The Sentinel, v.047 no. 12, 1922

              This is a beautiful Rosh Hashonah story,
symbolical of the dawn of a new day in Is-rael's
life. The author, Maurice Samuel, is
one of the talented, versatile and scholarly
Anglo-Jewish writers in America. Among
his outstanding works are "The Outsider,"
"The Greatest Romance of the Ages," and a
volume of translations from Bialik to be
published shortly. He writes an English
column for The Day, and is the president of
the Jewish Writers' Guild.-Editor's Note.
One afternoon during that bloody month of
September which heralded the close of the
world war, two soldiers, one. French and one
American, were walking down the rue de la
Pepiniere, in Bordeaux, France. This street,
one of the quietest in that provincial city,
winds through a residential district, passing
at one point the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre,
built during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.
All that remains of it now is a crumbled double
wall, with dilapidated arches through which
the lizards crawl on sunny days.
The. soldiers walked slowly, the Frenchman
with the aid of a crutch, the American leaning
on a stout stick. They talked in low tones, as
if a conversation of serious import had started
in the midst of trivial talk. They did not look
at the few passersby, but either at each other
or at the ground.
When they caine to the little gate which
leads into the small park containing the Roman
ruins, they turned in by tacit accord. In all
Bordeaux there is scarcely a quieter spot than
this. Onemight think that, as if to make up
for the sweat and agony which two thousand
years ago had delighted the howling mob seated
on the vanished tiers, Nature had condemned
the spot to eternal quiet. Round about the
tiny garden there rise the walls of tranquil
middle-class homes. The larger city, with its
traffic and its crowds, is far removed. The
rumble of a carriage, the patter.ofsindividual
footsteps only serve to deepen the silence that
sleeps on the place in sunshine and in darkness.
When the soldiers were seated, the French-man
leaned his elbow on his crutch and looked
up at the topmost point of the ruins.
"Perhaps you wonder," he said, speaking
in. French, "4why I am so melancholy today.
And I have so little reason, too. In another
week or so I shall be -able to dispense with
this. I shall be a whole man, with another
month 's leave, or even more, in front of me"
The American did not reply. He sensed,
by some unanalyzable instinct, that his new-found
friend was about to reveal something.
ntelruth," saida theFrenchman, amI am
afraid. And I scarcely know of what."
SHe hesitated a full minute, and then asked:
"Do you believe in a fate which half reveals
itself, which speaks a language you half under-stand,
and flashes to you now and again a
signal which you know has a meaning, but
which you have not the skill to read ?'"
"I do not know whether I believe in it or not," said the American, answering irn the
language of the other.
Si Would you laugh at me if I were. to speak
of it? " asked the French soldier.
"I laugh at nothing," said the American.
"I believe in everything and in nothing.
Nothing is possible, and everything is possible.
I laugh only at men who say yes and no with
such certainty to problems of nature and life
and death."
"It is so," said the Frenchman, grateful for
the . other's sympathy. Then, after another
long silence: "In our family there is a curious
legend, and a still more curious destiny linked
up with this part of the year. The legend I
half know-the destiny not at all. But both
are there. Even though I shall die with that
destiny unrevealed to me, I shall still believe
that it exists.
"I do not know how old the legend is, or
when the first shadow of that uindiscoverable
destiny fell across my family. My father, be-fore
he died, told me all he knew-as much as
I shall tell you. I sat at his bedside when he
lay dying, for both of us hoped that in the
moment before death some revelation would
come to him. He, too, had sat at the bedside
of his dying father. But neither to him nor
to his father before him was anything revealed.
His last word to me was: Remember ! So it
was his father's to him. It shall be mine to
my son, if I shall ever have one. But I do not
know what I must remember, what my fathers
remembered, or what my sons must remember.
Strange, is it not?"
He waited, as if for some comment, and then
continued:
"This much I do know. At this time of the
year, in the month of September, there is an
invisible and ghostly trumpeter haunts the
chief in line of our family. Wherever we
chance to find ourselves, on land or at sea, we
hear the sound of a bugle. Sometimes the
cause is natural. These last four years I have
heard the bugles of the army. When there is a
natural cause at hand, the mysterious trum-peter
utters his notes in that way. At other
times, once or twice, I have heard the notes
of a bugle when no natural cause could have
accounted for them. I say it with utter cer-tainty,
with the last power of belief that is in
me. I have heard that trumpeter when no one
else could have heard him, and when no one
else did hear him.
"He does not always come on the same day.
But always about this part of the year I begin
to expect him. I shall hear him, I know. If
I were to flee in to the heart of a forest, where
no other footstep has ever trodden, I shall
hear the sound at the appointed time. I shall
hear him if I leave the city or no. I shall hear
him, if I return to camp, in the bugles of our
regiment-but even if I remain in my own
home. in the heart of the city, where no bugle
is ever sounded, I shall hear him, too.
"No one knows' clearly this legend of the
trumpeter, but from what is known they call
himu the Trumpeter of the Rescue. They tell
that once, many, many generations ago, our
family was a family of warriors, in another
country, not far from here. They were famous
not only for their prowess on the battlefields
and in the knightly lists, but they shone in the
schools and in the court with equal lstre.
" The legend tells further that their power
came to them through a magic talisman, which
had been handed down within the family since,
the ve.ry creation of the world. This talisman
was as beloved of our family as it was hated
of our enemies. Every artifice which the cun-ning
of man could suggest, our enemies had at-tempted,
in order to wrest the talisman from
us. Not that they could use it themselves, but
they would deprive us of its virtues.
"In the end, where their cunning failed,
they succeeded by the force of numbers. They
tell, in this half-complete legend, that somehow
a forefather of mine abandoned the talisman
to placate his enemies. They tell how this
helped him nothing, how he. regretted his weak-ness,
and set out on a long quest in search of
the lost talisman. They tell how he wandered
over half the world in search of it-and found
it not. Andl they tell how, at this season of
the year, he heard a trumpeter from afar bid-ding
him continue the search, for success would
be his in the end."
The Frenchman was strangely agitated by
now. He rose suddenly to his feet, put his
crutch under his arm and said: "Let us go on.
We will go home. The rest I will tell you on
the way."
They went out into the sunny street, and
walked on slowly.
"In my family," said the Frenchman, "there
is no record of warriors or of statesmen or of
scholars. From the beginning of our records,
here in this city, we have been, with few ex-ceptions,
outside the main branch of the family,
only merchants. The first of my forefathers
of whom we have a record grew rich in the
reign of Francis the First. Where he came
from no one knows. Perhaps he came from
Bretagne or from Burgundy. But this is sure:
though we have lived in Gascony ever since,
he was no Gascon.
"There is neither rhyme nor reason in the
legend. We were never a family of poets;
there is nothing poetical in our records. With
this one incomprehensible exception, we were
always dull, comfortable merchants-that is,
till this war came.
"Why should so strange a legend, fit only
for some ancient nobility with a bloody past,
with stories of evil interwoven into its history,
haunt this family of ours? Why should a
trumpeter give us warning of something-en-couragement
or premonition of disaster-when
no trumpeter ever called my forefathers to
battle? Who is that trumpeter? What is his
message?"
The American was silent. A disturbing
change had come over his companion. His
eyes were listless. He spoke in sharp, broken
tones. His free hand trembled in its wild
gestures.
They had reached an old house in an utterly
silent street. Grass grew between the cobble-stones.
The houses on either side, centuries
od, leane oer totwards eachhother,ouncertain
went. The Frenchman led the young American
up to a wide room at the top of the house.
There they sat down and were silent.
" These days," said the Frenchman at last,
"I have felt that the trumpeter is drawing ever
closer and closer. I know, somehow, that I
shall hear him this time, not through some nat-ural
cause. He will sound his notes not through
corporeal and living lips, but he will lift up
this time, as he has often done, a bugle of
shadow, and send out notes inaudible perhaps
to all but me. In that old legend of my family,
they say he foretold the end of the quest for the
lost talisman. But I have ceased to believe
that, and know not what to believe. Perhaps
he is only the inherited memory of the lost
destiny. Perhaps there is no trumpeter wander-ing
the invisible world, but we, from father to
(Continued on page 61)