An Obscure Apostle Part 33

"You understand too much. You are too inquisitive. Your spirit is full of restlessness, and you carry trouble with you wherever you go.

I felt so happy to-day until my eye fell upon you, and black care entered with you into the room."

Meir hung his head.

"Zeide," he said sadly, "why do you reproach me? It is not about my own affairs I came to you."

"And what right have you to meddle with affairs that are not your own?" said Saul, with hesitation in his voice.

"They are our own, zeide. Kamionker is an Israelite, and as such ought not to cast a slur on our race; besides, they are our own, still more because your son, zeide, Abraham belongs to it."

Saul rose suddenly from the sofa and fell back again. Then he fixed his penetrating eyes upon Meir.

"Are you speaking the truth?" he asked sternly.

"I have seen and heard it all myself," whispered Meir.

Saul remained thinking a long time.

"Well," he said slowly, "you have the right to accuse your uncle. He is your father's brother, and from his deed shame and ignominy might come upon our house. The family of Ezofowich never did dishonourable things. I shall forbid Abraham to have anything to do with it."

"Zeide, tell also Kamionker and Kalman not to do it."

"You are foolish," said Saul. "Are Kamionker and Kalman my sons or my daughters' husbands? They would not listen to me."

"If they do not listen, zeide," exclaimed Meir "denounce them before the owner of Kamionka or before the law."

Saul looked at his grandson with flaming eyes.

"Your advice is that of a foolish boy. Would you have your old grandfather turn informer, and bring calamity upon his own brethren?"

He wanted to say something more, but the door opened to admit several visitors; they were Israelites from the country, respectable merchants or farmers from the neighbouring estates, arrived for the great fair. Saul half-rose to welcome his guests, who quickly stepping up to him, pressed his hand in hearty greeting, and explained that it was not so much business as the desire to see the wise and honoured Saul which had brought them to town. Saul answered with an equally polite speech, and asked them to be seated round the table, and without leaving his own seat on the sofa clapped his bony hands. At the signal a buxom servant girl came in with gla.s.ses of steaming tea, which filled the whole room with its subtle aroma. The guests thanked him smilingly, and then began a lively conversation about familiar subjects.

Meir saw that he would have no further opportunity of seeing his grandfather alone, and quickly left the room and went into the kitchen. This also was full of visitors, but of a different cla.s.s from those in the pitting-room. Upon the benches by the wall sat some fifteen men in old worn-out garments; and Sarah, Saul's daughter, and Raphael's wife, Saul's daughter-in-law, conversed with them and offered tea or mead and other refreshments.

The men responded gaily, if somewhat timidly, and accepted the refreshments with humble thanks. Most of them were inn-keepers, dairy farmers, or small tradesmen from the country. Their dark, lean faces and rough hands betrayed poverty and hard work. The smallest expense for food during their stay in town would have made a difference to them. They went, therefore, straight to Ezofowich's house, the doors of which were always hospitably open on such days, as had been the custom of the family for hundreds of years.

The two women in their silk gowns and bright caps flitted to and fro between the huge fireplace and the grateful guests. Outside the house there was another cla.s.s of visitors. Those were the very poorest, who had not come to buy or to sell at the fair, but to obtain some wine and food out of the charity of their wealthier brethren. To these the servant carried bread and clotted milk and small copper coins. The murmur of their thanks and blessings penetrated to the kitchen, where the two busy women smiled yet more contentedly, and produced more small coins from their capacious pockets.

In another part of the roomy kitchen stood the children of the house, pleased with their pretty dresses and coral necklaces, eating sweets.

The elder boys listened to the conversation of the men, and a few of the younger children played on the floor. Close to this group sat the great-grandmother, Freida. Days like this conveyed to her clouded memory pictures of the past, when she herself, a happy wife and mother, looked after the comforts of her numerous guests. Her great-granddaughter had roused her earlier than usual to-day, and dressed her in the costliest garments, and now, before she would be led into the sitting-room to her chair near the window, they were completing her toilette. The black-eyed Lija fastened the diamond star into her turban; her younger sister arranged the pendants; another put the costly pearls around her neck and twisted the golden chain cunningly among the soft folds of her white ap.r.o.n. Having done this they smiled and drew back a little to admire the effect of their handiwork, or peeped roguishly into the great-grandmother's eyes and kissed her on the forehead.

The men sitting round the wall nodded their heads sympathetically, looked reverentially at the old lady, and now and then exclamations of wonder and pleasure at seeing her surrounded by such tender care escaped from their lips.

The other part of the house, which had been so lively early in the morning, was now silent and deserted. Meir crossed the narrow pa.s.sage that divided the house, and opened the door of his Uncle Raphael's room, meeting his friend and cousin Haim upon the threshold. The youthful, almost childish face, surrounded by golden hair, looked beaming and excited.

"Where is Uncle Raphael?" asked Meir.

"Where should he be? He is at the fair, together with Ber, buying bullocks."

"And you, Haim, where are you going?"

But the lad did not even hear the question. Trilling a gay song, he had rushed off where the stir and lively spectacle of the fair attracted him.

Meir went out into the porch and looked around. The fair had scarcely begun, but in the midst of some forty carts he saw Ber discussing the prices of the cattle with the peasants. A little further on he saw Raphael standing in the porch of a house, surrounded by merchants, evidently talking and arranging business, as all their fingers were in motion. To approach these two men, who, after his grandfather, had the greatest, authority in the family, and engage them in private talk was impossible. Meir saw that, and did not even try.

The sight of the motley crowd, where everybody was engaged upon some business of his own, looked strange and unreal. His thoughts were so different from any of the thoughts that moved that bustling mult.i.tude.

"Why should it trouble me?" he murmured. "What can I do?" And yet it seemed to him impossible to wait in pa.s.sive inactivity until a red glare in the sky should announce that the nefarious design had been accomplished.

"What wrong has the man ever done us?" he said to himself. He was thinking of the owner of Kamionka.

His dull, listless eyes rested on the porch of Witebski's house, and he saw the merchant himself standing and leisurely smoking a cigar.

He was looking at the lively scene with the eyes of a man who had nothing whatever to do with it. The fact is, he dealt in timber, which he bought in large quant.i.ties, from the estates; therefore the fair had no special attraction for him. Besides, he considered himself too refined and thought too highly of his own business to mix with a crowd occupied with selling and buying corn or cattle.

Meir descended the steps and went towards Witebski, who, seeing him, smiled and stretched out a friendly hand.

"A rare visitor! A rare visitor!" he exclaimed. "But I know you could not come sooner to see the parents of your betrothed. We have heard how your severe grandfather ordered you to sit in Bet-ha-Midrash to read the Talmud. Well, it does not matter much; does it? The zeide is a dear old man, and did not mean it unkindly, just as you did not mean to do any wrong. Young people will now and then kick over the traces. Come into the drawing-room; I will call my wife, and she will make you welcome as a dear son-in-law."

The worldly-wise merchant spoke smilingly, and holding Meir by the hand, led him into the drawing-room. There, before the green sofa, he stood still, and looked into Meir's face and said:

"It is very praiseworthy, Meir, that you are bashful and shy of your future wife. I was the same at your age, and all young men ought to feel like it; but my daughter has been brought up in the world, where customs are somewhat different. She is wondering that she does not even know the fiance who is to be her husband within a month. I will go and bring her here. n.o.body need know you are together. I will shut the door and window, and you can have a quiet talk together and make each other's acquaintance."

He was moving towards the door, but Meir grasped him by the sleeve.

"Reb!" he said. "I am not thinking of betrothals or weddings; I came to you on a different errand altogether."

Witebski looked sharply at the grave and pale face of the young man, and his brow became slightly clouded.

"It is not about my own affairs I have come to you, Reb--"

The merchant quickly interrupted:

"If it be neither your affair nor mine, why enter it?"

"There are affairs," said the young man, "which belong to everybody, and it is everybody's business to think and speak about them."

He was thinking of public affairs, but though he did not express himself in these words, he felt all their importance.

"I have come across an awful secret to-day."

Witebski jumped up from the easy-chair where he was sitting.

"I do not want to hear about any awful secrets! Why should you come to me about it, when I am not curious to know anything?"

"I want you, Reb, to prevent a terrible deed."

"And why should I prevent anything; why do you come to me about it?"