Stories by Foreign Authors: German Volume II Part 4

Viola turned away. There was a painful silence, and then she looked up at her brother again. Her face was aglow, her eyes sparkled with a strange fire; she was trembling with agitation. Never before had Ephraim seen her thus.

"Ephraim, my brother," she commenced, in that measured monotone so peculiar to intense emotion, "with the bird you can do as you please.

You can set it free, or, if you like, you can wring its neck. But as for him, I'll never look in his face again, from me he shall not have a word of welcome. He broke our mother's heart ... our good, good mother; he has dishonored himself and us. And I can never forget it."

"Is it right for a child to talk like that of her own father?" said Ephraim in a tremulous voice.

"When a child has good cause to be ashamed of her own father!" cried Viola.

"Oh, my Viola, you must have forgotten dear mother's dying words. Don't you remember, as she opened her eyes for the last time, how she gathered up her failing strength, and raising herself in her bed, 'Children,' she said, 'my memory will protect you both, yea, and your father too.'

Viola, have you forgotten?"

Had you entered that little room an hour later, a touching sight would have met your eyes. Viola was seated on her brother's knee, her arms round his neck, whilst Ephraim with the gentle love of a brother for a younger sister, was stroking her hair, and whispering in her ear sweet words of solace.

The bird-cage was empty. ... That evening Ephraim sat up till midnight.

Outside in the Ghetto reigned the stillness of night.

All at once Ephraim rose from his chair, walked to the old bureau which stood near the door, opened it, and took from it a bulky volume, which he laid upon the table in front of him. But he did not seem at all bent upon reading. He began fingering the pages, until he came upon a bundle of bank-notes, and these he proceeded to count, with a whispering movement of his lips. He had but three or four more notes still to count, when his sharp ear detected the sound of stealthy footsteps, in the little courtyard in front of the house. Closing the book, and hastily putting it back again in the old bureau, Ephraim sprang to the window and opened it.

"Is that you, father?" he cried.

There was no answer.

Ephraim repeated his question.

He strained his eyes, peering into the dense darkness, but no living thing could he see. Then quite close to him a voice cried: "Make no noise ... and first put out the light."

"Heavens! Father, it is you then...!" Ephraim exclaimed.

"Hus.h.!.+" came in a whisper from without, "first put out the light."

Ephraim closed the window, and extinguished the light. Then, with almost inaudible step, he walked out of the room into the dark pa.s.sage; noiselessly he proceeded to unbolt the street-door. Almost at the same moment a heavy hand clasped his own.

"Father, father!" Ephraim cried, trying to raise his parent's hand to his lips.

"Make no noise," the man repeated, in a somewhat commanding tone.

With his father's hand in his, cautiously feeling his way, Ephraim led him into the room. In the room adjoining lay Viola, sleeping peacefully.

Time was when "Wild" Ascher's welcome home had been far otherwise.

Eighteen years before, upon that very threshold which he now crossed with halting, stealthy steps, as of a thief in the night, stood a fair and loving wife, holding a st.u.r.dy lad aloft in her arms, so that the father might at once see, as he turned the street corner, that wife and child were well and happy. Not another Ghetto in all Bohemia could show a handsomer and happier couple than Ascher and his wife. "Wild" Ascher was one of those intrepid, venturesome spirits, to whom no obstacle is so great that it cannot be surmounted. And the success which crowned his long, persistent wooing was often cited as striking testimony to his indomitable will. Gudule was famous throughout the Ghetto as "the girl with the wonderful eyes," eyes--so the saying ran--into which no man could look and think of evil. During the earlier years of their married life those unfathomable brown eyes exercised on Ascher the full power of their fascination. A time came, however, when he alleged that those very eyes had been the cause of all his ruin.

Gudule's birthplace was far removed from the Ghetto, where Ascher had first seen the light. Her father was a wealthy farmer in a secluded village in Lower Bohemia. But distant though it was from the nearest town of any importance, the solitary grange became the centre of attraction to all the young swains far and near. But there was none who found favor in Gudule's eyes save "Wild Ascher," in spite of many a friendly warning to beware of him. One day, just before the betrothal of the young people, an anonymous letter was delivered at the grange.

The writer, who called himself an old friend, entreated the farmer to prevent his dear child from becoming the wife of one who was suspected of being a gambler. The farmer was of an easy-going, indulgent nature, shunning care and anxiety as a very plague. Accordingly, no sooner had he read the anonymous missive than he handed it to his daughter, as though its contents were no concern of his.

When Gudule had read the letter to the end, she merely remarked: "Father, this concerns me, and n.o.body else."

And so the matter dropped.

Not until the wedding-day, half an hour before the ceremony, when the marriage canopy had already been erected in the courtyard, did the farmer sum up courage to revert to the warning of the unknown letter-writer. Taking his future son-in-law aside, he said:

"Ascher, is it true that you gamble?"

"Father," Ascher answered with equal firmness, "Gudule's eyes will save me!" Ascher had uttered no untruth when he gave his father-in-law this a.s.surance. He spoke in all earnestness, for like every one else he knew the magnetic power of Gudule's eyes.

Nowhere, probably, does the grim, consuming pestilence of gaming claim more victims than in the Ghetto. The ravages of drink and debauchery are slight indeed; but the tortuous streets can show too many a humble home haunted by the spectres of ruin and misery which stalked across the threshold when the FIRST CARD GAME was played.

It was with almost feverish anxiety that the eyes of the Ghetto were fixed upon the development of a character like Ascher's; they followed his every step with the closest attention. Long experience had taught the Ghetto that no gambler could be trusted.

As though conscious that all eyes were upon him, Ascher showed himself most punctilious in the discharge of even the minutest of communal duties which devolved upon him as a denizen of the Ghetto, and his habits of life were almost ostentatiously regular and decorous. His business had prospered, and Gudule had borne him a son.

"Well, Gudule, my child," the farmer asked his daughter on the day when his grandson was received into the covenant of Abraham,--"well, Gudule, was the letter right?"

"What letter?" asked Gudule.

"That in which your husband was called a gambler."

"And can you still give a thought to such a letter?" was Gudule's significant reply.

Three years later, Gudule's father came to visit her. This time she showed him his second grandchild, her little Viola. He kissed the children, and round little Viola's neck clasped three rows of pearls, "that the child may know it had a grandfather once."

"And where are your pearls, Gudule?" he asked, "those left you by your mother,--may she rest in peace! She always set such store by them."

"Those, father?" Gudule replied, turning pale; "oh, my husband has taken them to a goldsmith in Prague. They require a new clasp."

"I see," remarked her father. Notwithstanding his limited powers of observation, it did not escape the old man's eyes that Gudule looked alarmingly wan and emaciated. He saw it, and it grieved his very soul.

He said nothing however: only, when leaving, and after he had kissed the Mezuza [Footnote: Small cylinder inclosing a roll of parchment inscribed with the Hebrew word Shadai (Almighty) and with other texts, which is affixed to the lintel of every Jewish house.], he said to Gudule (who, with little Viola in her arms, went with him to the door), in a voice quivering with suppressed emotion: "Gudule, my child, the pearl necklet which I have given your little Viola has a clasp strong enough to last a hundred years ... you need never, therefore, give it to your husband to have a new clasp made for it." And without bestowing another glance upon his child the easy-going man left the house. It was his last visit.

Within the year Gudule received a letter from her eldest brother telling her that their father was dead, and that she would have to keep the week of mourning for him. Ever since his last visit to her--her brother wrote--the old man had been somewhat ailing, but knowing his vigorous const.i.tution, they had paid little heed to his complaints. It was only during the last few weeks that a marked loss of strength had been noticed. This was followed by fever and delirium. Whenever he was asked whether he would not like to see Gudule, his only answer was: "She must not give away the clasp of little Viola's necklet." And but an hour before his death, he raised his voice, and loudly called for "the letter." n.o.body knew what letter. "Gudule knows where it is," he said, with a gentle shake of his head. Those were the last words he spoke.

Had the old man's eyes deceived him on the occasion of his last visit to his son-in-law's house? No! For, setting aside the incident of the missing pearls, the whole Ghetto could long since have told him that the warning of the anonymous letter was not unfounded--for Gudule was the wife of a gambler.

With the resistless impetuosity of a torrent released from its prison of ice and snow, the old invincible disease had again overwhelmed its victim. Gudule noticed the first signs of it when one day her husband returned home from one of his business journeys earlier than he had arranged. Gudule had not expected him.

"Why did you not come to meet me with the children?" he cried peevishly; "do you begrudge me even that pleasure?"

"_I_ begrudge you a pleasure?" Gudule ventured to remark, as she raised her swimming eyes to his face.

"Why do you look at me so tearfully?" he almost shouted.

Ascher loved his wife, and when he saw the effect which his rough words had produced, he tenderly embraced her. "Am I not right, Gudule?" he said, "after a man has been working and slaving the livelong week, don't you think he looks forward with longing eyes for his dear children to welcome him at his door?"

At that moment Gudule felt the long latent suspicion revive in her that her husband was not speaking the truth. As if written in characters of fire, the words of that letter now came back to her memory; she knew now what was the fate that awaited her and her children.

Thenceforward, all the characteristic tokens of a gambler's life, all the vicissitudes which attend his unholy calling, followed close upon each other in grim succession. Most marked was the disturbance which his mental equilibrium was undergoing. Fits of gloomy despondency were succeeded, with alarming rapidity, by periods of tumultuous exaltation.

One moment it would seem as though Gudule and the children were to him the living embodiment of all that was precious and lovable, whilst at other times he would regard them with sullen indifference. It soon became evident to Gudule that her husband's affairs were in a very bad way, for her house-keeping allowance no longer came to her with its wonted regularity. But what grieved and alarmed her most, was the fact that Ascher was openly neglecting every one of his religious duties. To return home late on Friday night, long after sunset had ushered in the Sabbath, was now a common practice. Once even it happened, that with his clothes covered with dust, he came home from one of his business tours on a Sabbath morning, when the people in holiday attire were wending their way to the synagogue.

Nevertheless, not a sound of complaint escaped Gudule's lips. Hers was one of those proud, sensitive natures, such as are to be met with among all cla.s.ses and amid all circ.u.mstances of life, in Ghetto and in secluded village, no less than among the most favored ones of the earth.

Had she not cast to the winds the well-intentioned counsel given her in that unsigned letter? Why then should she complain and lament, now that the seed had borne fruit? She shrank from alluding before her husband to the pa.s.sion which day by day, nay, hour by hour, tightened its hold upon him. She would have died sooner than permit the word "gambler" to pa.s.s her lips. Besides, did not her eyes tell Ascher what she suffered?

Those very eyes were, according to Ascher, the cause of his rapid journey along the road to ruin.