Chapter VI

On the Sunday afternoon, feeling much better for the Saturday rest, and scrupulously gloved, shod, and robed in deference to the grandeur of her destination, Salvina boarded an omnibus, and after a tedious journey, involving a walk at the end, she arrived at the West End square in which her sister bloomed as governess and companion in a newly enriched Jewish family. She stood an instant in the porch to compose herself for the tragic task before her and felt in her pocket to be sure she had not lost the little bottle of smelling-salts with which she had considerately armed herself, in anticipation of a failure of Kitty's nerves. Then she knocked timidly at the door, which was opened by a speckless boy in buttons, who also opened up to her imagination endless vistas of aristocratic association. His impressive formality, as of the priest of a shrine, seemed untinged by any remembrance that on her one previous visit she had been made free of the holy of holies. But perhaps it was not the same boy. He was indeed less a boy to her than a row of buttons, and less a row of buttons than a symbol of all the elegances and opulences in which Kitty moved as to the manner born; the elaborate ritual of the toilette, the sacramental shaving of poodles, the mysterious panoramic dinners in which one had to be constantly aware of the appropriate fork.

Salvina had not waited a minute in the imposing hall, ere a radiant belle flew down the stairs--with a vivacity that troubled the sacro-sanct atmosphere--and caught Salvina in her arms.

"Oh, you dear Sally! I am _so_ glad to see you," and a fusillade of kisses accompanied the hug. "Whatever brings you here? Oh, and such a dowdy frock! You needn't flush up so, silly little child; nobody expects you to know how to dress like us ignoramuses, and it doesn't matter to-day, there's no one to see you, for they're all out driving, and I'm lying down with a headache."

"Poor Kitty. But then you ought to be out driving." She was divided between sympathy for the sufferer, and admiration of the finished, fine ladyhood implied in indifference to the chance of a carriage-drive.

"Yes, but I've so many letters to write, and they don't really drive on Sundays, just stop at house after house, and not good houses either. It is such a bore. They've never shaken off the society they had before they made their money."

"Well, but that's rather nice of them."

"Perhaps, but not nice for me. But come upstairs and you shall have some tea."

Salvina mounted the broad staircase with a reverence attuned to her own hushed footfalls, but her task of breaking the news to her sister weighed the heavier upon her for all this subdued magnificence. It seemed almost profane to bring the squalid episodes of Hackney into this atmosphere, appropriate indeed to the sinful romances of marquises and epauletted officers, but wholly out of accord with surreptitious furniture vans. What a blow to poor Kitty the news would be! She dallied weakly, till the tea was brought by a powdered footman. Then she had an ingenious idea for a little shock to lead up to a greater. She would say they were going to move. But as she took off her white glove not to sully it with the tea and cake, Kitty cried: "Why what have you done with my ring?"

Here was an excellent natural opening, but Salvina was taken too much aback to avail herself of it, especially as the artificial opening preoccupied her mind. "Oh, your ring's all right," she said hastily; "I came to tell you we are going to move."

Kitty clapped her hands. "Ah! so you've taken my advice at last! I'm so glad. It wasn't nice for me to stay with you at that dingy hole, even for a day or two a year. Mustn't mother be pleased!"

Salvina bit her lip. Her task was now heavier than ever.

"No, mother isn't pleased. She is crying about it."

"Crying? Disgusting. How she still hankers after Spitalfields and the Lane!"

"She isn't crying for that, but because father won't go with us."

"Oh, I have no patience with father. He hasn't a soul above red herrings and potatoes."

"Oh, yes he has. He has left us."

"What! Left you?" Kitty's pretty eyes opened wide. "Because he won't move to a better house!"

"No, we are moving to a worse house because he has moved to a better."

"What _are_ you talking about? Is it a joke? A riddle? I give it up."

"Father--can't you guess, Kitty?--father has gone away. There is some other woman."

"No?" gasped Kitty. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!" and she shook with long peals of silvery laughter. "Well, of all the funny things! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Funny!" and Salvina looked at her sternly.

"What, don't you see the humour of it? Father turning into the hero of a novelette. Romance and red herrings! Passion and potatoes! Ha! ha! ha!"

"If you had seen the havoc it wrought, you wouldn't have had the heart to laugh."

"Oh well, mother was crying. That I understand. But that's nothing new for her. She'd cry just as much if he were there. The average rainfall is--how many inches?"

Salvina's face was stern and white. "A mother's tears are sacred," she said in low but firm protest.

"Oh, dear me, Sally, I always forget you have no sense of humour. Well, what are you going to do about it?" and her own sense of humour continued to twitch and dimple the corners of her pretty mouth.

"I told you. We cannot afford to keep up the house--we must go back to apartments in Spitalfields."

Instantly Kitty's face grew as serious as Salvina's. "Oh, nonsense!" she said instinctively. The thought of her family returning to the discarded shell of apartments was humiliating; her own personality seemed being dragged back.

"We can't pay the rent. We must give a quarter's notice at once."

"Absurd! You'll only save a few shillings a week. Why can't you let apartments yourselves? At least you would preserve a decent appearance."

"Is it worth while having the responsibility of the rent? There's only mother and I--we shan't need a house."

"But there's Lazarus!"

"He'll have a place of his own. He'll marry before our notice expires."

"That same Jonas girl?"

"Yes."

"Ridiculous. Small tradespeople, and dreadfully common, all the lot. I thought he'd got over his passion for that bold black creature who's been seen licking ice-cream out of a street-glass. To connect us with that family! Men are so selfish. But I still don't see why you can't remain as you are--let your drawing-room, say, furnished."

"But it isn't furnished."

"Not furnished. Why, I've sat on the couch myself."

"Yes," said Salvina, a faint smile tempering her deadly gravity. "You are the only person who has ever done that. But there's no couch now. Father smuggled all the furniture away in a van."

Again Kitty's silver laughter rang out unquenchably.

"And you don't call that funny! Eloped with the chairs! I call it killing."

"Yes, for mother," said Salvina.

"Pooh! She'll outlive all of us. I wish you were as sure of getting the furniture back. She's not a bad mother, as mothers go, but you take her too seriously."

"But, Kitty, consider the disgrace!"

"The disgrace of having a wicked parent! I've endured for years the disgrace of having a poor one--and that's worse. My people--the Samuelsons, I mean--will never even hear of the pater's escapade--gossip keeps strictly to its station. And even if they do, they know already my family's under a cloud, and they have learned to accept me for myself."

"Well, I am glad you don't mind," said Salvina, half-relieved, half-shocked.

"I mind, if it makes you uncomfortable, you dear, silly Sally."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I think I'll go back to mother, now."

"Nonsense, why, we haven't begun to talk yet. Have another cup of tea. No? How's old Miss What's-a-name, your head-mistress? Any more frozen little kittens?"

"She's very kind, really. I'm sorry I told you about the kitten. She let me go home early on Friday."

"Why? To track the van?"

"No; I wasn't very well."

"Poor Sally!" and Kitty hugged her again. "I daresay you were more upset than mother."

Tears came into Salvina's eyes at her sister's affectionateness. "Oh, no; but please don't talk about it any more. Father is dead to us now."

"Then we must speak well of him."

Salvina shuddered. "He is a wicked, heartless man, and mother and I never wish to see his face again."

A cloud darkened Kitty's blonde brow.

"Yes, but she isn't going to marry another man, I hope."

"How can she?" said Salvina. "I wouldn't let her make any public scandal."

"But aren't there funny laws in our religion--_Get_ and things like that--which dispense with the English courts."

"I believe there are--I read about something of the kind in a novel--oh, yes! and father did offer mother _Get_ before he went off, so I suppose he considers his conscience clear."

"Well, I rely upon you, Sally, to see that she doesn't marry or complicate things more. We don't want two wicked parents."

"Of course not. But I am sure she doesn't dream of any new complications. You don't do her justice, Kitty. She's just broken-hearted; a perpetual widow, with worse than her husband's death to lament."

"Yes--her lost furniture."

"Oh, Kitty, do realize what it means."

"I do, my dear. I do realize it--it's too killing. Passion in a Pantechnicon or Elopements economically conducted. By the day or hour. Oh, dear, oh, dear! But do promise me, Salvina, that you won't go back to Spitalfields."

"I must be somewhere near the school, dearest. It will save train-fares."

Kitty pouted. "Well, you know I couldn't drive up to see you any more; Hackney was all but outside the radius--the radius of respectability. I couldn't ask coachman to go to Spitalfields--unless I pretended to be slumming."

"Well, pretend."

"Oh, Salvina! I thought you were so conscientious. No, I'll have to come in a cab. You're quite sure you won't have some more tea? Oh, do, I insist. One piece of sugar?"

"Yes, thank you, dear. By the way, has Sugarman the Shadchan been here?"

"You mean--has he gone?"

"Oh, poor Kitty! It was my fault. I let him know your address. I do hope the horrid man hasn't worried you."

"Sugarman?"

"No--Moss M. Rosenstein."

"How pat you have his name! But why do you call him horrid?"

Salvina stared. "But have you seen his photograph?"

"Oh, you can't go by photographs. He has been here."

"What! Sugarman had the impudence to bring him!"

Kitty flushed slightly. "No, he called alone--this afternoon, just before you."

"What impertinence! A brazen commercial courtship! You wouldn't receive him, of course."

"Oh, well, I thought it would be fun just to look at him," said Kitty uneasily. "A commercial courtship, as you express it, is not unamusing."

"I don't see anything amusing in it--it's an outrage."

"I told you you had no sense of humour. I find it comic to be loved before first sight by a man who has no _h_'s, but only _l_'s, _s_'s, and _d_'s."

"Sugarman says he did see you before loving you--noticed you before he went to the Cape. But you must have been a little girl then."

"He didn't tell me that--that would have been even more romantic. He only said he fell in love with my photograph, as paraded by Sugarman."

"Why, where should Sugarman get--"

"You never know what mother's been up to," interrupted Kitty dryly.

"Much more likely father."

"What's the odds? Do have another piece of cake."

"No, thank you. But what did you say to the man?"

"The same as you. Don't stare so, you stupid dear. I said, No, thank you."

"That I knew. Of course you couldn't possibly marry a bloated creature from the Cape. I meant, in what terms did you put him in his place?"

"Oh, really," said Kitty, laughing, but without her recent merriment. "This is too prejudiced. I can't admit that mere residence in the Cape is a disqualification."

"Oh, yes, it is. Why do they go there? Only to make money. A person whose one idea in life is money can't be a nice person."

"But money isn't his one idea--now his one idea is matrimony. That is a joke. You ought to laugh."

"It makes me cry to think that some nice girl may be driven into marrying him just for his money."

"Poor man! So because of his money he is to be prevented from having a nice wife."

Salvina was taken aback by this obverse view.

"How is he ever to improve?" asked Kitty, pursuing her advantage.

"Yes, that's true," Salvina admitted. "The best thing would be if some nice girl could _fall in love_ with him. But that doesn't make his methods less insulting. I wish all these Shadchans could be slaughtered off."

"What a savage little chit! They often make as good marriages as are made in heaven."

"Don't tease. You know you think as I do."

Salvina took an affectionate leave of her sister, and walked down the soft staircase, confused but cheerful. The boy in buttons let her out. To do so he hurriedly put down the infant of the house who was riding on his shoulders. Such a touch of humanity in a row of buttons gave Salvina a new insight and a suspicion that even the powdered footman who brought the tea might have an emotion behind his gorgeous waistcoat. But the crowds fighting for the omnibuses that fine Sunday afternoon depressed her again. All the seats outside were packed, and it was only after standing a long time on the pavement that she squeezed her way into an inside seat. The stuffiness and jolting made her feel sick and dizzy. By a happy accident her fingers encountered the bottle of smelling-salts in her pocket, and, as she pulled it out eagerly, she remembered it had been intended for Kitty.