he arrived at last, with a few charity coins in his pocket, in the familiar spitalfields alley, guarded by the three iron posts over which he remembered his [307]yankely leaping. his heart was full of tears and memories. ah, there was the butcher's shop still underneath the old apartment, with the tin labels stuck in the kosher meat, and there was gideon, the fat, genial butcher, flourishing his great carving-knife as of yore, though without that ancient smile of brotherly recognition. gideon's frigidity chilled him; it was an inauspicious omen, a symptom of things altered, irrevocable.
'does mrs. mandle still live here?' he asked with a horrible heart-sinking.
'yes, first floor,' said gideon, staring.
ah, how his heart leapt up again! haigitcha, his dear haigitcha! he went up the ever-open dusty staircase jostling against a spruce, handsome young fellow who was hurrying down. he looked back with a sudden conviction that it was his son. his heart swelled with pride and affection; but ere he could cry 'yankely' the young fellow was gone. he heard the whirr of machines. yes, she had kept on the workshop, the wonderful creature, though crippled by his loss and the want of capital. doubtless s. cohn's kind-hearted firm had helped her to tide over the crisis. ah, what a blackguard he had been! and she had brought up the children unaided. dear haigitcha! what madness had driven him from her side? but he would make amends—yes, he would make amends. he would slip again into his own niche, take up the old burdens and the old delights—perhaps even be again treasurer of 'the gates of mercy.'
he knocked at the door. haigitcha herself opened it.
[308]he wanted to cry her name, but the word stuck in his throat. for this was not his haigitcha; this was a new creature, cold, stern, tragic, prematurely aged, framed in the sombre shadows of the staircase. and in her eyes was neither rapture nor remembrance.
'what is it?' she asked.
'i am elkan; don't you know me?'
she stared with a little gasp, and a heaving of the flat breasts. then she said icily: 'and what do you want?'
'i am come back,' he muttered hoarsely in yiddish.
'and where is gittel?' she answered in the same idiom.
the needles of the whirring machines seemed piercing through his brain. so london knew that gittel had been the companion of his flight! he hung his head.
'i was only with her one year,' he whispered.
'then go back to thy dung-heap!' she shut the door.
he thrust his foot in desperately ere it banged to. 'haigitcha!' he shrieked. 'let me come in. forgive me, forgive me!'
it was a tug-of-war. he forced open the door; he had a vision of surprised 'hands' stopping their machines, of a beautiful, startled girl holding the ends of a half-laid tablecloth—his rachel, oh, his rachel!
'open the window, one of you!' panted haigitcha, her shoulders still straining against the door. 'call a policeman—the man is drunk!'
he staggered back, his pressure relaxed, the door slammed. this repetition of his 'yvonne rupert' experience sobered him effectually. what right, [309]indeed, had he to force himself upon this woman, upon these children, to whom he was dead? so might a suicide hope to win back his place in the old life. life had gone on without him—had no need of him. ah, what a punishment god had prepared for him! closed doors to the past, closed doors everywhere.
and this terrible sense of exclusion had not now the same palliative of righteous resentment. with yvonne rupert, the splendid-flaming, vicious ingrate, he had felt himself the sinned against. but before this wife-widow, this dutiful, hard-working, tragic creature, he had nothing but self-contempt. he tottered downstairs. how should he even get his bread—he whose ill-fame was doubtless the gossip of the ghetto? if he could only get hold of gideon's carving-knife!
