“God bless and reward you, my dear, dear friend. You know all I would say and yet cannot.”
He kissed her hand, and, with an ineffable look of holy calm, the Jewish convert left the room, still glancing back at him.
Two months passed, and Löwenberg grew better. One morning, a large letter was brought to him, with the Madrid post-mark. He opened it hastily, and scanned its contents. The letter fell from his hands as he read, and a dizziness came over him; he lay back on his couch, deadly pale.
“Is it anything bad about Maheleth?” timidly asked little Thamar.
“No,” he said, momentarily roused to anger. He took up the letter again and muttered, “A million dollars!” The children thought he was worse, and looked on with scared faces.
The letter was from a banker at Madrid, saying that he was authorized by a person deeply in Señor Cristalar's debt, but who wished to remain nameless, to apprise him of a [pg 530] certain sum, a million dollars, lying in ready money at his command in Hauptmann's bank at Frankfort. The person had long been wishing to make this restitution, but had not till now been able to ascertain his hiding-place. The invalid was in a fever; he could not help thinking of the young Christian he had spurned, yet he tried to persuade himself it was not he, but the man to whose knavery he had owed his total ruin.
Several days passed, and at last he wrote to Holcombe at the hotel he had been staying at. In ambiguous terms, he spoke of a generous service undeserved by him, and of his desire to see him, if only once. But the Englishman was gone and had left no address. He then wrote to his Madrid correspondent, urging him to try and discover the person from whom the money had been sent; but the banker wrote word that the whole transaction had been kept very secret, and that, before it had become known to him, it had passed through so many hands that it was impossible to find out the first person concerned. There was a hint of some American bank connected with it, and the money had been originally paid down in American gold; but beyond this there was no clue. Cristalar thought the Spanish banker had been probably bribed to keep silence, and a few more weeks sped by without his taking any active measures about his newly-found wealth. He received and acknowledged a letter of advice from Hauptmann's bank, telling him of the sum at his disposal, and Hauptmann himself came to call upon him and offer him his congratulations. The Spaniard, who still called himself by his German name, received the visit of his former employer as a mere conventional act of courtesy, and seemed in no wise elated by the sudden good-fortune he was being congratulated upon. He did not change his lodgings, but he hired a servant, and sent his daughters to the best Jewish school in the town. As soon as he got well, which was by rapid degrees, after he had received the letter that once more made him a millionaire, he left his children in charge of Rachel, and proceeded to London, where he advertised daily for information of Henry Holcombe. The weekly supplies in small sums had never discontinued, but he felt assured that, notwithstanding all these blinds, he could not be mistaken as to the name of his benefactor.
Meanwhile, Maheleth in her Bohemian home heard from Rachel of her father's fortune, his restoration to health, and his journey to England. She, too, wrote to Henry, and asked him to tell her if it were he that had thus returned good for evil. He simply said in reply that he was free to do as he liked with his money, and that he thought Señor Cristalar knew better how to use it than he did.
Summer came again, and with it Henry Holcombe; the old Juden-Strasse was once more before him, and then he learnt that Herr Löwenberg had gone three months ago to Madrid. He had been travelling in Italy and Greece, and had never gone home to his old English country-house, which now was let to good and steady tenants. He went to the convent; she was not there, but they expected her. So there was nothing for it but to go and chat with Rachel and old Zimmermann about old times and old friends.
A week later he called again at the convent, and the portress told him to wait. In the same little parlor, unchanged and clean, he waited for a quarter of an hour, hoping and dreading to see Maheleth. She [pg 531] came in this time alone. He took her hand in his, and looked a hungry look into her eyes. She said to him, smiling: