"Abraham, the son of Jossel, shall stand."
In obedience to the Cantor's summons, the blind boy, in his high hat
and silken praying-shawl with the blue stripes, rose, and guided by
his father's hand ascended the platform, amid the emotion of the
synagogue. His brave boyish treble, pursuing its faultless way,
thrilled the listeners to tears, and inflamed Zillah's breast, as she
craned down from the gallery, with the mad hope that the miracle had
happened, after all.
The house-gathering afterward savoured of the grewsome conviviality of
a funeral assemblage. But the praises of Brum, especially after his
great speech, were sung more honestly than those of the buried; than
whom the white-faced dull-eyed boy, cut off from the gaily coloured
spectacle in the sunlit room, was a more tragic figure.
But Zillah, in her fineries and forced smiles, offered the most tragic
image of all. Every congratulation was a rose-wreathed dagger, every
eulogy of Brum's eloquence a reminder of the Rabbi God had thrown away
in him.