Читать книгу The Master; a Novel - Israel Zangwill - Страница 9

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Other rumors, too, came by coach to the village—rumors of blizzard and shipwreck—each with its opportunities of exhortation and expectoration. But in the lonely forest home, past which the dazzling mail-coach rattled with only a blast on the horn, the tragic end of David Strang stood out in equal loneliness. For Death, when he smites the poor, often cuts off not only the beloved, but the bread-winner; and though, in a literal sense, the Strangs made their own bread, yet it was David who kept the roof over their head and the ground under their feet. But for his remittances the interest on the mortgage, under which they held the farm and the house, could not have been paid, for the produce of the clearing, the bit of buckwheat and barley, barely maintained the cultivators, both Harriet and Matt eking out the resources of the family by earning a little in kind, sometimes even in money. Matt was a skilful soapmaker, decorating his bars with fanciful devices; and he delighted in âsugaringâ—a poetic process involving a temporary residence in a log-hut or a lumbermanâs cabin in the heart of the forest.

Now that the overdue mortgage money had gone to the bottom of the sea, more money must be raised immediately. That the dead man had any claim upon the consideration of his employers did not occur to the bereaved family; rather, it seemed, he owed the owners compensation for the lost Sally Bell. A family council was held on the evening of the day so blackly begun. Not even the baby was excluded—it sat before the open-doored stove on its motherâs lap and crowed at the great burning logs that silhouetted the walls with leaping shadows. Sprat, too, was present, crouched on âMattâs matâ (as the children called the rag mat their brother had braided), thrusting forward his black muzzle when the door rattled with special violence, and by his side lay the boy staring into the tumbling flames, yet taking the lead in the council with a new authoritative ring in his voice.

Wherever the realities of life beleaguer the soul, there children are born serious, and experience soon puts an old head on young shoulders. The beady-eyed pappoose that the Indian squaw carries sandwichwise âtwixt back and board does not cry. Dump it down, and it stands stolid like a pawn on a chessboard. Hang it on a projecting knot in the props of a wig-wam, and it sways like a snared rabbit. Matt Strang, strenuous little soul, had always a gravity beyond his years: his fatherâs removal seemed to equal his years to his gravity. He knew himself the head of the house. Harriet, despite her superior summers, was of the wrong sex, and his mother, though she had physical force to back her, was not a reasoning being. For a time, no doubt, she would be quieted by the peace of the grave which all but the crowing infant felt solemnizing the household, but Matt had no hope of more than a truce.

It was the boyâs brain and the boyâs voice that prevailed at the council-fire. Daisy was to be killed and salted down and sold—fortunately she was getting on in years, and, besides, they could never have had the heart to eat their poor old friend themselves, with her affectionate old nose and her faithful udders. The calves were to become veal, and all this meat, together with the fodder thus set free, Deacon Hailey was to be besought to take at a valuation, in lieu of the mortgage money, for money itself could not be hoped for from Cobequid Village. Though the âalmighty dollarâ ruled here as elsewhere, it was an unseen monarch, whose imperial court was at Halifax. There Matt might have got current coin, here barter was all the vogue. Accounts were kept in English money; it was not till a few years later that the dollar became the standard coin. For their own eating Matt calculated that he would catch more rabbits and shoot more partridges than in years of yore, and in the summer he would work on neighboring farms. Harriet would have to extend her sewing practice, and collaborate with Matt in making shad-nets for the fishermen, and Mrs. Strang would get spinning jobs from the farmersâ wives. Which being settled with a definiteness that left even a balance of savings, the widow handed the infant in her arms to Harriet, and, replacing it by the big Bible, she slipped on her spectacles with a nervous, involuntary glance round the kitchen, and asked the six-year-old Teddy to stick a finger into the book. Opening the holy tome at that place, she began to read from the head to the end of the chapter in a solemn, prophetic voice that suited with her black cap pinched up at the edges. She had no choice of texts; pricking was her invariable procedure when she felt a call to prelection, and the issue was an uncertainty dubiously delightful; for one day there would be a story or a miracle to stir the childrenâs blood, and another day a bald genealogy, and a third day a chapter of Revelation, all read with equal reverence as equally inspiring parts of an equally inspired whole.

Matt breathed freely when his mother announced Ezra, chap. x., not because he had any interest in Ezra, but because he knew it was a pictureless portion. When the text was liable to be interrupted by illustrations, the reading was liable to be interrupted by remonstrances, for scarce a picture but bore the marks of his illuminating brush, and his rude palette of ground charcoal, chalk, and berry-juice. He had been prompted to color before his hand itched to imitate, and in later years these episodes of the far East had found their way to planed boards of Western pine, with the figures often in new experimental combinations, and these scenes were in their turn planed away to make room for others equally unsatisfactory to the critical artist. But his mother had never been able to forgive the iniquities of his prime, not even after she had executed vengeance on the sinner. She had brought the sacred volume from her home at Halifax, and a colored Bible she had never seen; color made religion cheerful, destroyed its essential austerity—it could no more be conceived apart from black and white than a minister of the Gospel. An especial grievance hovered about the early chapters of Exodus, for Matt had stained the Red Sea with the reddish hue of the Bay of Fundy—a sacrilege to his mother, to whose fervid imagination the Sea of Miracles loomed lurid with sacred sanguineousness to which no profane water offered any parallel.

But Ezra is far from Exodus, and to-night the reminder was not likely. A gleam of exaltation illumined the readerâs eyes when she read the first verse; at the second her face seemed to flush as if the firelight had shot up suddenly.

â âNow when Ezra hed prayed anâ when he hed confessed, weepinâ anâ castinâ himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: fur the people wept very sore.

â âAnâ Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered anâ said unto Ezra, We hev trespassed against our God, anâ hev taken strange wives of the people of the land....â â

She read on, pausing only at the ends of the verses. Harriet knitted stockings over babyâs head; the smaller children listened in awe. Mattâs thoughts soon passed from Shechaniah, the son of Jehiel, uninterested even by his relationship to Elam. Usually when the subject-matter was dull, and when he was tired of watching the wavering shadows on the gray-plastered walls, he got up a factitious interest by noting the initial letter of each verse and timing its length, in view of his Sunday-school task of memorizing for each week a verse beginning with some specified letter. His verbal memory being indifferent, he would spend hours in searching for the tiniest verse, wasting thereby an amount of time in which he could have overcome the longest; though, as he indirectly scanned great tracts of the Bible, it may be this A B C business was but the device of a crafty deacon skilled in the young idea. However this be, Mattâs mind was deeplier moved to-night. The shriek of the blind wind without contrasted with the cheerful crackle of the logs within, and the woful contrast brought up that weird image destined to haunt him for so long.

He shuddered to think of it—down there in the cold, excluded forever from the warm hearth of life. Was not that its voice in the wind—wailing, crying to be let in, shaking the door? His eyes filled with tears. Vaguely he heard his motherâs voice intoning solemnly.

â âAnâ of the sons of Immer; Hanani, and Zebadiah. Anâ of the sons of Harim; Maaseiah, anâ Elijah, anâ Shemaiah, anâ Jehiel, anâ Uzziah. Anâ of the sons of Pashur....â â

The baby was still smiling, and tangling Harrietâs knitting, but Billy had fallen asleep, and presently Matt found himself studying the flicker of the firelight upon the little crippleâs pinched face.

â âAnâ of the sons of Zattu; Elioenai, Eliashib, Mattaniah, anâ Jeremoth, anâ Zabad, anâ Aziza. Of the sons also of Bebai....â â

The prophetic voice rose and fell unwaveringly, unwearyingly.

âDonât you think I ought to write and tell Uncle Matt?â came suddenly from the brooding boyâs lips.

âSilence, you son of Belial!â cried his mother indignantly. âHow dare you interrupt the chapter, so near the end, too! Uncle Matt, indeed! Whatâs the mortal use of writinâ to him, I should like to know? Do you think heâs likely to repent any, to disgorge our land? Why, he donât deserve to know his brotherâs dead, the everlastinâ Barabbas. If heâd hed to do oâ me he wouldnât hev found it so easy to make away with our inheritance, I do allow, and my poor David would hev been alive, and to home here with us to-night, thetâs a fact. Christ hev mercy on us all.â She burst into tears, blistering the precious page. Harriet ceased to ply her needles; they seemed to be going through her bosom. The baby enjoyed a free hand with the wool. Billy slept on. Presently Mrs. Strang choked back her sobs, wiped her eyes, and resumed in a steady, reverential voice:

â âMachnadebai, Shashai, Sharai, Azareel, anâ Shelemiah, Shemariah, Shallum, Amariah, anâ Joseph. Of the sons of Nebo; Jeiel, Mattithiah, Zabad, Zebina, Jadau, anâ Joel, Benaiah.

â âAll these hed taken strange wives, anâ some of them hed wives by whom they hed children.â â

Her voice fell with the well-known droop that marked the close. âAnyways,â she added, âI donât know your uncleâs address. London is a big place—considerable bigger nor Halifax; anâ heâll allow we want to beg of him. Never!â She shut the book with an emphatic bang, and Matt rose from Spratâs side and put it away.

âOf course, I shaânât go back to school any more,â he said, lightly, remembering the point had not come up.

âOh yes, you will.â His motherâs first instinct was always of contradiction.

âI may get a job anâ raise a little money towards the mortgage.â

âWhat job kin you get in the winter?â

âWhy, I kin winnow wheat some,â he reminded her, âanâ chop the neighborsâ wood, anâ sort the vegetables in their cellars.â

âAnâ whatever you make by thet,â she reminded him, âyouâll overbalance by what youâd be givinâ away to the school-master. Youâve paid Alic McTavit to the end oâ the season.â

âI guess youâre off the track this load oâ poles, mother,â said Matt, amused by her muddled finance.

Yet it was the less logical if even more specious argument of completing the snow months (for only young and useless children went to school in the summer) that appealed to him. The human mind is strangely under the sway of times and seasons, and the calendar is the stanchest ally of sloth and procrastination, and so Mrs. Strang settled in temporary triumph to her task of making new black mourning dresses for the girls out of her old merino, and a few days afterwards, when Matt had carried out his financial programme satisfactorily (except that Deacon Haileyâs valuation did not afford the estimated surplus), he joined the other children in their pilgrimage schoolward. The young Strangs amounted to a procession. At its head came Matt, drawing Billy on a little hand-sled by a breast-rope that came through the auger-holes in the peaks of the runners, and the end of Sprat, who sneaked after the children, formed a literal tail to it, till, arriving too far to be driven back, the animal ran to the front in fearless gambollings. This morning the air was keen and bright, the absence of wind preventing the real temperature from being felt, and the sun lit up the white woods with cold sparkle. Ere the children had covered the two miles most of them conceived such a new appetite that their fingers itched to undo their lunch packets. A halt was called, the bread-and-molasses was unwrapped, and while the future was being recklessly sacrificed to the present by the younger savages, Matt edified them by drawing on the snow with the point of Billyâs crutch. They followed the development of these designs with vociferous anticipation, one shouting, âA cow,â and another âOle Heyâ before more than a curve was outlined. Matt always amused himself by commencing at the most unlikely part of the figure, and working round gradually in unexpected ways, so as to keep the secret to the last possible moment. Sometimes, when it had been guessed too early, he would contrive to convert a fox into a moose, his enjoyment of his dexterity countervailing the twinge of his conscience. To-day all the animals were tamer than usual. The boy drew listlessly, abstractedly, unresentful when his secret was guessed in the first stages. And at last, half of itself, the crutch began to shape a Face—a Face with shut eyes and dripping hair, indefinably uncanny.

âFather!â cried Ted, in thick, triumphant tones, exultation tempered by mastication. But the older children held their breath, and Teddyâs exclamation was succeeded by an awesome silence. Suddenly a sagging bough snapped and fell, the collie howled, and Matt, roused from his reverie, saw that Billyâs face had grown white as the dead snow. The child was palsied with terror; Matt feared one of his fits was coming on. In a frenzy of remorse he blurred out the face with the crutch, and hustled the sled forward, singing cheerily: