"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d as this mountain the coming day?"
She seemed indeed akin to the cold white peak as I had seen it flushed with sunrise. My pa.s.sion seemed suddenly prosaic and selfish. I was lifted up into the higher love that worships and abnegates.
"G.o.d bless you!" I said, and turning away with misty vision, saw, creeping off, the three dark fanatical figures.
VIII
Half a century later I was startled to find the name of Zloczszol in a headline of the Sunday edition of my American paper.
I had married, and was even a grandfather; for after my return to America the world of Bethulah had grown fantastic, stupidly superst.i.tious, and, finally, shadowy and almost unreal. Years and years of happiness had dissipated and obliterated the delicate fragrant dream of spiritual love.
But that strange long-forgotten name stirred instantly the sleeping past to life. I adjusted my spectacles and read the column eagerly. It was sensational enough, though not more so than a hundred columns of calamities in unknown places that one skips or reads with the mildest of thrills.
The long-threatened avalanche had fallen, and Nature had once more rudely reminded man of his puny place in creation. Rare conditions had at last come together. First a slight fall of snow, covering the mountain--how vividly I pictured it!--then a sharp frost which had frozen this deposit; after that a measureless, blinding snow-storm and a cyclonic wind. When all seemed calm again, the second ma.s.s of snow had begun to slide down the frozen surface of the first, quickening to a terrific pace, tearing down the leafless trunks and shooting them at the village like giant arrows of the angry G.o.ds. One of these arrows penetrated the trunk of a great cedar on the plain and stuck out on both sides, making a sort of cross, which the curious came from far and near to see. But, alas! the avalanche had not contented itself with such freakish manifestations; it had annihilated the new portion of the village which had dared crawl nearer the mountain when the railroad--a railroad in Zloczszol!--had found it cheaper to pa.s.s near the base than to make a circuit round the congested portion!
Alas! the cheapness was illusory. The depot with its crowd had been wiped out as by the offended Fury of the mountain; though by another freakish incident, ill.u.s.trating the t.i.tanic forces at work, yet the one redeeming detail of the appalling catastrophe, a small train of three carriages that had just moved off was lifted up bodily by the terrible wind that raced ahead of the monstrous sliding s...o...b..ll, and was clapped down in a field out of its reach, as if by a protecting hand. Not a creature on it was injured.
I had pa.s.sed the years allotted to man by the Psalmist, and my memory of the things of yesterday had begun to be faint and elusive, but the images of my Zloczszol adventure returned with a vividness that grew daily more possessive. What had become of Bethulah? Was she alive? Was she dead? And which were the sadder alternative--to have felt the darkness of early death closing round the great hope, or to have survived its possibility, and old, bent, bitter, and deserted by her followers, to await the lesser disenchantment of the grave?
An irresistible instinct impelled me--aged as I was myself--to revisit alone these scenes of my youth, to see how fate had rounded or broken off its grim ironic story.
I pa.s.s over the stages of the journey, at the conclusion of which I found myself again in the mountain village. Alas! The changes on the route had prepared me for the change in Zloczszol. Railroads threw their bridges over the gorges I had climbed, telegraph poles tamed the erst savage forest ways. And Zloczszol itself had now, by the line pa.s.sing through it, expanded into a trading centre, with vitality enough to recuperate quickly from the avalanche. The hotel was clean and commodious, but I could better have endured that ancient sitting-room in which the squalling baby was rocked. Strange, I could see its red wrinkled face, catch the very timbre of its piping cries!
Only the mountain was unchanged, and the pines and firs that had whispered dreams to my youth whispered sleep to my age. Ah, how frail and futile is the life of man! He pa.s.ses like a shadow, and the green sunlit earth he trod on closes over him and takes the tread of the new generations. What had I to say to these new, smart people in Zloczszol? No, the dead were my gossips and neighbours. For me more than the avalanche had desolated Zloczszol. I repaired to the cemetery. There I should find Yarchi. It was no use looking for him under the porch of the pine cottage. And there, too, I should in all likelihood find Bethulah!
But Ben David"s tomb was the first I found, carved with the intersecting triangles. The date showed he had died very soon after my departure; perhaps, I thought remorsefully, my importunities had agitated him too much. Ah! there at last was Yarchi. Under a high white stone he slept as soundly as any straight corpse. His sneering mouth had crumbled to dust, but I would have given much to hear it once more abuse the _Cha.s.sidim_. Propped on my stick and poring over the faded gilt letters, I recalled "the handsome stranger" whom the years had marred. But of Bethulah I saw no sign. I wandered back and found the turreted house, but it had been converted into a large store, and from Bethulah"s turret window hung a great advertising sky-sign.
I returned cheerlessly to the hotel, but as the sun began to pierce auspiciously through the bleakness of early March, I was about to sally forth again in the direction of Yarchi"s ancient cottage, when the porter directed me--as if I were a mere tourist--to go to see the giant cedar of Lebanon with its t.i.tanic arrow. However, I followed his instructions, and pretty soon I espied the broad-girthed tree towering over its field, with the foreign transpiercing trunk about fifteen feet from the ground, making indeed a vast cross. Leaning against the sunlit cedar was a white-robed figure, and as I hobbled nearer I saw by the shroud and the crown of flowers that I had found Bethulah.
At my approach she drew herself up in statuesque dignity, upright as Ben David of yore, and looked at me with keen unclouded eyes. There was a wondrous beauty of old age in her face and bearing. The silver hair banded on the temples glistened picturesquely against the reds and greens and golds of her crown.
"Ah, stranger!" she said, with a gracious smile. "You return to us."
"You recognize me?" I mumbled, in amaze.
"It is the face I loved in youth," she said simply.
Strange, happy, wistful tears sprang to my old eyes--some blurred sense of youth and love and G.o.d.
"Your youth seems with you still," I said. "Your face is as sweet, your voice as full of music."
The old ecstatic look lit up her eyes. "It is G.o.d who keeps me ever young, till the great day dawns."
I was taken aback. What! She believed still! That alternative had not figured in my prevision of pathetic closes. I was silent, but the old tumult of thought raged within me.
"But is not the day pa.s.sed forever?" I murmured at last.
The light in her eyes became queenly fire.
"While there is life," she cried, "in the veins of the house of Ben David!" And as she spoke my eye caught the gleam of the Persian emerald on her forefinger.
"And your worshippers--what of them?" I asked.
Her eyes grew sad. "After my father"s death--his memory for a blessing!--the pilgrims fell off, and when the years pa.s.sed without the miracle, his followers even here in Zloczszol began to weaken. And slowly a new generation arose, impatient and lax, which believed not in the faith of their forefathers and mocked my footsteps, saying, "Behold! the dreamer cometh!" And then the black fire-monster came, whizzing daily to and fro on the steel lines and breathing out fumes of unfaith, and the young men said lo! there is our true Redeemer.
Wherefore, as the years waxed and waned, until at last advancing Death threw his silver shadow on my hair, even the faithful grew to doubt, and they said, "But a few short years more and death must claim her, her mission unfulfilled, and the lamp of Israel"s hope shattered forever. Perchance it is we that have misunderstood the prophecies.
Not here, not here, shall G.o.d"s great miracle be wrought; this is not holy ground. "For the Lord dwelleth in Zion,"" they cried with the Prophets. Only on the sacred soil, outside of which G.o.d has never revealed himself, only in Palestine, they said, can Israel"s Redeemer be born. As it is written, "But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness."
"Then these and the scoffers persuaded me, seeing that I waxed very old, and I sold my father"s house--now grown of high value--to obtain the money for the journey, and I made ready to start for Jerusalem.
There had been a whirlwind and a great snow the day before and I would have tarried, but they said I must arrive in the Holy City ere the eve of Chanukah. And putting off my shroud and my crown, seeing that only in Jerusalem I might be a bride, I trusted myself to the fire-monster, and a vast company went with me to the starting-place--both of those who believed that salvation was of Zion and those who scoffed. But the monster had scarcely crawled out under G.o.d"s free heaven than G.o.d"s hand lifted me up and those with me--for my blessedness covered them--and put us down very far off, while a great white thunder-bolt fell upon the building and upon the scoffers and upon those who had prated of Zion, and behold! they were not. The mult.i.tude of Moab was as straw trodden down for the dunghill, and the high fort of the fire-monster was brought down and laid low and brought to the ground, even to the dust. Then arose a great cry from all the town and the mountain, and a rending of garments and a weeping in sackcloth. And many returned to the faith in me, for G.o.d"s hand has shown that here, and not elsewhere, is the miracle to be wrought. As it is written, word for word, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:--
""_And 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 G.o.d shall 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 it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our G.o.d; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under Him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And He shall spread forth His hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth to swim: and He shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall He bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust._"
"And here in this cedar of Lebanon, transplanted like Israel under the shadow of this alien mountain, the Lord has shot a bolt, for a sign to all that can read. And here I come daily to pray, and to await the divine moment."
She ceased, and her eyes turned to the now stainless heaven. And as I gazed upon her shining face it seemed to me that the fresh flowers and leaves of her crown, still wet with the dew, seen against that garment of death and the silver of decaying life, were symbolic of an undying, ever rejuvenescent hope.
IX
A last surprise awaited me. Bethulah now lived all alone in Yarchi"s pine cottage, which the years had left untouched.
Whether accident or purpose settled her there I do not know, but my heart was overcharged with mingled emotion as I went up the garden the next day to pay her a farewell visit. The poppies flaunted riotously amid the neglected maize, but the cottage itself seemed tidy.
It was the season when the cold wrinkled lips of winter meet the first kiss of spring, and death is pa.s.sing into resurrection. It was the hour when the chill shadows steal upon the sunlit day. In the sky was the shot purple of a rolling moor, merging into a glow of lovely green.
I stood under the porch where Yarchi had been wont to sun and snuff himself, and knocked at the door, but receiving no answer, I lifted the latch softly and looked in.
Bethulah was at her little table, her head lying on a great old Bible which her arms embraced. One long finger of departing sunlight pointed through the window and touched the flowers on the gray hair. I stole in with a cold fear that she was dead. But she seemed only asleep, with that sleep of old age which is so near to death and is yet the renewal of life.
I was curious to see what she had been reading. It was the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, and in the shadow of her crown ran the verses:--
"_And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shalt I of a surety bear a child, which am old?_
"_Is anything too hard for the Lord?_"