Chapter IV

The floods abated before the New Year dawned, as was testified by the arrival, not of doves with olive leaves, but of pilgrims from the north with shekels. The road was therefore open for me to go, yet I lingered. I told myself it was the fascination of the pilgrims, that curious new population which brought quite a bustle into the "Ring-Place" of Zloczszol, and gave even the shops of the native _Chassidim_ a live air. There were unpleasant camp-followers in the train of the invading army, cripples and consumptives, both rich and poor; but, on the whole, it was a cheery, well-to-do company. I retained my room by paying the rent of three lodgers, and even then Yarchi would come in and look at the big, tall bed wistfully, as if it were a waste of sleeping material.

The great episode of each day was now the royal levee. Crowds besieged the door of the "palace," in quest of health, wealth, and happiness, and the proprietor of fields had to squeeze in with the tramp, and the peasant woman and her neglected brat jostled the jewelled dame from the towns. I was glad to think that the "Holy Queen" was hidden safely away in her turret, and this consoled me for not meeting her again, though I walked or trotted about on my bay mare at all hours and in all places in quest of her.

It may seem curious that I did not boldly call and ask to see her, but that would bring the commonplace into our so poetic relation. Besides which, I divined that she would not be easily on view. Beyond indirectly justifying my intuition that she was Ben David's daughter by satisfying myself that the Wonder Rabbi had once had three girls, two of whom had died, I would not even make inquiries. I feared to dissipate the mystery and sacredness of our relation by gossip. Perhaps Yarchi would tell me she was mad, or treat me to some other coarse misconception due to the callous feelers with which he apprehended the world.

I did not even know for certain that the light I saw in the turret was hers. But when at night it was out, I hastened to the river-side, to see only my own shadow on the hushed mountain slope or on the white tombs. It seemed clear that she was being kept sacred from the pilgrims' gaze; perhaps, too, the deserted, untravelled road which was safe as her own home in normal times, was less secure now.

When I at last ventured to say casually to Yarchi that Ben David's daughter seemed to be kept strictly to the house, the ribald grin I had feared distorted his malicious mouth.

"Oh, you have seen Bethulah!" he said.

"Yes," I murmured, turning my flushed face away, but glad to learn her name. Bethulah! Bethulah! my heart seemed to beat to the music of it.

"Does she still stalk about in a shroud?" He did not wait for an answer, but went off into unending laughter, which doubled him up till his hunch protruded upward like a camel's.

"She does not go about at all now," I said freezingly. But this set Yarchi cachinnating worse than ever.

"He daren't trust even his own disciples, you see! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Yarchi!" I cried angrily, "you know Bethulah must be kept sacred from this rabble," and I switched with my riding-whip at the poppies that grew among the maize in the little front garden, as if they were pilgrims and I a Tarquin.

"Yes, I know that's Ben David's game. But I wish some man would marry her and ruin his business. Ha! ha! ha!"

"It would ruin yours too," I reminded him, more angrily. "You are ready enough to let lodgings to the pilgrims."

Yarchi shrugged his hump. "If fools are fools, wise men are wise men," he replied oracularly.

I strode away, but he had heated my brain with a new idea, or one that I now allowed myself to see clearly. Some man might marry her. Then why should I not be that man? Why should I not carry Bethulah back to America with me--the most precious curiosity of the Old World--a frank, virginal creature with that touch of the angel which I had dreamed of but had never met among our smart girls--up to then. And even if it were true that Ben David was a fraud, and needed the girl for his Cabalistic mystifications, even so I was rich enough to recoup him. The girl herself was no conscious accessory; of that I felt certain.

When my brain cooled, suggestions of the other aspects of the question began to find entrance. What of Bethulah herself? Why should she care to marry me? Or to go to the strange, raw country? And such a union--was it not too incongruous, too fantastic, for practical life? Thus I wrestled with myself for three days, all the while watching Bethulah's turret or the roads she might come by. On the third night I saw a wild mob of men at the turret end of the house, dancing in a ring and singing, with their eyes turned upward to the light that burnt on high. Their words I could not catch at first through the tumultuous howl, but it went on and on, like their circumvolutions, over and over again, till my brain reeled. It seemed to be an appeal to Bethulah to plead their cause on the coming _Yom-Hadin_ (New-Year day of Judgment):--

"By thy soul without sin,
Enter heaven within,
This divine _Yom-Hadin_,
Holy Maid.

"Undertake thou our plea;
Let the Poison God be
Answered stoutly by thee,
Holy Queen."

When I came to write this down afterward, I discovered it was an acrostic on her name, as is customary with festival prayers. And this I have preserved in my rough translation.