VIII

Half a century later I was startled to find the name of Zloczszol in a

headline of the Sunday edition of my American paper.

I had married, and was even a grandfather; for after my return to

America the world of Bethulah had grown fantastic, stupidly

superstitious, and, finally, shadowy and almost unreal. Years and

years of happiness had dissipated and obliterated the delicate

fragrant dream of spiritual love.

But that strange long-forgotten name stirred instantly the sleeping

past to life. I adjusted my spectacles and read the column eagerly. It

was sensational enough, though not more so than a hundred columns of

calamities in unknown places that one skips or reads with the mildest

of thrills.

The long-threatened avalanche had fallen, and Nature had once more

rudely reminded man of his puny place in creation. Rare conditions had

at last come together. First a slight fall of snow, covering the

mountain--how vividly I pictured it!--then a sharp frost which had

frozen this deposit; after that a measureless, blinding snow-storm and

a cyclonic wind. When all seemed calm again, the second mass of snow

had begun to slide down the frozen surface of the first, quickening to

a terrific pace, tearing down the leafless trunks and shooting them at

the village like giant arrows of the angry gods. One of these arrows

penetrated the trunk of a great cedar on the plain and stuck out on

both sides, making a sort of cross, which the curious came from far

and near to see. But, alas! the avalanche had not contented itself

with such freakish manifestations; it had annihilated the new portion

of the village which had dared crawl nearer the mountain when the

railroad--a railroad in Zloczszol!--had found it cheaper to pass near

the base than to make a circuit round the congested portion!

Alas! the cheapness was illusory. The depot with its crowd had been

wiped out as by the offended Fury of the mountain; though by another

freakish incident, illustrating the Titanic forces at work, yet the

one redeeming detail of the appalling catastrophe, a small train of

three carriages that had just moved off was lifted up bodily by the

terrible wind that raced ahead of the monstrous sliding snowball, and

was clapped down in a field out of its reach, as if by a protecting

hand. Not a creature on it was injured.

I had passed the years allotted to man by the Psalmist, and my memory

of the things of yesterday had begun to be faint and elusive, but the

images of my Zloczszol adventure returned with a vividness that grew

daily more possessive. What had become of Bethulah? Was she alive? Was

she dead? And which were the sadder alternative--to have felt the

darkness of early death closing round the great hope, or to have

survived its possibility, and old, bent, bitter, and deserted by her

followers, to await the lesser disenchantment of the grave?

An irresistible instinct impelled me--aged as I was myself--to revisit

alone these scenes of my youth, to see how fate had rounded or broken

off its grim ironic story.

I pass over the stages of the journey, at the conclusion of which I

found myself again in the mountain village. Alas! The changes on the

route had prepared me for the change in Zloczszol. Railroads threw

their bridges over the gorges I had climbed, telegraph poles tamed the

erst savage forest ways. And Zloczszol itself had now, by the line

passing through it, expanded into a trading centre, with vitality

enough to recuperate quickly from the avalanche. The hotel was clean

and commodious, but I could better have endured that ancient

sitting-room in which the squalling baby was rocked. Strange, I could

see its red wrinkled face, catch the very timbre of its piping cries!

Only the mountain was unchanged, and the pines and firs that had

whispered dreams to my youth whispered sleep to my age. Ah, how frail

and futile is the life of man! He passes like a shadow, and the green

sunlit earth he trod on closes over him and takes the tread of the new

generations. What had I to say to these new, smart people in

Zloczszol? No, the dead were my gossips and neighbours. For me more

than the avalanche had desolated Zloczszol. I repaired to the

cemetery. There I should find Yarchi. It was no use looking for him

under the porch of the pine cottage. And there, too, I should in all

likelihood find Bethulah!

But Ben David's tomb was the first I found, carved with the

intersecting triangles. The date showed he had died very soon after my

departure; perhaps, I thought remorsefully, my importunities had

agitated him too much. Ah! there at last was Yarchi. Under a high

white stone he slept as soundly as any straight corpse. His sneering

mouth had crumbled to dust, but I would have given much to hear it

once more abuse the _Chassidim_. Propped on my stick and poring over

the faded gilt letters, I recalled "the handsome stranger" whom the

years had marred. But of Bethulah I saw no sign. I wandered back and

found the turreted house, but it had been converted into a large

store, and from Bethulah's turret window hung a great advertising

sky-sign.

I returned cheerlessly to the hotel, but as the sun began to pierce

auspiciously through the bleakness of early March, I was about to

sally forth again in the direction of Yarchi's ancient cottage, when

the porter directed me--as if I were a mere tourist--to go to see the

giant cedar of Lebanon with its Titanic arrow. However, I followed his

instructions, and pretty soon I espied the broad-girthed tree towering

over its field, with the foreign transpiercing trunk about fifteen

feet from the ground, making indeed a vast cross. Leaning against the

sunlit cedar was a white-robed figure, and as I hobbled nearer I saw

by the shroud and the crown of flowers that I had found Bethulah.

At my approach she drew herself up in statuesque dignity, upright as

Ben David of yore, and looked at me with keen unclouded eyes. There

was a wondrous beauty of old age in her face and bearing. The silver

hair banded on the temples glistened picturesquely against the reds

and greens and golds of her crown.

"Ah, stranger!" she said, with a gracious smile. "You return to us."

"You recognize me?" I mumbled, in amaze.

"It is the face I loved in youth," she said simply.

Strange, happy, wistful tears sprang to my old eyes--some blurred

sense of youth and love and God.

"Your youth seems with you still," I said. "Your face is as sweet,

your voice as full of music."

The old ecstatic look lit up her eyes. "It is God who keeps me ever

young, till the great day dawns."

I was taken aback. What! She believed still! That alternative had not

figured in my prevision of pathetic closes. I was silent, but the old

tumult of thought raged within me.

"But is not the day passed forever?" I murmured at last.

The light in her eyes became queenly fire.

"While there is life," she cried, "in the veins of the house of Ben

David!" And as she spoke my eye caught the gleam of the Persian

emerald on her forefinger.

"And your worshippers--what of them?" I asked.

Her eyes grew sad. "After my father's death--his memory for a

blessing!--the pilgrims fell off, and when the years passed without

the miracle, his followers even here in Zloczszol began to weaken. And

slowly a new generation arose, impatient and lax, which believed not

in the faith of their forefathers and mocked my footsteps, saying,

'Behold! the dreamer cometh!' And then the black fire-monster came,

whizzing daily to and fro on the steel lines and breathing out fumes

of unfaith, and the young men said lo! there is our true Redeemer.

Wherefore, as the years waxed and waned, until at last advancing Death

threw his silver shadow on my hair, even the faithful grew to doubt,

and they said, 'But a few short years more and death must claim her,

her mission unfulfilled, and the lamp of Israel's hope shattered

forever. Perchance it is we that have misunderstood the prophecies.

Not here, not here, shall God's great miracle be wrought; this is not

holy ground. "For the Lord dwelleth in Zion,"' they cried with the

Prophets. Only on the sacred soil, outside of which God has never

revealed himself, only in Palestine, they said, can Israel's Redeemer

be born. As it is written, 'But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance,

and there shall be holiness.'

"Then these and the scoffers persuaded me, seeing that I waxed very

old, and I sold my father's house--now grown of high value--to obtain

the money for the journey, and I made ready to start for Jerusalem.

There had been a whirlwind and a great snow the day before and I would

have tarried, but they said I must arrive in the Holy City ere the eve

of Chanukah. And putting off my shroud and my crown, seeing that only

in Jerusalem I might be a bride, I trusted myself to the fire-monster,

and a vast company went with me to the starting-place--both of those

who believed that salvation was of Zion and those who scoffed. But the

monster had scarcely crawled out under God's free heaven than God's

hand lifted me up and those with me--for my blessedness covered

them--and put us down very far off, while a great white thunder-bolt

fell upon the building and upon the scoffers and upon those who had

prated of Zion, and behold! they were not. The multitude of Moab was

as straw trodden down for the dunghill, and the high fort of the

fire-monster was brought down and laid low and brought to the ground,

even to the dust. Then arose a great cry from all the town and the

mountain, and a rending of garments and a weeping in sackcloth. And

many returned to the faith in me, for God's hand has shown that here,

and not elsewhere, is the miracle to be wrought. As it is written,

word for word, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:--

"'_And 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 shall 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 it. And it shall be

said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He

will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be

glad and rejoice in His salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand

of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under Him, even as

straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And He shall spread forth His

hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth to

swim: and He shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of

their hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall He

bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust._'

"And here in this cedar of Lebanon, transplanted like Israel under the

shadow of this alien mountain, the Lord has shot a bolt, for a sign to

all that can read. And here I come daily to pray, and to await the

divine moment."

She ceased, and her eyes turned to the now stainless heaven. And as I

gazed upon her shining face it seemed to me that the fresh flowers and

leaves of her crown, still wet with the dew, seen against that garment

of death and the silver of decaying life, were symbolic of an undying,

ever rejuvenescent hope.