AS he had done upon a former and slightly similar occasion, and as he
was wont to do whenever his spirits were in any degree perturbed, Elias
climbed up-stairs to his studio, and sat down at the window. All day
long the sun had shone bright and hot; but ever since dusk the sky had
been clouding over; and now, plainly, a thunder-storm was near at hand.
The atmosphere was thick, still, tepid. With increasing frequency,
shafts of jagged lightning tore their way through the clouds, and were
followed by long, sullen, distant rumblings, as of suppressed fury
somewhere. Suddenly a breeze sprang up, swelling quickly into a strong
wind. The air filled with dust. The branches of the trees, over in the
park, groaned aloud; and from here and there came the noise of banging
shutters, and of loose things generally being knocked about. The flames
in the street-lamps below flared violently. Some of them went out. Big
drops of lukewarm water began to fall, splashing audibly where they
struck. All at once, a blinding flash, a deafening peal of thunder, from
right overhead; and the rain came pouring down in torrents.
Now, of course, Elias Bacharach--he in whose soul the man had long since
worsted the Jew, and reason abolished superstition--of course, Elias
knew that what his uncle had said about the God of Israel interposing
to prevent his marriage, was the sheerest sort of rubbish. That the
old gentleman had spoken in good faith--that he really believed in the
validity of his own prophecies, and had not uttered them merely with
a view to working upon his hearer's imagination, and exciting his
fears--Elias could not doubt; for to resort to such strategy was not, he
conceived, in the character of the artless and simple-minded rabbi.
But that very good faith only proved him to be the victim of a most
preposterous delusion. For himself, Elias had no misgivings. As
confident as a mortal can be of any future event, in this world of
uncertainties, so confident was he that the morrow evening would make
of him and Christine man and wife. Of course, there was always the
unforeseen to be allowed for; accidents were always possible. But if he
had none but supermundane obstacles to dread, then he might regard his
marriage as already an accomplished fact. And, notwithstanding, Elias
felt very much disturbed--very much annoyed, mystified, and ill-at-ease.
All that the rabbi had said was stuff and nonsense, at absolute, obvious
variance with science, with simple common sense--fit material for
laughter, for a certain contemptuous pity; but, nevertheless, every
time that Elias recalled just _what_ the rabbi had said, and the rabbi's
manner of saying it, he felt a sharp, inward pang, very like terror; he
had to catch a quick, short breath; and he confessed to himself that
he would give a good deal to be enabled to get inside the rabbi's
consciousness, and learn the grounds on which he based his
extraordinary, but apparently secure, conviction, and find out exactly
what form of divine interference he anticipated. Despite his clear
perception of the rabbi's sophistry, he caught himself furtively
querying: “Can there be any thing in it?” Despite his assurance that
all would go well, he caught himself furtively wishing that all was well
over, and his marriage-certificate signed and sealed. “There is not a
single chance of its taking place--not any more chance of its taking
place than there is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.”
That phrase stuck like a thorn in his mind, and produced a considerable
irritation.
This state of things, besides being intrinsically unpleasant, was
offensive to Elias's self-esteem. That he, at his age, in his stage
of enlightenment, should be unsettled by the senseless menaces of a
superstitious old bigot! Like a child frightened by its nurse's bugaboo.
And yet, there it was again, the sharp, internal twinge, so like the
sting of terror; and there again he fell to speculating upon what the
causes of the old man's singular belief could be.
He sat at his window, peered out into the night, and tried to think of
something else. He tried to think of Christine, tried to call up her
image, tried to live over again the evening that he had passed with her,
tried to picture to himself the happiness that the coming day held in
store. No use. “There is no more chance of its taking place, than there
is of the sun's failing to rise to-morrow morning.” The rabbi's voice
kept ringing in his ears, like a hateful tune that one has heard, and
can't get rid of. The painful emotions it awoke, kept rankling in his
bosom, and crowded out all the sweeter ones that sought to enter.
He could fix his mind permanently upon no subject but the rabbi's
irrational predictions. He tried to stir up a little interest in the
thunder-storm. There it was, raging furiously just outside his open
window; rain dashing earthward like a loosened flood; lightning-flash
following lightning-flash, and thunderclap thunder-clap, in rapid,
tumultuous, terrifying succession; enough, one would fancy, to arrest
and to appall the attention of any conscious being, human or even brute,
within the reach of sight or sound; but Elias's attention it held for
a moment only. Then his mind sped back to the subject which he was most
anxious to avoid. “Not a single chance--not any more chance than there
is of the sun's failing to rise!”
The clock of St. George's Church struck two. What was the rabbi doing
now? Elias wondered. Had he gone to bed? Or was he, perhaps, still down
stairs in his study?--praying, perhaps, that the Lord would in no wise
dishonor His servant's pledges. At this notion, Elias involuntarily
ground his teeth. “Praying for mischief!” he thought. “And what--what
if, after all, there should be some efficacy in that sort of
prayer!”--He remembered and rejoiced that he had told the rabbi nothing
further about Christine than her name--neither her father's name, nor
her place of abode. Otherwise, the rabbi might have deemed it his duty
to constitute himself heaven's instrument, and, by intimidating the
bride, have caused pain and trouble, if not, temporarily at least, have
prevented the wedding from proceeding. In his fanaticism, what might he
not be capable of doing?
The rain, beating upon the window-sill, spattered inward, wetting
Elias's clothing. When, by and by, he became aware that his coat-sleeve
had got soaked through, he left his seat, closed the window, and lighted
the gas.
His studio--in anticipation of his coming trip to Europe, and subsequent
change of residence--he had pretty well dismantled, having packed away
in dark closets and camphor-chests, the most part of such goods and
chattels as dust or moth can corrupt. Little, indeed, was left out, save
three or four chairs, a life-size lay-figure stripped of its draperies,
an easel or two, and a few time-blackened plaster casts fastened to
the wall. But over in one corner there was heaped up an assortment of
miscellaneous odds and ends, the accumulation of half a dozen years,
which, now, as his eye noted it, Elias remembered, he had meant to
overhaul, with a view to laying aside whatever he should think worth
keeping, and consigning the rest to the rag-and-bottle man. In the hurry
and excitement of the past few days, however, he had forgotten all about
it.
For a little while Elias stood still, blinking in the new-made
gas-light, and gazing rather vacantly at this old lumber-pile. Then,
suddenly, a gleam as of inspiration brightening his features, “What
time,” he asked himself, “could be better than the present? If I go to
bed, I shall only toss about, without sleeping; whereas, if I do this,
it will be an improvement upon sitting idle, and brooding, any how.”
With which, straightway, he whipped off his coat, drew up a chair, and,
not incurious as to what long-lost objects he might possibly unearth,
started upon the forgotten task.
Paint-rags, besmeared with a thousand colors; torn canvases, bearing
half-finished, half-begun, or half-obliterated studies; paint-tubes,
half-emptied, in which the remaining paint had congealed, or “fatted”;
worn-out brushes, broken palettes, shattered maul-sticks, fragments
of old casts and ornaments in plaster or terra-cotta; letters without
envelopes, envelopes without letters; newspapers, pamphlets, exhibition
catalogues, magazines, circulars, tailor's bills, cracked bottles,
cigarette-stumps, cast-off gloves, pocket handkerchiefs, cravats; all
sheeted over with fine, black dust, and all exhaling a musty, oily
odor; these were the elements that predominated, and most of these Elias
tossed pell-mell to the middle of the floor, for the maid to carry
away in the morning. To divert one's thoughts from some persistent and
exasperating topic, it is a commonplace, there is nothing like busying
one's fingers; manual exercise being the surest means to the end of
mental rest. Pretty soon Elias's late encounter with his uncle had
sunken out of mind--only occasionally, for brief intervals, to struggle
up, and agitate the surface--and agreeably interested in his present
occupation, he was whistling softly to himself, indifferent alike to the
perspiration that bathed his forehead, to the dust that penetrated his
nostrils, and to the dirt that took lodgment upon his hands.
Meanwhile, the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the rain had
settled into a steady drizzle.
Elias's first notable find was a pretty little gold lead-pencil, one,
he recognized, that had been sent him, as a present, on his twenty-first
birthday, by an aunt of his--his father's only sister--who lived in
New Orleans, and whom he had never seen. It had got lost, in a
most inexplicable manner, very-soon after its reception; and,
conscience-smitten, Elias now recollected how he had suspected, to the
degree of moral certainty, a poor devil of an Italian model of having
stolen it. Well, here it was, intact; and so, poor Archimede had been
innocent, after all.
Holding it in his hand, and examining it a little, before putting it
into his pocket, and going on with his work, Elias felt himself suddenly
carried backward, for an instant, to the period with which it was
associated. Talismanic pencil, that had power to raise the dead, and
annihilate the intervening years! There it lay, in shape, weight, color,
in length, breadth, thickness, in all its attributes and dimensions,
precisely the same as on that far-off birthday morning, when his mother,
to whose care his aunt had entrusted it, delivered it to him, neatly
boxed up in pasteboard, wrapped in tissue-paper, and sealed with red
sealing-wax. How well he remembered! It might have been last week. It
might almost have been yesterday. And yet, how much, indeed how much,
had happened since. At the breakfast-table, she had said, “Here, Elias,
here is something your Aunt Rachel has sent you--something that you will
prize especially, because she is not at all rich, and has doubtless had
to pinch and deny herself, in order to buy it.” Then she offered him
the parcel, which he, touched, surprised, expectant, took and opened,
finding within this same little pencil; and not it only, but wound
around it, a bit of writing in his Aunt Rachel's hand--the traditional
Hebrew _bensch_: “May the Lord make you to be great, like Ephraim and
Manasseh!” And immediately, of course, in his boyish enthusiasm, he had
set himself down, and put the pencil to its virgin use, by inditing with
it a glowing note of thanks--about the only use he ever had put it to,
for very soon afterward it disappeared. And then, the rest, the rest of
that wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten day! The pride and the triumph of
it! The masterpiece of a dinner that his mother had prepared. The check
for a dazzling sum of money, that he had found adroitly folded in
with his napkin! The toothsome nut-cake, with its twenty-one symbolic
candles! The wine that had been drunken to his health! The speech that
the rabbi had made, standing up at the head of the table, and haranguing
away as though he had had an audience of a thousand, instead of only
Elias and his mother--the mother, however, listening amid tears
and smiles, and applauding and nodding her head, as the splendid
achievements which the future was to behold at the hands of her son,
were prophetically described. The watch the rabbi had given him!--the
same that was ticking in his waistcoat-pocket at this very instant.
And the prayer that the rabbi had chanted! And how Elias himself, with
swelling heart, had joined in the invocation: “Holy, holy Lord, Thou
Who art one God!” and had vowed silently that, by the Lord's help, he
_would_ “strive to become good in the sight of men, and a pride unto his
people.” How well he remembered, thanks to this little pencil, precisely
the same now as then, quite unchanged. But oh, what a changed Elias, he
in whose palm it lay! How all the conditions of his life, and all his
interests and purposes in life, and all his convictions about life, had
changed since then! How little he had dreamed in those days of what was
coming! Strange, that he should have had no premonition of it. Strange,
that he should have gone on in peace and contentment, treading his level
path, forward, forward, unsuspectingly, and never have caught a glimpse,
never have got an inkling, of what was waiting for him, of what each
step was bringing him so much the nearer to, of what presently was to
burst upon him in a glory like that of heaven, and utterly revolutionize
himself and all his world. Strange, indeed! And yet, in those old,
simple, tranquil days, he had been happy, very happy, in a simple,
tranquil way; and now, as he looked back at them, they shone suffused in
a rose-colored enchantment; and he could feel his heart reach out toward
them, with a strong longing affection, which, though melancholy, was not
unmixed with sweetness.
Deep, engrossing, and of long duration, was the train of associations
that had thus been started. The church clock across the park rang the
half hour, before Elias finally roused himself, and renewed his attack
upon the lumber heap.
For a good while he struck nothing more of interest--nothing that he
cared to save, or even to look at twice. But by and by he fished out a
sketch-book, which, to judge from the dilapidated state of its binding,
must have been pretty old, and over which he paused, beating it against
the floor, to rid it of some of its dust, and then opening it, to
inspect its contents. On the fly-leaf he found his initials, “E. B.,”
and a date, “January, 1876.” Listlessly turning the pages, he was
somewhat amused, and a good deal ashamed, to perceive how poor and crude
the drawings were--heads, for the most part, with only here and there
a full-length figure; and he congratulated himself not a little that he
had thus chanced to run across it, because now he could destroy it,
and so make sure that nobody else should ever have the satisfaction of
seeing what wretched stuff he had once been capable of perpetrating. He
supposed that the sketches had nearly all been intended as portraits,
but in the main he could not place them--could not remember the persons
who had served as models. One face kept repeating itself; there were as
many as a dozen separate studies of it; the face of a young man, aged,
presumably, nineteen or twenty years; strangely familiar; the face of
some one, beyond doubt, whom he must have known intimately; and yet,
knitting his brows, and exerting his memory to the utmost, he was quite
unable to recall the original. Odd; and intensely annoying, as baffled
memory is apt to be; until, of a sudden, with a thrill of recognition
that was by no means agreeable, he identified it as himself. A few pages
further along, again with a sudden thrill, but this time with a far
stronger and deeper one, he came upon a portrait of his mother. It was
badly drawn, finical, over-elaborated; the draperies rigid as iron;
the flesh wooden; the pose--she was seated, reading--awkward, and
anatomically impossible; and yet, spite of all, it was an excellent,
even a startling, likeness; and-happening upon it in this unexpected
manner, Elias felt a not unnatural heart-leap and quickening of the
pulse. When, or under what circumstances, he had made it, he could not
think. He bent forward in his chair, gazed intently at it, and tried
hard to recollect. If the date on the fly-leaf was trustworthy, it must,
of course, have been after the first of January, 1876; but in his own
memory, ransack it as he might, he could find no record; This struck him
as exceedingly singular; because, he believed, he had been careful to
preserve all the sketches of his mother that he had ever taken, even the
most primitive and rudimentary; and how this one could not only have
got mislaid, but entirely have escaped his mind, besides, he was at a
complete loss to understand. So bending forward, and gazing intently at
it, he tried his best to recollect.
Of what now befell, or seemed to befall, I shall give an account written
some two years later by Elias himself, in a letter to Christine:
“Gradually--as is apt to happen, if you fix your eyes for any length
of time upon a single spot in some small object--gradually the picture
blurred, becoming simply a formless smudge upon the white surface of
the paper; a lapse on the part of my eyesight, which I, absorbed in the
effort I was making to remember, did not attempt to correct, but which
in due time, as was natural, corrected itself; and again the picture
stood out as distinct as before. Now, however, at once, every other
thought and every other feeling were swept away, clean out of my head,
by a sensation--I shall not be able to define it; you will easily
conceive it; a sensation half of amazement, half of terror; for, without
having changed in size, the face seemed to have changed totally in
quality; it seemed to have ceased to be a face drawn with black lead
upon paper, and to have become a face in veritable flesh and blood. The
hair had apparently become hair. There was color in the cheeks. And the
eyes were liquid, living eyes. They--the eyes--were what most affected
me. Large, black, mournful, as her eyes had been in life, they looked
into my eyes with an expression--I can't describe it. It was what you
would call an expression of intense agony, and of appeal; as though it
were an agony of my causing, and one that she appealed to me to
relieve. The lips--bluish white, as her lips were, toward the end of her
life--the lips seemed to move, and kept moving, as if trying to speak,
but unable to; until at last _they succeeded_; and I could have vowed
that I heard, in her own recognizable voice, just a little above a
whisper, these words: 'There is no more chance of its taking place than
there is of the sun's failing to rise. Beware!'--the words that my
uncle had spoken down stairs. I was so much startled, so much terrified,
that I jumped up from my chair. Thereat, instantly, the illusion
ended. Again it was only a crude pencil drawing upon the page of my
sketch-book. I can't tell how long it had lasted. Very likely not longer
than two or three seconds, though it seemed at least as many minutes.
I don't think I had breathed once. I don't think my heart had given a
single beat. It had literally paralyzed me with fear.
“But now that it was over, I fell back upon my chair, and my heart began
to pound like a hammer against my side; and I sat there, panting and
perspiring, like a man exhausted by some tremendous physical exertion.
I felt sick and dizzy, and had a racking headache.--Of course, it was
a mere optical delusion; a mere hallucination; not an actual, objective
phenomenon, not a _ghost_; a mere projection from my own imagination. A
long time afterward I talked with a physician about it. The substance of
what he said was this: Consider the steadily increasing excitement
under which my mind had been laboring for many days, in view of our
approaching marriage; consider the interview that I had had with my
uncle, only an hour or two earlier, and the high pitch of agitation to
which it had wrought me up; consider that it was long past my customary
bedtime, and that my brain was irritated by lack of sleep, for I had
not slept much of any the night before; consider that my mother was
just then the one person uppermost in my thoughts, having been vividly
recalled to me first by the pencil I had found, and then by the drawing
that I was looking at; consider finally that my bodily posture--bending
over till my chest nearly touched my knees--was such as to keep the
blood pent up in my head; and the occurrence becomes very easily
explicable, especially so, as such hallucinations, when people are
excited, are not uncommon experiences. This is what the medical man
said. It is undoubtedly true; and something like it I had wit enough to
tell myself immediately, at the time. But telling did no good. It is one
thing to satisfy your judgment; another to tranquilize your feelings and
hush your imagination. _They_ choose to accept the direct testimony of
your eyes and ears, rather than the deductions of your common sense.
“I knew, as I have said, that my nerves had simply played me a trick;
but that knowledge did not prevent me from passing a most wretched,
uncomfortable night--the rest of that night, till day-break. The memory
of the thing persisted in haunting me, in spite of the efforts I made
to forget it. Strive as I might, I could not shake off the fear, the
uneasiness, that it had inspired. Thinking of it, even at this distance,
I still wince a little. It produced a very deep impression, and must
have been, I believe, in large part accountable for, as it was of a
piece with, what happened next day--or, rather, the evening of the same
day, for it was now early morning.”