Rebbe

“ As Reba hurried along to meet her lover this rainy Sunday evening she tried to quench with old arguments the doubts and fears that would, in spite of her, spurt out now and then, like little sharp-tongued flames from a fire that isn't yet dead. It wasn't as if she were young, she told herself. She would never meet anybody else, who would care for her. Not in Ridgefield. She never had, and she was growing older every day. ”

“ It was there in the cemetery, among all the dead people buried underneath the snow, that, out of its darkness and confinement, Reba's soul was born anew—a small flickering little thing at first, wavering between light and darkness for days after its first moment of self-realization, but a spark of life, small and weak as it was, that persisted in existence and cried out night and day for nurture and tender ministration. ”

“ Oh, there were worlds and worlds for Reba to discover; and the sailor's love, if she might call it that, unreturned though it was, added magic sweetness to her new freedom.
Reba little guessed throughout that roseate-colored day of hers that her hour of happiness was to be so short. She had no premonition, when she started on her shopping-tour with Miss Park in the early afternoon, that a big, black, steam-driven monster, that had just snorted through Ridgefield, was hurling destruction toward her with every revolution of its ponderous wheels. ”

“ Reba turned steady eyes toward him. She never felt calmer in her life. The miraculous assurance of the early morning had not deserted her one whit. When she spoke her voice had a glad, defiant tone.
"I'm not the least bit sorry in the world!" she exclaimed.
For months and months Nathan fed his hungry heart on the memory of that reply. And Reba during many of those same months, perplexed and bewildered, strove desperately to call back the wonderful moment in the limousine when, as one inspired, she was consumed with the conviction of the ultimate rightness of her marriage. ”

“ For answer Reube merely gripped his arm with a strong pressure and stepped ahead with a lighted match. He could not urge Will to carry out the plan just proposed because in his heart, for all his confidence in Will’s powers as a swimmer, he could not believe it feasible. He saw, in imagination, his comrade’s battered body washing helplessly among the weedy and foaming rocks; while in the cave, for all the horror of it, there would certainly be some hours of respite—and who could say what they might not devise in all that time? ”

“ Oh, Reba shuddered, felt the horror at last. She, Rebecca Jerome, admired, loved and pitied vague masses of people she had never seen!
Aunt Augusta scornfully remarked at the end of Reba's fourth Sunday-letter home (she wrote, as before, persistently every week) , "Reba's putting on great airs—presuming to get heated up over this war-business. She knows about as much about it, I guess, as a cat! There'll be no living with that girl. She thinks she's being pretty smart, I suppose, with her exclamation-points about Belgium and France!" ”

“ As Reba mounted the creaky flight of stairs she caught a glimpse of the inside of the noisy bar-room, through the open door, and closed her eyes suddenly, as if they had been burned. There were half a dozen or more men in the room, and two girls, or women—at least something in skirts. Reba shuddered and followed the fat man, but she felt such a wave of faintness pass over her that she grasped the infirm railing by her side for support. ”

“ In spite of the fact that nature had finished with Reba's stature, contour, and features long since, still some sort of late loveliness bloomed upon her during that first fall of hers in Boston.
"Like green apples, picked and put down in a dark cellar before they're ripe," said Katherine Park to Louise Bartholomew one day. "Take them out in December and leave them in the sun a little while and they'll mellow up." ”

“ She rather lost her dignified self-control over Will’s story of the adventure in the cave, and she was filled with girlish excitement over the finding of the old blue jar.
“Of course, dearest boy,” said Mrs. Carter, “you did quite right to want Reuben to take all the treasure, since he alone found it. But where would he have been but for you? Reuben is a fine boy, if his grandfather didn’t amount to much. He takes after his mother’s family the most. ”

“ It flashed across the tortured Reba that to find herself in such a bedroom as this, forced to listen to the laughter, and shrill, delirious shrieks that issued now and again from the bar-room below, her eyes still smarting from what she had seen in that bar-room, was but the just outcome of her relations with Chadwick Booth. The forbiddenness of those relations loomed up before Reba in enormous proportions.
Why, he had never meant to marry her! It had never even occurred to him to make her his wife! ”

“ She just sat and looked at him and looked at him, as if he were the last person in the world she had expected to see seated beside her on the bench underneath the horse-chestnut tree.
He didn't realize how changed he was in her eyes. During his absence, whenever she had thought of him, it was never eyes, nose, mouth, features she saw, but just outline. Was it he? Was it Nathan? This man? No. Yes. No.
"You don't know me!" he exclaimed.
"I don't think I do," said Reba, in a jerky dazed voice, still staring. ”

“ Reuben hurriedly exclaimed. “It is only because I want Barbara. He would say the same to anyone else that asked for his daughter. You know me, rabbi; you have known me a long time, ever since I was a child. I do not pretend to be an angel, but I am not bad. I love the girl, and I can take good care of her. I don’t want to see his old wine glass again. I’d smash it into a——”
Reuben’s jaw fell, and his eyes stared vacantly at the wall. The rabbi followed his gaze, and, seeing nothing, turned to Reuben in surprise. ”

“ Reba's hands slipped down into her lap. Her eyes fixed themselves on the glass knob of a door across the room. She stared at it in silence, but it was not the knob she saw. Oh, how it hurt! Just to think of his eyes—how it hurt! She winced slightly.
"It isn't as if I were young," she said outloud, in that strange dull voice of hers. "I'm too old to get over it—to wake up healed from it some day," mystifyingly to those who listened Reba went on. "I shall never feel the same toward life again. ”

“ When, however, two or three afternoons and evenings alone together had been passed, and still he had not spoken of marriage, Reba began searching for other causes for his silence. Was it, possibly, she wondered, because he was uncertain of her feelings for him?
She was sure that this was the explanation when, one afternoon, three or four weeks after the revelation on the rocks, he smiled down at her with a kind of hurt-boy, peevish sort of expression, and asked half seriously, half playfully, "Why are you so passive, Becky, still? What are you made of? Why don't you ever let yourself go? ”

“ When they began removing life-long restraints from Reba they observed her as eagerly as if (instead of being anything so ruled by the laws of nature as a girl, or even a rose) she were a magical Japanese flower that had only to be dropped into a glass of water to unfold into marvelous beauty.
But Reba disappointed them. For five years Aunt Augusta repeated the two weeks at the fashionable summer-resorts, but it was absolutely useless. ”

“ I shouldn’t wonder a mite if Gandy’d try slashing ’em, so as to give Reube an unpleasant surprise when he starts out for the Dido’s first fishing.”
“I say,” said Will, “I never thought of that! We’ll ‘lay’ for him, so to speak, and give him a lesson if he tries it on.”
“A nod’s as good as a wink,” remarked Jerry Barnes, mysteriously, as he set Will down at Mrs. Carter’s door.
Mrs. Carter had not been at all anxious. Ever since Will’s reclamation of the new marsh she had had an implicit faith in his ability and judgment. She had imagined that he was spending the day with Reube. ”

“ It was during her second autumn in the city that Reba was offered a position at the Women's Alliance. She did not seek it. It had never occurred to Reba that she possessed qualities useful to an organization like the Women's Alliance. She drifted into her officialdom. But it was none the less precious to her. No secretly ambitious man ever drifted into a high position with more inward joy than Reba acquired her modest desk in the Alliance's office. ”

“ Reba was not afraid to walk the dark country roads about Ridgefield on moonless nights, and she told herself there was nothing to be afraid of here. And she wasn't afraid at first. It was when the lights of an approaching automobile appeared around an abrupt curve, that her heart suddenly jerked. She stepped back quickly out of sight behind some bushes, but after the automobile had passed, her heart was pounding hard. This wasn't a road where women were often found walking alone, she imagined. ”

“ You'll have to watch out," Reba recalled the minister having smilingly said to her mother and aunts when she appeared before him for the first time in her lengthened skirts. "There'll be young men coming thick and fast now, I'm thinking."
How they had beamed! Inwardly how she had beamed too. Aunt Augusta had had the parlor furniture re-covered in preparation for the minister's prediction. All three of the women who had tended Reba so long, with such diligence, expected wonderful things of her when at last she stood before them a finished young lady. ”

“ There was scarcely a Monday or Thursday evening during the half-dozen weeks that followed that Reba didn't put on a fresh waist and spotless white kid gloves, and steal out after supper to keep her strange tryst. She and her sailor friend always went to the same place of amusement, met at the same hour, at the same spot; always spent the same silent two hours and a half, side by side, in the dim intimate atmosphere of the crowded theater. ”

“ He rebuked him, and said: "In the place of great men thou must not sit." The man immediately went away, and sat by the door weeping bitterly. His tears reached the throne of glory, and God therefore sent the angel of death to take his (Reuben's) son; and he had begotten his son after his eightieth year. When the angel of death came to him, Reuben recognised him, and said: "Why hast thou come here? has the time arrived for me to quit the world?" "No," replied the angel, "God has sent me to take away thy son's life." "Why?" ”

“ It’s pretty tough—especially for mother!”
“Well,” said Will, with a queer, low tone of cheerfulness which seemed to his friend to mean more than cries and tears, “when I think of mother and Ted it sort of comes over me that I’d like to say my prayers—eh?” and for a minute or two, standing shoulder to shoulder, he and Reube leaned their faces silently against the oozy rock in the darkness. Then, lighting another match, they made all haste possible back to the side gallery, ascended it, and climbed upon the ledge. ”

“ Send me away that I may go back to my master. Whereupon they said. Let us call our child and ask what she saith. So they called Rebekka and said to her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. Then they sent away their sister Rebekka and what belonged to her, and the servant of Abraham and his attendants. And they blessed Rebekka and said to her, Thou art our sister. Mayest thou become thousands of myriads and may thy seed inherit the cities of their enemies. Then arose Rebekka and her maids, and mounting the camels they went with the man. ”

“ We cannot gainsay thee, be it good or bad. Behold Rebekka is before thee. Take her and go and let her be the wife of thy master's son, as the Lord hath spoken. And when Abraham's servant heard these words, he worshipped the Lord on the ground. Then the servant brought out jewels of silver and gold and raiment and gave them to Rebekka, and made presents to her brother and to her mother. ”

“ Reuben lighted a couple of the candles, then turning to his companion, who was lying on the bed frigging slowly his standing prick, as if keeping it in a state ready for use, said, "Will, it's time His Lordship was here now, what a good job I broke away from you just now, or you would have spent and spoilt all; he likes to see us looking ready and randy, but if he thinks we have been fucking or frigging by ourselves he would damn us, and bolt off in a rage." ”

“ Long time took he to dress, and a miserable man did he look when he presented himself at the breakfast table. Though breakfast was a mere form with him, he lingered so long in his chair, that Mrs. Hall, the housekeeper, seriously alarmed at this state of things, quietly went and begged Reuben (an early man) to come upstairs and persuade Isaac to forego attendance at his duties for the day.
“Why, Isaac, what’s the matter with thee to-day?” began Reuben, cheerily, but stopped short, shocked at the change in the other’s appearance. “Thou art surely very ill,” said he, more quietly. ”

“ Granny is pleading with him to forsake this den of depravity. Her hand is clasping his and those old, stern lines have melted into a smile of ineffable sweetness. The air is heavy and her voice not always audible, but Reuben hears:
“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.... ”

“ And if Reb Lebish himself said so, you may depend upon it he was right, because every Wednesday, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, Reb Lebish climbed busily onto the roof of the women's Shool, or onto the top of the hill beside the old house-of-study, and looked out for the minute when the sun should set, in one hand his watch, and in the other the calendar. And when the sun dropt out of sight on the further side of Mazepevke, Reb Lebish said to himself, "Got him!" ”