Part 55 (1/2)
”Oh yes, I'll be ready--Ha! Ha! Ha! A priest! Holy unto the Lord--I a priest! Ha! Ha! Ha! Do you know what my holiness consists in? In eating _tripha_ meat, and going to _Shool_ a few times a year! And I, _I_ am too holy to marry _your_ daughter. Oh, it is rich!” He ended in uncontrollable mirth, slapping his knee in ghastly enjoyment.
His laughter rang terrible. Reb Shemuel trembled from head to foot.
Hannah's cheek was drawn and white. She seemed overwrought beyond endurance. There followed a silence only less terrible than David's laughter.
”A _Cohen_,” burst forth David again. ”A holy _Cohen_ up to date. Do you know what the boys say about us priests when we're blessing you common people? They say that if you look on us once during that sacred function, you'll get blind, and if you look on us a second time you'll die. A nice reverent joke that, eh! Ha! Ha! Ha! You're blind already, Reb Shemuel. Beware you don't look at me again or I'll commence to bless you. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Again the terrible silence.
”Ah well,” David resumed, his bitterness welling forth in irony. ”And so the first sacrifice the priest is called upon to make is that of your daughter. But I won't, Reb Shemuel, mark my words; I won't, not till she offers her own throat to the knife. If she and I are parted, on you and you alone the guilt must rest. _You_ will have to perform the sacrifice.”
”What G.o.d wishes me to do I will do,” said the old man in a broken voice. ”What is it to that which our ancestors suffered for the glory of the Name?”
”Yes, but it seems you suffer by proxy,” retorted David, savagely.
”My G.o.d! Do you think I would not die to make Hannah happy?” faltered the old man. ”But G.o.d has laid the burden on her--and I can only help her to bear it. And now, sir, I must beg you to go. You do but distress my child.”
”What say you, Hannah? Do you wish me to go?”
”Yes--What is the use--now?” breathed Hannah through white quivering lips.
”My child!” said the old man pitifully, while he strained her to his breast.
”All right!” said David in strange harsh tones, scarcely recognizable as his. ”I see you are your father's daughter.”
He took his hat and turned his back upon the tragic embrace.
”David!” She called his name in an agonized hoa.r.s.e voice. She held her arms towards him. He did not turn round.
”David!” Her voice rose to a shriek. ”You will not leave me?”
He faced her exultant.
”Ah, you will come with me. You will be my wife.”
”No--no--not now, not now. I cannot answer you now. Let me think--good-bye, dearest, good-bye.” She burst out weeping. David took her in his arms and kissed her pa.s.sionately. Then he went out hurriedly.
Hannah wept on--her father holding her hand in piteous silence.
”Oh, it is cruel, your religion,” she sobbed. ”Cruel, cruel!”
”Hannah! Shemuel! Where are you?” suddenly came the excited voice of Simcha from the pa.s.sage. ”Come and look at the lovely fowls I've bought--and such _Metsiahs_. They're worth double. Oh, what a beautiful _Yomtov_ we shall have!”
CHAPTER XXV.
SEDER NIGHT.
”Prosaic miles of street stretch all around, Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned By arches that with thund'rous trains resound, And throbbing wires that galvanize the land; Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand; The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found; The last burlesque is playing in the Strand-- In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned.
Yet in ten thousand homes this April night An ancient people celebrates its birth To Freedom, with a reverential mirth, With customs quaint and many a h.o.a.ry rite, Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright, Its G.o.d shall be the G.o.d of all the Earth.”