Kitabı oku: «In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference», sayfa 7

"Dear me!" said Jack. "Why don't you carry your Brussels fan and wear your gray dress, and let her wear her black dress and take the kind of fan she wanted?"

"O, my child!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, "Neither of us would have taken a mite of comfort so. You don't understand how it feels when there are two of you. When you have spent – well, a great many years, in having things alike, you don't feel comfortable unless you are in pairs."

It was arranged that Jack should not go back to the office that afternoon. The sisters volunteered to take him with them.

Bethany hurried through her work, but it seemed to her she had never had so many interruptions, or so much to do.

It was after six when she closed her desk. Mr. Edmunds noticed the tired look on her flushed face, and said:

"Miss Hallam, my carriage is waiting down stairs. I have to stay here some time longer to meet a man who is late in keeping his engagement. Jerry may as well take you home while he is waiting." He went down on the elevator with her, and handed her into the carriage.

"Better stay out in the fresh air a little before you start home," he said, kindly. "It will do you good."

Bethany sank back gratefully among the cushions. Jerry had been her father's coachman at one time. He grinned from ear to ear as she took her seat.

"We'll take a spin along the river road," she said. "Give me a glimpse of the fields and the golden-rod, and then take me to Mrs. Marion's, on Phillips Avenue."

"Yes, miss," said Jerry, touching his hat. "I know all the roads you like best!"

The impatient horses needed no urging. They fairly flew down the beaten track that led from the noisy, bouldered streets into the grassy byways. On they went, past suburban orchards and outlying pastures, to the sights and sounds of the real country.

Bethany heard the slow, restful tinkle of bells in a quiet lane where the cows stood softly lowing at the bars. She heard the coo of doves in the distance, and the call of a quail in a brown stubble-field near by. Then the wind swept up from the river, now turning red in the sunset. It put new life into her pulses, and a new light in her eyes. The weariness was all gone. The wind had blown the light, curly hair about her face, and she put up her hands to smooth it back, as they came in sight of Mrs. Marion's house.

"It doesn't make any difference," she thought. "I can run up into Cousin Ray's room and put myself in order before any one sees me."

As the carriage stopped, some one stepped up quickly to assist her alight. It was David Herschel.

"Of all times!" she thought; "when I am literally blown to pieces. How queerly things do happen in this world!"

To her still greater wonderment, instead of closing the gate after her and going on down the street, he followed her up the steps.

"Cousin Ray said this was to be a surprise," she thought. "This must be part of it."

Miss Harriet and Miss Caroline had just smoothed their plumage in the guest-chamber, and were coming down the stairs hand in hand as David and Bethany entered the reception-hall.

This was their first glimpse of David. They had been very curious to see him. Jack had talked about him so much that they recognized him instantly from his description.

Miss Caroline squeezed Miss Harriet's hand, and said in a dramatic whisper, "Sister! the surprise."

"Look at Bethany," remarked Miss Harriet. "How unusually bright she looks, and yet a little flushed and confused. I wonder if he has been saying anything to her. They came in together."

"Pooh!" puffed Miss Caroline. Then they both moved forward with their most beaming "company smile," as Jack called it, to meet Mr. Herschel.

"Come in here," said Mrs. Marion, leading the way into the drawing-room, while Bethany made her escape up stairs.

"Mrs. Courtney, allow me to introduce Mrs. Dameron."

"Sally Atwater!" fairly shrieked Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet in chorus, as a tall, thin woman, with gray hair and sharp, twinkling eyes rose to meet them; "Sally Atwater, for the land's sake! how did you ever happen to get here?"

"It's an old school friend of theirs," explained Mrs. Marion to David, as the twins stood on tiptoe to grasp her around the neck and kiss her repeatedly between their exclamations of joyful surprise. "They haven't seen her since they were married. I'll present you, and then we'll leave them to have a good old gossip."

During the introductions in the drawing-room, Mr. Marion came into the hall, with his gripsack in his hand.

"Why, hello, Jack!" he called cheerily. "How are you, my boy? I'm so glad to see you."

He hung up his hat, and went forward to clap him on the shoulder and hold the little hands lovingly in his big, strong ones. While he still sat on the arm of Jack's chair, there was a sudden parting of the portieres behind them, a swift rustle, and two white hands met over his eyes and blindfolded him.

"O! O!" cried Jack ecstatically, and then clapped his hand over his mouth as he heard a warning "Sh!"

"It's Ray, of course," said Mr. Marion, laughing and reaching backwards to seize whoever had blindfolded him. "Nobody else would take such liberties."

"O, wouldn't they?" cried a mocking voice. "What about Ray's younger sister?"

He turned around, and catching her by the shoulders, held her out in front of him.

"Well, Lois Denning!" he exclaimed in amazement. "When did you get here, little sister? I never imagined you were within two hundred miles of this place."

"Neither did Ray until this morning. I just walked in unannounced."

When he had given her a hearty welcome she said: "O, I'm not the only one to surprise you. Just go in the other room, Brother Frank, and see who all's there, while I talk with this young man I haven't seen for a year."

Lois Denning had been Jack's favorite cousin since he was old enough to fasten his baby fingers in her long, brown hair. In her yearly visits to her sister she had devoted so much of her time to him, and been such a willing slave, that he looked forward to her coming even a shade more eagerly than he watched for Christmas.

There was one thing that remained longest in the memory of every guest who had ever enjoyed the hospitality of the Marion home. It was the warm welcome that made itself continually felt. It met them even in the free swing of the wide front door that seemed to say, "Just walk right in now, and make yourself at home."

There was an atmosphere of genial comfort and cheer that cast its spell on all who strayed over its inviting threshold. It made them long to linger, and loath to leave.

David Herschel was quick to appreciate the warm cordiality of his greeting. He had not been in the house five minutes until he felt himself on the familiar footing of an old friend. At first he wondered at the strange assortment of guests, and thought it queer he had been asked to meet the elderly twins and their old friend, who were so absorbed in each other.

Then Mrs. Marion brought in her sister, Lois Denning – a slim, graceful girl in a white duck suit, with a red carnation in the lapel of the jaunty jacket. She was a lively, outspoken girl, decided in her opinions, and original in her remarks.

"That red carnation just suits her," said David to himself, as they talked together. "She is so bright and spicy."

"Isn't it time for dinner, Ray?" asked Mr. Marion, anxiously. "It's getting dark, and I'm as hungry as a schoolboy."

"Yes, and your guests will think you are as impatient as one," she answered, laughingly. "We must wait a few minutes longer. Mr. Cragmore hasn't come yet."

"Cragmore!" cried Mr. Marion, starting to his feet.

"O dear," exclaimed his wife, "I didn't intend to tell you he was coming. I knew you hadn't seen the report from Conference yet, and I wanted to surprise you. He has been sent to the Clark Street Church. I met him coming up from the depot this morning, and asked him to dine with us to-night."

"Now I do wish I were a school-boy!" exclaimed Mr. Marion, "so that I might give vent to my delight as I used to."

"I remember how loud you could whoop when you were two feet six," remarked Mrs. Dameron. "I should not care to risk hearing you, now that you are six feet two."

There was a quick ring at the front door, and the next instant Frank Marion and George Cragmore were shaking hands as though they could never stop.

"I'm going to see if they fall on each other's necks and weep a la Joseph and his brethren," said Lois, tiptoeing towards the hall. "I've heard so much about George Cragmore, that I feel that I am about to be presented to a whole circus – menagerie and all."

"And how are ye, Mistress Marion?" they heard his musical voice say.

"Will ye moind that now," commented Lois in an undertone. "How's that for a touch of the rale auld brogue?"

He was introduced to the old ladies first, then to the saucy Lois and Jack. Then he caught sight of Herschel. They met with mutual pleasure, and were about cordially to renew their acquaintance, begun that day on the car, when Cragmore glanced across the room and saw Bethany.

Both Lois and David noticed the way his face lighted up, and the eagerness with which he went forward to speak to her.

That evening was the beginning of several things. The Hebrew class was organized. Mr. Marion had found only two of his teachers willing to undertake the work, but Lois cheerfully allowed herself to be substituted for the third one he had been so sure would join them.

"I'll not be here more than long enough to get a good start," she said, "but I'm in for anything that's going – Hebrew or Hopscotch, whichever it happens to be."

The twins declined to take any part. "I know it is beyond us," sighed Miss Harriet. "The Latin conjugations were always such a terror to me, and sister never did get her bearings in the German genders."

When it came time for the merry party to break up, Frank Marion would not listen to any good-nights from Cragmore.

"You're not going away. That's the end of it," he declared. "I'll walk down with you to the hotel, and have your trunk sent up. You're to stay here until you get a boarding place to suit you. I wouldn't let you go then, if I did not know it was essential for you to live nearer your congregation."

Mr. Marion walked on ahead, pushing Jack's chair, with Miss Caroline on one side, and Miss Harriet on the other.

Bethany followed with George Cragmore. There was a brilliant moonlight, and they walked slowly, enjoying to the utmost the rare beauty of the night.

"Come in a moment, George," called Mr. Marion, as he wheeled Jack up the steps. "I want to finish spinning this yarn."

They all went into the hall.

Bethany opened the door into the library and struck a match. Cragmore took it from her and lighted the gas.

But Mr. Marion still stood in the hall with his attentive audience of three.

"I'll be through in a moment," he called. The sisters dropped down in a large double rocker.

"You might as well sit down, too, Mr. Cragmore," said Bethany. "His minute may prove to be elastic."

Cragmore looked around the homelike old room, and then down at the fair-haired woman at his side. "Not to-night, thank you," he responded; "but I should like to come some other time. Yes, I think I should like to come here very often, Miss Hallam."

The admiration in his eyes, and the tone, made the remark so very personal that Bethany was slightly annoyed.

"O, our latch-string is always out to the clergy," she said lightly, and then led the way back to the hall to join the others.

CHAPTER XI.
"YOM KIPPUR."

THE morning after the first meeting of the Hebrew class at Rabbi Barthold's, Frank Marion came into the office.

"Herschel," he said, "when do you have your Day of Atonement services? Is it this week or next? Rabbi Barthold invited us to attend, but I am not sure about the date. He is going to preach a series of sermons that are to set forth the views now held by the Reform school, and Cragmore and I are anxious to hear them."

"It is the week after this," said David, consulting the calendar.

"Then I can arrange to get in from my trip in time for the Friday night service."

"What do you think of Rabbi Barthold?" asked David. "Isn't he a magnificent old fellow?"

Marion stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "Well," he said after some deliberation, "I hardly know where to place him. He doesn't belong to this age. If I believed in the transmigration of souls, I should say that some old Levite, whose life-work had been to keep the Temple lamps perpetually burning, had strayed back to earth again.

"That seems to be his mission now. He is trying to rekindle the pride and zeal and hope of an ancient day. Excuse me for saying it, Herschel, but there are few in his congregation who understand him. Their vision is so obscured by this dense fog of modern indifference that they fail to appreciate his aims. They are still in the outer courts, among the tables of the money-changers, and those who sell doves. They have never entered the inner sanctuary of a spiritual life. Their religion stops with the altar and the censer – the material things. Understand me," he said hastily, as David interrupted him, "I know there are a number you have in mind, who are loyally true to the spirit of Judaism, but they are few and far between. I am not speaking of them, but of the great mass of the congregation. I believe the services of the synagogue, and their religion itself, is only a form observed from a cold sense of duty, merely to avert the evil decree."

David drew himself up rather stiffly.

"And you are the disciple of the man who said, 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone!' What do you suppose the Jew has to say about the dead-heads in your Churches? What proportion of your membership has passed beyond the tables of the money-changers? How many in your pews, who mumble the creed and wear the label 'Christian,' will be able at the passages of God's Jordan to meet the challenge of his Shibboleth?"

Marion laid his hand on David's shoulder. "You misunderstand me, my boy," he said. "I have no harsher denunciation for the indifferent Jew than for the indifferent Christian. God pity them both! I was simply drawing a contrast between Rabbi Barthold and his people, as it appears to me – a shepherd who longs to lead his flock up to the source of all living water; but they prefer to dispense with climbing the spiritual heights, jostle each other for the richest herbage of the lowlands, and are satisfied. You know that is so, David."

"Yes," admitted David, with a sigh. "He can not even arouse them to the necessity of teaching their children Hebrew, if they would perpetuate loyalty to its traditions."

David was about to repeat what the Rabbi had said the night he consented to take the Hebrew class, but his pride checked him: "What are we coming to, my son? Protestantism is having a wonderful awakening in regard to the study of the Bible. Never has there been such a widespread interest in it as now. But among our people, how many of the younger generation make it a text-book of daily study? Such negligence will surely write its 'Ichabod' upon the future of our beloved Israel."

"What a discussion we have drifted into!" exclaimed Mr. Marion. "I had only intended dropping in here to ask you a simple question. Come to think, I believe I have not answered yours. You asked me my opinion of Rabbi Barthold. Well, I think he is a sincere, noble soul, a true seeker of the truth, and a man whose friendship I would value very highly."

Herschel looked much pleased.

"I hope you may be able to hear him on 'Yom Kippur,'" he said.

"I shall certainly try to be there," Marion answered.

As his footsteps died away in the hall, David said to himself: "If every Gentile were like that man, and every Jew like Uncle Ezra, what an ideal state of society there would be! But then," he added as an after-thought, "what would become of the lawyers? We would starve."

In the waning light of the afternoon, that Day of the Atonement, there was no more devout worshiper in all the temple than George Cragmore. He had just finished reading a book of M. Leroy Beaulieu's, "Israel Among the Nations," and as he turned the leaves of the prayer-book some one handed him, he was impressed with the truth of this sentence which recurred to him:

"The Hebrew genius was confined to a narrow bed between two rocky walls, whence only the sky could be seen; but it channeled there a well so deep that the ages have not dried it up, and the nations of the four corners of the earth have come to slake their thirst at its waters."

It seemed to him that all that was purest, most heart-searching and sublime in the Old Covenant; all that time has proven most precious and comforting of its promises; all therein that best satisfies the human yearnings toward the Infinite, and gives wings to the God-instinct in man, might be found somewhere in the exquisite mosaic of this day's ritual.

Marion, concentrating his attention chiefly on the sermons, admired their scholarly style, and indorsed most of their substance, but he came away with a feeling of sadness.

It seemed so pitiful to him to see these people with their backs turned on the sacrifice a divine love had already provided, trying to make their own empty-handed atonement, simply by their penitent pleadings and good deeds.

Herschel's devotions were interfered with by a spirit of criticism heretofore unknown to him. His thoughts were so full of doubts that had been having an almost imperceptible growth that he could not enter into the service with his usual abandon. He was continually contrasting those around him with that never-to-be-forgotten gathering on Lookout, and the congregation in the tent.

What made them to differ? He could not tell, but he felt that something was lacking here that had made the other such a force.

Cragmore had not been able to attend the Friday night service, nor the one on the following morning. He came in just after the noon recess, and was ushered to a pew near the center of the room, where he immediately became absorbed in the ritual. He followed devoutly through the meditations and the silent devotions, and when they came to the responsive readings, his voice joined in as earnestly as any son of Abraham there.

The synagogue, with its modern trappings and fashionably-dressed congregation, seemed to disappear. He saw the old Temple take its place, with its solemn ceremonials of scapegoat and burnt-offering. Through the chanting of the choir in the gallery back of him he heard the thousand-voiced song of the Levites. He seemed to see the clouds of incense, and the smoke arising from the high brazen altar. He bowed his head on the seat in front of him. His whole soul seemed to go out in reverent adoration to this great Jehovah, worshiped by both Hebrew and Christian.

The memorial service to the dead followed the sermon.

Cragmore's music-loving nature responded like a quivering harp-string as the choir began a minor chant:

"Oh what is man, the child of dust?

What is man, O Lord?"

The low, moaning tones of the great organ rose and fell like the beat of a far-off tide, as all heads bowed in silent devotion, recalling in that moment the lives that had passed out into the great beyond.

Cragmore whispered a fervent prayer of thankfulness for the unbroken family circle across the wide Atlantic.

As he did so, a breath of blossoming hawthorn hedges, a faint chiming of the Shandon bells, and the blue mists of the Kerry hills seemed to mingle a moment with his prayer.

The sun had set, when in the concluding service his eyes fell on the words the Rabbi was reading – The Mission of Israel – "It's a pity," he thought, "that every mentally cross-eyed Christian, who, between ignorance and bigotry, can get only a distorted impression of the Jews, couldn't have heard this service to-day, especially that prayer for all mankind, and this one he is reading now:

"'This twilight hour reminds us also of the eventide, when, according to Thy gracious promise, Thy light will arise over all the children of men, and Israel's spiritual descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heaven. Endow us, our Guardian, with strength and patience for our holy mission. Grant that all the children of Thy people may recognize the goal of our changeful career, so that they may exemplify, by their zeal and love for mankind, the truth of Israel's watchword: One humanity on earth, even as there is but one God in heaven. Enlighten all that call themselves by Thy name with the knowledge that the sanctuary of wood and stone, that erst crowned Zion's hill, was but a gate, through which Israel should step out into the world, to reconcile all mankind unto Thee! Thou alone knowest when this work of atonement shall be completed; when the day shall dawn in which the light of Thy truth, brighter than that of the visible sun, shall encircle the whole earth. But surely that great day of universal reconciliation, so fervently prayed for, shall come, as surely as none of Thy words return empty, unless they have done that for which Thou didst send them. Then joy shall thrill all hearts, and from one end of the earth to the other shall echo the gladsome cry: Hear, O Israel, hear all mankind, the Eternal our God, the Eternal is One. Then myriads will make pilgrimage to Thy house, which shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, and from their lips shall sound in spiritual joy: Lord, open for us the gates of thy truth. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of glory shall come in.'"

And the choir chanting, replied:

"Who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts – He is the King of glory."

There was a short prayer, then a benediction that made Cragmore and Marion look across the congregation at each other and smile. It was the Epworth benediction, with which the League was always dismissed:

"May the Lord bless thee, and keep thee. May the Lord let his countenance shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee! The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

The two men met each other at the door, and walked homeward together through the twilight.

Cragmore had found a boarding place. It was not far from the temple.

"Come up to my room," he said to Marion. "I see you still have Herschel's prayer-book with you. I want to compare the mission of Israel as given there with the one I was reading to-day of Leroy-Beaulieu's. I have never known before to-day what special hope they clung to. Come in and I will find the paragraph."

He lighted the gas in his room, pushed a chair over towards his guest, and, seating himself, began rapidly turning the leaves of the book.

"Here it is," he said, and he read as follows:

"Then at last Jewish faith, freed from all tribal spirit and purified of all national dross, will become the law of humanity. The world that jeered at the long suffering of Israel, will witness the fulfillment of prophecies delayed for twenty centuries by the blindness of the scribes, and the stubbornness of the rabbis. According to the words of the prophets, the nations will come to learn of Israel, and the people will hang to the skirts of her garments, crying, 'Let us go up together to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the Lord of Israel, that he may teach us to walk in his ways.' The true spiritual religion, for which the world has been sighing since Luther and Voltaire, will be imparted to it through Israel. To accomplish this, Israel needs but to discard her old practices, as in spring the oak shakes off the dead leaves of winter. The divine trust, the legacy of her prophets, which has been preserved intact beneath her heavy ritual, will be transmitted to the Gentiles by an Israel emancipated from all enslavement to form. Then only, after having infused the spirit of the Thora into the souls of all men, will Israel, her mission accomplished, be able to merge herself in the nations."

"See what a hopeless hope," said Cragmore, as he closed the book. "And yet do you know, Frank, I am becoming more and more sure that Israel has some great part to play in the conversion of humanity? Any one must see that nothing short of Divine power could have kept them intact as a race, and Divine power is never aimlessly exerted. There must be some great reason for such a miraculous preservation. What missionaries of the cross these people would make! What torch-bearers they have been! They have carried the altar-fires of Jehovah to every alien shore they have touched."

Cragmore stood up in his earnestness, his eyes alight with something akin to prophetic fire.

"The old thorny stem of Judaism shall yet bud and blossom into the perfect flower of Christianity!" he cried. "And when it does, O when it does, the 'chosen people' will become a veritable tree of life, whose leaves will be 'for the healing of the nations.'"