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Elkman was a bouncing beauty of a good orthodox stock, that she brought with her fifty pounds in cash, besides bedding and house-linen accumulated by her parents without prevision that she would marry an old hand, already provided with these household elements. The old clo'-woman's emotions were more mingled than ever.
And then at last all her smouldering distrust of Henry Elkman found overwhelming justification. And married villainy upon villainy, horror upon horror to a Christian girl, a heathen abomination. Natalya was wrestling with her over-full sack when she got the news from a gossiping lady client, and she was boring holes for the passage of string to tie up its mouth.
M. Victor Parrot, the young Swiss agent of M. Regis, hospitably asked us to take up our quarters with him, and promised to start us up stream without delay; his employer fixes the tariff of every article, and no discretion is left to the subordinates. We called upon M. Elkman of the Dutch factory.
Elkman, and then at last came the thunder-clap Henry had disappeared without leaving a trace. The wicked wife and the innocent brats had the four-roomed home to themselves. The Clothing Emporium knew him no more. Some whispered suicide, others America.
'Grow dumb like your mother, she murmured resentfully. What a bequest of misery Henry Elkman had left behind him! Ah, how right she had been to suspect him from the very first! 'But where is my little Joseph? she said aloud. 'He's playing somewhere in the street. 'Ach, mein Gott! Playing, when he ought to be weeping like this child of shame. Go and fetch him at once!
How could this stranger understand the mysteries of purging meat, of separating meat-plates from butter-plates? At last she could bear the weight no longer. She took the Elkman house in her rounds, and, bent under her sack, knocked at the familiar door. It was lunch-time, and unfamiliar culinary smells seemed wafted along the passage. Her morbid imagination scented bacon.
How in Heaven's name will they live? 'Oh, her father, the furrier, will have to look after them, the gossips assured her. 'He gave her good money, you know, fifty pounds and the bedding. Ah, trust Elkman for that. He knew he wasn't leaving the children to starve. 'I don't know so much, said the old woman, shaking her bewigged head. What was to be done? Suppose the furrier refused the burden.
'I wonder if we'll pass Mrs. Elkman, she said, amused. Joseph busied himself with disentangling the tails of his kite. But Natalya was too absorbed to notice their indifference to her. That poor little Daisy! The image of the baby swam vividly before her. What a terrible fate to be left in the hands of the public-house woman! Who knew what would happen to it?
But Henry's flight, she felt, had removed her even farther from the Elkman household. If she went to spy out the land, she would now have to face the virago in possession. But no! on second thoughts it was this other woman whom Henry's flight had changed to a stranger. What had the wretch to do with the children? She was a mere intruder in the house.
She could not cross the threshold without explanations. 'Is Mr. Elkman at home? she asked. 'You know the name! said the young woman, a little surprised. 'Yes, I have been here a good deal. The old woman's sardonic accent was lost on the listener. 'I am sorry there is nothing this time, she replied. 'Not even a pair of old shoes? 'No. 'But the dead woman's ? Are you, then, standing in them?
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