And there, flitting about the room in dainty lace petticoat, and littleelse, was young Beryl, superintending her aunt's feverish struggles withpaint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk stockings, socks, andwraps, snatching these articles from a voluminous wardrobe and tossingthem, haphazard, into a monumental dressing-basket, already half-fullwith two life-size teddy-bears.
The atmosphere of the Ghetto is a singular mixture. It is half-ironicgaiety and half-melancholy. But it has not the depressing sadness of theRussian Quarter. Its temper is more akin to that of the Irish colonythat has settled around Southwark and Bermondsey. There is sadness, butno misery. There is gloom, but no despair. There is hilarity, but nofrivolity. There is a note of delight, with sombre undertones. There isnothing of the rapture of living, but rather the pride of accepteddestiny. In the hotels and cafés this is most marked. At the AldgateHotel, you may sit in the brasserie and listen to the Russian Triodiscoursing wistful music, while the packed tables reek with smoke andYiddish talk; but there is a companionable, almost domestic touch aboutthe place which is so lacking about the Western lounges. Young Isaacs isthere, flashing with diamonds and hair-oil, and Rebecca is with him, andthe large, admiring parents of both of them sit with them and drink beeror eat sandwiches. And Isaacs makes love to his Rebecca in full sight ofall. They lounge in their chairs, arms enclasped, sometimes kissing,sometimes patting one another. And the parents look on, and roll theircurly heads and say, with subtle significance, "Oi-oi-oi!" many times.
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Then, as it seemed from far away, I heard an insistent murmur, like thebreaking of distant surf. I gazed around and speculated. In the barebrick wall was a narrow, high door. With the instinct of the journalist,I opened it. The puzzle was explained. It was the Dining Hall of theMetropolitan Orphanage, and the children were at their seven o'clocksupper. From the cathedral-like calm of the vestibule, I passed into anatmosphere billowing with the flutter of some five [Pg 158]hundred smalltongues. Under the pendant circles of gas-jets were ranged twelve long,narrow tables packed with children talking and eating with no sense ofany speed-limit. On the one side were boys in cruelly ugly brown suits,and on the other side, little girls from seven to fifteen in frocks ofsome dark material with a thin froth of lace at neck and wrists andcoarse, clean pinafores. Each table was attended by a matron, who servedout the dry bread and hot milk to the prefects, who carried the basinsup and down the tables as deftly as Mr. Paul Cinquevalli. Everywhere wasa prospect of raw faces and figures, which Charity had deliberately madeas uncomely as possible by clownish garb and simple toilet. The childrenate hungrily, and the place was full of the spirit of childhood, anadulterated spirit. The noise leaped and swelled on all sides in anexultant joy of itself, but if here and there a jet of jolly laughtershot from the stream, there were glances from the matrons.
The walls of the big bedroom were adorned with florid texts, tastefullyframed. It was a room of many beds, each enclosed in a cubicle. The bedswere hard, covered with coarse sheets. If I were a Fallen Brother, Ihardly think they would have tempted me from a life of ease.[Pg 164] And therewere RULES.... Oh, how I loathe RULES! I loathed them as a child atschool. I loathed drill, and I loathed compulsory games, and I loathedall laws that were made without purpose. There were long printed listsof Rules in this place, framed, and hung in each room. You can neverbelieve how many things a Fallen Sister may not do. Certain rules are,of course, essential; but the pedagogic mind, once started onlaw-making, can never stop; and it is usually the pedagogic type ofmind, with the lust for correction, that goes in for Charity. Why maynot the girls talk in certain rooms? Why may they not read anything butthe books provided? Why may they not talk in bed? Why must they foldtheir bed-clothes in such-and-such an exact way? Why must they notdescend from the bed-room as and when they are dressed? Why must theylet the Superior read their letters? And why, oh, why are these placesrun by white-faced men and elderly, hard women?
A few tugs were moored at the landing-stages. One or two men hung aboutthem, smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall streets came to themin throbbing blasts, for it was Saturday night, and closing time. Overthe great plain of London went up a great cry. Outside[Pg 208] the doors ofevery hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and OxfordStreet, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes oftheir recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now ofcomplaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptuconcerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows.A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows ofeternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousandwives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, for a thousand jovial orbrutal mates; and a thousand beds received their occupants in fullharness, booted and hatted, as though the enemy were at the gates.Everywhere strains of liquor-music surged up for the next thirtyminutes, finally to die away piecemeal as different roads receiveddifferent revellers.
I never heard the finish of it. I became rather interested in a scenenear the window, where a boy of about my own age was furiously kissing agirl somewhat younger. Then the lady at my side stretched a long armtowards me, and languished, and making the best of a bad job, Ilanguished, too. When the funny story and the fellah's aunt had beendisposed of, some one else went to the piano and played Debussy, and theanarchist brought me another drink; and the whole thing was suchpainfully manufactured Bohemianism that it made me a little tired. Theroom, the appointments, the absence of light, Debussy, the drinks, andthe girls' costumes were so obviously part of an elaborate make-up, anarrangement of life. The only spontaneous note was that which was beingstruck near the window. I decided to slip away, and fell down the raggedstairs into Chelsea, and looked upon the shadow-fretted streets, wherethe arc-lamps, falling through the trees, dappled the pavements withlight.
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