The Yoke of the Thorah. Harland Henry

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      SUNDAY came; and with it a warm sun, a blue sky, a soft, southerly breeze. It was one of those days, peculiar to our climate, which, though they may fall in the middle of winter, bear the fragrance of April upon their breath, and resuscitate for a moment in one's heart all the keen emotions dead since last spring-time. Elias presented himself at the Redwood house shortly after nine o'clock. Christine smiled upon him, and gave him a warm little hand to press. Her father asked, “How about costume? Want her to make up?” Elias said, “Oh, no; what she has on is perfect.” That was a simple gown of some dark blue stuff, confined at the waist by a broad band of cardinal ribbon. Her golden hair was caught in a loose knot behind her ears. Elias set up his easel in the parlor. Then he began the process of posing the model. This called for nice discrimination, and was productive of much mirthful debate. At last it was finished.

      “Now,” said old Redwood, “this is altogether too fine a day for me to spend cooped up in the house. I'll leave you two young folks to take care of each other. I'm going to read my newspaper in the park. Sunday don't come more than once a week, you understand. By-by, Chris. So long, Mr. Bacharach.”

      He went off.

      For a while Elias worked in silence. So great was the pleasure that he got from studying this young girl's beauty, and endeavoring to transfer the elements of it to his canvas, that he never thought of how heavily the time might lag for her. But all at once it occurred to him.

      “Why,” he reflected, “I'm treating her for all the world as if she were a paid model. This won't do. I must try to amuse her.”

      Then he sought high and low for something to say, something that would be at once appropriate and entertaining. In vain. His wits seemed to have deserted him, his mind to have become a total and hopeless blank. In order readily and happily to manufacture polite conversation, one must have had experience. Elias had had none. Now, in despair, he saw himself reduced to taking refuge in the weather.

      “This—er—has been an unusually mild fall, Miss Redwood,” he ventured.

      “Yes, very,” she acquiesced.

      “But the summer—that was a scorcher, wasn't it?”

      “Yes, indeed, dreadful,” she assented.

      “You spent it in the country, I suppose?”

      “Oh, no; we staid in the city.”

      “Ah, did you? So did I.”

      “Indeed?”

      “Yes.”

      He waited for her to go on, but she did not go on. With a sense of deep discouragement, he concluded that he had entered a cul-de-sac. He must begin anew, and upon another topic.

      Presently, “I hope you are not getting tired,” he said. “Don't hesitate to rest as often as you like.”

      “Oh, thank you, no; I'm not tired yet,” she answered.

      “Generally,” he announced, standing off, closing one eye, and taking an observation over the end of his crayon, “generally people who aren't used to it, find sitting very irksome; and even regular models, whose business it is, want to get up every now and then, and stretch themselves. But the painter himself never wearies.”

      “Because he is so interested in his work, I suppose?”

      “Yes, of course. Why, sometimes, of a summer day, I've painted for thirteen or fourteen hours at a stretch—from dawn till sunset—and then only been sorry that I could paint no more.”

      “It must be delightful to have an occupation like that—one that is a constant source of pleasure. It's the same, isn't it, with all kinds of artists—with musicians and sculptors?”

      “Yes, and writers. I know a man who is a writer—writes stories and poems and that sort of thing—and his wife says she has to use main force to get him to leave his manuscripts. Writers have the advantage of painters in one respect—they don't need daylight. Indeed, I think many of them like lamp-light better. The lamp is sort of emblematic of their calling, just as the palette is of ours. I have read somewhere of quite a celebrated novelist—I forget his name—an Englishman, I believe—who shuts his blinds, and lights the gas, and works by gaslight even in broad day. That's curious, isn't it?”

      “And foolish, besides; because they say it's very unhealthful and very bad for the eyes. I should think his novels would be awfully morbid.”

      “I used to paint by gaslight when I was at the League. But I don't any more. It doesn't pay. In the daytime your colors all look false and unwholesome—hectic—as if they had the consumption. Of course, if you're merely sketching, or working in black and white, it's different.”

      “Did you study at the League?”

      “Yes; and also under Stainar, in his studio.”

      “Stainar? At Paris?”

      “Oh, no; in New York. What little I know I have learned here in New York.”

      “Why, I thought every body had to study abroad—at Paris or Munich or Düsseldorf.”

      “They don't exactly have to. You can get very good instruction here. Stainar is a capital master; and there are others. Of course, it's desirable to study abroad, too. But I couldn't very well. I have never been further than fifty or a hundred miles from this city in my life.”

      “Why, how strange! I haven't either. But then, I'm a girl. You're a man. I should think you would have traveled.”

      “It was on account of my mother. She was a great stay-at-home; and I never felt like leaving her. Since her death—two years ago—I haven't had any wish to travel. I haven't had the heart for it.”

      After a little pause, Christine asked softly, “Have you any brothers or sisters?”

      “No, none. And my father died when I was a baby. So, except for me, my mother was quite alone. To be sure, she had my uncle, the rabbi; but he's not much company.”

      “Oh, have you an uncle who is a rabbi?”

      “Yes—Dr. Gedaza, of the Congregation Gates of Pearl, in Seventeenth Street.”

      “How interesting! Tell me, what is he like?”

      “Why, I don't know. How do you mean?”

      “What does he look like? And his character?”

      “Well, he's a little old gentleman, a widower. He wears spectacles, and he's got a bald head. He knows an' awful lot of theology, but in point of worldly wisdom he's as deficient as a child. Sometimes he's fairly good-natured, sometimes very severe. Generally he's absent-minded—up in the clouds.”

      “Has he a long white beard?”

      “He has a beard; but it's neither long nor white. It's short and black—though there may be a few white hairs scattered through it. There ought to be, considering his age. He's—Let me see. He's ten years older than my mother; СКАЧАТЬ