After his Sarah had been lowered into "The House of Life," and the excitement of the tombstone recording her virtues had subsided, Daniel would have withered away in an empty world but for little Schnapsie. The two kept house together; the same big house that had reeked with so much feminine life, and about which the odours of perfumes and powders still seemed to linger. But father and daughter only met at meals. He spent hours over the morning paper, with the old quaint delusions about India and other things he read of, and he pottered about the streets, or wandered into the Beth-Hamidrash, which a local fanatic had just instituted in North London, and in which, underthe guidance of a Polish sage, Daniel strove to concentrate his aged wits on the ritual problems of Babylon. At long intervals he brushed his old-fashioned high hat carefully, and timidly rang the bell of one of his daughters' mansions, and was permitted to caress a loudly remonstrating baby; but they all lived so far from him and one another in this mighty London. From Sylvia's, where there was a boy with buttons, he had always been frightened off, and when the others began to emulate her, his visits ceased altogether. As for the sisters coming to see him, all pleaded overwhelming domestic duty, and the frigidity of Florence's reception of them. "Now if you lived alone—or with one of us!" But somehow Daniel felt the latter alternative would be as desolate as the former. And though he knew some wide vague river flowed between even his present housemate's life and his own, yet he felt far more clearly the bridge of love over which their souls passed to each other.
Figure then the septuagenarian's amaze when, one fine morning, as he was shuffling about in his carpet slippers, the servant brought him word that his six daughters demanded his instantaneous presence in the drawing-room.
The shock drove out all thoughts of toilet; his heart beat quicker with a painful premonition of he knew not what. This simultaneous visit recalled funerals, weddings. He looked out of awindow and saw four carriages drawn up, and that completed his sense of something elemental. He tottered into the drawing-room—grown dingy now that it had no more daughters to dispose of—and shrank before the resplendence with which their presence reinvested it. They rustled with silks, shone with gold necklaces, and impregnated the air with its ancient aroma of powders and perfumes. He felt himself dwindling before all this pungent prosperity, like some more creative Frankenstein before a congress of his own monsters.
They did not rise as he entered. The Jewish group and the pagan group were promiscuously seated—marriage had broken down all the ancient landmarks. They all looked about the same agelessness—a standstill buxom matronhood.
Daniel stood at the door, glancing from one to another. Some coughed; others fidgeted with muffs.
"Sit down, sit down, father," said Rachael kindly, though she retained the arm-chair,—and there was a general air of relief at her voice. But the old embarrassment returned as the silence reëstablished itself when Daniel had drooped into a stiff chair.
At last Leah took the word: "We have come while Florrie is at her slumming—"
"At her slumming!" repeated Sylvia, with more significance, and a meaning smile spread over the six faces.
"Yes?" Daniel murmured.
"—Because we did not want her to know of our coming."
"It concerns Schnapsie?" he murmured.
"Yes, your little Schnapsie," said Daisy viciously.
"Yes; she has no time to come and seeus," cried Rebecca. "But she has plenty of time for her—slumming."
"Well, she does good," he murmured apologetically.
"A fat lot of good!" sniggered Rachael.
"To herself!" corrected Lily.
"I do not understand," he muttered uneasily.
"Well—" began Lily. "You tell him, Leah; you know more about it."
"You know as much as I do."
He looked appealingly from one to the other.
"I always said the slums were dangerous places for people of our class," said Sylvia. "She doesn't even confine herself to her own people."
The faces began to lighten—evidently they felt the ice broken.
"Dangerous!" he repeated, catching at the ominous word.
"Dreadful!" in a common shudder.
He half rose. "You have bad news?" he cried.
The faces gloomed over, the heads nodded.
"About Schnapsie?" he shrieked, jumping up.
"Sit down, sit down; she's not dead," said Leah contemptuously.
He sat down.
"Well, what is it? What has happened?"
"She's engaged!" In Leah's mouth the word sounded like a death-bell.
"Engaged!" he breathed, with a glimmering foreboding of the horror.
"To a Christian!" said Daisy brutally.
He sank back, pale and trembling. A tense silence fell on the room.
"But how? Who?" he murmured at last.
The girls recovered themselves. Now they were all speaking at once.
"Another slummer."
"He's the son of an archdeacon."
"An awful Christian crank."
"And that's your pet Schnapsie."
"Ifwehad wanted Christians, we could have been married twenty years ago."
"It's a terrible disgrace for us."
"She doesn't consider us in the least."
"She'll be miserable, anyhow. When they quarrel, he'll always throw it up to her that she's a Jewess."
"And wouldn't join our Daughters of Mercy committee—had no time."
"Wasn't going to marry—turned up her nose at all the Jewish young men!"
"But she would have told me!" he murmured hopelessly. "I don't believe it. My little Schnapsie!"
"Don't believe it?" snorted Leah. "Why, she didn't even deny it."
"Have you spoken to her, then?"
"Have we spoken to her! Why, she says Judaism is all nonsense! She will disgrace us all."
The blind racial instinct spoke through them—the twenty-five centuries of tested separateness. But Daniel felt in super-addition the conscious religious horror.
"But is she to be married in a Christian church?" he breathed.
"Oh, she isn't going to marry—yet."
His poor heart fluttered at the reprieve.
"She doesn't care a pin forourfeelings," went on Leah. "But of course she won't marry whileyouare alive."
Lily took up the thread. "We all told her if she'd only marry a Jew, we'd all be glad to have you—in turn. But she said it wasn't that. She could have you herself; her Alfred wouldn't mind. It's the shock to your religious feelings that keeps her back. She doesn't want to hurt you."
"God bless her, my good little Schnapsie!" he murmured. His dazed brain did not grasp all the bearings, was only conscious of a vast relief.
Disgust darkened all the faces.
He groped to understand it, putting his hand over the white hairs that straggled from his skull-cap.
"But then—then it's all right."
"Yes, all right," said Leah brutally. "But for how long?"
Her meaning seized him like an icy claw upon his heart. For the first time in his life he realized the certainty of death, and simultaneously with the certainty its imminence.
"We want you to put a stop to itnow," said Sylvia. "For our sakes make her promise that even when— You're the only one who has any influence over her."
She rose, as if to wind up the painful interview, and the others rose, too, with a multiplex rustling of silken skirts. He shook the six jewelled hands as in a dream, and promised to do his best; and as he watched the little procession of carriages roll off, it seemed to him indeed a funeral, and his own.
Ah God, that it should have come to this. Little Schnapsie could not be happy till he was dead. Well, why should he keep her waiting? What mattered the few odd years or months? He was already dead. There was his funeral going down the street.
To speak to Schnapsie he had never intended, even while he was promising it. Those years of silent life together had made real conversation impossible. The bridge on which his soul passed over tohers was a bridge over which hung a sacred silence. Under the weight of words, especially of angry parental words, it might break down forever. And that would be worse than death.
No; little Schnapsie had her own life, and he somehow knew he had not the right to question it, even though it seemed on the verge of deadly sin. He could not have expressed it in logical speech, was not even clearly conscious of it; but his tender relation with her had educated him to a sense of her moral rightness, which now survived and subsisted with his conviction that she was hopelessly astray. No, he had not the right to interfere with her life, with her prospect of happiness in her own way. He must give up living. Little Schnapsie must be nearly thirty; the best of her youth was gone. She should be happy with this strange man.
But if he killed himself, that would bring disgrace on the family—and little Schnapsie. Perhaps, too, Alfred would not marry her. Was there no way of slipping quietly out of existence? But then suicide was another deadly sin. If only that had really been his funeral procession!
"O God, God of Israel, tell me what to do!"
A sudden inspiration leapt to his heart. She should not have to wait for his death to be happy;he wouldliveto see her happy. He would pretend that her marriage cost him no pang; indeed, would not truly the pang be swallowed up in the thought of her happiness? Butwouldshe be happy?Couldshe be happy with this alien? Ah, there was the chilling doubt! If a quarrel came, would not the man always throw it in her face that she was a Jewess? Well, that must be left to herself. She was old enough not to rush into misery. Through all these years he had taken her pensive brow as the seat of all wisdom, her tender eyes as the glow of all goodness, and he could not suddenly readjust himself to a contradictory conception. By the time she came in he had composed himself for his task.
"Ah, my dear," he said, with a beaming smile, "I have heard the good news."
The answering smile died out of her eyes. She looked frightened.
"It's all right, little Schnapsie," he said roguishly. "So now I shall have seven sons-in-law. And Alfred the Second, eh?"
"You have heard?"
"Yes," he said, pinching her ear. "Thinks she can keep anything from her old father, does she?"
"But do you know that he is a—a—"
"A Christian? Of course. What's the difference, as long as he's a good man, eh?" He laughed noisily.
Little Schnapsie looked more frightened than ever. Were her father's wits wandering at last?
"But I thought—"
"Thought I would want you to sacrifice yourself! No, no, my dear; we are not in India, where women are burnt alive to please their dead husbands."
Little Schnapsie had an irrelevant vision of herself treading on diamonds and gold. She murmured, "Who told you?"
"Leah."
"Leah! But Leah is angry about it!"
"So she is. She came to me in a tantrum, but I told her whatever little Schnapsie did was right."
"Father!" With a sudden cry of belief and affection she fell on his neck and kissed him. "But isn't the darling old Jew shocked?" she said, half smiling, half weeping.
Cunning lent him clairvoyance. "How much Judaism is there in your sisters' husbands?" he said. "And without the religion, what is the use of the race?"
"Why, father, that's what I'm always preaching!" she cried, in astonishment. "Think what our Judaism was in the dear old Portsmouth days. What is the Sabbath here? A mockery. Not one of your sons-in-law closes his business. But there, when the Sabbath came in, how beautiful! Gradually it glided, glided; you heard the angel's wings. Then its shining presence was upon you, and a holy peace settled over the house."
"Yes, yes." His eyes filled with tears. He sawthe row of innocent girl faces at the white Sabbath table. What had London and prosperity brought him instead?
"And then the Atonement days, when the ram's horn thrilled us with a sense of sin and judgment, when we thought the heavenly scrolls were being signed and sealed. Who feels that here, father? Some of us don't even fast."
"True, true." He forgot his part. "Then you are a good Jewess still?"
She shook her head sadly. "We have outlived our destiny. Our isolation is a meaningless relic."
But she had kindled a new spark of hope.
"Can't you bring him over to us?"
"To what? To our empty synagogues?"
"Then you are going over to him?" He tried to keep his voice steady.
"I must; his father is an archdeacon."
"I know, I know," he said, though she might as well have said an archangel.
"But you do not believe in—in—"
"I believe in self-sacrifice; that is Christianity."
"Is it? I thought it was three Gods."
"That is not the essential."
"Thank God!" he said. Then he added hurriedly: "But will you be happy with him? Such different bringing up! You can't really feel close to him."
She laughed and blushed. "There are deeper things than one's bringing up, father."
"But if after marriage you should have a quarrel, he would always throw up to you that you are a Jewess."
"No, Alfred will never do that."
"Then make haste, little Schnapsie, or your old father won't live to see you under the canopy."
She smiled happily, believing him. "But there won't be any canopy," she said.
"Well, well, whatever it is," he laughed back, with horrid imagining that it might be a Cross.
It was agreed between them that, to avoid endless family councils, the sisters should not be told, and that the ceremony should be conducted as privately as possible. The archdeacon himself was coming up to town to perform the ceremony in the church of another of his sons in Chalk Farm. After the short honeymoon, Daniel was to come and live with the couple in Whitechapel, for they were to live in the centre of their labours. Poor Daniel tried to find some comfort in the thought that Whitechapel was a more Jewish and a homelier quarter than Highbury. But the unhomely impression produced upon him by his latest son-in-law neutralized everything. All his other sons-in-law had more or less awed him, but beneath the awe ran a tunnel of brotherhood. Withthis Alfred, however, he was conscious of a glacial current, which not all the young man's cordiality could tepefy.
"Are you sure you will be happy with him, little Schnapsie?" he asked anxiously.
"You dear worrying old thing!"
"But if after marriage you quarrel, he will always throw it up to you that you are—"
"And I'll throw it up to him that he is a Christian, and oughtn't to quarrel."
He was silenced. But his heart thanked God that his dear old wife had been spared the coming ordeal.
"This too was for good," he murmured, in the Hebrew proverb.
And so the tragic day drew nigh.
One short week before, Daniel was wandering about, dazed by the near prospect. An unholy fascination drew him toward Chalk Farm, to gaze on the church in which the profane union would be perpetrated. Perhaps he ought even to go inside; to get over his first horror at being in such a building, so as not to betray himself during the actual ceremony.
As he drew near the heathen edifice he saw a striped awning, carriages, a bustle of people entering, a pressing, peeping crowd. A wedding!
Ah, good! There was no doubt now he must go in; he would see what this unknown ceremony in this unknown building was like. It would be a sort of rehearsal; it would help to steel him at the tragic moment. He was passing through the central doors with some other men, but a policeman motioned them to a side door. He shuffled timidly within.
Full as the church was, the chill stone spaces struck cold to his heart; all the vast alien life they typified froze his soul. The dread wordMeshumad—apostate—seemed echoing and reëchoing from the cold pillars. He perceived his companions had bared their heads, and he hastily snatched off his rusty beaver. The unaccustomed sensation in his scalp completed his sense of unholiness.
Nothing seemed going on yet, but as he slipped into a seat in the aisle he became aware of an organ playing joyous preludes, almost jiggish. For a moment he wondered dully what there was to be gay about, and his eyes filled with bitter tears.
A craning forward in the nondescript congregation made the old man peer forward.
He saw, at the far end of the church, a sort of platform upon which four men, in strange, flowing robes, stood under a cross. He hid his eyes from the sight of the symbol that had overshadowed his ancestors' lives. When he opened his eyes again the men were kneeling. Wouldhehave to kneel, he wondered. Would his old joints have to assumethat pagan posture? Presently four bridesmaids, shielded by great glowing bouquets, appeared on the platform, and descending, passed with measured theatric pace down the farther avenue, too remote for his clear vision. His neighbours stood up to stare at them, and he rose, too. And throughout the organ bubbled out its playful cadenzas.
A stir and a buzz swept through the church. A procession began to file in. At its head was a pale, severe young man, supported by a cheerful young man. Other young men followed; then the bridesmaids reappeared. And finally—target of every glance—there passed a glory of white veil supported by an old military looking man in a satin waistcoat.
Ah, that would be he and Schnapsie, then. Up that long avenue, beneath all these curious Christian eyes, he, Daniel Peyser, would have to walk. He tried to rehearse it mentally now, so that he might not shame her; he paced pompously and stiffly, with beautiful Schnapsie on his arm, a glory of white veil. He saw himself slowly reaching the platform, under the chilling cross; then everything swam before him, and he sank shuddering into his seat. His little Schnapsie! She was being sucked up into all this hateful heathendom, to the seductive music of satanic orchestras.
He sat in a strange daze, vaguely conscious that the organ had ceased, and that some preacher's recitative had begun instead. When he looked upagain, the bridal party before the altar loomed vague, as through a mist. He passed his hand over his clouded brow. Of a sudden a sentence of the recitative pierced sharply to his brain:—
"Therefore if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace."
O God of Israel! Then it was the last chance! He sprang to his feet, and shouted in agony: "No, no, she must not marry him! She must not!"
All heads turned toward the shabby old man. An electric shiver ran through the church. The bride paled; a bridesmaid shrieked; the minister, taken aback, stood silent. A white-gloved usher hurried up.
"Do you forbid the banns?" called the minister.
The old man's mind awoke, and groped mistily.
"Come, what have you to say?" snapped the usher.
"I—I—nothing," he murmured in awed confusion.
"He is drunk," said the usher. "Out with you, my man." He hustled Daniel toward the side door, and let it swing behind him.
But Daniel shrank from facing the cordon of spectators outside. He hung miserably about the vestibule till the Wedding March swelled in ironic triumph, and the human outpour swept him into the street.
His abstracted look, his ragged talk, troubled Schnapsie at the evening meal, but she could not elicit that anything had happened.
In the evening paper, her eye, avid of marriage items, paused on a big-headed paragraph.
"I FORBID THE BANNS!"STRANGE SCENE AT A CHALK FARM CHURCH.
When she had finished the paragraph and read another, the first began to come back to her, shadowed with a strange suspicion. Why, this was the very church—? A Jewish-looking old man—! Great heavens! Then all this had been mere pose, self-sacrifice. And his wits were straying under the too heavy burden! Only blind craving for her own happiness could have made her believe that the mental habits of seventy years could be broken off.
"Well, father," she said brightly, "you will be losing me very soon now."
His lips quivered into a pathetic smile.
"I am very glad." He paused, struggling with himself. "If you are sure you will be happy!"
"But haven't we talked that over enough, father?"
"Yes—but you know—if a quarrel arose, he would always throw it up—that—"
"Nonsense, nonsense," she laughed. But therepetition of the old thought struck her poignantly as a sign of maundering wits.
"And you are sure you will get along together?"
"Quite sure."
"Then I am glad." He drew her to him, and kissed her.
She broke down and wept under the conviction of his lying. He became the comforter in his turn.
"Don't cry, little Schnapsie, don't cry. I didn't mean to frighten you. Alfred is a good man, and I am sure, even if you quarrel, he will never throw it—" The mumbling passed into a kiss on her wet cheek.
That night, after a long passionate vigil in her bedroom, little Schnapsie wrote a letter:—
"Dearest Alfred,—This will be as painful for you to read as for me to write. I find at the eleventh hour I cannot marry you. I owe it to you to state my reason. As you know, I did not consent to our love being crowned by union till my father had given his consent. I now find that this consent was not the free outcome of my father's soul, that it was only to promote my happiness. Try to imagine what it means for an old man of seventy odd years to wrench himself away from all his life-long prejudices, and you will realize what he has been trying to do for me. But the wrench was beyond his strength. He is breaking his heart over it, and, I fear, even wandering in his mind."You will say, let us again consent to wait for a contingency which I am not cold-blooded enough to set down more openly.But I do not think it is fair to you to let you risk your happiness further by keeping it entangled with mine. A new current of thought has been set going in my mind. If a religion that I thought all formalism is capable of producing such types of abnegation as my dear father, then it must, too, somewhere or other, hold in solution all those ennobling ingredients, all those stimuli to self-sacrifice, which the world calls Christian. Perhaps I have always misunderstood. We were so badly taught. Perhaps the prosaic epoch of Judaism into which I was born is only transitional, perhaps it only belongs to the middle classes, for I know I felt more of its poetry in my childhood; perhaps the future will develop (or recultivate) its diviner sides and lay more stress upon the life beautiful, and thus all this blind instinct of isolation may prove only the conservation of the race for its nobler future, when it may still become, in very truth, a witness to the Highest, a chosen people in whom all the families of the earth may be blessed. I do not know; all this is very confused and chaotic to me to-night. I only know I can hold out no certain hope of the earthly fulfilment of our love. I, too, feel in transition, and I know not to what. But, dearest Alfred, shall we not be living the Christian life—the life of abnegation—more truly if we give up the hope of personal happiness? Forgive me, darling, the pain I am causing you, and thus help me to bear my own."Your friend till death,"Florence."
"Dearest Alfred,—This will be as painful for you to read as for me to write. I find at the eleventh hour I cannot marry you. I owe it to you to state my reason. As you know, I did not consent to our love being crowned by union till my father had given his consent. I now find that this consent was not the free outcome of my father's soul, that it was only to promote my happiness. Try to imagine what it means for an old man of seventy odd years to wrench himself away from all his life-long prejudices, and you will realize what he has been trying to do for me. But the wrench was beyond his strength. He is breaking his heart over it, and, I fear, even wandering in his mind.
"You will say, let us again consent to wait for a contingency which I am not cold-blooded enough to set down more openly.But I do not think it is fair to you to let you risk your happiness further by keeping it entangled with mine. A new current of thought has been set going in my mind. If a religion that I thought all formalism is capable of producing such types of abnegation as my dear father, then it must, too, somewhere or other, hold in solution all those ennobling ingredients, all those stimuli to self-sacrifice, which the world calls Christian. Perhaps I have always misunderstood. We were so badly taught. Perhaps the prosaic epoch of Judaism into which I was born is only transitional, perhaps it only belongs to the middle classes, for I know I felt more of its poetry in my childhood; perhaps the future will develop (or recultivate) its diviner sides and lay more stress upon the life beautiful, and thus all this blind instinct of isolation may prove only the conservation of the race for its nobler future, when it may still become, in very truth, a witness to the Highest, a chosen people in whom all the families of the earth may be blessed. I do not know; all this is very confused and chaotic to me to-night. I only know I can hold out no certain hope of the earthly fulfilment of our love. I, too, feel in transition, and I know not to what. But, dearest Alfred, shall we not be living the Christian life—the life of abnegation—more truly if we give up the hope of personal happiness? Forgive me, darling, the pain I am causing you, and thus help me to bear my own.
"Your friend till death,"Florence."
It was an hour past midnight ere the letter was finished, and when it was sealed a sense of relief at remaining in the Jewish fold stole over her, though she would scarcely acknowledge it to herself, and impatiently analyzed it away as hereditary. And despite it, if she slept on the letter, would it ever be posted?
But the house was sunk in darkness. She wasthe only creature stirring. And yet she yearned to have the thing over, irrevocable. Perhaps she might venture out herself with her latch-key. There was a letter-box at the street corner. She lit a candle and stole out on the landing, casting a monstrous shadow which frightened her. In her over-wrought mood it almost seemed an uncanny creature grinning at her. Her mother's death-bed rose suddenly before her; her mother's voice cried: "Ah, Florrie, do not fret. I will find thee a bridegroom." Was this the bridegroom—was this the only one she would ever know?
"Father! father!" she shrieked, with sudden terror.
A door was thrown open; a figure shambled forth in carpet slippers—a dear, homely, reassuring figure—holding the coloured handkerchief which had helped to banish him from the drawing-room. His face was smeared; his eyelids under the pushed-up horn spectacles were red: he, too, had kept vigil.
"What is it? What is it, little Schnapsie?"
"Nothing. I—I—I only wanted to ask you if you would be good enough to post this letter—to-night."
"Good enough? Why, I shall enjoy a breath of air."
He took the letter and essayed a roguish laugh as his eye caught the superscription.
"Ho! ho!" He pinched her cheek. "So wemustn't let a day pass without writing to him, eh?"
She quivered under this unforeseen misconception.
"No," she echoed, with added firmness, "we mustn't let a day pass."
"But go to bed at once, little Schnapsie. You look quite pale. If you stay up so late writing him letters, you won't make him a beautiful bride."
"No," she repeated, "I won't make him a beautiful bride."
She heard the hall door close gently upon his cautious footsteps, and her eyes dimmed with divine tears as she thought of the joy that awaited his return.
On a summer's day toward the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century after Christ, Peloni walked in "the good place" of the FrankfortJudengasseand pondered. At times he came to a standstill and appeared to study the inscriptions on the tumbled tombstones, or the carven dragons, shields, and stars, but his black eyes burnt inward and he saw less the tragedy of Jewish death than the tragedy of Jewish life.
For "the good place" was the place of death.
Here alone in Frankfort—in this shut-in bit of the shut-in Jew-street—was true peace for Israel. The rest of the Jew-street offered comparative tranquillity even for the living; yet when, ninety years before Peloni was born, the great fire had raged therein, the inhabitants had locked the Ghetto-gate against the Christians, less fearful of the ravaging flames than of their fellow-citizens. Even to-day, if he ventured outside theJudengasse, Peloni must tread delicately. The foot-path was not for him: he must plod on the dusty road, with all the otherbeasts. In some places the very road was too holy for him, and any passer-by might snatch off his hat in punishment for his breaking bounds. The ragged street urchin or the staggering drunkard might cry to him "'Jud,' mach mores: Jew, mind your manners."
Some ten years ago the Frankfort Ghetto had been verbally abolished by a civilized archduke, caught up in the wave of Napoleonic toleration. Peloni had shared in the exultation of the Jews at the final dissipation of the long night of mediævalism. He had written a Hebrew poem on it, brilliantly rhymed, congested with apt quotations from Bible and Talmud, the whole making an acrostic upon the name of the enlightened Karl Theodor von Dalberg. Henceforth Israel would take his place among the peoples, honour on his brow, love in his heart, manhood in his limbs. A gracious letter of acknowledgment from the archduke was displayed in the window of Peloni's little bookselling establishment, amid the door-amulets, phylacteries, praying-shawls, Purim-scrolls, and Hebrew volumes.
But now the prince had been ousted, Napoleon was dead, everywhere the Ghetto-gates were locked again, and the Poem lay stacked on the remainder shelves. In vain had the grateful Jews hastened to fight for the Fatherland, tendered it body and soul. Poor little curly-haired Peloni had been attacked in the streets as an alien that very morning. Roysterershad raised the old cry of "Hep! Hep!"—fatal, immemorial cry, ghastly heritage of the Crusades. Century after century that cry had gone echoing through Europe. Century after century the Jews thought they had lived it down, bought it down, died it down. But no! it rose again, buoyant, menacing, irresponsible. Ah, what a fool he had been to hope! There was no hope.
Rarely, indeed, since the Dark Ages had persecution flaunted itself so openly. Riots and massacres were breaking out all over Germany, and in his own Ghetto Peloni had seen sights that had turned his patriotism to gall, and crushed his trust in the Christian, his beautiful bubble-dreams of the Millennium. Rothschild himself, whose house in theJudengassewith the sign of the red shield had been the centre of the attack, was well-nigh unable to maintain his position in the town. And these local successes inflamed the Jew-haters everywhere. "Let the children of Israel be sold to the English," recommended a popular pamphlet of the period, "who could employ them in their Indian plantations instead of the blacks. The best plan would be to purge the land entirely of this vermin, either by exterminating them, or, as Pharaoh, and the people of Meiningen, Würzburg, and Frankfort did, by driving them from the country."
"Oh, God!" thought Peloni, as his mind ran over the long chain from Pharaoh to Frankfort."Evermore to wander, stoned and derided! Thou hast set a mark on his forehead, but his punishment is greater than he can bear."
The dead lay all around him, one upon another, new red stones shouldering aside the gray stones that told to boot of the death of the centuries. And the pressure of all this struggle for death-room had raised the earth higher than the adjacent paths. He thought of how these dead had always come here; even in their lifetime, when the enemy raged outside. Here they had put the women and children and gone back to the synagogue to pray. Ah, the cowards! always oscillating betwixt cemetery and synagogue, why did they not live, why did they not fight? Yes, but they had fought,—fought for Germany, and this was Germany's reply.
But could they not fight for themselves then, with money, with the sinews of war, if not with the weapons; with gold, if not with steel? could they not join financial forces all through the world? But no! There was no such solidarity as the Christians dreamed. And they were too mixed up with the European world to dream of self-concentration. Even while the Frankfort Rothschild's house was surrounded by rioters, the Paris Rothschild was giving a ball to theéliteof diplomatic society.
No! the old Jews were right—there was only the synagogue and the cemetery.
But was there even the synagogue? That, too,was dead. The living faith, the vivid realization of Israel's hope, which had made the Dark Ages endurable and even luminous, were only to be found now among fanatics whose blind ignorance and fierce clinging to the dead letter and the obsolete form counterbalanced the poetry and sublimity of their persistence. In the Middle Ages, Peloni felt, his poems would have been absorbed into the liturgy. For when the liturgy and the religion were alive, they took in and gave out—like all living things. But no—the synagogue of to-day was dead.
Remained only the cemetery.
"Jude, verrek!" Jew, die like a beast.
Yes, what else was there to do? For he was not even a Rothschild, he told himself with whimsical anguish; only a poor poet, unread, unknown, unhealthy; a shadow that only found substance to suffer; a set of heart-strings across which every wind that blew made a poignant, passionate music; a lamentation incarnate, a voice of weeping in the wilderness, a bubble blown of tears, a dream, a mist, a nobody,—in short, Peloni!
The dead generations drew him. He fell, weeping passionately, upon a tomb.
There seemed an unwonted stir in theJudengassewhen Peloni returned to it. Was there another riotthreatening? he thought, as he passed along the narrow street of three-storied frame houses, most of them gabled, and all marked by peculiar signs and figures—the Bear or the Lion or the Garlic or the Red Shield (Rothschild)!
Outside the synagogue loitered a crowd, and as he drew near he perceived that there was a long Proclamation in a couple of folio sheets nailed on the door. It was doubtless this which was being discussed by the little groups he had already noted. About the synagogue door the throng was so thick that he could not get near enough to read it himself. But fortunately some one was engaged in reading it aloud for the benefit of those on the outskirts.
"'Wherefore I, Mordecai Manuel Noah, Citizen of the United States of America, late Consul of said States to the City and Kingdom of Tunis, High Sheriff of New York, Counsellor-at-Law, and by the Grace of God Governor and Judge of Israel, have issued this my proclamation.'"
A derisive laugh from a dwarfish figure in the crowd interrupted the reading. "Father Noah come to life again!" It was thePossemacher, or wedding-jester, who was not sparing of his wit, even when not professionally engaged.
"A foreigner—an American!" sneered a more serious voice. "Who made him ruler in Israel?"
"That's what the wicked Israelite asked Moses!" cried Peloni, curiously excited.
"Nun, nun!Go on!" cried others.
"'Announcing to the Jews throughout the world, that an asylum is prepared and hereby offered to them, where they can enjoy that Peace, Comfort, and Happiness which have been denied them through the intolerance and misgovernment of former ages. An asylum in a free and powerful country, where ample protection is secured to their persons, their property, and religious rights; an asylum in a country remarkable for its vast resources, the richness of its soil, and the salubrity of its climate; where industry is encouraged, education promoted, and good faith rewarded. "A land of Milk and Honey," where Israel may repose in Peace, under his "Vine and Fig tree," and where our People may so familiarize themselves with the science of government and the lights of learning and civilization, as may qualify them for that great and final Restoration to their ancient heritage, which the times so powerfully indicate.'"
The crowd had grown attentive. Peloni's face was pale as death. What was this great thing, fallen so unexpectedly from the impassive heaven his hopelessness had challenged?
But thePossemachercaptured the moment. "Father Noah's drunk again!"
A great laugh shook the crowd. But Peloni dug his nails into his palms. "Read on! Read on!" he cried hoarsely.
"'The Place of Refuge is in the State of NewYork, the largest in the American Union, and the spot to which I invite my beloved People from the whole world is called Grand Island.'"
Peloni drew a deep breath. His face had now changed to the other extreme and was flushed with excitement.
"Noah's Ark!" shot thePossemacherdryly, and had his audience swaying hysterically.
"For God's sake, brethren!" cried Peloni. "This is no joke. Have you forgotten already that here we are only animals?"
"And they went in two by two," said thePossemacher, "the clean beasts, and the unclean beasts!"
"Hush, hush, let us hear!" from some of the crowd.
"'Here I am resolved to lay the foundation of a State, named Ararat.'"
"Ah! what did I say?" the exultantPossemachershrieked at Peloni.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the crowd. "Noah's Ark resting on Ararat!" The dullest saw that.
Peloni was taken aback for a moment.
"But why should not the place of Israel's Ark of Refuge be named Ararat?" he asked of his neighbours.
"If only his name wasn't Noah!" they answered.
"That makes it even more appropriate," he murmured.
But "Noah's Ark" was the nickname that kills.Though the reader continued, it was only to an audience exhilarated by a sense of Arabian Nights fantasy. But the elaborate description of the grandeurs of this Grand Island, and the eloquent passages about the Century of Right, and the ancient Oracles, restored Peloni's enthusiasm to fever heat.
"It is too long," said the reader, wearying at last.
Peloni rushed forward and took up the task. The first sentence exalted him still further.
"'In God's name I revive, renew, and reëstablish the government of the Jewish Nation, under the auspices and protection of the Constitution and the Laws of the United States, confirming and perpetuating all our Rights and Privileges, our Name, our Rank, and our Power among the nations of the Earth, as they existed and were recognized under the government of the Judges of Israel.'" Peloni's voice shook with fervour. As he began the next sentence, "'It is my will,'" he stretched out his hand with an involuntary regal gesture. The spirit of Noah was entering into him, and he felt almost as if it was he who was re-creating the Jewish nation—"'It is my will that a Census of the Jews throughout the world be taken, that those who are well treated and wish to remain in their respective countries shall aid those who wish to go; that those who are in military service shall until further orders remain true and loyal to their rulers.
"'I command'"—Peloni read the words withexpansive magnificence, his poet's soul vibrating to that other royal dreamer's across the great Atlantic—"'that a strict Neutrality be maintained in the pending war betwixt Greece and Turkey.
"'I abolish forever'"—Peloni's hand swept the air,—"'Polygamy among the Jews.'"
"But where have we polygamy?" interrupted thePossemacher.
"'As it is still practised in Africa and Asia,'" read on Peloni severely.
"I'm off at once for Africa and Asia!" cried the marriage-jester, pretending to run. "Good business for me there."
"You'll find better business in America," said Peloni scathingly. "For do not all our Austrian young men fly thither to marry, seeing that at home only the eldest son may found a family? A pretty fatherland indeed to be a citizen of—a step-fatherland. Listen, on the contrary, to the noble tolerance of the Jew. 'Christians are freely invited.'"
"Ah! Do you know who'll go?" broke in a narrow-faced zealot. "The missionaries."
Peloni continued hastily: "'Ararat is open, too, to the Caraites and the Samaritans. The Black Jews of India and Africa shall be welcome; our brethren in Cochin-China and the sect on the coast of Malabar; all are welcome.'"
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed a burly Jew. "So we're to live with the blacks. Enough of this joke!"
But Peloni went on solemnly: "'A Capitation-tax on every Jew of Three Silver Shekels per annum—'"
"Ah, now we have got to it!" and a great roar broke from the crowd. "Not a badGeschäft, eh?" and they winked. "He is no fool, this Noah."
Peloni's blood boiled. "Do you believe everybody is like yourselves?" he cried. "Listen!"
"'I do appoint the first day of next Adar for a Thanksgiving Day to the God of Israel, for His divine protection and the fulfilment of His promises to the House of Israel. I recommend Peace and Union among ourselves, Charity and Good-will to all, Toleration and Liberality toward our Brethren of all Religions—'"
"Didn't I say a missionary in disguise?" murmured the zealot.
Peloni ended, with tremulous emotion: "'I humbly entreat to be remembered in your prayers, and earnestly do I enjoin you to "keep the charge of the Holy God," to walk in His ways, to keep His Statutes and His commandments and His judgments and Testimonies, as written in the Laws of Moses; "that thou mayest prosper in all thou doest and whithersoever thou turnest thyself."
"'Given under our hand and seal in the State of New York, on the 2d of Ab 5586 in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence.'"