FullReads

V

He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea. He was afraid of nothing–not even of the pogroms that awaited them in Russia. Russia itself became dear to him again–the beautiful land of his boyhood, whose birds and whispering leaves and waters had made his earliest music.

But dearer than all resurged his Jewish memories. When he went almost mechanically to the piano on the last afternoon, all these slumbering forces wakened in him found vent in a rhapsody of synagogue melody to which he abandoned himself, for once forgetting his audience. When gradually he became aware of the incongruity, it did but intensify his inspiration. Let the heathen rats wallow in Hebrew music! But soon all self-consciousness passed away again, drowned in his deeper self.

It was a strange fantasia that poured itself through his obedient fingers; it held the wistful chants of ancient ritual, the festival roulades and plaintive yearnings of melodious cantors, the sing-song augmentation of Talmud-students oscillating in airless study-houses, the long, melancholy drone of Psalm-singers in darkening Sabbath twilights, the rustle of palm-branches and sobbings of penitence, the long-drawn notes of the ram’s horn pealing through the Terrible Days, the passionate proclamation of the Unity, storming the gates of heaven. And fused with these merely physical memories, there flowed into the music the peace of Sabbath evenings and shining candles, the love and wonder of childhood’s faith, the fantasy of Rabbinic legend, the weirdness of penitential prayers in raw winter dawns, the holy joy of the promised Zion, when God would wipe away the tears from all faces.

There were tears to be wiped from his own face when he ended, and he wiped them brazenly, unresentful of the frenzied approval of the audience, which now let itself go, out of stored-up gratitude, and because this must be the last performance. All his vanity, his artistic posing, was swallowed up in utter sincerity. He did not shut the piano; he sat brooding a moment or two in tender reverie. Suddenly he perceived his red-haired muse at his side. Ah, she had discovered him at last, knew him simultaneously for the genius and the patriot, was come to pour out her soul at his feet. But why was she mute? Why was she tendering this scented letter? Was it because she could not trust herself to speak before the crowd? He tore open the delicate envelope. Himmel! what was this? Would the maestro honour Mrs. Wilhammer by taking tea in her cabin?

He stared dazedly at the girl, who remained respectful and silent.

‘Did you not hear what I was playing?’ he murmured.

‘Oh yes–a synagogue medley,’ she replied quietly. ‘They publish it on the East Side, nicht wahr?‘

‘East Side?’ He was outraged. ‘I know nothing of East Side.’ Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not say, jarred upon his quivering nerves, chilled his high emotion. ‘Will you say I shall have much pleasure?’ he added coldly.

The red-haired maid nodded and was gone. Rozenoffski went mechanically to his cabin, scarcely seeing the worshippers he plodded through; presently he became aware that he was changing his linen, brushing his best frock-coat, thrilling with pleasurable excitement.

Anon he was tapping at the well-known door. A voice–of another sweetness–cried ‘Come!’ and instantly he had the sensation that his touch on the handle had launched upon him, as by some elaborate electric contrivance, a tall and beautiful American, a rustling tea-gown, a shimmer of rings, a reek of patchouli, and a flood of compliment.

‘So delightful of you to come–I know you men of genius are farouches–it was awfully insolent of me, I know, but you have forgiven me, haven’t you?’