Part 3

Rosenstein walked aimlessly but joyfully down the street, bowing to right and to left at the many people who smiled upon him in so friendly a fashion. When he came to the corner he was surprised to see that the whole character of the street had changed over night. Then it seemed to him that a regiment of soldiers came marching up, each man holding out a flowing bowl to him, that he fell into line and joined the march, and that they all found themselves in a brilliant, dazzling glare of several hundred suns. Then they shot him from the mouth of a cannon, and when he regained consciousness he recognised the features of Mrs. Rosenstein and felt the grateful coolness of the wet towels she was tenderly laying upon his fevered head. It was nearly midnight.

Rosenstein groaned in anguish.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“You have been a drinker,” his wife replied, “but it is all over now. Take a nice long sleep and we will never speak of it again. And the yellow paper will do for another year.”

Rosenstein watched the flaming pinwheels and skyrockets that were shooting before his vision for a while; then a horrible idea came to him.

“See how much money I have in my pockets,” he said. His wife counted it.

“One dollar and forty cents,” she said. A sigh of relief rose from Rosenstein’s lips.

“It’s all right, then. I only had two dollars when I went out.” Then he fell peacefully asleep. The next morning he faced his wife and pointed out to her the awful lesson he had taught her.

“You now see what your stubbornness can drive me to,” he said. “I have squandered sixty cents and lost a whole day’s work in the store merely to convince you that it is all nonsense to put red paper on the walls.” But his wife was clinging to him and crying and vowing that she would never again insist upon anything that would add to their expenses. And then they kissed and made up, and Rosenstein went to his store, somewhat weak in the legs and somewhat dizzy, and with a queer feeling in his head, but elated that he had won a complete mastery over his stubborn spouse so cheaply.

The store was closed.

Rosenstein gazed blankly at the barred door and windows. It was the bookkeeper’s duty to arrive at eight o’clock and open the store. It was now nine o’clock. Where was the bookkeeper? And where were the three saleswomen? And the office-boy? As quickly as he could, Rosenstein walked to the bookkeeper’s house. He found that young man dressing himself and whistling cheerfully. The bookkeeper looked amazed when he beheld his employer.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Rosenstein. “Why are you not at the store? Where are the keys?”

The young man’s face fell. He looked at Rosenstein curiously. Then, “Were you only joking?” he asked.

“Joking?” repeated Rosenstein, more amazed than ever. “Me? How? When? Are you crazy?”

“You told us all yesterday to close the store and go and have a good time, and that we needn’t come back for a week.”

Rosenstein steadied himself against the door. He tried to speak, but something was choking him. Finally, pointing to his breast, he managed to gasp faintly:

“Me?”

The clerk nodded.

“And what else did I do?” asked Rosenstein, timidly.

“You gave us each five dollars and—and asked us to sing something and—what is it, Mr. Rosenstein. Are you ill?”

“Go—go!” gasped Rosenstein. “Get everybody and open the store again. Quickly. And tell them all not to speak of what happened yesterday. They—they—can—they can (gulp) keep the money. But the store must be opened and nobody must tell.”

He staggered out into the street. A policeman saw him clutching a lamp-post to steady himself.

“Are you sick, Mr. Rosenstein?” he asked. “You look pale. Can’t I get you a drink?”

Rosenstein recoiled in horror. “I am not a drinker!” he cried. Then he walked off, his head in a whirl, his heart sick with a sudden dread. He took a long walk, and when he felt that he had regained control of himself he returned to the store. It was open, and everything was going on as usual. And there was a man—a stranger—waiting for him. When he beheld Rosenstein the stranger’s face lit up.

“Good-morning!” he cried, cheerfully. “Sorry to trouble you so early, but this is rent day, and I need the money.”

Rosenstein turned pale. The saleswomen had turned their heads away with a discretion that was painfully apparent. Rosenstein’s eyes blinked rapidly several times. Then he said, huskily, “What money?”

The stranger looked at him in surprise.

“Don’t you remember this?” he asked, holding out a card. Rosenstein looked at him.

“Yes, this is my card. But what of it?”

“Look on the other side.” Rosenstein looked. Staring him in the face was: “I owe Mister Casey thirty-six dollars. I. Rosenstein.” The writing was undeniably his. And suddenly there came to him a dim, distant, dreamlike recollection of standing upon a mountain-top with a band of music playing around him and a Mr. Casey handing him some money.

“I thought that was an old dream,” he muttered to himself. Then, turning to the stranger, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Me?” said the stranger, in surprise; “why, I’m Casey—T. Casey, of Casey’s café. You told me to come as soon as I needed the——”

“Hush!” cried Rosenstein. “Never mind any more.” He opened a safe, took out the money, and paid Mr. Casey. When the latter had gone Rosenstein called the bookkeeper aside, and, in a fearful tone, whispered in his ear:

“Ach! I am so glad when I think that I didn’t, open the safe yesterday.” The bookkeeper looked at him in surprise.

“You tried, sir,” he said. “Don’t you remember when you said, ‘The numbers won’t stand still,’ and asked me if I couldn’t open it? And I told you I didn’t know the combination?”

Rosenstein gazed upon him in horror. The room became close. He went out and stood in the doorway, gasping for breath. In the street, directly in front of the store, stood a white horse. A seedy-looking individual stood on the curb holding the halter and gazing expectantly at Rosenstein.

“Good-morning, boss!” he cried, cheerfully.

Rosenstein glared at him. “Go away!” he cried. “I don’t allow horses to stand in front of my store. Take him somewhere else.”

“I’ll take him anywhere ye say, boss,” said the man, touching his cap. “But ye haven’t paid for him yet.”

Rosenstein’s heart sank. Then suddenly a wave of bitter resentment surged through him. He strode determinedly toward the man.

“Did I buy that horse?” he asked, fiercely.

“Sure ye did,” answered the man; “for yer milk store.”

“But I haven’t got a milk store,” answered Rosenstein. The man’s eyes blinked.

“Don’t I know it?” he cried. “Didn’t ye tell me so yerself? But didn’t ye say ye wuz going to start one? Didn’t ye say that this horse was as white as milk, and that if I’d sell him to ye y’d open a milk store? Didn’t ye make me take him out of me wagon and run him up and down the street fer ye? Didn’t ye make me take all the kids on the block fer a ride? Am I a liar? Huh?”

Rosenstein walked unsteadily into the store and threw his arm around the bookkeeper’s neck.

“Get rid of him. For God’s sake get him away from here! Give him some money—as little as you can. Only get him away. Some day I will increase your salary. I am sick to-day. I cannot do any business. I am going home.” He started for the rear door, but stopped at the threshold.

“Don’t take the horse, whatever you do,” he said. Then he went home.

Mrs. Rosenstein was sitting on the doorsteps knitting and beaming with joy. When she saw her husband she ran toward him. The tears stood in her eyes.

“Dearest husband! Dear, generous husband! To punish me for my stubbornness and then to fill me with happiness by gratifying the dearest wish of my heart! It is too much! I do not deserve it! One room is all I wanted!”

Rosenstein’s heart nearly stopped beating. Upon his ears fell a strange noise of scraping and tearing that came from the doorway of his house.

“Wh-wh-what is it?” he asked, feebly. His wife smiled.

“The paper-hangers are already at work,” she said, joyfully. “They said you insisted that all the work should be finished in one day, and they’ve sent twenty men here.”

Mr. Rosenstein sank wearily down upon the steps. The power of speech had left him. Likewise the power of thought. His brain felt like a maelstrom of chaotic, incoherent images. He felt that he was losing his mind. A brisk-looking young man, with a roll of red wall-paper in his hand, came down the steps and doffed his hat to Rosenstein.

“Good-morning!” he cried, cheerfully. (The salutation “Good-morning” was beginning to go through Rosenstein like a knife each time he heard it.) “I did it. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did. I tell you, sir, there isn’t another paper-hanger in the city who could fill a job like that at such short notice. Every single room in the house! And red paper, too, which has to be handled so carefully, and makes the work take so much longer. But the job will be finished to-night, sir.”

He walked off with the light tread and proud mien of a man who has accomplished something. Rosenstein looked after him bewildered. Then he turned to his wife, but when he saw the smile and the happy look that lit up her face he turned away and sighed. How could he tell her?

“My love,” said Mrs. Rosenstein, after a long pause, “promise me one thing and I will be happy as long as I live.”

Rosenstein was silent. In a vague way he was wondering if this promise was based upon some deed of yesterday that had not yet been revealed to him.

“Promise me,” his wife went on, “that, no matter what happens, you will never become a drinker again.”

Rosenstein sat bolt upright. He tried to speak. A hundred different words and phrases crowded to his lips, struggling for utterance. He became purple with suppressed excitement. In a wild endeavour to utter that promise so forcibly, so emphatically, and so fiercely as not only to assure his wife, but to relieve his suffering feelings, Rosenstein could only sputter incoherently. Then, suddenly realising the futility of the endeavour, and feeling that his whole vocabulary was inadequate to express the vehemence of his emotion, he gurgled helplessly:

“Yes. I promise.”

And he kept the promise.

THE POISONED CHAI

Bernstein sat in the furthest corner of the café, brooding. The fiercest torments that plague the human heart were rioting within him, as if they would tear him asunder. Bernstein was of an impulsive, overbearing nature, mature as far as years went, yet with the untrained, inexperienced emotions of a savage. To such natures the “no” from a woman’s lips comes like a blow; the sudden knowledge that those same lips can smile brightly upon another follows like molten lead.

That whole afternoon Bernstein had suffered the wildest tortures of jealousy. Had Natzi been a younger man Bernstein’s resentment might not have turned so hotly upon him. Yet Natzi was almost of his own age, a weak-faced creature, with an eternal smile, incapable of intense feeling, ignorant of even the faintest shade of that passion which he (Bernstein) had laid so humbly, so tenderly at her feet—and it was Natzi she loved! Bernstein’s hand darted to his inner pocket and came forth clutching a tiny object upon which he gazed with the look of a fiend.

“I may not have her,” he murmured, “but she will never belong to him.”

He held the tiny thing in his lap, below the level of the table, so that none other might see it, and looked at it intently. It was a small phial; it contained some colourless liquid.

The thought entered his brain to drain the contents of that phial himself and put an end to the fierce pain that was eating away his heart. Would it not be for the best? There was no one to care. The world held no one but her; perhaps his death would bring the tears to those big brown eyes; she might even come and kiss his cold forehead. But after that Natzi would be master of those kisses, upon Natzi’s lips hers would be pressed all the livelong day.

The blood surged to his brain; he clutched the table as though he would squeeze the wood to pulp; before his eyes rose a mist—a red mist—the red of blood. Slowly this mist cleared away, and the face and form of Natzi loomed up before him—Natzi, with patient, boyish eyes, smiling.

“It is the third time that I’ve said ‘Good-evening.’ Have you been sleeping with your eyes open?”

“No. No. Just thinking,” said Bernstein, talking rapidly. “Sit down. Here, opposite me. The light hurts my eyes. Come, let us have some chai. Here, waiter! Two chais. Have them hot, with plenty of rum.”

“You seem nervous, Bernstein. Aren’t you well?” asked Natzi, solicitously.

“Oh, smoking too much. But let us talk about yourself. How is the wood-carving business? Any better?”

Natzi shook his head, ruefully. “Worse,” he answered. “They’re doing everything by machinery these days, and the machines seem to be improving all the time. The work is all mechanical now. The only real pleasure I get out of my tools is at night when I am home. Then I can carve the things I like—things that don’t sell.”

The waiter brought two cups of chai, with the blue flames leaping brightly from the burning rum on the surface. Bernstein’s eyes were intent upon the flames.

“I have not yet congratulated you,” he said.

He did not see the look that came into Natzi’s eyes—a look of tenderness, of earnestness, a look that Bernstein had never seen there, although he had known Natzi many years.

“Yes,” said Natzi, thoughtfully. “I am to be congratulated. It is more than I deserve. I am not worthy.”

Bernstein’s gaze was fastened upon the flames. They were dancing brightly upon the amber liquid.

“She is so beautiful, so sweet, so pure,” Natzi went on. “To think that all that happiness is for me!”

The flames changed from blue to red. Bernstein’s brain whirled. He felt a wild impulse to throw himself upon his companion and seize him by the throat and strangle him, and cry aloud so that all could hear it: “You shall never have that happiness. She belongs to me. She is part of my life, part of myself. You cannot understand her. I alone of all men understand her. Every thought of my brain, every impulse of my being, every fibre of my body beats responsive to her. She was made for me. No other shall have her!”

Then the thought of the phial in his hand recurred to his mind and he became calm. The flames died out, and Natzi slowly drained his cup. Bernstein watched him with bloodshot eyes. Looking up he met Natzi’s gaze bent upon him anxiously.

“You are not well, Bernstein. Let us go home.”

“No, no,” Bernstein said, quickly. “It is just nervousness. I have smoked too much.” He made a feeble attempt at a smile. “Come,” said he, draining his cup. “Let us have another. The last. The very last. And after that we will drink no more chai.”

Two more cups were set before them.

“Look,” said Bernstein, “is that lightning in the sky?”

Natzi turned his head toward the open doorway. Swiftly, yet stealthily, Bernstein’s hand stretched forth until it touched the blue flames that danced on Natzi’s cup, hovered there a moment, and then was withdrawn just as Natzi turned around. His fingers had been scorched.

“No, I see no lightning. The stars are shining.”

“Let us drink,” said Bernstein. “The last drink.”

“I am not a fire-eater,” said Natzi, smiling. “Let us wait at least until the rum burns out.”

Bernstein lowered the flaming cup that, in his eagerness, he had raised toward his lips and looked at Natzi. Malice gleamed in his eyes.

“Yes. Let it cool. Then we will drink a toast.”

“With all my heart,” said Natzi. “It shall be a toast to her. A toast to the sweetest woman in the world.”

There was a long pause. Once or twice Natzi glanced hesitatingly at his companion, who sat with bowed head, his eyes intent upon the flames that leaped so brightly from his cup. Then Natzi spoke, slowly at first, but gradually more rapidly, and more animatedly as the intensity of his emotion mastered him.

“Do you know, dear friend,” he began, “there was a time when I thought she loved you? We were together so much, the three of us, and she had so many opportunities to know you—to know you as I knew you—to know your great, strong mind, your tender heart, your steadfastness, your generous nature, that could harbour no unworthy thought. You pose as a cynic, as a man who looks down upon the petty things that make up life for most of us, but I—I, who have lived with you, struggled with you, known so many of the trials and heart-breakings of everyday life with you—I know you better. True, you have no love for women, and I often wondered how you could be so blind to her sweetness, and to the charm that seemed to fill the room whenever we three were together. But I never took my eyes from her face, and when I saw with what breathless interest she listened whenever you spoke, whenever you told us of your plans for uplifting the down-trodden, of your innermost thoughts and hopes and feelings, I read in her eyes a fondness for you that filled me with despair.”

Bernstein was breathing heavily. His lips quivered; his face twitched; the blood had mounted to his cheeks. His eyes were downcast, fastened upon the blue flames of the chai, dancing and leaping in fantastic shapes.

“That time you were sick—do you remember? When the doctor said there was no hope on earth, when everyone felt that the end had come, when you lay for days white and still, hardly breathing, with the pallor of death upon your face—do you remember? And I nursed you—sat at your bedside through four days and four nights without a minute’s rest. And then, when the doctor said the crisis had passed and you would get well, I fainted away from sheer weakness—do you remember?”

Perspiration in huge drops was trickling slowly down Bernstein’s forehead. His lips were dry. His teeth were tightly clenched.

“And you thought I had done it all for friendship’s sake, and I listened to your outpouring of gratitude, taking it all for myself, without a word—without a word! Ah, my dear friend, it was hateful to deceive you; but how could I tell the truth? But now I have no shame in telling it. I did it for her. All for her. To save you for her. That was the only thought in my poor, whirling brain during those long, weary days and nights. I felt that if you died she would die. I knew the intensity of her nature, and I knew that if aught happened to the man she loved she would die of grief. And now to think you never cared for her, and that it was I whom she always loved!”

Natzi looked at the bowed head before him with tender smile. Bernstein was trembling.

“I am glad, though, that all happened as it did. Had I nursed you only for your own sake, much as I loved you, I might have weakened, my strength might not have held out. For a man can do that for his love which he cannot do for himself. And, perhaps, after all, it was an excellent lesson for me to learn to bear bitter disappointment.”

The flames in Bernstein’s cup were burning low. With every breath of air they flickered and trembled. They would soon die out.

“Look,” said Natzi, reaching into his pocket. “Look at this little piece that I carved during the hours that I sat at your bedside—to keep me awake. I have carried it over my heart ever since.”

Bernstein looked up. His eyes were frightfully bloodshot. His face was ashen. In Natzi’s hand he beheld a tiny carving in wood, fashioned with exquisite skill and grace, of a woman’s head. The flame in Natzi’s cup caught a light gust of air that stirred for a moment, leaped brightly, as if on purpose to illumine the features of the carved image, then flickered and went out. Bernstein had recognised the likeness. Those features were burning in his brain.

“Every night since then I have set this image before me, and I have prayed to God to always keep her as sweet, as pure, and as beautiful as He keeps the flowers in His woods. And every morning I have prayed to Him to fill her life with sunshine and gladness, and to let no sorrow fall upon her. And every day I carried it pressed against my heart and I felt sustained and strengthened. Ah, Bernstein, God is good! He gave her to me! He brought about the revelation that her heart was mine, her sweetness, her beauty—all were mine. Come, comrade, we have gone through many a struggle together. Let us drink a toast—you shall name it!”

Natzi held his cup aloft. With a hoarse cry Bernstein half rose from his seat, swiftly reached forward, and tore the cup from Natzi’s grasp.

“To her!” he cried. “To her! May God preserve her and forgive me!”

He drained the cup, stared wildly at the astonished countenance of Natzi, and, after a moment, during which he swayed slightly from side to side, fell forward upon the table, motionless.

URIM AND THUMMIM

The hall was packed to the point of suffocation, with thousands of gaunt, hollow-eyed strikers, who hung upon the speaker’s impassioned words with breathless interest. He was an eloquent speaker, with a pale, delicate face, and dark eyes that shone like burning coals.

He had been speaking for an hour, exhorting the strikers to stand firm, and to bear in patience their burden of suffering. When he dwelt on the prospect of victory, and portrayed the ultimate moment of triumph that would be theirs, if only they stood steadfast, a wave of enthusiasm surged through the audience, and they burst into wild cheers.

“Remember, fellow-workmen,” he went on, “that we have fought before. Remember that we have suffered before. And remember that we have won before.

“How many are there of you who can look back to the famous strike of ten years ago? Do you not remember how, for two months, we fought with unbroken ranks, and after privation and distress far beyond what we are passing through to-day, triumphed over our enemies and won a glorious victory? It was but a pittance that we were striking for, but the life of our union was at stake. With one exception, not a man faltered. The story of our sufferings only God remembers! But we bore them without a murmur, without complaint. There was one dastard—one traitor, recreant to his oath—but we triumphed in spite of him. Oh, my fellow-workers, let us——”

But now a mist gathered before my eyes; the sound of his voice died away, and all that assemblage faded from my sight.

The speaker’s words had awakened in my mind the memory of Urim and Thummim; all else was instantly forgotten.

* * * * *

Urim was a doll that had lost both legs and an arm, but its cheeks, when I first saw it, were still pink, and, in spite of its misfortunes, it wore a smile that never faded. Thummim was also a doll, somewhat more rugged than Urim, but gloomy and frowning, in spite of its state of preservation. Koppel and Rebecca agreed that Urim was by far the more interesting of the two, but the two had come into the household together, and to discard Thummim was altogether out of the question.

Koppel was a cloakmaker, and it was during the big strike that I first met him. Of all the members of that big trades-union he alone had continued to work when the strike was declared, and they all cursed him. Pleading and threats alike were of no avail to induce him to leave the shop; for the paltry pittance that he could earn he abandoned his union and violated his oath of affiliation.

At every meeting he was denounced, his name was hissed, he was an outcast among his kind.

When I tapped upon his door there was no response. I opened it and beheld a child with raven hair, so busily occupied with undressing a doll that she did not look up until I asked:

“Is Mr. Koppel in?”

She turned with a start and gazed at me in astonishment. Her big, brown eyes were opened wide at the apparition of a stranger, yet she did not seem at all alarmed. After a moment’s hesitation—the door was still open—she approached me and held out the doll.