Volume 16 — The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.

Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.

But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting-room, looking pale and worn.

“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”

The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular degree.

“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”

“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of persons he trusted.”

“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.

“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”

[pg 413]

“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”

“So have you, my poor child.”

“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a full-grown tree.”

“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear it alone.”

“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.

A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman's face.

“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”

“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”

“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”

“Oh! they are comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”

“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be seen if you can be a stoic.”

“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor resignation.”

Here a light step was heard, and the half-open door was pushed quickly back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and, holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:

“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just come from the jeweller's, just as my father ordered it!”

And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful parure of opals and diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned away impatiently, saying to the child:

“Thamar, I am engaged; don't come fooling here about these jewels; put them down, and go into the next room.”

The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.

“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never mind the pretty gems just now.”

And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her mother, resumed her seat.

“There are the first-fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to-day, and I shall have to tell him to take them back!”

“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”

Maheleth's father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness when that success disappears.

One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and honored: he could trace his [pg 414] ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain. It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife's beauty, his lavish hospitality, his daughter's charms, were strong enough, he knew, to break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in energy and strong will.

And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very galling to him. They now would turn from him, would forget his open-handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps, but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his friends.

Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his fortunes.

“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters' dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”

“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.

“Oh! you and I will be co-workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”

The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller's; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.

Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days' wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.

One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray's Guide-Book, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.

At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he did go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral-niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven-soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer-house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive Murray nor the ostentatious Byron; and, in fact, he [pg 415] departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.

He was walking one day down the Juden-Strasse, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval-looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half-hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.

“Oh! thank you, mein Herr!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.

But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark-clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn-looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.

He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the gushing style too much followed just then by some of his fair countrywomen.

The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.

He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann, Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families were given thus: “money-lender,” “banking-clerk,” and “lace-merchant,” respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house. Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away. Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the mysterious face would visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground-floor room, a merry face full of health and mischief—not his dream. The blinds were always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he began to fancy she must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home from the Juden-Strasse, and surprised him by telling [pg 416] him he was going home in a fortnight to get married.

“I've been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed myself immensely. And I've got such a pile of things going home to my fiancée, for our house. She will be delighted, she is so fond of queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I'll show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the different parts of the world I've been in.”

And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.

“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha's wife sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets, and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and mother-of-pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”

“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”

“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe, she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”

Then he turned out a huge tiger-skin, and said: “All my Indian things except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other curiosities. By the bye, I have some old point from Venice, but some people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn't it?”

Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he did not answer. His friend went on:

“I'll just ask the landlady, she'll be likely to know if there is any place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”

“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom face was directly in his mind's eye, and he could not drive the vision away.

“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice; “you have been here longer than I have.”

So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular houses bordering the curious Juden-Strasse. It was Friday evening, and the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish-looking building, with Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair-cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice-work defended these galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.

The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building; sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry [pg 417] Holcombe seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him. And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner's Kaddisch, as he saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he could hear the women's clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.

When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded him of the table d'hôte they had most likely already missed.

“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”

Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk, a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.

“By jove! that is a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a Christian.”

“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She looks like a Spaniard.”

The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to Holcombe:

“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace-merchant this morning.”

Holcombe's heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 Juden-Strasse.”

“I don't know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with pleasure.”

“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble-down dens of the Juden-Strasse.”

“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”

They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr Zimmermann.

“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all alone, he has got into very queer ways.”

They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded them.

“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for us, for my father, I mean, and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg, he is a stranger and has no friends.”

The two young men then knew that she was the money-lender's daughter, and Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.

“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well-known in the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for laces.”

“Oh! yes; rich he is; so rich he won't sell generally; but then an Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves himself.”

By this time, they had reached the [pg 418] door of the miser's room; a low, subdued voice was heard within reading.

Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was drawn ajar by some one inside.

“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”

Holcombe knew that voice must belong to the girl he had never forgotten. Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened, narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.

“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”

“To-day, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”

Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.

“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will let us see the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”

The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low voice:

“No; please do not ask to come in to-day; he is hardly conscious, and he might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”

“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come away; don't you understand?”

The door was closed gently, and Henry said:

“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”

“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that's it. But, I say, is she not pretty?”

“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.

“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.

“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man. Her own father is ill and can't work, and she is very good to him. She reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has two little sisters also.”

“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.

“She keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann's bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two months after they came here.”

“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.

“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a foreigner.”

“Maheleth! A curious name.”

“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister's—Thamar.”

They were at the street-door now, and Ellice bade the girl good-morning, saying they would come again on Monday.

“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”

“Yes,” said Holcombe.

“You don't seem very much interested, anyhow.”

“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”

“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”

Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace-merchant's den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried-up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it [pg 419] was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back-yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.

While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.

The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”

“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”

“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to-night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.

“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.

Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning's visit to her old protégé, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.

“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.

“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”

“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the young man turned to the lace-merchant.

“Have you been ill long?”

“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot do without her.”

“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”

“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell nothing now; I have no customers.”

Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:

“Are you fond of flowers?”

“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”

“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts-ease of you; but, if you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you something you will like to-morrow.”

“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you some; she has some growing in her room.”

“No, this one is enough. Good-by, and I will try and see you again.”

As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:

“Well, Holcombe, you are green! You don't mean to say you believe he is poor?”

“No, I don't believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few flowers and some good food, if he won't get them for himself.”

“I suppose you remember that [pg 420] there is another invalid in the house, and the same person nurses both?”

“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn't joke; it is not fair.”

“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”

A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the Juden-Strasse. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic cathedral, at eight o'clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why, determined to go.

The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace-giving and heart-soothing one. A rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the Tantum Ergo, and the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on was a slight, dark-robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace? Or from the curiosity of a chance passer-by?

He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding-place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.

“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”

To Be Continued.