Ghetto Tragedies Part 42

What was to be done? An inspiration came to her in the shape of a pamphlet. Life a.s.surance! Ah, that was it. Scottish Widows' Fund! How peculiarly apposite the t.i.tle. If her mother could be guaranteed a couple of thousand pounds, Death would lose its sting. Salvina carefully worked out all the arithmetical points involved, and discovered to her surprise that life a.s.surance was a form of gambling.

The Company wagered her that she would live to a certain age, and she wagered that she would not. But after a world of trouble in filling up doc.u.ments and getting endorsers, when she went before the Company's Doctor she was refused. The bet was not good enough. "Heart weak," was the ruthless indictment. "You ought not to teach," the Doctor even told her privately, and amid all her consternation Salvina was afraid lest by some mysterious brotherhood he should communicate with the Board Doctor and rob her of her situation. She began praying to G.o.d extemporaneously, in English. That was, for her, an index of impotence. She was at the end of her resources. She could see only a blank wall, and the wall was a great gravestone on which was chiselled: "_Hic jacet_, Salvina Brill, School Board Teacher, Undergraduate of London University. Unloved and unhappy."

She wept over the inscription, being still romantic. Poor mother, poor Kitty, what a blow her death would be to them! Even Lazarus would be sorry. And in the thought of them she drifted away from the rare mood of self-pity and wondered again how she could get together enough money before she died to secure her mother's future. But no suggestion came even in answer to prayer. Once she thought of the Stock Exchange, but it seemed to her vaguely wicked to conjure with stocks and shares.

She had read articles against it. Besides, what did she understand?

True, she understood as much as her father. But who knew whether his money really came from this source? She dismissed the Stock Exchange despairingly.

And meanwhile Mrs. Brill continued peevish and lachrymose, and Salvina found it more and more difficult to hide her own melancholy. One day, as she was leaving the school-premises, Sugarman the Shadchan accosted her. "Do make a beginning," he said winningly. "Only a sixteenth of a ticket. You can't lose."

Sugarman still never thought of her even as a refuge for impecunious bachelors, but with that shameless pertinacity which was the secret of his success, both as British marriage-maker and continental lottery agent, he had never ceased cajoling her toward his other net. He was now destined to a success which surprised even himself. Her scrupulous conscientiousness undermined by her a.n.a.lysis of the a.s.surance System, Salvina inquired eagerly as to the prizes, and bought three whole tickets at a quarter of the price of one a.s.surance instalment.

Sugarman made a careful note of the numbers, and so did Salvina. But it was unnecessary in her case. They were printed on her brain, graven on her heart, repeated in her prayers; they hovered luminous across her day-dreams, and if they distracted feverishly her dreams of the night, yet they tinged the school-routine pleasantly and made her mother's fretfulness endurable. They actually improved her health, and as the May sunshine warmed the earth, Salvina felt herself bourgeoning afresh, and she told herself her fears were morbid.

Nevertheless there was one thing she was resolved to complete, in case she were truly doomed, and that was her mother's education in reading, so often begun, so often foiled by her mother's pertinacious subsidence into contented ignorance. Of what use even to a.s.sure Mrs.

Brill's physical future, if her mind were to be left a pauper, dependent on others? How, without the magic resource of books, could she get through the long years of age, when decrepitude might confine her to the chimney-corner? Already her talk groaned with aches and pains.

Since the servant had been installed, the reading lessons had dropped off and finally been discontinued. Now that Salvina persisted in continuing, she found that her mother's brain had retained nothing.

Mrs. Brill had to begin again at the alphabet, and all the old routine of audacious guessing recommenced. Again a fat cow ate in a mug, for though Mrs. Brill had no head at all for corrections, she had a wonderful memory for her own mistakes, and took the whole sentence at a confident jump. It was an old friend.

One evening, in the kitchen to which Mrs. Brill always gravitated when the servant was away, she paused between her misreadings to dilate on the inconsiderateness of the servant in having this day out, though she was paid for the full week, and though the mistress had to stick at home and do all the work. As Salvina seemed to be spiritless this evening, and allowed the domestic to go undefended, this topic was worn out more quickly than usual, but the never failing subject of Mrs. Brill's aches and pains provided more pretexts for dodging the hard words. And meantime in a chair beside hers, poor Salvina, silent as to her own aches and pains, and the faintness which was coming over her, strained her attention to follow in correction on the heels of her mother's reading; but do what she would, she could not keep her eyes continuously on the little primer, and whenever Mrs. Brill became aware that Salvina's attention had relaxed, she scampered along at a breakneck speed, taking trisyllables as unhesitatingly as a hunter a three-barred gate. But every now and again Salvina would struggle back into concentration, and Mrs. Brill would tumble at the first ditch.

At last, Mrs. Brill, to her content, found herself cantering along, unimpeded, for a great stretch. Salvina lay back in her chair, dead.

"The broken dancer only merry danger," read Mrs. Brill, at a joyous gallop. Suddenly the knocker beat a frantic tattoo on the street door.

Up jumped Mrs. Brill, in sheer nervousness.

Salvina lay rigid, undisturbed.

"She's fallen asleep," thought her mother, guiltily conscious of having taken advantage of her slumbers. "All the same, she might spare my aged bones the trouble of dragging upstairs." But, being already on her feet, she mounted the stairs, and opened the door on Sugarman's beaming, breathless face.

"Your daughter--Number 75,814," he gasped.

Mrs. Brill, who knew nothing of Salvina's speculations, took some seconds to catch his drift.

"What, what?" she cried, trembling.

"I have won her a hundred thousand marks--the great prize!"

"The great prize!" screamed Mrs. Brill. "Salvina! Salvina! Come up,"

and not waiting for her reply, and overturning the flower-pots on the hall-table, she flew downstairs, helter-skelter. "Salvina!" she shook her roughly. "Wake up! You have won the great prize!"

But Salvina did not wake up, though she had won the great prize.

XV

One Sunday afternoon nearly five months later a nondescript series of vehicles, erratically and unpunctually succeeding one another, drew up near the mortuary of the Jewish cemetery, but, from the presence of women, it was obvious that something else than a funeral was in progress. In fact, the two four-wheelers, three hansom cabs, several dog-carts, and one open landau suggested rather a picnic amid the tombs. But it was only the ceremony of the setting of Salvina's tombstone, which was attracting all these relatives and well-wishers.

In the landau--which gave ample s.p.a.ce for their knees--sat the same quartette that had shared a cab to Lazarus's wedding, except that Salvina was replaced by Kitty. That ever young and beautiful person was the only member of the family who had the air of having fallen in the world, for despite that Salvina's great prize was now added to Mr.

Brill's capital (he being the legal heir), he had refused to set up a groom in addition to a carriage. A coachman, he insisted, was all that was necessary. It was the same tone that he had taken about the horsehair sofa, and it helped Mrs. Brill to feel that her husband was unchanged, after all.

Arrived on the ground, the Brills found a gathering of the Jonases, reconciled by death and riches. Others were to arrive, and the party distributed itself about the cemetery with an air of conscious incompleteness. Old Jonas shook hands cordially with Lazarus, and wiped away a tear from under his green shade. A few of Salvina's fellow-teachers had obeyed the notification of the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Jewish papers, and were come to pay the last tribute of respect.

The men wore black hat-bands, the women c.r.a.pe, which on all the nearer relatives already showed signs of wear. And among all these groups, conversing amiably of this or that in the pleasant October sunshine, the genteel stone-mason insinuated himself, pervading the gathering.

His breast was divided between anxiety as to whether the parents would like the tombstone, and uncertainty as to whether they would pay on the spot.

"Have you seen the stone? What do you think of it?" he kept saying to everybody, with a deferential a.s.sumption of artistic responsibility; though, as it was a handsome granite stone, the bulk of the chiselling had been done in Aberdeen, for the sake of economy, whilst the stone was green, and his own contribution had been merely the Hebrew lettering. One by one, under the guidance of the artist, the groups wandered toward the tombstone, and a spectator or two admiringly opened negotiations for future contingencies. An old lady who knew the stonemason's sister-in-law strove to make a bargain for her own tombstone, quite forgetting that the money she was saving on it would not be enjoyed by herself.

"What will you charge _me_?" she asked, with grotesque coquetry. "I think you ought to do it cheaper for _me_."

And in the House of the Priests the minister in charge of the ceremonial impatiently awaited the late comers, that he might intone the beautiful immemorial Psalms. He had made a close bargain with the cabman, and was anxious not to set him grumbling over the delay; apart from his desire to get back to his pretty wife, who was "at home" that afternoon.

At last the genteel stone-mason found an opportunity of piercing through the throng of friends that surrounded Mr. Brill, and of obsequiously inviting the generous orderer of this especially handsome and profitable tombstone to inspect it. Kitty followed in the wake of her parents. Almost at the tomb, a corpulent man with graying hair, issuing suddenly from an avenue of headstones, accosted her. She frowned.

"You oughtn't to have come," she said.

"Since I belong to the family, Kitty," he remonstrated, playing nervously with his ma.s.sive watch seals.

"No, you don't," she retorted. Then, relentingly: "I told you, Moss, that I could not give you my formal consent till after my sister's tombstone was set. That is the least respect I can pay her." And she turned away from the somewhat disconcerted Rosenstein, feeling very right-minded and very forgiving toward Salvina for delaying by so many years her marriage with the South African magnate.

Meantime Mr. Brill, in his heavily draped high hat, stood beside the pompous granite memorial, surveying it approvingly. His wife's hand lay tenderly in his own. Underneath their feet lay the wormy dust that had once palpitated with truth and honour, that had kept the conscience of the household.

"That bit of scroll-work," said the stone-mason admiringly, and with an air of having thrown it in at a loss; "you don't often see a bit like that--everybody's been saying so."

"Very fine!" replied Mr. Brill obediently.

"I paid the synagogue bill for you--to save you trouble," added the stone-mason, insinuatingly.

But Mr. Brill was abstractedly studying the stone, and the mason moved off delicately. Mrs. Brill tried to spell out a few of the words, but, as there was no one to reprimand her, admitted her break-down.

"Read it to me, dear heart," she whispered to Mr. Brill.

"I did read it you, my precious one," he said, "when Kitty sent it us.

It says:--

"'SALVINA BRILL, Whom G.o.d took suddenly, On May 29th, 1897, Aged twenty-five; Loved and lamented by all For her perfect goodness.'

Then come the Hebrew letters."

"Poor Salvina!" sighed Mrs. Brill. "She deserves it, though she did spoil our lives for years." He pressed her hand. "I can't tell you how frightened I was of her," she went on. "She almost made me think I ought not to forgive you even on the Day of Atonement. But I don't bear her malice, and I don't grudge her what the stone says."

"No, you mustn't," he said piously. "Besides, everybody knows one never puts the whole truth on tombstones."