“Does she imagine,” she often heard people whisper, “that because her father was a farmer her children are princes? Let her remember that her husband is but a common gambler.”
How different would have been their thoughts had they known that the children were Gudule’s sole comfort. What their father had never heard from her, she poured into their youthful souls. No tear their mother shed was unobserved by them; they knew when their father had lost and when he had won; they knew, too, all the varying moods of his unhinged mind; and in this terrible school of misery they acquired an instinctive intelligence, which in the eyes of strangers seemed mere precocity.
The two children, however, had early given evidence of a marked difference in disposition. Ephraim’s nature was one of an almost feminine gentleness, whilst Viola was strong-willed and proudly reserved.
“Mother,” she said one day, “do you think he will continue to play much longer?”
“Viola, how can you talk like that?” Ephraim cried, greatly disturbed.
Thereupon Viola impetuously flung her arms round her mother’s neck, and for some moments she clung to her with all the strength of her passionate nature. It was as though in that wild embrace she would fain pour forth the long pent-up sorrows of her blighted childhood.
“Mother!” she cried, “you are so good to him. Never, never shall he have such kindness from me!”
“Ephraim,” said Gudule, “speak to your sister. In her sinful anger, Viola would revenge herself upon her own father. Does it so beseem a Jewish child?”
“Why does he treat you so cruelly, then?” Viola almost hissed the words.
Soon after fell the final crushing blow. Ascher had been away from home for some weeks, when one day Gudule received a letter, dated a prison in the neighborhood of Vienna. In words of genuine sympathy the writer explained that Ascher had been unfortunate enough to forge the signature to a bill. She would not see him again for the next five years. God comfort her! The letter was signed: “A fellow-sufferer with your husband.”