The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery

by William Augustine Leahy

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  A RECANTATION.

  Saul Aronson was not the only person who found pleasure in the companyof Miss Lamb. There were others, with eyes not glamoured by any goldenmist of love, who would have found it hard to select an adjective strongenough to express their approbation of the petite devotee. About a yearbefore 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 amoderately loving wife, but she made a devoted widow. She had the waistof a wasp and a temper to match it. Her frame was angular, and herdisposition, too, revealed shoulder blades and elbows. If she lovedanything in this world it was her marbled cat, which was hated by everyboarder in the house, and a pariah among its tribe. From constantvisiting of her husband's grave her manners had assumed a cast whichwould have been appropriate to a cemetery, but was most depressing ineveryday converse. Even her smile had something acrid about it, like ashopworn lemon, and the acidity of her scowl would have reddened bluelitmus paper.

  People wondered why her niece, such a tender little body, should bedoomed to the martyrdom of waiting upon "Old Tabby Wolfe and herboarders." Mrs. Gubbins, who was the landlady's most intimatecrony--probably because among her other virtues she had a keen sense ofthe doleful--spread the report that Serena would inherit her aunt'sproperty, and that her own mother, Mrs. Wolfe's sister, had had an eyeto this when she parted with the eldest of her household. However thatmight be, the girl put up patiently with all the widow's quirks andoddities; entered into religious work enthusiastically, and in sixmonths had rubbed off the slight rusticity with which eighteen years ofchoring on a farm, before she came down to the city, had touched heraccent and manner.

  There were hardly any traces of kinship between aunt and niece. To besure, Serena had the slenderest slip of a waist that nature everfashioned, and just the least suggestion of cheek bones, too, which werenot at all disagreeable, however. When occasion demanded, she could givea sharp order, much as she may have rebuked Spot and Bossy for switchingwhen she milked them in the cowshed at home. But to the boarders thesebursts of impatience only gave their sweet waitress a piquancy like thetartness of the full-ripe strawberry.

  With them she was a general favorite. They used to declare that she putyeast in their beds, for they were like pans of dough, feathery andwhite, when she made them of a morning; and Serena, spinning thepie-plates round, scalloping the edges of the crust with a four-tinedfork, or knitting in the sitting-room from a ball of pink yarn thatdanced on the carpet as she unraveled it, was a spectacle of domesticityat which they never tired of gazing. Yet her dignity, which was farbeyond her years, prevented their making her a plaything. Thoughcordial, 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 Jupiterpresented 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 herlips gave him measureless joy. But this joy swelled to raptureinexpressible, such as only the saints in the ninth heaven and happylovers on earth are privileged to know, when she invited him to callupon her and pressed his hand a second time on bidding him adieu. Thethrill of her fingertips did not die out all that day; but it was a weekagain (for Aronson was a bashful youth) before he presumed to accept herinvitation.

  His mother marveled why Saul furbished himself up so carefully thatevening. He had risen from the supper table prematurely and spentexactly fifty-five minutes smoothing his hair, tidying his cravat anddrawing on his new pair of gloves. When he went out, instead ofsoliciting admiration for this array, he seemed to avoid it.

  As he drew toward the mansion whose door-plate still bore the name ofthe departed Ephraim Wolfe, an unwelcome surprise met Aronson. There inthe doorway, silhouetted against the hall lamp, was the form which heknew to be Serena's. She was admitting a visitor--a youth. The doorquickly closed and a rosy light came through the tinted curtains behind.But Aronson's spirits had sunk, his resolution departed. Instead ofcrossing the street, as he had planned to, and ringing the bell, with alittle speech of greeting all prepared, he walked on to the next cornerand irresolutely turned back.

  This time a shadow fell on the white curtain of the front room. It wasSerena rocking herself placidly in the rocking-chair. Every forwardinclination brought her sweet profile into view, every backward oneremoved it. Her lips moved. She was conversing, doubtless, with theyouth whose stolid shadow occupied the center of the opposite curtain.Eight times Saul Aronson passed and repassed that house-front before hecould tear himself away and return home to divest himself downheartedlyof all his finery.

  Two days later, however, he saw Serena again; and she renewed theinvitation. This time, when he approached, there was no hostile youth atthe door. Serena herself admitted him to the portals of the paradisewhich 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 toreturn.

  He never returned. As she informed Inspector McCausland, Serena hadnever looked on that lovelorn visage again.

  This was how he came to break his promise: One Sunday afternoon amessenger came to the Aronson door with a request from Simon Rabofskythat 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 wayreluctantly. The clamor of voices died when he crossed the threshold andsix pairs of inimical eyes, he thought, were lifted to his face. At atable in the midst sat Rabofsky, his yellowish earlocks dangling beneathhis 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 theordeal was come. They were six of the strictest in the congregation,from old Silberstein, who sat on the left of the ark and led therecitation of the eighteen psalms of a morning, to young Cohen, theJewish butcher, a zealot of zealots, than whom none more devoutly beathis bosom in prayer or observed the allotted holy days.

  "Brother Silberstein was just proposing that your place in thesynagogue be disposed of. It is a pity to see a seat vacant, when somany must stand. But I bade him not be hasty, for perhaps you had beenill of late."

  "Why play the innocent, Simon Rabofsky," broke in Cohen, "when you knowas well as we that he has been consorting with the gentiles?"

  "It is because I am loath to believe it," answered Rabofsky, in asorrowful tone, as if rebuking Cohen. "I am loath to believe one ofIsaac Aronson's household would turn away to bow before the idols ofBabylon."

  "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 Semiticcharacters, but the language was the jargon, for Rabofsky was no masterof Hebrew and Aramaic, "the divine talmud, which our fathers havepreserved through their hundred persecutions."

  "But its wisdom is obscure," answered Aronson.

  "Are there not doctors to explain those parts which are dark?" rejoinedRabofsky. "And behold, in this edition, which a Hebrew so enlightened asSaul Aronson should possess, are not all the lengthy passages shortenedand the unnecessary omitted by the labors of that light of Israel, bornat Cordova, Moses ben Maimon, whom the gentiles miscall Maimonides?"

  "Why plead with the apostate?" cried Silberstein, angrily. "He is nolonger a Jew. He toileth on the Sabbath. He goeth not down to thewaterside to lament."

  "It is false," said Aronson, hotly.

  "I said so," nodded Rabofsky.

  "Who are you to reprove me, Simon Rabofsky," continue
d Aronson, "becauseI cannot lie idle two days in the week? Do you rest from yourmoney-getting on the Sabbath? I think your wife, Rebecca, could answerme that. Did I not see her selling jewels to a Christian on the seventhday 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 breadof the tabernacle. So saith the holy book," he laid his finger again onthe page, "which Jehovah hath covered with the wings of His protectionso that torches could not destroy it. Behold it has arisen from athousand burnings uncharred!"

  All the Hebrews plucked their garments and with bowed heads muttered aprayer, 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. "Fewgrovel 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 hishands?"

  "You wrong the Christians," protested Aronson. "They are not all crueland there is much sweetness of love in their doctrine."

  "Not cruel!" rejoined Cohen. "How have they not poured out our blood inthe ages!"

  "Jehovah hath stored it up," added a gentler voice, piteously. It wasAbraham Barentzen, the patriarch of the colony, who had not spokenbefore, but kept looking at the backslider kindly, as if more in sorrowthan bitterness.

  "Sweetness of love!" cried Silberstein. "Love indeed and enough. Howthey love each other! Sect embracing sect! Pah!"

  "They hate us; they mock us, and our children court them," dronedanother in a minor key.

  "They call us cheats and usurers," cried Cohen, "because we make wealthout of the waste they cast away."

  "Psh!" said old Barentzen, raising his hands. "Be just. Those are onlythe few."

  "Perhaps it is some gentle girl that is tempting Saul Aronson, even asthe Philistine women of old weakened the faith of Samson," saidRabofsky, 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 wifecomely, buxom, well-dowered, modest, a good housekeeper and free fromtittle-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 crackedvoice out of a tattered hymn-book? Pretty soon we shall see Saul Aronsonshivering in the waters of baptism, and then he will change his name toPaul, 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 isvivid in the minds of the wanderers, and recollection of its sorrowsmakes a bond so strong that no temptation can break it. Aronson pausedto think. The dim traditions, all tears and fire and blood--the exodusfrom Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, the burning of Jerusalem, thedispersion, 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," saidold Barentzen, in a soothing voice. "Would he rather be buried when hedies under some idolatrous mound stuck with the symbol of him whom Judasrighteously delivered----"

  "There never was such a Nazarene," broke in Cohen impetuously. "It isall 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 ofsedition," said Rabofsky, with authoritative pomp. Like the misers ofevery 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 isall an invention."

  Thereupon the two zealots wrangled and jangled till Aronson's earsached. But his mind was dwelling upon old Barentzen's saying and sadlyacknowledging its truth. His heart was not really with the Christians.What did he know of their teachings? He had been given a bible, but itwas locked in his office drawer, unread. Besides, these were deepquestions. Who was he to dispute the great doctors, like Moses benMaimon?

  "So be it, obstinate youth," said Rabofsky at last, waving his hands toend the discussion.

  "I had begun to ask Saul Aronson a question," resumed Barentzen, in atone of rebuke. "Would you not rather lie like your fathers with theshards on your eyelids and a handful of earth from the land of Israelthrown over your resting-place?"

  Aronson hung his head.

  "Enough of this pleading and coaxing," snarled Cohen. "He isstiff-necked, I see. I will put his name with the other traitors. Thereare 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 hungoutward in my store window."

  "That the very children may know them for apostates and greedyhypocrites," added Rabofsky, to clinch the threat.

  "Hold," cried Aronson. He foresaw the fatal result of his misstep. Hecould hear the storm rising around him; the clamor of children on thestreets, the pointed fingers of men and women, the ironical commentsfrom the doorstep groups when he passed, the sly digs at the suppertable, the estranged glances of his mother. "It is all wrong," he cried.

  "Then, why do you haunt the gentile mountebanks?" asked Cohen, seizinghis sleeve.

  "Fangled like a fop!" said Silberstein, catching his lapel.

  "And shun the blessed synagogue?" added another, fumbling at his vestbuttons.

  "Are you a gentile or a Jew?" questioned Rabofsky, as chief inquisitor.

  "I am a Jew!" cried Aronson, in honest wrath, tousled and clapperclaweduntil his patience had given away. Then he rushed from the room.

  The list of "traitors" appeared in the Jewish Messenger without SaulAronson's name. The old, old conflict between love and honor had endedwith another defeat for the imperious boy-god. But it is no discredit toSerena Lamb that her influence yielded to a passion which is hardlysecond to any in the world for intensity--the Israelite's devotion tohis race. All that she retained of the young convert from whom so muchhad been expected was a confused memory of the conversation in hersitting-room. What had Aronson told her in his agitation during thatconfidential interview? It would seem that he had been too frank. Atleast, for several weeks after Serena's visit to McCausland, he wasstrangely conscious that some one was dogging his footsteps, both athome and about the office. Naturally, he ascribed this espionage to thesacred brotherhood, whose power is great in Israel, and, fearing theirvigilance, redoubled his evening invocations and waxed regular in hisattendance at the synagogue.