Eleven Possible Cases
Page 5
CHAPTER I.
I doubt if you will find either profit or pleasure in reading thisincident of my third voyage up the Nile. It is really not worth reading.I have written it down merely for a few friends who know something ofthe facts; and also to escape the annoyance of having to tell it over asone of the features of my four years' travel in the Orient. But tobegin. Wearying of the Levant, I was resting a time in Rome, when I wasformally invited, as well as specially urged, to witness the marriageceremony between the Grand Duchess Alexandria and the Duke of Edinburgh.Let us pass over these wasteful follies, the waste of time, the waste ofsense, of soul! I have only mentioned the reason for my presence in St.Petersburg; have only mentioned the fact of my being there, because Isaw a face in that gathering of people that could not be forgotten. Itwas the face of a tall, dark, and serenely silent Dolores; a young womanwho had surely met and made the acquaintance of sorrow early in themorning of life. I sometimes wonder if I could ever have known or caredto know any one who had not sorrowed deeply. And yet I now know verywell that, in whatever guise that woman could have come, there couldhave been no two roads for us from the day of her coming to the day ofher going.
Let me be a little confidential right here. I knew, I had always known,I should meet this woman. I had waited for her; worked hard, built upthe battlements and the fortress of my soul so that I might receive herinto it; and defend her well against my baser self when she should come.And now tell me--have you never had a thought, a conviction like this? Acertainty in your own heart that your other and better self would cometo you complete and entire some day, soon or late, so soon as you mighthave the fortress ready? The doctors said she was dying. She had beentrying to stand between the Czar and the Jews. She may not have been ofthat "peculiar people," but I think she had the money of Rothschilds andSir Moses Montefiore behind her.
There had been attempts at assassination, followed by executions. Someof the condemned were women. It was as if this woman herself had beencondemned to death. I think she suffered more than all the others puttogether; she was so very, very sensitive to the pain and sorrow ofothers.
There are souls like that. But there is a good God. The soul thatsuffers keenly can and shall enjoy keenly. You can, if you care topersist in it, make yourself, as the centuries wheel past, more than anentire nation in this.
We had common ground to work on in the cause of the condemned people. Itwas on this ground that we first met; as two swift streams that flow inthe same direction and so finally unite forever. All that could be donewas done speedily; for "the law's delay," whatever else must be laid tothe door of Russia, is not one of her sins.
As summer took flight we went south with the birds. For she surely feltthat she was dying. Besides, she had been impressed with the idea ofrestoring Jerusalem and having this homeless race re-established in theholy city. Her religion? I think it was all religions. I saw her kneelin the Kremlin at Moscow, cross herself in St. Peter's at Rome, and bendlow at prayer in the Synagogue at Alexandria. I think she would havedone the same in a mosque. As stated before, I had, previous to meetingher, been all over Syria. And so, whenever she referred to her cherishedidea, as she so often did, of forming Jewish settlements in and aboutJerusalem and restoring Israel, I took occasion to explain howimpossible and impractical it all was.
I remember telling her how that in a whole day's ride from Babylontoward Jerusalem I had seen no living thing save a single grasshopper! Iexplained to her that the path of civilization had been in the track ofthe setting sun ever since the dawn of history, and that it was not inthe power of man to reverse this course. I attempted to show that thetide of population would pour upon the salubrious and fertile shores ofthe farthest west till the heart of civilization would beat right there.I explained to her that wherever the great strong heart of commerce beatstrongest, there would be found the strongest and best of these peoplewhom she hoped to help; while the weak and helpless of that race wouldremain stranded by the waters of the Levant, as in Russia now.
"Why not, then, let us anticipate this and build the city of refuge byyour great sea in the path of this civilization which you say will sosurely come?"
Like the golden doors of dawn was the great earnest idea to me as shespoke. But of course I know, as I said before, that the "peculiarpeople" could not be induced to brave the desert. They do not seek rest,but action--employment in the marts. They would rest but a single nighteven by the sweet waters of Jacob's well.