“To blame?” asked Richard. “I? For what?”
“Only this minute,” the priest went on, “her father was here with a story that it made my blood boil to hear. The girl has rejected all her suitors, and tells her father that she will marry no one but you or——”
With a loud cry Richard sprang toward the door. There was a chair in the way, but it went spinning across the room.
“Richard!” roared his guardian. “What is all this?”
But Richard, bareheaded and coatless, was tearing down the stairs, three, four, five at a time, and the next moment there was a crash that made the house tremble to its foundation. Richard had gone out, and had shut the door behind him. The rabbi, homeward bound, was nearing his door when a young whirlwind, hatless and coatless, rushed by him. The rabbi stood still, amazed. His amazement grew when he beheld this tornado whirl up the steps of his house and throw itself violently against the door. As he ran forward to see what was happening the door opened and Hannah stood on the threshold, the light behind her streaming upon her shining hair. And, the next instant, all the wisdom that he had learned from the Talmud and the Kabbala deserted him. In after years he confessed that at that moment he felt like a fool. For the tempestuous Richard had seized Hannah in his arms and was kissing her cheeks and her lips and her eyes, and pouring out a perfect torrent of endearing phrases. And Hannah’s arms were tightly wound around his neck, and she was crying as though she feared that all the elements were about to try to drag the young man from her. A glint of reason returned to the rabbi.
“Hold!” he cried. “Foolish children! Stand apart! Listen to me!”
They turned and looked at him. The Rabbi Sarna looked into the eyes of Richard. But what he saw there troubled him. He could not bear the young man’s gaze. Almost in despair he turned to his daughter. “Hannah,” he began. Then he looked into her eyes, and his gaze fell. He sighed and walked past them into the house. In an instant he was forgotten.
“Oh, thou art fair, my love!” cried Richard. “Thou art fair!”
When “the traveller from New Zealand” stands upon the last remaining arch of London Bridge and gazes upon the ruins of St. Paul’s, the Catholic Church will still flourish. And when the nations of the earth have died and their names have become mere memories, as men to-day remember the Phœnicians and the Romans, then will there still rise to heaven that daily prayer, “Hear, O Israel!” And in the chronicles of neither of these religions will there ever be found mention of either Richard Shea or his wife Hannah. But, if that story be true of the Great Book in which the lives of all men are written down, and the motives of all their deeds recorded in black and white, then surely there is a page upon which these names appear. And perhaps, occasionally, an angel peeps at it and brushes away a tear and smiles.