Shagarach heard Emily gravely.
"An important witness for our cause," he answered, when she had finished. "We surely cannot suffer him to be thrust into prison." Emily knew that it was unnecessary for her to press the matter further, so she spent a brief evening in conversation with the quaint, affectionate mother, rarely alluding to the Floyd case or the mysterious oaf who had so alarmed her in that oriental room.
The following noon she ran down to the jail to see Robert, half-expecting to hear him playing the violin which she had sent him the day before. Robert's own Stradivarius, with all his other personal effects, had been destroyed at the fire, so Emily, having begged the sheriff's permission, had pinched herself to buy him a new one as richly toned as her slender means could purchase. Her own instrument was the piano, whose keys turned to silver beneath her touch, and it had been in the ensemble classes of the conservatory that she and Robert (through Beulah Ware) first met. When Dr. Silsby, the botanist, who had just come home from the west, called yesterday, she had insisted on his taking the violin to Robert, without betraying the giver's name. However, Robert's corridor (murderers' row, the name made her indignant) was silent when she approached it, and she searched his cell vainly for a violin box.
"Dr. Silsby has been to see you, Robert?" she asked, after the greetings due from sweetheart to sweetheart.
"He came in yesterday to cheer me."
"His usual method of cheering, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, said he had never expected me to outlive uncle; I always acted so much older than he did," laughed Robert.
"He is such a droll tease," said Emily, who never could be brought to admit that Robert was overserious for his years.
"But I made myself even with him before he went. He promised to read an article I had written while in prison, and took the manuscript under his arm, little suspecting what was in store for him. You know how he abhors my social heresies."
"And the article was——"
"My 'Modest Proposal for a Consumers' Trust,' socialistic from kappa to kappa. How Jonas will writhe! The last words he spoke were a thrust at my 'fad.' Yet every letter-carrier and uniformed employe I meet," added Robert, returning to his natural gravity, "contented and useful, convinces me more and more that the world is moving toward co-operation."
"But the reading will be torture to Dr. Silsby."
"It ought to do him good. How hard that lumper works!" Several negroes were staggering down the corridor, shouldering huge sides of beef for the jail cuisine. "And in fifty offices within a radius of a mile men are receiving large salaries for dawdling at elegant desks two or three hours a day."
"There are no sinecures at $10 a week," sighed Emily, drawing upon experience for this generalization. "But did Dr. Silsby have nothing with him when he called?"
"I believe he had—a violin box."
"Just so," said a cheerful voice behind them; "a violin-box, and forgot to leave it. You see I had the jacketing of that birch tree so much on my mind," it was Dr. Silsby himself, "everything else slipped out. You remember my speaking of the birch tree, Rob?"
"At least seven times," answered Robert.
"Cruelty, Miss Barlow, positive cruelty. That fine silver-birch in the jailyard—you saw it, I suppose, coming in—all peeled and naked from the ground as high as my reach. Wanton cruelty. Think of the winter nights. It will die. It will die."
One of Jonas Silsby's eccentricities was his keen sympathy for arboreal life, to which his rugged nature yearned even more than to the delicate products of the flower garden.
"I complained to the sheriff. There ought to be an ordinance severely punishing the barking of trees."
"Don't they fine the boys who mutilate foliage in the parks?" asked Emily.
"Fine! Horsewhip them! Rattan their knuckles! I'd teach them a lesson or two! The young barbarians! Well, cut it short, thinking of the trees, I forgot your violin. So last night I ordered a jacket made, good canvas cloth, that'll interest you, Rob, if you haven't forgotten all your botany in your wild——"
"How did you like my essay, Jonas?" asked Robert, mischievously.
"Quackery! A poultice to cure incurable diseases. Bah!"
"But you brought the violin to-day?" asked Emily, smiling.
"Yes, with the canvas jacket. You see it's Miss Barlow's present——"
"What!" cried Robert.
"There! Thunder! I've let it out. She was going to blindfold you and let you guess the giver."
"And the violin is in your vest pocket, I suppose?" asked Emily, innocently, on the brink of a peal of laughter.
"The violin! Jupiter!" exclaimed Dr. Silsby, thunderstruck. "It's a box of bulbs. I thought they were rather heavy."
Emily and Robert had a merry time over the botanist's absentmindedness, but he insisted that the original fault lay with the young barbarians who had upset him by unbarking the birch tree.
There was little news to exchange except the arrest of their "important witness," and the lunch hour at best was only sixty minutes long, so Emily was soon forced to make her adieus and leave Robert with his second best friend.
Beulah Ware called that evening to talk over their plans for a trip to the provinces, which Dr. Eustis, the Barlows' family physician, had imperatively ordered for the wasting girl. Could he have looked into her brain while she was preparing to retire in her chamber, and seen the velocity of the thoughts which were coursing through it then, he would surely have lengthened the weeks to months.
"Would the will be upheld?" she asked herself. Dr. Silsby's oral evidence was strong in its favor and Shagarach had spoken hopefully of late. The least that he could expect was a postponement until the trial was concluded. Since the evening she spent at his house, the lawyer had applied himself, if possible, more sternly than ever to the case, and his manner was more than ever that of a man repressing all lightness of spirit to make room for weighty thoughts.
What a mesh they were all entangled in. Shagarach as well as Robert, with the monster reaching again and again at his life! And McCausland—she hated his eternal smile. As if this business of life or death were a comedy for his amusement or the display of his superfine powers. She had begun to doubt whether their triumph over the false Bill Dobbs had been as genuine as they first supposed.
"A lie will travel a league while truth is putting on his boots," old John Davidson had said, shaking his head, when she described the adventure to him. And the result had proved him right. Although the truth leaked out, the original impression that Robert had really broken out of prison was never quite corrected, and of course it did him no good with the public.
In spite of herself, Emily could not help feeling that both these powerful minds were overreaching themselves by their very fertility and keenness, like the colossus of old, which tumbled by its own huge height. For the hundredth time she set their theories before her, trying to imagine how a jury would look at them.
Her rambling drowse naturally brought back the whole trip to Hillsborough and her conversation with Bertha. She tried to recall every word that the housemaid had uttered, rendered doubly precious, as it seemed to Emily, by the impossibility of consulting her again until the trial. What she had said of the previous fire especially struck Emily now. She tried to form a vivid picture on the curtain of darkness which surrounded her of that fatal study. The books all upright on their shelves, the canary bird singing, the waste-basket, the slippers under the arm-chair, and the dressing-gown thrown over it, the dog—suddenly Emily's heart stood still. She started up in bed and sat on its edge.
A minute later she was feeling for the match-box. As she stood before the mirror, her image came out slowly, slowly, emerging by the sulphurous blue flame. Lighting the gas, she drew the curtains. The bark of a watchdog broke the silence, or the footsteps of tardy home-comers, and now and then the shrill, faint whistle of a distant steamer, ocean-bound. But her ears were closed to outer impressions. She snatched at a volume of the great encyclopedia which she kept in her room, and, sitting on the bed, laid one knee across its fellow for a book-rest. In this posture she read eagerly, then exchanged the volume for another, and that for another, until she had ranged through the entire set and peeped at every letter from Archimedes to Zero, with long and very attentive stops at many curious headings. It was after 1 o'clock when she turned out the light and nearly 3 when her brain stopped buzzing. Next morning she limped in her left knee where the heavy encyclopedia had rested and her eyes were dull at their work.
The idea was so bold, so novel, that she waited a day before submitting it to Shagarach. Beulah Ware was her first confidant. Beulah took it up enthusiastically, and was for developing it farther before giving it out at all. But Emily judged this secrecy unjust to her lawyer, and, besides, was eager to know his opinion. He listened with interest to her "maybes" and "might bes" and commented in his usual tone of conviction.
"There are a great many 'ifs.' You depend entirely upon Bertha, and she is not at hand. When she does appear it will be so late that you will have little time to work up your idea. This is not said to discourage you; only to point out the obstacles you must surmount. By all means follow out the thought."
This was not the worst that Emily had feared, although she understood that it meant "There are at present only two theories, McCausland's and mine. Those are the horns of the dilemma between which the jury must choose." Seeing that she did not reply, Shagarach turned the subject toward Walter Riley's case, which was more serious than his mother knew.
The robbery of the bicycles was only one of a series of thefts which had been traced to this youthful "gang." In the club-room at Lonergan's, not only the Whistler's bicycle, which he had refused to sell, but a store of cigars, whisky, cheap jewelry and ladies' pocketbooks had been found, and the junkman, Bagley, was under arrest for acting as a "fence" to the thieves.
Walter asserted his innocence of other thefts, and also his ignorance of all the articles excepting the bicycle, which they had urged him to sell. His refusal to do so was corroborated by Turkey and Toot. On this very head he had had a falling out with the crowd and had ceased to visit the club-room, but, although it was frequented by as many as twenty youngsters, some of them half-grown men, no one had dared to heed Bagley's suggestion and dispose of Walter's abandoned property.
"Riley's act at its worst was no more serious than breaking a window or plucking pears from the tree. With your help he may get clear and be put on probation."
"Oh, must I testify?" asked Emily.
"Next Monday the case will be heard. You can be of service to the boy. I shall recommend short terms for Fenton and Watts."
Emily promised to be present. While she was returning to her studio old John Davidson overtook her in his carriage. She was glad to meet his kindly glance again and accept his proffered seat, especially as she espied the manikin, Kennedy, crossing the street in her direction. It was only a few blocks to her destination, but before they arrived she had poured out her new theory to the marshal, as if he were her father.
"Don't you think it's possible, Mr. Davidson?" she appealed to him, craving a morsel of sympathy.
"Possible? Of course it's possible," he answered cheerily; "I've met things a hundred times stranger myself."
But Emily's heart sunk a little, for she saw that he only spoke so out of kindness and that he did not really believe in her idea. And from that day she followed Beulah Ware's advice and hardly mentioned it, except to Beulah.
It is no wonder at all that Emily Barlow should have come to regard Inspector McCausland as the villain of the drama in which she was taking a part. Although whenever she tried to formulate his theory of the case it seemed to her too frail to hang a kitten by, yet she had moments of doubt in which his great reputation and clean record of victories oppressed and appalled her. And these moments were rendered frequent by a quality which McCausland seemed to possess in common with other satanic characters, his ubiquity, in which he was only surpassed by Mr. Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. In justice to McCausland, however, it should be stated that he did not make a practice, as the manikin did, of writing bi-weekly billet-doux.
The first time the detective's shadow fell across Emily's path—after her discovery of his identity—was on one of her visits to Senda Wesner. Who should be coming out of the bakeshop but chubby Richard in person? His bow was gallant and his smile serene.
"My weekly call," he said, stopping to chat for a moment. "A sociable little magpie, that one," jerking his thumb toward the bakeshop girl. Emily thought this uncomplimentary. From Miss Wesner she gathered enough to lead her to suspect that he was trying to connect the peddler in the green cart, who was certainly no peddler and who had eluded all pursuit thus far, with the slamming of the rear door, which must have been done by some one else than Floyd.
A few days later she had called at the office of the Beacon, the newspaper for which Robert wrote special articles, to obtain some papers from his desk. The desk was indeed there, but all its drawers had been removed and the managing editor explained that they might be found at the office of Inspector McCausland.
Twice she had met the inspector climbing Shagarach's stairs, but passing by the lawyer's door and mounting to the top story. The second time she had heard his voice in conference with a throaty falsetto she thought she knew, and the black mask of Pineapple Jupiter, appearing at the head of the stairs, confirmed her suspicions. Without scruple she entered the mission herself one day and expended all her arts to pump the old negro. The moment McCausland's name was introduced, however, his loquacity was checked of a sudden, then took dizzy flights of irrelevance.
"Oh, dese chillun, chillun," cried Jupiter, puttering away at a broken pane, "dey done gone break my winders."
"The stout, ruddy gentleman, I mean," persisted Emily, but Jupiter was so absorbed in his hymn tune that he did not hear her.
Sharper heads than Emily's had failed to force McCausland's hand when he chose to shut it tight. The newspaper reporters, whom no ordinary walls can bar, had bestirred themselves to secure for an inquisitive public the "new evidence" that the government had presented before the grand jury in the Floyd case, but absolutely without avail. Where such experienced allies owned themselves beaten, the gentle maiden might surely do so without dishonor.
As Shagarach foretold, Bertha had been spirited away. Mrs. Christenson, the intelligence offices, the Swedish consul, the Lutheran pastor, were all visited and revisited by Emily, especially since the new inspiration seized her, but none of them knew the address of the housemaid since she left Hillsborough that morning on an outward-bound train. The only rumor of her whereabouts was that vague report, coming from the bakeshop girl, which Dr. Silsby had set out to investigate.
With regard to the Arnolds' coachman, who had driven their carriage on the day of the fire, Emily considered Shagarach to be curiously indifferent. He had promised to subpoena the man for the trial, but that was all. Yet his testimony was crucial, since he must know whether Harry was with his mother in the vehicle.
This was a peculiarity of Shagarach's, in which he differed again from McCausland. Though he prepared his defense with consummate painstaking, when it came his turn to prosecute an unwilling witness, he seemed satisfied to know the truth in his own mind, relying upon his genius to extort a confession during the cross-examination. With a perjurer before him he wielded the lash like a slave-driver, and perhaps he was justified in this case in omitting a rehearsal which would only put the Arnolds on their guard.
But Emily's greatest disappointment came in what seemed to her the one weak point of Robert's defense, the axis around which the entire prosecution revolved. Time and again she had conferred with Shagarach on the subject of her lover's reverie after the deed. To think that he could not remember a face he had seen, an incident, a word spoken, during those four hours—nothing but a vague itinerary of the afternoon, which came out with difficulty each time, and the course of his own meditations, which, to tell the truth, was clear and copious enough, but worthless for the purpose.
At her last visit to the lawyer's home he had entered into this more deeply. Apparently the method of attacking the enigma, which he had hinted at possessing from the very first, was now ripened. For he loaned Emily a ponderous volume on "Diseases of the Memory," and asked her to bring in all the evidence possible showing the mutual affection of nephew and uncle, not failing to wear the water lily from time to time, as he had suggested before. But she was not satisfied with this, and, knowing Robert had visited the park, spent one whole Sunday making a tour of that district, questioning each of the gray-coated policemen.
At last she had found an officer who recollected "something of such a young man as she described." He "couldn't swear to it," but "had an idea he noticed him." In fact, his recollection grew vaguer and vaguer the more they tried to make it specific, and to Emily's chagrin, when they brought him to the jail, he asserted positively that Robert was not the man. This disappointment was sharpened tenfold by her meeting Inspector McCausland, passing out of the corridor, arm in arm with a car conductor.
"I am certain that was my passenger," the conductor was saying. To have her own failure and McCausland's success thus brought into contact accentuated both and gave Emily a miserable day.
The case of the old chemist was not so bad, and besides, was none of Emily's doing. John Davidson, the marshal, had taken up Shagarach's theory of Harry Arnold's guilt with remarkable zeal and had borrowed one of the photographs, so as to see if he could be of use. One day he came in, greatly excited, and asked for the lawyer.
"Got some evidence that'll surprise you, brother," said the marshal.
"Then it must be extraordinary," answered Shagarach.
"What do you think that young rascal did?"
"Who?"
"Arnold. Went to a chemist, a friend of mine, fellow-townsman, too, Phineas Fowler, and bought a big heap of combustible powder, a day or two before the fire. Sprinkled it over the whole room, probably."
"He wasn't so foolish as to leave his name, however?"
"Oh, Phineas knew the photograph. Spotted him right away when I fetched her out. Lucky I took it now, wan't it? 'That's the man,' says Phineas."
"I believe I have your friend's address already," said Shagarach, and in two or three days he was paying a long-delayed visit to Phineas Fowler.
Amid the compound odor of chemicals sat a shriveled pantaloon, with a long, thin beard whose two forks he kept pulling and stroking. Shagarach was about to state his business, when a stranger at the window came forward and interrupted him.
"The young man who bought the combustion powder was identified in jail yesterday," said Inspector McCausland, smiling. "It was only Floyd, on that matter of the bomb."
That matter of the bomb! Perhaps it would be harder to explain than Emily thought.
But McCausland was not always out beating the bush for evidence. Occasionally the mountain went to Mahomet. The reward of $5,000, which Harry Arnold had advertised, drew a dribbling stream of callers to the inspector's office. There was the veiled lady, who had seen the crime with the eyes of her soul, and would accept a small fee for a clairvoyant seance, and the lady with green glasses, whose card announced her as "Phoebe Isinglass, metaphysician." The moderation of her terms could only be accounted for by her scientific interest in the matter. She asked only $1,000 if she proved Floyd insane, $500 if she proved him sane, and $100 (merely as a compensation for her time) if the case baffled her skill.
Prof. I. Noah Little, the conchologist, paid McCausland the honor of a call and even brought his whelk-shell with him. With this occult instrument at his ear he had been known to make the most remarkable prophecies, declaring to gullible girls the names of their future spouses, and even portending the great snowfall of May 21 in the year 1880.
As for suggestions by mail, the office porter's spine grew bent with emptying the waste-basket which received them. Hypnotism was the favorite explanation with a large majority of the correspondents, followed by a somnambulism and various ingenious theories of accident. The pope and the czar were named as authors, and the freemasons were accused in one epistle of a plot to burn up the ocean with some diabolical explosive, to procure which they had all sold their souls to the devil, though what this had to do with the Floyd case was a greater mystery than the fire itself.
Out of all this chaff the inspector sifted a solitary grain. One morning he was joking in the office with Hardy, Johnson and Smith, three of his brothers-in-buttons. Hardy handled sneak-thieves and shoplifters, Johnson swindlers of a higher order, such as confidence men, and Smith the gangs of forgers and counterfeiters. They were all, like McCausland, common-looking men. This enabled them to slouch through life quietly, taking observations by the way.
"Well, Dick," said Johnson, "I hear you've been appointed confessor-general to Col. Mainwaring's sinners."
This was received with a hearty laugh, for they were a jolly four, these men of iron.
"That arson case is a puzzler," put in Smith. "Why didn't you send a bottle of the smoke to Sherlock Holmes?"
"With a blank label," added Johnson, "for the incendiary's name."
"Would he notice such an A B C riddle?" laughed Hardy.
"A lady for Mr. McCausland," announced the mulatto policeman, and the brothers-in-buttons quickly found other business.
She looked so timid and demure, with the blue straw bonnet which framed her sweet face, the red band lettered in gold, "Salvation Army."
Eyes, lifted slowly, of deep, dark blue, and the level brows laid over them for a foil. Beautiful eyes, we male observers say in our rough, generic fashion, but the finer perception of our sisters discriminates more closely. Not the iris alone makes the beauty of eyes. Lashes long and thick, lids of bewitching droop, brows penciled in the bow curve, any of these may be the true feature that starts our exclamation of delight. But in Miss Serena Lamb (as the girl gave her name) nearly all these marks were blended, and they overhung a feature which used to be fashionable and is still, when perfect, divine—the rosebud mouth.
She might well be timid in those surroundings—revolvers and handcuffs to right of her, medals and canes to left; shutter-cutters, winches, chisels, diamond drills, skeleton keys, wax molds, jimmies, screws, in the glass case in front—an elaborate outfit of burglar's tools, the trophies of McCausland's hunting expeditions, for the inspector's specialty was burglary. On one side the portrait of the true Bill Dobbs looked out from the center of a congenial group, and a tiny plush case kept the file made from a watch-spring with which the famous Barney Pease had cut his way to liberty. All this was formidable enough in itself, to say nothing of the huge bloodhound that lay half-asleep, with his jowl on the hearthstone.
"I thought I ought to tell you," said Miss Lamb, modestly, "although it may not be of importance."
"And yet it may," said the inspector, politely. "We often work from the merest trifles."
"It concerns the fire in Prof. Arnold's house."
"Ah!"
"You know our labors often bring sinners back to the fold and many of them insist on unburdening their past misdeeds to us. It is very distressing to hear, but it seems to ease their consciences."
McCausland mentally registered a great broad mark in her favor. She had not begun by asking for the reward.
"One day a young convert of ours came to my house and spent an hour with me. We sung hymns and conversed, and I truly believe he has heard the word. Hosanna! Alleluia!"
McCausland fidgeted a little at these transports, but the sweet face in the blue bonnet kept him respectful.
"I am young," she hardly looked 18, "but I strove earnestly with him that night. Moved by the spirit, he told me a guilty story, which I put aside until reading about your case stirred my memory, and I felt in duty bound to relate it. Alleluia!"
"Proceed, Miss Lamb."
"The young convert had been in his early days a locksmith and a great sinner before the world. One day a stranger proposed to him a reward if he should enter a certain room and open a safe which it contained. The temptation was great and he yielded, for he was poor in the riches of earth, and knew not then of the treasures of heaven. Alleluia! Praise!
"Weakly he consented to accompany the stranger, and on a certain Sunday, during the early hours of evening, suffered himself to be led into the room, where he found himself alone with the stranger. It was the name of this man and the description he gave me of the room which led me afterward to think that his action might have a connection with your case."
"What name?"
"Robert Floyd."
McCausland took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end.
"And how did he describe the room?"
"A library, he said, with a bird cage before one window and a desk in the corner."
"And the safe?"
"He could not open it at first, but tried again and again. Something alarmed them, however, or so I gathered. For you must know his accent was very hard to follow and—and"—(Serena blushed)—"he was very much agitated while he told me. But I gathered that they were interrupted and put off their wicked work."
"I must see this young convert. He may have sinned to good purpose that time."
"There comes the strange part of it. Since he made the confession I have not seen him again. He has not come to our meetings, as he used. Perhaps he has fallen back into the evil ways of the worldly minded. Perhaps the wicked ones have punished him."
"The description is certainly similar," said McCausland, shutting his right eye, so as to fix more keenly on his visitor's face the other, which was the one reputed microscopic in its powers.
"So it seemed to me, reading the papers, which are full of profane sayings, alas! But where sin is there must be the workers in the vineyard."
"I am glad you read them and you did well to come. But—do you know the convert's name? Without some clew, I fear——"
The young girl hesitated awhile, then answered:
"Aronson!"
McCausland started. It was not a common name.
"A young man, you say? And spoke with an accent?"
"Yes, slightly."
"Can it be Shagarach's man?" said McCausland to himself, reaching for the city directory. "There was something shady about his record." Then he rung a bell.
"Have the criminal docket looked up about four years ago for a case against one Aronson—larceny of an overcoat, I believe," he said to the mulatto officer.
"That was all," said Miss Lamb, arising to go.
"One moment," said McCausland, running his forefinger up the directory page. "Was his first name Saul?"
"I don't remember. I remember very little about him."
"'Saul Aronson, law student.' Let's look farther back," said McCausland, restoring the 1895 volume to the shelf; "'94, '93, '92, '91," he drew out the last. "It would be queer," he said to himself, "if Floyd's junior counsel should turn out to be an accomplice."
"Aronson," he read aloud. "Isaac, Jacob, Marks—Saul! 'Saul Aronson, locksmith'!"
This was how Aronson made the acquaintance of Serena Lamb. One day there resounded through the Ghetto (where Aronson lived) the pounding of a violent drum. Tum, tum, tum! Tum, tum, tum! Tumtyty, Tumtyty! Tum, tum, tum! And every now and then its bass companion marked the ictuses with a cavernous "Boom!" Then Moses and Samuel ceased their buying and selling for a few moments and the coats, vests and trousers which draped their window-fronts swung idly in the wind. And the little Samuels swarmed from their hiding-places till both curbstones were fringed two deep with humanity, eying the musical invaders. For the notes of the bugle burst out after this percussion prelude and a mixed choir of voices lifted a strange refrain.
Motley singers they were! Shabbily dressed men, with exaltation in their faces, and women of all ages and types, uniform only in their costumes. Raising the song, they clapped their hands together, like bacchants or chorybantes dashing cymbal on cymbal in the ecstasy of the dance. But such bacchants! Bacchants in blue bonnets, like grandmother's sundown! Bacchants with pure faces of undefiled girlhood! Bacchants with crone-faces all wrinkled and yellow! And away at the rear, chanting with might and main, though bent nearly double under the bass-drum which rested on his back, proudly marched Pineapple Jupiter.
Frowns gathered on the foreheads of Moses and Samuel when the import of this procession became clear, and many a portly Rachel clucked warningly to her brood. But youth is frivolous and inquisitive even in Israel; so the square was jammed with onlookers when the army set up its standard in the very heart of the Ghetto. True, not all these were children of the tribe. The slurred consonants of the Italian, vainly trying to smooth and liquefy our rugged tongue, were heard; the muffled nasals of the Portuguese; the virile drawl of the Celt; and a youthful accent which seemed to be a resultant of all this polyglot mixture. And to these others also the army was an abomination even as to Samuel and Moses.
Therefore, when the music ceased and the army formed in a wide ring with hands joined sisterly and brotherly, a great pandemonium took up and prolonged the last note of the dying bugle. The cock crew, the cat called and the bulldog barked at these devoted soldiers. But they only blessed their enemies and danced round and round as if rejoicing at persecution. Whereat the multitude fringing their circle danced with them, too, and staid Saul Aronson, who was passing, found himself whirled perforce in a maelstrom of larking boys, full-grown hoodlums and petticoated hobbledehoys.
When the first sister stepped forth to give her "testimony" the face beneath her bonnet compelled silence. Her voice was gentle, her figure petite. Her eyebrows lay across her forehead straight and dark, and she spoke from a rosebud mouth. No wonder the nearest onlookers leaned forward and the idlers on the outskirts inclined their heads to one side and hollowed their hands at their ears so as to catch the utterance which promised so fairly to their eyes.
To Saul Aronson it was a vision of paradise. The lashes of her modestly drooped eyes lay in dark half-moons on her cheek, but once when she lifted them a blue light seemed to flash down into his very heart; and that organ, amorphous before, grew suddenly crystal—a great blood-red ruby which he longed to lay at her feet. This was what she said, this lily of the morass:
"I give thanks to the Lord,"—her utterance was slow, her shrill voice pierced the stillness, "that He has led me away from my sins."
"Alleluia!" murmured the chorus.
"That He has poured into my heart the grace of His love and made manifest the wonder of His works. Are ye weary, sinners, weary of the way ye tread? Oh, come to the true way, where ye shall find life and light and joy and peace, as I have found it."
"Bress de name ob de Lord!" said Pineapple Jupiter, loudly. Whereat several tittered and a discreet sister whispered "Hush!"
"It is not to-day for which we live or the things of to-day—not for bread, or for gold, or for fame, which are perishable things. Not for to-day nor for to-morrow should we strive, but for eternity! Not for the approval of men, but of Him who is the just Judge everlasting. Holy! Holy! Holy!"
"Alleluia!" murmured the chorus.
"It is written in the word, which cannot lie, that the keys of the kingdom are given to Peter. Therefore, when ye go forth to the labor of your days, ask yourselves not what will men say, but what will Peter say when I knock at the golden door for admittance. Will he welcome me as a true child or will he spurn me to the outer darkness? Ask yourselves this, oh, sinners, each and all. What will Peter say, Joseph? What will Peter say, John? What will Peter say, Christian soul?"
This conclusion seemed to be the refrain of a hymn which the circle took up:
The trombone here drew forth a sepulchral note, representing, no doubt, the trump of doom, and Saul Aronson could almost feel its vibrations in the earth beneath him. He could have pummeled the irreverent knot of gamins who mimicked it grotesquely. Such courage, such loveliness, such sincerity, imposed reverence even for opposite opinions. Never before had he seen their performance in such a light as now. For performance it was. One after another of the brethren stepped into the circle and recited "testimony" to the jeering crowd around. Each testimony was followed by a hymn, in regular alternation. Not even the curiosity about the different sisters and brothers could prevent this evangel from becoming monotonous. So the captain varied it with more and more ecstatic exhibitions.
"Volunteers to clap hands!" he would call and four or five brothers jumped into the middle, clapping hands to the verses of a simple hymn, repeated ten or fifteen times. Brisker and brisker the tempo became, till the captain and his volunteers found themselves galloping around the ring, with sweet bonneted faces eagerly chanting their accompaniment. Aronson marveled but he did not sneer. For his gaze was on the rosebud mouth, whose "Alleluias" (adapted from his own liturgy, he knew) seemed to him the sweetest music mortal throat ever gave forth, the distilled honey of sound.
After more than an hour of such missionary effort, the captain called for a show of converts. "Hands up, all that have the love of the Lord in their hearts!"
Two seafaring men and a darky had the courage to show their palms, and they were standing very near the circle.
"How many souls love Jesus who died on the cross?"
Aronson, still at his post, felt a traitorous gladness when a dozen more of the crowd gave the signal of assent. This meager harvest of souls was the result of their labors. Then Pineapple Jupiter again bent his back under the heavy bass-drum, and the army reformed. Tumtyty, tum! Tumtyty, tum! Tumtyty, tumtyty, boom! The ringing bugle revived the languishing interest of the mob. One Jew of the Jews followed the music for nearly a mile. When he finally fell to the rear the rosebud mouth was still singing:
and he felt as if a great light had come to him and then vanished again, leaving a deeper darkness than ever.
Next morning he awoke with a rapid pulse. "What will Peter say, Aronson?" he asked as he drew on his garments, and when he sat down to copy a brief for Shagarach, "What will Peter say, Aronson?" the question again recurred. Strangely enough, it always took the clear, shrill accent of the girl. "What will Peter say, Aronson?" was the prayer for success he offered, when a week later, he mustered up courage to cross the mission threshold and ask Jupiter her name.
From that day Saul Aronson was an altered youth. The least beat of a drum in the Ghetto found him ready to quit dinner or company or work and fly out of the house with a hasty snatch at his hat in the entry.
Sometimes he returned with a rueful look and then his mother knew it was only the Garibaldi guard parading. But at other times it was a subject of remark how long he stayed and how moody he returned.
There was a family living in the rear of the Aronsons, with a divine little 8-year-old girl. Saul knew she was divine, although he had never seen anything but the back of her head. For at noontime when he came to dinner, or in the evening when he returned from work, she would be sitting in the swing her father had built for her, with her back toward him—swinging, singing, in blissful ignorance of the eyes that doted on her through the slats of Saul Aronson's blinds. She had one song of "the Savior" which she delighted to croon. Her voice was like that of a fledgling lark and her carols were made sweet with little improvised turns which often threatened to fail but always came out true—so sure was the child-singer's instinct, feeling the way before her. Nothing reminded him of Serena so much as this earthly angel, and he loved her for the image she called up.
Serena always looked at him. That is to say, her blue eyes pierced him through, accused him, reproved him, every time they were lifted toward the onlookers. But it was not until the day he raised his hand among the converts that she noted down his face for remembrance. He knew its features were not fascinating, especially the red mustache that bristled out horizontally from his lips, with the ends trimmed off as clean as a scrubbing-brush. But no one else, he felt sure, could worship her with such reverent adoration; and now she had deigned to notice him. What if Simon Rabofsky scowled at his raising his hand? Not "What will Simon Rabofsky say?" but "What will Peter say, Aronson?" was the question of questions. But I fear Peter was confused somewhat oddly in Saul's mind with the possessor of a certain rosebud mouth.
One night Aronson dreamed of Serena Lamb as his bride and the next morning announced his conversion to Pineapple Jupiter, at the same time asking for an introduction to blue eyes.
Saul Aronson was not the only person who found pleasure in the company of Miss Lamb. There were others, with eyes not glamoured by any golden mist of love, who would have found it hard to select an adjective strong enough to express their approbation of the petite devotee. About a year before she had come down from the country to be a companion to her aunt, Mrs. Wolfe, who had just lost her husband.
Mrs. Wolfe (according to neighbors' gossip) had been no more than a moderately loving wife, but she made a devoted widow. She had the waist of a wasp and a temper to match it. Her frame was angular, and her disposition, too, revealed shoulder blades and elbows. If she loved anything in this world it was her marbled cat, which was hated by every boarder in the house, and a pariah among its tribe. From constant visiting of her husband's grave her manners had assumed a cast which would have been appropriate to a cemetery, but was most depressing in everyday converse. Even her smile had something acrid about it, like a shopworn lemon, and the acidity of her scowl would have reddened blue litmus paper.
People wondered why her niece, such a tender little body, should be doomed to the martyrdom of waiting upon "Old Tabby Wolfe and her boarders." Mrs. Gubbins, who was the landlady's most intimate crony—probably because among her other virtues she had a keen sense of the doleful—spread the report that Serena would inherit her aunt's property, and that her own mother, Mrs. Wolfe's sister, had had an eye to this when she parted with the eldest of her household. However that might be, the girl put up patiently with all the widow's quirks and oddities; entered into religious work enthusiastically, and in six months had rubbed off the slight rusticity with which eighteen years of choring on a farm, before she came down to the city, had touched her accent and manner.
There were hardly any traces of kinship between aunt and niece. To be sure, Serena had the slenderest slip of a waist that nature ever fashioned, and just the least suggestion of cheek bones, too, which were not at all disagreeable, however. When occasion demanded, she could give a sharp order, much as she may have rebuked Spot and Bossy for switching when she milked them in the cowshed at home. But to the boarders these bursts of impatience only gave their sweet waitress a piquancy like the tartness of the full-ripe strawberry.
With them she was a general favorite. They used to declare that she put yeast in their beds, for they were like pans of dough, feathery and white, when she made them of a morning; and Serena, spinning the pie-plates round, scalloping the edges of the crust with a four-tined fork, or knitting in the sitting-room from a ball of pink yarn that danced on the carpet as she unraveled it, was a spectacle of domesticity at which they never tired of gazing. Yet her dignity, which was far beyond her years, prevented their making her a plaything. Though cordial, she was very reserved. Young ladies called her set; young men, seraphic but cold.
You may imagine how Aronson's heart hopped in his bosom when Jupiter presented him to this goddess.
"I have seen you at our meetings, Mr. Aronson," she graciously observed. She had noticed him, then. He knew it before, but the assurance from her lips gave him measureless joy. But this joy swelled to rapture inexpressible, such as only the saints in the ninth heaven and happy lovers on earth are privileged to know, when she invited him to call upon her and pressed his hand a second time on bidding him adieu. The thrill of her fingertips did not die out all that day; but it was a week again (for Aronson was a bashful youth) before he presumed to accept her invitation.
His mother marveled why Saul furbished himself up so carefully that evening. He had risen from the supper table prematurely and spent exactly fifty-five minutes smoothing his hair, tidying his cravat and drawing on his new pair of gloves. When he went out, instead of soliciting admiration for this array, he seemed to avoid it.
As he drew toward the mansion whose door-plate still bore the name of the departed Ephraim Wolfe, an unwelcome surprise met Aronson. There in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall lamp, was the form which he knew to be Serena's. She was admitting a visitor—a youth. The door quickly closed and a rosy light came through the tinted curtains behind. But Aronson's spirits had sunk, his resolution departed. Instead of crossing the street, as he had planned to, and ringing the bell, with a little speech of greeting all prepared, he walked on to the next corner and irresolutely turned back.
This time a shadow fell on the white curtain of the front room. It was Serena rocking herself placidly in the rocking-chair. Every forward inclination brought her sweet profile into view, every backward one removed it. Her lips moved. She was conversing, doubtless, with the youth whose stolid shadow occupied the center of the opposite curtain. Eight times Saul Aronson passed and repassed that house-front before he could tear himself away and return home to divest himself downheartedly of all his finery.
Two days later, however, he saw Serena again; and she renewed the invitation. This time, when he approached, there was no hostile youth at the door. Serena herself admitted him to the portals of the paradise which she inhabited in common with Mrs. Wolfe and the seven boarders, and 10 o'clock had long ceased striking when, incoherent with ecstasy, Saul Aronson uttered his last lingering doorstep adieu and promised to return.
He never returned. As she informed Inspector McCausland, Serena had never looked on that lovelorn visage again.
This was how he came to break his promise: One Sunday afternoon a messenger came to the Aronson door with a request from Simon Rabofsky that Saul should favor him with a visit. The young man had misgivings, but he dared not disobey.
Up a squalid flight, into a dingy back room, Aronson took his way reluctantly. The clamor of voices died when he crossed the threshold and six pairs of inimical eyes, he thought, were lifted to his face. At a table in the midst sat Rabofsky, his yellowish earlocks dangling beneath his skull-cap and a great book spread open before him.
"Peace be with you, Saul Aronson," he said in the jargon.
"The angel Dumah spare you, Simon Rabofsky," answered Aronson.
"I rejoice to see that you have not forgotten the holy salutations."
The twelve eyes sharpened their glances at Aronson and he knew the ordeal was come. They were six of the strictest in the congregation, from old Silberstein, who sat on the left of the ark and led the recitation of the eighteen psalms of a morning, to young Cohen, the Jewish butcher, a zealot of zealots, than whom none more devoutly beat his bosom in prayer or observed the allotted holy days.
"Brother Silberstein was just proposing that your place in the synagogue be disposed of. It is a pity to see a seat vacant, when so many must stand. But I bade him not be hasty, for perhaps you had been ill of late."
"Why play the innocent, Simon Rabofsky," broke in Cohen, "when you know as well as we that he has been consorting with the gentiles?"
"It is because I am loath to believe it," answered Rabofsky, in a sorrowful tone, as if rebuking Cohen. "I am loath to believe one of Isaac Aronson's household would turn away to bow before the idols of Babylon."
"Is it forbidden to search for wisdom?" said Aronson.
"You do not search for it in the book where it is found," said Rabofsky, laying his finger on the book before him. It was printed in Semitic characters, but the language was the jargon, for Rabofsky was no master of Hebrew and Aramaic, "the divine talmud, which our fathers have preserved through their hundred persecutions."
"But its wisdom is obscure," answered Aronson.
"Are there not doctors to explain those parts which are dark?" rejoined Rabofsky. "And behold, in this edition, which a Hebrew so enlightened as Saul Aronson should possess, are not all the lengthy passages shortened and the unnecessary omitted by the labors of that light of Israel, born at Cordova, Moses ben Maimon, whom the gentiles miscall Maimonides?"
"Why plead with the apostate?" cried Silberstein, angrily. "He is no longer a Jew. He toileth on the Sabbath. He goeth not down to the waterside to lament."
"It is false," said Aronson, hotly.
"I said so," nodded Rabofsky.
"Who are you to reprove me, Simon Rabofsky," continued Aronson, "because I cannot lie idle two days in the week? Do you rest from your money-getting on the Sabbath? I think your wife, Rebecca, could answer me that. Did I not see her selling jewels to a Christian on the seventh day of this very week?"
"It is written," answered Rabofsky, his steel-blue eyes contracting, "that the high priests in the hour of necessity made food of the bread of the tabernacle. So saith the holy book," he laid his finger again on the page, "which Jehovah hath covered with the wings of His protection so that torches could not destroy it. Behold it has arisen from a thousand burnings uncharred!"
All the Hebrews plucked their garments and with bowed heads muttered a prayer, in which Aronson found himself joining.
"Too many of our youth are beguiled by the flatteries of the gentiles," continued Rabofsky, not unwilling to divert the conversation.
"But such are only the lax ones, who worship no God," said Cohen. "Few grovel before idols, like this one."
"And hath Saul Aronson done this?" asked Rabofsky, as if in surprise.
"Did you not see him yourself at the gentile ceremony raising his hands?"
"You wrong the Christians," protested Aronson. "They are not all cruel and there is much sweetness of love in their doctrine."
"Not cruel!" rejoined Cohen. "How have they not poured out our blood in the ages!"
"Jehovah hath stored it up," added a gentler voice, piteously. It was Abraham Barentzen, the patriarch of the colony, who had not spoken before, but kept looking at the backslider kindly, as if more in sorrow than bitterness.
"Sweetness of love!" cried Silberstein. "Love indeed and enough. How they love each other! Sect embracing sect! Pah!"
"They hate us; they mock us, and our children court them," droned another in a minor key.
"They call us cheats and usurers," cried Cohen, "because we make wealth out of the waste they cast away."
"Psh!" said old Barentzen, raising his hands. "Be just. Those are only the few."
"Perhaps it is some gentle girl that is tempting Saul Aronson, even as the Philistine women of old weakened the faith of Samson," said Rabofsky, keenly.
"Are there not black-eyed daughters of Israel," cried old Barentzen, mild-voiced and reproving, "who will make him a home? If he wants a wife comely, buxom, well-dowered, modest, a good housekeeper and free from tittle-tattle, are there not such by scores in the neighborhood?"
"I fear it is Meyer Shagarach's doing," murmured Silberstein.
"Not so," spoke Cohen, sharply. Though young, he seemed a leader. "Shagarach is lost to the fold of Israel, but does he chant with cracked voice out of a tattered hymn-book? Pretty soon we shall see Saul Aronson shivering in the waters of baptism, and then he will change his name to Paul, like that other traitor, the fire-brand of Tarsus?"
"Traitor yourself!" cried Aronson, stung by Cohen's irony.
The word has terrible force in Israel. The whole past of the race is vivid in the minds of the wanderers, and recollection of its sorrows makes a bond so strong that no temptation can break it. Aronson paused to think. The dim traditions, all tears and fire and blood—the exodus from Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, the burning of Jerusalem, the dispersion, the persecutions without number—could he forget all those, snapping ties so sacred?
"After all, I think Saul Aronson's heart is not with the gentiles," said old Barentzen, in a soothing voice. "Would he rather be buried when he dies under some idolatrous mound stuck with the symbol of him whom Judas righteously delivered——"
"There never was such a Nazarene," broke in Cohen impetuously. "It is all a fable and the text in Josephus was written in by the gentiles."
"I say the Christ was real and rightly condemned as a creator of sedition," said Rabofsky, with authoritative pomp. Like the misers of every race, he was both devotee and formalist.
"He is not mentioned in the talmud," argued Cohen. "Nor elsewhere, until the history of our race crosses the history of the pagans. It is all an invention."
Thereupon the two zealots wrangled and jangled till Aronson's ears ached. But his mind was dwelling upon old Barentzen's saying and sadly acknowledging its truth. His heart was not really with the Christians. What did he know of their teachings? He had been given a bible, but it was locked in his office drawer, unread. Besides, these were deep questions. Who was he to dispute the great doctors, like Moses ben Maimon?
"So be it, obstinate youth," said Rabofsky at last, waving his hands to end the discussion.
"I had begun to ask Saul Aronson a question," resumed Barentzen, in a tone of rebuke. "Would you not rather lie like your fathers with the shards on your eyelids and a handful of earth from the land of Israel thrown over your resting-place?"
Aronson hung his head.
"Enough of this pleading and coaxing," snarled Cohen. "He is stiff-necked, I see. I will put his name with the other traitors. There are twenty in all. They shall be published in the next issue."
"Stay," said Aronson.
"On the first page," said Silberstein. "And the first page shall be hung outward in my store window."
"That the very children may know them for apostates and greedy hypocrites," added Rabofsky, to clinch the threat.
"Hold," cried Aronson. He foresaw the fatal result of his misstep. He could hear the storm rising around him; the clamor of children on the streets, the pointed fingers of men and women, the ironical comments from the doorstep groups when he passed, the sly digs at the supper table, the estranged glances of his mother. "It is all wrong," he cried.
"Then, why do you haunt the gentile mountebanks?" asked Cohen, seizing his sleeve.
"Fangled like a fop!" said Silberstein, catching his lapel.
"And shun the blessed synagogue?" added another, fumbling at his vest buttons.
"Are you a gentile or a Jew?" questioned Rabofsky, as chief inquisitor.
"I am a Jew!" cried Aronson, in honest wrath, tousled and clapperclawed until his patience had given away. Then he rushed from the room.
The list of "traitors" appeared in the Jewish Messenger without Saul Aronson's name. The old, old conflict between love and honor had ended with another defeat for the imperious boy-god. But it is no discredit to Serena Lamb that her influence yielded to a passion which is hardly second to any in the world for intensity—the Israelite's devotion to his race. All that she retained of the young convert from whom so much had been expected was a confused memory of the conversation in her sitting-room. What had Aronson told her in his agitation during that confidential interview? It would seem that he had been too frank. At least, for several weeks after Serena's visit to McCausland, he was strangely conscious that some one was dogging his footsteps, both at home and about the office. Naturally, he ascribed this espionage to the sacred brotherhood, whose power is great in Israel, and, fearing their vigilance, redoubled his evening invocations and waxed regular in his attendance at the synagogue.