The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies

And so they waited in the uncouth room in the solemn watches of the night, pricking up their ears at a rare footstep in the street, and hastening to peep out of the window; waiting for the knock that came not, and the dawn that was distant. The silence lay upon them like a pall.

Suddenly, in the weird stillness, they heard a fluttering and a skurrying, and, looking up, they saw a great white thing floating through the room. Flutter-Duck uttered a terrible cry. "Hear, O Israel!" she shrieked.

"Nee, nee," said Lewis reassuringly, though scarcely less startled. "It is only the tripha goose got loose."

"Nay, nay, it is the Devil!" hoarsely whispered Flutter-Duck, who had covered her face with her hands, and was shaking as with palsy.

Her terror communicated itself to her husband. "Hush, hush! Talk not so," he said, shivering with indefinable awe.

"Say psalms, say psalms!" panted Flutter-Duck. "Drive him out."

Lewis opened the window, but the unclean bird showed no desire to flit. It was evidently the Not-Good-One himself.

"Hear, O Israel!" wailed Flutter-Duck. "Since he came in this morning everything has been upside down."

The goose chuckled.

Lewis was seized with a fell terror that gave him a mad courage. Murmuring a holy phrase, he grabbed at the goose, which eluded him, and fluttered flappingly hither and thither. Lewis gave chase, his lips praying mechanically. At last he caught it by a wing, haled it, hissing and struggling and uttering rasping cries, to the window, flung it without, and closed the sash with a bang. Then he fell impotent against the work-table, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

"God be praised!" said Flutter-Duck, slowly uncovering her eyes. "Now Rachel will come back."

And with renewed hope they waited on, and the deathly silence again possessed the room.

All at once they heard a light step under the window; the father threw it open and saw a female form outlined in the darkness. There was a rat-tat-tat at the door.

"Ah, there she is!" hysterically ejaculated Flutter-Duck, starting up.

"The Holy One be blessed!" cried Lewis, rushing down the stairs.

A strange figure, the head covered by a green tartan shawl, greeted him. A cold ague passed over his limbs.

"Thank God, it's all right," said Mrs. Lefkovitch. "I see from your light you are still working; but isn't it time my Emanuel left off?"

"Your Emanuel?" gasped Lewis, with a terrible suspicion. "He went home early in the day; he was taken ill."

Flutter-Duck, who had crept at his heels bearing a candle, cried out, "God in Israel! She has flown away with Emanuel."

"Hush, you piece of folly!" whispered Lewis furiously.

"Yes, it was already arranged, and you blamed me!" gasped Flutter-Duck, with a last instinct of self-defence ere consciousness left her, and she fell forward.

"Silence," Lewis began, but there was an awful desolation at his heart and the salt of blood was in his mouth as he caught the falling form. The candlestick rolled to the ground, and the group was left in the heavy shadows of the staircase and the cold blast from the open door.

"God have mercy on me and the poor children! I knew all along it would come to that!" wailed Emanuel's wife.

"And I advanced him his week's money on Monday," Lewis remembered in the agony of the moment.

CHAPTER IV

POOR FLUTTER-DUCK

"Her cap blew off, her gown blew up,And a whirlwind cleared the larder."– Tennyson: The Goose.

It was New Year's Eve.

In the Ghetto, where "the evening and the morning are one day," New Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and the joyous medley of squeezing humanity moves slowly through the crush of mongers, pickpockets, and beggars. It is one of those festival occasions on which even those who have migrated from the Ghetto gravitate back to purchase those dainties whereof the heathen have not the secret, and to look again upon the old familiar scene. There is a stir of goodwill and gaiety, a reconciliation of old feuds in view of the solemn season of repentance, and a washing-down of enmities in rum.

At the point where the two main market-streets met, a grey-haired elderly woman stood and begged.

Poor Flutter-Duck!

Her husband dead, after a protracted illness that frittered away his savings; her daughter lost; her home a mattress in the corner of a strange family's garret; her faded prettiness turned to ugliness: her figure thin and wasted; her yellow-wrinkled face framed in a frowsy shawl; her clothes tattered and flimsy; Flutter-Duck stood and schnorred.

But Flutter-Duck did not do well. Her feather-head was not equal to the demands of her profession. She had selected what was ostensibly the coign of most vantage, forgetting that though everybody in the market must pass her station, they would already have been mulcted in the one street or the other.

But she held out her hand pertinaciously, appealing to every passer-by of importance, and throwing audible curses after those that ignored her. The cold of the bleak autumn day and the apathy of the public chilled her to the bone; the tears came into her eyes as she thought of all her misery and of the happy time – only a couple of years ago – when New Year meant new dresses. Only a grey fringe – the last vanity of pauperdom – remained of all her fashionableness. No more the plaited chignon, the silk gown, the triple necklace, – the dazzling exterior that made her too proud to speak to admiring neighbours, – only hunger and cold and mockery and loneliness. No plumes could she borrow, now that she really needed them to cover her nakedness. She who had reigned over a work-room, who had owned a husband and a marriageable daughter, who had commanded a maid-servant, who had driven in shilling cabs!

Oh, if she could only find her daughter – that lost creature by whose wedding-canopy she should have stood, radiant, the envy of Montague Street! But this was not a thought of to-day. It was at the bottom of all her thoughts always, ever since that fatal night. During the first year she was always on the lookout, peering into every woman's face, running after every young couple that looked like Emanuel and Rachel. But repeated disappointment dulled her. She had no energy for anything except begging. Yet the hope of finding Rachel was the gleam of idealism that kept her soul alive.

The hours went by, but the streams of motley pedestrians and the babel of vociferous vendors and chattering buyers did not slacken. Females were in the great majority, housewives from far and near foraging for Festival supplies. In vain Flutter-Duck wished them "A Good Sealing." It seemed as if her own Festival would be black and bitter as the Feast of Ab.

But she continued to hold out her bloodless hand. Towards three o'clock a fine English lady, in a bonnet, passed by, carrying a leather bag.

"Grant me a halfpenny, lady, dear! May you be written down for a good year!"

The beautiful lady paused, startled. Then Flutter-Duck's heart gave a great leap of joy. The impossible had happened at last. Behind the veil shone the face of Rachel – a face of astonishment and horror.

"Rachel!" she shrieked, tottering.

"Mother!" cried Rachel, catching her by the arm. "What are you doing here? What has happened?"

"Do not touch me, sinful girl!" answered Flutter-Duck, shaking her off with a tragic passion that gave dignity to the grotesque figure. Now that Rachel was there in the flesh, the remembrance of her shame surged up, drowning everything. "You have disgraced the mother who bore you and the father who gave you life."

The fine English lady – her whole soul full of sudden remorse at the sight of her mother's incredible poverty, shrank before the blazing eyes. The passers-by imagined Rachel had refused the beggar-woman alms.

"What have I done?" she faltered.

"Where is Emanuel?"

"Emanuel!" repeated Rachel, puzzled.

"Emanuel Lefkovitch that you ran away with."

"Mother, are you mad? I have never seen him. I am married."

"Married!" gasped Flutter-Duck ecstatically. Then a new dread rose to her mind. "To a Christian?"

"Me marry a Christian! The idea!"

Flutter-Duck fell a-sobbing on the fine lady's fur jacket. "And you never ran away with Lefkovitch?"

"Me take another woman's leavings? Well, upon my word!"

"Oh," sobbed Flutter-Duck. "Oh, if your father could only have lived to know the truth!"

Rachel's remorse became heartrending. "Is father dead?" she murmured with white lips. After awhile she drew her mother out of the babel, and giving her the bag to carry to save appearances, she walked slowly towards Liverpool Street, and took train with her for her pretty little cottage near Epping Forest.

Rachel's story was as simple as her mother's. After the showing up of Emanuel's duplicity, home had no longer the least attraction for her. Her nascent love for the migratory husband changed to a loathing that embraced the whole Ghetto in which such things were possible. Weary of Flutter-Duck's follies, indifferent to her father, she had long meditated joining her West-end girl-friend in the fur establishment in Regent Street, but the blow precipitated matters. She felt she could not remain a night more under her mother's roof, and her father's clumsy comment was but salt on her wound. Her heart was hard against both; month after month passed before her passionate, sullen nature would let her dwell on the thought of their trouble, and even then she felt that the motive of her flight was so plain that they would feel only remorse, not anxiety. They knew she could always earn her living, just as she knew they could always earn theirs. Living "in," and going out but rarely, and then in the fashionable districts, she never met any drift from the Ghetto, and the busy life of the populous establishment soon effaced the old, which faded to a forgotten dream. One day the chief provincial traveller of the house saw her, fell in love, married her, and took her about the country for six months. He was coming back to her that very evening for the New Year. She had gone back to the Ghetto that day to buy New Year honey, and, softened by time and happiness, rather hoped to stumble across her mother in the market-place, and so save the submission of a call. She never dreamed of death and poverty. She would not blame herself for her father's death – he had always been consumptive – but since death was come at last, it was lucky she could offer her mother a home. Her husband would be delighted to find a companion for his wife during his country rounds.

"So you see, mother, everything is for the best."

Flutter-Duck listened in a delicious daze.

What! Was everything then to end happily after all? Was she – the shabby old starveling – to be restored to comfort and fine clothes? Her brain seemed bursting with the thought of so much happiness; as the train flew along past green grass and autumn-tinted foliage, she strove to articulate a prayer of gratitude to Heaven, but she only mumbled "Médiâni," and lapsed into silence. And then, suddenly remembering she had started a prayer and must finish it, she murmured again "Médiâni."

When they came to the grand house with the front garden, and were admitted by a surprised maid-servant, infinitely nattier than any Flutter-Duck had ever ruled over, the poor creature was palsied with excess of bliss. The fire was blazing merrily in the luxurious parlour: could this haven of peace and pomp – these arm-chairs, those vases, that side-board – be really for her? Was she to spend her New Year's night surrounded by love and luxury, instead of huddling in the corner of a cold garret?

And as soon as Rachel had got her mother installed in a wonderful easy-chair, she hastened with all the eagerness of maternal pride, with all the enthusiasm of remorse, to throw open the folding-doors that led to her bedroom, so as to give Flutter-Duck the crowning surprise – the secret titbit she had reserved for the grand climax.

"There's a fine boy!" she cried.

And as Flutter-Duck caught sight of the little red face peeping out from the snowy draperies of the cradle, a rapture too great to bear seemed almost to snap something within her foolish, overwrought brain.

"I have already a grandchild!" she shrieked, with a great sob of ecstasy; and, running to the cradle-side, she fell on her knees, and covered the little red face with frantic kisses, repeating "Lewis love, Lewis love, Lewis love," till the babe screamed, and Rachel had to tear the babbling creature away.

You may see her almost any day walking in the Ghetto market-place – a meagre, old figure, with a sharp-featured face and a plaited chignon. She dresses richly in silk, and her golden earrings are set with coloured stones, and her bonnet is of the latest fashion. She lives near Epping Forest, and almost always goes home to tea. Sometimes she stands still at the point where the two market streets meet, extending vacantly a gloved hand, but for the most part she wanders about the by-streets and alleys of Whitechapel with an anxious countenance, peering at every woman she meets, and following every young couple. "If I could only find her!" she thinks yearningly.

Nobody knows whom she is looking for, but everybody knows she is only "Flutter-Duck."