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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghetto Tragedies, by Israel Zangwill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ghetto Tragedies
+
+Author: Israel Zangwill
+
+Release Date: January 26, 2011 [EBook #35076]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHETTO TRAGEDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
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+
+
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+GHETTO TRAGEDIES
+
+
+
+
+The MM Co.
+
+
+
+
+Ghetto Tragedies
+
+BY
+
+I. ZANGWILL
+
+AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO,"
+"THE KING OF SCHNORRERS," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1899,
+BY I. ZANGWILL
+
+
+Norwood Press
+J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The "Ghetto Tragedies" collected in a little volume in 1893 have been
+so submerged in the present collection that I have relegated the
+original name to the sub-title. "Satan Mekatrig" was written in 1889,
+"Bethulah" this year. Anyone who should wish to measure the progress
+or decay of my imagination during the ten years has therefore
+materials to hand. "Noah's Ark" stands on the firmer Ararat of
+history, my invention being confined to the figure of Peloni (the
+Hebrew for "nobody"). The other stories have also a basis in life. But
+neither in pathos nor heroic stimulation can they vie with the literal
+tragedy with which the whole book is in a sense involved. Mrs. N.S.
+Joseph, the great-hearted lady to whom "Ghetto Tragedies" was
+inscribed, herself walked in darkness, yet was not dismayed: in the
+prime of life she went down into the valley of the shadow, with no
+word save of consideration for others. I trust the new stories would
+not have been disapproved by my friend, to whose memory they must now,
+alas! be dedicated.
+
+                                                             I.Z.
+
+  OCTOBER, 1899.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I
+                                                             PAGE
+"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"                                    1
+
+II
+
+TRANSITIONAL                                                   41
+
+III
+
+NOAH'S ARK                                                     79
+
+IV
+
+THE LAND OF PROMISE                                           127
+
+V
+
+TO DIE IN JERUSALEM                                           159
+
+VI
+
+BETHULAH                                                      185
+
+VII
+
+THE KEEPER OF CONSCIENCE                                      249
+
+VIII
+
+SATAN MEKATRIG                                                345
+
+IX
+
+DIARY OF A MESHUMAD                                           403
+
+X
+
+INCURABLE                                                     457
+
+XI
+
+THE SABBATH-BREAKER                                           479
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"
+
+
+I
+
+It was not till she had fasted every Monday and Thursday for a
+twelvemonth, that Zillah's long yearning for a child was gratified.
+She gave birth--O more than fair-dealing God!--to a boy.
+
+Jossel, who had years ago abandoned the hope of an heir to pray for
+his soul, was as delighted as he was astonished. His wife had kept him
+in ignorance of the fasts by which she was appealing to Heaven; and
+when of a Monday or Thursday evening on his return from his boot
+factory in Bethnal Green, he had sat down to his dinner in Dalston, no
+suspicion had crossed his mind that it was Zillah's breakfast. He
+himself was a prosaic person, incapable of imagining such
+spontaneities of religion, though he kept every fast which it behoves
+an orthodox Jew to endure who makes no speciality of sainthood. There
+was a touch of the fantastic in Zillah's character which he had only
+appreciated in its manifestation as girlish liveliness, and which
+Zillah knew would find no response from him in its religious
+expression.
+
+Not that her spiritual innovations were original inventions. From some
+pious old crone, after whom (as she could read Hebrew) a cluster of
+neighbouring dames repeated what they could catch of the New Year
+prayers in the women's synagogue, Zillah had learnt that certain holy
+men were accustomed to afflict their souls on Mondays and Thursdays.
+From her unsuspecting husband himself she had further elicited that
+these days were marked out from the ordinary, even for the man of the
+world, by a special prayer dubbed "the long 'He being merciful.'"
+Surely on Mondays and Thursdays, then, He would indeed be merciful. To
+make sure of His good-will she continued to be unmerciful to herself
+long after it became certain that her prayer had been granted.
+
+
+II
+
+Both Zillah and Jossel lived in happy ignorance of most things,
+especially of their ignorance. The manufacture of boots and all that
+appertained thereto, the synagogue and religion, misunderstood
+reminiscences of early days in Russia, the doings and misdoings of a
+petty social circle, and such particular narrowness with general
+muddle as is produced by stumbling through a Sabbath paper and a
+Sunday paper: these were the main items in their intellectual
+inventory. Separate Zillah from her husband and she became even
+poorer, for she could not read at all.
+
+Yet they prospered. The pavements of the East End resounded with their
+hob-nailed boots, and even in many a West End drawing-room their
+patent-leather shoes creaked. But they themselves had no wish to stand
+in such shoes; the dingy perspectives of Dalston villadom limited
+their ambition, already sufficiently gratified by migration from
+Whitechapel. The profits went to enlarge their factory and to buy
+houses, a favourite form of investment in their set. Zillah could cook
+fish to perfection, both fried and stewed, and the latter variety both
+sweet and sour. Nothing, in fine, had been wanting to their
+happiness--save a son, heir, and mourner.
+
+When he came at last, little that religion or superstition could do
+for him was left undone. An amulet on the bedpost scared off Lilith,
+Adam's first wife, who, perhaps because she missed being the mother of
+the human race, hankers after babes and sucklings. The initiation into
+the Abrahamic covenant was graced by a pious godfather with pendent
+ear-locks, and in the ceremony of the Redemption of the First-Born the
+five silver shekels to the priest were supplemented by golden
+sovereigns for the poor. Nor, though Zillah spoke the passable English
+of her circle, did she fail to rock her Brum's cradle to the old
+"Yiddish" nursery-songs:--
+
+    "Sleep, my birdie, shut your eyes,
+      O sleep, my little one;
+    Too soon from cradle you'll arise
+      To work that must be done.
+
+    "Almonds and raisins you shall sell,
+      And holy scrolls shall write;
+    So sleep, dear child, sleep sound and well,
+      Your future beckons bright.
+
+    "Brum shall learn of ancient days,
+      And love good folk of this;
+    So sleep, dear babe, your mother prays,
+      And God will send you bliss."
+
+Alas, that with all this, Brum should have grown up a weakling, sickly
+and anaemic, with a look that in the child of poorer parents would have
+said starvation.
+
+
+III
+
+Yet through all the vicissitudes of his infantile career, Zillah's
+faith in his survival never faltered. He was emphatically a child from
+Heaven, and Providence would surely not fly in its own face. Jossel,
+not being aware of this, had a burden of perpetual solicitude, which
+Zillah often itched to lighten. Only, not having done so at first, she
+found it more and more difficult to confess her negotiation with the
+celestial powers. She went as near as she dared.
+
+"If the Highest One has sent us a son after so many years," she said
+in the "Yiddish" which was still natural to her for intimate domestic
+discussion, "He will not take him away again."
+
+"As well say," Jossel replied gloomily, "that because He has sent us
+luck and blessing after all these years, He may not take away our
+prosperity."
+
+"Hush! don't beshrew the child!" And Zillah spat out carefully. She
+was tremulously afraid of words of ill-omen and of the Evil Eye,
+against which, she felt vaguely, even Heaven's protection was not
+potent. Secretly she became more and more convinced that some woman,
+envious of all this "luck and blessing," was withering Brum with her
+Evil Eye. And certainly the poor child was peaking and pining away.
+"Marasmus," a physician had once murmured, wondering that so well
+dressed a child should appear so ill nourished. "Take him to the
+seaside often, and feed him well," was the universal cry of the
+doctors; and so Zillah often deserted her husband for a _kosher_
+boarding-house at Brighton or Ramsgate, where the food was voluminous,
+and where Brum wrote schoolboy verses to the strange, fascinating sea.
+
+For there were compensations in the premature flowering of his
+intellect. Even other mothers gradually came round to admitting he was
+a prodigy. The black eyes seemed to burn in the white face as they
+looked out on the palpitating universe, or devoured every and any
+scrap of print! A pity they had so soon to be dulled behind
+spectacles. But Zillah found consolation in the thought that the
+glasses would go well with the high black waistcoat and white tie of
+the British Rabbi. He had been given to her by Heaven, and to Heaven
+must be returned. Besides, that might divert it from any more sinister
+methods of taking him back.
+
+In his twelfth year Brum began to have more trouble with his eyes, and
+renewed his early acquaintance with the drab ante-rooms of eye
+hospitals that led, at the long-expected ting-ting of the doctor's
+bell, into a delectable chamber of quaint instruments. But it was not
+till he was on the point of _Bar-Mitzvah_ (confirmation at thirteen)
+that the blow fell. Unwarned explicitly by any physician, Brum went
+blind.
+
+"Oh, mother," was his first anguished cry, "I shall never be able to
+read again."
+
+
+IV
+
+The prepared festivities added ironic complications to the horror.
+After Brum should have read in the Law from the synagogue platform,
+there was to have been a reception at the house. Brum himself had
+written out the invitations with conscious grammar. "Present their
+compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Solomon and shall be glad to see _them_"
+(not _you_, as was the fashion of their set). It was after writing out
+so many notes in a fine schoolboy hand, that Brum began to be
+conscious of thickening blurs and dancing specks and colours. Now
+that the blind boy was crouching in hopeless misery by the glowing
+fire, where he had so often recklessly pored over books in the
+delicious dusk, there was no one handy to write out the countermands.
+As yet the wretched parents had kept the catastrophe secret, as though
+it reflected on themselves. And by every post the Confirmation
+presents came pouring in.
+
+Brum refused even to feel these shining objects. He had hoped to have
+a majority of books, but now the preponderance of watches, rings, and
+penknives, left him apathetic. To his parents each present brought a
+fresh feeling of dishonesty.
+
+"We must let them know," they kept saying. But the tiny difficulty of
+writing to so many prevented action.
+
+"Perhaps he'll be all right by Sabbath," Zillah persisted frenziedly.
+She clung to the faith that this was but a cloud: for that the glory
+of the Confirmation of a future Rabbi could be so dimmed would argue
+an incomprehensible Providence. Brum's performance was to be so
+splendid--he was to recite not only his own portion of the Law but the
+entire Sabbath _Sedrah_ (section).
+
+"He will never be all right," said Jossel, who, in the utter breakdown
+of Zillah, had for the first time made the round of the doctors with
+Brum. "None of the physicians, not even the most expensive, hold out
+any hope. And the dearest of all said the case puzzled him. It was
+like the blindness that often breaks out in Russia after the great
+fasts, and specially affects delicate children."
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Zillah; "but that was only among the
+Christians."
+
+"We have so many Christian customs nowadays," said Jossel grimly; and
+he thought of the pestilent heretic in his own synagogue who advocated
+that ladies should be added to the choir.
+
+"Then what shall we do about the people?" moaned Zillah, wringing her
+hands in temporary discouragement.
+
+"You can advertise in the Jewish papers," came suddenly from the
+brooding Brum. He had a flash of pleasure in the thought of composing
+something that would be published.
+
+"Yes, then everybody will read it on the Friday," said Jossel eagerly.
+
+Then Brum remembered that he would not be among the readers, and
+despair reconquered him. But Zillah was shaking her head.
+
+"Yes, but if we tell people not to come, and then when Brum opens his
+eyes on the Sabbath morning, he can see to read the _Sedrah_--"
+
+"But I don't want to see to read the _Sedrah_," said the boy
+petulantly; "I know it all by heart."
+
+"My blessed boy!" cried Zillah.
+
+"There's nothing wonderful," said the boy; "even if you read the
+scroll, there are no vowels nor musical signs."
+
+"But do you feel strong enough to do it all?" said the father
+anxiously.
+
+"God will give him strength," put in the mother. "And he will make his
+speech, too, won't you, my Brum?"
+
+The blind face kindled. Yes, he would give his learned address. He had
+saved his father the expense of hiring one, and had departed in
+original rhetorical ways from the conventional methods of expressing
+filial gratitude to the parents who had brought him to manhood. And
+was this eloquence to remain entombed in his own breast?
+
+His courageous resolution lightened the gloom. His parents opened
+parcels they had not had the heart to touch. They brought him his new
+suit, they placed the high hat of manhood on his head, and told him
+how fine and tall he looked; they wrapped the new silk praying-shawl
+round his shoulders.
+
+"Are the stripes blue or black?" he asked.
+
+"Blue--a beautiful blue," said Jossel, striving to steady his voice.
+
+"It feels very nice," said Brum, smoothing the silk wistfully. "Yes, I
+can almost feel the blue."
+
+Later on, when his father, a little brightened, had gone off to the
+exigent boot factory, Brum even asked to see the presents. The blind
+retain these visual phrases.
+
+Zillah described them to him one by one as he handled them. When it
+came to the books it dawned on her that she could not tell him the
+titles.
+
+"They have such beautiful pictures," she gushed evasively.
+
+The boy burst into tears.
+
+"Yes, but I shall never be able to read them," he sobbed.
+
+"Yes, you will."
+
+"No, I won't."
+
+"Then I'll read them to you," she cried, with sudden resolution.
+
+"But you can't read."
+
+"I can learn."
+
+"But you will be so long. I ought to have taught you myself. And now
+it is too late!"
+
+
+V
+
+In order to insure perfection, and prevent stage fright, so to speak,
+it had been arranged that Brum should rehearse his reading of the
+_Sedrah_ on Friday in the synagogue itself, at an hour when it was
+free from worshippers. This rehearsal, his mother thought, was now all
+the more necessary to screw up Brum's confidence, but the father
+argued that as all places were now alike to the blind boy, the
+prominence of a public platform and a large staring audience could no
+longer unnerve him.
+
+"But he will _feel_ them there!" Zillah protested.
+
+"But since they are not there on the Friday--?"
+
+"All the more reason. Since he cannot see that they are _not_ there,
+he can fancy they _are_ there. On Saturday he will be quite used to
+them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when Jossel, yielding, brought Brum to the synagogue appointment,
+the fusty old Beadle who was faithfully in attendance held up his
+hands in holy and secular horror at the blasphemy and the blindness
+respectively.
+
+"A blind man may not read the Law to the congregation!" he explained.
+
+"No?" said Jossel.
+
+"Why not?" asked Brum sharply.
+
+"Because it stands that the Law shall be read. And a blind man cannot
+read. He can only recite."
+
+"But I know every word of it," protested Brum.
+
+The Beadle shook his head. "But suppose you make a mistake! Shall the
+congregation hear a word or a syllable that God did not write? It
+would be playing into Satan's hands."
+
+"I shall say every word as God wrote it. Give me a trial."
+
+But the fusty Beadle's piety was invincible. He was highly sympathetic
+toward the human affliction, but he refused to open the Ark and
+produce the Scroll.
+
+"I'll let the _Chazan_ (cantor) know he must read to-morrow, as
+usual," he said conclusively.
+
+Jossel went home, sighing, but silenced. Zillah however, was not so
+easily subdued. "But my Brum will read it as truly as an angel!" she
+cried, pressing the boy's head to her breast. "And suppose he does
+make a mistake! Haven't I heard the congregation correct Winkelstein
+scores of times?"
+
+"Hush!" said Jossel, "you talk like an Epicurean. Satan makes us all
+err at times, but we must not play into his hands. The _Din_
+(judgment) is that only those who see may read the Law to the
+congregation."
+
+"Brum will read it much better than that snuffling old Winkelstein."
+
+"Sha! Enough! The _Din_ is the _Din_!"
+
+"It was never meant to stop my poor Brum from--"
+
+"The _Din_ is the _Din_. It won't let you dance on its head or chop
+wood on its back. Besides, the synagogue refuses, so make an end."
+
+"I _will_ make an end. I'll have _Minyan_ (congregation) here, in our
+own house."
+
+"What!" and the poor man stared in amaze. "Always she falls from
+heaven with a new idea!"
+
+"Brum shall not be disappointed." And she gave the silent boy a
+passionate hug.
+
+"But we have no Scroll of the Law," Brum said, speaking at last, and
+to the point.
+
+"Ah, that's you all over, Zillah," cried Jossel, relieved,--"loud
+drumming in front and no soldiers behind!"
+
+"We can borrow a Scroll," said Zillah.
+
+Jossel gasped again. "But the iniquity is just the same," he said.
+
+"As if Brum made mistakes!"
+
+"If you were a Rabbi, the congregation would baptize itself!" Jossel
+quoted.
+
+Zillah writhed under the proverb. "It isn't as if you went to the
+Rabbi; you took the word of the Beadle."
+
+"He is a learned man."
+
+Zillah donned her bonnet and shawl.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the minister."
+
+Jossel shrugged his shoulders, but did not stop her.
+
+The minister, one of the new school of Rabbis who preach sermons in
+English and dress like Christian clergymen, as befitted the dignity of
+Dalston villadom, was taken aback by the ritual problem, so new and so
+tragic. His acquaintance with the vast casuistic literature of his
+race was of the shallowest. "No doubt the Beadle is right," he
+observed profoundly.
+
+"He cannot be right; he doesn't know my Brum."
+
+Worn out by Zillah's persistency, the minister suggested going to the
+Beadle's together. Aware of the Beadle's prodigious lore, he had too
+much regard for his own position to risk congregational odium by
+flying in the face of an exhumable _Din_.
+
+At the Beadle's, the _Din_ was duly unearthed from worm-eaten folios,
+but Zillah remaining unappeased, further searching of these Rabbinic
+scriptures revealed a possible compromise.
+
+If the portion the boy recited was read over again by a reader not
+blind, so that the first congregational reading did not count, it
+might perhaps be permitted.
+
+It would be of course too tedious to treat the whole _Sedrah_ thus,
+but if Brum were content to recite his own particular seventh thereof,
+he should be summoned to the Rostrum.
+
+So Zillah returned to Jossel, sufficiently triumphant.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Abraham, the son of Jossel, shall stand."
+
+In obedience to the Cantor's summons, the blind boy, in his high hat
+and silken praying-shawl with the blue stripes, rose, and guided by
+his father's hand ascended the platform, amid the emotion of the
+synagogue. His brave boyish treble, pursuing its faultless way,
+thrilled the listeners to tears, and inflamed Zillah's breast, as she
+craned down from the gallery, with the mad hope that the miracle had
+happened, after all.
+
+The house-gathering afterward savoured of the grewsome conviviality of
+a funeral assemblage. But the praises of Brum, especially after his
+great speech, were sung more honestly than those of the buried; than
+whom the white-faced dull-eyed boy, cut off from the gaily coloured
+spectacle in the sunlit room, was a more tragic figure.
+
+But Zillah, in her fineries and forced smiles, offered the most tragic
+image of all. Every congratulation was a rose-wreathed dagger, every
+eulogy of Brum's eloquence a reminder of the Rabbi God had thrown away
+in him.
+
+
+VII
+
+Amid the endless babble of suggestions made to her for Brum's cure,
+one--repeated several times by different persons--hooked itself to her
+distracted brain. Germany! There was a great eye-doctor in Germany,
+who could do anything and everything. Yes, she would go to Germany.
+
+This resolution, at which Jossel shrugged his shoulders in despairing
+scepticism, was received with rapture by Brum. How he had longed to
+see foreign countries, to pass over that shining sea which whispered
+and beckoned so, at Brighton and Ramsgate! He almost forgot he would
+not _see_ Germany, unless the eye-doctor were a miracle-monger indeed.
+
+But he was doomed to a double disappointment; for instead of his going
+to Germany, Germany came to him, so to speak, in the shape of the
+specialist's annual visit to London; and the great man had nothing
+soothing to say, only a compassionate head to shake, with ominous
+warnings to make the best of a bad job and fatten up the poor boy.
+
+Nor did Zillah's attempts to read take her out of the infant primers,
+despite long hours of knitted brow and puckered lips, and laborious
+triumphs over the childish sentences, by patient addition of syllable
+to syllable. She also tried to write, but got no further than her own
+name, imitated from the envelopes.
+
+To occupy Brum's days, Jossel, gaining enlightenment in the ways of
+darkness, procured Braille books. But the boy had read most of the
+stock works thus printed for the blind, and his impatient brain
+fretted at the tardiness of finger-reading. Jossel's one consolation
+was that the boy would not have to earn his living. The thought,
+however, of how his blind heir would be cheated by agents and
+rent-collectors was a touch of bitter even in this solitary sweet.
+
+
+VIII
+
+It was the Sabbath Fire-Woman who, appropriately enough, kindled the
+next glimmer of hope in Zillah's bosom. The one maid-of-all-work, who
+had supplied all the help and grandeur Zillah needed in her
+establishment, having transferred her services to a husband, Zillah
+was left searching for an angel at thirteen pounds a year. In the
+interim the old Irishwoman who made a few pence a week by attending to
+the Sabbath fires of the poor Jews of the neighbourhood, became
+necessary on Friday nights and Saturdays, to save the household from
+cold or sin.
+
+"Och, the quare little brat!" she muttered, when she first came upon
+the pale, gnome-like figure by the fender, tapping the big book, for
+all the world like the Leprechaun cobbling.
+
+"And can't he see at all, at all?" she asked Zillah confidentially one
+Sabbath, when the boy was out of the room.
+
+Zillah shook her head, unable to speak.
+
+"_Nebbich!_" compassionately sighed the Fire-Woman, who had corrupted
+her native brogue with "Yiddish." "And wud he be borrun dark?"
+
+"No, it came only a few months ago," faltered Zillah.
+
+The Fire-Woman crossed herself.
+
+"Sure, and who'll have been puttin' the Evil Oi on him?" she asked.
+
+Zillah's face was convulsed.
+
+"I always said so!" she cried; "I always said so!"
+
+"The divil burrun thim all!" cried the Fire-Woman, poking the coals
+viciously.
+
+"Yes, but I don't know who it is. They envied me my beautiful child,
+my lamb, my only one. And nothing can be done." She burst into tears.
+
+"Nothin' is a harrd wurrd! If he was _my_ bhoy, the darlint, I'd cure
+him, aisy enough, so I wud."
+
+Zillah's sobs ceased. "How?" she asked, her eyes gleaming strangely.
+
+"I'd take him to the Pope, av course."
+
+"The Pope!" repeated Zillah vaguely.
+
+"Ay, the Holy Father! The ownly man in this wurruld that can take away
+the Evil Oi."
+
+Zillah gasped. "Do you mean the Pope of Rome?"
+
+She knew the phrase somehow, but what it connoted was very shadowy and
+sinister: some strange, mighty chief of hostile heathendom.
+
+"Who else wud I be manin'? The Holy Mother I'd be for prayin' to
+meself; but as ye're a Jewess, I dursn't tell ye to do that. But the
+Pope, he's a gintleman, an' so he is, an' sorra a bit he'll moind that
+ye don't go to mass, whin he shpies that poor, weeshy, pale shrimp o'
+yours. He'll just wave his hand, shpake a wurrd, an' whisht! in the
+twinklin' of a bedposht ye'll be praisin' the Holy Mother."
+
+Zillah's brain was whirling. "Go to Rome!" she said.
+
+The Fire-Woman poised the poker.
+
+"Well, ye can't expect the Pope to come to Dalston!"
+
+"No, no; I don't mean that," said Zillah, in hasty apology. "Only it's
+so far off, and I shouldn't know how to go."
+
+"It's not so far off as Ameriky, an' it's two broths of bhoys I've got
+there."
+
+"Isn't it?" asked Zillah.
+
+"No, Lord love ye: an' sure gold carries ye anywhere nowadays, ixcept
+to Heaven."
+
+"But if I got to Rome, would the Pope see the child?"
+
+"As sartin as the child wud see him," the Fire-Woman replied
+emphatically.
+
+"He can do miracles, then?" inquired Zillah.
+
+"What else wud he be for? Not that 'tis much of a miracle to take away
+the Evil Oi, bad scran to the witch!"
+
+"Then perhaps our Rabbi can do it, too?" cried Zillah, with a sudden
+hope.
+
+The Fire-Woman shook her head. "Did ye ever hear he could?"
+
+"No," admitted Zillah.
+
+"Thrue for you, mum. Divil a wurrd wud I say aginst your
+Priesht--wan's as good as another, maybe, for ivery-day use; but whin
+it comes to throuble and heart-scaldin', I pity the poor craythurs who
+can't put up a candle to the blessed saints--an' so I do. Niver a bhoy
+o' mine has crassed the ocean without the Virgin havin' her candle."
+
+"And did they arrive safe?"
+
+"They did so; ivery mother's son av 'em."
+
+
+IX
+
+The more the distracted mother pondered over this sensational
+suggestion, the more it tugged at her. Science and Judaism had failed
+her: perhaps this unknown power, this heathen Pope, had indeed
+mastery over things diabolical. Perhaps the strange religion he
+professed had verily a saving efficacy denied to her own. Why should
+she not go to Rome?
+
+True, the journey loomed before her as fearfully as a Polar Expedition
+to an ordinary mortal. Germany she had been prepared to set out for:
+it lay on the great route of Jewish migration westwards. But Rome? She
+did not even know where it was. But her new skill in reading would,
+she felt, help her through the perils. She would be able to make out
+the names of the railway stations, if the train waited long enough.
+
+But with the cunning of the distracted she did not betray her
+heretical ferment.
+
+"P--o--p--e, Pope," she spelt out of her infants' primer in Brum's
+hearing. "Pope? What's that, Brum?"
+
+"Oh, haven't you ever heard of the Pope, mother?"
+
+"No," said Zillah, crimsoning in conscious invisibility.
+
+"He's a sort of Chief Rabbi of the Roman Catholics. He wears a tiara.
+Kings and emperors used to tremble before him."
+
+"And don't they now?" she asked apprehensively.
+
+"No; that was in the Middle Ages--hundreds of years ago. He only had
+power over the Dark Ages."
+
+"Over the Dark Ages?" repeated Zillah, with a fresh, vague hope.
+
+"When all the world was sunk in superstition and ignorance, mother.
+Then everybody believed in him."
+
+Zillah felt chilled and rebuked. "Then he no longer works miracles?"
+she said faintly.
+
+Brum laughed. "Oh, I daresay he works as many miracles as ever. Of
+course thousands of pilgrims still go to kiss his toe. I meant his
+temporal power is gone--that is, his earthly power. He doesn't rule
+over any countries; all he possesses is the Vatican, but that is full
+of the greatest pictures by Michael Angelo and Raphael."
+
+Zillah gazed open-mouthed at the prodigy she had brought into the
+world.
+
+"Raphael--that sounds Jewish," she murmured. She longed to ask in what
+country Rome was, but feared to betray herself.
+
+Brum laughed again. "Raphael Jewish! Why--so it is! It's a Hebrew word
+meaning 'God's healing.'"
+
+"God's healing!" repeated Zillah, awestruck.
+
+Her mind was made up.
+
+
+X
+
+"Knowest thou what, Jossel?" she said in "Yiddish," as they sat by the
+Friday-night fireside when Brum had been put to bed. "I have heard of
+a new doctor, better than all the others!" After all it was the
+doctor, the healer, the exorcist of the Evil Eye, that she was seeking
+in the Pope, not the Rabbi of an alien religion.
+
+Jossel shook his head. "You will only throw more money away."
+
+"Better than throwing hope away."
+
+"Well, who is it now?"
+
+"He lives far away."
+
+"In Germany again?"
+
+"No, in Rome."
+
+"In Rome? Why, that's at the end of the world--in Italy!"
+
+"I know it's in Italy!" said Zillah, rejoiced at the information. "But
+what then? If organ-grinders can travel the distance, why can't I?"
+
+"But you can't speak Italian!"
+
+"And they can't speak English!"
+
+"Madness! Work, but not wisdom! I could not trust you alone in such a
+strange country, and the season is too busy for me to leave the
+factory."
+
+"I don't need you with me," she said, vastly relieved. "Brum will be
+with me."
+
+He stared at her. "Brum!"
+
+"Brum knows everything. Believe me, Jossel, in two days he will speak
+Italian."
+
+"Let be! Let be! Let me rest!"
+
+"And on the way back he will be able to see! He will show me
+everything, and Mr. Raphael's pictures. 'God's healing,'" she murmured
+to herself.
+
+"But you'd be away for Passover! Enough!"
+
+"No, we shall be easily back by Passover."
+
+"O these women! The Almighty could not have rested on the seventh day
+if he had not left woman still uncreated."
+
+"You don't care whether Brum lives or dies!" Zillah burst into sobs.
+
+"It is just because I do that I ask how are you going to live on the
+journey? And there are no _kosher_ hotels in Italy."
+
+"We shall manage on eggs and fish. God will forgive us if the hotel
+plates are unclean."
+
+"But you won't be properly nourished without meat."
+
+"Nonsense; when we were poor we _had_ to do without it." To herself
+she thought, "If he only knew I did without food altogether on Mondays
+and Thursdays!"
+
+
+XI
+
+And so Brum passed at last over the shining, wonderful sea, feeling
+only the wind on his forehead and the salt in his nostrils. It was a
+beautiful day at the dawn of spring; the far-stretching sea sparkled
+with molten diamonds, and Zillah felt that the highest God's blessing
+rested like a blue sky over this strange pilgrimage. She was dressed
+with great taste, and few would have divined the ignorance under her
+silks.
+
+"Mother, can you see France yet?" Brum asked very soon.
+
+"No, my lamb."
+
+"Mother, can you see France yet?" he persisted later.
+
+"I see white cliffs," she said at last.
+
+"Ah! that's only the white cliffs of Old England. Look the other way."
+
+"I _am_ looking the other way. I see white cliffs coming to meet us."
+
+"Has France got white cliffs, too?" cried Brum, disappointed.
+
+On the journey to Paris he wearied her to describe France. In vain she
+tried: her untrained vision and poor vocabulary could give him no new
+elements to weave into a mental picture. There were trees and
+sometimes houses and churches. And again trees. What kind of trees?
+Green! Brum was in despair. France was, then, only like England; white
+cliffs without, trees and houses within. He demanded the Seine at
+least.
+
+"Yes, I see a great water," his mother admitted at last.
+
+"That's it! It rises in the Cote d'Or, flows N.N.W. then W., and N.W.
+into the English Channel. It is more than twice as long as the Thames.
+Perhaps you'll see the tributaries flowing into it--the little
+rivers, the Oise, the Marne, the Yonne."
+
+"No wonder the angels envy me him!" thought Zillah proudly.
+
+They halted at Paris, putting up for the night, by the advice of a
+friendly fellow-traveller, at a hotel by the Gare de Lyon, where, to
+Zillah's joy and amazement, everybody spoke English to her and
+accepted her English gold--a pleasant experience which was destined to
+be renewed at each stage, and which increased her hope of a happy
+issue.
+
+"How loud Paris sounds!" said Brum, as they drove across it. He had to
+construct it from its noises, for in answer to his feverish
+interrogations his mother could only explain that some streets were
+lined with trees and some foolish unrespectable people sat out in the
+cold air, drinking at little tables.
+
+"Oh, how jolly!" said Brum. "But can't you see Notre Dame?"
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A splendid cathedral, mother--very old. Do look for two towers. We
+must go there the first thing to-morrow."
+
+"The first thing to-morrow we take the train. The quicker we get to
+the doctor, the better."
+
+"Oh, but we can't leave Paris without seeing Notre Dame, and the
+gargoyles, and perhaps Quasimodo, and all that Victor Hugo describes.
+I wonder if we shall see a devil-fish in Italy," he added
+irrelevantly.
+
+"You'll see the devil if you go to such places," said Zillah, who,
+besides shirking the labor of description, was anxious not to provoke
+unnecessarily the God of Israel.
+
+"But I've often been to St. Paul's with the boys," said Brum.
+
+"Have you?" She was vaguely alarmed.
+
+"Yes, it's lovely--the stained windows and the organ. Yes, and the
+Abbey's glorious, too; it almost makes me cry. I always liked to hear
+the music with my eyes shut," he added, with forced cheeriness, "and
+now that'll be all right."
+
+"But your father wouldn't like it," said Zillah feebly.
+
+"Father wouldn't like me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_," retorted
+Brum. "He doesn't understand these things. There's no harm in our
+going to Notre Dame."
+
+"No, no; it'll be much better to save all these places for the way
+back, when you'll be able to see for yourself."
+
+Too late it struck her she had missed an opportunity of breaking to
+Brum the real object of the expedition.
+
+"But the Seine, anyhow!" he persisted. "We can go there to-night."
+
+"But what can you see at night?" cried Zillah, unthinkingly.
+
+"Oh, mother! how beautiful it used to be to look over London Bridge at
+night when we came back from the Crystal Palace!"
+
+In the end Zillah accepted the compromise, and after their dinner of
+fish and vegetables--for which Brum had scant appetite--they were
+confided by the hotel porter to a bulbous-nosed cabman, who had
+instructions to restore them to the hotel. Zillah thought wistfully of
+her warm parlour in Dalston, with the firelight reflected in the glass
+cases of the wax flowers.
+
+The cab stopped on a quay.
+
+"Well?" said Brum breathlessly.
+
+"Little fool!" said Zillah good-humouredly. "There is nothing but
+water--the same water as in London."
+
+"But there are lights, aren't there?"
+
+"Yes, there are lights," she admitted cheerfully.
+
+"Where is the moon?"
+
+"Where she always is--in the sky."
+
+"Doesn't she make a silver path on the water?" he said, with a sob in
+his voice.
+
+"What are you crying at? The mother didn't mean to make you cry."
+
+She strained him contritely to her bosom, and kissed away his tears.
+
+
+XII
+
+The train for Switzerland started so early that Brum had no time to
+say his morning prayers; so, the carriage being to themselves, he
+donned his phylacteries and his praying-shawl with the blue stripes.
+
+Zillah sat listening to the hour-long recitative with admiration of
+his memory.
+
+Early in the hour she interrupted him to say: "How lucky I haven't to
+say all that! I should get tired."
+
+"That's curious!" replied Brum. "I was just saying, 'Blessed art Thou,
+O Lord our God, who hath not made me a woman.' But a woman _has_ to
+pray, too, mother. Else why is there given a special form for the
+women to substitute?--'Who hath made me according to His will.'"
+
+"Ah, that's only for learned women. Only learned women pray."
+
+"Well, you'd like to pray the Benediction that comes next, mother, I
+know. Say it with me--do."
+
+She repeated the Hebrew obediently, then asked: "What does it mean?"
+
+"'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the
+blind.'"
+
+"Oh, my poor Brum! Teach it me! Say the Hebrew again."
+
+She repeated it till she could say it unprompted. And then throughout
+the journey her lips moved with it at odd times. It became a
+talisman--a compromise with the God who had failed her.
+
+"Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the blind."
+
+
+XIII
+
+Mountains were the great sensation of the passage through Switzerland.
+Brum had never seen a mountain, and the thought of being among the
+highest mountains in Europe was thrilling. Even Zillah's eyes could
+scarcely miss the mountains. She painted them in broad strokes. But
+they did not at all correspond to Brum's expectations of the Alps.
+
+"Don't you see glaciers?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"No," replied Zillah, but kept a sharp eye on the windows of passing
+chalets till the boy discovered that she was looking for glaziers at
+work.
+
+"Great masses of ice," he explained, "sliding down very slowly, and
+glittering like the bergs in the Polar regions."
+
+"No, I see none," she said, blushing.
+
+"Ah! wait till we come to Mont Blanc."
+
+Mont Blanc was an obsession; his geography was not minute enough to
+know that the route did not pass within sight of it. He had expected
+it to dominate Switzerland as a cathedral spire dominates a little
+town.
+
+"Mont Blanc is 15,784 feet above the sea," he said voluptuously.
+"Eternal snow is on its top, but you will not see that, because it is
+above the clouds."
+
+"It is, then, in Heaven," said Zillah.
+
+"God is there," replied Brum gravely, and burst out with Coleridge's
+lines from his school-book:--
+
+    "'God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
+    Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
+    God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
+    Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
+    And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
+    And in their perilous fall shall thunder God!'"
+
+"Who openest the eyes of the blind," murmured Zillah.
+
+"There are five torrents rushing down, also," added Brum. "'And you,
+ye five wild torrents fiercely glad.' You'll recognize Mont Blanc by
+that. Don't you see them yet, mother?"
+
+"Wait, I think I see them coming."
+
+Presently she announced Mont Blanc definitely; described it with
+glaciers and torrents and its top reaching to God.
+
+Brum's face shone.
+
+"Poor lamb! I may as well give him Mont Blanc," she thought tenderly.
+
+
+XIV
+
+Endless other quaint dialogues passed between mother and son on that
+tedious and harassing journey southwards.
+
+"There'll be no more snow when we get to Italy," Brum explained.
+"Italy's the land of beauty--always sunshine and blue sky. It's the
+country of the old Gods--Venus, the goddess of beauty; Juno, with her
+peacocks; Jupiter, with his thunderbolts, and lots of others."
+
+"But I thought the Pope was a Christian," said Zillah.
+
+"So he is. It was long ago, before people believed in Christianity."
+
+"But then they were all Jews."
+
+"Oh no, mother. There were Pagan gods that people used to believe in
+at Rome and in Greece. In Greece, though, these gods changed their
+names."
+
+"So!" said Zillah scornfully; "I suppose they wanted to have a fresh
+chance. And what's become of them now?"
+
+"They weren't ever there, not really."
+
+"And yet people believed in them? Is it possible?" Zillah clucked her
+tongue with contemptuous surprise. Then she murmured mechanically,
+"'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the
+blind.'"
+
+"Well, and what do people believe in now? The Pope!" Brum reminded
+her. "And yet _he's_ not true."
+
+Zillah's heart sank. "But he's really there," she protested feebly.
+
+"Oh yes, he's there, because pilgrims come from all parts of the world
+to get his blessing."
+
+Her hopes revived.
+
+"But they wouldn't come unless he really did them good."
+
+"Well, if you argue like that, mother, you might as well say we ought
+to believe in Christ."
+
+"Hush! hush!" The forbidden word jarred on Zillah. She felt chilled
+and silenced. She had to call up the image of the Irish Fire-Woman to
+restore herself to confidence. It was clear Brum must not be told; his
+unfaith might spoil all. No, the deception must be kept up till his
+eyes were opened--in more than one sense.
+
+
+XV
+
+After Mont Blanc, Brum's great interest was the leaning tower of Pisa.
+"It is one of the wonders of the world," he said; "there are seven
+altogether."
+
+"Yes, it is a wonderful world," said Zillah; "I never thought about it
+before."
+
+And in truth Italy was beginning to touch sleeping chords. The
+cypresses, the sunset on the mountains, the white towns dozing on the
+hills under the magical blue sky,--all these broad manifestations of
+an obvious beauty, under the spur of Brum's incessant interrogatory,
+began to penetrate. Nature in unusual combinations spoke to her as its
+habitual phenomena had never done. Her replies to Brum did rough
+justice to Italy.
+
+Florence recalled "Romola" to the boy. He told his mother about
+Savonarola. "He was burnt!"
+
+"What!" cried Zillah. "Burn a Christian! No wonder, then, they burnt
+Jews. But why?"
+
+"He wanted the people to be good. All good people suffer."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, Brum! It is the bad who suffer."
+
+Then she looked at his wasted, white face, grown thinner with the
+weariness of the long journey through perpetual night, and wonder at
+her own words struck her silent.
+
+
+XVI
+
+They arrived at last in the Eternal City, having taken a final run of
+many hours without a break. But the Pope was still to seek.
+
+Leaving the exhausted Brum in bed, Zillah drove the first morning to
+the Vatican, where Brum said he lived, and asked to see him.
+
+A glittering Swiss Guard stared blankly at her, and directed her by
+dumb show to follow the stream of people--the pilgrims, Zillah told
+herself. She was made to scrawl her name, and, thanking God that she
+had acquired that accomplishment, she went softly up a gorgeous flight
+of steps, and past awe-inspiring creatures in tufted helmets, into the
+Sistine Chapel, where she wondered at people staring ceilingwards
+through opera-glasses, or looking downwards into little mirrors.
+Zillah also stared up through the gloom till she had a crick in the
+neck, but saw no sign of the Pope. She inquired of the janitor whether
+he was the Pope, and realized that English was, after all, not the
+universal language. She returned gloomily to see after Brum, and to
+consider her plan of campaign.
+
+"The great doctor was not at home," she said. "We must wait a little."
+
+"And yet you made us hurry so through everything," grumbled Brum.
+
+Brum remained in bed while Zillah went to get some lunch in the
+dining-room. A richly dressed old lady who sat near her noticed that
+she was eating Lenten fare, like herself, and, assuming her a
+fellow-Catholic, spoke to her, in foreign-sounding English, about the
+blind boy whose arrival she had observed.
+
+Zillah asked her how one could get to see the Pope, and the old lady
+told her it was very difficult.
+
+"Ah, those blessed old times before 1870!--ah, the splendid ceremonies
+in St. Peter's! Do you remember them?"
+
+Zillah shook her head. The old lady's assumption of spiritual
+fellowship made her uneasy.
+
+But St. Peter's stuck in her mind. Brum had already told her it was
+the Pope's house of prayer. Clearly, therefore, it was only necessary
+to loiter about there with Brum to chance upon him and extort his
+compassionate withdrawal of the spell of the Evil Eye. With a
+culminating inspiration she bought a photograph of the Pope, and
+overcoming the first shock of hereditary repulsion at the sight of the
+large pendent crucifix at his breast, she studied carefully the
+Pontiff's face and the Papal robes.
+
+Then, when Brum declared himself strong enough to get up, they drove
+to St. Peter's, the instruction being given quietly to the driver so
+that Brum should not overhear it.
+
+It was the first time Zillah had ever been in a cathedral; and the
+vastness and glory of it swept over her almost as a reassuring sense
+of a greater God than she had worshipped in dingy synagogues. She
+walked about solemnly, leading Brum by the hand, her breast swelling
+with suppressed sobs of hope. Her eyes roved everywhere, searching for
+the Pope; but at moments she well-nigh forgot her disappointment at
+his absence in the wonder and ghostly comfort of the great dim spaces,
+and the mysterious twinkle of the countless lights before the bronze
+canopy with its golden-flashing columns.
+
+"Where are we, mother?" said Brum at last.
+
+"We are waiting for the doctor."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"In the waiting-room."
+
+"It seems very large, mother."
+
+"No, I am walking round and round."
+
+"There is a strange smell, mother,--I don't know what--something
+religious."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" She laughed uneasily.
+
+"I know what it smells like: cold marble pillars and warm coloured
+windows."
+
+Her blood froze at such uncanny sensibility.
+
+"It is the smell of the medicines," she murmured. Somehow his
+divination made it more difficult to confess to him.
+
+"It feels like being in St. Paul's or the Abbey," he persisted, "when
+I used to shut my eyes to hear the organ better." He had scarcely
+ceased speaking, when a soft, slow music began to thrill with life the
+great stone spaces.
+
+Brum's grasp tightened convulsively: a light leapt into the blind
+face. Both came to a standstill, silent. In Zillah's breast rapture
+made confusion more confounded; and as this pealing grandeur, swelling
+more passionately, uplifted her high as the mighty Dome, she forgot
+everything--even the need of explanation to Brum--in this wonderful
+sense of a Power that could heal, and her Hebrew benediction flowed
+out into sobbing speech:--
+
+"'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who openest the eyes of the
+blind.'"
+
+But Brum had fainted, and hung heavy on her arm.
+
+
+XVII
+
+When Brum awoke, in bed again, after his long fainting-fit, he related
+with surprise his vivid dream of St. Paul's, and Zillah weakly
+acquiesced in the new deception, especially as the doctor warned her
+against exciting the boy. But her hopes were brighter than ever; for
+the old lady had beneficently appeared from behind a pillar in St.
+Peter's to offer eau de Cologne for the unconscious Brum, and had
+then, interesting herself in the couple, promised to procure for her
+fellow-Catholics admission to the next Papal reception. Being a very
+rich and fashionable old lady, she kept her word; but unfortunately,
+when the day came round, Brum was terribly low and forbidden to leave
+his bed.
+
+Zillah was distracted. If she should miss the great chance after all!
+It might never recur again.
+
+"Brum," she said at last, "this is the only day for a long time that
+the great eye-doctor receives patients. Do you think you could go, my
+lamb?"
+
+"Why won't he come here--like the other doctors?"
+
+"He is too great."
+
+"Well, I daresay I can manage. It's miserable lying in bed. Fancy
+coming to Rome and seeing nothing!"
+
+With infinite care Brum was dressed and wrapped up, and placed in a
+specially comfortable brougham; and thus at last mother and son stood
+waiting in one of the ante-chambers of the Vatican, amid twenty other
+pilgrims whispering in strange languages. Zillah was radiantly
+assured: the mighty Power, whatever it was, that spoke in music and in
+mountains, would never permit such weary journeyings and waitings to
+end in the old darkness; the malice of witches could not prevail
+against this great spirit of sunshine. For Brum, too, the long
+pilgrimage had enveloped the doctor with a miraculous glamour as of an
+eighth wonder of the world.
+
+Drooping wearily on his mother's arm, but wrought up to joyous
+anticipation, Brum had an undoubting sense of the patient crowd around
+him waiting, as in his old hospital days, for admission to the
+doctor's sanctum. His ear was strung for the ting-ting of the bell
+summoning the sufferers one by one.
+
+At last a wave of awe swept over the little fashionable gathering, and
+set Zillah's heart thumping and the room fading in mist, through which
+the tall, venerable, robed figure, the eagle features softened in
+benediction, gleamed like a god's. Then she found herself on her
+knees, with Brum at her side, and the wonderful figure passing between
+two rows of reverent pilgrims.
+
+"Why must I kneel, mother?" murmured Brum feebly.
+
+"Hush! hush!" she whispered. "The great doc--" she hesitated in awe of
+the venerable figure--"the great healer is here."
+
+"The great healer!" breathed Brum. His face was transfigured with
+ecstatic forevision. "'Who openeth the eyes of the blind,'" he
+murmured, as he fell forward in death.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TRANSITIONAL
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TRANSITIONAL
+
+
+I
+
+The day came when old Daniel Peyser could no longer withstand his
+wife's desire for a wider social sphere and a horizon blacker with
+advancing bachelors. For there were seven daughters, and not a man to
+the pack. Indeed, there had been only one marriage in the whole
+Portsmouth congregation during the last five years, and the Christian
+papers had had reports of the novel ceremony, with the ritual bathing
+of the bride and the breaking of the glass under the bridegroom's
+heel. To Mrs. Peyser, brought up amid the facile pairing of the
+Russian pale, this congestion of celibacy approached immorality.
+
+Portsmouth with its careless soldiers and sailors might be an
+excellent town for pawnbroking, especially when one was not too
+punctiliously acceptant of the ethics of the heathen, but as a market
+for maidens--even with dowries and pretty faces--it was hopeless. But
+it was not wholly as an emporium for bachelors that London appealed.
+It was the natural goal of the provincial Jew, the reward of his
+industry. The best people had all drifted to the mighty magic city,
+whose fascination survived even cheap excursions to it.
+
+Would father deny that they had now made enough to warrant the
+migration? No, father would not deny it. Ever since he had left
+Germany as a boy he had been saving money, and his surplus he had
+shrewdly invested in the neighbouring soil of Southsea, fast growing
+into a watering-place. Even allowing three thousand pounds for each
+daughter's dowry, he would still have a goodly estate.
+
+Was there any social reason why they should not cut as great a dash as
+the Benjamins or the Rosenweilers? No, father would not deny that his
+girls were prettier and more polished than the daughters of these
+pioneers, especially when six of them crowded around the stern granite
+figure, arguing, imploring, cajoling, kissing.
+
+"But I don't see why we should waste the money," he urged, with the
+cautious instincts of early poverty.
+
+"Waste!" and the pretty lips made reproachful "Oh's!"
+
+"Yes, waste!" he retorted. "In India one treads on diamonds and gold,
+but in London the land one treads on costs diamonds and gold."
+
+"But are we never to have a grandson?" cried Mrs. Peyser.
+
+The Indian item was left unquestioned, so that little Schnapsie, whose
+childish imagination was greatly impressed by these eventful family
+debates, had for years a vivid picture of picking her way with bare
+feet over sharp-pointed diamonds and pebbly gold. Indeed, long after
+she had learned to wonder at her father's naive geography the word
+"India" always shone for her with barbaric splendour.
+
+Environed by so much persistent femininity, the rugged elderly toiler
+was at last nagged into accepting a leisured life in London.
+
+
+II
+
+And so the family spread its wings joyfully and migrated to the
+wonder-town. Only its head and tail--old Daniel and little
+Schnapsie--felt the least sentiment for the things left behind. Old
+Daniel left the dingy synagogue to whose presidency he had mounted
+with the fattening of his purse, and in which he bought for himself,
+or those he delighted to honour, the choicest privileges of
+ark-opening or scroll-bearing; left the cronies who dropped in to play
+"Klabberjagd" on Sunday afternoons; left the bustling lucrative
+Saturday nights in the shop when the heathen housewives came to redeem
+their Sabbath finery.
+
+And little Schnapsie--who was only eleven, and not keen about
+husbands--left the twinkling tarry harbour, with its heroic hulks and
+modern men-of-war amid which the half-penny steamer plied; left the
+great waves that smashed on the pebbly beach, and the friendly moon
+that threw shimmering paths across their tranquillity; left the narrow
+lively streets in which she had played, and the school in which she
+had always headed her class, and the salt wind that blew over all.
+
+Little Schnapsie was only Schnapsie to her father. Her real name was
+Florence. The four younger girls all bore pagan names--Sylvia, Lily,
+Daisy, Florence--symbolic of the influence upon the family councils of
+the three elder girls, grown to years of discretion and disgust with
+their own Leah, Rachael, and Rebecca. Between these two strata of
+girls--Jewish and pagan--two boys had intervened, but their stay was
+brief and pitiful, so that all this plethora of progeny had not
+provided the father with a male mourner to say the _Kaddish_. But it
+seemed likely a grandson would not long be a-wanting, for the eldest
+girl was twenty-five, and all were good-looking. As if in irony, the
+Jewish group was blond, almost Christian, in colouring (for they took
+after the Teuton father), while the pagan group had characteristically
+Oriental traits. In little Schnapsie these Eastern charms--a whit
+heavy in her sisters--were repeated in a key of exquisite refinement.
+The thick black eyebrows and hair were soft as silk, dark dreamy eyes
+suffused her oval face with poetry, and her skin was like dead ivory
+flushing into life.
+
+
+III
+
+The first year at Highbury, that genteel suburb in the north of
+London, was an enchanted ecstasy for the mother and the Jewish group
+of girls, taken at once to the bosom of a great German clan, and
+admitted to a new world of dances and dinners, of "at homes" and
+theatres and card parties. The eldest of the pagan group,
+Sylvia--tyrannically kept young in the interests of her sisters--was
+the only one who grumbled at the change, for Lily and Daisy found
+sufficient gain in the prospect of replacing the elder group when it
+should have passed away in an odour of orange blossom. The scent of
+that was always in the air, and Mrs. Peyser and her three hopefuls
+sniffed it night and day.
+
+"No, no; Rebecca shall have him."
+
+"Not me! I am not going to marry a man with carroty hair. Leah's the
+eldest; it's her turn first."
+
+"Thank you, my dear. Don't give away what you haven't got."
+
+Every new young man who showed the faintest signs of liking to drop
+in, provoked a similar semi-facetious but also semi-serious
+canvassing--his person, his income, and the girl to whom he should be
+allotted supplying the sauce of every meal at which he--or his
+fellow--was not present.
+
+Thus, whether in the flesh or the spirit, the Young Man--for so many
+of him appeared on the scene that he hovered in the air rather as a
+type than an individual--was a permanent guest at the Peyser table.
+
+But all this new domestic excitement did not compensate little
+Schnapsie for her moonlit waters and the strange ships that came and
+went with their cargo of mystery.
+
+And poor old Daniel found no cronies to appeal to him like the old,
+nothing in the roar of London to compensate for the Saturday night
+bustle of the pawn-shop, no dingy little synagogue desirous of his
+presidential pomp. He sat inconspicuously in a handsome half-empty
+edifice, and knew himself a superfluous atom in a vast lonely
+wilderness.
+
+He was not, indeed, an imposing figure, with his ragged graying
+whiskers and his boyish blue eyes. In the street he had the stoop and
+shuffle of the Ghetto, and forgot to hide his coarse red hands with
+gloves; in the house he persisted in wearing a pious skull-cap. At
+first his more adaptable wife and his English-bred daughters tried to
+fit him for decent society, and to make him feel at home during their
+"at homes." But he was soon relegated to the background of these
+brilliant social tableaux; for he was either too silent or too
+talkative, with old-fashioned Jewish jokes which disconcerted the
+smart young men, and with Hebrew quotations which they could not even
+understand. And sometimes there thrilled through the small-talk the
+trumpet-note of his nose, as he blew it into a coloured handkerchief.
+Gradually he was eliminated from the drawing-room altogether.
+
+But for some years longer he reigned supreme in the dining-room--when
+there was no company. Old habit kept the girls at table when he
+intoned with noisy unction the Hebrew grace after meals; they even
+joined in the melodious morceaux that diversified the plain-chant. But
+little by little their contributions dwindled to silence. And when
+they had smart company to dinner, the old man himself was hushed by
+rows of blond and bugle eyebrows; especially after he had once or
+twice put young men to shame by offering them the honour of reciting
+the grace they did not know.
+
+Daniel's prayer on such occasions was at length reduced to a pious
+mumbling, which went unobserved amid the joyous clatter of dessert,
+even as his pious skull-cap passed as a preventive against cold.
+
+Last stage of all, the mumbling of his company manners passed over
+into the domestic circle; and this humble whispering to God became
+symbolic of his suppression.
+
+
+IV
+
+"I don't think he means Rachael at all."
+
+"Oh, how can you say so, Leah? It was me he took down to supper."
+
+"Nonsense! it isn't either of you he's after; that's only his
+politeness to my sisters. Didn't he say the bouquet was for me?"
+
+"Don't be silly, Rebecca. You know you can't have him. The eldest must
+take precedence."
+
+This changed tone indicated their humbler attitude toward the Young
+Man as the years went by. For the first young man did not propose,
+either to the sisterhood _en bloc_ or to a particular sister. And his
+example was followed by his successors. In fact, a procession of young
+men passed and repassed through the house, or danced with the girls at
+balls, without a single application for any of these many hands. And
+the first season passed into the second, and the second into the
+third, with tantalizing mirages of marriage. Balls, dances, dinners, a
+universe of nebulous matrimonial matter on the whirl, but never the
+shot-off star of an engagement! Mrs. Peyser's hair began to whiten
+faster. She even surreptitiously called in the Shadchan, or rather
+surrendered to his solicitations.
+
+"Pooh! Not find any one suitable?" he declared, rubbing his hands. "I
+have hundreds of young men on my books, just your sort, real
+gentlemen."
+
+At first the girls refused to consider applications from such a
+source. It was not done in their set, they said.
+
+Mrs. Peyser snorted sceptically. "Oh, indeed! and pray how did those
+Rosenweiler girls find husbands?"
+
+"Oh, yes, the Rosenweilers!" They shrugged their shoulders; they knew
+they had not that disadvantage of hideousness.
+
+Nevertheless they lent an ear to the agent's suggestions as filtered
+through the mother, though under pretence of deriding them.
+
+But the day came when even that pretence was dropped, and with broken
+spirit they waited eagerly for each new possibility. And with the
+passing of the years the Young Man aged. He grew balder, less
+gentlemanly, poorer.
+
+Once indeed, he turned up as a handsome and wealthy Christian, but
+this time it was he that was rejected in a unanimous sisterly shudder.
+Five slow years wore by, then of a sudden the luck changed. A
+water-proof manufacturer on the sunny side of forty appeared, the long
+glacial epoch was broken up, and the first orange blossom ripened for
+the Peyser household.
+
+It was Rebecca, the youngest of the Jewish group, who proved the
+pioneer to the canopy, but her marriage gave a new lease of youth even
+to the oldest. And miraculously, mysteriously, within a few months two
+other girls flew off Mrs. Peyser's shoulders--a Jewish and a
+pagan--though Sylvia was not yet formally "out."
+
+And though Leah, the first born, still remained unchosen, yet Sylvia's
+marriage to a Bayswater household had raised the family status, and
+provided a better field for operations. The Shadchan was frozen off.
+
+But he returned. For despite all these auguries and auspices another
+arctic winter set in. No orange blossoms, only desolate lichens of
+fruitless flirtation.
+
+Gradually the pagan group pushed its way into unconcealable womanhood.
+The problem darkened all the horizon. The Young Man grew middle-aged
+again. He lost all his money; he wanted old Daniel to set him up in
+business. Even this seemed better than a barren fine ladyhood, and
+Leah might have even harked back to the parental pawn-shop had not
+another sudden epidemic of felicity married off all save little
+Schnapsie within eighteen months. Mrs. Peyser was knocked breathless
+by all these shocks. First a rich German banker, then a prosperous
+solicitor (for Leah), then a Cape financier--any one in himself catch
+enough to "gouge out the eyes" of the neighbours.
+
+"I told you so," she said, her portly bosom swelling portlier with
+exultation as the sixth bride was whirled off in a rice shower from
+the Highbury villa, while the other five sat around in radiant
+matronhood. "I told you to come to London."
+
+Daniel pressed her hand in gratitude for all the happiness she had
+given herself and the girls.
+
+"If it were not for Florence," she went on wistfully.
+
+"Ah, little Schnapsie!" sighed Daniel. Somehow he felt he would have
+preferred her hymeneal felicity to all these marvellous marriages.
+For there had grown up a strange sympathy between the poor lonely old
+man, now nearly seventy, and his little girl, now twenty-four. They
+never conversed except about commonplaces, but somehow he felt that
+her presence warmed the air. And she--she divined his solitude, albeit
+dimly; had an intuition of what life had been for him in the days
+before she was born: the long days behind the counter, the risings in
+the gray dawn to chant orisons and don phylacteries ere the pawn-shop
+opened, the lengthy prayer and the swift supper when the shutters were
+at last put up--all the bare rock on which this floriage of prosperity
+had been sown. And long after the others had dropped kissing him
+good-night, she would tender her lips, partly because of the necessary
+domestic fiction that she was still a baby, but also because she felt
+instinctively that the kiss counted in his life.
+
+Through all these years of sordid squabbles and canvassings and weary
+waiting, all those endless scenes of hysteria engendered by the mutual
+friction of all that close-packed femininity, poor Schnapsie had
+lived, shuddering. Sometimes a sense of the pathos of it all, of the
+tragedy of women's lives, swept over her. She regretted every inch she
+grew, it seemed to shame her celibate sisters so. She clung willingly
+to short skirts until she was of age, wore her long raven hair in a
+plait with a red ribbon.
+
+"Well, Florence," said Leah genially, when the last outsider at
+Daisy's wedding had departed, "it's your turn next. You'd better hurry
+up."
+
+"Thank you," said Florence coldly. "I shall take my own time;
+fortunately there is no one behind me."
+
+"Humph!" said Leah, playing with her diamond rings. "It don't do to be
+too particular. Why don't you come round and see me sometimes?"
+
+"There are so many of you now," murmured Florence. She was not
+attracted by the solicitors and traders in whose society and carriages
+her mother lolled luxuriously, and she resented the matronly airs of
+her sisters. With Leah, however, she was conscious of a different and
+more paradoxical provocation. Leah had an incredible air of
+juvenility. All those unthinkable, innumerable years little Schnapsie
+had conceived of her eldest sister as an old maid, hopeless,
+senescent, despite the wonderful belt that had kept her figure
+dashing; but now that she was married she had become the girlish
+bride, kittenish, irresistible, while little Schnapsie was the old
+maid, the sister in peril of being passed by. And indeed she felt
+herself appallingly ancient, prematurely aged by her long stay at
+seventeen.
+
+"Yes, you are right, Leah," she said pensively, with a touch of
+malice. "To-morrow I shall be twenty-four."
+
+"What?" shrieked Leah.
+
+"Yes," Florence said obstinately. "And oh, how glad I shall be!" She
+raised her arms exultingly and stretched herself, as if shooting up
+seven years as soon as the pressure of her sisters was removed.
+
+"Do you hear, mother?" whispered Leah. "That fool of a Florence is
+going to celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday. Not the slightest
+consideration for _us_!"
+
+"I didn't say I would celebrate it publicly," said Florence.
+"Besides," she suggested, smiling, "very soon people will forget that
+I am _not_ the eldest."
+
+"Then your folly will recoil on your own head," said Leah.
+
+Little Schnapsie gave a devil-may-care shrug--a Ghetto trait that
+still clung to all the sisters.
+
+"Yes," added Mrs. Peyser. "Think what it will be in ten years' time!"
+
+"I shall be thirty-four," said Florence imperturbably. Another little
+smile lit up the dreamy eyes. "Then I _shall_ be the eldest."
+
+"Madness!" cried Mrs. Peyser, aloud, forgetting that her daughters'
+husbands were about. "God forbid I should live to see any girl of mine
+thirty-four!"
+
+"Hush, mother!" said Florence quietly. "I hope you will; indeed, I am
+sure you will, for I shall _never_ marry. So don't bother to put me on
+the books--I'm not on the market. Good-night."
+
+She sought out poor Daniel, who, awed by the culture and standing of
+his five sons-in-law, not to speak of the guests, was hanging about
+the deserted supper-room, smoking cigar after cigar, much to the
+disgust of the caterer's men, who were waiting to spirit away the box.
+
+Having duly kissed her father, little Schnapsie retired to bed to read
+Browning's love-poems. Her mother had to take a glass of champagne to
+restore her ruffled nerves to the appropriate ecstasy.
+
+
+V
+
+Poor portly Mrs. Peyser was not destined to enjoy her harvest of
+happiness for more than a few years. But these years were an
+overbrimming cup, with only the bitter drop of Florence's heretical
+indifference to the Young Man. Environed by the six households which
+she had begotten, Mrs. Peyser breathed that atmosphere of ebullient
+babyhood which was the breath of her Jewish nostrils; babies appeared
+almost every other month. It was a seething well-spring of healthy
+life. Religious ceremonies connected with these chubby new-comers, or
+medical recipes for their bodily salvation, absorbed her. But her
+exuberant grandmotherliness usually received a check in the summer,
+when the babies were deported to scattered sea-shores; and thus it
+came to pass that the summer of her death found her still lingering in
+London with a bad cold, with only Daniel and little Schnapsie at
+hand. And before the others could be called, Mrs. Peyser passed away
+in peace, in the old Portsmouth bed, overlooked by the old Hebrew
+picture exiled from the London dining-room.
+
+It was a curious end. She did not know she was dying, but Daniel was
+anxious she should not be reft into silence before she had made the
+immemorial proclamation of the Unity. At the same time he hesitated to
+appall her with the grim knowledge.
+
+He was blubbering piteously, yet striving to hide his sobs. The early
+days of his struggle came back, the first weeks of wedded happiness,
+then the long years of progressive prosperity and godly cheerfulness
+in Portsmouth ere she had grown fashionable and he unimportant; and a
+vast self-pity mingled with his pitiful sense of her excellencies--the
+children she had borne him in agony, the economy of her house
+management, the good bargains she had driven with the clod-pated
+soldiers and sailors, the later splendour of her social achievement.
+
+And little Schnapsie wept with a sense of the vanity of these dual
+existences to which she owed her own empty life.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Peyser, over whose black eyes a glaze had been stealing,
+let the long dark eyelashes fall over them.
+
+"Sarah!" whispered Daniel frantically. "Say the Shemang!"
+
+"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," said the sensuous
+lips obediently.
+
+Little Schnapsie shrugged her shoulders rebelliously. The dogma seemed
+so irrelevant.
+
+Mrs. Peyser opened her eyes, and a beautiful mother-light came into
+them as she saw the weeping girl.
+
+"Ah, Florrie, do not fret," she said reassuringly, in her long-lapsed
+Yiddish. "I will find thee a bridegroom."
+
+Her eyes closed, and little Schnapsie shuddered with a weird image of
+a lover fetched from the shrouded dead.
+
+
+VI
+
+After his Sarah had been lowered into "The House of Life," and the
+excitement of the tombstone recording her virtues had subsided, Daniel
+would have withered away in an empty world but for little Schnapsie.
+The two kept house together; the same big house that had reeked with
+so much feminine life, and about which the odours of perfumes and
+powders still seemed to linger. But father and daughter only met at
+meals. He spent hours over the morning paper, with the old quaint
+delusions about India and other things he read of, and he pottered
+about the streets, or wandered into the Beth-Hamidrash, which a local
+fanatic had just instituted in North London, and in which, under the
+guidance of a Polish sage, Daniel strove to concentrate his aged wits
+on the ritual problems of Babylon. At long intervals he brushed his
+old-fashioned high hat carefully, and timidly rang the bell of one of
+his daughters' mansions, and was permitted to caress a loudly
+remonstrating baby; but they all lived so far from him and one another
+in this mighty London. From Sylvia's, where there was a boy with
+buttons, he had always been frightened off, and when the others began
+to emulate her, his visits ceased altogether. As for the sisters
+coming to see him, all pleaded overwhelming domestic duty, and the
+frigidity of Florence's reception of them. "Now if you lived alone--or
+with one of us!" But somehow Daniel felt the latter alternative would
+be as desolate as the former. And though he knew some wide vague river
+flowed between even his present housemate's life and his own, yet he
+felt far more clearly the bridge of love over which their souls passed
+to each other.
+
+Figure then the septuagenarian's amaze when, one fine morning, as he
+was shuffling about in his carpet slippers, the servant brought him
+word that his six daughters demanded his instantaneous presence in the
+drawing-room.
+
+The shock drove out all thoughts of toilet; his heart beat quicker
+with a painful premonition of he knew not what. This simultaneous
+visit recalled funerals, weddings. He looked out of a window and saw
+four carriages drawn up, and that completed his sense of something
+elemental. He tottered into the drawing-room--grown dingy now that it
+had no more daughters to dispose of--and shrank before the
+resplendence with which their presence reinvested it. They rustled
+with silks, shone with gold necklaces, and impregnated the air with
+its ancient aroma of powders and perfumes. He felt himself dwindling
+before all this pungent prosperity, like some more creative
+Frankenstein before a congress of his own monsters.
+
+They did not rise as he entered. The Jewish group and the pagan group
+were promiscuously seated--marriage had broken down all the ancient
+landmarks. They all looked about the same agelessness--a standstill
+buxom matronhood.
+
+Daniel stood at the door, glancing from one to another. Some coughed;
+others fidgeted with muffs.
+
+"Sit down, sit down, father," said Rachael kindly, though she retained
+the arm-chair,--and there was a general air of relief at her voice.
+But the old embarrassment returned as the silence reestablished itself
+when Daniel had drooped into a stiff chair.
+
+At last Leah took the word: "We have come while Florrie is at her
+slumming--"
+
+"At her slumming!" repeated Sylvia, with more significance, and a
+meaning smile spread over the six faces.
+
+"Yes?" Daniel murmured.
+
+"--Because we did not want her to know of our coming."
+
+"It concerns Schnapsie?" he murmured.
+
+"Yes, your little Schnapsie," said Daisy viciously.
+
+"Yes; she has no time to come and see _us_," cried Rebecca. "But she
+has plenty of time for her--_slumming_."
+
+"Well, she does good," he murmured apologetically.
+
+"A fat lot of good!" sniggered Rachael.
+
+"To herself!" corrected Lily.
+
+"I do not understand," he muttered uneasily.
+
+"Well--" began Lily. "You tell him, Leah; you know more about it."
+
+"You know as much as I do."
+
+He looked appealingly from one to the other.
+
+"I always said the slums were dangerous places for people of our
+class," said Sylvia. "She doesn't even confine herself to her own
+people."
+
+The faces began to lighten--evidently they felt the ice broken.
+
+"Dangerous!" he repeated, catching at the ominous word.
+
+"Dreadful!" in a common shudder.
+
+He half rose. "You have bad news?" he cried.
+
+The faces gloomed over, the heads nodded.
+
+"About Schnapsie?" he shrieked, jumping up.
+
+"Sit down, sit down; she's not dead," said Leah contemptuously.
+
+He sat down.
+
+"Well, what is it? What has happened?"
+
+"She's engaged!" In Leah's mouth the word sounded like a death-bell.
+
+"Engaged!" he breathed, with a glimmering foreboding of the horror.
+
+"To a Christian!" said Daisy brutally.
+
+He sank back, pale and trembling. A tense silence fell on the room.
+
+"But how? Who?" he murmured at last.
+
+The girls recovered themselves. Now they were all speaking at once.
+
+"Another slummer."
+
+"He's the son of an archdeacon."
+
+"An awful Christian crank."
+
+"And that's your pet Schnapsie."
+
+"If _we_ had wanted Christians, we could have been married twenty
+years ago."
+
+"It's a terrible disgrace for us."
+
+"She doesn't consider us in the least."
+
+"She'll be miserable, anyhow. When they quarrel, he'll always throw it
+up to her that she's a Jewess."
+
+"And wouldn't join our Daughters of Mercy committee--had no time."
+
+"Wasn't going to marry--turned up her nose at all the Jewish young
+men!"
+
+"But she would have told me!" he murmured hopelessly. "I don't believe
+it. My little Schnapsie!"
+
+"Don't believe it?" snorted Leah. "Why, she didn't even deny it."
+
+"Have you spoken to her, then?"
+
+"Have we spoken to her! Why, she says Judaism is all nonsense! She
+will disgrace us all."
+
+The blind racial instinct spoke through them--the twenty-five
+centuries of tested separateness. But Daniel felt in super-addition
+the conscious religious horror.
+
+"But is she to be married in a Christian church?" he breathed.
+
+"Oh, she isn't going to marry--yet."
+
+His poor heart fluttered at the reprieve.
+
+"She doesn't care a pin for _our_ feelings," went on Leah. "But of
+course she won't marry while _you_ are alive."
+
+Lily took up the thread. "We all told her if she'd only marry a Jew,
+we'd all be glad to have you--in turn. But she said it wasn't that.
+She could have you herself; her Alfred wouldn't mind. It's the shock
+to your religious feelings that keeps her back. She doesn't want to
+hurt you."
+
+"God bless her, my good little Schnapsie!" he murmured. His dazed
+brain did not grasp all the bearings, was only conscious of a vast
+relief.
+
+Disgust darkened all the faces.
+
+He groped to understand it, putting his hand over the white hairs that
+straggled from his skull-cap.
+
+"But then--then it's all right."
+
+"Yes, all right," said Leah brutally. "But for how long?"
+
+Her meaning seized him like an icy claw upon his heart. For the first
+time in his life he realized the certainty of death, and
+simultaneously with the certainty its imminence.
+
+"We want you to put a stop to it _now_," said Sylvia. "For our sakes
+make her promise that even when-- You're the only one who has any
+influence over her."
+
+She rose, as if to wind up the painful interview, and the others rose,
+too, with a multiplex rustling of silken skirts. He shook the six
+jewelled hands as in a dream, and promised to do his best; and as he
+watched the little procession of carriages roll off, it seemed to him
+indeed a funeral, and his own.
+
+
+VII
+
+Ah God, that it should have come to this. Little Schnapsie could not
+be happy till he was dead. Well, why should he keep her waiting? What
+mattered the few odd years or months? He was already dead. There was
+his funeral going down the street.
+
+To speak to Schnapsie he had never intended, even while he was
+promising it. Those years of silent life together had made real
+conversation impossible. The bridge on which his soul passed over to
+hers was a bridge over which hung a sacred silence. Under the weight
+of words, especially of angry parental words, it might break down
+forever. And that would be worse than death.
+
+No; little Schnapsie had her own life, and he somehow knew he had not
+the right to question it, even though it seemed on the verge of deadly
+sin. He could not have expressed it in logical speech, was not even
+clearly conscious of it; but his tender relation with her had educated
+him to a sense of her moral rightness, which now survived and
+subsisted with his conviction that she was hopelessly astray. No, he
+had not the right to interfere with her life, with her prospect of
+happiness in her own way. He must give up living. Little Schnapsie
+must be nearly thirty; the best of her youth was gone. She should be
+happy with this strange man.
+
+But if he killed himself, that would bring disgrace on the family--and
+little Schnapsie. Perhaps, too, Alfred would not marry her. Was there
+no way of slipping quietly out of existence? But then suicide was
+another deadly sin. If only that had really been his funeral
+procession!
+
+"O God, God of Israel, tell me what to do!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+A sudden inspiration leapt to his heart. She should not have to wait
+for his death to be happy; he would _live_ to see her happy. He would
+pretend that her marriage cost him no pang; indeed, would not truly
+the pang be swallowed up in the thought of her happiness? But _would_
+she be happy? _Could_ she be happy with this alien? Ah, there was the
+chilling doubt! If a quarrel came, would not the man always throw it
+in her face that she was a Jewess? Well, that must be left to herself.
+She was old enough not to rush into misery. Through all these years he
+had taken her pensive brow as the seat of all wisdom, her tender eyes
+as the glow of all goodness, and he could not suddenly readjust
+himself to a contradictory conception. By the time she came in he had
+composed himself for his task.
+
+"Ah, my dear," he said, with a beaming smile, "I have heard the good
+news."
+
+The answering smile died out of her eyes. She looked frightened.
+
+"It's all right, little Schnapsie," he said roguishly. "So now I shall
+have seven sons-in-law. And Alfred the Second, eh?"
+
+"You have heard?"
+
+"Yes," he said, pinching her ear. "Thinks she can keep anything from
+her old father, does she?"
+
+"But do you know that he is a--a--"
+
+"A Christian? Of course. What's the difference, as long as he's a good
+man, eh?" He laughed noisily.
+
+Little Schnapsie looked more frightened than ever. Were her father's
+wits wandering at last?
+
+"But I thought--"
+
+"Thought I would want you to sacrifice yourself! No, no, my dear; we
+are not in India, where women are burnt alive to please their dead
+husbands."
+
+Little Schnapsie had an irrelevant vision of herself treading on
+diamonds and gold. She murmured, "Who told you?"
+
+"Leah."
+
+"Leah! But Leah is angry about it!"
+
+"So she is. She came to me in a tantrum, but I told her whatever
+little Schnapsie did was right."
+
+"Father!" With a sudden cry of belief and affection she fell on his
+neck and kissed him. "But isn't the darling old Jew shocked?" she
+said, half smiling, half weeping.
+
+Cunning lent him clairvoyance. "How much Judaism is there in your
+sisters' husbands?" he said. "And without the religion, what is the
+use of the race?"
+
+"Why, father, that's what I'm always preaching!" she cried, in
+astonishment. "Think what our Judaism was in the dear old Portsmouth
+days. What is the Sabbath here? A mockery. Not one of your sons-in-law
+closes his business. But there, when the Sabbath came in, how
+beautiful! Gradually it glided, glided; you heard the angel's wings.
+Then its shining presence was upon you, and a holy peace settled over
+the house."
+
+"Yes, yes." His eyes filled with tears. He saw the row of innocent
+girl faces at the white Sabbath table. What had London and prosperity
+brought him instead?
+
+"And then the Atonement days, when the ram's horn thrilled us with a
+sense of sin and judgment, when we thought the heavenly scrolls were
+being signed and sealed. Who feels that here, father? Some of us don't
+even fast."
+
+"True, true." He forgot his part. "Then you are a good Jewess still?"
+
+She shook her head sadly. "We have outlived our destiny. Our isolation
+is a meaningless relic."
+
+But she had kindled a new spark of hope.
+
+"Can't you bring him over to us?"
+
+"To what? To our empty synagogues?"
+
+"Then you are going over to him?" He tried to keep his voice steady.
+
+"I must; his father is an archdeacon."
+
+"I know, I know," he said, though she might as well have said an
+archangel.
+
+"But you do not believe in--in--"
+
+"I believe in self-sacrifice; that is Christianity."
+
+"Is it? I thought it was three Gods."
+
+"That is not the essential."
+
+"Thank God!" he said. Then he added hurriedly: "But will you be happy
+with him? Such different bringing up! You can't really feel close to
+him."
+
+She laughed and blushed. "There are deeper things than one's bringing
+up, father."
+
+"But if after marriage you should have a quarrel, he would always
+throw up to you that you are a Jewess."
+
+"No, Alfred will never do that."
+
+"Then make haste, little Schnapsie, or your old father won't live to
+see you under the canopy."
+
+She smiled happily, believing him. "But there won't be any canopy,"
+she said.
+
+"Well, well, whatever it is," he laughed back, with horrid imagining
+that it might be a Cross.
+
+
+IX
+
+It was agreed between them that, to avoid endless family councils, the
+sisters should not be told, and that the ceremony should be conducted
+as privately as possible. The archdeacon himself was coming up to town
+to perform the ceremony in the church of another of his sons in Chalk
+Farm. After the short honeymoon, Daniel was to come and live with the
+couple in Whitechapel, for they were to live in the centre of their
+labours. Poor Daniel tried to find some comfort in the thought that
+Whitechapel was a more Jewish and a homelier quarter than Highbury.
+But the unhomely impression produced upon him by his latest son-in-law
+neutralized everything. All his other sons-in-law had more or less
+awed him, but beneath the awe ran a tunnel of brotherhood. With this
+Alfred, however, he was conscious of a glacial current, which not all
+the young man's cordiality could tepefy.
+
+"Are you sure you will be happy with him, little Schnapsie?" he asked
+anxiously.
+
+"You dear worrying old thing!"
+
+"But if after marriage you quarrel, he will always throw it up to you
+that you are--"
+
+"And I'll throw it up to him that he is a Christian, and oughtn't to
+quarrel."
+
+He was silenced. But his heart thanked God that his dear old wife had
+been spared the coming ordeal.
+
+"This too was for good," he murmured, in the Hebrew proverb.
+
+And so the tragic day drew nigh.
+
+
+X
+
+One short week before, Daniel was wandering about, dazed by the near
+prospect. An unholy fascination drew him toward Chalk Farm, to gaze on
+the church in which the profane union would be perpetrated. Perhaps he
+ought even to go inside; to get over his first horror at being in such
+a building, so as not to betray himself during the actual ceremony.
+
+As he drew near the heathen edifice he saw a striped awning,
+carriages, a bustle of people entering, a pressing, peeping crowd. A
+wedding!
+
+Ah, good! There was no doubt now he must go in; he would see what this
+unknown ceremony in this unknown building was like. It would be a sort
+of rehearsal; it would help to steel him at the tragic moment. He was
+passing through the central doors with some other men, but a policeman
+motioned them to a side door. He shuffled timidly within.
+
+Full as the church was, the chill stone spaces struck cold to his
+heart; all the vast alien life they typified froze his soul. The dread
+word _Meshumad_--apostate--seemed echoing and reechoing from the cold
+pillars. He perceived his companions had bared their heads, and he
+hastily snatched off his rusty beaver. The unaccustomed sensation in
+his scalp completed his sense of unholiness.
+
+Nothing seemed going on yet, but as he slipped into a seat in the
+aisle he became aware of an organ playing joyous preludes, almost
+jiggish. For a moment he wondered dully what there was to be gay
+about, and his eyes filled with bitter tears.
+
+A craning forward in the nondescript congregation made the old man
+peer forward.
+
+He saw, at the far end of the church, a sort of platform upon which
+four men, in strange, flowing robes, stood under a cross. He hid his
+eyes from the sight of the symbol that had overshadowed his ancestors'
+lives. When he opened his eyes again the men were kneeling. Would _he_
+have to kneel, he wondered. Would his old joints have to assume that
+pagan posture? Presently four bridesmaids, shielded by great glowing
+bouquets, appeared on the platform, and descending, passed with
+measured theatric pace down the farther avenue, too remote for his
+clear vision. His neighbours stood up to stare at them, and he rose,
+too. And throughout the organ bubbled out its playful cadenzas.
+
+A stir and a buzz swept through the church. A procession began to file
+in. At its head was a pale, severe young man, supported by a cheerful
+young man. Other young men followed; then the bridesmaids reappeared.
+And finally--target of every glance--there passed a glory of white
+veil supported by an old military looking man in a satin waistcoat.
+
+Ah, that would be he and Schnapsie, then. Up that long avenue, beneath
+all these curious Christian eyes, he, Daniel Peyser, would have to
+walk. He tried to rehearse it mentally now, so that he might not shame
+her; he paced pompously and stiffly, with beautiful Schnapsie on his
+arm, a glory of white veil. He saw himself slowly reaching the
+platform, under the chilling cross; then everything swam before him,
+and he sank shuddering into his seat. His little Schnapsie! She was
+being sucked up into all this hateful heathendom, to the seductive
+music of satanic orchestras.
+
+He sat in a strange daze, vaguely conscious that the organ had ceased,
+and that some preacher's recitative had begun instead. When he looked
+up again, the bridal party before the altar loomed vague, as through
+a mist. He passed his hand over his clouded brow. Of a sudden a
+sentence of the recitative pierced sharply to his brain:--
+
+"Therefore if any man can show any just cause why they may not
+lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter
+forever hold his peace."
+
+O God of Israel! Then it was the last chance! He sprang to his feet,
+and shouted in agony: "No, no, she must not marry him! She must not!"
+
+All heads turned toward the shabby old man. An electric shiver ran
+through the church. The bride paled; a bridesmaid shrieked; the
+minister, taken aback, stood silent. A white-gloved usher hurried up.
+
+"Do you forbid the banns?" called the minister.
+
+The old man's mind awoke, and groped mistily.
+
+"Come, what have you to say?" snapped the usher.
+
+"I--I--nothing," he murmured in awed confusion.
+
+"He is drunk," said the usher. "Out with you, my man." He hustled
+Daniel toward the side door, and let it swing behind him.
+
+But Daniel shrank from facing the cordon of spectators outside. He
+hung miserably about the vestibule till the Wedding March swelled in
+ironic triumph, and the human outpour swept him into the street.
+
+
+XI
+
+His abstracted look, his ragged talk, troubled Schnapsie at the
+evening meal, but she could not elicit that anything had happened.
+
+In the evening paper, her eye, avid of marriage items, paused on a
+big-headed paragraph.
+
+          "I FORBID THE BANNS!"
+    STRANGE SCENE AT A CHALK FARM CHURCH.
+
+When she had finished the paragraph and read another, the first began
+to come back to her, shadowed with a strange suspicion. Why, this was
+the very church--? A Jewish-looking old man--! Great heavens! Then all
+this had been mere pose, self-sacrifice. And his wits were straying
+under the too heavy burden! Only blind craving for her own happiness
+could have made her believe that the mental habits of seventy years
+could be broken off.
+
+"Well, father," she said brightly, "you will be losing me very soon
+now."
+
+His lips quivered into a pathetic smile.
+
+"I am very glad." He paused, struggling with himself. "If you are sure
+you will be happy!"
+
+"But haven't we talked that over enough, father?"
+
+"Yes--but you know--if a quarrel arose, he would always throw it
+up--that--"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," she laughed. But the repetition of the old
+thought struck her poignantly as a sign of maundering wits.
+
+"And you are sure you will get along together?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Then I am glad." He drew her to him, and kissed her.
+
+She broke down and wept under the conviction of his lying. He became
+the comforter in his turn.
+
+"Don't cry, little Schnapsie, don't cry. I didn't mean to frighten
+you. Alfred is a good man, and I am sure, even if you quarrel, he will
+never throw it--" The mumbling passed into a kiss on her wet cheek.
+
+
+XII
+
+That night, after a long passionate vigil in her bedroom, little
+Schnapsie wrote a letter:--
+
+    "DEAREST ALFRED,--This will be as painful for you to read as for
+    me to write. I find at the eleventh hour I cannot marry you. I
+    owe it to you to state my reason. As you know, I did not consent
+    to our love being crowned by union till my father had given his
+    consent. I now find that this consent was not the free outcome
+    of my father's soul, that it was only to promote my happiness.
+    Try to imagine what it means for an old man of seventy odd years
+    to wrench himself away from all his life-long prejudices, and
+    you will realize what he has been trying to do for me. But the
+    wrench was beyond his strength. He is breaking his heart over
+    it, and, I fear, even wandering in his mind.
+
+    "You will say, let us again consent to wait for a contingency
+    which I am not cold-blooded enough to set down more openly. But
+    I do not think it is fair to you to let you risk your happiness
+    further by keeping it entangled with mine. A new current of
+    thought has been set going in my mind. If a religion that I
+    thought all formalism is capable of producing such types of
+    abnegation as my dear father, then it must, too, somewhere or
+    other, hold in solution all those ennobling ingredients, all
+    those stimuli to self-sacrifice, which the world calls
+    Christian. Perhaps I have always misunderstood. We were so badly
+    taught. Perhaps the prosaic epoch of Judaism into which I was
+    born is only transitional, perhaps it only belongs to the middle
+    classes, for I know I felt more of its poetry in my childhood;
+    perhaps the future will develop (or recultivate) its diviner
+    sides and lay more stress upon the life beautiful, and thus all
+    this blind instinct of isolation may prove only the conservation
+    of the race for its nobler future, when it may still become, in
+    very truth, a witness to the Highest, a chosen people in whom
+    all the families of the earth may be blessed. I do not know; all
+    this is very confused and chaotic to me to-night. I only know I
+    can hold out no certain hope of the earthly fulfilment of our
+    love. I, too, feel in transition, and I know not to what. But,
+    dearest Alfred, shall we not be living the Christian life--the
+    life of abnegation--more truly if we give up the hope of
+    personal happiness? Forgive me, darling, the pain I am causing
+    you, and thus help me to bear my own.
+
+                                    "Your friend till death,
+                                                      "FLORENCE."
+
+It was an hour past midnight ere the letter was finished, and when it
+was sealed a sense of relief at remaining in the Jewish fold stole
+over her, though she would scarcely acknowledge it to herself, and
+impatiently analyzed it away as hereditary. And despite it, if she
+slept on the letter, would it ever be posted?
+
+But the house was sunk in darkness. She was the only creature
+stirring. And yet she yearned to have the thing over, irrevocable.
+Perhaps she might venture out herself with her latch-key. There was a
+letter-box at the street corner. She lit a candle and stole out on the
+landing, casting a monstrous shadow which frightened her. In her
+over-wrought mood it almost seemed an uncanny creature grinning at
+her. Her mother's death-bed rose suddenly before her; her mother's
+voice cried: "Ah, Florrie, do not fret. I will find thee a
+bridegroom." Was this the bridegroom--was this the only one she would
+ever know?
+
+"Father! father!" she shrieked, with sudden terror.
+
+A door was thrown open; a figure shambled forth in carpet slippers--a
+dear, homely, reassuring figure--holding the coloured handkerchief
+which had helped to banish him from the drawing-room. His face was
+smeared; his eyelids under the pushed-up horn spectacles were red: he,
+too, had kept vigil.
+
+"What is it? What is it, little Schnapsie?"
+
+"Nothing. I--I--I only wanted to ask you if you would be good enough
+to post this letter--to-night."
+
+"Good enough? Why, I shall enjoy a breath of air."
+
+He took the letter and essayed a roguish laugh as his eye caught the
+superscription.
+
+"Ho! ho!" He pinched her cheek. "So we mustn't let a day pass without
+writing to him, eh?"
+
+She quivered under this unforeseen misconception.
+
+"No," she echoed, with added firmness, "we mustn't let a day pass."
+
+"But go to bed at once, little Schnapsie. You look quite pale. If you
+stay up so late writing him letters, you won't make him a beautiful
+bride."
+
+"No," she repeated, "I won't make him a beautiful bride."
+
+She heard the hall door close gently upon his cautious footsteps, and
+her eyes dimmed with divine tears as she thought of the joy that
+awaited his return.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+NOAH'S ARK
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+NOAH'S ARK
+
+
+I
+
+On a summer's day toward the close of the first quarter of the
+nineteenth century after Christ, Peloni walked in "the good place" of
+the Frankfort _Judengasse_ and pondered. At times he came to a
+standstill and appeared to study the inscriptions on the tumbled
+tombstones, or the carven dragons, shields, and stars, but his black
+eyes burnt inward and he saw less the tragedy of Jewish death than the
+tragedy of Jewish life.
+
+For "the good place" was the place of death.
+
+Here alone in Frankfort--in this shut-in bit of the shut-in
+Jew-street--was true peace for Israel. The rest of the Jew-street
+offered comparative tranquillity even for the living; yet when, ninety
+years before Peloni was born, the great fire had raged therein, the
+inhabitants had locked the Ghetto-gate against the Christians, less
+fearful of the ravaging flames than of their fellow-citizens. Even
+to-day, if he ventured outside the _Judengasse_, Peloni must tread
+delicately. The foot-path was not for him: he must plod on the dusty
+road, with all the other beasts. In some places the very road was too
+holy for him, and any passer-by might snatch off his hat in punishment
+for his breaking bounds. The ragged street urchin or the staggering
+drunkard might cry to him "_'Jud,' mach mores_: Jew, mind your
+manners."
+
+Some ten years ago the Frankfort Ghetto had been verbally abolished by
+a civilized archduke, caught up in the wave of Napoleonic toleration.
+Peloni had shared in the exultation of the Jews at the final
+dissipation of the long night of mediaevalism. He had written a Hebrew
+poem on it, brilliantly rhymed, congested with apt quotations from
+Bible and Talmud, the whole making an acrostic upon the name of the
+enlightened Karl Theodor von Dalberg. Henceforth Israel would take his
+place among the peoples, honour on his brow, love in his heart,
+manhood in his limbs. A gracious letter of acknowledgment from the
+archduke was displayed in the window of Peloni's little bookselling
+establishment, amid the door-amulets, phylacteries, praying-shawls,
+Purim-scrolls, and Hebrew volumes.
+
+But now the prince had been ousted, Napoleon was dead, everywhere the
+Ghetto-gates were locked again, and the Poem lay stacked on the
+remainder shelves. In vain had the grateful Jews hastened to fight for
+the Fatherland, tendered it body and soul. Poor little curly-haired
+Peloni had been attacked in the streets as an alien that very morning.
+Roysterers had raised the old cry of "Hep! Hep!"--fatal, immemorial
+cry, ghastly heritage of the Crusades. Century after century that cry
+had gone echoing through Europe. Century after century the Jews
+thought they had lived it down, bought it down, died it down. But no!
+it rose again, buoyant, menacing, irresponsible. Ah, what a fool he
+had been to hope! There was no hope.
+
+Rarely, indeed, since the Dark Ages had persecution flaunted itself so
+openly. Riots and massacres were breaking out all over Germany, and in
+his own Ghetto Peloni had seen sights that had turned his patriotism
+to gall, and crushed his trust in the Christian, his beautiful
+bubble-dreams of the Millennium. Rothschild himself, whose house in
+the _Judengasse_ with the sign of the red shield had been the centre
+of the attack, was well-nigh unable to maintain his position in the
+town. And these local successes inflamed the Jew-haters everywhere.
+"Let the children of Israel be sold to the English," recommended a
+popular pamphlet of the period, "who could employ them in their Indian
+plantations instead of the blacks. The best plan would be to purge the
+land entirely of this vermin, either by exterminating them, or, as
+Pharaoh, and the people of Meiningen, Wuerzburg, and Frankfort did, by
+driving them from the country."
+
+"Oh, God!" thought Peloni, as his mind ran over the long chain from
+Pharaoh to Frankfort. "Evermore to wander, stoned and derided! Thou
+hast set a mark on his forehead, but his punishment is greater than he
+can bear."
+
+The dead lay all around him, one upon another, new red stones
+shouldering aside the gray stones that told to boot of the death of
+the centuries. And the pressure of all this struggle for death-room
+had raised the earth higher than the adjacent paths. He thought of how
+these dead had always come here; even in their lifetime, when the
+enemy raged outside. Here they had put the women and children and gone
+back to the synagogue to pray. Ah, the cowards! always oscillating
+betwixt cemetery and synagogue, why did they not live, why did they
+not fight? Yes, but they had fought,--fought for Germany, and this was
+Germany's reply.
+
+But could they not fight for themselves then, with money, with the
+sinews of war, if not with the weapons; with gold, if not with steel?
+could they not join financial forces all through the world? But no!
+There was no such solidarity as the Christians dreamed. And they were
+too mixed up with the European world to dream of self-concentration.
+Even while the Frankfort Rothschild's house was surrounded by rioters,
+the Paris Rothschild was giving a ball to the _elite_ of diplomatic
+society.
+
+No! the old Jews were right--there was only the synagogue and the
+cemetery.
+
+But was there even the synagogue? That, too, was dead. The living
+faith, the vivid realization of Israel's hope, which had made the Dark
+Ages endurable and even luminous, were only to be found now among
+fanatics whose blind ignorance and fierce clinging to the dead letter
+and the obsolete form counterbalanced the poetry and sublimity of
+their persistence. In the Middle Ages, Peloni felt, his poems would
+have been absorbed into the liturgy. For when the liturgy and the
+religion were alive, they took in and gave out--like all living
+things. But no--the synagogue of to-day was dead.
+
+Remained only the cemetery.
+
+"_Jude, verrek!_" Jew, die like a beast.
+
+Yes, what else was there to do? For he was not even a Rothschild, he
+told himself with whimsical anguish; only a poor poet, unread,
+unknown, unhealthy; a shadow that only found substance to suffer; a
+set of heart-strings across which every wind that blew made a
+poignant, passionate music; a lamentation incarnate, a voice of
+weeping in the wilderness, a bubble blown of tears, a dream, a mist, a
+nobody,--in short, Peloni!
+
+The dead generations drew him. He fell, weeping passionately, upon a
+tomb.
+
+
+II
+
+There seemed an unwonted stir in the _Judengasse_ when Peloni returned
+to it. Was there another riot threatening? he thought, as he passed
+along the narrow street of three-storied frame houses, most of them
+gabled, and all marked by peculiar signs and figures--the Bear or the
+Lion or the Garlic or the Red Shield (_Rothschild_)!
+
+Outside the synagogue loitered a crowd, and as he drew near he
+perceived that there was a long Proclamation in a couple of folio
+sheets nailed on the door. It was doubtless this which was being
+discussed by the little groups he had already noted. About the
+synagogue door the throng was so thick that he could not get near
+enough to read it himself. But fortunately some one was engaged in
+reading it aloud for the benefit of those on the outskirts.
+
+"'Wherefore I, Mordecai Manuel Noah, Citizen of the United States of
+America, late Consul of said States to the City and Kingdom of Tunis,
+High Sheriff of New York, Counsellor-at-Law, and by the Grace of God
+Governor and Judge of Israel, have issued this my proclamation.'"
+
+A derisive laugh from a dwarfish figure in the crowd interrupted the
+reading. "Father Noah come to life again!" It was the _Possemacher_,
+or wedding-jester, who was not sparing of his wit, even when not
+professionally engaged.
+
+"A foreigner--an American!" sneered a more serious voice. "Who made
+him ruler in Israel?"
+
+"That's what the wicked Israelite asked Moses!" cried Peloni,
+curiously excited.
+
+"_Nun, nun!_ Go on!" cried others.
+
+"'Announcing to the Jews throughout the world, that an asylum is
+prepared and hereby offered to them, where they can enjoy that Peace,
+Comfort, and Happiness which have been denied them through the
+intolerance and misgovernment of former ages. An asylum in a free and
+powerful country, where ample protection is secured to their persons,
+their property, and religious rights; an asylum in a country
+remarkable for its vast resources, the richness of its soil, and the
+salubrity of its climate; where industry is encouraged, education
+promoted, and good faith rewarded. "A land of Milk and Honey," where
+Israel may repose in Peace, under his "Vine and Fig tree," and where
+our People may so familiarize themselves with the science of
+government and the lights of learning and civilization, as may qualify
+them for that great and final Restoration to their ancient heritage,
+which the times so powerfully indicate.'"
+
+The crowd had grown attentive. Peloni's face was pale as death. What
+was this great thing, fallen so unexpectedly from the impassive heaven
+his hopelessness had challenged?
+
+But the _Possemacher_ captured the moment. "Father Noah's drunk
+again!"
+
+A great laugh shook the crowd. But Peloni dug his nails into his
+palms. "Read on! Read on!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+"'The Place of Refuge is in the State of New York, the largest in the
+American Union, and the spot to which I invite my beloved People from
+the whole world is called Grand Island.'"
+
+Peloni drew a deep breath. His face had now changed to the other
+extreme and was flushed with excitement.
+
+"Noah's Ark!" shot the _Possemacher_ dryly, and had his audience
+swaying hysterically.
+
+"For God's sake, brethren!" cried Peloni. "This is no joke. Have you
+forgotten already that here we are only animals?"
+
+"And they went in two by two," said the _Possemacher_, "the clean
+beasts, and the unclean beasts!"
+
+"Hush, hush, let us hear!" from some of the crowd.
+
+"'Here I am resolved to lay the foundation of a State, named Ararat.'"
+
+"Ah! what did I say?" the exultant _Possemacher_ shrieked at Peloni.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the crowd. "Noah's Ark resting on Ararat!" The
+dullest saw that.
+
+Peloni was taken aback for a moment.
+
+"But why should not the place of Israel's Ark of Refuge be named
+Ararat?" he asked of his neighbours.
+
+"If only his name wasn't Noah!" they answered.
+
+"That makes it even more appropriate," he murmured.
+
+But "Noah's Ark" was the nickname that kills. Though the reader
+continued, it was only to an audience exhilarated by a sense of
+Arabian Nights fantasy. But the elaborate description of the grandeurs
+of this Grand Island, and the eloquent passages about the Century of
+Right, and the ancient Oracles, restored Peloni's enthusiasm to fever
+heat.
+
+"It is too long," said the reader, wearying at last.
+
+Peloni rushed forward and took up the task. The first sentence exalted
+him still further.
+
+"'In God's name I revive, renew, and reestablish the government of the
+Jewish Nation, under the auspices and protection of the Constitution
+and the Laws of the United States, confirming and perpetuating all our
+Rights and Privileges, our Name, our Rank, and our Power among the
+nations of the Earth, as they existed and were recognized under the
+government of the Judges of Israel.'" Peloni's voice shook with
+fervour. As he began the next sentence, "'It is my will,'" he
+stretched out his hand with an involuntary regal gesture. The spirit
+of Noah was entering into him, and he felt almost as if it was he who
+was re-creating the Jewish nation--"'It is my will that a Census of
+the Jews throughout the world be taken, that those who are well
+treated and wish to remain in their respective countries shall aid
+those who wish to go; that those who are in military service shall
+until further orders remain true and loyal to their rulers.
+
+"'I command'"--Peloni read the words with expansive magnificence, his
+poet's soul vibrating to that other royal dreamer's across the great
+Atlantic--"'that a strict Neutrality be maintained in the pending war
+betwixt Greece and Turkey.
+
+"'I abolish forever'"--Peloni's hand swept the air,--"'Polygamy among
+the Jews.'"
+
+"But where have we polygamy?" interrupted the _Possemacher_.
+
+"'As it is still practised in Africa and Asia,'" read on Peloni
+severely.
+
+"I'm off at once for Africa and Asia!" cried the marriage-jester,
+pretending to run. "Good business for me there."
+
+"You'll find better business in America," said Peloni scathingly. "For
+do not all our Austrian young men fly thither to marry, seeing that at
+home only the eldest son may found a family? A pretty fatherland
+indeed to be a citizen of--a step-fatherland. Listen, on the contrary,
+to the noble tolerance of the Jew. 'Christians are freely invited.'"
+
+"Ah! Do you know who'll go?" broke in a narrow-faced zealot. "The
+missionaries."
+
+Peloni continued hastily: "'Ararat is open, too, to the Caraites and
+the Samaritans. The Black Jews of India and Africa shall be welcome;
+our brethren in Cochin-China and the sect on the coast of Malabar; all
+are welcome.'"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed a burly Jew. "So we're to live with the blacks.
+Enough of this joke!"
+
+But Peloni went on solemnly: "'A Capitation-tax on every Jew of Three
+Silver Shekels per annum--'"
+
+"Ah, now we have got to it!" and a great roar broke from the crowd.
+"Not a bad _Geschaeft_, eh?" and they winked. "He is no fool, this
+Noah."
+
+Peloni's blood boiled. "Do you believe everybody is like yourselves?"
+he cried. "Listen!"
+
+"'I do appoint the first day of next Adar for a Thanksgiving Day to
+the God of Israel, for His divine protection and the fulfilment of His
+promises to the House of Israel. I recommend Peace and Union among
+ourselves, Charity and Good-will to all, Toleration and Liberality
+toward our Brethren of all Religions--'"
+
+"Didn't I say a missionary in disguise?" murmured the zealot.
+
+Peloni ended, with tremulous emotion: "'I humbly entreat to be
+remembered in your prayers, and earnestly do I enjoin you to "keep the
+charge of the Holy God," to walk in His ways, to keep His Statutes and
+His commandments and His judgments and Testimonies, as written in the
+Laws of Moses; "that thou mayest prosper in all thou doest and
+whithersoever thou turnest thyself."
+
+"'Given under our hand and seal in the State of New York, on the 2d of
+Ab 5586 in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peloni's efforts to organize a company of pilgrims to the New
+Jerusalem brought him only heart-ache. The very rabbi who had
+good-naturedly consented to circulate the fantastic foreigner's
+invitation, tapped his forehead significantly: "A visionary! of good
+intentions, doubtless, but still--a visionary. Besides, according to
+our dogmas, God alone knows the epoch of the Israelitish restoration;
+He alone will make it known to the whole universe, by signs entirely
+unequivocal; and every attempt on our part to reassemble with any
+political, national design, is forbidden as an act of high treason
+against the Divine Majesty. Mr. Noah has doubtless forgotten that the
+Israelites, faithful to the principles of their belief, are too much
+attached to the countries where they dwell, and devoted to the
+governments under which they enjoy liberty and protection, not to
+treat as a mere jest the chimerical consulate of a pseudo-restorer."
+
+"Noah's a madman, and you're an infant," Peloni's friends told him.
+
+"Since the destruction of the Temple," he quoted in retort, "the gift
+of prophecy has been confined to children and fools."
+
+"You are giving up a decent livelihood," they warned him. "You are
+throwing it into the Atlantic."
+
+"'Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return to thee after
+many days.'"
+
+"But in the meantime?"
+
+"'Man doth not live by bread alone.'"
+
+"As you please. But don't ask _us_ to throw up our comfortable home
+here."
+
+"Comfortable home!" and Peloni grew almost apoplectic as he reminded
+them of their miseries.
+
+"Persecution?" They shrugged their shoulders. "It comes only now and
+again, like a snow-storm, and we crawl through it."
+
+"That's just it--the lack of manliness--the poisoned atmosphere!"
+
+"Bah! The _Goyim_ refuse us equal rights because they know we're their
+superiors. Let us not jump from the frying-pan into the fire."
+
+So Peloni sailed for New York alone.
+
+
+III
+
+He was rather disappointed to find no other pilgrim even on the ship.
+True, there was one Jew, but the business Paradise of New York was his
+goal across this waste of waters, and of Noah's Ark he had never
+heard. Peloni's panegyric of Grand Island was rendered ineffective by
+his own nebulous conception of its commercial possibilities. He passed
+the slow days in the sailing-vessel polishing up his English, the
+literature of which he had long studied.
+
+In New York Peloni's hopes revived. Major Noah--for it appeared he
+was an officer of militia likewise--was in everybody's mouth. Editor
+of the _National Advocate_, the leading organ of the Bucktails, or
+Tammany party, a journalist whose clever sallies and humorous
+paragraphs were widely enjoyed, an author of excellent "Travels," a
+playwright of the first distinction, whose patriotic dramas were
+always given on the Fourth of July, a critic regarded as Sir Oracle, a
+politician, lawyer, and man of the world, a wit, the gay centre of
+every gathering--surely in this lion of New York, who was also the
+Lion of David, Israel had at last found a deliverer. They called him
+madman down in Frankfort, did they? Well, let them come here and see.
+
+He wrote home to the scoffers of the _Judengasse_ all the information
+about the great man that was in the very air of the American city,
+though the man himself he had only as yet corresponded with. He told
+the famous story of how when Noah was canvassing for the office of
+High Sheriff of New York, it was urged that no Jew should be put into
+an office where he might have to hang a Christian, to which Noah had
+retorted wittily, "Pretty Christian, to have to be hanged!" "And you
+all fancied 'Father Noah' would fall to pieces before the
+_Possemacher's_ wit!" Peloni commented with vengeful satisfaction. "I
+rejoice to say that Noah will never have anything to do with a
+_Possemacher_, for he is President of the Old Bachelors' Club, the
+members of which are pledged never to marry." He told of Noah's
+adventurous career: of how when he was a mere boy clerk in the
+auditor's office of his native Philadelphia, Congress had voted him a
+hundred dollars for his precocious preparation of the actuary tables
+for the eight-per-cent loan; of the three duels at Charleston, in
+which he had vindicated at once the courage of the Jew and the policy
+of American resistance to Great Britain; of his consulate in Tunis,
+his capture at sea by the British fleet during the war, his release on
+parole that enabled him to travel about England; of his genius for
+letters--a very David in Israel; of his generosity to hundreds of
+strugglers; of his quixotic disdain of money; of his impoverishing
+himself by paying two hundred thousand dollars of other people's debts
+as the price of his impulsive shrieval action in throwing open the
+doors of the Debtor's Jail when the yellow fever broke out within.
+"Yes," wrote Peloni exultantly, "in New York they talk no more of
+Shylock. And with all the temptations to Christian fellowship or Pagan
+free-living, a pillar of the synagogue,--nay, Israel's one hope in all
+the world!"
+
+It was a wonderful moment when Peloni, at last invited to call on the
+Judge of Israel, palpitated on the threshold of his study and gazed
+blinkingly at the great man enthroned before his writing-table amid
+elegant vistas of books and paintings. What a noble poetic vision it
+seemed to him: the broad brow, with the tumbled hair; the long,
+delicate-featured face tapering to a narrow chin environed with
+whiskers, but clean of beard or even of mustache, so that the mobile,
+sensitive mouth was laid bare. Peloni's glance also took in a handsome
+black coat, with a decoration on the lapel, a high-peaked collar, a
+black puffy bow, a frilled shirt, and a very broad jewelled cuff over
+a white, long-fingered hand, that held a tall quill with a great
+breadth of feather.
+
+"Ah, come in," said the Governor of Israel, waving his quill. "You are
+Peloni of Frankfort."
+
+"Come three thousand miles to kiss the hem of your garment."
+
+Noah permitted the attention. "I am obliged to you for your Hebrew
+poem in honour of my project," he said urbanely. "I approve of
+Hebrew--it is a link that binds us to our forefathers. I am myself
+editing a translation of the Book of Jasher."
+
+"You will have found my verses a very poor expression of your divine
+ideas."
+
+"You use a difficult Hebrew. But the general drift seemed to show you
+had caught the greatness of my conception."
+
+"Ah, yes! I have lived in _Judengasse_, oppressed and derided."
+
+"But there is worse than oppression--there is inward stagnation of the
+spiritual life. My idea came to me in Tunis, where the Jews are little
+oppressed. You know President Madison appointed me consul of the
+United States for the city and kingdom of Tunis, one of the most
+respectable and interesting stations in the regencies of Barbary. I
+had long desired to visit the country of Dido and Hannibal, to trace
+the field of Zama, and seek out the ruins of Utica,--whose sites I
+believe I have now successfully established,--but it was my main
+design to investigate the condition of the Barbary Jews, of whom, you
+will remember, we have no account later than Benjamin of Tudela's in
+the thirteenth century. But do not stand--take a chair. Well, I found
+our brethren--to the number of seven hundred thousand--controlling
+everything in Barbary, farming the revenue, regulating the coinage,
+keeping the Dey's jewels and almost his person,--in short, anything
+but persecuted, though, of course, the majority were miserably poor.
+They did not know I was a Jew--though Secretary Monroe recalled me
+because I was, and it was Monroe's doctrine that Judaism would be an
+obstacle to the discharge of my functions. Absurd! The Catholic priest
+was allowed to sprinkle the Consulate with holy water: the barefooted
+Franciscan received an alms, nor did I fail to acknowledge by a
+donation the decorated branch sent on Palm Sunday by the Greek Bishop.
+And as for the slaves, I assure you they were not backward in coming
+to ask favours. The only people who never came to me were precisely
+the Jews. I went about among them incognito, so to speak, like Haroun
+Alraschid among his subjects; hence I was able to see all the evils
+that will never be eliminated till Israel is again a nation."
+
+"Ah! your words are the words of wisdom. You touch the root of the
+evil. It is what I have always told them."
+
+Noah rose to his feet, displaying a royal stature in harmony with his
+broad shoulders. "Yes, I resolved it should be mine to elevate my
+people, to make them hold up their heads worthily in this century of
+freedom and enlightenment."
+
+"It is the Ark of the Convenant, as well as of the Deluge, which will
+rest on Ararat!"
+
+"True--and like the first Noah, I may become the progenitor of a new
+world. I have communications from the four corners of the earth. You
+are the type of thousands who will flee from the rotting tyrannies of
+Europe into the great free republic which I shall direct."
+
+He began to pace the room. Peloni had visions of great black lines of
+pilgrims converging from every quarter of the compass.
+
+"But this Grand Island--is it yours?" he inquired timidly.
+
+"I have bought thousands of acres of it--I and a few others who
+believe in the great future of our people."
+
+"Jews?"
+
+"No, not Jews--capitalists who know that we shall become the
+commercial centre of the new world,--that is, of the world of the
+future."
+
+Peloni groaned. "And Jews will not believe? We must go to the
+Gentiles. Jews will only put their money into Gentile schemes; will
+build always for others, never for themselves. It is the same
+everywhere. Alas for Israel!"
+
+"It is what I preach. Why administer Barbary for a savage Dey when you
+can administer Grand Island for yourself? Seven hundred thousand Jews
+in savage Barbary, and throughout these vast free States not seven
+thousand. Ah, but they will come; they will come. Ararat will gather
+its millions."
+
+"But will there be room?"
+
+"The State of New York," replied Noah, impressively, "is the largest
+in the Union, containing forty-three thousand two hundred and fourteen
+square miles divided into fifty-five counties and having six thousand
+and eighty-seven post-towns and cities together with six million acres
+of cultivated land. The constitution is founded on equality of rights.
+We recognize no religious differences. In our seven thousand free
+schools and gymnasia, four hundred thousand children of every religion
+are being educated. Here in this great and progressive State the long
+wandering of my beloved people shall end."
+
+"But Grand Island itself?" murmured Peloni feebly.
+
+"Come here," and Noah unrolled a great map. "See, how nobly it is
+situated in the Niagara River, near the world-famed Falls, which will
+supply water-power for our machinery. It is twelve miles long and from
+three to seven broad, and contains seventeen thousand acres. Lake Erie
+is two hundred and seventy miles long and borders New York,
+Pennsylvania, and Ohio, as well as Canada. And see! by navigable
+streams this great lake is connected with all that wonderful chain of
+lakes. By short canals we shall connect with the Illinois and
+Mississippi, and trade with New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
+Through the Ontario--see here!--we traffic with Quebec, Montreal, and
+touch the great Atlantic. The Niagara Falls, as I said, turn our
+machinery. The fur trade, the lumber trade, all is ours. Our cattle
+multiply, our lands wave with harvests. We are the centre of the
+world, the capital of the future. And look! See what the _Albany
+Gazette_ says: 'Here the Hebrews can have their Jerusalem without
+fearing the legions of Titus. Here they can erect their Temple without
+dreading the torches of frenzied soldiers. Here they can lay their
+heads on their pillows at night without fear of mobs, of bigotry and
+persecution.'"
+
+Peloni drew a long breath, enraptured by this holy El Dorado,
+sparkling on the map, amid its tributary lakes and rivers.
+
+"You will see the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah fulfilled," Noah went
+on. "For what is the 'land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the
+rivers of Ethiopia,' which shall send messengers to a nation scattered
+and peeled? What but America, shadowing us with the wings of its
+eagle? As it is written elsewhere, 'I will bear thee on eagle's
+wings.' It is true the English Bible translates 'Woe to the land,' but
+this is a mistranslation. It should be 'Hail to the land!' Also the
+word '_goumey_' they translate 'bulrushes'--'that sendeth messengers
+in vessels of bulrushes!' But does not '_goumey_' also mean 'rush,
+impetus?' And is it not therefore a prophecy of those new
+steam-vessels that are beginning to creep up, one of which has just
+crossed from England to India? Erelong they will be running between
+America and all the world. It is the Lord making ready for the easy
+ingathering of His people. Ay, and along these lakes"--the Prophet's
+finger swept the map--"will be heard the panting of mighty
+steam-monsters, all making for Ararat. By the way, Ararat lies here,"
+and he indicated a spot of the island opposite Tonawanda on the
+mainland.
+
+Peloni bent down and poetically pressed his lips to the spot, like
+Jehuda Halevi kissing the holy soil.
+
+"There is no one in possession there?" he inquired anxiously.
+
+"Maybe a few Iroquois Indians," said Noah. "But they will not have to
+be turned out like the Hittites and Amorites and Jebusites by our
+ancestors."
+
+"No?" murmured Peloni.
+
+"Of course not. They are our own brothers, carried away by the King of
+Assyria. There can be not the slightest doubt that the Red Indians are
+the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel."
+
+"What?" cried Peloni, vastly excited.
+
+"I shall publish a book on the subject. Yes, in worship, dialect,
+language, sacrifices, marriages, divorces, burials, fastings,
+purifications, punishments, cities of refuge, divisions of tribes,
+High-Priests, wars, triumphs--'tis our very tradition."
+
+"Then I suppose one could lodge with them. I am anxious to settle in
+Ararat at once."
+
+"You can scarcely settle there till the forest is cleared," said the
+great man, arching his eyebrows.
+
+"The forest!" repeated Peloni, taken aback.
+
+"Ah, you are dismayed. You are a European, accustomed to ready-made
+cities. We Americans, we change continents while you wait, build up
+Aladdin's palaces over-night. As soon as I can manage to go over the
+ground I will plan out the city."
+
+"You haven't been there yet?" gasped Peloni.
+
+"Ah, my dear Peloni. When should I find time to travel all the way to
+Buffalo,--a busy editor, lawyer, playwright, what not? True, the time
+that other men give to domestic happiness the President of the Old
+Bachelors' Club is able to give to his fellow-men. But the slow canal
+voyage--"
+
+At this moment there was a knock at the door, and a servant inquired
+if Major Noah could see his tailor.
+
+"Ah, a good augury!" cried the major. "Here is the tailor come to try
+on my Robe of Governor and Judge of Israel."
+
+The man bore an elaborate robe of crimson silk trimmed with ermine,
+which he arranged about Noah's portly person, making marks with pins
+and chalk where it could be made to fit better.
+
+"Do you like it?" said Noah, puffing himself out regally.
+
+Peloni's uneasiness vanished. Doubt was impossible before these
+magnificent realities. Ah! the Americans were wonderful.
+
+"I had to go through our annals," Noah explained, "to find which
+period of our government we could revive. Kingship was opposed to the
+sentiment of these States: in the epoch of the Judges I found my
+ideal. Indeed, what is the President of the United States but a
+_Shophet_, a Judge of Israel? Ah, you are looking at that painting of
+me--I shall have to be done again in my new robes. That elegant
+creature who hangs beside me is Miss Leesugg, the Hebe of English
+actresses, as she appeared in my 'She would be a Soldier, or the
+Plains of Chippewa.' There is a caricature of my uncle, Aaron J.
+Phillips, as the Turkish Commander in my 'Grecian Captive.' Dear me,
+shall I ever forget how he tumbled off that elephant! Ha! ha! ha!
+That is Miss Johnson, in my 'Yusef Carmatti, or the Siege of Tripoli.'
+The black and white is a fancy sketch of 'Marion, or the Hero of Lake
+George,' a play I wrote for the reopening of the Park Theatre and to
+celebrate the evacuation of New York by the British in 1783."
+
+"Ah, I was there, Major," said the tailor. "It was bully. But the
+house was so full of generals and colonels you could hardly hear a
+word."
+
+"Fortunately for me," laughed Noah. "Yes, I asked them to come in full
+uniform for the _eclat_ of the occasion. Which reminds me--here is a
+ticket for you."
+
+"For the play?" murmured Peloni, as he took it.
+
+Noah started and looked at him keenly. But his flush of anger faded
+before Peloni's innocent eyes. "No, no," he explained; "for the
+opening ceremony of the foundation of Ararat."
+
+Peloni's black eyes shone.
+
+"There will be a great crush and only ticket-holders can be admitted
+into the church."
+
+"Into the church!" echoed Peloni, paling.
+
+"Yes," said the Judge of Israel impressively, as he stood before a
+glass to adjust the graceful folds of his crimson robe. "Our
+fellow-citizens in Buffalo have been good enough to lend us the
+Episcopal Church for the ceremony."
+
+"What ceremony?" he faltered, as horrid images swept before him, and
+he heard all the way from Frankfort the taunting cry of "Missionary!"
+
+"The laying of the foundation-stone of Ararat."
+
+"Laying the foundation-stone in a church!" Peloni was puzzled.
+
+"Ah," said the Major, misunderstanding him; "it seems strange to you,
+nursed in the musty lap of Europe. But here in this land of freedom
+and this century of enlightenment all men are brothers."
+
+"But surely the foundation-stone should be laid on Grand Island."
+
+"It would have been desirable. But so many will wish to be present at
+this great celebration. Buffalo alone has some thirteen hundred
+inhabitants. How should we get them across? There are scarcely any
+boats to be had--and Ararat is twelve miles away. No, no, it is better
+to hold our ceremony in Buffalo. It is, after all, only a symbolism.
+The corner-stone is already being inscribed in Hebrew and English.
+'Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. Ararat, a City of Refuge for the
+Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the month Tishri, corresponding
+with September, 1825, in the fiftieth year of American Independence.'"
+
+The sonorous recitation by the _Shophet_ in his crimson and ermine
+robe somewhat restored Peloni's equanimity.
+
+"But when will the actual city be begun?" he asked.
+
+The _Shophet_ waved his hand airily. "A matter of days."
+
+"But are you sure we can build there?"
+
+"Look at the map. Here is Grand Island--ours! Here is the site of
+Ararat. It is all as plain as a pikestaff. And, talking of pikestaffs,
+it would not be a bad idea to plant a staff on Ararat with the flag of
+Israel."
+
+Peloni took fire: "Yes, yes, let me go and plant it. I'll journey
+night and day."
+
+"You shall plant it," said the _Shophet_ graciously. "Yes, I'll have
+the flag made at once. The property man at the Park Theatre will
+attend to it for me. The Lion of Judah and seven stars."
+
+"It shall be waving on Grand Island before you open the celebration in
+Buffalo."
+
+Peloni went out like a lion, his head in the seven stars. Could it be
+possible that to him--Peloni--had fallen the privilege of proclaiming
+the New Jerusalem!
+
+
+IV
+
+After the bustle of New York, the scattered village of Buffalo was
+restful but somewhat chilling to the Ghetto-bred poet, with his quick
+brain, unaccustomed to the slow processes of nature. Buffalo--with its
+muddy, unpaved streets, and great trees, up which squirrel and
+chipmunk ran--was still half in and half out of mother earth; man's
+artifice ruled in the high street with its stores and inns, some of
+which were even of brick; but in the byways every now and then a
+primitive log cabin broke the line of frame cottages, and in the
+outskirts cows and pigs walked about unconcernedly. It was a reminder
+of all that would have to be done in Ararat ere a Temple could shine,
+like a lighthouse of righteousness to the tossing nations. But when
+Peloni learned that it was only twelve years since the scarcely born
+village had been burnt down by the British and Indians in the war, he
+felt reencouraged, warming himself at the flame, so to speak. And when
+he found that the citizens were all agog about Ararat and the church
+celebration--that it divided interest with the Erie Canal, the hanging
+of the three Thayers, and the recent reception of General Lafayette at
+the Eagle Tavern--his heart expanded in a new poem.
+
+It was indeed an auspicious moment for Noah's scheme. All eyes were
+turned on the coming celebration of the opening of the great canal, to
+be the terminus of which Buffalo had fought victoriously against Black
+Rock. Golden visions of the future gleamed almost tangibly; and amid
+the general magnificence Noah's ornate dream took on equal solidity.
+Endless capital would be directed into the neighbourhood of
+Buffalo--for Ararat was only twelve miles away. Besides, all the great
+men of Buffalo--and there were many--had been honoured with elaborate
+cards of invitation to the grand ceremony of the foundation-stone. A
+few old Baptist farmers were surly about the threatened vast Jewish
+immigration, but the majority proclaimed with righteous warmth that
+the glorious American Constitution welcomed all creeds, and that there
+was money in it.
+
+Peloni looked about for a Jew to guide him, but could find none.
+Finally a Seneca Indian from the camp just below Buffalo undertook to
+look for the spot. It was with a strange thrill that Peloni's eyes
+rested for the first time on a red Indian. Was this indeed a long-lost
+brother of his? He cried "Shalom Aleikhem" in Hebrew, but the Indian,
+despite Noah's theories, did not seem to understand. Ultimately the
+dialogue was carried on in the few words of broken English which the
+Indian had picked up from the trappers, and in the gesture-language,
+in which, with his genius for all languages, Peloni was soon at home.
+And in truth he did find at heart some subtle sympathy with this
+copper-coloured savage which was not called out by the busy citizens
+of Buffalo. On a sunlit morning, bearing his flagstaff with the flag
+wrapped round it, a blanket, and a little store of provisions for
+camping out over-night, Peloni slipped into the birch canoe and the
+Indian paddled off. For miles they glided in silence along the
+sparkling Niagara, lone denizens of a lonely world.
+
+Suddenly Peloni thought of the _Judengasse_ of Frankfort, and for a
+moment it seemed to him that he must be dreaming. What! a few short
+months ago he was selling prayer-books and phylacteries in the shadow
+of the old high-gabled houses, and now, in a virgin district of the
+New World, in company with a half-naked red Indian, he was going to
+plant the flag of Judah on an island forest and to found the New
+Jerusalem. What would they say, his old friends, if they could see him
+now? And he--the _Possemacher_--what winged jest would he let fly? A
+perception of the monstrous fantasy of the thing stole on poor Peloni.
+Was he, perhaps, dreaming after all? No, there was the Niagara River,
+the village of Black Rock on his right hand, and on the other side of
+the gorge the lively Fort Erie and the poplar-fringed Canadian shore,
+and there too--on the map Noah had given him--Ararat lay waiting.
+
+The Indian paddled imperturbably, throwing back the sparkling water
+with a soft, soothing sound. Peloni lapsed into more pleasurable
+reflections. How beautiful was this great free place of sun and wind,
+of water and forest, after the noisome Jew-street! He was not
+dreaming, nor--thank God!--was Noah. Strange, indeed, that thus should
+deliverance for Israel be wrought; yet what was Israel's history but a
+series of miracles? And his--Peloni's--humble hand was to plant the
+flag that had lain folded and inglorious these twenty centuries!
+
+They glided by a couple of little islands, duly marked on the map, and
+then a great, wooded, dark purple mass rose to meet them with a band
+of deep orange on the low coast-line.
+
+It was Grand Island.
+
+Peloni whispered a prayer.
+
+Obeying the map marked by Noah, the canoe glided round the island,
+keeping to the American side. As they shot past a third little island,
+a dull booming began to be audible.
+
+"What is that?" Peloni's face inquired.
+
+The Indian smiled. "Not go many miles farther," he indicated. "The
+Rapids soon. Then--whizz! Then big jump! Niagara. Dead."
+
+Fortunately Ararat was due much sooner than Niagara. As they drew near
+the fourth of the little islands, which lay betwixt Grand Island and
+the mainland of the States, and saw the Tonawanda Creek emptying
+itself into the river, Peloni signed to the Indian to land; for it was
+here that Ararat was to arise.
+
+The landing was easy, the river here being shallow and the bank low.
+The beauty of the spot, as it lay wild and fresh from God's hand in
+the golden sunlight, moved Peloni to tears. The Indian, who seemed
+curious as to his movements and willing to share his mid-day meal,
+tied his canoe to a basswood tree and followed the standard-bearer.
+There was a glorious medley of leafy life--elm, oak, maple, linden,
+pine, wild cherry, wild plum--which Peloni could only rejoice in
+without differentiating it by names; and as the oddly assorted couple
+walked through the sun-dappled glades they startled a world of
+scurrying animal life--snipe and plover and partridges and
+singing-birds, squirrels and rabbits and even deer, that frisked and
+fluttered unprescient of the New Jerusalem that menaced their
+immemorial inheritance. The joy of city-building had begun at last to
+dawn on Peloni, the immense pleasure to the human will of beginning
+afresh, of shaking off the pressure of the ages, of inscribing free
+ideas on the plastic universe. As he wandered at random in search of a
+suitable spot on which to plant the flagstaff, the romance of this
+great American world thrilled him, of this vast continent won acre by
+acre from nature and the savage, covering itself with splendid cities;
+a retrospective sympathy with the citizens of Buffalo and their coming
+canal warmed his breast.
+
+Of a sudden he heard a screaming, and looking up he observed two
+strange, huge birds upon a blasted pine.
+
+"Eagles," said the laconic Indian.
+
+"Eagles!" And Peloni's heart leaped with a remembrance of Noah's
+words. "Here under their wings shall our flag be unfurled. And that
+blasted tree is Israel, that shall flourish again."
+
+He dug the pole into the earth. A breeze caught the flag, and the
+folds flew out, and the Lion of Judah and the seven stars flapped in
+the face of an inattentive universe. Peloni intoned the Hebrew
+benediction, closing his eyes in pious ecstasy. "Blessed art Thou, O
+Lord our God, who hast kept us alive, and preserved us, and enabled us
+to reach this day!"
+
+As he opened his eyes, he perceived in the distance high in air,
+rising far above the Island, a great mist of shining spray, amid which
+rainbows netted and tangled themselves in ineffable dream-like
+loveliness. At the same instant his ear caught--over the boom of the
+rapids--the first hint of another, a mightier, a more majestic roar.
+
+"Niagara," murmured the Indian.
+
+But Peloni's eyes were fixed on the celestial vision.
+
+"The _Shechinah_!" he whispered. "The divine presence that rested on
+the Tabernacle, and on Solomon's Temple, and that has returned at
+last--to Ararat."
+
+
+V
+
+The booming of cannon from the Court House, and from the Terrace
+facing the lake, saluted the bright September dawn and reminded the
+citizens of Buffalo that the Messianic day was here. But they needed
+no reminding. The great folk had laid out their best clothes; military
+insignia and Masonic regalia had been furbished up. Troops guarded St.
+Paul's Church and kept off the swarming crowd.
+
+The first act of the great historic drama--"Mordecai Manuel Noah; or,
+The Redemption of Israel"--passed off triumphantly, to the music of
+patriotic American airs. The procession, which marched at eleven from
+the Lodge through the chief streets, did honour to this marshaller of
+stage pageants.
+
+                       ORDER OF PROCESSION
+
+            Grand Marshal, Col. Potter, on horseback.
+                              Music.
+                            Military.
+                            Citizens.
+                         Civil Officers.
+                    State Officers in Uniform.
+            President and Trustees of the Corporation.
+                              Tyler.
+                            Stewards.
+                       Entered Apprentices.
+                          Fellow Crafts.
+                          Master Masons.
+                    Senior and Junior Deacons.
+                     Secretary and Treasurer.
+                    Senior and Junior Wardens.
+                        Master of Lodges.
+                          Past Masters.
+                           Rev. Clergy.
+               Stewards, with corn, wine, and oil.
+
+                     | Principal Architect, |
+               Globe | with square, level,  | Globe
+                     |      and plumb.      |
+                              Bible.
+           Square and Compass, borne by a Master Mason.
+                       The Judge of Israel
+  In black, wearing the judicial robes of crimson silk, trimmed
+            with ermine, and a richly embossed golden
+                  medal suspended from the neck.
+                         A Master Mason.
+                        Royal Arch Masons.
+                        Knights Templars.
+
+At the church door there was a halt. The troops parted to right and
+left, the pageant passed through into the crowded church, gay with the
+summer dresses of the ladies, the band played the grand march from
+"Judas Maccabaeus," the organ pealed out the "Jubilate." On the
+communion-table lay the corner-stone of Ararat!
+
+The morning service was read by the Rev. Mr. Searle in full
+canonicals; the choir sang "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne"; then came
+a special prayer for Ararat, and passages from Jeremiah, Zephaniah,
+and the Psalms, charged with divine promises and consolations for the
+long suffering of Israel, idyllic pictures of the Messianic future,
+symbolized by the silver cups with wine, corn, and oil, that lay on
+the corner-stone. At last arose, with that crimson silk robe trimmed
+with ermine thrown over his stately black attire, and with the richly
+embossed golden medal hanging from his neck--the Master of the Show,
+the Dramatist of the Real, the Humorist without a sense of Humour, the
+Dreamer of the Ghetto and American Man of Action, the Governor and
+Judge of Israel, the _Shophet_,--in brief, Mordecai Manuel Noah. He
+delivered a great discourse on the history of Israel and its present
+reorganization, which filled more than five columns of the newspapers,
+and was heard with solemn attention by the crowded Christian audience.
+Save a few Indians and his own secretary, not a single Jew was
+present to hold in check the orator's oriental imagination. Then the
+glittering procession filed back to the Lodge, and the brethren and
+the military dined joyously at the Eagle Tavern, and Noah's wit and
+humour returned for the after-dinner speech. He withdrew early in
+order to write a full account of the proceedings for the _Buffalo
+Patriot Extra_.
+
+A salvo of twenty-four guns rounded off the great day of Israel's
+restoration.
+
+
+VI
+
+Meantime Peloni on his island awaited the coming of its Ruler. He
+heard faintly the cannonade that preceded and concluded the laying of
+the foundation-stone in the chancel of the church, and he expected
+Noah the next day at the latest. But the next day passed, and no Noah.
+Peloni fed on the remains of his corn and drank from the river, but
+though his Indian guide was gone and he was a prisoner, he had no fear
+of starvation, because he saw the wigwams of another Indian encampment
+across the river and occasionally a party of them would glide past in
+a large canoe. Despite hunger, his sensations on this first day were
+delicious. The poet in him responded rapturously to the appeal of all
+this new life; to feel the brotherhood of wild creatures, to sleep
+under the stars in the vast night, to watch the silent, passionate
+beauty of the sunrise, ripening to the music of the birds.
+
+On the second day his eyes were gladdened by the oncoming of a boat
+rowed by two whites. They proved to be a stone mason and his man, and
+they bore provisions, a letter, and newspapers from Noah:--
+
+    "MY DEAR PELONI:
+
+    "A hurried line to report a glorious success, thank Heaven! A
+    finer day and more general satisfaction has not been known on
+    any similar occasion. All the dignity and talent of the
+    neighbourhood for miles was present. I hear that a vast
+    concourse also assembled at Tonawanda, expecting that the
+    ceremonies would be at Grand Island, but that many of them came
+    up in carriages in time to hear my Inaugural Speech. You will
+    see that the newspapers, especially the _Buffalo Patriot Extra_,
+    have reported me fully, showing how they realize the importance
+    of this world-stirring episode in Israel's history. Their
+    comments, too, are for the most part highly sympathetic. Of
+    course the _New York Herald_ will sneer; but then Bennett was
+    once in my employ on the _Courier and Enquirer_. They tell me
+    that you duly set out to plant the flag of Judah, and I assume
+    it is now by God's grace waving over Ararat. Heaven bless you!
+    my heart is too full for words. I had hoped to find time to-day
+    to behold the sublime spectacle myself, but urgent legal
+    business calls me back to New York. But I am resolved to start
+    the city without delay, and the bearers of this have my plan for
+    a little monument of brick and wood with the simple
+    inscription--'Ararat founded by Mordecai Manuel Noah,
+    1825'--from the summit of which the flag can wave. I leave you
+    to superintend the same, and take any measures you please to
+    promote the growth of the city and to receive, as my
+    representative, the inflowing immigrants from the Ghettos of the
+    world. I appoint you, moreover, Keeper of the Records. To you
+    shall be given to write the new Book of the Chronicles of
+    Israel. My friend Mr. Smith, one of the proprietors of the
+    island, will communicate with you on behalf of the Shareholders,
+    as occasion arises. Expect me shortly (perhaps with my bride,
+    for I am entering into holy wedlock with the most amiable and
+    beautiful of her sex) and meantime receive my blessing.
+
+                       "MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH, Judge of Israel,
+                            "_pro_ A.B. SEIXAS, Secr. _pro tem._"
+
+While the little monument was building, and the men were coming to and
+fro in boats, Peloni made friends with the Indians, the smoke-wreaths
+of whose lodges hovered across the river, and he picked up a little of
+their language. Also he explored his island, drawn by the crescendo
+roar of Niagara. It was at Burnt Island Bay that he had his first, if
+distant, view of the Falls themselves. The rapids, gurgling and
+plunging with foam and swirl and eddy, quickened his blood, but the
+cataracts disappointed him, after that rainbow glimpse of the upper
+spray, and it was not till he got himself landed on the Canadian shore
+and saw the monstrous rush of the vast tameless flood toward the great
+leap that he felt the presence and the power that were to be with him
+for the rest of his days. The bend of the Horse-Shoe was hidden by a
+white spray mountain that rose above its topmost waters, as they
+hurled themselves from green solidity to creamy mist. And as he
+looked, lo! the enchanting rainbows twinkled again, and he had a sense
+as of the smile of God, of the love of that awful, unfathomable Being,
+eternally persistent, while the generations rise and fall like
+vaporous spray.
+
+The tide was low and, drawn by an irresistible fascination, he
+adventured down among the rocks near the foot of the Fall. But a
+tingling storm of spray smote him half blind and wholly breathless,
+and all he could see was a monstrous misty Brocken-spirit upreared and
+in his ears were a thousand thunders. A wild elemental passion swelled
+and lifted him. Yes, Force, Force, was the secret of things: the vast
+primal energies that sent the stars shining and the seas roaring.
+Force, Life, Strength, that was what Israel needed. It had grown
+anaemic, slouching along its airless _Judengassen_. Oh, to fight, to
+fight, like the warriors who went out against the Greeks, who defended
+the Holy City against the Romans. "For the Lord is a Man of War." And
+he shouted the cry of David, "Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who
+teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight." But he stopped,
+smitten by an ironic memory. This very blessing was uttered every
+Sabbath twilight, in every Ghetto, by every bloodless worshipper, to a
+melancholy despairing melody, in the lightless dusk of the synagogues.
+
+The monument was speedily erected and, being hollow, proved useful for
+Peloni to sleep in, as the October nights grew chilly. And thus Peloni
+lived, a latter-day Crusoe. He had now procured fishing-tackle, and
+grew dexterous in luring black bass and perch and whitefish from the
+river. Also he had found out what berries he might eat. Occasionally a
+boat would sell him cornmeal from Buffalo, but his savings were
+melting away and he preferred to forage for himself, relishing the
+wild flavour of uncivilized living. He even wished it were possible to
+eat the birds or the rabbits he could have killed: but as various
+points of Jewish law forbade such diet, there was no use in buying a
+musket or a bow and arrow. So his relations with the animal world
+remained purely amicable. The robins and bluebirds and thrushes sang
+for him. The woodpeckers tapped on his monument to wake him in the
+morning. The blue jays screamed without wrath, and the partridges
+drummed unmartially. The squirrels frolicked with him, and the rabbits
+lost their shyness. One would have said these were the Lost Ten Tribes
+he had found.
+
+Peloni had become, not the Keeper of the Records, but the Keeper of
+Noah's Ark.
+
+
+VII
+
+So winter came, and there was still nothing to record, save the
+witchery of the muffled white world with its blue shadows and
+fantastic ice friezes and stalactites. Great icicles glittered on the
+rocks, showing all the hues beneath. Peloni, wrapped in his blanket,
+crouched on his monument over a log that burnt in an improvised grate.
+It was very lonely. He had heard from no one, neither from Noah, nor
+Smith, nor any Jewish or even Indian pilgrim to the New Jerusalem,
+and the stock of winter provisions had exhausted his little hoard of
+coin. The old despair began to twine round him like some serpent of
+ice. As he listened in such moods to the distant thunder of
+Niagara--which waxed louder as the air grew heavier, till it quite
+dominated the ever present rumble of the rapids--the sound took on
+endless meanings to his feverish brain. Now it was no longer the voice
+of the Eternal Being, it was the endless plaint of Israel beseeching
+the deaf heaven, the roar of prayer from some measureless synagogue;
+now it was the raucous voice of persecution, the dull bestial roar of
+malicious multitudes; and again it was the voice of the whole earth,
+groaning and travailing. And the horror of it was that it would not
+stop. It dropped on his brain, this falling water, as on the
+prisoner's in the mediaeval torture chamber. Could no one stop this
+turning wheel of the world, jar it grindingly to a standstill?
+
+Spring wore slowly round again. The icicles melted, the friezes
+dripped away, the fantastic mufflers slipped from the trees, and the
+young buds peeped out and the young birds sang. The river flowed
+uncurdled, the cataracts fell unclogged.
+
+In Peloni's breast alone the ice did not melt: no new sap stirred in
+his veins. The very rainbows on the leaping mist were now only
+reminders of the Biblical promise that the world would go on forever;
+forever the wheel would turn, and Israel wander homeless.
+
+And at last one sunny day a boat arrived with a message from the
+Master. Alas! even Noah had abandoned Ararat. "I am beginning to see,"
+he wrote, "that our only hope is Palestine. Zion alone has magnetism
+for the Jew. The great war against Gog prophesied in Ezekiel will be
+in Palestine. Gog is Russia, and the Russians are the descendants of
+the joint colony of Meshech and Tubal and the little horn of Daniel.
+Russia in an attempt to wrest India and Turkey from the English and
+the Turks will make the Holy Land the theatre of a terrible conflict.
+But yet in the end in Jerusalem shall we reerect Solomon's Temple. The
+ports of the Mediterranean will be again open to the busy hum of
+commerce; the fields will again bear the fruitful harvest, and
+Christian and Jew will together, on Mount Zion, raise their voices in
+praise of Him whose covenant with Abraham was to endure forever, in
+whose seed all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. This is our
+destiny."
+
+Peloni wandered automatically to the apex of the island at Burnt Ship
+Bay, and stood gazing meaninglessly at the fragments of the sunken
+ships. Before him raced the rapids, frenziedly anxious for the great
+leap. Even so, he thought, had Noah and he dreamed Israel would haste
+to Ararat. And Niagara maintained its mocking roar--its roar of
+gigantic laughter.
+
+Reerect Solomon's Temple in Palestine! A ruined country to regenerate
+a ruined people! A land belonging to the Turks, centre of the
+fanaticisms of three religions and countless sects! A soil which even
+to Noah was the destined theatre of world-shaking war!
+
+As he lifted his swimming eyes he saw to his astonishment that he was
+no longer alone. A tall majestic figure stood gazing at him: a grave,
+sorrowful Indian, feathered and tufted, habited only in buckskin
+leggings, and girdled by a belt of wampum. A musket in his hand showed
+he had been hunting, and a canoe Peloni now saw tethered to the bank
+indicated he was going back to his lodge. Peloni knew from his talks
+with the Tonawanda Indians opposite Ararat that this was Red Jacket,
+the famous chief of the Iroquois, the ancient lords of the soil.
+Peloni tendered the salute due to the royalty stamped on the man. Red
+Jacket ceremoniously acknowledged the obeisance. Then they gazed
+silently at each other, the puny, stooping scholar from the German
+Ghetto, and the stalwart, kingly savage.
+
+"Tell me," said Red Jacket imperiously, "what nation are you that
+build a monument but never a city like the other white men, nor even a
+camp like my people?"
+
+"Great Chief," replied Peloni in his best Iroquois, "we are a people
+that build for others."
+
+"I would ye would build for my people then. For these white men sweep
+us back, farther, farther, till there is nothing but"--and he made an
+eloquent gesture, implying the sweep into the river, into the jaws of
+the hurrying rapids. "Yet, methinks, I heard of a plan of your
+people--of a great pow-wow of your chiefs in a church, of a great city
+to be born here."
+
+"It is dead before birth," said Peloni.
+
+"Strange," mused Red Jacket. "Scarce twenty summers ago Joseph Elliott
+came here to plan out his city on a soil that was not his, and lo!
+this Buffalo rises already mighty and menacing. To-morrow it will be
+at my wigwam door--and we"--another gesture, hopeless, yet full of
+regal dignity, rounded off the sentence.
+
+And in that instant it was borne in upon Peloni that they were indeed
+brothers: the Jew who stood for the world that could not be born
+again, and the Red Indian who stood for the world that must pass away.
+Yes, they were both doomed. Israel had been too bent and broken by the
+long dispersion and the long persecution: the spring was snapped; he
+could not recover. He had been too long the pliant protege of kings
+and popes: he had prayed too many centuries in too many countries for
+the simultaneous welfare of too many governments, to be capable of
+realizing that government of his own for which he likewise prayed.
+This pious patience--this rejection of the burden on to the shoulders
+of Messiah and Miracle--was it more than the veil of unconscious
+impotence? Ah, better sweep oneself away than endure the long
+ignominy. And Niagara laughed on.
+
+"May I have the privilege of crossing in your canoe?" he asked.
+
+"You are not afraid?" said Red Jacket. "The rapids are dangerous
+here."
+
+Afraid! Peloni's inward laughter seemed to himself to match Niagara's.
+
+When he got to the mainland, he made straight for the Fall. He was on
+the American side, and he paused on the sward, on the very brink of
+the tameless cataract, that had for immemorial ages been driving
+itself backward by eating away its own rock. His fascinated eyes
+watched the curious smooth, purring slide of the vast mass of green
+water over the sharp edges, unending, unresting, the eternal
+revolution of a maddening, imperturbable wheel. O that blind wheel,
+turning, turning, while the generations waxed and waned, one
+succeeding the other without haste or rest or possibility of pause:
+creatures of meaningless majesty, shadows of shadows, dreaming of love
+and justice, and fading into the kindred mist, while this solid green
+cataract roared and raced through aeons innumerable, stable as the
+stars, thundering in majestic meaninglessness. And suddenly he threw
+himself into its remorseless whirl and was sucked down into the
+monstrous chaos of seething waters and whirled and hurled amid the
+rocks, battered and shapeless, but still holding Noah's letter in his
+convulsively clinched hand, while the rainbowed spray leapt
+impassively heavenward.
+
+The corner-stone of Ararat lies in the rooms of the Buffalo Historical
+Society, and no one who copies the inscription dreams that it is the
+gravestone of Peloni.
+
+And while the very monument has mouldered away in Ararat, Buffalo sits
+throned amid her waters, the Queen City of the Empire State, with the
+world's commerce at her feet. And from their palaces of Medina
+sandstone the Christian railroad kings go out to sail in their
+luxurious yachts,--vessels not of bulrushes but driven by steam, as
+predicted by Mordecai Manuel Noah, Governor and Judge of Israel.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LAND OF PROMISE
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LAND OF PROMISE
+
+
+I
+
+"Telegraph how many pieces you have."
+
+In this wise did the Steamship Company convey to the astute agent its
+desire to know how many Russian Jews he was smuggling out of the Pale
+into the steerage of its Atlantic liner.
+
+The astute agent's task was simple enough. The tales he told of
+America were only the clarification of a nebulous vision of the land
+flowing with milk and honey that hovered golden-rayed before all these
+hungry eyes. To the denizens of the Pale, in their cellars, in their
+gutter-streets, in their semi-subterranean shops consisting mainly of
+shutters and annihilating one another's profits; to the congested
+populations newly reinforced by the driving back of thousands from
+beyond the Pale, and yet multiplying still by an improvident reliance
+on Providence; to the old people pauperized by the removal of the
+vodka business to Christian hands, and the young people dammed back
+from their natural outlets by Pan-Slavic ukases, and clogged with
+whimsical edicts and rescripts--the astute agent's offer of getting
+you through Germany, without even a Russian passport, by a simple
+passage from Libau to New York, was peculiarly alluring.
+
+It was really almost an over-baiting of the hook on the part of the
+too astute agent to whisper that he had had secret information of a
+new thunderbolt about to be launched at the Pale; whereby the period
+of service for Jewish conscripts would be extended to fifteen years,
+and the area of service would be extended to Siberia.
+
+"Three hundred and seventy-seven pieces," ran his telegram in reply.
+In a letter he suggested other business he might procure for the line.
+
+"Confine yourself to freight," the Company wrote cautiously, for even
+under sealed envelopes you cannot be too careful. "The more the
+better."
+
+Freight! The word was not inexact. Did not even the Government reports
+describe these exploiters of the Muzhik as in some places packed in
+their hovels like salt herrings in a barrel; as sleeping at night in
+serried masses in sties which by day were tallow or leather factories?
+
+To be shipped as cargo came therefore natural enough. Nevertheless,
+each of these "pieces," being human after all, had a history, and one
+of these histories is here told.
+
+
+II
+
+Nowhere was the poverty of the Pale bitterer than in the weavers'
+colony, in which Srul betrothed himself to Biela. The dowries, which
+had been wont to kindle so many young men's passions, had fallen to
+freezing-point; and Biela, if she had no near prospect of marriage,
+could console herself with the knowledge that she was romantically
+loved. Even the attraction of _kest_--temporary maintenance of the
+young couple by the father-in-law--was wanting in Biela's case, for
+the simple reason that she had no father, both her parents having died
+of the effort to get a living. For marriage-portion and _kest_, Biela
+could only bring her dark beauty, and even that was perhaps less than
+it seemed. For you scarcely ever saw Biela apart from her homely
+quasi-mother, her elder sister Leah, who, like the original Leah, had
+"tender eyes," which combined with a pock-marked face to ensure for
+her premature recognition as an old maid. The inflamed eyelids were
+the only legacy Leah's father had left her.
+
+From Srul's side, though his parents were living, came even fainter
+hope of the wedding-canopy. Srul's father was blind--perhaps a further
+evidence that the local hygienic conditions were nocuous to the eye in
+particular--and Srul himself, who had occupied most of his time in
+learning to weave Rabbinic webs, had only just turned his attention
+to cloth, though Heaven was doubtless pleased with the gear of
+_Gemara_ he had gathered in his short sixteen years. The old weaver
+had--in more than one sense--seen better days before his affliction
+and the great factories came on: days when the independent hand-weaver
+might sit busily before the loom from the raw dawn to the black
+midnight, taking his meals at the bench; days when, moreover, the
+"piece" of satin-faced cloth was many ells shorter. "But they make up
+for the extra length," he would say with pathetic humour, "by cutting
+the pay shorter."
+
+The same sense of humour enabled him to bear up against the forced
+rests that increasing slackness brought the hand-weavers, while the
+factories whirred on. "Now is the proverb fulfilled," he cried to his
+unsmiling wife, "for there are two Sabbaths a week." Alas! as the
+winter grew older and colder, it became a week of Sabbaths. The wheels
+stood still; in all the colony not a spool was reeled. It was
+unprecedented. Gradually the factories had stolen the customers. Some
+sat waiting dazedly for the raw yarns they knew could no longer come
+at this season; others left the suburb in which the colony had drowsed
+from time immemorial, and sought odd jobs in the town, in the frowning
+shadows of the factories. But none would enter the factories
+themselves, though these were ready to suck them in on one sole
+condition.
+
+Ah! here was the irony of the tragedy. The one condition was the one
+condition the poor weavers could not accept. It was open to them to
+reduce the week of Sabbaths to its ancient and diurnal dimensions,
+provided the Sabbath itself came on Sunday. Nay, even the working-day
+offered them was less, and the wage was more than their own. The
+deeper irony within this irony was that the proprietor of every one of
+these factories was a brother in Israel! Jeshurun grown fat and
+kicking.
+
+Even the old blind man's composure deserted him when it began to be
+borne in on his darkness that the younger weavers meditated surrender.
+The latent explosives generated through the years by their perusal of
+un-Jewish books in insidious "Yiddish" versions, now bade fair to be
+touched to eruption by this paraded prosperity of wickedness;
+wickedness that had even discarded the caftan and shaved the corners
+of its beard.
+
+"But thou, apple of my eye," the old man said to Srul, "thou wilt die
+rather than break the Sabbath?"
+
+"Father," quoted the youth, with a shuddering emotion at the bare
+idea, "I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the
+righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread."
+
+"My son! A true spark of the Patriarchs!" And the old man clasped the
+boy to his arms and kissed him on the pious cheeks down which the
+ear-locks dangled.
+
+"But if Biela should tempt thee, so that thou couldst have the
+wherewithal to marry her," put in his mother, who could not keep her
+thoughts off grandchildren.
+
+"Not for apples of gold, mother, will I enter the service of these
+serpents."
+
+"Nevertheless, Biela is fair to see, and thou art getting on in
+years," murmured the mother.
+
+"Leah would not give Biela to a Sabbath-breaker," said the old man
+reassuringly.
+
+"Yes, but suppose she gives her to a bread-winner," persisted the
+mother. "Do not forget that Biela is already fifteen, only a year
+younger than thyself."
+
+But Leah kept firm to the troth she had plighted on behalf of Biela,
+even though the young man's family sank lower and lower, till it was
+at last reduced from the little suburban wooden cottage, with the
+spacious courtyard, to one corner of a large town-cellar, whose
+population became amphibious when the Vistula overflowed.
+
+And Srul kept firm to the troth Israel had plighted with the
+Sabbath-bride, even when his father's heart no longer beat, so could
+not be broken. The old man remained to the last the most cheerful
+denizen of the cellar: perhaps because he was spared the vision of his
+emaciated fellow-troglodytes. He called the cellar "Arba Kanfos,"
+after the four-cornered garment of fringes which he wore: and
+sometimes he said these were the "Four Corners" from which, according
+to the Prophets, God would gather Israel.
+
+
+III
+
+In such a state of things an agent scarcely needed to be astute.
+"Pieces" were to be had for the picking up. The only trouble was that
+they were not gold pieces. The idle weavers could not defray the
+passage-money, still less the agent's commission for smuggling them
+through.
+
+"If I only had a few hundred roubles," Srul lamented to Leah, "I could
+get to a land where there is work without breaking the Sabbath, a land
+to which Biela could follow me when I waxed in substance."
+
+Leah supported her household of three--for there was a younger sister,
+Tsirrele, who, being only nine, did not count except at meal-times--on
+the price of her piece-work at the Christian umbrella factory, where,
+by a considerate Russian law, she could work on Sunday, though the
+Christians might not. Thus she earned, by literal sweating in a torrid
+atmosphere, three roubles, all except a varying number of kopecks,
+every week. And when you live largely on black bread and coffee, you
+may, in the course of years, save a good deal, even if you have three
+mouths. Therefore, Leah had the sum that Srul mentioned so wistfully,
+put by for a rainy day (when there should be no umbrellas to make).
+And as the sum had kept increasing, the notion that it might form the
+nucleus of an establishment for Biela and Srul had grown clearer and
+clearer in her mind, which it tickled delightfully. But the idea that
+now came to her of staking all on a possible future was agitating.
+
+"We might, perhaps, be able to get together the money," she said
+tentatively. "But--" She shook her head, and the Russian proverb came
+to her lips. "Before the sun rises the dew may destroy you."
+
+Srul plunged into an eager recapitulation of the agent's assurances.
+And before the eyes of both the marriage-canopy reared itself splendid
+in the Land of Promise, and the figure of Biela flitted, crowned with
+the bridal wreath.
+
+"But what will become of your mother?" Leah asked.
+
+Srul's soap-bubbles collapsed. He had forgotten for the moment that he
+had a mother.
+
+"She might come to live with us," Leah hastened to suggest, seeing his
+o'erclouded face.
+
+"Ah, no, that would be too much of a burden. And Tsirrele, too, is
+growing up."
+
+"Tsirrele eats quite as much now as she will in ten years' time," said
+Leah, laughing, as she thought fondly of her dear, beautiful little
+one, her gay whimsies and odd caprices.
+
+"And my mother does not eat very much," said Srul, wavering.
+
+In this way Srul became a "piece," and was dumped down in the Land of
+Promise.
+
+
+IV
+
+To the four females left behind--odd fragments of two families thrown
+into an odder one--the movements of the particular piece, Srul, were
+the chief interest of existence. The life in the three-roomed wooden
+cottage soon fell into a routine, Leah going daily to the tropical
+factory, Biela doing the housework and dreaming of her lover, little
+Tsirrele frisking about and chattering like the squirrel she was, and
+Srul's mother dozing and criticising and yearning for her lost son and
+her unborn grandchildren. By the time Srul's first letter, with its
+exciting pictorial stamp, arrived from the Land of Promise, the
+household seemed to have been established on this basis from time
+immemorial.
+
+"I had a lucky escape, God be thanked," Srul wrote. "For when I arrived
+in New York I had only fifty-one roubles in my pocket. Now it seems
+that these rich Americans are so afraid of being overloaded with
+paupers that they will not let you in, if you have less than fifty
+dollars, unless you can prove you are sure to prosper. And a dollar, my
+dear Biela, is a good deal more than a rouble. However, blessed be the
+Highest One, I learned of this ukase just the day before we arrived,
+and was able to borrow the difference from a fellow-passenger, who lent
+me the money to show the Commissioners. Of course, I had to give it
+back as soon as I was passed, and as I had to pay him five roubles for
+the use of it, I set foot on the soil of freedom with only forty-six.
+However, it was well worth it; for just think, beloved Biela, if I had
+been shipped back and all that money wasted! The interpreter also said
+to me, 'I suppose you have got some work to do here?' 'I wish I had,' I
+said. No sooner had the truth slipped out than my heart seemed turned
+to ice, for I feared they would reject me after all as a poor wretch
+out of work. But quite the contrary; it seemed this was only a trap, a
+snare of the fowler. Poor Caminski fell into it--you remember the
+red-haired weaver who sold his looms to the Maggid's brother-in-law. He
+said he had agreed to take a place in a glove factory. It is true, you
+know, that some Polish Jews have made a glove town in the north, so the
+poor man thought that would sound plausible. Hence you may expect to
+see Caminski's red hair back again, unless he takes ship again from
+Libau and tells the truth at the second attempt. I left him howling in
+a wooden pen, and declaring he would kill himself rather than face his
+friends at home with the brand on his head of not being good enough for
+America. He did not understand that contract-labourers are not let in.
+Protection is the word they call it. Hence, I thank God that my
+father--his memory for a blessing!--taught me to make Truth the law of
+my mouth, as it is written. Verily was the word of the Talmud (Tractate
+Sabbath) fulfilled at the landing-stage: 'Falsehood cannot stay, but
+truth remains forever.' With God's help, I shall remain here all my
+life, for it is a land overflowing with milk and honey. I had almost
+forgotten to tell my dove that the voyage was hard and bitter as the
+Egyptian bondage; not because of the ocean, over which I passed as
+easily as our forefathers over the Red Sea, but by reason of the
+harshness of the overseers, who regarded not our complaints that the
+meat was not _kosher_, as promised by the agent. Also the butter and
+meat plates were mixed up. I and many with me lived on dry bread, nor
+could we always get hot water to make coffee. When my Biela comes
+across the great waters--God send her soon--she must take with her salt
+meat of her own."
+
+From the first, Srul courageously assumed that the meat would soon
+have to be packed; nay, that Leah might almost set about salting it at
+once. Even the slow beginnings of his profits as a peddler did not
+daunt him. "A great country," he wrote on paper stamped with the Stars
+and Stripes, with an eagle screaming on the envelope. "No special
+taxes for the Jews, permission to travel where you please, the schools
+open freely to our children, no passports and papers at every step,
+above all, no conscription. No wonder the people call it God's own
+country. Truly, as it is written, this is none other but the House of
+God, this is the Gate of Heaven. And when Biela comes, it will be
+Heaven." Letters like this enlarged the little cottage as with an
+American room, brightened it as with a fresh wash of blue paint.
+Despite the dreary grind of the week, Sabbaths and festivals found the
+household joyous enough. The wedding-canopy of Srul and Biela was a
+beacon of light for all four, which made life livable as they
+struggled toward it. Nevertheless, it came but slowly to meet them:
+nearly three years oozed by before Srul began to lift his eye toward a
+store. The hereditary weaver of business combinations had emerged
+tardily from beneath the logic-weaver and the cloth-weaver, but of
+late he had been finding himself. "If I could only get together five
+hundred dollars clear," he wrote to Leah. "For that is all I should
+have to pay down for a ladies' store near Broadway, and just at the
+foot of the stairs of the Elevated Railway. What a pity I have only
+four hundred and thirty-five dollars! Stock and goodwill, and only
+five hundred dollars cash! The other five hundred could stand over at
+five per cent. If I were once in the store I could gradually get some
+of the rooms above (there is already a parlour, in which I shall
+sleep), and then, as soon as I was making a regular profit, I could
+send Biela and mother their passage-money, and my wife could help 'the
+boss' behind the counter."
+
+To hasten the rosy day Leah sent thirty-five roubles, and presently,
+sure enough, Srul was in possession, and a photograph of the store
+itself came over to gladden their weary eyes and dilate those of the
+neighbours. The photograph of Srul, which had come eighteen months
+before, was not so suited for display, since his peaked cap and his
+caftan had been replaced by a jacket and a bowler, and, but for the
+ear-locks which were still in the picture, he would have looked like a
+factory-owner. In return, Srul received a photograph of the
+four--taken together, for economy's sake--Leah with her arm around
+Biela's waist, and Tsirrele sitting in his mother's lap.
+
+
+V
+
+But a long, wearying struggle was still before the new "boss," and two
+years crept along, with their turns of luck and ill-luck, of bargains
+and bad debts, ere the visionary marriage-canopy (that seemed to span
+the Atlantic) began to stand solidly on American soil. The third year
+was not half over ere Srul actually sent the money for Biela's
+passage, together with a handsome "waist" from his stock, for her to
+wear. But Biela was too timid to embark alone without Srul's mother,
+whose fare Srul could not yet manage to withdraw from his capital.
+Leah, of course, offered to advance it, but Biela refused this
+vehemently, because a new hope had begun to spring up in her breast.
+Why should she be parted from her family at all? Since her marriage
+had been delayed these five and a half years, a few months more or
+less could make no difference. Let Leah's savings, then, be for Leah's
+passage (and Tsirrele's) and to give her a start in the New World. "It
+rains, even in America, and there are umbrella factories there, too,"
+she urged. "You will make twice the living. Look at Srul!"
+
+And there was a new fear, too, which haunted Biela's aching heart, but
+which she dared not express to Leah. Leah's eyes were getting worse.
+The temperature of the factory was a daily hurt, and then, too, she
+had read so many vilely printed Yiddish books and papers by the light
+of the tallow candle. What if she were going blind? What if, while
+she, Biela, was happy with Srul, Leah should be starving with
+Tsirrele? No, they must all remain together: and she clung to her
+sister, with tears.
+
+To Leah the prospect of witnessing her sister's happiness was so
+seductive that she tried to take the lowest estimate of her own
+chances of finding work in New York. Her savings, almost eaten up by
+the journey, could not last long, and it would be terrible to have to
+come upon Srul for help, a man with a wife and (if God were good)
+children, to say nothing of his old mother. No, she could not risk
+Tsirrele's bread.
+
+But the increased trouble with her eyes turned her in favour of going,
+though, curiously enough, for a side reason quite unlike Biela's.
+Leah, too, was afraid of a serious breakdown, though she would not
+hint her fears to any one else. From her miscellaneous Yiddish reading
+she had gathered that miraculous eye-doctors lived in Koenigsberg. Now
+a journey to Germany was not to be thought of; if she went to America,
+however, it could be taken en route. It would be a sort of saving, and
+few things appealed to Leah as much as economy. This was why, some
+four months later, the ancient furniture of the blue-washed cottage
+was sold off, and the quartette set their faces for America by way of
+Germany. The farewell to the home of their youth took place in the
+cemetery among the high-shouldered Hebrew-speaking stones. Leah and
+Biela passionately invoked the spirits of their dead parents and bade
+them watch over their children. The old woman scribbled Srul and
+Biela's interlinked names over the flat tomb of a holy scholar. "Take
+their names up to the Highest One," she pleaded. "Entreat that their
+quiver be full, for the sake of thy righteousness."
+
+More dead than alive, the four "pieces" with their bundles arrived at
+Hamburg. Days and nights of travelling, packed like "freight" in hard,
+dirty wooden carriages, the endless worry of passports, tickets,
+questions, hygienic inspections and processes, the illegal exactions
+of petty officials, the strange phantasmagoria of places and
+faces--all this had left them dazed. Only two things kept up their
+spirits--the image of Srul waiting on the Transatlantic wharf in
+hymeneal attire, and the "pooh-pooh" of the miraculous Koenigsberg
+doctor, reassuring Leah as to her eyes. There was nothing radically
+the matter. Even the inflamed eyelids--though incurable, because
+hereditary--would improve with care. Peasant-like, Leah craved a
+lotion. "The sea voyage and the rest will do you more good than my
+medicines. And don't read so much." Not a groschen did Leah have to
+pay for the great specialist's services. It was the first time in her
+hard life anybody had done anything for her for nothing, and her
+involuntary weeping over this phenomenon tended to hurt the very
+eyelids under attention. They were still further taxed by the kindness
+of the Jewish committee at Hamburg, on the look-out to smooth the path
+of poor emigrants and overcome their dietary difficulties. But it was
+a crowded ship, and our party reverted again to "freight." With some
+of the other females, they were accommodated in hammocks swung over
+the very dining-tables, so that they must needs rise at dawn and be
+cleared away before breakfast. The hot, oily whiff of the
+cooking-engines came through the rocking doorway. Of the quartette,
+only Tsirrele escaped sea-sickness, but "baby" was too accustomed to
+be petted and nursed to be able suddenly to pet and nurse, and she
+would spend hours on the slip of lower deck, peering into the fairy
+saloons which were vivified by bugle instead of bell, and in which
+beautiful people ate dishes fit for the saints in Heaven. By an effort
+of will, Leah soon returned to her role of factotum, but the old
+woman and Biela remained limp to the end. Fortunately, there was only
+one day of heavy rolling and battened-down hatches. For the bulk of
+the voyage the great vessel brushed the pack of waves disdainfully
+aside. And one wonderful day, amid unspeakable joy, New York arrived,
+preceded by a tug and by a boat that conveyed inquiring officials. The
+great statue of Liberty, on Bedloe's Island, upheld its torch to light
+the new-comers' path. Srul--there he is on the wharf, dear old
+Srul!--God bless him! despite his close-cropped hair and his shaven
+ear-locks. Ah! Heaven be praised! Don't you see him waving? Ah, but
+we, too, must be content with waving. For here only the _tschinovniks_
+of the gilded saloon may land. The "freight" must be packed later into
+rigid gangs, according to the ship's manifest, transferred to a
+smaller steamer and discharged on Ellis Island, a little beyond
+Bedloe's.
+
+
+VI
+
+And at Ellis Island a terrible thing happened, unforeseen--a shipwreck
+in the very harbour.
+
+As the "freight" filed slowly along the corridor-cages in the great
+bare hall, like cattle inspected at ports by the veterinary surgeon,
+it came into the doctor's head that Leah's eye-trouble was infectious.
+"Granular lids--contagious," he diagnosed it on paper. And this
+diagnosis was a flaming sword that turned every way, guarding against
+Leah the Land of Promise.
+
+"But it is not infectious," she protested in her best German. "It is
+only in the family."
+
+"So I perceive," dryly replied America's Guardian Angel, who was now
+examining the obvious sister clinging to Leah's skirts. And in Biela,
+heavy-eyed with sickness and want of sleep, his suspicious vision
+easily discovered a reddish rim of eyelid that lent itself to the same
+fatal diagnosis, and sent her to join Leah in the dock of the
+rejected. The fresh-faced Tsirrele and the wizen-faced mother of Srul
+passed unscrutinized, and even the dread clerk at the desk who asked
+questions was content with their oath that the wealthy Srul would
+support them. Srul was, indeed, sent for at once, as Tsirrele was too
+pretty to be let out under the mere protection of a Polish crone.
+
+When the full truth that neither she nor Biela was to set foot in New
+York burst through the daze in Leah's brain, her protest grew frantic.
+
+"But my sister has nothing the matter with her--nothing. O _gnaediger
+Herr_, have pity. The Koenigsberg doctor--the great doctor--told me I
+had no disease, no disease at all. And even if I have, my sister's
+eyes are pure as the sunshine. Look, _mein Herr_, look again. See,"
+and she held up Biela's eyelids and passionately kissed the wet
+bewildered eyes. "She is to be married, my lamb--her bridegroom
+awaits her on the wharf. Send _me_ back, _gnaediger Herr_; I ought not
+to have come. But for God's sake, don't keep Biela out, don't." She
+wrung her hands. But the marriage card had been played too often in
+that hall of despairing dodges. "Oh, _Herr Doktor_," and she kissed
+the coat-tail of the ship's doctor, "plead for us; speak a word for
+her."
+
+The ship's doctor spoke a word on his own behalf. It was he who had
+endorsed the two girls' health-certificates at Hamburg, and he would
+be blamed by the Steamship Company, which would have to ship the
+sisters back free, and even defray their expenses while in quarantine
+at the depot. He ridiculed the idea that the girls were suffering from
+anything contagious. But the native doctor frowned, immovable.
+
+Leah grew hysteric. It was the first time in her life she had lost her
+sane standpoint. "Your own eye is affected," she shrieked, her dark
+pock-marked face almost black with desperate anger, "if you cannot see
+that it is only because my sister has been weeping, because she is ill
+from the voyage. But she carries no infection--she is healthy as an
+ox, and her eye is the eye of an eagle!" She was ordered to be silent,
+but she shrieked angrily, "The German doctors know, but the Americans
+have no _Bildung_."
+
+"Oh, don't, Leah," moaned Biela, throwing her arms round the panting
+breast. "What's the use?" But the irrepressible Leah got an S.I.
+ticket of Special Inquiry, forced a hearing in the Commissioners'
+Court.
+
+"Let her in, kind gentlemen, and send back the other one. Tsirrele
+will go back with me. It does not matter about the little one."
+
+The kind gentlemen on the bench were really kind, but America must be
+protected.
+
+"You can take the young one and the old one both back with you," the
+interpreter told her. "But they are the only ones we can let in."
+
+Leah and Biela were driven back among the damned. The favoured twain
+stood helplessly in their happier compartment. Even Tsirrele, the
+squirrel, was dazed. Presently the spruce Srul arrived--to find the
+expected raptures replaced by funereal misery. He wormed his way
+dizzily into the cage of the rejected. It was not the etiquette of the
+Pale to kiss one's betrothed bride, but Srul stared dully at Biela
+without even touching her hand, as if the Atlantic already rolled
+again between them. Here was a pretty climax to the dreams of years!
+
+"My poor Srul, we must go back to Hamburg to be married," faltered
+Biela.
+
+"And give up my store?" Srul wailed. "Here the dollar spins round. We
+have now what one names a boom. There is no land on earth like ours."
+
+The forlornness of the others stung Leah to her senses.
+
+"Listen, Srul," she said hurriedly. "It is all my fault, because I
+wanted to share in the happiness. I ought not to have come. If we had
+not been together they never would have suspected Biela's eyes--who
+would notice the little touch of inflammation which is the most she
+has ever suffered from? She shall come again in another ship, all
+alone--for she knows now how to travel. Is it not so, Biela, my lamb?
+I will see you on board, and Srul will meet you here, although not
+till you have passed the doctor, so that no one will have a chance of
+remembering you. It will cost a heap, alas! but I can get some work in
+Hamburg, and the Jews there have hearts of gold. Eh, Biela, my poor
+lamb?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Leah, you can always give yourself a counsel," and Biela
+put her wet face to her sister's, and kissed the pock-marked cheek.
+
+Srul acquiesced eagerly. No one remembered for the moment that Leah
+would be left alone in the Old World. The problem of effecting the
+bride's entry blocked all the horizon.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Srul. "The mother will look after Tsirrele, and in
+less than three weeks Biela will slip in."
+
+"No, three weeks is too soon," said Leah. "We must wait a little
+longer till the doctor forgets."
+
+"Oh, but I have already waited so long!" whimpered Srul.
+
+Leah's eyes filled with sympathetic tears. "I ought not to have made
+so much fuss. Now she will stick in the doctor's mind. Forgive me,
+dear Srul, I will do my best and try to make amends."
+
+Leah and Biela were taken away to the hospital, where they remained
+isolated from the world till the steamer sailed back to Hamburg.
+Herein, generously lodged, they had ample leisure to review the
+situation. Biela discovered that the new plan would leave Leah
+deserted, Leah remembered that she would be deserting little Tsirrele.
+Both were agreed that Tsirrele must go back with them, till they
+bethought themselves that her passage would have to be paid for, as
+she was not refused. And every kopeck was precious now. "Let the child
+stay till I get back," said Biela. "Then I will send her to you."
+
+"Yes, it is best to let her stay awhile. I myself may be able to join
+you after all. I will go back to Koenigsberg, and the great doctor will
+write me out a certificate that my affliction is not contagious."
+
+At the very worst--if even Biela could not get in--Srul should sell
+his store and come back to the Old World. It would put off the
+marriage again. But they had waited so long. "So let us cheer up after
+all, and thank the Lord for His mercies. We might all have been
+drowned on the voyage."
+
+Thus the sisters' pious conclusion.
+
+But though Srul and his mother and Tsirrele got on board to see them
+off, and Tsirrele gave graphic accounts of the wonders of the store
+and the rooms prepared for the bride, to say nothing of the great
+city itself, and Srul brought Biela and Leah splendid specimens of his
+stock for their adornment, yet it was a horrible thing for them to go
+back again without having once trodden the sidewalks of the Land of
+Promise. And when the others were tolled off, as by a funeral bell,
+and became specks in a swaying crowd; when the dock receded and the
+cheers and good-byes faded, and the waving handkerchiefs became a
+blur, and the Statue of Liberty dwindled, and the lone waste of waters
+faced them once more, Leah's optimism gave way, a chill sinister
+shadow fell across her new plan, some ominous intuition traversed her
+like a shudder, and she turned away lest Biela should see her tears.
+
+
+VII
+
+This despair did not last long. It was not in Leah's nature to
+despair. But her wildest hopes were exceeded when she set foot again
+in Hamburg and explained her hard case to the good committee, and a
+member gave her an informal hint which was like a flash of light from
+Heaven--its answer to her ceaseless prayer. Ellis Island was not the
+only way of approaching the Land of Promise. You could go round about
+through Canada, where they were not so particular, and you could slip
+in by rail from Montreal without attracting much attention. True,
+there was the extra expense.
+
+Expense! Leah would have gladly parted with her last rouble to unite
+Biela with her bridegroom. There must be no delay. A steamer for
+Canada was waiting to sail. What a fool she had been not to think that
+out for herself! Yes, but there was Biela's timidity again to
+consider. Travel by herself through this unknown Canada! And then if
+they were not so particular, why could not Leah slip through likewise?
+
+"Yes, but my eyes are more noticeable. I might again do you an
+injury."
+
+"We will separate at the landing-stage and the frontier. We will
+pretend to be strangers." Biela's wits were sharpened by the crisis.
+
+"Well, I can only lose the passage-money," said Leah, and resolved to
+take the risk. She wrote a letter to Srul explaining the daring
+invasion of New York overland which they were to attempt, and was
+about to post it, when Biela said:--
+
+"Poor Srul! And if I shall not get in after all!" Leah's face fell.
+
+"True," she pondered. "He will have a more heart-breaking
+disappointment than before."
+
+"Let us not kindle their hopes. After all, if we get in, we shall only
+be a few days later than our letter. And then think of the joy of the
+surprise."
+
+"You are right, Biela," and Leah's face glowed again with the
+anticipated joy of the surprise.
+
+The journey to Canada was longer than to the States, and the
+"freight" was less companionable. There were fewer Jews and women,
+more stalwart shepherds, miners, and dock-labourers. When after eleven
+days, land came, it was not touched at, but only remained cheeringly
+on the horizon for the rest of the voyage. At last the sisters found
+themselves unmolested on one of the many wharves of Montreal. But they
+would not linger a day in this unhomely city. The next morning saw
+them, dazed and worn out but happy-hearted, dodging the monstrous
+catapults of the New York motor-cars, while a Polish porter helped
+them with their bundles and convoyed them toward Srul's store. Ah,
+what ecstasy to be unregarded units of this free chaotic crowd.
+Outside the store--what a wonderful store it was, larger than the
+largest in the weavers' colony!--the sisters paused a moment to roll
+the coming bliss under their tongues. They peeped in. Ah, there is
+Srul behind the counter, waiting for customers. Ah, ah, he little
+knows what customers are waiting for him! They turned and kissed each
+other for mere joy.
+
+"Draw your shawl over your face," whispered Leah merrily. "Go in and
+ask him if he has a wedding-veil." Biela slipped in, brimming over
+with mischief and tears.
+
+"Yes, Miss?" said Srul, with his smartest store manner.
+
+"I want a wedding-veil of white lace," she said in Yiddish. At her
+voice Srul started. Biela could keep up the joke no longer. "Srul, my
+darling Srul!" she cried hysterically, her arms yearning to reach him
+across the counter.
+
+He drew back, pale, gasping for breath.
+
+"Ah, my dear ones!" blubbered Leah, rushing in. "God has been good to
+you, after all."
+
+"But--but--how did you get in?" he cried, staring.
+
+"Never mind how we got in," said Leah, every pock-mark glistening with
+smiles and tears. "And where is Tsirrele--my dear little Tsirrele?"
+
+"She--she is out marketing, with the mother."
+
+"And the mother?"
+
+"She is well and happy."
+
+"Thank God!" said Leah fervently, and beckoned the porter with the
+bundles.
+
+"But--but I let the room," he said, flushing. "I did not know that--I
+could not afford--"
+
+"Never mind, we will find a room. The day is yet high." She settled
+with the porter.
+
+Meantime Srul had begun playing nervously with a pair of scissors. He
+snipped a gorgeous piece of stuff to fragments.
+
+"What are you doing?" said Biela at last.
+
+"Oh--I--" he burst into a nervous laugh. "And so you ran the blockade
+after all. But--but I expect customers every minute--we can't talk
+now. Go inside and rest, Biela: you will find a sofa in the parlour.
+Leah, I want--I want to talk to you."
+
+Leah flashed a swift glance at him as Biela, vaguely chilled, moved
+through the back door into the revivifying splendours of the parlour.
+
+"Something is wrong, Srul," Leah said hoarsely. "Tsirrele is not here.
+You feared to tell us."
+
+He hung his head. "I did my best."
+
+"She is ill--dead, perhaps! My beautiful angel!"
+
+He opened his eyes. "Dead? No. Married!"
+
+"What! To whom?"
+
+He turned a sickly white. "To me."
+
+In all that long quest of the canopy, Leah had never come so near
+fainting as now. The horror of Ellis Island was nothing to this. That
+scene resurged, and Tsirrele's fresh beauty, unflecked by the voyage,
+came up luridly before her; the "baby," whom the unnoted years had
+made a young woman of fifteen, while they had been aging and staling
+Biela.
+
+"But--but this will break Biela's heart," she whispered, heart-broken.
+
+"How was I to know Biela would _ever_ get in?" he said, trying to be
+angry. "Was I to remain a bachelor all my life, breaking the
+Almighty's ordinance? Did I not wait and wait faithfully for Biela all
+those years?"
+
+"You could have migrated elsewhere," she said faintly.
+
+"And ruin my connection--and starve?" His anger was real by now.
+"Besides I have married into the family--it is almost the same thing.
+And the old mother is just as pleased."
+
+"Oh, she!" and all the endured bitterness of the long years was in the
+exclamation. "All she wants is grandchildren."
+
+"No, it isn't," he retorted. "Grandchildren with good eyes."
+
+"God forgive you," was all the lump in Leah's throat allowed her to
+reply. She steadied herself with a hand on the counter, striving to
+repossess her soul for Biela's sake.
+
+A customer came in, and the tragic universe dwindled to a prosaic
+place in which ribbons existed in unsatisfactory shades.
+
+"Of course we must go this minute," Leah said, as Srul clanked the
+coins into the till. "Biela cannot ever live here with you now."
+
+"Yes, it is better so," he assented sulkily. "Besides, you may as well
+know at once. I keep open on the Sabbath, and that would not have
+pleased Biela. That is another reason why it was best not to marry
+Biela. Tsirrele doesn't seem to mind."
+
+The very ruins of her world seemed toppling now. But this new
+revelation of Tsirrele's and his own wickedness seemed only of a piece
+with the first--indeed, went far to account for it.
+
+"You break the Sabbath, after all!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "We are not in Poland any longer. No dead
+flies here. Everybody does it. Shut the store two days a week! I
+should get left."
+
+"And you bring your mother's gray hairs down with sorrow to the
+grave."
+
+"My mother's gray hairs are no longer hidden by a stupid black
+_Shaitel_. That is all. I have explained to her that America is the
+land of enlightenment and freedom. Her eyes are opened."
+
+"I trust to God, your father's--peace be upon him!--are still shut!"
+said Leah as she walked with slow steady steps into the parlour, to
+bear off her wounded lamb.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+TO DIE IN JERUSALEM
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+TO DIE IN JERUSALEM
+
+
+I
+
+The older Isaac Levinsky grew, and the more he saw of the world after
+business hours, the more ashamed he grew of the Russian Rabbi whom
+Heaven had curiously chosen for his father. At first it seemed natural
+enough to shout and dance prayers in the stuffy little Spitalfields
+synagogue, and to receive reflected glory as the son and heir of the
+illustrious Maggid (preacher) whose four hour expositions of Scripture
+drew even West End pietists under the spell of their celestial
+crookedness. But early in Isaac's English school-life--for cocksure
+philanthropists dragged the younger generation to anglicization--he
+discovered that other fathers did not make themselves ridiculously
+noticeable by retaining the gabardine, the fur cap, and the ear-locks
+of Eastern Europe: nay, that a few--O, enviable sons!--could scarcely
+be distinguished from the teachers themselves.
+
+When the guardian angels of the Ghetto apprenticed him, in view of his
+talent for drawing, to a lithographic printer, he suffered agonies at
+the thought of his grotesque parent coming to sign the indentures.
+
+"You might put on a coat to-morrow," he begged in Yiddish.
+
+The Maggid's long black beard lifted itself slowly from the worm-eaten
+folio of the Babylonian Talmud, in which he was studying the tractate
+anent the payment of the half-shekel head-tax in ancient Palestine.
+"If he took the money from the second tithes or from the Sabbatical
+year fruit," he was humming in his quaint sing-song, "he must eat the
+full value of the same in the city of Jerusalem." As he encountered
+his boy's querulous face his dream city vanished, the glittering
+temple of Solomon crumbled to dust, and he remembered he was in exile.
+
+"Put on a coat?" he repeated gently. "Nay, thou knowest 'tis against
+our holy religion to appear like the heathen. I emigrated to England
+to be free to wear the Jewish dress, and God hath not failed to bless
+me."
+
+Isaac suppressed a precocious "Damn!" He had often heard the story of
+how the cruel Czar Nicholas had tried to make his Jews dress like
+Christians, so as insidiously to assimilate them away; how the police
+had even pulled off the unsightly cloth-coverings of the shaven polls
+of the married women, to the secret delight of the pretty ones, who
+then let their hair grow in godless charm. And, mixed up with this
+story, were vaguer legends of raw recruits forced by their sergeants
+to kneel on little broken stones till they perceived the superiority
+of Christianity.
+
+How the Maggid would have been stricken to the heart to know that
+Isaac now heard these legends with inverted sympathies!
+
+"The blind fools!" thought the boy, with ever growing bitterness. "To
+fancy that religion can lie in clothes, almost as if it was something
+you could carry in your pockets! But that's where most of their
+religion does lie--in their pocket." And he shuddered with a vision of
+greasy, huckstering fanatics. "And just imagine if I was sweet on a
+girl, having to see all her pretty hair cut off! As for those
+recruits, it served them right for not turning Christians. As if
+Judaism was any truer! And the old man never thinks of how he is
+torturing _me_--all the sharp little stones he makes _me_ kneel on."
+And, looking into the future with the ambitious eye of conscious
+cleverness, he saw the paternal gabardine over-glooming his life.
+
+
+II
+
+One Friday evening--after Isaac had completed his 'prentice
+years--there was anxiety in the Maggid's household in lieu of the
+Sabbath peace. Isaac's seat at the board was vacant. The twisted
+loaves seemed without salt, the wine of the consecration cup without
+savour.
+
+The mother was full of ominous explanations.
+
+"Perturb not the Sabbath," reproved the gabardined saint gently, and
+quoted the Talmud: "'No man has a finger maimed but 'tis decreed from
+above."
+
+"Isaac has gone to supper somewhere else," suggested his little
+sister, Miriam.
+
+"Children and fools speak the truth," said the Maggid, pinching her
+cheek.
+
+But they had to go to bed without seeing him, as though this were only
+a profane evening, and he amusing himself with the vague friends of
+his lithographic life. They waited till the candles flared out, and
+there seemed something symbolic in the gloom in which they groped
+their way upstairs. They were all shivering, too, for the fire had
+become gray ashes long since, the Sabbath Fire-Woman having made her
+last round at nine o'clock and they themselves being forbidden to
+touch even a candlestick or a poker.
+
+The sunrise revealed to the unclosed eyes of the mother that her boy's
+bed was empty. It also showed--what she might have discovered the
+night before had religion permitted her to enter his room with a
+light--that the room was empty, too: empty of his scattered
+belongings, of his books and sketches.
+
+"God in Heaven!" she cried.
+
+Her boy had run away.
+
+She began to wring her hands and wail with oriental amplitude, and
+would have torn her hair had it not been piously replaced by a black
+wig, neatly parted in the middle and now grotesquely placid amid her
+agonized agitation.
+
+The Maggid preserved more outward calm. "Perhaps we shall find him in
+synagogue," he said, trembling.
+
+"He has gone away, he will never come back. Woe is me!"
+
+"He has never missed the Sabbath service!" the Maggid urged. But
+inwardly his heart was sick with the fear that she prophesied truly.
+This England, which had seduced many of his own congregants to
+Christian costume, had often seemed to him to be stealing away his
+son, though he had never let himself dwell upon the dread. His sermon
+that morning was acutely exegetical: with no more relation to his own
+trouble than to the rest of contemporary reality. His soul dwelt in
+old Jerusalem, and dreamed of Israel's return thither in some vague
+millennium. When he got home he found that the postman had left a
+letter. His wife hastened to snatch it.
+
+"What dost thou?" he cried. "Not to-day. When Sabbath is out."
+
+"I cannot wait. It is from him--it is from Isaac."
+
+"Wait at least till the Fire-Woman comes to open it."
+
+For answer the mother tore open the envelope. It was the boldest act
+of her life--her first breach with the traditions. The Rabbi stood
+paralyzed by it, listening, as without conscious will, to her sobbing
+delivery of its contents.
+
+The letter was in Hebrew (for neither parent could read English), and
+commenced abruptly, without date, address, or affectionate formality.
+"This is the last time I shall write the holy tongue. My soul is
+wearied to death of Jews, a blind and ungrateful people, who linger on
+when the world no longer hath need of them, without country of their
+own, nor will they enter into the blood of the countries that stretch
+out their hands to them. Seek not to find me, for I go to a new world.
+Blot out my name even as I shall blot out yours. Let it be as though I
+was never begotten."
+
+The mother dropped the letter and began to scream hysterically. "I who
+bore him! I who bore him!"
+
+"Hold thy peace!" said the father, his limbs shaking but his voice
+firm. "He is dead. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed
+be the name of the Lord.' To-night we will begin to sit the seven
+days' mourning. But to-day is the Sabbath."
+
+"My Sabbath is over for aye. Thou hast driven my boy away with thy
+long prayers."
+
+"Nay, God hath taken him away for thy sins, thou godless
+Sabbath-breaker! Peace while I make the Consecration."
+
+"My Isaac, my only son! We shall say _Kaddish_ (mourning-prayer) for
+him, but who will say _Kaddish_ for us?"
+
+"Peace while I make the Consecration!"
+
+He got through with the prayer over the wine, but his breakfast
+remained untasted.
+
+
+III
+
+Re-reading the letter, the poor parents agreed that the worst had
+happened. The allusions to "blood" and "the new world" seemed
+unmistakable. Isaac had fallen under the spell of a beautiful heathen
+female; he was marrying her in a church and emigrating with her to
+America. Willy-nilly, they must blot him out of their lives.
+
+And so the years went by, over-brooded by this shadow of living death.
+The only gleam of happiness came when Miriam was wooed and led under
+the canopy by the President of the congregation, who sold
+haberdashery. True, he spoke English well and dressed like a clerk,
+but in these degenerate days one must be thankful to get a son-in-law
+who shuts his shop on the Sabbath.
+
+One evening, some ten years after Isaac's disappearance, Miriam sat
+reading the weekly paper--which alone connected her with the world and
+the fulness thereof--when she gave a sudden cry.
+
+"What is it?" said the haberdasher.
+
+"Nothing--I thought--" And she stared again at the rough cut of a head
+embedded in the reading matter.
+
+But no, it could not be!
+
+"Mr. Ethelred P. Wyndhurst, whose versatile talents have brought him
+such social popularity, is rumoured to have budded out in a new
+direction. He is said to be writing a comedy for Mrs. Donald O'Neill,
+who, it will be remembered, sat to him recently for the portrait now
+on view at the Azure Art Club. The dashing _comedienne_ will, it is
+stated, produce the play in the autumn season. Mr. Wyndhurst's smart
+sayings have often passed from mouth to mouth, but it remains to be
+seen whether he can make them come naturally from the mouths of his
+characters."
+
+What had these far-away splendours to do with Isaac Levinsky? With
+Isaac and his heathen female across the Atlantic?
+
+And yet--and yet Ethelred P. Wyndhurst _was_ like Isaac--that
+characteristic curve of the nose, those thick eyebrows! And perhaps
+Isaac _had_ worked himself up into a portrait-painter. Why not? Did
+not his old sketch of herself give distinction to her parlour? Her
+heart swelled proudly at the idea. But no! more probably the face in
+print was roughly drawn--was only accidentally like her brother. She
+sighed and dropped the paper.
+
+But she could not drop the thought. It clung to her, wistful and
+demanding satisfaction. The name of Ethelred P. Wyndhurst, whenever it
+appeared in the paper--and it was surprising how often she saw it now,
+though she had never noticed it before--made her heart beat with the
+prospect of clews. She bought other papers, merely in the hope of
+seeing it, and was not unfrequently rewarded. Involuntarily, her
+imagination built up a picture of a brilliant romantic career that
+only needed to be signed "Isaac." She began to read theatrical and
+society journals on the sly, and developed a hidden life of
+imaginative participation in fashionable gatherings. And from all this
+mass of print the name Ethelred P. Wyndhurst disengaged itself with
+lurid brilliancy. The rumours of his comedy thickened. It was
+christened _The Sins of Society_. It was to be put on soon. It was not
+written yet. Another manager had bid for it. It was already in
+rehearsal. It was called _The Bohemian Boy_. It would not come on this
+season. Miriam followed feverishly its contradictory career. And one
+day there was a large picture of Isaac! Isaac to the life! She soared
+skywards. But it adorned an interview, and the interview dropped her
+from the clouds. Ethelred was born in Brazil of an English engineer
+and a Spanish beauty, who performed brilliantly on the violin. He had
+shot big game in the Rocky Mountains, and studied painting in Rome.
+
+The image of her mother playing the violin, in her preternaturally
+placid wig, brought a bitter smile to Miriam's lips. And yet it was
+hard to give up Ethelred now. It seemed like losing Isaac a second
+time. And presently she reflected shrewdly that the wig and the
+gabardine wouldn't have shown up well in print, that indeed Isaac in
+his farewell letter had formally renounced them, and it was therefore
+open to him to invent new parental accessories. Of course--fool that
+she was!--how could Ethelred P. Wyndhurst acknowledge the same
+childhood as Isaac Levinsky! Yes, it might still be her Isaac.
+
+Well, she would set the doubt at rest. She knew, from the wide reading
+to which Ethelred had stimulated her, that authors appeared before the
+curtain on first nights. She would go to the first night of _The
+Whirligig_ (that was the final name), and win either joy or mental
+rest.
+
+She made her expedition to the West End on the pretext of a sick
+friend in Bow, and waited many hours to gain a good point of view in
+the first row of the gallery, being too economical to risk more than a
+shilling on the possibility of relationship to the dramatist.
+
+As the play progressed, her heart sank. Though she understood little
+of the conversational paradoxes, it seemed to her--now she saw with
+her physical eye this brilliant Belgravian world, in the stalls as
+well as on the stage--that it was impossible her Isaac could be of
+it, still less that it could be Isaac's spirit which marshalled so
+masterfully these fashionable personages through dazzling
+drawing-rooms; and an undercurrent of satire against Jews who tried to
+get into society by bribing the fashionables, contributed doubly to
+chill her. She shared in the general laughter, but her laugh was one
+of hysterical excitement.
+
+But when at last amid tumultuous cries of "Author!" Isaac Levinsky
+really appeared,--Isaac, transformed almost to a fairy prince, as
+noble a figure as any in his piece, Isaac, the proved master-spirit of
+the show, the unchallenged treader of all these radiant circles,--then
+all Miriam's effervescing emotion found vent in a sobbing cry of joy.
+
+"Isaac!" she cried, stretching out her arms across the gallery bar.
+
+But her cry was lost in the applause of the house.
+
+
+IV
+
+She wrote to him, care of the theatre. The first envelope she had to
+tear up because it was inadvertently addressed to Isaac Levinsky.
+
+Her letter was a gush of joy at finding her dear Isaac, of pride in
+his wonderful position. Who would have dreamed a lithographer's
+apprentice would arrive at leading the fashions among the nobility and
+gentry? But she had always believed in his talents; she had always
+treasured the water-colour he had made of her, and it hung in the
+parlour behind the haberdasher's shop into which she had married. He,
+too, was married, they had imagined, and gone to America. But perhaps
+he _was_ married, although in England. Would he not tell her? Of
+course, his parents had cast him out of their hearts, though she had
+heard mother call out his name in her sleep. But she herself thought
+of him very often, and perhaps he would let her come to see him. She
+would come very quietly when the grand people were not there, nor
+would she ever let out that he was a Jew, or not born in Brazil.
+Father was still pretty strong, thank God, but mother was rather
+ailing. Hoping to see him soon, she remained his loving Miriam.
+
+She waited eagerly for his answer. Day followed day, but none came.
+
+When the days passed into weeks, she began to lose hope; but it was
+not till _The Whirligig_, which she followed in the advertisement
+columns, was taken off after a briefer run than the first night seemed
+to augur, that she felt with curious conclusiveness that her letter
+would go unanswered. Perhaps even it had miscarried. But it was now
+not difficult to hunt out Ethelred P. Wyndhurst's address, and she
+wrote him anew.
+
+Still the same wounding silence. After the lapse of a month, she
+understood that what he had written in Hebrew was final; that he had
+cut himself free once and forever from the swaddling coils of
+gabardine, and would not be dragged back even within touch of its hem.
+She wept over her second loss of him, but the persistent thought of
+him had brought back many tender childish images, and it seemed
+incredible that she would never really creep into his life again. He
+had permanently enlarged her horizon, and she continued to follow his
+career in the papers, worshipping it as it loomed grandiose through
+her haze of ignorance. Gradually she began to boast of it in her more
+English circles, and so in course of time it became known to all but
+the parents that the lost Isaac was a shining light in high
+heathendom, and a vast secret admiration mingled with the contempt of
+the Ghetto for Ethelred P. Wyndhurst.
+
+
+V
+
+In high heathendom a vast secret contempt mingled with the admiration
+for Ethelred P. Wyndhurst. He had, it is true, a certain vogue, but
+behind his back he was called a Jew. He did not deserve the stigma in
+so far as it might have implied financial prosperity. His numerous
+talents had only availed to prevent one another from being seriously
+cultivated. He had had a little success at first with flamboyant
+pictures, badly drawn, and well paragraphed; he had written tender
+verses for music, and made quiet love to ugly and unhappy society
+ladies; he was an assiduous first-nighter, and was suspected of
+writing dramatic criticisms, even of his own comedy. And in that
+undefined social segment where Kensington and Bohemia intersect, he
+was a familiar figure (a too familiar figure, old fogies grumbled)
+with an unenviable reputation as a diner-out--for the sake of the
+dinner.
+
+Yet some of the people who called him "sponge" were not averse from
+imbibing his own liquids when he himself played the gracious host. He
+was appearing in that role one Sunday evening before a motley assembly
+in his dramatically furnished studio, nay, he was in the very act of
+biting into a sandwich scrupulously compounded with ham, when a
+telegram was handed to him.
+
+"Another of those blessed actresses crying off," he said. "I wonder
+how they ever manage to take up their cues!"
+
+Then his face changed as he hurriedly crumpled up the pinkish paper.
+
+"Mother is dying. No hope. She cries to see you. Have told her you are
+in London. Father consents. Come at once.--MIRIAM."
+
+He put the crumpled paper to the gas and lit a new cigarette with it.
+
+"As I thought," he said, smiling. "When a woman is an actress as well
+as a woman--"
+
+
+VI
+
+After his wife died--vainly calling for her Isaac--the old Maggid was
+left heart-broken. It was as if his emotions ran in obedient harmony
+with the dictum of the Talmud: "Whoso sees his first wife's death is
+as one who in his own day saw the Temple destroyed."
+
+What was there for him in life now but the ruins of the literal
+Temple? He must die soon, and the dream that had always haunted the
+background of his life began to come now into the empty foreground. If
+he could but die in Jerusalem!
+
+There was nothing of consequence for him to do in England. His Miriam
+was married and had grown too English for any real communion. True,
+his congregation was dear to him, but he felt his powers waning: other
+Maggidim were arising who could speak longer.
+
+To see and kiss the sacred soil, to fall prostrate where once the
+Temple had stood, to die in an ecstasy that was already Gan-Iden
+(Paradise)--could life, indeed, hold such bliss for him, life that had
+hitherto proved a cup of such bitters?
+
+Life was not worth living, he agreed with his long-vanished
+brother-Rabbis in ancient Babylon, it was only a burden to be borne
+nobly. But if life was not worth living, death--in Jerusalem--was
+worth dying. Jerusalem! to which he had turned three times a day in
+praying, whose name was written on his heart, as on that of the
+mediaeval Spanish singer, with whom he cried:--
+
+    "Who will make to me wings that I may fly ever Eastward,
+    Until my ruined heart shall dwell in the ruins of thee?
+    Then will I bend my face to thy sacred soil and hold precious
+    Thy very stones, yea e'en to thy dust shall I tender be.
+
+    "Life of the soul is the air of thy land, and myrrh of the purest
+    Each grain of thy dust, thy waters sweetest honey of the comb.
+    Joyous my soul would be, could I even naked and barefoot,
+    Amid the holy ruins of thine ancient Temple roam,
+    Where the Ark was shrined, and the Cherubim in the Oracle
+        had their home."
+
+To die in Jerusalem!--that were success in life.
+
+Here he was lonely. In Jerusalem he would be surrounded by a glorious
+host. Patriarchs, prophets, kings, priests, rabbonim--they all hovered
+lovingly over its desolation, whispering heavenly words of comfort.
+
+But now a curious difficulty arose. The Maggid knew from
+correspondence with Jerusalem Rabbis that a Russian subject would have
+great difficulty in slipping in at Jaffa or Beyrout, even aided by
+_bakhshish_. The only safe way was to enter as a British subject.
+Grotesque irony of the fates! For nigh half a century the old man had
+lived in England in his gabardine, and now that he was departing to
+die in gabardine lands, he was compelled to seek naturalization as a
+voluntary Englishman! He was even compelled to account mendaciously
+for his sudden desire to identify himself with John Bull's
+institutions and patriotic prejudices, and to live as a free-born
+Englishman. By the aid of a rich but pious West End Jew, who had
+sometimes been drawn Eastwards by the Maggid's exegetical eloquence,
+all difficulties were overcome. Armed with a passport, signed floridly
+as with a lion's tail rampant, the Maggid--after a quasi-death-bed
+blessing to Miriam by imposition of hands from the railway-carriage
+window upon her best bonnet--was whirled away toward his holy
+dying-place.
+
+
+VII
+
+Such disappointment as often befalls the visionary when he sees the
+land of his dreams was spared to the Maggid, who remained a visionary
+even in the presence of the real; beholding with spiritual eye the
+refuse-laden alleys and the rapacious _Schnorrers_ (beggars). He lived
+enswathed as with heavenly love, waiting for the moment of transition
+to the shining World-To-Come, and his supplications at the Wailing Wall
+for the restoration of Zion's glory had, despite their sympathetic
+fervour, the peaceful impersonality of one who looks forward to no
+worldly kingdom. To outward view he lived--in the rare intervals when
+he was not at a synagogue or a house-of-learning--somewhere up a dusky
+staircase in a bleak, narrow court, in one tiny room supplemented by a
+kitchen in the shape of a stove on the landing, itself a centre of
+pilgrimage to _Schnorrers_ innumerable, for whom the rich English
+Maggid was an unexpected windfall. Rich and English were synonymous in
+hungry Jerusalem, but these beggars' notion of charity was so modest,
+and the coin of the realm so divisible, that the Maggid managed to
+gratify them at a penny a dozen. At uncertain intervals he received a
+letter from Miriam, written in English. The daughter had not carried on
+the learned tradition of the mother, and so the Maggid was wont to have
+recourse to the head of the philanthropic technical school for the
+translation of her news into Hebrew. There was, however, not much of
+interest; Miriam's world had grown too alien: she could scrape together
+little to appeal to the dying man. And so his last ties with the past
+grew frailer and frailer, even as his body grew feebler and feebler,
+until at last, bent with great age and infirmity, so that his white
+beard swept the stones, he tottered about the sacred city like an
+incarnation of its holy ruin. He seemed like one bent over the verge of
+eternity, peering wistfully into its soundless depths. Surely God would
+send his Death-Angel now.
+
+Then one day a letter from Miriam wrenched him back violently from his
+beatific vision, jerked him back to that other eternity of the dead
+past.
+
+Isaac, Isaac had come home! Had come home to find desolation. Had then
+sought his sister, and was now being nursed by her through his dying
+hours. His life had come to utter bankruptcy: his possessions--by a
+cruel coincidence--had been sold up at the very moment that the
+doctors announced to him that he was a doomed man. And his death-bed
+was a premature hell of torture and remorse. He raved incessantly for
+his father. Would he not annul the curse, grant him his blessing,
+promise to say _Kaddish_ for his soul, that he might be saved from
+utter damnation? Would he not send his forgiveness by return, for
+Isaac's days were numbered, and he could not linger on more than a
+month or so?
+
+The Maggid was terribly shaken. He recalled bitterly the years of
+suffering, crowned by Isaac's brutal heedlessness to the cry of his
+dying mother: but the more grievous the boy's sin, the more awful the
+anger of God in store for him.
+
+And the mother--would not her own Gan-Iden be spoilt by her boy's
+agonizing in hell? For her sake he must forgive his froward offspring;
+perhaps God would be more merciful, then. The merits of the father
+counted: he himself was blessed beyond his deserts by the merits of
+the Fathers--of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had made the pilgrimage
+to Jerusalem; perhaps his prayers would be heard at the Mercy-Seat.
+
+With shaking hand the old man wrote a letter to his son, granting him
+a full pardon for the sin against himself, but begging him to entreat
+God day and night. And therewith an anthology of consoling Talmudical
+texts: "A man should pray for Mercy even till the last clod is thrown
+upon his grave.... For Repentance and Prayer and Charity avert the
+Evil Decree." The Charity he was himself distributing to the startled
+_Schnorrers_.
+
+The schoolmaster wrote out the envelope, as usual, but the Maggid did
+not post the letter. The image of his son's death-bed was haunting
+him. Isaac called to him in the old boyish tones. Could he let his boy
+die there without giving him the comfort of his presence, the visible
+assurance of his forgiveness, the touch of his hands upon his head in
+farewell blessing? No, he must go to him.
+
+But to leave Jerusalem at his age? Who knew if he would ever get back
+to die there? If he should miss the hope of his life! But Isaac kept
+calling to him--and Isaac's mother. Yes, he had strength for the
+journey. It seemed to come to him miraculously, like a gift from
+Heaven and a pledge of its mercy.
+
+He journeyed to Beyrout, and after a few days took ship for
+Marseilles.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Meantime in the London Ghetto the unhappy Ethelred P. Wyndhurst found
+each day a year. He was in a rapid consumption: a disorderly life had
+told as ruinously upon his physique as upon his finances. And with
+this double collapse had come a strange irresistible resurgence of
+early feelings and forgotten superstitions. The avenging hand was
+heavy upon him in life,--what horrors yet awaited him when he should
+be laid in the cold grave? The shadow of death and judgment
+over-brooded him, clouding his brain almost to insanity.
+
+There would be no forgiveness for him--his father's remoteness had
+killed his hope of that. It was the nemesis, he felt, of his refusal
+to come to his dying mother. God had removed his father from his
+pleadings, had wrapped him in an atmosphere holy and aloof. How should
+Miriam's letter penetrate through the walls of Jerusalem, pierce
+through the stonier heart hardened by twenty years of desertion!
+
+And so the day after she had sent it, the spring sunshine giving him a
+spurt of strength and courage, a desperate idea came to him. If he
+could go to Jerusalem himself! If he could fall upon his father's
+neck, and extort his blessing!
+
+And then, too, he would die in Jerusalem!
+
+Some half-obliterated text sounded in his ears: "And the land shall
+forgive sin."
+
+He managed to rise--his betaking himself to bed, he found, as the
+sunshine warmed him, had been mere hopelessness and self-pity. Let him
+meet Death standing, aye, journeying to the sun-lands. Nay, when
+Miriam, getting over the alarm of his up-rising, began to dream of the
+Palestine climate curing him, he caught a last flicker of optimism,
+spoke artistically of the glow and colour of the East, which he had
+never seen, but which he might yet live to render on canvas, winning a
+new reputation. Yes, he would start that very day. Miriam pledged her
+jewellery to supply him with funds, for she dared not ask her husband
+to do more for the stranger.
+
+But long before Ethelred P. Wyndhurst reached Jaffa he knew that only
+the hope of his father's blessing was keeping him alive.
+
+Somewhere at sea the ships must have passed each other.
+
+
+IX
+
+When the gabardined Maggid reached Miriam's house, his remains of
+strength undermined by the long journey, he was nigh stricken dead on
+the door-step by the news that his journey was vain.
+
+"It is the will of God," he said hopelessly. The sinner was beyond
+mercy. He burst into sobs and tears ran down his pallid cheeks and
+dripped from his sweeping white beard.
+
+"Thou shouldst have let us know," said Miriam gently. "We never
+dreamed it was possible for thee to come."
+
+"I came as quickly as a letter could have announced me."
+
+"But thou shouldst have cabled."
+
+"Cabled?" The process had never come within his ken. "But how should
+I dream he could travel? Thy letter said he was on his death-bed. I
+prayed God I might but arrive in time."
+
+He was for going back at once, but Miriam put him to bed--the bed
+Isaac should have died in.
+
+"Thou canst cable thy forgiveness, at least," she said, and so,
+without understanding this new miracle, he bade her ask the
+schoolmaster to convey his forgiveness to his son.
+
+"Isaac will inquire for me, if he arrives alive," he said. "The
+schoolmaster will hear of him. It is a very small place, alas! for God
+hath taken away its glory by reason of our sins."
+
+The answer came the same afternoon. "Message just in time. Son died
+peacefully."
+
+The Maggid rent his bed-garment. "Thank God!" he cried. "He died in
+Jerusalem. Better he than I! Isaac died in Jerusalem! God will have
+mercy on his soul."
+
+Tears of joy sprang to his bleared eyes. "He died in Jerusalem," he
+kept murmuring happily at intervals. "My Isaac died in Jerusalem."
+
+Three days later the Maggid died in London.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BETHULAH
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BETHULAH
+
+
+I
+
+The image of her so tragically trustful in that mountain village of
+Bukowina still haunts my mind, and refuses to be exorcised, as of
+yore, by the prose of life. One who is very dear to me advises driving
+her out at the point of the pen. Whether such recording of my life's
+strangest episode will lay these memories or not, the story itself may
+at least instruct my fellow-Jews in New York how variously their
+religion has manifested itself upon this perplexing planet. Doubtless
+many are still as ignorant as I was respecting their mediaeval
+contemporaries in Eastern Europe. True, they have now opportunities in
+their own Ghetto--which is, for cosmopolitanism, a New York within a
+New York--of studying strata from other epochs of Judaism spread out
+on the same plane of time as their own, even as upon the white sheet
+of that wonderful invention my aged eyes have lived to see, sequent
+events may be pictured simultaneously. In my youth these opportunities
+did not exist. Only in Baltimore and a few of the great Eastern
+cities was there any aggregation of Jews, and these were all--or
+wanted to be--good Yankees; while beyond the Mississippi, where my
+father farmed and hunted like a Christian, and where you might have
+scoured a thousand square miles to get _minyan_ (ten Jews for
+worship), our picturesque customs and ceremonies dwindled away from
+sheer absence of fellowship. My father used to tell of a bronzed
+trapper he breakfasted with on the prairie, who astonished him by
+asking him over their bacon if he were a Jew. "Yes," said my father.
+"Shake!" said the trapper. "You're the first fellow-Jew I've met for
+twenty years." Though in my childhood my father taught me the Hebrew
+he had brought from Europe, and told me droll Jewish stories in his
+native German, it will readily be understood that the real influences
+I absorbed were the great American ideals of liberty and humanity,
+emancipation and enlightenment, and that therefore the strange things
+I witnessed among the Carpathians were far more startling to me than
+they can be to the Jews of to-day upon whom the Old World has poured
+its archaic inhabitants. Nevertheless, I cannot but think that even
+those who have met strange drifts of sects in New York will be
+astonished by the tradition which I stumbled upon so blindly in my
+first European tour. For, so far as I can gather, the Zloczszol legend
+is unique in Jewish history and confined exclusively to this
+out-of-the-way corner, however near other heresies may have approached
+to some of the underlying conceptions. My landlord Yarchi's view that
+it was a mere piece of local commercial myth-making, a gross artifice,
+would have at least the merit of explaining this uniqueness. It has,
+in my eyes, no other.
+
+This tour of mine was to make not a circle, but a half-circle, for,
+landing at Hamburg I was to return by the Baltic, after a circuit
+through Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Buda-Pesth, Lemberg, (where my
+grandfather had once been a rabbi of consideration), Moscow, and St.
+Petersburg. I did not linger at Hamburg; purchasing a stout horse, I
+started on my long ride. Of course it did not seem so long to me--who
+had already ridden from Kansas to both of our seaboards--as it would
+to a young gentleman of to-day accustomed to parlour cars, though the
+constant change of dialects and foods was somewhat unsettling.
+
+But money speaks all languages, and a good Western stomach digests all
+diets. Bad water, however, no stomach can cope with; and I was laid up
+at Prague with a fever, which left me too weak to hurry on. I rambled
+about the Ghetto--the Judenstadt--which gave me my first insight into
+mediaeval Judaism, and was fascinated by the quaint alleys and houses,
+the Jewish town-hall, and the cellarlike _Alt-Neu_ synagogue with its
+miraculous history of unnumbered centuries. I heard the story of the
+great red flag on the pillar, with its "shield of David" and the
+Swede's hat, and was shown on the walls the spatterings of the blood
+of the martyrs of 1389.
+
+What emotions I had in the old graveyard--a Ghetto of the dead--where
+the graves were huddled together, three and four deep, and the very
+tombstones and corpses had undergone Ghetto persecution! A whole new
+world opened out to me, crooked as the Ghetto alleys--so alien from
+the free life of the flowering prairies--as I walked about this
+"Judengarten," studying the Hebrew inscriptions and the strange
+symbolic sculptures--the Priest's hands of blessing, the Levite's
+ewer, the Israelites' bunch of grapes, the Virgin with roses--and
+trying to reconstruct the life these dead had lived. Strange ancestral
+memories seemed thrilling through me, helping me to understand. Many
+stories did I hear, too, of the celebrated Rabbi Loew, and of the
+_golem_ he created, which brought him his meals: in sign whereof I was
+shown his grave, and his house marked with a lion on a blue
+background. I listened with American incredulity but hereditary
+sympathy. I was astonished to find men who still believed in a certain
+Sabbatai Zevi, Messiah of the Jews, and one showed me a Sabbatian
+prayer-book with a turbaned head of this Redeemer side by side with
+King David's, and another who scoffed at this seventeenth-century
+impostor, yet told me the tradition in his own family, how they had
+sold their business and were about to start for Palestine, when the
+news reached them that so far from deposing the Sultan, this Redeemer
+of Israel had become his doorkeeper and a Mohammedan.
+
+The year was passing toward the Fall ere I got to Buda-Pesth (in those
+days the enchanted gateway of the Orient, resounding with gypsy music,
+and not the civilized capital I found it the other day), and I had not
+proceeded far on the northerly bend of my journey when, soon after
+crossing the Carpathians, I was imprisoned in the mountain village of
+Zloczszol by the sudden overflow of the Dniester. The village itself
+was sheltered from the floods by a mountain between it and the
+tributary of the Dniester; but all the roads northward were
+impassable, and the water came round by clefts and soused our
+bordering fields and oozed very near the maize-garden of Yarchi's pine
+cottage, to which I had removed from the dirty inn, where a squalling
+baby in a cradle had shared the private sitting-room. It was a very
+straggling village, which began to straggle at the mountain-foot, but,
+for fear of avalanches, I was told, the houses did not grow
+companionable till some half a mile down the plain.
+
+In the centre of the village was a cobble-paved "Ring-Place" and
+market-place, on which gave a few streets of shops (the
+provision-shops benefiting hugely by the floods, which made imports
+difficult). It was a Jewish colony, with the exception of a few
+outlying farms, whose peasants brought touches of gorgeous colour into
+the procession of black gabardines. It was strange to me to live in a
+place in which every door-post bore a _Mezuzah_. It gave me a novel
+sense of being in a land of Israel, and sometimes I used to wonder how
+these people could feel such a sense of local patriotism as seemed to
+possess them. And yet I reflected that, like the giant cedar of
+Lebanon which rose from the plain in such strange contrast with the
+native trees of Zloczszol, Israel could be transplanted everywhere,
+and was made of as enduring and undying a wood--nay, that, even like
+this cedar-wood, it had strange properties of conserving other
+substances and arresting putrefaction. Hence its ubiquitous patriotism
+was universally profitable. Nevertheless, this was one of the
+surprises of my journey--to find Jews speaking every language under
+the European sun, regarding themselves everywhere as part of the soil,
+and often patriotic to the point of resenting immigrant Jews as
+foreigners. I myself was popularly known as "the Stranger," though I
+was not resented, because the couple of dollars at which I purchased
+the privilege of "ark-opening" on my first visit to the synagogue--a
+little Gothic building standing in a court-yard--gave me a further
+reputation as "the rich stranger." Once I blushed to overhear myself
+called "the handsome stranger," and I looked into my cracked mirror
+with fresh interest. But I told myself modestly a stalwart son of the
+prairies had an unfair advantage in such a world of stooping sallow
+students. Certainly I felt myself favoured both in youth and looks
+when I stepped into the Beth-Hamedrash, the house of study (which I
+had at first taken for a little mosque, like those I had seen on the
+slopes of Buda), and watched the curious gnarled graybeards crooning
+and rocking the livelong day over worm-eaten folios.
+
+Despite such odd glimpses of the interesting, I grew as tired of
+waiting for the waters to abate as Noah himself must have felt in his
+zoological institute.
+
+One day as I was gazing from my one-story window at the melancholy
+marsh to which the flood had reduced the landscape, I said glumly to
+my hunchbacked landlord, who stood snuffing himself under the porch,
+"I suppose it will be another week before I can get away."
+
+"Alas! yes," Yarchi replied.
+
+"Why alas?" I asked. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and
+the longer I stay the better for you."
+
+He shook his head. "The flood that keeps you here keeps away the
+pilgrims."
+
+"The pilgrims!" I echoed.
+
+"Ay," said he. "There will be three in that bed of yours."
+
+"But what pilgrims?"
+
+He stared at me. "Don't you know the New Year is nigh?"
+
+"Of course," I said mendaciously. I felt ashamed to confess my
+ignorant unconcern as to the proximity of the solemn season of
+ram's-horn blasts and penitence.
+
+"Well, it is at New Year the pilgrims flock to their Wonder Rabbi,
+that he may hear their petitions and bear them on high, likewise
+wrestle with Satan, and entreat for their forgiveness at the throne of
+Grace." There was a twinkle in Yarchi's eyes not quite consistent with
+the gravity of his words.
+
+"Do Wonder Rabbis live nowadays?" I asked.
+
+A pinch of snuff Yarchi was taking fell from between his fingers. "Do
+they live!" he cried. "Yes--and off white bread, for poverty!"
+
+"We have none in America. I only heard of one in Prague," I murmured
+apologetically, fearing the genus might be of the very elements of
+Judaism.
+
+"Ah, yes, the high Rabbi Loew, his memory for a blessing," he said
+reverently. "But these new Wonder Rabbis can only work one miracle."
+
+"What is that?" I asked.
+
+"The greatest of all--making their worshippers support them like
+princes." And he laughed in admiration of his own humour.
+
+"Then you are a heretic?" I said.
+
+"Heretic!" Yarchi's black eyes exchanged their twinkle for a flash of
+resentment. "Nay; they are the heretics, breeding dissension in
+Israel. Did they not dance on the grave of the sainted Elijah Wilna?"
+
+Tired of tossing the ball of conversation up and down, I left the
+window and joined the philosopher under his porch, where I elicted
+from him his version of the eighteenth-century movement of
+_Chassidim_, (the pious ones), which, in these days of English books
+on Judaism, will not be so new to American Jews as it was to me. These
+Shakers (or, as we should perhaps say nowadays, Salvationists), these
+protestants against cut-and-dried Judaism, who arose among the
+Carpathians under the inspiration of Besht (a word which Yarchi
+explained to me was made out of the initials of Baal Shem Tob--the
+Master of the Good Name), had, it seemed, pullulated into a thousand
+different sects, each named after the Wonder Rabbi whom it swore by,
+and in whose "exclusive divine right" (the phrase is Yarchi's) it
+believed.
+
+"But _we_ have the divinest chief," concluded Yarchi, grinning.
+
+"That's what they all say, eh?" I said, smiling in response.
+
+"Yes; but the Zloczszol rabbi is stamped with the royal seal. He
+professes to be of the Messianic seed, a direct descendant of David,
+the son of Jesse." And the hunchback chuckled with malicious humour.
+
+"I should like to see him," I said, feeling as if Providence had
+provided a new interest for my boredom.
+
+Yarchi pointed silently with his discoloured thumb over the plain.
+
+"You don't mean he is kept in that storehouse!" I said.
+
+Yarchi guffawed in high good-humour.
+
+"That! That's the _Klaus_!"
+
+"And what's the _Klaus_?"
+
+"The _Chassidim Stubele_ (little room)."
+
+"Is that where the miracles are done?"
+
+"No; that's their synagogue."
+
+"Oh, they just pray there!"
+
+"Pray? They get as drunk as Lot."
+
+
+II
+
+I returned to my window and gazed curiously at the _Klaus_, and now
+that my eye was upon it I saw it was astir with restless life. Men
+came and went continually. I looked toward the synagogue, and the more
+pretentious building seemed dead. Then I remembered what Yarchi had
+told me, that the _Chassidim_ had revolted against set prayer-times.
+("They pray and drink at all hours," was his way of putting it.)
+Something must always be forward in the _Klaus_, I thought, as I took
+my hat and stick, on exploring bent. Instinctively I put my pistol in
+my hip pocket, then bethought myself with a laugh that I was not
+likely to be molested by the "pious ones." But as it was unloaded, I
+let it remain in the pocket.
+
+I slipped into the building and on to a bench near the door. But for
+the veiled Ark at the end, I should not have known the place for a
+house of worship. True, some men were sitting or standing about,
+shouting and singing, with odd spasmodic gestures, but the bulk were
+lounging, smoking clay pipes, drinking coffee, and chattering, while a
+few, looking like tramps, lay snoring on the hard benches, deaf to all
+the din. My eye sought at once for the Wonder Rabbi himself, but amid
+the many quaint physiognomies there was none with any apparent seal of
+supremacy. The note of all the faces was easy-going good-will, and
+even the passionate contortions of melody and body which the
+worshippers produced, the tragic clutchings at space, the clinching of
+fists, and the beating of breasts had an air of cheery impromptu. They
+seemed to enjoy their very tears. And every now and then the
+inspiration would catch one of the gossipers and contort him likewise,
+while a worshipper would as suddenly fall to gossiping.
+
+Very soon a frost-bitten old man I remembered coming across in the
+cemetery on the mountain-slope, where he was sweeping the fallen
+leaves from a tomb, and singing like the grave-digger in _Hamlet_,
+sidled up to me and asked me if I needed vodka. I thought it advisable
+to need some, and was quickly supplied from a box the old fellow
+seemed to keep under the Ark. The price was so moderate that I tipped
+him with as much again, doubtless to the enhancement of the "rich
+stranger's" reputation. Sipping it, I was able to follow with more
+show of ease the bursts of rambling conversation. Sometimes they
+talked about the floods, anon about politics, then about sacred texts
+and the illuminations of the _Zohar_. But there was one topic which
+ran like a winding pattern through all the talk, bursting in at the
+most unexpected places, and this was the wonders wrought by their
+rabbi.
+
+As they dilated "with enkindlement" upon miracle after miracle, some
+wrought on earth and some in the higher spheres to which his soul
+ascended, my curiosity mounted, and calling for more vodka, "Where is
+the rabbi?" I asked the sexton.
+
+"He may perhaps come down to lunch," said he, in reverent accents, as
+if to imply that the rabbi was now in the upper spheres. I waited till
+tables were spread with plain fare in the _Klaus_ itself. At the
+savour the fountain of worship was sealed; the snorers woke up. I was
+invited to partake of the meal, which, I was astonished to find, was
+free to all, provided by the rabbi.
+
+"Truly royal hospitality," I thought. But our royal host himself did
+not "come down."
+
+My neighbour, of whom I kept inquiring, at last told me,
+sympathetically, to have patience till Friday evening, when the rabbi
+would come to welcome in the Sabbath. But as it was then Tuesday,
+"Cannot I call upon him?" I asked.
+
+He shook his head. "Ben David holds his court no more this year," he
+said. "He is in seclusion, preparing for the exalted soul-flights of
+the pilgrim season. The Sabbath is his only public day now."
+
+There was nothing for it but to wait till the Friday eve, though in
+the meantime I got Yarchi to show me the royal palace--a plain
+two-storied Oriental-looking building with a flat roof, and a turret
+on the eastern side, whose high, ivy-mantled slit of window turned at
+the first rays of the sun into a great diamond.
+
+"He couldn't come down, couldn't he?" Yarchi commented. "I daresay he
+wasn't sober enough."
+
+Somehow this jarred upon me. I was beginning to conjure up romantic
+pictures, and assuredly my one glimpse of the sect had not shown any
+intoxication save psychic.
+
+"He is very generous, anyhow," I said. "He supplies a free lunch."
+
+"Free to him," retorted the incorrigible Yarchi. "The worshippers
+fancy it is free, but it is they who pay for it." And he snuffed
+himself, chuckling. "I'll tell you what is free," he added. "His
+morals!"
+
+"But how do you know?"
+
+"Oh, all those fellows go in for the Adamite life."
+
+"What is the Adamite life?"
+
+He winked. "Not the pre-Evite."
+
+I saw it was fruitless to reason with his hunchbacked view of the
+subject.
+
+On the Friday eve I repaired again to the _Klaus_, but this time it
+was not so easy to find a seat. However, by the grace of my friend the
+sexton, I was accommodated near the Ark, where, amid a congregation
+clad in unexpected white, I sat, a conscious black discord. There was
+a certain palpitating fervour in the air, as though the imminence of
+the New Year and Judgment Day had strung all spirits to a higher
+tension. Suddenly a shiver seemed to run through the assemblage, and
+all eyes turned to the door. A tall old man, escorted by several
+persons of evident consideration, walked with erect head but tottering
+gait to the little platform in front of the Ark, and, taking a
+praying-shawl from the reverential hand of the sexton, held it a
+moment, as in abstraction, before drawing it over his head and
+shoulders. As he stood thus, almost facing me, yet unconscious of me,
+his image was photographed on my excited brain. He seemed very aged,
+with abundant white locks and beard, and he was clothed in a white
+satin robe cut low at the neck and ornamented at the breast with
+gold-laced, intersecting triangles of "the Shield of David."
+
+On his head was a sort of white biretta. I noted a curious streak of
+yellow in the silvered eyebrows, as if youth clung on, so to speak,
+by a single hair, and underneath these arrestive eyebrows green pupils
+alternately glowed and smouldered. On his forefinger he wore a signet
+ring, set with amethysts and with a huge Persian emerald, which, as
+his hand rose and fell, and his fingers clasped and unclasped
+themselves in the convulsion of prayer, seemed to glare at me like a
+third green eye. And as soon as he began thus praying, every trace of
+age vanished. He trembled, but only from emotion; and his passion
+mounted, till at last his whole body prayed. And the congregation
+joined in with shakings and quiverings and thunderings and ululations.
+Not even in Prague had I experienced such sympathetic emotion. After
+the well-regulated frigidities of our American services, it was truly
+warming to be among worshippers not ashamed to feel. Hours must have
+passed, but I sat there as content as any. When the service ended,
+everybody crowded round the Wonder Rabbi to give the "Good Sabbath"
+handshake. The scene jarred me by its incongruous suggestion of our
+American receptions at which the lion of the evening must extend his
+royal paw to every guest. But I went up among the rest, and murmured
+my salutation. The glow came into his eyes as they became conscious of
+me for the first time, and his gaunt bloodless hand closed crushingly
+on mine, so that I almost fancied the signet ring was sealing my
+flesh.
+
+"Good Sabbath, stranger," he replied. "You linger long here."
+
+"As long as the floods," I said.
+
+"Are you as dangerous to us?" he flashed back.
+
+"I trust not," I said, a whit startled.
+
+His jewelled forefinger drummed on the reading-stand, and his eyes no
+longer challenged mine, but were lowered as in abstraction.
+
+"Your grandfather, who lies in Lemberg, was no friend to the followers
+of Besht. He laid the ban even on white Sabbath garments, and those
+who but wept in the synagogues he classed with us."
+
+I was more taken aback by his knowledge of my grandfather than by that
+ancient gentleman's hostility to the emotional heresy of his day.
+
+"I never saw my grandfather," I replied simply.
+
+"True. The son of the prairies should know more of God than the
+bookworms. Will you accept a seat at my table?"
+
+"With pleasure, Rabbi," I murmured, dazed by his clairvoyant air.
+
+They were now arranging the two tables, one with a white cloth for the
+master and his circle in strict order of precedence; and the other of
+bare wood for such of the rabble as could first scramble into the
+seats. I was placed on his right hand, and became at once an object of
+wonder and awe. The _Kiddush_ which initiated the supper was not a
+novel ceremony to me, but what I had never seen before was the
+eagerness with which each guest sipped from the circulating wine-cup
+of consecration, and the disappointment of such of the mob as could
+find no drop to drain. Still fiercer was the struggle for the Wonder
+Rabbi's soup, after he had taken a couple of spoonfuls; even I had no
+chance of distinction before this sudden simultaneous swoop, though of
+course I had my own plateful to drink. As sudden was the transition
+from soup to song, the whole company singing and swaying in victorious
+ecstasy. I turned to speak to my host, but his face awed me. The eyes
+had now their smouldering inward fire. The eyebrows seemed wholly
+white; the features were still. Then as I watched him his whole body
+grew rigid, he closed his eyes, his head fell back. The singing
+ceased; as tense a silence reigned as though the followers too were in
+a trance. My eyes were fixed on the Master's blind face, which had now
+not the dignity of death, but only the indignity of lifelessness, and,
+but for the suggestion of mystery behind, would have ceased to impress
+me. For there was now revealed a coarseness of lips, a narrowness of
+forehead, an ugliness of high cheek-bone, which his imperial glance
+had transfigured, and which his flowing locks still abated. But as I
+gazed, the weird stillness took possession of me. I could not but feel
+with the rest that the Master was making a "soul-ascension."
+
+It seemed very long--yet it may have been only a few minutes, for in
+absolute silence one's sense of time is disconcerted--ere waves of
+returning life began to traverse the cataleptic face and form. At last
+the Wonder Rabbi opened his eyes, and the hush grew profounder. Every
+ear was astrain for the revelations to come.
+
+"Children," said he slowly, "as I passed through the circles the souls
+cried to me. 'Haste, haste, for the Evil One plotteth and the
+Messianic day will be again delayed.' So I rose into the ante-chamber
+of Grace where the fiery wheels sang 'Holy, holy,' and there I came
+upon the Poison God waiting to see the glory of the Little Face. And
+with him was a soul, very strange, such as I had never seen, living
+neither in heaven nor hell, perchance created of Satan himself for his
+instrument. Then with a great cry I uttered the Name, and the Poison
+God fled with a great fluttering, leaving the nameless, naked soul
+helpless amid the consuming, dazzling wheels. So I returned through
+the circles to reassure the souls, and they shouted with a great
+shout."
+
+"Hallelujah!" came in a great shout from the wrought-up listeners, and
+then they burst into a lilting chant of triumph. But by this time my
+mood had changed. The spell of novelty had begun to wear off; perhaps
+also I was fatigued by the long strain. I recalled the coarser face of
+the comatose saint, and I found nothing but gibberish in the oracular
+"revelation" which he had brought down with such elaborate pains from
+the circles amid which he seemed to move.
+
+Thanking him for his hospitality, I slipped from the hot, roaring
+room.
+
+Ah! what a waft of fresh air and sense of starlit space! The young
+moon floated in the star-sprinkled heavens like a golden boat, with a
+faint suggestion of the full-sailed orb. The true glamour and mystery
+of the universe were again borne in upon me, as in our rich,
+constellated prairie nights, and all the artificial abracadabra of the
+_Klaus_ seemed akin to its heated, noisy atmosphere. The lights of the
+village were extinguished, and, looking at my watch, I found it was
+close upon midnight. But as I passed the saint's "palace" I was
+astonished to find a light twinkling from the turret window. I
+wondered who kept vigil. Then I bethought me it was Friday night when
+no light could be struck, and this must be Ben David's bed-room lamp,
+awaiting his return.
+
+"I thought he had taken you up in his fiery chariot," grumbled Yarchi
+sleepily, as he unbarred the door.
+
+"The fiery chariot must not run on the Sabbath," I said smiling. "And,
+moreover, Ben David takes no passengers to the circles."
+
+"Circles! He ought to have a circle of rope round his neck."
+
+"The soup was good," I pleaded, as I groped my way toward my quaint,
+tall bed.
+
+
+III
+
+I cannot explain why, when Yarchi asked me sarcastically, over the
+Sabbath dinner, whether I was going to the "Supper of the Holy Queen,"
+I knew at once that I should be found at this mysterious meal. Perhaps
+it was that I had nothing better to do; perhaps my sympathy was
+returning to those strange, good-humoured, musical loungers, so far
+removed from the New York ideal of life. Or perhaps I was vaguely
+troubled by the dream I had wrestled with more or less obscurely all
+night long--that I stood naked in a whirl of burning wheels that sang,
+as they turned, the melody of the _Chassidim_. Was I this nondescript
+soul, I wondered, half smilingly, fashioned of the Evil One to delay
+the Messianic era?
+
+The sun was set, the three stars already in the sky, and my pious
+landlord had performed the Ceremony of Division ere I set out,
+declining the bread and fish Yarchi offered to make up in a package.
+
+"Saturday nights every man must bring his own meal," he said.
+
+I replied that I went not to eat, but to look on. However, I was so
+late in arriving that, as there were no lights, looking on was
+well-nigh reduced to listening. In the gray twilight the _Klaus_
+seemed full of uncanny forms rocking in monotonous sing-song. Through
+the gathering gloom the old Wonder Rabbi's face loomed half
+ghostlike, half regal. As the mystic dusk grew deeper and darkness
+fell, the fascination of it all began to overcome me: the dim,
+tossing, crooning figures, divined rather than seen, washed round
+lappingly and swayingly by their own rhythmic melody, full of wistful
+sweetness. My soul too tossed in this circumlapping tide. The complex
+world of modern civilization fell away from me as garments fall from a
+bather. Even this primitive mountain village passed into nothingness,
+and in a timeless, spaceless universe I floated in a lulling,
+measureless music.
+
+AEons might have elapsed ere the glare of light dazzled my eyes when
+the week-day candles were lit, and the supper to escort the departing
+Holy Queen--the Sabbath--began. Again I was invited to the upper
+table, despite Yarchi's warning. But I had no appetite for earthly
+things, was jarred by the prosaic gusto with which the mystics threw
+themselves upon the tureen of red _Borsch_ and the black pottle of
+brandy.
+
+"Der Rabbi hat geheissen Branntwein trinken," hummed the sexton
+joyously. But little by little, as their stomachs grew satiate, the
+holy singing started afresh, and presently they leaped up, pulled
+aside the table, and made a whirling ring. I was caught up into the
+human cyclone, and round and round we flew, our hands upon one
+another's shoulders, with blind ecstatic faces, our legs kicking out
+madly, to repel, I understood, the embryonic demons outside the magic
+circle. And again methought I made a "soul-ascension," or at least
+hovered as near to the ineffable mysteries as the demoniacles to our
+magic circle.
+
+Oh, what inexpressible religious raptures were mine! What no gorgeous
+temple, nor pealing organ, nor white-robed minister had ever wrought
+for me was wrought in this barracklike room with its rude benches and
+wooden ark. "Children of the Palace" we sang, and as I strove to pick
+up the words I thought we were indeed sons of our Father who is in
+Heaven.
+
+CHILDREN OF THE PALACE
+
+    Children of the Palace, haste--
+    All who yearn the bliss to taste
+    Of the glorious Little-Faced,
+    Where, within the King's house placed,
+    Shines the sapphire throne enchased.
+    Come, in joyful dance enlaced,
+    Mock the cold and primly chaste.
+    See no sullen nor straitlaced
+    In our circle may be traced.
+    Here with th' Ancient One embraced
+    Inmost truth 'tis ours to taste,
+    Outer husks are shred to waste.
+    Children of the Palace, haste,
+    With the glory to be graced,
+    Come, behold the Little-Faced.
+
+We broke up some hours earlier than the previous evening, but I hurried
+away from my sauntering fellow-worshippers, not now because I was
+disgusted, but because I feared to be. I needed solitude--communion
+with my own soul. The same crescent moon hung in the heavens, the same
+endless stars drew on the thoughts to a material infinity.
+
+But now I felt there was another and a truer universe encompassing
+this painted vision--a spiritual universe of which I had hitherto
+known nothing, though I had glibly prated of it and listened
+well-satisfied to sermons about it.
+
+The air was warm and pleasant, and, still thrilling with the sense of
+the Over-Soul, I had passed the outposts of the village almost
+unconsciously, and walked in the direction of the cemetery on the
+other slope of the mountain (for the dead feared neither floods nor
+avalanches). On my left ran the river, still turbulent and encumbered
+with wreckage and logs, but now at low tide some feet below the level
+of its steep banks. The road gradually narrowed till at last I was
+walking on a mere strip of path between the starlit water and the base
+of the mountain, which rose ineffably solemn with its desolate rock at
+my side and its dark pines higher up. And suddenly lifting my eyes, I
+saw before me a mystic moonlit figure that set my heart beating with
+terror and surprise.
+
+It was the figure of a woman, or rather of a girl, tall, queenly,
+shining in a strange white robe, with a crown of roses and olive
+branches. For a moment she seemed like some spirit of moonlight. But
+though the eyes were misted with sadness and dream, the face was of
+the most beautiful Jewish oval, glowing with dark creamy flesh.
+
+A wild idea rose to my mind, and, absurdly enough, stilled my beating
+heart. This was the Holy Queen Sabbath whose departure we had just
+been celebrating, and in this unfrequented haunt she abode till the
+twilight of the next Friday.
+
+"Hail, Holy Queen!" I said, almost involuntarily.
+
+I saw her large beautiful eyes grow larger as she woke with a start to
+my presence, but she only inclined her head with a sovereign air, as
+one used to adoration, and floated on--for so her gracious motion
+seemed to me.
+
+And as she passed by, it flashed upon me that the strange white robe
+was nothing but a shroud. And again a great horror seized me. But
+struggling with my failing senses, I told myself that at worst it was
+some poor creature buried alive in the graveyard, who had forced the
+coffin lid, and now wandered half insanely homewards.
+
+"May I not escort you, lady?" I cried after her. "The way is lonely."
+
+She turned her face again upon me. I saw it had fire as well as
+mystery.
+
+"Who dare molest the Holy Queen?" she said.
+
+Again I was plunged into the wildest bewilderment. Was my first fancy
+true? Or had I stumbled upon some esoteric title she bore? Or had she
+but seized on my own phrase?
+
+"But you go far?" I persisted.
+
+"Unto my father's house."
+
+"Pardon me. I am a stranger."
+
+She turned round wholly now and looked at me. "Oh, are _you_ the
+_Stranger_?" she said. The question rippled like music from her lips
+and was as sweet to my ear, linking her to me by the suggestion that I
+was not new to her imagination.
+
+"I am the Stranger," I answered, moving slowly toward her, "and
+therefore afraid for your sake, and startled by the shroud you wear."
+
+"Since the dawn of my thirteenth year it has been my daily robe. It
+should be in lamentation for Zion laid waste. But me, I fear, it
+reminds more of my dead mother and sisters."
+
+"You had sisters?"
+
+"Two beautiful lives, blown out one after the other like candles,
+making our home dark, when I was but a child. They too wore shrouds in
+life and death, first the elder, then the younger; and when I draw
+mine over my dress, it is of them I think always. I feel we are truly
+sisters--sisters of the shroud."
+
+I shivered as from some chill graveyard air, despite her sweet
+corporeality.
+
+"But the crown--the crown of joy?" I murmured, regarding now with
+closer vision the intertangled weaving of roses and myrtle and olive
+branches, with gold and crimson threads wound about salt stones and
+the pale yellow of pyrites.
+
+"I do not know what it signifies," she said simply.
+
+"Are you not the Holy Queen?" I asked, beginning to scent some
+Cabalistic or _Chassidic_ mystery.
+
+"Men worship me. But I know not of what I am queen." And a wistful
+smile played about the sweet mouth. "Peace and sweet dreams to you,
+sir." And she turned her face to the village.
+
+She knew not of what she was queen. There, all in one sentence, was
+the charm, the wonder, the pathos, of her. Yet there was still much
+that she knew that would enlighten me. And it was not wholly curiosity
+that provoked me to hold the vision. I hated to see the enchantment of
+her presence dissolve, to be robbed of the liquid notes of her voice.
+
+"You are queen of me at least," I said, following her, and throwing
+all my republican principles into the river among the other wreckage.
+"And your Majesty's liege cannot endure to see you walk unattended so
+late in the night."
+
+"I have God's company," she answered quietly.
+
+"True; He is always with us. Nevertheless, at night and in the
+mountains--"
+
+"He may be perceived more clearly. My father makes soul-ascensions at
+any hour by force of prayer. But for me the divine ecstasy comes only
+under God's heaven, and most clearly at night and among the graves.
+By day God is invisible, like the stars."
+
+"They may be perceived from a well," I said, mechanically, for my
+brain was busy with the intuition that she was Ben David's daughter,
+that her "queendom" was somehow bound up with his alleged royal
+descent.
+
+"Even so is God visible from the deeps of the spirit," she answered.
+"But these depths are not mine, and day speaks to me less surely of
+Him."
+
+"The day is divine too," I urged. "God speaks also through joy,
+through sunshine."
+
+"It is but the gilding of sorrow."
+
+"Nay, that is too hard a saying. How can you know that? You"--I made a
+bold guess, for my brain had continued to work feverishly--"who live
+cloistered in a turret, who are kept sequestered from man, who walk at
+night, and only among the dead. How can you know that life is so sad?"
+
+"I feel it. Is not every stone in the graveyard hewn from the dead
+heart of the mourners?"
+
+All the sadness of the world was in her eyes, yet somehow all the
+sweet solace. Again she bade me good-night, and I was so under the
+spell of her strange reply that I made no further effort to follow
+her, as she was swallowed up in the gloom of the firs where the path
+wound back round the mountain.
+
+
+IV
+
+The floods abated before the New Year dawned, as was testified by the
+arrival, not of doves with olive leaves, but of pilgrims from the
+north with shekels. The road was therefore open for me to go, yet I
+lingered. I told myself it was the fascination of the pilgrims, that
+curious new population which brought quite a bustle into the
+"Ring-Place" of Zloczszol, and gave even the shops of the native
+_Chassidim_ a live air. There were unpleasant camp-followers in the
+train of the invading army, cripples and consumptives, both rich and
+poor; but, on the whole, it was a cheery, well-to-do company. I
+retained my room by paying the rent of three lodgers, and even then
+Yarchi would come in and look at the big, tall bed wistfully, as if it
+were a waste of sleeping material.
+
+The great episode of each day was now the royal levee. Crowds besieged
+the door of the "palace," in quest of health, wealth, and happiness,
+and the proprietor of fields had to squeeze in with the tramp, and the
+peasant woman and her neglected brat jostled the jewelled dame from
+the towns. I was glad to think that the "Holy Queen" was hidden safely
+away in her turret, and this consoled me for not meeting her again,
+though I walked or trotted about on my bay mare at all hours and in
+all places in quest of her.
+
+It may seem curious that I did not boldly call and ask to see her, but
+that would bring the commonplace into our so poetic relation. Besides
+which, I divined that she would not be easily on view. Beyond
+indirectly justifying my intuition that she was Ben David's daughter
+by satisfying myself that the Wonder Rabbi had once had three girls,
+two of whom had died, I would not even make inquiries. I feared to
+dissipate the mystery and sacredness of our relation by gossip.
+Perhaps Yarchi would tell me she was mad, or treat me to some other
+coarse misconception due to the callous feelers with which he
+apprehended the world.
+
+I did not even know for certain that the light I saw in the turret was
+hers. But when at night it was out, I hastened to the river-side, to
+see only my own shadow on the hushed mountain slope or on the white
+tombs. It seemed clear that she was being kept sacred from the
+pilgrims' gaze; perhaps, too, the deserted, untravelled road which was
+safe as her own home in normal times, was less secure now.
+
+When I at last ventured to say casually to Yarchi that Ben David's
+daughter seemed to be kept strictly to the house, the ribald grin I
+had feared distorted his malicious mouth.
+
+"Oh, you have seen Bethulah!" he said.
+
+"Yes," I murmured, turning my flushed face away, but glad to learn her
+name. Bethulah! Bethulah! my heart seemed to beat to the music of it.
+
+"Does she still stalk about in a shroud?" He did not wait for an
+answer, but went off into unending laughter, which doubled him up till
+his hunch protruded upward like a camel's.
+
+"She does not go about at all now," I said freezingly. But this set
+Yarchi cachinnating worse than ever.
+
+"He daren't trust even his own disciples, you see! Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"Yarchi!" I cried angrily, "you know Bethulah must be kept sacred from
+this rabble," and I switched with my riding-whip at the poppies that
+grew among the maize in the little front garden, as if they were
+pilgrims and I a Tarquin.
+
+"Yes, I know that's Ben David's game. But I wish some man would marry
+her and ruin his business. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"It would ruin yours too," I reminded him, more angrily. "You are
+ready enough to let lodgings to the pilgrims."
+
+Yarchi shrugged his hump. "If fools are fools, wise men are wise men,"
+he replied oracularly.
+
+I strode away, but he had heated my brain with a new idea, or one that
+I now allowed myself to see clearly. Some man might marry her. Then
+why should I not be that man? Why should I not carry Bethulah back to
+America with me--the most precious curiosity of the Old World--a
+frank, virginal creature with that touch of the angel which I had
+dreamed of but had never met among our smart girls--up to then. And
+even if it were true that Ben David was a fraud, and needed the girl
+for his Cabalistic mystifications, even so I was rich enough to recoup
+him. The girl herself was no conscious accessory; of that I felt
+certain.
+
+When my brain cooled, suggestions of the other aspects of the question
+began to find entrance. What of Bethulah herself? Why should she care
+to marry me? Or to go to the strange, raw country? And such a
+union--was it not too incongruous, too fantastic, for practical life?
+Thus I wrestled with myself for three days, all the while watching
+Bethulah's turret or the roads she might come by. On the third night I
+saw a wild mob of men at the turret end of the house, dancing in a
+ring and singing, with their eyes turned upward to the light that
+burnt on high. Their words I could not catch at first through the
+tumultuous howl, but it went on and on, like their circumvolutions,
+over and over again, till my brain reeled. It seemed to be an appeal
+to Bethulah to plead their cause on the coming _Yom-Hadin_ (New-Year
+day of Judgment):--
+
+    "By thy soul without sin,
+    Enter heaven within,
+    This divine _Yom-Hadin_,
+                Holy Maid.
+
+    "Undertake thou our plea;
+    Let the Poison God be
+    Answered stoutly by thee,
+                Holy Queen."
+
+When I came to write this down afterward, I discovered it was an
+acrostic on her name, as is customary with festival prayers. And this
+I have preserved in my rough translation.
+
+
+V
+
+Despite my new spiritual insight, I could not bring myself to
+sympathize with such crude earthly visionings of the heavenly judgment
+bar (doubtless borrowed from the book of Job, which our enlightened
+Western rabbis rightly teach to be allegorical). Temporary absorption
+into the Over-Soul seemed to me to sum up the limits of _Chassidic_
+experience. Besides, Bethulah was not a being to be employed as a sort
+of supernatural advocate, but a sad, tender creature needing love and
+protection.
+
+This mob howling outside my lady's chamber added indignation to my
+strange passion for this beautiful "sister of the shroud." I would
+rescue her from this grotesque environment. I would go to her father
+and formally demand her hand, as, I had learnt, was the custom among
+these people. I slept upon the resolution, yet in the morning it was
+still uncrumpled; and immediately after breakfast I took my stand
+among the jostling crowd outside the turreted house, and unfairly
+secured precedence by a gold piece slipped into the palm of the
+doorkeeper. The scribe I found stationed in the ante-chamber made me
+write my wish on a piece of paper, which, however, I was instructed to
+carry in myself.
+
+Ben David was seated in a curious soft-cushioned, high-backed chair,
+with the intersecting triangles making a carved apex to it, but
+otherwise there was no mark of what Yarchi would have called
+charlatanism. His face, set between a black velvet biretta and the
+white masses of his beard, had the dignity with which it had first
+impressed me, and his long, fur-trimmed robe gave him an air of
+mediaeval wisdom.
+
+"Peace be to you, long-lingering stranger," he said, though his green
+eyes glittered ominously.
+
+"Peace," I murmured uneasily.
+
+With his left hand he put the still folded paper to his brow. I
+watched the light playing on the Persian emerald seal of the ring on
+the forefinger of his right hand. Suddenly I perceived he too was
+looking at the stone--nay, into it--and that while that continued to
+glitter, his own eyes had grown glazed.
+
+"Strange, strange," he muttered. "Again I see the fiery wheels, and
+the strange soul fashioned of Satan that dwells neither in heaven nor
+in hell." And his eyes lit up terribly again and rolled like fiery
+wheels.
+
+"What do you want?" he cried harshly.
+
+"It is written on the paper," I faltered, "just two words."
+
+He opened the paper and read out, "Your daughter!" His eyes rolled
+again. "What know you of my daughter?"
+
+"Oh, I know all about her," I said airily.
+
+"Then you know that my daughter does not receive pilgrims."
+
+"Nay, 'tis I that wish to receive your daughter," I ventured jocosely,
+with a touch of levity I did not feel. He raised his clinched hand as
+if to strike me, and I had a lurid sense of three green eyes glaring
+at me. I stood my ground as coolly as possible, and said, in dry,
+formal tones, "I wish to make application for her hand."
+
+A great blackness came over the frosted visage, as if his black
+biretta had been suddenly drawn forward, and his erst blanched
+eyebrows gloomed like a black lightning-cloud over the baleful eyes.
+
+I shrank back, then I had a sudden vision of the wagons clattering
+down Broadway in a live, sunlit, go-ahead world, and the Wonder Rabbi
+turned into an absurd old parent with a beautiful daughter and a bad
+temper.
+
+"I am a man of substance," I went on dryly. "In my country I have fat
+lands."
+
+The horribleness of thus bidding for Bethulah flashed on me even as I
+spoke. To mix up a creature of mist and moonlight with substance and
+fat lands! Monstrous! And yet I knew that thus, and thus only, by
+honourable talk with her guardian, could a Zloczszol bride be won.
+
+But the Wonder Rabbi sprang to his feet so vehemently that his
+high-backed chair rocked as in a gale.
+
+"Dog!" he shrieked. "Blasphemer!"
+
+I summoned all my American sang-froid.
+
+"Dog," I agreed, "inasmuch as I follow your daughter like a dog,
+humbly, lovingly. But blasphemer? Say rather worshipper. For I worship
+Bethulah."
+
+"Then worship her like the others," he roared. Had I not heard him
+pray, I should have expected the hoary patriarch to collapse after
+such an outburst.
+
+"Thank you," I said. "I don't want her to fly up to heaven for me. I
+want her to come down to earth--from her turret."
+
+"She will not come down to any earthly spouse," he said more gently.
+"Quite the reverse."
+
+"Then I will make a soul-ascension," I said defiantly.
+
+"Get back to hell, spawn of Satan!" he thundered again. "Or since,
+strange son of the New World, you neither believe nor disbelieve,
+hover eternally between hell and heaven!"
+
+"Meantime I am here," I said good-humouredly, "between you and your
+daughter. Come, come, be sensible; you are a very old man. Where in
+Zloczszol will you find a superior husband for your child?"
+
+"The Lord, to whom she is consecrated, forgive you your blasphemy," he
+said, in a changed voice, and rang his bell, so that the next
+applicant came in and I had to go.
+
+It was plain the girl was kept as a sacred celibate, a sort of vestal
+virgin--Bethulah was the very Hebrew for virgin, it suddenly flashed
+upon me. But how came such practices into Judaism--Judaism, with its
+cheery creed, "increase and multiply?" And _Chassidism_, I had
+hitherto imagined, was the cheeriness of Judaism concentrated! In
+Yarchi's version it was even license--"the Adamite life." I raked up
+my memories of the Bible--remembered Jephtha's daughter. But no! there
+could be no question of a vow; this was some new _Chassidic_ mystery.
+The crown and the shroud! The shroud of renunciation, the crown of
+victory!
+
+And for some fantastic shadow-myth a beautiful young life was to be
+immolated. My respect for _Chassidism_ vanished as suddenly as it
+came.
+
+But I was powerless. I could only wait till the flood of pilgrims
+oozed back, even as the waters had done. Then perhaps Bethulah might
+walk again upon the moonlit mountain-peak, or in the "house of life,"
+as the cemetery was mystically called.
+
+The penitential season, with its trumpets and terrors,
+judgment-writings and sealings, was over at last, and Tabernacles came
+like a breath of air and nature. Yarchi hammered up a little wooden
+booth in the corner of his front garden, and hung grapes and oranges
+and flowers from its loose roof of boughs, through which the stars
+peeped at us as we ate. It struck me as a very pretty custom, and I
+wondered why American Judaism had let it fall into desuetude. Ere the
+break-up of these booths the pilgrims had begun to melt away, the old
+sleepiness to fall upon Zloczszol.
+
+Hence I was startled one morning by the passage of a joyous procession
+that carried torches and played on flutes and tambourines. I ran out
+and discovered that I was part of a wedding procession escorting a
+bride. As this was a company not of _Chassidim_, but of everyday Jews,
+bound for the little Gothic synagogue, I was surprised, despite my
+experience of the Tabernacles, to find such picturesque goings-on, and
+I went all the way to the courtyard, where the rabbi came out to meet
+us with the bridegroom, who, it seemed, had already been conducted
+hither with parallel pomp. The happy youth--for he could only have
+been sixteen--was arrayed in festival finery, with white shoes on his
+feet and black phylacteries on his forehead, which was further
+over-gloomed by a cowl. He took the bride's hand, and then we all
+threw wheat over their heads, crying three times, "_Peru, Urvu_" (Be
+fruitful and multiply). But just when I expected the ceremony to
+begin, the bride was snatched away, and we all filed into the
+synagogue to await her return.
+
+I had fallen into a mournful reverie--perhaps the suggestion of my own
+infelicitous romance was too strong--when I felt a stir of excitement
+animating my neighbours, and, looking up, lo! I saw a tall female
+figure in a white shroud, with a veiled face, and on her head a crown
+of roses and myrtles and olive branches. A shiver ran through me.
+"Bethulah!" I cried half-aloud. My neighbours smiled, and as I
+continued to stare at the figure, I saw it was only the bride, thus
+transmogrified for the wedding canopy. And then some startling half
+comprehension came to me. Bethulah's dress was a bride's dress, then.
+She was made to appear a perpetual bride. Of whom? To what Cabalistic
+mystery was this the key? The Friday night hymn sprang to my mind.
+
+    "Oh, come, my beloved, to meet the Bride,
+    The face of the Sabbath let us welcome."
+
+For a moment I thought I held the solution, and that my very first
+conjecture had been warranted. The Holy Queen Sabbath was also
+typified as the Sabbath Bride, and this dual allegory it was that
+Bethulah incarnated. Or perchance it was Israel, the Bride of God!
+
+But I was still dissatisfied. I felt that the truth lay deeper than a
+mere poetic metaphor or a poetical masquerading. I discovered it at
+last, but at the risk of my life.
+
+
+VI
+
+I continued to walk nightly on the narrow path between the mountain
+and the river, like the ghost of one drowned, but without a glimpse of
+Bethulah. At last it grew plain that her father had warned her against
+me, that she had changed the hour of her exercise and soul-ascension,
+or even the place. I was indebted to accident for my second vision of
+this strange creature.
+
+I had diverted myself by visiting the neighbouring village, a
+refreshing contrast to Jewish Zloczszol, from the rough garland-hung
+wayside crosses (which were like sign-posts to its gilt-towered
+church) to the peasant women in pink aprons and top boots.
+
+A marvellous sunset was well-nigh over as I struck the river-side that
+curved homewards. The bank was here very steep, the river running as
+between cliffs. In the sky great drifts of gold-flushed cloud hung
+like relics of the glory that had been, and the autumn leaves that
+muffled my mare's footsteps seemed to have fallen from the sunset. In
+the background the white peak of the mountain was slowly parting with
+its volcanic splendour. And low on the horizon, like a small lake of
+fire in the heart of a tangled bush, the molten sun showed monstrous
+and dazzling.
+
+And straight from the sunset over the red leaves Bethulah came
+walking, rapt as in prophetic thought, shrouded and crowned, preceded
+by a long shadow that seemed almost as intangible.
+
+I reined in my horse and watched the apparition with a great flutter
+at my heart. And as I gazed, and thought of her grotesque worshippers,
+it was borne in upon me how unbefittingly Nature had peopled her
+splendid planet. The pageantry of dawn and sunset, of seas and
+mountains, how incongruous a framework for our petty breed, sordidly
+crawling under the stars. Bethulah alone seemed fitted to the high
+setting of the scene. She matched this lone icy peak, this fiery
+purity.
+
+"Bethulah!" I said, as she was almost upon my horse.
+
+She looked up, and a little cry that might have been joy or surprise
+came from her lips. But by the smile that danced in her eyes and the
+blood that leapt to her cheeks, I saw with both joy and surprise that
+this second meeting was as delightful to her as to me.
+
+But the conscious Bethulah hastened to efface what the unconscious had
+revealed. "It is not right of you, stranger, to linger here so long,"
+she said, frowning.
+
+"I am your shadow," I replied, "and must linger where you linger."
+
+"But you are indeed a shadow, my father says--a being fashioned of the
+Poison God to work us woe."
+
+"No, no," I said, laughing; "my horse bears no shadow. And the Poison
+God who fashioned me is not the absurd horned and tailed tempter you
+have been taught to believe in, but a little rosy-winged god, with a
+bow and poisoned arrows."
+
+"A little rosy-winged god?" she said. "I know of none such."
+
+"And you know not of what you are queen," I retorted, smiling.
+
+"There is but one God," she insisted, with sweet seriousness. "See, He
+burns in the bush, yet it is not consumed."
+
+She pointed to where the red sinking sun seemed to eat out the heart
+of the bush through which we saw it.
+
+"Thus this love-god burns in our hearts," I said, lifted up into her
+poetic strain, "and we are not consumed, only glorified."
+
+I strove to touch her hand, which had dropped caressingly on my
+horse's neck. But she drew back with a cry.
+
+"I may not listen. This is the sinful talk my father warned me of.
+Fare you well, stranger." And with swift step she turned homewards.
+
+I sat still a minute or two, half-disconcerted, half-content to gaze
+at her gracious motions; then I touched the mare with my heel, and she
+bounded off in pursuit. But at this instant three men in long
+gabardines and great round velvet hats started forward from the
+thicket, shouting and waving lighted pine-branches, and my frightened
+animal reared and plunged, and then broke into a mad gallop, making
+straight for the river curve between the cliffs. I threw myself back
+in the saddle, tugging desperately at the creature's mouth; but I
+might have been a child pulling at an elephant. I shook my feet free
+of the stirrups and prepared to tumble off as best I could, rather
+than risk the plunge into the river, when a projecting bough made me
+duck my head instinctively; but as I passed under it, with another
+instinctive movement I threw out my hands to clasp it, and, despite a
+violent wrench that seemed to pull my arms out of their sockets and
+swung my feet high forward, I hung safely. The mare, eased of my
+weight, was at the river-side the next instant, and with a wild,
+incredible leap alighted with her forefeet and the bulk of her body on
+the other bank, up which she scraped convulsively, and then stood
+still, trembling and sweating. I could not get at her, so, trusting
+she would find her way home safely, I dropped to the ground and ran
+back, with a mixed idea of finding Bethulah and chastising the three
+scoundrels. But all were become invisible.
+
+I walked half a mile across the plain to get to the rough pine bridge;
+and, once on the other bank, I had no difficulty in recovering the
+mare. She cantered up to me, indeed, and put her soft and still
+perspiring nose in my palm and whinnied her apologetic congratulations
+on our common escape.
+
+I rode slowly home, reflecting on the new turn in my love affairs, for
+it was plain that Bethulah had now been provided with a body-guard, of
+which she was as unconscious as of her body itself.
+
+But for the apparent necessity of her making soul-ascensions under
+God's heaven, I supposed she would not have been allowed to take the
+air at all with such a creature of Satan hovering.
+
+I stood sunning myself the next day on the same pine bridge, looking
+down on the swift current, and regretting there was no rail to lean on
+as one watched the fascinating flow of the beautiful river. It struck
+me as inordinately blue,--perhaps, I analyzed, by contrast with the
+long, sinuous weeds which here glided and tossed in the current like
+green water-snakes. These flexible greens reminded me of the Wonder
+Rabbi's eyes and his emerald seal; and I turned, with some sudden
+premonition of danger, just in time to dodge the attack of the same
+three ruffians, who must have been about to push me over.
+
+In an instant I had whipped out my pistol from my hip pocket, and
+cried, "Stand, or I fire!"
+
+The trio froze instantly in odd attitudes, which was lucky, as my
+pistol was unloaded. They looked almost comical in their air of abject
+terror. Their narrow, fanatical foreheads, with ringlets of piety
+hanging down below the velvet, fur-trimmed hats, showed them more
+accustomed to murdering texts than men. Had I not been still
+smouldering over yesterday's trick, I could have pitied them for the
+unwelcome job thrust upon their unskilled and apparently even
+unweaponed hands by the machinations of the Poison God and the orders
+of Ben David. One of them seemed quite elderly, and one quite young.
+The middle-aged one had a goitre, and perhaps that made me fancy him
+the most sinister, and keep my eye most warily upon him.
+
+"Sons of Belial," I said, recalling a biblical phrase that might be
+expected to prick, "why do you seek my life?"
+
+Two of them cowered under my gaze, but the elderly _Chassid_, seeing
+the shooting was postponed, spoke up boldly: "We are no sons of
+Belial. You are the begotten of Satan; you are the arch enemy of
+Israel."
+
+"I?" I protested in my turn. "I am a plain God-fearing son of
+Abraham."
+
+"A precious scion of the Patriarch's seed, who would delay the coming
+of the Messiah!"
+
+Again that incomprehensible accusation.
+
+"You speak riddles," I said.
+
+"How so? Did you not tell Ben David--his horn be exalted--that you
+knew all concerning Bethulah? Then must you know that of her
+immaculacy will the Messiah be born, one ninth of Ab."
+
+A flood of light burst upon me--mystic, yet clarifying; blinding, yet
+dissipating my darkness. My pistol drooped in my hand. My head swam
+with a whirl of strange thoughts, and Bethulah, already divine to me,
+took on a dazzling aureola, sailed away into some strange supernatural
+ether.
+
+"Have we not been in exile long enough?" said the youngest. "Shall a
+godless stranger tamper with the hope of generations?"
+
+"But whence this mad hope?" I said, struggling under the mystic
+obsession of his intensity.
+
+"Mad?" began the first, his eyes spitting fire; but the younger
+interrupted him.
+
+"Is not our saint the sole scion of the house of David? Is not his
+daughter the last of the race?"
+
+"And what if she is?"
+
+"Then who but she can be the destined mother of Israel's Redeemer?"
+
+The goitred _Chassid_ opened his lips and added, "If not now, when? as
+Hillel asked."
+
+"In our days at last must come the crowning glory of the house of Ben
+David," the young man went on. "For generations now, since the signs
+have pointed to the millennium, have the daughters of the house been
+kept unwedded."
+
+"What!" I cried. "Generations of _Bethulahs_ have been sacrificed to a
+dream!"
+
+Again the eyes of the first _Chassid_ dilated dangerously. I raised my
+pistol, but hastened to ask, in a more conciliatory tone, "Then how
+has the line been carried on?"
+
+"Through the sons, of course," said the young _Chassid_. "Now for the
+first time there are no sons, and only one daughter remains, the
+manifest vessel of salvation."
+
+I tried to call up that image of bustling Broadway that had braced me
+in colloquy with the old Wonder Rabbi, but it seemed shadowy now,
+compared with this world of solid spiritualities which begirt me.
+Could it be the same planet on which such things went on
+simultaneously? Or perhaps I was dreaming, and these three grotesque
+creatures were the product of Yarchi's cookery.
+
+But their hanging curls had a daylight definiteness, and down in the
+sunlit, translucent river I could see every shade of colour, from the
+green of the sinuous reed-snakes to the brown of the moss patches.
+
+On the bank walked two crows, and I noted for the first time with what
+comic pomposity they paced, their bodies bent forward like two
+important old gentlemen with their hands in the pockets of their black
+coat tails. They brought a smile to my face, but a menacing movement
+of the _Chassidim_ warned me to be careful.
+
+"And does the girl know all this?" I asked hurriedly.
+
+"She did not yesterday," said the elderly fellow. "Now she has been
+told."
+
+There was another long pause. I meditated rapidly but disjointedly,
+having to keep an eye against a sudden rush of my assailants, and
+mistrusting the goitred saint yet the more because he was so silent.
+
+"And is Bethulah content with her destiny?" I asked.
+
+"She is in the seventh heaven," said the elderly saint.
+
+I had a poignant shudder of incredulous protest. I recalled the flush
+of her sweet face at the sight of me, and brief as our meetings had
+been, I dared to feel that the irrevocable thrill had passed between
+us; that the rest would have been only a question of time.
+
+"Let Bethulah tell me so herself," I cried, "and I will leave her in
+her heaven."
+
+The men looked at one another. Then the eldest shook his head. "No;
+you shall never speak to her again."
+
+"We have maidens more beautiful among us," said the young man. "You
+shall have your choice. Ay, even my own betrothed would I give you."
+
+I flicked aside his suggestion. "But you cannot prevent Bethulah
+walking under God's heaven." They looked dismayed. "I will meet her,"
+I said, pursuing my advantage. "And Yarchi and other good Jews shall
+be at hand."
+
+"She shall be removed elsewhere," said the first.
+
+"I will track her down. Ah, you are afraid," I said mockingly. "You
+see it is not true that she is content to be immolated."
+
+"It is true," they muttered.
+
+"True as the Torah," added the elderly man.
+
+"Then there is no harm in her telling me so."
+
+"You may bear her off on your horse," said he of the goitre.
+
+"I will go on foot. Let her bid me go away, and I will leave
+Zloczszol."
+
+Again they looked at one another, and the relief in their eyes brought
+heart-sinking into mine. Yes, it was true. Bethulah was in the glow of
+a great surrender; she was still tingling with the revelation of her
+supreme destiny. To put her to the test now would be fatal. No; let
+her have time to meditate; ay, even to disbelieve.
+
+"To-morrow you shall speak with her, and no man shall know," said the
+oldest _Chassid_.
+
+"No, not to-morrow. In a week or two."
+
+"Ah, you wish to linger among us," he replied suspiciously.
+
+"I will go away till the appointed day," I replied readily.
+
+"Good. Continue your travels. Let us say a month, or even two."
+
+"If you will not spirit her away in my absence."
+
+"It is as easy to do so in your presence."
+
+"So be it."
+
+"Shall we say--the eve of Chanukah?" he suggested.
+
+It was my turn to regard him suspiciously. But I could see nothing to
+cavil at. He had merely mentioned an obvious date--that of the next
+festival landmark. Chanukah--the feast of rededication of the Temple
+after the Grecian pollution--the miracle of the unwaning oil, the
+memorial lighting of lights; there seemed nothing in these to work
+unduly upon the girl's soul, except in so far as the inspiring
+tradition of Judas Maccabaeus might attach her more devotedly to her
+conceptions of duty and self-dedication. Perhaps, I thought, with a
+flash of jealous anger, they meditated a feast of rededication of her
+after the pollution of my presence had been removed. Well, we should
+see.
+
+"The eve of Chanukah," I agreed, with a nonchalant air. "Only let the
+place be where I first met her--the path 'twixt mountain and river as
+you go to the cemetery."
+
+That would at least be a counter-influence to Chanukah! As they
+understood none of the subtleties of love, they agreed to this, and I
+made them swear by the Name.
+
+When they went their way I stood pondering on the bridge, my empty
+pistol drooping in my hand, till sky and river glowed mystically as
+with blood, and the chill evening airs reminded me that November was
+nigh.
+
+
+VII
+
+I got to Warsaw and back in the time at my disposal, but not all the
+freshness and variety of my experiences could banish the thought of
+Bethulah. There were days when I could absorb myself in the passing
+panorama, but I felt always, so to speak, in the ante-chamber of the
+great moment of our third and decisive meeting.
+
+And with every shortening day of December that moment approached. Yet
+I all but missed it when it came. A snowfall I might easily have
+foreseen retarded my journey at the eleventh hour, but my faithful
+mare ploughed her way through the white morasses. As she munched her
+mid-day corn in that quaint Christian village that neighboured
+Zloczszol, and in which I had agreed to stable her, it was borne in on
+me for the first time that the eve of Chanukah was likewise Christmas
+eve. I wondered vaguely if there was any occult significance in the
+coincidence or in the _Chassidic_ choice of dates; but it was too late
+now to protest, and loading my pistol against foul play, I hurried to
+the rendezvous.
+
+On the dark barren base of the mountain, patches of snow gleamed like
+winter blossoms; the gargoyle-like faces of the jags of rock on the
+river-bank were white-bearded with icicles. Down below the stream
+raced, apparently as turbid as ever, but suddenly, as it made a sharp
+curve and came under a thick screen of snow-laden boughs interarching
+over the cleft, it grew glazed in death.
+
+The sight of Bethulah was as of a spirit of sunshine moving across the
+white desolation. Her tall lone shadow fell blue upon the snowy path.
+She was swathed now in splendid silver furs, from which her face shone
+out like a tropical flower beneath its wreathed crown.
+
+Dignity and sovereignty had subtly replaced the grace of her movement,
+her very stature seemed aggrandized by the consciousness of her unique
+mission.
+
+She turned, and her virginal eyes met mine with abashing purity, and
+in that instant of anguished rapture I knew that my quest was vain.
+The delicate flush of joy and surprise touched her cheeks, indeed, as
+before, but this time I felt it would not be succeeded by terror.
+Self-conscious now, self-poised, she stood regally where she had
+faltered and fled.
+
+"You return to spend Chanukah with us," she said.
+
+"I came," I said, with uneasy bravado, "in the hope of spending it
+elsewhere--with you."
+
+"But you know that cannot be," she said gently.
+
+Ah, now she knew of what she was queen. But revolt was hot in my
+heart.
+
+"Then they have made you share their dream," I said bitterly.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with unruffled sweetness. "How beautiful upon the
+mountains are the feet of those that bring good tidings!" And her
+eyes shone in exultation.
+
+"They were messengers of evil," I said--"whisperers of untruth. Life
+is for love and joy."
+
+"Ah, no!" she urged tremulously. "Surely you know the world--how full
+it is of suffering and sin." And as with an unconscious movement, she
+threw back her splendid furs, revealing the weird shroud. "Ah, what
+ecstasy to think that the divine day will come, ere I am old, when, as
+it is written in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, '_He will destroy
+in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and
+the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in
+victory: and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and
+the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth:
+for the Lord hath spoken._'"
+
+Her own eyes were full of tears, which I yearned to kiss away.
+
+"But your own life meantime?" I said softly.
+
+"My life--does it not already take on the glory of God as this
+mountain the coming day?"
+
+She seemed indeed akin to the cold white peak as I had seen it flushed
+with sunrise. My passion seemed suddenly prosaic and selfish. I was
+lifted up into the higher love that worships and abnegates.
+
+"God bless you!" I said, and turning away with misty vision, saw,
+creeping off, the three dark fanatical figures.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Half a century later I was startled to find the name of Zloczszol in a
+headline of the Sunday edition of my American paper.
+
+I had married, and was even a grandfather; for after my return to
+America the world of Bethulah had grown fantastic, stupidly
+superstitious, and, finally, shadowy and almost unreal. Years and
+years of happiness had dissipated and obliterated the delicate
+fragrant dream of spiritual love.
+
+But that strange long-forgotten name stirred instantly the sleeping
+past to life. I adjusted my spectacles and read the column eagerly. It
+was sensational enough, though not more so than a hundred columns of
+calamities in unknown places that one skips or reads with the mildest
+of thrills.
+
+The long-threatened avalanche had fallen, and Nature had once more
+rudely reminded man of his puny place in creation. Rare conditions had
+at last come together. First a slight fall of snow, covering the
+mountain--how vividly I pictured it!--then a sharp frost which had
+frozen this deposit; after that a measureless, blinding snow-storm and
+a cyclonic wind. When all seemed calm again, the second mass of snow
+had begun to slide down the frozen surface of the first, quickening to
+a terrific pace, tearing down the leafless trunks and shooting them at
+the village like giant arrows of the angry gods. One of these arrows
+penetrated the trunk of a great cedar on the plain and stuck out on
+both sides, making a sort of cross, which the curious came from far
+and near to see. But, alas! the avalanche had not contented itself
+with such freakish manifestations; it had annihilated the new portion
+of the village which had dared crawl nearer the mountain when the
+railroad--a railroad in Zloczszol!--had found it cheaper to pass near
+the base than to make a circuit round the congested portion!
+
+Alas! the cheapness was illusory. The depot with its crowd had been
+wiped out as by the offended Fury of the mountain; though by another
+freakish incident, illustrating the Titanic forces at work, yet the
+one redeeming detail of the appalling catastrophe, a small train of
+three carriages that had just moved off was lifted up bodily by the
+terrible wind that raced ahead of the monstrous sliding snowball, and
+was clapped down in a field out of its reach, as if by a protecting
+hand. Not a creature on it was injured.
+
+I had passed the years allotted to man by the Psalmist, and my memory
+of the things of yesterday had begun to be faint and elusive, but the
+images of my Zloczszol adventure returned with a vividness that grew
+daily more possessive. What had become of Bethulah? Was she alive? Was
+she dead? And which were the sadder alternative--to have felt the
+darkness of early death closing round the great hope, or to have
+survived its possibility, and old, bent, bitter, and deserted by her
+followers, to await the lesser disenchantment of the grave?
+
+An irresistible instinct impelled me--aged as I was myself--to revisit
+alone these scenes of my youth, to see how fate had rounded or broken
+off its grim ironic story.
+
+I pass over the stages of the journey, at the conclusion of which I
+found myself again in the mountain village. Alas! The changes on the
+route had prepared me for the change in Zloczszol. Railroads threw
+their bridges over the gorges I had climbed, telegraph poles tamed the
+erst savage forest ways. And Zloczszol itself had now, by the line
+passing through it, expanded into a trading centre, with vitality
+enough to recuperate quickly from the avalanche. The hotel was clean
+and commodious, but I could better have endured that ancient
+sitting-room in which the squalling baby was rocked. Strange, I could
+see its red wrinkled face, catch the very timbre of its piping cries!
+Only the mountain was unchanged, and the pines and firs that had
+whispered dreams to my youth whispered sleep to my age. Ah, how frail
+and futile is the life of man! He passes like a shadow, and the green
+sunlit earth he trod on closes over him and takes the tread of the new
+generations. What had I to say to these new, smart people in
+Zloczszol? No, the dead were my gossips and neighbours. For me more
+than the avalanche had desolated Zloczszol. I repaired to the
+cemetery. There I should find Yarchi. It was no use looking for him
+under the porch of the pine cottage. And there, too, I should in all
+likelihood find Bethulah!
+
+But Ben David's tomb was the first I found, carved with the
+intersecting triangles. The date showed he had died very soon after my
+departure; perhaps, I thought remorsefully, my importunities had
+agitated him too much. Ah! there at last was Yarchi. Under a high
+white stone he slept as soundly as any straight corpse. His sneering
+mouth had crumbled to dust, but I would have given much to hear it
+once more abuse the _Chassidim_. Propped on my stick and poring over
+the faded gilt letters, I recalled "the handsome stranger" whom the
+years had marred. But of Bethulah I saw no sign. I wandered back and
+found the turreted house, but it had been converted into a large
+store, and from Bethulah's turret window hung a great advertising
+sky-sign.
+
+I returned cheerlessly to the hotel, but as the sun began to pierce
+auspiciously through the bleakness of early March, I was about to
+sally forth again in the direction of Yarchi's ancient cottage, when
+the porter directed me--as if I were a mere tourist--to go to see the
+giant cedar of Lebanon with its Titanic arrow. However, I followed his
+instructions, and pretty soon I espied the broad-girthed tree towering
+over its field, with the foreign transpiercing trunk about fifteen
+feet from the ground, making indeed a vast cross. Leaning against the
+sunlit cedar was a white-robed figure, and as I hobbled nearer I saw
+by the shroud and the crown of flowers that I had found Bethulah.
+
+At my approach she drew herself up in statuesque dignity, upright as
+Ben David of yore, and looked at me with keen unclouded eyes. There
+was a wondrous beauty of old age in her face and bearing. The silver
+hair banded on the temples glistened picturesquely against the reds
+and greens and golds of her crown.
+
+"Ah, stranger!" she said, with a gracious smile. "You return to us."
+
+"You recognize me?" I mumbled, in amaze.
+
+"It is the face I loved in youth," she said simply.
+
+Strange, happy, wistful tears sprang to my old eyes--some blurred
+sense of youth and love and God.
+
+"Your youth seems with you still," I said. "Your face is as sweet,
+your voice as full of music."
+
+The old ecstatic look lit up her eyes. "It is God who keeps me ever
+young, till the great day dawns."
+
+I was taken aback. What! She believed still! That alternative had not
+figured in my prevision of pathetic closes. I was silent, but the old
+tumult of thought raged within me.
+
+"But is not the day passed forever?" I murmured at last.
+
+The light in her eyes became queenly fire.
+
+"While there is life," she cried, "in the veins of the house of Ben
+David!" And as she spoke my eye caught the gleam of the Persian
+emerald on her forefinger.
+
+"And your worshippers--what of them?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes grew sad. "After my father's death--his memory for a
+blessing!--the pilgrims fell off, and when the years passed without
+the miracle, his followers even here in Zloczszol began to weaken. And
+slowly a new generation arose, impatient and lax, which believed not
+in the faith of their forefathers and mocked my footsteps, saying,
+'Behold! the dreamer cometh!' And then the black fire-monster came,
+whizzing daily to and fro on the steel lines and breathing out fumes
+of unfaith, and the young men said lo! there is our true Redeemer.
+Wherefore, as the years waxed and waned, until at last advancing Death
+threw his silver shadow on my hair, even the faithful grew to doubt,
+and they said, 'But a few short years more and death must claim her,
+her mission unfulfilled, and the lamp of Israel's hope shattered
+forever. Perchance it is we that have misunderstood the prophecies.
+Not here, not here, shall God's great miracle be wrought; this is not
+holy ground. "For the Lord dwelleth in Zion,"' they cried with the
+Prophets. Only on the sacred soil, outside of which God has never
+revealed himself, only in Palestine, they said, can Israel's Redeemer
+be born. As it is written, 'But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance,
+and there shall be holiness.'
+
+"Then these and the scoffers persuaded me, seeing that I waxed very
+old, and I sold my father's house--now grown of high value--to obtain
+the money for the journey, and I made ready to start for Jerusalem.
+There had been a whirlwind and a great snow the day before and I would
+have tarried, but they said I must arrive in the Holy City ere the eve
+of Chanukah. And putting off my shroud and my crown, seeing that only
+in Jerusalem I might be a bride, I trusted myself to the fire-monster,
+and a vast company went with me to the starting-place--both of those
+who believed that salvation was of Zion and those who scoffed. But the
+monster had scarcely crawled out under God's free heaven than God's
+hand lifted me up and those with me--for my blessedness covered
+them--and put us down very far off, while a great white thunder-bolt
+fell upon the building and upon the scoffers and upon those who had
+prated of Zion, and behold! they were not. The multitude of Moab was
+as straw trodden down for the dunghill, and the high fort of the
+fire-monster was brought down and laid low and brought to the ground,
+even to the dust. Then arose a great cry from all the town and the
+mountain, and a rending of garments and a weeping in sackcloth. And
+many returned to the faith in me, for God's hand has shown that here,
+and not elsewhere, is the miracle to be wrought. As it is written,
+word for word, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:--
+
+"'_And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast
+over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will
+swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God shall wipe away tears
+from off all faces: and the rebuke of His people shall He take away
+from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be
+said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He
+will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be
+glad and rejoice in His salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand
+of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under Him, even as
+straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And He shall spread forth His
+hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth to
+swim: and He shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of
+their hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall He
+bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust._'
+
+"And here in this cedar of Lebanon, transplanted like Israel under the
+shadow of this alien mountain, the Lord has shot a bolt, for a sign to
+all that can read. And here I come daily to pray, and to await the
+divine moment."
+
+She ceased, and her eyes turned to the now stainless heaven. And as I
+gazed upon her shining face it seemed to me that the fresh flowers and
+leaves of her crown, still wet with the dew, seen against that garment
+of death and the silver of decaying life, were symbolic of an undying,
+ever rejuvenescent hope.
+
+
+IX
+
+A last surprise awaited me. Bethulah now lived all alone in Yarchi's
+pine cottage, which the years had left untouched.
+
+Whether accident or purpose settled her there I do not know, but my
+heart was overcharged with mingled emotion as I went up the garden the
+next day to pay her a farewell visit. The poppies flaunted riotously
+amid the neglected maize, but the cottage itself seemed tidy.
+
+It was the season when the cold wrinkled lips of winter meet the first
+kiss of spring, and death is passing into resurrection. It was the
+hour when the chill shadows steal upon the sunlit day. In the sky was
+the shot purple of a rolling moor, merging into a glow of lovely
+green.
+
+I stood under the porch where Yarchi had been wont to sun and snuff
+himself, and knocked at the door, but receiving no answer, I lifted
+the latch softly and looked in.
+
+Bethulah was at her little table, her head lying on a great old Bible
+which her arms embraced. One long finger of departing sunlight pointed
+through the window and touched the flowers on the gray hair. I stole
+in with a cold fear that she was dead. But she seemed only asleep,
+with that sleep of old age which is so near to death and is yet the
+renewal of life.
+
+I was curious to see what she had been reading. It was the eighteenth
+chapter of Genesis, and in the shadow of her crown ran the verses:--
+
+"_And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying,
+Shalt I of a surety bear a child, which am old?_
+
+"_Is anything too hard for the Lord?_"
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE KEEPER OF CONSCIENCE
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE KEEPER OF CONSCIENCE
+
+
+I
+
+Salvina Brill walked to and fro in the dingy Hackney Terrace, waiting
+till her mother should return with the house-key. So far as change of
+scene was concerned the little pupil-teacher might as well have stood
+still. Everywhere bow-windows, Venetian blinds, little front
+gardens--all that had represented domestic grandeur to her after a
+childhood of apartments in Spitalfields, though her subsequent glimpse
+of the West End home in which her sister Kitty was governess, had made
+her dazedly aware of Alps beyond Alps.
+
+Though only seventeen, Salvina was not superficially sweet and could
+win no consideration from the seated males in the homeward train, and
+the heat of the weather and the crush of humanity--high hats
+sandwiched between workmen's tool-baskets--had made her head ache. Her
+day at the Whitechapel school had already been trying, and Thursday
+was always heavy with the accumulated fatigues of the week. It was
+unfortunate that her mother should be late, but she remembered how at
+breakfast the good creature had promised father to make a little
+excursion to the Borough and take a packet of tea to the house of some
+distant relatives of his, who were sitting _shivah_ (seven days'
+mourning). The non-possession of a servant made it necessary to lock
+up the house and pull down the blinds, when its sole occupant went
+visiting.
+
+After a few minutes of vain expectation, Salvina mechanically returned
+to her Greek grammar, which opened as automatically at the irregular
+verbs. She had just achieved the greatest distinction of her life, and
+one not often paralleled in Board School girl-circles, by
+matriculating at the London University. Hers was only a second-class
+pass, but gained by private night-study, supplemented by some evening
+lessons at the People's Palace, it was sufficiently remarkable;
+especially when one considered she had still other subjects to prepare
+for the Centres. Salvina was now audaciously aiming at the
+Bachelorhood of Arts, for which the Greek verbs were far more
+irregular. It was not only the love of knowledge that animated her: as
+a bachelor she might become a head-mistress, nay, might even aspire to
+follow the lead of her dashing elder sister and teach in a wealthy
+family that treated you as one of itself. Not that Kitty had ever
+matriculated, but an ugly duckling needs many plumes of learning ere
+it can ruffle itself like a beautiful swan.
+
+Who should now come upon the promenading student but Sugarman the
+Shadchan, his hand full of papers, and his blue bandanna trailing from
+his left coat-tail!
+
+"Ah, you are the very person I was coming to see," he cried gleefully
+in his corrupt German accent. "What is your sister's address now?"
+
+"Why?" said Salvina distrustfully.
+
+"I have a fine young man for her!"
+
+Salvina's pallid cheek coloured with modesty and resentment. "My
+sister doesn't need your services."
+
+"Maybe not," said Sugarman, unruffled. "But the young man does. He saw
+your sister once years ago, before he went to the Cape. Now he is a
+_Takif_ (rich man) and wants a wife."
+
+"He's not rich enough to buy Kitty." Salvina's romantic soul was
+outraged, and she spoke with unwonted asperity.
+
+"He is rich enough to buy Kitty all she wants. He is quite in love
+with her--she can ask for anything."
+
+"Then let him go and tell her so himself. What does he come to you
+for? He must be a very poor lover."
+
+"Poor! I tell you he is rolling in gold. It's the luckiest thing that
+could have happened to your family. You will all ride in your
+carriage. You ought to fall on your knees and bless me. Your sister is
+not so young any more, at nineteen a girl can't afford to sniff.
+Believe me there are thousands of girls who would jump at the
+chance--yes, girls with dowries, too. And your sister hasn't a penny."
+
+"My sister has a heart and a soul," retorted Salvina witheringly, "and
+she wants a heart and a soul to sympathize with hers, not a
+money-bag."
+
+"Then, won't you take a ticket for the lotte_ree_?" rejoined Sugarman
+pleasantly. "Then you get a money-bag of your own."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Not even half a ticket? Only thirty-six shillings! You needn't pay me
+now. I trust you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But think--I may win you the great prize--a hundred thousand marks."
+
+The sum fascinated Salvina, and for an instant her imagination played
+with its marvellous potentialities. They could all move to the
+country, and there among the birds and the flowers she could study all
+day long, and even try for a degree with Honours. Her father would be
+saved from the cigar factory, her sister from exile amid strangers,
+her mother should have a servant, her brother the wife he coveted. All
+her Spitalfields circle had speculated through Sugarman, not without
+encouraging hits. She smiled as she remembered the vendor of slippers
+who had won sixty pounds and was so puffed up that when his wife
+stopped in the street to speak to a shabby acquaintance, he cried
+vehemently, "Betsey, Betsey, do learn to behave according to your
+station."
+
+"You don't believe me?" said Sugarman, misapprehending her smile. "You
+can read it all for yourself. A hundred thousand marks, so sure my
+little Nehemiah shall see rejoicings. Look!"
+
+But Salvina waved back the thin rustling papers with their exotic
+Continental flavour. "Gambling is wicked," she said.
+
+Sugarman was incensed. "Me in a wicked business! Why, I know more
+Talmud than anybody in London, and can be called up the Law as
+_Morenu_! You'll say marrying is wicked, next. But they are both State
+Institutions. England is the only country in the world without a
+lotte_ree_."
+
+Salvina wavered, but her instinct was repugnant to money that did not
+accumulate itself by slow, painful economies, and her multifarious
+reading had made the word "Speculation" a prism of glittering vice.
+
+"I daresay _you_ think it's not wrong," she said, "and I apologize if
+I hurt your feelings. But don't you see how you go about unsettling
+people?"
+
+"Me! Why, I settle them! And if you'd only give me your sister's
+address--"
+
+His persistency played upon Salvina's delicate conscience; made her
+feel she must not refuse the poor man everything. Besides, the grand
+address would choke him off.
+
+"She's at Bedford Square, with the Samuelsons."
+
+"Ah, I know. Two daughters, Lily and Mabel," and Sugarman instead of
+being impressed nodded his head, as if even the Samuelsons were
+mortal and marriageable.
+
+"Yes, my sister is their governess and companion. But you'll only
+waste your time."
+
+"You think so?" he said triumphantly. "Look at this likeness!"
+
+And he drew out the photograph of a coarse-faced middle-aged man, with
+a jaunty flower in his frock-coat and a prosperous abdomen supporting
+a heavily trinketed watch-chain. Underneath swaggered the signature,
+"Yours truly, Moss M. Rosenstein."
+
+Salvina shuddered: "He was wise to send _you_," she said slyly.
+
+"Is it not so? Ah, and your brother, too, would have done better to
+come to me instead of falling in love with a girl with a hundred
+pounds. But I bear your family no grudge, you see. Perhaps it is not
+too late yet. Tell Lazarus that if he should come to break with the
+Jonases, there are better fish in the sea--gold fish, too. Good-bye.
+We shall both dance at your sister's wedding." And he tripped off.
+
+Salvina resumed her Greek, but the grotesque aorists could not hold
+her attention. She was hungry and worn out, and even when her mother
+came, it would be some time before her evening meal could be prepared.
+She felt she must sit down, if only on her doorsteps, but their
+whiteness was inordinately marred as by many dirty boots--she wondered
+whose and why--and she had to content herself with leaning against
+the stucco balustrade. And gradually as the summer twilight faded, the
+grammar dropped in her hand, and Salvina fell a-dreaming.
+
+What did she dream of, this Board School drudge, whose pasty face was
+craned curiously forward on sloping shoulders? Was it of the enchanted
+land of love of which Sugarman had reminded her, but over whose roses
+he had tramped so grossly? Alas! Sugarman himself had never thought of
+her as a client for any but the lottery section of his business.
+Within, she was one glow of eager romance, of honour, of quixotic
+duty, but no ray of this pierced without to give a sparkle to the eye,
+a colour to the cheek. No faintest dash of coquetry betrayed the
+yearning of the soul or gave grace to walk or gesture: her dress was
+merely a tidy covering. Her exquisite sensibility found bodily
+expression only as a clumsy shyness.
+
+Poor Salvina!
+
+
+II
+
+At last the welcome jar and creak of the gate awoke her.
+
+"Why, I thought you knew I had to go to the Borough!" began a fretful
+voice, forestalling reproach, and a buxom woman resplendent with black
+satin and much jewellery came up the tiny garden-path.
+
+"It doesn't matter, mother--I haven't been waiting long."
+
+"Well, you know how difficult it is to get a 'bus in this weather--at
+least if you want to sit outside, and it always makes my head ache
+frightfully to go inside--I'm not strong and young like you--and such
+a long way, I had to change at the Bank, and I made sure you'd get
+something to eat at one of the girls', and go straight to the People's
+Palace."
+
+Still muttering, Mrs. Brill produced a key, and after some fumbling
+threw open the door. Both made a step within, then both stopped,
+aghast.
+
+"It's the wrong house," thought Salvina confusedly, conscious of her
+power of making such mistakes.
+
+"_Kisshuf_ (witchcraft)!" whispered her mother, terrified into her
+native idiom. The passage lay before them, entirely bare of all its
+familiar colour and furniture: the framed engravings depicting the
+trials of William Lord Russell, in the Old Bailey, and Earl Stafford
+in Westminster Hall, the flower-pots on the hall table, the proudly
+purchased hat-rack, the metal umbrella-stand, all gone! And beyond,
+facing them, lay the parlour, an equally forlorn vacancy striking like
+a blast of chilly wind through its wide-open door.
+
+"Thieves!" cried Mrs. Brill, reverting from the supernatural and the
+Yiddish. "Murder! I'm ruined! They've stolen my house!"
+
+"Hush! Hush!" said Salvina, strung to calm by her mother's
+incoherence. "Let us see first what has really happened."
+
+"Happened! Haven't you got eyes in your head? All the fruit of my
+years of toil!" And Mrs. Brill wrung her jewelled hands. "Your father
+would have me call on those Sperlings, though I told him they'd be
+glad to dance on my tomb. And why didn't Lazarus stay at home?"
+
+"You know he has to be out looking for work."
+
+"And my gilt clock that I trembled even to wind up, and the big vase
+with the picture on it, and my antimacassars, and my beautiful couch
+that nobody had ever sat upon! Oh my God, oh my God!"
+
+Leaving her mother moaning out a complete inventory in the passage,
+Salvina advanced into the violated parlour. It was an aching void. On
+the bare mantelpiece, just where the gilt clock had announced a
+perpetual half-past two, gleamed an unstamped letter. She took it up
+wonderingly. It was in her father's schoolboyish hand, addressed to
+her mother. She opened it, as usual, for Mrs. Brill did not even know
+the alphabet, and refused steadily to make its acquaintance, to the
+ironic humiliation of the Board School teacher.
+
+    "You would not let me give you _Get_," [ran the letter
+    abruptly], "so you have only yourself to blame. I have left the
+    clothes in the bed-rooms, but what is mine is mine. Good-bye.
+
+                                                  "MICHAEL BRILL.
+
+    "P.S.--Don't try to find me at the factory. I have left."
+
+Salvina steadied herself against the mantelpiece till the room should
+have finished reeling round. _Get!_ Her father had wanted to put away
+her mother! Divorce, departure, devastation--what strange things were
+these, come to wreck a prosperity so slowly built up!
+
+"Quick, Salvina, there goes a policeman!" came her mother's cry.
+
+The room stood still suddenly. "Hush, hush, mother," Salvina said
+imperiously. "There's no thief!" She ran back into the passage, the
+letter in her hand.
+
+A fierce flame of intelligence leapt into the woman's face. "Ah, it's
+your father!" she cried. "I knew it, I knew he'd go after that painted
+widow, just because she has a little money, a black curse on her
+bones. Oh! oh! God in heaven! To bring such shame on me, for the sake
+of a saucy-nosed slut whose sister sold ironmongery in Petticoat
+Lane--a low lot, one and all, and not fit to wipe my shoes on, even
+when she was respectable, and this is what you call a father, Salvina!
+Oh my God, my God!"
+
+Salvina was by this time dazed, yet she had a gleam of consciousness
+left with which to register this culminating destruction of all her
+social landmarks. What! That monstrous wickedness of marquises and
+epauletted officers which hovered vaguely in the shadow-land of novels
+and plays had tumbled with a bang into real life; had fallen not even
+into its natural gilded atmosphere, but through the amulet-guarded
+doors of a respectable Jewish family in the heart of a Hackney
+Terrace, amid the horsehair couches and deal tables of homely reality.
+Nay--more sordid than the romantic wickedness of shadowland--it had
+even removed those couches and tables! And oddly blent with this
+tossing chaos of new thought in Salvina's romantic brain surged up
+another thought, no less new and startling. Her father and mother had
+once loved each other! They, too, had dawned upon each other, fairy
+prince and fairy princess; had laid in each other's hand that warm
+touch of trust and readiness to live and die for each other. It was
+very wonderful, and she almost forgot their hostile relationship in a
+rapid back-glance upon the years in which they had lived in mutual
+love before her unsuspecting eyes. Their prosaic bickering selves were
+transfigured: her vivid imagination threw off the damage of the years,
+saw her coarse, red-cheeked father and her too plump mother as the
+idyllic figures on the lamented parlour vase. And when her thought
+struggled painfully back to the actual moment, it was with a new
+concrete sense of its tragic intensity.
+
+"O mother, mother!" she cried, as she threw her arms round her. The
+Greek grammar and the letter fell unregarded to the floor.
+
+The fountain of Mrs. Brill's wrongs leapt higher at the sympathy. "And
+I could have had half-a-dozen young men! The boils of Egypt be upon
+him! Time after time I said, 'No,' though the Shadchan bewitched my
+parents into believing that Michael was an angel without wings."
+
+"But you also thought father an angel," Salvina pleaded.
+
+"Yes; and now he _has_ got wings," said Mrs. Brill savagely.
+
+Salvina's tears began to ooze out. Poor swain and shepherdess on the
+parlour vase! Was this, then, how idylls ended? "Perhaps he'll come
+back," she murmured.
+
+The wife snorted viciously. "And my furniture? The beautiful furniture
+I toiled and scraped for, that he always grumbled at, though I saved
+it out of the housekeeping money, without its costing _him_ a penny,
+and no man in London had better meals,--hot meat every day and fish
+for Sabbath, even when plaice were eightpence a pound,--and no
+servant--every scrap of work done with my own two hands! Now he carts
+everything away as if it were his."
+
+"I suppose it is by law," Salvina said mildly.
+
+"Law! I'll have the law on him."
+
+"Oh, no, mother!" and Salvina shuddered. "Besides, he has left our
+clothes."
+
+Mrs. Brill's eye lit up. "I see no clothes."
+
+"In our rooms. The letter says so."
+
+"And you still believe what he says?" She began to mount the stairs.
+"I am sure he packed in my Paisley shawl while he was about it. It is
+fortunate I wore all my jewellery. And you always say I put on too
+much!"
+
+Sustained by this unanswerable vindication of her past policy, Mrs.
+Brill ascended the stairs without further wailing.
+
+Salvina, whose sense of romance never exalted her above the practical,
+remembered now that her brother Lazarus might come back at any moment
+clamorously hungry. This pinned her to the concrete moment. How to get
+him some supper! And her mother, too, must be faint and tired. She ran
+into the kitchen, and found enough odds and ends left to make a meal,
+and even a cracked teapot and a few coarse cups not worth carrying
+away; and, with a sense of Robinson Crusoe adventure, she extracted
+light, heat, and cheerfulness from the obedient gas branch, which took
+on the air of a case of precious goods not washed away in the
+household wreck. When her mother at last came down, cataloguing the
+wardrobe salvage in picturesque Yiddish, Salvina stopped her curses
+with hot tea. They both drank, leaning against the kitchen-dresser,
+which served for a table for the cups.
+
+Salvina's Crusoe excitement increased when her mother asked her where
+they were to sleep, seeing that even the beds had been spirited away.
+
+"I have five shillings in my purse; I'll go out and buy a cheap
+mattress. But then there's Lazarus! Oh dear!"
+
+"Lazarus has his own bed. Yes, yes, thank God, we'll be able to borrow
+his wedding furniture."
+
+"But it's all stored away in the Jonas's attic."
+
+A smart rat-tat at the door denoted the inopportune return of Lazarus
+himself. Salvina darted upstairs to let him in and break the shock. He
+was a slimmer and more elegant edition of his father, a year older
+than Kitty, and taller than Salvina by a jaunty head and shoulders.
+
+"And why isn't the hall lamp alight?" he queried, as her white face
+showed itself in the dusky door-slit. "It looks so beastly shabby. The
+only light's in the kitchen; I daresay you and the mater are pigging
+there again. Why can't you live up to your position?"
+
+The unexpected reproach broke her down. "We have no position any
+more," she sobbed out. And all the long years of paralyzing economies
+swept back to her memory, all the painful progress--accelerated by her
+growing salary--from the Hounsditch apartments to the bow-windows and
+gas-chandeliers of Hackney!
+
+"What do you mean? What is the matter? Speak, you little fool! Don't
+cry." He came across the threshold and shook her roughly.
+
+"Father's run away with the furniture and some woman," she explained
+chokingly.
+
+"The devil!" The smart cane slipped from his fingers and he
+maintained his cigar in his mouth with difficulty. "Do you mean to say
+the old man has gone and--the beastly brute! The selfish hypocrite!
+But how could he get the furniture?"
+
+"He made mother go on a visit to the Borough."
+
+"The old fox! That's your religious chaps. I'll go and give 'em both
+brimstone. Where are they?"
+
+"I don't know where--but you must not--it is all too horrible. There's
+nothing even to sleep on. We thought of borrowing your furniture!"
+
+"What! And give the whole thing away to the Jonases--and lose Rhoda,
+perhaps. Good heavens, Sally. Don't be so beastly selfish. Think of
+the disgrace, if we can't cover it up."
+
+"The disgrace is for father, not for you."
+
+"Don't be an idiot. Old Jonas looked down on us enough already, and if
+it hadn't been for Kitty's calling on him in the Samuelsons' carriage,
+he might never have consented to the engagement."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Salvina, melted afresh by this new aspect. "My poor
+Lazarus!" and she gazed dolefully at the handsome youth who had
+divided with Kitty the good looks of the family. "But still," she
+added consolingly, "you couldn't have married for a long time,
+anyhow."
+
+"I don't know so much. I had a very promising interview this afternoon
+with the manager of Granders Brothers, the big sponge-people."
+
+"But you don't understand travelling in sponge."
+
+"Pooh! Travelling's travelling. There's nothing to understand.
+Whatever the article is, you just tell lies about it."
+
+"Oh, Lazarus!"
+
+"Don't make eyes--you ain't pretty enough. What do you know of the
+world, you who live mewed up in a Board School? I daresay you believe
+all the rot you have to tell the little girls."
+
+Her brother's shot made a wound he had not intended. Salvina was at
+last reminded of her own relation to the sordid tragedy, of what the
+other teachers would think, ay, even the little girls, so sharp in all
+that did not concern school-learning. Would her pupils have any
+inkling of the cloud on teacher's home? Ah, her brother was right.
+This disgrace besplashed them all, and she saw herself confusedly as a
+tainted figure holding forth on honour and duty to rows of white
+pinafores.
+
+
+III
+
+Meantime, her mother had toiled up--her jewels glittering curiously in
+the dusk--and now poured herself out to the fresh auditor in a
+breathless wail; recapitulated her long years of devotion and the
+abstracted contents of the house. But Lazarus soon wearied of the
+inventory of her virtues and furniture.
+
+"What's the use of crying over spilt milk?" he said. "You must get a
+new jug."
+
+"A new jug! And what about the basin and the coffee-pot and the
+saucepans and the plates! And my new blue dish with the
+willow-pattern. Oh, my God!"
+
+"Don't be so stupid."
+
+"She's a little dazed, Lazarus, dear. Have patience with her. Lazarus
+says it's no use crying and letting the neighbours hear you: we must
+make the best of a bad job, and cover it up."
+
+"You'll soon cover me up. I won't need my clothes then--only a clean
+shroud. After twenty years--he wipes his mouth and he goes away! Tear
+the rent in your garments, children mine, your mother is dead."
+
+"How can any one have patience with her?" cried Lazarus. "One would
+think it was such a treat for her to live with father. Judging by the
+rows you've had, mother, you ought to be thankful to be rid of him."
+
+"I _am_ thankful," she retorted hysterically. "Who said I wasn't? A
+grumbling, grunting pig, who grudged me my horsehair couch because he
+couldn't sit on it. Well, let him squat on it now with his lady. I
+don't care. All my enemies will pity me, will they? If they only knew
+how glad I was!" and she broke into more sobs.
+
+"Come, mother; come downstairs, Lazarus: don't let us stay up in the
+dark."
+
+"Not me," said Lazarus. "I'm not going down to hear this all over
+again. Besides, where am I to sit or to sleep? I must go to an hotel."
+He struck a match to relight his cigar and it flared weirdly upon the
+tear-smudged female faces. "Got any money, Salvina," he said more
+gently.
+
+"Only five shillings."
+
+"Well, I daresay I can manage on that. Good-night, mother, don't take
+on so, it'll be all the same a hundred years hence." He opened the
+door; then paused with his hand on the knob, and said awkwardly: "I
+suppose you'll manage to find something to sleep on just for
+to-night."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Salvina reassuringly; "we'll manage. Don't worry,
+dear."
+
+"I'll be in the first thing in the morning. We'll have a council of
+war. Good-night. It _is_ a beastly mean trick," and he went out
+meditatively.
+
+When he was gone, Salvina remembered that the five shillings were for
+the mattress. But she further bethought herself that the sum would
+scarcely have sufficed even for a straw mattress, and that the little
+gold ring Kitty had given her when she matriculated would fetch more.
+Her mother's jewellery must be left sacred; the poor creature was
+smarting enough from the sense of loss. Bidding her sit on the stairs
+till she returned, she hastened into Mare Street, the great Hackney
+highway, christened "The Devil's Mile" by the Salvation Army. Early
+experience had familiarized her with the process of pawning, but now
+she slipped furtively into the first pawn-shop and did not stay to
+make a good bargain. She spent on a telegram to the central
+post-office sixpence of the proceeds, so that she might be able to
+draw out without delay the few pounds she had laid by for her summer
+holiday. While she was purchasing the mattress at the garishly
+illuminated furniture store, the words "Hire System" caught her eye,
+and seemed a providential solution of the position. She broached
+negotiations for the furnishing of a bed-room and a kitchen, minus
+carpet and oilcloth (for these would not fit the cheaper apartments
+into which they would now have to revert), but she found there were
+tedious formalities to be gone through, and that her own signature
+would be invalid, as she was legally a child. However, she was able to
+secure the porterage of the mattress at once, and, followed by a
+bending Atlas, she hurried back to her mother--who sat on her stair,
+moaning--and diverted her from her griefs by teaching her to sign her
+name, in view of the legal exigencies of the morrow. It was a curious
+wind-up to her day's teaching. Poor Mrs. Brill's obstinate objection
+to education had to give way at last under such unexpected conditions,
+but she insisted on the shortest possible spelling, and so the uncouth
+"Esther Brills" pencilled at the top of the sheet were exchanged for
+more flowing "E. Brills" lower down. Even then, the good woman took
+the thing as a pictorial flourish, or a section of a map, and
+disdained acquaintance with the constituent letters, so that her
+progress in learning remained only nominal.
+
+Then the "infant" at law put her mother to bed and lay down beside her
+on the mattress, both in their clothes for lack of blankets. The
+mother soon dozed off, but the "child" lay turning from side to side.
+The pressure of her little tasks had dulled the edge of emotion, but
+now, in the silence of the night, the whole tragic position came back
+with all its sordid romanticism, its pathetic meanness; and when at
+last she slept, its obsession lay heavy upon her dreams, and she sat
+at her examination desk in the London University, striving horridly to
+recall the irregularities of Greek verbs, and to set them down with a
+pen that could never dip up any ink, while the inexorable hands of the
+clock went round, and her father, in the coveted Bachelor's gown,
+waited to spirit away her desk and seat as soon as the hour should
+strike.
+
+
+IV
+
+The next morning Salvina should have awakened with a sense through all
+her bones that it was Friday--the last day of the school-week,
+harbinger of such blessed rest that the mere expectation of it was
+also a rest. Alas! she woke from the nightmare of sleep to the
+nightmare of reality, and the week-end meant only time to sound the
+horror of the new situation.
+
+In one point alone, Friday remained a consolation. Only one day to
+face her fellow-teachers and her children, and then two days for
+hiding from the world with her pain, for preparing to face it again;
+to say nothing of the leisure for practical recuperation of the home.
+
+Lazarus turned up so late that the council of war was of the briefest
+and held almost on the door-step, for Salvina must be in school by
+nine. The thought of staying away--even in this crisis--simply did not
+occur to her.
+
+She arranged that Lazarus was to meet her in the city after morning
+school, when she would have drawn her savings from the post-office:
+more than enough for the advance on the furniture, which must be
+delivered that very afternoon. Lazarus had been for telegraphing at
+once to Kitty for assistance, but Salvina put her foot down.
+
+"Let us not frighten her--I will go and break it to her on Sunday
+afternoon. You know she can't spare any money; it is as much as she
+can do to dress up to the position."
+
+"I do hope the scandal won't spread," said Lazarus gloomily. "It would
+be a nice thing if she lost the position and fell back on our hands."
+
+"Yes, he has ruined all my children," sobbed Mrs. Brill, breaking out
+afresh. "But what did he care? Ah, if it wasn't for me, you would have
+been in the workhouse long ago."
+
+"Well then, go and do your Sabbath marketing or else we'll have to go
+there now," said Lazarus not unkindly; "the tradespeople will give you
+credit."
+
+"Rather! They know _I_ never ran away."
+
+"And mind, mother," said Salvina as she snatched up her Greek grammar,
+"mind the fried fish is as good as usual; we're a long way from the
+workhouse yet! And if you're not in to-night, Lazarus," she whispered
+as she ran off, "I'll never forgive you."
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" said Lazarus, looking after the awkward little
+figure, flying to catch the 8.21.
+
+"Yes, but I've no frying pan!" Mrs. Brill called after her.
+
+"You'll have it by this afternoon," Salvina called back reassuringly.
+
+The sun was already strong, the train packed, and Salvina stood so
+jammed in that she could scarcely hold her grammar open, and the
+irregular verbs danced before her eyes even more than their strange
+moods and tenses warranted. At the school her thrilling consciousness
+of her domestic tragedy interposed some strange veil between her and
+her fellow-teachers, and they seemed to stand away from her, enveloped
+in another atmosphere. She heard herself teaching--five elevens are
+fifty-five--and her own self seemed to stand away from her, too. She
+noted without protest two of the girls pulling each other's hair in
+some far-off hazy world, and the answering drone of the class--five
+elevens are fifty-five--seemed like the peaceful buzzing of a
+gigantic blue-bottle on a drowsy afternoon. It occurred to her
+suddenly that she was fifty-five years old, and when Miss Rolver, the
+Christian head-mistress, came into her room, Salvina had an unexpected
+feeling of advantage in life-experience over this desiccated specimen
+of femininity, redolent of time-tables, record-parchments, foolscap,
+and clean blotting-paper. Outside all this scheduled world pulsed a
+large irregular life of flesh and blood; all the primitive verbs in
+every language were irregular, it suddenly flashed upon her, and she
+had an instant of vivifying insight into the Greek language she had
+unquestioningly accepted as "dead"; saw Grecian men and women
+breathing their thoughts and passions--even expressing the shape of
+their throats and lips--through these erratic aorists.
+
+"You look tired, dear," said the head-mistress.
+
+"It's the heat," Salvina murmured.
+
+"Never mind; the summer holidays will soon be here."
+
+It sounded a mockery. Summer holidays would no longer mean Ramsgate,
+and delicious days of study on sunny cliffs, with the relaxation of
+novels and poems. These slowly achieved luxuries of the last two years
+were impossible for this year at least. And this thought of being
+penned up in London during the dog days oppressed her: she felt
+choking. Her next sensation was of water sprinkling on her face, and
+of Miss Rolver's kind anxious voice asking her if she felt better.
+Instead of replying, Salvina wondered in a clouded way where the
+school-managers were.
+
+Even her naive mind had been struck at last by the coincidence that
+whenever, after a managers' meeting, these omnipotent ladies and
+gentlemen from a higher world strolled through the school, Miss Rolver
+happened to be discovered in an interesting attitude. If it was the
+play-hour, she would be--for this occasion only--in the playground
+leading the games, surrounded by clamorously affectionate little ones.
+If it was working-time, she was found as a human island amid a sea of
+sewing: billows of pinafores and aprons heaved tumultuously around
+her. Or, with a large air of angelic motherhood, she would be tying up
+some child's bruised finger. Her greatest invention--so it had
+appeared to the scrupulous Salvina--was the stray, starved,
+half-frozen, sweet little kitten, lapping up milk from a saucer before
+a ruddy blazing fire at the very instant of the great personages'
+passage. How they had beamed, one and all, at the touching sight.
+
+Hence it was that Salvina's dazed vision now sought vaguely for the
+school-managers. But in another instant she realized that this present
+solicitude was not for another but for herself, and that it had
+nothing of the theatrical. A remorseful pang of conscience added to
+her pains. She said tremulously that she felt better and was gently
+chided for over-study and admonished to go home and rest.
+
+"Oh, no, I am all right now," she responded instinctively.
+
+"But I'll take your class," Miss Rolver insisted, and Salvina found
+herself wandering outside in the free sunshine, with a sense of the
+forbidden. An acute consciousness of Board School classes droning
+dutifully all over London made the streets at that hour strange and
+almost sinful. She went to the post-office and drew out as much of her
+money as red tape allowed, and while wandering about in Whitechapel
+waiting for the hour of her rendezvous with Lazarus, she had time to
+purchase a coarse but white table-cloth, a plush cover embroidered
+with "Jerusalem" in Hebrew, and a gilt goblet. These were for the
+Friday-night table.
+
+
+V
+
+But the Sabbath brought no peace. Though miracles were wrought in that
+afternoon, and, except that it was laid in the kitchen, the Sabbath
+table had all its immemorial air, with the consecration cup, the long
+plaited loaves under the "Jerusalem" cover, and the dish of fried
+fish that had grown to seem no less religious; yet there could be no
+glossing over the absence of the gross-paunched paternal figure that
+had so unctuously presided over the ceremony. His vacant place held
+all the emptiness of death, and all the fulness of retrospective
+profanation. How like he was to Moss M. Rosenstein, Salvina thought
+suddenly. Lazarus had ignored the gilt goblet and the shilling bottle
+of claret, and was helping himself from the coffee-pot, when his
+mother cried bitterly: "What! are we to eat like the animals?"
+
+"Oh bother!" Lazarus exclaimed. "You know I hate all these mummeries.
+I wouldn't say if they really made people good. But you see for
+yourself--"
+
+"Oh, but you must say _Kiddush_, Lazarus," said Salvina, half
+pleadingly, half peremptorily. She fetched the prayer-book and
+Lazarus, grumbling inarticulately, took the head of the table, and
+stumbled through the prayer, thanking God for having chosen and
+sanctified Israel above all nations, and in love and favour given it
+the holy Sabbath as an inheritance.
+
+But oh! how tamely the words sounded, how void of that melodious
+devotion thrilling through the joyous roulades of the father. It was a
+sort of symbol of the mutilated home, and thus Salvina felt it. And
+she remembered the last ceremony at which her father had
+presided--that of the Separation when the Sabbath faded into
+work-day--the ceremony of Division between the Holy and the Profane,
+and she shivered to think it had indeed marked for the unhappy man the
+line of demarcation.
+
+"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hallowest the Sabbath,"
+Lazarus was mumbling, and in another instant he was awkwardly
+distributing the ritual morsels of bread.
+
+But the mother could not swallow hers, for indignant imaginings of the
+rival Sabbath board. "May _her_ morsel choke her!" she cried, and
+nearly was choked by her own.
+
+"Oh, mother, do not mention her--neither her nor him.--_Never any
+more_," said Salvina. And again the new note of peremptoriness rang in
+her voice, and her mother stopped suddenly short like a scolded child.
+
+"Will you have plaice or sole, mother?" Salvina went on, her voice
+changing to a caress.
+
+"I can't eat, Salvina. Don't ask me."
+
+"But you must eat." And Salvina calmly helped her to fish and to
+coffee and put in the lumps of sugar; and the mother ate and drank
+with equal calm, as if hypnotized.
+
+All through the meal Salvina's mind kept swinging betwixt the past and
+the future. Strange odds and ends of scenes came up in which her
+father figured, and her old and new conceptions of him interplayed
+bewilderingly. Her sudden vision of him as Moss M. Rosenstein
+persisted, and could only be laid by concentrating her thoughts on the
+early days when he used to take herself and Kitty to Victoria Park,
+carrying her in his arms when she was tired. But it made her cry to
+see that little tired happy figure cuddling the trusted giant, and
+she had to jump for refuge into the future.
+
+They must move back to Hounsditch. She must give up the idea of
+becoming a "Bachelor": the hours of evening study must now be devoted
+to teaching others. Her University distinction was already great
+enough to give her an unusual chance of pupils, while her "Yiddish,"
+sucked in with her mother's milk, had become exceptionally good German
+under study. She might hope for as much as two shillings an hour and
+thus earn a whole sovereign extra per week.
+
+And over this poor helpless blighted mother, she would watch as over a
+child. All the maternal instinct in her awoke under the stress of this
+curiously inverted position. Her remorseful memory summoned a
+penitential procession of bygone petulances. Never again would she be
+cross or hasty with this ill-starred heroine. Yes, her mother was
+become a figure of romance to her, as well as a nursling. This woman,
+whose prosaic humours she had so often fretted under, was in truth a
+woman who had lived and loved. She had ceased to be a mere mother; a
+large being who presided over one's childhood. And this imaginative
+insight, she noted with surprise, would never have been hers but for
+her father's desertion: like one who realizes the virtues of a corpse,
+she had waited till love was slain to perceive its fragrance.
+
+A postman's knock, as the meal was finished, made her heart give a
+corresponding pit-a-pat, and she turned quite faint. All her nerves
+seemed to be on the rack, expecting new sensational developments. The
+letter was for Lazarus.
+
+"Ah, you abomination!" cried his mother, as he tore open the envelope.
+He did not pause to defend his Sabbath breaking, but cried joyfully:
+"What did I tell you? Granders Brothers offer me travelling expenses
+and a commission!"
+
+"Oh, thank God, thank God!" ejaculated his mother, her eyes raised
+piously. He took up his hat. "Where are you going?" said Mrs. Brill.
+
+"To see Rhoda of course. Don't you think she's as anxious about it as
+you?"
+
+Salvina's eyes were full of sympathetic tears: "Yes, yes, let him go,
+mother."
+
+
+VI
+
+On the Sunday afternoon, feeling much better for the Saturday rest,
+and scrupulously gloved, shod, and robed in deference to the grandeur
+of her destination, Salvina boarded an omnibus, and after a tedious
+journey, involving a walk at the end, she arrived at the West End
+square in which her sister bloomed as governess and companion in a
+newly enriched Jewish family. She stood an instant in the porch to
+compose herself for the tragic task before her and felt in her pocket
+to be sure she had not lost the little bottle of smelling-salts with
+which she had considerately armed herself, in anticipation of a
+failure of Kitty's nerves. Then she knocked timidly at the door, which
+was opened by a speckless boy in buttons, who also opened up to her
+imagination endless vistas of aristocratic association. His impressive
+formality, as of the priest of a shrine, seemed untinged by any
+remembrance that on her one previous visit she had been made free of
+the holy of holies. But perhaps it was not the same boy. He was indeed
+less a boy to her than a row of buttons, and less a row of buttons
+than a symbol of all the elegances and opulences in which Kitty moved
+as to the manner born; the elaborate ritual of the toilette, the
+sacramental shaving of poodles, the mysterious panoramic dinners in
+which one had to be constantly aware of the appropriate fork.
+
+Salvina had not waited a minute in the imposing hall, ere a radiant
+belle flew down the stairs--with a vivacity that troubled the
+sacro-sanct atmosphere--and caught Salvina in her arms.
+
+"Oh, you dear Sally! I am _so_ glad to see you," and a fusillade of
+kisses accompanied the hug. "Whatever brings you here? Oh, and such a
+dowdy frock! You needn't flush up so, silly little child; nobody
+expects you to know how to dress like us ignoramuses, and it doesn't
+matter to-day, there's no one to see you, for they're all out driving,
+and I'm lying down with a headache."
+
+"Poor Kitty. But then you ought to be out driving." She was divided
+between sympathy for the sufferer, and admiration of the finished,
+fine ladyhood implied in indifference to the chance of a
+carriage-drive.
+
+"Yes, but I've so many letters to write, and they don't really drive
+on Sundays, just stop at house after house, and not good houses
+either. It is such a bore. They've never shaken off the society they
+had before they made their money."
+
+"Well, but that's rather nice of them."
+
+"Perhaps, but not nice for me. But come upstairs and you shall have
+some tea."
+
+Salvina mounted the broad staircase with a reverence attuned to her
+own hushed footfalls, but her task of breaking the news to her sister
+weighed the heavier upon her for all this subdued magnificence. It
+seemed almost profane to bring the squalid episodes of Hackney into
+this atmosphere, appropriate indeed to the sinful romances of
+marquises and epauletted officers, but wholly out of accord with
+surreptitious furniture vans. What a blow to poor Kitty the news would
+be! She dallied weakly, till the tea was brought by a powdered
+footman. Then she had an ingenious idea for a little shock to lead up
+to a greater. She would say they were going to move. But as she took
+off her white glove not to sully it with the tea and cake, Kitty
+cried: "Why what have you done with my ring?"
+
+Here was an excellent natural opening, but Salvina was taken too much
+aback to avail herself of it, especially as the artificial opening
+preoccupied her mind. "Oh, your ring's all right," she said hastily;
+"I came to tell you we are going to move."
+
+Kitty clapped her hands. "Ah! so you've taken my advice at last! I'm
+so glad. It wasn't nice for me to stay with you at that dingy hole,
+even for a day or two a year. Mustn't mother be pleased!"
+
+Salvina bit her lip. Her task was now heavier than ever.
+
+"No, mother isn't pleased. She is crying about it."
+
+"Crying? Disgusting. How she still hankers after Spitalfields and the
+Lane!"
+
+"She isn't crying for that, but because father won't go with us."
+
+"Oh, I have no patience with father. He hasn't a soul above red
+herrings and potatoes."
+
+"Oh, yes he has. He has left us."
+
+"What! Left you?" Kitty's pretty eyes opened wide. "Because he won't
+move to a better house!"
+
+"No, we are moving to a worse house because he has moved to a better."
+
+"What _are_ you talking about? Is it a joke? A riddle? I give it up."
+
+"Father--can't you guess, Kitty?--father has gone away. There is some
+other woman."
+
+"No?" gasped Kitty. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!" and she shook with long peals
+of silvery laughter. "Well, of all the funny things! Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"Funny!" and Salvina looked at her sternly.
+
+"What, don't you see the humour of it? Father turning into the hero of
+a novelette. Romance and red herrings! Passion and potatoes! Ha! ha!
+ha!"
+
+"If you had seen the havoc it wrought, you wouldn't have had the heart
+to laugh."
+
+"Oh well, mother was crying. That I understand. But that's nothing new
+for her. She'd cry just as much if he were there. The average rainfall
+is--how many inches?"
+
+Salvina's face was stern and white. "A mother's tears are sacred," she
+said in low but firm protest.
+
+"Oh, dear me, Sally, I always forget you have no sense of humour.
+Well, what are you going to do about it?" and her own sense of humour
+continued to twitch and dimple the corners of her pretty mouth.
+
+"I told you. We cannot afford to keep up the house--we must go back to
+apartments in Spitalfields."
+
+Instantly Kitty's face grew as serious as Salvina's. "Oh, nonsense!"
+she said instinctively. The thought of her family returning to the
+discarded shell of apartments was humiliating; her own personality
+seemed being dragged back.
+
+"We can't pay the rent. We must give a quarter's notice at once."
+
+"Absurd! You'll only save a few shillings a week. Why can't you let
+apartments yourselves? At least you would preserve a decent
+appearance."
+
+"Is it worth while having the responsibility of the rent? There's only
+mother and I--we shan't need a house."
+
+"But there's Lazarus!"
+
+"He'll have a place of his own. He'll marry before our notice
+expires."
+
+"That same Jonas girl?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ridiculous. Small tradespeople, and dreadfully common, all the lot. I
+thought he'd got over his passion for that bold black creature who's
+been seen licking ice-cream out of a street-glass. To connect us with
+that family! Men are so selfish. But I still don't see why you can't
+remain as you are--let your drawing-room, say, furnished."
+
+"But it isn't furnished."
+
+"Not furnished. Why, I've sat on the couch myself."
+
+"Yes," said Salvina, a faint smile tempering her deadly gravity. "You
+are the only person who has ever done that. But there's no couch now.
+Father smuggled all the furniture away in a van."
+
+Again Kitty's silver laughter rang out unquenchably.
+
+"And you don't call that funny! Eloped with the chairs! I call it
+killing."
+
+"Yes, for mother," said Salvina.
+
+"Pooh! She'll outlive all of us. I wish you were as sure of getting
+the furniture back. She's not a bad mother, as mothers go, but you
+take her too seriously."
+
+"But, Kitty, consider the disgrace!"
+
+"The disgrace of having a wicked parent! I've endured for years the
+disgrace of having a poor one--and that's worse. My people--the
+Samuelsons, I mean--will never even hear of the pater's
+escapade--gossip keeps strictly to its station. And even if they do,
+they know already my family's under a cloud, and they have learned to
+accept me for myself."
+
+"Well, I am glad you don't mind," said Salvina, half-relieved,
+half-shocked.
+
+"I mind, if it makes you uncomfortable, you dear, silly Sally."
+
+"Oh, don't worry about me. I think I'll go back to mother, now."
+
+"Nonsense, why, we haven't begun to talk yet. Have another cup of tea.
+No? How's old Miss What's-a-name, your head-mistress? Any more frozen
+little kittens?"
+
+"She's very kind, really. I'm sorry I told you about the kitten. She
+let me go home early on Friday."
+
+"Why? To track the van?"
+
+"No; I wasn't very well."
+
+"Poor Sally!" and Kitty hugged her again. "I daresay you were more
+upset than mother."
+
+Tears came into Salvina's eyes at her sister's affectionateness. "Oh,
+no; but please don't talk about it any more. Father is dead to us
+now."
+
+"Then we must speak well of him."
+
+Salvina shuddered. "He is a wicked, heartless man, and mother and I
+never wish to see his face again."
+
+A cloud darkened Kitty's blonde brow.
+
+"Yes, but she isn't going to marry another man, I hope."
+
+"How can she?" said Salvina. "I wouldn't let her make any public
+scandal."
+
+"But aren't there funny laws in our religion--_Get_ and things like
+that--which dispense with the English courts."
+
+"I believe there are--I read about something of the kind in a
+novel--oh, yes! and father did offer mother _Get_ before he went off,
+so I suppose he considers his conscience clear."
+
+"Well, I rely upon you, Sally, to see that she doesn't marry or
+complicate things more. We don't want two wicked parents."
+
+"Of course not. But I am sure she doesn't dream of any new
+complications. You don't do her justice, Kitty. She's just
+broken-hearted; a perpetual widow, with worse than her husband's death
+to lament."
+
+"Yes--her lost furniture."
+
+"Oh, Kitty, do realize what it means."
+
+"I do, my dear. I do realize it--it's too killing. Passion in a
+Pantechnicon or Elopements economically conducted. By the day or hour.
+Oh, dear, oh, dear! But do promise me, Salvina, that you won't go back
+to Spitalfields."
+
+"I must be somewhere near the school, dearest. It will save
+train-fares."
+
+Kitty pouted. "Well, you know I couldn't drive up to see you any more;
+Hackney was all but outside the radius--the radius of respectability.
+I couldn't ask coachman to go to Spitalfields--unless I pretended to
+be slumming."
+
+"Well, pretend."
+
+"Oh, Salvina! I thought you were so conscientious. No, I'll have to
+come in a cab. You're quite sure you won't have some more tea? Oh, do,
+I insist. One piece of sugar?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, dear. By the way, has Sugarman the Shadchan been
+here?"
+
+"You mean--has he gone?"
+
+"Oh, poor Kitty! It was my fault. I let him know your address. I do
+hope the horrid man hasn't worried you."
+
+"Sugarman?"
+
+"No--Moss M. Rosenstein."
+
+"How pat you have his name! But why do you call him horrid?"
+
+Salvina stared. "But have you seen his photograph?"
+
+"Oh, you can't go by photographs. He has been here."
+
+"What! Sugarman had the impudence to bring him!"
+
+Kitty flushed slightly. "No, he called alone--this afternoon, just
+before you."
+
+"What impertinence! A brazen commercial courtship! You wouldn't
+receive him, of course."
+
+"Oh, well, I thought it would be fun just to look at him," said Kitty
+uneasily. "A commercial courtship, as you express it, is not
+unamusing."
+
+"I don't see anything amusing in it--it's an outrage."
+
+"I told you you had no sense of humour. I find it comic to be loved
+before first sight by a man who has no _h_'s, but only _l_'s, _s_'s,
+and _d_'s."
+
+"Sugarman says he did see you before loving you--noticed you before he
+went to the Cape. But you must have been a little girl then."
+
+"He didn't tell me that--that would have been even more romantic. He
+only said he fell in love with my photograph, as paraded by Sugarman."
+
+"Why, where should Sugarman get--"
+
+"You never know what mother's been up to," interrupted Kitty dryly.
+
+"Much more likely father."
+
+"What's the odds? Do have another piece of cake."
+
+"No, thank you. But what did you say to the man?"
+
+"The same as you. Don't stare so, you stupid dear. I said, No, thank
+you."
+
+"That I knew. Of course you couldn't possibly marry a bloated creature
+from the Cape. I meant, in what terms did you put him in his place?"
+
+"Oh, really," said Kitty, laughing, but without her recent merriment.
+"This is too prejudiced. I can't admit that mere residence in the Cape
+is a disqualification."
+
+"Oh, yes, it is. Why do they go there? Only to make money. A person
+whose one idea in life is money can't be a nice person."
+
+"But money isn't his one idea--now his one idea is matrimony. That is
+a joke. You ought to laugh."
+
+"It makes me cry to think that some nice girl may be driven into
+marrying him just for his money."
+
+"Poor man! So because of his money he is to be prevented from having a
+nice wife."
+
+Salvina was taken aback by this obverse view.
+
+"How is he ever to improve?" asked Kitty, pursuing her advantage.
+
+"Yes, that's true," Salvina admitted. "The best thing would be if some
+nice girl could _fall in love_ with him. But that doesn't make his
+methods less insulting. I wish all these Shadchans could be
+slaughtered off."
+
+"What a savage little chit! They often make as good marriages as are
+made in heaven."
+
+"Don't tease. You know you think as I do."
+
+Salvina took an affectionate leave of her sister, and walked down the
+soft staircase, confused but cheerful. The boy in buttons let her out.
+To do so he hurriedly put down the infant of the house who was riding
+on his shoulders. Such a touch of humanity in a row of buttons gave
+Salvina a new insight and a suspicion that even the powdered footman
+who brought the tea might have an emotion behind his gorgeous
+waistcoat. But the crowds fighting for the omnibuses that fine Sunday
+afternoon depressed her again. All the seats outside were packed, and
+it was only after standing a long time on the pavement that she
+squeezed her way into an inside seat. The stuffiness and jolting made
+her feel sick and dizzy. By a happy accident her fingers encountered
+the bottle of smelling-salts in her pocket, and, as she pulled it out
+eagerly, she remembered it had been intended for Kitty.
+
+
+VII
+
+Lazarus remained out late that evening, and, as he had forgotten to
+borrow the key, Salvina was sitting up for him.
+
+She utilized the time in preparing her sewing. She was making a
+night-dress with dozens and dozens of tiny tucks at the breast, all
+run by hand, and she was putting into the fine calico an artistic
+needlework absolutely futile, and with its perpetual "count two, miss
+two,"--infinitely trying to the eyes, especially by gas-light. The
+insane competition of the teachers, refining upon a Code in itself
+stupidly exacting, made the needlework the most distressing of all the
+tasks of the girl-teachers of that day. Salvina herself, with her
+morbid conscientiousness and desire to excel, underwent nightmares
+from the vexatiousness of learning how to cut holes so that they could
+not possibly be darned, and then darning them. When, at the
+head-centre, the lady demonstrator, armed with a Brobdingnagian
+whalebone needle, threaded with a bright red cord, executed
+herringboned fantasias on a canvas frame resembling a violin stand, it
+all looked easy enough. But when Salvina herself had to unravel a
+little piece of stockinette with a real needle and then fill in the
+hole so as to leave no trace of the crime, she was reduced to
+hysteria. Even the coloured threads with which she worked were a scant
+relief to the eye. And all this elaborate fancywork was entirely
+useless. At home Salvina was always at work, darning and mending;
+never was there a defter needle. Even the "hedge-tear-down" was neatly
+and expeditiously repaired, so long as she avoided the scholastic
+methods. "What's all this madness?" her mother had asked once, when
+she had tried the orthodox "Swiss darning" on a real article. And
+Mrs. Brill surveyed in amazement the back of the darn, which looked
+like Turkish towelling.
+
+To-night Salvina could not long continue her taxing work. Her eyes
+ached, and she at last resolved to rise early in the morning and
+proceed with the night-dress then. She turned the gas low, so as to
+reduce the bill, and it was as if she had turned down her own spirits,
+for a strange melancholy now took possession of her in the silent
+fuscous kitchen in the denuded house, and the emptiness of the other
+rooms seemed to strike a chill upon her senses. There were strange
+creaks and ghostly noises from all parts. She fixed her thought on the
+one furnished bed-room now occupied by her mother, as on a symbol of
+life and recuperation. But the uncanny noises went on; rustlings, and
+patterings, and Salvina felt that she might shriek and frighten her
+mother. She had almost resolved to turn up the gas, when the sound of
+a harmonium came muffled through the wall, and the softened voices of
+her Christian neighbours sang a Sunday hymn. Salvina ceased to be
+alone; and tears bathed her cheeks, as the crude melody lilted on. She
+felt absorbed in some great light and love, which was somehow both a
+present possession and a beckoning future that awaited her soul, and
+it was all mysteriously mixed with the blue skies of Victoria Park, in
+those far-off happy days when she had gone home on her father's
+shoulder; and with the blue skies of those enchanted sunlit lands of
+art and beauty, in which she would wander in the glorious future, when
+she should be making a hundred and fifty a year. Paris, Venice,
+Athens, Madrid--how the mellifluous syllables thrilled her! One by
+one, in her annual summer holiday, she and her mother might see them
+all. Meantime she saw them all in her imagination, bathed in the light
+that never was on sea or land, and it was not her mother with whom she
+journeyed but a noble young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted, who
+had imperceptibly slipped into her mother's place. Poor Salvina, with
+all her modesty, never saw herself as others saw her, never lost the
+dream of a romantic love. Lazarus's rat-tat recalled her to reality.
+
+"I know I'm late," he said, with apologetic defiance, "but it's no
+pleasure to sit in an empty house. _You_ may like it, but your tastes
+were always peculiar, and that straw mattress on the floor isn't
+inviting."
+
+"I am so sorry, dear. But then mother _must_ have the bed."
+
+"Well, it won't last long, thank Heaven. I made the Jonases consent to
+the marriage before the scandal gets to them."
+
+"So soon!" said Salvina with unconscious social satire.
+
+"Yes, and we'll have our honeymoon travelling for Granders Brothers.
+She's a good sort, is Rhoda, she doesn't mind gypsying. And that saves
+us from the expense of completing the furniture." He paused, and
+added awkwardly, "I'd lend it to you, only that might give us away."
+
+"But we don't need the furniture, dear, and don't you think they
+_ought_ to know--it is the rest of the world that it _doesn't_
+concern."
+
+"They are bound to know after the marriage. We've kept it dark so far,
+thanks to being in Hackney away from our old acquaintances and to
+mother's stinginess in not having encouraged new people to drop in.
+I've told the Jonases father was ill and might have to go away for his
+health. That'll pave the way to his absence from the wedding. It
+sounds quite grand. We'll send him to a German Spa."
+
+Salvina did not share her brother's respect for old Jonas, who bored
+her with trite quotations from English literature or the Hebrew Bible.
+He was in sooth a pompous ignoramus, acutely conscious of being an
+intellectual light in an ignorant society; a green shade he wore over
+his left eye added to his air of dignified distinction. Foreign Jews
+in especial were his scorn, and he seriously imagined that his own
+stereotyped phrases uttered with a good English pronunciation gave his
+conversation an immeasurable superiority over the most original
+thinking tainted by a German or Yiddish accent. Salvina's timid
+corrections of his English quotations made him angry and imperilled
+Lazarus's wooing. The young man was indeed the only member of the
+family who cultivated relations with the Jonases, though now it would
+be necessary to exchange perfunctory visits. Lazarus presided over
+these visits in fear and trembling, glossing over any slips as to the
+father, who was gone to the seaside for his health. On second
+thoughts, Lazarus had not ventured on a German Spa.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Ere the wedding-day arrived, Salvina had to go to the seaside.
+Clacton-on-Sea was the somewhat plebeian place and the school-fete the
+occasion. Salvina looked forward to it without much personal pleasure,
+because of the responsibilities involved, but it was a break in the
+pupil-teacher's monotonous round of teaching at the school and being
+taught at the Centres; and in the actual expedition the children's joy
+was contagious and made Salvina shed secret tears of sympathy. Arrived
+at the beach of the stony, treeless, popular watering-place, most of
+the happy little girls were instantly paddling in the surf with yells
+of delight, while the tamer sort dug sand-pits and erected castles.
+Salvina, whose office on this occasion was to assist an "assistant
+teacher," had to keep her eye on a particular contingent. She sat down
+on the noisy sunlit sands with her back to the sea-wall so as to sweep
+the field of vision. Her nervous conscientiousness made her count her
+sheep at frequent intervals, and be worried over missing now this
+one, now that one. How her heart beat furiously and then almost
+stopped, when she saw a child wading out too far. No, decidedly it was
+a trying form of pleasure for the teacher. One bright little girl who
+had never beheld the sea before picked up a wonderfully smooth white
+pebble, and bringing it to Salvina asked if it was worth any money.
+Salvina held it up, extemporizing an object lesson for the benefit of
+the little bystanders.
+
+"No," she said, "this is not worth any money, because you can get
+plenty of them without trouble, and even beautiful things are not
+considered valuable if anybody can have them. This stone was polished
+without charge by the action of the waves washing against it for
+millions and millions of years, and if it--"
+
+The sudden blare of a brass band on the other side of the sea-wall
+made her turn her head, and there, in a brand-new room of a brand-new
+house on the glaring Promenade, a room radiating blatant prosperity
+from its stony balcony, she perceived her father, in holiday attire,
+and by his side a woman, buxom and yellow-haired. A hot wave of blood
+seemed to flood Salvina up to the eyes. So there he was luxuriating in
+the sun, rich and careless. All her homely instincts of work and duty
+rose in burning contempt. And poor Mrs. Brill had to remain cooped at
+home, drudging and wailing. For a second she felt she would like to
+throw the stone at him, but her next feeling was pain lest the sight
+of her should painfully embarrass him; and turning her face swiftly
+seawards she went on, with scarce a pause perceptible to the little
+girls, "If it gets worn away some more millions of years, it will be
+ground down to sand, like all the other stones that were once here,"
+and as she spoke, she began to realize her own words, and a tragic
+sense of her own insignificance in this eternal wash of space and time
+seemed to reduce her to a grain of sand, and blow her about the great
+spaces. But the mood passed away before a fresh upwelling of concrete
+resentment against the self-pampered pair at the Promenade window.
+Nevertheless, her feeling of how their seeming satisfaction would be
+upset at the sight of her, made her carefully minimize the
+contingency, and the dread of it hovered over the day, adding to the
+worries over the children. But she vowed that her mother should be
+revenged; she, too, poor wronged one, should wallow in Promenade
+luxury in her future holidays; no more should she be housed in back
+streets without sea-views.
+
+At night, after Mrs. Brill was in bed, Salvina could not resist saying
+to Lazarus, whose supper she had been keeping hot for him: "How
+strange! Father _is_ at the seaside."
+
+"The dickens!" He paused, fork in hand. "You saw him at
+Clacton-on-Sea?"
+
+"Yes, but don't tell mother. So we didn't tell a lie after all. I'm so
+glad."
+
+"Oh, go to blazes, you and your conscience. Where was he staying?"
+
+"In a house in the very centre of the Promenade; it's simply
+shocking!"
+
+"Make me some fresh mustard, and don't moralize. Did you have a good
+time?"
+
+"Not very; a little cripple-girl in my class went paddling, and
+joking, and dropped her crutch, and it floated away--"
+
+"Bother your little cripple-girls. They always seem to be in your
+class!"
+
+"Because my class is on the ground floor."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! Just your luck. By the way," he became grave, "look what
+a beastly letter from Kitty! Not coming to the wedding. I call it
+awfully selfish of her."
+
+Kitty wrote her deep regrets, but her people had suddenly determined
+to go abroad and she could not lose this chance of seeing the world;
+"the governess's honeymoon," she christened it. Paris, Switzerland,
+Rome,--all the magic places were to be hers,--and Salvina, reading the
+letter, gasped with sympathy and longing.
+
+But the happy traveller was represented at the wedding by a large
+bronze-looking knight on horseback, which towered in shining green
+over the insignificant gifts of the Jonas's circle; the utilitarian
+salad-bowls, and fish-slices, and dessert sets. One other present
+stood out luridly, but only to Salvina. It was a glossy arm-chair,
+and on the seat lay a card: "From Rhoda's loving father-in-law." When
+Salvina first saw this--at a family card-party, the Sunday evening
+before the wedding--she started and flushed so furiously that Lazarus
+had to give her a warning nudge, and to whisper: "Only for
+appearance." At the supper-table old Jonas, who carved and jested with
+much appreciation of his own skill in both departments, referred
+facetiously to the absent father, who might, nevertheless, be said to
+be "in the chair" on that occasion.
+
+Salvina dressed her mother as carefully for the ceremony as though
+Kitty's fears were being realized and Mrs. Brill was the bride of the
+occasion; and so debonair a figure emerged from the ordeal that you
+could recognize Kitty's mother instead of Salvina's. Lazarus had spent
+his farewell evening of bachelorhood at an hotel, justly complaining
+that a mirrorless bed-room with a straw mattress was no place for a
+bridegroom to issue from. Never had bridegroom been so ill-treated, he
+grumbled; and he shook his fist imaginatively at the father who had
+despoiled him.
+
+But he joined his mother and sister in the cab; and as it approached
+the synagogue, he said suddenly: "Don't be shocked--but I rather
+expect father will be at the _Shool_ (synagogue)."
+
+"What!" and Mrs. Brill appeared like to faint.
+
+"He wouldn't have the cheek," Salvina said reassuringly, as she
+pulled out the smelling-salts which Kitty had not needed.
+
+"He wouldn't have the cheek _not_ to come," said Lazarus. "I asked
+him."
+
+"You!" They glared at him in horror.
+
+"Yes; I wasn't going to have things look funny--I hate explanations.
+The Jonases thought there was something queer the other night, when
+you both bungled the explanation of the rheumatism, spite all my
+coaching."
+
+"But where did you find him?" said the mother excitedly.
+
+"At Clacton-on-Sea."
+
+Salvina bit her lip.
+
+"I sent in my card,--'Laurence Beryl, of Granders Brothers.' When he
+saw me, I thought he would have had a fit. I told him if he didn't
+come up to the wedding and play heavy father, I'd summons him--"
+
+"Summons him!" echoed Mrs. Brill.
+
+"For stealing my old arm-chair. I remembered--ha! ha! ha!--it was I
+that had bought the easy-chair for myself, when we lived in
+Spitalfields and had only wooden chairs."
+
+"So he _did_ send that easy-chair!" said Salvina.
+
+"Yes; that was rather clever of him. And don't you think it's clever
+of me to save appearances?"
+
+"It'll be terrible for mother!" said Salvina hotly. "Didn't you think
+of that?"
+
+"She won't have to talk to him. He'll only hang round. Nobody will
+notice."
+
+"It would have been better to tell the truth," cried Salvina, "or even
+a lie. This is only acting a lie. And it must be as painful for him as
+for us."
+
+"Serve him right--the old furniture-sneak!"
+
+"It was a mistake," Salvina persisted.
+
+"Hush, hush, Salvina!" said Mrs. Brill. "Don't disturb your brother's
+festival."
+
+"He has disturbed it himself," said Salvina, bursting into tears. "I
+wish, mother, we had not come."
+
+"Here, here! This is a pretty wedding," said Lazarus.
+
+"Hush, Salvina, hush!" said Mrs. Brill. "What does it matter to us if
+a dog creeps into synagogue?"
+
+At this point the cab stopped.
+
+"We're not there!" cried Mrs. Brill.
+
+"No," Lazarus explained; "but we pick up father here. We must appear
+to arrive together."
+
+Ere the horrified pair could protest, he opened the door, sprang out,
+and pushed inside a stout, rubicund man with a festal rose in his
+holiday coat, but a miserable, shamefaced look in his eyes. Lazarus
+took his seat ere a word could be spoken. The cab rolled on.
+
+"Good-morning, Esther," he muttered. "I offered you _Get_."
+
+"Silence!" cried Salvina, as if she had been talking to the little
+girls. "How dare you speak to her?" She held her mother's hand and
+felt the pulse beating madly.
+
+"You old serpent--" began Mrs. Brill hotly.
+
+"Mother!" pleaded Salvina; "not a word; he doesn't deserve it."
+
+"In Jerusalem I could have two wives," he muttered. But no one
+replied.
+
+The four human beings sat in painful silence, their knees touching.
+The culprit shot uneasy, surreptitious glances at his wife, so radiant
+in jewels and finery and with so Kitty-like a complexion. It was as if
+he saw her freshly, or as if he were shocked--even startled--by her
+retaining so much joy of life despite his desertion of her.
+Fortunately the strange drive only lasted a few minutes. The
+bridegroom's wedding-party passed into the synagogue through an avenue
+of sympathetic observers.
+
+Mr. Brill had no part to play in the ceremony. The honours were
+carried off by Mr. Jonas, who stalked in slowly, with the bride on his
+arm, and a new green shade over his left eye. The rival father hovered
+meekly on the outskirts of the marriage-canopy amid a crowd of
+Jonases. Salvina stationed herself and her mother on the opposite
+border of the canopy, and throughout bristled, apprehensive,
+prohibitive, fiery, like a spaniel guarding its mistress against a
+bull-dog on the pounce. The bull-dog indeed was docile enough;
+avoiding the spaniel's eye, and trailing a spiritless tail. But the
+creature revived at the great wedding-feast in the hall of a hundred
+covers, and under the congratulations and the convivial influences
+tended to forget he was in disgrace. The bridegroom's parents were
+placed together, but Salvina changed seats with her mother, and became
+a buffer between the twain, a non-conducting medium through which the
+father could not communicate with the mother. With the latter she
+herself maintained a continuous conversation, and Mr. Brill soon found
+it more pleasant to forget his troubles in the charms of Mrs. Jonas,
+his other neighbour.
+
+After the almond-pudding, a succession of speakers ranging from
+relatives to old friends, and even the officiating minister, gave
+certificates of character to the bride and the bridegroom, amid the
+tears of the ladies. Father Jonas made an elaborate speech beginning,
+"Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," and interlarded with Hebrew
+quotations. Father Brill expressed the pleasure it gave him to
+acknowledge on behalf of himself and his dear wife, the kind things
+which had been said, and the delight they felt in seeing their son
+settled in the paths of domestic happiness, especially in connection
+with a scion of the house of Jonas, of whose virtues much had been
+said so deservedly that night. Lazarus declared, amid roars of
+laughter, that on this occasion only he would respond for his dear
+wife, but he felt sure that for the rest of their lives she would have
+the last word. Then the tables were cleared away and dancing began,
+which grew livelier as the dawn grew nearer. But long before that,
+Salvina had borne her mother away from the hovering bull-dog. Not,
+however, without a terrible scene in the homeward cab. All the
+volcanic flames Salvina and etiquette had suppressed during the day
+shot forth luridly. Burning lava was hurled against her husband,
+against her son, against Salvina. An impassioned inventory of the lost
+furniture followed, and the refrain of the whole was that she had been
+taken to a wedding, when all she wanted was a funeral.
+
+
+IX
+
+Salvina did not count this break-down against her mother. It was the
+natural revolt of nerves tried beyond endurance by Lazarus's trick.
+The whole episode intensified her sense of the romantic situation of
+her mother, and of the noble courage and dignity with which she
+confronted it. She wondered whether she herself would have emerged so
+stanchly from the ordeal of meeting a loved but faithless one, and her
+protective pity was tempered by a new admiration. Her admiration
+increased, when, as the secret gradually leaked out, her mother
+maintained an attitude of defiance against the world's sympathy,
+refused to hear stigmatizations of her husband, even from old Jonas,
+reserving the privilege of denunciation for her own mouth and
+Salvina's ear.
+
+And now began the new life of mother and daughter. With Kitty on the
+Continent, Lazarus married, and the father blotted out, they had only
+each other. They moved back to the skirts of the Ghetto, and Mrs.
+Brill resumed with secret joy her old place among her old cronies.
+Inwardly, she had fretted at the loss of them, for which the dignity
+of Hackney had been but a shadowy compensation. But to Salvina she
+only expressed her outraged pride, the humiliation of it all, and the
+poor girl, unconscious of how happy her mother really was among the
+Ghetto gossips, tortured her brain during school-hours with the
+thought of her mother's lonely misery. And even if Salvina had not
+been compelled to give private lessons in the evenings to supplement
+their income, she would in any case have relinquished her Bachelorhood
+aspirations in order to give her time to her mother. For Mrs. Brill
+had no resources within herself, so far as Salvina knew. Even the
+great artificial universe of books and newspapers was closed to her.
+Salvina resolved to overcome her obstinate reluctance to learn to
+read, as soon as the pressure of the other private lessons relaxed.
+Meantime, she lived for her mother and her mother on her.
+
+Oh, the bitterness of those private lessons after the fag of the day;
+the toiling to distant places on tired feet; the grinding bargains
+imposed by the well-to-do!
+
+One of these fiends was a beautiful lady, haughty, with fair
+complexion and frosted hair, and somehow suggested to Salvina a steel
+engraving. She arranged graciously that Salvina should teach her
+little girl conversational German at half-a-crown an hour, but when
+Salvina started on the first lesson in the luxurious sanctum, she
+found two sweetly dressed sisters; who, she was informed, could not
+bear to be separated, and might therefore be considered one. The steel
+engraving herself sat there, as if to superintend, occasionally asking
+for the elucidation of a point. At the second lesson there were two
+other little girls, neighbours, the lady informed her, who had thought
+it would be a good opportunity for them to learn, too. Salvina
+expressed her pleasure and her gratitude to her patroness. At the
+third lesson the aunt of the two little girls was also present with a
+suspicious air of discipleship. When at end of the month, Salvina
+presented her bill at five shillings an hour, the patroness flew into
+a towering rage. What did it matter to her how many children partook
+of the hour? An hour was an hour and a bargain a bargain. Salvina had
+not the courage or the capital to resist. And this life of ever
+teaching and never learning went on, week after week, year after year.
+For when her salary at the school increased, the additional burden of
+Lazarus and his wife and children fell upon her. For her feckless
+brother had soon exhausted the patience of Granders Brothers; he had
+passed shiftlessly from employment to employment, frequently
+dependent on Salvina and his father-in-law till old Jonas had
+declared, with all the dignity of his green shade, that his
+son-in-law--graceless offspring of a graceless sire--must never darken
+his door-step again.
+
+But the joy Mrs. Brill found in her grandchildren, the filling-out of
+her life, repaid Salvina amply for all the pinching necessary to
+subsidize her brother's household. She winced, though, to see her
+mother drop thoughtlessly into the glossy arm-chair presented by her
+absentee husband, and therein ensconced dandle Lazarus's children.
+Salvina was too sensitive to remind her mother, and shrank also from
+appearing fantastic. But that chair inspired a morbid repugnance, and
+one day, taking advantage of the fact that the stuffing began to
+extrude, she bought Lazarus a new and better easy-chair without saying
+why, and had the satisfaction of noting the relegation of the old one
+to a bed-room.
+
+Two bright spots of colour dappled those long, monotonous years. One
+was Kitty; the other was the summer holiday. Kitty's mere letters from
+the Continent--she wrote twice during the tour--were a source of
+exhilaration as well as of instruction. She brought nearer all those
+wonderful places which Salvina still promised herself to behold one
+day, though year after year she went steadily to Ramsgate. For her
+mother shrank from sea-voyages and strange places, as much as she
+loved the familiar beach swarming with Jewish faces and nigger
+minstrels. Even Salvina's little scheme of enthroning her mother
+expensively on the parade at Clacton-on-Sea, that mother unconsciously
+thwarted, though she endured equivalent splendour at Ramsgate at three
+guineas a week, with much grumbling over her daughter's extravagance.
+
+Once indeed when Salvina had seriously projected Paris in the interest
+of her French, there had been a quarrel on the subject. There were
+many quarrels on many subjects, but it was always one quarrel and had
+always the same groundwork of dialogue on Mrs. Brill's part, whatever
+the temporal variations.
+
+"A nice daughter! To trample under foot her own flesh and blood,
+because she thinks I'm dependent on her! Well, well, do your own
+marketing, you little ignoramus who don't know a skirt steak from a
+loin chop; you'll soon see if I don't earn my keep. I earned my living
+before you were born, and I can do so still. I'd rather live in one
+room than have my blood shed a day longer. I'll send for Kitty--she
+never stamps on the little mother. She shan't slave her heart out any
+more among strangers, my poor fatherless Kitty. No, we'll live
+together, Kitty and I. Lazarus would jump at us--my own dear, handsome
+Lazarus. I never see him but he tells me how the children are crying
+day and night for their granny, and why don't I go and live with him?
+_He_ wouldn't spit upon the mother who suckled him, and even Rhoda
+has more respect for me than my own real daughter."
+
+Such was the basal theme; the particular variation, when the holiday
+was concerned, took the shape of religious remonstrance. "And where am
+I to get _kosher_ food in Paris? In Ramsgate I enjoy myself; there's a
+_kosher_ butcher, and all the people I know. It's as good as London."
+
+Tears always conquered Salvina. She had an infinite patience with her
+mother on these occasions, not resenting the basal theme, but
+regarding it as a mere mechanic explosion of nervous irritation,
+generated by her lonely life. Sometimes she forgot this and argued,
+but was always the more sorry afterward. Not that she did not enjoy
+Ramsgate. Her nature that craved for so much and was content with so
+little found even Ramsgate a Paradise after a year of the slum-school,
+to which she always returned looking almost healthy. But this constant
+absorption in her mother's personality narrowed her almost to the same
+mental bookless horizon. All the red blood of ambition was sucked away
+as by a vampire; her energy was sapped and the unchanging rut of
+school-existence combined to fray away her individuality. She never
+went into any society; the rare invitation to a social event was
+always refused with heart-shrinking. Every year made her more shy and
+ungainly, more bent in on herself, and on the little round of school
+and home life, which left her indeed too weary in brain and body for
+aught beside. She sank into the scholastic old maid, unconsciously
+taking on the very gait and accent of Miss Rolver, into the
+limitations of whose life she had once had a flash of insight. Yet she
+was unaware of her decay; her automatic brain was still alive in one
+corner, where the dreams hived and nested. Paris and Rome and the
+wonder-places still shone on the horizon, together with the noble
+young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted. And twice or thrice a year
+Kitty would flash upon the scene to remind her that there was truly a
+world of elegance and adventure. Her mother had begun to worry over
+the beautiful Kitty's failure to marry; she had imagined that in those
+gilded regions she would have snapped up a South African millionaire
+or other ingenuous person. How nearly Kitty had actually come to doing
+so, even without the spring-board of Bedford Square, Salvina never
+told her. She had kept both Sugarman and Moss M. Rosenstein from
+pestering her mother, by telling the Shadchan that Kitty's voice and
+Kitty's alone weighed with Kitty in such a matter. When the swarthy
+capitalist returned to the Cape, despairing, Salvina had written to
+congratulate her sister on her high-mindedness. In the years that
+followed, she had to endure many a bad quarter of an hour of maternal
+reproach because Kitty did not marry, but Mrs. Brill's vengeance was
+unconscious. Kitty herself never heard a word of these complaints; to
+her the mother was all wreathed smiles, for she never came without
+bringing a trinket, and every one of these trinkets meant days of
+happiness. The little lockets and brooches were shown about to all the
+neighbours and hitched them on to the bright spheres which Kitty
+adorned. Carriages and footmen, soft carpets and gilded mirrors
+gleamed in the air. "My Kitty!" rolled under Mrs. Brill's tongue like
+a honeyed sweet. Kitty's little gifts, flashing splendidly on the
+everyday dulness, made more impression than all the steady monotonous
+services of Salvina. For the rest, Salvina conscientiously repaid
+these gifts in kind on Kitty's birthdays and other high days.
+
+
+X
+
+When Salvina was twenty-three years old a change came. Lazarus ceased
+to demand assistance: he was cheery and self-confident, and inclined
+to chaff Salvina on her prim ways. He removed to a larger house and
+her easy-chair disappeared before a more elegant. And the apparent
+brightness of her brother's prospects brightened Salvina's. Her
+savings increased, and, under the continuous profit of his
+self-support, she was soon able to meditate changes on her own
+account. Either she would give up her night-teaching--which had been
+more and more undermining her system--or she would procure her mother
+and Kitty a delightful surprise by migrating back to Hackney.
+
+Her mind hesitated between the joyous alternatives, lingering
+voluptuously now on one, now on the other, but somehow aware that it
+would ultimately choose the latter, for Kitty on her rare visits never
+failed to grumble at the lowness of the neighbourhood and the expense
+of cabs, and Mrs. Brill still yearned to see horses pawing outside her
+door-step. But an unexpected visit from Kitty, not six weeks after her
+last, and equally unexpected in place--for it was at Salvina's
+school--decided the matter suddenly.
+
+It was about half-past twelve, and Salvina, long since a full
+"assistant teacher," was seated at her desk, correcting the German
+exercises of a private pupil. Sparsely dotted about the symmetric
+benches were a few demure criminals undergoing the punishment of being
+kept in, and the air was still heavy with the breaths and odours of
+the blissful departed. A severe museum-case, with neatly ticketed
+specimens, backed Salvina's chair, and around the spacious room hung
+coloured diagrams of animals and plants. Kitty seemed a specimen from
+another world as her coquettish Leghorn hat flowering with poppies
+burst upon the scholastic scene.
+
+"Oh, dear, I thought you'd be alone," she said pettishly.
+
+"Is it anything important? The children don't matter," said Salvina.
+"You can tell me in German. I do hope nothing is the matter."
+
+"No, nothing so alarming as that," Kitty replied in German. "But I
+thought I'd find you alone and have a chat."
+
+"I had to stay here with the children. They must be punished."
+
+"Seems more like punishing yourself. But have you lunched, then?"
+
+"No." Salvina flushed slightly.
+
+"No? What's up? A Jewish fast! Ninth day of Ab, fall of Temple, and
+funny things like that. One always seems to stumble upon them in the
+East End."
+
+"How you do rattle on, Kitty!" and Salvina smiled. "No, I shall lunch
+as soon as these children are released."
+
+"But why wait for that?"
+
+Salvina's blush deepened. "Well, one doesn't want to eat a good dinner
+before hungry girls."
+
+"A good dinner! Why, what in heaven's name do you get? Truffles and
+plovers' eggs?"
+
+"No, but I get a very good meal sent in from the Cooking Centre
+opposite, and compared with what these girls get at home, steak and
+potatoes are the luxuries of Lucullus."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe it. They all look fatter than you. Then this is
+double punishment for you--extra work and hunger. Do send them away.
+They get on my nerves. And have your lunch like a sensible being."
+And without waiting for Salvina's assent: "Go along, girls," she said
+airily.
+
+The girls hesitated and looked at Salvina, who coloured afresh, but
+said, "Yes, this lady pleads for you, and I said that if you all
+promised to--"
+
+"Oh, yes, teacher," they interrupted enthusiastically, and were off.
+
+"Well, what I came to tell you, Sally, is that I'm not sure of my
+place much longer."
+
+Salvina turned pale, and that much-tried heart of hers thumped like a
+hammer. She waited in silence for the facts.
+
+"Lily is going to be married."
+
+"Well? All the more reason for Mabel to have a companion."
+
+Kitty shook her head. "It's the beginning of the end. Marriage is a
+contagious complaint in a family. First one member is taken off, then
+another. But that's not the worst."
+
+"No?" Poor Salvina held her breath.
+
+"Who do you think is the happy man? You'll never guess."
+
+"How should I? I don't know their circle."
+
+"Yes, you do. I mean, you know him."
+
+Salvina wrinkled her forehead vainly.
+
+"No, you'll never guess after all these years! Moss M. Rosenstein!"
+
+"Is it possible?" Salvina gasped. "Lily Samuelson!"
+
+"Yes--Lily Samuelson!"
+
+"But he must be an old man by now."
+
+"Well, _she_ isn't a chicken. And you thought it was such an outrage
+of him to ask for _me_. I suppose having once got inside the door to
+see me, he had the idea of aspiring higher."
+
+"Oh, don't say higher, Kitty. Richer, that's all--and now, I should
+say, lower, inasmuch as Lily Samuelson stoops to pick up what you
+passed by with scorn. And picks him up out of Sugarman's hand,
+probably."
+
+"Yes, it's all very well, and it's revenge enough in a way to think to
+myself what I do think to myself, when I see the young couple going
+on, and Moss is mortally scared of me, as I shoot him a glare, now and
+again. I shouldn't be surprised if he eggs them on to get rid of me.
+It would be too bad to be done out of everything."
+
+"Well, we must hope for the best," said Salvina, kissing her. "After
+all, you can always get another place."
+
+"I'm getting old," Kitty said glumly.
+
+"You old!" and the anaemic little school-mistress looked with laughing
+admiration at her sister's untarnished radiance. But when Kitty went,
+and lunch came, Salvina could not eat it.
+
+
+XI
+
+It was clear, however, that of the alternatives--giving up the
+night-work or returning to Hackney--the latter was the one favoured by
+Providence. Kitty might at any moment return to the parental roof, and
+there must be something, that Kitty would consider a roof, to shelter
+her.
+
+On Saturday Salvina went house-hunting alone in Hackney, and there--as
+if further pointed out by Providence--stood their old house "To let!"
+It had a dilapidated air, as if it had stood empty for many moons and
+had lost hope. It seemed to her symbolic of her mother's fortunes, and
+her imagination leapt at the idea of recuperating both. Very soon she
+had re-rented the house, though from another landlord, and the workmen
+were in possession, making everything bright and beautiful. Salvina
+chose wall-papers of the exact pattern of aforetime, and ordered the
+painting and decorations to repeat the old effects. They were to move
+in, a few days before the quarter.
+
+Her happy secret shone in her cheeks, and she felt all bright and
+refreshed, as if she, too, were being painted and cleaned and
+redecorated. The task of keeping it all from her mother was a great
+daily strain, and the secret had to overbrim for the edification of
+Lazarus. Lazarus hailed the change with expressions of unselfish joy,
+that brought tears into Salvina's eyes. He even went with her to see
+how the repairs were getting on, chatted with the workmen, disapproved
+of the landlord's stinginess in not putting down new drain pipes, and
+made a special call upon that gentleman.
+
+One day on her return from school Salvina found a postcard to the
+effect that the house was ready for occupation. Salvina was for once
+glad that she had never yet found time to persuade her mother to learn
+to read. She went to feast her eyes on the new-old house and came home
+with the key, which she hid carefully till the Sunday afternoon, when
+she induced her mother to make an excursion to Victoria Park. The
+weather was dull, and the old woman needed a deal of coaxing,
+especially as the coaxing must be so subtle as not to arouse
+suspicion.
+
+On the way back in the evening from the Park, which, as there was an
+unexpected band playing popular airs, her mother enjoyed, Salvina led
+her by the old familiar highways and byways back to the old home,
+keeping her engrossed in conversation lest it should suddenly befall
+her to ask why they were going that way. The expedient was even more
+successful than she had bargained for, Mrs. Brill's sub-consciousness
+calmly accepting all the old unchanged streets and sights and sounds,
+while her central consciousness was absorbed by the talk. Her legs
+trod automatically the dingy Hackney Terrace to which she had so often
+returned from her Park outing, her hand pushed open mechanically the
+old garden-gate, and as Salvina, breathlessly wondering if the spell
+could be kept up till the very last, opened the door with the
+latch-key, her mother sank wearily, and with a sigh of satisfaction,
+upon the accustomed hall-chair. In that instant of maternal apathy,
+the astonishment was wholly Salvina's. That hall-chair on which her
+mother sat was the very one which had stood there in the bygone happy
+years; the hat-rack was the one with which her father had "eloped"; on
+it stood the little flower-pots and on the wall hung the two
+engravings of the trials of Lord William Russell and Earl Stafford
+exactly in the same place, and facing her stood the open parlour with
+all the old furniture and colour. In that uncanny instant Salvina
+wondered if she had passed through years of hallucination. There was
+her mother, natural and unconcerned, bonneted and jewelled, exactly as
+she had come from Camberwell years ago when they had entered the house
+together. Perhaps they were still at that moment; she knew from her
+studies as well as from experience that you can dream years of
+harassing and multiplex experience in a single second. Perhaps there
+had been no waking hallucination; perhaps the long waiting for her
+mother to appear with the house-key had made her sleepy, and in that
+instant of doze she had dreamed all those horrible things--the empty
+house, her father's flight, his reappearance at her brother's
+marriage; the long years of evening lessons. Perhaps she was still
+seventeen, studying the Greek verbs for the Bachelorhood of Arts,
+perhaps her mother was still a happy wife. Her eyes filled with tears,
+and she let herself dwell upon the wondrous possibility a second or so
+longer than she believed in it. For the smell of new paint was too
+potent; it routed the persuasions of the old furniture. And in another
+instant it had penetrated through Mrs. Brill's fatigue. She started
+up, aware of something subtly wrong, ere clearer consciousness dawned.
+
+"Michael!" she shrieked, groping.
+
+"Hush, hush, mother!" said Salvina, with a pain as of swords at her
+heart. She felt her mother had stumbled--with whatever significance--upon
+the word of the enigma. "Another trick has been played on us."
+
+"A trick!" Mrs. Brill groped further. "But _you_ brought me. How comes
+this house here? What has happened?"
+
+"I wanted to surprise you. I have rented the old house, and some one
+else has put in the old furniture."
+
+"Michael is coming back! You and your father have plotted."
+
+"Oh, mother! How can you accuse me of such a thing!" All the expected
+joy of the surprise had been changed to anguish, she felt, both for
+her and for her mother. Oh, what a fatal mistake! "I won't have the
+furniture, we'll pitch it into the street--we are going to live here
+together, mammy, you and I, in the old home. We can afford it now."
+
+She laid her cheek to her mother's, but Mrs. Brill broke away
+petulantly and ran toward the parlour. "And does he think I'll have
+anything to do with him after all these years!" she cried.
+
+"Dear mother, he doesn't know you if he thinks that!" said Salvina,
+following her.
+
+"No, indeed! And a chip out of my best vase, just as I thought! And
+that isn't my chair--he's shoved me in one of a worse set. The
+horsehair may seem the same, but look at the legs--no carving at all.
+And where's the extra leaf of the table? Gone, too, I daresay. And my
+little gilt shovel that used to stand in the fender here, what's
+become of that? And do you call this a sofa? with the castors all off!
+Oh, my God, she has ruined all my furniture," and she burst into
+hysteric tears.
+
+Salvina could do nothing till the torrent had spent itself. But she
+was busy, thinking. She saw that again her brother and her father had
+conspired together. Hence Lazarus's officiousness toward the landlord
+and the workmen--that he might easily get the entry to the house. But
+perhaps the conspiracy had not the significance her mother put upon
+it. Perhaps Lazarus was principal, not agent; in the flush of his new
+prosperity he had really projected a generous act; perhaps he had
+resolved to put the coping-stone on the surprise Salvina was preparing
+for her mother, and had hence negotiated with the father for the old
+things. If so, she felt she had not the right to make her mother
+refuse them; the rather, she must hasten at once to Lazarus to pour
+out her appreciation of his thoughtfulness.
+
+"Come along, mother," she said at last, "don't sit there, crying. I
+think Lazarus must have bought back the things for you. You see,
+mammy, I wanted to give you a little surprise, and dear Lazarus has
+given _me_ a little surprise."
+
+"Do you really think it's only Lazarus?" asked Mrs. Brill, and to
+Salvina's anxious ear there seemed a shade of disappointment in the
+tone.
+
+"I'm sure it is--father couldn't possibly have the impudence. After
+all these years, too!"
+
+But when she at last got her mother to Lazarus, that gentleman
+confessed aggressively that he had been only the agent.
+
+"I don't see why you shouldn't let the poor old man come back," he
+said. "The other person died a year ago, only nobody liked to tell
+mother, she was so bristly and snappy."
+
+"Ah," interrupted Mrs. Brill exultantly, "then Heaven has heard my
+curses. May she burn in the lowest Gehenna. May her body become one
+yellow flame like her dyed hair."
+
+"Hush!" said Salvina sternly. "God shall judge the dead."
+
+"Oh, of course you always take everybody's part against your mother."
+And Mrs. Brill burst into tears again and sank into the new
+easy-chair.
+
+"I do think mother's right," said Lazarus sullenly. "Why do you stand
+in her way?"
+
+"I?" Salvina was paralyzed.
+
+"Yes, if it wasn't for you--"
+
+"Mother, do you hear what Lazarus is saying? That I keep you from
+father!"
+
+"Father! A pretty father to you! He waits till she's dead, and then he
+wants to creep back to us. But let him lie on her grave. He'll swell
+to bursting before he crosses my door-step."
+
+"There, Lazarus, do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, I hear," he said incredulously. "But does she know what father
+offers her--every comfort, every luxury? He is rich now."
+
+"Rich?" said Mrs. Brill. "The old swindler!"
+
+"He didn't swindle--he's very sorry for the past now, and awfully kind
+and generous."
+
+Salvina had a flash of insight. "Ho! So this is why--" She checked
+herself and looked round the handsome room, and the new easy-chair in
+which her mother sat became suddenly as hateful as the old.
+
+"Well, suppose it is?" said Lazarus defiantly. "I don't see why we
+shouldn't share in his luck."
+
+"And where does the luck come from?" Salvina demanded.
+
+"What's that to do with us? From the Stock Exchange, I believe."
+
+"And where did he get the money to gamble with?"
+
+"Oh, they always had money."
+
+Salvina's eyes blazed. The nerveless creature of the school became a
+fury. "And you'd touch that!"
+
+"Hang it all, he owes us reparation. You, too, Salvina--he is anxious
+to do everything for you. He says you must chuck up school--it's
+simply wearing you away. He says he wants to take you abroad--to
+Paris."
+
+"Oh, and so he thinks he'll get round mother by getting round me, does
+he? But let him take his furniture away at once, or we'll pitch it
+into the street. At once, do you hear?"
+
+"He won't mind." Lazarus smiled irritatingly. "He wants to put better
+furniture in, and his real desire is to move to a big house in
+Highbury New Park. But I persuaded him to put back the old
+furniture--I thought it would touch you--a token, you know, that he
+wanted 'auld lang syne.'"
+
+"Yes, yes, I understood," said Salvina, and then she thought suddenly
+of Kitty and a burst of hysteric laughter caught her. "Elopements
+economically conducted," went through her mind. "By the day or hour!"
+And she imagined the new phrases Kitty would coin. "The Prodigal
+Father and the Pantechnicon"--"The old Love and the old Furniture,"
+and the wild laughter rang on, till Lazarus was quite disconcerted.
+
+"I don't see where the fun comes in," he said wrathfully. "Father is
+very sorry, indeed he is. He quite cried to me--on that very chair
+where mother is sitting. I swear to you he did. And you have the heart
+to laugh!"
+
+"Would you have me cry, too? No, no; I am glad he is punished."
+
+"Yes--a nice miserable lonely old age he has before him."
+
+"He has plenty of money."
+
+"You're a cold, unfeeling minx! I don't envy the man who marries you,
+Salvina."
+
+Salvina flushed. "I don't, either--if he were to treat me as mother
+has been treated."
+
+"Yes, no one has had a life like mine, since the world began," moaned
+Mrs. Brill, and her waning tears returned in full flood.
+
+"My poor mammy," and Salvina put a handkerchief to the flooded cheeks.
+"Come home, we have had enough of this."
+
+Mrs. Brill rose obediently.
+
+"Oh, yes, take her home," said Lazarus savagely, "take her to your
+shabby, stinking lodging, when she might have a house in Highbury New
+Park and three servants."
+
+"She has a house at Hackney, and I'll give her a servant, too. Come,
+mother."
+
+Salvina mopped up her mother's remaining tears, and with an
+inspiration of arrogant independence, she rang for Lazarus's servant
+and bade her hail a hansom cab.
+
+"If you don't want all Hackney to come and gaze at a furnished road,"
+she said, in parting, "you'll take away that furniture yourself."
+
+Mrs. Brill bowled homeward, half consoled for everything by this
+charioted magnificence. Some neighbours stood by gossiping as she
+alighted, and then her unspoken satisfaction was complete.
+
+
+XII
+
+They moved into the new-old house, after Salvina had carefully
+ascertained that the furniture had returned to the cloud under which
+it had so long lived. In her resentment against its reappearance, she
+spent more than she could afford on the rival furniture that succeeded
+it, and which she now studied to make unlike it, so that quite without
+any touch of conscious taste, it became light, elegant, and even
+artistic in comparison with the old horsehair massiveness.
+
+Then began a very bad year for Salvina, even though the Damocles sword
+of Kitty's dismissal never fell, and Lily's migration to the Cape with
+Moss M. Rosenstein left Kitty still in power as companion to Mabel, to
+judge at least by Kitty's not seeking the parental roof, even as
+visitor. Mrs. Brill's happiness did not keep pace with the restored
+grandeurs and Salvina's own spurt of hope died down. She grew wanner
+than ever, going listlessly to her work and returning limp and fagged
+out.
+
+"You mew me up here with not a soul to speak to from morning till
+night," her mother burst forth one day.
+
+Salvina was not sorry to have her mother's silent lachrymosity thus
+interpreted. But she regretted that her helpless parent had not
+expressed her satisfaction with gossip when the Ghetto provided it,
+instead of yearning for higher scenes. She tried again to persuade
+Mrs. Brill to learn to read by way of mental resource, and Mrs. Brill
+indeed made some spasmodic efforts to master the alphabet and the
+vagaries of pronunciation from an infant's primer. But her brain was
+too set; and she forgot from word to word, and made bold bad guesses,
+so that even when "a fat cat sat on a mat" she was capable of making a
+fat cow eat in a mug. She struggled loyally though, except when
+Salvina's attention relaxed for an instant, and then she would proceed
+by leaps and bounds, like a cheating child with the teacher's eye off
+it, getting over five lines in the time she usually took to spell out
+one, and paradoxically pleased with herself at her rapid progress.
+
+Salvina was in despair. There is no creche for mothers, or she might
+have sent Mrs. Brill to one. She bethought herself of at last laying
+on a servant, as providing the desired combination of grandeur and
+gossip. To pay for the servant she undertook two hours of extra
+night-teaching. But the maid-of all-work proved only an exhaustless
+ground for grumbling. Mrs. Brill had never owned a servant, and the
+girl's deviation from angelhood of character and unerring perfection
+of action in every domestic department were a constant disappointment
+and grief to the new mistress.
+
+"A nice thing you have done for me," she wept to Salvina, having
+carefully ascertained the servant was out of ear-shot, "to seat a
+mistress on my head--and for that I must pay her into the bargain."
+
+"Aren't you glad you haven't got three servants?" said Salvina, with a
+touch of irresistible irony.
+
+"Don't throw up to me that you're saving me from falling on your
+father. I can be my own bread-winner. I don't want your doll's house
+furniture that one is scared to touch--like walking among eggshells.
+I'd rather live in one room and scrub floors than be beholden to
+anybody. Then I should be my own mistress, and not under a daughter's
+thumb. If only Kitty would marry, then I could go to _her_. Why
+doesn't she marry? It isn't as if she were like you. Is there a
+prettier girl in the whole congregation? It's because she's got no
+money, my poor, hardworking little Kitty. Her father would give her a
+dowry, if he were a man, not a pig."
+
+"Mother!" Salvina was white and trembling. "How can you dream of
+that?"
+
+"Not for myself. I'd see him rot before I'd take a farthing of his
+money. But I'm not domineering and spiteful like you. I don't stand in
+the way of other people benefiting. The money will only go to some
+other vermin. Kitty may as well have some."
+
+"Lazarus has some. That's enough, and more than enough."
+
+"Lazarus deserves it--he is a better son to me than you are a
+daughter!" and the tears fell again.
+
+Salvina cast about for what to do. Her mother's nerves were no doubt
+entirely disorganized by her sufferings and by the shock of Lazarus's
+trick. Some radical medicine must be applied. But every day Duty took
+Salvina to school and harassed her there and drove her to private
+lessons afterward, and left her neither the energy nor the brain for
+further innovations. And whenever she met Lazarus by accident--for she
+was too outraged to visit a house practically kept up by dishonourable
+money, apart from her objection to its perpetually festive atmosphere
+of solo-whist supper-parties--he would sneer at her high and mighty
+airs in casting out the furniture. "Oh, we're very grand now, we keep
+a servant; we have cut our father off with a shilling."
+
+She wished her mother would not go to see Lazarus, but she felt she
+had not the right to interfere with these visits, though Mrs. Brill
+returned from them, fretful and restive. Evidently Lazarus must be
+still insinuating reconciliation.
+
+"Lazarus worries you, mother, I feel sure," she ventured to say once.
+
+"Oh, no, he is a good son. He wants me to live with him."
+
+"What! On _her_ money!"
+
+"It isn't her money--your father made it on the Stock Exchange."
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"Didn't you hear Lazarus say so yourself?"
+
+Then a horrible suspicion came to Salvina. "He doesn't set father at
+you when you go there?" she cried.
+
+Mrs. Brill flushed furiously. "I'd like to see him try it on," she
+murmured.
+
+Salvina stooped to kiss her. "But he tells you tales of father's
+riches, I suppose."
+
+"Who wants his riches? If he offered me my own horse and carriage, I
+wouldn't be seen with him after the disgrace he's put upon me."
+
+"I wish, mother, Lazarus had inherited your sense of honour."
+
+Mrs. Brill was pleased. "There isn't a woman in the world with more
+pride! Your father made a mistake when he began with me!"
+
+
+XIII
+
+A horse and carriage did come, one flamboyant afternoon, but it was
+the Samuelsons', and brought the long-absent Kitty. And Kitty as usual
+brought a present. This time it was a bracelet, and Mrs. Brill clasped
+and unclasped it ecstatically, feeling that she had at least one
+daughter who loved her and did not domineer. Salvina was at school,
+and Mrs. Brill took Kitty all over the house, enjoying her approval,
+and accepting all the praise for the lighter and more artistic
+furniture. She told her of the episode of the return of the old
+furniture--"And didn't have the decency to put new castors on the sofa
+she had sprawled on!"
+
+Kitty's laughter was as loud and ringing as Salvina had anticipated;
+Mrs. Brill coloured under it, as though _she_ were found food for
+laughter. "What a ridiculous person he is!" Kitty added hastily.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Brill with eager pride and relief. "He thought he
+could coax me back like a dog with a bit of sugar."
+
+"It would be too funny to live with him again." And Kitty's eyes
+danced.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Brill anxiously. And under the sunshine
+of her daughter's approval she confided to her that he had really
+turned up twice at Lazarus's, beautifully costumed, with diamonds on
+his fingers and a white flower in his button-hole, but that she had
+repulsed him as she would repulse a drunken heathen. He had put his
+arms round her, but she had shaken him off as one shakes off a black
+beetle.
+
+Kitty turned away and stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth. She
+knew there was a tragic side, but the comic aspect affected her more.
+
+"Then you think I was right?" Mrs. Brill wound up.
+
+"Of course," Kitty said soothingly. "What do you want of him?"
+
+"But don't tell Salvina, or she'd eat my head off." And then, the
+eager upleaping fountain of her mother's egoistic babblings beginning
+at last to trickle thinly, Kitty found a breathing-space in which to
+inform her of the great news that throbbed in her own breast.
+
+"Lily Samuelson's dead! Mrs. Rosenstein, you know!"
+
+"Oh, my God!" ejaculated Mrs. Brill, trembling like a leaf. Nothing
+upset her more than to find that persons within her ken could actually
+die.
+
+"Yes, we had a cable from the Cape yesterday."
+
+"Hear, O Israel! Let me see--yes, she must have died in child-birth."
+
+"She did--the house is all in hysterics. I couldn't stand it any
+longer. I ordered the carriage and came here."
+
+"My poor Kitty! That Lily was too old to have a baby. And now he will
+marry Mabel."
+
+"Oh, no, mother."
+
+"Oh, yes, he will. Mabel will jump at him, you'll see."
+
+"But it isn't legal--you can't marry your deceased wife's sister."
+
+"I know you can't in England--what foolishness! But they'll go to
+Holland to be married."
+
+"Don't be so absurd, mother."
+
+"Absurd!" Mrs. Brill glared. "You mark my words. They'll be in Holland
+before the year's out, like Hyam Emanuel's eldest brother-in-law and
+the red-haired sister of Samuel, the pawnbroker."
+
+"Well, I don't care if they are," said Kitty, yawning.
+
+"Don't care! Why, you'll lose your place. They kept you on for Mabel,
+but now--"
+
+Kitty cut her short. "Don't worry, mother. I'll be all right. He's not
+married Mabel yet."
+
+This reminder seemed to come to Mrs. Brill like a revelation, so fast
+had her imagination worked. She calmed down and Kitty took the
+opportunity to seek to escape. "Tell Salvina the news," she said.
+"She'll be specially interested in it. In fact, judging by the last
+time, she'll be more excited than I am," and she smiled somewhat
+mysteriously. "Tell her I'm sorry I missed her--I was hoping to find
+her having a holiday, but apparently I haven't been lucky enough to
+strike some Jewish fast."
+
+But partly because Mrs. Brill was enraptured by her beautiful
+daughter, partly to keep the pompous equipage outside her door as long
+as possible, she detained Kitty so unconscionably that Salvina arrived
+from school. Kitty flew to embrace her as usual, but arrested herself,
+shocked.
+
+"Why, Sally!" she cried. "You look like a ghost! What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," said Salvina with a wan smile. "Just the excitement of
+seeing you, I suppose."
+
+Kitty performed the postponed embrace but remained dubious and shaken.
+Was it that her mind was morbidly filled with funereal images, or was
+it that her fresh eye had seen what her mother's custom-blinded vision
+had missed--that there was death in Salvina's face?
+
+This face of death-in-life stirred up unwonted emotions in Kitty and
+made her refrain apprehensively from speaking again of Lily's death;
+and some days later, when the first bustle of grief had subsided in
+Bedford Square, Kitty, still haunted by that grewsome vision, wrote
+Salvina a letter.
+
+    "MY DEAR OLD SALLY,--You must really draw in your horns. You
+    were not looking at all well the other day. You are burning the
+    candle at both ends, I am sure. That horrid Board School is
+    killing you. I am going to beg a fortnight's holiday for you,
+    and I am going to take you to Boulogne for a week, and then,
+    when you are all braced up again, we can have the second week at
+    Paris."
+
+    "MY DEAREST AND BEST OF SISTERS," [Salvina replied,] "How
+    shocking the news mother has told me of the death of poor Lily!
+    If she did wrong she was speedily punished. But let us hope she
+    really loved him. I am sure that your brooding on her sad fate
+    and your sympathy with the family in this terrible affliction
+    has made you fancy all sorts of things about me, just as mother
+    is morbidly apprehensive of that horrible creature marrying
+    Mabel and thus robbing you of your place. But your sweet letter
+    did me more good than if I had really gone to Paris. How did you
+    know it was the dream of my life? But it cannot be realized just
+    yet, for it would be impossible for me to be spared from school
+    just now. Miss Green is away with diphtheria, and as this is
+    examination time, Miss Rolver has her hands full. Besides,
+    mother would be left alone. Don't worry about me, darling. I
+    always feel like this about this time of year, but the summer
+    holiday is not many weeks off and Ramsgate always sets me up
+    again.
+
+                                        "Your loving sister,
+                                                        "SALVINA.
+
+    "P.S. Mother told me you advised her not to go to Lazarus's any
+    more, and she isn't going. I am so glad, dear. These visits have
+    worried her, as Lazarus is so persistent. I am only sorry I
+    didn't think of enlisting your influence before--it is naturally
+    greater than mine. Good-bye, dear.
+
+    "P.P.S. I find I have actually forgotten to thank you for your
+    generous offer. But you know all that is in my heart, don't you,
+    darling?"
+
+All the same Kitty's alarm began to communicate itself to Salvina,
+especially after repeated if transient premonitions of fainting in her
+class-room. For what would happen if she really fell ill? She could
+get sick leave of course for a time; though that would bring her under
+the eagle eye of the Board Doctor, before which every teacher quailed.
+He might brutally pronounce her unfit for service. And how if she did
+break down permanently? Or if she died! Her savings were practically
+nil; her salary ceased with her breath. Who would support her mother?
+Kitty of course would nobly take up the burden, but it would be
+terribly hard on her, especially when Mabel Samuelson should come to
+marry. Not that she was going to die, of course; she was too used to
+being sickly. Death was only a shadow, hovering far off.
+
+
+XIV
+
+What was to be done? An inspiration came to her in the shape of a
+pamphlet. Life Assurance! Ah, that was it. Scottish Widows' Fund! How
+peculiarly apposite the title. If her mother could be guaranteed a
+couple of thousand pounds, Death would lose its sting. Salvina
+carefully worked out all the arithmetical points involved, and
+discovered to her surprise that life assurance was a form of gambling.
+The Company wagered her that she would live to a certain age, and she
+wagered that she would not. But after a world of trouble in filling up
+documents and getting endorsers, when she went before the Company's
+Doctor she was refused. The bet was not good enough. "Heart weak," was
+the ruthless indictment. "You ought not to teach," the Doctor even
+told her privately, and amid all her consternation Salvina was afraid
+lest by some mysterious brotherhood he should communicate with the
+Board Doctor and rob her of her situation. She began praying to God
+extemporaneously, in English. That was, for her, an index of
+impotence. She was at the end of her resources. She could see only a
+blank wall, and the wall was a great gravestone on which was
+chiselled: "_Hic jacet_, Salvina Brill, School Board Teacher,
+Undergraduate of London University. Unloved and unhappy."
+
+She wept over the inscription, being still romantic. Poor mother, poor
+Kitty, what a blow her death would be to them! Even Lazarus would be
+sorry. And in the thought of them she drifted away from the rare mood
+of self-pity and wondered again how she could get together enough
+money before she died to secure her mother's future. But no suggestion
+came even in answer to prayer. Once she thought of the Stock Exchange,
+but it seemed to her vaguely wicked to conjure with stocks and shares.
+She had read articles against it. Besides, what did she understand?
+True, she understood as much as her father. But who knew whether his
+money really came from this source? She dismissed the Stock Exchange
+despairingly.
+
+And meanwhile Mrs. Brill continued peevish and lachrymose, and Salvina
+found it more and more difficult to hide her own melancholy. One day,
+as she was leaving the school-premises, Sugarman the Shadchan
+accosted her. "Do make a beginning," he said winningly. "Only a
+sixteenth of a ticket. You can't lose."
+
+Sugarman still never thought of her even as a refuge for impecunious
+bachelors, but with that shameless pertinacity which was the secret of
+his success, both as British marriage-maker and continental lottery
+agent, he had never ceased cajoling her toward his other net. He was
+now destined to a success which surprised even himself. Her scrupulous
+conscientiousness undermined by her analysis of the Assurance System,
+Salvina inquired eagerly as to the prizes, and bought three whole
+tickets at a quarter of the price of one Assurance instalment.
+
+Sugarman made a careful note of the numbers, and so did Salvina. But
+it was unnecessary in her case. They were printed on her brain, graven
+on her heart, repeated in her prayers; they hovered luminous across
+her day-dreams, and if they distracted feverishly her dreams of the
+night, yet they tinged the school-routine pleasantly and made her
+mother's fretfulness endurable. They actually improved her health, and
+as the May sunshine warmed the earth, Salvina felt herself bourgeoning
+afresh, and she told herself her fears were morbid.
+
+Nevertheless there was one thing she was resolved to complete, in case
+she were truly doomed, and that was her mother's education in reading,
+so often begun, so often foiled by her mother's pertinacious
+subsidence into contented ignorance. Of what use even to assure Mrs.
+Brill's physical future, if her mind were to be left a pauper,
+dependent on others? How, without the magic resource of books, could
+she get through the long years of age, when decrepitude might confine
+her to the chimney-corner? Already her talk groaned with aches and
+pains.
+
+Since the servant had been installed, the reading lessons had dropped
+off and finally been discontinued. Now that Salvina persisted in
+continuing, she found that her mother's brain had retained nothing.
+Mrs. Brill had to begin again at the alphabet, and all the old routine
+of audacious guessing recommenced. Again a fat cow ate in a mug, for
+though Mrs. Brill had no head at all for corrections, she had a
+wonderful memory for her own mistakes, and took the whole sentence at
+a confident jump. It was an old friend.
+
+One evening, in the kitchen to which Mrs. Brill always gravitated when
+the servant was away, she paused between her misreadings to dilate on
+the inconsiderateness of the servant in having this day out, though
+she was paid for the full week, and though the mistress had to stick
+at home and do all the work. As Salvina seemed to be spiritless this
+evening, and allowed the domestic to go undefended, this topic was
+worn out more quickly than usual, but the never failing subject of
+Mrs. Brill's aches and pains provided more pretexts for dodging the
+hard words. And meantime in a chair beside hers, poor Salvina, silent
+as to her own aches and pains, and the faintness which was coming over
+her, strained her attention to follow in correction on the heels of
+her mother's reading; but do what she would, she could not keep her
+eyes continuously on the little primer, and whenever Mrs. Brill became
+aware that Salvina's attention had relaxed, she scampered along at a
+breakneck speed, taking trisyllables as unhesitatingly as a hunter a
+three-barred gate. But every now and again Salvina would struggle back
+into concentration, and Mrs. Brill would tumble at the first ditch.
+
+At last, Mrs. Brill, to her content, found herself cantering along,
+unimpeded, for a great stretch. Salvina lay back in her chair, dead.
+
+"The broken dancer only merry danger," read Mrs. Brill, at a joyous
+gallop. Suddenly the knocker beat a frantic tattoo on the street door.
+Up jumped Mrs. Brill, in sheer nervousness.
+
+Salvina lay rigid, undisturbed.
+
+"She's fallen asleep," thought her mother, guiltily conscious of
+having taken advantage of her slumbers. "All the same, she might spare
+my aged bones the trouble of dragging upstairs." But, being already on
+her feet, she mounted the stairs, and opened the door on Sugarman's
+beaming, breathless face.
+
+"Your daughter--Number 75,814," he gasped.
+
+Mrs. Brill, who knew nothing of Salvina's speculations, took some
+seconds to catch his drift.
+
+"What, what?" she cried, trembling.
+
+"I have won her a hundred thousand marks--the great prize!"
+
+"The great prize!" screamed Mrs. Brill. "Salvina! Salvina! Come up,"
+and not waiting for her reply, and overturning the flower-pots on the
+hall-table, she flew downstairs, helter-skelter. "Salvina!" she shook
+her roughly. "Wake up! You have won the great prize!"
+
+But Salvina did not wake up, though she had won the great prize.
+
+
+XV
+
+One Sunday afternoon nearly five months later a nondescript series of
+vehicles, erratically and unpunctually succeeding one another, drew up
+near the mortuary of the Jewish cemetery, but, from the presence of
+women, it was obvious that something else than a funeral was in
+progress. In fact, the two four-wheelers, three hansom cabs, several
+dog-carts, and one open landau suggested rather a picnic amid the
+tombs. But it was only the ceremony of the setting of Salvina's
+tombstone, which was attracting all these relatives and well-wishers.
+
+In the landau--which gave ample space for their knees--sat the same
+quartette that had shared a cab to Lazarus's wedding, except that
+Salvina was replaced by Kitty. That ever young and beautiful person
+was the only member of the family who had the air of having fallen in
+the world, for despite that Salvina's great prize was now added to Mr.
+Brill's capital (he being the legal heir), he had refused to set up a
+groom in addition to a carriage. A coachman, he insisted, was all that
+was necessary. It was the same tone that he had taken about the
+horsehair sofa, and it helped Mrs. Brill to feel that her husband was
+unchanged, after all.
+
+Arrived on the ground, the Brills found a gathering of the Jonases,
+reconciled by death and riches. Others were to arrive, and the party
+distributed itself about the cemetery with an air of conscious
+incompleteness. Old Jonas shook hands cordially with Lazarus, and
+wiped away a tear from under his green shade. A few of Salvina's
+fellow-teachers had obeyed the notification of the advertisement in
+the Jewish papers, and were come to pay the last tribute of respect.
+The men wore black hat-bands, the women crape, which on all the nearer
+relatives already showed signs of wear. And among all these groups,
+conversing amiably of this or that in the pleasant October sunshine,
+the genteel stone-mason insinuated himself, pervading the gathering.
+His breast was divided between anxiety as to whether the parents would
+like the tombstone, and uncertainty as to whether they would pay on
+the spot.
+
+"Have you seen the stone? What do you think of it?" he kept saying to
+everybody, with a deferential assumption of artistic responsibility;
+though, as it was a handsome granite stone, the bulk of the chiselling
+had been done in Aberdeen, for the sake of economy, whilst the stone
+was green, and his own contribution had been merely the Hebrew
+lettering. One by one, under the guidance of the artist, the groups
+wandered toward the tombstone, and a spectator or two admiringly
+opened negotiations for future contingencies. An old lady who knew the
+stonemason's sister-in-law strove to make a bargain for her own
+tombstone, quite forgetting that the money she was saving on it would
+not be enjoyed by herself.
+
+"What will you charge _me_?" she asked, with grotesque coquetry. "I
+think you ought to do it cheaper for _me_."
+
+And in the House of the Priests the minister in charge of the
+ceremonial impatiently awaited the late comers, that he might intone
+the beautiful immemorial Psalms. He had made a close bargain with the
+cabman, and was anxious not to set him grumbling over the delay; apart
+from his desire to get back to his pretty wife, who was "at home" that
+afternoon.
+
+At last the genteel stone-mason found an opportunity of piercing
+through the throng of friends that surrounded Mr. Brill, and of
+obsequiously inviting the generous orderer of this especially
+handsome and profitable tombstone to inspect it. Kitty followed in the
+wake of her parents. Almost at the tomb, a corpulent man with graying
+hair, issuing suddenly from an avenue of headstones, accosted her. She
+frowned.
+
+"You oughtn't to have come," she said.
+
+"Since I belong to the family, Kitty," he remonstrated, playing
+nervously with his massive watch seals.
+
+"No, you don't," she retorted. Then, relentingly: "I told you, Moss,
+that I could not give you my formal consent till after my sister's
+tombstone was set. That is the least respect I can pay her." And she
+turned away from the somewhat disconcerted Rosenstein, feeling very
+right-minded and very forgiving toward Salvina for delaying by so many
+years her marriage with the South African magnate.
+
+Meantime Mr. Brill, in his heavily draped high hat, stood beside the
+pompous granite memorial, surveying it approvingly. His wife's hand
+lay tenderly in his own. Underneath their feet lay the wormy dust that
+had once palpitated with truth and honour, that had kept the
+conscience of the household.
+
+"That bit of scroll-work," said the stone-mason admiringly, and with
+an air of having thrown it in at a loss; "you don't often see a bit
+like that--everybody's been saying so."
+
+"Very fine!" replied Mr. Brill obediently.
+
+"I paid the synagogue bill for you--to save you trouble," added the
+stone-mason, insinuatingly.
+
+But Mr. Brill was abstractedly studying the stone, and the mason moved
+off delicately. Mrs. Brill tried to spell out a few of the words, but,
+as there was no one to reprimand her, admitted her break-down.
+
+"Read it to me, dear heart," she whispered to Mr. Brill.
+
+"I did read it you, my precious one," he said, "when Kitty sent it us.
+It says:--
+
+      "'SALVINA BRILL,
+    Whom God took suddenly,
+      On May 29th, 1897,
+      Aged twenty-five;
+    Loved and lamented by all
+    For her perfect goodness.'
+
+Then come the Hebrew letters."
+
+"Poor Salvina!" sighed Mrs. Brill. "She deserves it, though she did
+spoil our lives for years." He pressed her hand. "I can't tell you how
+frightened I was of her," she went on. "She almost made me think I
+ought not to forgive you even on the Day of Atonement. But I don't
+bear her malice, and I don't grudge her what the stone says."
+
+"No, you mustn't," he said piously. "Besides, everybody knows one
+never puts the whole truth on tombstones."
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SATAN MEKATRIG
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SATAN MEKATRIG
+
+    "_Suffer not the evil imagination to have dominion over us ...
+    deliver me from the destructive Satan._"--Morning Prayer.
+
+
+Without, the air was hot, heavy and oppressive; squadrons of dark
+clouds had rolled up rapidly from the rim of the horizon, and
+threatened each instant to shake heaven and earth with their
+artillery. But within the little synagogue of the "Congregation of
+Love and Mercy," though it was crowded to suffocation, not a window
+was open. The worshippers, arrayed in their Sabbath finery, were too
+intent on following the quaint monotonous sing-song of the Cantor
+reading the Law to have much attention left for physical discomfort.
+They thought of their perspiring brows and their moist undergarments
+just about as little as they thought of the meaning of the Hebrew
+words the reader was droning. Though the language was perfectly
+intelligible to them, yet their consciousness was chiefly and
+agreeably occupied with its musical accentuation, their piety being so
+interwoven with these beloved and familiar material elements as hardly
+to be separable therefrom. Perspiration, too, had come to seem almost
+an ingredient of piety on great synagogal occasions. Frequent
+experience had linked the two, as the poor opera-goer associates Patti
+with crushes. And the present was a great occasion. It was only an
+ordinary Sabbath afternoon service, but there was a feast of
+intellectual good things to follow. The great Rav Rotchinsky from
+Brody was to deliver a sermon; and so the swarthy, eager-eyed,
+curly-haired, shrewd-visaged cobblers, tailors, cigar-makers,
+peddlers, and beggars, who made up the congregation, had assembled in
+their fifties to enjoy the dialectical subtleties, the theological
+witticisms and the Talmudical anecdotes which the reputation of the
+Galician Maggid foreshadowed. And not only did they come themselves;
+many brought their wives, who sat in their wigs and earrings behind a
+curtain which cut them off from the view of the men. The general
+ungainliness of their figures and the unattractiveness of their
+low-browed, high-cheekboned, and heavy-jawed faces would have made
+this pious precaution appear somewhat superfluous to an outsider. The
+women, whose section of the large room thus converted into a place of
+worship was much smaller than the men's, were even more closely packed
+on their narrow benches. Little wonder, therefore, that just as a
+member of the congregation was intoning from the central platform the
+blessing which closes the reading of the Law, a woman disturbed her
+neighbours by fainting. She was carried out into the open air, though
+not without a good deal of bustle, which invoked indignant
+remonstrances in the Juedisch-Deutsch jargon, of "Hush, little women!"
+from the male worshippers, unconscious of the cause. The beadle went
+behind the curtain, and, fearing new disturbances, tried to open the
+window at the back of the little room, to let in some air from the
+back-yard on which it abutted. The sash was, however, too inert from a
+long season of sloth to move even in its own groove, and so the beadle
+elbowed his way back into the masculine department, and by much
+tugging at a cord effected a small slit between a dusty skylight and
+the ceiling, neglecting the grumblings of the men immediately beneath.
+
+Hardly had he done so, when all the heavy shadows that lay in the
+corners of the synagogue, all the glooms that the storm-clouds cast
+upon the day, and that the grimy, cobwebbed windows multiplied, were
+sent flying off by a fierce flash of lightning that bathed in a sea of
+fire the dingy benches, the smeared walls, the dingily curtained Ark,
+the serried rows of swarthy faces. Almost on the heels of the
+lightning came the thunder--that vast, instantaneous crash which
+denotes that the electric cloud is low.
+
+The service was momentarily interrupted; the congregation was on its
+feet; and from all parts rose the Hebrew blessing, "Blessed art thou,
+O Lord, performing the work of the Creation;" followed, as the
+thunder followed the lightning, by the sonorous "Blessed art thou, O
+Lord, whose power and might fill the Universe." Then the congregation,
+led by the great Rav Rotchinsky, to whose venerable thought-lined
+face, surmounted by its black cap, all eyes had instinctively turned,
+sat down again, feeling safe. The blessing was intended to mean, and
+meant no more than, a reverential acknowledgment of the majesty of the
+Creator revealed in elemental phenomena; but human nature, struggling
+amid the terrors and awfulness of the Universe, is always below its
+creed, and scarce one but felt the prayer a talisman. A moment
+afterward all rose again, as Moshe Grinwitz, wrapped in his Talith, or
+praying-shawl, prepared to descend from the _Al Memor_, or central
+platform, bearing in his arms the Scroll of the Law, which had just
+been reverentially wrapped in its bandages, and devoutly covered with
+its embroidered mantle and lovingly decorated with its ornamental
+bells and pointer.
+
+Now, as Moshe Grinwitz stood on the _Al Memor_ with his sacred burden,
+another terrible flash of lightning and appalling crash of thunder
+startled the worshippers. And Moshe's arms were nervously agitated,
+and a frightful thought came into his head. _Suppose he should drop
+the Holy Scroll!_ As this dreadful possibility occurred to him he
+trembled still more. The _Sepher Torah_ is to the Jew at once the most
+precious and the most sacred of possessions, and in the eyes of the
+"Congregation of Love and Mercy" their _Sepher Torah_ was, if
+possible, invested with a still higher preciousness and sanctity,
+because they had only one. They were too poor to afford luxuries; and
+so this single Scroll was the very symbol and seal of their
+brotherhood; in it lay the very possibility of their existence as a
+congregation. Not that it would be rendered "_Pasul_," imperfect and
+invalid, by being dropped; the fall could not erase any of the letters
+so carefully written on the parchment; but the calamity would be none
+the less awful and ominous. Every person present would have to abstain
+for a day from all food and drink, in sign of solemn grief. Moshe felt
+that if the idea that had flitted across his brain were to be
+realized, he would never have the courage to look his pious wife in
+the face after such passive profanity. The congregation, too, which
+honoured him, and which now waited to press devout kisses on the
+mantle of the Scroll, on its passage to the Ark--he could not but be
+degraded in its eyes by so negligent a performance of a duty which was
+a coveted privilege. All these thoughts, which were instinctively
+felt, rather than clearly conceived, caused Moshe Grinwitz to clasp
+the Sacred Scroll, which reached a little above his head, tightly to
+his breast. Feeling secure from the peril of dropping it, he made a
+step forward, but the bells jangled weirdly to his ears, and when he
+came to the two steps which led down from the platform, a horrible
+foreboding overcame him that he would stumble and fall in the descent.
+He stepped down one of the steps with morbid care, but lo! the feeling
+that no power on earth could prevent his falling gained tenfold in
+intensity. An indefinable presentiment of evil was upon him; the air
+was charged with some awful and maleficent influence, of which the
+convulsion of nature seemed a fit harbinger. And now his sensations
+became more horrible. The conviction of the impending catastrophe
+changed into a desire to take an active part in it, to have it done
+with and over. His arms itched to loose their hold of the _Sepher
+Torah_. Oh! if he could only dash the thing to the ground, nay, stamp
+upon it, uttering fearful blasphemies, and shake off this dark cloud
+that seemed to close round and suffocate him. A last shred of will, of
+sanity, wrestled with his wild wishes. The perspiration poured in
+streams down his forehead. It was but a moment since he had taken the
+Holy Scroll into his arms; but it seemed ages ago.
+
+His foot hovered between the first and second step, when a strange
+thing happened. Straight through the narrow slit opened in the
+skylight came a swift white arrow of flame, so dazzling that the awed
+worshippers closed their eyes; then a long succession of terrific
+peals shook the room as with demoniac laughter, and when the
+congregants came to their senses and opened their eyes they saw Moshe
+Grinwitz sitting dazed upon the steps of the _Al Memor_, his hands
+tightly grasping the ends of his praying-shawl, while the _Sepher
+Torah_ lay in the dust of the floor.
+
+For a moment the shock was such that no one could speak or move. There
+was an awful, breathless silence, broken only by the mad patter of the
+rain on the roof and the windows. The floodgates of heaven were opened
+at last, and through the fatal slit a very cascade of water seemed to
+descend. Automatically the beadle rushed to the cord and pulled the
+window to. His action broke the spell, and a dozen men, their swarthy
+faces darker with concern, rushed to raise up the prostrate Scroll,
+while a hubbub of broken ejaculations rose from every side.
+
+But ere a hand could reach it, Moshe Grinwitz had darted forward and
+seized the precious object. "No, no," he cried, in the jargon which
+was the common language of all present. "What do you want? The
+_mitzvah_ (good deed) is mine. I alone must carry it." He shouldered
+it anew.
+
+"Kiss it, at least," cried the great Rav Rotchinsky in a hoarse,
+shocked whisper.
+
+"Kiss it?" cried Moshe Grinwitz, with a sneering laugh. "What! with my
+wife in synagogue! Isn't it enough that I embrace it?" Then, without
+giving his hearers time to grasp the profanity of his words, he went
+on: "Ah, now I can carry thee easily. I can hold thee, and yet breathe
+freely. See!" And he held out the Scroll lengthwise, showing the
+gilded metal chain and the pointer and the bells contorted by the
+lightning. "I didn't hurt thee; God hurt thee," he said, addressing
+the Scroll. With a quick jerk of the hand he drew off the mantle and
+showed the parchment blackened and disfigured.
+
+A groan burst from some; others looked on in dazed silence. The
+pecuniary loss, added to the manifestation of Divine wrath,
+overwhelmed them. "Thou hast no soul now to struggle out of my hands,"
+went on Moshe Grinwitz contemptuously. "Look!" he added suddenly: "The
+lightning has gone back to hell again!" The men nearest him shuddered,
+and gazed down at the point on the floor toward which he was inclining
+the extremity of the Scroll. The wood was charred, and a small hole
+revealed the path the electric current had taken. As they looked in
+awestruck silence, a loud wailing burst forth from behind the curtain.
+The ill-omened news of the destruction of the _Sepher Torah_ had
+reached the women, and their Oriental natures found relief in profuse
+lamentation. "Smell! smell!" cried Moshe Grinwitz, sniffing the
+sulphurous air with open delight.
+
+"Woe! woe!" wailed the women. "Woe has befallen us!"
+
+"Be silent, all!" thundered the Maggid, suddenly recovering himself.
+"Be silent, women! Listen to my words. This is the vengeance of Heaven
+for the wickedness ye have committed in England. Since ye left your
+native country ye have forgotten your Judaism. There are men in this
+synagogue that have shaved the corners of their beard; there are women
+who have not separated the Sabbath dough. Hear ye! To-morrow shall be
+a fast day for you all. And you, Moshe Grinwitz, _bench gomel_--thank
+the Holy One, blessed be He, for saving your life."
+
+"Not I," said Moshe Grinwitz. "You talk nonsense. If the Holy One,
+blessed be He, saved my life, it was He that threatened it. My life
+was in no danger if He hadn't interfered."
+
+To hear blasphemies like this from the hitherto respectable and devout
+Moshe Grinwitz overwhelmed his hearers. But only for a moment. From a
+hundred throats there rose the angry cry, "Epikouros! Epikouros!" And
+mingled with this accusation of graceless scepticism there swelled a
+gathering tumult of "His is the sin! Cast him out! He is the Jonah! He
+is the sinner!" The congregants had all risen long ago and menacing
+faces glared behind menacing faces. Some of more heady temperament
+were starting from their places. "Moshe Grinwitz," cried the great
+Rav, his voice dominating the din, "are you mad?"
+
+"Now for the first time am I sane," replied the man, his brow dark
+with defiance, his tall but usually stooping frame rigid, his narrow
+chest dilated, his head thrown back so that the somewhat rusty high
+hat he wore sloped backward half off his skull. It was always a
+strange, arrestive face, was Moshe Grinwitz's, with its sallow skin,
+its melancholy dark eyes, its aquiline nose, its hanging side-curls,
+and its full, fleshy mouth embowered in a forest of black beard and
+mustache; and now there was an uncanny light about it which made it
+almost weird. "Now I see that the Socialists and Atheists are right,
+and that we trouble ourselves and tear out our very gall to read a
+_Torah_ which the Overseer himself, if there is one, scornfully
+shrivels up and casts beneath our feet. Know ye what, brethren? Let us
+all go to the Socialist Club and smoke our cigarettes. Otherwise are
+_you_ mad!" As he uttered these impious words, another flash of flame
+lit up the crowded dusk with unearthly light; the building seemed to
+rock and crash; the fingers of the storm beat heavily upon the
+windows. From the women's compartment came low wails of fear: "Lord,
+have mercy! Forgive us for our sins! It is the end of the world!" But
+from the men's benches there arose an incoherent cry like the growl of
+a tiger, and from all sides excited figures precipitated themselves
+upon the blasphemer. But Moshe Grinwitz laughed a wild, maniacal
+laugh, and whirled the sacred Scroll round and dashed the first comers
+against one another. But a muscular Lithuanian seized the extremity of
+the Scroll, and others hung on, and between them they wrested it from
+his grasp. Still he fought furiously, as if endowed with sinews of
+steel, and his irritated opponents, their faces bleeding and swollen,
+closed round him, forgetting that their object was but to expel him,
+and bent on doing him a mischief. Another moment and it would have
+fared ill with the man, when a voice, whose tones startled all but
+Moshe Grinwitz, though they were spoken close to his ear, hissed in
+Yiddish: "Well, if this is the way the members of the Congregation of
+Love and Mercy spend their Sabbath, methinks they had done as well to
+smoke cigarettes at the Socialist Club. What say ye, brethren?" These
+words, pregnant and deserved enough in themselves, were underlined by
+an accent of indescribable mockery, not bitter, but as gloating over
+the enjoyment of their folly. Involuntarily all turned their eyes to
+the speaker.
+
+Who was he? Where did he spring from, this black-coated, fur-capped,
+red-haired hunchback with the gigantic marble brow, the cold, keen,
+steely eyes that drew and enthralled the gazer, the handsome
+clean-shaven lips contorted with a sneer? None remembered seeing him
+enter--none had seen him sitting at their side, or near them. He was
+not of their congregation, nor of their brotherhood, nor of any of
+their crafts. Yet as they looked at him the exclamations died away on
+their lips, their menacing hands fell to their sides, and a wave of
+vague, uneasy remembrance passed over all the men in the synagogue.
+There was not one that did not seem to know him; there was not one who
+could have told who he was, or when or where he had seen him before.
+Even the great Rav Rotchinsky, who had set foot on English soil but a
+fortnight ago, felt a stir of shadowy recollection within him; and his
+corrugated brow wrinkled itself still more in the search after
+definiteness. A deep and sudden silence possessed the synagogue; the
+very sobs of the unseeing women were checked. Only the sough of the
+storm, the ceaseless plash of the torrent, went on as before. Without,
+the busy life of London pulsed, unchecked by the tempest; within, the
+little synagogue was given over to mystery and nameless awe.
+
+The sneering hunchback took the Holy Scroll from the nerveless hands
+of the Lithuanian, and waved it as in derision. "Blasted! harmless!"
+he cried. "The great Name itself mocked by the elements! So this is
+what ye toil and sweat for--to store up gold that His words may be
+inscribed finely on choice parchment; and then this is how He laughs
+at your toil and your self-sacrifice. Listen to Him no more; give not
+up the seventh day to idleness when your Lord worketh His lightnings
+thereon. Blind yourselves no longer over old-fashioned pages, dusty
+and dreary. Rise up against Him and His law, for He is moved with
+mirth at your mummeries. He and His angels laugh at you--Heaven is
+merry with your folly. What hath He done for His chosen people for
+their centuries of anguish and martyrdom? It is for His plaything that
+He hath _chosen_ you. He hath given you over into the hand of the
+spoiler; ye are a byword among nations; the followers of the
+victorious Christ spit in your faces. Here in England your lot is
+least hard; but even here ye eat your scanty bread with sorrow and
+travail. Sleep may rarely visit your eyes; your homes are noisome
+styes; your children perish around you; ye go down in sorrow to the
+grave. Rouse yourselves, and be free men. Waste your lives neither for
+God nor man. Or, if you will worship, worship the Christ, whose
+ministers will pour gold upon you. Eat, drink, and be merry, for
+to-morrow ye die."
+
+A charmed silence still hung over his auditors. Their resentment,
+their horror, was dead; a waft of fiery air seemed to blow over their
+souls, an intoxicating flush of evil thoughts held riot in their
+hearts. They felt their whole spirit move under the sway of the daring
+speaker, who now seemed to them merely to put into words thoughts long
+suppressed in their own hearts, but now rising into active
+consciousness. Yes, they had been fools: they would free themselves,
+and quaff the wine of life before the Angel of Death, Azrael, spilled
+the goblet. Moshe Grinwitz's melancholy eyes blazed with sympathetic
+ardour.
+
+"Hush, miserable blasphemer!" faltered the great Rav Rotchinsky, who
+alone could find his tongue. "The guardian of Israel neither
+slumbereth nor sleepeth." The hunchback wheeled round and cast a
+chilling glance at the venerable man. Then, smiling, "The maidens of
+England are beautiful," he said. "They are even fairer than the women
+of Brody."
+
+The great Rav turned pale, but his eyes shone. He struck out feebly
+with his arms, as though beating back some tempting vision.
+
+"You and I have spoken together before, Rabbi," said the hunchback.
+"We shall speak again--about women, wine, and other things. Your beard
+is long and white, but many days of sunshine are still before you, and
+the darkness of the grave is afar."
+
+The rabbi tried to mutter a prayer, but his lips only beat tremulously
+together.
+
+"Profane mocker," he muttered at length, "go to thy work and thy wine
+and thy pleasure, if thou wouldst desecrate the sacred Sabbath-day;
+but tempt not others to sin with thee. Begone; and may the Holy One,
+blessed be He, blast thee with His lightnings."
+
+"The Holy One blasteth only that which is holy," grimly rejoined the
+dwarfish stranger, exhibiting the Scroll, while a low sound of
+applause went up from the audience. "Said I not, ye were a sport and a
+mockery unto Him? Ye assemble in your multitude for prayer, and the
+vapour of your piety but prepares the air for the passage of His
+arrows. Ye adorn His Scroll with bells and chains, and the gilded
+metal but draws His lightnings."
+
+He looked around the room and a cat-like gleam of triumph stole into
+his wonderful eyes as he noted the effect of his words. He paused, and
+again for a moment the tense, awful silence reigned, emphasized by the
+loud but decreasing patter of the rain. This time it was broken in a
+strange, unexpected fashion.
+
+"_Yisgadal, veyiskadash sheme rabbo_," rang out a clear, childish
+voice from the rear of the synagogue. A little orphan child, who had
+come to repeat the _Kaddish_, the Hebrew mourners' unquestioning
+acknowledgment of the Supreme Goodness, had fallen into a sleep,
+overcome by the heat, and had slept all through the storm. Awakening
+now amid a universal silence, the poor little fellow instinctively
+felt that the congregation was waiting for him to pronounce the
+prayer. Alone of the male worshippers he had neither seen the
+blaspheming hunchback nor listened to his words.
+
+The hunchback's handsome face was distorted with a scowl; he stamped
+his broad splay-foot, but hearing no verbal interruption, the child,
+its eyes piously closed, continued its prayer--
+
+"_In the world which He hath created...._"
+
+"The rain has ceased, brethren," huskily whispered the hunchback, for
+his words seemed to stick in his throat. "Come outside and I will tell
+you how to enjoy this world, for world-to-come there is none." Not a
+figure stirred. The child's treble went unfalteringly on. The stranger
+hurried toward the door. Arrived there, he looked back. Moshe
+Grinwitz alone followed him. He hurled the Scroll at the child's head,
+but the lad just then took the three backward steps which accompany
+the conclusion of the prayer. The Scroll dashed itself against the
+wall; the stranger was gone and with him Moshe Grinwitz. A great wave
+of trembling passed through the length and breadth of the synagogue;
+the men drew long breaths, as if some heavy and sulphurous vapour had
+been dissipated from the atmosphere; the child lifted up with
+difficulty the battered Scroll, kissed it and handed it to his
+neighbour, who deposited it reverently in the Ark; a dazzling burst of
+sunshine flooded the room from above, and transmuted the floating dust
+into the golden shafts of some celestial structure; the Cantor and the
+congregation continued the words of the service at the point
+interrupted, as though all the strange episode had been a dream. They
+did not speak or wonder among themselves at it; nor did the rabbi
+allude to it in the marvellous exhortation that succeeded the service,
+save at its close, when he reminded them that on the morrow they must
+observe a solemn fast. But ever afterward they shunned Moshe Grinwitz
+as a leper; for the sight of him recalled his companion in blasphemy,
+the atheist and socialist propagandist, who had insidiously crept into
+their midst, after perverting and crazing their fellow as a
+preliminary; and the thought of the strange hunchback set their blood
+tingling and their brain surging with wild fancies and audacious
+thoughts. The tidings of their misfortune induced a few benevolent men
+to join in purchasing a new Scroll of the Law for them, and before the
+Feast of Consecration of this precious possession was well over, the
+once vivid images of that stormy and disgraceful scene were as shadows
+in the minds of men not unaccustomed to heated synagogal discussions,
+and not altogether strangers to synagogal affrays.
+
+    "_She will do him good and not evil all the days of her
+    life._"--Prov. xxxi. 12.
+
+As Moshe Grinwitz followed his new-found friend down the narrow
+windings that led to his own home, his whole being surrendered itself
+to the new delicious freedom. The burst of sunshine that greeted him
+almost as soon as he crossed the threshold of the synagogue seemed to
+him to typify the new life that was to be his. He drew up his gaunt
+form to his full height, stiffened his curved shoulders, bent by much
+stooping over his machine, and adjusted his high hat firmly on his
+head. It was not a restful, placid feeling that now possessed him;
+rather a busy ferment of ideas, a stirring of nerve currents, an
+accumulation of energy striving to discharge itself, a mercurial
+flowing of the blood. The weight of old life-long conceptions, nay,
+the burden of old learning, of which his store had been vast, was cast
+off. He did not know what he should do with the new life that tingled
+in his veins; he only felt alive in every pore.
+
+"Ha! brother!" he shouted to the hunchback, who was hurrying on
+before. "These fools in the synagogue would do better to come out and
+enjoy the fine weather."
+
+"They breathe the musty air to offer it up as a sweet incense,"
+responded the dwarf, slackening his steps to allow his companion to
+come up with him.
+
+Their short walk was diversified by quite a number of incidents. A
+driver lashed his horse so savagely that the animal bolted; two
+children walking hand in hand suddenly began to fight; a
+foreign-looking, richly dressed gentleman, half-drunk, staggered
+along. Moshe felt it a shame that one wealthy man should wear a heavy
+gold chain, which would support a poor family for a month; but ere his
+own temptation had gathered to a head, the poor gentleman was felled
+by a sudden blow, and a respectably clad figure vanished down an alley
+with the coveted spoil. Moshe felt glad, and made no attempt to assist
+the victim, and his attention was immediately attracted by some boys,
+who commenced to tie a cracker to a cat's tail. Occupied by all these
+observations, Moshe suddenly noted with a start that they had reached
+the house in which he lived. His companion had already entered the
+passage, for the door was always ajar, and Moshe had the impression
+that it was very kind of his new friend to accept his invitation to
+visit him. He felt very pleased, and followed him into the passage,
+but no sooner had he done so than an impalpable cloud of distrust
+seemed to settle upon him. The house was a tall, old-fashioned and
+grimy structure, which had been fine, and even stately, a century
+before, but which now sheltered a dozen families, mainly Jewish. Moshe
+Grinwitz's one room was situated at the very top, its walls forming
+part of the roof. Every flight of stairs Moshe went up, his spirit
+grew darker and darker, as if absorbing the darkness that hung around
+the cobwebbed, massive balustrades, upon which no direct ray of
+sunlight ever fell; and by the time he had reached the dusky landing
+outside his own door the vague uneasiness had changed into a horrible
+definite conception; a memory had come back upon him which set his
+heart thumping guiltily and anxiously in his bosom. His wife! His
+pure, virtuous, God-fearing wife! How was he to make her understand?
+But immediately a thought came, by which the burden of shame and
+anxiety was half lifted. His wife was not at home; she would still be
+in the Synagogue of Love and Mercy, where, mercifully blinded by the
+curtain, she, perhaps, was still ignorant of the part he had played.
+He turned suddenly to his companion, and caught the vanishing traces
+of an ugly scowl wrinkling the high white forehead under the fur cap.
+The hunchback's hair burnt like fire on the background of the gloom;
+his eyes flashed lightning.
+
+"Probably my wife is in the synagogue," said Moshe. "If so, she has
+the key, and we can't get in."
+
+"The key matters little," hissed the hunchback. "But you must first
+tear down this thing."
+
+Moshe's eyes followed in wonder the direction of his companion's long,
+white forefinger, and rested on the _Mezuzah_, where, in a tin case,
+the holy verses and the Name hung upon the door-post.
+
+"Tear it down?" repeated Moshe.
+
+"Tear it down!" replied the hunchback. "Never will I enter a home
+where this superstitious gew-gaw is allowed to decorate the door."
+
+Moshe hesitated; the thought of what his wife would say, again welled
+up strongly within him; all his new impious daring seemed to be
+melting away. But a mocking glance from the cruel eyes thrilled
+through him. He put his hand on the _Mezuzah_, then the unbroken habit
+of years asserted its sway, and he removed the finger which had lain
+on the Name and kissed it. Instantly another semi-transformation of
+his thoughts took place; he longed to take the hunchback by the
+throat. But it was an impotent longing, for when a low hiss of intense
+scorn and wrath was breathed from the clenched lips of his companion,
+he made a violent tug at the firmly fastened _Mezuzah_. It was
+half-loosed from the woodwork when, from behind the door, there issued
+in clear, womanly tones the solemn Hebrew words:--
+
+"_Blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly,
+nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the
+scornful._"
+
+It was Rebecca Grinwitz commencing the Book of Psalms, which she read
+through every Sabbath afternoon.
+
+A violent shudder agitated Moshe Grinwitz's frame; he paused with his
+hand on the _Mezuzah_, struggled with himself awhile, then kissed his
+finger again, and, turning to defy the scorn of his companion, saw
+that he had slipped noiselessly downstairs. A sob of intense relief
+burst from Moshe's lips.
+
+"Rivkoly, Rivkoly!" he cried hysterically, beating at the door; and in
+another moment he was folded in the quiet haven of his wife's arms.
+
+"Who told thee it was I?" said Rebecca, after a moment of delicious
+happiness for both. "I told them not to alarm thee, nor to spoil thy
+enjoyment of the sermon, because I knew thou wouldst be uneasy and be
+wanting to leave the synagogue if thou knewest I had fainted."
+
+"No one told me thou hadst fainted!" Moshe exclaimed, instantly
+forgetting his own perturbation.
+
+"And yet thou didst guess it!" said Rebecca, a happy little smile
+dimpling her pale cheek, "and came away after me." Then, her face
+clouding, "The _Satan Mekatrig_ has tempted us both away from
+synagogue," she said, "and even when I commence to say _Tehillim_
+(Psalms) at home, he interrupts me by sending me my darling husband."
+
+Moshe kissed her in acknowledgment of the complimentary termination of
+a sentence begun with unquestionable gloom. "But what made my Rivkoly
+faint?" he asked, glad, on reflection, that his wife's misconception
+obviated the necessity of explanations. "They ought to have opened the
+window at the back of the women's room."
+
+Rebecca shuddered. "God forbid!" she cried. "It wasn't the heat--it
+was _that_." Her eyes stared a moment at some unseen vision.
+
+"What?" cried Moshe, catching the contagion of horror.
+
+"He would have come in," she said.
+
+"Who would have come in?" he gasped.
+
+"The _Satan Mekatrig_," replied his wife. "He was outside, and he
+glared at me as if I prevented his coming in."
+
+A nervous silence followed. Moshe's heart beat painfully. Then he
+laughed with ghastly merriment. "Thou didst fall asleep from the
+heat," he said, "and hadst an evil dream."
+
+"No, no," protested his wife earnestly. "As sure as I stand here, no!
+I was looking into my _Chumosh_ (Pentateuch), following the reading of
+the _Torah_, and all at once I felt something plucking my eyes off my
+book and turning my head to look through the window immediately behind
+me. I wondered what _Satan Mekatrig_ was distracting my thoughts from
+the service. For a long time I resisted, but when the reading ceased
+for a moment the temptation overcame me and I turned and saw him."
+
+"How looked he?" Moshe asked in a whisper that strove in vain not to
+be one.
+
+"Do not ask me," Rebecca replied, with another shudder. "A little
+crooked demon with red hair, and a fur cap, and a white forehead, and
+baleful eyes, and a cock's talons for toes."
+
+Again Moshe laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Little fool!" he said,
+"I know the man. He is only a brother-Jew--a poor cutter or
+cigar-maker who laughs at _Yiddishkeit_ (Judaism), because he has no
+wife like mine to show him the heavenly light. Why, didst thou not see
+him afterward? But no, thou must have been gone by the time he came
+inside."
+
+"What I saw was no man," returned Rebecca, looking at him sternly. "No
+earthly being could have stopped my heart with his glances. It was the
+_Satan Mekatrig_ himself, who goeth to and fro on the earth, and
+walketh up and down in it. I must have been having wicked thoughts
+indeed this Sabbath, thinking of my new dress, for my Sabbath Angel
+to have deserted me, and to let the Disturber and the Tempter assail
+me unchecked." The poor, conscience-stricken woman burst into tears.
+
+"My Rivkoly have wicked thoughts!" said Moshe incredulously, as he
+smoothed her cheek. "If my Rivkoly puts on a new dress in honour of
+the Sabbath, is not the dear God pleased? Why, where _is_ thy new
+dress?"
+
+"I have changed it for an old one," she sobbed. "I do not want to see
+the demon again."
+
+"The _Satan Mekatrig_ has no real existence, I tell thee," said Moshe,
+irritated. "He only means our own inward thoughts, that distract us in
+the performance of the precepts; our own inward temptations to go
+astray after our eyes and after our hearts."
+
+"Moshe!" Rebecca exclaimed in a shocked tone, "have I married an
+Epikouros after all? My father, the Rav, peace be unto him, always
+said thou hadst the makings of one--that thou didst ask too many
+questions."
+
+"Well, whether there is a _Satan_ or not," retorted her husband, "thou
+couldst not have seen him; for the person thou describest is the man I
+tell thee of."
+
+"And thou keepest company with such a man," she answered; "a man who
+scoffs at _Yiddishkeit_! May the Holy One, blessed be He, forgive
+thee! Now I know why we have no children, no son to say _Kaddish_
+after us." And Rebecca wept bitterly--for the children she did not
+possess.
+
+Their common cause of grief coming thus unexpectedly into their
+consciousness softened them toward one another and dispelled the
+gathering irritation. Both had a melancholy vision of themselves
+stretched out stiff and stark in their shrouds, with no filial
+_Kaddish_ breaking in upon and gladdening their ears. O if their souls
+should be doomed to Purgatory, with no son's prayers to release them!
+Very soon they were sitting hand in hand, reading together the
+interrupted Psalms.
+
+And a deep peace fell upon Moshe Grinwitz. So the immortal allegorist,
+John Bunyan, must have felt when the mad longing to utter blasphemies
+and obscenities from the pulpit was stifled; and when he felt his soul
+once more in harmony with the Spirit of Good. So feel all men who have
+wrestled with a Being in the darkness and prevailed.
+
+They were a curious contrast--the tall, sallow, stooping,
+black-bearded man, and the small, keen-eyed, plump, pleasant-looking,
+if not pretty woman, in her dark wig and striped cotton dress, and as
+they sat, steadily going through the whole collection of Psalms to a
+strange, melancholy tune, fraught with a haunting and indescribable
+pathos, the shadows of twilight gathered unnoticed about the attic,
+which was their all in all of home. The iron bed, the wooden chairs,
+the gilt-framed _Mizrach_ began to lose their outlines in the
+dimness. The Psalms were finished at last, and then the husband and
+wife sat, still hand in hand, talking of their plans for the coming
+week. For once neither spoke of going to evening service at the
+Synagogue of Love and Mercy, and when a silver ray of moonlight lay
+broad across the counterpane, and Rebecca Grinwitz, peering into the
+quiet sky that overhung the turbid alley, announced that three stars
+were visible, the devout couple turned their faces to the east and
+sang the hymns that usher out the Sabbath.
+
+And when the evening prayer was over Rebecca produced from the
+cupboard the plainly cut goblet of raisin wine, and the metal
+wine-cup, the green twisted waxlight, and the spice-box, wherewith to
+perform the beautiful symbolical ceremony of the _Havdalah_, welcoming
+in the days of work, the six long days of dreary drudgery, with
+cheerful resignation to the will of the Maker of all things--of the
+Sabbath and the Day of Work, the Light and the Shadow, the Good and
+the Evil, blent into one divine harmony by His inscrutable Wisdom and
+Love.
+
+Moshe filled the cup with raisin wine, and, holding it with his right
+hand, chanted a short majestic Hebrew poem, whereof the burden was:--
+
+"Lo! God is my salvation; I will trust, and I will not be afraid. Be
+with us light and joy, gladness and honour." Then blessing the King of
+the Universe, who had created the fruit of the Vine, he placed the
+cup on the table and took up the spices, uttering a blessing over them
+as he did so. Then having smelled the spice-box, he passed it on to
+his wife and spread out his hands toward the light of the spiral wax
+taper, reciting solemnly: "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, King of
+the Universe, who createst the Light of the Fire." And then looking
+down at the Shade made by his bent fingers, he took up the wine-cup
+again, and chanted, with especial fervour, and with a renewed sense of
+the sanctities and sweet tranquillities of religion: "Blessed be Thou,
+O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makest a distinction between
+the Holy and the non-Holy, between Light and Darkness."
+
+    "_As for that night, let darkness seize upon it._"--Job iii. 6.
+
+It was _Kol Nidre_ night, the commencement of the great White Fast,
+the Day of Atonement. Throughout the Jewish quarter there was an air
+of subdued excitement. The synagogues had just emptied themselves and
+everywhere men and women, yet under the solemn shadow of passionate
+prayer, were meeting and exchanging the wish that they might weather
+the fast safely. The night was dark and starless, as if Nature partook
+of the universal mournfulness.
+
+Solitary, though amidst a crowd, a slight, painfully thin woman
+shuffled wearily along, her feet clad in the slippers which befitted
+the occasion, her head bent, her worn cheek furrowed with
+still-falling tears. They were not the last dribblets of an exhausted
+emotion, not the meaningless, watery expression of over-excited
+sensibility. They were real, salt, bitter tears born of an intense
+sorrow. The long, harassing service, with its untiring demands upon
+the most exalted and the most poignant emotions, would have been a
+blessing if it had dulled her capacity for anguish. But it had not.
+Poor Rebecca Grinwitz was still thinking of her husband.
+
+It was of him she thought, even when the ministers, in their long
+white cerements, were pouring forth their souls in passionate
+vocalization, now rising to a wail, now breaking to a sob, now sinking
+to a dread whisper; it was of him she thought when the weeping
+worshippers, covered from head to foot in their praying-shawls, rocked
+to and fro in a frenzy of grief, and battered the gates of Heaven with
+fiery lyrics; it was of him she thought when she beat her breast with
+her clenched fist as she made the confession of sin and clamoured for
+forgiveness. Sins enough she knew she had--but _his_ sin! Ah! God,
+_his_ sin!
+
+For Moshe had gone from bad to worse. He refused to reenter the
+synagogue where he had been so roughly handled. His speech became more
+and more profane. He said no more prayers; wore no more phylacteries.
+Her peaceful home-life wrecked, her reliance on her husband gone, the
+poor wife clung to him, still hoping on. At times she did not believe
+him sane. Gradually rumours of his mad behaviour on the Sabbath on
+which she had fainted reached her ears, and remembering that his
+strangeness had begun from the Sunday morning following that delicious
+afternoon of common Psalm-saying, she was often inclined to put it all
+down to mental aberration. But then his talk--so clever, if so
+blasphemous; bristling with little pointed epigrams and maxims such as
+she had never before heard from him or any one else. He was full of
+new ideas, too, on politics and the social system and other
+unpractical topics, picturing endless potentialities of wealth and
+happiness for the labourer. Meantime his wages had fallen by a third,
+owing to the loss of his former place, his master having been the
+president of the Congregation of Love and Mercy. What wonder,
+therefore, if Moshe Grinwitz intruded upon all his wife's
+thoughts--devotional or worldly? In a very real sense he had become
+her _Satan Mekatrig_.
+
+Up till to-night she had gone on hoping. For when the great White Fast
+comes round, a mighty wave as of some subtle magnetism passes through
+the world of Jews. Men and women who have not obeyed one precept of
+Judaism for a whole year suddenly awake to a remembrance of the faith
+in which they were born, and hasten to fast and pray, and abase
+themselves before the Throne of Mercy. The long-drawn, tremulous,
+stirring notes of the trumpet that ushers in the New Year, seem to
+rally and gather together the dispersed of Israel from every region
+of the underworld of unfaith and to mass them beneath the cope of
+heaven. And to-night surely the newly rooted nightshade of doubt would
+wither away in her husband's bosom. Surely this one link still held
+him to the religion of his fathers; and this one link would redeem him
+and yet save his soul from the everlasting tortures of the damned. But
+this last hope had been doomed to disappointment. Utterly unmoved by
+all the olden sanctities of the Days of Judgment that initiate the New
+Year, the miserable man showed no signs of remorse when the more awful
+terrors of the Day of Atonement drew near--the last day of grace for
+the sinner, the day on which the Divine Sentence is sealed
+irrevocably. And so the wretched woman had gone to the synagogue
+alone.
+
+Reaching home, she toiled up the black staircase and turned the handle
+of the door. As she threw open the door she uttered a cry. She saw
+nothing before her but a gigantic shadow, flickering grotesquely on
+the sloping walls and the slip of ceiling. It must be her own shadow,
+for other living occupant of the room she could see none. Where was
+her husband? Whither had he gone? Why had he recklessly left the door
+unlocked?
+
+She looked toward the table gleaming weirdly with its white
+tablecloth; the tall wax _Yom Kippur_ Candle, specially lit on the eve
+of the solemn fast and intended to burn far on into the next day, had
+all but guttered away, and the flame was quivering unsteadily under
+the influence of a draught coming from the carelessly opened window.
+Rebecca shivered from head to foot; a dread presentiment of evil shook
+her soul. For years the Candle had burnt steadily, and her life also
+had been steady and undisturbed. Alas! it needed not the omen of the
+_Yom Kippur_ Candle to presage woe.
+
+"May the dear God have mercy on me!" she exclaimed, bursting into
+fresh tears. Hardly had she uttered the words when a monstrous black
+cat, with baleful green eyes, dashed from under the table, sprang upon
+the window-sill, and disappeared into the darkness, uttering a
+melancholy howl. Almost frantic with terror, the poor woman dragged
+herself to the window and closed it with a bang, but ere the sash had
+touched the sill, something narrow and white had flashed from the room
+through the gap, and the reverberations made in the silent garret by
+the shock of the violently closed window were prolonged in mocking
+laughter.
+
+"Well thrown, Rav Moshe!" said a grating voice. "Now that you have at
+last conquered your reverence for a bit of tin and a morsel of
+parchment, I will honour your mansion with my presence."
+
+Instantly Rebecca felt a wild longing to join in the merriment and to
+laugh away her fears; but, muttering a potent talismanic verse, she
+turned and faced her husband and his guest. Instinct had not deceived
+her--the new-comer was the hunchback of that fatal Sabbath. This time
+she did not faint.
+
+"A strange hour and occasion to bring a visitor, Moshe," she said
+sternly, her face growing even more rigid and white as she caught the
+nicotian and alcoholic reek of the two men's breaths.
+
+"Your good _Frau_ is not over-polite," said the visitor. "But it's
+_Yom Kippur_, and so I suppose she feels she must tell the truth."
+
+"I brought him, Rivkoly, to convince thee what a fool thou wast to
+assert that thou hadst seen--but _I_ mustn't be impolite," he broke
+off, with a coarse laugh. "There's no call for _me_ to tell the truth
+because it's _Yom Kippur_. Down at the Club we celebrated the occasion
+by something better than truth--a jolly spread! And our good friend
+here actually stood a bottle of champagne! Champagne, Rivkoly! Think
+of it! Real, live champagne, like that which fizzes and sparkles on
+the table of the Lord Mayor. Oh, he's a jolly good fellow! and so said
+all of us, too. And yet thou sayest he isn't a fellow at all."
+
+A drunken leer overspread his sallow face, and was rendered more
+ghastly by the flame leaping up from the expiring candle.
+
+"_Roshah_, sinner!" thundered the woman. Then looking straight into
+the cruel eyes of the hunchback, her wan face shining with the stress
+of a great emotion, her meagre form convulsed with fury, "Avaunt,
+_Satan Mekatrig_!" she screamed. "Get thee down from my house--get
+thee down. In God's name, get thee down--to hell."
+
+Even the brazen-faced hunchback trembled before her passion; but he
+grasped his friend's hot hand in his long, nervous fingers, and seemed
+to draw courage from the contact.
+
+"If I go, I take your husband!" he hissed, his great eyes blazing in
+turn. "He will leave me no more. Send me away, if you will."
+
+"Yes, thou must not send my friend away like this," hiccoughed Moshe
+Grinwitz. "Come, make him welcome, like the good wife thou wast wont
+to be."
+
+Rebecca uttered a terrible cry, and, cowering down on the ground,
+rocked herself to and fro.
+
+The drunkard appeared moved. "Get up, Rivkoly," he said, with a
+tremour in his tones. "To see thee one would think thou wast sitting
+_Shivah_ over my corpse." He put out his hand as if to raise her up.
+
+"Back!" she screamed, writhing from his grasp. "Touch me not; no
+longer am I wife of thine."
+
+"Hear you that, man?" said the hunchback eagerly. "You are free. I am
+here as a witness. Think of it; you are free."
+
+"Yes, I am free," repeated Moshe, with a horrible, joyous exultation
+on his sickly visage. The gigantic shadow of himself that bent over
+him, cast by the dying flame of the _Yom Kippur_ Candle, seemed to
+dance in grim triumph, his long side-curls dangling in the spectral
+image like barbaric ornaments in the ears of a savage, while the
+unshapely, fantastic shadow of the hunchback seemed to nod its head in
+applause. Then, as the flame leaped up in an irregular jet, the
+distorted shadow of the Tempter intertwined itself in a ghastly
+embrace with her own. With frozen blood and stifled breath the
+tortured woman turned away, and, as her eyes fell upon the
+many-cracked looking-glass which adorned the mantelpiece, she saw, or
+her overwrought fancy seemed to see--her husband's dead face, wreathed
+with a slavering serpent in the place of the phylacteries he had
+ceased to wear, and surrounded by endless perspectives of mocking
+marble-browed visages, with fiery snakes for hair and live coals for
+eyes.
+
+She felt her senses slipping away from her grasp, but she struggled
+wildly against the heavy vapour that seemed to choke her. "Moshe!" she
+shrieked, in mad, involuntary appeal for help, as she clutched the
+mantel and closed her eyes to shut out the hideous vision.
+
+"I am no longer thy husband," tauntingly replied the man. "I may not
+touch thee."
+
+"Hear you that, woman?" came the sardonic voice of the hunchback. "You
+are free. I am here as a witness."
+
+"I am here as a witness," a thousand mocking voices seemed to hiss in
+echoed sibilance.
+
+A terrible silence followed. At last she turned her white shrunken
+face, which the contrast of the jet-black wig rendered weird and
+death-like, toward the man who had been her husband, and looked long
+and slowly, yearningly yet reproachfully, into his bloodshot eyes.
+
+Again a great wave of agitation shook the man from head to foot.
+
+"Don't look at me like that, Rivkoly," he almost screamed. "I won't
+have it. I won't see thee. Curse that candle! Why does it flicker on
+eternally and not blot thee from my sight?" He puffed violently at the
+tenacious flame and a pall fell over the room. But the next instant
+the light leaped up higher than ever.
+
+"Moshe!" Rebecca shrieked in wild dismay. "Dost thou forget it is _Kol
+Nidre_ night? How canst thou dare to blow out a light? Besides, it is
+the _Yom Kippur_ Candle--it is our life and happiness for the New
+Year. If you blow it out, I swear, by my soul and the great Name, that
+you shall never look upon my face again."
+
+"It is because I do not wish to see thy face that I will blow it out,"
+he replied, laughing hysterically.
+
+"No, no!" she pleaded. "I will go away rather. It is nearly dead of
+itself; let it die."
+
+"No! It takes too long dying; 'tis like thy father, the Rav, who had
+the corpse-watchers so long in attendance that one died himself," said
+Moshe Grinwitz with horrible laughter. "I will kill it!" And bending
+down low over the broad socket of the candlestick, so that his head
+loomed gigantic on the ceiling, he silenced forever the restless
+tongue of fire.
+
+Immediately a thick blackness, as of the grave, settled upon the
+chamber. Hollow echoes of the blasphemer's laughter rang and resounded
+on every side. Myriads of dreadful faces shaped themselves out of the
+gloom, and mowed and gibbered at the woman. At the window, the green,
+baleful eyes of the black cat glared with phosphorescent light. A
+wreath of fiery serpents twisted themselves in fiendish contortions,
+shedding lurid radiance upon the cruel marble brow they garlanded. An
+unspeakable Eeriness, an unnameable Unholiness, floated with
+far-sweeping, rustling pinions through the Darkness.
+
+With stifling throat that strove in vain to shriek, the woman dashed
+out through the well-known door, fled wildly down the stairs, pursued
+at every step by the sardonic merriment, met at every corner by the
+gibbering shapes--fled on, dashing through the heavy, ever-open street
+door into the fresher air of the night--on, instinctively on, through
+the almost deserted streets and alleys, where only the vile gin-houses
+gleamed with life--on, without pause or rest, till she fell exhausted
+upon the dusty door-step of the Synagogue of Love and Mercy.
+
+    "_All Israel have a portion in the world to come._"--Ethics of
+    the Fathers.
+
+The aged keeper of the synagogue rushed out at the noise.
+
+"Save me! For God's sake, save me, Reb Yitzchok!" cried the fallen
+figure. "Save me from the _Satan Mekatrig_! I have no home--no
+husband--any more! Take me in!"
+
+"Take you in?" said Reb Yitzchok pityingly, for he dimly guessed
+something of her story. "Where can I take you in? You know my wife and
+I are allowed but one tiny room here."
+
+"Take me in!" repeated the woman. "I will pass the night in the
+synagogue. I must pray for my husband's soul, for he has no son to
+pray for him. Let me come in! Save me from the _Satan Mekatrig_!"
+
+"You would certainly meet many a _Satan Mekatrig_ in the streets
+during the night," said the old man musingly. "But have you no friends
+to go to?"
+
+"None--none--but God! Let me in that I may go to Him. Give me shelter,
+and He will have mercy on you when the great _Tekiah_ sounds to-morrow
+night!"
+
+Without another word Reb Yitzchok went into his room, returned with
+the key, and threw open the door of the women's synagogue, revealing a
+dazzling flood of light from the numerous candles, big and little,
+which had been left burning in their sconces. The low curtain that
+served as a partition had been half rolled back by devoted husbands
+who had come to inquire after their wives at the end of the service,
+and the synagogue looked unusually large and bright, though it was hot
+and close, with lingering odours of breaths, and snuff, and tallow,
+and smelling-salts.
+
+With a sob of infinite thankfulness Rebecca dropped upon a wooden
+bench.
+
+"Would you like a blanket?" said the old man.
+
+"No, no, God bless you!" she replied. "I must watch and weep, not
+sleep. For the Scroll of Judgment is written and the Book of Life is
+all but closed."
+
+With a pitying sigh the old man turned and left her alone for the
+night in the Synagogue of Love and Mercy.
+
+For a few moments Rebecca sat, prayerless, her soul full of a strange
+peace. Then she found herself counting the chimes as they rolled out
+sonorously from a neighbouring steeple: One, Two, Three, Four, Five,
+Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, TWELVE!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Starting up suddenly when the last stroke ceased to vibrate on the
+air, Rebecca Grinwitz found, to her surprise, that a merciful sleep
+must have overtaken her eyelids, that hours must have passed since
+midnight had struck, and that the great Day of Atonement must have
+dawned. Both compartments of the synagogue were full of the restless
+stir of a praying multitude. With a sense of something vaguely
+strange, she bent her eyes downward on her neighbour's _Machzor_. The
+woman immediately pushed the prayer-book more toward Rebecca, with a
+wonderful smile of love and tenderness, which seemed to go right
+through Rebecca's heart, though she could not clearly remember ever
+having seen her neighbour before. Nor, wonderingly stealing a first
+glance around, could she help feeling that the entire congregation was
+somewhat strange and unfamiliar, though she could not quite think why
+or how. The male worshippers, too, why did they all wear the
+shroud-like garments, usually confined on this solemn occasion to the
+ministers and a few extra-devout personages? And had not some
+transformation come over the synagogue? Was it only the haze before
+her tear-worn eyes or did dim perspectives of worshippers stretch away
+boundlessly on all sides of the clearly seen area, which still
+retained the form of the room she knew so well?
+
+But the curious undercurrent of undefined wonder lasted but a moment.
+In another instant she was reconciled to the scene. All was familiar
+and expected; once more she was taking part in divine service with no
+sorrowful thoughts of her husband coming to distract her, her whole
+soul bathing in and absorbing the Peace of God which passeth all
+understanding. Then suddenly she felt a stir of recollection coming
+over her, and a stream of love warming her heart, and looking up at
+her neighbour's face she saw with joyous content that it was that of
+her mother.
+
+The service went on, mother and daughter following it in the book they
+had in common. After several hours, during which the huge,
+far-spreading congregation alternated with the Cantor in intoning the
+beautiful poems of the liturgy of the day, the white curtain with its
+mystic cabalistic insignia was rolled back from the Ark of the
+Covenant and two Scrolls were withdrawn therefrom. Rebecca noted with
+joy that the Ark was filled with Scrolls big and little, in rich
+mantles, and that those taken out were swathed in satin beautifully
+embroidered, and that the ornaments and the musically tinkling bells
+were of pure gold.
+
+Then some of the worshippers were called up in turn to the _Al Memor_
+to be present at the reading of a section of the Law. They were all
+well known to Rebecca. First came Moses ben Amram. He walked humbly up
+to the _Al Memor_ with bowed head, his long _Talith_ enveloping him
+from crown to foot. Rebecca saw his face well, for though it was
+covered with a thick veil, it shone luminously through its draping.
+
+"Bless ye the Lord, who is blessed," said Moses ben Amram, the words
+seeming all the sweeter from his lips for the slight stammering with
+which they were uttered.
+
+"Blessed be the Lord, who is blessed to all eternity and beyond,"
+responded the endless congregation, in a low murmur that seemed to be
+taken up and vibrated away and away into the infinite distances for
+ever and ever.
+
+"Blessed be the Lord, who is blessed to all eternity and beyond,"
+echoed the melodious voice. Then, in words that seemed to roll and
+fill the great gulfs of space with a choral music of sacred joy, Moses
+continued, "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, the King of the
+Universe, who hath chosen us from all peoples, and given unto us His
+Law. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who givest the Law."
+
+After him came Aaron ben Amram, whose white beard reached to his
+knees. Abraham ben Terah, Isaac ben Abraham, and Jacob ben Isaac--all
+venerable figures, with faces which Rebecca felt were radiant with
+infinite tenderness and compassion for such poor helpless children as
+herself--were also called up, and after the Patriarchs, Elijah the
+Prophet. Lastly came a white-haired, stooping figure, whose gait and
+whose every gesture told Rebecca that it was her father. How glad she
+felt to see him thus honoured! As she listened to his quavering tones
+the dusty tombstones of dead years seemed rolled away, and all their
+simple joys and griefs to live again, not quite as of yore, but
+transfigured by some solemn pathos.
+
+When the reading of the Law was at an end, David ben Jesse, a
+royal-looking graybeard, held up the Scroll to the four corners of
+space, and it was rolled up by his son Solomon, the Preacher; the
+carrying of it to the Ark being given to Rabbi Akiba, whose features
+wore a strange, ecstatic look, as though ennobled by suffering. The
+vast multitude rose with a great rustling, the sound whereof reached
+afar, and sang a hymn of rejoicing, so that the whole universe was
+filled with melody. Rebecca alone could not sing. For the first time
+she missed her husband, Moshe. Why was he not here, like all the other
+friends of her life, whose beloved faces surrounded her on every side
+and made a sweet atmosphere of security for her soul? What was he
+doing outside of this mighty assembly? Why was he not there to have
+the sacred duty of carrying the Scroll entrusted to him? She felt the
+tears pouring down her cheeks. She was ready to sink to the earth with
+sudden lassitude. "Mother! dear mother!" she cried, "I feel so faint."
+
+"You must have some air, my child, my Rivkoly," said the mother, the
+dearly remembered voice falling for the first time with ineffable
+sweetness on Rebecca's ears. And she put out her hand, and lo! it grew
+longer and longer, till it reached up to the skylight, and then
+suddenly the whole roof vanished and the free air of heaven blew in
+like celestial balm upon Rebecca's hot forehead. Yet she noted with
+wonder that the holy candles burnt on steadily, unfluttered by the
+refreshing breeze. And then, lo! the starless heavens above her opened
+out in indescribable Glory. The Dark budded into ineffable Beauty; a
+supernally pure, luminous Splendour, transcendently dazzling, filled
+the infinite depths of the Firmament with melodious coruscations of
+Infinite Love made visible, and white-winged hosts of radiant Cherubim
+sang "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full
+of His Glory." And all the vast congregation fell upon their faces and
+cried "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full
+of His Glory." And Moses ben Amram arose, and he lifted his hands
+toward the Splendour and he cried, "Lord, Lord God, merciful and
+gracious, long-suffering and full of kindness and truth. Lo, Thou
+sealest the seals before the twilight. Seal Thy People, I pray Thee,
+in the Book of Life, though Thou blot me out. Forgive them, and pardon
+their transgressions for the sake of the merits of the Patriarchs and
+for the sake of the merits of the Martyrs, who have shed their blood
+like water and offered their flesh to the flames for the
+Sanctification of the Name. Forgive them, and blot out their
+transgressions."
+
+And all the congregation said "Amen."
+
+Then a surging wave of hope rose within Rebecca's breast, and it
+lifted her to her feet and stretched out her arms toward the
+Splendour. And she said: "Lord God, forgive Thou my husband, for he is
+in the hand of the Tempter. Save him from the power of the Evil One
+by Thine outstretched arm and Thy mighty hand. Save him and pardon
+him, Lord, in Thine infinite mercy." Then a strange, dread, anxious
+silence fell upon the vast spaces of the Firmament, till from the
+heart of the Celestial Splendour there fell a Word that floated
+through the Universe like the sweet blended strains of all sweet
+instruments, a Word that mingled all the harmonies of winds and waters
+and mortal and angelic voices into one divine cadence--_Salachti_.
+
+And with the sweet Word of Forgiveness lingering musically in her
+charmed ears, and the sweet assurance at her heart that she, the poor,
+miserable tailor's wife, despised and trodden under foot by the rich
+and by the heathen around, could lean upon the breast of an Almighty
+Father, who had prepared for her immortal glories and raptures amid
+all her loved ones in a world where He would wipe the tears from off
+all eyes, Rebecca Grinwitz awoke to find the bright morning sunshine
+streaming in upon her and the fresh morning air blowing in upon her
+fevered brow from the skylight which Reb Yitzchok had just opened.
+
+    "_Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the
+    fowler._"--Psalm xci. 3.
+
+A shroud of newly fallen snow enveloped the dead earth, over which the
+dull, murky sky looked drearily down. Within his fireless garret,
+which was almost empty of furniture, Moshe Grinwitz lay, wasted away
+to a shadow. His beard was unkempt, his cheek-bones were almost
+fleshless, his feverish eyes large and staring, his side-curls tangled
+and untended. There did not seem enough strength left in the frame to
+resist a babe; yet, when he coughed, the whole skeleton was agitated
+as though with galvanic energy.
+
+"Will he never come back?" he murmured uneasily.
+
+"Fear not; so far as lies in my power, I shall be with you always,"
+replied the voice of the hunchback as he entered the room. "But, alas!
+I have little comfort to bring you. One pawnbroker after another
+refused to advance anything on my waistcoat, and at last I sold it
+right out for a few pence. See; here is some milk. It is warm."
+
+Moshe tried to clutch the jug, but fell back, helpless. A shade of
+anxiety passed over his companion's face. "Have I miscalculated?" he
+muttered. He held the jug to the sick man's lips, supporting his head
+with the other. Moshe drank, then fell back, and pressed his friend's
+hand gratefully.
+
+"Poor Moshe," said the hunchback. "What a shame I tossed into the
+gutter the gold my father left me seven months ago! How could I
+foresee you would be struck down with this long sickness?"
+
+"No, no, don't regret it," quavered Moshe, his white face lighting up.
+"We had jolly old times, jolly old times, while the money lasted. Oh,
+you've been a good friend to me--a good friend. If I had never known
+you, I should have passed away into nothingness, without ever having
+known the mad joys of wine and riot. I have had wild, voluptuous
+moments of revelry and mirth. No power in heaven or hell can take away
+the past. And then the sweet freedom of doing as you will, thinking as
+you will, flying with wings unclogged by superstition--to you I owe it
+all! And since I have been ill you have watched over me like--like a
+woman."
+
+His words died away in a sob, and then there was silence, except when
+his cough sounded strange and hollow in the bare room. Presently he
+went on:--
+
+"How unjust Rivkoly was to you! She once said"--here the speaker
+laughed a little melancholy laugh--"that you were the _Satan Mekatrig_
+in person."
+
+"Poor afflicted woman!" said his friend, with pitying scorn. "In this
+nineteenth century, when among the wise the belief in the gods has
+died out, there are yet fools alive who believe in the devil. But she
+could only have meant it metaphorically."
+
+The sick man shook his head. "She said the evil influence--of course,
+it seemed evil to her--you wielded over her thoughts, and I suppose
+mine, too, was more than human--was supernatural."
+
+"Oh, I don't say I'm not more strong-minded than most people. Of
+course I am, or I should be howling hymns at the present moment. But
+why does a soldier catch fire under the eye of his captain? What
+magnetism enables one man to bewitch a nation? Why does one friend's
+unspoken thought find unuttered echo in another's? Go to Science,
+study Mesmerism, Hypnotism, Thought-Transference, and you will learn
+all about Me and my influence."
+
+"Yes, Rivkoly never had any idea of anything outside her prayer-book.
+Rivkoly--"
+
+"Mention not her name to me," interrupted the hunchback harshly. "A
+woman who deserts her husband--"
+
+"She swore to go if I blew out the _Yom Kippur_ light. And I did."
+
+"A woman who goes out of her wits because her husband gets into his!"
+sneered the other. "Doubtless her superstitious fancy conjured up all
+sorts of sights in the dark. Ho! ho! ho!" and he laughed a ghastly
+laugh. "Happily she will never come back. She's evidently able to get
+along without you. Probably she has another husband more to her pious
+taste."
+
+Moshe raised himself convulsively. "Don't say that again!" he
+screamed. "_My_ Rivkoly!" Then a violent cough shook him and his white
+lips were reddened with blood.
+
+The cold eyes of the hunchback glittered strangely as he saw the
+blood. "At any rate," he said, more gently, "she cannot break the
+mighty oath she sware. She will never come back."
+
+"No, she will never come back," the sick man groaned hopelessly. "But
+it was cruel of me to drive her away. Would to G--"
+
+The hunchback hastily put his hand on the speaker's mouth, and
+tenderly wiped away the blood. "When I am better," said Moshe, with
+sudden resolution, "I will seek her out: perhaps she is starving."
+
+"As you will. You know she can always earn her bread and water at the
+cap-making. But you are your own master. When you are rid of this
+sickness--which will be soon--you shall go and seek her out and bring
+her to abide with you." The words rang sardonically through the
+chamber.
+
+"How good you are!" Moshe murmured, as he sank back relieved.
+
+The hunchback leaned over the bed till his gigantic brow almost
+touched the sick man's, till his wonderful eyes lay almost on his.
+"And yet you will not let me hasten on your recovery in the way I
+proposed to you."
+
+"No, no," Moshe said, trembling all over. "What matters if I lie here
+a week more or less?"
+
+"Lie here!" hissed his friend. "In a week you will lie rotting."
+
+A wild cry broke from the blood-bespattered lips! "I am not dying! I
+am not dying! You said just now I should be better soon."
+
+"So you will; so you will. But only if we have money. Our last
+farthing, our last means of raising a farthing, is gone. Without
+proper food, without a spark of fire, how can you hold out a week in
+this bitter weather? No, unless you would pass from the light and the
+gladness of life to the gloom and the shadow of the tomb, you must be
+instantly baptized."
+
+"_Shmad_ myself! Never!" said the sick man, the very word conjuring up
+an intolerable loathing, deeper than reason; and then another violent
+fit of coughing shook him.
+
+"See how this freezing atmosphere tells on you. You must take
+Christian gold, I tell you. Thus only shall I be able to get you
+fire--to get you fire," repeated the hunchback with horrible emphasis.
+"You call yourself a disbeliever. If so, what matters? Why should you
+die for a miserable prejudice? But you are no true infidel. So long as
+you shrink from professing any religion under the sun, you still
+possess a religion. Your unfaith is but foam-drift on the deep sea of
+faith; but lip-babble while your heart is still infected with
+superstition. Come, bid me fetch the priest with his crucifix and holy
+water. Let us fool him to the top of his bent. Rouse yourself; be a
+man and live."
+
+"No, no, brother! I will be a man and die."
+
+"Fool!" hissed the hunchback. "It fits not one who has lived for
+months by Christian gold to be so nice."
+
+"You lie!" Moshe gasped.
+
+"The seven months that you and I have known each other, it is
+Christian gold that has warmed you and fed you and rejoiced you, and
+that, melted down, has flowed in your veins as wine. Whence, then,
+took I the money for our riotings?"
+
+"From your father, you said."
+
+"Yes, from my spiritual father," was the grim reply. "No, having that
+belief, which _you_ still lack, in the hollowness and mockery of all
+save pleasure, I became a Christian. For a time they paid me well, but
+as soon as I had been put on the annual report I had served my purpose
+and the supplies fell off. I could be converted again in another town
+or country, but I dare not leave you. But you are a new man, and
+should I drag you into the fold they will reward us both well. Instead
+of subsisting on dry bread and milk you will fare on champagne and
+turtle-soup once more."
+
+Moshe sat up and gazed wildly one long second at the Tempter. He
+looked at his own fleshless arms, and shuddered. He felt the icy hand
+of Death upon him. He knew himself a young man still. Must he go down
+into the eternal darkness, and be folded in the freezing clasp of the
+King of Terrors, while the warm bosom of Life offered itself to his
+embrace? No; give him Life, Life, Life, polluted and stained with
+hypocrisy, but still Life, delicious Life.
+
+The steely eyes of the hunchback watched the contest anxiously.
+Suddenly a change came over the wildly working face--it fell back
+chill and rigid on the pillow, the eyes closed. The room seemed to
+fill with an impalpable, brooding Vapour, as if a thick fog were
+falling outside. The watcher caught madly at his friend's wrist and
+sought to detect a pulsation. His eyes glowed with horrible exultant
+relief.
+
+"Not yet, not yet, Brother Azrael," he said mockingly, as if
+addressing the impalpable Vapour; "Thou who art wholly woven of Eyes,
+canst Thou not see that it is not yet time to throw the fatal pellet
+into his throat? Back, back!"
+
+The Vapour thickened. The minutes passed. The hunchback peered
+expectant at the corpse-like face on the dingy pillow. At last the
+eyes opened, but in them shone a strange, rapt expression.
+
+"Thank God, Rivkoly!" the dying lips muttered. "I knew thou wouldst
+come."
+
+As he spoke there was a frantic beating at the door. The hunchback's
+face was convulsed.
+
+"Hasten, hasten, Brother Azrael!" he cried.
+
+The Vapour lightened a little. Moshe Grinwitz seemed to rally. His
+face glowed with eagerness.
+
+"Open the door! open the door!" he cried. "It's Rivkoly--my Rivkoly!"
+
+The vain battering at the door grew fiercer, but none noted it in the
+house. Since the shadow of the hunchback had first fallen within that
+thickly crowded human nest, the doves had become hawks, the hawks
+vultures. All was discord and bickering.
+
+"Lie still," said the hunchback; "'tis but your fevered imagination.
+Drink."
+
+He put the jug to the dying man's lips, but it was dashed violently
+from his hand and shattered into a hundred pieces.
+
+"Give me nothing bought with Christian money!" gasped Moshe hoarsely,
+his breath rattling painfully in his throat. "Never will I knowingly
+gain by the denial of the Unity of God."
+
+"Then die like a dog!" roared the hunchback. "Hasten, Brother Azrael!"
+
+The Vapour folded itself thickly about the room. The rickety door was
+shaken frantically, as by a great gale.
+
+"Moshe! Moshe!" shrieked a voice. "Let me in--me--thy Rivkoly! In
+God's name, let me in! I bring thee a precious gift. Or art thou dead,
+dead, dead? My God, why didst Thou not cause me to know he was ill
+before!"
+
+"Your husband is dying," said the hunchback. "When he is dead, you
+shall look upon his face. But he may not look upon your face again.
+You have sworn it."
+
+"Devil!" cried the fierce voice of the woman. "I swore it on _Kol
+Nidre_ night, when I had just asked the Almighty to absolve me from
+all rash oaths. Let me in, I tell you."
+
+"I will not have a sacred oath treated thus lightly," said the
+hunchback savagely. "I will keep your soul from sin."
+
+"Cursed be thou to eternity of eternities!" replied the woman. "Pray,
+Moshe, pray for thy soul. Pray, for thou art dying."
+
+"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," rose the sonorous
+Hebrew.
+
+"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," wailed the woman.
+The very Vapour seemed to cling round and prolong the vibrations of
+the sacred words. Only the hunchback was silent. The mocking words
+died on his lips, and as the woman, with one last mighty blow, dashed
+in through the flying door, he seemed to glide past her and melt into
+the darkness of the staircase.
+
+Rivkoly heeded not his contorted, malignant visage, crowned with its
+serpentine wreath of fiery hair; she flew straight through the heavy
+Vapour, stooped and kissed the livid mouth, read in a moment the
+decree of Death in the eyes, and then put something small and warm
+into her husband's fast chilling arms.
+
+"Take it, Moshe," she cried, "and comfort thy soul in death. 'Tis thy
+child, for God has at last sent us a son. _Yom Kippur_ night--now six
+long months ago--I had a dream that God would forgive thee, and I was
+glad. But when I thought to go home to thee in the evening, I learnt
+that thou hadst been feasting all that dread Day of Atonement with the
+_Satan Mekatrig_; and my heart fell, for I knew that my dream was but
+the vain longing of my breast, and that through thine own misguided
+soul thou couldst never be saved from the eternal vengeance. Then I
+went away, far from here, and toiled and lived hard and lone; and I
+believed not in my dream. But I prayed and prayed for thy soul, and
+lo! very soon I was answered; for I knew we should have a child. And
+then I entreated that it should be a son, to pray for thee, and
+perhaps win thee back to God, and to say the _Kaddish_ after thee when
+thou shouldst come to die, though I knew not that thy death was at
+hand; and a few weeks back the Almighty was gracious and merciful to
+me, and I had my wish."
+
+She ceased, her wan face radiant. The Shadow of Death could not chill
+her sublime faith, her simple, trustful hope. The husband was clasping
+the feebly whimpering babe to his frozen breast, and showering
+passionate kisses on its unconscious form.
+
+"Rivkoly!" he whispered, as the tears rolled down his cheeks, "how
+pale and thin thou art grown! O God, my sin has been heavy!"
+
+"No, no," she cried, her loving hand in his. "It was the _Satan
+Mekatrig_ that led thee astray. I am well and strong. I will work for
+our child, and train it up to pray for thee and to love thee. I have
+named it Jacob, for it shall wrestle with the Recording Angel and
+shall prevail."
+
+The hue of death deepened on Moshe Grinwitz's face, but it was
+overspread by a divine calm.
+
+"Ah, the good old times we had at the _Cheder_ in Poland," he said.
+"The rabbi was sometimes cross, but we children were always in good
+spirits; and when the Rejoicing of the Law came round it was such fun
+carrying the candles stuck in hollowed apples, and gnawing at your
+candlestick as you walked. I always loved _Simchath Torah_, Rivkoly.
+How long is it to the Rejoicing?"
+
+"It will soon be here again, now Passover is over," she said, pressing
+his hand.
+
+"Is _Pesach_ over?" he said mournfully. "I don't remember giving
+_Seder_. Why didst thou not remind me, Rivkoly? It was so wrong of
+thee. Thou knowest how I loved the sight of the table--the angels
+always seemed to hover about it. _Chad Gadyah! Chad Gadyah!_" he
+commenced to sing in a cracked, hoarse whisper. The child burst into a
+wail. "Hush, hush, Yaankely," said the mother, taking it to her
+breast.
+
+"A--a--ah!" A wild scream rose from Moshe Grinwitz's lips. "My
+_Kaddish_! Take not away my _Kaddish_!" He sat up, with clammy,
+ghastly brow, and glared with sightless eyes, his arms groping. A thin
+stream of blood oozed from his mouth.
+
+"Hear, O Israel!" screamed the woman, as she put her hand to his mouth
+to stanch the blood.
+
+He beat her back wildly. "Not thee! I want not thee! My _Kaddish_!"
+came the mad, hoarse whisper. "I have blasphemed God! Give me my
+_Kaddish_! give me my _Kaddish_!"
+
+She put the child into his arms, and he clutched it in his dying
+frenzy. As he felt its feeble form, the old divine peace came over his
+face. The babe's cries were hushed in fear. The mother was dumb and
+stony. And silently the Vapour crawled in sluggish folds through the
+heavy air.
+
+But in a moment the silence was broken by a deep, stertorous rattle.
+Moshe Grinwitz's head fell back; his arms relaxed their hold of his
+child, which was caught with a wild cry to its mother's bosom. And the
+dark Vapour lifted, and showed the three figures to the baleful,
+agonized eyes of the hunchback at the open door.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+DIARY OF A MESHUMAD
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+DIARY OF A MESHUMAD[1]
+
+
+_Tchemnovosk, Saturday (midnight)._--So! The first words have been
+written. For the first time in my life I have commenced a diary. Will
+it prove the solace I have heard it is? Shall I find these now cold,
+blank pages growing more and more familiar, till I shall turn to them
+as to a sympathetic friend; till this little book shall become that
+loved and trusted confidant for whom my lonely soul longs? Instead of
+either Black or White Clergy, this record in black and white shall be
+my father confessor. Our village pope, to whom I have so often
+confessed everything but the truth, would be indeed shocked, if he
+could gossip with this, his new-created brother. What a heap of
+roubles it would take to tranquillize him! Ah, God! _Ach_, God of
+Israel! how is it possible that a man who has known the tenderest
+human ties should be so friendless, so solitary in his closing years,
+that not even in memory can he commune with a fellow-soul? Verily, the
+old curse has wrought itself out, that penalty of apostasy which came
+to my mind the other day after nearly forty years of forgetfulness,
+that curse which has filled my spirit with shuddering awe, and driven
+me to seek daily communion through thee, little book, even with my own
+self of yesterday--"_And that soul shall be cut off from among its
+people._" Yea, and from all others, too! For so many days and years
+Caterina was my constant companion; I loved her as my own soul. Yet
+was she but a sun that dazzled my eyes so that I could not gaze upon
+my own soul; but a veil between me and my dead youth. The sun has sunk
+forever below the horizon; the veil is rent. No phantom from the other
+world hovers to remind me of our happiness. Those years, with all
+their raptures and successes, are a dull blank. It is the years of
+boyhood and youth which resurge in my consciousness; their tints are
+vivid, their tones are clear.
+
+Why is this? Is it Caterina's death? Is it old age? Is it returning to
+these village scenes after half a lifetime spent in towns? Is it the
+sight of the _izbas_, and their torpid, tow-haired, sheepskin-clad
+inhabitants, and the great slushy cabbage gardens, that has rekindled
+the ashen past into colours of flame? And yet, except our
+vodka-seller, there isn't a Jew in the place. However it be,
+Caterina's face is filmy, phantasmal, compared with my mother's. And
+mother died forty years ago; the grass of two short years grows over
+my wife's grave. And Paul? He is living--he kissed me but a few
+moments back. Yet _his_ face is far-away--elusive. The hues of life
+are on my father's--poor, ignorant, narrow-minded, warm-hearted
+father, whose heart I broke. Happily I have not to bear the
+remembrance of his dying look, but can picture him as I saw him in
+those miserable, happy days. My father's kiss is warm upon the lips
+which my son's has just left cold. Poor St. Paul, living up there with
+your ideals and your theories like a dove in a balloon! And yet,
+_golubtchik_, how I love you, my handsome, gifted boy, fighting the
+battle of life so pluckily and well! Ah! it is hard fighting when one
+is hampered by a conscience. Is it your fault that the cold iron bar
+of a secret lies between our souls; that a bar my own hands have
+forged, and which I have not the courage or the strength to break,
+keeps you from my inmost heart, and makes us strangers? No; you are
+the best of sons, and love me truly. But if your eyes were purged, and
+you could see the ugly, hateful thing, and through and beyond it, into
+my ugly, hateful soul! Ah, no! That must never be. Your affection,
+your reverential affection, is the only sacred and precious thing yet
+left to me on earth. If I lost that, if my spirit were cut off even
+from the semblance of human sympathy, then might the grave close over
+my body, as it would have already closed over my soul. And yet should
+I have the courage to die? Yes; for then Paul would know; Paul would
+obey my wishes and see me buried among my people. Paul would hire
+mourners (God! hired mourners, when I have a son!) to say the
+_Kaddish_. Paul would do his duty, though his heart broke. Terrible,
+ominous words! Break my son's heart as I did my father's! The
+saints--_voi!_ I mean God--forfend! And for opposite reasons. _Ach_,
+it is a strange world. Is religion, then, a curse, eternally dividing
+man from man? No, I will not think these blasphemous thoughts. My
+poor, brave Paul!
+
+To-morrow will be a hard day.
+
+_Sunday Night._--I have just read over my last entry. How cold, how
+tame the words seem, compared with the tempest with which I am shaken.
+And yet it _is_ a relief to have uttered them; to have given vent to
+my passion and pain. Already this scrawl of mine has become sacred to
+me; already this study in which I write has become a sanctuary to
+which my soul turns with longing. All day long my diary was in my
+thoughts. All my turbulent emotions were softened by the knowledge
+that I should come here and survey them with calm; by the hope that
+the tranquil reflectiveness which writing induces would lead me into
+some haven of rest. And first let me confess that I am glad Paul goes
+back to St. Petersburg on Tuesday. It is a comfort to have him here
+for a few days, and yet, oh, how I dread to meet his clear gaze! How
+irksome this close contact, with the rough rubs it gives to all my
+sore places! How I abhorred myself to-day as I went through the
+ghastly mimicries of prayer, and crossing myself, and genuflexion, in
+our little church. How I hate the sight of its sky-blue dome and its
+gilt minarets! When the pope brought me the Gospel to kiss, fiery
+shame coursed through my veins. And then when I saw the look of humble
+reverence on Paul's face as he pressed his lips to the silver-bound
+volume, my blood was frozen to ice. Strange, dead memories seemed to
+float about the incense-laden air; shadowy scenes; old, far-away
+cadences. And when the deacon walked past me with his _bougie_, there
+seemed to flash upon me some childish recollection of a joyous
+candle-bearing procession, whereat my eyes grew filled with sudden
+tears. The marble altar, the silver candlesticks, the glittering
+jewelled scene faded into mist. And then the choir sang, and under the
+music I grew calm again. After all, religions were made for men. And
+this one was just fitted for the simple muzhiks who dotted the benches
+with their stupid, good natured figures. They must have their
+gold-bedecked gods in painting and image; and their saints in gold
+brocade to kneel before at all hours to solace themselves with visions
+of a brocaded Paradise.
+
+And yet what had I to do with these childish superstitions?--I whose
+race preached the great doctrine of the Unity to a world sunk in vice
+and superstition; whose childish lips were taught to utter the
+_Shemang_ as soon as they could form the syllables; who _know_ that
+the Christian creed is a monstrous delusion! To think that I have lent
+the sanction of my manhood to these grotesque beliefs. Grotesque, say
+I? when to Paul they are the essence of all lofty feeling and
+aspiration! And yet I know that he is blind, or sees things with that
+strange perversion of vision of which I have heard him accuse the
+Jews--my brethren. He believes what he has been taught. And who taught
+him? _Bozhe moi!_ was it not I who have brought him up in these
+degrading beliefs, which he imagines I share? God! is this my
+punishment, that he is faithful to the creed taught him by a father
+who was faithless to his own? And yet there were excuses enough for
+me, Thou knowest. Why did these forms and ceremonies, which now loom
+beautiful to me through a mist of tears, seem hideous chains on the
+free limbs of childhood? Was it my father's fault or my own that the
+stereotyped routine of the day; that the being dragged out of bed in
+the gray dawn to go to synagogue, or to intone in monotonous sing-song
+the weary casuistries of the rabbis; that the endless precepts or
+prohibitions, made me conceive religion as the most hateful of
+tyrannies? Through the cloud of forty years I can but dimly recall
+the violence of the repulsion with which things Jewish inspired me--of
+how it galled me to feel that I was one of that detested race, that I
+was that mockery and byword, a _Zhit_; that, with little sympathy with
+my people, I was yet destined to partake of its burdens and its
+disabilities. Bitter as my soul is within me to-day, I can yet
+understand, can yet half excuse, that fatal mistake of ignorant and
+ambitious youth.
+
+It were easy for me now to acknowledge myself a Jew, even with the
+risk of Siberia before me. I am rich, I have some of the education for
+which I longed, above all, I have _lived_. Ah, how differently the
+world, with its hopes and its fears, and its praise and censure, looks
+to the youth who is climbing slowly up the hill, and the man who is
+swiftly descending to the valley! But the knowledge of the vanity of
+all things comes too late; this, too, is vanity. Enough that I
+sacrificed the sincerity and reality of life for unrealities, which
+then seemed to me the only things worth having. There was none to
+counsel, and none to listen. I fled my home; I was baptized into the
+Church. At once all that hampered me was washed away. Before me
+stretched the free, open road of culture and well-being. I was no
+longer the slave of wanton laws, the laughing-stock of every Muscovite
+infant, liable to be kicked and cuffed and spat at by every true
+Russian. What mattered a lip-profession of Christianity, when I cared
+as little for Judaism as for it? I never looked back; my prior life
+faded quickly from my memory. Alone I fought the battle of
+life--alone, unaided by man or hope in God. A few lucky speculations
+on the Bourse, starting from the risking of the few kopecks amassed by
+tuition, rescued me from the need of pursuing my law-studies. I fell
+in love and married. Caterina, your lovely face came effectively
+between me and what vague visions of my past, what dim uneasiness of
+remorse, yet haunted me. You never knew--your family never knew--that
+I was not a Slav to the backbone. The new life lay fold on fold over
+the old; the primitive writing of the palimpsest was so thickly
+written over, that no thought of what I had once been troubled me
+during all those years of wedded life, made happier by your birth and
+growth, my Paul, my darling Paul; no voice came from those forgotten
+shores, save once, when--who knows through what impalpable medium?--I
+learnt or divined my father's death, and all the air was filled with
+hollow echoes of reproach. During those years I avoided contact with
+Jews as much as I could; when it was inevitable, I made the contact
+brief. The thought of the men, of their gabardines and their pious
+ringlets, of their studious dronings and their devout quiverings and
+wailings, of the women with their coarse figures and their unsightly
+wigs; the remembrance of their vulgar dialect, and their shuffling
+ways, and their accommodating morality, filled me with repulsion. As
+if to justify myself to myself, my mind conceived of them only in
+their meanest and tawdriest aspects. The black points alone caught my
+eye, and linked themselves into a perfect-seeming picture.
+
+_Da_, I have been a good Russian, a good Christian. I have not stirred
+my little finger to help the Jews in their many and grievous
+afflictions. They were nothing to me. Over the vodka and the champagne
+I have joined in the laugh against them, without even feeling I was of
+them. Why, then, these strange sympathies that agitate me now; these
+feelings, shadowy, but strong and resistless as the shadow of death?
+Am I sane, or is this but incipient madness? Am I sinking into a
+literal second childhood, in which all the terrors and the sanctities
+that once froze or stirred my soul have come to possess me once more?
+Am I dying? I have heard that the scene of half a century ago may be
+more vivid to dying eyes than the chamber of death itself. Has
+Caterina's death left a blank which these primitive beloved memories
+rush in to fill up? Was it the light of her face that blinded me to
+the dear homely faces of my father and mother? If I had not met her,
+how would things have been? Should I have repented earlier of my
+hollow existence? Was it the genuineness of her faith in her heathen
+creed that made me acquiesce in its daily profession and its dominance
+in our household life? And are the old currents flowing so strongly
+now, only because they were so long artificially dammed up? Of what
+avail to ask myself these questions? I asked them yesterday and I
+shall be no wiser to-morrow. No man can analyze his own emotions,
+least of all I, unskilled to sound the depths of my soul, content if
+the surface be unruffled. Perhaps, after all, it is Paul who is the
+cause of the troubling of the waters, which yet I am glad have not
+been left in their putrid stagnation. For since Caterina's clay-cold
+form was laid in the Moscow churchyard, and Paul and I have been
+brought the nearer together for the void, my son has opened my eyes to
+my baseness. The light that radiates from his own terrible nobleness
+has shown me how black and polluted a soul is mine. My whole life has
+been shuffled through under false colours. Even if I shared few of the
+Jew's beliefs, it should have been my duty--and my proud duty--to
+proclaim myself of the race. If, as I fondly believed, I was superior
+to my people, then it behoved me to allow that superiority to be
+counted to their credit and to the honour of the Jewish flag. My poor
+brethren, sore indeed has been your travail, and your cry of pain
+pierces the centuries. Perhaps--who knows?--I could have helped a
+little if I had been faithful, as faithful as Paul will be to his own
+ideals. Ah, if Paul had been a Jew--! My God! _is_ Paul a Jew? Have I
+upon my shoulders the guilt of this loss to Judaism, too?
+
+Analyze myself, reproach myself, doubt my own sanity how I may, one
+thing is clear. From the bottom of my heart I long, I yearn, I burn to
+return to the religion of my childhood. I long to say and to sing the
+Hebrew words that come scantily and with effort to my lips. I long to
+join my brethren at prayer, to sit with them in the synagogue, in the
+study, at the table; to join them in their worship and at their meals;
+to share with them their joys and sorrows, their wrongs and their
+inner delights. Laugh at myself how I will, I long to bind my arm and
+brow with the phylacteries of old and to wrap myself in my fringed
+shawl, and to abase myself in the dust before the God of Israel; nay,
+to don the greasy gabardine at which I have mocked, and to let my hair
+grow even as theirs. As yet this is all but a troubled aspiration, but
+it is irresistible and must work itself out in deeds. It cannot be
+argued with. The wind bloweth as it listeth; who shall say why I am
+tempest-tossed?
+
+_Monday Night._--Paul has retired to rest to rise early to-morrow for
+the journey to Moscow. For something has happened to alter his plans,
+and he goes thither instead of to the capital. He is sleeping the
+sleep of the young, the hopeful, and the joyous. _Ach_, that what
+gives him joy should be to me--; but let me write down all. This
+morning at breakfast Paul received a letter, which he read with a cry
+of astonishment and joy. "Look, little father, look," he exclaimed,
+handing it to me. I read, trying to disguise my own feelings and to
+sympathize with his gladness. It was a letter from a firm of
+well-known publishers in Moscow, offering to publish a work on the
+Greek Church, the MS. of which he had submitted to them.
+
+"_Nu vot, batiushka_," said he, "I will tell you that this book
+_donnera a penser_ to the theologians of the bastard forms of
+Christianity."
+
+The ribald remark that rose to my lips did not pass them. "But why did
+you not tell me of this before?" I asked instead, endeavouring to
+infuse a note of reproach into my indifference.
+
+"Ah, father, I did not want you to distress yourself. I knew your
+affection for me was so great that you might want to stint yourself,
+and put yourself to trouble to help me to pay the expenses of
+publication myself. You would have shared my disappointments. I wanted
+you to share my triumph--as now. It is two years that I have been
+trying to get it published. I wrote it in the year before mother,
+whose soul is with the saints, left us. But, _eka!_ I am recompensed
+at last." And his pale face beamed and his dark eyes flashed with
+excitement.
+
+Yes, Paul was right. As Paul always is. Brought up, I think wisely, to
+believe in my comparative poverty, he has become manlier for not
+having a crutch to lean upon. Was it not enough that he was devoid
+from the start of the dull, dead weight of Judaism which clogged my
+own early years? Up to the present, though, he has not done so well as
+I. Russian provincial journalism scatters few luxuries to its
+votaries. Paul is so stupidly contented with everything that he is not
+likely to write anything to make a sensation. He has not invented
+gunpowder.
+
+Paul's voice broke in curiously on my reflections. "It ought to make
+some sensation. I have collected a whole series of new arguments,
+partly textual, partly historical, to show the absolute want of _locus
+standi_ of any other than the Orthodox Church."
+
+"Indeed," I murmured, "and what _is_ the Orthodox Church?" Paul stared
+at me.
+
+"I mean," I added hastily, "your conception of the Orthodox Church."
+
+"My conception?" said Paul. "I suppose you mean how do I defend the
+conception which is embodied in our ceremonies and ritual?" And before
+I could stop him, he had given me a summary of his arguments under
+which I would not have kept awake if I had not been thinking of other
+things. My poor boy! So this wire-drawn stuff about the Sacrament and
+the Lord's Supper is what has cost you toilsome days and sleepless
+nights, while to me the thought that I had embraced one variety of
+Christianity rather than another had never before occurred. All forms
+were the same to me, from Catholicism to Calvinism; the baptismal water
+had glided from my back as from a duck's. True, I have lived with all
+the conventional surroundings of my Christian fellow-countrymen, as I
+have lived with the language of Russia on my lips, and subservient to
+Russian customs and manners. But all the while I was neither a Russian
+nor a Christian. I was a Jew.
+
+Every now and again I roused myself to laudatory assent to one of
+Paul's arguments when I divined by his tone that it was due. But when
+he wound up with a panegyric on "our glorious Russian State," and "our
+little father, the Czar, God's Vicegerent on earth, who alone of
+European monarchs incarnates and unites in his person Church and
+State, so that loyalty and piety are one," I could not refrain from
+pointing out that it was a pure fluke that Russia was "orthodox" at
+all.
+
+"Suppose," said I, "Wladimir, when he made his famous choice between
+the Creeds of the world, had picked Judaism? It all turned on a single
+man's whim."
+
+"Father," Paul cried in a pained tone, "do not be blasphemous.
+Wladimir was divinely inspired to dower his country with the true
+faith. Just therein lay the wisdom of Providence in achieving such
+great results through the medium of an individual. It is impossible
+that God should have permitted him to incline his ear to the infidel
+Israelite, who has survived to be at once a link with the past and a
+living proof of the sterility of the soul that refuses the living
+waters. The millions of holy Russia perpetuating the stubborn heresy
+of the Jews--adopting an unfaith as a faith! The very thought makes
+the blood run cold. Nay, then would every Russian deserve to be sunk
+in squalor, dishonesty, and rapacity, even as every Jew."
+
+"Not every Jew, Paul," I remonstrated.
+
+"No, not perhaps every Jew in squalor," he assented, with a sarcastic
+laugh; "for too many of the knaves have feathered their nests very
+comfortably. Even the Raskolnik is more tolerable. And many of them
+are not even Jews. The Russian Press is infested with these fellows,
+who take the bread out of the mouths of honest Christians, and will
+even write the leaders in the religious papers. Believe me, little
+father, these Jewish scribblers who have planted their flagstaffs
+everywhere have cost me many a heartache, many a disappointment."
+
+I could not help thinking this sentiment somewhat unworthy of my Paul,
+though it threw a flood of light on the struggle, whose details he had
+never troubled me with. I began to doubt my wisdom in sending so
+unpractical a youth out into the battle of life, to hew his way as
+best he might. But how was I to foresee that he would become a writing
+man, that he would be tripped up at every turn by some clever Hebrew,
+and that his aversion from the race would be intensified?
+
+"But surely," I said, after a moment of silence, "our Slavic
+journalists are not all Christians, either."
+
+"They are not," he admitted sadly. "The Universities have much to
+answer for. Instead of rigidly excluding every vicious book that
+unsettles the great social and religious ideals of which God designed
+Russia to be the exponent, the works of Spencer and Taine, and Karl
+Marx and Tourguenieff, and every literary Antichrist, are allowed to
+poison faith in the sap. The censor only bars the superficially
+anti-Russian books. But there will come a reaction. A reaction," he
+added solemnly, "to which this work of mine may, by the grace of God,
+be permitted to contribute."
+
+I could have laughed at my son if I had not felt so inclined to weep.
+Paul's pietism irritated me for the first time. Was it that _my_
+reaction against my past had become stronger than ever, was it that
+Paul had never exposed his own narrowness so completely before? I know
+not. I only know I felt quite angry with him. "And how do you know
+there will ever be a reaction?" I asked.
+
+"Christ never leaves himself without a witness long," he answered
+sententiously. "And already there are symptoms enough that the creed
+of the materialist does not satisfy the soul. Look at our Tolstoi, who
+is coming back to Christianity after ranging at will through the gaudy
+pleasure-grounds of science and life; it is true his Christianity is
+cast after his own formula, and that he has still much intellectual
+pride to conquer, but he is on the right road to the fountain of
+life. But, little father, you are unlike yourself this morning," he
+went on, putting his hand to my hot forehead. "You are not well." He
+kissed me. "Let me give you another cup of tea," he said, and turned
+on the tap of the samovar with an air that disposed of the subject.
+
+I sipped at my cup to please him, remarking in the interval between
+two sips as indifferently as I could, "But what makes you so bitter
+against the Jews?"
+
+"And what makes you so suddenly their champion?" he retorted.
+
+"When have I championed them?" I asked, backing.
+
+"Your pardon," he said. "Of course I should have understood you are
+only putting in a word for them for argument's sake. But I confess I
+have no patience with any one who has any patience with these
+bloodsuckers of the State. Every true Russian must abhor them. They
+despise the true faith, and are indifferent to our ideals. They sneak
+out of the conscription. They live for themselves, and regard us as
+their natural prey. Our peasantry are corrupted by their brandy-shops,
+squeezed by their money-lenders, and roused to discontent by the
+insidious utterances of their peddlers, d----d wandering Jews, who
+hate the Government and the Tschinn and everything Russian. When did a
+Jew invest his money in Russian industries? They are a filthy,
+treacherous, swindling set. Believe me, _batiushka_, pity is wasted
+upon them."
+
+"Pity is never spent upon them," I retorted. "They are what the
+Russians--what we Russians--have made them. Who has pent them into
+their foul cellars and reeking dens? They work with their brains, and
+you--we--abuse them for not working with their hands. They work with
+their hands, and the Czar issues a ukase that they are to be driven
+off the soil they have tilled. It is AEsop's fable of the wolf and the
+lamb."
+
+"In which the wolf is the Jew," said Paul coolly. "The Jew can always
+be trusted to take care of himself. His cunning is devilish. Till his
+heart is regenerate, the Jew remains the Ishmael of the modern world,
+his hand against every man's, every man's against his."
+
+"'Love thy neighbour as thyself,'" I quoted bitterly.
+
+"Even so," said Paul. "The Jew must be cut off, even as the Christian
+must pluck out his own eye if it offendeth him. Christ came among us
+to bring not peace but a sword. If the Kingdom of Christ is delayed by
+these vermin, they must be poisoned off for the sake of Russia and
+humanity at large."
+
+"Vermin, indeed!" I cried hotly, for I could no longer restrain
+myself. "And what know you of these vermin of whom you speak with such
+assurance? What know you of their inner lives, of their sanctified
+homes, of their patient sufferings? Have you penetrated to their
+hearths and seen the beautiful _naivete_ of their lives, their simple
+faith in God's protection, though it may well seem illusion, their
+unselfish domesticity, their sublime scorn of temptation, their
+fidelity to the faith of their ancestors, their touching celebrations
+of fast and festival, their stanchness to one another, their humble
+living and their high respect for things intellectual, their
+unflinching toil from morn till eve for a few kopecks of gain, their
+heroic endurance of every form of torment, vilification, contempt--?"
+I felt myself bursting into tears and broke from the breakfast table.
+
+Paul followed me to my room in amazement. In the midst of all my
+tempest of emotion I was no less amazed at my own indiscretion.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" he said, clasping his arm around my
+neck. "Why make yourself so hot over this accursed race, for whom,
+from some strange whim or spirit of perverseness, you stand up to-day
+for the first time in my recollection?"
+
+"It is true; why indeed?" I murmured, striving to master myself. After
+all, the picture I had drawn was as ideal in its beauty as Paul's in
+its ugliness. "_Nu_, I only wanted you to remember that they were
+human beings."
+
+"_Ach_, there is the pity of it," persisted Paul; "that human beings
+should fall so low. And who has been telling you of all these angelic
+qualities you roll so glibly off your tongue?"
+
+"No one," I answered.
+
+"Then you have invented them. Ha! ha! ha!" And Paul went off into a
+fit of good-humoured laughter. That laughter was a sword between his
+life and mine, but I let a responsive smile play across my features,
+and Paul went to his own room in higher spirits than ever.
+
+We met again at dinner, and again at our early supper, but Paul was
+too full of his book, and I of my own thoughts to permit of a renewal
+of the dispute. Even a saint, I perceive, has his touch of egotism,
+and behind all Paul's talk of Russia's ideals, of the misconceptions
+of their fatherland's function by feather-brained Nihilists and
+Democrats possessed of that devil, the modern spirit, there danced, I
+am convinced, a glorified vision of St. Paul floating down the vistas
+of the future, with a nimbus of Russian ideals around his head. If he
+has only put them as eloquently into his book as he talks of them he
+will at least be read.
+
+But I have bred a bigot.
+
+And the more bigoted he is, the more my heart faints within me for the
+simple, sublime faith of my people. Behind all the tangled network of
+ceremony and ritual, the larger mind of the man who has lived and
+loved sees the outlines of a creed grand in its simplicity, sublime in
+its persistence. The spirit has clothed itself on with flesh, as it
+must do for human eyes to gaze on it and live with it; and if, in
+addition, it has swaddled itself with fold on fold of garment, even so
+the music has not gone out of its voice, nor the love out of its eyes.
+
+As soon as Paul is gone to-morrow, I must plan out my future life. His
+book will doubtless launch him on the road to fame and fortune. But
+what remains for me? To live on as I am doing would be intolerable. To
+do nothing for my people, either with voice or purse, to live alone in
+this sleepy hamlet, cut off from all human fellowship, alienated from
+everything that makes my neighbours' lives endurable--better death
+than such a death-in-life. And yet is it possible that I can get into
+touch again with my youth, that after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep,
+I can take up again and retwine the severed strands? How shall my
+people receive again a viper into its bosom? Well, come what may,
+there must be an end to this. Even at this moment reproachful voices
+haunt my ear; and in another moment, when I put down my pen to go to
+my sleepless bed, I shall take care to light my bed-room candle before
+extinguishing my lamp, for the momentary darkness would be filled with
+impalpable solemnity bordering on horror. Flashes and echoes from the
+ghostly world of my youth, the faces of my dead parents, strange
+fragments of sound and speech, the sough of the wind in the trees of
+the "House of the Living," the far-away voice of the Chazan singing
+some melancholy tune full of heart-break and weirdness, the little
+crowded Cheder where the rabbi intoned the monotonous lesson, the
+whizz of the stone little Ivanovitch flung at my forehead because I
+had "killed Christ"--. No, my nerves are not strong enough to bear
+these visions and voices.
+
+All my life long I see now I have been reserved and solitary. Never
+has any one been admitted to my heart of hearts--not even Caterina.
+But now I must unburden my soul to some one ere I die. And to another
+living soul. For this dead sheet of paper will not, I perceive, do
+after all.
+
+_Saturday Night._--Nearly a week has passed since I wrote the above
+words, and I am driven to your pages again. I would have come to you
+last night, but suddenly I recollected that it was the Sabbath. I have
+kept the Sabbath. I have prayed a few broken fragments of prayer,
+recovered almost miraculously from the deeps of memory. I have rested
+from every toil. I stayed myself from stirring up the fire, though it
+was cold and I was shivering. And a new peace has come to me.
+
+I have heard from Paul; he has completed the negotiations with the
+Moscow booksellers. The book is to have every chance. Of course, in a
+way I wish it success. It cannot do much harm, and I am proud of Paul,
+after all. What a rabbi he would have made! It seems these publishers
+are also the owners of a paper, and Paul is to have some work on it,
+which will give him enough to live upon. So he will stay in Moscow for
+a few months and see his book through the press. He fears the distance
+is too great for him to come to and fro, as he would have done had he
+been at the capital. Though I know I shall long for his presence
+sometimes in my strange reactions, yet on the whole I feel relieved.
+To-morrow without Paul will be an easier day. I shall not go to
+church, though honest old Clara Petroffskovna may stare and cross
+herself in holy horror, and spoil the _borsch_. As for the
+neighbours--let the _startchina_ and the _starostas_ and the retired
+major from Courland, and even the bibulous Prince Shoubinoff, gossip
+as they will. I cannot remain here now for more than a few weeks.
+Besides, I can be unwell. No, on second thoughts, I shall not be
+unwell. I have had enough of shuffling and deceit.
+
+_Sunday._--A day of horrible _ennui_ and despair. I tried to read the
+Old Testament, of course in Russian, for Hebrew books I have none, and
+it is doubtful whether I could read them if I had. But the black cloud
+remained. It chokes me as I write. My limbs are as lead, my head
+aches. And yet I know the ailment is not of the body.
+
+_Monday._--The depression persists. I made a little expedition into
+the country. I rowed up the stream in a _duscehubka_. I tried to
+forget everything but the colours of the forest and the sparkle of
+the waters. The air was less cold than it has been for the last few
+days, but the russet of the pine-leaves spoke to me only of melancholy
+and decay. The sun set in blood behind the hills. Once I heard the
+howl of the wolves, but they were far away.
+
+_Monday._--So. Just a week. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says I must not
+write yet, but I _must_ fill up the record, even if in a few lines. It
+is strange how every habit--even diary-keeping--enslaves you, till you
+think only of your neglected task. Ah, well! if I have been ill, I
+have been lucky in my period, for those frightful storms would have
+kept me indoors. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says it was a _mild_ attack
+of influenza. God preserve me from a severe one! And yet would it not
+be better if it had carried me off altogether? But that is a cowardly
+thought. I must face the future bravely, for my own hands have forged
+my fate. How the writing trembles and contorts itself! I must remember
+Nicholas's caution. He is a frank, good-hearted fellow, is our village
+doctor, and I have had two or three talks with him from between the
+bedclothes. I don't think friend Nicholas is a very devout Christian,
+by the by; for he said one or two things which I should have taken
+seriously, had I been what he thinks I am; but which had an audacious,
+ironical sound to my sympathetic, sceptical ears. How funny was that
+story about the Archimandrite of Czernovitch!
+
+_Thursday Afternoon._--My haste to be out of bed precipitated me back
+again into it. But the actual pain has been small. I have grown very
+friendly with Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and he has promised to spend
+the evening with me. I am better now in body, though still troubled in
+mind. Paul's silence has brought a new anxiety. He has not written for
+twelve days. What can be the matter with him? I suppose he is
+overworking himself. And now to hunt up my best cigarettes for
+_Monsieur le medecin_. Strange that illness should perhaps have
+brought me a friend. Nothing, alas! can bring me a confidant.
+
+_11 p.m._--Astounding discovery! Nicholas Alexandrovitch is a Jew! I
+don't know how it was, but suddenly something was said; we looked at
+each other, and then a sort of light flashed across our faces; we read
+the mutual secret in each other's eyes; a magnetic impulse linked our
+hands together in a friendly clasp, and we felt that we were brothers.
+And yet Nicholas is a whole world apart from me in feeling and
+conviction. How strange and mysterious is this latent brotherhood
+which binds our race together through all differences of rank,
+country, and even faith! For Nicholas is an agnostic of agnostics; he
+is even further removed from sympathy with my new-found faith than the
+ordinary Christian, and yet my sympathy with him is not only warmer
+than, but different in _kind_ from, that which I feel toward any
+Christian, even Caterina's brother. I have told him all. Yes, little
+book, him also have I told all. And he sneers at me. But there lurks
+more fraternity in his sneer than in a Christian's applause. We are
+knit below the surface like two ocean rocks, whose isolated crests
+rise above the waters. Nicholas laughs at there being any Judaism to
+survive, or anything in Judaism worth surviving. He declares that the
+chosen people have been chosen for the plaything of the fates, fed
+with illusions and windy conceit, and rewarded for their fidelity with
+torture and persecution. He pities them, as he would pity a dog that
+wanders round its master's grave, and will not eat for grief. In fact,
+save for this pity, he is even as I was until these new emotions rent
+me. He is outwardly a Christian, because he could not live comfortably
+otherwise, but he has nothing but contempt for the poor peasants whose
+fever-wrung brows he touches with a woman's hand. He looks upon them
+only as a superior variety of cattle, and upon the well-to-do people
+here as animals with all the vices of the muzhiks, and none of their
+virtues. For my Judaic cravings he has a good-natured mockery, and
+tells me I was but sickening for this influenza. He says all my
+symptoms are physical, not spiritual; that the loss of Caterina
+depressed me, that this depression drove me into solitude, and that
+this solitude in its turn reacted on my depression. He thinks that
+religion is a secretion of morbid minds, and that my Judaism will
+vanish again with the last traces of my influenza. And, indeed, there
+is much force in what he says, and much truth in his diagnosis and
+analysis of my condition. He advises me to take plenty of outdoor
+exercise, and to go back again to one of the great towns. To go back
+to Judaism, to ally one's self with an outcast race and a dying
+religion is, he thinks, an act of folly only paralleled by its
+inutility. The world will outgrow all these forms and prejudices in
+time is his confident assurance, as he puffs tranquilly at his
+cigarette and sips his Chartreuse. He points out, what is true enough,
+that I am not alone in my dissent from the religion I profess; for, as
+he epigrammatically puts it, the greatest Raskolniks[2] are the
+Orthodox. The religious statistics of the Procurator of the State
+Synod are, indeed, a poor index to the facts. Well, there is comfort
+in being damned in company. I do not agree with him on any other
+point, but he has done me good. The black cloud is partially
+lifted--perhaps the trouble was only physical, after all. I feel
+brighter and calmer than for months past. Anyhow, if I am to become a
+Jew again, I can think it out quietly. Even if I could bear Paul's
+contempt, there would always be, as Nicholas points out, great peril
+for me in renouncing the Orthodox faith. True, it would be easy enough
+to bribe the priest and the authorities, and to continue to receive
+my eucharistical certificate. But where is the sacrifice in that? It
+is hypocrisy exchanged for hypocrisy. And then what would become of
+Paul's prospects if it were known his father was a _Zhit_? But I
+cannot think of all this now. Paul's silence is beginning to fill me
+with a frightful uneasiness. A presentiment of evil weighs upon me. My
+dear dove, my _dusha_ Paul!
+
+_Friday Afternoon._--Still no letter from Paul. Can anything have
+happened? I have written to him, briefly informing him that I have
+been unwell. I shall ride to Zlotow and telegraph, if I do not hear in
+a day or two.
+
+_Saturday Morning._--All petty and stupid thoughts of my own spiritual
+condition are swallowed up in the thought of Paul. Ever selfish, I
+have allowed him to dwell alone in a far-off city, exposed to all the
+vicissitudes of life. Perhaps he is ill, perhaps he is half-starved on
+his journalistic pittance.
+
+_Saturday Night._--A cruel disappointment! A letter came, but it was
+only from my man of business, advising investment in some South
+American loan. Have given him _carte blanche_. Of what use is my money
+to me? Even Paul couldn't spend it now, with the training I have given
+him. He is only fitted for the cowl. He may yet join the Black Clergy.
+Why does he not write, my poor St. Paul?
+
+_Sunday._--Obedient to the insistent clamour of the bells, I
+accompanied Nicholas Alexandrovitch to _church_, and mechanically
+asked help of the Virgin at the street corner. For I have gone back
+into my old indifference, as Nicholas predicted. I have given the
+necessary orders. The _paracladnoi_ is ready. To-morrow I go to
+Zlotow; thence I take the train for Moscow. He will not tell me the
+truth if I wire.... The weather is bitterly cold, and the stoves here
+are so small.... I am shivering again, but a glass of vodka will put
+me right.... A knock.... Clara Petroffskovna has run to the door. Who
+can it be? Paul?
+
+_Monday Afternoon._--No, it was not Paul. Only Nicholas
+Alexandrovitch. He had heard in the village that I was making
+preparations for a journey, and came to inquire about it, and to
+reproach me for not telling him. He looked relieved when I told him it
+was only to Moscow to look after Paul. I fancy he thought I had had a
+fit of remorse for my morning's devotions, and was off to seek
+readmission into the fold. Except our innkeeper, there is not a Jew in
+this truly God-forsaken place. Of course, I don't reckon myself--or
+the doctor. I wonder if our pope is a Jew! I laugh--but who knows?
+Anyhow I am here, wrapped in my thickest fur cloak, while it is
+Nicholas who is on the road to Moscow. He spoke truly in saying I was
+too weak yet to undertake the journey--that springless _paracladnoi_
+alone is enough to knock a healthy man up; though whether he was
+equally veracious in professing to have business to transact in
+Moscow, I cannot say. _Da_, he is a good fellow, is my brother
+Nicholas. To-morrow I shall know if anything has happened to my son,
+to my only child.
+
+_Tuesday Night._--Thank God! A wire from Nicholas. "Have seen Paul. No
+cause for uneasiness. Will write." Blessings on you, my friend, for
+the trouble you have taken for me. I feel much better already. Paul
+has, I suppose, been throwing himself heart and soul into this new
+journalistic work, and has forgotten his loving father. After all, it
+is only a fortnight, though it has seemed months. Anyhow, he will
+write. I shall hear from him in a day or two now. But a sudden
+thought. "Will write." Who will write? Paul or Nicholas? Oh, Paul;
+Paul without doubt. Nicholas has told him of my anxiety. Yes.
+To-morrow night or the next morning I shall have a letter from Paul.
+All is well.
+
+If I were to tell Paul the truth, I wonder what he would say! I am
+afraid I shall never know.
+
+_Thursday Noon._--A letter from Nicholas. I cannot do better than
+place it here.
+
+    "MY DEAR DEMETRIUS,--I hope you got my telegram and are at ease
+    again. I had a lively journey up here, travelling in company
+    with a Government _employe_, who is very proud of his country,
+    and of the Stanislaus cross round his neck. Such a pompous ass I
+    have never met; he beats even our friend, Prince Shoubinoff, in
+    his Sunday clothes, with the _barina_ on his arm. As you may
+    imagine, I drew him out like a telescope. I have many a droll
+    story for you when I return. To come to Paul. I made it my
+    business at once to call upon the publishers--it is one of the
+    largest firms here--and from them I learnt that your son was
+    still at the same address, in the _Kitai-Gorod_, as that given
+    in the first and only letter you have had from him. I did not
+    care about going there direct, for I thought it best that he
+    should be unaware of my presence, in case there should be
+    anything which it would be advisable for me to find out for your
+    information. However, by haunting the neighbourhood of the
+    offices of his newspaper, I caught sight of him within a couple
+    of hours. He has a somewhat over-wrought expression in his
+    countenance, and does not look particularly well. I fancy he is
+    exciting himself about the production of his book. He has not
+    seen me yet, nor shall I let him see me till I ascertain that he
+    is not in any trouble. It is only his silence to you that makes
+    me fancy something may be the matter; otherwise I should
+    unhesitatingly put down his pallor and intensity of expression
+    to over-work and, perhaps, religious fervour. He went straight
+    to the Petrovski Cathedral on leaving the offices. I am here for
+    a few days longer, and will write again. It is frightfully cold.
+    The thermometer is at freezing point. I sit in my _shuba_ and
+    shiver. _Au revoir._
+
+                                       "NICHOLAS ALEXANDROVITCH."
+
+There is something not quite satisfying about this letter. It looks as
+if there was more beneath the surface. Paul is evidently looking ill
+or ecstatic, or both. But, at any rate, my main anxiety is allayed. I
+can wait with more composure for Nicholas's second letter. But why
+does not the boy write himself? He must have got the letter telling
+him I had been unwell. And yet not a word of sympathy! I don't half
+like Nicholas's idea of playing the spy, though, as if my son is not
+to be trusted. What can he suspect? But Nicholas Alexandrovitch
+dearly loves to invent a mystery for the sake of ferreting it out.
+These scientific men are so sharp that they often cut themselves.
+
+_Friday Afternoon._--At last Paul has written.
+
+    "MY DARLING PAPASHA,--I am surprised you should be anxious about
+    me. I am quite comfortable here, and have now conquered all the
+    difficulties that beset me at the first. How came you to allow
+    yourself to be unwell? I hope Nicholas Alexandrovitch is taking
+    care of you. By the by, I almost thought I saw him here this
+    morning on the bridge, looking over into the _reka_, but there
+    was a church procession, and I had hurried past the man before
+    the thought struck me, and the odds were so much against its
+    being our _zemski-doktor_, that I would not trouble to turn
+    back. I have already corrected the proofs of several sheets of
+    my book. It will be dedicated, by special permission, to
+    Archbishop Varenkin. My articles in the _Courier_ are attracting
+    considerable attention. I have left orders for the publishers to
+    send you my last, which will appear to-morrow. May the holy
+    Mother and the saints watch over you.
+
+    --Your devoted son,                                     PAUL.
+
+    "P.S.--I am making more money than I want, and I shall be glad
+    to send you some, if you have any wants unsupplied."
+
+My darling boy! How could I ever have felt myself alienated from you?
+I will come to you and live with you and share your triumphs. No
+miserable scruples shall divide our lives any more. The past is
+ineradicable; the future is its inevitable fruit. So be it. My
+spiritual yearnings and wrestlings were but the outcome of a morbid
+physical condition. Nicholas was right. And now to read my son's
+article, which I have here, marked with a blue border. Why should I,
+with my superficial ponderings, be right and he wrong?
+
+_Saturday Night._--I have a vague remembrance that three stars marked
+the close of the Sabbath. And here in the frosty sky I see a whole
+host scintillating in the immeasurable depths. The Sabbath is over and
+once more I drag myself to my writing desk to pour out the anguish of
+a tortured spirit. All day I have sat as in a dumb trance gazing out
+beyond the _izbas_ and the cabbage fields toward the eternal hills.
+How beautiful and peaceful everything is! God, wilt Thou not impart to
+me the secret of peace?
+
+Little did I divine what awaited my eyes when they rested fondly on
+the first sentence of Paul's article. _Voi_, it was a pronouncement on
+the Jewish question, venomous, scathing, mordant, terrific. It was an
+indictment of the race, lit up with all the glow of moral indignation;
+cruel and slanderous, yet noble and righteous in its tone and ideals;
+base as hell, yet pure as heaven; breathing a savagery as of
+Torquemada, and a saintliness as of Tolstoi. Paul in every line, my
+own noble, bigoted, wrong-headed Paul. As I read it, my whole frame
+trembled. A corresponding passion and indignation stirred my blood to
+fever-heat. All my slumbering Jewish instincts woke again to fresh
+life; and I knew myself for the weak, miserable wretch that I am. To
+think that a son of mine should thus vilify his own race. What can I
+do? _Bozhe moi_, what can I do? How can I stop this horrible,
+unnatural thing? I dare not open Paul's eyes to what he is doing. And
+yet it is my duty.... It is my duty. By that token I know I shall not
+do it. Heaven have pity on me!
+
+_Tuesday._--Heaven have pity on Paul! Here is Nicholas's promised
+letter.
+
+    "DEAR DEMETRIUS,--I have strange news for you. It is quite
+    providential (I use the word without prejudice, as the lawyers
+    say) that I came here. But all is well now, so you may read what
+    follows without alarm. Last Thursday morning, during my
+    purposeful wanderings within Paul's usual circuit, I came face
+    to face with our young gentleman. His eyes stared straight at me
+    without seeing me. His face was ghastly white, and the lines
+    were rigid as if with some stern determination. His lips were
+    moving, but I could not catch his mutterings. He held a sealed
+    letter in his hand. I saw the superscription. It was addressed
+    to you. Instantly the dread came to my mind that he was about to
+    commit suicide, and that this was his farewell to you. I
+    followed him. He posted the letter at the post-office, turned
+    back, threaded his way like a somnambulist across the bridge,
+    without, however, approaching the parapet, walked mechanically
+    onward to his own apartments, put the latch-key into the
+    house-door, and then fell back in a dead faint--into my arms. I
+    took him upstairs, explained what had happened, put him to bed,
+    and--I write this from the bedside. For the crisis is over now;
+    the brain fever has abated, and he has now nothing to do but to
+    get well, though he will be longer about it than a young fellow
+    of his age has a right to be. His body is emaciated with fasts
+    and vigils and penances. I curse religion when I look at him. As
+    if the struggle for life were not hard enough without humanity
+    being hampered by these miserable superstitions. But you will be
+    wanting to know what is the matter. Well, _batiushka_, what
+    should be the matter but the old, old matter? _La femme_ is,
+    strange to relate, a fine specimen of our own race of lovely
+    women, my dear Demetrius. She is a Jewess of the most orthodox
+    family in Moscow, and therein lies the crux of the situation. (I
+    am not playing upon words, but the phrase is doubly significant
+    here.) Of course Paul has not the slightest idea I know all
+    this; but of course I have had it from his hot lips all the
+    same. As far as I have been able to piece his broken utterances
+    together, they have had some stolen love passages, each followed
+    by swift remorse on both sides, and--another furtive love
+    passage. Paul has been comparing himself to St. Anthony, and
+    even to Jesus, when Satan, _ce chef admirable_, spread a
+    first-class dinner in the wilderness. But the poor lad must have
+    suffered much behind all his heroics. And what his final
+    resolution to give her up cost him is pretty evident. I suppose
+    he must have told you of it in that letter. Isn't it the oddest
+    thing in the world? Rachel Jacobvina is the girl's name, and her
+    people keep a clothes' store round the corner, and her father is
+    the Parnass (you will remember what that means) of his
+    synagogue. She is a sweet little thing; and Paul evidently has a
+    taste for other _belles_ than _belles-lettres_. From what you
+    told me of him I fully expected this sort of thing. The poor
+    fellow is looking at me now from among his iced bandages with a
+    piteous air of resignation to the will of Nicholas
+    Alexandrovitch in bringing him back to this world of trouble
+    when he already felt his wings sprouting. Poor Paul! He little
+    dreams what I am writing; but he will get over this, and marry
+    some fair, blue-eyed Circassian with corresponding tastes in
+    fasting, and an enthusiastic longing for the Kingdom of God,
+    when the year shall be a perpetual Lent. In his failure to
+    realize history, he thinks it a crime to adore a Jewish virgin,
+    though he spends half his time in adoring the Madonna. How
+    shocked he would be if I pointed this out! People who look
+    through ecclesiastical spectacles so rarely realize that the
+    Holy Family was a Jewish one. But my pen is running away with
+    me, and our patient looks thirsty. _Proshchai_.
+
+                                                      "NICHOLAS."
+
+    "P.S.--There is not the slightest danger of a relapse unless the
+    image of this diabolical girl comes before him again. And I
+    keep his attention distracted. Besides, he had finally conquered
+    his passion. This illness was at once the seal and the witness
+    of his unchangeable resolve. I have heard him repeat the terms
+    of the letter of farewell he sent her. It was final."
+
+So this was the meaning of your silence; this the tragedy that lay
+behind your simple sentence, "I have now conquered all the
+difficulties which beset me at the first." This was the motive that
+guided your hand to write those bitter lines about our race, so that
+you might henceforth cut yourself off from the possibility of allying
+yourself with it even in thought. I understand all now, my poor
+high-mettled boy. How you must have suffered! How your pride must have
+rebelled at the idea that you might have to make such a confession to
+me--little knowing I should have hailed it with delight. That
+temptation should have assailed you, too, at such a period--when you
+were publishing your great work on the ideals of Holy Russia!
+Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Providence. And yet why may not
+all be well after all, and Heaven grant me such grace as I would
+willingly sacrifice my life to deserve? It is impossible that my son's
+passion can be utterly dead. Such fires are only covered up. I will go
+to him and tell him all. The news that he is a Jew will revolutionize
+him. His love will flame up afresh and take on the guise and glamour
+of duty. Love, posing as logic, will whisper in his ear that no bars
+of early training can avail to keep him from the race to which he
+belongs by blood and by his father's faith. In this girl's eyes he
+will read God's message of command, and I, God's message of Peace and
+Reconciliation. The tears are in my eyes; I can hardly see to write.
+The happiness I foresee is too great. Blessings on your sweet face,
+Rachel Jacobvina, my own darling daughter that is to be. To you is
+allotted the blessed task of solving a fearful problem, of rescuing
+and reuniting two human lives. Yes, Heaven is indeed merciful.
+To-morrow I start for Moscow.
+
+_Thursday._--How can I write it? No, there is no pity in Heaven. The
+sky smiles in steely blankness. The air cuts like a knife. Paul is
+well, or as well as a convalescent can be. He must have had a heart of
+ice. But it is fortunate he had, seeing what the icy fates have
+wrought. I arrived at Moscow, and hurried in a _droshky_ across the
+well-known bridge to Paul's lodgings. A ghastly procession stopped me.
+Some _burlaks_ were bearing the corpse of a young girl who had thrown
+herself into the ice-laden river. A clammy foreboding gathered at my
+heart, but ere I had time to say a word, an old, caftan-clad man, with
+agonized eyes and a white, streaming beard, dashed up, pulled off the
+face-cloth, revealing a strange, weird loveliness, uttered a scream
+which yet rings in my ears, threw himself passionately on the body,
+rose up again, murmured something solemnly and resignedly in Hebrew,
+rent his garments, readjusted the face-cloth, and followed weeping in
+the rear. And from lip to lip, that for once forgot to curl in scorn,
+flew the murmur: "Rachel Jacobvina."
+
+_Saturday Night._--I slouched into the synagogue this morning, the
+cynosure of suspicious eyes. I nearly uncovered my head in
+forgetfulness. Somebody offered me a _Talith_, which I wrapped round
+myself with marked awkwardness. The service moved me beyond measure. I
+have neither the pen nor the will to describe my sensations. I was a
+youth again. The intervening decades faded away. Rachel's father said
+the _Kaddish_. The peace of God has touched my soul. Paul is asleep. I
+have made Nicholas take his much-needed rest. I am reading the Hebrew
+Psalms. The language comes back to me bit by bit.
+
+_Monday._--Paul is sitting up reading--proofs. I have been to condole
+with Rachel's father, as he sat mourning upon the ground. I explained
+that I was a stranger in the town, and had heard of the accident. I
+have given five hundred roubles to the synagogue. The whole
+congregation is buzzing with the generosity of the rich Jewish farmer
+from the country. Fortunately there is no danger of Paul hearing
+anything of my doings. He is a prisoner; and Nicholas and myself keep
+watch over him by turns.
+
+_Tuesday._--I have just come from a meeting of the Palestine
+Colonization Society. Heavens, what ideals burn in these breasts
+supposed to throb only with cupidity and cunning! Their souls still
+turn to the Orient, as the needle turns to the pole. And how the
+better-off among them pity their weaker brethren! With what enthusiasm
+they plot and plan to get them beyond the frontier into freer
+countries, but chiefly into the centre of all Jewish aspiration, the
+Holy Land! How they wept when I doubled their finances at a stroke. My
+poor, much-wronged brethren!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Odessa, Monday._--It is almost a year since I closed this book, and
+now, after a period of peace, I am driven to it again. Paul has made
+an irruption into my tranquil household. For eleven months now I have
+lived in this little two-storied house overlooking the roadstead, with
+Isaac and the _ekonomka_ for my sole companions. So long as I could
+pour my troubles into the ear of the venerable old rabbi (who was
+starving for material sustenance when I took him, as I was for
+spiritual), so long I had no need of you, my old confidant. But this
+visit of Paul has reopened all my sores. I have smuggled the rabbi out
+of the way; but even if he were here, he could not understand the
+terrible situation. The God of Israel alone knows what I feel at
+having to deny Him, at having to hide my faith from my own son. He
+must not stay. The New Year is nigh, with its feasts and fasts.
+Moreover, surrounded as one is by spies, Paul's presence here may
+lead to discoveries that I am not what the authorities imagine.
+Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone back to the village.
+But no. There was that church-going. A village is so small. In this
+great and bustling seaport I am lost, or comparatively so. A few
+roubles in the ecclesiastical palm, and complete oblivion settles on
+me.
+
+To-night I shall know to what I owe this sudden visit. Paul is
+radiant. He plays with his untold news like a child with a new toy. He
+drops all sorts of mysterious hints. He frisks around me like a fond
+spaniel. But he reserves his tit-bit for to-night, when the tramp of
+the sailors and the perambulating peasantry shall have died away, and
+we shall be seated cosily in my study, smoking our cigarettes, and
+looking out toward the quiet lights of the shipping. Of course it is
+good news--Heaven help me, I fear Paul's good news. Good news that
+Paul has come all the way from St. Petersburg to tell me, which only
+his own lips may tell me, must, if past omens speak truly, be
+terrible. God grant I may survive the telling.
+
+What a coward I am! Have I not long since made up my mind that Paul
+must go his way and I mine? What difference, then, can his news make
+to me? He will never know now that I am a _Zhit_ unless he hears it
+from my dying lips as I utter the declaration of the Unity. I made up
+my mind to that when I came here. Paul threatens to make his mark as
+a writer on theological subjects. To tell him the truth would only
+sadden him and do him no good; while to reveal my own Judaism to the
+world would but serve to damage him and injure his prospects. This may
+seem but a cover for my cowardice, for my fear of State reprisals; but
+it is true for all that. _Bozhe moi_, is it not punishment enough not
+to be able to join my brethren in their worship? I must remain here,
+where I am unknown, practising my religion unostentatiously and in
+secret. The sense of being in a Jewish city satisfies my soul. We are
+here more than a fourth of the population. House-rent and fuel are
+very dear, but we thrive and prosper, thanks to God. I give to our
+poor, through Isaac, but they hardly want my help. I rejoice in the
+handsome synagogues, though I dare not enter them. Yes, I am best
+here. Why be upset by my boy's visit? Paul will tell me his news, I
+shall congratulate him, he will go back to the capital, and all will
+be as before.
+
+_Monday Midnight._--No, all can never be as before. One last step
+remained to divide our lives to all eternity. _Voi_, Paul has taken
+it.
+
+All came off as arranged. We sat together at my window. It was a
+glorious night, and a faint, fresh wind blew in from the sea. The
+lights in the harbour twinkled, the stars glistened in the sky. But as
+Paul told me his good news, the whole horizon was one great flame
+before my eyes. He began by recapitulating, though with fuller details
+than was possible by letter, what I knew pretty well already; the
+story of the great success of his book, which had been reviewed in all
+the theological magazines of Europe, and had gone through four
+editions in the year, and been translated into German and Italian; the
+story of how he had been encouraged to come to St. Petersburg, and how
+he had prospered on the press there. And then came the grand news--he
+was offered the editorship of the _Novoe Vremia_, the great St.
+Petersburg paper!
+
+In an instant I realized all it meant, and in my horror I almost
+fainted. Paul would direct this famous Government and anti-Semitic
+organ, Paul would pen day after day those envenomed leaders, goading
+on the mob to turn and rend their Jewish fellow-citizens, denying them
+the rights of human beings. Paul would direct the flood of sarcasm and
+misrepresentation poured forth day after day upon my inoffensive
+brethren. The old anguish with which I had read that article a year
+ago returned to me; but not the old tempest of wrath. By sheer force
+of will I kept myself calm. A great issue was at stake, and I nerved
+myself for the contest.
+
+"Paul," said I, "you are a lucky fellow." I kissed him on the brow
+with icy lips. He saw my great emotion, but felt it was but natural.
+
+"_Da_," said he, "I am a lucky fellow. It is a great thing. Few men
+have had such an opportunity at twenty-five."
+
+"_Nutchozh?_ And how do you propose to utilize it?" I asked.
+
+"_Och_, I must conduct the paper on the same general lines," he said;
+"of course, with improvements."
+
+"Amongst the latter the omission of the anti-Semitic bias, I hope."
+
+He stared at me. "Certainly not. The proprietors make its continuance
+on the same general lines a condition. They are very good. They even
+guard me against possible prosecutions by paying a handsome salary to
+a man of straw. _Ish-lui_, it is a fine berth that I've got."
+
+Should I tell him the thing was impossible--that he was a Jew? No;
+time for that when all other means had failed. "_Och_, you have
+accepted it?" I said.
+
+"Of course I have, father. Why should I give them time to change their
+minds?"
+
+"I should have thought you would have consulted me first."
+
+"_Nu, uzh_, I have never consulted you yet about accepting work," he
+said in a wondering, disappointed tone.
+
+"_Nuka_, but this puts you finally into a career, does it not?"
+
+"Certainly. That is why I accepted it, and I thought you would be
+glad."
+
+"That is why you should have refused it. But I _am_ glad all the
+same."
+
+"I do not understand you, father."
+
+"_Nuka_, _golubtchik_, listen," I said in my most endearing tone,
+drawing my arm round his neck. "Your struggles for existence were but
+struggles for the sake of the struggle. You are not as other young
+men. You have succeeded; and the moment you win the prize is the
+moment for retiring gracefully, leaving it in the hands of him who
+needs it. Your fight was but a game I allowed you to play. You are
+rich."
+
+"Rich?"
+
+"Rich! Nearly all my life I have been a wealthy man. I own land in
+every part of Russia; I hold shares in all the most successful
+companies. I have kept this knowledge from you so that you might enjoy
+your riches more when you knew the truth."
+
+"Rich?" He repeated the word again in a dazed tone. "_Ach_, why did I
+not know this before?"
+
+"You had not succeeded. You had not had your experience, my son, my
+dearest Paul. But now your work is over, or rather your true work
+begins. Freed from the detestable routine of a newspaper office, you
+shall write your books and work out your ideas at leisure, and
+relieved from all material considerations."
+
+"_Da_, it would have been a beautiful ideal--once," he said; then
+added fiercely: "Rich? And I did not know it."
+
+"But you were the happier for your ignorance."
+
+"No, father. The struggle is too terrible. Often have I sat and wept.
+_Ish-lui_, time after time my book--destined as it was to
+success--came back to me from the publishers. And I could have
+produced it myself all along!"
+
+Pangs of remorse agitated me. Had my plan been, indeed, a failure?
+"But you have the pride of unhelped success."
+
+"And the bitter memories. And once--" He paused.
+
+"Once?" I said.
+
+"Once I loved a girl. She is dead now, so it doesn't matter. There
+were many and complicated obstacles to our union. With money they
+would have been overcome."
+
+"Poor boy!" I said wonderingly, for I knew nothing of this apparently
+new love episode. "Forgive me, my son, if I have acted mistakenly.
+Anyhow, from this moment your happiness is my sole care."
+
+"No," he said, with sudden determination. "It is too late now. You
+meant it for the best, _papasha_. But I do not want the money now. I
+have money of my own--and glory. Why should I give up what my own
+hands have won?"
+
+"Because I ask it of you, Paul; because I ask you to allow me to make
+reparation for the mischief I have done."
+
+"The truest reparation will be to let things go unrepaired," he said,
+with a touch of sarcasm. "I shall be happier as editor of this paper.
+What finer medium for my ideas than a great newspaper? What more
+potent lever to my hand for raising Holy Russia to a yet higher plane?
+No, father. Let bygones be bygones. Give my share of your wealth to a
+society for helping struggling talent. I struggle no longer. Leave me
+to go on in the path my pen has carved out."
+
+I fell at his feet and begged him to let me have my way, but some
+obstinate demon seemed to have taken possession of his breast. I
+opened my desk and showered bank-notes upon him. He spurned them, and
+one flew out into the night. Neither of us put out a hand to arrest
+its flight.
+
+I saw that nothing but the truth had any chance to alter his resolve.
+But I played one more card before resorting to this dangerous weapon.
+
+"Listen, my own dearest Paul," I burst out. "If money will not tempt
+you, let a father's petition persuade you. Learn, then, that I dread
+your taking this position because you will perpetually have to attack
+the Jews--"
+
+"As they deserve," he put in.
+
+"Be it so. But I--I have a kindness for this oppressed race."
+
+He looked at me in silence, as if awaiting further explanation. I
+gave it, blurting out the shameful lie with ill-concealed confusion.
+
+"Once upon a time I--I loved a Jewess. I could not marry her, of
+course. But ever since that time I have had a soft place in my heart
+for her unhappy race."
+
+A look of surprise flashed into Paul's eyes. Then his face grew
+tender. He took my hand in his.
+
+"Father, we have a common sorrow," he said. "The girl I spoke of was a
+Jewess."
+
+"How?" I exclaimed, surprised in my turn. It was the same affair,
+then.
+
+"Yes, she was a Jewess. But I taught her the truth. Christ was
+revealed to her prisoned soul. She would have fled with me if we had
+had the means, and if I had been able to support her in some other
+country. But she did not dare be baptized and stay in Moscow or
+anywhere near. She said her father would have killed her. The only
+alternative was for me to embrace Judaism. Impossible as you may think
+it, father, and I confess it to my eternal shame, at the very period I
+was correcting the proofs of my book, I was wrestling with a
+temptation to embrace this Satanic heresy. But I conquered the
+temptation. It was easy to conquer. To renounce the faith which was my
+blessed birthright would, as you know, have cost me dear. Selfishness
+warred for once on the side of salvation. Rachel wished to fly with
+me. I knew she would have been poor and unhappy. I refused to take
+advantage of her girlish impetuousness. I heard afterward that she had
+drowned herself." The tears rained down his cheeks.
+
+"We had arranged to wait till I could save a stock of money. _Voi_,
+the delay undid us. One day Rachel's father called on me. He had got
+wind of our secret. He fell at my feet and tore his hair, and wept and
+conjured me not to darken his home and his life. A Jewess could only
+wed a Jew, he said. If I had only been born a Jew all would have been
+well. But his Rachel had, perhaps, talked of becoming a Christian. Did
+I not know that was impossible? As well expect the sheep to howl like
+the wolf. Blood was thicker than baptismal water. Her heart would
+always cleave to her own religion. And was my love so blind as not to
+see that even if she spoke of Christianity it was only to please me?
+that she only kissed the crucifix that I might kiss her, and knelt to
+the Virgin that I might kneel to her? At home, he swore it with
+fearful oaths, she was always bitterly sarcastic at the expense of the
+true faith. I believed him. My God, I believed him! For at times I had
+feared it myself. I would be no party to such carnal blasphemy, and
+charged him with a note of farewell. When he went I felt as if I had
+escaped from a terrible temptation. I fell on my knees and thanked the
+saints."
+
+"But why did you not tell me this at the time?" I cried in intolerable
+anguish.
+
+"_Nu_; to what end? It would only have worried you. I did not know you
+were rich."
+
+"And at this time you offered to send _me_ money!" I said, with sudden
+recollection.
+
+"Since I had not enough, you might as well have some of it. Anyhow,
+father, you see all this has made no difference to me. I shall never
+marry now, of course; but it hasn't altered the opinion I have always
+had of the Jews--rather corroborated it. Rachel told me enough of the
+superstitious slavery amid which she was forced to live. I have no
+doubt now that her father lied. But for his pigheaded tribalism,
+Rachel would have been alive to-day. So why your love for a Jewish
+girl should make you tender to the race I do not see, dearest father.
+There are always exceptions to everything--Rachel was one; the woman
+you loved was another. And now it is very late; I think I will go to
+bed."
+
+He kissed me and went out at the door. Then he came back and put his
+head inside again. A sweet, sad, winning smile lit up his pale,
+thoughtful face.
+
+"I will put you on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_, father," he
+said. "Good-night, _papasha_."
+
+What could I say? What could I do? I called up a smile to my trembling
+lips.
+
+"Good-night, Paul," I said.
+
+I shall never tell him now.
+
+_Tuesday, 3 a.m._--I reopen these pages to note an ironic climax to
+this bitter day. Through the excitement of Paul's coming I had not
+read my letters. After sitting here in a numb trance for hours, I
+suddenly bethought me of them. One is from my business man, informing
+me that he has just sold the South American stock, respecting which I
+gave him _carte blanche_. I go to bed richer by five thousand roubles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Odessa, Wednesday Night._--Six months have passed. I am on the free
+list of the _Novoe Vremia_. Almost every day brings me a fresh stab as
+I read. But I am a "constant reader." It is my penance, and I bear it
+as such. After a long silence, I have just had a letter from Nicholas
+Alexandrovitch, and I reopen my diary to note it. He is about to marry
+a prosperous widow, and is going over to Catholicism. He writes he is
+very happy. Lucky, soulless being. He does not know he will be a
+richer man when I die. Happily, I am ready, though it were to-day. My
+peace is made, I hope, with God and man, though Paul knows nothing
+even now. He could not fail to learn it, though, if he came to Odessa
+again. I have bribed the spies and the clergy heavily. Thanks to their
+silence, I am one of the most prominent Jews of the town, and nobody
+dreams of connecting me with the trenchant editor of the _Novoe
+Vremia_. I see now that I could have acted so all along, if I had not
+been such a coward. But I keep Paul away. It is my last cowardice. In
+a postscript Nicholas writes that Paul's articles are causing a great
+sensation in the remotest parts of Russia. Alas, I know it. Are there
+not anti-Jewish riots in all parts, encouraged by cruel Government
+measures? Do not the local newspapers everywhere reproduce Paul's
+printed firebrands? Have I not the pleasure of coming across them
+again in our own Odessa papers, in the _Wiertnik_ and the _Listok_? I
+should not wonder if we had an outbreak here. There was a little
+affray yesterday in the _pereouloks_ of the Jewish quarter, though we
+are quiet enough down this way.... Great God! What is that noise I
+hear?... Yes! it is! it is! "Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the
+_Zhits_!" There is red on the horizon. _Bozhe moi!_ It is flame!
+_Voi!_ They are pillaging the Jewish quarter. The sun sinks in blood,
+as on that unhappy day among the village hills.... _Ach!_ Paul, Paul!
+Why did I not stop your murderous pen?... But if not you, another
+would have written.... No, that is no excuse.... Forgive me, O God, I
+have been weak. Ever weak and cowardly from the day I first deserted
+Thee, even unto this day.... I am not worthy of my blood, of my
+race.... They are coming this way. It goes through me like a knife.
+"Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the _Zhits_!" And now I see them.
+They are mad, drunk with the vodka they have stolen from the Jewish
+inns. Great God! They have knives and guns. And their leader is
+flourishing a newspaper and shouting out something from it. There are
+soldiers among them, and sailors, native and foreign, and mad muzhiks.
+Where are the police?... The mob is passing under my window. _God pity
+me, it is Paul's words they are shouting._... They have passed. No
+one thinks of me. Thank God, I am safe. I am safe from these demons.
+What a narrow escape!... Ah, God, they have captured Rabbi Isaac and
+are dragging him along by his white beard toward the barracks. My
+place is by his side. I will rouse my brethren. We are not a few. We
+will turn on these dogs and rend them. _Proshchai_, my loved diary.
+Farewell! I go to proclaim the Unity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] In order to preserve the local colour, the Translator has
+occasionally left a word or phrase of the MS. in the original Russian.
+
+[2] Dissenters.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"INCURABLE"
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"INCURABLE"
+
+    "_Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave.
+    Whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy
+    hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in
+    the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and Thou hast afflicted
+    me with all Thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from
+    me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up and
+    I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of
+    affliction. I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord, I have spread
+    forth my hands unto Thee._"--Eighty-eighth Psalm.
+
+
+There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the
+friends of the patients would be admitted. The Incurables would hear
+the latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much
+with these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It
+was an unpretentious institution--two corner houses knocked
+together--near the east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor
+at a penny a week, and scarcely recognized by the rich; so that
+paraplegia and vertigo and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless
+diseases knocked hopelessly at its narrow portals. But it was a model
+institution all the same, and the patients lacked for nothing except
+freedom from pain. There was even a miniature synagogue for their
+spiritual needs, with the women's compartment religiously railed off
+from the men's, as if these grotesque ruins of sex might still
+distract each other's devotions.
+
+Yet the Rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly, hydrocephalous,
+paralytic Leah had had the chair she inhabited carried down into the
+men's sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling
+fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man, who had the Braille Bible at
+his fingers' ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had
+strolled vacuously into the ladies' ward, and, indifferent to the
+pretty white-aproned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a
+weird, hatchet-faced cripple with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting
+big spectacles. Like most of the patients she was up and dressed; only
+a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.
+
+"Leah says she'd be quite happy if she could walk like you," said Mad
+Mo in complimentary tones. "She always says Milly walks so beautiful.
+She says you can walk the whole length of the garden." Milly, huddled
+in her chair, smiled miserably.
+
+"You're crying again, Rebecca," protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced
+dwarf in excellent English, as she touched her friend's withered hand.
+"You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered."
+
+"No--I feel so nice," said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint musical
+accent. "You sall not tink I cry because I am not happy. Ven I read
+sad tings--like my life--den only I am happy."
+
+The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendent earrings oscillate.
+"I thought you were brooding over your love affairs," she said.
+
+"Me!" cried Rebecca. "I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is
+Psalm eighty-eight dat I brood over. 'I am afflicted and ready to die
+from my yout' up.' Yes, I vas only a girl ven I had to go to
+Koenigsberg to find a doctor to cut off my leg. 'Lover and friend hast
+dou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness!'"
+
+Her face shone ecstatic.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod in
+the direction of a neighbouring waterbed on which a pale, rigid,
+middle-aged woman lay, with shut sleepless eyes.
+
+"Se cannot understand Englis'," said the Russian girl proudly.
+
+"Don't be so sure, look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddish!"
+
+Rebecca shook her head incredulously. "Sarah is a Polis' woman," she
+said. "For years dey are in England and dey learn noting."
+
+"_Ick bin krank! Krank! Krank!_" suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish
+grandmother--an advanced centenarian--as if to corroborate the girl's
+contention. She was squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and
+again murmuring her querulous burden of sickness, and jabbering at
+the nurses to shut all the windows. Fresh air she objected to as
+vehemently as if it were butter or some other heterodox dainty.
+
+Hard upon her crooning came bloodcurdling screams from the room above,
+sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a "Barnum" show, that
+the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret--not yet
+indurated--thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the
+ashen perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all
+the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen jelly-like hands resting on
+cotton-wool pads, an air-pillow between her knees, her whole frame
+racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only
+diversion faint blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the
+glass of a framed picture; yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in
+her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.
+
+Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white,
+impassive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a
+strong, stern face, telling of a present of pain, and faintly hinting
+at a past of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and
+indeed the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in
+the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years
+before. Her only surviving son--a youth whom the English atmosphere
+had not improved--had sailed away to trade with the Kaffirs. And her
+husband had not been to see her for a fortnight!
+
+When the visitors began to arrive, her torpor vanished. She eagerly
+raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up.
+But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a
+buzz of talk in the room--the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre
+of a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when
+they didn't come and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of
+her to their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with.
+One or two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she
+would speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing
+under the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By
+and by she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her
+artificial walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to
+look for her--
+
+"Woe is me!" wailed her centenarian country-woman, rocking to and fro.
+"What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to
+see if the old grandmother isn't dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!"
+
+Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the
+darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah's husband had not yet come.
+
+"He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow," Sister Margaret ventured to say in
+her best Yiddish. "Or he is busy working. Work is not so slack any
+more." Alone in the institution she shared Sarah's ignorance of the
+Kretznow scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.
+
+"He would have written," said Sarah sternly. "He is awearied of me. I
+have lain here a year. Job's curse is on me."
+
+"Shall I to him"--Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish
+word--"write?"
+
+"No! He hears me knocking at his heart."
+
+They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex
+souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured
+feebly, "But--"
+
+"Leave me in peace!" with a cry like that of a wounded animal.
+
+The matron gently touched the novice's arm and drew her away. "_I_
+will write to him," she whispered.
+
+Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in a
+hell of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten
+her--surely she would not lie thus till death--that far-off death her
+strong religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone
+into the Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and
+the cost of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight
+of his strength?
+
+The next day he came--by special invitation. His face was sallow,
+rimmed with swarthy hair; his under lip was sensuous. He hung his
+head, half veiling the shifty eyes.
+
+Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah's face sparkled.
+
+"Put up the screen!" she murmured, and in its shelter drew her
+husband's head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.
+
+But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: "I thought thou wast
+dying."
+
+A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.
+
+"Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life. I _was_ dying--for a
+sight of thee."
+
+"But the matron wrote to me pressingly," he blurted out. He felt her
+breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands she thrust
+him away.
+
+"God's fool that I am--I should have known; to-day is not visiting
+day. They have compassion on me--they see my sorrows--it is public
+talk."
+
+His pulse seemed to stop. "They have talked to thee of me," he
+faltered.
+
+"I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered--one cannot
+hide one's heart."
+
+"They have no right to talk," he muttered in sulky trepidation.
+
+"They have every right," she rejoined sharply. "If thou hadst come to
+see me even once--why hast thou not?"
+
+"I--I--have been travelling in the country with cheap jewellery. The
+tailoring is so slack."
+
+"Look me in the eyes! Law of Moses? No, it is a lie. God shall forgive
+thee. Why hast thou not come?"
+
+"I have told thee."
+
+"Tell that to the Sabbath Fire-Woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so
+very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like
+some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out
+utterly--"
+
+"No, no, Sarah," he murmured uneasily.
+
+"Then why--?"
+
+He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. "I
+did not like to come," he said desperately.
+
+"Why not?" Crimson patches came and went on her white cheeks; her
+heart beat madly.
+
+"Surely thou canst understand!"
+
+"Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue!"
+
+"I answer as thou askest."
+
+"Thou answerest not at all."
+
+"No answer is also an answer," he snarled, driven to bay. "Thou
+understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk."
+
+"Ah--h--h!" in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined
+everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat
+back by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on
+the pillow, the eyes closed.
+
+He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.
+
+"So sick! So sick! So sick!" moaned the wizened grandmother.
+
+"Thou sayest they have compassion on thee in their talk," he murmured
+at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully; "have they none on me?"
+
+Her silence chilled him. "But _thou_ hast compassion, Sarah," he
+urged. "_Thou_ understandest."
+
+Presently she reopened her eyes.
+
+"Thou art not gone?" she murmured.
+
+"No--thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life! Only--"
+
+"Wilt thou wash my skin, and not make me wet?" she interrupted
+bitterly. "Go home. Go home to her!"
+
+"I will not go home."
+
+"Then go under like Korah."
+
+He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the
+opening of a peep-hole into Paradise--a paradise of Adam and Eve and
+forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the
+sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of
+jealousy in which she writhed?
+
+He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely
+remorseful, but she would not see him. So he went away, vaguely
+indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.
+
+When you lie on your back all day and all night you have time to
+think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in
+many lights from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. One such light
+flashed on the paradise, and showed it to her as but the portico of
+purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she
+was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.
+
+On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness.
+And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come
+and see her.
+
+He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his
+peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him,
+her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.
+
+"Thou hast sent for me?" he murmured.
+
+"Yes--perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my death-bed!" she
+replied, with bitter irony.
+
+"It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself--only thou wouldst
+not see my face."
+
+"I have seen it for twenty years--it is another's turn now."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"It is true all the same--I am on my death-bed."
+
+He started. A pang shot through his breast. He darted an agitated
+glance at her face.
+
+"Is it not so? In this bed I shall die. But God knows how many years I
+shall lie in it."
+
+Her calm gave him an uncanny shudder.
+
+"And till the Holy One, blessed be He, takes me, thou wilt live a
+daily sinner."
+
+"I am not to blame. God has stricken me. I am a young man."
+
+"Thou art to blame!" Her eyes flashed fire. "Blasphemer! Life is sweet
+to thee--yet perchance thou wilt die before me."
+
+His face grew livid. "I am a young man," he repeated tremulously.
+
+"Dost thou forget what Rabbi Eliezer said? 'Repent one day before thy
+death'--that is to-day, for who knows?"
+
+"What wouldst thou have me do?"
+
+"Give up--"
+
+"No, no," he interrupted. "It is useless. I cannot. I am so lonely."
+
+"Give up," she repeated inexorably, "thy wife."
+
+"What sayest thou? My wife! But she is not my wife. Thou art my wife."
+
+"Even so. Give me up. Give me _Get_ (divorce)."
+
+His breath failed, his heart thumped at the suggestion.
+
+"Give thee _Get_!" he whispered.
+
+"Yes. Why didst thou not send me a bill of divorcement when I left thy
+home for this?"
+
+He averted his face. "I thought of it," he stammered. "And then--"
+
+"And then?" He seemed to see a sardonic glitter in the gray eyes.
+
+"I--I was afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" She laughed in grim mirthlessness. "Afraid of a bed-ridden
+woman!"
+
+"I was afraid it would make thee unhappy." The sardonic gleam melted
+into softness, then became more terrible than before.
+
+"And so thou hast made me happy instead!"
+
+"Stab me not more than I merit. I did not think people would be cruel
+enough to tell thee."
+
+"Thine own lips told me."
+
+"Nay--by my soul," he cried, startled.
+
+"Thine eyes told me, then."
+
+"I feared so," he said, turning them away. "When she came into my
+house, I--I dared not go to see thee--that was why I did not come,
+though I always meant to, Sarah, my life. I feared to look thee in the
+eyes. I foresaw they would read the secret in mine--so I was afraid."
+
+"Afraid!" she repeated bitterly. "Afraid I would scratch them out!
+Nay, they are good eyes. Have they not seen my heart? For twenty years
+they have been my light.... Those eyes and mine have seen our children
+die."
+
+Spasmodic sobs came thickly now. Swallowing them down, she said, "And
+she--did she not ask thee to give me _Get_?"
+
+"Nay, she was willing to go without. She said thou wast as one
+dead--look not thus at me. It is the will of God. It was for thy sake,
+too, Sarah, that she did not become my wife by law. She, too, would
+have spared thee the knowledge of her."
+
+"Yes; ye have both tender hearts! She is a mother in Israel, and thou
+art a spark of our father Abraham."
+
+"Thou dost not believe what I say?"
+
+"I can disbelieve it, and still remain a Jewess."
+
+Then, satire boiling over into passion, she cried vehemently, "We are
+threshing empty ears. Thinkest thou I am not aware of the
+Judgments--I, the granddaughter of Reb Shloumi (the memory of the
+righteous for a blessing)? Thinkest thou I am ignorant thou couldst
+not obtain a _Get_ against me--me who have borne thee children, who
+have wrought no evil? I speak not of the _Beth-Din_, for in this
+impious country they are loath to follow the Judgments, and from the
+English _Beth-Din_ thou wouldst find it impossible to obtain the _Get_
+in any case, even though thou didst not marry me in this country, nor
+according to its laws. I speak of our own _Rabbonim_--thou knowest
+even the Maggid would not give thee _Get_ merely because thy wife is
+bed-ridden. That--that is what thou wast afraid of."
+
+"But if thou art willing,--" he replied eagerly, ignoring her scornful
+scepticism.
+
+His readiness to accept the sacrifice was salt upon her wounds.
+
+"Thou deservest I should let thee burn in the lowest Gehenna," she
+cried.
+
+"The Almighty is more merciful than thou," he answered. "It is He that
+hath ordained it is not good for man to live alone. And yet men shun
+me--people talk--and she--she may leave me to my loneliness again."
+His voice faltered with self-pity. "Here thou hast friends, nurses,
+visitors. I--I have nothing. True, thou didst bear me children, but
+they withered as by the evil eye. My only son is across the ocean; he
+hath no love for me or thee."
+
+The recital of their common griefs softened her toward him.
+
+"Go!" she whispered. "Go and send me the _Get_. Go to the Maggid, he
+knew my grandfather. He is the man to arrange it for thee with his
+friends. Tell him it is my wish."
+
+"God shall reward thee. How can I thank thee for giving thy consent?"
+
+"What else have I to give thee, my Herzel, I who eat the bread of
+strangers? Truly says the Proverb, 'When one begs of a beggar the Herr
+God laughs!'"
+
+"I will send thee the _Get_ as soon as possible."
+
+"Thou art right, I am a thorn in thine eye. Pluck me out quickly."
+
+"Thou wilt not refuse the _Get_, when it comes?" he replied
+apprehensively.
+
+"Is it not a wife's duty to submit?" she asked with grim irony. "Nay,
+have no fear. Thou shalt have no difficulty in serving the _Get_ upon
+me. I will not throw it in the messenger's face.... And thou wilt
+marry her?"
+
+"Assuredly. People will no longer talk. And she must needs bide with
+me. It is my one desire."
+
+"It is mine likewise. Thou must atone and save thy soul."
+
+He lingered uncertainly.
+
+"And thy dowry?" he said at last. "Thou wilt not make claim for
+compensation?"
+
+"Be easy--I scarce know where my _Cesubah_ (marriage certificate) is.
+What need have I of money? As thou sayest, I have all I want. I do not
+even desire to purchase a grave--lying already so long in a
+charity-grave. The bitterness is over."
+
+He shivered. "Thou art very good to me," he said. "Good-bye."
+
+He stooped down--she drew the bedclothes frenziedly over her face.
+
+"Kiss me not!"
+
+"Good-bye, then," he stammered. "God be good to thee!" He moved away.
+
+"Herzel!" She had uncovered her face with a despairing cry. He
+slouched back toward her, perturbed, dreading she would retract.
+
+"Do not send it--bring it thyself. Let me take it from thy hand."
+
+A lump rose in his throat. "I will bring it," he said brokenly.
+
+The long days of pain grew longer--the summer was coming, harbingered
+by sunny days that flooded the wards with golden mockery. The evening
+Herzel brought the _Get_, Sarah could have read every word on the
+parchment plainly, if her eyes had not been blinded by tears.
+
+She put out her hand toward her husband, groping for the document he
+bore. He placed it in her burning palm. The fingers closed
+automatically upon it, then relaxed, and the paper fluttered to the
+floor. But Sarah was no longer a wife.
+
+Herzel was glad to hide his burning face by stooping for the fallen
+bill of divorcement. He was long picking it up. When his eyes met hers
+again, she had propped herself up in her bed. Two big round tears
+trickled down her cheeks, but she received the parchment calmly and
+thrust it into her bosom.
+
+"Let it lie there," she said stonily, "there where thy head hath lain.
+Blessed be the true Judge."
+
+"Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?"
+
+"Why should I be angry? She was right--I am but a dead woman. Only no
+one may say _Kaddish_ for me, no one may pray for the repose of my
+soul. I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles,
+and throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy home was desolate,
+there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou
+wilt be happy, too."
+
+"Thou hast been a good wife, Sarah," he murmured, touched.
+
+"Recall not the past; we are strangers now," she said, with recurrent
+harshness.
+
+"But I may come and see thee--sometimes." He had stirrings of remorse
+as the moment of final parting came.
+
+"Wouldst thou reopen my wounds?"
+
+"Farewell, then."
+
+He put out his hand timidly; she seized it and held it passionately.
+
+"Yes, yes, Herzel! Do not leave me! Come and see me here--as a friend,
+an acquaintance, a man I used to know. The others are thoughtless--they
+forget me--I shall lie here--perhaps the Angel of Death will forget me,
+too." Her grasp tightened till it hurt him acutely.
+
+"Yes, I will come--I will come often," he said, with a sob of physical
+pain.
+
+Her clasp loosened, she dropped his hand.
+
+"But not till thou art married," she said.
+
+"Be it so."
+
+"Of course thou must have a 'still wedding.' The English synagogue
+will not marry thee."
+
+"The Maggid will marry me."
+
+"Thou wilt show me her _Cesubah_ when thou comest next?"
+
+"Yes--I will contrive to get it from her."
+
+A week passed--he brought the marriage certificate.
+
+Outwardly she was calm. She glanced through it. "God be thanked," she
+said, and handed it back. They chatted of indifferent things, of the
+doings of the neighbours. When he was going, she said, "Thou wilt come
+again?"
+
+"Yes, I will come again."
+
+"Thou art so good to spend thy time on me thus. But thy wife--will she
+not be jealous?"
+
+He stared, bewildered by her strange, eerie moments.
+
+"Jealous of thee?" he murmured.
+
+She took it in its contemptuous sense and her white lips twitched. But
+she only said, "Is she aware thou hast come here?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Do I know? I have not told her."
+
+"Tell her."
+
+"As thou wishest."
+
+There was a pause. Presently the woman spoke.
+
+"Wilt thou not bring her to see me? Then she will know that thou hast
+no love left for me--"
+
+He flinched as at a stab. After a painful moment he said: "Art thou in
+earnest?"
+
+"I am no marriage-jester. Bring her to me--will she not come to see an
+invalid? It is a _mitzvah_ (good deed) to visit the sick. It will wipe
+out her trespass."
+
+"She shall come."
+
+She came. Sarah stared at her for an instant with poignant curiosity,
+then her eyelids drooped to shut out the dazzle of her youth and
+freshness. Herzel's wife moved awkwardly and sheepishly. But she was
+beautiful--a buxom, comely country girl from a Russian village, with a
+swelling bust and a cheek rosy with health and confusion.
+
+Sarah's breast was racked by a thousand needles. But she found breath
+at last.
+
+"God bless--thee, Mrs.--Kretznow," she said gaspingly.
+
+She took the girl's hand.
+
+"How good thou art to come and see a sick creature."
+
+"My husband willed it," the new wife said in deprecation. She had a
+simple, stupid air that did not seem wholly due to the constraint of
+the strange situation.
+
+"Thou wast right to obey. Be good to him, my child. For three years he
+waited on me, when I lay helpless. He has suffered much. Be good to
+him!"
+
+With an impulsive movement she drew the girl's head down to her and
+kissed her on the lips. Then with an anguished cry of "Leave me for
+to-day," she jerked the blanket over her face and burst into tears.
+She heard the couple move hesitatingly away. The girl's beauty shone
+on her through the opaque coverings.
+
+"O God!" she wailed. "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let me die
+now. For the merits of the Patriarchs take me soon, take me soon."
+
+Her vain passionate prayer, muffled by the bedclothes, was wholly
+drowned by ear-piercing shrieks from the ward above--screams of agony
+mingled with half-articulate accusations of attempted poisoning--the
+familiar paroxysm of the palsied woman who clung to life.
+
+The thrill passed again through Sister Margaret. She uplifted her
+sweet humid eyes.
+
+"Ah, Christ!" she whispered. "If I could die for her!"
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE SABBATH-BREAKER
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE SABBATH-BREAKER
+
+
+The moment came near for the Polish centenarian grandmother to die.
+From the doctor's statement it appeared she had only a bad quarter of
+an hour to live. Her attack had been sudden, and the grandchildren she
+loved to scold could not be present.
+
+She had already battled through the great wave of pain, and was
+drifting beyond the boundaries of her earthly Refuge. The nurses,
+forgetting the trouble her querulousness and her overweening dietary
+scruples had cost them, hung over the bed on which the shrivelled
+entity lay. They did not know she was living again through the one
+great episode of her life.
+
+Nearly forty years back, when (though already hard upon seventy and a
+widow) a Polish village was all her horizon, she received a letter. It
+arrived on the eve of Sabbath on a day of rainy summer. It was from
+her little boy--her only boy--who kept a country inn seven-and-thirty
+miles away, and had a family. She opened the letter with feverish
+anxiety. Her son--her _Kaddish_--was the apple of her eye. The old
+woman eagerly perused the Hebrew script, from right to left. Then
+weakness overcame her and she nearly fell.
+
+Embedded casually enough in the four pages was a passage that stood
+out for her in letters of blood. "I am not feeling very well lately;
+the weather is so oppressive and the nights are misty. But it is
+nothing serious; my digestion is a little out of order, that's all."
+There were roubles for her in the letter, but she let them fall to the
+floor unheeded. Panic fear, travelling quicker than the tardy post of
+those days, had brought rumour of a sudden outbreak of cholera in her
+son's district. Already alarm for her boy had surged about her heart
+all day; the letter confirmed her worst apprehensions. Even if the
+first touch of the cholera-fiend was not actually on him when he
+wrote, still he was by his own confession in that condition in which
+the disease takes easiest grip. By this time he was on a bed of
+sickness--nay, perhaps on his death-bed, if not dead. Even in those
+days the little grandmother had lived beyond the common span; she had
+seen many people die, and knew that the Angel of Death does not always
+go about his work leisurely. In an epidemic his hands are too full to
+enable him to devote much attention to each case. Maternal instinct
+tugged at her heart-strings, drawing her toward her boy. The end of
+the letter seemed impregnated with special omen--"Come and see me
+soon, dear little mother. I shall be unable to get to see you for
+some time." Yes, she must go at once--who knew but that it would be
+the last time she would look upon his face?
+
+But then came a terrible thought to give her pause. The Sabbath was
+just "in"--a moment ago. Driving, riding, or any manner of journeying
+was prohibited during the next twenty-four hours. Frantically she
+reviewed the situation. Religion permitted the violation of the
+Sabbath on one condition--if life was to be saved. By no stretch of
+logic could she delude herself into the belief her son's recovery
+hinged upon her presence--nay, analyzing the case with the cruel
+remorselessness of a scrupulous conscience, she saw his very illness
+was only a plausible hypothesis. No; to go to him now were beyond
+question to profane the Sabbath.
+
+And yet beneath all the reasoning, her conviction that he was sick
+unto death, her resolve to set out at once, never wavered. After an
+agonizing struggle she compromised. She could not go by cart--that
+would be to make others work into the bargain, and would moreover
+involve a financial transaction. She must walk! Sinful as it was to
+transgress the limit of two thousand yards beyond her village--the
+distance fixed by Rabbinical law--there was no help for it. And of all
+the forms of travelling, walking was surely the least sinful. The Holy
+One, blessed be He, would know she did not mean to work; perhaps in
+His mercy He would make allowance for an old woman who had never
+profaned His rest-day before.
+
+And so, that very evening, having made a hasty meal, and lodged the
+precious letter in her bosom, the little grandmother girded up her
+loins to walk the seven-and-thirty miles. No staff took she with her,
+for to carry such came under the Talmudical definition of work.
+Neither could she carry an umbrella, though it was a season of rain.
+Mile after mile she strode briskly on, toward that pallid face that
+lay so far beyond the horizon, and yet ever shone before her eyes like
+a guiding star. "I am coming, my lamb," she muttered. "The little
+mother is on the way."
+
+It was a muggy night. The sky, flushed with a weird, hectic glamour,
+seemed to hang over the earth like a pall. The trees that lined the
+roadway were shrouded in a draggling vapour. At midnight the mist
+blotted out the stars. But the little grandmother knew the road ran
+straight. All night she walked through the forest, fearless as Una,
+meeting neither man nor beast, though the wolf and the bear haunted
+its recesses, and snakes lurked in the bushes. But only the innocent
+squirrels darted across her path. The morning found her spent, and
+almost lame. But she walked on. Almost half the journey was yet to do.
+
+She had nothing to eat with her; food, too, was an illegal burden, nor
+could she buy any on the holy day. She said her Sabbath morning prayer
+walking, hoping God would forgive the disrespect. The recital gave her
+partial oblivion of her pains. As she passed through a village the
+dreadful rumour of cholera was confirmed; it gave wings to her feet for
+ten minutes, then bodily weakness was stronger than everything else,
+and she had to lean against the hedges on the outskirts of the village.
+It was nearly noon. A passing beggar gave her a piece of bread.
+Fortunately it was unbuttered, so she could eat it with only minor
+qualms lest it had touched any unclean thing. She resumed her journey,
+but the rest had only made her feet move more painfully and
+reluctantly. She would have liked to bathe them in a brook, but that,
+too, was forbidden. She took the letter from her bosom and reperused
+it, and whipped up her flagging strength with a cry of "Courage, my
+lamb! the little mother is on the way." Then the leaden clouds melted
+into sharp lines of rain, which beat into her face, refreshing her for
+the first few moments, but soon wetting her to the skin, making her
+sopped garments a heavier burden, and reducing the pathway to mud, that
+clogged still further her feeble footsteps. In the teeth of the wind
+and the driving shower she limped on. A fresh anxiety consumed her
+now--would she have strength to hold out? Every moment her pace
+lessened, she was moving like a snail. And the slower she went the more
+vivid grew her prescience of what awaited her at the journey's end.
+Would she even hear his dying word? Perhaps--terrible thought!--she
+would only be in time to look upon his dead face! Mayhap that was how
+God would punish her for her desecration of the holy day. "Take heart,
+my lamb!" she wailed. "Do not die yet. The little mother comes."
+
+The rain stopped. The sun came out, hot and fierce, and dried her
+hands and face, then made them stream again with perspiration. Every
+inch won was torture now, but the brave feet toiled on. Bruised and
+swollen and crippled, they toiled on. There was a dying voice--very
+far off yet, alas!--that called to her, and as she dragged herself
+along, she replied: "I am coming, my lamb. Take heart! the little
+mother is on the way. Courage! I shall look upon thy face, I shall
+find thee alive."
+
+Once a wagoner observed her plight and offered her a lift, but she
+shook her head steadfastly. The endless afternoon wore on--she crawled
+along the forest-way, stumbling every now and then from sheer
+faintness, and tearing her hands and face in the brambles of the
+roadside. At last the cruel sun waned, and reeking mists rose from the
+forest pools. And still the long miles stretched away, and still she
+plodded on, torpid from over-exhaustion, scarcely conscious, and
+taking each step only because she had taken the preceding. From time
+to time her lips mumbled: "Take heart, my lamb! I am coming." The
+Sabbath was "out" ere, broken and bleeding, and all but swooning, the
+little grandmother crawled up to her son's inn, on the border of the
+forest. Her heart was cold with fatal foreboding. There was none of
+the usual Saturday night litter of Polish peasantry about the door.
+The sound of many voices weirdly intoning a Hebrew hymn floated out
+into the night. A man in a caftan opened the door, and mechanically
+raised his forefinger to bid her enter without noise. The little
+grandmother saw into the room behind. Her daughter-in-law and her
+grandchildren were seated on the floor--the seat of mourners.
+
+"Blessed be the true Judge!" she said, and rent the skirt of her
+dress. "When did he die?"
+
+"Yesterday. We had to bury him hastily ere the Sabbath came in."
+
+The little, grandmother lifted up her quavering voice, and joined the
+hymn, "I will sing a new song unto Thee, O God; upon a harp of ten
+strings will I sing praises unto Thee."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nurses could not understand what sudden inflow of strength and
+impulse raised the mummified figure into a sitting posture. The little
+grandmother thrust a shrivelled claw into her peaked, shrunken bosom,
+and drew out a paper, crumpled and yellow as herself, covered with
+strange crabbed hieroglyphics, whose hue had long since faded. She
+held it close to her bleared eyes--a beautiful light came into them,
+and illumined the million-puckered face. The lips moved faintly; "I am
+coming, my lamb," she mumbled. "Courage! The little mother is on the
+way. I shall look on thy face. I shall find thee alive."
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 421: stanchness is a legitimate spelling variant     |
+    |           of staunchness                                  |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghetto Tragedies, by Israel Zangwill
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