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I
"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"
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I
"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"
I
It was not till she had fasted every Monday and Thursday for a
twelvemonth, that Zillah's long yearning for a child was gratified.
She gave birth--O more than fair-dealing God!--to a boy.
Jossel, who had years ago abandoned the hope of an heir to pray for
his soul, was as delighted as he was astonished. His wife had kept him
in ignorance of the fasts by which she was appealing to Heaven; and
when of a Monday or Thursday evening on his return from his boot
factory in Bethnal Green, he had sat down to his dinner in Dalston, no
suspicion had crossed his mind that it was Zillah's breakfast. He
himself was a prosaic person, incapable of imagining such
spontaneities of religion, though he kept every fast which it behoves
an orthodox Jew to endure who makes no speciality of sainthood. There
was a touch of the fantastic in Zillah's character which he had only
appreciated in its manifestation as girlish liveliness, and which
Zillah knew would find no response from him in its religious
expression.
Not that her spiritual innovations were original inventions. From some
pious old crone, after whom (as she could read Hebrew) a cluster of
neighbouring dames repeated what they could catch of the New Year
prayers in the women's synagogue, Zillah had learnt that certain holy
men were accustomed to afflict their souls on Mondays and Thursdays.
From her unsuspecting husband himself she had further elicited that
these days were marked out from the ordinary, even for the man of the
world, by a special prayer dubbed "the long 'He being merciful.'"
Surely on Mondays and Thursdays, then, He would indeed be merciful. To
make sure of His good-will she continued to be unmerciful to herself
long after it became certain that her prayer had been granted.