and I shall be with you. I have been wounded. They have told you that,
have they not? But it is nothing, a scratch. It troubles me now, but it
will soon be over. Last night I sat in the hot Southern twilight that
smelled of jessamine and dreamed myself back with you in New England,
where the spring nights are cold. But I did not dream any more the
meetings of fantasy. My mind leaped forward, and dreamed of my real
home-coming. I had greeted them all, my dear mother, the girls, Alice,
and Lucretia. Then they left us alone in the little circle about the
sun-dial, only it was summer, and the bees were heavy with the flower
dust, the air was fragrant. And then at last I saw the consciousness
of womanhood in your eyes--those clear eyes that have always looked
so straight at mine, straight into my heart, it seemed, although I
knew they were too young to see. Not once except for that first moment
when you said, with lowered lids, "Welcome home, William," did you look
at me. And as we sat on the garden seat, I could see your color rise,
the lace scarf tremble with your quickened breath. And then I took your
hand. "I have come home to you, Allison," I said. "What have you to say
to me?" But you would not raise your eyes. I took both of your hands
then. "Look at me, Allison," I said, and something ran through you like
the wind through a rose shaking out its perfume, and I seemed to draw
into my very soul the fragrance of your young emotion; and I said again,
"Look at me, Allison." And then, half like a child commanded, you raised
your eyes.... There is a majestic purity about you, Allison! Even in the
young confusion of that moment it pierced me, humbled me in adoring love
before you. "Allison, speak," I said, and I could scarcely get out the
words. "Do you love me?" and you, stammering like a child, said, "I
don't know, William. I don't know." "Then at least you do not love any
other man?" I asked you, and you shook your head.
Oh, Allison, if I come home to find that some other man has taught you
love, how shall I live through the burden of my days!
WILLIAM.
July, '65.
My Allison:
Here I sit in verity at my window and write. I shall never speak,
after all; for now I know that I haven't the right. The wound was
fatal, it seems, and I have only a short time to live, so I dare not
tell you until after I am gone. It would hurt you too much. Even now
I can scarcely bear to see your pity in your eyes. Suppose that pity
were to imagine itself love! When I am myself, my whole being rejects
that thought. It is not such love I dreamed to win from you, my Allison.
Then again there are moments, weak moments, when I would have anything,
take you at any price, only to have you nearer, only to wring those
brief hours of warmth and sunshine from the cold outstretched hand of
death. But that is only weakness. Such sad companionship with oncoming
death shall not be for you, my beloved. You shall see me till the last
as Lucretia's brother, not your lover. I cannot trust myself to think
of that other man who will live my dreams. Yet for myself I ask only
to live till the end with my eyes filled with the sight of you; to live
in fact and memory over each tone of your voice, each light and shade
on that dear face. You are not a child now. With your dark braids about
your star-like face, you are a woman, ready to waken to the knowledge
of love; but, thank God! not yet awakened. So I may know still the cool,
unconscious touch of your hand, your dear daily gift of flowers, watch
your sweet down-bent head as you come to read to me here in our garden,
and not heed the words for the dearness of dreaming over your face,
living so intensely each moment of you. Oh, my sweet, why did you go
so soon to-day? I know it was to buy ribbons for a new muslin for Molly
Dearborn's party. You must go to your parties, be happy. That is all I
wish. Yet you would so gladly have given me that hour if you had known.
Some one could have matched the ribbon for you. "Allison does not know,"
I heard Lucretia say the other day. "We do not want her to know. It
would distress her too much." I shall not let you know, my darling.
I write it now, but I shall blot it out lest it hurt you too much to
know afterward how precious each moment you gave me was, lest it grieve
your tender heart to know there was something more you might have given
had you known.
WILLIAM.
Like one coming out of a dream, Mark glanced about the room, noted the
hands of the clock marking the half hour past midnight, then picked up
the picture of the girl who was young more than forty years ago.
With a little sense of shock it came to him that she existed no more. He
wondered whether she also had died in her sweet youth or lived still, an
old woman.
If she was alive, had she married some one not Uncle William? Or had she
never married? Had she loved him? Had she known that he loved her? He
picked up the picture again. The face seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed
to speak to him. He lost himself in dreams and roused himself with a
laugh.
"I believe I am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love
with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And _that_
is a subject for a song--"
Allison, a quaint little name it was. Allison what? Who was she? It
struck him suddenly,--he wondered that he had not thought of it
before,--it must be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the
young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance
in it to the old. To-morrow he would find out.
The pathos of it--too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he
gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them
away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom
those letters were written had never read them.
III
The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt
Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands,
lifting it to the light.
"Why, that little old picture of Allison!" she said. "I had forgotten we
had it. Where did you find it? It was William's." She stared at it with
the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. "I
always thought your Uncle William was in love with her," she confided,
"although he never told us so."
"Miss Allison Clyde?" Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly,
marveling:
"Why, didn't you know!"
"And was Miss Allison in love with Uncle William?"
Miss Lucretia answered doubtfully:
"I don't know. She was a child. She never said so."
"Did she ever, later on, have a love-affair?"
His aunt shook her head.
"Not that I know of. She was always so taken up with her own household.
They were very close to each other, a very united family."
"It is a wonderful little face," Mark said, looking down at the
daguerreotype.
"She was only a child then," Lucretia repeated, "not more than fifteen."
Her eyes became reminiscent. "She was still so young, only seventeen,
when he died. When he came home, he knew he had not long to live. He
used to sit out here and watch her as she moved about. He never talked
much, but the look in his eyes was," Aunt Lucretia stated in her quiet
way, "very moving."
Mark heard a step, and glanced up to see Miss Allison Clyde herself
standing beside them, looking down at them with a smile.
"To whom am I indebted for this honor? That funny little old ambrotype!
Where did you unearth it, Lucretia?"
"It was Brother William's," Lucretia explained, with her gentle
melancholy. "Mark found it in his room and asked me about it."
Mark looked to see some revelation in Miss Allison Clyde's face, but
found none. Her kindly smile had not faded or changed except to take
on a shade of amusement as she picked up the ambrotype.
"How proud I was of that mantilla!" she said. "I remember it so well.
It was green. Do you recall it, Lucretia?"
Miss Lucretia nodded, her frail hands busy with the tea-cups.
"I do. And the turban with the green plume you wore with it."
Mark glanced from the picture of the child to the face of the woman
whose youth was past. Was it tragedy for her, he wondered, that she
had never known in its fullness the meaning of love and home? Or was
she happy burning with her own diffusing light full of the warmth of
humanity, loving, and giving to all the world instead of one lover?
Miss Lucretia interrupted his reverie.
"I suppose you are going over to see Stella this evening, and we old
people shall have to amuse ourselves without you as best we can."
Mark lifted his Lowestoft tea-cup and set it down again before he
answered slowly:
"No, I think not. I am going to stay and have some music with Miss
Allison."
He wondered why Miss Allison had made Stella seem suddenly hard, new,
almost crude, like the modern furniture in the drawing-room beside the
fine old mahogany, with its simple decoration and tone of time.
It was that evening, which he had decided should be his last, that,
when their music was over, he handed Miss Allison Clyde a sheet of
manuscript music.
"Since you liked it," he said.
She took it, a faint color coming in her cheek. It was the manuscript
of the fifth song of his cycle, "Evening," and he had dedicated it to
her. Involuntarily she moved to give it back to him.
"No, not to me. You are too kind. But you must dedicate it to youth."
He nodded, with his smile.
"So I have: to the woman who has youth in her heart." Then he drew
out the package of letters. "And these," he said in a lower voice,
"are yours also." He handed them to her silently.
"Mine?" She turned over the package in doubtful wonder.
"I found them in the desk with the daguerreotype. When you open them
you will understand."
Turning from the doorway for a last good night, Mark saw Miss Allison,
as he always afterward remembered her, standing by the tall mantel in
the candle-light with the unopened package of Uncle William's letters
in her hand.
ZELIG[17]
BY BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT
From _The Bellman_
[17] Copyright, 1915, by The Bellman Company. Copyright, 1916, by
Benjamin Rosenblatt.
Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him
"Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent--"Mr."
"The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his
neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to
belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means
being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew
must join "A Society for Burying Its Members," to be provided at least
with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a
member of one of these. "Alone, like a stone," his wife often sighed.
In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his
heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The
workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after
two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the
Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope.
His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall,
and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked
like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled
curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby
clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old
cap covered his massive head.
He had spent most of his life in a sequestered village in Little Russia,
where he tilled the soil and even wore the national peasant costume.
When his son and only child, a poor widower with a boy of twelve on
his hands, emigrated to America, the father's heart bled. Yet he chose
to stay in his native village at all hazards, and to die there. One day,
however, a letter arrived from the son that he was sick; this sad news
was followed by words of a more cheerful nature--"and your grandson
Moses goes to public school. He is almost an American; and he is not
forced to forget the God of Israel. He will soon be confirmed. His Bar
Mitsva is near." Zelig's wife wept three days and nights upon the
receipt of this letter. The old man said little; but he began to sell
his few possessions.
To face the world outside his village spelled agony to the poor rustic.
Still he thought he would get used to the new home which his son had
chosen. But the strange journey with locomotive and steamship bewildered
him dreadfully; and the clamor of the metropolis, into which he was
flung pell-mell, altogether stupefied him. With a vacant air he regarded
the Pandemonium, and a petrifaction of his inner being seemed to take
place. He became "a barrel with a stave missing." No spark of animation
visited his eye. Only one thought survived in his brain, and one desire
pulsed in his heart: to save money enough for himself and family to
hurry back to his native village. Blind and dead to everything, he moved
about with a dumb, lacerating pain in his heart,--he longed for home.
Before he found steady employment, he walked daily with titanic strides
through the entire length of Manhattan, while children and even adults
often slunk into byways to let him pass. Like a huge monster he seemed,
with an arrow in his vitals.
In the shop where he found a job at last, the workmen feared him at
first; but, ultimately finding him a harmless giant, they more than once
hurled their sarcasms at his head. Of the many men and women employed
there, only one person had the distinction of getting fellowship from
old Zelig. That person was the Gentile watchman or janitor of the shop,
a little blond Pole with an open mouth and frightened eyes. And many
were the witticisms aimed at this uncouth pair. "The big one looks like
an elephant," the joker of the shop would say; "only he likes to be fed
on pennies instead of peanuts."
"Oi, oi, his nose would betray him," the "philosopher" of the shop
chimed in; and during the dinner hour he would expatiate thus: "You
see, money is his blood. He starves himself to have enough dollars to
go back to his home: the Pole told me all about it. And why should he
stay here? Freedom of religion means nothing to him, he never goes to
synagogue; and freedom of the press? Bah--he never even reads the
conservative Tageblatt!"
Old Zelig met such gibes with stoicism. Only rarely would he turn up
the whites of his eyes, as if in the act of ejaculation; but he would
soon contract his heavy brows into a scowl and emphasize the last with
a heavy thump of his sizzling iron.
When the frightful cry of the massacred Jews in Russia rang across
the Atlantic, and the Ghetto of Manhattan paraded one day through
the narrow streets draped in black, through the erstwhile clamorous
thoroughfares steeped in silence, stores and shops bolted, a wail of
anguish issuing from every door and window--the only one remaining
in his shop that day was old Zelig. His fellow-workmen did not call
upon him to join the procession. They felt the incongruity of "this
brute" in line with mourners in muffled tread. And the Gentile watchman
reported the next day that the moment the funeral dirge of the music
echoed from a distant street, Zelig snatched off the greasy cap he
always wore, and in confusion instantly put it on again. "All the rest
of the day," the Pole related with awe, "he looked wilder than ever,
and so thumped with his iron on the cloth that I feared the building
would come down."
But Zelig paid little heed to what was said about him. He dedicated his
existence to the saving of his earnings, and only feared that he might
be compelled to spend some of them. More than once his wife would be
appalled in the dark of night by the silhouette of old Zelig in
nightdress, sitting up in bed and counting a bundle of bank notes which
he always replaced under his pillow. She frequently upbraided him for
his niggardly nature, for his warding off all requests outside the
pittance for household expense. She pleaded, exhorted, wailed. He
invariably answered: "I haven't a cent by my soul." She pointed to the
bare walls, the broken furniture, their beggarly attire.
"Our son is ill," she moaned. "He needs special food and rest; and our
grandson is no more a baby; he'll soon need money for his studies. Dark
is my world; you are killing both of them."
Zelig's color vanished; his old hands shook with emotion. The poor woman
thought herself successful, but the next moment he would gasp: "Not a
cent by my soul."
One day old Zelig was called from his shop, because his son had a sudden
severe attack; and, as he ascended the stairs of his home, a neighbor
shouted: "Run for a doctor; the patient cannot be revived." A voice as
if from a tomb suddenly sounded in reply, "I haven't a cent by my soul."
The hallway was crowded with the ragged tenants of the house, mostly
women and children; from far off were heard the rhythmic cries of the
mother. The old man stood for a moment as if chilled from the roots
of his hair to the tips of his fingers. Then the neighbors heard his
sepulchral mumble: "I'll have to borrow somewheres, beg some one," as
he retreated down the stairs. He brought a physician; and when the
grandson asked for money to go for the medicine, Zelig snatched the
prescription and hurried away, still murmuring: "I'll have to borrow,
I'll have to beg."
Late that night, the neighbors heard a wail issuing from old Zelig's
apartment; and they understood that the son was no more.
Zelig's purse was considerably thinned. He drew from it with palsied
fingers for all burial expenses, looking about him in a dazed way.
Mechanically he performed the Hebrew rites for the dead, which his
neighbors taught him. He took a knife and made a deep gash in his
shabby coat; then he removed his shoes, seated himself on the floor,
and bowed his poor old head, tearless, benumbed.
The shop stared when the old man appeared after the prescribed three
days' absence. Even the Pole dared not come near him. A film seemed to
coat his glaring eye; deep wrinkles contracted his features, and his
muscular frame appeared to shrink even as one looked. From that day on,
he began to starve himself more than ever. The passion for sailing back
to Russia, "to die at home at last," lost but little of its original
intensity. Yet there was something now which by a feeble thread bound
him to the New World.
In a little mound on the Base Achaim, the "House of Life," under
a tombstone engraved with old Hebrew script, a part of himself lay
buried. But he kept his thoughts away from that mound. How long and
untiringly he kept on saving! Age gained on him with rapid strides.
He had little strength left for work, but his dream of home seemed
nearing its realization. Only a few more weeks, a few more months!
And the thought sent a glow of warmth to his frozen frame. He would
even condescend now to speak to his wife concerning the plans he had
formed for their future welfare, more especially when she revived her
pecuniary complaints.
"See what you have made of us, of the poor child," she often argued,
pointing to the almost grown grandson. "Since he left school, he works
for you, and what will be the end?"
At this, Zelig's heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some
indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt,
incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him
and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should detect it.
Bitter misgivings concerning the boy began to mingle with the reveries
of the old man. At first, he hardly gave a thought to him. The boy grew
noiselessly. The ever-surging tide of secular studies that runs so high
on the East Side caught this boy in its wave. He was quietly preparing
himself for college. In his eagerness to accumulate the required sum,
Zelig paid little heed to what was going on around him; and now, on
the point of victory, he became aware with growing dread of something
abrewing out of the common. He sniffed suspiciously; and one evening
he overheard the boy talking to grandma about his hatred of Russian
despotism, about his determination to remain in the States. He ended by
entreating her to plead with grandpa to promise him the money necessary
for a college education.
Old Zelig swooped down upon them with wild eyes. "Much you need it,
you stupid," he thundered at the youngster in unrestrained fury. "You
will continue your studies in Russia, durak, stupid." His timid wife,
however, seemed suddenly to gather courage and she exploded: "Yes, you
should give your savings for the child's education here. Woe is me, in
the Russian universities no Jewish children are taken."
Old Zelig's face grew purple. He rose and abruptly seated himself again.
Then he rushed madly, with a raised, menacing arm, at the boy in whom he
saw the formidable foe--the foe he had so long been dreading.
But the old woman was quick to interpose with a piercing shriek: "You
madman, look at the sick child; you forget from what our son died, going
out like a flickering candle."
That night Zelig tossed feverishly on his bed. He could not sleep. For
the first time, it dawned upon him what his wife meant by pointing to
the sickly appearance of the child. When the boy's father died, the
physician declared that the cause was tuberculosis.
He rose to his feet. Beads of cold sweat glistened on his forehead,
trickled down his cheeks, his beard. He stood pale and panting. Like a
startling sound, the thought entered his mind--the boy, what should be
done with the boy?
The dim, blue night gleamed in through the windows. All was shrouded
in the city silence, which yet has a peculiar, monotonous ring in
it. Somewhere, an infant awoke with a sickly cry which ended in a
suffocating cough. The grizzled old man bestirred himself, and with
hasty steps he tiptoed to the place where the boy lay. For a time
he stood gazing on the pinched features, the under-sized body of the
lad; then he raised one hand, passed it lightly over the boy's hair,
stroking his cheeks and chin. The boy opened his eyes, looked for a
moment at the shriveled form bending over him, then he petulantly
closed them again.
"You hate to look at granpa, he is your enemy, eh?" The aged man's
voice shook, and sounded like that of the child's awaking in the night.
The boy made no answer; but the old man noticed how the frail body
shook, how the tears rolled, washing the sunken cheeks.
For some moments he stood mute, then his form literally shrank to that
of a child's as he bent over the ear of the boy and whispered hoarsely:
"You are weeping, eh? Granpa is your enemy, you stupid! To-morrow I will
give you the money for the college. You hate to look at granpa; he is
your enemy, eh?"
THE SURVIVORS[18]
_A Memorial Day Story_
BY ELSIE SINGMASTER
From _The Outlook_
[18] Copyright, 1915, by The Outlook Company. Copyright, 1916, by Elsie
Singmaster Lewars
In the year 1868, when Memorial Day was instituted, Fosterville had
thirty-five men in its parade. Fosterville was a border town; in it
enthusiasm had run high, and many more men had enlisted than those
required by the draft. All the men were on the same side but Adam
Foust, who, slipping away, joined himself to the troops of his mother's
Southern State. It could not have been any great trial for Adam to fight
against most of his companions in Fosterville, for there was only one of
them with whom he did not quarrel. That one was his cousin Henry, from
whom he was inseparable, and of whose friendship for any other boys he
was intensely jealous. Henry was a frank, open-hearted lad who would
have lived on good terms with the whole world if Adam had allowed him
to.
Adam did not return to Fosterville until the morning of the first
Memorial Day, of whose establishment he was unaware. He had been ill
for months, and it was only now that he had earned enough to make his
way home. He was slightly lame, and he had lost two fingers of his left
hand. He got down from the train at the station, and found himself at
once in a great crowd. He knew no one, and no one seemed to know him.
Without asking any questions, he started up the street. He meant to go,
first of all, to the house of his cousin Henry, and then to set about
making arrangements to resume his long-interrupted business, that of a
saddler, which he could still follow in spite of his injury.
As he hurried along he heard the sound of band music, and realized that
some sort of a procession was advancing. With the throng about him he
pressed to the curb. The tune was one which he hated; the colors he
hated also; the marchers, all but one, he had never liked. There was
Newton Towne, with a sergeant's stripe on his blue sleeve; there was
Edward Green, a captain; there was Peter Allinson, a color-bearer. At
their head, taller, handsomer, dearer than ever to Adam's jealous eyes,
walked Henry Foust. In an instant of forgetfulness Adam waved his hand.
But Henry did not see; Adam chose to think that he saw and would not
answer. The veterans passed, and Adam drew back and was lost in the
crowd.
But Adam had a parade of his own. In the evening, when the music and the
speeches were over and the half-dozen graves of those of Fosterville's
young men who had been brought home had been heaped with flowers, and
Fosterville sat on doorsteps and porches talking about the day, Adam put
on a gray uniform and walked from one end of the village to the other.
These were people who had known him always; the word flew from step to
step. Many persons spoke to him, some laughed, and a few jeered. To no
one did Adam pay any heed. Past the house of Newton Towne, past the
store of Ed Green, past the wide lawn of Henry Foust, walked Adam, his
hands clasped behind his back, as though to make more perpendicular than
perpendicularity itself that stiff backbone. Henry Foust ran down the
steps and out to the gate.
"Oh, Adam!" cried he.