Chapter XII

That night, after a long passionate vigil in her bedroom, little Schnapsie wrote a letter:--

"DEAREST ALFRED,--This will be as painful for you to read as for
me to write. I find at the eleventh hour I cannot marry you. I
owe it to you to state my reason. As you know, I did not consent
to our love being crowned by union till my father had given his
consent. I now find that this consent was not the free outcome
of my father's soul, that it was only to promote my happiness.
Try to imagine what it means for an old man of seventy odd years
to wrench himself away from all his life-long prejudices, and
you will realize what he has been trying to do for me. But the
wrench was beyond his strength. He is breaking his heart over
it, and, I fear, even wandering in his mind.

"You will say, let us again consent to wait for a contingency
which I am not cold-blooded enough to set down more openly. But
I do not think it is fair to you to let you risk your happiness
further by keeping it entangled with mine. A new current of
thought has been set going in my mind. If a religion that I
thought all formalism is capable of producing such types of
abnegation as my dear father, then it must, too, somewhere or
other, hold in solution all those ennobling ingredients, all
those stimuli to self-sacrifice, which the world calls
Christian. Perhaps I have always misunderstood. We were so badly
taught. Perhaps the prosaic epoch of Judaism into which I was
born is only transitional, perhaps it only belongs to the middle
classes, for I know I felt more of its poetry in my childhood;
perhaps the future will develop (or recultivate) its diviner
sides and lay more stress upon the life beautiful, and thus all
this blind instinct of isolation may prove only the conservation
of the race for its nobler future, when it may still become, in
very truth, a witness to the Highest, a chosen people in whom
all the families of the earth may be blessed. I do not know; all
this is very confused and chaotic to me to-night. I only know I
can hold out no certain hope of the earthly fulfilment of our
love. I, too, feel in transition, and I know not to what. But,
dearest Alfred, shall we not be living the Christian life--the
life of abnegation--more truly if we give up the hope of
personal happiness? Forgive me, darling, the pain I am causing
you, and thus help me to bear my own.

"Your friend till death,
"FLORENCE."

It was an hour past midnight ere the letter was finished, and when it was sealed a sense of relief at remaining in the Jewish fold stole over her, though she would scarcely acknowledge it to herself, and impatiently analyzed it away as hereditary. And despite it, if she slept on the letter, would it ever be posted?

But the house was sunk in darkness. She was the only creature stirring. And yet she yearned to have the thing over, irrevocable. Perhaps she might venture out herself with her latch-key. There was a letter-box at the street corner. She lit a candle and stole out on the landing, casting a monstrous shadow which frightened her. In her over-wrought mood it almost seemed an uncanny creature grinning at her. Her mother's death-bed rose suddenly before her; her mother's voice cried: "Ah, Florrie, do not fret. I will find thee a bridegroom." Was this the bridegroom--was this the only one she would ever know?

"Father! father!" she shrieked, with sudden terror.

A door was thrown open; a figure shambled forth in carpet slippers--a dear, homely, reassuring figure--holding the coloured handkerchief which had helped to banish him from the drawing-room. His face was smeared; his eyelids under the pushed-up horn spectacles were red: he, too, had kept vigil.

"What is it? What is it, little Schnapsie?"

"Nothing. I--I--I only wanted to ask you if you would be good enough to post this letter--to-night."

"Good enough? Why, I shall enjoy a breath of air."

He took the letter and essayed a roguish laugh as his eye caught the superscription.

"Ho! ho!" He pinched her cheek. "So we mustn't let a day pass without writing to him, eh?"

She quivered under this unforeseen misconception.

"No," she echoed, with added firmness, "we mustn't let a day pass."

"But go to bed at once, little Schnapsie. You look quite pale. If you stay up so late writing him letters, you won't make him a beautiful bride."

"No," she repeated, "I won't make him a beautiful bride."

She heard the hall door close gently upon his cautious footsteps, and her eyes dimmed with divine tears as she thought of the joy that awaited his return.

* * * * *

III

NOAH'S ARK

* * * * *

III

NOAH'S ARK