"I send you—'roubles,' and beg of you, my dear son, to do me the favour, and come home for the Passover Festival. It is a disgrace to me in my old age. We have one son, an only child, and we are not worthy to see him. Your mother also asks me to beg of you to be sure to come home for the Passover. And you must know that Busie is to be congratulated. She is now betrothed. And if the Lord wills it, she is going to be married on the Sabbath after the Feast of Weeks.
"From me,
"Your Father."
This is the letter my father wrote to me. For the first time a sharp letter—for the first time in all those years since we had parted. And we had parted from one another, father and I, in silence, without quarrelling. I had acted in opposition to his wishes. I would not go his road, but my own road. I went abroad to study. At first my father was angry. He said he would never forgive me. Later, he began to send me money.
"I send you—'roubles,'" he used to write, "and your mother sends you her heartiest greetings."
Short, dry letters he wrote me. And my replies to him were also short and dry:
"I have received your letter with the—'roubles.' I thank you, and I send my mother my heartiest greetings."
Cold, terribly cold were our letters to one another. Who had time to realize where I found myself in the world of dreams in which I lived? But now my father's letter woke me up. Not so much his complaint that it was a shame I should have left him alone in his old age—that it was a disgrace for him that his only son should be away from him. I will confess it that this did not move me so much. Neither did my mother's pleadings with me that I should have pity on her and come home for the Passover Festival. Nothing took such a strong hold of me as the last few lines of my father's letter. "And you must know that Busie is to be congratulated."
Busie! The same Busie who has no equal anywhere on earth, excepting in the "Song of Songs"—the same Busie who is bound up with my life, whose childhood is interwoven closely with my childhood—the same Busie who always was to me the bewitched Queen's Daughter of all my wonderful fairy tales—the most wonderful princess of my golden dreams—this same Busie is now betrothed, is going to be married on the Sabbath after the Feast of Weeks? Is it true that she is going to be married, and not to me, but to some one else?
. . . . .
Who is Busie—what is she? Oh, do you not know who Busie is? Have you forgotten? Then I will tell you her biography all over again, briefly, and in the very same words I used when telling it you once on a time, years ago.