But when at last amid tumultuous cries of "Author!" Isaac Levinsky really appeared,—Isaac, transformed almost to a fairy prince, as noble a figure as any in his piece, Isaac, the proved master-spirit of the show, the unchallenged treader of all these radiant circles,—then all Miriam's effervescing emotion found vent in a sobbing cry of joy.
"Isaac!" she cried, stretching out her arms across the gallery bar.
But her cry was lost in the applause of the house.
IV
She wrote to him, care of the theatre. The first envelope she had to tear up because it was inadvertently addressed to Isaac Levinsky.
Her letter was a gush of joy at finding her dear Isaac, of pride in his wonderful position. Who would have dreamed a lithographer's apprentice would arrive at leading the fashions among the nobility and gentry? But she had always believed in his talents; she had always treasured the water-colour he had made of her, and it hung in the parlour behind the haberdasher's shop into which she had married. He, too, was married, they had imagined, and gone to America. But perhaps he was married, although in England. Would he not tell her? Of course, his parents had cast him out of their hearts, though she had heard mother call out his name in her sleep. But she herself thought of him very often, and perhaps he would let her come to see him. She would come very quietly when the grand people were not there, nor would she ever let out that he was a Jew, or not born in Brazil. Father was still pretty strong, thank God, but mother was rather ailing. Hoping to see him soon, she remained his loving Miriam.
She waited eagerly for his answer. Day followed day, but none came.
When the days passed into weeks, she began to lose hope; but it was not till The Whirligig, which she followed in the advertisement columns, was taken off after a briefer run than the first night seemed to augur, that she felt with curious conclusiveness that her letter would go unanswered. Perhaps even it had miscarried. But it was now not difficult to hunt out Ethelred P. Wyndhurst's address, and she wrote him anew.
Still the same wounding silence. After the lapse of a month, she understood that what he had written in Hebrew was final; that he had cut himself free once and forever from the swaddling coils of gabardine, and would not be dragged back even within touch of its hem. She wept over her second loss of him, but the persistent thought of him had brought back many tender childish images, and it seemed incredible that she would never really creep into his life again. He had permanently enlarged her horizon, and she continued to follow his career in the papers, worshipping it as it loomed grandiose through her haze of ignorance. Gradually she began to boast of it in her more English circles, and so in course of time it became known to all but the parents that the lost Isaac was a shining light in high heathendom, and a vast secret admiration mingled with the contempt of the Ghetto for Ethelred P. Wyndhurst.