The Imported Bridegroom | Page 4

had not seen any
since he had left his native place.
Echoes of many, many years ago called to Asriel from amid the

whispering host. His soul burst into song. He felt like shutting his eyes
and trusting himself to the caressing breath of the air, that it might waft
him whithersoever it chose. His senses were in confusion: he beheld a
sea of fragrance; he inhaled heavenly music; he listened to a symphony
of hues.
"What a treat to breathe! What a paradise!" he exclaimed in his heart.
"The cholera take it, how delicious! Do you deserve it, old sinner you?
Ten plagues you do! But hush! the field is praying--"
With a wistful babyish look he became absorbed in a gigantic
well-sweep suspended from the clear sky, and then in the landscape it
overhung. The woody mass darkling in the distance was at once racing
about and standing still. Fleecy clouds crawled over a hazy hilltop. And
yonder--behold! a long, broad streak of silver gleaming on the horizon!
Is it a lake? Asriel's eyes are riveted and memories stir in his breast. He
recalls not the place itself, but he can remember his reminiscences of it.
During his first years in America, at times when he would surrender
himself to the sweet pangs of homesickness and dwell, among other
things, on the view that had seen him off to the unknown land, his mind
would conjure up something like the effect now before his eyes. As a
dream does it comes back to him now. The very shadows of thirty-five
years ago are veiled.
Asriel gazes before him in deep reverence. The sky is letting itself
down with benign solemnity, its measureless trough filled with melody,
the peasant's wagon creaking an accompaniment to it all--to every
speck of color, as well as to every sound of the scene.
At one moment he felt as though he had strayed into the other world; at
another, he was seized with doubt as to his own identity. "Who are
you?" he almost asked himself, closing and reopening his hand
experimentally. "Who or what is that business which you call life? Are
you alive, Asriel? Whereupon he somehow remembered Flora's
photograph, and, taking it out of his bosom pocket, fell to
contemplating it.
The wagon turned into a side road, and the Polish peasant, leaning

forward, cursed and whipped the animal into a peevish trot. Presently
something gray hove in. sight. Far away, below, hazy blotches came
creeping from behind the sky. The wagon rolls downhill. Asriel is in a
flurry. He feels like one on the eve of a great event, he knows not
exactly what.
The wagon dashes on. Asriel's heart is all of a flutter. Suddenly--O
Lord of the Universe! Why, there glistens the brook--what do you call
it? "'Repka?"' he asks the driver.
"Repka!" the other replies, without facing about.
"Repka, a disease into her heart! Repka, dear, may she live long! Who
could beat Asriel in swimming?" Over there, on the other side, it was
where Asriel's father once chased him for bathing during Nine Days.
He bumped his head against the angle of a rock, did the little scamp,
and got up with a deep, streaming gash in his lower lip. The mark is
still there, and Asriel delights to feel it with his finger now. As he does
so the faces of some of his playmates rise before him. Pshaw! he could
whip every one of them! Was he not a daredevil of a loafer! But how
many of those fellow truants of his will he find alive? he asks himself,
and the question wrings his heart.
Asriel strains his eyes at the far distance till, behold! smoke is spinning
upward against the blue sky. He can make out the chimney pots. His
soul overflows. Sobs choke his breath. "Say!" he begins, addressing
himself to the driver. But "say" is English. "Sloukhai!" he shouts, with
delight in the Polish word. He utters the names of the surrounding
places, and the dull peasant's nods of assent thrill him to the core. He
turns this way and that, and in his paroxysm of impatience all but leaps
out of the wagon.
The rambling groups of houses define their outlines. Asriel recognizes
the Catholic church. His heart bounds with joy. "Hush, wicked thing!
It's a church of Gentiles." But the wicked thing surreptitiously resumes
its greeting. And over there, whitening at some distance from the other
dwellings--what is it? "The nobleman's palace, as sure as I am a Jew!"
He had forgotten all about it, as sure as he was a Jew! But what is the

nobleman s name? Is he alive?--And there is the mill--the same mill!
"I'll swoon away!" he says to himself audibly.
Asriel regains some composure.
Half