Ghetto Tragedies Part 5

"Well?" said Brum breathlessly.

"Little fool!" said Zillah good-humouredly. "There is nothing but water--the same water as in London."

"But there are lights, aren't there?"

"Yes, there are lights," she admitted cheerfully.

"Where is the moon?"

"Where she always is--in the sky."

"Doesn't she make a silver path on the water?" he said, with a sob in his voice.

"What are you crying at? The mother didn't mean to make you cry."

She strained him contritely to her bosom, and kissed away his tears.

XII

The train for Switzerland started so early that Brum had no time to say his morning prayers; so, the carriage being to themselves, he donned his phylacteries and his praying-shawl with the blue stripes.

Zillah sat listening to the hour-long recitative with admiration of his memory.

Early in the hour she interrupted him to say: "How lucky I haven't to say all that! I should get tired."

"That's curious!" replied Brum. "I was just saying, 'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our G.o.d, who hath not made me a woman.' But a woman _has_ to pray, too, mother. Else why is there given a special form for the women to subst.i.tute?--'Who hath made me according to His will.'"

"Ah, that's only for learned women. Only learned women pray."

"Well, you'd like to pray the Benediction that comes next, mother, I know. Say it with me--do."

She repeated the Hebrew obediently, then asked: "What does it mean?"

"'Blessed art Thou, O Lord our G.o.d, who openest the eyes of the blind.'"

"Oh, my poor Brum! Teach it me! Say the Hebrew again."

She repeated it till she could say it unprompted. And then throughout the journey her lips moved with it at odd times. It became a talisman--a compromise with the G.o.d who had failed her.

"Blessed art Thou, O Lord our G.o.d, who openest the eyes of the blind."

XIII

Mountains were the great sensation of the pa.s.sage through Switzerland.

Brum had never seen a mountain, and the thought of being among the highest mountains in Europe was thrilling. Even Zillah's eyes could scarcely miss the mountains. She painted them in broad strokes. But they did not at all correspond to Brum's expectations of the Alps.

"Don't you see glaciers?" he asked anxiously.

"No," replied Zillah, but kept a sharp eye on the windows of pa.s.sing chalets till the boy discovered that she was looking for glaziers at work.

"Great ma.s.ses of ice," he explained, "sliding down very slowly, and glittering like the bergs in the Polar regions."

"No, I see none," she said, blus.h.i.+ng.

"Ah! wait till we come to Mont Blanc."

Mont Blanc was an obsession; his geography was not minute enough to know that the route did not pa.s.s within sight of it. He had expected it to dominate Switzerland as a cathedral spire dominates a little town.

"Mont Blanc is 15,784 feet above the sea," he said voluptuously.

"Eternal snow is on its top, but you will not see that, because it is above the clouds."

"It is, then, in Heaven," said Zillah.

"G.o.d is there," replied Brum gravely, and burst out with Coleridge's lines from his school-book:--

"'G.o.d! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, G.o.d!

G.o.d! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!

And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder G.o.d!'"

"Who openest the eyes of the blind," murmured Zillah.

"There are five torrents rus.h.i.+ng down, also," added Brum. "'And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad.' You'll recognize Mont Blanc by that. Don't you see them yet, mother?"

"Wait, I think I see them coming."

Presently she announced Mont Blanc definitely; described it with glaciers and torrents and its top reaching to G.o.d.

Brum's face shone.

"Poor lamb! I may as well give him Mont Blanc," she thought tenderly.

XIV

Endless other quaint dialogues pa.s.sed between mother and son on that tedious and hara.s.sing journey southwards.

"There'll be no more snow when we get to Italy," Brum explained.

"Italy's the land of beauty--always suns.h.i.+ne and blue sky. It's the country of the old G.o.ds--Venus, the G.o.ddess of beauty; Juno, with her peac.o.c.ks; Jupiter, with his thunderbolts, and lots of others."

"But I thought the Pope was a Christian," said Zillah.

"So he is. It was long ago, before people believed in Christianity."

"But then they were all Jews."