And so the seasons and the years wore on, each walling in the lonely
thinker with more solid ice, and making it only the more difficult
ever to break through or to melt his prison walls. Nigh fifteen long
winter years had passed in a solitude tempered by theological thought,
and Uriel, nigh forgotten by his people, had now worked his way even
from the religion of Moses. It was the heart alone that was the seat
of religion; wherefore, no self-styled Revelation that contradicted
Nature could be true. Right Religion was according to Right Reason;
but no religion was reasonable that could set brother against brother.
All ceremonies were opposed to Reason. Goodness was the only true
religion. Such bold conclusions sometimes affrighted himself, being
alone in the world to hold them. "All evils," his note-book summed it
up in his terse Latin, "come from not following Right Reason and the
Law of Nature."
And thinking such thoughts in the dead language that befitted one cut
off from life, to whom Dutch was never aught but the unintelligible
jargon of an unspiritual race, he was leaving his house on a bleak
evening when one clapped him on the shoulder, and turning in amaze, he
was still more mazed to find, for the first time in fifteen years, a
fellow-creature tendering a friendly smile and a friendly hand. He
drew back instinctively, without even recognizing the aged,
white-bearded, yet burly figure.
"What, Senhor Da Costa! thou hast forgotten thy victim?"
With a strange thrill he felt the endless years in Amsterdam slip off
him like the coils of some icy serpent, as he recognized the genial
voice of the Porto physician, and though he was back again in the
dungeon of the Holy Office, it was not the gloom of the vault that he
felt, but sunshine and blue skies and spring and youth. Through the
soft mist of delicious tears he gazed at the kindly furrowed face of
the now hoary-headed physician, and clasped his great warm hand,
holding it tight, forgetting to drop it, as though it were drawing him
back to life and love and fellowship.
The first few words made it clear that Dom Diego had not heard of
Uriel's excommunication. He was new in the city, having been driven
there, pathetically enough, at the extreme end of his life by the
renewed activity of the Holy Office. "I longed to die in Portugal," he
said, with his burly laugh; "but not at the hands of the Inquisition."
Uriel choked back the wild impulse to denounce the crueller
Inquisition of Jewry, from the sudden recollection that Dom Diego
might at once withdraw from him the blessed privilege of human speech.
"Didst make a good voyage?" he asked instead.
"Nay, the billows were in the Catholic League," replied the old man,
making a wry face. "However, the God of Israel neither slumbers nor
sleeps, and I rejoice to have chanced upon thee, were it only to be
guided back to my lodgings amid this water labyrinth."
On the way, Uriel gave what answers he could to the old man's
questionings. His mother was dead; his brother Vidal had married,
though his wife had died some years later in giving birth to a boy,
who was growing up beautiful as a cherub. Yes, he was prospering in
worldly affairs, having long since intrusted them to Joseph--that was
to say, Vidal--who had embarked all the family wealth in a Dutch
enterprise called the West India Company, which ran a fleet of
privateers, to prey upon the treasure-ships in the war with Spain. He
did not say that his own interests were paid to him by formal letter
through a law firm, and that he went in daily fear that his estranged
and pious brother, now a pillar of the synagogue, would one day
religiously appropriate the heretic's property, backed by who knew
what devilish provision of Church or State, leaving him to starve. But
he wondered throughout their walk why Dom Diego, who had such constant
correspondence with Amsterdam, had never heard of his excommunication,
and his bitterness came back as he realized that the ban had extended
to the mention of his name, that he was as one dead, buried, cast down
to oblivion. Even before he had accepted the physician's invitation to
cross his threshold, he had resolved to turn this silence to his own
profit: he, whose inward boast was his stainless honor, had resolved
to act a silent lie. Was it not fair to outwit the rogues with their
own weapon? He had faded from human memory--let it be so. Was he to
be cut off from this sudden joy of friendship with one of his blood
and race, he whose soul was perishing with drought, though, until this
moment, he had been too proud to own it to himself?
But when he entered Dom Diego's lodging and saw the unexpected,
forgotten Ianthe--Ianthe grown from that sweet child to matchless
grace of early womanhood; Ianthe with her dark smiling eyes and her
caressing voice and her gentle movements--then this resolution of
passive silence was exchanged for a determination to fight desperately
against discovery. In the glow of his soul, in the stir of youth and
spring in his veins, in the melting rapture of his mood, that first
sight of a beautiful girl's face bent smilingly to greet her father's
guest had sufficed to set his heart aflame with a new emotion, sweet,
riotous, sacred. What a merry supper-party was that; each dish eaten
with the sauce of joyous memories! How gaily he rallied Ianthe on her
childish ways and sayings! Of course, she remembered him, she said,
and the toys and flowers, and told how comically he had puckered his
brow in argumentation with her father. Yes, he had the same funny
lines still, and once she touched his forehead lightly for an instant
with her slender fingers in facetious demonstration, and he trembled
in painful rapture. And she played on her lute, too, on the lute he
had given her of old, those slender fingers making ravishing music on
the many-stringed instrument, though her pose as she played was more
witching still. What a beautiful glimpse of white shoulders and dainty
lace her straight-cut black bodice permitted!
He left the house drunk, exalted, and as the cold night air smote the
forehead she had touched he was thrilled with fiery energy. He was
young still, thank God, though fifteen years had been eaten out of
his life, and he had thought himself as old and gray as the marshes.
He was young still, he told himself fiercely, defiantly. At home his
note-book lay open, as usual, on his desk, like a friend waiting to
hear what thoughts had come to him in his lonely walk. How far off and
alien seemed this cold confidant now, how irrelevant, and yet, when
his eye glanced curiously at his last recorded sentence, how relevant!
"All evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of
Nature." How true! How true! He had followed neither Right Reason nor
the Law of Nature.
X
In the morning, when the cold, pitiless eye of the thinker penetrated
through the sophisms of desire as clearly as his bodily eye saw the
gray in his hair and the premature age in his face, he saw how
impossible it was to keep the secret of his situation from Dom Diego.
Honor forbade it, though this, he did not shrink from admitting to
himself, might have counted little but for the certainty of discovery.
If he went to the physician's abode he could not fail to meet
fellow-Jews there. To some, perhaps, of the younger generation, his
forgotten name would convey no horrid significance; but then, Dom
Diego's cronies would be among the older men. No; he must himself warn
Dom Diego that he was a leper--a pariah. But not--since that might
mean final parting--not without a farewell meeting. He sent Pedro with
a note to the physician's lodgings, begging to be allowed the
privilege of returning his hospitality that same evening; and the
physician accepting for himself and daughter, a charwoman was sent
for, the great cobwebbed house was scrubbed and furbished in the
living chambers, the ancient silver was exhumed from mildewed
cupboards, the heavy oil-paintings were dusted, a lively canary in a
bright cage was hung on a marble pillar of the dining-room, over the
carven angels; flowers were brought in, and at night, in the soft
light of the candles, the traces of year-long neglect being subdued
and hidden, a spirit of festivity and gaiety pervaded the house as of
natural wont, while the Moorish attendant's red knee-breeches,
gold-braided coat, and blue-feathered turban, hitherto so incongruous
in the general grayness, now seemed part of the normal color. And
Uriel, too, grown younger with the house, made a handsome be-ruffed
figure as he sat at the board, exchanging merry sallies with the
physician and Ianthe.
After the meal and the good wine that alone had not had its cobwebs
brushed shamefacedly away, Dom Diego fell conveniently asleep, looking
so worn and old when the light of his lively fancy had died out of his
face, that the speech of Uriel and Ianthe took a tenderer tone for
fear of disturbing him. Presently, too, their hands came together,
and--such was the swift sympathy between these shapely creatures--did
not dispart. And suddenly, kindled to passion by her warm touch and
breathing presence, stabbed with the fear that this was the last time
he would see her, he told her that for the first time in his life he
knew the meaning of love.
"Oh, if thou wouldst but return my love!" he faltered with dry throat.
"But no! that were too much for a man of my years to hope. But whisper
at least, that I am not repugnant to thee."
She was about to reply, when he dropped her hand and stayed her with a
gesture as abrupt as his avowal.
"Nay, answer me not. Not till I have told thee what honor forbids I
should withhold."
And he told the story of his ban and his long loneliness, her face
flashing 'twixt terror and pity.
"Answer me, now," he said, almost sternly. "Couldst thou love such a
man, proscribed by his race, a byword and a mockery, to whom it is a
sin against Heaven even to speak?"
"They would not marry us," she breathed helplessly.
"But couldst thou love me?"