Judith Trachtenberg Part 2

"Do you really think so?" The young fellow laughed nervously. The next moment he had thrown his arms around her form and had kissed her on the neck. The brave deed was rewarded by loud laughter and clapping of hands.

Pale as death, and trembling from head to foot, Judith tore herself free. "What a cowardly, knavish, trick!" she exclaimed, indignantly.

"You are right!" said a deep, sonorous voice, so loudly that it was distinctly heard above the noise. "It was a mean, cowardly trick!"

The speaker was Agenor Baranowski.

"Monsieur le Comte!" exclaimed Wladko.

"I am at your service whenever you like. Will you do me the honor of taking my arm, mademoiselle?"

He led her through the guests, who silently made way for them.

"Where may I conduct you?" he inquired. "Is your mother here?"

"I have no mother. But I live in the house."

"I know you are the daughter of Herr Trachtenberg, who welcomed me so pleasantly to-day. Well, then, shall I take you to your housekeeper?"

"No, only as far as the stairs, please," for she felt her strength failing her.

He accompanied her to the stairs, and took leave of her with a profound bow.

"But, Judith!" called Lady Anna, rus.h.i.+ng out of the room.

The girl did not hear her, and the count had returned to the salon.

CHAPTER II.

The next day people were talking everywhere of the kiss and its consequences. In the drawing-room of the magistrate, in the cafe of Aaron Siebenschlafer, where the Christian dignitaries a.s.sembled, and in the court of the synagogue, where the public opinion of the Ghetto originated.

"That is the result," complained the Jews, "of allowing a Jewish child to frequent Christian b.a.l.l.s. Why need she have been so irritable when the young gentleman made a joke about her father? But the innocent must expiate the sins committed by the guilty. Wladko and the count will have a duel, and if one is killed, or (may G.o.d forbid!) both of them, on whom will this blood rest? On us all; for a Jewish child was the cause!"

"The impudent thing!" said the Christians. "She certainly is beautiful, and her beauty has bewitched the count. That is his only excuse. What had he to do with it? He ought to have kissed her, too. But, in the first place, she ought not to have been invited."

Lady Anna had her excuse ready, and, when this was said to her, made answer: "She was invited at his express request. The little coquette attracted his attention at his _entree_, and he immediately asked my husband her name, saying, when they parted, 'I shall be pleased to meet _all_ those pretty ladies again to-night.' Tell me what else I could do? Now I suppose the little upstart is proud of what she has done."

There she made a mistake. The poor little beauty felt as if she could never show her face again to the world. Sorrow gnawed her heart, and tears poured over her pale cheeks. She had only left her own room once, early in the dawn, when the carriage drove up which was to carry her brother away.

Then she fell on his neck, and covered his face, clothes, and hand with her tears and kisses, until he, too, wept with her. "Pardon me!" she stammered again and again. "You meant it for the best; you are always right; you were right last night, and I will remember it my life long."

He had no knowledge of the painful scene of the preceding evening, nor had his father, who stood gazing affectionately on them. So they started on their journey with a light heart. Nathaniel was to accompany his son the first day, and would not be home until the next evening.

Till then Judith kept in her room; even Lady Anna knocked in vain. She had come to have a sensible talk with the girl before Nathaniel's return. The old Jew was clever, but one could not tell how he would take the affair; and this was of great importance, as Herr von Wroblewski was thinking of applying for a considerable loan.

She went away uneasily after hearing no sound behind the door, but she lost little in not having had a conversation. For, had Judith's own father told her she had been wrong in repaying insult with insult, she would not have believed him. She was convinced she had done what was right, and was also convinced she had hitherto been tolerated only by the people in whose society she had found such pleasure and delight.

How humiliating the recollection of their friendliness, even more so than the remembrance of the insult! For while she thirsted pa.s.sionately for revenge, it angered her to think of one even of that set with grat.i.tude and respect. She recalled his glance in the morning; her face had led him on, or perhaps he wished to earn her regard. But again came the thought of his n.o.ble interposition in her behalf, of the deep respect he showed when leading her from the room, and his face rose before her--the pale, n.o.ble, commanding face with the sad eyes.

"No," she sobbed, "he is no better than the others." Yet this decision brought no consolation to the poor heart but fresh grief.

Another child of man was weeping inconsolably over the same event, but he was not beautiful as was the golden-haired Jewess. It was Herr Wladko von Wolczinski. And with him sobbed his father, mother, and four sisters, so that the whole house re-echoed with their lamentations.

His cousin Jan was the only one who remained unmoved. "Howl away," he growled. "If you did not wish to fight a duel, you should not have allowed us to persuade you into sending a challenge. It's only twenty-five paces, and only once firing. Baby, do be a man! Shoot him down! You can hit a deer at twenty-five paces."

"Jan," cried Wladko, "how can you be so heartless? Has a deer a pistol in its hand, aimed at me? It's a horrible thought!" Then, as the ladies kept up their quintet of sobs, old Herr Wolczinski determined to see if anything could be done to avert the calamity, and went to the magistrate.

"I have no desire to reproach you," he began, gloomily and energetically, "but it is your duty to prevent bloodshed. Count Agenor is the last of his line; he ought not fall by the hand of a Wolczinski.

Let him only write a brief apology, which we can insert in the _Lemberg Gazette_, and the duel will be stopped."

Herr von Wroblewski had hard work to restrain his merriment, and indeed he did not entirely succeed.

"I scarcely think that possible," he replied. "Count Agenor was a Uhlan officer before he succeeded to his estates, and left the service in high repute."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the baron, affecting astonishment. "I did not know it. In that case we would only be giving him a choice between moral and physical death, which would be hard. Then we will only require a written apology, which we shall not publish."

Herr von Wroblewski cleared his throat. "Well, then, we shall give no one occasion to say we are revengeful. An oral apology will suffice. We will invite a few gentlemen. Count Agenor can come to us, and--" The baron came to a stop. Herr von Wroblewski cleared his throat louder than ever.

"Or--h'm--! We won't invite any one--or we could meet here! You, Wladko, the count, and myself, quite informally. He could just mutter something, as, 'I did not intend to give offence, etc.' They would shake hands, and--"

Herr von Wroblewski was seized with a severe fit of coughing.

"D---- it all!" swore the old gentleman, wiping the perspiration from his face. "We cannot make it easier. We couldn't go to him, so that he could say the few words. Or--h'm!--do you think we could?"

"It would be very unusual," said the magistrate again, sober as the grave.

"Unusual! That does not matter! _Mon Dieu!_ Everything must be done for the first time. My dear friend, I beg of you, I implore you to--"

"I will do my best," promised Wroblewski, and he kept his word. He went to the count the very next day, and laughingly laid the proposition before him. Agenor laughed aloud.

"It is impossible. I am an officer. No matter what I said to the boy, it would be regarded as an apology."

"But you don't thirst for his blood. Just consider--a young fellow excited by champagne, and she a Jewess!"

"He met her as your guest."

"Yes, certainly! I do not intend to excuse Wladko. But be honest, my dear count. Would you have said anything if she had been ugly?"

"Yes," said Agenor, seriously. "I do not love the Jews, as you know; quite the contrary; and not because of my experience with them as a young officer. But I find it quite natural that all creatures on earth should protect themselves with their own weapons. Theirs are trickery and money. I have frequently asked myself whose fault it is that they use such weapons. They are often men with splendid abilities, and in many ways more moral than we. I acknowledge it is very largely our own fault. We are antagonistic; we knock them down; they bite us in the heels. So, without pondering over whose fault it is, I place myself in the ranks of those to whom I belong, by blood and position."

"But, my dear count!" interrupted the official. "As if it required any words! Do you fancy I like the Jews?"

"Your position is not mine," responded Agenor, curtly. "As judge, you cannot be a party man; but I, as a private individual, may, and, as the head of an old family, must be one. For in the contest my cla.s.s is being ruined. It cuts me to the heart to know this, for I think much of this cla.s.s, its necessities and its obligations. We aristocrats--I mean we true, pure-blooded, wealthy old families--are the only firm pillars of the state, as, indeed, we Polish aristocrats are the only hope of our nation. There is no other besides us--the middle cla.s.s scarcely exists, and the peasantry are against us. Look over the country; one man after another, one family after another, falls and sinks into oblivion--through foolishness, idleness, and bad management, I allow.

But could we incur debts so readily if there were no Jews in the country? Who is the inheritor? The Jew! Who has possession of the estates of the Wolczinskis, which a hundred years ago were enormous?