'It was Eelan Reid, sir; Mr. Reid's daughter that keeps the shop.'
So the schoolmaster wrote 'Miss Eelan Reid' in a fair round hand, and then he paused for a moment. He was making up his mind to the all-decisive action.
'Perhaps you can wait for another note and take that for me at the same time,' he said. He gave them some picture papers to look at. Then he wrote the note of such moment to himself, beginning, as before, 'Dear Madam,' and doing his best to follow the many instructions which the faithful Mrs. Sims had given him. It was a curious specimen of literature, in which a truly elegant mind and warm heart were veiled, but not hidden, by an embarrassed attempt at conventional phrases—a letter that most women would laugh at, and that the best women would reverence. He addressed that envelope too, and sealed the notes and sent away the boys.
There was no sleep for the schoolmaster that night. With folded arms he paced his room in restless misery. Now that the die was cast, the ideal Miss Blakely faded from his mind; he felt instinctively that she was mythical. He saw clearly that he had forfeited the best possibilities of life for the sake of temporary convenience, that he had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
The long night passed at length, as all nights pass. The sun rose over purple hills to glow upon the spring-stirred forest and to send golden shafts deep down into the clear heart of lake and stream. The fallen beauty of past woodland summers had tinged the water till it glowed like nut-brown wine; so brown it was that the pools of the river, where it swirled and rushed past the schoolhouse bend, seemed to greet the sun with the soft dark glances of fawn-eyed water-sprites. The glorious sky, the tender colours of the budding wood, the very dandelions on the untrimmed bank, contrived their hues to accord and rejoice with the laughing water, and the birds swelled out its song. In the rapture of spring and of morning there was no echo of grief; for the unswerving law of nature, moving through the years, had set each thing in its right home. It is only the perplexed soul that is forced to choose its own way and suffer from the choice, and the song of our life is but set to the accompaniment of a sad creed if we may not trust that, above our human wills, there is a Power able to overrule the mistakes of true hearts, to lead the blind by unseen paths, and save the simple from their own simplicity.
Very early in the morning the schoolmaster, haggard and worn, slipped out of his own door to refresh himself in the sunlight that gleamed down upon his bit of green through the budding willow treesthat grew by the river-side. He stood awhile under the bending boughs, watching the full stream as it tossed its spray into the lap of the flower-fringed shore. He looked, as he stood there, like a ghost of the preceding night, caught against his will and embraced by the joyous morning. Just then he had a vision.
A girl came towards him across the grass and stood a few paces distant. The slender willow twigs, with their hanging catkins and tiny golden leaves, made a sort of veil between them. She was very beautiful, at least so the schoolmaster thought; perhaps she was the personification of the morning, perhaps she was a wood-nymph—it did not matter much; he felt, in his excitement and exhaustion, that her beauty and grace were not real, but only an hallucination of moving sun and shade. She took the swaying willow-twigs in her pretty hands and looked through them at him and stroked the downy flowers.
'Why did you send me that letter?' she said at last, with a touch of severity in her voice.
'The letter,' he stammered, wondering what she could mean.
He remembered, with a sort of dull return of consciousness, that hewasguilty of having sent a letter—terribly guilty in his own estimation—but it was sent to Miss Blakely, and this was not MissBlakely. That one letter had so completely absorbed all his mind that he had quite forgotten any others that he might have written in the course of his whole life.
'Do not be angry with me,' he said imploringly. He had but one idea, that was, to keep this radiant dream of beauty with him as long as possible.
'I'm not angry; I am not angry at all—indeed'—and here she looked down at the twigs in her hand and began pulling the young leaves rather roughly—'I am not sure but that I am rather pleased. I have so often met you in the woods, you know; only I didn't know that you had ever noticed me.'
'I never did,' said the schoolmaster; but happily his nervous lips gave but indistinct utterance to the words, and his tone was pathetic. She thought he had only made some further pleading.
'I—I—I like you very much,' she said. 'I suppose, of course, everybody will be very much surprised, and mother may not be pleased, you know, just at first; but she's good and dear, mother is, in spite of what she says; and father will be glad about anything that pleases me.'
He did not understand what she said; but he felt distressed at the moment to notice that she was twisting the tender willow leaves, albeit he saw that she only did so because, in her embarrassment, her fingers worked unconsciously. He came forward andtook her hands gently, to disentangle them from the twigs. She let them lie in his, and looked up in his face and smiled.
'I will try to be a good wife, and manage all the common things, and not tease you to be like other men, if you will sometimes read your books to me and explain to me what life means, and why it is so beautiful, and why things are as they are.'
'I'm afraid I don't understand these matters myself very well,' he said; 'but we can talk about them together.'
While he held her hands, she drooped her head till it touched his shoulder.
He had kissed no one since his mother died, and the great joy that took possession of his heart brought, by its stimulus, a sudden knowledge of what had really happened to his mind. In a marvellously tender way, for a man who could not go a-courting, he put his hand under the pretty chin and looked down wonderingly, reverently, at the serious upturned face. 'And this is bonnie Eelan Reid?'
Then Eelan, thinking that he was teasing her gently for being so easily won when she had gained the reputation of being so proud, cast down her eyes and blushed.
So they were married, and lived happily, very happily, although they had their sorrows, as othershave. The schoolmaster was man enough to keep the knowledge of his blunder a secret between himself and God.
As for Miss Blakely, she never quite understood who had stolen the dollar, or when, or where; but she was glad to get it back. She never forgave Mrs. Sims for having managed her trust so ill, although the widow declared, with tears in her eyes, that she had done her best.
'He would have taken in the knowingest person, he would indeed, Ann Blakely; and, to my notion, a straightforward woman like you is well quit of a man who, while he looked so innocent, could act so deep.'
The end of March had come. The firm Canadian snow roads had suddenly changed their surface and become a chain of miniature rivers, lakes interspersed by islands of ice, and half-frozen bogs.
A young priest had started out of the city of Montreal to walk to the suburb of Point St. Charles. He was in great haste, so he kilted up his long black petticoats and hopped and skipped at a good pace. The hard problems of life had not as yet assailed him; he had that set of the shoulders that belongs to a good conscience and an easy mind; his face was rosy-cheeked and serene.
Behind him lay the hill-side city, with its grey towers and spires and snow-clad mountain. All along his way budding maple trees swayed their branches overhead; on the twigs of some there was the scarlet moss of opening flowers, some were tipped with red buds and some were grey. TheMarch wind was surging through them; the March clouds were flying above them,—light grey clouds with no rain in them,—veil above veil of mist, and each filmy web travelling at a different pace. The road began as a street, crossed railway tracks and a canal, ran between fields, and again entered between houses. The houses were of brick or stone, poor and ugly; the snow in the fields was sodden with water; the road——
'I wish that the holy prophet Elijah would come to this Jordan with his mantle,' thought the priest to himself.
This was a pious thought, and he splashed and waded along conscientiously. He had been sent on an errand, and had to return to discharge a more important duty in the same afternoon.
The suburb consisted chiefly of workmen's houses and factories, but there were some ambitious-looking terraces. The priest stopped at a brick dwelling of fair size. It had an aspect of flaunting respectability; lintel and casements were shining with varnish; cheap starched curtains decked every window. When the priest had rung a bell which jingled inside, the door was opened by a young woman. She was not a servant, her dress was fur-belowed and her hair was most elaborately arranged. She was, moreover, evidently Protestant; she held the door and surveyed the visitor with an air thatwas meant to show easy independence of manner, but was, in fact, insolent.
The priest had a slip of paper in his hand and referred to it. 'Mrs. O'Brien?' he asked.
'I'm not Mrs. O'Brien,' said the young woman, looking at something which interested her in the street.
A shrill voice belonging, as it seemed, to a middle-aged woman, made itself heard. 'Louisy, if it's a Cath'lic priest, take him right in to your gran'ma; it's him she's expecting.'
A moment's stare of surprise and contempt, and the young woman led the way through a gay and cheaply furnished parlour, past the door of a best bedroom which stood open to shew the frills on the pillows, into a room in the back wing. She opened the door with a jerk and stared again as the priest passed her. She was a handsome girl; the young priest did not like to be despised; within his heart he sighed and said a short prayer for patience.
He entered a room that did not share the attempt at elegance of the front part of the house; plain as a cottage kitchen, it was warm and comfortable withal. The large bed with patchwork quilt stood in a corner; in the middle was an iron stove in which logs crackled and sparkled. The air was hot and dry, but the priest, being accustomed to the atmosphere of stoves, took no notice, in fact, henoticed nothing but the room's one inmate, who from the first moment compelled his whole attention.
In a wooden arm-chair, dressed in a black petticoat and a scarlet bedgown, sat a strong old woman. Weakness was there as well as strength, certainly, for she could not leave her chair, and the palsy of excitement was shaking her head, but the one idea conveyed by every wrinkle of the aged face and hands, by every line of the bowed figure, was strength. One brown toil-worn hand held the head of a thick walking-stick which she rested on the floor well in front of her, as if she were about to rise and walk forward. Her brown face—nose and chin strongly defined—was stretched forward as the visitor entered; her eyes, black and commanding, carried with them something of that authoritative spell that is commonly attributed to a commanding mind. Great physical size or power this woman apparently had never had, but she looked the very embodiment of a superior strength.
'Shut the door! shut the door behind ye!' These were the first words that the youthful confessor heard, and then, as he advanced, 'You're young,' she said, peering into his face. Without a moment's intermission further orders were given him: 'Be seated; be seated! Take a chair by the fire and put up your wet feet. It is from Father M'Leod of St. Patrick's Church that ye've come?'
The young man, whose boots were well soaked with ice-water, was not loth to put them up on the edge of the stove. It was not at all his idea of a priestly visit to a woman who had represented herself as dying, but it is a large part of wisdom to take things as they come until it is necessary to interfere.
'You wrote, I think, to Father M'Leod, saying that as the priests of this parish are French and you speak English——'
Some current of excitement hustled her soul into the midst of what she had to say.
''Twas Father Maloney, him that had St. Patrick's before Father M'Leod, who married me; so I just thought before I died I'd let one of ye know a thing concerning that marriage that I've never told to mortal soul. Sit ye still and keep your feet to the fire; there's no need for a young man like you to be taking your death with the wet because I've a thing to say to ye.'
'You are not a Catholic now,' said he, raising his eyebrows with intelligence as he glanced at a Bible and hymn-book that lay on the floor beside her.
He was not unaccustomed to meeting perverts; it was impossible to have any strong emotion about so frequent an occurrence. He had had a long walk and the hot air of the room made him somewhat sleepy; if it had not been for the fever and excitement of her mind he might not have picked up more than the main facts of all she said. As it was, his attention wandered for some minutes from the words that came from her palsied lips. It did not wander from her; he was thinking who she might be, and whether she was really about to die or not, and whether he had not better ask Father M'Leod to come and see her himself. This last thought indicated that she impressed him as a person of more importance and interest than had been supposed when he had been sent to hear her confession.
All this time, fired by a resolution to tell a tale for the first and last time, the old woman, steadying as much as she might her shaking head, and leaning forward to look at the priest with bleared yet flashing eyes, was pouring out words whose articulation was often indistinct. Her hand upon her staff was constantly moving, as if she were about to rise and walk; her body seemed about to spring forward with the impulse of her thoughts, the very folds of the scarlet bedgown were instinct with excitement.
The priest's attention returned to her words.
'Yes, marry and marry and marry—that's what you priests in my young days were for ever preaching to us poor folk. It was our duty to multiply and fill the new land with good Cath'lics. Father Maloney, that was his doctrine, and me a young girl just come out from the old country with my parents,and six children younger than me. Hadn't I had enough of young children to nurse, and me wanting to begin life in a new place respectable, and get up a bit in the world? Oh, yes! but Father Maloney he was on the look-out for a wife for Terry O'Brien. He was a widow man with five little helpless things, and drunk most of the time was Terry, and with no spirit in him to do better. Oh! but what did that matter to Father Maloney when it was the good of the Church he was looking for, wanting O'Brien's family looked after? O'Brien was a good, kind fellow, so Father Maloney said, and you'll never hear me say a word against that. So Father Maloney got round my mother and my father and me, and married me to O'Brien, and the first year I had a baby, and the second year I had another, so on and so on, and there's not a soul in this world can say but that I did well by the five that were in the house when I came to it.
'Oh! "house"!—-- d'ye think it was one house he kept over our heads? No, but we moved from one room to another, not paying the rent. Well, and what sort of a training could the children get? Father Maloney he talked fine about bringing them up for the Church. Did he come in and wash them when I was a-bed? Did he put clothes on their backs? No, and fine and angry he was when I told him that that was what he ought to have done!Oh! but Father Maloney and I went at it up and down many a day, for when I was wore out with the anger inside me, I'd go and tell him what I thought of the marriage he'd made, and in a passion he'd get at a poor thing like me teaching him duty.
'Not that I ever was more than half sorry for the marriage myself, because of O'Brien's children, poor things, that he had before I came to them. Likely young ones they were too, and handsome, what would they have done if I hadn't been there to put them out of the way when O'Brien was drunk, and knocking them round, or to put a bit of stuff together to keep them from nakedness?
'"Well," said Father Maloney to me, "why isn't it to O'Brien that you speak with your scolding tongue?" Faix! and what good was it to spake to O'Brien, I'd like to know? Did you ever try to cut water with a knife, or to hurt a feather-bed by striking at it with your fist? A nice good-natured man was Terry O'Brien—I'll never say that he wasn't that,—except when he was drunk, which was most of the time—but he'd no more backbone to him than a worm. That was the sort of husband Father Maloney married me to.
'The children kept a-coming till we'd nine of them, that's with the five I found ready to hand; and the elder ones getting up and needing to be set out in the world, and what prospect was there for them? Whatcould I do for them? Me always with an infant in my arms! Yet 'twas me and no other that gave them the bit and sup they had, for I went out to work; but how could I save anything to fit decent clothes on them, and it wasn't much work I could do, what with the babies always coming, and sick and ailing they were half the time. The Sisters would come from the convent to give me charity. 'Twas precious little they gave, and lectured me too for not being more submiss'! And I didn't want their charity; I wanted to get up in the world. I'd wanted that before I was married, and now I wanted it for the children. Likely girls the two eldest were, and the boy just beginning to go the way of his father.'
She came to a sudden stop and breathed hard; the strong old face was still stretched out to the priest in her eagerness; the staff was swaying to and fro beneath the tremulous hand. She had poured out her words so quickly that there was in his chest a feeling of answering breathlessness, yet he still sat regarding her placidly with the serenity of healthy youth.
She did not give him long rest. 'What did I see around me?' she demanded. 'I saw people that had begun life no better than myself getting up and getting up, having a shop maybe, or sending their children to the "Model" School to learn to be teachers,or getting them into this business or that, and mine with never so much as knowing how to read, for they hadn't the shoes to put on——
'And I had it in me to better them and myself. I knew I'd be strong if it wasn't for the babies, and I knew, too, that I'd do a kinder thing for each child I had, to strangle it at it's birth than to bring it on to know nothing and be nothing but a poor wretched thing like Terry O'Brien himself——'
At the word 'strangle' the young priest took his feet from the ledge in front of the fire and changed his easy attitude, sitting up straight and looking more serious.
'It's not that I blamed O'Brien over much, he'd just had the same sort of bringing up himself and his father before him, and when he was sober a very nice man he was; it was spiritiness he lacked; but if he'd had more spiritiness he'd have been a wickeder man, for what is there to give a man sense in a rearing like that? If he'd been a wickeder man I'd have had more fear to do with him the thing I did. But he was just a good sort of creature without sense enough to keep steady, or to know what the children were wanting; not a notion he hadn't but that they'd got all they needed, and I had it in me to better them. Will ye dare to say that I hadn't?
'After Terry O'Brien went I had them all set out in the world, married or put to work with the best,and they've got ahead. All but O'Brien's eldest son, every one of them have got ahead of things. I couldn't put the spirit intohimas I could into the littler ones and into the girls. Well, but he's the only black sheep of the seven, for two of them died. All that's living but him are doing well, doing well' (she nodded her head in triumph), 'and their children doing better than them, as ought to be. Some of them ladies and gentlemen, real quality. Oh! ye needn't think I don't know the difference' (some thought expressed in his face had evidently made its way with speed to her brain)—'my daughter that lives here is all well enough, and her girl handsome and able to make her way, but I tell you there's some of my grandchildren that's as much above her in the world as she is above poor Terry O'Brien—young people that speak soft when they come to see their poor old grannie and read books, oh! I know the difference; oh! I know very well—not but what my daughter here is well-to-do, and there's not one of them all but has a respect for me.' She nodded again triumphantly, and her eyes flashed. 'They know, they know very well how I set them out in the world. And they come back for advice to me, old as I am, and see that I want for nothing. I've been agoodmother to them, and a good mother makes good children and grandchildren too.'
There was another pause in which she breathedhard; the priest grasped the point of the story; he asked—
'What became of O'Brien?'
'I drowned him.'
The priest stood up in a rigid and clerical attitude.
'I tell ye I drowned him.' She had changed her attitude to suit his; and with the supreme excitement of telling what she had never told, there seemed to come to her the power to sit erect. Her eagerness was not that of self-vindication; it was the feverish exaltation with which old age glories over bygone achievement.
'I'd never have thought of it if it hadn't been O'Brien himself that put it into my head. But the children had a dog, 'twas little enough they had to play with, and the beast was useful in his way too, for he could mind the baby at times; but he took to ailing—like enough it was from want of food, and I was for nursing him up a bit and bringing him round, but O'Brien said that he'd put him into the canal. 'Twas one Sunday that he was at home sober—for when he was drunk I could handle him so that he couldn't do much harm. So says I, "And why is he to be put in the canal?"
'Says he, "Because he's doing no good here."
'So says I, "Let the poor beast live, for he does no harm."
'Then says he, "But it's harm he does taking the children's meat and their place by the fire."
'And says I, "Are ye not afraid to hurry an innocent creature into the next world?" for the dog had that sense he was like one of the children to me.
'Then said Terry O'Brien, for he had a wit of his own, "And if he's an innocent creature he'll fare well where he goes."
'Then said I, "He's done his sins, like the rest of us, no doubt."
'Then says he, "The sooner he's put where he can do no more the better."
'So with that he put a string round the poor thing's neck and took him away to where there was holes in the ice of the canal, just as there is to-day, for it was the same season of the year, and the children all cried; and thinks I to myself, "If it was the dog that was going to put their father into the water they would cry less." For he had a peevish temper in drink, which was most of the time.
'So then, I knew what I would do. 'Twas for the sake of the children that were crying about me that I did it, and I looked up to the sky and I said to God and the holy saints that for Terry O'Brien and his children 'twas the best deed I could do; and the words that we said about the poor beast rang in my head, for they fitted to O'Brien himself, every one of them.
'So you see it was just the time when the icewas still thick on the water, six inches thick maybe, but where anything had happened to break it the edges were melting into large holes. And the next night when it was late and dark I went and waited outside the tavern, the way O'Brien would be coming home.
'He was just in that state that he could walk, but he hadn't the sense of a child, and we came by the canal, for there's a road along it all winter long, but there were places where if you went off the road you fell in, and there were placards up saying to take care. But Terry O'Brien hadn't the sense to remember them. I led him to the edge of a hole, and then I came on without him. He was too drunk to feel the pain of the gasping. So I went home.
'There wasn't a creature lived near for a mile then, and in the morning I gave out that I was afraid he'd got drowned, so they broke the ice and took him up. And there was just one person that grieved for Terry O'Brien. Many's the day I grieved for him, for I was accustomed to have him about me, and I missed him like, and I said in my heart, "Terry, wherever ye may be, I have done the best deed for you and your children, for if you were innocent you have gone to a better place, and if it were sin to live as you did, the less of it you have on your soul the better for you; and as for thechildren, poor lambs, I can give them a start in the world now I am rid of you!" That's what I said in my heart to O'Brien at first—when I grieved for him; and then the years passed, and I worked too hard to be thinking of him.
'And now, when I sit here facing the death for myself, I can look out of my windows there back and see the canal, and I say to Terry again, as if I was coming face to face with him, that I did the best deed I could do for him and his. I broke with the Cath'lic Church long ago, for I couldn't go to confess; and many's the year that I never thought of religion. But now that I am going to die I try to read the books my daughter's minister gives me, and I look to God and say that I've sins on my soul, but the drowning of O'Brien, as far as I know right from wrong, isn't one of them.'
The young priest had an idea that the occasion demanded some strong form of speech. 'Woman,' he said, 'what have you told me this for?'
The strength of her excitement was subsiding. In its wane the afflictions of her age seemed to be let loose upon her again. Her words came more thickly, her gaunt frame trembled the more, but not for one moment did her eye flinch before his youthful severity.
'I hear that you priests are at it yet. "Marry and marry and marry," that's what ye teach thepoor folks that will do your bidding, "in order that the new country may be filled with Cath'lics," and I thought before I died I'd just let ye know how one such marriage turned; and as he didn't come himself you may go home and tell Father M'Leod that, God helping me, I have told you the truth.'
The next day an elderly priest approached the door of the same house. His hair was grey, his shoulders bent, his face was furrowed with those benign lines which tell that the pain which has graven them is that sympathy which accepts as its own the sorrows of others. Father M'Leod had come far because he had a word to say, a word of pity and of sympathy, which he hoped might yet touch an impenitent heart, a word that he felt was due from the Church he represented to this wandering soul, whether repentance should be the result or not.
When he rang the bell it was not the young girl but her mother who answered the door; her face, which spoke of ordinary comfort and good cheer, bore marks of recent tears.
'Do you know,' asked the Father curiously, 'what statement it was that your mother communicated to my friend who was here yesterday?'
'No, sir, I do not.'
'Your mother was yesterday in her usual health and sound mind?' he interrogated gently.
'She was indeed, sir,' and she wiped a tear.
'I would like to see your mother,' persisted he.
'She had a stroke in the night, sir; she's lying easy now, but she knows no one, and the doctor says she'll never hear or see or speak again.'
The old man sighed deeply.
'If I may make so bold, sir, will you tell me what business it was my mother had with the young man yesterday or with yourself?'
'It is not well that I should tell you,' he replied, and he went away.
The curate was walking on the cliffs with his lady-love. All the sky was grey, and all the sea was grey. The soft March wind blew over the rocky shore; it could not rustle the bright green weed that hung wet from the boulders, but it set all the tufts of grass upon the cliffs nodding to the song of the ebbing tide. The lady was the vicar's daughter; her name was Violetta.
'Let us stand still here,' said the curate, 'for there is something I must say to you to-day.' So they stood still and looked at the sea.
'Violetta,' said the curate, 'you cannot be ignorant that I have long loved you. Last night I took courage and told your father of my hope and desire that you should become my wife. He told me what I did not know, that you have already tasted the joy of loveand the sorrow of its disappointment. I can only ask you now if this former love has made it impossible that you should love again.'
'No,' she answered; 'for although I loved and sorrowed then with all the strength of a child's heart, still it was only as a child, and that is past.'
'Will you be my wife?' said the curate.
'I cannot choose but say "yes," I love you so much.'
Then they turned and went back along the cliffs, and the curate was very happy. 'But tell me,' he said, 'about this other man that loved you.'
'His name was Herbert. He was the squire's son. He loved me and I loved him, but afterwards we found that his mother had been mad——' Violetta paused and turned her sweet blue eyes upon the sea.
'So you could not marry?' said the curate.
'No,' said Violetta, casting her eyes downward, 'because the taint of madness is a terrible thing.' She shuddered and blushed.
'And you loved him?'
'Dearly, dearly,' said Violetta, clasping her hands. 'But madness in the blood is too terrible; it is like the inheritance of a curse.'
'He went away?' said the curate.
'Yes, Herbert went away; and he died. He loved me so much that he died.'
'I do not wonder at that,' said the curate, 'for you are very lovely, Violetta.'
They walked home hand in hand, and when they had said good-bye under the beech trees that grew by the vicarage gate, the curate went down the street of the little town. The shop-keepers were at their doors breathing the mild spring air. The fishermen had hung their nets to dry in the market-place near the quay. The western cloud was turning crimson, and the steep roofs and grey church-tower absorbed in sombre colours the tender light. The curate was going home to his lodgings, but he bethought him of his tea, and turned into the pastry-cook's by the way.
'Have you any muffins, Mrs. Yeander?' he asked.
'No, sir,' said the portly wife of the baker, in a sad tone, 'they're all over.'
'Crumpets?' said he.
'Past and gone, sir,' said the woman with a sigh. She had a coarsely poetical cast of mind, and commonly spoke of the sale of her goods as one might speak of the passing of summer flowers. The curate was turning away.
'I would make bold, sir,' said the woman, 'to ask if you've heard that we've let our second-floor front for a while. It's a great thing for us, sir, as you know, to 'ave it let, not that you'll approve the person as 'as took it.'
'Oh!' said the curate, 'how is that?'
'He's the new Jewish rabbi, sir, being as they've opened the place of their heathenish worship again. It's been shut this two year, for want of a Hebrew to read the language.'
'Oh, no, Mrs. Yeander; you're quite mistaken in calling the Jews heathens.'
'The meeting-place is down by the end of the street, sir—a squarish sort of house. It's not been open in your time; likely you'll not know it. The new rabbi's been reading a couple of weeks to them. They do say it's awful queer.'
'Oh, indeed!' said the curate; 'what are their hours of service?'
'Well, to say the truth, sir, they'll soon be at it now, for it's Friday at sunset they've some antics or other in the place. The rabbi's just gone with his book.'
'I think I'll look them up, and see what they're at,' said he, going out.
He was a thin, hard-working man. His whole soul was possessed by his great love for Violetta, but even the gladness of its success could not turn him from his work. When the day was over he would indulge in brooding on his joy; until then the need of the world pressed. He stepped out again into the evening glow. The wind had grown stronger, and he bent his head forward and walked against ittowards the west. He felt a sudden sympathy for this stranger who had come to minister in his own way to the few scattered children of the Jews who were in the town. He knew the unjust sentiment with which he would be surrounded as by an atmosphere. The curate was broad in his views. 'All nations and all people,' thought he, 'lust for an excuse to deem their neighbour less worthy than themselves, that they may oppress him. This is the selfishness which is the cause of all sin and is the devil.' When he got to this point in his thoughts he came to a sudden stand and looked up. 'But, thank God,' he said to himself, 'the True Life is still in the world, and as we resist the evil we not only triumph ourselves, but make the triumph of our children sure.' So reasoned the curate; he was a rather fanatical fellow.
The people near gave him 'good-day' when they saw him stop. All up and down the street the children played with shrill noises and pattering feet. The sunset cloud was brighter, and the dark peaked roofs of tile and thatch and slate, as if compelled to take some notice of the fire, threw back the red where, here and there, some glint of moisture gave reflection to the coloured light. He had come near the end of the town, and, where the houses opened, the red sky was fretted with dark twigs and branches of elm trees which grew on the grassy slope of thecliff. The elm trees were in the squire's park, and the curate looked at them sadly and thought of Herbert who had died.
Up a little lane at the end of the street he found the entrance to a low square hall. There was a small ante-room to the place of service, and in this a dull-looking man was seated polishing a candlestick. He was a crossing-sweeper by trade and a friend of the curate.
'Well, Issachar; so you've got your synagogue open again!'
The man Issachar made some sound meant for a response, but not intelligible.
'How many Jews will there be in the town?'
'Twenty that are heads of families, and two grown youths,' said Issachar.
'That's enough to keep up a service, for some of them will be rich?'
'Some are very rich,' said Issachar, wrinkling his face with satisfaction when he said the words.
'Then how is it you don't always keep up the service?'
But Issachar had no explanation to give. He polished his candlestick the more vigorously, and related at some length what he knew of the present reader, which was, in fact, nothing, except that he was a foreigner and had only offered to read while he was visiting the town.
'I have come for the service,' said the curate.
'Better not,' said Issachar; 'it's short to-night, and there'll not be many.'
The curate answered by opening the inner door and entering. There were some high pews up and down the sides of the room. There was a curtain at the farther end and a reading desk in the centre, both of which were enclosed in a railing ornamented by brass knobs, and in which were set high posts supporting gas-lamps, nine in all, which were lit, either for heat or ceremony, and turned down to a subdued light. The evening light entered through the domed roof. Hebrew texts which the curate could not decipher were painted on the dark walls. He took off his hat reverently and sat down. There was no one there. He felt very much surprised at finding himself alone. To his impressible nervous nature it seemed that he had suddenly entered a place far removed in time and space from the every-day life with which he was so familiar. He sat a long time; it was cold, and the evening light grew dim, and yet no one came. Issachar entered now and then, and made brief remarks about sundry things as he gave additional polish to the knobs on the railing, but he always went out again.
At length a side door opened and the reader came in from his vestry. He had apparently waited in hope of a congregation, but now came in to performhis duty without their aid. Perhaps he was not so much disappointed as the curate was. It would have been very difficult to tell from looking at him what his emotions were. He was a stout large man with a coarse brown beard. There was little to be seen of his face but the hair upon it, and one gathered the suggestion, although it was hard to know from what, that the man and his beard were not as clean as might be. He wore a black gown and an ordinary high silk hat, although pushed much farther back on his head than an Englishman would have worn it. He walked heavily and clumsily inside the railing, and stood before the desk, slowly turning over backward the leaves of the great book. Then suddenly he began to chant in the Hebrew tongue. His voice fell mellow and sweet upon the silence, filling it with drowsy sound, as the soft music of a humble-bee will suddenly fill the silence of a woodland glade. There was no thought, only feeling, conveyed by the sound.
Issachar had gone out, and the Anglican priest sat erect, gazing at the Jew through the fading light, his attention painfully strained by the sense of loneliness and surprise. From mere habit he supposed the chant to be an introduction to a varied service, but no change came. On and on and on went the strange music, like a potent incantation, the big Jew swaying his body slightly with the rhythm, and atlong intervals came the whisper of paper with the turning of the leaf.
The curate gazed and wondered until he forgot himself. Then he tried with an effort to recall who he was, and where he was, and all the details of the busy field of labour he had left just outside the door. He wished that the walls of the square room were not so thick, that some sound from the town might come in and mingle with the chant. He strained his ear in vain to catch a word of the Hebrew which might be intelligible to him. He wondered much what sort of a man this Jew might be, actuated by what motives, impelled by what impulses to his lonely task. All the sorrow of a hope deferred through ages, and a long torture patiently borne, seemed gathered in the cadence; but the man—surely the man was no refined embodiment of the high sentiment of his psalm! And still the soft rich voice chanted the unknown language, and the daylight grew more dim.
The curate was conscious that again he tried to remember who he was, and where; and then the surroundings of the humble synagogue fell away, and he himself was standing looking at a jewel. It was a purple stone, oval-shaped and polished, perhaps about as large as the drop of dew which could hang in a harebell's heart. The stone was the colour of a harebell, and there was a ray of light in it, as if inthe process of its formation the jewel had caught sight of a star, and imprisoned the tiny reflection for ever within itself. The curate moved his head from side to side to see if the ray within the stone would remain still, but it did not, turning itself to meet his eye as if the tiny star had a life and a light of its own. Then he looked at the setting, for the stone was set in steel. A zigzag-barred steel frame held it fast, and outside the zigzag bars there was a smooth ring, with some words cut upon it in Hebrew. The characters were very small; he knew, rather than saw, that they were Hebrew; but he did not know what they meant. All this time he had been stooping down, looking at this thing as if it lay very near the ground. Then suddenly he noticed upon what it was lying. There was a steel chain fastened to it, and the chain was around the neck of a woman who lay upon the earth; the jewel was upon her breast. But how white and cold the breast was! Surely there was no life in it. And he observed with horror that the garments which had fallen back were oozing with water, and that the hair was wet. He hardly saw the face; for a moment he thought he saw it, and that it was the face of a Jewess, young and beautiful, but the vision passed from him. The chant had ceased, and the rabbi was kissing his book.
Very solemnly the Jew bowed himself threetimes and kissed the book, and then in the twilight of the nine dim lamps he stumbled out and shut the door, without giving a glance to his one listener.
As for the young Christian priest, he was panic-stricken. When our senses themselves deceive us we are cut off from our cheerful belief in the reality of material things, or forced to face the unpleasant fact that we hold no stable relationship to them. He rushed out into the street. Issachar was at the entrance as he passed, and he fancied he saw the face of the reader peeping at him from the vestry window, but he crushed his hat hard down on his head and strode away, courting the bluster of the wind, striving by the energy of action to cast off the trance that seemed to enslave him.
When he reached his own door he found the baker's wife sitting on the doorstep. It was quite dusk; perhaps that was the reason he did not recognise her at first.
'La, sir, I found them two muffins lying unbeknown in the corner of the shelf, so I brought them round, thinking you mightn't 'ave 'ad your tea.'
'Muffins?' said the curate, as if he were not quite sure what muffins might be. Then he began to wonder if he was really losing his wits, and he plunged into talk with the woman, saying anything and everything to convince himself that he was notasleep or mad. 'Do you know, Mrs. Yeander, that I am going to be married?'
'Well, I am sure, sir,' said she, curtseying and smiling. 'It's a great compliment to me to hear it from your own lips; not that it's unexpected. Miss Violetta's a sweet saint, just like her ma, she is, an' her ma's a saint if there ever was one. Mr. Higgs, the verger, says that to see her pray that length of time on her knees after the service is over in church is a touching sight.'
'But I don't think Miss Violetta is like her mother,' said the curate.
'Well no, sir; now that you mention it, perhaps she's not—at least, not in looks. But lor' sir, she's wonderful like her ma when it comes to paying a bill, not but what they're to be respected for keeping a heye on the purse. I often tell Yeander that if we were a bit more saving, like the vicar's lady, we'd lay by a bit for our old age.'
'Yes, Mrs. Yeander, yes; that would be an excellent plan,' said the curate, fumbling with his latch-key in the door. 'Suppose you come in and make my tea for me, Mrs. Yeander. I'm all alone to-night.'
'I bethought I might do that, sir, when I came along. Yeander was in the shop, and I said, Mrs. Jones having gone to see her son, that you'd 'ave no one, so I just says to Yeander, "I'll step round, an' if I'm asked I'll make tea."'
The curate lit his lamp and poked his fire, and the portly woman began to toast his muffins. The flame lit up the placid wrinkles of her face as she knelt before it:
'But I don't think Miss Violetta is in the least like her mother,' said he again.
'Lor' sir, don't you? Well, you ought to know best. They do say what's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh; but it'll be none the worse for you if she looks sharp after the spending. You're not much given to saving.'
The curate walked nervously up and down his small room.
'Make the tea strong to-night,' he said.
'Mr. Higgs, the verger, do hate the vicar's lady, sir—he do, and no mistake—but he says anybody could see with 'alf a heye that she was a real saint. The subscriptions she puts down to missions and church restorings—it's quite wonderful.'
The curate ran his hand wearily through his hair. He felt called upon to say something. 'I have the highest respect for Mrs. Moore,' he began. 'I know her to be a most devoted helpmeet to the vicar, and a truly good woman. At the same time'—he coughed—'at the same time, I should wish to say distinctly that after being niggardly in her domestic affairs, which is unfortunately the case, I do not think it adds to her stock of Christianvirtues to give the money thus saved to church work.'
The curate cleared his throat. It was because he was flying from himself that he had let the woman talk until this speech of his had been made necessary; but at all times his humble friends in this town were well nigh irrepressible in their talk. This woman was in full tide now.
'They do say, sir, there's a difference between honest saving and greed. Mr. Higgs said to Yeander one day, says he, "Mrs. Moore's folks far back made their money by sharp trading, and greed's in the family, and it's the worst sort of greed, for it grasps both at 'eaven and earth, both at this life and the 'eavenly. And," says he, "no one could doubt that the lady's that way constituted that she couldn't cut a loaf of bread in 'alf without giving herself the largest share, even if it were the bread of life."'
'My good Mrs. Yeander——' began the curate in stern rebuke.
'Oh, no, sir, Mr. Higgs don't mean no harm. He only gets that riled at Mrs. Moore sometimes that he kind of lets off to Yeander and me.'
'And I don't think, Mrs. Yeander,' said the curate, for the third time, 'that Miss Violetta is at all like her mother.'
'She's young yet, sir,' said the woman. Then shewent away, leaving the curate to interpret her last remark as he chose.
About a week after that there was a fine dinner given at the vicarage to welcome the curate into the family. The old squire was invited, but he refused to come. Violetta's mamma wrote and asked some of her relatives to come down from town. 'Our chosen son-in-law is not rich,' she wrote, 'but he comes of an old family, and that is a great thing. Dear Violetta will, of course, inherit my own fortune, which will be ample for them, and his good connections, with God's blessing, will complete their happiness.' So they came down. There was the vicar's brother, who was a barrister, and his wife. Then there were two sisters of Mrs. Moore, who were both very rich. One was an old maid, and one was married to a dean—she brought her husband. 'You see,' said Violetta's mamma to the curate, 'our relatives are all either law or clergy.'
There were very grand preparations made for the dinner, and Mrs. Higgs, the wife of the verger, came to the curate's rooms the day before and took away his best clothes, that she might see they were well brushed for the occasion. She did up his collar andwristbands herself, and gave them a fine gloss. Higgs brought them back just in time for the dinner.
'It's just about five years since they had such a turn-out at the vicarage,' said Higgs in a crisp little voice. 'Miss Violetta was nineteen then; she'll be twenty-four now.'
'Yes,' said the curate absently; 'what was up then?'
''Twas a dinner much of a muchness to this. Mrs. Higgs, she was just reminding me of it. But that was in honour of Mr. Herbert, of the 'All. You'll 'ave heard of him?'
'Oh, yes,' said the curate, 'all that was very sad.'
'The more so,' said Higgs briskly, 'that when it was broke hoff, Mr. Herbert died of love. He went to some foreign countries and took up with low company, and there he died. Squire hasn't held his head up straight since that day.'
'All that was before I came,' said the curate very gravely, for he did not know exactly what to say.
'Lor' bless you, sir,' said Higgs, 'I was in no way blaming you. There's no blame attaching to any, that I know; squire's wife was as mad as a hare. Miss Violetta, she cried her pretty eyes nigh out for Mr. Herbert; it's time she'd another.'
The curate went to the dinner, and it was a very fine affair indeed. Violetta wore a silk gown and lookedcharming. She does not look a day older than she did when I saw her five years ago,' said the dean to the curate, meaning to be very polite, but the curate did not smile at the compliment.
'How fine your flowers are!' said the maiden aunt to Violetta. 'Where did you get them, my dear?'
'The squire sent them to me,' said Violetta, with a droop of her eyelids which made her look more charming than ever. Then they had dinner, and after dinner Violetta gave them some music. It was sacred music, for Mrs. Moore did not care for anything else.
When the song was over Mrs. Moore said to the curate, 'It has been my wish to give dear Violetta a little gift as a slight remembrance of this happy occasion, and I thought that something of my own would be more valuable than——' Here the mother's voice broke with very natural emotion, and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. 'You must excuse me,' she murmured, 'she is such a dear—such a very dear girl, and she is our only child.'
'Indeed, I can well understand,' said he, with earnest sympathy.
'Such a dear—such a very dear girl,' murmured Mrs. Moore again. Then she rose and embraced Violetta and wept, and the aunts all shed tears, and the vicar coughed. Violetta's own blue eyes over-flowed with very pretty tears.
The curate felt very uncomfortable indeed, and said again that he quite understood, and that it was quite natural. The dean and the barrister both said what they ought. The dean remarked that these dear parents ought not to sorrow at losing a daughter, but rejoice at finding a son. The barrister pointed out that as the bride was only expected to move into the next house but one after her marriage, all talk of parting was really quite absurd. The vicar did not say anything; he rarely did when his wife was present. Then Mrs. Moore became more composed, and put a ring on her daughter's finger. The curate did not see the ring at the moment. He was leaning against the mantel-shelf, feeling very much overcome by the responsibility of his new happiness.
'Oh, mamma, how lovely!' cried Violetta. 'How perfectly beautiful!'
'A star-amethyst!' said the barrister in a tone of surprise.
'Is it a star-amethyst indeed?' said the dean, looking over the shoulders of the group with his double eye-glass. 'I am not aware that I ever saw one before; they are a very rare and beautiful sort of gem.'
'Where did you get it, sister Matilda?' asked the maiden aunt.
Now, although Mrs. Moore was in a most gracious humour, she never liked being asked questions at anytime. 'I am surprised that you should ask me that, Eliza. I have had it for many years.'
'But you must have got it somewhere at the beginning of the years,' persisted Eliza, who was of a more lively disposition.
Mrs. Moore gave her a severe glance for the frivolous tone of her answer. 'I was just about to explain that this stone has been lying for years among the jewellery which poor uncle Ford bequeathed to me. I thought it a pity that such a beautiful stone should lie unnoticed any longer.'
'Oh, a great pity!' they all cried.
'I should not have supposed that poor dear uncle Ford possessed such a rare thing,' said the wife of the dean.
'It is very curious you never mentioned it before,' said Eliza.
But Eliza was not in favour.
'Not at all,' said Mrs. Moore; 'I take very little interest in such things. Life is too short to allow our attention to be diverted from serious things by mere ornaments.'
'That is very true,' said the dean.
Violetta broke through the little circle to show her lover the ring. 'Look,' she said, holding up her pretty hand. 'Isn't it lovely? Isn't mamma very kind?'
The curate turned his eyes from the fire with aneffort. He had been listening to all they said in a state of dreamy surprise. He did not wish to look at the stone, and the moment he saw it he perceived it was what he had seen before. It was not exactly the same shade of purple, but it appeared to him that he had seen it before by daylight, and now the lamps were lit. It was the same shape and size, and the tiny interior star was the same. He moved his head from side to side to see if the ray moved to meet his eye, and he found that it did so. He looked at Violetta. How beautiful she was in her white gown, with her little hand uplifted to display the shining stone, and her face upturned to his! The soft warm curve of the delicate breast and throat, the red lips that seemed to breathe pure kisses and holy words, the tender eyes shining like the jewel, dewy with the sacred tears she had been shedding, and the yellow hair, smooth, glossy, brushed saintly-wise on either side of the nunlike brow—all this he looked at, and his senses grew confused. The sad rise and fall of the Hebrew chant was in his ears again; the bright room and the people were not there, but the chant seemed in some strange way to rise up in folds of darkness and surround Violetta like a frame; and everything else was dark and filled with the music, except Violetta, who stood there white and shining, holding up the ring for him to look at; and at her feet lay that other woman, wet and dead, with thesame stone in the steel chain at her throat. 'Isn't it lovely? Isn't mamma very kind?' Violetta was saying.
'My dear, I think he is ill,' said the vicar.
They took him by the arm, putting him on a chair, and fetched water and a glass of wine. He heard them talking together.
'I daresay it has been too much for him,' said the dean. 'Joy is often as hard to bear as grief.'
'He is such a fellow for work,' said the vicar, 'I never knew any one like him.'
The curate sat up quite straight. 'Did any of you ever see an amethyst like this set in steel?'
'In steel? What an odd idea!' said the maiden aunt.
'He is not quite himself yet,' said the dean in a low voice, tapping her on the shoulder.
'I think it would be very inappropriate, indeed very wrong, to set a valuable stone in any of the baser metals,' said Mrs. Moore. She spoke as if the idea were a personal affront to herself, but then she had an immense notion of her own importance, and always looked upon all wrong-doing as a personal grievance.
'Whatever made you think of it?' asked Violetta.
'I daresay it was rather absurd,' said the curate meekly.
'By no means,' said the barrister; 'the idea of making jewellery exclusively of gold is modern and crude. In earlier times many beautiful articles of personal ornamentation were made of brass and even of iron.'
'Mamma,' said Violetta, 'I remember one day seeing a curious old thing in the bottom of your dressing-case. It looked as if it might be made of steel. It was a very curious old thing—chain, and a pendant with some inscription round it.'
'Did you?' said Mrs. Moore. 'I have several old trinkets. I do not know to which you refer.'
She bade Violetta ring for tea. 'I am sure you will be the better for a cup of tea,' she said, turning to the curate.
'I am quite well,' he replied. 'I think, if you will excuse me, I will walk home at once; the air will do me good.'
But they would not hear of his walking home. They made him drink tea and sit out the evening with them. Violetta gave them some more music; and they all made themselves exceedingly agreeable. When the evening was over they sent the curate home in the carriage.
The night was frosty, calm, and clear, and quite light, for the March moon was just about to rise from the eastern sea.
When the carriage set him down at his own door the curate had no mind to go in. He waited till the sound of the horse's feet had died away, and then he walked back down the empty street. The town was asleep; his footsteps echoed sharply from roofs and walls.
He was not given to morbid fancies or hallucinations, and he was extremely annoyed at what had taken place. Twice in the last eight days he had been the subject of a waking dream, and now he was confronted with what seemed an odd counterpart of his vision in actual fact. It was no doubt a mere coincidence, but it was a very disagreeable one. Of course if he saw the old trinket described by Violetta, the chances were that it would be quite different from the setting of the stone which the dead woman wore; but even if the two were exactly the same, what difference could it make? A dream is nothing, and that which appears in a dream is nothing. The coincidence had no meaning.
He turned by the side of the church down thelane which led to the little quay. The tide was halfway up the dark weed, and the fishing-boats were drawn near to the quay, ready for the cruise at dawn; their dark furled sails were bowing and curtseying to one another with all ceremony, like ghosts at a stately ball. To the east and south lay the sea, vacant, except that on the eastern verge stood a palace of cloud, the portals of which were luminous with the light from within, and now they were thrown open with a golden flash, and yellow rays shot forth into the upper heavens, spreading a clear green light through the deep midnight of the sky where the other worlds wandered. Then the yellow moon came from her palace, wrapping herself at first with a mantle of golden mist, as if—Godiva-like—she shrank from loosening her garments; but the need of the darkling earth pressed upon her, and she dropped her covering and rode forth in nakedness.
Everything was more lovely now, for there was light to see the loveliness. The bluff wind that came from the bosom of the sea seemed only to tell of a vast silence and a world asleep. The rocky shore, with its thin line of white breakers, stretched round to the west. About a mile away there was a rugged headland, with some crags at its feet, which had been broken off and rolled down into the sea by the Frost Demon of bygone years. The smallest was farthest out, and wedged behind it and sheltered by it wasthe black hulk of a wrecked vessel. This outermost rock lay so that it broke the waves as they came against the wreck, and each was thrown high in a white jet and curl of spray, and fell with a low sob back into the darkness of the sea.
The curate turned and walked toward the headland on the cliff path where he had walked a week before with Violetta. The cliffs were completely desolate, except for some donkeys browsing here and there, their brown hair silvered by the frost. There was a superstition in the town that the place was haunted on moonlight nights by the spirit of a woman who had perished in the wreck. It had been a French vessel, wrecked five years before, and all on board were drowned—six men and one woman, the wife of the skipper. They had all been buried in one grave in the little cemetery that was on the top of the headland; and it was easy to see how the superstition of the haunting came about, for as the curate watched the spray on the rock near the wreck rise up in the moonlight and fall back into the sea, he could almost make himself believe that he saw in it the supple form of a woman with uplifted hands, praying heaven for rescue.
The wind was pretty rough when he got to the head of land, and he walked up among the graves to find a place where he might be sheltered and yet have advantage of the view. He knew thatclose by the edge of the cliff, over the grave of the shipwrecked people, stood a marble cross, large enough to shelter a man somewhat if he leaned against it. Upon this cross was a long inscription giving a touching account of the wreck, and stating that it was erected by Matilda Moore, wife of the vicar, out of grief for the sad occurrence, and with an earnest prayer for the unknown bereaved ones.
The curate was rather fond of reading this inscription, as we all are apt to be fond of going over words which, although perfectly familiar to us, still leave some space for curiosity concerning their author and origin, and he was wondering idly as he walked whether there would be light enough from the moon to read them now. The wind came, like the moonlight, from the south-east, and he walked round by the western side of the graveyard in order to come up the knoll on which the cross stood by the sheltered side. Everything around him was intensely bleak and white, for the moon, having left the horizon, had lost her golden light, and the colouring of the night had toned down to white and purple. Patches of wild white cloud were scudding across the pallid purple sky beneath the stars, and there was a silver causeway across the purple sea. The purple was not unlike that of an amethyst. The cliffs sloped back to the town; the boats and peaked roofs and church tower were seen by thesharp outline of their masses of light and shade. The street lamps were not lit in the town because of the moon, and only in two or three places there was the warm glow of a casement fringed with the rays of a midnight candle. To the left of the cliffs, close to the town, were the trees of the squire's park and the roof of the Hall. Perhaps it was because the curate was looking at these things, as he walked among the graves, that he did not look at the monument towards which he was making way, until he came within half a dozen yards of it; then he suddenly saw that there was another man leaning against it, half hid in the shadow. He stopped at once and stood looking.
The man had thrown his arms backward over the arms of the cross, and was leaning, half hanging, upon it; the young priest was inexpressibly shocked and startled by the attitude. He knew that none of the humbler inhabitants of the town would venture near such a place at such a time, nor could he think of any one else who was likely to be there. Besides, although he could not see the stranger distinctly, he himself was standing in full moonlight, and yet the man in the shadow of the cross made no sign of seeing him. At that moment he would gladly have gone home without asking further question, but that would have looked as if he were afraid.
He tried a chance remark. 'It is a fine night,' he said, as lightly as might be.
'Yes,' said the other, and moved his arms from the arms of the cross. It was only one word, but the curate recognised the soft voice at once. It was the Jewish rabbi.
'I was at one of your services the other day,' he said, advancing nearer.
'Yes.'
'I felt sorry your people did not turn out better.'
There was no answer.
'It is a very cold wind,' said the curate. 'I hardly know why I came out so far.'
'Shall I tell you?' asked the Jew softly. He spoke good English, but very slowly, and with some foreign accent.
'Certainly, if you can.'
'I desired very much to see you.'
'But you did not tell me, so that could not be the reason. Your will could not influence my mind. I assure you I came of my own free will; it would be terrible if one man should be at the mercy of another's caprice.'
'Be it so; let us call it chance then. I desired that you should come, and you came.'
'But you do not think that you have a power over other men like that?'
'I do not know; I find that with some men suchcorrespondence between my will and their thoughts and actions is not rare; but I could not prove that it is not chance. It makes no difference to me whether it be chance or not. I have been thinking of you very much, desiring your aid, and twice you have come to me—as you say—of your own free will.'
'If you have such a power, you may be responsible for a very disagreeable dream I had in your synagogue the other day.'
'What was the dream?'
'Nay, if you created it you should be able to tell me what it was.'
'I have no idea what it was; if I influenced your imagination I did so unconsciously.'
There was about this Jew such a complete gentleness and repose, such earnestness without eagerness, such self-confidence without self-assertion, that the curate's heart warmed to him instinctively.
'I believe you are an honest Christian,' said the Jew very simply.
'I hope honest Christians are not rare.'
'I think a wholly honest man is very rare, because to see what is honest it is necessary to look at things without self-interest or desire.'
'I am certainly not such a man. The most I can say is that I try to be more honest every day.'
'That is very well said,' said the Jew. 'If youhad believed in your own honesty, I should have doubted it.' Then, in a very simple and quiet way, he told the curate a strange story.
He said that he lived in Antwerp. They were five in one family—the parents, a sister and brother, and himself. His father and brother did business with the English ships, but he was a teacher and reader in the synagogue. There had been in their family a very sacred heirloom in the form of an amulet or charm. Their forefathers had believed that it came from Jerusalem before their nation lost the holy city; but he himself did not think that this could be true; he only knew that it was ancient, and possessed very valuable properties as a talisman to those who knew how to use it. About five years before, his sister, who was beautiful and wayward, had loved and married a French sea-captain. The father cursed his daughter, but the mother could not let her go from them under the fear of this curse, and she hung the amulet about her neck as a safeguard. Alas for such safeguard! in a few weeks the captain's ship was wrecked, and all on her were drowned. He said that it was that same ship which lay near them, a wreck among the waves, and his sister lay buried beneath their feet.