Ghetto Tragedies Part 17

State Officers in Uniform.

President and Trustees of the Corporation.

Tyler.

Stewards.

Entered Apprentices.

Fellow Crafts.

Master Masons.

Senior and Junior Deacons.

Secretary and Treasurer.

Senior and Junior Wardens.

Master of Lodges.

Past Masters.

Rev. Clergy.

Stewards, with corn, wine, and oil.

Princ.i.p.al Architect, Globe with square, level, Globe and plumb. Bible.

Square and Compa.s.s, borne by a Master Mason.

The Judge of Israel In black, wearing the judicial robes of crimson silk, trimmed with ermine, and a richly embossed golden medal suspended from the neck.

A Master Mason.

Royal Arch Masons.

Knights Templars.

At the church door there was a halt. The troops parted to right and left, the pageant pa.s.sed through into the crowded church, gay with the summer dresses of the ladies, the band played the grand march from "Judas Maccabaeus," the organ pealed out the "Jubilate." On the communion-table lay the corner-stone of Ararat!

The morning service was read by the Rev. Mr. Searle in full canonicals; the choir sang "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne"; then came a special prayer for Ararat, and pa.s.sages from Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and the Psalms, charged with divine promises and consolations for the long suffering of Israel, idyllic pictures of the Messianic future, symbolized by the silver cups with wine, corn, and oil, that lay on the corner-stone. At last arose, with that crimson silk robe trimmed with ermine thrown over his stately black attire, and with the richly embossed golden medal hanging from his neck--the Master of the Show, the Dramatist of the Real, the Humorist without a sense of Humour, the Dreamer of the Ghetto and American Man of Action, the Governor and Judge of Israel, the _Shophet_,--in brief, Mordecai Manuel Noah. He delivered a great discourse on the history of Israel and its present reorganization, which filled more than five columns of the newspapers, and was heard with solemn attention by the crowded Christian audience.

Save a few Indians and his own secretary, not a single Jew was present to hold in check the orator's oriental imagination. Then the glittering procession filed back to the Lodge, and the brethren and the military dined joyously at the Eagle Tavern, and Noah's wit and humour returned for the after-dinner speech. He withdrew early in order to write a full account of the proceedings for the _Buffalo Patriot Extra_.

A salvo of twenty-four guns rounded off the great day of Israel's restoration.

VI

Meantime Peloni on his island awaited the coming of its Ruler. He heard faintly the cannonade that preceded and concluded the laying of the foundation-stone in the chancel of the church, and he expected Noah the next day at the latest. But the next day pa.s.sed, and no Noah.

Peloni fed on the remains of his corn and drank from the river, but though his Indian guide was gone and he was a prisoner, he had no fear of starvation, because he saw the wigwams of another Indian encampment across the river and occasionally a party of them would glide past in a large canoe. Despite hunger, his sensations on this first day were delicious. The poet in him responded rapturously to the appeal of all this new life; to feel the brotherhood of wild creatures, to sleep under the stars in the vast night, to watch the silent, pa.s.sionate beauty of the sunrise, ripening to the music of the birds.

On the second day his eyes were gladdened by the oncoming of a boat rowed by two whites. They proved to be a stone mason and his man, and they bore provisions, a letter, and newspapers from Noah:--

"MY DEAR PELONI:

"A hurried line to report a glorious success, thank Heaven! A finer day and more general satisfaction has not been known on any similar occasion. All the dignity and talent of the neighbourhood for miles was present. I hear that a vast concourse also a.s.sembled at Tonawanda, expecting that the ceremonies would be at Grand Island, but that many of them came up in carriages in time to hear my Inaugural Speech. You will see that the newspapers, especially the _Buffalo Patriot Extra_, have reported me fully, showing how they realize the importance of this world-stirring episode in Israel's history. Their comments, too, are for the most part highly sympathetic. Of course the _New York Herald_ will sneer; but then Bennett was once in my employ on the _Courier and Enquirer_. They tell me that you duly set out to plant the flag of Judah, and I a.s.sume it is now by G.o.d's grace waving over Ararat. Heaven bless you!

my heart is too full for words. I had hoped to find time to-day to behold the sublime spectacle myself, but urgent legal business calls me back to New York. But I am resolved to start the city without delay, and the bearers of this have my plan for a little monument of brick and wood with the simple inscription--'Ararat founded by Mordecai Manuel Noah, 1825'--from the summit of which the flag can wave. I leave you to superintend the same, and take any measures you please to promote the growth of the city and to receive, as my representative, the inflowing immigrants from the Ghettos of the world. I appoint you, moreover, Keeper of the Records. To you shall be given to write the new Book of the Chronicles of Israel. My friend Mr. Smith, one of the proprietors of the island, will communicate with you on behalf of the Shareholders, as occasion arises. Expect me shortly (perhaps with my bride, for I am entering into holy wedlock with the most amiable and beautiful of her s.e.x) and meantime receive my blessing.

"MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH, Judge of Israel, "_pro_ A.B. SEIXAS, Secr. _pro tem._"

While the little monument was building, and the men were coming to and fro in boats, Peloni made friends with the Indians, the smoke-wreaths of whose lodges hovered across the river, and he picked up a little of their language. Also he explored his island, drawn by the crescendo roar of Niagara. It was at Burnt Island Bay that he had his first, if distant, view of the Falls themselves. The rapids, gurgling and plunging with foam and swirl and eddy, quickened his blood, but the cataracts disappointed him, after that rainbow glimpse of the upper spray, and it was not till he got himself landed on the Canadian sh.o.r.e and saw the monstrous rush of the vast tameless flood toward the great leap that he felt the presence and the power that were to be with him for the rest of his days. The bend of the Horse-Shoe was hidden by a white spray mountain that rose above its topmost waters, as they hurled themselves from green solidity to creamy mist. And as he looked, lo! the enchanting rainbows twinkled again, and he had a sense as of the smile of G.o.d, of the love of that awful, unfathomable Being, eternally persistent, while the generations rise and fall like vaporous spray.

The tide was low and, drawn by an irresistible fascination, he adventured down among the rocks near the foot of the Fall. But a tingling storm of spray smote him half blind and wholly breathless, and all he could see was a monstrous misty Brocken-spirit upreared and in his ears were a thousand thunders. A wild elemental pa.s.sion swelled and lifted him. Yes, Force, Force, was the secret of things: the vast primal energies that sent the stars shining and the seas roaring.

Force, Life, Strength, that was what Israel needed. It had grown anaemic, slouching along its airless _Judenga.s.sen_. Oh, to fight, to fight, like the warriors who went out against the Greeks, who defended the Holy City against the Romans. "For the Lord is a Man of War." And he shouted the cry of David, "Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight." But he stopped, smitten by an ironic memory. This very blessing was uttered every Sabbath twilight, in every Ghetto, by every bloodless worshipper, to a melancholy despairing melody, in the lightless dusk of the synagogues.

The monument was speedily erected and, being hollow, proved useful for Peloni to sleep in, as the October nights grew chilly. And thus Peloni lived, a latter-day Crusoe. He had now procured fishing-tackle, and grew dexterous in luring black ba.s.s and perch and whitefish from the river. Also he had found out what berries he might eat. Occasionally a boat would sell him cornmeal from Buffalo, but his savings were melting away and he preferred to forage for himself, relishing the wild flavour of uncivilized living. He even wished it were possible to eat the birds or the rabbits he could have killed: but as various points of Jewish law forbade such diet, there was no use in buying a musket or a bow and arrow. So his relations with the animal world remained purely amicable. The robins and bluebirds and thrushes sang for him. The woodp.e.c.k.e.rs tapped on his monument to wake him in the morning. The blue jays screamed without wrath, and the partridges drummed unmartially. The squirrels frolicked with him, and the rabbits lost their shyness. One would have said these were the Lost Ten Tribes he had found.

Peloni had become, not the Keeper of the Records, but the Keeper of Noah's Ark.

VII

So winter came, and there was still nothing to record, save the witchery of the m.u.f.fled white world with its blue shadows and fantastic ice friezes and stalact.i.tes. Great icicles glittered on the rocks, showing all the hues beneath. Peloni, wrapped in his blanket, crouched on his monument over a log that burnt in an improvised grate.

It was very lonely. He had heard from no one, neither from Noah, nor Smith, nor any Jewish or even Indian pilgrim to the New Jerusalem, and the stock of winter provisions had exhausted his little h.o.a.rd of coin. The old despair began to twine round him like some serpent of ice. As he listened in such moods to the distant thunder of Niagara--which waxed louder as the air grew heavier, till it quite dominated the ever present rumble of the rapids--the sound took on endless meanings to his feverish brain. Now it was no longer the voice of the Eternal Being, it was the endless plaint of Israel beseeching the deaf heaven, the roar of prayer from some measureless synagogue; now it was the raucous voice of persecution, the dull b.e.s.t.i.a.l roar of malicious mult.i.tudes; and again it was the voice of the whole earth, groaning and travailing. And the horror of it was that it would not stop. It dropped on his brain, this falling water, as on the prisoner's in the mediaeval torture chamber. Could no one stop this turning wheel of the world, jar it grindingly to a standstill?

Spring wore slowly round again. The icicles melted, the friezes dripped away, the fantastic m.u.f.flers slipped from the trees, and the young buds peeped out and the young birds sang. The river flowed uncurdled, the cataracts fell unclogged.

In Peloni's breast alone the ice did not melt: no new sap stirred in his veins. The very rainbows on the leaping mist were now only reminders of the Biblical promise that the world would go on forever; forever the wheel would turn, and Israel wander homeless.

And at last one sunny day a boat arrived with a message from the Master. Alas! even Noah had abandoned Ararat. "I am beginning to see,"

he wrote, "that our only hope is Palestine. Zion alone has magnetism for the Jew. The great war against Gog prophesied in Ezekiel will be in Palestine. Gog is Russia, and the Russians are the descendants of the joint colony of Meshech and Tubal and the little horn of Daniel.

Russia in an attempt to wrest India and Turkey from the English and the Turks will make the Holy Land the theatre of a terrible conflict.

But yet in the end in Jerusalem shall we reerect Solomon's Temple. The ports of the Mediterranean will be again open to the busy hum of commerce; the fields will again bear the fruitful harvest, and Christian and Jew will together, on Mount Zion, raise their voices in praise of Him whose covenant with Abraham was to endure forever, in whose seed all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. This is our destiny."

Peloni wandered automatically to the apex of the island at Burnt Ship Bay, and stood gazing meaninglessly at the fragments of the sunken ships. Before him raced the rapids, frenziedly anxious for the great leap. Even so, he thought, had Noah and he dreamed Israel would haste to Ararat. And Niagara maintained its mocking roar--its roar of gigantic laughter.

Reerect Solomon's Temple in Palestine! A ruined country to regenerate a ruined people! A land belonging to the Turks, centre of the fanaticisms of three religions and countless sects! A soil which even to Noah was the destined theatre of world-shaking war!

As he lifted his swimming eyes he saw to his astonishment that he was no longer alone. A tall majestic figure stood gazing at him: a grave, sorrowful Indian, feathered and tufted, habited only in buckskin leggings, and girdled by a belt of wampum. A musket in his hand showed he had been hunting, and a canoe Peloni now saw tethered to the bank indicated he was going back to his lodge. Peloni knew from his talks with the Tonawanda Indians opposite Ararat that this was Red Jacket, the famous chief of the Iroquois, the ancient lords of the soil.

Peloni tendered the salute due to the royalty stamped on the man. Red Jacket ceremoniously acknowledged the obeisance. Then they gazed silently at each other, the puny, stooping scholar from the German Ghetto, and the stalwart, kingly savage.

"Tell me," said Red Jacket imperiously, "what nation are you that build a monument but never a city like the other white men, nor even a camp like my people?"

"Great Chief," replied Peloni in his best Iroquois, "we are a people that build for others."

"I would ye would build for my people then. For these white men sweep us back, farther, farther, till there is nothing but"--and he made an eloquent gesture, implying the sweep into the river, into the jaws of the hurrying rapids. "Yet, methinks, I heard of a plan of your people--of a great pow-wow of your chiefs in a church, of a great city to be born here."

"It is dead before birth," said Peloni.

"Strange," mused Red Jacket. "Scarce twenty summers ago Joseph Elliott came here to plan out his city on a soil that was not his, and lo!

this Buffalo rises already mighty and menacing. To-morrow it will be at my wigwam door--and we"--another gesture, hopeless, yet full of regal dignity, rounded off the sentence.

And in that instant it was borne in upon Peloni that they were indeed brothers: the Jew who stood for the world that could not be born again, and the Red Indian who stood for the world that must pa.s.s away.

Yes, they were both doomed. Israel had been too bent and broken by the long dispersion and the long persecution: the spring was snapped; he could not recover. He had been too long the pliant protege of kings and popes: he had prayed too many centuries in too many countries for the simultaneous welfare of too many governments, to be capable of realizing that government of his own for which he likewise prayed.

This pious patience--this rejection of the burden on to the shoulders of Messiah and Miracle--was it more than the veil of unconscious impotence? Ah, better sweep oneself away than endure the long ignominy. And Niagara laughed on.

"May I have the privilege of crossing in your canoe?" he asked.

"You are not afraid?" said Red Jacket. "The rapids are dangerous here."

Afraid! Peloni's inward laughter seemed to himself to match Niagara's.

When he got to the mainland, he made straight for the Fall. He was on the American side, and he paused on the sward, on the very brink of the tameless cataract, that had for immemorial ages been driving itself backward by eating away its own rock. His fascinated eyes watched the curious smooth, purring slide of the vast ma.s.s of green water over the sharp edges, unending, unresting, the eternal revolution of a maddening, imperturbable wheel. O that blind wheel, turning, turning, while the generations waxed and waned, one succeeding the other without haste or rest or possibility of pause: creatures of meaningless majesty, shadows of shadows, dreaming of love and justice, and fading into the kindred mist, while this solid green cataract roared and raced through aeons innumerable, stable as the stars, thundering in majestic meaninglessness. And suddenly he threw himself into its remorseless whirl and was sucked down into the monstrous chaos of seething waters and whirled and hurled amid the rocks, battered and shapeless, but still holding Noah's letter in his convulsively clinched hand, while the rainbowed spray leapt impa.s.sively heavenward.

The corner-stone of Ararat lies in the rooms of the Buffalo Historical Society, and no one who copies the inscription dreams that it is the gravestone of Peloni.