Children of the Ghetto Part 100

"One far-off divine event To which the whole Creation moves"?

The roar dwindled to a solemn silence, as though in answer to her questionings. Then the ram's horn shrilled--a stern long-drawn-out note, that rose at last into a mighty peal of sacred jubilation. The Atonement was complete.

The crowd bore Esther downstairs and into the blank indifferent street.

But the long exhausting fast, the fetid atmosphere, the strain upon her emotions, had overtaxed her beyond endurance. Up to now the frenzy of the service had sustained her, but as she stepped across the threshold on to the pavement she staggered and fell. One of the men pouring out from the lower synagogue caught her in his arms. It was Strelitski.

A group of three stood on the saloon deck of an outward-bound steamer.

Raphael Leon was bidding farewell to the man he reverenced without discipleship, and the woman he loved without blindness.

"Look!" he said, pointing compa.s.sionately to the wretched throng of Jewish emigrants huddling on the lower deck and scattered about the gangway amid jostling sailors and stevedores and bales and coils of rope; the men in peaked or fur caps, the women with shawls and babies, some gazing upwards with lackl.u.s.tre eyes, the majority brooding, despondent, apathetic. "How could either of you have borne the sights and smells of the steerage? You are a pair of visionaries. You could not have breathed a day in that society. Look!"

Strelitski looked at Esther instead; perhaps he was thinking he could have breathed anywhere in her society--nay, breathed even more freely in the steerage than in the cabin if he had sailed away without telling Raphael that he had found her.

"You forget a common impulse took us into such society on the Day of Atonement," he answered after a moment. "You forget we are both Children of the Ghetto."

"I can never forget that," said Raphael fervently, "else Esther would at this moment be lost amid the human flotsam and jetsam below, sailing away without you to protect her, without me to look forward to her return, without Addie's bouquet to a.s.sure her of a sister's love."

He took Esther's little hand once more It lingered confidingly in his own. There was no ring of betrothal upon it, nor would be, till Rachel Ansell in America, and Addie Leon in England, should have pa.s.sed under the wedding canopy, and Raphael, whose breast pocket was bulging with a new meerschaum too sacred to smoke, should startle the West End with his eccentric choice, and confirm its impression of his insanity. The trio had said and resaid all they had to tell one another, all the reminders and the recommendations. They stood without speaking now, wrapped in that loving silence which is sweeter than speech.

The sun, which, had been shining intermittently, flooded the serried shipping with a burst of golden light, that coaxed the turbid waves to brightness, and cheered the wan emigrants, and made little children leap joyously in their mothers' arms. The knell of parting sounded insistent.

"Your allegory seems turning in your favor, Raphael," said Esther, with a sudden memory.

The pensive smile that made her face beautiful lit up the dark eyes.

"What allegory is that of Raphael's?" said Strelitski, reflecting her smile on his graver visage. "The long one in his prize poem?"

"No," said Raphael, catching the contagious smile. "It is our little secret."

Strelitski turned suddenly to look at the emigrants. The smile faded from his quivering mouth.

The last moment had come. Raphael stooped down towards the gentle softly-flushing face, which was raised unhesitatingly to meet his, and their lips met in a first kiss, diviner than it is given most mortals to know--a kiss, sad and sweet, troth and parting in one: _Ave et vale_--hail and farewell."

"Good-bye, Strelitski," said Raphael huskily. "Success to your dreams."

The idealist turned round with a start. His face was bright and resolute; the black curl streamed buoyantly on the breeze.

"Good-bye," he responded, with a giant's grip of the hand. "Success to your hopes."

Raphael darted away with his long stride. The sun was still bright, but for a moment everything seemed chill and dim to Esther Ansell's vision.

With a sudden fit of nervous foreboding she stretched out her arms towards the vanishing figure of her lover. But she saw him once again in the tender, waving his handkerchief towards the throbbing vessel that glided with its freight of hopes and dreams across the great waters towards the New World.