Rabbi and Priest Part 41

A frightful scene had in the meantime been enacted at the Rabbi's dwelling, whither many an unprotected woman and child had hastened in the belief that it would be safe from the mob. The detachment of rioters under the leadership of Loris had already attacked it and the crying and pleading of the inmates could be heard above the confusion of the mob.

But they pleaded in vain. Had anyone but Loris been in command, the house of the beloved and honored Rabbi might have been spared, for his many acts of kindness had endeared him to the _moujiks_ as well as to his own people. When Loris arrived before the humble dwelling, however, there was but one sentiment in his heart--revenge. Too well he remembered the ignominious defeat he had experienced within those walls, and at the recollection of Kathinka, the base pa.s.sion which absence had not subdued broke forth again and transformed the man into a savage.

There was no pity, no mercy to be expected from him.

At the windows of Winenki's house stood the women, their faces blanched with fear as they looked upon the blood-thirsty army without.

"Down with the door!" shouted Loris, and a dozen ready hands shook the door upon its fastenings.

Suddenly the men stopped in their mad work. Mikail the monk had rushed into their midst. His priestly robes were torn and covered with mud, his eyes were bloodshot, his face the picture of wild despair; his bosom heaved and his clenched hands gyrated madly in an effort to command silence.

"Men of Kief!" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, "this b.l.o.o.d.y work must cease. In the name of the Czar I command you to go to your homes and molest the Jews no further! They are innocent of the charges brought against them."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Loris. "Since when has Mikail turned protector of the Jews?"

"They are innocent, I tell you!" cried the priest. "Leave them in peace!"

"Down with the Jews!" cried one of the band. "The Czar has given us their property and we will have it!"

"It is false!" shouted Mikail. "The _ukase_ is a forgery. I myself wrote it and had it circulated. It never had the Czar's sanction."

"The priest is mad!" cried Loris. "For three years he has incited us to enmity against the Jews and now he pleads their cause. On with the work!

We have much to do before night."

"In the name of his majesty, I command you to cease!" yelled the priest, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"In the name of the Governor of Kief, I command you to go on!" shouted Loris. "Down with Rabbi Winenki and his family! Down with the miserable race that killed our Saviour!"

The battering at the door was resumed with renewed vigor. A cry of triumph announced to the crowd that the barrier was down, and a portion of the infuriated mob rushed into the house.

In vain did Mikail circulate among the men, by turns commanding and pleading, to induce them to desist from their work of destruction.

They looked at him askance and then at each other, significantly. But yesterday this same priest spurred them on to vengeance, filling them with pa.s.sion against the people whose cause he now espoused.

"He is mad," they whispered, and turning their backs upon him, they continued their excesses.

Loris had in the meantime entered the room in which he had kneeled to the beautiful Kathinka.

The Rabbi with his aged father and a number of beardless youths, pupils of his school, guarded the door leading to the inner room, in which the women and girls had taken refuge. They had armed themselves with chairs and whatever happened to be within reach, and with these primitive weapons they expected to hold the enemy in check. As well endeavor to stay the flood of the mighty Dnieper with a net drawn across its stream!

The mob charged upon them with an impetus that could not be resisted.

The Rabbi, single-handed, felled two powerful _moujiks_; then he himself fell bleeding to the floor. His gray-bearded father was dealt a blow on the head from a stout cudgel, and he lay upon the ground in the agonies of death. The young men seeing that resistance but increased their peril, threw down their weapons and fled, leaving the inner room with its helpless inmates in the hands of the rioters.

Loris was the first to enter, and his companions were not slow in following his example. A number of maidens, crazed with horror, sprang from the windows, only to fall into the arms of the rabble without.

Three of the women were killed in the heroic struggle for their honor and not less than twenty suffered indignities worse than death.

The Rabbi's wife, Recha, succeeding in escaping the vigilance of the invading party and hurried into the outer room. Suddenly her eyes encountered the form of her husband lying upon the floor, bathed in blood and apparently dead. With a shriek she threw herself upon his prostrate body. When her friends attempted to move her after the danger had pa.s.sed, they found that terror and grief had done their work. Recha had lost her reason.

On his entrance into the room, Loris gazed about him, and soon singled out Kathinka, standing among her friends, silently praying. With a cry of mingled joy and rage, he threw himself upon her and put his arms firmly around her.

"Ha! beautiful Kathinka!" he said, ironically; "so we meet again. How happy you must be to see me! Yes, I love you still, and you shall be mine, all mine! Don't struggle, sweet one; I shall remove you to my dwelling, far from all this noise and tumult. Ho, there! make room there for me and my prize!"

Lifting the struggling maiden in his arms, he pressed through the crowd, out into the street. There he set down his precious burden and paused to regain his breath.

Kathinka looked hastily about her. There were many in the crowd who had known her since her childhood, many whom her father had befriended, but they stood pa.s.sively by and abstained from offering her either a.s.sistance or sympathy. Then, as Loris again wound his arms about her; she cried loudly for help:

"Come to my aid," she cried, imploringly. "Do none of you know me; will none lend me a helping hand? I am Kathinka, the daughter of Rabbi Winenki! Will no one raise his arm in my defence?"

There was no reply to her appeal; the rioters had no mercy for the despised Jewess.

Of a sudden the crowd parted. Thank G.o.d, there was a champion for Kathinka. Mikail the priest elbowed his way through the dense ma.s.s of maddened humanity and with eyes wilder and face more haggard than before, he approached the shrieking girl. With a cry of fury, he fell upon Loris and endeavored to tear him from his victim. Loris was for a moment too astonished to offer any resistance.

"What do you want with me, priest?" he cried, angrily, when he recognized his a.s.sailant.

"I am here to remind you of your honor, of your manhood; to plead with you in behalf of that poor maiden. You shall not harm a hair of her head while I have strength to defend her."

"This is, indeed, wonderful!" laughed Loris, mockingly. "The arch Jew-hater has become the champion of innocence! Go to your monastery, priest, and leave the battle-field to soldiers!" and pushing Mikail contemptuously aside, he renewed his hold upon the girl, who, overpowered by her terror and despair, had become insensible.

At that moment another form pushed its way through the crowd. It was Joseph, who after great difficulties, had at length succeeded in reaching the spot. He, too, had heard Kathinka's despairing cry, and had hastened to protect her. A rapid glance made the situation clear to him and he at once prepared to attack the Governor's son. But the priest had forestalled him. With a yell of rage, Mikail threw himself upon the young ruffian and the two were instantly engaged in a desperate combat.

Loris was inspired by pa.s.sion and revenge; the priest was moved by a feeling which he could not himself a.n.a.lyze. The hatred which he bore Loris broke out in unreasoning fury; he had heard Kathinka's cry of distress, had heard her a.s.sert that she was the daughter of his own brother, and in the strange revulsion of feeling which had overcome him since yesterday, he determined to effect her release at all hazards.

The men twined and twisted about each other, swayed to and fro in their endeavor to gain the mastery, while the crowd, forgetting its own pa.s.sions, formed a circle about them, applauding now the one, now the other.

Meanwhile Joseph had raised the helpless form of his betrothed from the ground and endeavored to carry her through the mob. A score of brawny arms barred the way.

Fear for his beloved gave the young man almost superhuman strength.

Seizing in his right hand a cudgel which was lying on the ground, while his left arm still supported Kathinka, he hewed a pa.s.sage through the ranks. Eight men lay sprawling upon the ground and their companions retreated before the telling blows of Joseph's club. When he found himself unembarra.s.sed by the rioters, he lifted Kathinka in both his arms and ran as fast as his feet would bear him to his father's house, which, having already been attacked, he hoped would escape a second visit.

The combat between Loris and Mikail was short. The priest labored under a manifest disadvantage in being crippled in one arm, while Loris, driven to desperation by seeing Kathinka carried off, gathered all his strength and with a mighty blow hurled the monk to the ground. There was a dull crash. The priest's head had struck the pavement with such force that his skull was crushed and a crimson stream of blood gushed from his lips and nostrils, his body quivered, his maimed arm fell heavily at his side. Mikail, the Jew-hater, had ceased to exist.

For a moment Loris was dazed and conscience-stricken. To kill a priest was a serious crime. Moreover, that priest had been his father's friend and favorite adviser, and Loris had much to fear from parental wrath.

The mischief was done, however, and bestowing upon the dead body a parting glance of ineffable hatred, he set to work to reunite his scattered band.

The outrages in the Jewish quarter had been duly reported to the Governor, who shrugged his shoulders, rubbed his palms and smiled with secret satisfaction.

"Revenge is sweet," he muttered, and he placed himself at the window, where he could witness the burning of the houses.

About noon the body of Mikail was carried past the palace to the Petcherskoi convent, and at the same time exaggerated accounts reached Drentell's ears of the dangers to which his beloved son had been exposed.

"It is time to put an end to the attack," thought the Governor, and another detachment of soldiers was sent out to a.s.sist the first in quelling the riot and to arrest all disorderly persons found upon the streets. This order was vigorously enforced. About two thousand people were made prisoners, nearly half of them Jews, arrested for protecting their lives and property.

The scenes in the Jewish quarter at the close of the riot, beggar description. Dust and feathers filled the air, for one of the mob's chief amus.e.m.e.nts consisted in tearing open feather-beds and pillows and scattering their contents. Broken furniture, dishes and stoves strewed the pavements. Not a pane of gla.s.s or door was left entire. It was as though an army had invaded the place. Nearly three thousand Israelites were without shelter, their houses having been burned or otherwise demolished. Many hundreds more were reduced to poverty, having been despoiled of everything. The destruction of human life was appalling, many corpses being recovered from the river, days after the occurrence; and the number of people who were driven to insanity by the atrocities committed will probably never be known.[22]

Rabbi Winenki, who had received a dangerous wound, recovered slowly. His grief at the apparently hopeless insanity of his wife and the death of his father were indescribable; they were in a slight measure mitigated by the knowledge that his daughter had been spared the barbarous fate that had befallen so many of Israel's women.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

WHAT THE PRIEST HAD ACCOMPLISHED.