ISAAC LEVI, rescued by George Fielding, reached his tent smarting
with pain and bitter insult; he sat on the floor pale and dusty, and
anathematized his adversaries in the Hebrew tongue. Wrath still boiling
in his heart, he drew out his letters and read them. Then grief mingled
with his anger. Old Cohen, his friend and agent and coeval, was dead.
Another self dead.
Besides the hint that this gave him to set his house in order, a
distinct consideration drew Isaac now to England. He had trusted much
larger interests to old Cohen than he was at all disposed to leave in
the hands of Cohen's successors, men of another generation, “progeniem
vitiosiorem,” he sincerely believed.
Another letter gave him some information about Meadows that added
another uneasiness to those he already felt on George's account. Hence
his bitter disappointment when he found George gone from the mine,
the date of his return uncertain. Hence, too, the purchase of Moore's
horses, and the imploring letter to George--measures that proved
invaluable to that young man, whose primitive simplicity and wise
humility led him not to question the advice of his elder, but obey it.
And so it was that, although the old Jew sailed home upon his own
interests, yet during the voyage George Fielding's assumed a great
importance, direct and incidental. Direct, because the old man was warm
with gratitude to him; indirect, because he boiled over with hate of
George's most dangerous enemy. And, as he neared the English coast, the
thought that though he was coming to Farnborough he could not come home,
grew bitterer and bitterer, and then that he should find his enemy and
his insulter in the very house sacred by the shadows of the beloved and
dead!!
Finding in Nathan a youth of no common fidelity and shrewdness, Isaac
confided in him; and Nathan, proud beyond description of the confidence
bestowed on him by one so honored in his tribe, enlisted in his cause
with all the ardor of youth tempered by Jewish address.
Often they sat together on the deck, and the young Jewish brain and the
old Jewish brain mingled and digested a course of conduct to meet every
imaginable contingency; for the facts they at present possessed were
only general and vague.
The first result of all this was that these two crept into the town of
Farnborough at three o'clock one morning; that Isaac took out a key and
unlocked the house that stood next to Meadows' on the left hand; that
Isaac took secret possession of the first floor, and Nathan open but
not ostentatious possession of the ground-floor, with a tale skillfully
concocted to excite no suspicion whatever that Isaac was in any way
connected with his presence in the town. Nathan, it is to be observed,
had never been in Farnborough before.
The next morning they worked. Nathan went out, locking the door after
him, to execute two commissions. He was to find out what the young
Cohens were doing, and how far they were likely to prove worthy of the
trust reposed in their father; and what Susan Merton was doing, and
whether Meadows was courting her or not. The latter part of Nathan's
task was terribly easy.
The young man came home late at night, locked the door, made a concerted
signal, and was admitted to the senior presence. He found him smoking
his Eastern pipe. Nathan with dejected air told him that he had good
news; that the Cohens not only thought themselves wiser than their
father, which was permissible, but openly declared it, which he, though
young, had observed to be a trait confined to very great fools.
“It is well said, my son,” quoth Isaac, smoking calmly, “and the other
business?”
“Oh, master!” said Nathan, “I bring still worse tidings of her. She is a
true Nazarite, a creature without faith. She is betrothed to the man you
hate, and whom I, for your sake, hate even to death.”
They spoke in an Eastern dialect, which I am paraphrasing here and
translating there, according to the measure of my humble abilities.
Isaac sucked his pipe very fast; this news was a double blow to his
feelings. “If she be indeed a Nazarite without faith, let her go; but
judge not the simple hastily. First, let me know how far woman's frailty
is to blame; how far man's guile--for not for nothing was Crawley sent
out to the mine by Meadows. Let me consider;” and he smoked calmly
again.
After a long silence, which Nathan was too respectful to break, the old
man gave him his commission for to-morrow. He was to try and discover
why Susan Merton had written no letters for many months to George;
and why she had betrothed herself to the foe. “But reveal nothing in
return,” said Isaac, “neither ask more than three questions of any one
person, lest they say, 'Who is this that being a Jew asks many questions
about a Nazarite maiden, and why asks he them?'”
At night Nathan returned full of intelligence. She loved the young man
Fielding. She wrote letters to him and received letters from him, until
gold was found in Australia. But after this he wrote to her no more
letters, wherefore her heart was troubled.
“Ah! and did she write to him?”
“Yes! but received no answer, nor any letter for many months.”
“Ah!” (puff!) (puff!)
“Then came a rumor that he was dead, and she mourned for him after
the manner of her people many days. Verily, master, I am vexed for the
Nazarite maiden, for her tale is sad. Then came a letter from Australia,
that said he is not dead, but married to a stranger. Then the maiden
said: 'Behold now this twelve months he writes not to me, this then is
true'; and she bowed her head, and the color left her cheek. Then this
Meadows visited her, and consoled her day by day. And there are those
who confidently affirm that her father said often to her, 'Behold now I
am a man stricken in years, and the man Meadows is rich'; so the maiden
gave her hand to the man, but whether to please the old man her father,
or out of the folly and weakness of females, thou, O Isaac, son of
Shadrach, shalt determine; seeing that I am young, and little versed in
the ways of women, knowing this only by universal report, that they are
fair to the eye but often bitter to the taste.”
“Aha!” cried Isaac, “but I am old, O Nathan, son of Eli, and with the
thorns of old age comes one good fruit, 'experience.' No letters came to
him, yet she wrote many. None came to her, yet he wrote many. All this
is transparent as glass--here has been fraud as well as guile.”
Nathan's eye sparkled. “What is the fraud, master?”
“Nay, that I know not, but I will know!”
“But how, master?”
“By help of thine ears, or my own!”
Nathan looked puzzled. So long as Mr. Levi shut himself up a close
prisoner on the first floor what could he hear for himself?
Isaac read the look and smiled. He then rose, and, putting his finger
to his lips, led the way to his own apartments. At the staircase-door,
which even Nathan had not yet passed, he bade the young man take off his
shoes; he himself was in slippers. He took Nathan into a room, the floor
of which was entirely covered with mattresses. A staircase, the steps
of which were covered with horsehair, went by a tolerably easy slope
and spiral movement nearly up to the cornice. Of this cornice a portion
about a foot square swung back on a well-oiled hinge, and Isaac drew out
from the wall with the utmost caution a piece of gutta-percha piping, to
this he screwed on another piece open at the end, and applied it to his
ear.
Nathan comprehended it all in a moment. His master could overhear every
word uttered in Meadows' study. Levi explained to him that ere he left
his old house he had put a new cornice in the room he thought Meadows
would sit in, a cornice so deeply ornamented that no one could see the
ear he left in it, and had taken out bricks in the wall of the adjoining
house and made the other arrangements they were inspecting together.
Mr. Levi further explained that his object was simply to overhear and
counteract every scheme Meadows should form. He added that he never
intended to leave Farnborough for long. His intention had been to
establish certain relations in that country, buy some land, and return
immediately; but the gold discovery had detained him.
“But, master,” said Nathan, “suppose the man had taken his business to
the other side of his house?”
“Foolish youth,” replied Isaac, “am I not on both sides of him!!”
“Ah! What, is there another on the other?” Isaac nodded.
Thus, while Nathan was collecting facts, Isaac had been watching,
“patient as a cat, keen as a lynx,” at his ear-hole, and heard--nothing.
Now the next day Nathan came in hastily long before the usual hour.
“Master, another enemy is come--the man Crawley! I saw him from the
window; he saw not me. What shall I do?”
“Keep the house all day. I would not have him see you. He would say,
'Aha! the old Jew is here, too.'” Nathan's countenance fell. He was a
prisoner now as well as his master.
The next morning, rising early to prepare their food, he was surprised
to find the old man smoking his pipe down below.
“All is well, my son. My turn has come. I have had great patience, and
great is the reward.” He then told him with natural exultation the
long conference he had been secretly present at between Crawley and
Meadows--a conference in which the enemy had laid bare, not his guilt
only, but the secret crevice in his coat of mail. “She loves him
not!” cried Levi, with exultation. “She is his dupe! With a word I can
separate them and confound him utterly.”
“Oh, master!” cried the youth eagerly, “speak that word to-day, and let
me be there and hear it spoken if I have favor in your eyes.”
“Speak it to-day!” cried Levi, with a look of intense surprise at
Nathan's simplicity. “Go to, foolish youth!” said he; “what, after I
have waited months and months for vengeance, would you have me fritter
it away for want of waiting a day or two longer? No, I will strike, not
the empty cup from his hand, but the full cup from his lips. Aha! you
have seen the Jew insulted and despised in many lands; have patience now
and you shall see how he can give blow for blow; ay! old, and feeble,
and without a weapon, can strike his adversary to the heart.”
Nathan's black eye flashed. “You are the master, I the scholar,” said
he. “All I ask is to be permitted to share the watching for your enemy's
words, since I may not go abroad while it is day.”
Thus the old and young lynx lay in ambush all day. And at night the
young lynx prowled, but warily, lest Crawley should see him; and every
night brought home some scrap of intelligence.
To change the metaphor, it was as though while the Western spider wove
his artful web round the innocent fly, the Oriental spider wove another
web round him, the threads of which were so subtle as to be altogether
invisible. Both East and West leaned with sublime faith on their
respective gossamers, nor remembered that “Dieu dispose.”