Part 11

Very soon a frost-bitten old man I remembered coming across in the cemetery on the mountain-slope, where he was sweeping the fallen leaves from a tomb, and singing like the grave-digger in _Hamlet_, sidled up to me and asked me if I needed vodka. I thought it advisable to need some, and was quickly supplied from a box the old fellow seemed to keep under the Ark. The price was so moderate that I tipped him with as much again, doubtless to the enhancement of the "rich stranger's" reputation. Sipping it, I was able to follow with more show of ease the bursts of rambling conversation. Sometimes they talked about the floods, anon about politics, then about sacred texts and the illuminations of the _Zohar_. But there was one topic which ran like a winding pattern through all the talk, bursting in at the most unexpected places, and this was the wonders wrought by their rabbi.

As they dilated "with enkindlement" upon miracle after miracle, some wrought on earth and some in the higher spheres to which his soul ascended, my curiosity mounted, and calling for more vodka, "Where is the rabbi?" I asked the sexton.

"He may perhaps come down to lunch," said he, in reverent accents, as if to imply that the rabbi was now in the upper spheres. I waited till tables were spread with plain fare in the _Klaus_ itself. At the savour the fountain of worship was sealed; the snorers woke up. I was invited to partake of the meal, which, I was astonished to find, was free to all, provided by the rabbi.

"Truly royal hospitality," I thought. But our royal host himself did not "come down."

My neighbour, of whom I kept inquiring, at last told me, sympathetically, to have patience till Friday evening, when the rabbi would come to welcome in the Sabbath. But as it was then Tuesday, "Cannot I call upon him?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Ben David holds his court no more this year," he said. "He is in seclusion, preparing for the exalted soul-flights of the pilgrim season. The Sabbath is his only public day now."

There was nothing for it but to wait till the Friday eve, though in the meantime I got Yarchi to show me the royal palace--a plain two-storied Oriental-looking building with a flat roof, and a turret on the eastern side, whose high, ivy-mantled slit of window turned at the first rays of the sun into a great diamond.

"He couldn't come down, couldn't he?" Yarchi commented. "I daresay he wasn't sober enough."

Somehow this jarred upon me. I was beginning to conjure up romantic pictures, and assuredly my one glimpse of the sect had not shown any intoxication save psychic.

"He is very generous, anyhow," I said. "He supplies a free lunch."

"Free to him," retorted the incorrigible Yarchi. "The worshippers fancy it is free, but it is they who pay for it." And he snuffed himself, chuckling. "I'll tell you what is free," he added. "His morals!"

"But how do you know?"

"Oh, all those fellows go in for the Adamite life."

"What is the Adamite life?"

He winked. "Not the pre-Evite."

I saw it was fruitless to reason with his hunchbacked view of the subject.

On the Friday eve I repaired again to the _Klaus_, but this time it was not so easy to find a seat. However, by the grace of my friend the sexton, I was accommodated near the Ark, where, amid a congregation clad in unexpected white, I sat, a conscious black discord. There was a certain palpitating fervour in the air, as though the imminence of the New Year and Judgment Day had strung all spirits to a higher tension. Suddenly a shiver seemed to run through the assemblage, and all eyes turned to the door. A tall old man, escorted by several persons of evident consideration, walked with erect head but tottering gait to the little platform in front of the Ark, and, taking a praying-shawl from the reverential hand of the sexton, held it a moment, as in abstraction, before drawing it over his head and shoulders. As he stood thus, almost facing me, yet unconscious of me, his image was photographed on my excited brain. He seemed very aged, with abundant white locks and beard, and he was clothed in a white satin robe cut low at the neck and ornamented at the breast with gold-laced, intersecting triangles of "the Shield of David."

On his head was a sort of white biretta. I noted a curious streak of yellow in the silvered eyebrows, as if youth clung on, so to speak, by a single hair, and underneath these arrestive eyebrows green pupils alternately glowed and smouldered. On his forefinger he wore a signet ring, set with amethysts and with a huge Persian emerald, which, as his hand rose and fell, and his fingers clasped and unclasped themselves in the convulsion of prayer, seemed to glare at me like a third green eye. And as soon as he began thus praying, every trace of age vanished. He trembled, but only from emotion; and his passion mounted, till at last his whole body prayed. And the congregation joined in with shakings and quiverings and thunderings and ululations. Not even in Prague had I experienced such sympathetic emotion. After the well-regulated frigidities of our American services, it was truly warming to be among worshippers not ashamed to feel. Hours must have passed, but I sat there as content as any. When the service ended, everybody crowded round the Wonder Rabbi to give the "Good Sabbath" handshake. The scene jarred me by its incongruous suggestion of our American receptions at which the lion of the evening must extend his royal paw to every guest. But I went up among the rest, and murmured my salutation. The glow came into his eyes as they became conscious of me for the first time, and his gaunt bloodless hand closed crushingly on mine, so that I almost fancied the signet ring was sealing my flesh.

"Good Sabbath, stranger," he replied. "You linger long here."

"As long as the floods," I said.

"Are you as dangerous to us?" he flashed back.

"I trust not," I said, a whit startled.

His jewelled forefinger drummed on the reading-stand, and his eyes no longer challenged mine, but were lowered as in abstraction.

"Your grandfather, who lies in Lemberg, was no friend to the followers of Besht. He laid the ban even on white Sabbath garments, and those who but wept in the synagogues he classed with us."

I was more taken aback by his knowledge of my grandfather than by that ancient gentleman's hostility to the emotional heresy of his day.

"I never saw my grandfather," I replied simply.

"True. The son of the prairies should know more of God than the bookworms. Will you accept a seat at my table?"

"With pleasure, Rabbi," I murmured, dazed by his clairvoyant air.

They were now arranging the two tables, one with a white cloth for the master and his circle in strict order of precedence; and the other of bare wood for such of the rabble as could first scramble into the seats. I was placed on his right hand, and became at once an object of wonder and awe. The _Kiddush_ which initiated the supper was not a novel ceremony to me, but what I had never seen before was the eagerness with which each guest sipped from the circulating wine-cup of consecration, and the disappointment of such of the mob as could find no drop to drain. Still fiercer was the struggle for the Wonder Rabbi's soup, after he had taken a couple of spoonfuls; even I had no chance of distinction before this sudden simultaneous swoop, though of course I had my own plateful to drink. As sudden was the transition from soup to song, the whole company singing and swaying in victorious ecstasy. I turned to speak to my host, but his face awed me. The eyes had now their smouldering inward fire. The eyebrows seemed wholly white; the features were still. Then as I watched him his whole body grew rigid, he closed his eyes, his head fell back. The singing ceased; as tense a silence reigned as though the followers too were in a trance. My eyes were fixed on the Master's blind face, which had now not the dignity of death, but only the indignity of lifelessness, and, but for the suggestion of mystery behind, would have ceased to impress me. For there was now revealed a coarseness of lips, a narrowness of forehead, an ugliness of high cheek-bone, which his imperial glance had transfigured, and which his flowing locks still abated. But as I gazed, the weird stillness took possession of me. I could not but feel with the rest that the Master was making a "soul-ascension."

It seemed very long--yet it may have been only a few minutes, for in absolute silence one's sense of time is disconcerted--ere waves of returning life began to traverse the cataleptic face and form. At last the Wonder Rabbi opened his eyes, and the hush grew profounder. Every ear was astrain for the revelations to come.

"Children," said he slowly, "as I passed through the circles the souls cried to me. 'Haste, haste, for the Evil One plotteth and the Messianic day will be again delayed.' So I rose into the ante-chamber of Grace where the fiery wheels sang 'Holy, holy,' and there I came upon the Poison God waiting to see the glory of the Little Face. And with him was a soul, very strange, such as I had never seen, living neither in heaven nor hell, perchance created of Satan himself for his instrument. Then with a great cry I uttered the Name, and the Poison God fled with a great fluttering, leaving the nameless, naked soul helpless amid the consuming, dazzling wheels. So I returned through the circles to reassure the souls, and they shouted with a great shout."

"Hallelujah!" came in a great shout from the wrought-up listeners, and then they burst into a lilting chant of triumph. But by this time my mood had changed. The spell of novelty had begun to wear off; perhaps also I was fatigued by the long strain. I recalled the coarser face of the comatose saint, and I found nothing but gibberish in the oracular "revelation" which he had brought down with such elaborate pains from the circles amid which he seemed to move.

Thanking him for his hospitality, I slipped from the hot, roaring room.

Ah! what a waft of fresh air and sense of starlit space! The young moon floated in the star-sprinkled heavens like a golden boat, with a faint suggestion of the full-sailed orb. The true glamour and mystery of the universe were again borne in upon me, as in our rich, constellated prairie nights, and all the artificial abracadabra of the _Klaus_ seemed akin to its heated, noisy atmosphere. The lights of the village were extinguished, and, looking at my watch, I found it was close upon midnight. But as I passed the saint's "palace" I was astonished to find a light twinkling from the turret window. I wondered who kept vigil. Then I bethought me it was Friday night when no light could be struck, and this must be Ben David's bed-room lamp, awaiting his return.

"I thought he had taken you up in his fiery chariot," grumbled Yarchi sleepily, as he unbarred the door.

"The fiery chariot must not run on the Sabbath," I said smiling. "And, moreover, Ben David takes no passengers to the circles."

"Circles! He ought to have a circle of rope round his neck."

"The soup was good," I pleaded, as I groped my way toward my quaint, tall bed.

III

I cannot explain why, when Yarchi asked me sarcastically, over the Sabbath dinner, whether I was going to the "Supper of the Holy Queen," I knew at once that I should be found at this mysterious meal. Perhaps it was that I had nothing better to do; perhaps my sympathy was returning to those strange, good-humoured, musical loungers, so far removed from the New York ideal of life. Or perhaps I was vaguely troubled by the dream I had wrestled with more or less obscurely all night long--that I stood naked in a whirl of burning wheels that sang, as they turned, the melody of the _Chassidim_. Was I this nondescript soul, I wondered, half smilingly, fashioned of the Evil One to delay the Messianic era?

The sun was set, the three stars already in the sky, and my pious landlord had performed the Ceremony of Division ere I set out, declining the bread and fish Yarchi offered to make up in a package.

"Saturday nights every man must bring his own meal," he said.

I replied that I went not to eat, but to look on. However, I was so late in arriving that, as there were no lights, looking on was well-nigh reduced to listening. In the gray twilight the _Klaus_ seemed full of uncanny forms rocking in monotonous sing-song. Through the gathering gloom the old Wonder Rabbi's face loomed half ghostlike, half regal. As the mystic dusk grew deeper and darkness fell, the fascination of it all began to overcome me: the dim, tossing, crooning figures, divined rather than seen, washed round lappingly and swayingly by their own rhythmic melody, full of wistful sweetness. My soul too tossed in this circumlapping tide. The complex world of modern civilization fell away from me as garments fall from a bather. Even this primitive mountain village passed into nothingness, and in a timeless, spaceless universe I floated in a lulling, measureless music.

AEons might have elapsed ere the glare of light dazzled my eyes when the week-day candles were lit, and the supper to escort the departing Holy Queen--the Sabbath--began. Again I was invited to the upper table, despite Yarchi's warning. But I had no appetite for earthly things, was jarred by the prosaic gusto with which the mystics threw themselves upon the tureen of red _Borsch_ and the black pottle of brandy.

"Der Rabbi hat geheissen Branntwein trinken," hummed the sexton joyously. But little by little, as their stomachs grew satiate, the holy singing started afresh, and presently they leaped up, pulled aside the table, and made a whirling ring. I was caught up into the human cyclone, and round and round we flew, our hands upon one another's shoulders, with blind ecstatic faces, our legs kicking out madly, to repel, I understood, the embryonic demons outside the magic circle. And again methought I made a "soul-ascension," or at least hovered as near to the ineffable mysteries as the demoniacles to our magic circle.

Oh, what inexpressible religious raptures were mine! What no gorgeous temple, nor pealing organ, nor white-robed minister had ever wrought for me was wrought in this barracklike room with its rude benches and wooden ark. "Children of the Palace" we sang, and as I strove to pick up the words I thought we were indeed sons of our Father who is in Heaven.

CHILDREN OF THE PALACE

Children of the Palace, haste-- All who yearn the bliss to taste Of the glorious Little-Faced, Where, within the King's house placed, Shines the sapphire throne enchased. Come, in joyful dance enlaced, Mock the cold and primly chaste. See no sullen nor straitlaced In our circle may be traced. Here with th' Ancient One embraced Inmost truth 'tis ours to taste, Outer husks are shred to waste. Children of the Palace, haste, With the glory to be graced, Come, behold the Little-Faced.

We broke up some hours earlier than the previous evening, but I hurried away from my sauntering fellow-worshippers, not now because I was disgusted, but because I feared to be. I needed solitude--communion with my own soul. The same crescent moon hung in the heavens, the same endless stars drew on the thoughts to a material infinity.

But now I felt there was another and a truer universe encompassing this painted vision--a spiritual universe of which I had hitherto known nothing, though I had glibly prated of it and listened well-satisfied to sermons about it.

The air was warm and pleasant, and, still thrilling with the sense of the Over-Soul, I had passed the outposts of the village almost unconsciously, and walked in the direction of the cemetery on the other slope of the mountain (for the dead feared neither floods nor avalanches). On my left ran the river, still turbulent and encumbered with wreckage and logs, but now at low tide some feet below the level of its steep banks. The road gradually narrowed till at last I was walking on a mere strip of path between the starlit water and the base of the mountain, which rose ineffably solemn with its desolate rock at my side and its dark pines higher up. And suddenly lifting my eyes, I saw before me a mystic moonlit figure that set my heart beating with terror and surprise.

It was the figure of a woman, or rather of a girl, tall, queenly, shining in a strange white robe, with a crown of roses and olive branches. For a moment she seemed like some spirit of moonlight. But though the eyes were misted with sadness and dream, the face was of the most beautiful Jewish oval, glowing with dark creamy flesh.

A wild idea rose to my mind, and, absurdly enough, stilled my beating heart. This was the Holy Queen Sabbath whose departure we had just been celebrating, and in this unfrequented haunt she abode till the twilight of the next Friday.

"Hail, Holy Queen!" I said, almost involuntarily.

I saw her large beautiful eyes grow larger as she woke with a start to my presence, but she only inclined her head with a sovereign air, as one used to adoration, and floated on--for so her gracious motion seemed to me.

And as she passed by, it flashed upon me that the strange white robe was nothing but a shroud. And again a great horror seized me. But struggling with my failing senses, I told myself that at worst it was some poor creature buried alive in the graveyard, who had forced the coffin lid, and now wandered half insanely homewards.

"May I not escort you, lady?" I cried after her. "The way is lonely."

She turned her face again upon me. I saw it had fire as well as mystery.

"Who dare molest the Holy Queen?" she said.

Again I was plunged into the wildest bewilderment. Was my first fancy true? Or had I stumbled upon some esoteric title she bore? Or had she but seized on my own phrase?

"But you go far?" I persisted.

"Unto my father's house."

"Pardon me. I am a stranger."

She turned round wholly now and looked at me. "Oh, are _you_ the _Stranger_?" she said. The question rippled like music from her lips and was as sweet to my ear, linking her to me by the suggestion that I was not new to her imagination.

"I am the Stranger," I answered, moving slowly toward her, "and therefore afraid for your sake, and startled by the shroud you wear."

"Since the dawn of my thirteenth year it has been my daily robe. It should be in lamentation for Zion laid waste. But me, I fear, it reminds more of my dead mother and sisters."

"You had sisters?"

"Two beautiful lives, blown out one after the other like candles, making our home dark, when I was but a child. They too wore shrouds in life and death, first the elder, then the younger; and when I draw mine over my dress, it is of them I think always. I feel we are truly sisters--sisters of the shroud."

I shivered as from some chill graveyard air, despite her sweet corporeality.

"But the crown--the crown of joy?" I murmured, regarding now with closer vision the intertangled weaving of roses and myrtle and olive branches, with gold and crimson threads wound about salt stones and the pale yellow of pyrites.

"I do not know what it signifies," she said simply.

"Are you not the Holy Queen?" I asked, beginning to scent some Cabalistic or _Chassidic_ mystery.

"Men worship me. But I know not of what I am queen." And a wistful smile played about the sweet mouth. "Peace and sweet dreams to you, sir." And she turned her face to the village.

She knew not of what she was queen. There, all in one sentence, was the charm, the wonder, the pathos, of her. Yet there was still much that she knew that would enlighten me. And it was not wholly curiosity that provoked me to hold the vision. I hated to see the enchantment of her presence dissolve, to be robbed of the liquid notes of her voice.

"You are queen of me at least," I said, following her, and throwing all my republican principles into the river among the other wreckage. "And your Majesty's liege cannot endure to see you walk unattended so late in the night."

"I have God's company," she answered quietly.

"True; He is always with us. Nevertheless, at night and in the mountains--"

"He may be perceived more clearly. My father makes soul-ascensions at any hour by force of prayer. But for me the divine ecstasy comes only under God's heaven, and most clearly at night and among the graves. By day God is invisible, like the stars."

"They may be perceived from a well," I said, mechanically, for my brain was busy with the intuition that she was Ben David's daughter, that her "queendom" was somehow bound up with his alleged royal descent.

"Even so is God visible from the deeps of the spirit," she answered. "But these depths are not mine, and day speaks to me less surely of Him."

"The day is divine too," I urged. "God speaks also through joy, through sunshine."

"It is but the gilding of sorrow."

"Nay, that is too hard a saying. How can you know that? You"--I made a bold guess, for my brain had continued to work feverishly--"who live cloistered in a turret, who are kept sequestered from man, who walk at night, and only among the dead. How can you know that life is so sad?"

"I feel it. Is not every stone in the graveyard hewn from the dead heart of the mourners?"

All the sadness of the world was in her eyes, yet somehow all the sweet solace. Again she bade me good-night, and I was so under the spell of her strange reply that I made no further effort to follow her, as she was swallowed up in the gloom of the firs where the path wound back round the mountain.

IV

The floods abated before the New Year dawned, as was testified by the arrival, not of doves with olive leaves, but of pilgrims from the north with shekels. The road was therefore open for me to go, yet I lingered. I told myself it was the fascination of the pilgrims, that curious new population which brought quite a bustle into the "Ring-Place" of Zloczszol, and gave even the shops of the native _Chassidim_ a live air. There were unpleasant camp-followers in the train of the invading army, cripples and consumptives, both rich and poor; but, on the whole, it was a cheery, well-to-do company. I retained my room by paying the rent of three lodgers, and even then Yarchi would come in and look at the big, tall bed wistfully, as if it were a waste of sleeping material.

The great episode of each day was now the royal levee. Crowds besieged the door of the "palace," in quest of health, wealth, and happiness, and the proprietor of fields had to squeeze in with the tramp, and the peasant woman and her neglected brat jostled the jewelled dame from the towns. I was glad to think that the "Holy Queen" was hidden safely away in her turret, and this consoled me for not meeting her again, though I walked or trotted about on my bay mare at all hours and in all places in quest of her.

It may seem curious that I did not boldly call and ask to see her, but that would bring the commonplace into our so poetic relation. Besides which, I divined that she would not be easily on view. Beyond indirectly justifying my intuition that she was Ben David's daughter by satisfying myself that the Wonder Rabbi had once had three girls, two of whom had died, I would not even make inquiries. I feared to dissipate the mystery and sacredness of our relation by gossip. Perhaps Yarchi would tell me she was mad, or treat me to some other coarse misconception due to the callous feelers with which he apprehended the world.

I did not even know for certain that the light I saw in the turret was hers. But when at night it was out, I hastened to the river-side, to see only my own shadow on the hushed mountain slope or on the white tombs. It seemed clear that she was being kept sacred from the pilgrims' gaze; perhaps, too, the deserted, untravelled road which was safe as her own home in normal times, was less secure now.