The moment came near for the Polish centenarian grandmother to die.
From the doctor's statement it appeared she had only a bad quarter of
an hour to live. Her attack had been sudden, and the grandchildren she
loved to scold could not be present.
She had already battled through the great wave of pain, and was
drifting beyond the boundaries of her earthly Refuge. The nurses,
forgetting the trouble her querulousness and her overweening dietary
scruples had cost them, hung over the bed on which the shrivelled
entity lay. They did not know she was living again through the one
great episode of her life.
Nearly forty years back, when (though already hard upon seventy and a
widow) a Polish village was all her horizon, she received a letter. It
arrived on the eve of Sabbath on a day of rainy summer. It was from
her little boy--her only boy--who kept a country inn seven-and-thirty
miles away, and had a family. She opened the letter with feverish
anxiety. Her son--her _Kaddish_--was the apple of her eye. The old
woman eagerly perused the Hebrew script, from right to left. Then
weakness overcame her and she nearly fell.
Embedded casually enough in the four pages was a passage that stood
out for her in letters of blood. "I am not feeling very well lately;
the weather is so oppressive and the nights are misty. But it is
nothing serious; my digestion is a little out of order, that's all."
There were roubles for her in the letter, but she let them fall to the
floor unheeded. Panic fear, travelling quicker than the tardy post of
those days, had brought rumour of a sudden outbreak of cholera in her
son's district. Already alarm for her boy had surged about her heart
all day; the letter confirmed her worst apprehensions. Even if the
first touch of the cholera-fiend was not actually on him when he
wrote, still he was by his own confession in that condition in which
the disease takes easiest grip. By this time he was on a bed of
sickness--nay, perhaps on his death-bed, if not dead. Even in those
days the little grandmother had lived beyond the common span; she had
seen many people die, and knew that the Angel of Death does not always
go about his work leisurely. In an epidemic his hands are too full to
enable him to devote much attention to each case. Maternal instinct
tugged at her heart-strings, drawing her toward her boy. The end of
the letter seemed impregnated with special omen--"Come and see me
soon, dear little mother. I shall be unable to get to see you for
some time." Yes, she must go at once--who knew but that it would be
the last time she would look upon his face?
But then came a terrible thought to give her pause. The Sabbath was
just "in"--a moment ago. Driving, riding, or any manner of journeying
was prohibited during the next twenty-four hours. Frantically she
reviewed the situation. Religion permitted the violation of the
Sabbath on one condition--if life was to be saved. By no stretch of
logic could she delude herself into the belief her son's recovery
hinged upon her presence--nay, analyzing the case with the cruel
remorselessness of a scrupulous conscience, she saw his very illness
was only a plausible hypothesis. No; to go to him now were beyond
question to profane the Sabbath.
And yet beneath all the reasoning, her conviction that he was sick
unto death, her resolve to set out at once, never wavered. After an
agonizing struggle she compromised. She could not go by cart--that
would be to make others work into the bargain, and would moreover
involve a financial transaction. She must walk! Sinful as it was to
transgress the limit of two thousand yards beyond her village--the
distance fixed by Rabbinical law--there was no help for it. And of all
the forms of travelling, walking was surely the least sinful. The Holy
One, blessed be He, would know she did not mean to work; perhaps in
His mercy He would make allowance for an old woman who had never
profaned His rest-day before.
And so, that very evening, having made a hasty meal, and lodged the
precious letter in her bosom, the little grandmother girded up her
loins to walk the seven-and-thirty miles. No staff took she with her,
for to carry such came under the Talmudical definition of work.
Neither could she carry an umbrella, though it was a season of rain.
Mile after mile she strode briskly on, toward that pallid face that
lay so far beyond the horizon, and yet ever shone before her eyes like
a guiding star. "I am coming, my lamb," she muttered. "The little
mother is on the way."
It was a muggy night. The sky, flushed with a weird, hectic glamour,
seemed to hang over the earth like a pall. The trees that lined the
roadway were shrouded in a draggling vapour. At midnight the mist
blotted out the stars. But the little grandmother knew the road ran
straight. All night she walked through the forest, fearless as Una,
meeting neither man nor beast, though the wolf and the bear haunted
its recesses, and snakes lurked in the bushes. But only the innocent
squirrels darted across her path. The morning found her spent, and
almost lame. But she walked on. Almost half the journey was yet to do.
She had nothing to eat with her; food, too, was an illegal burden, nor
could she buy any on the holy day. She said her Sabbath morning prayer
walking, hoping God would forgive the disrespect. The recital gave her
partial oblivion of her pains. As she passed through a village the
dreadful rumour of cholera was confirmed; it gave wings to her feet for
ten minutes, then bodily weakness was stronger than everything else,
and she had to lean against the hedges on the outskirts of the village.
It was nearly noon. A passing beggar gave her a piece of bread.
Fortunately it was unbuttered, so she could eat it with only minor
qualms lest it had touched any unclean thing. She resumed her journey,
but the rest had only made her feet move more painfully and
reluctantly. She would have liked to bathe them in a brook, but that,
too, was forbidden. She took the letter from her bosom and reperused
it, and whipped up her flagging strength with a cry of "Courage, my
lamb! the little mother is on the way." Then the leaden clouds melted
into sharp lines of rain, which beat into her face, refreshing her for
the first few moments, but soon wetting her to the skin, making her
sopped garments a heavier burden, and reducing the pathway to mud, that
clogged still further her feeble footsteps. In the teeth of the wind
and the driving shower she limped on. A fresh anxiety consumed her
now--would she have strength to hold out? Every moment her pace
lessened, she was moving like a snail. And the slower she went the more
vivid grew her prescience of what awaited her at the journey's end.
Would she even hear his dying word? Perhaps--terrible thought!--she
would only be in time to look upon his dead face! Mayhap that was how
God would punish her for her desecration of the holy day. "Take heart,
my lamb!" she wailed. "Do not die yet. The little mother comes."
The rain stopped. The sun came out, hot and fierce, and dried her
hands and face, then made them stream again with perspiration. Every
inch won was torture now, but the brave feet toiled on. Bruised and
swollen and crippled, they toiled on. There was a dying voice--very
far off yet, alas!--that called to her, and as she dragged herself
along, she replied: "I am coming, my lamb. Take heart! the little
mother is on the way. Courage! I shall look upon thy face, I shall
find thee alive."
Once a wagoner observed her plight and offered her a lift, but she
shook her head steadfastly. The endless afternoon wore on--she crawled
along the forest-way, stumbling every now and then from sheer
faintness, and tearing her hands and face in the brambles of the
roadside. At last the cruel sun waned, and reeking mists rose from the
forest pools. And still the long miles stretched away, and still she
plodded on, torpid from over-exhaustion, scarcely conscious, and
taking each step only because she had taken the preceding. From time
to time her lips mumbled: "Take heart, my lamb! I am coming." The
Sabbath was "out" ere, broken and bleeding, and all but swooning, the
little grandmother crawled up to her son's inn, on the border of the
forest. Her heart was cold with fatal foreboding. There was none of
the usual Saturday night litter of Polish peasantry about the door.
The sound of many voices weirdly intoning a Hebrew hymn floated out
into the night. A man in a caftan opened the door, and mechanically
raised his forefinger to bid her enter without noise. The little
grandmother saw into the room behind. Her daughter-in-law and her
grandchildren were seated on the floor--the seat of mourners.
"Blessed be the true Judge!" she said, and rent the skirt of her
dress. "When did he die?"
"Yesterday. We had to bury him hastily ere the Sabbath came in."
The little, grandmother lifted up her quavering voice, and joined the
hymn, "I will sing a new song unto Thee, O God; upon a harp of ten
strings will I sing praises unto Thee."
* * * * *
The nurses could not understand what sudden inflow of strength and
impulse raised the mummified figure into a sitting posture. The little
grandmother thrust a shrivelled claw into her peaked, shrunken bosom,
and drew out a paper, crumpled and yellow as herself, covered with
strange crabbed hieroglyphics, whose hue had long since faded. She
held it close to her bleared eyes--a beautiful light came into them,
and illumined the million-puckered face. The lips moved faintly; "I am
coming, my lamb," she mumbled. "Courage! The little mother is on the
way. I shall look on thy face. I shall find thee alive."
Printed in the United States of America.
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