The Incendiary Part 27

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

A RECANTATION.

Saul Aronson was not the only person who found pleasure in the company of Miss Lamb. There were others, with eyes not glamoured by any golden mist of love, who would have found it hard to select an adjective strong enough to express their approbation of the pet.i.te devotee. About a year before she had come down from the country to be a companion to her aunt, Mrs. Wolfe, who had just lost her husband.

Mrs. Wolfe (according to neighbors' gossip) had been no more than a moderately loving wife, but she made a devoted widow. She had the waist of a wasp and a temper to match it. Her frame was angular, and her disposition, too, revealed shoulder blades and elbows. If she loved anything in this world it was her marbled cat, which was hated by every boarder in the house, and a pariah among its tribe. From constant visiting of her husband's grave her manners had a.s.sumed a cast which would have been appropriate to a cemetery, but was most depressing in everyday converse. Even her smile had something acrid about it, like a shopworn lemon, and the acidity of her scowl would have reddened blue litmus paper.

People wondered why her niece, such a tender little body, should be doomed to the martyrdom of waiting upon "Old Tabby Wolfe and her boarders." Mrs. Gubbins, who was the landlady's most intimate crony--probably because among her other virtues she had a keen sense of the doleful--spread the report that Serena would inherit her aunt's property, and that her own mother, Mrs. Wolfe's sister, had had an eye to this when she parted with the eldest of her household. However that might be, the girl put up patiently with all the widow's quirks and oddities; entered into religious work enthusiastically, and in six months had rubbed off the slight rusticity with which eighteen years of choring on a farm, before she came down to the city, had touched her accent and manner.

There were hardly any traces of kinship between aunt and niece. To be sure, Serena had the slenderest slip of a waist that nature ever fashioned, and just the least suggestion of cheek bones, too, which were not at all disagreeable, however. When occasion demanded, she could give a sharp order, much as she may have rebuked Spot and Bossy for switching when she milked them in the cowshed at home. But to the boarders these bursts of impatience only gave their sweet waitress a piquancy like the tartness of the full-ripe strawberry.

With them she was a general favorite. They used to declare that she put yeast in their beds, for they were like pans of dough, feathery and white, when she made them of a morning; and Serena, spinning the pie-plates round, scalloping the edges of the crust with a four-tined fork, or knitting in the sitting-room from a ball of pink yarn that danced on the carpet as she unraveled it, was a spectacle of domesticity at which they never tired of gazing. Yet her dignity, which was far beyond her years, prevented their making her a plaything. Though cordial, she was very reserved. Young ladies called her set; young men, seraphic but cold.

You may imagine how Aronson's heart hopped in his bosom when Jupiter presented him to this G.o.ddess.

"I have seen you at our meetings, Mr. Aronson," she graciously observed. She had noticed him, then. He knew it before, but the a.s.surance from her lips gave him measureless joy. But this joy swelled to rapture inexpressible, such as only the saints in the ninth heaven and happy lovers on earth are privileged to know, when she invited him to call upon her and pressed his hand a second time on bidding him adieu. The thrill of her fingertips did not die out all that day; but it was a week again (for Aronson was a bashful youth) before he presumed to accept her invitation.

His mother marveled why Saul furbished himself up so carefully that evening. He had risen from the supper table prematurely and spent exactly fifty-five minutes smoothing his hair, tidying his cravat and drawing on his new pair of gloves. When he went out, instead of soliciting admiration for this array, he seemed to avoid it.

As he drew toward the mansion whose door-plate still bore the name of the departed Ephraim Wolfe, an unwelcome surprise met Aronson. There in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall lamp, was the form which he knew to be Serena's. She was admitting a visitor--a youth. The door quickly closed and a rosy light came through the tinted curtains behind. But Aronson's spirits had sunk, his resolution departed. Instead of crossing the street, as he had planned to, and ringing the bell, with a little speech of greeting all prepared, he walked on to the next corner and irresolutely turned back.

This time a shadow fell on the white curtain of the front room. It was Serena rocking herself placidly in the rocking-chair. Every forward inclination brought her sweet profile into view, every backward one removed it. Her lips moved. She was conversing, doubtless, with the youth whose stolid shadow occupied the center of the opposite curtain. Eight times Saul Aronson pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed that house-front before he could tear himself away and return home to divest himself downheartedly of all his finery.

Two days later, however, he saw Serena again; and she renewed the invitation. This time, when he approached, there was no hostile youth at the door. Serena herself admitted him to the portals of the paradise which she inhabited in common with Mrs. Wolfe and the seven boarders, and 10 o'clock had long ceased striking when, incoherent with ecstasy, Saul Aronson uttered his last lingering doorstep adieu and promised to return.

He never returned. As she informed Inspector McCausland, Serena had never looked on that lovelorn visage again.

This was how he came to break his promise: One Sunday afternoon a messenger came to the Aronson door with a request from Simon Rabofsky that Saul should favor him with a visit. The young man had misgivings, but he dared not disobey.

Up a squalid flight, into a dingy back room, Aronson took his way reluctantly. The clamor of voices died when he crossed the threshold and six pairs of inimical eyes, he thought, were lifted to his face. At a table in the midst sat Rabofsky, his yellowish earlocks dangling beneath his skull-cap and a great book spread open before him.

"Peace be with you, Saul Aronson," he said in the jargon.

"The angel Dumah spare you, Simon Rabofsky," answered Aronson.

"I rejoice to see that you have not forgotten the holy salutations."

The twelve eyes sharpened their glances at Aronson and he knew the ordeal was come. They were six of the strictest in the congregation, from old Silberstein, who sat on the left of the ark and led the recitation of the eighteen psalms of a morning, to young Cohen, the Jewish butcher, a zealot of zealots, than whom none more devoutly beat his bosom in prayer or observed the allotted holy days.

"Brother Silberstein was just proposing that your place in the synagogue be disposed of. It is a pity to see a seat vacant, when so many must stand. But I bade him not be hasty, for perhaps you had been ill of late."

"Why play the innocent, Simon Rabofsky," broke in Cohen, "when you know as well as we that he has been consorting with the gentiles?"

"It is because I am loath to believe it," answered Rabofsky, in a sorrowful tone, as if rebuking Cohen. "I am loath to believe one of Isaac Aronson's household would turn away to bow before the idols of Babylon."

"Is it forbidden to search for wisdom?" said Aronson.

"You do not search for it in the book where it is found," said Rabofsky, laying his finger on the book before him. It was printed in Semitic characters, but the language was the jargon, for Rabofsky was no master of Hebrew and Aramaic, "the divine talmud, which our fathers have preserved through their hundred persecutions."

"But its wisdom is obscure," answered Aronson.

"Are there not doctors to explain those parts which are dark?" rejoined Rabofsky. "And behold, in this edition, which a Hebrew so enlightened as Saul Aronson should possess, are not all the lengthy pa.s.sages shortened and the unnecessary omitted by the labors of that light of Israel, born at Cordova, Moses ben Maimon, whom the gentiles miscall Maimonides?"

"Why plead with the apostate?" cried Silberstein, angrily. "He is no longer a Jew. He toileth on the Sabbath. He goeth not down to the waterside to lament."

"It is false," said Aronson, hotly.

"I said so," nodded Rabofsky.

"Who are you to reprove me, Simon Rabofsky," continued Aronson, "because I cannot lie idle two days in the week? Do you rest from your money-getting on the Sabbath? I think your wife, Rebecca, could answer me that. Did I not see her selling jewels to a Christian on the seventh day of this very week?"

"It is written," answered Rabofsky, his steel-blue eyes contracting, "that the high priests in the hour of necessity made food of the bread of the tabernacle. So saith the holy book," he laid his finger again on the page, "which Jehovah hath covered with the wings of His protection so that torches could not destroy it. Behold it has arisen from a thousand burnings uncharred!"

All the Hebrews plucked their garments and with bowed heads muttered a prayer, in which Aronson found himself joining.

"Too many of our youth are beguiled by the flatteries of the gentiles," continued Rabofsky, not unwilling to divert the conversation.

"But such are only the lax ones, who worship no G.o.d," said Cohen. "Few grovel before idols, like this one."

"And hath Saul Aronson done this?" asked Rabofsky, as if in surprise.

"Did you not see him yourself at the gentile ceremony raising his hands?"

"You wrong the Christians," protested Aronson. "They are not all cruel and there is much sweetness of love in their doctrine."

"Not cruel!" rejoined Cohen. "How have they not poured out our blood in the ages!"

"Jehovah hath stored it up," added a gentler voice, piteously. It was Abraham Barentzen, the patriarch of the colony, who had not spoken before, but kept looking at the backslider kindly, as if more in sorrow than bitterness.

"Sweetness of love!" cried Silberstein. "Love indeed and enough. How they love each other! Sect embracing sect! Pah!"

"They hate us; they mock us, and our children court them," droned another in a minor key.

"They call us cheats and usurers," cried Cohen, "because we make wealth out of the waste they cast away."

"Psh!" said old Barentzen, raising his hands. "Be just. Those are only the few."

"Perhaps it is some gentle girl that is tempting Saul Aronson, even as the Philistine women of old weakened the faith of Samson," said Rabofsky, keenly.

"Are there not black-eyed daughters of Israel," cried old Barentzen, mild-voiced and reproving, "who will make him a home? If he wants a wife comely, buxom, well-dowered, modest, a good housekeeper and free from t.i.ttle-tattle, are there not such by scores in the neighborhood?"

"I fear it is Meyer s.h.a.garach's doing," murmured Silberstein.

"Not so," spoke Cohen, sharply. Though young, he seemed a leader. "s.h.a.garach is lost to the fold of Israel, but does he chant with cracked voice out of a tattered hymn-book? Pretty soon we shall see Saul Aronson shivering in the waters of baptism, and then he will change his name to Paul, like that other traitor, the fire-brand of Tarsus?"

"Traitor yourself!" cried Aronson, stung by Cohen's irony.

The word has terrible force in Israel. The whole past of the race is vivid in the minds of the wanderers, and recollection of its sorrows makes a bond so strong that no temptation can break it. Aronson paused to think. The dim traditions, all tears and fire and blood--the exodus from Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, the burning of Jerusalem, the dispersion, the persecutions without number--could he forget all those, snapping ties so sacred?

"After all, I think Saul Aronson's heart is not with the gentiles," said old Barentzen, in a soothing voice. "Would he rather be buried when he dies under some idolatrous mound stuck with the symbol of him whom Judas righteously delivered----"

"There never was such a Nazarene," broke in Cohen impetuously. "It is all a fable and the text in Josephus was written in by the gentiles."

"I say the Christ was real and rightly condemned as a creator of sedition," said Rabofsky, with authoritative pomp. Like the misers of every race, he was both devotee and formalist.

"He is not mentioned in the talmud," argued Cohen. "Nor elsewhere, until the history of our race crosses the history of the pagans. It is all an invention."

Thereupon the two zealots wrangled and jangled till Aronson's ears ached. But his mind was dwelling upon old Barentzen's saying and sadly acknowledging its truth. His heart was not really with the Christians. What did he know of their teachings? He had been given a bible, but it was locked in his office drawer, unread. Besides, these were deep questions. Who was he to dispute the great doctors, like Moses ben Maimon?

"So be it, obstinate youth," said Rabofsky at last, waving his hands to end the discussion.

"I had begun to ask Saul Aronson a question," resumed Barentzen, in a tone of rebuke. "Would you not rather lie like your fathers with the shards on your eyelids and a handful of earth from the land of Israel thrown over your resting-place?"

Aronson hung his head.

"Enough of this pleading and coaxing," snarled Cohen. "He is stiff-necked, I see. I will put his name with the other traitors. There are twenty in all. They shall be published in the next issue."

"Stay," said Aronson.

"On the first page," said Silberstein. "And the first page shall be hung outward in my store window."

"That the very children may know them for apostates and greedy hypocrites," added Rabofsky, to clinch the threat.

"Hold," cried Aronson. He foresaw the fatal result of his misstep. He could hear the storm rising around him; the clamor of children on the streets, the pointed fingers of men and women, the ironical comments from the doorstep groups when he pa.s.sed, the sly digs at the supper table, the estranged glances of his mother. "It is all wrong," he cried.

"Then, why do you haunt the gentile mountebanks?" asked Cohen, seizing his sleeve.

"Fangled like a fop!" said Silberstein, catching his lapel.

"And shun the blessed synagogue?" added another, fumbling at his vest b.u.t.tons.

"Are you a gentile or a Jew?" questioned Rabofsky, as chief inquisitor.

"I am a Jew!" cried Aronson, in honest wrath, tousled and clapperclawed until his patience had given away. Then he rushed from the room.

The list of "traitors" appeared in the Jewish Messenger without Saul Aronson's name. The old, old conflict between love and honor had ended with another defeat for the imperious boy-G.o.d. But it is no discredit to Serena Lamb that her influence yielded to a pa.s.sion which is hardly second to any in the world for intensity--the Israelite's devotion to his race. All that she retained of the young convert from whom so much had been expected was a confused memory of the conversation in her sitting-room. What had Aronson told her in his agitation during that confidential interview? It would seem that he had been too frank. At least, for several weeks after Serena's visit to McCausland, he was strangely conscious that some one was d.o.g.g.i.ng his footsteps, both at home and about the office. Naturally, he ascribed this espionage to the sacred brotherhood, whose power is great in Israel, and, fearing their vigilance, redoubled his evening invocations and waxed regular in his attendance at the synagogue.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE WRATH OF s.h.a.gARACH.

Walter Riley, Thomas J. Fenton and Arthur Watts had a separate trial from the other members of the "club," which resorted to Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen. There was only one charge against them--to wit, the larceny of three bicycles and their sale to one Timothy Bagley, aforesaid, dealer in junk.

The government had little difficulty in proving its case. First, one of the owners of the bicycles testified to having recognized his wheel, cunningly repainted, in a stranger's possession, to following up its rider and tracing it finally to an auction sale at which he had purchased it cheap. From the auctioneer to Bagley, from Bagley to the "club," was easy work for the officer detailed to investigate the theft. Walter's unsold wheel was confiscated, together with all the other stolen property on the premises, and no fewer than seven of the boys placed under arrest. But the only charge against Riley, Fenton and Watts was the theft of the bicycles.

Bagley, the junkman, who was involved in the affair, had made a singular confession, candid enough in most particulars but with great hiatuses here and there concerning the disposal of certain articles, princ.i.p.ally articles of value--a watch, a meerschaum pipe and the third of the bicycles. No threats or promises in private had been able to wring from him a confession concerning these points. But at the mention of a pipe s.h.a.garach had raised his head and, crossing over to the prosecuting attorney, secured a description of the missing object.

"You admit, then, that you offered Riley $10 for the bicycle which he had ridden?" asked s.h.a.garach of Bagley on cross-examination.

"Yes, sir."

"How often did you repeat this offer?"

"Several times--about four or five times."

"And the boy each time refused?"

"Yes, sir."

"What language did he use?"

"He said the wheel wasn't his."

"Which you knew very well, didn't you, without being told?"

"Yes, sir."

"And when you proposed that Fenton should ride the bicycle over to your shop, what was Riley's conduct then?"

"I don't know of my own knowledge. But they told me that he wouldn't have it."

"He threatened them, then?"

"Yes, sir, you might call it threatening."

"Then Riley would appear to have put forward some claim upon the bicycle, although he denied that it was his. Would you not say that he seemed to regard himself as its custodian rather than its proprietor? That he was storing it in Lonergan's kitchen until the occasion should arise when it might be returned to its owner?"

"Well, the boys said he was sorry for taking the wheel and that he never meant to steal it."

"That is all--all on that point, I mean." Bagley had started to leave the stand. "There is another matter, however, with regard to the third bicycle--the one which has not been recovered"--Bagley shifted uneasily to the opposite foot. "How does it happen that you, the sole repository of the secrets of these young law-breakers, can tell us nothing of that?"

"I know nothing about it."