“I wonder you dared hope it,” muttered Simeon. “Would our mother live with any one who lives not as a Jew, whose dearest pride is to seem in all points like the stranger with whom he lives?”
“Thank you for the kind will, my dear son,” replied the widow, affectionately, though sorrowfully; “but you are right in thinking it cannot be. I am too old and too ailing to mingle now with strangers. I cannot leave my own lowly dwelling; I cannot give up these forms and ordinances which I have learned to love, and believe obligatory upon me. Bring your wife to me, if indeed she does not scorn your poor Jewish mother; she will meet but love from me and mine.”
Reuben flung himself impetuously on her neck, and she felt his whole frame tremble as with choking sobs. His sister, Sarah, and Joseph reiterated their mothers words; Simeon alone was silent. Another half-hour passed—an interval painful to all parties, despite the exertions of Sarah and the widow to make it cheerful, and then Reuben rose to depart. His affectionate embrace, his warm “Good night, God bless you,” was welcomed and returned as warmly by all, and then he looked for Simeon. The youth was standing at the farther end of the apartment, in the deepest shadow, his arms folded on his breast, his lip compressed, and eyes fixed sternly on the ground.
“Simeon!” exclaimed Reuben, as he approached him with frankly extended hand, “Simeon! we are brothers; let us part friends.”
“Give up this intended marriage, come back to the faith you have deserted, and we are brothers,” answered Simeon, sternly. “If not, we are severed, and for ever.”
“Be it as you will, then,” answered Reuben, controlling anger with a violent effort. “Should you need a brother or a friend, you will find them both in me: the God of our fathers demands not violence like this.”
“He does not—He does not. Simeon, I beseech, COMMAND you, do not part thus with your brother; on your love, your duty to me, as your only remaining parent, I command this,” his mother said, mildly, but imperatively; but for once she spoke in vain. Leah, Sarah, Joseph, all according to their different characters, sought to soften him; but the dark cloud only thickened on his brow. At that moment a light form pressed through them all, and clasping his knees, looked up in that agitated face, as if those sightless orbs had more than common power—and Ruth it was that spoke.
“Brother,” she said, in her clear, sweet voice, “brother, our father bade us love our brother, even if he turned aside from all we hold most sacred and most dear. We stood around his death-bed, and we promised this—to love him to the end. Brother, you will not break this vow? No, no: our father looks upon us, hears us still!”
There was a strong and terrible struggle on the part of Simeon, and a heavy groan of repentant anguish broke from the very heart of Reuben.
“My father, my poor father! did he so love me? And will you still hate me, Simeon?” he gasped forth.