Part 15 (1/2)
”Oh, yes, I have, father. While you were all telling stories I was _bens.h.i.+ng_ quietly to myself.”
”Is Saul also among the prophets, is Levi also among the story-tellers?”
murmured Pinchas to himself. Aloud he said: ”The child speaks truth; I saw his lips moving.”
Levi gave the poet a grateful look, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his satchel and ran off to No. 1 Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, inwardly upbraiding Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as yet had his breakfast for his book. Perhaps it was Simcha's presence that was to blame. She was the Reb's right hand and he did not care to let her know what his left was doing.
He retired to his study when Pinchas departed, and the Rebbitzin clattered about with a besom.
The study was a large square room lined with book-shelves and hung with portraits of the great continental Rabbis. The books were bibliographical monsters to which the Family Bibles of the Christian are mere pocket-books.
They were all printed purely with the consonants, the vowels being divined grammatically or known by heart. In each there was an island of text in a sea of commentary, itself lost in an ocean of super-commentary that was bordered by a continent of super-super-commentary. Reb Shemuel knew many of these immense folios--with all their tortuous windings of argument and anecdote--much as the child knows the village it was born in, the crooked by-ways and the field paths. Such and such a Rabbi gave such and such an opinion on such and such a line from the bottom of such and such a page--his memory of it was a visual picture. And just as the child does not connect its native village with the broader world without, does not trace its streets and turnings till they lead to the great towns, does not inquire as to its origins and its history, does not view it in relation to other villages, to the country, to the continent, to the world, but loves it for itself and in itself, so Reb Shemuel regarded and reverenced and loved these gigantic pages with their serried battalions of varied type. They were facts--absolute as the globe itself--regions of wisdom, perfect and self-sufficing. A little obscure here and there, perhaps, and in need of amplification or explication for inferior intellects--a half-finished ma.n.u.script commentary on one of the super-commentaries, to be called ”The Garden of Lilies,” was lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk--but yet the only true encyclopaedia of things terrestrial and divine. And, indeed, they were wonderful books. It was as difficult to say what was not in them as what was. Through them the old Rabbi held communion with his G.o.d whom he loved with all his heart and soul and thought of as a genial Father, watching tenderly over His froward children and chastising them because He loved them. Generations of saints and scholars linked Reb Shemuel with the marvels of Sinai. The infinite network of ceremonial never hampered his soul; it was his joyous privilege to obey his Father in all things and like the king who offered to reward the man who invented a new pleasure, he was ready to embrace the sage who could deduce a new commandment. He rose at four every morning to study, and s.n.a.t.c.hed every odd moment he could during the day. Rabbi Meir, that ancient ethical teacher, wrote: ”Whosoever labors in the Torah for its own sake, the whole world is indebted to him; he is called friend, beloved, a lover of the All-present, a lover of mankind; it clothes him in meekness and reverence; it fits him to become just, pious, upright and faithful; he becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of insult.”
Reb Shemuel would have been scandalized if any one had applied these words to him.
At about eleven o'clock Hannah came into the room, an open letter in her hand.
”Father,” she said, ”I have just had a letter from Samuel Levine.”
”Your husband?” he said, looking up with a smile.
”My husband,” she replied, with a fainter smile.
”And what does he say?”
”It isn't a very serious letter; he only wants to rea.s.sure me that he is coming back by Sunday week to be divorced.”
”All right; tell him it shall be done at cost price,” he said, with the foreign accent that made him somehow seem more lovable to his daughter when he spoke English. ”He shall only be charged for the scribe.”
”He'll take that for granted,” Hannah replied. ”Fathers are expected to do these little things for their own children. But how much nicer it would be if you could give me the _Gett_ yourself.”
”I would marry you with pleasure,” said Reb Shemuel, ”but divorce is another matter. The _Din_ has too much regard for a father's feelings to allow that.”
”And you really think I am Sam Levine's wife?”
”How many times shall I tell you? Some authorities do take the _intention_ into account, but the letter of the law is clearly against you. It is far safer to be formally divorced.”
”Then if he were to die--”
”Save us and grant us peace,” interrupted the Reb in horror.
”I should be his widow.”
”Yes, I suppose you would. But what _Narrischkeit_! Why should he die?
It isn't as if you were really married to him,” said the Reb, his eye twinkling.
”But isn't it all absurd, father?”
”Do not talk so,” said Reb Shemuel, resuming his gravity. ”Is it absurd that you should be scorched if you play with fire?”
Hannah did not reply to the question.