NormalizeHEADmain

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 10270 deletions

diff --git a/old/56178-8.txt b/old/56178-8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 2dc3cd5..0000000
--- a/old/56178-8.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,10270 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forward from Babylon, by Louis Golding
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Forward from Babylon
-
-Author: Louis Golding
-
-Release Date: December 13, 2017 [EBook #56178]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORWARD FROM BABYLON ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Al Haines
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-  FORWARD FROM BABYLON
-
-  BY
-
-  LOUIS GOLDING
-
-
-
-  1921
-  MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
-  NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
-FOR MY FATHER
-
-
-
-
-_A Glossary of some Yiddish words is given on p._ 308.
-
-
-
-
-  CONTENTS
-
-  BOOK I
-
-  FORWARD FROM DOOMINGTON WALLS
-
-  CHAPTER
-
-  I
-  II
-  III
-  IV
-  V
-
-
-  BOOK II
-
-  FORWARD FROM PHYLACTERIES
-
-  VI
-  VII
-  VIII
-  IX
-  X
-
-
-  BOOK III
-
-  APHRODITE
-
-  XI
-  XII
-  XIII
-  XIV
-  XV
-  XVI
-
-
-
-
-FORWARD FROM BABYLON
-
-
-
-BOOK I
-
-FORWARD FROM DOOMINGTON WALLS
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Russia--here was the first Babylon.  Sitting on the metal stool, his
-second-hand velvet suit fraying against the heat of the oven, Philip's
-big eyes were round with horror of this immense, inscrutable place.
-Everything they said was portentous, not wholly real.  Many of their
-words attained a meaning only after laborious thinking.
-
-"_Kossacken_--big as trees!"
-
-"Big spikes in front of the Gubernator's house!  Babies stuck!  Rachel,
-the parchment-maker's daughter, caught up on a white horse!  Never
-heard of again!"
-
-"Blood in the streets, thick!"
-
-A fear and a helpless rage seized the faces there, always only half
-seen in the gloom of the kitchen.  By day, beyond the bars which
-uselessly scowled against the small glass panes, the drab walls of the
-house next door kept away everything but a dirty and dubious light.  By
-night, the flare of the coal-gas jet distorted his father, Reb Monash,
-and his own feet on the fender, and the sofa into things of blurred,
-awkward lines.
-
-It must be confessed that Reb Monash Massel was not wholly unconscious
-of his power to produce this atmosphere where terrible and impalpable
-presences flowed from his lips in a shadowy rout.  Sabres flashing!
-Hilarious ponderous blasphemies tangled in the beards of _Kossacken_
-storming onward and away!
-
-"You've heard me talk of Mendel, the Red One?  No, not the shoemaker,
-the clerk!  It was when a clerk he was, in the woods!  They were
-cutting the Posne firs.  They knew he was a Jew, the wood-cutters, and
-they put their heads together.  Can one be a Jew without stabbing the
-_goyishke_ eyes, eh?  He was working very late one night; it was near
-the end of the month and he had all his accounts to make up.  Well, he
-was bending over his papers very busy, and it was late, after midnight.
-There were owls hooting and two or three mad dogs in the woods crying
-now and again.  It was very miserable, but he was bent over his
-figures.  Above his head the air sang suddenly.  He lifted his head and
-a knife he saw, quivering in the log wall beyond him, to his left.  The
-window on his right was wide open because it was a sultry night.  He
-got up quietly and closed the window, then took the knife out to give
-back to its owner next day.  He was settling down to his work again
-when his eye was caught by something gleaming in the opposite wall.
-They were very badly built log cottages, these, pulled down as soon as
-the trees in that part of the forest were cleared.  Badly built, big
-chinks between the logs.  It was the gleam of a gun pointing at him
-through a chink...."
-
-Somebody uttered a sharp cry.  Philip on the fender-stool sat with the
-points of his elbows striking into his thighs, his chin pressed down
-into the palms of his hands.  A burning coke exploded in the fire and a
-fragment jumped out on the mat.  Mrs. Massel stooped to it and swiftly,
-with unprotected hands, threw it back into the fire.
-
-"It's already a long time ago," said Reb Monash.  "I wasn't fifteen
-yet.  I wasn't married.  It's all over now, it's all over.  Besides,"
-he went on comfortably, at the risk of disturbing the atmosphere he had
-created by his subtle modulations of tone, his pauses, his notes of
-drawn tension, "besides, they'll all be frying in hell, the
-wood-cutters, one and all!  What will you?"
-
-A slight murmur of satisfaction went round among the women.  The
-assurance coming from so authoritative a source as Reb Monash himself,
-no one could doubt that the wood-cutters had long ago met their deserts
-and were still adequately enduring them.
-
-"_Nu tatte_, what about Mendel, the Red One?"  This from Philip in an
-anxious quaver.
-
-Reb Monash looked round and down on Philip, a significant droop in his
-eyelids, his lips tightening a little.
-
-"_Schweig_," he said.  "Silence! is thy _tatte_ running away?"
-
-"Hush!" Mrs. Massel echoed, very quietly, from her corner of the sofa.
-
-Reb Monash could not resist the temptation of taking out one of his
-Silver Virginia cigarettes, deliberately setting it in his mouthpiece,
-lighting it, and drawing smoke two or three times contemplatively.
-
-Somebody's foot tapped in a corner.  He resumed.  "_Yah_, a gun
-pointing at him through a chink.  What was there to do, I ask you?  If
-they fired--well, they fired, and he was dead.  If they didn't fire, he
-was alive.  And if a man's alive, a man must live.  Not so?  So he took
-his quill in his hand again ... and he heard a little noise in the wall
-behind him.  He looked round.  Another gun.  There, held by unseen
-hands in the night.  Another gun.  Pointing at him.  Two guns pointing
-at him.  He turned round to his table again.  A Jew's not a Jew for
-nothing.  He said a few blessings.  Thou hearest, Feivel?" turning to
-Philip.
-
-Philip swallowed a lump in his throat fearfully.  He was afraid to
-answer.  It was perhaps one of those rhetorical questions to which an
-answer was somehow, mysteriously, an offence.  He thrust his head
-deeper into his hands and blinked.
-
-"He said a few blessings," Reb Monash repeated, to press the moral home
-upon his listeners.  "Well, what will you?  He was a good clerk, very
-neat.  And while the minutes in his clock were ticking as slowly as the
-years during the Time of Bondage, his figures he brought over from
-column to column.  When came the first sign of morning so that the lamp
-shone less strongly on the two guns in the walls there, pointed at his
-heart," these last words with slow emphasis and repeated, "pointed at
-his heart--he dipped his head and hands into his bowl of water, took
-out his _tallus_ and his _tephilim_; and when he was passing the strap
-round his arm, he heard very faintly the guns withdrawn through the
-chinks in the walls.  But he could hear no feet creeping away.
-Besides, he was _davenning_; how could he listen to anything else?
-It's only God you must think about when you're _davenning_, no?
-
-"He finished when it was already day in his hut.  His beard--it was a
-small beard, only a young man's beard--was grey, like the snow in Angel
-Street.  He did his accounts so well, did Mendel, the Red One--they
-always called him the Red One, even after that night, and strangers
-wondered why Red One--so well, that the merchant he worked for
-increased his wages by a rouble a month soon after.  Oh, a Russia it
-was!  What say you?"
-
-By this time Mrs. Levine, from Number Seven, was soaked in tears, her
-face, her blouse, and even the flour on her apron was streaky and damp.
-She had come in half-way through, but any anecdote, sad or merry, or
-merely a parable to illustrate a point of law, invariably reduced her
-to tears.
-
-"_Nu, nu!_" said Reb Monash, "over a year in Jerusalem!" which was a
-signal that no further ramification was to be expected from that
-anecdote, and moreover, that it might not be unwise for Mrs. Massel to
-drop her knitting and prepare for him a tumblerful of tea and lemon,
-with a lump of sugar--not too much lemon, for these were hard times;
-not like Russia, where people hung round your neck to beg the privilege
-from you of staying with them as a guest for two months, three months,
-as long as you liked.  Well, that was Russia, but what could you expect
-from England?  Pah!  _Yidishkeit_ going to the dogs!  Young men he'd
-seen with his own eyes shamelessly boarding those new-fangled electric
-tramcars on a _Shabbos_!  Which involved a double offence; not only
-riding but also carrying money in their pockets to pay for this
-dissipation--money on _Shabbos_!
-
-So it seemed, Philip was fitfully made aware, that there were aspects
-of this Russian Babylon which compared very favourably with the
-situation in England, or, more precisely, in the drab Northern city of
-Doomington, where Philip first saw the light, seven years before; or,
-perhaps, to be accurate, in Angel Street, where the wire factory at one
-end and the grocer's shop at the other were the limits of his confident
-experience.  Beyond Moishele's shop ("grocer's" shop only for
-convenience, seeing that his stock-in-trade extended from
-sewing-machines to fish and beetroot), Doomington Road extended its
-sonorous length, where, sole oases in this desert of terror, Philip
-recognized the Bridgeway Elementary School and the Polish Synagogue,
-the _Polisher Shool_.
-
-It was not wholly that the young scions of Judæa in Russia were so far
-from committing definite sins against God and Man that their days were
-a positive round of gratuitous holiness.  Much as Philip tried
-dutifully to rejoice with his father over this sanctity of young
-Russian Jewry, even when Reb Monash significantly expatiated on the
-talents of young gentlemen only seven years old who steered their own
-vessels through the dark seas of Kaballah--it was not this piety which
-set Philip brooding.
-
-The landscape which his elders painted, unconsciously and incidentally,
-as a background to their memories, filled his mind with inchoate
-sequences of pictures.  To the Jewish mind there is only one landscape
-which purely for its own sake arrests the mind and the heart.  Each
-detail of Jordan or Lebanon is impressed centuries too deep for its
-deletion under snow or dissolution under fire.  Plateau of Spain, the
-turbid flow of Volga, the squalid nightmare of Doomington Road, are
-matters of indifference to the Judaic protagonists while the great
-drama develops along its austere and shoddy ways towards some
-_dénouement_ far beyond the invisible hills.  To Reb Monash the
-Orthodox Greek Church he had known at home and from which his eyes
-turned bitterly away, whence the black-hearted pappas came forth and,
-on seeing Reb Monash, grimaced and bit his lips, had imperceptibly
-become the Baptist Missionary Chapel at the corner of Travers Row,
-whence the Rev. Wilberforce Wilkinson emerged from time to time,
-bestowing on every Reb Monash or Philip Massel who came that way a
-smile beatific with missionary invitation.
-
-But it was a matter of much concern to Philip that the Dniester which
-flowed beyond the pear-orchards (pear-orchards! he tried wistfully to
-recreate them spreading their splendid snows beyond the kitchen
-wallpaper) was clean as--clean as the water in the scullery tap.  Which
-seemed mythological.  Philip's acquaintance with rivers was limited to
-the River Mitchen that flowed on the further side of the wire factory
-and parallel with Doomington Road.  The river stank--literally and
-abundantly.  When it rose after the spring floods of two years ago, the
-cellars of Angel Street were a wash of noisome and greasy waters.
-
-"It happened in the centre of a forest..." said one.  "Trees--the sun
-never got through their leaves in summer..." said another.  "Yes, she
-had her own vines and fig trees...."  "... Corn, barley, all rotten in
-the rains..."  "... and after that, to finish them, they had five
-haystacks burned to the ground;" "the orchard by the river, near the
-Woman's Pool ..." they said to each other.
-
-It was little more than words to Philip.  It seemed illogical that
-there should be a river, which, being a river, did not stink.  Fruit
-could hardly be dissociated from the baskets and trays at Moishele's
-shop.  True, there were unconvincing pictures of fruit trees in the
-classroom at school, but they lent only a feeble corroboration.
-
-And then inevitably the talk came round from orchards and clean rivers
-to the old Babylonian horrors.
-
-"It happened in winter.  I stood in the trunk of a rotten tree till
-nightfall.  All day I could hear the women screaming and the horses of
-the _Kossacken_ storming in from the country.  They set fire to
-Miriam's house, and when she came to the window holding her hands out
-to the crowd ... they threw a broken wine bottle in her face...."
-
-When Reb Monash fell into his best anecdotic form, Philip sometimes,
-only a year or two ago, had been afraid to venture beyond the front
-door, in fear of _Kossacken_ galloping in with drawn sabres from
-Doomington Road.  Indubitably the night was compact with their menace.
-Only gradually he shook off these alarms.  England, he realized, the
-very filth of the Mitchen river impressing it upon him, and the grime
-of these grassless, clangorous streets, England was not Russia--a
-knowledge won only after thick agony and his brow soaked with midnight
-terror.  Russia--the first Babylon--the dread, the enmity, faded into
-the murky Doomington skies.
-
-One scene remained with him to consummate this nightmare.  Reb Monash
-told the story frequently.  If he had played a part whereat women
-lowered their respectful eyes with a fleeting gesture of disapproval or
-impatience, his piety none the less was confirmed, if it needed
-confirmation, in the eyes of the Lord Himself.
-
-It was many years ago now, years before Philip was born.  Reb Monash at
-last was emigrating from Russia to the Western world.  His family and
-half a dozen other families had been packed into the uncovered
-emigrants' cart which was to take them to the railway terminus many
-leagues away, where they would entrain for Germany and Hamburg.  It was
-a matter of no interest to the authorities that at most a dozen people
-could breathe comfortably and stretch their limbs in the vehicle they
-provided.  Family after family was bundled in, every half-foot of extra
-space was crammed with bedding and the few household goods which, the
-more cumbrous they were, they found the more indispensable.
-
-Why, indeed, Reb Monash was emigrating he had not precisely satisfied
-himself.  Though fear of a _pogrom_ hovered ever on the horizon, a
-cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but liable, any wind of prejudice
-blowing, to streak the sky with more sanguine hues than sunset, this
-had been beyond memory so much a normal feature of existence that it
-could not have been the determining factor.  If the traditional
-_wanderlust_ animated him, he was too much in demand as an orator in
-the synagogues hundreds of miles round Terkass to lack means to gratify
-his instinct.  It cannot have been the sentiment that young Jewry in
-England and America (where he was intending to end his provisional
-pilgrimage) had so far fallen from grace that it needed the example of
-his physical presence before it could resume the narrow road; it can
-hardly have been that--for such ungodliness as prevailed in England and
-America needed to be seen before it could be imagined.
-
-"But there we were," said Reb Monash, "Chayah," this being Mrs. Massel,
-"with little Rochke, peace be upon her, at her breast, and myself and
-Dorah and little Channah.  Oh, what a wind was blowing!  Knives!
-Packed like dead men in coffins we were!  Then the driver cracked his
-whip and we were away.  It was a desolate country, only we could see
-the long road in front and overhead the cold clouds and the fir trees
-running along the road by our side, patiently, like wolves!  We could
-only hear the wind and the bells of the horses and their hoofs,
-click-click, click-click, hour after hour.  But though the wind blew so
-cold in our faces, there was no room to breathe, no room.  To stretch
-out the chest, an impossible thing.  And then there was a station at
-the roadside where we stopped and--imagine it! they put another five,
-six people in the cart.  Think of it!  We started to grumble and some
-of the women and girls began to cry.  What do you expect?  They were
-half-dead for sleep.  But how could they sleep, crushed like that,
-standing, with no room to bend, let alone lie down, and the wind
-driving through their chattering teeth.  There was an official there.
-'Curse you!' shouted he, when he heard us lift our voices, 'Curse you!'
-
-"May he be cursed to his father's father!" every one in the kitchen
-muttered bitterly.
-
-"'Curse you for a lousy lot--you beggars, you rats!  Ugh!'  He spat
-into the cart, in amongst us.  _Nu_, we did what possible was to let
-the new people come in.  Can you picture for yourselves--Oh! you
-can't--what it was like?  Rochke, peace be upon her, was at the breast.
-We could hear the poor baby crying for food, eh, Chayah?"
-
-But Mrs. Massel could never bear the telling of this tale.  She would
-be in the scullery peeling potatoes.  Not washing up.  It was
-indiscreet to make a noise when Reb Monash was talking.  If Philip
-dropped a book, Reb Monash had to pause a full minute until he
-recovered the evenness of his flow.
-
-"Poor little Rochke, peace be upon her, crying for food!  And so
-crushed were we that there wasn't even room to feed the child, though
-everybody understood and tried to make room.  Now, perhaps you'll
-realize what it was like.  As the child became more and more hungry she
-became too weak even to cry.  It was getting dark and I started my
-night prayers.  Then I heard Chayah shout to me, 'Monash!  Monash!'  It
-was not the first time she'd cried 'Monash!' to me that day.  What
-could I do?  What help was there?  I just went on _davenning_.  Ah, the
-poor child, the poor child, God wanted thee!"
-
-His eyes softened.  There was a huskiness in his throat.  The women in
-the kitchen lifted their aprons to their eyes.  If there were any men
-there they cleared their throats staunchly.  Philip sat on the fender
-stool, his heart bursting with pity for his mother.  "Poor mother! my
-own poor mother!" he felt like whispering into her ear and throwing his
-arms round her neck and assuring her that he was alive and _he_ would
-love her and die for her at the last.  But he remembered that he was
-not encouraged to display vehemently his passion for his mother.  Very
-gently he slipped from the stool, turned round into the scullery and
-took a knife to help her peel the potatoes.  At all events, he would
-not allow her to work so cruelly hard.  Why, her fingers were dry and
-thin!  No! he would never let her work like this.  Never mind, when he
-grew up...
-
-"Poor child, poor child!" Reb Monash continued, his voice a trifle
-unsteady.  "How can I tell you?  She was suffocating there.  No room
-for her little lungs to open and draw breath!  'Monash, the child, the
-child!' Chayah was saying.  What could I do?  How could I understand?
-Besides, I was _davvenning_--how could I interrupt?  And her little
-face was growing grey.  What?  Do you understand?  There was no room
-for her heart to beat ... so her heart stopped beating!"
-
-Again there was a pause.  The suffocation which had gripped the child
-in that monstrous cart years ago seemed to occupy the kitchen in Angel
-Street.  It was not only the shut window; the beneficence of the
-architects of Angel Street had declared that kitchen-windows should be
-close-sealed as a wall.  It was not the shut doors; the doors were
-always shut because a "draught" aggravated Reb Monash's cough and
-rendered him speechless for minutes.  That suffocation from the Russian
-road had descended upon Angel Street.  Some one opened his collar and
-craned his neck for air.
-
-"But, of course, Chayah would not believe that anything had happened to
-the child.  I could only see Rochke very indistinctly because we'd been
-separated by the crowd.  'It's only a fit!  Shake her, shake her, if
-thou canst!' I said.  'Or perhaps a sickness of the stomach!' said
-Chayah.  'It will be well with the child when we stop and get down!
-She'll have some air and food, and she'll be all right, no?  Oh yes,
-she will, she will!  Sleep then, sleep then, babynu, all in mammy's
-arms!' she sang.
-
-"God alone knows what the place was where we stopped to change horses.
-And Rochke, peace be upon her?  Well, what need to talk?  She's happier
-than you or me.  Oh, but what an ornament to the race she would have
-been!  Such eyes, the little one, holy, like an old woman's!  But wait,
-the story's not finished yet.  Can it be believed?  The officials
-there, they wanted us to continue the journey with the dead child!  The
-smirched of soul, the godless ones!  Wanted us to go on with the dead
-child!  And when even they saw it was against God and Man, they wanted
-to bury her there and then, in unconsecrated ground!  Oi!  Oi! has it
-been heard of since Moses?  But always put your trust in the Above One
-and all will be well with you.  Know that!  Think of us, in the
-wilderness, with a dead baby, and no holy ground to bury her and not a
-friend anywhere.  The cart had gone on to the next stage, with Dorah
-and Channah.  Think of us!
-
-"It was then the Above One came to our help.  A Jewish merchant was on
-the road with a load of dried fruit.  He stopped, God be thanked, at
-the station, and we told him how things lay with us.  And would you
-believe it?  Not a penny he would take--not much was there to give--but
-he took the baby away and gave her holy burial in his own town!  Be his
-years long in the land!  May his seed multiply to the fourth and fifth
-generation!  And so all is well with Rochke, peace be upon her!"
-
-Reb Monash obviously drew much consolation for the whole episode from
-the fact that the Above One had shown him this signal favour, and the
-last offices had been performed unimpeachably over Rochke's body.
-
-But perhaps Philip was too young to be comforted by the thoughts of the
-propriety with which the incident had closed.  He could only see very
-clearly the figures of his mother, blank-eyed, her hands empty,
-standing alone in Babylon, in that bleak Russian night.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-Philip had not yet recovered from the dull dismay with which he had
-found himself installed as a scholar in the Infants' Class of the
-Bridgeway Elementary School.  He had attained the age of five.  Within
-quite recent memory he had been breeched.  He still remembered the
-pocket in his skirt which was crammed with "stuffs"--the main
-merchandise of his companions, snippets of prints, calicoes, alpacas
-and linen rags picked up below the maternal needles and generally on
-the doorsteps of Angel Street.
-
-Reb Monash was by no means hostile to the idea that Philip should
-acquire a Gentile education, on the broad understanding that it should
-not outshadow Philip's accomplishment in Hebrew lore.  It went without
-saying that labour on the Saturday should be anathema under any
-concatenation of the links of Fate.  Moreover, the law of the land, in
-the person of the "School Board," had been eyeing him significantly.
-
-"It's time Philip should begin school!" said Reb Monash shatteringly
-one evening.  Philip lay dozing on the horse-hair sofa.  His heart
-shook before the joint assault of a great joy and a great fear.
-"School"--that unfathomable place of red brick and towering windows,
-where the "lads" went, the swaggering young men who jumped from
-pavement to pavement of Angel Street in five jumps; where one was
-brought into direct visual contact with "pleaseteacher," a thing beyond
-all imagination lovely and terrible.
-
-"So Channah, thou wilt not go to work to-morrow morning.  He's an old
-man, Philip, and he must make his start in life."
-
-"All right, _tatte_!" Channah murmured.  She thought ruefully of the
-fourpence or eightpence less it would mean in her week's total as a
-buttonhole hand.  But she was devoted to Philip and his wise, elderly
-ways, and the thought of setting his feet upon the paths of that
-learning whence her own feet had been rudely torn on the morning of
-Philip's birth was worth the sacrifice of many fourpences.
-
-Philip's face shone soapily next morning.  His black hair lay stretched
-in rigidly parallel formations on both sides of his impeccable parting.
-Channah had shined his button-boots with so much rubbing and spitting
-into congealed blacking that his boots seemed to focus all the light in
-the kitchen.  His mother had adorned his blouse with a great bow of
-vermilion sateen.
-
-"Is pleaseteachers like policemans?" Philip asked, as Channah led him
-by a hand clammy with apprehension along the Doomington Road to the
-Bridgeway Elementary School.
-
-"Oh no!  Pleaseteachers are much more lovely!" was the reply.
-"Policemen only lock little boys up, but pleaseteachers give 'em
-toffee--and flowers!"
-
-"And flowers?" echoed Philip incredulously.
-
-When they arrived at the entrance to the school, a sudden nausea
-overwhelmed Philip.
-
-"I'se not going to school!" he said suddenly and firmly.
-
-"Feivele, what do you mean?"
-
-"I'se not going!"
-
-"What's the matter with you?  Why aren't you going?"
-
-"_Dat's_ why!"
-
-But Channah had not come unprepared for such an emergency.  Mrs. Massel
-had anticipated it with a stick-jaw of Moishele's best.  She held it
-towards the child and made provocative labial noises.
-
-"Aren't you going now?"
-
-"No!" he said a little more doubtfully.
-
-She had another weapon in the armoury.
-
-"_Tatte_ will give you such a _pitch-patch_!" she said
-threateningly--_pitch-patch_ being a form of castigation among all
-nations as constant in method as it is variable in name.
-
-In the surge of new fears, Reb Monash had been temporarily obscured.
-Philip's mind travelled back swiftly to the knees of Reb Monash where
-at so sinless an age he had already lain transversely more than once.
-He contemplated the possibility of _pitch-patch_ for some moments.
-
-"Gib me de stickjaw, den!" he said.
-
-"You can't eat it now!"
-
-"One suck!" he wheedled.
-
-They passed duly through the vestibule into the great "infants' hall."
-At its geometrical centre the principal pleaseteacher sat, pavilioned
-in terrors.  A few words of high import passed between Miss
-Featherstone and Channah.  Before Philip's eyes the walls soared
-endlessly into perpendicular space.  There was no ceiling.  He made the
-hideous discovery that there was no floor to the room.  His shining
-boots hung suspended in space.  Strange antiphonies propounded and
-expounded the cosmic mysteries.  He was lost.  He was rolling headlong
-among the winds, like a piece of cotton-fluff lifted high above the
-roofs of Angel Street.
-
-What was this?  The pleaseteacher was looking at him; her mouth was
-opening; there were big cracks on each side of her nose.  Yes, she was
-smiling into him.  He resumed his ponderable qualities.  He was a
-little boy dismally sick in the infants' hall of the Bridgeway
-Elementary School.  He preferred to be a piece of cotton-fluff.  It was
-a more impersonal doom.
-
-"What's your name, little boy?"
-
-He wondered whether it was an impertinence to reply.  It was funny and
-dry at the back of his throat.  He stared fixedly at the crack on the
-left side of her nose.
-
-"What's your name, little boy?"  A certain acidulation had thinned her
-voice.
-
-"My name Feivele an' I live at ten Angel Street an' I'm five years old
-an' my farver's Rebbie Massel!" he said, the words trembling out in a
-bewildered spate.
-
-"Will you ask your brother to speak a little more slowly and
-distinctly, Miss Massel?  Thank you.  Now what's your name, little boy?"
-
-"Philip Massel, pleaseteacher!"
-
-"Now, Philip Massel.  I'm your head mistress.  You must call _me_ Miss
-Featherstone.  Miss Briggs!" she called, "Miss Briggs!  Will you please
-put Philip Massel into your class?"  Then turning to Philip, "You will
-kindly call Miss Briggs 'teacher.'  You understand?"
-
-"Yes, pleaseteacher!"
-
-"Stupid!  But he'll soon know better," she assured Channah.
-
-"Yes, Miss Featherstone!" Channah corroborated.  Philip's hand
-feverishly held his sister's all this while.
-
-"You'd better just see him to his place," said Miss Featherstone to
-Channah, as Miss Briggs led the way to her class.
-
-"Sit here, Philip," said Miss Briggs, "next to Hyman Marks!"
-
-"Don't go 'way, don't go 'way!" Philip huskily implored Channah.
-Hundreds of scornful eyes were stripping him bare of his blouse, his
-shined boots, his bow of vermilion sateen, till they all lay at his
-feet in a miserable heap and he shivered there in the cold, naked,
-despised.  "Don't go 'way!" he moaned.
-
-Channah looked despairingly towards Miss Briggs.
-
-Miss Briggs seized her chalk significantly.  It was time the new-comer
-had settled down.
-
-"I'll tell you what," said Channah, "I'll go to Moishele's and buy you
-a ha'pny tiger nuts and a box of crayons.  And I'll come back straight
-away."
-
-"Promise!" he demanded in anguish.
-
-"_Emmes!_" she said, invoking the Hebrew name of Truth.
-
-"_Emmes what?_"  He knew that Truth unsupported by an invocation to the
-Lord was a weak buttress.
-
-"_Emmes adoshem!_" she said, her heart sinking at the perjury.  But,
-she consoled herself, it was not as if she had sworn by the undiluted
-form of the oath, "_Emmes adonoi!_" from the violation of which
-solemnity there is no redemption.
-
-Philip saw her disappear through the doors.  A black cloud of
-loneliness enveloped him until he could hardly breathe.  The terrifying
-sing-song of these young celebrants at their fathomless ceremony had
-begun again.
-
-  _Twice one are two,
-  One and one are two!
-  Twice two are four,
-  Two and two are four!_
-
-
-Fantastic hieroglyphs danced across the blackboard at the dictate of
-Miss Briggs' chalk.  The heavy minutes ticked and ticked in a
-reiteration of monochrome and despair.
-
-  _Twice one are two,
-  One and one are two!_
-
-
-What teeth she had, Miss Briggs!  Not like his mother's!  A little
-yellow his mother's were, but small and neat, as he observed whenever
-she smiled one of her tired and sweet smiles.  What was the specific
-purpose of Miss Briggs' teeth?  Why should those two at the top in
-front be so large and pointed?  He had heard old Mo who sold newspapers
-tell tales about canninbles.  Wass Miss Briggs a canninble?  Oh the
-long, long Channahless minutes!  When would she come?  What?  Some one
-was whispering behind him.
-
-"Say, kid!"
-
-Philip was afraid to turn round.  What would Miss Briggs do if he
-turned round?  And she had two such horrid teeth, at the top, in front!
-
-"Say, kid!  Got anyfing?"
-
-Philip turned his head round fearfully.  A villainously scowling face
-was bent over from the bench behind towards his own.
-
-"Aven't yer got nuffing?"
-
-Philip looked helplessly into the forbidding face.
-
-"I tell yer, kid!" the voice menaced, "if yer don't gib me anyfing,
-I'll spifflicate yer!"
-
-The process of spifflication sounded as terrible as it certainly was
-vague.  Philip put his hand into his trouser-pocket where the lump of
-stickjaw lay warmly spreading its seductive bounties over the lining.
-To part with a whole lump of stickjaw from which the one due he had
-extracted was a single suck!  But, on the other hand, spifflication!
-And moreover, soon, oh surely very, very soon, Channah would come back
-with the tiger nuts, not to mention the box of crayons.  He drew the
-lump of sticky languor from his pocket.  A grubby fist from behind
-closed round it.
-
-  _Twice two are four,
-  Two and two are four!_
-
-
-Faithless Channah!  How could the mere passing of time be such a
-labour?  He subsided into a daze of stupefaction; only the hope of
-Channah's appearance buzzed and buzzed like a fly on the ear-drum.  A
-great tear rolled slowly down his face.  Another followed and another.
-They dropped into the bow of vermilion sateen.  Suppose his mother
-should die in his absence?  Or there might be a big, big fire!  And
-just suppose....
-
-A great clangour of bells!  Miss Featherstone on her dais shut a book
-with a loud snap.  Miss Briggs definitively placed her chalk on her
-desk.  A pleaseteacher from another class walked with dignity over to
-the piano at the far end of the hall.  She lifted the lid and played a
-slow march.  The top class filed out from the desks, advanced in single
-order to a red line which, starting a few feet from Miss Featherstone's
-dais, led to the door; the class marched along the red line and passed
-with decorum from the hall.  When Philip walked the red line in his
-turn he was wondering whether he ought to be placing each foot
-centrally upon the line.  Dizzily he staggered along.  When at last he
-rushed out into the road, wild with the relief from servitude, Mrs.
-Massel was waiting for him outside the school entrance, and when she
-lifted him from his feet, he howled with fearful delight.
-
-His heart was full of resentment against Channah for her ignoble
-desertion.  "Channah de Pannah, de big fat fing!" he jeered, when he
-saw her at dinner.  Only the surface of his wound was healed when she
-bestowed upon him not only the tiger nuts and the box of crayons but a
-gratuitous tin trumpet gay with scarlet wools.
-
-He refused vehemently to return to school that afternoon.  But Reb
-Monash, entering the kitchen from the sitting-room where his _chayder_,
-his Hebrew school, was installed, speedily convinced him that the
-morning's bitter destiny must again be pursued.
-
-For days his tiny faculties were flattened beneath the weight of his
-bewilderment.  When, one morning, he went with the others into the
-playground for the interval, he crept inconspicuously on the skirts of
-the shrieking masses to the furthest corner in the wall, where he
-crouched, huddled, wondering what it was like to be grown up.  When a
-lady came into the playground and vigorously rang a bell, he felt that
-no bell had any meaning to him.  He was apart, unwanted.  When he saw
-the children lining up in their classes and passing into the school
-with their teachers at their head, he turned towards them a dull
-abstracted eye.  But when the appalling quiet of the playground
-impressed itself upon him, and he heard the choruses droning through
-the windows, "Twice One are Two," he realized with a sickening pang of
-alarm that he too was a cog in that machine, that he ought to have been
-minutes and minutes ago on the inner side of those walls.
-
-His face was hot with shame as he dragged his feet through the door,
-and along the red line which burned down the hall like a trail of fire.
-When he slunk into his place like a cat with a stolen steak into a
-cellar, he found the eyes of Miss Briggs turned towards him so round
-with stony horror that he feared they must drop from their sockets.
-Hyman Marks next door gazed virtuously at him and turned away with a
-sniff.
-
-Something of this early stupefaction remained with him, even though he
-had passed from the infants' hall to the upstairs department.
-"Pleaseteacher" had long been attenuated into "teacher," and Miss
-Green, who was the genius president over Standard Two, had entertained
-for him more than a teacherly regard ever since Philip had raised his
-hand in the middle of a lesson and inquired from her, "Please, Miss
-Green, can pupils marry teachers?"  They frequently maintained long
-conversations when school was over, until Philip suddenly would bethink
-himself of the duties his racial tongue demanded and which awaited him
-in _chayder_ under the unremitting vigilance of Reb Monash; whereon,
-with a troubled "Please, good afternoon, teacher!" he would scamper
-off.  Miss Green liked the sonority with which he delivered the
-recitations she taught in class.  He had a premature sense of tragedy.
-
-  _On Linden when the sun was low,
-  All darkly lay the untrodden snow--_
-
-he delivered with the long modulations of a funeral dirge.  He seemed
-to have discovered a new delight in the mere utterance of rhythmic
-lines.  "On Linden when the sun was low," he chanted on his way home
-from school, bringing his right foot down heavily upon the iambic
-stresses of the line.  There was a Saturday morning when Reb Monash
-tested his knowledge of the Bible portion to be read in the synagogue
-that day with "Say then, Feivele, what is the chapter in _shool_
-to-day?"
-
-Philip was abstracted.  His mind was recreating his latest conversation
-with Miss Green.
-
-"On Linden when the sun was low!" he replied.  Reb Monash stared at
-him.  "Proselytized one!" he exclaimed.  "What means this?"  He led
-Philip to a copy of the Pentateuch and summarily refreshed his mind.
-
-They were great friends, Miss Green and Philip, a fact which did not
-leave Philip's behaviour uninfluenced.  The class was filing through
-the open door, (in the upstairs department the classes had single rooms
-instead of a common hall).  He had not noticed that an unfamiliar
-teacher was standing at the door in Miss Green's place, and just before
-entering he turned round to exchange a few words with his successor in
-the procession.
-
-"You bad boy!" exclaimed the voice of the strange lady.  "Do not sit
-down in your place!  You will stand in the corner till I ask for you!"
-
-Philip's ears were rimmed with hot shame.  The procession ended.  "Come
-here!" said the lady.  "Hold your hand out!  Now!"  Five, ten, twenty
-times, she brought a ruler down on his knuckles.  It was not the pain
-which mattered.  It was the disgrace!  He, Miss Green's young
-friend--or, as his class-mates with characteristic envy and vulgarity
-called it, her "sucker-up!"  Acute as his humiliation was, he kept
-strict count of the ruler's descent upon his knuckles.  Twenty-four!
-Wouldn't Miss Green have something to say about it!
-
-When the class filed into the room next day, Miss Green was looking
-down upon Philip with so affectionate a regard that the shame and anger
-pent within him since yesterday burst their bounds and he broke into
-tears.
-
-Horror upon horror!  Miss Green, touched to the heart by these sudden
-tears, bent down from her Olympian five-foot-four and kissed him loudly
-on the forehead!  It was too much to bear!  A platonic display of
-mutual respect was an excellent arrangement.  But this descent into the
-murky ether of physical contact injured his sense of fitness.  The
-sudden drought of his tears, the bright red spot in the centre of each
-cheek, instructed Miss Green that she had erred.  "These inscrutable
-little Jew-boys!" she mused, and turned to Alfred and the cakes.
-
-Next day she asked him to stay a moment with her after school.  They
-both realized the impropriety of any reference to yesterday's incident.
-There followed a little small talk, then--
-
-"Tell me, Philip," she said quietly, "tell me which you'd rather be,
-Jew or Christian?"
-
-The wheels of the whole world for one instant ceased their revolutions.
-Here in truth was the end of an epoch and the beginning of another.
-Here was an issue which nothing had ever before presented to his mind,
-and an issue stated so simply.  "Tell me, Philip, which would you
-rather be, Jew or Christian?"  He caught his breath as he envisioned
-the state of affairs when such things as being Jew or Christian
-depended upon one's own volition.  For one instant cool as snow and
-loud with the volume of plunging waters a something beyond even this
-came from far off and looked mournfully and intensely into his eyes: he
-beheld a state of things where nothing bound him with chains, where
-dispassionately he looked at Jew and Christian, and walked away,
-onward, up the slopes of a hill, where words like these had lost all
-meaning.
-
-He staggered on the locker where Miss Green had placed him.  His
-forehead was damp with a slight dew of sweat.  The blackboard caught
-his eyes.
-
-      26
-      34
-     ---
-     104
-     78
-     ---
-     884
-
-
-Yes, yes, that was more intelligent.  He scratched his head and looked
-down at his feet.  Really when you come to think of it, Christians did
-eat repulsive things.  There was a Christian boy in the playground one
-afternoon eating a _brawn_ sandwich--despicable food, spotted and pale
-pink like the white cat at home after the kettle of boiling water had
-fallen on its fur.  True! it seemed that Christian boys occasionally
-went for their holidays and saw cows and trees and things--a distinct
-feather in the Christian hat.  But on the other hand, Mr. Barkle was a
-Christian, and only Christians could kill rabbits like Mr. Barkle.  The
-slaughtering of animals was a very peculiar and limited privilege among
-his own folk--a rite performed, as Reb Monash had made clear to the
-_chayder_, swiftly, painlessly and professionally.  Mr. Barkle, on the
-other hand, had brought a rabbit into Standard Two for "object lesson"
-and murdered it, slowly, publicly.  Mr. Barkle himself was not unlike a
-rabbit.  He was very fat and his grey waistcoat resembled the rabbit's
-belly.  But his eyes sparkled somewhat unpleasantly--very different
-from the rabbit's big, brown frightened eyes.  And Mr. Barkle had
-pressed the rabbit's neck between his hands, till the eyes became
-bigger and bigger, and the legs moved convulsively, and a long low
-whistle came out mournfully from the rabbit's throat, and the legs
-twitched only faintly and then hung quite limp.
-
-After Mr. Barkle had cut up the animal to describe its parts, a little
-Christian boy had said:
-
-"Please, Mister Barkle, can I take the rabbit 'ome?  Farver luvs
-rabbits!"
-
-No!  Philip determined.  _No!_ he would never be a Christian!
-
-Yet Miss Green was a Christian.  It would be impolite to be too decided
-about it.
-
-"Please, Miss Green," he said, looking up, "I'd rarver stay wot I was
-born!"
-
-"There's a wise boy!" said Miss Green, with the faintest touch of
-chagrin.  And the conversation pursued less transcendental roads.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-At no time did Philip find the society of his coevals congenial; the
-society at least of the young males of his age; which was an element in
-his composition not, I venture, to be crudely dismissed as one form or
-another of priggishness.
-
-Whatever the defects were of Philip's education, and these were not
-inconsiderable, he was never warned to have no truck with Barney of
-next door because his father was a presser and rigidly banished collars
-from his wardrobe, excepting on _Yom Kippur_, the Day of Atonement, on
-which occasion a waterproof collar did annual service with much
-_éclat_; nor were fogs of dubiety sedulously created around Mr. and
-Mrs. Lavinsky, whose premarital relations were, it was rumoured, not
-free from stain.
-
-Yet inherently Philip held himself aloof from all the "lads" in Angel
-Street.  He felt, not consciously and certainly not in defined words,
-that everything coarse and cruel in the architecture of Angel Street
-had taken hold of their spirit.  There was as much of the frankly and
-repulsively animal in them as in the sharp-ribbed cats who chattered
-obscenely on the walls.  He felt at times when he saw the boys
-slithering along the roofs that fragments of the very roofs, steeped in
-grime and dirty rain as they were, had detached themselves and become
-animate.
-
-He turned with relief to the latest "poetry" he had been taught; in the
-reverberant recessions of rhythm the boys were rolled over and sucked
-down like pebbles in an ebbing tide.  The fustian of "Horatius" gave
-him unmeasured delight, and soaked in the yellow flood of Tiber he
-would forget the malodorous imminence of Mitchen.
-
-But in the girls of Angel Street he satisfied his need for human
-companionship.  They did not bandy the filth of gesture and word which
-were the traffic of the boys and which turned him sick, made him
-faintly but dismally aware of yawning abysses of uncleanness hidden
-from his feet.
-
-So he would sit with the girls at their doorsteps while the boys
-shrieked in the entries.  The girls were a willing audience for his
-declamations of verse; they accepted Kaspar's reiteration of "But it
-was a famous victory" with sympathy and evident pleasure.  When they
-realized the full implications of the question,
-
-  _Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,
-        A tress o' golden hair,
-        O' drowned maiden's hair?_
-
-they took out their handkerchiefs and wept.
-
-Philip was sitting among the girls cutting out from the advertisement
-pages of magazines pictures of ladies with artificially perfected
-busts.  The pictures thus obtained were inserted among the leaves of
-books and the custom of the possessors of pins was solicited.  Three
-pricks among the pages of the books were allowed, with whatsoever
-bounty fell to the adventure.
-
-Philip had never quite decided which was the happier state--the being
-endowed with pictures of many well-busted ladies, or the possession of
-many pins.  The latter at least held the prospect of a service he might
-render to his mother, to whom a stock of pins should, he presumed, be
-an inestimable boon.  But opulence in pins meant a dearth in busted
-ladies--a barren state of affairs only to be remedied by a fresh outlay
-of capital.
-
-A "gang" came by whooping.  "Gang" was a popular word in the vocabulary
-of Angel Street.  It was sinister with warnings of Red Indians crawling
-on their bellies from the pampas beyond Doomington Road.  It evoked
-images of Red Signs found on the necks of the murdered daughters of
-millionaires.
-
-"Yah! look at Philip Massel!" a voice jeered from the "gang."  Philip
-shivered.  He disliked the "gang," he had no point of contact with it.
-
-"Stick-to-my-muvver-an-don't-touch-me!" the voice continued.  The girls
-were silent, for chivalry was not a predominant trait in the psychology
-of the "gang."  Jessie still bore a black eye inflicted by Barney in
-unequal war.  It was Barney took up the cry:
-
-"Philip Massel, Queen-of-the-Girls!"
-
-This was a slogan which appealed to his comrades.  "Philip Massel,
-Queen-of-the-Girls!" they reiterated shrilly.  Philip's face was pale.
-His hand trembled as he cut the pictures.  The bust of the next lady he
-delimitated sadly belied the merits claimed by the advertisement.
-
-"Oo--oo!  'Oo kissed Jessie in the back entry?" Barney howled.
-
-"Philip Massel, Queen-of-the-Girls!" the rest sang in choric delight.
-Oh, the black cavernous lie!  Was Jehovah silent?  Philip's eyes
-blazed.  He flung his scissors down with a crash.  The further side of
-Angel Street rose and sank as he rushed towards Barney.  The rules of
-the ring had not yet been studied in Angel Street.  Murderously he
-buffeted his fists against Barney's abdomen.  Barney turned green and
-subsided.  The rest of the "gang" jumped upon Philip and were
-comfortably pummelling him when Reb Monash appeared on the scene.  Mrs.
-Levine had lost no time in informing him that a brawl was in progress.
-Reb Monash had no doubt it involved those of his scholars who were
-already scandalously late for _chayder_.
-
-The "gang" wilted before him.  At his feet lay Philip, gasping and
-bleeding.
-
-"Feivele at the bottom of it!" he thundered.  "Oh, a credit thou art to
-thy race!  An eight-year old, and this is the sum of thy knowledge!
-Come then, I will instruct thee!" and he led Philip sternly home by a
-familiar grasp of the brachial muscle between finger and thumb.  Jessie
-picked up the scissors ruminatively and turned the pages of the _Strand
-Magazine_.
-
-
-The idea shortly after occurred to Philip that some compromise with his
-sex ought to be possible.  It occurred simultaneously with the
-appearance in his library of a new type of American hero.  He was now
-able to read without difficulty the "bloods" which described with
-impartial gusto sandbaggings in the Bowery and the slaughter of
-travellers conducted by Poncho-clad desperadoes in the Argentine.
-Lurid as the "gang" was in behaviour, their literature was still
-extremely tepid.  Intellectually, they had not outstepped Lady
-Kathleen's tender limits as laid down in her _Books for the Bairns_,
-whereas Philip's heart had for months hovered and exulted with the
-hearts of fully-fledged errand boys, twelve and fourteen years old.
-
-But a new hero had crossed the Atlantic.  He was in soul much more
-turbulent than the heroes of the conservative school.  His morals,
-purely, be it understood, in order to achieve a virtuous end, were even
-more elastic.  The terror of his name was even more astounding.  But
-all his villainous qualities were kept strictly below the surface,
-though, of course, his assistants were as coarse-grained and
-blasphemous as tradition demanded.  His manners were so exquisite that
-hotel-keepers did not presume to ask for the payment of their bills.
-When he slipped from his chambers to undertake a midnight escapade, he
-would insert into one pocket his revolver, into another a
-silver-mounted bottle of hair-oil.  Whilst his minions were grappling
-with the objects of his displeasure and bullet shots ripped across the
-shack, he would lift the wick of the lamp in order to manicure his
-nails.  His speech was so full of gracious evasions that--that, in
-short, he completely captured Philip's heart.
-
-Here was a mode of making artistic capital out of those very qualities
-of the young men in Angel Street which so revolted him, whilst at the
-same time he would himself accentuate those features of aloof
-refinement for which they had dubbed him "bouncer," a word particularly
-repugnant to him, accentuate them actually amid deference and applause.
-
-How, then, was a reversal of the Angel Street relationships to be
-effected?  Philip hardly knew.  His first discovery was the gratifying
-fact that on a certain non-physical plane the "gang" regarded him with
-a measure of positive awe.  Not only was he the son of his father, but
-he had the Kabbalistic faculty of uttering rhymes, a faculty which
-influenced them precisely as a barbarian village might be influenced by
-a medicine-man's incantations.  His uprising against Barney had not
-been barren of result, though the fierce splendour of it had been
-mitigated somewhat by the parental sequel.
-
-But most of the battle was won when, by a stroke of fortune, Philip,
-for whom a new hat was long overdue, was supplied with a sample of the
-head-gear associated with captaincy from time immemorial.  His new hat
-was dowered with a shiny peak and a ribbon splendid with the legend
-"H.M.S. IMMACULATE," and when pressed slantwise over Philip's left eye
-gave him an air of authority not generally associated with his small
-face.  A certain calm persuasive eloquence, assisted by a number of
-"alleys," both "blood" and "conker," vastly advanced his cause.  He
-read, finally, certain convincing passages from the career of the Dandy
-Dave by which not only was Philip Massel's claim to be his European
-representative rendered incontrovertible, but it was proved also that
-any actual immersion of his own person in the filth of affairs was as
-unbecoming to Philip's new dignity as to the dignity of Dandy Dave.
-
-The character Philip now assumed was undoubtedly a composite affair.
-Dandy Dave was predominant, but it was not immune from the vocabulary
-and behaviour of pirates, explorers, trappers and other species of
-emancipated men.  The trapper element did not persist, as shall be
-rendered credible.
-
-"Do you see that skunk?" Captain Philip exclaimed to Lieutenant Barney
-one day.
-
-"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Lieutenant Barney, "Aye, aye, sir!" being, in
-fact, Lieutenant Barney's only and final achievement in the diction of
-romance.
-
-The "skunk" was a notorious piebald cat even at that moment slinking
-with a torso of fried fish along the yard wall of an empty house where
-the "gang" was foregathered.
-
-"'E must be captured!  We shall sell 'is 'ide to the next ship wot
-calls at yonder port!"
-
-An exciting chase, which extended over two days, followed.  On the
-evening of the second day the corpse of the piebald cat was laid at
-Captain Philip's feet.
-
-"Wot now, Captain?" said Lieutenant Barney, whose wavering loyalties
-had been steadied only an hour ago by the gift of an india-rubber
-sucker.  Philip's heart fluttered a little unquietly.  In the mere
-abstract conception of chase there had been much of the poetical.  In
-the presence of the dead cat the fogs of illusion thinned.  Shame
-tugged at his heart-strings.  But the faultless figure of Dandy Dave
-stood before him.  With little knowledge of the implication of his
-words, "Flay 'im!" he said harshly.  "The merchants call this morn!"
-
-Lieutenant Barney inserted a broken blade below the fringe of the cat's
-eye.  He tugged.  Philip looked down.  The hideous mess which ensued
-spattered Philip's brain like a pat of filth.  He ran quickly from the
-yard and was violently sick for many minutes....  The trapper aspect of
-Captain Philip's authority did not again assert itself.
-
-Behind the Bridgeway Elementary School extended a huge and desolate
-brick-croft.  Here the "gang" frequently undertook expeditions to the
-Himalayas and the two Poles.  Volcanoes were discovered and duly
-charted.  Wide lakes of clayey yellow water were navigated.  It was a
-point of honour with the "gang" that the lakes must be definitely
-crossed from border to border, not merely circumvented.  But while the
-"gang" miserably splashed along and drew their clogged boots to the
-further side, Captain Philip serenely walked the whole way round and
-from his dry vantage encouraged his men to safety.  It would never do
-for the Doomington counterpart of Dandy Dave to smirch his own limbs
-alongside of the vulgar herd.
-
-The last episode in the captaincy of Philip was the Liberation of
-Princess Lena, the immediate inspiration of which was the gallant
-rescue by Dandy Dave of the daughter of the President of the American
-Republic from a cellar below the very basement of the White House.
-
-Lena Myer lived in Angel Street and kept irregular hours.  The days of
-her flirtations had already begun.  When she returned one evening it
-was arranged that the "gang" was to seize her, gag her, and carry her
-away to the stable of the lemonade works adjacent to the wire
-factory--whither Lieutenant Barney had discovered a secret entrance.
-Here for the space of an hour she was to be bound to a support.  The
-clattering of horses was to be heard in the courtyard and Captain
-Philip, sweeping in magnificently, was to cut her bonds, lay her
-captors in the dust and deliver her with a flourish to her distracted
-parents.
-
-Of course, Lena herself was not to be informed of the somewhat negative
-part reserved for her.  She had already attained her "stuck-up" days,
-but her beauty and her father's wealth, (he was a barber), evidently
-cast her for the situation.
-
-All fell out as arranged.  As she entered the darkest patch of Angel
-Street a black mass fell on her, choked her with rags, and bore her
-kicking furiously to the stable, where she was fastened to a wooden
-support.  Many desolate minutes passed, during which her moans struck
-so heavy a chill into the hearts of the desperadoes that at last they
-removed the rags from her mouth.  Immediately such a foul stream of
-imprecation fell from her virginal lips, that the bloodthirsty gang
-withdrew trembling towards the spider-webbed walls.  She threatened
-them venomously with the vengeance of her admirers.  Some one made a
-tentative advance in her direction.  She uttered a piercing scream and
-he recoiled with knocking knees.  The "gang" had experienced fights
-with "gangs" from other streets; the "gang" even had compassed the
-discomfiture of a policeman.  But a situation like this, where the
-incalculable feminine threw all their generalizations into rout, left
-them shorn of philosophy.
-
-"Jem Cohen 'll 'ave your eyes out, yer rotten lot 'er lice!" said the
-maiden delicately.
-
-A clatter in the yard beyond the stable, cunningly caused by the play
-of two slates on the cobbles, produced sudden silence.  Captain Philip!
-A tremendous wave of dislike for Captain Philip swept over his
-supporters!  Nobody but a "bouncer" like that Philip Massel could have
-involved them in so unnatural a situation.  By crikey!  _They'd_ show
-him, by jemmy, wouldn't they just!
-
-Philip rushed into the stable's darkness.
-
-Rigid with hate, Princess Lena lay taut against her support.  With a
-fine curve Philip drew the captainly knife.  The braces-and-rope
-fetters fell from the lady's limbs.  With the hiss of an escaping
-valve, Lena threw herself upon the astounded hero.  Two great scratches
-ripped redly down Philip's cheeks.
-
-"Take that an' that an' that' an that!" she howled as she thumped him,
-bit him, scratched him, tore his hair.  Then her nerves gave way, and
-she sank to the ground, all of a heap, sobbing.
-
-Beyond a scowling, laughing, shaking of fists, the "gang" had remained
-passive hitherto, but the moment Lena subsided, with convulsive
-unanimity they fell upon their captain.  When at length the sated gang
-emerged from the stable, there was no superficial point of resemblance
-between Dandy Dave and the quivering youth moaning lugubriously in the
-darkness.
-
-Philip had not yet found a key to the Happy Life.  His experiment among
-the young gentlemen of Angel Street had doubtless been foredoomed to
-failure.  He was not of them.  He had been a "bouncer" and would, in
-their eyes, remain a "bouncer" unto the world's end.  They realized
-cunningly how he winced when they shouted filthy words after him.
-Their experience with Lena Myer had widened their vocabulary, and they
-filled the air with enthusiastic impurity as he passed by.  He was
-approaching his ninth birthday, but still the little girls of Angel
-Street gave him his one illusion of society.
-
-School, too, filled him with leaden ennui.  Miss Green's class was only
-a memory of his later infancy.  Miss Tibbet, his present teacher, was a
-hopeless automaton.  She wore masculine boots and impenetrable
-tortoise-shell spectacles.  When she opened her lips, sound issued;
-when she closed her lips, sound did not issue.  Her personality was
-capable of no further differentiation.  Nothing happened.  A waking
-sleep buzzed in her classroom like a bluebottle.
-
-For his years he was early in Miss Tibbet's class.  There was something
-about him which much endeared Philip to the young ladies of ten and
-eleven who sat in the same benches.  The emotion at first was one of
-somewhat elderly amusement and compassion.  But when Jane Freedman
-declared herself in love with him, it became a universal discovery that
-Philip lay wedged between the split sections of every heart.  They
-brought offerings to him--cigarette cards, jujubes and raw carrots,
-(Philip had an unholy appetite for raw carrots).  One day Jane Freedman
-waylaid him with a large lump of pine-apple rock.
-
-"Kiss me, and it is yours!" she said.  It was a very large and inviting
-piece of pine-apple rock; it had only been slightly sucked, not more
-than a taste.  He kissed her.
-
-The other girls promptly waylaid him with larger pieces of pine-apple
-rock.  The whole thing really was very unpleasant.  On the other hand
-pine-apple rock had its compensation.  Yet Philip developed a great
-distaste for humanity.  Boys, at one extreme, were more unclean than
-cats, (cats being the predominant fauna of Angel Street, they were a
-useful starting point for all philosophy).  Girls, at the other, were
-more sentimental than fish.  Pine-apple rock began speedily to pall
-upon him.
-
-School was wearying beyond words.  Not a chance gleam of gold filtered
-through the pall of cloud.  Miss Tibbet's mouth opened; then it closed.
-It would have been an incident, even if you could have seen her eyelids
-blink beyond her spectacles.  She taught poetry as she taught vulgar
-fractions.  A mad impulse began to seize upon Philip.  He must separate
-his own lips further, wider, more hilariously than ever Miss Tibbet was
-capable.  Then to deliver himself of one prolonged shout--no more.  One
-prolonged shout which would cleave a path through the clouds of
-monotony wherethrough the dizzy horses of adventure might come tumbling
-from the spacious blue winds beyond.  Not a shout of pain or of
-desperation.  A shout merely from the whole capacity of his lungs, a
-human shout, a challenge of the body in ennui.
-
-His lips opened trembling.  Miss Tibbet's spectacles swept blankly
-towards his face.  He bent down over his paper.  The impulse waxed
-within him and became a passion.  He began to say to himself that the
-whole future of his life depended upon his courage.  If he did not open
-his lips and yell he would be one thing.  If he did open his lips and
-yell, he would be another thing, and a bigger, freer thing.  One day he
-stretched his jaws to make the effort.  The back of his mouth was
-crammed with sand.  He lifted his hand as if to hide a yawn.
-
-A mystic conviction took possession of him.  If he had any value, that
-shout would be achieved.  But its agent would be something greater than
-himself.  Prepared or unprepared for it, the shout would come, if he
-was worthy.
-
-It was a very hot afternoon.  Miss Tibbet croaked at the blackboard
-like a machine.  A desultory dog was barking somewhere with insensate
-yelps.  The geranium before the closed windows drooped in the heat.
-Flies were droning aimlessly.
-
-A huge shout swept suddenly into every corner of the room, slapped Miss
-Tibbet's face like the palm of a hand.  There was an intense silence.
-All eyes turned to Philip's face, which was flushed furiously red,
-unhappy, exultant.
-
-"Philip Massel, stand up!"  He shuffled to his feet.
-
-"Was it you who made that noise?"
-
-"Yes, Miss Tibbet!"
-
-"Why did you make that noise?"
-
-"I don't know!"
-
-"Did somebody stick a pin into you?"
-
-"No!"
-
-"Did anybody stick a pin into Philip Massel?"
-
-No reply.
-
-Here was something entirely beyond Miss Tibbet's experience.
-
-"Will the monitors keep order, please, while I take this boy to the
-head master!"
-
-Philip knew that sooner or later he would burst into tears.  But a
-great load was off his mind.  He was free, he was free!  For one moment
-of dizzy elation a pang of that emotion struck him which long ago made
-him tremble on a locker in Miss Green's room before the fateful
-question--"Tell me, Philip, which would you rather be, Jew or
-Christian?"  The sheer poignancy passed, but something of his elation
-remained, even in the cadaverous sanctum of the head master.
-
-Mr. Tomlinson sat ominous in his chair as he listened to Miss Tibbet's
-recital.
-
-"Why did you behave in that disgraceful way, Philip Massel?"
-
-"I--I--don't know, sir!"
-
-"What do you mean, you don't know?"
-
-"I don't know, sir!"
-
-"Are you sure it wasn't a pin?"
-
-"Yes, sir!"
-
-"Are you in pain?"
-
-"No, sir!"
-
-"Am I to understand that..."  But Philip's shoulders were shaking.  Big
-tears rolled down his face.  He hid his face in a dirty, frayed
-handkerchief.  He heard Mr. Tomlinson and Miss Tibbet whispering
-overhead.
-
-"The heat..." said one.
-
-"Yes, I should think ... the heat...."
-
-"You may go home, Philip Massel!" said Mr. Tomlinson.  "Tell your
-mother to put you to bed at once.  Say I told her she must keep you
-quiet.  Don't come to school to-morrow if your head is aching....  And
-never let it happen again, young man!  Understand that!"
-
-Philip withdrew.  A grin mingled maliciously with his tears.
-
-A day or two later he was standing contemplatively against the
-playground wall during the interval, when he observed Harry Sewelson
-approaching.  Sewelson, though he was about a year older, was in
-Philip's class.  He lived in a draper's shop some minutes along
-Doomington Road.  They had had no commerce hitherto.  Philip made a new
-friend with extreme difficulty, and though he realized that there was a
-quality in Sewelson, a keenness in his grey eyes, which distinguished
-him from the rest, there was a garlic vulgarity about him, a
-strongly-flavoured bluster, which, he had learned from Reb Monash, was
-inseparable from Roumanian Jewry.
-
-"I say!" declared Sewelson, "I bet you I know what was the matter on
-Tuesday!  I bet I know why you gave that shout!"
-
-"_Bet_ you don't!" Philip replied.  He was vaguely proud of the complex
-of motives which had induced him to behave in so baffling a manner.
-
-"Nobody pricked you!" Sewelson asserted.
-
-"Right for once!" Philip agreed.
-
-"And you weren't ill!  I bet I know!"
-
-Philip looked up curiously.
-
-"_You just wanted to!_" Sewelson whispered in a somewhat melodramatic
-manner.  "You felt you just had to.  You couldn't get away.  You were
-sick and tired!"
-
-Philip's brown eyes looked up shyly, with a certain pleasure, with a
-certain distrust, into the grey eyes before him.
-
-"You're right!" said Philip.  "It wasn't my fault!"
-
-"I say," Sewelson said, after a pause.  "I say..."  Then he paused
-again.
-
-"Yes?" asked Philip.
-
-"I say, what about being pals?"
-
-Philip blushed slightly.  "Let's!" he said.
-
-They walked down the playground with linked arms.
-
-"Oh, yes!" accepted Philip innocently.  "I _do_ think Miss Tibbet is a
-narky bitch!"
-
-"Carried _nem-con_!" exclaimed Sewelson, proud of his elegant
-introduction of a foreign tongue.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-The vicissitudes of school and Angel Street represented only the
-secular side of Philip's existence.  The Jewish, the clerical side,
-claimed his servitude as soon as he pushed open the door of the house.
-The whole day, of course, was punctuated with greater or lesser
-ceremonies; but a considerable portion of it, at least of that part not
-taken up by school, was spent in his father's _chayder_.  Beyond
-_chayder_, to gather together and confirm the saintliness ardently
-desired and pursued for him by his father, lay the synagogue in
-Doomington Road, the _Polisher Shool_.
-
-The room in which the _chayder_ was housed was distinctly dismal,
-despite the fountain of spiritual light playing perpetually there, the
-fountain whereof Reb Monash himself was the head.  It lay between the
-"parlour," a chilly room upholstered in yellow plush, which was on the
-right as you passed into the "lobby," and the kitchen in the recesses
-of the house, to enter which you descended two invisible steps.  Beyond
-the window of the _chayder_ and beyond the yard, hung a grim,
-blank-windowed hat-and-cap factory.
-
-Low forms, where the two dozen scholars were disposed, ran round the
-four walls of the room.  Before a table facing the window Reb Monash
-sat, in the additional shadow cast by the large oblong of cardboard
-which occupied a fourth of the window-space so as to hide the damage
-caused by a malicious Gentile stone.  More for minatory gesture than
-for punishment, a bone-handled walking-stick lay to his hand, along the
-table.  Facing the door a large cupboard stood invariably open.  Here
-on the lowest shelf were the Prayer Books, from the first page of which
-the youngest scholars learned their Hebrew capitals.  Here also were
-the penny exercise books where the scholars proficient in the cursive
-script wrote letters of a totally imaginary politeness to their
-parents.  "My dear and most esteemed Father and Mother," they ran, "I
-am full of concern for your health.  Reb Monash joins me in respectful
-greeting.  The High Festivals are approaching, God be thanked, and I
-trust the Above One will bless our ways with milk and honey and will
-much increase our progeny, even as the sands on the shore.  Believe I
-am your to-death-devoted son."
-
-Upon one wall hung a chart where an adventurous red line traced the
-forty years' wandering of the Jewish race between the House of Bondage
-and the Promised Land.  A portrait of Dr. Theodor Herzl, every feature
-cleverly pricked out in Hebrew letters, hung opposite.  There were
-enlargements from photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Massel, and portraits of
-Heine and Disraeli, which had been hung not without compunction,
-although each had made so generous a death-bed recantation of his
-errors.
-
-The payment to Reb Monash for a week's tuition ranged between one
-shilling and eighteenpence.  He sometimes accepted ninepence, but on
-the condition that other parents should not be informed and the market
-be thus demoralized.  He even accepted no payment at all, in cases of
-extreme indigence, where it meant that a scion of Israel would
-otherwise run riot in pagan ignorance.  The attendances of his pupils
-were as follows:--In the week-days, a few frantic minutes between
-morning and afternoon school for the recital of _minchah_, the midday
-prayer, and more importantly, several long hours in the evening; on the
-Saturday, once, after dinner.
-
-During the evening session, while the maturer boys were biting their
-pens over their letters home, and the boys less mature were
-transcribing for page after page a sample line in Reb Monash's own
-script, _rebbie_ himself dealt with the infants, five, four, three
-years old.  Patiently, gently, the meat skewer he used as a pointer
-moved from capital to capital.  (A safe way to win temporary harbourage
-in _rebbie's_ good graces was to provide him with a new pointer.)
-
-"_Aleph!_" said Reb Monash.  "_Aleph!_" piped the little voice.
-
-"_Baze!_" "_Baze!_" "_Gimmel, doled!_" "_Gimmel, doled!_"
-
-With the young he had enormous patience.  When at last they knew all
-the letters in their consecutive order, his pointer would dart
-bewilderingly from letter to letter.
-
-"_Lange mem, tsadik, coff...._"
-
-Ignorance, up to a certain age, Reb Monash could condone.  It was
-inattention against which he maintained a fiery crusade.
-
-"What, thou canst not distinguish between _baze_ and _shloss mem_?
-Playest thou then alleys already?  Thou art a lump-Gentile, a
-_shtik-goy_!"  After the youngsters had been thus instructed, a snap of
-his Prayer Book was the signal for a deathly calm.  All the exercise
-books were closed and put away upon their shelf.  Everybody sat down
-upon the benches round the wall and each face assumed a look of virtue
-bordering upon imbecility.  Reb Monash then produced a thin notebook
-where in three columns down each page he had written a large number of
-Hebrew words.  These words had, excepting rarely, no connection with
-each other.  One leaped abruptly from "pepper" to "son-in-law" and
-thence to "chair," "snake," "pomegranate" and "yesterday."
-
-Starting with any boy indiscriminately he read out word after word,
-receiving an English or Yiddish equivalent.  Here again, to introduce a
-complexity, he suddenly interrupted the written order of the words, or,
-indeed, himself gave the profane equivalent of the vocabulary and
-demanded the "Holy Speech" in return.  With as little warning he
-transferred his attention to another of his scholars, and woe upon him
-if the black crime of inattention had sent his wits scattering, woe if
-his lips could not repeat the word just translated!  A silence intense
-as the silence of the antechamber where the High Priest three times
-demands from Radames his defence, occupied the breathless _chayder_
-during the process of "Hebrew."
-
-Yet for all his sallies and alarms the tragedy of Reb Monash was no
-more apparent than in the heart-broken monotone in which he uttered his
-list of inconsequent words.  All the ghettoes of Russia had known the
-silver of his voice.  If there had been sorrows of Israel none had told
-them more poignantly; if Zion still were to raise tall towers, none so
-joyfully had prophesied her new splendours.  Still in many synagogues
-beyond the _Polisher Shool_ his oratory was in demand.  But the glow of
-his old dreams?  Was it because no single reality had called him to
-concrete endeavours, that no single dream had found fulfilment?
-
-But all this lay deep down, deeper than himself dared to pursue.
-
-"_Pilpelim?_" "Pepper!"
-
-"_Lo mit a vov?_" "To him!"
-
-"Philip, where holds one?"
-
-"... er ... er..."
-
-"What! thou knowest not?"
-
-"Yes, _tatte_, yes ... _odom_, a man!"
-
-Reb Monash's lips set tight.  Philip's back curved under his father's
-fist.  He pressed his head down upon his neck.  He knew that the nearer
-he attained to immobility, the sooner would his punishment be over.
-
-Reb Monash sat down again.
-
-"_Roshoh?_" he asked significantly.
-
-"Evil one!"
-
-"_Boruch?_" to point the contrast.
-
-"Blessed!" the voice translated.
-
-And so till "Hebrew" was at an end.  Then followed translation from the
-week's portion of the Pentateuch; and perhaps if one or two scholars of
-such holy state remained under his care, an excursion into the Talmud.
-
-
-The combination of Miss Tibbet and _chayder_ left Philip limp with
-fatigue and dejection.  Life under Miss Tibbet was clockwork, barren of
-adventure and hope.  _Chayder_ was a cycle that each year returned to
-the same spot through a round of indignities and petty tyrannies.  All
-its nightly incidents were the same as last week's and last year's and
-seemed destined to reduplication world without end.  Walls seemed to
-rise frowning before him wherever he looked.  It was hard to breathe.
-Were these days the pattern of all the days he should ever know, till
-he died at last and half-hearted funeral eulogies were uttered over his
-coffin?
-
-Yet now and again there were incidents which slightly relieved the
-tedium of existence.  As for instance when the notorious Jakey arrived
-in _chayder_ about an hour late one stifling summer evening.  Jakey was
-in truth a desperate character.  His stockings lay invariably over his
-boots, and the boots themselves knew no other fastening than string.
-Among the layers of dirt on his face his right eye or his left emerged
-livid in purple and salmon hues.  On numerous occasions he had "wagged"
-school in order to play pitch and toss with coins, derived who knew
-whence? in the company of stalwarts fifteen years old, three years his
-senior.
-
-It was in fact during the solemn stillness of "Hebrew" that he arrived.
-Upon his appearance the hush was intensified into something acute as
-shrill sound or pain.  Slowly, with tight-browed condemnation, Reb
-Monash turned his head to the truant.  "So thou art come!" he said.
-"Enter! we are incomplete without thee!"  With withering courtesy he
-motioned him to the end of a bench.  Nonchalantly moving the tip of his
-tongue from one cheek to the other Jakey sat down.
-
-"_Nu_, Jakele, what hast thou for thyself to say?" he asked, still
-couchant, as it were, upon his chair.  Jakey for several seconds longer
-kept his tongue in his left cheek.  He lifted his brows in interested
-contemplation.
-
-"I had the stomach-ache!" he suggested, clasping his hands against his
-liver as a piece of convincing by-play.
-
-"_Ligner!_" thundered Reb Monash, "Thou art sound as a Hottentot!"
-
-Jakey withdrew one hand from his stomach, and lifted a thumb to his
-mouth.
-
-"My muvver's dying!" he said after further meditation.
-
-Reb Monash quivered with wrath.
-
-"Such a year upon thee!  Long live they mother, but thou, thou art a
-proselytized one!"
-
-He advanced to make Jakey more immediately aware of the jeopardy into
-which his soul had fallen.  Jakey looked up shiftily, his eyes
-watchful.  Reb Monash's fist came down upon empty air.  Swift as a
-lizard Jakey darted across to the table.  He stood there, Reb Monash's
-bone-handled stick uplifted.  A murmur of horror went round the
-_chayder_.  Reb Monash with a shout of anger advanced raging.  And then
-it was that his own stick, the symbol of more absolute authority than
-the Shah's, was brought down upon his own shoulder.  There was a
-silence.  Then immediately a tremendous hubbub filled the room.  Reb
-Monash sank into his chair.  A few of the youngest lads lifted up their
-voices and wept.  A boy in a corner was giggling nervously.
-
-"Where is he?  Where is he?" asked Reb Monash weakly.  An enormity had
-been perpetrated unknown in the annals of _chayders_.  And in his, Reb
-Monash's, where discipline and holiness were equal stars.
-
-"'E's ran away!  I seen 'im!" the cry rose.
-
-Reb Monash grimly took up once more his book of Hebrew words.  The long
-monotone began again.
-
-"_Ishoh?_" "A woman!"
-
-"_Sachin?_" "A knife!"
-
-The door was flung open.  A storm of flying apron-strings filled the
-threshold, and a cloud of loose hair.  It was the mother of Jakey.
-
-"Reb Monash, what is for such a thing?" she demanded indignantly.  "One
-might think a policeman, not a _rebbie_.  My poor Jakele, gentle as a
-dove, a credit in Israel!  What for a new thing is this?"
-
-Reb Monash lifted his hands deprecatingly.  "What say you, Mrs. Gerber?
-An hour later he comes...."
-
-She gave him no time to continue.  "And then to lay about him with a
-walking-stick!  A Tartar, not a Jew!  Never a word of complaint from
-God or man about my poor orphan and ... to come to _chayder_ ... and a
-pogrom!  _Oi, a shkandal_!  A walking-stick like a tree!  A moujik, God
-should so help me, not a _rebbie_!  Poor Jakele, crying his heart out
-like a dove!  I'll take him away from a so crooked _chayder_!"
-
-"But that concerns me little!" broke in Reb Monash.  "For each one that
-goes, come four each time!"  (This confident mathematic invariably
-puzzled Philip.  He knew how necessary to the Massel family was an
-increased income.  Why should not Reb Monash dismiss his whole
-_chayder_ and then automatically increase his clientele fourfold?)
-
-"Like a tree a walking-stick!" continued Mrs. Gerber.  She flounced
-through the door.  "Such a year!  Such a black year shall seize you!"
-she spat.  The door closed with a loud bang.  It was impossible to sit
-down under it.  Not only to have been assaulted, but to be accused of
-being the assailant was too much to bear.  Reb Monash took his
-skull-cap, his _yamelke_, from his head, placed it on the mantelshelf,
-and assumed his silk hat.
-
-"Learn over your passages!" he rapped out as he followed furiously to
-the house of Jakey.
-
-There was subdued whispering at first.
-
-"Wot a lark!" said some one.  "Oo--aye!  Wot a lark!" some one else
-repeated.  Then every one laughed.  Philip was hilarious.  It really
-was too funny--Jakey the dove!
-
-"I've got the stomach-ache, _rebbie_!"
-
-"No you've not, you mean your muvver's dying!"
-
-Some one lifted the walking-stick.  Barney did a _pas seul_ in the
-corner.  The gaiety of the situation intoxicated everybody.  Philip was
-swept off his feet by the general merriment.  He reached up for his
-father's skull-cap, put it on and looked round solemnly.  Barney
-imitated Mrs. Gerber with great distinction.
-
-"A moujik, not a _rebbie_!"
-
-At this moment the door opened.  Reb Monash's face looked round
-glowering below his silk hat.  Quick as thought Philip covered the
-borrowed skull-cap, knowing there was no time to replace it, with his
-own cap.  He felt the unfortunate load pressing guiltily against his
-head.
-
-Reb Monash took off the silk hat and looked round for the _yamelke_.
-
-"Where's my _yamelke_?" he demanded fiercely.
-
-"Dunno!" a murmur rose.
-
-"Did I not place it on the mantelshelf?"
-
-"Didn' see yer!"
-
-"Dost thou know?"
-
-"No, _rebbie_!"
-
-"Dost thou, Philip?"
-
-"No, _tatte_!"
-
-"Dost thou, Barney?"
-
-"No, _rebbie_!"
-
-"Empty ye out all your pockets!"
-
-The _yamelke_ was nowhere to be found.  It was a very hot evening and
-it produced on Philip an unholy delight to see his father sitting there
-in the close heat, with bright red carpet slippers, thin black
-trousers, a thin alpaca coat--and to crown all, the stately and stuffy
-tall hat, malevolent and quite definitely absurd.
-
-It was towards the end of the evening that Philip lifted his cap to
-scratch his head over some knotty point in the _chumish_, the
-Pentateuch, they were translating.  He had wholly forgotten the
-abstracted _yamelke_, so, whilst his own cap fell with a soft slur on
-the table before him, the _yamelke_ sat revealed like a toad under a
-lifted stone.
-
-Reb Monash looked up.  It was too late to hide the _yamelke_.  Reb
-Monash's eyes glinted unpleasantly.  _Chayder_ drew to an immediate end.
-
-
-The drizzle falling beyond the _chayder_ window next day was like a
-curtain of liquid soot.  The interview between Reb Monash and Philip on
-the conclusion of last evening's episode had made them both, for
-different, for opposite, reasons, very tired.  Philip, though the hard
-form where he sat left him at no time unconscious of his wounds, was
-only a little more listless than his father.  His mind was too numbed
-even to appreciate the exquisite irony of his letter to his "esteemed
-and beloved parents."  When the ritual of "Hebrew" recommenced, it was
-only with an effort that he suspended the mechanical scrawling of his
-pen.  The dirge of question and reply proceeded mournfully, broken only
-by the occasional "where holds one?" like the surface of a pond on a
-dull day when the fish seem to rise rather to assert their rights than
-to satisfy their hunger.  Oh, to get away from it all, mused Philip
-dimly.  To where there are trees and grass like Longton Park, but
-freer, larger.  To go there alone and to come back to mother, perhaps
-with an offering of cowslips, whatever they were.  There would be a
-bird there who would sing.  Not like a canary.  He couldn't bear the
-singing of canaries.  They reminded him of a pale girl whom he saw
-sometimes at a window of the hat-and-cap factory.  She sang sometimes,
-like a canary, ever so sweetly, but a captive.  He had once seen a
-canary cage hanging on an outside wall.  A great rain-storm had burst,
-but the people on the doorstep had gone in, forgetting all about the
-bird.  He had knocked at their door and told them, and though the man
-had sworn at him, he took the bird in, a sickly sodden mass,
-greyish-yellow.  That bird had not sung again.  It uttered only a
-little broken cheep each morning when the sun came.  Now out there ...
-Oh, what was all this useless droning, droning about ... "_Pilpelim?_"
-"Pepper!" ... out there, when the rain came, there would be thick
-branches to shelter that singing bird.  He would walk alone, clean,
-free.  "Alone I walked, I walked alone."  There was music in that!
-"Alone I walked, I walked alone."  Yes of course! the sense was quite
-different, but there was something about it identical with his "On
-Linden when the sun was low."  "Alone I walked, I walked alone," he
-stressed.  "I sat upon a mossy stone," he followed swiftly.  What fun!
-That was like real poetry.  He repeated the words, trembling with
-delight.
-
-  _Alone I walked, I walked alone.
-  I sat upon a mossy stone._
-
-What about that bird?  We must introduce that bird!  "I heard a bird
-singing up in the sky."  No, that wouldn't do!  Something was wrong!
-Gosh! it was very easy!  Just leave out that "singing," thus: "I heard
-a bird up in the sky."  But we can't end there!  "I heard a bird up in
-the sky," and ... and ... "He sang so sweet and so did I!"  His thighs
-trembled.  His heart stormed.  He had beaten down the walls of
-_chayder_; he was away beyond somewhere; he was elected into the
-fellowship of poetry; what did Miss Tibbet matter for ever and ever?
-Again, again ... how did it go? ... lest he should lose it!  Listen!
-Ah, the surge the fullness of it!
-
-  Alone I walked, I walked alone,
-  I sat upon a mossy stone.
-  I heard a bird up in the sky.
-  He sang so sweet and so did I!
-
-Green fields stretching away, trees, stones with soft moss, a bird, a
-bird!
-
-"Feivel, where holds one?"
-
-Sickeningly, with the click of a trap, the walls of _chayder_ shut to
-about him.  An ecstasy was in his eyes.  A mist of stupidity,
-helplessness, obscured their light.  Oh, no! oh, no! he would make no
-pretence about it.  He'd not been listening, he'd been away, singing!
-... What did it matter?  Let the fist come down on his aching back!
-Let the muscles of his arm be pinched and wrenched again.  Listen, oh
-listen!
-
-  _I heard a bird up in the sky.
-  He sang so sweet and so did I._
-
-
-He lifted his wide eyes to his father.  In an even voice he said,
-"_Tatte_, I've not been listening!"
-
-A thrill of subdued expectance went round the _chayder_.  His enemies
-rubbed their grubby hands gleefully.  One or two looked anxious.
-
-But there was no explosion.  In the same even tones Reb Monash said,
-"_Nu_, and what hast thou been doing?"
-
-Slowly Philip's sallow face flushed a deep crimson.  Must he tell?
-Must he stand there stripped of this new garment which had covered him,
-fragrant with spices and touched with the colours of a new dawn?  But
-it was the voice not of his own free lips, the voice ordered by some
-blind, strong dictate of the heart, that said, "I was writing a poetry!"
-
-A slight sound came from Reb Monash's lips.  It was only dimly anger;
-it was also resignation, dismay.  His lips closed.  The fires of his
-wrath last night had burned round his son, till at last Philip lay on
-the sofa, spent, lightless, like a cinder.  He had thereon turned to
-Mrs. Massel who at one stage had ventured to intervene.  Would she like
-to see her son stuff his maws with pig; or perhaps grow up to take a
-_shiksah_ to his arms?  All that night low sobbing came from the room
-where Philip slept.  Even when Reb Monash thought his wife sleeping,
-there came an answering moan from her bed as the sobbing of the boy
-entered the room like a frail ghost.  Reb Monash turned his eyes upon
-his Hebrew notebook.
-
-"Go thou! go thou! go!" he said heavily.  "I'll deal with thee later!"
-
-Philip passed from the room.  The walls of _chayder_ were no more round
-him; his head rang again with the poor music he had made.
-
-"Mamma!" he said, bursting into the kitchen, "I've made a poetry!"
-
-"Feivele!" she exclaimed with horror.  "Why art thou not in _chayder_?"
-
-"He sent me out!" he answered, his lips quivering.  "I've been a bad
-boy!"
-
-"Then go out into the street!" she said.  "He'll see thee here and say
-I'm petting thee!"
-
-He ran out into Angel Street.  The lines were singing in his head.  He
-skipped along Angel Street, from the wire factory to Doomington Road
-and back again, chanting his lines.  Then Harry Sewelson, his pal, came
-into his mind.  He would make use of his unusual liberty to go and tell
-him about the "poetry."  He ran breathlessly along Doomington Road to
-"Sewelson's High-Class Drapery and Hosiery Establishment."  He passed
-through the side non-professional door along a dark lobby to the
-kitchen.  Harry sat in a corner reading.
-
-A sudden shame and reluctance overwhelmed Philip.  What was he making
-all this fuss about?  Harry would only laugh at him, and why shouldn't
-he?
-
-"Hello!" said Harry, "come in!"
-
-Philip came forward.  "What are you reading?" he asked.
-
-"Poetry!" Harry replied.
-
-This put a different complexion on affairs.
-
-"_I've_ just done a poetry!" Philip declared proudly, throwing his
-scruples aside.  He had established an affinity with a printed book.
-
-"G-arn!" said Harry sceptically.
-
-"_Emmes!_"
-
-"Tell us then!"
-
-  "_Alone I walked, I walked alone.
-  I sat upon a mossy stone.
-  I heard a bird up in the sky.
-  He sang so sweet and so did I._
-
-There, what d'you think of that?"
-
-"It's not your own!"
-
-"_Emmes adonoi!_"
-
-Harry looked up with warm commendation in his eyes.
-
-"You know," he said, "it's like this feller!"
-
-"Who's that?"
-
-"Oh, this feller's called Tennyson!" he said, turning the leaves.
-
-Philip drew a chair close and together they examined the faded penny
-reprint.
-
-"Gosh!" exclaimed Philip excitedly.  "Isn't that spiff!"
-
-
-If the episode of the profane poem written during the sanctity of
-"Hebrew" had rendered Reb Monash sadly and half-consciously aware that
-in Philip he had nurtured a son who lay beyond the theoretic and
-practical bounds of his knowledge; a son who was so bewilderingly
-unlike and unworthy of himself as he had been like and worthy of his
-father, and his father had been like and worthy of his grandfather, and
-so backward to whichever of the Twelve Tribes had fathered his race--if
-the episode of the poem produced in him only fears and doubts, it was
-the appearance of Mottele which crystallized for him the difference
-between the actual Philip and the Philip of his dreams.
-
-The parents of Mottele had removed to Doomington from a smaller town in
-an adjacent county for the specific reason that Mottele had demanded
-more adequate instruction in Hebrew.  They had moved even though the
-father had achieved a fair clientele as a tailor in the town where he
-had settled, whereas the market in tailors for Doomington was already
-hopelessly glutted.
-
-At the time when Mottele entered Reb Monash's _chayder_ Mottele had
-passed his ninth, and Philip his tenth birthday.  His mother, as she
-floated in amply behind the compact figure of Mottele, seemed rather an
-exhalation from Mottele than an important author of his existence.  She
-was vague and large and benignant as a moon, shining with pale piety
-reflected from the central sun of Mottele.  Mottele himself entered as
-one doomed only for a short while to range the treacherous zone of the
-fleshly.  By an inverse law of gravity, his eyes were drawn upwards to
-the ceiling and thence to the mudless floors of Heaven where his elder
-brethren, the mediæval Rabbis and the early Prophets, awaited the
-quietus to the mundane phase of Mottele's piety.  His general
-appearance betokened a rigid aloofness from the vulgar delights of the
-body.  Both stud-holes of his waterproof collar were in excellent
-condition; the pockets which in most entrants to _chayder_ were
-associated with the fecund bulges of boy-merchandise, displayed only a
-_sidder_, a Prayer Book, emerging with propriety; his stainless boots
-proved that the rapturous puddles of the roadway were unknown of his
-fastidious feet.  Upon his head sat a little round peakless cap from
-which fell a demure fringe over his forehead.  There was something
-sweet and thin, a little sickly almost, in the tender flute of his
-voice as it piped to Reb Monash's question a response as innocent as
-honey.
-
-Upon Reb Monash Mottele produced an immediate and visible effect.  He
-fell naturally into a manner towards him of affection, mingled with
-respect.  "Here," he declared, "here truly is a Judaic child!  Just as
-at home!  No blackguarding in the streets, and his head never running
-this way and that to nothingness and Gentilehood.  A credit to God and
-Man!"
-
-Mottele seemed almost audibly to lap up the instruction tendered him,
-almost audibly, as a cat audibly laps milk; you might almost see his
-sharp little tongue wash round the corners of his mouth to make sure
-that no drop of Jewish wisdom should be unabsorbed.  During "Hebrew,"
-he sat upon his corner of the form with a rapture of concentration
-worthy of some infant mystic vouchsafed the Beatific Vision.  It was
-with no vulgar assertion of rights that his claim to one especial end
-on one especial form was recognized.  His claim existed merely, and one
-might question as easily the claim of Reb Monash to thump the back for
-inattention.  There was something both ludicrous and infuriating in the
-sight of some hulking fellow of twelve shuffling heavily away from the
-sacrosanct seat, as the result of some slight pathetic quiver in
-Mottele's eyelids.
-
-Before long Mottele's bark was sailing the deep waters of the
-post-Pentateuchal Bible, while Philip's keel was still grinding against
-the elementary shingles of the "weekly portion."  Mottele now became
-Reb Monash's standard, before which all things else, at but a cursory
-reference, were revealed as dross.  The state of Philip's spiritual
-health was shown to be perilous in the extreme.  Now too Reb Monash
-developed a new theory.
-
-"It is not that Feivel cannot!" he declared bitterly.  "He will not!
-It suits him not to be a good Jew!  Regard then Mottele!  There is a
-jewel for you, there is an ornament for England, one shakes with
-delight of him in the _Polisher Shool_.  One says in looking upon
-Mottele that there is hope still for the Hebrew race!  Mottele ...
-Mottele ... Mottele! ..."
-
-Day after day the word Mottele droned or thundered in Philip's ears.
-All that was stifling in Angel Street and repressive in _chayder_ took
-to itself for a name the three syllables of Mottele.  The word began to
-lose for him all its physical connotation.  Increasingly it became for
-him a symbol of injustice and despair.
-
-Reb Monash had felt hitherto that the child of his dreams, such a child
-as would have been a living glory in Terkass, was almost of too
-exquisite a lineament for the reality of this godless England.  But
-Mottele had undeceived him, for here in the very flesh was a child
-actually born in England and yet recalling irresistibly the piety of
-his own boyhood in Russia; a child such as he had been himself, at ten
-years an intimate of greybeards and an object of almost superstitious
-affection and reverence among the old women of the Synagogue.  He would
-not confess it to himself, yet there seemed an element of injustice in
-the fact that he, Reb Monash, to whom surely, on the grounds of his own
-holiness and the uninterrupted holiness of his ancestry generation
-behind generation, such a son as Mottele was due, that he should be the
-father of so unsatisfactory a child as Philip.  There was much he loved
-in Philip.  Because of the very strength of his love for Philip, he
-assured himself, he grieved so much to find Philip so far from his
-heart's desire.  It was as much a matter of the happiness of Philip's
-own soul as of the happiness and credit of himself.  But, he realized,
-to display to Philip or to Philip's mother, how deep was his love for
-his son, would be tantamount to an offence against God.  It would
-sanction the delusion that he accepted Philip such as he was, whereas
-the Philip he strove after was far less like Philip than like himself
-or Mottele, after which image, with God's grace, he would yet convert
-his son.  For there was much, he repeated, he loved in Philip; as for
-instance his poetry, his imagination, which, wedded to Jewishness, the
-spiritual state called _Yidishkeit_, were a valuable possession, as he,
-in his oratory, himself frequently realized.  On the other hand, the
-quality of poetry, unhealthily developed, might nourish errors
-concerning the primal verity of _Yidishkeit_ which might land him into
-the pits of the unclean.  There was a certain quality of the _rational_
-which up to a certain limit was likewise a decoration.  It was a
-quality which could excellently elucidate a parable or examine an
-obscure text with the possible result of throwing upon it a naive and
-modern light very entertaining to the elders at the Synagogue; but
-again, like all Philip's positive qualities, it had a negative aspect
-of the greatest spiritual danger.  It was a God-sent bounty that had
-sent Mottele in his way--Mottele, who had imagination, but not to
-excess, who was rational, but not unhealthily.  By placing the virtues
-of Mottele in a clear light before Philip, by the spectacle of the
-affection and esteem which Mottele commanded in the exercise of these
-virtues, both in _chayder_ and in _shool_, the increasing contumacy he
-had observed with alarm in Philip would be broken down, and a son
-worthy of the traditions of Reb Monash adorn his home.
-
-"I hate him!" Philip was saying to Harry, "I hate him!"  His face was
-still wet with tears of vexation.  His fists were clenched and his jaws
-were set viciously.  He had only escaped that evening by slipping out
-through the front door after opening it for a septuagenarian panegyrist
-of Mottele.
-
-"He's only a liar and a sucker-up!" he exclaimed.  "He does it for just
-what he can get out of it!  Thinks I can't see!  Yah!" he growled in
-disgust.
-
-"But listen!" said Harry, "Just listen to this!
-
-  _How could I look upon the day?
-  They should have stabb'd me where I lay,
-        Oriana--
-  They should have trod me into clay,
-        Oriana!_
-
-What do you think of that?  Isn't it fine?  He seems to have had a
-rottener time even than Mottele's giving you!  But isn't it grand
-stuff?"
-
-"Yes, I know, I know!  But tell me what I can do!  I hate him!  I want
-to kill him!"
-
-Harry looked up reflectively.  "Kill him?" he asked.  "Stab him where
-he lies, Oriana!  That's an idea, Philip!  I can lend you a peashooter.
-Or, why not try a gonfalon?  Gonfalons are awfully tricky!"
-
-"You're laughing!" said Philip indignantly.  "I wish you came to our
-_chayder_, you wouldn't laugh then, I can tell you!"
-
-"But you talked about killing yourself, didn't you?  Really, I don't
-know what to say!  Kill him or try to forget about him!"
-
-"Oh God, God!" said Philip, banging his forehead in despair.  "It's so
-miserable!  While I'm being half killed, he sits smiling and wiping his
-rotten nose!"
-
-Harry looked up sympathetically.
-
-"Else you could run away and be Two Little Vagabonds!" he suggested.
-
-"Don't want to run away!  He'd swank like one o'clock, the pig!" Philip
-said morosely.  "Besides," he added in a slightly altered tone, "don't
-want to run away from mother!  She'd be lonely!  Oh, Harry, you're no
-help to a chap, you aren't!"
-
-Yet the conversation was not wholly fruitless.  It implanted in Philip
-the germ of more than one idea.
-
-
-"_Rebbie_," said Mottele at dinner one Saturday afternoon, "my uncle,
-peace-be-upon-him, died on Thursday, no?  I want to go and join the
-_minyon_ at my auntie's house to-night."
-
-"What good art thou at a minyon?  Thou canst not make a tenth!  Thou
-art in years still far from thy thirteenth year."
-
-"But all the same it's a _mitzvah_?"
-
-"Ah, true, true!" said Reb Monash, his eye full of benignant
-appreciation.  "Go thou then.  Thou art no big one and they will make
-room for thee.  Bring thou in the best bread thou hast forgotten,
-Chayah," he said turning to his wife.
-
-She rose and entered the parlour where Reb Monash kept the "best bread"
-locked in the sideboard.  She placed the bread dutifully before her
-husband.  It had latterly become the custom for Mottele to join the
-Massel family for dinner on the Sabbath mid-day.  Reb Monash felt that
-his punctilious washing before meals, his prayers before food and his
-evident appreciation of the long blessing after food, could have
-nothing but the most exemplary effect upon Philip.
-
-Philip writhed inwardly to find Reb Monash cut a couple of slices of
-the "best bread" (so dignified because the flour was of a slightly
-superior brand and was varnished and sprinkled with black grain), one
-for Mottele and one for himself.  The "second bread" lay at the other
-end of the table for the consumption of his mother, of Channah and, of
-course, of Philip.  The treatment meted out respectively to Mottele and
-himself in _chayder_ had inured him to indignity.  This seemed,
-however, an unnecessary slight upon his mother, even if she was only a
-woman and therefore somewhat beyond the pale of masculine courtesies.
-
-"As for thee, Feivel," said Reb Monash, "after dinner thou wilt stay
-indoors to say over to thyself the week's portion, while I take my few
-minutes' sleep.  It was badly said by thee in _chayder_ on Thursday
-evening.  Thou didst halt three times, four times.  When wilt thou
-learn to say it like Mottele?  It was like a stream running, Chayah,
-the way Mottele said it, so clear, oh, a pleasure!"
-
-Mottele's eyes were turned ceilingwards in a direction which had become
-habitual with him during the chanting of his praises.  Praise produced
-in him no tremor of self-consciousness.  It was his due.  Being a good
-Jew had, there was ample authority, its celestial reward, but that did
-not render superfluous a certain meed of appreciation in this lesser
-mundane state.
-
-It might be remonstrated here that Mottele displayed in abundant
-measure the qualities of "priggishness" already repudiated as an
-essential element in Philip's character.  To which allegation the only
-reply must be that "priggishness" simply does not meet the Mottele
-case.  "Priggishness" is a word defining a totally different collection
-of qualities; those persons to whom Mottele was a delight, and they
-were many, might have admitted that he was distinguished by a sort of
-precocity, but they felt this precocity definitely to demonstrate how
-pleasant an odour was Mottele in the nostrils of the Lord, Whose
-providence had caused Rebecca to conceive at the premature age of
-three, the youthful Rabbi Achivah to develop the beard of senility in
-the course of a single night, and Mottele to be the thing he was.
-Those persons, on the other hand, to whom Mottele was more a stink than
-an odour, and it is to be regretted that Philip was one of these, would
-have laughed with pale scorn at the idea of disposing of Mottele as a
-"prig," Mottele, whose sweet face was a cauldron of infamy and whose
-voice was harsher than a Hell hag's lament over an escaped soul.
-
-"But, _tatte_, can't I just go out to the corner of Angel Street?"
-asked Philip mournfully.  He knew instinctively that utterance of the
-possibility put it effectively out of court.
-
-"Thou wilt not go!  Have I not spoken?  Enough!  _Nu_, Mottele, when
-thou goest to study in the Yeshivah, thou wilt come to see me, yes?"
-
-Mottele began ingeniously to pun upon the word Yeshivah.  Reb Monash
-beamed with delight.
-
-"Well," said Reb Monash, when the carrot and potato dessert had been
-cleared away, "I go to sleep.  One will see thee in the afternoon
-_shool_, Mottele, for _minchah_, eh?"
-
-"God being so good, Reb Monash!"
-
-"And forget thou not, Feivel!  Not a foot into the street or thou wilt
-see then!"
-
-"But Monash," broke in Mrs. Massel, "see how it is a fine day!  Can't
-he just go out and get some air in the street?"
-
-"So thou must take his part, Chayah, _nu_?  It will not harm him to go
-without air.  The Torah if he will imbibe will do him more good!"
-
-"_A guten Shabbos!_" said Mottele quietly as he slid through the door,
-"A good Sabbath!"  Philip looked towards him in a passion of dumb hate.
-Mottele halted for the fraction of a moment with a trace of virtuous
-aloofness and a slightly lifted head.  There followed a quick flash of
-vivid red thrust through his teeth, and the door closed softly behind
-him.
-
-"I'll show him!  I'll show him!  I'll show him!" the words pealed
-through Philip's head.  "The devil!  I'll give it him!  Oh, s'elp me if
-I don't!"
-
-"To thy _chumish_ then!" said Reb Monash as he climbed the stairs.
-
-Philip sat down on a dusty form in the deserted _chayder_.  He turned
-to a chapter in Genesis and started mumbling aloud.  He mumbled on to
-the end.  He repeated the portion again, having already ascertained
-that his knowledge of it was as thorough as his knowledge of anything
-could be.  He repeated it stupidly a third and a fourth time.  He knew
-that his father would be sleeping for an hour--no more, no less.  Was
-he to go on mumbling and mumbling for a hot solid hour?  Oh, what did
-it all mean, this soupy stuff, what sense had it, what poetry?
-
-He remembered with a qualm of longing a line or two Harry had found
-somewhere:
-
-  _O Brignall banks are wild and fair
-    And Greta woods are green...._
-
-
-But this! ... mumble, mumble, mumble, that's all it was ... rubb-ish!
-as Miss Tibbet used to say.  What!  Rubbish?  Oh, sinful thought!  He
-laid his fingers dismayfully against his sinning lips.  After all,
-Mottele had nothing to do with the inception of the Bible; neither had
-father, for that matter.  The Bible was something awful and unutterable
-and it was...  Oh, there weren't any words for it!  And he'd said
-rubbish!  Yet God would understand he hadn't really meant it.  Besides,
-if God were a young boy kept in mumbling all a Saturday afternoon, He
-might say unfortunate things about the Bible, even though He's written
-it all Himself.  But how close it was in here!  What a headache he had!
-He wasn't supposed to go into the kitchen and talk to his mother.  But
-it was stuffy, horribly stuffy ... and he knew every word in his
-_chumish_ seven times over.  Oh, not so well as Mottele, oh, no, oh,
-no!  That wasn't to be expected!  Did anybody know anything so well as
-Mottele?  How he hated Mottele!  He knew that poetry was beginning to
-have a hold over his affections second only to his mother.  But he
-didn't love poetry half so passionately as he hated Mottele.  That
-reminded him.  _He_ wasn't going to let Mottele stick his tongue out at
-him, after Mottele had polluted the house with his presence at dinner.
-No, he'd first cut his throat three times, that he would!
-
-Where was it now, where was it?  He hunted about in his pockets.  One
-possession, and not for intrinsic reasons, Philip prized above all
-others.  It was a smooth chip, several inches long.  Some months ago
-now he had determined to assure himself of some record of the
-indignities heaped upon him, directly or indirectly caused by Mottele!
-The idea of the notched stick was very popular with the heroes of
-romance.  Yes, that would be just the thing, a notched stick!  His
-stick was already notched all the way down one side and well down the
-other.  Oh, yes, it was in the left trouser pocket!  Strictly he wasn't
-supposed to transfer anything from his weekday to his Saturday pockets.
-Nothing must be carried on a Saturday.  But he could not afford to be
-without his notched stick even on Saturdays.  It was the only thing
-which maintained in him a degree of sanity when some peculiarly
-injurious comparison had been made between Mottele and himself.  He
-clutched t grimly inside his pocket and assured himself of some
-ultimate and lurid vengeance.  Torture perhaps, some form of slow
-assassination during which Mottele was all the time precisely aware of
-the assassin.  "Kill him!" Harry had suggested.  What was that phrase
-of Channah's? ... "Many a true word's spoken in jest!"
-
-He hardly dared to notch the stick while it was still Shabbos.
-Besides, his knife was in his weekday trousers.  He'd not forget ...
-But this headache!  Father would be safely sleeping for a time yet.
-He'd just creep along the lobby tip-toe and see what his mother was
-doing.
-
-"Mamma, Mamma, hello!"  She was sitting in the meagre light of the
-window.  The kitchen around her was scrupulously clean.  A pair of
-cheap steel-rimmed spectacles lay on her nose; she was reading the
-Yiddish version of the Bible, intended especially for women.
-
-"Fievele," she said, "thou shouldst be repeating thy _chumish_ now,
-thou shouldst not be here!"
-
-"I've got such a headache, Mamma," he murmured clasping his forehead
-with a somewhat exaggerated gesture.  "I want to go out for a minute or
-two!  I'm stuffed!"
-
-"But he said 'no'!"
-
-"I've finished now.  I know it all.  What more can I do?"
-
-"Thou must not think of it!"
-
-"Ah, let me," he said appealingly, "only a minute or two!"
-
-"What will he say to me, Feivele?  Better go not!"
-
-"Oh, I'll be back straight away!  Or I'll tell you what; you stand at
-the front door, and when he starts getting up wave your hand and I'll
-be back in a jiffy, long before he's down.  Ah _do_, Mamma!"
-
-"If thou hast a headache it is best for thee to be outside!" she said
-uneasily.  "Go then.  But forget not the moment I wave to thee, thou
-art back!"
-
-Philip darted to the door.
-
-"One second!" she said, "here's an apple for thee!  I got just one--for
-thee!"
-
-"What a lovely Mamma!  Thank you, thank you!"
-
-It was a forlorn little figure stood at the Angel Street corner of
-Doomington Road.  He saw the crowded tram-cars go up the road towards
-an urban simulation of moorland called "Baxter's Hill."  But beyond it
-green, real country began ... and there was a river ... He saw the boys
-of Angel Street playing games with a positively weekday enthusiasm.  He
-had wanted particularly to go and talk about Tennyson and things with
-Harry this afternoon!  How much luckier a lot had been cast for Harry!
-There was a genial, vaguely terrifying unorthodoxy about his parents
-which sometimes verged upon the license of the sheerly Gentile.  They
-carried money on Saturdays!  Mrs. Sewelson put the kettle on the fire
-with her own hands on Saturdays.  But he wouldn't change his own mother
-for a hundred anybody-else's mothers, he vowed, his eyes softening, his
-teeth biting into the apple she had given him.
-
-Would it be congenial to bite Mottele!  No! that was girlish--and he'd
-have such a sweet, nasty taste.  No! he'd just pommel him, the "dog's
-body" (he had heard the phrase on the lips of Lena Myer in description
-of a young gentleman who had transferred his attention from Miss Myer
-to another lady).  Ah, one minute!  What was that Mottele had said
-about going to attend a prayer-for-the-dead meeting at his auntie's
-house?  Gosh!  Here was an idea!  S'elp me if Mottele wouldn't have to
-attend his own prayer-for-the-dead meeting!  By heaven, Mottele had
-gone far enough!  It was about time he got some of his own back!
-
-Surely, Mother was waving!  Oh, yes, certainly she was!  He doubled
-back like a rabbit surprised on the edge of a thicket.  When his father
-entered the room he was safely mumbling away.
-
-"Feivel, thou art panting!" said Reb Monash suspiciously.
-
-"I've been crying!" replied Philip sullenly.
-
-"So?  Well, let me hear what thou dost with thy _chumish_ now!  Mind
-not one mistake, or thou wilt not stir from the house after _Shabbos_
-one step!"
-
-Philip recited the portion with flawless accuracy.  The week was duly
-ushered in with the night service of the Sabbath.  It was dark when
-Philip made his way along Doomington Road and turned to the right past
-the Bridgeway Elementary School along the side of it skirted by
-Blenheim Road.  The road led to a slightly loftier stratum of
-Doomington, past gloomy brick-crofts which rose into the muddy hills on
-one side and sank into clayey pools on the other, and it was along this
-road that Mottele was bound to pass after the service on his return
-home.  Force of habit would lead him along the right side, from which
-the ground sloped downwards.  Rain brought the yellow mud sluicing from
-the hills on the opposite side, rendering it therefore unpalatable for
-such delicate boots as Mottele's.
-
-The red tongue of his enemy, a slight enough offence in itself, but by
-accident a consummation of so much preceding injury, had gone more
-venomously to Philip's heart than Mottele had intended.  Disregarding
-the unwisdom of soiling his Saturday suit, Philip lay down to begin his
-vigil.  Mottele was a long time in arriving.  No doubt, Philip mused,
-he was sucking in the praise due to him for gratuitously walking up to
-Longton to take part in the service.  Philip passed his fingernail down
-the notches in his stick.  Twenty-five, twenty-six ... a dull anger
-stupefied him ... twenty-nine ... One after one in gibbering disorder,
-the occasions immortalized on the notched stick recreated themselves in
-his mind.
-
-"Mottele, oh, an Israel glory is Mottele!"
-
-"Mottele, Mottele, Mottele! ..."
-
-Curse Mottele ... the "dog's body"!  And here was Mottele turning round
-the bend in the road, his detestable little figure caught in the rays
-of a lamp.  Good, good!  He was bound to pass that way.  He slid his
-body a couple of yards cautiously.  That brought him nearly to the deep
-part of the pond ... Two feet deep, at most, but that would do!  Ah,
-glory to God, here he was!
-
-It was over surprisingly quickly.  He rushed out upon the unsuspecting
-Mottele, fell upon him and dragged him irresistibly over the edge of
-the pavement towards the pond.  They swung there for a moment or two
-against its edge.  Philip felt Mottele's fingers tighten in his hair.
-Mottele seemed to remove not only his cap but half his scalp.  The next
-moment Mottele lay squelching in the ooze.
-
-"Yah, Israel's glory, how d'you like that?  Yah, dog's body!"
-
-There was a spluttering.  Then in Yiddish, "The God of Abraham, Isaac
-and Jacob will show thee!"  In English followed, "Yer bloody bastard!"
-
-But a sudden and ghastly fear had gripped Philip.  A realization of the
-enormity of his crime possessed him.  He swept the grass blindly for a
-cap, lifted it, and ran down the Blenheim Road, his heart thumping in a
-tumult of dismay.
-
-He had been in the house for about twenty minutes when Reb Monash
-asked: "Feivel, whose cap art thou wearing?"
-
-Philip took his cap off.  With a grimace he discovered it was
-Mottele's.  He'd know sooner or later anyhow.  It was quite useless to
-lie about it.
-
-"Mottele's!" he replied.
-
-"Where didst thou get it?"
-
-No answer.
-
-Threateningly, in crescendo:
-
-"Where didst thou get it?"
-
-"Found it!"
-
-"Where?  Say thou where, at once!"
-
-There was a loud knocking at the door.  Reb Monash remained in
-ignorance but a few seconds longer.  A deputation poured into the
-kitchen.  It consisted of two or three women, an old man gabbling
-indignantly, the father of Mottele, the mother of Mottele, and in her
-arms, swathed in a shawl, the soaked, screaming Mottele himself.
-
-"It is well!" said Reb Monash shortly.  "It is well!" he said quietly
-and grimly.  "You may go!  We shall be happy together, Feivel and I!"
-he added with acid humour.
-
-Philip was conscious of the strained white face of his mother staring
-from the candle-lit gloom of the scullery.  He didn't mind these things
-himself so fearfully much ... but somehow she never seemed able to get
-used to them ... ah well, he'd had his whack ... the sooner it was over!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Not the most enthusiastic observer could have foretold the growth of a
-friendship between Philip and Mottele.  On the other hand, Reb Monash
-regarded with some alarm the growing relations between his son and
-Harry Sewelson.  He was not wholly satisfied that a sound Jewish
-atmosphere ruled in the Sewelson household, but his own path and theirs
-were too far apart for any accurate ascertainment.  Though they did not
-live far away the Sewelsons were neither relatives nor _landsleit_; and
-it was a fact that _landsleit_, that is, folk who have emigrated from
-the same region or township in Eastern Europe, knew more of each
-other's affairs though they lived at opposite ends of Doomington, than
-folk who had originated from different provinces of the Exile, even
-though these lived in the same street.  He remembered with a certain
-dismay how upon the first occasion that Philip had invited his friend
-to Angel Street, Sewelson had instinctively removed his cap upon
-entering the kitchen--an act which, perversely enough to non-Jewish
-minds, is not merely bad manners in an orthodox Jewish house, but
-positively savours of sin.
-
-Harry had sat there quietly, but his grey eyes keenly observant.  He
-had entered the conversation, however, with a certain fertility of
-Yiddish vocabulary and idea which more nonplussed Reb Monash than won
-him over.  When he sat down to bread and butter and tea with Philip,
-his prayer-before-food was so rapid and brief a mumble as to suggest
-either ignorance or contempt.
-
-"It likes me him not, this young man!" declared Reb Monash with some
-anxiety.  But there was not at this time any specific reason for
-forbidding the friendship between the two lads; so that when _chayder_
-and _shool_ left room for the dissipation, Philip was away up
-Doomington Road and in the kitchen beyond the Drapery and Hosiery
-Establishment.
-
-"I don't know what it is," Philip was saying, "I don't know what it is
-about poetry.  Somehow, you can get away with it.  It's like a ... it's
-like a road, isn't it?  You start in Angel Street and you start walking
-and hey, hullo! where are you?"
-
-"You're right and you're wrong!" declared Harry.  He was now a mature
-man of twelve, and in ways more or less subtle was fond of rendering
-the disparity of a year between them apparent to Philip.  "It's more'n
-that, I think.  It can take you away, but it can keep you there as
-well.  You understand better what it all means.  You understand, that's
-what poetry means!" he declared solemnly, his face assuming an aspect
-of such inscrutable wisdom as Philip might or might not penetrate.
-
-"I can't understand!" said Philip morosely.  "It's too big to try.
-Besides I _don't_ want to understand, so there!  It's rotten, the whole
-thing's rotten, _chayder_ and Angel Street and _shool_ and the lads and
-everything.  I hate it all and I don't want to understand it.  I just
-_feel_ that poetry's nice, a million times nicer than all this
-everywhere...."  He pointed comprehensively beyond and round the walls
-of the kitchen to include the whole of life as it presented itself to
-him.
-
-"What a girly-girly word, nice!" scoffed Harry.  "You ought to be
-careful what words you say or you'll never get a scholarship.  Poetry
-is not nice--it's splendid, and magnificent and all that sort of thing.
-_Nice_!  Ugh!"
-
-"Well, you know what I mean!" said Philip uncomfortably.  The tendency
-to jibe at him was a somewhat distracting trait that had manifested
-itself in his relations with Harry.  The wholly undefined idea stirred
-vaguely within him that Harry treated him somewhat as he treated
-poetry--as something out of which he could make intellectual capital,
-something to make use of--like chewing gum which you kept on chewing
-and chewing until there wasn't any more chew in it, and then you just
-stuck it under a chair and forgot about it.  But he speedily shook off
-ideas of this disturbing kind.  Life was already sufficiently
-complicated without mixing it up with silly old bogeys which led
-nowhere.  Moreover, his friendship with Harry was worth it, if only for
-the sake of discussing poetry.
-
-"Poetry makes you _feel_ funny!" said Philip.  "It's nicer'n singing or
-pictures.  It doesn't let you think at all ... I mean thinking like
-thinking out sums about how many herrings in a barrel at twelve and
-sixpence what's one and a half next week!  See?"
-
-"There's thinking and thinking!" Harry postulated.  "There's thinking
-about herrings and a half--and thinking about philoserphy!" he declared
-pompously.
-
-"Philwhaterphy?" asked Philip with a mixture of scepticism and
-reverence.
-
-"Philoserphy!"
-
-"Whatever does that mean?"
-
-"Oh, knowing all about things upside down!"
-
-"What's that got to do with Tennyson?" Philip asked smartly, as if he
-had rather scored a point.
-
-"Tennyson never says anything at all about jography or mensuration.  I
-suppose he forgot all about 'em when he left school!" Philip continued.
-
-"That shows all you know!  Philoserphy is something bigger'n jography.
-Got nothing to do with it!"
-
-"What's Tennyson's philoserphy?"
-
-"Oh, it's better to be an Englishman than a Chinee!" Harry decided,
-expanding his bosom with vicarious patriotism.
-
-"I like carrots more'n cabbage!  Is that philoserphy?" asked Philip, in
-some slight fear of his intellectual patron.
-
-"There's a lot more in it, too!" replied Harry somewhat uneasily,
-disregarding his friend's levity.  "In the spring a young man comes out
-all spots and goes and gets married!  There!"
-
-"Humph!  I s'pose there's lots of philoserphies and things in
-Tennyson!" agreed Philip, not wholly convinced.  "But I like poetry
-because it's ... because it's got ... Oh, I don't know what to say!
-_You_ know!"
-
-"Well anyhow, _I_ know why I like poetry!" Harry insisted.
-
-"You know the song we're singing in school?  It goes:
-
-  _Come unto these yellow sands,
-    And then take hands.
-  Curtsey'd when you have and kissed,
-    The wild waves whist!_
-
-
-"Now when they're all singing it, I hate singing it.  It all gets lost
-in twiddly-bits.  I just _say_ it, slowly, and not listening to the
-class.  See how it goes, like kids dancing at Mother-Ice-cream's organ,
-
-  _Come unto these yellow sands!_
-
-and then you all sort of stop a minute and go slowly, like drilling,
-only beautifuller.
-
-  _And then take hands!_
-
-And have you ever seen what a lot of 'w's' there is in that line.  Just
-listen:--
-
-  _The wild waves whist!_
-
-I wonder if that's done on purpose?"
-
-"Of course it is!" Harry said with a note of superiority in his voice.
-"That's what they call 'alliteration!'  They have a dictionary and put
-down all the nice words beginning with one letter and then they start
-writing poetry.  It's very clever!"
-
-"Yes, it is _too_ clever!" agreed Philip, embarrassingly conscious of a
-whole field of technical difficulty yet to be ploughed before attaining
-the happy position of a Tennyson.  "Now she didn't tell us who wrote
-that poem?  Who was it?"
-
-"That _poetry_!" stressed Harry, with an ironic reminiscence of an
-error not long thrown over by his friend, "was by William Shakespeare.
-Better than Tennyson they _do_ say!"
-
-"Better than Tennyson!" Philip repeated with something of horror at the
-irreverence.  "But Tennyson was a _Lord_!"
-
-"Well, Lords are not everything!  Some Lords' grandfathers were just
-beer-house men!" exclaimed a democratic Harry.
-
-"What was this Shakespeare, anyhow?  I think we used to do a recitation
-by him all about stiffening the sinews, didn't we?"
-
-"He was in a stable, and pinched rabbits from a woman called 'Lowsy
-Lucy'!  That's _his_ life story!"
-
-"And yet he wrote all that about coming to these yellow sands and then
-holding hands!  But he can't really be better than Tennyson.  He never
-wrote those lines about hollyhocks.  Do you remember?  Like this:
-
-  _Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
-  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily!_
-
-Those are the beautifullest lines all over anywhere!"
-
-"A bit of a tongue twister, eh?  Makes you pronounce all your aitches
-like "hammer hammer hammer on the hard high road!" Harry blasphemed,
-twinkling.
-
-"Oh don't, don't!" exclaimed Philip, a catch of pain in his voice.
-
-"Anyhow there isn't any philoserphy in those lines!  And you don't know
-what hollyhocks are?  How can you like the lines?  It's swank!"
-
-"I don't know!  It might be because I don't know, I like the lines.
-But I _do_ know it's a flower; and when I see the real flower I'll be
-glad to see it.  But it's got nothing to do with the poetry.  That's
-just by itself:
-
-  _Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
-  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily!"_
-
-
-"Never mind, never mind!" said Harry sapiently, "you'll grow older some
-day!"
-
-"I wonder!" mused Philip.  "But look here, what's the time?  Crutches!
-Half-past eight!  Got to be in bed at nine!  So-long, Mr. Philoserphy!"
-
-"So long till next time!" returned the sage, settling himself down to
-his book.  "_O revower!_"
-
-
-As Philip ran along Doomington Road he could not help halting at the
-floral establishment half-way home which recently had initiated a
-forlorn crusade against the artistic apathy of the neighbourhood.
-Already, it was evident, the high ideals of Madame Smythe, Floriste,
-were being tarnished by the rust of compromise.  She had opened her
-establishment with a blaze of purely floral splendour.  There were rose
-trees entering into bloom, lilies, bunches of garden flowers,
-democratic pots of geranium and fuchsia, tall tulips, narcissi; and as
-a subfusc groundwork, wooden boxes of bulbs, manures, weed killers,
-syringes and packets of seed.  It was not long before young vegetables
-were introduced, ostensibly on the ground that vegetables such as
-potatoes and peas had a floral as well as a dietetic significance.  And
-now hoary potatoes, full-grown carrots, unblushing turnips, made an
-almost animal show among the fragility of creeper and flowers.
-
-None the less Madame Smythe's shop was the nearest thing to poetry in
-the concrete that Philip had yet encountered.  Not a day passed but
-that Philip on his return from school flattened his nose against the
-floristic window-pane, his eyes dazzled with delight, albeit
-calceolaria and hyacinth equally were mere words to him.
-
-One day he observed that a new glory arose from Madame Smythe's tallest
-and most expensive vase.  It took the shape of three flowers which he
-had not seen before (he had not seen them for the reason that Madame
-Smythe opened the shop in spring, and the new-comers were autumn
-flowers).  They were fluffy masses of numberless soft yellow petals,
-bending slightly on their stalks like a gracious and lovely woman.  Oh,
-the rapture of burying a nose in these fragrant sweet cushions, the
-rapture of seeing one of them upon his mother's blouse till her own
-brown eyes caught additional gold from the gold of these blooms!
-
-  _Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
-  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily,_
-
-he murmured.  Ah, the scrumptious hollyhocks!  That's what they were of
-course!  Hollyhocks!  "Heavily hangs the hollyhock!"  That's just what
-these flowers were doing!  He had no sooner coupled the name with the
-flower than by the easiest process in the world the flower and the name
-became one.  No wonder Tennyson wrote poetry about hollyhocks!  Just
-look how each little petal curled so exquisitely, each petal fresh as
-morning, yet chiselled finely into perfect form!
-
-"Wouldn't it be spiff to buy a hollyhock and give it to mother, saying
-(as one always said in romance), 'For the Fairest!' then bowing
-gallantly!" he mused.  "What can I do?  I get a ha'p'ny a week, when
-I'm good, from father.  I'll be good for three weeks.  That'll be
-three-ha'pence.  Then I'll go in and buy a hollyhock.  Oo, what fun!"
-
-The second and third halfpennies were added to the first, not without
-depressions in the barometer of virtue.  He shyly entered the shop of
-his ambitions.
-
-"Can I have a hollyhock, please, ma'am!"
-
-"_A hollyhock_?  I'm sorry, young man, we don't keep no hollyhocks!"
-
-A look of grievous disappointment came into Philip's face.  His voice
-trembled.
-
-"But please, ma'am," he said, "you've had some hollyhocks in the window
-and somebody's bought 'em and now you've got some more hollyhocks!"
-
-"Gracious! what can the young man want!  We ain't got no hollyhocks!
-Just show me what you mean!"
-
-Philip approached the lattice-work which separated the shop from the
-shop window.  He pointed to the vase where his hollyhocks bloomed rich
-and desirable.
-
-"One of those hollyhocks, please!" he said.
-
-"Hollyhocks!" she snorted.  "Hollyhocks!  Haw, haw, haw!  Lawks!
-Them's chrysanthemums!  Haw, haw, haw!"
-
-Philip's disappointment deepened.  It was the glamour of the word no
-less than the actual flower that had drawn his feet to pilgrimage.  But
-Madame Smythe had lifted the vase of chrysanthemums from the window.
-
-"One, did you say?" she inquired, resuming business.
-
-"Yes, one, please!" he assented, with trepidation.
-
-"Here you are, sir, thank you!"
-
-He opened his hands where the halfpennies lay warm and wet.  He placed
-his three coins on the counter.
-
-"What!" she snapped, somewhat dangerously.  "Sixpence, if you please!"
-
-"I--I--I'm sorry!" he said weakly and blushing violently, "I'm sorry!
-I haven't got any more!"
-
-"Go home!" said Madame Smythe more genially, melting as she perceived
-the lad's embarrassment.  "Go home and tickle your fat aunt!  Tell her
-I told you!"
-
-Now even if they weren't hollyhocks, and he reflected bitterly that he
-had had no warrant for calling them hollyhocks, he wasn't going to be
-humiliated in this way.  No! not even if they cost ninepence, let alone
-sixpence.  No, he was going to buy a hollyhock, that is to say a
-chrysanthemum, for his mother, even if he died for it!  How could he
-get sixpence?  An appalling sum, on the further side even of avarice,
-but he was going to get it, and he already had three-ha'pence, anyhow!
-
-Another three weeks of comparative virtue swelled his total to
-threepence.  Two separate ha'p'nies from his sister Dorah (who had been
-married for years and lived up in Longton), and he was worth fourpence.
-It was a point of honour not to receive the slightest subsidy from his
-mother towards her own gift.  A ha'p'ny borrowed from Harry and
-three-ha'pence from the sale of an enormous number of Dandy Dave's
-chronicled exploits brought him the desired total.
-
-He marched boldly into Madame Smythe's establishment.  "One
-chrysanthemum, please!" he demanded.
-
-"Come again, Johnny, eh?  Got the money this time?"
-
-"Of course I have!"
-
-"Hoity-toity!  All right, my lord!"
-
-"Here you are, ma'am!" he said, as he received the flower wrapped in
-tissue-paper and handed over his coins.
-
-"I say!  I say!  Mr. Rich!  You've given me too much!"
-
-"But you said sixpence!"
-
-"Oh, that was weeks ago!  They're cheaper now; they're only threepence!"
-
-He was sickened to think he had allowed the extra weeks to pass by thus
-unchrysanthemumed.  "Give me another!" he demanded haughtily to
-convince Madame Smythe of his superiority to all consideration of money.
-
-The kitchen was crowded when Philip entered with his flowers and he
-slipped in unnoticed to join his mother in the scullery.
-
-"Mamma," he said shyly, "I've brought you a present all for yourself!"
-
-"Oh, Feivele, sweet child, how lovely!  But the money, where didst thou
-get the money from?"
-
-"I've been saving up, Mamma.  But never mind about that!  You've got to
-take these flowers and wear them on your blouse!"
-
-"But I can't, Feivele!  It's not right a married woman should wear
-flowers.  Knowest thou not a Jewish woman must not wear her own hair?
-How then shall I wear flowers?  And what will thy _tatte_ say?  I
-can't, my child!"
-
-"Oh, Mamma I've been saving up for such a long time just to buy 'em for
-you.  And now you don't want 'em.  It's rotten, it's real rotten of
-you!"
-
-"I do want them; see, look where I put them in this jar.  They'll be
-here a long time, while I'm standing in the scullery, washing up and
-peeling potatoes.  And when they're dead, Feivele, they'll still be
-living inside me.  Dost thou understand?  Thou art a good child!" she
-said, "God bless thee!"  She bent down and kissed his forehead.
-
-... It was memories such as these and such chance snatches of poetry
-that kept Philip that evening against the window-pane of Madame Smythe,
-Floriste, for many contemplative minutes.  Nine o'clock had passed when
-at last he entered the kitchen of Number Ten Angel Street.
-
-"Regard the hour!" said Reb Monash.  "Thou hast been squandering the
-hours with Sewelson!  It likes me not that Sewelson!  What about thy
-scholarship!  Thou shouldst have been in to-night studying for thy
-scholarship after _chayder_.  Much success thou wilt win!"
-
-"Oh, I forgot about the scholarship!" said Philip apologetically.
-"_Emmes, tatte_, I'll be in all to-morrow night studying the history
-book!"
-
-"Well, we shall see then!  Go to bed now, at once!  Good night!"
-
-"Good night all!"
-
-
-Philip had recently been chosen as one of the candidates for the
-Doomington School Scholarship Examination by the master of Standard
-Seven, whither Philip's talents in "Grammar and Composition" had
-brought him with unusual rapidity.  Reb Monash was delighted that his
-son was progressing at least along the road to Gentile scholarship.
-His experience contained the records of several young men whose earlier
-years had been devoted to the mastery of secular knowledge, which, in
-due time, only turned them with the more zeal to Jewish wisdom, whereto
-all other accomplishments were but footnotes and commentaries; these
-young men had actually been enabled through their Gentile wisdom to
-study the Bible and the Talmud from a new, and sometimes from a
-broader, point of view.  He himself could read English well and was no
-mean scholar of the Russian and German literatures.  In addition to
-which, of course, was his profundity in Hebrew lore, which gave him an
-honoured position among the very circle of the Rabbis.
-
-"It will do him no harm!" said Reb Monash.  "If he will be like Moishe
-Nearford I will not be displeased.  You know Moishe Nearford, the Long
-One?  Not only was he high in Doomington School but he went on to the
-university where one respected him, God and Man.  And yet a Jew is he,
-a perfect one.  Never goes out with any other girl, only his sister
-you'll see on his arm, week after week.  A real Jew, say I, and a real
-brother!  And what about Moses Montefiore?  He would stand up in the
-House of Parliament while one talked of taxes and India and face the
-East and start shaking himself over his _davenning_!  But let him be
-like Moishe Nearford, let alone Moses Montefiore, and I am content!"
-
-So it came about that a tacit understanding existed for the next few
-months between Reb Monash and Philip that the old Spartan devotion to
-_chayder_ and _shool_ was temporarily not expected from him.  It was
-not in the least that Reb Monash deviated one whit from the ideal by
-whose pattern he had determined to shape Philip; nor that Philip found
-one whit more congenial the ideal thus created, an ideal so near to
-Mottele as by that reason alone to be repugnant.  It was, to simplify
-the issue, a state of truce.
-
-During this period, while Philip was reading for his own examination,
-Harry was elected to a scholarship, not indeed to the older foundation
-of Doomington School, which was the goal of Philip's endeavours, but to
-the modern Council institution called the Highfield Grade School, for
-which Harry's more astute and vehement personality seemed to fit him
-more readily than for the fourth-century romanticism of Doomington
-School.  Yet only partly to keep abreast with his friend did Philip
-apply himself to hard reading of a less congenial kind than poetry.  It
-is at a very early stage in the fortunes of Angel Street youth that the
-shadows of tailor shop and grocery stores begin to cloud the dawn.
-Before the meaning of such liberty as Angel Street can afford has been
-grasped, it is time to study the lines of slavery.  So early then had
-the grinding fear of a sweated agony in a factory over the Mitchen
-turned Philip's mind towards his only escape, to further and further
-schooling, beyond the boundaries of the Bridgeway Elementary School.
-Perhaps more immediately he felt that Doomington School would leave him
-free to tread the primrose path of poetry.  He envisioned such
-black-gowned masters as figured in the adventures of Master Tom Merry;
-saw them walking along groves academe hidden somewhere behind the walls
-of Doomington School; and at their heels, imbibing the poetry these
-gentlemen read from gold-clasped poets illuminated upon parchment
-richer than the Scrolls of the Law at the _Polisher Shool_, a crowd of
-emotional youths, who only turned from poetry in order to practise at
-the nets or consume at Ma Pott's tuck-shop illimitable pastry.
-
-He applied himself with fervour to French verbs, the Gulf Stream, and
-the vexed question of herrings in barrels.  He discovered that at a
-certain stage in his reading the letters on the page before him lost
-their antique stability and began to pirouette across the page, bowing
-their heads, and, in the case of the genus "f" and "g," swishing their
-tails indecorously; soon everything would melt in a mist of grey until
-only by shutting his eyes and relaxing every ocular nerve he could
-resume his vision.
-
-"Father!" he declared, "it gets all mixed up on the paper when I've
-been reading a long time.  I think I need spectacles!"
-
-"Thou canst not study," asked Reb Monash, "without wanting to be like
-thy elders?  Go then, go!  I did not want spectacles till I was
-five-and-thirty and I read more by the time I was ten than thou shalt
-have read when thou art thirty!  Go then, go!  Thine eyes are well
-enough!"
-
-It was in the paper on geometry that his bad sight brought swiftest
-disaster.  He had solved one or two propositions with infinite
-difficulty.  He stared so hard and long at the paper before him on an
-indecipherable mass of angles and lines that the _danse funèbre_ began
-sooner than usual.  When his vision arrived at the stage of opacity he
-laid his pen down in a mood of bitter resentment....  He felt himself
-for the first time hating his father with a conscious hate.
-
-The examination was being held in the Meeting Hall of Doomington
-School.  He looked over the backs of his bent industrious competitors
-towards the tall arched windows.  These, on their outer side, were cut
-by a black parapet, leaving only the upper half of the windows on that
-side of the hall open to the daylight.  He saw dimly a dark mass moving
-leisurely along the parapet, now appearing behind the windows, now
-disappearing behind the intervening walls.  It seemed almost like one
-of the peccant letters on his paper, incarnate in bulk.  The long tail
-wagged playfully.  Philip blinked and stared intently.  It was a large
-and amiable rat.  The rat disappeared beyond the further windows and
-left Philip staring blankly.  The rat found the destination he had been
-making for unworthy of his continuous esteem.  He sauntered pleasantly
-back and then, discovering that an incident of more than usual interest
-was taking place in the hall, he sat down on his haunches and looked on
-in friendly concern.  Philip felt the rat's eyes looking interestedly
-down upon his own.  He could have sworn that the rat inclined his head
-with the gesture of a commendatory uncle.
-
-"Never mind, old lad!" said the rat.  "You're making a howling mess of
-your geometry, it's true!  If Mister Blabberthwaite, the geometry man,
-had the least say in the matter there'd be no chance for you, my
-hearty.  And you've by no means gratified my expectations regarding
-your geography paper, I must say.  It was, perhaps, coming it a bit
-thick to ask the names of all the capes on the American sea-board, that
-I admit; but that wasn't any excuse for chucking Flamborough Head at
-the mouth of the Irrawaddy which, if I mistake not, is not in America
-at all.  It's in Queensland or something of the sort.  However,
-_that's_ no odds!  Don't worry, I feel a strong suspicion that
-Doomington School will make room for you yet ... although don't breathe
-a word, or it's all u.p., to use a vulgarism.  No, not a word!  The
-truth is," whispered the rat, lifting a silencing paw to his nose, "Mr.
-Furness and I have got something up our sleeves for you, something you
-can't guess; but it's there right enough.  _Verb. sap._, as people
-invariably say upon arriving at my own respectable age.  But
-Esmeralda's squeaking, old chap!  Sorry I can't stay ... but these
-wives, you know! ... Well, so long, so long, and keep going!  So long!"
-And the rat resumed his urbane path.
-
-It was impossible to get down to his geometry again, his head was
-swimming.  He rose and deposited his papers before the dignified
-grey-haired worthy at the door, who, if he wasn't Mr. Furness, the head
-master, was at least, surely, the Principal Governor of the School.
-
-When they placed the subjects for an English essay before him and he
-read:
-
-  "A day in my favourite church."
-
-or
-
-  "What is the meaning of Empire Day?"
-
-or
-
-  "The Place of Poetry in Cities,"
-
-with a shout of inner exultance which, he feared, would lift the roof
-of his skull, he realized precisely the good fortune which Messrs.
-Furness and Rat had been retaining for him up their joint sleeves.  He
-betook himself to "The Place of Poetry in Cities" with a secret fear
-that the ink-pot could not possibly contain sufficient ink, a fear
-counteracted by the dismal thought that only one hour was allowed him
-to express his opinion upon the subject of which he was the prime
-authority in all Britain.
-
-"The Place of Poetry in Cities," he began with anticipatory panache,
-"is so great that it abolishes cities and turns the mud rivers into
-rivers of silver.  There is," he continued with anti-climax, "nothing
-like it."  But he soon resumed the tenour of his flight.  Philip was,
-in fact, affirming his creed, affirming the philosophy he had attained
-after eleven and a half years of brick and mud, of stupidity, error,
-false ideals, of that living poetry spelled by the half-hidden love
-between his mother and himself, of that poetry in words which, without
-this living poetry, could not have unfolded her secrets to a child
-immersed in an almost unbroken despair.  His pen scratched furiously
-along.  Too swiftly, too swiftly, the minutes raced round the rim of
-his borrowed watch.  Frequently the green meadows of his writing were
-patined with flowers from the poets he had discovered, Campbell, Moore,
-Tennyson, Longfellow, and when these failed him, an impromptu verse
-from Philip Massel bubbled from his simmering brain.  He was vaguely
-conscious of the approach towards him of a clean-shaven man, with a
-strong, red face, firm of jaw; but clad in such inexpensive clothing as
-obviously to denote him the caretaker or, perhaps, the drilling
-instructor.  He was aware with a slight annoyance that the man hung for
-some minutes over his paper and then very lightly placed his hand on
-Philip's head.  There was something quiet and fine and firm in that
-gesture.  Perhaps he wasn't the drilling instructor?  Perhaps he was a
-real master with a large family and he couldn't afford to wear
-brand-new clothing?  What did it matter? ... "so that the chimneys all
-seem to be made of gold and the poor men are like princes...."
-
-The stage arrived when he could no longer see the lines on which he was
-writing or the letters he was forming.  Still his pen raced along.  The
-tip of his pen disappeared in a mist like the top of a telegraph pole
-in a November fog.  His forehead was clammy with sweat.  His forefinger
-and thumb hurt horribly.  And what was that?  Some fool was clanging
-the bell!  That meant he must stop!  Oh, the fool!  Faster still and
-faster!  He felt that his eyes must fall from his sockets.  Tears of
-effort were rolling down his face.  At last!  At last!  "... for Poetry
-takes us from the cities of bricks and mud to a land full of beauty
-like the night is full of stars!"
-
-The dignitary of the receiving-desk by the door stared curiously at
-him.  He staggered out, half-blind, but filled with a great calm.  The
-days that followed were days of a confident lassitude.  The decision
-lay on the knees of the Rat and Mr. Furness, and he was content to wait.
-
-When the information arrived that Philip Massel had won his
-scholarship, Reb Monash buried Philip's head in his moustache and
-beard.  "Now," he said, his voice quivering, "thou wilt be a Jew and a
-Human, a credit to God and Man!"
-
-Another matter of satisfaction was the fact that Mottele looked
-enviously towards him and made deliberate advances.  And when he went
-to tell his sister Dorah, in Longton, it was surprising to find her
-stiff angular figure bending down and the hard mouth with strange
-vehemence kissing him.  Sixpence and a new overcoat of a wonderful
-fluffy grey followed from the same quarter.  Channah cried and bought
-him a little volume of selections from a poet called Shelley.
-
-But he appreciated nothing as he appreciated the pan of onions his
-mother fried for him, all in curly brown strips and steeped in butter;
-and more onions, and more onions, until he had had enough.  And his
-mother looked at him, and he understood, for the voice that asked for
-another plateful was choked not merely by fried onions.
-
-
-
-
-BOOK II
-
-FORWARD FROM PHYLACTERIES
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Philip realized at no earlier age than is customary that life, anyhow
-externally, is a succession of illusions, and that, if reality actually
-exists, it must be isolated from facts and days, this inner reality
-being governed by one set of laws and the outer appearance by another.
-So that while poetry still dominated the inner boy as with a rod of
-changeless reality, he found it necessary to abandon, for instance, the
-old fancy of Doomington School in favour of the present fact.
-
-It was a matter of acute disappointment to him that one convention laid
-down by all his reading was not observed; for he was not seized by a
-group of young gentlemen clad principally in Eton suits and top hats to
-be immersed in a stream which ought surely to have flowed somewhere
-through the precincts of the school.  The front of the building solidly
-enough lined a narrow central street of Doomington.  A further aspect,
-and one which seemed to conclude its periphery, was seen beyond the
-grassless ground adjoining an even older institution.  From no vantage
-were the leafy summits of trees to be seen and no stream issued from
-any portcullised arch in the walls.  It was the antique Mitchen alone
-which thrust turbid ink in any visible proximity.  But what secret
-bowers and what green places were hidden beyond the walls, some
-mysterious how contained in her unfathomed spaces, who could tell?
-
-He was not ducked in some shy water.  On the other hand it did not
-approach his concept of an awesome initiation that a group of quite
-grubby boys seized him and bore him, frightened but not wholly
-unwilling, towards an underground lavatory where pallid basins gleamed
-in the interrupted light.  His head was thrust into one of these
-prosaic basins and water sent unpleasantly down his neck.  He was with
-some solemnity declared then to be fully a member of Transition A, and
-allowed to proceed to his lunch in the main section of this underground
-world, where he sat on the water pipes that lined the walls, eating
-bread and cheese timidly.  The air tingled with the bloodthirsty shouts
-of footballers, violently kicking balls of crushed paper and twine.  A
-lady with tawny hair in a corner of the basement dispensed Jersey
-caramels to appeased footballers.  Indubitably the triumph of the day
-was the purchase of a cap, green, with blue circular stripes, crested
-with an eagle invincibly--a cap which proclaimed to the whole abashed
-world that here was one who was of the world's elect, here was one who
-was no lesser a mortal than a scholar at Doomington School.
-
-As he walked home that afternoon, he took slow and measured steps, so
-that none should be denied the privilege of gazing upon his cap.  It
-seemed that less a thing of cloth texture sat on his head than a crest
-of fire.  As he walked along Doomington Road, he paused before each
-mirrored window as if to tie a shoelace, and actually to compare his
-eagle, to their enormous disfavour, with all fowls in the lists of
-fable or biology.  But a climax, which seemed on the whole rather to be
-overdoing it, occurred as he passed below the windows of the factory
-where his sister Channah was a button-hole hand.  For the shrill bravas
-of feminine throats attracted his gaze upwards and there he saw and
-heard the clustered buttonhole hands cheering and waving
-enthusiastically.  And before Philip had time to lower his blushing
-face a cloud of confetti descended upon this youthful bridegroom of our
-fair Lady of Wisdom, accentuating his discomfort into an ordeal of
-shame.  At this moment a schoolmate, not much older than Philip, but
-his faded cap displaying a far more advanced stage of sophistication,
-passed by, bestowing a sour look upon the object of this public
-debasement of the masculine values of Doomington School.  When he
-arrived home his mother laid before him a steaming plate of soup which
-she almost upset in her proud concentration upon the eagle-crested cap.
-
-"And do you know, Mother," Philip declared during his breathless
-repetition of the day's events, "there was a man there who put us into
-our classes and he was reading my composition at the scholarship and I
-thought he was the drilling man but he isn't really, he's the head
-master, Mr. Furness, and he's like Jupiter, only Jupiter's got a great
-big black beard and Mr. Furness hasn't and he's not got much on the top
-of his head either.  There's a huge statue of Jupiter..."
-
-"To thy soup, Feivel!" said Mrs. Massel, "It will get cold and Mr.
-Foniss will not come and heat it for thee.  Calm then, calm!" she
-demanded, by no means less aquiver with excitement than the boy.
-
-Yet it must be here said that for some considerable time to come,
-Doomington School had no serious influence upon Philip's real life.
-There was of course something _genteel_ about the atmosphere compared
-with the crudities of the Bridgeway Elementary School, and this
-demanded from Philip a much more rigid discipline in the matter of
-boots and ties.  His master, he was informed, hailed from an Olympian
-institution called Oxford University, and for this reason wore a sombre
-black gown which would have made of a less imposing figure than this
-gentleman an object to be treated with remote awe.  Mr. Mathers was
-distinguished from Miss Tibbet, at least by the fact that he did not
-wear tortoise-shell spectacles, and from Miss Briggs of the infants'
-hall, by the fact that the two front teeth of his top jaw were not
-disproportionate.  Yet Philip felt in his presence a combination of the
-Briggs terror and the Tibbet ennui.  There was in him a monomaniac
-insistence on the correct orders of Latin sentences which produced the
-sensation half-way during the lesson that the orders of Latin sentences
-and the orders of the stars in their courses were of like fundamental
-gravity.  Mr. Mathers presented an interesting contrast to little Mr.
-Costar who taught French, and who sat in his high desk like a little
-bird twittering on a bough.  Twitter--twitter! the notes came, in a
-sequence of trills not musical but shrill and frequent.  Yet sometimes,
-and without warning, the tree-top twitter would cease, the eyes of Mr.
-Costar would become glacially severe, some delinquent would be lifted
-in his beak like a pink quivering worm, the throat of Mr. Costar would
-vibrate in the processes of swallowing, and immediately the twitter
-would be resumed, twitter--twitter, shrill, without humour.  The boys
-seemed no less strange and unreal than Mr. Mathers and Mr. Costar.
-They came mysteriously from townships scattered round the central and
-gloomy sun of Doomington, and disappeared with their daily quotum of
-Latin orders and French verbs into the same dim places, beyond the pale
-of knowledge.  There was a community of Jewish boys at Doomington, but
-he seemed at once only too familiar with their characteristics.  They
-were a blend of Mottele and Barney, Mottele being the predominant
-element.  Doomington School lay outside him, poetry lay within.
-Doomington School did not want him.  He would wait.  Perhaps he too
-would some day attain the heavy-browed responsibilities of a form
-monitor, might be even the monitor elected by the form itself and not
-the monitor arbitrarily appointed by the master.  But now all these
-concerns were beyond him, unintelligible.
-
-On the other hand, the rearrangement in his daily times produced by the
-school day was a matter of considerable importance.  It meant that he
-arrived home nearly two hours before the nightly session of _chayder_;
-with the consequence that Reb Monash was still wrapped in his afternoon
-doze.  Mrs. Massel had by this time cleared away every vestige of the
-mid-day meal and the kitchen was smelling delightfully fresh and clean.
-The brasses on the mantelshelf shone broad and lustrous--trays and
-samovar brought over from Russia, and the array of candlesticks which
-glorified the table every Sabbath eve.  The floor had been
-energetically scrubbed and the windows so polished as to seduce into
-the kitchen whatever light lingered beyond the iron bars.  On the sofa
-sat Mrs. Massel herself, in a clean afternoon apron, her fingers busy
-with knitting, allowing herself in Philip's honour the few minutes she
-spent idly in a day which began at six in the morning and ended at
-eleven.  Mrs. Massel was a woman of middle age, slim, but her whole
-body eloquent of hard work.  When Reb Monash had gone to seek his
-rhetorical fortunes in America, before Philip was born, she had tried
-to combine the housework with some form of itinerant business; the
-strain was still visible in the long lines across her forehead.  Her
-face was small and wrinkled and superficially older than her actual
-years.  When, however, she smiled, the clouds of her sorrow and
-tiredness seemed to chase each other out of the skies of her face.  She
-was then wistful and childish as one to whom the world still had all
-her tragedies to reveal.  Her nose was a little too broad for the small
-lines of her face, and this only added to her smile an element of the
-elfin and unreal, as if she had been instructed in some wisdom of dim
-mirth by little people far beyond the circle of her recurrent
-drudgeries.  This childlike sweetness lay in her eyes even in repose;
-for they seemed large and luminous with some inner steady light, they
-were brown like hill tarns when autumn is on the bracken slopes round
-them.  On her smiling this light seemed to be broken into little
-ripples which coursed over the brown waters of her eyes; but a surprise
-and a doubt at no time deserted them, as if beyond the horizon clouds
-lay ever waiting to veil these brown lights with mist.
-
-The love between Mrs. Massel and her son was a thing which never or
-rarely found expression in the usual endearments.  It was a love much
-more of silences than of speech.  Philip did not like kissing her, as
-feeling somehow that the relation between them lay too deep for the
-lips.  It made him self-conscious, and of his love a duty and a
-convention instead of the sacrament too deep for any deliberate
-thought.  Kissing in Christian families, he learned from books and his
-meagre experience, was a routine, where every member of the family
-kissed all others on recognized sections of the face at organized
-hours.  From his mother the endearments he received were a broken word
-which unwittingly left her lips, a gentle wind-like caress on the head,
-a goodly something pressed secretly into his hand, or merely a glance
-from her brown and childish eyes which might rest on his own for two
-moments, silent with sanctity.
-
-This concealment of their affection had always come naturally to them,
-though it was found also to be the most discreet policy.  Reb Monash
-had long discovered that the way to confirm impiety was to cherish the
-impious.  He therefore expected from his wife that at those periods
-when he was displaying in no mild manner his objection to the latest
-phase of Philip's heathenism, his wife should loyally and actively
-second his displeasure.  Any manifestation of affection towards Philip
-at such times caused him with so little restraint to lift his voice
-that (to the humiliation of his wife) it was obvious that their
-neighbours on both sides of the house were no less participant of his
-eloquence than himself.
-
-It was because during a whole hour they could sit and talk without
-fear, that Philip's return from school now became the brightest period
-of the day for both.  Quite quickly Philip would switch from the day's
-events to the latest poetry that had fastened on his imagination.
-
-"Mamma," he said, "Listen and be very quiet.  I'm going to read you
-something from Shelley.  Oh, it's a lovely thing about a plant in a
-garden where there was hyacinths and roses like nymphs and about a Lady
-who came with osier bands and things to hold the flowers up.  I say,
-Mamma, I say!"
-
-"_Nu_, what is it?  Thy meat's not well cooked?"
-
-"No, no!  I'm talking about lilies, not meat!  I wonder which you are!"
-
-"What I am?  I am thy mother!  What more needest thou?"
-
-"Which are you?  Are you the Sensitive Plant or are you the Lady in the
-garden?  When _tatte_ starts shouting you look lonely, like the
-Sensitive Plant, but when he's upstairs you're all lovely like the
-Lady!"
-
-"Foolishness!  Foolishness!"
-
-"But then the Lady died, so it can't be you, can it?  And so did the
-Sensitive Plant, so what are we to do about it?"
-
-"Of course she died!  What then?  And thy mother also, over a hundred
-years!  She too!  But why must thou talk about Death like this, thou
-not thirteen yet?  Wait till thou art older and thou hast a wife and
-family and hast married a son and a daughter, then it will be time!
-But for thy Lady, she's only a story, so of course she's dead!  How
-else?"
-
-"Ah, that's where you're wrong, see!  Shelley knows all about it.  He
-makes you feel awfully miserable and then he comes back right at the
-very end:
-
-  _That garden sweet, that lady fair,
-  And all sweet shapes and odours there,
-  In truth have never past away!
-  'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they._
-
-I suppose all that's what Harry means by 'philosophy.'  Anyhow, that's
-not the part I like so much.  What d'you think of this?
-
-  _... Narcissi, the fairest among them all
-  Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess
-  Till they die of their own dear loveliness."_
-
-
-"What does thy mother think of it?  My head's aching; what can I
-understand thereof?"
-
-"Oh yes, you can understand it right enough!  You understand it better
-than I do, but you don't want to show off!  But listen ... Oh, where's
-that Shelley Channah bought me?  Good, here it is!  Listen to this
-now!"  And he ran through another poem recently discovered.  This
-reading and chanting would take place daily.  Mrs. Massel sat on the
-sofa bewildered by this spate of melody, but keenly happy in the
-enthusiasm of her son.  If she ever ventured a "Philip, but not one
-word do I understand!"  "Ah! what does that matter?" Philip replied.
-"Do you remember when I asked _tatte_ what good I would do to God by
-saying a lot of prayers I can't understand a bit about--you remember,
-he was in a good temper?--he answered that it didn't matter if you
-can't understand; it's so holy to say things in Hebrew that God likes
-it just the same.  Well, there you are, it's just poetry!  It's like
-singing, only much finer!"
-
-Sometimes he would get her to repeat lines after him.  She might make a
-feeble attempt to remonstrate with him, but saw that her humorous
-efforts made him so beam with delight, that awkwardly, with an entirely
-false distribution of accents and meanings, she stammered out her
-lines.  It was "Arethusa" finally brought this diversion to an end.
-
-"From her couch of snows," said Philip.  She made an effort to imitate
-him.
-
-"In the Acroceraunian mountains."
-
-"In de Ac--ac--ac ... It cannot be, Feivel.  I can't!"
-
-"In the Ac--ro--ce--rau--nian mountains."
-
-"Ac--roc--Ac--roc--roc--  No, Feivel, my teeth!  Tell me all the rest
-thyself, I will listen; it will be better so!  I cannot thy croc--croc!"
-
-When at last the feet of Reb Monash were heard in the bedroom overhead,
-the poetry séance came abruptly to an end.  Mrs. Massel turned to the
-fire to put on the kettle for his pre-_chayder_ tea.  Philip
-regretfully hid away his poet and turned to the intricacies of algebra.
-
-Schoolboys have an unerring instinct for the presence or absence of
-what at Doomington School was called "public spirit."  It was in fact
-so essential a part of the non-material composition of the school that
-the lists of forms which were drawn up terminally, a little invidiously
-distinguished with an asterisk those hearts where "public spirit" was a
-constant flame.
-
-Philip, though his first year was well advanced, still came to school
-somewhat as a stranger.  While he himself anticipated little the
-vehement passion which would some day absorb him into the fabric of the
-school, his form mates anticipated it far less.  So that the cold
-disregard for Philip general in the form was in certain boys
-concentrated into active persecution, and in Jeremy Higson, into an
-attitude mournfully reminiscent of the Babylonian _Kossacken_.  The
-spirit was similar but the methods differed vitally.  Higson might be
-standing loosely against a desk when Philip entered the room after the
-luncheon interval.  A nail-studded boot would sweep like Jove's bolt
-from the void into Philip's rear.  But turning towards Higson, Philip
-would find only a heavy-faced youth talking sleepily with his friends.
-Higson senior was a mild Episcopalian gentleman who had written sixteen
-pamphlets to prove the identity of the Anglo-Saxons, including the
-Higsons senior and junior, with the Lost Tribes.  For some perverse
-reason Higson junior was exceedingly antipathetic to the Found Tribes,
-when, to be logical, it was for Higson junior to rush forward in
-consanguineous ecstasy to kiss Philip on the forehead and to repudiate
-his principal friend, Evan Evans, an indisputable Celt, as an
-outlander, an unsanctified.
-
-"Where was Moses when the light went out?" he jeered with criminal
-disrespect.  "Who killed Christ?" he insisted frequently, turning
-towards Philip an eye so baleful that it was evident he considered
-Philip an actual participant in the crucifixion.
-
-"Out of my way, you _smog_!" he growled, realizing that smog was a more
-acid irritant to Philip than _sheeny_.  Yet he discovered and practised
-a more exquisite infliction.  He knew that pig was anathema in Judæa,
-because Higson senior had once made a pathetic effort to veto this
-commodity from his household in response to Pentateuchal inhibition, an
-effort done to nought by the severe displeasure of Mrs. Higson and
-Higson junior.
-
-Higson junior therefore introduced into the classroom the most
-succulent morsels from his midday ham sandwiches to devour them in
-lengthy bliss before Philip's sickened eyes.  Philip began to discover
-little blobs of ham fat in his pockets and school bag.  Upon one
-calamitous day he found as he devoured the first mouthful of his lunch
-a taste of unutterable impiety in his mouth.  Looking with horror into
-his paper bag he found that its contents had been skilfully tampered
-with, (he kept his lunch stowed in the pockets of his coat hanging in
-the basement cloakroom), and that his mouth was now tainted with the
-abomination of desolation.  He withdrew on the wings of disgust and
-scoured his mouth with water for the remainder of that interval, a
-process he repeated impetuously during the next few days as often as he
-recalled the dishonour of his mouth.
-
-"What do you mean by it?" Higson asked Philip one afternoon.
-
-"By what?"
-
-"Killing Christ!"
-
-Philip winced and turned away.
-
-"I say, lads!" Higson said winking.  "Let's have a lark with _smoggie_!"
-
-"What's on, Turnips?"
-
-"Let's crucify him!"
-
-A slight gasp of horror rose from the Higson clientele.
-
-"It's quite easy!  Let's first stretch him out on the wall...."
-
-Philip ran to the foot of Mr. Mathers' desk.  His desperate eye had
-caught sight of a large earthenware bottle of ink.  He lifted it and
-with twitching lips he whispered, "Touch me, that's all!"
-
-"You little squib!" said Higson, swaggering forward nonchalantly.  He
-looked round to his friends.
-
-"Just give me a hand, you fellows!"
-
-"This is your job, Turnips!  You bring him to the wall!  We'll do the
-rest!"
-
-"Just you touch me, that's all!" Philip said wildly, his whole body
-tense against the desk.
-
-"And what will you do?"
-
-"I'll throw this in your face!  You'll see!"
-
-"Go it, Turnips!" the retinue encouraged.  "He's littler than you!"
-
-Higson looked round with a growing expression of despair.  It was
-impossible to withdraw.  He moved towards Philip.  Philip's arm shot
-forward.  "Oogh--oogh--oogh!"  A great volume of muddy ink was
-streaming down Higson's face and over his light green suit.  "Oh, you
-bloody little devil!  Oh, by Christ, I'll show you!"
-
-"No you don't!" a quiet voice said.  It was Forrester, the football
-captain for the form.  "You've had your whack!  You'd better go and
-wash before Mathers comes in!"
-
-"Yah!" howled the retinue with swift veer of sails.  "Look at Turnips!"
-
-Bullying was one thing, in fact, and dirty blasphemy another,
-particularly when attended by public ignominy.
-
-Philip, it is true, was not more beloved after this incident than
-before, but Higson certainly receded into a background of smouldering
-impotence.
-
-It can readily be seen then that Transition A was not likely to render
-Philip's old interests less attractive.
-
-A new planet now was beginning to swim into Sewelson's ken.  The planet
-attained soon the fixity of a star.  The star soon almost rivalled the
-sun of poetry as the prime luminary of Philip's intellectual sky.  The
-name of the new focus was Socialism.
-
-"Don't talk to me about poetry!" Harry declared impatiently one day.
-"What's the good of poetry while children are starving in garrets?  For
-God's sake keep it in its place, like a lap-dog in a basket.  I tell
-you, Philip, I tell you, there's nothing else but Socialism.  Liberals
-are Conservatives with their hands in somebody else's pockets.
-Conservatives are Liberals with their hands in their own pockets!
-Chalk and cheese!  We working men have got beyond 'em; we can see 'em
-through and through.  Dead Sea Fruit, that's what they are, all lies
-and hypocrisy inside, and red smiles outside.  What did Churchill
-promise and how much has he done?  No, Philip, a good time's coming!
-Socialism for ever!"
-
-"But listen, Harry, not so fast!  What does it all mean?  And why
-should it knock poetry out like that?  There can't be much good in it,
-if it hasn't got any room for poetry, I don't care what you say!"
-
-Harry glared for a moment.  "I didn't say that!" he snapped.  "I said
-it's bigger than poetry!  It is poetry!  How do you like that?  Real
-poetry!"
-
-The relation between the boys at this moment presented in a lively
-manner their differences and similarities.  When any fresh intellectual
-concept was presented to Philip, he was constitutionally distrustful of
-it until he had ascertained its position regarding his previous
-intellectual experience.  With an unease which expressed itself in a
-sort of timid humour, he held back from the idea, fearful of any
-separative influence upon the current of his emotions.  Harry, on the
-other hand, was borne away completely by any new proposition which
-made, through material disharmony, towards intellectual harmony.  But
-he was as instinctively afraid of a new emotional enthusiasm as Philip
-was hospitable to it, and here he adopted the protective coloration of
-a humour somewhat lambent and mischievous, to disguise the essentially
-sluggish setting of his sympathies towards an enlargement of his
-non-rational existence.
-
-"Well, define it!" challenged Philip.  "I know that I don't know
-anything about it excepting that all sorts of filthy people are called
-Socialists.  People who get full of poetry begin to live a more
-beautiful life inside.  I suppose it ought to be the same with
-Socialists!"
-
-"Oh, there you are, just as I thought!" exclaimed Harry rather shrilly.
-"Talking about Socialists, Socialists!  What about poets, poets, if it
-comes to that?  You know Shelley was an absolute pig with that girl
-Harriet and Cowper was mad and Tennyson became a Lord!  What on earth's
-that got to do with poetry!  I was talking about Socialism, and I say
-there's nothing in the world but Socialism!  That's what I say! ..."
-
-"How long have you been like this, Harry?  It sounds uncomfortable!"
-
-"Oh, ages!" replied Harry loosely.
-
-"You said nothing about it when I saw you two Saturdays ago.  Not that
-that's got anything to do with it, either!  But still, lend a poor chap
-a hand!  Where does it all want to get to?"
-
-"Oh, there's millions of books been written about it.  You know you
-couldn't put poetry into a word or two, but it means something like
-'Government of the People for the People by the People'--that sort of
-thing.  No millionaires paddling about in fat motor-cars and boys
-getting consumptive in mines!  No plush and palaces for the lords and
-sweat and a crust for the working people.  No rotten old kings on
-thrones and dying men scrubbing on their knees in workhouses! ... Oh,
-don't you see how we want it in Doomington of all places in the world!
-_There's_ something--what is it you're always gassing about?--which is
-going to sweep away the muck and the chimneys quicker than mooning
-about with hollyhocks!"
-
-"Have you got a book about it?" asked Philip uneasily.
-
-"A book?  Yes, I _suppose_ you'd better have a book to help you along.
-I've got a fine book all about it, by a chap called Blatchford.
-_Britain for the British_, that's what it's called!  It'll knock you
-off your feet, first read.  Oh damn, I've lent it to Segal!  I don't
-think you've met Segal!  No?  Oh, he's a clever devil!  Yes, I'll get
-it back from Segal and you can have it."
-
-"Right!  I'd like to see what it's all about."
-
-"Look here!  You've done your homework, haven't you?  You haven't?
-Well, _I_ haven't, it doesn't matter!  There's a Socialist meeting
-outside Ward's Engineering Works to-night!  They're thinking of putting
-up a Socialist candidate instead of the lousy Liberal.  What do you say
-to coming along just now?"
-
-"I'll never get home in time.  The old man's getting a bit radgy again."
-
-"Well, of course, if you're always going to be tied to your father's
-apron strings...."
-
-"I didn't say I wasn't coming!" Philip broke in hotly.
-
-"Right-ho!  We'll go through the back.  It's nearer!"
-
-It is almost no exaggeration to say that when Philip came home that
-night, his head was clamorous with a new gospel, his eyes shone with
-revelation, his too inflammable nature was ablaze!  He walked in
-unsteadily as if he had been drinking a heady wine.  He looked towards
-his father with a certain pity in his glance.  Was he not too a victim
-of these iniquitous conditions which the fiery-bearded man had
-described with such blood-freezing fury?  Did Reb Monash know it?  Of
-course he did not know it!  "Hapathy!" the man had thundered, "Hapathy!
-'Ere is the henemy!  Your fathers is strangling their children.  What
-for?  Hapathy!  Your children is drinking the blood of their fathers!
-What for?  What for, I ask?  Hapathy!  Deny it who can!"
-
-Reb Monash was engaged in a conversation with a lady who had two sons
-to dispose into a _chayder_.  He thought it discreet for the moment to
-remain outwardly unaware of the sinful hour Philip had chosen for his
-return.  Open disapproval would have displayed Philip as no
-satisfactory sample, so to speak, of the paternal wares.  He turned to
-Philip and with a gentle significance the two-sonned lady could not
-have fathomed, inquired, "Sewelson?"
-
-"No!" replied Philip, "Socialism!"
-
-Reb Monash's lips tightened imperceptibly.  He resumed the conversation
-with his client.
-
-"Of course," declared Philip enthusiastically some time later, "there's
-absolutely no doubt of it!  Shelley was an out-and-out Socialist!  As
-much of a Socialist as that candidate fellow, Dan what's-his-name!"
-
-"You're right!  Shelley was all there!" affirmed Harry.  He beamed
-pleasantly upon his convert.  "All the decent chaps have been
-Socialists from the beginning.  Christ too, he was no end of a
-Socialist!"
-
-"Don't know anything about Christ!" said Philip uneasily.  There was
-something disturbing in this treatment of Christ.  Christ belonged in
-the first place to Russia, where they impaled babies in His honour; and
-then to the Baptist Missionary Chapel, where He was associated with
-soup and magic lanterns; and to the Christian prayers at school
-wherein, of course, Philip had no part.
-
-"Christ was a Jew, after all," Harry put in tentatively, "like Karl
-Marx."
-
-"Karl Marx?"
-
-"Yes, that's the chap who wrote the big book you were looking at, on
-the chair near you.  I can't say I quite understand it, but they all
-say you've got to read it, so I got it out of the library."
-
-"Oh that!  I don't like that sort of Socialism, it's as bad as Mathers'
-Latin!  I prefer Shelley's.  How does it go?  Oh yes, don't you think
-this is fine poetry and fine Socialism, both together in one?
-
-  _Arise like lions after slumber
-  In unvanquishable number.
-  Shake your chains to earth like dew
-  Which in sleep had fatten upon you.
-  Ye are many.  They are few!_
-
-Isn't it fine?"
-
-"Whist!  Yes, that beats the song we sing at the Socialist
-meetings--all about keeping the red flag flying, eh?  It leaves old man
-Tennyson a bit husky, what do you think?"
-
-"Steady dog, isn't he, Tennyson?  Wants to take his time about it.
-Doesn't he say something like
-
-  _Freedom slowly broadens down
-  From precedent to precedent....?_
-
-Doesn't that mean you've got to take things sort of quietly?"
-
-"... While mothers haven't got any milk for their kids and Doomington
-stinks with corpses!  By God!  It makes me sick!  But there's no point
-rubbing it into you, you dark horse.  You've been a Socialist for the
-last--how many--fourteen years?  But listen, I've not told you?  Dan
-Jamieson wants me to get on my hind legs and say a few words at one of
-his meetings.  What do you say to that?"
-
-"I'd be frightened out of my life.  But how does he know you'll not
-make a muck of it?"
-
-"That's what I wanted to know.  But he said he overhead me barging at a
-lot of kids at a street corner, and he said to himself, 'that's the
-goods for me,' he said."
-
-"Gee!  You'll start crying in the middle!"
-
-"Don't be so sure!  It matters too much for me to start howling like a
-kid.  I'm as good as that weedy fellow with no chin at the Liberal
-meeting yesterday, any time of the year!"
-
-"What are you going to talk about?  Will you spit out this here Marx of
-yours?"
-
-"I saw Jamieson on Tuesday and asked him what he wanted.  'Never tha
-mind, lad!' he said, 'it'll serve our purpose seeing a lad like thee
-get oop on's feet.  That'll fetch 'em.  Doan't think in advance about
-it.  Just oppen tha lips and t'rest'll coom.'  That's the way he went
-on.  It _does_ make me feel rather goosy sometimes," Harry admitted,
-"but I've got hopes in that line, so all I can say is I ought to be
-damn glad of the chance!"
-
-"Well, you're a game 'un, anyhow.  I shouldn't like to be in your
-shoes."
-
-"You never know, my lad, you never know!" Harry speculated with dubious
-prophecy.
-
-
-Again some time has passed.  Reb Monash sits upright upon that corner
-chair wherein none shall sit whether Reb Monash be asleep upstairs or
-at the furthest limit of his peregrinations--because "Respect!
-respect!" he declares, "What means it to be sitting on a father's
-chair!"  He is sitting upright and his left fist clenched angrily beats
-the table before him in punctuation of his utterances.
-
-"Has one ever heard of such a thing?  A _yungatsch_ of fifteen, not
-more, to stand up in the market-place with the enemies of Israel and
-talk black things!  That's what it means, your schools and your
-teachers!  His parent, what is he?  An _isvostchik_!  I never had any
-trust in these Rumanians.  The town rings with it.  Imagine! standing
-up on a cart among the Atheists and Free-Lovers and Socialists!  It's a
-_shkandal_.  It will bring his mother's grey hairs in sorrow to the
-grave.  Sooner my son should in the grave himself be than behave like
-that proselytized Sewelson.  Understand, not a word, Feivel!  Thou must
-never put foot into the heathen's house!  I forbid it!  I have had my
-doubts for long.  Would that I had so commanded before this day.  God
-knows what poison thou canst have drunk from his lips.  What, what
-sayest thou, Philip?"
-
-"_Tatte_, I can't, he's my only pal!  I'll be alone without him.  And
-he doesn't do it every week, anyhow.  It's only this once!"
-
-"Never must he enter this house!  And if thou art ever seen with him, I
-will break for thee thy bones, all of them.  No more now!"  He brought
-the palm of his hand down emphatically.  "Chayah, bring me a glass of
-tea!  Tell thy son to go to bed!  If not it will be the worse for him!"
-
-Philip's heart shook with resentment and grief.  "I won't give him up,"
-he muttered fiercely behind his teeth.  "He won't stop me!  He can't!
-I'll be damned if I give him up!  He'll see!"
-
-Heavy wings were brooding over the kitchen in Angel Street.  The gas
-jet drooped dejectedly as if reluctant to light up the scared faces of
-Mrs. Massel and her daughter.  They sat side by side on the sofa
-nervously rubbing together the palms of their hands.  The thin white
-cat scratched his ribs against their ankles and howled into their faces
-inquiringly.
-
-"Never mind," said Channah, "perhaps he'll just give him a good hiding
-and send him off without supper.  It's happened before, mother.  Don't
-look so worried!"
-
-"Thou dost not know, Channah, what he's been saying to me in bed the
-last few nights.  He said if he'll go again with Sewelson he'll
-_shmeis_ him till he begs for mercy.  He said he'll keep him in the
-cellar all night, he'll _shmeis_ him till he can't even cry.  Oh, what
-a year has fallen upon us, Channah!"
-
-"I hate Sewelson, it's all his fault!  I wish he was at the bottom of
-the sea!" Channah burst out bitterly.
-
-"But it was wrong of Feivel.  It was wrong to go out with Sewelson
-again.  I told him.  He deserves it.  But no, the poor dove, not ..."
-
-"Not what he'll get.  Do you know who it was told father he was talking
-to Sewelson?  Oh, the sneak--I could murder him!"
-
-"I don't know!  I don't know!  It was one of the _chayder_ boys, I
-think.  But hush, here come they!  Don't say a word to him, Channah, or
-he'll turn round on me and keep on shouting in bed all night!  Oi, look
-at the child!"
-
-Reb Monash entered the room, his face bloodless with anger and cold
-determination.  Philip followed behind, his hands sunk in his pockets,
-his chin on his breast.  Reb Monash took from the pocket of his alpaca
-coat a long thin strip of black hide.  He sat down on a chair, and
-without looking towards Philip, commanded "Thy trousers down!" Philip
-obeyed.
-
-"Now I will teach thee whether thou wilt mix with all the filth in the
-land.  Over my knees!"
-
-The venomous strap descended, twice, three times, four times.  A swift
-catch came from Philip's throat.  Again and once again.  Her whole body
-shuddering dismally, Mrs. Massel stole from the room.  From the
-scullery came Channah's voice, moaning.  Again the strap came down.  A
-thin cry of pain shrilled through Philip's teeth.
-
-"And wilt thou again go with Sewelson?"
-
-No answer.
-
-"And wilt thou again go with Sewelson.  Say no!"
-
-"I will!  I will!"
-
-"Well, we will see who will prevail.  Say no!"
-
-"I will!"
-
-"I am stronger than thou.  Say no!"
-
-For answer Philip's body rolled slackly from his father's knees.
-
-"No, my son, no!  It is not yet finished.  Wilt thou say no?  One word,
-no!"
-
-The strap whistled through the air.  Remotely, brokenly, Philip's voice
-came from far off.
-
-"No!"
-
-"That is as I thought!  Thou wilt bless me some time with tears in
-thine eyes for what has been done to-night.  Thy mother can give thee
-supper if she will, I do not forbid."
-
-But the crushed figure of Philip had writhed from the room.  Soon he
-was lying on his bed, limp, not daring to stir because each movement
-stabbed him acutely.  He buried his face in the pillow.  He could not
-think.  He could not remember.  He knew only that he was a mass of
-intolerable pain.  Yet he knew that something hurt him even more than
-his pain.  He had forsworn himself.  He had lost something.  All life
-was a fight, was a movement forward, away from the darkness into the
-places of light.  He had forsworn himself.  He had fallen back into
-Babylon.  The dark was closing round him and the pitchy waters were
-gurgling in his throat.
-
-There was a whisper beside him.
-
-"Philip, Philip, it's Channah!"
-
-Who was Channah?  A girl, a sister.  She had a rolled gold brooch with
-two holes where diamonds should have been.  One of her boots was very
-worn at the heel.
-
-"Go away, go away!  I don't want you!"
-
-"Philip, poor old kid, I'm so sorry!  Mother's crying her heart out!
-Listen, Philip!  Mother sent me up with a cup of milk and some cake!"
-
-How the pain licked round him, like flames.  Sewelson was a fine chap,
-anyhow.  God, what a wonderful speech he had made that night!  When he
-came down his face was pouring with sweat.  Somebody threw a brick at
-him....
-
-"Philip, well?"
-
-"Oh, go away, go away!  I don't want anything!  Leave me alone!"
-
-"I'm leaving the milk and the cake on the chair by your bed, see?  Good
-night, kid!  Drink up and try and go to sleep!"
-
-Dimly he heard the sound of his father and mother entering their
-bedroom.  Then a long monologue followed.  It was very loud, but his
-ears were sealed against it.  Pitch blackness was all round him, and
-something had made a breach in the walls of his soul and the pitch
-blackness was flooding through.  Would they all be drowned, Sewelson
-and Shelley and the big bluff face of Dan Jamieson?  He had forsworn
-Shelley.  The image of Shelley's body tossing forlornly on the waters
-of Spezzia reproached him.  Why had Shelley died if Philip Massel were
-to forget him, leave him tossing endlessly on the grey seas?  A
-melancholy cat gibbered beyond the window, down in the yard.  Wearily,
-wearily, the hours passed.  He could not tolerate it.  With his guilt
-keeping his shoulders below the waters he would never breathe clean
-airs again, he would never fall asleep, never awake.
-
-What could he do?  He must gainsay his disloyalty!  There was nothing
-for it.  Thus only would the forward march from Babylon be resumed.
-What?  What?  He started from his bed!  Repudiate his treachery before
-the man in whose pocket lay dreadfully coiled the black snake?  There
-was nothing, nothing but this!  Else all liberty was vain, poetry was
-vain.  Poetry was a plaything, not the incense in the House of the
-Lord.  A clock in a church steeple tolled once, twice.  The night was
-passing; the dawn would come.  He would find his soul lost with the
-dawn.  Nothing of glamour or struggle would be left for him.
-
-Yet what could he do?  Renounce his renunciation?  Nothing less,
-nothing else!  Vividly each stroke of the strap was reiterated in his
-memory.  Was liberty worth it, was poetry?  He remembered Harry's
-bleeding forehead where the lout had thrown the brick.  He imagined the
-floating, sodden hair of Shelley adrift on the indifferent waters.
-
-He rose from his bed.  It felt as if he were tearing his body into
-strips.  Every bone ached, every muscle was raw.  He opened his door
-and crept down the stairs till he stood outside his father's bedroom.
-He knocked.  His father had at last fallen asleep.  The monologue for
-that night was ended at last.  There was no reply.  He knocked again.
-A sudden and tremendous panic seized him.  What a fool he was!  What
-was he doing it all for?  Why shouldn't he settle down and be what his
-father wanted him to be and what the masters at school wanted him to
-be.  It was the easier way.  How easy it would be to gain the applause
-of the Polish Synagogue, the applause of Doomington School!  On the
-other side, what?  Poetry, Shelley!  A swift agony of pain as he moved
-recalled him to his determination.  Forward, forward!  He knocked a
-third time, more loudly.
-
-"Yah, yah!" came the startled, sleepy voice of Reb Monash.  "Who is it?
-What is it?"
-
-Philip opened the door.
-
-"It's me!"
-
-"What hast thou come about?"
-
-"I've come about Sewelson.  I said I won't go out again with
-Sewelson..."  There was a pause.  The boy heard his heart drumming
-across the night.  Then followed--"Well--I will!"
-
-He heard a gasp from the bed.
-
-"Gott!"
-
-Silence, complete silence.
-
-Philip closed the door and crept upstairs again.  The pain of his
-lacerated flesh was somehow easier to bear.  A faint finger of
-moonlight pointed ghostlily into the room as he entered.  He made out
-vaguely the milk and cake his mother had sent up for him.  He
-discovered he was ravenously hungry and devoured the food.  He took his
-clothes off and with great caution hunched himself between the
-blankets.  The moonlight washed over his face and showed him sound
-asleep.
-
-
-The truce was over.  During Philip's first year at school it had
-already worn a little thin.  The emotion of pride with which Reb Monash
-had seen his son enrolled among the scholars of Doomington School was
-now considerably reduced.  Philip's second year at school seemed by no
-means likely to bear out his father's prognostications that the study
-of Gentile lore would so work upon his stubborn brain as to turn him
-with warmth towards the _Yidishkeit_ of home and synagogue.  _Chayder_
-was now out of the question.  It was easy enough for Philip to plead
-home-work when a tentative invitation in that direction was held out,
-and he was now nearly fourteen years old, too fully fledged for the
-compass of _chayder's_ wing.
-
-Yet Reb Monash was certainly going to see that the boy's other duties
-were not neglected--his washings before food, his three several bodies
-of prayer at morning, noon and night, his rigid application to the
-matutinal phylacteries, his countless other duties.  In the degree that
-Philip's enthusiasm for that whole aspect of his existence symbolized
-by his phylacteries flagged, a process considerably accelerated by the
-distintegrative tide of Socialism, Reb Monash himself determined that
-his son's feet should be held forcefully upon the precise road.  He
-frequently threatened a visit to Mr. Furness, an issue to which Philip
-could not help looking forward with both pleasure and apprehension.
-Philip had come into contact with the Head Master on very few
-occasions, during one of which he was soundly snubbed for an effort to
-display to Mr. Furness how much more intimate was his knowledge of
-Shelley's philosophy than Mr. Furness'.  Yet he felt that there was a
-faculty in Mr. Furness for seeing with those deep-set stone-blue eyes
-so deeply into a proposition that the difficult nature of his case
-would be manifest to him.  He felt at the same time a little discomfort
-at the thought that the distinctly mediocre position he occupied in the
-fortnightly form lists might attain a prominence he did not desire.
-But, he reassured himself, there was always time to pick up in that
-line, when he felt like it; in the meanwhile his friendship with
-Sewelson was far more absorbing, particularly when it now became an
-occupation which involved a savour of the perils incident to big game
-hunting.  In short, whenever the opportunity presented itself, he was
-in Sewelson's company, and whenever Reb Monash discovered the fact he
-received the punishment he risked.
-
-Dan Jamieson had received a paltry hundred and thirty-five votes at the
-General Election.  But he had brought a blush of intense pleasure and
-pride to Harry's cheeks by assuring him that to Harry he owed the odd
-thirty-five.
-
-"The foäk canna stand oop agin a babe!" he declared.  Philip was
-standing by at the time, shyly enough, and Jamieson added kindly, "and
-I expect another thirty-five voäts from thee, lad, next time we sets
-ball rollin'!"
-
-Harry refused to let his friend forget the thirty-five votes which were
-due from him to the Socialist cause.  "It's not enough for you," he
-insisted, "to talk to the chaps at the dinner hour.  That's an average
-of a man a month.  I know.  I've been doing it.  You'll have to get up
-and spout!"
-
-"Don't be a fool, Harry!  You know it's not my line!  I'm not old
-enough, anyhow!"
-
-"Fiddle!  What about me?"
-
-Philip's career as an orator began with a question he tried to ask at a
-Conservative meeting, with a mouth which felt as if it were dilated
-with an india-rubber ball.  No one took the least notice.  After many
-minutes his blush of discomfort faded away, but he swore fervently that
-he wasn't going to be such a blithering idiot next time.  Some days
-later, when the tide of a Liberal orator's eloquence seemed to be
-momentarily checked, he burst in shrilly with a long premeditated
-question, "But what's the good of trying to patch the roof when the
-foundations are rotten?"  The orator closed his mouth with a spasm of
-fright.  A number of heavy democrats in the crowd said genially, "Good
-for you, sonny!  That's stumped him!  Yes, what d'you say to that?"
-they shouted to the orator, "What's the good of trying to patch the
-roof when the foundations are rotten?"
-
-"My concern is not with children," said the orator unhappily, "I'm
-after the vote, the men with the vote.  I leave it to the other parties
-to canvass the children!"
-
-"Down with him, down with him!" a woman shrieked excitedly.  "He wants
-to starve the kids!"
-
-"Where's the young 'un?  Give him a chance!"
-
-But Philip had withdrawn, having tasted blood.  A sweet music was
-jingling in his ears.  He had heard his own voice lifted in the
-presence of a crowd and the crowd had responded generously.  He
-abandoned momentarily his ambition to become Poet Laureate and
-determined to shape his course towards the Premiership of the United
-Kingdom.
-
-Now and again during this period Philip went to have a few words with
-an old Bridgeway School friend of his who worked in one of the coat and
-mantle factories bordering the Mitchen.  It was an experience which
-lifted his Socialism from a theory and a somewhat sentimental
-abstraction to a clamant and immediate need.  "Sweated labour" became a
-phrase which he could endow with the actual physical associations it
-was intended to conjure.  He saw the men in their filthy shirts
-spitting upon their pressing-irons and the floor indiscriminately.
-Their sweat fell unregarded on the material below them.  The tailors
-sitting about on the littered tables seemed to be more perversions of
-men, grotesques, than men actually.  The windows were fouled with an
-opaque mist of dirt and sweat.  Little boys shuffled uneasily about
-like subterranean gnomes.  Girls cackled hideously after him, and when
-the men started an obscene catch which lifted his gorge, girl after
-girl in the adjoining rooms accepted the sexual challenge and cackled
-in return.  He saw a thick-nosed foreman whose waistcoat glimmered
-evilly with countless soup droppings fuddling his fingers in the bosom
-of a girl.  He saw another girl, a recent recruit, leaning,
-ivory-yellow, through a window which looked down on the Mitchen slime.
-There was no reason why her body should not follow where her eyes
-looked down so stupidly.  What else was there?  Nothing but the reeking
-room and the dirty songs and the swinish waistcoat of the foreman!  The
-picture of this sick girl remained abidingly with him.  When Harry
-turned suddenly to him one evening and announced that he had given
-Philip's name to the Longton secretary as a speaker for next Sunday
-evening, at the very moment of dismay and revolt her image came back to
-him and filled him with a blind fury against the ordinances of men.
-
-"All right, I'll come!" he said thickly.  "You know I'll make a filthy
-mess of it, but that's your fault.  I've got nothing to say and I don't
-know how to say it and I'll just get up and open my mouth and shut it
-and fall off.  Good God, Harry Sewelson, you're a pig!"
-
-"And you're a good Socialist!  There's two first-rate lies.  It's on
-the croft outside Longton Park.  But don't worry, Philip, old man,
-you've got the stuff, never fear!  Sunday, May the something-or-other,
-is the date.  Anyhow, that doesn't matter, it's next Sunday, at
-half-past six!  So that's all right!"
-
-Philip carefully prepared a little speech.  He repeated it several
-times before his mother, assuring her that it was one of Antony's many
-orations over the corpse of Cæsar.  So long as Philip did not declaim
-loud enough to wake Reb Monash she was happy enough to listen
-obediently to Antony's denunciation of the House of Lords.
-
-Next Sunday Philip turned up and sat below the oratorial cart biting
-his nails nervously and recapitulating his speech.  He was called upon
-immediately after an emancipated coal-heaver, whose jocosity had
-tickled the crowd into unrest.
-
-When Philip rose blinking and with a heart full of the most unmitigated
-hatred for Harry, a gentleman adorned with a muffler and a slant Tweed
-hat exclaimed ribaldly, "Crikey!  Look what's come!  Johnny, go back to
-your mummy's titty-bottle!"
-
-There was a prompt evanescence from Philip's brain of his carefully
-prepared speech.  He was at that stage of nervousness which endows its
-victims with a degree of courage no ordinary frame of mind could
-conceivably induce.  He turned fiercely towards the humorous gentleman
-and forgetting completely his brothers in the cause who were round him
-on the cart, forgetting the upturned, sceptical faces of his audience,
-he vented upon the humorous gentleman so turbid a stream of
-denunciation, dazzled his head with such a storm of rapiers furnished
-as much from his own shrill temper as from the prose of Blatchford and
-the poetry of Shelley, convinced him so thoroughly that both the
-continuance of the House of Lords along its bloody path of rapacity and
-the putrefaction of the factories along the Mitchen River were due to
-his criminal indifference and abysmal stupidity, that the humorous
-gentleman straightened his Tweed hat, tied his muffler into a different
-knot, buttoned all the buttons in his jacket, in the vain effort to
-present as different an appearance as possible from the humorist who
-had twitted the firebrand on his first appearance upon the platform.
-
-Philip was sweating and shivering when he descended; he was, moreover,
-consumed with a secret dread lest the object of his denunciations
-should wait for him in a dark corner to conclude the episode in
-Philip's disfavour.  The Longton secretary shook Philip's hand
-respectfully as if the limb were made of a clay slightly superior to
-his own.  He checked himself when he found he was addressing Philip as
-"sir" and substituted "comrade."  And Philip, when he descended the
-Blenheim Road, found himself booked to speak at a meeting on the
-Longton croft some time ahead.
-
-Philip instinctively realized that whatever the future held in store
-for him as a speaker (but, to be candid, the glories of the Premiership
-seemed speedily to dissipate), his talent lay rather in the field of
-inspiration than of discipline.  He knew (and this confirmed his
-orientation towards the Laureateship) that he would invariably be a
-catspaw of circumstances either for success or failure, as soon as he
-had laid aside the pen for the tongue.  For this reason he deliberately
-withheld from the _Book of Pros and Cons for Debating Societies_ out of
-which, as his friend confessed, Harry made golden capital.  As he sat
-again below the cart on the evening of his second public appearance, he
-made a strenuous effort to keep his mind as blank as possible.
-Overhead his precedent orator was thundering.  The sanguine hues of his
-bellying and flamboyant tie had already won for him half his battle.
-Who could impeach the politics of a man whose neckwear flung a defiance
-in the teeth of sunset and whose eloquence paled both?  With a
-consistent massacre of aitches he triumphed across the turbulent field,
-until at last, when he ended with "and your children will get down on
-their knees and praise God that their parents took the right path!",
-the crowd generally, and Philip in particular, were swept high and dry
-upon the beach of enthusiasm by the wave of the man's argument.
-
-It was impossible to be self-conscious at such a moment.  Philip sprang
-valiantly on to the cart and with tremendous effect his treble, like
-woodwind ardently repeating the theme of brass, reiterated "and your
-children will get down on their knees and praise God that their parents
-took the right path!"
-
-There was no holding him back.  Repeatedly he brought his left fist
-upon the palm of his right hand to clinch his indisputable conclusions.
-The other speakers on the platform were shocked out of mere admiration
-into submission to his cogency.  Harry could hardly realize that this
-was the hesitant young friend who followed his lead with such
-blundering perseverance, and who was, when you came to think of it,
-rather a muff on the whole.  It was a stranger, small, ungainly,
-irresistible.  The crowd below stared, their mouths gaping, their heads
-swaying slightly to the rhythm of his gestures.
-
-It was an incoherent enough medley, and perhaps the precocity of the
-youth was more exhibited in the uncanny earnestness of his manner than
-in the intellectual quality of the stuff he uttered.  The crowd he was
-addressing consisted of serious artisans, night-school-educated clerks,
-filmy half-existent women, whose mental development at fifty would in
-all likehood not transcend Harry's at fifteen, to whom they listened
-indeed, not because they were interested in his crystal arguments, but
-because his wit, his adroitness, pleased them like the froth on their
-evening pints.  They were therefore an easier prey to Philip's uncouth
-flood of undigested emotions.  He attempted, as often as he remembered
-this episode, to reconstruct his speech, to examine what potent
-eloquence had carried himself away even more completely than the crowd.
-He only remembered the moment when he returned to the concluding remark
-of the last speaker.  "Our fathers," he began, "our fathers have tried
-... I say, our fathers ... our fathers ..."
-
-The crowd breathed anxiously.  What was happening to the young feller?
-Had he seen a ghost, he was that pale?  He'd been as red as a turkey
-cock only just now, he had!  There weren't no stopping him a minute
-ago, and now the words were sticking in the back of his throat.  It was
-a shame, it was!  It was too much to expect of a kid!  Just like these
-Socialist fellers to put it across a kid once they got hold of him!
-Couldn't be more than fifteen, or sixteen at the most, he couldn't!  It
-wasn't good enough, don't care what you say!  He'd faint if they wasn't
-careful....
-
-But look, he was starting again.
-
-"Our fathers have tried for all they are worth.  Your fathers and mine
-have tried..."  The lad's eyes were starting from his head.  He gulped
-and started again, "Have tried, I say..."
-
-It was as if some spell of physical evocation resided in his words.
-Whilst his lips were still shaping the first vowel of "fathers,"
-something black and aloof and ominous had drifted from the vague
-towards the limit of his audience.  A tall shining silk hat, familiar
-symbol of repressions and disaster, threw a deep gloom over against his
-eyes.
-
-"Our fathers have tried..."
-
-But his own father was here, whose love for him was like hate, and
-whose hate pierced at once his son's heart and his own.  What should he
-do?  It was he, of course it was he!  Whose else could those mournful
-and hostile eyes be, their orbs large with a stricken indignation?
-There passed across the fringe of his stupor a recollection like the
-vague white wing of an owl at dayfall.  Hadn't his father said
-something about going to see Dorah up in Longton this evening?  Why had
-he not taken warning and kept away?  His father must have noticed from
-the road some hundred yards away the gathering on the croft against the
-railings of Longton Park.  He must then have determined to go home
-through the croft instead of down the straight Blenheim Road, so to
-discover whether the proselytized one, the forbidden Harry Sewelson,
-was uttering his nefarious doctrine here, with Philip, perhaps, at his
-feet.  And here he stood, his brow contracted with pent fury, biting
-his upper lip!  With what dexterity of the sloping brush had he stroked
-the silky fibre of his hat to-day!  How white, deathly white, was the
-white bow on his stiff white front!  There were signs of white in his
-black beard.  He was getting old, old.  His eyes blazed.  Old?  He was
-young, proud, strong--younger than his son, young as his race, the
-eternal child, the stubborn stripling that would not change nor grow
-though God were visible, though the hills melted, though the stars
-cried across the void "Lo! you must change or you shall die!"
-
-In this moment with tense clarity an alternative presented itself
-before Philip's swooning eyes.  He might withdraw; he had carried them
-with him so clearly that they would let him go with but a sympathetic
-murmur if he stammered out that he was unwell.  He could withdraw with
-grace, and at the same time go to meet the inevitable trouble half-way.
-There discretion pointed.  He must decide at once.
-
-Or else, or else he could set the seal on his victories.  He would not
-have uttered that dismal shout in school vainly, he would not have
-recanted vainly upon that strange dim night.  He would, seeking for
-courage in the very depth of his spirit, in the very height of this sky
-where his father and he stood face to face, while Doomington waited,
-and his race waited, he would gather together once more the reins of
-his daring.  Who should withstand his horses?  Who should gainsay the
-thunder of their nostrils and the death in their feet!  Was it his own
-battle alone that awaited decision?  Himself, he existed no more!  The
-unborn brothers of his race, the unborn children of his country, lifted
-towards him their ghostly hands.  Do not desert us, they said, for in a
-boy's hand lies the issue, and God is silent, waiting that a boy should
-speak.  A boy was he?  A boy?  He was a man amongst the men of eld!
-Isaiah was by his side!  Dimly the exquisite voice of Shelley said to
-him, "Do not despair!"
-
-What if it should break him, what if it meant he could never lift his
-voice again?  Yet his voice though silent, his voice though a frail
-boy's, should be voluminous on the winds of the world, and if his body
-were cast aside, his heart's blood would be red energy in the hearts of
-the cohorts of Joy.
-
-His figure suddenly, with the automatic gesture of the marionette,
-straightened itself.  With something of defiance he flung his chest
-forward and clenched both his fists.  A wave of swift colour flushed
-into his cheeks and as swiftly withdrew.  He was speaking once more.
-
-
-The passion that moved the lad now was too swift merely for swift
-diction.  He spoke evenly, his voice was almost a whisper.  The
-black-bearded man who had stood for some moments on the edge of the
-crowd, disappeared.  No one noticed him.  At last Philip dropped
-loosely into the chair behind him on the cart.
-
-For an hour or two that evening hardly a man moved from the gathering
-in front of the railings of the Longton Park.
-
-"Come to our house and have some grub!" said Harry apprehensively to
-Philip, who leaned against the railings, ashen-pale.
-
-Philip turned away wearily.  "Go away, Harry, I'm done!"  He walked
-home very slowly, carefully avoiding the lines between the pavement
-slabs.  He trod on the foot of a dignitary from the _Polisher Shool_,
-who swore at him and spat into the street.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-When the storm had subsided, Philip felt like a sea-battered hulk,
-shorn of spars, incompetent to face wind and tide.  The muscle of his
-left arm suffered peculiarly.  Really, the way it had been wrenched and
-bruised was almost comical.  As if his arm had espoused Blatchford and
-orated on the waste croft which his father had so persistently misnamed
-the "Public ways and the market-places."  Poor old muscle!  He dropped
-his forearm tenderly to see if the movement did not circle the upper
-arm with bracelets of fire.  He took his shirt off and licked the
-coloured wound with his tongue, like an animal released from a trap.
-He stared into a jagged fragment of mirror, and seeing his face so grey
-and drawn burst unaccountably into a roar of laughter.  He drowned the
-noise at once by biting his lip fiercely.  "The Romance of a Brachial
-Muscle!"  What a fine subject for a long narrative poem in countless
-cantos!  Oh, by God, he was miserable!  What was wrong with Life?  Why
-were Life and he always at daggers drawn?  He recapitulated the sum of
-his conscious crimes.  He had once stolen carrots from the cellar, it
-was true!  But equipoise had been asserted: he had been rewarded by an
-ample stomach-ache.  And finally, when physical calm had been
-established, to round off his state with spiritual calm, he had bought
-two penn'orth of carrots and replaced them in the cellar.  Also, he was
-bound to confess, he invariably kept his book open in school during the
-reciting of prepared passages.  But then the boy behind him used his
-own collar as he himself used the collar of the boy in front.  It
-wasn't really cheating because Gibson was such an ass in so many ways!
-Anyhow there was no doubt the world hated him.  The world had always
-hated him.  He had never got on with anybody in Angel Street.  He had a
-filthy time at school, and then there was all this business, and oh,
-hell! what a rotten arm he had!
-
-
-He had determined against committing suicide.  He remembered once
-saying to his mother after a row, saying with a strange mordant humour,
-"Mother, I think it'll be happier for the whole family if I commit
-suicide!"
-
-"If thou what?  Speak plain!"
-
-"Kill myself!  Throw myself in the river!"
-
-She had made no reply.  She merely went to the sofa and sat trembling
-for a few minutes.  She said "Feivel!" once, less with reproach than
-raw, ugly pain.  All that day she did her housework unsteadily and said
-not a word to Philip.  He hadn't liked it.  No, it was better not to
-commit suicide.  It savoured too imitatively, moreover, of the _Mighty
-Atom_, whom he had disliked.  Then, in addition, the wife of somebody
-the watchmaker had recently tried it and succeeded.  She obviously
-could have reaped no satisfaction from the episode.  If only he could
-die accidentally!  Would even that make his father sorry for his
-abominable treatment?  The youthful corpse would lie on the parlour
-floor under a black cloth and everybody would sympathize frightfully
-with his mother and be pointedly chilly towards Reb Monash.  Wouldn't
-he be sick about it!  Wouldn't he ask God for another chance to behave
-like a decent sort of father, but all to no use!  There would be his
-son's pale and romantic corpse lying stately beneath the cloth, with
-candles and things about.  "Easeful Death," one of the poets said
-somewhere.  That wasn't half strong enough.  It was a triumph, a
-pageant!  But it meant being carted off, didn't it, to the cold ground
-somewhere, and the weepers would go away and the candles be
-extinguished, and the rain would come down, and the coffin be sodden
-and fall away!  That was where the worm-element came in, and with the
-worm-element he could pretend no sympathy; "where the worm became
-top-dog," as he had once brilliantly said in comment upon "And the play
-is the Tragedy, Man--the hero, the Conqueror--Worm!"
-
-It was at this moment that the idea of running away occurred to him.
-He had lately been reading the triumphant career of a runner-away.
-Harry had once recommended running away, sceptically enough, but it
-would be tremendously interesting to take his casual advice seriously.
-He was quite definitely conscious how melodramatic the idea was, and
-just as conscious that he had already decided on its execution.  The
-fellow in the book had performed no end of valiant deeds in fires,
-shipwrecks and revolutions.  It was a thin book, duller even than Mr.
-Henty, whom he had long ago discarded.  Of course, he was not going to
-be taken in by that sort of thing, but any proposal was more
-satisfactory than the shoutings and the bruised arms of which his life
-now was constituted.
-
-It was settled!  He was going to run away!  When?  Obviously now, at
-once!  There was no point in to-morrow.  To-morrow would be like
-yesterday.  It was evening now.  He'd set out and by the time night
-came ... Oh, there wasn't any need to worry about it!  Something would
-happen.  Something always happened, Yet everything was rather
-frighteningly vague.  Was there any need to carry anything off with
-him?  Doubtless it would be more independent and proud to go just as he
-was, and he wouldn't need an overcoat for months.  Oh yes, he might as
-well stick that Shelley in his pocket.  He would finish the "Revolt of
-Islam," though he had tried three times already.  He lifted his injured
-arm to reach the book and dropped it again, wincing.  He sat down
-before his rickety table, and wrote a brief note to his mother, slipped
-it into an envelope and descended into the kitchen.  He looked
-mournfully and significantly upon his mother, murmuring to himself
-bitterly, "If she only knew!"  He felt a disgraceful impulse to utter a
-loud howl of remorse, but manfully repressed it and, realizing that
-each moment in the kitchen endangered his resolution, went to the door.
-As he closed the door behind him, he dropped the envelope through.
-
-He carefully examined his feelings.  He was running away, wasn't he?
-It was the most dramatic moment in all his life.  There had been
-psychological crises before, but here was something palpable, dramatic.
-He was putting himself into immediate communion with some of the
-choicest spirits of history or legend.  Not many other chaps dared do
-this sort of thing.  Then why on earth wasn't he more excited about it?
-His heart ought to be storming valiantly, but its workings seemed to
-respect their usual method and speed.  He only felt a little dazed and
-stupid.  He was under the ridiculous impression he was only acting!
-That was absurd, at such a crisis!  The vague, the vast, into which he
-was adventuring, were not merely uninviting, they were, in some
-inexplicable fashion, not even there.  Home and his father and his
-mother and his arm, all these were realities enough, and the only
-realities.  But this running away, upon which at this very moment he
-was actually embarked, was a thin dream.  And here was another reality,
-here was Channah coming down the street.
-
-"Good-bye, Channah!" he said darkly.
-
-"You're not off to a meeting?" she ventured confidently.
-
-"Oh no!  Oh no!" he replied gloomily.  She walked on.  It was necessary
-to be moving.  She would probably find the note and the finding would
-lead to immediate results.  He ran along into Doomington Road, and
-almost mechanically turned up into Blenheim Road.  They'd not know
-which way he was going, he needn't fear that.  He slowed down and
-sauntered along.  Where the devil should he go now? that question ought
-to be decided.  His mind was torpid.  No sooner was the question
-formulated than it passed from his mind.  Somebody was gesticulating to
-a crowd on the croft.  Aimlessly he turned in that direction.  They
-were talking about Tariff Reform, statistics, Poor Laws, molasses and
-things.  He lacked the resolution to go further, so he stood, neither
-listening nor thinking, just dull, dimly unhappy.
-
-He felt an arm slip round his neck.  An anguished voice said, "Philip,
-don't be such a donkey!  Mother's half-mad with worry, you
-_meshugener_!  Is this your idea of a joke, you little fool?"
-
-Channah must have realized which way his steps would instinctively turn.
-
-Philip threw the arm off and turned to a dishevelled Channah.  "I'm not
-a fool!  I'm dead sick of him and I'm going to get out of it!"
-
-"Where?" she asked.
-
-"Anywhere!" he exclaimed desperately.
-
-"Come on now, there's a good lad!"  She got hold of his arm.  "He'll
-not know anything about it if you come at once!"
-
-"I want him to know!  Let go!  Oh, you won't, won't you?  There!"  He
-wrenched his arm free.  He fled along the croft and found his sister
-following in forlorn pursuit.  When he had put a safe distance between
-them he turned round.  Channah was standing, wringing her hands, and
-her hair, escaped from her combs and pins, flew about her head.  It
-made him feel an unutterable scoundrel.  He knew that he was acting
-like a fool and a blackguard!  "Come home, Philip, oh, do come home!"
-her voice shrilled.
-
-But he couldn't.  He had a little dignity after all.  He was getting on
-in life and it was about time he could think out and pursue his own
-plan of campaign.
-
-"I can't!" he said.  "Give Mother my love!  Good-bye!  Tell her it's
-not my fault!" he insisted anxiously.  "Good-bye!"
-
-He followed up the road and left Channah standing blankly.  Definitely
-he was running away.  An almost complete numbness now gripped his
-brain.  He had a faint idea of getting out into the country but he
-found himself penetrating deeper and deeper into the town.  Night was
-gathering thickly over Doomington.  He felt too stupid even to be aware
-of his hunger.  For hours and hours, it seemed, he walked through the
-dark streets.  Indifferent people jostled him into the roadway.  Every
-now and again he found his journeying had brought him before the same
-ugly squat little church.  He must get out of this.  He turned off in a
-direction he was certain he had not pursued before.  He found himself
-in a murky hidden square, with feet heavy as blocks of stone.  Blocks
-of stone seemed to be tugging his eyelids down to close over his eyes.
-He was suddenly aware of a tremendous need of sleep.  There was a form
-in the flagged path which led through the square.  A man and a woman
-were sitting very close together on it; but there was room for him.  He
-threw himself down and his head fell immediately upon his chest.  He
-plunged at once into a tired sleep.  When he awoke, it was very dark
-and quiet.  He remembered that there had been a man and a woman beside
-him, but they had moved away!  What was it he was doing here?  Of
-course, he'd run away!  What a thick heavy business it was, running
-away!  How many hours ago was it since he had started?  Nothing had
-happened yet.  Nothing.  He just felt foolish and extremely miserable.
-Well, he must keep going till something did happen.  As he rose, he
-heard the bell in the steeple over him toll hollowly.  One o'clock!
-Oh, the desolate hour!  Somewhere deep in Doomington, alone, hungry,
-tired, at one o'clock!  He shuffled wearily from the square and up
-through one or two towering and narrow streets.  He heard a man
-prowling about in a doorway.  His heart stood still with terror.  Steps
-came forward and a lantern surrounded him with ghostly light.  A
-policeman peered suspiciously into his face and lumbered on.  Here was
-a main road.  How wide and lonely and terrible it was!  He dared not
-stand still, the policeman would come after him and ask questions which
-he would not be able to answer.  He must keep moving, moving, God knew
-where, but moving.  His feet made an alarming sound on the deserted
-pavements.  Oh, what was he doing here?  Why hadn't he waited till he
-got some money from somewhere, somehow, before he ran away?  How
-formidably the doorways were barred against him!  The plate-glass
-windows stared leering with baleful eyes.  Some one had moved from a
-side street into the main road and was coming towards him.  A lady it
-was.  A real lady too, she seemed, as she came nearer and he saw the
-opulent nature of her clothing.  Her skirts swished richly.  There was
-a feather bobbing over the side of her hat.  Channah had only one
-feather which she kept securely from year to year, dyeing it
-occasionally.  There were three feathers in the lady's hat.  What was
-she doing out just now?  She couldn't possibly be running away, like
-himself.  She was rather fat, she ought to be quite a decent sort.  She
-introduced a sense of companionship into the appalling void of night.
-Joy!  She had stopped and was talking to him!
-
-"Well, cockie!" she said, "it's rather late for a little 'un!"
-
-"Yes, ma'am!" he said respectfully.
-
-"Haven't you got a home?  You look all right, your clothes and that!"
-
-"Yes, I have got a home!"
-
-"'Xcuse my asking like, but why aren't you in it?  It's gone two, you
-know!"
-
-"Well, because ... it's because ... I ... I mean, he ..."
-
-"Oh, I understand, cockie!" she said kindly.  "He's been and gone and
-chucked you out like, eh?"
-
-"He _hasn't_ chucked me out!" declared Philip hotly.  "I've chucked
-myself out.  I've run away from home!"
-
-"Phew!" she whistled.  "That's the ticket, eh?  You're a plucked 'un!
-But what are you going to do now?"
-
-"I don't know.  Just walk, I suppose.  I'll see!"
-
-"I like you, sonnie, I like your voice.  Let's keep on, it'll never do
-to stand in one place, they don't like it.  Just come to the lamp
-there.  I'd like to look at you!"
-
-He found that a large, warm, somewhat flabby hand had taken his own.
-They walked together to a lamp.  His friend got hold of his forehead
-with one hand and his chin with the other, and exposed his face to the
-falling lamplight.  He caught a glimpse of the lady's face above the
-heavy chain of rolled gold that lay on her bosom.  Her face was pallid
-round the fringes of the cheeks and on the tip of her nose, and by
-contrast, her cheeks were singularly red.  Her lips too were red, quite
-unlike the red of Channah's lips and his mother's.  It was a sleepy,
-fat face, rather kindly.  There was something strange about her eyes,
-something like--well, funny eyes, anyhow!  Hungry eyes they were, a
-little wild, yet they were sleepy and kind, too.  Surely her breath
-didn't smell the least bit of beer?  No, not such a thoroughly
-estimable lady!  Perhaps it was beer ... the poor lady had to take for
-her health?
-
-"Sonnie!" she said.  "You've been having a heavy time, eh?  Poor kid!
-You've got nice eyes, you know!  Be careful what you do with 'em.  It
-was eyes like yours what did for Bertha.  Poor Bertha!  She was a slim
-lass once, Prayer Book and all, and parasol on Sundays, all complete!"
-
-"Who's Bertha, please?"
-
-"Hush, sonnie, hush, I'm talking!  Bertha?  Don't tell Reginald--I'm
-Bertha!  He wasn't a big feller neither, what done her in!  And it
-wasn't for money, anyways, _I_ can tell you.  Love it was, and it isn't
-all the girls can say that!  And he went with his lips this way and
-with his eyes that way, and where was you?  Yes, he had eyes just like
-yours, Arthur!  Your name is Arthur, isn't it?"
-
-"No, my name's Philip!"
-
-"Oh, we are a gentleman, aren't we?  'No, my name's Philip!'  Haw! haw!
-Your name's not Philip, see?  Your name's Arthur!  What's good enough
-for him is good enough for _you_, Arthur.  So there, Arthur! ... I'm
-sorry, kid, I'm not laughing at you.  You see, I'm feeling all funny
-like...."  She passed the back of her hand across her forehead.  A big
-bead of clammy sweat was thrust backward into the maze of her yellowish
-hair.  "To tell you the honest, Arthur," she whispered, leaning over
-towards the boy, "he's been and pitched me out!"  She lifted her voice.
-"Pitched me out, he has, the dirty heathen, at two o'clock in the
-morning!  After all the times we've had together.  Scarborough!  Oh,
-Scarborough!  The waiters stand round you and says 'Lobster, ma'am,
-_with_ hock?' polite as polite!  And here am I!  Not good enough for
-the likes of him, ain't I?  I'll show him up!  Pitched me out...."  She
-took a fluffy handkerchief from the depths of her blouse and tapped
-each eye.
-
-"I beg your pardon," said Philip with uneasy politeness, "have you had
-to leave home too?"
-
-"Home, sonnie, home?  I've got a _home_!  Oh, it's all right about my
-_home_!  But now and again a night out, eh, is the goods for Bertha!
-I'm one of the girls!  I'm a bird!  I'm not too particular about my
-perch, though I _have_ got a little perch of my own!  But I was ...
-hello!  Some one's coming!  Can you see who it is?"
-
-"Yes," said Philip.  "It's a policeman, I think!"
-
-She whispered into his ear anxiously.  "Listen, I'm going to be your ma
-when he comes up, if he asks things.  Understand?  You've got the sick
-sudden, and I thought a walk would settle your stomach.  Now...."
-
-The policeman advanced and halted.  "Hello, missus!" he said.
-"Burglars or what?"
-
-"No, constable," replied the lady with quiet dignity, "my poor Arthur's
-got a touch of the colic so I thought it best to give him a breath of
-air like."  She was wiping Philip's forehead with the little
-handkerchief.  "Are you feeling better now, Arthur boy?"
-
-"Best go and stow him between the sheets, lady.  He'll catch his death
-in the damp air," the policeman growled amiably, and walked away.
-
-The situation was altogether so inexplicable that Philip clutched
-feebly after the expression "I'm a bird!" as a clue which might perhaps
-lead him through the maze.
-
-"A bird?" he asked.  "Do you mean you sell birds?"
-
-"Now you _are_ a funny kid.  No, I don't sell birds.  Leastwise, I only
-sell one bird.  See?  That's a joke like.  Ec, Arthur, but I did feel
-all goosy when that policeman came, didn't you?  My heart's going like
-a pendulick yet, up and down, down and up.  Well, I hopes your kidneys
-are better, anyhow.  But you _do_ look pale, kid!  Anything wrong!  How
-old did you say you was?  Fourteen and a half?  So am I, next birthday,
-ha, ha!  Fourteen and a half!  What must it be like to have a kid
-fourteen and a half?  Sometimes I wishes ..."
-
-"Have you got no children yourself, ma'am?"
-
-"What do you mean by asking me questions, Arthur?  An honest woman like
-me!  If it hadn't been for you, Arthur, and that time you kissed me
-under the mulberry tree ... Remember?  Oh kid, kid, I'm all sort of
-melted inside!  Is your mother still living?  She is, is she?  Does she
-ever kiss you, Arthur?  Here, like this, on your lips ... like this ...
-like this ... Oh, my Arthur boy!"
-
-She had seized him round the shoulders.  Her great soft lips were
-hungrily raining kisses on his own.  And her breath smelt beerily.
-
-"Let me go!" he shouted with sudden fright.  "Who are you?  What do you
-want?"  He broke away and rubbed his lips savagely with his sleeve.
-
-She was mopping large tears from her eyes.  "Oh, I'm lonely, I'm so
-lonely!" she moaned.  "He's gone and pitched me out and here's Arthur,
-and he shakes me off like a dog.  Why ever was I born, God help me!"
-
-A swift intense pang gripped Philip's stomach.  He staggered against
-the wall.  Globes of red fire juggled before his eyes.
-
-"What's the matter?  I didn't mean anything!" the woman exclaimed with
-alarm.  "Tell me what's wrong!"
-
-"I'm ... I'm ... hungry! ..." moaned Philip.
-
-"Hungry?  When did you last have a bite?"
-
-"Dinner-time!"
-
-"And what have you been doing since?"
-
-"I don't know!  I'm only hungry!"
-
-"Oh, poor dove, poor dove!  Hungry are you?  And here was me standing
-and you hungry and standing I was and talking, talking.  Come to his
-own Bertha's.  Come to my little perch, Arthur, sonnie, and I'll soon
-set you right.  What about a rasher, eh, and some new bread and butter
-and a cup of strong hot tea?  I'll put him on his little feet again!
-This way, sonnie ... Lord God, what a life is Bertha's!  It ain't far.
-It's just beyond the church straight along and the second to the left
-... unsteady on his legs, he's that hungry...!  Come with Bertha!"
-
-Again Philip's hand was enclosed in the hand of the lady.  Nothing in
-the world mattered except that strong hot cup of tea, that bread and
-butter, that rasher, whatever a rasher was!  As they walked through the
-empty streets, the kettle boiled before him on a fire of mirage, the
-slaver of his hunger rimmed his tongue, the "rasher" was frying
-ghostlily like a tail of fish on his mother's pan.
-
-He heard her moaning musically over his head, like the doves in the
-immemorial elms.  It was a strange farrago of Arthurs and Berthas and
-mulberry trees.  He made no effort to follow the wanderings of her
-mind, which now and again would reach indignantly the brick wall of her
-late dismissal.  Street succeeded street blankly and he found her
-shuffling at last for a key.  They entered the dark lobby of a house.
-
-"Go quiet, kid!" she murmured, "Rosie's got a pal in the parlour
-to-night, I think!"
-
-They entered a room and the lady lit the gas, revealing a large soft
-bed that dominated the apartment.  There was a table in a corner where
-stood a few utensils and a portable cooking-jet on a small round of
-oilcloth.
-
-"I'll tell you what, Arthur!" she said, "You'd best undress yourself
-and get into bed.  I'll get your rasher ready in a jiffy."
-
-Philip looked shyly up to her.  He was not too faint to be unaffected
-by the thought of undressing before a strange lady.  "I don't like," he
-muttered.
-
-"It's all right," she assured him, "I'm used to it!"
-
-"Perhaps you've got boys of your own?" Philip suggested helpfully.
-
-"Oh yes, I've got lots of boys!"
-
-He was tremendously tired.  How invitingly that soft bed displayed its
-fat pillows.  "I say, please!" he said awkwardly.  "Will you look the
-other way?"
-
-She tittered soundlessly.  He saw she had a succession of chins and
-that each vibrated to her mirth.  "All right, kid, I'm getting on with
-the food."  As he undressed, she cut the white bread into healthy
-slices and buttered them abundantly.  Drowsily he saw her making the
-tea and he was almost asleep when he heard a loud simmering in a pan.
-He looked up, his mouth watering, and saw, impaled on her fork, a
-semi-translucent wafer of striped meat.  He shook off the mist of
-sleep.  "Tell me, if you don't mind.  Is that a rasher?"
-
-"Of course it is!"
-
-"What is a rasher?"
-
-"Bless my soul, bacon, _of_ course!"
-
-"Please, please!" he exclaimed.  "I daren't eat bacon.  I can't eat
-bacon!"
-
-"That's how it is, is it?" She came closer curiously and examined his
-face.  "Hum, yes!  You're a little Jew-boy, aren't you?"
-
-"I am!"  He wondered what it was going to mean.  Would she send him
-back into the night hungry, faint to death?  Who could fathom the
-attitude of a given Gentile, man or woman, towards any accidental
-Jew-boy?
-
-"Funny!" she pondered.  "One Jew-boy pushes me out and I takes another
-Jew-boy in!  All right, Arthur!  Nothing's going to happen.  You're
-still my own Arthur!  Don't get frightened.  But if you won't have
-bacon, you can only have sardines.  I wasn't expecting no visitors
-to-night."
-
-"Anything!" he murmured weakly.
-
-He ate greedily.  She took the food away when he had finished and sat
-by the bedside, looking into his face.  She held his hand between her
-own soft hands.  In two moments he was asleep.
-
-When he awoke next morning amid the clank of trams and the calling of
-boys, he found himself embraced by two great white arms.  With a sudden
-shudder of realization, the events of yesterday and last night came
-back to him.  The lady who had been so kind had gone into bed after
-him.  It was rather stifling in the bed, he didn't like it!  He didn't
-like lying in the arms of a strange lady.  A qualm of dislike passed
-over him.  As gently as possible, so as not to waken her, he slipped
-from her arms and from the bed and started to dress.  Her face was
-distinctly unpleasant in the cold morning light.  It was heavy and
-layers of fat swelled all round it.  She had been crying, for the marks
-of tears ran dirtily down the bleared crimson of her cheeks.  Her hair
-lay about lankly on the pillow.  Yet there was something unutterably
-pathetic about her expression.  How could he show her his gratitude?
-Where would he have been without her?
-
-"It's all right, Arthur," he heard her say.  "I know you're getting up.
-It's all right, just keep on dressing!"  She did not open her eyes.
-
-"I want to thank you very much!" he said lamely.
-
-"No, kid, I want to thank you.  I've never had it before.  I don't
-suppose it'll ever come again.  If ever you tells your mother about it,
-just say as Bertha thanks her.  She's a mother and she'll understand
-maybe.  So long, kiddie, so long!"
-
-He was fully dressed.  He made a movement in her direction.  "No, kid.
-Don't shake my hand.  Don't touch me.  Before you have anything to do
-with Bertha again, just walk into the river without looking where
-you're going.  Go away, for God's sake, go away!  You'll find the front
-door open!  Go back home!  Your mother wants you!"  Her unwieldy body
-turned round on the bed and the great face was buried in the pillow.
-He stole from the room, down the stairs, and through the front door.
-The door closed behind him and he saw a milk cart drive by cheerily.
-Suddenly the figure of the strange kind lady became terrible and sad
-and very remote.  He turned away from her house.  Mechanically he set
-his face in the direction of home.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-If Philip's oration on the croft, despite its immediate consequences,
-had been a triumph for Philip, the fatality which had irresistibly
-drawn his feet homeward after his escapade with Bertha, without any
-reference to his will, was a triumph, if that was not too vulgar a
-word, for Reb Monash.  It made clear to both the father and the son
-that Philip could not yet exist on his own initiative; however
-refractory a cog he was in the machinery of the house in Angel Street,
-that machinery was still the condition of his existence at all.  It was
-the consciousness that this position had been made starkly clear by the
-issue of this latest event, and that this latest event was itself so
-tangible a grievance, that induced Reb Monash to interview Mr. Furness.
-After school on that same day, summoned by a special note from the
-Head, Philip stood apprehensively outside his door.  He knocked
-timidly.  A tremendous bellow filled the room and came gustily out into
-the corridor.
-
-"COME in!" the first word reduplicate and reverberant like a shout in
-the cleft of hills.  Philip entered, his ears singing.  But the next
-moment the shout ebbed wholly from his ears when he saw Mr. Furness
-rise and come towards him with a smile at once admonitory and
-encouraging.
-
-"Well, Philip, how are you?"
-
-"I'm all right, sir, thank you, sir!"
-
-"Who is the latest poet?  Still Shelley?  Keep to Shelley, Philip; he
-knew more of the spirit of God than all the churches!"
-
-"I've been reading Edgar Allan Poe, sir."
-
-"Humph!  I'm not so sure!  Unhealthy, morbid!  Hard time, poor fellow,
-on the other hand!  Don't overdo him!"
-
-"No, sir!"
-
-"But to the matter in hand.  You know why I've sent for you?"
-
-"Yes, sir.  He told me he was coming, sir."
-
-"Your father's a great man, Philip.  If in twenty years you're half the
-man he is, I'll be proud of you.  You've been distressing him, he tells
-me.  He's very concerned about you.  Come now, what's wrong?"
-
-"I can't explain, sir.  We're different."
-
-"You ran away from home lately and were out all night?"
-
-Philip bit his lip.  "Yes, sir."
-
-"You're too old for that mock-romantic sort of thing.  There's a strain
-of it in your essays.  Mr. Gibson sent me up your essay on Julius
-Cæsar--something about 'he shall endure while the luminaries of history
-rot in oblivion!'  Luminaries don't rot.  Leave all that to the
-journalists, my boy, you can do better stuff.  It wasn't only
-mock-romantic, it was cruel!  Can you imagine how your mother slept
-that night?  I'm rather ashamed of you.  It was selfish.  It was a
-pose."
-
-"But you don't know, sir, what had happened the day before.  I was
-nearly dead."
-
-"I can understand.  Public speaking, Socialism!  All in their time!
-You're forcing things, you'll burn out and be cinders when you ought to
-be a man.  No, you've not got the foundation for it.  You've been
-slacking in form.  What is it you go to poetry for, do you know?"
-
-"I can't say, sir.  Beauty, perhaps?"
-
-"Yes, beauty!  You don't know the beauty of labour, though.  When
-you've mastered your Cæsar and your Greek Grammar--dull work, my boy,
-dull work!--you'll find poetry finer than Shelley, the poetry Shelley
-thought made his own like a marsh-lamp, the poetry of the Greeks.  You
-started well, but your place in form has been going down steadily.
-Listen, Philip," he drew the boy nearer to him, "there's the question
-of your scholarship.  Think what it'll mean to her if anything happened
-to your scholarship.  You're not going to allow it, are you?  And if
-you go down as steadily as you have been going down of late, I don't
-see what else can happen.  What do you feel?"
-
-There was a lump in Philip's throat.  "I don't want anything to happen
-which will hurt her."
-
-"Well, Philip, we understand each other.  Put your hand to the plough
-like a man.  Make a clean furrow and a deep one.  I don't think we need
-say more, need we?  Come and see me when you've made a fresh discovery
-in poetry, we'll talk about him.  So good-bye now, Philip!"
-
-Philip took the big man's hand and withdrew, feeling at once tearful,
-chastened, and absurdly exalted, and a solemn determination now
-possessed him to do some serious work before the examination which
-ended the year.  Every evening he withdrew to his own back room which,
-out of most unpromising materials, his mother had converted into the
-semblance of a study.  She had inserted ledges into soap boxes where
-his textbooks and poets were ranged above frills of pinky-white paper.
-She had covered the doddering table with a neat piece of parti-coloured
-cloth.  A few bright pictures from magazines were tacked upon the
-walls.  In recognition of the new spirit of industry earnestly avowed
-before her she substituted for the deficiently-seated chair a
-rocking-chair which gave Philip an especial delight and won him to
-sympathy with aorist tenses and the optative mood.  Not a word passed
-between Reb Monash and Philip.  No current of sympathy ran to connect
-them.  Philip displayed no readiness to compromise in the matter of a
-more ardent ritual.  He would gabble off his prayers as quickly as
-possible, and then, with no attempt to hide his relief, turn to his
-books.  His prayers were still tolerable, if barely, during the period
-when he lavished his enthusiasm on active Socialism.  Now that he began
-to forswear his Socialistic delights, they began to be dust in his
-mouth.  The half-hour long morning prayers of which he might understand
-one word in twenty, so wrought upon his nerves, that he felt like
-crying aloud sharply, particularly during that section of the devotion
-when he stood towards the East, placing together the inner sides of his
-feet, looking blankly through the wall into nothingness.  One morning,
-during the sheer meaningless drift of his utterance, he curiously found
-himself repeating something of sweet and significant import.  He was
-reciting, not the torpid Hebrew, but the languorous chimes of
-"Ulalume."  Delightedly he continued the poem to its end and once more
-repeated it, till he realized that the time expected from him in the
-recapitulation of the "Nineteen Prayers" was at an end.  He completed
-his morning's devotion with "Alastor."  He had made a valuable
-discovery.  The ennui of prayer was not now to gloom his faculties
-thrice daily.  He could now pass in pageant before him all the comely
-shapes of poetry he had known.
-
-He at no time made the definite discovery that Reb Monash had realized
-his substitution of poetry for prayer.  If Reb Monash had made the
-discovery, it was not succeeded by such immediate castigation as Philip
-knew well.  It was as if Reb Monash had at last found out that at the
-end of these episodes the cause of piety, if anything, was weaker in
-his son's bosom than before.  Darkness gathered over the house in Angel
-Street.  A dim premonition of failure had settled upon Reb Monash's
-eyes, but sternly he fought against it.  Mrs. Massel moved wanly and
-fearfully about the house, fearful of satisfying her hunger for Philip
-with a stroke of the hand or a word.  Channah stayed out as long and
-discreetly as possible with her friends.  A silence hung over the
-house, for Reb Monash's popularity as a raconteur was at an end.  Not
-for years had the gathering in the kitchen taken place, where,
-centrally, Mrs. Levine sniffed, and the tale of Rochke's interment was
-told 'mid indignation and tears.  Only at night was the silence broken
-when Philip had taken his books down to study in the kitchen and Mr.
-and Mrs. Massel had gone to bed.  Then for an hour, or for two hours,
-Reb Monash would recount the iniquities of his son in a voice of loud,
-persistent monotony, still persistent while the advance of sleep was
-clogging its clarity.
-
-Peculiarly Philip resented the incident of the rocking-chair.  He had
-betrayed his liking for the chair in a casual conversation, comparing
-it with the inadequacy of the chair it had superseded.  He found next
-day that his father had removed the chair.  It was not wanted nor used
-by Reb Monash.  It was, he reflected bitterly, pure dislike of the
-thought that he should enjoy even so feeble a pleasure as this.  The
-action seemed almost automatic on the part of Reb Monash and was
-significant of the whole relation between the father and son.
-
-As Philip sat on the lame, cracking chair before his table, the
-pointlessness of it worked him up to a white heat.  It was not merely
-pointless.  It lacked dignity.  Reb Monash was the symbol of the older
-world, with iron and austere traditions, with a forehead lit by the far
-lights of antiquity.  But the incident of the rocking-chair stood
-stupidly out of keeping with the conflict of which now Philip was
-becoming intellectually conscious.
-
-At this time, too, the domestic finances were more miserable than they
-had ever been before.  The threat began to take shape that, at the end
-of the year, with the conclusion of his present scholarship, Philip
-would be expected to bring in his contribution to the household.  All
-the more passionately, therefore, Philip applied himself to his books
-in the hope of a continuance of his scholarship allowance.  Each
-evening, when the big kitchen table was cleared, he descended from the
-room upstairs with its meagre table and spread his books over the whole
-extent of the kitchen table.  It was understood that in the
-constriction of finances, Philip was on no account to work by gaslight,
-a single candle being, Reb Monash affirmed, more than expensive enough.
-
-In truth these nights were cheerless almost as a charnel-house.  It was
-not merely that the ghost of his mother seemed always hovering
-ineffectually about the room, as if she lifted her hands for a peace
-which came not, or that his own personality surged uneasily and
-wretchedly in undecided war against the immanent personality of his
-father.  Presences more tangible and numerous filled the room with
-detestable sounds.  Black, heavy beetles came drowsily and innumerably
-ambling from the wainscotting and from among the embers of the
-extinguished fire.  He could hear them crackling and rustling where the
-wall-paper had swollen from the wall.  They filled him with loathing.
-They were the quintessence of the ugliness of Doomington; but much of
-Doomington had been charmed away for him by poetry, the beetles no
-charm could exorcise.  Sometimes his hatred so swept him away that he
-ran about the room, treading quashily on the hordes of beetles where
-they lumbered along the floor.  But the more their black bodies burst
-into white paste below his boot, the more unconcernedly they emerged
-from their hiding places.  They seemed in their pompous progression to
-wink and leer at him, where the dim light of the candle caught their
-oily shells.  Then a nausea gripped him, his feet were sticky and
-unclean, the gall churned in his body.  They crept on the table
-sometimes, they dropped with a sucking thud from the bulging whitewash
-of the ceiling.  Once he lifted a glass of water from the table to his
-lips and found his lips in contact with the body of a beetle on the
-rim.  That night he was so wild with terror that he lit the
-gas--unconscionable extravagance, but as he sat feebly in the chair, he
-could hear the foul battalions rustling, whispering, smirking towards
-their chinks.
-
-His eyes had always been weak.  The working by candle-light gave him so
-much pain that he now formed the habit of lighting the gas when the
-last syllables of the monologue upstairs had died away.  One night he
-left the kitchen-door open and the light staggered out into the hall.
-A dim beam thrown upward somehow attracted the attention of Reb Monash,
-who had ceased intoning that night more from weariness than sleep.  A
-shout of anger filled the house.  Tremblingly Philip extinguished the
-gas and pored aching over his texts by dim candle-light.  It was with
-infinite caution, and when his eyes stood almost blindly in his skull,
-that now he ventured to light the gas.  More than an hour after
-midnight on one occasion he stood on the table and applied the candle
-to the gas-jet.  It was a heavy and oppressive night, but he had much
-work to do; the examinations were at hand.  Again a long time passed.
-The sweat stood clammily on Philip's head.  His lungs gaped for air.
-He placed a chair against the door and held it half-open, so that,
-while a little light escaped, a little air came in.  Once more he
-buried himself deep in his work.  Wearily his eyes went on from page to
-page.  He entered almost into a trance of dull pre-occupation with the
-lifeless books.  Nothing existed for him beyond the poor round of
-grammar, dictionary, text, notebook.  Life was neither a freedom nor a
-slavery; it was a concentration upon unimportant importances, emptily
-insistent upon themselves.  The sense which informed him that Reb
-Monash stood at the door was neither sight nor sound.  He was _aware_
-of his presence.  His heart seemed to flicker hesitantly down the
-depths of his being, until it left a blank behind his ribs, where a
-mouth entered whose teeth were fear and pain and anger.  Anger!  Surely
-it was not right for any man, in any relation, let alone a father, to
-steal like a criminal from his bed, soundlessly, terribly, and stand
-there with shut, pale lips!  There were limits to the methods correct
-in the most comprehensive fatherhood.  And his crime?  He was doing his
-work, nothing more than his work!  His tongue was chafed and sick.
-Perhaps it was an illusion after all.  Surely he was alone, he had
-heard nothing.  He lifted his eyes.  The actual physical presence of
-Reb Monash struck him sharply and heavily like a blow on the cheek.  He
-gasped with fright.  He stood there forbidding and dark, but a strange
-light round him and his dim nightclothes.  He was supernatural.  He
-stood there taut with hate.  He said not a word.  Philip's jaw relaxed,
-his eyes staring dazed into his father's eyes.  They stared at each
-other across a gulf of deafening noise and of ghastly silence.  Whose
-feet had brought him down silent as death from his bed, who invested
-him with that cadaverous power?  Illimitably beyond him stretched
-ancestral influences into the bowels of time.  There was one slipping
-away, fruit of their loins, one for whom each had been a Christ
-crucified, slipping from the fold of their pride into the pagan vast.
-Behind the boy's head boyish presences groped towards him....
-
-The spell was snapped by a hurried pattering of feet downstairs.  The
-scared face of Mrs. Massel appeared.
-
-"What dost thou mean?" she wailed, "what dost thou mean?  Go!  Touch
-him not!  He might have died with fright!  What art thou?  What dost
-thou mean by it?"  She had at last asserted herself.  With weak hands
-she pushed him away from the door.  "Come, leave the boy!  He will go
-to bed at once!  See, his face is like a tablecloth!  Come, oi, oi,
-come!"
-
-"Go thou in front!" said Reb Monash.  He entered the kitchen, where
-Philip cowered on his chair.  He turned out the gas and without a word
-went upstairs to his room.  A dull idiocy numbed Philip's brain.  He
-put his head down between his hands, and it slipped before long on to
-the table.  Here Mrs. Massel found him after some hours when she came
-down to light the fire.  As he shook himself, a beetle fell sleepily
-from his sleeve.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Some time previously, in the spring of the same year, the walls of
-Doomington had fallen to their last stone upon the blast of the
-trumpets of spring.  Philip and Harry had adventured one afternoon
-beyond the moor called "Baxter's Hill" at the north of the town and
-found themselves by the side of a Mitchen distinctly cleaner than the
-river which flowed behind the wire factory at the bottom of Angel
-Street.  They had walked up-stream for several miles out to a place of
-fresh fields and young lambs skipping.  It was true that chimneys still
-punctuated every horizon with smoky fingers.  But here and there were
-thickets of trees where the lads lay embowered in green peace,
-conscious of thick grass only and the speech of leaves.  They both
-claimed the distinction of having first sighted the shimmering and
-enchanted carpet of blue below a sun-pierced canopy of foliage.  Here
-they abandoned themselves to the first wild rapture of Spring--the
-first rapture of Spring Philip had known--burying their faces among the
-dewy bells.  Further and further to the dusk they went, until a new
-town, flinging its van to meet them and to meet the Spring in their
-button-holes and hearts, said, "Advance no more!"  Weary and sleepy and
-very hungry they came home that night, but their arms were lush with
-heaped bluebells and the knowledge of Spring was steady in them.  They
-knew a place where Doomington was a lie and earth was soft.
-
-Into this place, in the attenuated figure of Alec Segal, the "clever
-devil" whose acquaintance Philip had made several months ago, came
-Atheism.  The recent years of his history had not left Philip wholly
-unprepared for the assault against Judaism.  But when Segal said
-casually that the Holy Bible's self was just a bundle of musty papyri,
-and God a dispensable formula, he was painfully shocked.
-
-"Look here, Segal!" he said, "How can you say such a thing?  Anything
-might happen to a chap!"
-
-Segal took off his cap and made an awkward gesture towards the implicit
-deity.  "Right-ho!" he exclaimed, "Happen away!"
-
-Philip held his breath for a moment.  Nothing took place.  Only a cow
-mooed contentedly.
-
-Segal was slightly taller than Harry and a little his senior.  The
-angle of his nose related him more directly than either of his two
-friends to the root stock of his race.  Yet he had neither the
-Heinesque vehemence of the one nor the inveterate romance of the other.
-He could, in fact, hardly be thought of in terms of character.  He
-seemed to be the sum of certain intellectual qualities.  His sole
-morbidity was a ruthless passion for logic.  Poetry, which in various
-ways had brought the three youths together, interested him, but neither
-for ethical nor for æsthetic reasons.  Each poem was an interesting
-proposition in itself, like a mixture in a test tube at his school
-laboratory.  It had the mechanical attributes of rhythm and rhyme and
-metaphor constructing a mechanical whole.
-
-But on thinking the matter over, after frequent and painful discussion,
-Philip realized that Segal's attitude so shocked him because it dared
-to put into blunt words something he had long been timorously feeling.
-By the Bible, of course, Segal meant religion generally.  The Bible was
-the foundation of Judaism and therefore of Christianity, which, he had
-long ago decided, in any case hadn't much claim to serious
-consideration.  His own remark had been sound enough; he had declared
-that the disappearance of religion would leave the world "jolly empty."
-But empty of what things?  Empty as a garden without weeds.  What
-stupidity, cruelty, ignorance, flourished below the damp boughs of
-religion from border to border of the world!  And what things would
-still flourish if religion were cut down!  Tall trees of liberty, fine
-flowers of poetry!
-
-What was it he had always felt wrong with Judaism?  What did it lack?
-It was a quality not entirely missing even from the garbled
-Christianity that came his way.  The Baptist Missionary Chapel was as
-fervent an enemy of this quality as the most vigorous Judaism.  But dim
-intimations had come by him on the wind of another Christian spirit.
-Here there were white lilies and blue gowns pointed with stars; there
-was soft singing at evening and the burning of many candles; there were
-superb altars, marble and kingly.  Superb altars--the Baptist
-Missionary Chapel!  Christianity contained both.  But this quality was
-eternally triumphant in the grand false superstitions of Greece and
-Rome.  Here there were white pillars in a noon of hyacinth; baskets of
-wrought gold held violets and primroses; there were processions of
-chiselled gods before whom maidens scattered a long foam of petals;
-there were lads running races and the wind was in their hair; the wind
-was a god, there were gods in the thickets of olive and in the
-translucent caves of the sea.
-
-Beauty!  Poetry!  This was what he needed most.  This was what that old
-world gave.  What delight did his fathers know, generation beyond
-generation, in the comely things of the world?  What statuary had come
-down and what pictures of burnished gold and azure?  What dances were
-there to the rising sun and in procession with the slow stars?  If any
-of his fathers had made him a graven image, he was stoned and the
-thunders of those hoary enemies of lovely things shook over the
-cowering tribes.  There had descended to him a tradition of tragedy and
-pride.  Of beauty, none.  There was, for example, the _shool_.  How the
-air was foetid!  How the walls were bare!  How the hangings before the
-ark were tawdry!  How the prayers were raucous, how the air drooped for
-lack of poetry!
-
-Ah! the sense of relief which began to possess him when now, throwing
-forward his chest, and breathing even in midmost Doomington the deep
-air of liberty, he realized how vain were all his innumerable
-ceremonies; that God did not require of him these things and these; He
-did not sit there watchfully counting the syllables of prayer His
-votaries uttered, sit there like a miser counting his pieces of gold;
-that the subterfuges and evasions of ritual which had given him
-frequent unease were not fraught with more than a merely local and
-temporary danger.  Forward from phylacteries!  They had slipped from
-his arms like manacles.  They lay discarded like the slough of a
-serpent, coiled round his feet.  What there was now of poetry in the
-Feast of Tabernacles, in the prophetic and vague beards of the old men,
-in the synagogue-chanting on darkening Saturday evenings, in the
-mingled array of the Passover Tables, in the puckered faces of the
-antique women muttering their year-long prayers, in the blast of the
-liberating horn upon the Fast of Atonement--what there was of poetry in
-them, he was free to understand; for they were shorn of all that had
-made them forbidding; they were not symbols of dark terror, they were
-pathways into the heart of the world.  And with these he was free to
-understand what there was of poetry in the vague Christian lilies, in
-the burning of candles before the shrines of picturesque saints,
-brothers of those other and marble gods.  All that these Greek gods had
-of poetry and all their groves and their broad-browed morning lads and
-the virginal worshippers before those altars of poetry--all, all these
-things were his.  He was winning to freedom after much slavery.
-
-But the acceptance of a general diminution in the divine attributes,
-through which the Godhead gradually became a vague half-credible
-abstraction, was attended by a campaign much more injurious to Philip's
-ease.  His elders had approached God with as much terror as
-understanding when they made any advances in the celestial direction.
-It was reassuring to realize that if God was being divested of His
-raiment of love, He was losing proportionately the lightning of His
-jealousy and the bolt of His somewhat sectarian wrath.  Yet
-simultaneously, as Segal and Harry agreed with no apparent remorse, it
-was imperative to abandon the immortality of the soul.  To Philip there
-was something homicidal, matricidal, in the facile way with which they
-consigned to worms as their ultimate doom the folk whom they might be
-expected to love most dearly.  They admitted it was an unpleasant pill
-to swallow, but in the wind of truth their personal predilections, they
-avowed, were as chaff!  Who were they to stand up against Logic,
-against Law?  "Truth the grand," a poet had said, "has blown my dreams
-into grains of sand!"
-
-Segal remained imperturbable amid the crash of boyish comfort and
-illusion.  His own extinction being the disintegration of a number of
-acute faculties, there would be no wraith of frustrated passion and
-insatiate hungers to move forlornly through the Godless void.  There
-was a keen, bright fascination in this self-sufficiency for both the
-tempestuous utilitarianism of Harry and the inchoate poetry of Philip
-for whom this friendship involved almost a pungent ecstasy of
-self-extinction, like the repeated assault of the moth against the
-poised, unreluctant flame.  These conclusions plunged Harry into a more
-fiery round of Socialistic activities than he had yet known.  If the
-oppressed classes of the world would in no future state achieve
-equality, if the capitalists in no democracy of spirits would be set by
-counter-balance to hew wood and draw water for wage slaves there
-triumphant, all the more reason then to achieve an earthly Utopia, to
-rouse young Doomington to a sense of its manifold wrongs and, in the
-concrete, to stand as Socialist candidate for the coming parliamentary
-election at the Highfield Grade School.  Philip, on the other hand,
-felt what happened in this miserable and abortive world hardly
-mattered, when all its insignificant schemes were doomed, collectively
-and individually, to sudden and absolute annihilation.  The extinction
-of souls was not an attractive philosophy, he reflected bitterly, but
-there seemed no alternative but to accept it as a general truth.  Not
-wholly consciously and with a passionate stupidity he applied three
-individual cases to the test of the general assertion; the survival of
-Shelley's soul, his mother's and his own.  What arguing could there be
-about these three and, least of all, about Shelley's.  His mother's
-death and his own being so utterly incredible, so much _contra
-naturam_, their souls existed in an ether beyond all jeopardy.  Yet
-Shelley was demonstrably dead.  But was he dead indeed?  He realized
-now for the first time how Shelley was the _lar_ of all his years.  He
-might vaguely and unhappily acquiesce in the destruction of souls _en
-masse_, but nothing could convince him that Shelley did not triumph,
-personally, separately, in the clouds of morning and ride the horses of
-the wind; that he was not still the conscious spirit of song wherever
-birds and waters sang; that the pyre had dissipated for ever that
-unconquerable spirit.
-
-Such then was the dubious and difficult current of Philip's atheism.
-And it was a strange fortune that these speculations should most have
-waged war within him at that period of the Jewish year when the
-festivals which culminate in the New Year and the Day of Atonement
-demanded unusually frequent attendance within the walls of the
-_Polisher Shool_, the inner temple of phylacteries, where Philip still
-so long and so frequently was held captive.
-
-The worshipper entered the synagogue through a narrow door to the left
-of an establishment for fried fish and chips.  The odour, therefore, of
-these commodities rising through the building interpenetrated the
-atmosphere of prayer, until prayer and chipped potatoes became
-inextricably woven together, and at no period in his life could Philip
-pass beyond a fried fish shop without feeling a far-off refluence from
-the old call to worship.  Indeed, Philip's earliest anthropomorphism
-represented the Deity as some immense celestial figure in white cloth
-and a white hat standing above the fume and splendour of a great
-concave oven where He shovelled upon his tray the souls of human
-beings, brown and crisp, and resembling mystically the strips of
-potatoes shovelled by Mr. Marks upon a less divine tray in a chip-shop
-less august.
-
-The worshipper now climbed a narrow staircase, and passing by the
-women's door entered the synagogue proper.  If he had endured some
-recent loss in his family, the beadle from within would declare
-robustly, "Look ye towards the bereaved one!" who would enter with
-drooped head, the object of the regulated curiosity of bearded and
-beardless alike.  Only a thin wooden partition divided the women's from
-the men's section, so that on one side praise was lifted to the Lord by
-the women because He had made them what they were, on the other, in
-unabashed juxtaposition, heartier praise was lifted by the men because
-He had made them men.  Little boys could stand quite easily upon the
-forms and look down upon the women swaying in their old black silks and
-beneath their crazy cherry-garlanded bonnets.  Here stood the
-_rebitsin_, Serra Golda, the most pious and wrinkled of Hebrew woman,
-who, because it is a _mitzvah_, an act of grace, to stand as long as
-possible during the Day of Atonement, stood all that hot long day on
-her ulcered feet, even though the mere creeping from her own dun
-parlour not far away had been one hard agony.  Here too stood Mrs.
-Massel, very quiet and shy among the voluble women, wiping her eyes
-sometimes and repeating the prayers quietly, or perhaps, becoming
-conscious of the dark watchful scrutiny of her boy beyond the
-partition, lifting to him her face for one sweet moment and dropping it
-again towards her Prayer Book.
-
-Against the centre of the Eastern wall, which was at right angles with
-this partition, stood the Ark wherein the Scrolls of the Law reposed
-among mothy velvet, themselves enveloped in a petticoat of plush whence
-hung silver bells.  The whole Ark was curtained by a pall of scarlet,
-lettered with gold thread.  At the centre of the masculine section
-(whose dimensions were some fifty by forty feet) stood the pulpit, some
-inches above the general level, where the whole service was incanted
-and the occasional auxiliaries from the audience were summoned.  Below
-the pulpit and facing the Ark, a coffin-like desk drawn closely against
-their amplitudes, sat the elected officers for the year, the _parnass_
-and the two _gabboim_.  Reb Monash, the power of whose oratory was so
-signal an ornament to the _Polisher Shool_, sat upon the right-hand
-side of the Ark itself, against the wall.  The benches ran parallel
-along the _shool_ on both sides of the pulpit.  In the strict, if
-uncongenial, interests of truth it is necessary to say that every
-member of the synagogue above the age of thirty spat, and not a few
-below that age, these last retaining the easier hygiene of Poland and
-further Europe.  The more honourable worthies had their own particular
-joints in the boarding for their expectorations, although, if they were
-more than usually afflicted, they would proceed to the doorway,
-returning thence purged.  Hence experience alone was an adequate pilot
-for an unscathed journey between any point of the synagogue and the
-door.  There were times when such tender breasts as Philip's were so
-nauseated by the persistent spitting that their hearts seemed to
-suspend beating from sheer sickness.  On two occasions Philip's head
-fell back bloodlessly and with a bang on the hard wood behind him and
-he was taken away to the lavatory, where several men and women filled
-their mouths with water and cascaded his face for some minutes until he
-opened his eyes.  No season in the year was hot enough to justify the
-opening of the windows.  A current of the comparatively clean air from
-Doomington Road was declared with horror to be "A draught!  A draught!"
-and with patriarchical fury the windows were closed to.  Sometimes on a
-particularly sultry day an enterprising youth might open a window for
-several inches without drawing the attention of the elders.  It would
-be unobserved for perhaps half an hour as no slightest movement of air
-was created.  Then the alarm would be given.  Immediately angry shouts
-of "A draught!  A draught!" would be heard, some would huddle their
-arms in the cold, some would cough vehemently in the blizzard of
-self-suggestion.  Occasionally the younger generation might make the
-effort to stand up shoulder to shoulder for the rights of ventilation,
-but so furious a hubbub would be created, the unease spreading itself
-into the women's department where a clucking would be heard as of an
-apprehensive farmyard; but especially the thunders of Mr. Linsky would
-be so olympically august, that the younger generation would subside and
-once more the opaque odours coagulate.
-
-The _Polisher Shool_ was, it may be deduced, a somewhat reactionary
-institution.  But occasionally Reb Monash was called upon to deliver an
-oration in a synagogue of such Æsculapian sanity that the atmosphere
-seemed positively to evoke the vacant silence of Gentile worship.  The
-definitely English congregations were assembled actually in superseded
-chapels, and here the laws of ventilation were no less rigorous than in
-the offices of the Doomington Board of Health.  But these lacked the
-element of personality with which the _Polisher Shool_ was perhaps too
-copiously endowed.  And if all his life Philip had not been made
-unceasingly conscious of the dislike entertained for him in cordial
-measure by the body politic of the synagogue, he would have derived
-much consolation from the study of its personalities, of the rotund Reb
-Yonah, of Reb Shimmon like an army with banners, and the wizened
-_shammos_, the beadle, flapping about on loose soles like a
-disreputable ghost.
-
-Philip's attitude towards _shool_ was immediately prejudiced on his
-mere going thither.  For almost from earliest times, not appreciably
-long, it seemed, after he had discarded the blue wool and tassels of
-infancy, he had been expected to crown his small figure with a large
-black bowler hat; and bowler hats, as could not be denied, were
-_bloody_.  He felt stupidly self-conscious as he walked along by his
-father's side, as if all Doomington stared and jeered.  If Reb Monash
-met a friend and these pursued a common way to the synagogue, Philip
-would hover behind, remove the bowler hat, and pretend it was somebody
-else's--he was only "holding it like."
-
-There was a brood of young gentlemen very popular among their elders at
-the _Polisher Shool_.  There was Hymie, whose eyes were large and
-innocent and who helped himself daily from his father's till.  His
-voice was the voice of an exceptionally guileless thrush and he sang
-Yiddish songs at _Shalla-shudos_, the Saturday afternoon gatherings.
-There was Moishe, who asked such clever questions so sweetly concerning
-the weekly portion, that they were answered with delight by the
-expository old men, excepting when, as they somewhat frequently did,
-they involved sexual references.  Moishe's mind was prematurely a
-cesspool.  Others also there were to whom piety was a paying
-proposition, and two were pious because they were thus made.  Philip
-could not throw in his lot with this company.  And the whole _shool_
-remembered how the synagogue-president, the _parnass_, had, some years
-ago, pressed him to drink of the Sabbath night cup of wine; how Philip
-had refused it both because he didn't like wine and because he didn't
-like a public exhibition of a deed tinged with piety; how the pride of
-the _parnass_ had been aroused and how he endeavoured to force the wine
-between Philip's lips while the whole _shool_ awaited the issue; how
-Philip had suddenly thrust aside the foot of the beaker so that the
-wine fell stickily round the respective trousers of himself and the
-_parnass_.
-
-Philip felt instinctively how everybody stiffened with dislike when he
-entered the synagogue, a dislike accentuated by the universal honour
-with which his father was regarded.  Had he but been the son of a
-bootmaker, the Judaic virtues would not have been so prominently
-expected from him; they would have said "a bootmaker remains a
-bootmaker, even to his remote posterity!"  But being the son of Reb
-Monash, whose black hair and beard his son was even now dimming with
-disastrous grey, Philip was a public scorn.
-
-All which did not embarrass Philip so much as the interminable hours he
-spent behind the shut windows in the stale air--while bluebells lilted
-afar off and birds spoke their foreign exquisite languages.  And now
-above all a widening had thrust his horizon far away and far away from
-the smoky limits of Doomington, far from the mythic circuit of green
-waves wherein England lay, far from the last hills of the world, out to
-the tingling spaces and the royal stars.
-
-For Segal, who had brought the dissolution of atheism with him, had
-brought also astronomy: with a singing for the quiet sun and a meaning
-for the hollows of sky.  It was, of course, a long time now that for
-both Philip and Harry the flat layer of earth had dropped away, coiling
-round themselves to produce the globe they had seen in effigy, so far
-back as the days of Miss Green.  But Segal introduced, as
-preliminaries, Sir Robert Ball and Proctor and Camille Flammarion, and
-a knowledge of constellations, the nature of nebulæ, star dust and the
-Milky Way, which united the three boys with a bond of fervent interest.
-For Segal it meant illimitable fresh spaces for the plummet of logic;
-and because Space was infinite, no room was left for God, who, if He
-existed at all, could thus only be attenuated into nothingness.  Harry
-dreamed of an undiscoverable planet where equity among its mortals
-prevailed; for in the infinite types of star which space permitted
-through infinite time, it was evident that one such star had been or
-was or might be developed; it was to this ideal star that he hitched
-the lumbering wagon of earth.  To Philip, the Milky Way was a divine
-bluebell bank dancing by the borders of a celestial river.  The stars
-fed him with innumerable new images, giving to his conception of poetry
-a depth and height.  And here once more, as if to consummate the
-significance Shelley had involved through each succeeding phase of
-Philip's adolescence, just as he had been found to crystallize a world
-in which complete escape from Doomington mud and brick might be
-realized; to hold the stormy banner of Socialism; to smite down the
-hydra-heads of religion; so now Shelley was seen to be a poet to whom
-the fields of stars were more naturally a place for wandering and
-singing than deathly fields of sorrel and marguerite; he was the Starry
-Poet.
-
-
-"I say, you chaps!" Harry said excitedly one day, "there's a telescope
-in the Curiosity Shop opposite the gaol!  What about it?"
-
-"The inference being," suggested Segal, "that as soon as we've pinched
-the telescope the gaol's waiting on the other side of the road?"
-
-"No, old Cartwright's too watchful and the gaol too uncomfortable.
-Didn't you say so yourself when you came out after your last six
-months' hard?  What about clubbing together and buying it?"
-
-"I've got fourpence!" said Philip.
-
-"I've not got that!" said Segal.  "But let's find out about it.  It's
-just the thing we want.  Ye Gods, we might find a new comet!  Beware,
-Halley!"
-
-They appeared at Mr. Cartwright's shop and asked the price nonchalantly
-of a set of chessmen.  "And what's the price of this telescope?" asked
-Harry with such an exaggerated gesture of indifference that Mr.
-Cartwright could not fail to perceive the yearning of his bowels.
-
-"A quid!" said Mr. Cartwright.
-
-It was so shattering a sum that, whereas they would have attempted
-bargaining if he had said, "Three-and-sixpence," they now said
-brokenly, "All right!  We'll buy it."
-
-Mr. Cartwright was so astonished at this acquiescence that, taken
-similarly off his guard, "You can have it for twelve bob!" he gasped.
-
-"O--er--I'm sorry!  We've not got more than three just now!  We'll save
-up the rest!"
-
-Quick change of tactics on the part of General Cartwright, who has time
-to recover his breath.  "All right!" he declared, mouth tight at the
-corners, "Leave that as a deposit and I'll reduce the price to eighteen
-and six!" he said munificently.
-
-Hence the telescope, which, though its actual magnifying powers were
-somewhat scanty, served both as an outward symbol of their devotion to
-stars and moon and as the token of their friendship.  A new experience
-now entered their lives, a state, an exaltation, a mystic absorption of
-themselves into the heart of night from which the logician was by no
-means immune and which he anticipated with as much fearful joy as his
-friends.  It was called "going deep," and was a state which they could
-not cajole or anticipate but came when it listed and departed as
-mysteriously.  It was the fine flower of their friendship, coming only
-at night during their contemplation of skies.
-
-They would find as they talked of Cassiopeia or the far-flung wing of
-Aquila or Vega's blue swords or the misty Pleiad sisters, a thinning of
-their own voices, a growing outward and aloft.  It seemed that the hulk
-of body lay supine on the grimy soil of Doomington while their souls
-quietly adventured among the high places.  It was an ether where
-extremes met, the young logician carried along a steep straight line by
-the inherent ecstasy of Law to a place where, by different curves of
-passionate imagination, his friends had ascended mysteriously those
-ladders of poetry between earth and heaven.  It was perhaps a shadow of
-that state of fleshly innocence towards which the mystics have yearned,
-that state which Adam supremely knew when Eve had not yet been torn
-from his side.  It was a state doomed to last not long, to re-occur
-less frequently as the mists began to cloud their eyes insistently and
-to stifle in their ears the clarity of starry silence.  They did not
-know how long a time lasted their "goings deep"--some moments only,
-perhaps, sometimes a dim trance of a fleshless hour.  But when they
-descended from those places, their chaffings and bickerings were
-resumed with difficulty, as if their bickering gainsaid a stilled voice
-they had heard.
-
-One incident each of them remembered most clearly out of this time of
-astronomy--the night of the moon's eclipse.  With various degrees of
-difficulty they obtained permission to stay out till morning, and at
-midnight they met upon the highest point of Baxter's Hill.  A moorland
-air came wandering in from the adjacent country, and because the
-chimneys had ceased for the night to thicken the atmosphere, this
-strange sweet air came timidly towards them, as a stranger little
-welcomed in these parts.  They lay back upon the grass looking towards
-those regions of the sky where the moon did not yet dim the stars to
-extinction.  The telescope passed from hand to hand and they spoke of
-the ashen hollows in the moon, Segal naming her features, and
-emphasizing placidly how, soon or late, this earth whereon they lay now
-should have exhausted all her fires.
-
-Very quietly they spoke in the still night air until a sound of terror
-was heard from some hidden hollow and the words were stricken on their
-lips.  The sound was heard again and again, curdling their blood.
-
-"A woman's being murdered somewhere!" exclaimed Philip.
-
-"Baxter's Hill has got a dirty reputation.  I wonder if a fellow's
-trying to get the better of a girl?" Harry whispered.
-
-"Listen!  Isn't it a rotten sound!"
-
-The truth occurred to Segal.  "You prize fools!  Oh, you ultra prize
-fools!" he cackled.  "It's a sheep!  Ha, ha!  A sheep!  And you're two
-more!"
-
-They found the midnight full of curious noises in which man and his
-works had no concern.  An owl hooted.  A nightjar skimmed an edge of
-darkness silently, then turned his hoarse wheel.  Insects crepitated
-below grasses.  The boys had little known how the watchful forces of
-nature crept back to the place Doomington had usurped when, during the
-night, the town's fumy power was relaxed.
-
-When at last the dark band of eclipse sliced the rim of the moon,
-Philip was drowsing.  Harry seized him suddenly.  Philip sprang to his
-feet.  "Look!  Look!  The moon!  The eclipse!"
-
-Slowly the transformation took place.  The three lads stood there
-tensely straining towards the moon.  It seemed that the world had no
-sound during this breathless miracle.  No owl cried and no sheep lifted
-a voice from the hollows.  The moorland wind stopped, the scant grasses
-did not move.  A train in a far cutting uttered a startled cry and
-subsided.  Until out of the white purity was made a disk of lurid and
-burnished splendour, like the bossed shield of a Titan who strode
-across space while the issues were still dubious of celestial wars.
-
-The lads waited on the moor till dawn came, so that the fringe of that
-night should not be sullied by their return to Doomington dust.  Dawn
-came with a cool breath from the East and a line of pale green lying
-like a blade on the far-seen Mitchen.  A sword was swung above the
-slopes, glancing with gold and crimson.  The edge of the sun was at
-last visible.  The boys made their way homeward along the quiet streets.
-
-
-As Reb Monash ascended the pulpit on the second morning of _Rosh
-Hashonah_, the New Year festival, to deliver a _drosheh_, an oration,
-in his capacity as professional orator or _maggid_, the incidents of
-the eclipse were hazily passing through Philip's mind.  For some time
-Reb Monash's utterance was calm and measured, not interfering with the
-flow of Philip's recollections.  But a sudden note of passion rising
-and again falling away flickered across Philip's brain, as a vein of
-fire smoulders with the turning of an opal, and when the opal is turned
-away is swallowed in pearl-mist and blue.  He was occupying the seat
-vacated by his father against the side of the Ark.  He looked up
-towards Reb Monash who again was speaking abstractly, evenly, as if he
-were finding his way somewhither.  There was still on his face a
-certain air of preoccupation which Philip had noticed all that morning.
-It had been a morning signalized also by a few low kind words he had
-said to Philip which had touched the boy curiously; and, at one moment,
-he had looked sombrely, gently, into his son's eyes, placing a hand on
-his shoulder as if to hold him back from the darkness towards which his
-steps were tending.  Philip had looked back uneasily into his eyes,
-wondering.  A shadow of so much sadness in his father's face had
-produced a sick yearning in the deeps of the boy's body.  His own eyes
-had filled strangely, but he had clenched his fists and set his teeth.
-His father had turned away from him and walked back into the
-_chayder_....
-
-Reb Monash standing in the pulpit became mysteriously depersonalized.
-He became a force capable at one moment of bringing tears to the eyes
-of his harshest listeners and the next of convulsing them with
-laughter.  Philip realized from what deep well of oratory sprang that
-runlet which had burst forth upon the Longton croft from his lips.  In
-the pulpit Reb Monash lost sight of his personal sorrow and became the
-voice of the age-long sorrow of his race.  At such a time he stood like
-a bard, his _tallus_ hanging down in great folds, his voice of such
-strength and sweetness that a weeping came from the women's section
-upon its first syllables.
-
-The first part of the morning's oration proceeded on traditional lines.
-He subtly interwove the text he had chosen with the message of the
-festival now celebrated.  Upon single words he threw such diverse and
-strange lights that they were opened up gallery beyond gallery, like a
-mine of meanings.  Each sentence was illuminated by his inexhaustible
-fertility of quotation, each quotation prefaced by the "as it stands in
-the passage."  He elaborated each point by a swift "_zu moshel_," to
-give a parallel.  But all this skill was the routine of the _maggid's_
-profession; he had graduated with these arts in many schools.  He was
-proceeding further than this; his voice still was subdued, patient, as
-if realizing that beyond these thickets was a clearing of intense
-light, if but steadily he made his way.  Then suddenly he emerged from
-the tortuous paths and the tangle of undergrowth, with a loud resonant
-cry as he came upon the clear space at the centre of his heart.
-
-"But is it truly the beginning of the year?  Shall it be a rejoicing
-for our fathers and for our sons if the birth of to-day is not a birth
-but a death?  _Hayom harras olom_!  But think, my brothers and my
-sisters, into what world the Year, the Law, came first!  For the world
-was void and dark, and the spirit of God moved upon the waters, and the
-spirit of God was the Law.  The godlings were of stone and of wood whom
-you would kick and they were fallen down, and their number was the
-sands of the sea.  Then to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob the one
-God vouchsafed Himself and in His book His breath is fire.  How He was
-gracious to our fathers beyond all their deserts when, recollecting the
-impieties of Egypt, they made themselves a false God, a Calf of Gold.
-But yet He did not abandon them, nor in after times.  Always he held
-out His right arm over them, yea He shattered the gathered enemies,
-even with the jawbone of an ass He shattered them.  Whole races of the
-godless were destroyed in His love for the Law He had uttered and the
-Chosen People to whom He had entrusted the Law.  Then our parents fell
-upon evil ways, they took to themselves the daughters of the Gentile,
-they no more circumcised their sons into the company of the Chosen.
-Too many, too many to tell were the sorrows that came down upon us.
-Our vineyards were taken away, our crops were wasted, our daughters
-stolen away from us.  The gold and the ivory of Solomon's temple were
-despoiled, the Holy City was a waste of weeds.  Yet once more in His
-goodness Jerusalem arose and once more in their hardness of heart the
-people sought the false gods: until the accursed Titus came upon us and
-the walls for ever fell.  By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and
-wept; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps on the
-willows in the midst thereof.  But lo, my brothers, do not weep; my
-sisters, one thing was left to us, as a tabernacle in the wilderness, a
-dove on the void of waters, a sword in our right hand, a burning bush;
-that Law which each year begins and ends but has no ending.  For upon
-it once again when the years of the _gollus_ are numbered shall the
-Temple be rebuilt.  Yea, when the trumpet shall sound, the corpses of
-the Chosen shall be awakened; they shall rise from their graves and
-roll from the scattered lands, beyond seas and hills, once more to the
-hills of Zion.  How shall the gems on the breast of the High Priest
-shine and his garments be of dazzling white!  How a Miriam shall sing a
-sweeter song on further shores of deeper waters and more divinely
-cloven than the waters of the Red Sea!  Then at last shall Moses arise
-from his undiscovered grave to enter that land he had but seen afar
-off.  The land shall be flowing with milk and honey and the grapes on
-the vines be fat.  Our matrons shall be fruitful with blessed children
-and our daughters be glad.  The Law shall be as a sign upon the
-forehead of our sons.
-
-How it shall all be forgotten, the valley of the shadow, the centuries
-of _gollus_!  Did our fathers lie on the rack of the Spaniards and were
-their thumbs torn from their hands?  It shall be as a mist of ten years
-gone by.  There were they crouched in cellars, old _bobbies_ leaning
-against the damp walls, an old _zadie_ reading by the little candle of
-the goodness of the God of Israel.  The boys looked up listening with
-shining eyes.  There was the sound of bursting doors, but the old voice
-did not falter.  There was the clatter of iron boots down the stone
-stairway; but there was no ceasing in the praise of God.  And though
-the old men, the women, yea, the children sucking still quietly at
-their mothers' breasts, were tied against stacks of wood, and the flame
-withheld if they but forswore Israel, still was the Law to them like a
-cool cavern full of the fragrance of God, even in the very centre of
-fire.
-
-_Pogrommen_ have there been in those lands whence we have come?  Who
-shall remember them?  Though the babies were torn from the wombs of
-mothers, and maidens violated in the streets at noon, all shall be,
-because the Law has been given to us, as dust in the roadway!
-
-But hold!  What do I say?  If once more the children of Israel shall
-build them a Calf of Gold, if they shall turn to the heathen things,
-who shall keep back the lightnings of God, our God strong in love but
-terrible in jealousy?  Shall not we be utterly swept away till there is
-no memory of our defeats and no trace of our victories?  Shall it all
-be vain, the rack, the fire, the mother disembowelled in pregnancy?
-
-I say to you, look at our children, for a bad spirit has come into
-these lands.  I say not to you, our brothers and sisters, but to you,
-to you, our children, keep ye your goings within the fold of the Law!
-Have you need then of pogroms and swords that you shall remain with
-God?  Because, in this place, He has withheld them, thank Him for that
-He loves you more.  Behold, age behind age our sufferings and our
-triumph go.  Bring it not all to naught.  Make not the bloodshed to be
-useless as water.  For the air is thick with the voices of the dead,
-saying: 'Hold, hold by the banner of Israel!  Let it not fall from you!
-Proudly we held it though the blood dripped from our fingers!'
-
-Lo, our children, you make us to you as strangers, you harden our
-hearts with anger.  But we are ready with our love for you when you
-follow upon our ways, which are the ways of the countless dead.  Let
-not for little things our heritage be squandered; let not the Maccabæan
-banner be smirched, nor false gods enter into our tabernacles which we
-build now upon a wandering thousandfold bitterer than the forty years.
-We lift out our arms to you.  Join us in singing the Lord's song!  May
-the next year see us in Zion!"
-
-There were one or two looked with alarm upon the face of Philip staring
-from the wall against the Holy Ark.  His face was bloodless, his eyes
-round as if in nightmare.  Not a sound was heard when Reb Monash came
-weakly down from the pulpit.  No one knew where to turn his eyes.  As
-his father came nearer to resume his seat, Philip gave a sudden
-convulsive start, then fell jerkily towards the form where he had sat
-before the _drosheh_.  A tiny whispering arose in the congregation, as
-of leaves after a windless noon when a first breeze shakes, or of still
-waters ruffled.  The _parnass_ uttered a deep _oi! oi!_ absently
-clapping his hands three or four times; the weeping of the women
-decreased; the men bent towards each other and talked.  Some one
-ascended the pulpit to begin the second part of the service.
-
-
-Reb Monash had chosen well; for that preoccupation which had held his
-face all that morning now held his son's for the rest of that day.
-After dinner he lay down on the sofa thinking heavily; he neither spoke
-a word with his mother nor picked up a book.  He had answered too
-easily all the questions life had offered him.  Was it too late to
-begin thinking clearly now?  Were his conclusions correct by accident
-or were all his conclusions mere self-flattery?  No formula to help him
-through the mists of doubt which were swarming round him came his way.
-Late that night, when _shool_ and the evening _meyeriv_ service were
-over, he walked out towards Baxter's Hill, under the light of stars.
-It was not long that he moved onward like a sluggish water.  A wind
-came from somewhere afar off and set into motion the mists in his head.
-More and more quickly they whirled within him, and then, swiftly, they
-were gone.  He rose skywards from his feet.  Without pain or pleasure,
-all that issue which had racked him this day became thin, remote.  He
-moved on the shores of a sea where the sands were stars, and the sea
-was the great womb of the undefined, where all things were not, but God
-was.  Trembling, aghast, he stood on the arch of the sweep of sands,
-hearing incoherent murmurings.  Towards a blackness cool and clear he
-stood where foam and wind beat into his face.  He turned from the
-voices of sea and bent down dabbling his fingers among the star-sands.
-He rose and walked stepping from rock to rock to the channel where the
-Milky Way flowed inward from the sea.  On the bank of the Milky Way, he
-stopped once more and lifted in his hands a handful of grass.  Beyond
-the slope, the dim waters of Mitchen moved through the night.  He
-leaned for some minutes drowsing against a tree trunk, then turned
-towards the vague hulk of Baxter's Hill.  "It's over!" he whispered.
-"I know!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-It was noon on the Day of Atonement which followed nine days after the
-_Rosh Hashonah_ memorable to more than one by the oration of Reb
-Monash, noon in Cambridge Street, a thoroughfare in Doomington far
-removed from the region of the synagogues, which, for this day, were
-crowded from dawn to dusk by the day-long worshippers.  The most pious
-did not move from within their precincts; the less pious withdrew
-occasionally to the immediate environs.  All who were sacrilegious on
-all the other three hundred and sixty-four days, on this day rigidly
-fasted, and, having no regular pew in a regular synagogue, were
-devoutly glad to pay for the privilege of any pew in any synagogue.  If
-they gainsaid or were indifferent to the precepts of their faith on
-other days, who could forswear the immemorial terror of this day?  If
-they had been building all the year a palisade between Heaven and
-themselves, on this day, who knew, they might enter Heaven through a
-breach in the palisade.  On the night concluding _Yom Kippur_ many
-looked forward to the impieties of the morrow as if these had been
-annulled in anticipation.  But most felt that if all else were
-_démodé_, _Yom Kippur_ stood august beyond fashion.  Even the great
-jewellery and general emporia of Doomington shut their doors, though
-they exhibited a note to the effect that cleaning operations were in
-progress, so that their credit with their more Nonconformist customers
-might remain unimpaired.  Bob Cohen, who lived with a _goyah_, a
-Gentile lady, all the year round, became entirely oblivious of her
-existence for these twenty-four hours, in a synagogue several towns
-away from the scene of his amour.  In _shool_ his fervent contrition
-was only drowned by the self-reproaches of the penitents whose
-perpetual state was the strictest matrimonial chastity.  Avowed
-atheists put in an appearance despite all their logic.  There were few
-Jews in Doomington that day beyond the circumference of a circle whose
-radius was half a mile in any direction from the _Polisher Shool_.
-
-Hence it was surprising to see Alec Segal in a shop doorway far up
-Cambridge Street on the afternoon of _Yom Kippur_.  It added to the
-surprise to find Harry Sewelson join him after some minutes, for the
-four parents of these youths, emancipated to the pitch of transferring
-a kettle to and from the fire on _shabbos_, were yet very far from the
-transgression of this ultimate sanctity; a sanctity of such awe as
-might overwhelm spirits even of the defiant aloofness of Segal and
-Harry.
-
-"You're late!" said Segal.
-
-"Three minutes!"
-
-"Six and a half to be precise!"
-
-"You'll be taking notes of how long your neck's in the noose before
-you're dead...."
-
-"Yes, and make a graph of the parabola of my descent.  But why are you
-late?  Called in at a public-house _en route_?"
-
-"No fear!  I've had a drink at the scullery-tap, it was a little less
-ostentatious.  I suppose you've had a drink?"
-
-"Yes, I hid a bottle of lemonade in my mattress!" declared Segal
-cunningly.
-
-"I'm not thirsty but I'm jolly peckish.  My elder sister fainted, so I
-had to take her home.  As for Esther--you know, my other sister--she's
-only fifteen, but she's dead nuts on fasting.  Queer thing, the less
-she puts down the more she brings up!  She's been sick all day!"
-
-"But that young scoundrel's not turned up yet!  I wonder if anything's
-wrong?"
-
-"He's all right.  His father doesn't stir a foot out of the _Polisher
-Shool_; he'll have had an opportunity to prig something to eat and
-drink!"
-
-"I don't think he can have backed out?" Segal suggested.
-
-"I don't think it's likely.  He may be walking backward to draw
-attention away from his bowler hat.  He doesn't like bowler hats!"
-
-"Or he may be writing a poem in a dark corner, being only young and
-somewhat foolish.  He'll grow out of the first as time goes on."
-
-"Yes, he's amusing enough.  But isn't that the illustrious bowler hat?"
-
-"Hello!  Here we are!  I say, bowler hat, have you seen Philip Massel?"
-
-"He's just coming!" said Philip, appearing at last.  "Well, he's come!
-I'm starving, where's the shop?"
-
-"You've been at a banquet with Sir Timothy and the City Fathers; else
-why so late?" insisted Harry.
-
-"My mother was fearfully faint," replied Philip awkwardly.  "I didn't
-like to leave her.  It's a crime for her to fast, she's so weak
-nowadays!  It's not been so bad for me, with some packets of biscuits
-at home and a copy of Milton for _shool_.  But let's come along!"
-
-The boys walked up Cambridge Street and turned to the right towards a
-bridge over the Deadwater Canal.  They passed through the door of an
-eating-house and the fat smells of frying enveloped them unpleasantly;
-they chose a table in a corner and sat before a lake of spilled gravy
-and the tin utensils.
-
-"It feels rather shifty, all this!" ventured Philip after a few moments.
-
-"Look here, lad, don't be conscientious at this time of day!"
-remonstrated Segal.
-
-"I mean when you think of the old men and the sick women who're a sight
-worse off than we are!"
-
-"Now, Philip," interposed Harry, "You know quite well it's not the
-beastly food.  It's a symbol of freedom!  We're not going to be
-enslaved any longer under the heel of these daft old superstitions.
-_Vive la liberté_ and all that sort of thing!  I positively don't feel
-like eating now, as a matter of fact; the stink's rather thick.  You
-know, Alec, you might have chosen something more encouraging than this
-hole."
-
-"Phew!" from Philip.  "I prefer the smell of the _Polisher Shool_!"
-
-"We can't afford anything better.  I should have preferred the New
-Carlton myself, I admit!"
-
-"There'd be too many Jews there!  It would be too public!" Harry
-affirmed.
-
-"Well, young fellers," said a dishevelled lady at this stage, "wot are
-ye going to 'ave?  Say it slick!"
-
-"Ham and eggs all round!" said Segal lordlily.
-
-"Righto!"  The lady was bustling off.
-
-"Hold on!" Philip shouted after her concernedly.
-
-"What's the matter with you, cock?"
-
-"What else have you got?  I won't have ham!"
-
-"What about fish and fried, saucy?"
-
-"Thank you!" Philip muttered gratefully.
-
-"What do you mean by it?" exclaimed Harry indignantly.  "What do you
-want to spoil the show for?"
-
-"You can call me a blooming prig, if you like, and be blowed!  I think
-ham's overdoing it, that's all!  It's not playing the game!"
-
-"Don't be a kid!  What's your objection to the miserable animal?  I
-thought you'd got over all that!"
-
-"I thought so too, but I think a chap can choose another sort of day
-for ham!  What's the good of piling it on like this?"
-
-"Do you mean," asked Harry, "that you've just shoved your head out of
-the burrow of superstitions, like a rabbit, and are going to dive down
-again, scared?  I thought you were more consistent than that.
-Personally I should prefer beef, but I'm sacrificing my inclinations
-precisely because ham is a symbol."
-
-"It's not a symbol!  I call it cheek!"
-
-"Cheek my fat aunt!  You're funking it!"
-
-"You can say what you like!  You can stuff your own mouth with the
-muck!  I'm not going to choke for your sake!"
-
-"But what of all your wonderful talk about freedom and advancing with
-the new race," Segal asked quietly, "and all the good old moonshine?"
-
-"I just think, if you want a symbol, fried fish on _Yom Kippur_ is as
-useful as ham.  It's what d'you call it?  it's irreverent somehow,
-insisting on ham!  Yes, that's it!  It's irreverent!"
-
-"It's certainly expensive!" declared Segal with an air of finality.
-When the food came at last, the three boys hardly touched either ham or
-fish.  They had, at least, stood up for the principle of emancipation!
-And ham, moreover, is a difficult commodity between unaccustomed jaws.
-
-"It's time I got back!" said Philip, at the point where Cambridge
-Street merged into more familiar territory.  "He'll be getting restive
-about me!"
-
-"There's a comet in the offing!" declared Segal.  "To-morrow night?"
-
-"To-morrow night, and let your ham rest quiet in your bellies!"
-
-
-Philip, after entering the _Polisher Shool_, spent a little time with
-his mother, not yet being of an age when a masculine presence raised
-perturbation in the women's section.  When he advanced towards his own
-seat, his father frowned a question upon him.  "_Nu_, and where so
-long?"
-
-"I've been feeling sick!" Philip replied truthfully.
-
-"Sit thee down then and open thy _machzer_!  It is at this place one
-holds!  Omit thou no word!"
-
-"I hope you are feeling all right, _tatte_?"
-
-"How should I feel?  'Tis well with me!"
-
-Around his head the chanting and the weeping gathered volume.  The
-voice of Mr. Herman on the pulpit was choked with crying and his usual
-ornamentations were now wholly absent from his delivery.  The hands of
-Mr. Linsky thundered contrition.  The face of Reb Yonah was drenched in
-tears.  To Philip it seemed that the voices of all these moaning,
-swaying men had been lifted for age beyond age.  It was as if he stood
-in a dark country where large boulders stood greyly from the uneven
-ground; the air was full of lamentations; the sky was compact with
-lightless cloud.  If but the dome were rifted, if but through that blue
-division there came among these boulders and this lamentation the sharp
-shaft of wind--the boulders would subside into sand, there would be no
-lamentation; there would be flowers in green hollows, and water in
-willowy places; if but the dome were rifted, if but a wind blew....
-
-Philip was tired of vain imaginings.  As long prayer succeeded long
-prayer, the tedium of the day gripped him.  He remembered the _Milton_
-in his pocket and, with a thrill of dangerous delight, drew it forth
-carefully.  Oh, it was important to take the utmost care!  Good Lord,
-if he were found out, what on earth would happen?  Could anything
-happen proportionate to the crime?  His _machzer_, fortunately, was a
-large, protective book!  He leaned the _Milton_ against its yellow
-pages and turned stealthily to "Comus."  Was there any poetry like
-"Comus" in the world?  What savour it gained from contact with these
-present sights and sounds!  How fair was the lady, and how the rhymes
-were like bells at morning!
-
-Enraptured he turned page upon page of "Comus."  "Comus" was ended.
-Reb Monash was shaking in his corner there, by the Ark, his face pale
-with the fast.  All was safe.  He turned to "Allegro" and "Penseroso."
-Never had he known poetry to taste so fresh, like cheese and fine bread
-among the hills.  He turned to the "Ode on the morning of Christ's
-Nativity."
-
-  _See how from far upon the eastern road
-  The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet...._
-
-What lines were these, flawless in music, divinely simple!
-
-  _The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet...._
-
-How much loveliness in how little space!  "Star-led," the exquisite
-phrase! ... "Star-led" ... Now to the "Hymn! ..."
-
-But a law of gravitation greater than he might understand brought his
-eyes from his book, bent backward his head, lifted his eyes into the
-eyes of his father staring down from above upon his book.
-
-Then Philip realized blindingly the significance of this moment:
-
-  _... The son of heaven's eternal King,
-  Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born...._
-
-and once more,
-
-  _... The heaven-born Child
-  All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies...._
-
-Into the inmost centre of the very heart of his father's faith, the
-faith of those innumerable dead who for the many centuries had looked
-upon this day as the climax of their childhood in Jehovah, upon this
-_Yom Kippur_ whose mere utterance was a fear and a great light, into
-the synagogue's self, at the very doors of the Holy Ark where lay the
-Law pregnant with history, he had introduced ... the "wedded Maid," the
-"heaven-born Child" ...!
-
-Down from his father's eyes it seemed that two actual shafts of flame
-descended into his own eyes, burning like an acid through the pupils
-beyond the sockets, into the grey stuff of his brain.  A sweat stood
-upon Philip's forehead, and a chill then seemed to hold it there, like
-a circle of ice.  The fire in his father's eyes shrivelled; there came
-a hollow shadow of unutterable pain; a sigh fell weakly from his lips.
-He staggered towards the door for air.
-
-He returned and said, "My son, throw it away, throw thyself away!  Let
-me not see thee again!"
-
-Philip hid the book among the dilapidated Prayer Books at a corner of
-the women's section and returned to his _machzer_.  Not once did his
-father's eye meet his own during the rest of the day.  When Reb Monash
-and his wife were proceeding homewards after the fast and Philip made a
-movement as to accompany them, Reb Monash stared with cold eyes and
-motioned him to stand away.
-
-
-The end had come.  Channah sitting with wet eyes on a corner of the
-sofa knew it.  Mrs. Massel in the scullery lifting her apron to her
-eyes and sobbing ever so quietly knew it.  Philip in the darkness of
-the empty _chayder_ with his head between his hands knew it.  Reb
-Monash knew it, breaking his fast in the kitchen, saying not a word.
-
-The next morning Reb Monash turned to Mrs. Massel.  Philip was in the
-room.  "He must go somewhere!  He cannot sleep here to-night!  He has
-broken me, let him not stay to laugh in my face!"
-
-"What can he do?  Where can he go?"
-
-"I know not!  He must go!"  There was no doubting the finality of his
-command.
-
-Not a word passed between Philip and his father.  Mrs. Massel dared not
-trust herself to utter a sound until Reb Monash had gone upstairs for
-his afternoon nap.
-
-"_Nu_, Feivele," she ventured then, "seest thou what has befallen us?
-God knows I have not too many years to see thee in ... and now this
-black year!  _Schweig den, schweig_, Feivel!  What shall be with us?"
-
-Channah realized that it lay with her to take the initiative.
-
-"Mother," she urged, "all will be well!  You mustn't upset yourself
-like this!  The thing we've to talk about now is what we're going to do
-with Philip!"
-
-"Yes, what?" Philip asked helplessly.
-
-"We've understood for a long time it was going to end up like this,
-there was nothing else for it.  We were talking about it only last
-week.  She said..."
-
-"Who said, Channah?  Who do you mean?"
-
-"I mean Dorah!  She said you were wasting the old man to a shadow and
-she was going to put a stop to it, for father's sake and everybody
-else's!"
-
-"Wasting to a shadow!  What about mother?"
-
-"I know!  But I didn't say anything!  You know what it's like to argue
-with Dorah!  But she was going to see father about it, sooner or later,
-and now that this has happened ... well, we'd best go and see her at
-once!"
-
-"Not one word didst thou say to me!" complained Mrs. Massel.
-
-"It's bad enough now we've got to; what dost thou want more, _mutter_?"
-
-"Oh, but what are you driving at, Channah?  What's the idea?"
-
-"She's going to put up a bed for you in her back-room.  Benjamin keeps
-a lot of stock there now, but they can put a little under your bed and
-the rest on the landing.  You can pay her so much a week while your
-scholarship lasts, and if you don't get another, well, she says you'll
-just have to go in for tailoring or something; or Benjamin can take you
-on his rounds."
-
-"Oh, hell!" groaned Philip.
-
-There had never been much sympathy between his elder sister Dorah and
-himself.  Although the fact was rarely referred to among the Massels,
-Reb Monash and his wife were already a widower and a widow respectively
-when they were married, Reb Monash bringing Dorah, and Mrs. Massel
-Channah, to the union.  Their only children were Rochke, who died so
-tragically on the exodus of the family from Russia, and Philip, born
-some time later in Doomington.  The common parent between Dorah and
-Philip, therefore, was Reb Monash, and the long conflict between the
-father and son had rendered less and less substantial the affection
-between the brother and sister.  Dorah, a tall, squared-jawed angular
-woman, was in some ways more masculine and more forbidding than Reb
-Monash, and in all ways more evident to the eye in her Longton
-household than her demure husband, Benjamin, whose main concerns in
-life were his wife's temper and the state of his samples.  From time to
-time she had startled Philip with sudden spurts of generosity, but
-these had become increasingly rarer during the last two years.
-
-"There's no way out of it!" asserted Channah.  "And, after all, mother,
-it's only twenty minutes' walk away.  Besides, there's the tram up
-Blenheim Road!"
-
-The three made their appearance before long at Dorah's.  They found her
-already in possession of the main facts, as she had sent Benjamin down
-that morning to find out how the family was feeling after the fast and
-Benjamin had met Reb Monash proceeding to Longton.  They had both
-accepted the hospitality and the lemon-tea of Mr. Levine, the
-_parnass_, who had ushered them in from the door of his furniture shop.
-Benjamin had rendered his report duly.
-
-With Channah, Dorah was monosyllabic.  Philip she ignored.
-
-"From where he takes this godlessness, _mutter_," she said in Yiddish,
-"I understand not!  A _shkandal_ it is, over the whole neighbourhood!"
-
-"He is growing older, he will understand more.  _Folg mir_, Dorah, he
-will be a good Jew yet!"
-
-"Would that one saw the least sign!  I have made his bed for him, with
-a _perinny_ on top and a _perinny_ below.  He will be comfortable!"
-
-"Oh, mother, don't!" broke in Channah.  "Don't!  It's not far from
-Angel Street!  You'll be able to see her every day after school, won't
-you, Philip?"
-
-"Yes!" said Philip thickly, "Every day!  He'll be sleeping!"
-
-Dorah turned to Philip for the first time.  "Well, you'd best go home
-and get your things ready!  Will you want to bring all those books?"
-
-"I must have my books!"
-
-"He can take away the bookcases I made for them!" declared Mrs. Massel.
-"The books will not be in thy way!"
-
-"_Loz shen zein_!  Let it be, then!  Well, he will need a handcart.
-Our greengrocer has one.  I'll send him down at eight o'clock!"
-
-
-A miserable drizzle was falling as Philip gathered the collection of
-books he so much prized and placed them on the dirty brown sacking of
-the handcart.  Angel Street was more dark and wretched than the Angel
-Street of any of his memories.  His mother stood on the doorstep
-forlornly, coughing heavily now and again in the rain and wind.  He had
-laid the soap-box bookcases she had made for him over his books and the
-man was securing the whole load under a final layer of sacking with
-coils of coarse rope.
-
-"I'm going now, mamma!"  He kissed her drawn face.
-
-"Go, my little one!"
-
-As the cart splashed over the greasy setts of Angel Street through the
-damp darkness, she still stood watching, rain in her hair and soaking
-her blouse.  Slightly she lifted her hands towards the receding boy.
-He looked back and saw her still standing there.  He came back swiftly
-and covered her face with kisses.  But as he again withdrew, again she
-stood there emptily.  Whither did her lorn figure bring back his mind?
-Whither?  Somewhere long ago, far off!  Then he remembered.  He
-remembered his image of her alone in the Russian darkness, when the
-dead child had been taken from her arms.  She had stood there emptily
-as now ... But the handcart was lurching round into Doomington Road....
-
-
-
-
-BOOK III
-
-APHRODITE
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Such then was the spiritual adolescence of Philip Massel, and such, as
-lately described, the situation which was its inevitable result--a
-result not wholly unforeseen by one or two minor characters in the
-drama of his boyhood.  In some senses the intellectual was the more
-spectacular element of his development; but the budding of his physical
-faculties, the suffusion of all his blood with sex, proceeded
-pauselessly through this troubled time.  The strands of growth are, of
-course, inextricably intertwined, and this account has followed too
-rigidly the threads of Philip's spiritual history.  It must return,
-therefore, to a phase which only by a little space followed the
-emergence of Socialism above Philip's horizon, and by a little space
-preceded that episode with Bertha which demonstrated his curious
-simplicity.
-
-We turn then to a budding in Doomington Road.  A group straggle within
-and without the rays of a lamp which illuminates a corner formed by
-Walton Street and the road itself.  There is much tittering, a little
-whispering, and a youth raucously is singing!
-
-  _Press your lips on my lips,
-  Your dear little, queer little, shy lips._
-
-It was only ten minutes ago that Policeman Pig-nob (as he is derisively
-termed) passed this way, with basest intentions upon Aphrodite.
-
-It is nought to him whether there be a gathering together for the mere
-barren breeding of money or for a far holier purpose--the ultimate
-propagation of an antique race.  Any gathering together at any street
-corner suggests to him disrespect towards the corpulent Doomington
-abstraction who is the Chief Constable, and is liable to be
-misinterpreted as an incipient movement against the Monarchy and
-Balmoral, (which he inaccurately places in the Strand near the lofty
-pillar where Cleopatra stands with a blind eye and a cocked hat looking
-towards the City Temple; for Policeman Pig-nob is a Free Churchman and
-to him the City Temple is almost unsurpassed in sacredness by the Chief
-Constable's detached villa itself or His Britannic Majesty's Balmoral).
-It is, I have recorded, but ten minutes ago that Policeman Pig-nob
-passed this way and dispersed the Aphrodisiac gathering.  The males
-folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away.  The
-females, having ascertained even so soon the Sanctuary which is their
-flesh, stood their ground.  Imagine, therefore, their horror when
-Policeman Pig-nob, not merely with policiary rudeness, shone his
-bull's-eye into their faces, (decorated in two cases with pink
-face-powder and in one with mauve), but, forsooth, pulled the admired
-hair of one of their number; and not, finally, Janey's hair or Ethel's
-or Lily's somewhat skimpy hair, but, I adjure you, Edie's very hair!
-Edie's!  The lovely thick brown hair of the Queen of Walton Street!
-Not that Janey, Ethel, Lily and their attendant virgins were not madly
-jealous of Edie and her positively cattish success with the boys, but
-really ... the rights of the sex.... Policeman Pig-nob ... Edie ...
-and, as the most recent immigrant from Russia betrayed herself into
-exclaiming ... "_a chalery soll im nemen_!  a cholera should him take!"
-
-As silently, as swiftly as they had faded, the boys re-entered the
-fiery joint circle of Love and the Walton Street lamp.  Edie stood
-picturesquely sobbing in the shadowed doorway of a shop.  Over her
-Harry Sewelson stood proud guard, awaiting the moment when a
-silk-handkerchief, requisitioned from the paternal establishment, might
-plead for him a devotion which her tears but cemented like glue.  In
-this direction too the heart of Philip Massel yearned sickly, albeit
-Ethel was murmuring seductively to him "dear little, queer little, shy
-lips!"
-
-For the time of the budding of Philip Massel had come; yet even in his
-budding Philip was fastidious.  It was no use, he decided.  He could
-not bud and burgeon towards Ethel.  This very decision seemed to make
-Ethel ache the more intensely towards the stimulation by Philip of her
-own florescence.  You could not avoid kissing Ethel amid the
-permutations and combinations of Shy Widow and Postman's Knock,
-particularly as she tenderly called for you to join her in the lobby's
-darkness much more frequently than you called for her.  This was most
-particularly the case at her own birthday party, when out of sheer
-animal gratitude for the smoked salmon sandwiches you received from her
-hands--well, what else could you be expected to do?  But, alas, when
-you kissed Ethel, you could not fail to notice how frequently the nose
-of Ethel assaulted either your left or your right cheek.
-
-But as for Edie--ah, do not speak of Edie!  For her nose, by some
-miraculous diaphaneity or impalpability of love, seemed dimly, if at
-all, existent when the felicity of kissing Edie came your way--too rare
-felicity, for who but Harry Sewelson hulked before you on that faint,
-fair road to Edie?
-
-If the expression may be allowed, at first Philip did not bud
-enthusiastically.  Once more his intellectual timidity asserted itself;
-particularly when Harry, whose interest in girls had declared itself
-somewhat suddenly, very completely and some months ago, had attempted
-to convince Philip by cogent intellectual argument that the time had
-arrived for the widening of Philip's sphere of interest.  Philip had as
-yet been aware of little physical encouragement and less emotional.
-And it seemed an act of deliberate malice on the part of Providence, an
-act calculated to arrest abruptly for a period of time his "widening"
-(until such time as the gathered forces would break sharply through the
-crust of distaste), that, first of feminine contacts, brought Ethel's
-nose into collision with Philip's cheek.  No act of quixotry towards a
-promptly smitten lady could impel Philip to turn the other.  It was
-fortunate, therefore, that Edie's lips made their appearance to obscure
-this nasal disquietude.  And with Edie's lips, suddenly there came to
-Philip a knowledge of something softer than flowers and more fragrant
-than any breath in a garden after rain.  Her hair covered her with a
-warmth and her hands were at once soft and nimble.  She said little,
-for she had little to say, but she disposed her innumerous wares with
-such naive artifice that she suggested calm deep wells into which her
-bucket rarely dipped.  She was, in fact, a plump and pretty little
-girl, alluring, secret, a little conceited.  She realized with pleasure
-the vague suggestion of unholiness contained in any relation with the
-atheistic Harry, but she observed, flattered, with what immediacy Harry
-usurped her for his own when he stormed the citadel of Walton Street
-and ousted her other lovers with the flick of a cynical tongue.  With
-premature womanishness she was conscious of the piquant contrast the
-figure of Harry afforded beside her own: the hard acute angles--the
-curves; the eloquent tongue--the tongue more enchanting in its silences
-than in its speech; the grey, quick eyes--the indeterminate brown; the
-lips whose kisses were incisions of steel--the lips which were like
-night, sweet, odorous.
-
-On the recommendation of Harry, an invitation to Janey's birthday party
-was sent to Philip.  The problem of a birthday present troubled him
-less than on his previous and first visit to such a ceremony, the
-occasion upon which he had met and conquered Ethel; for then, even
-after he had included a bottle of Parma Violet Scent with a box where
-he had glued seven halfpenny coins in a quaint design on the inner side
-of the lid, he had been perturbed lest he had not used sufficient
-halfpennies for real generosity.  At Janey's birthday party, however,
-all such considerations had been drowned in a fortuitous kiss he had
-bestowed on Edie.  (It had been a game which had lasted till every
-possible combination had been exhausted and each pair of female lips
-knew every pair of male).
-
-But it was rare that these successful and unsuccessful adolescent
-amours knew the shelter of four walls--birthday parties were as
-infrequent as they were splendid.  Hence it was that the corner of
-Walton Street each evening saw the gathering of adolescents, in which
-behold Philip included, criminally weaned for a time, I grieve to say,
-from the Anabasis and even impaired in his adherence to Karl Marx.  And
-if Reb Monash inquired "Why so late?" or "Whither going?" and Philip
-answered "The Library!" it had been true at least on two occasions upon
-which he had made that reply.  The epoch of street-corner flirtation
-had set in, and among strange, misty places went the wits of Philip
-woolgathering.
-
-Alec Segal looked on aloof, amused.  He had much eloquence,
-introspective and extraspective, at his command.  Yet there was none of
-the Walton Street ladies concerning whom he wove garlands of words.  If
-the development of his adolescence was impressed upon his conscious
-mind, and it was unlikely that he had not been mentally tabulating all
-his states as they succeeded each other, he had made no verbal comments
-to his younger friends.  When Harry was found embroiled in the
-passages-at-arms of which Walton Street was the witness, Alec was
-interested and looked wise.  When Philip fought weakly and fell in
-these same encounters, Alec still remained silent, but a shade of the
-sardonic settled more fixedly on his lips.
-
-The whole of this new development was chaotic, obscure, a blind
-impulsion towards new things somewhat alien from his other
-loyalties--if Edie's lips were not to be taken, as in his equivocal
-poetic mind he tended to take them, as the fruit of the tree of poesy.
-With a little discomfort he would observe from time to time Alec Segal
-standing thin and cryptic at the outskirts of the Walton Street mêlée;
-standing there for one moment or two as if he were biding his time, and
-then behold, Alec was no more there.
-
-"Alec!" he would demand, "Why do you come tip-toeing in like that?  It
-gives a chap the creeps!  If you come, can't you stay a bit, and if you
-can't stay, why on earth do you come?  You're like a family ghost
-creeping about corridors and grinning from the battlements.  You're a
-grisly beast, Alec!"
-
-Alec would rub his left forefinger along the curved line of his nose.
-
-"Nothing, my son!  I'm just waiting!"
-
-"Waiting for what?"
-
-"Oh, I don't know!  Everything's waiting, so am I!  What's the moon
-waiting for when she stops short at midnight?  I'm just waiting!  Some
-of us are made to keep on moving, like Harry, for instance, and some of
-us to wait!  But don't question your grandfather!  It's disrespectful!"
-
-
-One evening Harry, Alec and Philip were walking down the lonely track
-called Chester Street which led beyond the police station, through dark
-fields barren of buildings, into Blenheim Road.  They were proceeding
-from a party which had been undiluted misery to Philip and had given,
-therefore, at least so much food for interested analysis to Alec.  Even
-Harry was subdued.  The party had been a thorough failure.  Edie had
-lost her forfeit and had been requested to kiss the boy she liked best
-in the room.  There was a breathless quiet as with downcast eyes she
-halted a moment and then walked demurely towards the face of the
-nincompoop, George something-or-other.  He was not even a scholar of a
-Doomington higher school.  He was, it was rumoured, attached to the
-"job and fent" line.  He had lank black hair greasily retreating in
-equal mass from an undeviating central line.  His cheeks were, it was
-true, very silky.  His mouth was endurable.  But, indisputably, he was
-a boob.  What if his father _was_ a master tailor?  After all, there
-are higher social grades than master tailorhood; even if the mere fact
-of a scholarship does not put you secure above all considerations of
-social status.  And Edie had kissed George.
-
-It was, of course, a deadly snub for Harry; but how much more deadly
-for Philip, who immediately before had himself been obliged to kiss the
-girl he liked best in the room, and had proceeded with ardent shyness
-to his lady's throne and the uninterested lips of Edie.
-
-"There's no idealism in them at all!" reflected Harry bitterly.  "I
-don't think they know what love means!  Here's a chap ready to
-sacrifice his shirt for them, a chap many girls would jump at!  And
-then what happens?  A dolt with sleek hair turns up, and a Cheshire
-grin, and they're round his neck and licking his feet!  It isn't only
-that they've got no taste--you know.  They've got no self-respect!"
-
-"Be more explicit, Harry!" Alec interposed.  "Don't shirk the
-issue--and Edie!"
-
-"They're all the same--absolutely ungrateful and heartless!  I'm going
-to be a monk, a Trappist, I think!  Trappism's a profession invented
-specially for me!"
-
-"What?  Because a little minx..."
-
-"Don't...."
-
-"Don't be a fool, Harry; you said they were all the same!  I agree.
-Why are you specially put out about Edie then?  You didn't object to
-the beefy arm of Lily wandering round George's waist, did you?"
-
-"Not a scrap of difference--Lily's beefy arm, Edie's beefy soul...!"
-
-"Look here!" Philip broke in miserably.  "It's no good slanging her.  I
-suppose if she likes him better she's entitled to be _his_ girl instead
-of somebody else's."
-
-"A little raw, Philip?" Alec asked.
-
-"Of course I'm not!  I don't care what she does!  I didn't notice her
-all evening!"
-
-"Oh, you liar!"
-
-"You looked glum enough when she chose that fellow, didn't you?"
-taunted Harry.
-
-"Headache, I suppose!  And even if I did look glum, and I don't say I
-did--you needn't rub it into a chap.  Besides, in any case, I didn't
-look glum!"
-
-"Your logic's masterful as usual, Philip!"
-
-"The point is not Philip's logic but the heartlessness of women!" Harry
-insisted.  "What's to be done about it?"
-
-"The only thing to be done about it," declared Alec, "is to look the
-fact in the face, that's all!  You must have no illusions about them!
-You must stare them straight in the eyes and beyond!  Let 'em know
-they're not deceiving you with their little tricks!  Strip off the
-illusions, I say!"
-
-"I suppose by 'illusions' you mean," said Philip, "all that's jolly
-about 'em and make 'em different from us!  No, it won't work!"
-
-"There isn't anything different about us!  We're all alike!  Strip them
-naked and it's just--Body, Sex!"
-
-"What on earth are you driving at now?" Philip asked, frightened.
-
-"Only this--that it's about time you ... Hello!  Look here!  What on
-earth ... what on earth's this?"
-
-They had come to the darkest part of Chester Street.  Alec's foot had
-stumbled against something large and soft.  The boys stopped.  Harry
-lit a match and they saw a bundle before them wrapped in a white sheet.
-It was large and bulky and tied at the top in loose knots.
-
-"What is it?" Philip asked.
-
-"Washing, perhaps?" Alec speculated.
-
-"Open it!" Harry demanded peremptorily.  "It might be anything!"
-
-"What shall we do with it?  Perhaps it's something dropped from a
-removal cart, eh?" wondered Alec.  "But I hardly think so, it's lying
-so steadily on its bottom, as if it had been put there deliberately.  I
-think we'd best take it along ... Hello!  Listen!  I say!  It's
-_crying_!  Good God, can you hear?"
-
-"Get out of the way, Alec!" Harry exclaimed, "Don't stand theorizing!"
-He bent down and untied the knots swiftly.  "Light up!" he commanded,
-pushing his matches into Philip's hand.
-
-Harry uttered a startled cry.
-
-"A baby!"
-
-"Ye gods, a baby!"
-
-And in truth, wrapped in a blanket and lying in a soft heap in a
-clothes-basket, a minute baby lay, whining feebly and curling its
-infinitesimal fingers.
-
-"The kid'll die of cold!  We must get it out of the way at once!"
-
-"Not a day old!" Alec mused.
-
-"Get a move on, for God's sake!  Where shall we take it?"
-
-"The police-station just along!" Philip suggested.
-
-"Yes, the very place!"  Harry took off his greatcoat and placed it over
-the top of the basket.  "Here, Alec, take hold of the other handle!"
-
-The baby was delivered into the hands of an inspector, summoned by a
-policeman who refused to have anything to do with the case.  The
-inspector scrutinized the three lads suspiciously, as if he were ready
-to believe that one or the other of them was the father of the child.
-They made their statement and at length, reluctantly, he allowed them
-to withdraw.
-
-"By Heaven!" muttered Harry, "What a swine the man is!"
-
-"Who do you mean?" asked Alec, who, now that the practical matter had
-been discharged and they were once more entering the immaterial world
-of thought, reassumed the elderliness of his voice and manner.  "Who do
-you mean, vague youth, is a swine?  The inspector!"
-
-"No!  The father!"
-
-"Yes, I'm with you!  But what about the mother?"
-
-"Fancy a mother behaving like that!" Philip wondered.
-
-"That's just what I mean!  The woman behaved perfectly naturally.
-Parents only keep their children because other people do.  They're not
-really interested in children.  My parents are not interested in me and
-I'm not fearfully interested in them.  It's only a sort of crust of
-habit, and the parents of this child wouldn't allow it to form.  John
-Smith and Mary Brown, let's call them.  I declare that John Smith and
-Mary Brown are just natural and sensible people--they had their
-fling--Body, Sex!  That's to-night's party and John Smith and Edie and
-the baby in the cradle all reduced to their elements!  Body, Sex!  It's
-as simple as an equation in Algebra!"  (Alec invariably ended his
-ratiocinations with a flick of the fingers--a 'so easy, you know'!)
-
-The incident had filled Harry with nausea.  The disillusionment at the
-party, the check to his pride it had involved, the callous abandonment
-of the child in the bare croft, had combined to produce in him an
-indignation of cynicism.
-
-"You're right!" he declared.  "It's Sex, pure and simple!  It's all
-dirt!"
-
-"And you, Philip?"
-
-"What do I know about it?  Go on!"
-
-Philip listened, fascinated and repelled.  At least the philosophy of
-Segal offered a coherent explanation of to-night and the other nights.
-The whole theme was virgin to him, but the method of attack was so
-deadly calm, so impersonal, that he was impelled to follow.  He was
-conscious, moreover, that other people, not least Harry and Alec, did
-not exclude this branch of life from their horizon; why, then, should
-he?  It was all so different from the filth of Angel Street; here, if
-soul played no part or little in this interpretation, mind at least was
-not absent.  There was, he did not dare to confess to himself, a quaint
-furtive pleasure in it all....
-
-"Go on!" he said, breathless to advance, and half-inclined to flee.
-
-Alec Segal talked.  For one hour, two hours, they paced from corner to
-dark corner of Chester Street.  There were but few interruptions from
-Harry and none from Philip.  Only, as Alec talked, Philip felt
-sometimes that he would like to lie down on the cold kerb to
-cry--simply, childishly, to cry.  And he felt creeping round him like a
-mist, a deadlier loneliness than had ever beset his heart, a loneliness
-that now crept and eddied through his being in chill wisps.  Oh for the
-brown eyes of his mother, so innocent and so wide with knowledge!  For
-the bloom was fading from the world; the freshness was passing away.
-Friendship was passing away.  Hitherto he had stood alone,
-self-sufficient.  Now the new preoccupations must assail him, wean him
-from his old friends.  Wean him, oh sorrowful, oh, surely false, from
-his mother!  Lead him towards insubstantial things waiting somewhere to
-hold him!  And these things reached towards his friends, were
-interposed between them and him.  They had been complete and single
-once, these friends, despite all the flaws in their unity.  They were
-but provisional and dependent now, as he was himself to be
-henceforward.  Pain which had a core of delight, delight which was
-gilded dust!
-
-The three youths parted.  As they moved in different ways, night, it
-seemed to Philip, engulfed them separately bringing unbridgeable
-division.  Night swallowed something of boyhood.  Manhood came stalking
-towards Philip out of the vast.  Manhood placed a finger on his young
-forehead.  A sad boy slept that night in Angel Street, sad and wise.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Dorah was a tall, raw-boned woman, carrying all the implicit angles of
-Reb Monash to an explicit extreme.  In the civil strife at Angel Street
-her sympathy had always been on the side of tradition and Reb Monash,
-as against licence and Philip.  Channah likewise had, in a weak and
-somewhat hopeless way, taken sides.  Not openly, not with unabashed
-self-declaration, and far less through philosophy than sentiment, she
-had been steadily at Philip's side--when, at least, she was not
-absorbed in her collection of Vesta Tilley post cards and her long
-waitings at gallery doors for the performances of Lewis Waller or
-Martin Harvey.
-
-The veins of Dorah's temper were less easily tapped than Reb Monash's,
-but when tapped, they yielded richer ore.  When her temper was at its
-most exuberant, her voice was of a dovey stillness which boded much
-woe.  But the contradiction in her household which most concerned
-Philip was, in a word, weak tea.  So well defined and dark and abrupt
-was Dorah, that one would have imagined that tea of her brewing would
-be raven as Acheron.  Yet it was, in fact, as weak as a rickety child.
-It was tepid.  It was served in a large pint mug, so that its quantity
-the more ruthlessly exposed the invariable defects of its quality.
-Much and cold milk annihilated its last semblance to the potent brews
-of Angel Street and copious sugar rendered it, at length, unpleasant as
-an inverse castor oil.
-
-Compare with weak tea, tea almost leonine; also cherries in the skim of
-milk, and Mrs. Massel sitting hard by, humming happily like a kettle,
-or moving about the kitchen with happy bird-like noises, and producing
-finally a remnant of Saturday's _kuggel_ (which is a thick brown soft
-pudding with many raisins and a celestial crisp crust)! ... Until the
-shuffling of Reb Monash's feet overhead might be heard, and there is
-the last gulping of tea and swallowing of _kuggel_, and the lifting of
-a laden satchel of books, and from Philip's lips a fatuous "So long,
-old mother, toodle-oo!" which is a valediction juvenile indeed from the
-lips of a young man to whom at last the secrets of the universe have
-been laid bare, from the genesis of the baby to the real nature of God
-and the perfidy of Edie....
-
-"So long, old mother!"
-
-
-Since the exodus from Angel Street, relations between Philip and his
-father had not been clearly defined.  Philip still descended from
-Longton each Saturday morning to accompany Reb Monash to the _Polisher
-Shool_.  He had at first been extremely reluctant to go, but Dorah
-threatened unstated oppressions, and though tea could hardly have been
-more pallid, Philip felt it wise to fall in with her request.  He still
-came down to join in festival meals, but no word of intimacy passed
-between them.  In _shool_, the watchful eye of Reb Monash no longer
-guarded Philip's Prayer Book lest two pages be turned over in place of
-one; which very remission compelled Philip to reiterate the cryptic
-prayers with a blank, dull fidelity.
-
-Thus, therefore, though they were on conversational terms with each
-other, as a man might be with a youth he disliked or feared but in whom
-he was compelled to take an interest, out of loyalty towards a dead
-friend, invariably the awakening of Reb Monash brought about the
-dissolution of such a cherry-séance as I have spoken of.  For Mrs.
-Massel and her son had now made a tacit pact by which Philip always
-came home from Doomington School via Angel Street instead of by the
-upper road to Longton called Brownel Gap.  It meant an uninterrupted
-hour with his mother, and these months, howsoever disastrous and dark
-the day might be before and after this golden hour, were their halcyon
-days.
-
-"And yet," apprehensively muttered Philip to himself, "how thin she is
-getting!"
-
-"Mother!" he would say, "Aren't you well?  Can't you take something?
-You don't look half so--you know--half so fat and jolly as ordinary
-mothers do.  Look at Alec Segal's mother!  She adds another chin every
-month and she keeps on getting further out in front!  You don't!
-What'll we do about it, mother; it can't go on, you know!"
-
-"Channah, God bless her!" she would reply, "out of her hard-earned
-wages--and you know how much he makes her bring into the house--and
-then her new dress she's bought for Betsy's wedding, it's all purple
-like wine, a _par-shane_, that's what the dear girl looks, a beauty
-straight out of the picture book!  Vesta Tilley me thou no Vesta
-Tilleys!  Going on the stage like a boy, smoking cigarettes!  But she
-always wears wigs!  Perhaps she wants to make herself out a daughter of
-Israel, with her wearing wigs!  Well, if she ever dresses up like an
-honest woman, I say Channah's new back comb, even if it hasn't got real
-diamonds, is just as lovely as Vesta Tilley's!  Don't forget the sugar
-in thy tea, Feivele!"
-
-"Yes, right, mother!  But what about Channah, her hard-earned wages?"
-
-"Oh yes!  My head, my head!  Thou dost not get thy brains from my old
-silly head, Feivele!  _Nu_, where were we!  _Yah_!  I was saying, out
-of her hard-earned wages, cod-liver oil she buys me, and sometimes two
-fresh eggs she buys me!  The extravagant girl, two fresh eggs!  Make me
-a poetry out of two fresh eggs!  It's all right making poetry out of
-trees and rivers!  Thou hast ever seen trees and rivers, yes?  No!  Ah,
-those were _takke_ trees by the Dneister, and that was a river in a
-thousand!  Will I ever smell again the grass in the fields by the
-river, when they cut it and it lies in heaps, and the moon, it comes up
-like a feather!  This is not for me, Feivele!  But when I'm dead,
-Feivele...."
-
-"No, no, no, mother!  Look here, I don't think you ought to talk like
-that!  It isn't sensible!"
-
-"I mean over a hundred years--thou shalt see a lot of countries and
-hills and thou shalt smell the grass cut by the river, maybe thou shalt
-see even the Dneister!  Perhaps my brother Benya's daughter--she is how
-many years old, eight, nine--perhaps she will be a _studentka_ and thou
-wilt teach her English and she will teach thee _Russ_ and you'll get
-married--and thy old mamma, she'll not be there to see!"
-
-"Mother, it's not decent of you!  You talk like that more and more, I
-don't know why, and if you'd only take more care of yourself, you could
-be the Fat Woman in a show!"
-
-"I'm sorry, son, I'm sorry," covering up her traces wistfully, "I mean
-I'll be over the sea in Angel Street, and you'll not want to wait till
-you come to England, thou and Rivkah--yes, yes, Rivkah is her name, God
-bless her! before you get married!"
-
-Some days later, after another sitting where conversation ranges over
-continents and stars, and there is no fatigue in their wings--"Say,
-mother! here's two more new-laid eggs!  I think one's a duck's, does it
-matter?"
-
-"Oh a _katchky_!  A big blue _katchky's_ egg!  Oh, Feivele, where didst
-thou--
-
-"Now don't ask!  And anyhow, I've been sick of Longfellow for ages!"
-
-"See, I'll boil it now!  There's time before he comes down!  Thou wilt
-have half!"
-
-Stoutly, "Nothing, nothing!  It's yours!"  The egg is boiled.
-Sacredly, as if duck-egg-eating were a holy rite, Mrs. Massel eats her
-duck's egg.  Once or twice she throws in fervent appreciations of the
-race of _katchkies_.  Philip half hopes her cheeks will here and now
-take on a shade more colour from the nourishment he has provided for
-her out of the disposal of Evangeline.  Her face still is pale, and
-there are still drawn lines at the mouth.  Ah well, only wait till
-she's taken a lot more cod-liver oil and a lot more new-laid eggs,
-including as many _katchkies_ as discarded poets will provide....!
-
-"Feivele, he comes!"
-
-"Humph--ho!  I'm going!  Oh, look at your hands, how liny and seamy
-they are!  Come, _do_ leave those brasses alone, they're so much work!
-And you know, when you don't clean 'em the only difference is they look
-like copper instead of brass!  Ototototoi!  I must be off, I suppose!
-What fat cherries they were--like babies!  Well, you huge bullying
-monster of a mother, till to-morrow, till to-morrow!"
-
-So the months passed, with their half-surreptitious visits to Mrs.
-Massel, which gained something of their too short delight from their
-shallow secrecy.  At the extremes of the day, there were, on the one
-hand, school, on the other hand, Walton Street.  At school he generally
-maintained an unambitious head above the waters, still fitfully
-persecuted by his fellows, or ignored, or dimly tolerated as one who
-took no interest in societies, sports and camps, but from whom no
-positive evil was to be expected, saving sometimes an ugly spurt of
-temper which did not cringe even before the towering creatures who at
-all other times carried universal terror in their wake.  At the other
-extreme of the day were the sporadic flirtations in Walton Street which
-began somewhat to lose their attractions as he moved towards his
-sixteenth year.  There were subfusc rumours about the migration of Alec
-Segal's family to another town for reasons unspecified.  Harry Sewelson
-became entangled with two barmaids and a German governess successively.
-The simpering graces of the Edie ménage, it is grievous to add, began
-to wear thinner and thinner, excepting for the grosser souls of a
-George or a Willy Levi the Barber.  Moreover, Philip had received so
-feeble a move as a consequence of an Edie-deteriorated school year,
-that he determined violently to regain his academic self-esteem.  Of
-the fact that he became a competitor for the five-pound prize to be
-awarded to the greatest authority on Chaucer in the middle school at
-Doomington, Philip had left Dorah unaware.  She was ready to expend
-over him the vials of her maternal love (she had no children) only as
-soon as he consented to be what she termed "a Jew among Jews."  The
-history of Angel Street had taught her the futility of positive
-compulsion in this direction.  But she placed before her the definite
-policy of treating Philip in a manner neither hostile nor affectionate,
-until, maybe, the sheer force of frigidity brought him creeping to the
-warmth.  Whilst Philip had spent all the evening in the pursuit of
-Edie's lips instead of in the pursuit of a high place in form, she had
-merely said nothing.  When now till a late hour he began to concern
-himself with his school work and his tales of Chaucer, she said nothing
-still, and was told as little.  But likewise Philip said nothing to his
-mother.  Suppose, and after all many of his competitors were in senior
-forms, suppose he should fail badly!  Only Channah was his confidante,
-and from her he obtained the gift of a certain most desirable complete
-Chaucer which Cartwright had displayed in his curiosity shop for
-fruitless months.
-
-Philip still remembered the almost dizzy delight he had occasioned his
-mother by the winning of a mere form prize as second-in-class two years
-ago.  She still treasured it alongside of her Yiddish translations of
-Holy Writ, in the most intimate recess of her cupboard.  Not a word was
-intelligible to her, of course; she was capable even of holding the
-book upside down.  Yet she would carefully wipe her spectacles and
-proceed to move her eyes in leisurely transports from page to
-hieroglyphic page.  She was so much attached to the book that he had
-not had the heart to take it away with him on the melancholy handcart
-which had transported his goods to Longton.
-
-The decision of the Chaucer prize was to be decided an hour after
-school on a certain day and the official announcement to be made at
-prayers the following day.  In an agony of sick apprehension Philip
-slunk about the corridors of the school.  He was in a state of comatose
-despair and was staring unseeingly into a case of stuffed beavers and
-stoats, when a hearty and heavy hand descended on his shoulder.
-
-"Well, Philip!" exclaimed the robust voice of Mr. Furness, "and who do
-you think has won the Chaucer prize?"
-
-"Albert Chapman, sir!" suggested Philip weakly.
-
-"Try again!"
-
-"Jack Lord, sir!"
-
-"No, my lad!  He lives nearer Angel Street than that!  Oh, of course,
-you live in Longton now!  How's your sister?"
-
-"You ... you don't mean _me_, sir?"
-
-"But I do!  Come into my room, I've a poet I think you'll like.
-Henley!  You've not met Henley?
-
-  _It matters not how strait the gate,
-  How charged with punishment the scroll!_
-
-
-Won't your mother be glad, eh?  I'm pleased, Philip, very!  You're
-making good again!  Let me see, we were quoting Henley.  Of course, you
-remember:
-
-  _In the fell clutch of circumstance
-  I have not winced nor cried aloud._
-
-No?  Here's the book then! ..."
-
-
-Philip ran to Angel Street breathlessly and burst into the kitchen.
-Reb Monash had already come down and was sipping his glass of
-lemon-tea.  But Philip had no eyes for Reb Monash.
-
-"Mother!" he shouted, "I've won!  I've won the Chaucer!  A five-pound
-prize!  Isn't it grand!  I'll be able to buy you a blouse for _yom
-tov_!  And hordes of eggs!  Isn't it grand!"
-
-She looked towards Reb Monash.  He had contracted his forehead.
-
-"Hush!" she said in a thin, even voice.  "Thy father has a head this
-afternoon.  Make not so much noise!"
-
-"Don't you understand?  I've won an awfully big prize and I've worked
-so hard for it!" he said, crestfallen.  He had expected she would flush
-with delight and seize his hands and lift them to her lips, as she did
-when she was tremendously pleased with him.  Instead, here she was
-showing no sign of pleasure, hardly of interest.
-
-"It is well!" she said.  "But thou must be quiet!  Thou wilt have a cup
-of tea, wilt thou?"
-
-"No!" he muttered, suppressing in his throat a lump of acute
-disappointment.  "I've got to go to Dorah's at once!  I promised to do
-something for her!"
-
-His eyes had a suspicion of dampness when he arrived at Longton.  He
-ate a chilled dinner sullenly.
-
-Next day he had not the heart to go and see his mother.  He spent the
-hour in an alcove of the school library ostensibly reading De Quincey,
-actually playing a game at that time gathering momentum at Doomington
-School, the game called "push penny," where two pair of nibs stuck in a
-table served as goal posts, and two rival pocket knives impelling two
-rival pennies attempted to introduce a further coin into the respective
-pen-nib goals.  But he turned up in Angel Street as usual the following
-day.  He was sulky.  "A nice mother you are..." he began.  But he had
-not time to say more.  She had seated him beside her on the sofa and
-was stroking his head.  "Feivele, Feivele, didst thou not understand?
-When he is here, dare I show what I think, how glad I am...?"  A fit of
-coughing interrupted her.  The boy looked up anxiously.  "Thou
-knowest," she began again, "thou knowest what he will think, that I
-encourage thee in they _goyishkeit_.  Ah, would that thou _wert_ a
-holier Jew, my son!  It does not matter how far thou wilt go in the
-world, once a Jew, remain a Jew!  Thou wilt have high friends.  They
-will say to thy face 'How thou art wonderful, Mr. Massel!'  Is not that
-true?  And behind thee they will murmur 'Jew!  Jew!'  _Yah, yah_, that
-is a long way ahead!  Where I shall be, who knows?  And now again, what
-hast thou won?  What?  No!  Not five pounds!  For just sitting down and
-writing for three hours?  No, that cannot be!  Mr. Furness likes thee,
-no?  It is Mr. Furness, he knows thou art cleverer than all the other
-boys...."
-
-"No it wasn't, mother!  He hadn't anything to do with it!"
-
-"Tell me not!  No sane man will give away five pounds because one sits
-oneself down at a desk and writes words!  Ah well, let it be, if thou
-wilt have it so! ... But thou must not work so hard, thine eyes ... Oh,
-this coughing!  I went to the market to buy a hen for _shabbos_.  It is
-cheaper there.  And it was raining one of your English rains ... lakes,
-it rained!"
-
-"You know, mother, it's rotten of you!  You shouldn't do it!"
-
-"It will pass, it will pass!  But the kettle's boiling!  Tea!  And look
-what I have bought thee, to-day!  Cakes with ice, eh?  I know how thou
-art a sweet tooth!  Dost thou remember swallowing a whole box of pills
-because thou thought they were sweets!  And how I took thee in this
-shawl, the red one, to the chemist!  And he made thee sick with his
-finger, and thou bit his hand, thou _yungatsch_!  See!  It boils over
-on my clean fender!  _Kum shen, kum_!"
-
-The summer examinations followed.  For some weeks preceding them,
-Philip worked hard all day and long into the night.  It was during this
-period that Mrs. Massel took to her bed.  Her cough had become heavy
-and persistent.  Philip would come in after school with frightened eyes.
-
-"It will pass, it will pass!" she repeated.  He tried to overwhelm in a
-frenzied absorption in his work the lurking fear which gnawed at his
-heart-strings.  Soon it was found imperative to move her bed from the
-upstairs bedroom to the parlour below.  The pale thinning face would
-intervene between him and the page.  He would draw back in a sudden
-access of terror.  "It will be all right!" he assured himself, "All the
-really hot days of summer are to come yet!"  One thing at least he
-could do.  He would get a first-rate place in the exams.  He knew how
-that would delight her.  He was sure it would help her no end.  He
-thrust himself wholly into his books.
-
-He did so well at the examination that a bursary was awarded him which
-put his position at school beyond all peril for another two years.
-
-"Mother!" he burst in one day.  "Such good news!"
-
-She lifted her head tiredly.  "Tell me, my son!"
-
-"I've got a huge scholarship and school's absolutely right now, nothing
-to fear!  Tell me, mother, aren't you horribly excited!  Isn't it fine!"
-
-But looking down on her face, he found it wet with tears.  An ice-sharp
-dismay leapt to his heart.
-
-"Mother, aren't you glad?  You ought to be laughing!  I never expected
-anything like it!  Oh, mother, why on earth are you crying?  What's it
-all about?"
-
-"Thou wilt not understand, Philip!  But it is nothing!  I'm not really
-crying!  Nothing, nothing!  See, my face is dry!  Kiss me, Feivele!"
-
-He bent down to her.  For an hour he talked to her of the new
-confidence his success had brought him and what he was going to do when
-he left school.  He might even go to the University!  No, he would not
-be a doctor!  His ambitions hadn't taken shape yet, but he might be....
-Oh, he didn't know what he mightn't be if he only tried!  And he'd have
-such a house for her to live in...!
-
-He fell to describing the house of his dreams ... until at length
-Channah came in.  She was ending her button-hole labours earlier,
-nowadays, in order to have more time to attend to her mother.
-
-The summer holidays had already begun when Mr. Furness wrote to Philip
-informing him that he had made arrangements for the boy to spend a
-fortnight in the country.  It was characteristic of Mr. Furness.  He
-realized that unless he himself engineered it there was no chance of
-Philip obtaining the holiday the boy seemed badly to need.  It was
-better, he decided, not to broach the matter at all, but by definitely
-presenting Philip with the _fait accompli_, and by placing himself
-behind the vantage of the impersonal post, to simplify Philip's
-position as far as possible.  The idea had occurred to him of inviting
-Philip to the annual Doomington camp among the Westmoreland hills,
-particularly as the camp regularly contained a fair proportion of the
-Jewish boys at the school.  But the thought of Reb Monash seemed
-rigidly to disqualify the idea.  It was obvious that with the most
-courteous intentions in the world the ceremonial minutiae of Angel
-Street could hardly be repeated to their last austerity in the divine
-welter of camp.  He cast about in his mind, therefore, for a means of
-satisfying at once the scruples of Reb Monash and his own determination
-that Philip should breathe smokeless air.  The Jewish "guest house"
-kept by Mrs. Kraft under the Wenton Hills seemed as amiable a solution
-as he could find.
-
-It was run on "strictly _kosher_" lines for boys between the ages of
-thirteen and sixteen, and ladies over the decorous age of thirty.  The
-determination to avoid complications _du coeur_ seemed, he considered,
-perhaps a little ostentatious.  The important point, however, was that
-Wenton House was at once "_kosher_" and in the country, and he was
-satisfied that Mrs. Kraft was a capable and excellent lady.
-
-For one moment only Mr. Furness's letter brought to Philip a wild joy,
-then the joy flickered and was quenched.
-
-"Absolutely impossible!" he determined.  "How can I go and leave her
-lying ill in the parlour, coughing!  I'm not going, that's final!"
-
-But the matter was by no means so easily decided.  "Not going!" cried
-Mrs. Massel.  "Not going!" echoed Channah.
-
-"Be thou not a fool, my son!" the mother urged.  "How I have yearned it
-should come to pass for thee!  What, a Yiddisher house in the country!
-Of course thou wilt go!  Thou wilt come back a _labe_, a lion, with a
-big chest, a sight for God and Man!  Perhaps there will be a real river
-there?  No?  Not like the Mitchen!  A river they call it, such a year
-upon them!  Yes, and the men in the fields will be cutting the grass,
-or is it too soon?  The year is slower in this England of thine than in
-Terkass, but what knows one of the year, how it comes or goes, in thy
-lovely Dum--ing--tonn!"
-
-"Don't be silly, mother!  How on earth can I go when you're like this!
-I can't!  I can't think of it!"
-
-"A question!  Thou must go, I say!  Annotate for me no passages!
-_Mirtsaschem_, I'll be well again when thou returnest.  I will make
-thee, all for thyself, a _kuggel_ ... _oi, oi_, this coughing ...
-_mishkosheh_, it will pass ... a large _kuggel_, with large raisins,
-larger raisins are not!"
-
-"Of course you must go!" broke in Channah, adding her pressure, "Look
-how hard you've been working with all your Chaucers and things!  We'll
-be having you to look after as well, if you're not careful!  And you
-know yourself how it'll cheer mother up to think you're in the open air
-with no worries and nothing to do but get fat!  I'll tell you what,
-I'll give you an extra half-crown--if you promise not to spend it on
-your smelly old books--and you must go to a farm every morning----"
-
-But as she went on talking, a shadow, the sensation of a picture rather
-than a picture itself, established itself in Philip's mind.  A figure
-shrouded, very calm, very cold!  Candles fluttering somewhere!  Hunched
-shadows ... calm ... cold....!
-
-"I can't go!  I can't go!" he shouted suddenly.
-
-"Feivele!" his mother begged.  "What is with you?  Speak to him,
-Channah, speak to him!"
-
-"You're a beast, Philip!  Look how you're upsetting her!  You _must_
-go!  _Emmes adonoi_, the doctor said she's getting on nicely.  It's
-only rest she wants and good food, he said, and no worry.  No worry,
-mind you!"
-
-He looked away from Channah and saw the appeal in his mother's eyes.
-
-"All right, I'll go!" he said heavily.
-
-"Good old lad!  The first thing..."
-
-"Look here, Channah!" he interrupted.  An idea had suddenly occurred to
-him.  "I'll go on one condition.  You must write a note to me every day
-I'm away, it doesn't matter how small, a post-card if you like!  And
-every day mother must write her name on it, without fail!  Promise
-that!"
-
-Channah looked at him strangely.
-
-"Of course I'll promise!  And I'll do it!  Won't we, mother?"
-
-"The foolish boy with his poetry-ideas!  Of course we will!  _Nu, shen,
-nu_, thou art happy now?  He will say to me a poetry, Channah, and thou
-must go this moment to boil thyself an egg!  Go thou, go, _tochterel_!"
-
-"That's all right!" murmured Philip.  Before him waved green banners of
-grass towards the foothills, and white clouds sailed aloof over broken
-peaks....  "That's all right, mother!  And if you forget that _kuggel_
-..."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-For the first day at Wenton Philip was almost drunk with the abrupt
-change from Doomington to the fresh air and the hills.  The atmosphere
-in Wenton House, to be sure, was a little chilly.  The relentless
-cleanliness of each conceivable detail was disturbing.  The flaky
-boiled potatoes served up for midday dinner, Philip's first meal in the
-House, compared a little disagreeably with the potatoes baked in
-abundant fat as prepared by Mrs. Massel and only less ably by Dorah.
-There occurred also a slight contretemps with the implements for
-pudding.  It seemed that most of the boys who sat at Philip's table had
-paid earlier visits to Wenton House: for Mrs. Kraft, as she stood at
-the door to receive her junior guests, was able, though the scheduled
-fortnight was only just beginning, to inquire from one youth, "Well,
-Abey, and did you get that job in the shipping office?" and from
-another, "Tell me, Hyman, is the other sister married yet?" and to warn
-a third, "I hope you will not throw stones, Jackie, at the Christian
-boys in the village!  _I_ get blamed for it, and it won't do, it won't
-do!"  To Philip she said, a smile emerging from the grimace of matronal
-hospitality, "What did you say your name was?  Philip Massel?  And how
-old?  Oh, of course, Mr. Furness told me, getting on for sixteen!
-Well, we're glad to see you, Philip!  See you have a good time!"
-
-Far chillier than Mrs. Kraft were the boiled potatoes, and chillier the
-pictures on the walls.  Wenton House was not wholly self-supporting;
-only the charity of several benevolent individuals in Doomington
-rendered a country fortnight possible to the boys on the easy terms of
-their acceptance.  Hence perhaps the legends below the pictures, "How
-ready is the arm of Charity!" "Charity, the Handmaiden of God!"
-
-Yet, despite the slight constriction in the atmosphere engendered by
-these details, the sight of Winckley Pike beyond the wide window of the
-dining-room, and the quick cry of swallows and the smell of clover
-atoned for the hygienic potatoes, and made of the pictured legends mere
-ingenuous statements of fact.  The country was not so overwhelming a
-revolution in the mind of Philip as might have been expected.  Poetry
-had long ago made real enough the unseen hills and the unsmelled
-blossoms.  Bluebell Bank had given concreteness as well as subjective
-reality to his dreams, and such excursions into the country for a whole
-day as he had experienced several times, with Dorah once, with Harry
-and Alec once, and twice with a master at school, had continued the
-process of revelation.  They had once climbed Bracken Hill to see far
-off the triangular mass of Winckley Pike, and beyond, the more desolate
-moors and the jagged hills.
-
-It was at tea-time that he first thoroughly became aware of the dark
-eyes of a lady, a young lady, a lady who was chiefly dark eyes.  He had
-had a dim feeling during dinner that some inexplicable thing was
-causing a disturbance in his blood.  He had given it no name.  It may
-have been nervousness merely due to the new surroundings.  But at
-tea-time he ascertained quite clearly that among the ladies of
-appallingly mature age seated round the table between his own table and
-the windows, a young lady not fearfully much older than himself, was
-lifting lettuce to her virginal lips.  She was sixteen, perhaps
-seventeen, certainly not eighteen!  They were nice lips for eating
-lettuce with, but they were nothing to compare with her eyes.  Dark
-eyes, a bit languishing and long, with long lashes.  He wondered what
-she was doing there amid her staider companions.  He wondered what the
-colour of her dark eyes really was.  Would you call it brown, or a sort
-of deep shade of grey?  He became aware of her awareness of him.  She
-was conscious of his scrutiny and the dark eyes stared scorn.  A chit
-of a boy like him!  He realized he had held his cup of tea for long
-seconds arrested on its journey to his lips.  He blushed and drained
-the chilled cup to its last drop.  The lady was chattering vivaciously,
-her eyes quick and lovely, her lettuce-receiving lips making rich, full
-curves as she spoke.
-
-"Make a good tea, you boys!" came the vigilant injunction of Mrs. Kraft.
-
-"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" was the fervent and almost unanimous reply.
-
-"Yes, Mrs. Kraft!" hurried Philip, startled, belated.  He observed
-quite distinctly the lips of the dark-eyed lady shape in mockery "Yes,
-Mrs. Kraft!"  His veins burned resentment against the insolent mystery.
-The sun shouldered from behind a cloud and thrust his fingers into her
-thick hair.  It sparkled and was alive with lights like a tray of gems
-in a jeweller's window.  The flash and wealth of the girl's hair turned
-him swiftly veering towards Doomington, the thinning hair of his mother.
-
-"Poor old mother!" he mused, deliberately switching his mind away from
-the lady of long lashes.  "I wonder if the cough's eased down a bit?  I
-wonder how many days it'll be before she's up and about again....  What
-a funny little nose she's got, a weird little cleft at the tip!  What
-can she be doing in that lot? ... O blow the girl, what's she got to do
-with it anyhow?  Why on earth shouldn't mother get away here, as soon
-as she's properly all right?  Everything's _kosher_ and all that sort
-of thing.  He'll have to find the money somewhere, that's all!  They
-could sell all those _bechers_ and the plush table-cloth.  And we never
-use the samovar nowadays!  Oh what a rotten cough it was, like
-something tearing!  Poor old..."
-
-"You won't leave that piece of bread and butter on the plate
-unfinished, Philip Massel, please!" broke in the voice of Mrs. Kraft.
-
-"I'm so sorry!" he said, a quiver in his voice, the cough still
-jangling and echoing in his brain, "I didn't notice it!"
-
-He again caught the eyes of the dark lady.  It seemed that mysteriously
-she had caught the infection of his sadness.  Her eyes were rounder
-than they had been, though not less dark.  Her speech was more subdued.
-
-Or perhaps it was an illusion.  Perhaps?  Of course it was an illusion!
-A laughter fell from her throat like a shower of pebbles.  Surely she
-couldn't have meant that almost imperceptible wink for him?  An elder
-person was muttering uncomfortably, "Not so much jam, Mamie!"
-
-Mamie!
-
-An ever so much nicer name, when you came to think of it, than "Edie."
-"Edie" began with a screech and its one consonant was a miserable
-dental.  Strange how totally Edie and her nymphs had slipped from his
-thoughts of late months!  He remembered the thoroughly nasty row at
-school after the Walton Street period had brought him so abysmally low
-down in form.  They had been giddy months....  He had learned a lot....
-Then the Chaucer came, then the school exams.  Then she fell ill and
-got worse as the weeks went on....  There had been no room for Edie.
-She was a sly, deceiving creature, not really to be trusted, though
-beautiful in a sort of way of course.  Now Mamie ... extraordinary
-name, Mamie....
-
-The boys had begun to file out of the room, and Philip turned his eyes
-once more towards Mamie, absurdly daring to hope she was looking in his
-direction, or, if not actually looking towards him, at least showing
-the black jewels of her eyes.  But her head was turned away; he could
-make out the leaf of lettuce that was delicately approaching the hidden
-mouth.
-
-Duly the next day a letter came from Channah.  Mother was getting on as
-well as might be expected, and be sure and get that glass of milk every
-day, and if ever you walk into streams, go back at once and change into
-your other boots.  Below the girl's writing the wavering Yiddish
-letters of his mother's signature scrawled sacredly.  With a
-sentimentalism he did not repress, despite a consciousness of Alec's
-probable attitude towards such behaviour, he placed the letter under
-his shirt until its successor of next day should displace it.  He was
-walking alone, along a quiet lane behind the ambling shanks of cows.
-He had made efforts to develop friendly relations with some of the
-other boys at Wenton House.  But most of them seemed to have got
-acquainted with each other in Doomington or on previous holidays and
-were already splitting up into exclusive groups of twos and threes.  He
-could not help but feel that they looked upon him with some distrust.
-Many of them had already left their schools and were installed in
-warehouses and factories.  Philip was obviously one of those stuck-up
-people who pronounced their "u's" almost as if they were "a's," which
-was absurd, and some of them their "a's" as if they were "ar's," which
-was intolerable.  There was something too, he observed, of subtle
-contempt in their attitude.  They had all paid a certain sum of
-shillings for their respective fortnights, but the rumour had gone
-abroad that an unknown capitalist was financing Philip's holiday.  No,
-they decided, he was not their class; a little above, a little below,
-but not of them!  So that, not entirely to his displeasure, he was left
-rather pointedly alone.  Upon the second afternoon, then, he was
-sauntering slowly along at a little distance behind a herd of cows,
-when he saw far up the lane a female figure clothed in light blue turn
-round a bend with some speed, advance a little, and then apparently
-catching sight of the approaching cows, stop suddenly and flatten
-against a laneside tree.  Then pursuing her round the bend lurched a
-red cow, followed by another and a third.  The blue-clad figure sped
-onward again until the foremost of the advancing cows was not far from
-her, then she sank once more into the dry ditch.  Philip had recognised
-the black hair.  He had almost made out the brightness of the eyes.  It
-was Mamie, the enchantress of the tea-table!
-
-"Frightened of cows!" he thought a little contemptuously.  "All right,
-I'll lend the poor girl a hand!"  He came quickly forward and placed
-himself between the girl and the roadway.
-
-"Excuse me, won't you!" he said, "I personally am not afraid of
-cows...."
-
-The bent head was lifted with quick anger, the black hair tossing.
-
-"Who said I was?" asked the girl.
-
-"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Philip crestfallen.  "I didn't understand
-why----" and he proceeded to move away, a flush of flame lining his
-ears.
-
-"Don't go away!" the girl shrieked.  "I am frightened!  Horribly!"
-
-He came back.  "Right-ho!" he said, and folded his arms.  The cows were
-filing past in the two directions.  Mamie looked round from the side of
-Philip's legs.  "They're nearly all gone!" he assured her.
-
-"I hate cows!" she vowed.
-
-He ventured a remark not strictly _à propos_.  "And I hate moths!  Of
-course, not to mention beetles!"
-
-"I don't like beetles--or moths!" she added speculatively.  "But
-principally mice and cows.  But then what would you expect from a
-sensintive girl like me?"
-
-His mind went floundering after the meaning of "sensintive."  Oh, of
-course, she meant what people usually called "sensitive."  What a
-quaint old-world sort of word it was on Mamie's lips!  "Exactly!
-Exactly!" he agreed politely.
-
-"If I may say so, it isn't exactly _delincate_ to know which are bulls
-and which are cows.  Only vulgar girls know _that_ sort of thing!"
-What a fascinating little trick she had of putting "n's" into
-unexpected places.  _Delincate_!  It gave the very word a delicacy of
-its own.
-
-"Oh, yes!" he said with conviction.
-
-"I'd best be getting up!" she remarked after a slight silence.  "It was
-very _sweet_ of you to give me your protection.  Thank you!" her lips
-shaped lusciously.  "Thank you!  So sweet of you!  Quite chivalrous!"
-she completed, with a delightfully displaced accent.
-
-"Not at all, not at all!" murmured Philip.  Really girls did make an
-awful fool of him!  It was about time he said something a little more
-elaborate than "Exactly!" or "Not at all!"  He had said more before a
-crowd of working men in ten seconds than he seemed capable of in ten
-hours in the presence of this quite extraordinary young lady.
-
-"You might," came her voice, a little waspishly, "help a lady to her
-feet when she gives you an invintation!  That you might!"  She was
-rising from the ditch.  He bent over towards her, stung and foolish,
-and lifted her to her feet.  The pout left her lips at once.  "Oh,
-thank you so much!" she trilled.  "Quite grown-up you are, somehow!
-How long are you staying in this dirty hole!"
-
-"As long as you are!" he said recklessly, in a spurt of shy gallantry.
-
-"Go hon, now!" she mocked, and flicked the tip of his nose with
-outstretched fingers.  "That you aren't!  I'll have to run away from
-you if you talk like that!"  She broke into song--"Saucy and so young!"
-she quavered.  Her voice sent little waves of pleasure coursing up and
-down his spine.  "I'm older than you are, I'll bet!" he ventured
-maturely.
-
-"How old, Percival?" she asked, signifying her pleasure with a smile of
-arch gratitude.
-
-"About seventeen!" he lied.
-
-"Well, I'm only just a bit older, nearly eighteen!" she said glibly.
-Her hand patted and smoothed her hair.  "Nearly eighteen!" she
-repeated, as if the sound of the words gave her real pleasure.
-
-"So we're sort of practically the same age!" suggested Philip.
-
-"_Are_ we now?  Well, you are taller than me and only a month or so
-younger, so we'll call it _quits_, as we say on the stage!"
-
-"On the _stage_?" Philip asked breathlessly.
-
-"On the concert-platform, I _do_ mean!  Not low-down music-halls and
-musical comedies!  I'm a singer!"
-
-"By Jove!" Philip whispered, "I didn't know you were one of those!"
-
-"One of those what?" she asked sharply.
-
-"Singers!" he replied innocently.  "Why, what?"
-
-"Oh, it's all right, what's-your-name!" she said.  "Oh, by the way,
-what _is_ your name?"
-
-"Philip, my name is!  Philip Massel!"
-
-"Quite nice!" she approved.  "Mine's Ursula!"
-
-"But I heard a lady say 'Mamie!'"
-
-She frowned.  "Oh, that's only my Jewish name--Mamie Jacobovitch.  Of
-course you'll have heard my professional name, 'Ursula Daventry.'  But
-I don't mind being called Mamie on holidays!  But how long," she asked,
-changing the subject, "did you say you were staying?  A fortnight, I
-suppose?  I'm staying three weeks!"
-
-"I thought girls weren't supposed to stay at Mrs. Kraft's, are they?"
-
-"Oh, it's my precious mother's doing!  She's gone off to Chester to
-help Auntie Bessie have a baby, although what good _she'll_ do ... but
-I oughtn't to talk to you like this, you're only a kid after all!"
-
-"You just said, you know, we're really the same age to all intents and
-purposes, didn't you?"
-
-"Of course I did!  Of course we are!  Where was I!  Oh, yes!  Well, and
-mother's a cousin of Mrs. Hannetstein and Mrs. Hannetstein's a big
-friend of Mrs. Kraft and there you are.  _I'm_ just shunted out of the
-way!  Not wanted in Chester!  Not trusted on my own in Doomington!
-It's filthy!  And to be locked up with a lot of old women!"
-
-"I hope it won't be so rotten for you after all!  If the weather keeps
-fine----"
-
-"Don't be so _hinty_, Philip!  But all right, in any case there isn't
-any real reason why we shouldn't go out together sometimes, is
-there?--so long as we keep it dark.  I suppose Mrs. Kraft would pack me
-off straight away, the _woman_, if she sniffed that I was carrying on!"
-
-"But talking isn't carrying on?"
-
-"You have no idea what filthy minds they've got, all of them!  But look
-here, Mr. Philip, we're out on the main road now and those are the back
-windows of Wenton House.  They might be spying out even now, some of
-them!  You can't tell with these females!  I'll tell you what, just
-slip back into the lane and follow on in five minutes, don't you think?
-Good-bye, Percival, see you to-morrow?  _Such_ thanks for rescuing me
-from the bulls!  Good-bye!"
-
-Philip slipped back into the lane, his head whirling.  Bewildering,
-audacious, inexplicable girl!  So beautifully friendly and candid, and
-so intelligent, and so much a woman of the world--a concert-singer!
-And she took one as one's equal, not as a nice school-boy who was only
-just putting his nose into the world.  Philip was flattered and
-excited.  He sat down against the hedge, and his hand wandered for his
-handkerchief towards the pocket sewn on his shirt.  As he extracted the
-handkerchief, something crackled.  The letter, Channah's letter, with
-his mother's signature!  He had forgotten all about her!  Oh, what a
-hog he was!  Probably coughing her chest out on the sofa that very
-moment!  A tiny feeling of revolt against the compelling Mamie entered
-his heart.  Almost forgotten his mother!  That would never do!  But
-what eyes she had, smiling and dark and secret, even if she was so
-charmingly frank on the outside!  There was tragedy in those eyes!
-Yes, he was sure there must be tragedy in her life somewhere.  Poor
-girl! he murmured protectively.  By the time he reached Wenton House he
-had constructed for her a sombre Greek background against which her
-proud bright spirit shone unyielding.  Poor girl! he repeated.  But
-what eyes! he mused finally, what eyes!
-
-Next morning no letter arrived.  He was furious, chiefly with Channah.
-"What does she mean by promising me and then letting me down like this!
-Another of her rotten old actor-heroes; absolutely sloppy about them,
-she is!  I wonder how mother can be!  They ought to know how anxious
-they'd make me not writing after they'd promised!  Absolutely filthy,
-taking the bloom off a chap's holiday, the only holiday I've ever had!"
-He spilt his coffee with bad temper.  Mrs. Kraft stared sourly from her
-post at the "ladies'" table.  Philip rushed out after breakfast to
-compose a letter of fierce invective.  It then occurred to him that if
-his mother was worse, his letter wouldn't help.  He tried to convince
-himself that she was better and that Channah had therefore not thought
-the letter worth bothering about.  He tore up the letter, but his bad
-temper increased.  The morning passed very dully and he was too sullen
-to be interested in the munificent substitution of fried for boiled
-potatoes at dinner.  But as the afternoon shadows deepened, his feet
-took him disconsolately towards the lane where the cow-and-Mamie
-episode had taken place.  In that direction lay, he felt, the only
-oasis in the ennui of Wenton.  An absurdity suddenly struck him.  Here
-was the romantic, the poet, who had once rhapsodized over a blade of
-grass and shouted for glory at a bird's song, here was he, with strange
-sweet singers on every branch of unnamed trees, with wild flowers
-dappling the meadows, scented weeds filling the streamside air, here
-was he dull and sulky and stupid!  What was coming over him?  Had the
-year ended in too feverish a bout of work?  But of course it was
-Channah and that letter!  Hang the girl, why hadn't she written?  Yet
-that wasn't all, there was something else making him unquiet, setting
-up cross currents in these free Wenton days which until recently had
-seemed a dream not for a dreary time capable of realization.  What else
-beside Channah?  Oh, yes, here was the lane where he had seen the
-huddling mass of blue.  Mamie!  Undoubtedly, it was that weird girl
-with the dark eyes putting things out of tune!  He didn't like her!
-There was too much assurance about her....  By Heaven, here she was,
-sitting demure and watchful on the further side of a sycamore!
-
-"Good afternoon, Philip!"
-
-"Good afternoon, Miss--er, Miss Daventry!"
-
-"Well, if you won't call me Mamie, I can't say I really mind, you know!
-But I don't think it's at all friendly of you!  That I don't!
-Particularly after----"
-
-"I'm fearfully sorry, Mamie!  I didn't think you'd really like to,
-after only meeting yesterday!"
-
-"After all, what does that matter with girls and boys like me and you!
-Won't you just sit down here, or are you going on...?"
-
-"Oh, if you'll let me----"
-
-"Yes, do!  Now what is it is bringing that nasty frown on Philip's
-forehead!  Out with it, he mustn't look so worried or Mamie will think
-all sorts of things!"
-
-"It's about, well, it's about a letter!"
-
-"Oh, oh!" said the girl teasingly.  "Oh, oh!  Tell us all about her!
-And you do look so young to be carrying on!  I said to myself when I
-first saw you, I said, 'Now there's a young man an innocent girl like
-me's got to be careful of!  I can see it in his eyes, I can'!"  She
-hummed the words of a song.  She momentarily forgot her friend as she
-pursued a phrase along a trilling tremolo.  And then, "Oh, yes, where
-are we!  A letter from his little sweetheart!  Oh, oh, Philip!"
-
-"It isn't!" Philip declared.  He explained haltingly the nature of the
-letter.
-
-"Oh, don't worry about that sort of thing on holiday!" enjoined Mamie
-airily.  "_I_ never would, not if my mother were dying of the croup!
-And if your sister doesn't keep her promises, she's a cat and it's her
-own look-out!  Oh no, no, no, don't let a little thing like that worry
-you!"
-
-"Really, don't talk of her like that!  She's a sport!  She's not a cat!"
-
-"Did I say your sister was a cat?  Oh, I didn't mean that, you didn't
-get me proper.  You see it's like this....  Oh, hell!  It's not worth
-bothering about!  What was I going to say?  Let me see--yes!  Don't be
-afraid of me, Philip, why don't you move up a bit, there's room enough?
-That's right!  Now let's talk about something interesting, not letters
-and stuff!"
-
-A flame of resentment was smouldering in Philip.  He was searching
-round for something to say which would re-establish his self-respect.
-Peculiar girl!  There was no making her out!  What was she doing?  She
-was holding his hand!  What soft fingers she had!  She stroked his
-wrist, then his forearm.  Quaint waves of pleasure went tingling along
-his backbone.  She was leaning her head on his shoulder.  Her lovely
-hair was blowing against his cheek, her bosom was pressing warmly
-against him.
-
-"Philip!" she said.  He made no reply.  "Philip!" she repeated.  What
-was there to say?  He liked the feel of her against him, he liked the
-eyelashes curling from her eyes.  "Say something, Philip!"
-
-"Mamie," he said lamely, "it's awfully nice of you to be so--to be----"
-
-"Hush, Philip, do be quiet!"
-
-They sat thus for some time, Philip's mind drowsing in an unfamiliar
-content.  They rose at last and separated at the corner of the lane.
-When he thought, half an hour later, of the letter which had not been
-sent, he murmured, "Oh, it's all right, I'll hear to-morrow!  Nothing's
-the matter, nothing!"  He could feel still the softness of her hair on
-his cheek.
-
-Channah's note next day was shorter than the last.  She did not mention
-her oversight of the previous day.  Once more the signature of his
-mother lay crooked and inexpressibly precious at the foot of the page.
-
-"I told you so!" said Mamie triumphantly that evening.  "_Absolutely_
-no need to worry!  Hold my arm a wee bit tighter!"
-
-When no letter arrived the following day, it required no great effort
-to allay the pangs of unease.  "To-morrow!" he said.  "It'll be all
-right to-morrow!  I wish Channah weren't so lazy.  Now mother's getting
-better there really isn't any excuse...."
-
-Channah's note of the next day was almost curt.  "Mother getting on
-just the same.  Looking forward to your coming back."
-
-But surely there was a change in mother's signature!  Oh, surely!  He
-took his wallet from his pocket and removed the two letters he had
-already received.  A numbing anxiety gripped him.  It was quite
-impossible to doubt that the Yiddish letters of the latest signature
-were sprawling about weakly, the vertical strokes ending in impotent
-scratches.  "God!" he exclaimed in sudden fright.  "Nothing can be
-wrong!"  He tried to reassure himself.  "She was very tired, that's
-what it is!  Oh, _she's_ all right!  But what if anything were to
-happen to her while I'm away!  That's absurd!  Can't a person make a
-few scratches in signing a letter without giving rise to silly
-nightmare ideas?  I don't know what on earth's wrong with me these last
-few days!  I wish I hadn't met Mamie!  She always seems to be
-quarrelling with mother inside me!  What on earth is wrong with me!
-What have I got to drag Mamie in for!  Quarrelling with mother!  Isn't
-that a stupid thing to say about the poor girl!  Poor Mamie!  Oh, damn
-Mamie!"
-
-They had made an appointment for that evening in a quiet angle between
-a barn and a hayrick.  "I'll be damned if I'll go and see her!"  But at
-tea that day she looked towards him with such careful languor and
-winked her large fine eye so solemnly that his resolve weakened.
-"After all _she's_ done nothing!  I wish I weren't so anxious about
-mother, things would be so splendid ... Would you pass the bread and
-butter, please!  Thank you!"
-
-She kept him waiting for twenty minutes.  He fumed, his temper was
-thoroughly chafed.  "Curse it!  I'll go back home to-morrow, I can't
-bear this filthy suspense!  What does she mean by keeping me hanging
-about like this!"  A corncrake creaked from an adjacent field.  "Oh,
-the idiot!" he swore.  "I'll wring its dirty neck!  I'll go away if she
-doesn't turn up in three minutes!  Can anything really be wrong at
-home!  After all, the doctor said she was coming round--oh, blast that
-bird!"  His foot knocked angrily.  "Hello!" he whistled.  "What's
-that?"  From quite close at hand a low singing travelled towards him.
-It was a cold voice, but peculiarly sweet.  It was a mere tune, without
-meaning or words, but it soothed him like a cool hand on the forehead.
-Its pitch was low, like a tiny bird's.  Probably the voice could not be
-heard at all a few yards away.  The singing was for himself, a message!
-Then he saw a slight foot and a blue skirt emerge beyond the corner of
-the hayrick and black hair floated into view.  The warbling became
-clearer, though not less soft, the dark eyes of Mamie were beaming upon
-him and her rich red lips were ravishing their music upon the little
-space between the barn and the hayrick.  Philip lay back, soothed and
-drowsed, the melody played about him like a fountain.
-
-She was by his side, having said not a word; her singing was reduced to
-the very verge of sound.  Then she was silent, her two arms round
-Philip's waist.  The corncrake croaked unheard.  He put his two hands
-on her cheeks and looked into her eyes.  There was a glint of mockery
-lurking among their shadows.
-
-"Can I----?" he asked whispering, yearning, afraid.
-
-"You little fool!" she said.  And saying this, she seemed old as the
-line of high hills which swung against the southward horizon.  From a
-gloom of generations she spoke, a desiring animal voice sounding from a
-depth of many histories.
-
-"You little fool!  Haven't I been waiting for it!  Oh, you slowcoach!"
-
-His lips darted hungrily to hers.  His body was aflame.  He pressed her
-hard against his breast.  His lips relaxed, but hers were still
-passionate, remorseless, unslacking.  Then at last their lips fell
-apart.
-
-"Oh!" she said, and there was a hint of a squeak in her voice.  "Oh,
-now wasn't that really nice!"
-
-Even now he had room to be shocked at her unfortunate choice of an
-adjective.  "Sweetheart!" he said, "It was more!  It was full and
-golden like the harvest moon!  It was like a flooded river, foaming
-gold in the sunset!  It was, it was--Oh, for God's sake don't let me
-make a speech!  Kiss me!"
-
-"Oh, but I like you to!  Say it again, Philip!  Take one hand away, put
-it on your heart, like so!  Now fire away!"
-
-"Mamie, how can you tease a chap, now--_now_!  At a time when----"
-
-"Now you're going to be sloppy!  I can beat you at that game!  Bend
-closer!" she enjoined, playing her fingers about in his hair.  "How do
-you like this one?"
-
-The lines of her bosom were soft and only half-secret as he held her,
-looking dazedly into her eyes.  He was kissing her eyelids and the
-hollows under the eyes.  "Philip!" she murmured, "How delincate of you!"
-
-The word impinged, now as he kissed the slender fringe of those dark
-eyes, unpleasantly against his skin.  But she lifted her eyelids once
-more and once more he was drowning in sensuous waters, flickering
-weakly down dim lights and warm opaque shadows.
-
-They said little.  It was all a playing with their faces and hands and
-lips.  He seemed to be growing deeper and deeper into her.  She was
-leaning against him, pale, a little tired, it seemed.  Once more his
-head was stooping to her lips.  Without warning, he found her rising to
-her feet and standing over him.
-
-"Mamie!"
-
-"We'd best stop!  That'll do, Philip Massel!  Leave some till next
-time...."
-
-"Mamie, but what..."
-
-"Good-night!"
-
-He saw her pass swiftly from view as she flickered round the angle of
-the barn.
-
-"Mamie!" he shouted.  "What's the matter?  What on earth have I done?"
-
-No reply came back to him.  He rose a little dizzily and came out into
-the evening.  He saw the trees kissing each other in a little wind.
-The strange sweet smell of her kisses was on his lips.  He saw two
-horses in a field rubbing their heads together.  Clouds overhead kissed
-and mingled.  Leaves fluttering kissed each other and darted aloof,
-only once more to bring their lips together.  He heard a stream along
-the field where he was standing so crazed and tired, lipping and
-kissing the pebbles.
-
-"Mamie!" he whispered.  "She loves me!"  Overhead the cry of rooks
-came, raucously, ironically.  "Don't believe it!  Don't believe it!
-Don't-you-believe it!"  Who was being ironical?  Was it he, was it the
-rooks?  "Don't believe it!" they cawed.  "To hell with you all!" he
-shouted into the black vortex.  He lifted his hand to his mouth as if
-to retain there the impress of her lips.
-
-"I needn't be a fool about it!" he muttered through his teeth.
-
-He fell asleep that night with a sense of the closeness of her face.
-Dimly and dazed he remembered that her lips had seemed to drink him up.
-Engulfed in her, he lay sleeping at length.  And yet was he truly
-asleep?  From what world came this enamel can with the rusted edges,
-from the real world, from the world of unintelligible dreams?  Oh, yes,
-of course; he recognized it!  It was the can that hung on a nail over
-the scullery sink.  They were filling the can with water, unseen and
-pale hands holding it to the guttering tap.  "Don't think of them!" the
-girl said, "think of my lips!  Aren't they juicy, aren't they sweet?"
-But processionally, as though that cheap can were a flagon of holy
-wines, they were bearing it away, along the lobby, and towards the
-front door.  The cat was crying eerily from a shut room.
-Tick--tick--tick! moaned the clock.  Candles fluttering! ... Good girl,
-Mamie!  Here she was, with flushed cheeks and tossing hair!  Wouldn't
-let them have it all their own way, she wouldn't!  The can of water
-stood--why, why? stood at the pavement's edge.  She lifted the can and
-threw the water away, but the can dropped from her fingers, and here
-once more was the can at the pavement's edge, full once more with dark,
-mournful waters.  "Never mind them!" she whispered.  She bent towards
-him, her eyes desirous.  Yet ever quenchless, like a vase of tears, the
-can stood at the pavement's edge.  And here was Mrs. Levine, sodden
-flour on her apron, and long, torn wools fluttering from her shawl.
-She was wringing her hands.  She bent towards the can of water.  "Look
-away!" said the girl fiercely.  A rumbling of wheels...
-
-A cock was crowing.  The leaves of a full tree were swishing against
-the window.  Philip opened to the dawn red and apprehensive eyes.
-
-
-But his first remembrance as he stared towards the oblong of eight
-lights was not the girl, not all the grape-dark kissing; it was a
-sudden stab of contrition--"The letter!  My mother's signature!  By
-God, what a swine I was!  I forgot!"
-
-Mrs. Kraft read the names of the recipients of letters during
-breakfast.  Nothing?  Nothing for Philip Massel!  He stared savagely
-towards Mrs. Kraft.  She might have read out his name alongside of the
-fools she had mentioned; he needed his letter a thousand times more
-than they!  He turned resentful eyes towards Mamie.  Mamie was
-chattering sweetly with Mrs. Hannetstein.  He stumbled into the garden
-and sat disconsolately against a trunk.  The self-satisfied buzzing of
-a bee over its tremendously exaggerated labours annoyed him acutely.
-Minutes passed.  His despondency and irritation became more and more
-unbearably stupid.  He had allowed himself to forget her, he had
-allowed those hungry quiet eyes to slip from his heaven, he had
-allowed--oh, what a maddeningly fierce scarlet was the geranium in
-those precise window-boxes!  What an insane monotony of triplicate
-phrases that shallow fat bird sang yonder, the bird with the mottled
-breast!  What a gawky youth was this passing through the front gate
-with a bumpkin leer and corkscrew feet, a foolish little ochre envelope
-held stiffly before him!  He leaned back against the tree and closed
-his eyes tiredly.  How long would it take before she would really be
-about?  Of course it had been a boast, a joke, that she'd have a
-monstrous _kuggel_ to greet his return!  His head was buzzing foolishly.
-
-"Philip Massel!  A telegram for you!"  Of course that had nothing to do
-with him!  Who the hell was Philip Massel, anyhow?  He heard the
-metallic tinkling of a grasshopper, and saw against his shut eyelids
-huge yellow spheres like brandy-balls and blue rings and spectral
-vapours.
-
-"Philip Massel!  Didn't you hear?  A telegram, I said!"
-
-The bumpkin was grinning towards him.  At the front door Mrs. Kraft
-stood, arm outstretched.  Philip turned a frightened face from youth to
-woman, from woman to youth.  He came forward and opened the envelope.
-
-  "Mother dangerous return immediately.
-      CHANNAH,"
-
-he read.
-
-A blare of terror sounded in his brain like trumpets.
-
-"Mrs. Kraft!" he choked.  "My mother's dying!  Oh, quick, I've got to
-go home!"
-
-From very far away her voice came.  "You must have some hot coffee
-before you go!  The next train's the eleven-twenty!"
-
-"You don't know what she's like!" said Philip, burning with a sudden
-tremendous desire to make this woman understand over whose beloved,
-intolerably beloved head, lay hideous shadow.
-
-"I know!" the woman was saying.  "I've been through it all!"  She had
-taken Philip's arm.  "Come in now, you can't go off at once!  Poor lad,
-I'm sorry!  But then, perhaps, all will turn out well.  Jane!" she
-shouted, "bring some strong coffee in at once!"
-
-"I don't want anything!" he said.  But he found the coffee scorching
-his palate and coursing hotly down his throat.  He found Mrs. Kraft by
-his side, as he started to fold things into his bag with hands which,
-uselessly suspended at the wrists, seemed to be lumps of lead.  A shirt
-fell from his fingers to the floor as though it were woven of metal
-threads.  Mrs. Kraft bent quietly to the shirt, folded it and tucked it
-away; the boy for one moment swung round to look at her, through a gap
-in the clouds which had gathered about his head.  "What's been wrong
-with me all this time?" he speculated.  "I've never seen this woman
-before, I've never been in the same room!"  She had passed repeatedly
-from his vision like a cart going by on a crowded road--bearing no
-lineaments of her own, being merely a thing of which his senses had
-been half-conscious.  Was she stern, forbidding?  He did not know.  Was
-she, as she seemed now, a grave-eyed woman, quiet, full of pity?  How
-could he argue it out now, while the straps were fumbling from his
-ineffectual fingers, and like a vigilant automaton, her hands had
-usurped his own?
-
-"Harry Levi!" he heard her shout into the garden.  "Go with Philip
-Massel to the station and carry his bag for him!"
-
-She mumbled a difficult word of sympathy and the blank door lay between
-him and Mrs. Kraft.  Three and four and five times Harry Levi asked,
-"Is she chucking you out, Massel, or wot is it, eh?"  He had no quarrel
-with Harry Levi.  There was no reason why he should not be civil to
-Harry Levi; but his lips would not move, and the roof of his mouth was
-like burnt crust.  Harry Levi relapsed into an injured and simmering
-silence.
-
-There were minutes of waiting at the station, minutes blank and ugly
-and high like the wall of a factory.  The train came hurtling in from
-among the hills, uttering as it approached the station a lugubrious and
-prolonged howl.  The howl reverberated through all the corners of
-Philip's heart, rocking, shuddering, dismally dying away.
-
-He was in the train at last.  "I must face the fact, I must face the
-fact!"  Chu--chu--chu! the train went, chu--chu--chu!  "Face the fact!
-Face the fact!"  As he lay in the corner of the carriage, huddled like
-a discarded coat, he realized that the fool's paradise in which he had
-lived lay about him futile and desolate.  A puff of wind and the walls
-had tottered, there was a groaning of uprooted beams, a smell of hot
-dust, overhead the intolerable eye of the sun looking sourly down!
-Fool he had been!  Had he not seen her dying before his eyes, year by
-year, day by day!
-
-A little specious voice whispered, "But Channah says she's only ill.
-She doesn't say--not that!  Perhaps it won't ... really, Philip, you
-can't tell ... perhaps...!"
-
-"Dangerously ill!" Philip countered, "Dangerously ill!"
-
-"Quite, I see!  But not--not the other thing....  Other people have
-been dangerously ill and yet, you know...."
-
-It was only the somnolent fat man opposite to him, whose belly curved
-below a heavy gilt chain and whose huge red cheeks cushioned curved
-long eyelashes, who prevented Philip from leaping to his feet and
-shrieking wildly.  "Enough of your lies!  I've allowed myself to be
-taken in long enough!  Oh, for God's sake be quiet now, be quiet, or
-I'll go mad!"
-
-The puerility, the futility of it all!  And had he assured himself that
-though all other women soever in the tremendous history of the world
-had died, she alone would be exonerate, for his sake, forsooth--she who
-now perhaps was lying dead...?  No, that at least could not be!  She
-would wait for him.  By God, God would pay for it if she was not
-allowed to wait for him!
-
-Oh, speed on, speed on, reluctant and sombre train!  Devour the
-separating miles, throw the hills behind you, plunge forward to the
-cities, speed on or she shall be dead!  Oh, carry me swiftly to her
-waiting eyes!  Her eyelids are heavy!  Keep them not waiting so long
-that they shall droop, droop!  Oh, swifter, swifter!
-
-What mercy could he expect from the train?  Had he not known all along
-and kept the knowledge safely hidden in his furthest recesses?  Of
-course she had insisted on his going away from her!  She had known that
-this was coming!  She had determined to keep him immune from the shadow
-whose fringes she knew to be even then hanging over the house in Angel
-Street!  But it had been for him to stand fast, to say--"No, mother,
-I'm not going!  Whatever you say, I must, I will be with you!"  She
-would have understood with that wisdom of hers which lay far from her
-mere lips, was glimpsed but fitfully in the cloudy hollows of her eyes.
-
-Of course he had known!  What else had he meant by that insistence on
-her signature!  It must have been patent to them all how he had dared
-to go in the teeth of so imperious a premonition that he demanded her
-handwriting from day to day.  That girl....!  The memory of her pecked
-at the flesh between his ribs like some insatiable bird!  Kissing,
-fooling round with her hair, her lips, while she lay weakening, dying.
-A sound crawled through his teeth.  In his own ears it was cavernous,
-heavy, loud.  Suddenly self-conscious, he looked nervously up to the
-fat man, but the heavy chin still hung placidly relaxed and the
-shoulders were lifting a little to the incipient snores.
-
-The window beside him was shut.  His shirt and collar seemed to have
-fastened tight round his throat, choking him.  He dropped the window
-with a crash and the cool air came surging in.  It was not enough, and
-he set his face out against the jaws of the wind and felt its chilly
-comfort washing the roots of his hair.
-
-Swifter, swifter, train, absorb the miles!  That white house below the
-chimney stack on the horizon there, shall we never outstrip it?
-Grinning there in its unapproachable immobility!  Ah, now, the horizon
-swivels round on a pivot, and swift for your callous face, oh, white,
-grinning house!  Wind, wind, what message do you bring from her?  Is
-she waiting?  No, no, I shall not come too late!
-
-Who's speaking?  "That'll do, young feller-me-lad!"  The draught has
-awakened the dozing fat man.
-
-His lips vibrate with growing indignation.  "Shoot that winder oop and
-sit tha down!  Awake sin' fower o'th'clock and tha wilt go playin'
-tricks with winders, wilt'a... ?"
-
-The window is replaced along the full length of its groove, and with a
-rumbling from the gills, a slight outraged crest-heavy swinging, the
-fat man once more slides away into somnolence.
-
-What shall he do as the slow miles dawdle by?  Poetry!  How long he has
-deserted poetry!  What strange affinity had there been between poetry
-and beetles!  Rarely, rarely since those old days of crackling
-wall-paper and whisperful spent cinders where the beetles crawled, had
-a pencil, busy a moment ago on the annotation of vacuous texts, found
-itself scrawling rhymes and dreams.  He had felt that poetry would not
-come his way again, but now ... as the train beat like a living pulse,
-now that his own heart seemed to be moving forward and backward again,
-a great shining piston ... He hunted in his pockets for a pencil, took
-out a blunt stump, and lifted an envelope from the same pocket.  With a
-quick dart of anguish he realized it was the last letter he had
-received from Channah, where already the signature of his mother
-sprawled with the impotence of death.  He flung the pencil away as if
-the impulse which had produced it from his pocket had been treason.  He
-remembered with bitter mirth an anticipatory consolation he had once
-frequently imbibed.  At the same time as he had persistently assured
-himself of his mother's immortality, he had whispered, smirking, "Yes,
-but when she does die, won't I start writing wonderful poetry!
-Marvellous elegies that'll make Gray sound like a threepenny
-kettledrum!  I'll make 'em sit up!  And I'll have a little book bound
-in soft red leather..."  The tortured lad winced as he brought to mind
-the old fatuity.  He would make capital out of her death, would he,
-little books bound in soft red leather!  How well he knew now he would
-be like a fallen leaf on a road trodden by a thousand feet!
-
-Oh, swifter, train!  Never train moved so slowly!  He moved from
-against the fat man and pushed the opposite seat ludicrously with his
-feet to bring the train sooner to Doomington.
-
-He was holding the envelope in his hand.  And he had allowed the girl
-called Mamie to persuade him to take no alarm in the weakening of the
-signature.  He had suppressed the instinct from swimming into clear
-consciousness, the instinct to return at once before the hand weakened
-into the last torpor.  Now at length the contest and the protagonists
-of which his mind had been the arena stood starkly before him, and he
-knew, with what shame, what despair, who had prevailed.  Mamie and a
-tickling of the lips, shafts of shy pleasure about the loins--and his
-mother, waiting.  With abrupt clarity, the enamelled can which last
-night had prevailed over the disorder of his dreams, returned.  Now
-clearly he realized the heart-breaking symbolism of the enamel can; not
-merely symbolism!  Soon the can should be not merely a symbol, but a
-fact; soon, perhaps now!
-
-In all his forethought of death, not in especial relation with his
-mother, but with anybody he loved or knew, one element in the Jewish
-custom had brought him most distress.  Frequent observation had
-instructed him that when a dead body lay beyond the doors of a Jewish
-house, a vessel of water and a bucket to replenish it were placed at
-the edge of the pavement.  As the living passed by the place of death,
-the vessel was lifted to sluice from each hand alternately of the
-passer-by the contamination issuing from the melancholy doors.  It was
-a sign of death which had sometimes come upon him so suddenly but with
-such incontrovertible assertion that it had long filled the crevices of
-his mind with horror.
-
-The actual enamel tin of his dreams he also recognized.  It had been
-condemned a long time ago to the scullery at Angel Street, because the
-enamel had been chipped by old service from its edges, and it now hung,
-he well remembered, on a rusted nail by the sink.  It had been used by
-his father and himself for the hand-washing which preceded every meal.
-There could be no vestige of doubt that when the time came for this
-desperate and bitter use, the enamel can would be lifted from the nail
-and would contain cold water for cleansing at the pavement's edge.
-
-Ah, how he realized now what Mamie was endeavouring to do when she had
-lifted the enamel can in his dreams and thrown away the water, and the
-can had fallen from her fingers.  Once more she sought to delude him
-into believing that all was well, that the deadly need did not exist
-for the cleansing of hands at the enamel can.  Even as she had sought
-to assure him that all was well with the writing in Channah's letter!
-Too late!  There at the pavement's edge, despite her duplicity, the
-enamel can lay once more, its little lake of grey water reflecting the
-grey sky.  Here came a woman, swaying in her sorrow, her shawl slipping
-from her head!  She stooped.  Over the knuckles of the left hand washed
-the water, over the knuckles of the right.
-
-Philip shivered suddenly.  What if he actually found the enamel can
-outside the doorsteps?  Could he bear to go into the house?  No, that
-at least he had not deserved!  Not that!  She would wait, he knew she
-would wait.
-
-But see! the streets were now set thick along the path of the railway,
-dingy parallels, skulking streets at right angles.  The fields had long
-been engulfed in red brick, grey brick.  The town once more was
-gathering about his lungs.  And there, pretentious, ugly, forbidding,
-like the policemen for whom it was their focal centre, reared the
-chimney of the prison on Doomington Road.  The fat man blinked with
-alarm as the train jarred and jolted into the station.
-
-"Doomington!" Philip murmured, "Be kind, God!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-The tramcar stopped at a corner nearer the station by one block of
-buildings than Angel Street.  Rayman, the butcher, was hacking away
-with indecent enthusiasm at a hulk of ribs.  At Lansky, the draper's,
-unconcerned girl assistants were measuring lengths of cloth by
-outstretching one corner and lifting the other to the teeth.  Philip
-noticed with an acute realization of detail the stupid cat with a
-closed eye and a foolish blue ribbon round its neck which was arching
-its back lasciviously against a woman's leg.  The distance he had
-walked could scarcely have been more than fifty yards, yet when he came
-to Moishele's shop at the corner it seemed to him for one moment that
-he had been walking and walking since dawn broke.  Above him and across
-the intervening gap of the street, on the side wall of the "Crown Inn,"
-and over the advertisement for Groves and Whitnall's Ale, he read on an
-oblong plaque, "Angel Street."
-
-Angel Street!  He dared not put into words what he feared.  Must he
-turn into the street?  Oh, turn swiftly, swiftly, never a moment to
-lose!  A small clump of figures down the street brought momentary
-terror over his blurred eyes, until he made out the wheels and the
-containing boards of a fruit-handcart.
-
-Thank God, nothing!  Nothing at the pavement's edge outside the steps
-of his father's house!  Quietly he knocked.  He could hear his heart
-knocking loudly as the hand knocked.  Channah came to the door; pale
-she was, with wide, dark eyes.  A spurt of light came into her eyes
-when she saw Philip standing there, then the light flickered away.
-
-"How is she?"
-
-"Bad!  Go in and see!"
-
-"Just take my bag away.  Oh, Channah, I thought I'd never get here!"
-
-"Give it me and go in!  She's been asking for you!"
-
-"But why didn't you send for me before?  Why did you let me stay away
-so long?  How could you do it?  If I hadn't come home in time, Channah,
-oh, think..."
-
-"But it's all been so sudden, so sudden!  Only two or three days ago
-she broke down suddenly.  She just crumpled up.  You never saw such a
-difference in a day or two!  Oh, it's been terrible!  Let's come away,
-we mustn't keep the door open!  Why are you standing there like that,
-Philip!  Shake yourself, be sensible!"
-
-"Nothing, Channah, nothing!  Oh, tell me, why did you persuade me to go
-away, both of you?  If I ever forgive you, can I forgive myself?"
-
-"Philip, let me close the front door!  Come in, don't stand like a
-stone!  I can't understand you; why don't you go in at once, she's been
-asking for you, I tell you!"
-
-"Don't you see how I'm afraid?  It's on my mind--what I just said!  Why
-did you let me go?"
-
-"We hadn't the least idea of anything.  You'd have upset her if you'd
-missed the chance.  You'd have brought it about sooner!"
-
-"Do you think she really meant it--about the _kuggel_?  Wasn't she just
-joking?"
-
-"No.  She wanted to get up to make you some and send it to you!  Emmes,
-Philip, if it isn't true!"
-
-He had been standing stiff in each joint, touched as with frost.
-Suddenly all his body drooped.  His voice fell to an almost
-unintelligible whisper.  "Let me go in to her....!"
-
-He moved the few steps to the parlour door and turned the handle.  He
-was at her bedside.  Only her eyes he first saw.  They were larger,
-warmer, deeper than they had been at any time before.  Because of the
-eyes, he was not immediately conscious with the whole of his mind of
-the pallor in which they were set: not merely pallor, a bloodless
-yellow.
-
-But the consciousness of this pallor was soaking through each pore of
-his body and mind, even as he bent to kiss her powerless lips; even as
-he rose and was saying, "Look, mother, mother!  I'm back from Wenton!"
-The consciousness of her pallor so steeped each atom, each corpuscle in
-him that he became yellow as she.  Still, for her sake, he held his
-lips firm against his teeth, subdued the impulse in his four limbs to
-fling themselves wildly, wildly, upon the floor.  She was too weak to
-answer.  He saw her mouth endeavour to frame words and abandon the
-attempt.  Only by a lifting of the eyelids she showed the joy at the
-centre of that waning heart, and by the dim flush of colour which
-spread across her cheeks.
-
-He knew not for what length of time he stood motionless over a body so
-thin it hardly seemed to break the line of the counterpane.  At last he
-became aware that the door had opened and Channah had come through.
-
-"Let me just come near her, Philip, I'll see if she can take a drop of
-milk!  Dorah's in the kitchen!  She wants you to go in and have some
-food!"
-
-"Not now!" he whispered.
-
-There was a shuffling with utensils on the bedside table.  The sound
-seemed to relax a chain which had held the boy taut.  He staggered a
-few steps and, perceiving the moth-eaten yellow plush arm-chair near
-him, he sank into it with convulsive abandonment.  Now he became
-consciously and fully aware of the shock he had endured.  Sometimes in
-his dreams he had seen her dead.  One dream of them all had lifted his
-eyelids at midnight from eyes glassy with horror.  Now as it came back
-to him, he winced and writhed.  He had seen her head lying on that
-copper tray where each Sabbath eve she had placed the uncut bread
-before her husband.  Beside her head lay a squat beaker of wine, the
-beaker over which, before the meal began, Reb Monash incanted the
-_kiddush_ with shut eyes.  In a groping, childish way he had
-endeavoured to exorcise the terror of this dream by rationalizing it,
-by relating the hideous phantasm to the fabric of reality.  He knew
-that the copper tray gleaming always like smooth dark mahogany might
-stand as symbol of the heavy labours which year by year reduced her to
-a ghost.  She had the Jewish housewife's intense pride in the
-cleanliness and beauty of her home.  Each Thursday evening the kitchen
-table was littered with trays, brass candlesticks, beakers, tins of
-polish, dusters.  Though the reek of the polish was offensive to her
-lungs and sent her into fits of coughing, no Thursday evening saw the
-arduous ritual abated by one iota.  But Philip knew that the
-significance of the dream lay deeper than this.  Obscurely he realized
-that the beaker of wine represented all the sacerdotalism of his race;
-in some way far too profound for his guessing the vision of the severed
-head was complicated with that antique ritual, so magnificently alive
-and yet so ineffably dead.  The head was lying on that tray of her own
-devoted polishing throughout the doomed years, lying as an offering to
-the impendent bearded God of his race.  The cavernous lips opened as
-the beaker rose to their glooms.  "I am that I am!" a voice moaned
-among endless colonnades of hills toppling towards the verges of space.
-How came it that the eyes of Jehovah aloof among the chasmed clouds
-were the eyes of Reb Monash, sitting upon his peculiar and inalienable
-chair in the corner of the kitchen?  And the copper tray was a lake
-profound with many distances and many generations where dim ancestral
-shapes flickered from deep to deep.  Twofold tyrannies along the
-deliberate reaches of the Nile, wildernesses and weak lads straggling
-and dying in the wake of the wanderers, smitten lands of exile,
-_Kossacken_ galloping in with sabres and flung beards, a slight lad
-crumpled in a moth-eaten yellow plush armchair, crumpled, broken, too
-mournful for any tears.
-
-He had seen her dead in dreams, but never so pale, so shrunken as now,
-her mouth retaining little if any at all of the weak, warm milk Channah
-was lifting on a spoon.  An ague shivering visited his whole body.
-Clearly he brought her to mind as she hovered round him with cherries
-and tea on those immortal afternoons; he saw her struggling with the
-Acroceraunian mountains, her lips humorously twisting to shape the
-alien syllables.  He remembered the quiet pride with which, long ago,
-she had regarded Reb Monash as he sat oracular in his chair, his
-admirers drinking with reverent avidity the wine of wisdom flowing from
-his lips.  The boy's throat shook with harsh, suppressed sobs.
-
-Channah spoke.  "Philip, she's calling to you!"
-
-Not a tear had risen to his eyes.  He bent over his mother with a wan
-smile.  Weakly, slowly, she spoke.  He knew that she had been lying
-there, waiting to summon up the strength with which to frame a few
-words.
-
-"_Nu_, Feivele, my own one.  Art thou feeling stronger for being away?"
-
-"Mother, loved one," he replied in her own Yiddish.  "Yes, stronger.
-But I had rather I had been with thee!"
-
-"Speak not thus!  I was happy to think of thee among the fields.  Didst
-thou have a special egg a day and milk?"
-
-"I did!  But no, mother, thou must not talk more!  Thou art not strong
-now, but wait, wait ... when thou art better...."
-
-"Be thou not a child!  Feivele, I am going ... going...."
-
-The words were smothered in a tiny dry coughing.  Channah came forward
-to help her.  He turned his head away from the forlorn struggle.
-
-Reb Monash had been to the _Polisher Shool_ for minchak.  He returned,
-and stood at the door, large-eyed, haunted.
-
-"Thou art back, Feivele?" he said.  He seemed to be searching for
-further words, but nothing came.  The voice seemed to Philip to strike
-against his skin, then to fall away dully to the floor.
-
-"Yes, _tatte_, yes," he said mechanically, and the abstract sphere in
-which his mother dying and his grief and himself seemed to be
-encrystalled, closed round him again in separating completeness.
-
-All day greedily he remained with her, knowing with a mournful
-exultance that when she gathered strength she would say a few words to
-him; yet when these moments came, saying "Hush, mamma, not now!
-Sweetest, hush!" bending over her, faintly touching her forehead.
-
-A long time had passed, and he was conscious not merely of hunger, but
-of a concrete clawed weakness tearing at the pit of his stomach, before
-he allowed Channah to take him into the kitchen and cut some slices of
-bread and butter for him and fill a pint mug with tea.  Dorah was there
-putting washed plates on the shelves, and as Channah sat down at the
-table, she moved away to the parlour to take her place.  Channah was
-sitting opposite to him, herself sipping tea, not with any interest,
-but because she knew that nothing had crossed her lips since morning.
-
-There had been long silence while Philip ate and drank, his attention
-wandering frequently from the food till Channah with a watchful word
-recalled his wits.
-
-"Channah," he said suddenly, "when will she die?"
-
-She was startled.  Her cup clattered on the saucer.
-
-"Philip!" she said, in remonstrance.
-
-"Channah," he repeated, "tell me, when will she die?  That's what I
-want to know, how long is there?"
-
-He was speaking in regular, subdued tones, with hardly an inflection in
-his voice.  It seemed the voice almost of one talking in his sleep.  An
-instinct commanded her to remonstrate no further, to fall in at once
-with this strange mood, to adopt his tones, to reply with no
-equivocation.
-
-"Not long.  Three days ago the doctor said she'd last a week.
-Yesterday he said she couldn't last above two or three days.  But only
-think--if it had happened before you came back!"
-
-The last consideration made no impression.  "Not more than two or three
-days more?" he repeated.
-
-She nodded.
-
-"That was yesterday?" he said.  "So to-morrow is the latest."
-
-"To-morrow is the latest."
-
-"Mother will die to-morrow.  The day after to-morrow she will be dead.
-What is the day after to-morrow?"
-
-"To-day's Friday.  It'll be Sunday!"
-
-His voice gathered urgency.  "Boys must go to funerals!" he demanded.
-
-"They must," she said, "they always do!  We don't go," she added.  "You
-must go for us!"
-
-"There will be no mother the day after to-morrow?"
-
-"Philip," she wailed, "why must you go on like that?  I can't bear it!
-It's been bad enough, but this is worse.  You're looking and talking so
-funny I can't make you out.  Go on with your tea, it's getting cold!
-I'll put in some tea from the teapot, shall I?"  She hastened to the
-fire on unsteady feet.
-
-"Cold," he was repeating, "the day after to-morrow!"
-
-She left the fire and crossed over to him.  "Philip, don't!" she
-implored.  She shook him by the shoulders as if he were relapsing into
-dangerous sleep.
-
-He blinked.  There was a grinding in his head like a clock running
-down.  "Poor old Channah, I'm sorry!  I was hungry and it's made me
-dizzy.  What a pig I've been!  What have I been saying?"
-
-"It's all right, I was only joking!" she assured him.  "Be a good old
-boy, now, Philip, and have some more tea!  You can't make things any
-better by not eating!" she insisted, "So let's try and be sensible!"
-
-"Oh, it's all right, Channah!  You just get on with your own, I've had
-enough.  I can't stay away any longer.  You've been attending to her
-all this time, while I've been--I've been--" he paused and grimaced,
-"I've been enjoying myself.  I must go in straight away.  You keep on
-with your tea."
-
-But as soon as he closed the kitchen door behind him, she fumbled for
-her handkerchief in her blouse and withdrew to the scullery, her
-shoulders rocking.
-
-He was only slightly conscious of the people that came in to see how
-she was and of his father sitting speechless in the corner, and Dorah
-busy with one thing and another.  He resented the appearance of the
-doctor and his cursory examination of her, the negative shaking of his
-head towards Reb Monash.  What was there still to be done!  What need
-was there to underline so black, so ineluctable a fact?  Perhaps if he
-had more frequently envisaged the possibility of her death formerly,
-even in the face of her lying so wasted on the bed before him he might
-have dared to entertain a wild flicker of hope.  But having only in
-dreams seen her dead hitherto, and then with such indignation and
-terror even in the depths of his subconscious heart that he would awake
-fighting the dark, now the pulse of his soul was smothered in an icy
-certitude, and he would allow no forlorn gleam of hope to lead him away
-from her, from this last intense communion of which the sands were
-running out, moment by ashen moment.
-
-There was a murmuring like wings about their heads and about them the
-shuffling of clumsy feet attempting to achieve a vain silence.
-Sometimes he would find Reb Monash hanging over them, or Channah and
-Dorah whispering together.  One of them might smooth a pillow or lift a
-spoon to her lips.  And though he knew that these things were happening
-within the same four walls as contained his mother and himself, in the
-limitless egotism of his grief it seemed to him that walls far other
-than these held them in a remote world, together, inseparable,
-undisturbed.
-
-Imperceptibly day had thickened into dusk and dusk into night.  The
-incandescent mantle chuckled and flared unevenly.  The last neighbour
-had tearfully withdrawn.  He knew that several times Dorah had spoken
-to him and that he had answered, yet with no knowledge of the words his
-lips were actually shaping.  At last he realized that both his sisters
-were urging him to go away, to go to bed.  Channah was trying to draw
-him from the chair where he sat leaning over the bed.
-
-"No, no, I'm not going!" he said.
-
-"But you must go!  Channah and I..." started Dorah.
-
-"Go!" said Channah, "only for a few hours!"
-
-"I tell you I've been away all these days and I'm not going away for a
-second now!  Let me be quiet, both of you!  You go to bed!  Can't I see
-you've been up every night, while I've been sleeping in comfort over
-there, not knowing anything!"  He dropped his voice to a tone of
-appeal.  "_Do_ let me stay!  If she wants anything, I can manage it.
-Dorah, you ought to go up to be near father!" He found himself dimly
-conscious for the first time since his return of his father's pallor,
-his ghost-like silence.  The vague picture of his father faded away.
-
-"I'll go for two or three hours!" said Dorah.  "When I come down, you
-must go up at once!"  Her lanky figure bent awkwardly over Mrs. Massel.
-Her thin lips touched the forehead fleetingly.  Channah threw herself
-down on her knees beside the bed and babbled incoherent words.
-
-"Go thou, go, my own one!" murmured her mother.  "Thou hast not
-slept--how long!  Go, darling, sleep, sleep!"
-
-There followed silence after the women had withdrawn.  Not a word
-passed between his mother and Philip.  Sometimes she would close her
-eyes for some minutes, then open them once more full and deep upon her
-son's.  He remembered how Time had been so dilatory in the train; how
-he had wanted hours to shrivel into minutes, the long minutes to be
-brief as a spark.  Now Time moved too swiftly, with deadly deliberate
-speed.
-
-Beyond the parlour window and high beyond the houses on the other side
-of Angel Street, he heard the galloping of horses and the abateless
-revolutions of wheels.  Oh, that the moments could expand into hours,
-and the hours once more into the years in which he had loved her so
-little and she had loved him so well, so well despite the danger that
-lay between and the cloud that had always enveloped them.
-
-But now at least there was no danger, no cloud; nothing hindered their
-unity.  The whispering of Doomington, that ceased not even in a
-snow-muffled winter midnight, now on all sides withdrew, leaving the
-dim parlour in Angel Street aloof and calm.  The incandescent light
-choked and spat no more.  A still light, steadier than the moon, less
-garish than the tree-shaded twilight of glades, invested the room,
-converting each object there into a significance beyond ugliness and
-beauty.  All accidentals of space and birth and time were stripped from
-the woman on the bed, from the boy at her side.  She was the mother, he
-was the son, nothing more.  There was a pulsation in the air, between
-them and about them, linking them though they were far apart as
-Aldebaran and the Earth, though she lay crumbling under her wooden lid
-and he strode sun-engirdled over the morning hills.
-
-How long this thing lasted the boy did not know at all, for he did not
-even know that it came.  He only knew that Channah was peering round
-the door, fearful of waking them if they had fallen asleep.  She
-wondered how it came that his face was shining as with dawn, though
-still the night was deep and the black incandescent gas flared and
-gasped.  She wondered also at the smile which lay curled at the edges
-of her mother's lips.  She saw, at one moment, how his eyes looked
-calmly towards hers, and how the next moment his head had fallen limply
-on his breast.  She came forward swiftly to prevent him slipping to the
-ground.
-
-He awoke to find himself lying under a blanket in his own former
-bedroom, whither, he learned later, Dorah and Reb Monash had lifted
-him.  He stared unseeing for some time into the blotched ceiling, then
-the words came tolling against his ears, "The Last Morning!  The Last
-Morning!"  He did not at once seize the meaning of the phrase.  He knew
-merely that this morning was to be an ending of things.  But when the
-phrase became particularized, _whose_ last morning had dawned, slowly
-he rose from his bed as a doomed man for the gallows.
-
-It was morning.  The blind had been drawn, but they had left the gas
-feebly talking in the incandescent burner.  Shadowy people had already
-gathered in the lobby and there were several neighbours in the parlour.
-Reb Monash was standing over her bed listening to the faint words she
-was endeavouring to shape.  A flicker of jealousy touched the boy's
-heart.
-
-"Monash," she said, "it is _shabbos_, yes?"
-
-"Yah, Chayah, the Holy Day!"
-
-"Ah, _gutt, gutt_!"
-
-She could say no more.  He observed how the neighbours would make way
-to give each other the privilege of being within the dying woman's room
-for some minutes.  Death seemed to be in the room with all the
-actuality of physical presence.  He seemed to be standing over Philip's
-head leaning dark branches about him like a tree....  No, he would not
-let the futile gas burn there while the sun, while even the warped sun
-of Doomington, shone into the room!  What were all these people doing
-here, treading softly in and out?  Did they hope that she would carry a
-brief for their souls into that country whither she was shortly
-adventuring?
-
-The clock! the clock! How it ticked relentlessly on the mantelpiece, a
-large, round alarm clock with a pale face!
-
-Channah was whispering.  "I think she wants you!"  He brought his ear
-close to his mother's lips.
-
-"_Shabbos_," she said, "the Holy Day!  Before _shabbos_ goes, I am no
-more, son mine!"
-
-Should he say--the words were almost on his lips--"Mother, mother!  The
-sun's shining!  You will be strong yet!  That dress of satin I always
-wanted to buy you, I will buy you soon.  You will sit in the parlour
-like a queen, only making cakes sometimes, for _yom tov_!  I will take
-your arm and we will go out into the green fields.  Birds, mother!  And
-blossom on the trees!  Even yet, mother, even yet!"  There was no time
-for lovely, false hopes.  He said not a word, but she knew how he was
-closer than he had been since the days when he lay, a fluttering
-lifeless life, under her heart.
-
-The clock!  The clock!  There was a whispering, a treading.  Some one
-had arrived.  They bent to his ear and said, "It's from the _shool_.
-Some one has come to say the 'Hear, O Israel!'  Let him be near!"
-
-Channah took him by the arm.  "Come to the door.  Just while the man's
-there!  Come!"
-
-A low wailing rose from the room.  "Oh God, Channah," he cried, "Oh,
-why do they make all this ceremony out of dying!  Why can't they let
-her lie quietly?  Did you hear how her breathing went heavier?  She
-wants to die, she's so tired!  And they won't let her!  Oh, listen to
-them, send them away!  Let's be alone with her!"
-
-The shadow in the room when they returned seemed palpable.  He could
-make out no sound, no appearance clearly, save her face, and the
-laboured breathing.  And the clock! always ticking, dispassionately,
-relentlessly!  Always the clock!  A rattling in her throat complicated
-her breathing.
-
-"Channah," said the boy, "Channah, look at the clock!"  His voice was
-hard, mechanical.  "It's a quarter to nine.  At nine o'clock she'll be
-dead!"
-
-"Feivele!" his father whispered.  "She's said thy name!  Go!"
-
-"Mother, lovely, I'm here!  What wilt thou?  Ah, see, I'm here!"
-
-"Thou wilt be, Feivele, say it--thou wilt be always a good boy?  And
-think ... of thy mother?  Thou sayest yes?"
-
-"Yes, _mutter meine_, yes!"
-
-"And love Channah?  And all, all?  So, I am happy!  Remember, thou,
-Feivele!"
-
-The clock stealing, stealing forward!  Not the banded powers of Heaven
-shall hold the clock-finger from moving forward over that space black
-with doom!  Tick-tock! wild eyes of Channah, Dorah wringing her hands!
-Tick-tock! bearded face of Reb Monash, wrapped like a forest in its
-griefs!  Tick-tock! a wailing in the air like trees when the wind goes
-about mournfully!  Tick-tock! the rattling in her throat!  Oh, the
-falling chin, the glazing eye, Oh, dead, dead...!  Tick-tock...!
-tock....!
-
-
-Waters flowing over his head where he lay prostrate on the beach!  Dark
-green engulfing waters drowning him beyond grief or tears!  Tricklings
-through his nostrils and oozings along the channels of his brain,
-runlets boring through the drums of his ears, surge after surge
-gurgling over his lips and into the bursting throat!  And how bitter
-the taste of the foam, encrusting his palate with a scurf of salt,
-bitter as ashes, as sand!  A low desolate bell swinging ceaselessly in
-this world of sunken waters, as if the doom of oceans and lands had
-been pronounced, and all souls must bestir themselves, howsoever long
-ago they were clad in flesh!
-
-And always a whispering, and a secret sound of feet even so low under
-the water's rim, whither no sun attained, where the bell swung to and
-fro in the lapse of glooms.  The fantastic denizens of these waters!
-Things with large phosphorescent eyes shedding tears that flickered
-down the watery darkness like worms of fire!  Things with shuffling
-feet and lolling heads, bearded things with wise and cavernous skulls,
-and one, shaped like a small woman, appearing, disappearing, busy on
-important offices beyond all scrutiny!  They would stand over him,
-staring with meaningless kindness through the weeds which swayed and
-swung over his body.  They would endeavour to lift his hands from their
-laxity to receive the offerings they brought, would lift their
-offerings to his lips, but too bitter was the savour of brine on his
-tongue and his head too weary!  He would turn away from them, burying
-his face in the clammy sands.  There had long been a filtered light in
-the waters which engulfed the world; the light thickened into opaque
-walls.  He could see no more the lolling heads, that busy strange woman
-who came and went.  Only darkness, and for how long!  Even the bell was
-muffled almost to nothingness, the bell was more a sense than a sound,
-the bell seemed to be tolling from the deeps of his own body where he
-lay unstarred, tolling from below his bones and making the arm which
-lay across his breast lift and fall away.  Once more the light
-returning and the sound of feet and the bell louder tolling, louder and
-ever louder, until the metal against which the tongue beat and
-clamoured, burst into a thousand fragments, and he knew that he shook
-with sobs!
-
-Over him stood the busy woman; Mrs. Finberg she was, the shroud maker,
-officiator at deaths.  She waited till the hollow sobbing subsided,
-then pressed on him hot cup of tea.  This time he did not refuse, did
-not turn his head and bury it in the escaping stuffing of the sofa.
-
-After some moments he rose and opened the kitchen door.  He found
-Channah proceeding towards the lobby.
-
-"When will it be, Channah?" he asked, "Is it arranged?"
-
-"When will what be?"
-
-"You know, the funeral, I mean!"
-
-"It won't be more than a few hours now!"
-
-"But I don't understand!  Not more than a few hours!  What's the time
-now?"
-
-"It's just after nine!"
-
-"Nine o'clock?  But she died at nine o'clock!"
-
-She drew back frightened.  "But that was _yesterday_!"
-
-"_Yesterday_?  Oh, what's the matter with me?  Is it Sunday just now
-then?"
-
-"Of course it is!  It was _shabbos_ yesterday!"
-
-"Of course, of course!"  He began to apprehend how time had been
-annihilated for him.  "Of course it's Sunday!  What was I talking
-about?  And you say it's in a few hours then?"
-
-"The man from the burial society has just been in.  He says the cabs'll
-come about two, he thinks; somebody said that funerals are the only
-things that Jews are in time about.  Oh, Philip, Philip, they'll not be
-late; what does it matter when they come?"
-
-"Oh, so there'll be cabs?"
-
-"Yes, there'll be cabs!"
-
-"And there'll be--you know--a hearse?"
-
-"What do you keep on asking these questions for?  Of course there must
-be!"
-
-"What's all those heavy noises for, in the parlour?  What is it they're
-moving about?"
-
-"Don't, Philip, don't!  Come back into the kitchen!"
-
-"It's the coffin!  Isn't it the coffin?"
-
-The parlour door was flung open suddenly.  With her hair escaped from
-the pins, her hands beating wildly, there stood Dorah, crying shrilly,
-with broken catches!  "Come here, Channah, Philip!  Come, look at her
-for the last time!  Quick, quick, it'll be too late!"
-
-Channah clung back against him.
-
-"We must go!" Philip whispered.  "Poor old girl, let's go!"
-
-All but her face was covered where she lay, the lid revealing the calm
-head.  The room was full of unchecked sobbing.  Grief was round her
-like a whirlpool.  How calm she lay at its centre, unperturbed, serene!
-A woman was tearing her hair, Dorah beating her breast savagely!  Reb
-Monash stood heaped against a corner, his head drooped upon his breast.
-Channah, her shoulders convulsively shaking, lay clasped in a woman's
-arms.  Philip looked tearless upon his mother's tearless face.  _She_
-knew how to take Death quietly, like a queen!  The tinge of yellow had
-gone from her cheeks.  They were only white now, placidly white.  Never
-before had her face been so wise and sweet.  Oh, the queenly lady ...
-mother as never before!
-
-"Go out now, you must go out!" a voice said.
-
-"Never, never!  You'll never take her away!" Dorah shrieked, but the
-woman led Dorah out, and Channah after her.  For one moment Reb Monash
-and Philip remained in the room, the body between them.  Then they too
-went.
-
-Little trickles faltered down the kitchen windows, dulling the light
-already so meagre.  Philip looked out into the yard and saw a slow
-drizzle falling miserably.  The ground would be sodden, out there.  He
-shivered.  A chill rain faltered within him as he turned away, a
-drizzle soaking his heart till it was sodden like the cemetery out
-along the paved roads, somewhere at a corner of Doomington.  As he sat
-motionless, a man approached him and asked him to unfasten his coat.
-With leaden fingers he obeyed.  The man seized his waistcoat a little
-distance above the first button-hole and held it taut with the left
-thumb and first finger.  A razor in the right hand made a two-inch
-incision.  The canvas threads sprawled from the gap like exposed nerves.
-
-When the first cab came crunching along Angel Street, he observed with
-abstract interest how the wheels, though superficially they seemed to
-be arrested outside the front door, still went heavily revolving
-towards his ribs and crunched them below their passing, till he could
-hardly breathe for the sharp bits of bone sticking in his chest.  Other
-vehicles followed.  Two cabs had been subscribed for and sent by the
-_Polisher Shool_ to express the sympathy and respect of the
-congregation.  One or two other synagogues which had witnessed Reb
-Monash's oratorical triumphs paid a like tribute, and there was, of
-course, a quotum provided by the burial society out of the Sunday fund
-to which Reb Monash had contributed from the first week of his arrival
-in Doomington, as knowing that though his family's living might be a
-doubtful affair, of death's coming, soon or late, there could be no
-doubt.
-
-Some one told him that his father, the _parnass_ and the _gabboim_ of
-the _Polisher Shool_ were already installed in the leading cab.  They
-were waiting for him.  A lethargy had been creeping about his brain.
-"Wasn't there any way of getting out of it?  Why must he go?  Why must
-any one go?  Wasn't it finished, finished beyond recall?"
-
-Dorah sat on the sofa swaying regularly from side to side.  He heard
-the crying of Channah, hidden somewhere.
-
-"Go thou, go!" moaned Dorah.
-
-He staggered through the front door.  A swift wave of sympathy from the
-red-eyed crowd in the street surged towards him.  A horrible
-self-consciousness afflicted him and he wilted like a leaf before a
-flame.
-
-"What a lovely funeral!" he heard somebody mutter....
-
-He heard the clinking of coins in a tin box.  He remembered.  There was
-no wedding, no funeral where the _shammos_ was not to be seen, clinking
-his box for the poor.
-
-But the clinking faded from his ears when he discovered with a swift
-stare of recognition the tin can at the pavement's edge.  "_Orummer
-ingel!_" a woman cried, lifting her voice, "Poor lad!"  The words
-grated.  He was glad to find himself in the dark shelter of the cab,
-crushed in among the men.
-
-As the procession moved away, he knew that Dorah stood on the steps of
-the house, beating her hands together, shouting; that Channah seemed to
-run after them like a ghost; she tottered, and the capable arms of
-women had seized her, were bearing her away.  The hearse turned the
-corner of Angel Street.  The cabs followed.
-
-Still a passionless stupor held him as they moved along Doomington Road
-and up Blenheim Road, through Longton, beyond the outskirts of the
-Jewish quarter, and to Wheatley at last, where the Jewish cemetery
-straggled over the low slope of a hill and the tombstones bore meekly
-the inquisitions of the passing trams.
-
-The entrance into the cemetery was a wooden, draughty shed where a few
-Prayer Books were lying about on the forms.  The shed was rapidly
-filling.  In addition to those whom the cabs had brought were a number
-who had travelled by tram.  Soon he found a service beginning and
-himself mechanically joining in prayers.  And shortly after he was
-moving out into the open with the rest, into the damp air.  They were
-moving along the uphill winding path to the cemetery.  The clay
-underfoot was difficult for treading.  The atmosphere was full of the
-smell of turned earth.  After one or two minutes the untidy procession
-paused and the _chazan_ who was officiating at the funeral continued
-the wailing chant.  Again they moved forward and again they stopped;
-the chant was resumed, until at last they were among the graves.  There
-were uprooted weeds, removed by the caretaker from privileged graves,
-lying in dank heaps, tainting the tainted air and tangling the narrow
-walks among the dead.
-
-This was the place then, this black, deep hole?  The rain was drizzling
-into the grave.  If they waited too long, there would be a floor of
-clayey water.  It was a deep hole; who had thought that graves were so
-deep?  It was true that no disturbance from the harsh world above would
-penetrate so far; but if the grave were a little less deep, there would
-be communion with the roots of flowers, almost the tiny pattering of
-birds' feet.
-
-So he mused, hardly conscious of the solemn chanting and the sobbing
-about his ears, until some one whispered that he must throw a clod of
-earth into the grave, on to the coffin lid.
-
-Even this, then?  No release, no hope!  A lump of earth fell dully from
-his father's hand.  Light would the earth be which her son threw on his
-mother's bed!  He lifted a fragment of clay and released it over the
-grave.  But heavily the sound came, boomed on his ears.  Others
-followed.  He became aware of a new refrain in the threnody round him.
-"Beg for me, Chayah!"  "Beg for me, beg the Above One!" they were
-shouting into the grave as the coffin disappeared below the rising
-earth.  "Beg for me, Chayah!"
-
-He turned away.  No more sound was heard of clay on naked wood.
-Terribly, silently, the level rose.  The caretaker had seized the
-shovel and was piling more earth on the broken surface.  Behind a tall
-white stone with black pillars a little distance away, hidden from the
-rest, Philip lay for some time, his face on the damp gravel, at last
-realizing how far from all reach they had placed her, beyond all
-language, all vision, at the roots of darkness, far from his twitching
-fingers.  It was time for the mourners to descend to the shed for
-_minchah_.  The _chazan_ was getting restive.
-
-But a few lingered among the stones, coming to read again the
-inscriptions over the graves of parents, children, friends, all equally
-dead in the Wheatley cemetery, all under the drizzle in uncomplaining
-company, all stretched quiet under the levelled clods, which other
-sons, fathers, friends had heaped on the coffin lids.
-
-When the crowd had descended, he found Reb Monash sitting alone on a
-form against the wall.  The _shammos_ whispered to Philip that he must
-be seated alongside his father.  Head swimming, he obeyed.  And now
-came _minchah_, the afternoon service.  Reb Monash turned up in a
-Prayer Book the _kaddish_, the special prayer of the bereaved.  The
-isolation of their two voices frightened him, but he was conscious of a
-tense determination that no hitch should take place in this concluding
-ceremony, that she should be left, the tired woman, at rest as soon as
-they would release her.  He uttered the prayer with dead clarity.
-
-Minchah was over.  In dull wonder he realized that the shammos had
-unfastened his father's shoe laces and was unfastening his own.  Reb
-Monash rose weakly and walked across the room and Philip followed.  The
-crowd desultorily made way for them as they moved, their loose laces
-dragging in the dust.  As they were fumbling once more with the tying
-of their laces, the black figures were flickering through the door into
-the road.
-
-Who of the living shall stay in the place of the dead?  Let the dead
-hold such converse together as they can!  Day speeds to night and night
-will bring new day.  An emptier day for empty eyes in this place and in
-that, but a new day none the less.  Will not fresh waters be flowing
-from the mountain sources, and other waves hurtle against the shores?
-It is only the caretaker's dog who prowls unhappily among the graves,
-wondering dimly at all this to-do.  The caretaker himself wipes the
-clay from his weeding fork and sets to work again, whistling.
-
-There was a self-satisfaction in the clatter of the horses' hoofs as
-the cabs made their way from the cemetery, an indication that having
-achieved their part of the day's burden satisfactorily, it was left to
-the humans they were carrying away to dismiss them as soon as decorum
-permitted.  The drizzle persisted still.  The tram-lines glistened
-evilly mottled among the bricks.  With fitful abstraction Philip looked
-through the window into the drab day.  The continuity of houses had not
-yet begun.  Here and there stood a public house at a corner, or two or
-three houses thrown up in apologetic haste.  The cabs overtook a man
-and a woman walking citywards in the same direction; it seemed that
-when the hearse came abreast of the man, a natural impulse made him
-remove his hat.  The man stood gaping as the first cab approached, the
-woman staring curiously.  Then suddenly she seized him by the shoulder
-and pointed a correcting finger towards the procession.  She shouted
-something into his ears--the actual words were drowned in the rattle of
-wheels.  The man gaped more foolishly, and at once, deliberately,
-replaced his hat.  As the man and woman passed from Philip's sight,
-they were grinning significantly into each other's faces.  The lad
-wondered what it meant.  Quickly he was informed.  The procession was
-now riding abreast of a piece of waste ground, sloping greasily up from
-the roadside level.  Against the sky-line, faintly muffled by the
-intervening rain, Philip saw three or four youths standing,
-long-legged.  He perceived that as soon as they became conscious of the
-funeral procession their lank immobility had stiffened, and that at
-once they proceeded to make derisive gestures with their arms and
-hands.  When at last he realized the significance of their gestures he
-felt as though each had plunged a rusty knife into him.  It was the
-movement he remembered on the part of a band of youths who two or three
-years ago had assembled outside the _Polisher Shool_ to mock the old
-Jews entering on their _Yom Kippur_ supplications.  It was the movement
-which had sometimes greeted him in the meaner Gentile parts of
-Doomington, to an accompaniment of "smoggy van Jew!"  Once Higson
-Junior had stood at the top of the stairs ...
-
-The rain was not too opaque to obscure their lips shaping, nor so dense
-that he could not hear the scornful implacable words--"Smogs!  Look at
-the smoggy van Jews!"
-
-"God!" he shouted, suddenly starting to his feet.  The others calmed
-him, bade him sit down; to them it seemed a spasmodic outburst of his
-grief.  They had not noticed the gesticulating youths on the clay
-slope.  Or perhaps the youths had not escaped their notice, but having
-passed this way before, the edge of the experience had been blunted for
-them by familiarity.
-
-Philip as suddenly subsided, but the blood surged through him, wave
-after wave, in fierce anger.  This, then, was the gentleness of Christ!
-These the countrymen of Shelley!  For these Socialism schemed and
-poured its hot blood!  Oh, God!  The skunks!  What would it matter if
-himself they stripped and threw stones at him, sent him bleeding home?
-Or if they filled with mud the mouths and nostrils of these old men
-about him?  But they had desecrated Death itself, the dolorous quiet
-majesty of Death!  They had desecrated her, the sleeping woman with the
-folded hands, the lips that should utter no more her sweet calm words,
-her eyes, sealed under disks of clay, that had been innocent as dawn!
-
-He squirmed in his corner of the cab.  They had desecrated her sleep,
-these minions of Christ!  It seemed at that moment that no life
-henceforward lay before him excepting the shattering from His throne of
-the thorn-crowned Hypocrite, in whose service those long-legged
-blackguards jeered at Death.  This mood passed quickly.  A memory came
-to him of a picture he had seen somewhere, the eyes of Christ lifted in
-anguish, the heavy blood thickening about the wounds.  But he felt that
-a bitter brew had been forced down his throat.  A taste of crude salt
-lay in the hollow of his tongue.
-
-The cab arrived at Angel Street.  Dorah and Channah sat waiting in the
-kitchen on low stools, and low stools (on which alone the bereaved of a
-Jewish family may sit during the shiveh, the seven days' mourning) were
-set for Reb Monash and Philip.  The neighbours had prepared some food,
-but Philip could not eat.  Each mouthful became impregnated with the
-evil liquid flowing round his tongue.  He was conscious of nothing but
-intense irritation and dared not trust himself to utter a word.  He
-winced when a door opened, squeaking, and brutally he kicked the cat as
-it meowed into his face.  When Channah put her hand on his forehead, he
-threw it off with a suppressed scream.  He was annoyed that the women
-let the food lie about so long, and when they removed it, he was
-annoyed that they removed it so clumsily.  A ring of hot metal seemed
-to lie behind each eye.  He shut his eyes, but only set the rings
-rolling on their axes and throwing off sparks.
-
-A sing-song monologue was drumming into his ears.  One or two of Reb
-Monash's friends had come in and his father was narrating the virtues
-of the dead woman.
-
-"Oi, such a wife!" he was moaning, "A Yiddish soul and good as gold!
-Nothing which it is right for a Yiddish woman to do, she did not do!
-No _mitzvah_ was too hard for her!  And on Friday night what a table it
-was!  Not a speck on the tablecloth and the candles shining like the
-heavens!  _Oi_, my buried Chayah!  Where shall I find me such another
-one?  Where, where?  And on _yom tovvim_....!"
-
-The teeth of Philip's bitterness fastened close on this harangue.  This
-was the first moment since his return from Wenton that he had become
-conscious of Reb Monash as a separate and complete entity.  He had been
-irrelevant hitherto.  Only his mother, living or dead, had occupied the
-full circle of his vision.  There had been room for no one, nothing but
-her.  The incident on the return from the cemetery had made a hole in
-the walls of his isolation, an acid had come trickling into him,
-corroding him.  What did the old man mean by this futility?  What
-interest was all this to the nodding old fools on the sofa?  Indeed,
-what interest were her virtues to the man himself, eulogizing her from
-the low stool, in the same chant he had heard often in the bygone
-years, rising fitfully from the room where the living woman lay
-sleepless and frightened in her bed?
-
-"And what think you she would do?  She would borrow money on her
-bracelets to lend to Yashka, the fisher's wife!  And when a woman gave
-birth she would forget she was ill herself: she'd go out through the
-rain to make her some dainty and clean her floor!  What a house she
-kept for me....!"
-
-It was intolerable!  Would he never finish?  Whither was he leading?
-Faster and faster revolved the wheels behind his eyes.  He dug his
-nails into his hands and the voice proceeded evenly.  He had stopped.
-No, it was to draw breath!  He was proceeding again.  This man his
-father?  Oh, a stranger surely!  They had lost sympathy enough, God
-knows, these years.  But the man incanting now so monotonously, who was
-he, what was he doing here?
-
-Philip found his own lips in motion.  Reb Monash was silent and turned
-his head towards his son.
-
-"You've found it all out now, have you?" he said.  The voice was raw
-and dry, a voice he had never uttered nor heard before.  Was it himself
-had asked that question, and himself who asked again with words that
-stabbed the tranced silence in which the room lay frozen--
-
-"So you've found it out now that you've killed her?"
-
-A blight seemed to fall on the lips of Reb Monash.  They turned sick
-and grey.  The colour spread along his cheeks.  His eyes grew wider and
-dark and very sorrowful.  Neither he nor his son seemed aware that
-Dorah had advanced to the boy, her teeth showing large between her
-lips, that she lifted her hand to strike him, but the hand had failed
-suddenly, and she had sunk on a stool, sobbing.  The eyes of Reb Monash
-still rested full on his son's, but his chin drooped lower on his
-breast.  When he spoke, his voice echoed the raw dry tones that had
-left Philip's mouth.
-
-"God knows, Feivele!" he said.  "Perhaps thou hast right!"
-
-His head shook unsteadily for some moments, then fell forward and
-downward like a lead weight.
-
-"He's fainted!" shrieked Dorah.
-
-"He's fainted!" Channah echoed.  Dorah turned fiercely on Philip.  Her
-fingers clawed the air.
-
-"What have I done?" Philip said.  "What was I saying?"
-
-They flung the door open.  Some one fumbled at the window frantically
-for a minute or two, then realized that the window could not open.
-With quick sobs of alarm Channah threw water into Reb Monash's face,
-while Dorah held his head to the air.
-
-Reb Monash opened his eyes.  "Where's Feivele?" he asked faintly.
-
-"Here!" the boy whispered.
-
-"Feivele!" said his father.  "Feivele, let it be over!  It has lasted
-too long!"
-
-"Father, what meanest thou?  I knew not what I was saying...."
-
-"No, that is finished; it is said!  The fighting, let it be over!  Go
-thine own way!  If thou wilt come mine, some day far off, God be
-praised!  But the fighting, let it be over!  I am tired!"
-
-The boy stared into his father's face.  Memory after memory floated
-like vapours darkly over the seas of the past, interposed themselves
-between that sallow face and his eyes.  Then he saw the eyelids fail
-wearily.  The memories drew away along the wide levels.
-
-He knew what issue had been declared.  They had suffered much and
-waited long, his father and he.  To Death had fallen the decision of
-their conflict.
-
-"Father, let it be over!"
-
-
-The tension was only broken that night.  Harry Sewelson came in and
-after a speechless, eloquent handshake, informed Philip that he had
-been away all yesterday and had learned of the death only a couple of
-hours ago.  He had heard women discussing it over the counter in his
-father's shop.  Alec and his family had left the town unexpectedly a
-few days ago or Alec would have come in too....
-
-People kept on crowding into the kitchen till the room was unbearably
-stuffy.  Harry had relapsed into reverent silence in a corner.  Philip
-was certain he would choke unless he went to the front door to breathe.
-He passed along the lobby and opened the door.  At that moment old
-Serra Golda, who had just climbed the stairs, was about to knock, and
-even as her hand rose to the knocker, the door swung noiselessly
-inward.  Her little puckered eighty-year-old face, caught faintly by
-the gleam of a street lamp, was distraught with fright.  She uttered a
-slight screech of horror.  Her beady eyes stared from her head in a
-manner intolerably ridiculous.  A demon of laughter seized Philip
-overwhelmingly and a great raucous peal bellowed from his lips.  He
-swayed impotently, hands waving in the air, each mouthful of laughter
-louder and more hideous than the last.  The old lady bustled by him,
-muttering indignantly, "Thou loafer! such a year upon thee!"
-
-The words only emphasized the insanity of his mirth.  He managed to
-close the door and then stood in the darkness of the lobby, beating his
-head on the wall in his transports.  He felt his ribs cracking in the
-onslaught of laughter, and clasped his hands tight round his body.
-
-He found Harry standing beside him.
-
-"Good God!  Philip!" he exclaimed.  "It isn't seemly!  How can you do
-it!"
-
-For long Philip could shape no word.  The tears streamed from his eyes.
-At last, with infinite difficulty, he brought out:
-
-"Oh, hell, Harry, don't you understand?  Don't you see ... see how
-I'm..."
-
-But the words were drowned in a fresh and prolonged peal.  Harry walked
-away from him impatiently.
-
-It was fortunate that _meyeriv_, the evening service, had been rendered
-and the _kaddish_ intoned.  Philip now realized clearly that the
-laughter was entirely out of his control and that it would be fatal to
-re-enter the kitchen.  Although the main attack had subsided, bubbles
-of laughter still boiled in his throat and issued from his lips in
-ragged shrieks.  Utterly prostrated, he determined that the only thing
-he could do was to go to bed at once, and he fell asleep with his own
-laughter ringing lamentably in his ears.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-Three times daily for the following seven days, a little community,
-necessarily never less than ten adults, and frequently intersprinkled
-with a few of those more pious _chayder_ boys who wished specially to
-commend themselves to their _rebbie_, gathered for _davenning_ in the
-Angel Street kitchen; the visitors on sofa and chairs, Reb Monash and
-Philip on low stools; the mourners uttering their _kaddish_, the
-visitors chiming amen with devout promptitude.
-
-_Davenning_, perhaps by some deliberate charitable intention, seemed to
-take up most of the day, and effectively chequered Philip's moods of
-stagnant melancholy with the need for definite action and a brave show
-in the eyes of the world.  Benjamin, Dorah's husband, a meek,
-pale-haired man, whose will had always been a useful and docile
-implement in the hands of his wife, attended the _minyon_ with complete
-regularity, a praiseworthy fact in virtue of the commercial travelling
-which took him into far outlying villages.  Dorah herself returned to
-Longton, leaving Philip in Angel Street for the period of the _shiveh_.
-
-After the first week the family was permitted to resume ordinary
-chairs, but for a whole month the unshaved cheeks of Philip Massel
-testified biblically to his loss.  Yet _kaddish_ was not at end.  Three
-times a day for the ensuing eleven months the prayer was to be uttered
-in one synagogue or another.  And year after year thereafter candles
-were to be lit on the eve of the anniversary of the death and _kaddish_
-three times uttered next day.
-
-For the Jewish mind the prayer is invested with extreme sanctity.  The
-birth of a son conveys to his father and mother immediately the glad
-tidings of "Thank God! a _kaddish_ for our souls!"  In a precisely
-similar manner to the purchase of a mass and for precisely similar
-reasons, a _kaddish_, by a childless man and woman, will be bought for
-money.  There are, indeed, old men who shuffle about the dark spaces of
-a synagogue, whose main livelihood is the recital, at a stated rate, of
-the prayer.  But, it is needless to insist, the commercial commodity is
-held to possess by no means the same efficacy as the consanguineous
-_kaddish_.  Dereliction of duty in this matter is held to be a flagrant
-betrayal of the dead.  The image is held before the culprit's eye of
-the body attempting to shake free from its bondage of worms and mud,
-and for lack of intercession before the throne of God, enchained
-cruelly within the narrow territory of the coffin.
-
-The state in which Philip had endured the climax of his mother's
-illness, her death and funeral, had involved, it has been evident, less
-a storm of suffering than a trance, a deadly level of hysteria.  When
-he returned from Angel Street to Longton, he seemed to lose his faculty
-for quick reaction, for poignant contrition or grief.  His mind
-reduplicated the sooty autumn which spread like a web about the city,
-entrapping the last evidences of summer and leaving them to hang
-bedraggled like sucked flies.
-
-Whether or no, for one who had at least made such pretensions of
-affection towards his dead mother, he ought, from the point of view of
-an abstract decency, to have persisted with the prayer to which she
-herself had attached such importance, it is not easy to decide.  It is
-possible that had he recited the _kaddish_ in a language he understood,
-he would have persisted even to the end.  On the other hand, it is
-possible that had he been faced with the task of reiterating for so
-long the same fixed number and sequence of words with their inelastic
-content of meaning, he would have defected even sooner: that, in fact,
-the mere unintelligibility of the prayer conferred upon it for a season
-the quality of the kabbalistic.  But the essential fact is this, that
-the emotional part of him now flowed like a sluggish backwater, and in
-his emotion alone the ritual could have been steeped until it shone
-with beauty and urgency.
-
-Only his mind moved with any clarity, and his mind had long ago decided
-that phylacteries belonged to Babylon, that all the terror of the Day
-of Atonement was an immense, an almost conquering hypnotism, from which
-with travail he had escaped.  _Kaddish_ was but an issue of the same
-quality as these, though more painful in its solution; for those others
-were related merely to the general problem presented to him by his
-race, whilst this was bound up so immediately with the lovely thing he
-had lost.
-
-His first absence from the morning service at the little _shool_ in
-Longton (his absences from the afternoon and evening services were not
-ostentatious and were therefore not commented on) produced a series of
-violent outbursts from Dorah, culminating in a threat that she would no
-longer allow him to pass her doors.  When he informed her that he had
-had other struggles to determine and others still faced him, that he
-was too tired arguing the matter of _kaddish_ with himself for any
-argument with her, that, in short, he would go, as she threatened, and
-become an errand boy or a clerk, her anger relaxed.  It was certain he
-was very worn out, and if he actually left the bosom of his family, his
-last tie with Judaism would be snapped, and--who knew? he might, God
-forbid, even marry a Gentile, a _goyah_!  What a scandal it would be!
-Benjamin would lose his Jewish clientele, it would shake Reb Monash's
-_chayder_ to its foundations, and what would be thought of a _maggid_
-whose son ... No, the matter was too terrible to think of!  They must
-be patient, perhaps God would be kind even yet!  Yet it was hard, very
-hard to bear!  Not for all her resolutions could she stifle periodic
-outbursts of wrath.  Philip would rise from the table with shut lips
-and retire to his room and his books.
-
-Poetry had begun to lose its savour for him.  Poetry tinkled.  He
-discovered a volume of the _Poems and Ballads_.  It mystified and
-annoyed him.  He was in no mood for the sheer unrelated beauty of
-Keats, and Tennyson seemed fit only to read on a bench among the tulip
-beds of Longton Park.  His feet held him too heavily to the ground to
-allow, with Shelley, any excursion into the empyrean.  As yet it was an
-atmosphere too rare for him to breathe again; there was too much of the
-graveyard damp in his lungs.  The equilibristic clap-trap of "Ulalume"
-and "The Raven" filled him at first with indignation and then with mere
-mirth.
-
-The routine of school made as yet hardly any break in the even tenour
-of his mind.  Mr. Furness uttered a few words of sympathy, so quiet and
-unobtrusive that without scraping the wound they gave to Philip a sense
-of ease and understanding more than all the rhymed consolations of the
-poets.  With Browning he had more success, and though the robust
-exuberance of the poet was out of harmony with Philip's prevailing
-mood, here at least was stuff of the earth earthy, sound stuff for his
-jaws to tackle with pertinacity.  But the discovery he made which
-nearest met his mood was the discovery of prose.  With fiction, of
-course, he had always been familiar.  But this was no more prose in a
-strict sense than Pope was poetry.  Each existed for a purpose beyond
-its medium, Dickens for his tale and Pope for his precept.  But when he
-casually picked up at a handcart in the Swinford market a copy of the
-_Religio Medici_, chiefly for a melancholy delight in its mere odour of
-antique must, and thus casually stumbled on a music which had more than
-the subtlety of verse, and none of its arbitrary divisions, he was
-carried away upon an untravelled sea.  The "Urn Burial" he chanted
-night after night.  The _History_ of Clarendon and the _Compleat
-Angler_ were a similar experience, the mere narrative of the first and
-the piscatorial erudition of the other affecting him as not truly
-relevant to the prose in which they were written, being merely moulds
-to give their music one shape instead of another shape.  He moved
-lazily towards the more troubled seas of Swift and was suddenly tossing
-helplessly in those furious waters; until release allowed him to seek
-amiable harbourage with Dick Steele and, disregarding lordlily an
-intervening century, in the pleasant coves of Lamb.
-
-It was not that the agony of those summer days, the telegram at Wenton,
-the cemetery, the words he had uttered in Angel Street and their
-consequence, were submerged quickly or in the least.  For long, periods
-of listless vacuity clogged Philip's feet and mind.  He would sit
-musing for hours over an unfinished meal or stand in prolonged and
-joyless reverie before a hardware shop.  The slow blood in his veins
-called for no action.  No dream of sky or hills was potent enough to
-prick his limbs with desire to be moving beyond the bounds of the city
-and along the climbing roads.  So for a time these voyages with the
-learned and dead doctors of prose were the only adventures of his soul.
-
-Almost with the first quickening of spring, something of the old unease
-twitched his body.  He realized that his friend Alec, from whom no word
-had come to him, had not once entered his mind; that even Harry, upon
-whom he had stumbled several times, had in no wise concerned him.  He
-had seen him once or twice with a lady.  Details of her had not
-impressed themselves upon him.  He knew only that she seemed ten or
-twenty years older than his friend, and a plain woman; distinctly, a
-plain woman.  He determined to call for Harry and suggest a tram ride
-into the country.
-
-"I'm sorry," Harry had said awkwardly.  "I'm afraid I can't!  I'm quite
-fixed up.  I never have time to go with any one else."
-
-"I beg your pardon," said Philip huffily, "really I shouldn't like to
-intrude!  It just occurred to me that we used to have something to do
-with one another not so very long ago.  I think I'd best not keep you
-any longer now."
-
-"Philip, try and be a sport, if you can!" Harry entreated.  "My time's
-not my own.  You're not old enough yet, so you can't possibly
-understand!  No offence meant!"
-
-"What's the good of crowing about--what's your haughty age--nearly
-eighteen?  It's a privilege bought by mere waiting!"
-
-"Of course I could trust you to misunderstand.  The fact is there's
-every chance of my getting--for God's sake don't tell a word to any
-one--", he dropped his voice and looked carefully round, "of my getting
-married!"
-
-"Good God, man, you're a baby!  Don't be a fool!"
-
-"Oh, don't try that game on me!  I'm old enough for marrying, if I'm
-old enough to be a father.  Don't look so startled!  I don't mean to
-say that I am.  That's the trouble!  Yes, it was a pretty sound
-instinct that prevented me from going round to see you, even when they
-kept her in after hours!  I see the sort of sympathy I could have
-expected!"
-
-"But who on earth is it?"
-
-"Didn't we see you somewhere or other about ten days ago when we were
-together?"
-
-"Do you mean that----?"
-
-"Yes, that's Miss Walpole!" he said austerely.  "The trouble is that we
-can't really decide if I am the father actually or not!" he went on in
-a sudden burst of confidence.  "But the baby's due before long and
-there's only one thing left for a decent chap to do.  That's apart
-entirely from the fact that the girl means everything to me now!" he
-said with assumed airiness.
-
-"Don't be so bloody, Harry!" Philip burst out.  A clearer vision of the
-lady presented itself to him than when she passed before him in the
-flesh.  "She's a hag of eighty!"
-
-The face of the infatuated youth turned white with wrath.  "I think the
-sooner you take your filthy face through that door the better!  You and
-your blasted impertinence!"
-
-Dignity demanded a frigid and immediate withdrawal.
-
-"I'll be damned!" Philip murmured, "a chap with a mind like Harry's!
-Lord, it was as hard as a knife!  Poor old devil, I suppose he'll wake
-up in a month and find himself up to the neck!  Who's left?  That's
-what I want to know!  All the old landmarks are washed away.  What the
-hell is a chap to do?  Who's left?"  The question drummed insistently
-into his ears.  He found himself aching for friendship.  For the last
-few months he had hardly uttered a word excepting a request for the
-sugar, perhaps, and a reply to a question at school.  His general
-friendlessness filled him with humiliation.  The Walton Street phase
-had drawn to its dull end long ago and not a figure remained who
-offered the least hope of companionship.  Alec, like the callous swine
-he had always felt Alec fundamentally to be, had merely
-disappeared--bearing with him the telescope of high romance, as might
-have been expected.  On Harry the gods had inflicted a terrible
-cerebral affliction.  Philip remembered Harry's attendant lady and
-shuddered.  And Harry had been sweet on Edie once!  Oh, yes, Edie!
-What was it he had heard Dorah and Benjamin saying about Edie?  He
-remembered.  Her photograph had been seen by a "millionaire" in the
-house of a relative of Edie in Pittsburg, U.S.A.  The "millionaire,"
-promptly enamoured, had entered into negotiations with the authorities
-in Doomington, the negotiations were succeeded by a trunk of the most
-astounding dresses and a first-class ticket to Pittsburg.  So much for
-Edie!  In any case she had worn thin ages ago.  Then it was that Mamie
-returned to his mind.
-
-His first thought was "Damn that girl!  I thought I'd forgotten her!"
-She filled him with a vivid sense of guilt.  "I've had enough!" he
-vowed.  His mind returned to the episode of the signature, and to
-escape his contrition, he fled from the house and walked swiftly down
-Blenheim Road.  To his horror he discovered that every step he took was
-actually a step nearer the enchantress.  To his horror he was forced to
-recognize that the thought of her made him tingle with pleasure.  The
-recollection of her began to torture him.  It was a double infliction,
-sensations of guilt and promptings of delight struggling for mastery.
-When his mind returned to his mother, his despair was more abandoned
-than it had been since the summer.  Yet ever when his gloom was most
-profound, the girl re-entered his thoughts, whistling as she turned the
-corner of the barn, brushing his cheeks with her hair.
-
-"By God!" he exclaimed.  "I lent her that prose translation of Dante!"
-(He remembered that she had asked who had wrote Dante, and that she had
-thought it so _delincate_ of him to lend her so sweet a book.  And when
-she'd just finished the Pansy Bright-eye Library she was reading, she'd
-_love_ to learn all about this here Dante.  She was sure he'd be _that_
-interesting!)
-
-Which lack of culture had then rather accentuated than diminished her
-charm, a quaint sort of sophisticated naïveté.  "Of course, I've got to
-get my book back!  I'll call for it to-morrow night!"
-
-He knocked firmly at the door of the Mamie household.  A miniature
-version of Mamie appeared.  He asked if Philip Massel could see Miss
-Mamie....  The child disappeared into the sitting-room half-way along
-the passage.  A whispering which seemed to last many minutes followed.
-Then the child reappeared and ushered him into the room.  The glare of
-an admirable incandescent mantle blinded him for a moment.  There were
-three or four people in the room but immediately he only recognized
-Mrs. Hannetstein.  A familiar voice addressed him.
-
-"Oh, good evening, Mr.--er--Massel, so glad you've called!"
-
-He turned to the source of the voice.  Good heavens, was that Mamie?
-Hell, she'd got her hair up!  You couldn't quite compare her to Harry's
-discovery, but she was years older than she had seemed!  He was aware
-she had called him Mr. Massel.  He would have to follow suit.  Perhaps
-it was mere intrigue.  He held out his arm waveringly.  "Good evening,
-Miss..."  He found, to his despair, he had entirely forgotten her
-surname.  "I mean, Miss..."  He coughed unhappily.  But Mamie, so far
-from assisting him in his embarrassment, was unaware of it.
-
-"Mother, this is Mr. Massel!  We met, where was it?  Oh, of course, in
-Wenton.  Do you remember this gentleman, auntie?  He helped me to
-escape from some cows, didn't you?"
-
-"Yes," he managed to stammer, "and they were ravenous as wolves!  I was
-awfully brave!"
-
-Everybody laughed politely.
-
-"I was just going to practise my latest song, 'Red Hearts, Red Roses.'
-_Do_ sit down, won't you?" Mamie pressed.
-
-"Thank you!"
-
-"So glad you've come, but you don't mind my practising this song before
-my accompanist comes, Mr. Mendel, you know, the famous violinist!"
-
-"Ah, Mamie, ah!" exclaimed her aunt waggishly, shaking the first finger
-of her left hand in humorous admonition.
-
-"Don't be silly, auntie!" Mamie cried with a skittishness almost
-elderly.  She sat down at the piano, and struck a few chords.  Then Red
-Hearts bled, Red Roses drooped for some minutes.
-
-Philip sat stiffly on his chair, wondering at the precise reason that
-had brought him here.  He wished she hadn't put her hair up.  He
-wondered dimly if he was in love with her.  If he was, he supposed he
-ought to keep his eyes glued on her face in a peculiarly tense way.
-But it was distracting to see her lips moving in that active
-manner--like red mice, twisting!
-
-"Oh, by the way," said Mamie at the conclusion of her song.  "I was
-sorry to hear of your loss.  Mrs. Kraft told me.  It must have been
-awfully unpleasant!"
-
-"It was rather rotten!" Philip muttered with difficulty.
-
-What a peculiarly unreal air the girl gave to sorrow and death.
-Inexplicable creature!  Was this politely tittering oldish young lady
-the girl whose lips had sought his own like a bee?  What was the matter
-with him now, or what had been wrong then?  His own pose on the chair,
-the piano, everything was strained, a little false.  But over in
-Wheatley, the cemetery, the grave, there was no unreality!  Damp clay
-and the sprawling weeds!  No, he must wrench his mind away from
-Wheatley, or he'd never be able to peel the apple that was lying in a
-plate on his knees.
-
-"To be sure," said Mrs. Hannetstein comfortably, "Death comes to us all
-sooner or later!  Don't you think so, Mr. Massel?"
-
-There seemed no reason to repudiate the assertion.
-
-Conversation trickled in a thin stream.  Philip was conscious of a
-certain slight unease in the air.  Wasn't it about time he was going?
-It certainly was time he set about doing what he came to do.  Then what
-on earth was it he had come for?
-
-There was a loud knock at the door.  "That'll be Adolf!" declared
-Mamie, rising from the piano stool with a glad yelp.  "Run to the door,
-Esther!"
-
-A masterly tread was heard along the lobby.
-
-"There you are, darling!" said Mamie, as a tall fair gentleman opened
-the door, and stared possessively into the room.  "Won't you put your
-violin down first?"
-
-He put his violin down in a corner with deliberation and as
-deliberately caught Mamie in his arms.  That ceremony over, he sat down
-and blinked inquiringly towards Philip.
-
-"Adolf, dear, this is a young gentleman who was staying in Wenton when
-I was there!" said Mamie, with vague discomfort.
-
-"Very glad to meet him, to be sure!" said Adolf.
-
-"Mr. Massel, this is Adolf Mendel, the violinist!  My fiancé," she
-added with a note of deferential pride.
-
-Her fiancé ... then she'd ... her _fiancé_...!
-
-The blustering, big-boned lout, what the devil did he mean by taking
-everything for granted in this gruff cocksure way!  Had he ever sat
-with her in the angle of a barn and a haystack, kissing like hell!  Had
-her eyelashes ever ... and her lips...
-
-And she there, the vampire, what did she mean by it!  Oh, blast her and
-the whole empty-headed crowd of them with their Red Roses and squeaky
-violins!
-
-Anyhow, thank God, it was over!  She'd pricked the bubble of his
-insufferably stupid illusion!  In her degree and kind she'd gone the
-way of all the rest--Edie, Alec, Harry!  What an idiotic room it was,
-with its refined knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and that creature with
-her hair up and the red-plush-framed photograph of Blackpool on the
-piano!  They were discussing music and songs with a wealth of
-ostentatious esoteric detail.  That was obvious enough surely.  They
-wanted him to clear.  He rose to go.  Mamie perceived it with alacrity
-from the corner of her eye.
-
-"Oh, I'm so sorry you've got to go!" she said effusively.  "And I'm
-awfully sorry about that too, you know!  You will come round again?
-Shan't he, Adolf, you'd love to see Mr. Massel again!  Not at all, not
-at all; oh, good night!"
-
-On the other side of the door he remembered his translation of Dante.
-
-"Blast Dante!" he exclaimed through his teeth.
-
-It was the fit of profound misogyny which followed this entirely
-unsatisfactory incident that fitted him so completely for the
-effusiveness and glitter of Wilfrid Strauss, and for that interlude
-with Kate which, only too conventional in its mere detail, was
-nevertheless at once the end and the beginning of Philip Massel's
-boyhood.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-A certain hesitancy checks me upon the appearance of Wilfrid Strauss in
-this narration; even though I am aware how easy and profitable it is to
-philosophize upon the _deus ex machina_; how it is entertaining to
-demonstrate that from the flimsiest accidentals the most stalwart
-essentials depend.  Yet the Wilfrid Strauss phase in Philip's
-development is not so much to be considered a stalwart essential as an
-exact statement of accounts, a period, a signpost whose backward arm
-pointed to obscure chaos, whose forward arm pointed at least to clearer
-issues, more breadth, more light.  It is probable that one Strauss and
-another had from time to time come into some sort of contact with
-Philip, for in such communities as Whitechapel, Brownlow Hill and
-Doomington, from the turbid mass of Jewish tailordom a type perpetually
-emerges which is volatile, swift, scornful of the mere labour of hands,
-ostentatious of the agile intellectual qualities which make the type
-invaluable for undertakings rarely entirely scrupulous.  If previously,
-then, Philip had encountered a Strauss in embryo or in maturity, there
-was no point at which their respective strengths and weaknesses had
-met.  Yet, in point of fact, it is Eulalie et Cie., Paris, of undefined
-occupations, who have kept this particular and actual Mr. Wilfrid
-Strauss too busily engaged, on the Rue de Rivoli and in Leicester
-Square, for his appearance before this date in the lesser thoroughfares
-of Doomington.  And it is not possible to declare that Strauss, as he
-swaggered gently down Transfer Street from the Inland Station, would
-have met Philip Massel on any other afternoon than the May afternoon in
-the year of Philip's history I have now attained.
-
-Philip had hoped, earnestly enough, as his old associations faded more
-and more completely out of his life, to pass beyond the fog of
-strangeness which shrouded from him the heart and meaning of Doomington
-School.  But he was forced to realize that volition was by no means
-adequate to achieve this purpose; for the paradoxical truth was borne
-in upon him, that, as he stood, he was somehow absurdly too young and
-inconceivably too old to take his place simply among the rest.  The
-problem was to be resolved only by deliberate action, and action was
-wholly beyond his reach.  He could drift sombrely with the tide of his
-own ineffectual melancholy, but the lassitude that softened his limbs
-prevented him from striking out against the current.
-
-He fell into the habit, therefore, of following for long hours the
-similar roads of Doomington, the amorphous monster which had always
-stretched so vaguely, so inscrutably, beyond his own steely horizons.
-In one direction you reached the museum where the mummies were embalmed
-in such fatuous splendour; southward lay the University galleries where
-the skeleton of some immense, extinct beast swung terrifyingly from the
-roof.  Northward the road led far and far away to a place where
-suddenly three chimneys sprang like giants against the throat of the
-sky.  Or in the centre of the city, at the extremes of the bibliophilic
-world, were the handcarts whose books concerned themselves mainly with
-the salvation of your soul, and the plate-glass-windowed shops of
-Messrs. Dobrett and Lees and Messrs. Hornel, whose books were
-recommended as admirable companions for your motor tours under the
-Pyrenees and your yachting cruises in the Mediterranean.
-
-It was a lifeless youth, sick at heart, prematurely flotsam, he
-mourned, on the indifferent waters of life, who passed one afternoon
-under the shadow of the Stock Exchange, along Transfer Street and in
-the direction of Consort Square, where his defunct Highness stood
-isolated and unhappy among the conflicting currents of tramcars.  But
-Philip saw nothing, heard nothing clearly, and paused not even a moment
-before the innumerable display of the latest Rhodesian novel behind the
-windows of Messrs. Dobrett and Lees' shop.  A book swung vacantly
-between finger and thumb as he walked vacantly along.  And he was so
-startled when a distinguished young stranger stopped him to ask a
-question that the book slipped to the ground.  Not so much the sudden
-vision of what Philip conceived to be the most immaculate of grey
-tweeds as the easy refinement of the young gentleman's voice took him
-aback.  Philip flushed and bent down towards the book.
-
-"Oh, allow me, allow me!" said the stranger.  "It was entirely my
-fault!"  He stooped gallantly, lifted the book, and with a mauve silk
-handkerchief flicked, off the Doomington dust.
-
-"Thank you!" said Philip.  "No, really, it was my fault!  I forgot I
-was holding it!"
-
-The other made a courtly gesture of remonstrance.  "This is the way,
-isn't it," he repeated, "to Blenheim Road?"
-
-Philip considered a moment.  "It's rather complicated if you've not
-been there before.  You see, you've first got to turn to the left.  And
-then, let me see ... Or you might take the car ... But look here, I'm
-not doing anything special just now.  If you'd like, I could..."
-
-There was something attractively full-blooded about the stranger,
-though it was true that the gloss--there seemed hardly another
-word--the almost boot-polish perfection of his appearance, was a little
-overwhelming.  It would be easy enough to put him on the Brownel Gap
-car which would lead him to the top end of Blenheim Road.  Yet Philip
-felt somehow reluctant to disattach himself so promptly from the
-stranger, to allow him merely to merge into the tumult and mist.
-
-"If I dared to encroach..." hesitated the polite young man.  It was, of
-course, an unworthy sentiment, particularly in a Communistic bosom ...
-and yet one could not help feeling that to be seen talking to a
-stranger of this calibre was rather a distinction.  All the people he
-had rubbed shoulders with to-day, what dull faces they had, threadbare
-suits, dry lips mouthing "Cotton, cotton, cotton!" even to themselves!
-This young man was wearing the most smartly tailored of grey tweed
-suits, shoes of metropolitan brilliance, a velours hat whose ample
-brims shadowed, expensively, quick green eyes, a slightly squat nose,
-and lips attuned, as one might judge from a slight thickness and their
-broad curves, to Bacchic riot and to kissing, even, it might well be,
-to the more recondite pleasures of the flesh.  The last thought checked
-Philip.  Yes, there was something full-blooded to the verge of
-coarseness in that mouth!  Wasn't all this talk about taxis and one's
-own little two-seater, a hell of a scooter, you know, just a little too
-ostentatious?  After all, a gentleman in the complete sense of the word
-could deduce from one's clothes, for instance...
-
-The stranger interrupted himself suddenly, then stared at Philip with
-some intentness.  Then he lifted his forefinger to his nose and asked
-"_Zog mir, bist a Yid_?  Tell me, thou art a Jew?"
-
-Not merely the intonation of the voice had changed, so that the cadence
-of Leicester Square had subtly become the chant of the _Yeshiveh_, but
-its very timbre was different, thicker, more ingenuous, infinitely more
-homely.
-
-"_Ich bin!_" replied Philip, perhaps a little stiffly.
-
-"So you're one of us then, eh? well, all's well!  I want you to help
-me, kid!"
-
-A note of _bonhommie_ had entered the voice.  "You say you can come
-along this way, can you?  Good!  Do you mind?  I'm going to take you
-into my confidence, if you'll let me!"
-
-Philip blinked.  He felt a momentary difficulty in his breathing, as if
-he had been running.  A little sudden, one might think....
-
-"What do you say to just getting in here for a moment till we see where
-we are?"  They withdrew into the doorway of a block of offices.  "The
-fact is, I've got a job which is going to keep me in and about
-Doomington for a few months and I don't know a soul in the place.  To
-tell the truth, I've managed to avoid Doomington till now....  Now
-isn't that a tactful thing to say to a native!  I suppose you _do_
-belong to the place, don't you?  But look here, you don't mind me
-buttonholing you like this, do you now?  Perfect stranger and that sort
-of thing!"
-
-There was no doubt he was a thoroughly engaging young fellow.  And at
-this moment Allen of the Sixth passed by, a celebrated swell so far as
-school swells went.  Allen looked merely dowdy now, with his somewhat
-down-at-heel brown brogues and the silver braid round his prefectorial
-cap coming loose at the peak.  Philip was sure that Allen had glanced a
-little enviously towards himself and with real respect at the stranger.
-But who could resist the dapper waist cunningly conferred upon the
-young man by some prince of tailors?
-
-"It's very decent of you indeed!" Philip muttered.  "I appreciate it.
-You know if I can be of any help at all, I'll be only too pleased!"
-
-A grin extended the corners of the stranger's mouth.  He almost ogled
-Philip as he replaced finger to ever-so-slightly-aquiline nose.
-
-"A charming little speech, charming!  I'm developing my theories about
-you, so help me!  A lady's man, that's what you are, a regular lady's
-man!  One has met your type, you know, up and down the place!"
-
-Philip was not over pleased by this invariable insistence on the part
-of strangers that he was a "lady's man," that he had a "way with him,"
-that they had "met your type, you know, up and down the place!"  He
-coughed a little awkwardly.  "I hate women!" he declared with vivid
-retrospect and pained conviction.
-
-The other laughed a little too loudly.  "And a jolly good joke, ha, ha!
-Hate women--gee, what an idea!  But more of the ladies anon!  Let's
-just settle the matter in hand!"  He made a motion towards the suit
-case at his feet.
-
-"Let me take your bag!" demanded Philip, with tardy politeness.
-
-"Not for a moment!  It's quite light, anyhow.  My real luggage is at
-the station and it's as much as I'm worth with Eulalie et Cie.--my
-employers, you know, Paris,"--he paused to give the information its
-exact importance,--"as much as I'm worth to let this little Johnny out
-of my hand, God bless it!  But listen, I've got something to ask you.
-Would you first tell me your name?  Pardon?  Massel!  Oh, yes; good
-name, solid!  Here's mine!"
-
-He tenderly replaced his bag between his feet and withdrew a card from
-an expensive leather case.  "Wilfrid Strauss, _né_ Wolfie, but don't
-tell any one!  You can't sell ladies' vanities and
-gentlemen's--er--gentlemen's comforts, don't you know, with a name like
-Wolfie, can you now?"
-
-Philip slightly demurred.
-
-Strauss lifted eyebrows of fleeting disapproval.  "_Wolfie_, impossible
-patronymic!  Tell me now, I want to get into a Jewish boarding house.
-You see the Doomington trade is absolutely in Jewish hands and they're
-threatening to undercut ... but don't let me talk shop!  How about it?
-Blenheim Road is the sort of district, I understand?  I don't generally
-associate myself with the Only Race, as you can perhaps appreciate, so
-to speak, but you're beginning to see the line of attack, eh?"
-
-Philip pressed his shoulder blades against the wall to re-establish his
-sense of reality.  "Quite so, quite so!" he replied weakly.
-
-"You can be of help to me, old man, if you would?  I mean, you know the
-local ropes and that's half the game!"
-
-At least here was Strauss adumbrating interests definite, if not
-exalted, some sort of _terminus ad quem_.  How nauseatingly void and
-vain had life in Doomington become!
-
-Strauss proceeded.  "Another thing!  I've developed a sudden consuming
-passion for, what d'you call 'em, _creplach_, absolutely soaked in
-_shmaltz_, you know the sort ... and potato _blintsies_ ... and let me
-see, there's _mameliggy_, um, yes, _mameliggy_!"
-
-Memories of the curiously-flavoured Roumanian dish as served on special
-occasions by Mrs. Sewelson vividly presented themselves.
-
-"Oh, so you're a Roumanian, Mr. ... I mean, Strauss?" Philip juxtaposed.
-
-"No, no, don't misunderstand!  One of my great pals in the old Mincing
-Lane days, Rupert Kahn--poor devil, he's doing twelve months now,
-somebody told me--was engaged to a _Roumanische nekaveh_ for a time,
-till he made off with the engagement rings and her silver combs, and
-you couldn't blame him either--calves like the hind legs of an
-elephant.--Oh, appalling!  ... But I say, don't you think we'd better
-be moving on?" Strauss interrupted himself.  They emerged from the
-doorway and Strauss slipped his arm through Philip's as though the dawn
-of their acquaintance was already ancient history.
-
-"Where the hell am I wandering off to, Massel, old dear?" Strauss
-speculated.  "I'm afraid I'm a trifle light-headed.  It must be that
-champagne the Inland Company so beneficently provide, eh?  Half a
-bottle of fizz always cuts more of a dash than a whole of Sauterne,
-although it's not strictly the thing for lunch, would you say?  Still,
-it's worth the difference, every time!  What's your preference?"
-
-"I'm afraid I'm not much of a connoisseur myself!  Palestine's wine's
-about as far as I've gone, with occasional whiskey and
-_lekkach_"--Strauss looked puzzled--"you know, those curly little
-cakes!  It's not been quite my line, somehow!"
-
-"Poor old thing!" mused Strauss.  "You've not moved very far and that's
-a fact!  At about your age--I think my calculations are right--I'd
-spent three or four week-ends with Marjorie in Brighton ... Oh, curse
-the man!  Him and his dirty Doomington manners!"  The youth scowled
-uglily.  Somebody, evidently displeased by the expansive manner Strauss
-had adopted for his procession down Transfer Street, had thrust a
-vicious elbow into the grey tweed waist.  For one horrible moment it
-seemed that Strauss was mobilizing his resources for a punitive
-expectoration, but the West End reassumed control in time and Strauss
-continued:--
-
-"Oh, yes, Brighton, Marjorie, as I was saying!  That girl was a sponge,
-nothing more or less!  She'd just open her mouth and pour the stuff
-down like rainwater pouring down a spout.  Gee, that's a while ago now!
-Still, I don't think--damn those motors!--a show like Transfer Street
-is the place for one's confessions, what do you say?  One oughtn't to
-let oneself rip like this, but you've got the sort of face one can
-trust, Massel, if I may say so.  Somehow I generally manage to land on
-my feet when I arrive in a strange town, though I take no credit to
-myself for it, mark you!  I remember once, first time I landed in
-Bordeaux ... But for God's sake let's go somewhere and have some tea.
-Then we can discuss the boarding-house business and the way the wind
-blows in Doomington.  How do you feel about it?"
-
-They had arrived some time ago at the point where Transfer Street
-crosses the pride of the city, the thoroughfare called Labour Street.
-A stream of vehicles passing transversely had held them up, but when at
-last the policeman raised a hand in potent arrest, the two youths
-crossed and found themselves facing the Crystal Café.
-
-"This looks rather the kind of place!" exclaimed Strauss.  "What's it
-like?"
-
-The inside of the gilded eating-houses that threw the glare of their
-lamps and the smells of their cooking into Labour Street had hitherto
-occupied Philip's attention for a curious moment at most.  His
-ignorance seemed now to be a grave lacuna in his education.  "Sorry,
-not the vaguest idea!" he protested ruefully.
-
-"Hold, I hear music!  Say, boy, I guess we'll try the dandy li'l place
-right now!" declared Strauss, with an artful introduction of the
-appropriate accent.  They entered, and the host ordered a delicate meal
-with some grandeur.  Philip found the marble-faced walls a little ugly,
-but distinctly rich and impressive.  The gentlemen in the orchestra he
-found also ugly, also distinctly rich and impressive; particularly the
-florid gentleman at the piano, whose moustache wandered so persistently
-into his mouth that he gave up the attempt to blow it away and
-endeavoured to reconcile himself to the taste.  He was so very
-inflated, would the sudden puncture of a pin dismiss him into thin air?
-Anyhow the marble seemed solid enough.  Philip surreptitiously passed
-his hand along the marble behind him to assure himself.  His head was
-in a whirl.  His friendship with the garrulous, glittering youth
-(Strauss made dainty play with his fingers to display two quite
-admirable rings, and there was a gleam of gold cuff-links from
-shirt-sleeves which he seemed deliberately to have pulled down an
-excessive inch), his friendship with Strauss had developed at so
-kinematic a speed that he was half afraid he could hear himself panting
-over the chocolate éclairs.
-
-At least he had breath enough to tender such information as he
-possessed concerning Jewish boarding-houses, the people who might be
-considered the "swells" of the community, which synagogues would
-provide the happiest hunting-grounds for chase not strictly specified,
-and a number of kindred affairs.  He discovered that he was usefuller
-than he had anticipated.  He said to himself humorously that he was
-blossoming into a man of the world.  Much fascinating conversation, or
-more strictly, monologue, followed, on matters less professional.  It
-was laid down as axiomatic that every young fellow under eighteen,
-worth the least grain of his salt, knew what's what--a phrase Philip
-had already encountered, but here, obviously, endowed with a more
-intimate meaning than hitherto.  When Strauss requested him to choose
-between the Turkish and Russian compartments of his cigarette case, he
-felt it behoved him to patronize the Turkish, for a recondite technical
-reason which at once did high credit to his own imagination and
-satisfactorily impressed his friend.  A number of entertaining
-adventures were narrated by Strauss, illustrative of the nature of
-what's what.  There was Flo in the punt at Richmond.  Oh, of course, a
-married woman, she was!  But then her own husband had introduced her
-with a wink which meant merely, "Go ahead, Wilfrid, old duck, go
-ahead!"  And there was silly old Bobby--insisted on wearing a wedding
-ring at Bournemouth, and Jimmy Gluckstein had spread the news that he'd
-settled down in decent matrimony.  Did a chap no end of harm, that sort
-of thing!  And, 'struth, yes, ha, ha, ha! that ducky little French bit,
-Flory!  Her mother, moaning with toothache, had interrupted them at
-about two in the morning.  There'd only just been time to slip under
-the bed.  And it was March, too, March in Paris!  From two till seven
-in the morning, mark you!  Grr-grr! ... From Strauss's enjoyment of the
-tale one could not help deducing that he felt, at least after this
-lapse of time; that his part in the episode was indisputably the most
-enjoyable, even the most dignified....  And oh, yes, talking about
-four-posters ... there was Fanny ... you should have heard ... another
-cigarette? ... and when her real boy came ... camisole ... about time
-we went ... Oh no, no, don't mention it!..."
-
-Yes, of course, Philip would be delighted to accompany Strauss to Mrs.
-Levinsky's, in Blenheim Road.  But wait a moment, why not try Mrs.
-Lipson's, in Brownel Gap, next door to Halick, the dentist?  It was
-quite near to both the Reformed and the Portuguese Synagogues, a useful
-base for operations....  And it was at Mrs. Lipson's that Philip saw
-Strauss duly installed--after a dalliance in a bar parlour where
-Strauss drank a cocktail to fortify himself against the shock of his
-resumption into his tribe's bosom, and where Philip, school cap stuffed
-mournfully into trousers pocket, could not but accept a port and lemon
-for "old time's sake."
-
-"You'll be certain, Philip, to call round for me to-morrow about
-twelve!" exhorted Strauss, as Philip at last left him that evening.
-"What's that, school?  Oh, bother it, I forgot!  Good old Philip,
-sitting at a nice desk doing multiplication sums and putting his hand
-up with the answer!"
-
-"Look here!" Philip objected rawly.  Yet it was difficult to shake off
-the temptation to believe that from more than one point of view, this,
-after all, was a fair epitome of scholastic labour.  "School's all
-right!  There's a good deal in it beyond books and things!" he
-reflected with some wistfulness.  But the basement
-playground-restaurant compared rather dingily, he was uncomfortably
-conscious, with the blare and marble of the Crystal Café.
-
-"Well, you're outgrowing it pretty quickly, I can say that for you!
-What do you say to coming round to-morrow evening?  You could take me
-the round of the district ... and what about a music hall to wind up
-with?"
-
-"I can't let you do all this for me!  It wouldn't be playing the game!
-I mean we've only met to-day and I don't know anything about the
-business side of things, and you see I don't get much money myself.  I
-just give lessons to a master-tailor...."
-
-"Don't be absurd, old boy!  I'll expect you to do the same for me, with
-interest, when I'm down on my luck!  Not a word more!  Five o'clock,
-you think?  Good!  Well, so long, old dear!  Take a Turkish to smoke on
-the way home!"
-
-"Er--thanks!  So long!  Till to-morrow!"
-
-
-At the appointed time next day, at the very door of Mrs. Lipson's
-boarding-house, Philip was seized with a sudden vehement impulse to
-turn his back upon his new friend, simmering enthusiastically somewhere
-beyond those _kosher_ portals.  Where after all was it leading to?  The
-most insensitive nostril could not fail to register the faint odour of
-corruption which hung about Wilfrid Strauss.  Somehow that impeccable
-grey tweed suit was more shoddy than the corduroys of that poor old
-devil trundling a wheelbarrow beside the gutter.  Yet whither did all
-the other roads lead?  Whatever the landscape on the journey, whatever
-pitiful doctrine guided you, where else but to a Wheatley cemetery,
-damp clay, a towsled dog barking emptily?  And how was Strauss less
-valiant a companion thither than Harry and Alec and the rest?  If he
-preferred to chase, not the shadow, but the glittering substance, who
-could blame him?  A fine specimen he himself had become!  Hardly a
-person in Doomington to talk to; at home the unresponsive books--Swift
-and Lamb beginning to gesticulate as little intelligibly as his faded
-poets; at school, still the unsealed barriers!  Nothing left but to
-moon about the streets, remembering, regretting--hoping never.  What,
-indeed, was there to hope for?  The old loyalties were annulled, the
-old dreams crumbled!  Heigh-ho, thank God for Wilfrid Strauss and for
-noise, Life!  It was a chap's duty to himself to know what Life meant
-before Life had done with him, thrown him aside into that long, narrow
-dustbin....
-
-He knocked.  The sound came sharp and clear like a challenge against
-the tedium which had been stupefying him for so weary a time.
-
-Strauss was delighted, charmed.  He had been troubled by spasmodic
-doubts as the afternoon wore on.  Would Massel turn up after all?
-There was something in the lad he couldn't quite fathom, something
-which might turn Philip away from him in the mysterious manner so many
-people he had particularly wished to please had, from time to time,
-turned away.  He hoped he'd turn up if only to save him the strenuous
-necessity of discovering somebody else likely to show him the ropes
-economically.  Besides, there was something distinctly pleasing about
-the youth.  If only he'd dress a little better....  Anyhow, he was
-going to be useful if merely as a guide--though one couldn't call him
-exactly a business man.  He'd more than repay the price of a tea and a
-theatre now and again.  And if he'd only allow himself to be initiated
-into the business, what confidence he would arouse in the most chary
-breast!
-
-There was a value in Philip's friendship Strauss did not recognize so
-consciously.  It gave him a peculiar satisfaction to observe the
-deference that Philip naively paid to his exhibition of nis vanities; a
-satisfaction increased by the knowledge that Philip was a "college
-lad."  It was amusing to gibe at "college lads," to be sure, and one
-didn't actually desire to be a "college lad," yet one could not help
-vulgarly and secretly envying them....  In any case, it's easy enough
-to get rid of a chap when he's outlived his use.  Hadn't he already
-made that discovery often enough?  Time enough for that ... "Come in,
-old man, come in!  Risk a whiskey and soda?"
-
-The tawdry gaieties Strauss had in his command followed in bewildering
-succession.  Books seemed to become less and less important as the
-furtive weeks passed by.  If a memory of his mother came palely before
-him, he would the more speedily betake himself to the company of
-Wilfrid Strauss.  It was difficult to retain those old musics of
-Shelley when the brass bellowed windily across the Regent
-Roller-Skating Rink, and the girls cackled in your ear.  No long time
-elapsed before Strauss had made the rounds of the less reputable cafés,
-the more shady music halls, and, finally, the Doomington Zoological
-Gardens, with their alfresco dancing at the borders of the lake.  The
-delights of the gardens were only vitiated for Philip by the inexorable
-custom which demanded that each male should at rigid intervals kiss his
-paramour--"strag" was the recognized term--in the ludicrously
-inadequate shelter of a laurel shrub.
-
-There followed more than these.  There followed Kate and her lazy eyes
-and the yelp of her animal laughter.
-
-"Deeper, deeper, deeper!" became the insistent burden in Philip's
-brain.  Closer round his feet the mud was gathering.  Yet against this
-one thing he long managed to stand out, though Strauss would return to
-him, rubbing his eyes sleepily, or smacking his lips with luxurious
-appreciation.  Delicately Strauss would suggest how illogical his
-position was, how, seeing it was necessary to take the plunge sooner or
-later, why not now, old sport?
-
-Why not?  More and more cynical his solitary mind was becoming, ever
-the more solitary as Strauss and he were more closely entangled in the
-cult of their pleasures.  What else did women mean?  They would die, he
-would die, securely enough all of them, whatsoever happened in the
-interspace.  Alec's old philosophy was gaining new confirmation.  What
-inhibitions did Life hold by which a youth should not probe for the
-honey of experience, each flower, chaste or poisonous, that opened to
-the sun or moon?
-
-
-"Feivele!" ventured Reb Monash to him one _shabbos_ morning, "Tell me,
-what is this lord's son that takes thee about?  I saw thee with him in
-Brownel Gap on Tuesday when I was going to Rabbi Shimmon.  Thou didst
-not see me, no?  Or maybe it suits thee not--when thou art with thy
-lord's son?  The town talks!  Tell me then, what wills he with thee?
-It likes me him not!"
-
-"Oh, for God's sake, _tatte_...!"
-
-For one moment the flame of the extinguished conflict seemed to glower
-and spit from Philip's eyes.  Then he recovered himself.  He stared
-into the pallor of his father's cheeks, avoiding the eyes, avoiding the
-deep lines of fatigue about the corners of his mouth.  "Nothing,
-_tatte_, a friend!  What will you?"  Reb Monash was about to express
-his unease with another question when he too checked himself and the
-shadow of this new friendship lay between them, heavy, unexplained.
-
-But when next Strauss seductively introduced the name of Kate into the
-conversation, Philip shouted suddenly, at the top of his voice--and in
-Cambridge Street, "Go to the devil, you're a swine!"  He turned
-savagely on his heel and attempted for four evenings to attain
-emancipation in the Doomington Reference Library.  He had not power
-enough, however, after the dull prostration of these months, to resist
-the suave note of apology and invitation which arrived for him on the
-fifth morning.  A little public house near the skating rink the same
-evening found them closer friends than before.
-
-Channah was not so easily subdued as Reb Monash.  She had heard ugly
-reports--the girls at the hat factory were very eloquent on the
-subject--concerning Mr. Strauss and his "goings on."  "Oh, Philip,
-Philip, there's a dear!  Won't you now ... come, Feivele!  Oh, do give
-him up!  I hate him, I hate him!  Give him up for my sake!" ... She
-returned frequently to the attack and knew devastatingly where his
-defences were weakest.  "Not for me, give him up for mother's sake!"
-
-Philip temporized.  He'd think about it.  What was all the worry about;
-couldn't he take care of himself?  Channah, really, old girl, what on
-earth was there to sing about?
-
-"But think!  What would she have said?  She'd have..."
-
-"She'd have loved him!  Just those little ways that any woman..."
-
-"Any woman!  That's just what I said!"
-
-"Oh, shut up, Channah, for Heaven's sake, shut up!"
-
-
-The collapse came suddenly.  It was a shoddy enough affair.  When
-Strauss left him with Kate in Kate's house in Carnford Avenue in order
-to repair next door with her friend, Patsy of the broad bosom and the
-yellow hair, what was there for the youth to do, when Kate with
-half-closed eyes, through soft lips purred, "Coming, honey?" what was
-there but thickly to reply, "I'm following, Kate!" while the temples
-beat like hammers and the banisters seemed clammy with desire and shame.
-
-Somewhat intently Dorah examined him when he returned to Longton next
-morning.  She dropped into the Yiddish suitable for the expression of
-deep feeling.  "_Nu_, and where hast thou been all night?  Not enough
-for thee to come in at twelve, at one, but thou must spend the night
-too!  What was?  Thy socialistic friends or thy wonderful Lord
-Backstreet?  _Blegatchies_, knockabouts, thy whole brotherhood!"
-
-Philip winced.  "Astronomy!" he declared sickly.  "We've been examining
-a new ... a new comet!"
-
-"It is no good for thee, thy Astronomy!" she declared categorically.
-"Thou art a tablecloth!  An evening indoors with a book would do thee
-no harm.  Or thou hast forgotten how to read, say?"
-
-All that day he spent sitting in his own bedroom, a closed book before
-him, staring into the wall-paper beyond.  Neither thoughts nor emotions
-stirred within him; only somewhere far down, there was a sensation as
-of a finger plucking at the strings of an instrument.
-
-He had arranged to see Kate once more, about a week later.  There was
-no conflict now.  Heavily he saw the clock fingers creeping towards the
-hour of his appointment, and listlessly he closed the door behind him.
-A cool, clear evening was about them as Strauss and Philip repaired
-towards Carnford Avenue, with a wind in their faces which, in higher
-levels, was chasing clouds like yachts along the channels of the sky.
-As Kate's door closed behind them, the passing wind seemed to Philip a
-hand which had endeavoured to seize his coat, but, failing, moaned and
-subsided in the dark threshold of the house.
-
-The sensation of something calling and something forsworn did not
-desert him.  Now it was once more a wind attempting to circumvent the
-crooked chimney and sobbing away at length with a rattle in its throat.
-Now it was a finger of flame leaping from the fire in sudden appeal, or
-the sight of his own face in a looking-glass, curiously impressing upon
-him the fact that he had not only brought one self to this place, but
-many selves, some of whom had once played a seemlier part in the comedy
-of his days than he who now produced a distracted image in Kate's
-looking-glass.
-
-Conversation flowed in the room like beer from a public house tap,
-surfaced with froth and smelling stalely.  He was talking with the
-others, but the lips seemed to be as much another's as his own, the
-lips of one over whom he had triumphed once and again, but who was
-triumphing now.  Wilfrid Strauss seemed a mannikin manufactured from a
-pliant glass, though he showed his rings and crossed his legs as if his
-limbs were flesh and bone; transparent almost he seemed, so that the
-ugly design of the wall-paper was not intercepted by his contour;
-almost brittle, as if, were someone to handle him roughly, he would
-fall to the ground in fragments tinkling sharply.  And when finally he
-withdrew with Patsy, the peculiar illusion remained with Philip that he
-had never in his life encountered a person whose farcical name was
-Wilfrid Strauss.
-
-Yet when the woman whispered "Come!" the friend of Wilfrid Strauss did
-not disobey.  The wind was still clawing at the window-pane as they
-entered her room.  It was only when his eyes were closing in sleep that
-he saw moonlight invade the room and heard the wind wailing in the last
-horizon.
-
-
-When he awoke the room was aflood with moonlight.  It flowed over the
-bed making the sheets and counterpane cloth of silver.  The walls
-dropped from the ceiling in straight falls of frozen mist, the floor
-shone like a beaten metal.  It seemed to him that a voice came upon the
-path of the moonrays, a voice not of sound but light, saying: Go!  If
-it was the mother who had seemed to be dead or perhaps--could it
-be?--that woman he had met once in the central gloom of Doomington and
-whom he could so clearly envision now, he could not decide--that woman
-who had long ago taken him to her bed on the night when he had fled
-from his early terrors.  Or perhaps it was none other than his own
-voice--for he was about to break free at last--insistently saying, Go,
-do not delay!
-
-It was with no sense of shame that he rose from the bed and dressed
-quietly in that wizard room.  In this world of cool clear beauty, at
-this time of vision, shame had no place.  Had he departed from beauty,
-from vision?  He would return thither again.
-
-Kate's hair lay over her face as she slept.  He bent and smoothed her
-hair aside and moved away quietly.
-
-He opened the front door of the house and walked along the deserted
-pavement of Carnford Avenue.  Walking was not swift enough, it was too
-deliberate.  He ran, his limbs loosely swinging over the dark streets.
-He ran effortlessly like a deer glimpsed through woods.  He had no
-consciousness of direction and though he ran far he was not fatigued.
-No thought kept pace beside him beyond the knowledge of his running.
-
-A policeman appeared suddenly from the gloom of a shop entrance.  He
-brought down his hand menacingly on Philip's shoulder.  Philip stopped
-dead.
-
-"Just a tick, my fine young feller!" the policeman exclaimed.  "Where
-are you coming from?"
-
-"From Babylon!" Philip shouted.  "Let me go!  Get out of my way!"
-
-"B--b--babel--what?" the policeman stammered.  His upraised arm fell to
-his side.  The lad was fifty yards away, once more running swiftly and
-evenly.  Yet no!  He wasn't a burglar!  It wasn't that!  He wasn't
-carrying anything, and he certainly wasn't frightened!  Drunk?  Oh no,
-not drunk!  Well then, what the 'ell?  If it came to anybody being
-frightened...!  He lifted his helmet, passed his hand over his hair and
-withdrew again into the shop entrance.
-
-Baxter's Hill!  No sense of recognition or surprise arrested Philip
-when he found himself skirting the foot of the hill and, before long,
-running over the grassy path by the Mitchen River.  Here he had found
-escape before to-night, here wall after wall that girdled the city of
-his slaveries had come crashing down!  But as he left the bridge behind
-him and followed two or three broad curves of the river, out toward the
-cleaner spaces of water, he was conscious only that his strength was
-almost spent and his feet were dragging.  Suddenly he collapsed.  His
-legs gave way at the knees and his forehead fell into thick grass.  The
-strange elation which had impelled him into the night, in a single
-moment deserted him.  His body was racked with misery, his face
-twitched.  With a last effort he turned his body round, stretched out
-his arms, and lay staring into passionless night.  Stark misery held
-him clamped to the ground.
-
-Vain and vain, he felt, his life had been, his life consummated now by
-this last treachery!  Each of his little philosophies had but pandered
-to his conceit, to his sentimental stupidities, immured him the more
-closely in the stinking castle of Self.  Sex had led him away and he
-had wallowed in its sty--he who had been granted, by his living mother
-and his dead, the surest path into open spaces and a wind from the
-sea....
-
-So for some time in this black despair he reproached himself with
-having at no time accepted the clean way; as having been always odious,
-an insect in rotten wood.  The mood passed.  Another came, not armed
-with talons, but cold, profound, like a fog.  How long this mood lasted
-there can be no telling.  Yet it was at the very heart of this
-desolation that he became aware of a warmth and a benediction which had
-descended upon him.  His face was being soothed with the contact of
-kindly flesh!  He heard the breathing of an animal.  At last he knew
-that a horse was moving its soft mouth up and down his face, assuring
-him that now he might throw aside his sorrow, enter once more into the
-company of innocent things.  A few yards away he perceived another
-horse grazing, a misty sweetness against the background of night.  The
-beauty of the arched line of its neck seemed almost to arrest his
-heart.  The horse over him, as having achieved its intent, brought its
-head away.  He could hear the champing of its jaws, the tearing of
-grass.
-
-The lad looked steadily towards the waned stars and the clear moon.
-Much lay behind him, he knew.  More lay in front of him.  Beyond the
-bridge along the road, deep in his city, lay a little thing and a
-great, the first republic, School, whose citizenship he must yet earn.
-He had moved there hitherto with averted eyes, a stranger.  Thence
-great affairs and greater expanded circle-wise, beyond race, beyond
-country, beyond even the gigantic world, out beyond the moon, the sun;
-even--he laughed aloud--even into the hazard of the very stars.
-
-He rose from the grass and walked over to the water's edge.  The air
-was warm with the new summer.  The two horses moved about near him,
-like friends.  He was young, young!  Come, it would be morning soon!
-Was a sleepy bird already singing a first song?
-
-He slipped off his clothes swiftly and dived into the water.  When he
-rose again, the water-drops flung from his hair gleamed like gems.  It
-was cold, harshly, superbly cold; but he shouted for joy as he struck
-for the bank in the first breath of the morning.  The horses rubbed
-their noses together and communed.
-
-
-
-
-GLOSSARY
-
-(_The following Yiddish words--mainly, of course, of Hebrew or German
-extraction--are spelt in such a fashion as rather to recall their
-actual pronunciation than to indicate what is often a dubious or mixed
-origin._)
-
-_Becher_.  Beaker.
-
-_Blintsie_.  A thin cake, usually of mashed potatoes, and fried in oil.
-
-_Bobbie_.  Grandmother.
-
-_Chayder_.  A Hebrew school.
-
-_Chazan_.  A professional cantor at services.
-
-_Davenning_.  The reciting of prayers, which must not be interrupted by
-extraneous matter.
-
-_Folg mir_.  Obey me.
-
-_Gollus_.  The dispersion; the exile.
-
-_Goyishke_.  Gentile (adj.).
-
-_Ligner_.  Liar.
-
-_Machzer_.  Festival prayer-book.
-
-_Maggid_.  Professional orator.
-
-_Minchah_.  Afternoon service.
-
-_Minyon_.  The quorum of ten worshippers for prayer.
-
-_Mishkosheh_.  Be content; that will do.
-
-_Mitzvah_.  Lit. a command; hence, a pious act.
-
-_Nekaveh_.  A female.
-
-_Perinny_.  An exaggerated eiderdown.
-
-_Shabbos_.  The Sabbath Day, Saturday, on which, among many
-prohibitions, it is forbidden to ride.
-
-_Shiksah_.  A Gentile girl.
-
-_Shmaltz_.  Fat, usually of fowls.
-
-_Shmeis_.  To give a whipping.
-
-_Shool_.  Synagogue.
-
-_Takke_.  Indeed.
-
-_Tallus and Tephilim_.  Praying-shawl and phylacteries.
-
-_Yamelke_.  Skull-cap.
-
-_Yeshiveh_.  A highly advanced _chayder_.
-
-_Yom tov_.  Lit. a good day; hence, festival.
-
-_Zadie_.  Grandfather.
-
-
-
-_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England_.  William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Forward from Babylon, by Louis Golding
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORWARD FROM BABYLON ***
-
-***** This file should be named 56178-8.txt or 56178-8.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/1/7/56178/
-
-Produced by Al Haines
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
-be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
-law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
-so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
-States without permission and without paying copyright
-royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
-of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
-concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
-and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
-specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
-eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
-for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
-performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
-away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
-not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
-trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
-
-START: FULL LICENSE
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
-Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
-destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
-possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
-Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
-by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
-person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
-1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
-agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
-Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
-of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
-works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
-States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
-United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
-claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
-displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
-all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
-that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
-free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
-works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
-Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
-comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
-same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
-you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
-in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
-check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
-agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
-distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
-other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
-representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
-country outside the United States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
-on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
-  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
-  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
-  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
-  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
-  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
-  are located before using this ebook.
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
-derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
-contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
-copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
-the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
-redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
-either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
-obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
-additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
-beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
-any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
-to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
-other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
-version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
-(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
-to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
-of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
-Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
-full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-provided that
-
-* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
-  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
-  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
-  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
-  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
-  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
-  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
-  Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
-  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
-  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
-  works.
-
-* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
-  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
-  receipt of the work.
-
-* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
-Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
-Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
-contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
-or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
-intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
-other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
-cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
-with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
-with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
-lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
-or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
-opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
-the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
-without further opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
-OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
-LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
-damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
-violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
-agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
-limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
-unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
-remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
-accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
-production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
-including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
-the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
-or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
-additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
-Defect you cause.
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
-computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
-exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
-from people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
-generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
-Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
-www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
-U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
-mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
-volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
-locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
-Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
-date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
-official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-
-    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-    Chief Executive and Director
-    gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
-state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
-donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
-freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
-distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
-volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
-the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
-necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
-edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
-facility: www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-