The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 42

Esther trembled from head to foot; she could not look at him. There was no mistaking his meaning now; her breast was a whirl of delicious pain. But in proportion as the happiness at her beck and call dazzled her, so she recoiled from it. Bent on self-effacement, attuned to the peace of despair, she almost resented the solicitation to be happy; she had suffered so much that she had grown to think suffering her natural element, out of which she could not breathe; she was almost in love with misery. And in so sad a world was there not something ign.o.ble about happiness, a selfish aloofness from the life of humanity? And, illogically blent with this questioning, and strengthening her recoil, was an obstinate conviction that there could never be happiness for her, a being of ignominious birth, without roots in life, futile, shadowy, out of relation to the tangible solitudes of ordinary existence. To offer her a warm fireside seemed to be to tempt her to be false to something--she knew not what.

Perhaps it was because the warm fireside was in the circle she had quitted, and her heart was yet bitter against it, finding no palliative even in the thought of a triumphant return. She did not belong to it; she was not of Raphael's world. But she felt grateful to the point of tears for his incomprehensible love for a plain, penniless, low-born girl. Surely it was only his chivalry. Other men had not found her attractive. Sidney had not; Levi only fancied himself in love. And yet beneath all her humility was a sense of being loved for the best in her, for the hidden qualities Raphael alone had the insight to divine. She could never think so meanly of herself or of humanity again. He had helped and strengthened her for her lonely future; the remembrance of him would always be an inspiration, and a reminder of the n.o.ble side of human nature.

All this contradictory medley of thought and feeling occupied but a few seconds of consciousness. She answered him without any perceptible pause, lightly enough.

'Really, Mr. Leon, I don't expect _you_ to say such things. Why should we be so conventional, you and I? How can your life be a blank, with Judaism yet to be saved?'

'Who am I to save Judaism? I want to save you,' he said pa.s.sionately.

'What a descent! For Heaven's sake stick to your earlier ambition!'

'No, the two are one to me. Somehow you seem to stand for Judaism, too. I cannot disentwine my hopes; I have come to conceive your life as an allegory of Judaism, the offspring of a great and tragic past with the germs of a rich blossoming, yet wasting with an inward canker. I have grown to think of its future as somehow bound up with yours. I want to see your eyes laughing, the shadows lifted from your brow; I want to see you face life courageously, not in pa.s.sionate revolt nor in pa.s.sionless despair, but in faith and hope and the joy that springs from them. I want you to seek peace, not in a despairing surrender of the intellect to the faith of childhood, but in that faith intellectually justified. And while I want to help you, and to fill your life with the suns.h.i.+ne it needs, I want you to help me, to inspire me when I falter, to complete my life, to make me happier than I had ever dreamed. Be my wife, Esther. Let me save you from yourself.'

'Let me save you from yourself, Raphael. Is it wise to wed with the grey spirit of the Ghetto that doubts itself?'

And like a spirit she glided from his grasp and disappeared in the crowd.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PRODIGAL SON

The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor and perturbation.

'What is the matter, my dear?' asked the Reb anxiously.

'Oh, father,' she cried, 'read this! Bad news of Levi.'

A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed countenance.

'Mention not his name!' he said harshly. 'He is dead.'

'He may be by now!' Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. 'You were right, Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now he is laid up with typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One of his friends writes to tell us. He must have caught it in one of those insanitary dressing-rooms we were reading about.'

Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret when the fatal telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never faded from her mind. She had an instant conviction that it was all over with poor Levi.

'My poor lamb!' cried the Rebbitzin, the coffee cup dropping from her nerveless hand.

'Simcha,' said Reb Shemuel sternly, 'calm thyself; we have no son to lose. The Holy One--blessed be He!--hath taken him from us. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'

Hannah rose. Her face was white and resolute. She moved towards the door.

'Whither goest thou?' inquired her father in German.

'I am going to my room, to put on my hat and jacket,' replied Hannah quietly.

'Whither goest thou?' repeated Reb Shemuel.

'To Stockbridge. Mother, you and I must go at once.'

The Reb sprang to his feet. His brow was dark; his eyes gleamed with anger and pain.

'Sit down and finish thy breakfast,' he said.

'How can I eat? Levi is dying,' said Hannah in low firm tones. 'Will you come, mother, or must I go alone?'

The Rebbitzin began to wring her hands and weep. Esther stole gently to Hannah's side and pressed the poor girl's hand. 'You and I will go,' her clasp said.

'Hannah!' said Reb Shemuel. 'What madness is this? Dost thou think thy mother will obey thee rather than her husband?'

'Levi is dying. It is our duty to go to him.' Hannah's gentle face was rigid. But there was exaltation rather than defiance in the eyes.

'It is not the duty of women,' said Reb Shemuel harshly. 'I will go to Stockbridge. If he dies (G.o.d have mercy upon his soul!), I will see that he is buried among his own people. Thou knowest women go not to funerals.' He reseated himself at the table, pus.h.i.+ng aside his scarcely touched meal, and began saying the grace. Dominated by his will and by old habit, the three trembling women remained in reverential silence.

'The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace,' concluded the old man in unfaltering accents. He rose from the table and strode to the door, stern and erect. 'Thou wilt remain here, Hannah, and thou, Simcha,' he said. In the pa.s.sage his shoulders relaxed their stiffness, so that the long snow-white beard drooped upon his breast. The three women looked at one another.

'Mother,' said Hannah, pa.s.sionately breaking the silence, 'are you going to stay here while Levi is dying in a strange town?'

'My husband wills it,' said the Rebbitzin, sobbing. 'Levi is a sinner in Israel. Thy father will not see him; he will not go to him till he is dead.'

'Oh yes, surely he will,' said Esther. 'But be comforted. Levi is young and strong. Let us hope he will pull through.'

'No, no,' moaned the Rebbitzin. 'He will die, and my husband will but read the psalms at his death-bed. He will not forgive him; he will not speak to him of his mother and sister.'

'Let _me_ go. I will give him your messages,' said Esther.

'No, no,' interrupted Hannah. 'What are you to him? Why should you risk infection for our sakes?'

'Go, Hannah, but secretly,' said the Rebbitzin in a wailing whisper.

'Let not thy father see thee till thou arrive; then he will not send thee back. Tell Levi that I--oh, my poor child, my poor lamb!' Sobs overpowered her speech.

'No, mother,' said Hannah quietly, 'thou and I shall go. I will tell father we are accompanying him.'

She left the room, while the Rebbitzin fell weeping and terrified into a chair, and Esther vainly endeavoured to soothe her. The Reb was changing his coat when Hannah knocked at the door, and called 'Father.'

'Speak not to me, Hannah,' answered the Reb roughly. 'It is useless.'

Then, as if repentant of his tone, he threw open the door, and pa.s.sed his great trembling hand lovingly over her hair. 'Thou art a good daughter,' he said tenderly. 'Forget that thou hast had a brother.'

'But how can I forget?' she answered him in his own idiom. 'Why should I forget? What hath he done?'

He ceased to smooth her hair--his voice grew sad and stern.

'He hath profaned the Name. He hath lived like a heathen; he dieth like a heathen now. His blasphemy was a byword in the congregation. I alone knew it not till last Pa.s.sover. He hath brought down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'

'Yes, father, I know,' said Hannah, more gently. 'But he is not all to blame!'

'Thou meanest that I am not guiltless; that I should have kept him at my side?' said the Reb, his voice faltering a little.