Chapter VI

I continued to walk nightly on the narrow path between the mountain and the river, like the ghost of one drowned, but without a glimpse of Bethulah. At last it grew plain that her father had warned her against me, that she had changed the hour of her exercise and soul-ascension, or even the place. I was indebted to accident for my second vision of this strange creature.

I had diverted myself by visiting the neighbouring village, a refreshing contrast to Jewish Zloczszol, from the rough garland-hung wayside crosses (which were like sign-posts to its gilt-towered church) to the peasant women in pink aprons and top boots.

A marvellous sunset was well-nigh over as I struck the river-side that curved homewards. The bank was here very steep, the river running as between cliffs. In the sky great drifts of gold-flushed cloud hung like relics of the glory that had been, and the autumn leaves that muffled my mare's footsteps seemed to have fallen from the sunset. In the background the white peak of the mountain was slowly parting with its volcanic splendour. And low on the horizon, like a small lake of fire in the heart of a tangled bush, the molten sun showed monstrous and dazzling.

And straight from the sunset over the red leaves Bethulah came walking, rapt as in prophetic thought, shrouded and crowned, preceded by a long shadow that seemed almost as intangible.

I reined in my horse and watched the apparition with a great flutter at my heart. And as I gazed, and thought of her grotesque worshippers, it was borne in upon me how unbefittingly Nature had peopled her splendid planet. The pageantry of dawn and sunset, of seas and mountains, how incongruous a framework for our petty breed, sordidly crawling under the stars. Bethulah alone seemed fitted to the high setting of the scene. She matched this lone icy peak, this fiery purity.

"Bethulah!" I said, as she was almost upon my horse.

She looked up, and a little cry that might have been joy or surprise came from her lips. But by the smile that danced in her eyes and the blood that leapt to her cheeks, I saw with both joy and surprise that this second meeting was as delightful to her as to me.

But the conscious Bethulah hastened to efface what the unconscious had revealed. "It is not right of you, stranger, to linger here so long," she said, frowning.

"I am your shadow," I replied, "and must linger where you linger."

"But you are indeed a shadow, my father says--a being fashioned of the Poison God to work us woe."

"No, no," I said, laughing; "my horse bears no shadow. And the Poison God who fashioned me is not the absurd horned and tailed tempter you have been taught to believe in, but a little rosy-winged god, with a bow and poisoned arrows."

"A little rosy-winged god?" she said. "I know of none such."

"And you know not of what you are queen," I retorted, smiling.

"There is but one God," she insisted, with sweet seriousness. "See, He burns in the bush, yet it is not consumed."

She pointed to where the red sinking sun seemed to eat out the heart of the bush through which we saw it.

"Thus this love-god burns in our hearts," I said, lifted up into her poetic strain, "and we are not consumed, only glorified."

I strove to touch her hand, which had dropped caressingly on my horse's neck. But she drew back with a cry.

"I may not listen. This is the sinful talk my father warned me of. Fare you well, stranger." And with swift step she turned homewards.

I sat still a minute or two, half-disconcerted, half-content to gaze at her gracious motions; then I touched the mare with my heel, and she bounded off in pursuit. But at this instant three men in long gabardines and great round velvet hats started forward from the thicket, shouting and waving lighted pine-branches, and my frightened animal reared and plunged, and then broke into a mad gallop, making straight for the river curve between the cliffs. I threw myself back in the saddle, tugging desperately at the creature's mouth; but I might have been a child pulling at an elephant. I shook my feet free of the stirrups and prepared to tumble off as best I could, rather than risk the plunge into the river, when a projecting bough made me duck my head instinctively; but as I passed under it, with another instinctive movement I threw out my hands to clasp it, and, despite a violent wrench that seemed to pull my arms out of their sockets and swung my feet high forward, I hung safely. The mare, eased of my weight, was at the river-side the next instant, and with a wild, incredible leap alighted with her forefeet and the bulk of her body on the other bank, up which she scraped convulsively, and then stood still, trembling and sweating. I could not get at her, so, trusting she would find her way home safely, I dropped to the ground and ran back, with a mixed idea of finding Bethulah and chastising the three scoundrels. But all were become invisible.

I walked half a mile across the plain to get to the rough pine bridge; and, once on the other bank, I had no difficulty in recovering the mare. She cantered up to me, indeed, and put her soft and still perspiring nose in my palm and whinnied her apologetic congratulations on our common escape.

I rode slowly home, reflecting on the new turn in my love affairs, for it was plain that Bethulah had now been provided with a body-guard, of which she was as unconscious as of her body itself.

But for the apparent necessity of her making soul-ascensions under God's heaven, I supposed she would not have been allowed to take the air at all with such a creature of Satan hovering.

I stood sunning myself the next day on the same pine bridge, looking down on the swift current, and regretting there was no rail to lean on as one watched the fascinating flow of the beautiful river. It struck me as inordinately blue,--perhaps, I analyzed, by contrast with the long, sinuous weeds which here glided and tossed in the current like green water-snakes. These flexible greens reminded me of the Wonder Rabbi's eyes and his emerald seal; and I turned, with some sudden premonition of danger, just in time to dodge the attack of the same three ruffians, who must have been about to push me over.

In an instant I had whipped out my pistol from my hip pocket, and cried, "Stand, or I fire!"

The trio froze instantly in odd attitudes, which was lucky, as my pistol was unloaded. They looked almost comical in their air of abject terror. Their narrow, fanatical foreheads, with ringlets of piety hanging down below the velvet, fur-trimmed hats, showed them more accustomed to murdering texts than men. Had I not been still smouldering over yesterday's trick, I could have pitied them for the unwelcome job thrust upon their unskilled and apparently even unweaponed hands by the machinations of the Poison God and the orders of Ben David. One of them seemed quite elderly, and one quite young. The middle-aged one had a goitre, and perhaps that made me fancy him the most sinister, and keep my eye most warily upon him.

"Sons of Belial," I said, recalling a biblical phrase that might be expected to prick, "why do you seek my life?"

Two of them cowered under my gaze, but the elderly _Chassid_, seeing the shooting was postponed, spoke up boldly: "We are no sons of Belial. You are the begotten of Satan; you are the arch enemy of Israel."

"I?" I protested in my turn. "I am a plain God-fearing son of Abraham."

"A precious scion of the Patriarch's seed, who would delay the coming of the Messiah!"

Again that incomprehensible accusation.

"You speak riddles," I said.

"How so? Did you not tell Ben David--his horn be exalted--that you knew all concerning Bethulah? Then must you know that of her immaculacy will the Messiah be born, one ninth of Ab."

A flood of light burst upon me--mystic, yet clarifying; blinding, yet dissipating my darkness. My pistol drooped in my hand. My head swam with a whirl of strange thoughts, and Bethulah, already divine to me, took on a dazzling aureola, sailed away into some strange supernatural ether.

"Have we not been in exile long enough?" said the youngest. "Shall a godless stranger tamper with the hope of generations?"

"But whence this mad hope?" I said, struggling under the mystic obsession of his intensity.

"Mad?" began the first, his eyes spitting fire; but the younger interrupted him.

"Is not our saint the sole scion of the house of David? Is not his daughter the last of the race?"

"And what if she is?"

"Then who but she can be the destined mother of Israel's Redeemer?"

The goitred _Chassid_ opened his lips and added, "If not now, when? as Hillel asked."

"In our days at last must come the crowning glory of the house of Ben David," the young man went on. "For generations now, since the signs have pointed to the millennium, have the daughters of the house been kept unwedded."

"What!" I cried. "Generations of _Bethulahs_ have been sacrificed to a dream!"

Again the eyes of the first _Chassid_ dilated dangerously. I raised my pistol, but hastened to ask, in a more conciliatory tone, "Then how has the line been carried on?"

"Through the sons, of course," said the young _Chassid_. "Now for the first time there are no sons, and only one daughter remains, the manifest vessel of salvation."

I tried to call up that image of bustling Broadway that had braced me in colloquy with the old Wonder Rabbi, but it seemed shadowy now, compared with this world of solid spiritualities which begirt me. Could it be the same planet on which such things went on simultaneously? Or perhaps I was dreaming, and these three grotesque creatures were the product of Yarchi's cookery.

But their hanging curls had a daylight definiteness, and down in the sunlit, translucent river I could see every shade of colour, from the green of the sinuous reed-snakes to the brown of the moss patches.

On the bank walked two crows, and I noted for the first time with what comic pomposity they paced, their bodies bent forward like two important old gentlemen with their hands in the pockets of their black coat tails. They brought a smile to my face, but a menacing movement of the _Chassidim_ warned me to be careful.

"And does the girl know all this?" I asked hurriedly.

"She did not yesterday," said the elderly fellow. "Now she has been told."

There was another long pause. I meditated rapidly but disjointedly, having to keep an eye against a sudden rush of my assailants, and mistrusting the goitred saint yet the more because he was so silent.

"And is Bethulah content with her destiny?" I asked.

"She is in the seventh heaven," said the elderly saint.

I had a poignant shudder of incredulous protest. I recalled the flush of her sweet face at the sight of me, and brief as our meetings had been, I dared to feel that the irrevocable thrill had passed between us; that the rest would have been only a question of time.

"Let Bethulah tell me so herself," I cried, "and I will leave her in her heaven."

The men looked at one another. Then the eldest shook his head. "No; you shall never speak to her again."

"We have maidens more beautiful among us," said the young man. "You shall have your choice. Ay, even my own betrothed would I give you."

I flicked aside his suggestion. "But you cannot prevent Bethulah walking under God's heaven." They looked dismayed. "I will meet her," I said, pursuing my advantage. "And Yarchi and other good Jews shall be at hand."

"She shall be removed elsewhere," said the first.

"I will track her down. Ah, you are afraid," I said mockingly. "You see it is not true that she is content to be immolated."

"It is true," they muttered.

"True as the Torah," added the elderly man.

"Then there is no harm in her telling me so."

"You may bear her off on your horse," said he of the goitre.

"I will go on foot. Let her bid me go away, and I will leave Zloczszol."

Again they looked at one another, and the relief in their eyes brought heart-sinking into mine. Yes, it was true. Bethulah was in the glow of a great surrender; she was still tingling with the revelation of her supreme destiny. To put her to the test now would be fatal. No; let her have time to meditate; ay, even to disbelieve.

"To-morrow you shall speak with her, and no man shall know," said the oldest _Chassid_.

"No, not to-morrow. In a week or two."

"Ah, you wish to linger among us," he replied suspiciously.

"I will go away till the appointed day," I replied readily.

"Good. Continue your travels. Let us say a month, or even two."

"If you will not spirit her away in my absence."

"It is as easy to do so in your presence."

"So be it."

"Shall we say--the eve of Chanukah?" he suggested.

It was my turn to regard him suspiciously. But I could see nothing to cavil at. He had merely mentioned an obvious date--that of the next festival landmark. Chanukah--the feast of rededication of the Temple after the Grecian pollution--the miracle of the unwaning oil, the memorial lighting of lights; there seemed nothing in these to work unduly upon the girl's soul, except in so far as the inspiring tradition of Judas Maccabaeus might attach her more devotedly to her conceptions of duty and self-dedication. Perhaps, I thought, with a flash of jealous anger, they meditated a feast of rededication of her after the pollution of my presence had been removed. Well, we should see.

"The eve of Chanukah," I agreed, with a nonchalant air. "Only let the place be where I first met her--the path 'twixt mountain and river as you go to the cemetery."

That would at least be a counter-influence to Chanukah! As they understood none of the subtleties of love, they agreed to this, and I made them swear by the Name.

When they went their way I stood pondering on the bridge, my empty pistol drooping in my hand, till sky and river glowed mystically as with blood, and the chill evening airs reminded me that November was nigh.