Part 20

"The rain has ceased, brethren," huskily whispered the hunchback, for his words seemed to stick in his throat. "Come outside and I will tell you how to enjoy this world, for world-to-come there is none." Not a figure stirred. The child's treble went unfalteringly on. The stranger hurried toward the door. Arrived there, he looked back. Moshe Grinwitz alone followed him. He hurled the Scroll at the child's head, but the lad just then took the three backward steps which accompany the conclusion of the prayer. The Scroll dashed itself against the wall; the stranger was gone and with him Moshe Grinwitz. A great wave of trembling passed through the length and breadth of the synagogue; the men drew long breaths, as if some heavy and sulphurous vapour had been dissipated from the atmosphere; the child lifted up with difficulty the battered Scroll, kissed it and handed it to his neighbour, who deposited it reverently in the Ark; a dazzling burst of sunshine flooded the room from above, and transmuted the floating dust into the golden shafts of some celestial structure; the Cantor and the congregation continued the words of the service at the point interrupted, as though all the strange episode had been a dream. They did not speak or wonder among themselves at it; nor did the rabbi allude to it in the marvellous exhortation that succeeded the service, save at its close, when he reminded them that on the morrow they must observe a solemn fast. But ever afterward they shunned Moshe Grinwitz as a leper; for the sight of him recalled his companion in blasphemy, the atheist and socialist propagandist, who had insidiously crept into their midst, after perverting and crazing their fellow as a preliminary; and the thought of the strange hunchback set their blood tingling and their brain surging with wild fancies and audacious thoughts. The tidings of their misfortune induced a few benevolent men to join in purchasing a new Scroll of the Law for them, and before the Feast of Consecration of this precious possession was well over, the once vivid images of that stormy and disgraceful scene were as shadows in the minds of men not unaccustomed to heated synagogal discussions, and not altogether strangers to synagogal affrays.

"_She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life._"--Prov. xxxi. 12.

As Moshe Grinwitz followed his new-found friend down the narrow windings that led to his own home, his whole being surrendered itself to the new delicious freedom. The burst of sunshine that greeted him almost as soon as he crossed the threshold of the synagogue seemed to him to typify the new life that was to be his. He drew up his gaunt form to his full height, stiffened his curved shoulders, bent by much stooping over his machine, and adjusted his high hat firmly on his head. It was not a restful, placid feeling that now possessed him; rather a busy ferment of ideas, a stirring of nerve currents, an accumulation of energy striving to discharge itself, a mercurial flowing of the blood. The weight of old life-long conceptions, nay, the burden of old learning, of which his store had been vast, was cast off. He did not know what he should do with the new life that tingled in his veins; he only felt alive in every pore.

"Ha! brother!" he shouted to the hunchback, who was hurrying on before. "These fools in the synagogue would do better to come out and enjoy the fine weather."

"They breathe the musty air to offer it up as a sweet incense," responded the dwarf, slackening his steps to allow his companion to come up with him.

Their short walk was diversified by quite a number of incidents. A driver lashed his horse so savagely that the animal bolted; two children walking hand in hand suddenly began to fight; a foreign-looking, richly dressed gentleman, half-drunk, staggered along. Moshe felt it a shame that one wealthy man should wear a heavy gold chain, which would support a poor family for a month; but ere his own temptation had gathered to a head, the poor gentleman was felled by a sudden blow, and a respectably clad figure vanished down an alley with the coveted spoil. Moshe felt glad, and made no attempt to assist the victim, and his attention was immediately attracted by some boys, who commenced to tie a cracker to a cat's tail. Occupied by all these observations, Moshe suddenly noted with a start that they had reached the house in which he lived. His companion had already entered the passage, for the door was always ajar, and Moshe had the impression that it was very kind of his new friend to accept his invitation to visit him. He felt very pleased, and followed him into the passage, but no sooner had he done so than an impalpable cloud of distrust seemed to settle upon him. The house was a tall, old-fashioned and grimy structure, which had been fine, and even stately, a century before, but which now sheltered a dozen families, mainly Jewish. Moshe Grinwitz's one room was situated at the very top, its walls forming part of the roof. Every flight of stairs Moshe went up, his spirit grew darker and darker, as if absorbing the darkness that hung around the cobwebbed, massive balustrades, upon which no direct ray of sunlight ever fell; and by the time he had reached the dusky landing outside his own door the vague uneasiness had changed into a horrible definite conception; a memory had come back upon him which set his heart thumping guiltily and anxiously in his bosom. His wife! His pure, virtuous, God-fearing wife! How was he to make her understand? But immediately a thought came, by which the burden of shame and anxiety was half lifted. His wife was not at home; she would still be in the Synagogue of Love and Mercy, where, mercifully blinded by the curtain, she, perhaps, was still ignorant of the part he had played. He turned suddenly to his companion, and caught the vanishing traces of an ugly scowl wrinkling the high white forehead under the fur cap. The hunchback's hair burnt like fire on the background of the gloom; his eyes flashed lightning.

"Probably my wife is in the synagogue," said Moshe. "If so, she has the key, and we can't get in."

"The key matters little," hissed the hunchback. "But you must first tear down this thing."

Moshe's eyes followed in wonder the direction of his companion's long, white forefinger, and rested on the _Mezuzah_, where, in a tin case, the holy verses and the Name hung upon the door-post.

"Tear it down?" repeated Moshe.

"Tear it down!" replied the hunchback. "Never will I enter a home where this superstitious gew-gaw is allowed to decorate the door."

Moshe hesitated; the thought of what his wife would say, again welled up strongly within him; all his new impious daring seemed to be melting away. But a mocking glance from the cruel eyes thrilled through him. He put his hand on the _Mezuzah_, then the unbroken habit of years asserted its sway, and he removed the finger which had lain on the Name and kissed it. Instantly another semi-transformation of his thoughts took place; he longed to take the hunchback by the throat. But it was an impotent longing, for when a low hiss of intense scorn and wrath was breathed from the clenched lips of his companion, he made a violent tug at the firmly fastened _Mezuzah_. It was half-loosed from the woodwork when, from behind the door, there issued in clear, womanly tones the solemn Hebrew words:--

"_Blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful._"

It was Rebecca Grinwitz commencing the Book of Psalms, which she read through every Sabbath afternoon.

A violent shudder agitated Moshe Grinwitz's frame; he paused with his hand on the _Mezuzah_, struggled with himself awhile, then kissed his finger again, and, turning to defy the scorn of his companion, saw that he had slipped noiselessly downstairs. A sob of intense relief burst from Moshe's lips.

"Rivkoly, Rivkoly!" he cried hysterically, beating at the door; and in another moment he was folded in the quiet haven of his wife's arms.

"Who told thee it was I?" said Rebecca, after a moment of delicious happiness for both. "I told them not to alarm thee, nor to spoil thy enjoyment of the sermon, because I knew thou wouldst be uneasy and be wanting to leave the synagogue if thou knewest I had fainted."

"No one told me thou hadst fainted!" Moshe exclaimed, instantly forgetting his own perturbation.

"And yet thou didst guess it!" said Rebecca, a happy little smile dimpling her pale cheek, "and came away after me." Then, her face clouding, "The _Satan Mekatrig_ has tempted us both away from synagogue," she said, "and even when I commence to say _Tehillim_ (Psalms) at home, he interrupts me by sending me my darling husband."

Moshe kissed her in acknowledgment of the complimentary termination of a sentence begun with unquestionable gloom. "But what made my Rivkoly faint?" he asked, glad, on reflection, that his wife's misconception obviated the necessity of explanations. "They ought to have opened the window at the back of the women's room."

Rebecca shuddered. "God forbid!" she cried. "It wasn't the heat--it was _that_." Her eyes stared a moment at some unseen vision.

"What?" cried Moshe, catching the contagion of horror.

"He would have come in," she said.

"Who would have come in?" he gasped.

"The _Satan Mekatrig_," replied his wife. "He was outside, and he glared at me as if I prevented his coming in."

A nervous silence followed. Moshe's heart beat painfully. Then he laughed with ghastly merriment. "Thou didst fall asleep from the heat," he said, "and hadst an evil dream."

"No, no," protested his wife earnestly. "As sure as I stand here, no! I was looking into my _Chumosh_ (Pentateuch), following the reading of the _Torah_, and all at once I felt something plucking my eyes off my book and turning my head to look through the window immediately behind me. I wondered what _Satan Mekatrig_ was distracting my thoughts from the service. For a long time I resisted, but when the reading ceased for a moment the temptation overcame me and I turned and saw him."

"How looked he?" Moshe asked in a whisper that strove in vain not to be one.

"Do not ask me," Rebecca replied, with another shudder. "A little crooked demon with red hair, and a fur cap, and a white forehead, and baleful eyes, and a cock's talons for toes."

Again Moshe laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Little fool!" he said, "I know the man. He is only a brother-Jew--a poor cutter or cigar-maker who laughs at _Yiddishkeit_ (Judaism), because he has no wife like mine to show him the heavenly light. Why, didst thou not see him afterward? But no, thou must have been gone by the time he came inside."

"What I saw was no man," returned Rebecca, looking at him sternly. "No earthly being could have stopped my heart with his glances. It was the _Satan Mekatrig_ himself, who goeth to and fro on the earth, and walketh up and down in it. I must have been having wicked thoughts indeed this Sabbath, thinking of my new dress, for my Sabbath Angel to have deserted me, and to let the Disturber and the Tempter assail me unchecked." The poor, conscience-stricken woman burst into tears.

"My Rivkoly have wicked thoughts!" said Moshe incredulously, as he smoothed her cheek. "If my Rivkoly puts on a new dress in honour of the Sabbath, is not the dear God pleased? Why, where _is_ thy new dress?"

"I have changed it for an old one," she sobbed. "I do not want to see the demon again."

"The _Satan Mekatrig_ has no real existence, I tell thee," said Moshe, irritated. "He only means our own inward thoughts, that distract us in the performance of the precepts; our own inward temptations to go astray after our eyes and after our hearts."

"Moshe!" Rebecca exclaimed in a shocked tone, "have I married an Epikouros after all? My father, the Rav, peace be unto him, always said thou hadst the makings of one--that thou didst ask too many questions."

"Well, whether there is a _Satan_ or not," retorted her husband, "thou couldst not have seen him; for the person thou describest is the man I tell thee of."

"And thou keepest company with such a man," she answered; "a man who scoffs at _Yiddishkeit_! May the Holy One, blessed be He, forgive thee! Now I know why we have no children, no son to say _Kaddish_ after us." And Rebecca wept bitterly--for the children she did not possess.

Their common cause of grief coming thus unexpectedly into their consciousness softened them toward one another and dispelled the gathering irritation. Both had a melancholy vision of themselves stretched out stiff and stark in their shrouds, with no filial _Kaddish_ breaking in upon and gladdening their ears. O if their souls should be doomed to Purgatory, with no son's prayers to release them! Very soon they were sitting hand in hand, reading together the interrupted Psalms.

And a deep peace fell upon Moshe Grinwitz. So the immortal allegorist, John Bunyan, must have felt when the mad longing to utter blasphemies and obscenities from the pulpit was stifled; and when he felt his soul once more in harmony with the Spirit of Good. So feel all men who have wrestled with a Being in the darkness and prevailed.

They were a curious contrast--the tall, sallow, stooping, black-bearded man, and the small, keen-eyed, plump, pleasant-looking, if not pretty woman, in her dark wig and striped cotton dress, and as they sat, steadily going through the whole collection of Psalms to a strange, melancholy tune, fraught with a haunting and indescribable pathos, the shadows of twilight gathered unnoticed about the attic, which was their all in all of home. The iron bed, the wooden chairs, the gilt-framed _Mizrach_ began to lose their outlines in the dimness. The Psalms were finished at last, and then the husband and wife sat, still hand in hand, talking of their plans for the coming week. For once neither spoke of going to evening service at the Synagogue of Love and Mercy, and when a silver ray of moonlight lay broad across the counterpane, and Rebecca Grinwitz, peering into the quiet sky that overhung the turbid alley, announced that three stars were visible, the devout couple turned their faces to the east and sang the hymns that usher out the Sabbath.

And when the evening prayer was over Rebecca produced from the cupboard the plainly cut goblet of raisin wine, and the metal wine-cup, the green twisted waxlight, and the spice-box, wherewith to perform the beautiful symbolical ceremony of the _Havdalah_, welcoming in the days of work, the six long days of dreary drudgery, with cheerful resignation to the will of the Maker of all things--of the Sabbath and the Day of Work, the Light and the Shadow, the Good and the Evil, blent into one divine harmony by His inscrutable Wisdom and Love.

Moshe filled the cup with raisin wine, and, holding it with his right hand, chanted a short majestic Hebrew poem, whereof the burden was:--

"Lo! God is my salvation; I will trust, and I will not be afraid. Be with us light and joy, gladness and honour." Then blessing the King of the Universe, who had created the fruit of the Vine, he placed the cup on the table and took up the spices, uttering a blessing over them as he did so. Then having smelled the spice-box, he passed it on to his wife and spread out his hands toward the light of the spiral wax taper, reciting solemnly: "Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who createst the Light of the Fire." And then looking down at the Shade made by his bent fingers, he took up the wine-cup again, and chanted, with especial fervour, and with a renewed sense of the sanctities and sweet tranquillities of religion: "Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makest a distinction between the Holy and the non-Holy, between Light and Darkness."

"_As for that night, let darkness seize upon it._"--Job iii. 6.

It was _Kol Nidre_ night, the commencement of the great White Fast, the Day of Atonement. Throughout the Jewish quarter there was an air of subdued excitement. The synagogues had just emptied themselves and everywhere men and women, yet under the solemn shadow of passionate prayer, were meeting and exchanging the wish that they might weather the fast safely. The night was dark and starless, as if Nature partook of the universal mournfulness.

Solitary, though amidst a crowd, a slight, painfully thin woman shuffled wearily along, her feet clad in the slippers which befitted the occasion, her head bent, her worn cheek furrowed with still-falling tears. They were not the last dribblets of an exhausted emotion, not the meaningless, watery expression of over-excited sensibility. They were real, salt, bitter tears born of an intense sorrow. The long, harassing service, with its untiring demands upon the most exalted and the most poignant emotions, would have been a blessing if it had dulled her capacity for anguish. But it had not. Poor Rebecca Grinwitz was still thinking of her husband.

It was of him she thought, even when the ministers, in their long white cerements, were pouring forth their souls in passionate vocalization, now rising to a wail, now breaking to a sob, now sinking to a dread whisper; it was of him she thought when the weeping worshippers, covered from head to foot in their praying-shawls, rocked to and fro in a frenzy of grief, and battered the gates of Heaven with fiery lyrics; it was of him she thought when she beat her breast with her clenched fist as she made the confession of sin and clamoured for forgiveness. Sins enough she knew she had--but _his_ sin! Ah! God, _his_ sin!

For Moshe had gone from bad to worse. He refused to reenter the synagogue where he had been so roughly handled. His speech became more and more profane. He said no more prayers; wore no more phylacteries. Her peaceful home-life wrecked, her reliance on her husband gone, the poor wife clung to him, still hoping on. At times she did not believe him sane. Gradually rumours of his mad behaviour on the Sabbath on which she had fainted reached her ears, and remembering that his strangeness had begun from the Sunday morning following that delicious afternoon of common Psalm-saying, she was often inclined to put it all down to mental aberration. But then his talk--so clever, if so blasphemous; bristling with little pointed epigrams and maxims such as she had never before heard from him or any one else. He was full of new ideas, too, on politics and the social system and other unpractical topics, picturing endless potentialities of wealth and happiness for the labourer. Meantime his wages had fallen by a third, owing to the loss of his former place, his master having been the president of the Congregation of Love and Mercy. What wonder, therefore, if Moshe Grinwitz intruded upon all his wife's thoughts--devotional or worldly? In a very real sense he had become her _Satan Mekatrig_.

Up till to-night she had gone on hoping. For when the great White Fast comes round, a mighty wave as of some subtle magnetism passes through the world of Jews. Men and women who have not obeyed one precept of Judaism for a whole year suddenly awake to a remembrance of the faith in which they were born, and hasten to fast and pray, and abase themselves before the Throne of Mercy. The long-drawn, tremulous, stirring notes of the trumpet that ushers in the New Year, seem to rally and gather together the dispersed of Israel from every region of the underworld of unfaith and to mass them beneath the cope of heaven. And to-night surely the newly rooted nightshade of doubt would wither away in her husband's bosom. Surely this one link still held him to the religion of his fathers; and this one link would redeem him and yet save his soul from the everlasting tortures of the damned. But this last hope had been doomed to disappointment. Utterly unmoved by all the olden sanctities of the Days of Judgment that initiate the New Year, the miserable man showed no signs of remorse when the more awful terrors of the Day of Atonement drew near--the last day of grace for the sinner, the day on which the Divine Sentence is sealed irrevocably. And so the wretched woman had gone to the synagogue alone.

Reaching home, she toiled up the black staircase and turned the handle of the door. As she threw open the door she uttered a cry. She saw nothing before her but a gigantic shadow, flickering grotesquely on the sloping walls and the slip of ceiling. It must be her own shadow, for other living occupant of the room she could see none. Where was her husband? Whither had he gone? Why had he recklessly left the door unlocked?

She looked toward the table gleaming weirdly with its white tablecloth; the tall wax _Yom Kippur_ Candle, specially lit on the eve of the solemn fast and intended to burn far on into the next day, had all but guttered away, and the flame was quivering unsteadily under the influence of a draught coming from the carelessly opened window. Rebecca shivered from head to foot; a dread presentiment of evil shook her soul. For years the Candle had burnt steadily, and her life also had been steady and undisturbed. Alas! it needed not the omen of the _Yom Kippur_ Candle to presage woe.

"May the dear God have mercy on me!" she exclaimed, bursting into fresh tears. Hardly had she uttered the words when a monstrous black cat, with baleful green eyes, dashed from under the table, sprang upon the window-sill, and disappeared into the darkness, uttering a melancholy howl. Almost frantic with terror, the poor woman dragged herself to the window and closed it with a bang, but ere the sash had touched the sill, something narrow and white had flashed from the room through the gap, and the reverberations made in the silent garret by the shock of the violently closed window were prolonged in mocking laughter.

"Well thrown, Rav Moshe!" said a grating voice. "Now that you have at last conquered your reverence for a bit of tin and a morsel of parchment, I will honour your mansion with my presence."

Instantly Rebecca felt a wild longing to join in the merriment and to laugh away her fears; but, muttering a potent talismanic verse, she turned and faced her husband and his guest. Instinct had not deceived her--the new-comer was the hunchback of that fatal Sabbath. This time she did not faint.

"A strange hour and occasion to bring a visitor, Moshe," she said sternly, her face growing even more rigid and white as she caught the nicotian and alcoholic reek of the two men's breaths.

"Your good _Frau_ is not over-polite," said the visitor. "But it's _Yom Kippur_, and so I suppose she feels she must tell the truth."

"I brought him, Rivkoly, to convince thee what a fool thou wast to assert that thou hadst seen--but _I_ mustn't be impolite," he broke off, with a coarse laugh. "There's no call for _me_ to tell the truth because it's _Yom Kippur_. Down at the Club we celebrated the occasion by something better than truth--a jolly spread! And our good friend here actually stood a bottle of champagne! Champagne, Rivkoly! Think of it! Real, live champagne, like that which fizzes and sparkles on the table of the Lord Mayor. Oh, he's a jolly good fellow! and so said all of us, too. And yet thou sayest he isn't a fellow at all."

A drunken leer overspread his sallow face, and was rendered more ghastly by the flame leaping up from the expiring candle.

"_Roshah_, sinner!" thundered the woman. Then looking straight into the cruel eyes of the hunchback, her wan face shining with the stress of a great emotion, her meagre form convulsed with fury, "Avaunt, _Satan Mekatrig_!" she screamed. "Get thee down from my house--get thee down. In God's name, get thee down--to hell."

Even the brazen-faced hunchback trembled before her passion; but he grasped his friend's hot hand in his long, nervous fingers, and seemed to draw courage from the contact.