it back--see if you don’t! One of the artist fellows in the shop showed
me how to use them. You stick your thumb through this thing--_so_! Then
squeeze out the paint and mix it the color of what you want to make.
That same artist fellow told me there was going to be a picture show
in his shop window to-day. You be sure to see it. The pictures will be
made out of just such stuff as you have here. Now don’t you miss seeing
that picture show--on no account--Rahel!” he called out, as she hobbled
away.
Her heart grew light as the distance increased between herself and
the Ghetto. The bright world filled her with a pleasant sense of
possession. Could she not make all the lovely things she saw her own?
Could she not steal them and put them on the white paper in the bottom
of the old bag?
“I’ll fill the bag first and get what money I can, and then I’ll go to
the picture show.”
Few could withstand the appealing, misshapen figure, with the ragged
dress and piteous face. As noon approached, there was enough in the
bag to satisfy Gaon, and she turned her steps toward the shop, in the
direction Joel had given.
It was not hard to find. Some distance away she caught the gold gleam
of a frame, and saw a crowd upon the walk. When she reached the edge of
the crowd, she was obliged to put her burden down and pause for breath.
Noon was at hand and the people were beginning to leave. Soon she dared
to creep forward and look up.
Oh, never-to-be-forgotten moment! Wondrous vision! The gold frame
filled the window from side to side. Within it, floating downward
across a well-nigh endless vista of clouds and radiant mists, tenderly
up-curling and fleecily white, yet which seemed to be just on the
point of bursting into the brilliancy of sunlight, or into some more
delicate, multi-colored efflorescence of light, was a figure--a figure
of a man of divinest beauty. His blue robe edged with gold floated
gently on the roseate air. About his head was a circle of light,
as if there an immortal sun was about to rise, and his hands were
outstretched in the blessing of prayer.
“It is strange,” thought Rahel, “that his hands are held right out
toward me.” She looked about for verification. “Yes, they are held
right out toward me and not toward any of the others. And his eyes,
too, are looking down into mine.”
As she stood and looked up at the sweet, sad eyes, and they looked
back tenderly into hers, a feeling of grief cramped her heart,--grief
for the mother-love she had never known, for the careless merriment of
childhood lost and gone, for the stonings, the taunts, the jeers, the
insults; for the cruel beatings, the enforced fasts, the insufficient
food; the cold, damp room where she slept on a pile of rags and wept
herself to sleep, and where, in her timid childhood, she had suffered
agonies of fear of the dark and the storms and the wind. She felt that
the pictured One above was sorry; that He pitied her and suffered too;
that He knew it all, understood it all; and tears came to her eyes and
fell down, one by one, like crystals, on the walk. She felt as the
child feels who runs to its mother’s skirts, sure of protection and
comfort.
The beam of love melted the hardened anguish of her heart and gave it
voice, as sun melts silent snow-fields and makes way for the “green
murmur” of summer. She stood and wept, and her heart was lightened.
Her grief melted away and vanished in the mist of tears. Passers-by
jostled her, but she did not feel them. The noon hour passed nor did
hunger remind her of it, nor weariness warn that she had stood for
a long time. The ineffable face which has smiled its peace adown the
bitterness of the ages smiled into hers, and the miracle of love was
wrought anew.
She could not drag herself away from the picture; she could not
look enough. She drank in its meaning, its caressing sympathy, its
all-pervading kindliness, greedily. It was for this that she had
thirsted, as a traveler in a stony desert thirsts for water; for what
is love but the thirst of the soul?
“I can make me a picture just like that!” she thought, with a thrill of
pleasure.
Inspired by this resolve, she went around to a side street, took out
the drawing-paper and pencils and, seating herself upon the old bag,
went to work.
“I will make it just like that, only beneath I will paint the Sea of
Galilee.”
When the picture was sketched in, she left the clothes-bag with a
Jewish fruit-seller, and went back to compare her work with the
original; changing and correcting until the pencil sketch was a perfect
likeness in miniature.
On the way home, she meditated upon ways and means of executing the
plan. How could she get a piece of canvas large enough, and when she
got it, where could she put it? Gaon must not know, nor any one in the
quarter.
As she neared the Ghetto and saw in the distance the complicated
twisted gables of the old house, like a flash the problem solved
itself. The two rooms occupied by Gaon and Deborah were on the first
floor. Out of the rear of these rooms a rickety stairway, clinging to
one wall, led to an upper, back room, which Rahel occupied. This room,
whose two outer walls were of stone, belonged to an older house, which
a wealthy rabbi had built for his own use several decades before. The
front had fallen down and been replaced by the present wretched wooden
structure.
The old rabbi’s room had been painted pale yellow, with the exception
of one long, white panel reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was left
unpainted--as was the custom with the pious--for a testimonial of the
good rabbi’s grief at the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem.
“I will paint it in that panel. Grandmother is too feeble and too
nearly blind to risk the stairs, and Gaon is too busy. He has not
entered the room for years. It will be safe enough there. To-morrow is
_Shabbes_, and the next day the Christian Sunday; I shall have two days
in which to begin it.”
When Monday came and she went into the city again, it was with the
happy consciousness that the great picture was begun. She went straight
to the shop window in order to contemplate the original and take from
it corrective ideas for her copy.
The picture was gone, but in its place there was another of the same
man, almost, if not quite, as lovely. This time he was sitting in
a field of lilies beside a sunny sea. She felt dimly, rather than
thought, that his face was as pure and as beautiful as the flowers
and did not cause the slightest discord in the scene’s serenity. In
front of him children played. He was holding his arms out toward them
invitingly, as if to embrace them all, and the world beside, as if he
would say, “So wide is my love.” The same gentle, tender smile curved
the lips, and the eyes were twin stars of love.
Beneath were some printed words she could not read. As she stood lost
in contemplation, a woman came and stood beside her in whose face she
recognized the old indelible marks of the Jewish race.
The woman was a baptized Jewess, whose early days had been passed in
the Ghetto, and who retained a memory of its Mauschel dialect.
“Who is it?” ventured Rahel timidly, pointing to the picture.
Finding the name unintelligible to the strange child, the woman was
searching in her mind for a circumlocution when--
“Is it a great king?” whispered Rahel, in an awed voice.
“Yes, the greatest King in the world.”
“Where does he live?”
“Everywhere.”
“Then he is here in Hamburg?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right here.”
“What is he doing there in the picture?”
“Blessing little children. He loves them. If they are blind, He touches
their eyes and they see. If they are ill, He makes them well.”
“Does he love me?”
“Yes, dear.”
Again tears came to her eyes and fell upon the pavement.
“Do you think he would make me well--and--_straight_?”
“If you love Him, I know He will.”
When Rahel brushed the tears away from her eyes, so that she could look
up, the kind woman was gone. She could not see her in any direction and
she had forgotten to ask where he lived.
That day she thought of nothing but the King. Gaon and his displeasure
if she returned with an empty bag vanished like mist before the sun.
_The King! The King!_ Her soul was caught up and whirled along in an
ecstasy of emotion that banished thought and fear.
The divine face which in ages past smiled down upon its martyrs’
insensibility to pain and anguish, upon its exiles for faith’s sake,
forgetfulness of home and kindred, and upon the mortally injured, the
blessed promise of a paradise beyond, wrought its old magic upon her.
Nor weariness, nor hunger, nor fear could reach her through Love’s
fever, sent of God.
“Such a very great king,” she reflected, “must live in one of those
large houses at the edge of the city.”
Patiently she limped along the dusty roads, the old bag trailing
behind, pausing at each house that presented a goodly appearance to
inquire, in a language that no one could understand, if the King lived
there. When they shook their heads, she was loth to go away, and tried
again and again to explain. To make up for inability to answer her
questions, and for the grief and disappointment that lay in her eyes,
they gave her money. She took it mechanically, not knowing what she did.
For a week she was not seen in the Ghetto. The day’s long journeys
to the outskirts of the city made it impossible to reach the gate at
four, which was closing time. She slept in barns and by haystacks, and
kind-hearted servants fed her.
No large house in the environs was left unvisited. As daily the quest
became more futile, she stopped passers on the streets, and with
trembling gestures and tearful words tried to explain what she wanted
to know, pointing the while to her poor bent back and misshapen hip.
She peered into the carriages of the rich and scanned each passing face.
Her feet were bruised and bleeding; her throat parched with the dust of
the road; her eyes dim and blurred with the strain of looking. But of
this she knew nothing, nor that the absorbing passion was wasting her
body and burning up the frail tenement of the spirit.
People became accustomed to seeing the strange child with the wild,
white face, and touched their foreheads significantly when they met her.
A week later, when she turned her steps toward the Ghetto, the only
thought that came to console her for the bitterness of disappointment
was that she must surely find him sometime, because he lived in
Hamburg. And then, too, he might be away on a visit and that kind
woman not know about it.
The silver coins served in some slight degree to mollify Gaon’s wrath,
until she persistently refused to explain the cause of her absence.
Then he would have beaten her as of old, had it not been for the
nearness of the Passover, and the fact that he wished to preserve his
serenity of soul, with the hope that at that season the vision might be
vouchsafed him. He made peace with his conscience by commanding her to
stay at home and fast and pray, preceding the feast.
During these days of punishment, when she was confined within her room,
she utilized every moment of the light, from the first faint flush of
dawn to the last pallid beam of evening, in working upon the picture.
Like magic it grew beneath her fingers. Each stroke of the brush
brought nearer to her the living figure. She thrilled with the artist’s
incommunicable joy of creation. All her life, all her love, all her
energy, all her longing, she put into the blessed face. She poured her
soul into it. She robbed her frail body of life that it might beam the
richer.
As the painted face took on life and beauty and color, and the
pulsating glow of reality, the frail, gnome-like figure that worked
upon it, standing upon an old chair placed on top of a table, became
frailer and more spectral looking, and painted with a fiercer and a
more demoniac energy. The brush flew with the fury of inspiration.
Each drop of paint wrought a miracle and called matter into life. The
artist’s body was wasted away until it looked as if a spirit caught
up in a cobweb of rags was hovering against the old rabbi’s wall, and
painting with the marvelous precision of a supernatural power. At the
end of the two weeks the picture was completed and shone like a gem
illuminating the dingy room.
When Gaon’s good humor returned sufficiently to send Rahel out of the
Ghetto again, Passion-week had come and its tragic gloom hung over the
German city. As she walked along slowly and feebly, feeling the effect
of the fast, she caught sight, down the old familiar street, of the
Sea of Galilee, and her heart leaped high with joy at the thought that
beneath the feet of the King she had made it just so blue and sparkling.
She was too weak to beg. She was too weary to walk. She sat down and
watched the blue water in that happy daze which exhaustion brings to
the mind. She felt as if she were encased in a crystal sphere, against
which beat vainly the tingling noises of life, but whose bright surface
reflected, soap-bubble-wise, color and form with an added charm. The
world floated off and away, and she watched it vaguely, her mind taking
note of it as of something seen in a dream. She did not know how long
she sat there. Hours were as minutes. The light began to slope to
westward, warning her of closing time. She got up feebly, determined to
go as far as the window to see the picture. On the morrow the Passover
began, and she would not be permitted to leave the Ghetto for eight
days. Feebly, dizzily, she dragged herself along, her mind a chaos of
fragmentary thoughts.
She could see the window some distance away, but nothing gleamed in it.
On approaching, what a vision of grief met her eyes! The shock brought
order to her mind and summoned her strength by one mighty effort to a
consuming realization of grief.
There, in the deep window recess, which was draped in black, just where
the glowing picture had hung, was a huge cross of snowy marble, and
upon it, dying, suffering, with pitiful wounds upon the hands and feet
and breast, with a crown of cruel thorns upon the gentle brow--Oh!
agony beyond expression--_The King_!!
Now she could never find him, never see him! Now he could not lay his
hands in blessing upon her and make her well! There was no one who
pitied her, no one who loved her! There was nothing left to live for.
When the dimness which overmastering emotion causes passed, she looked
about at the people to see if their grief was equal to her own. They
were going about busily and happily as usual. Bright-haired girls
tripped by in groups, carrying bouquets of gay flowers, and calm
matrons led little children. Yes, yes, it was all true what Gaon had
told her: _the world outside the gate was wicked!_
Why did they not mourn for him? Why did they not cover their heads with
the white grave cloths and strew upon them ashes? Why did they not find
the ones who killed him and torture them--torture them--torture them!
Her grief was transformed into rage. Physical exhaustion strung her
nerves to the pitch of frenzy and sent the wild blood beating in her
brain.
She threw away the old bag. She pushed back hastily the thick hair
from her eyes. She straightened as best she could the miserable bent
figure. She turned and faced the passers-by and the busy street. She
flung her long, thin arms upward, as do Judean shepherds when they
pray, and in that stern and ancient tongue which is rich in reproaches
and the eloquence of vengeance, she cursed them. She cursed them in her
rage and fury at their heartlessness, their wanton cruelty, their base
ingratitude.
Shriller and shriller grew her voice, fiercer and more unrestrained the
unintelligible words, which called down upon them the vengeance of the
stern Hebrew God, who would destroy them with the fire of his wrath.
Her frail body, swaying to and fro in the agony of emotion, was all but
consumed by the whirlwind of passion that swept it. The heat of anger
burned and withered it as does flame the stubble, and she fell forward
exhausted, upon the walk.
Some one picked her up and placed her in a neighboring doorway. But
what terrible grief breathed from her face! Her eyes, out of which the
passion had died, were like dim, tarnished mirrors, and the pitiful
mouth was pinched and pale. There was nothing left to live for! The
sun had gone out and the moon was dead and the stars had fallen out of
heaven.
When she reached home, she flung herself upon the floor and wept. To
her grandmother’s questions and exhortations she was deaf. She did not
hear them. Nothing mattered now.
Gaon came, his eyes shining with fanaticism, and told her that it was
the eve of the Fourteenth of Nisan, that on the morrow the Passover
began, and that she must help her grandmother prepare the evening meal.
To his commands she turned unheeding ears. Her lifted face expressed
the apathy of the dead. Her blurred eyes looked through him and beyond
at something he could not see.
When the meal was ready, the cups of salted water set on, the bitter
herbs, and the leg of mutton, Gaon arose and said reverently: “Blessed
art Thou--who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast
commanded us concerning the removal of the leavened bread.”
He took one of the lighted candles and proceeded to search carefully
the house, according to the command, to make sure that nothing
forbidden be left during the season of the feast. Into every nook and
cranny of the two rooms he peered, saying after each examination that
if anything forbidden be left unnoticed, it was not his fault and his
heart was pure.
When Rahel heard him groping on the rickety stairs in the back room,
she leaped to her feet and followed.
“Grandfather--do not go there! You know there can be nothing in my
room. Do not go there!”
“I must do as the Law commands.”
“No--Grandfather!--it is useless--the stairs are unsafe--do not go!”
Unheeding her words, he climbed the creaking stairs, Rahel following.
He flung the door open. The draft blew the candle flame to gigantic
size, illuminating the picture high upon the opposite wall. In the
momentary flash of light it was a living form. The dingy wall had
parted and let in the mist-sweet, white, cloud-radiance of night, adown
which sped toward the trembling, aged man the glorious figure of the
young Messiah. For a moment he was overcome by fear and reverence, and
awed into silence by the majesty of beauty.
Then his nature reasserted itself. He remembered that Rahel had begged
him not to come. The truth dawned upon him. His face grew cruel and
thin. Unspeakable anger shone from the narrow little eyes upon her
who had broken the Law and a second time kept him from the vision. A
hideous Hebrew type became visible beneath the mask which habit made.
From under the snarling, lifted upper lip, long teeth protruded like
tusks, and his voice was hoarse with wrath.
“Rahel, did you do that?”
No answer.
“Rahel, I say, did you do that?”
The strain of the day and the past two weeks had exhausted her. The
face that looked back at him was as white and as emotionless as the
dead. In the dulled eyes shone no light of comprehension.
“God of Abraham!--and painted in the place sacred to Jerusalem and the
Temple! Never shall I gain the vision--never! never!” His shrunken body
quivered like a leaf in the wind. “Now I shall never gain the vision!”
Tears, pitifulness, a world of disappointment, trembled in his voice.
“I have sinned grievously. I have not kept the Law. It says: ‘If thy
right hand offend thee, cut it off.’ And I let her live when she
offended first--I let her live--Oh, God of Abraham--I let her live--”
“Do you understand what you have done; that you have defiled the house;
that you have broken the express command of the Torah: ‘Thou shalt have
no other Gods before me;’ that you have kept me from the vision? Do you
understand?” The old anger flashed its wild light over his face and
rang tempestuously in his voice. “Do you understand?”
“_There!_--take _that_!--and _that_!--” He struck her upon the head
with all the force of his uplifted arm. “I will seal up the door; I
will disclaim to my God accountability of this room and its contents!
Now, O God, I have done as Thou commandest: ‘If thy right hand offend
thee, cut it off.’”
In falling, Rahel’s temple struck a stone uncovered of plastering at
the foot of the old rabbi’s wall, and she lay motionless, a thin stream
of bright blood trickling down her cheek.
After fastening the door and sealing it securely and disclaiming, as
was the custom on the eve of the Fourteenth of Nisan, accountability
for anything forbidden found beneath his roof, he went back to his
blind and aged wife, where he said grace with fervent solemnity and
partook of the sacred meal.
That night the Hamburg fire broke out. The inhabitants of the Ghetto
barely escaped. They were well-nigh forgotten. When the gate-keepers
remembered them and let them out, they were on the verge of being
roasted like rats in a trap.
Among the first to reach the Great Gate and wait were Gaon and his
wife. Rahel was not with them. Faithful to his vow, he had left the
door of the old rabbi’s room sealed and fastened.
The devastation of that terrible fire is a matter of history. It is
numbered among the calamities that have befallen the human race. When,
days later, the fire had subsided, nothing of the swarming Ghetto
buildings was left but charred and crumbling wood.
When Easter dawned, bright and smiling, there still rose from this
burnt and blackened district wreaths of smoke and white steam,
up-curling reverently round the base of the indestructible stone of the
old rabbi’s wall which, alone, of all the Ghetto, still stood erect,
ascending like a peace offering of incense toward the glorious figure
that looked down from above, a figure glowing with youth and beauty,
and framed in the glittering light of spring--radiant, triumphant,
indestructible, immortal--the King--the Hebrew Christ!
THE END
Transcriber Notes
Obvious punctuation errors have been corrected.
Page 88: “struggles eeriely” changed to “struggles eerily”