THE SONG OF MIRIAM
“HOW she sings, poor Miriam! She is always singing.”
And the old man who murmured these words raised his head in the sunshine where he sat, and listened with an expression of pleased attention stealing over his worn features. He was very poor, very feeble, very much despised by all his neighbours, and generally known as ‘that dirty Jew,’ a designation by no means complimentary, yet happening to fit him exactly. He made no secret of being a Jew, neither did he make any attempt to be otherwise than dirty. As a matter of fact he had only one suit of clothes and was hopelessly unable to afford another; while the simple operation of washing became an involved and troublesome business in the narrow dimensions of the room he occupied, a roof attic no bigger than a medium sized store-cupboard. Indeed, few good housekeepers could have been found who would not have grumbled at it as being much too ‘stuffy’ for the proper preservation of jams and pickles; but he, poor human wretch, managed to live and breathe in it resignedly enough, sharing it with the only creature he loved in the world, his grandchild Miriam. She it was whose full young voice pealed forth just now in rich round notes of music through which the words ran with the dominating force and fervour of almost operatic declamation:
“‘O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever!’”
The voice came from outside the attic, for its owner had scrambled through the window and was seated at her ease on the sloping roof — a small, picturesque figure in ragged clothing, with a mass of dark hair tumbling wildly about, and falling so thickly over the face as nearly to conceal it from view. A flash of large, bright, eager eyes, a glimmer of red lips and white teeth, and the tip of a decidedly Jewish nose was all that could be discerned of Miriam as she lounged on the slanting roof slates in the full sunlight, swinging her bare feet idly to and fro, and declaiming over and over again with many roulades and brilliant cadenzas, —
“‘O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever!
“‘Let Israel now confess that His mercy endureth for ever!
“‘Let the house of Aaron now say that His mercy endureth for ever!
“‘Let all that fear the Lord proclaim that His mercy endureth for ever!’”
Over the crowded chimneys of one of the worst and poorest quarters of Paris the grand words echoed in their own sonorous Hebrew tongue, and ‘the dirty Jew,’ Reuben David, listened till a burning moisture began to gather in his halfblind eyes, and covering his face with one wrinkled hand he muttered, —
“How long, O Lord — how long! O that Thou would’st rend the heavens and come down, that the eye might perceive Thee in all Thy glory! What have we done unto Thee, O God of my fathers, that we should be exiled from hope? Thy mercy endureth for ever! Let me believe it so, O God! Let me believe it while faith is still possible.”
He rose totteringly, and crossing to the window put his head through its square opening.
“Miriam! Miriam!”
The song ceased, the ragged figure sprang up lightly, the mass of dark hair was flung back with a quick movement, and the face of the child gleamed out like a flower from amidst her squalid surroundings.
“Grandfather!”
“Come in, child, come in!” said Reuben gently. “The neighbours will not like thy singing so loud.”
Miriam’s black eyes glistened — her lips laughed scornfully.
“The neighbours! What do I care! They will take me for one of the cats on the roof, that is all.”
Nevertheless, she obeyed her grandfather’s mute sign, and slipped nimbly through the window into the room, where she stood looking up wistfully at the old man’s face, while she mechanically twisted a thick strand of her black hair round and round her fingers.
“Is there nothing to eat?” she asked presently, in an anxious tone. “Not even a crust for you, beloved and kind one?”
Reuben sighed and shook his head. Then shuffling feebly across the room again, he sat down in his accustomed place on the same chair, in the same resigned and patient attitude.
“There is nothing, child,” he said, “and I am weak and faint, else I would go into the streets and beg for food. But I fear I cannot move far; I am stricken useless with long fasting.”
While he thus spoke, Miriam had been swiftly binding up her rebellious locks, and now she straightened herself with a gesture and look of eloquent determination. She had a curiously resolved face for a girl of her age — she was barely fourteen.
“Wait here;” she said, and with an impulsive movement she threw her arms round the old man’s drooping figure, and kissed him tenderly.
Wait here, and I will go; I will find something; all people cannot be hard-hearted and uncharitable. I will study the faces as they pass, and see where love looks through the eyes, then I will plead for help and I know I shall win my cause! — yes, dear and beloved one! I shall come back rich.”
“Rich!” Old Reuben echoed the word faintly, with a flickering smile at the absurdity of the idea.
“One is rich with enough!” said Miriam gaily, and opening the door, she waved her hand and darted away.
Her grandfather, left to himself, let his weary head droop forward on his chest, and, closing his eyes, tried to forget the pangs of hunger in sleep. But though he partially dozed he never quite lost consciousness, and through the dream-haze of semi-somnolence he was aware of the warm breadth of afternoon sunshine that brightened his poor room, of the rumbling noise of the passing vehicles outside, even of the humming song of a big bluebottle fly that circled about and bounced against the ceiling with buzzing pertinacity. So that the stealthy lifting of the door-latch startled him broad awake in a moment, and he half rose out of his chair to confront the intruder, a young man of shabby and slouching appearance, who paused on the threshold before entering.
“Well, Uncle Reuben! Pretending to starve, as usual?”
“Pretending to starve!” The old man pushed his chair aside and stood erect, his indignation flushing his thin features with a glow of new life.
“Worthy nephew, I do not lie,” he said sternly; “I am only a Jew. I leave lies to Christians.”
The new-corner strode into the room, his thin lips twitching with an evil smile.
“You insult my religion,” he began.
“Tour religion?” queried Reuben, “you mean your father’s religion. You, Josef Perez, never had a religion, I think, except when as a child at the knee of your mother — the sister who used to be all in all to me — you lisped your first prayers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one Jehovah who hath never deserted His people — until now!”
The last two words escaped his lips involuntarily and were accompanied by a heavy sigh. Young Perez looked at him morosely.
“All this is mere cant and humbug,” he said impatiently, “I don’t care two sous about one religion more than another, you know that well enough. With a Jewish mother and a Christian father, I am a half-breed between a lie and a truth, I suppose, and it doesn’t matter to me which is the truth and which the lie. Where is Miriam?”
“She has gone out.”
“That’s a good hearing at any rate. I hate to see her crawling about like a snake, and staring at me with her big eyes. You know what I’ve come for, well enough. I want money.”
Reuben David threw up his hands with an eloquent gesture.
“Money!” he cried; “where can I get it? Should I lack food if I knew?”
“Oh that’s all sham!” retorted Perez. “If you’ve no money yourself, you know very well how to find it. You can give me a letter to one of your hang-dog friends of usurers, and I daresay enough cash can be screwed out to keep me going. I only want a thousand francs; it’s a mere trifle.” The old man stared at him for a moment as though misdoubting the evidence of his own eyes and ears.
“A thousand francs!” he exclaimed at last. “Are you mad, nephew, or am I? What do you expect of me? I have not a sou to buy bread, and you d
emand a thousand francs! You tell me to ask my friends — I have no friends? Would I let the child Miriam suffer the pains of hunger if I had friends? Would I suffer myself? I can do nothing; nothing for my own needs or yours. I am almost destitute of clothing; I have to beg charity in the streets to get sufficient money to pay the rent for this wretched room; and yet, you, knowing all this, come to me for a thousand francs! You must be dreaming!”
Perez scowled.
“Dreaming or waking, I know you are a Jew,” he said. “And Jews always have money. My father told me so. And he said of you that you could coin it if you chose. There was no love lost between you and him I remember, and between you both, I believe you worried my mother into her grave. You were always miser as well as Jew, and I daresay you’ve got a tidy hoard hidden away in this very room, under the boards or behind the grate for all I know. But I’ll get all I can out of you this time, depend upon it! I have come prepared for that, so you may as well make the best of the business and give me what I want without any foolery about it.”
He looked around him suspiciously as he spoke, and lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. Reuben made no answer.
“Do you hear me?” continued Perez, advancing close up to him with a sudden stride. “I’m sick of all your stories about starvation and poverty; you are the best liar I ever met. Out with your hidden cash, or it will be the worse for you! I’ve no time to stand here arguing the matter; find me the money I tell you, or I’ll find it for myself.”
The old man met his fierce gaze calmly and fixedly.
“You are at liberty to do so, nephew Perez,” he said tranquilly; “if you can discover gold in this poor room you are welcome to it. God is my witness that I have spoken truth to you when I tell you I have not a penny in the world.”
As he uttered the words with uplifted eyes and an eloquent gesture of sorrow, his nephew’s face grew livid, the veins in his forehead standing out like cords in the rush of evil blood that heated his brain.
“Lying devil!” he muttered with an oath; then springing forward he lifted his hand — it grasped something sharp and glittering — there followed a brief struggle — a fiercely-dealt heavy blow — and Reuben David, with a faint choking groan, fell dead on the floor, the blood welling from a ghastly wound in his throat where his nephew had mortally stabbed him. The afternoon sunlight poured fully on the prone figure, the white hair, and the red blood that stained the floor, and the murderer, still grasping the Spanish poniard that had wrought the wicked deed, stared at his work for a moment in sick and giddy horror. His limbs seemed paralysed; he had no power to stir, and while he stood thus rooted to the spot he heard in the distance the notes of a full pure voice floating upwards and sounding ever nearer and clearer.
“‘Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever.
“‘Let all who fear the Lord confess that His mercy endureth for ever.’”
Seized with a panic, Perez roused himself from his apathy. The dagger dropped unheeded from his hand.
“No time,” he muttered, looking wildly about him. “No time to hunt for the money. Curse that Miriam! I could twist her throat easily — but — I dare not — not so soon after—”
He stopped, shuddering, then creeping to the door he lifted the latch noiselessly and passed out into the darkness of the landing beyond — a close narrow passage which led to an unused loft; and here, among the shadows, he shrank out of sight, straining his ears to listen to Miriam’s light step as it came bounding up from the ground floor in an almost rhythmic measure with the sound of her singing. She passed him close; her skirt brushed his foot; he could just see her face, which was smiling and radiant. Crouching back further into the semi-obscurity he waited, holding his breath — he heard her call out in a mirthful voice, “Grandfather!”
Then a wild shriek of pitiful anguish pierced the air; a shriek that turned the blood to ice in the wretched assassin’s veins and set his nerves quivering. Only that one shriek sounded, then all was still. And in that awful silence, the murderer, creeping cautiously along like a stealthy animal, glided down the stairs without a sound, and reaching the open house-door unobserved, fled away.
* * * *
Years passed, and the murder of the Jew, Reuben David, was almost forgotten. Justice had been baffled, and the law had busied itself in vain — the murderer, though tacitly understood to be one Josef Perez, a nephew of the dead man, had never yet been found. Miriam, on the day of the murder, had been discovered lying in a swoon by the side of her slain relative, and on recovering consciousness and being questioned, declared amid her passionate sobs and tears that she knew no possible cause for the brutal deed. Her grandfather was always poor, she said, and had been forced to beg for his livelihood, being too old and feeble to work. She was able, however, to identify the Spanish stiletto that was found in the room, as the property of her cousin, Josef Perez, son of a wine merchant in Madrid who had failed recently in business. This same wine merchant, brother-in-law of the murdered Reuben, was sought for by the police and found, but, on being interrogated, swore that he knew nothing of his son’s whereabouts, adding that he was always a ne’er-do-weel, and had deserted his home some years since. Finally, after long and fruitless search, inquiries were dropped, and Miriam alone remembered the horror of that sunlit afternoon, when she had found her only protector in the world lying dead, with his white hair soaked in a pool of blood. She could never blot the awful picture from her sight; it was always before her. She remembered, too, how she had sung—” O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever!” And she had asked herself many times since, —
“Where was God then! Why did He permit a dastard crime? How did He show His mercy?”
And it was a question she was never able to answer to her own satisfaction. As a Jewess, she believed in the axiom, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” and certainly she would have added, “A life for a life.” Revenge was just and reasonable, she considered; and for years she always carried about with her the dagger that had killed old Reuben, hoping against hope that one day she might meet the murderer and confront him with the proof of his crime.
And so time went on, and it was the full season in Paris. All the world of fashion was pouring itself in the Grand Opera, for it was the night of a new production, in which one of the most marvellous singers of the day ‘the divine Miriami,’ as she was called, had consented to f create’ the title-role. At the last moment a serious contretemps occurred; one of the male singers, who had a small secondary part to perform, was suddenly taken ill, and the only person who could be found to replace him was an obscure individual named Manuelos, an ‘under-study’ who had never appeared before in grand opera. The manager hastened to explain the affair to the famous Miriami, who, he thought, might justly consider herself affronted to be thus forced to sing even a few bars with an untried stranger; but the great prima-donna was in a very good humour, and treated the matter lightly. After all, the part that had to be filled was a small one, its performer’s chief business consisting in being stabbed by the heroine in the last act.
“Any one can sing the few bars of music necessary,” she said indifferently, to the explanatory and apologetic manager. “It is scarcely more than recitative. I shall not be at all put out by this stranger, as long as he keeps in time and tune.”
And with a smile of conscious power, she swept out of her dressing-room, gorgeous and superb in the rich costume and jewels of her part. She was very beautiful, was ‘the divine Miriami’; her great black eyes, her magnificent figure, her ravishing grace, had won her the admiration of kings and emperors, and her glorious voice, united to intense dramatic power, gave her undisputed pre-eminence in her profession. On this night, in particular, from the very commencement of the new opera she scored triumph after triumph, and it was not till the close of the second act that she came face to face with the unknown ‘understudy,’ Manuelos. As soon as she fully perceived him, a
curious change came over her — she seemed to grow taller and more majestic than ever — she looked like a goddess, and sang like an angel, and the brilliant audience almost wore itself out with enthusiastic acclamations and recalls. At last the curtain fell, and she walked slowly up to the man who had been summoned at an hour’s notice to take the place of the singer who was ill.
“You rendered your few bars very well,” she said, with a gracious smile. “What is your name? I forget—”
The ‘under-study,’ a middle-aged man of handsome yet dissolute appearance, bowed low, flattered by the famous prima-donna s notice, and replied, —
“Josef Manuelos, Madame!”
“Ah! that is your stage-name of course! Your father’s name was Manuelos, and your own is Josef. It is a pretty combination! Mine is also pretty. I am known as ‘Miriami,’ but my real name” — and she smiled again brilliantly—” is Miriam David, just as yours is Josef Perez!”
He started, and an awful pallor blanched his features. The orchestra was playing a delicious ‘intermezzo,’ and it seemed to him like the shrieking of devils.
“Miriam David!—” he gasped. “Miriam And he stared, panic-stricken, at the magnificent woman before him, with her regal figure, her blazing eyes, her scarlet lips, parted just now in that strange, cold smile.
“Yes, I am Miriam,” she said. “You would scarcely think it, would you? But children alter so much, you know! Are you not glad to see me? I am particularly pleased to find you; I have been looking for you a long while! I knew you could sing a little; but I never thought you would make it a profession. How strange it is we should meet like this!”
She spoke in the lightest and most indifferent tone possible, but conscious guilt made him quick to hear the suppressed fury in her voice, and quick to see the gathering passion in her eyes. He cowered and shrank before her; a cold perspiration bedewed his forehead and hands.
“This is your property I believe?” she said suddenly, drawing a glittering object from her belt and showing it to him. He uttered a faint exclamation, — it was the Spanish dagger with which he had murdered old Reuben. He looked wildly around him, — the stage was full of supernumeraries, carpenters and dressers, who were all busy in their respective places, preparing for the last act of the opera, — he tried to speak, but vainly, — he sought everywhere with his eyes for some means of exit and escape, and Miriam saw it. Replacing the dagger in her girdle, she approached him closely and whispered, —
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 918