steal it. It had just been handed to him for setting, and he was carrying it in his waistcoat-pocket in the careless manner of all stone-dealers.
After he and a sure thousand pounds had vanished into the night, I sat for awhile in the café listening to the chatter of the cigarette-girls of the quarter.
It was all of war. Of Stefan, who had been repatriated; of Abramovitch, who had evaded service by bolting to Ireland with a false green form for which he had paid £100; of Sergius, who had been hiding in a cellar.
When one thinks of cigarette-girls one thinks at once of Marion Crawford's Cigarette-maker's Romance and of Martin Harvey's super-sentimental performance in that play, so dear to the Streatham flapper. But Sonia Karavitch, though soaked in the qualities of her race—dark beauty, luxurious curls, brooding temper, and spiritual melancholy—would, I fear, repel those who only know her under the extravagantly refining rays of the limelight. But those who love humanity in the raw will love her.
Sonia Karavitch is seventeen. She wears a black frock, with many sprigs of red ribbon at her neck and in her raven hair. Her fingers are stained brown with tobacco; but, though she has heavy eyes and lounges languorously, like a drowsy cat in the sunshine, she works harder than most other factory-girls.
From six o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night she is at her table, rolling by the thousand those hand-made cigarettes which command big prices in Piccadilly. When she speaks she has a lazy voice with a curious lisp, and it is full of sadness.
Yet she is not sad. She has a pleasant little home in one of the big tenements, where she lives with her mother and little brother, and, in her own demonstrative way, is happy. The harder she works, the more money there is for luxuries for the little brother. Often of an evening her friends come home with her, and drink tea-and-lemon with her, and make music.
Sonia Karavitch is very shy, and never mixes with the folk who are not of her own colony. She was born in Stepney of Russian parents, and she never goes out of Stepney. And why should she? For in the half-dozen streets where she lives her daily life she can speak the language of her parents, can buy clothes such as her mother wore in Odessa, and can find all those little touches that mean home to the homeless or the exiled.
Every morning she goes straight to the factory; at noon she goes home to dinner; and in the evening she goes straight home again. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons—which is her Sunday, for Sonia is of Jewish faith—she takes a walk in Whitechapel High Street, because, you see, there is much life in Whitechapel High Street; there are her compatriots, and there are street-organs, and violets are a penny a bunch.