Chapter VII

I got to Warsaw and back in the time at my disposal, but not all the freshness and variety of my experiences could banish the thought of Bethulah. There were days when I could absorb myself in the passing panorama, but I felt always, so to speak, in the ante-chamber of the great moment of our third and decisive meeting.

And with every shortening day of December that moment approached. Yet I all but missed it when it came. A snowfall I might easily have foreseen retarded my journey at the eleventh hour, but my faithful mare ploughed her way through the white morasses. As she munched her mid-day corn in that quaint Christian village that neighboured Zloczszol, and in which I had agreed to stable her, it was borne in on me for the first time that the eve of Chanukah was likewise Christmas eve. I wondered vaguely if there was any occult significance in the coincidence or in the _Chassidic_ choice of dates; but it was too late now to protest, and loading my pistol against foul play, I hurried to the rendezvous.

On the dark barren base of the mountain, patches of snow gleamed like winter blossoms; the gargoyle-like faces of the jags of rock on the river-bank were white-bearded with icicles. Down below the stream raced, apparently as turbid as ever, but suddenly, as it made a sharp curve and came under a thick screen of snow-laden boughs interarching over the cleft, it grew glazed in death.

The sight of Bethulah was as of a spirit of sunshine moving across the white desolation. Her tall lone shadow fell blue upon the snowy path. She was swathed now in splendid silver furs, from which her face shone out like a tropical flower beneath its wreathed crown.

Dignity and sovereignty had subtly replaced the grace of her movement, her very stature seemed aggrandized by the consciousness of her unique mission.

She turned, and her virginal eyes met mine with abashing purity, and in that instant of anguished rapture I knew that my quest was vain. The delicate flush of joy and surprise touched her cheeks, indeed, as before, but this time I felt it would not be succeeded by terror. Self-conscious now, self-poised, she stood regally where she had faltered and fled.

"You return to spend Chanukah with us," she said.

"I came," I said, with uneasy bravado, "in the hope of spending it elsewhere--with you."

"But you know that cannot be," she said gently.

Ah, now she knew of what she was queen. But revolt was hot in my heart.

"Then they have made you share their dream," I said bitterly.

"Yes," she replied, with unruffled sweetness. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those that bring good tidings!" And her eyes shone in exultation.

"They were messengers of evil," I said--"whisperers of untruth. Life is for love and joy."

"Ah, no!" she urged tremulously. "Surely you know the world--how full it is of suffering and sin." And as with an unconscious movement, she threw back her splendid furs, revealing the weird shroud. "Ah, what ecstasy to think that the divine day will come, ere I am old, when, as it is written in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, '_He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory: and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken._'"

Her own eyes were full of tears, which I yearned to kiss away.

"But your own life meantime?" I said softly.

"My life--does it not already take on the glory of God as this mountain the coming day?"

She seemed indeed akin to the cold white peak as I had seen it flushed with sunrise. My passion seemed suddenly prosaic and selfish. I was lifted up into the higher love that worships and abnegates.

"God bless you!" I said, and turning away with misty vision, saw, creeping off, the three dark fanatical figures.