The Yoke of the Thorah

CONTENTS


IT was the last day of November, 1882. The sun had not shone at all that day. The wind, sharp-edged, had blown steadily from the northeast. The clouds, leaden of hue and woolly of texture, had hung very close to the earth. Weather-wise people had predicted snow—the first snow of the season; but none had fallen. Rheumatic people had had their tempers whetted. Impressionable people, among them Elias Bacharach, had been beset by the blues.
Elias had tried hard to absorb himself in his work; but without success. His colors would not blend. His brushes had lost their cunning. His touch was uncertain. His eye was false. At two o'clock he had given up in despair, and sent his model home. Then he sat down at the big window of his studio, and looked off across the tree-tops into the lowering north. A foolish thing to do. It was a cheerless prospect. In the clouds he could trace a hundred sullen faces. The tree-tops shivered. The whistling wind, the noises of the street, the drone of a distant hand-organ, mingled in dreary, enervating counterpoint. His own mood darkened. Though he had every reason to be contented—though he had youth, art, independence, excellent health, sufficient wealth, and not a care in the world—he was nervous and restless and depressed. The elements were to blame. Under gray skies, which of us has not had pretty much the same experience?
By and by Elias got up.
“I'll go out,” he said, “and walk it off.”
He went out. For a while he walked aimlessly hither and thither. But walking did not bring the hoped-for relief. He and the world were out of tune. The men and women whom he passed were one and all either commonplace or ugly. The sounds that smote his ears were inharmonious. The wind sent a chill to his bones; besides, it bore a disagreeable odor of petroleum from the refineries across the river. “I might as well—I might better—have remained within-doors,” was his reflection. Presently, however, he found himself in Union Square. This reminded him that there was a little matter about which he wanted to see Matthew Redwood, the costumer. Elias had lately read Mistral's “Mirèio.” The poem had fired his enthusiasm. He was bent upon making Mirèio the subject of a picture. But, he had asked himself, what style of costume do the Provençal peasant women wear? He had determined to consult Redwood. Now, being in Redwood's neighborhood, he would call upon the old man, and state the question.