Part 25

"Rich?" He repeated the word again in a dazed tone. "_Ach_, why did I not know this before?"

"You had not succeeded. You had not had your experience, my son, my dearest Paul. But now your work is over, or rather your true work begins. Freed from the detestable routine of a newspaper office, you shall write your books and work out your ideas at leisure, and relieved from all material considerations."

"_Da_, it would have been a beautiful ideal--once," he said; then added fiercely: "Rich? And I did not know it."

"But you were the happier for your ignorance."

"No, father. The struggle is too terrible. Often have I sat and wept. _Ish-lui_, time after time my book--destined as it was to success--came back to me from the publishers. And I could have produced it myself all along!"

Pangs of remorse agitated me. Had my plan been, indeed, a failure? "But you have the pride of unhelped success."

"And the bitter memories. And once--" He paused.

"Once?" I said.

"Once I loved a girl. She is dead now, so it doesn't matter. There were many and complicated obstacles to our union. With money they would have been overcome."

"Poor boy!" I said wonderingly, for I knew nothing of this apparently new love episode. "Forgive me, my son, if I have acted mistakenly. Anyhow, from this moment your happiness is my sole care."

"No," he said, with sudden determination. "It is too late now. You meant it for the best, _papasha_. But I do not want the money now. I have money of my own--and glory. Why should I give up what my own hands have won?"

"Because I ask it of you, Paul; because I ask you to allow me to make reparation for the mischief I have done."

"The truest reparation will be to let things go unrepaired," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I shall be happier as editor of this paper. What finer medium for my ideas than a great newspaper? What more potent lever to my hand for raising Holy Russia to a yet higher plane? No, father. Let bygones be bygones. Give my share of your wealth to a society for helping struggling talent. I struggle no longer. Leave me to go on in the path my pen has carved out."

I fell at his feet and begged him to let me have my way, but some obstinate demon seemed to have taken possession of his breast. I opened my desk and showered bank-notes upon him. He spurned them, and one flew out into the night. Neither of us put out a hand to arrest its flight.

I saw that nothing but the truth had any chance to alter his resolve. But I played one more card before resorting to this dangerous weapon.

"Listen, my own dearest Paul," I burst out. "If money will not tempt you, let a father's petition persuade you. Learn, then, that I dread your taking this position because you will perpetually have to attack the Jews--"

"As they deserve," he put in.

"Be it so. But I--I have a kindness for this oppressed race."

He looked at me in silence, as if awaiting further explanation. I gave it, blurting out the shameful lie with ill-concealed confusion.

"Once upon a time I--I loved a Jewess. I could not marry her, of course. But ever since that time I have had a soft place in my heart for her unhappy race."

A look of surprise flashed into Paul's eyes. Then his face grew tender. He took my hand in his.

"Father, we have a common sorrow," he said. "The girl I spoke of was a Jewess."

"How?" I exclaimed, surprised in my turn. It was the same affair, then.

"Yes, she was a Jewess. But I taught her the truth. Christ was revealed to her prisoned soul. She would have fled with me if we had had the means, and if I had been able to support her in some other country. But she did not dare be baptized and stay in Moscow or anywhere near. She said her father would have killed her. The only alternative was for me to embrace Judaism. Impossible as you may think it, father, and I confess it to my eternal shame, at the very period I was correcting the proofs of my book, I was wrestling with a temptation to embrace this Satanic heresy. But I conquered the temptation. It was easy to conquer. To renounce the faith which was my blessed birthright would, as you know, have cost me dear. Selfishness warred for once on the side of salvation. Rachel wished to fly with me. I knew she would have been poor and unhappy. I refused to take advantage of her girlish impetuousness. I heard afterward that she had drowned herself." The tears rained down his cheeks.

"We had arranged to wait till I could save a stock of money. _Voi_, the delay undid us. One day Rachel's father called on me. He had got wind of our secret. He fell at my feet and tore his hair, and wept and conjured me not to darken his home and his life. A Jewess could only wed a Jew, he said. If I had only been born a Jew all would have been well. But his Rachel had, perhaps, talked of becoming a Christian. Did I not know that was impossible? As well expect the sheep to howl like the wolf. Blood was thicker than baptismal water. Her heart would always cleave to her own religion. And was my love so blind as not to see that even if she spoke of Christianity it was only to please me? that she only kissed the crucifix that I might kiss her, and knelt to the Virgin that I might kneel to her? At home, he swore it with fearful oaths, she was always bitterly sarcastic at the expense of the true faith. I believed him. My God, I believed him! For at times I had feared it myself. I would be no party to such carnal blasphemy, and charged him with a note of farewell. When he went I felt as if I had escaped from a terrible temptation. I fell on my knees and thanked the saints."

"But why did you not tell me this at the time?" I cried in intolerable anguish.

"_Nu_; to what end? It would only have worried you. I did not know you were rich."

"And at this time you offered to send _me_ money!" I said, with sudden recollection.

"Since I had not enough, you might as well have some of it. Anyhow, father, you see all this has made no difference to me. I shall never marry now, of course; but it hasn't altered the opinion I have always had of the Jews--rather corroborated it. Rachel told me enough of the superstitious slavery amid which she was forced to live. I have no doubt now that her father lied. But for his pigheaded tribalism, Rachel would have been alive to-day. So why your love for a Jewish girl should make you tender to the race I do not see, dearest father. There are always exceptions to everything--Rachel was one; the woman you loved was another. And now it is very late; I think I will go to bed."

He kissed me and went out at the door. Then he came back and put his head inside again. A sweet, sad, winning smile lit up his pale, thoughtful face.

"I will put you on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_, father," he said. "Good-night, _papasha_."

What could I say? What could I do? I called up a smile to my trembling lips.

"Good-night, Paul," I said.

I shall never tell him now.

_Tuesday, 3 a.m._--I reopen these pages to note an ironic climax to this bitter day. Through the excitement of Paul's coming I had not read my letters. After sitting here in a numb trance for hours, I suddenly bethought me of them. One is from my business man, informing me that he has just sold the South American stock, respecting which I gave him _carte blanche_. I go to bed richer by five thousand roubles.

* * * * *

_Odessa, Wednesday Night._--Six months have passed. I am on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_. Almost every day brings me a fresh stab as I read. But I am a "constant reader." It is my penance, and I bear it as such. After a long silence, I have just had a letter from Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and I reopen my diary to note it. He is about to marry a prosperous widow, and is going over to Catholicism. He writes he is very happy. Lucky, soulless being. He does not know he will be a richer man when I die. Happily, I am ready, though it were to-day. My peace is made, I hope, with God and man, though Paul knows nothing even now. He could not fail to learn it, though, if he came to Odessa again. I have bribed the spies and the clergy heavily. Thanks to their silence, I am one of the most prominent Jews of the town, and nobody dreams of connecting me with the trenchant editor of the _Novoe Vremia_. I see now that I could have acted so all along, if I had not been such a coward. But I keep Paul away. It is my last cowardice. In a postscript Nicholas writes that Paul's articles are causing a great sensation in the remotest parts of Russia. Alas, I know it. Are there not anti-Jewish riots in all parts, encouraged by cruel Government measures? Do not the local newspapers everywhere reproduce Paul's printed firebrands? Have I not the pleasure of coming across them again in our own Odessa papers, in the _Wiertnik_ and the _Listok_? I should not wonder if we had an outbreak here. There was a little affray yesterday in the _pereouloks_ of the Jewish quarter, though we are quiet enough down this way.... Great God! What is that noise I hear?... Yes! it is! it is! "Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the _Zhits_!" There is red on the horizon. _Bozhe moi!_ It is flame! _Voi!_ They are pillaging the Jewish quarter. The sun sinks in blood, as on that unhappy day among the village hills.... _Ach!_ Paul, Paul! Why did I not stop your murderous pen?... But if not you, another would have written.... No, that is no excuse.... Forgive me, O God, I have been weak. Ever weak and cowardly from the day I first deserted Thee, even unto this day.... I am not worthy of my blood, of my race.... They are coming this way. It goes through me like a knife. "Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the _Zhits_!" And now I see them. They are mad, drunk with the vodka they have stolen from the Jewish inns. Great God! They have knives and guns. And their leader is flourishing a newspaper and shouting out something from it. There are soldiers among them, and sailors, native and foreign, and mad muzhiks. Where are the police?... The mob is passing under my window. _God pity me, it is Paul's words they are shouting._... They have passed. No one thinks of me. Thank God, I am safe. I am safe from these demons. What a narrow escape!... Ah, God, they have captured Rabbi Isaac and are dragging him along by his white beard toward the barracks. My place is by his side. I will rouse my brethren. We are not a few. We will turn on these dogs and rend them. _Proshchai_, my loved diary. Farewell! I go to proclaim the Unity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In order to preserve the local colour, the Translator has occasionally left a word or phrase of the MS. in the original Russian.

[2] Dissenters.

* * * * *

X

"INCURABLE"

* * * * *

X

"INCURABLE"

"_Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave. Whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto Thee._"--Eighty-eighth Psalm.

There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the friends of the patients would be admitted. The Incurables would hear the latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much with these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It was an unpretentious institution--two corner houses knocked together--near the east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor at a penny a week, and scarcely recognized by the rich; so that paraplegia and vertigo and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless diseases knocked hopelessly at its narrow portals. But it was a model institution all the same, and the patients lacked for nothing except freedom from pain. There was even a miniature synagogue for their spiritual needs, with the women's compartment religiously railed off from the men's, as if these grotesque ruins of sex might still distract each other's devotions.

Yet the Rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly, hydrocephalous, paralytic Leah had had the chair she inhabited carried down into the men's sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man, who had the Braille Bible at his fingers' ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had strolled vacuously into the ladies' ward, and, indifferent to the pretty white-aproned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a weird, hatchet-faced cripple with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting big spectacles. Like most of the patients she was up and dressed; only a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.

"Leah says she'd be quite happy if she could walk like you," said Mad Mo in complimentary tones. "She always says Milly walks so beautiful. She says you can walk the whole length of the garden." Milly, huddled in her chair, smiled miserably.

"You're crying again, Rebecca," protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced dwarf in excellent English, as she touched her friend's withered hand. "You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered."

"No--I feel so nice," said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint musical accent. "You sall not tink I cry because I am not happy. Ven I read sad tings--like my life--den only I am happy."

The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendent earrings oscillate. "I thought you were brooding over your love affairs," she said.

"Me!" cried Rebecca. "I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is Psalm eighty-eight dat I brood over. 'I am afflicted and ready to die from my yout' up.' Yes, I vas only a girl ven I had to go to Koenigsberg to find a doctor to cut off my leg. 'Lover and friend hast dou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness!'"

Her face shone ecstatic.

"Hush!" whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod in the direction of a neighbouring waterbed on which a pale, rigid, middle-aged woman lay, with shut sleepless eyes.

"Se cannot understand Englis'," said the Russian girl proudly.

"Don't be so sure, look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddish!"

Rebecca shook her head incredulously. "Sarah is a Polis' woman," she said. "For years dey are in England and dey learn noting."

"_Ick bin krank! Krank! Krank!_" suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish grandmother--an advanced centenarian--as if to corroborate the girl's contention. She was squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and again murmuring her querulous burden of sickness, and jabbering at the nurses to shut all the windows. Fresh air she objected to as vehemently as if it were butter or some other heterodox dainty.

Hard upon her crooning came bloodcurdling screams from the room above, sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a "Barnum" show, that the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret--not yet indurated--thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the ashen perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen jelly-like hands resting on cotton-wool pads, an air-pillow between her knees, her whole frame racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only diversion faint blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the glass of a framed picture; yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.

Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white, impassive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a strong, stern face, telling of a present of pain, and faintly hinting at a past of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and indeed the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years before. Her only surviving son--a youth whom the English atmosphere had not improved--had sailed away to trade with the Kaffirs. And her husband had not been to see her for a fortnight!

When the visitors began to arrive, her torpor vanished. She eagerly raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up. But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a buzz of talk in the room--the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre of a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when they didn't come and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of her to their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with. One or two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she would speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing under the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By and by she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her artificial walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to look for her--

"Woe is me!" wailed her centenarian country-woman, rocking to and fro. "What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to see if the old grandmother isn't dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!"

Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah's husband had not yet come.

"He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow," Sister Margaret ventured to say in her best Yiddish. "Or he is busy working. Work is not so slack any more." Alone in the institution she shared Sarah's ignorance of the Kretznow scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.

"He would have written," said Sarah sternly. "He is awearied of me. I have lain here a year. Job's curse is on me."

"Shall I to him"--Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word--"write?"

"No! He hears me knocking at his heart."

They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured feebly, "But--"

"Leave me in peace!" with a cry like that of a wounded animal.

The matron gently touched the novice's arm and drew her away. "_I_ will write to him," she whispered.

Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in a hell of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten her--surely she would not lie thus till death--that far-off death her strong religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone into the Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and the cost of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight of his strength?

The next day he came--by special invitation. His face was sallow, rimmed with swarthy hair; his under lip was sensuous. He hung his head, half veiling the shifty eyes.

Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah's face sparkled.

"Put up the screen!" she murmured, and in its shelter drew her husband's head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.

But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: "I thought thou wast dying."

A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.

"Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life. I _was_ dying--for a sight of thee."

"But the matron wrote to me pressingly," he blurted out. He felt her breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands she thrust him away.

"God's fool that I am--I should have known; to-day is not visiting day. They have compassion on me--they see my sorrows--it is public talk."

His pulse seemed to stop. "They have talked to thee of me," he faltered.

"I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered--one cannot hide one's heart."

"They have no right to talk," he muttered in sulky trepidation.

"They have every right," she rejoined sharply. "If thou hadst come to see me even once--why hast thou not?"

"I--I--have been travelling in the country with cheap jewellery. The tailoring is so slack."

"Look me in the eyes! Law of Moses? No, it is a lie. God shall forgive thee. Why hast thou not come?"

"I have told thee."

"Tell that to the Sabbath Fire-Woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out utterly--"

"No, no, Sarah," he murmured uneasily.

"Then why--?"

He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. "I did not like to come," he said desperately.

"Why not?" Crimson patches came and went on her white cheeks; her heart beat madly.

"Surely thou canst understand!"

"Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue!"

"I answer as thou askest."

"Thou answerest not at all."

"No answer is also an answer," he snarled, driven to bay. "Thou understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk."

"Ah--h--h!" in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat back by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on the pillow, the eyes closed.

He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.

"So sick! So sick! So sick!" moaned the wizened grandmother.

"Thou sayest they have compassion on thee in their talk," he murmured at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully; "have they none on me?"

Her silence chilled him. "But _thou_ hast compassion, Sarah," he urged. "_Thou_ understandest."

Presently she reopened her eyes.

"Thou art not gone?" she murmured.

"No--thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life! Only--"

"Wilt thou wash my skin, and not make me wet?" she interrupted bitterly. "Go home. Go home to her!"

"I will not go home."

"Then go under like Korah."

He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the opening of a peep-hole into Paradise--a paradise of Adam and Eve and forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of jealousy in which she writhed?

He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely remorseful, but she would not see him. So he went away, vaguely indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.

When you lie on your back all day and all night you have time to think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in many lights from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. One such light flashed on the paradise, and showed it to her as but the portico of purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.

On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness. And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come and see her.

He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.

"Thou hast sent for me?" he murmured.

"Yes--perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my death-bed!" she replied, with bitter irony.

"It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself--only thou wouldst not see my face."

"I have seen it for twenty years--it is another's turn now."

He was silent.

"It is true all the same--I am on my death-bed."

He started. A pang shot through his breast. He darted an agitated glance at her face.

"Is it not so? In this bed I shall die. But God knows how many years I shall lie in it."

Her calm gave him an uncanny shudder.

"And till the Holy One, blessed be He, takes me, thou wilt live a daily sinner."

"I am not to blame. God has stricken me. I am a young man."

"Thou art to blame!" Her eyes flashed fire. "Blasphemer! Life is sweet to thee--yet perchance thou wilt die before me."

His face grew livid. "I am a young man," he repeated tremulously.

"Dost thou forget what Rabbi Eliezer said? 'Repent one day before thy death'--that is to-day, for who knows?"

"What wouldst thou have me do?"

"Give up--"