I got to Warsaw and back in the time at my disposal, but not all the
freshness and variety of my experiences could banish the thought of
Bethulah. There were days when I could absorb myself in the passing
panorama, but I felt always, so to speak, in the ante-chamber of the
great moment of our third and decisive meeting.
And with every shortening day of December that moment approached. Yet
I all but missed it when it came. A snowfall I might easily have
foreseen retarded my journey at the eleventh hour, but my faithful
mare ploughed her way through the white morasses. As she munched her
mid-day corn in that quaint Christian village that neighboured
Zloczszol, and in which I had agreed to stable her, it was borne in on
me for the first time that the eve of Chanukah was likewise Christmas
eve. I wondered vaguely if there was any occult significance in the
coincidence or in the _Chassidic_ choice of dates; but it was too late
now to protest, and loading my pistol against foul play, I hurried to
the rendezvous.
On the dark barren base of the mountain, patches of snow gleamed like
winter blossoms; the gargoyle-like faces of the jags of rock on the
river-bank were white-bearded with icicles. Down below the stream
raced, apparently as turbid as ever, but suddenly, as it made a sharp
curve and came under a thick screen of snow-laden boughs interarching
over the cleft, it grew glazed in death.
The sight of Bethulah was as of a spirit of sunshine moving across the
white desolation. Her tall lone shadow fell blue upon the snowy path.
She was swathed now in splendid silver furs, from which her face shone
out like a tropical flower beneath its wreathed crown.
Dignity and sovereignty had subtly replaced the grace of her movement,
her very stature seemed aggrandized by the consciousness of her unique
mission.
She turned, and her virginal eyes met mine with abashing purity, and
in that instant of anguished rapture I knew that my quest was vain.
The delicate flush of joy and surprise touched her cheeks, indeed, as
before, but this time I felt it would not be succeeded by terror.
Self-conscious now, self-poised, she stood regally where she had
faltered and fled.
"You return to spend Chanukah with us," she said.
"I came," I said, with uneasy bravado, "in the hope of spending it
elsewhere--with you."
"But you know that cannot be," she said gently.
Ah, now she knew of what she was queen. But revolt was hot in my
heart.
"Then they have made you share their dream," I said bitterly.
"Yes," she replied, with unruffled sweetness. "How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of those that bring good tidings!" And her
eyes shone in exultation.
"They were messengers of evil," I said--"whisperers of untruth. Life
is for love and joy."
"Ah, no!" she urged tremulously. "Surely you know the world--how full
it is of suffering and sin." And as with an unconscious movement, she
threw back her splendid furs, revealing the weird shroud. "Ah, what
ecstasy to think that the divine day will come, ere I am old, when, as
it is written in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, '_He will destroy
in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and
the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in
victory: and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and
the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth:
for the Lord hath spoken._'"
Her own eyes were full of tears, which I yearned to kiss away.
"But your own life meantime?" I said softly.
"My life--does it not already take on the glory of God as this
mountain the coming day?"
She seemed indeed akin to the cold white peak as I had seen it flushed
with sunrise. My passion seemed suddenly prosaic and selfish. I was
lifted up into the higher love that worships and abnegates.
"God bless you!" I said, and turning away with misty vision, saw,
creeping off, the three dark fanatical figures.