‘There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do,’ he said.
She tried to defend herself, but how could she when she knew he was in the right?
‘It’s not that I don’t do my best,’ she began; ‘I do work - I try hard to work, but it’s all so quick, and I lose myself - I’m stupid, that’s all.’
‘Stupidity’s no good to me,’ he frowned. ‘I can’t afford it.’
She supposed he must be nearly ruining himself over this café, how much money could it cost him, she wondered; perhaps any day he would tell her it had failed. They still lived so very cheaply in themselves, two small rooms at the top of the building. If he was making the business pay surely he would say they could live more comfortably. It was months and months since she had asked for a new dress, and there were other little things she wanted too, stockings, nightdresses - she did her best with her needle and pieces of cheap material. She did not like to ask for clothes if they were on the edge of disaster. He might even be put in prison for debt.
‘There’s only one thing left - you can hardly be a fool at that,’ he told her. ‘I’ll put you in charge of the cloakroom. Any tips of course you can keep.You had better buy yourself a black dress and an apron and look respectable for once. Take those ear-rings off, too.’
So Elsa, the dancing beauty of the Kasbah, sat all day long as a cloakroom attendant in Lévy’s café. She was too tired to mind. It seemed to her that this was the first time she had rested in five years. From now on she would only see Julius in the evenings. The management of the café took him further from her than ever, it was as though he advanced a step forward with each alteration and enlargement and she was left behind, incapable of progress. In the evenings, over their frugal supper in the one sitting-room, cheerless and poorly furnished, he would eat in silence, his mind teeming with plans and never resting for one moment; while she, changing his plate and washing the dishes, darning his socks in a little low chair at his side, would feel like some servant with no other interest or utility to him but to see to his wants and to hold his silence.
Her duties in the cloakroom were practically negligible, she had no part in the general life and the running of the café. More and more she would become shut up in herself unaware of this stream of vitality that passed her by, without realisation of the development around her, leaving her thus stranded on the little desolate shore of her existence.
Julius was ‘the manager,’ ‘the boss,’ he was an unknown quantity with whom she had no concern. He moved in his own span of life in another time and their paths led away from one another.
In 1890, Lévy’s café in Holborn was already a big three-storeyed building, comprising some three or four shops that had been knocked into one; and in the spring of that year Julius Lévy took over the entire block which brought him now to the corner of Southampton Row.
The café had sprung up like a mushroom in five years, and the only one who seemed entirely unconcerned was Julius himself who took the affair for granted. He had known he could not fail, and far from being proud and contented with this achievement at the age of thirty, for he was certainly the envy and the thorn in the flesh of the smaller shop-keepers, he considered the Holborn café as nothing more nor less than the little fountain-head from which a thousand rivers would spring. Now that he had a capable staff working under him and need no longer himself be in constant supervision, he had time to look about him, and to gauge the market value of property, to note the growing importance of the West End of London as a commercial centre. The Strand, Leicester Square, Piccadilly. In ten or fifteen years’ time these were the spots which would be most congested, theatres, restaurants, people crowding here to be fed and entertained. He had no concern with the far end of Piccadilly, of Bond Street and Mayfair; he looked towards Oxford Street as his most certain proposition. Oxford Street which would become the shopping Mecca of the middle classes, with their thick-headed, good-humoured love of a bargain, their sheep-like tendency to be driven, their grasping, inherent desire to snatch ‘something for nothing,’ who would bring to Julius the fullest measure of prosperity.
Every year ground rent was increasing and property doubled in value; he would have to buy early and buy quickly, he must get in first, and before the lesser sharks came sniffing at his heels. Lévy’s of Holborn was serving his purpose, the profits came rolling in to be checked and put aside, profit to be used for the opening up of Lévy’s of Oxford Street and Lévy’s of the Strand. He knew they would be small at first, ignored perhaps, laughed at by people who fed in hotels and restaurants, but he could afford to wait, he could enjoy his patience, and sooner or later the great herd of the middle classes would come to him, and they represented, though they did not know it, the wealth and the whole meaning of England.
Nobody had heard of him yet, he was only a Jewish fellow, another of those foreigners, who ran a café somewhere down in Holborn where the clerks and office boys gobbled their midday meals. But give me ten years, he thought; ten years, fifteen years, and I’ll put a chain around England that nobody will break.
Julius was a boy sailing his first boat upon a pond, he was a boy at a carpenter’s bench with a tool in his hand singing as he worked, he was a child with his castle of bricks built firmly within walls. Life was a game to him, a game of pen and paper and a hundred figures jotted here and there; figures that were shaped as pounds and shillings and pence. It was a game when to win you must buy first and buy low and cheat the other fellow, when you must come first before the whole world and think just a fraction ahead of your opponent. He would not relax, not for a moment would he pause and say: ‘I have done this,’ but must continue unwavering and straight, reaching out to the skies like an arrow flying to the face of the sun. In one of his rare communicative moods he showed Elsa a drawing of his plans. It was a sheet of paper drawn to the scale of a map of London, and the streets and quarters were marked into divisions. Here and there he had marked certain thoroughfares with crosses. He pointed to them with his finger. ‘There - that dot in the Strand, there’s a site there I want for building. I shall get it in two years, they’ll be sending the traffic along this side street to avoid congestion by Charing Cross. See that cross in red ink in Oxford Street? The green omnibuses stop there now and there’s a row of small-window-fronted shops. They’ll have to come down for me. Right over there, in the south-west, in Kensington, there’s property going for a song. It can wait for a few years until I’m ready. The Strand will be my first.’
He had one hand in his pocket and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. His hair flopped over one eye. He was a boy, he couldn’t mean what he said.
‘You haven’t the money to do all that, Julius,’ she said slowly. ‘Why, you’ll be ruined. Once you get entangled into schemes of that sort you’ll be out of your depth and no one to help you. Why can’t you be content with the one café? I expect in time, if you are careful, it will be quite a big sort of place.’
He looked at her curiously. She did not seem to understand that even now the café in Holborn was a great money-making concern, that the profits this year seemed enormous for a comparatively new business and that he could, if he wished, buy his Strand site to-morrow, only he was waiting for the psychological moment. There were no original expenses here, he had bought Grundy’s and the adjacent block at the lowest possible price. Something for nothing - something for nothing. He lived no more comfortably than the original baker, he had no expenses, he scarcely spent a penny - every profit went into the café. He would not let Elsa suspect the truth.
‘Oh! I’ll find some capital,’ he said, ‘even if I have to borrow or steal. Don’t you bother your head about that.’
As he watched her grave face it came to him that she never smiled or was merry with him now, she was greatly changed from the old days when they first came to London. She was no longer a playful, restless, sensitive kitten who curled upon his chest, she had grown into a placid, dull little cat, a quiet, sleepy tabby cat who blinked her great eyes and was surely rather stupid. He wondered why she should be so changed. He would have liked someone beside him to share his enthusiasm, to see ahead as he did and to glory in his success. A mind attuned to his and receptive. A woman with sense and intuition who could hear him talk without bewilderment. A woman of depth and culture who possessed health and vitality. Yes, health above all things, vigorous blood in a strong body, a capacity for laughter. What had happened to Elsa? Had he outgrown her? He wanted to see her smile and chatter as she used to do. She was like an unused garment left hanging in a dark cupboard; she was dusty and stale.
‘Go out and buy yourself some clothes,’ he said suddenly and quite unexpectedly, surprised at his own words. ‘Go this afternoon, never mind the expense. I’ll pay.’
She looked shocked and uncertain, she was afraid he would mock her.
‘Don’t be an owl,’ he said, ‘I mean what I say. I’m tired of seeing you go about like a drab.’
After that she went from his mind, he had business to do, and it was not until the evening that he saw her again. She was waiting for him in the dull sitting-room, sitting nervously in a chair, her hands in her lap. She wore a pink flowered summer dress, the bodice fitting tight to her waist and the sleeves full above the elbow as was the fashion. Her hat was large, with a single rose, and she wore it above the mass of her dark hair that had been waved and washed for the first time for many years. The excitement had brought a touch of colour to each cheek, and she glanced away from him shyly as though she were some girl he had not met before.
‘Why, Mimitte,’ he began in wonder, using his old name for her unconsciously; ‘why, Mimitte, what have you done to yourself ?’
And she answered him hastily, ‘Are you angry with me? You told me I could,’ like a child, afraid she should be scolded.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand, that’s how I wanted you to be - you ought to have done this before,’ and he went to her and lifted her up from the chair and stood her upon it.
‘Do you like me - the dress I mean?’ she asked, forgetting he was the manager of Lévy’s, and she nothing but a cloakroom attendant, one of his staff. ‘Do you like it, Julius? - I wasn’t sure about the colour, and then the price they charged seemed wicked to me, but you said never mind about that. That’s scent I’ve put on the bodice, extravagant of me I know, but you always liked the scent of amber in the Kasbah - put your head there, smell. We used to be like this often, didn’t we? It seems such ages ago. Stay with me a little, like that, holding me and your head against my breast, it’s so lovely and makes me happy and queer. Why, Julius - why, Julius - so silly of me - I believe I’m going to cry.’
He stood quite still with his face hidden in her dress. The scent was the old Alger scent, disturbing and mysterious and sweet, and she felt warm in his arms and clean and good; she was once more a woman, a child, a young thing to be loved. Why couldn’t she have been like this all these months and the last years? Something was wasted and gone. It could not have been his fault. He felt a tear splash on to his head, she was crying, then. He did not know how he felt, but he was stirred and touched in some way that did not explain itself.
‘You funny little thing,’ he said, and kept repeating it over and over again, half to himself, ‘you funny little thing.’
They were together that night, and the next night, and after that, and each day she grew younger and prettier and closer to him, and was happy with a last tender rush of happiness like the last intoxicating warmth of an Indian summer. He told her she need not work any more, that was over and finished, all she had to do was to look as she did, and be with him. No work, no scolding, no insults hurled at her, no meek acceptance of the paltry tips left on the cloakroom table; all she need do was to wear pretty clothes, and to care for her hands, and be fresh and smiling when he turned to her, and to hold her head high before company. She would have him proud of her, she thought, if she took pains to look her best, she would have him showing her off, perhaps, watching her with a smile, she would learn to be smart and clever and she would be his lady.
He began to take her out in the evening. They went to the Lyceum and had the front seats in the upper circle.
She wore her new dress, and her cheeks were flushed like the rose in her hat, her eyes shone and she trembled with excitement.
‘Is this the end?’ she asked after each act. ‘Will there be any more?’
And when the play was finished they drove back to Holborn in a hansom and she held his hands close to her heart.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she told him, and he laughed, for the fun of it to him had been in watching her eyes.
‘I wonder why I’m doing all this?’ he thought. ‘I shan’t want to for long; there’ll be other things.’ But he said to her: ‘You’re my lovely, aren’t you?’
One day in September they rode out in an omnibus to Hampton Court, and he took her on the river, she prattling all the time in delight and trailing one hand in the water, watching the glances of other women at her dress, and he laughingly told her to put up her parasol because the men’s eyes were following them and he was jealous.
The next day she was tired, she woke heavy and unrefreshed, she found her nightgown was wringing wet, she must have sweated much in the night. Her old worrying cough had started again.
‘I must have caught a chill on the river,’ she thought. ‘I won’t tell Julius, it will irritate him.’
She felt cold and hot in turn, she had a fever, she sat indoors the whole day, rather wretched and miserable.
‘You look pasty,’ he told her that evening, and the next day she put rouge on her cheeks, saying she was better, and went out and did some shopping. She came back very tired again, coughing a good deal.