One Friday evening--after Isaac had completed his 'prentice
years--there was anxiety in the Maggid's household in lieu of the
Sabbath peace. Isaac's seat at the board was vacant. The twisted
loaves seemed without salt, the wine of the consecration cup without
savour.
The mother was full of ominous explanations.
"Perturb not the Sabbath," reproved the gabardined saint gently, and
quoted the Talmud: "'No man has a finger maimed but 'tis decreed from
above."
"Isaac has gone to supper somewhere else," suggested his little
sister, Miriam.
"Children and fools speak the truth," said the Maggid, pinching her
cheek.
But they had to go to bed without seeing him, as though this were only
a profane evening, and he amusing himself with the vague friends of
his lithographic life. They waited till the candles flared out, and
there seemed something symbolic in the gloom in which they groped
their way upstairs. They were all shivering, too, for the fire had
become gray ashes long since, the Sabbath Fire-Woman having made her
last round at nine o'clock and they themselves being forbidden to
touch even a candlestick or a poker.
The sunrise revealed to the unclosed eyes of the mother that her boy's
bed was empty. It also showed--what she might have discovered the
night before had religion permitted her to enter his room with a
light--that the room was empty, too: empty of his scattered
belongings, of his books and sketches.
"God in Heaven!" she cried.
Her boy had run away.
She began to wring her hands and wail with oriental amplitude, and
would have torn her hair had it not been piously replaced by a black
wig, neatly parted in the middle and now grotesquely placid amid her
agonized agitation.
The Maggid preserved more outward calm. "Perhaps we shall find him in
synagogue," he said, trembling.
"He has gone away, he will never come back. Woe is me!"
"He has never missed the Sabbath service!" the Maggid urged. But
inwardly his heart was sick with the fear that she prophesied truly.
This England, which had seduced many of his own congregants to
Christian costume, had often seemed to him to be stealing away his
son, though he had never let himself dwell upon the dread. His sermon
that morning was acutely exegetical: with no more relation to his own
trouble than to the rest of contemporary reality. His soul dwelt in
old Jerusalem, and dreamed of Israel's return thither in some vague
millennium. When he got home he found that the postman had left a
letter. His wife hastened to snatch it.
"What dost thou?" he cried. "Not to-day. When Sabbath is out."
"I cannot wait. It is from him--it is from Isaac."
"Wait at least till the Fire-Woman comes to open it."
For answer the mother tore open the envelope. It was the boldest act
of her life--her first breach with the traditions. The Rabbi stood
paralyzed by it, listening, as without conscious will, to her sobbing
delivery of its contents.
The letter was in Hebrew (for neither parent could read English), and
commenced abruptly, without date, address, or affectionate formality.
"This is the last time I shall write the holy tongue. My soul is
wearied to death of Jews, a blind and ungrateful people, who linger on
when the world no longer hath need of them, without country of their
own, nor will they enter into the blood of the countries that stretch
out their hands to them. Seek not to find me, for I go to a new world.
Blot out my name even as I shall blot out yours. Let it be as though I
was never begotten."
The mother dropped the letter and began to scream hysterically. "I who
bore him! I who bore him!"
"Hold thy peace!" said the father, his limbs shaking but his voice
firm. "He is dead. 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed
be the name of the Lord.' To-night we will begin to sit the seven
days' mourning. But to-day is the Sabbath."
"My Sabbath is over for aye. Thou hast driven my boy away with thy
long prayers."
"Nay, God hath taken him away for thy sins, thou godless
Sabbath-breaker! Peace while I make the Consecration."
"My Isaac, my only son! We shall say _Kaddish_ (mourning-prayer) for
him, but who will say _Kaddish_ for us?"
"Peace while I make the Consecration!"
He got through with the prayer over the wine, but his breakfast
remained untasted.