# The King of Schnorrers (Collection)/Flutter-Duck: A Ghetto Grotesque

Contents
Flutter-Duck.
A GHETTO GROTESQUE.
CHAPTER I.
FLUTTER-DUCK IN FEATHER.
Although everybody calls her "Flutter-Duck "now, there was a time when the inventor had exclusive rights in the nickname, and used it only in the privacy of his own apartment. That time did not last long, for the inventor was Flutter-Duck's husband, and his apartment was a public work-room among other things. He gave her the name in Yiddish—Flatterkatchki—a descriptive music in syllables, full of the flutter and quack of the farm-yard. It expressed his dissatisfaction with her airy, flighty propensities, her love of gaiety and gadding. She was a butterfly, irresponsible. off to balls and parties almost once a month, and he, a self-conscious ant, resented her. From the point of view of piety she was also sadly to seek, rejecting wigs in favour of the fringe. In the weak moments of early love her husband had acquiesced in the profanity, but later all the gain to her soft prettiness did not compensate for the twinges of his conscience. ​370 FL UTTER-D UCK.
Flutter-Duck's husband was a furrier — a master- furrier, for did he not run a workshop ? This workshop was also his living-room, and this living-room was also his bedroom. It was a large front room on the first floor, over a chandler's shop in an old-fashioned house in Montague Street, White- chapel. Its shape was peculiar — an oblong stretching streetwards, interrupted in one of the longer walls by a square projection that might have been accounted a room in itself (by the landlord), and was, indeed, used as a kitchen. That the fireplace had been built in this corner was thus an advantage. Entering through the door on the grand staircase, you found yourself nearest the window with the bulk of the room on your left, and the square recess at the other end of your wall, so that you could not see it at first. At the window, which, of course, gave on Montague Street, was the bare wooden table at which the " hands " — man, woman, and boy — sat and stitched. The finished work — a confusion of fur caps, boas, tippets, and trimmings — hung over the dirty wainscot between the door and the recess. The middle of the room was quite bare, to give the workers freedom of movement, but the wall facing you was a back- ground for luxurious furniture. First — nearest the window — came a sofa, on which even in the first years of marriage Flutter- Duck's husband sometimes lay prone, too unwell to do more than superintend the operations, for he was of a consumptive habit. Over the sofa hung a large gilt-framed mirror, the gilt protected by muslin drapings, in the corners of which flyblown paper flowers grew. Next to the sofa was a high chest of drawers crowned with dusty decanters, and after an interval filled up with the Sabbath clothes hanging on pegs and covered by a white sheet ; the bed used up the rest of the space, its head and one side touching the walls, and its foot stretching towards the kitchen fire. On ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 371
the wall above this fire hung another mirror, — small and narrow, and full of wavering, watery reflections, — also framed in muslin, though this time the muslin served to conceal dirt, not to protect gilt. The kitchen-dresser, decorated with pink needle-work paper, was at right angles to the fireplace, and it faced the kitchen table, at which Flutter-Duck cleaned fish, peeled potatoes, and made meat kosher by salting and soaking it, as Rabbinic law demanded.
By the foot of the bed, in the narrow wall opposite the window, was a door leading to a tiny inner room. For years this door remained locked ; another family lived on the other side, and the furrier had neither the means nor the need for an extra bedroom. It was a room made for esca- pades and romances, connected with the back-yard by a steep ladder, up and down which the family might be seen going, and from which you could tumble into a broken- headed water-butt, or, by a dexterous back-fall, arrive in a dustbin. Jacob's ladder the neighbours called it, though the family name was Isaacs.
And over everything was the trail of the fur. The air was full of a fine fluff — a million little hairs floated about the room covering everything, insinuating themselves every- where, getting down the backs of the workers and tickling them, getting into their lungs and making them cough, get- ting into their food and drink and sickening them till they learnt callousness. They awoke with " furred " tongues, and they went to bed with them. The irritating filaments gathered on their clothes, on their faces, on the crockery, on the sofa, on the mirrors (big and little), on the bed, on the decanters, on the sheet that hid the Sabbath clothes — an impalpable down overlaying everything, penetrating even to the drinking-water in the board-covered zinc bucket, and ​372 FL UTTER-D UCK.
covering " Rebbitzin," the household cat, with foreign fur. And in this room, drawing such breath of life, they sat — man, woman, boy — bending over boas bewitching young ladies would skate in ; stitch, stitch, from eight till two and from three to eight, with occasional overtime that ran on now and again far into the next day ; till their eyelids would not keep open any longer, and they couched on the floor on a heap of finished work ; stitch, stitch, winter and summer, all day long, swallowing hirsute bread and butter at nine in the morning, and pausing at tea-time for five o'clock fur. And when twilight fell the gas was lit in the crowded room, thickening still further the clogged atmosphere, charged with human breaths and street odours, and wafts from the kitchen corner and the leathery smell of the dyed skins ; and at times the yellow fog would steal in to contribute its clammy vapours. And often of a winter's' morning the fog arrived early, and the gas that had lighted the first hours of work would burn on all day in the thick air, flaring on the Oriental figures w r ith that strange glamour of gas-light in fog, and throwing heavy shadows on the bare boards ; glazing with satin sheen the pendent snakes of fur, illuming the bowed heads of the workers and the master's sickly face under the tasselled smoking-cap, and touching up the faded fineries of Flutter-Duck, as she flitted about, chattering and cooking.
Into such an atmosphere Flutter-Duck one day introduced a daughter, the " hands " getting an afternoon off, in honour not of the occasion but of decency. After that the crying of an infant became a feature of existence in the furrier's workshop ; gradually it got rarer, as little Rachel grew up and reconciled herself to life. But the fountain of tears never quite ran dry. Rachel was a passionate child, and did not enjoy the best of parents. ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 373
Every morning Flutter- Duck, who felt very grateful to Heaven for this crowning boon, — at one time bitterly du- bious, — made the child say her prayers. Flutter- Duck said them word by word, and Rachel repeated them. They were in Hebrew, and neither Flutter- Duck nor Rachel had the least idea what they meant. For years these prayers preluded stormy scenes.
"Mediant/" Flutter-Duck would begin.
" Mediani!" little Rachel would lisp in her piping voice. It was two words, but Flutter-Duck imagined it was one. She gave the syllables in recitative, the dni just two notes higher than the medi i and she accented them quite wrongly. When Rachel first grew articulate, Flutter-Duck was so overjoyed to hear the little girl echoing her, that she would often turn to her husband with an exclamation of " Thou hearest, Lewis, love?"
And he, impatiently : " Nee, nee, I hear."
Flutter-Duck, thus recalled from the pleasures of mater- nity to its duties, would recommence the prayer. " Medi- am!
Which little Rachel would silently ignore.
" Mediani! ' Flutter- Duck's tone would now be impera- tive and ill-tempered.
Then little Rachel would turn to her father querulously. " She thayth it again, Mediani, father ! "
And Flutter-Duck, outraged by this childish insolence, would exclaim, "Thou hearest, Lewis, love?" and incon- tinently fall to clouting the child. And the father, annoyed by the shrill ululation consequent upon the clouting : " Nee, nee, I hear too much." Rachel's refusal to be coerced into giving devotional over-measure was not merely due to her sense of equity. Her appetite counted for more. Prayers were the avenue to breakfast, and to pamper her feather​374 FL UTTER-D UCK.
headed mother in repetitions was to put back the meal. Flutter- Duck was quite capable of breaking down, even in the middle, if her attention was distracted for a moment, and of trying back from the very beginning. She would, for example, get as far as " Hear — my daughter — the in- struction — of thy mother," giving out the words one by one in the sacred language which was to her abracadabra.
And little Rachel, equally in the dark, would repeat obe- diently, "Hear — my daughter — the instruction of — thy mother." Then the kettle would boil, or Flutter-Duck would overhear a remark made by one of the " hands," and interject: "Yes, I'd give him !' or, "A fat lot she knows about it," or some phrase of that sort ; after which she would grope for the lost thread of prayer, and end by ejac- ulating desperately : —
"Medidnif"
And the child sternly setting her face against this flip- pancy, there would be slapping and screaming, and if the father protested, Flutter-Duck would toss her head, and rejoin in her most dignified English : " If I bin a mother, I bin a mother ! "
To the logical adult it will be obvious that the little girl's obstinacy put the breakfast still further back ; but then, ob- stinate little girls are not logical, and when Rachel had been beaten she would eat no breakfast at all. She sat sullenly in the corner, her pretty face swollen by weeping, and her great black eyes suffused with tears. Only her father could coax her then. He would go so far as to allow her to nurse " Rebbitzin," without reminding her that the creat- ure's touch would make her forget all she knew, and convert her into a " cat's-head." And certainly Rachel always for- got not to touch the cat. Possibly the basis of her father's psychological superstition was the fact that the cat is an ​FL U J ' TER-D UC 'K. 375
unclean animal, not to be handled, for he would not touch puss himself, though her pious title of " Rebbitzin," or Rabbi's wife, was the invention of this master of nicknames. But for such flashes no one would have suspected the stern little man of humour. But he had it — dry. He called the cat " Rebbitzin " ever since the day she refused to drink milk after meat. Perhaps she was gorged with the meat. But he insisted that the cat had caught religion through living in a Jewish family, and he developed a theory that she would not eat meat till it was kosher, so that in its earlier stages it might be exposed without risk of feline larceny.
Cats are soothing to infants, but they ceased to satisfy Rachel when she grew up. Her education, while it gratified Her Majesty's Inspectors, was not calculated to eradicate the domestic rebel in her. At school she learnt of the existence of two Hebrew words, called Moudeh am, but it was not till some time after that it flashed upon her that they were closely related to Mediant, and the discovery did not improve her opinion of her mother. She was a bonny child, who promised to be a beautiful girl, and her teachers petted her. They dressed well, these teachers, and Rachel ceased to consider Flutter-Duck's Sabbath shawl the stand- ard of taste and splendour. Ere she was in her teens she grumbled at her home surroundings, and even fell foul of the all-pervading fur, thereby quarrelling with her bread and butter in more senses than one. She would open the win- dow — strangely fastidious — to eat her bread and butter off the broad ledge outside the room, but often the fur only came flying the faster to the spot, as if in search of air ; and in the winter her pretentious queasiness set everybody re- monstrating and shivering in the sudden draught.
Her objection to fur did not, however, embrace the prep​376 FLUT TER-D UCK.
aration of it, for after school hours the little girl sat patiently stitching till late at night, by way of apprenticeship to her future, buoyed up by her earnings, and adding strip to strip, with the hair going all the same way, till she had made a great black snake. Of course she did not get anything near three-halfpence for twelve yards, like the real " hands," but whatever she earnt went towards her Festival frocks, which she would have got in any case. Not knowing this, she was happy to deserve the pretty dresses she loved, and was least impatient of her mother's chatter when Flutter- Duck dinned into her ears how pretty she looked in them. Alas ! it is to be feared Lewis was right, that Flutter- Duck was a rattle-brain indeed. And the years which brought Flutter-Duck prosperity, which emancipated her from personal participation in the sewing, and gave Rachel the little bedroom to herself, did not bring wisdom. When Flutter-Duck's felicity culminated in a maid-servant (if only one who slept out), she was like a child with a monkey-on-a-stick. She gave the servant orders merely to see her arms and legs moving. She also lay late in bed to enjoy the spectacle of the factotum making the nine o'clock coffee it had been for so many years her own duty to pre- pare for the " hands." How sweetly the waft of chicory came to her nostrils ! At first her husband remonstrated.
"It is not beautiful," he said. "You ought to get up before the ' hands ' come."
Flutter-Duck flushed resentfully. " If I bin a missis, I bin a missis," she said with dignity. It became one of her formulae. When the servant developed insolence, as under Flutter-Duck's fostering familiarity she did, Flutter-Duck would resume her dignity with a jerk.
" If I bin a missis," she would say, tossing her flighty head haughtily, " I bin a missis." ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 377
CHAPTER II.
A MIGRATORY BIRD,
" There strode a stranger to the door, And it was windy weather."
— Tennyson: The Goose.
One day, when Rachel was nineteen, there came to the workshop a handsome young man. He had been brought by a placard in the window of the chandler's shop, and was found to answer perfectly to its wants. He took his place at the work-table, and soon came to the front as a wage- earner, wielding a dexterous needle that rarely snapped, even in white fur. His name was Emanuel Lefkovitch, and his seat was next to Rachel's. For Rachel had long since entered into her career, and the beauty of her early-blos- soming womanhood was bent day after day over strips of rabbit-skin, which she made into sealskin jackets. For compensation to her youth Rachel walked out on the Sabbath elegantly attired in the latest fashion. She ordered her own frocks now, having a banking account of her own, in a tin box that was hidden away in her little bedroom. Her father honourably paid her a wage as large as she would have got elsewhere — otherwise she would have gone there. Her Sabbath walks extended as far as Hyde Park, and she loved to watch the fine ladies cantering in the Row, or lolling in luxurious carriages. Sometimes she even peeped into fashionable restaurants. She became the admir- ing disciple of a girl who worked at a Jewish furrier's in Regent Street, and whose occidental habitat gave her a halo of aristocracy. Even on Friday nights Rachel would disap- pear from the sacred domesticity of the Sabbath hearth, and ​378 FLUTTER-DUCK.
Flutter- Duck suspected that she went to the Cambridge Music Hall in Spitalfields. This led to dramatic scenes, for Rachel's frovvardness had not decreased with age. If she had only gone out with some accredited young man, Flutter-Duck could have borne the scandal in view of the joyous prospect of becoming a grandmother. But no ! Rachel tolerated no matrimonial advances, not even from the most seductive of SJiadchanim, though her voluptuous figure and rosy lips marked her out for the marriage- broker's eye. Her father had grown sterner with the growth of his malady, and though at the bottom of his heart he loved and was proud of his beautiful Rachel, the words that rose to his lips were often as harsh and bitter as Flutter-Duck's own, so that the girl would withdraw sullenly into herself and hold no converse with her parents for days. Nevertheless, there were plenty of halcyon intervals, especially in the busy season, when the extra shillings made the whole work-room brisk and happy, and the furriers gossiped of this and that, and told stories more droll than decorous. And then, too, every day was a delightfully inevitable sweep towards the Sabbath, and every Sabbath was a spoke in the great revolving wheel that brought round to them picturesque Festivals, or solemn Fasts, scarcely less enjoyable. And so there was an undercurrent of poetry below the sordid prose of daily life, and rifts in the grey t'o^, through which they caught glimpses of the azure vast- ness overarching the world. And the advent of Emanuel Lefkovitch distinctly lightened the atmosphere. His hand- some face, his gay spirits, were like an influx of ozone. Rachel was perceptibly the brighter for his presence. She was gentler to everybody, even to her parents, and chatted vivaciously, and walked with an airier step ! The sickly master-furrier's face lit up with pleasure as from his sofa he ​FL UT1 '/•: R-D I r CK. 379
watched Emanuel's assiduous attentions to his girl in the way of picking up scissors and threading needles, and he frowned when Flutter-Duck hovered about the young man, chattering and monopolising his conversation.
But one fine morning, some months after Emanuel's arrival, a change came over the spirit of the scene. There was a knock at the door, and an ugly, shabby woman, in a green tartan shawl, entered. She scrutinised the room sharply, then uttered a joyful cry of " Emanuel, my love ! " and threw herself upon the handsome young man with an affectionate embrace. Emanuel, flushed and paralysed, was a ludicrous figure, and the workers tittered, not unfamiliar with marital contretemps.
" Let me be," he said sullenly at last, as he untwined her dogged arms. " I tell you I won't have anything to do with you. It's no use."
" Oh no, Emanuel, love, don't say that ; not after all these months?"
" Go away ! " cried Emanuel hoarsely.
"Be not so obstinate," she persisted, in wheedling accents, stroking his flaming cheeks. " Kiss little Joshua and little Miriam."
Here the spectators became aware of two woe-begone infants dragging at her skirts.
" Go away ! " repeated Emanuel passionately, and pushed her from him with violence.
The ugly, shabby woman burst into hysterical tears.
" My own husband, dear people," she sobbed, addressing the room. " My own husband — married to me in Poland five years ago. See, I have the Cesubah .' ' She half drew the marriage parchment from her bosom. " And he won't live with me ! Every time he runs away from me. Last time I saw him was in Liverpool, on the eve of Tabernacles. ​380 FLUTTER-DUCK.
And before that I had to go and find him in Newcastle, and he promised me never to go away again — yes, you did, you know you did, Emanuel, love. And here have I been look- ing weeks for you at all the furriers and tailors, without bread and salt for the children, and the Board of Guardians won't believe me, and blame me for coming to London. Oh, Emanuel, love, God shall forgive you."
Her dress was dishevelled, her wig awry ; big tears streamed down her cheeks.
"How can I live with an old witch like that?" asked Emanuel, in brutal self-defence.
"There are worse than me in the world," rejoined the woman meekly.
" Nee, nee," roughly interposed the master-furrier, who had risen from his sofa in the excitement of the scene. " It is not beautiful not to live with one's wife." He paused to cough. " You must not put her to shame."
" It's she who puts me to shame." Emanuel turned to Rachel, who had let her work slip to the floor, and whose face had grown white and stern, and continued depre- catingly, " I never wanted her. They caught me by a trick."
" Don't talk to me," snapped Rachel, turning her back on him.
The woman looked at her suspiciously — the girl's beauty seemed to burst upon her for the first time. " He is my husband," she repeated, and made as if she would draw out the Cesubah again.
" Nee, nee, enough ! " said the master-furrier curtly. " You are wasting our time. Your husband shall live with you, or he shall not work with me."
" You have deceived us, you rogue ! " put in Flutter-Duck shrilly. ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 381
" Did I ever say I was a single man?" retorted Emanuel, shrugging his shoulders.
" There ! He confesses it ! " cried his wife in glee. " Come, Emanuel, love," and she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him passionately. " Do not be obstinate."
" I can't come now," he said, with sulky facetiousness. " Where are you living? "
She told him, and he said he would come when work was over.
" On your faith ? " she asked, with another uneasy glance at Rachel.
" On my faith," he answered.
She moved towards the door, with her draggle-tail of infants. As she was vanishing, he called shame-facedly to the departing children, —
" Well, Joshua ! Well, Miriam ! Is this the way one treats a father? A nice way your mother has brought you up ! "
They came back to him dubiously, with unwashed, pathetic faces, and he kissed them. Rachel bent down to pick up her rabbit-skin. Work was resumed in dead silence.
CHAPTER III.
FLIGHT.
"The goose flew this way and flew that, And filled the house with clamour."
— TENNYSON: The Goose.
Flutter-Duck could not resist rushing in to show the gorgeous goose she had bought from a man in the street — a most wonderful bargain. Although it was only a Wednes​382 FL U T TER-D UCK.
day, why should they not have a goose? They were at the thick of the busy season, and the winter promised to be bit- ter, so they could afford it.
" Nee, nee ; there are enough Festivals in our religion already," grumbled her husband, who, despite his hacking cough, had been driven to the work-table by the plentifulness of work and the scarcity of " hands."
"Almost as big a goose as herself! " whispered Emanuel Lefkovitch to his circle. He had made his peace with his wife, and was again become the centre of the work-room's gaiety. " What a bargain ! " he said aloud, clucking his tongue with admiration. And Flutter-Duck, consoled for her husband's criticism, scurried out again to have her bar- gain killed by the official slaughterer.
When she returned, doleful and indignant, with the goose still in her basket, and the news that the functionary had re- fused it Jewish execution, and pronounced it tripha (un- clean) for some minute ritual reason, she broke off her denunciation of the vendor from a sudden perception that some graver misfortune had happened in her absence.
" Nee, nee," said Lewis, when she stopped her chatter. " Decidedly God will not have us make Festival to-day. Even you must work."
"Me?" gasped Flutter-Duck.
Then she learnt that Emanuel Lefkovitch, whom she had left so gay, had been taken with acute pains — and had had to go home. And work pressed, and Flutter-Duck must under-study him in all her spare moments. She was terribly vexed — she had arranged to go and see an old crony's daughter married in the Synagogue that afternoon, and she would have to give that up, if indeed her husband did not even expect her to give up the ball in the evening. She temporarily tethered the goose's leg to a bed-post by a long ​FL I r T TER- D UCK. 383
string, so that for the rest of the day the big bird waddled pompously about the floor and under the bed, unconscious to what or whom it owed its life, and blissfully unaware that it was trip ha.
" Nee, nee," sniggered Lewis, as Flutter-Duck savagely kicked the cat out of her way. " Don't be alarmed, Reb- bitzin won't attack it. Rebbitzin is a better judge of triphas than you."
It was another cat, but it was the same joke.
Flutter-Duck began to clean the fish with intensified viciousness. She had bought them as a substitute for the goose, and they were a constant reminder of her complex ill- hap. Very soon she cut her finger, and scoured the walls vainly in search of cobweb ligature. Bitter was her plaint of the servant's mismanagement ; when she herself had looked after the house there had been no lack of cobwebs in the corners. Nor was this the end of Flutter-Duck's mis- fortunes. When, in the course of the afternoon, she sent up to Mrs. Levy on the second floor to remind her that she would be wanting her embroidered petticoat for the evening, answer came back that it was the anniversary of Mrs. Levy's mother's death, and she could not permit even her petticoat to go to a wedding. Finally, the gloves that Flutter-Duck borrowed from the chandler's wife were split at the thumbs. And so the servant was kept running to and fro, spoiling the neighbours for the greater glory of Flutter-Duck. It was only at the eleventh hour that an embroidered petticoat was obtained.
Altogether there was electricity in the air, and Emanuel was not present to divert it down the rod of jocularity. The furriers stitched sullenly, with a presentiment of storm. But it held over all day, and there was hope the currents would pass harmlessly away. ​384 FLUTTER-DUCK.
With the rising of Flutter-Duck from the work-table, however, the first rumblings began. Lewis did not attempt to restrain her from her society dissipation, but he fumed in- wardly throughout her toilette. More than ever he realised, as he sat coughing and bending over the ermine he was tufting with black spots, the incompatibility of this union between ant and butterfly, and occasionally his thought would shoot out in dry sarcasm. But Flutter-Duck had passed beyond the plane in which Lewis existed as her husband. All day she had talked freely, if a whit condescendingly, to her fellow-furriers, lamenting the mischances of the day ; but in proportion as she began to get clean and beautiful, as the muslins of the great mirror became a frame for a gorgeous picture of a lady, Flutter-Duck grew more and more aloof from workaday interests, felt herself borne into a higher world of radiance and elegance, into a rarefied atmosphere of gentility, that froze her to statue-like frigidity.
She was not Flutter-Duck then.
And when she was quite dressed for the wedding, and had put on the earrings with the coloured stones and the crowning glory of the chignon of false plaits, stuck over with little artificial white flowers, the female neighbours came crowding into the work-room boudoir to see how she looked, and she revolved silently for their inspection like a dress- maker's figure, at most acknowledging their compliments with monosyllables. She had invited them to come and admire her appearance, but by the time they came she had grown too proud to speak to them. Even the women of whose finery she wore fragments, and who had contributed to her splendour, seemed to her poor dingy creatures, whose contact would sully her embroidered petticoat. In grotesque contrast with her peacock-like stateliness, the big tripha goose began to get lively, cackling and flapping about within ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 385
its radius, as if the soul of Flutter- Duck had passed into its body.
The moment of departure had come. The cab stood at the street-door, and a composite crowd stood round the cab. In the Ghetto a cab has special significance, and Flutter-Duck would have to pass to hers through an avenue of polyglot commentators. At the last moment, adjusting her fleecy wrap over her head like any grande dame (from whom she differed only in the modesty of her high bodice and her full sleeves), Flutter-Duck discovered that there was a great rent in one part of the wrap and a great stain in another. She uttered an exclamation of dismay — this seemed to her the climax of the day's misfortunes.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she cried, her dignity almost melting in tears.
The by-standers made sympathetic but profitless noises.
" Oh, double it another way," jerked Rachel from the work-table. " Come here, I'll do it for you."
" Are you too lazy to come here ? " replied Flutter-Duck irritably. Rachel rose and went towards her, and rearranged the wrap.
" Oh no, that won't do," complained Flutter-Duck, attitudinising before the glass. " It shows as bad as ever. Oh, what shall I do?"
"Do you know what I'll tell you?" said her husband meditatively : " Don't go ! "
Flutter-Duck threw him a fiery look.
"Oh well," said Rachel, shrugging her shoulders and thrusting forward her lip contemptuously, " it'll have to do."
" No, it won't — lend me your pink one."
" I'm not going to have my pink one dirtied, too," grumbled Rachel. ​
    s< I FL UTTER-D UCK.
" Do you hear what I say?" exclaimed Flutter-Duck, with increasing wrath. " Give me the pink wrap ! When the mother says is said ! " And she looked around the group of spectators, in search of sympathy with her trials and admiration for her maternal dignity.
" I can never keep anything for myself," said Rachel sullenly. " You never take care of anything."
"I took care of you," screamed Flutter-Duck, goaded beyond endurance by the thought that her neighbours were witnessing this filial disrespect. " And a fat lot of good it's done me."
" Yes, much care you take of me. You only think of enjoying yourself. It's young girls who ought to go out, not old women."
" You impudent face ! " And with an irresistible impulse of savagery, a reversion to the days of Medidni, Flutter- Duck swung round her arm, and struck Rachel violently on the cheek with her white-gloved harld.
The sound of the slap rang hollow and awful through the room.
The workers looked up and paused, the neighbours held their breath ; there was a dread silence, broken only by the hissings of the excited goose, and the half involuntary apologetic murmurings of Flutter-Duck's lips : " If I bin a mother, I bin a mother."
For an instant Rachel's face was a white mask, on which five fingers stood out in fire ; the next it was one burning mass of angry blood. She clenched her fist, as if about to strike her mother, then let the fingers relax ; half from a relic of filial awe, half from respect for the finery. There was a peculiar light in her eyes. Without a word she turned slowly on her heel and walked into her little room, emerging,
her hand. She gave it to her mother, without looking at her, and walked back to her work, and poor foolish Flutter- Duck, relieved, triumphant, and with an irreproachable head-wrap, passed majestically from the room, amid the buzz of the neighbours (who accompanied her downstairs with valedictory brushings of fur-fluff from her shoulders), through the avenue of polyglot commentators, into the waiting cab.
All this time Flutter-Duck's husband had sat petrified, but now a great burst of coughing shook him. He did not know what to say or do, and prolonged the cough artificially to cover his embarrassment. Then he opened his mouth several times, but shut it indecisively. At last he said soothingly, with kindly clumsiness : " Nee, nee ; you shouldn't irritate the mother, Rachel. You know what she is."
Rachel's needle plodded on, and the uneasy silence resumed its sway.
Presently Rachel rose, put down her piece of work finished, and without a word passed back to her bedroom, her beautiful figure erect and haughty. Lewis heard her key turn in the lock. The hours passed, and she did not return. Her father did not like to appear anxious before the " hands," but he had a discomforting vision of her lying on her bed, in a dumb agony of shame and rage. At last eight o'clock struck, and, backward as the work was, Lewis did not suggest overtime. He even dismissed the servant an hour before her time. He was in a fever of impatience, but delicacy had kept him from intruding on his daughter's grief before strangers. Now he hastened to her door, and knocked timidly, then loudly.
" Nee, nee, Rachel," he cried, with sympathetic sternness, " Enough ! " ​FL U T TER-D UCK. 389
But a chill silence alone answered him.
He burst open the rickety door, and saw a dark mass huddled up in the shadow on the bed. A nearer glance showed him it was only clothes. He opened the door that led on to Jacob's ladder, and called her name. Then by the light streaming in from the other apartment he hastily examined the room. It was obvious that she had put on her best clothes, and gone out.
Half relieved, he returned to the sitting-room, leaving the door ajar, and recited his evening prayer. Then he began to prepare a little meal for himself, telling himself that she had gone for a walk, after her manner ; perhaps was shaking off her depression at the Cambridge Music Hall. Supper over and grace said, he started doing the overwork, and then, when sheer weariness forced him to stop, he drew his comfortless wooden chair to the kitchen fire, and studied Rabbinical lore from a minutely printed folio.
The Whitechapel Church clock, suddenly booming mid- night, awoke him from these sacred subtleties with a start of alarm. Rachel had not returned.
The fire burnt low. He shivered, and threw on some coal. Half an hour more he waited, listening for her foot- step. Surely the music-hall must be closed by now. He crept down the stairs, and wandered vaguely into the cold, starless night, jostled by leering females, and returned for- lorn and coughing. Then the thought flashed upon him that his girl had gone to her mother, had gone to fetch her from the wedding ball, and to make it up with her. Yes ; that would be it. Hence the best clothes. It could be nothing else. He must not let any other thought get a hold on his mind. He would have run round to the festive scene, only he did not know precisely where it was, and it was too late to ask the neighbours. ​300 FLUTTER-DUCK.
One o'clock !
A mournful monotone, stern in its absoluteness, like the clang of a gate shutting out a lost soul.
One more hour of aching suspense, scarcely dulled by the task of making hot coffee, and cutting bread and butter for his returning womankind ; then Flutter-Duck came back. Alone !
Came back in her cab, her fading features flushed with the joy of life, with the artificial flowers in her false chignon, and the pink wrap over her head.
"Where is Rachel?" gasped poor Lewis, meeting her at the street-door.
"Rachel ! isn't she here? I left her with you," answered Flutter-Duck, half sobered.
"Merciful God!" ejaculated her husband, and put his hand to his breast, pierced by a shooting pain.
" I left her with you," repeated Flutter-Duck with white lips. "Why did you let her go out? Why didn't you look after her?"
"Silence, you sinful mother!" cried Lewis. "You shamed her before strangers, and she has gone out — tc drown herself — what do I know?"
Flutter- Duck burst into hysterical sobbing.
" Yes, take her part against me ! You always make me out wrong."
"Restrain yourself!' he whispered imperiously. "Do you wish to have the neighbours hear you again?"
" I daresay she's only hiding somewhere, sulking, as she did when a child," said Flutter-Duck. " Have you looked under the bed? "
Foolish as he knew her words were, they gave him a gleam of hope. He led the way upstairs without answering, and taking a candle, examined her bedroom again with ludicrous minuteness. This time the sight of her old clothes was ​FL UTTER-D UCK. 39 1
comforting ; if she had wanted to drown herself, she would not — he reasoned with perhaps too masculine a logic — have taken her best clothes to spoil. With a sudden thought he displaced the hearthstone. He had early discovered where she kept her savings, though he had neither tampered with them nor betrayed his knowledge. The tin box was broken open, empty ! In the drawers there was not a single article of her jewellery. Rachel had evidently left home ! She had gone by way of Jacob's ladder — secretly.
Prostrated by the discovery, the parents sat down in help- less silence. Then Flutter-Duck began to wring her white- gloved hands, and to babble incoherent suggestions and reproaches, and protestations that she was not to blame. The hot coffee cooled untasted, the pink wrap lay crumpled on the floor.
Lewis revolved the situation rapidly. What could be done ? Evidently nothing — for that night at least. Even the police could do nothing till the morning, and to call them in at all would be to publish the scandal to the whole world. Rachel had gone to some lodging — there could be no doubt about that. And yet he could not go to bed, his heart still expected her, though his brain had given up hope. He walked about restlessly, racked by fits of coughing, then he dropped back into his seat before the decaying fire. And Flutter-Duck, frightened into silence at last, sat on the sofa, dazed, in her trappings and gewgaws, with the white flowers glistening in her false hair, and her pallid cheeks stained with tears.
And so they waited in the uncouth room in the solemn watches of the night, pricking up their ears at a rare footstep in the street, and hastening to peep out of the window ; waiting for the knock that came not, and the dawn that was distant. The silence lay upon them like a pall. ​o)2 FL UT TER-D UCK.
Suddenly, in the weird stillness, they heard a fluttering and a skurrying, and, looking up, they saw a great white thing floating through the room. Flutter-Duck uttered a terrible cry. " Hear, O Israel ! " she shrieked.
" Nee, nee," said Lewis reassuringly, though scarcely less startled. " It is only the tripha goose got loose."
" Nay, nay, it is the Devil ! " hoarsely whispered Flutter- Duck, who had covered her face with her hands, and was shaking as with palsy.
Her terror communicated itself to her husband. "Hush, hush ! Talk not so," he said, shivering with indefinable awe.
" Say psalms, say psalms ! " panted Flutter-Duck. " Drive him out."
Lewis opened the window, but the unclean bird showed no desire to flit. It was evidently the Not-Good-One himself.
" Hear, O Israel ! " wailed Flutter-Duck. " Since he came in this morning everything has been upside down."
The goose chuckled.
Lewis was seized with a fell terror that gave him a mad courage. Murmuring a holy phrase, he grabbed at the goose, which eluded him, and fluttered flappingly hither and thither. Lewis gave chase, his lips praying mechanically. At last he caught it by a wing, haled it, hissing and struggling and uttering rasping cries, to the window, flung it without, and closed the sash with a bang. Then he fell impotent against the work-table, and spat out a mouthful of blood.
" God be praised ! " said Flutter-Duck, slowly uncovering her eyes. " Now Rachel will come back."
And with renewed hope they waited on, and the deathly silence again possessed the room.
All at once they heard a light step under the window ; the father threw it open and saw a female form outlined in the darkness. There was a rat-tat-tat at the door. ​FL UTTER-D UCK. 393
" Ah, there she is ! " hysterically ejaculated Flutter-Duck, starting up.
" The Holy One be blessed ! " cried Lewis, rushing down the stairs.
A strange figure, the head covered by a green tartan shawl, greeted him. A cold ague passed over his limbs.
"Thank God, it's all right," said Mrs. Lefkovitch. "I see from your light you are still working but isn't it time my Emanuel left off?"
" Your Emanuel?" gasped Lewis, with a terrible suspicion. " He went home early in the day ; he was taken ill."
Flutter-Duck, who had crept at his heels bearing a candle, cried out, " God in Israel ! She has flown away with Emanuel."
" Hush, you piece of folly ! " whispered Lewis furiously.
" Yes, it was already arranged, and you blamed me ! " gasped Flutter-Duck, with a last instinct of self-defence ere consciousness left her, and she fell forward.
" Silence," Lewis began, but there was an awful desolation at his heart and the salt of blood was in his mouth as he caught the falling form. The candlestick rolled to the ground, and the group was left in the heavy shadows of the staircase and the cold blast from the open door.
" God have mercy on me and the poor children ! I knew all along it would come to that ! " wailed Emanuel's wife.
"And I advanced him his week's money on Monday," Lewis remembered in the agony of the moment. ​394 FL UTTER-D Ui 'A',
CHAPTER IV.
POOR FLUTTER-DUCK.
" Her cap blew oft", her gown blew up, And a whirlwind cleared the larder."
— Tennyson : The Goose.
It was New Year's Eve.
In the Ghetto, where " the evening and the morning are one day," New Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and the joyous medley of squeezing humanity moves slowly through the crush of mongers, pickpockets, and beggars. It is one of those festival occasions on which even those who have migrated from the Ghetto gravitate back to purchase those dainties whereof the heathen have not the secret, and to look again upon the old familiar scene. There is a stir of good-will and gaiety, a reconciliation of old feuds in view of the solemn season of repentance, and a washing-down of enmi- ties in rum.
At the point where the two main market-streets met, a grey-haired elderly woman stood and begged.
Poor Flutter-Duck !
Her husband dead, after a protracted illness that frittered away his savings ; her daughter lost ; her home a mattress in the corner of a strange family's garret ; her faded pretti- ness turned to ugliness : her figure thin and wasted ; her yellow-wrinkled face framed in a frowsy shawl ; her clothes tattered and flimsy ; Flutter-Duck stood and schnorred.
But Flutter- Duck did not do well. Her feather-head was not equal to the demands of her profession. She had
forgetting that though everybody in the market must pass her station, they would already have been mulcted in the one street or the other.
But she held out her hand pertinaciously, appealing to every passer-by of importance, and throwing audible curses after those that ignored her. The cold of the bleak autumn day and the apathy of the public chilled her to the bone ; the tears came into her eyes as she thought of all her misery and of the happy time — only a couple of years ago — when New Year meant new dresses. Only a grey fringe — the last vanity of pauperdom — remained of all her fashion- ableness. No more the plaited chignon, the silk gown, the triple necklace, — the dazzling exterior that made her too proud to speak to admiring neighbours, — only hunger and cold and mockery and loneliness. No plumes could she borrow, now that she really needed them to cover her nakedness. She who had reigned over a work-room, who had owned a husband and a marriageable daughter, who had commanded a maid-servant, who had driven in shilling cabs !
Oh, if she could only find her daughter — that lost creat- ure by whose wedding-canopy she should have stood, radiant, the envy of Montague Street ! But this was not a thought of to-day. It was at the bottom of all her thoughts always, ever since that fatal night. During the first year she was always on the lookout, peering into every woman's face, running after every young couple that looked like Emanuel and Rachel. But repeated disappointment dulled her. She had no energy for anything except begging. Yet the hope of finding Rachel was the gleam of idealism that kept her soul alive.
The hours went by, but the streams of motley pedestrians and the babel of vociferous vendors and chattering buyers did not slacken. Females were in the great majority, housewives from far and near foraging for Festival supplies. ​FL UTTER-D UCK. 397
In vain Flutter-Duck wished them "A Good Sealing." It seemed as if her own Festival would be black and bitter as the Feast of Ab.
But she continued to hold out her bloodless hand. Towards three o'clock a fine English lady, in a bonnet, passed by, carrying a leather bag.
" Grant me a halfpenny, lady, dear ! May you be written down for a good year ! "
The beautiful lady paused, startled. Then Flutter- Duck's heart gave a great leap of joy. The impossible had happened at last. Behind the veil shone the face of Rachel — a face of astonishment and horror.
" Rachel ! " she shrieked, tottering.
'•Mother!" cried Rachel, catching her by the arm. " What are you doing here? What has happened?"
" Do not touch me, sinful girl!" answered Flutter- Duck, shaking her off with a tragic passion that gave dignity to the grotesque figure. Now that Rachel was there in the flesh, the remembrance of her shame surged up, drowning everything. " You have disgraced the mother who bore you and the father who gave you life."
The fine English lady — her whole soul full of sudden remorse at the sight of her mother's incredible poverty, shrank before the blazing eyes. The passers-by imagined Rachel had refused the beggar-woman alms.
" What have I done?" she faltered.
" Where is Emanuel ? "
" Emanuel !" repeated Rachel, puzzled.
" Emanuel Lefkovitch that you ran away with."
" Mother, are you mad? I have never seen him. I am married."
" Married ! " gasped Flutter-Duck ecstatically. Then a new dread rose to her mind. " To a Christian ? " ​398 FL U T TER-D ( r CK.
" Me marry a Christian ! The idea ! "
Flutter-Duck fell a-sobbing on the fine lady's fur jacket. "And you never ran away with Lefkovitch? "
" Me take another woman's leavings? Well, upon my word ! "
" Oh," sobbed Flutter-Duck. " Oh, if your father could only have lived to know the truth ! "
Rachel's remorse became heartrending. " Is father dead?" she murmured with white lips. After awhile she drew her mother out of the babel, and giving her the bag to carry to save appearances, she walked slowly towards Liverpool Street, and took train with her for her pretty little cottage near Epping Forest.
Rachel's story was as simple as her mother's. After the showing up of Emanuel's duplicity, home had no longer the least attraction for her. Her nascent love for the migratory husband changed to a loathing that embraced the whole Ghetto in which such things were possible. Weary of Flutter- Duck's follies, indifferent to her father, she had long meditated joining her West-end girl-friend in the fur estab- lishment in Regent Street, but the blow precipitated matters. She felt she could not remain a night more under her mother's roof, and her father's clumsy comment was but salt on her wound. Her heart was hard against both ; month after month passed before her passionate, sullen nature would let her dwell on the thought of their trouble, and even then she felt that the motive of her flight was so plain that they would feel only remorse, not anxiety. They knew she could always earn her living, just as she knew they could always earn theirs. Living " in," and going out but rarely, and then in the fashionable districts, she never met any drift from the Ghetto, and the busy life of the populous establish- ment soon effaced the old, which faded to a forgotten dream. ​FLUTTER-DUCK. 399
One day the chief provincial traveller of the house saw her, fell in love, married her, and took her about the country for six months. He was coming back to her that very evening for the New Year. She had gone back to the Ghetto that day to buy New Year honey, and, softened by time and happiness, rather hoped to stumble across her mother in the market-place, and so save the submission of a call. She never dreamed of death and poverty. She would not blame herself for her father's death — he had always been consumptive — but since death was come at last, it was luckv she could offer her mother a home. Her hus- band would be delighted to find a companion for his wife during his country rounds.
"So you see, mother, everything is for the best."
Flutter-Duck listened in a delicious daze.
What! Was everything then to end happily after all? Was she — the shabby old starveling — to be restored to comfort and fine clothes ? Her brain seemed bursting with the thought of so much happiness ; as the train flew along past green grass and autumn-tinted foliage, she strove to articulate a prayer of gratitude to Heaven, but she only mumbled " Mediani" and lapsed into silence. And then, suddenly remembering she had started a prayer and must finish it, she murmured again " Mediant"
When they came to the grand house with the front garden, and were admitted by a surprised maid-servant, infinitely nattier than any Flutter-Duck had ever ruled over, the poor creature was palsied with excess of bliss. The fire was blazing merrily in the luxurious parlour : could this haven of peace and pomp — these arm-chairs, those vases, that side-board — be really for her? Was she to spend her New Year's night surrounded by love and luxury, instead of huddling in the corner of a cold garret? ​400 FLUTTER-DUCK.
And as soon as Rachel had got her mother installed in a wonderful easy-chair, she hastened with all the eagerness of maternal pride, with all the enthusiasm of remorse, to throw open the folding-doors that led to her bedroom, so as to give Flutter- Duck the crowning surprise — the secret tit- bit she had reserved for the grand climax.
" There's a fine boy ! " she cried.
And as Flutter-Duck caught sight of the little red face peeping out from the snowy draperies of the cradle, a rapt- ure too great to bear seemed almost to snap something within her foolish, overwrought brain.
" I have already a grandchild ! " she shrieked, with a great sob of ecstasy ; and, running to the cradle-side, she fell on her knees, and covered the little red face with frantic kisses, repeating " Lewis love, Lewis love, Lewis love," till the babe screamed, and Rachel had to tear the babbling creature away.
You may see her almost any day walking in the Ghetto market-place — a meagre, old figure, with a sharp-featured face and a plaited chignon. She dresses richly in silk, and her golden earrings are set with coloured stones, and her bonnet is of the latest fashion. She lives near Epping Forest, and almost always goes home to tea. Sometimes she stands still at the point where the two market streets meet, extending vacantly a gloved hand, but for the most part she wanders about the by-streets and alleys of White- chapel with an anxious countenance, peering at every woman she meets, and following every young couple. " If I could only find her ! " she thinks yearningly.
Nobody knows whom she is looking for, but everybody knows she is only " Flutter-Duck."
Printed in the United States of America.
References