IV

The prepared festivities added ironic complications to the horror.

After Brum should have read in the Law from the synagogue platform,

there was to have been a reception at the house. Brum himself had

written out the invitations with conscious grammar. "Present their

compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Solomon and shall be glad to see _them_"

(not _you_, as was the fashion of their set). It was after writing out

so many notes in a fine schoolboy hand, that Brum began to be

conscious of thickening blurs and dancing specks and colours. Now

that the blind boy was crouching in hopeless misery by the glowing

fire, where he had so often recklessly pored over books in the

delicious dusk, there was no one handy to write out the countermands.

As yet the wretched parents had kept the catastrophe secret, as though

it reflected on themselves. And by every post the Confirmation

presents came pouring in.

Brum refused even to feel these shining objects. He had hoped to have

a majority of books, but now the preponderance of watches, rings, and

penknives, left him apathetic. To his parents each present brought a

fresh feeling of dishonesty.

"We must let them know," they kept saying. But the tiny difficulty of

writing to so many prevented action.

"Perhaps he'll be all right by Sabbath," Zillah persisted frenziedly.

She clung to the faith that this was but a cloud: for that the glory

of the Confirmation of a future Rabbi could be so dimmed would argue

an incomprehensible Providence. Brum's performance was to be so

splendid--he was to recite not only his own portion of the Law but the

entire Sabbath _Sedrah_ (section).

"He will never be all right," said Jossel, who, in the utter breakdown

of Zillah, had for the first time made the round of the doctors with

Brum. "None of the physicians, not even the most expensive, hold out

any hope. And the dearest of all said the case puzzled him. It was

like the blindness that often breaks out in Russia after the great

fasts, and specially affects delicate children."

"Yes, I remember," said Zillah; "but that was only among the

Christians."

"We have so many Christian customs nowadays," said Jossel grimly; and

he thought of the pestilent heretic in his own synagogue who advocated

that ladies should be added to the choir.

"Then what shall we do about the people?" moaned Zillah, wringing her

hands in temporary discouragement.

"You can advertise in the Jewish papers," came suddenly from the

brooding Brum. He had a flash of pleasure in the thought of composing

something that would be published.

"Yes, then everybody will read it on the Friday," said Jossel eagerly.

Then Brum remembered that he would not be among the readers, and

despair reconquered him. But Zillah was shaking her head.

"Yes, but if we tell people not to come, and then when Brum opens his

eyes on the Sabbath morning, he can see to read the _Sedrah_--"

"But I don't want to see to read the _Sedrah_," said the boy

petulantly; "I know it all by heart."

"My blessed boy!" cried Zillah.

"There's nothing wonderful," said the boy; "even if you read the

scroll, there are no vowels nor musical signs."

"But do you feel strong enough to do it all?" said the father

anxiously.

"God will give him strength," put in the mother. "And he will make his

speech, too, won't you, my Brum?"

The blind face kindled. Yes, he would give his learned address. He had

saved his father the expense of hiring one, and had departed in

original rhetorical ways from the conventional methods of expressing

filial gratitude to the parents who had brought him to manhood. And

was this eloquence to remain entombed in his own breast?

His courageous resolution lightened the gloom. His parents opened

parcels they had not had the heart to touch. They brought him his new

suit, they placed the high hat of manhood on his head, and told him

how fine and tall he looked; they wrapped the new silk praying-shawl

round his shoulders.

"Are the stripes blue or black?" he asked.

"Blue--a beautiful blue," said Jossel, striving to steady his voice.

"It feels very nice," said Brum, smoothing the silk wistfully. "Yes, I

can almost feel the blue."

Later on, when his father, a little brightened, had gone off to the

exigent boot factory, Brum even asked to see the presents. The blind

retain these visual phrases.

Zillah described them to him one by one as he handled them. When it

came to the books it dawned on her that she could not tell him the

titles.

"They have such beautiful pictures," she gushed evasively.

The boy burst into tears.

"Yes, but I shall never be able to read them," he sobbed.

"Yes, you will."

"No, I won't."

"Then I'll read them to you," she cried, with sudden resolution.

"But you can't read."

"I can learn."

"But you will be so long. I ought to have taught you myself. And now

it is too late!"

V

In order to insure perfection, and prevent stage fright, so to speak,

it had been arranged that Brum should rehearse his reading of the

_Sedrah_ on Friday in the synagogue itself, at an hour when it was

free from worshippers. This rehearsal, his mother thought, was now all

the more necessary to screw up Brum's confidence, but the father

argued that as all places were now alike to the blind boy, the

prominence of a public platform and a large staring audience could no

longer unnerve him.

"But he will _feel_ them there!" Zillah protested.

"But since they are not there on the Friday--?"

"All the more reason. Since he cannot see that they are _not_ there,

he can fancy they _are_ there. On Saturday he will be quite used to

them."

* * * * *

But when Jossel, yielding, brought Brum to the synagogue appointment,

the fusty old Beadle who was faithfully in attendance held up his

hands in holy and secular horror at the blasphemy and the blindness

respectively.

"A blind man may not read the Law to the congregation!" he explained.

"No?" said Jossel.

"Why not?" asked Brum sharply.

"Because it stands that the Law shall be read. And a blind man cannot

read. He can only recite."

"But I know every word of it," protested Brum.

The Beadle shook his head. "But suppose you make a mistake! Shall the

congregation hear a word or a syllable that God did not write? It

would be playing into Satan's hands."

"I shall say every word as God wrote it. Give me a trial."

But the fusty Beadle's piety was invincible. He was highly sympathetic

toward the human affliction, but he refused to open the Ark and

produce the Scroll.

"I'll let the _Chazan_ (cantor) know he must read to-morrow, as

usual," he said conclusively.

Jossel went home, sighing, but silenced. Zillah however, was not so

easily subdued. "But my Brum will read it as truly as an angel!" she

cried, pressing the boy's head to her breast. "And suppose he does

make a mistake! Haven't I heard the congregation correct Winkelstein

scores of times?"

"Hush!" said Jossel, "you talk like an Epicurean. Satan makes us all

err at times, but we must not play into his hands. The _Din_

(judgment) is that only those who see may read the Law to the

congregation."

"Brum will read it much better than that snuffling old Winkelstein."

"Sha! Enough! The _Din_ is the _Din_!"

"It was never meant to stop my poor Brum from--"

"The _Din_ is the _Din_. It won't let you dance on its head or chop

wood on its back. Besides, the synagogue refuses, so make an end."

"I _will_ make an end. I'll have _Minyan_ (congregation) here, in our

own house."

"What!" and the poor man stared in amaze. "Always she falls from

heaven with a new idea!"

"Brum shall not be disappointed." And she gave the silent boy a

passionate hug.

"But we have no Scroll of the Law," Brum said, speaking at last, and

to the point.

"Ah, that's you all over, Zillah," cried Jossel, relieved,--"loud

drumming in front and no soldiers behind!"

"We can borrow a Scroll," said Zillah.

Jossel gasped again. "But the iniquity is just the same," he said.

"As if Brum made mistakes!"

"If you were a Rabbi, the congregation would baptize itself!" Jossel

quoted.

Zillah writhed under the proverb. "It isn't as if you went to the

Rabbi; you took the word of the Beadle."

"He is a learned man."

Zillah donned her bonnet and shawl.

"Where are you going?"

"To the minister."

Jossel shrugged his shoulders, but did not stop her.

The minister, one of the new school of Rabbis who preach sermons in

English and dress like Christian clergymen, as befitted the dignity of

Dalston villadom, was taken aback by the ritual problem, so new and so

tragic. His acquaintance with the vast casuistic literature of his

race was of the shallowest. "No doubt the Beadle is right," he

observed profoundly.

"He cannot be right; he doesn't know my Brum."

Worn out by Zillah's persistency, the minister suggested going to the

Beadle's together. Aware of the Beadle's prodigious lore, he had too

much regard for his own position to risk congregational odium by

flying in the face of an exhumable _Din_.

At the Beadle's, the _Din_ was duly unearthed from worm-eaten folios,

but Zillah remaining unappeased, further searching of these Rabbinic

scriptures revealed a possible compromise.

If the portion the boy recited was read over again by a reader not

blind, so that the first congregational reading did not count, it

might perhaps be permitted.

It would be of course too tedious to treat the whole _Sedrah_ thus,

but if Brum were content to recite his own particular seventh thereof,

he should be summoned to the Rostrum.

So Zillah returned to Jossel, sufficiently triumphant.