A Cigarette-Maker's Romance Part 17

"No. It is not a piece of lace," answered the girl. "I will tell you what it is, if we do not get enough without it."

"I only thought," explained the Cossack, "that if we were going to try and p.a.w.n it, I had better know--"

"We cannot p.a.w.n it," said Vjera decisively. "It will have to be sold. Let us go in together." She spoke the last words as they reached the door of the p.a.w.n-shop.

"I could save you the trouble," Schmidt suggested, offering to take the wolf's skin. But Vjera would not give it up. She felt that she must see everything done herself, if only to distract her thoughts from more painful matters.

The place was half full of people, most of them with anxious faces, and all having some object or other in their hands. The p.a.w.n-shops do their best business in the evening. A man and a woman, both advanced in middle age, well fed, parsimoniously washed and possessing profiles of an outline disquieting to Christian prejudices, leaned over the counter, handled the articles offered them, consulted each other in incomprehensible monosyllables, talked volubly to the customers in oily undertones and from time to time counted out small doses of change which they gave to the eager recipients, accompanied by little slips of paper on which there were both printed and written words. The room was warm and redolent of poverty.

A broad flame of gas burned, without a shade, over the middle of the counter.

In spite of their unctuous tones the Hebrew and his wife did their business rapidly, with sharpness and decision. Either one of them would have undertaken to name the precise p.a.w.ning value of anything on earth and, possibly, of most things in heaven, provided that the universe were brought piecemeal to their counter. Both Vjera and Schmidt had been made acquainted by previous necessities with the establishment. Vjera held her paper parcel in her hand. The other things were laid together upon the counter. The Hebrew woman glanced at the samovar, felt the weight of it and turned it once round.

"Leaky," she observed in her smooth voice. "Old bra.s.s. One mark and a half." Her husband put out his hand, touched the machine, lifted it, and nodded.

"Only a mark and a half!" exclaimed Vjera. "And the skin, how much for that?"

"It is a genuine Russian wolf," Schmidt put in. "And it is very large."

"Moth-eaten," said the Jewess. "And there is a hole in the side. Five marks."

Schmidt held the fur up to the light and blew into it with a professional air, as furriers do.

"Look at that!" he cried, persuasively. "Why, it is worth twenty!"

The Hebrew lady, instead of answering extended a fat thumb and a plump, pointed forefinger, and pinching a score of hairs between the two, pulled them out without effort, and then held them close to the Cossack's eyes.

"Five marks," she repeated, getting the money out and preparing to fill in a couple of p.a.w.n-tickets.

"Make it ten, with the samovar!" entreated Vjera. The Jewess smiled.

"Do you think the samovar is of gold?" she inquired. "Six and a half for the two. Take it or leave it."

Vjera looked at Schmidt anxiously as though to ask his opinion.

"They will not give more," he said, in Russian.

The girl took the money and the flimsy tickets and they went out into the street. Vjera hesitated as to the direction she should take, and Schmidt looked to her as though awaiting her orders.

"Twenty-eight and a half and six and a half are thirty-five," she said, thoughtfully. "And we have nothing more to give, but this. I must sell it, Herr Schmidt."

"Well, what is it?" he asked, glad to know the secret at last.

"It is my mother's hair. She cut it off herself when she knew she was dying and she told me to sell it if ever I needed a little money."

The girl's voice trembled violently, and she turned her head away. Schmidt was silent and very grave. Then Vjera began to move on again, clutching the precious thing to her bosom and drawing her shawl over it.

"The best man for this lives in the Maffei Stra.s.se," said Schmidt after a few minutes.

"Show me the way." Vjera turned as he directed. At that moment she would have lost herself in the familiar streets, had he not been there to guide her.

The hairdresser's shop was brilliantly lighted, and as good fortune would have it, there were no customers within. With an entreating glance which he obeyed, Vjera made Schmidt wait outside.

"Please do not look!" she whispered. "I can bear it better alone." The good fellow nodded and began to walk up and down.

As Vjera entered the shop, the chief barber in command waltzed forward, as hairdressers always seem to waltz. At the sight of the poor girl, however, he a.s.sumed a stern appearance which, to tell the truth, was out of character with his style of beauty. His rich brown locks were curled and anointed in a way that might have aroused envy in the heart of an a.s.syrian dandy in the palmy days of Sardanapalus.

"Do you buy hair?" asked Vjera, timidly offering her limp parcel.

"Oh, certainly, sometimes," answered the barber. The youth in attendance--the barber tadpole of the hairdresser frog--abandoned the cleansing of a comb and came forward with a leer, in the hope that Vjera might turn out to be pretty on a closer inspection. In this he was disappointed.

The man took the parcel and laid it on one of the narrow marble tables placed before a mirror in a richly gilt frame. He pushed aside the blue gla.s.s powder-box, the vial of brilliantine and the brushes. Vjera untied the bit of faded ribband herself and opened the package. The contents exhaled a faint, sickly odour.

A tress of beautiful hair, of unusual length and thickness, lay in the paper. The colour was that which is now so much sought after, and which great ladies endeavour to produce upon their own hair, when they have any, by washing it with extra-dry champagne, while little ladies imitate them with a humble solution of soda. The colour in question is a reddish-brown with rich golden lights in it, and it is very rare in nature.

The barber eyed the thick plait with a businesslike expression.

"The colour is not so bad," he remarked, as though suggesting that it might have been very much better.

"Surely, it is very beautiful hair!" said Vjera, her heart almost breaking at the sight of the tenderly treasured heirloom.

Suddenly the man snuffed the odour, lifted the tress to his nose, and smelt it. Then he laid it down again and took the thicker end, which was tied tightly with a ribband, in his hands, pulling at the short lengths of hair which projected beyond the knot. They broke very easily, with an odd, soft snap.

"It is worth nothing at all," said the barber decisively. "It is a pity, for it is a very pretty colour."

Vjera started, and steadied herself against the back of the professional chair which stood by the table.

"Nothing?" she repeated, half stupid with the pain of her disappointment.

"Nothing? not even fifteen marks?"

"Nothing. It is rotten, and could not be worked. The hairs break like gla.s.s."

Vjera pressed her left hand to her side as though something hurt her. The tadpole youth grinned idiotically and the barber seemed anxious to end the interview.

With a look of broken-hearted despair the girl turned to the table and began to do up her parcel again. Her shawl fell to the ground as she moved. Then the tadpole nudged his employer and pointed at Vjera's long, red-brown braid, and grinned again from ear to ear.

"Is it fifteen marks that you want?" asked the man.

"Fifteen--yes--I must have fifteen," repeated Vjera in dull tones.

"I will give it to you for your own hair," said the barber with a short laugh.

"For my own?" cried Vjera, suddenly turning round. It had never occurred to her that her own tress could be worth anything. "For my own?" she repeated as though not believing her ears.

"Yes--let me see," said the man. "Turn your head again, please. Let me see. Yes, yes, it is good hair of the kind, though it has not the gold lights in it that the other had. But, to oblige you, I will give you fifteen for it."

"But I must have the money now," said Vjera, suspiciously. "You must give me the money now, to take with me. I cannot wait."

The barber smiled, and produced a gold piece and five silver ones.