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But the mother’s heart was palpitating with another emotion. A faint clamour in the Polish quarter at the back, as she replaced the samovar in the kitchen, had recalled all her alarms, and she merely threw open the door of the room. But Ben Amram was not absent-minded enough to be beguiled by her air of obedient alacrity. Besides, he could see the shut street-door through the strip of passage. He gestured towards it.

Now she feigned laziness. ‘Oh, never mind.’

‘David, open the street-door.’

The eldest boy sprang up joyously. It would have been too bad of mother to keep Elijah on the doorstep.

‘No, no, David!’ Golda stopped him. ‘It is too heavy; he could not undo the bolts and bars.’

‘You have barred it?’ Ben Amram asked.

‘And why not? In this season you know how the heathen go mad like street-dogs.’

‘Pooh! They will not bite us.’

‘But, Aaron! You heard about the lost Christian child!’

‘I have saved many a Christian child, Golda.’

‘They will not remember that.’

‘But I must remember the ritual.’ And he made a movement.

‘No, no, Aaron! Listen!’

The shrill noises seemed to have veered round towards the front of the house. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I hear only the goats bleating.’

She clung to him as he made for the door. ‘For the sake of our children!’

‘Do not be so childish yourself, my crown!’

‘But I am not childish. Hark!’

He smiled calmly. ‘The door must be opened.’

Her fears lent her scepticism. ‘It is you that are childish. You know no Prophet of Redemption will come through the door.’

He caressed his venerable beard. ‘Who knows?’

‘I know. It is a Destroyer, not a Redeemer of Israel, who will come. Listen! Ah, God of Abraham! Do you not hear?’

Unmistakably the howl of a riotous mob was approaching, mingled with the reedy strains of an accordion.

‘Down with the Zhits! Death to the dirty Jews!’

‘God in heaven!’ She released her husband, and ran towards the children with a gesture as of seeking to gather them all in her arms. Then, hearing the bolts shot back, she turned with a scream. ‘Are you mad, Aaron?’

But he, holding her back with his gaze, threw wide the door with his left hand, while his right upheld Elijah’s goblet, and over the ululation of the unseen mob and the shrill spasms of music rose his Hebrew welcome to the visitor: ‘Baruch habaa!‘

Hardly had the greeting left his lips when a wild flying figure in a rich furred coat dashed round the corner and almost into his arms, half-spilling the wine.

‘In God’s name, Reb Aaron!’ panted the refugee, and fell half-dead across the threshold.

The physician dragged him hastily within, and slammed the door, just as two moujiks–drunken leaders of the chase–lurched past. The mother, who had sprung forward at the sound of the fall, frenziedly shot the bolts, and in another instant the hue and cry tore past the house and dwindled in the distance.

Ben Amram raised the white bloody face, and put Elijah’s goblet to the lips. The strange visitor drained it to the dregs, the clustered children looking on dazedly. As the head fell back, it caught the light from the festive candles of the Passover board. The face was bare of hair; even the side curls were gone.

‘Maimon the Meshummad!’ cried the mother, shuddering back. ‘You have saved the Apostate.’

‘Did I not say the door must be opened?’ replied Ben Amram gently. Then a smile of humour twitched his lips, and he smoothed his white beard. ‘Maimon is the only Jew abroad to-night, and how were the poor drunken peasants to know he was baptized?’

Despite their thrill of horror at the traitor, David and his brothers and sisters were secretly pleased to see Elijah’s goblet empty at last.

III

Next morning the Passover liturgy rang jubilantly through the vast, crowded synagogue. No violence had been reported, despite the passage of a noisy mob. The Ghetto, then, was not to be laid waste with fire and sword, and the worshippers within the moss-grown, turreted quadrangle drew free breath, and sent it out in great shouts of rhythmic prayer, as they swayed in their fringed shawls, with quivering hands of supplication. The Ark of the Law at one end of the great building, overbrooded by the Ten Commandments and the perpetual light, stood open to mark a supreme moment of devotion. Ben Amram had been given the honour of uncurtaining the shrine, and its richly clad scrolls of all sizes, with their silver bells and pointers, stood revealed in solemn splendour.