Chapter 10

AS he had done upon a former and slightly similar occasion, and as he was wont to do whenever his spirits were in any degree perturbed, Elias climbed up-stairs to his studio, and sat down at the window. All day long the sun had shone bright and hot; but ever since dusk the sky had been clouding over; and now, plainly, a thunder-storm was near at hand. The atmosphere was thick, still, tepid. With increasing frequency, shafts of jagged lightning tore their way through the clouds, and were followed by long, sullen, distant rumblings, as of suppressed fury somewhere. Suddenly a breeze sprang up, swelling quickly into a strong wind. The air filled with dust. The branches of the trees, over in the park, groaned aloud; and from here and there came the noise of banging shutters, and of loose things generally being knocked about. The flames in the street-lamps below flared violently. Some of them went out. Big drops of lukewarm water began to fall, splashing audibly where they struck. All at once, a blinding flash, a deafening peal of thunder, from right overhead; and the rain came pouring down in torrents.

Now, of course, Elias Bacharach—he in whose soul the man had long since worsted the Jew, and reason abolished superstition—of course, Elias knew that what his uncle had said about the God of Israel interposing to prevent his marriage, was the sheerest sort of rubbish. That the old gentleman had spoken in good faith—that he really believed in the validity of his own prophecies, and had not uttered them merely with a view to working upon his hearer’s imagination, and exciting his fears—Elias could not doubt; for to resort to such strategy was not, he conceived, in the character of the artless and simple-minded rabbi. But that very good faith only proved him to be the victim of a most preposterous delusion. For himself, Elias had no misgivings. As confident as a mortal can be of any future event, in this world of uncertainties, so confident was he that the morrow evening would make of him and Christine man and wife. Of course, there was always the unforeseen to be allowed for; accidents were always possible. But if he had none but supermundane obstacles to dread, then he might regard his marriage as already an accomplished fact. And, notwithstanding, Elias felt very much disturbed—very much annoyed, mystified, and ill-at-ease. All that the rabbi had said was stuff and nonsense, at absolute, obvious variance with science, with simple common sense—fit material for laughter, for a certain contemptuous pity; but, nevertheless, every time that Elias recalled just what the rabbi had said, and the rabbi’s manner of saying it, he felt a sharp, inward pang, very like terror; he had to catch a quick, short breath; and he confessed to himself that he would give a good deal to be enabled to get inside the rabbi’s consciousness, and learn the grounds on which he based his extraordinary, but apparently secure, conviction, and find out exactly what form of divine interference he anticipated. Despite his clear perception of the rabbi’s sophistry, he caught himself furtively querying: “Can there be any thing in it?” Despite his assurance that all would go well, he caught himself furtively wishing that all was well over, and his marriage-certificate signed and sealed. “There is not a single chance of its taking place—not any more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun’s failing to rise to-morrow morning.” That phrase stuck like a thorn in his mind, and produced a considerable irritation.

This state of things, besides being intrinsically unpleasant, was offensive to Elias’s self-esteem. That he, at his age, in his stage of enlightenment, should be unsettled by the senseless menaces of a superstitious old bigot! Like a child frightened by its nurse’s bugaboo. And yet, there it was again, the sharp, internal twinge, so like the sting of terror; and there again he fell to speculating upon what the causes of the old man’s singular belief could be.

He sat at his window, peered out into the night, and tried to think of something else. He tried to think of Christine, tried to call up her image, tried to live over again the evening that he had passed with her, tried to picture to himself the happiness that the coming day held in store. No use. “There is no more chance of its taking place, than there is of the sun’s failing to rise to-morrow morning.” The rabbi’s voice kept ringing in his ears, like a hateful tune that one has heard, and can’t get rid of. The painful emotions it awoke, kept rankling in his bosom, and crowded out all the sweeter ones that sought to enter. He could fix his mind permanently upon no subject but the rabbi’s irrational predictions. He tried to stir up a little interest in the thunder-storm. There it was, raging furiously just outside his open window; rain dashing earthward like a loosened flood; lightning-flash following lightning-flash, and thunderclap thunder-clap, in rapid, tumultuous, terrifying succession; enough, one would fancy, to arrest and to appall the attention of any conscious being, human or even brute, within the reach of sight or sound; but Elias’s attention it held for a moment only. Then his mind sped back to the subject which he was most anxious to avoid. “Not a single chance—not any more chance than there is of the sun’s failing to rise!”

The clock of St. George’s Church struck two. What was the rabbi doing now? Elias wondered. Had he gone to bed? Or was he, perhaps, still down stairs in his study?—praying, perhaps, that the Lord would in no wise dishonor His servant’s pledges. At this notion, Elias involuntarily ground his teeth. “Praying for mischief!” he thought. “And what—what if, after all, there should be some efficacy in that sort of prayer!”—He remembered and rejoiced that he had told the rabbi nothing further about Christine than her name—neither her father’s name, nor her place of abode. Otherwise, the rabbi might have deemed it his duty to constitute himself heaven’s instrument, and, by intimidating the bride, have caused pain and trouble, if not, temporarily at least, have prevented the wedding from proceeding. In his fanaticism, what might he not be capable of doing?

The rain, beating upon the window-sill, spattered inward, wetting Elias’s clothing. When, by and by, he became aware that his coat-sleeve had got soaked through, he left his seat, closed the window, and lighted the gas.

His studio—in anticipation of his coming trip to Europe, and subsequent change of residence—he had pretty well dismantled, having packed away in dark closets and camphor-chests, the most part of such goods and chattels as dust or moth can corrupt. Little, indeed, was left out, save three or four chairs, a life-size lay-figure stripped of its draperies, an easel or two, and a few time-blackened plaster casts fastened to the wall. But over in one corner there was heaped up an assortment of miscellaneous odds and ends, the accumulation of half a dozen years, which, now, as his eye noted it, Elias remembered, he had meant to overhaul, with a view to laying aside whatever he should think worth keeping, and consigning the rest to the rag-and-bottle man. In the hurry and excitement of the past few days, however, he had forgotten all about it.

For a little while Elias stood still, blinking in the new-made gas-light, and gazing rather vacantly at this old lumber-pile. Then, suddenly, a gleam as of inspiration brightening his features, “What time,” he asked himself, “could be better than the present? If I go to bed, I shall only toss about, without sleeping; whereas, if I do this, it will be an improvement upon sitting idle, and brooding, any how.”

With which, straightway, he whipped off his coat, drew up a chair, and, not incurious as to what long-lost objects he might possibly unearth, started upon the forgotten task.

Paint-rags, besmeared with a thousand colors; torn canvases, bearing half-finished, half-begun, or half-obliterated studies; paint-tubes, half-emptied, in which the remaining paint had congealed, or “fatted”; worn-out brushes, broken palettes, shattered maul-sticks, fragments of old casts and ornaments in plaster or terra-cotta; letters without envelopes, envelopes without letters; newspapers, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, magazines, circulars, tailor’s bills, cracked bottles, cigarette-stumps, cast-off gloves, pocket handkerchiefs, cravats; all sheeted over with fine, black dust, and all exhaling a musty, oily odor; these were the elements that predominated, and most of these Elias tossed pell-mell to the middle of the floor, for the maid to carry away in the morning. To divert one’s thoughts from some persistent and exasperating topic, it is a commonplace, there is nothing like busying one’s fingers; manual exercise being the surest means to the end of mental rest. Pretty soon Elias’s late encounter with his uncle had sunken out of mind—only occasionally, for brief intervals, to struggle up, and agitate the surface—and agreeably interested in his present occupation, he was whistling softly to himself, indifferent alike to the perspiration that bathed his forehead, to the dust that penetrated his nostrils, and to the dirt that took lodgment upon his hands.

Meanwhile, the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the rain had settled into a steady drizzle.

Elias’s first notable find was a pretty little gold lead-pencil, one, he recognized, that had been sent him, as a present, on his twenty-first birthday, by an aunt of his—his father’s only sister—who lived in New Orleans, and whom he had never seen. It had got lost, in a most inexplicable manner, very-soon after its reception; and, conscience-smitten, Elias now recollected how he had suspected, to the degree of moral certainty, a poor devil of an Italian model of having stolen it. Well, here it was, intact; and so, poor Archimede had been innocent, after all.

Holding it in his hand, and examining it a little, before putting it into his pocket, and going on with his work, Elias felt himself suddenly carried backward, for an instant, to the period with which it was associated. Talismanic pencil, that had power to raise the dead, and annihilate the intervening years! There it lay, in shape, weight, color, in length, breadth, thickness, in all its attributes and dimensions, precisely the same as on that far-off birthday morning, when his mother, to whose care his aunt had entrusted it, delivered it to him, neatly boxed up in pasteboard, wrapped in tissue-paper, and sealed with red sealing-wax. How well he remembered! It might have been last week. It might almost have been yesterday. And yet, how much, indeed how much, had happened since. At the breakfast-table, she had said, “Here, Elias, here is something your Aunt Rachel has sent you—something that you will prize especially, because she is not at all rich, and has doubtless had to pinch and deny herself, in order to buy it.” Then she offered him the parcel, which he, touched, surprised, expectant, took and opened, finding within this same little pencil; and not it only, but wound around it, a bit of writing in his Aunt Rachel’s hand—the traditional Hebrew bensch: “May the Lord make you to be great, like Ephraim and Manasseh!” And immediately, of course, in his boyish enthusiasm, he had set himself down, and put the pencil to its virgin use, by inditing with it a glowing note of thanks—about the only use he ever had put it to, for very soon afterward it disappeared. And then, the rest, the rest of that wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten day! The pride and the triumph of it! The masterpiece of a dinner that his mother had prepared. The check for a dazzling sum of money, that he had found adroitly folded in with his napkin! The toothsome nut-cake, with its twenty-one symbolic candles! The wine that had been drunken to his health! The speech that the rabbi had made, standing up at the head of the table, and haranguing away as though he had had an audience of a thousand, instead of only Elias and his mother—the mother, however, listening amid tears and smiles, and applauding and nodding her head, as the splendid achievements which the future was to behold at the hands of her son, were prophetically described. The watch the rabbi had given him!—the same that was ticking in his waistcoat-pocket at this very instant. And the prayer that the rabbi had chanted! And how Elias himself, with swelling heart, had joined in the invocation: “Holy, holy Lord, Thou Who art one God!” and had vowed silently that, by the Lord’s help, he would “strive to become good in the sight of men, and a pride unto his people.” How well he remembered, thanks to this little pencil, precisely the same now as then, quite unchanged. But oh, what a changed Elias, he in whose palm it lay! How all the conditions of his life, and all his interests and purposes in life, and all his convictions about life, had changed since then! How little he had dreamed in those days of what was coming! Strange, that he should have had no premonition of it. Strange, that he should have gone on in peace and contentment, treading his level path, forward, forward, unsuspectingly, and never have caught a glimpse, never have got an inkling, of what was waiting for him, of what each step was bringing him so much the nearer to, of what presently was to burst upon him in a glory like that of heaven, and utterly revolutionize himself and all his world. Strange, indeed! And yet, in those old, simple, tranquil days, he had been happy, very happy, in a simple, tranquil way; and now, as he looked back at them, they shone suffused in a rose-colored enchantment; and he could feel his heart reach out toward them, with a strong longing affection, which, though melancholy, was not unmixed with sweetness.

Deep, engrossing, and of long duration, was the train of associations that had thus been started. The church clock across the park rang the half hour, before Elias finally roused himself, and renewed his attack upon the lumber heap.

For a good while he struck nothing more of interest—nothing that he cared to save, or even to look at twice. But by and by he fished out a sketch-book, which, to judge from the dilapidated state of its binding, must have been pretty old, and over which he paused, beating it against the floor, to rid it of some of its dust, and then opening it, to inspect its contents. On the fly-leaf he found his initials, “E. B.,” and a date, “January, 1876.” Listlessly turning the pages, he was somewhat amused, and a good deal ashamed, to perceive how poor and crude the drawings were—heads, for the most part, with only here and there a full-length figure; and he congratulated himself not a little that he had thus chanced to run across it, because now he could destroy it, and so make sure that nobody else should ever have the satisfaction of seeing what wretched stuff he had once been capable of perpetrating. He supposed that the sketches had nearly all been intended as portraits, but in the main he could not place them—could not remember the persons who had served as models. One face kept repeating itself; there were as many as a dozen separate studies of it; the face of a young man, aged, presumably, nineteen or twenty years; strangely familiar; the face of some one, beyond doubt, whom he must have known intimately; and yet, knitting his brows, and exerting his memory to the utmost, he was quite unable to recall the original. Odd; and intensely annoying, as baffled memory is apt to be; until, of a sudden, with a thrill of recognition that was by no means agreeable, he identified it as himself. A few pages further along, again with a sudden thrill, but this time with a far stronger and deeper one, he came upon a portrait of his mother. It was badly drawn, finical, over-elaborated; the draperies rigid as iron; the flesh wooden; the pose—she was seated, reading—awkward, and anatomically impossible; and yet, spite of all, it was an excellent, even a startling, likeness; and-happening upon it in this unexpected manner, Elias felt a not unnatural heart-leap and quickening of the pulse. When, or under what circumstances, he had made it, he could not think. He bent forward in his chair, gazed intently at it, and tried hard to recollect. If the date on the fly-leaf was trustworthy, it must, of course, have been after the first of January, 1876; but in his own memory, ransack it as he might, he could find no record; This struck him as exceedingly singular; because, he believed, he had been careful to preserve all the sketches of his mother that he had ever taken, even the most primitive and rudimentary; and how this one could not only have got mislaid, but entirely have escaped his mind, besides, he was at a complete loss to understand. So bending forward, and gazing intently at it, he tried his best to recollect.

Of what now befell, or seemed to befall, I shall give an account written some two years later by Elias himself, in a letter to Christine:

“Gradually—as is apt to happen, if you fix your eyes for any length of time upon a single spot in some small object—gradually the picture blurred, becoming simply a formless smudge upon the white surface of the paper; a lapse on the part of my eyesight, which I, absorbed in the effort I was making to remember, did not attempt to correct, but which in due time, as was natural, corrected itself; and again the picture stood out as distinct as before. Now, however, at once, every other thought and every other feeling were swept away, clean out of my head, by a sensation—I shall not be able to define it; you will easily conceive it; a sensation half of amazement, half of terror; for, without having changed in size, the face seemed to have changed totally in quality; it seemed to have ceased to be a face drawn with black lead upon paper, and to have become a face in veritable flesh and blood. The hair had apparently become hair. There was color in the cheeks. And the eyes were liquid, living eyes. They—the eyes—were what most affected me. Large, black, mournful, as her eyes had been in life, they looked into my eyes with an expression—I can’t describe it. It was what you would call an expression of intense agony, and of appeal; as though it were an agony of my causing, and one that she appealed to me to relieve. The lips—bluish white, as her lips were, toward the end of her life—the lips seemed to move, and kept moving, as if trying to speak, but unable to; until at last they succeeded; and I could have vowed that I heard, in her own recognizable voice, just a little above a whisper, these words: ‘There is no more chance of its taking place than there is of the sun’s failing to rise. Beware!’—the words that my uncle had spoken down stairs. I was so much startled, so much terrified, that I jumped up from my chair. Thereat, instantly, the illusion ended. Again it was only a crude pencil drawing upon the page of my sketch-book. I can’t tell how long it had lasted. Very likely not longer than two or three seconds, though it seemed at least as many minutes. I don’t think I had breathed once. I don’t think my heart had given a single beat. It had literally paralyzed me with fear.

“But now that it was over, I fell back upon my chair, and my heart began to pound like a hammer against my side; and I sat there, panting and perspiring, like a man exhausted by some tremendous physical exertion. I felt sick and dizzy, and had a racking headache.—Of course, it was a mere optical delusion; a mere hallucination; not an actual, objective phenomenon, not a ghost; a mere projection from my own imagination. A long time afterward I talked with a physician about it. The substance of what he said was this: Consider the steadily increasing excitement under which my mind had been laboring for many days, in view of our approaching marriage; consider the interview that I had had with my uncle, only an hour or two earlier, and the high pitch of agitation to which it had wrought me up; consider that it was long past my customary bedtime, and that my brain was irritated by lack of sleep, for I had not slept much of any the night before; consider that my mother was just then the one person uppermost in my thoughts, having been vividly recalled to me first by the pencil I had found, and then by the drawing that I was looking at; consider finally that my bodily posture—bending over till my chest nearly touched my knees—was such as to keep the blood pent up in my head; and the occurrence becomes very easily explicable, especially so, as such hallucinations, when people are excited, are not uncommon experiences. This is what the medical man said. It is undoubtedly true; and something like it I had wit enough to tell myself immediately, at the time. But telling did no good. It is one thing to satisfy your judgment; another to tranquilize your feelings and hush your imagination. They choose to accept the direct testimony of your eyes and ears, rather than the deductions of your common sense.

“I knew, as I have said, that my nerves had simply played me a trick; but that knowledge did not prevent me from passing a most wretched, uncomfortable night—the rest of that night, till day-break. The memory of the thing persisted in haunting me, in spite of the efforts I made to forget it. Strive as I might, I could not shake off the fear, the uneasiness, that it had inspired. Thinking of it, even at this distance, I still wince a little. It produced a very deep impression, and must have been, I believe, in large part accountable for, as it was of a piece with, what happened next day—or, rather, the evening of the same day, for it was now early morning.”