HE rabbi sat before his empty fire-place, with slippered feet upon the hearth, reading to himself, in a whisper, from the current number ofThe Jewish Messenger. He raised his eyes absent-mindedly upon Elias's face, where they rested for an instant, vacant of expression. Then, suddenly, they lighted up, but with a light which was manifestly that of alarm. Throwing aside his newspaper, and half rising from his chair, “What—what is the matter with you?” he cried. “What has happened?”
“Happened? The matter with me?” stammered Elias, halting. “What do you mean?”
“Why, boy, you're as pale as death. You look—you look as though you had seen a ghost.”
Elias forced a laugh, a faint one.
“Nonsense,” he said. “I'm all right. Perhaps it's the shade of your lamp. The light, coming through that green, is enough to make any one look.”
He sat down opposite the rabbi, and struggled hard to appear nonchalant and at his ease, even going to the length of lighting a cigarette. He must have met with some success; for presently the rabbi, who had not ceased to regard him anxiously, observed with an air of relief, “Yes, I guess itwasthe lamp-shade. Now that you're seated and out of the range of it, you look as usual. But when you first came in, I declare, you gave me quite a turn.” With which he picked up his newspaper, found his place, and resumed his whispered reading.
Thus for a few minutes. Then, tossing his half-consumed cigarette into the grate, “I wanted to have a little talk with you to-night, Uncle Felix, if you don't mind,” Elias said.
“Of course, I don't mind,” the rabbi returned kindly, lowering his paper. “What did you want to say?”
“Something that will surprise you, I suppose. I wanted to tell you that I am thinking of—of getting married.”
“Ah, indeed!” cried the rabbi, his face breaking into a smile. “Thinking of getting married! Well, I'm glad, right glad, to hear it. It's—you're twenty-seven, aren't you?—it's high time.”
“So it is,” Elias assented, conscious of a certain dismal humor in the situation.
There befell a silence, during which the rabbi, still with a smile upon his lips, seemed to be revolving the intelligence in his mind.
Pretty soon, “Yes, I admit, it does surprise me,” he continued, “for, to speak the truth, I had set you down for a pretty confirmed woman-hater. But, as I say, it's high time. Men wait too long nowadays about getting married. In half the weddings that I perform, the bridegrooms are fully thirty-five, and many of them are upwards of forty. Now, in my time, it was different. We used to recognize marriage as a religious obligation—which it is, in fact—and to look askance at a man who was still single at five-and-twenty. I myself was married at twenty-three.”
He paused for a moment, then asked, “Well, have you begun to look around?”
“To look around?” queried Elias, puzzled.
“Exactly—for a young lady,” explained the rabbi.
“Oh! Why, no. I found her without looking around.”
“Found her? You mean, then, that you have actually made a choice?”
“Why, of course. What did you suppose?”
“Oh, I thought may be you were merely considering the subject abstractly—on general principles—and had decided that the time had come. But you say that you have already chosen the lady. Well, I declare, how close-mouthed you have kept!—I suppose now,” he added, “you want me to open negotiations, eh?”
“Negotiations? How do you mean?”
“Why, with her parents, of course. Ask for her hand—declare your sentiments.”
“Oh, no; that isn't necessary.”
“No? How so?”
“Why, I've done all that for myself. I have proposed, and—and been accepted.”
“You have! You don't say so! Oh, you sly, secretive rascal! Well, I congratulate you. You ought to have stuck to the good, old-fashioned custom, and had me make the first advances; but I congratulate you, all the same. What's her name? Who is she? One of our congregation? Tell me all about her.”
The rabbi sat forward in his chair, curiosity incarnate. His pale skin had become slightly flushed. His eyes, beaming over the gold bows of his spectacles, were fixed intently upon his nephew's face.
Elias had not enjoyed this beating about the bush; but he had lacked both the courage and the tact to put an end to it. Now, however, when its end had arrived naturally, in the course of circumstances, he wished that it might have been indefinitely prolonged; so great, so unreasonable, was the dread he felt.
“Her name,” he began—he looked hard at the floor; and his voice was a trifle unsteady—“she's a young American lady; and her name is Redwood—Miss Christine Redwood.”
For an instant the rabbi's appearance did not change. It no doubt needed that instant for his mind to appreciate the purport of what his ears had heard. But all at once, the flush across his forehead first deepened to a vivid crimson, and then faded quite away, leaving the skin waxen white, with the blue veins distended upon it. A dart of light, like an electric spark, shot from his eyes, which then filled with an opaque, smoky darkness. His lips twitched a little; his fingers clenched convulsively. He started backward a few inches into his chair. His attitude was that of a man whose faculties have been scattered and confounded by a sudden, tremendous blow.
But this attitude the rabbi retained for scarcely the time it takes to draw a breath. Almost at once he seemed to recover himself. His fingers relaxed. His face regained its ordinary composure. In a low voice, with not a trace of perturbation, coldly, even indifferently:
“A young American lady? Miss Christine—? Be kind enough to repeat the name,” he said.
Elias, continuing to stare hard at the floor, repeated it: “Redwood—Miss Christine Redwood.”
Then, with bowed head and trembling heart, he waited for the outbreak which, he supposed, of course, would come. He stared at the floor—taking vague note of the patch of carpet at his feet, remarking how threadbare it was worn, how faded its colors were, remarking even how, at a certain point, a bent pin stuck upward from it—stared at the floor, and waited. But the rabbi spoke no word. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, ticked, ticked; suddenly, from its interior, sounded a quick whir of machinery, and then a single clear stroke of its bell—half-after midnight. Next instant the clock of St. George's church, across the park, responded with a deep, reverberating boom-Elias waited; and still the rabbi did not speak. Such silence was incomprehensible, exasperating, ominous. All the more violent, for this delay, would the storm be, when it broke, Elias thought. He did not dare to look the rabbi squarely in the face, to meet his eye; but he stole a glance, swift enough to escape arrest, and yet deliberate enough to see that the rabbi was still seated, just as before, in his chair; and then he returned to his contemplation of the carpet. Yes, the silence was exasperating, even unbearable. Why did he not say his say, scold, plead, exhort, curse, empty the phials of his wrath, and have done with it? Elias waited till his over-taxed nerves could endure the suspense no longer; when, teeth gritted, tone defiant, “Redwood,” he repeated for a third time. “Don't you hear?”
The rabbi vouchsafed no syllable in reply; but his lips curled in a slight, enigmatic smile.
Again Elias found himself constrained to wait. He waited till the silence had again grown insupportable. At length, springing to his feet, “For God's sake,” he cried, “why—why don't you speak?”
“Speak?” echoed the rabbi, with the same inscrutable smile, and a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. “What is there to say?”
“Say—say any thing. I don't care what you say,” Elias cried passionately. “Only, this silence—if you want to drive me crazy, keep it up. It makes me feel as if—as if my head would burst open.” He crushed his hands hard against his temples. “Go on. Speak. Curse me. Any thing. Only, don't sit there that way, as though you had been struck dumb.”
“Come, come, Elias! Stop your bellowing. Stop storming about like that. Sit down—there, where you were before. Be quiet. Be rational. Then, if you wish, we can talk.”
Elias dropped into his chair.
“I'm quiet. I'm rational,” he groaned. “Go ahead.”
“Well, really,” the rabbi submitted. “I don't see that there is much to be said.”
“Not much to be said! For heaven's sake! Haven't you heard? Haven't you understood? Haven't I told you that I am going to marry a Christian?”
“There's no need of screaming at me, Elias. Yes. I have understood. When—when was it your intention that this marriage should take place?”
“To-morrow. It takes place to-morrow evening at half past eight o'clock.”
“Indeed? So soon? Why have you waited so long about telling me? Or, having waited so long, why did you tell me at all?”
“I don't know. Many reasons. I thought—”
“Oh, well, it doesn't matter. It makes no difference,” the rabbi interrupted, and again relapsed into silence.
“Well?” ventured Elias, interrogatively.
“Well, what?” returned the rabbi.
“Well, why don't you go on? Finish what you've got to say?”
“I don't know that I have any thing more to say.”
“Any thingmore!You haven't said any thing at all, as yet.”
“Well, then, I don't know that I have any thing at all to say.”
“Good God!” Elias broke out furiously. “You—you'll—what is the matter with you, any how? I tell you that I am going to marry a Christian; and you—you sit there—like—like I don't know what—and answer that you have nothing to say about it!”
“Precisely; because, indeed, Ihavenothing to say about it—except this, that the marriage will never take place. That's all.”
“Never take place! I give it up. What in reason's name do you mean?”
“I mean what I say.”
“That we—she and I—are—are not going to get married, after all?”
“Yes.”
“But haven't I told you that our marriage comes off to-morrow night?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Well, you have told me so; but you are mistaken.”
“Mistaken! I think you must have gone mad.”
“Not in the least. The marriage won't come off to-morrow night, nor any other night.”
“I should like to know what's to prevent it.”
“It will be prevented.”
“I don't just see how.”
“Wait, and youshallsee.”
“By whom? By you, for example? If so, by what means?”
“Oh, no; not by me.”
“By whom, then?”
Elias put this question, smiling defiantly.
For a moment there was a deep stillness in the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Then the rabbi rose to his feet, advanced close to Elias, and stood facing him. With an expression of immense dignity upon his white, delicately modeled features, quietly, gravely, in a tone of serene conviction: “Elias,” he said, “by the Lord our God, the God of Israel.”
Elias's smile died out. He recoiled with a start into his chair; and for an instant all the blood left his lips. But then, with an attempt at lightness which was somehow very unbecoming, “Oh, so? You mean, I suppose, that the Lord will strike me dead—or afflict me with a paralysis—or something of that kind—yes?”
Quite unscathed by his nephew's irony, slowly, seriously, without raising his voice, “I mean, Elias,” the rabbi pursued, “that you had better beware. You expected me—when, at midnight, you burst in here, pale with guilt, and made the announcement that within twenty-four hours you were going to transgress all the laws of our religion, by marrying a woman who is not of our race or faith—you expected me—didn't you?—to reason with you, to picture to you the awful consequences that must follow upon such a sin, to plead with you in the name of your dead father and mother, to entreat you, to endeavor in every possible way to get you to give up your insane, suicidal idea. You expected me, as you have said, to curse you; or, that failing, to fall upon my knees, and beseech you.—Well, you see—and, to judge from your actions, you see with some surprise, even with some disappointment—that I do none of these things, that I do nothing of the kind. Why? Because, as I have told you, the marriage you speak of will never take place. There is not a single chance of its taking place—not any more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning. Neither I, nor any man, need raise a finger, need speak a word. The Lord God of Israel, Elias Bacharach, has His eye upon you. He will prevent this marriage from taking place. And all I say to you is—what I said at the beginning—look out! Beware!”
The rabbi had spoken very earnestly, but very quietly, and without a touch of excitement. Having concluded, he went back to his chair, took off his spectacles, wiped their lenses with his handkerchief, and unconcernedly replaced them upon the bridge of his nose.
Elias had sat still, nervously twitching his foot, and allowing his eyes to roam vacantly about the room. Now, for a moment, he kept his peace. Then, “You don't state the grounds for this singular and no doubt comforting belief, nor do you specify the methods by which the Lord is to accomplish the result. I should like to know, if it is the some to you, just what to expect. Am I, as I suggested, to be incapacitated bodily? By paralysis? By death? Or what?”
“I don't choose to state the grounds of my belief, Elias, nor to specify in any respect, nor, indeed, to discuss the question at all with you—especially when you see fit to adopt that insolent and blasphemous tone of voice. I will simply repeat—what I hope you will reflect upon, and take to heart—that you had best beware. Now I wish to be left alone. I shall see you again in the morning. Good-night.”
Elias rose.
“Well, I'm glad you take the matter so easily, Uncle Felix; and since you practically put me out, good-night.”
AS he had done upon a former and slightly similar occasion, and as he was wont to do whenever his spirits were in any degree perturbed, Elias climbed up-stairs to his studio, and sat down at the window. All day long the sun had shone bright and hot; but ever since dusk the sky had been clouding over; and now, plainly, a thunder-storm was near at hand. The atmosphere was thick, still, tepid. With increasing frequency, shafts of jagged lightning tore their way through the clouds, and were followed by long, sullen, distant rumblings, as of suppressed fury somewhere. Suddenly a breeze sprang up, swelling quickly into a strong wind. The air filled with dust. The branches of the trees, over in the park, groaned aloud; and from here and there came the noise of banging shutters, and of loose things generally being knocked about. The flames in the street-lamps below flared violently. Some of them went out. Big drops of lukewarm water began to fall, splashing audibly where they struck. All at once, a blinding flash, a deafening peal of thunder, from right overhead; and the rain came pouring down in torrents.
Now, of course, Elias Bacharach—he in whose soul the man had long since worsted the Jew, and reason abolished superstition—of course, Elias knew that what his uncle had said about the God of Israel interposing to prevent his marriage, was the sheerest sort of rubbish. That the old gentleman had spoken in good faith—that he really believed in the validity of his own prophecies, and had not uttered them merely with a view to working upon his hearer's imagination, and exciting his fears—Elias could not doubt; for to resort to such strategy was not, he conceived, in the character of the artless and simple-minded rabbi. But that very good faith only proved him to be the victim of a most preposterous delusion. For himself, Elias had no misgivings. As confident as a mortal can be of any future event, in this world of uncertainties, so confident was he that the morrow evening would make of him and Christine man and wife. Of course, there was always the unforeseen to be allowed for; accidents were always possible. But if he had none but supermundane obstacles to dread, then he might regard his marriage as already an accomplished fact. And, notwithstanding, Elias felt very much disturbed—very much annoyed, mystified, and ill-at-ease. All that the rabbi had said was stuff and nonsense, at absolute, obvious variance with science, with simple common sense—fit material for laughter, for a certain contemptuous pity; but, nevertheless, every time that Elias recalled justwhatthe rabbi had said, and the rabbi's manner of saying it, he felt a sharp, inward pang, very like terror; he had to catch a quick, short breath; and he confessed to himself that he would give a good deal to be enabled to get inside the rabbi's consciousness, and learn the grounds on which he based his extraordinary, but apparently secure, conviction, and find out exactly what form of divine interference he anticipated. Despite his clear perception of the rabbi's sophistry, he caught himself furtively querying: “Can there be any thing in it?” Despite his assurance that all would go well, he caught himself furtively wishing that all was well over, and his marriage-certificate signed and sealed. “There is not a single chance of its taking place—not any more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.” That phrase stuck like a thorn in his mind, and produced a considerable irritation.
This state of things, besides being intrinsically unpleasant, was offensive to Elias's self-esteem. That he, at his age, in his stage of enlightenment, should be unsettled by the senseless menaces of a superstitious old bigot! Like a child frightened by its nurse's bugaboo. And yet, there it was again, the sharp, internal twinge, so like the sting of terror; and there again he fell to speculating upon what the causes of the old man's singular belief could be.
He sat at his window, peered out into the night, and tried to think of something else. He tried to think of Christine, tried to call up her image, tried to live over again the evening that he had passed with her, tried to picture to himself the happiness that the coming day held in store. No use. “There is no more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.” The rabbi's voice kept ringing in his ears, like a hateful tune that one has heard, and can't get rid of. The painful emotions it awoke, kept rankling in his bosom, and crowded out all the sweeter ones that sought to enter. He could fix his mind permanently upon no subject but the rabbi's irrational predictions. He tried to stir up a little interest in the thunder-storm. There it was, raging furiously just outside his open window; rain dashing earthward like a loosened flood; lightning-flash following lightning-flash, and thunderclap thunder-clap, in rapid, tumultuous, terrifying succession; enough, one would fancy, to arrest and to appall the attention of any conscious being, human or even brute, within the reach of sight or sound; but Elias's attention it held for a moment only. Then his mind sped back to the subject which he was most anxious to avoid. “Not a single chance—not any more chance than there is of the sun's failing to rise!”
The clock of St. George's Church struck two. What was the rabbi doing now? Elias wondered. Had he gone to bed? Or was he, perhaps, still down stairs in his study?—praying, perhaps, that the Lord would in no wise dishonor His servant's pledges. At this notion, Elias involuntarily ground his teeth. “Praying for mischief!” he thought. “And what—what if, after all, there should be some efficacy in that sort of prayer!”—He remembered and rejoiced that he had told the rabbi nothing further about Christine than her name—neither her father's name, nor her place of abode. Otherwise, the rabbi might have deemed it his duty to constitute himself heaven's instrument, and, by intimidating the bride, have caused pain and trouble, if not, temporarily at least, have prevented the wedding from proceeding. In his fanaticism, what might he not be capable of doing?
The rain, beating upon the window-sill, spattered inward, wetting Elias's clothing. When, by and by, he became aware that his coat-sleeve had got soaked through, he left his seat, closed the window, and lighted the gas.
His studio—in anticipation of his coming trip to Europe, and subsequent change of residence—he had pretty well dismantled, having packed away in dark closets and camphor-chests, the most part of such goods and chattels as dust or moth can corrupt. Little, indeed, was left out, save three or four chairs, a life-size lay-figure stripped of its draperies, an easel or two, and a few time-blackened plaster casts fastened to the wall. But over in one corner there was heaped up an assortment of miscellaneous odds and ends, the accumulation of half a dozen years, which, now, as his eye noted it, Elias remembered, he had meant to overhaul, with a view to laying aside whatever he should think worth keeping, and consigning the rest to the rag-and-bottle man. In the hurry and excitement of the past few days, however, he had forgotten all about it.
For a little while Elias stood still, blinking in the new-made gas-light, and gazing rather vacantly at this old lumber-pile. Then, suddenly, a gleam as of inspiration brightening his features, “What time,” he asked himself, “could be better than the present? If I go to bed, I shall only toss about, without sleeping; whereas, if I do this, it will be an improvement upon sitting idle, and brooding, any how.”
With which, straightway, he whipped off his coat, drew up a chair, and, not incurious as to what long-lost objects he might possibly unearth, started upon the forgotten task.
Paint-rags, besmeared with a thousand colors; torn canvases, bearing half-finished, half-begun, or half-obliterated studies; paint-tubes, half-emptied, in which the remaining paint had congealed, or “fatted”; worn-out brushes, broken palettes, shattered maul-sticks, fragments of old casts and ornaments in plaster or terra-cotta; letters without envelopes, envelopes without letters; newspapers, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, magazines, circulars, tailor's bills, cracked bottles, cigarette-stumps, cast-off gloves, pocket handkerchiefs, cravats; all sheeted over with fine, black dust, and all exhaling a musty, oily odor; these were the elements that predominated, and most of these Elias tossed pell-mell to the middle of the floor, for the maid to carry away in the morning. To divert one's thoughts from some persistent and exasperating topic, it is a commonplace, there is nothing like busying one's fingers; manual exercise being the surest means to the end of mental rest. Pretty soon Elias's late encounter with his uncle had sunken out of mind—only occasionally, for brief intervals, to struggle up, and agitate the surface—and agreeably interested in his present occupation, he was whistling softly to himself, indifferent alike to the perspiration that bathed his forehead, to the dust that penetrated his nostrils, and to the dirt that took lodgment upon his hands.
Meanwhile, the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the rain had settled into a steady drizzle.
Elias's first notable find was a pretty little gold lead-pencil, one, he recognized, that had been sent him, as a present, on his twenty-first birthday, by an aunt of his—his father's only sister—who lived in New Orleans, and whom he had never seen. It had got lost, in a most inexplicable manner, very-soon after its reception; and, conscience-smitten, Elias now recollected how he had suspected, to the degree of moral certainty, a poor devil of an Italian model of having stolen it. Well, here it was, intact; and so, poor Archimede had been innocent, after all.
Holding it in his hand, and examining it a little, before putting it into his pocket, and going on with his work, Elias felt himself suddenly carried backward, for an instant, to the period with which it was associated. Talismanic pencil, that had power to raise the dead, and annihilate the intervening years! There it lay, in shape, weight, color, in length, breadth, thickness, in all its attributes and dimensions, precisely the same as on that far-off birthday morning, when his mother, to whose care his aunt had entrusted it, delivered it to him, neatly boxed up in pasteboard, wrapped in tissue-paper, and sealed with red sealing-wax. How well he remembered! It might have been last week. It might almost have been yesterday. And yet, how much, indeed how much, had happened since. At the breakfast-table, she had said, “Here, Elias, here is something your Aunt Rachel has sent you—something that you will prize especially, because she is not at all rich, and has doubtless had to pinch and deny herself, in order to buy it.” Then she offered him the parcel, which he, touched, surprised, expectant, took and opened, finding within this same little pencil; and not it only, but wound around it, a bit of writing in his Aunt Rachel's hand—the traditional Hebrewbensch: “May the Lord make you to be great, like Ephraim and Manasseh!” And immediately, of course, in his boyish enthusiasm, he had set himself down, and put the pencil to its virgin use, by inditing with it a glowing note of thanks—about the only use he ever had put it to, for very soon afterward it disappeared. And then, the rest, the rest of that wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten day! The pride and the triumph of it! The masterpiece of a dinner that his mother had prepared. The check for a dazzling sum of money, that he had found adroitly folded in with his napkin! The toothsome nut-cake, with its twenty-one symbolic candles! The wine that had been drunken to his health! The speech that the rabbi had made, standing up at the head of the table, and haranguing away as though he had had an audience of a thousand, instead of only Elias and his mother—the mother, however, listening amid tears and smiles, and applauding and nodding her head, as the splendid achievements which the future was to behold at the hands of her son, were prophetically described. The watch the rabbi had given him!—the same that was ticking in his waistcoat-pocket at this very instant. And the prayer that the rabbi had chanted! And how Elias himself, with swelling heart, had joined in the invocation: “Holy, holy Lord, Thou Who art one God!” and had vowed silently that, by the Lord's help, hewould“strive to become good in the sight of men, and a pride unto his people.” How well he remembered, thanks to this little pencil, precisely the same now as then, quite unchanged. But oh, what a changed Elias, he in whose palm it lay! How all the conditions of his life, and all his interests and purposes in life, and all his convictions about life, had changed since then! How little he had dreamed in those days of what was coming! Strange, that he should have had no premonition of it. Strange, that he should have gone on in peace and contentment, treading his level path, forward, forward, unsuspectingly, and never have caught a glimpse, never have got an inkling, of what was waiting for him, of what each step was bringing him so much the nearer to, of what presently was to burst upon him in a glory like that of heaven, and utterly revolutionize himself and all his world. Strange, indeed! And yet, in those old, simple, tranquil days, he had been happy, very happy, in a simple, tranquil way; and now, as he looked back at them, they shone suffused in a rose-colored enchantment; and he could feel his heart reach out toward them, with a strong longing affection, which, though melancholy, was not unmixed with sweetness.
Deep, engrossing, and of long duration, was the train of associations that had thus been started. The church clock across the park rang the half hour, before Elias finally roused himself, and renewed his attack upon the lumber heap.
For a good while he struck nothing more of interest—nothing that he cared to save, or even to look at twice. But by and by he fished out a sketch-book, which, to judge from the dilapidated state of its binding, must have been pretty old, and over which he paused, beating it against the floor, to rid it of some of its dust, and then opening it, to inspect its contents. On the fly-leaf he found his initials, “E. B.,” and a date, “January, 1876.” Listlessly turning the pages, he was somewhat amused, and a good deal ashamed, to perceive how poor and crude the drawings were—heads, for the most part, with only here and there a full-length figure; and he congratulated himself not a little that he had thus chanced to run across it, because now he could destroy it, and so make sure that nobody else should ever have the satisfaction of seeing what wretched stuff he had once been capable of perpetrating. He supposed that the sketches had nearly all been intended as portraits, but in the main he could not place them—could not remember the persons who had served as models. One face kept repeating itself; there were as many as a dozen separate studies of it; the face of a young man, aged, presumably, nineteen or twenty years; strangely familiar; the face of some one, beyond doubt, whom he must have known intimately; and yet, knitting his brows, and exerting his memory to the utmost, he was quite unable to recall the original. Odd; and intensely annoying, as baffled memory is apt to be; until, of a sudden, with a thrill of recognition that was by no means agreeable, he identified it as himself. A few pages further along, again with a sudden thrill, but this time with a far stronger and deeper one, he came upon a portrait of his mother. It was badly drawn, finical, over-elaborated; the draperies rigid as iron; the flesh wooden; the pose—she was seated, reading—awkward, and anatomically impossible; and yet, spite of all, it was an excellent, even a startling, likeness; and-happening upon it in this unexpected manner, Elias felt a not unnatural heart-leap and quickening of the pulse. When, or under what circumstances, he had made it, he could not think. He bent forward in his chair, gazed intently at it, and tried hard to recollect. If the date on the fly-leaf was trustworthy, it must, of course, have been after the first of January, 1876; but in his own memory, ransack it as he might, he could find no record; This struck him as exceedingly singular; because, he believed, he had been careful to preserve all the sketches of his mother that he had ever taken, even the most primitive and rudimentary; and how this one could not only have got mislaid, but entirely have escaped his mind, besides, he was at a complete loss to understand. So bending forward, and gazing intently at it, he tried his best to recollect.
Of what now befell, or seemed to befall, I shall give an account written some two years later by Elias himself, in a letter to Christine:
“Gradually—as is apt to happen, if you fix your eyes for any length of time upon a single spot in some small object—gradually the picture blurred, becoming simply a formless smudge upon the white surface of the paper; a lapse on the part of my eyesight, which I, absorbed in the effort I was making to remember, did not attempt to correct, but which in due time, as was natural, corrected itself; and again the picture stood out as distinct as before. Now, however, at once, every other thought and every other feeling were swept away, clean out of my head, by a sensation—I shall not be able to define it; you will easily conceive it; a sensation half of amazement, half of terror; for, without having changed in size, the face seemed to have changed totally in quality; it seemed to have ceased to be a face drawn with black lead upon paper, and to have become a face in veritable flesh and blood. The hair had apparently become hair. There was color in the cheeks. And the eyes were liquid, living eyes. They—the eyes—were what most affected me. Large, black, mournful, as her eyes had been in life, they looked into my eyes with an expression—I can't describe it. It was what you would call an expression of intense agony, and of appeal; as though it were an agony of my causing, and one that she appealed to me to relieve. The lips—bluish white, as her lips were, toward the end of her life—the lips seemed to move, and kept moving, as if trying to speak, but unable to; until at lastthey succeeded; and I could have vowed that I heard, in her own recognizable voice, just a little above a whisper, these words: 'There is no more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun's failing to rise. Beware!'—the words that my uncle had spoken down stairs. I was so much startled, so much terrified, that I jumped up from my chair. Thereat, instantly, the illusion ended. Again it was only a crude pencil drawing upon the page of my sketch-book. I can't tell how long it had lasted. Very likely not longer than two or three seconds, though it seemed at least as many minutes. I don't think I had breathed once. I don't think my heart had given a single beat. It had literally paralyzed me with fear.
“But now that it was over, I fell back upon my chair, and my heart began to pound like a hammer against my side; and I sat there, panting and perspiring, like a man exhausted by some tremendous physical exertion. I felt sick and dizzy, and had a racking headache.—Of course, it was a mere optical delusion; a mere hallucination; not an actual, objective phenomenon, not aghost; a mere projection from my own imagination. A long time afterward I talked with a physician about it. The substance of what he said was this: Consider the steadily increasing excitement under which my mind had been laboring for many days, in view of our approaching marriage; consider the interview that I had had with my uncle, only an hour or two earlier, and the high pitch of agitation to which it had wrought me up; consider that it was long past my customary bedtime, and that my brain was irritated by lack of sleep, for I had not slept much of any the night before; consider that my mother was just then the one person uppermost in my thoughts, having been vividly recalled to me first by the pencil I had found, and then by the drawing that I was looking at; consider finally that my bodily posture—bending over till my chest nearly touched my knees—was such as to keep the blood pent up in my head; and the occurrence becomes very easily explicable, especially so, as such hallucinations, when people are excited, are not uncommon experiences. This is what the medical man said. It is undoubtedly true; and something like it I had wit enough to tell myself immediately, at the time. But telling did no good. It is one thing to satisfy your judgment; another to tranquilize your feelings and hush your imagination.Theychoose to accept the direct testimony of your eyes and ears, rather than the deductions of your common sense.
“I knew, as I have said, that my nerves had simply played me a trick; but that knowledge did not prevent me from passing a most wretched, uncomfortable night—the rest of that night, till day-break. The memory of the thing persisted in haunting me, in spite of the efforts I made to forget it. Strive as I might, I could not shake off the fear, the uneasiness, that it had inspired. Thinking of it, even at this distance, I still wince a little. It produced a very deep impression, and must have been, I believe, in large part accountable for, as it was of a piece with, what happened next day—or, rather, the evening of the same day, for it was now early morning.”
ELIAS speaks of “day-break”; but it can not accurately be said that the day broke at all that morning. The blackness of the night slowly faded into a dismal, lifeless drab. It rained. The wind blew from the north-east. Under it, the branches of the trees, across in the park, swayed strenuously to and fro. The sparrows, with sadly bedraggled plumage, huddled together upon the window-sills, and raised their voices in noisy disputation, as if thereby seeking to screw their courage up, and not mind the%sorry weather. The milkman's wagon came rattling down the street. The milkman wore a rubber overcoat. His war-whoop sounded less spirited, less defiant, than its wont.
By and by Elias looked at his watch. It was getting along toward seven o'clock. Just then somebody rapped upon his studio door. Elias's nerves must indeed have been in a bad way. He started, paled, trembled, recovered himself, and called out, “Come in.”
It was the rabbi.
“Good morning, Elias,” the rabbi said.
“Good morning,” responded Elias, with a none too hospitable inflection.
“So, you haven't been abed? You've been sitting up all night?” the rabbi questioned.
“How do you know that?” was Elias's counter-question.
“I looked for you in your bedroom, and saw that your bed had not been slept in.”
“Oh.”
After a pause, “What have you been doing, up alone all night?” the rabbi asked.
“Lots of things. A man on the eve of his marriage has plenty to do.”
The rabbi stood still for a little while, glancing around the room. Then he sat down. At which, Elias rose.
“If you'll excuse me,” he said, “I'll go down stairs. I haven't taken my bath yet.”
“Have you said your prayers yet?” inquired the rabbi.
But Elias was already beyond ear-shot in the hall.
When, perhaps a quarter hour later, Elias, emerging from his bath, entered his bedroom, he discovered the rabbi established there at the window.
Wheeling about, and facing his nephew, “You didn't answer my question,” the rabbi said.
“What question?”
“I asked whether you had said your prayers this morning.”
“Oh.”
“Well, have you?”
“No.”
“Perhaps lately you have got out of the habit of saying your prayers—yes?”
Elias made no reply. He appeared not to have heard. He was busy fastening the buttons into a shirt-bosom.
“I'll wait till you've finished dressing,” said the rabbi.
He went to the window, and stood looking out.
The rabbi's presence troubled Elias exceedingly. But, he thought, considering every thing, the least he could do would be to put up with it as graciously as possible and not grumble. “What do you want with me, any how?” it was his impulse to demand. But he held his tongue, and proceeded with his toilet.
When at last he had tied his cravat and buttoned his coat, “Are you ready now to come down stairs with me?” the rabbi began.
“What for?”
“Several things. Are you ready? Will you come?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” Elias answered, and followed the old man from the room.
To himself: “I don't care what he does or says. It may be annoying, but it can't do any serious harm. To-day is the last day; and I'll let him him have his own way in every thing, no matter how absurd and exasperating it may be. I'll keep my temper and treat him respectfully, no matter how hard he may try me.”
They had reached the front hall of the house. The rabbi put his hand upon the knob of the front parlor door.
“Oh,” Elias exclaimed, drawing back, “are you going in there?”
“Yes.”
Calling to mind his resolution, Elias gulped down his unwillingness, and said, “Oh, well; all right.” But it cost him an effort to do so.
Even during his mother's life-time, the front parlor had been but very seldom used. Since her death, it had not been used at all. Indeed, since the day of her funeral, now nearly three years gone by, Elias had not crossed its threshold. The blinds and windows were kept permanently closed, save when, once a week, the servants entered to sweep and dust.
Now the rabbi pushed open the door, and, stepping aside, signalled Elias to pass in. Elias obeyed. The rabbi followed.
It was dark inside. Only a few pallid rays of daylight leaked through at the edges of the curtains. The air was cold and at the same time oppressive—laden with that stuffy, musty odor, which always pervades an uninhabited, shut-up room. At first, Elias could scarcely see an arm's-length before his face; but, as his eyesight gradually accustomed itself to the obscurity, he was able to make out the forms of the furniture, and to discern upon the walls sundry large black patches which he knew to be pictures.
The rabbi struck a match.
“Take it,” he said to Elias, “and light the gas; I'm not tall enough.”
Elias did as he was bidden.
The gas-burner, from disuse, had got clogged with dust. It shot a long, slim tongue of flame up into the air, and gave off a shrill, continuous whistle. Every now and then the flame had a convulsion, the whistle dropped a note or two; then both returned to their original conditions.
For a New York dwelling-house, it was a spacious room, this parlor; say, in width twenty feet, by forty in depth. The chairs and sofas, scrupulously wrapped in linen, were ranged along the walls. Over the carpet, completely covering it, stretched a broad sheet of grayish crash. The piano wore a rubber jacket, and had its legs swathed in newspapers. The books in the bookcases—books of the decorative, rather than of the readable order, for the most part—were locked up behind glass doors. The tall mirror, between the windows, shone through a veil of pink mosquito-netting. Supplies of the same material had been stretched across all the pictures.
In front of one of these pictures—that which hung above the mantel-piece—the rabbi now paused, and, raising his arm, pointed to it, in silence.
It was the portrait of a gentleman, full length, life-size, done in oils. The gentleman rested one hand upon a pile of ponderous, calf-bound volumes—law-books, or medical works, they looked like—that towered aloft from the floor. In his other hand, he held an unrolled scroll of parchment, upon which big black Hebrew characters were inscribed. Of artistic value the picture had little, or none at all; but it had another sort of value: it was a portrait of Elias's father.
The rabbi pointed to it in silence. Elias thought the rabbi's proceeding a little theatrical; but he made no comment.
By and by the rabbi lowered his arm, and faced about. Having done which, he raised his other arm, and this time brought his index finger to bear upon a portrait of Elias's mother.
Theatrical, certainly; disagreeably so, too; Elias thought.
At this point there befell an interruption which had somewhat the effect of an anti-climax. The breakfast-bell rang.
“Well,” said the rabbi, “let's go to breakfast.”
Elias turned off the gas. They left the parlor, and went down stairs to the dining-room.
There, having taken their places at the table, the rabbi extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, and with it covered his head. Elias did likewise. Whereupon the rabbi chanted the usual grace before meat. At its conclusion, both he and Elias replaced their handkerchiefs in their pockets, and the maid-servant brought the coffee.
For a while neither nephew nor uncle spoke.
At last, “What are you thinking about, Elias?” the rabbi asked.
“I was thinking, if you wish to know,” Elias answered, “of my great happiness—of the fact that to-day the lady whom I love is to become my wife.”
“Ah, so? It doesn't seem to improve your appetite,” returned the rabbi. “You're not eating especially well.”
He made Elias the object of a curious, meditative glance; then pursued: “Don't misunderstand me, Elias. It isn't at all my aim to dissuade you from this marriage. That, as I told you last night, would be a work of supererogation. But Ishouldlike to ask you just a single question. Suppose your mother were still alive, would you entertain for an instant the idea of marrying a Christian?”
“I don't know?”
“You don't know?”
“Well, probably not.”
“Good. That is what I thought. And now, let me ask you one question more. Is it your opinion that, simply because your mother has died, you are absolved from all obligations toward her, and are at liberty to act in a way, which, if she were still with us, it would break her heart to have you act in? Is that your opinion?”
Elias did not reply. He colored up, however, and bit his lip.
The rabbi waited a moment, then queried, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“You don't answer.”
“I don't mean to answer. It isn't a fair question,” said Elias.
The rabbi gave a short, contemptuous laugh.
Again for a while neither of them spoke. Elias was uncomfortably conscious that the rabbi's eyes were fixed upon his face. He stood it as long as he could. Then, abruptly, he got up.
“Please excuse me,” he said, “I have something to do up-stairs.”
With which he left the room.
He went to his studio and locked the door behind him. He had told the rabbi that he had something to do. But the truth was that he had nothing to do, except to kill time as best he could until the hour should arrive for him to start for Sixty-third Street. He had arranged not to call upon Christine at all that day. He thought it would be more considerate to leave her alone with her father. Now, the day stretched out like an eternity before his imagination. Would it ever wear away?
It occurred to him that it might not be a bad plan to get some sleep, if he could; so he retired to his bedroom, and threw himself all dressed upon his bed.
Pretty soon he heard a rap upon the door.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“I,” the rabbi's voice responded. .
“He'll end by driving me mad,” thought Elias. “What do you want?” he asked aloud.
“I want to see you.”
“Well, I'm busy.”
“I shan't interfere with your business.”
“I'm going to sleep.”
“I shan't prevent you from sleeping.”
Elias said nothing further. The rabbi came in. “I only wanted to sit with you. It is better that I should be on hand,” explained the rabbi, and sat down near the window.
Elias closed his eyes and tried hard to sleep. But he could not sleep. It is doubtful whether, in view of his approaching wedding, he could have slept, under the most soothing circumstances. Under the actual circumstances, it was like trying to sleep while some one is sticking pins into you. Elias strove to be philosophical. “Why should I allow his mere presence to irritate me as it does?” he asked himself. Whatever the correct answer to this inquiry may have been, the fact remained that the rabbi's mere presence did irritate him to an excessive degree. He bore it for a few minutes silently. At length, flinging his philosophy overboard, he jumped up from his bed, and announced vehemently, “Well, I'm going out.”
“Ah,” said the rabbi, quietly, “I'll go with you.”
“Thanks,” replied Elias, “but I prefer to go alone.”
“I'm sorry,” said the rabbi; “but it is my duty.”
“What's your duty?”
“It is my duty not to let you leave my sight today.”
At this Elias lost his self-control.
“In heaven's name,” he blurted out, “do—do you mean to say that you're going to stick to me like this all day?”
“I should fail in my duty toward you, if I did not.”
“Well then, do you—do you know what you'll do?” cried Elias, in a loud, infuriated voice.
“No; what?” questioned the rabbi, composedly.
“Good God! You—you'll drive me out of my senses. You make me feel as though my head would split open. You—you—” His voice choked in his throat. His face had become burning red.
“Look out,” said the rabbi. “You'll burst a blood-vessel, if you carry on like that.”
“Well, then, for mercy's sake, leave me alone. Go down stairs about your business. Leave me here to attend to mine.”
The rabbi did not speak. He made no move to obey.
“Don't you hear?” Elias cried.
“Yes.”
“Well, why don't you go?”
“I have told you. It is my duty to stay.”
“God help me, if you weren't an old man, and my uncle, I—I'd—” Elias faltered. His clenched fists completed the sentence.
“Put me out? But Iaman old man, and your uncle; and so you won't, eh?” rejoined the rabbi, with maddening coolness.
“You must forgive me,” said Elias, recovering a little his self-possession. “I ought not to have threatened you. I didn't mean to. But you don't know how you make me suffer. You don't know what torture it is.”
“Oh, that's all right. You needn't apologize,” the rabbi said.
“But what I ask,” Elias went on, “I ask as a kindness, please leave me alone.”
“That,” returned the rabbi, “is a request which I am compelled to deny.”
Elias stood still for an instant, as if undetermined what to do. He felt the blood rush angrily to his brain, and then sink away, leaving a violent ache behind it. “Well, I suppose I'll have to grin and bear it, then,” he said by and by, and dropped upon a chair.
After an interval of silence Elias began, with sufficient coolness, “Would you mind telling mewhyyou consider it your duty to remain with me all day?”
“It is my duty to be on hand, to be at your side, when the moment of your need shall arrive. It may be any moment now.”
“Of my need? I don't understand.”
“When the Lord manifests Himself,” the rabbi explained.
“Oh,” said Elias, and relapsed into silence. He added presently, “I'm going down stairs, to get a glass of water,” and rose.
“You'll come back?” questioned the rabbi, “Yes, I suppose so.”
But when he had reached the foot of the staircase, and saw his hat hanging from the rack near the vestibule door, a temptation presented itself which was too strong for flesh and blood to resist. He caught his hat up, and put it upon his head, and dashed out into the street. It was raining. He had no umbrella. But he did not mind. He walked rapidly, without an objective point, without even noticing what direction he followed.