By this time they had reached the room at the end of the hall, the door of which she threw open.
Jewish people, as a rule, use their dining-rooms to sit in, keeping the drawing-rooms for company only. This is always presupposing that they have no extra sitting-room. After all, a dining-room is not a bad place for the family gathering, having a large table as an objective plane for a round game, which also serves as a support for reading matter; while from an economical point of view it preserves the drawing-rooms in reception stiffness and ceremonious newness.
The apartment they entered was large and square, and contained the regulation chairs, table, and silver and crystal loaded sideboard.
Upon the mantel-piece, the unflickering light from a waxen taper burning in a gla.s.s of oil lent an unusual air of Sabbath quiet to the room.
"I have "Yahrzeit" for my mother," explained Jo Lewis, glancing toward the taper after greeting his visitors. He sat down quietly again.
"Do you always burn the light?" asked Arnold.
"Always. A light once a year to a mother"s memory is not much to ask of a son."
"How long is it since you lost your mother?" questioned Ruth, gently.
Jo Lewis was a man with whom she had little in common. To her he seemed to have but one idea,--the ama.s.sing of wealth. With her more intellectual cravings, the continual striving for this, to the exclusion of all higher aspirations, put him on a plane too narrow for her footing. Unpolished he certainly was, but the rough, exposed grain of his unhewn nature showed many strata of strength and virility. In this gentle mood a tenderness had come into view that drew her to him with a touch of kinship.
"Thirty years," he answered musingly,--"thirty years. It is a long time, Ruth; but every year when I light the taper it seems as if but yesterday I was a boy crying because my mother had gone away forever." The strong man wiped his eyes.
"The little light casts a long ray," observed Ruth. "Love builds its own lighthouse, and by its gleaming we travel back as at a leap to that which seemed eternally lost."
Jo Lewis sighed. Presently the thoughts that so strongly possessed him found an outlet.
"There was a woman for you!" he cried with glowing eyes. "Why, Arnold, you talk of men being great financiers; I wonder what you would have said to the powers my mother showed. We were poor, but poor to a degree of which you can know nothing. Well, with a large family of small children she struggled on alone and managed to keep us not only alive, but clean and respectable. In our village Sara Lewis was a name that every man and woman honored as if it belonged to a princess. Jennie is a good woman, but life is made easy for her. I often think how grand my mother would feel if she were here, and I were able to give her every comfort. G.o.d knows how proud and happy I would have been to say, "You have struggled enough, Mother; life is going to be a heaven on earth to you now." Well, well, what is the good of thinking of it? To-morrow I shall go down town and deal with men, not memories; it is more profitable."
"Not always," said Arnold, dryly. The two men drifted into a business discussion that neither Mrs. Lewis nor Ruth cared to follow.
"Are you quite ready?" asked Mrs. Lewis, drawing her chair closer to Ruth"s.
"Entirely," she replied; "we start on the 8.30 train in the morning."
"You will be gone a month, will you not?"
"Yes; we wish to get back for the holidays. New Year"s falls on the 12th of September, and we must give the house its usual holiday cleaning."
"I have begun already. Somehow I never thought you would mind being away."
"Why, we always go to the Temple, you know; and I would not miss the Atonement services for a great deal."
"Why don"t you say "Yom Kippur," as everybody else does?"
"Because "Atonement" is English and means something to me. Is there anything odd about that?"
"I suppose not. By the way, if there is anything you would like to have done while you are away, let me know."
"I think I have seen to everything. You might run in and see Louis now and then."
"Louis," Mrs. Lewis called instantly, "be sure to come in often for dinner while the folks are gone."
"Thank you; I shall. The last dinner I ate with you was delicious enough to do away with any verbal invitation to another."
He arose, seeing Ruth had risen and was kissing her cousins good-by.
Mrs. Lewis beamed with pleasure at his words.
"Now, won"t you take something before you go?" she asked. "Ruth, I have the loveliest cakes."
"Oh, Jennie," remonstrated Ruth, as her cousin bustled off, "we have just dined."
"Let her enjoy herself," observed Louis; "she is never so happy as when she is feeding somebody."
The clink of gla.s.ses was soon heard, and Mrs. Lewis"s rosy face appeared behind a tray with tiny gla.s.ses and a plate of rich, brown-looking little cakes.
"Jo, get the Kirsch. You must try one, Ruth; I made them myself."
When they had complimented her on her cakes and Louis had drunk to his next undertaking, suggested by Jo Lewis, the visitors departed.
They had been walking in almost total silence for a number of blocks, when Ruth turned suddenly to him and said with great earnestness,--
"Louis, what is the matter with you? For the last few days you have hardly spoken to me. Have I done anything to annoy you?"
"You? Why, no, not that I remember."
"Then, please, before we go off, be friendly with me again."
"I am afraid I am not of a very hilarious temperament."
"Still, you manage to talk to others."
"Have you cared very much who talked to you lately?"
Her cheek changed color in the starlight.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Anything or nothing."
Ruth looked at him haughtily.
"If nothing," he continued, observing her askance from lowered lids, "what I am about to say will be harmless. If anything, I still hope you will find it pardonable."
"What are you about to say?"
"It won"t take long. Will you be my wife?"
And the stars still shone up in heaven!
Her face turned white as a Niphetos rose.