Tales of the Chesapeake | Page 4

seen it by
land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He
laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire. Looking
up from the living child's face, he caught the sparkle of the crucifix he
had discovered, where it stood in the narrow window-sill. There were
gems of various colors in it, and they reflected the firelight lustrously,
like a slender chandelier, or, as the Jew remembered in the version of
the Evangels, like the gifts those bearded wise men, of whom he might
resemble one, brought to the manger of the infant Christ--gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. Struck by the conceit, he looked again at the
baby's face--the baby but a few days or weeks old--and he felt, in spite
of himself, a softness and pity.
"It might be true," he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and
unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this
preacher, did behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn, eighteen

hundred and forty years ago."
He looked again at the cross. In the relief of the night against the
window-pane its jewels shone like the only living things in the hovel. A
figure was extended upon this cross, and every nail was a precious
stone; the crown of thorns was all diamonds.
"It might be true," he said again, "that on a cross-beam like that, the
manger baby perished for some audacity--as I might be put to death if I
mocked the usages of a whole nation, as this preacher has done."
The cross, an object as high as one of the window-panes, and suffused
with the exuding dyes of its jewels, took now a dewy lustre, as if
weeping precious gum and amber. The Jew felt an instant's sense of
superstition, which he dashed away, and placing the child, already
sleeping, before the fire, awakened rapacity led him to hunt the hovel
over. He found nothing but a few religious books, and amongst them a
leather-covered Testament, which he opened and read with
insensibility--passing on, at length, to interest, then to fascination, at
last to rage and defiance--the opening chapters and the close of the
story of Jesus.
"Now, by the sufferings of my patient race! I will do a thing unlike
myself, to prove this testimony a libel. Here is a child more homeless
than this carpenter, Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming of
David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves I have
imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will rob the
shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a Hebrew. Yea,
if I can make it so, a Rabbi of Israel!"
Issachar looked again at the cross. Day was breaking in the window
behind it, and the rich light of its gems was obscurer, but its form and
proportions seemed to have expanded--perhaps because he had worn
his eyes reading by the firelight--and the outstretched figure looked
large as humanity, and the cross lofty and real, as that which it was
made to commemorate. He hid it beneath his garment, and walked forth
into the gray dawn of Christmas. One star remained in mid-heaven,
whiter than the day. It poised over the hovel of the dead like something

new-born in the sky, and unacquainted with its fellow orbs.
"Christmas gift!" shouted a party of lads and women, rushing upon the
Jew. "Christmas gift! You are caught, Issachar. Give us a present, old
miser!"
It was the custom in that old settled country that whoever should be
earliest up, and say "Christmas gift!" to others, should receive some
little token in farthings or kind.
"Bah!" answered the Jew. "Look in yonder, where the best of your
religion lie, perished by your inhumanity, and behold your Christmas
gift to them!"
There, where no friendly feet but those of negroes and slaves had
entered for months, the strengthening morning showed a young wife,
almost white, and the most beautiful of her type, with comely features,
and eyes and hair that the proudest white beauty might envy. The
gauntness of death had scarcely diminished those charms which had
brought the pride of the world's esteem and the prudence of religion to
her feet, and lifted her to virtuous matrimony, only to banish her lover
from the hearthstones of his race and make them both outcasts, the
poorest of the creatures of God, even on Chincoteague. A slight sense
of self-accusation touched the bystanders.
"He was a good preacher," said one, "and I was converted under him.
He baptized my children. That he should have married a darkey!"
"She was a pious girl," added another, "and from her youth up was in
temptation, which