Part 9

“Ah, but, my son, of what avail is hesitation at such a moment?—when you are gazing into the eyes of the woman you love? With sails set and a strong wind behind it, can the ship hesitate to speed across the sea? Thrust into a bed of live coals, can the wood hesitate to kindle and burn? With the sun beating hot upon the earth above it, can the seed hesitate to sprout and send forth rootlets? How long then could I, with the light of your mother’s face shining upon my pathway, how long could I hesitate to say, ‘I love you. Be my wife’.—We were married.

“You, my son, will never know how happy it is possible for a man to be. A woman such as your mother is born only once in all time. You will never meet with her like. You will never know the supreme joy of having her for your wife. Her breath was sweeter than the fragrance of the sweetest flower. The song of the nightingale was less musical than her simplest word. All the light of heaven was eclipsed by the light that glowed far down in her eyes. Her presence at my side was a foretaste of paradise. Only to take her hand into my own and stroke its warm, satiny skin, was an ecstasy which I can not describe, which I can not remember even at this extreme moment without a quickening of the pulse. For three, yes, for four years after our marriage we were so happy that we cried each morning and each evening at our prayers, ‘Lord, what have we done to merit such happiness?’—I, my son, laughed as I recalled the dying words of my father. ‘The family curse in my case,’ I said, ‘has gone astray. I have no fear.’—Alas! I took too much for granted. I congratulated myself too soon. Our happiness was doomed to be burst like a bubble at a touch. The family curse had perhaps gone astray for a little while: it was bound to find its way back before the end. The will of our ancestor could not be thwarted.

“The first three years of our married life we passed at Savannah, dwelling with the parents of your mother. There you were born—as it seemed, in order to consummate and seal with the seal of our perfect joy. Then, when you were still but three months old, it became necessary that I should return and take up my residence again in New York. We were not sorry to come to New York.

“Nicholas had been my closest friend for many years. Boys together at Breslau, we had crossed the sea together, and had started our new life together here in America. Before our wedding I had described Nicholas to your mother, saying, ‘Him also must you love;’ and to Nicholas I had written, bidding him include my wife in his love of me.—This was why we were not sorry to leave Savannah and come to New York: because Nicholas was here, because we wanted to be near to our best friend.—Nicholas met us as we disembarked from the sailing vessel that had brought us hither. It made my heart warm to greet my old comrade and to present to him my wife and my son.

“I was a true friend to Nicholas. After your mother and you, he was first in my heart. I would have shared with him my last drop of water, my last crumb of bread; and he, I believed, would have done the same by me. My purse was always open for Nicholas to put in his hand and take out what he would, even to the last penny. I thought Nicholas was pure gold. I trusted him as I trusted myself. I said to your mother, ‘No evil can betide you so long as Nicholas is alive. If any thing should happen to me, in him you will have a brother, in him our Ernest will have a second father.’ It gave me a sense of perfect security, made me feel that the strength of my own right arm was doubled, the fact that Nicholas was my friend.

“Good. After my return to New York the intimacy between Nicholas and myself increased. He was constantly at our house. We were always glad to see him. A place was always laid for him at our table; it made our hearts light to have him with us, so bright, so gay, withal so good, so sterling, such a trusty friend was he. I delighted to witness the friendship that rapidly sprang up between your mother and Nicholas. He entertained her, told her stories, made her laugh.—She would often exclaim, ‘Dear, good Nicholas! What should we do without him?’ I replied, ‘That is right. Let him be next to your son and your husband in your affection.’ I do not think it is common for one man to love another as I loved Nicholas.

“But after we had been in New York a little more than two months, your mother’s manner toward Nicholas began to change. She was cold and formal to him; when he would arrive, instead of running up with outstretched hands and crying, ‘Ah, it is you!’ she would courtesy to him and say without smiling, ‘How do you do?’—She laughed no more at his stories, she appeared to avoid him when she could; when she could not, she was silent and morose. I could see no reason for this. I was pained. I said, ‘Bertha, why do you behave so toward our best friend?’ Your mother pretended not to understand. ‘Don’t deny it,’ I insisted. ‘You are as distant, as polite to him, as if he were a mere acquaintance.’ Your mother answered, ‘I am sorry to distress you. I don’t know what you mean. I was not aware that I had been discourteous to your friend.’—’Has Nicholas done any thing?’ I asked.—’No, he has done nothing.’—I blamed your mother severely. I besought her to subdue what I took for her caprice. Yet every day her conduct toward Nicholas grew colder and more formal. Every day I reproved her more and more earnestly. This was the nearest approach to a quarrel that your mother and I had ever had. It grieved me deeply that she should adopt such a manner toward my friend. I was all the more cordial to him in consequence. I hoped that he would not notice the turn affairs had taken.

“Thus till almost a year ago. You lacked but a fortnight of being one year old.

“Business had kept me down town till late. At last I made up my mind that I should not be able to go home at all that night. So I told Nicholas to visit Bertha and let her know. ‘Spend the evening with her,’ I said. ‘Explain how it is that I am compelled to remain here. Tell her that I will come home to breakfast. Be sure to entertain her. I don’t want to think of her as lonesome.’

“Next morning I hurried home. I stole softly into the house, to surprise your mother. Ah, my son, my son, I need not give you the details.—The house was empty. There was a brief letter from your mother. As I read it, my head swam, a mortal weakness overpowered me, I sank in a swoon upon the floor.

“When I recovered from my swoon, I was lying undressed in bed. There were people round about. I remembered every thing. What! I was lying idle in bed, and Nicholas still alive? I started up to be upon his track. I fell back, impotent. ‘What has befallen me?’ I asked. I was informed that I had had a hemorrhage of the lungs.

“I need not tell you what I suffered. My suffering was great in proportion to my love. The shame, the disgrace, were nothing. But at one blow to be deprived of wife, child, friend; to have my love and my faith and my happiness shattered at one stroke: it was too much. Yet, let this be impressed upon you, that not for one instant did I blame your mother. I realized that she, like myself, was but the helpless victim of the family curse. It was my fault. I had defied the inevitable. The keenest agony of all was to lie there, unable to rise, and think of Nicholas. Ah, a thousand times in imagination I tore his heart bleeding from his breast! I hated him now, as much as I had formerly cherished him. And yet, I believe I could in the end have forgiven him, if—ah, but of what use to say, ‘If’. Listen to the truth.

“It was a short four months afterward—four months that had seemed, however, a thousand years to me—and I still lay here dead in life, when the good Dr. Hirsch, (to whom now in my dying hours I commend you, my son), came to my bedside and said that he had seen your mother. He believed that if I would take her back, she would be glad. If I would take her back! ‘Bring her to me,’ I cried. And I thanked for this manifestation of his mercy. ‘You must prepare for a sad change in her,’ said Dr. Hirsch.—’Bring her, bring her,’ I cried impatiently.

“Not even to you, my son, can I reveal the secret of that first hour, of that deep hour, when your mother sat again at my side and received my pardon—nay, not my pardon, for it was her place to pardon me. If before that it had been possible for me to forgive Nicholas, it was so no longer. For your mother’s face was deathly pale, her cheek hollow, her eye bright with fever. Nicholas had—what? Petted her for a month; for a month, ignored her; for another month, ill treated her; in the end, abandoned her, it might be to starve. Nicholas had done this Nicholas whom I had loved and trusted. As I saw your mother pine away, grow paler and more feeble beneath my sight, my hatred of that man intensified. On the day your mother died, I promised her that I would get well and live and force him to atone for his offense in blood. My great hatred seemed to endow me with strength. I believed that would not let me die until I had once again met Nicholas face to face.

“But this delusion was short-lived. A second hemorrhage threw me back, weaker than ever, upon my bed. The physician told me that I had absolutely no ground for hope. It was evident that had willed that the chastisement of my enemy should not be wrought out by my hand. ‘But’ is just,’ I said. ‘He will not allow a crime like this to go unavenged.’

“It was then that my thought turned to you. And all this time, what of you? You too were lying at the point of death. Of you too the physician said, ‘He can not survive the winter.’ You, my single hope, threatened at any moment to breathe your last. ‘But no,’ I cried, ‘it shall not be so. My Ernest must live. As is both just and merciful, Ernest will live.’

“I watched the fluctuations of your illness, divided between hope and fear, between faith in the goodness of and doubt lest the worst might come to pass. Ah, that was a breathless period. Day after day passed by, and there was no certainty. Constantly the doctor said, ‘Death is merely a question of a few days, more or less.’ Constantly my heart replied, ‘No, no, he will not die.” has decreed that he shall live.’ I prayed that your life might be spared, morning, noon, and night. My own strength was ebbing away. But that was of little matter. I wanted to hold out only until I should know for good and all whether my son was to survive.

“Blessed be the name of forever! At the moment when the physician said, ‘He will die within an hour,’ lo! the God of our fathers touched your body with his healing wand. There was a change for the better. The physician himself could not deny it. He maintained that it was but transitory. ‘Nothing short of a miracle,’ said he, ‘can save this baby’s life.’

“‘We will see,’ said I aloud. To myself I said, ‘The miracle has been performed.’

“I was right. Two days later the physician confessed that your chances of recovery were good. Two days later still you were out of danger. had heard my prayers. The God of Israel is a righteous God! Oh, for the tongue of the prophets to sing a sufficient song of thanksgiving to . He has snatched you from the clutch of death for a purpose. He will see to it that you fulfill that purpose, though your heart be burned to ashes in the task. He will make you to be great like Ephraim and Manasseh. (Y si me ha Elohim k’.phraim v’chi Manasseh!)

“Again I have summoned your nurse, to bring you to my bedside. Again I have laid down my pen, to place my hand upon your head and bless you in the name of Again, before reading further, pause for a space and pray that the breath of God may make strong your heart.”

“My son, I allow you one-and-twenty years to become a man, one-and-twenty years to gain strength of arm and firmness of will. I allow you one-and-twenty years of youth, one-and-twenty years in which to enjoy life, free of care. On your twenty-first birthday, if the good and reverend Dr. Hirsch live, he will put this writing into your hands. Should he be dead, others will see that you receive it. On your twenty-first birthday you will be a boy no longer. You will recognize yourself for a man. You will ask, ‘What is to be the aim, the occupation of my life?’ You will read this writing, and your question will be answered. Your father on the brink of the grave pauses to speak to you as follows:—

“In the name of , who in response to my prayers has saved your life, who created you out of the dust and the ashes, who tore you from the embrace of death and restored health to your shattered body for one sole purpose, in Ins name I charge you: Find my enemy out and put him to death. He is still a young man. He will scarcely be an old man when you have become of age. It is a long time to wait, a long time to defer my vengeance, one-and-twenty years, but so I believe has willed it. After you have reached the age of one-and-twenty years, let that be the single motive and object of your days: to find him out and put him to death by the most painful mode of death you can devise. Do not strike him down with one blow. Torture him to death. Pluck his flesh from his bones shred by shred. Prolong his agony to the utmost. Thus shall you compensate in some measure for the one-and-twenty years of delay. And again and again as he is writhing under your heel, cry out to him, ‘Remember, remember the friend who loved you and whom you betrayed, whose honey you turned to gall and wormwood.’ But, if meanwhile from other causes death should have overtaken him, then shall you transfer your anger to his next-of-kin; then, I charge you, visit the penalty of his sin upon his children and his children’s children. For has not decreed that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generations? The blood of Nicholas must be spilled, whether it courses in his veins or in the veins of his posterity. The race of Nicholas must be exterminated, obliterated from the face of the earth. As you honor the wish of a dying father, as you dread the wrath of , falter not in this that I command. Search the four corners of the world until you have unearthed my enemy or his kindred. Empty his blood upon the sand as you would the blood of swine. And think, as he is calling out to you for mercy, think, ‘At last my father’s revenge is wreaked! At last my father’s spirit can rest content. Even now my father is in transports of delight as he witnesses this fruition of his hope. At each thrust of my knife into our enemy’s flesh, the heart of my father leaps with satisfaction. At each scream of pain that escapes from our enemy’s throat, the voice of my father waxes great with joy.’

“Ah, my son, at that mighty hour, whether I be confined in the bottom fastnesses of hell or exalted to the mountain tops of paradise, I shall know what is happening, I shall fling myself upon my face and sing a song of praise to for the unspeakable rapture which he has permitted me to enjoy.

“My son, I trust you. You will not falter. You will remember that has saved you from death for this solitary purpose, that you have no right to your own life except as you employ it for the chastisement of my foe. I have no fear. You will hate him with a hatred equal to my own. You will wreak that hatred as I should have wreaked it, had my life been spared.

“I have no fear, no distrust, and yet—all things are possible. My son, I warn you. In case you be faint-hearted, in case you recoil from this mission you are charged with, or in case by any accident—though will allow no such accident to happen—in case by any accident this writing should fail to reach you, I shall be prepared. From my grave I shall watch over you. From my grave I shall guide you. From my grave I shall see to it that you do not neglect the duty of your life. Though seas roll between you and him, I shall see to it that you two meet.

“Though your heart be bound to him as to your own flesh and blood, I shall see to it that you swerve not. And if he be dead, I shall see to it that you are brought face to face with his kindred. Man, woman, or child, spare neither. Young or old, able or feeble-bodied, let it matter not. In case your strength desert you, in case your courage weaken, I shall be at your side, I shall nerve your arm. If you hesitate, remember that my spirit will possess your body and do what must be done in spite of your hesitation. There will be no escape for you. As certainly as the moon must follow the earth, so certainly will and must you, my son, accomplish the purpose for which your life is given.—But falter not, as you cherish the fair name of your mother, as you honor the desire, as you fear the curse, of a dying father, as you hope for peace for your own soul.

“I have done. I think I have made every thing clear. Farewell.

“Your father, Ernest Neuman.

“I have written the above during my moments of strength for the last four days. Now I have just read it over. I find that it but feebly expresses all that I mean and feel. But will enlighten you as you read. It is enough. I find also that I have omitted to mention his full name. His name is Nicholas Pathzuol.”

XII.

THE emotions that grew upon me, as I read my father’s message, need not be detailed. How, as I painfully deciphered it, word following upon word added steadily to the weight of those emotions, until at length it seemed as though the burden was greater than I could bear, I need not tell. Indeed, so engrossed had I become by what had gone before, that the sense of the last line did not penetrate my mind. I leaned back in my chair and drew a long breath like one exhausted by an effort beyond his strength. I waited for the commotion of thought and feeling to quiet a little. I was completely horror-stricken and tired out and bewildered.

But by and by it occurred to me, “What did he say the man’s name was?” And languidly I picked up the paper and read the postscript for a second time. The next instant I was on my feet, rigid, aghast, for consternation. What!

Pathzuol! The name of Veronika! My head swam. It was as if I had sustained a terrific blow between the eyes. Could it be that this Pathzuol, the man who had dishonored my mother, the man whom my father had commissioned me to murder, was her father? the father of her who had indeed been murdered, and of whose murder I had been accused? The mere possibility stunned and sickened me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had been under a pretty tense nervous strain ever since the reception of Tikulski’s letter in the afternoon. This last utterly undid me. My muscles relaxed, my knees knocked together, the perspiration trickled down my forehead. I went off into a regular fit of weeping, like a woman.

It was not long before Merivale entered. I looked up and saw him standing over me, with a physiognomy divided between astonishment and contempt.

“Ah, Lexow,” he said, shaking his head, “I am surprised at you.” Then his eyes grew stern, and he continued sharply, “Stop! Stop your crying. You ought to be ashamed. Whatever new misfortune has befallen you, you have no right to act like this. It is a man’s part to bear misfortune silently. It is a school-girl’s or a baby’s to take on in this fashion. Stop your crying, dry your eyes, and show what you are made of. Grit your teeth and clench your fists and don’t open your mouth till you are ready to behave like a reasonable being.”

His words sobered me to some extent.

“Well,” I said, “I am calm now. What do you want?”

“If I should do what I want,” he answered, “you would not speedily forget it. I should—but never mind that. What I want you to do is to speak up like a man and explain the occasion of this rumpus, if you can.”

“Here, read this,” I said, offering him the paper.

He took it, glanced at it, turned it this way and that, handed it back. “How can I read it?” he said. “It’s German. Read it to me.—Come, read it to me,” he repeated, as I hesitated.

I gulped down my reluctance and read the whole thing through as rapidly as I could in English. He sat across the table, smoking and drawing figures in the ash-pan with the ashes of his cigarette. Once in a while I heard him whistle softly to himself. He had thrown his last cigarette aside and was biting his fingernails when the reading drew to a close.

“No more?” he asked.

“Isn’t that enough?” I rejoined.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. Oh, yes; that’s enough; and it’s pretty bad too. But I expected something worse from the rough way you cut up.”

“Worse? In heaven’s name what could be worse? My mother dishonored, my father broken hearted, and I marked out for a murderer, even from my cradle? And then—”

“I say it’s hard, deucedly hard. But inasmuch as you’re not a murderer, you know, I wouldn’t let that side of the matter bother me, if I were you. The bad part of the business is to think of how your father’s happiness, your mother’s innocence, were destroyed. Think how he must have suffered!”

“But you haven’t listened, you haven’t understood the worst, yet. Here, see his name—Pathzuol.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Why, don’t you remember? It is the same name as hers—Veronika’s—my sweetheart’s.”

“Decidedly!” exclaimed Merivale. “That is a startling coincidence, I admit.”

“Couple that with—with the rest of my father’s story and with—with the—well, with all the facts—and I think you’ll confess that it was sufficient to shake me up a bit. To come upon that name at the end of such a letter, it was like being knocked down. I lost my self-possession. Think! if he was her father! But, oh no; it isn’t credible. It’s sheer accident, of course.”

“Of course it is. The letter doesn’t say that he was even married. I suppose there’s more than one Pathzuol in the world as well as more than one Merivale. But all the same, it’s a coincidence of a sort to stir a fellow up. I don’t wonder you lost your balance. Only, the idea of boohooing like a woman! That’s inexcusable. Mercy! what a good hater your father was! And what an unspeakable wretch, Nicholas!”

“Yes,” I went on, “it gave me a pretty severe jolt, the sight of that name; and I can’t seem to get over it. I don’t know why, but I can’t help feeling as though there were more in this than either you or I perceive, as though there were some deduction or other to be drawn from it which is right within arm’s reach and yet which I can’t grasp—some horrible corollary, you know. My brain is in a whirl, I—I—”

“You are quite unstrung, as it is natural you should be. But you must exert your reason and put the stopper upon your imagination. Let deductions and corollaries take care of themselves. Confine yourself to the facts, and you’ll see that they’re not as bad as they might be, after all. For example—”

“But it is just the facts that perplex and horrify me. My father destines me to be the murderer of Nicholas Pathzuol or of his next of kin. All ignorant of this destiny, I meet and love a lady whose name is Pathzuol—a name so rare that I had never heard it before, and have not since, except in this writing to-day. My lady is murdered; and I, though innocent, am suspected and accused of the crime. Add to this my father’s threat to come back from the grave and use me as his instrument, in case I hesitate or in case I never receive his letter; and—well, it is like a problem in mathematics—given this and that, to determine so and so. No, no, there’s no use denying it, this strange combination of facts must have some awful meaning. It seems as though each minute I was just on the point of catching it, and then as I tighten my fingers around it, it escapes again and eludes me.”