The artist, at least, determined it should go no further. He put on his hat, and went to find Yossel Mandelstein. But Yossel was not to be found so easily, and the artist's resolution strengthened with each false scent. Yossel was ultimately run to earth, or rather to Heaven, in theBeth Hamedrash, where he was shaking himself studiously over a Babylonian folio, in company with a motley assemblage of youths and greybeards equally careless of the demands of life. The dusky home of holy learning seemed an awkward place in which to broach the subject of love. In a whisper he besought the oscillating student to come outside. Yossel started up in agitation.
'Ah, your grandmother is dying,' he divined, with what seemed a lover's inaccuracy. 'I will come and pray at once.'
'No, no, she is not dying,' said Schneemann hastily, adding in a grim murmur, 'unless of love.'
'Oh, then, it is not about your grandmother?'
'No—that is to say, yes.' It seemed more difficult than ever to plunge into the delicate subject. To refer plumply to the courtship would, especially if itwere not true, compromise his grandmother and, incidentally, her family. Yet, on the other hand, he longed to know what lay behind all this philandering, which in any casehadbeen compromising her, and he felt it his duty as his grandmother's protector and the representative of the family to ask Yossel straight out whether his intentions were honourable.
He remembered scenes in novels and plays in which undesirable suitors were tackled by champions of convention—scenes in which they were even bought off and started in new lands. Would not Yossel go to a new land, and how much would he want over and above his fare? He led the way without.
'You have lived here all your life, Yossel, have you not?' he said, when they were in the village street.
'Where else shall a man live?' answered Yossel.
'But have you never had any curiosity to see other parts? Would you not like to go and see Vienna?'
A little gleam passed over Yossel's dingy face. 'No, not Vienna—it is an unholy place—but Prague! Prague where there is a great Rabbi and the old, old underground synagogue that God has preserved throughout the generations.'
'Well, why not go and see it?' suggested the artist.
Yossel stared. 'Is it for that you tore me away from my Talmud?'
'N—no, not exactly for that,' stammered Schneemann. 'Only seeing you glued to it gave me the idea what a pity it was that you should not travel and sit at the feet of great Rabbis?'
'But how shall I travel to them? My crutches cannot walk so far as Prague.'
'Oh, I'd lend you the money to ride,' said the artist lightly.
'But I could never repay it.'
'You can repay me in Heaven. You can give me a little bit of yourGan Iden' (Paradise).
Yossel shook his head. 'And after I had the fare, how should I live? Here I make a fewGuldenby writing letters for people to their relatives in America; in Prague everybody is very learned; they don't need a scribe. Besides, if I cannot die in Palestine I might as well die where I was born.'
'But why can't you die in Palestine?' cried the artist with a new burst of hope. 'Youshalldie in Palestine, I promise you.'
The gleam in Yossel's face became a great flame of joy. 'I shall die in Palestine?' he asked ecstatically.
'As sure as I live! I will pay your fare the whole way, second-class.'
For a moment the dazzling sunshine continued on Yossel's face, then a cloud began to pass across it.
'But how can I take your money? I am not aSchnorrer.'
Schneemann did not find the question easy to answer. The more so as Yossel's eagerness to go and die in Palestine seemed to show that there was no reason for packing him off. However, he told himself that one must make assurance doubly sure and that, even if it was all empty gossip, still he had stumbled upon a way of making an old man happy.
'There is no reason why you should take my money,' he said with an artistic inspiration, 'but there is every reason why I should buy to myself theMitzvah(good deed) of sending you to Jerusalem. You see, I have so few good deeds to my credit.'
'So I have heard,' replied Yossel placidly. 'A very wicked life it is said you lead at Rome.'
'Most true,' said the artist cheerfully.
'It is said also that you break the Second Commandment by making representations of things that are on sea and land.'
'I would the critics admitted as much,' murmured the artist.
'Your grandmother does not understand. She thinks you paint houses—which is not forbidden. But I don't undeceive her—it would pain her too much.' The lover-like sentiment brought back the artist's alarm.
'When will you be ready to start?' he said.
Yossel pondered. 'But to die in Palestine one must live in Palestine,' he said. 'I cannot be certain that God would take my soul the moment I set foot on the holy soil.'
The artist reflected a moment, but scarcely felt rich enough to guarantee that Yossel should live in Palestine, especially if he were an unconscionably long time a-dying. A happy thought came to him. 'But there is theChalukah,' he reminded Yossel.
'But that is charity.'
'No—it is not charity, it is a sort of university endowment. It is just to support such old students as you that these sums are sent from all the world over. The prayers and studies of our old men in Jerusalem are a redemption to all Israel. And yours would be to me in particular.'
'True, true,' said Yossel eagerly; 'and life is very cheap there, I have always heard.'
'Then it is a bargain,' slipped unwarily from the artist's tongue. But Yossel replied simply:
'May the blessings of the Eternal be upon you for ever and for ever, and by the merit of my prayers in Jerusalem may your sins be forgiven.'
The artist was moved. Surely, he thought, struggling between tears and laughter, no undesirable lover had ever thus been got rid of by the head of the family. Not to speak of an undesirable grandfather.
The news that Yossel was leaving the village bound for the Holy Land, produced a sensation which quite obscured his former notoriety as an aspirant to wedlock. Indeed, those who discussed the new situation most avidly forgot how convinced they had been that marriage and not death was the hunchback's goal. How Yossel had found money for the great adventure was not the least interesting ingredient in the cup of gossip. It was even whispered that the grandmother herself had been tapped. Her skittish advances had been taken seriously by Yossel. He had boldly proposed to lead her under the Canopy, but at this point, it was said, the old lady had drawn back—she who had led him so far was not to be thus led. Women are changeable, it is known, and even when they are old they do not change. But Yossel had stood up for his rights; he had demanded compensation. And his fare to Palestine was a concession for his injured affections. It was not many days before the artist met personswho had actually overheard the bargaining between theBubeand the hunchback.
Meantime Yossel's departure was drawing nigh, and all those who had relatives in Palestine besieged him from miles around, plying him with messages, benedictions, and even packages for their kinsfolk. And conversely, there was scarcely a Jewish inhabitant who had not begged for clods of Palestine earth or bottles of Jordan water. So great indeed were the demands that their supply would have constituted a distinct invasion of the sovereign rights of the Sultan, and dried up the Jordan.
With his grandmother's future thus off his mind, the artist had settled down to making a picture of the ruined castle which he commanded from his bedroom window. But when the through ticket for Jerusalem came from the agent at Vienna, and he had brazenly endured Yossel's blessings for the same, his artistic instinct demanded to see how theBubewas taking her hero's desertion. As he lifted the latch he heard her voice giving orders, and the door opened, not on the peaceful scene he expected of the spinster at her ingle nook, but of a bustling and apparently rejuvenated old lady supervising a packing menial. The greatest shock of all was that this menial proved to be Yossel himself squatted on the floor, his crutches beside him. Almost as in guilty confusion the hunchback hastily closed the sheet containing a huddle of articles, and tied it into a bundle before the artist's chaotic sense of its contents could change into clarity. But instantly a flash of explanation came to him.
'Aha, grandmother,' he said, 'I see you too are sending presents to Palestine.'
The grandmother took snuff uneasily. 'Yes, it is going to the Land of Israel,' she said.
As the artist lifted his eyes from the two amorphous heaps on the floor—Yossel and his bundle—he became aware of a blank in the familiar interior.
'Why, where is the spinning-wheel?' he cried.
'I have given it to the widow Rubenstein—I shall spin no more.'
'And I thought of painting you as a spinster!' he murmured dolefully. Then a white patch in the darkened wood over the mantelpiece caught his eye. 'Why, your marriage certificate is gone too!'
'Yes, I have taken it down.'
'To give to the widow Rubenstein?'
'What an idea!' said his grandmother seriously. 'It is in the bundle.'
'You are sending it away to Palestine?'
The grandmother fumbled with her spectacles, and removing them with trembling fingers blinked downwards at the bundle. Yossel snatched up his crutches, and propped himself manfully upon them.
'Your grandmother goes with me,' he explained decisively.
'What!' the artist gasped.
The grandmother's eyes met his unflinchingly; they had drawn fire from Yossel's. 'And why should I not go to Palestine too?' she said.
'But you are so old!'
'The more reason I should make haste if I am to be luckier than Moses our Master.' She readjusted her spectacles firmly.
'But the journey is so hard.'
'Yossel has wisdom; he will find the way while alive as easily as others will roll thither after death.'
'You'll be dead before you get there,' said the artist brutally.
'Ah, no! God will not let me die before I touch the holy soil!'
'You, too, want to die in Palestine?' cried the amazed artist.
'And where else shall a daughter of Israel desire to die? Ah, I forgot—your mother was an Epicurean with godless tresses; she did not bring you up in the true love of our land. But every day for seventy years and more have I prayed the prayer that my eyes should behold the return of the Divine Glory to Zion. That mercy I no longer expect in my own days, inasmuch as the Sultan hardens his heart and will not give us back our land, not though Moses our Master appears to him every night, and beats him with his rod. But at least my eyes shall behold the land of Israel.'
'Amen!' said Yossel, still propped assertively on his crutches. The grandson turned upon the interrupter. 'But you can't take herwithyou?'
'Why not?' said Yossel calmly.
Schneemann found himself expatiating upon the responsibility of looking after such an old woman; it seemed too absurd to talk of the scandal. That was left for the grandmother to emphasize.
'Would you have me arrive alone in Palestine?' she interposed impatiently. 'Think of the talk it would make in Jerusalem! And should I even be permitted to land? They say the Sultan's soldiers stand at the landing-place like the angels at the gatesof Paradise with swords that turn every way. But Yossel is cunning in the customs of the heathen; he will explain to the soldiers that he is an Austrian subject, and that I am hisFrau.'
'What! Pass you off as hisFrau!'
'Who speaks of passing off? He could say I was his sister, as Abraham our Father said of Sarah. But that was a sin in the sight of Heaven, and therefore as our sages explain——'
'It is simpler to be married,' Yossel interrupted.
'Married!' echoed the artist angrily.
'The witnesses are coming to my lodging this afternoon,' Yossel continued calmly. 'Dovidel and Yitzkoly from theBeth Hamedrash.'
'They think they are only coming to a farewell glass of brandy,' chuckled the grandmother. 'But they will find themselves at a secret wedding.'
'And to-morrow we shall depart publicly for Trieste,' Yossel wound up calmly.
'But this is too absurd!' the artist broke in. 'I forbid this marriage!'
A violent expression of amazement overspread the ancient dame's face, and the tone of the far-away years came into her voice. 'Silence, Vroomkely, or I'll smack your face. Do you forget you are talking to your grandmother?'
'I think Mr. Mandelstein forgets it,' the artist retorted, turning upon the heroic hunchback. 'Do you mean to say you are going to marry my grandmother?'
'And why not?' asked Yossel. 'Is there a greater lover of God in all Galicia?'
'Hush, Yossel, I am a great sinner.' But her oldface was radiant. She turned to her grandson. 'Don't be angry with Yossel—all the fault is mine. He did not ask me to go with him to Palestine; it was I that askedhim.'
'Do you mean that you asked him to marry you?'
'It is the same thing. There is no other way. How different would it have been had there been any other woman here who wanted to die in Palestine! But the women nowadays have no fear of Heaven; they wear their hair unshorn—they——'
'Yes, yes. So you asked Yossel to marry you.'
'Asked? Prayed, as one prays upon Atonement Day. For two years I prayed to him, but he always refused.'
'Then why——?' began the artist.
'Yossel is so proud. It is his only sin.'
'Oh, Yenta!' protested Yossel flushing, 'I am a very sinful man.'
'Yes, but your sin is all in a lump,' theBubereplied. 'Your iniquity is like your ugliness—some people have it scattered all over, but you have it all heaped up. And the heap is called pride.'
'Never mind his pride,' put in the artist impatiently. 'Why did he not go on refusing you?'
'I am coming to that. Only you were always so impatient, Vroomkely. When I was cutting you a piece ofKuchen, you would snatch greedily at the crumbs as they fell. You see Yossel is not made of the same clay as you and I. By an oversight the Almighty sent an angel into the world instead of a man, but seeing His mistake at the last moment, the All-High broke his wings short and left him a hunchback. But when Yossel's father made a match for him withLeah, the rich corn-factor's daughter, the silly girl, when she was introduced to the bridegroom, could see only the hump, and scandalously refused to carry out the contract. And Yossel is so proud that ever since that day he curled himself up into his hump, and nursed a hatred for all women.'
'How can you say that, Yenta?' Yossel broke in again.
'Why else did you refuse my money?' theBuberetorted. 'Twice, ten, twenty times I asked him to go to Palestine with me. But obstinate as a pig he keeps grunting "I can't—I've got no money." Sooner than I should pay his fare he'd have seen us both die here.'
The artist collapsed upon the bundle; astonishment, anger, and self-ridicule made an emotion too strong to stand under. So this was all his Machiavellian scheming had achieved—to bring about the very marriage it was meant to avert! He had dug a pit and fallen into it himself. All this would indeed amuse Rozenoffski and Leopold Barstein. He laughed bitterly.
'Nay, it was no laughing matter,' said theBubeindignantly. 'For I know well how Yossel longed to go with me to die in Jerusalem. And at last the All-High sent him the fare, and he was able to come to me and invite me to go with him.'
Here the artist became aware that Yossel's eyes and lips were signalling silence to him. As if, forsooth, one published one's good deeds! He had yet to learn on whose behalf the hunchback was signalling.
'So! You came into a fortune?' he asked Yossel gravely.
Yossel looked the picture of misery. TheBubeunconsciously cut through the situation. 'A wicked man gave it to him,' she explained, 'to pray away his sins in Jerusalem.'
'Indeed!' murmured the artist. 'Anyone you know?'
'Heaven has spared her the pain of knowing him,' ambiguously interpolated her anxious protector.
'I don't even know his name,' added theBube. 'Yossel keeps it hidden.'
'One must not shame a fellow-man,' Yossel urged. 'The sin of that is equal to the sin of shedding blood.'
The grandmother nodded her head approvingly. 'It is enough that the All-High knows his name. But for such an Epicurean much praying will be necessary. It will be a long work. And your first prayer, Yossel, must be that you shall not die very soon, else the labourer will not be worthy of his hire.'
Yossel took her yellow withered hand as in a lover's clasp. 'Be at peace, Yenta! He will be redeemed if only byyourmerits. Are we not one?'
Aaron Ben Amram removed from the great ritual dish the roasted shankbone of lamb (symbolic residuum of the Paschal Sacrifice) and the roasted egg (representative of the ancient festival-offering in the Temple), and while his wife and children held up the dish, which now contained only the bitter herbs and unleavened cakes, he recited the Chaldaic prelude to theSeder—the long domestic ceremonial of the Passover Evening.
'This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come in and eat; let all who require come in and celebrate the Passover. This year here, next year in the land of Israel! This year slaves, next year sons of freedom!'
But the Polish physician showed nothing of the slave. White-bearded, clad in a long white robe and a white skullcap, and throned on white pillows, he made rather a royal figure, indeed for this night of nights conceived of himself as 'King' and his wife as 'Queen.'
But 'Queen' Golda, despite her silk gown and flowery cap, did not share her consort's majestic mood, still less the rosy happiness of the children who sat round this fascinating board. Her heart was full of a whispering fear that not all the brave melodies of thefather nor all the quaint family choruses could drown. All very well for the little ones to be unconscious of the hovering shadow, but how could her husband have forgotten the horrors of the Blood Accusation in the very year he had led her under the Canopy?
And surely he knew as well as she that the dreadful legend was gathering again, that the slowly-growing Jew-hatred had reached a point at which it must find expression, that thePritzim(nobles) in their great houses, and the peasants behind their high palings, alike sulked under the burden of debts. Indeed, had not the Passover Market hummed with the old, old story of a lost Christian child? Not murdered yet, thank God, nor even a corpse. But still, if a boyshouldbe found with signs of violence upon him at this season of the Paschal Sacrifice, when the Greek Church brooded on the Crucifixion! O God of Abraham, guard us from these fiends unchained!
But the first part of the elaborate ritual, pleasantly punctuated with cups of raisin wine, passed peacefully by, and the evening meal, mercifully set in the middle, was reached, to the children's vast content. They made wry, humorous mouths, each jest endeared by annual repetition, over the horseradish that typified the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage, and ecstatic grimaces over the soft, sweet mixture of almonds, raisins, apples, and cinnamon, vaguely suggestive of the bondsmen's mortar; they relished the eggs sliced into salt water, and then—the symbols all duly swallowed—settled down with more prosaic satisfaction to the merely edible meats and fishes, though even to these the special Passover plates and dishes and the purified knives and forks lent a new relish.
By this time Golda was sufficiently cheered up to meditate her annual theft of theAfkuman, that segment of Passover cake under Aaron's pillow, morsels of which, distributed to each as the final food to be tasted that night, replaced the final mouthful of the Paschal Lamb in the ancient Palestinian meal.
But Elijah's goblet stood in the centre of the table untasted. Every time the ritual cup-drinking came round, the children had glanced at the great silver goblet placed for the Prophet of Redemption. Alas! the brimming raisin wine remained ever at the same level.
They found consolation in the thought that the great moment was still to come—the moment of the third cup, when, mother throwing open the door, father would rise, holding the goblet on high, and sonorously salute an unseen visitor.
True, in other years, though they had almost heard the rush of wings, the great shining cup had remained full, and when it was replaced on the white cloth, a vague resentment as at a spurned hospitality had stirred in each youthful breast. But many reasons could be found to exculpate Elijah—not omitting their own sins—and now, when Ben Amram nodded to his wife to open the door, expectation stood on tip-toe, credulous as ever, and the young hearts beat tattoo.
But the mother's heart was palpitating with another emotion. A faint clamour in the Polish quarter at the back, as she replaced the samovar in the kitchen, hadrecalled all her alarms, and she merely threw open the door of the room. But Ben Amram was not absent-minded enough to be beguiled by her air of obedient alacrity. Besides, he could see the shut street-door through the strip of passage. He gestured towards it.
Now she feigned laziness. 'Oh, never mind.'
'David, open the street-door.'
The eldest boy sprang up joyously. It would have been too bad of mother to keep Elijah on the doorstep.
'No, no, David!' Golda stopped him. 'It is too heavy; he could not undo the bolts and bars.'
'You have barred it?' Ben Amram asked.
'And why not? In this season you know how the heathen go mad like street-dogs.'
'Pooh! They will not bite us.'
'But, Aaron! You heard about the lost Christian child!'
'I have saved many a Christian child, Golda.'
'They will not remember that.'
'But I must remember the ritual.' And he made a movement.
'No, no, Aaron! Listen!'
The shrill noises seemed to have veered round towards the front of the house. He shrugged his shoulders. 'I hear only the goats bleating.'
She clung to him as he made for the door. 'For the sake of our children!'
'Do not be so childish yourself, my crown!'
'But I am not childish. Hark!'
He smiled calmly. 'The door must be opened.'
Her fears lent her scepticism. 'It is you that are childish. You know no Prophet of Redemption will come through the door.'
He caressed his venerable beard. 'Who knows?'
'I know. It is a Destroyer, not a Redeemer of Israel, who will come. Listen! Ah, God of Abraham! Do you not hear?'
Unmistakably the howl of a riotous mob was approaching, mingled with the reedy strains of an accordion.
'Down with theZhits! Death to the dirty Jews!'
'God in heaven!' She released her husband, and ran towards the children with a gesture as of seeking to gather them all in her arms. Then, hearing the bolts shot back, she turned with a scream. 'Are you mad, Aaron?'
But he, holding her back with his gaze, threw wide the door with his left hand, while his right upheld Elijah's goblet, and over the ululation of the unseen mob and the shrill spasms of music rose his Hebrew welcome to the visitor: 'Baruch habaa!'
Hardly had the greeting left his lips when a wild flying figure in a rich furred coat dashed round the corner and almost into his arms, half-spilling the wine.
'In God's name, Reb Aaron!' panted the refugee, and fell half-dead across the threshold.
The physician dragged him hastily within, and slammed the door, just as two moujiks—drunken leaders of the chase—lurched past. The mother, who had sprung forward at the sound of the fall, frenziedly shot the bolts, and in another instant the hue and cry tore past the house and dwindled in the distance.
Ben Amram raised the white bloody face, and put Elijah's goblet to the lips. The strange visitor drained it to the dregs, the clustered children looking on dazedly. As the head fell back, it caught the lightfrom the festive candles of the Passover board. The face was bare of hair; even the side curls were gone.
'Maimon theMeshummad!' cried the mother, shuddering back. 'You have saved the Apostate.'
'Did I not say the door must be opened?' replied Ben Amram gently. Then a smile of humour twitched his lips, and he smoothed his white beard. 'Maimon is the only Jew abroad to-night, and how were the poor drunken peasants to know he was baptized?'
Despite their thrill of horror at the traitor, David and his brothers and sisters were secretly pleased to see Elijah's goblet empty at last.
Next morning the Passover liturgy rang jubilantly through the vast, crowded synagogue. No violence had been reported, despite the passage of a noisy mob. The Ghetto, then, was not to be laid waste with fire and sword, and the worshippers within the moss-grown, turreted quadrangle drew free breath, and sent it out in great shouts of rhythmic prayer, as they swayed in their fringed shawls, with quivering hands of supplication. The Ark of the Law at one end of the great building, overbrooded by the Ten Commandments and the perpetual light, stood open to mark a supreme moment of devotion. Ben Amram had been given the honour of uncurtaining the shrine, and its richly clad scrolls of all sizes, with their silver bells and pointers, stood revealed in solemn splendour.
Through the ornate grating of their gallery thegaily-clad women looked down on the rocking figures, while the grace-notes of the cantor on his central daïs, and the harmoniously interjected 'poms' of his male ministrants flew up to their ears, as though they were indeed angels on high. Suddenly, over the blended passion of cantor and congregation, an ominous sound broke from without—the complex clatter of cavalry, the curt ring of military orders. The swaying figures turned suddenly as under another wind, the women's eyes grew astare and ablaze with terror. The great doors flew open, and—oh, awful, incredible sight—a squadron of Cossacks rode slowly in, two abreast, with a heavy thud of hoofs on the sacred floor, and a rattle of ponderous sabres. Their black conical caps and long beards, their great side-buttoned coats, and pockets stuffed with protrusive cartridges, their prancing horses, their leaded knouts, struck a blood-curdling discord amid the prayerful, white-wrapped figures. The rumble of worship ceased, the cantor, suddenly isolated, was heard soaring ecstatically; then he, too, turned his head uneasily and his roulade died in his throat.
'Halt!' the officer cried. The moving column froze. Its bristling length stretched from the central platform, blocking the aisle, and the courtyard echoed with the clanging hoofs of its rear, which backed into the school and the poor-house. TheShamash(beadle) was seen to front the flamboyant invaders.
'Why does your Excellency intrude upon our prayers to God?'
The congregation felt its dignity return. Who would have suspected Red Judah of such courage—such apt speech? Why, the very Rabbi was petrified;the elders of theKahalstood dumb. Ben Amram himself, their spokesman to the Government, whose praying-shawl was embroidered with a silver band, and whose coat was satin, remained immovable between the pillars of the Ark, staring stonily at the brave beadle.
'First of all, for the boy's blood!'
The words rang out with military precision, and the speaker's horse pawed clangorously, as if impatient for the charge. The men grew death-pale, the women wrung their hands.
'Ai, vai!' they moaned. 'Woe! woe!'
'What boy? What blood?' said theShamash, undaunted.
'Don't palter, you rascal! You know well that a Christian child has disappeared.'
The aged Rabbi, stimulated by theShamash, uplifted a quavering voice.
'The child will be found of a surety—if, indeed, it is lost,' he added with bitter sarcasm. 'And surely your Excellency cannot require the boy's blood at our hands ere your Excellency knows it is indeed spilt.'
'You misunderstand me, old dog—or rather you pretend to, old fox. The boy's blood is here—it is kept in this very synagogue—and I have come for it.'
TheShamashlaughed explosively. 'Oh, Excellency!'
The synagogue, hysterically tense, caught the contagion of glad relief. It rang with strange laughter.
'There is no blood in this synagogue, Excellency,' said the Rabbi, his eyes a-twinkle, 'save what runs in living veins.'
'We shall see. Produce that bottle beneath the Ark.'
'That!' TheShamashgrinned—almost indecorously. 'That is the Consecration wine—red as my beard,' quoth he.
'Ha! ha! the red Consecration wine!' repeated the synagogue in a happy buzz, and from the women's gallery came the same glad murmur of mutual explanation.
'We shall see,' repeated the officer, with iron imperturbability, and the happy hum died into a cold heart-faintness, fraught with an almost incredulous apprehension of some devilish treachery, some mock discovery that would give the Ghetto over to the frenzies of fanatical creditors, nay, to the vengeance of the law.
The officer's voice rose again. 'Let no one leave the synagogue—man, woman, or child. Kill anyone who attempts to escape.'
The screams of fainting women answered him from above, but impassively he urged his horse along the aisle that led to the Ark; its noisy hoofs trampled over every heart. Springing from his saddle he opened the little cupboard beneath the scrolls, and drew out a bottle, hideously red.
'Consecration wine, eh?' he said grimly.
'What else, Excellency?' stoutly replied theShamash, who had followed him.
A savage laugh broke from the officer's lips. 'Drink me a mouthful!'
As theShamashtook the bottle, with a fearless shrug of the shoulders, every eye strained painfully towards him, save in the women's gallery, where many covered their faces with their hands. Every breath was held.
Keeping the same amused incredulous face, Red Judah gulped down a draught. But as the liquid met his palate a horrible distortion overcame his smile, his hands flew heavenwards. Dropping the bottle, and with a hoarse cry, 'Mercy, O God!' he fell before the Ark, foaming at the mouth. The red fluid spread in a vivid pool.
'Hear, O Israel!' A raucous cry of horror rose from all around, and was echoed more shrilly from above. Almighty Father! The Jew-haters had worked their fiendish trick. Now the men were become as the women, shrieking, wringing their hands, crying, 'Ai, vai!' 'Gewalt!' The Rabbi shook as with palsy. 'Satan! Satan!' chattered through his teeth.
But Ben Amram had moved at last, and was stooping over the scarlet stain.
'A soldier should know blood, Excellency!' the physician said quietly.
The officer's face relaxed into a faint smile.
'A soldier knows wine too,' he said, sniffing. And, indeed, the spicy reek of the Consecration wine was bewildering the nearer bystanders.
'Your Excellency frightened poor Judah into a fit,' said the physician, raising the beadle's head by its long red beard.
His Excellency shrugged his shoulders, sprang to his saddle, and cried a retreat. The Cossacks, unable to turn in the aisle, backed cumbrously with a manifold thudding and rearing and clanking, but ere the congregation had finished rubbing their eyes, the last conical hat and leaded knout had vanished, and only the tarry reek of their boots was left in proof of their actual passage. A deep silence hung for a momentlike a heavy cloud, then it broke in a torrent of ejaculations.
But Ben Amram's voice rang through the din. 'Brethren!' He rose from wiping the frothing lips of the stricken creature, and his face had the fiery gloom of a seer's, and the din died under his uplifted palm. 'Brethren, the Lord hath saved us!'
'Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever!' The Rabbi began the phrase, and the congregation caught it up in thunder.
'But hearken how. Last night at theSeder, as I opened the door for Elijah, there entered Maimon theMeshummad! 'Twas he quaffed Elijah's cup!'
There was a rumble of imprecations.
'A pretty Elijah!' cried the Rabbi.
'Nay, but God sends the Prophet of Redemption in strange guise,' the physician said. 'Listen! Maimon was pursued by a drunken mob, ignorant he was a deserter from our camp. When he found how I had saved him and dressed his bleeding face, when he saw the spread Passover table, his child-soul came back to him, and in a burst of tears he confessed the diabolical plot against our community, hatched through his instrumentality by some desperate debtors; how, having raised the cry of a lost child, they were to have its blood found beneath our Holy Ark as in some mystic atonement. And while you all lolled joyously at theSedertable, a bottle of blood lay here instead of the Consecration wine, like a bomb waiting to burst and destroy us all.'
A shudder of awe traversed the synagogue.
'But the Guardian of Israel, who permits us to sleep on Passover night without night-prayer, neitherslumbers nor sleeps. Maimon had bribed theShamashto let him enter the synagogue and replace the Consecration wine.'
'Red Judah!' It was like the growl of ten thousand tigers. Some even precipitated themselves upon the writhing wretch.
'Back! back!' cried Ben Amram. 'The Almighty has smitten him.'
'"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,"' quoted the Rabbi solemnly.
'Hallelujah!' shouted a frenzied female voice, and 'Hallelujah!' the men responded in thunder.
'Red Judah had no true belief in the God of Israel,' the physician went on.
'May he be an atonement for us all!' interrupted the Cantor.
'Amen!' growled the congregation.
'For a hundred roubles and the promise of personal immunity Red Judah allowed Maimon theMeshummadto change the bottles while all Israel sat at the Seder. It was because the mob saw theMeshummadstealing out of the synagogue that they fell upon him for a pious Jew. Behold, brethren, how the Almighty weaves His threads together. After the repentant sinner had confessed all to me, and explained how the Cossacks were to be sent to catch all the community assembled helpless in synagogue, I deemed it best merely to get the bottles changed back again. The false bottle contained only bullock's blood, but it would have sufficed to madden the multitude. Since it is I who have the blessed privilege of supplying the Consecration wine it was easy enough to give Maimon another bottle, and armed with this he roused theShamashin the dawn, pretending he had now obtained true human blood. A rouble easily procured him the keys again, and when he brought me back the bullock's blood, I awaited the sequel in peace.'
'Praise ye the Lord, for He is good,' sang the Cantor, carried away.
'For His mercy endureth for ever,' replied the congregation instinctively.
'I did not foresee theShamashwould put himself so brazenly forward to hide his guilt, or that he would be asked to drink. But when theEpikouros(atheist) put the bottle to his lips, expecting to taste blood, and found instead good red wine, doubtless he felt at once that the God of Israel was truly in heaven, that He had wrought a miracle and changed the blood back to wine.'
'And such a miracle God wrought verily,' cried the Rabbi, grasping the physician's hand, while the synagogue resounded with cries of 'May thy strength increase,' and the gallery heaved frantically with blessings and congratulations.
'What wonder,' the physician wound up, as he bent again over the ghastly head, with its pious ringlets writhing like red snakes, 'that he fell stricken by dread of the Almighty's wrath!'
And while men were bearing the convulsive form without, the Cantor began to recite the Grace after Redemption. And then the happy hymns rolled out, and the choristers cried 'Pom!' and a breath of jubilant hope passed through the synagogue. The mighty hand and the outstretched arm which had redeemed Israel from the Egyptian bondage were still hovering over them, nor would the Prophet Elijah for ever delay to announce the ultimate Messiah.