Читать книгу Sackcloth into Silk - Warwick Deeping - Страница 15

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George was fastening his braces. George was a difficult getter up, and never the early and industrious apprentice.

George winked at himself in the mirror, opened his mouth and sang. His notion of singing was to bawl, swaying slightly on his fat thighs as he did so. The song was years out of date, but it suited the occasion and shaped itself to the attack. It was a thing you could bellow, even while brushing your hair.

“Yip—I addy—I aye—I aye,

Yip—I addy—I aye.”

George brought out the Yip like a man slapping someone whom he had caught bending. George had cunning. He did not Yip every morning. Let that ruddy young brother of his be kept guessing. Scribbling poetry, what? Here was a manly voice to tear up the little beggar’s inspiration.

George heard a door open. Ha, he had drawn the poet from his desk. Karl’s voice came through the door.

“Must you make that filthy noise?”

George yelped exultantly, and brushed his hair.

“For God’s sake, shut up.”

George swung to the door. He pulled it open, and confronted a white and furious Karl.

“And what’s the matter with you, snotty?—Can’t I sing if I feel like it?”

Karl gave him a little homicidal smile.

“O, call it singing!”

“It’s as good as your bloody scribbling. Think I’m going to creep about like a mouse because I’ve got a sniffy little brother——”

Rebecca was listening at the foot of the stairs. Her voice intervened.

“George.”

“Hallo.”

“Come down here.—I have something to say to you.”

George was afraid of his mother.—“Be down in two ticks, ma.” He gave his younger brother an evil look, slammed the door, and finished dressing. Karl returned to his room and with an air of frustration, sat down at his table and stared out of the window.—His mother was waiting for George and the delay only hardened her purpose. As a Jewess she should have been equally partial to all her children, but Rebecca had weighed prejudice in her hand and accepted it. Was she to choose the gold or the dross? She could be fanatical, and as a fanatic she waited for her second son.

He came clumbering down the stairs like a large animal.

“What’s the trouble, ma?”

So, George was going to be insolent. She stood in the middle of the passage with her large hands over the swell of her apron.

“You’ll stop that shouting in the morning.”

“Shouting?—I’m only singing.”

“It’s the same,” said his mother, “and you’ll stop it.”

“Why should I?—Just because——”

“Yes,” said Rebecca inexorably, “because of Karl.”

George flared. He went off the deep end. If there was to be a row let it be his row. Hadn’t he a grievance? To be told to keep quiet because a younger brother sat and scribbled. Hell! He was not going to stand this sort of thing. It was just ruddy favouritism.—He shouted. His mother’s face remained heavy with a kind of ruthless calm.

She turned and walked to the street door at the end of the passage and opened it.

“My house, my lad.—You’ll do what I tell you or leave it.”

George’s shouting mouth hung open for a moment—a silent hole. He stared at his mother, and then he resumed his shouting.

“I’m quitting.—I’m fed up.—Mus’n’t wake the baby, what?—I’ve got plenty of places to go to.”

His mother nodded at him.

“Then—go.”

He went, and such was the passing of George. He reappeared periodically, either to display himself and his clothes when his fortunes were fair, or “To touch the old woman for something” when he was short of cash, but Rebecca remained ruthless towards George. There was no fatted calf for him.

3

Concealed behind a row of skirts in her bedroom cupboard Rebecca kept a little old safe which had been purchased second hand. Its paint was peeling off, and the brass handle had no polish, but Karl’s mother was not concerned with the exterior of her strong-box. It was the contents that mattered, cash, title deeds, stock certificates, ledgers, her pass-book, some jewellery. Rebecca loved money, because it was hard to come by, and because of the power it possessed. She was secretive, both about her treasure and her affairs, fearing not moth nor corruption and thieves, but the demands of nature. Not even Karl knew of this safe, though its contents might be plunder stored away for the fertilizing of her beloved’s future.

Rebecca banked with Lloyds in Upper Street. There were occasions when she interviewed the branch manager and discussed with him the purchase of stock. She kept a sum of ready money in her safe for the emergencies of her business, for Rebecca had to buy as well as sell, and when a bargain was to be driven the production of ready cash often clinched the deal in her favour.

A February evening and frosty. The shop was shut, and Karl at Mr. Belcher’s. Rebecca had locked her bedroom door, and opening the cupboard, pushed aside the clothes that hid the safe. She had the day’s takings to put away. She was alone in the house, and but for the clangour of passing trams, the Essex Road was in a muffled mood.

She unlocked the safe, and deposited in a small black and gold cashbox three sovereigns, and seventeen shillings in silver. There was an entry to be made in a ledger. The gas jet was flaring, and as she turned the tap to steady the flame, she remembered that Augustus had not come back for his supper. She stood for a moment with her fingers on the tap of the gas-bracket, while the face of her first-born interposed itself between cashbox and ledger. Gus had been behaving rather mysteriously of late. He slept and ate in his mother’s house, but rather like some casual lodger who came and went, and whose essential life was lived elsewhere. Augustus had always been secretive, a somewhat funereal young man, who—if he had any sins to confess, chose no family confessor.

Rebecca’s fingers were still on the tap when she heard a tram stop outside the house. There was nothing singular in the stopping of a tram, but a little interval of silence seemed to link the incident with the ringing of the side door bell. The metallic jingle came from the end of the passage near the kitchen where six old-fashioned bells hung darkly just below the ceiling.

Rebecca frowned. She locked the safe, hid the key under the mattress of her bed, and went downstairs. The bell was still trembling in its spring.—She was alone in the house.—Karl had not rung that bell. There had been a note of apology in its summons, a suggestion of hesitant and surreptitious carefulness. Karl rang much more gaily.

She could hear voices. So, there were two people outside, and one of them had rung the bell. Rebecca went softly down the passage; she was close to the door when she heard a woman’s voice make a remark.

“Better ring again, hadn’t you?”

It was a young voice, and yet incipiently shrewish. The bell was rung again, and even more timorously so.

“I suppose the old woman’s in?”

“There was a light in her bedroom.”

The voice of Augustus! What was her first-born doing on his mother’s doorstep with a young person who spoke of Rebecca as the old woman? Some conspiracy was afoot. Had love come to Augustus, and was the face of the loved one to be revealed to his mother? Rebecca was far wiser than her first-born. If Augustus was being moved to marry a young woman with a voice like that, he would most certainly regret it.

Rebecca put both hands to the door, and turning key and handle simultaneously she opened it suddenly upon those two. A gas jet was burning behind her, and its light fell upon the two faces. She did not look at her son, but into the eyes of the strange woman.

There was a pause, and then Augustus was heard to say—“Mother, this is Emily.”

Emily was seen to smile, and the smile had a fallacious brightness, like the glitter of a knife.

“Ah,” said Rebecca,—“come in, Emily.”

But Emily glanced at her man, jerking her chin round at him as though prompting his courage.

“Emily and I are married.”

Rebecca’s large black figure filled the doorway. She seemed to breathe heavily for a moment. Then she smiled at her son’s unexpected wife.

“Well, that’s news, my dear, but come inside. Draughts give me colds on the chest.”

She was bland, almost motherly. She stood back against the wall and let them in. Emily entered with the air of a young woman who was ready to be saucy if Rebecca gave her half a chance. Rebecca looked at Augustus as he passed her, and saw only a self-conscious profile. Augustus was feeling very uncomfortable. His mother’s dark eyes were on him like the eyes of some familiar and formidable seer.

A solitary gas jet was burning in the parlour. Rebecca lit the other two, and gave the fire a poke.

“Sit down, my dear.”

Emily was already sitting down, and on her dignity as wife and matron. Rebecca, poker in hand, turned and smiled upon her. Augustus was standing behind Emily’s chair like one of those young Victorian husbands in a wedding photograph.

“Well, well,” said Rebecca,—“this is a surprise, isn’t it. I expected Gus back to supper, and he brings back a wife.”

Emily was watching Rebecca like a sandy cat who was not quite sure how this old black cat was shaping.

“You needn’t be afraid, Mrs. Slopp, that we are expecting you to put yourself out.”

“O, no, my dear.”

“Gus and I are in lodgings.”

“Most considerate of you, I’m sure.”

Rebecca was summing up her new daughter. Emily was sandy with pale eyelashes. Emily had a long thin nose, sharp at the tip, a muddy complexion, patches of yellow pigment in her pale eyes, a mean tight mouth. A shrew, and she had Augustus in her pocket. But Rebecca understood. Her firstborn lacked courage. He had been afraid to tell his mother. He had preferred to confront her with an accomplished fact, and with the sandy and sinewy assurance of Emily.

“Well,” said Rebecca,—“I suppose you young things have ways of your own. For better—or worse—my dears. And when is the baby expected?”

Augustus looked shocked.

“Nothing of the kind, ma.”

Rebecca was smiling at Emily, an Emily whose nostrils and mouth were compressed for conflict.

“Well, well,—Gus was always such a shy boy, my dear, but you’ll cure him of that. And perhaps you would like a little supper.”

“Much obliged I’m sure,” said Emily,—“but we had it in our lodgings.”

Rebecca did a gracious thing. She bent down and kissed Emily. The magnanimous and the ironical were mingled in her, and though Emily’s answering kiss was a peck, that was just Emily and like Emily accepted. This family affair was brief and formal. Out in the street Emily declared that the old woman had swallowed it pretty well. “I thought she was going to be nasty.” Augustus’s verdict was more casuistical.—Meanwhile, “the old woman” remained solidly in the open doorway, confronting the night, and the fatefulness of the occasion.

Exit George, exit Augustus. A tram went by, clanging its bell urgently at some dark object that threatened to impede it, and Rebecca smiled to herself. Was she not rather like that tram, wanting all obstacles—human and otherwise—out of her way?

She would be alone now in the house with Karl.

She closed the door, and shuffling slippered into the parlour, she sat down by the fire. The silent house seemed to share her secret exultation. Rebecca sat and listened for the footsteps of her beloved.