Louis Golding

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”