"Shall I to him"--Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word--"write?"
"No! He hears me knocking at his heart."
They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured feebly, "But--"
"Leave me in peace!" with a cry like that of a wounded animal.
The matron gently touched the novice"s arm and drew her away. "_I_ will write to him," she whispered.
Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in a h.e.l.l of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten her--surely she would not lie thus till death--that far-off death her strong religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone into the Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and the cost of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight of his strength?
The next day he came--by special invitation. His face was sallow, rimmed with swarthy hair; his under lip was sensuous. He hung his head, half veiling the shifty eyes.
Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah"s face sparkled.
"Put up the screen!" she murmured, and in its shelter drew her husband"s head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.
But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: "I thought thou wast dying."
A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.
"Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life. I _was_ dying--for a sight of thee."
"But the matron wrote to me pressingly," he blurted out. He felt her breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands she thrust him away.
"G.o.d"s fool that I am--I should have known; to-day is not visiting day. They have compa.s.sion on me--they see my sorrows--it is public talk."
His pulse seemed to stop. "They have talked to thee of me," he faltered.
"I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered--one cannot hide one"s heart."
"They have no right to talk," he muttered in sulky trepidation.
"They have every right," she rejoined sharply. "If thou hadst come to see me even once--why hast thou not?"
"I--I--have been travelling in the country with cheap jewellery. The tailoring is so slack."
"Look me in the eyes! Law of Moses? No, it is a lie. G.o.d shall forgive thee. Why hast thou not come?"
"I have told thee."
"Tell that to the Sabbath Fire-Woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out utterly--"
"No, no, Sarah," he murmured uneasily.
"Then why--?"
He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. "I did not like to come," he said desperately.
"Why not?" Crimson patches came and went on her white cheeks; her heart beat madly.
"Surely thou canst understand!"
"Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue!"
"I answer as thou askest."
"Thou answerest not at all."
"No answer is also an answer," he snarled, driven to bay. "Thou understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk."
"Ah--h--h!" in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat back by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on the pillow, the eyes closed.
He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.
"So sick! So sick! So sick!" moaned the wizened grandmother.
"Thou sayest they have compa.s.sion on thee in their talk," he murmured at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully; "have they none on me?"
Her silence chilled him. "But _thou_ hast compa.s.sion, Sarah," he urged. "_Thou_ understandest."
Presently she reopened her eyes.
"Thou art not gone?" she murmured.
"No--thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life! Only--"
"Wilt thou wash my skin, and not make me wet?" she interrupted bitterly. "Go home. Go home to her!"
"I will not go home."
"Then go under like Korah."
He shuffled out. That night her lonely h.e.l.l was made lonelier by the opening of a peep-hole into Paradise--a paradise of Adam and Eve and forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of jealousy in which she writhed?
He lingered about the pa.s.sage on the next visiting day, vaguely remorseful, but she would not see him. So he went away, vaguely indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.
When you lie on your back all day and all night you have time to think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in many lights from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. One such light flashed on the paradise, and showed it to her as but the portico of purgatory. Her husband would be d.a.m.ned in the next world, even as she was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.
On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness.
And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come and see her.
He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.
"Thou hast sent for me?" he murmured.
"Yes--perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my death-bed!" she replied, with bitter irony.