XIII.
SLOWLY recovering his senses, the first thing that Elias became conscious of, was a racking headache. By and by he opened his eyes, and glanced around. Vaguely, as if half waking, half dreaming, he saw that he was lying fully dressed upon his own bed in his own bed-chamber. The gas was turned down low. By fits and starts a puff of fresh, cool air blew through the open window, making the curtain flap noisily, and the gas-flame flicker. Nobody else was in the room. Pretty soon he closed his eyes again, and again for a while was aware only of that desperate pain in the head.
But by degrees a certain sluggish perplexity began to assert itself, a certain dull surprise and curiosity.
“There is something strange—something I don't understand. How do I come to be here? Have I been asleep and dreaming? Or is it true that a little while ago I was somewhere else? Where? I was doing something—something important—something that somebody else was doing with me. What? And then something happened. And—and now, here I am, lying here as though I had just waked out of a sleep, but all dressed, and with such, with such a headache—— Let me think.”
He tried hard to think; but in his mind all was impenetrable darkness, through which his thought groped at random, catching no gleam to follow; until of a sudden, a swift, intense lightning-flash of memory; and in an instant of supreme horror—with a mental recoil that communicated itself to his body, and made it start convulsively—he beheld what he supposed to be the appalling truth. Upon that lightning-flash, succeeded a very thunderstorm confusion in his brain.
“Oh, God!” he cried; and again and again, “Oh, God!”
Just what was it that he remembered?
“I remembered,” says he, in another part of that letter from which an excerpt was printed in Chapter X., “I remembered every thing down to the moment of my falling, with unaccustomed vividness and detail. I remembered our entering the parlor—you trembling upon my arm!—and running the gauntlet of the guests, and coming to a stand-still before the clergyman. I remembered the address that he had made; and how you had listened, with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks; and how I had—well, scarcely listened—but waited till he should finish, with eyes fastened upon your face, and heart beating hard for happiness.
“I remembered his asking, 'Wilt thou take this woman, Christine, to thy wedded wife?' and the glow of joy and pride and triumph, with which I prepared to answer. I remembered that then, just as I was opening my lips to speak, it seemed as though suddenly a dazzling disk of light rose before my eyes, changing color in rapid pulsations from white through yellow to scarlet; a sudden, tingling pain, like a powerful electric current, starting in the back of my head, shot through my body; a hard, sharp lump stuck in my throat; I felt that I was losing my ability to stand upright. I tried with might and main to keep my feet, and to speak the two necessary words. But I could not. My limbs contracted spasmodically. I heard a sharp explosion, like the report of a pistol, which sounded and felt as though somehow it came from within my own head. I cried out. I believed that I was surely dying. There was a second of immense agony—fear of death. I fell. Up to that point, I remembered every thing perfectly. But at that point, my memory broke short off.”
And remembering these things in this way, what did he conclude? He jumped to a conclusion which was most unwarrantable and most deplora-able, but which, considering all the circumstances, considering the fact that he was a Jew, born a Jew, bred a Jew, and the fact that for countless generations his ancestors upon every side had been Jews of the Jews, can scarcely be regarded as unnatural. He concluded that what the rabbi had prophesied had come to pass. He concluded that the God of Israel had indeed interfered.