Part 11

“Well, I guess I will--yes,” the old man assented, and did so. “Well,” he continued, “this has been the devil's own business all around, hasn't it? Poor Chris, poor little Chris--she's pretty near out of her head. She's all broke up. She is, for a fact. She wanted to come down here with me--begged and implored me to let her. But I wouldn't. I didn't know how you might be; and, think s's I, it might just fret her worse than ever. She's been scared about to death. Poor little thing! I tried to comfort her, and cheer her up; but it wa'n't much use. A father don't count for much, now-a-days, when a young man is concerned. I suppose,” he wound up abruptly, “seeing you feel all right again, you'll be up to the house to-night, hey? Then we can settle on a new day for the wedding.”

Elias summoned his utmost courage. “N-no; I think not,” he said. His voice was husky and unsteady.

Redwood did not understand. “Hey--what?” he queried.

“I say, no; I think I shall not call this evening.”

“No? Why, why not? Don't you--ain't you well enough? Chris is just--I may say, she's just pining for a sight of ye. I really think she'll get sick, if this thing keeps on. If you're able to leave the house, I really think you'd better come up. She--she's nearly cried her eyes out. I told her--just before I left--I told her: 'Now, look here, Chris, you want to stop that crying. You want to dry your eyes, and _bleach_ 'em, against Elias's coming,' says I, 'for he won't admire them, red like that.' I said this, you know, to sort of make her laugh. But seriously, I'm scared about her. I am, actually. She hasn't tasted a mouthful of food all day. I guess I'll have to call in the doctor if she ain't better to-morrow. But unless you're considerably worse off than you look, I guess you'd better come up. I'll tell you what you do--you come up with me now, and take dinner.”

Elias felt that the old man was making it more and more difficult for him to say what would have to be said. He clenched his fists, and gritted his teeth, and began by a great effort to force out the words.

“Mr. Redwood--there is a--a misunderstanding. I must set it right. I--I am exceedingly sorry--to--to be compelled to tell you--to tell you that--” Here his voice sank to a whisper. He paused for a moment, drew a long breath, resumed aloud, “--that, owing to circumstances which I can not perfectly explain--because, in fact, of our difference of religion--she being a Christian, and I a Jew--the--the engagement--between Miss Redwood and myself--will have to be--broken off. This is quite positive. There is no help for it. Please--please believe it, without my saying more. I am very sorry. Our engagement will have to be broken off.”

He did not dare to look at the man to whom he had spoken. He looked at his uncle. But the latter was watching old Redwood.

Old Redwood's face was eloquent. When Elias had begun to speak, the old man had been smiling good-naturedly. Gradually his smile had faded to an expression of blank incomprehension; which, in its turn, had gradually changed to one of uttermost, indignant astonishment. But now, this too had departed, and his features had become set in a new smile--a smile which revealed the abyssmal contempt, the passionate, malignant scorn, at the bottom of his soul, far more clearly than the strongest words could have done. A grayish pallor had overspread his brow. His eyes blazed upon Elias. Between his drawn lips, his teeth gleamed savagely. He sat still, nodding his head, and smiling that unpropitious smile.

For a long while, painfully long, no one spoke.

Elias, though he dared not look, knew how fiercely old Redwood was eying him--felt the heat of old Redwood's gaze. His cheeks flaming, his body in a tremor, he sat still, afraid to stir. He could hear old Redwood breathe. He could hear the boisterous beating of his own heart, in dread apprehension of the brewing storm. He could hear the regular, metallic tick-tack of the rabbi's clock, which increased the stress, as it measured the duration, of his suspense. The rabbi, also, was smiling now--a smile of genial satisfaction.

At last old Redwood moved. He shifted in his chair. He cleared his throat. With a single jerk of his tall frame, he got upon his feet. He stood for a few seconds, silent. Presently, “Well, Elias Bacharach,” he said, in low, dry tones, vibrant with suppressed fury, “I understand that I am to inform my daughter from you, that, as you have said, on account of your difference of religion, she is to consider herself jilted and thrown over. I think that is the upshot of what you have said.”

“Say, rather, released from her engagement,” put in the rabbi, blandly. “And if you will permit me, I shall be happy to explain to you the circumstances which render this step unavoidable.”

“Pardon me,” returned old Redwood, with a grand bow and flourish. “I was not aware, sir, of having addressed you. I'm talking to Mr. Elias Bacharach. And now, Elias Bacharach, this is what I've got to say. I suppose you know what you air. I suppose you know the names I could call ye, if I had a mind to demean myself to calling names. You look in the dictionary, and you'll find them printed in black and white. But I guess you won't need to look so far. I guess it will do just as well if you look in your own conscience. You know what you've done. You know how you've taken a young, innocent girl, and won her heart, and got it set on you, so that she don't think of any thing or any body else; and then flung her overboard, and spoiled her life, and darkened her whole youth. And you know what honest people think of a man who's done that. That's all. You needn't be afraid. You needn't sit there, shaking. I ain't going to hurt you. I ain't going to touch you, even. I'll go home now. I'll go home, and tell the news to Christine. If it kills her, you know who'll have to answer for her death.” Thus far, the old man had spoken with great self-control; but here, suddenly, he forgot himself.--“But, by God,” he thundered out, “if it does kill her, I--I'd rather _have_ it, by God! than have her married to you, now that I know what you are, you damn, miserable, white-livered Jew!”

With which, he stalked from the room; and next moment the street-door slammed behind him.

“Well, now, Elias,” said the rabbi, “now it's all over for good and all.”

“Yes, I dare say,” replied Elias; “but I feel somehow as though it had just begun--as though the worst of it were still to come.”

“Oh, nonsense!” cried the rabbi. “You're morbid. Cheer up. Let's celebrate your deliverance with a bottle of wine.”

XIV.

APPARENTLY it did not once occur to Elias to seek a natural explanation for what had happened; and even if it had done so, I don't believe it would have made much difference. But this, as has been said, in view of all the circumstances, was scarcely strange. The supernatural explanation had, so to speak, captured his mind by storm. With tremendous force and suddenness, it had thrust itself upon him at a moment when he was suffering the exhaustion and the debility consequent upon a violent shock; and, once in possession, it clung tenaciously, and left no foothold for a saner judgment to stand upon. Then, besides, had not the rabbi's menaces predisposed him to accept it? And finally, there were heredity and education and mental habitude, which in such matters must surely count for much. Elias had been fancying that his inherited and sedulously cultivated superstition was dead and buried. Love, like a radiant St. George, had slain the monster. To us, wise after the fact, it is conceivable that it had but slumbered; and now again was wide awake, breathing fire and vengeance; and had given its quondam executioner such a blow as might not speedily be recovered from, if at all.

Elias, at any rate, did not doubt. He told himself that he had been on the point of committing a mortal sin, one that would have removed him forever beyond the pale of divine mercy, one that would have entailed upon him, and upon his seed after him, infinite retribution. He told himself that at the eleventh hour heaven had intervened, and saved him from his own suicidal clutch. He shuddered at the notion of the risk he had run. He was duly grateful for his deliverance. It had at first surprised him to find that his love of Christine had not survived. That which had absorbed his life, and shaped and directed his life, and been to his life what the sunlight is to the day, its vital, dominating, distinguishing principle, had vanished utterly out of his life, had melted phantom-like, and left not a shred, not a mark, not even a gap, behind, to show where, or of what substance, or of what form it had been. It was the extinguishment of a subtle, spiritual flame, which departs, so far as is determinable, nowhither--is simply swallowed up and assimilated by the inane. Three days ago, he had believed it possessed of everlasting vigor; and now, it was gone as completely as the snows of yesteryear. Death and dissolution had occurred simultaneously.--But his surprise was short-lived. On reflection, he agreed with the rabbi, that nothing else could have been expected. He adopted the rabbi's metaphor, and said that the breath of the Lord had entered his heart, and cleansed it. He remembered how, once before, something similar had befallen, in answer to prayer. But the effects of that had been transitory. The effects of this, he thought, would be permanent. If there were the materials for melancholy here, Elias was callous to their influence.

It seemed, indeed, that not only had his love been abolished, but that his entire emotional system had sunken into a state of apathy, and become unresponsive and inactive. He knew, for example, perfectly well how Christine would suffer. The light of her youth would be quenched, and its sweetness turned to gall and wormwood. The world, that was so fair in her sight, would crumble suddenly to a wide waste of dust and ashes. An agony like fire would be kindled in her young heart, hopeless even of hope. It might perhaps, as old Redwood had said, it might perhaps kill her. But if it did not kill her, it would do worse. She would have to live, and bear it. He knew all this. He could not help knowing it. It was too big, palpable, conspicuous, to be ignored. He knew it; and he stated it clearly, completely, circumstantially, to himself. And then he wondered at his stolidity; for it woke not a throe either of compunction or of compassion. He said to himself, “Altogether aside from the personal element, from the fact that she is who she is, and that I have been her lover; altogether aside, also, from the fact that I, though helpless and irresponsible, am still the occasion of her unhappiness; and simply because she is a woman, a human being, the knowledge of her overwhelming sorrow and utter desolation, ought to move me to deepest, keenest pity.” But it did not. It did not move him to a single momentary qualm. His condition puzzled and mystified him. He could imagine no way to account for it, unless by again following the logic of the rabbi, and assuming it to be the act of God. That it was merely the torpor, the numbness, naturally resulting from the fright, and the immense physical and moral shock, he had sustained, does not appear to have suggested itself to him.

On the morning after his interview with old Redwood (on the morning, namely, of the fourth of May, 1883; date worth remembering), Elias was established at his studio-window, watching the play of sunlight and shadow upon the foliage opposite in the park, and introspecting somewhat listlessly in the direction above set forth, when there came a light tap upon his door; and, without turning around, he called out, “Come in.” He heard the door creak open. He heard the visitor take two or three steps forward into the room. Then, before he had looked to see who it was, he heard his own name pronounced shyly, by a voice that was but too well-known:

“Elias!”

Unspeakably astounded and discomfited, he sprang to his feet, faced her, and stood dumb.

At the moment he was not conscious of noticing especially her appearance; but long afterward he recalled it vividly. Long afterward, the pale face, the disordered golden hair, the large, dark, tearful eyes, the appealing attitude--hands stretched out toward him, face upturned--became of all his memories the strongest, the clearest, the most constant, the one on which his remorse chiefly fed.

But now, he faced her and stood dumb, aware only of hubbub in his brain, and dismay in his breast.

She, manifestly unprepared for this style of greeting, started back. Her eyes filled with fear.

“Oh Elias,” she faltered, “you--you make me think that it is true.”

He, finding his voice, cried piteously: “Oh, why--why did you come here?”

And then they were both silent.

At last she began: “I came--because I could not believe--because my father told me something which I knew was a lie. I came to have you tell me that it was a lie. Oh, why did he tell me such a cruel thing? Why--why do you act like this?”

She paused, expecting him to speak. But he did not speak.

All at once she went on passionately: “Oh, you don't know what he told me. He must have wanted to kill me. But I knew it was a lie. I told him it was a lie--oh, such a shameful, cruel lie. Oh, God! Here, this was it: he told me--he told me that you--Elias--oh, no, no, no! I can not say it. But yes, yes--I _will_ say it--I _must_ say it. He said that you--you did not love me any more. Oh, my God, my God!”

She had moved up toward him. Now she fell upon his breast, and sobbed her heart out.

He passively allowed her to remain there. What to do? what to say? he asked himself, distracted.

“Oh, Elias--my darling--I--I knew it could not be true,” she was murmuring between her sobs.

Thus, until her grief had spent itself--until she had had her cry out. By and by she raised her eyes to his, and smiling a forlorn little smile, asked timidly, “You think I am very silly?”

But her smile did not last long. Suddenly, it changed to an expression of utmost woe and terror. She fell back a step or two.

“Elias!” she cried, in a sharp, startled voice. “Why do you look at me like that? Is--do--you can't--mean--that it is true!”

He felt that he must speak. He must gather his forces, and make her understand. He was trying to. He was trying to find the words he needed. But before they had come to him, the door opened, and the rabbi glided upon the scene.

The rabbi took in the situation at a glance.

“Elias,” he said, “this is unfortunate. You ought to have called me.”

Turning to Christine: “You have forgotten yourself, madam. By what right are you here? Did your father send you? I shall be happy to show you the way down stairs.”

He bowed in the direction of the door.

She looked helplessly from the rabbi to his nephew; but she found little to reassure her in Elias's face.

“Was there any thing you had to say to this young lady, before she goes, Elias?” the rabbi queried, in a brisk, business-like tone.

“No, nothing,” Elias began faintly, “nothing, except--yes, except--” He broke off, and drew a sharp, loud breath; suddenly he began anew: “Christine, I am powerless. The Lord--it is the Lord's will. I--it--what your father told you--it was the truth.”

The words found their own way out, mechanically. He could scarcely realize that he had spoken.

For an instant she stood motionless. Then she reeled and tottered, as if about to fall. Then she recovered herself. Slowly, with a dazed, stunned air, groping blindly, she turned, and reached the door, and crossed the threshold.

The rabbi followed, shutting the door behind him.

Elias dropped into a chair. Bewildered, agitated, fagged-out, undone--he felt all this. But he felt not a pang for her.

“If I had thrown you down and trampled upon you,” he wrote, a little less than two years afterward, “it would not have been so brutal, so cruel; but if I had done it in my sleep, I could not have been more insensible to your pain.”

XV.

ONE evening at dinner, about a fortnight later, “What's the matter, Elias?” the rabbi asked. “You're not feeling sick, are you? Or blue? Or worried about any thing?”

“Why, no,” Elias answered, “I feel all right. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don't know. I thought you were looking a little out-of-sorts. Likely enough, it was only an idea.”

“The truth is,” Elias presently volunteered, “that, so far from feeling blue or low-spirited or anything of that kind, I don't seem to feel much of any thing at all. I'm sort of sluggish--dull--dead-and-alive. I'd give a good deal for a sensation, an excitement. I've been feeling this way pretty much all the time since--for the last two weeks. Heavy, thick, as though my blood had stopped circulating. I wish you'd stick a pin into me.”

“Oh, you need a little amusement, a little fun, something to take you out of yourself. That's all. Why don't you go to the theater?”

“No, thanks. I'm not fond of the theater. Besides, it's too hot.”

“Well, then, why don't you make a call?”

“A call! Pshaw; is that your notion of excitement?”

“Well, it's better than sitting at home, and moping, isn't it?”

“And, any how, whom do I know to call on?”

“Whom do you know? Mercy upon me! I could name fifty people, whom you not only know, but to whom you actually owe calls. It's really abominable, the way you neglect, and always have neglected, your social duties. There's no excuse for it. If--if you were an old recluse like me, it would be different.”

“I don't see how. What if you were a young recluse, like me?”

“Ah, but nobody has a right to be a young recluse. It is only when we get along in years, that we are entitled to withdraw from the world. Besides, it's narrowing, it's hardening. You need contact with other people, to broaden your mind, and keep your sympathies alive. If you avoid society while you're young, the milk of human kindness will dry up in your bosom. You'll get coldblooded, selfish, indifferent.” Which amiable sentiments, falling from the lips of the rabbi, possessed a peculiar interest. “Come,” he added, “run up-stairs, and put on your best suit, and go make a call.”

“Again I ask, whom on?”

“On--on anybody. I'll tell you whom. Call on Mr. and Mrs. Koch.”

The pronunciation of this name has been anglicized into _Coach_.

“Which Koch? A. Hamilton?”

“No, of course not. Washington I.”

“Oh, heavens! I haven't called on them these two years. I'd be afraid to show my face inside their door. They'd overwhelm me with reproaches.”

“Well, what of that? You could stand it, I guess. They're very nice people, the Kochs; people whom it is worth while to be on good terms with--so warm-hearted and unpretentious, and yet with their hundreds of thousands behind them. There isn't a smarter business man in New York City than Washington I. Koch, nor a more honest, nor a more open-handed. Look at that stained glass window he gave the congregation. And then, at the same time, he's a man of ideas, a well-informed man; and best of all, he's a pious Jew.”

“Well, I'll tell you what I'll do,” said Elias; “I'll call on them, if you'll come along.”

“I! Nonsense! I called on them last New-Year's, and shall call again next. That's the most that can be expected of me.”

“Well, I shouldn't dare to go alone. If you'd come along, to keep me in countenance, I'd go. But alone--no, never.”

There was an interval of silence. Suddenly the rabbi said, “Well, I declare, I'll do it. I'll do it, just to encourage you. There; let's go up-stairs and dress.”

Pretty soon they left the house and sauntered westward arm-in-arm. Elias wore the Prince Albert coat that he had had made to be married in.

It was a hot night, and it had all the qualities characteristic of a hot night in New York. The air was redolent of bursting ailanthus buds. Strains of music, more or less musical, were wafted from every point of the compass--from behind open windows, where people sang, or played pianos; from the blazing depths of German concert saloons, where cracked-voiced orchestrions thundered discord; from the street corners, where itinerant bands halted, and blew themselves red in the face; and from the indeterminate distance, where belated hand-organs wailed with mechanical melancholy. Third Avenue, into which thoroughfare Elias and the rabbi presently turned, was thronged by many sorts and conditions of men and women clad in light summer gear, and drifting onward in light, languid, summer fashion. It was intensely hot and oppressive; and yet, somehow, it was productive of a certain unmistakable exhilaration. The sense one got of busy, teeming human life, was penetrating and enlivening.

They walked up to Eighteenth Street, where they took the Elevated Railway. At Fifty-ninth Street they descended, and thence proceeded to Lexington Avenue. On Lexington Avenue, just above Sixty-first Street, the Kochs resided. Out on the stoops of most of the houses that they passed, the inmates were seated, resting, gossiping, trying to cool off--the ladies in white dresses, the gentlemen often in their shirt-sleeves. Here and there, some of them were partaking of refreshments; beer, sandwiches, or cheese that savored of the Rhine. Here and there, some of them had fallen asleep. Here and there, a couple of young folks made surreptitious love, and, consumed by inner fires, forgot the outer heat. A pervasive odor, compounded of tobacco smoke and eau-de-cologne, assailed the nostrils. What snatches of conversation could be overheard, were either in German, or in English pronounced with a strong German accent.

They rang the Kochs' door-bell, and were ushered by a white-capped, flaxen-haired _Mädchen_ into the drawing-room.

The drawing-room was gorgeously and elaborately over-furnished. A bewildering arabesque, in gold, vermilion, and purple, decorated the ceiling. A dark, pseudo-æsthetic paper, bearing huge pink apricots embossed upon a ground of olive-green, covered the walls. The gas fixtures were of brass, wrought into an intricate design, and burnished to the highest possible brilliancy. The globes were alternately of ruby and emerald tinted glass. There were a good many pictures; two or three family portraits in charcoal, and several bits of color. Of the latter, the one above the mantelpiece was the largest. A blaze of crimson and orange, deep-set in a massive gilt frame, it proved, on close inspection, to be a specimen of worsted-work; and represented, as a device embroidered upon the margin testified, the Queen of Sheba playing before Solomon. The Queen had beautiful gambooge hair, and ultramarine eyes. Her harp was of ivory, with strings of silver; her costume, décolleté, of indigo velvet, trimmed profusely with handsome gold lace. Solomon--it is to be hoped, for his own sake, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like this flamboyant effigy of himself. In a robe of gold brocade, lined with scarlet satin, and bearing upon his brow a richly bejeweled crown, that must certainly have weighed in the neighborhood of twenty pounds, the sagacious monarch looked wretchedly hot and uncomfortable. The rest of this apartment was in perfect keeping. The chairs were of ebony, upholstered in stamped red velvet.