Part 93 (1/2)

”She cut herself adrift?” he repeated interrogatively. ”But why?”

”I will tell you,” said Raphael in low tones. ”I don't think it will be betraying her confidence to say that she found her position of dependence extremely irksome; it seemed to cripple her soul. Now I see what Mrs. Goldsmith is. I can understand better what life in her society meant for a girl like that.”

”And what has become of her?” asked the Russian. His face was agitated, the lips were almost white.

”I do not know,” said Raphael, almost in a whisper, his voice failing in a sudden upwelling of tumultuous feeling. The ever-whirling wheel of journalism--that modern realization of the labor of Sisyphus--had carried him round without giving him even time to remember that time was flying. Day had slipped into week and week into month, without his moving an inch from his groove in search of the girl whose unhappiness was yet always at the back of his thoughts. Now he was shaken with astonished self-reproach at his having allowed her to drift perhaps irretrievably beyond his ken.

”She is quite alone in the world, poor thing!” he said after a pause.

”She must be earning her own living, somehow. By journalism, perhaps.

But she prefers to live her own life. I am afraid it will be a hard one.” His voice trembled again. The minister's breast, too, was laboring with emotion that checked his speech, but after a moment utterance came to him--a strange choked utterance, almost blasphemous from those clerical lips.

”By G.o.d!” he gasped. ”That little girl!”

He turned his back upon his friend and covered his face with his hands, and Raphael saw his shoulders quivering. Then his own vision grew dim.

Conjecture, resentment, wonder, self-reproach, were lost in a new and absorbing sense of the pathos of the poor girl's position.

Presently the minister turned round, showing a face that made no pretence of calm.

”That was bravely done,” he said brokenly. ”To cut herself adrift! She will not sink; strength will be given her even as she gives others strength. If I could only see her and tell her! But she never liked me; she always distrusted me. I was a hollow windbag in her eyes--a thing of shams and cant--she shuddered to look at me. Was it not so? You are a friend of hers, you know what she felt.”

”I don't think it was you she disliked,” said Raphael in wondering pity.

”Only your office.”

”Then, by G.o.d, she was right!” cried the Russian hoa.r.s.ely. ”It was this--this that made me the target of her scorn.” He tore off his white tie madly as he spoke, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it.

”She and I were kindred in suffering; I read it in her eyes, averted as they were at the sight of this accursed thing! You stare at me--you think I have gone mad. Leon, you are not as other men. Can you not guess that this d.a.m.nable white tie has been choking the life and manhood out of me? But it is over now. Take your pen, Leon, as you are my friend, and write what I shall dictate.”

Silenced by the stress of a great soul, half dazed by the strange, unexpected revelation, Raphael seated himself, took his pen, and wrote:

”We understand that the Rev. Joseph Strelitski has resigned his position in the Kensington Synagogue.”

Not till he had written it did the full force of the paragraph overwhelm his soul.

”But you will not do this?” he said, looking up almost incredulously at the popular minister.

”I will; the position has become impossible. Leon, do you not understand? I am not what I was when I took it. I have lived, and life is change. Stagnation is death. Surely you can understand, for you, too, have changed. Cannot I read between the lines of your leaders?”

”Cannot you read in them?” said Raphael with a wan smile. ”I have modified some opinions, it is true, and developed others; but I have disguised none.”

”Not consciously, perhaps, but you do not speak all your thought.”

”Perhaps I do not listen to it,” said Raphael, half to himself. ”But you--whatever your change--you have not lost faith in primaries?”

”No; not in what I consider such.”

”Then why give up your platform, your housetop, whence you may do so much good? You are loved, venerated.”

Strelitski placed his palms over his ears.

”Don't! don't!” he cried. ”Don't you be the _advocatus diaboli_! Do you think I have not told myself all these things a thousand times? Do you think I have not tried every kind of opiate? No, no, be silent if you can say nothing to strengthen me in my resolution: am I not weak enough already? Promise me, give me your hand, swear to me that you will put that paragraph in the paper. Sat.u.r.day. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--in six days I shall change a hundred times. Swear to me, so that I may leave this room at peace, the long conflict ended.

Promise me you will insert it, though I myself should ask you to cancel it.”