Jews -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
They walked as far as Seventh Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, where they
took the University Place car. Elias thought he had never been so happy.
It was an exhilaration merely to share this young girl's presence,
breathing the same air that she breathed. The sunshine caught new
radiance from her hair. Lambent fires burned in her eyes. There was no
music that Elias would rather have heard, than the music of her voice
as she talked to him. They had the car to themselves for the first few
blocks; but then it began to fill up with ladies, and at last chivalry
compelled Elias to sacrifice his seat at Christine's side. He clung to
the strap in front of her, and looked down at her; and she looked up
at him; and so, with their glances, they communed together, very rarely
opening their lips, until, having reached Fourteenth Street, it behooved
them to dismount.
The music began. Christine sat forward in her chair, and listened with
manifest appreciation. But she made no sign to her companion till the
musicians had played, and the chorus sung, the first bar or two of the
“Peasants' Rondo.” Then she turned upon him suddenly, with eyes dilated
and lips apart, and drew a quick breath, and uttered an ecstatic
little “_Oh!_” The syllable sped straight to his heart, and started an
unfamiliar palpitation there. From that moment until the concert was
terminated, both of these young people were in Heaven; she, thanks to
the marvelous music, which seized hold of her, and bore her away, like a
blossom upon its bosom: he, thanks to the beautiful girl who was seated
next to him, and whose eyes kept smiling into his, and whose breath for
one priceless second fell upon his cheek. Every most trifling incident
of that afternoon somehow engraved itself upon Elias Bacharach's memory.
Long afterward he recalled it all: how Christine was dressed, the shape
of her bonnet, the color of her gloves, the fragrance of the rose that
she wore in her breast; how he had wrapped her cloak about her shoulders
when she complained of a draught; how she had beat time with her fan
when the students sang their drinking song, and laughed when Brander
sang the ballad of the rat, and looked grave when Gretchen sang “There
was a King in Thule,” and started, and paled, and caught her breath, and
put her hand impulsively upon Elias's arm, when Faust and Mephistopheles
began their tempestuous ride into hell. He remembered it all, in
exceeding bitterness of spirit. He would have followed Faust's example,
and pledged his soul to eternal bondage, gladly, eagerly, if by doing so
he could have won back the possibilities of that vanished afternoon.
Old Redwood met them, as he had promised, on the curbstone in front of
the exit.
“You'd better come up town and dine with us, Mr. Bacharach,” he said.
“Oh, yes; do, please,” urged Christine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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