"Dear Demetrius,—I have strange news for you. It is quite providential (I use the word without prejudice, as the lawyers say) that I came here. But all is well now, so you may read what follows without alarm. Last Thursday morning, during my purposeful wanderings within Paul's usual circuit, I came face to face with our young gentleman. His eyes stared straight at me without seeing me. His face was ghastly white, and the lines were rigid as if with some stern determination. His lips were moving, but I could not catch his mutterings. He held a sealed letter in his hand. I saw the superscription. It was addressed to you. Instantly the dread came to my mind that he was about to commit suicide, and that this was his farewell to you. I followed him. He posted the letter at the post-office, turned back, threaded his way like a somnambulist across the bridge, without, however, approaching the parapet, walked mechanically onward to his own apartments, put the latch-key into the house-door, and then fell back in a dead faint—into my arms. I took him upstairs, explained what had happened, put him to bed, and—I write this from the bedside. For the crisis is over now; the brain fever has abated, and he has now nothing to do but to get well, though he will be longer about it than a young fellow of his age has a right to be. His body is emaciated with fasts and vigils and penances. I curse religion when I look at him. As if the struggle for life were not hard enough without humanity being hampered by these miserable superstitions. But you will be wanting to know what is the matter. Well,batiushka, what should be the matter but the old, old matter?La femmeis, strange to relate, a fine specimen of our own raceof lovely women, my dear Demetrius. She is a Jewess of the most orthodox family in Moscow, and therein lies the crux of the situation. (I am not playing upon words, but the phrase is doubly significant here.) Of course Paul has not the slightest idea I know all this; but of course I have had it from his hot lips all the same. As far as I have been able to piece his broken utterances together, they have had some stolen love passages, each followed by swift remorse on both sides, and—another furtive love passage. Paul has been comparing himself to St. Anthony, and even to Jesus, when Satan,ce chef admirable, spread a first-class dinner in the wilderness. But the poor lad must have suffered much behind all his heroics. And what his final resolution to give her up cost him is pretty evident. I suppose he must have told you of it in that letter. Isn't it the oddest thing in the world? Rachel Jacobvina is the girl's name, and her people keep a clothes' store round the corner, and her father is the Parnass (you will remember what that means) of his synagogue. She is a sweet little thing; and Paul evidently has a taste for otherbellesthanbelles-lettres. From what you told me of him I fully expected this sort of thing. The poor fellow is looking at me now from among his iced bandages with a piteous air of resignation to the will of Nicholas Alexandrovitch in bringing him back to this world of trouble when he already felt his wings sprouting. Poor Paul! He little dreams what I am writing; but he will get over this, and marry some fair, blue-eyed Circassian with corresponding tastes in fasting, and an enthusiastic longing for the Kingdom of God, when the year shall be a perpetual Lent. In his failure to realize history, he thinks it a crime to adore a Jewish virgin, though he spends half his time in adoring the Madonna. How shocked he would be if I pointed this out! People who look through ecclesiastical spectacles so rarely realize that the Holy Family was a Jewish one. But my pen is running away with me, and our patient looks thirsty.Proshchaï."Nicholas.""P.S.—There is not the slightest danger of a relapse unless the image of this diabolical girl comes before him again. And Ikeep his attention distracted. Besides, he had finally conquered his passion. This illness was at once the seal and the witness of his unchangeable resolve. I have heard him repeat the terms of the letter of farewell he sent her. It was final."
"Dear Demetrius,—I have strange news for you. It is quite providential (I use the word without prejudice, as the lawyers say) that I came here. But all is well now, so you may read what follows without alarm. Last Thursday morning, during my purposeful wanderings within Paul's usual circuit, I came face to face with our young gentleman. His eyes stared straight at me without seeing me. His face was ghastly white, and the lines were rigid as if with some stern determination. His lips were moving, but I could not catch his mutterings. He held a sealed letter in his hand. I saw the superscription. It was addressed to you. Instantly the dread came to my mind that he was about to commit suicide, and that this was his farewell to you. I followed him. He posted the letter at the post-office, turned back, threaded his way like a somnambulist across the bridge, without, however, approaching the parapet, walked mechanically onward to his own apartments, put the latch-key into the house-door, and then fell back in a dead faint—into my arms. I took him upstairs, explained what had happened, put him to bed, and—I write this from the bedside. For the crisis is over now; the brain fever has abated, and he has now nothing to do but to get well, though he will be longer about it than a young fellow of his age has a right to be. His body is emaciated with fasts and vigils and penances. I curse religion when I look at him. As if the struggle for life were not hard enough without humanity being hampered by these miserable superstitions. But you will be wanting to know what is the matter. Well,batiushka, what should be the matter but the old, old matter?La femmeis, strange to relate, a fine specimen of our own raceof lovely women, my dear Demetrius. She is a Jewess of the most orthodox family in Moscow, and therein lies the crux of the situation. (I am not playing upon words, but the phrase is doubly significant here.) Of course Paul has not the slightest idea I know all this; but of course I have had it from his hot lips all the same. As far as I have been able to piece his broken utterances together, they have had some stolen love passages, each followed by swift remorse on both sides, and—another furtive love passage. Paul has been comparing himself to St. Anthony, and even to Jesus, when Satan,ce chef admirable, spread a first-class dinner in the wilderness. But the poor lad must have suffered much behind all his heroics. And what his final resolution to give her up cost him is pretty evident. I suppose he must have told you of it in that letter. Isn't it the oddest thing in the world? Rachel Jacobvina is the girl's name, and her people keep a clothes' store round the corner, and her father is the Parnass (you will remember what that means) of his synagogue. She is a sweet little thing; and Paul evidently has a taste for otherbellesthanbelles-lettres. From what you told me of him I fully expected this sort of thing. The poor fellow is looking at me now from among his iced bandages with a piteous air of resignation to the will of Nicholas Alexandrovitch in bringing him back to this world of trouble when he already felt his wings sprouting. Poor Paul! He little dreams what I am writing; but he will get over this, and marry some fair, blue-eyed Circassian with corresponding tastes in fasting, and an enthusiastic longing for the Kingdom of God, when the year shall be a perpetual Lent. In his failure to realize history, he thinks it a crime to adore a Jewish virgin, though he spends half his time in adoring the Madonna. How shocked he would be if I pointed this out! People who look through ecclesiastical spectacles so rarely realize that the Holy Family was a Jewish one. But my pen is running away with me, and our patient looks thirsty.Proshchaï.
"Nicholas."
"P.S.—There is not the slightest danger of a relapse unless the image of this diabolical girl comes before him again. And Ikeep his attention distracted. Besides, he had finally conquered his passion. This illness was at once the seal and the witness of his unchangeable resolve. I have heard him repeat the terms of the letter of farewell he sent her. It was final."
So this was the meaning of your silence; this the tragedy that lay behind your simple sentence, "I have now conquered all the difficulties which beset me at the first." This was the motive that guided your hand to write those bitter lines about our race, so that you might henceforth cut yourself off from the possibility of allying yourself with it even in thought. I understand all now, my poor high-mettled boy. How you must have suffered! How your pride must have rebelled at the idea that you might have to make such a confession to me—little knowing I should have hailed it with delight. That temptation should have assailed you, too, at such a period—when you were publishing your great work on the ideals of Holy Russia! Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Providence. And yet why may not all be well after all, and Heaven grant me such grace as I would willingly sacrifice my life to deserve? It is impossible that my son's passion can be utterly dead. Such fires are only covered up. I will go to him and tell him all. The news that he is a Jew will revolutionize him. His love will flame up afresh and take on the guise and glamour of duty. Love, posing as logic, will whisper in his ear that no bars of early training can avail to keep him from the raceto which he belongs by blood and by his father's faith. In this girl's eyes he will read God's message of command, and I, God's message of Peace and Reconciliation. The tears are in my eyes; I can hardly see to write. The happiness I foresee is too great. Blessings on your sweet face, Rachel Jacobvina, my own darling daughter that is to be. To you is allotted the blessed task of solving a fearful problem, of rescuing and reuniting two human lives. Yes, Heaven is indeed merciful. To-morrow I start for Moscow.
Thursday.—How can I write it? No, there is no pity in Heaven. The sky smiles in steely blankness. The air cuts like a knife. Paul is well, or as well as a convalescent can be. He must have had a heart of ice. But it is fortunate he had, seeing what the icy fates have wrought. I arrived at Moscow, and hurried in adroshkyacross the well-known bridge to Paul's lodgings. A ghastly procession stopped me. Someburlakswere bearing the corpse of a young girl who had thrown herself into the ice-laden river. A clammy foreboding gathered at my heart, but ere I had time to say a word, an old, caftan-clad man, with agonized eyes and a white, streaming beard, dashed up, pulled off the face-cloth, revealing a strange, weird loveliness, uttered a scream which yet rings in my ears, threw himself passionately on the body, rose up again, murmured something solemnly and resignedly in Hebrew, rent his garments,readjusted the face-cloth, and followed weeping in the rear. And from lip to lip, that for once forgot to curl in scorn, flew the murmur: "Rachel Jacobvina."
Saturday Night.—I slouched into the synagogue this morning, the cynosure of suspicious eyes. I nearly uncovered my head in forgetfulness. Somebody offered me aTalith, which I wrapped round myself with marked awkwardness. The service moved me beyond measure. I have neither the pen nor the will to describe my sensations. I was a youth again. The intervening decades faded away. Rachel's father said theKaddish. The peace of God has touched my soul. Paul is asleep. I have made Nicholas take his much-needed rest. I am reading the Hebrew Psalms. The language comes back to me bit by bit.
Monday.—Paul is sitting up reading—proofs. I have been to condole with Rachel's father, as he sat mourning upon the ground. I explained that I was a stranger in the town, and had heard of the accident. I have given five hundred roubles to the synagogue. The whole congregation is buzzing with the generosity of the rich Jewish farmer from the country. Fortunately there is no danger of Paul hearing anything of my doings. He is a prisoner; and Nicholas and myself keep watch over him by turns.
Tuesday.—I have just come from a meeting of the Palestine Colonization Society. Heavens, whatideals burn in these breasts supposed to throb only with cupidity and cunning! Their souls still turn to the Orient, as the needle turns to the pole. And how the better-off among them pity their weaker brethren! With what enthusiasm they plot and plan to get them beyond the frontier into freer countries, but chiefly into the centre of all Jewish aspiration, the Holy Land! How they wept when I doubled their finances at a stroke. My poor, much-wronged brethren!
Odessa, Monday.—It is almost a year since I closed this book, and now, after a period of peace, I am driven to it again. Paul has made an irruption into my tranquil household. For eleven months now I have lived in this little two-storied house overlooking the roadstead, with Isaac and theekonomkafor my sole companions. So long as I could pour my troubles into the ear of the venerable old rabbi (who was starving for material sustenance when I took him, as I was for spiritual), so long I had no need of you, my old confidant. But this visit of Paul has reopened all my sores. I have smuggled the rabbi out of the way; but even if he were here, he could not understand the terrible situation. The God of Israel alone knows what I feel at having to deny Him, at having to hide my faith from my own son. He must not stay. The New Year is nigh, with its feasts and fasts. Moreover, surrounded asone is by spies, Paul's presence here may lead to discoveries that I am not what the authorities imagine. Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone back to the village. But no. There was that church-going. A village is so small. In this great and bustling seaport I am lost, or comparatively so. A few roubles in the ecclesiastical palm, and complete oblivion settles on me.
To-night I shall know to what I owe this sudden visit. Paul is radiant. He plays with his untold news like a child with a new toy. He drops all sorts of mysterious hints. He frisks around me like a fond spaniel. But he reserves his tit-bit for to-night, when the tramp of the sailors and the perambulating peasantry shall have died away, and we shall be seated cosily in my study, smoking our cigarettes, and looking out toward the quiet lights of the shipping. Of course it is good news—Heaven help me, I fear Paul's good news. Good news that Paul has come all the way from St. Petersburg to tell me, which only his own lips may tell me, must, if past omens speak truly, be terrible. God grant I may survive the telling.
What a coward I am! Have I not long since made up my mind that Paul must go his way and I mine? What difference, then, can his news make to me? He will never know now that I am aZhitunless he hears it from my dying lips as I utter the declaration of the Unity. I made up my mind to that when I came here. Paul threatens to make hismark as a writer on theological subjects. To tell him the truth would only sadden him and do him no good; while to reveal my own Judaism to the world would but serve to damage him and injure his prospects. This may seem but a cover for my cowardice, for my fear of State reprisals; but it is true for all that.Bozhe moi, is it not punishment enough not to be able to join my brethren in their worship? I must remain here, where I am unknown, practising my religion unostentatiously and in secret. The sense of being in a Jewish city satisfies my soul. We are here more than a fourth of the population. House-rent and fuel are very dear, but we thrive and prosper, thanks to God. I give to our poor, through Isaac, but they hardly want my help. I rejoice in the handsome synagogues, though I dare not enter them. Yes, I am best here. Why be upset by my boy's visit? Paul will tell me his news, I shall congratulate him, he will go back to the capital, and all will be as before.
Monday Midnight.—No, all can never be as before. One last step remained to divide our lives to all eternity.Voi, Paul has taken it.
All came off as arranged. We sat together at my window. It was a glorious night, and a faint, fresh wind blew in from the sea. The lights in the harbour twinkled, the stars glistened in the sky. But as Paul told me his good news, the whole horizon was one great flame before my eyes. He began by recapitulating, though with fuller details than waspossible by letter, what I knew pretty well already; the story of the great success of his book, which had been reviewed in all the theological magazines of Europe, and had gone through four editions in the year, and been translated into German and Italian; the story of how he had been encouraged to come to St. Petersburg, and how he had prospered on the press there. And then came the grand news—he was offered the editorship of theNovoe Vremia, the great St. Petersburg paper!
In an instant I realized all it meant, and in my horror I almost fainted. Paul would direct this famous Government and anti-Semitic organ, Paul would pen day after day those envenomed leaders, goading on the mob to turn and rend their Jewish fellow-citizens, denying them the rights of human beings. Paul would direct the flood of sarcasm and misrepresentation poured forth day after day upon my inoffensive brethren. The old anguish with which I had read that article a year ago returned to me; but not the old tempest of wrath. By sheer force of will I kept myself calm. A great issue was at stake, and I nerved myself for the contest.
"Paul," said I, "you are a lucky fellow." I kissed him on the brow with icy lips. He saw my great emotion, but felt it was but natural.
"Da," said he, "I am a lucky fellow. It is a great thing. Few men have had such an opportunity at twenty-five."
"Nutchozh?And how do you propose to utilize it?" I asked.
"Och, I must conduct the paper on the same general lines," he said; "of course, with improvements."
"Amongst the latter the omission of the anti-Semitic bias, I hope."
He stared at me. "Certainly not. The proprietors make its continuance on the same general lines a condition. They are very good. They even guard me against possible prosecutions by paying a handsome salary to a man of straw.Ish-lui, it is a fine berth that I've got."
Should I tell him the thing was impossible—that he was a Jew? No; time for that when all other means had failed. "Och, you have accepted it?" I said.
"Of course I have, father. Why should I give them time to change their minds?"
"I should have thought you would have consulted me first."
"Nu, uzh, I have never consulted you yet about accepting work," he said in a wondering, disappointed tone.
"Nuka, but this puts you finally into a career, does it not?"
"Certainly. That is why I accepted it, and I thought you would be glad."
"That is why you should have refused it. But Iamglad all the same."
"I do not understand you, father."
"Nuka,golubtchik, listen," I said in my most endearing tone, drawing my arm round his neck. "Your struggles for existence were but struggles for the sake of the struggle. You are not as other young men. You have succeeded; and the moment you win the prize is the moment for retiring gracefully, leaving it in the hands of him who needs it. Your fight was but a game I allowed you to play. You are rich."
"Rich?"
"Rich! Nearly all my life I have been a wealthy man. I own land in every part of Russia; I hold shares in all the most successful companies. I have kept this knowledge from you so that you might enjoy your riches more when you knew the truth."
"Rich?" He repeated the word again in a dazed tone. "Ach, why did I not know this before?"
"You had not succeeded. You had not had your experience, my son, my dearest Paul. But now your work is over, or rather your true work begins. Freed from the detestable routine of a newspaper office, you shall write your books and work out your ideas at leisure, and relieved from all material considerations."
"Da, it would have been a beautiful ideal—once," he said; then added fiercely: "Rich? And I did not know it."
"But you were the happier for your ignorance."
"No, father. The struggle is too terrible. Often have I sat and wept.Ish-lui, time after time my book—destined as it was to success—came back to me from the publishers. And I could have produced it myself all along!"
Pangs of remorse agitated me. Had my plan been, indeed, a failure? "But you have the pride of unhelped success."
"And the bitter memories. And once—" He paused.
"Once?" I said.
"Once I loved a girl. She is dead now, so it doesn't matter. There were many and complicated obstacles to our union. With money they would have been overcome."
"Poor boy!" I said wonderingly, for I knew nothing of this apparently new love episode. "Forgive me, my son, if I have acted mistakenly. Anyhow, from this moment your happiness is my sole care."
"No," he said, with sudden determination. "It is too late now. You meant it for the best,papasha. But I do not want the money now. I have money of my own—and glory. Why should I give up what my own hands have won?"
"Because I ask it of you, Paul; because I ask you to allow me to make reparation for the mischief I have done."
"The truest reparation will be to let things go unrepaired," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I shall be happier as editor of this paper. What finer medium for my ideas than a great newspaper? What more potent lever to my hand for raising Holy Russia to a yet higher plane? No, father. Let bygones be bygones. Give my share of your wealth to a society for helping struggling talent. I struggle no longer. Leave me to go on in the path my pen has carved out."
I fell at his feet and begged him to let me have my way, but some obstinate demon seemed to have taken possession of his breast. I opened my desk and showered bank-notes upon him. He spurned them, and one flew out into the night. Neither of us put out a hand to arrest its flight.
I saw that nothing but the truth had any chance to alter his resolve. But I played one more card before resorting to this dangerous weapon.
"Listen, my own dearest Paul," I burst out. "If money will not tempt you, let a father's petition persuade you. Learn, then, that I dread your taking this position because you will perpetually have to attack the Jews—"
"As they deserve," he put in.
"Be it so. But I—I have a kindness for this oppressed race."
He looked at me in silence, as if awaiting furtherexplanation. I gave it, blurting out the shameful lie with ill-concealed confusion.
"Once upon a time I—I loved a Jewess. I could not marry her, of course. But ever since that time I have had a soft place in my heart for her unhappy race."
A look of surprise flashed into Paul's eyes. Then his face grew tender. He took my hand in his.
"Father, we have a common sorrow," he said. "The girl I spoke of was a Jewess."
"How?" I exclaimed, surprised in my turn. It was the same affair, then.
"Yes, she was a Jewess. But I taught her the truth. Christ was revealed to her prisoned soul. She would have fled with me if we had had the means, and if I had been able to support her in some other country. But she did not dare be baptized and stay in Moscow or anywhere near. She said her father would have killed her. The only alternative was for me to embrace Judaism. Impossible as you may think it, father, and I confess it to my eternal shame, at the very period I was correcting the proofs of my book, I was wrestling with a temptation to embrace this Satanic heresy. But I conquered the temptation. It was easy to conquer. To renounce the faith which was my blessed birthright would, as you know, have cost me dear. Selfishness warred for once on the side of salvation. Rachel wished to flywith me. I knew she would have been poor and unhappy. I refused to take advantage of her girlish impetuousness. I heard afterward that she had drowned herself." The tears rained down his cheeks.
"We had arranged to wait till I could save a stock of money.Voi, the delay undid us. One day Rachel's father called on me. He had got wind of our secret. He fell at my feet and tore his hair, and wept and conjured me not to darken his home and his life. A Jewess could only wed a Jew, he said. If I had only been born a Jew all would have been well. But his Rachel had, perhaps, talked of becoming a Christian. Did I not know that was impossible? As well expect the sheep to howl like the wolf. Blood was thicker than baptismal water. Her heart would always cleave to her own religion. And was my love so blind as not to see that even if she spoke of Christianity it was only to please me? that she only kissed the crucifix that I might kiss her, and knelt to the Virgin that I might kneel to her? At home, he swore it with fearful oaths, she was always bitterly sarcastic at the expense of the true faith. I believed him. My God, I believed him! For at times I had feared it myself. I would be no party to such carnal blasphemy, and charged him with a note of farewell. When he went I felt as if I had escaped from a terrible temptation. I fell on my knees and thanked the saints."
"But why did you not tell me this at the time?" I cried in intolerable anguish.
"Nu; to what end? It would only have worried you. I did not know you were rich."
"And at this time you offered to sendmemoney!" I said, with sudden recollection.
"Since I had not enough, you might as well have some of it. Anyhow, father, you see all this has made no difference to me. I shall never marry now, of course; but it hasn't altered the opinion I have always had of the Jews—rather corroborated it. Rachel told me enough of the superstitious slavery amid which she was forced to live. I have no doubt now that her father lied. But for his pigheaded tribalism, Rachel would have been alive to-day. So why your love for a Jewish girl should make you tender to the race I do not see, dearest father. There are always exceptions to everything—Rachel was one; the woman you loved was another. And now it is very late; I think I will go to bed."
He kissed me and went out at the door. Then he came back and put his head inside again. A sweet, sad, winning smile lit up his pale, thoughtful face.
"I will put you on the free list of theNovoe Vremia, father," he said. "Good-night,papasha."
What could I say? What could I do? I called up a smile to my trembling lips.
"Good-night, Paul," I said.
I shall never tell him now.
Tuesday, 3 a.m.—I reopen these pages to note an ironic climax to this bitter day. Through the excitement of Paul's coming I had not read my letters. After sitting here in a numb trance for hours, I suddenly bethought me of them. One is from my business man, informing me that he has just sold the South American stock, respecting which I gave himcarte blanche. I go to bed richer by five thousand roubles.
Odessa, Wednesday Night.—Six months have passed. I am on the free list of theNovoe Vremia. Almost every day brings me a fresh stab as I read. But I am a "constant reader." It is my penance, and I bear it as such. After a long silence, I have just had a letter from Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and I reopen my diary to note it. He is about to marry a prosperous widow, and is going over to Catholicism. He writes he is very happy. Lucky, soulless being. He does not know he will be a richer man when I die. Happily, I am ready, though it were to-day. My peace is made, I hope, with God and man, though Paul knows nothing even now. He could not fail to learn it, though, if he came to Odessa again. I have bribed the spies and the clergy heavily. Thanks to their silence, I am one of the most prominent Jews of the town, and nobody dreams of connecting me with the trenchant editor of theNovoe Vremia. I see now that I could have actedso all along, if I had not been such a coward. But I keep Paul away. It is my last cowardice. In a postscript Nicholas writes that Paul's articles are causing a great sensation in the remotest parts of Russia. Alas, I know it. Are there not anti-Jewish riots in all parts, encouraged by cruel Government measures? Do not the local newspapers everywhere reproduce Paul's printed firebrands? Have I not the pleasure of coming across them again in our own Odessa papers, in theWiertnikand theListok? I should not wonder if we had an outbreak here. There was a little affray yesterday in thepereouloksof the Jewish quarter, though we are quiet enough down this way.... Great God! What is that noise I hear?... Yes! it is! it is! "Down with theZhits! Down with theZhits!" There is red on the horizon.Bozhe moi!It is flame!Voi!They are pillaging the Jewish quarter. The sun sinks in blood, as on that unhappy day among the village hills....Ach!Paul, Paul! Why did I not stop your murderous pen?... But if not you, another would have written.... No, that is no excuse.... Forgive me, O God, I have been weak. Ever weak and cowardly from the day I first deserted Thee, even unto this day.... I am not worthy of my blood, of my race.... They are coming this way. It goes through me like a knife. "Down with theZhits! Down with theZhits!" And now I see them. They are mad, drunk withthe vodka they have stolen from the Jewish inns. Great God! They have knives and guns. And their leader is flourishing a newspaper and shouting out something from it. There are soldiers among them, and sailors, native and foreign, and mad muzhiks. Where are the police?... The mob is passing under my window.God pity me, it is Paul's words they are shouting.... They have passed. No one thinks of me. Thank God, I am safe. I am safe from these demons. What a narrow escape!... Ah, God, they have captured Rabbi Isaac and are dragging him along by his white beard toward the barracks. My place is by his side. I will rouse my brethren. We are not a few. We will turn on these dogs and rend them.Proshchaï, my loved diary. Farewell! I go to proclaim the Unity.
[1]In order to preserve the local colour, the Translator has occasionally left a word or phrase of the MS. in the original Russian.
[1]In order to preserve the local colour, the Translator has occasionally left a word or phrase of the MS. in the original Russian.
[2]Dissenters.
[2]Dissenters.
"Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave. Whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto Thee."—Eighty-eighth Psalm.
"Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave. Whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto Thee."—Eighty-eighth Psalm.
There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the friends of the patients would be admitted. The Incurables would hear the latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much with these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It was an unpretentious institution—two corner houses knocked together—near the east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor at a penny a week, and scarcely recognized by the rich; so that paraplegia and vertigo and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless diseases knocked hopelessly at its narrow portals. But it was a model institution all the same, and the patients lacked for nothing except freedom from pain. There was evena miniature synagogue for their spiritual needs, with the women's compartment religiously railed off from the men's, as if these grotesque ruins of sex might still distract each other's devotions.
Yet the Rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly, hydrocephalous, paralytic Leah had had the chair she inhabited carried down into the men's sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man, who had the Braille Bible at his fingers' ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had strolled vacuously into the ladies' ward, and, indifferent to the pretty white-aproned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a weird, hatchet-faced cripple with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting big spectacles. Like most of the patients she was up and dressed; only a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.
"Leah says she'd be quite happy if she could walk like you," said Mad Mo in complimentary tones. "She always says Milly walks so beautiful. She says you can walk the whole length of the garden." Milly, huddled in her chair, smiled miserably.
"You're crying again, Rebecca," protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced dwarf in excellent English, as she touched her friend's withered hand. "You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered."
"No—I feel so nice," said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint musical accent. "You sall not tinkI cry because I am not happy. Ven I read sad tings—like my life—den only I am happy."
The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendent earrings oscillate. "I thought you were brooding over your love affairs," she said.
"Me!" cried Rebecca. "I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is Psalm eighty-eight dat I brood over. 'I am afflicted and ready to die from my yout' up.' Yes, I vas only a girl ven I had to go to Königsberg to find a doctor to cut off my leg. 'Lover and friend hast dou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness!'"
Her face shone ecstatic.
"Hush!" whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod in the direction of a neighbouring waterbed on which a pale, rigid, middle-aged woman lay, with shut sleepless eyes.
"Se cannot understand Englis'," said the Russian girl proudly.
"Don't be so sure, look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddish!"
Rebecca shook her head incredulously. "Sarah is a Polis' woman," she said. "For years dey are in England and dey learn noting."
"Ick bin krank! Krank! Krank!" suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish grandmother—an advanced centenarian—as if to corroborate the girl's contention. She was squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and again murmuring her querulousburden of sickness, and jabbering at the nurses to shut all the windows. Fresh air she objected to as vehemently as if it were butter or some other heterodox dainty.
Hard upon her crooning came bloodcurdling screams from the room above, sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a "Barnum" show, that the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret—not yet indurated—thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the ashen perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen jelly-like hands resting on cotton-wool pads, an air-pillow between her knees, her whole frame racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only diversion faint blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the glass of a framed picture; yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.
Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white, impassive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a strong, stern face, telling of a present of pain, and faintly hinting at a past of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and indeed the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years before. Her only surviving son—a youth whom the English atmosphere had not improved—had sailed away totrade with the Kaffirs. And her husband had not been to see her for a fortnight!
When the visitors began to arrive, her torpor vanished. She eagerly raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up. But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a buzz of talk in the room—the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre of a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when they didn't come and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of her to their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with. One or two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she would speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing under the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By and by she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her artificial walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to look for her—
"Woe is me!" wailed her centenarian country-woman, rocking to and fro. "What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to see if the old grandmother isn't dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!"
Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah's husband had not yet come.
"He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow," Sister Margaret ventured to say in her best Yiddish. "Or he is busyworking. Work is not so slack any more." Alone in the institution she shared Sarah's ignorance of the Kretznow scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.
"He would have written," said Sarah sternly. "He is awearied of me. I have lain here a year. Job's curse is on me."
"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"
"No! He hears me knocking at his heart."
They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured feebly, "But—"
"Leave me in peace!" with a cry like that of a wounded animal.
The matron gently touched the novice's arm and drew her away. "Iwill write to him," she whispered.
Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in a hell of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten her—surely she would not lie thus till death—that far-off death her strong religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone into the Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and the cost of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight of his strength?
The next day he came—by special invitation. His face was sallow, rimmed with swarthy hair; hisunder lip was sensuous. He hung his head, half veiling the shifty eyes.
Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah's face sparkled.
"Put up the screen!" she murmured, and in its shelter drew her husband's head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.
But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: "I thought thou wast dying."
A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.
"Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life. Iwasdying—for a sight of thee."
"But the matron wrote to me pressingly," he blurted out. He felt her breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands she thrust him away.
"God's fool that I am—I should have known; to-day is not visiting day. They have compassion on me—they see my sorrows—it is public talk."
His pulse seemed to stop. "They have talked to thee of me," he faltered.
"I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered—one cannot hide one's heart."
"They have no right to talk," he muttered in sulky trepidation.
"They have every right," she rejoined sharply. "If thou hadst come to see me even once—why hast thou not?"
"I—I—have been travelling in the country with cheap jewellery. The tailoring is so slack."
"Look me in the eyes! Law of Moses? No, it is a lie. God shall forgive thee. Why hast thou not come?"
"I have told thee."
"Tell that to the Sabbath Fire-Woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out utterly—"
"No, no, Sarah," he murmured uneasily.
"Then why—?"
He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. "I did not like to come," he said desperately.
"Why not?" Crimson patches came and went on her white cheeks; her heart beat madly.
"Surely thou canst understand!"
"Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue!"
"I answer as thou askest."
"Thou answerest not at all."
"No answer is also an answer," he snarled, driven to bay. "Thou understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk."
"Ah—h—h!" in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat back by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on the pillow, the eyes closed.
He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.
"So sick! So sick! So sick!" moaned the wizened grandmother.
"Thou sayest they have compassion on thee in their talk," he murmured at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully; "have they none on me?"
Her silence chilled him. "Butthouhast compassion, Sarah," he urged. "Thouunderstandest."
Presently she reopened her eyes.
"Thou art not gone?" she murmured.
"No—thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life! Only—"
"Wilt thou wash my skin, and not make me wet?" she interrupted bitterly. "Go home. Go home to her!"
"I will not go home."
"Then go under like Korah."
He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the opening of a peep-hole into Paradise—a paradise of Adam and Eve and forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of jealousy in which she writhed?
He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely remorseful, but she would not see him. So he went away, vaguely indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.
When you lie on your back all day and all nightyou have time to think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in many lights from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. One such light flashed on the paradise, and showed it to her as but the portico of purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.
On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness. And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come and see her.
He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.
"Thou hast sent for me?" he murmured.
"Yes—perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my death-bed!" she replied, with bitter irony.
"It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself—only thou wouldst not see my face."
"I have seen it for twenty years—it is another's turn now."
He was silent.
"It is true all the same—I am on my death-bed."
He started. A pang shot through his breast. He darted an agitated glance at her face.
"Is it not so? In this bed I shall die. But God knows how many years I shall lie in it."
Her calm gave him an uncanny shudder.
"And till the Holy One, blessed be He, takes me, thou wilt live a daily sinner."
"I am not to blame. God has stricken me. I am a young man."
"Thou art to blame!" Her eyes flashed fire. "Blasphemer! Life is sweet to thee—yet perchance thou wilt die before me."
His face grew livid. "I am a young man," he repeated tremulously.
"Dost thou forget what Rabbi Eliezer said? 'Repent one day before thy death'—that is to-day, for who knows?"
"What wouldst thou have me do?"
"Give up—"
"No, no," he interrupted. "It is useless. I cannot. I am so lonely."
"Give up," she repeated inexorably, "thy wife."
"What sayest thou? My wife! But she is not my wife. Thou art my wife."
"Even so. Give me up. Give meGet(divorce)."
His breath failed, his heart thumped at the suggestion.
"Give theeGet!" he whispered.
"Yes. Why didst thou not send me a bill of divorcement when I left thy home for this?"
He averted his face. "I thought of it," he stammered. "And then—"
"And then?" He seemed to see a sardonic glitter in the gray eyes.
"I—I was afraid."
"Afraid!" She laughed in grim mirthlessness. "Afraid of a bed-ridden woman!"
"I was afraid it would make thee unhappy." The sardonic gleam melted into softness, then became more terrible than before.
"And so thou hast made me happy instead!"
"Stab me not more than I merit. I did not think people would be cruel enough to tell thee."
"Thine own lips told me."
"Nay—by my soul," he cried, startled.
"Thine eyes told me, then."
"I feared so," he said, turning them away. "When she came into my house, I—I dared not go to see thee—that was why I did not come, though I always meant to, Sarah, my life. I feared to look thee in the eyes. I foresaw they would read the secret in mine—so I was afraid."
"Afraid!" she repeated bitterly. "Afraid I would scratch them out! Nay, they are good eyes. Have they not seen my heart? For twenty years they have been my light.... Those eyes and mine have seen our children die."
Spasmodic sobs came thickly now. Swallowing them down, she said, "And she—did she not ask thee to give meGet?"
"Nay, she was willing to go without. She said thou wast as one dead—look not thus at me. It is the will of God. It was for thy sake, too, Sarah,that she did not become my wife by law. She, too, would have spared thee the knowledge of her."
"Yes; ye have both tender hearts! She is a mother in Israel, and thou art a spark of our father Abraham."
"Thou dost not believe what I say?"
"I can disbelieve it, and still remain a Jewess."
Then, satire boiling over into passion, she cried vehemently, "We are threshing empty ears. Thinkest thou I am not aware of the Judgments—I, the granddaughter of Reb Shloumi (the memory of the righteous for a blessing)? Thinkest thou I am ignorant thou couldst not obtain aGetagainst me—me who have borne thee children, who have wrought no evil? I speak not of theBeth-Din, for in this impious country they are loath to follow the Judgments, and from the EnglishBeth-Dinthou wouldst find it impossible to obtain theGetin any case, even though thou didst not marry me in this country, nor according to its laws. I speak of our ownRabbonim—thou knowest even the Maggid would not give theeGetmerely because thy wife is bed-ridden. That—that is what thou wast afraid of."
"But if thou art willing,—" he replied eagerly, ignoring her scornful scepticism.
His readiness to accept the sacrifice was salt upon her wounds.
"Thou deservest I should let thee burn in the lowest Gehenna," she cried.
"The Almighty is more merciful than thou," he answered. "It is He that hath ordained it is not good for man to live alone. And yet men shun me—people talk—and she—she may leave me to my loneliness again." His voice faltered with self-pity. "Here thou hast friends, nurses, visitors. I—I have nothing. True, thou didst bear me children, but they withered as by the evil eye. My only son is across the ocean; he hath no love for me or thee."
The recital of their common griefs softened her toward him.
"Go!" she whispered. "Go and send me theGet. Go to the Maggid, he knew my grandfather. He is the man to arrange it for thee with his friends. Tell him it is my wish."
"God shall reward thee. How can I thank thee for giving thy consent?"
"What else have I to give thee, my Herzel, I who eat the bread of strangers? Truly says the Proverb, 'When one begs of a beggar the Herr God laughs!'"
"I will send thee theGetas soon as possible."
"Thou art right, I am a thorn in thine eye. Pluck me out quickly."
"Thou wilt not refuse theGet, when it comes?" he replied apprehensively.
"Is it not a wife's duty to submit?" she asked with grim irony. "Nay, have no fear. Thou shalt have no difficulty in serving theGetupon me. Iwill not throw it in the messenger's face.... And thou wilt marry her?"
"Assuredly. People will no longer talk. And she must needs bide with me. It is my one desire."
"It is mine likewise. Thou must atone and save thy soul."
He lingered uncertainly.
"And thy dowry?" he said at last. "Thou wilt not make claim for compensation?"
"Be easy—I scarce know where myCesubah(marriage certificate) is. What need have I of money? As thou sayest, I have all I want. I do not even desire to purchase a grave—lying already so long in a charity-grave. The bitterness is over."
He shivered. "Thou art very good to me," he said. "Good-bye."
He stooped down—she drew the bedclothes frenziedly over her face.
"Kiss me not!"
"Good-bye, then," he stammered. "God be good to thee!" He moved away.
"Herzel!" She had uncovered her face with a despairing cry. He slouched back toward her, perturbed, dreading she would retract.
"Do not send it—bring it thyself. Let me take it from thy hand."
A lump rose in his throat. "I will bring it," he said brokenly.
The long days of pain grew longer—the summerwas coming, harbingered by sunny days that flooded the wards with golden mockery. The evening Herzel brought theGet, Sarah could have read every word on the parchment plainly, if her eyes had not been blinded by tears.
She put out her hand toward her husband, groping for the document he bore. He placed it in her burning palm. The fingers closed automatically upon it, then relaxed, and the paper fluttered to the floor. But Sarah was no longer a wife.
Herzel was glad to hide his burning face by stooping for the fallen bill of divorcement. He was long picking it up. When his eyes met hers again, she had propped herself up in her bed. Two big round tears trickled down her cheeks, but she received the parchment calmly and thrust it into her bosom.
"Let it lie there," she said stonily, "there where thy head hath lain. Blessed be the true Judge."
"Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?"
"Why should I be angry? She was right—I am but a dead woman. Only no one may sayKaddishfor me, no one may pray for the repose of my soul. I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles, and throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy home was desolate, there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou wilt be happy, too."
"Thou hast been a good wife, Sarah," he murmured, touched.
"Recall not the past; we are strangers now," she said, with recurrent harshness.
"But I may come and see thee—sometimes." He had stirrings of remorse as the moment of final parting came.
"Wouldst thou reopen my wounds?"
"Farewell, then."
He put out his hand timidly; she seized it and held it passionately.
"Yes, yes, Herzel! Do not leave me! Come and see me here—as a friend, an acquaintance, a man I used to know. The others are thoughtless—they forget me—I shall lie here—perhaps the Angel of Death will forget me, too." Her grasp tightened till it hurt him acutely.
"Yes, I will come—I will come often," he said, with a sob of physical pain.
Her clasp loosened, she dropped his hand.
"But not till thou art married," she said.
"Be it so."
"Of course thou must have a 'still wedding.' The English synagogue will not marry thee."
"The Maggid will marry me."
"Thou wilt show me herCesubahwhen thou comest next?"
"Yes—I will contrive to get it from her."
A week passed—he brought the marriage certificate.
Outwardly she was calm. She glanced throughit. "God be thanked," she said, and handed it back. They chatted of indifferent things, of the doings of the neighbours. When he was going, she said, "Thou wilt come again?"
"Yes, I will come again."
"Thou art so good to spend thy time on me thus. But thy wife—will she not be jealous?"
He stared, bewildered by her strange, eerie moments.
"Jealous of thee?" he murmured.
She took it in its contemptuous sense and her white lips twitched. But she only said, "Is she aware thou hast come here?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Do I know? I have not told her."
"Tell her."
"As thou wishest."
There was a pause. Presently the woman spoke.
"Wilt thou not bring her to see me? Then she will know that thou hast no love left for me—"
He flinched as at a stab. After a painful moment he said: "Art thou in earnest?"
"I am no marriage-jester. Bring her to me—will she not come to see an invalid? It is amitzvah(good deed) to visit the sick. It will wipe out her trespass."
"She shall come."
She came. Sarah stared at her for an instant with poignant curiosity, then her eyelids drooped toshut out the dazzle of her youth and freshness. Herzel's wife moved awkwardly and sheepishly. But she was beautiful—a buxom, comely country girl from a Russian village, with a swelling bust and a cheek rosy with health and confusion.
Sarah's breast was racked by a thousand needles. But she found breath at last.
"God bless—thee, Mrs.—Kretznow," she said gaspingly.
She took the girl's hand.
"How good thou art to come and see a sick creature."
"My husband willed it," the new wife said in deprecation. She had a simple, stupid air that did not seem wholly due to the constraint of the strange situation.
"Thou wast right to obey. Be good to him, my child. For three years he waited on me, when I lay helpless. He has suffered much. Be good to him!"
With an impulsive movement she drew the girl's head down to her and kissed her on the lips. Then with an anguished cry of "Leave me for to-day," she jerked the blanket over her face and burst into tears. She heard the couple move hesitatingly away. The girl's beauty shone on her through the opaque coverings.
"O God!" she wailed. "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let me die now. For the merits of the Patriarchs take me soon, take me soon."
Her vain passionate prayer, muffled by the bedclothes, was wholly drowned by ear-piercing shrieks from the ward above—screams of agony mingled with half-articulate accusations of attempted poisoning—the familiar paroxysm of the palsied woman who clung to life.
The thrill passed again through Sister Margaret. She uplifted her sweet humid eyes.
"Ah, Christ!" she whispered. "If I could die for her!"