In League with Israel Part 6

His mother, with a woman's tact, sent the pictures of all the family, whom he had not seen for several years. Their faces called up so many happy memories of the past that they pleaded more eloquently than words.

It was a sweet, loving letter she wrote to her boy, reminding him of all they had been to each other, and begging him for her sake to come back to the old faith. But right at the last she wrote: "If you insist on clinging to this false Christ, whom we have taught you to despise, the heart of your father and of your mother must be closed against you, and you must be thrust out from us forever with our curse upon you."

He knew it was the custom. He had been present once when the awful anathema was hurled at a traitor to the faith, withdrawing every right from the outlaw, living or dead. He knew that his grave would be dug in the Jewish cemetery in Baltimore; that the rabbi would read the rites of burial over his empty coffin, and that henceforth his only part in the family life would be the blot of his disgraceful memory.

He spread the pictures and the letters on the desk before him. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead, as he realized the hopelessness of the alternative offered him. One by one he took up the photographs of his brothers and sisters, looked at them long and fondly, and laid them aside; then his father's, with its strong, proud face. He put that away, too.

At last he picked up his mother's picture. She looked straight out at him, with such a world of loving tenderness in the smiling eyes, with such trustful devotion, as if she knew he could not resist the appeal, that he turned away his head. The trial seemed greater than he could bear. He was trembling with the force of it. Then he looked again into the dear, patient face, till his eyes grew too dim to see. It was the same old mother who had nursed him, who had loved him, who had borne with his waywardness and forgiven him always. He seemed to feel the soft touch of her lips on his forehead as she bent over to give him a goodnight kiss. All that she had ever done for him came rus.h.i.+ng through his memory so overwhelmingly that he broke down utterly, and began to sob like a child. "O, I can't give her up," he groaned. "My dear old mother! I can't grieve her so!"

All that morning he clung to her picture, sometimes walking the floor in his agony, sometimes falling on his knees to pray. "G.o.d in heaven have pity," he cried. "That a man should have to choose between his mother and his Christ!" At last he rose, and, with one more long look at the picture, laid it reverently away with shaking hands. He had surrendered everything.

He did not tell all this to his sympathizing listeners. They could read part of the pathos of that struggle in his face, part in the voice that trembled occasionally, despite his strong effort to control it.

Frank Marion's thoughts went back to his own gentle mother in the old homestead among the green hills of Kentucky. As he thought of the great pillar of strength her unfaltering faith had been to him, of how from boyhood it had upheld and comforted and encouraged him, of how much he had always depended upon her love and her prayers, his sympathies were stirred to their depths. He reached out and took Lessing's hand in his strong grasp.

"G.o.d help you, brother!" he said, fervently.

Bethany turned her head aside, and looked away into the hazy distances.

She knew what it meant to feel the breaking of every tie that bound her best beloved to her. She knew what it was to have only pictured faces to look into, and lay away with the pain of pa.s.sionate longing. The question flashed into her mind, could she have made the voluntary surrender that he had made? She put it from her with a throb of shame that she was glad that she had not been so tested.

Some acquaintance of Mr. Marion, pa.s.sing down the steps, recognized him, and called back:

"What time does your speech come on the program, Frank? I understand you are to hold forth to-day."

Mr. Marion hastily excused himself for a moment, to speak to his friend.

Bethany sat silent, thinking intently, while she drew unmeaning dots and dashes over the cover of her note-book.

Mr. Lessing turned to her abruptly. "Did you ever speak to a Jew about your Savior?" he asked, with such startling directness, that Bethany was confused.

"No," she said, hesitatingly.

"Why?" he asked.

He was looking at her with a penetrating gaze that seemed to read her thoughts.

"Really," she answered, "I have never considered the question. I am not very well acquainted with any, for one reason; besides, I would have felt that I was treading on forbidden grounds to speak to a Jew about religion. They have always seemed to me to be so intrenched in their beliefs, so proof against argument, that it would be both a useless and thankless undertaking."

"They may seem invulnerable to arguments," he answered, "but n.o.body is proof against a warm, personal interest. Ah, Miss Hallam, it seems a terrible thing to me. The Church will make sacrifices, will cross the seas, will overcome almost any obstacle to send the gospel to China or to Africa, anywhere but to the Jews at their elbows. O, of course, I know there are a few Hebrew missions, scattered here and there through the large cities, and a few earnest souls are devoting their entire energy to the work. But suppose every Christian in the country became an evangel to the little community of Jews within the radius of his influence. Suppose a practical, prayerful, individual effort were made to show them Christ, with the same zeal you expend in sending 'the old story' to the Hottentots. What would be the result? O, if I had waited for a grown person to speak to me about it, I might have waited until the day of my death. I was restless. I was dissatisfied. I felt that I needed something more than my creed could give me. For what is Judaism now? I read an answer not long ago: 'A religion of sacrifice, to which, for eighteen centuries, no sacrifice has been possible; a religion of the Pa.s.sover and the Day of Atonement, on which, for well-nigh two millenniums, no lamb has been slain and no atonement offered; a sacerdotal religion, with only the shadow of a priesthood; a religion of a temple which has no temple more; its altar is quenched, its ashes scattered, no longer kindling any enthusiasm, nor kindled by any hope.'[A] No man ever took me by the hand and told me about the peace I have now. No man ever shared with me his hope, or pointed out the way for me to find it. If it had not been for the blessed guiding influence of a little child, my hungry heart might still be crying out unsatisfied."

He went on to repeat several conversations he had had with men of his own race, to show her how this indifference of Christians was reckoned against them as a glaring inconsistency by the Jews. Almost as if some one had spoken the words to her, she seemed to hear the condemnation, "I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat. I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me not in. Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not to me."

Strange as it may seem, Bethany's interpretation of that Scripture had always been in a temporal sense. More than once, when a child, she had watched her mother feed some poor beggar, with the virtuous feeling that that condemnation could not apply to the Hallam family. But now Lessing's impa.s.sioned appeal had awakened a different thought. Who so hungered as those who, reaching out for bread, grasped either the stones of a formal ritualism or the abandoned hope of prophecy unfulfilled? Who such "strangers within the gates" of the nations as this race without a country? From the brick-kilns of Pharaoh to the willows of Babylon, from the Ghetto of Rome to the f.a.got-fires along the Rhine, from Spanish cruelties to English extortions, they had been driven--exiles and aliens. The New World had welcomed them. The New World had opened all its avenues to them. Only from the door of Christian society had they turned away, saying, "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in."

In the pause that followed, Bethany's heart went out in an earnest prayer: "O G.o.d, in the great day of thy judgment, let not that condemnation be mine. Only send me some opportunity, show me some way whereby I may lead even one of the least among them to the world's Redeemer!"

Mr. Marion came back from his interview, looking at his watch as he did so. It was so near time for services to begin at the tent, that he did not resume his seat.

"We may never meet again, Mr. Lessing," said Bethany, holding out her hand as she bade him good-bye. "So I want to tell you before I go, what an impression this conversation has made upon me. It has aroused an earnest desire to be the means of carrying the hope that comforts me, to some one among your people."

"You will succeed," he said, looking into her earnest upturned face.

Then he added softly, in Hebrew, the old benediction of an olden day--"Peace be unto you."

All that day, after the sunrise meeting, David Herschel had been with Major Herrick, going over the battle-fields, and listening to personal reminiscences of desperate engagements. A monument was to be erected on the spot where nearly all the major's men had fallen in one of the most hotly-contested battles of the war. He had come down to help locate the place.

"It's a very different reception they are giving us now," remarked the major, as they drove through the city.

Epworth League colors were flying in all directions. Every street gleamed with the white and red banners of the North, crossed with the white and gold of the South.

"Chattanooga is entertaining her guests royally; people of every denomination, and of no faith at all, are vying with each other to show the kindliest hospitality. We are missing it by being at the hotel. I told Mrs. Herrick and the girls I would meet them at the tent this evening. Will you come, too?"

"No, thank you," replied David, "my curiosity was satisfied this morning. I'll go on up to the inn. I have a letter to write."

The major laughed.

"It's a letter that has to be written every day, isn't it?" he said, banteringly. "Well, I can sympathize with you, my boy. I was young myself once. Conferences aren't to be taken into account at all when a billet-doux needs answering."

The next day David kept Marta with him as much as possible. He could see that she was becoming greatly interested, and catching much of Albert Herrick's enthusiasm. The boy was a great League worker, and attended every meeting.

David took Marta a long walk over the mountain paths. They sat on the wide, vine-hung veranda of the inn, and read together. Then, as it was their Sabbath, he took her up to his room, and read some of the ritual of the day, trying to arouse in her some interest for the old customs of their childhood.

To his great dismay, he found that she had drifted away from him. She was not the yielding child she had been, whom he had been able to influence with a word.

She showed a disposition to question and contend, that annoyed him. The rabbi was right. She had been left too long among contaminating influences.

It was with a feeling of relief that he woke Sunday morning to hear the rain beating violently against the windows. He was glad on her account that the storm would prevent them going down into the city. But toward evening the sun came out, and Frances Herrick began to insist on going down to the night service in the tent.

"It is the last one there will be!" she exclaimed. "I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"Neither would I," responded Marta. "There is something so inspiring in all that great chorus of voices."

When David found that his sister really intended to go, notwithstanding his remonstrances, and that the family were waiting for her in the hall below, he made no further protest, but surprised her by taking his hat, and tucking her hand in his arm.

"Then I will go with you, little sister," he said. "I want to have as much of your company as possible during my short visit."

Albert Herrick, who was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, divined David's purpose in keeping his sister so close. He lifted his eyebrows slightly as he turned to take his mother's wraps, leaving Frances to follow with the major.

The tent was crowded when they reached it. They succeeded with great difficulty in obtaining several chairs in one of the aisles.

"Herschel and I will go back to the side," said Albert. "The audience near the entrance is constantly s.h.i.+fting, and we can slip into the first vacant seat; some will be sure to get tired and go out before long. They always do."

It was the first time David had been in the tent, and he was amazed at the enormous audience. He leaned against one of the side supports, watching the people, still intent on crowding forward. Suddenly his look of idle curiosity changed to one of lively interest. He recognized the face of the Jew who had attracted him in the mountain meeting. Isaac Lessing was in the stream of people pressing slowly towards him.

Nearer and nearer he came. The crowd at the door pushed harder. The fresh impetus jostled them almost off their feet, and in the crush Lessing was caught and held directly in front of David. Some magnetic force in the eyes of each held the gaze of the other for a moment. Then Lessing, recognizing the common bond of blood, smiled.

That ringing cry, "I am a converted Jew," had sounded in David's ears ever since it first startled him. He felt confident that the man was laboring under some strong delusion, and he wished that he might have an opportunity to dispel it by skillful arguments, and win him back to the old faith.

Seized by an impulse as sudden as it was irresistible, he laid his hand on the stranger's arm.

"I want to speak with you," he said, hurriedly, and in a low tone. "Come this way. I will not detain you long."